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# Athanasius: Select Works and Letters
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Title: NPNF2-04. Athanasius: Select Works and Letters Creator(s): Athanasius Schaff, Philip (1819-1893) (Editor) Print Basis: New York: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1892 Rights: Public Domain CCEL Subjects: All; Proofed; Early Church; LC Call no: BR60 LC Subjects:
Christianity
Early Christian Literature. Fathers of the Church, etc. __________________________________________________________________
A SELECT LIBRARY
OF THE
NICENE AND
POST-NICENE FATHERS
OF
THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.
SECOND SERIES
TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH WITH PROLEGOMENA AND EXPLANATORY NOTES.
VOLUMES I-VII.
UNDER THE EDITORIAL SUPERVISION OF
PHILIP SCHAFF, D.D., LL.D.,
PROFESSOR OF CHURCH HISTORY IN THE UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, NEW YORK.
AND
HENRY WACE, D.D.,
PRINCIPAL OF KING'S COLLEGE, LONDON.
VOLUME IV
ATHANASIUS:
SELECT WORKS AND LETTERS
T&T CLARK
Edinburgh
EDINBURGH
__________________________________________________
Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company Grand Rapids, Michigan
WM. B. EERDMANS PUBLISHING COMPANY
GRAND RAPIDS, MICHIGAN __________________________________________________________________
Editorial Preface.
------------------------
It is with a sense of deep obligation to Mr. Robertson, the special editor, that this volume of the Post-Nicene series of the Fathers is presented to the subscribers and the public. It will furnish, as is believed, a more comprehensive and thorough introduction to the study of Athanasius than is elsewhere accessible, and the labour and devotion bestowed upon it are beyond all acknowledgment. Thanks must also be expressed to the publishers, by whose liberality the ordinary limits of the volumes of this series have been extended, in order that so important a Father as Athanasius might be represented with as much fulness as possible.
Mr. Robertson's Preface explains the care and respect with which the translation and notes of Cardinal Newman have been treated, in reprinting them for the purpose of this edition. But there appeared in some parts of the translation inaccuracies which could not be reproduced consistently with a faithful representation of the original; and so far, therefore, and so far only, it has been corrected. Where any correction has been made in the Cardinal's notes, it is of course distinctly specified.
I must add an expression of particular gratitude to my friend, the Rev. J. H. Lupton, Surmaster of St. Paul's School, for his generous help in reading the translations throughout, and for various valuable suggestions. The assistance of his scholarly learning gives me additional confidence in presenting this volume to the public.
I must take the opportunity of expressing my great regret that there has been so considerable an interruption in the issue of the series. But by the sudden failure, partly from illness, and partly from other unforeseen causes, of two important contributions at the very moment when they were needed, the editor and the publishers were exposed to difficulties which were for the time insuperable. But other volumes of the series are now steadily progressing, and it is believed there will be no further interruptions in the publication.
Henry Wace.
King's College, London,
21 Nov. 1891. __________________________________________________________________
Select Writings and Letters
OF
Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria.
Edited, with Prolegomena, Indices, and Tables,
by
ARchibald Robertson
Principal of Bishop Hatfield's Hall, Durham, Late Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford __________________________________________________________________
Preface.
------------------------
In preparing the present volume the Editor has aimed at providing the English reader with the most complete apparatus for the study of Athanasius, his life, and his theological influence, which could be brought within the compass of a single volume of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Library.' The volume contains all the most important treatises of Athanasius (in as nearly as possible their exact chronological order), with the exception of the ad Serapionem, the contra Apollinarium, the ad Marcellinum, and the exegetical remains. On these and other treatises omitted from the present collection the reader is referred to the Prolegomena, ch. iii.
A great part of the volume, including the bulk of the historical and anti-Arian works, and the Festal Letters, consists of a revision of translations and notes comprised in the Oxford Library of the Fathers. The notes to all, and the translation of most, of the works in question, excepting the Festal Letters, were prepared for that series by Mr. (since Cardinal) Newman. It was at first intended to incorporate his work without any change; but as the volume began to take shape this intention was inevitably to some extent modified; moreover, the limits of space demanded the sacrifice of some of the less important matter. The principles upon which the necessary changes have been made will be found stated on pp. 304, 305, 450. What is there said applies also to the de Decretis and Letter of Eusebius, as well as to the notes to the historical pieces; it may be added that the translation of the Fourth Discourse' has been very carefully revised, in order to secure the utmost closeness to the somewhat difficult original. In all the new translations, as well as in the revision of earlier work, the aim has been to secure the strictest fidelity compatible with clearness. The easy assumption that distinctions of tenses, constructions, &c., count for little or nothing in patristic Greek has been steadily resisted. Doubtless there are passages where the distinction, for example, of aorist and perfect, seems to fade away; but generally speaking, Athanasius is fully sensitive to this and other points of grammar.
The incorporation in this volume of so much of the ample patristic learning of Cardinal Newman has inevitably involved some sacrifice of uniformity. To provide the new matter with illustrative notes on anything like the same scale, even had it been within the present editor's power, would have involved the crowding out of many works which the reader will certainly prefer to have before him. Again, many opinions are expressed by Cardinal Newman which the present editor is unable to accept. It may not be invidious to specify as an example the many cases in which the notes enforce views of Church authority, especially of papal authority, or again of the justifiableness of religious persecution, which appear to be at any rate foreign to the mind of Athanasius; or the tacit assumption that the men of the fourth century can be divided by a broad and fast line into orthodox and heretical, and that while everything may be believed to the discredit of the latter, the former were at once uniform in their convictions and consistently right in practice. Such an assumption operates with special injustice against men like Eusebius, whose position does not fall in with so summary a classification. But it has been thought better to leave the notes in nearly all such cases as they stand, only very rarely inserting a reference or observation to call attention to another aspect of the case. And in no instance has the editor forgotten the respect due to the theological learning and personal greatness of Cardinal Newman, or to his peculiar eminence as a religious thinker.
But this has made it inevitable that many matters are regarded in one way in the notes of Newman, and in quite another where the present editor speaks for himself. What the great Cardinal says of his Historical Sketches' (Preface to vol. ii.) holds good to a large extent of his expositions of Athanasius. Though mainly historical, they are in their form and character polemical, as being directed against certain Protestant ideas and opinions.' The aim of the present editor has been throughout exclusively historical. He has regarded any polemical purpose as foreign to the spirit in which this series was undertaken, and moreover as fated in the long run to defeat its own aim. Whatever results may ultimately be reaped from the field of patristic studies, whether practical, dogmatic, or controversial, they must be resolutely postponed or rather ignored, pending the application of strict method to the criticism and interpretation of the texts, and to the reconstruction of the history whether of the life or of the doctrine of the Church. For the latter purpose, lucifera experimenta, non fructifera quærenda.' To follow this method, without concealing, but without obtruding, his personal convictions, has been the endeavour of the present editor. That he has succeeded, it is not for him to claim: but his work has been in this respect disinterested, and he ventures to hope that readers of all opinions will at least recognise in it un livre de bonne foy.'
The Prolegomena are not intended to be anything approaching to a complete treatise upon the history, writings, or theology of S. Athanasius. They are simply what their title implies, an attempt to furnish in a connected form a preliminary account of the matters comprised in the text of the volume, such as on the one hand to reduce the necessity for a running historical commentary, on the other hand to prepare the reader for the study of the text itself.
Full indices have been added for the same purpose. The general index comprises the leading theological and historical topics, and a complete register of all personal names. This latter seemed requisite in order to escape the arbitrariness of any line which might have been drawn between important and insignificant characters. The nobodies of history may occasionally be important witnesses. The index of Scripture texts has been made with painful attention to detail, and contains no unverified reference. To draw the line in each case between formal citation and mere reminiscence would have involved too great an expenditure of time and space; moreover there are many probable reminiscences of Scripture language which it would have been endless to include. But on the whole the index in question claims to be a complete synopsis of the use made of the Bible in the text of this volume. As such it is hoped that, with whatever occasional errors, it may be of use to the patristic and the biblical student alike.
For the original matter comprised in this volume the editor disclaims any credit of his own. He has aimed simply at consulting and comparing the best authorities, at sifting their conclusions, and at following those which seem best founded. That in doing so the original sources are ready to hand throughout is the peculiar good fortune of those who work at Athanasius. It remains, then, for the editor to express his principal obligations to modern writers. To mention those of earlier date, such as Montfaucon and Tillemont, is merely to say that he has not neglected the indispensable foundations of his task. But Athanasius has also attracted to the study of his works much of the best patristic scholarship of recent times. Among the names mentioned in the first chapter of the Prolegomena, that of Cardinal Newman speaks for itself. No English student will neglect his Arians, however much some of its views may require modification. Pre-eminent for accurate knowledge of the texts and for vivid presentment of the history is Dr. Bright, whose works have been constantly open before the present editor, and have secured him from many an oversight. His occasional divergence from Dr. Bright's views, especially on points of chronology, has gone along with grateful appreciation of this scholar's genuine historical interest, large theological grasp, and perhaps unequalled personal sympathy with Athanasius as a man and as a writer. (On the use made in this volume of his Later Treatises of S. Athanasius, the reader is referred to what is said, infr. p. 482.)
Last, but not least, the editor must acknowledge his obligations to Mr. Gwatkin. To say that that writer's Studies of Arianism have done more than any one work with which he is acquainted to place the intricate story of the period on a secure historical footing is saying a great deal, but by no means too much. To say that whatever historical accuracy has been attained in this volume has been rendered possible by Mr. Gwatkin's previous labours is to the present writer a matter of mere honest acknowledgment. Especially this is the case in chronological questions. Here Mr. Gwatkin has in no single instance been blindly followed, or without the attempt to interrogate the sources independently. But in nearly all cases Mr. Gwatkin's results, which, it should be added, are those accepted by the best continental students also, have held their own. It has been the editor's misfortune to differ from Mr. Gwatkin now and then, for example with regard to the Life of Antony: but even where he has differed as to conclusions, he has received help and instruction from Mr. Gwatkin's ample command of material, and genuinely scientific method.
In addition to the above writers, the manifold obligations of the editor are recorded in the introductions and notes: if any have been passed over, it has been due to inadvertence or to the necessity of condensation. For the suggestions and help of personal friends the editor's gratitude may be here expressed without the mention of names. But he may specially mention the Rev. H. Ellershaw and Miss Payne Smith, to the former of whom he owes the translation of the Life of Antony, while the latter has kindly revised the Oxford translation of the bulk of the Festal Letters. Lastly, the many kindnesses, and uniform consideration, shewn to him by the English editor of this series call for his warmest recognition: that they may prove not wholly thrown away is the utmost that their recipient can venture to hope.
A.R.
The University, Durham,
1891. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Prolegomena.
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Chapter I.
Literature
§1. Editions, &c. (A) Before 1601 only Latin translations. The first, at Vicenza, 1482, completed by Barnabas Celsanus after the death of the translator Omnibonus of Lonigo; dedicated to Paul II. Contained a few works only, viz. the two books c. Gentes,' the letter to Serapion de Morte Arii, the De Incarn. adv. Arian. and adv. Apollin., the Dispute with Arius at the Council of Nicæa.' (2) Paris, 1520, pub. by Jean Petit: two books c. Gent. fragment of the ad Marcellin. and some spuria.' (3) Second edition at Strassburg, 1522. (4) Basel, 1527, by Eramus: Serap. ill. and iv., de Decr., Apol. Fug., Apol. c. Ar. (part of), ad Monach.,' and some spuria' (he rejected Serap. i. as unworthy of Athan.!). (5) Lyons, 1532, same contents as numbers (2) and (4), but with renderings by Politian, Reuchlin, Erasmus, &c. (6) Cologne, 1632, similar contents. (7) 1556, Basel (apud Frobenium'), by P. Nannius, in 4 volumes; great advance on previous editions. 3 vols. contain the version by Nannius of the genuina,' the fourth spuria,' rendered by others. The Nannian version was ably tested, and found wanting, under the direction of the congregation of the Index (Migne xxv. pp. xviii. sqq.). (8) 1564 (or 1584?) Basel (substantially the same). (9) 1570, Paris, Vita Antonii and five dialogues de Trin.,' version of Beza. (10) 1572, Paris, five volumes, combining Nos. 7 and 9. (II) 1574, Paris, Letter ad Amun, Letter 39 (fragment), Letter ad Rufinianum. (12) 1581, Paris, incorporating the latter with No. 10. (13) Rome, 1623, the spurious de variis quæstionibus.
(B) The first Greek Edition (14) 1601 at Heidelberg by Commelinus, with the Nannian Latin version (2 vols. fo. with a supplement of fragments, letters, &c., communicated by P. Felckmann). This edition was founded upon Felckmann's collation of numerous mss., of which the chief were (a) that in the Public Library at Basel (sæc. xiv., not ix.-x. as Felck. states; formerly belonged to the Dominican Friary there). (b) The Codex Christophorsoni,' now at Trin. Coll., Camb., sæc. xvi. ineunt. (g) A Codex Goblerianus' dated 1319, formerly tes mones tou kurizou, and principally used by Nannius. Neither this nor the remaining mss. of Felckmann are as yet, I believe, identified. (Particulars, Migne, P.G. xxv. p. xliii.) (15) 1608, Paris, pub. by C. Chappelet, edited by Fronton le Duc, S.J., Latin only. (17) 1612, Paris, No. 15, with Vit. Ant. in Greek and Latin, from an edition (16) of 1611, Augsburg, by Höschel, 4º. (18) 1627, Paris, Greek text of 1601 with version of Nannius from edition No. 17, both injudiciously revised by Jean le Pescheur, from the critical notes of Felckmann himself, which however are omitted in this edition. (19) Cologne,' or rather Leipzig, 1686, poor reprint of No. 18 with the Syntagma Doctrinæ which Arnold had published in the previous year (see below, ch. ii. §9). (Montf. wrongly dates this 1681.)
(C) All the above were entirely superseded by the great (20) 1698 Paris Benedictine Edition by Bernard de Montfaucon, aided, for part of vol. 1, by Jacques Loppin, 3 volumes fol. (i.e. vol. 1, parts 1 and 2, genuina,' vol. 2 dubia et spuria'), with a new Latin Version and ample prolegomena, &c. Montfaucon took over, apparently without revision, the critical data of Felckmann (including his mistake as to the age of the Basel ms. but collated very many fresh mss. (principally Parisian, full particulars in Migne xxvi. pp. 1449, sqq.), and for the first time put the text on a fairly satisfactory footing. The Works of Athanasius were freshly arranged with an attempt at chronological order, and a Monitum' or short introduction prefixed to each. Critical, and a few explanatory, notes throughout; also an onomasticon' or glossary. This splendid edition was far more complete than its predecessors, and beautifully printed. After its completion, Montfaucon discovered fresh material, most of which he published in vol. 2 of his Collectio Nova Patrum,' Paris, 1706, with some further supplementary matter to his Prolegomena, partly in reply to Tillemont upon various critical questions; small additions in his Biblioth. Coisliniana, 1715. (The letters to Lucifer, included in Montfaucon's edition, had already seen the light in vol. iv. of the Bibliotheca Maxima Patrum (Lyons, 1677, Greek fathers in Latin only), and the two notes to Orsisius were taken from the life of Pachomius in the Acta SS. for May.)
(21) 1746, Rome, the de Titulis Psalmorum, edited from Barberini and Vatican mss. by Cardinal Niccolo Antonelli. (22) 1769, Venice, vol. v. of the Bibliotheca Patrum' of the Oratorian Andrea Gallandi. Contains the works omitted in No. 20, chiefly from Montf. Coll. Nov., but with a few minor additions, and with the fragments and letters found by Maffei at Verona (see below, pp. 495, 554). (23) 1777, Padua, by Giustiniani, in four volumes, containing firstly Montfaucon's genuina' in two volumes, the dubia' and spuria' in the third, and the supplementary matter from (21) and (22) in the fourth. The printing of this standard edition is not equal to that of No. 20. (24) 1884' (1857), Paris, vols. xxv.-xxviii. of Migne's Patrologia Græca, a reprint of No. 23, but in a new order (see vol. xxviii. p. 1650), and with the addition of the Festal Letters from Mai (see below, p. 501). The merits and demerits of this series are well known. Of the latter, the most serious are the misprints, with which every page literally teems.
(D) With Migne's edition the publication of a complete Athanasius (so far as his works are known to be extant) is attained, although there is still everything to be done towards the revision of the text on a critical basis. Among modern editions of large portions of Athanasius from the Benedictine text may be mentioned (25) Thilo, Athan. Opp. dogm. Selecta, Leipz. 1853. (26) Bright, Orations against the Arians (1873 2nd ed. 1883), and Historical Writings of Athanasius, 1881 (Oxf. Univ. Press), with introductions; both most convenient; his Lessons from the lives of three great Fathers (Longmans, 1890) gives an interesting popular study of Athan. Editions of separate books will be noticed in the short Introductions prefixed in this volume. __________________________________________________________________
§2. Translations. The principal Latin versions have been referred to in §1. Of those in foreign languages it is not easy to procure adequate information. Fialon, in the work mentioned below, translates Apol. Const. and Apol. Fug.; in German the Bibliothek der Kirchenväter,' vols. 13-18, Ausgew. Schriften des h. Ath., contains translations of several works by Fisch, Kempten from 1872. The principal English Translations are those in the Library of the Fathers.' Of these, those edited or translated by Newman are incorporated in this volume. Some letters included in this volume, as well as the work against Apollinarianism, are also comprised in the volume (Lib. Fath. 46, 1881) by Bright, with excellent notes, &c., and with a preface by Dr. Pusey (see below, p. 482). Translations of single books will be noticed in the respective Introductions. __________________________________________________________________
§3. Biographies. (a.) Ancient. The writings of Athanasius himself, while seldom furnishing precise chronological data, furnish almost all the primary information as to the facts of his eventful life. The earliest Life' is the panegyric of Gregory of Nazianzus (Or. 21), delivered at CP. 379 or 380, rich in praises, but less so in historical material. More important in the latter respect is the Historia Acephala (probably earlier than 390) printed in this volume, pp. 496, sqq. (The Edition by Sievers in Ztschr. für Hist. Theol. for 1868 is referred to in this volume as Sievers' simply.) It is a priceless source of chronological information, especially where it coincides with and confirms the data of the Festal Index (pp. 503, sqq.), a document probably earlier than 400. A secondary place is occupied by the Church historians, especially Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret, who draw largely from Athanasius himself, and from Rufinus, also in part from the Hist. Aceph. (especially Sozomen), and from Arian sources, which are mainly used by Philostorgius. More scattered notices in later ecclesiastical writers of the fourth century, especially Epiphanius; also Synesius, Jerome, Basil, &c., in the documents of the Councils, &c., and in the Life of Pachomius and other early documents relating to Egyptian Monasticism (see below, Introd. to Vit. Anton. and Appendix, pp. 188, 487).
(b) Medieval. Under this head we may notice the Lives printed by Montfaucon among his Prolegomena. The first, Incerto Auctore,' is dependent on the fifth-century historians and of no value. A second, preserved by Photius (c. 840) is in the judgment of that scholar, which Montfaucon endorses unparalleled rubbish.' That by the Metaphrast 967) is a patchwork from earlier writers made with little skill, and not of use to the historian. An Arabic Life current in the Coptic Church, communicated to Montf. by Renandot, is given by Montf., as he says, that his readers may appreciate the stupendous ignorance and triviality' of that nation. Montf. mentions Latin Lives' compiled from Rufinus and from the Hist. Tripartita, of no value whatever.' Of the Life of Athanasius by Pachomius,' mentioned by Archd. Farrar (infra), I can obtain no particulars.
(c) Modern. The first was that by Tortelius prefixed to the edition of 1520 (§1 (2)), but compiled in the previous century and dedicated to Pope Eugenius IV. (good for its time,' M.). Montf. mentions a valueless life by Lipomanus and a worse one of unknown origin prefixed to other early editions. In 1671 Hermant made the first attempt at a critical biography (Paris); in 1664 an English work, "History of the Life and Actions of St. Athanasius by N.B. P.C. Catholick," with the imprimatur of Abp. Sheldon, had been published at London, in 1677 the biography in Cave, Lives of the Fathers, and in 1686-1704 du Pin, Nouvelle Bibliothèque. About the same date appeared the first volume of the Acta SS. for May, which contains a careful life by Paperbroch (1685; ded. to Innocent XI.). But all previous (to say nothing of subsequent) labours were cast into the shade by the appearance of the Vita' of Montfaucon (Prolegg. to Tom. 1) in 1698, in which the chronology was reduced to order, and every particle of information lucidly digested; and by the Memoires' of M. Lenain de Tillemont' (vol. viii. in 1702), which go over the ground with quite equal thoroughness, and on many points traverse the conclusions of Montfaucon, whose work came into Tillemont's hands only when the latter was on his death-bed (1698). The ground was once more traversed with some fulness and with special attention to the literary and doctrinal work of Athan. by Remy Ceillier, (Aut. Sacrés, vol. v. 1735). After this nothing remained to be done until the revival of interest in patristic studies during the present century. In 1827 appeared the monograph of Möhler Ath. der Grösse' (Mainz), a dogmatic (R.C.) rather than a historical study: in 1862 Stanley (Eastern Church,' Lect. vii.). Böhringer's life (in vol. 6 of Kirchengesch. in Biographien, 1860-1879) is praised as thoroughly good and nearly exhaustive.' Fialon St. Athanase, Paris, 1877, is a most interesting and suggestive, though rather sketchy, treatment from an unusual point of view. P. Barbier Vie de St. A. (Tours, 1888) I have not seen. The best English life is that of Dr. Bright, first in the Introd. to the Orations' (supra, d. 26), but rewritten for the Dictionary of Christ. Biography. The same writer's Introd. to the Hist. Writings (supra ib.) is equally good and should also be consulted. A lucid and able sketch by Dr. Reynolds has been published by the Religious Tract Society, 1889, and Archd. Farrar, Lives of the Fathers, 1, pp. 445-571, is eloquent and sympathetic. __________________________________________________________________
§4. History of the Period, and of the Arian Controversy. (a) Conflict of the Church with Heathenism. On the later persecutions Aubé, Les Chrétiens dans l'Emp. romain, Paris, 1881, id. L'église et l'état,' ib. 1886, Uhlhorn Der Kampf des Christentums, &c. (4th ed.), 1886, Bernhardt Gesch. Roms von Valerian bis Dioklet., 1876, Görres, Licinianische Christenverfolgung, 1875. On Diocletian, Mason, Persec. of Diocl., 1876, Monographs by Vogel, 1857, Preuss, 1869. On the general subject of the decline of paganism, Lasaulx Untergang des Hellenismus, 1854, Merivale's Boyle Lectures, 1864-5, Chastel, Destruction du Paganisme, 1850, Schultze Gesch. des Untergangs des G.-R. Heidentums, 1887 (not praised), Döllinger, Gentile and Jew (E. Tr.), 1862. On the revival of paganism under Julian, Rendall, Julian 1879, Bp. J. Wordsworth in D.C.B., vol. iii., lives of Julian by Neander, 1813, Rode, 1877, Mücke, 1879, Naville, 1877, Strauss, der Romantiker, u.s.w., 1847, Julian's works, ed. Hertlein, 1875, and Neumann, 1880. Monographs by Auer, 1855, Mangold, 1862, Semisch, 1862, Lübker, 1864; Capes, University Life in Ancient Athens, 1877, Sievers, Leben des Libanius, 1868.
(b) The Christian Empire. Keim, Uebertritt Konstantins, 1862, Brieger, Konst. der G., 1880, Gibbon's chapters on the subject should be carefully read. Chawner's Legisl. of Constantine, De Broglie, L'église et L'emp. romain, iii., Ranke, Weltgesch. iv. pp. 1-100 (important), 1884, Schiller, Gesch. der röm. Kaiserzeit (ii), 1887. See also the full bibliography in vol. 1 of this series, p. 445-465.
(c) General History of the Church. It is unnecessary to enumerate the well-known general histories, all of which devote special pains to Athanasius and the Arian controversy. This is especially the case with Schaff, Nicene Christ. ii. 616-678, 884-893, with full bibliography. See also supra §3. Bright's Notes on the Canons (Oxf. 1882), and Hefele, vol. 2 (E. Tra.), are most useful: also Kaye, Council of Nicæa (Works, vol. v. ed. 1888). Card. Hergenröther's Kirchengeschichte (allowing for the natural bias of the writer) is fair and able, with good bibliographical references in the notes (ed. 1884). By far the best modern historical monograph on the Arian period is that of Gwatkin, Studies of Arianism, 1882, constantly referred to in this volume, and indispensable. His Arian Controversy, 1889, is an abridgement, but with supplementary discussions of importance on one or two points; very useful bibliography prefixed to both. (Cf. also below, Chap. v. §1) Kölling's Geschichte der Arianischen Häresie (1st vol., 1874, 2nd, 1883) is pretentious and uncritical. __________________________________________________________________
§5. History of Doctrine. For ancient sources see articles Heresiology and Person of Christ in D.C.B., vols. iii., iv. The modern classics are the works of Petavius, de Trinitate (in vols. ii. and iii. of his De dogmat. Theol.) of Thomassinus, Dogmata Theologica, and of Bull, Defensio fidei Nicænæ (maintaining against Petav. the fixity of pre-Nicene doctrine). Under this head we include Newman's Arians of the Fourth Century, an English classic, unrivalled as a dogmatic and religious study of Arianism, although unsatisfactory on its purely historical side. (Obsolete chronology retained in all editions.) The general histories of Doctrine are of course full on the subject of Arianism; for an enumeration of them, see Harnack, §2 of his Prolegomena. In English we have Shedd (N.Y., 1863, Edinb., 1884), Hagenbach (Clark's Foreign Theol. Lib.), and the great work of Dorner (id.). The most important recent works are those of Harnack, Dogmengeschichte (1886, third vol., 1890), a most able work and (allowing for the prepossessions of the Ritschl school) impartial and philosophical; and Loofs, Leitfaden zur Dogmengeschichte (2 ed., 1890), on similar lines, but studiously temperate and fair. Both works are much used in this volume (quoted commonly as Harnack,' Loofs,' simply. Harnack, vol. i., is quoted from the first edition, but the later editions give comparative tables of the pages). For Councils and Creeds, in addition to the works of Hefele and Bright mentioned §4 c., see Heurtley Harmonia Symbolica; Hahn, Bibliothek der Symbole; Hort, Two Dissertations (1876), indispensable for history of the Nicene Creed; Swainson, Nicene and Apostles' Creed, 1875; Caspari, Ungedruckte u.s.w. Quellen zum Taufsymbol u.s.w. (3 vols. in 2, Christiania, 1866-1875), and Alte und Neue Quellen, ib. 1879; one of the most important of modern patristic works. __________________________________________________________________
§6. Patristic Monographs. (a) Among the very numerous works of this kind, the most useful for our purpose are Zahn, Marcellus von Ancyra, 1867, very important for doctrinal history; Reinkens, Hilarius von Poitiers, 1864; Fialon, St. Basile, 1868; Ullmann, Gregorius von Nazianz (2 ed., 1867, part of earlier ed. trans. by Cox, 1855); Krüger, Lucifer von Calaris (excellent, especially for the Council of 362). Under this head may be mentioned the numerous excellent articles in Dict. Chr. Biog. referred to in their respective connexions.
(b) On the doctrine of Athanasius. In addition to the works of Ceillier and Möhler referred to above, Atzberger, Die Logoslehre des h. Ath. (Munich, 1880); Voigt, Die Lehre des Athan. (Bremen, 1861); Pell, Lehre des h. Ath. von der Sünde und Erlösung (Passau, 1888, a careful and meritorious analysis, candidly in the interest of Roman Catholicism. Difficulties not always faced).
The above list of authorities, &c., does not pretend to completeness, nor to enumerate the sources for general secular or Church history. But in what relates specially to Athanasius it is hoped that an approximation to either requirement has been attained. Works bearing on more special points are referred to in their proper places. In particular, a special Brief Bibliography is prefixed to the Vita Antonii. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Chapter II.
Life of St. Athanasius and Account of Arianism
A. §§1-3. To the Council of Nicæa, 298-325.
§1. Early years, 298-319.
§2. The Arian controversy before Nicæa (319-325).
§3. (1.) The Council of Nicæa (325).
§3. (2.) Situation at the close of the Council (325-328).
a. Novelty of Arianism. Its Antecedents in the history of doctrine.
b. The Omoousion.'
c. Materials for reaction. 1. Persecuted Arians. 2. Eusebius and the Court. 3. Ecclesiastical conservatism. Marcellus and Photinus.
B. §§4-8. The Conflict with Arianism (328-361).
§4. Early years of his Episcopate (328-335), and first troubles.
§5. The Council of Tyre and First Exile (335-337).
§6. Renewed troubles and Second Exile (337-346).
(1) At Alexandria (337-339).
(2) At Rome. Council of Antioch, &c. (339-342).
(3) Constans; Council of Sardica, and its sequel (342-346).
§7. The golden Decade (346-356).
(1) Athanasius as bishop.
(2) Sequel of the death of Constans.
§8. The Third Exile (356-361).
(1) Expulsion of Athanasius.
(2) State of the Arian controversy:--(a) Anomoeans'; (b) Homoeans'; (c) Semi-Arians.'
(3) Athanasius in his retirement.
C. §§9, 10. Athanasius in Victory (362-373).
§9. Under Julian and his successors; Fourth and Fifth Exiles (362-366).
§10. Last years. Basil, Marcellus, Apollinarius (366-373).
Id primum scitu opus est in proposito nobis minime fuisse ut omnia ad Arium Arianos aliosque haereticos illius aetatis itidemque Alexandrum Alexandrinum Hosium Marcellum Serapionem aliosque Athanasii familiares aut synodos spectantia recensere sed solummodo ea quæ uel ad Athanasii Vitam pertinent uel ad eam proxime accedunt.--Montfaucon.
Athanasius was born between 296 and 298 [1] . His parents, according to later writers, were of high rank and wealthy. At any rate, their son received a liberal education. In his most youthful work we find him repeatedly quoting Plato, and ready with a definition from the Organon of Aristotle. He is also familiar with the theories of various philosophical schools, and in particular with the developments of Neo-Platonism. In later works, he quotes Homer more than once (Hist. Ar. 68, Orat. iv. 29), he addresses to Constantius a defence bearing unmistakeable traces of a study of Demosthenes de Corona (Fialon, pp. 286 sq. 293). His education was that of a Greek: Egyptian antiquities and religion, the monuments and their history, have no special interest for him: he nowhere betrays any trace of Egyptian national feeling. But from early years another element had taken a first place in his training and in his interest. It was in the Holy Scriptures that his martyr teachers had instructed him, and in the Scriptures his mind and writings are saturated. Ignorant of Hebrew, and only rarely appealing to other Greek versions (to Aquila once in the Ecthesis, to other versions once or twice upon the Psalms), his knowledge of the Old Testament is limited to the Septuagint. But of it, as well as of the New Testament, he has an astonishing command, 'Alexandreus to genei, aner logios, dunatos on en tais graphais. The combination of Scriptural study and of Greek learning was what one expects in a pupil of the famous Alexandrian School; and it was in this School, the School of Clement and Origen, of Dionysius and Theognostus, that young Athanasius learned, possibly at first from the lips of Peter the bishop and martyr of 311 [2] . The influence of Origen still coloured the traditions of the theological school of Alexandria. It was from Alexander, Bishop of Alexandria 312-328, himself an Origenist of the right wing,' that Athanasius received his moulding at the critical period of his later teens.
Of his first introduction to Alexander a famous story is told by Rufinus (Hist. Eccl. I. xiv.). The Bishop, on the anniversary of the martyrdom of his predecessor, Peter, was expecting some clergy to dinner after service in a house by the sea. Out of the window, he saw some boys at play on the shore: as he watched, he saw that they were imitating the sacred rites of the Church. Thinking at last that they were going too far, he sent some of his clergy to bring them in. At first his enquiries of the little fellows produced an alarmed denial. But at length he elicited that one of them had acted the Bishop and had baptized some of the others in the character of catechumens. On ascertaining that all details had been duly observed, he consulted his clergy, and decided that the baptisms should be treated as valid, and that the boy-bishop and his clergy had given such plain proof of their vocation that their parents must be instructed to hand them over to be educated for the sacred profession. Young Athanasius accordingly, after a further course of elementary studies, was handed over to the bishop to be brought up, like Samuel, in the Temple of God. This, adds Sozomen (ii. 17), was the origin of his subsequent attachment to Alexander as deacon and secretary. The story is credited by some writers of weight (most recently, by Archdeacon Farrar), but seems highly improbable. It depends on the single authority of a writer not famed for historical judgment, and on the very first anniversary of Peter's martyrdom, when Alexander had hardly ascended the episcopal throne, Athanasius was at least fourteen years old. The probability that the anniversary would have been other than the first, and the possibility that Athanasius was even older, coupled with the certainty that his theological study began before Peter's martyrdom, compel us to mark the story with at least a strong note of interrogation. But it may be allowed to confirm us in the belief that Alexander early singled out the promise of ability and devotion which marked Athanasius for his right-hand man long before the crisis which first proved his unique value.
His years of study and work in the bishop's household bore rich fruit in the two youthful works already alluded to. These works more than any later writings of Athanasius bear traces of the Alexandrian theology and of the influence of Origenism: but in them already we trace the independent grasp of Christian principles which mark Athanasius as the representative of something more than a school, however noble and many-sided. It was not as a theologian, but as a believing soul in need of a Saviour, that Athanasius approached the mystery of Christ. Throughout the mazes of the Arian controversy his tenacious hold upon this fundamental principle steered his course and balanced his theology. And it is this that above all else characterises the golden treatise on the Incarnation of the Word. There is, however, one element in the influence of Origen and his successors which already comes out, and which never lost its hold upon Athanasius,--the principle of asceticism. Although the ascetic tendency was present in Christianity from the first, and had already burst forth into extravagance in such men as Tertullian, it was reserved for the school of Origen, influenced by Platonist ideas of the world and life, to give to it the rank of an acknowledged principle of Christian morals--to give the stimulus to monasticism (see below, p. 193). Among the acclamations which accompanied the election of Athanasius to the episcopate that of heis ton askeon was conspicuous (Apol. Ar. 6). In de Incarn. 51. 1, 48. 2, we seem to recognise the future biographer of Antony [3] . __________________________________________________________________
[1] He was unable to speak from memory of the events of the persecution of 303 (Hist. Ar. 64), but (de Incarn. 56. 2) had been instructed in religion by persons who had suffered as martyrs. This must have been before 311, the date of the last persecution in Egypt under Maximin. Before 319 he had written his first books against the Gentiles,' the latter of which, on the Incarnation, implies a full maturity of power in the writer, while the former is full of philosophical and mythological knowledge such as argues advanced education. But from several sources we learn that his election to the episcopate in 328 was impugned, at any rate in after years, on the ground of his not having attained the canonical age of thirty. There is no ground for supposing that this was true: but such a charge would not be made without some ground at least of plausibility. We must therefore suppose that on June 8, 328, he was not much beyond his thirtieth year. His parents, moreover, were living after the year 358 (see below, p. 562, note 6); allowing them over fourscore years at that date, we find in 298 a reasonable date for the birth of their son. We must remember that in southern climates mind and body mature somewhat more rapidly than with ourselves, and contra Gentes' and de Incarnatione' will scarcely appear precocious.
[2] The statements of Greg. Naz. that he frequented classes of grammar and rhetoric is probable enough; that of Sulpitius Severus that he was juris consultus' lacks corroboration.
[3] The actual connection of Athanasius with Antony at this period is implied in the received text of Vit. Anton.' Prolog., for it could scarcely fall at any later date. At the same time the youthful life of Athanasius seems fully accounted for in such a way as to leave little room for it (so Tillemont). But our ignorance of details leaves it just possible that he may for a time have visited the great hermit and ministered to him as Elisha did of old to Elijah. (Cf. p. 195, note 2.) __________________________________________________________________
§2. The Arian Controversy before Nicæa, 319-325.
At the time when Athanasius first appeared as an author, the condition of Christian Egypt was not peaceful. Meletius, bishop of Lycopolis, was accused of having sacrificed during the persecution in 301 (pp. 131, 234); condemned by a synod under bishop Peter, he had carried on schismatical intrigues under Peter, Achillas, and Alexander, and by this time had a large following, especially in Upper Egypt. Many cities had Meletian bishops: many of the hermits, and even communities of monks (p. 135), were on his side.
The Meletian account of the matter (preserved by Epiphan. Hær. 58) was different from this. Meletius had been in prison along with Peter, and had differed from him on the question of the lapsed, taking the sterner view, in which most of the imprisoned clergy supported him. It would not be without a parallel (D.C.B. art. Donatists, Novatian) in the history of the burning question of the lapsi to suppose that Meletius recoiled from a compromised position to the advocacy of impossible strictness. At any rate (de Incarn. 24. 4) the Egyptian Church was rent by a formidable schism. No doctrinal question, however, was involved. The alliance of Meletians and Arians belongs to a later date.
It is doubtful whether the outbreak of the Arian controversy at Alexandria was directly connected with the previous Christological controversies in the same Church. The great Dionysius some half-century before had been involved in controversy with members of his Church both in Alexandria and in the suffragan dioceses of Libya (infr. p. 173). Of the sequel of that controversy we have no direct knowledge: but we find several bishops and numerous clergy and laity in Alexandria and Libya [4] ready to side with Arius against his bishop.
The origin of the controversy is obscure. It certainly must be placed as early as 318 or 319, to leave sufficient time before the final deposition of Arius in the council of 321 (infr. p. 234). We are told that Arius, a native of Libya, had settled in Alexandria soon after the origin of the Meletian schism, and had from motives of ambition sided at first with Meletius, then with Peter, who ordained him deacon, but afterwards was compelled to depose him (Epiph. Hær. 69, Sozom. i. 15). He became reconciled to Achillas, who raised him to the presbyterate. Disappointed of the bishopric at the election of Alexander, he nurtured a private grudge (Thdt. H. E. i. 2), which eventually culminated in opposition to his teaching. These tales deserve little credit: they are unsupported by Athanasius, and bear every trace of invention ex post facto. That Arius was a vain person we see from his Thalia (infr. p. 308): but he certainly possessed claims to personal respect, and we find him not only in charge of the urban parish of Baucalis, but entrusted with the duties of a professor of scriptural exegesis. There is in fact no necessity to seek for personal motives to explain the dispute. The Arian problem was one which the Church was unable to avoid. Not until every alternative had been tried and rejected was the final theological expression of her faith possible. Two great streams of theological influence had run their course in the third century: the subordinationist theology of Origen at Alexandria, the Monarchian theology of the West and of Asia which had found a logical expression in Paul of Samosata. Both streams had met in Lucian the martyr, at Antioch, and in Arius, the pupil of Lucian, produced a result which combined elements of both (see below, §3 (2) a). According to some authorities Arius was the aggressor. He challenged some theological statements of Alexander as Sabellian, urging in opposition to them that if the Son were truly a Son He must have had a beginning, and that there had been therefore a time when He did not exist. According to others (Constantine in Eus. Vit. ii. 69) Alexander had demanded of his presbyters an explanation of some passage of Scripture which had led Arius to broach his heresy. At any rate the attitude of Alexander was at first conciliatory. Himself an Origenist, he was willing to give Arius a fair hearing (Sozom. ubi supra). But the latter was impracticable. He began to canvass for support, and his doctrine was widely accepted. Among his first partisans were a number of lay people and virgins, five presbyters of Alexandria, six deacons, including Euzoius, afterwards Arian bishop at Antioch (a.d. 361), and the Libyan bishops Secundus of Ptolemais in Pentapolis (see p. 226) and Theonas of Marmarica (see p. 70). A letter was addressed to Arius and his friends by Alexander, and signed by the clergy of Alexandria, but without result. A synod was now called (infr. p. 70, Socr. i. 6) of the bishops of Egypt and Libya, and Arius and his allies deposed. Even this did not check the movement. In Egypt two presbyters and four deacons of the Mareotis, one of the former being Pistus, a later Arian bishop of Alexandria, declared for Arius; while abroad he was in correspondence with influential bishops who cordially promised their support. Conspicuous among the latter was a man of whom we shall hear much in the earlier treatises of this volume, Eusebius, bishop of Berytus, who had recently, against the older custom of the Church (p. 103, note 6), but in accordance with what has ever since been general in the case of important sees, been translated to the imperial city of Nicomedia. High in the favour, perhaps related to the family, of Constantine, possessed of theological training and practical ability, this remarkable man was for nearly a quarter of a century the head and centre of the Arian cause. (For his character and history, see the excellent article in D.C.B. ii. 360-367.) He had been a fellow-pupil of Arius in the school of Lucian, and fully shared his opinions (his letter to Paulinus of Tyre, Thdt. H. E. i. 6). The letter addressed to him by Arius (ib. 5) is one of our most important Arian monuments. Arius claims the sympathy of Eusebius of Cæsarea and other leading bishops, in fact of all the East excepting Macarius of Jerusalem and two others, heretical and untutored persons.' Eusebius responded with zeal to the appeal of his fellow-Lucianist.' While Alexander was indefatigable in writing to warn the bishops everywhere against Arius (who had now left Alexandria to seek foreign support, first in Palestine, then at Nicomedia), and in particular addressed a long letter to Alexander, bishop of Byzantium (Thdt. H. E. i. 4), Eusebius called a council at Nicomedia, which issued letters in favour of Arius to many bishops, and urged Alexander himself to receive him to communion. Meanwhile a fresh complication had appeared in Egypt. Colluthus, whose name stands first among the signatures to the memorandum (to be mentioned presently) of the deposition of Arius, impatient it would seem at the moderation of Alexander, founded a schism of his own, and although merely a presbyter, took upon himself to ordain. In Egypt and abroad confusion reigned: parties formed in every city, bishops, to adopt the simile of Eusebius (Vit. Const.), collided like the fabled Symplegades, the most sacred of subjects were bandied about in the mouths of the populace, Christian and heathen.
In all this confusion Athanasius was ready with his convictions. His sure instinct and powerful grasp of the centre of the question made him the mainstay of his Bishop in the painful conflict. At a stage [5] of it difficult to determine with precision, Alexander sent out to the bishops of the Church at large a concise and carefully-worded memorandum of the decision of the Egyptian Synod of 321, fortified by the signatures of the clergy of Alexandria and the Mareotis (see infra, pp. 68-71).
This weighty document, so different in thought and style from the letter of Alexander preserved by Theodoret, bears the clear stamp of the mind and character of Athanasius: it contains the germ of which his whole series of anti-Arian writings are the expansion (see introd. and notes, pp. 68-71), and is a significant comment on the hint of the Egyptian. bishops (Apol. c. Ar. 6 ad init.).
Early in 324 a new actor came upon the scene. Hosius, bishop of Cordova and confessor (he is referred to, not by name, Vit. Const. ii. 63, 73, cf. iii. 7, ho panu boomenos; by name, Socr. i. 7), arrived with a letter from the Emperor himself, intreating both parties to make peace, and treating the matter as one of trivial moment. The letter may have been written upon information furnished by Eusebius (D.C.B. s.v.); but the anxiety of the Emperor for the peace of his new dominions is its keynote. On the arrival of Hosius a council (p. 140) was held, which produced little effect as far as the main question was concerned: but the claims of Colluthus were absolutely disallowed, and his ordination of one Ischyras (infr. §5) to the presbyterate pronounced null and void. Hosius apparently carried back with him a strong report in favour of Alexander; at any rate the Emperor is credited (Gelas. Cyz. ii., Hard. Conc. i. 451-458) with a vehement letter of rebuke to Arius, possibly at this juncture. Such was the state of affairs which led to the imperial resolve, probably at the suggestion of Hosius, to summon a council of bishops from the whole world to decide the doctrinal question, as well as the relatively lesser matters in controversy. __________________________________________________________________
[4] It is of interest to note the changed conditions. In 260 bishop Dionysius had to check the Monarchian tendency in Libya, and was accused by members of his own flock of separating the Son from the Being (ousia) of the Father. In 319 a Libyan, Arius, cries out upon the Sabellianism of his bishop, and formulates the very doctrine which Dionysius had been accused of maintaining.
[5] The chronology cannot be determined with precision. The Memorandum is signed by Colluthus and therefore precedes his schism. The letter to Alex. Byzant. was written after the Colluthian schism had begun. But the proceedings of Eusebius described above had at least begun when the Memorandum was circulated, which must, therefore, have been some time after the Synod of 321. The letter of Alexander to his clergy prefixed to the depositio was drawn up after it, and includes the names of the Mareotic seceders. We may, therefore, tentatively adopt the following series:--321 a.d.: Egyptian Synod deposes Arius. Arius in correspondence with Eusebius, &c. Leaves Alexandria for Palestine and Nicomedia. Letters sent abroad by Alexander. Eusebius holds council and writes to Alexander. 322: Memorandum drawn up; Alexandrian clergy assemble to sign it; prefatory address to them by Alexander with reference to the Mareotic defection which has just occurred; circulation of Memorandum; schism of Colluthus. 323: Letter of Alexander to Alexander of Byzantium; (Sept.) Constantine, master of the East, and ready to intervene in the controversy. __________________________________________________________________
§3 (1) The Council of Nicæa.
An ecumenical council was a new experiment. Local councils had long since grown to be a recognised organ of the Church both for legislation and for judicial proceedings. But no precedent as yet prescribed, no ecclesiastical law or theological principle had as yet enthroned, the General Council' as the supreme expression of the Church's mind. Constantine had already referred the case of the Donatists first to a select council at Rome under bishop Miltiades, then to what Augustine (Ep. 43) has been understood to call a plenarium ecclesiæ universæ concilium' at Arles in 314. This remedy for schism was now to be tried on a grander scale. That the heads of all the Churches of Christendom should meet in free and brotherly deliberation, and should testify to all the world their agreement in the Faith handed down independently but harmoniously from the earliest times in Churches widely remote in situation, and separated by differences of language, race, and civilisation, is a grand and impressive idea, an idea approximately realised at Nicæa as in no other assembly that has ever met. The testimony of such an assembly carries the strongest evidential weight; and the almost unanimous horror of the Nicene Bishops at the novelty and profaneness of Arianism condemns it irrevocably as alien to the immemorial belief of the Churches. But it was one thing to perceive this, another to formulate the positive belief of the Church in such a way as to exclude the heresy; one thing to agree in condemning Arian formulæ, another to agree upon an adequate test of orthodoxy. This was the problem which lay before the council, and with which only its more clearsighted members tenaciously grappled: this is the explanation of the reaction which followed, and which for more than a generation, for well nigh half a century after, placed its results in jeopardy. The number of bishops who met at Nicæa was over 250 [6] . They represented many nationalities (Euseb. ubi supra.), but only a handful came from the West, the chief being Hosius, Cæcilian of Carthage, and the presbyters sent by Silvester of Rome, whose age prevented his presence in person. The council lasted from the end of May till Aug. 25 (see D.C.A., 1389). With the many picturesque stories told of its incidents we have nothing to do (Stanley's Eastern Church, Socr. i. 10-12, Soz. i. 17, 18, Rufin. H. E. i. 3-5); but it may be well to note the division of parties. (1) Of thoroughgoing partisans of Arius, Secundus [7] and Theonas alone scorned all compromise. But Eusebius of Nicomedia, Theognis, Bishop of Nicæa itself, and Maris of Chalcedon, also belonged to the inner circle of Arians by conviction (Socr. i. 8; Soz. i. 21 makes up the same number, but wrongly). The three last-named were pupils of Lucian (Philost. ii. 15). Some twelve others (the chief names are Athanasius of Anazarbus and Narcissus of Neronias, in Cilicia; Patrophilus of Scythopolis, Aetius of Lydda, Paulinus of Tyre, Theodotus of Laodicea, Gregory of Berytus, in Syria and Palestine; Menophantus of Ephesus; for a fuller discussion see Gwatk. p. 31, n. 3) completed the strength of the Arian party proper. (2) On the other hand a clearly formulated doctrinal position in contrast to Arianism was taken up by a minority only, although this minority carried the day. Alexander of Alexandria of course was the rallying point of this wing, but the choice of the formula proceeded from other minds. gpostasis and housia are one in the Nicene formula: Alexander in 323 writes of treis upostaseis.
The test formula of Nicæa was the work of two concurrent influences, that of the anti-Origenists of the East, especially Marcellus of Ancyra, Eustathius of Antioch, supported by Macarius of Ælia,' Hellanicus of Tripolis, and Asclepas of Gaza, and that of the Western bishops, especially Hosius of Cordova. The latter fact explains the energetic intervention of Constantine at the critical moment on behalf of the test (see below, and Ep. Eus. p. 75); the word was commended to the Fathers by Constantine, but Constantine was prompted' by Hosius (Harnack, Dogmg. ii. 226); houtos ten en Nikai& 139; piotin exetheto (infr. p. 285, §42). Alexander (the Origenist) had been prepared for this by Hosius beforehand (Soc. iii. 7; Philost. i. 7; cf. Zahn Marcell. p. 23, and Harnack's important note, p. 229). Least of all was Athanasius the author of the homoousion; his whole attitude toward the famous test (infr. p. 303) is that of loyal acceptance and assimilation rather than of native inward affinity. He was moulded by the Nicene Creed, did not mould it himself' (Loofs, p. 134). The theological keynote of the council was struck by a small minority; Eustathius, Marcellus, perhaps Macarius, and the Westerns, above all Hosius; the numbers were doubtless contributed by the Egyptian bishops who had condemned Arius in 321. The signatures, which seem partly incorrect, preserve a list of about 20. The party then which rallied round Alexander in formal opposition to the Arians may be put down at over thirty. The men who best understood Arianism were most decided on the necessity of its formal condemnation.' (Gwatkin.) To this compact and determined group the result of the council was due, and in their struggle they owed much--how much it is hard to determine--to the energy and eloquence of the deacon Athanasius, who had accompanied his bishop to the council as an indispensable companion (infr. p. 103; Soz. i. 17 fin.). (3) Between the convinced Arians and their reasoned opponents lay the great mass of the bishops, 200 and more, nearly all from Syria and Asia Minor, who wished for nothing more than that they might hand on to those who came after them the faith they had received at baptism, and had learned from their predecessors. These were the conservatives [8] ,' or middle party, composed of all those who, for whatever reason, while untainted with Arianism, yet either failed to feel its urgent danger to the Church, or else to hold steadily in view the necessity of an adequate test if it was to be banished. Simple shepherds like Spyridion of Cyprus; men of the world who were more interested in their libelli than in the magnitude of the doctrinal issue; theologians, a numerous class, who on the basis of half-understood Origenist ideas were prepared to recognise in Christ only the Mediator appointed (no doubt before all ages) between God and the World' (Zahn Marc. p. 30); men who in the best of faith yet failed from lack of intellectual clearsightedness to grasp the question for themselves; a few, possibly, who were inclined to think that Arius was hardly used and might be right after all; such were the main elements which made up the mass of the council, and upon whose indefiniteness, sympathy, or unwillingness to impose any effective test, the Arian party based their hopes at any rate of toleration. Spokesman and leader of the middle party was the most learned Churchman of the age, Eusebius of Cæsarea. A devoted admirer of Origen, but independent of the school of Lucian, he had, during the early stages of the controversy, thrown his weight on the side of toleration for Arius. He had himself used compromising language, and in his letter to the Cæsarean Church (infra, p. 76 sq.) does so again. But equally strong language can be cited from him on the other side, and belonging as he does properly to the pre-Nicene age, it is highly invidious to make the most of his Arianising passages, and, ignoring or explaining away those on the other side, and depreciating his splendid and lasting services to Christian learning, to class him summarily with his namesake of Nicomedia [9] . (See Prolegg. to vol. 1 of this series, and above all the article in D.C.B.) The fact however remains, that Eusebius gave something more than moral support to the Arians. He was neither a great man nor a clear thinker' (Gwatkin); his own theology was hazy and involved; as an Origenist, his main dread was of Monarchianism, and his policy in the council was to stave off at least such a condemnation of Arianism as should open the door to confounding the Persons.' Eusebius apparently represents, therefore, the left wing,' or the last mentioned, of the conservative' elements in the council (supra, and Gwatkin, p. 38); but his learning, age, position, and the ascendency of Origenist Theology in the East, marked him out as the leader of the whole.
But the conservatism' of the great mass of bishops rejected Arianism more promptly than had been expected by its adherents or patrons.
The real work of the council did not begin at once. The way was blocked by innumerable applications to the Christian Emperor from bishops and clergy, mainly for the redress of personal grievances. Commonplace men often fail to see the proportion of things, and to rise to the magnitude of the events in which they play their part. At last Constantine appointed a day for the formal and final reception of all personal complaints, and burnt the libelli' in the presence of the assembled fathers. He then named a day by which the bishops were to be ready for a formal decision of the matters in dispute. The way was now open for the leaders to set to work. Quasi-formal meetings were held, Arius and his supporters met the bishops, and the situation began to clear (Soz. i. 17). To their dismay (de Decr. 3) the Arian leaders realised that they could only count on some seventeen supporters out of the entire body of bishops. They would seem to have seriously and honestly underrated the novelty of their own teaching (cf. the letter of Arius in Thdt. i. 5), and to have come to the council with the expectation of victory over the party of Alexander. But they discovered their mistake:--
Sectamur ultro, quos opimus
Fallere et effugere est triumphus."
Fallere et effugere' was in fact the problem which now confronted them. It seems to have been agreed at an early stage, perhaps it was understood from the first, that some formula of the unanimous belief of the Church must be fixed upon to make an end of controversy. The Alexandrians and Conservatives' confronted the Arians with the traditional Scriptural phrases (pp. 163, 491) which appeared to leave no doubt as to the eternal Godhead of the Son. But to their surprise they were met with perfect acquiescence. Only as each test was propounded, it was observed that the suspected party whispered and gesticulated to one another, evidently hinting that each could be safely accepted, since it admitted of evasion. If their assent was asked to the formula like to the Father in all things,' it was given with the reservation that man as such is the image and glory of God.' The power of God' elicited the whispered explanation that the host of Israel was spoken of as dunamis kuriou, and that even the locust and caterpillar are called the power of God.' The eternity' of the Son was countered by the text, We that live are alway (2 Cor. iv. 11)!' The fathers were baffled, and the test of homoousion, with which the minority had been ready from the first, was being forced (p. 172) upon the majority by the evasions of the Arians. When the day for the decisive meeting arrived it was felt that the choice lay between the adoption of the word, cost what it might, and the admission of Arianism to a position of toleration and influence in the Church. But then, was Arianism all that Alexander and Eustathius made it out to be? was Arianism so very intolerable, that this novel test must be imposed on the Church? The answer came (Newman Ar. 4 p. 252) from Eusebius of Nicomedia. Upon the assembling of the bishops for their momentous debate (hos de ezeteito tes pisteos ho tropos, Eustath.) he presented them with a statement of his belief. The previous course of events may have convinced him that half-measures would defeat their own purpose, and that a challenge to the enemy, a forlorn hope, was the only resort left to him [10] . At any rate the statement was an unambiguous assertion of the Arian formulæ, and it cleared the situation at once. An angry clamour silenced the innovator, and his document was publicly torn to shreds (hup' opsei panton, says an eye-witness in Thdt. i. 8). Even the majority of the Arians were cowed, and the party were reduced to the inner circle of five (supra). It was now agreed on all hands that a stringent formula was needed. But Eusebius of Cæsarea came forward with a last effort to stave off the inevitable. He produced a formula, not of his own devising (Kölling, pp. 208 sqq.), but consisting of the creed of his own Church with an addition intended to guard against Sabellianism (Hort, Two Diss. pp. 56, sq. 138). The formula was unassailable on the basis of Scripture and of tradition. No one had a word to say against it, and the Emperor expressed his personal anxiety that it should be adopted, with the single improvement of the homoousion. The suggestion thus quietly made was momentous in its result. We cannot but recognise the prompter' Hosius behind the Imperial recommendation: the friends of Alexander had patiently waited their time, and now their time was come: the two Eusebii had placed the result in their hands. But how and where was the necessary word to be inserted? and if some change must be made in the Cæsarean formula, would it not be as well to set one or two other details right? At any rate, the creed of Eusebius was carefully overhauled clause by clause, and eventually took a form materially different from that in which it was first presented [11] , and with affinities to the creeds of Antioch and Jerusalem as well as Cæsarea.
All was now ready; the creed, the result of minute and careful deliberations (we do not know their history, nor even how long they occupied [12] ), lay before the council. We are told the council paused.' The evidence fails us; but it may well have been so. All the bishops who were genuinely horrified at the naked Arianism of Eusebius of Nicomedia were yet far from sharing the clearsighted definiteness of the few: they knew that the test proposed was not in Scripture, that it had a suspicious history in the Church. The history of the subsequent generation shews that the mind of Eastern Christendom was not wholly ripe for its adoption. But the fathers were reminded of the previous discussions, of the futility of the Scriptural tests, of the locust and the caterpillar, of the whisperings, the nods, winks, and evasions. With a great revulsion of feeling the council closed its ranks and marched triumphantly to its conclusion. All signed,--all but two, Secundus and Theonas. Maris signed and Theognis, Menophantus and Patrophilus, and all the rest. Eusebius of Nicomedia signed; signed everything, even the condemnation of his own convictions and of his genuine fellow-Lucianist' Arius; not the last time that an Arian leader was found to turn against a friend in the hour of trial. Eusebius justified his signature by a mental reservation;' but we can sympathise with the bitter scorn of Secundus, who as he departed to his exile warned Eusebius that he would not long escape the same fate (Philost. i. 9).
The council broke up after being entertained by the Emperor at a sumptuous banquet in honour of his Vicennalia. The recalcitrant bishops with Arius and some others were sent into exile (an unhappy and fateful precedent), a fate which soon after overtook Eusebius of Nicomedia and Theognis (see the discussion in D.C.B. ii. 364 sq.). But in 329 we find Eusebius once more in high favour with Constantine, discharging his episcopal functions, persuading Constantine that he and Arius held substantially the Creed of Nicæa.'
The council also dealt with the Paschal question (see Vit. Const. iii. 18; so far as the question bears on Athanasius see below, p. 500), and with the Meletian schism in Egypt. The latter was the main subject of a letter (Soc. i. 9; Thdt. i. 9) to the Alexandrian Church. Meletius himself was to retain the honorary title of bishop, to remain strictly at home, and to be in lay communion for the rest of his life. The bishops and clergy of his party were to receive a mustikotera cheirotonia (see Bright, Notes on Canons, pp. 25 sqq.; Gore, The Church and the Ministry, ed. 1, p. 192 note), and to be allowed to discharge their office, but in the strictest subordination to the Catholic Clergy of Alexander. But on vacancies occurring, the Meletian incumbents were to succeed subject to (1) their fitness, (2) the wishes of the people, (3) the approval of the Bishop of Alexandria. The terms were mild, and even the gentle nature of Alexander seems to have feared that immediate peace might have been purchased at the expense of future trouble (his successor openly blames the compromise, p. 131, and more strongly p. 137); accordingly, before carrying out the settlement he required Meletius to draw up an exact list of his clergy at the time of the council, so as to bar an indefinite multiplication of claims. Meletius, who must have been even less pleased with the settlement than his metropolitan, seems to have taken his time. At last nothing would satisfy both parties but the personal presentation of the Meletian bishops from all Egypt, and of their clergy from Alexandria itself, to Alexander (p. 137, toutous kai parontas paredoken to 'Alexandro), who was thus enabled to check the Brevium or schedule handed in by their chief [13] . All this must have taken a long time after Alexander's return, and the peace was soon broken by his death.
Five months after the conclusion of the negotiations, Alexander having now died, the flame of schism broke out afresh (infr. p. 131. Montfaucon, in Migne xxv. p. lvii., shews conclusively that the above is the meaning of the menas pente.) On his death-bed, Alexander called for Athanasius. He was away from Alexandria, but the other deacon of that name (see signatures p. 71), stepped forward in answer to the call. But without noticing him, the Bishop repeated the name, adding, You think to escape, but it cannot be.' (Sozom. ii. 17.) Alexander had already written his Easter Letter for the year 328 (it was apparently still extant at the end of the century, p. 503). He died on April 17 of that year (Pharmuthi 22), and on the eighth of June Athanasius was chosen bishop in his stead. __________________________________________________________________
[6] So Eus. Vit. Const. iii. 8--over 270, Eustath. in Thdt. i. 8--in fact more than 300 (de Decr. 3), according to Athanasius, who again, toward the end of his life (ad Afr. 2) acquiesces in the precise figure 318 (Gen. xiv. 14; the Greek numeral tie combines the Cross with the initial letters of the Sacred Name) which a later generation adopted (it first occurs in the alleged Coptic acts of the Council of Alexandria, 362, then in the Letter of Liberius to the bishops of Asia in 365, infr. §9), on grounds perhaps symbolical rather than historical.
[7] The name of Secundus appears among the subscriptions (cf. Soz. i. 21) but this is contradicted by the primary evidence (Letter of the Council in Soc. i. 9, Thdt. i. 9); cf. Philost. i. 9, 10. But there is evidence that there were two Secundi.
[8] A term first brought into currency in this connection by Mr. Gwatkin (p. 38, note), and since adopted by many writers including Harnack; in spite of the obvious objection to the importations of political terms into the grave questions of this period, the term is too useful to be surrendered, and the conservatives' of the Post-Nicene reaction were in fact too often political in their methods and spirit. The truly conservative men, here as in other instances, failed to enlist the sympathy of the conservative rank and file.
[9] The identity of name has certainly done Eusebius no good with posterity. But no one with a spark of generosity can fail to be moved by the appeal of Socrates (ii. 21) for common fairness toward the dead.
[10] Or possibly Theodoret, &c., drew a wrong inference from the words of Eustathius (in Thdt. i. 8), and the gramma was not submitted by Eusebius, but produced as evidence against him; in this case it must have been, as Fleury observes, his letter to Paulinus of Tyre.
[11] , vol. 2, p. 227. The main alterations were (1) The elimination of the word logos and substitution of hui& 231;s in the principal place. This struck at the theology of Eusebius even more directly than at that of Arius. (2) The addition not only of homoousion to patri, but also of toutestin ek tes ousias tou patros between monogene and theon as a further qualification of gennethenta (specially against Euseb. Nicom.: see his letter in Thdt. i. 6). (3) Further explanation of gennethenta by g. ou poiethenta, a glance at a favourite argument of Arius, as well as at Asterius. (4) enanthropesanta added to explain sarkothenta, and so to exclude the Christology which characterised Arianism from the first. (5) Addition of anathematisms directed against all the leading Arian doctrines.
[12] The events have been related in what seems to be their most likely order, but there is no real certainty in the matter. It is clear that there were at least two public sittings (Soz. i. 17, the language of Eus. V. C. iii. 10, is reconcileable with this) in the emperor's presence, at the first of which the libelli were burned and the bishops requested to examine the question of faith. This was probably on June 19. The tearing up of the creed of Eus. Nic. seems from the account of Eustathius to have come immediately before the final adoption of a creed. The creed of Eusebius of Cæsarea, which was the basis of that finally adopted, must therefore have been propounded after the failure of his namesake. (Montfaucon and others are clearly wrong in supposing that this was the blasphemy' which was torn to pieces!) The difficulty is, where to put the dramatic scene of whisperings, nods, winks, and evasions which compelled the bishops to apply a drastic test. I think (with Kölling, &c.) that it must have preceded the proposal of Eusebius, upon which the homoousion was quietly insisted on by Constantine; for the latter was the only occasion (prophasis) of any modification in the Cæsarean Creed, which in itself does not correspond to the tests described infr. p. 163. But Montfaucon and others, followed by Gwatkin, place the scene in question after the proposal of Eus. Cæs. and the resolution to modify his creed by the insertion of a stringent test,--in fact at the pause' of the council before its final resolution. This conflicts with the clear statement of Eusebius that the homoousion was the thin end of the wedge' which led to the entire recasting of his creed (see infr. p. 73. The idea of Kölling, p. 208, that the creed of Eusebius was drawn up by him for the occasion, and that the mathema of the council was ready beforehand as an alternative document, is refuted by the relation of the two documents; see Hort, pp. 138, 139). It follows, therefore, from the combined accounts of Ath., Euseb. and Eustathius (our only eye-witnesses) that (1) the fathers were practically resolved upon the homoousion before the final sitting. (2) That this resolve was clinched by the creed of Eusebius of Nicomedia. (3) That Eusebius of Cæsarea made his proposal when it was too late to think of half-measures. (4) That the creed of Eusebius was modified at the Emperor's direction (which presupposes the willingness of the Council). (5) That this revision was immediately followed by the signatures and the close of the council. The work of revision, however, shews such signs of attention to detail that we are almost compelled to assume at least one adjournment of the final sitting. When the other business of the council was transacted, including the settlement of the Easter question, the Meletian schism, and the Canons, it is impossible to say. Kölling suo jure puts them at the first public session. The question must be left open, as must that of the presidency of the council. The conduct of the proceedings was evidently in the hands of Constantine, so that the question of presidency reduces itself to that of identifying the bishop on Constantine's right who delivered the opening address to the Emperor: this was certainly not Hosius (see Vit. C. iii. 11, and vol. 1 of this series, p. 19), but may have been Eusebius of Cæsarea, who probably after a few words from Eustathius (Thdt.) or Alexander (Theod. Mops. and Philost.) was entrusted with so congenial a task. The name of Hosius stands first on the extant list of signatures, and he may have signed first, although the lists are bad witnesses. The words of Athanasius sometimes quoted in this connection (p. 256), over what synod did he not preside?' must be read in connection with the distinction made by Theodoret in quoting the passage in question (H. E. ii. 15) that Hosius 'was very prominent at the great synod of Nicæa, and presided over those who assembled at Sardica. This is the only evidence we possess to which any weight can be attached.
[13] It is worth noting that the Nicene arrangement was successful in some few cases. See Index to this vol. s.v. Theon (of Nilopolis), &c. __________________________________________________________________
§3 (2). The situation after the Council of Nicæa.
The council (a) had testified, by its horrified and spontaneous rejection of it, that Arianism was a novelty subversive of the Christian faith as they had received it from their fathers. They had (b) banished it from the Church by an inexorable test, which even the leading supporters of Arius had been induced to subscribe. In the years immediately following, we find (c) a large majority of the Eastern bishops, especially of Syria and Asia Minor, the very regions whence the numerical strength of the council was drawn, in full reaction against the council; first against the leaders of the victorious party, eventually and for nearly a whole generation against the symbol itself; the final victory of the latter in the East being the result of the slow growth of conviction, a growth independent of the authority of the council which it eventually was led to recognise. To understand this paradox of history, which determines the whole story of the life of Athanasius as bishop, it is necessary to estimate at some length the theological and ecclesiastical situation at the close of the council: this will best be done by examining each point in turn (a) the novelty of Arianism, (b) the homoousion as a theological formula, (c) the materials for reaction.
(a) Arianism was a new doctrine in the Church' (Harnack, p. 218); but it claimed to be no novelty. And it was successful for a long time in gaining conservative' patronage. Its novelty, as observed above, is sufficiently shewn by its reception at the Council of Nicæa. But no novelty springs into existence without antecedents. What were the antecedents of Arianism? How does it stand related to the history within the Church of the momentous question, What think ye of Christ?'
In examining such a question, two methods are possible. We may take as our point of departure the formulated dogma say of Nicæa, and examine in the light of it variations in theological statements in preceding periods, to shew that they do not warrant us in regarding the dogma as an innovation. That is the dogmatic method. Or we may take our start from the beginning, and trace the history of doctrine in the order of cause and effect, so as to detect the divergence and convergence of streams of influence, and arrive at an answer to the question, How came men to think and speak as they did? That is the historical method. Both methods have their recommendations, and either has been ably applied to the problem before us. In electing the latter I choose the more difficult road; but I do so with the conviction, firstly, that the former has tended (and especially in the ablest hands) to obscure our perception of the actual facts, secondly, that the saving faith of Christ has everything to gain from a method which appeals directly to our sense of historical truth, and satisfies, not merely overawes, the mind.
Let us then go back to the beginning of the Gospel.' Taking the synoptic gospels as our primary evidence, we ask, what did Christ our Lord teach about Himself? We do not find formal definitions of doctrine concerning His Person. Doubtless it may seem that such a definition on His part would have saved infinite dispute and searchings of heart in the history of the Church. But recognising in Him the unique and supreme Revealer of the Father, it is not for us to say what He should have taught; we must accept His method of teaching as that which Divine Wisdom chose as the best, and its sequel in history as the way in which God willed man to learn. We find then in the materials which we possess for the history of His Life and Teaching fully enough to explain the belief of His disciples (see below) in His Divinity. Firstly, there is no serious doubt as to His claim to be the Messiah. (The confession of Peter in all four Gospels, Matt. xvi. 16; Mark viii. 29; Luke ix. 27; John vi. 69; Son of Man,' Dan. vii. 13; ix. 24, &c.). In this character He is King in the kingdom of Heaven (Matt. xxv. 31-36, cf. Mk. viii. 38), and revises the Law with full authority (Matt. v. 21-44, cf. Luke v. 24; Matt. xii. 8). It may be added that whatever this claim conveyed to the Jews of His own time (see Stanton's Jewish and Christian Messiah) it is impossible to combine in one idea the Old Testament traits of the Coming One if we stop short of the identification of the Messiah with the God of Israel (see Delitzsch, Psalms, vol. i. pp. 94, 95, last English ed.). Secondly, Christ enjoys and confers the full authority of God (Matt. x. 40; Luke x. 16; cf. also Matt. xxiv. 35; Mk. xiii. 31; Luke xxi. 33), gives and promises the Holy Spirit (the Spirit of the Father,' see Matt. x. 17, &c.; Luke xii. 12, and especially Luke xxi. 15, ego gar doso, &c.), and apparently sends the prophets and holy men of old (cf. Matt. xxiii. 34, ego apostello with Luke xi. 49). Thirdly, the foundation of all this is laid in a passage preserved by the first and third gospels, in which He claims the unqualified possession of the mind of the Father (Luke x. 22; Matt. xi. 27), No man knoweth [who] the Son [is], save the Father, neither knoweth any man [who] the Father [is] save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will (bouletai) reveal Him.' Observe the reciprocity of knowledge between the Son and the Father. This claim is a decisive instantia foederis between the Synoptics and the Fourth Gospel, e.g. John xvi. 15; xiv. 9, &c. Fourthly, we observe the claim made by Him throughout the synoptic record to absolute confidence, absolute faith, obedience, self-surrender, such as no frail man is justified in claiming from another; the absence of any trace in the mind of the meek and lowly' one of that consciousness of sin, that need of reconciliation with God, which is to us an indispensable condition of the religious temper, and the starting-point of Christian faith (contrast Isa. vi. 5).
We now turn to the Apostles. Here a few brief remarks must suffice. (A suggestive summary in Sanday, What the first Christians thought about Christ,' Oxford House Papers, First Series.) That S. Paul's summary of the Gospel (1 Cor. xv. 3 sqq.) is given by him as common ground between himself and the older Apostles follows strictly from the fact that the verb used (parelabon) links the facts of Redemption (v. 3, 4) with the personal experiences of the original disciples (5 sqq.). In fact it is not in dispute that the original Jewish nucleus of the Apostolic Church preached Jesus as the Messiah, and His death as the ground of forgiveness of sins (Pfleiderer, Urchrist. p. 20; Acts ii. 36, 38; iii. 26; iv. 12, &c.; the Hebraic colouring' of these early chapters is very characteristic and important). The question is, however, how much this implied as to the Divine Personality of the Saviour; how far the belief of the Apostles and their contemporaries was uniform and explicit on this point. Important light is thrown on this question by the controversy which divided S. Paul from the mass of Jewish Christians with respect to the observance of the Law. Our primary source of knowledge here is Galatians, ch. ii. We there learn that while S. Paul regarded this question as involving the whole essence of the Gospel, and resisted every attempt to impose circumcision on Gentile Christians, the older Apostles conceded the one point regarded as central, and, while reserving the obligation of the Law on those born under it (which S. Paul never directly assailed, 1 Cor. vii. 18) recognised the Gospel of the uncircumcision as legitimate. This concession, as the event proved, conceded everything; if the gospel of the uncircumcision' was sufficient for salvation, circumcision became a national, not a religious principle. Now this whole question was fundamentally a question about Christ. Men who believed, or were willing to grant, that the Law uttered from Sinai by the awful voice of the Most High Himself was no longer the supreme revelation of God, the one divinely ordained covenant of righteousness, certainly believed that some revelation of God different in kind (for no revelation of God to man could surpass the degree of Ex. xxxiii. 11) had taken place, an unique revelation of God in man. The revelation of God in Christ, not the revelation of God to Moses, was the one fact in the world's history; Sinai was dwarfed in comparison of Calvary. But it must be observed that while the older Apostles, by the very recognition of the gospel of the uncircumcision, went thus far with S. Paul, S. Paul realised as a central principle what to others lay at the circumference. What to the one was a result of their belief in Christ was to him the starting-point, from which logical conclusions were seen to follow, practical applications made in every direction. At the same time S. Paul taught nothing about Christ that was not implied in the belief of the older Apostles, or that they would not have felt impelled by their own religious position to accept. In fact it was their fundamental union in the implicit belief of the divinity of the Lord that made possible any agreement between S. Paul and the Jewish Apostles as to the gospel of the uncircumcision.
The apostles of the circumcision, however, stood between S. Paul and the zealot mass of Jewish Christians (Acts xxi. 20), many of whom were far from acquiescing in the recognition of S. Paul's Gospel. On the same principle that we have used to determine the belief of the Stuloi with regard to Christ, we must needs recognise that where the gospel of the uncircumcision was still assailed or disparaged, the Divinity of Christ was apprehended faintly, or not at all.
The name of the Ebionite' sect testifies to its continuity with a section of the Jerusalem Church (see Lightfoot's Galatians, S. Paul and the Three). It should be observed, however, firstly that between the clear-sighted Apostle of the Gentiles and the straitest of the zealots, there lay every conceivable gradation of intermediate positions (Loofs, Leitf. §11. 2, 3); secondly, that while emancipation from legalism in the Apostolic Church implied what has been said above, a belief in the divinity of Jesus was in itself compatible with strict Jewish observance.
The divinity of Christ then was firmly held by S. Paul (the most remarkable passage is Rom. x. 9, 11, 13, where Kurion 'Iesoun = auton = Kurion = hvhy Joel ii. 32), and his belief was held by him in common with the Jewish Apostles, although with a clearer illumination as to its consequences. That this belief was absolutely universal in the Church is not to be maintained, the elimination of Ebionism was only gradual (Justin, Dial. xlviii. ad fin.); but that it, and not Ebionism, represented the common belief of the Apostles and New Testament writers is not to be doubted.
But taking this as proved, we do not find an equally clear answer to the question In what sense is Christ God? The synoptic record makes no explicit reference to the pre-existence of Christ: but the witness of John and descent of the Spirit (Mark i. 7-11) at His baptism, coupled with the Virginal Birth (Mt., Lk.), and with the traits of the synoptic portrait of Christ as collected above, if they do not compel us to assert, yet forbid us to deny the presence of this doctrine to the minds of the Evangelists. In the Pauline (including Hebrews) and Johannine writings the doctrine is strongly marked, and in the latter (Joh. i. 1, 14, 18, monogenes Theos) Jesus Christ is expressly identified with the creative Word (Palestinian Memra, rather than Alexandrian or from Philo; see also Rev. xix. 13), and the Word with God. Moreover such passages as Philipp. ii. 6 sqq., 2 Cor. xiii. 14 (the Apostolic benediction), &c., &c., are significant of the impression left upon the mind of the infant Churches as they started upon their history no longer under the personal guidance of the Apostles of the Lord.
Jesus Christ was God, was one with the Father and with the Spirit: that was enough for the faith, the love, the conduct of the primitive Church. The Church was nothing so little as a society of theologians; monotheists and worshippers of Christ by the same instinct, to analyse their faith as an intellectual problem was far from their thoughts: God Himself (and there is but one God) had suffered for them (Ign. Rom. vi.; Tat. Gr. 13; Melito Fr. 7), God's sufferings were before their eyes (Clem. R. I. ii. 1), they desired the drink of God, even His blood (Ign. Rom. vii., cf. Acts xx. 28); if enthusiastic devotion gave way for a moment to reflexion we must think of Jesus Christ as of God' (Clem. R.' II. 1).
The Apostolic fathers' are not theological in their aim or method. The earliest seat of theological reflexion in the primitive Church appears to have been Asia Minor, or rather Western Asia from Antioch to the Ægean. From this region proceed the Ignatian letters, which stand alone among the literature of their day in theological depth and reflexion. Their theology is wonderfully mature in spite of its immaturity, full of reflexions, and yet at the same time full of intuitive originality' (Loofs, p. 61). The central idea is that of the renovation of man (Eph. 20), now under the power of Satan and Death (ib. 3, 19), which are undone (katalusis) in Christ, the risen Saviour (Smyrn. 3), who is our true Life,' and endows us with immortality (Smyrn. 4, Magn. 6, Eph. 17). This is by virtue of His Divinity (Eph. 19, Smyrn. 4) in union with His perfect Manhood. He is the only utterance of God (logos apo siges proelthon, Magn. 8), the unlying mouth by which the Father spake' (Rom. 8.) God come (genomenos) in the flesh,' our God' (Eph. 7, 18). His flesh partaken mystically in the Eucharist unites our nature to His, is the medicine of incorruption' (Eph. 20, Smyrn. 7, cf. Trall. 1). Ignatius does not distinguish the relation of the divine to the human in Christ: he is content to insist on both: one Physician, of flesh and of spirit, begotten and unbegotten' (Eph. 7). Nor does he clearly conceive the relation of the Eternal Son to the Father. He is unbegotten (as God) and begotten (as man): from eternity with the Father (Magn. 6): through Him the One God manifested himself. The theological depth of Ignatius was perhaps in part called forth by the danger to the churches from the Docetic heretics, representative of a Judaic (Philad. 5, Magn. 8-10) syncretism which had long had a hold in Asia Minor (1 John and Lightfoot Coloss., p. 73, 81 sqq.). To this he opposes what is evidently a creed (Trall. 9), with emphasis on the reality (alethos) of all the facts of Redemption comprised in it.
It was in fact the controversies of the second century that produced a theology in the Catholic Church,--that in a sense produced the Catholic Church itself. The idea of the Church as distinct from and embracing the Churches is a New Testament idea (Eph. v. 25, cf. 1 Cor. xv. 9, &c.), and the name Catholic' occurs at the beginning of the second century (Lightfoot's note on Ign. Smyrn. 8); but the Gnostic and Montanist controversies compelled the Churches which held fast to the paradosis of the Apostles to close their ranks (episcopal federation) and to reflect upon their creed. The Baptismal Creed (Rom. x. 9, Acts viii. 37, Text. Rec., cf. 1 Cor. xv. 3-4) began to serve as a tessera or passport of right belief, and as a regulative standard, a rule of faith.' The limits of the Christian Church' began to be more clearly defined (Stanton, ubi supr. p. 167).
Another influence which during the same period led to a gradual formation of theology was the necessity of defending the Church against heathenism. If the Gnostics were the first Christian theologians' (Harnack), the Apologists (120-200) are more directly important for our present enquiry. The usual title of Justin Philosopher and Martyr' is significant of his position and typical of the class of writers to which he belongs. On the one hand the Apologists are philosophers rather than theologians. Christianity is the only true philosophy' (Justin); its doctrines are found piecemeal among the philosophers (logos spermatikos), who are so far Christians, just as the Christians are the true philosophers (Justin and Minuc. Felix). But the Logos, who is imparted fragmentarily to the philosophers, is revealed in His entire divine Personality in Christ (so Justin beyond the others, Apol. ii. 8, 10). In the doctrine of God, their thought is coloured by the eclectic Platonism of the age before Plotinus. God, the Father of all things, is Creator, Lord, Master, and as such known to man, but in Himself Unoriginate (agenetos), ineffable, mysterious (arretos), without a name, One and alone, incapable of Incarnation (for references to Justin and to Plato, D.C.B. iii. 572). His goodness' is metaphysical perfection, or beneficence to man, His righteousness' that of Moral Governor of the Universe (contrast the deeper sense of St. Paul, Rom. iii. 21, &c.). But the abstractness of the conception of God gives way to personal vividness in the doctrine of the visible God' (Tert. Prax. 15 sq.), the Logos (the subject of the O.T. theophanies' according to the Apologists) who was with' the Father before all things (Just. Dial. 62), but was begotten' or projected (probletheis) by the will of the Father (ib. 128) as God from God, as a flame from fire. He is, like the Father, ineffable (Christos, Just. Apol. ii. 6), yet is the angelos, huperetes of the Father. In particular He is the Father's minister in Creation: to create He proceeded from the Father, a doctrine expressly deduced from Prov. viii. 22 (Dial. 61, 129). Before this He was the logos endiathetos, after it the logos prophorikos, the Word uttered (Ps. xlv. 1 LXX; this distinction is not in Justin, but is found Theophil. ad Autol. ii. 10, 22: it is the most marked trace of philosophic [Stoic] influence on the Apologists). The Apologists, then, conceive of Christian theology as philosophers. Especially the Person of the Saviour is regarded by them from the cosmological, not the soteriological view-point. From the latter, as we have seen, St. Paul starts; and his view gradually embraces the distant horizon of the former (1 Cor. viii. 6, Coloss. i. 15); from the soteriological side also (directly) he reaches the divinity of Christ (Rom. v. 1-8; 1 Cor. i. 30; Rom. x. 13, as above). Here, as we shall see, Athanasius meets the Arians substantially by St. Paul's method. But the Apologists, under the influence of their philosophy rather than of their religion, start from the cosmological aspect of the problem. They engraft upon an Apostolic (Johannine) title of the Saviour an Alexandrine group of associations: they go far towards transmuting the Word of St. John to the Logos of Philo and the Eclectics. Hence their view of His Divinity and of his relation to the Father is embarrassed. His eternity and His generation are felt to be hardly compatible: His distinct Personality is maintained at the expense of His true Divinity. He is God, and not the One God; He can manifest Himself (Theophanies) in a way the One God cannot; He is an intermediary between God and the world. The question has become philosophical rather than directly religious, and philosophy cannot solve it. But on the other hand, Justin was no Arian. If he was Philosopher, he was also Martyr. The Apologists are deeply saturated with Christian piety and personal enthusiastic devotion to Christ. Justin in particular introduces us, as no other so early writer, into the life, the worship, the simple faith of the Primitive Church, and we can trace in him influences of the deeper theology of Asia Minor (Loofs, p. 72 sq. but see more fully the noble article on Justin in D.C.B. vol. iii.). But our concern is with their influence on the analysis of the object of faith; and here we see that unconsciously they have severed the Incarnate Son from the Eternal Father: not God (ho ontos theos) but a subordinate divine being is revealed in Christ: the Logos, to adopt the words of Ignatius, is no longer a true breach of the Divine Silence.
We must now glance at the important period of developed Catholicism marked especially by the names of Irenæus, Tertullian, and Clement, the period of a consolidated organisation, a (relatively) fixed Canon of the New Testament, and a catholic rule of faith (see above, and Lumby, Creeds, ch. i.; Heurtley, Harmonia Symbolica, i.-viii.). The problem of the period which now begins (180-250) was that of Monarchianism; the Divinity of Christ must be reconciled with the Unity of God. Monarchianism is in itself the expression of the truth common to all monotheism, that the arche or Originative Principle is strictly and Personally One and one only (in contrast to the plurality of archikai hupostaseis, see Newman, Arians^4, p. 112 note). No Christian deliberately maintains the contrary. The Apologists, as we have seen, tended to emphasise the distinction of Father and Son; but this tendency makes of necessity in the direction of subordination;' and any distinction of Persons' or Hypostases in the Godhead involves to a Monotheist some subordination, in order to save the principle of the Divine Monarchia.' The Monarchian denied any subordination or distinction of hypostases within the Godhead. This tendency we have now to follow up. We do not meet with it as a problem in Irenæus. (He is said to have written against it,' Newman, Ar.^4, p. 117, citing Dodw. in Iren.) This scholar of pupils of Apostles stands in the lines of the Asiatic theology. He is the successor of Ignatius and Polycarp. We find him, in sharp contrast to the Apologists, giving full expression to the revelation of God in Jesus (the Son is the Measure of the Father, for He contains Him'), and the union of man with God in the Saviour, as the carrying out of the original destiny of man, by the destruction of sin, which had for the time frustrated it (III. xviii. p. 211, Deus antiquam hominis plasmationem in se recapitulans). Hence the deification' of man's nature by union with Christ (a remarkable point of contact with Athanasius, see note on de Incar. 54. 3); incorruption is attained to by the knowledge of God (cf. John xvii. 3) through faith (IV. xx.); we cannot comprehend God, but we learn to know Him by His Love (ib.). At the same time we trace the influence of the Apologists here and there in his Christology (III. 6, 19, and the explanation of the Theophanies,' iv. 20). But in his younger contemporary Tertullian, the reaction of Monarchianism makes itself felt. He is himself one of the Apologists, and at the same time under Asiatic influences. The two trains of influence converge in the name Trinitas, which he is the first to use (trias first in the Asiatic Apologist Theophilus). In combating the Monarchian Praxeas (see below) he carries subordinationism very far (cf. Hermog. 3. fuit tempus cum Ei filius non fuit'), he distinguishes the Word as rationalis deus' from eternity, and sermonalis' not from eternity (cf. again, Theophilus, supra). The Generation of the Son is a probole (also eructare' from Ps. xlv. 1), but the divine Substance' remains the same (river and fountain, sun and ray, Prax. 8, 9). He aims at reconciling subordination' with the Monarchia,' (ib. 4). In the Incarnate Christ he distinguishes the divine and human as accurately as Leo the Great (ib. 27, 29). In spite of inconsistencies such as were inevitable in his strange individuality (Stoic, philosopher, lawyer, Apologist, Asiatic' theologian, Catholic, Montanist) we see in Tertullian the starting-point of Latin Theology (but see also Harnack ii. 287 note).
We must now examine more closely the history of Monarchian tendencies, and firstly in Rome. The sub-Apostolic Church, simply holding the Divinity of Christ and the Unity of God, used language (see above) which may be called naively Monarchian.' This holds good even of Asiatic theology, as we find it in its earlier stage. The baptismal creed (as we find it in the primitive basis of the Apostles' Creed) does not solve the problem thus presented to Christian reflexion. Monarchianism attempted the solution in two ways. Either the One God was simply identified with the Christ of the Gospels and the Creeds, the Incarnation being a mode of the Divine manifestation (Father as Creator, Son as Redeemer, Spirit as Sanctifier, or the like): Modalism' or Modalistic Monarchianism (including Patripassianism, Sabellianism, and later on the theology of Marcellus); or (this being felt incompatible with the constant personal distinction of Christ from the Father) a special effluence, influence, or power of the one God was conceived of as residing in the man Jesus Christ, who was accordingly Son of God by adoption, God by assimilation: dynamic' Monarchianism or Adoptionism (Son' and Spirit' not so much modes of the Divine self-realisation as of the Divine Action). This letter, the echo but not the direct survival of Ebionism, was later on the doctrine of Photinus; we shall find it exemplified in Paul of Samosata; but our present concern is with its introduction at Rome by the two Theodoti, the elder of whom (a tanner from Byzantium) was excommunicated by Bishop Victor, while the younger, a student of the Peripatetic philosophy and grammatical interpreter of Scripture, taught there in the time of Zephyrinus. A later representative of this school, Artemon, claimed that its opinions were those of the Roman bishops down to Victor (Eus. H. E. v. 28). This statement cannot be accepted seriously; but it appears to be founded on a real reminiscence of an epoch in the action and teachings of the Roman bishops at the time. It must be remembered that the two forms of Monarchianism--modalism and adoptionism--are, while very subtly distinguished in their essential principle, violently opposed in their appearance to the popular apprehension. Their doctrine of God is one, at least in its strict unitarianism; but while to the Modalist Christ is the one God, to the Adoptionist He is essentially and exclusively man. [14] In the one case His Personality is divine, in the other human. Now there is clear proof of a strong Modalist tendency [15] in the Roman Church at this time; this would manifest itself in especial zeal against the doctrine of such men as Theodotus the younger, and give some colour to the tale of Artemon. Both Tertullian and Hippolytus complain bitterly of the ignorance of those responsible for the ascendancy which this teaching acquired in Rome (Zephurinon andra idioten kai apeiron ton ekklesiastikon horon, Hipp. idiotes quisque aut perversus,' simplices, ne dicam imprudentes et idiotæ.' Tert.). The utterances of Zephyrinus support this: I believe in one God, Jesus Christ' (Hipp., see above on the language of the sub-Apost. Church). The Monarchian influences were strengthened by the arrival of fresh teachers from Asia (Cleomenes and Epigonus, see note 2) and began to arouse lively opposition. This was headed by Hippolytus, the most learned of the Roman presbytery, and eventually bishop [16] in opposition to Callistus, the successor of Zephyrinus. The theology of Hippolytus was not unlike that of Tertullian, and was hotly charged by Callistus with Ditheism.' The position of Callistus himself, like that of his predecessor, was one of compromise between the two forms of Monarchianism, but somewhat more developed. A distinction was made between Christ' (the divine) and Jesus (the human); the latter suffered actually, the former indirectly (filius patitur, pater vero compatitur.' (Tert.) ton Patera sumpeponthenai to hui& 254;, Hipp.; it is clear that under Praxeas' Tertullian is combating also the modified Praxeanism of Callistus. See adv. Prax. 27, 29; Hipp. ix. 7); not without reason does Hippolytus charge Callistus with combining the errors of Sabellius with those of Theodotus. The compromise of Callistus was only partially successful. On the one hand the strictly modalist Sabellius, who from about 215 takes the place of Cleomenes at the head of Roman Monarchianism (his doctrine of the huiopator, of the Trinity as successive prosopa, aspects,' of the One God, pure modalism as defined above) scorned compromise (he constantly reproached Callistus with having changed his front, Hipp.) was excommunicated, and became the head of a sect. And the fierce opposition of Hippolytus failed to command the support of more than a limited circle of enthusiastic admirers, or to maintain itself after his death. On the other hand (the process is quite in obscurity: see Harnack^1, p. 620) the theology of Hippolytus and Tertullian eventually gained the day. Novatian, whose grande volumen' (Jer.) on the Trinity represents the theology of Rome about 250 a.d., simply epitomises Tertullian,' and that in explanation of the Rule of Faith. As to the Generation of the Son, he drops the quando Ipse [Pater] voluit' of Tertullian, but like him combines a (modified) subordination' with the communio substantiæ'--in other words the homoousion. Monarchianism was condemned in the West; its further history belongs to the East (under the name of Sabellianism first in Libya: see pp. 173, sqq.). But the hold which it maintained upon the Roman Church for about a generation (190-220) left its mark. Rome condemned Origen, the ally of Hippolytus; Rome was invoked against Dionysius of Alexandria; (Rome and) the West formulated the homoousion at Nicæa; Rome received Marcellus; Rome rejected the treis hupostaseis and supported the Eustathians at Antioch; it was with Rome rather than with the prevalent theology of the East that Athanasius felt himself one. (Cf. also Harnack, Dg. 1^1, p. 622 sqq.) Monarchianism was too little in harmony with the New Testament, or with the traditional convictions of the Churches, to live as a formulated theology. The naive modalism' of the simplices quae major semper pars credentium est' (Tert.) was corrected as soon as the attempt was made to give it formal expression [17] . But the attempt to do so was a valuable challenge to the conception of God involved in the system of the Apologists. To their abstract, transcendent, philosophical first Principle, Monarchianism opposed a living, self-revealing, redeeming God, made known in Christ. This was a great gain. But it was obtained at the expense of the divine immutability. A God who passed through phases or modes, now Father, now Son, now Spirit, a God who could suffer, was not the God of the Christians. There is some justice in Tertullian's scoff at their Deum versipellem.'
The third great name associated with the end of the second century, that of Clement, is important to us chiefly as that of the teacher of Origen, whose influence we must now attempt to estimate. Origen (185-254) was the first theologian in the full sense of the term; the first, that is, to erect upon the basis of the rule of faith (Preface to de Princ.) a complete theological system, synthesising revealed religion with a theory of the Universe, of God, of man, which should take into account the entire range of truth and knowledge, of faith and philosophy. And in this sense for the Eastern Church he was the last theologian as well. In the case of Origen the Vincentian epigram, absolvuntur magistri condemnantur discipuli (too often applicable in the history of doctrine) is reversed. In a modified form his theology from the first took possession of the Eastern Church; in the Cappadocian fathers it took out a new lease of power, in spite of many vicissitudes it conquered opposing forces (the sixth general council crushed the party who had prevailed at the fifth); John of Damascus, in whom the Eastern Church says its last word, depends upon the Origenist theology of Basil and the Gregories. But this theology was Origenism with a difference. What was the Origenism of Origen? To condense into the compass of our present purpose the many-sidedness of Origen is a hopeless task. The reader will turn to the fifth and sixth of Bigg's Bampton Lectures for the best recent presentation; to Newman's Arians (I. §3), especially the apology' at the end); to Harnack (ed. 1, pp. 510-556) and Loofs (§28); Shedd (vol. i. 288-305, should be read before Bigg and corrected by him) and Dorner; to the sections in Bull (Defens. ii. 9, iii. 3) and Petavius (who in Trin. I. iv. pursues with fluent malignity omnigenis errorum portentis infamem scriptorem'); to the Origeniana of Huet and the dissertations of the standard editors; to the article Origenist Controversies, and to the comprehensive, exact, and sympathetic article Origen in the Dictionary of Christian Biography. The fundamental works of Origen for our purpose are the de Principiis, the contra Celsum, and the de Oratione; but the exegetical works are necessary to fill out and correct first impressions.
The general position of Origen with regard to the Person of Christ is akin to that of Hippolytus and Tertullian. It is to some extent determined by opposition to Gnosticism and to Monarchianism. His visit to Rome (Eus. H. E., vi. 14) coincided with the battle of Hippolytus against Zephyrinus and his destined successor: on practical as well as on doctrinal points he was at one with Hippolytus. His doctrine of God is reached by the soteriological rather than the cosmological method. God is known to us in the Incarnate Word; his point of view is moral, not...pseudo-metaphysical.' The impassibility of the abstract philosophical idea of God is broken into by the passion of Love' (Bigg, p. 158). In opposition to the perfection of God lies the material world, conditioned by evil, the result of the exercise of will. This cause of evil is antecedent to the genesis of the material universe, the katabole kosmou; materiality is the penalty and measure of evil. (This part of Origen's doctrine is markedly Platonic. Plotinus, we read, refused to observe his own birthday; in like manner Origen quaintly notes that only wicked men are recorded in Scripture to have kept their birthdays; Bigg, 203, note; cf. Harnack, p. 523, note.) The soul (psuche as if from psuchesthai) has in a previous state waxed cold,' i.e. lost its original integrity, and in this condition enters the body, i.e. is subjected to vanity' in common with the rest of the creature, and needs redemption (qualify this by Bigg, pp. 202 sqq., on Origen's belief in Original Sin). To meet this need the Word takes a Soul (but one that has never swerved from Him in its pre-existent state: on this antinomy Bigg, 190, note, 199) and mediante Anima, or rather mediante hac substantia animæ (Prin. II. vi.) unites the nature of God and of Man in One. (On the union of the two natures in the theanthropos, in Ezek. iii. 3, he is as precise as Tertullian: we find the Hypostatic Union and Communicatio Idiomatum formally explicit; Bigg, 190.) The Word deifies' Human Nature, first His Own, then in others as well (Cels. iii. 28, hina genetui theia: he does not use theopoieisthai; the thought is subtly but really different from that which we found in Irenæus: see Harnack, p. 551), by that perfect apprehension of Him hoper en prin genetai sarx, of which faith in the Incarnate is the earliest but not the final stage (applying 2 Cor. v. 16; cf. the Commentary on the Song of Songs).
What account then does Origen give of the beginning and the end of the great Drama of existence? He starts from the end, which is the more clearly revealed; God shall be all in all.' But the end must be like the beginning;' One is the end of all, One is the beginning. From 1 Cor. xv. he works back to Romans viii.: the one is his key to the eternity after, the other, to the eternity before (Bigg pp. 193 sq.). Into this scheme he brings creation, evil, the history of Revelation, the Church and its life, the final consummation of all things. The Universe is eternal: God is prior to it in conception, yet He was never other than Creator. But in the history of the Universe the material world which we know is but a small episode. It began, and will end. It began with the estrangement of Will from God, will end with its reconciliation: God, from Whom is the beginning of all, will be all in all.' (For Origen's eschatology see Bigg, 228-234.) From this point of view we must approach the two-sided Christology of Origen. To him the two sides were aspects of the same thing: but if the subtle presupposition as to God and the Universe is withdrawn, they become alternative and inconsistent Christologies, as we shall see to have actually happened. As God is eternally Creator, so He is eternally Father (Bigg, 160, note). The Son proceeds from Him not as a part of His Essence, but as the Ray from the Light; it cannot be rightly or piously said that He had a beginning, en hote ouk en (cf. De Princ. i. 2, iv. 28, and infr. p. 168); He is begotten from the Essence of the Father, He is of the same essence (homoousios) (Fragm. 3 in Heb., but see Bigg, p. 179), there is no unlikeness whatever between the Son and the Father (Princ. i. 2, 12). He was begotten ek tou thelematos tou Patros (but to Origen the thelema was inherent in the Divine Nature, cf. Bigg. 161, Harnack, p. 534 against Shedd, p. 301, note) not by probole or emanation (Princ. iv. 28, i. 2. 4), as though the Son's generation were something that took place once for all, instead of existing continuously. The Father is in the Son, the Son in the Father: there is coinherence.' On the other hand, the Word is God derivatively not absolutely, O logos en pros ton Theon, kai Theos en ho Logos. The Son is Theos, the Father alone ho Theos. He is of one ousia with the Father as compared with the creatures; but as contrasted with the Father, Who may be regarded as ep?keina ousias [18] , and Who alone is autotheos, autoagathos, alethinos theos, the Son is ho deuteros theos (Cels. v. 39, cf. Philo's deutereuon theos). As the Son of God, He is contrasted with all geneta; as contrasted with the Ingenerate Father, He stands at the head of the series of genneta; He is metaxu tes tou agen[n]etou kai tes ton geneton phuseos [19] . He even explains the Unity of the Father and the Son as moral (duo te hupostasei pragmata hen de te homonoi& 139; kai te tautoteti tou boulematos, Cels. viii. 12). The Son takes His place even in the cosmic process from Unity to Unity through Plurality, God is in every respect One and Simple, but the Saviour by reason of the Many becomes Many' (on John i. 22, cf. Index to this vol., s.v. Christ). The Spirit is subordinated to the Son, the Son to the Father (elatton para ton patera ho hui& 232;s...eti de hetton to pneuma to hagion, Princ. I. 3, 5 Gk.), while to the Spirit are subordinated created spirits, whose goodness is relative in comparison with God, and the fall of some of whom led to the creation of matter (see above). Unlike the Son and the Spirit they are mutable in will, subject to prokope, capable of embodiment even if in themselves immaterial.
The above slender sketch of the leading thoughts of Origen will suffice to show how intimately his doctrine of the Person of Christ hangs together with his philosophy of Religion and Nature. That philosophy is the philosophy of his age, and must be judged relatively. His deeply religious, candid, piercing spirit embodies the highest effort of the Christian intellect conditioned by the categories of the best thought of his age. Everywhere, while evading no difficulty, his strenuous speculative search is steadied by ethical and religious instinct. As against Valentinian and the Platonists, with both of whom he is in close affinity, he inexorably insists on the self-consciousness and moral nature of God, on human freewill. As against all contemporary non-Christian thought his system is pure monism. Yet the problem of evil, in which he merges the antithesis of matter and spirit, brings with it a necessary dualism, a dualism, however, which belongs but to a moment in the limitless eternity of God's all-in-allness before and after. Is he then a pantheist? No, for to him God is Love (in Ezek. vi. 6), and the rational creature is to be made divine and united to God by the reconciliation of Will and by conscious apprehension of Him. The idea of Will is the pivot of Origen's system, the centripetal force which forbids it to follow the pantheistic line which it yet undoubtedly touches. The moral' unity of the Father and the Son (see above, tautotes boulematos and ek tou thelematos) is Unity in that very respect in which the Creator stands over against the self-determining rational creature. Yet the immutability, the Oneness of God, must be reconciled with the plurality, the mutability of the creature; here the Logos mediates; dia ta polla ginetai polla: but this must be from eternity:--accordingly creation is eternal too. Here we see that the cosmological idea has prevailed over the religious, the Logos of Origen is still in important particulars the Logos of the Apologists, of Philo and the philosophers. The difference lies in His co-eternity, upon which Origen insists without wavering. The resemblance lies in the intermediate [20] position ascribed to Him between the agennetos, (ho Theos), and the geneta; He is, as Hypostasis, subordinate to the Father.
Now it is evident that the mere intellectual apprehension of a system which combines so many opposite tendencies, which touches every variety of the theological thought of the age (even modalism, for to Origen the Father is the Monas, the autotheos, while yet He is no abstraction but a God who exists in moral activity, supra) and subtly harmonises them all, must have involved no ordinary philosophical power. When we add to this fact the further consideration that precisely the fundamental ideas of Origen were those which called forth the liveliest opposition and were gradually dropped by his followers, we can easily understand that in the next generation Origenism was no longer either the system of Origen, or a single system at all.
In one direction it could lend itself to no compromise; in spite of the justice done by Origen to the fundamental ideas both of modalism and of emanative adoptionism (cf. Harnack, pp. 548, note, and 586), to Monarchianism in either form he is diametrically opposed. The hypostatic distinctness of Son and Spirit is once for all made good for the theology of Eastern Christendom. We see his disciples exterminate Monarchianism in the East. On the left wing Dionysius refutes the Sabellians of Libya, on the right Gregory Thaumaturgus, Firmilian, and their brethren, after a long struggle, oust the adoptionist Paul from the See of Antioch. But its influence on the existing Catholic theology, however great (and in the East it was very great), inevitably made its way in the face of opposition, and at the cost of its original subtle consistency. The principal opposition came from Asia Minor, where the traditions of theological thought (see above, on Ignatius and Irenæus, below on Marcellus) were not in sympathy [21] with Origen. We cannot demonstrate the existence of a continuous theological school in Asia; but Methodius (270-300) certainly speaks with the voice of Ignatius and Irenæus. He deals with Origen much as Irenæus dealt with the Gnostics, defending against him the current sense of the regula fidei, and especially the literal meaning of Scripture, the origination of the soul along with the body, the resurrection of the body in the material sense, and generally opposing realism to the spiritualism of Origen. But in thus opposing Origen, Methodius is not uninfluenced by him (see Socr. vi. 13). He, too, is a student of Plato (with little of his style or spirit'); his realism' is speculative.' He no longer defends the Asiatic Chiliasm, his doctrine of the Logos is coloured by Origen as that of Irenæus was by the Apologists. The legacy of Methodius and of his Origenist contemporaries to the Eastern Church was a modified Origenism, that is a theology systematised on the intellectual basis of the Platonic philosophy, but expurgated by the standard of the regula fidei. This result was a compromise, and was at first attended with great confusion. Origen's immediate following seized some one side, some another of his system; some were more, some less influenced by the orthodox' reaction against his teaching. We may distinguish an Origenist right' and an Origenist left.' If the Origenist view of the Universe was given up, the coeternity of the Son and Spirit with the Father was less firmly grasped. Origen had, if we may use the expression, levelled up.' The Son was mediator between the Ingenerate God and the created, but eternal Universe. If the latter was not eternal, and if at the same time the Word stood in some essential correlation to the creative energy of God, Origen's system no longer implied the strict coeternity of the Word. Accordingly we find Dionysius (see below, p. 173 sqq.) uncertain on this point, and on the essential relation of the Son to the Father. More cautious in this respect, but tenacious of other startling features of Origen, were Pierius and Theognostus, who presided over the Catechetical School at the end of the century [22] .
On the other hand, very many of Origen's pupils, especially among the bishops, started from the other side of Origen's teaching, and held tenaciously to the coeternity of the Son, while they abandoned the Origenist paradoxes' with regard to the Universe, matter, pre-existence, and restitution. Typical of this class is Gregory Thaumaturgus, also Peter the martyr bishop of Alexandria, who expressly opposed many of Origen's positions (though hardly with the violence ascribed to him in certain supposed fragments in Routh, Rell. iv. 81) and Alexander himself. It was this wing' of the Origenist following that, in combination with the opposition represented by Methodius, bequeathed to the generation contemporary with Nicæa its average theological tone. The coeternity of the Son with the Father was not (as a rule) questioned, but the essential relation of the Logos to the Creation involved a strong subordination of the Son to the Father, and by consequence of the Spirit to the Son. Monarchianism was the heresy most dreaded, the theology of the Church was based on the philosophical categories of Plato applied to the explanation and systematisation of the rule of faith. This was very far from Arianism. It lacked the logical definiteness of that system on the one hand, it rested on the other hand on a different conception of God; the hypostatic subordination of the Son was insisted upon, but His true Sonship as of one Nature with the Father, was held fast. In the slow process of time this neo-Asiatic theology found its way partly to the Nicene formula, partly to the illogical acceptance of it with regard to the Son, with refusal to apply it to the Spirit (Macedonius). To the men who thought thus, the blunt assertion that the Son was a creature, not coeternal, alien to the Essence of the Father, was a novelty, and wholly abhorrent. Arius drew a sharper line than they had been accustomed to draw between God and the creature; so did Athanasius. But Arius drew his line without flinching between the Father and the Son. This to the instinct of any Origenist was as revolting as it would have been to the clear mind and Biblical sympathy of Origen himself. In theological and philosophical principles alike Arius was opposed even to the tempered Origenism of the Nicene age. The latter was at the furthest remove from Monarchianism, Arianism was in its essential core Monarchian; the common theology borrowed its philosophical principles and method from the Platonists, Arius from Aristotle. To anticipate, Arianism and (so-called) semi-Arianism have in reality very little in common except the historical fact of common action for a time. Arianism guarded the transcendence of the divine nature (at the expense of revelation and redemption) in a way that semi-Arianism,' admitting as it did inherent inequality in the Godhead, did not. They therefore tended in opposite directions; Arianism to Anomoeanism, semi-Arianism' to the Nicene faith; their source was different. Aristotle made men Arians,' says Newman with truth, Plato, semi-Arians' (Arians^4, p. 335, note): but to say this is to allow that if Arianism goes back to Lucian and so to Paul of Samosata, semi-Arianism is a fragment from the wreck of Origen.
The Origenist bishops of Syria and Asia Minor had in the years 269-272, after several efforts, succeeded in deposing Paul of Samosata from the See of Antioch. This remarkable man was the ablest pre-Nicene representative of Adoptionist Monarchianism. The Man Jesus was inhabited by the Word,' i.e. by an impersonal power of God, distinct from the Logos or reason (wisdom) inherent in God as an attribute, which descended upon him at His Baptism. His union with God, a union of Will, was unswerving, and by virtue of it He overcame the sin of mankind, worked miracles, and entered on a condition of Deification. He is God ek prokopes (cf. Luke ii. 52) by virtue of progress in perfection. That is in brief the system of Paul, and we cannot wonder at his deposition. For the striking points of contact with Arianism (two Wisdoms,' two Words,' prokope: cf. Orat. c. Ar. i. 5, &c.) we have to account [23] . The theology of Arius is a compromise between the Origenist doctrine of the Person of Christ and the pure Monarchian Adoptionism of Paul of Samosata; or rather it engrafts the former upon the latter as the foundation principle, seriously modifying each to suit the necessity of combining the two. This compromise was not due to Arius himself but to his teacher, Lucian the Martyr. A native himself of Samosata, he stood in some relation of attachment (not clearly defineable) to Paul. Under him, he was at the head of a critical, exegetical, and theological school at Antioch. Upon the deposition of Paul he appears not so much to have been formally excommunicated as to have refused to acquiesce in the new order of things. Under Domnus and his two successors, he was in a state of suspended communion [24] ; but eventually was reconciled with the bishop (Cyril?) and died as a martyr at Nicomedia, Jan. 7, 312. The latter fact, his ascetic life, and his learning secured him widespread honour in the Church; his pupils formed a compact and enthusiastic brotherhood, and filled many of the most influential Sees after the persecution. That such a man should be involved in the reproach of having given birth to Arianism is an unwelcome result of history, but one not to be evaded [25] . The history of the Lucianic compromise and its result in the Lucianic type of theology, are both matters of inference rather than of direct knowledge. As to the first, whatever evidence there is connects Lucian's original position with Paul. His reconciliation with Bishop Cyril must have involved a reapproachment to the formula of the bishops who deposed Paul,--a thoroughly Origenist document. We may therefore suppose that the identification of Christ with the Logos, or cosmic divine principle, was adopted by him from Origenist sources. But he could not bring himself to admit that He was thus essentially identified with God the eternal; he held fast to the idea of prokope as the path by which the Lord attained to Divinity; he distinguished the Word or Son who was Christ from the immanent impersonal Reason or Wisdom of God, as an offspring of the Father's Will, an idea which he may have derived straight from Origen, with whom of course it had a different sense. For to Origen Will was the very essence of God; Lucian fell back upon an arid philosophical Monotheism, upon an abstract God fenced about with negations (Harnack 2^2, 195, note) and remote from the Universe. It was counted a departure from Lucian's principles if a pupil held that the Son was the perfect Image of the Father's Essence' (Philost. ii. 15); Origen's formula, distinct in hypostasis, but one in will,' was apparently exploited in a Samosatene sense to express the relation of the Son to the Father. The only two points in fact in which Lucian appears to have modified the system of Paul were, firstly in hypostatising the Logos, which to Paul was an impersonal divine power, secondly in abandoning Paul's purely human doctrine of the historical Christ. To Lucian, the Logos assumed a body (or rather Deus sapientiam suam misit in hunc mundum carne vestitam, ubi infra, p. 6), but itself took the place of a soul [26] ; hence all the tapeinai lexeis of the Gospels applied to the Logos as such, and the inferiority and essential difference of the Son from the Father rigidly followed.
The above account of Lucian is based on that of Harnack, Dogmg. ii. 184, sqq. It is at once in harmony with all our somewhat scanty data (Alexander, Epiphanius, Philostorgius, and the fragment of his last confession of faith preserved by Rufin. in Eus. H. E. ix. 9, Routh, Rell. iv. pp. 5-7, from which Harnack rightly starts) and is the only one which accounts for the phenomena of the rise of Arianism. We find a number of leading Churchmen in agreement with Arius, but in no way dependent on him. They are Eusebius of Nicomedia, Maris, Theognis, Athanasius of Anazarba, Menophantus; all Lucianists. The first Arian writer, Asterius (see below), is a Lucianist. (The Egyptian bishops Secundus and Theonas cannot be put down to any school; we do not know their history; but they are distinguished from the Lucianists by Philost. ii. 3.) It has been urged that, although Arius brought away heresy from the school of Lucian, yet he was not the only one that did so. True; but then the heresy was all of the same kind (list of pupils of Lucian in Philost. ii. 14, iii. 15). Aetius, the founder of logical ultra-Arianism and teacher of Eunomius, was taught the exegesis of the New Testament by the Lucianists Athanasius of Anazarba and Antony of Tarsus, of the Old by the Lucianist Leontius. This fairly covers the area of Arianism proper. But it may be noted that some Origenists of the left wing,' whose theology emphasized the subordination, and vacillated as to the eternity of the Son, would find little to shock them in Arianism (Eusebius of Cæsarea, Paulinus of Tyre), while on the other hand there are traces of a Lucianist right wing,' men like Asterius, who while essentially Arian, made concessions to the conservative' position chiefly by emphasising the cosmic mediation of the Word and His exact likeness' to the Father [27] . The Theology of the Eastern Church was suffering from the effort to assimilate the Origenist theology: it could not do so without eliminating the underlying and unifying idea of Origenism; this done, the overwhelming influence of the great teacher remained, while dissonant fragments of his system, vaguely comprehended in many cases, permeated some here, some there [28] . Meanwhile the school of Lucian had a method and a system; they knew their own minds, and relied on reason and exegesis. This was the secret of their power. Had Arius never existed, Arianism must have tried its strength under such conditions. But the age was ready for Arius; and Arius was ready. The system of Arius was in effect that of Lucian: its formulation appears to have been as much the work of Asterius as of Arius himself. (Cf. p. 155, §8, ho de 'Ar. metagrapsas dedoke tois idiois. The extant writings of Arius are his letters to Eus. Nic. and to Alexander, preserved by Theodoret and Epiph. Hær. 69, and the extracts from the Thalia' in Ath., pp. 308-311, 457, 458; also the confession' in Socr. i. 26, Soz. ii. 27. Cf. also references to his dicta in Ath. pp. 185, 229, &c.) Arius started from the idea of God and the predicate Son.' God is above all things uncreated, or unoriginate, agen[n]etos, (the ambiguity of the derivatives of gennasthai and genesthai are a very important element in the controversy. See p. 475, note 5, and Lightfoot, Ignat. ii. p. 90 sqq.) Everything else is created, geneton. The name Son' implies an act of procreation. Therefore, before such act, there was no Son, nor was God properly speaking a Father. The Son is not coeternal with Him. He was originated by the Father's will, as indeed were all things. He is, then, ton geneton, He came into being from non-existence (ex ouk onton), and before that did not exist (ouk en prin genetai). But His relation to God differs from that of the Universe generally. Created nature cannot bear the awful touch of bare Deity. God therefore created the Son that He in turn might be the agent in the Creation of the Universe--created Him as the beginning of His ways,' (Prov. viii. 22, LXX.). This being so, the nature of the Son was in the essential point of agennesia unlike that of the Father; (xenos tou huiou kat' ousian ho Pater hoti anarchos): their substances (hupostaseis) are anepimiktoi,--have nothing in common. The Son therefore does not possess the fundamental property of sonship, identity of nature with the Father. He is a Son by Adoption, not by Nature; He has advanced by moral probation to be Son, even to be monogenes theos (Joh. i. 14). He is not the eternal Logos, reason, of God, but a Word (and God has spoken many): but yet He is the Word by grace; is no longer, what He is by nature, subject to change. He cannot know the Father, much less make Him known to others. Lastly, He dwells in flesh, not in full human nature (see above, p. xxviii. and note 2). The doctrine of Arius as to the Holy Spirit is not recorded, but probably He was placed between the Son and the other ktismata (yet see Harnack ii. 199, note 2).
Arian Literature. Beside the above-mentioned letters and fragments of Arius, our early Arian documents are scanty. Very important is the letter of Eus. Nic. to Paulinus, referred to above, §3 (1), pp. xvi., xviii., other fragments of letters, p. 458 sq. The writings [29] of Asterius, if preserved, would have been an invaluable source of information [30] . Asterius seems to have written before the Nicene Council; he may have modified his language in later treatises. He was replied to by Marcellus in a work which brought him into controversy (336) with Eusebius of Cæsarea. With the creeds and Arian literature after the death of Constantine we are not at present concerned.
Arianism was a novelty. Yet it combines in an inconsistent whole elements of almost every previous attempt to formulate the doctrine of the Person of Christ. Its sharpest antithesis was Modalism: yet with the modalist Arius maintained the strict personal unity of the Godhead. With dynamic monarchianism it held the adoptionist principle in addition; but it personified the Word and sacrificed the entire humanity of Christ. In this latter respect it sided with the Docetæ, most Gnostics, and Manichæans, to all of whom it yet opposes a sharply-cut doctrine of creation and of the transcendence of God. With Origen and the Apologists before him it made much of the cosmic mediation of the Word in contrast to the redemptive work of Jesus; with the Apologists, though not with Origen, it enthroned in the highest place the God of the Philosophers: but against both alike it drew a sharp broad line between the Creator and the Universe, and drew it between the Father and the Son. Least of all is Arianism in sympathy with the theology of Asia,--that of Ignatius, Irenæus, Methodius, founded upon the Joannine tradition. The profound Ignatian idea of Christ as the Logos apo siges proelthon is in impressive contrast with the shallow challenge of the Thalia, Many words hath God spoken, which of these was manifested in the flesh?'
Throughout the controversies of the pre-Nicene age the question felt rather than seen in the background is that of the Idea of God. The question of Monotheism and Polytheism which separated Christians from heathen was not so much a question of abstract theology as of religion, not one of speculative belief, but of worship. The Gentile was prepared to recognise in the background of his pantheon the shadowy form of one supreme God, Father of gods and men, from whom all the rest derived their being. But his religion required the pantheon as well; he could not worship a philosophic supreme abstraction. The Christian on the other hand was prepared in many cases to recognise the existence of beings corresponding to the gods of the heathen (whether 1 Cor. viii. 5 can be quoted here is open to question). But such beings he would not worship. To him, as an object of religion, there was one God. The one God of the heathen was no object of practical personal religion; the One God of the Christian was. He was the God of the Old Testament, the God who was known to His people not under philosophical categories, but in His dealings with them as a Father, Deliverer, He who would accomplish all things for them that waited on Him, the God of the Covenant. He was the God of the New Testament, God in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, manifesting His Righteousness in the Gospel of Christ to whosoever believed. In Christ the Christian learned that God is Love. Now this knowledge of God is essentially religious; it lies in a different plane from the speculative aporiai as to God's transcendence or immanence, while yet it steadies the religious mind in the face of speculations tending either way. A God who is Love, if immanent, must yet be personal, if transcendent, must yet manifest His Love in such a way that we can know it and not merely guess it. Now as Christian instinct began to be forced to reflexion, in other words, as faith began to strive for expression in a theology [31] , it could not but be that men, however personally religious, seized hold of religious problems by their speculative side. We have seen this exemplified in the influence of Platonic philosophy on the Apologists and Alexandrine Fathers. But to Origen, with all his Platonism, belongs the honour of enthroning the God of Love at the head and centre of a systematic theology. Yet the theology of the end of the third century assimilated secondary results of Origen's system rather than his underlying idea. On the one hand was the rule of faith with the whole round of Christian life and worship, determining the religious instinct of the Church; on the other, the inability to formulate this instinct in a coherent system so long as the central problem was overlooked or inadequately dealt with. God is One, not more; yet how is the One God to be conceived of, what is His relation to the Universe of genesis and phthora? and the Son is God, and the Spirit; how are they One, and if One how distinct? How do we avoid the relapse into a polytheism of secondary gods? What is--not the essential nature of Godhead, for all agreed that that is beyond our ken--but the proton hemin, the essential idea for us to begin from if we are to synthesise belief and theology, pistis and gnosis?
Arianism stepped in with a summary answer. God is one, numerically and absolutely. He is beyond the ken of any created intelligence. Even creation is too close a relation for Him to enter into with the world. In order to create, he must create an instrument (pp. 360 sqq.), intermediate between Himself and all else. This instrument is called Son of God, i.e. He is not coeternal (for what son was ever as old as his parent?), but the result of an act of creative will. How then is He different from other creatures? This is the weak point of the system; He is not really different, but a difference is created by investing Him with every possible attribute of glory and divinity except the possession of the incommunicable nature of deity. He is merely anointed above His fellows.' His divinity' is acquired, not original; relative, not absolute; in His character, not in His Person. Accordingly He is, as a creature, immeasurably far from the Creator; He does not know God, cannot declare God to us. The One God remains in His inaccessible remoteness from the creature. But yet Arians worshipped Christ; although not very God, He is God to us. Here we have the exact difficulty with which the Church started in her conflict with heathenism presented again unsolved. The desperate struggle, the hardly earned triumph of the Christians, had been for the sake of the essential principle of heathenism! The One God was, after all, the God of the philosophers; the idea of pagan polytheism was realised and justified in Christ [32] ! To this Athanasius returns again and again (see esp. p. 360); it is the doom of Arianism as a Christian theology.
If Arianism failed to assist the thought of the Church to a solution of the great problem of God, its failure was not less conspicuous with regard to revelation and redemption. The revelation of the Gospel stopped short in the person of Christ, did not go back to the Father. God was not in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, we have access in Christ to a created intelligence, not to the love of God to usward, not to the everlasting Arms, but to a being neither divine nor human. Sinners against heaven and before God, we must accept an assurance of reconciliation from one who does not know Him whom we have offended; the kiss of the Father has never been given to the prodigal. Men have asked how we are justified in ascribing to the infinite God the attributes which we men call good: mercy, justice, love. If Christ is God, the answer lies near; if He is the Christ of Arius, we are left in moral agnosticism. Apart from Christ, the philosophical arguments for a God have their force; they proffer to us an ennobling belief, a grand perhaps'; but the historical inability of Monotheism to retain a lasting hold among men apart from revelation is an impressive commentary on their compelling power. In Christ alone does God lay hold upon the soul with the assurance of His love (Rom. v. 5-8; Matt. xi. 28; John xvii. 3). The God of Arius has held out no hand toward us; he is a far-off abstraction, not a living nor a redeeming God.
The illogicality of Arianism has often been pointed out (Gwatkin, pp. 21 sqq. esp. p. 28); how, starting from the Sonship of Christ, it came round to a denial of His Sonship; how it started with an interest for Monotheism and landed in a vindication of polytheism; how it began from the incomprehensibility of God even to His Son, and ended (in its most pronounced form) with the assertion that the divine Nature is no mystery at all, even to us. It is an insult to the memory of Aristotle to call such shallow hasty syllogising from ill-selected and unsifted first principles by his name. Aristotle himself teaches a higher logic than this. But at this date Aristotelianism proper was extinct. It only survived in the form of pure' logic, adopted by the Platonists, but also studied for its own sake in connection with rhetoric and the art of arguing (cf. Socr. ii. 35). Such an instrument might well be a cause of confusion in the hands of men who used it without regard to the conditions of the subject-matter. An illogical compromise between the theology of Paul of Samosata and of Origen, the marvel is that Arianism satisfied any one even in the age of its birth. What has been said above with regard to the conception of God in the early Church may help to explain it; the germ of ethical insight which is latent in adoptionism, and which when neglected by the Church has always made itself felt by reaction, must also receive justice; once again, its inherent intellectualism was in harmony with the dominant theology of the Eastern Church, that is with one side of Origenism. Where analogous conditions have prevailed, as for example in the England of the early eighteenth century, Arianism has tended to reappear with no one of its attendant incongruities missing.
But for all that, the doom of Arianism was uttered at Nicæa and verified in the six decades which followed. Every possible alternative formula of belief as to the Person of Christ was forced upon the mind of the early Church, was fully tried, and was found wanting. Arianism above all was fully tried and above all found lacking. The Nicene formula alone has been found to render possible the life, to satisfy the instincts of the Church of Christ. The choice lies--nothing is clearer--between that and the doctrine of Paul of Samosata. The latter, it has been said, was misunderstood, was never fairly tried. As a claimant to represent the true sense of Christianity it was I think once for all rejected when the first Apostles gave the right hand of fellowship to S. Paul (see above, p. xxii.); its future trial must be in the form of naturalism, as a rival to Christianity, on the basis of a denial of the claim of Christ to be the One Saviour of the World, and of His Gospel to be the Absolute Religion. But Arianism, adding to all the difficulties of a supernatural Christology the spirit of the shallowest rationalism and the fundamental postulate of agnosticism, can surely count for nothing in the Armageddon of the latter days,
Spiacente a Dio ed a' nemici suoi.
(b) The homoousion as a theological formula [33] .
The distinction, which in the foregoing discussion we have frequently had under our notice, between the pistis and gnosis of the early Church, the pistis common to all, and formulated in the tessera or rule of faith, the gnosis the property of apologists and theologians aiming at the expression of faith in terms of the thought of their age, and at times, though for long only slightly, reacting upon the rule of faith itself (Aquileia, Cæsarea, Gregory Thaumaturgus), makes itself felt in the account of the Nicene Council. That the legacy of the first world-wide gathering of the Church's rulers is a Rule of Faith moulded by theological reflexion, one in which the gnosis of the Church supplements her pistis, is a momentous fact; a fact for which we have to thank not Athanasius but Arius. The pistis of the Fathers repudiated Arianism as a novelty; but to exclude it from the Church some test was indispensable; and to find a test was the task of theology, of gnosis. The Nicene Confession is the Rule of Faith explained as against Arianism. Arianism started with the Christian profession of belief in our Lord's Sonship. If the result was incompatible with such belief, it was inevitable that an explanation should be given, not indeed of the full meaning of divine Sonship, but of that element in the idea which was ignored or assailed by the misconception of Arius. Such an explanation is attempted in the words ek tes ousias tou patros, homoousian to Patri, and again in the condemnation of the formula ex heteras hupostaseos e ousias. This explanation was not adopted without hesitation, nor would it have been adopted had any other barrier against the heresy, which all but very few wished to exclude, appeared effective. We now have to examine firstly the grounds of this hesitation, secondly the justification of the formula itself.
The objections felt to the word homoousion at the council were (1) philosophical, based on the identification of ousia with either eidos (i.e. as implying a formal essence' prior to Father and Son alike) or hule; (2) dogmatic, based on the identification of ousia with tode ti, and on the consequent Sabellian sense of the homoousion; (3) Scriptural, based on the non-occurrence of the word in the Bible; (4) Ecclesiastical, based on the condemnation of the word by the Synod which deposed Paul at Antioch in 269.
All these objections were made and felt bona fide, although Arians would of course make the most of them. The subsequent history will show that their force was outweighed only for the moment with many of the fathers, and that to reconcile the conservatism' of the Asiatic bishops to the new formula must be a matter of time. The third or Scriptural objection need not now be discussed at length. Precedent could be pleaded for the introduction into creeds of words not expressly found in Scripture (e.g. the word catholic' applied to the Church in many ancient creeds, the creed of Gregory Thaumaturgus with trias teleia, &c. &c.); the only question was, were the non-scriptural words expressive of a Scriptural idea? This was the pith of the question debated between Athanasius and his opponents for a generation after the council; the conservative' majority eventually came round to the conviction that Athanasius was right. But the question depends upon the meaning of the word itself.
The word means sharing in a joint or common essence, ousia (cf. homonumos, sharing the same name, &c. &c.). What then is ousia? The word was introduced into philosophical use, so far as we know, by Plato, and its technical value was fixed for future ages by his pupil Aristotle. Setting aside its use to express existence' in the abstract, we take the more general use of the word as indicating that which exists in the concrete. In this sense it takes its place at the centre of his system of categories,' as the something to which all determinations of quality, quantity, relation and the rest attach, and which itself attaches to nothing; in Aristotle's words it alone is self-existent, choriston, whereas all that comes under any of the other categories is achoriston, non-existent except as a property of some ousia. But here the difficulty begins. We may look at a concrete term as denoting either this or that individual simply (tode ti), or as expressing its nature, and so as common to more individuals than one. Now properly (protos) ousia is only appropriate to the former purpose. But it may be employed in a secondary sense to designate the latter; in this sense species and genera are deuterai ousiai, the wider class being less truly ousiai than the narrower. In fact we here detect the transition of the idea of ousia from the category of ousia proper to that of poion (cf. Athan. p. 478 sq.; he uses ousia freely in the secondary sense for non-theological purposes in contra Gentes, where it is often best rendered nature'). Aristotle accordingly uses ousia freely to designate what we call substances, whether simple or compound, such as iron, gold, earth, the heavens, to akineton, &c., &c. Corresponding again, to the logical distinction of genos and eidos is the metaphysical distinction (not exactly of matter and form, but) of matter simply, regarded as to hupokeimenon, and matter regarded as existing in this or that form, to poion to en te ousi& 139;, to ti en einai, the meeting-point of logic and metaphysics in Aristotle's system. Agreeably to this distinction, ousia is used sometimes of the latter--the concrete thing regarded in its essential nature, sometimes of the former he hupokeimene ousia hos hule, hule being in fact the summum genus of the material world.
Now the use of the word in Christian theology had exemplified nearly every one of the above senses. In the quasi-material sense homoousion had been used in the school of Valentinian to express the homogeneity of the two factors in the fundamental dualism of the Universe of intelligent beings. In a somewhat similar sense it is used in the Clementine Homilies xx. 7. The Platonic phrase for the Divine Nature, epekeina pases ousias, adopted by Origen and by Athanasius contra Gentes, appears to retain something of the idea of ousia as implying material existence; and this train of associations had to be expressly disclaimed in defending the Nicene formula. In the sense of homogeneity the word omoousion is expressly applied by Origen, as we have seen, to the Father and the Son: on the other hand, taking ousia in the primary' Aristotelian sense, he has heteros kat' ousian kai hupokeimenon In the West (see above on Tertullian and Novatian) the Latin substantia (Cicero had in vain attempted to give currency to the less euphonious but more suitable essentia) had taken its place in the phrase unius substantiæ orcommunio substantiæ, intended to denote not only the homogeneity but the Unity of Father and Son. Accordingly we find Dionysius of Rome pressing the test upon his namesake of Alexandria and the latter not declining it (below, p. 183). But a few years later we find the Origenist bishops, who with the concurrence of Dionysius of Rome deposed Paul of Samosata, expressly repudiating the term. This fact, which is as certain as any fact in Church history (see Routh Rell. iii. 364 &c., Caspari Alte u. Neue. Q., pp. 161 sqq.), was a powerful support to the Arians in their subsequent endeavours to unite the conservative East in reaction against the council. Scholars are fairly equally divided as to the explanation of the fact. Some hold, following Athanasius and Basil, that Paul imputed the omoousion (in a materialising sense) to his opponents, as a consequence of the doctrine they opposed to his own, and that the 80' in repudiating the word, repudiated the idea that the divine nature could be divided by the emanation of a portion of it in the Logos. Hilary, on the other hand, tells us that the word was used by Paul himself (male omoousion Paulus confessus est, sed numquid melius Arii negaverunt?') If so, it must have been meant to deny the existence of the Logos as an ousia (i.e. Hypostasis) distinct from the Father. Unfortunately we have not the original documents to refer to. But in either case the word was repudiated at Antioch in one sense, enacted at Nicæa in another. The fact however remains that the term does not exclude ambiguity. Athanasius is therefore going beyond strict accuracy when he claims (p. 164) that no one who is not an Arian can fail to be in agreement with the Synod. Marcellus and Photinus alone prove the contrary. But he is right in regarding the word as rigidly excluding the heresy of Arius.
This brings us to the question in what sense ousia is used in the Nicene definition. We must remember the strong Western and anti-Origenist influence which prevailed in the council (above, p. xvii.), and the use of hupostasis and ousia as convertible terms in the anathematism (see Excursus A, pp. 77, sqq. below). Now going back for a moment to the correspondence of the two Dionysii, we see that Dionysius of Rome had contended not so much against the subordination of the Son to the Father as against their undue separation (memerismenai hupostaseis). In other words he had pressed the homoousion upon his namesake in the interest rather of the unity than of the equality of the Persons in the Holy Trinity. At Nicæa, the problem was (as shewn above) to explain (at least negatively) how the Church understood the Generation of the Son. Accordingly we find Athanasius in later years explaining that the Council meant to place beyond doubt the Essential Relation of the Divine Persons to one another (to idion tes ousias, tautotes, see de Decr. pp. 161, 163 sq., 165, 168, 319; of course including identity of Nature, pp. 396, 413, 232), and maintaining to the end (where he expresses his own view, p. 490, &c.) the convertibility of ousia and hupostasis for this purpose. By the word ho theos or theos he understands ouden heteron e ten ousian tou ontos (de Decr. 22). The conclusion is that in their original sense the definitions of Nicæa assert not merely the specific identity of the Son with the Father (as Peter qua man is of one ousia with Paul, or the Emperor's statue of one form with the Emperor himself, p. 396), but the full unbroken continuation of the Being of the Father in the Son, the inseparable unity of the Son with the Father in the Oneness of the Godhead. Here the phrase is balanced' by the ek tes [hupostaseos e] ousias tou Patros, not as though merely one ousia had given existence to another, but in the sense that with such origination the ousia remained the same. This is a first approximation to the mysterious doctrine of the perichoresis' coinherence, or circuminsessio,' which is necessary to guard the doctrine of the Trinity against tritheism, but which, it must be observed, lifts it out of the reach of the categories of any system of thought in which the workings of human intelligence have ever been able to organise themselves. The doctrine of the Holy Trinity vindicated by the Nicene formula on the one hand remains, after the exclusion of others, as the one direction in which the Christian intellect can travel without frustrating and limiting the movement of faith, without bringing to a halt the instinct of faith in Christ as Saviour, implanted in the Church by the teaching of S. Paul and of S. John, of the Lord Himself: on the other hand it is not a full solution of the intellectual difficulties with which the analysis of that faith and those instincts brings us face to face. That God is One, and that the Son is God, are truths of revelation which the category of substance' fails to synthesise. The Nicene Definition furnishes a basis of agreement for the purpose of Christian devotion, worship, and life, but leaves two theologies face to face, with mutual recognition as the condition of the healthy life of either. The theology of Athanasius and of the West is that of the Nicene formula in its original sense. The inseparable Unity of the God of Revelation is its pivot. The conception of personality in the Godhead is its difficulty. The distinctness of the Father, Son, and Spirit is felt (allos ho Pater allos ho hui& 231;s), but cannot be formulated so as to satisfy our full idea of personality. For this Athanasius had no word; prosopon meant too little (implying as it did no more than an aspect possibly worn but for a special period or purpose), hupostasis (implying such personality as separates Peter from Paul) too much. But he recognised the admissibility of the sense in which the Nicene formula eventually, in the theology of the Cappadocian fathers, won its way to supremacy in the East. To them hupostasis was an appropriate term to express the distinction of Persons in the Godhead, while ousia expressed the divine Nature which they possessed in common (see Excursus A. p. 77 sqq.). This sense of ousia approximated to that of species, or eidos (Aristotle's secondary' ousia), while that of hupostasis gravitated toward that of personality in the empirical sense. But in neither case did the approximation amount to complete identity. The idea of trine personality was limited by the consideration of the Unity; the perichoresis was recognised, although in a somewhat different form, the prominent idea in Athanasius being that of coinherence or immanence, whereas the Cappadocians, while using, of course, the language of John xiv. 11, yet prefer the metaphor of successive dependence hosper ex haluseo. (Bas. Ep. 38, p. 118 D). To Athanasius, the Godhead is complete not in the Father alone, still less in the Three Persons as parts of the one ousia, but in each Person as much as in all. The Cappadocian Fathers go back to the Origenist view that the Godhead is complete primarily in the Father alone, but mediately in the Son or Spirit, by virtue of their origination from the Father as pege or aitia tes theotetos. To Athanasius the distinct Personality of Son and Spirit was the difficulty; his difference from Origen was wide, from Marcellus subtle. To the Cappadocians the difficulty was the Unity of the Persons; to Marcellus they were toto cælo opposed, they are the pupils of Origen [34] . Accordingly when Basil makes a distinction between ousia and hupostasis in the Nicene anathematism, he is giving not historical exegesis but his own opinion.
The Nicene definition in this sense emphasized the Unity of the Godhead in Three Persons, against the Arian division of the Son from the Father. How then did it escape the danger of lending countenance to Monarchianism? Athanasius feels the difficulty without solving it, for the distinction given by him, p. 84, between homoousios and monoousios is without real meaning (we say with Tertullian of one substance'). On the whole in mature years he held that the title Son' was sufficient to secure the Trinity of Persons. By the name Father we confute Arius, by the name of Son we overthrow Sabellius' (p. 434; cf. p. 413); and we find that the council in its revision of the Cæsarean creed shifted hui& 231;s to the principal position where it took the place of logos. Beyond this the Creed imposed no additional test in that direction (the ek tes ousias is important but not decisive in this respect). This was felt as an objection to the Creed, and the objection was pointed by the influence of Marcellus at the council. The historical position of Marcellus is in fact, as we shall see, the principal key to the conservative' reaction which followed. The insertion into the conservative creeds of a clause asserting the endlessness of Christ's Kingdom, which eventually received ecumenical authority, was an expression of this feeling. But a final explanation between the Nicene doctrine and Monarchianism could not come about until the idea of Personality had been tested in the light of the appearance of the Son in the Flesh. The solution, or rather definition, of the problem is to be sought in the history of the Christological questions which began with Apollinarius of Laodicea.
The above account of the anti-Arian test formulated at Nicæa will suffice to explain the motives for its adoption, the difficulties which made that adoption reluctant, and the fact of the reaction which followed. One thing is clear, namely that given the actual conditions, nothing short of the test adopted would have availed to exclude the Arian doctrine. It is also I think clear, that not only was the current theology of the Eastern Church unable to cope with Arianism, but that it was itself a danger to the Church and in need of the corrective check of the Nicene definition. Hellenic as was the system of Origen, it was in its spirit Christian, and saturated with the influence of Scripture. It could never have taken its place as the expression of the whole mind of the Church; but it remains as the noblest monument of a Christian intellect resolutely in love with truth for its own sake, and bent upon claiming for Christ the whole range of the legitimate activity of the human spirit. But the age had inherited only the wreck of Origenism, and its partial victory in the Church had brought confusion in its train, the leaders of the Church were characterised by secular knowledge rather than grasp of first principles, by dogmatic intellectualism rather than central apprehension of God in Christ. Eusebius of Cæsarea is their typical representative. The Nicene definition and the work of Athanasius which followed were a summons back to the simple first principles of the Gospel and the Rule of Faith. What then is their value to ourselves? Above all, this, that they have preserved to us what Arianism would have destroyed, that assurance of Knowledge of, and Reconciliation to, God in Christ of which the divinity of the Saviour is the indispensable condition; if we are now Christians in the sense of S. Paul we owe it under God to the work of the great synod. Not that the synod explained all; or did more than effectually block off false forms of thought or avenues of unbalanced inference' which challenged the acceptance of Christian people.' The decisions of councils are primarily not the Church saying "yes" to fresh truths or developments or forms of consciousness; but rather saying "no" to untrue and misleading modes of shaping and stating her truth,' (Lux Mundi, ed. i. p. 240, cf. p. 334). It is objected that the Nicene Formula, especially as understood by Athanasius, is itself a false form of thought,' a flat contradiction in terms. That the latter is true we do not dispute (see Newman's notes infra, p. 336, note 1, &c.). But before pronouncing the form of thought for that reason a false one, we must consider what the terms' are, and to what they are applied. To myself it appears that a religion which brought the divine existence into the compass of the categories of any philosophy would by that very fact forfeit its claim to the character of revelation. The categories of human thought are the outcome of organised experience of a sensible world, and beyond the limits of that world they fail us. This is true quite apart from revelation. The ideas of essence and substance, personality and will, separateness and continuity, cause and effect, unity and plurality, are all in different degrees helps which the mind uses in order to arrange its knowledge, and valid within the range of experience, but which become a danger when invested with absolute validity as things in themselves. Even the mathematician reaches real results by operating with terms which contain a perfect contradiction (e.g. ·, and to some extent the calculus of operations'). The idea of Will in man, of Personality in God, present difficulties which reason cannot reconcile.
The revelation of Christ is addressed primarily to the will not to the intellect, its appeal is to Faith not to Theology. Theology is the endeavour of the Christian intellect to frame for itself conceptions of matters belonging to the immediate consequences of our faith, matters about which we must believe something, but as to which the Lord and His Apostles have delivered nothing formally explicit. Theology has no doubt its certainties beyond the express teaching of our Lord and the New Testament writers; but its work is subject to more than the usual limitations of human thought: we deal with things outside the range of experience, with celestial things; but we have no celestial language.' To abandon all theology would be to acquiesce in a dumb faith: we are to teach, to explain, to defend; the logos sophias and logos gnoseos have from the first been gifts of the Spirit for the building up of the Body. But we know in part and prophesy in part, and our terms begin to fail us just in the region where the problem of guarding the faith of the simple ends and the inevitable metaphysic, into which all pure reflexion merges, begins. Eite oun philosopheteon eite me philosopheteon, philosopheteon, man is metaphysical nolens volens:' only let us recollect that when we find ourselves in the region of antinomies we are crossing the frontier line between revelation and speculation, between the domain of theology and that of ontology. That this line is approached in the definition of the great council no one will deny. But it was reached by the council and by the subsequent consent of the Church reluctantly and under compulsion. The bold assumption that we can argue from the revelation of God in Christ to mysteries beyond our experience was made by the Gnostics, by Arius: the Church met them by a denial of what struck at the root of her belief, not by the claim to erect formulæ applied merely for the lack of better into a revealed ontology. In the terms Person, Hypostasis, Will, Essence, Nature, Generation, Procession, we have the embodiment of ideas extracted from experience, and, as applied to God, representing merely the best attempt we can make to explain what we mean when we speak of God as Father and of Christ as His Son. Even these last sacred names convey their full meaning to us only in view of the historical person of Christ and of our relation to God through Him. That this meaning is based upon an absolute relation of Christ to the Father is the rock of our faith. That relation is mirrored in the name Son of God: but what it is in itself, when the empirical connotations of Sonship are stripped away, we cannot possibly know. Omoousios to Patri, ek tes ousias tou Patros' these words assert at once our faith that such relation exists and our ignorance of its nature. To the simplicity of faith it is enough to know (and this knowledge is what our formula secures) that in Christ we have not only the perfect Example of Human Love to God, but the direct expression and assurance of the Father's Love to us.
(c) Materials for Reaction.
The victory of Nicæa was rather a surprise than a solid conquest. As it was not the spontaneous and deliberate purpose of the bishops present, but a revolution which a minority had forced through by sheer strength of clearer Christian thought, a reaction was inevitable as soon as the half-convinced conservatives returned home' (Gwatkin). The reaction, however, was not for a long time overtly doctrinal. The defeat, the moral humiliation of Arianism at the council was too signal, the prestige of the council itself too overpowering, the Emperor too resolute in supporting its definition, to permit of this. Not till after the death of Constantine in 337 does the policy become manifest of raising alternative symbols to a coordinate rank with that of Nicæa; not till six years after the establishment of Constantius as sole Emperor,--i.e. not till 357,--did Arianism once again set its mouth to the trumpet. During the reign of Constantine the reaction, though doctrinal in its motive, was personal in its ostensible grounds. The leaders of the victorious minority at Nicæa are one by one attacked on this or that pretence and removed from their Sees, till at the time of Constantine's death the East is in the hands of their opponents. What were the forces at work which made this possible?
(1) Persecuted Arians. Foremost of all, the harsh measures adopted by Constantine with at least the tacit approval of the Nicene leaders furnished material for reaction. Arius and his principal friends were sent into exile, and as we have seen they went in bitterness of spirit. Arius himself was banished to Illyricum, and would seem to have remained there five or six years. (The chronology of his recall is obscure, but see D.C.B. ii. 364, and Gwatkin, p. 86, note 2). It would be antecedently very unlikely that a religious exile would spare exertions to gain sympathy for himself and converts to his opinions. As a matter of fact, Arianism had no more active supporters during the next half-century than two bishops of the neighbouring province of Pannonia, Valens of Mursa (Mitrowitz), and Ursacius [35] of Singidunum (Belgrade). Valens and Ursacius are described as pupils of Arius, and there is every reason to trace their personal relations with the heresiarch to his Illyrian exile. The seeds sown in Illyria at this time were still bearing fruit nearly 50 years later (pp. 489, 494, note). Secundus nursed his bitterness fully thirty years (p. 294; cf. 456). Theognis grasped at revenge at Tyre in 335 (pp. 104, 114). Eusebius of Nicomedia, recalled from exile with his friend and neighbour Theognis, not long after the election of Athanasius in 328, was ready to move heaven and earth to efface the results of the council. The harsh measures against the Arians then, if insufficient to account for the reaction, at any rate furnished it with the energy of personal bitterness and sense of wrong.
(2) The Eusebians and the Court. Until the council of Sardica (i.e. a short time after the death of Eusebius of Nicomedia), the motive power of the reaction proceeded from the environment of Eusebius, hoi peri Eusebion. It should be observed once for all that the term Eusebians' is the later and inexact equivalent of the last named Greek phrase, which (excepting perhaps p. 436) has reference to Eusebius of Nicomedia only, and not to his namesake of Cæsarea. The latter, no doubt, lent his support to the action of the party, but ought not to suffer in our estimation from the misfortune of his name. Again, the Eusebians' are not a heresy, nor a theological party or school; they are the ring,' or personal entourage, of one man, a master of intrigue, who succeeded in combining a very large number of men of very different opinions in more or less close association for common ecclesiastical action. The Eusebians' sensu latiori are the majority of Asiatic bishops who were in reaction against the council and its leaders; in the stricter sense the term denotes the pure Arians like Eusebius, Theognis, and the rest, and those political Arians' who without settled adherence to Arian principles, were, for all practical purposes, hand in glove with Eusebius and his fellows. To the former class emphatically belong Valens and Ursacius, whose recantation in 347 is the solitary and insufficient foundation for the sweeping generalisation of Socrates (ii. 37), that they always inclined to the party in power,' and George, the presbyter of Alexandria, afterwards bishop of the Syrian Laodicea, who, although he went through a phase of conservatism,' 357-359, began and ended (Gwatkin, pp. 181-183) as an Arian, pure and simple. Among political Arians' of this period Eusebius of Cæsarea is the chief. He was not, as we have said above, an Arian theologically, yet whatever allowances may be made for his conduct during this period (D.C.B., ii. 315, 316) it tended all in one direction. But on the whole, political Arianism is more abundantly exemplified in the Homoeans of the next generation, whose activity begins about the time of the death of Constans. The Eusebians proper were political indeed ei tines kai alloi, but their essential Arianism is the one element of principle about them [36] . Above all, the employment of the term Semi-Arians' as a synonym for Eusebians, or indeed as a designation of any party at this period, is to be strongly deprecated. It is the (possibly somewhat misleading, but reasonable and accepted) term for the younger generation of convinced conservatives,' whom we find in the sixth decade of the century becoming conscious of their essential difference in principle from the Arians, whether political or pure, and feeling their way toward fusion with the Nicenes. These are a definite party, with a definite theological position, to which nothing in the earlier period exactly corresponds. The Eusebians proper were not semi-, but real Arians. Eusebius of Cæsarea and the Asiatic conservatives are the predecessors of the semi-Arians, but their position is not quite the same. Reserving them for a moment, we must complete our account of the Eusebians proper. Their nucleus consisted of the able and influential circle of Lucianists;' it has been remarked by an unprejudiced observer that, so far as we know, not one of them was eminent as a religious character (Harnack, ii. 185); their strength was in fixity of policy and in ecclesiastical intrigue; and their battery was the imperial court. Within three years of the Council, Constantine had begun to waver, not in his resolution to maintain the Nicene Creed, that he never relaxed, but in his sternness toward its known opponents. His policy was dictated by the desire for unity: he was made to feel the lurking dissatisfaction of the bishops of Asia, perhaps as his anger was softened by time he missed the ability and ready counsel of the extruded bishop of his residential city. An Arian presbyter (Eustathius' or Eutokius'?), who was a kind of chaplain to Constantia, sister of Constantine and widow of Licinius, is said to have kept the subject before the Emperor's mind after her death (in 328, see Socr. i. 25). At last, as we have seen, first Eusebius and Theognis were recalled, then Arius himself was pardoned upon his general assurance of agreement with the faith of the Synod.
The atmosphere of a court is seldom favourable to a high standard of moral or religious principle; and the place-hunters and hangers-on of the imperial courts of these days were an exceptionally worthless crew (see Gwatkin, p. 60, 100, 234). It is a tribute to the Nicene cause that their influence was steadily on the other side, and to the character of Constantine that he was able throughout the greater part of the period to resist it, at any rate as far as Athanasius was concerned. But on the whole the court was the centre whence the webs of Eusebian intrigue extended to Egypt, Antioch, and many other obscurer centres of attack.
The influences outside the Church were less directly operative in the campaign, but such as they were they served the Eusebian plans. The expulsion of a powerful bishop from the midst of a loyal flock was greatly assisted by the co-operation of a friendly mob; and Jews (pp. 94, 296), and heathen alike were willing to aid the Arian cause. The army, the civil service, education, the life of society were still largely heathen; the inevitable influx of heathen into the Church, now that the empire had become Christian, brought with it multitudes to whom Arianism was a more intelligible creed than that of Nicæa; the influence of the philosophers was a serious factor, they might well welcome Arianism as a Selbstersetzung des Christentums.' This is not inconsistent with the instances of persecution of heathenism by Arian bishops, and of savage heathen reprisals, associated with the names of George of Alexandria, Patrophilus, Mark of Arethusa, and others. (For a fuller discussion, with references, see Gwatkin, pp. 53-59.)
(3.) The Ecclesiastical Conservatives. Something has already been said in more than one connection to explain how it came to pass that the very provinces whose bishops made up the large numerical majority at Nicæa, also furnished the numbers which swelled the ranks of the Eusebians at Tyre, Antioch, and Philippopolis. The actual men were, of course, in many cases [37] changed in the course of years, but the sees were the same, and there is ample evidence that the staunch Nicene party were in a hopeless minority in Asia Minor [38] and but little stronger in Syria. The indefiniteness of this mass of episcopal opinion justifies the title Conservative.' In adopting it freely, we must not forget, what the whole foregoing account has gone to shew, that their conservatism was of the empirical or short-sighted kind, prone to acquiesce in things as they are, hard to arouse to a sense of a great crisis, reluctant to step out of its groove. If by conservatism we mean action which really tends to preserve the vital strength of an institution, then Athanasius and the leaders of Nicæa were the only conservatives. But it is not an unknown thing for vulgar conservatism to take alarm at the clear grasp of principles and facts which alone can carry the State over a great crisis, and by wrapping itself up in its prejudices to play into the hands of anarchy. Common men do not easily rise to the level of mighty issues. Where Demosthenes saw the crisis of his nation's destiny, Æschines saw materials for a personal impeachment of his rival. In the anti-Nicene reaction the want of clearness of thought coincided with the fatal readiness to magnify personal issues. Here was the opportunity of the Arian leaders: a confused succession of personal skirmishes, in which the mass of men saw no religious principle, nor any combined purpose (Soc. i. 13, nuktomachias te ouden apeiche ta ginomena) was conducted from headquarters with a fixed steady aim. But their machinations would have been fruitless had the mass of the bishops been really in sympathy with the council to which they were still by their own action committed. Arian hatred of the council would have been powerless if it had not rested on a formidable mass of conservative discontent: while the conservative discontent might have died away if the court had not supplied it with the means of action' (Gwatkin, p. 61. He explains the policy of the court by the religious sympathies of Asia Minor [39] and its political importance, pp. 90-91.) But the authority of the council remained unchallenged during the lifetime of Constantine, and no Arian raised his voice against it. One doctrinal controversy there was, of subordinate importance, but of a kind to rivet the conservatives to their attitude of sullen reaction.
It follows from what has been said of the influence of Origen in moulding the current theology of the Eastern Church, that the one theological principle which was most vividly and generally grasped was the horror of Monarchian and especially of Sabellian' teaching. Now in replying to Asterius the spokesman of early Arianism, no less a person than Marcellus, bishop of Ancyra (Angora) in Galatia, and one of the principal leaders of Nicæa, had laid himself open to this charge. It was brought with zeal and learning (in 336) in two successive works by Eusebius of Cæsarea, which, with Ath., Orat. iv. are our principal source of information as to the tenets of Marcellus (see D.C.B. ii. 341, sq., Zahn Marcellus 99 sqq., fragments collected by Rettberg Marcelliana). On the other hand he was uniformly supported by the Nicene party, and especially by Athanasius and the Roman Church. His book was examined at Sardica, and on somewhat ex parte grounds (p. 125) pronounced innocent: a personal estrangement from Athanasius shortly after (Hilar. Fragm. ii. 21, 23) on account of certain ambiguæ prædicationes eius, in quam Photinus erupit, doctrinæ,' did not amount to a formal breach of communion (he is mentioned 14 years later as an exiled Nicene bishop, pp. 256, 271), nor did the anxious questioning of Epiphanius (see Hær. 72. 4.) succeed in extracting from the then aged Athanasius more than a significant smile. He refuses to condemn him, and in arguing against opinions which appear to be his, he refrains from mentioning the name even of Photinus [40] . It may be well therefore to sketch in a few touches what we know of the system of Marcellus, in order that we may appreciate the relative right of Eusebius in attacking, and of Athanasius and the Romans in supporting him. Marcellus is a representative of the traditional theology of Asia Minor, as we find it in Ignatius and Irenæus (see above, pp. xxii.-xxiv., xxvi. fin.), and is independent of any influence of, or rather in conscious reaction against, Origenism. We cannot prove that he had studied either Ignatius or Irenæus, but we find the doctrine of anakephalaiosis with reference to Creation and the Incarnation, and the Ignatian thought of the Divine Silence, and a general unmistakeable affinity (cf. Zahn 236-244). Marcellus appeals from Origen to S. John.' He begins with the idea of Sonship, as Arius and the Nicene Council had done. Perceiving that on the one hand Arians and Origenists alike were led by the idea of Sonship as dependent on paternal will to infer the inferiority of the Son to the Father, and in the more extreme case to deny His coeternity, feeling on the other hand (with Irenæus II. xxviii. 6) our inability to find an idea to correspond with the relation implied in the eternal Sonship, he turns to the first chapter of S. John as the classic passage for the pre-existent nature of Christ. He finds that before the Incarnation the Saviour is spoken of as Logos only: accordingly all other designations, even that of Son, must be reserved for the Incarnate. Moreover (Joh. i. 1) the Word is strictly coeternal, and no name implying an act (such as gennesis) can express the relation of the Word to God. But in view of the Divine Purpose of Creation and Redemption (for the latter is involved in the former by the doctrine of anakephalaiosis) there is a process, a stirring within the divine Monad. The Word which is potentially (dunamei) eternally latent in God proceeds forth in Actuality (energei& 139;), yet without ceasing to be potentially in God as well. In this energeia drastike, to which the word gennesis may be applied, begins the great drama of the Universe which rises to the height of the Incarnation, and which, after the Economy is completed, and fallen man restored (and more than restored) to the Sonship of God which he had lost, ends in the return of the Logos to the Father, the handing over of His Kingdom by the Son, that God may be all in all.
What strikes one throughout the scheme is the intense difficulty caused to Marcellus by the unsolved problem which underlies the whole theology of the Nicene leaders, the problem of personality. The Manhood of Christ was to Marcellus per se non-personal. The seat of its personality was the indwelling Logos. But in what sense was the Logos itself personal? Here Marcellus loses his footing: in what sense can any idea of personality attach to a merely potential existence? Again, if it was only in the energeia drastike that the personality of the Word was realised, and this only reached its fulness in the Incarnation of Christ, was the transition difficult to the plain assertion that the personality of the Son, or of the Word, originated with the Incarnation? But if this were not so, and if the Person of the Word was to recede at the consummation of all things into the Unity of the Godhead, what was to become of the Nature He had assumed? That it too could merge into a potential existence within the Godhead was of course impossible; what then was its destiny? The answer of Marcellus was simple: he did not know (Zahn, 179); for Scripture taught nothing beyond 1 Cor. xv. 28.
We now perceive the subtle difference between Marcellus and Athanasius. Neither of them could formulate the idea of Personality in the Holy Trinity. But Athanasius, apparently on the basis of a more thorough intelligence of Scripture (for Marcellus, though a devout, was a partial and somewhat ignorant biblical theologian), felt what Marcellus did not, the steady inherent personal distinctness of the Father and the Son. Accordingly, while Athanasius laid down and adhered to the doctrine of eternal gennesis, Marcellus involved himself in the mystical and confused idea of a divine platusmos and sustole. Moreover, while Athanasius was clearsighted in his apprehension of the problem of the day, Marcellus was after all merely conservative: he went behind the conservatism of the Origenists,--behind even that of the West, where Tertullian had left a sharper sense of personal distinction in the Godhead,--to an archaic conservatism akin to the naive modalism' of the early Church; upon this he engrafted reflexion, in part that of the old Asiatic theology, in part his own. As the result, his faith was such as Athanasius could not but recognise as sincere; but in his attempt to give it theological expression he split upon the rocks of Personality, of Eschatology, of the divine immutability. His theology was an honest and interesting but mistaken attempt to grapple with a problem before he understood another which lay at its base. In doing so he exposed himself justly to attack; but we may with Athanasius, while acknowledging this, retain a kindly sympathy for this veteran ally of many confessors and sturdy opponent of the alliance between science and theology.
The feeling against Marcellus might have been less strong, at any rate it would have had less show of reason, but for the fact that he was the teacher of Photinus. This person became bishop of Sirmium between 330 and 340, gave great offence by his teaching, and was deposed by the Arian party ineffectually in 347, finally in 351. After his expulsion he occupied himself with writing books in Greek and in Latin, including a work against all heresies,' in which he expounded his own (Socr. ii. 30). None of his works have survived, and our information is very scanty (Zahn, Marc. 189-196 is the best account), but he seems to have solved the central difficulty of Marcellus by placing the seat of the Personality of Christ in His Human Soul. How much of the system of his master he retained is uncertain, but the result was in substance pure Unitarianism. It is instructive to observe that even Photinus was passively supported for a time by the Nicenes. He was apparently (Hil. Fr. ii. 19, sqq.) condemned at a council at Milan in 345, but not at Rome till 380. Athanasius (pp. 444-447) abstains from mentioning his name although he refutes his opinions; once only he mentions him as a heretic, and with apparent reluctance (c. Apoll. ii. 19, tou legomenou photeinou). The first [41] condemnation of him on the Nicene side in the East is by Paulinus of Antioch in 362 (p. 486). On the other hand the Eusebians eagerly caught at so irresistible a weapon. Again and again they hurled anathemas at Photinus, at first simply identifying him with Marcellus, but afterwards with full appreciation of his position. And even to the last the new Nicene party in Asia were aggrieved at the refusal of the old Nicenes at Alexandria and Rome to anathematise the master of such a heretic. Photinus was the scandal of Marcellus, Marcellus of the Council of Nicæa. __________________________________________________________________
[14] . p. 123) is very delicate: both ideas are covered by Dasein'. The two forms of Monarchianism are related exactly as the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity is to the Nestorian.
[15] . p. 608), and Cleomenes. Praxeas arrived in Rome under Victor (or earlier, Harnack, p. 610), and combined strong opposition to Montanism, with equally strong modalism in his theology. In both respects his influence told upon the heads of the Church. Montanism was expelled, Modalism tolerated, Theodotus excommunicated; Duo negotia diaboli Praxeas Romæ procuravit: prophetiam expulit et hæresin intulit: Paracletum fugavit et Patrem crucifixit'. (Tert.) Praxeas hæresin introduxit quam Victor[inus] (perhaps a confusion with Zephyrinus) corroborare curavit' (Tertullian' adv. Hær.)
[16] This point is still in debate. Against it, see Lightfoot, S. Clement of Rome (ed. 1890), for it, Döllinger Hipp. and Call., and Neumann, Der Röm. Staat u. d. Allg. Kirche (Leipz. 1890).
[17] But only at Aquileia was the rule of faith adapted by the insertion of impassibilis.
[18] See Newman's note Ar. p. 186, where the additions in brackets seriously modify his statement in the text. Also cf. infr. ch. iv. §3, and Bigg, p. 179, note 2.
[19] Cels. iii. 34, cf. Alexander's mesiteuousa phusis monogenes. But observe that the passage insisted on by Shedd, 294, heteros kat' ousian kai hupokeimenon ho hui& 232;s tou patros, does not bear the sense he extracts from it. ousia here is not essence' but hypostasis'.
[20] The formula ktisma ho hui& 231;s is ascribed to Origen by the anti-Chalcedonists of the sixth century, but is probably a consequenz-macherei' from the above; see Caspari Alte u. N. Quellen, p. 60, note. But ktisma was sometimes applied to the Son in a vague sense, on the ground of Prov. viii. 22, a text not used in this way by Origen.
[21] Compare the strong Origenist rejection of Chiliasm, the spiritualism of Origen as contrasted with the realism of Asia Minor, the Asiatic origin of Roman Monarchianism, of Montanism.
[22] The position of Eusebius of Cæsarea is at the extreme left' of the Origenist body. (A reflex of the unsolved problems of the Church of that time,' Dorner.) It is as though Dionysius instead of withdrawing and modifying his incriminated statements, had involved them in a haze of explanations and biblical phrases which left them where they were. But this is not so much Arianism as confusion. All is hollow and empty, precarious and ambiguous. With a vast apparatus of biblical expressions and the use of every possible formula, Monotheism is indeed maintained, but practically a created subordinate God is inserted between God and mankind' (Harnack, p. 648). See also Dorner, Lehre der Pers. Chr. Pt. 1, pp. 793-798. The language quoted by Ath. below, p. 459, was doubtless meant by Eusebius in an Origenist sense.
[23] The theological genesis of Paul's system is obscure. The theory of Newman that he was under strong Jewish influences is largely based upon the late and apparently quite erroneous tradition that his patroness Zenobia was a Jewess; see p. 296, note 9^a, and Gwatkin, p. 57, and note 3. Harnack regards him as the representative of archaic' East-Syrian adoptionism such as pervades the Discussion of Archelaus with Manes;' see Routh, Rell. v. especially pp. 178-184. But Paul would not have spoken of Mary as Dei Genetrix,' p. 128; I cannot see more in these Acta' than a naive adoptionism homologous to the naive modalism' of much early Christian language, but like it not representative of the entire view of those who use it; we must also note that the statements of Archelaus' are coloured by reaction against the docetism of Manes;' but Paul may well have taken up this naive adoptionism, and, by strict Aristotelian logic, developed it as the exclusive basis of his system. Whether Paul's use of the idea of the Logos betrays the faintest influence of Origen is to me, at least, extremely uncertain.
[24] aposunagogos emeinen, Alex. Alexand. in Thdt.; the objections of Gwatkin, p. 18, note, are generously meant rather than convincing: the creed of Lucian' is not usable without discrimination for Lucian's position: see discussion by Caspari A.u.N.Q. p. 42, note.
[25] . 598, ii. 183 sqq. must, I think, convince any open mind of the fact. Consult his article on Lucian in Herzog^2. viii. 767 (the best investigation), also Neander H. E. ii. 198, iv. 108; Möller K.G. i. 226, D.C.B. iii. 748; Kölling, vol. 1, pp. 27-31, who makes the mistake of taking the Lucianic creed' as his point of departure.
[26] This is ascribed to Lucian by Epiph. Ancor. 33, and there is no reason whatever to doubt it. The tenet was part of the Arian system from the first, and was attacked already by Eustathius, Fragm. apud Thdt. Dial. iii., but often overlooked, e.g. even by Athanasius in his writings before 362, but see p. 352, note 5. It came to the front in the system of Eunomius, and was much discussed in the last decade of the life of S. Athan. The system of Apollinaris was different. (See pp. 570, note 1, 575, note 1.)
[27] aparallakton eikona, which an Arian would be prepared to admit as the result of the prokope. (See below, §6, on the Creeds of 341). I cannot regard Asterius as a semi-Arian;' the only grounds for it are the above phrase and the statement (Lib. Syn.) that he attended the Council of 341 with the Conservative Dianius. But Asterius was as ready to compromise with conservatism as he had formerly been with heathenism, and his anxiety for a bishopric would carry him to even greater lengths in order to attend a council under influential patronage.
[28] The letter of Alexander to his namesake of Byzantium in Thdt. i. 4, cannot be exempted from this generalisation.
[29] They appear to have comprised the Arian appeal to Scripture of which (considering the Biblical learning of Lucian and what we hear of the training of Aetius, to say nothing of the exegetical chair held by Arius at Alxa.) their use must be pronounced meagre and superficial. In the O.T. they harped upon three texts, Deut. vi. 4 (Monotheism), Ps. xlv. 8 (Adoptionism), and Prov. viii. 22, LXX. (the Word a Creature). In the N.T. they appeal for Monotheism (in their sense) to Luke xviii. 19, John xvii. 3; The Son a Creature, Acts ii. 36, 1 Cor. i. 24, Col. i. 15, Heb. iii. 2; Adoptionism, Matt. xii. 28; prokope, Luke ii. 52; also Matt. xxvi. 41, Phil. ii. 6, sq., Heb. i. 4; The Son treptos, &c., Mark xiii. 32, John xiii. 31, xi. 34; inferior to the Father, John xiv. 48, Matt. xxvii. 46, also xi. 27 a, xxvi. 39, xxviii. 18, John xii. 27, and 1 Cor. xv. 28 (cf. pp. 407, sq.). In this respect Origen is immeasurably superior.
[30] They are regarded by Athan., a generation after they were written, as the representative statement of the case' for Arianism (pp. 459 sq.; 324 sqq., 361, 363, 368, &c., from which passages and Eus. c. Marcell. a fragmentary restoration might be attempted). For what is known of his history (not in D.C.B.) see Gwatkin, p. 72, note; for his doctrinal position see above, p. xxviii.
[31] A theology which aims at consistency must borrow a method, a philosophy, from outside the sphere of religion. The most developed system of Catholic theology, that of S. Thomas Aquinas, borrows its method from the same source as did Arius,--Aristotle.
[32] This illustrates the famous paradox of Cardinal Newman (Development, ed. 1878, pp. 142-4), that the condemnation of Arian Christology left vacant a throne in heaven which the medieval Church legitimately filled with the Blessed Virgin; that the Nicene condemnation of the Arian theology is the vindication of the medieval; that the votaries of Mary do not exceed the true faith, unless the blasphemers of her Son come up to it.' But the question here was one of worship, not of theology. The Arians worshipped Christ, whom they regarded as a created being: therefore, the Nicene fathers urge with one consent, they were idolaters. The idea of a created being capable of being worshipped was an Arian legacy to the Church, no doubt. But this very idea, to Athanasius and Hilary, marked them out as idolaters. It was reserved for later times to find a subject for an Arian predicate' (Mozley). The argument is an astonishing admission.
[33] , pp. 185 to 193, and his notes and excursus embodied in this volume, especially that appended to Epist. Euseb. p. 77; Zahn's Marcellus, pp. 11-27 (also p. 87), perhaps the best modern discussion; Harnack ii. pp. 228-230, and note 3; Loofs §§32-34; Shedd i. 362-372; and the Introduction to the Tomus and ad Afros in this volume pp. 482, 488. The use of ousia in Aristotle is tabulated by Bonitz in the fifth volume (index) to the Berlin edition: its use in Plato is less frequent and less technical, but see the brief account in Liddell and Scott.
[34] Gregory Thaumaturgus was the great Origenist influence in northern Asia Minor: the Cappadocian fathers were also influenced in the direction of the homoousion by Apollinarius: see the correspondence between Basil and the latter, Bas. Epp. 8, 9, edited by Dräseke in Ztschr. für K.G. viii. 85 sqq. Apollinarius was of course equally opposed to Arianism and to Origen: see also p. 449 sq.
[35] They were probably not yet bishops at this time, as they were young bishops at Tyre in 335; evidently they are the fairest of God's youthful flock' (!) alluded to in Eus. V. C. iv. 43.
[36] At the same time Arius himself and all his fellow Lucianists (unlike the obscure Secundus and Theonas, and the later generation of Eunomians) are open to the charge of subserviency at a pinch.
[37] Alexander of Thessalonica had been at Nicæa, Dianius of Cæs. Capp. had not. The two are typical of the better sort of conservatives.
[38] For Asia besides Marcellus we have only Diodorus of Tenedos, not at Nicæa, but expelled soon after 330, p. 271; signs at Sardica, p. 147, banished again p. 276, not in D.C.B.; for Syria the names p. 271, cf. p. 256.
[39] Always an important factor in the stability of the Byzantine throne, see, on Justinian, D.C.B. iii. 545a, sub fin. Newman, Arians, Appendix v., brings no conclusive proof of strong Nicene feeling among the masses of the laity in this region. But the people' in Galatia, according to Basil, remained devoted to Marcellus.
[40] At the same time he adopts a certain reserve in speaking of Marcellus, and his name is absent from the roll of the orthodox, p. 227.
[41] But he is condemned by name in the alleged Coptic Acts of the Council of 362; moreover Eustathius appears to have written against him, see Cowper, Syr. Misc. 60. __________________________________________________________________
§4. Early years of his Episcopate. The Anti-Nicene reaction, 328-335.
Athanasius was elected bishop by general consent. Alexander, as we have seen, had practically nominated him, and a large body of popular opinion clamoured for his election, as "the good, the pious, a Christian, one of the ascetics, a genuine bishop." The actual election appears (p. 103) to have rested with the bishops of Egypt and Libya, who testify ten years later (ib.) that the majority [42] of their body elected him.
The see to which he succeeded was the second in Christendom; it had long enjoyed direct jurisdiction over the bishops of all Egypt and Libya (p. 178, Socr. i. 9), the bishops of Alexandria enjoyed the position and power of secular potentates, although in a less degree than those of Rome, or of Alexandria itself in later times (Socr. vii. 11, cf. 7). The bishop had command of large funds, which, however, were fully claimed for church purposes and alms (see p. 105). In particular, the pope' of Alexandria had practically in his hands the appointment to the sees in his province: accordingly, as years go on, we find Arianism disappear entirely from the Egyptian episcopate. The bishop of Alexandria, like many other influential bishops in antiquity, was commonly spoken of as Papa or Pope; he also was known as the 'Archiepiskopos, as we learn from a contemporary inscription (see p. 564, note 2).
The earliest biographer of Athanasius (see Introduction to Hist. Aceph. p. 495, 496, below) divides the episcopate of Athanasius into periods of quiet' and of exile, marking the periods of each according to what appears to be the reckoning officially preserved in the episcopal archives. His first period of quiet' lasts from June 8, 328, to July 11, 335 (departure for Tyre), a period of seven years, one month and three days; it is thus the third longest period of undisturbed occupancy of his see, the next being the last from his final restoration under Valens till his death (seven years and three months), and the longest of all being the golden decade (346-356, really nine years and a quarter) preceding the Third Exile.
Of the internal events of this first septennium of quiet we know little that is definite. At the end of it, however, we find him supported by the solid body of the Egyptian episcopate: and at the beginning one of his first steps (autumn of 329) was to make a visitation of the province to strengthen the churches of God' (Vit. Pach., cf. also Epiph. Hær. 68. 6). We learn from the life of Pachomius (on which see below, p. 189), that he penetrated as far as Syene on the Ethiopian frontier, and, as he passed Tabenne, was welcomed by Pachomius and his monks with great rejoicings. At the request of Saprion, bishop of Tentyra, in whose diocese the island was, he appears to have ordained Pachomius to the presbyterate, thus constituting his community a self-contained body (Acta SS. Mai. iii. 30, Appx.). The supposed consecration of Frumentius at this time must be reserved, in accordance with preponderating evidence, for §7.
Meanwhile, the anti-Nicene reaction was being skilfully fostered by the strategy of Eusebius of Nicomedia. Within a year of the election of Athanasius we find him restored to imperial favour, and at once the assault upon the Nicene strongholds begins. The controversy between Marcellus and Eusebius of Cæsarea (supra, p. xxxv.), appears to have begun later, but the latter was already, in conjunction with his friend Paulinus of Tyre and with Patrophilus, at theological war with Eustathius of Antioch. A synod of Arian and reactionary bishops assembled at Antioch, and deposed the latter on the two charges (equally de rigueur in such cases) of Sabellianism and immorality. Backed by a complaint (possibly founded on fact) that he had indiscreetly repeated a current tale (p. 271, n. 2) concerning Helena, the Emperor's mother, the sentence of the council had the full support of the civil arm, and Eustathius lost his see for ever. Although he lived till about 358, no council ventured to restore' him (discussed by Gwatkin, pp. 73, 74, note), but the Christian public of Antioch violently resented his extrusion, and a compact body of the Church-people steadily refused to recognise any other bishop during, and even after, his lifetime (infr. p. 481). Asclepas of Gaza was next disposed of, then Eutropius of Hadrianople, and many others (names, p. 271). Meanwhile everything was done to foment disturbance in Egypt. The Meletians had been stirring ever since the death of Alexander, and Eusebius was not slow to use such an opportune lever. The object in view was two-fold, the restoration of Arius to communion in Alexandria, without which the moral triumph of the reaction would be unachieved, and the extrusion of Athanasius. Accordingly a fusion took place [43] between the Arians of Egypt and the Meletians, now under the leadership of John Arcaph,' whom Meletius on his death-bed had consecrated as his successor against the terms of the Nicene settlement. At any rate, the Meletians were attached to the cause by Eusebius by means of large promises. At the same time (330?) Eusebius, having obtained the recall of Arius from exile, wrote to Athanasius requesting him to admit Arius and his friends (Euzoius, Pistus, &c.) to communion; the bearer of the letter conveyed the assurance of dire consequences in the event of his non-compliance (p. 131). Athanasius refused to admit persons convicted of heresy at the Ecumenical Council. This brought a letter from the Emperor himself, threatening deposition by an imperial mandate unless he would freely admit all who should desire it;'--a somewhat sweeping demand. Athanasius replied firmly and, it would seem, with effect, that the Christ-opposing heresy had no fellowship with the Catholic Church.' Thereupon Eusebius played what proved to be the first card of a long suit. A deputation of three Meletian bishops arrived at the Palace with a complaint. Athanasius had, they said, levied a precept (kanon) upon Egypt for Church expenses: they had been among the first victims of the exaction. Luckily, two Presbyters of Alexandria were at court, and were able to disprove the charge, which accordingly drew a stern rebuke upon its authors. Constantine wrote to Athanasius summoning him to an audience, probably with the intention of satisfying himself as to other miscellaneous accusations which were busily ventilated at this date, e.g., that he was too young (cf. p. 133) when elected bishop, that he had governed with arrogance and violence, that he used magic (this charge was again made 30 years later, Ammian. xv. 7), and subsidised treasonable persons. Athanasius accordingly started for court, as it would seem, late in 330 (see Letter 3, p. 512 sq.). His visit was successful, but matters went slowly; Athanasius himself had an illness, which lasted a long time, and upon his recovery the winter storms made communication impossible. Accordingly, his Easter letter for 332 (Letter 4) was sent unusually late--apparently in the first navigable weather of that year--and Athanasius reached home, after more than a year's absence [44] , when Lent was already half over.
The principal matters investigated by Constantine during the visit of Athanasius were certain charges made by the three Meletian bishops, whom Eusebius had detained for the purpose; one of these, the story of Macarius and the broken chalice, will be given at length presently. All alike were treated as frivolous, and Athanasius carried home with him a commendatory letter from Augustus himself. Defeated for the moment, the puppets of Eusebius matured their accusations, and in a year's time two highly damaging stories were ripe for an ecclesiastical investigation.
(a) The case of Ischyras. This person had been ordained presbyter by Colluthus, and his ordination had been, as we have seen (§2), pronounced null and void by the Alexandrian Council of 324. In spite of this he had persisted in carrying on his ministrations at the village where he lived (Irene Secontaruri, possibly the hamlet Irene' belonged to the township of S., there was a presbyter for the township, pp. 133, 145, but none at Irene, p. 106). His place of worship was a cottage inhabited only by an orphan child; of the few inhabitants of the place, only seven, and those his own relations, would attend his services. During a visitation of his diocese, Athanasius, had heard of this from the presbyter of the township, and had sent Macarius, one of the clergy who were attending him on his tour (cf. pp. 109, 139), to summon Ischyras for explanations. Macarius found the poor man ill in bed and unable to come, but urged his father to dissuade him from his irregular proceedings. But instead of desisting, Ischyras joined the Meletians. His first version of the matter appears to have been that Macarius had used violence, and broken his chalice. The Meletians communicate this to Eusebius, who eggs them on to get up the case. The story gradually improves. Ischyras, it now appeared, had been actually celebrating the Eucharist; Macarius had burst in upon him, and not only broken the chalice but upset the Holy Table. In this form the tale had been carried to Constantine when Athanasius was at Nicomedia. The relations of Ischyras, however, prevailed upon him to recall his statements, and he presented the Bishop with a written statement that the whole story was false, and had been extorted from him by violence. Ischyras was forgiven, but placed under censure, which probably led to his eventually renewing the charge with increased bitterness. Athanasius now was accused of personally breaking the chalice, &c. In the letter of the council of Philippopolis the cottage of Ischyras becomes a basilica' which Athanasius had caused to be thrown down.
(b) The case of Arsenius. Arsenius was Meletian bishop of Hypsele (not in the Meletian catalogue of 327). By a large bribe, as it is stated, he was induced by John Arcaph to go into hiding among the Meletian monks of the Thebaid; rumours were quietly set in motion that Athanasius had had him murdered, and had procured one of his hands for magical purposes. A hand was circulated purporting to be the very hand in question. A report of the case, including the last version of the Ischyras scandal, was sent to Constantine, who, startled by the new accusation, sent orders to his half-brother, Dalmatius, a high official at Antioch, to enquire into the case. He appears to have suggested a council at Cæsarea under the presidency of Eusebius, which was to meet at some time in the year 334 (perusin, p. 141, cf. note 2 there, also Gwatkin, p. 84 note; the 30 months' of Soz. ii. 25 is an exaggeration). Athanasius, however, obstinately declined a trial before a judge whom he regarded as biassed; his refusal bitterly offended the aged historian. Accordingly the venue was fixed for Tyre in the succeeding year; a Count Dionysius was to represent the Emperor, and see that all was conducted fairly, and Athanasius was stringently (p. 137) summoned to attend. Meanwhile a trusted deacon was on the tracks of the missing man. Arsenius was traced to a monastery' of Meletian brethren in the nome of Antæopolis in Upper Egypt. Pinnes, the presbyter of the community, got wind of the discovery, and smuggled Arsenius away down the Nile; presently he was spirited away to Tyre. The deacon, however, very astutely made a sudden descent upon the monastery in force, seized Pinnes, carried him to Alexandria, brought him before the Duke,' confronted him with the monk who had escorted Arsenius away, and forced them to confess to the whole plot. As soon as he was able to do so, Pinnes wrote to John Arcaph, warning him of the exposure, and suggesting that the charge had better be dropped (p. 135; the letter is an amusingly naive exhibition of human rascality). Meanwhile (Socr. i. 29) Arsenius was heard of at an inn in Tyre by the servant of a magistrate; the latter had him arrested, and informed Athanasius [45] . Arsenius stoutly denied his identity, but was recognised by the bishop of Tyre, and at last confessed. The Emperor was informed and wrote to Athanasius (p. 135), expressing his indignation at the plot, as also did Alexander, bishop of Thessalonica. Arsenius made his peace with Athanasius, and in due time succeeded (according to the Nicene rule) to the sole episcopate of Hypsele (p. 548). John Arcaph even admitted his guilt and renounced his schisms and was invited to Court (p. 136); but his submission was not permanent.
According to the Apology of Athanasius, all this took place some time before the council of Tyre; we cannot fix the date, except that it must have come after the Easter of 332 (see above). It appears most natural, from the language of Apol. Ar. 71, to fix the exposure of Arsenius not very long before the summoning of the council of Tyre, but long enough to allow for the renewed intrigues which led to its being convened. But this pushes us back behind the intended council of Cæsarea in 334; we seem therefore compelled to keep Arsenius waiting at Tyre from about 333 to the summer of 335.
It must be remembered that the Council of Tyre was merely a parergon to the great Dedication Meeting at Jerusalem, which was to celebrate the Tricennalia of Constantine's reign by consecrating his grand church on Mount Calvary. On their way to Jerusalem the bishops were to despatch at Tyre their business of quieting the Egyptian troubles [46] (Eus. V. C. iv. 41). To Tyre accordingly Athanasius repaired. He left Alexandria on July 11, 335, and was absent, as it proved (according to the reckoning of the Hist. Aceph., below, p. 496), two years, four months and eleven days. __________________________________________________________________
[42] Eager opposition, however, was not lacking. The accounts are confused, but the statement of the bishops leaves room for a strong minority of malcontents, who may have elected Theonas' (was he the exiled Arian bishop of Marmarica? the electors of Theonas' in Epiph. Hær. 68 are Meletians, but there is no Theonas in the Meletian catalogue of 327; the Arians and Meletians very likely combined; the latter properly had no votes, but they were not likely to regard this; see Gwatkin, p. 66, note, Church Quarterly Review. xvi. p. 393). The protests of the opposition were apparently disregarded and Athanasius consecrated before the other side considered the question as closed, (The statement of Epiph. Hær. 69, that the Arians chose one Achillas, is unsupported.) Athanasius was probably only just thirty years old, and his opponents did not fail to question whether he were not under the canonical age.
[43] Soz. ii. 21, 22: the account is not very clear; probably there was a gradual approximation, the first step being the Meletian support of the Arian Theonas against Athanasius in 328, if the view suggested above is correct.
[44] Fest. Ind. iii. The Index is of course right in giving 330-331 as the year of his departure for Nicomedia, but makes a slip in assigning his absence as the cause of delay in the despatch of the Letter for that year instead of for the following one. See p. 512 note 1.
[45] Who perhaps visited Tyre himself at this time, according to an allusion in Hist. Aceph. xii., see Sievers, Einl. p. 131.
[46] The conduct of Constantine will appear fairly consistent if we suppose that after ordering the investigation at Antioch, supr. (332?) he received proofs (333) of the falsehood of the Arsenius story, but that, finding that the complaints were constantly renewed, and that Ath. refused to meet his accusers at Cæsarea, he yielded to the suggestion (Eus. Nic.?) that the assembly of so many bishops at Jerusalem might be a valuable opportunity for finally dealing with so troublesome a matter. He desired peace, and had not lost his faith in councils. Hefele follows Socrates i. 29, in his error as to the date of the discovery of Arsenius (E. Tr. ii. 21). __________________________________________________________________
§5. The Council of Tyre and First Exile of Athanasius, 335-337.
Many of the bishops who were making their way to the great festival met at Tyre. The Arian element was very strong. Eusebius of Nicomedia, Narcissus, Maris, Theognis, Patrophilus, George, now bishop of Laodicea, are all familiar names. Ursacius and Valens, young [47] both in years and in mind' make their first entrance on the stage of ecclesiastical intrigue; Eusebius of Cæsarea headed a large body of conservative' malcontents: in the total number of perhaps 150, the friends of Athanasius were outnumbered by nearly two to one. (See Gwatkin's note, p. 85, Hefele ii. 17, Eng Tra.) Eusebius of Cæsarea took the chair (yet see D.C.B. ii. 316^b). The proceedings of the Council were heated and disorderly; promiscuous accusations were flung from side to side; the president himself was charged by an excited Egyptian Confessor with having sacrificed to idols (p. 104, n. 2), while against Athanasius every possible charge was raked up. The principal one was that of harshness and violence. Callinicus, bishop of Pelusium, according to a later story [48] , had taken up the cause of Ischyras, and been deposed by Athanasius in consequence. A certain Mark had been appointed to supersede him, and he had been subjected to military force. Certain Meletian bishops who had refused to communicate with Athanasius on account of his irregular election, had been beaten and imprisoned. A document from Alexandria testified that the Churches were emptied on account of the strong popular feeling against these proceedings. The number of witnesses, and the evident readiness of the majority of bishops to believe the worst against him, inspired Athanasius with profound misgivings as to his chance of obtaining justice. He had in vain objected to certain bishops as biassed judges; when it was decided to investigate the case of Ischyras on the spot, the commission of six was chosen from among the very persons challenged (p. 138). Equally unsuccessful was the protest of the Egyptian bishops against the credit of the Meletian witnesses (p. 140). But on one point the accusers walked into a trap. The hand of Arsenius' was produced, and naturally made a deep impression (Thdt. H. E. i. 30). But Athanasius was ready. Did you know Arsenius personally?' Yes' is the eager reply from many sides. Promptly Arsenius is ushered in alive, wrapped up in a cloak. The Synod expected an explanation of the way he had lost his hand. Athanasius turned up his cloak and shewed that one hand at least was there. There was a moment of suspense, artfully managed by Athanasius. Then the other hand was exposed, and the accusers were requested to point out whence the third had been cut off (Socr. i. 29). This was too much for John Arcaph, who precipitately fled (so Socr., he seems to have gone to Egypt with the couriers mentioned below, cf. p. 142). But the Eusebians were made of sterner stuff: the whole affair was a piece of magic; or there had been an attempt to murder Arsenius, who had hid himself from fear. At any rate Athanasius must not be allowed to clear himself so easily. Accordingly, in order partly to gain time and partly to get up a more satisfactory case, they prevailed on Count Dionysius, in the face of strong remonstrances from Athanasius (p. 138), to despatch a commission of enquiry to the Mareotis in order to ascertain the real facts about Ischyras. The nature of the commission may be inferred, firstly, from its composition, four strong Arians and two (Theodore of Heraclea, and Macedonius of Mopsuestia) reactionaries; secondly, from the fact that they took Ischyras with them, but left Macarius behind in custody; thirdly, from the fact that couriers were sent to Egypt with four days' start, and with an urgent message to the Meletians to collect at once in as large numbers as possible at Irene, so as to impress the commissioners with the importance of the Meletian community at that place. The Egyptian bishops present at Tyre handed in strongly-worded protests to the Council, and to Count Dionysius, who received also a weighty remonstrance from the respected Alexander, Bishop of Thessalonica. This drew forth from him an energetic protest to the Eusebians (p. 142 sq.) against the composition of the commission. His protest was not, however, enforced in any practical way, and the Egyptians thereupon appealed to the Emperor (ib.). Athanasius himself escaped in an open boat with four of his bishops, and found his way to Constantinople, where he arrived on October 30. The Emperor was out riding when he was accosted by one of a group of pedestrians. He could scarcely credit his eyes and the assurance of his attendants that the stranger was none other than the culprit of Tyre. Much annoyed at his appearance, he refused all communication; but the persistency of Athanasius and the reasonableness of his demand prevailed. The Emperor wrote to Jerusalem to summon to his presence all who had been at the Council of Tyre (pp. 105, 145).
Meanwhile the Mareotic Commission had proceeded with its task. Their report was kept secret, but eventually sent to Julius of Rome, who handed it over to Athanasius in 339 (p. 143). Their enquiry was carried on with the aid of Philagrius the prefect, a strong Arian sympathiser, whose guard pricked the witnesses if they failed to respond to the hints of the commissioners and the threats of the prefect himself. The clergy of Alexandria and the Mareotis were excluded from the court, and catechumens, Jews and heathen, none of whom could properly have been present on the occasion, were examined as to the interruption of the eucharistic service by Macarius (p. 119). Even with these precautions the evidence was not all that could be wished. To begin with, it had all taken place on an ordinary week-day, when there would be no Communion (pp. 115, 125, 143); secondly, when Macarius came in Ischyras was in bed; thirdly, certain witnesses whom Athanasius had been accused of secreting came forward in evidence of the contrary (p. 107). The prefect consoled himself by letting loose the violence of the heathen mob (p. 108) against the virgins' of the Church. The catholic party were helpless; all they could do was to protest in writing to the commission, the council, and the prefect (pp. 138-140. The latter protest is dated 10th of Thoth, i.e. Sep. 8, 335, Diocletian leap-year).
The commission returned to Tyre, where the council passed a resolution (Soz. ii. 25) deposing Athanasius. They then proceeded to Jerusalem for the Dedication [49] of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Here Arius with certain others (probably including Euzoius) was received to communion on the strength of the confession of faith he had presented to Constantine a few years before, and the assembled bishops drew up a synodal letter announcing the fact to Egypt and the Church at large (pp. 144, 460). At this juncture the summons from Constantine arrived. The terms of it shewed that the Emperor was not disposed to hear more of the broken chalice or the murdered Arsenius: but the Eusebians were not at a loss. They advised the bishops to go quietly to their homes, while five of the inner circle, accompanied by Eusebius of Cæsarea, who had a panegyric to deliver in the imperial presence, responded to the summons of royalty. They made short work of Athanasius. The whole farrago of charges examined at Tyre was thrown aside. He had threatened to starve the paneudaimon patris, the chosen capital of Constantine, by stopping the grain ships which regularly left Alexandria every autumn. It was in vain for Athanasius to protest that he had neither the means nor the power to do anything of the kind. You are a rich man,' replied Eusebius of Nicomedia, and can do whatever you like.' The Emperor was touched in a sore place [50] . He promptly ordered the banishment of Athanasius to Treveri, whither he started, as it would seem, on Feb. 5, 336 (pp. 105, 146, 503, note 11). The friends of Athanasius professed to regard the banishment as an act of imperial clemency, in view of what might have been treated as a capital matter, involving as it did the charge of treason (p. 105); and Constantine II., immediately after his father's death, stated (pp. 146, 272, 288) in a letter (written before he became Augustus in Sept. 337) that he had been sent to Treveri merely to keep him out of danger, and that Constantine had been prevented only by death from carrying out his intention of restoring him. These charitable constructions need not be rudely ignored; but in all probability the anxiety to be rid of a cause of disturbance was at least one motive with the peace-loving Emperor. At any rate the Eusebians could not obtain the imperial sanction to their proposed election of a successor (Pistus?) to Athanasius. On his return after the death of Constantine he found his see waiting for him unoccupied (Apol. c. Ar. 29, p. 115).
The close of the Tricennalia was made the occasion of a council at Constantinople (winter 335-336). Marcellus was deposed for heresy and Basil nominated to the see of Ancyra, Eusebius of Cæsarea undertaking to refute the new Samosatene.' Other minor depositions were apparently carried out at the same time, and several Western bishops, including Protogenes of Sardica, had reason later on to repent of their signatures to the proceedings (Hil. Fragm. iii.).
Death of Arius. From Jerusalem Arius had gone to Alexandria, but (Soz. ii. 29) had not succeeded in obtaining admission to the Communion of the Church there. Accordingly he repaired to the capital about the time of the Council just mentioned. The Eusebians resolved that here at any rate he should not be repelled. Arius appeared before the Emperor and satisfied him by a sworn profession of orthodoxy, and a day was fixed for his reception to communion. The story of the distress caused to the aged bishop Alexander is well known. He was heard to pray in the church that either Arius or himself might be taken away before such an outrage to the faith should be permitted. As a matter of fact Arius died suddenly the day before his intended reception. His friends ascribed his death to magic, those of Alexander to the judgment of God, the public generally to the effect of excitement on a diseased heart (Soz. l. c.). Athanasius, while taking the second view, describes the occurrence with becoming sobriety and reserve (pp. 233, 565). Alexander himself died very soon after, and Paul was elected in his place (D.C.B. art. Macedonius (2)), but was soon banished on some unknown charge, whereupon Eusebius of Nicomedia was translated to the capital see (between 336 and 340; date uncertain. Cf. D.C.B. ii. 367a).
Of the sojourn of Athanasius at Treveri, the noble home of the Emperors on the banks of the Mosel, we know few details, but his presence there appeals to the historic imagination. (See D.C.B. i. 186a.) He cannot have been there much above a year. He kept the Easter festival, probably of 336, certainly of 337, in the still unfinished Church (p. 244: the present Cathedral is said to occupy the site of what was then an Imperial palace: but the main palace is apparently represented by the Roman baths).' He was not suffered to want (p. 146): he had certain Egyptian brethren with him; and found a sympathetic friend in the good Bishop Maximinus (cf. p. 239). The tenth festal letter, §1, preserves a short extract from a letter written from Trier to his clergy.
Constantine died at Nicomedia, having previously received baptism from the hands of Eusebius, on Whit-Sunday, May 22, 337. None of his sons were present, and the will is said to have been entrusted to the Arian chaplain mentioned above (p. xxxiv). Couriers carried the news to the three Cæsars, and at a very moderate [51] rate of reckoning, it may have been known at Trier by about June 4. Constantine, as the eldest son, probably expected more from his father's will than he actually obtained. At any rate, on June 17 he wrote a letter to the people and clergy of Alexandria, announcing the restoration of their bishop in pursuance of an intention of his father's, which only death had cut short. Constantius meanwhile hastened (from the East, probably Antioch) to Constantinople (D.C.B. i. 651): he too had expectations, for he was his father's favourite. The brothers met at Sirmium, and agreed upon a division of the Empire, Constantius taking the East, Constans Italy and Illyricum, and Constantine the Gauls and Africa. On Sep. 9 they formally assumed the title Augustus [52] . Athanasius had apparently accompanied Constantine to Sirmium, and on his way eastward met Constantius at Viminacium (p. 240), his first interview with his future persecutor. He presently reached Constantinople (p. 272), and on his way southward, at Cæsarea in Cappadocia, again met Constantius, who was hurrying to the Persian frontier. On Nov. 23 he reached Alexandria amid great rejoicings (pp. 104, 503, Fest. Ind. x.), the clergy especially esteeming that the happiest day of their lives.' But the happiness was marred by tumults (Soz. ii. 2, 5, Hil. Fragm. iii. 8, Fest. Ind. xi., next year again'), which were, however, checked by the civil power, the prefect Theodorus being, apparently, favourable to Athanasius (pp. 102, 527, note 2). The festal letter for 338 would seem to have been finished at Alexandria, but the point is not absolutely clear. Here begins his second period of quiet,' of one year, four months and twenty-four days, i.e., from Athyr 27 (Nov. 23), 337, to Pharmuthi 21 (April 16), 339. __________________________________________________________________
[47] p. 107: Euseb. V. C. iv. 43, calls them the fairest of God's youthful flock.' The Council of Sardica in 343 describes them as ungodly and foolish youths,' Hil. Frag. ii., cf. pp. 120, 122.
[48] Soz. ii. 25. But Callinicus was a Meletian all along: pp. 132, 137, 517.
[49] The Greek Church still commemorates this Festival on Sep. 13; the Chron. Pasch. gives Sep. 17 for the Dedication. But if the Mareotic Commissioners returned to Tyre, as they certainly did (Soz. l.c.), these dates are untrustworthy.
[50] The philosopher Sopater had been put to death on a similar charge a few years before, D.C.B. i. 631.
[51] The courier Palladius, who was considered a marvel, could carry a message from Nisibis to CP. on horseback in three days, about 250 miles a day, Socr. vii. 19. At 100 miles a day, i.e. eight miles an hour for 12½ hours out of the 24, the 1,300 miles from Nicomedia to Treveri would be easily covered by a horseman in the time specified; see Gibbon quoted p. 115, note 1, and for other examples, Gwatkin, p. 137.
[52] This date is certain (Gwatk., 108, note), but the meeting at Sirmium may possibly fall in the following summer. __________________________________________________________________
§6. Renewal of Troubles. Second Exile. Pistus and Gregory, Culmination of Eusebian Intrigue. Rome and Sardica. (337-346).
(1). The stay of Athanasius at Alexandria was brief and troubled. The city was still disturbed by Arian malcontents, who had the sympathy of Jews and Pagans, and it was reported that the monks, and especially the famous hermit Antony, were on their side. This impression, however, was dissipated by the appearance of the great Ascetic himself, who, at the urgent request of the orthodox (pp. 214 sq., 503), consented to shew himself for two days in the uncongenial atmosphere of the city. The mystery and marvellous reputation, which even then surrounded this much-talked-of character, attracted Christians and heathen alike, in large numbers, to hear and see him, and, if possible, to derive some physical benefit from his touch. He denounced Arianism as the worst of heresies, and was solemnly escorted out of town by the bishop in person. As an annalist toward the close of the century tells us, Antony, the great leader, came to Alexandria, and though he remained there only two days, shewed himself wonderful in many things, and healed many. He departed on the third of Messori' (i.e., July 27, 338).
Meanwhile the Eusebians were busy. In the new Emperor Constantius, the Nicomedian found a willing patron: probably his translation to the See of Constantinople falls at this time. It was represented to the Emperor that the restoration of the exiled Bishops in 337, and especially that of Athanasius, was against all ecclesiastical order. Men deposed by a Synod of the Church had presumed to return to their sees under the sanction of the secular authority. This was technically true, but the proceedings at Tyre were regarded by Athan. as depriving that Synod of any title to ecclesiastical authority (pp. 104, 271). It is impossible to accept au pied de la lettre the protests on either side against state interference with the Church: both parties were willing to use it on their own side, and to protest against its use by their opponents. Constantine had summoned [53] the Council of Nicæa, had (Soz. i. 17) fixed the order of its proceedings, and had enforced its decisions by civil penalties. The indignant rhetoric of Hist. Ar. 52 (p. 289) might mutatis nominibus have been word for word the remonstrance of a Secundus or Theonas against the great Ecumenical Synod of Christendom. At Tyre, Jerusalem, and CP., the Eusebians had their turn, and again at Antioch, 338-341. The Council of Sardica relied on the protection of Constans, that of Philippopolis on Constantius. The reign of the latter was the period of Arian triumph; that of Theodosius secured authority to the Catholics. The only consistent opponents of civil intervention in Church affairs were the Donatists in the West and the Eunomians or later Arians in the East (with the obscure exception of Secundus and Theonas, the original Arians cannot claim the compliment paid by Fialon, p. 115, to their independence). To the Donatists is due the classical protest against Erastianism, Quid Imperatori cum ecclesia'(D.C.B. i. 652). Believing, as the present writer does, that the Donatist protest expresses a true principle, and that the subjection of religion to the State is equally mischievous with that of the State to the Church, it is impossible not to regret these consequences of the conversion of Constantine. But allowance must be made for the sanguine expectations with which the astonishing novelty of a Christian Emperor filled men's minds. It was only as men came to realise that the civil sword might be drawn in support of heresy that they began to reflect on the impropriety of allowing to even a Christian Emperor a voice in Church councils. Athanasius was the first to grasp this clearly. The voice of protest [54] sounds in the letter of the Egyptian Synod of 338-9; throughout his exiles he steadily regarded himself, and was regarded by his flock, as the sole rightful Bishop of Alexandria, and continued to issue his Easter Letters from first to last. At the same time, it must be admitted that if he was right in returning to Alexandria in 337 without restoration by a Synod, he could not logically object to the return of Eusebius and Theognis (p. 104), who had not been deposed at Nicæa, but banished by the Emperor. The technical rights of Chrestus and Amphion (l. c.) were no better than those of Gregory or George. The spiritual elevation of Athanasius over the head and shoulders of his opponents is plain to ourselves; we see clearly the moral contrast between the councils of Rome and Antioch (340-41), of Sardica and Philippopolis (343), of Alexandria (362) and Seleucia (359). But to men like the Eastern conservatives' the technical point of view necessarily presented itself with great force, and in judging of their conduct we must not assume that it was either meaningless diabolism' or deliberate sympathy with Arianism that led so many bishops of good character to see in Athanasius and the other exiles contumacious offenders against Church order. (I am quite unable to accept M. Fialon's sweeping verdict upon the majority of Oriental bishops as weak, vicious, more devoted to their own interests than to the Church,' &c., p. 116. He takes as literally exact the somewhat turgid rhetorical complaints of Greg. Naz.)
But the Eusebians were not limited to technical complaints. They had stirring accounts to give of the disorders which the return of Athanasius had excited, of the ruthless severity with which they had been put down by the prefect, who was, it was probably added, a mere tool in the hands of the bishop. Accordingly in the course of 338 the subservient Theodorus was recalled, and Philagrius the Cappadocian, who had governed with immense [55] popularity in 335-337 (Fest. Ind. and p. 107 sq.), was sent to fill the office a second time. This was regarded at Alexandria as an Arian triumph (see p. 527, note 2). His arrival did not tend to allay the disorders. Old charges against Athanasius were raked up, and a new one added, namely that of embezzlement of the corn appropriated to the support of widows by the imperial bounty. The Emperor appears to have sent a letter of complaint to Athanasius (p. 273), but to have paid little attention to his defence. The Eusebians now ventured to send a bishop of their own to Alexandria in the person of Pistus, one of the original Arian presbyters, who was consecrated by the implacable Secundus. The date of this proceeding is obscure, probably it was conducted in an irregular manner, so as to render it possible to ignore it altogether if, as proved to be the case, a stronger candidate should be necessary. First, however, it was necessary to try the temper of the West. A deputation consisting of a presbyter Macarius and two deacons, Martyrius and Hesychius, was sent to Julius, bishop of Rome, to lay before him the enormities of Athanasius, Marcellus, Paul, Asclepas and the rest, and to urge the superior title of Pistus to the recognition of the Church. But upon hearing of this Athanasius summoned the Egyptian Episcopate together (winter 338-339), and composed a circular letter (pp. 101-110) dealing fully with the charges against him, especially with regard to the manner of his election and the irregularity of his return a year before. Two presbyters carried the letter in haste to Rome, and enlightened the Church there as to the antecedents of Pistus. Next day it was announced that Macarius, in spite of a bodily ailment,' had decamped in the night. The deacons however remained, and requested Julius to call a council, undertaking that if Athanasius and the Eusebians were confronted all the charges brought by the latter should be made good. This proposal seemed unobjectionable, and Julius wrote inviting all parties to a council at Rome, or some other place to be agreed upon (p. 272); his messengers to the Eusebians were the Roman presbyters Elpidius and Philoxenus [56] , (p. 111). The council was fixed for the following summer (so it would seem); but no reply was received from the Eusebians, who kept the presbyters in the East until the following January, when they at length started for Rome bearing a querulous and somewhat shifty reply (answered by Julius, p. 111, sqq.). But before the invitation had reached the Eusebians they had assembled at Antioch, where Constantius was in residence for the winter (laws dated Dec. 27; the court thereon January ? p. 92), repeated the deposition of Athanasius, and appointed Gregory, a Cappadocian, to succeed him. It had become clear that Pistus was a bad candidate; perhaps no formal synod could be induced to commit themselves to a man excommunicated at Nicæa and consecrated by Secundus. At any rate they tried to find an unexceptionable nominee. But their first, Eusebius, afterwards bishop of Emesa, refused the post, and so they came to Gregory [57] , a former student of Alexandria, and under personal obligations to its bishop (Greg. Naz. Or. xxi. 15).
All was now ready for the blow at Athanasius. It fell in Lent (pp. 94, 503). His position since the arrival of Philagrius had been one of unrest. In this year again,' says our annalist, there were many tumults. On the xxii Phamenoth (i.e. Sunday, Mar. 18, 339) he was sought after by his persecutors in the night. On the next morning he fled from the Church of Theonas after he had baptized many. Then on the fourth day (Mar. 22) Gregory the Cappadocian entered the city as bishop' (Fest. Ind. xi.). But Athanasius (p. 95), remained quietly in the town for about four weeks more [58] . He drew up for circulation throughout the tribes' (cf. Judges xix. 29) a memorandum and appeal, describing the intrusion of Gregory and the gross outrages which had accompanied it. This letter was written on or just after Easter Day (April 15), and immediately after this he escaped from Alexandria and made his way to Rome. The data as to the duration of the periods of quiet' and exile fix the date of his departure for Easter Monday, April 16. This absence from Alexandria was his longest, lasting ninety months and three days,' i.e. from Pharmuthi 21 (April 16) 339 to Paophi 24 (October 21), 346.
(2.) The Second Exile of Athanasius falls into two sections, the first of four years (p. 239), to the council of Sardica (339-343), the second of three years, to his return in Oct. 346. The odd six months cannot be distributed with certainty unless we can arrive at a more exact result than at present appears attainable for the month and duration of the Sardican synod.
In May, 339, Athanasius, accompanied by a few of his clergy (story of the detachment' of his monk Ammonius in Socr. iv. 23, sub fin.), arrived at Rome. He was within three months followed by Marcellus, Paul of CP., Asclepas, and other exiles who had been restored at the end of 337 but had once more been ejected. Soon after, Carpones, an original Arian of Alexandria, appeared as envoy of Gregory. He confirmed all that had been alleged against Pistus, but failed to convince Julius that his own bishop was anything but an Arian. Meanwhile time wore on, and no reply came from the Eusebians. Athanasius gave himself up to enforced leisure and to the services of the Church. Instead of his usual Easter letter for the following spring, he sent a few lines to the clergy of Alexandria and a letter to his right-hand man, bishop Serapion of Thmuis, requesting him to make the necessary announcement of the season. Gregory made his first attempt (apparently also his last) to fix the Easter Festival, but in the middle of Lent, to the amusement of the public, discovered that a mistake had been made, the correction of which involved his adherents in an extra week of Lenten austerities. We can well imagine that the spectacle of the abstracted asceticism of Ammonius aroused the curiosity and veneration of the Roman Christians, and thus gave an impulse to the ascetic life in the West (see Jerome, cited below, p. 191). That is all we know of the life of Athanasius during the first eighteen months of his stay at Rome.
In the early spring of 340 the presbyters returned (see above) with a letter from a number of bishops, including the Eusebian leaders, who had assembled at Antioch in January. This letter is carefully dissected in the reply of the Roman Council, and appears to have been highly acrimonious in its tone. Julius kept it secret for a time (p. 111), hoping against hope that after all some of the Orientals would come for the council; but at length he gave up all expectations of the kind, and convoked the bishops of Italy, who examined the cases of the various exiles (p. 114). All the old charges against Athanasius were gone into with the aid of the Mareotic report (the ex parte character of which Julius strongly emphasises) and of the account of the proceedings at Tyre. The council had no difficulty in pronouncing Athanasius completely innocent on all points. The charge of ignoring the proceedings of a council was disposed of by pointing out the uncanonical character of Gregory's appointment (p. 115), and the infraction by the complainants of the decrees of Nicæa. With regard to Marcellus, he responded to the request of the bishops by volunteering a written confession of his faith (p. 116, Epiph. Hær. 72), which was in fact the creed of the Roman Church itself (Caspari, Quellen iii. 28, note, argues that the creed must have been tendered at an earlier visit, 336-337, but without cogent reasons). Either Julius and his bishops were (like the fathers of Sardica) very easily satisfied, or Marcellus exercised extreme reserve as to his peculiar tenets (Zahn, p. 71, makes out the best case he can for his candour). The other exiles were also pronounced innocent, and the synod restored' them all. It remained to communicate the result to the Oriental bishops. This was done by Julius in a letter drawn up in the name of the council, and preserved by Athanasius in his Apology. Its subject matter has been sufficiently indicated, but its statesmanlike logic and grave severity must be appreciated by reference to the document itself. It has been truly called one of the ablest documents in the entire controversy.' It is worth observing that Julius makes no claim whatever to pass a final judgment as successor of S. Peter, although the Orientals had expressly asserted the equal authority of all bishops, however important the cities in which they ruled (p. 113); on the contrary he merely claims that without his own consent, proceedings against bishops would lack the weight of universal consent (p. 118). At the same time he claims to be in possession of the traditions of S. Paul and especially of S. Peter, and is careful to found upon precedent (that of Dionysius) a claim to be consulted in matters alleged against a bishop of Alexandria. This claim, by its modesty, is in striking contrast with that which Socrates (ii. 17) and Sozom. (iii. 8, 10) make for him,--that owing to the greatness of his see, the care of all the churches pertained to him: and this again, which represents what the Greek Church of the early fifth century was accustomed to hear from Rome, is very different from the claim to a jurisdiction of divine right which we find formulated in Leo the Great.
The letter of Julius was considered at the famous Council of the Dedication (of Constantine's Golden' Church at Antioch, see Eus. V. C. iii. 50), held in the summer of 341 (between May 22 and Sept. 1, see Gwatkin, p. 114, note). Eusebius of Constantinople was there (he had only a few months longer to live), and most of the Arian leaders. Cæsarea was represented by Acacius, who had succeeded Eusebius some two years before; a man of Whom we shall hear more. But of the ninety-odd bishops who attended, the majority must have been conservative in feeling, such as Dianius of Cæsarea, who possibly presided. At any rate Hilary (de Syn. 32) calls it a synod of saints,' and its canons passed into the accepted body of Church Law. Their reply to Julius is not extant, but we gather from the historians that it was not conciliatory. (Socr. ii. 15, 17; Soz. iii. 8, 10; they are in such hopeless confusion as to dates and the order of events that it is difficult to use them here; Theodoret is more accurate but less full.)
But the council marks an epoch in a more important respect; with it begins the formal Doctrinal Reaction against the Nicene Formula. We have traces of previous confessions, such as that of Arius and Euzoius, 330-335, and an alleged creed drawn up at CP. in 336. But only now begins the long series of attempts to raise some other formula to a position of equality with the Nicene, so as to eventually depose the homoousion from its position as an ecumenical test.
The first suggestion of a new creed came from the Arian bishops, who propounded a formula (p. 146, §22), with a disavowal of any intention of disparaging that of Nicæa (Socr. ii. 10), but suspiciously akin to the evasive confession of Arius, and prefaced with a suicidally worded protest against being considered as followers of the latter. The fate of this creed in the council is obscure; but it would seem to have failed to commend itself to the majority, who put forward a creed alleged to have been composed by Lucian the martyr. This (see above, p. xxviii, and p. 461, notes 5-9), was hardly true of the creed as it stood, but it may have been signed by Lucian as a test when he made his peace with bishop Cyril. At any rate the creed is catholic in asserting the exact Likeness of the Son to the Father's Essence (yet the Arians could admit this as de facto true, though not originally so; only the word Essence would, if honestly taken, fairly exclude their sense), but anti-Nicene in omitting the homoousion, and in the phrase te men hupostasei tria, te de sumphoni& 139; hen, an artfully chosen point of contact between Origen on the one hand, and Asterius, Lucian, and Paul of Samosata on the other. The anathemas, also, let in an Arian interpretation. This creed is usually referred to as the Creed of the Dedication' or Lucianic' Creed, and represents, on the one hand the extreme limit of concession to which Arians were willing to go, on the other the theological rallying point of the gradually forming body of reasoned conservative opinion which under the nickname of semi-Arianism' (Epiph. Hær. 73; it was repudiated by Basil of Ancyra, &c.) gradually worked toward the recognition of the Nicene formula.
A third formula was presented by Theophronius, bishop of Tyana, as a personal statement of belief, and was widely signed by way of approval. It insists like the Lucianic creed on the pretemporal gennesis, against Marcellus, adding two other points (hypostatic pre-existence and eternal kingdom of the Son) in the same direction, and closing with an anathema against Marcellus, Sabellius, Paul, and all who communicate with any of their supporters. This was of course a direct defiance of Julius and the Westerns (Mr. Gwatkin, by a slip, assigns this anathema to the fourth' creed).
Lastly, a few months after the council (late autumn of 341) a few bishops reassembled in order to send a deputation to Constans (since 340 sole Western Emperor). They decided to substitute for the genuine creeds of the council a fourth formulary, which accordingly the Arians Maris and Narcissus, and the neutrals Theodore of Heraclea and Mark of Arethusa, conveyed to the West. The assertion of the eternal reign of Christ was strengthened, and the name of Marcellus omitted, but the Nicene anathemas were skilfully adapted so as to strike at the Marcellian and admit the Arian doctrine of the divine Sonship. This creed became the basis on which the subsequent Arianising confessions of 343 (Philippopolis), 344 (Macrostich), and 351 (Sirmium) were moulded by additions to and modifications of the anathemas. This series of creeds mark the stationary period of Arianism,' i.e. between the close of the first generation (Arius, Asterius, Eusebius of Nicomedia) and the beginnings of the divergence of parties under the sole reign of Constantius. At present opposition to the school of Marcellus and to the impregnable strength of the West under a Catholic Emperor kept the reactionary party united.
It has been necessary to dwell upon the work of this famous Council in view of its subsequent importance. It is easy to see how the Eastern bishops were prevailed upon to take the bold step of putting forth a Creed to rival the Nicene formula. The formal approval of Marcellus at Rome shewed, so they felt, the inadequacy of that formula to exclude Sabellianism, or rather the direct support which that heresy could find in the word homoüsion.' This being so, provided they made it clear that they were not favouring Arianism, they would be doing no more than their duty in providing a more efficient test. But here the Arian group saw their opportunity. Conservative willingness to go behind Nicæa must be made to subserve the supreme end of revoking the condemnation of Arianism. Hence the confusion of counsels reflected in the multiplicity of creeds. The result pleased no one. The Lucianic Creed, with its anti-Arian clauses, tempered by equivocal qualifications, was a feeble and indirect weapon against Marcellus, who could admit in a sense the pre-æonian gennesis and the true' sonship. On the other hand, the three creeds which only succeeded in gaining secondary ratification, while express against Marcellus, were worthless as against Arianism. On the whole, the fourth creed, in spite of its irregular sanction, was found the most useful for the time (341-351); but as their doctrinal position took definite form, the Conservative wing fell back on the Lucianic' Creed, and found in it a bridge to the Nicene (cf. pp. 470, 472, Hil. de Syn. 33, and Gwatkin, p. 119, note).
(3.) Athanasius remained in Rome more than three years after his departure from Alexandria (April, 339-May? 342, see p. 239). During the last of these years, the dispute connected with him had been referred by Julius to Constans, who had requested his brother to send some Oriental bishops with a statement of their case: this was the reason of the deputation (see above) of the winter of 341. They found Constans at Treveri, but owing to the warnings of good Bishop Maximinus [59] , he refused to accept their assurances, and sent them ignominiously away. This probably falls in the summer of 342, the deputation on arriving in Italy having found that Constans had already left Milan for his campaign against the Franks (Gwatkin, p. 122, note 3). If this be so, Constans had already made up his mind that a General Council was the only remedy, and had written to Constantius to arrange for one. Before leaving Milan he had summoned Athanasius from Rome, and announced to him what he had done. The young Prince was evidently an admirer of Athanasius, who had received from him in reply to a letter of self-defence, written from Alexandria, an order for certain puktia, or bound volumes of the Scriptures (see Montfaucon, Animadv. xv., in Migne xxv., p. clxxvi.). The volumes had been delivered before this date. Constans hurried off to Gaul, while Athanasius remained at Milan, where he afterwards received a summons to follow the Emperor to Treveri [60] ; here he met the venerable Hosius and others, and learned that the Emperors had fixed upon Sardica (now Sophia in Bulgaria), on the frontier line of the dominions of Constans [61] , as the venue for the great Council, which was to assemble in the ensuing summer. Athanasius must have kept the Easter of 343 at Treveri: he had written his usual Easter letter (now lost) most probably from Rome or Milan, in the previous spring. The date of assembly and duration of the Sardican synod are, unfortunately, obscure. But the proceedings must have been protracted by the negotiations which ended in the departure of the Easterns, and (p. 124, note 2) by the care with which the evidence against the incriminated bishops was afterwards gone into [62] .
We shall probably be safe in supposing that the Council occupied the whole of August and September, and that Constans sent Bishops Euphrates and Vincent to his brother at Antioch as soon as the worst weather of winter was over.
The Western bishops assembled at Sardica to the number of about 95 (see p. 147). Athanasius, Marcellus, and Asclepas arrived with Hosius from Treveri. Paul of Constantinople, for some unknown reason, was absent, but was represented by Asclepas [63] . The Orientals came in a body, and with suspicion. They had the Counts Musonianus and Hesychius, and (according to Fest. Ind., cf. p. 276) the ex-Prefect Philagrius, as advisers and protectors: they were lodged in a body at the Palace of Sophia. The proceedings were blocked by a question of privilege. The Easterns demanded that the accused bishops should not be allowed to take their seats in the Council; the majority replied that, pending the present enquiry, all previous decisions against them must be in fairness considered suspended. There was something to be said on both sides (see Hefele, p. 99), but on the whole, the synod being convoked expressly to re-hear both sides, the majority were perhaps justified in refusing to exclude the accused. A long interchange (p. 119), of communications followed, and at last, alleging that they were summoned home by the news of the victory in the Persian war, the minority disappeared by night, sending their excuse by the Sardican Presbyter Eustathius (p. 275). At Philippopolis, within the dominions of Constantius, they halted and drew up a long and extremely wild and angry statement of what had occurred, deposing and condemning all concerned, from Hosius, Julius and Athanasius downward. They added the Antiochene Confession (fourth' of 341), with the addition of some anathemas directed at the system of Marcellus. Among the signatures, which included most of the surviving Arian leaders, along with Basil of Ancyra, and other moderate men, we recognise that of Ischyras, bishop from the Mareotis,' who had enjoyed the dignity without the burdens of the Episcopate since the Council of Tyre (p. 144). The document was sent far and wide, among the rest to the Donatists of Africa (Hef., p. 171).
This rupture doomed the purpose of the council to failure: instead of leading to agreement it had made the difference a hopeless one. But the Westerns were still a respectable number, and might do much to forward the cause of justice and of the Nicene Faith. Two of the Easterns had joined them, Asterius of Petra and Arius, bishop of an unknown see in Palestine. The only other Oriental present, Diodorus of Tenedos, appears to have come, like Asclepas, &c., independently of the rest. The work of the council was partly judicial, partly legislative. The question was raised of issuing a supplement to, or formula explanatory of, the Nicene creed, and a draft (preserved Thdt. H. E. ii. 8) was actually made, but the council declined to sanction anything which should imply that the Nicene creed was insufficient (p. 484, correcting Thdt. ubi supra, and Soz. iii. 12).
The charges against all the exiles were carefully examined and dismissed. This was also the case with the complaints against the orthodoxy of Marcellus, who was allowed to evade the very point which gave most offence (p. 125). Probably the ocular evidence (p. 124) of the violence which many present had suffered, indisposed the fathers to believe any accusations from such a quarter. The synod next proceeded to legislate. Their canons were twenty in number, the most important being canons 3-5, which permit a deposed bishop to demand the reference of his case to Julius bishop of Rome,' honouring the memory of Peter the Apostle;' the deposition to be suspended pending such reference; the Roman bishop, if the appeal seem reasonable, to request the rehearing of the case in its own province, and if at the request of the accused he sends a presbyter to represent him, such presbyter to rank as though he were his principal in person. The whole scheme appears to be novel and to have been suggested by the history of the case of the exiles. The canons are very important in their subsequent history, but need not be discussed here. (Elaborate discussions in Hefele, pp. 112-129; see also D.C.A. pp. 127 sq., 1658, 1671, Greenwood, Cath. Petr. i. 204-208, D.C.B. iii. 662 a, and especially 529-531.) The only legislation, however, to which Athanasius alludes is that establishing a period of 50 years during which Rome and Alexandria should agree as to the period for Easter (Fest. Ind. xv., infr. p. 544, also Hefele pp. 157 sqq.). The arrangement averted a dispute in 346, but differences occurred in spite of it in 349, 350, 360, and 368.
The synod addressed an encyclical letter to all Christendom (p. 123), embodying their decisions and announcing their deposition of eight or nine Oriental bishops (including Theodore of Heraclea, Acacius, and several Arian leaders) for complicity with Arianism. They also wrote to the Church of Alexandria and to the bishops of Egypt with special reference to Athanasius and to the Alexandrian Church, to Julius announcing their decisions, and to the Mareotis (Migne xxvi. 1331 sqq. printed with Letters 46, 47. Hefele ii. 165 questions the genuineness of all three, but without reason; see p. 554, note 1).
The effect of the Council was not at first pacific. Constantius shared the indignation of the Eastern bishops, and began severe measures against all the Nicene-minded bishops in his dominions (pp. 275 sqq). Theodulus, Bishop of Trajanople, died of his injuries before the Sardican Bishops had completed their work. At Hadrianople savage cruelties were perpetrated (ib.); and a close watch was instituted in case Athanasius should attempt to return on the strength of his synodical acquittal. Accordingly, he passed the winter and spring at Naissus (now Nish, see Fest. Ind. xvi.), and during the summer, in obedience to an invitation from Constans, repaired to Aquileia, where he spent the Easter of 345.
Meanwhile, Constans had made the cause of the Sardican majority his own. At the beginning of the year 344 he sent two of its most respected members to urge upon Constantius the propriety of restoring the exiles. Either now or later he hinted that refusal would be regarded by him as a casus belli. His remonstrance gained unexpected moral support from an episode, strange even in that age of unprincipled intrigue. In rage and pain at the apparent success of the envoys, Stephen, Bishop of Antioch, sought to discredit them by a truly diabolical trick (see p. 276). Its discovery, just after Easter, 344, roused the moral sense of Constantius. A Council was summoned, and met during the summer [64] (p. 462, §26, three years after' the Dedication at Midsummer, 341). Stephen was ignominiously deposed (see Gwatkin 125, note 1), and Leontius, an Arian, but a lover of quiet and a temporiser, appointed. The Council also re-issued the fourth' Antiochene Creed with a very long explanatory addition, mildly condemning certain Arian phrases, fiercely anathematising Marcellus and Photinus, and with a side-thrust at supposed implications of the Nicene formula. A deputation was sent to Italy, consisting of Eudoxius of Germanicia and three others. They reached Milan at the Synod of 345, and were able to procure a condemnation of Photinus (not Marcellus), but on being asked to anathematise Arianism refused, and retired in anger. At the same Synod of Milan, however, Valens and Ursacius, whose deposition at Sardica was in imminent danger of being enforced by Constans, followed the former example of Eusebius of Nicomedia, Maris, Theognis, and Arius himself, by making their submission, which was followed up two years later by a letter in abject terms addressed to Julius, and another in a tone of veiled insolence to Athanasius (p. 131). In return, they were able to beat up a Synod at Sirmium against Photinus (Hil. Frag. ii. 19), but without success in the attempt to dislodge him.
Meanwhile, Constantius had followed up the Council at Antioch by cancelling his severe measures against the Nicene party. He restored to Alexandria certain Presbyters whom he had expelled, and in the course of the summer wrote a public letter to forbid any further persecution of the Athanasians in that city. This must have been in August, 344, and about ten months later' (p. 277), i.e., on June 26, 345 (F. I. xviii.), Gregory, who had been in bad health for fully four years, died [65] . Constantius, according to his own statement (pp. 127, 277), had already before the death of Gregory written twice to Athanasius (from Edessa; he was at Nisibis on May 12, 345), and had sent a Presbyter to request him urgently to come and see him with a view to his eventual restoration. As Gregory was known to be in a dying state, this is quite intelligible, but the language of Hist. Ar. 21, which seems to put all three letters after Gregory's death, cannot stand if we are to accept the assurance of Constantius. Athanasius, at any rate, hesitated to obey, and stayed on at Aquileia (344 till early in 346), where he received a third and still more pressing invitation, promising him immediate restoration. He at once went to Rome to bid farewell to Julius, who wrote (p. 128 sq.) a most cordial and nobly-worded letter of congratulation for Athanasius to take home to his Church. Thence he proceeded to Trier to take leave of Constans (p. 239), and rapidly travelled by way of Hadrianople (p. 276) to Antioch (p. 240), where he was cordially received [66] by Constantius. His visit was short but remarkable. Constantius gave him the strongest assurances (pp. 277, 285) of goodwill for the future, but begged that Athanasius would allow the Arians at Alexandria the use of a single Church. He replied that he would do so if the Eustathians of Antioch (with whom alone he communicated during this visit) might have the same privilege. But this Leontius would not sanction, so the proposal came to nothing (Soc. ii. 23, Soz. iii. 20), and Athanasius hastened on his way. At Jerusalem he was detained by the welcome of a Council, which Bishop Maximus had summoned to greet him (p. 130), but on the twenty-first of October his reception by his flock took place; the people, and those in authority, met him a hundred miles distant' (Fest. Ind. xviii.), and amid splendid rejoicings (cf. p. xlii., note 3), he entered Alexandria, to remain there in quiet' nine years, three months and nineteen days' (Hist. Aceph. iv., cf. p. 496), viz., from Paophi 24 (Oct. 21), 346, to Mechir 13 (Feb. 8), 356. This period was his longest undisturbed residence in his see; he entered upon it in the very prime of life (he was 48 years old), and its internal happiness earns it the title of a golden decade. __________________________________________________________________
[53] As he had previously referred the Donatist schism to the commission of Rome and the Council of Arles.
[54] But they complain, p. 104, §8, of coercion not of Erastianism.
[55] The ordinary time for the entry of the Prefect upon his duties seems to have been about the end of the Egyptian Year (end of August). Accordingly the prefectures and years in Fest. Ind. roughly correspond: Philagrius was already Prefect when the Mareotic Commission arrived (Aug. 335). According to the headings to the Festal Letters vi., vii., he had superseded Paternus in 334: either the Index or the headings are mistaken. For the popularity of Philagrius, see Greg. Naz. Orat. xxi. 28, who mentions that his reappointment was due to the request of a deputation from Alex. (this must have come from the Arians!) and that the rejoicings which welcomed his return exceeded any that could have greeted the Emperor, and nearly equalled those which had welcomed the return of Athanasius himself. But Gregory is a rhetorician; see p. 138, and Tillem. viii. 664.
[56] It is possible, however, that these carried a second letter, after the arrival of Ath. See pp. 110, 273.
[57] Gregory shewed his Arianism by employing Ammon as his secretary, see p. 96. The curious parallelism between Gregory and George (infr. §8),--the names differing (in Latin) by a single letter only, both Arians, both Cappadocians, both intruded bishops of Alexandria, both arriving from court, both arriving in Lent, both exercising violence, both charged by Ath. with the storming of churches, with similar scenes of desecration, maltreatment of virgins, &c., in either case,--is one of the strangest examples of history repeating itself within a few years. What wonder that the fifth-century historians confuse the two still further together, and that they still find followers? The most important point of confusion is the alleged murder of Gregory (due to Theodoret), who really died a natural death. It is none too soon for this time-honoured blunder to do the like. On the inveterate tendency of Georges and Gregories to coalesce, and exchange names in transcription (to say nothing of modern typography), see D.C.B. ii. pp. 640-650, 778 sq., 798 sq., passim.
[58] In some church other than Theonas,' probably Quirinus,' which latter, however, was stormed on Easter Day, pp. 273, 95, note 3. The statement, Hist. Ar. 10, that he sailed for Rome before Gregory's arrival is in any case verbally inexact, but it may refer to his flight from Theonas.'
[59] Bitter complaint in Hil. Fragm. iii. 27; cf. infr. p. 462, Soz. iii. 10, who wrongly gives Italy' as the place.
[60] This may have been in the autumn, after the close of the campaign, but see infr. ch. v. §3, c, d.
[61] Hefele i. 91, is singular in placing it in the empire of Constantius. The Ichtiman range between Sophia and Philippopolis was the natural boundary between Thrace and Moesia, or Dacia Media.'
[62] On the one hand the deputation after the council reached Constantius at Antioch about Easter (April 15), 344. They were, however sent not directly by the Council, but by Constans after its close (Thdt. ii. 8). We may be certain that their arrival at Antioch was at the very least two months after the close of the council; but in all probability the interval was much longer. Again, the course of events described above forbids us to put the council earlier than the early summer of 343. But according to the Festal Index xv. the council at any rate began before the end of August in that year. If the bishops left their churches after Easter (a very natural and usual arrangement, compare Nicæa, the Dedication, &c.), they could easily assemble by the end of June. The Orientals came somewhat later. The beginning of July is accordingly our terminus a quo, the end of January our terminus ad quem. What exact part of the interval the council occupied we cannot decide.
[63] The statement in the synodal letter of Philippolis that Asclepas had been deposed seventeen' years before is clearly corrupt. The true reading may be seven' (council of CP. in 336) or xiii, which might easily be changed to xvii. (Cf. Hefele, pp. 89, 90).
[64] The ten months' of Hist. Ar. 21, p. 277, are to be reckoned, not from Easter 344, but from the letters of Const. to Alexandria some months after.
[65] It must be observed that the Index is loose in its statement here: see Gwatkin, p. 105, Sievers, p. 108. The statement of Thdt., &c., that he was murdered is simply due to the usual confusion of Gregory with George (cf. p. xliii. note 5).
[66] This visit cannot have been between May 7 and Aug. 27, when Const. was at CP. Nor can it well have been before May 7. We must, therefore, with Sievers, p. 110, put it in September. Yet see Gwatkin, p. 127, note. __________________________________________________________________
§7. The Golden Decade, 346-356.
(1). This period is divided into two by the death of Constans in 350, or perhaps more exactly by the final settlement of sole power in the hands of Constantius on the day of Mursa, Sept. 28, 351 [67] . The internal condition of the Church at Alexandria, however, was not seriously disturbed even in the second period. From this point of view the entire period may be treated as one. Its opening was auspicious. Egypt fully participated in the profound and wonderful peace' (p. 278) of the Churches. The Bishops of province after province were sending in their letters of adhesion to the Synod of Sardica (ib. and p. 127), and those of Egypt signed to a man.
The public rejoicing of the Alexandrian Church had something of the character of a mission' in modern Church life. A wave of religious enthusiasm passed over the whole community. How many widows and how many orphans, who were before hungry and naked, now through the great zeal of the people were no longer hungry, and went forth clothed;' in a word, so great was their emulation in virtue, that you would have thought every family and every house a Church, by reason of the goodness of its inmates and the prayers which were offered to God' (p. 278). Increased strictness of life, the sanctification of home, renewed application to prayer, and practical charity, these were a worthy welcome to their long-lost pastor. But most conspicuous was the impulse to asceticism. Marriages were renounced and even dissolved in favour of the monastic life; the same instincts were at work (but in greater intensity) as had asserted themselves at the close of the era of the pagan persecutions (p. 200, §4, fin.). Our knowledge of the history of the Egyptian Church under the ten years' peaceful rule of Athanasius is confined to a few details and to what we can infer from results.
Strong as was the position of Athanasius in Egypt upon his return from exile, his hold upon the country grew with each year of the decade. When circumstances set Constantius free to resume the Arian campaign, it was against Athanasius that he worked; at first from the remote West, then by attempts to remove or coax him from Alexandria. But Athanasius was in an impregnable position, and when at last the city was seized by the coup de main of 356, from his hidings places in Egypt he was more inaccessible still, more secure in his defence, more free to attack. Now the extraordinary development of Egyptian Monachism must be placed in the first rank of the causes which strengthened Athanasius in Egypt. The institution was already firmly rooted there (cf. p. 190), and Pachomius, a slightly older contemporary of Athanasius himself, had converted a sporadic manifestation of the ascetic impulse into an organised form of Community Life. Pachomius himself had died on May 9, 346 (infr. p. lx., note 3, and p. 569, note 3: cf. Theolog. Literaturztg. 1890, p. 622), but Athanasius was welcomed soon after his arrival by a deputation from the Society of Tabenne, who also conveyed a special message from the aged Antony. Athanasius placed himself at the head of the monastic movement, and we cannot doubt that while he won the enthusiastic devotion of these dogged and ardent Copts, his influence on the movement tended to restrain extravagances and to correct the morbid exaltation of the monastic ideal. It is remarkable that the only letters which survive from this decade (pp. 556-560) are to monks, and that they both support what has just been said. The army of Egyptian monks was destined to become a too powerful weapon, a scandal and a danger to the Church: but the monks were the main secret of the power and ubiquitous activity of Athanasius in his third exile, and that power was above all built up during the golden decade.
Coupled with the growth of monachism is the transformation of the episcopate. The great power enjoyed by the Archbishop of Alexandria made it a matter of course that in a prolonged episcopate discordant elements would gradually vanish and unanimity increase. This was the case under Athanasius: but the unanimity reflected in the letter ad Afros had practically already come about in the year of the return of Ath. from Aquileia, when nearly every bishop in Egypt signed the Sardican letter (p. 127; the names include the new bishops of 346-7 in Letter 19, with one or two exceptions). Athanasius not infrequently (pp. 559 sq. and Vit. Pach. 72) filled up vacancies in the episcopate from among the monks, and Serapion of Thmuis, his most trusted suffragan, remained after his elevation in very close relation with the monasteries.
Athanasius consecrated bishops not only for Egypt, but for the remote Abyssinian kingdom of Auxume as well. The visit of Frumentius to Alexandria, and his consecration as bishop for Auxume, are referred by Rufinus i. 9 (Socr. i. 19, &c.) to the beginning of the episcopate of Athanasius. But the chronology of the story (Gwatkin, pp. 93 sqq., D.C.B. ii. 236 where the argument is faulty) forbids this altogether, while the letter of Constantius (p. 250) is most natural if the consecration of Frumentius were then a comparatively recent matter, scarcely intelligible if it had taken place before the deposition' of Athan. by the council of Tyre. Athanasius had found Egypt distracted by religious dissensions; but by the time of the third exile we hear very little of Arians excepting in Alexandria itself (see p. 564); the Arians' of the rest of Egypt were the remnant of the Meletians, whose monks are still mentioned by Theodoret (cf. p. 299 sq.). An incident which shews the growing numbers of the Alexandrian Church during this period is the necessity which arose at Easter in one year of using the unfinished Church of the Cæsareum (for its history cf. p. 243, note 6, and Hist. Aceph. vi., Fest. Ind. xxxvii., xxxviii., xl.) owing to the vast crowds of worshippers. The Church was a gift of Constantius, and had been begun by Gregory, and its use before completion and dedication was treated by the Arians as an act of presumption and disrespect on the part of Athanasius.
(2.) But while all was so happy in Egypt, the profound peace' of the rest of the Church was more apparent than real. The temporary revulsion of feeling on the part of Constantius, the engrossing urgency of the Persian war, the readiness of Constans to use his formidable power to secure justice to the Nicene bishops in the East, all these were causes which compelled peace, while leaving the deeper elements of strife to smoulder untouched. The rival depositions and anathemas of the hostile Councils remained without effect. Valens was in possession at Mursa, Photinus at Sirmium. Marcellus was, probably, not at Ancyra (Zahn 82); but the Arians deposed at Sardica were all undisturbed, while Athanasius was more firmly established than ever at Alexandria. On the whole, the Episcopate of the East was entirely in the hands of the reaction--the Nicene element, often large, among the laity was in many cases conciliated with difficulty. This is conspicuously the case at Antioch, where the temporising policy of Leontius managed to retain in communion a powerful body of orthodox Christians, headed by Diodorus and Flavian, whose energy neutralised the effect of his own steadily Arian policy (particulars, Gwatkin, pp. 133, sqq., Newman, Arians^4, p. 455--from Thdt. H. E. ii. 24). The Eustathian schism at Antioch was, apparently, paralleled by a Marcellian schism at Ancyra, but such cases were decidedly the exception.
Of the mass of instances where the bishops were not Arian but simply conservative, the Church of Jerusalem is the type. We have the instructions given to the Catechumens of this city between 348 and 350 by Cyril, who in the latter year (Hort, p. 92) became bishop, and whose career is typical of the rise and development of so-called semi-Arianism. Cyril, like the conservatives generally, is strongly under the influence of Origen (see Caspari iv. 146-162, and of. the Catechesis in Heurtley de Fid. et Symb. 62 with the Regula Fidei in Orig. de Princ. i.). The instructions insist strongly on the necessity of scriptural language, and while contradicting the doctrines of Arius (without mentioning his name; cf. Athanasius on Marcellus and Photinus in pp. 433-447) Cyril tacitly protests against the homoousion as of human contrivance (Cat. v. 12), and uses in preference the words like to the Father according to the Scriptures' or in all things.' This language is that of Athanasius also, especially in his earlier works (pp. 84 sqq.), but in the latter phase of the controversy, especially in the Dated Creed of 359, which presents striking resemblances to Cyril's Catecheses, it became the watchword of the party of reaction. The Church of Jerusalem then was orthodox substantially, but rejected the Nicene formula, and this was the case in the East generally, except where the bishops were positively Arian. All were aggrieved at the way in which the Eastern councils had been treated by the West, and smarted under a sense of defeat (cf. Bright, Introd. to Hist. Tr., p. xviii.).
Accordingly the murder of Constans in 350 was the harbinger of renewed religious discord. For a time the political future was doubtful. Magnentius, knowing what Athanasius had to fear from Constantius, made a bid for the support of Egypt. Clementius and Valens, two members of a deputation to Constantius, came round by way of Egypt to ascertain the disposition of the country, and especially of its Bishop. Athanasius received them with bitter lamentations for Constans, and, fearing the possibility of an invasion by Magnentius, he called upon his congregation to pray for the Eastern Emperor. The response was immediate and unanimous: O Christ, send help to Constantius' (p. 242). The Emperor had, in fact, sought to secure the fidelity of Athanasius by a letter (pp. 247, 278), assuring him of his continued support. And until the defeat of Magnentius at Mursa, he kept his word. That victory, which was as decisive for Valens as it was for Constantius (Gibbon, ii. 381, iii. 66, ed. Smith), was followed up by a Council at Sirmium, which successfully ousted the too popular Photinus (cf. pp. 280, 298; on the appeal of Photinus, and the debate between him and Basil of Ancyra, apparently in 355, see Gwatkin, pp. 145 sq., note 6). This was made the occasion for a new onslaught upon Marcellus in the anathemas appended to a reissue of the fourth Antiochene' or Philippopolitan Creed (p. 465; on the tentative character of these anathemas as a polemical move, cf. Gwatkin, p. 147, note 1). The Emperor was occupied for more than a year with the final suppression of Magnentius (Aug. 10, 353), but the first Winter after his victory, which he spent at Arles, was employed against an enemy more odious to him than the vanquished tyrant of Gaul' (Gibbon).
It is unnecessary to detail the tedious and unedifying story of the councils of Arles and Milan. The former was a provincial council of Gaul, attended by legates of the Roman see. All present submissively registered the imperial condemnation of Athanasius. The latter, delayed till 355 by the Rhenish campaign of Constantius, was due to the request of Liberius, who desired to undo the evil work of his legates, and to the desire of the Emperor to follow up the verdict of a provincial with that of a more representative Synod. The number of bishops present was probably very small (the numbers in Socrates ii. 36, Soz. iv. 9, may refer to those who afterwards signed under compulsion, p. 280, cf. the case of Sardica, p. 127, note 10). The proceedings were a drama in three acts, first, submission, the legates protesting; secondly, stormy protest, after the arrival of Eusebius of Vercellæ; thirdly, open coercion. The deposition of Athanasius was proffered to each bishop for signature, and, if he refused, a sentence of banishment was at once pronounced, the emperor sitting with the velum' drawn, much as though an English judge were to assume the black cap at the beginning of a capital trial. He cut short argument by announcing that he was for the prosecution,' and remonstrance by the sentence of exile (p. 299); the hoper ego boulomai touto kanon put into his mouth by Athanasius (p. 281) represents at any rate the spirit of his proceedings as justly as does la tradizione son' io' that of the autocrat of a more recent council. At this council no creed was put forth: until the enemy was dislodged from Alexandria the next step would be premature. But a band of exiles were sent in strict custody to the East, of some of whom we shall hear later on (pp. 561, 481, 281, cf. p. 256, and the excellent monograph of Krüger, Lucifer von Calaris, pp. 9-23).
Meanwhile, Athanasius had been peacefully pursuing his diocesan duties, but not without a careful outlook as the clouds gathered on the horizon. The prospect of a revival of the charges against him moved him to set in order an unanswerable array of documents, in proof, firstly of the unanimity, secondly of the good reason, with which he had been acquitted of them (see p. 97). He had also, in view of revived assertions of Arianism, drawn up the two letters or memoranda on the rationale of the Nicene formula and on the opinion ascribed to his famous predecessor, Dionysius (the Apology was probably written about 351, the date of the de Decr., and de Sent. Dion. [68] falls a little later). In 353 he began to apprehend danger, from the hopes with which the establishment of Constantius in the sole possession of the Empire was inspiring his enemies, headed by Valens in the West, and Acacius of Cæsarea in the East. Accordingly, he despatched a powerful deputation to Constantius, who was then at Milan, headed by Serapion, his most trusted suffragan (cf. p. 560, note 3a; p. 497, §3, copied by Soz. iv. 9; Fest. Ind. xxv.). The legates sailed May 19, but on the 23rd Montanus, an officer of the Palace, arrived with an Imperial letter, declining to receive any legates, but granting an alleged request of Athanasius to be allowed to come to Italy (p. 245 sq.). As he had made no request of the kind, Athanasius naturally suspected a plot to entice him away from his stronghold. The letter of Constantius did not convey an absolute command, so Athanasius, protesting his willingness to come when ordered to do so, resolved to remain where he was for the present. All the people were exceedingly troubled,' according to our chroniclers. In this year Montanus was sent against the bishop, but a tumult having been excited, he retired without effect.' Two years and two months later, i.e., in July-Aug. 355 (p. 497), force was attempted instead of stratagem, which the proceedings of Arles had, of course, made useless. In this year Diogenes, the Secretary of the Emperor, came with the intention of seizing the bishop,' and Diogenes pressed hard upon all, trying to dislodge the bishop from the city, and he afflicted all pretty severely; but on Sept. 4 [69] he pressed sharply, and stormed a Church, and this he did continually for four months...until Dec. 23. But as the people and magistrates vehemently withstood Diogenes, he returned back without effect on the 23rd of December aforesaid' (Fest. Ind. xxvii., Hist. Aceph. iii.). The fatal blow was clearly imminent. By this time the exiles had begun to arrive in the East, and rumours came [70] that not even the powerful and popular Liberius, not even Father' Hosius himself, had been spared. Athanasius might well point out to Dracontius (p. 558) that in declining the bishopric of the country district of Alexandria' he was avoiding the post of danger. On the sixth of January the Duke' Syrianus arrived in Alexandria, concentrating in the city drafts from all the legions stationed in Egypt and Libya. Rumour was active as to the intentions of the commandant, and Athanasius felt justified in asking him whether he came with any orders from the Court. Syrianus replied that he did not, and Athanasius then produced the letter of Constantius referred to above (written 350-351). The magistrates and people joined in the remonstrance, and at last Syrianus protested by the life of Cæsar' that he would remain quiet until the matter had been referred to the Emperor. This restored confidence, and on Thursday night, Feb. 8, Athanasius was presiding at a crowded service of preparation for a Communion on the following morning (Friday after Septuagesima) in the Church of Theonas, which with the exception of the unfinished Cæsareum was the largest in the city (p. 243). Suddenly the church was surrounded and the doors broken in, and just after midnight Syrianus and the notary' Hilary entered with an infinite force of soldiers.' Athanasius (his fullest account is p. 263) calmly took his seat upon the throne (in the recess of the apse), and ordered the deacon to begin the 136th psalm, the people responding at each verse for His mercy endureth for ever.' Meanwhile the soldiers crowded up to the chancel, and in spite of entreaties the bishop refused to escape until the congregation were in safety. He ordered the prayers to proceed, and only at the last moment a crowd of monks and clergy seized the Archbishop and managed to convey him in the confusion out of the church in a half-fainting state (protest of Alexandrians, p. 301), but thankful that he had been able to secure the escape of his people before his own (p. 264). From that moment Athanasius was lost to public view for six years and fourteen days' (Hist. Aceph., i.e., Mechir 13, 356-Mechir 27, 362), for he remembered that which was written, Hide thyself as it were for a little moment, until the indignation be overpast (pp. 288, 252, 262). Constantius and the Arians had planned their blow with skill and delivered it with decisive effect. But they had won a Cadmean Victory.' __________________________________________________________________
[67] See below.
[68] In de Sent. Dion. 23, 24, Arius is spoken of in a way consistent with his being still alive. But the phase of the Arian controversy to which the tract relates begins a decade after Arius' death, and we therefore follow the indications which class the de Sent. with the de Decr.
[69] All the following dates are affected by Leap-Year, 355-6, see Table C, p. 501, and correct p. 246, note 3, to Jan. 6.
[70] Definite information came only after Feb. 8, see p. 248. __________________________________________________________________
§8. The Third Exile, 356-362.
The third exile of Athanasius marks the summit of his achievement. Its commencement is the triumph, its conclusion the collapse of Arianism. It is true that after the death of Constantius the battle went on with variations of fortune for twenty years, mostly under the reign of an ardently Arian Emperor (364-378). But by 362 the utter lack of inner coherence in the Arian ranks was manifest to all; the issue of the fight might be postponed by circumstances but could not be in doubt. The break-up of the Arian power was due to its own lack of reality: as soon as it had a free hand, it began to go to pieces. But the watchful eye of Athanasius followed each step in the process from his hiding-place, and the event was greatly due to his powerful personality and ready pen, knowing whom to overwhelm and whom to conciliate, where to strike and where to spare. This period then of forced abstention from affairs was the most stirring in spiritual and literary activity in the whole life of Athanasius. It produced more than half of the treatises which fill this volume, and more than half of his entire extant works. With this we shall have to deal presently; but let it be noted once for all how completely the amazing power wielded by the wandering fugitive was based upon the devoted fidelity of Egypt to its pastor. Towns and villages, deserts and monasteries, the very tombs were scoured by the Imperial inquisitors in the search for Athanasius; but all in vain; not once do we hear of any suspicion of betrayal. The work of the golden decade was bearing its fruit.
(1.) On leaving the church of Theonas, Athanasius appears to have made his escape from the city. If for once we may hazard a conjecture, the numerous cells of the Nitrian desert offered a not too distant but fairly inpenetrable refuge. He must at any rate have selected a place where he could gain time to reflect on the situation, and above all ensure that he should be kept well informed of events from time to time. For in Athanasius we never see the panic-stricken outlaw; he is always the general meditating his next movement and full of the prospects of his cause. He made up his mind to appeal to Constantius in person. He could not believe that an Emperor would go back upon his solemn pledges, especially such a voluntary assurance as he had received after the death of Constans. Accordingly he drew up a carefully elaborated defence (Ap. Const. 1-26) dealing with the four principal charges against him, and set off through the Libyan [71] desert with the intention of crossing to Italy and finding Constantius at Milan. But while he was on his way, he encountered rumours confirming the reports of the wholesale banishment not only of the recalcitrants of Milan, but of Liberius of Rome and the great Hosius of Spain. Next came the news of the severe measures against Egyptian bishops, and of the banishment of sixteen of their number, coupled with the violence practised by the troops at Alexandria on Easter Day (p. 248 sq.); however, his journey was continued, until he received copies of letters from the Emperor, one denouncing him to the Alexandrians and recommending a new bishop, one George, as their future guide, the other summoning the princes of Auxumis to send Frumentius (supr. p. xlviii.) to Egypt in order that he might unlearn what he had been taught by the most wicked Athanasius' and receive instruction from the venerable George.' These letters, which shew how completely the pursuers were off the scent (p. 249), convinced Athanasius that a personal interview was out of the question. He returned into the desert,' and at leisure completed his apology (pp. 249-253), with the view partly of possible future delivery, partly no doubt of literary circulation. Before turning back, however, he appears to have drawn up his letter to the bishops of Egypt and Libya, warning them against the formula (see p. 222) which was being tendered for their subscription, and encouraging them to endure persecution, which had already begun at least in Libya (Ep. Æg.); the designation of George (§7) was already known, but he had not arrived, nor had Secundus (19) reappeared in Egypt, at any rate not in Libya (he was there in Lent, 357, p. 294). The letter to the bishops, then, must have been written about Easter, 356; not long after, because it contains no details of the persecution in Egypt; not before, for the persecution had already begun, and Athanasius was already in Cyrenaica, whence he turned back not earlier than April (to allow time for Constantius (1) to hear that Athanasius was thought to have fled to Ethiopia, (2) to write to Egypt, (3) for copies of the letter to overtake Athanasius on his way to Italy. Constantius was at Milan Jan.-April).
Meanwhile in Alexandria disorders had continued. The duke' appears to have been either unable for a time, or to have thought it needless, to take possession of the churches; but we hear of a violent dispersion of worshippers from the neighbourhood of the cemetery on Easter Day (p. 249, cf. the Virgins after Syrianus but before Heraclius, p. 288); while throughout Egypt subscription to an Arianising formula was being enforced on the bishops under pain of expulsion. After Easter, a change of governor took place, Maximus of Nicæa (pp. 301 sqq., 247) being succeeded by Cataphronius, who reached Alexandria on the 10th of June (Hist. Aceph. iv.). He was accompanied by a Count Heraclius, who brought a letter from Constantius threatening the heathen with severe measures (pp. 288, 290), unless active hostilities against the Athanasian party were begun (this letter was not the one given p. 249; Ath. rightly remarks it reflected great discredit upon the writer'). Heraclius announced that by Imperial order the Churches were to be given up to the Arians, and compelled all the magistrates, including the functionaries of heathen temples, to sign an undertaking to execute the Imperial incitements to persecution, and to agree to receive as Bishop the Emperor's nominee. These incredible precautions shew the general esteem for Athanasius even outside the Church, and the misgivings felt at Court as to the reception of the new bishop. The Gentiles reluctantly agreed, and the next acts of violence were carried out with their aid, or rather with that of the more abandoned among them' (p. 291). On the fourth day from the arrival of Cataphronius, that is in the early hours of Thursday, June 13, after a service (which had began overnight, pp. 290, 256 fin., Hist. Aceph. v.), just as all the congregation except a few women had left, the church of Theonas was stormed and violences perpetrated which left far behind anything that Syrianus had done. Women were murdered, the church wrecked and polluted with the very worst orgies of heathenism, houses and even tombs were ransacked throughout the city and suburbs on pretence of seeking for Athanasius.' Sebastian the Manichee, who about this time succeeded to the military command of Syrianus, appears to have carried on these outrages with the utmost zest (yet see Hist. Ar. 60). Many more bishops were driven into exile (compare the twenty-six of p. 297 with the sixteen' p. 248, but some may belong to a still later period, see p. 257), and the Arian bishops and clergy installed, including the bitterly vindictive Secundus in Libya (p. 257). The formal transfer of churches at Alexandria took place on Saturday, June 15 (infr., p. 290, note 9): the anniversary of Eutychius (p. 292) was kept at Alexandria on July 11, (Martyrol. Vetust. Ed. 1668). After a further delay of eight months and eleven days' George, the new bishop, made his appearance (Feb. 24, 357 [72] , third Friday in Lent). His previous career [73] and character [74] were strange qualifications for the second bishopric in Christendom. He had been a pork-contractor at Constantinople, and according to his many enemies a fraudulent one; he had amassed considerable wealth, and was a zealous Arian. His violent temper perhaps recommended him as a man likely to crush the opposition that was expected. The history of his episcopate may be briefly disposed of here. He entered upon his See in Lent, 357, with an armed force. At Easter he renewed the violent persecution of bishops, clergy, virgins, and lay people. In the week after Pentecost he let loose the cruel commandant Sebastian against a number of persons who were worshipping at the cemetery instead of communicating with himself; many were killed, and many more banished. The expulsion of bishops (over thirty,' p. 257, cf. other reff. above) was continued (the various data of Ath. are not easy to reconcile, the first 16 of p. 257 may be the sixteen' of p. 248, before Easter, 356: we miss the name of Serapion in all the lists!) Theodore, Bishop of Oxyrynchus, the largest town of middle Egypt, upon submitting to George, was compelled by him to submit to reordination. The people refused to have anything more to do with him, and did without a bishop for a long time, until they obtained a pastor in one Heraclides, who is said to have become a Luciferian.' (Cf. Lib. Prec., and Le Quien ii. p. 578.) George carried on his tyranny eighteen months, till Aug. 29, 358. His fierce insults against Pagan worship were accompanied by the meanest and most oppressive rapacity. At last the populace, exasperated by his adder's bites' (Ammian.), attacked him, and he was rescued with difficulty. On Oct. 2 he left the town, and the party of Athanasius expelled his followers from the churches on Oct. 11, but on Dec. 24, Sebastian came in from the country and restored the churches to the people of George. On June 23, 359, the notary Paul' (in complicandis calumniarum nexibus artifex dirus, unde ei Catenæ inditum est cognomentum,' Ammian. Marc. XIV. v., XV. iii.), the Jeffreys of the day, held a commission of blood, and vindictively punished many [75] .' George was at this time busy with the councils of Seleucia and Constantinople (he was not actually present at the latter, Thdt. H. E. ii. 28), and was in no hurry to return. At last, just after the death of Constantius, he ventured back, Nov. 26, 361, but on the proclamation of Julian on Nov. 30 was seized by the populace and thrown into chains; on Dec. 24, impatient of the tedious forms of judicial proceedings,' the people dragged him from prison and lynched him with the utmost ignominy.
Athanasius meanwhile eluded all search. During part of the year 357-358 he was in concealment in Alexandria itself, and he was supposed to be there two years later (Fest. Ind. xxx., xxxii.; the latter gives some colour to the tale of Palladius--cf. Soz. v. 6--of his having during part of this period remained concealed in the house of a Virgin of the church), but the greater part of his time was undoubtedly spent in the numberless cells of Upper and Lower Egypt, where he was secure of close concealment, and of loyal and efficient messengers to warn him of danger, keep him informed of events, and carry his letters and writings far and wide. The tale of Rufinus (i. 18) that he lay hid all the six years in a dry cistern is probably a confused version of this general fact. The tombs of kings and private persons were at this time the common abode of monks (cf. p. 564, note 1; also Socr. iv. 13, a similar mistake). Probably we must place the composition of the Life of Antony, the great classic of Monasticism, at some date during this exile, although the question is surrounded with difficulties (see pp. 188 sqq.). The importance of the period, however, lies in the march of events outside Egypt. (For a brilliant sketch of the desert life of Athanasius see D.C.B. i. 194 sq.; also Bright, Hist. Treatises, p. lxxiv. sq.)
(2.) With the accession of Constantius to sole power, the anti-Nicene reaction at last had a free hand throughout the Empire. Of what elements did it now consist? The original reaction was conservative in its numerical strength, Arian in its motive power. The stream was derived from the two fountain heads of Paul of Samosata, the ancestor of Arius, and of Origen the founder of the theology of the Eastern Church generally and especially of that of Eusebius of Cæsarea. Flowing from such heterogeneous sources, the two currents never thoroughly mingled. Common action, dictated on the one hand by dread of Sabellianism, manipulated on the other hand by wire-pullers in the interest of Arianism, united the East till after the death of Constantine in the campaign against the leaders of Nicæa. Then for the last ten years of the life of Constans, Arianism, or rather the Reaction, had its stationary period' (Newman). The chaos of creeds at the Council of Antioch (supr. p. xliv.) shewed the presence of discordant aims; but opposition to Western interference, and the urgent panic of Photinus and his master, kept them together: the lead was still taken by the Arianisers, as is shewn by the continued prominence of the fourth Antiochene Creed at Philippopolis (343), Antioch (344), and Sirmium (351). But the second or Lucianic Creed was on record as the protest of the conservative majority, and was not forgotten. Yet until after 351, when Photinus was finally got rid of and Constantius master of the world, the reaction was still embodied in a fairly compact and united party. But now the latent heterogeneity of the reaction began to make itself felt. Differing in source and motive, the two main currents made in different directions. The influence of Aristotle and Paul and Lucian set steadily toward a harder and more consistent Arianism, that of Plato and the Origenists toward an understanding with the Nicenes.
(a.) The original Arians, now gradually dying out, were all tainted with compromise and political subserviency. Arius, Asterius, Eusebius of Nicomedia, and the rest (Secundus and Theonas are the solitary exception), were all at one time or another, and in different degrees, willing to make concessions and veil their more objectionable tenets under some evasive confession. But in many cases temporary humiliation produced its natural result in subsequent uncompromising defiance. This is exemplified in the history of Valens and Ursacius after 351. Valens, especially, figures as the head of a new party of Anomoeans' or ultra-Arians. The rise of this party is associated with the name of Aetius, its after-history with that of his pupil Eunomius, bishop of Cyzicus from 361. It was marked by a genuine scorn for the compromises of earlier Arianism, from which it differed in nothing except its more resolute sincerity. The career of Aetius (D.C.B. i. 50, sqq.) was that of a struggling, self-made, self-confident man. A pupil of the Lucianists (supr., p. xxviii.), he shrunk from none of the irreverent conclusions of Arianism. His loud voice and clear-cut logic lost none of their effect by fear of offending the religious sensibilities of others. In 350 Leontius ordained him deacon, with a licence to preach, at Antioch; but Flavian and Diodorus (see above, §7) raised such a storm that the cautious bishop felt obliged to suspend him. On the appointment of George he was invited to Alexandria, whither Eunomius was attracted by his fame as a teacher. His influence gradually spread, and he found many kindred spirits among the bishops. The survivors of the original Arians were with him at heart, as also were men like Eudoxius, bishop of Germanicia (of Antioch, 358, of CP. 360), who fell as far behind Aetius in sincerity as he surpassed him in profanity; the Anomoeans (anomoios) were numerically strong, and morally even more so; they were the wedge which eventually broke up the reactionary mass, rousing the sincere horror of the Conservatives, commanding the sometimes dissembled but always real sympathy of the true Arians, and seriously embarrassing the political Arians, whose one aim was to keep their party together by disguising differences of principle under some convenient phrase.
(b.) This latter party were headed by Acacius in the East and in the West by Valens, who while in reality, as stated above, making play for the Anomoean cause, was diplomatist enough to use the influential party of no principle' as his instrument for the purpose. Valens during the whole period of the sole reign of Constantius (and in fact until his own death about 375) was the heart and soul of the new and last phase of Arianism, namely of the formal attempt to impose an Arian creed upon the Church in lieu of that of Nicæa. But this could only be done by skilful use of less extreme men, and in the trickery and statecraft necessary for such a purpose Valens was facile princeps. His main supporter in the East was Acacius, who had succeeded to the bishoprick, the library, and the doctrinal position of his preceptor Eusebius of Cæsarea. The latter, as we saw (p. xxvii. note 5), represented the extreme left' of the conservative reaction, meeting the right wing, or rather the extreme concessions, of pure Arianism as represented by its official advocate Asterius, whom in fact Eusebius had defended against the onslaught of Marcellus. In so far then as the stream of pure Arianism could be mingled with the waters of Conservatism, Acacius was the channel in which they joined. Eusebius had not been an Arian, neither was Acacius; Eusebius had theological convictions, but lacked clearness of perception, Acacius was a clear-headed man but without convictions; Eusebius was substantially conservative in his theology, but tainted with political Arianism; Acacius was a political Arian first, and anything you please afterwards. On the whole, his sympathies seem to have been conservative, but he manifests a rooted dislike of principle of any kind. He appoints orthodox bishops (Philost. v. 1), but quarrels with them as soon as he encounters their true mettle, Cyril in 358, Meletius in 361; he befriends Arians, but betrays the too honest Aetius in 360. His ecclesiastical career begins with the council of four creeds in 341; in controversy with Marcellus he developed the concessions of Asterius till he almost reached the Nicene standard; he hailed effusively the Anomoean Creed of Valens in 358 (Soz. iv. 12), and in 359-60 forced that of Nike in its amended form upon the Eastern Church far and wide. He is next heard of, signing the Omoousion, in 363, and lastly (Socr. iv. 2) under Valens is named again along with Eudoxius. The real opinions of a man with such a record are naturally not easy to determine, but we may be sure that he was in thorough sympathy with the policy of Constantius, namely the union of all parties in the Church on the basis of subserviency to the State.
The difficulty was to find a formula. The test of Nicæa could not be superseded without putting something in its place, which should include Arianism as effectually as the other had excluded it. Such a test was eventually (after 357) found in the word homoios [76] . It was a word with a good Catholic history. We find it used freely by Athanasius in his earlier anti-Arian writings, and it was thoroughly current in conservative theology, as for example in Cyril's Catecheses (he has homoion kata tas graphas and homoion kata panta). It would therefore permit even the full Nicene belief. On the other hand many of the more earnest conservative theologians had begun to reflect on what was involved in the likeness' of the Son to the Father, and had formulated the conviction that this likeness was essential, not, as the Arians held, acquired. This was in fact a fair inference from the ousias aparallakton eikona of the Dedication Creed. This question made an agreement between men like Valens and Basil difficult, but it could be evaded by keeping to the simple homoion, and deprecating non-scriptural precision. Lastly, there were the Anomoeans to be considered. Now the homoion had the specious appearance of flatly contradicting this repellent avowal of the extremists; but to Valens and his friends it had the substantial recommendation of admitting it in reality. Likeness' is a relative term. If two things are only like' they are ipso facto to some extent unlike; the two words are not contradictories but correlatives, and if the likeness is not essential, the unlikeness is. So far then as the Homoean' party rested on any doctrinal principle at all, that principle was the principle of Arius; and that is how Valens forwarded the Anomoean cause by putting himself at the head of the Homoeans. His plan of campaign had steadily matured. The deposition of Photinus in 351 had sounded the note of war, Arles and Milan (353-5) and the expulsion of Athanasius (356) had cleared the field of opponents, George was now in possession at Alexandria, and in the summer of 357 the triumph of Arianism was proclaimed. A small council of bishops met at Sirmium and published a Latin Creed, insisting strongly (1) on the unique Godhead of the Father, (2) on the subjection of the Son along with all things subjected to Him by the Father,' and (3) strictly proscribing the terms homoousion, homoiousion, and all discussion of ousia, as unscriptural and inscrutable.
This manifesto was none the less Anomoean for not explicitly avowing the obnoxious phrase. It forbids the definition of the likeness' as essential, and does not even condescend to use the homoion at all. The Nicene definition is for the first time overtly and bluntly denounced, and the conservatives' are commanded to hold their peace. The Sirmium blasphemy' was indeed a trumpet-blast of defiance. The echo came back from the Homoeans assembled at Antioch, whence Eudoxius the new bishop, Acacius, and their friends addressed the Pannonians with a letter of thanks. But the blast heralded the collapse of the Arian cause; the Reaction fell to pieces the moment Arianism ventured to have a policy of its own' (Gwatkin, p. 158, the whole account should be consulted). Not only did orthodox Gaul, under Phoebadius of Agen, the most stalwart of the lesser men whom Milan had spared, meet in synod and condemn the blasphemy, but the conservative East was up in arms against Arianism, for the first time with thorough spontaneity. Times were changed indeed; the East was at war with the West, but on the side of orthodoxy against Arianism.
(c) We must now take account of the party headed by Basil of Ancyra and usually (since Epiphanius), but with some injustice, designated as Semi-Arians. Their theological ancestry and antecedents have been already sketched (pp. xxvii., xxxv.); they are the representatives of that conservatism, moulded by the neo-Asiatic, or modified Origenist tradition, which warmly condemned Arianism at Nicæa, but acquiesced with only half a heart in the test by which the Council resolved to exclude it. They furnished the numerical strength, the material basis so to call it, of the anti-Nicene reaction; but the reaction on their part had not been Arian in principle, but in part anti-Sabellian, in part the empirical conservatism of men whose own principles are vague and ill-assorted, and who fail to follow the keener sight which distinguishes the higher conservatism from the lower. They lent themselves to the purposes of the Eusebians (a name which ought to be dropped after 342) on purely negative grounds and in view of questions of personal rights and accusations. A positive doctrinal formula they did not possess. But in the course of years reflexion did its work. A younger generation grew up who had not been taught to respect Nicæa, nor yet had imbibed Arian principles. Cyril at Jerusalem, Meletius at Antioch, are specimens of a large class. The Dedication Creed at Antioch represents an early stage in the growth of this body of conviction, conviction not absolutely uniform everywhere, as the result shews, but still with a distinct tendency to settle down to a formal position with regard to the great question of the age. There was nothing in the Nicene doctrine that men like this did not hold: but the word homoousion opened the door to the dreaded Sabellian error: was not the history of Marcellus and Photinus a significant comment upon it? But if ousia meant not individuality, but specific identity (supr., p. xxxi. sq.) even this term might be innocently admitted. But to make that meaning plain, what was more effective than the insertion of an iota? Omoiousios, then, was the satisfactory test which would banish Arius and Marcellus alike. Who first used the word for the purpose, we do not know, but its first occurrence is its prohibition in the blasphemy' of Valens in 357. The leader of the semi-Arians' in 357 was Basil of Ancyra, a man of deep learning and high character. George of Laodicea, an original Arian, was in active but short-lived [77] alliance with the party, other prominent members of it were Eustathius, Bishop of Sebaste (Sivas), Eleusius of Cyzicus, Macedonius of Constantinople, Eusebius of Emesa, Cyril of Jerusalem, and Mark of Arethusa, a high-minded but violent man, who represents the left' wing of the party as Cyril and Basil represent the right.'
Now the trumpet-blast' of Valens gave birth to the Semi-Arians' as a formal party. An attempt was made to reunite the reaction on a Homoean basis in 359, but the events of that year made the breach more open than ever. The tendency towards the Nicene position which received its impulse in 357 continued unchecked until the Nicene cause triumphed in Asia in the hands of the conservatives' of the next generation.
Immediately after the Acacian Synod at Antioch early in 358, George of Laodicea, who had reasons of his own for indignation against Eudoxius, wrote off in hot haste to warn Basil of the fearful encouragement that was being given to the doctrines of Aetius in that city. Basil, who was in communication (through Hilary) with Phoebadius and his colleagues, had invited twelve neighbouring bishops to the dedication of a church in Ancyra at this time, and took the opportunity of drawing up a synodical letter insisting on the Essential Likeness of the Son to the Father (homoion kat' ousian), and eighteen anathemas directed against Marcellus and the Anomoeans. (The censure of homoousion e tautoousion is against the Marcellian sense of the homoousion). Basil, Eustathius, and Eleusius then proceeded to the Court at Sirmium and were successful in gaining the ear of the Emperor, who at this time had a high regard for Basil, and apparently obtained the ratification by a council, at which Valens, &c., were present, of a composite formula of their own (Newman's semi-Arian digest of three Confessions') which was also signed by Liberius, who was thereupon sent back to Rome. (Soz. iv. 15 is our only authority here, and his account of the formula is not very clear: he seems to mean that two, not three, confessions were combined. (Cf. p. 449, note 4.) On the whole, it is most probable that the fourth' Antiochene formula in its Sirmian recension of 351 is intended, perhaps with the addition of twelve of the Ancyrene anathemas. (The question of the signatures of Liberius need not detain us.) The party of Valens were involved in sudden and unlooked-for discomfiture. Basil even succeeded in obtaining a decree of banishment against Eudoxius, Aetius, and seventy' others (Philost. iv. 8). But an Arian deputation from Syria procured their recall, and all parties stood at bay in mutual bitterness.
Now was the opportunity of Valens. He saw the capabilities of the Homoean compromise, as yet embodied in no creed, and resolved to try it: and his experiment was not unsuccessful. All parties alike seem to have agreed upon the necessity for a council of the whole Church (on the origin of the proposal, and for other details, see p. 448). But Valens was determined what the result of the council must be. Accordingly he prevailed on the Emperor to divide it, the Western Synod to meet at Ariminum, the Eastern at Rocky Seleucia,' a mountain fortress in Cilicia where there happened to be plenty of troops. The management of the latter was entrusted to Acacius; at Rimini Valens would be present in person. In event of the two synods differing, a delegation of ten bishops from each was to meet at Court and settle the matter. The Creed to be adopted had also to be arranged beforehand, and for this purpose, to his great discredit, Basil of Ancyra entered into a conference (along with Mark of Arethusa and certain colleagues) with Valens, George of Alexandria, and others of like mind. The result was the Dated Creed' (May 22, 359) drawn by Mark, prohibiting the word ousia (in a gentler tone than that of the creed of Valens in 357), but containing the definition homoion kata panta (as also the Scriptures teach,' see above, on Cyril, p. xlix.), words which Valens and Ursacius sought to suppress. But Constantius insisted on their retention, and Basil emphasised his subscription by a strongly-worded addition. Moreover in conjunction with George of Laodicea he drew up a memorandum (Epiph. 72, 12-22) vindicating the term ousia as implied in Scripture, insisting on the absolute essential likeness of the Son to the Father, except in respect of the Incarnation, and repudiating the idea that agennesia is the essential notion of Godhead. Such a protest was highly significant as an approach to the Nicene position, but Basil must have felt its inefficiency for the purpose in hand. Had the creed been anything but a surrender of principle on his part, no explanatory memoranda would have been needed.
After the fiasco of the Dated Creed, the issue of the Councils was not doubtful. The details may be reserved for another place (pp. 448, 453 sqq.), but the general result is noteworthy. At both Councils the court party were in a minority, and in both alike they eventually had their way. (See Bright, Hist. Tr. lxxxiv.-xc., and Gwatkin, 170-180.) On the whole the Seleucian synod came out of the affair more honourably than the other, as their eventual surrender was confined to their delegates. Both Councils began bravely. The majorities deposed their opponents and affirmed their own faith, the Westerns that of Nicæa, the Easterns that of the Dedication. From both Councils deputations from each rival section went to the Emperor, who was now at Constantinople. The deputies from the majority at Ariminum, where the meeting had begun fully two months before the other, were not received, but detained first at Hadrianople, then at Niké in Thrace (chosen, says Socr. ii. 37, to impose on the world by the name), where they were induced to sign a recension of the Dated Creed (the Creed itself had been revoked and recast without the date and perhaps without the kata panta before the preliminary meeting at Sirmium broke up, p. 466) of a more distinctly Homoean character. Armed with this document Valens brought them back to the Council, and by threats and cajolery' obtained the signatures of nearly all the bishops. Yet the stalwart Phoebadius, Claudius of Picenum, the venerable African Muzonius, father of the Council, and a few others, were undaunted. But Valens, by adroit dissimulation and by guiding into a manageable shape the successive anathematisms by which his orthodoxy was tested, managed to deceive these simple-minded Westerns, and with applause and exultation, plausu quodam et tripudio' (Jer.), amidst which Valens was lauded to the skies' (!), the bishops were released from their wearisome detention and suspense. But Valens cum recessisset tunc gloriabatur' (Prov. xx. 14). The Western bishops realised too late what they had done, Ingemuit totus orbis, et se Arianum esse miratus est.' Valens hurried with the creed and the anathemas of Phoebadius to Constantinople, where he found the Seleucian deputies in hot discussion at court. The Eastern bishops at Seleucia had held to the Lucianic' creed, and contemptuously set aside not only the Acacian alternative (p. 466), but the whole compromise of Basil and Mark at the Sirmian conference of the preceding May. The Conservatives' and Acacians were at open war. But the change of the seat of war to the court gave the latter the advantage, and Valens and Acacius were determined to secure their position at any cost. The first step was to compel the signature of the semi-Arian' deputies to the creed of Ariminum. This was facilitated by the renewal on the part of Acacius and Valens of their repudiation, already announced at Seleucia (p. 466), of the 'Anomoion, (of course with the mental reservation that the repudiation referred only to will). Even so, tedious discussions [78] , and the threats of Constantius, with whom Basil had now lost all his influence (Thdt. ii. 27), were needed to bring about the required compliance late at night on New Year's Eve, 359-360 (Soz. iv. 23). In January, at the dedication of the Great Church of Constantine, the second step was taken. The revised creed of Niké was reissued without the anathemas of Ariminum. Aetius was offered by his friend Eudoxius as a sacrifice to the Emperor's scruples (see the account of the previous debates in Thdt. ubi supra), much as Arius had been sacrificed by his fellow-Lucianists at Nicæa (§2 supra: nine bishops protested, but were allowed six months to reconsider their objection; the six months lasted two years, and then a reconciliation with Aetius took place for a time, Philost. vii. 6). Next a clean sweep was made of the leading semi-Arians on miscellaneous charges (Soz. iv. 24, sq.), and Eudoxius was installed as bishop of the New Rome in the place of Macedonius. The sacrifice of Aetius gave the Homoeans a free hand against their opponents, and was compensated by the appointment of numerous Anomoeans to vacant sees. In particular Eunomius replaced Eleusius at Cyzicus. In the eastern half of the Empire Homoeanism was supreme, and remained so politically for nearly twenty years. But not in the West. Before the Council of Constantinople met, the power of the West had passed away from Constantius. Gaul had acknowledged Julian as Augustus, and from Gaul came the voice of defiance for the Homoean leaders and sympathy for their deposed opponents (Hil. Frag. xi.). And even in the East, throughout their twenty years the Homoeans retained their hold upon the Church by a dead hand. The moral strength of Christendom lay elsewhere;' on the one hand the followers of Eunomius were breaking loose from Eudoxius and forming a definitely Arian sect, those of Macedonius crystallising their cruder conservatism into the illogical creed of the Pneumatomachi;' on the other hand the second generation of the semi-Arians' were, under the influence of Athanasius, working their way to the Greek Catholicism of the future, the Catholicism of the neo-Nicene school, of Basil and the two Gregories.
The lack of inner cohesion in the Homoean ranks was exemplified at the start in the election of a new bishop for Antioch. Eudoxius had vacated the see for that of New Rome; Anianus, the nominee of the Homoeusian majority of Seleucia, was out of the question; accordingly at a Council in 361 the Acacians fixed upon Meletius, who had in the previous year accepted from the Homoeans of CP. the See of Sebaste in the room of the exiled Eustathius. The new Bishop was requested by the Emperor to preach on the test passage Prov. viii. 22. This he did to a vast and eagerly expectant congregation. To the delight of the majority (headed by Diodorus and Flavian), although he avoided the homoousion, he spoke with no uncertain sound on the essential likeness of the Son to the Father. Formally Nicene,' indeed, the sermon was not (text in Epiph. Hær. lxxiii. 29-33, see Hort, p. 96, note 1), but the dismay of the Homoean bishops equalled the joy of the Catholic laity. Meletius was deposed' in favour of the old Arian Euzoius (infr., p. 70), and after his return under Jovian gave in his formal adhesion to the Nicene test.
(3.) The history of Athanasius during this period is the history of his writings. Hidden from all but devotedly loyal eyes, whether in the cells of Nitria and the Thebaid, or lost in the populous solitude of his own city, he followed with a keen and comprehensive glance the march of events outside. Two men in this age had skill to lay the physician's finger upon the pulse of religious conviction; Hilary, the Western who had learned to understand and sympathise with the East, Athanasius, the Oriental representative of the theological instincts of the West. First of all came the writings of which we have spoken, the circular to the bishops and the Apology to Constantius; then the dignified Apology for his flight, written not long before the expulsion of George late in 358, when he had begun to realise the merciless enmity and profound duplicity of the Emperor. We find him not long after this in correspondence with the exiled confessor, Lucifer of Calaris (pp. 561 sq., 481 sqq.), and warning the Egyptian monks against compromising relations with Arian visitors (Letter 53, a document of high interest), narrating to the trusted Serapion the facts as to the death of Arius, and sending to the monks a concise refutation of Arian doctrine (Letters 52, 54). With the latter is associated a reissue of the Apology of 351, and, as a continuation of it, the solitary monument of a less noble spirit which Athanasius has left us, the one work which we would gladly believe to have come from any other pen [79] . But this supposition is untenable, and in the ferocious pamphlet against Constantius known as the Arian History we are reminded that noble as he was, our saint yet lived in an age of fierce passions and reckless personal violence. The Arian History has its noble features--no work of Athanasius could lack them--but it reveals not the man himself but his generation; his exasperation, and the meanness of his persecutors. (For details on all these tracts see the Introductions and notes to them.) None of the above books directly relate to the doctrinal developments sketched above. But these developments called forth the three greatest works of his exile, and indeed of his whole career. Firstly, the four Logoi or Tracts against Arianism, his most famous dogmatic work. Of these an account will be given in the proper place, but it may be noticed here that they are evidently written with a conciliatory as well as a controversial purpose, and in view of the position between 357 and 359. Next, the four dogmatic letters to Serapion, the second of which reproduces the substance of his position against the Arians, while the other three are devoted to a question overlooked in the earlier stages of the controversy, the Coessentiality of the Holy Spirit. This work may possibly have come after the third, and in some ways the most striking, of the series, the de Synodis written about the end of 359, and intended as a formal offer of peace to the Homoeusian party. Following as it did closely upon the conciliatory work of Hilary, who was present at Seleucia on the side of the majority, this magnanimous Eirenicon produced an immediate effect, which we trace in the letters of the younger Basil written in the same or following year; but the full effect and justification of the book is found in the influence exerted by Athanasius upon the new orthodoxy which eventually restored the ten provinces' to the knowledge of God' (Hil. de Syn. 63. Further details in Introd. to de Syn., infra, p. 448. It may be remarked that the romantic idea of his secret presence at Seleucia, and even at Ariminum, must be dismissed as a too rigid inference from an expression used by him in that work: see note 1 there).
This brings us to the close of the eventful period of the Third Exile, and of the long series of creeds which registers the variations of Arianism during thirty years. We may congratulate ourselves on having come at last to the end of the labyrinth of expositions' (Socr. ii. 41), and within sight of the emergence of conviction out of confusion, of order out of chaos. The work of setting in order opens our next period. Of the exile there is nothing more to tell except its close. Hurrying from Antioch on his way from the Persian frontier to oppose the eastward march of Julian, Constantius caught a fever, was baptised by Euzoius, and died at Mopsucrenæ under Mount Taurus, on Nov. 3, 361. Julian at once avowed the heathenism he had long cherished in secret, and by an edict, published in Alexandria on Feb. 9, recalled from exile all bishops banished by Constantius. And twelve days after the posting of this edict Athanasius appeared at Alexandria and entered the Church on the twenty-seventh day of the same month, Mechir (Feb. 21). He remained in the Church until the twenty-sixth of Paophi (i.e., Oct. 23)...eight whole months' (Hist. Aceph. vii. The murder of George has been referred to above, p. liii.). __________________________________________________________________
[71] The envoys of Magnentius had come from Italy through Libya in 350-351. The desert' (Apol. Const. 27, 32) must be the region between Alxa. and Cyrenaica, not Palestine as Tillem. viii. 186, infers from Ep. Æg. 5. There is no evidence that Ath. left his province during this exile, and Palestine was a most dangerous territory to venture into. The cautious vagueness of his language, Ep. Æg. 5, while it baffles even our curiosity, yet favours the hypothesis that the events referred to belong to the Egyptian persecution.
[72] This date, coming from the common source of the Historia Acephala and Festal Index (i.e. from the accredited Alexandrian chronology of the period), must be accepted unless there is cogent proof of its incorrectness. No such proof is offered: we have no positive statement to the contrary, but only (1) the fact that the intrusion of George is related, Apol. Fug. 6, immediately after an attack on the great church, possibly the coup de main of Syrianus, but more probably that of p. 290, note 9, without any hint of a long interval. This is true, and if there were no evidence the other way might justify a guess that George came in Lent, 356; but no one would claim that the passage is conclusive by itself; (2) the improbability' of George delaying his arrival so long. Improbability is a relative term; we know too little of George's consecration or movements to justify its use in the present connection. All the evidence goes to shew that the court party were far from sanguine as to the nature of his reception, and that their misgivings were well-founded. The above considerations look very small when we compare them with the mass of positive evidence the other way. (1.) The civil Governor had changed: Maximus held the post on Feb. 8, 356 (Hist. Ar. 81, &c.), Cataphronius when the churches were transferred to the party of George, see below, 6. (2.) The military Commander had changed: Syrianus was replaced by Sebastian, who appears just after the transfer of churches, Hist. Ar. 55-60 (Dr. Bright in D.C.B. i. 194, note, seems to admit that Sebastian belongs to a later date than the Lent of 356). (3.) The Wednesday (and Thursday) of Hist. Ar. 55 were not in Lent.' They suit the data of Hist. Aceph. perfectly well. (4.) Had George arrived before Easter 356, Athan. would have heard of it in the Desert,' Apol. Const. 27; but he has only heard of his nomination onomasthe 28, probably from the letters given in §§30, 31). (5.) The Letter to the Egyptian bishops was written from Libya or Cyrenaica, when the coercion of the episcopate had begun: it postulates some time since his expulsion, but George was then (§7) only in contemplation. (6.) There is no evidence that the coup de main of Syrianus was other than unpopular in the city. This was reported to Const., who after the (Easter) outrages on the Virgins (Ap. Const. 27; Hist. Ar. 48), and after the expulsion of the sixteen bishops (Hist. Ar. 54, this was probably about Easter, Ap. Const. 27) sent Heraclius (with the discreditable' letter), in whose company (Hist. Ar. 55) the new Prefect Cataphronius first appears. This let loose the refuse of the heathen population as described, ib. 55-60. (7.) Here the precise statement of the Hist. Aceph. fits in exactly. The Presbyters and people of Ath. remained in possession of the Churches until the arrival of the new Prefect, with Count Heraclius, on June 10. (8.) Heraclius is expressly called the precursor of George (p. 288) and is evidently sent to disarm the reported hostility of the (even heathen) public to the appointment. It may be added that if we are to take probabilities' into account, it is easier to imagine a reason for a court nominee like George having been slow to take up a dangerous post, than for the Alexandrian chronologists of the day having invented a year's interval when none had existed. Montfaucon had already noticed that a good deal must have happened' between the irruption of Syrianus and the entry of George. The data of Athanasius are for the first time clearly explained by the light thrown on them by the chroniclers. I should also have urged the fact that the commemoration of George's Pentecost Martyrs on May 21 in the Roman Martyrology suits 357 and not 356, had I succeeded in tracing the history of the entry, which has, however, so far eluded my efforts.
[73] We are quite in the dark as to when, and by whom, George was consecrated bishop. The statement of Sozomen iv. 8, that he was ordained by a council of thirty bishops at Antioch, including Theodore of Heraclea, who had died before the exile of Liberius in 355 (Thdt. H. E. ii. 16, p. 93. 13), is involved in too hopeless a tangle of anachronisms to be of any value for our enquiry. But that George was ordained in Antioch is in itself likely enough, and if so, his ordination would probably follow close upon the expulsion of Athanasius. But the repeated assurances of Ath. that George came from court would imply that after his ordination George went to Italy. That at once puts his arrival in Alxa. in Lent 356 out of the question.
[74] The statements of Ath. as to George are made at secondhand, and must be taken cum grano. He is notoriously wealthy,' yet hired' by the Arians. (Cf. p. 249; but apparently he combined wealth and avarice.) That he was a heathen' is certainly untrue. His ignorance' is equally so: we know that he was a well-read man and possessed a remarkably good library (D.C.B. ii. 638). That he had the temper of a hangman' (p. 227) is in keeping with all that we know of him, and as to his general character, the statements of Athanasius and other churchmen are not stronger than Amm. Marcell. XXII. xi. 4 (cf. Gibbon, iii. 171 sqq., ed. Smith, but correct his jeu d'esprit on S. George and the Dragon' by Bright, in D.C.B. ubi supra; yet see Stanley, Eastern Church, Lect. vii. III..).
[75] p. 497. George was at Sirmium in the Spring of 359 (Soz. (v. 16). Paul Catena came to Alxa. from a similar commission at Scythopolis. He was apparently aided in both places by Modestus the Comes Orientis. From Liban. Ep. 205, we gather, to the credit of George, that he was the intermediary of requests for mitigation on some of the sentences. He was at this time at Antioch, from whence also Ex Comitatu Principis,' Amm. XXII. xi., he returned to Alxa. in 361, evidently before he had heard of the Emperor's death. (Sievers, pp. 138 sq.)
[76] We cannot fix the date when this word was first adopted as a shibboleth. It occurs, but not conspicuously, in the Macrostich' of 344, but not in any other creed till the dated' symbol of 359. But if (as Krüger, Lucif, p. 42, note, assumes) the homoiousion was adopted as a protest against the bald homoion, the latter must have been current long before 357, when the former was proscribed. I incline to regard the homoion (as a test word) as a later rival to the homoiousion
[77] Apparently it began with the quarrel over the election to the bishopric of Antioch, which Eudoxius managed to seize after the death of Leontius. George was aggrieved at his rights as an elector being ignored, and may have had hopes of the see for himself. See Soz. iv. 13; but Philost. iv. 5 with much less likelihood puts this down to Basil.
[78] The discussions, reported with every appearance of substantial accuracy by Thdt. ii. 27, may have taken place at this time, or at the council of the succeeding month (Thdt. fails to distinguish the two meetings). Gwatkin, p. 180, appears to be right in adopting the former alternative, viz. that the party of Basil prudently abstained from attending a council in which they would be overpowered: cf. Soz. iv. 24, who however contradicts himself in the next chapter, sub fin. But the case is not quite clear.
[79] He always used amanuenses, but we have no evidence that he entrusted them with actual composition, p. 242. __________________________________________________________________
§9. Athanasius under Julian and his successors; Fourth and Fifth Exiles. Feb. 21, 362, to Feb. 1, 366.
(a) The Council of Alexandria in 362. The eight months of undisturbed residence enjoyed by Athanasius under Julian were well employed. One of his first acts was to convoke a Synod at Alexandria to deal with the questions which stood in the way of the peace of the Church. The Synod was one of saints and confessors,' including as it did many of the Egyptian bishops who had suffered under George (p. 483, note 3, again we miss the name of the trusted Serapion), Asterius of Petra and Eusebius of Vercellae, with legates from Lucifer of Calaris, Apollinarius of Laodicea, and Paulinus the Presbyter who ruled the Eustathian community of Antioch. Our knowledge of the proceedings of the Synod (with an exception to be referred to later on) is derived entirely from its Tome' or Synodal letter addressed to the latter community and to the exiles who were its guests. Rufinus, from whom or from the Tome itself Socrates appears to derive his knowledge, follows the Tome closely, with perhaps a faint trace of knowledge from some other [80] source. Sozomen gives a short and inadequate report (v. 12). But the importance of the Council is out of all proportion either to the number of bishops who took part in it or to the scale of its documentary records. Jerome goes so far as to say that by its judicious conciliation it snatched the whole world from the jaws of Satan' (Adv. Lucif. 20). If this is in any measure true, if it undid both in East and West the humiliating results of the twin Synods of 359, the honour of the achievement is due to Athanasius alone. He saw that victory was not to be won by smiting men who were ready for peace, that the cause of Christ was not to be furthered by breaking the bruised reed and quenching the smoking flax. (Best accounts of the Council, Newman, Arians V. i., Krüger, Lucif. 41-52, Gwatkin, p. 205, sqq.) The details may be reserved for the Introduction to the Tome, p. 481. But in the strong calm moderation of that document we feel that Athanasius is no longer a combatant arduously contending for victory, but a conqueror surveying the field of his triumph and resolving upon the terms of peace. The Council is the ripe first-fruits of the de Synodis, the decisive step by which he placed himself at the head of the reuniting forces of Eastern Christendom; forces which under the recognised headship of the Father of Orthodoxy' were able successfully to withstand the revived political supremacy of Arianism under Valens, and after his death to cast it out of the Church. The Council then is justly recognised as the crown of the career of Athanasius, for its resolutions and its Letter unmistakably proceed from him alone, and none but he could have tempered the fiery zeal of the confessors and taught them to distinguish friend from foe.
It would have been well had Lucifer been there in person and not by deputy only. As it was he had gone to Antioch in fiery haste, with a promise extorted by Eusebius to do nothing rashly. Fanatical in his orthodoxy, quite unable to grasp the theological differences between the various parties (his remonstrances with Hilary upon the conciliatory efforts of the latter shew his total lack of theology: see also Krüger, pp. 36, sq.), and concentrating all his indignation upon persons rather than principles, Lucifer found Antioch without a bishop; for Euzoius was an Arian, and Meletius, whose return to the church of the Palæa was (so it seems) daily expected, was to Lucifer little better. What to such a man could seem a quicker way to the extinction of the schism than the immediate ordination of a bishop whom all would respect, and whose record was one of the most uncompromising resistance to heresy? Lucifer accordingly, with the aid we may suppose of Kymatius and Anatolius, ordained Paulinus, the widely-esteemed head of the irreconcileable or (to adopt Newman's word) protestant minority, who had never owned any Bishop of Antioch save the deposed and banished Eustathius. The act of Lucifer had momentous consequences (see D.C.B. on Meletius and Flavian, &c.); it perpetuated the existing tendency to schism between East and West; and but for the forbearance of Athanasius it would perhaps have wrecked the alliance of Conservative Asia with Nicene orthodoxy which his later years cemented. Even as it was, the relations between Athanasius and Basil were sorely tried by the schism of Antioch. The Tome however was signed by Paulinus [81] , who added a short statement of his own faith, which, by recognising the legitimacy of the theological language of the other catholic party at Antioch, implicitly conceded the falseness of his own position.
Eusebius and Asterius of Petra carried the letter to Antioch, where they found the mischief already done. In deep pain at the headstrong action of his fellow-countryman, Eusebius gave practical assurance to both parties of his full sympathy and recognition, and made his way home through Asia and Illyria, doing his best in the cause of concord wherever he came. Lucifer renounced communion with all the parties to what he considered a guilty compromise, and journeyed home to Sardinia, making mischief everywhere (terribly so at Naples, according to the grotesque tale in the Lib. Prec.; see D.C.B. iv. 1221 under Zosimus (2)), and ended his days in the twofold reputation of saint and schismatic (Krüger, pp. 55, 116 sq.).
It may be well to add a few words upon the supposed Coptic acts of this council, and upon their connection with the very ancient Syntagma Doctrinæ, wrongly so named, and wrongly ascribed to Athanasius. These acts' are in reality a series of documents consisting of (1) The Nicene Creed, Canons, and Signatures; (2) A Coptic recension of the Syntagma Doctrinæ; (3) the letter of Paulinus from Tom. Ant., sub fin., a letter of Epiphanius, and a fragmentary letter of Rufinus,' i.e. Rufinianus (see infr. p. 566, note 1). Revillout, who published these texts from a Turin and a Roman (Borgia) manuscript in 1881 (Le Concile de Nicée d'apres les textes Coptes) jumped (Archives des missions scientifiques et littéraires, 1879) at the conclusion that the whole series emanated from the council of 362, from whose labours all our copies of the Nicene canons and signatures are supposed by him to emanate. His theory cannot be discussed at length in this place. It is worked out with ingenuity, but with insufficient knowledge of general Church history. It appears to be adopted wholesale by Eichhorn in his otherwise critical and excellent Athanasii de vita ascetica testimonia (see below, p. 189); but even those whose scepticism has not been awaked by the hypothesis itself must I think be satisfied by the careful study of M. Batiffol (Studia Patristica, fasc. ii.) that Revillout has erected a castle in the air. Of any acts' of the Council of 362 the documents contain no trace at all. It is therefore out of place to do more than allude here to the great interest of the Syntagma in its three or four extant recensions in connection at once with the history of Egyptian Monasticism and with the literature of the Didache ton ib' apostolon (see Harnack in Theol. Litzg. 1887, pp. 32, sqq., Eichhorn, ib. p. 569, Warfield in Andover Review, 1886, p. 81, sqq., and other American literature referred to by Harnack a.a.O).
All over the Empire the exiles were returning, and councils were held (p. 489), repudiating the Homoean formula of union, and affirming that of Nicæa. In dealing with the question of those who had formerly compromised themselves with Arianism, these councils followed the lead of that of Alexandria, which accordingly is justly said by Jerome (adv. Lucif. 20) to have snatched the world from the jaws of Satan, by obviating countless schisms and attaching to the Church many who might otherwise have been driven back into Arianism.
Such were the more enduring results of the recall of the exiled bishops by Julian; results very different from what he contemplated in recalling them. Apparently before the date of the council he had written to the Alexandrians (Ep. 26), explaining that he had recalled the exiles to their countries, not to their sees, and directing that Athanasius, who ought after so many sentences against him to have asked special permission to return, should leave the City at once on pain of severer punishment. An appeal seems to have been made against this order by the people of Alexandria, but without effect. Pending the appeal Athanasius apparently felt safe in remaining in the town, and carrying out the measures described above. In October (it would seem) Julian wrote an indignant letter to the Prefect Ecdikius Olympus (Sievers, p. 124), threatening a heavy fine if Athanasius, the enemy of the gods,' did not leave not only Alexandria, but Egypt, at once. He adds an angry comment on his having dared to baptize in my reign' Greek ladies of rank (Ep. 6). Another letter (Ep. 51) to the people of Alexandria, along with arguments in favour of Serapis and the gods, and against Christ, reiterates the order for Athanasius to leave Egypt by Dec. 1. Julian's somewhat petulant reference to the bishop as a contemptible little fellow' ill conceals his evident feeling that Athanasius, who had coped with Constantius like a king battling with a king' (Greg. Naz.), was in Egypt a power greater than himself. But no man has ever wielded such political power as Athanasius with so little disposition to use it. He bowed his head to the storm and prepared to leave Alexandria once more (Oct. 23). His friends stood round lamenting their loss. Be of good heart,' he replied, it is only a cloud, and will soon pass away' (Soz. v. 14). He took a Nile boat, and set off toward Upper Egypt, but finding that he was tracked by the government officers he directed the boat's course to be reversed. Presently they met that of the pursuers, who suspecting nothing asked for news of Athanasius. He is not far off' was the answer, given according to one account by Athanasius himself (Thdt. iii. 9, Socr. iii. 14). He returned to Chæreu, the first station on the road eastward from Alexandria (as is inferred from the Thereu or Thereon of Hist. Aceph. vii., viii.; but the identification is merely conjectural; for Chæreu cf. Itin. and Vit. Ant. 86), and after danger of pursuit was over, ascended to the upper parts of Egypt as far as Upper Hermupolis in the Thebaid and as far as Antinoupolis; and while he abode in these places it was learned that Julian the Emperor was dead, and that Jovian, a Christian, was Emperor' (Hist. Aceph.). Of his stay in the Thebaid (cf. Fest. Ind. xxxv.) some picturesque details are preserved in the life of Pachomius and the letter of Ammon (on which see below, p. 487). As he approached Hermupolis, the bishops, clergy, and monks (about 100 in number') of the Thebaid lined both banks of the river to welcome him. Who are these,' he exclaimed, that fly as a cloud and as doves with their young ones' (Isa. lx. 8, LXX). Then he saluted the Abbat Theodore, and asked after the brethren. By thy holy prayers, Father, we are well.' He was mounted on an ass and escorted to the monastery with burning torches (they almost set fire to him'), the abbat walking before him on foot. He inspected the monasteries, and expressed his high approval of all he heard and saw, and when Theodore, upon departing for his Easter (363) visitation [82] of the brethren, asked the Pope' to remember him in his prayers, the answer was characteristic: If we forget thee, O Jerusalem' (Vit. Pachom. 92, see p. 569). About midsummer he was near Antinoupolis, and trusted messengers warned him that the pursuers were again upon his track. Theodore brought his covered boat to escort him up to Tabenne, and in company with an abbat' called Pammon they made their way slowly against wind and stream. Athanasius became much alarmed and prayed earnestly to himself, while Theodore's monks towed the boat from the shore. Athanasius, in reply to an encouraging remark of Pammon, spoke of the peace of mind he felt when under persecution, and of the consolation of suffering and even death for Christ's sake. Pammon looked at Theodore, and they smiled, barely restraining a laugh. You think me a coward,' said Athanasius. Tell him,' said Theodore to Pammon. No, you must tell him.' Theodore then announced to the astonished archbishop that at that very hour Julian had been killed in Persia, and that he should lose no time in making his way to the new Christian Emperor, who would restore him to the Church. The story (below, p. 487) implies rather than expressly states that the day and hour tallied exactly with the death of Julian, June 26, 363. This story is, on the whole, the best attested of the many legends of the kind which surround the mysterious end of the unfortunate prince. (Cf. Thdt. H. E. iii. 23, Soz. vi. 2. For the religious policy of Julian and his relation to Church history, see Rendall's Julian and the full and excellent article by Wordsworth in D.C.B. iii. 484-525.)
Athanasius entered Alexandria secretly and made his way by way of Hierapolis (Sept. 6, Fest. Ind.) to Jovian at Edessa, and returned with him (apparently) to Antioch. On Feb. 14 (or 20, Fest. Index) he returned to Alexandria with imperial letters and took possession of the churches, his fourth exile having lasted fifteen months and twenty-two days' (Hist. Aceph.). The visit to Antioch was important.
Firstly, it is clear from the combined and circumstantial testimony of the Festal Index, the Hist. Aceph., and the narrative of Ammon, that Athanasius hurried to meet Jovian on his march from Persia to Antioch, and visited Alexandria only in passing and in private. He appears to have taken the precaution (see below) of taking certain bishops and others, representing the majority (plethos) of the Egyptian Church, along with him. Accordingly the tale of Theodoret (iv. 2), that he assembled a council (tous logimoterous ton episkopon egeiras), and wrote a synodal letter to Jovian, in reply to a request from the latter to furnish him with an accurate statement of doctrine (followed by Montf., Hefele, &c.) must be set aside as a hasty conjecture from the heading of the Letter to Jovian (see below, ch. v. §3 (h), and cf. Vales. on Thdt. iv. 3, who suspected the truth).
Athanasius, secondly, had good reason for hurrying. The Arians had also sent a large deputation to petition against the restoration of Athanasius, and to ask for a bishop. Lucius, their candidate for the post, accompanied the deputation. But the energy of Athanasius was a match for their schemes. He obtained a short but emphatic letter from Jovian, bidding him return to his see, and placed in the Emperor's hands a letter (below, Letter 56, p. 567), insisting on the integrity of the Nicene creed, which it recites, and especially on the Godhead of the Holy Spirit.
Meanwhile at Antioch, where the winter was spent (Jovian was mostly there till Dec. 21), there was much to be attended to. Least important of all were the efforts of the Arian deputation to secure a hearing for their demands. Jovian's replies to them on the repeated occasions on which they waylaid him are perhaps undignified (Gwatkin) but yet shew a rough soldier-like common sense. Any one you please except Athanasius' they urged. I told you, the case of Athanasius is settled already:' then, to the body-guard Feri, feri' (i.e. use your sticks!) Some of the plethos of Antioch seized Lucius and brought him to Jovian, saying, Look, your Majesty, at the man they wanted to make a bishop!' (See p. 568 sq.)
Athanasius appears to have attempted to bring about some settlement of the disputes which distracted the Church of Antioch. The Hist. Aceph. makes him arrange the affairs' of that Church, but Sozom. (vi. 5), who copies the phrase, significantly adds hos hoi& 231;n te en--as far as it was feasible.' The vacillations (Philost. viii. 2, 7, ix. 3, &c.) of Euzoius between Eudoxius on the one hand, and the consistent Anomoeans on the other, and the formation of a definite Anomoean sect, represented in Egypt by Heliodorus, Stephen, and other nominees of the bitter Arian Secundus (who appears to be dead at last) probably concerned Athanasius but little. But the breach among the Antiochene Catholics was more hopeless than ever. The action of Paulinus in ordaining a bishop for Tyre, Diodorus by name (p. 580 note), shews that he had caught something of the spirit of Lucifer, while on the other hand we can well imagine that it was with mixed feelings that Athanasius saw a number of bishops assemble under Meletius to sign the Nicene Creed. To begin with, they explained the homoousion to be equivalent to ek tes ousias and homoion kat' ousian. Now this was no more than taking Athanasius literally at his word (de Syn. 41 exactly; the confession, Socr. iii. 25, appears to meet Ath. de Syn. half way: cf. the reference to 'Ellenike chresis with de Syn. 51), and there is no reason to doubt that the majority [83] of those who signed did so in all sincerity, merely guarding the homoousion against its Sabellian sense (which Hilary de Syn. 71, had admitted as possible), and in fact, meaning by the term exactly what Basil the Great and his school meant by it. This is confirmed by the express denunciation of Arianism and Anomoeanism. But Athanasius may have suspected an intention on the part of some signatories to evade the full sense of the creed, especially as touching the Holy Spirit, and this suspicion would not be lessened by the fact that Acacius signed with the rest. It must remain possible, therefore, that a clause in the letter to Jovian referred to above, expresses his displeasure [84] at the wording of the document. (On the significance of the confession in question, see Gwatkin, pp. 226 sq., 244, note 1.) We gather from language used by St. Basil at a later date (Bas. Epp. 89, 258) that Athanasius endeavoured to conciliate Meletius, and to bring about some understanding between the two parties in the Church. Meletius appears to have considered such efforts premature: Basil writes to him that he understands that Athanasius is much disappointed that no renewal of friendly overtures has taken place, and that if Meletius desires the good offices of the Bishop of Alexandria the first word must come from him (probably seven or eight years later than this date). In justice to Meletius it must be allowed that Paulinus did his best to embitter the schism by ordaining bishops at Tyre and elsewhere, ordinations which Meletius naturally resented, and appears to have ignored (D.C.B. iv. Zeno (3),--where observe that the breach of canons began with the appointment of Paulinus himself). Athanasius returned to Alexandria on Feb. 14 (Hist. Aceph.) or 20 (Fest. Ind.), and Jovian died, by inhaling the fumes of a charcoal fire in the bedroom of a wayside inn, on Feb. 17.
Valentinian, an officer of Pannonian birth, was elected Emperor by the army, and shortly co-opted his brother Valens to a share in the Empire. Valens was allotted the Eastern, Valentinian choosing the Western half of the Empire. Valentinian was a convinced but tolerant Catholic, and under his reign Arianism practically died away in the Latin West (infra, p. 488). Valens, a weak, parsimonious, but respectable and well-intentioned ruler, at first took no decided line, but eventually (from the end of 364) fell more and more into the hands of Eudoxius (from whom he received baptism in 367) and the Arian hangers-on of the Court (a suggestive, if in some details disputable, sketch of the general condition of the Eastern Church under Valens in Gwatkin, pp. 228-236, 247 sq.). The semi-Arians of Asia were continuing their advance toward the Nicene position, but the question of the Holy Spirit was already beginning to cleave them into two sections. At their council of Lampsacus (autumn of 364) they reasserted their formula of essential likeness' against the Homoeans, but appear to have left the other and more difficult question undecided. After Valens had declared strongly on the side of the enemy, they were driven to seek Western aid. They set out to seek Valentinian at Milan, but finding him departed on his Gallic campaign (Gwatkin, 236, note) they contented themselves with laying before Liberius, on behalf of the Synod of Lampsacus and other Asiatic Councils, a letter accepting the Nicene Creed. After some hesitation (Soc. iv. 12) they were cordially received by Liberius, who gave them a letter to take home with them, in which the controverted question of the Holy Spirit is passed over in silence. (Letter of the Asiatics in Socr. iv. 12, that of Liberius in Hard. Conc. i. 743-5, the names include Cyril of Jerusalem, Macedonius, Silvanus of Tarsus, Athanasius of Ancyra, &c., and the Pope's letter is addressed to them et universis orientalibus orthodoxis'). On their return, the disunion of the party manifested itself by the refusal of several bishops to attend the synod convoked to receive the deputies at Tyana, and by their assembling a rival meeting in Caria to reaffirm the Lucianic' Creed (Hefele, ii. 287 E. Tr.). Further efforts at reunion were frustrated by the Imperial prohibition of an intended Synod at Tarsus, possibly in 367.
Athanasius remained in peace in his see until the spring of 365, when on May 5 a rescript was published at Alexandria, ordering that all bishops expelled under Constantius who had returned to their sees under Julian should be at once expelled by the civil authorities under pain of a heavy fine. The announcement was received with great popular displeasure. The officials were anxious to escape the fine, but the Church-people argued that the order could not apply to Athanasius, who had been restored by Constantius, expelled by Julian in the interest of idolatry, and restored by order of Jovian. Their remonstrances were backed up by popular riots: when these had lasted a month, the Prefect quieted the people by the assurance that the matter was referred back to Augustus (Hist. Aceph. x., followed by Soz. vi. 12). But on Oct. 5 an imperative answer seems to have come. The Prefect and the Commandant broke into the Church of Dionysius at night and searched the apartments of the clergy to seize the bishop. But Athanasius, warned in time, had escaped from the town that very night and retired to a country house which belonged to him near the New River' [85] . This was the shortest and mildest of the five exiles of Athanasius. In the autumn the dangerous revolt of Procopius threw the Eastern Empire into a panic. It was no time to allow popular discontent to smoulder at Alexandria, and on Feb. 1, 366, the notary Brasidas publicly announced the recall of Athanasius to Imperial order. The notary and curiales' went out to the suburb in person and escorted Athanasius in state to the Church of Dionysius. __________________________________________________________________
[80] He states (1) That a rigorist party in the council were at first opposed to all conciliatory measures; this is highly probable, see Hieron. adv. Lucif. 20; (2) that former active Arians were to be admitted to lay communion only; this is not unlikely; (3) by implication, that Eusebius and Lucifer went first to Antioch, and agreed to take no step till after the Council which Eus. was to attend in person, and Luc. by deputy, at Alxa., but that Luc. broke his promise. This may contain a grain of truth, i.e. that Lucifer promised to do nothing before he heard from Alxa., but Eusebius can scarcely have gone to Antioch. I owe these notices to the excellent analysis of our sources of information in Krüger, Lucif. p. 46 sq.; but he makes an odd slip, p. 48, in saying that Soz. schweigt von der Synode zu Alex. uberhaupt.'
[81] This is placed later in 363 by Dr. Bright, D.C.B. i. 199, on the ground of a statement of Epiphanius, Hær. 77. 20, which, however, is not quite decisive on the point.
[82] Krüger, in Theol. Litzg. 1890, p. 620 sqq., fixes the death of Theodore for Easter 363, on the ground, as I venture to think, of a date (345) for the death of Pachomius too early by one year. The question is too intricate to discuss here, but with all deference to so competent a critic, I am confident that Theodore lived till at any rate the following Easter. See infr. p. 569, note 3.
[83] This is certainly true of men like Athanasius of Ancyra, Eusebius of Samosata, Pelagius of Laodicea, Titus of Bostra, &c.
[84] The tract de Hypocrisi Meletii et Eusebii printed among the dubious' works of Athanasius may well express the sentiments of some of his friends of the party of Paulinus on this occasion. (Tillem. viii. 708.)
[85] So Hist. Aceph., Fest. Ind. Socrates iv. 13 says he hid four months in his Father's tomb.' Soz. vi. 12, mentions the story, but finding it contradicted by the Hist. Aceph., adopts the vague compromise eis ti chorion ekrupteto. The New River' divided Alexandria from its Western suburbs. __________________________________________________________________
§10. Last Years, Feb. 1, 366-May 2, 373.
Athanasius now entered upon the last septennium of his life, a well-earned Sabbath of honoured peace and influence for good. Little occurred to disturb his peace at home, and if the confusion and distress of the Eastern Church under Valens could not but cause him anxiety, in Egypt at any rate, so long as he lived, the Catholic Faith was secure from molestation.
In 367 Lucius, who had been ordained Bishop of Alexandria by the Arian party at Antioch, made an attempt to enter the city. He arrived by night on Sept. 24, but on the following day the public got wind of his presence in Alexandria, and a dangerous riot was imminent. A strong military force rescued him from the enraged mob, and on Sept. 26 he was escorted out of Egypt. In the previous year a heathen riot had taken place and the great Church in the Cæsareum had been burned. But in May, 368, the building was recommenced (the incendiaries having been punished) under an Imperial order.
On Sept. 22, 368, Athanasius began to build a Church in the quarter Mendidium' (perhaps in commemoration of his completion of the 40th year of his Episcopate, see Hist. Aceph. xii.), which was dedicated Aug. 7, 370, and called after his own name.
In 368 or the following year we place the Synod at which Athanasius drew up his letter to the bishops of Africa giving an account of the proceedings at Nicæa, and mentioning his dissatisfaction at the continued immunity enjoyed by Auxentius at Milan (see p. 488).
Our knowledge of the last years of the life of Athanasius is derived partly from his own letters (59-64), partly from the scanty data of his latest works, partly from the letters of Synesius and Basil. From Synesius (Ep. 77) we hear of the case of Siderius, a young officer from the army who was present in Libya on civil duty. The Bishop of Erythrum, Orion by name, was in his dotage, and the inhabitants of two large villages in the diocese, impatient of the lack of supervision, clamoured for a bishop of their own, and for the appointment of Siderius. Siderius was accordingly consecrated by a certain Bishop Philo alone, without the canonical two assistants, and without the cognisance of Athanasius. But in view of the immense utility of the appointment Athanasius overlooked its irregularity, and even promoted Siderius to the Metropolitan see of Ptolemais, merging the two villages upon Orion's death once more into their proper diocese. (Fuller details D.C.B. iv. 777, sq.) But if Athanasius was no slave to ecclesiastical discipline when the good of the church was in question, he enforced it unsparingly in the interest of morality. An immoral governor of Libya was sternly excommunicated and the fact announced far and wide. We have the reply of Basil the Great, who in 370 had become Bishop of Cæsarea in Cappadocia, to this notification, and from this time frequent letters passed between the champions of the Old and of the New Nicene orthodoxy. Unhappily we have none of the letters of Athanasius: those of Basil shew us that the loss is one to be deplored. The correspondence bore partly on the continuance of the unhappy schism at Antioch. Basil asks for the mediation of Athanasius; if he could not bring himself to write a letter to the bishops in communion with Meletius, he might at least use his influence with Paulinus and prevail upon him to withdraw. He also presses Meletius to take the initiative in conciliation: possibly he did so, at least one of Basil's letters is sent by the hand of one of Meletius' deacons (Bas. Epp. 60, 66, 69, 80, 82, 89). But nothing came of the application:' Meletius probably felt injured at the strong support Athanasius had given to Paulinus, even in so questionable an affair as that of Diodorus of Tyre (supra, §9, and cf. Letter 64); while Athanasius was too deeply committed to surrender Paulinus, who again was the last man to yield of his own accord (Thdt. H. E. v. 23).
Basil obtained the good offices of Athanasius in his attempt to induce the bishops of Rome and the West to give him some support in his efforts against heresy in the East; but the failure here was due to the selfishness and arrogance of the Westerns. (Epp. 61, 67).
Basil was also troubled with the continued refusal of Athanasius and the Westerns to repudiate Marcellus, who was still living in extreme old age, and to whom the mass of the people at Ancyra were attached (Bas. Ep. 266, Legat. Eugen. 1, anarithmeton plethos). This state of things, he urged, kept alive the prejudice of many against the Nicene decrees (Ep. 69). But the Marcellians, perhaps aware of the efforts of Basil, sent a deputation, headed by the deacon Eugenius, and fortified by letters from the bishops' of Macedonia and Achaia, to Alexandria. A synod was apparently in readiness to receive them, and upon demand they produced a statement of their faith, emphatically adopting the Nicene creed, condemning Sabellius, but affirming an en hupostasei triada. The distinction between Logos and the Son is rejected, and the idea that the Monad existed before the Son anathematised. Photinus is classed as a heretic with Paul of Samosata. Only the eternal duration of Christ's kingdom is not mentioned. (It may be noted that while this letter gives up many points of the theology of Marcellus, the process is quite completed in a letter submitted by the Marcellian community in 375 to some exiled Egyptian bishops at Diocæsarea [86] ; Epiph. Hær. 72, 11). Athanasius accepted the confession, and the assembled bishops subscribed their names (only a few signatures are preserved). While we understand Basil's regret at the refusal of Athanasius to condemn Marcellus, we can scarcely share it. If Athanasius shewed partiality toward his old ally, it was an error of generosity, or rather let us say a recognition of the truth, too often forgotten in religious controversy, that mistakes are not necessarily heresies, and that a man may go very far wrong in his opinions and yet be entitled to sympathy and respect.
Basil speaks of Athanasius in terms of unbounded veneration and praise, and Athanasius in turn rebukes those who attempted to disparage Basil's orthodoxy, calling him a bishop such as any church might desire to call its own (p. 579 sq.).
During the last decade of his life the attention of Athanasius was drawn to the questions raised by the Arian controversy as to the human nature of our Lord. The Arian doctrine on this subject was apparently as old as Lucian, but the whole subject received little or no attention in the earlier stages of the controversy, and it was only with the rise of the Anomoean school that the questions came into formal discussion. In the later letters of Athanasius we see the traces of wide-spread controversy on the matter (especially in that to Epictetus, No. 59), and Apollinarius, bishop of the Syrian Laodicea, and a former close friend of Athanasius, whose legates in 362 had joined in condemning the Arian Christology, broached a peculiar theory on the subject, viz., that while Christ took a human soul along with His Body, the Word took the place of the human spirit, pneuma (1 Thess. v. 23). The details of the system do not belong to our subject (an excellent sketch in Gwatkin's Arian Controversy, pp. 136-141); in fact it was two years after the death of Athanasius when Apollinarius definitely founded a sect by consecrating a schismatic bishop for the already distracted Church of Antioch. But Athanasius marked with alarm the tendency of his friend, and in the very last years of his life wrote a tract against his tenet in two short books, in which, as in writing against Marcellus and Photinus 15 years before, he refrains from mentioning Apollinarius by name. It may be observed that at the close of the second book he brings himself for the first time to censure by name him they call Photinus,' classing him along with Paul of Samosata.
Athanasius was active to the last; spiritually (we are not able to say physically) his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated.' In his seventy-fifth year he entered (Ruf. ii. 3) upon the forty-sixth year of his episcopate. Feeling that his end was near, he followed the example of his revered predecessor Alexander, and named Peter as the man whom he judged fittest to succeed him; then on the seventh of Pachon [87] (May 2, 373) he departed this life in a wonderful manner.' __________________________________________________________________
[86] For the best treatment of the document, see Zahn, p, 95. I am quite unable to follow the theory advanced in D. C. B. iii. 812; least of all the writer's suggestion that Athanasius was egregiously duped' (!) by Marcellus.
[87] Fest. Ind. xlv. The Hist. Aceph. give May 3; probably he died after midnight; but May 2 is kept as his feast by the Copts and by the Western Church. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Chapter III.
Writings and Personal Characteristics of S. Athanasius
§1. It will be attempted to give a complete list of his writings in chronological order; those included in this volume will be marked with an asterisk and enumerated in this place without remark. The figures prefixed indicate the probable date.
(1) 318: *Two books contra Gentes,' viz. c. Gent. and De Incarn. (2) 321-2: *Depositio Arii (on its authorship, see Introd.) (3) 328-373: *Festal Letters. (4) 328-335? *Ecthesis or Expositio Fidei. (5) Id.? *In Illud Omnia, etc. (6) 339: *Encyclica ad Episcopos ecclesiæ catholicæ. (7) 343: *Sardican Letters (46, 47, in this vol.). (8) 351? *Apologia Contra Arianos. (9) 352? *De Decretis Concilii Nicæni, with the *Epistola Eusebii (a.d. 325) as appendix. (10) Id.? *De Sententia Dionysii. (11) 350-353? *Ad Amun, (Letter 48). (12) 354: *Ad Dracontium (Letter 49 in this vol.). (13) 356-362? *Vita Antoni. (14) 356: *Epistola ad Episc. Ægypti et Libyæ. (15) 356-7: *Apol. ad Constantium. (16) 357: *Apol. de Fuga. (17) 358: *Epist. ad Serapionem de Morte Arii (Letter 54). (18) ID. *Two Letters to Monks (52, 53). (19) 358? *Historia Arianorum ad monachos.' (20) Id. *Orationes adversus Arianos IV. (21) 359? *Ad Luciferum (Letters 50, 51). (22) Id.? Ad Serapionem Orationes IV. (Migne xxvi. 529, sqq.). These logoi or dogmatic letters are the most important work omitted in the present volume. Serapion of Thmuis, who appears from the silence respecting him in the lists of exiles to have escaped banishment in 356-7, reported to Athanasius the growth of the doctrine that, while the Son was co-essential with the Father, the Spirit was merely a creature superior to Angels. Athanasius replied in a long dogmatic letter, upon receiving which Serapion was begged to induce the author to abridge it for the benefit of the simple. After some hesitation Athanasius sent two more letters, the second drawing out the proofs of the Godhead of the Son, the third restating more concisely the argument of the first. The objections by which these letters were met were replied to in a fourth letter which Athanasius declared to be his last word. The persons combated are not the Macedonians, who only formed a party on this question at a later date, and whose position was not quite that combated in these letters. Athanasius calls them Tropikoi, or Figurists,' from the sense in which they understood passages of Scripture which seemed to deify the Holy Spirit. It is not within our compass to summarise the treatises, but it may be noted that Ath. argues that where pneuma is absolute or anarthrous in Scripture it never refers to the Holy Spirit unless the context already supplies such reference (i. 4, sqq.). He meets the objection that the Spirit, if God and of God, must needs be a Son, by falling back upon the language of Scripture as our guide where human analogies fail us. He also presses his opponents with the consequence that they substitute a Dyad for a Trinity. In the fourth letter, at the request of Serapion, he gives an explanation of the words of Christ about Sin Against the Spirit. Rejecting the view (Origen, Theognostus) that post-baptismal sin is meant (§§9, sqq.), as favouring Novatianist rigour, he examines the circumstances under which our Lord uttered the warning. The Pharisees refused to regard the Lord as divine when they saw His miracles, but ascribed them to Beelzebub. They blasphemed the Spirit,' i.e. the Divine Personality of Christ (§19, cf. Lam. iv. 20, LXX.). So far as the words relate to the Holy Spirit, it is not because the Spirit worked through Him (as through a prophet) but because He worked through the Spirit (20). Blasphemy against the Spirit, then, is blasphemy against Christ in its worst form (see also below, ch. iv., §6). It may be noted lastly that he refers to Origen in the same terms of somewhat measured praise (ho polumathes kai philoponos), as in the De Decretis.
(23) 359-60. *De Synodis Arimini et Seleuciæ celebratis. (24) 362: *Tomus Ad Antiochenos. (25) Id. Syntagma Doctrinæ (?) see chapter ii. §9, above. (26) 362: *Letter to Rufinianus (Letter 55). (27) 363-4: *Letter to Jovian (Letter 56). (28) 364? *Two small Letters to Orsisius (57, 58). (29) 369? *Synodal Letter Ad Afros. (30) Id.? *Letter to Epictetus (59). (31) Id.? *Letters to Adelphius and Maximus (60, 61). (32) 363-372 ? *Letter to Diodorus of Tyre (fragment, Letter 64). (33) 372: *Letters to John and Antiochus and to Palladius (62, 63). (34) 372? Two books against Apollinarianism (Migne xxvi. 1093, sqq. Translated with notes, &c., in Bright, Later Treatises of St. Athan.). The two books are also known under separate titles: Book I. as De Incarnatione D.N.J.C. contra Apollinarium,' Book II. as De Salutari Adventu D.N.J.C.' The Athanasian authorship has been doubted, chiefly on the ground of certain peculiar expressions in the opening of Book I.; a searching investigation of the question has not yet been made, but on the whole the favourable verdict of Montfaucon holds the field. He lays stress on the affinity of the work to letters 59-61. I would add that the studious omission of any personal reference to Apollinarius is highly characteristic.) In the first book Athanasius insists on the reality of the human nature of Christ in the Gospels, and that it cannot be co-essential with the Godhead. We do not worship a creature?' No; for we worship not the Flesh of Christ as such but the Person who wears it, viz. the Son of God. Lastly, he urges that the reality of redemption is destroyed if the Incarnation does not extend to the spirit of man, the seat of that sin which Christ came to atone for (§19), and seeks to fasten upon his opponents a renewal (§§20, 21) of the system of Paul of Samosata.
The second book is addressed to the question of the compatibility of the entire manhood with the entire sinlessness of Christ. This difficulty he meets by insisting that the Word took in our nature all that God had made, and nothing that is the work of the devil. This excludes sin, and includes the totality of our nature.
This closes the list of the dated works which can be ascribed with fair probability to Athanasius.
The remainder of the writings of Athanasius may be enumerated under groups, to which the dated' works will also be assigned by their numbers as given above. Works falling into more than one class are given under each.
a. Letters. (Numbers 3, 7, 11, 12, 17, 18, 21, 26-28, 30-33; spurious letters, see infr. p. 581.)
b. Dogmatic. (2, 4, 5, 9, 10, 14, 20, 22-24, 26, 27, 29-31, 34.)
(35.) De Trinitate et Spiritu Sancto (Migne xxvi. 1191). Preserved in Latin only, but evidently from the Greek. Pronounced genuine by Montfaucon, and dated (?) 365.
(36) De Incarnatione et Contra Arianos (ib. 984). The Athanasian authorship of this short tract is very questionable. It is quoted as genuine by Theodoret Dial. ii. and by Gelasius de duabus naturis. In some councils it is referred to as On the Trinity against Apollinarius;' by Facundus as On the Trinity.' The tract is in no sense directed against Apollinarius. In reality it is an argument, mainly from Scripture, for the divinity of Christ, with a digression (13-19) on that of the Holy Spirit. On the whole the evidence is against the favourable verdict of Montfaucon, Ceillier, &c. That Athanasius should, at any date possible for this tract, have referred to the Trinity as the three Hypostases' is out of the question (§10): his explanation of Prov. viii. 22 in Orat. ii. 44 sqq. is in sharp contrast with its reference to the Church in §6; at a time when the ideas of Apollinarius were in the air and were combated by Athanasius (since 362) he would not have used language savouring of that system (§§2, 3, 5, 7, &c.). It has been thought that we have here one of the Apollinarian tracts which were so industriously and successfully circulated under celebrated names (infra, on No. 40); the express insistence on two wills in Christ (§21), if not in favour of Athanasian might seem decisive against Apollinarian authorship, but the peculiar turn of the passage, which correlates the one will with sarx the other with pneuma and theos is not incompatible with the latter, which is, moreover, supported by the constant insistance on God having come, en sarki and en homoiomati anthropou. The anthropos teleios of §8 and the homoiothe kata panta of §11 lose their edge in the context of those passages. The first part of §7 could scarcely have been written by an earnest opponent of Apollinarianism. This evidence is not conclusive, but it is worth considering, and, at any rate, leaves it very difficult to meet the strong negative case against the genuineness of the Tract. (Best discussion of the latter in Bright, Later Treatises of St. A., p. 143; he is supported by Card. Newman in a private letter.)
(37) The Sermo Maior de Fide. (Migne xxvi. 1263 sqq., with an additional fragment p. 1292 from Mai Bibl. nov.). This is a puzzling document in many ways. It has points of contact with the earliest works of Ath. (especially pieces nearly verbatim from the de Incarn., see notes there), also with the Expos. Fid. Card. Newman calls it with some truth Hardly more than a set of small fragments from Ath.'s other works.' However this may be, it is quoted by Theodoret as Athanasian more than once. The peculiarity lies in the constant iteration of Anthropos for the Lord's human nature (see note on Exp. Fid.), and in some places as though it were merely the equivalent to soma or sarx, while in others the Anthropos might be taken as the seat of Personality (26, 32). Accordingly the tract might be taken advantage of either by Nestorians, or still more by Apollinarians. The syllogistic method,' praised in the work by Montfaucon, was not unknown to the last-mentioned school. (Prov. viii. 22 is explained in the Athanasian way. For a fuller discussion, result unfavourable, see Bright, ubi supr. p. 145.)
(38) Fragments against Paul of Samosata, Macedonians, Novatians (Migne xxvi. 1293, 1313-1317). The first of these may well be genuine. It repeats the (mistaken) statement of Hist. Ar. 71, that Zenobia was a Jewess. Of the second, all that can be said is that it attacks the Macedonians in language borrowed from Ep. Æg. 11. The third, consisting of a somewhat larger group of five fragments, comprise a short sentence comparing the instrumentality of the priest in absolving to his instrumentality in baptizing.
It may be observed that fragments of this brevity rarely furnish a decisive criterion of genuineness.
(39) Interpretatio Symboli (ib. 1232, Hahn, §66). Discussed fully by Caspari, Ungedruckte u.s.w. Quellen i. pp. 1-72, and proved to be an adaptation of a baptismal creed drawn up by Epiphanius (Ancor. ad fin.) in 374. It may be Alexandrian, and, if so, by Bishop Peter or Theophilus about 380. It is a Ermeneia, or rather an expansion, of the Nicene, not as Montf. says, of the Apostles'(!), Creed.
(40) De Incarnatione Verbi Dei (Migne xxviii. 25-29). Quoted as Athanasian by Cyril of Alex., &c., and famous as containing the phrase Mian phusin tou Logou sesarkomenen Apollinarian; one of the many forgeries from this school circulated under the names of Athanasius, Gregory Thaumaturgus, Julius, &c. See Caspari, ubi supra 151, Loofs, Leontius, p. 82, sqq. Caspari's proof is full and conclusive. See also Hahn, §120.
(41) Verona Creed (Hahn, §41, q.v.), a Latin fragment of a Western creed; nothing Athanasian but the ms. title.
(42) Damasine' Creed (Opp. ed. Ben. ii. 626, Migne P.L lxii. 237 in Vig. Thaps.) forms the eighth' of the Libri de Trinitate ascribed now to Athan. now to Damasus, &c., &c.: see Hahn, §128 and note.
(43) de Incarnatione' (Migne xxviii. 89), Anti-Nestorian: fifth century.
c. Historical, or historico-polemical (6, 8-10, 13-19, 23).
(44) Fragment concerning Stephen and the Envoys at Antioch (Migne xxvi. 1293). Closely related (relative priority not clear) to the account in Thdt. H. E., ii. 9.
d. Apologetic. To this class belong only the works under No. (1).
e. Exegetical (5). The other exegetical works attributed to Athan. are mainly in Migne, vol. xxvii.
(45) Ad Marcellinum de Interpretatione Psalmorum. Certainly genuine. A thoughtful and devout tract on the devotional use of the Psalter. He lays stress on its universality, as summing up the spirit of all the other elements of Scripture, and as applying to the spiritual needs of every soul in all conditions. He remarks that the Psalms are sung not for musical effect, but that the worshippers may have longer time to dwell upon their meaning. The whole is presented as the discourse tinos philoponou gerontos, possibly an ideal character.
(46) Expositiones in Psalmos, with an Argumentum (hupothesis) prefixed. The latter notices the arrangement of the Hebrew Psalter, the division into books, &c., and accounts for the absence of logical order by the supposition that during the Captivity some prophet collected as best he could the Scriptures which the carelessness of the Israelites had allowed to fall into disorder. The titles are to be followed as regards authorship. Imprecatory passages relate to our ghostly enemies. In the Expositions each Psalm is prefaced by a short statement of the general subject. He occasionally refers to the rendering of Aquila, Theodotion, and Symmachus.
(47) Fragmenta in Psalmos. Published by Felckmann from the Catena of Nicetas Heracleota, who has used his materials somewhat freely, often combining the comments of more than one Father into a single whole.
(48) De Titulis Psalmorum. First published by Antonelli in 1746. This work, consisting of very brief notes on the Psalter verse by verse, is spoken of disparagingly by Alzog, Patrol., p. 229, and regarded as spurious, on good prima facie grounds, by Gwatkin, p. 69, note. Eichhorn, de Vit. Ascet., p. 43, note, threatens the latter (1886) with a refutation which, however, I have not seen.
(49) Fragmentum in Cantica. (Photius mentions a Commentary on Eccles. and Cant.) From a Catena published by Meursius in 1617. Very brief (on Cant. i. 6, 7, iii. 1, 2, vi. 1). A spurious homily is printed (pp. 1349-1361) as an appendix to it.
(50) Fragmenta in Evang. Matthæi. Also from ms. catenæ. Contain a remarkable reference to the Eucharist (p. 1380, on Matt. vii. 6) and a somewhat disparaging reference to Origen (infr. p. 33) in reference to Matt. xii. 32, which passage is explained as in Serap. iv. (vide supra 22). The extracts purport in some cases to be taken from a homiletical or expository work of Athanasius divided into separate logoi. The passage on the nine incurable diseases of Herod' is grotesque (Migne xxvi. 1252), but taken from Joseph., B. J. I. xxiii. 5. Cf. Euseb. H. E. i. 8.
(51) Fragmenta in Lucam. Also from ms. catenæ. At the end, a remarkable passage on the extent to which prayers can help the departed.
(52) Fragmenta in Job. From Nicetas and ms. catenæ. Contains little remarkable. Behemoth' is Satan, as elsewhere in Athan.
(53) Fragmentum in I. Cor. A short paragraph on 1 Cor. vii. 1, or rather on vi. 18, somewhat inadequately explained.
f. Moral and Ascetic, (11-13, [25], 28).
(54) Sermo de Patientia. (Migne xxvi. 1295.) Of doubtful genuineness (Montf., Gwatkin).
(55) De Virginitate. (Migne xxviii. 251). Pronounced dubious by Montf., spurious by Gwatkin, genuine by Eichhorn (ubi supr., pp. 27, sqq.), who rightly lays stress on the early stage of feminine asceticism which is implied. But I incline to agree with Mr. Gwatkin as to its claims to come from Athanasius. Three hypostases' are laid down in a way incompatible with Athanasius' way of speaking in later life.
(56) Miscellaneous Fragments. These are too slight and uncertain to be either classed or discussed here. De Amuletis (xxvi. 1319); de Azymis, (1327), very dubious; In Ramos palmarum (1319), also dubious; various small homiletical and controversial pieces (pp. 1224-1258) of various value and claims to genuineness. (See also Migne xxv. p. xiv. No. xx.)
(57) Of Lost Works (in addition to those of which fragments have been mentioned above) a Refutation of Arianism is referred to in Letter 52. We also hear of a treatise against heresies (a fragment above, No. 56). A Synodicon,' with the names of all Bishops present at Nicæa, is quoted by Socr. i. 13, but is referred by Revillout to his alleged Acts of the Synod of Alexandria in 362, which he supposes to have reissued the Acts of Nicæa. See above, p. lix. A consolatory address to the Virgins maltreated by George is mentioned by Theodoret, H. E. ii. 14; he quotes a few words, referring to the fact that the Arians would not even allow them peaceable burial, but sit about the tombs like demons' to prevent it. The Oratio de defunctis (infra, ch. iv. §6, fragment above, 56) is ascribed to him by John Damasc., but by others to Cyril of Alexandria. Many of his letters must have been lost. The Festal Letters are still very incomplete, and his letters to S. Basil would be a welcome discovery if they exist anywhere. A doctrinal letter against the Arians, not preserved to us, is mentioned de Decr. 5. (See also Montfaucon's Præf. ii. (Migne xxv. p. xxv., sqq), and Jerome, de Vir. illustr. 87, a somewhat careless and scanty list.)
The above enumeration includes all the writings attributed with any probability to S. Athanasius. The fragmentary character of many of them is no great presumption against their genuineness. The Abbat Cosmas in the sixth century advised all who met with anything by Athanasius to copy it, and if they had no paper, to use their clothes for the purpose. This will readily explain (if explanation is needed) the transmission of such numerous scraps of writing under the name of the great bishop. It will also partly explain the large body of Spurious Works which have sheltered themselves under his authority. To this class we have already assigned several writings (25, 36, 37? 39-43, 44? 48? 53? 55, 56 in part). Others whose claims are even less strong may be passed over, with only the mention of one or two of the more important. They are all printed in Migne, vol. xxviii., and parallels to some, especially the dubious' In passionem et crucem Domini, are marked in Williams' notes to the Festal Letters, partly incorporated in this volume. The epistola catholica and Synopsis Scripturæ sacræ are among the better known, and are classed with a few others as dubia' by Montfaucon, the fictitious Disputatio habita in concilio Nicæno contra Arium, among the spuria.' The silly tale de Imagine Berytensi seems to have enjoyed a wide circulation in the middle ages. Of the other undoubtedly spurious' works the most famous is the Athanasian Creed' or Quicunque Vult. It is needless to say that it is unconnected with Athanasius: its origin is still sub judice. The second part of it bears traces of the period circa 430 a.d., and the question which still awaits a last word is whether the Symbol is or is not a fusion of two originally independent documents. Messrs. Lumby, Swainson and others have ably maintained this, but the difficulties of their hypothesis that the fusion took place as late as about 800 a.d. are very great, and I incline to think will eventually prove fatal to it. But the discussion does not belong to our present subject. __________________________________________________________________
§2. Athanasius as an Author. Style and Characteristics.
Athanasius was not an author by choice. With the exception of the early apologetic tracts all the writings that he has left were drawn from him by the stress of theological controversy or by the necessities of his work as a Christian pastor. We have no systematic doctrinal treatise, no historical monograph from his pen, although his writings are rich in materials for history and dogmatics alike. The exception to this is in the exegetical remains, especially those on the Psalms, which (supra, No. 45, sqq.) imply something more than occasional work, some intention of systematic composition. For this, a work congenial to one who was engaged in preaching, his long intervals of quiet at Alexandria (especially 328-335, 346-356, 365-373) may well have given him leisure. But on the whole, his writings are those of a man of powerful mind indeed and profound theological training, but still of a man of action. The style of Athanasius is accordingly distinguished from that of many older and younger contemporaries (Eusebius, Gregory Naz., &c.) by its inartificiality. This was already observed by Erasmus, who did not know many of his best works, but who notes his freedom from the harshness of Tertullian, the exaggeration of Jerome, the laboured style of Hilary, the overloaded manner of Augustine and Chrysostom, the imitation of the Attic orators so conspicuous in Gregory; sed totus est in explicanda re.' That is true. Athanasius never writes for effect, but merely to make his meaning plain and impress it on others. This leads to his principal fault, namely his constant self-repetition (see p. 47, note 6); even in apologising for this he repeats the offence. The praise by Photius (quoted below, Introd. to Orat.) of his aperitton seems to apply to his freedom not from repetition but from extravagance, or studied brilliancy. This simplicity led Philostorgius, reflecting the false taste of his age, to pronounce Athanasius a child as compared with Basil, Gregory, or Apollinarius. To a modern reader the manliness of his character is reflected in the unaffected earnestness of his style. Some will admire him most when, in addressing a carefully calculated appeal to an emperor, he models his periods on Demosthenes de Corona (see p. 237). To others the unrestrained utterance of the real man, in such a gem of feeling and character as the Letter (p. 557) to Dracontius, will be worth more than any studied apology. With all his occasional repetition, with all the feebleness of the Greek language of that day as an instrument of expression, if we compare it with the Greek of Thucydides or Plato, Athanasius writes with nerve and keenness, even with a silent but constant underflow of humour. His style is not free from Latinisms; preda (= præda) in the Encycl., beteranos (= veteranus), belon (= velum), magistros, &c., are barbarisms belonging to the later decadence of Greek, but not without analogy even in the earliest Christian Literature. xunoris is used in an unusual sense, p. 447. 'Areiomanitai seems to be coined by himself; akathekon, apoxenizein, epakouein (= answer), enkuklein, &c., are Alexandrinisms (see Fialon, p. 289). On the whole, no man was ever less of a stylist, while at the same time making the fullest use of the resources furnished by the language at his command. When he wrote, seven centuries of decay had passed over the language of Thucydides, the tragedians, Plato and the Orators. The Latin Fathers of the day had at their disposal a language only two centuries or so past its prime. The heritage of Thucydides had passed through Tacitus to the Latin prose writers of the silver age. The Latin of Tertullian, Cyprian, Jerome, Augustin, Leo, with all its mannerisms and often false antithesis and laboured epigram, was yet a terse incisive weapon compared with the patristic Greek. But among the Greek Fathers Athanasius is the most readable, simply because his style is natural and direct, because it reflects the man rather than the age. __________________________________________________________________
§3. Personal characteristics (see Stanley's Eastern Church, Lect. vii.).
To write an elaborate character of Athanasius is superfluous. The full account of his life (chap. ii.), and the specimens of his writings in this volume, may be trusted to convey the right impression without the aid of analysis. But it may be well to emphasise one or two salient points. [88]
In Athanasius we feel ourselves in contact with a commanding personality. His early rise to decisive epoch-making influence,--he was scarcely more than 27 at the council of Nicæa,--his election as bishop when barely of canonical age, the speedy ascendancy which he gained over all Egypt and Libya, the rapid consolidation of the distracted province under his rule, the enthusiastic personal loyalty of his clergy and monks, the extraordinary popularity enjoyed by him at Alexandria even among the heathen (excepting, perhaps, the more abandoned among them,' Hist. Ar. 58), the evident feeling of the Arians that as long as he was intact their cause could not prosper, the jealously of his influence shewn by Constantius and Julian, all this is a combined and impressive tribute to his personal greatness. In what then did this consist?
Principally, no doubt, in his moral and mental vigour; resolute ability characterises his writings and life throughout. He had the not too common gift of seeing the proportions of things. A great crisis was fully appreciated by him; he always saw at once where principles separated or united men, where the bond or the divergence was merely accidental. With Arius and Arianism no compromise was to be thought of; but he did not fail to distinguish men really at one with him on essentials, even where their conduct toward himself had been indefensible (de Syn.). So long as the cause was advanced, personal questions were insignificant. So far Athanasius was a partisan. It may be admitted that he saw little good in his opponents; but unless the evidence is singularly misleading there was little good to see. The leaders of the Arian interest were unscrupulous men, either bitter and unreasoning fanatics like Secundus and Maris, or more often political theologians, like Eusebius of Nicomedia, Valens, Acacius, who lacked religious earnestness. It may be admitted that he refused to admit error in his friends. His long alliance with Marcellus, his unvarying refusal to utter a syllable of condemnation of him by name; his refusal to name even Photinus, while yet (Orat. iv.) exposing the error associated with his name; his suppression of the name of Apollinarius, even when writing directly against him; all this was inconsistent with strict impartiality, and, no doubt, placed his adversaries partly in the right. But it was the partiality of a generous and loyal spirit, and he could be generous to personal enemies if he saw in them an approximation to himself in principle. When men were dead, unlike too many theologians of his own and later times, he restrained himself in speaking of them, even if the dead man were Arius himself.
In the whole of our minute knowledge of his life there is a total lack of self-interest. The glory of God and the welfare of the Church absorbed him fully at all times. We see the immense power he exercised in Egypt; the Emperors recognised him as a political force of the first order; Magnentius bid for his support, Constantius first cajoled, then made war upon him; but on no occasion does he yield to the temptation of using the arm of flesh. Almost unconscious of his own power, he treats Serapion and the monks as equals or superiors, begging them to correct and alter anything amiss in his writings. His humility is the more real for never being conspicuously paraded.
Like most men of great power, he had a real sense of humour (Stanley, p. 231, sq., ed. 1883). Even in his youthful works we trace it (infr. p. 2), and it is always present, though very rarely employed with purpose. But the exposure of the Arsenius calumny at Tyre, the smile with which he answered the importunate catechising of an Epiphanius about old' Marcellus, the oracular interpretation of the crow's cras' in answer to the heathen (Sozom. iv. 10), the grave irony with which he often confronts his opponents with some surprising application of Scripture, his reply to the pursuers from the Nile boat in 362, allow us to see the twinkle of his keen, searching eye. Courage, self-sacrifice, steadiness of purpose, versatility and resourcefulness, width of ready sympathy, were all harmonised by deep reverence and the discipline of a single-minded lover of Christ. The Arian controversy was to him no battle for ecclesiastical power, nor for theological triumph. It was a religious crisis involving the reality of revelation and redemption. He felt about it as he wrote to the bishops of Egypt, we are contending for our all' (p. 234).
A certain cloud of romance encircled him' (Reynolds). His escapes from Philagrius, Syrianus, Julian, his secret presence in Alexandria, his life among the monasteries of Egypt in his third exile, his reputed visits to distant councils, all impress the imagination and lend themselves to legend and fable. Later ages even claimed that he had fled in disguise to Spain and served as cook in a monastery near Calahorra (Act. SS. 2 Maii)! But he is also surrounded by an atmosphere of truth. Not a single miracle of any kind is related of him. To invest him with the halo of miracle the Bollandists have to come down to the translation' of his body, not to Constantinople (an event surrounded with no little uncertainty), but to Venice, whither a thievish sea-captain, who had stolen it from a church in Stamboul, brought a body, which decisively proved its identity by prodigies which left no room for doubt. But the Athanasius of history is not the subject of any such tales. It has been said that no saint outside the New Testament has ever claimed the gift of miracles for himself. At any rate (though he displays credulity with regard to Antony), the saintly reputation of Athanasius rested on his life and character alone, without the aid of any reputation for miraculous power.
And resting upon this firm foundation, it has won the respect and admiration even of those who do not feel that they owe to him the vindication of all that is sacred and precious. Not only a Gregory or an Epiphanius, an Augustine or a Cyril, a Luther or a Hooker, not only Montfaucon and Tillemont, Newman and Stanley pay tribute to him as a Christian hero. Secular as well as Church historians fall under the spell of his personality, and even Gibbon lays aside his solemn sneer' to do homage to Athanasius the great. __________________________________________________________________
[88] Of his personal appearance little is known. Gregory Naz. praises his beauty of expression, Julian sneers at his small stature. Later tradition adds a slight stoop, a hooked nose and small mouth, short beard spreading into large whiskers, and light auburn hair, (See Stanley ubi supr). __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IV.
The Theology of S. Athanasius
§1. General Considerations.
The theological training of Athanasius was in the school of Alexandria, and under the still predominant although modified influence of Origen (see above, pp. xiv., xxvii.). The resistance which the theology of that famous man had everywhere encountered had not availed, in the Greek-speaking churches of the East, to stem its influence; at the same time it had made its way at the cost of much of its distinctive character. Its principal opponent, Methodius, who represented the ancient Asiatic tradition, was himself not uninfluenced by the theology he opposed. The legacy of his generation to the Nicene age was an Origenism tempered in various degrees by the Asiatic theology and by accommodations to the traditional canon of ecclesiastical teaching. The degrees of this modification were various, and the variety was reflected in the indeterminate body of theological conviction which we find at the time of the outbreak of Arianism, and which, as already explained, lies at the basis of the reaction against the definition of Nicæa. The theology of Alexandria remained Origenist, and the Origenist character is purest and most marked in Pierius, Theognostus, and in the non-episcopal heads of the Alexandrian School. The bishops of Alexandria after Dionysius represent a more tempered Origenism. Especially this holds good of the martyred Peter, whom we find expressly correcting distinctive parts of the system of his spiritual ancestor. In Alexander of Alexandria, the theological sponsor of the young Athanasius, the combination of a fundamentally Origenist theology with ideas traceable to the Asiatic tradition is conspicuous [89] .
Athanasius, then, received his first theological ideas from Origenist sources, and in so far as he eventually diverged from Origen we must seek the explanation partly in his own theological or religious idiosyncrasy and in the influences which he encountered as time went on, partly in the extent to which the Origenism of his masters was already modified by different currents of theological influence.
To work out this problem satisfactorily would involve a separate treatise and a searching study, not only of Athanasius [90] but on the one hand of Origen and his school, on the other of Methodius and the earlier pre-Nicene theologians. What is here attempted is the more modest task of briefly drawing attention to some of the more conspicuous evidences of the process and to some of its results in the developed theology of the saintly bishop.
It has been said by Harnack that the theology of Athanasius underwent no development, but was the same from first to last. The truth of this verdict is I think limited by the fact that the Origenism of Athanasius distinctly undergoes a change, or rather fades away, in his later works. A non-Origenist element is present from the first, and after the contest with Arianism begins, Origen's ideas recede more and more from view. Athanasius was influenced negatively by the stress of the Arian controversy: while the vague and loose Origenism of the current Greek theology inclined the majority of bishops to dread Sabellianism rather than Arianism, and to underrate the danger of the latter (pp. xviii., xxxv.), Athanasius, deeply impressed, from personal experience, with the negation of the first principles of redemption which Arianism involved, stood apart from the first from the theology of his Asiatic contemporaries and went back to the authority of Scripture and the Rule of Faith. He was influenced positively by the Nicene formula, which represents the combination of Western with anti-Origenist Eastern traditions in opposition to the dominant Eastern theology. The Nicene formula found in Athanasius a mind predisposed to enter into its spirit, to employ in its defence the richest resources of theological and biblical training, of spiritual depth and vigour, of self-sacrificing but sober and tactful enthusiasm; its victory in the East is due under God to him alone.
Athanasius was not a systematic theologian: that is he produced no many-sided theology like that of Origen or Augustine. He had no interest in theological speculation, none of the instincts of a schoolman or philosopher. His theological greatness lies in his firm grasp of soteriological principles, in his resolute subordination of everything else, even the formula homoousios, to the central fact of Redemption, and to what that fact implied as to the Person of the Redeemer. He goes back from the Logos of the philosophers to the Logos of S. John, from the God of the philosophers to God in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. His legacy to later ages has been felicitously compared (Harnack, Dg. ii. 26, note) to that of the Christian spirit of his age in the realm of architecture. To the many forms of architectural conception which lived in Rome and Alexandria in the fourth century, the Christian spirit added nothing fresh. Its achievement was of a different kind. Out of the many it selected and consecrated one; the multiplicity of forms it carried back to a single dominant idea, not so much by a change in the spirit of the art as by the restoration of Religion to its place as the central motive. It bequeathed to the art of the middle ages the Basilica, and rendered possible the birth of Gothic, a style, like that of the old Greek Temple, truly organic. What the Basilica was in the history of the material, the central idea of Athanasius has been in that of the spiritual fabric; an auspicious reduction, full of promise for the future, of the exuberant speculation of Greek theology to the one idea in which the power of religion then resided' (ib. and pp. 22 sqq., freely reproduced). __________________________________________________________________
[89] To begin with, we have the interesting fact that Alexander studied the writings of Melito of Sardis, and even worked up his tract peri psuches kai somatos eis to pathos into a homiletical discourse of his own, omitting such passages as seemed to savour of modalism,' (see Krüger in Zeitschr. f. wiss. Theol. 1888, p. 434, sqq.: his grounds are convincing). Secondly, the expressions attributed to him by Arius (in his letter to Euseb. Nic.), and his letter to his namesake of Byzantium, bear out the above statement.
[90] The reader is requested to supplement the necessarily very slender treatment of the Athanasian theology in this chapter by referring to the General Index to this volume, as well as to the Index of Texts, for guidance to the passages of Athanasius which are needed to check, fill out, and qualify what is here presented only in broad outline. __________________________________________________________________
§2. Fundamental ideas of man and his redemption.
To Athanasius the Incarnation of the Son of God, and especially his Death on the Cross, is the centre of faith and theology (Incar. 19, kephalaion tes pisteos, cf. 9. 1 and 2, 20. 2, &c.). For our salvation' (Incar. 1) the Word became Man and died. But how did Athanasius conceive of salvation'? from what are we saved, to what destiny does salvation bring us, and what idea does he form of the efficacy of the Saviour's death? Now it is not too much to say that no one age of the Church's existence has done full justice to the profundity and manysidedness of the Christian idea of Redemption as effected in Christ and as unfolded by S. Paul. The kingdom of God and His Righteousness; the forgiveness of sins and the adoption of sons as a present gift; the consummation of all at the great judgment;--Christian men of different ages, countries, characters and mental antecedents, while united in personal devotion to the Saviour and in the sanctifying Power of His Grace, have interpreted these central ideas of the Gospel in terms of their own respective categories, and have succeeded in bringing out now one, now another aspect of the mystery of Redemption rather than in preserving the balance of the whole. Who will claim that the last word has yet been said on S. Paul's deep conception of God's (not mercy but) Righteousness as the new and peculiar element (Rom. i. 17, iii. 22, 26) of the Gospel Revelation? to search out the unsearchable riches of Christ is the prerogative of Christian faith, but is denied, save to the most limited extent, to Christian knowledge (1 Cor. xiii. 9). The onesidedness of any given age in apprehending the work of Christ is to be recognised by us not in a censorious spirit of self-complacency, but with reverent sympathy, and with the necessity in view of correcting our own: panta dokimazete, to kalon katechete.
Different ages and classes have necessarily thought under different categories. The categories of the post-apostolic age were mainly ethical; the Gospel is the new law, and the promise of eternal life, founded on true knowledge of God, and accepted by faith. Those of the Asiatic fathers from Ignatius downwards were largely physical or realistic. Mankind is brought in Christ (the physician) from death to life, from phthora to aphtharsia (Ign. passim); to euangelion...apartisma aphtharsias (Ign., Melit.); human nature is changed by the Incarnation, man made God. Tertullian introduced into Western theology forensic categories. He applied them to the Person, not yet to the Work, of Christ: but the latter application, pushed to a repellent length in the middle ages, and still more so since the Reformation, may without fancifulness be traced back to the fact that the first Latin Father was a lawyer. Again, Redemption was viewed by Origen and others under cosmological categories, as the turning point in the great conflict of good with evil, of demons with God, as the inauguration of the deliverance of the creation and its reunion with God. The many-sidedness of Origen combined, indeed, almost every representation of Redemption then current, from the propitiatory and mediatorial, which most nearly approached the thought of S. Paul, to the grotesque but widely-spread view of a ransom due to the devil which he was induced to accept by a stratagem. It may be said that with the exception of the last-named every one of the above conceptions finds some point of contact in the New Testament; even the forensic idea, thoroughly unbiblical in its extremer forms, would not have influenced Christian thought as it has done had it not corresponded to something in the language of S. Paul.
Now Athanasius does not totally ignore any one of these conceptions, unless it be that of a transaction with the devil, which he scarcely touches even in Orat. ii. 52 (see note there). Of the forensic view he is indeed almost clear. His reference to the debt' (to opheilomenon, Incar. 20, Orat. ii. 66) which had to be paid is connected not so much with the Anselmic idea of a satisfaction due, as with the fact that death was by the divine word (Gen. iii.), attached to sin as its penalty.
The aspect of the death of Christ as a vicarious sacrifice (anti panton, de Incar. 9; prosphora and thusia, 10) is not passed over. But on the whole another aspect predominates. The categories under which Athanasius again and again states the soteriological problem are those of zoe and thanatos, and aphtharsia. So far as he works the problem out in detail it is under physical categories, without doing full justice to the ideas of guilt and reconciliation, of the reunion of will between man and God. The numberless passages which bear this out cannot be quoted in full, but the point is of sufficient importance to demand the production of a few details.
(a) The original state of man was not one of nature,' for man's nature is phthora; (ten en thanato kata phusin phthoran, Incar. 3, cf. 8, 10, 44) the Word was imparted to them in that they were made kata ten tou theou eikona (ib). Hence what later theology marks off as an exclusively supernatural gift is according to Athanasius inalienable from human nature, i.e. it can be impaired but not absolutely lost (Incar. 14, and apparently Orat. iii. 10 fin.; the question of the teaching of Athan. upon the natural endowments of man belongs specially to the Introd. to de Incarnatione, where it will be briefly discussed). Accordingly their infraction of the divine command (by turning their minds, c. Gent. 3, to lower things instead of to the theoria ton theion), logically involved them in non-existence (de Incar. 4), but actually, inasmuch as the likeness of God was only gradually lost, in phthora, regarded as a process toward non-existence. This again involved men in increasing ignorance of God, by the gradual obliteration of the eikon, the indwelling Logos, by virtue of which alone men could read the open book (c. Gent. 34 fin.) of God's manifestation of Himself in the Universe. It is evident that the pathological point of view here prevails over the purely ethical: the perversion of man's will merges in the general idea of phthora, the first need of man is a change in his nature; or rather the renewed infusion of that higher and divine nature which he has gradually lost. (Cf. de Incar. 44, chrezonton tes autou theotetos dia tou homoiou).
(b) Accordingly the mere presence of the Word in a human body, the mere fact of the Incarnation, is the essential factor in our restoration (simile of the city and the king, ib. 9. 3, &c., cf. Orat. ii. 67, 70). But if so, what was the special need of the Cross? Athanasius felt, as we have already mentioned, the supremacy of the Cross as the purpose of the Saviour's coming, but he does not in fact give to it the central place in his system of thought which it occupies in his instincts. Man had involved himself in the sentence of death; death must therefore take place to satisfy this sentence (Orat. ii. 69; de Incar. 20. 2, 5); the Saviour's death, then, put an end to death regarded as penal and as symptomatic of man's phthora (cf. ib. 21. 1, &c.). It must be confessed that Athanasius does not penetrate to the full meaning of S. Paul. The latter also ascribed a central import to the mere fact of the Incarnation (Rom. viii. 3, pempsas), but primarily in relation to sin (yet see Athan. c. Apoll. ii. 6); and the destruction of the practical power of sin stands indissolubly correlated (Rom. viii. 1) with the removal of guilt and so with the Righteousness of God realising itself in the propitiation of the blood of Christ (ib. iii. 21--26).
To Athanasius nature is the central, will a secondary or implied factor in the problem. The aspect of the death of Christ most repeatedly dwelt upon is that in it death spent its force (plerotheises tes exousias en to kuriako souati, ib. 8) against human nature, that the corruption' of mankind might run its full course and be spent in the Lord's body, and so cease for the future. Of this Victory over death and the demons the Resurrection is the trophy. His death is therefore to us (ib. 10) the arche zoes, we are henceforth aphthartoi dia tes anastaseos (27. 2, 32. 6, cf. 34. 1, &c.), and have a portion in the divine nature, are in fact deified (cf. de Incarn. 54, and note there). This last thought, which became (Harnack, vol. ii. p. 46) the common property of Eastern theology, goes back through Origen and Hippolytus to Irenæus. On the whole, its presentation in Athanasius is more akin to the Asiatic than to the Origenist form of the conception. To Origen, man's highest destiny could only be the return to his original source and condition: to Irenæus and the Asiatics, man had been created for a destiny which he had never realised; the interruption in the history of our race introduced by sin was repaired by the Incarnation, which carried back the race to a new head, and so carried it forward to a destiny of which under its original head it was incapable. To Origen the Incarnation was a restoration to, to Irenæus and to Athanasius (Or. ii. 67), an advance upon, the original state of man. (Pell, pp. 167-177, labours to prove the contrary, but he does not convince.)
(c) This leads us to the important observation that momentous as are to Athanasius the consequences of the introduction of sin into the world, he yet makes no such vast difference between the condition of fallen and unfallen men as has commonly been assumed to exist. The latter state was inferior to that of the members of Christ (Orat. ii. 67, 68), while the immense (c. Gent. 8, de Incar. 5) consequences of its forfeiture came about only by a gradual course of deterioration (de Incar. 6. 1, ephanizeto; observe the tense), and in different degrees in different cases. The only difference of kind between the two conditions is in the universal reign of Death since the (partial) forfeiture of the tou kat' eikona charis: and even this difference is a subtle one; for man's existence in Paradise was not one of aphtharsia except prospectively (de Incar. 3. 4). He enjoyed present happiness, alupos anodunos amerimnos zoe, with promise of aphtharsia in heaven. That is, death would have taken place, but not death as unredeemed mankind know it (cf. de Incar. 21. 1). In other words, man was created not so much in a state of perfection (teleios ktistheis, p. 384) as with a capacity for perfection (and for even more than perfection, p. 385 sq.) and with a destiny to correspond with such capacity. This destination remains in force even after man has failed to correspond to it, and is in fact assigned by Athanasius as the reason why the Incarnation was a necessity on God's part (de Incar. 6. 4-7, 10. 3, 13. 2-4, Orat. ii. 66, &c., &c.). Accordingly, while man was created (Orat. ii. 59) through the Word, the Word became Flesh that man might receive the yet higher dignity of Sonship [91] ; and while even before the Incarnation some men were de facto pure from sin (Orat. iii. 33) by virtue of the charis tes kleseos involved in to kat' eikona' (see ib. 10, fin.; Orat. i. 39 is even stronger, cf. iv. 22), they were yet thnetoi and phthartoi; whereas those in Christ die, no longer kata ten proteran genesin en to 'Adam, but to live again logotheises tes sarkos (Orat. iii. 33, fin., cf. de Incar. 21. 1).
(d) The above slight sketch of the Athanasian doctrine of man's need of redemption and of the satisfaction of that need brings to light a system free from much that causes many modern thinkers to stumble at the current doctrine of the original state and the religious history of mankind. That mankind did not start upon their development with a perfect nature, but have fought their way up from an undeveloped stage through many lower phases of development; that this development has been infinitely varied and complex, and that sin and its attendant consequences have a pathological aspect which practically is as important as the forensic aspect, are commonplaces of modern thought, resting upon the wider knowledge of our age, and hard to reconcile with the (to us) traditional theological account of these things. The Athanasian account of them leaves room for the results of modern knowledge, or at least does not rudely clash with the instincts of the modern anthropologist. The recovery of the Athanasian point of view is prima facie again. At what cost is it obtained? Does its recognition involve us in mere naturalism veiled under religious forms of speech? That was certainly not the mind of Athanasius, nor does his system really lend itself to such a result. To begin with, the divine destiny of man from the first is an essential principle with our writer. Man was made and is still exclusively destined for knowledge of and fellowship with his Creator. Secondly the means, and the only means, to this end is Christ the Incarnate Son of God. In Him the religious history of mankind has its centre, and from Him it proceeds upon its new course, or rather is enabled once more to run the course designed for it from the first. How far Athanasius exhausted the significance of this fact may be a question; that he placed the fact itself in the centre is his lasting service to Christian thought.
(e) The categories of Athanasius in dealing with the question before us are primarily physical, i.e., on the one hand cosmological, on the other pathological. But it is well before leaving the subject to insist that this was not exclusively the case. The purpose of the Incarnation was at once to renew us, and to make known the Father (de Incarn. 16); or as he elsewhere puts it (ib. 7 fin.), anaktisai ta hola, huper panton, pathein, and peri panton presbeusui pros ton Patera. The idea of aphtharsia which so often stands with him for the summum bonum [92] imparted to us in Christ, involves a moral and spiritual restoration of our nature, not merely the physical supersession of phthora by athanasia (de Incarn. 47, 51, 52, &c., &c.). __________________________________________________________________
[91] The above is strikingly illustrated by the discussion (pp. 381-383) of prototokos pases ktiseos (Col. i. 15). At first sight Ath. appears to contradict himself, explaining prototokos as he does first solely of the Saviour as Incarnate, and then of the cosmic and creative function of the Word. But closer examination brings out his view of creation itself (p. 383) as an act of Grace, demanding not (as the current Eastern theology held, in common with Arius) the mediation of a subordinate Creator, but an act of absolutely Divine condescension analogous to, and anticipatory of, the Incarnation. The apparently disturbing persistence in the argument of the cosmological explanation of prototokos is really therefore due to a subtle change in it, by virtue of which it comes into relation with the Soteriological idea,--which is the pivot of the entire anti-Arian position of Athanasius on this question,--and with the ultimate scheme in which (cf. Rom. viii.) the effects of the Incarnation are to embrace the whole creation. Because creation as such involves the promise of adoption, and tends to deification as its goal, the Son is prototokos in the region of Grace and of Creation alike.
[92] On the subject of §2, see also Pell. Lehre des h. Athan. and Shedd ii. pp. 37, sqq., 237, sqq. The former demonstrates his full accord with modern Roman Catholic teaching, the latter, his exact harmony with the modern Protestant view of the doctrine. It is at least a tribute to the greatness of Athan. that advocates of all sides are so eager to claim him. __________________________________________________________________
§3. Fundamental Ideas of God, the World, and Creation.
The Athanasian idea of God has been singled out for special recognition in recent times; he has been claimed, and on the whole with justice, as a witness for the immanence of God in the universe in contrast to the insistence in many Christian systems on God's transcendence or remoteness from all created things. (Fiske, Idea of God, discussed by Moore in Lux Mundi (ed. 1) pp. 95-102.) The problem was one which Christian thought was decisively compelled to face by the Arian controversy (supra, p. xxix. sq.). The Apologists and Alexandrians had partially succeeded in the problem expressed in the dying words of Plotinus, to bring the God which is within into harmony with the God which is in the universe,' or rather to reconcile the transcendence with the immanence of God. But their success was only partial: the immanence of the Word had been emphasised, but in contrast with the transcendence of the Father. This could not be more than a temporary resting-place for the Christian mind, and Arius forced a solution. That solution was found by Athanasius. The mediatorial work of the Logos is not necessary as though nature could not bear the untempered hand of the Father. The Divine Will is the direct and sole source of all things, and the idea of a mediatorial nature is inconsistent with the true idea of God (pp. 87, 155, 362, comparing carefully p. 383). All things created are capable of sustaining God's absolute hand. The hand which fashioned Adam now also and ever is fashioning and giving entire consistence to those who come after him.' The immanence, or intimate presence and unceasing agency of God in nature, does not belong to the Word as distinct from the Father, but to the Father in and through the Word, in a word to God as God (cf. de Decr. 11, where the language of de Incarn. 17 about the Word is applied to God as such). This is a point which marks an advance upon anything that we find in the earliest writings of Athanasius, and upon the theology of his preceptor Alexander, to whom, amongst other not very clear formulæ, the Word is a mesiteuousa phusis monogenes (Thdt. H. E. ii. 4; Alexander cannot distinguish phusis from hupostasis or ousia; Father and Son are duo achorista pragmata, but yet te hupostasei duo phuseis). This is indeed the principal particular in which Athanasius left the modified Origenism of his age, and of his own school, behind. If on the other hand he resembled Arius in drawing a sharper line than had been drawn previously between the one God and the World, it must also be remembered that his God was not the far off purely transcendent God of Arius, but a God not far from every one of us (Orat. ii. p. 361 sq.).
That God is beyond all essence huperekeina pases ousias (c. Gent. 2. 2, 40. 2, 35. I genetes ousias) is a thought common to Origen and the Platonists, but adopted by Athanasius with a difference, marked by the addition of genetes. That God created all things out of pure bounty of being (c. Gent. §2. 2, §41. 2, de Incarn. §3. 3, and note there) is common to Origen and Philo, being taken by the latter from Plato's Timæus. The Universe, and especially the human soul, reflects the being of its Author (c. Gent. passim). Hence there are two main paths by which man can arrive at the knowledge of God, the book of the Universe (c. Gent. 34 fin.), and the contemplation or self-knowledge of the soul itself (ib. 33, 34). So far Athanasius is on common ground with the Platonists (cf. Fialon, pp. 270, sqq.); but he takes up distinctively Christian ground, firstly, in emphasising the insufficiency of these proofs after sin has clouded the soul's vision, and, above all, in insisting on the divine Incarnation as the sole remedy for this inability, as the sole means by which man as he is can reach a true knowledge of God. Religion not philosophy is the sphere in which the God of Athanasius is manifest to man. Here, again, Athanasius is Christo-centric.' With Origen, Athanasius refuses to allow evil any substantive existence (c. Gent. §§2, 6, de Incarn. §4. 5); evil resides in the will only, and is the result of the abuse of its power of free choice (c. Gent. 5 and 7). The evil in the Universe is mainly the work of demons, who have aggravated the consequences of human sin also (de Incarn. 52. 4). On the other hand, the evil does not extend beyond the sphere of personal agency, and the Providence of God (upon which Athanasius insists with remarkable frequency, especially in the de Fuga and c. Gent. and de Incarn., also in Vit. Anton.) exercises untiring care over the whole. The problem of suffering and death in the animal creation is not discussed by him; he touches very incidentally, Orat. ii. 63, on the deliverance of creation in connection with Rom. viii. 19-21. __________________________________________________________________
§4. Vehicles of Revelation; Scripture, the Church, Tradition.
(a) The supreme and unique revelation of God to man is in the Person of the Incarnate Son. But though unique the Incarnation is not solitary. Before it there was the divine institution of the Law and the Prophets, the former a typical anticipation (de Incarn. 40. 2) of the destined reality, and along with the latter (ib. 12. 2 and 5) for all the world a holy school of the knowledge of God and the conduct of the soul.' After it there is the history of the life and teaching of Christ and the writings of His first Disciples, left on record for the instruction of all ages. Athanasius again and again applies to the Scriptures the terms theia and theopneusta (e.g. de Decr. 15, de Incarn. 33. 3, &c.; the latter word, which he also applies to his own martyr teachers, is, of course, from 2 Tim. iii. 16). The implications of this as bearing on the literal exactness of Scripture he nowhere draws out. His strongest language (de Decr. ubi supra) is incidental to a controversial point: on Ps. lii. (liii.) 2, he maintains that there is no hyperbola in Scripture; all is strictly true,' but he proceeds on the strength of that principle to allegorise the verse he is discussing. In c. Gent. 2, 3, he treats the account of Eden and the Fall as figurative. But in his later writings there is, so far as I know, nothing to match this. In fact, although he always employs the allegorical method, sometimes rather strangely (e.g. Deut. xxviii. 66, in de Incarn. 35, Orat. ii. 19, after Irenæus, Origen, &c.), we discern, especially in his later writings, a tendency toward a more literal exegesis than was usual in the Alexandrian school. His discussion, e.g., of the sinlessness of Christ (c. Apol. i. 7, 17, ii. 9, 10) contrasts in this respect with that of his master Alexander, who appeals, following Origen's somewhat startling allegorical application, to Prov. xxx. 19, a text nowhere used by Ath. in this way (Thdt. H. E. i. 4). This is doubtless largely due to the pressure of the controversy with the Arians, who certainly had more to gain than their opponents from the prevalent unhistorical methods of exegesis, as we see from the use made by them of 2 Cor. iv. 11 at Nicæa, and of Prov. viii. 22 throughout [93] . Accordingly Athanasius complains loudly of their exegesis (Ep. Æg. 3-4, cf. Orat. i. 8, 52), and insists (id. i. 54, cf. already de Decr. 14) on the primary necessity of always conscientiously studying the circumstances of time and place, the person addressed, the subject matter, and purpose of the writer, in order not to miss the true sense. This rule is the same as applies (de Sent. Dion. 4) to the interpretation of any writings whatever, and carries with it the strict subordination of the allegorical to the historical sense, contended for by the later school of Antioch, and now accepted by all reasonable Christians (see Kihn in Wetzer-Hergenröther's Kirchen-Lex. vol. i. pp. 955-959, who calls the Antiochene exegesis certainly a providential phenomenon;' also supra, p. xxviii., note 1).
(b) The Canon of Scripture accepted by Athanasius has long been known from the fragments of the thirty-ninth Festal Letter (Easter, 367). The New Testament Canon comprises all the books received at the present day, but in the older order, viz., Gospels, Acts, Catholic Epistles, Pauline Epistles (Hebrews expressly included as S. Paul's between Thess. and Tim.), Apocalypse. The Old Testament canon is remarkable in several ways. The number of books is 22, corresponding to the Alexandrian Jewish reckoning, not to the (probably) older Jewish or Talmudic reckoning of 24 (the rolls of Ruth and Lam. counted separately, and with the Hagiographa). This at once excludes from the Canon proper the so-called Apocrypha,' with the exception of the additions to Daniel, and of Baruch and the Epistle,' which are counted as one book with Jeremiah. The latter is also the case with Lamentations, while on the other hand the number of 22 is preserved by the reckoning of Ruth as a separate book from Judges to make up for the exclusion of Esther. This last point is archaic, and brings Athanasius into connection with Melito (171 a.d.), who gives (Eus. H. E. iv. 26. 14, see also vol. 1, p. 144, note 1, in this series) a Canon which he has obtained by careful enquiry in Palestine. This Canon agrees with that of Athanasius except with regard to the order assigned to Esdras' (i.e. Ezra and Nehemiah, placed by M. at the end), to the twelve in one book' (placed by M. after Jer.), and Daniel (placed by M. before Ezekiel). Now, Esther is nowhere mentioned in the N.T., and the Rabbinical discussions as to whether Esther defiled the hands' (i.e. was canonical') went on to the time of R. Akiba (135), an older, and even of R. Juda the holy' (150-210), a younger, contemporary of Melito (see Wildeboer, Ontstaan van den Kanon, pp. 58, sq., 65, &c.). The latter, therefore, may represent the penultimate stage in the history of the Hebrew canon before its close in the second century, (doubted by Bleek, Einl.^5, §242, but not unlikely). Here, then, Ath. represents an earlier stage of opinion than Origen (Eus. H. E. vi. 25), who gives the finally fixed Hebrew Canon of his own time, but puts Esther at the end. As to the number of books, Athan. agrees with Josephus, Melito, Origen, and with Jerome, who, however, knows of the other reckoning of 24 (nonnulli' in Prol. Gal.). Athanasius enumerates, as outside the Canon, but appointed by the Fathers to be read by those who newly join us,' Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Esther, Judith, and Tobit, as well as what is called the Teaching of the Apostles and the Shepherd. In practice, however, he quotes several of the latter as Scripture' (Wisdom repeatedly so, see index to this vol.); The Shepherd' is most profitable,' and quoted for the Unity of the Creator (and cf. de Decr. 4), but not as Scripture;' the Didache' is not used by him unless the Syntagma (vide supra, p. lix.) be his genuine work. He also quotes 1 Esdras for the praise of Truth, and 2 Esdras once, as a prophet.' Daniel' includes Susanna and Bel and the Dragon.
(c) On the sufficiency of Scripture for the establishment of all necessary doctrine Athanasius insists repeatedly and emphatically (c. Gent. 1, de Incarn. 5, de Decr. 32, Vit. Ant. 16, &c., &c.); and he follows up precept by example. His works are a continuous appeal to Scripture.' There is no passage in his writings which recognises tradition as supplementing Scripture, i.e., as sanctioning articles of faith not contained in Scripture. Tradition is recognised as authoritative in two ways: (1) Negatively, in the sense that doctrines which are novel are prima facie condemned by the very fact (de Decr. 7, note 2, ib. 18, Orat. i. 8, 10, ii. 34, 40, de Syn. 3, 6, 7, and Letter 59, §3); and (2) positively, as furnishing a guide to the sense of Scripture (see references in note on Orat. iii. 58, end of ch. xxix.). In other words, tradition with Athanasius is a formal, not a material, source of doctrine. His language exemplifies the necessity of distinguishing, in the case of strong patristic utterances on the authority of tradition, between different senses of the word. Often it means simply truth conveyed in Scripture, and in that sense handed down' from the first, as for example c. Apol. i. 22, the Gospel tradition,' and Letter 60. 6 (cf. Cypr. Ep. 74. 10, where Scripture is divinæ traditionis caput et origo.'). Moreover, tradition as distinct from Scripture is with Athanasius not a secret unwritten body of teaching handed down orally [94] , but is to be found in the documents of antiquity and the writings of the Fathers, such as those to whom he appeals in de Decr., &c. That the appeal of Athanasius was to Scripture, that of the Arians to tradition' (Gwatkin) is an overstatement, in part supported by the pre-Nicene history of the word homoousion (supra, p. xxxi. sq.). The rejection of this word by the Antiochene Council (in 268-9) is met by Athanasius, de Synod. 43, sqq., partly by an appeal to still older witnesses in its favour, partly by the observation (§45) that writing in simplicity [the Fathers] arrived not at accuracy concerning the homoousion, but spoke of the word as they understood it,' an argument strangely like that of the Homoeans (Creed of Niké, ib. §30) that the Fathers [of Nicæa] adopted the word in simplicity.'
(d) Connected with the function and authority of tradition is that of the Church. On the essential idea of the Church there is little or nothing of definite statement. The term Catholic Church' is of course commonly used, both of the Church as a whole, and of the orthodox body in this or that place. The unity of the Church is emphatically dwelt on in the opening of the encyclical written in the name of Alexander (infr., p. 69 and supr., p. xvi.) as the reason for communicating the deposition of Arius at Alexandria to the Church at large. The joyful mother of children' (Exp. in Ps. cxiii. 9) is interpreted of the Gentile Church, made to keep house,' hate ton Kurion enoikon echousa, joyful because her children are saved through faith in Christ,' whereas those of the synagogue' are apolei& 139; paradedomena: the strong city' polis perioches and Edom' of Ps. lx. 11 are likewise interpreted of the Church as gathered from all nations; similarly the Ethiopians of Ps. lxxxvii. 4 (where the de Tit. pss. gives a quite different and more allegorical sense, referring the verse to baptism). The full perfection of the Church is referred by Athanasius not to the (even ideal) Church on earth but to the Church in heaven. The kingdom of God' (Matt. vi. 33) is explained as the enjoyment of the good things of the future, namely the contemplation and knowledge of God so far as man's soul is capable of it,' while the city of Ps. lxxxvii. 1-3 is he ano Ierousalem in the de Titulis, but in the Expositio the Church glorified by the indwelling of the Only-begotten.' In all this we miss any decisive utterance as to the doctrinal authority of the Church except in so far as the recognition of such authority is involved in what has been cited above in favour of tradition. It may be said that the conditions which lead the mind to throw upon the Church the weight of responsibility for what is believed were absent in the case of Athanasius as indeed in the earlier Greek Church generally.
But Athanasius was far from undervaluing the evidence of the Church's tradition. The organ by which the tradition of the Church does its work is the teaching function of her officers, especially of the Episcopate (de Syn. 3, &c.). But to provide against erroneous teaching on the part of bishops, as well as to provide for the due administration of matters affecting the Church generally, and for ecclesiastical legislation, some authority beyond that of the individual bishop is necessary. This necessity is met, in the Church as conceived by Athanasius, in two ways, firstly by Councils, secondly in the pre-eminent authority of certain sees which exercise some sort of jurisdiction over their neighbours. Neither of these resources of Church organisation meets us, in Athanasius, in a completely organised shape. A word must be said about each separately, then about their correlation.
(a) Synods. Synods as a part of the machinery of the Church grew up spontaneously. The meeting of the Apostles and Elders' at Jerusalem (Acts xv.) exemplifies the only way in which a practical resolution on a matter affecting a number of persons with independent rights can possibly be arrived at, viz., by mutual discussion and agreement. Long before the age of Athanasius it had been recognised in the Church that the bishops were the persons exclusively entitled to represent their flocks for such a purpose; in other words, Councils of bishops had come to constitute the legislative and judicial body in the Church (Eus. V. C. i. 51). Both of these functions, and especially the latter, involved the further prerogative of judging of doctrine, as in the case of Paul of Samosata. But the whole system had grown up out of occasional emergencies, and no recognised laws existed to define the extent of conciliar authority, or the relations between one Council and another should their decisions conflict. Not even the area covered by the jurisdiction of a given Council was defined (Can. Nic. 5). We see a Synod at Arles deciding a case affecting Africa, and reviewing the decision of a previous Synod at Rome; a Council at Tyre trying the case of a bishop of Alexandria; a Council at Sardica in the West deposing bishops in the East, and restoring those whom Eastern Synods had deposed; we find Acacius and his fellows deposed at Seleucia, then in a few weeks deposing their deposers at Constantinople; Meletius appointed and deposed by the same Synod at Antioch in 361, and in the following year resuming his see without question. All is chaos. The extent to which a Synod succeeds in enforcing its decisions depends on the extent to which it obtains de facto recognition. The canons of the Council of Antioch (341) are accepted as Church law, while its creeds are condemned as Arian (de Syn. 22-25).
We look in vain for any statement of principle on the part of Athanasius to reduce this confusion to order. The classical passage in his writings is the letter he has preserved from Julius of Rome to the Eastern bishops (Apol. c. Ar. 20-35). The Easterns insist strongly on the authority of Councils, in the interests of their deposition of Athanasius, &c., at Tyre. Julius can only reply by invoking an old-established custom of the Church, ratified, he says, at Nicæa (Can. 5?), that the decisions of one Council may be revised by another; a process which leads to no finality. The Sardican canons of three years later drew up, for judicial purposes only, a system of procedure, devolving on Julius (or possibly on the Roman bishop for the time being) the duty of deciding, upon the initiative of the parties concerned, whether in the case of a deposed bishop a new trial of the case was desirable, and permitting him to take part in such new trial by his deputies. But Athanasius never alludes to any such procedure, nor to the canons in question. (Compare above, pp. xlii., xlvi.).
The absence of any a priori law relating to the authority of Synods applies to general as well as to local Councils. The conception of a general Council did not give rise to Nicæa, but vice versa (see above, p. xvii.). The precedent for great Councils had already been set at Antioch (268-9) and Arles (314); the latter in fact seems to be indirectly called by S. Augustine plenarium universæ ecclesiæ concilium; but the widely representative character of the Nicene Council, and the impressive circumstances under which it met, stamped upon it from the first a recognised character of its own. Again and again (de Decr. 4, 27, Orat. i. 7, Ep. Æg. 5, &c., &c.) Athanasius presses the Arians with their rejection of the decision of a world-wide' Council, contrasting it (e.g. de Syn. 21) with the numerous and indecisive Councils held by them. He protests (Ep. Æg. 5, Tom. ad Ant., &c.) against the idea that any new creed is necessary or to be desired in addition to the Nicene. But in doing so, he does not suggest by a syllable that the Council was formally and a priori infallible, independently of the character of its decision as faithfully corresponding to the tradition of the Apostles. Its authority is secondary to that of Scripture (de Syn. 6, sub. fin.), and its scriptural character is its justification (ib.). In short, Mr. Gwatkin speaks within the mark when he disclaims for Athan. any mechanical theory [95] of conciliar infallibility. To admit this candidly is not to depreciate, but to acknowledge, the value of the great Synod of Nicæa; and to acknowledge it, not on the technical grounds of later ecclesiastical law, but on grounds which are those of Athanasius himself. (On the general subject see D.C.A. 475-484, and Hatch, B.L. vii.)
(b) Jurisdiction of bishops over bishops. The fully-developed and organised patriarchal' system does not meet us in the Nicene age. The bishops of important towns, however, exercise a very real, though not definable authority over their neighbours. This is especially true of Imperial residences. The migration of Eusebius to Nicomedia and afterwards to Constantinople broke through the time-honoured rule of the Church, but set the precedent commonly followed ever afterwards. In Egypt, although the name patriarch' was as yet unheard, the authority of the Bishop of Alexandria was almost absolute. The name archbishop' is here used for the first time. It is first applied apparently to Meletius (Apol. Ar. 71) in his list of clergy, but at a later date (about 358) to Athanasius in a contemporary inscription (see p. 564^a, note 1). At the beginning of his episcopate (supra, p. xxxvii.) we find him requested to ordain in a diocese of Upper Egypt by its bishop. He sends bishops on deputations (Fest. Ind. xxv., &c.), and exercises ordinary jurisdiction over bishops and people of Libya and Pentapolis (cf. reference to Synesius, supr., p. lxii.). This was a condition of things dating at least from the time of Dionysius (p. 178, note 2). In particular he had practically the appointment of bishops for all Egypt, so that in the course of his long episcopate all the Egyptian sees were manned by his faithful adherents (cf. p. 493). The mention of Dionysius suggests the question of the relation of the see of Alexandria to that of Rome, and of the latter to the Church generally. On the former point, what is necessary will be said in the Introd. to the de Sent. Dion. With regard to the wider question, Athanasius expresses reverence for that bishopric because it is an Apostolic throne,' and for Rome, because it is the metropolis of Romania' (p. 282). That is his only utterance on the subject. Such reverence ought, he says, to have secured Liberius from the treatment to which he had been subjected. The language cited excludes the idea of any divinely-given headship of the Church vested in the Roman bishop, for his object is to magnify the outrageous conduct of Constantius and the Arians. Still less can anything be elicited from the account given by Ath. of the case of the Dionysii, or of his own relations to successive Roman bishops. He speaks of them as his beloved brothers and fellow-ministers (e.g., p. 489) and cordially. welcomes their sympathy and powerful support, without any thought of jurisdiction. But he furnishes us with materials, in the letter of Julius, for estimating not his own view of the Roman see, but that held by its occupant. The origin of the proceedings was the endeavour of the Easterns to procure recognition at Rome and in the West for their own nominee to the bishopric of Alexandria. They had requested Julius to hold a Council, and to be himself the judge if he so pleased' (Apol. c. Ar. 20). This was intended to frighten Athanasius, but not in the least, as the sequel shews, to submit the decisions of a Council to revision by a single bishop. Julius summoned a Council as described above (p. xliii.), and at the end of a long period of delay and controversy sent a letter expressing his view of the case to the Orientals. This document has been already discussed (p. xliv.). It forms an important landmark in the history of papal claims, standing at least as significantly in contrast with those of the successors of Julius, as with those of his predecessors.
(g) Bishops and Councils. The superiority of councils to single bishops (including those of Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch) was questioned by no one in this age. Julius claims the support, not of authority inherent in his see, but of canons, and on the basis of them claims a voice in matters affecting the Church at large, not in his own name, but in that of us all, that so a just sentence might proceed from all' (Apol. c. Ar. 35). Again, just as the judgment of his predecessor Melchiades and his council was revised at Arles in 314 (Augustin. Ep. 105. 8), so the case of Athanasius and Marcellus was reheard at the Council of Sardica three years after the decision of Julius and his council. The council was the supreme organ of the Church for legislative, judicial, and doctrinal purposes; had any other of superior or even equal rank been recognised, or had the authority of councils themselves been defined a priori by a system of Church law, the confusion of the fourth century would not have arisen. Whether or no the age would have gained, we at least should have been the losers. __________________________________________________________________
[93] Athanasius is not always innocent of the method of which he complains; e.g. when he uses Isa. i. 11, pleres eimi, as a proof of the Divine Perfection.
[94] The idea of a mysterious unwritten tradition is a legacy of Gnosticism to the Church. Irenæus, in order to meet the Gnostic appeal to a supposed unwritten Apostolic tradition, confronts it with the consistency of the public and normal teaching of the Churches everywhere, of which the Roman Church is a convenient microcosm or compendium. The idea of a paradosis agraphos is adopted by Clement and Origen, and passes from the latter to Eusebius, and to the Cappadocian Fathers (Basil de Sp. S. 27, applies it only to practical details), Epiphanius, and later writers. Details in Harnack ii. 90, note, cf. Salmon, Infallibility, Lect. ix. On the somewhat different subject of the Disciplina Arcani,' see Herzog-Plitt. s.v. Arkan-Disciplia'
[95] What is conspicuously true of the Second General Council is in reality not less true of the First. Its high authority to later ages is due not to its formal character as a council, but to the character of its work; the consent of the Church, and that not readily given, but as the result of a long process of searching and sifting, has given to it its irreformable' authority. Its authority is expressly put on a par with that of the Antiochene Synod of c. 269, by Ath. de Syn. 43 (consult the whole discussion, pp. 473, 475, &c.). Short of a council which should include every bishop of the entire Church, in unanimous agreement,--an impossible contingency,--the claims of any given council to be truly ecumenical are relative, not absolute; and no consistent theory is possible of the conditions under which a council could by virtue of its constitution claim infallibility for its decisions. The supposed infallibility of general councils lies in reality outside them, in the authority which sanctions and consecrates their decisions. According to the precedent of Nicæa this is the Church diffusive' (cf. p. 489, and Pusey, Councils, p. 225, sq.), and such consent, again, must necessarily be partial and relative. If a more tangible and expeditious theory is wanted, we have it in the Roman system, according to which a council is infallible if ratified by the Pope. This at once puts all such councils, whether local or general, on one level, and affords a ready criterion. In other words, the only consistent (mechanical) theory of the infallibility of councils is one which makes councils superfluous. If such a theory had been known to the Church in the age of councils, the councils would not have been held. __________________________________________________________________
§5. Content of Revelation. God Three in One and the Incarnation.
To dwell at length on the theology of Athanasius under this head is unnecessary here, not because there is little to say, but partly because what there is to say has been to some extent anticipated above, §§2, 3, and ch. ii. pp. xxxii., xxxvi., partly because the history of his life and work is the best exposition of what he believed and taught. That his theology on these central subjects was profoundly moulded by the Nicene formula is (to the present writer at least) the primary fact (see ch. ii. §3 (1), and (2) b). This of course presupposes that the Nicene faith found in him a character and mind prepared to become its interpreter and embodiment; and that this was so his pre-Nicene writings sufficiently shew.
For instance, his progressive stress on the Unity of the Godhead in Father, Son, and Spirit is but the following up of the thought expressed de Incarn. 17. 1 en mono to heautou Patri holos on kata panta. It may be noted that he argues also from the idea of the Trinity to the coessential Godhead of the Spirit, ad Serap. i. 28, sq., Trias de estin ouch heos onomatos monon...alla alethei& 139; kai huparxei trias...eipatosan palin...trias estin e duas; and that he meets the difficulty (see infra, p. 438, ten lines from end, also Petav. Trin. VII. xiv.) of differentiating the relation of the Spirit to the Father from the gennesis of the Son by a confession of ignorance and a censure upon those who assume that they can search out the deep things of God (ib. 17-19). The principle might be applied to this point which is laid down de Decr. 11, that an act' belonging to the essence of God, cannot, by virtue of the simplicity of the Divine Nature, be more than one: the act' therefore of divine gennesis (the nature of which we do not know) cannot apply to the Spirit but only to the Son. But I do not recollect any passage in which Athanasius draws this conclusion from his own premises. The language of Athanasius on the procession of the Spirit is unstudied. In Exp. Fid. 4, he appears to adopt the procession' of the Spirit from the Father through the Son (after Dionysius, see Sent. Dion. 17). In Serap. i. 2, 20, 32, iii. 1, he speaks of the Spirit as idion tou Logou, just as the Word is idios tou Patros. His language on the subject, expressing the idea common to East and West (under the cloud of logomachies which envelop the subject) might possibly furnish the basis of an eirenicon' between the two separated portions of Christendom. In explaining the theophanies' of the Old Testament, Athanasius takes a position intermediate between that of the Apologists, &c. (supr., p. xxiii.) who referred them to the Word, and that of Augustine who referred them to Angels only. According to Athanasius the Angel' was and was not the Word: regarded as visible he was an Angel simply, but the Voice was the Divine utterance through the Word (see Orat. iii. 12, 14; de Syn. 27, Anath 15, note; also Serap. i. 14).
Lastly, it must again be insisted that in his polemic against Arianism Athanasius is centrally soteriological. It is unnecessary to collect passages in support of what will be fully appreciated only after a thorough study of the controversial treatises. The essence of his position is comprised in his paraphrase of St. Peter's address to the Jews, Orat. ii. 16, sq., or in the argument, ib. 67, sqq., i. 43, and iii. 13. With regard to the Incarnation, it may be admitted that Athanasius uses language which might have been modified had he had later controversies in view. His common use of anthropos for the Manhood of Christ (see below, p. 83) might be alleged by the Nestorian, his comparison of it to the vesture of the High Priest (Orat. i. 47, ii. 8, see note there) by the Apollinarian or Monophysite partisan. But at least his use of either class of expressions shews that he did not hold the doctrine associated in later times with the other. Moreover, while from first to last he is explicitly clear as to the seat of personality in Christ, which is uniformly assigned to the Divine Logos (p. 40, note 2 and reff.), the integrity of the manhood of Christ is no less distinctly asserted (cf. de Incarn. 18. 1, 21. 7). He uses soma and anthropos indifferently during the earlier stages of the conflict, ignoring or failing to notice the peculiarity of the Luciano-Arian Christology. But from 362 onward the full integrity of the Saviour's humanity, sarx and psuche logike or pneuma, is energetically asserted against the theory of Apollinarius and those akin to it [96] (cf. Letters 59 and 60, and c. Apoll.). Some corollaries of this doctrine must now be mentioned.
The question of the sinlessness of Christ is not discussed by Athanasius ex professo until the controversy with Apollinarianism. In the earlier Arian controversy the question was in reality involved, partly by the Arian theory of the preptotes of the Word, partly by the correlated theory of prokope (cf. Orat. ii. 6, sqq.), and Athanasius instinctively falls back on the consideration that the Personality of the Son, if Divine, is necessarily sinless. In c. Apoll. i. 7, 17, ii. 10 the question is more thoroughly analysed. The complete psychological identity of Christ's human nature with our own is maintained along with the absolute moral identity of His will (thelesis, the determination of will, not the thelema ousiodes or volitional faculty) with the Divine will.
With regard to the human knowledge of Christ, the texts Mark xiii. 32, Luke ii. 52, lie at the foundation of his discussion Orat. iii. 42-53. The Arians appealed to these passages to support the contention that the Word, or Son of God in His Divine nature, was ignorant of the Day,' and advanced in knowledge. The whole argument of Athan. in reply is directed to shewing that these passages apply not to the Word or Son in Himself, but to the Son Incarnate. He knows as God, is ignorant as man. Omniscience is the attribute of Godhead, ignorance is proper to man. The Incarnation was not the sphere of advancement to the Word, but of humiliation and condescension; but the Manhood advanced in wisdom as it did in stature also, for advance belongs to man. That is the decisive and clear-cut position of Athanasius on this subject (which the notes there vainly seek to accommodate to the rash dogmatism of the schools). Athanasius appeals to the utterances of Christ which imply knowledge transcending human limitations in order to shew that such knowledge, or rather all knowledge, was possessed by the Word; in other words such utterances belong to the class of divine' not to that of human' phenomena in the life of Christ. So far as His human nature was concerned, He assumed its limitations of knowledge equally with all else that belongs to the physical and mental endowments of man. Why then was not Divine Omniscience exerted by Him at all times? This question is answered as all questions must be which arise out of any limitation of the Omnipotence of God in the Manhood of Christ. It was for our profit, as I at least think' (ib. 48). The very idea of the Incarnation is that of a limiting of the Divine under human conditions, the Divine being manifested in Christ only so far as the Wisdom of God has judged it necessary in order to carry out the purpose of His coming. In other words, Athanasius regarded the ignorance of Christ as economical' only in so far as the Incarnation is itself an oikonomia, a measured revelation, at once a veiling and a manifestation, of all that is in God. That the divine Omniscience wielded in the man Christ Jesus an adequate instrument for its own manifestation Athanasius firmly holds: the exact extent to which such manifestation was carried, the reserve of miraculous power or knowledge with which that Instrument was used, must be explained not by reference to the human mind, will, or character of Christ, but to the Divine Will and Wisdom which alone has both effected our redemption and knows the secrets of its bringing about. With Athanasius, we may quote St. Paul, tis egno noun Kuriou.
It may be observed before leaving this point that Athanasius takes occasion (§43, fin., cf. 45) to distinguish two senses of the words the Son,' as referring on the one hand to the eternal, on the other to the human existence of Christ. To the latter he limits Mark xiii. 32: the point is of importance in view of his relation to Marcellus (supra, p. xxxvi.).
As a further corollary of the Incarnation we may notice his frequent use (Orat. iii. 14, 29, 33, iv. 32, c. Apoll. i. 4, 12, 21) of the word theotokos as an epithet or as a name for the Virgin Mary. The translation Mother of God' is of course erroneous. God-bearer' (Gottes-bärerin), the literal equivalent, is scarcely idiomatic English. The perpetual virginity of Mary is maintained incidentally (c. Apoll. i. 4), but there is an entire absence in his writings not only of worship of the Virgin, but of Mariology,' i.e., of the tendency to assign to her a personal agency, or any peculiar place, in the work of Redemption (Gen. iii. 15, Vulg.). Further, the argument of Orat. i. 51 fin., that the sending of Christ in the flesh for the first time (loipon) liberated human nature from sin, and enabled the requirement of God's law to be fulfilled in man (an argument strictly within the lines of Rom. viii. 3), would be absolutely wrecked by the doctrine of the freedom of Mary from original sin (immaculate conception'). If that doctrine be held, sin was condemned in the flesh' (i.e., first deposed from its place in human nature, see Gifford or Meyer-Weiss in loc.), not by the sending of Christ, but by the congenital sinlessness of Mary. If the Arians had only known of the latter doctrine, they would have had an easy reply to that powerful passage. __________________________________________________________________
[96] The doctrine of Athanasius is, not formally but none the less really, the doctrine of Chalcedon, which again stands or falls together with that of Nicæa. Like the latter, it transcends the power of human thought to do more than state it in terms which exclude the (Nestorian and Monophysite) alternatives. The Man Jesus Christ is held to have lacked nothing that constitutes personality in man; the human personality which therefore belongs to it ideally, being in fact merged in the Divine personality of the Son. The impersonality,' as it is sometimes called, of Christ quâ man is therefore better spoken of as His Divine Personality. Personality and will are correlated but not identical ideas. __________________________________________________________________
§6. Derivative Doctrines. Grace and the Means of Grace; The Christian Life; The Last Things.
The idea of Grace is important to the theological system of Athanasius, in view of the central place occupied in that system by the idea of restoration and new creation as the specific work of Christ upon His fellow-men (supra, §2, cf. Orat. ii. 56, Exp. in Pss. xxxiii. 2, cxviii. 5, LXX.). But, in common with the Greek Fathers generally, he does not analyse its operation, nor endeavour to fix its relation to free will (cf. Orat. i. 37 fin., iii. 25 sub fin.). The divine predestination relates (for anything that Ath. says) not to individuals so much as to the Purpose of God, before all ages, to repair the foreseen evil of man's fall by the Incarnation (Orat. ii. 75, sq.). On the general subject of Sacraments and their efficacy, he says little or nothing. The initiatory rite of Baptism makes us sons of God (de Decr. 31, cf. Orat. i. 37 ut supra), and is the only complete renewal to be looked for in this life, Serap. iv. 13). It is accompanied (de Trin. et Sp. S. 7) by confession of faith in the Trinity, and the baptism administered by Arians who do not really hold this faith is therefore in peril of losing its value (Orat. ii. 42, fin.). The grace of the Spirit conferred at baptism will be finally withdrawn from the wicked at the last judgment (Exp. in Ps. lxxv. 13, LXX.). In the de Trin. et Sp. S. 21 baptism is coupled with the imposition of hands as one rite. On the Eucharist there is an important passage (ad Serap. iv. 19), which must be given in full. He has been speaking of sin against the Holy Spirit, which latter name he applies [see above, ch. iii. §1 (22)] to the Saviour's Divine Personality. He proceeds to illustrate this by John vi. 62-64.
For here also He has used both terms of Himself, flesh and spirit; and He distinguished the spirit from what is of the flesh in order that they might believe not only in what was visible in Him, but in what was invisible, and so understand that what He says is not fleshly, but spiritual. For for how many would the body suffice as food, for it to become meat even for the whole world? But this is why He mentioned the ascending of the Son of Man into heaven; namely, to draw them off from their corporeal idea, and that from thenceforth they might understand that the aforesaid flesh was heavenly from above, and spiritual meat, to be given at His hands. For what I have said unto you,' says He, is spirit and life;' as much as to say, what is manifested, and to be given for the salvation of the world, is the flesh which I wear. But this, and the blood from it, shall be given to you spiritually at My hands as meat, so as to be imparted spiritually in each one, and to become for all a preservative to resurrection of life eternal.'
Beyond this he does not define the relation of the outward and visible in the Eucharist to the spiritual and inward. The reality of the Eucharistic gift is insisted on as strongly as its spirituality in such passages as ad Max. (Letter 61) 2 sub fin., and the comment on Matt. vii. 6 (Migne xxvii. 1380), See to it, therefore, Deacon, that thou do not administer to the unworthy the purple of the sinless body,' and the protest of the Egyptian bishops (Apol. c. Ar. 5) that their churches are adorned only by the blood of Christ and by the pious worship of Him.' The Holy Table is expressly stated to have been made of wood (Hist. Ar. 56), and was situated (Apol. Fug.) in a space called the hierateion. The Eucharist was celebrated in most places every Sunday, but not on week-days (Apol. c. Ar. 11). But in Alexandria we hear of it being celebrated on a Friday on one occasion, and this was apparently a normal one (Apol. Fug. 24, Apol. Const. 25). To celebrate the Eucharist was the office of the bishop or presbyter (Apol. c. Ar. 11). Ischyras (supr. p. xxxviii.) was held by Athanasius to be a layman only, and therefore incapable of offering the Eucharist. The sacrificial aspect of the Eucharist is not touched upon, except in the somewhat strange fragment (Migne xxvi. 1259) from an Oratio de defunctis, which contains the words he de ge anaimaktos thusia exilasmos. He insists on the finality of the sacrifice of the Cross, Orat. ii. 9, hai men gar kata nomon...ouk eichon to piston, kath' hemeran parerchomenai; & 211; de tou Soteros thusia hapax genomene teteleioke to pan. On repentance and the confession of sins there is little to quote. He strongly asserts the efficacy of repentance, and explains Heb. vi. 4, of the unique cleansing and restoring power of baptism (Serap. iv. 13, as cited above.) A catena on Jeremiah preserves a fragment [supra, ch. iii. §1 (38)], which compares the ministry of the priest in baptism to that in confession: houtos kai ho exomologoumenos en metanoia dia tou hi& 153;reos lambanei ten aphesin chariti Christou. Of compulsory confession, or even of this ordinance as an ordinary element of the Christian life, we read nothing.
On the Christian ministry again there is little direct teaching. The ordinations by the presbyter Colluthus (Apol. Ar. 11, 12) are treated as null. The letter (49) to Dracontius contains vigorous and beautiful passages on the responsibility of the Ministry. On the principles of Christian conduct there is much to be gathered from obiter dicta in the writings of Athanasius. His description (cf. supra, p. xlviii.) of the revival of religious life at Alexandria in 346, and the exhortations in the Easter letters, are the most conspicuous passages for this purpose. In particular, he insists (e.g., p. 67) on the necessity of a holy life and pure mind for the apprehension of divine things, and especially for the study of the Scriptures. He strongly recommends the discipline of fasting, in which, as compared with other churches (Rome especially), the Alexandrian Christians were lax (Letter 12), but he warns them in his first Easter letter to fast not only with the body, but also with the soul.' He also dwells (Letter 6) on the essential difference of spirit between Christian festivals and Jewish observance of days. Christ is the true Festival, embracing the whole of the Christian life (Letters 5, 14). He lays stress on love to our neighbour, and especially on kindness to the poor (Letter i. 11, Hist. Ar. 61, Vit. Ant. 17, 30). On one important practical point he is very emphatic: Persecution is a device of the devil' (Hist. Ar. 33). This summary judgment was unfortunately less in accordance with the spirit of the times than with the Spirit of Christ.
The ascetic teaching of Athanasius must be reserved for the introduction to the Vita Antoni (cf. Letters 48, 49, also above, p. xlviii.). His eschatology calls for discussion in connection with the language of the de Incarnatione, and will be briefly noticed in the introduction to that tract. With regard to prayers for the departed, he distinguishes (on Luke xiii. 21, &c., Migne xxvii. 1404) the careless, whose friends God will move to assist them with their prayers, from the utterly wicked who are beyond the help of prayer. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Chapter V.
Chronology and Tables
§1. Sources.
(1) The Festal Letters of Athanasius with their Index and the Historia Acephala constitute our primary source for chronological details (see below, §2). (2) Along with these come the chronological notices scattered up and down the other writings of Athanasius. These are of course of the utmost importance, but too often lack definiteness. (3) The chronological data in the fifth-century historians, headed by Socrates, are a mass of confusion, and have been a source of confusion ever since, until the discovery of the primary sources, No. (1) mentioned above. They must, therefore, be used only in strict subordination to the latter. (4) More valuable but less abundant secondary notices are to be derived from the Life of Pachomius, from the letter of Ammon (infra, p. 487), and from other writers of the day. (5) For the movements of the Emperors the laws in the Codex Theodosianus (ed. Hänel in Corpus Juris Ante-Justiniani) give many dates, but the text is not in a satisfactory condition.
(6) Modern discussions. The conflicting attempts at an Athanasian chronology prior to the discovery of the Festal Letters are tabulated in the Appendix to Newman's Arians, and discussed by him in his introduction to the Historical Tracts (Oxf. Lib. Fathers). The notes to Dr. Bright's article Athanasius in D.C.B., and his introduction to the Hist. Writings of S. Ath., may be profitably consulted, as also may Larsow's Fest-briefe (Leipz., 1852), with useful calendar information by Dr. J. G. Galle, the veteran professor of Astronomy at Breslau, and Sievers on the Hist. Aceph. (Supr. ch. i. §3.)
But by far the most valuable chronological discussions are those of Prof. Gwatkin in his Studies of Arianism. He has been the first to make full use of the best data, and moreover gives very useful lists of the great officials of the Empire and of the movements of the Eastern Emperors. Mr. Gwatkin's results were criticised in the Church Quarterly Review, vol. xvi. pp. 392-398, 1883, by an evidently highly-qualified hand [97] . The criticisms of the Reviewer have been most carefully weighed by the present writer, although they quite fail to shake him in his general agreement with Mr. Gwatkin's results.
For the general chronology of the period we may mention Weingarten's Zeit-tafeln (ed. 3, 1888) as useful, though not especially so for our purpose, and above all Clinton's Fasti Romani, which, however, were drawn up in the dark ages before the discovery of the Festal Letters, and are therefore antiquated so far as the life of Athanasius is concerned. __________________________________________________________________
[97] The candid, but friendly, and often just, criticisms on Mr. Gwatkin's book do not concern us here. But the Reviewer's chronological strictures are his weakest point: he uses his texts without criticism, and falls far short of Mr. Gwatkin's standard of searching historical method. __________________________________________________________________
§2. Principles and Method.
The determination of the leading Athanasian dates depends mainly on the value to be assigned to the primary sources, §1 (1). Reserving the fuller discussion of these texts for the Introduction to the Letters (pp. 495 sq., 500 sq.), it will suffice to state here what seem to be the results of an investigation of their value. (1) The Historia Acephala and Festal Index are independent of each other (cf. Sievers, p. 95, misunderstood, I think, by Mr. Gwatkin, p. 221). (2) They both belong to the generation after the death of Athanasius, the H. A. being apparently the earlier. (3) The data as to which they agree must, therefore, come from a source prior to either, i.e., contemporary with Athanasius. (4) In several important particulars they are confirmed by our secondary Egyptian sources, such as the Letter of Ammon and Life of Pachomius. (5) They verify most of the best results arrived at independently of them (of this below), and (6) In no case do they agree in fixing a date which can be proved to be wrong, or which there are sound reasons for distrusting. On these grounds I have classed the Historia and Index as primary sources, and maintain that the dates as to which the two documents agree must be accepted as certain. This principle at once brings the doubtful points in the chronology within very moderate limits. The general chronological table, in which the dates fixed by the agreement of these sources are printed in black type, will make this plain enough. It remains to shew that the principle adopted works out well in detail, or in other words, that the old Alexandrian chronology, transmitted to us through the twofold channel of the Historia and the Index, harmonises the apparent discrepancies, and solves the difficulties, of the chronological statements of Athanasius, and tallies with the most trustworthy information derived from other sources. In some cases it has been found desirable to discuss points of chronology where they occur in the Life of Athanasius; what will be attempted here is to complete what is there passed over without thorough discussion, in justification of the scheme adopted in our general chronological table. __________________________________________________________________
§3. Applications.
(a) Death of Alexander and Election of Athanasius. That the latter took place on June 8, 328, is established by the agreement of our sources, together with the numbering of the Festal Letters. Theodoret (H. E. i. 26) and others, misled by some words of Athanasius (Apol. c. Ar. 59), handed down to later ages the statement that Alexander died five months after the Council of Nicæa. It had long been seen that this must be a mistake (Tillemont, vi. 736, Montfaucon, Monit. in Vit. S. Athan.) and various suggestions [98] were made as to the terminus a quo for the five months' mentioned by Athanasius; that of Montfaucon remains the most probable (see ch. ii. §3 (1), p. xxi.). But the field was left absolutely clear for the precise and concordant statement of our chroniclers, which, therefore, takes undisputed possession. (Further details, supr. p. xx. sq.; Introd. to Letters, pp. 495, 303).
(b) The first exile of Athanasius. The duration is fixed by the Hist. Aceph. (see Introd. p. 495, sq.) as two years, four months, and eleven days, and this exactly coincides with the dates given by the Index for his departure for Tyre, July 11, 335, and his return from exile Nov. 23, 337 (not 338; for the Diocletian year began at the end of August). Although, therefore, the Hist. Aceph. is not available for the date, the constructive agreement between it and the Index is complete. But it has been contended that the year of the return from this exile must still be placed in 338, in spite of the new evidence to the contrary. The reasons alleged are very weak. (1) The letter of Constantine II., dated Treveri, June 17, so far from making against the year 337, clinches the argument in its favour. Constantine is still only Cæsar' when he writes it (pp. 146, 272); he was proclaimed Augustus on Sep. 9, 337 (Montf. in ann. 338 tries in vain to parry this decisive objection to the later date. He appeals to Maximin in Eus. H. E. ix. 10, but overlooks the word sebastos there. Is it conceivable that a disappointed eldest son, as sensitive about his claims as Constantine was, would within so short a time of becoming Augustus' be content to call himself merely Cæsar'?) The objection as to the distance of Treveri from Nicomedia has no weight, as we show elsewhere (p. xli., note 4); Constantine might have heard of his father's death a fortnight before the date of this letter. (2) The law (Cod. Th. X. x. 4) dated Viminacium, June 12, 338, if correctly ascribed to Constantius, would certainly lend plausibility to the view that it was at that time that Athanasius met Constantius at Viminacium (p. 240). But the names are so often confused in mss., and the text of the Theodosian Code requires such frequent correction, that there is no solid objection to set against the extremely cogent proofs (Gwatkin, p. 138) that the law belongs to Constantine, who in that case cannot have been at Trier on June 17, 338. As to Constantius, there is no reason against his having been in Pannonia at some time in the summer of 337. (3) The statement of Theodoret (H. E. ii. 1) that Ath. stayed at Treveri two years and four months' seems to reproduce that of the Hist. Aceph. as to the length of the exile, and is only verbally inexact in applying it to the period actually spent in Trier. (4) The language of Letter 10, the Festal letter for 338, is not absolutely decisive, but §§3, 11 certainly imply that when it was written, whether at Alexandria or elsewhere, the durance of Athanasius was at an end. There can, we submit, be no reasonable doubt that the first exile of Athanasius began with his departure from Alexandria on July 11, 335, and ended with his return thither on Nov. 23, 337.
(c) Commencement of the second exile. Here again the agreement of our chronicles is constructive only, owing to the loss of the earlier part of the Hist. Aceph.; but it is none the less certain. The exile ended, as everyone now admits and as both chronicles tell us, on Paoph. 24 (Oct. 21), 346: it lasted, according to the H. A., seven years, six months, and three days. This carries us back to Phar. 21 (April 16), 339. Now we learn from the Index that he left the Church of Theonas on the night of Mar. 18-19, and from the Encyclical, 4, 5, that he took refuge first in another church, then in some secret place till over Easter Sunday (Apr. 15). This fits exactly with Apr. 16 as the date of his flight to Rome. To this there is only one serious objection, viz., that Ath. was summoned (p. 239) to Milan by Constantius after the end of three years from his leaving Alexandria. It has been assumed (without any proof) that this took place just before' the council of Sardica. As a matter of fact, Constans left Athan. in Milan, and (apparently after his summer campaign) ordered him to follow him to Trier, in order to travel thence to the Council. Athanasius does not state either how long he remained at Milan, or when he was ordered to Trier; for a chronological inference, in opposition to explicit evidence, he furnishes no basis whatever. I agree with Mr. Gwatkin (whom his Reviewer quite misunderstands) in placing the Milan interview about May, 342, and the journey from Trier to Sardica after Easter (probably later still) in 343 (Constans was in Britain in the spring of 343, and had returned to Trier before June 30, Cod. Th. XII. i. 36, see also supr. p. xlv.). A more reasonable objection to the statement of the Index is that of Dr. Bright (p. xv. note 5), who sets against its information that Athan. fled from Theonas' four days before Gregory's arrival, the statement of the Encyclical that he left a certain church after Gregory's outrages at Eastertide. But clearly Athan. first escaped from the church of Theonas, afterwards (between Good Friday and Easter) from some other church (alle ekklesia), not named by him (Quirinus,' cf. p. 95, note 1), and finally from the City itself. (Dr. Bright's arguments in favour of 340 are vitiated in part by his placing Easter on April 9, i.e. on a Wednesday, instead of the proper day, Sunday, Mar. 30). The date, April 16, 339, is, therefore, well established as the beginning of the second exile, and there is no tangible evidence against it. It is, moreover, supported by the subscription to the letter to Serapion, which stands in the stead of the Easter letter for 340, and which states that the letter was written from Rome.
(d) Council of Sardica and death of Gregory. The confusion into which the whole chronology of the surrounding events was thrown by the supposition (which was naturally taken without question upon the authority of Socrates and Sozomen) that the Sardican council met in 347, is reflected in the careful digest of opinions made by Newman (Arians, Appendix, or better, Introduction to Hist. Treatises of S. Ath. p. xxvi.; cf. also Hefele, Eng. Tra., vol. 2, p. 188, sq., notes), and especially in the difficulties caused by the necessity of placing the Council of Milan in 345 before Sardica, and the mission of Euphrates of Cologne to Antioch as late as 348. Now the Hist. Aceph., by giving October, 346, as the date of the return of Athanasius from his second exile, at once challenged the received date for Sardica, and J. D. Mansi, the learned editor of the Collectio Amplissima' of the Councils, used this fact as the key to unlock the chronological tangle of the period. He argued that the Council of Sardica must be put back at least as early as 344; but the natural conservatism of learning resisted his conclusions until the year 1852, when the Festal Letters, discovered ten years earlier, were made available for the theological public of Europe. The date 347 was then finally condemned. Not only did Letter 18, written at Easter, 345, refer to the Council's decision about Easter, and Letter 19 refer to his restoration as an accomplished fact; the Index most positively dated the synod in the year 343, which year has now taken its place as the accepted date, although the month and duration of the assembly are still open to doubt (Supr. p. xlv., note 6). In any case it is certain that the Easter at which the deputies from Constans and the Council reached Antioch was Easter, 344. This brings us to the question of the date of Gregory's death. Mr. Gwatkin rightly connects the Council which deposed Stephen for his behaviour to the Western deputies, and elected Leontius, with the issue of the Macrostich' creed three years' (de Syn. 26) after the Council of the Dedication, i.e., in the summer of 344. This is our only notice of time for the Council in question, and it is not very precise; but the Council may fairly be placed in the early summer, which would allow time for the necessary preliminaries after Easter, and for the meeting of the fathers at reasonable notice. (Perhaps Stephen was promptly and informally deposed (Thdt.) after Easter, but a regular council would be required to ratify this act and to elect his successor.) After the Council (we are again not told how long after) Constantius writes a public letter to Alexandria forbidding further persecution of the orthodox (277, note 3). This may well have been in the later summer of 344. Then about ten months later' (ib.) Gregory dies. This would bring us about' to the early summer of 345; and this rough calculation [99] is curiously confirmed by the precise statement of the Index xviii., that Gregory died on June 26 (345, although the Index, in accordance with its principle of arrangement, which will be explained in the proper place, puts the notice under the following year). Of course the date of the letter of Constantius, which Athanasius gives as the terminus a quo of the ten months,' cannot be fixed except by conjecture, and the date given by the Index is (1) the only precise statement we have, (2) is likely enough in itself, and (3) agrees perfectly with the datum of de Synod 26. That is to say, as far as our evidence goes it appears to be correct.
(e) Return of Athanasius in 346. Here the precise statements of the Index and Hist. Aceph. agree, and are confirmed by Letter 19, which was written after his return. The date therefore requires no discussion. But it is important as a signal example of the high value to be assigned to the united witness of our two chronicles. For this is the pivot date which, in the face of all previously accepted calculations, has taken its place as unassailably correct, and has been the centre from which the recovery of the true chronology of the period has proceeded. The difficulty in dating the interview with Constantius at Antioch is briefly discussed p. xlvii. note 10.
(f) Irruption of Syrianus and Intrusion of George. The former event is dated without any room for doubt on the night of Thursday, Feb. 8 (Mechir 13), 356 (see p. 301, also Index and Hist. Aceph.). Here again the accuracy of our chronicles on points where they agree comes out strongly. It should be noted that an ill-informed writer could hardly have avoided a blunder here; for 356 was a leap-year: and in consequence of this (1) all the months from Thoth to Phamenoth, inclusive, began a day later, owing to the additional Epagomenon before the first day of Thoth: the 13th Mechir would, therefore, in these years correspond to Feb. 8, not as usual to Feb. 7. (2) Owing to the Roman calendar inserting its intercalary day at the end of February, Feb. 8 would fall on the Thursday, not on the Friday (reckoning back from Easter on Apr. 7: see Tables C, D., pp. 501 sq.). This date, then, may rank as one of the absolutely fixed points of our chronology. After the above examples of the value of the concordant testimony of the two chronicles, we must demand positive and circumstantial proof to the contrary before rejecting their united testimony that George made his entry into Alexandria in the Lent of 357, not 356. As a matter of fact all the positive evidence (supr., p. lii., note 11) is the other way, and when weighed against it, the feather-weight of an inference from a priori probability, and from the assumed silence of Athanasius (Ap. Fug. 6), kicks the beam.
(g) Athanasius in 362. The difficulty here is that Athanasius clearly returned after the murder of George, which, according to Amm. Marc. XXII. xi., took place upon the receipt at Alexandria of the news of the execution of Artemius at Antioch, which latter event must be placed in July. Therefore Athanasius would not have returned till August, 362. On the other hand the Hist. Aceph. makes George arrested four days after his return to Alexandria, and immediately upon the proclamation of the new Emperor, Nov. 30, 361. On Dec. 24 George is murdered, on Feb. 9 the edict for the return of the exiles is promulged, and on Feb. 21 Athanasius returns, to take flight again eight months' later, on Oct. 24. The difficulty is so admirably sifted by Mr. Gwatkin (pp. 220, 221) that I refer to his discussion instead of giving one here. His conclusion is clearly right, viz., that Ammianus here, as occasionally elsewhere, has missed the right order of events, and that George was really murdered at the time stated in Hist. Aceph. The only addition to be made to Mr. Gwatkin's decisive argument is that Ammianus is inconsistent with himself, and in agreement with the Hist. Aceph., in dating the arrest of George shortly after his return from court. As George would not have been at Julian's court, this notice implies that the arrest took place only shortly after the death of Constantius. Moreover, George, who even under Constantius was not over-ready to visit his see, and who knew well enough the state of heathen feeling against him, would not be likely to return to Alexandria after Julian had been six months on the throne. We have then not so much to balance Ammianus against the Hist. Aceph., as to balance one of his statements, not otherwise confirmed, against another which is supported by the Hist. Aceph., and by other authorities as well, especially Epiph. Hær. 76. 1. (The Festal Index gives no precise date here, except Oct. 24, for the flight of Athanasius, which so far as it goes confirms the Hist. Aceph.) Moreover, "on the side of Ammianus there is at worst an oversight; whereas the Hist. Aceph. would need to be re-written." The murder of George, Dec. 24, 361, return of Athanasius, Feb. and his flight, Oct. 24, 362, may therefore be taken as firmly-established dates.
(h) Supposed Council at Alexandria in 363. This Synod assumed by Baronius, Montfaucon (Vit. in Ann. 363. 3) and others, after Theodoret (H. E. iv. 2) must be pronounced fictitious (so already Vales. in Thdt. l.c.). (1) The letter of Ammon (extract printed in this volume, p. 487) tells us on the authority of Athanasius that when Pammon and Theodore miraculously announced the death of Julian, they informed Athan. that the new Emperor was to be a Christian, but that his reign would be short; that Athanasius must go at once and secretly to the Emperor, whom he would meet on his journey before the army reached Antioch, that he would be favourably received by him, and that he would obtain an order for his restoration. Now (apart from the possibility of a grain of truth in the pheme of the death of Julian) all these details bear the unmistakeable character of a vaticinium post eventum, in other words, we have the story as it was current when Ammon drew up the document in question at the request of Archbishop Theophilus (see also p. 567, note 1). At that time, then, the received account was that Athan. hastened secretly to meet Jovian as soon as he knew of his accession, and that he met him between Antioch and Nisibis. Now this native Egyptian account is transmitted independently by two other channels. (2) The Hist. Aceph. viii. tells us that the bishop entered Alexandria secretly adventu eius non pluribus cognito,' went by ship to Jovian, and returned with letters from him. (3) The Festal Index tells us that eight months (i.e., Oct. 24-June 26) after the flight of Ath. Julian died. On his death being published, Athan. returned secretly by night to Alexandria. Then on Sept. 6 he crossed the Euphrates (this seems to be the meaning of embarked at the Eastern Hierapolis,' the celebrated city, perhaps the ancient Karkhemish, which commanded the passage of the river, though some miles from its W. bank) and met the Emperor Jovian, by whom he was eventually dismissed with honour, returning to Alexandria Feb. 20, 364. Jovian was at Edessa Sept. 27, at Antioch Oct. 23.
The agreement of the three documents is most striking, and the more so since the chronicles are clearly independent both of one another and especially of the letter of Ammon, as is clear from the fact that neither mentions the pheme, while the Festal Index implicitly contradicts it. This appears to be a crucial case in many ways. Firstly, the three narratives are all consistent in excluding the possibility of any such council as is supposed to have been summoned (see above, p. lx.). Against this there is nothing but the hasty inference of Thdt. (corrected by Valois, see above, ib.); the valueless testimony of the Libellus Synodicus (9th cent.); the marvellous tale of Sozom. v. 7 (referred to this time by Tillem. viii. 219, but by Soz. to the death of George: probably an amplification of Hist. Aceph. visus est') that Athanasius suddenly to the delight of his people was found enthroned in his Church; and the more vague statement of Socr. (iii. 24) that he regained his church at once after Julian's death.' As the three fifth-century writers are implicitly contradicted by three writers of Alexandria at the end of the previous century, the latter must be believed against the former. Secondly, the Index, the later as it appears, of the two chronicles, would seem to represent a form of the story less marvellous and therefore earlier than that of the Narratio. Now the latter certainly belongs to the Episcopate of Theophilus. The Index therefore can scarcely be placed later, and the Hist. Aceph. would fall, as Sievers, Einl. 2, had independently placed it at the beginning of the Episcopate of Theophilus. Thirdly, we have here an excellent example not only of the value of the combined evidence of the two chronicles, but also of their character as representing in many important respects the Alexandrian tradition of the last third of the fourth century. Before leaving this question it will be well to consider the dates a little more closely. Hierapolis was counted eight days' journey from Antioch. From Alexandria to Antioch by sea was about 500 miles, i.e. with a fair wind scarcely more than four days' sail (it might be less, cf. Conybeare and Howson, St. Paul, vol. 2, p. 376, sq. ed. 1877). This allows about twelve days for Athan. to reach the Euphrates from Alexandria, remembering that southerly winds prevail in the Eastern Mediterranean at this season (Sievers, Einl. 28). Now Athan. reached Hierapolis on Sept. 6 (Thoth 8, Egyptian leap-year). But according to the Index, he reached Alex. after Julian's death was published, and this according to Hist. Aceph. was on Mesori 26, i.e. Aug. 19. From that day to Sept. 6 are eighteen days, leaving about a week's margin for Ath. to hear the news, reach Alexandria, and perhaps for delay in finding a vessel, &c. But a far wider margin is really available, for the official announcement must have been preceded by many rumours, and was probably not despatched till more than a fortnight after Julian's death (as is observed by Mr. Gwatkin, p. 221). If we remember that Athanasius, according to the Letter of Ammon, was making all possible haste (supra, §9) we shall again realise the subtle cohesion of these three sources, and the impossibility of the large Synod' imagined by some historians for the year 363.
(k) Exile under Valens. The date of this is discussed by Tillem. (note 96) and Montf. Vit. who, on the unstable basis of a computation of Theophanes (about 800 a.d.) and of the vague and loose sequences of events in Socr. and Sozom., tentatively refer the exile to the year 367. The only show of solid support for this date was that Tatianus (of later and unfortunate celebrity), whom the Photian Life and that by the Metaphrast connected with the expulsion, was known from Cod. Theod. to have been Prefect of Egypt in 367. But this airy fabric now gives place to the precise and accurate data of the Theophilan chronicles. Both Index and Hist. Aceph. place the occurrence not under Tatian but under Flavian, governor of Egypt 364-366. Both fix the year 365. The Hist. Aceph. (used by Soz. vi. 12, who however makes no use of the dates) gives May 5, 365, for the Imperial order against bishops restored by Julian, June 8 for the reference to the Emperor (supra, ch. ii. §9), Oct. 5 for the retreat of Athan. and search for him by Flavian and Duke Victorinus, Feb. 1 for the return of Athanasius. This detailed chronology is corroborated in two ways; first by a letter of Libanius (Ep. 569) to Flavian, thanking him for a present of [Egyptian] doves, and congratulating him on his victory' (a play on the name Victorinus is added), but with a satirical hint that if only Victorinus had any prisoners to shew for his pains (a clear allusion to the escape of Ath.) he (Libanius) would think him a finer fellow even than Cleon (Siev. Einl. 31). Secondly, the restoration of Ath. by Valens becomes historically intelligible, in view of the danger from Procopius, as pointed out supr. p. lxi., fin. We cannot then doubt that the chronicles are here once more the channels of the genuine chronological tradition.
(1) Death of Athanasius. It is superfluous to discuss this date at the present day, but it may be worth while to point out for the last time how admirably the combined testimony of our chronicles confirms the judgment of the best critics (Montfaucon, Tillemont, &c.) antecedent to their discovery, and how clearly the secondary value to be assigned to the chronological statements of Socrates and Sozomen once more comes out (Socr. iv. 21 puts the date at 371, and was followed by Papebroke, Petavius and others (fuller details and discussion of the question on its ancient footing in Newman's preface to Hist. Tracts of St. Athan., pp. xx., sqq.). But no one any longer questions the date of May 2-3, 373. The fact that the Hist. Aceph. gives May 3 and the Index May 2 (the date observed in the later calendars) vouches for the independence of the two documents and for the very early date of the former: probably, as Sievers and others suggest, the true date is the night between May 2 and May 3. __________________________________________________________________
[98] E.g. that he died five months after his return home from the council (Tillem.), or after the reconciliation of Meletius (Montf.). As neither event is dated, both hypotheses render the five months' useless for chronology.
[99] The above resumé of the details of the evidence makes it clear that Mr. Gwatkin's alleged oversights are in reality those of his critic. The proposal of the latter to correct Epiph.' in Fest. Ind. to Pharmuthi' is especially gratuitous. __________________________________________________________________
I. General Chronological Table of the Life of S. Athanasius.
N.B.--Dates upon which the Historia Acephala and Festal Index coincide are printed in Thick Type. Where the agreement, though certain, is constructive and not explicit, an asterisk is added. Where the month, or day, is in ordinary type, the agreement does not extend to the details in question. The more doubtful points of chronology are marked by italics.
284.
Aug. 29.
Beginning of Diocletian era.'
298.
Birth of s. athanasius about this year.
301.
Death of Bishop Theonas. Peter, bishop of Alexandria.
303.
Feb. 23.
First edict of persecution by Diocletian and Galerius.
December.
Vicennalia of Diocletian at Rome.
304.
Fourth Edict' of Persecution.
305.
Retirement of Diocletian (Constantine and Maximin Cæsars').
306.
Constantine proclaimed Augustus' at York.
307.
Maximin assumes title of Augustus' (holds Syria and Egypt).
311.
First edict of Toleration, and death of Galerius.
311.
Renewed persecution by Maximin in Syria and Egypt. Martyrdom of Peter, &c., at Alexandria.
312.
Edict of Toleration by Constantine at Milan.
Oct. 26.
Constantine defeats Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge.
Achillas, bishop of Alexandria.
313.
Edict of Milan (third Edict of Toleration), by Constantine and Licinius.
Alexander, bishop of Alexandria.
Maximin defeated by Licinius. His Edict of Toleration, and death.
Earliest possible date for the boy-baptism' of Athanasius.
318.
Probable date of the contra Gentes, his first book.
319.
Commencement of Arian controversy.
321.
Deposition of Arius by an Egyptian Synod.
322.
Mareotic defection to Arius.
Memorandum of deposition signed by Clergy of Alexandria.
Schism of Colluthus.
323.
Letter of Alexander of Alexandria to his namesake of Byzantium.
Sept. 18.
Final defeat of Licinius. Constantine sole Emperor.
324.
First intervention of Constantine in Arian question.
Hosius at Alexandria. Council there.
325.
Summer.
Council of NicÆA.
327.
November
Entire Meletian Episcopate collected at Alexandria, and reconciled to the Church (p. 137).
328.
April 17.
Death of Alexander.
June 8.
Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria.
329, 330.
Visitation of the Thebaid: ordains Pachomius presbyter.
330.
Council at Antioch deposes Eustathius.
331.
Athanasius defends himself before Constantine.
334.
Council at Cæsarea. Athan. refuses to attend.
335.
July 11*.
Athanasius leaves Alex. for Council of Tyre (beginning of first exile, Epiphi 17).
Aug.-Sept.
Mareotic commission in Egypt.
End of Sept.?
Council at Jerusalem. Arius received to communion.
Oct. 30.
Athanasius at CP.
336.
Feb. 8.
Athanasius starts for Treveri in Gaul.'
Council at CP., Marcellus (Asclepas), &c., deposed.
Basil, bishop of Ancyra.
Death of Arius at CP.
337.
May 22.
Death of Constantine at Nicomedia.
June 17.
Letter of Constantius Cæsar' ordering return of Athanasius (p. lxxxii.).
Nov. 23*.
*Return of Athanasius to Alexandria.
338.
July 25-27.
Visit of Antony to Alexandria.
Pistus intrusive bishop of Alexandria.
Winter.
Council of Egyptian bishops at Alexandria.
Envoys of both parties in Rome.
339.
January.
Synod at Antioch appoint Gregory bishop of Alexandria.
339.
Mar. 19.
Flight of Athanasius from Theonas.'
Mar. 22.
Arrival of Gregory at Alexandria.
April 16.
*Departure of Athanasius for Rome (p. lxxxii., the authorities agree as to the year, and their data combine readily as to the exact days).
340.
January.
Eusebian bishops meet at Antioch and reply to Julius. Their letter reaches Rome in spring.
Autumn.
Roman council and reply of Julius to Eusebians (eighteen months from arrival of Ath. in Rome).
341.
Midsummer.
Council of the Dedication at Antioch. Four creeds.
342.
May.
Athanasius leaves Rome (after three years' stay) for Milan.
Constans leaves him there (Frankish Campaign).
Summer.
Constans repels Eusebian deputies at Treveri (p. xlv.).
Late autumn.
Death of Eusebius of Nicomedia or CP.
343.
Easter.
Athanasius at Treveri.
July.
Assembly of Council of Sardica.
344.
Easter.
Athanasius at Naissus.
After Easter.
Deposition of Stephen: Council at Antioch appoint Leontius and issue Macrostich.'
August.
Constantius writes forbidding persecution of orthodox at Alexandria.
345.
Easter, April 7.
Athanasius at Aquileia.
Council at Milan. Photinus condemned.
June 26.
Death of Gregory at Alexandria (about ten months after letter of Constantius).
346.
September.
Interview of Ath. with Constantius at Antioch.
Oct. 21.
Return to Alexandria.
End of year.
Earliest possible date for consecration of Frumentius by Athanasius.
347.
First council at Sirmium against Photinus.
349.
Controversy with Rome concerning Easter.
350.
Jan. 18.
Murder of Constans.
351.
Mar. 15.
Gallus proclaimed as Constantius Cæsar.'
Sep. 28.
Battle of Mursa.
Second council of Sirmium. Photinus deposed.
353.
May 19.
Legation of Serapion, &c., to Constantius. Montanus at Alexandria.
353.
Autumn.
Council at Arles against Athanasius.
354.
Execution of Gallus.
355.
Council at Milan against Athanasius.
July-Dec.
Diogenes at Alexandria.
November.
Julian Cæsar. '
356.
Jan. 6.
Syrianus at Alexandria.
Feb. 8.
Church of Theonas stormed by Syrianus.
Beginning of third exile.
June 10.
Cataphronius becomes Prefect of Egypt.
357.
Feb. 24.
George enters Alexandria as Bishop.
Summer.
Third council, and second creed (blasphemy') of Sirmium.
358.
Lent.
Council of Ancyra.
Oct. 2.
Expulsion of George from Alexandria.
359.
May 22.
Conference of Sirmium. The dated Creed.
May-Dec.
Councils of Ariminum and Seleucia.
Dec. 31.
Creed of Niké accepted by delegates at CP.
360.
Jan.
Julian proclaimed Augustus' at Paris.
Dedication council at CP. (Homoean; deposition of Semi-Arian' leaders and excommunication of Aetius).
361.
Meletius elected bishop of Antioch and deposed. Euzoius, Arian bishop.
Nov. 3.
Death of Constantius.
362.
Feb. 9.
Julian's edict (for recall of bishops) posted at Alexandria.
Feb. 21.
Return of Athanasius.
Summer.
Council of the confessors at Alexandria.
Lucifer founds the schism at Antioch.
October 4.
Renewed order of Julian against Athanasius.
Retirement of Athanasius.
363.
June 26.
Death of Julian. Athan. in Upper Egypt.
August?
Athanasius secretly in Alexandria.
Sep. 6.
Athan. crosses the Euphrates.
Sep.
Meets Jovian at Edessa.
Winter.
At Antioch.
364.
Feb. 14 (or 20).
Returns to Alexandria.
Feb. 17.
Death of Jovian.
Mar. 29.
Valens appointed Augustus' by Valentinian.
Autumn.
Council of Lampsacus.
365.
Spring.
Valens at Antioch. Renewal of Arian persecutions.
May 5.
Rescript arrives at Alexandria for expulsion of Athanasius.
Oct. 5.
Athanasius retires to his country house.
Sep. 28.
Revolt of Procopius at CP.
366.
Feb. 1.
Athanasius officially restored.
May 21.
Defeat of Procopius.
July 21.
Cæsareum burnt at Alexandria.
367.
Sep. 24.
Attempt of Lucius to enter Alexandria.
368.
Sep. 22.
Athanasius begins his Memorial Church.
370.
Aug. 7.
Memorial Church dedicated.
Correspondence between Athan. and Basil begins.
371.
Deputation of the Marcellians of Ancyra to Athanasius.
372.
Two books against Apollinarianism.
373.
May 2-3.
Death of Athanasius.
A table of the Egyptian months, and a table of the date of Easter, &c., in each year of the episcopate of Athanasius, will be given at the end of the introduction to the collection of Letters at the close of this volume (p. 501 sq.). A list of the consuls of each year is given in the Festal Index. __________________________________________________________________
II. Synoptical Table of the Bishops of the Chief Sees.
And of the principal Councils held, during the lifetime of Athanasius.
N.B.--The names of bishops in italics are open to doubt regarding their date.
An asterisk prefixed to a bishop's name means that he was elected when the see was not de facto vacant (the case of Ursinus of Rome in 366 is not free from doubt).
after the name of a synod indicates that although not formally Arian it was held under the influence of Eusebius of Nicomedia.
* denotes a synod more or less implicated in Arianism by its creeds (N.B. no creed at Arles or Milan, 353-355).
** denote a formally Arian synod.
Semi-Arian' synods are printed in italics.
Emperor
Rome
Alexandria
Antioch
Constantinople
Synods
W. E.
W.
E.
301. Peter
305. Galerius
305. Illiberis
306. Constantine
307. Licinius
309. Eusebius
308-313. Maximin
310. Melchiades
312. Achillas
313. Alexander
313. Rome
314. Silvester (d. 335)
314. Arles
314? Ancyra
315? Neo-Cæsarea
319. Philogonius.
Paulinus
320? Alexander
321. Alexandria
323. Constantine, sole Augustus
c. 324. Eustathius
324. Alexandria
325. Nicæa
328. Athanasius
330. Paulinus?'
[330. Constantinople' made the new Rome]
330. Antioch
Eulalius
332. Euphronius
333. Flacillus (or Placitus)
334. Cæsarea
335. Tyre and Jerusalem
336. Mark
336. Paul (d. 350?)
336. CP.
337. Constantine II. (d. 340). Constans (d. 350)
Constantius
337. Julius
338. *Pistus
337? *Eusebius (d. 341-2)
339. *Gregory
339&40. Antioch
340. Rome
340. Gangra
341. Antioch*
342. Stephen
342. *Macedonius
Sardica
343. Philippopolis*
344. Leontius
344. Antioch*
345. Milan
347. Sirmium I*
350. Constantius, sole Augustus
351. Sirmium II*
352. Liberius
353. Arles*
355. Milan*
357. *Felix
357. *George
357. Eudoxius
357. Sirmium III**
358. Ancyra
359. *Anianus
359. Sirmium IV*
Ariminum* Seleucia*
360. *Eudoxius
360. CP**
361. Julian
361. Meletius
*Euzoius
362. *Paulinus (schism).
362. Alexandria
362. Laodicea??
363. Jovian
363. Antioch
364. Valentinian Valens
364. Lampsacus
366. Damasus (d. 384)
366-7. *Ursinus
367. *Lucius
367. Tyana
370. Demophilus [Evagrius]
373. Peter
375. Gratian (d. 383)
Valentinian II. (d. 392)
379. Theodosius __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Appendix.
------------------------
The Civil and Military Government of Egypt in the Lifetime of Athanasius.
The name Egypt in the fourth century was applied firstly to the diocese' or group of provinces governed by the Præfectus Ægypti or Præfectus Augustalis,' secondly to the Delta or Ægyptus Propria, one of the provinces of which the diocese was made up. These provinces (Ammian. Marc. XXII. xvi.) were originally three in number: Egypt proper, Libya, and the Thebais. During our period they became five, firstly by the separation of the Eastern Delta from Egypt proper under the name of Augustamnica in 341 (infr. pp. 130, 504, note 17a); secondly by the subdivision of Libya (at an uncertain date) into Hither Libya (Libya Inferior,' or Siccior'), and the Pentapolis or Libya Superior of which Ptolemais was the capital. At a later date still the Heptanomis was separated from Ægyptus' under the name of Arcadia, given in honour of the Emperor Arcadius. These then are the six provinces which make up Egypt' in the Notilia (shortly after a.d. 400). Each province, with the exception of Augustamnica, whose governor enjoyed the title of corrector,' was under a præses (hegoumenos): not one of the six was of consular rank. This regulation was due to the peculiar constitution of the diocese or province of Egypt in the wider sense. At the head of this latter, and subordinate in rank, though scarcely second in dignity, to the Comes Orientis, was the Prefect of Egypt, who enjoyed an exceptional position among the greater provincial officers. He appears to have been, at least in practice, directly under the Præfectus Prætorio per Orientem, the supreme civil representative of Augustus' throughout the Eastern Empire. The title Præfectus had in fact a different history as applied to the Prefect of the East and the Prefect of Egypt respectively. As applied to the latter, it was as old as Augustus. The importance of Egypt, mainly but not solely as a granary of Rome, had led the politic heir of Julius Cæsar to ensure its complete and peculiar dependence on the emperor. For this object, its government was committed to a nominee of the emperor, who must be not a Senator but an Eques only; i.e. he must never have held one of the great offices of state from Consul to quæstor. No one of senatorial rank was to be permitted to set foot in Egypt. (For the prerogatives of the præfectus Ægypti under Augustus see Tacitus Ann. xii. 60. also Ulp. Digest. I. xvii.). This arrangement survived the various vicissitudes of Egypt in the third century, and even the reorganisation of the Empire by Diocletian. Egypt was severed off between 365 and 386 from the Eastern Diocese' (Sievers, p. 117, appealing to Mommsen in Abhandl. der Berliner Akad. 1862). Upon the above facts was founded the (perhaps merely popular) title Augustalis' which we find already applied to the Prefect of Egypt about a.d. 350 (infr. p. 143, cf. p. 93 note). But Sievers (ubi supr.), following Mommsen, contends that there is reason to think that the dignity of Augustal' Prefect was officially created about a.d. 367. This view cannot be adequately discussed here, but it rests only in part upon the series of governors furnished by the Festal Index.
From that document we learn that the prefect of Egypt' in the wider sense in almost every case held also the office of governor' of Egypt in the narrower sense. The exceptions noted by Sievers (§14) are in most cases based on the errors of Larsow. But in 365 Flavianus is governor' only, next year Prefect' also: his successors Proclianus and Tatianus are each governor' only (366-7), but the latter is Prefect in 368, and governor' only in 369-70, as also is Palladius, 370-371, who is yet succeeded by Olympius as Prefect.' These variations may be due merely to careless use of language, or possibly to some change about the time referred to.
The list of prefects of Egypt is fuller than any that exists for a Roman province over so long a period, and on the whole it is in the highest degree trustworthy. But there are one or two drawbacks to take account of. Firstly, there are the discrepancies between the Index iii., vi., vii., and the headings to the corresponding letters (see notes). Also, the heading to Letter x. presupposes a change of governor in the previous year of which the Index tells us nothing. Again, a letter of Julian's (No. 23) is addressed to a Hermogenes, governor of Egypt' for whom it is difficult to find room in the following list at the date required (end of 361, when Gerontius was prefect). Julianus, uncle of the Emperor, if not disguised under the name Italicianus (see below), possibly ruled Egypt (Jul. Ep. 11), as Comes Orientis, which office he held in 362. On the other hand the Olympus of Index xxxiv., and the Ecdikius of Julian, Epp. 6, 50, and Cod. Theod. xv. i. 8, are probably one and the same (Sievers, p. 124).
The Military command of Egypt was now in the hand of the dux,' who had the disposal of the troops in Egypt proper; those of Libya and of the Thebais were, at any rate later on, entrusted to separate duces.' In the Notitia, while the two latter duces' remain, the Dux Ægypti is replaced by a higher official, entitled the Comes Rei Militaris per Ægyptum.' But this belongs to a later date. In the time of Athanasius Counts' appear in Egypt only as extraordinary or special commissioners whose authority is exercised concurrently with that of the Dux, as, e.g., Count Heraclianus or Heraclius (infr. pp. 290, 292), whose commission runs parallel with the command of the new dux' Sebastianus; and Count Asterius (p. 289), who was in Egypt when Felicissimus was Duke.'
We now give a list of the governors and dukes of Egypt, with references to the Festal Index: these must also be supplemented by the general index to this volume:--
(1) Prefect and Governor.
328, 329. Septimius Zenius (Index i., Heading i.).
330. Magninianus (Index ii., Heading ii.).
331. Hyginus (or Eugenius,' Index iii.), but Florentius (Heading iii.).
332. Hyginus (Heading iv. and Index iv.).
333. Paternus (Heading v. and Index v.).
334, 335. Paternus (Index), but Philagrius (Heading iv., v.).
336-7. Philagrius (Index viii., ix.).
338. Theodorus (Index x.), superseded by Philagrius (Heading x.).
339, 340. Philagrius (Index xi., xii., Heading xi.).
341-343. Longinus (Index xiii.-xv., Headings xiii., xiv., and cf. Cod. Th. XVI. ii. 10, 11, correcting date by Sievers, p. 114).
344. Palladius of Italy (Index xvi.).
345-352. Nestorius of Gaza (Index xvii.-xxiv., Headings xvii.-xx., also infr. pp. 218, 219, notes, &c.).
353, 354. Sebastianus of Thrace (Index xxv., xxvi.).
355, 356. Maximus the elder' of Nicæa (Index xxvii., xxviii., and see pp. 246, 301).
356, 7. Cataphronius (Index xxviii., xxix.; he arrived on June 10, 356, see p. 290, note 9; also cf. Liban. Epp. 434, 435).
357-359. Parnassius (Index xxix., xxxi., cf. for the latter year Amm. Marc. XIX., xii.).
359. (For 3 months only) Italicianus of Italy,' perhaps for Julianus (so Siev., p. 121, cf. Index xxxi.).
359-361. Faustinus (Index xxxi.-xxxiii., cf. p. 291?).
361, 362. Gerontius (Index xxxiii., xxxiv., Liban. Epp. 294, 295, 547, 548).
362, 363. Ecdikius Olympus (Index xxxiv., xxxv., cf. remarks above).
364. Hierius or Aerius (Index xxxvi., Sievers, Leben des Libanius, Appendix A).
364. Maximus (Index ib., Liban. Ep. 1050, written in July or Aug.), for a short time only.
364-366. Flavianus (Index xxxvi., xxxviii., Liban. Ep. 569, supr. ch. v. §3, k).
366, 367. Proclianus (Index xxxviii., xxxix.).
367-370. Tatianus (Index xxxix., xlii., see Gibbon ch. xxix. and notes 6-8, for references).
370, 371. Olympius Palladius (Index xlii., xliii.).
371-373. Aelius Palladius (Index xliii.-xlv., Socr. iv. 21, &c.).
(2) Dux Ægypti.
Our materials for this list are very scanty, but we can verify the following:--
340 and 345. Balacius or Valacius (pp. 219, 273, &c.).
350. Felicissimus (p. 289).
356. (Jan. and Feb.) Syrianus (Index xxviii., &c.).
356. (Apparently after Midsummer, cf. p. 292 with 290.) Sebastianus (successor of Syrianus,' Ep. Ammon. 21); he remains till after 358 (cf. Siev. p. 125 for references to letters of Libanius).
360. Artemius (succ. of Sebastianus,' ib., Index xxxii., Letter 53. note 1).
365, 366. Victorinus (ch. v. §3, k).
367, 368. Traianus (Index xxxix., Sievers, pp. 146, sq.).
On the matters dealt with in this appendix, consult Mommsen, Provinces (Eng. Tra.), ii., pp. 233, 246; the Notitia (ed. Panciroli, Genev., 1623, Böcking, Bonn, 1839-1853, Seeck, Berlin, 1876); Gibbon, ch. xvii.; Marquardt, Röm. Staats-verwaltung, vol. i.; and Kuhn, Die städtische, &c., Verfassung des R. Reiches, vol. ii.; also Sievers on the Hist. Aceph. (supr. ch. i., §3).
On the Egyptian bishoprics, see, in addition to Le Quien, a Coptic list of sees in De Rougé, Géographie de la Basse-Egypte, Paris, 1891, which came out too late to be used for this volume. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Introduction to the Treatise
Contra Gentes
------------------------
This treatise and that which follows it form in reality two parts of a single work. Jerome (De Script. Eccl.) refers to them as Adversus Gentes Libri Duo.' They are, however, more commonly distinguished by the titles given them in the present volume. Both books, indeed, are mainly directed against the Gentiles, but in the present treatise the refutation is carried out with more special reference to the beliefs and worship of the heathen. The two books belong to the earlier years of Athanasius. The Arian controversy which broke out (319 a.d.) probably before his twenty-second year has left no trace upon them (not even c. Gent. 46. 8, see note there). How long before the limit thus fixed the work was composed it is impossible to say with certainty. The hint (c. Gent. 9. 5) that the time for the deification of emperors by decree of the Senate might have come to an end points to the conversion of Constantine as a terminus a quo. And the full maturity of power which marks out the de Incarnatione as a masterpiece of Christian theology inclines us to put the composition as late as we can. Hence the date usually adopted, viz. in or shortly before 318 A.D., the twenty-first year (probably) of Athanasius' age.
The position of the book in relation to the general history of the theology of Athanasius and of the Church has been pointed out in the Prolegomena. It remains to sketch its argument, and tabulate its arrangement: a somewhat more extended summary is prefixed to each section.
His aim is to vindicate (§1) the Dignity and reasonableness of the Christian Faith. The main vindication of the Faith is seen in its practical results. But, that these may produce their proper effect, a removal of error from the mind is needed. Hence the necessity of refuting idolatry, which is deduced from the same cause as evil in general, namely, the departure of man from his original exemplar, the Logos (§§2-5). By the misuse of his power of conscious choice, man fell (6-8) into the degradation and illusions (9-15) of idolatry. He then examines the popular and learned pleas on behalf of idolatry (16-26), and thus arrives at the central problem of the conception of God. That God is not Nature is shewn (27-29) by the mutual dependence of the various constituents of the Universe: no one of these, therefore, can be God: nor can their totality; for God is not compounded of parts on which He depends, but is Himself the cause of existence to all. Such a God as this, the soul of man (30-33) can and, if purified from sin, will (34) recognise; if her imperfections hinder this, the spectacle of Reason and Order in the Universe (35-46) will assist her to recognise the handiwork of God, and the presence of the Logos, and through him the Father. The reclamation and restoration of sinful and degraded man can only be effected (47) by a return to the Logos. This opens the question dealt with in the second book, de Incarnatione.
Such is the general drift of the c. Gentes, and its high interest is beyond question. At the same time it may be admitted that to modern readers much of it fails to commend itself. In the two-fold work before us Athanasius looks before and after.' The second portion, on the Incarnation, waxes rather than wanes in its significance for modern theology. It is more modern to us than the theology of any generation since then. But the c. Gentes, with its retrospect upon a past utterly dead [100] to the human spirit, its arguments addressed to a range of ideas widely remote from our own, its inadequate view of the genesis and history of heathen religions, its antiquated physics (36, 44, and the phusikos logos of 39), its occasional glaring fallacies of argument (16 sub fin., 33. 1), is apt to disappoint the modern student who reads it for the first time. This may explain its not having been translated before now. But while the defects of the book are evident at a glance, it grows upon the reader with repeated study. The moral elevation of its tone,--the firm grasp of central Christian truths,--the sure insight in dealing with such problems as evil and sin,--the relation of God to Nature,--the ethical contrast of Christian theism and heathen polytheism,--the grave humour of such passages as 16. 5; 10. 4 fin.; II. 2 fin., &c.,--and beyond all this a certain largeness of mind and simple unostentatious fervour of conviction, stamp the book as a great one, and as the worthy complement of its more renowned companion.
The two together are, next to Origen's de Principiis, the first attempt to construct a scientific system of the Christian religion upon certain fundamental ideas of God and world, sin and redemption; and they form the ripe fruit of the positive apology in the Greek Church.' (Schaff, Nicene Christianity, p. 82.) The polemic against idolatry and heathen mythology is common to the general class of Christian apologists, and is to be found in heathen writers like Lucian and even Porphyry (letter to Anebo). But what distinguishes Athanasius from previous apologists (excepting Origen) is the novel nature of his problem. The alliance between philosophy and gross popular idolatry had given Christian apology a new task. From Porphyry downwards (Porphyry himself was not consistent in this respect) the Neo-platonist school, in alarm at the progress of Christianity, had taken up the defence of popular paganism, endeavouring to subsume its grosser manifestations, its images, sacrifices, &c., under philosophico-religious principles (infra §19, &c.). The idea of theurgy' as the necessary initiation into the higher life colours the teaching of Porphyry, but more strongly that of his pupil Iamblichus, who died early in the fourth century, and whose pupils (Ædesius, &c.) were contemporaries of Athanasius. This degeneration of Platonism, however, went along with the continued study of Plato, whose dialogues are to some extent common ground between Athanasius and his opponents (Phædrus, §5, 33, Laws, 33, Timæus, 41, &c., &c.; but it is not in every case easy to say whether Athan. quotes Plato merely at second hand, or directly, as he certainly does 10. 4).
It may be remarked finally that in these early treatises the influence of Origen and his school is more distinct than in the later works of Athanasius. Not to lay too much stress on his proof of God's existence and unity from the Cosmos (cf. Orig. c. Cels. I. 23), the prominence of the philosophic doctrine of the Logos as a cosmic mediatorial Principle (compare Alexander's mesiteuousa phusis monogenes) stands in contrast with his later insistence (cf. Orat. ii. 24, sq.) on the directness of the personal agency of God (see also below, note on In Illud' 2). The Platonist idea of the Logos is utilised (de Incarn. 41) without sufficient explanation of its fundamental difference from the Christian doctrine. The influence of Origenism is traceable in his theory of the nature of evil as purely negative (cf. §5 with Orig. c. Cels. iv. 66), in the explanation (to which I recall nothing parallel in his later works) of the garden of Eden as figurative (2. 4, cf. 3. 3), the stress laid on the restoration of knowledge of God through the Logos, and perhaps in the deification of man through Christ (Orig. c. Cels. iii. 28 sub. fin.), a thought which Athanasius brings forward in his later at least as often as in his earlier writings (see note on de Incarn. 54. 3). On the whole, however, the tendency of Athanasius in the course of the Arian controversy is to move away from Origen and toward the Western habit of thought: this is especially exemplified in the history of the term Hypostasis (see above, Prolegg. chap. II. §3 (2) b, and below Introd. to Tom. ad Ant.; cf. also Introductions to de Sent. Dionys. and ad Afros). Some of the more characteristic speculations of Origen have left no trace even on the earliest works of Athanasius (see Introd. to the next Treatise). The translation (here as elsewhere, except where it is otherwise stated) is from the Benedictine text.
The contents of the contra Gentes fall into the following scheme:--
Page
§1.
Introduction. Statement of the purpose of the treatise.
§§2-29.
First Part. Refutation of Heathenism.
§§2-5.
a. The nature of evil.
§2.
(1) Not substantially, nor originally existent
§§3, 4.
(2) Its history
§5.
(3) Its essential nature, viz. a determination of will
§6.
False views of evil refuted.
(1) Heathen: Evil natural
(2) Heretical: Dualism
§7.
This latter refuted, and the doctrine of the Church stated
b. Idolatry.
§§8-10.
(1) Its history and varieties
§11, 12.
(2) Immorality of its mythologies
10
§§13, 14.
(3) Folly of image worship
11
§15.
(4) Heathen deities, as popularly represented, are not gods
12
§§16-22.
c. Arguments in favour of heathenism considered.
§§16, 17.
(1) Immoral features due to the poets.' But (a) they come to use with the same credential as the names and existence of the gods; (b) The poets more likely to have invented the divine than the human features of these beings.
12
§18.
(2) The gods worshipped for beneficent inventions,' &c. But this is no title to deification.
13
§19.
(3) Images (a) necessary to represent invisible beings, (b) a means of intercourse with the gods'
14
§20-22.
This refuted
14
§§23-26.
d. Supplementary proofs against idolatry. (1) Variety of cults
16
(2) Human sacrifice. (3) The gods the cause of moral corruption
17
e. Theism established against philosophic pantheism.
§27.
(1) No part of the universe identical with God.
18
§28.
(2) The whole universe not identical with God
18
§29.
(3) Nature and God distinct
19
§§30-34.
Second Part. Knowledge of God Possible. The Soul
§30.
(a) The soul of man akin to God
20
(b) Proofs of its existence:--
§31.
(1) Man and animals
20
(2) Objectivity of thought
20
§32.
(3) Soul and body
21
§33.
(c) Proofs of its immortality
21
§34.
(d) The soul, the mirror of the Logos, can know God, at least through creation.
22
§§35-44.
Third Part. Nature a Revelation of God.
1. Nature a revelation:--
§35-37.
(a) Of God
22
§38, 39.
(b) Of His Unity
24
§40.
(c) Of the Reason or Word' of God
25
§§41, 42.
2. The cosmic function of the Word, original and permanent
26
§§43, 44.
Three similes to illustrate this
27
§§45-47.
Conclusion:--
a. The teaching of Scripture on the subjects of Parts I. and III
28
b. Transition to the theme of the next treatise
29 __________________________________________________________________
[100] In heathen countries the case is different. An English translation was made a few years since for dissemination in India by the members of the Oxford Mission at Calcutta. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Against the Heathen.
------------------------
§1. Introduction:--The purpose of the book a vindication of Christian doctrine, and especially of the Cross, against the scoffing objection of Gentiles. The effects of this doctrine its main vindication.
The knowledge of our religion and of the truth of things is independently manifest rather than in need of human teachers, for almost day by day it asserts itself by facts, and manifests itself brighter than the sun by the doctrine of Christ. 2. Still, as you nevertheless desire to hear about it, Macarius [101] , come let us as we may be able set forth a few points of the faith of Christ: able though you are to find it out from the divine oracles, but yet generously desiring to hear from others as well. 3. For although the sacred and inspired Scriptures are sufficient [102] to declare the truth,--while there are other works of our blessed teachers [103] compiled for this purpose, if he meet with which a man will gain some knowledge of the interpretation of the Scriptures, and be able to learn what he wishes to know,--still, as we have not at present in our hands the compositions of our teachers, we must communicate in writing to you what we learned from them,--the faith, namely, of Christ the Saviour; lest any should hold cheap the doctrine taught among us, or think faith in Christ unreasonable. For this is what the Gentiles traduce and scoff at, and laugh loudly at us, insisting on the one fact of the Cross of Christ; and it is just here that one must pity their want of sense, because when they traduce the Cross of Christ they do not see that its power has filled all the world, and that by it the effects of the knowledge of God are made manifest to all. 4. For they would not have scoffed at such a fact, had they, too, been men who genuinely gave heed to His divine Nature. On the contrary, they in their turn would have recognised this man as Saviour of the world, and that the Cross has been not a disaster, but a healing of Creation. 5. For if after the Cross all idolatry was overthrown, while every manifestation of demons is driven away by this Sign [104] , and Christ alone is worshipped and the Father known through Him, and, while gainsayers are put to shame, He daily invisibly wins over the souls of these gainsayers [105] ,--how, one might fairly ask them, is it still open to us to regard the matter as human, instead of confessing that He Who ascended the Cross is Word of God and Saviour of the World? But these men seem to me quite as bad as one who should traduce the sun when covered by clouds, while yet wondering at his light, seeing how the whole of creation is illumined by him. 6. For as the light is noble, and the sun, the chief cause of light, is nobler still, so, as it is a divine thing for the whole world to be filled with his knowledge, it follows that the orderer and chief cause of such an achievement is God and the Word of God. 7. We speak then as lies within our power, first refuting the ignorance of the unbelieving; so that what is false being refuted, the truth may then shine forth of itself, and that you yourself, friend, may be reassured that you have believed what is true, and in coming to know Christ have not been deceived. Moreover, I think it becoming to discourse to you, as a lover of Christ, about Christ, since I am sure that you rate faith in and knowledge of Him above anything else whatsoever. __________________________________________________________________
[101] See de Incarn. 1 and note there.
[102] Constantly insisted on by Athan. Cf. de Incarn. 5, and note on de Decr. 32.
[103] De Incarn. 56. 2; he may also be referring to works from the Alex. school, such as Orig. de Princ.
[104] Cf. de Incarn. 47. 2, 48. 3, Vit. Ant. passim.
[105] Cf. de Incarn. 50. 3, 51. 3, &c. __________________________________________________________________
§2. Evil no part of the essential nature of things. The original creation and constitution of man in grace and in the knowledge of God.
In the beginning wickedness did not exist. Nor indeed does it exist even now in those who are holy, nor does it in any way belong to their nature. But men later on began to contrive it and to elaborate it to their own hurt. Whence also they devised the invention of idols, treating what was not as though it were. 2. For God Maker of all and King of all, that has His Being beyond [106] all substance and human discovery, inasmuch as He is good and exceeding noble, made, through His own Word our Saviour Jesus Christ, the human race after His own image, and constituted man able to see and know realities by means of this assimilation to Himself, giving him also a conception [107] and knowledge even of His own eternity, in order that, preserving his nature intact, he might not ever either depart from his idea of God, nor recoil from the communion of the holy ones; but having the grace of Him that gave it, having also God's own power from the Word of the Father, he might rejoice and have fellowship with the Deity, living the life of immortality unharmed and truly blessed. For having nothing to hinder his knowledge of the Deity, he ever beholds, by his purity, the Image of the Father, God the Word, after Whose image he himself is made. He is awe-struck as he contemplates that Providence [108] which through the Word extends to the universe, being raised above the things of sense and every bodily appearance, but cleaving to the divine and thought-perceived things in the heavens by the power of his mind. 3. For when the mind of men does not hold converse with bodies, nor has mingled with it from without aught of their lust, but is wholly above them, dwelling with itself as it was made to begin with, then, transcending the things of sense and all things human, it is raised up on high; and seeing the Word, it sees in Him also the Father of the Word, taking pleasure in contemplating Him, and gaining renewal by its desire toward Him; 4. exactly as the first of men created, the one who was named Adam in Hebrew, is described in the Holy Scriptures as having at the beginning had his mind to God-ward in a freedom unembarrassed by shame, and as associating with the holy ones in that contemplation of things perceived by the mind which he enjoyed in the place where he was--the place which the holy Moses called in figure a Garden. So purity of soul is sufficient of itself to reflect God, as the Lord also says, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." __________________________________________________________________
[106] See Orig. c. Cels. vii. 42 sqq. de Princ. I. 1.
[107] Restored in Christ, see §34.
[108] Cf. Ep. Æg. 15, Apol. Fug. passim, Orat. iii. 37. __________________________________________________________________
§3. The decline of man from the above condition, owing to his absorption in material things.
Thus then, as we have said, the Creator fashioned the race of men, and thus meant it to remain. But men, making light of better things, and holding back from apprehending them, began to seek in preference things nearer to themselves. 2. But nearer to themselves were the body and its senses; so that while removing their mind from the things perceived by thought, they began to regard themselves; and so doing, and holding to the body and the other things of sense, and deceived as it were in their own surroundings, they fell into lust of themselves, preferring what was their own to the contemplation of what belonged to God. Having then made themselves at home in these things, and not being willing to leave what was so near to them, they entangled their soul with bodily pleasures, vexed and turbid with all kind of lusts, while they wholly forgot the power they originally had from God. 3. But the truth of this one may see from the man who was first made, according to what the holy Scriptures tell us of him. For he also, as long as he kept his mind to God, and the contemplation of God, turned away from the contemplation of the body. But when, by counsel of the serpent, he departed from the consideration of God, and began to regard himself, then they not only fell to bodily lust, but knew that they were naked, and knowing, were ashamed. But they knew that they were naked, not so much of clothing as that they were become stripped of the contemplation of divine things, and had transferred their understanding to the contraries. For having departed from the consideration of the one and the true, namely, God, and from desire of Him, they had thenceforward embarked in divers lusts and in those of the several bodily senses. 4. Next, as is apt to happen, having formed a desire for each and sundry, they began to be habituated to these desires, so that they were even afraid to leave them: whence the soul became subject to cowardice and alarms, and pleasures and thoughts of mortality. For not being willing to leave her lusts, she fears death and her separation from the body. But again, from lusting, and not meeting with gratification, she learned to commit murder and wrong. We are then led naturally to shew, as best we can, how she does this. __________________________________________________________________
§4. The gradual abasement of the Soul from Truth to Falsehood by the abuse of her freedom of Choice.
Having departed from the contemplation of the things of thought, and using to the full the several activities of the body, and being pleased with the contemplation of the body, and seeing that pleasure is good for her, she was misled and abused the name of good, and thought that pleasure was the very essence of good: just as though a man out of his mind and asking for a sword to use against all he met, were to think that soundness of mind. 2. But having fallen in love with pleasure, she began to work it out in various ways. For being by nature mobile, even though she have turned away from what is good, yet she does not lose her mobility. She moves then, no longer according to virtue or so as to see God, but imagining false things, she makes a novel use of her power, abusing it as a means to the pleasures she has devised, since she is after all made with power over herself. 3. For she is able, as on the one hand to incline to what is good, so on the other to reject it; but in rejecting the good she of course entertains the thought of what is opposed to it, for she cannot at all cease from movement, being, as I said before, mobile by nature. And knowing her own power over herself, she sees that she is able to use the members of her body in either direction, both toward what is, or toward what is not. 4. But good is, while evil is not; by what is, then, I mean what is good, inasmuch as it has its pattern in God Who is. But by what is not I mean what is evil, in so far as it consists in a false imagination in the thoughts of men. For though the body has eyes so as to see Creation, and by its entirely harmonious construction to recognise the Creator; and ears to listen to the divine oracles and the laws of God; and hands both to perform works of necessity and to raise to God in prayer; yet the soul, departing from the contemplation of what is good and from moving in its sphere, wanders away and moves toward its contraries. 5. Then seeing, as I said before, and abusing her power, she has perceived that she can move the members of the body also in an opposite way: and so, instead of beholding the Creation, she turns the eye to lusts, shewing that she has this power too; and thinking that by the mere fact of moving she is maintaining her own dignity, and is doing no sin in doing as she pleases; not knowing that she is made not merely to move, but to move in the right direction. For this is why an apostolic utterance assures us "All things are lawful, but not all things are expedient [109] ." __________________________________________________________________
[109] 1 Cor. x. 23. __________________________________________________________________
§5. Evil, then consists essentially in the choice of what is lower in preference to what is higher.
But the audacity of men, having regard not to what is expedient and becoming, but to what is possible for it, began to do the contrary; whence, moving their hands to the contrary, it made them commit murder, and led away their hearing to disobedience, and their other members to adultery instead of to lawful procreation; and the tongue, instead of right speaking, to slander and insult and perjury; the hands again, to stealing and striking fellow-men; and the sense of smell to many sorts of lascivious odours; the feet, to be swift to shed blood, and the belly to drunkenness and insatiable gluttony [110] . 2. All of which things are a vice and sin of the soul: neither is there any cause of them at all, but only the rejection of better things. For just as if a charioteer [111] , having mounted his chariot on the race-course, were to pay no attention to the goal, toward which he should be driving, but, ignoring this, simply were to drive the horse as he could, or in other words as he would, and often drive against those he met, and often down steep places, rushing wherever he impelled himself by the speed of the team, thinking that thus running he has not missed the goal,--for he regards the running only, and does not see that he has passed wide of the goal;--so the soul too, turning from the way toward God, and driving the members of the body beyond what is proper, or rather, driven herself along with them by her own doing, sins and makes mischief for herself, not seeing that she has strayed from the way, and has swerved from the goal of truth, to which the Christ-bearing man, the blessed Paul, was looking when he said, "I press on toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling of Christ Jesus [112] :" so that the holy man, making the good his mark, never did what was evil. __________________________________________________________________
[110] Rom. iii. 10 foll.
[111] Cf. Plato Phædrus 246 C, 248 A, 253 E, 254.
[112] Phil. iii. 14. __________________________________________________________________
§6. False views of the nature of evil: viz., that evil is something in the nature of things, and has substantive existence. (a) Heathen thinkers: (evil resides in matter). Their refutation. (b) Heretical teachers: (Dualism). Refutation from Scripture.
Now certain of the Greeks, having erred from the right way, and not having known Christ, have ascribed to evil a substantive and independent existence. In this they make a double mistake: either in denying the Creator to be maker of all things, if evil had an independent subsistence and being of its own; or again, if they mean that He is maker of all things, they will of necessity admit Him to be maker of evil also. For evil, according to them, is included among existing things. 2. But this must appear paradoxical and impossible. For evil does not come from good, nor is it in, or the result of, good, since in that case it would not be good, being mixed in its nature or a cause of evil. 3. But the sectaries, who have fallen away from the teaching of the Church, and made shipwreck concerning the Faith [113] , they also wrongly think that evil has a substantive existence. But they arbitrarily imagine another god besides the true One, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and that he is the unmade producer of evil and the head of wickedness, who is also artificer of Creation. But these men one can easily refute, not only from the divine Scriptures, but also from the human understanding itself, the very source of these their insane imaginations. 4. To begin with, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ says in His own gospels confirming the words of Moses: "The Lord God is one;" and "I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth [114] ." But if God is one, and at the same time Lord of heaven and earth, how could there be another God beside Him? or what room will there be for the God whom they suppose, if the one true God fills all things in the compass of heaven and earth? or how could there be another creator of that, whereof, according to the Saviour's utterance, the God and Father of Christ is Himself Lord? 5. Unless indeed they would say that it were, so to speak, in an equipoise, and the evil god capable of getting the better of the good God. But if they say this, see to what a pitch of impiety they descend. For when powers are equal, the superior and better cannot be discovered. For if the one exist even if the other will it not, both are equally strong and equally weak equally, because the very existence of either is a defeat of the other's will: weak, because what happens is counter to their wills: for while the good God exists in spite of the evil one, the evil god exists equally in spite of the good. __________________________________________________________________
[113] 1 Tim. i. 19.
[114] Mark xii. 29; Matt. xi. 25. __________________________________________________________________
§7. Refutation of dualism from reason. Impossibility of two Gods. The truth as to evil is that which the Church teaches: that it originates, and resides, in the perverted choice of the darkened soul.
More especially, they are exposed to the following reply. If visible things are the work of the evil god, what is the work of the good God? for nothing is to be seen except the work of the Artificer. Or what evidence is there that the good God exists at all, if there are no works of His by which He may be known? for by his works the artificer is known. 2. Or how could two principles exist, contrary one to another: or what is it that divides them, for them to exist apart? For it is impossible for them to exist together, because they are mutually destructive. But neither can the one be included in the other, their nature being unmixed and unlike. Accordingly that which divides them will evidently be of a third nature, and itself God. But of what nature could this third something be? good or evil? It will be impossible to determine, for it cannot be of the nature of both. 3. This conceit of theirs, then, being evidently rotten, the truth of the Church's theology must be manifest: that evil has not from the beginning been with God or in God, nor has any substantive existence; but that men, in default of the vision of good, began to devise and imagine for themselves what was not, after their own pleasure. 4. For as if a man, when the sun is shining, and the whole earth illumined by his light, were to shut fast his eyes and imagine darkness where no darkness exists, and then walk wandering as if in darkness, often falling and going down steep places, thinking it was dark and not light,--for, imagining that he sees, he does not see at all;--so, too, the soul of man, shutting fast her eyes, by which she is able to see God, has imagined evil for herself, and moving therein, knows not that, thinking she is doing something, she is doing nothing. For she is imagining what is not, nor is she abiding in her original nature; but what she is is evidently the product of her own disorder. 5. For she is made to see God, and to be enlightened by Him; but of her own accord in God's stead she has sought corruptible things and darkness, as the Spirit says somewhere in writing, "God made man upright, but they have sought out many inventions [115] ." Thus it has been then that men from the first discovered and contrived and imagined evil for themselves. But it is now time to say how they came down to the madness of idolatry, that you may know that the invention of idols is wholly due, not to good but to evil. But what has its origin in evil can never be pronounced good in any point,--being evil altogether. __________________________________________________________________
[115] Eccl. vii. 29. __________________________________________________________________
§8. The origin of idolatry is similar. The soul, materialised by forgetting God, and engrossed in earthly things, makes them into gods. The race of men descends into a hopeless depth of delusion and superstition.
Now the soul of mankind, not satisfied with the devising of evil, began by degrees to venture upon what is worse still. For having experience of diversities of pleasures, and girt about with oblivion of things divine; being pleased moreover and having in view the passions of the body, and nothing but things present and opinions about them, ceased to think that anything existed beyond what is seen, or that anything was good save things temporal and bodily; so turning away and forgetting that she was in the image of the good God, she no longer, by the power which is in her, sees God the Word after whose likeness she is made; but having departed from herself, imagines and feigns what is not. 2. For hiding, by the complications of bodily lusts, the mirror which, as it were, is in her, by which alone she had the power of seeing the Image of the Father, she no longer sees what a soul ought to behold, but is carried about by everything, and only sees the things which come under the senses. Hence, weighted with all fleshly desire, and distracted among the impressions of these things, she imagines that the God Whom her understanding has forgotten is to be found in bodily and sensible things, giving to things seen the name of God, and glorifying only those things which she desires and which are pleasant to her eyes. 3. Accordingly, evil is the cause which brings idolatry in its train; for men, having learned to contrive evil, which is no reality in itself, in like manner feigned for themselves as gods beings that had no real existence. Just, then, as though a man had plunged into the deep, and no longer saw the light, nor what appears by light, because his eyes are turned downwards, and the water is all above him; and, perceiving only the things in the deep, thinks that nothing exists beside them, but that the things he sees are the only true realities; so the men of former time, having lost their reason, and plunged into the lusts and imaginations of carnal things, and forgotten the knowledge and glory of God, their reasoning being dull, or rather following unreason, made gods for themselves of things seen, glorifying the creature rather than the Creator [116] , and deifying the works rather than the Master, God, their Cause and Artificer. 4. But just as, according to the above simile, men who plunge into the deep, the deeper they go down, advance into darker and deeper places, so it is with mankind. For they did not keep to idolatry in a simple form, nor did they abide in that with which they began; but the longer they went on in their first condition, the more new superstitions they invented: and, not satiated with the first evils, they again filled themselves. with others, advancing further in utter shamefulness, and surpassing themselves in impiety. But to this the divine Scripture testifies when it says, "When the wicked cometh unto the depth of evils, he despiseth [117] ." __________________________________________________________________
[116] Rom. i. 25.
[117] Prov. xviii. 3. __________________________________________________________________
§9. The various developments of idolatry: worship of the heavenly bodies, the elements, natural objects, fabulous creatures, personified lusts, men living and dead. The case of Antinous, and of the deified Emperors.
For now the understanding of mankind leaped asunder from God; and going lower in their ideas and imaginations, they gave the honour due to God first to the heaven and the sun and moon and the stars, thinking them to be not only gods, but also the causes of the other gods lower than themselves [118] . Then, going yet lower in their dark imaginations, they gave the name of gods to the upper æther and the air and the things in the air. Next, advancing further in evil, they came to celebrate as gods the elements and the principles of which bodies are composed, heat and cold and dryness and wetness. 2. But just as they who have fallen flat creep in the slime like land-snails, so the most impious of mankind, having fallen lower and lower from the idea of God, then set up as gods men, and the forms of men, some still living, others even after their death. Moreover, counselling and imagining worse things still, they transferred the divine and supernatural name of God at last even to stones and stocks, and creeping things both of land and water, and irrational wild beasts, awarding to them every divine honour, and turning from the true and only real God, the Father of Christ. 3. But would that even there the audacity of these foolish men had stopped short, and that they had not gone further yet in impious self-confusion. For to such a depth have some fallen in their understanding, to such darkness of mind, that they have even devised for themselves, and made gods of things that have no existence at all, nor any place among things created. For mixing up the rational with the irrational, and combining things unlike in nature, they worship the result as gods, such as the dog-headed and snake-headed and ass-headed gods among the Egyptians, and the ram-headed Ammon among the Libyans. While others, dividing apart the portions of men's bodies, head, shoulder, hand, and foot, have set up each as gods and deified them, as though their religion were not satisfied with the whole body in its integrity. 4. But others, straining impiety to the utmost, have deified the motive of the invention of these things and of their own wickedness, namely, pleasure and lust, and worship them, such as their Eros, and the Aphrodite at Paphos. While some of them, as if vying with them in depravation, have ventured to erect into gods their rulers or even their sons, either out of honour for their princes, or from fear of their tyranny, such as the Cretan Zeus, of such renown among them, and the Arcadian Hermes; and among the Indians Dionysus, among the Egyptians Isis and Osiris and Horus, and in our own time Antinous, favourite of Hadrian, Emperor of the Romans, whom, although men know he was a mere man, and not a respectable man, but on the contrary, full of licentiousness, yet they worship for fear of him that enjoined it. For Hadrian having come to sojourn in the land of Egypt, when Antinous the minister of his pleasure died, ordered him to be worshipped; being indeed himself in love with the youth even after his death, but for all that offering a convincing exposure of himself, and a proof against all idolatry, that it was discovered among men for no other reason than by reason of the lust of them that imagined it. According as the wisdom of God testifies beforehand when it says, "The devising of idols was the beginning of fornication [119] ." 5. And do not wonder, nor think what we are saying hard to believe, inasmuch as it is not long since, even if it be not still the case that the Roman Senate vote to those emperors who have ever ruled them from the beginning, either all of them, or such as they wish and decide, a place among the gods, and decree them to be worshipped [120] . For those to whom they are hostile, they treat as enemies and call men, admitting their real nature, while those who are popular with them they order to be worshipped on account of their virtue, as though they had it in their own power to make gods, though they are themselves men, and do not profess to be other than mortal. 6. Whereas if they are to make gods, they ought to be themselves gods; for that which makes must needs be better than that which it makes, and he that judges is of necessity in authority over him that is judged, while he that gives, at any rate that which he has, confers a layout, just as, of course, every king, in giving as a favour what he has to give, is greater and in a higher position than those who receive. If then they decree whomsoever they please to be gods, they ought first to be gods themselves. But the strange thing is this, that they themselves by dying as men, expose the falsehood of their own vote concerning those deified by them. __________________________________________________________________
[118] For the following chapters Döllinger, The Gentile and the Jew,', is a rich mine of illustration. The recently published Manual of the History of Religions,' by Prof. Chantepie de la Saussaye (Eng. Tra. pub. by Longmans), summarises the best results of recent research.
[119] Wisd. xiv. 12.
[120] Constantine was the last Emperor officially deified (D.C.B., I. 649), but even Theodosius is raised to heaven by the courtly Claudian Carm. de 111 Cons. Honor. 163 sqq.; cf. Gwatkin, p. 54, note. __________________________________________________________________
§10. Similar human origin of the Greek gods, by decree of Theseus. The process by which mortals became deified.
But this custom is not a new one, nor did it begin from the Roman Senate: on the contrary, it had existed previously from of old, and was formerly practised for the devising of idols. For the gods renowned from of old among the Greeks, Zeus, Poseidon, Apollo, Hephæstus, Hermes, and, among females, Hera and Demeter and Athena and Artemis, were decreed the title of gods by the order of Theseus, of whom Greek history tells us [121] ; and so the men who pass such decrees die like men and are mourned for, while those in whose favour they are passed are worshipped as gods. What a height of inconsistency and madness! knowing who passed the decree, they pay greater honour to those who are the subjects of it. 2. And would that their idolatrous madness had stopped short at males, and that they had not brought down the title of deity to females. For even women, whom it is not safe to admit to deliberation about public affairs, they worship and serve with the honour due to God, such as those enjoined by Theseus as above stated, and among the Egyptians [122] Isis and the Maid and the Younger one [123] , and among others Aphrodite. For the names of the others I do not consider it modest even to mention, full as they are of all kind of grotesqueness. 3. For many, not only in ancient times but in our own also, having lost their beloved ones, brothers and kinsfolk and wives; and many women who had lost their husbands, all of whom nature proved to be mortal men, made representations of them and devised sacrifices, and consecrated them; while later ages, moved by the figure and the brilliancy of the artist, worshipped them as gods, thus falling into inconsistency with nature [124] . For whereas their parents had mourned for them, not regarding them as gods (for had they known them to be gods they would not have lamented them as if they had perished; for this was why they represented them in an image, namely, because they not only did not think them gods, but did not believe them to exist at all, and in order that the sight of their form in the image might console them for their being no more), yet the foolish people pray to them as gods and invest them with the honour of the true God. 4. For example, in Egypt, even to this day, the death-dirge is celebrated for Osiris and Horus and Typho and the others. And the caldrons [125] at Dodona, and the Corybantes in Crete, prove that Zeus is no god but a man, and a man born of a cannibal father. And, strange to say, even Plato, the sage admired among the Greeks, with all his vaunted understanding about God, goes down with Socrates to Peiræus [126] to worship Artemis, a figment of man's art. __________________________________________________________________
[121] This is probably a reference to the hiera anagraphe of Euhemerus, which Christian apologists commonly took as genuine history: see §12, note 1.
[122] Cf. de la Saussaye, §51. Isis, as goddess of the earth, corresponded to Demeter; as goddess of the dead, to the Kore (Persephone).
[123] The Neotera is a puzzle. The most likely suggestion is that of Montfaucon, who refers it to Cleopatra, who nea Isis echrematize (Plut. Vit. Anton.). He cites also a coin of M. Antony, on which Cleopatra is figured as thea neotera. Several such are given by Vaillant, de Numism. Cleopatr. 189. She was not the first of her name to adopt this style, see Head Hist. Num. pp. 716, 717. The text might be rendered Isis, both the Maid and the Younger.'
[124] Cf. Wisd. xiv. 12 sqq. quoted below.
[125] Cf. Greg. Naz. Or. v. 32, p. 168 c, and Dict. G. and R. Geog. I. p. 783a.
[126] Plat. Rep. I. ad init. __________________________________________________________________
§11. The deeds of heathen deities, and particularly of Zeus.
But of these and such like inventions of idolatrous madness, Scripture taught us beforehand long ago, when it said [127] , "The devising of idols was the beginning of fornication, and the invention of them, the corruption of life. For neither were they from the beginning, neither shall they be for ever. For the vainglory of men they entered into the world, and therefore shall they come shortly to an end. For a father afflicted with untimely mourning when he hath made an image of his child soon taken away, now honoured him as a god which was then a dead man, and delivered to those that were under him ceremonies and sacrifices. Thus in process of time an ungodly custom grown strong was kept as a law. And graven images were worshipped by the commands of kings. Whom men could not honour in presence because they dwelt afar off, they took the counterfeit of his visage from afar, and made an express image of the king whom they honoured, to the end that by this their forwardness they might flatter him that was absent as if he were present. Also the singular diligence of the artificer did help to set forward the ignorant to more superstition: for he, peradventure, willing to please one in authority, forced all his skill to make the resemblance of the best fashion: and so the multitude, allured by the grace of the work, took him now for a god, which a little before was but honoured as a man: and this was an occasion to deceive the world, for men serving either calamity or tyranny, did ascribe unto stones and stocks the incommunicable Name." 2. The beginning and devising of the invention of idols having been, as Scripture witnesses, of such sort, it is now time to shew thee the refutation of it by proofs derived not so much from without as from these men's own opinions about the idols. For to begin at the lowest point, if one were to take the actions of them they call gods, one would find that they were not only no gods, but had been even of men the most contemptible. For what a thing it is to see the loves and licentious actions of Zeus in the poets! What a thing to hear of him, on the one hand carrying off Ganymede and committing stealthy adulteries, on the other in panic and alarm lest the walls of the Trojans should be destroyed against his intentions! What a thing to see him in grief at the death of his son Sarpedon, and wishing to succour him without being able to do so, and, when plotted against by the other so-called gods, namely, Athena and Hera and Poseidon, succoured by Thetis, a woman, and by Ægaeon of the hundred hands, and overcome by pleasures, a slave to women, and for their sakes running adventures in disguises consisting of brute beasts and creeping things and birds; and again, in hiding on account of his father's designs upon him, or Cronos bound by him, or him again mutilating his father! Why, is it fitting to regard as a god one who has perpetrated such deeds, and who stands accused of things which not even the public laws of the Romans allow those to do who are merely men? __________________________________________________________________
[127] Wisd. xiv. 12 sqq. __________________________________________________________________
§12. Other shameful actions ascribed to heathen deities. All prove that they are but men of former times, and not even good men.
For, to mention a few instances out of many to avoid prolixity, who that saw his lawless and corrupt conduct toward Semele, Leda, Alcmene, Artemis, Leto, Maia, Europe, Danae, and Antiope, or that saw what he ventured to take in hand with regard to his own sister, in having the same woman as wife and sister, would not scorn him and pronounce him worthy of death? For not only did he commit adultery, but he deified and raised to heaven those born of his adulteries, contriving the deification as a veil for his lawlessness: such as Dionysus, Heracles, the Dioscuri, Hermes, Perseus, and Soteira. 2. Who, that sees the so-called gods at irreconcileable strife among themselves at Troy on account of the Greeks and Trojans, will fail to recognise their feebleness, in that because of their mutual jealousies they egged on even mortals to strife? Who, that sees Ares and Aphrodite wounded by Diomed, or Hera and Aïdoneus from below the earth, whom they call a god, wounded by Heracles, Dionysus by Perseus, Athena by Arcas, and Hephæstus hurled down and going lame, will not recognise their real nature, and, while refusing to call them gods, be assured (when he hears that they are corruptible and passible) that they are nothing but men [128] , and feeble men too, and admire those that inflicted the wounds rather than the wounded? 3. Or who that sees the adultery of Ares with Aphrodite, and Hephæstus contriving a snare for the two, and the other so-called gods called by Hephæstus to view the adultery, and coming and seeing their licentiousness, would not laugh and recognise their worthless character? Or who would not laugh at beholding the drunken folly and misconduct of Heracles toward Omphale? For their deeds of pleasure, and their unconscionable loves, and their divine images in gold, silver, bronze, iron, stone, and wood, we need not seriously expose by argument, since the facts are abominable in themselves, and are enough taken alone to furnish proof of the deception; so that one's principal feeling is pity for those deceived about them. 4. For, hating the adulterer who tampers with a wife of their own, they are not ashamed to deify the teachers of adultery; and refraining from incest themselves they worship those who practise it; and admitting that the corrupting of children is an evil, they serve those who stand accused of it and do not blush to ascribe to those they call gods things which the laws forbid to exist even among men. __________________________________________________________________
[128] This explanation of gods as deified men is known as Euhemerism, from Euhemerus, who broached the theory in the third century, b.c. (supra, 10, note 1); but there were Euhemerists in Greece before Euhemerus' (Jowett's Plato, 2. 101). The Fathers very commonly adopt the theory, for which, however, there are very slight grounds. Such cases as those of Antinous and the Emperors, as well as the legends of heroes and demigods, gave it some plausibility (see Döllinger; Gentile and Jew, vol. i. p. 344, Eng. Tr.). __________________________________________________________________
§13. The folly of image worship and its dishonour to art.
Again, in worshipping things of wood and stone, they do not see that, while they tread under foot and burn what is in no way different, they call portions of these materials gods. And what they made use of a little while ago, they carve and worship in their folly, not seeing, nor at all considering that they are worshipping, not gods, but the carver's art. 2. For so long as the stone is uncut and the wood unworked, they walk upon the one and make frequent use of the other for their own purposes, even for those which are less honourable. But when the artist has invested them with the proportions of his own skill, and impressed upon the material the form of man or woman, then, thanking the artist, they proceed to worship them as gods, having bought them from the carver at a price. Often, moreover, the image-maker, as though forgetting the work he has done himself, prays to his own productions, and calls gods what just before he was paring and chipping. 3. But it were better, if need to admire these things, to ascribe it to the art of the skilled workman, and not to honour productions in preference to their producer. For it is not the material that has adorned the art, but the art that has adorned and deified the material. Much juster were it, then, for them to worship the artist than his productions, both because his existence was prior to that of the gods produced by art, and because they have come into being in the form he pleased to give them. But as it is, setting justice aside, and dishonouring skill and art, they worship the products of skill and art, and when the man is dead that made them, they honour his works as immortal, whereas if they did not receive daily attention they would certainly in time come to a natural end. 4. Or how could one fail to pity them in this also, in that seeing, they worship them that cannot see, and hearing, pray to them that cannot hear, and born with life and reason, men as they are, call gods things which do not move at all, but have not even life, and, strangest of all, in that they serve as their masters beings whom they themselves keep under their own power? Nor imagine that this is a mere statement of mine, nor that I am maligning them; for the verification of all this meets the eyes, and whoever wishes to do so may see the like. __________________________________________________________________
§14. Image worship condemned by Scripture.
But better testimony about all this is furnished by Holy Scripture, which tells us beforehand when it says [129] , "Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men's hands. Eyes have they and will not see; a mouth have they and will not speak; ears have they and will not hear; noses have they and will not smell; hands have they and will not handle; feet have they and will not walk; they will not speak through their throat. Like unto them be they that make them." Nor have they escaped prophetic censure; for there also is their refutation, where the Spirit says [130] , "they shall be ashamed that have formed a god, and carved all of them that which is vain: and all by whom they were made are dried up: and let the deaf ones among men all assemble and stand up together, and let them be confounded and put to shame together; for the carpenter sharpened iron, and worked it with an adze, and fashioned it with an auger, and set it up with the arm of his strength: and he shall hunger and be faint, and drink no water. For the carpenter chose out wood, and set it by a rule, and fashioned it with glue, and made it as the form of a man and as the beauty of man, and set it up in his house, wood which he had cut from the grove and which the Lord planted, and the rain gave it growth that it might be for men to burn, and that he might take thereof and warm himself, and kindle, and bake bread upon it, but the residue they made into gods, and worshipped them, the half whereof they had burned in the fire. And upon the half thereof he roasted flesh and ate and was filled, and was warmed and said: It is pleasant to me, because I am warmed and have seen the fire.' But the residue thereof he worshipped, saying, Deliver me for thou art my god.' They knew not nor understood, because their eyes were dimmed that they could not see, nor perceive with their heart; nor did he consider in his heart nor know in his understanding that he had burned half thereof in the fire, and baked bread upon the coals thereof, and roasted flesh and eaten it, and made the residue thereof an abomination, and they worship it. Know that their heart is dust and they are deceived, and none can deliver his soul. Behold and will ye not say, There is a lie in my right hand?'" 2. How then can they fail to be judged godless by all, who even by the divine Scripture are accused of impiety? or how can they be anything but miserable, who are thus openly convicted of worshipping dead things instead of the truth? or what kind of hope have they? or what kind of excuse could be made for them, trusting in things without sense or movement, which they reverence in place of the true God? __________________________________________________________________
[129] Ps. cxv. 5 sqq.
[130] Isa. xliv. 9 sqq. (LXX.). __________________________________________________________________
§15. The details about the gods conveyed in the representations of them by poets and artists shew that they are without life, and that they are not gods, nor even decent men and women.
For would that the artist would fashion the gods even without shape, so that they might not be open to so manifest an exposure of their lack of sense. For they might have cajoled the perception of simple folk to think the idols had senses, were it not that they possess the symbols of the senses, eyes for example and noses and ears and hands and mouth, without any gesture of actual perception and grasp of the objects of sense. But as a matter of fact they have these things and have them not, stand and stand not, sit and sit not. For they have not the real action of these things, but as their fashioner pleased, so they remain stationary, giving no sign of a god, but evidently mere inanimate objects, set there by man's art. 2. Or would that the heralds and prophets of these false gods, poets I mean and writers, had simply written that they were gods, and not also recounted their actions as an exposure of their godlessness and scandalous life. For by the mere name of godhead they might have filched away the truth, or rather have caused the mass of men to err from the truth. But as it is, by narrating the loves and immoralities of Zeus, and the corruptions of youths by the other gods, and the voluptuous jealousies of the females, and the fears and acts of cowardice and other wickednesses, they merely convict themselves of narrating not merely about no gods, but not even about respectable men, but on the contrary, of telling tales about shameful persons far removed from what is honourable. __________________________________________________________________
§16. Heathen arguments in palliation of the above: and (1) the poets are responsible for these unedifying tales.' But are the names and existence of the gods any better authenticated? Both stand or fall together. Either the actions must be defended or the deity of the gods given up. And the heroes are not credited with acts inconsistent with their nature, as, on this plea, the gods are.
But perhaps, as to all this, the impious will appeal to the peculiar style of poets, saying that it is the peculiarity of poets to feign what is not, and, for the pleasure of their hearers, to tell fictitious tales; and that for this reason they have composed the stories about gods. But this pretext of theirs, even more than any other, will appear to be superficial from what they themselves think and profess about these matters. 2. For if what is said in the poets is fictitious and false, even the nomenclature of Zeus, Cronos, Hera, Ares and the rest must be false. For perhaps, as they say, even the names are fictitious, and, while no such being exists as Zeus, Cronos, or Ares, the poets feign their existence to deceive their hearers. But if the poets feign the existence of unreal beings, how is it that they worship them as though they existed? 3. Or perhaps, once again, they will say that while the names are not fictitious, they ascribe to them fictitious actions. But even this is equally precarious as a defence. For if they made up the actions, doubtless also they made up the names, to which they attributed the actions. Or if they tell the truth about the names, it follows that they tell the truth about the actions too. In particular, they who have said in their tales that these are gods certainly know how gods ought to act, and would never ascribe to gods the ideas of men, any more than one would ascribe to water the properties of fire; for fire burns, whereas the nature of water on the contrary is cold. 4. If then the actions are worthy of gods, they that do them must be gods; but if they are actions of men, and of disreputable men, such as adultery and the acts mentioned above, they that act in such ways must be men and not gods. For their deeds must correspond to their natures, so that at once the actor may be made known by his act, and the action may be ascertainable from his nature. So that just as a man discussing about water and fire, and declaring their action, would not say that water burned and fire cooled, nor, if a man were discoursing about the sun and the earth, would he say the earth gave light, while the sun was sown with herbs and fruits, but if he were to say so would exceed the utmost height of madness, so neither would their writers, and especially the most eminent poet of all, if they really knew that Zeus and the others were gods, invest them with such actions as shew them to be not gods, but rather men, and not sober men. 5. Or if, as poets, they told falsehoods, and you are maligning them, why did they not also tell falsehoods about the courage of the heroes, and feign feebleness in the place of courage, and courage in that of feebleness? For they ought in that case, as with Zeus and Hera, so also to slanderously accuse Achilles of want of courage, and to celebrate the might of Thersites, and, while charging Odysseus with dulness, to make out Nestor a reckless person, and to narrate effeminate actions of Diomed and Hector, and manly deeds of Hecuba. For the fiction and falsehood they ascribe to the poets ought to extend to all cases. But in fact, they kept the truth for their men, while not ashamed to tell falsehoods about their so-called gods. 6. And as some of them might argue, that they are telling falsehoods about their licentious actions, but that in their praises, when they speak of Zeus as father of gods, and as the highest, and the Olympian, and as reigning in heaven, they are not inventing but speaking truthfully; this is a plea which not only myself, but anybody can refute. For the truth will be clear, in opposition to them, if we recall our previous proofs. For while their actions prove them to be men, the panegyrics upon them go beyond the nature of men. The two things then are mutually inconsistent; for neither is it the nature of heavenly beings to act in such ways, nor can any one suppose that persons so acting are gods. __________________________________________________________________
§17. The truth probably is, that the scandalous tales are true, while the divine attributes ascribed to them are due to the flattery of the poets.
What inference then is left to us, save that while the panegyrics are false and flattering, the actions told of them are true? And the truth of this one can ascertain by common practice. For nobody who pronounces a panegyric upon anyone accuses his conduct at the same time, but rather, if men's actions are disgraceful, they praise them up with panegyrics, on account of the scandal they cause, so that by extravagant praise they may impose upon their hearers, and hide the misconduct of the others. 2. Just as if a man who has to pronounce a panegyric upon someone cannot find material for it in their conduct or in any personal qualities, on account of the scandal attaching to these, he praises them up in another manner, flattering them with what does not belong to them, so have their marvellous poets, put out of countenance by the scandalous actions of their so-called gods, attached to them the superhuman title, not knowing that they cannot by their superhuman fancies veil their human actions, but that they will rather succeed in shewing, by their human shortcomings, that the attributes of God do not fit them. 3. And I am disposed to think that they have recounted the passions and the actions of the gods even in spite of themselves. For since they were endeavouring to invest with what Scripture calls the incommunicable name and honour of [131] God them that are no gods but mortal men, and since this venture of theirs was great and impious, for this reason even against their will they were forced by truth to set forth the passions of these persons, so that their passions recorded in the writings concerning them might be in evidence for all posterity as a proof that they were no gods. __________________________________________________________________
[131] Wisd. xiv. 21. Cf. Isa. xlii. 8, and xlviii. 11 __________________________________________________________________
§18. Heathen defence continued. (2) The gods are worshipped for having invented the Arts of Life.' But this is a human and natural, not a divine, achievement. And why, on this principle, are not all inventors deified?
What defence, then, what proof that these are real gods, can they offer who hold this superstition? For, by what has been said just above, our argument has demonstrated them to be men, and not respectable men. But perhaps they will turn to another argument, and proudly appeal to the things useful to life discovered by them, saying that the reason why they regard them as gods is their having been of use to mankind. For Zeus is said to have possessed the plastic art, Poseidon that of the pilot, Hephæstus the smith's, Athena that of weaving, Apollo that of music, Artemis that of hunting, Hera dressmaking, Demeter agriculture, and others other arts, as those who inform us about them have related. 2. But men ought to ascribe them and such like arts not to the gods alone but to the common nature of mankind, for by observing nature [132] men discover the arts. For even common parlance calls art an imitation of nature. If then they have been skilled in the arts they pursued, that is no reason for thinking them gods, but rather for thinking them men; for the arts were not their creation, but in them they, like others, imitated nature. 3. For men having a natural capacity for knowledge according to the definition laid down [133] concerning them, there is nothing to surprise us if by human intelligence, and by looking of themselves at their own nature and coming to know it, they have hit upon the arts. Or if they say that the discovery of the arts entitles them to be proclaimed as gods, it is high time to proclaim as gods the discoverers of the other arts on the same grounds as the former were thought worthy of such a title. For the Phoenicians invented letters, Homer epic poetry, Zeno of Elea dialectic, Corax of Syracuse rhetoric, Aristæus bee-keeping, Triptolemus the sowing of corn, Lycurgus of Sparta and Solon of Athens laws; while Palamedes discovered the arrangement of letters, and numbers, and measures and weights. And others imparted various other things useful for the life of mankind, according to the testimony of our historians. 4. If then the arts make gods, and because of them carved gods exist, it follows, on their shewing, that those who at a later date discovered the other arts must be gods. Or if they do not deem these worthy of divine honour, but recognise that they are men, it were but consistent not to give even the name of gods to Zeus, Hera, and the others, but to believe that they too have been human beings, and all the more so, inasmuch as they were not even respectable in their day; just as by the very fact of sculpturing their form in statues they shew that they are nothing else but men. __________________________________________________________________
[132] phusis is here used in a double sense.
[133] By Aristotle, Top. V. ii.-iv. where man is defined as zoon epistemes dektikon: compare Metaph. I. i. All men by nature desire to know.' __________________________________________________________________
§19. The inconsistency of image worship. Arguments in palliation. (1) The divine nature must be expressed in a visible sign. (2) The image a means of supernatural communications to men through angels.
For what other form do they give them by sculpture but that of men and women and of creatures lower yet and of irrational nature, all manner of birds, beasts both tame and wild, and creeping things, whatsoever land and sea and the whole realm of the waters produce? For men having fallen into the unreasonableness of their passions and pleasures, and unable to see anything beyond pleasures and lusts of the flesh, inasmuch as they keep their mind in the midst of these irrational things, they imagined the divine principle to be in irrational things, and carved a number of gods to match the variety of their passions. 2. For there are with them images of beasts and creeping things and birds, as the interpreter of the divine and true religion says, "They became vain in their reasonings, and their senseless heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God for the likeness of an image of corruptible man, and of birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things, wherefore God gave them up unto vile passions." For having previously infected their soul, as I said above, with the irrationalities of pleasures, they then came down to this making of gods; and, once fallen, thenceforward as though abandoned in their rejection of God, thus they wallow [134] in them, and portray God, the Father of the Word, in irrational shapes. 3. As to which those who pass for philosophers and men of knowledge [135] among the Greeks, while driven to admit that their visible gods are the forms and figures of men and of irrational objects, say in defence that they have such things to the end that by their means the deity may answer them and be made manifest; because otherwise they could not know the invisible God, save by such statues and rites. 4. While those [136] who profess to give still deeper and more philosophical reasons than these say, that the reason of idols being prepared and fashioned is for the invocation and manifestation of divine angels and powers, that appearing by these means they may teach men concerning the knowledge of God; and that they serve as letters for men, by referring to which they may learn to apprehend God, from the manifestation of the divine angels effected by their means. Such then is their mythology,--for far be it from us to call it a theology. But if one examine the argument with care, he will find that the opinion of these persons also, not less than that of those previously spoken of, is false. __________________________________________________________________
[134] Cf. Orat. iii. 16.
[135] This may refer to Maximus of Tyre (Saussaye, §11), or to the lost treatise of the divine Iamblichus' Peri agalmaton, which was considered worth answering by Christian writers as late as the seventh century (Philoponus in Phot. Bibl. Cod. 215).
[136] This is in effect the defence of the Scriptor de Mysteriis' (possibly Iamblichus, see Bernays 2 Abhandlungen' 1880, p. 37): material means of worship are a means of access directly to the lower (or quasi-material) gods, and so indirectly to the higher. Few men can reach the latter without the aid of their manifestation in the lower; parestin a& 204;los tois enulois ta a& 203;la (v. 23, cf. 14). __________________________________________________________________
§20. But where does this supposed virtue of the image reside? in the material, or in the form, or in the maker's skill? Untenability of all these views.
For one might reply to them, bringing the case before the tribunal of truth, How does God make answer or become known by such objects? Is it due to the matter of which they consist, or to the form which they possess? For if it be due to the matter, what need is there of the form, instead of God manifesting Himself through all matter without exception before these things were fashioned? And in vain have they built their temples to shut in a single stone, or stock, or piece of gold, when all the world is full of these substances. 2. But if the superadded form be the cause of the divine manifestation, what is the need of the material, gold and the rest, instead of God manifesting Himself by the actual natural animals of which the images are the figures? For the opinion held about God would on the same principle have been a nobler one, were He to manifest Himself by means of living animals, whether rational or irrational, instead of being looked for in things without life or motion. 3. Wherein they commit the most signal impiety against themselves. For while they abominate and turn from the real animals, beasts, birds, and creeping things, either because of their ferocity or because of their dirtiness, yet they carve their forms in stone, wood, or gold, and make them gods. But it would be better for them to worship the living things themselves, rather than to worship their figures in stone. 4. But perhaps neither is the case, nor is either the material or the form the cause of the divine presence, but it is only skilful art that summons the deity, inasmuch as it is an imitation of nature. But if the deity communicates with the inmates on account of the art, what need, once more, of the material, since the art resides in the men? For if God manifests Himself solely because of the art, and if for this reason the images are worshipped as gods, it would be right to worship and serve the men who are masters of the art, inasmuch as they are rational also, and have the skill in themselves. __________________________________________________________________
§21. The idea of communications through angels involves yet wilder inconsistency, nor does it, even if true, justify the worship of the image.
But as to their second and as they say profounder defence, one might reasonably add as follows. If these things are made by you, ye Greeks, not for the sake of a self-manifestation of God Himself, but for the sake of a presence there of angels, why do you rank the images by which ye invoke the powers as superior and above the powers invoked? For ye carve the figures for the sake of the apprehension of God, as ye say, but invest the actual images with the honour and title of God, thus placing yourselves in a profane position. 2. For while confessing that the power of God transcends the littleness of the images, and for that reason not venturing to invoke God through them, but only the lesser powers, ye yourselves leap over these latter, and have bestowed on stocks and stones the title of Him, whose presence ye feared, and call them gods instead of stones and men's workmanship, and worship them. For even supposing them to serve you, as ye falsely say, as letters for the contemplation of God, it is not right to give the signs greater honour than that which they signify. For neither if a man were to write the emperor's name would it be without risk to give to the writing more honour than to the emperor; on the contrary, such a man incurs the penalty of death; while the writing is fashioned by the skill of the writer. 3. So also yourselves, had ye your reasoning power in full strength, would not reduce to matter so great a revelation of the Godhead: but neither would ye have given to the image greater honour than to the man that carved it. For if there be any truth in the plea that, as letters, they indicate the manifestation of God, and are therefore, as indications of God, worthy to be deified, yet far more would it be right to deify the artist who carved and engraved them, as being far more powerful and divine than they, inasmuch as they were cut and fashioned according to his will. If then the letters are worthy of admiration, much more does the writer exceed them in wonder, by reason of his art and the skill of his mind. If then it be not fitting to think that they are gods for this reason, one must again interrogate them about the madness concerning the idols, demanding from them the justification for their being in such a form. __________________________________________________________________
§22. The image cannot represent the true form of God, else God would be corruptible.
For if the reason of their being thus fashioned is, that the Deity is of human form, why do they invest it also with the forms of irrational creatures? Or if the form of it is that of the latter, why do they embody it also in the images of rational creatures? Or if it be both at once, and they conceive God to be of the two combined, namely, that He has the forms both of rational and of irrational, why do they separate what is joined together, and separate the images of brutes and of men, instead of always carving it of both kinds, such as are the fictions in the myths, Scylla, Charybdis, the Hippocentaur, and the dog-headed Anubis of the Egyptians? For they ought either to represent them solely of two natures in this way, or, if they have a single form, not to falsely represent them in the other as well. 2. And again, if their forms are male, why do they also invest them with female shapes? Or if they are of the latter, why do they also falsify their forms as though they were males? Or if again they are a mixture of both, they ought not to be divided, but both ought to be combined, and follow the type of the so-called hermaphrodites, so that their superstition should furnish beholders with a spectacle not only of impiety and calumny, but of ridicule as well. 2. And generally, if they conceive the Deity to be corporeal, so that they contrive for it and represent belly and hands and feet, and neck also, and breasts and the other organs that go to make man, see to what impiety and godlessness their mind has come down, to have such ideas of the Deity. For it follows that it must be capable of all other bodily casualties as well, of being cut and divided, and even of perishing altogether. But these and like things are not properties of God, but rather of earthly bodies. 3. For while God is incorporeal and incorruptible, and immortal, needing nothing for any purpose, these are both corruptible, and are shapes of bodies, and need bodily ministrations, as we said before [137] . For often we see images which have grown old renewed, and those which time, or rain, or some or other of the animals of the earth have spoiled, restored. In which connexion one must condemn their folly, in that they proclaim as gods things of which they themselves are the makers, and themselves ask salvation of objects which they themselves adorn with their arts to preserve them from corruption, and beg that their own wants may be supplied by beings which they well know need attention from themselves, and are not ashamed to call lords of heaven and all the earth creatures whom they shut up in small chambers. __________________________________________________________________
[137] Supra xiii. 3. __________________________________________________________________
§23. The variety of idolatrous cults proves that they are false.
But not only from these considerations may one appreciate their godlessness, but also from their discordant opinions about the idols themselves. For if they be gods according to their assertion and their speculations, to which of them is one to give allegiance, and which of them is one to judge to be the higher, so as either to worship God with confidence, or as they say to recognise the Deity by them without ambiguity? For not the same beings are called gods among all; on the contrary, for every nation almost there is a separate god imagined. And there are cases of a single district and a single town being at internal discord about the superstition of their idols. 2. The Phoenicians, for example, do not know those who are called gods among the Egyptians, nor do the Egyptians worship the same idols as the Phoenicians have. And while the Scythians reject the gods of the Persians, the Persians reject those of the Syrians. But the Pelasgians also repudiate the gods in Thrace, while the Thracians know not those of Thebes. The Indians moreover differ from the Arabs, the Arabs from the Ethiopians, and the Ethiopians from the Arabs in their idols. And the Syrians worship not the idols of the Cilicians, while the Cappadocian nation call gods beings different from these. And while the Bithynians have adopted others, the Armenians have imagined others again. And what need is there for me to multiply examples? The men on the continent worship other gods than the islanders, while these latter serve other gods than those of the main lands. 3. And, in general, every city and village, not knowing the gods of its neighbours, prefers its own, and deems that these alone are gods. For concerning the abominations in Egypt there is no need even to speak, as they are before the eyes of all: how the cities have religions which are opposite and incompatible, and neighbours always make a point of worshipping the opposite of those next to them [138] : so much so that the crocodile, prayed to by some, is held in abomination by their neighbours, while the lion, worshipped as a god by others, their neighbours, so far from worshipping, slay, if they find it, as a wild beast; and the fish, consecrated by some people, is used as food in another place. And thus arise fights and riots and frequent occasions of bloodshed, and every indulgence of the passions among them. 4. And strange to say, according to the statement of historians, the very Pelasgians, who learned from the Egyptians the names of the gods, do not know the gods of Egypt, but worship others instead. And, speaking generally, all the nations that are infatuated with idols have different opinions and religions, and consistency is not to be met with in any one case. Nor is this surprising. 5. For having fallen from the contemplation of the one God, they have come down to many and diverse objects; and having turned from the Word of the Father, Christ the Saviour of all, they naturally have their understanding wandering in many directions. And just as men who have turned from the sun and are come into dark places go round by many pathless ways, and see not those who are present, while they imagine those to be there who are not, and seeing see not; so they that have turned from God and whose soul is darkened, have their mind in a roving state, and like men who are drunk and cannot see, imagine what is not true. __________________________________________________________________
[138] Hdt. ii. 69; cf. Juv. Sat. xv. 36, numina vicinorum Odit uterque locus.' This is one of the few places where Athanasius has any Egyptian local colour' (cf. supra 9 and 10). M. Fialon is certainly too imaginative (p. 86 contradicted p. 283), when he sees in the contra Gentes an appreciation of the higher religious principles which the modern science (toute Francaise') of Egyptology has enabled us to read behind the grotesque features of popular Egyptian polytheism. __________________________________________________________________
§24. The so-called gods of one place are used as victims in another.
This, then, is no slight proof of their real godlessness. For, the gods for every city and country being many and various, and the one destroying the god of the other, the whole of them are destroyed by all. For those who are considered gods by some are offered as sacrifices and drink-offerings to the so-called gods of others, and the victims of some are conversely the gods of others. So the Egyptians serve the ox, and Apis, a calf, and others sacrifice these animals to Zeus. For even if they do not sacrifice the very animals the others have consecrated, yet by sacrificing their fellows they seem to offer the same. The Libyans have for god a sheep which they call Ammon, and in other nations this animal is slain as a victim to many gods. 2. The Indians worship Dionysus, using the name as a symbol for wine, and others pour out wine as an offering to the other gods. Others honour rivers and springs, and above all the Egyptians pay especial honour to water, calling them gods. And yet others, and even the Egyptians who worship the waters, use them to wash off the dirt from others and from themselves, and ignominiously throw away what is used. While nearly the whole of the Egyptian system of idols consists of what are victims to the gods of other nations, so that they are scorned even by those others for deifying what are not gods, but, both with others and even among themselves, propitiatory offerings and victims. __________________________________________________________________
§25. Human sacrifice. Its absurdity. Its prevalence. Its calamitous results.
But some have been led by this time to such a pitch of irreligion and folly as to slay and to offer in sacrifice to their false gods even actual men, whose figures and forms the gods are. Nor do they see, wretched men, that the victims they are slaying are the patterns of the gods they make and worship, and to whom they are offering the men. For they are offering, one may say, equals to equals, or rather, the higher to the lower; for they are offering living creatures to dead, and rational beings to things without motion. 2. For the Scythians who are called Taurians offer in sacrifice to their Virgin, as they call her, survivors from wrecks, and such Greeks as they catch, going thus far in impiety against men of their own race, and thus exposing the savagery of their gods, in that those whom Providence has rescued from danger and from the sea, they slay, almost fighting against Providence; because they frustrate the kindness of Providence by their own brutal character. But others, when they are returned victorious from war, thereupon dividing their prisoners into hundreds, and taking a man from each, sacrifice to Ares the man they have picked out from each hundred. 3. Nor is it only Scythians who commit these abominations on account of the ferocity natural to them as barbarians: on the contrary, this deed is a special result of the wickedness connected with idols and false gods. For the Egyptians used formerly to offer victims of this kind to Hera, and the Phoenicians and Cretans used to propitiate Cronos in their sacrifices of children. And even the ancient Romans used to worship Jupiter Latiarius, as he was called, with human sacrifices, and some in one way, some in another, but all [139] without exception committed and incurred the pollution: they incurred it by the mere perpetration of the murderous deeds, while they polluted their own temples by filling them with the smoke of such sacrifices. 4. This then was the ready source of numerous evils to mankind. For seeing that their false gods were pleased with these things, they forthwith imitated their gods with like misdoings, thinking that the imitation of superior beings, as they considered them, was a credit to themselves. Hence mankind was thinned by murders of grown men and children, and by licence of all kinds. For nearly every city is full of licentiousness of all kinds, the result of the savage character of its gods; nor is there one of sober life in the idols' temples [140] save only he whose licentiousness is witnessed to by them all [141] . __________________________________________________________________
[139] On human sacrifice see Saussaye, §17, and Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, pp. 343 sqq., especially p. 347, note 1, for references to examples near the time of this treatise.
[140] Reading eidoleiois conj. Marr.
[141] i.e. among the licentious worshippers the lifeless image is the only one free from vice, although the worshippers credit him with divine attributes, and therefore, according to their superstition, with a licentious life. __________________________________________________________________
§26. The moral corruptions of Paganism all admittedly originated with the gods.
Women, for example, used to sit out in old days in the temples of Phoenicia, consecrating to the gods there the hire of their bodies, thinking they propitiated their goddess by fornication, and that they would procure her favour by this. While men, denying their nature, and no longer wishing to be males, put on the guise of women, under the idea that they are thus gratifying and honouring the Mother of their so-called gods. But all live along with the basest, and vie with the worst among themselves, and as Paul said, the holy minister of Christ [142] : "For their women changed the natural use into that which is against nature: and likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another, men with men working unseemliness." 2. But acting in this and in like ways, they admit and prove that the life of their so-called gods was of the same kind. For from Zeus they have learned corruption of youth and adultery, from Aphrodite fornication, from Rhea licentiousness, from Ares murders, and from other gods other like things, which the laws punish and from which every sober man turns away. Does it then remain fit to consider them gods who do such things, instead of reckoning them, for the licentiousness of their ways, more irrational than the brutes? Is it fit to consider their worshippers human beings, instead of pitying them as more irrational than the brutes, and more soul-less than inanimate things? For had they considered the intellectual part of their soul they would not have plunged headlong into these things, nor have denied the true God, the Father of Christ. __________________________________________________________________
[142] Rom. i. 26. __________________________________________________________________
§27. The refutation of popular Paganism being taken as conclusive, we come to the higher form of nature-worship. How Nature witnesses to God by the mutual dependence of all her parts, which forbid us to think of any one of them as the supreme God. This shewn at length.
But perhaps those who have advanced beyond these things, and who stand in awe of Creation, being put to shame by these exposures of abominations, will join in repudiating what is readily condemned and refuted on all hands, but will think that they have a well-grounded and unanswerable opinion, namely, the worship of the universe and of the parts of the universe. 2. For they will boast that they worship and serve, not mere stocks and stones and forms of men and irrational birds and creeping things and beasts, but the sun and moon and all the heavenly universe, and the earth again, and the entire realm of water: and they will say that none can shew that these at any rate are not of divine nature, since it is evident to all, that they lack neither life nor reason, but transcend even the nature of mankind, inasmuch as the one inhabit the heavens, the other the earth. 3. It is worth while then to look into and examine these points also; for here, too, our argument will find that its proof against them holds true. But before we look, or begin our demonstration, it suffices that Creation almost raises its voice against them, and points to God as its Maker and Artificer, Who reigns over Creation and over all things, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ; Whom the would-be philosophers turn from to worship and deify the Creation which proceeded from Him, which yet itself worships and confesses the Lord Whom they deny on its account. 4. For if men are thus awestruck at the parts of Creation and think that they are gods, they might well be rebuked by the mutual dependence of those parts; which moreover makes known, and witnesses to, the Father of the Word, Who is the Lord and Maker of these parts also, by the unbroken law of their obedience to Him, as the divine law also says: "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament sheweth His handiwork [143] ." 5. But the proof of all this is not obscure, but is clear enough in all conscience to those the eyes of whose understanding are not wholly disabled. For if a man take the parts of Creation separately, and consider each by itself,--as for example the sun by itself alone, and the moon apart, and again earth and air, and heat and cold, and the essence of wet and of dry, separating them from their mutual conjunction,--he will certainly find that not one is sufficient for itself but all are in need of one another's assistance, and subsist by their mutual help. For the Sun is carried round along with, and is contained in, the whole heaven, and can never go beyond his own orbit, while the moon and other stars testify to the assistance given them by the Sun: while the earth again evidently does not yield her crops without rains, which in their turn would not descend to earth without the assistance of the clouds; but not even would the clouds ever appear of themselves and subsist, without the air. And the air is warmed by the upper air, but illuminated and made bright by the sun, not by itself. 6. And wells, again, and rivers will never exist without the earth; but the earth is not supported upon itself, but is set upon the realm of the waters, while this again is kept in its place, being bound fast at the centre of the universe. And the sea, and the great ocean that flows outside round the whole earth, is moved and borne by winds wherever the force of the winds dashes it. And the winds in their turn originate, not in themselves, but according to those who have written on the subject, in the air, from the burning heat and high temperature of the upper as compared with the lower air, and blow everywhere through the latter. 7. For as to the four elements of which the nature of bodies is composed, heat, that is, and cold, wet and dry, who is so perverted in his understanding as not to know that these things exist indeed in combination, but if separated and taken alone they tend to destroy even one another according to the prevailing power of the more abundant element? For heat is destroyed by cold if it be present in greater quantity, and cold again is put away by the power of heat, and what is dry, again, is moistened by wet, and the latter dried by the former. __________________________________________________________________
[143] Ps. xix. 1. __________________________________________________________________
§28. But neither can the cosmic organism be God. For that would make God consist of dissimilar parts, and subject Him to possible dissolution.
How then can these things be gods, seeing that they need one another's assistance? Or how is it proper to ask anything of them when they too ask help for themselves one from another? For if it is an admitted truth about God that He stands in need of nothing, but is self-sufficient and self-contained, and that in Him all things have their being, and that He ministers to all rather than they to Him, how is it right to proclaim as gods the sun and moon and other parts of creation, which are of no such kind, but which even stand in need of one another's help? 2. But, perhaps, if divided and taken by themselves, our opponents themselves will admit that they are dependent, the demonstration being an ocular one. But they will combine all together, as constituting a single body, and will say that the whole is God. For the whole once put together, they will no longer need external help, but the whole will be sufficient for itself and independent in all respects; so at least the would-be philosophers will tell us, only to be refuted here once more. 3. Now this argument, not one whit less than those previously dealt with, will demonstrate their impiety coupled with great ignorance. For if the combination of the parts makes up the whole, and the whole is combined out of the parts, then the whole consists of the parts, and each of them is a portion of the whole. But this is very far removed from the conception of God. For God is a whole and not a number of parts, and does not consist of diverse elements, but is Himself the Maker of the system of the universe. For see what impiety they utter against the Deity when they say this. For if He consists of parts, certainly it will follow that He is unlike Himself, and made up of unlike parts. For if He is sun, He is not moon, and if He is moon, He is not earth, and if He is earth, He cannot be sea: and so on, taking the parts one by one, one may discover the absurdity of this theory of theirs. 4. But the following point, drawn from the observation of our human body, is enough to refute them. For just as the eye is not the sense of hearing, nor is the latter a hand: nor is the belly the breast, nor again is the neck a foot, but each of these has its own function, and a single body is composed of these distinct parts,--having its parts combined for use, but destined to be divided in course of time when nature, that brought them together, shall divide them at the will of God, Who so ordered it;--thus (but may He that is above pardon the argument [144] ), if they combine the parts of creation into one body and proclaim it God, it follows, firstly, that He is unlike Himself, as shewn above; secondly, that He is destined to be divided again, in accordance with the natural tendency of the parts to separation. __________________________________________________________________
[144] Cf. Orat. i. 25, note 2. __________________________________________________________________
§29. The balance of powers in Nature shews that it is not God, either collectively, or in parts.
And in yet another way one may refute their godlessness by the light of truth. For if God is incorporeal and invisible and intangible by nature, how do they imagine God to be a body, and worship with divine honour things which we both see with our eyes and touch with our hands? 2. And again, if what is said of God hold true, namely, that He is almighty, and that while nothing has power over Him, He has power and rule over all, how can they who deify creation fail to see that it does not satisfy this definition of God? For when the sun is under the earth, the earth's shadow makes his light invisible, while by day the sun hides the moon by the brilliancy of his light. And hail ofttimes injures the fruits of the earth, while fire is put out if an overflow of water take place. And spring makes winter give place, while summer will not suffer spring to outstay its proper limits, and it in its turn is forbidden by autumn to outstep its own season. 3. If then they were gods, they ought not to be defeated and obscured by one another, but always to co-exist, and to discharge their respective functions simultaneously. Both by night and by day the sun and the moon and the rest of the band of stars ought to shine equally together, and give their light to all, so that all things might be illumined by them. Spring and summer and autumn and winter ought to go on without alteration, and together. The sea ought to mingle with the springs, and furnish their drink to man in common. Calms and windy blasts ought to take place at the same time. Fire and water together ought to furnish the same service to man. For no one would take any hurt from them, if they are gods, as our opponents say, and do nothing for hurt, but rather all things for good. 4. But if none of these things are possible, because of their mutual incompatibility, how does it remain possible to give to these things, mutually incompatible and at strife, and unable to combine, the name of gods, or to worship them with the honours due to God? How could things naturally discordant give peace to others for their prayers, and become to them authors of concord? It is not then likely that the sun or the moon, or any other part of creation, still less statues in stone, gold, or other material, or the Zeus, Apollo, and the rest, who are the subject of the poet's fables, are true gods: this our argument has shewn. But some of these are parts of creation, others have no life, others have been mere mortal men. Therefore their worship and deification is no part of religion, but the bringing in of godlessness and of all impiety, and a sign of a wide departure from the knowledge of the one true God, namely the Father of Christ. 5. Since then this is thus proved, and the idolatry of the Greeks is shewn to be full of all ungodliness, and that its introduction has been not for the good, but for the ruin, of human life;--come now, as our argument promised at the outset, let us, after having confuted error, travel the way of truth, and behold the Leader and Artificer of the Universe, the Word of the Father, in order that through Him we may apprehend the Father, and that the Greeks may know how far they have separated themselves from the truth. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Part II.
§30. The soul of man, being intellectual, can know God of itself, if it be true to its own nature.
The tenets we have been speaking of have been proved to be nothing more than a false guide for life; but the way of truth will aim at reaching the real and true God. But for its knowledge and accurate comprehension, there is need of none other save of ourselves. Neither as God Himself is above all, is the road to Him afar off or outside ourselves, but it is in us and it is possible to find it from ourselves, in the first instance, as Moses also taught, when he said [145] : "The word" of faith "is within thy heart." Which very thing the Saviour declared and confirmed, when He said: "The kingdom of God is within you [146] ." 2. For having in ourselves faith, and the kingdom of God, we shall be able quickly to see and perceive the King of the Universe, the saving Word of the Father. And let not the Greeks, who worship idols, make excuses, nor let any one else simply deceive himself, professing to have no such road and therefore finding a pretext for his godlessness. 3. For we all have set foot upon it, and have it, even if not all are willing to travel by it, but rather to swerve from it and go wrong, because of the pleasures of life which attract them from without. And if one were to ask, what road is this? I say that it is the soul of each one of us, and the intelligence which resides there. For by it alone can God be contemplated and perceived. 4. Unless, as they have denied God, the impious men will repudiate having a soul; which indeed is more plausible than the rest of what they say, for it is unlike men possessed of an intellect to deny God, its Maker and Artificer. It is necessary then, for the sake of the simple, to shew briefly that each one of mankind has a soul, and that soul rational; especially as certain of the sectaries deny this also, thinking that man is nothing more than the visible form of the body. This point once proved, they will be furnished in their own persons with a clearer proof against the idols. __________________________________________________________________
[145] Deut. xxx. 14.
[146] Luc. xvii. 12. __________________________________________________________________
§31. Proof of the existence of the rational soul. (1) Difference of man from the brutes. (2) Man's power of objective thought. Thought is to sense as the musician to his instrument. The phenomena of dreams bear this out.
Firstly, then, the rational nature of the soul is strongly confirmed by its difference from irrational creatures. For this is why common use gives them that name, because, namely, the race of mankind is rational. 2. Secondly, it is no ordinary proof, that man alone thinks of things external to himself, and reasons about things not actually present, and exercises reflection, and chooses by judgment the better of alternative reasonings. For the irrational animals see only what is present, and are impelled solely by what meets their eye, even if the consequences to them are injurious, while man is not impelled toward what he sees merely, but judges by thought what he sees with his eyes. Often for example his impulses are mastered by reasoning; and his reasoning is subject to after-reflection. And every one, if he be a friend of truth, perceives that the intelligence of mankind is distinct from the bodily senses. 3. Hence, because it is distinct, it acts as judge of the senses, and while they apprehend their objects, the intelligence distinguishes, recollects, and shews them what is best. For the sole function of the eye is to see, of the ears to hear, of the mouth to taste, of the nostrils to apprehend smells, and of the hands to touch. But what one ought to see and hear, what one ought to touch, taste and smell, is a question beyond the senses, and belonging to the soul and to the intelligence which resides in it. Why, the hand is able to take hold of a sword-blade, and the mouth to taste poison, but neither knows that these are injurious, unless the intellect decide. 4. And the case, to look at it by aid of a simile, is like that of a well-fashioned lyre in the hands of a skilled musician. For as the strings of the lyre have each its proper note, high, low, or intermediate, sharp or otherwise, yet their scale is indistinguishable and their time not to be recognized, without the artist. For then only is the scale manifest and the time right, when he that is holding the lyre strikes the strings and touches each in tune. In like manner, the senses being disposed in the body like a lyre, when the skilled intelligence presides over them, then too the soul distinguishes and knows what it is doing and how it is acting. 5. But this alone is peculiar to mankind, and this is what is rational in the soul of mankind, by means of which it differs from the brutes, and shews that it is truly distinct from what is to be seen in the body. Often, for example, when the body is lying on the earth, man imagines and contemplates what is in the heavens. Often when the body is quiet [147] , and at rest and asleep, man moves inwardly, and beholds what is outside himself, travelling to other countries, walking about, meeting his acquaintances, and often by these means divining and forecasting the actions of the day. But to what can this be due save to the rational soul, in which man thinks of and perceives things beyond himself? __________________________________________________________________
[147] Cf. Vit. Ant. 34. __________________________________________________________________
§32. (3) The body cannot originate such phenomena; and in fact the action of the rational soul is seen in its over-ruling the instincts of the bodily organs.
We add a further point to complete our demonstration for the benefit of those [148] who shamelessly take refuge in denial of reason. How is it, that whereas the body is mortal by nature, man reasons on the things of immortality, and often, where virtue demands it, courts death? Or how, since the body lasts but for a time, does man imagine of things eternal, so as to despise what lies before him, and desire what is beyond? The body could not have spontaneously such thoughts about itself, nor could it think upon what is external to itself. For it is mortal and lasts but for a time. And it follows that that which thinks what is opposed to the body and against its nature must be distinct in kind. What then can this be, save a rational and immortal soul? For it introduces the echo of higher things, not outside, but within the body, as the musician does in his lyre. 2. Or how again, the eye being naturally constituted to see and the ear to hear, do they turn from some objects and choose others? For who is it that turns away the eye from seeing? Or who shuts off the ear from hearing, its natural function? Or who often hinders the palate, to which it is natural to taste things, from its natural impulse? Or who withholds the hand from its natural activity of touching something, or turns aside the sense of smell from its normal exercise [149] ? Who is it that thus acts against the natural instincts of the body? Or how does the body, turned from its natural course, turn to the counsels of another and suffer itself to be guided at the beck of that other? Why, these things prove simply this, that the rational soul presides over the body. 3. For the body is not even constituted to drive itself, but it is carried at the will of another, just as a horse does not yoke himself, but is driven by his master. Hence laws for human beings to practise what is good and to abstain from evil-doing, while to the brutes evil remains unthought of and undiscerned, because they lie outside rationality and the process of understanding. I think then that the existence of a rational soul in man is proved by what we have said. __________________________________________________________________
[148] Supra xxx.
[149] Compare the somewhat analogous argument in Butler, Serm. ii. __________________________________________________________________
§33. The soul immortal. Proved by (1) its being distinct from the body, (2) its being the source of motion, (3) its power to go beyond the body in imagination and thought.
But that the soul is made immortal is a further point in the Church's teaching which you must know, to show how the idols are to be overthrown. But we shall more directly arrive at a knowledge of this from what we know of the body, and from the difference between the body and the soul. For if our argument has proved it to be distinct from the body, while the body is by nature mortal, it follows that the soul is immortal, because it is not like the body. 2. And again, if as we have shewn, the soul moves the body and is not moved by other things, it follows that the movement of the soul is spontaneous, and that this spontaneous movement goes on after the body is laid aside in the earth. If then the soul were moved by the body, it would follow that the severance of its motor would involve its death. But if the soul moves the body also, it follows all the more that it moves itself. But if moved by itself [150] , it follows that it outlives the body. 3. For the movement of the soul is the same thing as its life, just as, of course, we call the body alive when it moves, and say that its death takes place when it ceases moving. But this can be made clearer once for all from the action of the soul in the body. For if even when united and coupled with the body it is not shut in or commensurate with the small dimensions of the body, but often [151] , when the body lies in bed, not moving, but in death-like sleep, the soul keeps awake by virtue of its own power, and transcends the natural power of the body, and as though travelling away from the body while remaining in it, imagines and beholds things above the earth, and often even holds converse with the saints and angels who are above earthly and bodily existence, and approaches them in the confidence of the purity of its intelligence; shall it not all the more, when separated from the body at the time appointed by God Who coupled them together, have its knowledge of immortality more clear? For if even when coupled with the body it lived a life outside the body, much more shall its life continue after the death of the body, and live without ceasing by reason of God Who made it thus by His own Word, our Lord Jesus Christ. 4. For this is the reason why the soul thinks of and bears in mind things immortal and eternal, namely, because it is itself immortal. And just as, the body being mortal, its senses also have mortal things as their objects, so, since the soul contemplates and beholds immortal things, it follows that it is immortal and lives for ever. For ideas and thoughts about immortality never desert the soul, but abide in it, and are as it were the fuel in it which ensures its immortality. This then is why the soul has the capacity for beholding God, and is its own way thereto, receiving not from without but from herself the knowledge and apprehension of the Word of God. __________________________________________________________________
[150] Cf. Plato Phædr. 245 C-E., Legg. 896, A, B. The former passage is more likely to be referred to here as it is, like the text, an argument for immortality. Athan. has also referred to Phædrus above, §5. (Against Gwatkin, Studies, p. 101.)
[151] Cp. xxxi. 5, and ref. __________________________________________________________________
§34. The soul, then, if only it get rid of the stains of sin is able to know God directly, its own rational nature imaging back the Word of God, after whose image it was created. But even if it cannot pierce the cloud which sin draws over its vision, it is confronted by the witness of creation to God.
We repeat then what we said before, that just as men denied God, and worship things without soul, so also in thinking they have not a rational soul, they receive at once the punishment of their folly, namely, to be reckoned among irrational creatures: and so, since as though from lack of a soul of their own they superstitiously worship soulless gods, they are worthy of pity and guidance. 2. But if they claim to have a soul, and pride themselves on the rational principle, and that rightly, why do they, as though they had no soul, venture to go against reason, and think not as they ought, but make themselves out higher even than the Deity? For having a soul that is immortal and invisible to them, they make a likeness of God in things visible and mortal. Or why, in like manner as they have departed from God, do they not betake themselves to Him again? For they are able, as they turned away their understanding from God, and feigned as gods things that were not, in like manner to ascend with the intelligence of their soul, and turn back to God again. 3. But turn back they can, if they lay aside the filth of all lust which they have put on, and wash it away persistently, until they have got rid of all the foreign matter that has affected their soul, and can shew it in its simplicity as it was made, that so they may be able by it to behold the Word of the Father after Whose likeness they were originally made. For the soul is made after the image and likeness of God, as divine Scripture also shews, when it says in the person of God [152] : "Let us make man after our Image and likeness." Whence also when it gets rid of all the filth of sin which covers it and retains only the likeness of the Image in its purity, then surely this latter being thoroughly brightened, the soul beholds as in a mirror the Image of the Father, even the Word, and by His means reaches the idea of the Father, Whose Image the Saviour is. 4. Or, if the soul's own teaching is insufficient, by reason of the external things which cloud its intelligence, and prevent its seeing what is higher, yet it is further possible to attain to the knowledge of God from the things which are seen, since Creation, as though in written characters, declares in a loud voice, by its order and harmony, its own Lord and Creator. __________________________________________________________________
[152] Gen. i. 26. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Part III.
§35. Creation a revelation of God; especially in the order and harmony pervading the whole.
For God, being good and loving to mankind, and caring for the souls made by Him,--since He is by nature invisible and incomprehensible, having His being beyond all created existence [153] , for which reason the race of mankind was likely to miss the way to the knowledge of Him, since they are made out of nothing while He is unmade,--for this cause God by His own Word gave the Universe the Order it has, in order that since He is by nature invisible, men might be enabled to know Him at any rate by His works [154] . For often the artist even when not seen is known by his works. 2. And as they tell of Phidias the Sculptor that his works of art by their symmetry and by the proportion of their parts betray Phidias to those who see them although he is not there, so by the order of the Universe one ought to perceive God its maker and artificer, even though He be not seen with the bodily eyes. For God did not take His stand upon His invisible nature (let none plead that as an excuse) and leave Himself utterly unknown to men; but as I said above, He so ordered Creation that although He is by nature invisible He may yet be known by His works. 3. And I say this not on my own authority, but on the strength of what I learned from men who have spoken of God, among them Paul, who thus writes to the Romans [155] : "for the invisible things of Him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made;" while to the Lycaonians he speaks out and says [156] : "We also are men of like passions with you, and bring you good tidings, to turn from these vain things unto a Living God, Who made the heaven and the earth and the sea, and all that in them is, Who in the generations gone by suffered all nations to walk in their own ways. And yet He left not Himself without witness, in that He did good, and gave you [157] from heaven rains and fruitful seasons, filling your hearts with food and gladness." 4. For who that sees the circle of heaven and the course of the sun and the moon, and the positions and movements of the other stars, as they take place in opposite and different directions, while yet in their difference all with one accord observe a consistent order, can resist the conclusion that these are not ordered by themselves, but have a maker distinct from themselves who orders them? or who that sees the sun rising by day and the moon shining by night, and waning and waxing without variation exactly according to the same number of days, and some of the stars running their courses and with orbits various and manifold, while others move [158] without wandering, can fail to perceive that they certainly have a creator to guide them? __________________________________________________________________
[153] Cf. below, 40. 2.
[154] Cf. Orat. ii. 32.
[155] Rom. i. 20.
[156] Acts xiv. 15.
[157] humin and humon below are read by several mss., and are probably correct as in the original passage.
[158] The fixed' stars as distinct from the planets. For the argument, cf. Plato, Legg. 966 E. __________________________________________________________________
§36. This the more striking, if we consider the opposing forces out of which this order is produced.
Who that sees things of opposite nature combined, and in concordant harmony, as for example fire mingled with cold, and dry with wet, and that not in mutual conflict, but making up a single body, as it were homogeneous, can resist the inference that there is One external to these things that has united them? Who that sees winter giving place to spring and spring to summer and summer to autumn, and that these things contrary by nature (for the one chills, the other burns, the one nourishes, the other destroys), yet all make up a balanced result beneficial to mankind,--can fail to perceive that there is One higher than they, Who balances and guides them all, even if he see Him not? 2. Who that sees the clouds supported in air, and the weight of the waters bound up in the clouds, can but perceive Him that binds them up and has ordered these things so? Or who that sees the earth, heaviest of all things by nature, fixed upon the waters, and remaining unmoved upon what is by nature mobile, will fail to understand that there is One that has made and ordered it, even God? Who that sees the earth bringing forth fruits in due season, and the rains from heaven, and the flow of rivers, and springing up of wells, and the birth of animals from unlike parents, and that these things take place not at all times but at determinate seasons,--and in general, among things mutually unlike and contrary, the balanced and uniform order to which they conform,--can resist the inference that there is one Power which orders and administers them, ordaining things well as it thinks fit? 4. For left to themselves they could not subsist or ever be able to appear, on account of their mutual contrariety of nature. For water is by nature heavy, and tends to flow downwards, while the clouds are light and belong to the class of things which tend to soar and mount upwards. And yet we see water, heavy as it is, borne aloft in the clouds. And again, earth is very heavy, while water on the other hand is relatively light; and yet the heavier is supported upon the lighter, and the earth does not sink, but remains immoveable. And male and female are not the same, while yet they unite in one, and the result is the generation from both of an animal like them. And to cut the matter short, cold is opposite to heat, and wet fights with dry, and yet they come together and are not at variance, but they agree, and produce as their result a single body, and the birth of everything. __________________________________________________________________
§37. The same subject continued.
Things then of conflicting and opposite nature would not have reconciled themselves, were there not One higher and Lord over them to unite them, to Whom the elements themselves yield obedience as slaves that obey a master. And instead of each having regard to its own nature and fighting with its neighbour, they recognise the Lord Who has united them, and are at concord one with another, being by nature opposed, but at amity by the will of Him that guides them. 2. For if their mingling into one were not due to a higher authority, how could the heavy mingle and combine with the light, the wet with the dry, the round with the straight, fire with cold, or sea with earth, or the sun with the moon, or the stars with the heaven, and the air with the clouds, the nature of each being dissimilar to that of the other? For there would be great strife among them, the one burning, the other giving cold; the heavy dragging downwards, the light in the contrary direction and upwards; the sun giving light while the air diffused darkness: yes, even the stars would have been at discord with one another, since some have their position above, others beneath, and night would have refused to make way for day, but would have persisted in remaining to fight and strive against it. 3. But if this were so, we should consequently see not an ordered universe, but disorder, not arrangement but anarchy, not a system, but everything out of system, not proportion but disproportion. For in the general strife and conflict either all things would be destroyed, or the prevailing principle alone would appear. And even the latter would shew the disorder of the whole, for left alone, and deprived of the help of the others, it would throw the whole out of gear, just as, if a single hand and foot were left alone, that would not preserve the body in its integrity. 4. For what sort of an universe would it be, if only the sun appeared, or only the moon went her course, or there were only night, or always day? Or what sort of harmony would it be, again, if the heaven existed alone without the stars, or the stars without the heaven? Or what benefit would there be if there were only sea, or if the earth were there alone without waters and without the other parts of creation? Or how could man, or any animal, have appeared upon earth, if the elements were mutually at strife, or if there were one that prevailed, and that one insufficient for the composition of bodies. For nothing in the world could have been composed of heat, or cold, or wet, or dry, alone, but all would have been without arrangement or combination. But not even the one element which appeared to prevail would have been able to subsist without the assistance of the rest: for that is how each subsists now. __________________________________________________________________
§38. The Unity of God shewn by the Harmony of the order of Nature.
Since then, there is everywhere not disorder but order, proportion and not disproportion, not disarray but arrangement, and that in an order perfectly harmonious, we needs must infer and be led to perceive the Master that put together and compacted all things, and produced harmony in them. For though He be not seen with the eyes, yet from the order and harmony of things contrary it is possible to perceive their Ruler, Arranger, and King. 2. For in like manner as if we saw a city, consisting of many and diverse people, great and small, rich and poor, old and young, male and female, in an orderly condition, and its inhabitants, while different from one another, yet at unity among themselves, and not the rich set against the poor, the great against the small, nor the young against the old, but all at peace in the enjoyment of equal rights,--if we saw this, the inference surely follows that the presence of a ruler enforces concord, even if we do not see him; (for disorder is a sign of absence of rule, while order shews the governing authority: for when we see the mutual harmony of the members in the body, that the eye does not strive with the hearing, nor is the hand at variance with the foot, but that each accomplishes its service without variance, we perceive from this that certainly there is a soul in the body that governs these members, though we see it not); so in the order and harmony of the Universe, we needs must perceive God the governor of it all, and that He is one and not many. 3. So then this order of its arrangement, and the concordant harmony of all things, shews that the Word, its Ruler and Governor, is not many, but One. For if there were more than one Ruler of Creation, such an universal order would not be maintained, but all things would fall into confusion because of their plurality, each one biasing the whole to his own will, and striving with the other. For just as we said that polytheism was atheism, so it follows that the rule of more than one is the rule of none. For each one would cancel the rule of the other, and none would appear ruler, but there would be anarchy everywhere. But where no ruler is, there disorder follows of course. 4. And conversely, the single order and concord of the many and diverse shews that the ruler too is one. For just as though one were to hear from a distance a lyre, composed of many diverse strings, and marvel at the concord of its symphony, in that its sound is composed neither of low notes exclusively, nor high nor intermediate only, but all combine their sounds in equal balance,--and would not fail to perceive from this that the lyre was not playing itself, nor even being struck by more persons than one, but that there was one musician, even if he did not see him, who by his skill combined the sound of each string into the tuneful symphony; so, the order of the whole universe being perfectly harmonious, and there being no strife of the higher against the lower or the lower against the higher, and all things making up one order, it is consistent to think that the Ruler and King of all Creation is one and not many, Who by His own light illumines and gives movement to all. __________________________________________________________________
§39. Impossibility of a plurality of Gods.
For we must not think there is more than one ruler and maker of Creation: but it belongs to correct and true religion to believe that its Artificer is one, while Creation herself clearly points to this. For the fact that there is one Universe only and not more is a conclusive proof that its Maker is one. For if there were a plurality of gods, there would necessarily be also more universes than one. For neither were it reasonable for more than one God to make a single universe, nor for the one universe to be made by more than one, because of the absurdities which would result from this. 2. Firstly, if the one universe were made by a plurality of gods, that would mean weakness on the part of those who made it, because many contributed to a single result; which would be a strong proof of the imperfect creative skill of each. For if one were sufficient, the many would not supplement each other's deficiency. But to say that there is any deficiency in God is not only impious, but even beyond all sacrilege. For even among men one would not call a workman perfect if he were unable to finish his work, a single piece, by himself and without the aid of several others. 3. But if, although each one was able to accomplish the whole, yet all worked at it in order to claim a share in the result, we have the laughable conclusion that each worked for reputation, lest he should be suspected of inability. But, once more, it is most grotesque to ascribe vainglory to gods. 4. Again, if each one were sufficient for the creation of the whole, what need of more than one, one being self-sufficient for the universe? Moreover it would be evidently impious and grotesque, to make the thing created one, while the creators were many and different, it being a maxim of science [159] that what is one and complete is higher than things that are diverse. 5. And this you must know, that if the universe had been made by a plurality of gods, its movements would be diverse and inconsistent. For having regard to each one of its makers, its movements would be correspondingly different. But such difference again, as was said before, would involve disarray and general disorder; for not even a ship will sail aright if she be steered by many, unless one pilot hold the tiller [160] , nor will a lyre struck by many produce a tuneful sound, unless there be one artist who strikes it. 6. Creation, then, being one, and the Universe one, and its order one, we must perceive that its King and Artificer also is one. For this is why the Artificer Himself made the whole universe one, lest by the coexistence of more than one a plurality of makers should be supposed; but that as the work is one, its Maker also may be believed to be One. Nor does it follow from the unity of the Maker that the Universe must be one, for God might have made others as well. But because the Universe that has been made is one, it is necessary to believe that its Maker also is one. __________________________________________________________________
[159] Or, perhaps, "innate, self-evident maxim" (logos phusikos).
[160] lit. "the steering-paddles." __________________________________________________________________
§40. The rationality and order of the Universe proves that it is the work of the Reason or Word of God.
Who then might this Maker be? for this is a point most necessary to make plain, lest, from ignorance with regard to him, a man should suppose the wrong maker, and fall once more into the same old godless error, but I think no one is really in doubt about it. For if our argument has proved that the gods of the poets are no gods, and has convicted of error those that deify creation, and in general has shewn that the idolatry of the heathen is godlessness and impiety, it strictly follows from the elimination of these that the true religion is with us, and that the God we worship and preach is the only true One, Who is Lord of Creation and Maker of all existence. 2. Who then is this, save the Father of Christ, most holy and above all created existence [161] , Who like an excellent pilot, by His own Wisdom and His own Word, our Lord and Saviour Christ, steers and preserves and orders all things, and does as seems to Him best? But that is best which has been done, and which we see taking place, since that is what He wills; and this a man can hardly refuse to believe. 3. For if the movement of creation were irrational, and the universe were borne along without plan, a man might fairly disbelieve what we say. But if it subsist in reason and wisdom and skill, and is perfectly ordered throughout, it follows that He that is over it and has ordered it is none other than the [reason or] Word of God. 4. But by Word I mean, not that which is involved and inherent in all things created, which some are wont to call the seminal [162] principle, which is without soul and has no power of reason or thought, but only works by external art, according to the skill of him that applies it,--nor such a word as belongs to rational beings and which consists of syllables, and has the air as its vehicle of expression,--but I mean the living and powerful Word of the good God, the God of the Universe, the very Word which is God [163] , Who while different from things that are made, and from all Creation, is the One own Word of the good Father, Who by His own providence ordered and illumines this Universe. 5. For being the good Word of the Good Father He produced the order of all things, combining one with another things contrary, and reducing them to one harmonious order. He being the Power of God and Wisdom of God causes the heaven to revolve, and has suspended the earth, and made it fast, though resting upon nothing, by His own nod [164] . Illumined by Him, the sun gives light to the world, and the moon has her measured period of shining. By reason of Him the water is suspended in the clouds; the rains shower upon the earth, and the sea is kept within bounds, while the earth bears grasses and is clothed with all manner of plants. 6. And if a man were incredulously to ask, as regards what we are saying, if there be a Word of God at all [165] , such an one would indeed be mad to doubt concerning the Word of God, but yet demonstration is possible from what is seen, because all things subsist by the Word and Wisdom of God, nor would any created thing have had a fixed existence had it not been made by reason, and that reason the Word of God, as we have said. __________________________________________________________________
[161] Cf. above 2. 2 and note, also 35. 1.
[162] spermatikos
[163] Joh. i. 1.
[164] neuma, i.e. act of will, or fiat.
[165] De Incarn. 41. 3. __________________________________________________________________
§41. The Presence of the Word in nature necessary, not only for its original Creation, but also for its permanence.
But though He is Word, He is not, as we said, after the likeness of human words, composed of syllables; but He is the unchanging Image of His own Father. For men, composed of parts and made out of nothing, have their discourse composite and divisible. But God possesses true existence and is not composite, wherefore His Word also has true Existence and is not composite, but is the one and only-begotten God [166] , Who proceeds in His goodness from the Father as from a good Fountain, and orders all things and holds them together. 2. But the reason why the Word, the Word of God, has united Himself [167] with created things is truly wonderful, and teaches us that the present order of things is none otherwise than is fitting. For the nature of created things, inasmuch as it is brought into being out of nothing, is of a fleeting sort, and weak and mortal, if composed of itself only. But the God of all is good and exceeding noble by nature,--and therefore is kind. For one that is good can grudge nothing [168] : for which reason he does not grudge even existence, but desires all to exist, as objects for His loving-kindness. 3. Seeing then all created nature, as far as its own laws were concerned, to be fleeting and subject to dissolution, lest it should come to this and lest the Universe should be broken up again into nothingness, for this cause He made all things by His own eternal Word, and gave substantive existence to Creation, and moreover did not leave it to be tossed in a tempest in the course of its own nature, lest it should run the risk of once more dropping out of existence [169] ; but, because He is good He guides and settles the whole Creation by His own Word, Who is Himself also God, that by the governance and providence and ordering action of the Word, Creation may have light, and be enabled to abide alway securely. For it partakes of the Word Who derives true existence from the Father, and is helped by Him so as to exist, lest that should come to it which would have come but for the maintenance of it by the Word,--namely, dissolution,--"for He is the Image of the invisible God, the first-born of all Creation, for through Him and in Him all things consist, things visible and things invisible, and He is the Head of the Church," as the ministers of truth teach in their holy writings [170] . __________________________________________________________________
[166] Joh. i. 18, R.V. Marg.
[167] epibebeken, see for the sense Incarn. 43. 4, &c.
[168] Plato Timæus 29 E, quoted also de Incarn. 3. 3. This explanation of Divine Creation is also adopted by Philo de Migratione Abrah. 32 (and see Drummond's Philo, vol. 2, pp. 56, sqq.).
[169] Plato Politic. (see de Incarn. 43. 7, note).
[170] Col. i. 15-18 __________________________________________________________________
§42. This function of the Word described at length.
The holy Word of the Father, then, almighty and all-perfect, uniting with the universe and having everywhere unfolded His own powers, and having illumined all, both things seen and things invisible, holds them together and binds them to Himself, having left nothing void of His own power, but on the contrary quickening and sustaining all things everywhere, each severally and all collectively; while He mingles in one the principles of all sensible existence, heat namely and cold and wet and dry, and causes them not to conflict, but to make up one concordant harmony. 2. By reason of Him and His power, fire does not fight with cold nor wet with dry, but principles mutually opposed, as if friendly and brotherly combine together, and give life to the things we see, and form the principles by which bodies exist. Obeying Him, even God the Word, things on earth have life and things in the heaven have their order. By reason of Him all the sea, and the great ocean, move within their proper bounds, while, as we said above, the dry land grows grasses and is clothed with all manner of diverse plants. And, not to spend time in the enumeration of particulars, where the truth is obvious, there is nothing that is and takes place but has been made and stands by Him and through Him, as also the Divine [171] says, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; all things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made." 3. For just as though some musician, having tuned a lyre, and by his art adjusted the high notes to the low, and the intermediate notes to the rest, were to produce a single tune as the result, so also the Wisdom of God, handling the Universe as a lyre, and adjusting things in the air to things on the earth, and things in the heaven to things in the air, and combining parts into wholes and moving them all by His beck and will, produces well and fittingly, as the result, the unity of the universe and of its order, Himself remaining unmoved with the Father while He moves all things by His organising action, as seems good for each to His own Father. 4. For what is surprising in His godhead is this, that by one and the same act of will He moves all things simultaneously, and not at intervals, but all collectively, both straight and curved, things above and beneath and intermediate, wet, cold, warm, seen and invisible, and orders them according to their several nature. For simultaneously at His single nod what is straight moves as straight, what is curved also, and what is intermediate, follows its own movement; what is warm receives warmth, what is dry dryness, and all things according to their several nature are quickened and organised by Him, and He produces as the result a marvellous and truly divine harmony. __________________________________________________________________
[171] Joh. i. 1. __________________________________________________________________
§43. Three similes to illustrate the Word's relation to the Universe.
And for so great a matter to be understood by an example, let what we are describing be compared to a great chorus. As then the chorus is composed of different people, children, women again, and old men, and those who are still young, and, when one, namely the conductor, gives the sign, each utters sound according to his nature and power, the man as a man, the child as a child, the old man as an old man, and the young man as a young man, while all make up a single harmony; 2. or as our soul at one time moves our several senses according to the proper function of each, so that when some one object is present all alike are put in motion, and the eye sees, the ear hears, the hand touches, the smell takes in odour, and the palate tastes,--and often the other parts of the body act too, as for instance if the feet walk; 3. or, to make our meaning plain by yet a third example, it is as though a very great city were built, and administered under the presence of the ruler and king who has built it; for when he is present and gives orders, and has his eye upon everything, all obey; some busy themselves with agriculture, others hasten for water to the aqueducts, another goes forth to procure provisions,--one goes to senate, another enters the assembly, the judge goes to the bench, and the magistrate to his court. The workman likewise settles to his craft, the sailor goes down to the sea, the carpenter to his workshop, the physician to his treatment, the architect to his building; and while one is going to the country, another is returning from the country, and while some walk about the town others are going out of the town and returning to it again: but all this is going on and is organised by the presence of the one Ruler, and by his management: 4. in like manner then we must conceive of the whole of Creation, even though the example be inadequate, yet with an enlarged idea. For with the single impulse of a nod as it were of the Word of God, all things simultaneously fall into order, and each discharge their proper functions, and a single order is made up by them all together. __________________________________________________________________
§44. The similes applied to the whole Universe, seen and unseen.
For by a nod and by the power of the Divine Word of the Father that governs and presides over all, the heaven revolves, the stars move, the sun shines, the moon goes her circuit, and the air receives the sun's light and the æther his heat, and the winds blow: the mountains are reared on high, the sea is rough with waves, and the living things in it grow, the earth abides fixed, and bears fruit, and man is formed and lives and dies again, and all things whatever have their life and movement; fire burns, water cools, fountains spring forth, rivers flow, seasons and hours come round, rains descend, clouds are filled, hail is formed, snow and ice congeal, birds fly, creeping things go along, water-animals swim, the sea is navigated, the earth is sown and grows crops in due season, plants grow, and some are young, some ripening, others in their growth become old and decay, and while some things are vanishing others are being engendered and are coming to light. 2. But all these things, and more, which for their number we cannot mention, the worker of wonders and marvels, the Word of God, giving light and life, moves and orders by His own nod, making the universe one. Nor does He leave out of Himself even the invisible powers; for including these also in the universe inasmuch as he is their maker also, He holds them together and quickens them by His nod and by His providence. And there can be no excuse for disbelieving this. 3. For as by His own providence bodies grow and the rational soul moves, and possesses life and thought, and this requires little proof, for we see what takes place,--so again the same Word of God with one simple nod by His own power moves and holds together both the visible universe and the invisible powers, allotting to each its proper function, so that the divine powers move in a diviner way, while visible things move as they are seen to do. But Himself being over all, both Governor and King and organising power, He does all for the glory and knowledge of His own Father, so that almost by the very works that He brings to pass He teaches us and says, "By the greatness and beauty of the creatures proportionably the maker of them is seen [172] ." __________________________________________________________________
[172] Wisd. xiii. 5. __________________________________________________________________
§45. Conclusion. Doctrine of Scripture on the subject of Part I.
For just as by looking up to the heaven and seeing its order and the light of the stars, it is possible to infer the Word Who ordered these things, so by beholding the Word of God, one needs must behold also God His Father, proceeding from Whom He is rightly called His Father's Interpreter and Messenger. 2. And this one may see from our own experience; for if when a word proceeds from men [173] we infer that the mind is its source, and, by thinking about the word, see with our reason the mind which it reveals, by far greater evidence and incomparably more, seeing the power of the Word, we receive a knowledge also of His good Father, as the Saviour Himself says, "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father [174] ." But this all inspired Scripture also teaches more plainly and with more authority, so that we in our turn write boldly to you as we do, and you, if you refer to them, will be able to verify what we say. 3. For an argument when confirmed by higher authority is irresistibly proved. From the first then the divine Word firmly taught the Jewish people about the abolition of idols when it said [175] : "Thou shalt not make to thyself a graven image, nor the likeness of anything that is in the heaven above or in the earth beneath." But the cause of their abolition another writer declares [176] , saying: "The idols of the heathen are silver and gold, the works of men's hands: a mouth have they and will not speak, eyes have they and will not see, ears have they and will not hear, noses have they and will not smell, hands have they and will not handle, feet have they and will not walk." Nor has it passed over in silence the doctrine of creation; but, knowing well its beauty, lest any attending solely to this beauty should worship things as if they were gods, instead of God's works, it teaches men firmly beforehand when it says [177] : "And do not when thou lookest up with thine eyes and seest the sun and moon and all the host of heaven, go astray and worship them, which the Lord thy God hath given to all nations under heaven." But He gave them, not to be their gods, but that by their agency the Gentiles should know, as we have said, God the Maker of them all. 4. For the people of the Jews of old had abundant teaching, in that they had the knowledge of God not only from the works of Creation, but also from the divine Scriptures. And in general to draw men away from the error and irrational imagination of idols, He saith [178] : "Thou shalt have none other gods but Me." Not as if there were other gods does He forbid them to have them, but lest any, turning from the true God, should begin to make himself gods of what were not, such as those who in the poets and writers are called gods, though they are none. And the language itself shews that they are no Gods, when it says, "Thou shalt have none other gods," which refers only to the future. But what is referred to the future does not exist at the time of speaking. __________________________________________________________________
[173] Cf. de Sent. Dionys. 23.
[174] Joh. xiv. 9.
[175] Ex. xx. 4.
[176] Ps. cxv. 4-7.
[177] Deut. iv. 19.
[178] Ex. xx. 3. __________________________________________________________________
§46. Doctrine of Scripture on the subject of Part 3.
Has then the divine teaching, which abolished the godlessness of the heathen or the idols, passed over in silence, and left the race of mankind to go entirely unprovided with the knowledge of God? Not so: rather it anticipates their understanding when it says [179] : "Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is one God;" and again, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy strength;" and again, "Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve, and shalt cleave to Him." 2. But that the providence and ordering power of the Word also, over all and toward all, is attested by all inspired Scripture, this passage suffices to confirm our argument, where men who speak of God say [180] : "Thou hast laid the foundation of the earth and it abideth. The day continueth according to Thine ordinance." And again [181] : "Sing to our God upon the harp, that covereth the heaven with clouds, that prepareth rain for the earth, that bringeth forth grass upon the mountains, and green herb for the service of man, and giveth food to the cattle." 3. But by whom does He give it, save by Him through Whom all things were made? For the providence over all things belongs naturally to Him by Whom they were made; and who is this save the Word of God, concerning Whom in another psalm [182] he says: "By the Word of the Lord were the heavens made, and all the host of them by the Breath of His mouth." For He tells us that all things were made in Him and through Him. 4. Wherefore He also persuades us and says [183] , "He spake and they were made, He commanded and they were created;" as the illustrious Moses also at the beginning of his account of Creation confirms what we say by his narrative [184] , saying: and God said, "let us make man in our image and after our likeness:" for also when He was carrying out the creation of the heaven and earth and all things, the Father said to Him [185] , "Let the heaven be made," and "let the waters be gathered together and let the dry land appear," and "let the earth bring forth herb" and "every green thing:" so that one must convict Jews also of not genuinely attending to the Scriptures. 5. For one might ask them to whom was God speaking, to use the imperative mood? If He were commanding and addressing the things He was creating, the utterance would be redundant, for they were not yet in being, but were about to be made; but no one speaks to what does not exist, nor addresses to what is not yet made a command to be made. For if God were giving a command to the things that were to be, He must have said, "Be made, heaven, and be made, earth, and come forth, green herb, and be created, O man." But in fact He did not do so; but He gives the command thus: "Let us make man," and "let the green herb come forth." By which God is proved to be speaking about them to some one at hand: it follows then that some one was with Him to Whom He spoke when He made all things. 6. Who then could it be, save His Word? For to whom could God be said to speak, except His Word? Or who was with Him when He made all created Existence, except His Wisdom, which says [186] : "When He was making the heaven and the earth I was present with Him?" But in the mention of heaven and earth, all created things in heaven and earth are included as well. 7. But being present with Him as His Wisdom and His Word, looking at the Father He fashioned the Universe, and organised it and gave it order; and, as He is the power of the Father, He gave all things strength to be, as the Saviour says [187] : "What things soever I see the Father doing, I also do in like manner." And His holy disciples teach that all things were made "through Him and unto Him;" 8. and, being the good Offspring of Him that is good, and true Son, He is the Father's Power and Wisdom and Word, not being so by participation [188] , nor as if these qualifies were imparted to Him from without, as they are to those who partake of Him and are made wise by Him, and receive power and reason in Him; but He is the very Wisdom, very Word, and very own Power of the Father, very Light, very Truth, very Righteousness, very Virtue, and in truth His express Image, and Brightness, and Resemblance. And to sum all up, He is the wholly perfect Fruit of the Father, and is alone the Son, and unchanging Image of the Father. __________________________________________________________________
[179] Deut. vi. 4, 5, 13.
[180] Ps. cxix. 90.
[181] Ps. cxlvii. 7-9.
[182] Ps. xxxiii. 6.
[183] Ps. cxlviii. 5.
[184] Gen. i. 20.
[185] Gen. i. 6-11.
[186] Prov. viii. 27.
[187] Joh. v. 19; Col. i. 16.
[188] metoche, cf. de Syn. 48, 51, 53. This was held by Arians, but in common with Paul Samos. and many of the Monarchian heretics. The same principle in Orig. on Ps. 135 (Lomm. xiii. 134) ou kata metousian alla kat' ousian theos. __________________________________________________________________
§47. Necessity of a return to the Word if our corrupt nature is to be restored.
Who then, who can declare the Father by number, so as to discover the powers of His Word? For like as He is the Father's Word and Wisdom, so too condescending to created things, He becomes, to impart the knowledge and apprehension of Him that begot Him, His very Brightness and very Life, and the Door, and the Shepherd, and the Way, and King and Governor, and Saviour over all, and Light, and Giver of Life, and Providence over all. Having then such a Son begotten of Himself, good, and Creator, the Father did not hide Him out of the sight of His creatures, but even day by day reveals Him to all by means of the organisation and life of all things, which is His work. 2. But in and through Him He reveals Himself also, as the Saviour says [189] : "I in the Father and the Father in Me:" so that it follows that the Word is in Him that begat Him, and that He that is begotten lives eternally with the Father. But this being so, and nothing being outside Him, but both heaven and earth and all that in them is being dependent on Him, yet men in their folly have set aside the knowledge and service of Him, and honoured things that are not instead of things that are: and instead of the real and true God deified things that were not, "serving the creature rather than the Creator [190] ," thus involving themselves in foolishness and impiety. 3. For it is just as if one were to admire the works more than the workman, and being awestruck at the public works in the city, were to make light of their builder, or as if one were to praise a musical instrument but to despise the man who made and tuned it. Foolish and sadly disabled in eyesight! For how else had they known the building, or ship, or lyre, had not the ship-builder made it, the architect built it, or the musician fashioned it? 4. As then he that reasons in such a way is mad, and beyond all madness, even so affected in mind, I think, are those who do not recognise God or worship His Word, our Lord Jesus Christ the Saviour of all, through Whom the Father orders, and holds together all things, and exercises providence over the Universe; having faith and piety towards Whom, my Christ-loving friend, be of good cheer and of good hope, because immortality and the kingdom of heaven is the fruit of faith and devotion towards Him, if only the soul be adorned according to His laws. For just as for them who walk after His example, the prize is life everlasting, so for those who walk the opposite way, and not that of virtue, there is great shame, and peril without pardon in the day of judgment, because although they knew the way of truth their acts were contrary to their knowledge. __________________________________________________________________
[189] Joh. xiv. 10.
[190] Rom. i. 25. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Introduction to the Treatise
on the
Incarnation of the Word.
------------------------
The tract against the Gentiles' leaves the reader face to face with the necessity of restoration by the Divine Word as the remedy for corrupt human nature. How this necessity is met in the Incarnation is shewn in the pages which follow. The general design of the second tract is to illustrate and confirm the doctrine of the Incarnation by shewing (1) its necessity and end, (2) the congruity of its details, (3) its truth, as against the objections of Jews and Gentiles, (4) its result. He begins by a review (recapitulating c. Gent. 2-7) of the doctrine of creation and of man's place therein. The abuse by man of his special Privilege had resulted in its loss. By foregoing the Divine Life, man had entered upon a course of endless undoing, of progressive decay, from which none could rescue him but the original bestower of his life (2-7). Then follows a description in glowing words of the Incarnation of the Divine Word and of its efficacy against the plague of corruption (8-10). With the Divine Life, man had also received, in the knowledge of God, the conscious reflex of the Divine Likeness, the faculty of reason in its highest exercise. This knowledge their moral fall dimmed and perverted. Heeding not even the means by which God sought to remind them of Himself, they fell deeper and deeper into materialism and superstition. To restore the effaced likeness the presence of the Original was requisite. Accordingly, condescending to man's sense-bound intelligence--lest men should have been created in vain in the Image of God--the Word took Flesh and became an object of Sense, that through the Seen He might reveal the Invisible (11-16).
Having dwelt (17-19) upon the meaning and purpose of the Incarnation, he proceeds to speak of the Death and Resurrection of the Incarnate Word. He, Who alone could renew the handiwork and restore the likeness and give afresh the knowledge of God, must needs, in order to pay the debt which all had incurred (to para panton opheilomenon), die in our stead, offering the sacrifice on behalf of all, so as to rise again, as our first-fruits, from the grave (20-32, note especially §20). After speaking of the especial fitness of the Cross, once the instrument of shame, now the trophy of victory, and after meeting some difficulties connected with the manner of the Lord's Death, he passes to the Resurrection. He shews how Christ by His triumph over the grave changed (27) the relative ascendancy of Death and Life: and how the Resurrection with its momentous train of consequences, follows of necessity (31) from the Incarnation of Him in Whom was Life.
The two main divisions of contemporary unbelief are next combated. In either case the root of the difficulty is moral; with the Greeks it is a frivolous cynicism, with the Jews, inveterate obstinacy. The latter (33-40) are confuted, firstly, by their own Scriptures, which predict both in general and in detail the coming of Jesus Christ. Also, the old Jewish polity, both civil and religious, has passed away, giving place to the Church of Christ.
Turning to the Greeks (41-45), and assuming that they allow the existence of a pervading Spirit, whose presence is the sustaining principle of all things, he challenges them to reject, without inconsistency, the Union of that Spirit, the Logos (compare St. Augustine Conf. VII. ix.), with one in particular of the many constituents of that Universe wherein he already dwells. And since man alone (43. 3) of the creatures had departed from the order of his creation, it was man's nature that the Word united to Himself, thus repairing the breach between the creature and the Creator at the very point where it had occurred.
God did not restore man by a mere fiat (44) because, just as repentance on man's part (7) could not eradicate his disease, so such a fiat on God's part would have amounted to the annihilation of human nature as it was, and the creation of a fresh race. Man's definite disorder God met with a specific remedy, overcoming death with life. Thus man has been enabled once more to shew forth, in common with the rest of Creation, the handiwork and glory of his Maker.
Athanasius then confronts the Greeks, as he had the Jews, with facts. Since the coming of Christ, paganism, popular and philosophic, had been falling into discredit and decay. The impotence and rivalries of the philosophic teachers, the local and heterogeneous character, the low moral ideals of the old worships, are contrasted with the oneness and inspiring power of the religion of the Crucified. Such are the two, the dying and the living systems; it remains for him who will to taste and see what that life is which is the gift of Christ to them that follow Him (46-end).
The purpose of the tract, in common with the contra Gentes, being to commend the religion of Christ to acceptance, the argument is concerned more with the Incarnation as a living fact, and with its place in the scheme of God's dealing with man, than with its analysis as a theological doctrine. He does not enter upon the question, fruitful of controversy in the previous century at Alexandria, but soon to burst forth into furious debate, of the Sonship of the Word and of His relation to God the Father. Still less does he touch the Christological questions which arose with the decline of the Arian tempest, questions associated with the names of Apollinarius, Theodore, Cyril, Nestorius, Eutyches, Theodoret, and Dioscorus. But we feel already that firm grasp of soteriological principles which mark him out as the destined conqueror of Arianism, and which enabled him by a sure instinct to anticipate unconsciously the theological difficulties which troubled the Church for the century after his death. It is the broad comprehensive treatment of the subject in its relation to God, human nature, and sin, that gives the work its interest to readers of the present day. In strong reaction from modern or medieval theories of Redemption, which to the thoughtful Christian of to-day seem arbitrary, or worse, it is with relief that men find that from the beginning it was not so; that the theology of the early Church interpreted the great Mystery of godliness in terms which, if short of the fulness of the Pauline conception, are yet so free from arbitrary assumptions, so true to human nature as the wisest of men know it, so true to the worthiest and grandest ideas of God (see below, p. 33 ad fin.). The de Incarnatione, then, is perhaps more appreciated in our day than at any date since the days of its writer.
It may therefore be worth while to devote a word or two to some peculiarities incidental to its aim and method. We observe first of all how completely the power of the writer is absorbed in the subject under discussion. It is therefore highly precarious to infer anything from his silence even on points which might seem to require explanation in the course of his argument. Not a word is said of the doctrine of the Trinity, nor of the Holy Spirit; this directly follows from the purpose of the work, in accordance with the general truth that while the Church preaches Christ to the World, the Office and Personality of the Spirit belongs to her inner life. The teaching of the tract with regard to the constitution of man is another case in point. It might appear (§3, cf. 11. 2, 13. 2) that Athanasius ascribed the reasonable soul of man, and his immortality after death, not to the constitution of human nature as such, but to the grace superadded to it by the Creator (he tou kat' eikona charis), a grace which constituted men logikoi (3. 4) by virtue of the power of the Logos, and which, if not forfeited by sin, involved the privilege of immortality. We have, then, to carefully consider whether Athanasius held, or meant to suggest, that man is by nature, and apart from union with God, (1) rational, or (2) immortal. If we confine our view to the treatise before us, there would be some show of reason in answering both questions in the negative; and with regard to immortality this has been recently done by an able correspondent of The Times (April 9, 1890).
But that Athanasius held the essential rationality and immortality of the soul is absolutely clear, if only from c. Gent. 32 and 33. We have, then, to find an explanation of his language in the present treatise. With regard to immortality, it should be observed (1) that the language employed (in 4. 5, where kenothenai tou einai aei is explained by to dialuthentas menein en to thanato kai te phthora) suggests a continued condition, and therefore something short of annihilation, although not worthy of the name of existence or life,--(2) that even in the worst of men the image of God is defaced, but not effaced (14. 1, &c.), and that even when grace is lost (7. 4), man cannot be as though the contact with the divine had never taken place;--(3) that in this work, as by St. Paul in 1 Cor. xv., the final destiny of the wicked is passed over (but for the general reference 56. 3) in silence. It may be added (4) that Athanasius puts together all that separates man from irrational creatures without clearly drawing the line between what belongs to the natural man and what to the kat' eikona charis. The subject of eschatology is nowhere dealt with in full by Athanasius; while it is quite certain (c. Gent. 33) that he did not share the inclination of some earlier writers (see D.C.B. ii. p. 192) toward the idea of conditional immortality, there is also no reason to think that he held with the Universalism of Origen, Gregory of Nyssa and others (see Migne, Patr. Gr. xxvii. p. 1404 A, also 1384 C, where the unfortunate Origen's' opinions seem to be rejected, but with an implied deprecation of harsh judgment). As to his view of the essential rationality of man (see c. Gent. 32) the consideration (4) urged above once more applies (compare the discussion in Harnack, Dg. ii. 146 sqq.). Yet he says that man left to himself can have no idea of God at all (11. 1), and that this would deprive him of any claim to be considered a rational being (ib. 2). The apparent inconsistency is removed if we understand that man may be rational potentially (as all men are) and yet not rational in the sense of exercising reason (which is the case with very many). In other words, grace gives not the faculty itself, but its integrity, the latter being the result not of the mere psychological existence of the faculty, but of the reaction upon it of its highest and adequate object. (The same is true to a great extent of the doctrine of pneuma in the New Testament.)
A somewhat similar caution is necessary with regard to the analogy drawn out (41, &c.) between the Incarnation and the Union of the Word with the Universe. The treatise itself (17. 1, ektos kat' ousian, and see notes on 41) supplies the necessary corrective in this case. It may be pointed out here that the real difference between Athanasius and the neo-Platonists was not so much upon the Union of the Word with any created Substance, which they were prepared to allow, as upon the exclusive Union of the Word with Man, in Contrast to His essential distinctness from the Universe. This difference goes back to the doctrine of Creation, which was fixed as a great gulf between the Christian and the Platonist view of the Universe. The relation of the latter to the Word is fully discussed in the third part of the contra Gentes, the teaching of which must be borne in mind while reading the forty-first and following chapters of the present treatise.
Lastly, the close relation between the doctrine of Creation and that of Redemption marks off the Soteriology of this treatise from that of the middle ages and of the Reformation. Athanasius does not leave out of sight the idea of satisfaction for a debt. To him also the Cross was the central purpose (20. 2, cf. 9. 1, 2, &c.) of His Coming. But the idea of Restoration is most prominent in his determination of the necessity of the Incarnation. God could have wiped out our guilt, had He so pleased, by a word (44): but human nature required to be healed, restored, recreated. This (anaktisai) is the foremost of the three ideas (7. 5) which sum up his account of the dignus tanto Vindice nodus [191] .
The translation which follows is that printed in 1885 (D. Nutt, second edition, 1891) by the editor of this volume, with a very few changes (chiefly 2. 2, 8. 4, 34. 2, 44. 7, 8): it was originally made for the purpose of lectures at Oxford (1879-1882), and the analytical headings now prefixed to each chapter are extracted verbatim from notes made for the same course of lectures. The notes have mostly appeared either in the former edition of the translation, or appended to the Greek text published (D. Null, 1882) by the translator. A few, however, have now been added, including some references to the Sermo Major, which borrows wholesale from the present treatise (Prolegg. ch. III. §1. 37). Two other English translations have appeared, the one (Parker, 1880) previous, the other (Religious Tract Society, n.d.) subsequent to that of the present translator. The text followed is that of the Benedictine editors, with a few exceptions. Of those that at all affect the sense, 43.6 (kai to soma) and 51. 2 (kata tes eid;) are due to Mr. Marriott (Analecta Christiana, Oxf. 1844). For the others (13. 2, omission of me, 28. 3, kata tou puros rejecting conjectures of Montf. and Marriott, 42. 6, omission of pepoiekenai 57. 3, kai ta for ta kai) the present editor is alone responsible.
Synopsis of the Treatise.
------------------------
Page
§1.
Introduction. The Redemptive work of the Word based on His initial relation to the Creature.
36
FIRST PART.--The Incarnation of the Word.
§§2, 3.
Doctrine of Creation:
(1) Three erroneous views (2) rejected:
The Epicurean (materialistic) as failing to recognize a differentiating Principle.
36
The Platonic (matter pre-existent) as not satisfying the idea of God
37
The Gnostic (dualistic) as contradictory to Scripture
37
(2) The true doctrine (3) and its application to the Creation of Man
37
This directly brings us to a
§§4-10.
First Reason for the Incarnation:
By departing from the Word, men lost the Principle of Life, and were wasting away (4, 5)
38
God could neither avert nor suffer this (6)
39
The latter would argue weakness, the former changeableness (7) on God's part
39
The Word alone could solve this dilemma (7. 4). This done by His becoming man (8) and dying for us all (9). Reasonableness, and results of this (10)
40
§§11-16.
Second Reason for the Incarnation:
In departing from the Word, men had also lost the Principle of Reason, by which they knew God. In spite of God's witness to Himself, they were sunk into superstition and mental degradation (11, 12)
42
How none but the Word could remedy this (13, 14)
43
How He actually did so (15, 16). The Incarnation, a revelation of the Invisible Godhead
44
(§§17, 18 explain this in further detail)
45
§19.
Transition to Second Part:
The Incarnation an irresistible revelation of God. This is especially true of the Death of Christ.
46
SECOND PART.--The Death and Resurrection of Christ.
His Death:
§20.
1.--Why necessary
47
§§21-25.
2.--Why death by Crucifixion--
a.--Why public, and not natural, but at the hands of others (21-23)
47
b.--Why not of His own choosing (24)
49
c.--Why the Cross, of all deaths (25)
49
His rising again:
§26.
1.--Why on the third day
50
§27.
2.--Changed relation of Death to mankind
50
§§28-32.
3.--Reality of His Resurrection--This:
a.--To be tested by Experience (28)
51
b.--Implied by its visible effects (29-31. 3)
51
c.--Involved in the Nature of the Incarnate Word (31. 4)
53
d.--Confirmed by what we see; as is the case with all truth about the unseen God (32. 1-5)
53
Summary of what is thus proved to be true (32. 6)
53
THIRD PART.--Refutation of Contemporary Unbelief.
§§33-40.
A.--Refutation of Jews:
§§33-39.
1.--From principles admitted by them--i.e., from prophecies relating to the Messiah
54
(§39 forms the step to the next section)
57
§40.
2.--From facts: cessation of the Jewish dispensation, as foretold by Daniel
57
§§41-55.
B.--Refutation of Gentiles:
§§41-45.
1.--From principles admitted by them-
§§41, 42.
a.--The Word, whose existence contemporary philosophy allowed, might reasonably be supposed to unite Himself to some particular nature: consequently, to human nature
58
§43.
b.--Reasons for His Union with Man in particular
59
§44.
c.--Reasons why man should not be restored by a mere fiat
60
§45.
d.--Results of the Scheme actually adopted
61
§§46-55.
2.--Refutation of Gentiles from facts--
§§46-50.
a.--Discredit and decay, since the coming of Christ, of philosophic and popular paganism
61
§§51, 52.
b.--Influence of Christian morals on Society
64
§53.
c.--Influence of Christ on the individual
65
§§54, 55.
d.--Nature and glory of Christ's Work: summary of His victory over paganism
65
§§56, 57.
CONCLUSION: the enquirer referred to the Scriptures. Indispensable moral conditions of the investigation of Spiritual Truth
66 __________________________________________________________________
[191] The corrections were made before he could obtain the essay carefully and gratefully used, but his text is defective, especially and text of Sievers (Zeitsch. Hist. Theol. 1868), where he now from the accidental omission of one of the key-clauses of the finds them nearly all anticipated. Sievers' discussion has been whole (§17). __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
On the Incarnation of the Word.
------------------------
§1. Introductory.--The subject of this treatise: the humiliation and incarnation of the Word. Presupposes the doctrine of Creation, and that by the Word. The Father has saved the world by Him through Whom he first made it.
Whereas in what precedes we have drawn out--choosing a few points from among many--a sufficient account of the error of the heathen concerning idols, and of the worship of idols, and how they originally came to be invented; how, namely, out of wickedness men devised for themselves the worshipping of idols: and whereas we have by God's grace noted somewhat also of the divinity of the Word of the Father, and of His universal Providence and power, and that the Good Father through Him orders all things, and all things are moved by Him, and in Him are quickened: come now, Macarius [192] (worthy of that name), and true lover of Christ, let us follow up the faith of our religion [193] , and set forth also what relates to the Word's becoming Man, and to His divine Appearing amongst us, which Jews traduce and Greeks laugh to scorn, but we worship; in order that, all the more for the seeming low estate of the Word, your piety toward Him may be increased and multiplied. 2. For the more He is mocked among the unbelieving, the more witness does He give of His own Godhead; inasmuch as He not only Himself demonstrates as possible what men mistake, thinking impossible, but what men deride as unseemly, this by His own goodness He clothes with seemliness, and what men, in their conceit of wisdom, laugh at as merely human, He by His own power demonstrates to be divine, subduing the pretensions of idols by His supposed humiliation--by the Cross--and those who mock and disbelieve invisibly winning over to recognise His divinity and power. 3. But to treat this subject it is necessary to recall what has been previously said; in order that you may neither fail to know the cause of the bodily appearing of the Word of the Father, so high and so great, nor think it a consequence of His own nature that the Saviour has worn a body; but that being incorporeal by nature, and Word from the beginning, He has yet of the loving-kindness and goodness of His own Father been manifested to us in a human body for our salvation. 4. It is, then, proper for us to begin the treatment of this subject by speaking of the creation of the universe, and of God its Artificer, that so it may be duly perceived that the renewal of creation has been the work of the self-same Word that made it at the beginning. For it will appear not inconsonant for the Father to have wrought its salvation in Him by Whose means He made it. __________________________________________________________________
[192] See Contra Gentes, i. The word (Makarie) may be an adjective only, but its occurrence in both places seems decisive. The name was very common (Apol. c. Ar. passim). Macarius' was a Christian, as the present passage shews: he is presumed (c. Gent. i. 7) to have access to Scripture.
[193] tes eusebeias. See 1 Tim. iii. 16, and note 1 on De Decr. 1. __________________________________________________________________
§2. Erroneous views of Creation rejected. (1) Epicurean (fortuitous generation). But diversity of bodies and parts argues a creating intellect. (2.) Platonists (pre-existent matter.) But this subjects God to human limitations, making Him not a creator but a mechanic. (3) Gnostics (an alien Demiurge). Rejected from Scripture.
Of the making of the universe and the creation of all things many have taken different views, and each man has laid down the law just as he pleased. For some say that all things have come into being of themselves, and in a chance fashion; as, for example, the Epicureans, who tell us in their self-contempt, that universal providence does not exist, speaking right in the face of obvious fact and experience. 2. For if, as they say, everything has had its beginning of itself, and independently of purpose, it would follow that everything had come into [194] mere being, so as to be alike and not distinct. For it would follow in virtue of the unity of body that everything must be sun or moon, and in the case of men it would follow that the whole must be hand, or eye, or foot. But as it is this is not so. On the contrary, we see a distinction of sun, moon, and earth; and again, in the case of human bodies, of foot, hand, and head. Now, such separate arrangement as this tells us not of their having come into being of themselves, but shews that a cause preceded them; from which cause it is possible to apprehend God also as the Maker and Orderer of all.
3. But others, including Plato, who is in such repute among the Greeks, argue that God has made the world out of matter previously existing and without beginning. For God could have made nothing had not the material existed already; just as the wood must exist ready at hand for the carpenter, to enable him to work at all. 4. But in so saying they know not that they are investing God with weakness. For if He is not Himself the cause of the material, but makes things only of previously existing material, He proves to be weak, because unable to produce anything He makes without the material; just as it is without doubt a weakness of the carpenter not to be able to make anything required without his timber. For, ex hypothesi, had not the material existed, God would not have made anything. And how could He in that case be called Maker and Artificer, if He owes His ability to make to some other source--namely, to the material? So that if this be so, God will be on their theory a Mechanic only, and not a Creator out of nothing [195] ; if, that is, He works at existing material, but is not Himself the cause of the material. For He could not in any sense be called Creator unless He is Creator of the material of which the things created have in their turn been made. 5. But the sectaries imagine to themselves a different artificer of all things, other than the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, in deep blindness even as to the words they use. 6. For whereas the Lord says to the Jews [196] : "Have ye not read that from the beginning He which created them made them male and female, and said, For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they twain shall become one flesh?" and then, referring to the Creator, says, "What, therefore, God hath joined together let not man put asunder:" how come these men to assert that the creation is independent of the Father? Or if, in the words of John, who says, making no exception, "All things [197] were made by Him," and "without Him was not anything made," how could the artificer be another, distinct from the Father of Christ? __________________________________________________________________
[194] Or, "been made in one way only." In the next clause I formerly translated the difficult words hos epi somatos henos as in the case of the universe;' but although the rendering has commended itself to others I now reluctantly admit that it puts too much into the Greek (in spite of §41. 5).
[195] eis to einai.
[196] Matt. xix. 4, &c.
[197] John i. 3. __________________________________________________________________
§3. The true doctrine. Creation out of nothing, of God's lavish bounty of being. Man created above the rest, but incapable of independent perseverance. Hence the exceptional and supra-natural gift of being in God's Image, with the promise of bliss conditionally upon his perseverance in grace.
Thus do they vainly speculate. But the godly teaching and the faith according to Christ brands their foolish language as godlessness. For it knows that it was not spontaneously, because forethought is not absent; nor of existing matter, because God is not weak; but that out of nothing, and without its having any previous existence, God made the universe to exist through His word, as He says firstly through Moses: "In [198] the beginning God created the heaven and the earth;" secondly, in the most edifying book of the Shepherd, "First [199] of all believe that God is one, which created and framed all things, and made them to exist out of nothing." 2. To which also Paul refers when he says, "By [200] faith we understand that the worlds have been framed by the Word of God, so that what is seen hath not been made out of things which do appear." 3. For God is good, or rather is essentially the source of goodness: nor [201] could one that is good be niggardly of anything: whence, grudging existence to none, He has made all things out of nothing by His own Word, Jesus Christ our Lord. And among these, having taken especial pity, above all things on earth, upon the race of men, and having perceived its inability, by virtue of the condition of its origin, to continue in one stay, He gave them a further gift, and He did not barely create man, as He did all the irrational creatures on the earth, but made them after His own image, giving them a portion even of the power of His own Word; so that having as it were a kind of reflexion of the Word, and being made rational, they might be able to abide ever in blessedness, living the true life which belongs to the saints in paradise. 4. But knowing once more how the will of man could sway to either side, in anticipation He secured the grace given them by a law and by the spot where He placed them. For He brought them into His own garden, and gave them a law: so that, if they kept the grace and remained good, they might still keep the life in paradise without sorrow or pain or care besides having the promise of incorruption in heaven; but that if they transgressed and turned back, and became evil, they might know that they were incurring that corruption in death which was theirs by nature: no longer to live in paradise, but cast out of it from that time forth to die and to abide in death and in corruption. 5. Now this is that of which Holy Writ also gives warning, saying in the Person of God: "Of every tree [202] that is in the garden, eating thou shalt eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, ye shall not eat of it, but on the day that ye eat, dying ye shall die." But by "dying ye shall die," what else could be meant than not dying merely, but also abiding ever in the corruption of death? __________________________________________________________________
[198] Gen. i. 1.
[199] Herm. Mand. 1.
[200] Heb. xi. 3.
[201] c. Gent. xli. and Plato, Timæus 29 E.
[202] Gen. ii. 16, sq. __________________________________________________________________
§4. Our creation and God's Incarnation most intimately connected. As by the Word man was called from non-existence into being, and further received the grace of a divine life, so by the one fault which forfeited that life they again incurred corruption and untold sin and misery filled the world.
You are wondering, perhaps, for what possible reason, having proposed to speak of the Incarnation of the Word, we are at present treating of the origin of mankind. But this, too, properly belongs to the aim of our treatise. 2. For in speaking of the appearance of the Saviour amongst us, we must needs speak also of the origin of men, that you may know that the reason of His coming down was because of us, and that our transgression [203] called forth the loving-kindness of the Word, that the Lord should both make haste to help us and appear among men. 3. For of His becoming Incarnate we were the object, and for our salvation He dealt so lovingly as to appear and be born even in a human body. 4. Thus, then, God has made man, and willed that he should abide in incorruption; but men, having despised and rejected the contemplation of God, and devised and contrived evil for themselves (as was said [204] in the former treatise), received the condemnation of death with which they had been threatened; and from thenceforth no longer remained as they were made, but [205] were being corrupted according to their devices; and death had the mastery over them as king [206] . For transgression of the commandment was turning them back to their natural state, so that just as they have had their being out of nothing, so also, as might be expected, they might look for corruption into nothing in the course of time. 5. For if, out of a former normal state of non-existence, they were called into being by the Presence and loving-kindness of the Word, it followed naturally that when men were bereft of the knowledge of God and were turned back to what was not (for what is evil is not, but what is good is), they should, since they derive their being from God who IS, be everlastingly bereft even of being; in other words, that they should be disintegrated and abide in death and corruption. 6. For man is by nature mortal, inasmuch as he is made out of what is not; but by reason of his likeness to Him that is (and if he still preserved this likeness by keeping Him in his knowledge) he would stay his natural corruption, and remain incorrupt; as Wisdom [207] says: "The taking heed to His laws is the assurance of immortality;" but being incorrupt, he would live henceforth as God, to which I suppose the divine Scripture refers, when it says: "I have [208] said ye are gods, and ye are all sons of the most Highest; but ye die like men, and fall as one of the princes." __________________________________________________________________
[203] Cf. Orat. ii. 54, note 4.
[204] c. Gent. 3-5.
[205] Eccles. vii. 29; Rom. i. 21, 22.
[206] Rom. v. 14.
[207] Wisd. vi. 18.
[208] Ps. lxxxii. 6, sq. __________________________________________________________________
§5. For God has not only made us out of nothing; but He gave us freely, by the Grace of the Word, a life in correspondence with God. But men, having rejected things eternal, and, by counsel of the devil, turned to the things of corruption, became the cause [209] of their own corruption in death, being, as I said before, by nature corruptible, but destined, by the grace following from partaking of the Word, to have escaped their natural state, had they remained good. 2. For because of the Word dwelling with them, even their natural corruption did not come near them, as Wisdom also says [210] : "God made man for incorruption, and as an image of His own eternity; but by envy of the devil death came into the world." But when this was come to pass, men began to die, while corruption thence-forward prevailed against them, gaining even more than its natural power over the whole race, inasmuch as it had, owing to the transgression of the commandment, the threat of the Deity as a further advantage against them.
3. For even in their misdeeds men had not stopped short at any set limits; but gradually pressing forward, have passed on beyond all measure: having to begin with been inventors of wickedness and called down upon themselves death and corruption; while later on, having turned aside to wrong and exceeding all lawlessness, and stopping at no one evil but devising all manner of new evils in succession, they have become insatiable in sinning. 4. For there were adulteries everywhere and thefts, and the whole earth was full of murders and plunderings. And as to corruption and wrong, no heed was paid to law, but all crimes were being practised everywhere, both individually and jointly. Cities were at war with cities, and nations were rising up against nations; and the whole earth was rent with civil commotions and battles; each man vying with his fellows in lawless deeds. 8. Nor were even crimes against nature far from them, but, as the Apostle and witness of Christ says: "For their [211] women changed the natural use into that which is against nature: and likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the women, burned in their lust one toward another, men with men working unseemliness, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet." __________________________________________________________________
[209] Cf. Concil. Araus. II. Can. 23. Suam voluntatem homines faciunt, non Dei, quando id agunt quod Deo displicet.'
[210] Wisd. ii. 23, sq.
[211] Rom. i. 26, sq. __________________________________________________________________
§6. The human race then was wasting, God's image was being effaced, and His work ruined. Either, then, God must forego His spoken word by which man had incurred ruin; or that which had shared in the being of the Word must sink back again into destruction, in which case God's design would be defeated. What then? was God's goodness to suffer this? But if so, why had man been made? It could have been weakness, not goodness on God's part.
For this cause, then, death having gained upon men, and corruption abiding upon them, the race of man was perishing; the rational man made in God's image was disappearing, and the handiwork of God was in process of dissolution. 2. For death, as I said above, gained from that time forth a legal [212] hold over us, and it was impossible to evade the law, since it had been laid down by God because [213] of the transgression, and the result was in truth at once monstrous and unseemly. 3. For it were monstrous, firstly, that God, having spoken, should prove false--that, when once He had ordained that man, if he transgressed the commandment, should die the death, after the transgression man should not die, but God's word should be broken. For God would not be true, if, when He had said we should die, man died not. 4. Again, it were unseemly that creatures once made rational, and having partaken of the Word, should go to ruin, and turn again toward non-existence by the way of corruption [214] . 5. For it were not worthy of God's goodness that the things He had made should waste away, because of the deceit practised on men by the devil. 6. Especially it was unseemly to the last degree that God's handicraft among men should be done away, either because of their own carelessness, or because of the deceitfulness of evil spirits.
7. So, as the rational creatures were wasting and such works in course of ruin, what was God in His goodness to do? Suffer corruption to prevail against them and death to hold them fast? And where were the profit of their having been made, to begin with? For better were they not made, than once made, left to neglect and ruin. 8. For neglect reveals weakness, and not goodness on God's part--if, that is, He allows His own work to be ruined when once He had made it--more so than if He had never made man at all. 9. For if He had not made them, none could impute weakness; but once He had made them, and created them out of nothing, it were most monstrous for the work to be ruined, and that before the eyes of the Maker. 10. It was, then, out of the question to leave men to the current of corruption; because this would be unseemly, and unworthy of God's goodness. __________________________________________________________________
[212] Gen. ii. 15.
[213] Gal. iii. 19 (verbally only).
[214] Cf. Anselm cur Deus Homo, II. 4, Valde alienum est ab eo, ut ullam rationalem naturam penitus perire sinat.' __________________________________________________________________
§7. On the other hand there was the consistency of God's nature, not to be sacrificed for our profit. Were men, then, to be called upon to repent? But repentance cannot avert the execution of a law; still less can it remedy a fallen nature. We have incurred corruption and need to be restored to the Grace of God's Image. None could renew but He Who had created. He alone could (1) recreate all, (2) suffer for all, (3) represent all to the Father.
But just as this consequence must needs hold, so, too, on the other side the just claims [215] of God lie against it: that God should appear true to the law He had laid down concerning death. For it were monstrous for God, the Father of truth, to appear a liar for our profit and preservation. 2. So here, once more, what possible course was God to take? To demand repentance of men for their transgression? For this one might pronounce worthy of God; as though, just as from transgression men have become set towards corruption, so from repentance they may once more be set in the way of incorruption. 3. But repentance would, firstly, fail to guard the just claim [216] of God. For He would still be none the more true, if men did not remain in the grasp of death; nor, secondly, does repentance call men back from what is their nature--it merely stays them from acts of sin. 4. Now, if there were merely a misdemeanour in question, and not a consequent corruption, repentance were well enough. But if, when transgression had once gained a start, men became involved in that corruption which was their nature, and were deprived of the grace which they had, being in the image of God, what further step was needed? or what was required for such grace and such recall, but the Word of God, which had also at the beginning made everything out of nought? 5. For His it was once more both to bring the corruptible to incorruption, and to maintain intact the just claim [217] of the Father upon all. For being Word of the Father, and above all, He alone of natural fitness was both able to recreate everything, and worthy to suffer on behalf of all and to be ambassador for all with the Father. __________________________________________________________________
[215] Literally "what is reasonable with respect to God," i.e. what is involved in His attributes and in His relation to us, cf. Rom. iii. 26, cf. Anselm, ib. I. 12, who slightly narrows down the idea of Athan. Si peccatum sic dimittitur impunitum, similiter erit apud Deum peccanti et non peccanti, quod Deo non convenit....Inconvenientia autem iniustitia est.'
[216] See previous note.
[217] See previous note. __________________________________________________________________
§8. The Word, then, visited that earth in which He was yet always present ; and saw all these evils. He takes a body of our Nature, and that of a spotless Virgin, in whose womb He makes it His own, wherein to reveal Himself, conquer death, and restore life.
For this purpose, then, the incorporeal and incorruptible and immaterial Word of God comes to our realm, howbeit he was not far from us [218] before. For no part of Creation is left void of Him: He has filled all things everywhere, remaining present with His own Father. But He comes in condescension to shew loving-kindness upon us, and to visit us. 2. And seeing the race of rational creatures in the way to perish, and death reigning over them by corruption; seeing, too, that the threat against transgression gave a firm hold to the corruption which was upon us, and that it was monstrous that [219] before the law was fulfilled it should fall through: seeing, once more, the unseemliness of what was come to pass: that the things whereof He Himself was Artificer were passing away: seeing, further, the exceeding wickedness of men, and how by little and little they had increased it to an intolerable pitch against themselves: and seeing, lastly, how all men were under penalty of death: He took pity on our race, and had mercy on our infirmity, and condescended to our corruption, and, unable to bear that death should have the mastery--lest the creature should perish, and His Father's handiwork in men be spent for nought--He takes unto Himself a body, and that of no different sort from ours. 3. For He did not simply will to become embodied, or will merely to appear [220] . For if He willed merely to appear, He was able to effect His divine appearance by some other and higher means as well. But He takes a body of our kind, and not merely so, but from a spotless and stainless virgin, knowing not a man, a body clean and in very truth pure from intercourse of men. For being Himself mighty, and Artificer of everything, He prepares the body in the Virgin as a temple unto Himself, and makes it His very own [221] as an instrument, in it manifested, and in it dwelling. 4. And thus taking from our bodies one of like nature, because all were under penalty of the corruption of death He gave it over to death in the stead of all, and offered it to the Father--doing this, moreover, of His loving-kindness, to the end that, firstly, all being held to have died in Him, the law involving the ruin of men might be undone (inasmuch as its power was fully spent in the Lord's body, and had no longer holding-ground against men, his peers), and that, secondly, whereas men had turned toward corruption, He might turn them again toward incorruption, and quicken them from death by the appropriation [222] of His body and by the grace of the Resurrection, banishing death from them like straw from the fire [223] . __________________________________________________________________
[218] Acts xvii. 27.
[219] Cf. vi. 3.
[220] Cf. 43. 2.
[221] Cf. Orat. iii. 33, note 5, also ib. 31, note 10.
[222] Cf. Orat. iii. 33, note 5, also ib. 31, note 10.
[223] The simile is inverted. Men are the straw,' death the fire.' cf. xliv. 7. __________________________________________________________________
§9. The Word, since death alone could stay the plague, took a mortal body which, united with Him, should avail for all, and by partaking of His immortality stay the corruption of the Race. By being above all, He made His Flesh an offering for our souls; by being one with us all, he clothed us with immortality. Simile to illustrate this.
For the Word, perceiving that no otherwise could the corruption of men be undone save by death as a necessary condition, while it was impossible for the Word to suffer death, being immortal, and Son of the Father; to this end He takes to Himself a body capable of death, that it, by partaking of the Word Who is above all, might be worthy to die in the stead of all, and might, because of the Word which was come to dwell in it, remain incorruptible, and that thenceforth corruption might be stayed from all by the Grace of the Resurrection. Whence, by offering unto death the body He Himself had taken, as an offering and sacrifice free from any stain, straightway He put away death from all His peers by the offering of an equivalent. 2. For being over all, the Word of God naturally by offering His own temple and corporeal instrument for the life [224] of all satisfied the debt by His death. And thus He, the incorruptible Son of God, being conjoined with all by a like nature, naturally clothed all with incorruption, by the promise of the resurrection. For the actual corruption in death has no longer holding-ground against men, by reason of the Word, which by His one body has come to dwell among them. 3. And like as [225] when a great king has entered into some large city and taken up his abode in one of the houses there, such city is at all events held worthy of high honour, nor does any enemy or bandit any longer descend upon it and subject it; but, on the contrary, it is thought entitled to all care, because of the king's having taken up his residence in a single house there: so, too, has it been with the Monarch of all. 4. For now that He has come to our realm, and taken up his abode in one body among His peers, henceforth the whole conspiracy of the enemy against mankind is checked, and the corruption of death which before was prevailing against them is done away. For the race of men had gone to ruin, had not the Lord and Saviour of all, the Son of God, come among us to meet the end of death [226] . __________________________________________________________________
[224] antipsuchon.
[225] Possibly suggested by the practice of the emperors. Constantinople was thus dignified a few years later (326). For this simile compare Sermo Major de Fide, c. 6.
[226] Or, "to put an end to death." __________________________________________________________________
§10. By a like simile, the reasonableness of the work of redemption is shewn. How Christ wiped away our ruin, and provided its antidote by His own teaching. Scripture proofs of the Incarnation of the Word, and of the Sacrifice He wrought.
Now in truth this great work was peculiarly suited to God's goodness. 1. For if a king, having founded a house or city, if it be beset by bandits from the carelessness of its inmates, does not by any means neglect it, but avenges and reclaims it as his own work, having regard not to the carelessness of the inhabitants, but to what beseems himself; much more did God the Word of the all-good Father not neglect the race of men, His work, going to corruption: but, while He blotted out the death which had ensued by the offering of His own body, He corrected their neglect by His own teaching, restoring all that was man's by His own power. 2. And of this one may be assured at the hands of the Saviour's own inspired writers, if one happen upon their writings, where they say: "For the love of Christ [227] constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then all died, and He died for all that we should no longer live unto ourselves, but unto Him Who for our sakes died and rose again," our Lord Jesus Christ. And, again: "But [228] we behold Him, Who hath been made a little lower than the angels, even Jesus, because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honour, that by the grace of God He should taste of death for every man." 3. Then He also points out the reason why it was necessary for none other than God the Word Himself to become incarnate; as follows: "For it became Him, for Whom are all things, and through Whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the Captain of their salvation perfect through suffering;" by which words He means, that it belonged to none other to bring man back from the corruption which had begun, than the Word of God, Who had also made them from the beginning. 4. And that it was in order to the sacrifice for bodies such as His own that the Word Himself also assumed a body, to this, also, they refer in these words [229] : "Forasmuch then as the children are the sharers in blood and flesh, He also Himself in like manner partook of the same, that through death He might bring to naught Him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and might deliver them who, through fear of death, were all their lifetime subject to bondage." 5. For by the sacrifice of His own body, He both put an end to the law which was against us, and made a new beginning of life for us, by the hope of resurrection which He has given us. For since from man it was that death prevailed over men, for this cause conversely, by the Word of God being made man has come about the destruction of death and the resurrection of life; as the man which bore Christ [230] saith: "For [231] since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive:" and so forth. For no longer now do we die as subject to condemnation; but as men who rise from the dead we await the general resurrection of all, "which [232] in its own times He shall show," even God, Who has also wrought it, and bestowed it upon us. 6. This then is the first cause of the Saviour's being made man. But one might see from the following reasons also, that His gracious coming amongst us was fitting to have taken place. __________________________________________________________________
[227] 2 Cor. v. 14.
[228] Heb. ii. 9, sq.
[229] Heb. ii. 14, sq.
[230] Cf. Gal. vi. 17
[231] 1 Cor. xv. 21, sq.
[232] 1 Tim. vi. 15. __________________________________________________________________
§11. Second reason for the Incarnation. God, knowing that man was not by nature sufficient to know Him, gave him, in order that he might have some profit in being, a knowledge of Himself. He made them in the Image of the Word, that thus they might know the Word, and through Him the Father. Yet man, despising this, fell into idolatry, leaving the unseen God for magic and astrology; and all this in spite of God's manifold revelation of Himself.
God, Who has the power over all things, when He was making the race of men through His own Word, seeing the weakness of their nature, that it was not sufficient of itself to know its Maker, nor to get any idea at all of God; because while He was uncreate, the creatures had been made of nought, and while He was incorporeal, men had been fashioned in a lower way in the body, and because in every way the things made fell far short of being able to comprehend and know their Maker--taking pity, I say, on the race of men, inasmuch as He is good, He did not leave them destitute of the knowledge of Himself, lest they should find no profit in existing at all [233] . 2. For what profit to the creatures if they knew not their Maker? or how could they be rational without knowing the Word (and Reason) of the Father, in Whom they received their very being? For there would be nothing to distinguish them even from brute creatures if they had knowledge of nothing but earthly things. Nay, why did God make them at all, as He did not wish to be known by them? 3. Whence, lest this should be so, being good, He gives them a share in His own Image, our Lord Jesus Christ, and makes them after His own Image and after His likeness: so that by such grace perceiving the Image, that is, the Word of the Father, they may be able through Him to get an idea of the Father, and knowing their Maker, live the happy and truly blessed life. 4. But men once more in their perversity having set at nought, in spite of all this, the grace given them, so wholly rejected God, and so darkened their soul, as not merely to forget their idea of God, but also to fashion for themselves one invention after another. For not only did they grave idols for themselves, instead of the truth, and honour things that were not before the living God, "and [234] serve the creature rather than the Creator," but, worst of all, they transferred the honour of God even to stocks and stones and to every material object and to men, and went even further than this, as we have said in the former treatise. 5. So far indeed did their impiety go, that they proceeded to worship devils, and proclaimed them as gods, fulfilling their own [235] lusts. For they performed, as was said above, offerings of brute animals, and sacrifices of men, as was meet for them [236] , binding themselves down all the faster under their maddening inspirations. 6. For this reason it was also that magic arts were taught among them, and oracles in divers places led men astray, and all men ascribed the influences of their birth and existence to the stars and to all the heavenly bodies, having no thought of anything beyond what was visible. 7. And, in a word, everything was full of irreligion and lawlessness, and God alone, and His Word, was unknown, albeit He had not hidden Himself out of men's sight, nor given the knowledge of Himself in one way only; but had, on the contrary, unfolded it to them in many forms and by many ways. __________________________________________________________________
[233] Cf. 13. 2.
[234] Cf. Rom. i. 25
[235] auton may refer to the daimones, in which case compare c. Gent. 25. sub fin.
[236] See c. Gent. 25. 1, ta homoia tois homoiois. Or the text may mean simply "as their due." __________________________________________________________________
§12. For though man was created in grace, God, foreseeing his forgetfulness, provided also the works of creation to remind man of him. Yet further, He ordained a Law and Prophets, whose ministry was meant for all the world. Yet men heeded only their own lusts.
For whereas the grace of the Divine Image was in itself sufficient to make known God the Word, and through Him the Father; still God, knowing the weakness of men, made provision even for their carelessness: so that if they cared not to know God of themselves, they might be enabled through the works of creation to avoid ignorance of the Maker. 2. But since men's carelessness, by little and little, descends to lower things, God made provision, once more, even for this weakness of theirs, by sending a law, and prophets, men such as they knew, so that even if they were not ready to look up to heaven and know their Creator, they might have their instruction from those near at hand. For men are able to learn from men more directly about higher things. 3. So it was open to them, by looking into the height of heaven, and perceiving the harmony of creation, to know its Ruler, the Word of the Father, Who, by His own providence over all things makes known the Father to all, and to this end moves all things, that through Him all may know God. 4. Or, if this were too much for them, it was possible for them to meet at least the holy men, and through them to learn of God, the Maker of all things, the Father of Christ; and that the worship of idols is godlessness, and full of all impiety. 5. Or it was open to them, by knowing the law even, to cease from all lawlessness and live a virtuous life. For neither was the law for the Jews alone, nor were the Prophets sent for them only, but, though sent to the Jews and persecuted by the Jews, they were for all the world a holy school of the knowledge of God and the conduct of the soul. 6. God's goodness then and loving-kindness being so great--men nevertheless, overcome by the pleasures of the moment and by the illusions and deceits sent by demons, did not raise their heads toward the truth, but loaded themselves the more with evils and sins, so as no longer to seem rational, but from their ways to be reckoned void of reason. __________________________________________________________________
§13. Here again, was God to keep silence? to allow to false gods the worship He made us to render to Himself? A king whose subjects had revolted would, after sending letters and messages, go to them in person. How much more shall God restore in us the grace of His image. This men, themselves but copies, could not do. Hence the Word Himself must come (1) to recreate, (2) to destroy death in the Body.
So then, men having thus become brutalized, and demoniacal deceit thus clouding every place, and hiding the knowledge of the true God, what was God to do? To keep still silence at so great a thing, and suffer men to be led astray by demons and not to know God? 2. And what was the use of man having been originally made in God's image? For it had been better for him to have been made simply like a brute animal, than, once made rational, for him to live [237] the life of the brutes. 3. Or where was any necessity at all for his receiving the idea of God to begin with? For if he be not fit to receive it even now, it were better it had not been given him at first. 4. Or what profit to God Who has made them, or what glory to Him could it be, if men, made by Him, do not worship Him, but think that others are their makers? For God thus proves to have made these for others instead of for Himself. 5. Once again, a merely human king does not let the lands he has colonized pass to others to serve them, nor go over to other men; but he warns them by letters, and often sends to them by friends, or, if need be, he comes in person, to put them to rebuke in the last resort by his presence, only that they may not serve others and his own work be spent for naught. 6. Shall not God much more spare His own creatures, that they be not led astray from Him and serve things of nought? especially since such going astray proves the cause of their ruin and undoing, and since it was unfitting that they should perish which had once been partakers of God's image. 7. What then was God to do? or what was to be done save the renewing of that which was in God's image, so that by it men might once more be able to know Him? But how could this have come to pass save by the presence of the very Image of God, our Lord Jesus Christ? For by men's means it was impossible, since they are but made after an image; nor by angels either, for not even they are (God's) images. Whence the Word of God came in His own person, that, as He was the Image of the Father, He might be able to create afresh the man after the image. 8. But, again, it could not else have taken place had not death and corruption been done away. 9. Whence He took, in natural fitness, a mortal body, that while death might in it be once for all done away, men made after His Image might once more be renewed. None other then was sufficient for this need, save the Image of the Father. __________________________________________________________________
[237] The Bened. text is corrected here on the ground (1) of ms. evidence, (2) of construction (for which see 6, 7, and c. Gent. 20. 3). __________________________________________________________________
§14. A portrait once effaced must be restored from the original. Thus the Son of the Father came to seek, save, and regenerate. No other way was possible. Blinded himself, man could not see to heal. The witness of creation had failed to preserve him, and could not bring him back. The Word alone could do so. But how? Only by revealing Himself as Man.
For as, when the likeness painted on a panel has been effaced by stains from without, he whose likeness it is must needs come once more to enable the portrait to be renewed on the same wood: for, for the sake of his picture, even the mere wood on which it is painted is not thrown away, but the outline is renewed upon it; 2. in the same way also the most holy Son of the Father, being the Image of the Father, came to our region to renew man once made in His likeness, and find him, as one lost, by the remission of sins; as He says Himself in the Gospels: "I came [238] to find and to save the lost." Whence He said to the Jews also: "Except [239] a man be born again," not meaning, as they thought, birth from woman, but speaking of the soul born and created anew in the likeness of God's image. 3. But since wild idolatry and godlessness occupied the world, and the knowledge of God was hid, whose part was it to teach the world concerning the Father? Man's, might one say? But it was not in man's power to penetrate everywhere beneath the sun; for neither had they the physical strength to run so far, nor would they be able to claim credence in this matter, nor were they sufficient by themselves to withstand the deceit and impositions of evil spirits. 4. For where all were smitten and confused in soul from demoniacal deceit, and the vanity of idols, how was it possible for them to win over man's soul and man's mind--whereas they cannot even see them? Or how can a man convert what he does not see? 5. But perhaps one might say creation was enough; but if creation were enough, these great evils would never have come to pass. For creation was there already, and all the same, men were grovelling in the same error concerning God. 6. Who, then, was needed, save the Word of God, that sees both soul and mind, and that gives movement to all things in creation, and by them makes known the Father? For He who by His own Providence and ordering of all things was teaching men concerning the Father, He it was that could renew this same teaching as well. 7. How, then, could this have been done? Perhaps one might say, that the same means were open as before, for Him to shew forth the truth about the Father once more by means of the work of creation. But this was no longer a sure means. Quite the contrary; for men missed seeing this before, and have turned their eyes no longer upward but downward. 8. Whence, naturally, willing to profit men, He sojourns here as man, taking to Himself a body like the others, and from things of earth, that is by the works of His body [He teaches them], so that they who would not know Him from His Providence and rule over all things, may even from the works done by His actual body know the Word of God which is in the body, and through Him the Father. __________________________________________________________________
[238] Cf. Luc. xix. 10.
[239] See John iii. 3, 5. __________________________________________________________________
§15. Thus the Word condescended to man's engrossment in corporeal things, by even taking a body. All man's superstitions He met halfway; whether men were inclined to worship Nature, Man, Demons, or the dead, He shewed Himself Lord of all these.
For as a kind teacher who cares for His disciples, if some of them cannot profit by higher subjects, comes down to their level, and teaches them at any rate by simpler courses; so also did the Word of God. As Paul also says: "For seeing [240] that in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom knew not God, it was God's good pleasure through the foolishness of the word preached to save them that believe." 2. For seeing that men, having rejected the contemplation of God, and with their eyes downward, as though sunk in the deep, were seeking about for God in nature and in the world of sense, feigning gods for themselves of mortal men and demons; to this end the loving and general Saviour of all, the Word of God, takes to Himself a body, and as Man walks among men and meets the senses of all men half-way [241] , to the end, I say, that they who think that God is corporeal may from what the Lord effects by His body perceive the truth, and through Him recognize [242] the Father. 3. So, men as they were, and human in all their thoughts, on whatever objects they fixed their senses, there they saw themselves met half-way [243] , and taught the truth from every side. 4. For if they looked with awe upon the Creation, yet they saw how she confessed Christ as Lord; or if their mind was swayed toward men, so as to think them gods, yet from the Saviour's works, supposing they compared them, the Saviour alone among men appeared Son of God; for there were no such works done among the rest as have been done by the Word of God. 5. Or if they were biassed toward evil spirits, even, yet seeing them cast out by the Word, they were to know that He alone, the Word of God, was God, and that the spirits were none. 6. Or if their mind had already sunk even to the dead, so as to worship heroes, and the gods spoken of in the poets, yet, seeing the Saviour's resurrection, they were to confess them to be false gods, and that the Lord alone is true, the Word of the Father, that was Lord even of death. 7. For this cause He was both born and appeared as Man, and died, and rose again, dulling and casting into the shade the works of all former men by His own, that in whatever direction the bias of men might be, from thence He might recall them, and teach them of His own true Father, as He Himself says: "I came to save and to find that which was lost [244] ." __________________________________________________________________
[240] 1 Cor. i. 21.
[241] Lit. "draws toward Himself."
[242] Lit. "infer."
[243] Lit. "draws toward Himself."
[244] Cf. 14. 2. __________________________________________________________________
§16. He came then to attract man's sense-bound attention to Himself as man, and so to lead him on to know Him as God.
For men's mind having finally fallen to things of sense, the Word disguised Himself by appearing in a body, that He might, as Man, transfer men to Himself, and centre their senses on Himself, and, men seeing Him thenceforth as Man, persuade them by the works He did that He is not Man only, but also God, and the Word and Wisdom of the true God. 2. This, too, is what Paul means to point out when he says: "That ye [245] being rooted and grounded in love, may be strong to apprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length, and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that ye may be filled unto all the fulness of God." 3. For by the Word revealing Himself everywhere, both above and beneath, and in the depth and in the breadth--above, in the creation; beneath, in becoming man; in the depth, in Hades; and in the breadth, in the world--all things have been filled with the knowledge of God. 4. Now for this cause, also, He did not immediately upon His coming accomplish His sacrifice on behalf of all, by offering His body to death and raising it again, for by this [246] means He would have made Himself invisible. But He made Himself visible enough by what [247] He did, abiding in it, and doing such works, and shewing such signs, as made Him known no longer as Man, but as God the Word. 5. For by His becoming Man, the Saviour was to accomplish both works of love; first, in putting away death from us and renewing us again; secondly, being unseen and invisible, in manifesting and making Himself known by His works to be the Word of the Father, and the Ruler and King of the universe. __________________________________________________________________
[245] Eph. iii. 18, sq.
[246] dia toutou, perhaps, in both places--"by it," viz. His body.
[247] dia toutou, perhaps, in both places--"by it," viz. His body. __________________________________________________________________
§17. How the Incarnation did not limit the ubiquity of the Word, nor diminish His Purity. (Simile of the Sun.)
For He was not, as might be imagined, circumscribed in the body, nor, while present in the body, was He absent elsewhere; nor, while He moved the body, was the universe left void of His working and Providence; but, thing most marvellous, Word as He was, so far from being contained by anything, He rather contained all things Himself; and just as while present in the whole of Creation, He is at once distinct in being from the universe, and present in all things by His own power,--giving order to all things, and over all and in all revealing His own providence, and giving life to each thing and all things, including the whole without being included, but being in His own Father alone wholly and in every respect,--2. thus, even while present in a human body and Himself quickening it, He was, without inconsistency, quickening the universe as well, and was in every process of nature, and was outside the whole, and while known from the body by His works, He was none the less manifest from the working of the universe as well. 3. Now, it is the function of soul to behold even what is outside its own body, by acts of thought, without, however, working outside its own body, or moving by its presence things remote from the body. Never, that is, does a man, by thinking of things at a distance, by that fact either move or displace them; nor if a man were to sit in his own house and reason about the heavenly bodies, would he by that fact either move the sun or make the heavens revolve. But he sees that they move and have their being, without being actually able to influence them. 4. Now, the Word of God in His man's nature was not like that; for He was not bound to His body, but rather was Himself wielding it, so that He was not only in it, but was actually in everything, and while external to the universe, abode in His Father only. 5. And this was the wonderful thing that He was at once walking as man, and as the Word was quickening all things, and as the Son was dwelling with His Father. So that not even when the Virgin bore Him did He suffer any change, nor by being in the body was [His glory] dulled: but, on the contrary, He sanctified the body also. 6. For not even by being in the universe does He share in its nature, but all things, on the contrary, are quickened and sustained by Him. 7. For if the sun too, which was made by Him, and which we see, as it revolves in the heaven, is not defiled [248] by touching the bodies upon earth, nor is it put out by darkness, but on the contrary itself illuminates and cleanses them also, much less was the all-holy Word of God, Maker and Lord also of the sun, defiled by being made known in the body; on the contrary, being incorruptible, He quickened and cleansed the body also, which was in itself mortal: "who [249] did," for so it says, "no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth." __________________________________________________________________
[248] Cf. St. Aug. de Fid. et Symb. 10, Rufin. in Symb. Apost. 12. So also Tertull. adv. Marc. Quodcunque induerit ipse dignum fecit.'
[249] 1 Pet. ii. 22. __________________________________________________________________
§18. How the Word and Power of God works in His human actions: by casting out devils, by Miracles, by His Birth of the Virgin.
Accordingly, when inspired writers on this matter speak of Him as eating and being born, understand [250] that the body, as body, was born, and sustained with food corresponding to its nature, while God, the Word Himself, Who was united with the body, while ordering all things, also by the works He did in the body shewed Himself to be not man, but God the Word. But these things are said of Him, because the actual body which ate, was born, and suffered, belonged to none other but to the Lord: and because, having become man, it was proper for these things to be predicated of Him as man, to shew Him to have a body in truth, and not in seeming. 2. But just as from these things He was known to be bodily present, so from the works He did in the body He made Himself known to be Son of God. Whence also He cried to the unbelieving Jews; "If [251] I do not the works of My Father, believe Me not. But if I do them, though ye believe not Me, believe My works; that ye may know and understand that the Father is in Me, and I in the Father." 3. For just as, though invisible, He is known through the works of creation; so, having become man, and being in the body unseen, it may be known from His works that He Who can do these is not man, but the Power and Word of God. 4. For His charging evil spirits, and their being driven forth, this deed is not of man, but of God. Or who that saw Him healing the diseases to which the human race is subject, can still think Him man and not God? For He cleansed lepers, made lame men to walk, opened the hearing of deaf men, made blind men to see again, and in a word drove away from men all diseases and infirmities: from which acts it was possible even for the most ordinary observer to see His Godhead. For who that saw Him give back [252] what was deficient to men born lacking, and open the eyes of the man blind from his birth, would have failed to perceive that the nature of men was subject to Him, and that He was its Artificer and Maker? For He that gave back that which the man from his birth had not, must be, it is surely evident, the Lord also of men's natural birth. 5. Therefore, even to begin with, when He was descending to us, He fashioned His body for Himself from a Virgin, thus to afford to all no small proof of His Godhead, in that He Who formed this is also Maker of everything else as well. For who, seeing a body proceeding forth from a Virgin alone without man, can fail to infer that He Who appears in it is Maker and Lord of other bodies also? 6. Or who, seeing the substance of water changed and transformed into wine, fails to perceive that He Who did this is Lord and Creator of the substance of all waters? For to this end He went upon the sea also as its Master, and walked as on dry land, to afford evidence to them that saw it of His lordship over all things. And in feeding so vast a multitude on little, and of His own self yielding abundance where none was, so that from five loaves five thousand had enough, and left so much again over, did He shew Himself to be any other than the very Lord Whose Providence is over all things? __________________________________________________________________
[250] Compare Orat. iii. 31, note 11.
[251] John x. 37, sq.
[252] Cf. 49. 2. __________________________________________________________________
§19. Man, unmoved by nature, was to be taught to know God by that sacred Manhood, Whose deity all nature confessed, especially in His Death.
But all this it seemed well for the Saviour to do; that since men had failed to know His Providence, revealed in the Universe, and had failed to perceive His Godhead shewn in creation, they might at any rate from the works of His body recover their sight, and through Him receive an idea of the knowledge of the Father, inferring, as I said before, from particular cases His Providence over the whole. 2. For who that saw His power over evil spirits, or who that saw the evil spirits confess that He was their Lord, will hold his mind any longer in doubt whether this be the Son and Wisdom and Power of God? 3. For He made even the creation break silence: in that even at His death, marvellous to relate, or rather at His actual trophy over death--the Cross I mean--all creation was confessing that He that was made manifest and suffered in the body was not man merely, but the Son of God and Saviour of all. For the sun hid His face, and the earth quaked and the mountains were rent: all men were awed. Now these things shewed that Christ on the Cross was God, while all creation was His slave, and was witnessing by its fear to its Master's presence. Thus, then, God the Word shewed Himself to men by His works. But our next step must be to recount and speak of the end of His bodily life and course, and of the nature of the death of His body; especially as this is the sum of our faith, and all men without exception are full of it: so that you may know that no whit the less from this also Christ is known to be God and the Son of God. __________________________________________________________________
§20. None, then, could bestow incorruption, but He Who had made, none restore the likeness of God, save His Own Image, none quicken, but the Life, none teach, but the Word. And He, to pay our debt of death, must also die for us, and rise again as our first-fruits from the grave. Mortal therefore His Body must be; corruptible, His Body could not be.
We have, then, now stated in part, as far as it was possible, and as ourselves had been able to understand, the reason of His bodily appearing; that it was in the power of none other to turn the corruptible to incorruption, except the Saviour Himself, that had at the beginning also made all things out of nought and that none other could create anew the likeness of God's image for men, save the Image of the Father; and that none other could render the mortal immortal, save our Lord Jesus Christ, Who is the Very Life [253] ; and that none other could teach men of the Father, and destroy the worship of idols, save the Word, that orders all things and is alone the true Only-begotten Son of the Father. 2. But since it was necessary also that the debt owing from all should be paid again: for, as I have already said [254] , it was owing that all should die, for which especial cause, indeed, He came among us: to this intent, after the proofs of His Godhead from His works, He next offered up His sacrifice also on behalf of all, yielding His Temple to death in the stead of all, in order firstly to make men quit and free of their old trespass, and further to shew Himself more powerful even than death, displaying His own body incorruptible, as first-fruits of the resurrection of all. 3. And do not be surprised if we frequently [255] repeat the same words on the same subject. For since we are speaking of the counsel of God, therefore we expound the same sense in more than one form, lest we should seem to be leaving anything out, and incur the charge of inadequate treatment: for it is better to submit to the blame of repetition than to leave out anything that ought to be set down. 4. The body, then, as sharing the same nature with all, for it was a human body, though by an unparalleled miracle it was formed of a virgin only, yet being mortal, was to die also, conformably to its peers. But by virtue of the union of the Word with it, it was no longer subject to corruption according to its own nature, but by reason of the Word that was come to dwell [256] in it it was placed out of the reach of corruption. 5. And so it was that two marvels came to pass at once, that the death of all was accomplished in the Lord's body, and that death and corruption were wholly done away by reason of the Word that was united with it. For there was need of death, and death must needs be suffered on behalf of all, that the debt owing from all might be paid. 6. Whence, as I said before, the Word, since it was not possible for Him to die, as He was immortal, took to Himself a body such as could die, that He might offer it as His own in the stead of all, and as suffering, through His union [257] with it, on behalf of all, "Bring [258] to nought Him that had the power of death, that is the devil; and might deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage." __________________________________________________________________
[253] autozoe, see c. Gent. 40, 46, and Orat. iv. 2, note 4.
[254] See especially §7.
[255] e.g. viii. 4; x. 5, &c. It is quite a peculiarity of Ath. to repeat, and to apologise for doing so,' (Newman in Orat. ii. 80, note 1).
[256] epibasis, compare epibainein, 43. 4, &c.
[257] epibasis, compare epibainein, 43. 4, &c.
[258] Cf. 10. 4, above. __________________________________________________________________
§21. Death brought to nought by the death of Christ. Why then did not Christ die privately, or in a more honourable way? He was not subject to natural death, but had to die at the hands of others. Why then did He die? Nay but for that purpose He came, and but for that, He could not have risen.
Why, now that the common Saviour of all has died on our behalf, we, the faithful in Christ, no longer die the death as before, agreeably to the warning of the law; for this condemnation has ceased; but, corruption ceasing and being put away by the grace of the Resurrection, henceforth we are only dissolved, agreeably to our bodies' mortal nature, at the time God has fixed for each, that we may be able to gain a better resurrection. 2. For like the seeds which are cast into the earth, we do not perish by dissolution, but sown in the earth, shall rise again, death having been brought to nought by the grace of the Saviour. Hence it is that blessed Paul, who was made a surety of the Resurrection to all, says: "This corruptible [259] must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality; but when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death where is thy sting? O grave where is thy victory?" 3. Why, then, one might say, if it were necessary for Him to yield up His body to death in the stead of all, did He not lay it aside as man privately, instead of going as far as even to be crucified? For it were more fitting for Him to have laid His body aside honourably, than ignominiously to endure a death like this. 4. Now, see to it, I reply, whether such an objection be not merely human, whereas what the Saviour did is truly divine and for many reasons worthy of His Godhead. Firstly, because the death which befalls men comes to them agreeably to the weakness of their nature; for, unable to continue in one stay, they are dissolved with time. Hence, too, diseases befall them, and they fall sick and die. But the Lord is not weak, but is the Power of God and Word of God and Very Life. 5. If, then, He had laid aside His body somewhere in private, and upon a bed, after the manner of men, it would have been thought that He also did this agreeably to the weakness of His nature, and because there was nothing in him more than in other men. But since He was, firstly, the Life and the Word of God, and it was necessary, secondly, for the death on behalf of all to be accomplished, for this cause, on the one hand, because He was life and power, the body gained strength in Him; 6. while on the other, as death must needs come to pass, He did not Himself take, but received at others' hands; the occasion of perfecting His sacrifice. Since it was not fit, either, that the Lord should fall sick, who healed the diseases of others; nor again was it right for that body to lose its strength, in which He gives strength to the weaknesses of others also. 7. Why, then, did He not prevent death, as He did sickness? Because it was for this that He had the body, and it was unfitting to prevent it, lest the Resurrection also should be hindered, while yet it was equally unfitting for sickness to precede His death, lest it should be thought weakness on the part of Him that was in the body. Did He not then hunger? Yes; He hungered, agreeably to the properties of His body. But He did not perish of hunger, because of the Lord that wore it. Hence, even if He died to ransom all, yet He saw not corruption. For [His body] rose again in perfect soundness, since the body belonged to none other, but to the very Life. __________________________________________________________________
[259] 1 Cor. xv. 53, sqq. __________________________________________________________________
§22. But why did He not withdraw His body from the Jews, and so guard its immortality? (1) It became Him not to inflict death on Himself, and yet not to shun it. (2) He came to receive death as the due of others, therefore it should come to Him from without. (3) His death must be certain, to guarantee the truth of His Resurrection. Also, He could not die from infirmity, lest He should be mocked in His healing of others.
But it were better, one might say, to have hidden from the designs of the Jews, that He might guard His body altogether from death. Now let such an one be told that this too was unbefitting the Lord. For as it was not fitting for the Word of God, being the Life, to inflict death Himself on His own body, so neither was it suitable to fly from death offered by others, but rather to follow it up unto destruction, for which reason He naturally neither laid aside His body of His own accord, nor, again, fled from the Jews when they took counsel against Him. 2. But this did not shew weakness on the Word's part, but, on the contrary, shewed Him to be Saviour and Life; in that He both awaited death to destroy it, and hasted to accomplish the death offered Him for the salvation of all. 3. And besides, the Saviour came to accomplish not His own death, but the death of men; whence He did not lay aside His body by a death of His own [260] --for He was Life and had none--but received that death which came from men, in order perfectly to do away with this when it met Him in His own body. 4. Again, from the following also one might see the reasonableness of the Lord's body meeting this end. The Lord was especially concerned for the resurrection of the body which He was set to accomplish. For what He was to do was to manifest it as a monument of victory over death, and to assure all of His having effected the blotting out of corruption, and of the incorruption of their bodies from thenceforward; as a gage of which and a proof of the resurrection in store for all, He has preserved His own body incorrupt. 5. If, then, once more, His body had fallen sick, and the word had been sundered from it in the sight of all, it would have been unbecoming that He who healed the diseases of others should suffer His own instrument to waste in sickness. For how could His driving out the diseases of others have been believed [261] in if His own temple fell sick in Him [262] ? For either He had been mocked as unable to drive away diseases, or if He could, but did not, He would be thought insensible toward others also. __________________________________________________________________
[260] Cf. Joh. x. 17, 18.
[261] Cf. Matt. xxvii. 42.
[262] i.e. when sustained by its union with Him. __________________________________________________________________
§23. Necessity of a public death for the doctrine of the Resurrection.
But even if, without any disease and without any pain, He had hidden His body away privily and by Himself "in [263] a corner," or in a desert place, or in a house, or anywhere, and afterwards suddenly appeared and said that He had been raised from the dead, He would have seemed on all hands to be telling idle tales [264] , and what He said about the Resurrection would have been all the more discredited, as there was no one at all to witness to His death. Now, death must precede resurrection, as it would be no resurrection did not death precede; so that if the death of His body had taken place anywhere in secret, the death not being apparent nor taking place before witnesses, His Resurrection too had been hidden and without evidence. 2. Or why, while when He had risen He proclaimed the Resurrection, should He cause His death to take place in secret? or why, while He drove out evil spirits in the presence of all, and made the man blind from his birth recover his sight, and changed the water into wine, that by these means He might be believed to be the Word of God, should He not manifest His mortal nature as incorruptible in the presence of all, that He might be believed Himself to be the Life? 3. Or how were His disciples to have boldness in speaking of the Resurrection, were they not able to say that He first died? Or how could they be believed, saying that death had first taken place and then the Resurrection, had they not had as witnesses of His death the men before whom they spoke with boldness? For if, even as it was, when His death and Resurrection had taken place in the sight of all, the Pharisees of that day would not believe, but compelled even those who had seen the Resurrection to deny it, why, surely, if these things had happened in secret, how many pretexts for disbelief would they have devised? 4. Or how could the end of death, and the victory over it be proved, unless challenging it before the eyes of all He had shewn it to be dead, annulled for the future by the incorruption of His body? __________________________________________________________________
[263] Acts xxvi. 26.
[264] Luke xxiv. 11. __________________________________________________________________
§24. Further objections anticipated. He did not choose His manner of death; for He was to prove Conqueror of death in all or any of its forms: (simile of a good wrestler). The death chosen to disgrace Him proved the Trophy against death: moreover it preserved His body undivided.
But what others also might have said, we must anticipate in reply. For perhaps a man might say even as follows: If it was necessary for His death to take place before all, and with witnesses, that the story of His Resurrection also might be believed, it would have been better at any rate for Him to have devised for Himself a glorious death, if only to escape the ignominy of the Cross. 2. But had He done even this, He would give ground for suspicion against Himself, that He was not powerful against every death, but only against the death devised for [265] Him; and so again there would have been a pretext for disbelief about the Resurrection all the same. So death came to His body, not from Himself, but from hostile counsels, in order that whatever death they offered to the Saviour, this He might utterly do away. 3. And just as a noble wrestler, great in skill and courage, does not pick out his antagonists for himself, lest he should raise a suspicion of his being afraid of some of them, but puts it in the choice of the onlookers, and especially so if they happen to be his enemies, so that against whomsoever they match him, him he may throw, and be believed superior to them all; so also the Life of all, our Lord and Saviour, even Christ, did not devise a death for His own body, so as not to appear to be fearing some other death; but He accepted on the Cross, and endured, a death inflicted by others, and above all by His enemies, which they thought dreadful and ignominious and not to be faced; so that this also being destroyed, both He Himself might be believed to be the Life, and the power of death be brought utterly to nought. 4. So something surprising and startling has happened; for the death, which they thought to inflict as a disgrace, was actually a monument of victory against death itself. Whence neither did He suffer the death of John, his head being severed, nor, as Esaias, was He sawn in sunder; in order that even in death He might still keep His body undivided and in perfect soundness, and no pretext be afforded to those that would divide the Church. __________________________________________________________________
[265] i.e. suggested as endoxon (supra, 1); a reading par' eautou has been suggested: (devised) "by Himself." __________________________________________________________________
§25. Why the Cross, of all deaths? (1) He had to bear the curse for us. (2) On it He held out His hands to unite all, Jews and Gentiles, in Himself. (3) He defeated the "Prince of the powers of the air" in His own region, clearing the way to heaven and opening for us the everlasting doors.
And thus much in reply to those without who pile up arguments for themselves. But if any of our own people also inquire, not from love of debate, but from love of learning, why He suffered death in none other way save on the Cross, let him also be told that no other way than this was good for us, and that it was well that the Lord suffered this for our sakes. 2. For if He came Himself to bear the curse laid upon us, how else could He have "become [266] a curse," unless He received the death set for a curse? and that is the Cross. For this is exactly what is written: "Cursed [267] is he that hangeth on a tree." 3. Again, if the Lord's death is the ransom of all, and by His death "the middle [268] wall of partition" is broken down, and the calling of the nations is brought about, how would He have called us to Him, had He not been crucified? For it is only on the cross that a man dies with his hands spread out. Whence it was fitting for the Lord to bear this also and to spread out His hands, that with the one He might draw the ancient people, and with the other those from the Gentiles, and unite both in Himself. 4. For this is what He Himself has said, signifying by what manner of death He was to ransom all: "I, when [269] I am lifted up," He saith, "shall draw all men unto Me." 5. And once more, if the devil, the enemy of our race, having fallen from heaven, wanders about our lower atmosphere, and there bearing rule over his fellow-spirits, as his peers in disobedience, not only works illusions by their means in them that are deceived, but tries to hinder them that are going up (and about this [270] the Apostle says: "According to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience"); while the Lord came to cast down the devil, and clear the air and prepare the way for us up into heaven, as said the Apostle: "Through [271] the veil, that is to say, His flesh"--and this must needs be by death--well, by what other kind of death could this have come to pass, than by one which took place in the air, I mean the cross? for only he that is perfected on the cross dies in the air. Whence it was quite fitting that the Lord suffered this death. 6. For thus being lifted up He cleared the air [272] of the malignity both of the devil and of demons of all kinds, as He says: "I beheld [273] Satan as lightning fall from heaven;" and made a new opening of the way up into heaven as He says once more: "Lift [274] up your gates, O ye princes, and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors." For it was not the Word Himself that needed an opening of the gates, being Lord of all; nor were any of His works closed to their Maker; but we it was that needed it whom He carried up by His own body. For as He offered it to death on behalf of all, so by it He once more made ready the way up into the heavens. __________________________________________________________________
[266] Gal. iii. 13.
[267] Deut. xxi. 23.
[268] Eph. ii. 14.
[269] John xii. 32.
[270] Eph. ii. 2, and see the curious visions of Antony, Vit. Ant., 65, 66.
[271] Heb. x. 20.
[272] Cf. Lightfoot on Coloss. ii. 15, also the fragment of Letter 22, and Letter 60. 7.
[273] Luc. x. 18.
[274] Ps. xxiv. 7, [LXX.] __________________________________________________________________
§26. Reasons for His rising on the Third Day. (1) Not sooner for else His real death would be denied, nor (2) later; to (a) guard the identity of His body, (b) not to keep His disciples too long in suspense, nor (c) to wait till the witnesses of His death were dispersed, or its memory faded.
The death on the Cross, then, for us has proved seemly and fitting, and its cause has been shewn to be reasonable in every respect; and it may justly be argued that in no other way than by the Cross was it right for the salvation of all to take place. For not even thus--not even on the Cross--did He leave Himself concealed; but far otherwise, while He made creation witness to the presence of its Maker, He suffered not the temple of His body to remain long, but having merely shewn it to be dead, by the contact of death with it, He straightway raised it up on the third day, bearing away, as the mark of victory and the triumph over death, the incorruptibility and impassibility which resulted to His body. 2. For He could, even immediately on death, have raised His body and shewn it alive; but this also the Saviour, in wise foresight, did not do. For one might have said that He had not died at all, or that death had not come into perfect contact with Him, if He had manifested the Resurrection at once. 3. Perhaps, again, had the interval of His dying and rising again been one of two days [275] only, the glory of His incorruption would have been obscure. So in order that the body might be proved to be dead, the Word tarried yet one intermediate day, and on the third shewed it incorruptible to all. 4. So then, that the death on the Cross might be proved, He raised His body on the third day. 5. But lest, by raising it up when it had remained a long time and been completely corrupted, He should be disbelieved, as though He had exchanged it for some other body--for a man might also from lapse of time distrust what he saw, and forget what had taken place--for this cause He waited not more than three days; nor did He keep long in suspense those whom He had told about the Resurrection: 6. but while the word was still echoing in their ears and their eyes were still expectant and their mind in suspense, and while those who had slain Him were still living on earth, and were on the spot and could witness to the death of the Lord's body, the Son of God Himself, after an interval of three days, shewed His body, once dead, immortal and incorruptible; and it was made manifest to all that it was not from any natural weakness of the Word that dwelt in it that the body had died, but in order that in it death might be done away by the power of the Saviour. __________________________________________________________________
[275] Literally at an even' [distance], as contrasted with (a) the same day (2, above), (b) the third day (en tritai& 251; diastemati (6, below). en iso must therefore be equivalent in sense to deuteraiou. Possibly the literal sense is [had the Resurrection taken place] at an equal interval between the Death and the [actual day of] the Resurrection.' __________________________________________________________________
§27. The change wrought by the Cross in the relation of Death to Man.
For that death is destroyed, and that the Cross is become the victory over it, and that it has no more power but is verily dead, this is no small proof, or rather an evident warrant, that it is despised by all Christ's disciples, and that they all take the aggressive against it and no longer fear it; but by the sign of the Cross and by faith in Christ tread it down as dead. 2. For of old, before the divine sojourn of the Saviour took place, even to the saints death was terrible [276] , and all wept for the dead as though they perished. But now that the Saviour has raised His body, death is no longer terrible; for all who believe in Christ tread him under as nought, and choose rather to die than to deny their faith in Christ. For they verily know that when they die they are not destroyed, but actually [begin to] live, and become incorruptible through the Resurrection. 3. And that devil that once maliciously exulted in death, now that its [277] pains were loosed, remained the only one truly dead. And a proof of this is, that before men believe Christ, they see in death an object of terror, and play the coward before him. But when they are gone over to Christ's faith and teaching, their contempt for death is so great that they even eagerly rush upon it, and become witnesses for the Resurrection the Saviour has accomplished against it. For while still tender in years they make haste to die, and not men only, but women also, exercise themselves by bodily discipline against it. So weak has he become, that even women who were formerly deceived by him, now mock at him as dead and paralyzed. 4. For as when a tyrant has been defeated by a real king, and bound hand and foot, then all that pass by laugh him to scorn, buffeting and reviling him, no longer fearing his fury and barbarity, because of the king who has conquered him; so also, death having been conquered and exposed by the Saviour on the Cross, and bound hand and foot, all they who are in Christ, as they pass by, trample on him, and witnessing to Christ scoff at death, jesting at him, and saying what has been written against him of old: "O death [278] , where is thy victory? O grave, where is thy sting." __________________________________________________________________
[276] Cf. Ps. lv. 4, lxxxix. 47; Job. xviii. 14.
[277] Cf. Acts ii. 24
[278] Cf. above, 21. 2. __________________________________________________________________
§28. This exceptional fact must be tested by experience. Let those who doubt it become Christians.
Is this, then, a slight proof of the weakness of death? or is it a slight demonstration of the victory won over him by the Saviour, when the youths and young maidens that are in Christ despise this life and practise to die? 2. For man is by nature afraid of death and of the dissolution of the body; but there is this most startling fact, that he who has put on the faith of the Cross despises even what is naturally fearful, and for Christ's sake is not afraid of death. 3. And just as, whereas fire has the natural property of burning, if some one said there was a substance which did not fear its burning, but on the contrary proved it weak--as the asbestos among the Indians is said to do--then one who did not believe the story, if he wished to put it to the test, is at any rate, after putting on the fireproof material and touching the fire, thereupon assured of the weakness attributed [279] to the fire: 4. or if any one wished to see the tyrant bound, at any rate by going into the country and domain of his conqueror he may see the man, a terror to others, reduced to weakness; so if a man is incredulous even still after so many proofs and after so many who have become martyrs in Christ, and after the scorn shewn for death every day by those who are illustrious in Christ, still, if his mind be even yet doubtful as to whether death has been brought to nought and had an end, he does well to wonder at so great a thing, only let him not prove obstinate in incredulity, nor case-hardened in the face of what is so plain. 5. But just as he who has got the asbestos knows that fire has no burning power over it, and as he who would see the tyrant bound goes over to the empire of his conqueror, so too let him who is incredulous about the victory over death receive the faith of Christ, and pass over to His teaching, and he shall see the weakness of death, and the triumph over it. For many who were formerly incredulous and scoffers have afterwards believed and so despised death as even to become martyrs for Christ Himself. __________________________________________________________________
[279] kata tou puros kata appears to have the predicative force so common in Aristotle. The Bened. translation the weakness of fire against the asbestos' is based on a needless conjecture. __________________________________________________________________
§29. Here then are wonderful effects, and a sufficient cause, the Cross, to account for them, as sunrise accounts for daylight.
Now if by the sign of the Cross, and by faith in Christ, death is trampled down, it must be evident before the tribunal of truth that it is none other than Christ Himself that has displayed trophies and triumphs over death, and made him lose all his strength. 2. And if, while previously death was strong, and for that reason terrible, now after the sojourn of the Saviour and the death and Resurrection of His body it is despised, it must be evident that death has been brought to nought and conquered by the very Christ that ascended the Cross. 3. For as, if after night-time the sun rises, and the whole region of earth is illumined by him, it is at any rate not open to doubt that it is the sun who has revealed his light everywhere, that has also driven away the dark and given light to all things; so, now that death has come into contempt, and been trodden under foot, from the time when the Saviour's saving manifestation in the flesh and His death on the Cross took place, it must be quite plain that it is the very Saviour that also appeared in the body, Who has brought death to nought, and Who displays the signs of victory over him day by day in His own disciples. 4. For when one sees men, weak by nature, leaping forward to death, and not fearing its corruption nor frightened of the descent into Hades, but with eager soul challenging it; and not flinching from torture, but on the contrary, for Christ's sake electing to rush upon death in preference to life upon earth, or even if one be an eye-witness of men and females and young children rushing and leaping upon death for the sake of Christ's religion; who is so silly, or who is so incredulous, or who so maimed in his mind, as not to see and infer that Christ, to Whom the people witness, Himself supplies and gives to each the victory over death, depriving him of all his power in each one of them that hold His faith and bear the sign of the Cross. 5. For he that sees the serpent trodden under foot, especially knowing his former fierceness no longer doubts that he is dead and has quite lost his strength, unless he is perverted in mind and has not even his bodily senses sound. For who that sees a lion, either, made sport of by children, fails to see that he is either dead or has lost all his power? 6. Just as, then, it is possible to see with the eyes the truth of all this, so, now that death is made sport of and despised by believers in Christ let none any longer doubt, nor any prove incredulous, of death having been brought to nought by Christ, and the corruption of death destroyed and stayed. __________________________________________________________________
§30. The reality of the resurrection proved by facts: (1) the victory over death described above: (2) the Wonders of Grace are the work of One Living, of One who is God: (3) if the gods be (as alleged) real and living, a fortiori He Who shatters their power is alive.
What we have so far said, then, is no small proof that death has been brought to naught, and that the Cross of the Lord is a sign of victory over him. But of the Resurrection of the body to immortality thereupon accomplished by Christ, the common Saviour and true Life of all, the demonstration by facts is clearer than arguments to those whose mental vision is sound. 2. For if, as our argument shewed, death has been brought to nought, and because of Christ all tread him under foot, much more did He Himself first tread him down with His own body, and bring him to nought. But supposing death slain by Him, what could have happened save the rising again of His body, and its being displayed as a monument of victory against death? or how could death have been shewn to be brought to nought unless the Lord's body had risen? But if this demonstration of the Resurrection seem to any one insufficient, let him be assured of what is said even from what takes place before his eyes. 3. For whereas on a man's decease he can put forth no power, but his influence lasts to the grave and thenceforth ceases; and actions, and power over men, belong to the living only; let him who will, see and be judge, confessing the truth from what appears to sight. 4. For now that the Saviour works so great things among men, and day by day is invisibly persuading so great a multitude from every side, both from them that dwell in Greece and in foreign lands, to come over to His faith, and all to obey His teaching, will any one still hold his mind in doubt whether a Resurrection has been accomplished by the Saviour, and whether Christ is alive, or rather is Himself the Life? 5. Or is it like a dead man to be pricking the consciences of men, so that they deny their hereditary laws and bow before the teaching of Christ? Or how, if he is no longer active (for this is proper to one dead), does he stay from their activity those who are active and alive, so that the adulterer no longer commits adultery, and the murderer murders no more, nor is the inflicter of wrong any longer grasping, and the profane is henceforth religious? Or how, if He be not risen but is dead, does He drive away, and pursue, and cast down those false gods said by the unbelievers to be alive, and the demons they worship? 6. For where Christ is named, and His faith, there all idolatry is deposed and all imposture of evil spirits is exposed, and any spirit is unable to endure even the name, nay even on barely hearing it flies and disappears. But this work is not that of one dead, but of one that lives--and especially of God. 7. In particular, it would be ridiculous to say that while the spirits cast out by Him and the idols brought to nought are alive, He who chases them away, and by His power prevents their even appearing, yea, and is being confessed by them all to be Son of God, is dead. __________________________________________________________________
§31. If Power is the sign of life, what do we learn from the impotence of idols, for good or evil, and the constraining power of Christ and of the Sign of the Cross? Death and the demons are by this proved to have lost their sovereignty. Coincidence of the above argument from facts with that from the Personality of Christ.
But they who disbelieve in the Resurrection afford a strong proof against themselves, if instead of all the spirits and the gods worshipped by them casting out Christ, Who, they say, is dead, Christ on the contrary proves them all to be dead. 2. For if it be true that one dead can exert no power, while the Saviour does daily so many works, drawing men to religion, persuading to virtue, teaching of immortality, leading on to a desire for heavenly things, revealing the knowledge of the Father, inspiring strength to meet death, shewing Himself to each one, and displacing the godlessness of idolatry, and the gods and spirits of the unbelievers can do none of these things, but rather shew themselves dead at the presence of Christ, their pomp being reduced to impotence and vanity; whereas by the sign of the Cross all magic is stopped, and all witchcraft brought to nought, and all the idols are being deserted and left, and every unruly pleasure is checked, and every one is looking up from earth to heaven: Whom is one to pronounce dead? Christ, that is doing so many works? But to work is not proper to one dead. Or him that exerts no power at all, but lies as it were without life? which is essentially proper to the idols and spirits, dead as they are. 3. For the Son of God is [280] "living and active," and works day by day, and brings about the salvation of all. But death is daily proved to have lost all his power, and idols and spirits are proved to be dead rather than Christ, so that henceforth no man can any longer doubt of the Resurrection of His body. 4. But he who is incredulous of the Resurrection of the Lord's body would seem to be ignorant of the power of the Word and Wisdom of God. For if He took a body to Himself at all, and--in reasonable consistency, as our argument shewed-- appropriated it as His own, what was the Lord to do with it? or what should be the end of the body when the Word had once descended upon it? For it could not but die, inasmuch as it was mortal, and to be offered unto death on behalf of all: for which purpose it was that the Saviour fashioned it for Himself. But it was impossible for it to remain dead, because it had been made the temple of life. Whence, while it died as mortal, it came to life again by reason of the Life in it; and of its Resurrection the works are a sign. __________________________________________________________________
[280] Heb. iv. 12. __________________________________________________________________
§32. But who is to see Him risen, so as to believe? Nay, God is ever invisible and known by His works only: and here the works cry out in proof. If you do not believe, look at those who do, and perceive the Godhead of Christ. The demons see this, though men be blind. Summary of the argument so far.
But if, because He is not seen, His having risen at all is disbelieved, it is high time for those who refuse belief to deny the very course of Nature. For it is God's peculiar property at once to be invisible and yet to be known from His works, as has been already stated above. 2. If, then, the works are not there, they do well to disbelieve what does not appear. But if the works cry aloud and shew it clearly, why do they choose to deny the life so manifestly due to the Resurrection? For even if they be maimed in their intelligence, yet even with the external senses men may see the unimpeachable power and Godhead of Christ. 3. For even a blind man, if he see not the sun, yet if he but take hold of the warmth the sun gives out, knows that there is a sun above the earth. Thus let our opponents also, even if they believe not as yet, being still blind to the truth, yet at least knowing His power by others who believe, not deny the Godhead of Christ and the Resurrection accomplished by Him. 4. For it is plain that if Christ be dead, He could not be expelling demons and spoiling idols; for a dead man the spirits would not have obeyed. But if they be manifestly expelled by the naming of His name, it must be evident that He is not dead; especially as spirits, seeing even what is unseen by men, could tell if Christ were dead and refuse Him any obedience at all. 5. But as it is, what irreligious men believe not, the spirits see--that He is God,--and hence they fly and fall at His feet, saying just what they uttered when He was in the body: "We [281] know Thee Who Thou art, the Holy One of God;" and, "Ah, what have we to do with Thee, Thou Son of God? I pray Thee, torment me not." 6. As then demons confess Him, and His works bear Him witness day by day, it must be evident, and let none brazen it out against the truth, both that the Saviour raised His own body, and that He is the true Son of God, being from Him, as from His Father, His own Word, and Wisdom, and Power, Who in ages later took a body for the salvation of all, and taught the world concerning the Father, and brought death to nought, and bestowed incorruption upon all by the promise of the Resurrection, having raised His own body as a first-fruits of this, and having displayed it by the sign of the Cross as a monument of victory over death and its corruption. __________________________________________________________________
[281] Cf. Luc. iv. 34, and Marc. v. 7. __________________________________________________________________
§33. Unbelief of Jews and scoffing of Greeks. The former confounded by their own Scriptures. Prophecies of His coming as God and as Man.
These things being so, and the Resurrection of His body and the victory gained over death by the Saviour being clearly proved, come now let us put to rebuke both the disbelief of the Jews and the scoffing of the Gentiles. 2. For these, perhaps, are the points where Jews express incredulity, while Gentiles laugh, finding fault with the unseemliness of the Cross, and of the Word of God becoming man. But our argument shall not delay to grapple with both especially as the proofs at our command against them are clear as day. 3. For Jews in their incredulity may be refuted from the Scriptures, which even themselves read; for this text and that, and, in a word, the whole inspired Scripture, cries aloud concerning these things, as even its express words abundantly shew. For prophets proclaimed beforehand concerning the wonder of the Virgin and the birth from her, saying: "Lo, the [282] Virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a Son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which is, being interpreted, God with us." 4. But Moses, the truly great, and whom they believe to speak truth, with reference to the Saviour's becoming man, having estimated what was said as important, and assured of its truth, set it down in these words: "There [283] shall rise a star out of Jacob, and a man out of Israel, and he shall break in pieces the captains of Moab." And again: "How lovely are thy habitations O Jacob, thy tabernacles O Israel, as shadowing gardens, and as parks by the rivers, and as tabernacles which the Lord hath fixed, as cedars by the waters. A man shall come forth out of his seed, and shall be Lord over many peoples." And again, Esaias: "Before [284] the Child know how to call father or mother, he shall take the power of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria before the king of Assyria." 5. That a man, then, shall appear is foretold in those words. But that He that is to come is Lord of all, they predict once more as follows: "Behold [285] the Lord sitteth upon a light cloud, and shall come into Egypt, and the graven images of Egypt shall be shaken." For from thence also it is that the Father calls Him back, saying: "I called [286] My Son out of Egypt." __________________________________________________________________
[282] Matt. i. 23; Isa. vii. 14.
[283] Num. xxiv. 5-17.
[284] Isa. viii. 4.
[285] Isa. xix. 1.
[286] Hos. xi. 1. __________________________________________________________________
§34. Prophecies of His passion and death in all its circumstances.
Nor is even His death passed over in silence: on the contrary, it is referred to in the divine Scriptures, even exceeding clearly. For to the end that none should err for want of instruction in the actual events, they feared not to mention even the cause of His death,--that He suffers it not for His own sake, but for the immortality and salvation of all, and the counsels of the Jews against Him and the indignities offered Him at their hands. 2. They say then: "A man [287] in stripes, and knowing how to bear weakness, for his face is turned away: he was dishonoured and held in no account. He beareth our sins, and is in pain on our account; and we reckoned him to be in labour, and in stripes, and in ill-usage; but he was wounded for our sins, and made weak for our wickedness. The chastisement of our peace was upon him, and by his stripes we were healed." O marvel at the loving-kindness of the Word, that for our sakes He is dishonoured, that we may be brought to honour. "For all we," it says, "like sheep were gone astray; man had erred in his way; and the Lord delivered him for our sins; and he openeth not his mouth, because he hath been evilly entreated. As a sheep was he brought to the slaughter, and as a lamb dumb before his shearer, so openeth he not his mouth: in his abasement his judgment was taken away [288] ." 3. Then lest any should from His suffering conceive Him to be a common man, Holy Writ anticipates the surmises of man, and declares the power (which worked) for Him [289] , and the difference of His nature compared with ourselves, saying: "But who shall declare his generation? For his life is taken away [290] from the earth. From the wickedness of the people was he brought to death. And I will give the wicked instead of his burial, and the rich instead of his death; for he did no wickedness, neither was guile found in his mouth. And the Lord will cleanse him from his stripes." __________________________________________________________________
[287] Isa. liii. 3, sqq.
[288] Or, "exalted."
[289] ten huper autou dunamin. The Ben. version simplifies this difficult expression by ignoring the huper. Mr. E. N. Bennett has suggested to me that the true reading may be hupera& 203;lon for huper autou (aulos supra 8. 1, huperaulos in Philo). I would add the suggestion that autou stood after huperaulon, and that the similarity of the five letters in ms. caused the second word to be dropped out. His exceeding immaterial power' would be the resulting sense. (See Class. Review, 1890, No. iv. p. 182.)
[290] Or, "exalted." __________________________________________________________________
§35. Prophecies of the Cross. How these prophecies are satisfied in Christ alone.
But, perhaps, having heard the prophecy of His death, you ask to learn also what is set forth concerning the Cross. For not even this is passed over: it is displayed by the holy men with great plainness. 2. For first Moses predicts it, and that with a loud voice, when he says: "Ye shall see [291] your Life hanging before your eyes, and shall not believe." 3. And next, the prophets after him witness of this, saying: "But [292] I as an innocent lamb brought to be slain, knew it not; they counselled an evil counsel against me, saying, Hither and let us cast a tree upon his [293] bread, and efface him from the land of the living." 4. And again: "They pierced [294] my hands and my feet, they numbered all my bones, they parted my garments among them, and for my vesture they cast lots." 5. Now a death raised aloft and that takes place on a tree, could be none other than the Cross: and again, in no other death are the hands and feet pierced, save on the Cross only. 6. But since by the sojourn of the Saviour among men all nations also on every side began to know God; they did not leave this point, either, without a reference: but mention is made of this matter as well in the Holy Scriptures. For "there [295] shall be," he saith, "the root of Jesse, and he that riseth to rule the nations, on him shall the nations hope." This then is a little in proof of what has happened. 7. But all Scripture teems with refutations of the disbelief of the Jews. For which of the righteous men and holy prophets, and patriarchs, recorded in the divine Scriptures, ever had his corporal birth of a virgin only? Or what woman has sufficed without man for the conception of human kind? Was not Abel born of Adam, Enoch of Jared, Noe of Lamech, and Abraham of Tharra, Isaac of Abraham, Jacob of Isaac? Was not Judas born of Jacob, and Moses and Aaron of Ameram? Was not Samuel born of Elkana, was not David of Jesse, was not Solomon of David, was not Ezechias of Achaz, was not Josias of Amos, was not Esaias of Amos, was not Jeremy of Chelchias, was not Ezechiel of Buzi? Had not each a father as author of his existence? Who then is he that is born of a virgin only? For the prophet made exceeding much of this sign. 8. Or whose birth did a star in the skies forerun, to announce to the world him that was born? For when Moses was born, he was hid by his parents: David was not heard of, even by those of his neighbourhood, inasmuch as even the great Samuel knew him not, but asked, had Jesse yet another son? Abraham again became known to his neighbours as [296] a great man only subsequently to his birth. But of Christ's birth the witness was not man, but a star in that heaven whence He was descending. __________________________________________________________________
[291] Deut. xxviii. 66, see Orat ii. 16, note 1.
[292] Jer. xi. 19.
[293] Properly "let us destroy the tree with its bread" (i.e. fruit). The LXX, translate b^elahmô upon his bread,' which is possible in itself; but they either mistook the verb, or followed some wrong reading. Their rendering is followed by all the Latin versions. For a comment on the latter see Tertull. adv. Marc. iii. 19, iv. 40.
[294] Ps. xxii. 16, sqq.
[295] Isa. xi. 10.
[296] Or only after he had grown great,' i.e. to man's estate. __________________________________________________________________
§36. Prophecies of Christ's sovereignty, flight into Egypt, &c.
But what king that ever was, before he had strength to call father or mother, reigned and gained triumphs over his enemies [297] ? Did not David come to the throne at thirty years of age, and Solomon, when he had grown to be a young man? Did not Joas enter on the kingdom when seven years old, and Josias, a still later king, receive the government about the seventh year of his age? And yet they at that age had strength to call father or mother. 2. Who, then, is there that was reigning and spoiling his enemies almost before his birth? Or what king of this sort has ever been in Israel and in Juda--let the Jews, who have searched out the matter, tell us--in whom all the nations have placed their hopes and had peace, instead of being at enmity with them on every side? 3. For as long as Jerusalem stood there was war without respite betwixt them, and they all fought with Israel; the Assyrians oppressed them, the Egyptians persecuted them, the Babylonians fell upon them; and, strange to say, they had even the Syrians their neighbours at war against them. Or did not David war against them of Moab, and smite the Syrians, Josias guard against his neighbours, and Ezechias quail at the boasting of Senacherim, and Amalek make war against Moses, and the Amorites oppose him, and the inhabitants of Jericho array themselves against Jesus son of Naue? And, in a word, treaties of friendship had no place between the nations and Israel. Who, then, it is on whom the nations are to set their hope, it is worth while to see. For there must be such an one, as it is impossible for the prophet to have spoken falsely. 4. But which of the holy prophets or of the early patriarchs has died on the Cross for the salvation of all? Or who was wounded and destroyed for the healing of all? Or which of the righteous men, or kings, went down to Egypt, so that at his coming the idols of Egypt fell [298] ? For Abraham went thither, but idolatry prevailed universally all the same. Moses was born there, and the deluded worship of the people was there none the less. __________________________________________________________________
[297] Isa. viii. 4, where note LXX.
[298] Cf. Letter 61. 4. __________________________________________________________________
§37. Psalm xxii. 16, &c. Majesty of His birth and death. Confusion of oracles and demons in Egypt.
Or who among those recorded in Scripture was pierced in the hands and feet, or hung at all upon a tree, and was sacrificed on a cross for the salvation of all? For Abraham died, ending his life on a bed; Isaac and Jacob also died with their feet raised on a bed; Moses and Aaron died on the mountain; David in his house, without being the object of any conspiracy at the hands of the people; true, he was pursued by Saul, but he was preserved unhurt. Esaias was sawn asunder, but not hung on a tree. Jeremy was shamefully treated, but did not die under condemnation; Ezechie suffered, not however for the people, but to indicate what was to come upon the people. 2. Again, these, even where they suffered, were men resembling all in their common nature; but he that is declared in Scripture to suffer on behalf of all is called not merely man, but the Life of all, albeit He was in fact like men in nature. For "ye shall [299] see," it says, "your Life hanging before your eyes;" and "who shall declare his generation?" For one can ascertain the genealogy of all the saints, and declare it from the beginning, and of whom each was born; but the generation of Him that is the Life the Scriptures refer to as not to be declared. 3. Who then is he of whom the Divine Scriptures say this? Or who is so great that even the prophets predict of him such great things? None else, now, is found in the Scriptures but the common Saviour of all, the Word of God, our Lord Jesus Christ. For He it is that proceeded from a virgin and appeared as man on the earth, and whose generation after the flesh cannot be declared. For there is none that can tell His father after the flesh, His body not being of a man, but of a virgin alone; 4. so that no one can declare the corporal generation of the Saviour from a man, in the same way as one can draw up a genealogy of David and of Moses and of all the patriarchs. For He it is that caused the star also to mark the birth of His body; since it was fit that the Word, coming down from heaven, should have His constellation also from heaven, and it was fitting that the King of Creation when He came forth should be openly recognized by all creation. 5. Why, He was born in Judæa, and men from Persia came to worship Him. He it is that even before His appearing in the body won the victory over His demon adversaries and a triumph over idolatry. All heathen at any rate from every region, abjuring their hereditary tradition and the impiety of idols, are now placing their hope in Christ, and enrolling themselves under Him, the like of which you may see with your own eyes. 6. For at no other time has the impiety of the Egyptians ceased, save when the Lord of all, riding as it were upon a cloud, came down there in the body and brought to nought the delusion of idols, and brought over all to Himself, and through Himself to the Father. 7. He it is that was crucified before the sun and all creation as witnesses, and before those who put Him to death: and by His death has salvation come to all, and all creation been ransomed. He is the Life of all, and He it is that as a sheep yielded His body to death as a substitute, for the salvation of all, even though the Jews believe it not. __________________________________________________________________
[299] Cf. 35. 2, and 34. 3. __________________________________________________________________
§38. Other clear prophecies of the coming of God in the flesh. Christ's miracles unprecedented.
For if they do not think these proofs sufficient, let them be persuaded at any rate by other reasons, drawn from the oracles they themselves possess. For of whom do the prophets say: "I was [300] made manifest to them that sought me not, I was found of them that asked not for me: I said Behold, here am I, to the nation that had not called upon my name; I stretched out my hands to a disobedient and gainsaying people." 2. Who, then, one might say to the Jews, is he that was made manifest? For if it is the prophet, let them say when he was hid, afterward to appear again. And what manner of prophet is this, that was not only made manifest from obscurity, but also stretched out his hands on the Cross? None surely of the righteous, save the Word of God only, Who, incorporeal by nature, appeared for our sakes in the body and suffered for all. 3. Or if not even this is sufficient for them, let them at least be silenced by another proof, seeing how clear its demonstrative force is. For the Scripture says: "Be strong [301] ye hands that hang down, and feeble knees; comfort ye, ye of faint mind; be strong, fear not. Behold, our God recompenseth judgment; He shall come and save us. Then shall the eyes of the blind be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall hear; then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the stammerers shall be plain." 4. Now what can they say to this, or how can they dare to face this at all? For the prophecy not only indicates that God is to sojourn here, but it announces the signs and the time of His coming. For they connect the blind recovering their sight, and the lame walking, and the deaf hearing, and the tongue of the stammerers being made plain, with the Divine Coming which is to take place. Let them say, then, when such signs have come to pass in Israel, or where in Jewry anything of the sort has occurred. 5. Naaman, a leper, was cleansed, but no deaf man heard nor lame walked. Elias raised a dead man; so did Eliseus; but none blind from birth regained his sight. For in good truth, to raise a dead man is a great thing, but it is not like the wonder wrought by the Saviour. Only, if Scripture has not passed over the case of the leper, and of the dead son of the widow, certainly, had it come to pass that a lame man also had walked and a blind man recovered his sight, the narrative would not have omitted to mention this also. Since then nothing is said in the Scriptures, it is evident that these things had never taken place before. 6. When, then, have they taken place, save when the Word of God Himself came in the body? Or when did He come, if not when lame men walked, and stammerers were made to speak plain, and deaf men heard, and men blind from birth regained their sight? For this was the very thing the Jews said who then witnessed it, because they had not heard of these things having taken place at any other time: "Since [302] the world began it was never heard that any one opened the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, He could do nothing." __________________________________________________________________
[300] Isa. lxv. 1, 2; cf. Rom. x. 20, sq.
[301] Isa. xxxv. 3, sqq.
[302] John ix. 32, sq. __________________________________________________________________
§39. Do you look for another? But Daniel foretells the exact time. Objections to this removed.
But perhaps, being unable, even they, to fight continually against plain facts, they will, without denying what is written, maintain that they are looking for these things, and that the Word of God is not yet come. For this it is on which they are for ever harping, not blushing to brazen it out in the face of plain facts. 2. But on this one point, above all, they shall be all the more refuted, not at our hands, but at those of the most wise Daniel, who marks both the actual date, and the divine sojourn of the Saviour, saying: "Seventy [303] weeks are cut short upon thy people, and upon the holy city, for a full end to be made of sin, and for sins to be sealed up, and to blot out iniquities, and to make atonement for iniquities, and to bring everlasting righteousness, and to seal vision and prophet, and to anoint a Holy of Holies; and thou shalt know and understand from the going forth of the word to restore [304] and to build Jerusalem unto Christ the Prince" 3. Perhaps with regard to the other (prophecies) they may be able even to find excuses and to put off what is written to a future time. But what can they say to this, or can they face it at all? Where not only is the Christ referred to, but He that is to be anointed is declared to be not man simply, but Holy of Holies; and Jerusalem is to stand till His coming, and thenceforth, prophet and vision cease in Israel. 4. David was anointed of old, and Solomon and Ezechias; but then, nevertheless, Jerusalem and the place stood, and prophets were prophesying: God and Asaph and Nathan; and, later, Esaias and Osee and Amos and others. And again, the actual men that were anointed were called holy, and not Holy of Holies. 5. But if they shield themselves with the captivity, and say that because of it Jerusalem was not, what can they say about the prophets too? For in fact when first the people went down to Babylon, Daniel and Jeremy were there, and Ezechiel and Aggæus and Zachary were prophesying. __________________________________________________________________
[303] Dan. ix. 24, sq.
[304] Lit. "answer," a misrendering of the Hebrew. __________________________________________________________________
§40. Argument (1) from the withdrawal of prophecy and destruction of Jerusalem, (2) from the conversion of the Gentiles, and that to the God of Moses. What more remains for the Messiah to do, that Christ has not done?
So the Jews are trifling, and the time in question, which they refer to the future, is actually come. For when did prophet and vision cease from Israel, save when Christ came, the Holy of Holies? For it is a sign, and an important proof, of the coming of the Word of God, that Jerusalem no longer stands, nor is any prophet raised up nor vision revealed to them,--and that very naturally. 2. For when He that was signified was come, what need was there any longer of any to signify Him? When the truth was there, what need any more of the shadow? For this was the reason of their prophesying at all,--namely, till the true Righteousness should come, and He that was to ransom the sins of all. And this was why Jerusalem stood till then--namely, that there they might be exercised in the types as a preparation for the reality. 3. So when the Holy of Holies was come, naturally vision and prophecy were sealed and the kingdom of Jerusalem ceased. For kings were to be anointed among them only until the Holy of Holies should have been anointed; and Jacob prophesies that the kingdom of the Jews should be established until Him, as follows:--"The ruler [305] shall not fail from Juda, nor the Prince from his loins, until that which is laid up for him shall come; and he is the expectation of the nations." 4. Whence the Saviour also Himself cried aloud and said: "The [306] law and the prophets prophesied until John." If then there is now among the Jews king or prophet or vision, they do well to deny the Christ that is come. But if there is neither king nor vision, but from that time forth all prophecy is sealed and the city and temple taken, why are they so irreligious and so perverse as to see what has happened, and yet to deny Christ, Who has brought it all to pass? Or why, when they see even heathens deserting their idols, and placing their hope, through Christ, on the God of Israel, do they deny Christ, Who was born of the root of Jesse after the flesh and henceforth is King? For if the nations were worshipping some other God, and not confessing the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Moses, then, once more, they would be doing well in alleging that God had not come. 5. But if the Gentiles are honouring the same God that gave the law to Moses and made the promise to Abraham, and Whose word the Jews dishonoured,--why are they ignorant, or rather why do they choose to ignore, that the Lord foretold by the Scriptures has shone forth upon the world, and appeared to it in bodily form, as the Scripture said: "The [307] Lord God hath shined upon us;" and again: "He [308] sent His Word and healed them;" and again: "Not [309] a messenger, not an angel, but the Lord Himself saved them?" 6. Their state may be compared to that of one out of his right mind, who sees the earth illumined by the sun, but denies the sun that illumines it. For what more is there for him whom they expect to do, when he is come? To call the heathen? But they are called already. To make prophecy, and king, and vision to cease? This too has already come to pass. To expose the godlessness of idolatry? It is already exposed and condemned. Or to destroy death? He is already destroyed. 7. What then has not come to pass, that the Christ must do? What is left unfulfilled, that the Jews should now disbelieve with impunity? For if, I say,--which is just what we actually see,--there is no longer king nor prophet nor Jerusalem nor sacrifice nor vision among them, but even the whole earth is filled with the knowledge of God, and Gentiles, leaving their godlessness, are now taking refuge with the God of Abraham, through the Word, even our Lord Jesus Christ, then it must be plain, even to those who are exceedingly obstinate, that the Christ is come, and that He has illumined absolutely all with His light, and given them the true and divine teaching concerning His Father. 8. So one can fairly refute the Jews by these and by other arguments from the Divine Scriptures. __________________________________________________________________
[305] Gen. xlix. 10.
[306] Matt. xi. 13. cf. Luc. xvi. 16.
[307] Cf. Ps. cxviii. 27, and for the literal sense, Num. vi. 25
[308] Ps. cvii. 20.
[309] Isa. lxiii. 9 (LXX.), and the note in the (Queen's Printers') Variorum' Bible. __________________________________________________________________
§41. Answer to the Greeks. Do they recognise the Logos? If He manifests Himself in the organism of the Universe, why not in one Body? for a human body is a part of the same whole.
But one cannot but be utterly astonished at the Gentiles, who, while they laugh at what is no matter for jesting, are themselves insensible to their own disgrace, which they do not see that they have set up in the shape of stocks and stones. 2. Only, as our argument is not lacking in demonstrative proof, come let us put them also to shame on reasonable grounds,--mainly from what we ourselves also see. For what is there on our side that is absurd, or worthy of derision? Is it merely our saying that the Word has been made manifest in the body? But this even they will join in owning to have happened without any absurdity, if they show themselves friends of truth. 3. If then they deny that there is a Word of God at all, they do so gratuitously [310] , jesting at what they know not. 4. But if they confess that there is a Word of God, and He ruler of the universe, and that in Him the Father has produced the creation, and that by His Providence the whole receives light and life and being, and that He reigns over all, so that from the works of His providence He is known, and through Him the Father,--consider, I pray you, whether they be not unwittingly raising the jest against themselves. 5. The philosophers of the Greeks say that the universe is a great body [311] ; and rightly so. For we see it and its parts as objects of our senses. If, then, the Word of God is in the Universe, which is a body, and has united Himself with the whole and with all its parts, what is there surprising or absurd if we say that He has united Himself [312] with man also. 6. For if it were absurd for Him to have been in a body at all, it would be absurd for Him to be united with the whole either, and to be giving light and movement to all things by His providence. For the whole also is a body. 7. But if it beseems Him to unite Himself with the universe, and to be made known in the whole, it must beseem Him also to appear in a human body, and that by Him it should be illumined and work. For mankind is part of the whole as well as the rest. And if it be unseemly for a part to have been adopted as His instrument to teach men of His Godhead, it must be most absurd that He should be made known even by the whole universe. __________________________________________________________________
[310] Athan. here assumes, for the purpose of his argument, the principles of the Neo-platonist schools. They were influenced, in regard to the Logos, by Philo, but even on this subject the germ of their teaching may be traced in Plato, especially in the Timæus, (See Drummond's Philo, i. 65-88, Bigg's Bamp. Lect. 14, 18, 248-253, and St. Aug. Confess. in Nicene Fathers,' Series 1, vol. 1, p. 107 and notes.)
[311] Especially Plato, Tim. 30, &c.
[312] epibebekenai, cf. above, 20. 4, 6. The Union of God and Man in Christ is of course hypostatic' or personal, and thus (supra 17. 1), different in kind from the union of the Word with Creation. His argument is ad homines. It was not for thinkers who identified the Universe with God to take exception to the idea of Incarnation. __________________________________________________________________
§42. His union with the body is based upon His relation to Creation as a whole. He used a human body, since to man it was that He wished to reveal Himself.
For just as, while the whole body is quickened and illumined by man, supposing one said it were absurd that man's power should also be in the toe, he would be thought foolish; because, while granting that he pervades and works in the whole, he demurs to his being in the part also; thus he who grants and believes that the Word of God is in the whole Universe, and that the whole is illumined and moved by Him, should not think it absurd that a single human body also should receive movement and light from Him. 2. But if it is because the human race is a thing created and has been made out of nothing, that they regard that manifestation of the Saviour in man, which we speak of, as not seemly, it is high time for them to eject Him from creation also; for it too has been brought into existence by the Word out of nothing. 3. But if, even though creation be a thing made, it is not absurd that the Word should be in it, then neither is it absurd that He should be in man. For whatever idea they form of the whole, they must necessarily apply the like idea to the part. For man also, as I said before, is a part of the whole. 4. Thus it is not at all unseemly that the Word should be in man, while all things are deriving from Him their light and movement and light, as also their authors say, "In [313] him we live and move and have our being." 5. So, then, what is there to scoff at in what we say, if the Word has used that, wherein He is, as an instrument to manifest Himself? For were He not in it, neither could He have used it; but if we have previously allowed that He is in the whole and in its parts, what is there incredible in His manifesting Himself in that wherein He is? 6. For by His own power He is united [314] wholly with each and all, and orders all things without stint, so that no one could have called it out of place for Him to speak, and make known Himself and His Father, by means of sun, if He so willed, or moon, or heaven, or earth, or waters, or fire [315] ; inasmuch as He holds in one all things at once, and is in fact not only in all but also in the part in question, and there invisibly manifests Himself. In like manner it cannot be absurd if, ordering as He does the whole, and giving life to all things, and having willed to make Himself known through men, He has used as His instrument a human body to manifest the truth and knowledge of the Father. For humanity, too, is an actual part of the whole. 7. And as Mind, pervading man all through, is interpreted by a part of the body, I mean the tongue, without any one saying, I suppose, that the essence of the mind is on that account lowered, so if the Word, pervading all things, has used a human instrument, this cannot appear unseemly. For, as I have said previously, if it be unseemly to have used a body as an instrument, it is unseemly also for Him to be in the Whole. __________________________________________________________________
[313] See Acts xvii. 28.
[314] epibainon, see supra, note 3.
[315] The superfluous pepoiekenai is ignored, being untranslateable as the text stands. For a less simple conjecture, see the Bened. note. __________________________________________________________________
§43. He came in human rather than in any nobler form, because (I) He came to save, not to impress ; (2) man alone of creatures had sinned. As men would not recognise His works in the Universe, He came and worked among them as Man; in the sphere to which they had limited themselves.
Now, if they ask, Why then did He not appear by means of other and nobler parts of creation, and use some nobler instrument, as the sun, or moon, or stars, or fire, or air, instead of man merely? let them know that the Lord came not to make a display, but to heal and teach those who were suffering. 2. For the way for one aiming at display would be, just to appear, and to dazzle the beholders; but for one seeking to heal and teach the way is, not simply to sojourn here, but to give himself to the aid of those in want, and to appear as they who need him can bear it; that he may not, by exceeding the requirements of the sufferers, trouble the very persons that need him, rendering God's appearance useless to them. 3. Now, nothing in creation had gone astray with regard to their notions of God, save man only. Why, neither sun, nor moon, nor heaven, nor the stars, nor water, nor air had swerved from their order; but knowing their Artificer and Sovereign, the Word, they remain as they were made [316] . But men alone, having rejected what was good, then devised things of nought instead of the truth, and have ascribed the honour due to God, and their knowledge of Him, to demons and men in the shape of stones. 4. With reason, then, since it were unworthy of the Divine Goodness to overlook so grave a matter, while yet men were not able to recognise Him as ordering and guiding the whole, He takes to Himself as an instrument a part of the whole, His human body, and unites [317] Himself with that, in order that since men could not recognise Him in the whole, they should not fail to know Him in the part; and since they could not look up to His invisible power, might be able, at any rate, from what resembled themselves to reason to Him and to contemplate Him. 5. For, men as they are, they will be able to know His Father more quickly and directly by a body of like nature and by the divine works wrought through it, judging by comparison that they are not human, but the works of God, which are done by Him. 6. And if it were absurd, as they say, for the Word to be known through the works of the body, it would likewise be absurd for Him to be known through the works of the universe. For just as He is in creation, and yet does not partake of its nature in the least degree, but rather all things partake [318] of His power; so while He used the body as His instrument He partook of no corporeal property, but, on the contrary, Himself sanctified even the body. 7. For if even Plato, who is in such repute among the Greeks, says [319] that its author, beholding the universe tempest-tossed, and in peril of going down to the place of chaos, takes his seat at the helm of the soul and comes to the rescue and corrects all its calamities; what is there incredible in what we say, that, mankind being in error, the Word lighted down [320] upon it and appeared as man, that He might save it in its tempest by His guidance and goodness? __________________________________________________________________
[316] This thought is beautifully expressed by Keble :-- All true, all faultless, all in tune, Creation's wondrous choir Opened in mystic unison, to last till time expire. And still it lasts: by day and night with one consenting voice All hymn Thy glory Lord, aright, all worship and rejoice: Man only mars the sweet accord".... (Christian Year,' Fourth Sunday after Trinity.)
[317] Cf. 41. 5, note 3.
[318] Cf. Orig. c. Cels. vi. 64, where there is the same contrast between metechein and metechesthai
[319] Ath. paraphrases loosely Plat. Politic. 273 D. See Jowett's Plato (ed. 2) vol. iv. pp. 515, 553.
[320] Lit. "sate down," as four lines above. __________________________________________________________________
§44. As God made man by a word, why not restore him by a word? But (1) creation out of nothing is different from reparation of what already exists. (2) Man was there with a definite need, calling for a definite remedy. Death was ingrained in man's nature: He then must wind life closely to human nature. Therefore the Word became Incarnate that He might meet and conquer death in His usurped territory. (Simile of straw and asbestos.)
But perhaps, shamed into agreeing with this, they will choose to say that God, if He wished to reform and to save mankind, ought to have done so by a mere fiat [321] , without His word taking a body, in just the same way as He did formerly, when He produced them out of nothing. 2. To this objection of theirs a reasonable answer would be: that formerly, nothing being in existence at all, what was needed to make everything was a fiat and the bare will to do so. But when man had once been made, and necessity demanded a cure, not for things that were not, but for things that had come to be, it was naturally consequent that the Physician and Saviour should appear in what had come to be, in order also to cure the things that were. For this cause, then, He has become man, and used His body as a human instrument. 3. For if this were not the right way, how was the Word, choosing to use an instrument, to appear? or whence was He to take it, save from those already in being, and in need of His Godhead by means of one like themselves? For it was not things without being that needed salvation, so that a bare command should suffice, but man, already in existence, was going to corruption and ruin [322] . It was then natural and right that the Word should use a human instrument and reveal Himself everywhither. 4. Secondly, you must know this also, that the corruption which had set in was not external to the body, but had become attached to it; and it was required that, instead of corruption, life should cleave to it; so that, just as death has been engendered in the body, so life may be engendered in it also. 5. Now if death were external to the body, it would be proper for life also to have been engendered externally to it. But if death was wound closely to the body and was ruling over it as though united to it, it was required that life also should be wound closely to the body, that so the body, by putting on life in its stead, should cast off corruption. Besides, even supposing that the Word had come outside the body, and not in it, death would indeed have been defeated by Him, in perfect accordance with nature, inasmuch as death has no power against the Life; but the corruption attached to the body would have remained in it none the less [323] . 6. For this cause the Saviour reasonably put on Him a body, in order that the body, becoming wound closely to the Life, should no longer, as mortal, abide in death, but, as having put on immortality, should thenceforth rise again and remain immortal. For, once it had put on corruption, it could not have risen again unless it had put on life. And death likewise could not, from its very nature, appear, save in the body. Therefore He put on a body, that He might find death in the body, and blot it out. For how could the Lord have been proved at all to be the Life, had He not quickened what was mortal? 7. And just as, whereas stubble is naturally destructible by fire, supposing (firstly) a man keeps fire away from the stubble, though it is not burned, yet the stubble remains, for all that, merely stubble, fearing the threat of the fire--for fire has the natural property of consuming it; while if a man (secondly) encloses it with a quantity of asbestos, the substance said [324] to be an antidote to fire, the stubble no longer dreads the fire, being secured by its enclosure in incombustible matter; 8. in this very way one may say, with regard to the body and death, that if death had been kept from the body by a mere command on His part, it would none the less have been mortal and corruptible, according to the nature of bodies; but, that this should not be, it put on the incorporeal Word of God, and thus no longer fears either death or corruption, for it has life as a garment, and corruption is done away in it. __________________________________________________________________
[321] With this discussion compare that upon repentance' above 7. (esp. 7. 4).
[322] Restoration by a mere fiat would have shewn God's power, the Incarnation shews His Love. See Orat. i. 52, note 1, ii. 68, note 1.
[323] Cf. Orat. i. 56, note 5, 65, note 3.
[324] See above 28. 3. He appears not to have seen the substance. __________________________________________________________________
§45. Thus once again every part of creation manifests the glory of God. Nature, the witness to her Creator, yields (by miracles) a second testimony to God Incarnate. The witness of Nature, perverted by man's sin, was thus forced back to truth. If these reasons suffice not, let the Greeks look at facts.
Consistently, therefore, the Word of God took a body and has made use of a human instrument, in order to quicken the body also, and as He is known in creation by His works so to work in man as well, and to shew Himself everywhere, leaving nothing void of His own divinity, and of the knowledge of Him. 2. For I resume, and repeat what I said before, that the Saviour did this in order that, as He fills all things on all sides by His presence, so also He might fill all things with the knowledge of Him, as the divine Scripture also says [325] : "The whole earth was filled with the knowledge of the Lord." 3. For if a man will but look up to heaven, he sees its Order, or if he cannot raise his face to heaven, but only to man, he sees His power, beyond comparison with that of men, shewn by His works, and learns that He alone among men is God the Word. Or if a man is gone astray among demons, and is in fear of them, he may see this man drive them out, and make up his mind that He is their Master. Or if a man has sunk to the waters [326] , and thinks that they are God,--as the Egyptians, for instance, reverence the water,--he may see its nature changed by Him, and learn that the Lord is Creator of the waters. 4. But if a man is gone down even to Hades, and stands in awe of the heroes who have descended thither, regarding them as gods, yet he may see the fact of Christ's Resurrection and victory over death, and infer that among them also Christ alone is true God and Lord. 5. For the Lord touched all parts of creation, and freed and undeceived all of them from every illusion; as Paul says: "Having [327] put off from Himself the principalities and the powers, He triumphed on the Cross:" that no one might by any possibility be any longer deceived, but everywhere might find the true Word of God. 6. For thus man, shut in on every side [328] , and beholding the divinity of the Word unfolded everywhere, that is, in heaven, in Hades, in man, upon earth, is no longer exposed to deceit concerning God, but is to worship Christ alone, and through Him come rightly to know the Father. 7. By these arguments, then, on grounds of reason, the Gentiles in their turn will fairly be put to shame by us. But if they deem the arguments insufficient to shame them, let them be assured of what we are saying at any rate by facts obvious to the sight of all. __________________________________________________________________
[325] Isa. xi. 9. For the arguments, compare §§11-14.
[326] See Döllinger, Gentile and Jew, i. 449.
[327] Col. ii. 15.
[328] The Incarnation completes the circle of God's self-witness and of man's responsibility. __________________________________________________________________
§46. Discredit, from the date of the Incarnation, of idol-cultus, oracles, mythologies, demoniacal energy, magic, and Gentile philosophy. And whereas the old cults were strictly local and independent, the worship of Christ is catholic and uniform.
When did men begin to desert the worshipping of idols, save since God, the true Word of God, has come among men? Or when have the oracles among the Greeks, and everywhere, ceased and become empty, save when the Saviour has manifested Himself upon earth? 2. Or when did those who are called gods and heroes in the poets begin to be convicted of being merely mortal men [329] , save since the Lord erected His conquest of death, and preserved incorruptible the body he had taken, raising it from the dead? 3. Or when did the deceitfulness and madness of demons fall into contempt, save when the power of God, the Word, the Master of all these as well, condescending because of man's weakness, appeared on earth? Or when [330] did the art and the schools of magic begin to be trodden down, save when the divine manifestation of the Word took place among men? 4. And, in a word, at what time has the wisdom of the Greeks become foolish, save when the true Wisdom of God manifested itself on earth? For formerly the whole world and every place was led astray by the worshipping of idols, and men regarded nothing else but the idols as gods. But now, all the world over, men are deserting the superstition of the idols, and taking refuge with Christ; and, worshipping Him as God, are by His means coming to know that Father also Whom they knew not. 5. And, marvellous fact, whereas the objects of worship were various and of vast number, and each place had its own idol, and he who was accounted a god among them had no power to pass over to the neighbouring place, so as to persuade those of neighbouring peoples to worship him, but was barely served even among his own people; for no one else worshipped his neighbour's god--on the contrary, each man kept to his own idol [331] , thinking it to be lord of all;--Christ alone is worshipped as one and the same among all peoples; and what the weakness of the idols could not do--to persuade, namely, even those dwelling close at hand,--this Christ has done, persuading not only those close at hand, but simply the entire world, to worship one and the same Lord, and through Him God, even His Father. __________________________________________________________________
[329] Cf. notes on c. Gent. 10, and 12. 2.
[330] On the following argument see Döllinger ii. 210 sqq., and Bigg, Bampt. Lect. 248, note 1.
[331] On the local character of ancient religions, see Döllinger i. 109, &c., and Coulanges, La Cité Antique, Book III. ch. vi., and V. iii. (the substance in Barker's Aryan Civilisation). __________________________________________________________________
§47. The numerous oracles,--fancied apparitions in sacred places, &c., dispelled by the sign of the Cross. The old gods prove to have been mere men. Magic is exposed. And whereas Philosophy could only persuade select and local cliques of Immortality, and goodness,--men of little intellect have infused into the multitudes of the churches the principle of a supernatural life.
And whereas formerly every place was full of the deceit of the oracles [332] , and the oracles at Delphi and Dodona, and in Boeotia [333] and Lycia [334] and Libya [335] and Egypt and those of the Cabiri [336] , and the Pythoness, were held in repute by men's imagination, now, since Christ has begun to be preached everywhere, their madness also has ceased and there is none among them to divine any more. 2. And whereas formerly demons used to deceive [337] men's fancy, occupying springs or rivers, trees or stones, and thus imposed upon the simple by their juggleries; now, after the divine visitation of the Word, their deception has ceased. For by the Sign of the Cross, though a man but use it, he drives out their deceits. 3. And while formerly men held to be gods the Zeus and Cronos and Apollo and the heroes mentioned in the poets, and went astray in honouring them; now that the Saviour has appeared among men, those others have been exposed as mortal men [338] , and Christ alone has been recognised among men as the true God, the Word of God. 4. And what is one to say of the magic [339] esteemed among them? that before the Word sojourned among us this was strong and active among Egyptians, and Chaldees, and Indians, and inspired awe in those who saw it; but that by the presence of the Truth, and the Appearing of the Word, it also has been thoroughly confuted, and brought wholly to nought. 5. But as to Gentile wisdom, and the sounding pretensions of the philosophers, I think none can need our argument, since the wonder is before the eyes of all, that while the wise among the Greeks had written so much, and were unable to persuade even a few [340] from their own neighbourhood, concerning immortality and a virtuous life, Christ alone, by ordinary language, and by men not clever with the tongue, has throughout all the world persuaded whole churches full of men to despise death, and to mind the things of immortality; to overlook what is temporal and to turn their eyes to what is eternal; to think nothing of earthly glory and to strive only for the heavenly. __________________________________________________________________
[332] On these, see Döllinger, i. 216, &c., and Milton's Ode on the Nativity, stanza xix.
[333] i.e. that of Trophonius.
[334] Patara.
[335] Ammon.
[336] See Döllinger, i. 73, 164-70: the Cabiri were pre-Hellenic deities, worshipped in many ancient sanctuaries, but principally in Samothrace and Lemnos.
[337] Cf. Vit. Ant. xvi.-xliii., also Döllinger, ii. 212, and a curious catena of extracts from early Fathers, collected by Hurter in Opuscula SS. Patrum Selecta,' vol. 1, appendix.
[338] For this opinion, see note 1 on c. Gent. 12.
[339] See Döllinger, ii. 210, and (on Julian) 215.
[340] In Plato's ideal Republic, the notion of any direct influence of the highest ideals upon the masses is quite absent. Their happiness is to be in passive obedience to the few whom those ideals inspire. (Contrast Isa. liv. 13, Jer. xxxi. 34.) __________________________________________________________________
§48. Further facts. Christian continence of virgins and ascetics. Martyrs. The power of the Cross against demons and magic. Christ by His Power shews Himself more than a man, more than a magician, more than a spirit. For all these are totally subject to Him. Therefore He is the Word of God.
Now these arguments of ours do not amount merely to words, but have in actual experience a witness to their truth. 2. For let him that will, go up and behold the proof of virtue in the virgins of Christ and in the young men that practise holy chastity [341] , and the assurance of immortality in so great a band of His martyrs. 3. And let him come who would test by experience what we have now said, and in the very presence of the deceit of demons and the imposture of oracles and the marvels of magic, let him use the Sign of that Cross which is laughed at among them, and he shall see how by its means demons fly, oracles cease, all magic and witchcraft is brought to nought. 4. Who, then, and how great is this Christ, Who by His own Name and Presence casts into the shade and brings to nought all things on every side, and is alone strong against all, and has filled the whole world with His teaching? Let the Greeks tell us, who are pleased to laugh, and blush not. 5. For if He is a man, how then has one man exceeded the power of all whom even themselves bold to be gods, and convicted them by His own power of being nothing? But if they call Him a magician, how can it be that by a magician all magic is destroyed, instead of being confirmed? For if He conquered particular magicians, or prevailed over one only, it would be proper for them to hold that He excelled the rest by superior skill; 6. but if His Cross has won the victory over absolutely all magic, and over the very name of it, it must be plain that the Saviour is not a magician, seeing that even those demons who are invoked by the other magicians fly from Him as their Master. 7. Who He is, then, let the Greeks tell us, whose only serious pursuit is jesting. Perhaps they might say that He, too, was a demon, and hence His strength. But say this as they will, they will have the laugh against them, for they can once more be put to shame by our former proofs. For how is it possible that He should be a demon who drives the demons out? 8. For if He simply drove out particular demons, it might properly be held that by the chief of demons He prevailed against the lesser, just as the Jews said to Him when they wished to insult Him. But if, by His Name being named, all madness of the demons is uprooted and chased away, it must be evident that here, too, they are wrong, and that our Lord and Saviour Christ is not, as they think, some demoniacal power. 9. Then, if the Saviour is neither a man simply, nor a magician, nor some demon, but has by His own Godhead brought to nought and cast into the shade both the doctrine found in the poets and the delusion of the demons and the wisdom of the Gentiles, it must be plain and will be owned by all, that this is the true Son of God, even the Word and Wisdom and Power of the Father from the beginning. For this is why His works also are no works of man, but are recognised to be above man, and truly God's works, both from the facts in themselves, and from comparison with [the rest of] mankind. __________________________________________________________________
[341] Cf. Hist. Arian. 25, Apol. Const. 33. __________________________________________________________________
§49. His Birth and Miracles. You call Asclepius, Heracles, and Dionysus gods for their works. Contrast their works with His, and the wonders at His death, &c.
For what man, that ever was born, formed a body for himself from a virgin alone? Or what man ever healed such diseases as the common Lord of all? Or who has restored what was wanting to man's nature, and made one blind from his birth to see? 2. Asclepius was deified among them, because he practised medicine and found out herbs for bodies that were sick; not forming them himself out of the earth, but discovering them by science drawn from nature. But what is this to what was done by the Saviour, in that, instead of healing a wound, He modified a man's original nature, and restored the body whole. 3. Heracles is worshipped as a god among the Greeks because he fought against men, his peers, and destroyed wild beasts by guile. What is this to what was done by the Word, in driving away from man diseases and demons and death itself? Dionysus is worshipped among them because he has taught man drunkenness; but the true Saviour and Lord of all, for teaching temperance, is mocked by these people. 4. But let these matters pass. What will they say to the other miracles of His Godhead? At what man's death was the sun darkened and the earth shaken? Lo even to this day men are dying, and they died also of old. When did any such-like wonder happen in their case? 5. Or, to pass over the deeds done through His body, and mention those after its rising again: what man's doctrine that ever was has prevailed everywhere, one and the same, from one end of the earth to the other, so that his worship has winged its way through every land? 6. Or why, if Christ is, as they say, a man, and not God the Word, is not His worship prevented by the gods they have from passing into the same land where they are? Or why on the contrary does the Word Himself, sojourning here, by His teaching stop their worship and put their deception to shame? __________________________________________________________________
§50. Impotence and rivalries of the Sophists put to shame by the Death of Christ. His Resurrection unparalleled even in Greek legend.
Many before this Man have been kings and tyrants of the world, many are on record who have been wise men and magicians, among the Chaldæans and Egyptians and Indians; which of these, I say, not after death, but while still alive, was ever able so far to prevail as to fill the whole earth with his teaching and reform so great a multitude from the superstition of idols, as our Saviour has brought over from idols to Himself? 2. The philosophers of the Greeks have composed many works with plausibility and verbal skill; what result, then, have they exhibited so great as has the Cross of Christ? For the refinements they taught were plausible enough till they died; but even the influence they seemed to have while alive was subject to their mutual rivalries; and they were emulous, and declaimed against one another. 3. But the Word of God, most strange fact, teaching in meaner language, has cast into the shade the choice sophists; and while He has, by drawing all to Himself, brought their schools to nought, He has filled His own churches; and the marvellous thing is, that by going down as man to death, He has brought to nought the sounding utterances of the wise [342] concerning idols. 4. For whose death ever drove out demons? or whose death did demons ever fear, as they did that of Christ? For where the Saviour's name is named, there every demon is driven out. Or who has so rid men of the passions of the natural man, that whoremongers are chaste, and murderers no longer hold the sword, and those who were formerly mastered by cowardice play the man? 5. And, in short, who persuaded men of barbarous countries and heathen men in divers places to lay aside their madness, and to mind peace, if it be not the Faith of Christ and the Sign of the Cross? Or who else has given men such assurance of immortality, as has the Cross of Christ, and the Resurrection of His Body? 6. For although the Greeks have told all manner of false tales, yet they were not able to feign a Resurrection of their idols,--for it never crossed their mind, whether it be at all possible for the body again to exist after death. And here one would most especially accept their testimony, inasmuch as by this opinion they have exposed the weakness of their own idolatry, while leaving the possibility open to Christ, so that hence also He might be made known among all as Son of God. __________________________________________________________________
[342] e.g. Iamblichus, &c., cf. Introd. to c. Gent. __________________________________________________________________
§51. The new virtue of continence. Revolution of Society, purified and pacified by Christianity.
Which of mankind, again, after his death, or else while living, taught concerning virginity, and that this virtue was not impossible among men? But Christ, our Saviour and King of all, had such power in His teaching concerning it, that even children not yet arrived at the lawful age vow that virginity which lies beyond the law. 2. What man has ever yet been able to pass so far as to come among Scythians and Ethiopians, or Persians or Armenians or Goths, or those we hear of beyond the ocean or those beyond Hyrcania, or even the Egyptians and Chaldees, men that mind magic and are superstitious beyond nature and savage in their ways, and to preach at all about virtue and self-control, and against the worshipping of idols, as has the Lord of all, the Power of God, our Lord Jesus Christ? 3. Who not only preached by means of His own disciples, but also carried persuasion to men's mind, to lay aside the fierceness of their manners, and no longer to serve their ancestral gods, but to learn to know Him, and through Him to worship the Father. 4. For formerly, while in idolatry, Greeks and Barbarians used to war against each other, and were actually cruel to their own kin. For it was impossible for any one to cross sea or land at all, without arming the hand with swords [343] , because of their implacable fighting among themselves. 5. For the whole course of their life was carried on by arms, and the sword with them took the place of a staff, and was their support in every emergency; and still, as I said before, they were serving idols, and offering sacrifices to demons, while for all their idolatrous superstition they could not be reclaimed from this spirit. 6. But when they have come over to the school of Christ, then, strangely enough, as men truly pricked in conscience, they have laid aside the savagery of their murders and no longer mind the things of war: but all is at peace with them, and from henceforth what makes for friendship is to their liking. __________________________________________________________________
[343] Cf. Thucy. i. 5 6: pasa gar he Ellas esiderophorei,' &c. __________________________________________________________________
§52. Wars, &c., roused by demons, lulled by Christianity.
Who then is He that has done this, or who is He that has united in peace men that hated one another, save the beloved Son of the Father, the common Saviour of all, even Jesus Christ, Who by His own love underwent all things for our salvation? For even from of old it was prophesied of the peace He was to usher in, where the Scripture says: "They [344] shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their pikes into sickles, and nation shall not take the sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." 2. And this is at least not incredible, inasmuch as even now those barbarians who have an innate savagery of manners, while they still sacrifice to the idols of their country, are mad against one another, and cannot endure to be a single hour without weapons: 3. but when they hear the teaching of Christ, straightway instead of fighting they turn to husbandry, and instead of arming their hands with weapons they raise them in prayer, and in a word, in place of fighting among themselves, henceforth they arm against the devil and against evil spirits, subduing these by self-restraint and virtue of soul. 4. Now this is at once a proof of the divinity of the Saviour, since what men could not learn among idols [345] they have learned from Him; and no small exposure of the weakness and nothingness of demons and idols. For demons, knowing their own weakness, for this reason formerly set men to make war against one another, lest, if they ceased from mutual strife, they should turn to battle against demons. 5. Why, they who become disciples of Christ, instead of warring with each other, stand arrayed against demons by their habits and their virtuous actions: and they rout them, and mock at their captain the devil; so that in youth they are self-restrained, in temptations endure, in labours persevere, when insulted are patient, when robbed make light of it: and, wonderful as it is, they despise even death and become martyrs of Christ. __________________________________________________________________
[344] Isa. ii. 4.
[345] St. Augustine, Civ. D. IV. xvi. commenting on the fact that the temple of Repose' (Quies) at Rome was not within the city walls, suggests qui illam turbam colere perseveraret...doemoniorum, eum Quietem habere non posse.' __________________________________________________________________
§53. The whole fabric of Gentilism levelled at a blow by Christ secretly addressing the conscience of Man.
And to mention one proof of the divinity of the Saviour, which is indeed utterly surprising,--what mere man or magician or tyrant or king was ever able by himself to engage with so many, and to fight the battle against all idolatry and the whole demoniacal host and all magic, and all the wisdom of the Greeks, while they were so strong and still flourishing and imposing upon all, and at one onset to check them all, as was our Lord, the true Word of God, Who, invisibly exposing each man's error, is by Himself bearing off all men from them all, so that while they who were worshipping idols now trample upon them, those in repute for magic burn their books, and the wise prefer to all studies the interpretation of the Gospels? 2. For whom they used to worship, them they are deserting, and Whom they used to mock as one crucified, Him they worship as Christ, confessing Him to be God. And they that are called gods among them are routed by the Sign of the Cross, while the Crucified Saviour is proclaimed in all the world as God and the Son of God. And the gods worshipped among the Greeks are falling into ill repute at their hands, as scandalous beings; while those who receive the teaching of Christ live a chaster life than they. 3. If, then, these and the like are human works, let him who will point out similar works on the part of men of former time, and so convince us. But if they prove to be, and are, not men's works, but God's, why are the unbelievers so irreligious as not to recognise the Master that wrought them? 4. For their case is as though a man, from the works of creation, failed to know God their Artificer. For if they knew His Godhead from His power over the universe, they would have known that the bodily works of Christ also are not human, but are the works of the Saviour of all, the Word of God. And did they thus know, "they would not," as Paul said [346] , "have crucified the Lord of glory." __________________________________________________________________
[346] 1 Cor. ii. 8. __________________________________________________________________
§54. The Word Incarnate, as is the case with the Invisible God, is known to us by His works. By them we recognise His deifying mission. Let us be content to enumerate a few of them, leaving their dazzling plentitude to him who will behold.
As, then, if a man should wish to see God, Who is invisible by nature and not seen at all, he may know and apprehend Him from His works: so let him who fails to see Christ with his understanding, at least apprehend Him by the works of His body, and test whether they be human works or God's works. 2. And if they be human, let him scoff; but if they are not human, but of God, let him recognise it, and not laugh at what is no matter for scoffing; but rather let him marvel that by so ordinary a means things divine have been manifested to us, and that by death immortality has reached to all, and that by the Word becoming man, the universal Providence has been known, and its Giver and Artificer the very Word of God. 3. For He was made man that we might be made God [347] ; and He manifested Himself by a body that we might receive the idea of the unseen Father; and He endured the insolence of men that we might inherit immortality. For while He Himself was in no way injured, being impossible and incorruptible and very Word and God, men who were suffering, and for whose sakes He endured all this, He maintained and preserved in His own impassibility. 4. And, in a word, the achievements of the Saviour, resulting from His becoming man, are of such kind and number, that if one should wish to enumerate them, he may be compared to men who gaze at the expanse of the sea and wish to count its waves. For as one cannot take in the whole of the waves with his eyes, for those which are coming on baffle the sense of him that attempts it; so for him that would take in all the achievements of Christ in the body, it is impossible to take in the whole, even by reckoning them up, as those which go beyond his thought are more than those he thinks he has taken in. 5. Better is it, then, not to aim at speaking of the whole, where one cannot do justice even to a part, but, after mentioning one more, to leave the whole for you to marvel at. For all alike are marvellous, and wherever a man turns his glance, he may behold on that side the divinity of the Word, and be struck with exceeding great awe. __________________________________________________________________
[347] theopoiethomen. See Orat. ii. 70, note 1, and many other passages in those Discourses, as well as Letters 60. 4, 61. 2. (Eucharistic reference), de Synodis 51, note 7. (Compare also Iren. IV. xxxviii. 4, non ab initio dii facti sumus, sed primo quidem homines, tunc demum dii,' cf. ib. præf. 4. fin. also V. ix. 2, sublevat in vitam Dei.' Origen Cels. iii. 28 fin. touches the same thought, but Ath. is here in closer affinity to the idea of Irenæus than to that of Origen.) The New Test. reference is 2 Pet. i. 4, rather than Heb. ii. 9 sqq; the Old Test., Ps. lxxxii. 6, which seems to underlie Orat. iii. 25 (note 5). In spite of the last mentioned passage, God' is far preferable as a rendering, in most places, to gods,' which has heathenish associations. To us (1 Cor. viii. 6) there are no such things as gods.' (The best summary of patristic teaching on this subject is given by Harnack Dg. ii. p. 46 note.) __________________________________________________________________
§55. Summary of foregoing. Cessation of pagan oracles, &c.: propagation of the faith. The true King has come forth and silenced all usurpers.
This, then, after what we have so far said, it is right for you to realize, and to take as the sum of what we have already stated, and to marvel at exceedingly; namely, that since the Saviour has come among us, idolatry not only has no longer increased, but what there was is diminishing and gradually coming to an end: and not only does the wisdom of the Greeks no longer advance, but what there is is now fading away: and demons, so far from cheating any more by illusions and prophecies and magic arts, if they so much as dare to make the attempt, are put to shame by the sign of the Cross. 2. And to sum the matter up: behold how the Saviour's doctrine is everywhere increasing, while all idolatry and everything opposed to the faith of Christ is daily dwindling, and losing power, and falling. And thus beholding, worship the Saviour, "Who is above all" and mighty, even God the Word; and condemn those who are being worsted and done away by Him. 3. For as, when the sun is come, darkness no longer prevails, but if any be still left anywhere it is driven away; so, now that the divine Appearing of the Word of God is come, the darkness of the idols prevails no more, and all parts of the world in every direction are illumined by His teaching. 4. And as, when a king is reigning in some country without appearing but keeps at home in his own house, often some disorderly persons, abusing his retirement, proclaim themselves; and each of them, by assuming the character, imposes on the simple as king, and so men are led astray by the name, hearing that there is a king, but not seeing him, if for no other reason, because they cannot enter the house; but when the real king comes forth and appears, then the disorderly impostors are exposed by his presence, while men, seeing the real king, desert those who previously led them astray: 5. in like manner, the evil spirits formerly used to deceive men, investing themselves with God's honour; but when the Word of God appeared in a body, and made known to us His own Father, then at length the deceit of the evil spirits is done away and stopped, while men, turning their eyes to the true God, Word of the Father, are deserting the idols, and now coming to know the true God. 6. Now this is a proof that Christ is God the Word, and the Power of God. For whereas human things cease, and the Word of Christ abides, it is clear to all eyes that what ceases is temporary, but that He Who abides is God, and the true Son of God, His only-begotten Word. __________________________________________________________________
§56. Search then, the Scriptures, if you can, and so fill up this sketch. Learn to look for the Second Advent and Judgment.
Let this, then, Christ-loving man, be our offering to you, just for a rudimentary sketch and outline, in a short compass, of the faith of Christ and of His Divine appearing to usward. But you, taking occasion by this, if you light upon the text of the Scriptures, by genuinely applying your mind to them, will learn from them more completely and clearly the exact detail of what we have said. 2. For they were spoken and written by God, through men who spoke of God. But we impart of what we have learned from inspired teachers who have been conversant with them, who have also become martyrs for the deity of Christ, to your zeal for learning, in turn. 3. And you will also learn about His second glorious and truly divine appearing to us, when no longer in lowliness, but in His own glory,--no longer in humble guise, but in His own magnificence,--He is to come, no more to suffer, but thenceforth to render to all the fruit of His own Cross, that is, the resurrection and incorruption; and no longer to be judged, but to judge all, by what each has done in the body, whether good or evil; where there is laid up for the good the kingdom of heaven, but for them that have done evil everlasting fire and outer darkness. 4. For thus the Lord Himself also says: "Henceforth [348] ye shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power, and coming on the clouds of heaven in the glory of the Father." 5. And for this very reason there is also a word of the Saviour to prepare us for that day, in these words: "Be [349] ye ready and watch, for He cometh at an hour ye know not." For, according to the blessed Paul: "We [350] must all stand before the judgment-seat of Christ, that each one may receive according as he hath done in the body, whether it be good or bad." __________________________________________________________________
[348] Matt. xxvi. 64.
[349] Cf. Matt. xxiv. 42; Marc. xiii. 35.
[350] 2 Cor. v. 10; cf. Rom. xiv. 10. __________________________________________________________________
§57. Above all, so live that you may have the right to eat of this tree of knowledge and life, and so come to eternal joys. Doxology.
But for the searching of the Scriptures and true knowledge of them, an honourable life is needed, and a pure soul, and that virtue which is according to Christ; so that the intellect guiding its path by it, may be able to attain what it desires, and to comprehend it, in so far as it is accessible to human nature to learn concerning the Word of God. 2. For without a pure mind and a modelling of the life after the saints, a man could not possibly comprehend the words of the saints. 3. For just as, if a man wished to see the light of the sun, he would at any rate wipe and brighten his eye, purifying himself in some sort like what he desires, so that the eye, thus becoming light, may see the light of the sun; or as, if a man would see a city or country, he at any rate comes to the place to see it;--thus he that would comprehend the mind of those who speak of God must needs begin by washing and cleansing his soul, by his manner of living, and approach the saints themselves by imitating their works; so that, associated with them in the conduct of a common life, he may understand also what has been revealed to them by God, and thenceforth, as closely knit to them, may escape the peril of the sinners and their fire at the day of judgment, and receive what is laid up for the saints in the kingdom of heaven, which "Eye hath not seen [351] , nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man," whatsoever things are prepared for them that live a virtuous life, and love the God and Father, in Christ Jesus our Lord: through Whom and with Whom be to the Father Himself, with the Son Himself, in the Holy Spirit, honour and might and glory for ever and ever. Amen. __________________________________________________________________
[351] 1 Cor. ii. 9. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Depositio Arii.
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Introduction to the Deposition of Arius' and Encyclical Letter of Alexander.
The following documents form the fittest opening to the series of Anti-Arian writings of Athanasius. They are included in the Benedictine edition of his works, and in the Oxford Collection of Historical Tracts, of which the present translation is a revision. The possibility that the Encyclical Letter was drawn up by Athanasius himself, now deacon and Secretary to Bishop Alexander (Prolegg. ch. ii. §2), is a further reason for its inclusion. The Athanasian authorship is maintained by Newman on the following grounds, which his notes will be found to bear out. (1) Total dissimilarity of style as compared with Alexander's letter to his namesake of Byzantium (given by Theodoret, H. E. i. 4). That piece is in an elaborate and involved style, full of compound words, with nothing of the Athanasian simplicity and vigour. (2) Remarkable identity of style with that of Athanasius, extending to his most characteristic expressions. (3) Distinctness of the theological view' and terminology of Alexander as compared with Athanasius; the Encyclical coinciding with the latter against the former. (4) Athanasian use of certain texts. These arguments are of great weight, and make out at least a prima facie case for Newman's view. The latter has the weight of Böhringer's opinion on its side, while the counter-arguments of Kölling (vol. 1. p. 105) are trivial. Gwatkin, Studies, 29, note 4, misses the points (Nos. 1 and 3) of Newman's argument, which may fairly be said to hold the field. The deposition of Arius at Alexandria took place (Prolegg, ubi supra) in 320 or 321; more likely the latter. Whether the Encyclical was drawn up at the Synod which deposed Arius, as is generally supposed, or some two years later, as has been inferred from the references to Eusebius of Nicomedia (D. C. B. i. 80, cf. Prolegg. ubi supra, note 1), is a question that may for our present purpose be left open. In any case it is one of the earliest documents of the Arian controversy. It should be noted that the homoousion does not occur in this document, a fact of importance in the history of the adoption of the word as a test at Nicæa, cf. Prolegg. ch. ii. §3 (1) and (2) b. At this stage the Alexandrians were content with the formulæ homoios kat' ousian (Athan.), aparallaktos eikon, apekribomene emphereia (Alex. in Thdt.), which were afterwards found inadequate.
The letter, after stating the circumstances which call it forth, and recording the doctrine propounded by Arius, and his deposition, points out some of the leading texts which condemn the doctrine (§§3, 4). The Arians are then (§5) compared to other heretics, and the bishops of the Church generally warned (§6) against the intrigues of Eusebius of Nicomedia. The letter is signed by the sixteen presbyters of Alexandria, and the twenty-four deacons (Athanasius signs fourth), as well as by eighteen presbyters and twenty deacons of the Mareotis. The scriptural argument of the Epistle is the germ of the polemic developed in the successive Anti-Arian treatises which form the bulk of the present volume. __________________________________________________________________
Deposition of Arius.
------------------------
Alexander's Deposition of Arius and his companions, and Encyclical Letter on the subject.
Alexander, being assembled with his beloved brethren, the Presbyters and Deacons of Alexandria, and the Mareotis, greets them in the Lord.
Although you have already subscribed to the letter I addressed to Arius and his fellows, exhorting them to renounce his impiety, and to submit themselves to the sound Catholic Faith, and have shewn your right-mindedness and agreement in the doctrines of the Catholic Church: yet forasmuch as I have written also to our fellow-ministers in every place concerning Arius and his fellows, and especially since some of you, as the Presbyters Chares and Pistus [352] , and the Deacons Serapion, Parammon, Zosimus, and Irenæus, have joined Arius and his fellows, and been content to suffer deposition with them, I thought it needful to assemble together you, the Clergy of the city, and to send for you the Clergy of the Mareotis, in order that you may learn what I am now writing, and may testify your agreement thereto, and give your concurrence in the deposition of Arius, Pistus, and their fellows. For it is desirable that you should be made acquainted with what I write, and that each of you should heartily embrace it, as though he had written it himself.
A Copy.
To his dearly beloved and most honoured fellow-ministers of the Catholic Church in every place, Alexander sends health in the Lord.
1. As there is one body [353] of the Catholic Church, and a command is given us in the sacred Scriptures to preserve the bond of unity and peace, it is agreeable thereto that we should write and signify to one another whatever is done by each of us individually; so that whether one member suffer or rejoice, we may either suffer or rejoice with one another. Now there are gone forth in this diocese, at this time, certain lawless [354] men, enemies of Christ, teaching an apostasy, which one may justly suspect and designate as a forerunner [355] of Antichrist. I was desirous [356] to pass such a matter by without notice, in the hope that perhaps the evil would spend itself among its supporters, and not extend to other places to defile [357] the ears [358] of the simple [359] . But seeing that Eusebius, now of Nicomedia, who thinks that the government of the Church rests with him, because retribution has not come upon him for his desertion of Berytus, when he had cast an eye [360] of desire on the Church of the Nicomedians, begins to support these apostates, and has taken upon him to write letters every where in their behalf, if by any means he may draw in certain ignorant persons to this most base and antichristian heresy; I am therefore constrained, knowing what is written in the law, no longer to hold my peace, but to make it known to you all; that you may understand who the apostates are, and the cavils [361] which their heresy has adopted, and that, should Eusebius write to you, you may pay no attention to him, for he now desires by means of these men to exhibit anew his old malevolence [362] , which has so long been concealed, pretending to write in their favour, while in truth it clearly appears, that he does it to forward his own interests.
2. Now those who became apostates are these, Arius, Achilles, Aeithales, Carpones, another Arius, and Sarmates, sometime Presbyters: Euzoïus, Lucius, Julius, Menas, Helladius, and Gaius, sometime Deacons: and with them Secundus and Theonas, sometime called Bishops. And the novelties they have invented and put forth contrary to the Scriptures are these following:--God was not always a Father [363] , but there was a time when God was not a Father. The Word of God was not always, but originated from things that were not; for God that is, has made him that was not, of that which was not; wherefore there was a time when He was not; for the Son is a creature and a work. Neither is He like in essence to the Father; neither is He the true and natural Word of the Father; neither is He His true Wisdom; but He is one of the things made and created, and is called the Word and Wisdom by an abuse of terms, since He Himself originated by the proper Word of God, and by the Wisdom that is in God, by which God has made not only all other things but Him also. Wherefore He is by nature subject to change and variation as are all rational creatures. And the Word is foreign from the essence [364] of the Father, and is alien and separated therefrom. And the Father cannot be described by the Son, for the Word does not know the Father perfectly and accurately, neither can He see Him perfectly. Moreover, the Son knows not His own essence as it really is; for He is made for us, that God might create us by Him, as by an instrument; and He would not have existed, had not God wished to create us. Accordingly, when some one asked them, whether the Word of God can possibly change as the devil changed, they were not afraid to say that He can; for being something made and created, His nature is subject to change.
3. Now when Arius and his fellows made these assertions, and shamelessly avowed them, we being assembled with the Bishops of Egypt and Libya, nearly a hundred in number, anathematized both them and their followers. But Eusebius and his fellows admitted them to communion, being desirous to mingle falsehood with the truth, and impiety with piety. But they will not be able to do so, for the truth must prevail; neither is there any "communion of light with darkness," nor any "concord of Christ with Belial [365] ." For who ever heard such assertions before [366] ? or who that hears them now is not astonished and does not stop his ears lest they should be defiled with such language? Who that has heard the words of John, "In the beginning was the Word [367] ," will not denounce the saying of these men, that "there was a time when He was not?" Or who that has heard in the Gospel, "the Only-begotten Son," and "by Him were all things made [368] ," will not detest their declaration that He is "one of the things that were made." For how can He be one of those things which were made by Himself? or how can He be the Only-begotten, when, according to them, He is counted as one among the rest, since He is Himself a creature and a work? And how can He be "made of things that were not," when the Father saith, "My heart hath uttered a good Word," and "Out of the womb I have begotten Thee before the morning star [369] ?" Or again, how is He "unlike in substance to the Father," seeing He is the perfect "image" and "brightness [370] " of the Father, and that He saith, "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father [371] ?" And if the Son is the "Word" and "Wisdom" of God, how was there "a time when He was not?" It is the same as if they should say that God was once without Word and without Wisdom [372] . And how is He "subject to change and variation," Who says, by Himself, "I am in the Father, and the Father in Me [373] ," and "I and the Father are One [374] ;" and by the Prophet, "Behold Me, for I am, and I change not [375] ?" For although one may refer this expression to the Father, yet it may now be more aptly spoken of the Word, viz., that though He has been made man, He has not changed; but as the Apostle has said, "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever." And who can have persuaded them to say, that He was made for us, whereas Paul writes, "for Whom are all things, and by Whom are all things [376] ?"
4. As to their blasphemous position that "the Son knows not the Father perfectly," we ought not to wonder at it; for having once set themselves to fight against Christ, they contradict even His express words, since He says, "As the Father knoweth Me, even so know I the Father [377] ." Now if the Father knows the Son but in part, then it is evident that the Son does not know the Father perfectly; but if it is not lawful to say this, but the Father does know the Son perfectly, then it is evident that as the Father knows His own Word, so also the Word knows His own Father Whose Word He is.
5. By these arguments and references to the sacred Scriptures we frequently overthrew them; but they changed like chameleons [378] , and again shifted their ground, striving to bring upon themselves that sentence, "when the wicked falleth into the depth of evils, he despiseth [379] ." There have been many heresies before them, which, venturing further than they ought, have fallen into folly; but these men by endeavouring in all their cavils to overthrow the Divinity of the Word, have justified the other in comparison of themselves, as approaching nearer to Antichrist. Wherefore they have been excommunicated and anathematized by the Church. We grieve for their destruction, and especially because, having once been instructed in the doctrines of the Church, they have now sprung away. Yet we are not greatly surprised, for Hymenæus and Philetus [380] did the same, and before them Judas, who followed the Saviour, but afterwards became a traitor and an apostate. And concerning these same persons, we have not been left without instruction; for our Lord has forewarned us; "Take heed lest any man deceive you: for many shall come in My name, saying, I am Christ, and the time draweth near, and they shall deceive many: go ye not after them [381] ;" while Paul, who was taught these things by our Saviour, wrote that "in the latter times some shall depart from the sound faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils, which reject the truth [382] ."
6. Since then our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ has instructed us by His own mouth, and also hath signified to us by the Apostle concerning such men, we accordingly being personal witnesses of their impiety, have anathematized, as we said, all such, and declared them to be alien from the Catholic Faith and Church. And we have made this known to your piety, dearly beloved and most honoured fellow-ministers, in order that should any of them have the boldness [383] to come unto you, you may not receive them, nor comply with the desire of Eusebius, or any other person writing in their behalf. For it becomes us who are Christians to turn away from all who speak or think any thing against Christ, as being enemies of God, and destroyers [384] of souls; and not even to "bid such God speed [385] ," lest we become partakers of their sins, as the blessed John hath charged us. Salute the brethren that are with you. They that are with me salute you.
Presbyters of Alexandria.
7. I, Colluthus, Presbyter, agree with what is here written, and give my assent to the deposition of Arius and his associates in impiety.
Alexander [386] , Presbyter, likewise
Dioscorus [387] , Presbyter, likewise
Dionysius [388] , Presbyter, likewise
Eusebius, Presbyter, likewise
Alexander, Presbyter, likewise
Nilaras [389] , Presbyter, likewise
Arpocration, Presbyter, likewise
Agathus, Presbyter
Nemesius, Presbyter
Longus [390] , Presbyter
Silvanus, Presbyter
Peroys, Presbyter
Apis, Presbyter
Proterius, Presbyter
Paulus, Presbyter
Cyrus, Presbyter, likewise
Deacons
Ammonius [391] , Deacon, likewise
Macarius, Deacon
Pistus [392] , Deacon, likewise
Athanasius, Deacon
Eumenes, Deacon
Apollonius [393] , Deacon
Olympius, Deacon
Aphthonius [394] , Deacon
Athanasius [395] , Deacon
Macarius, Deacon, likewise
Paulus, Deacon
Petrus, Deacon
Ambytianus, Deacon
Gaius [396] , Deacon, likewise
Alexander, Deacon
Dionysius, Deacon
Agathon, Deacon
Polybius, Deacon, likewise
Theonas, Deacon
Marcus, Deacon
Comodus, Deacon
Serapion [397] , Deacon
Nilon, Deacon
Romanus, Deacon, likewise
Presbyters of the Mareotis.
I, Apollonius, Presbyter, agree with what is here written, and give my assent to the deposition of Arius and his associates in impiety.
Ingenius [398] , Presbyter, likewise
Ammonius, Presbyter
Dioscorus [399] , Presbyter
Sostras, Presbyter
Theon [400] , Presbyter
Tyrannus, Presbyter
Copres, Presbyter
Ammonas [401] , Presbyter
Orion, Presbyter
Serenus, Presbyter
Didymus, Presbyter
Heracles [402] , Presbyter
Boccon [403] , Presbyter
Agathus, Presbyter
Achillas, Presbyter
Paulus, Presbyter
Thalelæus, Presbyter
Dionysius, Presbyter, likewise
Deacons
Sarapion [404] , Deacon, likewise
Justus, Deacon, likewise
Didymus, Deacon
Demetrius [405] , Deacon
Maurus [406] , Deacon
Alexander, Deacon
Marcus [407] , Deacon
Comon, Deacon
Tryphon [408] , Deacon
Ammonius [409] , Deacon
Didymus, Deacon
Ptollarion [410] , Deacon
Seras, Deacon
Gaius [411] , Deacon
Hierax [412] , Deacon
Marcus, Deacon
Theonas, Deacon
Sarmaton, Deacon
Carpon, Deacon
Zoilus, Deacon, likewise __________________________________________________________________
[352] Cf. Apol. Ar. §24.
[353] (Eph. iv. 4.) St. Alexander in Theod. begins his Epistle to his namesake of Constantinople with some moral reflections, concerning ambition and avarice. Athan. indeed uses a similar introduction to his Ep. Æg., but it is not addressed to an individual.
[354] paranomoi. vid. Hist. Ar. §71 init. 75 fin. 79.
[355] prodromon 'Antichristou. vid Orat. i. 7. Vit. Ant. 69. note on de Syn. 5.
[356] kai eboulomen men siope....epeide de....ananken eschon. vid. Apol. contra. Ar. §1 init, de Decr. § 2. Orat. i. 23 init. Orat. ii. init. Orat. iii. 1. ad Serap. i. 1. 16. ii. 1 init. iii. init. iv. 8 init. Letters 52. 2, 59. 3 fin. 61. 1. contra Apollin. i. 1 init.
[357] rhupose, and infr. rhupon. vid Hist. Ar. §3. §80, de Decr. §2. Ep. Æg. 11 fin. Orat. i. 10.
[358] akoas, and infr. akoas buei. vid. Ep. Æg. §13. Orat. i. §7. Hist. Ar. §56.
[359] akeraion. Apol. contr. Ar. §1. Ep. Æg. §18. Letters 59. 1, 60. 2 fin. Orat. i. 8.
[360] epophthalmisas also used of Eusebius Apol. contr. Ar. §6. Hist. Ar. §7.
[361] rhematia. vid. de Decr. §8, 18. Orat. i. 10. de Sent. §23 init S. Dionysius also uses it. Ibid. §18.
[362] kakonoian. vid Hist. Ar. §75. de Decr. §1. et al.
[363] ouk aei pater. This enumeration of Arius's tenets, and particularly the mention of the first, corresponds to de Decr. §6. Ep. Æg. §12. as being taken from the Thalia. Orat. i. §5. and far less with Alex. ap. Theod. p. 731, 2. vid. also Sent. D. §16. katachrestikos, which is found here, occurs de Decr. §6.
[364] ousian; ousia tou logou or tou huiou is a familiar expression with Athan. e.g. Orat. i. 45, ii. 7, 9, 11, 12, 13, 18 init. 22, 47 init. 56 init. &c., for which Alex. in Theod. uses the word hupostasis e.g. ten idiotropon autou hupostasin; tes hupostaseos autou aperiergastou; neoteran tes hupostaseos genesin; he tou uonogenous anekdiegetos hupostasis; ten tou logou upostasin
[365] (2 Cor. vi. 14.) koinonia photi. This is quoted Alex. ap. Theod. H. E. i. 3. p. 738; by S. Athan. in Letter 47. It seems to have been a received text in the controversy, as the Sardican Council uses it, Apol Ar. 49, and S. Athan. seems to put it into the mouth of St. Anthony, Vit. Ant. 69.
[366] tis gar ekouse. Ep. Æg. §7 init. Letter 59. §2 init. Orat. i. 8. Apol. contr. Ar. 85 init. Hist. Ar. §46 init. §73 init. §74 init. ad Serap. iv. 2 init.
[367] John i. 1.
[368] John i. 3, 14.
[369] Ps. xlv. 1. and cx. 3.
[370] Heb. i. 3.
[371] (Joh. xiv. 9, 10; x. 29.) On the concurrence of these three texts in Athan. (though other writers use them too, and Alex. ap. Theod. has two of them), vid. note on Orat. i. 34.
[372] alogon kai asophon ton theon. de Decr. §15. Orat. i. §19. Ap. Fug. 27. note, notes on Or. i. 19, de. Decr. 15, note 6.
[373] (Joh. xiv. 9, 10; x. 29.) On the concurrence of these three texts in Athan. (though other writers use them too, and Alex. ap. Theod. has two of them), vid. note on Orat. i. 34.
[374] (Joh. xiv. 9, 10; x. 29.) On the concurrence of these three texts in Athan. (though other writers use them too, and Alex. ap. Theod. has two of them), vid. note on Orat. i. 34.
[375] (Mal. iii. 6.) This text is thus applied by Athan. Orat. i. 30. ii. 10. In the first of these passages he uses the same apology, nearly in the same words, which is contained in the text.
[376] Heb. xiii. 8; ii. 10.
[377] John x. 15.
[378] chamaileontes. vid. de Decr. §1. Hist. Ar. §79.
[379] Prov. xviii. 3 [cf. Orat. iii. 1, c. Gent. 8. 4, &c.]
[380] 2 Tim. ii. 17.
[381] Luke xxi. 8.
[382] (1 Tim. iv. 1.) Into this text which Athan. also applies to the Arians (cf. note on Or. i. 9.), Athan. also introduces, like Alexander here, the word hugianouses, e.g. Ep. Æg. §20, Orat. i. 8 fin. de Decr. 3, Hist. Arian. §78 init. &c. It is quoted without the word by Origen contr. Cels. v. 64, but with hugious in Matth. t. xiv. 16. Epiphan, has hugiainouses didaskalias, Hær. 78. 2. hugious did. ibid. 23. p. 1055.
[383] propeteusainto. vid. de Decr. §2.
[384] phthoreas ton psuchon. but S. Alex. in Theod. uses the compound word phthoropoios. p. 731. Other compound or recondite words (to say nothing of the construction of sentences) found in S. Alexander's Letter in Theod., and unlike the style of the Circular under review, are such as he philarchos kai philarguros prothesis; christemporian; phrenoblabous; idiotropon; homostoichois sullabais; theegorous apostolous; & 135;ntidiastolen tes patrikes maieuseos; melancholiken; philotheos sapheneia anosiourgias; phlenaphon muthon. Instances of theological language in S. Alex. to which the Letter in the text contains no resemblance are achorista pragmata duo; ho hui& 232;s ten kata panta homoioteta autou ek phuseos apomaxamenos; di' esoptrou akelidotou kai empsuchou theias eikonos; mesiteuousa phusis monogenes; tas te hupostasei duo phuseis
[385] 2 John 10.
[386] Vid. Presbyters, Apol. Ar. 73.
[387] Vid. Presbyters, Apol. Ar. 73.
[388] Vid. Presbyters, Apol. Ar. 73.
[389] Vid. Presbyters, Apol. Ar. 73.
[390] Vid. Presbyters, Apol. Ar. 73.
[391] Vid. Presbyters, ib.
[392] Vid. Presbyters, ib.
[393] Vid. Presbyters, ib.
[394] Vid. Presbyters, ib.
[395] Vid. Presbyters, ib.
[396] Vid. Presbyters, ib.
[397] Vid. Presbyters, ib.
[398] Apol. Ar. 75.
[399] Apol. Ar. 75.
[400] Apol. Ar. 75.
[401] Apol. Ar. 75.
[402] Heraclius? ib.
[403] Apol. Ar. 75.
[404] Ib.
[405] Ib.
[406] Ib.
[407] Ib.
[408] Ib.
[409] Ib.
[410] Ib.
[411] Ib.
[412] Ib. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Epistola Eusebii.
------------------------
Introduction.
The letter which follows, addressed by Eusebius of Cæsarea to his flock, upon the conclusion of the great Synod, is appended by Athanasius to his defense of the Definition of Nicæa (de Decretis), written about a.d. 350. It is, however, inserted here in the present edition, partly in accordance with the chronological principle of arrangement, but principally because it forms the fittest introduction to the series of treatises which follow. Along with the account of Eustathius in Theodoret H. E. i. 8, and that given by Eusebius, in his life of Constantine (vol. I. pp. 521-526 of this series), it forms one of our most important authorities for the proceedings at Nicæa, and the only account we have dating from the actual year of the Council. It is especially important as containing the draft Creed submitted to the Council by Eusebius, and the revised form of it eventually adopted. The former, which contained (in the first paragraph of §3, from We believe' down to One Holy Ghost') the traditional Creed of the Church of Cæsarea, which Eusebius had professed at his baptism, was laid by him before the Council, and approved: but at the Emperor's suggestion the single word homoousion was inserted (not by the majority' as distinct from the Emperor, as stated by Swainson, Creeds, p. 65). This modification opened the door for others, which eventually resulted in the Creed given in §4. It is not altogether easy to reconcile this account with that given by Athanasius himself (below de Decr. 19, 20, Ad Afr. 5), according to which the Council were led to insist on the insertion of the homoousion by the evasions with which the Arian bishops met every other test that was propounded, signalling to each other by nods winks and gestures, as each Scriptural attribute of the Son was enumerated, that this also could be accepted in an Arian sense. Probably (see Prolegg. ch. ii. §3 (1) note 5) the discussions thus described came first (cp. Sozom. i. 17): then Eusebius of Nicomedia presented the document which was indignantly torn up: then came the Confession of Eusebius of Cæsarea, which was adopted as the basis of the Creed finally issued. In any case the Emperor's suggestion of the insertion of homoousion must have been prompted by others, most likely by Hosius (Hist. Ar. 42, Cf. Hort, Two Dissertations, p. 58. Gwatkin, Studies, pp. 44, 45, puts the scene described by Athanasius during the debate upon the final adoption of the Creed).
The translation which follows, with the notes and Excursus A, is the unaltered work of Newman (Library of the Fathers, vol. 8, pp. 59-72), except that the word essence' (for ousia), as throughout this volume, has been substituted for substance,' and the translation of genetos by generate' altered wherever it occurs, as explained in the preface. Additions by the editor of this volume are here as elsewhere included in square brackets. __________________________________________________________________
Council of Nicæa.
------------------------
Letter of Eusebius of Cæsarea to the people of his Diocese [413] .
1. What was transacted concerning ecclesiastical faith at the Great Council assembled at Nicæa, you have probably learned, Beloved, from other sources, rumour being wont to precede the accurate account of what is doing. But lest in such reports the circumstances of the case have been misrepresented, we have been obliged to transmit to you, first, the formula of faith presented by ourselves, and next, the second, which [the Fathers] put forth with some additions to our words. Our own paper, then, which was read in the presence of our most pious [414] Emperor, and declared to be good and unexceptionable, ran thus:--
2. "As we have received from the Bishops who preceded us, and in our first catechisings, and when we received the Holy Laver, and as we have learned from the divine Scriptures, and as we believed and taught in the presbytery, and in the Episcopate itself, so believing also at the time present, we report to you our faith, and it is this [415] :"--
3. "We believe in One God, the Father Almighty, the Maker of all things visible and invisible. And in One Lord Jesus Christ, the Word of God, God from God, Light from Light, Life from Life, Son Only-begotten, first-born of every creature, before all the ages, begotten from the Father, by Whom also all things were made; Who for our salvation was made flesh, and lived among men, and suffered, and rose again the third day, and ascended to the Father, and will come again in glory to judge the quick and dead. And we believe also in One Holy Ghost:"
"believing each of these to be and to exist, the Father truly Father, and the Son truly Son, and the Holy Ghost truly Holy Ghost, as also our Lord, sending forth His disciples for the preaching, said, "Go teach all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost [416] ." Concerning Whom we confidently affirm that so we hold, and so we think, and so we have held aforetime, and we maintain this faith unto the death, anathematizing every godless heresy. That this we have ever thought from our heart and soul, from the time we recollect ourselves, and now think and say in truth, before God Almighty and our Lord Jesus Christ do we witness, being able by proofs to shew and to convince you, that, even in times past, such has been our belief and preaching."
4. On this faith being publicly put forth by us, no room for contradiction appeared; but our most pious Emperor, before any one else, testified that it comprised most orthodox statements. He confessed moreover that such were his own sentiments, and he advised all present to agree to it, and to subscribe its articles and to assent to them, with the insertion of the single word, One-in-essence, which moreover he interpreted as not in the sense of the affections of bodies, nor as if the Son subsisted from the Father in the way of division, or any severance; for that the immaterial, and intellectual, and incorporeal nature could not be the subject of any corporeal affection, but that it became us to conceive of such things in a divine and ineffable manner. And such were the theological remarks of our most wise and most religious Emperor; but they, with a view [417] to the addition of One in essence, drew up the following formula:--
The Faith dictated in the Council.
"We believe in One God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible:"--
"And in One Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father, Only-begotten, that is, from the essence of the Father; God from God, Light from Light, Very God from Very God, begotten not made, One in essence with the Father, by Whom all things were made, both things in heaven and things in earth; Who for us men and for our salvation came down and was made flesh, was made man, suffered, and rose again the third day, ascended into heaven, and cometh to judge quick and dead."
"And in the Holy Ghost."
"And those who say, Once He was not,' and Before His generation He was not,' and He came to be from nothing,' or those who pretend that the Son of God is Of other subsistence or essence [418] ,' or created' or alterable,' or mutable,' the Catholic Church anathematizes."
5. On their dictating this formula, we did not let it pass without inquiry in what sense they introduced "of the essence of the Father," and "one in essence with the Father." Accordingly questions and explanations took place, and the meaning of the words underwent the scrutiny of reason. And they professed, that the phrase "of the essence" was indicative of the Son's being indeed from the Father, yet without being as if a part of Him. And with this understanding we thought good to assent to the sense of such religious doctrine, teaching, as it did, that the Son was from the Father, not however a part of His essence [419] . On this account we assented to the sense ourselves, without declining even the term "One in essence," peace being the object which we set before us, and stedfastness in the orthodox view.
6. In the same way we also admitted "begotten, not made;" since the Council alleged that "made" was an appellative common to the other creatures which came to be through the Son, to whom the Son had no likeness. Wherefore, say they, He was not a work resembling the things which through Him came to be [420] , but was of an essence which is too high for the level of any work; and which the Divine oracles teach to have been generated from the Father [421] , the mode of generation being inscrutable and incalculable to every originated nature.
7. And so too on examination there are grounds for saying that the Son is "one in essence" with the Father; not in the way of bodies, nor like mortal beings, for He is not such by division of essence, or by severance, no, nor by any affection, or alteration, or changing of the Father's essence and power [422] (since from all such the unoriginate nature of the Father is alien), but because "one in essence with the Father" suggests that the Son of God bears no resemblance to the originated creatures, but that to His Father alone Who begat Him is He in every way assimilated, and that He is not of any other subsistence and essence, but from the Father [423] . To which term also, thus interpreted, it appeared well to assent; since we were aware that even among the ancients, some learned and illustrious Bishops and writers [424] have used the term "one in essence," in their theological teaching concerning the Father and Son.
8. So much then be said concerning the faith which was published; to which all of us assented, not without inquiry, but according to the specified senses, mentioned before the most religious Emperor himself, and justified by the forementioned considerations. And as to the anathematism published by them at the end of the Faith, it did not pain us, because it forbade to use words not in Scripture, from which almost all the confusion and disorder of the Church have come. Since then no divinely inspired Scripture has used the phrases, "out of nothing," and "once He was not," and the rest which follow, there appeared no ground for using or teaching them; to which also we assented as a good decision, since it had not been our custom hitherto to use these terms.
9. Moreover to anathematize "Before His generation He was not," did not seem preposterous, in that it is confessed by all, that the Son of God was before the generation according to the flesh [425] .
10. Nay, our most religious Emperor did at the time prove, in a speech, that He was in being even according to His divine generation which is before all ages, since even before He was generated in energy, He was in virtue [426] with the Father ingenerately, the Father being always Father, as King always, and Saviour always, being all things in virtue, and being always in the same respects and in the same way.
11. This we have been forced to transmit to you, Beloved, as making clear to you the deliberation of our inquiry and assent, and how reasonably we resisted even to the last minute as long as we were offended at statements which differed from our own, but received without contention what no longer pained us, as soon as, on a candid examination of the sense of the words, they appeared to us to coincide with what we ourselves have professed in the faith which we have already published. __________________________________________________________________
[413] This Letter is also found in Socr. H. E. i. 8. Theod. H. E. i. Gelas. Hist. Nic. ii. 34. p. 442. Niceph. Hist. viii. 22.
[414] And so infr. "most pious," §4. "most wise and most religious," ibid. "most religious," §8. §10. Eusebius observes in his Vit. Const. the same tone concerning Constantine, and assigns to him the same office in determining the faith (being as yet unbaptized). E.g. "When there were differences between persons of different countries, as if some common bishop appointed by God, he convened Councils of God's ministers; and not disdaining to be present and to sit amid their conferences," &c. i. 44. When he came into the Nicene Council, "it was," says Eusebius, "as some heavenly Angel of God," iii. 10. alluding to the brilliancy of the imperial purple. He confesses, however, he did not sit down until the Bishops bade him. Again at the same Council, "with pleasant eyes looking serenity itself into them all, collecting himself, and in a quiet and gentle voice" he made an oration to the Fathers upon peace. Constantine had been an instrument in conferring such vast benefits, humanly speaking, on the Christian Body, that it is not wonderful that other writers of the day besides Eusebius should praise him. Hilary speaks of him as "of sacred memory," Fragm. v. init. Athanasius calls him "most pious," Apol. contr. Arian. 9; "of blessed memory," ad Ep. Æg. 18. 19. Epiphanius "most religious and of ever-blessed memory," Hær. 70. 9. Posterity, as was natural, was still more grateful.
[415] "The children of the Church have received from their holy Fathers, that is, the holy Apostles, to guard the faith; and withal to deliver and preach it to their own children....Cease not, faithful and orthodox men, thus to speak, and to teach the like from the divine Scriptures, and to walk, and to catechise, to the confirmation of yourselves and those who hear you; namely, that holy faith of the Catholic Church, as the holy and only Virgin of God received its custody from the holy Apostles of the Lord; and thus, in the case of each of those who are under catechising, who are to approach the Holy Laver, ye ought not only to preach faith to your children in the Lord, but also to teach them expressly, as your common mother teaches, to say: We believe in One God,'" &c. Epiph. Ancor. 119 fin., who thereupon proceeds to give at length the [so-called] Constantinopolitan Creed. And so Athan. speaks of the orthodox faith, as "issuing from Apostolical teaching and the Fathers' traditions, and confirmed by New and Old Testament." Letter 60. 6. init. Cyril Hier. too as "declared by the Church and established from all Scripture." Cat. v. 12. "Let us guard with vigilance what we have received...What then have we received from the Scriptures but altogether this? that God made the world by the Word," &c., &c. Procl. ad Armen. p. 612. "That God, the Word, after the union remained such as He was, &c., so clearly hath divine Scripture, and moreover the doctors of the Churches, and the lights of the world taught us." Theodor. Dial. 3 init. "That it is the tradition of the Fathers is not the whole of our case; for they too followed the meaning of Scripture, starting from the testimonies, which just now we laid before you from Scripture." Basil de Sp. §16. vid. also a remarkable passage in de Synod. §6 fin. infra.
[416] Matt. xxviii. 19.
[417] [Or, taking the addition as their pretext.']
[418] The only clauses of the Creed which admit of any question in their explanation, are the "He was not before His generation," and "of other subsistence or essence." Of these the former shall be reserved for a later part of the volume; the latter is treated of in a note at the end of this Treatise [see Excursus A.].
[419] Eusebius does not commit himself to any positive sense in which the formula "of the essence" is to be interpreted, but only says what it does not mean. His comment on it is "of the Father, but not as a part;" where, what is not negative, instead of being an explanation, is but a recurrence to the original words of Scripture, of which ex ousias itself is the explanation; a curious inversion. Indeed it is very doubtful whether he admitted the ex ousias at all. He says, that the Son is not like the radiance of light so far as this, that the radiance is an inseparable accident of substance, whereas the Son is by the Father's will, kata gnomen kai proairesin, Demonstr. Ev. iv. 3. And though he insists on our Lord being alone, ek theou, yet he means in the sense which Athan. refutes, supr. §6, viz. that He alone was created immediately from God, vid. next note 6. It is true that he plainly condemns with the Nicene Creed the ex ouk onton of the Arians, "out of nothing," but an evasion was at hand here also; for he not only adds, according to Arian custom, "as others" (vid. note following) but he has a theory that no being whatever is out of nothing, for non-existence cannot be the cause of existence. God, he says, "proposed His own will and power as a sort of matter and substance' of the production and constitution of the universe, so that it is not reasonably said, that any thing is out of nothing. For what is from nothing cannot be at all. How indeed can nothing be to any thing a cause of being? but all that is, takes its being from One who only is, and was, who also said I am that I am.'" Demonstr. Ev. iv. 1. Again, speaking of our Lord, "He who was from nothing would not truly be Son of God, as neither is any other of things generate.'" Eccl. Theol. i. 9 fin. [see, however, D.C.B. ii. p. 347].
[420] Eusebius distinctly asserts, Dem. Ev. iv. 2, that our Lord is a creature. "This offspring," he says, "did He first produce Himself from Himself as a foundation of those things which should succeed, the perfect handy-work, demiourgema, of the Perfect, and the wise structure, architektonema, of the Wise," &c. Accordingly his avowal in the text is but the ordinary Arian evasion of "an offspring, not as the offsprings." E.g. "It is not without peril to say recklessly that the Son is originate out of nothing similarly to the other things originate.'" Dem. Ev. v. 1. vid. also Eccl. Theol. i. 9. iii. 2. And he considers our Lord the only Son by a divine provision similar to that by which there is only one sun in the firmament, as a centre of light and heat. "Such an Only-begotten Son, the excellent artificer of His will and operator, did the supreme God and Father of that operator Himself first of all beget, through Him and in Him giving subsistence to the operative words (ideas or causes) of things which were to be, and casting in Him the seeds of the constitution and governance of the universe;...Therefore the Father being One, it behoved the Son to be one also; but should any one object that He constituted not more, it is fitting for such a one to complain that He constituted not more suns, and moons, and worlds, and ten thousand other things." Dem. Ev. iv. 5 fin. vid. also iv. 6.
[421] Eusebius does not say that our Lord is "from the essence of" the Father, but has "an essence from" the Father. This is the Semi-arian doctrine, which, whether confessing the Son from the essence of the Father or not, implied that His essence was not the Father's essence, but a second essence. The same doctrine is found in the Semi-arians of Ancyra, though they seem to have confessed "of the essence." And this is one object of the homoousion, to hinder the confession "of the essence" from implying a second essence, which was not obviated or was even encouraged by the homoiousion. The Council of Ancyra, quoting the text "As the Father hath life in Himself so," &c., says, "since the life which is in the Father means essence, and the life of the Only-begotten which is begotten from the Father means essence, the word so' implies a likeness of essence to essence." Hær. 73. 10 fin. Hence Eusebius does not scruple to speak of "two essences," and other writers of three essences, contr. Marc. i. 4. p. 25. He calls our Lord "a second essence." Dem. Ev. vi. Præf. Præp. Ev. vii. 12. p. 320, and the Holy Spirit a third essence, ibid. 15. p. 325. This it was that made the Latins so suspicions of three hypostases, because the Semi-arians, as well as they, understood hupostasis to mean essence [but this is dubious]. Eusebius in like manner [after Origen] calls our Lord "another God," "a second God." Dem. Ev. v. 4. p. 226. v. fin. "second Lord." ibid. 3 init. 6. fin. "second cause." Dem. Ev. v. Præf. vid. also heteron echousa to kat' ousian hupokeimenon, Dem. Ev. v. 1. p. 215. kath' heauton ousiomenos. ibid. iv. 3. And so heteros para ton patera. Eccl. Theol. i. 60. p. 90. and zoen idian echon. ibid. and zon kai huphestos kai tou patros huparchon ektos. ibid. Hence Athan. insists so much, as in de Decr., on our Lord not being external to the Father. Once admit that He is in the Father, and we may call the Father, the only God, for He is included. And so again as to the Ingenerate, the term does not exclude the Son, for He is generate in the Ingenerate.
[422] This was the point on which the Semi-arians made their principal stand against the "one in essence," though they also objected to it as being of a Sabellian character. E.g. Euseb. Demonstr. iv. 3. p. 148. d.p. 149. a, b. v. 1. pp. 213-215. contr. Marcell. i. 4. p. 20. Eccl. Theol. i. 12. p. 73. in laud. Const. p. 525. de Fide i. ap. Sirmond. tom. i. p. 7. de Fide ii. p. 16, and apparently his de Incorporali. And so the Semi-arians at Ancyra Epiph. Hær. 73. 11. p. 858. a, b. And so Meletius ibid. p. 878 fin. and Cyril Hier. Catech. vii. 5. xi. 18. though of course Catholics would speak as strongly on this point as their opponents.
[423] Here again Eusebius does not say "from the Father's essence," but "not from other essence, but from the Father." According to note 5, supr. he considered the will of God a certain matter or substance. Montfaucon in loc. and Collect. Nov. Præf. p. xxvi. translates without warrant "ex Patris hypostasi et substantiâ." As to the Son's perfect likeness to the Father which he seems here to grant, it has been already shewn, de Decr. 20, note 9, how the admission was evaded. The likeness was but a likeness after its own kind, as a picture is of the original. "Though our Saviour Himself teaches," he says, "that the Father is the only true God,' still let me not be backward to confess Him also the true God, as in an image,' and that possessed; so that the addition of only' may belong to the Father alone as archetype of the image....As, supposing one king held sway, and his image was carried about into every quarter, no one in his right mind would say that those who held sway were two, but one who was honoured through his image; in like manner," &c. de Eccles. Theol. ii. 23, vid. ibid. 7.
[424] Athanasius in like manner, ad Afros. 6. speaks of "testimony of ancient Bishops about 130 years since;" and in de Syn. §43. of "long before" the Council of Antioch, a.d. 269. viz. the Dionysii, &c. vid. note on de Decr. 20.
[425] Socrates, who advocates the orthodoxy of Eusebius, leaves out this heterodox paragraph [§§9, 10] altogether. Bull, however, Defens. F. N. iii. 9. n. 3. thinks it an interpolation. Athanasius alludes to the early part of the clause, supr. §4. and de Syn. §13. where he says, that Eusebius implied that the Arians denied even our Lord's existence before His incarnation. As to Constantine, he seems to have been used on these occasions by the court Bishops who were his instructors, and who made him the organ of their own heresy. Upon the first rise of the Arian controversy he addressed a sort of pastoral letter to Alexander and Arius, telling them that they were disputing about a question of words, and recommending them to drop it and live together peaceably. Euseb. vit. C. ii. 69. 72.
[426] [Rather potentially' both here and three lines below.] Theognis, [one] of the Nicene Arians, says the same, according to Philostorgius; viz. "that God even before He begat the Son was a Father, as having the power, dunamis, of begetting." Hist. ii. 15. Though Bull pronounces such doctrine to be heretical, as of course it is, still he considers that it expresses what otherwise stated may be orthodox, viz. the doctrine that our Lord was called the Word from eternity, and the Son upon His descent to create the worlds. And he acutely and ingeniously interprets the Arian formula, "Before His generation He was not," to support this view. Another opportunity will occur of giving an opinion upon this question; meanwhile, the parallel on which the heretical doctrine is supported in the text is answered by many writers, on the ground that Father and Son are words of nature, but Creator, King, Saviour, are external, or what may be called accidental to Him. Thus Athanasius observes, that Father actually implies Son, but Creator only the power to create, as expressing a dunamis; "a maker is before his works, but he who says Father, forthwith in Father implies the existence of the Son." Orat. iii. §6. vid. Cyril too, Dial. ii. p. 459. Pseudo-Basil, contr. Eun. iv. 1. fin. On the other hand Origen argues the reverse way, that since God is eternally a Father, therefore eternally Creator also: "As one cannot be father without a son, nor lord without possession, so neither can God be called All-powerful, without subjects of His power;" de Princ. i. 2. n. 10. hence he argued for the eternity of matter. __________________________________________________________________
Excursus [427] A.
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On the meaning of the phrase ex heteras hupostaseos e ousias in the Nicene Anathema.
Bishop Bull has made it a question, whether these words in the Nicene Creed mean the same thing, or are to be considered distinct from each other, advocating himself the latter opinion against Petavius. The history of the word hupostasis is of too intricate a character to enter upon here; but a few words may be in place in illustration of its sense as it occurs in the Creed, and with reference to the view taken of it by the great divine, who has commented on it.
Bishop Bull, as I understood him (Defens. F. N. ii. 9. §11.), considers that two distinct ideas are intended by the words ousia and hupostasis, in the clause ex heteras hupostaseos e ousias; as if the Creed condemned those who said that the Son was not from the Father's essence, and those also who said that He was not from the Father's hypostasis or subsistence; as if a man might hold at least one of the two without holding the other. And in matter of fact, he does profess to assign two parties of heretics, who denied this or that proposition respectively.
Petavius, on the other hand (de Trin. iv. I.), considers that the word hupostasis is but another term for ousia, and that not two but one proposition is contained in the clause in question; the word hupostasis not being publicly recognised in its present meaning till the Council of Alexandria, in the year 362. Coustant. (Epist. Pont. Rom. pp. 274. 290. 462.) Tillemont (Memoires S. Denys. d'Alex. §15.), Huet (Origenian. ii. 2. n. 3.), Thomassin (de Incarn. iii. 1.), and Morinus (de Sacr. Ordin. ii. 6.), take substantially the same view; while Maranus (Præf. ad S. Basil. §1. tom. 3. ed. Bened.), Natalis Alexander, Hist. (Sæc. 1. Diss. 22. circ. fin.), Burton (Testimonies to the Trinity, No. 71), and [Routh] (Reliqu. Sacr. vol. iii. p. 189.), differ from Petavius, if they do not agree with Bull.
Bull's principal argument lies in the strong fact, that S. Basil expressly asserts, that the Council did mean the two terms to be distinct, and this when he is answering the Sabellians, who grounded their assertion that there was but one hupostasis, on the alleged fact that the Council had used ousia and hupostasis indifferently.
Bull refers also to Anastasius Hodeg. 21. (22. p. 343.?) who says, that the Nicene Fathers defined that there are three hypostases or Persons in the Holy Trinity. Petavius considers that he derived this from Gelasius of Cyzicus, a writer of no great authority; but, as the passage occurs in Anastasius, they are the words of Andrew of Samosata. But what is more important, elsewhere Anastasius quotes a passage from Amphilochius to something of the same effect. c. 10. p. 164. He states it besides himself, c. 9. p. 150. and c. 24. p. 364. In addition, Bull quotes passages from S. Dionysius of Alexandria, S. Dionysius of Rome (vid. below, de Decr. 25-27 and notes), Eusebius of Cæsarea, and afterwards Origen; in all of which three hypostases being spoken of, whereas antiquity, early or late, never speaks in the same way of three ousiai, it is plain that hupostasis then conveyed an idea which ousia did not. To these may be added a passage in Athanasius, in Illud, Omnia, §6.
Bishop Bull adds the following explanation of the two words as they occur in the Creed: he conceives that the one is intended to reach the Arians, and the other the Semi-arians; that the Semi-arians did actually make a distinction between ousia and hupostasis, admitting in a certain sense that the Son was from the hupostasis of the Father, while they denied that He was from His ousia. They then are anathematized in the words ex heteras ousias; and, as he would seem to mean, the Arians in the ex heteras hupostaseos.
Now I hope it will not be considered any disrespect to so great an authority, if I differ from this view, and express my reasons for doing so.
1. First then, supposing his account of the Semi-arian doctrine ever so free from objection, granting that they denied the ex ousias, and admitted the ex hupostaseos, yet who are they who, according to his view, denied the ex hupostaseos, or said that the Son was ex heteras hupostaseos? he does not assign any parties, though he implies the Arians. Yet though, as is notorious, they denied the ex ousias, there is nothing to shew that they or any other party of Arians maintained specifically that the Son was not [from] the hupostasis, or subsistence of the Father. That is, the hypothesis supported by this eminent divine does not answer the very question which it raises. It professes that those who denied the ex hupostaseos, were not the same as those who denied the ex ousias; yet it fails to tell us who did deny the ex hupostaseos, in a sense distinct from ex ousias.
2. Next, his only proof that the Semi-arians did hold the ex hupostaseos as distinct from the ex ousias, lies in the circumstance, that the three (commonly called) Semi-arian confessions of a.d. 341, 344, 351, known as Mark's of Arethusa [i.e. the fourth Antiochene'], the Macrostich, and the first Sirmian, anathematize those who say that the Son is ex heteras hupostaseos, not anathematizing the kai me ek tou theou, which he thence infers was their own belief. Another explanation of this passage will be offered presently; meanwhile, it is well to observe, that Hilary, in speaking of the confession of Philippopolis which was taken from Mark's, far from suspecting that the clause involved an omission, defends it on the ground of its retaining the Anathema (de Synod. 35.), thus implying that ex heteras hupostaseos kai me ek tou theou was equivalent to ex heteras hupostaseos e ousias. And it may be added, that Athanasius in like manner, in his account of the Nicene Council (de Decret. §20. fin.), when repeating its anathema, drops the ex hupostaseos altogether, and reads tous de legontas ex ouk onton,....e poiema, e ex heteras ousias, toutous anathematizei k. t. l.
3. Further, Bull gives us no proof whatever that the Semi-arians did deny the ex ousias; while it is very clear, if it is right to contradict so great a writer, that most of them did not deny it. He says that it is "certissimum" that the heretics who wrote the three confessions above noticed, that is, the Semi-arians, "nunquam fassos, nunquam fassuros fuisse filium ex ousias, e substantia, Patris progenitum." His reason for not offering any proof for this naturally is, that Petavius, with whom he is in controversy, maintains it also, and he makes use of Petavius's admission against himself. Now it may seem bold in a writer of this day to differ not only with Bull, but with Petavius; but the reason for doing so is simple; it is because Athanasius asserts the very thing which Petavius and Bull deny, and Petavius admits that he does; that is, he allows it by implication when he complains that Athanasius had not got to the bottom of the doctrine of the Semi-arians, and thought too favourably of them. "Horum Semi-arianorum, quorum antesignanus fuit Basilius Ancyræ episcopus, prorsus obscura fuit hæresis.....ut ne ipse quidem Athanasius satis illam exploratam habuerit." de Trin. i. x. §7.
Now S. Athanasius's words are most distinct and express; "As to those who receive all else that was defined at Nicæa, but dispute about the One in essence' only, we must not feel as towards enemies....for, as confessing that the Son is from the essence of the Father and not of other subsistence, ek tes ousias tou patros einai, kai me ex heteras hupostaseos ton huion,...they are not far from receiving the phrase One in essence' also. Such is Basil of Ancyra, in what he has written about the faith" de Syn. §41;--a passage, not only express for the matter in hand, but remarkable too, as apparently using hupostasis and ousia as synonymous, which is the main point which Bull denies. What follows in Athanasius is equally to the purpose: he urges the Semi-arians to accept the homoousion, in consistency, because they maintain the ex ousias and the homoiousion would not sufficiently secure it.
Moreover Hilary, while defending the Semi-arian decrees of Ancyra or Sirmium, says expressly, that according to them, among other truths, "non creatura est Filius genitus, sed a natura Patris indiscreta substantia est." de Syn. 27.
Petavius, however, in the passage to which Bull appeals, refers in proof of this view of Semi-arianism, to those Ancyrene documents, which Epiphanius has preserved, Hær. 73. and which he considers to shew, that according to the Semi-arians the Son was not ex ousias tou patros. He says, that it is plain from their own explanations that they considered our Lord to be, not ek tes ousias, but ek tes homoiotetos (he does not say hupostaseos, as Bull wishes) tou patros and that, energei& 139; gennetike, which was one of the divine energeiai, as creation, he ktistike, was another. Yet surely Epiphanius does not bear out this representation better than Athanasius; since the Semi-arians, whose words he reports, speak of "hui& 232;n homoion kai kat' ousian ek tou patros, p. 825 b, hos he sophia tou sophou hui& 232;s, ousia ousias, p. 853 c, kat' ousian hui& 232;n tou Theou kai patros, p. 854 c, exousi& 139; homou kai ousi& 139; patros monogenous huiou. p. 858 d, besides the strong word gnesios, ibid. and Athan. de Syn. §41. not to insist on other of their statements.
The same fact is brought before us even in a more striking way in the conference at Constantinople, a.d. 360, before Constantius, between the Anomoeans and Semi-arians, where the latter, according to Theodoret, shew no unwillingness to acknowledge even the homoousion, because they acknowledge the ex ousias. When the Anomoeans wished the former condemned, Silvanus of Tarsus said, "If God the Word be not out of nothing, nor a creature, nor of other essence, ousias, therefore is He one in essence, homoousios, with God who begot Him, as God from God, and Light from Light, and He has the same nature with His Father." H. E. ii. 23. Here again it is observable, as in the passage from Athanasius above, that, while apparently reciting the Nicene Anathema, he omits ex heteras hupostaseos, as if it were superfluous to mention a synonym.
At the same time there certainly is reason to suspect that the Semi-arians approximated towards orthodoxy as time went on; and perhaps it is hardly fair to determine what they held at Nicæa by their statements at Ancyra, though to the latter Petavius appeals. Several of the most eminent among them, as Meletius, Cyril, and Eusebius of Samosata conformed soon after; on the other hand in Eusebius, who is their representative at Nicæa, it will perhaps be difficult to find a clear admission of the ex ousias. But at any rate he does not maintain the ex hupostaseos, which Bull's theory requires.
On various grounds then, because the Semi-arians as a body did not deny the ex ousias, nor confess the ex hupostaseos, nor the Arians deny it, there is reason for declining Bishop Bull's explanation of these words as they occur in the Creed; and now let us turn to the consideration of the authorities on which that explanation rests.
As to Gelasius, Bull himself does not insist upon his testimony, and Anastasius [about 700 a.d.] is too late to be of authority. The passage indeed which he quotes from Amphilochius is important, but as he was a friend of S. Basil, perhaps it does not very much increase the weight of S. Basil's more distinct and detailed testimony to the same point, and no one can say that that weight is inconsiderable.
Yet there is evidence the other way which overbalances it. Bull, who complains of Petavius's rejection of S. Basil's testimony concerning a Council which was held before his birth, cannot maintain his own explanation of its Creed without rejecting Athanasius's testimony respecting the doctrine of his contemporaries, the Semi-arians; and moreover the more direct evidence, as we shall see, of the Council of Alexandria, a.d. 362, S. Jerome, Basil of Ancyra, and Socrates.
First, however, no better comment upon the sense of the Council can be required than the incidental language of Athanasius and others, who in a foregoing extract exchanges ousia for hupostasis in a way which is natural only on the supposition that he used them as synonyms. Elsewhere, as we have seen, he omits the word e hupostaseos in the Nicene Anathema, while Hilary considers the Anathema sufficient with that omission.
In like manner Hilary expressly translates the clause in the Creed by ex altera substantia vel essentia. Fragm. ii. 27. And somewhat in the same way Eusebius says in his letter, ex heteras tinos hupostaseos te kai ousias.
But further, Athanasius says expressly, ad Afros,--"Hypostasis is essence, ousia, and means nothing else than simply being, which Jeremiah calls existence when he says," &c. §4. It is true, he elsewhere speaks of three Hypostases, but this only shews that he attached no fixed sense to the word. [Rather, he abandons the latter usage in his middle and later writings.] This is just what I would maintain; its sense must be determined by the context; and, whereas it always stands in all Catholic writers for the Una Res (as the 4th Lateran speaks), which ousia denotes, when Athanasius says, "three hypostases," he takes the word to mean ousia in that particular sense in which it is three, and when he makes it synonymous with ousia, he uses it to signify Almighty God in that sense in which He is one.
Leaving Athanasius, we have the following evidence concerning the history of the word hupostasis. S. Jerome says, "The whole school of secular learning understanding nothing else by hypostasis than usia, essence," Ep. xv. 4, where, speaking of the Three Hypostases he uses the strong language, "If you desire it, then be a new faith framed after the Nicene, and let the orthodox confess in terms like the Arian."
In like manner, Basil of Ancyra, George, and the other Semi-arians, say distinctly, "This hypostasis our Fathers called essence," ousia. Epiph. Hær. 74. 12. fin.; in accordance with which is the unauthorized addition to the Sardican Epistle, "hupostasin, hen autoi hoi hairetikoi ousian prosagoreuousi." Theod. H. E. ii. 6.
If it be said that Jerome from his Roman connection, and Basil and George as Semi-arians, would be led by their respective theologies for distinct reasons thus to speak, it is true, and may have led them to too broad a statement of the fact; but then on the other hand it was in accordance also with the theology of S. Basil, so strenuous a defender of the formula of the Three Hypostases, to suppose that the Nicene Fathers meant to distinguish hupostasis from ousia in their anathema.
Again, Socrates informs us that, though there was some dispute about hypostasis at Alexandria shortly before the Nicene Council, yet the Council itself "devoted not a word to the question," H. E. iii. 7.; which hardly consists with its having intended to rule that ex heteras hupostaseos was distinct from ex heteras ousias.
And in like manner the Council of Alexandria, a.d. 362, in deciding that the sense of Hypostasis was an open question, not only from the very nature of the case goes on the supposition that the Nicene Council had not closed it, but says so in words again and again in its Synodal Letter. If the Nicene Council had already used "hypostasis" in its present sense, what remained to Athanasius at Alexandria but to submit to it?
Indeed the history of this Council is perhaps the strongest argument against the supposed discrimination of the two terms by the Council of Nicæa. Bull can only meet it by considering that an innovation upon the "veterem vocabuli usum" began at the date of the Council of Sardica, though Socrates mentions the dispute as existing at Alexandria before the Nicene Council, H. E. iii. 4. 5. while the supposititious confession of Sardica professes to have received the doctrine of the one hypostasis by tradition as Catholic.
Nor is the use of the word in earlier times inconsistent with these testimonies; though it occurs so seldom, in spite of its being a word of S. Paul [i.e. Heb. i. 3], that testimony is our principal evidence. Socrates' remarks deserve to be quoted; "Those among the Greeks who have treated of the Greek philosophy, have defined essence, ousia, in many ways, but they had made no mention at all of hypostasis. Irenæus the Grammarian, in his alphabetical Atticist, even calls the term barbarous; because it is not used by any of the ancients, and if anywhere found, it does not mean what it is now taken for. Thus in the Phoenix of Sophocles it means an ambush;' but in Menander, preserves,' as if one were to call the wine-lees in a cask hypostasis.' However it must be observed, that, in spite of the old philosophers being silent about the term, the more modern continually use it for essence, ousias, H. E. iii. 7. The word principally occurs in Origen among Ante-Nicene writers, and he, it must be confessed uses it, as far as the context decides its sense, to mean subsistence or person. In other words, it was the word of a certain school in the Church, which afterwards was accepted by the Church; but this proves nothing about the sense in which it was used at Nicæa. The three Hypostases are spoken of by Origen, his pupil Dionysius, as afterwards by Eusebius of Cæsarea (though he may notwithstanding have considered hypostasis synonymous with essence), and Athanasius (Origen in Joan. ii. 6. Dionys. ap. Basil de Sp. S. n. 72. Euseb. ap. Socr. i. 23. Athan. in Illud Omnia, &c. 6); and the Two Hypostases of the Father and the Son, by Origen, Ammonius, and Alexander (Origen c. Cels. viii. 2. Ammon. ap. Caten. in Joan. x. 30. Alex. ap. Theod. i. 3. p. 740). As to the passage in which two hypostases are spoken of in Dionysius' letter to Paul of Samosata, that letter certainly is not genuine, as might be shewn on a fitting occasion, though it is acknowledged by very great authorities.
I confess that to my mind there is an antecedent probability that the view which has here been followed is correct. Judging by the general history of doctrine, one should not expect that the formal ecclesiastical meaning of the word should have obtained everywhere so early. Nothing is more certain than that the doctrines themselves of the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation were developed, or, to speak more definitely, that the propositions containing them were acknowledged, from the earliest times; but the particular terms which now belong to them are most uniformly of a later date. Ideas were brought out, but technical phrases did not obtain. Not that these phrases did not exist, but either not as technical, or in use in a particular School or Church, or with a particular writer, or as hapax legomena, as words discussed, nay resisted, perhaps used by some local Council, and then at length accepted generally from their obvious propriety. Thus the words of the Schools pass into the service of the Catholic Church. Instead then of the word hupostasis being, as Maran says, received in the East "summo consensu," from the date of Noetus or at least Sabellius, or of Bull's opinion "apud Catholicos Dionysii ætate ratum et fixum illud fuisse, tres esse in divinis hypostases," I would consider that the present use of the word was in the first instance Alexandrian, and that it was little more than Alexandrian till the middle of the fourth century.
Lastly, it comes to be considered how the two words are to be accounted for in the Creed, if they have not distinct senses. Coustant supposes that ex ousias was added to explain ex hupostaseos, lest the latter should be taken in a Sabellian sense. On which we may perhaps remark besides, that the reason why hupostasis was selected as the principal term was, that it was agreeable to the Westerns as well as admitted by the Orientals. Thus, by way of contrast, we find the Second General Council, at which there were no Latins, speaking of Three Hypostases, and Pope Damasus and the Roman Council speaking a few years sooner of the Holy Ghost as of the same hypostasis and usia with the Father and the Son. Theod. H. E. ii. 17. Many things go to make this probable. For instance, Coustant acutely points out, though Maran and the President of Magdalen [Routh, Rel. Sac. iii. 383] dissent, that this probably was a point of dispute between the two Dionysii; the Bishop of Alexandria asserting, as we know he did assert, Three Hypostases, the Bishop of Rome protesting in reply against "Three partitive Hypostases," as involving tritheism, and his namesake rejoining, "If because there are Three Hypostases, any say that they are partitive, three there are, though they like it not." Again, the influence of the West shews itself in the language of Athanasius, who, contrary to the custom of his Church, of Origen, Dionysius, and his own immediate patron and master Alexander, so varies his own use of the word, as to make his writings almost an example of that freedom which he vindicated in the Council of Alexandria. Again, when Hosius went to Alexandria before the Nicene Council, and a dispute arose with reference to Sabellianism about the words hupostasis and ousia, what is this too, but the collision of East and West? It should be remembered moreover that Hosius presided at Nicæa, a Latin in an Eastern city; and again at Sardica, where, though the decree in favour of the One Hypostasis was not passed, it seems clear from the history that he was resisting persons with whom in great measure he agreed. Further, the same consideration accounts for the omission of the ex ousias from the Confession of Mark and the two which follow, on which Bull relies in proof that the Semi-arians rejected this formula. These three Semi-arian Creeds, and these only, were addressed to the Latins, and therefore their compilers naturally select that synonym which was most pleasing to them, as the means of securing a hearing; just as Athanasius on the other hand in his de Decretis, writing to the Greeks, omits hupostaseos and writes ousias. __________________________________________________________________
[427] [This excursus supports the view taken above, Prolegg. ch. ii. §3 (2) b; the student should supplement Newman's discussion by Zahn Marcellus and Harnack Dogmengesch. as quoted at the head of that section of the Prolegg. The word Semi-arian' is used in a somewhat inexact sense in this excursus, see Prolegg. ch. ii. §3 (2) c, and §8 (2) c.] __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Introduction to Expositio Fidei.
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The date of this highly interesting document is quite uncertain, but there is every ground for placing it earlier than the explicitly anti-Arian treatises. Firstly, the absence of any express reference to the controversy against Arians, while yet it is clearly in view in §§3 and 4, which lay down the rule afterwards consistently adopted by Athanasius with regard to texts which speak of the Saviour as created. Secondly, the untroubled use of homoios (§1, note 4) to express the Son's relation to the Father. Thirdly, the close affinity of this Statement to the Sermo Major de Fide which in its turn has very close points of contact with the pre-Arian treatises. But see Prolegg. ch. iii. §1 (37).
If we are to hazard a conjecture, we may see in this "ekthesis" a statement of faith published by Athanasius upon his accession to the Episcopate, a.d. 328. The statement proper (Hahn §119) consists of §1. §§2-4 are an explanatory comment insisting on the distinct Existence of the Son, and on His essential uncreatedness.
The translation which follows has been carefully compared with one made by the late Prof. Swainson in his work on the Creeds, pp. 73-76. Dr. Swainson there refers to a former imperfect and misleading' translation (in Irons' Athanasius contra Mundum) which the present editor has not seen. Dr. Swainson expresses doubts as to the Athanasian authorship of the Ecthesis, but without any cogent reason. The only point of importance is one which acquaintance with the usual language of Athanasius shews to make distinctly in favour of, and not against, the genuineness of this little tract. Three times in the course of it the Human Body, or Humanity of the Lord is spoken of as ho Kuriakos anthropus. Dr. Swainson exaggerates the strangeness of the expression by the barbarous rendering Lordly man' (How would he translate kuriakon deipnon?). But the phrase certainly requires explanation, although the explanation is not difficult. (1) It is quoted by Facundus of Hermiane from the present work (Def. Tr. Cap. xi. 5), and by Rufinus from an unnamed work of Athanasius (libellus'), probably the present one. Moreover, Athanasius himself uses the phrase, frequently in the Sermo Major de Fide, and in his exposition of Psalm xl. (xli.). Epiphanius uses it at least twice (Ancor. 78 and 95); and from these Greek Fathers the phrase (Dominicus Homo') passed on to Latin writers such as Cassian and Augustine (below, note 5), who, however, subsequently cancelled his adoption of the expression (Retr. I. xix. 8). The phrase, therefore, is not to be objected to as un-Athanasian. In fact (2) it is founded upon the profuse and characteristic use by Ath. of the word anthropos to designate the manhood of our Lord (see Orat. c. Ar. i. 41, 45, ii. 45, note 2. Dr. Swainson appears unaware of this in his unsatisfactory paragraph p. 77, lines 14 and foll.). If the human nature of Christ may be called anthropos (1 Tim. ii. 5) at all, there is no difficulty in its being called ho anthr. tou soteros (Serm. M. de F. 24 and 30), or kuriakos anthropos, a phrase equated with to [kuriakon] soma in Serm. M. de F. 19 and 28-31 (see also a discussion in Thilo Athan. Opp. Dogm. select. p. 2). This use of the word anthropos, if carelessly employed, might lend itself to a Nestorian sense. But Athanasius does not employ it carelessly, nor in an ambiguous context; although of course he might have used different language had he foreseen the controversies of the fifth century. At any rate, enough has been said to shew that its use in the present treatise does not expose its genuineness to cavil. __________________________________________________________________
Statement of Faith.
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1. We believe in one Unbegotten [428] God, Father Almighty, maker of all things both visible and invisible, that hath His being from Himself. And in one Only-begotten Word, Wisdom, Son, begotten of the Father without beginning and eternally; word not pronounced [429] nor mental, nor an effluence [430] of the Perfect, nor a dividing of the impassible Essence, nor an issue [431] ; but absolutely perfect Son, living and powerful (Heb. iv. 12), the true Image of the Father, equal in honour and glory. For this, he says, is the will of the Father, that as they honour the Father, so they may honour the Son also' (Joh. v. 23): very God of very God, as John says in his general Epistles, And we are in Him that is true, even in His Son Jesus Christ: this is the true God and everlasting life' (1 Joh. v. 20): Almighty of Almighty. For all things which the Father rules and sways, the Son rules and sways likewise: wholly from the Whole, being like [432] the Father as the Lord says, he that hath seen Me hath seen the Father' (Joh. xiv. 9). But He was begotten ineffably and incomprehensibly, for who shall declare his generation?' (Isa. liii. 8), in other words, no one can. Who, when at the consummation of the ages (Heb. ix. 26), He had descended from the bosom of the Father, took from the undefiled Virgin Mary our humanity (anthropon), Christ Jesus, whom He delivered of His own will to suffer for us, as the Lord saith: No man taketh My life from Me. I have power to lay it down, and have power to take it again' (Joh. x. 18). In which humanity He was crucified and died for us, and rose from the dead, and was taken up into the heavens, having been created as the beginning of ways for us (Prov. viii. 22), when on earth He shewed us light from out of darkness, salvation from error, life from the dead, an entrance to paradise, from which Adam was cast out, and into which he again entered by means of the thief, as the Lord said, This day shalt thou be with Me in paradise' (Luke xxiii. 43), into which Paul also once entered. [He shewed us] also a way up to the heavens, whither the humanity of the Lord [433] , in which He will judge the quick and the dead, entered as precursor for us. We believe, likewise, also in the Holy Spirit that searcheth all things, even the deep things of God (1 Cor. ii. 10), and we anathematise doctrines contrary to this.
2. For neither do we hold a Son-Father, as do the Sabellians, calling Him of one but not of the same [434] essence, and thus destroying the existence of the Son. Neither do we ascribe the passible body which He bore for the salvation of the whole world to the Father. Neither can we imagine three Subsistences separated from each other, as results from their bodily nature in the case of men, lest we hold a plurality of gods like the heathen. But just as a river, produced from a well, is not separate, and yet there are in fact two visible objects and two names. For neither is the Father the Son, nor the Son the Father. For the Father is Father of the Son, and the Son, Son of the Father. For like as the well is not a river, nor the river a well, but both are one and the same water which is conveyed in a channel from the well to the river, so the Father's deity passes into the Son without flow and without division. For the Lord says, I came out from the Father and am come' (Joh. xvi. 28). But He is ever with the Father, for He is in the bosom of the Father, nor was ever the bosom of the Father void of the deity of the Son. For He says, I was by Him as one setting in order' (Prov. viii. 30). But we do not regard God the Creator of all, the Son of God, as a creature, or thing made, or as made out of nothing, for He is truly existent from Him who exists, alone existing from Him who alone exists, in as much as the like glory and power was eternally and conjointly begotten of the Father. For He that hath seen' the Son hath seen the Father (Joh. xiv. 9). All things to wit were made through the Son; but He Himself is not a creature, as Paul says of the Lord: In Him were all things created, and He is before all' (Col. i. 16). Now He says not, was created' before all things, but is' before all things. To be created, namely, is applicable to all things, but is before all' applies to the Son only.
3. He is then by nature an Offspring, perfect from the Perfect, begotten before all the hills (Prov. viii. 25), that is before every rational and intelligent essence, as Paul also in another place calls Him first-born of all creation' (Col. i. 15). But by calling Him First-born, He shews that He is not a Creature, but Offspring of the Father. For it would be inconsistent with His deity for Him to be called a creature. For all things were created by the Father through the Son, but the Son alone was eternally begotten from the Father, whence God the Word is first-born of all creation,' unchangeable from unchangeable. However, the body which He wore for our sakes is a creature: concerning which Jeremiah says, according to the edition of the seventy translators [435] (Jer. xxxi. 22): The Lord created for us for a planting a new salvation, in which salvation men shall go about:' but according to Aquila the same text runs: The Lord created a new thing in woman.' Now the salvation created for us for a planting, which is new, not old, and for us, not before us, is Jesus, Who in respect of the Saviour [436] was made man, and whose name is translated in one place Salvation, in another Saviour. But salvation proceeds from the Saviour, just as illumination does from the light. The salvation, then, which was from the Saviour, being created new, did, as Jeremiah says, create for us a new salvation,' and as Aquila renders: The Lord created a new thing in woman,' that is in Mary. For nothing new was created in woman, save the Lord's body, born of the Virgin Mary without intercourse, as also it says in the Proverbs in the person of Jesus: The Lord created me, a beginning of His ways for His works' (Prov. viii. 22). Now He does not say, created me before His works,' lest any should take the text of the deity of the Word.
4. Each text then which refers to the creature is written with reference to Jesus in a bodily sense. For the Lord's Humanity [437] was created as a beginning of ways,' and He manifested it to us for our salvation. For by it we have our access to the Father. For He is the way (Joh. xiv. 6) which leads us back to the Father. And a way is a corporeal visible thing, such as is the Lord's humanity. Well, then, the Word of God created all things, not being a creature, but an offspring. For He created none of the created things equal or like unto Himself. But it is the part of a Father to beget, while it is a workman's part to create. Accordingly, that body is a thing made and created, which the Lord bore for us, which was begotten for us [438] , as Paul says, wisdom from God, and sanctification and righteousness, and redemption;' while yet the Word was before us and before all Creation, and is, the Wisdom of the Father. But the Holy Spirit, being that which proceeds from the Father, is ever in the hands [439] of the Father Who sends and of the Son Who conveys Him, by Whose means He filled all things. The Father, possessing His existence from Himself, begat the Son, as we said, and did not create Him, as a river from a well and as a branch from a root, and as brightness from a light, things which nature knows to be indivisible; through whom to the Father be glory and power and greatness before all ages, and unto all the ages of the ages. Amen. __________________________________________________________________
[428] See de Syn. §§3, 46, 47, and the Excursus in Lightfoot's Ignatius, vol. ii. pp. 90 and foll (first ed.).
[429] Cf. note by Newman on de Synodis, §26 (5).
[430] Cf. Newman's note (8) on de Decr. §11.
[431] Or development' (Gr. probole) a word with Gnostic and Sabellian antecedents, cf. Newman's note 8 on de Synodis, §16.
[432] This word, which became the watchword of the Acacian party, the successors of the Eusebians, marks the relatively early date of this treatise. At a later period Athanasius would not use it without qualification (see Orat. ii. §22, note 4), and later still, rejected the Word entirely as misleading (de Synodis, §53. note 9). Yet see ad Afros. 7, and Orat. ii. 34.
[433] ho kuriakos anthropos (see above, introductory remarks). The expression is quoted as used by Ath., apparently from this passage, by Rufinus (Hieron. Opp. ix. p. 131, ed. 1643), Theodoret, Dial. 3, and others. The expression Dominicus Homo' used by St. Augustine is rendered Divine Man' in Nicene and P. N. Fathers, Series i. vol. vi. p. 40 b.
[434] monoousion kai ouch homoousion (see Prolegg. ch. ii. §3 (2) b sub fin.). The distinction cannot (to those accustomed to use the Nicene' Creed in English) be rendered so as to imply a real difference. The real distinction lies, not in the prefixes mono- and homo-, but in the sense to be attached to the ambiguous term ousia
[435] Heb. For the Lord hath created a new thing in the earth, A woman shall encompass a man.' Cf.Orat. ii. 46, note 5.
[436] The same phrase also in Serm. M. de Fid. 18.
[437] kuriakos anthropos, see above.
[438] egennethe (1 Cor. i. 30, egenethe). The two words are constantly confused in mss., and I suspect that egenethe, which (pace Swainson p. 78, note) the context really requires, was what Ath. wrote.
[439] See also de Sent. Dionys. 17. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Introduction to In Illud Omnia,' Etc.
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This memorandum or short article was written, as its first sentence shews, during the lifetime of Eusebius of Nicomedia, and therefore not later than the summer of a.d. 342. The somewhat abrupt beginning, and the absence of any exposition of the latter portion of the text, have led to the inference that the work is a fragment: but its conclusion is evidently perfect, and the opening words probably refer to the text itself. The tract is a reply to the Arian argument founded upon Luke x. 22 (Matt. xi. 27). If all things' had been delivered to the Son by the Father, it would follow that once He was without them. Now all things' include His Divine Sonship. Therefore there was a time when the Son was not. Athanasius meets this argument by totally denying the minor premise. By all things,' he argues, Christ referred to His mediatorial work and its glories, not to His essential nature as Word of God. He then adduces Joh. xvi. 15, to shew at once the Son's distinctness from the Father, and that the Father's attributes must also be those of the Son.
The interpretation of the main text given in this tract was not subsequently maintained by Athanasius: in Orat. iii. 35, he explains it of the Son, as safeguarding His separate personality against the Sabellians. It should, however, be noted that this change of ground does not involve any concession to the Arian use of the passage: it merely transfers the denial of Athanasius from their minor to their major premise.
Beyond the fact that the tract was written before 342 there is no conclusive evidence as to its date. But it is generally placed (Montfaucon, Ceillier, Alzog) before the Encyclical,' which was written in 339, and in several particulars it differs from the later anti-Arian treatises: perhaps then we may conjecturally place it about 335, i.e. before the first exile of the Pope.' __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
On Luke X. 22 (Matt. XI. 27).
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§1. This text refers not to the eternal Word but to the Incarnate.
"All things were delivered to Me by My Father. And none knoweth Who the Son is, save the Father; and Who the Father is, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal Him."
And from not perceiving this they of the sect of Arius, Eusebius and his fellows, indulge impiety against the Lord. For they say, if all things were delivered (meaning by all' the Lordship of Creation), there was once a time when He had them not. But if He had them not, He is not of the Father, for if He were, He would on that account have had them always, and would not have required to receive them. But this point will furnish all the clearer an exposure of their folly. For the expression in question does not refer to the Lordship over Creation, nor to presiding over the works of God, but is meant to reveal in part the intention of the Incarnation (tes oikonomias). For if when He was speaking they were delivered' to Him, clearly before He received them, creation was void of the Word. What then becomes of the text "in Him all things consist" (Col. i. 17)? But if simultaneously with the origin of the Creation it was all delivered' to Him, such delivery were superfluous, for all things were made by Him' (Joh. i. 3), and it would be unnecessary for those things of which the Lord Himself was the artificer to be delivered over to Him. For in making them He was Lord of the things which were being originated. But even supposing they were delivered' to Him after they were originated, see the monstrosity. For if they were delivered,' and upon His receiving them the Father retired, then we are in peril of falling into the fabulous tales which some tell, that He gave over [His works] to the Son, and Himself departed. Or if, while the Son has them, the Father has them also, we ought to say, not were delivered,' but that He took Him as partner, as Paul did Silvanus. But this is even more monstrous; for God is not imperfect [440] , nor did He summon the Son to help Him in His need; but, being Father of the Word, He makes all things by His means, and without delivering creation over to Him, by His means and in Him exercises Providence over it, so that not even a sparrow falls to the ground without the Father (Matt. x. 29), nor is the grass clothed without God (ib. vi. 30), but at once the Father worketh, and the Son worketh hitherto (cf. Joh. v. 17). Vain, therefore, is the opinion of the impious. For the expression is not what they think, but designates the Incarnation. __________________________________________________________________
[440] See Orat. ii. §24, 25, De Decr. §8, and Harnack, Dogmgesch. (ed. 2) vol. 2. p. 208, note. __________________________________________________________________
§2. Sense in which, and end for which all things were delivered to the Incarnate Son.
For whereas man sinned, and is fallen, and by his fall all things are in confusion: death prevailed from Adam to Moses (cf. Rom. v. 14), the earth was cursed, Hades was opened, Paradise shut, Heaven offended, man, lastly, corrupted and brutalised (cf. Ps. xlix. 12), while the devil was exulting against us;--then God, in His loving-kindness, not willing man made in His own image to perish, said, Whom shall I send, and who will go?' (Isa. vi. 8). But while all held their peace, the Son [441] said, Here am I, send Me.' And then it was that, saying Go Thou,' He delivered' to Him man, that the Word Himself might be made Flesh, and by taking the Flesh, restore it wholly. For to Him, as to a physician, man was delivered' to heal the bite of the serpent; as to life, to raise what was dead; as to light, to illumine the darkness; and, because He was Word, to renew the rational nature (to logikon). Since then all things were delivered' to Him, and He is made Man, straightway all things were set right and perfected. Earth receives blessing instead of a curse, Paradise was opened to the robber, Hades cowered, the tombs were opened and the dead raised, the gates of Heaven were lifted up to await Him that cometh from Edom' (Ps. xxiv. 7, Isa. lxiii. 1). Why, the Saviour Himself expressly signifies in what sense all things were delivered' to Him, when He continues, as Matthew tells us: Come unto Me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest' (Matt. xi. 28). Yes, ye were delivered' to Me to give rest to those who had laboured, and life to the dead. And what is written in John's Gospel harmonises with this: The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into His hand' (Joh. iii. 35). Given, in order that, just as all things were made by Him, so in Him all things might be renewed. For they were not delivered' unto Him, that being poor, He might be made rich, nor did He receive all things that He might receive power which before He lacked: far be the thought: but in order that as Saviour He might rather set all things right. For it was fitting that while through Him' all things came into being at the beginning, in Him' (note the change of phrase) all things should be set right (cf. Joh. i. 3, Eph. i. 10). For at the beginning they came into being through' Him; but afterwards, all having fallen, the Word has been made Flesh, and put it on, in order that in Him' all should be set right. Suffering Himself, He gave us rest, hungering Himself, He nourished us, and going down into Hades He brought us back thence. For example, at the time of the creation of all things, their creation consisted in a fiat, such as let [the earth] bring forth,' let there be' (Gen. i. 3, 11), but at the restoration it was fitting that all things should be delivered' to Him, in order that He might be made man, and all things be renewed in Him. For man, being in Him, was quickened: for this was why the Word was united to man, namely, that against man the curse might no longer prevail. This is the reason why they record the request made on behalf of mankind in the seventy-first Psalm: Give the King Thy judgment, O God' (Ps. lxxii. 1): asking that both the judgment of death which hung over us may be delivered to the Son, and that He may then, by dying for us, abolish it for us in Himself. This was what He signified, saying Himself, in the eighty-seventh Psalm: Thine indignation lieth hard upon me' (Ps. lxxxviii. 7). For He bore the indignation which lay upon us, as also He says in the hundred and thirty-seventh: Lord, Thou shalt do vengeance for me' (Ps. cxxxviii. 8, LXX.). __________________________________________________________________
[441] This dramatic representation of the Mission of the Son stands alone in the writings of Athanasius, and, if pressed, lends itself to a conception of the relation of the Son to the Father which, if not Arian, is at least contrary to the more explicit and mature conception of Athanasius as formulated for example in Orat. ii. 31 (and see note 7 there). The same idea appears in Milton's Paradise Lost (e.g. Book X.). See Newman, Arians 4, p. 93, note. __________________________________________________________________
§3. By all things' is meant the redemptive attributes and power of Christ.
Thus, then, we may understand all things to have been delivered to the Saviour, and, if it be necessary to follow up understanding by explanation, that hath been delivered unto Him which He did not previously possess. For He was not man previously, but became man for the sake of saving man. And the Word was not in the beginning flesh, but has been made flesh subsequently (cf. Joh. i. 1 sqq.), in which Flesh, as the Apostle says, He reconciled the enmity which was against us (Col. i. 20, ii. 14, Eph. ii. 15, 16) and destroyed the law of the commandments in ordinances, that He might make the two into one new man, making peace, and reconcile both in one body to the Father. That, however, which the Father has, belongs also to the Son, as also He says in John, All things whatsoever the Father hath are Mine' (Joh. xvi. 15), expressions which could not be improved. For when He became that which He was not, all things were delivered' to Him. But when He desires to declare His unity with the Father, He teaches it without any reserve, saying: All things whatsoever the Father hath are Mine.' And one cannot but admire the exactness of the language. For He has not said all things whatsoever the Father hath, He hath given to Me,' lest He should appear at one time not to have possessed these things; but are Mine.' For these things, being in the Father's power, are equally in that of the Son. But we must in turn examine what things the Father hath.' For if Creation is meant, the Father had nothing before creation, and proves to have received something additional from Creation; but far be it to think this. For just as He exists before creation, so before creation also He has what He has, which we also believe to belong to the Son (Joh. xvi. 15). For if the Son is in the Father, then all things that the Father has belong to the Son. So this expression is subversive of the perversity of the heterodox in saying that if all things have been delivered to the Son, then the Father has ceased to have power over what is delivered, having appointed the Son in His place. For, in fact, the Father judgeth none, but hath given all judgment to the Son' (Joh. v. 22). But let the mouth of them that speak wickedness be stopped' (Ps. lxiii. 11), (for although He has given all judgment to the Son, He is not, therefore, stripped of lordship: nor, because it is said that all things are delivered by the Father to the Son, is He any the less over all), separating as they clearly do the Only-begotten from God, Who is by nature inseparable from Him, even though in their madness they separate Him by their words, not perceiving, the impious men, that the Light can never be separated from the sun, in which it resides by nature. For one must use a poor simile drawn from tangible and familiar objects to put our idea into words, since it is over bold to intrude upon the incomprehensible nature [of God]. __________________________________________________________________
§4. The text John xvi. 15, shews clearly the essential relation of the Son to the Father.
As then the light from the Sun which illumines the world could never be supposed, by men of sound mind, to do so without the Sun, since the Sun's light is united to the Sun by nature; and as, if the Light [442] were to say: I have received from the Sun the power of illumining all things, and of giving growth and strength to them by the heat that is in me, no one will be mad enough to think that the mention of the Sun is meant to separate him from what is his nature, namely the light; so piety would have us perceive that the Divine Essence of the Word is united by nature to His own Father. For the text before us will put our problem in the clearest possible light, seeing that the Saviour said, All things whatsoever the Father hath are Mine;' which shews that He is ever with the Father. For whatsoever He hath' shews that the Father wields the Lordship, while are Mine' shews the inseparable union. It is necessary, then, that we should perceive that in the Father reside Everlastingness, Eternity, Immortality. Now these reside in Him not as adventitious attributes, but, as it were, in a well-spring they reside in Him, and in the Son. When then you wish to perceive what relates to the Son, learn what is in the Father, for this is what you must believe to be in the Son. If then the Father is a thing created or made, these qualities belong also to the Son. And if it is permissible to say of the Father there was once a time when He was not,' or made of nothing,' let these words be applied also to the Son. But if it is impious to ascribe these attributes to the Father, grant that it is impious also to ascribe them to the Son. For what belongs to the Father, belongs to the Son. For he that honoureth the Son, honoureth the Father that sent Him, and he that receiveth the Son, receiveth the Father with Him, because he that hath seen the Son hath seen the Father (Matt. x. 40; John xiv. 9). As then the Father is not a creature, so neither is the Son; and as it is not possible to say of Him there was a time when He was not,' nor made of nothing,' so it is not proper to say the like of the Son either. But rather, as the Father's attributes are Everlastingness, Immortality, Eternity, and the being no creature, it follows that thus also we must think of the Son. For as it is written (Joh. v. 26), As the Father hath life in Himself, so gave He to the Son also to have life in Himself.' But He uses the word gave' in order to point to the Father who gives. As, again, life is in the Father, so also is it in the Son, so as to shew Him to be inseparable and everlasting. For this is why He speaks with exactness, whatsoever the Father hath,' in order namely that by thus mentioning the Father He may avoid being thought to be the Father Himself. For He does not say I am the Father,' but whatsoever the Father hath.' __________________________________________________________________
[442] Cf. Orat. iii. 36. __________________________________________________________________
§5. The same text further explained.
For His Only-begotten Son might, ye Arians, be called Father' by His Father, yet not in the sense in which you in your error might perhaps understand it, but (while Son of the Father that begat Him) Father of the coming age' (Isa. ix. 6, LXX). For it is necessary not to leave any of your surmises open to you. Well then, He says by the prophet, A Son is born and given to us, whose government is upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Angel of Great Counsel, mighty God, Ruler, Father of the coming age' (Isa. ix. 6). The Only-begotten Son of God, then, is at once Father of the coming age, and mighty God, and Ruler. And it is shewn clearly that all things whatsoever the Father hath are His, and that as the Father gives life, the Son likewise is able to quicken whom He will. For the dead,' He says, shall hear the voice of the Son, and shall live' (cf. John v. 25), and the will and desire of Father and Son is one, since their nature also is one and indivisible. And the Arians torture themselves to no purpose, from not understanding the saying of our Saviour, All things whatsoever the Father hath are Mine.' For from this passage at once the delusion of Sabellius can be upset, and it will expose the folly of our modern Jews. For this is why the Only begotten, having life in Himself as the Father has, also knows alone Who the Father is, namely, because He is in the Father and the Father in Him. For He is His Image, and consequently, because He is His Image, all that belongs to the Father is in Him. He is an exact seal, shewing in Himself the Father; living Word and true, Power, Wisdom, our Sanctification and Redemption (1 Cor. i. 30). For in Him we both live and move and have our being' (Acts xvii. 28), and no man knoweth Who is the Father, save the Son, and Who is the Son, save the Father' (Luke x. 22). __________________________________________________________________
§6. The Trisagion wrongly explained by Arians. Its true significance.
And how do the impious men venture to speak folly, as they ought not, being men and unable to find out how to describe even what is on the earth? But why do I say what is on the earth?' Let them tell us their own nature, if they can discover how to investigate their own nature? Rash they are indeed, and self-willed, not trembling to form opinions of things which angels desire to look into (1 Pet. i. 12), who are so far above them, both in nature and in rank. For what is nearer [God] than the Cherubim or the Seraphim? And yet they, not even seeing Him, nor standing on their feet, nor even with bare, but as it were with veiled faces, offer their praises, with untiring lips doing nought else but glorify the divine and ineffable nature with the Trisagion. And nowhere has any one of the divinely speaking prophets, men specially selected for such vision, reported to us that in the first utterance of the word Holy the voice is raised aloud, while in the second it is lower, but in the third, quite low,--and that consequently the first utterance denotes lordship, the second subordination, and the third marks a yet lower degree. But away with the folly of these haters of God and senseless men. For the Triad, praised, reverenced, and adored, is one and indivisible and without degrees (aschematistos). It is united without confusion, just as the Monad also is distinguished without separation. For the fact of those venerable living creatures (Isa. vi.; Rev. iv. 8) offering their praises three times, saying Holy, Holy, Holy,' proves that the Three Subsistences [443] are perfect, just as in saying Lord,' they declare the One Essence. They then that depreciate the Only-begotten Son of God blaspheme God, defaming His perfection and accusing Him of imperfection, and render themselves liable to the severest chastisement. For he that blasphemes any one of the Subsistences shall have remission neither in this world nor in that which is to come. But God is able to open the eyes of their heart to contemplate the Sun of Righteousness, in order that coming to know Him whom they formerly set at nought, they may with unswerving piety of mind together with us glorify Him, because to Him belongs the kingdom, even to the Father Son and Holy Spirit, now and for ever. Amen. __________________________________________________________________
[443] treis hupostaseis. This expression is a link between this tract and the Expositio (§2), and is one of the indications it bears of an early date. At this time we see that Athanasius speaks of Three Hypostases,' but qualifies his language by the caveat (Expos. 2) that they are not memerismenai. In this he follows his Origenist predecessor Dionysius, and the language of the present passage is that of Basil or the Gregories. But it is not the language of Athan. himself in his later years. See above, Prolegg. ch. ii. §3 (2) b, and Introd. to Tom. ad Ant. and to Ad Afr. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Introduction to the Encyclical Epistle to the Bishops Throughout the World.
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Athanasius wrote the following Epistle in the year 339. In the winter at the beginning of that year the Eusebians held a Council at Antioch. Here they appointed Gregory to the see of Alexandria in the place of Athanasius (see Prolegg. ch. ii. 6). Gregory was by birth a Cappadocian, and (if Nazianzen speaks of the same Gregory, which some critics doubt) studied at Alexandria, where S. Athanasius had treated him with great kindness and familiarity, though Gregory afterwards took part in propagating the calumny against him of having murdered Arsenius. Gregory was on his appointment dispatched to Alexandria' (Newman). The proceedings on his arrival, Lent, 339, are related in the following Encyclical Epistle, which Athanasius forwarded immediately before his departure for Rome to all the Bishops of the Catholic Church. It is less correct in style, as Tillemont observes, than other of his works, as if composed in haste. In the Editions previous to the Benedictine, it was called an "Epistle to the Orthodox everywhere;" but Montfaucon has been able to restore the true title. He has been also able from his mss. to make a far more important correction, which has cleared up some very perplexing difficulties in the history. All the Editions previous to the Benedictine read "George" throughout for "Gregory," and "Gregory" in the place where "Pistus" occurs. Baronius, Tillemont, &c., had already made the alterations from the necessity of the case' (Newman). After comparing the violence done to the Church with the outrage upon the Levite's wife in Judges, ch. xix., he appeals to the bishops of the universal Church to regard his cause as their own (§1). He then recounts the details of what has happened; the announcement by the Prefect Philagrius of the supersession of Ath. by Gregory, the popular indignation, and its grounds (§2); the instigation of the heathen mob by Philagrius to commit outrages upon the sacred persons and buildings (§3); the violent intrusion of Gregory (§4); the proceedings against himself (§5). He warns them against Gregory as an Arian, and asks their sympathy for himself (§6), and that they will refuse to receive any of Gregory's letters (§7). The Encyclical' was written just before his departure from Alexandria, where he must have been in retirement for three weeks (Index to Festal Letter, 339) previously, as he appears (§5) to have remained in the town till after Easter-day. Dr. Bright (p. xv. note) sees here a proof of the inaccuracy of the Index:' but there are other grounds for regarding it as correct (see Prolegg. ch. v. §3, c, and Introd. to Letters): its chronology is therefore adopted by the present editor. The events which led up to the scenes described in the letter are more fully dealt with in Prolegg. ch. ii. §6 (I), sub fin. and (2). It may be added that Sozomen, iii. 6 in describing this escape of Athan., inserts the scene in the Church which really took place in Feb. 356, while Socrates ii. 11 confuses the two occasions even more completely. Internal evidence shews that Soz. partially corrected Socr. by the aid of the Hist. Aceph. The confusion of Gregory with George (especially easy in Latin), to which almost every historian from Socrates and Theodoret to Neander and Newman has fallen an occasional victim, appears to have vitiated the transcription of this encyclical from very early times. But Sievers (p. 104) goes too far in ascribing to that cause the insertion of a great part of §§3-5. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Circular Letter.
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To his fellow-ministers in every place, beloved lords, Athanasius sends health in the Lord.
§1. The whole Church affected by what has occurred.
Our sufferings have been dreadful beyond endurance, and it is impossible to describe them in suitable terms; but in order that the dreadful nature of the events which have taken place may be more readily apprehended, I have thought it good to remind you of a history out of the Scriptures. It happened that a certain Levite [444] was injured in the person of his wife; and, when he considered the exceeding greatness of the pollution (for the woman was a Hebrew, and of the tribe of Judah), being astounded at the outrage which had been committed against him, he divided his wife's body, as the Holy Scripture relates in the Book of Judges, and sent a part of it to every tribe in Israel, in order that it might be understood that an injury like this pertained not to himself only, but extended to all alike; and that, if the people sympathised with him in his sufferings, they might avenge him; or if they neglected to do so, might bear the disgrace of being considered thenceforth as themselves guilty of the wrong. The messengers whom he sent related what had happened; and they that heard and saw it, declared that such things had never been done from the day that the children of Israel came up out of Egypt. So every tribe of Israel was moved, and all came together against the offenders, as though they had themselves been the sufferers; and at last the perpetrators of this iniquity were destroyed in war, and became a curse in the mouths of all: for the assembled people considered not their kindred blood, but regarded only the crime they had committed. You know the history, brethren, and the particular account of the circumstances given in Scripture. I will not therefore describe them more in detail, since I write to persons acquainted with them, and as I am anxious to represent to your piety our present circumstances, which are even worse than those to which I have referred. For my object in reminding you of this history is this, that you may compare those ancient transactions with what has happened to us now, and perceiving how much these last exceed the other in cruelty, may be filled with greater indignation on account of them, than were the people of old against those offenders. For the treatment we have undergone surpasses the bitterness of any persecution; and the calamity of the Levite was but small, when compared with the enormities which have now been committed against the Church; or rather such deeds as these were never before heard of in the whole world, or the like experienced by any one. For in that case it was but a single woman that was injured, and one Levite who suffered wrong; now the whole Church is injured, the priesthood insulted, and worst of all, piety [445] is persecuted by impiety. On that occasion the tribes were astounded, each at the sight of part of the body of one woman; but now the members of the whole Church are seen divided from one another, and are sent abroad some to you, and some to others, bringing word of the insults and injustice which they have suffered. Be ye therefore also moved, I beseech you, considering that these wrongs are done unto you no less than unto us; and let every one lend his aid, as feeling that he is himself a sufferer, lest shortly ecclesiastical Canons, and the faith of the Church be corrupted. For both are in danger, unless God shall speedily by your hands amend what has been done amiss, and the Church be avenged on her enemies. For our Canons [446] and our forms were not given to the Churches at the present day, but were wisely and safely transmitted to us from our forefathers. Neither had our faith its beginning at this time, but it came down to us from the Lord through His disciples [447] . That therefore the ordinances which have been preserved in the Churches from old time until now, may not be lost in our days, and the trust which has been committed to us required at our hands; rouse yourselves, brethren, as being stewards of the mysteries of God [448] , and seeing them now seized upon by others. Further particulars of our condition you will learn from the bearers of our letters; but I was anxious myself to write you a brief account thereof, that you may know for certain, that such things have never before been committed against the Church, from the day that our Saviour when He was taken up, gave command to His disciples, saying, Go ye and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost [449] .' __________________________________________________________________
[444] Judg. xix. 29.
[445] eusebeia, orthodoxy, see de Decr. 1, note.
[446] Vid. Beveridg. Cod. Can. Illustr. i. 3. §2, who comments on this passage at length. Allusion is also made to the Canons in Apol. contr. Arian. §69.
[447] Vid. de Syn. §4. Orat. i. §8. Tertull. Præscr. Hær. §29.
[448] 1 Cor. iv. 1.
[449] Matt. xxviii. 19. __________________________________________________________________
§2. Violent and Uncanonical Intrusion of Gregory.
Now the outrages which have been committed against us and against the Church are these. While we were holding our assemblies in peace, as usual, and while the people were rejoicing in them, and advancing in godly conversation, and while our fellow-ministers in Egypt, and the Thebais, and Libya, were in love and peace both with one another and with us; on a sudden the Prefect of Egypt puts forth a public letter, bearing the form of an edict, and declaring that one Gregory from Cappadocia was coming to be my successor from the court. This announcement confounded every one, for such a proceeding was entirely novel, and now heard of for the first time. The people however assembled still more constantly in the churches [450] , for they very well knew that neither they themselves, nor any Bishop or Presbyter, nor in short any one had ever complained against me; and they saw that Arians only were on his side, and were aware also that he was himself an Arian, and was sent by Eusebius and his fellows to the Arian party. For you know, brethren, that Eusebius and his fellows have always been the supporters and associates of the impious heresy of the Arian madmen [451] , by whose means they have ever carried on their designs against me, and were the authors of my banishment into Gaul.
The people, therefore, were justly indignant and exclaimed against the proceeding, calling the rest of the magistrates and the whole city to witness, that this novel and iniquitous attempt was now made against the Church, not on the ground of any charge brought against me by ecclesiastical persons, but through the wanton assault of the Arian heretics. For even if there had been any complaint generally prevailing against me, it was not an Arian, or one professing Arian doctrines, that ought to have been chosen to supersede me; but according to the ecclesiastical Canons, and the direction of Paul, when the people were gathered together, and the spirit' of them that ordain, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ [452] ' all things ought to have been enquired into and transacted canonically, in the presence of those among the laity and clergy who demanded the change; and not that a person brought from a distance by Arians, as if making a traffic of the title of Bishop, should with the patronage and strong arm of heathen magistrates, thrust himself upon those who neither asked for nor desired his presence, nor indeed knew anything of what had been done. Such proceedings tend to the dissolution of all the ecclesiastical Canons, and compel the heathen to blaspheme, and to suspect that our appointments are not made according to a divine rule, but as a result of traffic and patronage [453] . __________________________________________________________________
[450] Assembling in the Churches seems to have been a sort of protest or demonstration, sometimes peaceably, but sometimes in a more exceptionable manner;--peaceably, during Justina's persecution at Milan, Ambros. Ep. i. 20. August. Confess. ix. 15, but at Ephesus after the third Ecumenical Council the Metropolitan shut up the Churches, took possession of the Cathedral, and succeeded in repelling the imperial troops. Churches were asylums, vid. Cod. Theodos. ix. 45. §4. &c.; at the same time arms were prohibited.
[451] areiomaniton, vid. note on de Syn. 13.
[452] 1 Cor. v. 4.
[453] Orat. i. 8, note. __________________________________________________________________
§3. Outrages which took place at the time of Gregory's arrival.
Thus was this notable appointment of Gregory brought about by the Arians, and such was the beginning of it. And what outrages he committed on his entry into Alexandria, and of what great evils that event has been the cause, you may learn both from our letters, and by enquiry of those who are sojourning among you. While the people were offended at such an unusual proceeding, and in consequence assembled in the churches, in order to prevent the impiety of the Arians from mingling itself with the faith of the Church, Philagrius, who has long been a persecutor of the Church and her virgins, and is now Prefect [454] of Egypt, an apostate already, and a fellow-countryman of Gregory, a man too of no respectable character, and moreover supported by Eusebius and his fellows, and therefore full of zeal against the Church; this person, by means of promises which he afterwards fulfilled, succeeded in gaining over the heathen multitude, with the Jews and disorderly persons, and having excited their passions, sent them in a body with swords and clubs into the churches to attack the people.
What followed upon this [455] it is by no means easy to describe: indeed it is not possible to set before you a just representation of the circumstances, nor even could one recount a small part of them without tears and lamentations. Have such deeds as these ever been made the subjects of tragedy among the ancients? or has the like ever happened before in time of persecution or of war? The church and the holy Baptistery were set on fire, and straightway groans, shrieks, and lamentations, were heard through the city; while the citizens in their indignation at these enormities, cried shame upon the governor, and protested against the violence used to them. For holy and undefiled virgins [456] were being stripped naked, and suffering treatment which is not to be named and if they resisted, they were in danger of their lives. Monks were being trampled under foot and perishing; some were being hurled headlong; others were being destroyed with swords and clubs; others were being wounded and beaten. And oh! what deeds of impiety and iniquity have been committed upon the Holy Table! They were offering birds and pine cones [457] in sacrifice, singing the praises of their idols, and blaspheming even in the very churches our Lord and Saviour Jesus-Christ, the Son of the living God. They were burning the books of Holy Scripture which they found in the church; and the Jews, the murderers of our Lord, and the godless heathen entering irreverently (O strange boldness!) the holy Baptistery, were stripping themselves naked, and acting such a disgraceful part, both by word and deed, as one is ashamed even to relate. Certain impious men also, following the examples set them in the bitterest persecutions, were seizing upon the virgins and ascetics by the hands and dragging them along, and as they were haling them, endeavoured to make them blaspheme and deny the Lord; and when they refused to do so, were beating them violently and trampling them under foot. __________________________________________________________________
[454] The Prefect of Egypt was called [after 367, see Sievers, p. 119, and Prolegg. ch. v. Appendix, yet see Apol. Ar. §83] Augustalis as having been first appointed by Augustus, after his victories over Antony. He was of the Equestrian, not, as other Prefects, of the Senatorian order. He was the imperial officer, as answering to Proprætors in the Imperial Provinces. vid. Hofman. in voc. [on Philagrius, see Apol. c. Ari. §72, Prolegg. ch. ii. §5 (1) note].
[455] Cf. Hist. Ar. §9 and 10. Apparently the great Church of Theonas' is meant, see Fest. Index xi.
[456] The sister of S. Antony was one of the earliest known inmates of a nunnery, vit. Ant. §2. 3. They were called by the Catholic Church by the title, "Spouse of Christ." Apol. ad Const. §33.
[457] The thuos or suffitus of Grecian sacrifices generally consisted of portions of odoriferous trees. vid. Potter. Antiqu. ii. 4. Some translate the word here used (strobilous), "shell-fish." __________________________________________________________________
§4. Outrages on Good Friday and Easter Day, 339.
In addition to all this, after such a notable and illustrious entry into the city, the Arian Gregory, taking pleasure in these calamities, and as if desirous to secure to the heathens and Jews, and those who had wrought these evils upon us, a prize and price of their iniquitous success, gave up the church to be plundered by them. Upon this license of iniquity and disorder, their deeds were worse than in time of war, and more cruel than those of robbers. Some of them were plundering whatever fell in their way; others dividing among themselves the sums which some had laid up there [458] ; the wine, of which there was a large quantity, they either drank or emptied out or carried away; they plundered the store of oil, and every one took as his spoil the doors and chancel rails; the candlesticks they forthwith laid aside in the wall [459] , and lighted the candles of the Church before their idols: in a word, rapine and death pervaded the Church. And the impious Arians, so far from feeling shame that such things should be done, added yet further outrages and cruelty. Presbyters and laymen had their flesh torn, virgins were stript of their veils [460] , and led away to the tribunal of the governor, and then cast into prison; others had their goods confiscated, and were scourged; the bread of the ministers and virgins was intercepted. And these things were done even during the holy season of Lent [461] , about the time of Easter; a time when the brethren were keeping fast, while this notable Gregory exhibited the disposition of a Caiaphas, and, together with Pilate the Governor, furiously raged against the pious worshippers of Christ. Going into one of the churches on the Preparation [462] , in company with the Governor and the heathen multitude, when he saw that the people regarded with abhorrence his forcible entry among them, he caused that most cruel person, the Governor, publicly to scourge in one hour, four and thirty virgins and married women, and men of rank, and to cast them into prison. Among them there was one virgin, who, being fond of study, had the Psalter in her hands, at the time when he caused her to be publicly scourged: the book was torn in pieces by the officers, and the virgin herself shut up in prison. __________________________________________________________________
[458] Churches, as heathen temples before them, were used for deposits. At the sack of Rome, Alaric spared the Churches and their possessions; nay, he himself transported the costly vessels of St. Peter into his Church.
[459] en to toichi& 251;. [Reference uncertain.]
[460] apomaphorizomenai; see Sophocles' Lexicon under maphorion
[461] Lent and Passion Week was the season during which Justina's persecution of St. Ambrose took place, and the proceedings against St. Chrysostom at Constantinople. On the Paschal Vigils, vid. Tertull. ad Uxor. ii. 4. [Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. iv. p. 46] p. 426, note n. Oxf. Tr.
[462] paraskeue, i.e., Good Friday. [Apr. 13, 339,] The word was used for Friday generally as early as S. Clem. Alex. Strom. vii. p. 877. ed. Pott. vid. Constit. Apostol. v. 13. Pseudo-Ign. ad Philipp. 13. __________________________________________________________________
§5. Retirement of Athanasius, and tyranny of Gregory and Philagrius.
When all this was done, they did not stop even here; but consulted how they might act the same part in the other church [463] , where I was mostly living during those days; and they were eager to extend their fury to this church also, in order that they might hunt out and dispatch me. And this would have been my fate, had not the grace of Christ assisted me, if it were only that I might escape to relate these few particulars concerning their conduct. For seeing that they were exceedingly mad against me, and being anxious that the church should not be injured, nor the virgins that were in it suffer, nor additional murders be committed, nor the people again outraged, I withdrew myself from among them, remembering the words of our Saviour, If they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another [464] .' For I knew, from the evil they had done against the first-named church, that they would forbear no outrage against the other also. And there in fact they reverenced not even the Lord's day [465] of the holy Feast, but in that church also they imprisoned the persons who belonged to it, at a time when the Lord delivered all from the bonds of death, whereas Gregory and his associates, as if fighting against our Saviour, and depending upon the patronage of the Governor, have turned into mourning this day of liberty to the servants of Christ. The heathens were rejoicing to do this, for they abhor that day; and Gregory perhaps did but fulfil the commands of Eusebius and his fellows in forcing the Christians to mourn under the infliction of bonds.
With these acts of violence has the Governor seized upon the churches, and has given them up to Gregory and the Arian madmen. Thus, those persons who were excommunicated by us for their impiety, now glory in the plunder of our churches; while the people of God, and the Clergy of the Catholic Church are compelled either to have communion with the impiety of the Arian heretics, or else to forbear entering into them. Moreover, by means of the Governor, Gregory has exercised no small violence towards the captains of ships and others who pass over sea, torturing and scourging some, putting others in bonds, and casting them into prison, in order to oblige them not to resist his iniquities, and to take letters [466] from him. And not satisfied with all this, that he may glut himself with our blood, he has caused his savage associate, the Governor, to prefer an indictment against me, as in the name of the people, before the most religious Emperor Constantius, which contains odious charges, from which one may expect not only to be banished, but even ten thousand deaths. The person who drew it up is an apostate from Christianity, and a shameless worshipper of idols, and they who subscribed it are heathens, and keepers of idol temples, and others of them Arians. In short, not to make my letter tedious to you, a persecution rages here, and such a persecution as was never before raised against the Church. For in former instances a man at least might pray while he fled from his persecutors, and be baptized while he lay in concealment. But now their extreme cruelty has imitated the godless conduct of the Babylonians. For as they falsely accused Daniel [467] , so does the notable Gregory now accuse before the Governor those who pray in their houses, and watches every opportunity to insult their ministers, so that through his violent conduct, many are endangered from missing baptism, and many who are in sickness and sorrow have no one to visit them, a calamity which they bitterly lament, accounting it worse than their sickness. For while the ministers of the Church are under persecution, the people who condemn the impiety of the Arian heretics choose rather thus to be sick and to run the risk, than that a hand of the Arians should come upon their heads. __________________________________________________________________
[463] [On the difficulties of this part of the history, see Prolegg. ch. ii. §6 (1) ad fin., and ch. v. §3, c. It must be noted that according to the following passage Ath. had left the other church' before Easter Day. It was probably that of Quirinus,' Hist. Ar. 10.]
[464] Cf. Ap. Fug. 11, and Matt. x. 23.
[465] Easter Day [Apr. 15].
[466] i.e. letters of communion.
[467] Dan. vi. 13. __________________________________________________________________
§6. All the above illegalities were carried on in the interest of Arianism.
Gregory then is an Arian, and has been sent to the Arian party; for none demanded him, but they only; and accordingly as a hireling and a stranger, he makes use of the Governor to inflict these dreadful and cruel deeds upon the people of the Catholic Churches, as not being his own. For since Pistus, whom Eusebius and his fellows formerly appointed over the Arians, was justly anathematized [468] and excommunicated for his impiety by you the Bishops of the Catholic Church, as you all know, on our writing to you concerning him, they have now, therefore, in like manner sent this Gregory to them; and lest they should a second time be put to shame, by our again writing against them, they have employed extraneous force against me, in order that, having obtained possession of the Churches, they may seem to have escaped all suspicion of being Arians. But in this too they have been mistaken, for none of the people of the Church are with them, except the heretics only, and those who have been excommunicated on divers charges, and such as have been compelled by the Governor to dissemble. This then is the drama of Eusebius and his fellows, which they have long been rehearsing and composing; and now have succeeded in performing through the false charges which they have made against me before the Emperor [469] . Notwithstanding, they are not yet content to be quiet, but even now seek to kill me; and they make themselves so formidable to our friends, that they are all driven into banishment, and expect death at their hands. But you must not for this stand in awe of their iniquity, but on the contrary avenge: and shew your indignation at this their unprecedented conduct against us. For if when one member suffers all the members suffer with it, and, according to the blessed Apostle, we ought to weep with them that weep [470] , let every one, now that so great a Church as this is suffering, avenge its wrongs, as though he were himself a sufferer. For we have a common Saviour, who is blasphemed by them, and Canons belonging to us all, which they are transgressing. If while any of you had been sitting in your Church, and while the people were assembled with you, without any blame, some one had suddenly come under plea of an edict as successor of one of you, and had acted the same part towards you, would you not have been indignant? would you not have demanded to be righted? If so, then it is right that you should be indignant now, lest if these things be passed over unnoticed, the same mischief shall by degrees extend itself to every Church, and so our schools of religion be turned into a market-house and an exchange. __________________________________________________________________
[468] Apol. c. Ar. §§19, 24.
[469] Apol. c. Ar. 3.
[470] 1 Cor. xii. 26; Rom. xii. 15. __________________________________________________________________
§7. Appeal to the bishops of the whole Church to unite against Gregory.
You are acquainted with the history of the Arian madmen, beloved, for you have often, both individually and in a body, condemned their impiety; and you know also that Eusebius and his fellows, as I said before, are engaged in the same heresy; for the sake of which they have long been carrying on a conspiracy against me. And I have represented to you, what has now been done, both for them and by them, with greater cruelty than is usual even in time of war, in order that after the example set before you in the history which I related at the beginning, you may entertain a zealous hatred of their wickedness, and reject those who have committed such enormities against the Church. If the brethren at Rome [471] [last year], before these things had happened, and on account of their former misdeeds, wrote letters to call a Council, that these evils might be set right (fearing which, Eusebius and his fellows took care previously to throw the Church into confusion, and desired to destroy me, in order that they might thenceforth be able to act as they pleased without fear, and might have no one to call them to account), how much more ought you now to be indignant at these outrages, and to condemn them, seeing they have added this to their former misconduct.
I beseech you, overlook not such proceedings, nor suffer the famous Church of the Alexandrians to be trodden down by heretics. In consequence of these things the people and their ministers are separated from one another, as one might expect, silenced by the violence of the Prefect, yet abhorring the impiety of the Arian madmen. If therefore Gregory shall write unto you, or any other in his behalf, receive not his letters, brethren, but tear them in pieces and put the bearers of them to shame, as the ministers of impiety and wickedness. And even if he presume to write to you after a friendly fashion, nevertheless receive them not. Those who bring his letters convey them only from fear of the Governor, and on account of his frequent acts of violence. And since it is probable that Eusebius and his fellows will write to you concerning him, I was anxious to admonish you beforehand, so that you may herein imitate God, Who is no respecter of persons, and may drive out from before you those that come from them; because for the sake of the Arian madmen they caused persecutions, rape of virgins, murders, plunder of the Church's property, burnings, and blasphemies in the Churches, to be committed by the heathens and Jews at such a season. The impious and mad Gregory cannot deny that he is an Arian, being proved to be so by the person who writes his letters. This is his secretary Ammon, who was cast out of the Church long ago by my predecessor the blessed Alexander for many misdeeds and for impiety.
For all these reasons, therefore, vouchsafe to send me a reply, and condemn these impious men; so that even now the ministers and people of this place, seeing your orthodoxy and hatred of wickedness, may rejoice in your concord in the Christian faith, and that those who have been guilty of these lawless deeds against the Church may be reformed by your letters, and brought at last, though late, to repentance. Salute the brotherhood that is among you. All the brethren that are with me salute you. Fare ye well, and remember me, and the Lord preserve you continually, most truly beloved lords. __________________________________________________________________
[471] Apol. Ar. 22, 30, Hist. Ar. 9. [The word perusin, last year, is absent from the best ms. used by Montfaucon.'] __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Introduction to Apologia Contra Arianos.
------------------------
"This Apology," says Montfaucon, "is the most authentic source of the history of the Church in the first half of the fourth century. Athanasius is far superior to any other historians of the period, both from his bearing for the most part a personal testimony to the facts he relates, and from his great accuracy and use of actual documents. On the other hand, Rufinus, Socrates, Sozomen, Theodoret, must not be used without extreme caution, unless they adduce documents, which is seldom the case." The Apology' is a personal defence by Athanasius against the charges laid against him by the Eusebian party, and does not directly concern matters of doctrine. After the Council of Nicæa, the Eusebian policy had been to oust the principal opponents from their sees on personal grounds, so as to pave the way for the abrogation of the Nicene formula. The attack upon Athanasius began in 331, but without success. It was renewed at Cæsarea and Tyre in 334-335, and resulted in the exile of Athanasius to Treveri, 336. His return in 337 was followed by a Synod at Antioch which deposed' him (close of 338), and by his expulsion in favour of Gregory (339). Then follow the intervention of Julius (339-340), and the Council of Sardica (343), which resulted in the eventual return of Athanasius in the autumn of 346. (The details are given more fully in the Prolegomena, ch. ii. §§4-6). After this latter date, and before the relapse of Valens and Ursacius which followed upon the death of Constans, Athanasius drew up a collection of documents in proof of his innocence, connecting them together by an explanatory narrative. (1) The charges against him related to events alleged to have occurred before the year 332 (extortion of money, subvention of the rebel Philumenus, the chalice of Ischyras, murder and mutilation of the bishop Arsenius): the principal evidence as to their falsehood was comprised in the proceedings of the Councils of Tyre and Jerusalem, and of the commission of enquiry sent by the assembled bishops to the Mareotis. (2) The judicial investigations which proved the innocence of Athanasius took place first at Rome under Julius, secondly at Sardica under Hosius; and were followed by the recognition of his innocence on the part of the Emperor Constantius, of bishops in various parts of the world, and lastly of some of his chief accusers.
The method of defence now adopted by Athanasius was firstly to show how complete that recognition had been: this he does by a series of documents from the eve of his departure to Rome down to the recantation of Ursacius and Valens soon after his return to Alexandria: these documents cover eight years (339-347) previous to the composition of the Apology (§§1-58). Having shewn the completeness of his acquittal, he next gives the evidence upon which it was based. Accordingly the second part (§§59-90) of the Apology deals with facts and documents earlier than those comprised in the first. Hence the inversion of chronological sequence (præposterus ordo, Montf.) as between the two parts.
Referring the reader to the Prolegomena for a connected view of the history of which this Apology is the primary source, it will suffice for our present purpose to enumerate the documents quoted, with the briefest possible statement of their contents and bearing upon the general purpose of the work. It should be noted that while in the first part the documents follow one another in strict chronological order, those of the second part fall into groups within which the matters are arranged as best suits the argument, and not in order of time. In the following list the probable or approximate date of each document is given.
a. DOCUMENTS IN THE FIRST PART (general subject, the vindication of Athanasius before the bishops of the Christian world).
i. Documents Prior to the Council of Sardica (§§1-35).
1. §§3-19 (end of 338 or beginning of 339). Circular of Egyptian bishops reciting the election of Athanasius, the plots and charges against him, the history of the Mareotic Commission, the testimony available in his defence, and requesting all bishops to join in vindicating him.
2. §§20-35 (340 a.d.). Letter of Julius to the Eusebian bishops (at the request of a Roman Council) remonstrating with their discourteous reply to a former letter, reciting the history of the intrigues against Athanasius, pressing them with their disrespect to the Synod of Nicæa, with their evasion of the invitation to the Council at Rome, vindicating Athanasius (on the ground of documentary proof of his innocence, and on that of the irregularity of the proceedings against him) and Marcellus (upon his own statement of belief), lastly, insisting on the propriety of a reference of the questions at issue to the whole Church, and upon the precedent giving the Roman Church a decisive voice in questions affecting that of Alexandria.
ii. Council of Sardica (§§36-50).
3. §§36-40 (a.d. 343) Letter of the Council to the Church of Alexandria, reciting the intrigues against Athanasius, and the confirmation by the council of his acquittal by Julius, encouraging the Alexandrine Church to patience, and announcing that they have requested the Emperors to give effect to their decisions.
4. §§41-43 (same date). Letter of the Council to the bishops of Egypt and Libya: identical with No. 3, except that it omits the reference to certain presbyters of Alexandria, and mentions several Arian leaders by name.
5. §§44-50 (same date). Circular letter of the Council, reciting the occasion of its assembling, the behaviour of the Eastern bishops, the violence inflicted by them upon orthodox bishops, the breakdown of the charges brought by them against Athanasius, and the purgation of Marcellus and Asclepas, who are pronounced innocent, while the Arian leaders are deposed and anathematised. The signatures follow of over 280 bishops, most of whom signed afterwards while the letter was in circulation.
iii. Documents Forming a Sequel to the Council of Sardica (§§51-58).
6-8. §51. Letters of Constantius to Athanasius before and after death of Gregory.
6. (a.d. 345). Expressing sympathy with his sufferings, and inviting him to court; he has written to Constans to ask him to allow Athanasius to return.
7. (same year, later). Urging the same invitation.
8. (346, winter, or early spring). A similar summons, but more pressing.
9. §52 (same year). Letter of Julius to the Church of Alexandria, eulogising Athanasius, complimenting them for their constancy, and congratulating them upon his return.
10. §54 (same year). Circular letter of Constantius to the Church at large, announcing the restoration of Athanasius and the cessation of all decrees against him, with indemnity to all in his communion.
11. §55 (same date). Letter of Constantius to the Church of Alexandria. Announcement of the restoration of Athanasius, with exhortation to peace, and warning against disturbances.
12. §56 (same date). To the Prefect of Egypt and other officials. Revocation of decrees against those in communion with Athanasius, and restoration of their immunities.
13. §57 (same year, autumn). Letter of the bishops of Palestine to the Egyptian Church congratulating them on the restoration of Athanasius.
14. §58 (a.d. 347). Letter of Valens and Ursacius to Julius unreservedly withdrawing their allegations against Athanasius, anathematizing Arius and his heresy, and at the same time promising to take the consequences of their offence if required by Julius to do so.
15. ib. (same year). Letter of the same to Athanasius, with a greeting and assurance that they are in communion with him and with the Church.
b. DOCUMENTS IN THE SECOND PART.
i. Letters of Constantine Previous to the Council of Tyre (§§59-63).
16. §59 (a.d. 331). A fragment, urging Athanasius with threats to admit to communion all (Arians) who wish it.
17. §61 (same year). Letter to the people of Alexandria, remonstrating with them for their dissensions and stigmatising the calumnies against Athanasius (about the affair of Philumenus).
ii. 18. §64 (332). Confession of Ischyras, that he had been compelled by the violence of certain Meletians to fabricate false charges against Athanasius.
iii. The Affair of Arsenius (§§65-70).
19. §67 (probably 332). Intercepted letter of the presbyter Pinnes to John Arcaph, warning him of the discovery of the plot, and begging him to drop the matter.
20. §68 (same year). Letter of Constantine to Athanasius, expressing indignation at the charges concerning Arsenius and Ischyras, and bidding him publish this letter in vindication of himself.
21. §66 (same year). Letter of Alexander, Bishop of Thessalonica, praising Serapion, the son of an old friend, and congratulating Athanasius on the exposure of the plot about Arsenius.
22. §69 (same year). Letter of Arsenius to Athanasius, offering submission and requesting communion with the Church.
23. §70 (same year). Letter of Constantine to John Arcaph accepting his reconciliation to Athanasius, and summoning him to court.
iv. Proceedings at Tyre in 335 (§§71-83).
24. §77. Address to the Council by the Egyptian Bishop, complaining of the presence of partizan judges, of the rejection of their evidence, and of the proposed constitution of the Mareotic Commission.
25. §71. (Written a.d. 327, but put in as evidence at Tyre by Athanasius in the matter of Ischyras, after the exposure of the plot concerning Arsenius). List of Meletian Bishops and Clergy presented to Alexander of Alexandria shortly before his death, and not containing the name of Ischyras.
26. §78. Protest addressed by the Egyptian Bishops to Count Dionysius, repeating the above complaints (in No. 24), and requesting him to stop the irregularities.
27. §80. Alexander of Thessalonica to Dionysius, warning him of the conspiracy against Athanasius, and of the character of the Mission to the Mareotis.
28. §81. Letter of Dionysius to the Council, strongly remonstrating against their proceedings.
29. §79. Letter of the Egyptian Bishops to Dionysius appealing to the Emperor.
30-32. Protests made by Egyptian Clergy against the proceedings of the Mareotic Commission.
30. §73. Clergy of Alexandria to the Commissioners, protesting against the exclusion of all independent persons from the proceedings.
31. §§74, 75. Clergy of the Mareotis to the Council, giving an account of the facts concerning Ischyras, and of the ex-parte character of the proceedings of the Commission.
32. §76. The same to the Prefect and other officials of Egypt (dated Sep. 8, 335), denying upon oath the tale of Ischyras, and requesting them to forward their statement to the Emperor.
v. Documents Subsequent to the Council of Tyre (§§84-88).
33. §86 (335). Constantine to the Bishops assembled at Tyre, summoning them to give an account of their proceedings.
34. §84. The Council of Jerusalem to the Church of Alexandria, announcing that Arius has been received to communion.
35. §87 (June 17, 337). Constantine II. to the Church of Alexandria (upon the death of Constantine, whose purpose he claims to be carrying out), announcing the restoration of Athanasius.
36. §85 (perhaps in 337, but possibly as early as 335). Order by Flavius Hemerius for the erection of a church for Ischyras.
The two concluding sections (89, 90) of the Apology are a postscript added during the troubles under Constantius (about 358, see Introd. to Hist. Ar.). He points to the sufferings which many bishops, including Hosius and Liberius, had endured rather than surrender his cause, as fresh evidence of their belief in his innocence. He refuses to see any detraction from the force of this argument in the fall of the two bishops mentioned.
The importance to the historian of this collection of documents need not be dwelt upon. If the charges in dispute seem trivial and even grotesque, they none the less illustrate the temper of the parties concerned, and the character of the controversy during the very important twenty years which end with the death of Constans and the reign of Constantius over the undivided Empire. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Defence Against the Arians.
------------------------
Introduction.
1. I supposed that, after so many proofs of my innocence had been given, my enemies would have shrunk from further enquiry, and would now have condemned themselves for their false accusations of others. But as they are not yet abashed, though they have been so clearly convicted, but, as insensible to shame, persist in their slanderous reports against me, professing to think that the whole matter ought to be tried over again (not that they may have judgment passed on them, for that they avoid, but in order to harass me, and to disturb the minds of the simple); I therefore thought it necessary to make my defence unto you, that you may listen to their murmurings no longer, but may denounce their wickedness and base calumnies. And it is only to you, who are men of sincere minds, that I offer a defence: as for the contentious, I appeal confidently to the decisive proofs which I have against them. For my cause needs no further judgment; for judgment has already been given, and not once or twice only, but many times. First of all, it was tried in my own country in an assembly of nearly one hundred of its Bishops [472] ; a second time at Rome, when, in consequence of letters from Eusebius, both they and we were summoned, and more than fifty Bishops met [473] ; and a third time in the great Council assembled at Sardica by order of the most religious Emperors Constantius and Constans, when my enemies were degraded as false accusers, and the sentence that was passed in my favour received the suffrages of more than three hundred Bishops, out of the provinces of Egypt, Libya, and Pentapolis, Palestine, Arabia, Isauria, Cyprus, Pamphylia, Lycia, Galatia, Dacia, Moesia, Thrace, Dardania, Macedonia, Epirus, Thessaly, Achaia, Crete, Dalmatia, Siscia, Pannonia, Noricum, Italy, Picenum, Tuscany, Campania, Calabria, Apulia, Bruttia, Sicily, the whole of Africa, Sardinia, Spain, Gaul, and Britain.
Added to these was the testimony [474] of Ursacius and Valens, who had formerly calumniated me, but afterwards changed their minds, and not only gave their assent to the sentence that was passed in my favour, but also confessed that they themselves and the rest of my enemies were false accusers; for men who make such a change and such a recantation of course reflect upon Eusebius and his fellows, for with them they had contrived the plot against me. Now after a matter has been examined and decided on such clear evidence by so many eminent Bishops, every one will confess that further discussion is unnecessary; else, if an investigation be instituted at this time, it may be again discussed and again investigated, and there will be no end to such trifling.
2. Now the decision of so many Bishops was sufficient to confound those who would still fain pretend some charge against me. But when my enemies also bear testimony in my favour and against themselves, declaring that the proceedings against me were a conspiracy, who is there that would not be ashamed to doubt any longer? The law requires that in the mouth of two or three witnesses [475] judgments shall be settled, and we have here this great multitude of witnesses in my favour, with the addition of the proofs afforded by my enemies; so much so that those who still continue opposed to me no longer attach any importance to their own arbitrary [476] judgment, but now have recourse to violence, and in the place of fair reasoning seek to injure [477] those by whom they were exposed. For this is the chief cause of vexation to them, that the measures they carried on in secret, contrived by themselves in a corner, have been brought to light and disclosed by Valens and Ursacius; for they are well aware that their recantation while it clears those whom they have injured, condemns themselves.
Indeed this led to their degradation in the Council of Sardica, as mentioned before; and with good reason; for, as the Pharisees of old, when they undertook the defence of Paul [478] , fully exposed the conspiracy which they and the Jews had formed against him; and as the blessed David was proved to be persecuted unjustly when the persecutor confessed, I have sinned, my son David [479] ;' so it was with these men; being overcome by the truth they made a request, and delivered it in writing to Julius, Bishop of Rome. They wrote also to me requesting to be on terms of peace with me, though they have spread such reports concerning me; and probably even now they are covered with shame, on seeing that those whom they sought to destroy by the grace of the Lord are still alive. Consistently also with this conduct they anathematized Arius and his heresy; for knowing that Eusebius and his fellows had conspired against me in behalf of their own misbelief, and of nothing else, as soon as they had determined to confess their calumnies against me, they immediately renounced also that antichristian heresy for the sake of which they had falsely asserted them.
The following are the letters written in my favour by the Bishops in the several Councils and first the letter of the Egyptian Bishops.
Encyclical Letter of the Council of Egypt.
The holy Council assembled at Alexandria out of Egypt, the Thebais, Libya, and Pentapolis, to the Bishops of the Catholic Church everywhere, brethren beloved and greatly longed for in the Lord, greeting.
3. Dearly beloved brethren, we might have put forth a defence of our brother Athanasius as respects the conspiracy of Eusebius and his fellows against him, and complained of his sufferings at their hands, and have exposed all their false charges, either at the beginning of their conspiracy or upon his arrival at Alexandria. But circumstances did not permit it then, as you also know; and lately, after the return of the Bishop Athanasius, we thought that they would be confounded and covered with shame at their manifest injustice: in consequence we prevailed with ourselves to remain silent. Since, however, after all his severe sufferings, after his retirement into Gaul, after his sojourn in a foreign and far distant country in the place of his own, after his narrow escape from death through their calumnies, but thanks to the clemency of the Emperor,--distress which would have satisfied even the most cruel enemy,--they are still insensible to shame, are again acting insolently against the Church and Athanasius; and from indignation at his deliverance venture on still more atrocious schemes against him, and are ready with an accusation, fearless of the words in holy Scripture [480] , A false witness shall not be unpunished;' and, The mouth that belieth slayeth the soul;' we therefore are unable longer to hold our peace, being amazed at their wickedness and at the insatiable love of contention displayed in their intrigues.
For see, they cease not to disturb the ear of royalty with fresh reports against us; they cease not to write letters of deadly import, for the destruction of the Bishop who is the enemy of their impiety. For again have they written to the Emperors against him; again they wish to conspire against him, charging him with a butchery which has never taken place; again they wish to shed his blood, accusing him of a murder that never was committed (for at that former time would they have murdered him by their calumnies, had we not had a kind Emperor); again they are urgent, to say the least, that he should be sent into banishment, while they pretend to lament the miseries of those alleged to have been exiled by him. They lament before us things that have never been done, and, not satisfied with what has been done to him, desire to add thereto other and more cruel treatment. So mild are they and merciful, and of so just a disposition; or rather (for the truth shall be spoken) so wicked are they and malicious; obtaining respect through fear and by threats, rather than by their piety and justice, as becomes Bishops. They have dared in their letters to the Emperors to pour forth language such as no contentious person would employ even among those that are without; they have charged him with a number of murders and butcheries, and that not before a Governor, or any other superior officer, but before the three Augusti; nor shrink they from any journey however long, provided only all greater courts may be filled with their accusations. For indeed, dearly beloved, their business consists in accusations, and that of the most solemn character, forasmuch as the tribunals to which they make their appeal are the most solemn of any upon earth. And what other end do they propose by these investigations, except to move the Emperor to capital punishment?
4. Their own conduct therefore, and not that of Athanasius, is the fittest subject for lamentation and mourning, and one would more properly lament them, for such actions ought to be bewailed, since it is written, Weep ye not for the dead, neither bemoan him: but weep sore for him that goeth away, for he shall return no more [481] .' For their whole letter contemplates nothing but death; and their endeavour is to kill, whenever they may be permitted, or if not, to drive into exile. And this they were permitted to do by the most religious father of the Emperors, who gratified their fury by the banishment of Athanasius [482] , instead of his death. Now that this is not the conduct even of ordinary Christians, scarcely even of heathens, much less of Bishops, who profess to teach others righteousness, we suppose that your Christian consciences must at once perceive. How can they forbid others to accuse their brethren, who themselves become their accusers, and that to the Emperors? How can they teach compassion for the misfortunes of others, who cannot rest satisfied even with our banishment? For there was confessedly a general sentence of banishment against us Bishops, and we all looked upon ourselves as banished men: and now again we consider ourselves as restored with Athanasius to our native places, and instead of our former lamentations and mourning over him, as having the greatest encouragement and grace,--which may the Lord continue to us, nor suffer Eusebius and his fellows to destroy?
Even if their charges against him were true, here is a certain charge against them, that against the precept of Christianity, and after his banishment and trials, they have assaulted him again, and accuse him of murder, and butchery, and other crimes, which they sound in the royal ears against the Bishops. But how manifold is their wickedness, and what manner of men think you them, when every word they speak is false, every charge they bring a calumny, and there is no truth whatever either in their mouths or their writings! Let us then at length enter upon these matters, and meet their last charges. This will prove, that in their former representations in the Council [483] and at the trial their conduct was dishonourable, or rather their words untrue, besides exposing them for what they have now advanced.
5. We are indeed ashamed to make any defence against such charges. But since our reckless accusers lay hold of any charge, and allege that murders and butcheries were committed after the return of Athanasius, we beseech you to bear with our answer though it be somewhat long; for circumstances constrain us. No murder has been committed either by Athanasius or on his account, since our accusers, as we said before, compel us to enter upon this humiliating defence. Slaughter and imprisonment are foreign to our Church. No one did Athanasius commit into the hands of the executioner; and the prison, so far as he was concerned, was never disturbed. Our sanctuaries are now, as they have always been, pure, and honoured only with the Blood of Christ and His pious worship. Neither Presbyter nor Deacon was destroyed by Athanasius; he perpetrated no murder, he caused the banishment of no one. Would that they had never caused the like to him, nor given him actual experience of it! No one here has been banished on his account; no one at all except Athanasius himself, the Bishop of Alexandria, whom they banished, and whom, now that he is restored, they again seek to entangle in the same or even a more cruel plot than before, setting their tongues to speak all manner of false and deadly words against him.
For, behold, they now attribute to him the acts of the magistrates; and although they plainly confess in their letter that the Prefect of Egypt passed sentence upon certain persons, they now are not ashamed to impute this sentence to Athanasius; and that, though he had not at the time entered Alexandria, but was yet on his return from his place of exile. Indeed he was then in Syria; since we must needs adduce in defence his length of way from home, that a man may not be responsible for the actions of a Governor or Prefect of Egypt. But supposing Athanasius had been in Alexandria, what were the proceedings of the Prefect to Athanasius? However, he was not even in the country; and what the Prefect of Egypt did was not done on ecclesiastical grounds, but for reasons which you will learn from the records, which, after we understood what they had written, we made diligent enquiry for, and have transmitted to you. Since then they now raise a cry against certain things which were never done either by him or for him, as though they had certainly taken place, and testify against such evils as though they were assured of their existence; let them inform us from what Council they obtained their knowledge of them, from what proofs, and from what judicial investigation? But if they have no such evidence to bring forward, and nothing but their own mere assertion, we leave it to you to consider as regards their former charges also, how the things took place, and why they so speak of them. In truth, it is nothing but calumny, and a plot of our enemies, and a temper of ungovernable mood, and an impiety in behalf of the Arian madmen which is frantic against true godliness, and desires to root out the orthodox, so that henceforth the advocates of impiety may preach without fear whatever doctrines they please. The history of the matter is as follows:--
6. When Arius, from whom the heresy of the Arian madmen has its name, was cast out of the Church for his impiety by Bishop Alexander, of blessed memory, Eusebius and his fellows, who are the disciples and partners of his impiety, considering themselves also to have been ejected, wrote frequently to Bishop Alexander, beseeching him not to leave the heretic Arius out of the Church [484] . But when Alexander in his piety towards Christ refused to admit that impious man, they directed their resentment against Athanasius, who was then a Deacon, because in their busy enquiries they had heard that he was much in the familiarity of Bishop Alexander, and much honoured by him. And their hatred of him was greatly increased after they had experience of his piety towards Christ, in the Council assembled at Nicæa [485] , wherein he spoke boldly against the impiety of the Arian madmen. But when God raised him to the Episcopate, their long-cherished malice burst forth into a flame, and fearing his orthodoxy and resistance of their impiety, they (and especially Eusebius [486] , who was smitten with a consciousness of his own evil doings), engaged in all manner of treacherous designs against him. They prejudiced the Emperor against him; they frequently threatened him with Councils; and at last assembled at Tyre; and to this day they cease not to write against him, and are so implacable that they even find fault with his appointment to the Episcopate [487] , taking every means of shewing their enmity and hatred towards him, and spreading false reports for the sole purpose of thereby vilifying his character.
However, the very misrepresentations which they now are making do but convict their former statements of being falsehoods, and a mere conspiracy against him. For they say, that after the death of Bishop Alexander, a certain few having mentioned the name of Athanasius, six or seven Bishops elected him clandestinely in a secret place:' and this is what they wrote to the Emperors, having no scruple about asserting the greatest falsehoods. Now that the whole multitude and all the people of the Catholic Church assembled together as with one mind and body, and cried, shouted, that Athanasius should be Bishop of their Church, made this the subject of their public prayers to Christ, and conjured us to grant it for many days and nights, neither departing themselves from the Church, nor suffering us to do so; of all this we are witnesses, and so is the whole city, and the province too. Not a word did they speak against him, as these persons represented, but gave him the most excellent titles they could devise, calling him good, pious, Christian, an ascetic [488] , a genuine Bishop. And that he was elected by a majority of our body in the sight and with the acclamations of all the people, we who elected him also testify, who are surely more credible witnesses than those who were not present, and now spread these false accounts.
But yet Eusebius finds fault with the appointment of Athanasius,--he who perhaps never received any appointment to his office at all; or if he did, has himself rendered it invalid [489] . For he had first the See of Berytus, but leaving that he came to Nicomedia. He left the one contrary to the law, and contrary to the law invaded the other; having deserted his own without affection, and holding possession of another's without reason; he lost his love for the first in his lust for another, without even keeping to that which he obtained at the prompting of his lust. For, behold, withdrawing himself from the second, again he takes possession of another's [490] , casting an evil eye all around him upon the cities of other men, and thinking that godliness [491] consists in wealth and in the greatness of cities, and making light of the heritage of God to which he had been appointed; not knowing that where' even two or three are gathered in the name of the' Lord, there' is the Lord in the midst of them;' not considering the words of the Apostle, I will not boast in another man's labours;' not perceiving the charge which he has given, Art thou bound unto a wife? seek not to be loosed.' For if this expression applies to a wife, how much more does it apply to a Church, and to the same Episcopate; to which whosoever is bound ought not to seek another, lest he prove an adulterer according to holy Scripture.
7. But though conscious of these his own misdoings, he has boldly undertaken to arraign the appointment of Athanasius, to which honourable testimony has been borne by all, and he ventures to reproach him with his deposition, though he has been deposed himself, and has a standing proof of his deposition in the appointment of another in his room. How could either he or Theognius [492] depose another, after they had been deposed themselves, which is sufficiently proved by the appointment of others in their room? For you know very well that there were appointed instead of them Amphion to Nicomedia and Chrestus to Nicæa, in consequence of their own impiety and connection with the Arian madmen, who were rejected by the Ecumenic Council. But while they desire to set aside that true Council, they endeavour to give that name to their own unlawful combination [493] ; while they are unwilling that the decrees of the Council should be enforced, they desire to enforce their own decisions; and they use the name of a Council, while they refuse to submit themselves to one so great as this. Thus they care not for Councils, but only pretend to do so in order that they may root out the orthodox, and annul the decrees of the true and great Council against the Arians, in support of whom, both now and heretofore, they have ventured to assert these falsehoods against the Bishop Athanasius. For their former statements resembled those they now falsely make, viz., that disorderly meetings were held at his entrance [494] , with lamentation and mourning, the people indignantly refusing to receive him. Now such was not the case, but, quite the contrary, joy and cheerfulness prevailed, and the people ran together, hastening to obtain the desired sight of him. The churches were full of rejoicings, and thanksgivings were offered up to the Lord everywhere; and all the Ministers and Clergy beheld him with such feelings, that their souls were possessed with delight, and they esteemed that the happiest day of their lives. Why need we mention the inexpressible joy that prevailed among us Bishops, for we have already said that we counted ourselves to have been partakers in his sufferings?
8. Now this being confessedly the truth of the matter, although it is very differently represented by them, what weight can be attached to that Council or trial of which they make their boast? Since they presume thus to interfere in a case which they did not witness, which they have not examined, and for which they did not meet, and to write as though they were assured of the truth of their statements, how can they claim credit respecting these matters for the consideration of which they say that they did meet together? Will it not rather be believed that they have acted both in the one case and in the other out of enmity to us? For what kind of a Council of Bishops was then held? Was it an assembly which aimed at the truth? Was not almost every one among them our enemy [495] ? Did not the attack of Eusebius and his fellows upon us proceed from their zeal for the Arian madness? Did they not urge on the others of their party? Have we not always written against them as professing the doctrines of Arius? Was not Eusebius of Cæsarea in Palestine accused by our confessors of sacrificing to idols [496] ? Was not George proved to have been deposed by the blessed Alexander [497] ? Were not they charged with various offences, some with this, some with that?
How then could such men entertain the purpose of holding a meeting against us? How can they have the boldness to call that a Council, at which a Count presided, which an executioner attended, and where an usher [498] instead of the Deacons of the Church introduced us into Court; and where the Count only spoke, and all present held their peace, or rather obeyed his directions [499] ? The removal of those Bishops who seemed to deserve it was prevented at his desire; and when he gave the order we were dragged about by soldiers;--or rather Eusebius and his fellows gave the order, and he was subservient to their will. In short, dearly beloved, what kind of Council was that, the object of which was banishment and murder at the pleasure of the Emperor? And of what nature were their charges?--for here is matter of still greater astonishment. There was one Arsenius whom they declared to have been murdered; and they also complained that a chalice belonging to the sacred mysteries had been broken.
Now Arsenius is alive, and prays to be admitted to our communion. He waits for no other testimony to prove that he is still living, but himself confesses it, writing in his own person to our brother Athanasius, whom they positively asserted to be his murderer. The impious wretches were not ashamed to accuse him of having murdered a man who was at a great distance from him, being separated by so great a distance, whether by sea or land, and whose abode at that time no one knew. Nay, they even had the boldness to remove him out of sight, and place him in concealment, though he had suffered no injury; and, if it had been possible, they would have transported him to another world, nay, or have taken him from life in earnest, so that either by a true or false statement of his murder they might in good earnest destroy Athanasius. But thanks to divine Providence for this also which permitted them not to succeed in their injustice, but presented Arsenius [500] alive to the eyes of all men, who has clearly proved their conspiracy and calumnies. He does not withdraw from us as murderers, nor hate us as having injured him (for indeed he has suffered no evil at all); but he desires to hold communion with us; he wishes to be numbered among us, and has written to this effect.
9. Nevertheless they laid their plot against Athanasius, accusing him of having murdered a person who was still alive; and those same men are the authors of his banishment [501] . For it was not the father of the Emperors, but their calumnies, that sent him into exile. Consider whether this is not the truth. When nothing was discovered to the prejudice of our fellow-minister Athanasius, but still the Count threatened him with violence, and was very zealous against him, the Bishop [502] fled from this violence and went up [503] to the most religious Emperor, where he protested against the Count and their conspiracy against him, and requested either that a lawful Council of Bishops might be assembled, or that the Emperor would himself receive his defence concerning the charges they brought against him. Upon this the Emperor wrote in anger, summoning them before him, and declaring that he would hear the cause himself, and for that purpose he also ordered a Council to be held. Whereupon Eusebius and his fellows went up and falsely charged Athanasius, not with the same offences which they had published against him at Tyre, but with an intention of detaining the vessels laden with corn, as though Athanasius had been the man to pretend that he could stop the exports of corn from Alexandria to Constantinople [504] .
Certain of our friends were present at the palace with Athanasius, and heard the threats of the Emperor upon receiving this report. And when Athanasius cried out upon the calumny, and positively declared that it was not true, (for how, he argued, should he a poor man, and in a private station, be able to do such a thing?) Eusebius did not hesitate publicly to repeat the charge, and swore that Athanasius was a rich man, and powerful, and able to do anything; in order that it might thence be supposed that he had used this language. Such was the accusation these venerable Bishops proffered against him. But the grace of God proved superior to their wickedness, for it moved the pious Emperor to mercy, who instead of death passed upon him the sentence of banishment. Thus their calumnies, and nothing else, were the cause of this. For the Emperor, in the letter which he previously wrote, complained of their conspiracy, censured their machinations, and condemned the Meletians as unscrupulous and deserving of execration; in short, expressed himself in the severest terms concerning them. For he was greatly moved when he heard the story of the dead alive; he was moved at hearing of murder in the case of one alive, and not deprived of life. We have sent you the letter.
10. But these marvellous men, Eusebius and his fellows, to make a show of refuting the truth of the case, and the statements contained in this letter, put forward the name of a Council, and ground its proceedings upon the authority of the Emperor. Hence the attendance of a Count at their meeting, and the soldiers as guards of the Bishops, and royal letters compelling the attendance of any persons whom they required. But observe here the strange character of their machinations, and the inconsistency of their bold measures, so that by some means or other they may take Athanasius away from us. For if as Bishops they claimed for themselves alone the judgment of the case, what need was there for the attendance of a Count and soldiers? or how was it that they assembled under the sanction of royal letters? Or if they required the Emperor's countenance and wished to derive their authority from him, why were they then annulling his judgment? and when he declared in the letter which he wrote, that the Meletians were calumniators, unscrupulous, and that Athanasius was most innocent, and made much stir about the pretended murder of the living, how was it that they determined that the Meletians had spoken the truth, and that Athanasius was guilty of the offence; and were not ashamed to make the living dead, living both after the Emperor's judgment, and at the time when they met together, and who even until this day is amongst us? So much concerning the case of Arsenius.
11. And as for the cup belonging to the mysteries, what was it, or where was it broken by Macarius? for this is the report which they spread up and down. But as for Athanasius, even his accusers would not have ventured to blame him, had they not been suborned by them. However, they attribute the origin of the offence to him; although it ought not to be imputed even to Macarius who is clear of it. And they are not ashamed to parade the sacred mysteries before Catechumens, and worse than that, even before heathens [505] : whereas, they ought to attend to what is written, It is good to keep close the secret of a king [506] ;' and as the Lord has charged us, Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine [507] .' We ought not then to parade the holy mysteries before the uninitiated, lest the heathen in their ignorance deride them, and the Catechumens being over-curious be offended. However, what was the cup, and where and before whom was it broken? It is the Meletians who make the accusation, who are not worthy of the least credit, for they have been schismatics and enemies of the Church, not of a recent date, but from the times of the blessed Peter, Bishop and Martyr [508] . They formed a conspiracy against Peter himself; they calumniated his successor Achillas; they accused Alexander even before the Emperor; and being thus well versed in these arts, they have now transferred their enmity to Athanasius, acting altogether in accordance with their former wickedness. For as they slandered those that have been before him, so now they have slandered him. But their calumnies and false accusations have never prevailed against him until now, that they have got Eusebius and his fellows for their assistants and patrons, on account of the impiety which these have adopted from the Arian madmen, which has led them to conspire against many Bishops, and among the rest Athanasius.
Now the place where they say the cup was broken, was not a Church; there was no Presbyter in occupation of the place; and the day on which they say that Macarius did the deed, was not the Lord's day. Since then there was no church there; since there was no one to perform the sacred office; and since the day did not require the use of it [509] ; what was this cup belonging to the mysteries, and when, or where was it broken? There are many cups, it is plain, both in private houses, and in the public market; and if a person breaks one of them, he is not guilty of impiety. But the cup which belongs to the mysteries, and which if it be broken intentionally, makes the perpetrator of the deed an impious person, is found only among those who lawfully preside. This is the only description that can be given of this kind of cup; there is none other; this you legally give to the people to drink; this you have received according to the canon of the Church [510] ; this belongs only to those who preside over the Catholic Church, for to you only it appertains to administer the Blood of Christ, and to none besides. But as he who breaks the cup belonging to the mysteries is an impious person, much more impious is he who treats the Blood of Christ with contumely: and he does so who does this [511] ' contrary to the rule of the Church. (We say this, not as if a cup even of the schismatics was broken by Macarius, for there was no cup there at all; how should there be? where there was neither Lord's house nor any the belonging to the Church, nay, it was not the time of the celebration of the mysteries). Now such a person is the notorious Ischyras, who was never appointed to his office by the Church, and when Alexander admitted the Presbyters that had been ordained by Meletius, he was not even numbered amongst them; and therefore did not receive ordination even from that quarter.
12. By what means then did Ischyras become a Presbyter? who was it that ordained him? was it Colluthus? for this is the only supposition that remains. But it is well known and no one has any doubt about the matter that Colluthus died a Presbyter, and that every ordination of his was invalid, and that all that were ordained by him during the schism were reduced to the condition of laymen, and in that rank appear in the congregation. How then can it be believed that a private person, occupying a private house had in his possession a sacred chalice? But the truth is, they gave the name of Presbyter at the time to a private person, and gratified him with this title to support him in his iniquitous conduct towards us; and now as the reward of his accusations they procure for him the erection of a Church [512] . So that this man had then no Church; but as the reward of his malice and subserviency to them in accusing us, he receives now what he had not before; nay, perhaps they have even remunerated his services with the Episcopate, for so he goes about reporting, and accordingly behaves towards us with great insolence. Thus are such rewards as these now bestowed by Bishops upon accusers and calumniators though indeed it is reasonable, in the case of an accomplice, that as they have made him a partner in their proceedings, so they should also make him their associate in their own Episcopate. But this is not all; give ear yet further to their proceedings at that time.
13. Being unable to prevail against the truth, though they had thus set themselves in array against it, and Ischyras having proved nothing at Tyre, but being shewn to be a calumniator, and the calumny ruining their plot, they defer proceedings for fresh evidence, and profess that they are going to send to the Mareotis certain of their party to enquire diligently into the matter. Accordingly they dispatched secretly, with the assistance of the civil power, persons to whom we openly objected on many accounts, as being of the party of Arius, and therefore our enemies; namely, Diognius [513] , Maris, Theodorus, Macedonius, and two others, young both in years and mind [514] , Ursacius and Valens from Pannonia; who, after they had undertaken this long journey for the purpose of sitting in judgment upon their enemy, set out again from Tyre for Alexandria. They did not shrink from becoming witnesses themselves, although they were the judges, but openly adopted every means of furthering their design, and undertook any labour or journey whatsoever in order to bring to a successful issue the conspiracy which was in progress. They left the Bishop Athanasius detained in a foreign country while they themselves entered their enemy's city, as if to have their revel both against his Church and against his people. And what was more outrageous still, they took with them the accuser Ischyras, but would not permit Macarius, the accused person, to accompany them, but left him in custody at Tyre. For Macarius the Presbyter of Alexandria' was made answerable for the charge far and near.
14. They therefore entered Alexandria alone with the accuser, their partner in lodging, board, and cup; and taking with them Philagrius the Prefect of Egypt they proceeded to the Mareotis, and there carried on the so-called investigation by themselves, all their own way, with the forementioned person. Although the Presbyters frequently begged that they might be present, they would not permit them. The Presbyters both of the city and of the whole country desired to attend, that they might detect who and whence the persons were who were suborned by Ischyras. But they forbade the Ministers to be present, while they carried on the examination concerning church, cup, table, and the holy things, before the heathen; nay, worse than that, they summoned heathen witnesses during the enquiry concerning a cup belonging to the mysteries; and those persons who they affirmed were taken out of the way by Athanasius by summons of the Receiver-general, and they knew not where in the world they were, these same individuals they brought forward before themselves and the Prefect only, and avowedly used their testimony, whom they affirmed without shame to have been secreted by the Bishop Athanasius.
But here too their only object is to effect his death, and so they again pretend that persons are dead who are still alive, following the same method they adopted in the case of Arsenius. For the men are living, and are to be seen in their own country; but to you who are at a great distance from the spot they make a great stir about the matter as though they had disappeared, in order that, as the evidence is so far removed from you, they may falsely accuse our brother-minister, as though he used violence and the civil power; whereas they themselves have in all respects acted by means of that power and the countenance of others. For their proceedings in the Mareotis were parallel to those at Tyre; and as there a Count attended with military assistance, and would permit nothing either to be said or done contrary to their pleasure, so here also the Prefect of Egypt was present with a band of men, frightening all the members of the Church, and permitting no one to give true testimony. And what was the strangest thing of all, the persons who came, whether as judges or witnesses, or, what was more likely, in order to serve their own purposes and those of Eusebius, lived in the same place with the accuser, even in his house, and there seemed to carry on the investigation as they pleased.
15. We suppose you are not ignorant what outrages they committed at Alexandria; for they are reported everywhere. Naked swords [515] were at work against the holy virgins and brethren; scourges were at work against their persons, esteemed honourable in the sight of God, so that their feet were lamed by the stripes, whose souls are whole and sound in purity and all good works [516] . The trades were excited against them; and the heathen multitude was set to strip them naked, to beat them, wantonly to insult them, and to threaten them with their altars and sacrifices. And one coarse fellow, as though license had now been given them by the Prefect in order to gratify the Bishops, took hold of a virgin by the hand, and dragged her towards an altar that happened to be near, imitating the practice of compelling to offer sacrifice in time of persecution. When this was done, the virgins took to flight, and a shout of laughter was raised by the heathen against the Church; the Bishops being in the place, and occupying the very house where this was going on; and from which, in order to obtain favour with them, the virgins were assaulted with naked swords, and were exposed to all kinds of danger, and insult, and wanton violence. And this treatment they received on a fast-day [517] , and at the hands of persons who themselves were feasting with the Bishops indoors.
16. Foreseeing these things, and reflecting that the entrance of enemies into a place is no ordinary calamity, we protested against this commission. And Alexander [518] , Bishop of Thessalonica, considering the same, wrote to the people residing there, discovering the conspiracy, and testifying of the plot. They indeed reckon him to be one of themselves, and account him a partner in their designs; but they only prove thereby the violence they have exercised towards him. For even the profligate Ischyras himself was only induced by fear and violence to proceed in the matter, and was obliged by force to undertake the accusation. As a proof of this, he wrote himself to our brother Athanasius [519] , confessing that nothing of the kind that was alleged had taken place there, but that he was suborned to make a false statement. This declaration he made, though he was never admitted by Athanasius as a Presbyter, nor received such a title of grace from him, nor was entrusted by way of recompense with the erection of a Church, nor expected the bribe of a Bishopric; all of which he obtained from them in return for undertaking the accusation. Moreover, his whole family held communion with us [520] , which they would not have done had they been injured in the slightest degree.
17. Now to prove that these things are facts and not mere assertions, we have the testimony [521] of all the Presbyters of the Mareotis [522] , who always accompany the Bishop in his visitations, and who also wrote at the time against Ischyras. But neither those of them who came to Tyre were allowed to declare the truth [523] , nor could those who remained in the Mareotis obtain permission to refute the calumnies of Ischyras [524] . The copies also of the letters of Alexander, and of the Presbyters, and of Ischyras will prove the same thing. We have sent also the letter of the father of the Emperors, in which he expresses his indignation that the murder of Arsenius was charged upon any one while the man was still alive; as also his astonishment at the variable and inconsistent character of their accusations with respect to the cup; since at one time they accused the Presbyter Macarius, at another the Bishop Athanasius, of having broken it with his hands. He declares also on the one hand that the Meletians are calumniators, and on the other that Athanasius is perfectly innocent.
And are not the Meletians calumniators, and above all John [525] , who after coming into the Church, and communicating with us, after condemning himself, and no longer taking any part in the proceedings respecting the cup, when he saw Eusebius and his fellows zealously supporting the Arian madmen, though they had not the daring to co-operate with them openly, but were attempting to employ others as their masks, undertook a character, as an actor in the heathen theatres [526] ? The subject of the drama was a contest of Arians; the real design of the piece being their success, but John and his partizans being put on the stage and playing the parts, in order that under colour of these, the supporters of the Arians in the garb of judges might drive away the enemies of their impiety, firmly establish their impious doctrines, and bring the Arians into the Church. And those who wish to drive out true religion strive all they can to prevail by irreligion; they who have chosen the part of that impiety which wars against Christ, endeavour to destroy the enemies thereof, as though they were impious persons; and they impute to us the breaking of the cup, for the purpose of making it appear that Athanasius, equally with themselves, is guilty of impiety towards Christ.
For what means this mention of a cup belonging to the mysteries by them? Whence comes this religious regard for the cup among those who support impiety towards Christ? Whence comes it that Christ's cup is known to them who know not Christ? How can they who profess to honour that cup, dishonour the God of the cup? or how can they who lament over the cup, seek to murder the Bishop who celebrates the mysteries therewith? for they would have murdered him, had it been in their power. And how can they who lament the loss of the throne that was Episcopally covered [527] , seek to destroy the Bishop that sat upon it, to the end that both the throne may be without its Bishop, and that the people may be deprived of godly doctrine? It was not then the cup, nor the murder, nor any of those portentous deeds they talk about, that induced them to act thus; but the forementioned heresy of the Arians, for the sake of which they conspired against Athanasius and other Bishops, and still continue to wage war against the Church.
Who are they that have really been the cause of murders and banishments? Is it not these? Who are they that, availing themselves of external support, conspire against the Bishops? Are not Eusebius and his fellows the men, and not Athanasius, as they say in their letters? Both he and others have suffered at their hands. Even at the time of which we speak, four Presbyters [528] of Alexandria, though they had not even proceeded to Tyre, were banished by their means. Who then are they whose conduct calls for tears and lamentations? Is it not they, who after they have been guilty of one course of persecution, do not scruple to add to it a second, but have recourse to all manner of falsehood, in order that they may destroy a Bishop who will not give way to their impious heresy? Hence arises the enmity of Eusebius and his fellows; hence their proceedings at Tyre; hence their pretended trials; hence also now the letters which they have written even without any trial, expressing the utmost confidence in their statements; hence their calumnies before the father of the Emperors, and before the most religious Emperors themselves.
18. For it is necessary that you should know what is now reported to the prejudice of our fellow-minister Athanasius, in order that you may thereby be led to condemn their wickedness, and may perceive that they desire nothing else but to murder him. A quantity of corn was given by the father of the Emperors for the support of certain widows, partly of Libya, and partly certain out of Egypt. They have all received it up to this time, Athanasius getting nothing therefrom, but the trouble of assisting them. But now, although the recipients themselves make no complaint, but acknowledge that they have received it, Athanasius has been accused of selling all the corn, and appropriating the profits to his own use: and the Emperor wrote to this effect about it, charging him with the offence in consequence of the calumnies which had been raised against him. Now who are they which have raised these calumnies? Is it not those who after they have been guilty of one course of persecution, scruple not to set on foot another? Who are the authors of those letters which are said to have come from the Emperor? Are not the Arians, who are so zealous against Athanasius, and scruple not to speak and write anything against him? No one would pass over persons who have acted as they have done, in order to entertain suspicion of others. Nay, the proof of their calumny appears to be most evident for they are anxious under cover of it, to take away the corn from the Church, and to give it to the Arians. And this circumstance more than any other, brings the matter home to the authors of this design and their principals, who scrupled neither to set on foot a charge of murder against Athanasius, as a base means of prejudicing the Emperor against him, nor yet to take away from the Clergy of the Church the subsistence of the poor, in order that in fact they might make gain for the heretics.
19. We have sent also the testimony of our fellow-ministers in Libya, Pentapolis, and Egypt, from which likewise you may learn the false accusations which have been brought against Athanasius. And these things they do, in order that, the professors of true godliness being henceforth induced by fear to remain quiet, the heresy of the impious Arians may be brought in in its stead. But thanks be to your piety, dearly beloved, that you have frequently anathematized the Arians in your letters, and have never given them admittance into the Church. The exposure of Eusebius and his fellows is also easy and ready at hand. For behold, after their former letters concerning the Arians, of which also we have sent you copies, they now openly stir up the Arian madmen against the Church, though the whole Catholic Church has anathematized them; they have appointed a Bishop [529] over them; they distract the Churches with threats and alarms, that they may gain assistants in their impiety in every part. Moreover, they send Deacons to the Arian madmen, who openly join their assemblies; they write letters to them, and receive answers from them, thus making schisms in the Church, and holding communion with them; and they send to every part, commending their heresy, and repudiating the Church, as you will perceive from the letters they have addressed to the Bishop of Rome [530] and perhaps to yourselves also. You perceive therefore, dearly beloved, that these things are not undeserving of vengeance: they are indeed dreadful and alien from the doctrine of Christ.
Wherefore we have assembled together, and have written to you, to request of your Christian wisdom to receive this our declaration and sympathize with our brother Athanasius, and to shew your indignation against Eusebius and his fellows who have essayed such things, in order that such malice and wickedness may no longer prevail against the Church. We call upon you to be the avengers of such injustice, reminding you of the injunction of the Apostle, Put away from among yourselves that wicked person [531] .' Wicked indeed is their conduct, and unworthy of your communion. Wherefore give no further heed to them, though they should again write to you against the Bishop Athanasius (for all that proceeds from them is false); not even though they subscribe their letter with names [532] of Egyptian Bishops. For it is evident that it will not be we who write, but the Meletians [533] , who have ever been schismatics, and who even unto this day make disturbances and raise factions in the Churches. For they ordain improper persons, and all but heathens; and they are guilty of such actions as we are ashamed to set down in writing, but which you may learn from those whom we have sent unto you, who will also deliver to you our letter.
20. Thus wrote the Bishops of Egypt to all Bishops, and to Julius, Bishop of Rome. __________________________________________________________________
[472] The Council of Sardica says eighty; which is a usual number in Egyptian Councils. (vid. Tillemont, vol. 8. p. 74.) There were about ninety Bishops in Egypt, the Thebais, and Libya. The present Council was held [at the end of 338 or possibly at the beginning of 339]. Its synodal Epistle is contained below, §3, and is particularly addressed to Pope Julius, §20.
[473] This was held in 340. Julius's Letter is found below, §21.
[474] Vid. infr. §58. This was a.d. 347.
[475] Deut. xvii. 6.
[476] hos ethelesan. vid. infr. §14. de Decr. §3. de Syn. §13. Ep. Æg. §5.
[477] This implies that Valens and Ursacius were subjected to some kind of persecution, which is natural [most improbable]. They relapsed in 351, when Constantius on the death of Constans came into possession of his brother's dominions; and professed to have been forced to their former recantation by the latter Emperor.
[478] Acts xxiii. 9.
[479] 1 Sam. xxvi. 21.
[480] Prov. xix. 5; Wisd. i. 11.
[481] Jer. xxii. 10.
[482] Hist. Ar. 50.
[483] Of Tyre. See below, §71.
[484] Cf. de Syn. 17.
[485] Cf. Socr. i. 8.
[486] Cf. Nicomedia.
[487] The Eusebians alleged that, fifty-four Bishops of the two parties of S. Alexander and Meletius being assembled for the election, and having sworn to elect by the common voice, six or seven of these broke their oaths in favour of S. Athanasius, whom no one had thought of, and consecrated him in secret to the great surprise and scandal of both ecclesiastical and lay persons. vid. Socr. ii. 17. Philostorgius (a.d. 425) adds particulars, explanatory or corrective of this statement, of which the Bishops in the text do not seem to have heard; viz., that Athanasius with his party one night seized on the Church of St. Dionysius, and compelled two Bishops whom he found there to consecrate him against their will; that he was in consequence anathematized by all the other Bishops, but that, fortifying himself in his position, he sent in his election to the Emperor, and by this means obtained its confirmation. H. E. ii. 16. It appears, in matter of fact, that S. Athan. was absent at time of his election; as Socrates says, in order to avoid it, or as Epiphanius, on business at the Court; these reasons are compatible. [Cf. Prolegg. ch. ii. §4, and Gwatkin's note, quoted there.]
[488] It is contested whether S. Athan. was ever one of S. Antony's monks, the reading of a passage in the commencement of his Vit. Ant., which would decide the question, varying in different mss. The word "ascetic" is used of those who lived a life, as afterwards followed in Monasteries, in the Ante-Nicene times. [See D.C.B. 1. 181^a, and Prolegg. ch. ii. §1 ad fin, and Introd. to Vit. Ant.]
[489] The Canons of Nicæa and Sardica were absolute against translation, but, as Bingham observes, Antiqu. vi. 4. §6, only as a general rule. The so-called Apostolical Canons except "a reasonable cause" and the sanction of a Council; one of the Councils of Carthage prohibits them when subserving ambitious views, and except for the advantage of the Church. Vid. list of translations in Socr. Hist. vii. 36. Cassiodor. Hist. xii. 8. Niceph. Hist. xiv. 39. Coteler. adds others ad Can. Apost. 14. [cf. Hist Ari. 7.]
[490] i.e. Constantinople on the expulsion of Paul.
[491] 1 Tim. vi. 5; Matt. xviii. 20; 2 Cor. x. 15; 1 Cor. vii. 27.
[492] Or Theognis; he was, as well as Eusebius, a pupil of Lucian's, and was deposed together with him after the Nicene Council for communicating with Arians. [They were not ecclesiastically deposed, but exiled by the Emperor, see Prolegg. ch. ii. §§3 (1) and (2) c, 6 (1).] Constantine banished them to Gaul; they were recalled in the course of two or three years. He was dead by the date of the Council of Sardica.
[493] Eusebian Council of Tyre, a.d. 335.
[494] On his return from Gaul, Nov. 23, a.d. 337. [Prolegg. ch. ii. §6 (1).]
[495] Cf. §77.
[496] At the Council of Tyre, Potamo, an Egyptian Bishop and Confessor asked Eusebius what had happened to him in prison during the persecution, Epiph. Hær. 68, 7, as if hinting at his cowardice. It appears that Eusebius was prisoner at Cæsarea with S. Pamphilus; yet he never mentions the fact himself, which is unlike him, if it was producible. [The insinuation of Potammon was groundless: see Dic. C. Biog. ii. 311.]
[497] George, Bishop of Laodicea, had been degraded when a priest by S. Alexander, for his profligate habits as well as his Arianism. Athan. speaks of him elsewhere as reprobated even by his party. de Fug. 26. [Cf. §49, de Syn. 17. Prolegg. ch. ii. §3 (2) c, 2.]
[498] Conventarius.
[499] Hist. Ari. 11, and below §§36, 71.
[500] §65.
[501] By Constantine into Gaul, a.d. 336.
[502] The circumstances of this appeal, which are related by Athan. below, §86, are thus summed up by Gibbon; "Before the final sentence could be pronounced at Tyre, the intrepid primate threw himself into a bark which was ready to hoist sail for the imperial city. The request of a formal audience might have been opposed or eluded; but Athanasius concealed his arrival, watched the moment of Constantine's return from an adjacent villa, and boldly encountered his angry sovereign as he passed on horseback through the principal street of Constantinople. So strange an apparition excited his surprise and indignation; and the guards were ordered to remove the importunate suitor; but his resentment was subdued by involuntary respect; and the haughty spirit of the Emperor was awed by the courage and eloquence of a Bishop, who implored his justice and awakened his conscience." Decl. and Fall, xxi. Athan. was a small man in person.
[503] i.e. to Constantinople.
[504] §87.
[505] This period, when Christianity was acknowledged by the state but not embraced by the population, is just the time when we hear most of this Reserve as a principle. While Christians were but a sect, persecution enforced a discipline, and when they were commensurate with the nation, faith made it unnecessary. We are now returned to the state of the fourth century.
[506] Tob. xii. 7.
[507] Matt. vii. 6.
[508] [Cf. §59, and Ep. Æg. 22, Prolegg. ch. ii. §2 init.]
[509] This seems to imply that the Holy Communion was only celebrated on Sundays in the Egyptian Churches. [Cf. §§63, 74, 76.]
[510] Vid. Can. Ap. 65.
[511] 1 Cor. xi. 25.
[512] Cf. §85.
[513] Vid. also Ep. Æg. 7. Euseb. Vit. C. iv. 43. Hilar. ad Const. i. 5. Fragm. ii. 12. [Diognius' is another form of Theognius' or Theognis. See Prolegg. ch. ii. §5.]
[514] Vid. also Ep. Æg. 7. Euseb. Vit. C. iv. 43. Hilar. ad Const. i. 5. Fragm. ii. 12. [Diognius' is another form of Theognius' or Theognis. See Prolegg. ch. ii. §5.]
[515] Cf. Encycl. 3, Apol. Const. 33.
[516] Hist. Arian. 12.
[517] [Not in Lent, for the commission were at Alexandria in September, see the date of the protest, infra, §76.]
[518] This Alexander had been one of the Nicene Fathers, in 325, and had the office of publishing their decrees in Macedonia, Greece, &c. He was at the Council of Jerusalem ten years after, at which the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was consecrated, and afterwards Arius admitted to communion. His influence with the Court party seems to have been great, judging from Count Dionysius's tone in speaking of him. Infr. §§66, 80, 81.
[519] Infr. §64.
[520] Vid infr. §63 fin. §85 fin.
[521] Infr. §74.
[522] The district, called Mareotis from a neighbouring lake, lay in the territory and diocese of Alexandria, to the south-west. It consisted of various large villages, with handsome Churches, and resident Priests, and of hamlets which had none; of the latter was "Irene of Secontarurus)" (infr. §85.) where Ischyras lived.
[523] Infr. §79.
[524] §72 fin.
[525] Arcaph. infr. 65 fin., head of the Meletians.
[526] Vid. infr. §37, 46. and de Syn. 32, note.
[527] Cathedræ velatæ, see Bingh. viii. 6. §10.
[528] Vid. their names infr. §40.
[529] Pistus.
[530] Vid. infr. §21.
[531] 1 Cor. v. 13.
[532] The Eusebians availed themselves of the subscriptions of the Meletians, as at Philippopolis, Hilar. Fragm. 3.
[533] Infr. §73. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter II.--Letter of Julius to the Eusebians at Antioch.
Eusebius and his fellows wrote also to Julius, and thinking to frighten me, requested him to call a council, and to be himself the judge, if he so pleased [534] . When therefore I went up to Rome, Julius wrote to Eusebius and his fellows as was suitable, and sent moreover two of his own Presbyters [535] , Elpidius and Philoxenus [536] . But they, when they heard of me, were thrown into confusion, as not expecting my going up thither; and they declined the proposed Council, alleging unsatisfactory reasons for so doing, but in truth they were afraid lest the things should be proved against them which Valens and Ursacius afterwards confessed [537] . However, more than fifty Bishops assembled, in the place where the Presbyter Vito held his congregation; and they acknowledged my defence, and gave me the confirmation [538] both of their communion and their love. On the other hand, they expressed great indignation against Eusebius and his fellows, and requested that Julius would write to the following effect to those of their number who had written to him. Which accordingly he did, and sent it by the hand of Count Gabianus.
The Letter of Julius.
Julius to his dearly beloved brethren [539] , Danius, Flacillus, Narcissus, Eusebius, Maris, Macedonius, Theodorus, and their friends, who have written to me from Antioch, sends health in the Lord.
21. I have read your letter [540] which was brought to me by my Presbyters Elpidius and Philoxenus, and I am surprised to find that, whereas I wrote to you in charity and with conscious sincerity, you have replied to me in an unbecoming and contentious temper; for the pride and arrogance of the writers is plainly exhibited in that letter. Yet such feelings are inconsistent with the Christian faith; for what was written in a charitable spirit ought likewise to be answered in a spirit of charity and not of contention. And was it not a token of charity to send Presbyters to sympathize with them that are in suffering, and to desire those who had written to me to come thither, that the questions at issue might obtain a speedy settlement, and all things be duly ordered, so that our brethren might no longer be exposed to suffering, and that you might escape further calumny? But something seems to shew that your temper is such, as to force us to conclude that even in the terms in which you appeared to pay honour to us, you have expressed yourselves under the disguise of irony. The Presbyters also whom we sent to you, and who ought to have returned rejoicing, did on the contrary return sorrowful on account of the proceedings they had witnessed among you. And I, when I had read your letter, after much consideration, kept it to myself, thinking that after all some of you would come, and there would be no need to bring it forward, lest if it should be openly exhibited, it should grieve many of our brethren here. But when no one arrived, and it became necessary that the letter should be produced, I declare to you, they were all astonished, and were hardly able to believe that such a letter had been written by you at all; for it is expressed in terms of contention rather than of charity.
Now if the author of it wrote with an ambition of exhibiting his power of language, such a practice surely is more suitable for other subjects: in ecclesiastical matters, it is not a display of eloquence that is needed, but the observance of Apostolic Canons, and an earnest care not to offend one of the little ones of the Church. For it were better for a man, according to the word of the Church, that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the sea, than that he should offend even one of the little ones [541] . But if such a letter was written, because certain persons have been aggrieved on account of their meanness of spirit towards one another (for I will not impute it to all); it were better not to entertain any such feeling of offence at all, at least not to let the sun go down upon their vexation; and certainly not to give it room to exhibit itself in writing.
22. Yet what has been done that is a just cause of vexation? or in what respect was my letter to you such? Was it, that I invited you to be present at a council? You ought rather to have received the proposal with joy. Those who have confidence in their proceedings, or as they choose to term them, in their decisions, are not wont to be angry, if such decision is inquired into by others; they rather shew all boldness, seeing that if they have given a just decision, it can never prove to be the reverse. The Bishops who assembled in the great Council of Nicæa agreed, not without the will of God, that the decisions of one council should be examined in another [542] , to the end that the judges, having before their eyes that other trial which was to follow, might be led to investigate matters with the utmost caution, and that the parties concerned in their sentence might have assurance that the judgment they received was just, and not dictated by the enmity of their former judges. Now if you are unwilling that such a practice should be adopted in your own case, though it is of ancient standing, and has been noticed and recommended by the great Council, your refusal is not becoming; for it is unreasonable that a custom which had once obtained in the Church, and been established by councils, should be set aside by a few individuals.
For a further reason they cannot justly take offence in this point. When the persons whom you, Eusebius and his fellows, dispatched with your letters, I mean Macarius the Presbyter, and Martyrius and Hesychius the Deacons, arrived here, and found that they were unable to withstand the arguments of the Presbyters who came from Athanasius, but were confuted and exposed on all sides, they then requested me to call a Council together, and to write to Alexandria to the Bishop Athanasius, and also to Eusebius and his fellows, in order that a just judgment might be given in presence of all parties. And they undertook in that case to prove all the charges which had been brought against Athanasius. For Martyrius and Hesychius had been publicly refuted by us, and the Presbyters of the Bishop Athanasius had withstood them with great confidence: indeed, if one must tell the truth, Martyrius and his fellows had been utterly overthrown; and this it was that led them to desire that a Council might be held. Now supposing that they had not desired a Council, but that I had been the person to propose it, in discouragement of those who had written to me, and for the sake of our brethren who complain that they have suffered injustice; even in that case the proposal would have been reasonable and just, for it is agreeable to ecclesiastical practice, and well pleasing to God. But when those persons, whom you, Eusebius and his fellows, considered to be trustworthy, when even they wished me to call the brethren together, it was inconsistent in the parties invited to take offence, when they ought rather to have shewn all readiness to be present. These considerations shew that the display of anger in the offended persons is petulant, and the refusal of those who decline to meet the Council is unbecoming, and has a suspicious appearance. Does any one find fault, if he sees that done by another, which he would allow if done by himself? If, as you write, each council has an irreversible force, and he who has given judgment on a matter is dishonoured, if his sentence is examined by others; consider, dearly beloved, who are they that dishonour councils? who are setting aside the decisions of former judges? Not to inquire at present into every individual case, lest I should appear to press too heavily on certain parties, the last instance that has occurred, and which every one who hears it must shudder at, will be sufficient in proof of the others which I omit.
23. The Arians who were excommunicated for their impiety by Alexander, the late Bishop of Alexandria, of blessed memory, were not only proscribed by the brethren in the several cities, but were also anathematised by the whole body assembled together in the great Council of Nicæa. For theirs was no ordinary offence, neither had they sinned against man, but against our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, the Son of the living God. And yet these persons who were proscribed by the whole world, and branded in every Church, are said now to have been admitted to communion again; which I think even you ought to hear with indignation. Who then are the parties who dishonour a council? Are not they who have set at nought the votes of the Three hundred [543] , and have preferred impiety to godliness? The heresy of the Arian madmen was condemned and proscribed by the whole body of Bishops everywhere; but the Bishops Athanasius and Marcellus have many supporters who speak and write in their behalf. We have received testimony in favour of Marcellus [544] , that he resisted the advocates of the Arian doctrines in the Council of Nicæa; and in favour of Athanasius [545] , that at Tyre nothing was brought home to him, and that in the Mareotis, where the Reports against him are said to have been drawn up, he was not present. Now you know, dearly beloved, that ex parte proceedings are of no weight, but bear a suspicious appearance. Nevertheless, these things being so, we, in order to be accurate, and neither shewing any prepossession in favour of yourselves, nor of those who wrote in behalf of the other party, invited those who had written to us to come hither; that, since there were many who wrote in their behalf, all things might be enquired into in a council, and neither the guiltless might be condemned, nor the person on his trial be accounted innocent. We then are not the parties who dishonour a council, but they who at once and recklessly have received the Arians whom all had condemned, and contrary to the decision of the judges. The greater part of those judges have now departed, and are with Christ; but some of them are still in this life of trial, and are indignant at learning that certain persons have set aside their judgment.
24. We have also been informed of the following circumstance by those who were at Alexandria. A certain Carpones, who had been excommunicated by Alexander for Arianism, was sent hither by one Gregory with certain others, also excommunicated for the same heresy. However, I had learnt the matter also from the Presbyter Macarius, and the Deacons Martyrius and Hesychius. For before the Presbyters of Athanasius arrived they urged me to send letters to one Pistus at Alexandria, though at the same time the Bishop Athanasius was there. And when the Presbyters of the Bishop Athanasius came, they informed me that this Pistus was an Arian, and that he had been excommunicated [546] by the Bishop Alexander and the Council of Nicæa, and then ordained [547] by one Secundus, whom also the great Council excommunicated as an Arian. This statement Martyrius and his fellows did not gainsay, nor did they deny that Pistus had received his ordination from Secundus. Now consider, after this who are most justly liable to blame? I, who could not be prevailed upon to write to the Arian Pistus; or those, who advised me to do dishonour to the great Council, and to address the irreligious as if they were religious persons? Moreover, when the Presbyter Macarius, who had been sent hither by Eusebius with Martyrius and the rest, heard of the opposition which had been made by the Presbyters of Athanasius, while we were expecting his appearance with Martyrius and Hesychius, he departed in the night, in spite of a bodily ailment; which leads us to conjecture that his departure arose from shame on account of the exposure which had been made concerning Pistus. For it is impossible that the ordination of the Arian Secundus should be considered valid in the Catholic Church. This would indeed be dishonour to the Council, and to the Bishops who composed it, if the decrees they framed, as in the presence of God, with such extreme earnestness and care, should be set aside as worthless.
25. If, as you write [548] , the decrees of all Councils ought to be of force, according to the precedent in the case of Novatus [549] and Paul of Samosata, all the more ought not the sentence of the Three hundred to be reversed, certainly a general Council ought not to be set at nought by a few individuals. For the Arians are heretics as they, and the like sentence has been passed both against one and the other. And, after such bold proceedings as these, who are they that have lighted up the flame of discord? for in your letter you blame us for having done this. Is it we, who have sympathised with the sufferings of the brethren, and have acted in all respects according to the Canon; or they who contentiously and contrary to the Canon have set aside the sentence of the Three hundred, and dishonoured the Council in every way? For not only have the Arians been received into communion, but Bishops also have made a practice of removing from one place to another [550] . Now if you really believe that all Bishops have the same and equal authority [551] , and you do not, as you assert, account of them according to the magnitude of their cities; he that is entrusted with a small city ought to abide in the place committed to him, and not from disdain of his trust to remove to one that has never been put under him; despising that which God has given him, and making much of the vain applause of men. You ought then, dearly beloved, to have come and not declined, that the matter may be brought to a conclusion; for this is what reason demands.
But perhaps you were prevented by the time fixed upon for the Council, for you complain in your letter that the interval before the day we appointed [552] was too short. But this, beloved, is a mere excuse. Had the day forestalled any when on the journey, the interval allowed would then have been proved to be too short. But when persons do not wish to come, and detain even my Presbyters up to the month of January [553] , it is the mere excuse of those who have no confidence in their cause; otherwise, as I said before, they would have come, not regarding the length of the journey, not considering the shortness of the time, but trusting to the justice and reasonableness of their cause. But perhaps they did not come on account of the aspect of the times [554] , for again you declare in your letter, that we ought to have considered the present circumstances of the East, and not to have urged you to come. Now if as you say you did not come because the times were such, you ought to have considered such times beforehand, and not to have become the authors of schism, and of mourning and lamentation in the Churches. But as the matter stands, men, who have been the cause of these things, shew that it is not the times that are to blame, but the determination of those who will not meet a Council.
26. But I wonder also how you could ever have written that part of your letter, in which you say, that I alone wrote, and not to all of you, but to Eusebius and his fellows only. In this complaint one may discover more of readiness to find fault than of regard for truth. I received the letters against Athanasius from none other than Martyrius, Hesychius and their fellows, and I necessarily wrote to them who had written against him. Either then Eusebius and his fellows ought not alone to have written, apart from you all, or else you, to whom I did not write, ought not to be offended that I wrote to them who had written to me. If it was right that I should address my letter to you all, you also ought to have written with them: but now considering what was reasonable, I wrote to them, who had addressed themselves to me, and had given me information. But if you were displeased because I alone wrote to them, it is but consistent that you should also be angry, because they wrote to me alone. But for this also, beloved, there was a fair and not unreasonable cause. Nevertheless it is necessary that I should acquaint you that, although I wrote, yet the sentiments I expressed were not those of myself alone, but of all the Bishops throughout Italy and in these parts. I indeed was unwilling to cause them all to write, lest the others should be overpowered by their number. The Bishops however assembled on the appointed day, and agreed in these opinions, which I again write to signify to you; so that, dearly beloved, although I alone address you, yet you may be assured that these are the sentiments of all. Thus much for the excuses, not reasonable, but unjust and suspicious, which some of you have alleged for your conduct.
27. Now although what has already been said were sufficient to shew that we have not admitted to our communion our brothers Athanasius and Marcellus either too readily, or unjustly, yet it is but fair briefly to set the matter before you. Eusebius and his fellows wrote formerly against Athanasius and his fellows, as you also have written now; but a great number of Bishops out of Egypt and other provinces wrote in his favour. Now in the first place, your letters against him are inconsistent with one another, and the second have no sort of agreement with the first, but in many instances the former are answered by the latter, and the latter are impeached by the former. Now where there is this contradiction in letters, no credit whatever is due to the statements they contain. In the next place if you require us to believe what you have written, it is but consistent that we should not refuse credit to those who have written in his favour; especially, considering that you write from a distance, while they are on the spot, are acquainted with the man, and the events which are occurring there, and testify in writing to his manner of life, and positively affirm that he has been the victim of a conspiracy throughout.
Again, a certain Bishop Arsenius was said at one time to have been made away with by Athanasius, but we have learned that he is alive, nay, that he is on terms of friendship with him. He has positively asserted that the Reports drawn up in the Mareotis were ex parte ones; for that neither the Presbyter Macarius, the accused party, was present, nor yet his Bishop, Athanasius himself. This we have learnt, not only from his own mouth, but also from the Reports which Martyrius, Hesychius and their fellows, brought to us [555] ; for we found on reading them, that the accuser Ischyras was present there, but neither Macarius, nor the Bishop Athanasius; and that the Presbyters of Athanasius desired to attend, but were not permitted. Now, beloved, if the trial was to be conducted honestly, not only the accuser, but the accused also ought to have been present. As the accused party Macarius attended at Tyre, as well as the accuser Ischyras, when nothing was proved, so not only ought the accuser to have gone to the Mareotis, but also the accused, so that in person he might either be convicted, or by not being convicted might shew the falseness of the accusation. But now, as this was not the case, but the accuser only went out thither, with those to whom Athanasius objected, the proceedings wear a suspicious appearance.
28. And he complained also that the persons who went to the Mareotis went against his wish, for that Theognius, Maris, Theodorus, Ursacius, Valens, and Macedonius, who were the persons they sent out, were of suspected character. This he shewed not by his own assertions merely, but from the letter of Alexander who was Bishop of Thessalonica; for he produced a letter written by him to Dionysius [556] , the Count who presided in the Council, in which he shews most clearly that there was a conspiracy on foot against Athanasius. He has also brought forward a genuine document, all in the handwriting of the accuser Ischyras himself [557] , in which he calls God Almighty to witness that no cup was broken, nor table overthrown, but that he had been suborned by certain persons to invent these accusations. Moreover, when the Presbyters of the Mareotis arrived [558] , they positively affirmed that Ischyras was not a Presbyter of the Catholic Church and that Macarius had not committed any such offence as the other had laid to his charge. The Presbyters and Deacons also who came to us testified in the fullest manner in favour of the Bishop Athanasius, strenuously asserting that none of those things which were alleged against him were true, but that he was the victim of a conspiracy.
And all the Bishops of Egypt and Libya wrote and protested [559] that his ordination was lawful and strictly ecclesiastical, and that all that you had advanced against him was false, for that no murder had been committed, nor any persons despatched on his account, nor any cup broken, but that all was false. Nay, the Bishop Athanasius also shewed from the ex parte reports drawn up in the Mareotis, that a catechumen was examined and said [560] , that he was within with Ischyras, at the time when they say Macarius the Presbyter of Athanasius burst into the place; and that others who were examined said,--one, that Ischyras was in a small cell,--and another, that he was lying down behind the door, being sick at that very time, when they say Macarius came thither. Now from these representations of his, we are naturally led to ask the question, How was it possible that a man who was lying behind the door sick could get up, conduct the service, and offer? and how could it be that Oblations were offered when catechumens were within [561] ? for if there were catechumens present, it was not yet the time for presenting the Oblations. These representations, as I said, were made by the Bishop Athanasius, and he showed from the reports, what was also positively affirmed by those who were with him, that Ischyras has never been a presbyter at all in the Catholic Church, nor has ever appeared as a presbyter in the assemblies of the Church; for not even when Alexander admitted those of the Meletian schism, by the indulgence of the great Council, was he named by Meletius among his presbyters, as they deposed [562] ; which is the strongest argument possible that he was not even a presbyter of Meletius; for otherwise, he would certainly have been numbered with the rest. Besides, it was shewn also by Athanasius from the reports, that Ischyras had spoken falsely in other instances: for he set up a charge respecting the burning of certain books, when, as they pretend, Macarius burst in upon them, but was convicted of falsehood by the witnesses he himself brought to prove it.
29. Now when these things were thus represented to us, and so many witnesses appeared in his favour, and so much was advanced by him in his own justification, what did it become us to do? what did the rule of the Church require of us, but that we should not condemn him, but rather receive him and treat him like a Bishop, as we have done? Moreover, besides all this he continued here a year and six months [563] , expecting the arrival of yourselves and of whoever chose to come, and by his presence he put everyone to shame, for he would not have been here, had he not felt confident in his cause; and he came not of his own accord, but on an invitation by letter from us, in the manner in which we wrote to you [564] . But still you complain after all of our transgressing the Canons. Now consider; who are they that have so acted? we who received this man with such ample proof of his innocence, or they who, being at Antioch at the distance of six and thirty posts [565] , nominated a stranger to be Bishop, and sent him to Alexandria with a military force; a thing which was not done even when Athanasius was banished into Gaul, though it would have been done then, had he been really proved guilty of the offence. But when he returned, of course he found his Church unoccupied and waiting for him.
30. But now I am ignorant under what colour these proceedings have been carried on. In the first place, if the truth must be spoken, it was not right, when we had written to summon a council, that any persons should anticipate its decisions: and in the next place, it was not fitting that such novel proceedings should be adopted against the Church. For what canon of the Church, or what Apostolical tradition warrants this, that when a Church was at peace, and so many Bishops were in unanimity with Athanasius the Bishop of Alexandria, Gregory should be sent thither, a stranger to the city, not having been baptized there, nor known to the general body, and desired neither by Presbyters, nor Bishops, nor Laity--that he should be appointed at Antioch, and sent to Alexandria, accompanied not by presbyters, nor by deacons of the city, nor by bishops of Egypt, but by soldiers? for they who came hither complained that this was the case.
Even supposing that Athanasius was in the position of a criminal after the Council, this appointment ought not to have been made thus illegally and contrary to the rule of the Church, but the Bishops of the province ought to have ordained one in that very Church, of that very Priesthood, of that very Clergy [566] ; and the Canons received from the Apostles ought not thus to be set aside. Had this offence been committed against any one of you, would you not have exclaimed against it, and demanded justice as for the transgression of the Canons? Dearly beloved, we speak honestly, as in the presence of God, and declare, that this proceeding was neither pious, nor lawful, nor ecclesiastical. Moreover, the account which is given of the conduct of Gregory on his entry into the city, plainly shews the character of his appointment. In such peaceful times, as those who came from Alexandria declared them to have been, and as the Bishops also represented in their letters, the Church was set on fire; Virgins were stripped; Monks were trodden under foot; Presbyters and many of the people were scourged and suffered violence; Bishops were cast into prison; multitudes were dragged about from place to place; the holy Mysteries [567] , about which they accused the Presbyter Macarius, were seized upon by heathens and cast upon the ground; and all to constrain certain persons to admit the appointment of Gregory. Such conduct plainly shews who they are that transgress the Canons. Had the appointment been lawful, he would not have had recourse to illegal proceedings to compel the obedience of those who in a legal way resisted him. And notwithstanding all this, you write that perfect peace prevailed in Alexandria and Egypt. Surely not, unless the work of peace is entirely changed, and you call such doings as these peace.
31. I have also thought it necessary to point out to you this circumstance, viz. that Athanasius positively asserted that Macarius was kept at Tyre under a guard of soldiers, while only his accuser accompanied those who went to the Mareotis; and that the Presbyters who desired to attend the inquiry were not permitted to do so, while the said inquiry respecting the cup and the Table was carried on before the Prefect and his band, and in the presence of Heathens and Jews. This at first seemed incredible, but it was proved to have been so from the Reports; which caused great astonishment to us, as I suppose, dearly beloved, it does to you also. Presbyters, who are the ministers of the Mysteries, are not permitted to attend, but an enquiry concerning Christ's Blood and Christ's Body is carried on before an external judge, in the presence of Catechumens, nay, worse than that, before Heathens and Jews, who are in ill repute in regard to Christianity. Even supposing that an offense had been committed, it should have been investigated legally in the Church and by the Clergy, not by heathens who abhor the Word and know not the Truth. I am persuaded that both you and all men must perceive the nature and magnitude of this sin. Thus much concerning Athanasius.
32. With respect to Marcellus [568] , forasmuch as you have charged him also of impiety towards Christ, I am anxious to inform you, that when he was here, he positively declared that what you had written concerning him was not true; but being nevertheless requested by us to give an account of his faith, he answered in his own person with the utmost boldness, so that we recognised that he maintains nothing outside the truth. He made a confession [569] of the same godly doctrines concerning our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ as the Catholic Church confesses; and he affirmed that he had held these opinions for a very long time, and had not recently adopted them: as indeed our Presbyters [570] , who were at a former date present at the Council of Nicæa, testified to his orthodoxy; for he maintained then, as he has done now, his opposition to Arianism (on which points it is right to admonish you, lest any of you admit such heresy, instead of abominating it as alien from sound doctrine [571] ). Seeing then that he professed orthodox opinions, and had testimony to his orthodoxy, what, I ask again in his case, ought we to have done, except to receive him as a Bishop, as we did, and not reject him from our communion? These things I have written, not so much for the purpose of defending their cause, as in order to convince you, that we acted justly and canonically in receiving these persons, and that you are contentious without a cause. But it is your duty to use your anxious endeavours and to labour by every means to correct the irregularities which have been committed contrary to the Canon, and to secure the peace of the Churches; so that the peace of our Lord which has been given to us [572] may remain, and the Churches may not be divided, nor you incur the charge of being authors of schism. For I confess, your past conduct is an occasion of schism rather than of peace.
33. For not only the Bishops Athanasius and Marcellus and their fellows came hither and complained of the injustice that had been done them, but many other Bishops also [573] , from Thrace, from Coele-Syria, from Phoenicia and Palestine, and Presbyters, not a few, and others from Alexandria and from other parts, were present at the Council here, and in addition to their other statements, lamented before all the assembled Bishops the violence and injustice which the Churches had suffered, and affirmed that similar outrages to those which had been committed in Alexandria had occurred in their own Churches, and in others also. Again there lately came Presbyters with letters from Egypt and Alexandria, who complained that many Bishops and Presbyters who wished to come to the Council were prevented; for they said that, since the departure of Athanasius [574] even up to this time, Bishops who are confessors [575] have been beaten with stripes, that others have been cast into prison, and that but lately aged men, who have been an exceedingly long period in the Episcopate, have been given up to be employed in the public works, and nearly all the Clergy of the Catholic Church with the people are the objects of plots and persecutions. Moreover they said that certain Bishops and other brethren had been banished for no other reason than to compel them against their will to communicate with Gregory and his Arian associates. We have heard also from others, what is confirmed by the testimony of the Bishop Marcellus, that a number of outrages, similar to those which were committed at Alexandria, have occurred also at Ancyra in Galatia [576] . And in addition to all this, those who came to the Council reported against some of you (for I will not mention names) certain charges of so dreadful a nature that I have declined setting them down in writing: perhaps you also have heard them from others. It was for this cause especially that I wrote to desire you to come, that you might be present to hear them, and that all irregularities might be corrected and differences healed. And those who were called for these purposes ought not to have refused, but to have come the more readily, lest by failing to do so they should be suspected of what was alleged against them, and be thought unable to prove what they had written.
34. Now according to these representations, since the Churches are thus afflicted and treacherously assaulted, as our informants positively affirmed, who are they that have lighted up a flame of discord [577] ? We, who grieve for such a state of things and sympathize with the sufferings of the brethren, or they who have brought these things about? While then such extreme confusion existed in every Church, which was the cause why those who visited us came hither, I wonder how you could write that unanimity prevailed in the Churches. These things tend not to the edification of the Church, but to her destruction; and those who rejoice in them are not sons of peace, but of confusion: but our God is not a God of confusion, but of peace [578] . Wherefore, as the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ knows, it was from a regard for your good name, and with prayers that the Churches might not fall into confusion, but might continue as they were regulated by the Apostles, that I thought it necessary to write thus unto you, to the end that you might at length put to shame those who through the effects of their mutual enmity have brought the Churches to this condition. For I have heard, that it is only a certain few [579] who are the authors of all these things.
Now, as having bowels of mercy, take ye care to correct, as I said before, the irregularities which have been committed contrary to the Canon, so that if any mischief has already befallen, it may be healed through your zeal. And write not that I have preferred the communion of Marcellus and Athanasius to yours, for such like complaints are no indications of peace, but of contentiousness and hatred of the brethren. For this cause I have written the foregoing, that you may understand that we acted not unjustly in admitting them to our communion, and so may cease this strife. If you had come hither, and they had been condemned, and had appeared unable to produce reasonable evidence in support of their cause, you would have done well in writing thus. But seeing that, as I said before, we acted agreeably to the Canon, and not unjustly, in holding communion with them, I beseech you for the sake of Christ, suffer not the members of Christ to be torn asunder, neither trust to prejudices, but seek rather the peace of the Lord. It is neither holy nor just, in order to gratify the petty feeling of a few persons, to reject those who have never been condemned and thereby to grieve the Spirit [580] . But if you think that you are able to prove anything against them, and to confute them face to face let those of you who please come hither: for they also promised that they would be ready to establish completely the truth of those things which they have reported to us.
35. Give us notice therefore of this, dearly beloved, that we may write both to them, and to the Bishops who will have again to assemble, so that the accused may be condemned in the presence of all, and confusion no longer prevail in the Churches. What has already taken place is enough: it is enough surely that Bishops have been sentenced to banishment in the presence of Bishops; of which it behoves me not to speak at length, lest I appear to press too heavily on those who were present on those occasions. But if one must speak the truth, matters ought not to have proceeded so far; their petty feeling ought not to have been suffered to reach the present pitch. Let us grant the "removal," as you write, of Athanasius and Marcellus, from their own places, yet what must one say of the case of the other Bishops and Presbyters who, as I said before, came hither from various parts, and who complained that they also had been forced away, and had suffered the like injuries? O beloved, the decisions of the Church are no longer according to the Gospel, but tend only to banishment and death [581] . Supposing, as you assert, that some offence rested upon those persons, the case ought to have been conducted against them, not after this manner, but according to the Canon of the Church. Word should have been written of it to us all [582] , that so a just sentence might proceed from all. For the sufferers were Bishops, and Churches of no ordinary note, but those which the Apostles themselves had governed in their own persons [583] .
And why was nothing said to us concerning the Church of the Alexandrians in particular? Are you ignorant that the custom has been for word to be written first to us, and then for a just decision to be passed from this place [584] ? If then any such suspicion rested upon the Bishop there, notice thereof ought to have been sent to the Church of this place; whereas, after neglecting to inform us, and proceeding on their own authority as they pleased, now they desire to obtain our concurrence in their decisions, though we never condemned him. Not so have the constitutions [585] of Paul, not so have the traditions of the Fathers directed; this is another form of procedure, a novel practice. I beseech you, readily bear with me: what I write is for the common good. For what we have received from the blessed Apostle Peter [586] , that I signify to you; and I should not have written this, as deeming that these things were manifest unto all men, had not these proceedings so disturbed us. Bishops are forced away from their sees and driven into banishment, while others from different quarters are appointed in their place; others are treacherously assailed, so that the people have to grieve for those who are forcibly taken from them, while, as to those who are sent in their room, they are obliged to give over seeking the man whom they desire, and to receive those they do not.
I ask of you, that such things may no longer be, but that you will denounce in writing those persons who attempt them; so that the Churches may no longer be afflicted thus, nor any Bishop or Presbyter be treated with insult, nor any one be compelled to act contrary to his judgment, as they have represented to us, lest we become a laughing-stock among the heathen, and above all, lest we excite the wrath of God against us. For every one of us shall give account in the Day of judgment [587] of the things which he has done in this life. May we all be possessed with the mind of God! so that the Churches may recover their own Bishops, and rejoice evermore in Jesus Christ our Lord; through Whom to the Father be glory, for ever and ever. Amen.
I pray for your health in the Lord, brethren dearly beloved and greatly longed for.
36. Thus wrote the Council of Rome by Julius, Bishop of Rome. __________________________________________________________________
[534] a.d. 339. vid. Hist. Arian. §11. [Socrates (iii. 5) and Sozomenus (ii. 8, &c.), confuse the Antiochene Synod, which sent the letter referred to, with the Synod of the Dedication' held in 341 a.d., after the receipt of the letter of Julius.]
[535] Vito and Vincentius, Presbyters, had represented Silvester at Nicæa. Liberius sent Vincentius, Bishop, and Marcellus, Bishop, to Constantius; and again Lucifer, Bishop, and Eusebius, Bishop. [The practice was common to all bishops, not peculiar to that of Rome.] S. Basil suggests that Damasus should send legates into the East, Ep. 69. The Council of Sardica, Can. 5, recognised the Pope's power of sending legates into foreign Provinces to hear certain appeals; "ut de Latere suo Presbyterum mittat." [It conferred the power (1) upon Julius (2) without any right of initiative, in Can. 3; Can. 5 simply regulates the exercise of the power thus conferred. The genuineness of these Canons has been disputed: at Rome they were quoted in the fifth century as Nicene.'] vid. Thomassin. de Eccl. Disc. Part I. ii. 117. [D.C.B. iii. 530, D.C.A. 197, 1658.]
[536] [Date uncertain; see Prolegg. ch. ii. §6 (1) sub fin., and note there.]
[537] Infr. §58.
[538] Vid. infr. §36.
[539] By Danius, which had been considered the same name as Dianius, Bishop of Cæsarea in Cappadocia, Montfaucon in loc. understands the notorious Arian Bishop of Nicæa, called variously Diognius (supr. §13.), Theognius (infr §28.), Theognis (Philost. Hist. ii. 7.), Theogonius, (Theod. Hist. i. 19.), and assigns some ingenious and probable reasons for his supposition. [Danius' was the Bishop of Cæsarea in Cappad., he also signs at Philippopolis. See D.C.B. under Dianius and Basil.] Flacillus, Arian Bishop of Antioch, as Athan. names him, is called Placillus (in S. Jerome's Chronicon, p. 785.), Placitus (Soz. iii. 5.), Flacitus (Theod. Hist. i. 21.). Theodorus was Arian Bishop of Heraclea, whose Comments on the Psalms are supposed to be those which bear his name in Corderius's Catena. [He was not a thorough Arian.]
[540] Some of the topics contained in the Eusebian Letter are specified in Julius's answer. It acknowledged, besides, the high dignity of the [church] of Rome, as being a "School (phrontisterion) of Apostles and a Metropolis of orthodoxy from the beginning," but added that "doctors came to it from the east; and they ought not themselves to hold the second place, for they were superior in virtue, though not in their Church." And they said that they would hold communion with Julius if he would agree to their depositions and substitutions in the Eastern Sees. Soz. iii. 8.
[541] Matt. xviii. 6.
[542] As this determination does not find a place among the now received Canons of the Council, the passage in the text becomes of great moment in the argument in favour of the twenty Canons extant in Greek being but a portion of those passed at Nicæa. vid. Alber. Dissert. in Hist. Eccles. vii. Abraham Ecchellensis has argued on the same side (apud Colet. Concil. t. ii. p. 399. Ed. Ven. 1728), also Baronius, though not so strongly, Ann. 325. nn. 157 &c. and Montfaucon in loc. Natalis Alexander, Sæc. 4. Dissert. 28 argues against the larger number, and Tillemont, Mem. vi. 674. [But it is far more likely that Julius is making a free use of Can. Nic. 5; the Arabic canons are apparently referred to in the above note: no one now defends them.]
[543] The number of the Fathers at the Nicene Council is generally considered to have been 318, the number of Abraham's servants, Gen. xiv. 14. Anastasius (Hodeg. 3. fin.) referring to the first three Ecumenical Councils, speaks of the faith of the 318, the 150, and the 200. [Prolegg. ch. ii. §3 (1).]
[544] Cf. §32.
[545] Cf. §73.
[546] Cf. supr. Depos. Ar.
[547] Cf. Ep. Æg. 7, 19, Hist. Ar. 63.
[548] Vid. also Hilar. Fragm. iii. 20.
[549] The instance of Novatian makes against the Eusebians, because for some time after Novatian was condemned in the West, his cause was abandoned in the East. Tillemont, Mem. t. 7. p. 277.
[550] Vid. supr. §6.
[551] Cyprian. de Unit. Eccl. 4.
[552] prothesmia
[553] a.d. 340.
[554] The Persian war. Hist. Arian. §11.
[555] Infr. §83 fin.
[556] Infr. §80.
[557] §64.
[558] §74.
[559] Supr. §6.
[560] Infr. §83.
[561] Bingh. Ant. X. v. 8.
[562] Infr. §71.
[563] Spring of 339 a.d. to autumn of 340.
[564] Hist. Ar. 9.
[565] Or rather, halts, monai. They are enumerated in the Itinerary of Antoninus, and are set down on Montfaucon's plate. The route passes over the Delta to Pelusium, and then coasts all the way to Antioch. These monai were day's journeys, Coustant in Hilar. Psalm 118, Lit. 5. 2. or half a day's journey, Herman. ibid; and were at unequal intervals, Ambros. in Psalm 118, Serm. 5. §5. Gibbon says that by the government conveyances, "it was easy to travel an 100 miles in a day along the Roman roads." ch. ii. Mone or mansio properly means the building, where soldiers or other public officers rested at night (hence its application to monastic houses). Such buildings included granaries, stabling, &c. vid. Con. Theod. ed. Gothofr. 1665. t. 1. p. 47, t. 2. p. 507. Du Cange Gloss. t. 4. p. 426. Col. 2.
[566] Vid. Bingh. Ant. II. xi.
[567] Athan. only suggests this, supr. Encyc. 3. S. Hilary says the same of the conduct of the Arians at Toulouse; "Clerks were beaten with clubs; Deacons bruised with lead; nay, even on Christ Himself (the Saints understand my meaning) hands were laid." Contr. Constant. 11.
[568] Julius here acquits Marcellus; but he is considered heretical by S. Epiphanius, loc. cit. S. Basil. Epp. 69, 125, 263, 265. S. Chrysostom in Hebr. Hom. ii. 2. Theodoret, Hær. ii. 10. vid. Petav. de Trin. i. 13. who condemns him, and Bull far more strongly, Def. F. N. ii. 1. §9. Montfaucon defends him (in a special Dissertation, Collect. Nov. tom. 2.) and Tillemont. Mem. tom. 7. p. 513, and Natalis Alex. Sæc. iv. Dissert. 30. [Prolegg. ch. ii. §3 (2) c.]
[569] Vid. Epiph. Hær. 72. 2, 3. and §47. infr.
[570] Vincentius and Vito.
[571] 1 Tim. i. 10.
[572] Joh. xiv. 27.
[573] The names of few are known; perhaps Marcellus, Asclepas, Paul of Constantinople, Lucius of Adrianople. vid. Montf. in loc. Tillem. Mem. tom. 7. p. 272.
[574] These outrages took place immediately on the dismission of Elpidius and Philoxenus, the Pope's legates, from Antioch. Athan. Hist. Ar. 12.
[575] e.g. Sarapammon and Potamo, both Confessors, who were of the number of the Nicene Fathers, and had defended Athan. at Tyre, were, the former banished, the latter beaten to death. vid. infr. Hist. Ar. 12.
[576] The Pseudo-Sardican Council, i.e. that of Philippopolis, retort this accusation on the party of Marcellus; Hilar. Fragm. iii. 9. but the character of the outrages fixes them on the Arians, vid. infr. §45, note [There were doubtless outrages on both sides].
[577] Vid. supr. §25.
[578] 1 Cor. xiv. 33.
[579] Ad Ep. Æg. 5. de Syn. 5.
[580] Eph. iv. 30.
[581] Hist. Arian. §67.
[582] Coustant in loc. fairly insists on the word "all," as shewing that S. Julius does not here claim the prerogative of judging by himself all Bishops whatever, and that what follows relates merely to the Church of Alexandria.
[583] St. Peter (Greg. M. Epist. vii. Ind. 15. 40.) or St. Mark (Leo Ep. 9.) at Alexandria. St. Paul at Ancyra in Galatia (Tertull. contr. Marcion. iv. 5.) vid. Coustant. in loc.
[584] Socrates says somewhat differently, "Julius wrote back....that they acted against the Canons, because they had not called him to a Council, the Ecclesiastical Canon commanding that the Churches ought not to make Canons beside the will of the Bishop of Rome." Hist. ii. 17. Sozomen in like manner, "for it was a sacerdotal law, to declare invalid whatever was transacted beside the will of the Bishop of the Romans." Hist. iii. 10. vid. Pope Damasus ap. Theod. Hist. v. 10. Leon. Epist. 14. &c. In the passage in the text the prerogative of the Roman see is limited, as Coustant observes, to the instance of Alexandria; and we actually find in the third century a complaint lodged against its Bishop Dionysius with the Pope. [Prolegg. ch. iv. §4.]
[585] diataxeis. St. Paul says houtos en tais ekklesiais diatassomai 1 Cor. vii. 17. ta de loipa diataxomai. Ibid. xi. 34. vid. Pearson, Vind. Ignat. p. 298. Hence Coustant in col. Athan. would suppose Julius to refer to 1 Cor. v. 4. which Athan. actually quotes, Ep. Encycl. §2. supr. p. 93. Pearson, loc. cit. considers the diataxeis of the Apostles, as a collection of regulation and usages, which more or less represented, or claimed to represent, what may be called St. Paul's rule, or St. Peter's rule, &c. Cotelier considers the diataxeis as the same as the didachai, the "doctrine" or "teaching" of the Apostles. Præfat. in Const. Apost. So does Beveridge, Cod. Can. Illustr. ii. 9. §5.
[586] [Petri] in Sede sua vivit potestas et excellit auctoritas. Leon. Serm. iii. 3. vid. contra Barrow on the Supremacy, p. 116. ed. 1836. "not one Bishop, but all Bishops together through the whole Church, do succeed St. Peter, or any other Apostle."
[587] Matt. xii. 36. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter III.--Letters of the Council of Sardica to the Churches of Egypt and of Alexandria, and to all Churches.
But when, notwithstanding, Eusebius and his fellows proceeded without shame, disturbing the Churches, and plotting the ruin of many, the most religious Emperors Constantius and Constans being informed of this, commanded the Bishops from both the West and East to meet together in the city of Sardica. In the meantime Eusebius [588] died: but a great number assembled from all parts, and we challenged the associates of Eusebius and his fellows to submit to a trial. But they, having before their eyes the things that they had done, and perceiving that their accusers had come up to the Council, were afraid to do this; but, while all besides met with honest intentions, they again brought with them the Counts [589] Musonianus [590] and Hesychius the Castrensian [591] , that, as their custom was, they might effect their own aims by their authority. But when the Council met without Counts, and no soldiers were permitted to be present, they were confounded, and conscience-stricken, because they could no longer obtain the judgment they wished, but such only as reason and truth required. We, however, frequently repeated our challenge, and the Council of Bishops called upon them to come forward, saying, "You have come for the purpose of undergoing a trial; why then do you now withdraw yourselves? Either you ought not to have come, or having come, not to conceal yourselves. Such conduct will prove your greatest condemnation. Behold, Athanasius and his fellows are here, whom you accused while absent; if therefore you think that you have any thing against them, you may convict them face to face. But if you pretend to be unwilling to do so, while in truth you are unable, you plainly shew yourselves to be calumniators, and this is the decision the Council will give you." When they heard this they were self-condemned (for they were conscious of their machinations and fabrications against us), and were ashamed to appear, thereby proving themselves to have been guilty of many base calumnies.
The holy Council therefore denounced their indecent and suspicious flight [592] , and admitted us to make our defence; and when we had related their conduct towards us, and proved the truth of our statements by witnesses and other evidence, they were filled with astonishment, and all acknowledged that our opponents had good reason to be afraid to meet the Council, lest their guilt should be proved before their faces. They said also, that probably they had come from the East, supposing that Athanasius and his fellows would not appear, but that, when they saw them confident in their cause, and challenging a trial, they fled. They accordingly received us as injured persons who had been falsely accused, and confirmed yet more towards us their fellowship and love. But they deposed Eusebius's associates in wickedness, who had become even more shameless than himself, viz., Theodorus [593] of Heraclea, Narcissus of Neronias, Acacius [594] of Cæsarea, Stephanus [595] of Antioch, Ursacius and Valens of Pannonia, Menophantus of Ephesus, and George [596] of Laodicaea; and they wrote to the Bishops in all parts of the world, and to the diocese of each of the injured persons, in the following terms.
Letter of the Council of Sardica to the Church of Alexandria.
The Holy Council, by the grace of God assembled at Sardica, from [597] Rome, Spain, Gaul, Italy, Campania, Calabria, Apulia, Africa, Sardinia, Pannonia, Moesia, Dacia, Noricum, Siscia, Dardania, the other Dacia, Macedonia, Thessaly, Achaia, Epirus, Thrace, Rhodope, Palestine, Arabia, Crete, and Egypt, to their beloved brothers, the Presbyters and Deacons, and to all the Holy Church of God abiding at Alexandria, sends health in the Lord.
37. We were not ignorant, but the fact was well known to us, even before we received the letters of your piety, that the supporters of the abominated heresy of the Arians were practising many dangerous machinations, rather to the destruction of their own souls, than to the injury of the Church. For this has ever been the object of their unprincipled craft; this is the deadly design in which they have been continually engaged; viz. how they may best expel from their places and persecute all who are to be found anywhere of orthodox sentiments, and maintaining the doctrine of the Catholic Church, which was delivered to them from the Fathers. Against some they have laid false accusations; others they have driven into banishment; others they have destroyed by the punishments inflicted on them. At any rate they endeavoured by violence and tyranny to surprise the innocence of our brother and fellow-Bishop Athanasius, and therefore conducted their enquiry into his case without any care, without any faith, without any sort of justice. Accordingly having no confidence in the part they had played on that occasion, nor yet in the reports they had circulated against him, but perceiving that they were unable to produce any certain evidence respecting the case, when they came to the city of Sardica, they were unwilling to meet the Council of all the holy Bishops. From this it became evident that the decision of our brother and fellow-Bishop Julius was a just one [598] ; for after cautious deliberation and care he had determined, that we ought not to hesitate at all about communion with our brother Athanasius. For he had the credible testimony of eighty Bishops, and was also able to advance this fair argument in his support that by the mere means of our dearly beloved brethren his own Presbyters, and by correspondence, he had defeated the design of Eusebius and his fellows, who relied more upon violence than upon a judicial enquiry.
Wherefore all the Bishops from all parts determined upon holding communion with Athanasius on the ground that he was innocent. And let your charity also observe, that when he came to the holy Council assembled at Sardica, the Bishops of the East were informed of the circumstance, as we said before, both by letter, and by injunctions conveyed by word of mouth, and were invited by us to be present. But, being condemned by their own conscience, they had recourse to unbecoming excuses, and set themselves to avoid the enquiry. They demanded that an innocent man should be rejected from our communion, as a culprit, not considering how unbecoming, or rather how impossible, such a proceeding was. And as for the Reports which were framed in the Mareotis by certain most wicked and most abandoned youths [599] , to whose hands one would not commit the very lowest office of the ministry, it is certain that they were ex parte statements. For neither was our brother the Bishop Athanasius present on the occasion, nor the Presbyter Macarius who was accused by them. And besides, their enquiry, or rather their falsification of facts, was attended by the most disgraceful circumstances. Sometimes heathens, sometimes Catechumens, were examined, not that they might declare what they knew, but that they might assert those falsehoods which they had been taught by others. And when you Presbyters, who were in charge in the absence of your Bishop, desired to be present at the enquiry, in order that you might shew the truth, and disprove the falsehoods, no regard was paid to you; they would not permit you to be present, but drove you away with insult.
Now although their calumnies have been most plainly exposed before all men by these circumstances; yet we found also, on reading the Reports, that the most iniquitous Ischyras, who has obtained from them the empty title of Bishop as his reward for the false accusation, had convicted himself of calumny. He declares in the Reports that at the very time when, according to his positive assertions, Macarius entered his cell, he lay there sick; whereas Eusebius and his fellows had the boldness to write that Ischyras was standing up and offering when Macarius came in.
38. The base and slanderous charge which they next alleged against him, has become well-known to all men. They raised a great outcry, affirming that Athanasius had committed murder, and had made away with one Arsenius a Meletian Bishop, whose loss they pretended to deplore with feigned lamentations and fictitious tears, and demanded that the body of a living man, as if a dead one, should be given up to them. But their fraud was not undetected; one and all knew that the person was alive, and was numbered among the living. And when these men, who are ready upon any opportunity, perceived their falsehoods detected (for Arsenius shewed himself alive, and so proved that he had not been made away with, and was not dead), yet they would not rest, but proceeded to add other to their former calumnies [600] , and to slander the man by a fresh expedient. Well; our brother Athanasius, dearly beloved, was not confounded, but again in the present case also with great boldness challenged them to the proof, and we too prayed and exhorted them to come to the trial, and if they were able, to establish their charge against him. O great arrogance! O dreadful pride! or rather, if one must say the truth, O evil and accusing conscience! for this is the view which all men take of it.
Wherefore, beloved brethren, we admonish and exhort you, above all things to maintain the right faith of the Catholic Church. You have undergone many severe and grievous trials; many are the insults and injuries which the Catholic Church has suffered, but he that endureth to the end, the same shall be saved [601] .' Wherefore even though they still recklessly assail you, let your tribulation be unto you for joy. For such afflictions are a sort of martyrdom, and such confessions and tortures as yours will not be without their reward, but ye shall receive the prize from God. Therefore strive above all things in support of the sound faith, and of the innocence of your Bishop and our fellow-minister Athanasius. We also have not held our peace, nor been negligent of what concerns your comfort, but have deliberated and done whatsoever the claims of charity demand. We sympathize with our suffering brethren, and their affliction we consider as our own.
39. Accordingly we have written to beseech our most religious and godly Emperors, that their kindness would give orders for the release of those who are still suffering from affliction and oppression, and would command that none of the magistrates, whose duty it is to attend only to civil causes, give judgment upon Clergy [602] , nor henceforward in any way, on pretence of providing for the Churches, attempt anything against the brethren; but that every one may live, as he prays and desires to do, free from persecution, from violence and fraud, and in quietness and peace may follow the Catholic and Apostolic Faith. As for Gregory, who has the reputation of being illegally appointed by the heretics, and has been sent by them to your city, we wish your unanimity to understand, that he has been deposed by a judgment of the whole sacred Council, although indeed he has never at any time been considered to be a Bishop at all. Wherefore receive gladly your Bishop Athanasius, for to this end we have dismissed him in peace. And we exhort all those who either through fear, or through the intrigues of certain persons, have held communion with Gregory, that now being admonished, exhorted, and persuaded by us, they withdraw from that his detestable communion, and straightway unite themselves to the Catholic Church.
40. But forasmuch as we have learnt that Aphthonius, Athanasius the son of Capito, Paul, and Plutio, our fellow Presbyters [603] , have also suffered from the machinations of Eusebius and his fellows, so that some of them have had trial of exile, and others have fled on peril of their lives, we have in consequence thought it necessary to make this known unto you, that you may understand that we have received and acquitted them also, being aware that whatever has been done by Eusebius and his fellows against the orthodox has tended to the glory and commendation of those who have been attacked by them. It were fitting that your Bishop and our brother Athanasius should make this known to you respecting them, to his own respecting his own; but as for more abundant testimony he wished the holy Council also to write to you, we deferred not to do so, but hastened to signify this unto you, that you may receive them as we have done, for they also are deserving of praise, because through their piety towards Christ they have been thought worthy to endure violence at the hands of the heretics.
What decrees have been passed by the holy Council against those who are at the head of the Arian heresy, and have offended against you, and the rest of the Churches, you will learn from the subjoined documents [604] . We have sent them to you, that you may understand from them that the Catholic Church will not overlook those who offend against her.
Letter of the Council of Sardica to the Bishops of Egypt and Libya.
The holy Council, by the grace of God assembled at Sardica, to the Bishops of Egypt and Libya, their fellow-ministers and dearly beloved brethren, sends health in the Lord.
41. We were not ignorant [605] , but the fact was well known to us, even before we received the letters of your piety, that the supporters of the abominated heresy of the Arians were practising many dangerous machinations, rather to the destruction of their own souls, than to the injury of the Church. For this has ever been the object of their craft and villainy: this is the deadly design in which they have been continually engaged, viz. how they may best expel from their places and persecute all who are to be found anywhere of orthodox sentiments, and maintaining the doctrine of the Catholic Church, which was delivered to them from the Fathers. Against some they have laid false accusations; others they have driven into banishment; others they have destroyed by the punishments inflicted on them. At any rate they endeavoured by violence and tyranny to surprise the innocence of our brother and fellow-Bishop Athanasius, and therefore conducted their enquiry into his case without any faith, without any sort of justice. Accordingly having no confidence in the part they had played on that occasion, nor yet in the reports they had circulated against him, but perceiving that they were unable to produce any certain evidence respecting the case, when they came to the city of Sardica, they were unwilling to meet the Council of all the holy Bishops. From this it became evident that the decision of our brother and fellow-Bishop Julius was a just one; for after cautious deliberation and care he had decided, that we ought not to hesitate at all about communion with our brother Athanasius. For he had the credible testimony of eighty Bishops, and was also able to advance this fair argument in his support, that by the mere means of our dearly beloved brethren his own Presbyters, and by correspondence, he had defeated the designs of Eusebius and his fellows, who relied more upon violence than upon a judicial inquiry.
Wherefore all the Bishops from all parts determined upon holding communion with Athanasius on the ground that he was innocent. And let your charity also observe, that when he came to the holy Council assembled at Sardica, the Bishops of the East were informed of the circumstance, as we said before, both by letter, and by injunctions conveyed by word of mouth, and were invited by us to be present. But, being condemned by their own conscience, they had recourse to unbecoming excuses, and began to avoid the enquiry. They demanded that an innocent man should be rejected from our communion, as a culprit, not considering how unbecoming, or rather how impossible, such a proceeding was. And as for the reports which were framed in the Mareotis by certain most wicked and abandoned youths, to whose hands one would not commit the very lowest office of the ministry, it is certain that they were ex parte statements. For neither was our brother the Bishop Athanasius present on the occasion, nor the Presbyter Macarius, who was accused by them. And besides, their enquiry, or rather their falsification of facts, was attended by the most disgraceful circumstances. Sometimes Heathens, sometimes Catechumens, were examined, not that they might declare what they knew, but that they might assert those falsehoods which they had been taught by others. And when you Presbyters, who were in charge in the absence of your Bishop, desired to be present at the enquiry, in order that you might shew the truth, and disprove falsehood, no regard was paid to you; they would not permit you to be present, but drove you away with insult.
Now although their calumnies have been most plainly exposed before all men by these circumstances; yet we found also, on reading the Reports, that the most iniquitous Ischyras, who has obtained from them the empty title of Bishop as his reward for the false accusation, had convicted himself of calumny. He declares in the Reports, that at the very time when, according to his positive assertions, Macarius entered his cell, he lay there sick; whereas Eusebius and his fellows had the boldness to write that Ischyras was standing offering when Macarius came in.
42. The base and slanderous charge which they next alleged against him has become well known unto all men. They raised a great outcry, affirming that Athanasius had committed murder, and made away with one Arsenius a Meletian Bishop, whose loss they pretended to deplore with feigned lamentations, and fictitious tears, and demanded that the body of a living man, as if a dead one, should be given up to them. But their fraud was not undetected; one and all knew that the person was alive, and was numbered among the living. And when these men, who are ready upon any opportunity, perceived their falsehood detected (for Arsenius shewed himself alive, and so proved that he had not been made away with, and was not dead), yet they would not rest, but proceeded to add other to their former calumnies, and to slander the man by a fresh expedient. Well: our brother Athanasius, dearly beloved, was not confounded, but again in the present case also with great boldness challenged them to the proof, and we too prayed and exhorted them to come to the trial, and if they were able, to establish their charge against him. O great arrogance! O dreadful pride! or rather, if one must say the truth, O evil and accusing conscience! for this is the view which all men take of it.
Wherefore, beloved brethren, we admonish and exhort you, above all things, to maintain the right faith of the Catholic Church. You have undergone many severe and grievous trials; many are the insults and injuries which the Catholic Church has suffered, but he that endureth to the end, the same shall be saved [606] .' Wherefore, even though they shall still recklessly assail you, let your tribulation be unto you for joy. For such afflictions are a sort of martyrdom, and such confessions and tortures as yours will not be without their reward, but ye shall receive the prize from God. Therefore strive above all things in support of the sound Faith, and of the innocence of your Bishop and our brother Athanasius. We also have not held our peace, nor been negligent of what concerns your comfort, but have deliberated and done whatsoever the claims of charity demand. We sympathize with our suffering brethren, and their afflictions we consider as our own, and have mingled our tears with yours. And you, brethren, are not the only persons who have suffered: many others also of our brethren in ministry have come hither, bitterly lamenting these things.
43. Accordingly, we have written to beseech our most religious and godly Emperors, that their kindness would give orders for the release of those who are still suffering from affliction and oppression, and would command that none of the magistrates, whose duty it is to attend only to civil causes, give judgment upon Clergy, nor henceforward in any way, on pretence of providing for the Churches, attempt anything against the brethren, but that every one may live, as he prays and desires to do, free from persecution, from violence and fraud, and in quietness and peace may follow the Catholic and Apostolic Faith. As for Gregory, who has the reputation of being illegally appointed by the heretics, and who has been sent by them to your city, we wish your unanimity to understand, that he has been deposed by the judgment of the whole sacred Council, although indeed he has never at any time been considered to be a Bishop at all. Wherefore receive gladly your Bishop Athanasius; for to this end we have dismissed him in peace. And we exhort all those, who either through fear, or through intrigues of certain persons, have held communion with Gregory, that being now admonished, exhorted, and persuaded by us, they withdraw from his detestable communion, and straightway unite themselves to the Catholic Church.
What decrees have been passed by the holy Council against Theodorus, Narcissus, Stephanus, Acacius, Menophantus, Ursacius, Valens, and George [607] , who are the heads of the Arian heresy, and have offended against you and the rest of the Churches, you will learn from the subjoined documents. We have sent them to you, that your piety may assent to our decisions, and that you may understand from them, that the Catholic Church will not overlook those who offend against her.
Encyclical Letter of the Council of Sardica.
The holy Council [608] , by the grace of God, assembled at Sardica, to their dearly beloved brethren, the Bishops and fellow-Ministers of the Catholic Church every where, sends health in the Lord.
44. The Arian madmen have dared repeatedly to attack the servants of God, who maintain the right faith; they attempted to substitute a spurious doctrine, and to drive out the orthodox; and at last they made so violent an assault against the Faith, that it became known even to the piety of our most religious Emperors. Accordingly, the grace of God assisting them, our most religious Emperors have themselves assembled us together out of different provinces and cities, and have permitted this holy Council to be held in the city of Sardica; to the end that all dissension may be done away, and all false doctrine being driven from us, Christian godliness may alone be maintained by all men. The Bishops of the East also attended, being exhorted to do so by the most religious Emperors, chiefly on account of the reports they have so often circulated concerning our dearly beloved brethren and fellow-ministers Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, and Marcellus, Bishop of Ancyro-Galatia. Their calumnies have probably already reached you, and perhaps they have attempted to disturb your ears, that you may be induced to believe their charges against the innocent, and that they may obliterate from your minds any suspicions respecting their own wicked heresy. But they have not been permitted to effect this to any great extent; for the Lord is the Defender of His Churches, Who endured death for their sakes and for us all, and provided access to heaven for us all through Himself. When therefore Eusebius and his fellows wrote long ago to Julius our brother and Bishop of the Church of the Romans, against our forementioned brethren, that is to say, Athanasius, Marcellus, and Asclepas [609] , the Bishops from the other parts wrote also, testifying to the innocence of our fellow-minister Athanasius, and declaring that the representations of Eusebius and his fellows were nothing else but mere falsehood and calumny.
And indeed their calumnies were clearly proved by the fact that, when they were invited to a Council by our dearly beloved fellow-minister Julius, they would not come, and also by what was written to them by Julius himself. For had they had confidence in the measures and the acts in which they were engaged against our brethren, they would have come. And besides, they gave a still more evident proof of their conspiracy by their conduct in this great and holy Council. For when they arrived at the city of Sardica, and saw our brethren Athanasius, Marcellus, Asclepas, and the rest, they were afraid to come to a trial and though they were repeatedly invited to attend, they would not obey the summons. Although all we Bishops met together, and above all that man of most happy old age, Hosius, one who on account of his age, his confession, and the many labours he has undergone, is worthy of all reverence; and although we waited and urged them to come to the trial, that in the presence of our fellow-ministers they might establish the truth of those charges which they had circulated and written against them in their absence; yet they would not come, when they were thus invited, as we said before, thus giving proof of their calumnies, and almost proclaiming to the world by this their refusal, the plot and conspiracy in which they have been engaged. They who are confident of the truth of their assertions are able to make them good against their opponents face to face. But as they would not meet us, we think that no one can now doubt, however they may again have recourse to their bad practices, that they possess no proof against our fellow-ministers, but calumniate them in their absence, while they avoid their presence.
45. They fled, beloved brethren, not only on account of the calumnies they had uttered, but because they saw that those had come who had various charges to advance against them. For chains and irons were brought forward which they had used; persons appeared who had returned from banishment; there came also our brethren, kinsmen of those who were still detained in exile, and friends of such as had perished through their means. And what was the most weighty ground of accusation, Bishops were present, one [610] of whom brought forward the irons and chains which they had caused him to wear, and others appealed to the death which had been brought about by their calumnies. For they had proceeded to such a pitch of madness, as even to attempt to destroy Bishops; and would have destroyed them, had they not escaped their hands. Our fellow-ministers, Theodulus of blessed memory [611] , died during his flight from their false accusations, orders having been given in consequence of these to put him to death. Others also exhibited sword-wounds; and others complained that they had been exposed to the pains of hunger through their means. Nor were they ordinary persons who testified to these things, but whole Churches, in whose behalf legates appeared [612] , and told us of soldiers sword in hand, of multitudes armed with clubs, of the threats of judges, of the forgery of false letters. For there were read certain false letters of Theognius and his fellows against our fellow-ministers Athanasius, Marcellus, and Asclepas, written with the design of exasperating the Emperors against them; and those who had then been Deacons of Theognius proved the fact. From these men, we heard of virgins stripped naked, churches burnt, ministers in custody, and all for no other end, but only for the sake of the accursed heresy of the Arian madmen, whose communion whoso refused was forced to suffer these things.
When they perceived then how matters lay, they were in a strait what course to choose. They were ashamed to confess what they had done, but were unable to conceal it any longer. They therefore came to the city of Sardica, that by their arrival they might seem to remove suspicion from themselves of such offences. But when they saw those whom they had calumniated, and those who had suffered at their hands; when they had before their eyes their accusers and the proofs of their guilt, they were unwilling to come forward, though invited by our fellow-ministers Athanasius, Marcellus, and Asclepas, who with great freedom complained of their conduct, and urged and challenged them to the trial, promising not only to refute their calumnies, but also to bring proof of the offences which they had committed against their Churches. But they were seized with such terrors of conscience, that they fled; and in doing so they exposed their own calumnies and confessed by running away the offences of which they had been guilty.
46. But although their malice and their calumnies have been plainly manifested on this as well as on former occasions, yet that they may not devise means of practising a further mischief in consequence of their flight, we have considered it advisable to examine the part they have played according to the principles of truth; this has been our purpose, and we have found them calumniators by their acts, and authors of nothing else than a plot against our brethren in ministry. For Arsenius, who they said had been murdered by Athanasius, is still alive, and is numbered among the living; from which we may infer that the reports they have spread abroad on other subjects are fabrications also. And whereas they spread abroad a rumour concerning a cup, which they said had been broken by Macarius the Presbyter of Athanasius, those who came from Alexandria, the Mareotis, and the other parts, testified that nothing of the kind had taken place. And the Egyptian Bishops [613] who wrote to Julius our fellow-minister, positively affirmed that there had not arisen among them even any suspicion whatever of such a thing.
Moreover, the Reports, which they say they have to produce against him, are, as is notorious, ex parte statements; and even in the formation of these very Reports, Heathens and Catechumens were examined; one of whom, a Catechumen, said [614] in his examination that he was present in the room when Macarius broke in upon them; and another declared, that Ischyras of whom they speak so much, lay sick in his cell at the time; from which it appears that the Mysteries were never celebrated at all, because Catechumens were present, and also that Ischyras was not present, but was lying sick on his bed. Besides, this most worthless Ischyras, who has falsely asserted, as he was convicted of doing, that Athanasius had burnt some of the sacred books, has himself confessed that he was sick, and was lying in his bed when Macarius came; from which it is plain that he is a slanderer. Nevertheless, as a reward for these his calumnies, they have given to this very Ischyras the title of Bishop, although he is not even a Presbyter. For two Presbyters, who were once associated with Meletius, but were afterwards received by the blessed Alexander, Bishop of Alexandria, and are now with Athanasius, appeared before the Council, and testified that he was not even a Presbyter of Meletius, and that Meletius never had either Church or Minister in the Mareotis. And yet this man, who has never been even a Presbyter, they have now brought forward as a Bishop, that by this name they may have the means of overpowering those who are within hearing of his calumnies.
47. The book of our fellow-minister Marcellus was also read, by which the fraud of Eusebius and his fellows was plainly discovered. For what Marcellus had advanced by way of enquiry [615] , they falsely represented as his professed opinion; but when the subsequent parts of the book were read, and the parts preceding the queries themselves, his faith was found to be correct. He had never pretended, as they positively affirmed [616] , that the Word of God had His beginning from holy Mary, nor that His kingdom had an end; on the contrary he had written that His kingdom was both without beginning and without end. Our fellow-minister Asclepas also produced Reports which had been drawn up at Antioch in the presence of his accusers and Eusebius of Cæsarea, and proved that he was innocent by the declarations of the Bishops who judged his cause [617] . They had good reason therefore, dearly beloved brethren, for not hearkening to our frequent summons, and for deserting the Council. They were driven to this by their own consciences; but their flight only confirmed the proof of their own calumnies, and caused those things to be believed against them, which their accusers, who were present, were asserting and arguing. But besides all these things, they had not only received those who were formerly degraded and ejected on account of the heresy of Arius, but had even promoted them to a higher station, advancing Deacons to the Presbytery, and of Presbyters making Bishops, for no other end, but that they might disseminate and spread abroad impiety, and corrupt the orthodox faith.
48. Their leaders are now, after Eusebius and his fellows, Theodorus of Heraclea, Narcissus of Neronias in Cilicia, Stephanus of Antioch, George of Laodicea, Acacius of Cæsarea in Palestine, Menophantus of Ephesus in Asia, Ursacius of Singidunum in Moesia, and Valens of Mursa in Pannonia [618] . These men would not permit those who came with them from the East to meet the holy Council, nor even to approach the Church of God; but as they were coming to Sardica, they held Councils in various places by themselves, and made an engagement under threats, that when they came to Sardica, they would not so much as appear at the trial, nor attend the assembling of the holy Council, but simply coming and making known their arrival as a matter of form, would speedily take to flight. This we have been able to ascertain from our fellow-ministers, Macarius of Palestine and Asterius of Arabia [619] , who after coming in their company, separated themselves from their unbelief. These came to the holy Council, and complained of the violence they had suffered, and said that no right act was being done by them; adding that there were many among them who adhered to orthodoxy, but were prevented by those men from coming hither, by means of the threats and promises which they held out to those who wished to separate from them. On this account it was that they were so anxious that all should abide in one dwelling, and would not suffer them to be by themselves even for the shortest space of time.
49. Since then it became us not to hold our peace, nor to pass over unnoticed their calumnies, imprisonments, murders, wounds, conspiracies by means of false letters, outrages, stripping of the virgins, banishments, destruction of the Churches, burnings, translations from small cities to larger dioceses, and above all, the rising of the ill-named Arian heresy by their means against the orthodox faith; we have therefore pronounced our dearly beloved brethren and fellow-ministers Athanasius, Marcellus, and Asclepas, and those who minister to the Lord with them, to be innocent and clear of offence, and have written to the diocese of each, that the people of each Church may know the innocence of their own Bishop, and may esteem him as their Bishop and expect his coming.
And as for those who like wolves [620] have invaded their Churches, Gregory at Alexandria, Basil at Ancyra, and Quintianus at Gaza, let them neither give them the title of Bishop, nor hold any communion at all with them, nor receive letters [621] from them, nor write to them. And for Theodorus, Narcissus, Acacius, Stephanus, Ursacius, Valens, Menophantus, and George, although the last from fear did not come from the East, yet because he was deposed by the blessed Alexander, and because both he and the others were connected with the Arian madness, as well as on account of the charges which lie against them, the holy Council has unanimously deposed them from the Episcopate, and we have decided that they not only are not Bishops, but that they are unworthy of holding communion with the faithful.
For they who separate the Son and alienate the Word from the Father, ought themselves to be separated from the Catholic Church and to be alien from the Christian name. Let them therefore be anathema to you, because they have corrupted the word of truth [622] .' It is an Apostolic injunction [623] , If any man preach any other Gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed.' Charge your people that no one hold communion with them, for there is no communion of light with darkness; put away from you all these, for there is no concord of Christ in Belial [624] . And take heed, dearly beloved, that ye neither write to them, nor receive letters from them; but desire rather, brethren and fellow-ministers, as being present in spirit [625] with our Council, to assent to our judgments by your subscriptions [626] , to the end that concord may be preserved by all our fellow-ministers everywhere. May Divine Providence protect and keep you, dearly beloved brethren, in sanctification and joy.
I, Hosius, Bishop, have subscribed this, and all the rest likewise.
This is the letter which the Council of Sardica sent to those who were unable to attend, and they on the other hand gave their judgment in accordance; and the following are the names both of those Bishops who subscribed in the Council, and of the others also.
50. Hosius of Spain [627] , Julius of Rome by his Presbyters Archidamus and Philoxenus, Protogenes of Sardica, Gaudentius, Macedonius, Severus, Prætextatus, Ursicius, Lucillus, Eugenius, Vitalius, Calepodius, Florentius, Bassus, Vincentius, Stercorius, Palladius, Domitianus, Chalbis, Gerontius, Protasius, Eulogus, Porphyrius, Dioscorus, Zosimus, Januarius, Zosimus, Alexander, Eutychius, Socrates, Diodorus, Martyrius, Eutherius, Eucarpus, Athenodorus, Irenæus, Julianus, Alypius, Jonas, Aetius, Restitutus, Marcellinus, Aprianus, Vitalius, Valens, Hermogenes, Castus, Domitianus, Fortunatius, Marcus, Annianus, Heliodorus, Musæus, Asterius, Paregorius, Plutarchus, Hymenæus, Athanasius, Lucius, Amantius, Arius, Asclepius, Dionysius, Maximus, Tryphon, Alexander, Antigonus, Ælianus, Petrus, Symphorus, Musonius, Eutychus, Philologius, Spudasius, Zosimus, Patricius, Adolius, Sapricius [628] .
From Gaul the following; Maximianus [629] , Verissimus [630] , Victurus, Valentinus [631] , Desiderius, Eulogius, Sarbatius, Dyscolius [632] , Superior, Mercurius, Declopetus, Eusebius, Severinus [633] , Satyrus, Martinus, Paulus, Optatianus, Nicasius, Victor [634] , Sempronius, Valerinus, Pacatus, Jesses, Ariston, Simplicius, Metianus, Amantus [635] , Amillianus, Justinianus, Victorinus [636] , Satornilus, Abundantius, Donatianus, Maximus.
From Africa; Nessus, Gratus [637] , Megasius, Coldæus, Rogatianus, Consortius, Rufinus, Manninus, Cessilianus, Herennianus, Marianus, Valerius, Dynamius, Mizonius, Justus, Celestinus, Cyprianus, Victor, Honoratus, Marinus, Pantagathus, Felix, Baudius, Liber, Capito, Minervalis, Cosmus, Victor, Hesperio, Felix, Severianus, Optantius, Hesperus, Fidentius, Salustius, Paschasius.
From Egypt; Liburnius, Amantius, Felix, Ischyrammon, Romulus, Tiberinus, Consortius, Heraclides, Fortunatius, Dioscorus, Fortunatianus, Bastamon, Datyllus, Andreas, Serenus, Arius, Theodorus, Evagoras, Helias, Timotheus, Orion, Andronicus, Paphnutius, Hermias, Arabion, Psenosiris, Apollonius, Muis, Sarapampon [638] , Philo, Philippus, Apollonius, Paphnutius, Paulus, Dioscorus, Nilammon, Serenus, Aquila, Aotas, Harpocration, Isac, Theodorus, Apollos, Ammonianus, Nilus, Heraclius, Arion, Athas, Arsenius, Agathammon, Theon, Apollonius, Helias, Paninuthius, Andragathius, Nemesion, Sarapion, Ammonius, Ammonius, Xenon, Gerontius, Quintus, Leonides, Sempronianus, Philo, Heraclides, Hieracys, Rufus, Pasophius, Macedonius, Apollodorus, Flavianus, Psaes, Syrus, Apphus, Sarapion, Esaias, Paphnutius, Timotheus, Elurion, Gaius, Musæus, Pistus, Heraclammon, Heron, Helias, Anagamphus, Apollonius, Gaius, Philotas, Paulus, Tithoes, Eudæmon, Julius.
Those on the road [639] of Italy are Probatius, Viator, Facundinus, Joseph, Numedius, Sperantius, Severus, Heraclianus, Faustinus, Antoninus, Heraclius, Vitalius, Felix, Crispinus, Paulianus.
From Cyprus; Auxibius, Photius, Gerasius, Aphrodisius, Irenicus, Nunechius, Athanasius, Macedonius, Triphyllius, Spyridon, Norbanus, Sosicrates.
From Palestine; Maximus, Aetius, Arius, Theodosius, Germanus, Silvanus, Paulus, Claudius, Patricius, Elpidius, Germanus, Eusebius, Zenobius, Paulus, Petrus.
These are the names of those who subscribed to the acts of the Council; but there are very many beside, out of Asia, Phrygia, and Isauria [640] , who wrote in my behalf before this Council was held, and whose names, nearly sixty-three in number, may be found in their own letters. They amount altogether to three hundred and forty-four [641] . __________________________________________________________________
[588] Of Nicodemia.
[589] Hist. Ar. 15.
[590] Musonian was originally of Antioch, and his name Strategius; he had been promoted and honoured with a new name by Constantine, for whom he had collected information about the Manichees. Amm. Marc. xv. 13, §1. In 354, he was Prætorian Prefect of the East. (vid. de Syn. 1, note 1.) Libanius praises him.
[591] The Castrensians were the officers of the palace; castra, as stratopedon, infr. §86. being at this time used for the Imperial Court. vid. Gothofred in Cod. Theod. vi. 30. p. 218. Du Cange in voc.
[592] To Philippopolis.
[593] p. 111, note 2.
[594] [Prolegg. ch. ii. §8 (2) b.]
[595] Hist. Arian. §20.
[596] [Prolegg. ch. ii. §3 (2) c. 1. and §8 (2) c.]
[597] Vid. supr. p. 100, where Isauria, Thessaly, Sicily, Britain, &c., added. Also Theod. H. E. ii. 6. vid. p. 120 note 9 a.
[598] Vid. infr. §51, note.
[599] Supr. p. 107, note 9.
[600] Vid. supr. §36. infr. §87.
[601] Matt. x. 22.
[602] Vid. Bingham. Antiqu. V. ii. 5. &c. Gieseler Eccl. Hist. vol. I. p. 242. Bassi. Biblioth. Jur. t. l. p. 276. Bellarm. de C eric. 28.
[603] Supr. p. 109.
[604] Vid. Encycl. Letter, infr. §46.
[605] It will be observed that this Letter is nearly a transcript of the foregoing. It was first printed in the Benedictine Edition.
[606] Matt. x. 22.
[607] §36.
[608] Vid. Theod. Hist. ii. 6. Hil. Fragm. ii.
[609] Asclepas, or Asclepius of Gaza, Epiph. Hær. 69. 4. was one of the Nicene Fathers, and according to Theod. Hist. i. 27. was at the Council of Tyre, which Athan. also attended, but only by compulsion. According to the Eusebians at Philippopolis, they had deposed him [17 years previously, but the number must be corrupt, or the statement incorrect]. They state, however, at the same time, that he had been condemned by Athanasius and Marcellus, vid. Hilar. Fragm. iii. 13. Sozomen, Hist. iii. 8. says that they deposed him on the charge of having overturned an altar; and, after Athan. infr. §47, that he was acquitted at Sardica on the ground that Eusebius of Cæsarea and others had reinstated him in his see (before 339). There is mention of a Church built by him in Gaza ap. Bolland. Febr. 26. Vit. L. Porphyr. n. 20. p. 648.
[610] Perhaps Lucius of Hadrianople, says Montfaucon, referring to Apol. de Fug. §3. vid. also Hist. Arian. 19.
[611] Theodulus, Bishop of Trajanopolis in Thrace, who is here spoken of as deceased, seems to have suffered this persecution from the Eusebians upon their retreat from Sardica, vid. Athan. Hist. Arian. §19. We must suppose then with Montfaucon, that the Council, from whom this letter proceeds, sat some considerable time after that retreat, and that the proceedings spoken of took place in the interval. Socrates, however, makes Theodulus survive Constans, who died 350. H. E. ii. 26.
[612] The usual proceeding of the Arians was to retort upon the Catholics the charges which they brought against them, supr. §33, note 4. Accordingly, in their Encyclical from Philippopolis, they say that "a vast multitude had congregated at Sardica, of wicked and abandoned persons, from Constantinople and Alexandria; who lay under charges of murder, blood, slaughter, robbery, plunder, spoiling, and all nameless sacrileges and crimes; who had broken altars, burnt Churches, ransacked private houses," &c. &c. Hil. Fragm. iii. 19.
[613] p. 101.
[614] Cf. §28.
[615] Cf. de Decr. §25, note
[616] De Syn. §25, note.
[617] §44, note 9.
[618] Vid. supr. §§13, note, and 36. About Stephanus, vid. infr. Hist. Arian. §20.
[619] [For Macarius, read Arius.] These two Bishops were soon after the Council banished by Eusebian influence into upper Libya, where they suffered extreme ill usage. vid. Hist. Arian. §18.
[620] Vid. Acts xx. 29
[621] p. 95, note 4.
[622] 2 Cor. ii. 17.
[623] Gal. i. 9.
[624] 2 Cor. vi. 14, 15.
[625] 1 Cor. v. 3.
[626] In like manner the Council of Chalcedon was confirmed by as many as 470 subscriptions, according to Ephrem (Phot. Bibl. p. 801) by 1600 according to Eulogius (ibid. p. 877), i.e. of Bishops, Archimandrites. &c.
[627] Hosius is called by Athan, the father and the president of the Council. Hist. Arian. 15, 16. Roman controversialists here explain why Hosius does not sign himself as the Pope's legate, De Marc. Concord. v. 4. Alber. Dissert. ix. and Protestants why his legates rank before all the other Bishops, even before Protogenes, Bishop of the place. Basnage, Ann. 347. 5. Febronius considers that Hosius signed here and at Nicæa, as a sort of representative of the civil, and the Legates of ecclesiastical supremacy. de Stat. Eccl. vi. 4. And so Thomassin, "Imperator velut exterior Episcopus: præfuit autem summus Pontifex, ut Episcopus interior." Dissert. in Conc. x. 14. The popes never attended in person the Eastern Councils. St. Leo excuses himself on the plea of its being against usage. Epp. 37. and 93. [Silvester's absence from Nicæa was due solely to extreme old age. But Sardica was a Western council.]
[628] [The above names, with a few exceptions, comprise those present at the Council. See additional Note at the end of this Apology, where a list is given in alphabetical order of all bishops present, with their Sees.]
[629] Of Treveri.
[630] Of Lyons.
[631] Of Arles.
[632] Of Rheims.
[633] Of Sens.
[634] Of Worms.
[635] Of Strassburg.
[636] Of Paris.
[637] Of Carthage.
[638] §§33, note 3a, and 78.
[639] hoi en to kanali& 251; tes 'Italias. "Canalis est, non via regia aut militaris, verum via tranversa, quæ in regiam seu basilicam influit, quasi aquæ canalis in alveum." Gothofred. in Cod. Theod. vi. de Curiosis, p. 196. who illustrates the word at length. Du Cange on the contrary, in voc. explains it of "the high road." Tillemont professes himself unable to give a satisfactory sense to it. vol. viii. p. 685. [The word occurs in the XIth. Sardican canon, where the Greek version (Can. XX. in Bruns) glosses it kanali& 251; etoi parodo.]
[640] Cf. §36.
[641] Athan. says, supr. §1. that the Letter of the Council was signed in all by more than 300. It will be observed, that Athan.'s numbers in the text do not accurately agree with each other. The subscriptions enumerated are 284, to which 63 being added, made a total of 347, not 344. [The enumeration of Ath. includes many who signed long afterwards. Those from Palestine' are simply the signatories of the synodal letter of 346, below §57. The number, 170 mentioned by Ath. Hist. Ar. 15 gives an orthodox majority of 20. See additional Note at end of this Apology, and Gwatkin, Studies, p. 121, note.] __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IV.--Imperial and Ecclesiastical Acts in Consequence of the Decision of the Council of Sardica.
51. When the most religious Emperor Constantius heard of these things, he sent for me, having written privately to his brother Constans of blessed memory, and to me three several times in the following terms.
Constantius Victor Augustus to Athanasius [642] . Our benignant clemency will not suffer you to be any longer tempest-tossed by the wild waves of the sea; for our unwearied piety has not lost sight of you, while you have been bereft of your native home, deprived of your goods, and have been wandering in savage wildernesses. And although I have for a long time deferred expressing by letter the purpose of my mind concerning you, principally because I expected that you would appear before us of your own accord, and would seek a relief of your sufferings; yet forasmuch as fear, it may be, has prevented you from fulfilling your intentions, we have therefore addressed to your fortitude letters full of our bounty, to the end that you may use all speed and without fear present yourself in our presence, thereby to obtain the enjoyment of your wishes, and that, having experience of our kindness, you may be restored again to your own. For this purpose I have besought my lord and brother Constans Victor Augustus, in your behalf, that he would give you permission to come, in order that you may be restored to your country with the consent of us both, receiving this as a pledge of our favour.
The Second Letter.
Although we made it very plain to you in a former letter that you may without hesitation come to our Court, because we greatly wished to send you home, yet, we have further sent this present letter to your fortitude to exhort you without any distrust or apprehension, to place yourself in the public conveyances [643] , and to hasten to us, that you may enjoy the fulfilment of your wishes.
The Third Letter.
Our pleasure was, while we abode at Edessa, and your Presbyters were there, that, on one of them being sent to you, you should make haste to come to our Court, in order that you might see our face, and straightway proceed to Alexandria. But as a very long period has elapsed since you received letters from us, and you have not yet come, we therefore hasten to remind you again, that you may endeavour even now to present yourself before us with speed, and so may be restored to your country, and obtain the accomplishment of your prayers. And for your fuller information we have sent Achitas the Deacon, from whom you will be able to learn the purpose of our soul, that you may now secure the objects of your prayers.
Such was the tenor of the Emperor's letters; on receiving which I went up to Rome to bid farewell to the Church and the Bishop: for I was at Aquileia [644] when the above was written. The Church was filled with all joy, and the Bishop Julius rejoiced with me in my return and wrote to the Church [645] ; and as we passed along, the Bishops of every place sent us on our way in peace. The letter of Julius was as follows.
52. Julius to the Presbyters, Deacons, and people residing at Alexandria [646] .
I congratulate you, beloved brethren, that you now behold the fruit of your faith before your eyes; for any one may see that such indeed is the case with respect to my brother and fellow-Bishop Athanasius, whom for the innocency of his life, and by reason of your prayers, God is restoring to you again. Wherefore it is easy to perceive, that you have continually offered up to God pure prayers and full of love. Being mindful of the heavenly promises, and of the conversation that leads to them, which you have learnt from the teaching of my brother aforesaid, you knew certainly and understood by the right faith that is in you, that he, whom you always had as present in your most pious minds, would not be separated from you for ever. Wherefore there is no need that I should use many words in writing to you; for your faith has already anticipated whatever I could say to you, and has by the grace of God procured the accomplishment of the common prayers of you all. Therefore, I repeat again, I congratulate you, because you have preserved your souls unconquered in the faith; and I also congratulate no less my brother Athanasius, in that, though he is enduring many afflictions, he has at no time been forgetful of your love and earnest desires towards him. For although for a season he seemed to be withdrawn from you in body, yet he has continued to live as always present with you in spirit [647] .
53. Wherefore he returns to you now more illustrious than when he went away from you. Fire tries and purifies the precious materials, gold and silver: but how can one describe the worth of such a man, who, having passed victorious through the perils of so many tribulations, is now restored to you, being pronounced innocent not by our voice only, but by the voice of the whole Council [648] ? Receive therefore, beloved brethren, with all godly honour and rejoicing, your Bishop Athanasius, together with those who have been partners with him in so many labours. And rejoice that you now obtain the fulfilment of your prayers, after that in your salutary letter you have given meat and drink to your Pastor, who, so to speak, longed and thirsted after your godliness. For while he sojourned in a foreign land, you were his consolation; and you refreshed him during his persecutions by your most faithful minds and spirits. And it delights me now to conceive and figure to my mind the joy of every one of you at his return, and the pious greetings of the concourse, and the glorious festivity of those that run to meet him. What a day will that be to you, when my brother comes back again, and your former sufferings terminate, and his much-prized and desired return inspires you all with an exhilaration of perfect joy! The like joy it is ours to feel in a very great degree, since it has been granted us by God, to be able to make the acquaintance of so eminent a man. It is fitting therefore that I should conclude my letter with a prayer. May Almighty God, and His Son our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, afford you continual grace, giving you a reward for the admirable faith which you displayed in your noble confession in behalf of your Bishop, that He may impart unto you and unto them that are with you, both here and hereafter, those better things, which the eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him [649] ,' through our Lord Jesus Christ, through Whom to Almighty God be glory for ever and ever. Amen. I pray, dearly beloved brethren, for your health and strength in the Lord.
54. The Emperor, when I came to him [650] with these letters, received me kindly, and sent me forth to my country and Church addressing the following to the Bishops, Presbyters, and People.
Constantius, Victor, Maximus, Augustus, to the Bishops and Presbyters of the Catholic Church.
The most reverend Athanasius has not been deserted by the grace of God, but although for a brief season he was subjected to trial to which human nature is liable, he has obtained from the all-surveying Providence such an answer to his prayers as was meet, and is restored by the will of the Most High, and by our sentence, at once to his country and to the Church, over which by divine permission he presided. Wherefore, in accordance with this, it is fitting that it should be provided by our clemency, that all the decrees which have heretofore been passed against those who held communion with him, be now consigned to oblivion, and that all suspicions respecting them be henceforward set at rest, and that immunity, such as the Clergy who are associated with him formerly enjoyed, be duly confirmed to them. Moreover to our other acts of favour towards him we have thought good to add the following, that all persons of the sacred catalogue [651] should understand, that an assurance of safety is given to all who adhere to him, whether Bishops, or other Clergy. And union with him will be a sufficient guarantee, in the case of any person, of an upright intention. For whoever, acting according to a better judgment and part, shall choose to hold communion with him, we order, in imitation of that Providence which has already gone before, that all such should have the advantage of the grace which by the will of the Most High is now offered to them from us. May God preserve you.
The Second Letter.
Constantius, Victor, Maximus, Augustus, to the people of the Catholic Church at Alexandria.
55. Having in view your welfare in all respects, and knowing that you have for a long time been deprived of episcopal superintendence, we have thought good to send back to you your Bishop Athanasius, a man known to all men for the uprightness that is in him, and for the good disposition of his personal character. Receive him, as you are wont to receive every one, in a suitable manner, and, using his advocacy as your succour in your prayers to God, endeavour to preserve continually that unanimity and peace according to the order of the Church which is at the same time becoming in you, and most advantageous for us. For it is not becoming that any dissension or faction should be raised among you, contrary to the prosperity of our times. We desire that this offence may be altogether removed from you, and we exhort you to continue stedfastly in your accustomed prayers, and to make him, as we said before, your advocate and helper towards God. So that, when this your determination, beloved, has influenced the prayers of all men, even those heathen who are still addicted to the false worship of idols may eagerly desire to come to the knowledge of our sacred religion. Again therefore we exhort you to continue in these things, and gladly to receive your Bishop, who is sent back to you by the decree of the Most High, and by our decision, and determine to greet him cordially with all your soul and with all your mind. For this is what is both becoming in you, and agreeable to our clemency. In order that all occasions of disturbance and sedition may be taken away from those who are maliciously disposed, we have by letter commanded the magistrates who are among you to subject to the vengeance of the law all whom they find to be factious. Wherefore taking into consideration both these things, our decision in accordance with the will of the Most High, and our regard for you and for concord among you, and the punishment that awaits the disorderly, observe such things as are proper and suitable to the order of our sacred religion, and receiving the afore-mentioned Bishop with all reverence and honour, take care to offer up with him your prayers to God, the Father of all, in behalf of yourselves, and for the well-being of your whole lives.
56. Having written these letters, he also commanded that the decrees, which he had formerly sent out against me in consequence of the calumnies of Eusebius and his fellows, should be cancelled and struck out from the Orders of the Duke and the Prefect of Egypt; and Eusebius the Decurion [652] was sent to withdraw them from the Order-books. His letter on this occasion was as follows.
Constantius, Victor, Augustus, to Nestorius [653] . (And in the same terms, to the Governors of Augustamnica, the Thebais, and Libya.)
Whatever Orders are found to have been passed heretofore, tending to the injury and dishonour of those who hold communion with the Bishop Athanasius, we wish them to be now erased. For we desire that whatever immunities his Clergy possessed before, they should again possess the same. And we wish this our Order to be observed, that when the Bishop Athanasius is restored to his Church, those who hold communion with him may enjoy the immunities which they have always enjoyed, and which the rest of the Clergy enjoy; so that they may have the satisfaction of being on an equal footing with others.
57. Being thus set forward on my journey, as I passed through Syria, I met with the Bishops of Palestine, who when they had called a Council [654] at Jerusalem, received me cordially, and themselves also sent me on my way in peace, and addressed the following letter to the Church and the Bishops.
The Holy Council, assembled at Jerusalem, to the fellow-ministers in Egypt and Libya, and to the Presbyters, Deacons, and People at Alexandria, brethren beloved and greatly longed for, sends health in the Lord.
We cannot give worthy thanks to the God of all, dearly beloved, for the wonderful things which He has done at all times, and especially at this time for your Church, in restoring to you your pastor and lord, and our fellow-minister Athanasius. For who ever hoped that his eyes would see what you are now actually obtaining? Of a truth, your prayers have been heard by the God of all, Who cares for His Church, and has looked upon your tears and groans, and has therefore heard your petitions. For ye were as sheep scattered and fainting, not having a shepherd [655] . Wherefore the true Shepherd, Who careth for His own sheep, has visited you from heaven, and has restored to you him whom you desire. Behold, we also, being ready to do all things for the peace of the Church, and being prompted by the same affection as yourselves, have saluted him before you; and communicating with you through him, we send you these greetings, and our offering of thanksgiving, that you may know that we also are united in the bond of love that joins you to him. You are bound to pray also for the piety of our most God-beloved Emperors, who, when they knew your earnest longings after him, and his innocency, determined to restore him to you with all honour. Wherefore receive him with uplifted hands, and take good heed that you offer up due thanksgiving on his behalf to God Who has bestowed these blessings upon you; so that you may continually rejoice with God and glorify our Lord, in Christ Jesus our Lord, through Whom to the Father be glory for ever. Amen.
I have set down here the names of those who subscribed this letter, although I have mentioned them before [656] . They are these; Maximus, Aetius, Arius, Theodorus [657] , Germanus, Silvanus, Paulus, Patricius, Elpidius, Germanus, Eusebius, Zenobius, Paulus, Macrinus [658] , Petrus, Claudius.
58. When Ursacius and Valens saw all this, they forthwith condemned themselves for what they had done, and going up to Rome, confessed their crime, declared themselves penitent, and sought forgiveness [659] , addressing the following letters to Julius, Bishop of ancient Rome, and to ourselves. Copies of them were sent to me from Paulinus, Bishop of Treveri [660] .
A Translation from the Latin of a Letter [661] to Julius, concerning the recantation of Ursacius and Valens [662] .
Ursacius and Valens to the most blessed lord, pope Julius.
Whereas it is well known that we have heretofore in letters laid many grievous charges against the Bishop Athanasius, and whereas when we were corrected by the letters of your Goodness, we were unable to render an account of the statement we had made; we do now confess before your Goodness, and in the presence of all the Presbyters our brethren, that all the reports which have heretofore come to your hearing respecting the case of the aforesaid Athanasius, are falsehoods and fabrications, and are utterly inconsistent with his character. Wherefore we earnestly desire communion with the aforesaid Athanasius, especially since your Piety, with your characteristic generosity, has vouchsafed to pardon our error. But we also declare, that if at any time the Eastern Bishops, or even Athanasius himself, ungenerously should wish to bring us to judgment for this matter, we will not depart contrary to your judgment. And as for the heretic Arius and his supporters, who say that once the Son was not, and that the Son was made of that which was not, and who deny that Christ is God and the Son of God before the worlds, we anathematize them both now and for evermore, as also we have set forth in our former declaration at Milan [663] . We have written this with our own hands, and we profess again, that we have renounced for ever, as we said before, the Arian heresy and its authors.
I Ursacius subscribed this my confession in person; and likewise I Valens.
Ursacius and Valens, Bishops, to their lord and brother, the Bishop Athanasius.
Having an opportunity of sending by our brother and fellow Presbyter Musæus, who is coming to your Charity, we salute you affectionately, beloved brother, through him, from Aquileia, and pray you, being as we trust in health, to read our letter. You will also give us confidence, if you will return to us an answer in writing. For know that we are at peace with you, and in communion with the Church, of which the salutation prefixed to this letter is a proof. May Divine Providence preserve you, my Lord, our beloved brother!
Such were their letters, and such the sentence and the judgment of the Bishops in my behalf. But in order to prove that they did not act thus to ingratiate themselves, or under compulsion in any quarter, I desire, with your permission, to recount the whole matter from the beginning, so that you may perceive that the bishops wrote as they did with upright and just intentions, and that Ursacius and Valens, though they were slow to do so, at last confessed the truth. __________________________________________________________________
[642] Written a.d. 345.
[643] Gothof. in Cod. Theod. viii. 5. p. 507.
[644] Apol. Const. 3, 15.
[645] "They acquainted Julius the Bishop of Rome with their case; and he, according to the prerogative (pronomia) of the Church in Rome, fortified them with letters in which he spoke his mind, and sent them back to the East, restoring each to his own place, and remarking on those who had violently deposed them. They then set out from Rome, and on the strength (thar& 191;ountes) of the letters of Bishop Julius, take possession of their Churches." Socr. ii. 15. It must be observed, that in the foregoing sentences Socrates has spoken of "(imperial) Rome." Sozomen says, "Whereas the care of all (kedemonias) pertained to him on account of the dignity of his see, he restored each to his own Church." iii. 8. "I answer," says Barrow, "the Pope did not restore them judicially but declaratively, that is, declaring his approbation of their right and innocence, did admit them to communion....Besides, the Pope's proceeding was taxed, and protested against, as irregular;....and, lastly, the restitution of Athanasius and the other Bishops had no complete effect, till it was confirmed by the synod of Sardica, backed by the imperial authority." Suprem. p. 360. ed. 1836.
[646] Written early in 346 a.d.
[647] Athan. here omits a paragraph in his own praise. vid. Socr. ii. 23.
[648] §35, note 3.
[649] 1 Cor. ii. 9.
[650] [At Antioch September (?) 346. See Prolegg. ch. ii. §6 (3).]
[651] Vid. Bingh. Antiqu. I. v. 10.
[652] Member of the Curia or Council.
[653] Prefect of Egypt, vid. Vita Ant. 86, Fest. Ind. xvii.-xxiv.
[654] Hist. Arian. 25.
[655] Matt. ix. 36.
[656] §50.
[657] Theodosius, supr.
[658] Not supr.
[659] Cf. §20, note 4.
[660] Triberon, Paul infr. Hist. Ar. 26.
[661] Hist. Arian. 25. 26.
[662] [Gibbon, ch. xxi. note 108, doubts the fact of this recantation on the ground of the dissimilar tone of the two letters that follow. Newman explains that they treat Julius as a superior,' Athanasius as an equal;' but surely he was something more than an equal. Fear of Constans, and the desire to secure themselves from attack, would make it important for them at any price to obtain the favour of the first bishop of the West. In order to do this they had to make their peace with Athanasius; but in doing so, they went no further than they could help.]
[663] a.d. 347. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Part II.
Chapter V.--Documents connected with the charges of the Meletians against S. Athanasius.
59. Peter was Bishop among us before the persecution, and during the course of it he suffered martyrdom. When Meletius, who held the title of bishop in Egypt, was convicted of many crimes, and among the rest of offering sacrifice to idols, Peter deposed him in a general council of the bishops. Whereupon Meletius did not appeal to another council, or attempt to justify himself before those who should come after, but made a schism, so that they who espoused his cause are even yet called Meletians instead of Christians [664] . He began immediately to revile the bishops, and made false accusations, first against Peter himself, and against his successor Achillas, and after Achillas, against Alexander [665] . And he thus practised craftily, following the example of Absalom, to the end that, as he was disgraced by his deposition, he might by his calumnies mislead the simple. While Meletius was thus employed, the Arian heresy also had arisen. But in the Council of Nicæa, while the heresy was anathematized, and the Arians were cast out, the Meletians on whatever grounds [666] (for it is not necessary now to mention the reason) were received. Five months however had not yet passed [667] when, the blessed Alexander having died, the Meletians, who ought to have remained quiet, and to have been grateful that they were received on any terms, like dogs unable to forget their vomit, were again troubling the Churches.
Upon learning this, Eusebius, who had the lead in the Arian heresy, sends and buys the Meletians with large promises, becomes their secret friend, and arranges with them for their assistance on any occasion when he might wish for it. At first he sent to me, urging me to admit Arius and his fellows to communion [668] , and threatened me in his verbal communications, while in his letters he [merely] made a request. And when I refused, declaring that it was not right that those who had invented heresy contrary to the truth, and had been anathematized by the Ecumenical [669] Council, should be admitted to communion, he caused the Emperor also, Constantine, of blessed memory, to write to me, threatening me, in case I should not receive Arius and his fellows, with those afflictions, which I have before undergone, and which I am still suffering. The following is a part of his letter. Syncletius and Gaudentius, officers of the palace [670] , were the bearers of it.
Part of a Letter from the Emperor Constantine.
Having therefore knowledge of my will, grant free admission to all who wish to enter into the Church. For if I learn that you have hindered or excluded any who claim to be admitted into communion with the Church, I will immediately send some one who shall depose you by my command, and shall remove you from your place.
60. When upon this I wrote and endeavoured to convince the Emperor, that that anti-Christian heresy had no communion with the Catholic Church, Eusebius forthwith, availing himself of the occasion which he had agreed upon with the Meletians, writes and persuades them to invent some pretext, so that, as they had practised against Peter and Achillas and Alexander, they might devise and spread reports against us also. Accordingly, after seeking for a long time, and finding nothing, they at last agree together, with the advice of Eusebius and his fellows, and fabricate their first accusation by means of Ision, Eudæmon, and Callinicus [671] , respecting the linen vestments [672] , to the effect that I had imposed a law upon the Egyptians, and had required its observance of them first. But when certain Presbyters of mine were found to be present, and the Emperor took cognizance of the matter, they were condemned (the Presbyters were Apis and Macarius), and the Emperor wrote, condemning Ision, and ordering me to appear before him. His letters were as follows [673] .
Eusebius, having intelligence of this, persuades them to wait; and when I arrive, they next accuse Macarius of breaking the cup, and bring against me the most heinous accusation possible, viz. that, being an enemy of the Emperor, I had sent a purse of gold to one Philumenus. The Emperor therefore heard us on this charge also in Psammathia [674] , when they, as usual, were condemned, and driven from the presence; and, as I returned, he wrote the following letter to the people.
Constantine, Maximus, Augustus, to the people of the Catholic Church at Alexandria.
61. Beloved brethren, I greet you well, calling upon God, Who is the chief witness of my intention, and on the Only-begotten, the Author of our Law, Who is Sovereign over the lives of all men, and Who hates dissensions. But what shall I say to you? That I am in good health? Nay, but I should be able to enjoy better health and strength, if you were possessed with mutual love one towards another, and had rid yourselves of your enmities, through which, in consequence of the storms excited by contentious men, we have left the haven of brotherly love. Alas! what perverseness is this! What evil consequences are produced every day by the tumult of envy which has been stirred up among you! Hence it is that evil reports have settled upon the people of God. Whither has the faith of righteousness departed? For we are so involved in the mists of darkness, not only through manifold errors, but through the faults of ungrateful men, that we bear with those who favour folly, and though we are aware of them, take no heed of those who set aside goodness and truth. What strange inconsistency is this! We do not convict our enemies, but we follow the example of robbery which they set us, whereby the most pernicious errors, finding no one to oppose them, easily, if I may so speak, make a way for themselves. Is there no understanding among us, for the credit of our common nature, since we are thus neglectful of the injunctions of the law?
But some one will say, that love is a thing brought out by nature. But, I ask, how is it that we who have got the law of God for our guide in addition to our natural advantages, thus tolerate the disturbances and disorders raised by our enemies, who seem inflamed, as it were, with firebrands? How is it, that having eyes, we see not, neither understand, though we are surrounded by the intelligence of the law? What a stupor has seized upon our life, that we are thus neglectful of ourselves, and that although God admonishes us! Is it not an intolerable evil? and ought we not to esteem such men as our enemies, and not the household and people of God? For they are infuriated against us, abandoned as they are: they lay grievous crimes to our charge, and make attacks upon us as enemies.
62. And I would have you yourselves to consider with what exceeding madness they do this. The foolish men carry their maliciousness at their tongues' end. They carry about with them a sort of leaden anger, so that they reciprocally smite one another, and involve us by way of increasing their own punishment. The good teacher is accounted an enemy, while he who clothes himself with the vice of envy, contrary to all justice makes his gain of the gentle temper of the people; he ravages, and consumes, he decks himself out, and recommends himself with false praises; he subverts the truth, and corrupts the faith, until he finds out a hole and hiding-place for his conscience. Thus their very perverseness makes them wretched, while they impudently prefer themselves to places of honour, however unworthy they may be. Ah! what a mischief is this! they say "Such an one is too old; such an one is a mere boy; the office belongs to me; it is due to me, since it is taken away from him. I will gain over all men to my side, and then I will endeavour with my power to ruin him." Plain indeed is this proclamation of their madness to all the world; the sight of companies, and gatherings, and rowers under command [675] in their offensive cabals. Alas! what preposterous conduct is ours, if I may say it! Do they make an exhibition of their folly in the Church of God? And are they not yet ashamed of themselves? Do they not yet blame themselves? Are they not smitten in their consciences, so that they now at length shew that they entertain a proper sense of their deceit and contentiousness? Theirs is the mere force of envy, supported by those baneful influences which naturally belong to it. But those wretches have no power against your Bishop. Believe me, brethren, their endeavours will have no other effect than this, after they have worn down our days, to leave to themselves no place of repentance in this life. Wherefore I beseech you, lend help to yourselves; receive kindly our love, and with all your strength drive away those who desire to obliterate from among us the grace of unanimity; and looking unto God, love one another. I received gladly your Bishop Athanasius, and addressed him in such a manner, as being persuaded that he was a man of God. It is for you to understand these things, not for me to judge of them. I thought it becoming that the most reverend Athanasius himself should convey my salutation to you, knowing his kind care of you, which, in a manner worthy of that peaceable faith which I myself profess, is continually engaged in the good work of declaring saving knowledge, and will be able to exhort you as is suitable, May God preserve you, beloved brethren.
Such was the letter of Constantine.
63. After these occurrences the Meletians remained quiet for a little time, but afterwards shewed their hostility again, and contrived the following plot, with the aim of pleasing those who had hired their services. The Mareotis is a country district of Alexandria, in which Meletius was not able to make a schism. Now while the Churches still existed within their appointed limits, and all the Presbyters had congregations in them, and while the people were living in peace, a certain person named Ischyras [676] , who was not a clergyman, but of a worthless disposition, endeavoured to lead astray the people of his own village, declaring himself to be a clergyman. Upon learning this, the Presbyter of the place informed me of it when I was going through my visitation of the Churches, and I sent Macarius the Presbyter with him to summon Ischyras. They found him sick and lying in a cell, and charged his father to admonish his son not to continue any such practices as had been reported against him. But when he recovered from his sickness, being prevented by his friends and his father from pursuing the same course, he fled over to the Meletians; and they communicate with Eusebius and his fellows, and at last that calumny is invented by them, that Macarius had broken a cup, and that a certain Bishop named Arsenius had been murdered by me. Arsenius they placed in concealment, in order that he might seem made away with, when he did not make his appearance; and they carried about a hand, pretending that he had been cut to pieces. As for Ischyras, whom they did not even know, they began to spread a report that he was a Presbyter, in order that what he said about the cup might mislead the people. Ischyras, however, being censured by his friends, came to me weeping, and said that no such thing as they had reported had been done by Macarius, and that himself had been suborned by the Meletians to invent this calumny. And he wrote the following letter.
To the Blessed pope [677] Athanasius, Ischyras sends health in the Lord.
64. As when I came to you, my Lord Bishop, desiring to be received into the Church, you reproved me for what I formerly said, as though I had proceeded to such lengths of my own free choice, I therefore submit to you this my apology in writing, in order that you may understand, that violence was used towards me, and blows inflicted on me by Isaac and Heraclides, and Isaac of Letopolis, and those of their party. And I declare, and take God as my witness in this matter, that of none of the things which they have stated, do I know you to be guilty. For no breaking of a cup or overturning of the Holy Table ever took place, but they compelled me by violent usage to assert all this. And this defence I make and submit to you in writing, desiring and claiming for myself to be admitted among the members of your congregation. I pray that you may have health in the Lord.
I submit this my handwriting to you the Bishop Athanasius in the presence of the Presbyters, Ammonas of Dicella, Heraclius of Phascos, Boccon of Chenebri, Achillas of Myrsine, Didymus of Taphosiris, and Justus from Bomotheus [678] ; and of the Deacons, Paul, Peter, and Olympius, of Alexandria, and Ammonius, Pistus, Demetrius, and Gaius, of the Mareotis.
65. Notwithstanding this statement of Ischyras, they again spread abroad the same charges against me everywhere, and also reported them to the Emperor Constantine. He too had heard before of the affair of the cup in Psammathia [679] , when I was there, and had detected the falsehood of my enemies. But now he wrote to Antioch to Dalmatius [680] the Censor requiring him to institute a judicial enquiry respecting the murder. Accordingly the Censor sent me notice to prepare for my defence against the charge. Upon receiving his letters, although at first I paid no regard to the thing because I knew that nothing of what they said was true, yet seeing that the Emperor was moved, I wrote to my fellow-ministers into Egypt, and sent a deacon, desiring to learn something of Arsenius, for I had not seen the man for five or six years. Well, not to relate the matter at length, Arsenius was found in concealment, in the first instance in Egypt, and afterwards my friends discovered him again in concealment in Tyre also. And what was most remarkable, even when he was discovered he would not confess that he was Arsenius, until he was convicted in court before Paul, who was then Bishop of Tyre, and at last out of very shame could not deny it.
This he did in order to fulfil his contract with Eusebius and his fellows, lest, if he were discovered, the game they were playing should at length be broken up; which in fact came to pass. For when I wrote the Emperor word, that Arsenius was discovered, and reminded him of what he had heard in Psammathia concerning Macarius the Presbyter, he stopped the proceedings of the Censor's court, and wrote condemning the proceedings against me as calumnious, and commanded Eusebius and his fellows, who were coming into the East to appear against me, to return. Now in order to shew that they accused me of having murdered Arsenius (not to bring forward the letters of many persons on the subject), it shall be sufficient only to produce one from Alexander the Bishop of Thessalonica, from which the tenor of the rest may be inferred. He then being acquainted with the reports which Archaph, who is also called John, circulated against me on the subject of the murder, and having heard that Arsenius was alive, wrote as follows.
Letter of Alexander.
To his dearly beloved son and fellow-minister like-minded, the lord Athanasius, Alexander the Bishop sends health in the Lord.
66. I congratulate the most excellent Sarapion, that he is striving so earnestly to adorn himself with holy habits, and is thus advancing to higher praise the memory of his father. For, as the Holy Scripture somewhere says, though his father die, yet he is as though he were not dead [681] :' for he has left behind him a memorial of his life. What my feelings were towards the ever memorable Sozon, you yourself, my lord [682] , are not ignorant, for you know the sacredness of his memory, as well as the goodness of the young man. I have received only one letter from your reverence, which I had by the hands of this youth. I mention this to you, my lord, in order that you may know. Our dearly beloved brother and deacon Macarius, afforded me great pleasure by writing to me from Constantinople, that the false accuser Archaph had met with disgrace, for having given out before all men that a live man had been murdered. That he will receive from the righteous Judge, together with all the tribe of his associates, that punishment, which his crimes deserve, the unerring Scriptures assure us. May the Lord of all preserve you for very many years, my lord, in every way most kind.
67. And they who lived with Arsenius bear witness, that he was kept in concealment for this purpose, that they might pretend his death; for in searching after him we found the person [who had done so], and he in consequence wrote the following letter to John, who played the chief part in this false accusation.
To his dearly beloved brother John, Pinnes, Presbyter of the Monastery [683] of Ptemencyrcis, in the home of Anteopolis, sends greeting.
I wish you to know, that Athanasius sent his deacon into the Thebais, to search everywhere for Arsenius; and Pecysius the Presbyter, and Silvanus the brother of Helias, and Tapenacerameus, and Paul monk of Hypsele, whom he first fell in with, confessed that Arsenius was with us. Upon learning this we caused him to be put on board a vessel, and to sail to the lower countries with Helias the monk. Afterwards the deacon returned again suddenly with certain others, and entered our monastery, in search of the same Arsenius, and him they found not, because, as I said before, we had sent him away to the lower countries; but they conveyed me together with Helias the monk, who took him out of the way, to Alexandria, and brought us before the Duke [684] ; when I was unable to deny, but confessed that he was alive, and had not been murdered: the monk also who took him out of the way confessed the same. Wherefore I acquaint you with these things, Father, lest you should determine to accuse Athanasius; for I said that he was alive, and had been concealed with us, and all this is become known in Egypt, and it cannot any longer be kept secret.
I, Paphnutius, monk of the same monastery, who wrote this letter, heartily salute you. I pray for your health.
The following also is the letter which the Emperor wrote when he learnt that Arsenius was found to be alive.
Constantine, Victor, Maximus, Augustus, to the pope Athanasius.
68. Having read the letters of your wisdom, I felt the inclination to write in return to your fortitude, and to exhort you that you would endeavour to restore the people of God to tranquillity, and to merciful feelings. For in my own mind I hold these things to be of the greatest importance, that we should cultivate truth, and ever keep righteousness in our thoughts, and have pleasure especially in those who walk in the right way of life. But as concerning those who are deserving of all execration, I mean the most perverse and ungodly Meletians, who have at last stultified themselves by their folly, and are now raising unreasonable commotions by envy, uproar, and tumult, thus making manifest their own ungodly dispositions, I will say thus much. You see that those who they pretended had been slain with the sword, are still amongst us, and in the enjoyment of life. Now what could be a stronger presumption against them, and one so manifestly and clearly tending to their condemnation, as that those whom they declared to have been murdered, are yet in the enjoyment of life, and accordingly will be able to speak for themselves?
But this further accusation was advanced by these same Meletians. They positively affirmed that you, rushing in with lawless violence, had seized upon and broken a cup, which was deposited in the most Holy Place; than which there certainly could not be a more serious charge, nor a more grievous offence, had such a crime actually been perpetrated. But what manner of accusation is this? What is the meaning of this change and variation and difference in the circumstances of it, insomuch that they now transfer this same accusation to another person [685] , a fact which makes it clearer, so to speak, than the light itself, that they designed to lay a plot for your wisdom? After this, who can be willing to follow them, men that have fabricated such charges to the injury of another, seeing too that they are hurrying themselves on to ruin, and are conscious that they are accusing you of false and feigned crimes? Who then, as I said, will follow after them, and thus go headlong in the way of destruction; in that way in which it seems they alone suppose that they have hope of safety and of help? But if they were willing to walk according to a pure conscience, and to be directed by the best wisdom, and to go in the way of a sound mind, they would easily perceive that no help can come to them from Divine Providence, while they are given up to such doings, and tempt their own destruction. I should not call this a harsh judgment of them, but the simple truth.
And finally, I will add, that I wish this letter to be read frequently by your wisdom in public, that it may thereby come to the knowledge of all men, and especially reach the ears of those who thus act, and thus raise disturbances; for the judgment which is expressed by me according to the dictates of equity is confirmed also by real facts. Wherefore, seeing that in such conduct there is so great an offence, let them understand that I have thus judged; and that I have come to this determination, that if they excite any further commotion of this kind, I will myself in person take cognizance of the matter, and that not according to the ecclesiastical, but according to the civil laws, and so I will in future find them out, because they clearly are robbers, so to speak, not only against human kind, but against the divine doctrine itself. May God ever preserve you, beloved brother!
69. But that the wickedness of the calumniators might be more fully displayed, behold Arsenius also wrote to me after he was discovered in his place of concealment; and as the letter which Ischyras had written confessed the falsehood of their accusation, so that of Arsenius proved their maliciousness still more completely.
To the blessed Pope Athanasius, Arsenius, Bishop of those who were heretofore under Meletius in the city of the Hypselites, together with the Presbyters and Deacons, wishes much health in the Lord.
Being earnestly desirous of peace and union with the Catholic Church, over which by the grace of God you preside, and wishing to submit ourselves to the Canon of the Church, according to the ancient rule [686] , we write unto you, dearly beloved Pope, and declare in the name of the Lord, that we will not for the future hold communion with those who continue in schism, and are not yet at peace with the Catholic Church, whether Bishops, Presbyters, or Deacons. Neither will we take part with them if they wish to establish anything in a Council; neither will we send letters of peace [687] unto them nor receive such from them; neither yet without the consent of you, the bishop of the metropolis, will we publish any determination concerning Bishops, or on any other general ecclesiastical question; but we will yield obedience to all the canons that have heretofore been ordained, after the example of the Bishops [688] Ammonian, Tyrannus, Plusian, and the rest. Wherefore we beseech your goodness to write to us speedily in answer, and likewise to our fellow-ministers concerning us, informing them that we will henceforth abide by the fore-mentioned resolution and will be at peace with the Catholic Church, and at unity with our fellow-ministers in the [various] districts. And we are persuaded that your prayers, being acceptable unto God, will so prevail with Him, that this peace shall be firm and indissoluble unto the end, according to the will of God the Lord of all, through Jesus Christ our Lord.
The sacred Ministry that is under you, we and those that are with us salute. Very shortly, if God permit, we will come to visit your goodness. I, Arsenius, pray for your health in the Lord for many years, most blessed Pope.
70. But a stronger and clearer proof of the calumny against us is the recantation of John, of which the most God-beloved Emperor Constantine of blessed memory is a witness, for knowing how John had accused himself, and having received letters from him expressing his repentance, he wrote to him as follows.
Constantine, Maximus, Augustus to John.
The letters which I have received from your prudence were extremely pleasing to me, because I learned from them what I very much longed to hear, that you had laid aside every petty feeling, had joined the Communion of the Church as became you, and were now in perfect concord with the most reverend Bishop Athanasius. Be assured therefore that so far I entirely approve of your conduct; because, giving up all skirmishing, you have done that which is pleasing to God, and have embraced the unity of His Church. In order therefore that you may obtain the accomplishment of your wishes, I have thought it right to grant you permission to enter the public conveyance [689] , and to come to the court [690] of my clemency. Let it then be your care to make no delay; but as this letter gives you authority to use the public conveyance, come to me immediately, that you may have your desires fulfilled, and by appearing in my presence may enjoy that pleasure which it is fit for you to receive. May God preserve you continually, dearly beloved brother. __________________________________________________________________
[664] Cf. Orat. i. 2 and notes.
[665] Ad. Ep. Æg. §22. supr. §11.
[666] [Prolegg. ch. ii. §3 (1) ad fin.] Athan. speaks more openly against this arrangement. infr. §71.
[667] [According to the tenses in the original the five months mark the date not of Alexander's death (April 17, 328), but of the renewed Meletian troubles. The settlement did not keep them quiet for five months. The terminus a quo of the five months is somewhat doubtful; but it certainly is not the Council of Nicæa, see §71, &c. Montf. Monit. in Vit. S. Athanasii, also Prolegg. ch. ii. §3 (1) and ch. v. §3 a.]
[668] Ad. Ep Æg. 23.
[669] Supr. §7, and de Decr. 27.
[670] palatinoi, vid. Apol. ad Const. §19.
[671] Infr. §71 fin. Sozom. ii. 25.
[672] sticharia, ecclesiastical. [See D.C.A. p. 1933.]
[673] They are lost.
[674] Suburb of Nicomedia, infr. §65.
[675] archieresian
[676] Cf. §§46, 72, 77.
[677] Cf. de Syn. 16, [and Fest Ind. passim].
[678] [Cf. the list of Mareotic clergy supr., p. 72. The three deacons of Alexandria are in the list, p. 71].
[679] Vid. §60.
[680] Dalmatius was the name of father and son, the brother and nephew of Constantine. Socrates, Hist. i. 27. gives the title of Censor to the son; but the Chron. Pasch. p. 531 (Dind.) gives it to the father. Valesius, and apparently Tillemont (Empereurs, vol. 4. p. 657) think Socrates mistaken. The younger Dalmatius was created Cæsar by Constantine a few years before his death; and as well as his brother Hannibalian, and a number of other relatives, was put to death by the soldiery, on the death of Constantine. vid. Hist. Ar. 69. [Gwatkin, p. 108 note].
[681] Ecclus. 30. 4.
[682] despota. Theod. H. E. i. 5. init.
[683] [The mone here is not a monastery in the later sense, but a village or cluster of cells. This intercepted letter demonstrates the existence of Meletian monks, of which there is other evidence also: (see below, Introd. to Vit. Ant. The objection of Weingarten to the genuineness of this letter is purely arbitrary)].
[684] According to the system of government introduced by Diocletian and Constantine, there were thirty-five military commanders of the troops, under the Magistri militum, and all of these bore the name of duces or dukes; the comites, or counts, were ten out of the number, who were distinguished as companions of the Emperor. vid. Gibbon, ch. 17. Three of these dukes were stationed in Egypt [i.e. in the whole prefecture; one only in the province of Egypt in the narrower sense].
[685] Cf. §28.
[686] Vid. supr. p. 92, note 3; the (so-called) Apostolical Canon apparently referred to here, is Can. 27. according to Beveridge.
[687] Cf. p. 95, note 4.
[688] i.e. Meletian Bishops who had conformed; or, since they are not in the list, §71. Catholic Bishops with whom the conforming party were familiar; or Meletians after the return of Meletius. vid. Tillemont, Mem. vol. 8. p. 658.
[689] On the "cursus publicus," vid. Gothofred. in Cod. Theod. viii. tit. 5. It was provided for the journeys of the Emperor, for persons whom he summoned, for magistrates, ambassadors, and for such private persons as the Emperor indulged in the use of it, which was gratis. The use was granted by Constantine to the Bishops who were summoned to Nicæa, as far as it went, in addition (though aliter Valesius in loc.) to other means of travelling. Euseb. v. Const. iii. 6. The cursus publicus brought the Bishops to the Council of Tyre. ibid. iv. 43. In the conference between Liberius and Constantius, Theod. Hist. ii. 13. it is objected that the cursus publicus is not sufficient to convey Bishops to the Council which Liberius proposes; he answers that the Churches are rich enough to convey their Bishops as far as the sea. Thus S. Hilary was compelled (data evectionis copia, Sulp. Sev. Hist. ii. 57.) to attend at Seleucia, as Athan. at Tyre. Julian complains of the abuse of the cursus publicus, perhaps with an allusion to these Councils of Constantius. vid. Cod. Theod. viii. tit. 5. l. 12. where Gothofred quotes Liban. Epitaph. in Julian. vol. i. p. 569. ed. Reiske.) Vid. the well-known passage of Ammianus, who speaks of the Councils being the ruin of the res vehicularia Hist. xxi. 16. The Eusebians at Philippopolis say the same thing. Hilar. Frag. iii. 25. The Emperor provided board and perhaps lodging for the Bishops at Ariminum; which the Bishops of Aquitaine, Gaul, and Britain, declined, except three British from poverty. Sulp. Hist. ii. 56. Hunneric in Africa, after assembling 466 Bishops at Carthage, dismissed them without modes of conveyance, provision, or baggage. Victor Utic. Hist. iii. init. In the Emperor's letter previous to the assembling of the sixth Ecumenical Council, a.d. 678, (Harduin, Conc. t. 3. p. 1048 fin.) he says he has given orders for the conveyance and maintenance of its members. Pope John VIII. reminds Ursus, Duke of Venice (a.d. 876.), of the same duty of providing for the members of a Council, "secundum pios principes, qui in talibus munifice semper erant intenti." Colet. Concil. (Ven. 1730,) t. xi. p. 14.
[690] stratopedon; vid. Chrys. on the Statues, p. 382, note 6. Gothofr. in Cod. Theod. vi. 32, 1. 1. Castra sunt ubi Princeps est. ibid. 35, l. 15. also Kiesling. de Discipl. Cler. i. 5. p. 16. Beveridge in Can. Apost. 83. interprets strateia of any civil engagement as opposed to clerical. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VI.--Documents connected with the Council of Tyre.
71. Thus ended the conspiracy. The Meletians were repulsed and covered with shame; but notwithstanding this Eusebius and his fellows still did not remain quiet, for it was not for the Meletians but for Arius and his fellows, that they cared, and they were afraid lest, if the proceedings of the former should be stopped, they should no longer find persons to play the parts [691] , by whose assistance they might bring in that heresy. They therefore again stirred up the Meletians, and persuaded the Emperor to give orders that a Council should be held afresh at Tyre, and Count Dionysius was despatched thither, and a military guard was given to Eusebius and his fellows. Macarius also was sent as a prisoner to Tyre under a guard of soldiers; and the Emperor wrote to me, and laid a peremptory command upon me, so that, however unwilling, I set out. The whole conspiracy may be understood from the letters which the Bishops of Egypt wrote; but it will be necessary to relate how it was contrived by them in the outset, that so may be perceived the malice and wickedness that was exercised against me. There are in Egypt, Libya, and Pentapolis, nearly one hundred Bishops; none of whom laid anything to my charge; none of the Presbyters found any fault with me; none of the people spoke aught against me; but it was the Meletians who were ejected by Peter, and the Arians, that divided the plot between them, while the one party claimed to themselves the right of accusing me, the other of sitting in judgment on the case. I objected to Eusebius and his fellows as being my enemies on account of the heresy; next, I shewed in the following manner that the person who was called my accuser was not a Presbyter at all. When Meletius was admitted into communion (would that he had never been so admitted [692] !) the blessed Alexander who knew his craftiness required of him a schedule of the Bishops whom he said he had in Egypt, and of the presbyters and deacons that were in Alexandria itself, and if he had any in the country district. This the Pope Alexander has done, lest Meletius, having received the freedom of the Church, should tender [693] many, and thus continually, by a fraudulent procedure, foist upon us whomsoever he pleased. Accordingly he has made out the following schedule of those in Egypt.
A schedule presented by Meletius to the Bishop Alexander.
I, Meletius of Lycopolis, Lucius of Antinopolis, Phasileus of Hermopolis, Achilles of Cusæ, Ammonius of Diospolis.
In Ptolemais, Pachymes of Tentyræ.
In Maximianopolis, Theodorus of Coptus.
In Thebais, Cales of Hermethes, Colluthus of Upper Cynopolis, Pelagius of Oxyrynchus, Peter of Heracleopolis, Theon of Nilopolis, Isaac [694] of Letopolis, Heraclides of Niciopolis [695] , Isaac of Cleopatris, Melas of Arsenoitis.
In Heliopolis, Amos of Leontopolis, Ision of Athribis.
In Pharbethus, Harpocration of Bubastus, Moses of Phacusæ, Callinicus [696] of Pelusium, Eudæmon of Tanis [697] , Ephraim of Thmuis.
In Sais, Hermæon of Cynopolis and Busiris, Soterichus of Sebennytus, Pininuthes of Phthenegys, Cronius of Metelis, Agathammon of the district of Alexandria.
In Memphis, John who was ordered by the Emperor to be with the Archbishop [698] . These are those of Egypt.
And the Clergy that he had in Alexandria were Apollonius Presbyter, Irenæus Presbyter, Dioscorus Presbyter, Tyrannus Presbyter. And Deacons; Timotheus Deacon, Antinous Deacon, Hephæstion Deacon. And Macarius Presbyter of Parembole [699] .
72. These Meletius presented actually in person [700] to the Bishop Alexander, but he made no mention of the person called Ischyras, nor ever professed at all that he had any Clergy in the Mareotis. Notwithstanding our enemies did not desist from their attempts, but still he that was no Presbyter was feigned to be one, for there was the Count ready to use compulsion towards us, and soldiers were hurrying us about. But even then the grace of God prevailed: for they could not convict Macarius in the matter of the cup; and Arsenius, whom they reported to have been murdered by me, stood before them alive and shewed the falseness of their accusation. When therefore they were unable to convict Macarius, Eusebius and his fellows, who became enraged that they had lost the prey of which they had been in pursuit, persuaded the Count Dionysius, who is one of them, to send to the Mareotis, in order to see whether they could not find out something there against the Presbyter, or rather that they might at a distance patch up their plot as they pleased in our absence: for this was their aim. However,--when we represented that the journey to the Mareotis was a superfluous undertaking (for that they ought not to pretend that statements were defective which they had been employed upon so long, and ought not now to defer the matter; for they had said whatever they thought they could say, and now being at a loss what to do, they were making pretences); or if they must needs go to the Mareotis, that at least the suspected parties should not be sent,--the Count was convinced by my reasoning, with respect to the suspected persons; but they did anything rather than what I proposed, for the very persons whom I objected against on account of the Arian heresy, these were they who promptly went off, viz. Diognius, Maris, Theodorus, Macedonius, Ursacius, and Valens. Again, letters were written to the Prefect of Egypt and a military guard was provided; and, what was remarkable and altogether most suspicious, they caused Macarius the accused party to remain behind under a guard of soldiers, while they took with them the accuser [701] . Now who after this does not see through this conspiracy? Who does not clearly perceive the wickedness of Eusebius and his fellows? For if a judicial enquiry must needs take place in the Mareotis, the accused also ought to have been sent thither. But if they did not go for the purpose of such an enquiry, why did they take the accuser? It was enough that he had not been able to prove the fact. But this they did in order that they might carry on their designs against the absent Presbyter, whom they could not convict when present, and might concoct a plan as they pleased. For when the Presbyters of Alexandria and of the whole district found fault with them because they were there by themselves, and required that they too might be present at their proceedings (for they said that they knew both the circumstances of the case, and the history of the person named Ischyras), they would not allow them; and although they had with them Philagrius the Prefect of Egypt [702] , who was an apostate, and heathen soldiers, during an enquiry which it was not becoming even for Catechumens to witness, they would not admit the Clergy, lest there as well as at Tyre there might be those who would expose them.
73. But in spite of these precautions they were not able to escape detection: for the Presbyters of the City and of the Mareotis, perceiving their evil designs, addressed to them the following protest.
To Theognius, Maris, Macedonius, Theodorus, Ursacius, and Valens, the Bishops who have come from Tyre, these from the Presbyters and Deacons of the Catholic Church of Alexandria under the most reverend Bishop Athanasius.
It was incumbent upon you when you came hither and brought with you the accuser, to bring also the Presbyter Macarius; for trials are appointed by Holy Scripture to be so constituted, that the accuser and accused may stand up together. But since neither you brought Macarius, nor our most reverend Bishop Athanasius came hither with you, we claimed for ourselves the right of being present at the investigation, that we might see that the enquiry was conducted impartially, and might ourselves be convinced of the truth. But when you refused to allow this, and wished, in company only with the Prefect of Egypt and the accuser, to do whatever you pleased, we confess that we saw a suspicion of evil in the affair, and perceived that your coming was only the act of a cabal and a conspiracy. Wherefore we address to you this letter, to be a testimony before a genuine Council, that it may be known to all men, that you have carried on an ex parte proceeding and for your own ends, and have desired nothing else but to form a conspiracy against us. A copy of this, lest it should be kept secret by you, we have handed in to Palladius also the Controller [703] of Augustus. For what you have already done causes us to suspect you, and to reckon on the like conduct from you hereafter.
I Dionysius Presbyter have handed in this letter. Alexander Presbyter, Nilaras Presbyter, Longus Presbyter, Aphthonius Presbyter, Athanasius Presbyter, Amyntius Presbyter, Pistus Presbyter, Plution Presbyter, Dioscorus Presbyter, Apollonius Presbyter, Sarapion Presbyter, Ammonius Presbyter, Gaius Presbyter, Rhinus Presbyter, Æthales Presbyter.
Deacons; Marcellinus Deacon, Appianus Deacon, Theon Deacon, Timotheus Deacon, a second Timotheus Deacon.
74. This is the letter, and these the names of the Clergy of the city; and the following was written by the Clergy of the Mareotis, who know the character of the accuser, and who were with me in my visitation.
To the holy Council of blessed Bishops of the Catholic Church, all the Presbyters and Deacons of the Mareotis send health in the Lord.
Knowing that which is written, Speak that thine eyes have seen,' and, A false witness shall not be unpunished [704] ', we testify what we have seen, especially since the conspiracy which has been formed against our Bishop Athanasius has made our testimony necessary. We wonder how Ischyras ever came to be reckoned among the number of the Ministers of the Church, which is the first point we think it necessary to mention. Ischyras never was a Minister of the Church; but when formerly he represented himself to be a Presbyter of Colluthus, he found no one to believe him, except only his own relations [705] . For he never had a Church, nor was ever considered a Clergyman by those who lived but a short distance from his village, except only, as we said before, by his own relations. But, notwithstanding he assumed this designation, he was deposed in the presence of our Father Hosius at the Council which assembled at Alexandria [706] , and was admitted to communion as a layman, and so he continued subsequently, having fallen from his falsely reputed rank of presbyter. Of his character we think it unnecessary to speak, as all men have it in their power to become acquainted therewith. But since he has falsely accused our Bishop Athanasius of breaking a cup and overturning a table, we are necessarily obliged to address you on this point. We have said already that he never had a Church in the Mareotis; and we declare before God as our witness, that no cup was broken, nor table overturned by our Bishop, nor by any one of those who accompanied him; but all that is alleged respecting this affair is mere calumny. And this we say, not as having been absent from the Bishop, for we are all with him when he makes his visitation of the Mareotis, and he never goes about alone, but is accompanied by all of us Presbyters and Deacons, and by a considerable number of the people. Wherefore we make these assertions as having been present with him in every visitation which he has made amongst us, and testify that neither was a cup ever broken, nor table overturned, but the whole story is false, as the accuser himself also witnesses under his own hand [707] . For when, after he had gone off with Meletians, and had reported these things against our Bishop Athanasius, he wished to be admitted to communion, he was not received, although he wrote and confessed under his own hand that none of these things were true, but that he had been suborned by certain persons to say so.
75. Wherefore also Theognius, Theodorus, Maris, Macedonius, Ursacius, Valens, and their fellows came into the Mareotis, and when they found that none of these things were true, but it was likely to be discovered that they had framed a false accusation against our Bishop Athanasius, Theognius and his fellows being themselves his enemies, caused the relations of Ischyras and certain Arian madmen to say whatever they wished. For none of the people spoke against the Bishop; but these persons, through fear of Philagrius the Prefect of Egypt, and by threats and with the support of the Arian madmen, accomplished whatever they desired. For when we came to disprove the calumny, they would not permit us, but cast us out, while they admitted whom they pleased to a participation in their schemes, and concerted matters with them, influencing them by fear of the Prefect Philagrius. Through his means they prevented us from being present, that we might discover whether those who were suborned by them were members of the Church or Arian madmen. And you also, dearly beloved Fathers, know, as you teach us, that the testimony of enemies avails nothing. That what we say is the truth the handwriting [708] of Ischyras testifies, as do also the facts themselves, because when we were conscious that no such thing as was pretended had taken place, they took with them Philagrius, that through fear of the sword and by threats they might frame whatever plots they wished. These things we testify as in the presence of God; we make these assertions as knowing that there will be a judgment held by God; desiring indeed all of us to come to you, but being content with certain of our number, so that the letters may be instead of the presence of those who have not come.
I, Ingenius Presbyter, pray you health in the Lord, beloved fathers. Theon Presbyter, Ammonas P., Heraclius P., Boccon P., Tryphon P., Peter P., Hierax P., Sarapion P., Marcus P., Ptollarion P., Gaius P., Dioscorus P., Demetrius P., Thyrsus P.
Deacons; Pistus Deacon, Apollos D., Serras D., Pistus D., Polynicus D., Ammonius D., Maurus D., Hephæstus D., Apollos D., Metopas D., Apollos D., Serapas D., Meliphthongus D., Lucius D., Gregoras D.
76. The same to the Controller, and to Philagrius, at that time Prefect of Egypt.
To Flavius Philagrius, and to Flavius Palladius, Ducenary [709] , Officer of the Palace, and Controller, and to Flavius Antoninus, Commissary of Provisions, and Centenary of my lords the most illustrious Prefects of the sacred Prætorium, these from the Presbyters and Deacons of the Mareotis, a nome of the Catholic Church which is under the most Reverend Bishop Athanasius, we address this testimony by those whose names are underwritten:--
Whereas Theognius, Maris, Macedonius, Theodorus, Ursacius, and Valens, as if sent by all the Bishops who assembled at Tyre, came into our Diocese alleging that they had received orders to investigate certain ecclesiastical affairs, among which they spoke of the breaking of a cup of the Lord, of which information was given them by Ischyras, whom they brought with them, and who says that he is a Presbyter, although he is not,--for he was ordained by the Presbyter Colluthus who pretended to the Episcopate, and was afterwards ordered by a whole Council, by Hosius and the Bishops that were with him, to take the place of a Presbyter, as he was before; and accordingly all that were ordained by Colluthus resumed the same rank which they held before, and so Ischyras himself proved to be a layman,--and the church which he says he has, never was a church at all, but a quite small private house belonging to an orphan boy of the name of Ision;--for this reason we have offered this testimony, adjuring you by Almighty God, and by our Lords Constantine Augustus, and the most illustrious Cæsars his sons, to bring these things to the knowledge of their piety. For neither is he a Presbyter of the Catholic Church nor does he possess a church, nor has a cup ever been broken, but the whole story is false and an invention.
Dated in the Consulship of Julius Constantius the most illustrious Patrician [710] , brother of the most religious Emperor Constantine Augustus, and of Rufinus Albinus, most illustrious men, on the tenth day of the month Thoth [711] .
These were the letters of the Presbyters.
77. The following also are the letters and protests of the Bishops who came with us to Tyre, when they became aware of the conspiracy and plot.
To the Bishops assembled at Tyre, most honoured Lords, those of the Catholic Church who have come from Egypt with Athanasius send greeting in the Lord.
We suppose that the conspiracy which has been formed against us by Eusebius, Theognius, Maris, Narcissus, Theodorus, Patrophilus, and their fellows is no longer uncertain. From the very beginning we all demurred, through our fellow-minister Athanasius, to the holding of the enquiry in their presence, knowing that the presence of even one enemy only, much more of many, is able to disturb and injure the hearing of a cause. And you also yourselves know the enmity which they entertain, not only towards us, but towards all the orthodox, how that for the sake of the madness of Arius, and his impious doctrine, they direct their assaults, they form conspiracies against all. And when, being confident in the truth, we desired to shew the falsehood, which the Meletians had employed against the Church, Eusebius and his fellows endeavoured by some means or other to interrupt our representations, and strove eagerly to set aside our testimony, threatening those who gave an honest judgment, and insulting others, for the sole purpose of carrying out the design they had against us. Your godly piety, most honoured Lords, was probably ignorant of their conspiracy, but we suppose that it has now been made manifest. For indeed they have themselves plainly disclosed it; for they desired to send to the Mareotis those of their party who are suspected by us, so that, while we were absent and remained here, they might disturb the people and accomplish what they wished. They knew that the Arian madmen, and Colluthians [712] and Meletians, were enemies of the Catholic Church and therefore they were anxious to send them, that in the presence of our enemies they might devise against us whatever schemes they pleased. And those of the Meletians who are here, even four days previously (as they knew that this enquiry was about to take place), despatched at evening certain of their party, as couriers, for the purpose of collecting Meletians out of Egypt into the Mareotis, because there were none at all there, and Colluthians and Arian madmen, from other parts, and to prepare them to speak against us. For you also know that Ischyras himself confessed before you, that he had not more than seven persons in his congregation. When therefore we heard that, after they had made what preparations they pleased against us, and had sent these suspected persons, they were going about to each of you, and requiring your subscriptions, in order that it might appear as if this had been done with the consent of you all; for this reason we hastened to write to you, and to present this our testimony; declaring that we are the objects of a conspiracy under which we are suffering by and through them, and demanding that having the fear of God in your minds, and condemning their conduct in sending whom they pleased without our consent, you would refuse your subscriptions, lest they pretend that those things are done by you, which they are contriving only among themselves. Surely it becomes those who are in Christ, not to regard human motives, but to prefer the truth before all things. And be not afraid of their threatenings, which they employ against all, nor of their plots, but rather fear God. If it was at all necessary that persons should be sent to the Mareotis, we also ought to have been there with them, in order that we might convict the enemies of the Church, and point out those who were aliens, and that the investigation of the matter might be impartial. For you know that Eusebius and his fellows contrived that a letter should be presented, as coming from the Collutians, the Meletians, and Arians, and directed against us: but it is evident that these enemies of the Catholic Church speak nothing that is true concerning us, but say everything against us. And the law of God forbids an enemy to be either a witness or a judge. Wherefore as you will have to give an account in the day of judgment, receive this testimony, and recognising the conspiracy which has been framed against us, beware, if you are requested by them, of doing anything against us, and of taking part in the designs of Eusebius and his fellows. For you know, as we said before, that they are our enemies, and you are aware why Eusebius of Cæsarea became such last year [713] . We pray that you may be in health, greatly beloved Lords.
78. To the most illustrious Count Flavius Dionysius, from the Bishops of the Catholic Church in Egypt who have come to Tyre.
We suppose that the conspiracy which has been formed against us by Eusebius, Theognius, Maris, Narcissus, Theodorus, Patrophilus and their fellows, is no longer uncertain. From the very beginning we all demurred, through our fellow-minister Athanasius, to the holding of the enquiry in their presence, knowing that the presence of even one enemy only, much more of many, is able to disturb and injure the hearing of a cause. For their enmity is manifest which they entertain, not only towards us, but also towards all the orthodox, because they direct their assaults, they form conspiracies against all. And when, being confident in the truth, we desired to shew the falsehood which the Meletians had employed against the Church, Eusebius and his fellows endeavoured by some means or other to interrupt our representations, and strove eagerly to set aside our testimony, threatening those who gave an honest judgment and insulting others, for the sole purpose of carrying out the design they had against us. Your goodness was probably ignorant of the conspiracy which they have formed against us, but we suppose that it has now been made manifest. For indeed they have themselves plainly disclosed it; for they desired to send to the Mareotis those of their party who are suspected by us, so that, while we were absent and remained here, they might disturb the people and accomplish what they wished. They knew that Arian madmen, Colluthians, and Meletians were enemies of the Church, and therefore they were anxious to send them, that in the presence of our enemies, they might devise against us whatever schemes they pleased. And those of the Meletians who are here, even four days previously (as they knew that this enquiry was about to take place), despatched at evening two individuals of their own party, as couriers, for the purpose of collecting Meletians out of Egypt into the Mareotis, because there were none at all there, and Colluthians, and Arian madmen, from other parts, and to prepare them to speak against us. And your goodness knows that he himself confessed before you, that he had not more than seven persons in his congregation. When therefore we heard that, after they had made what preparations they pleased against us, and had sent these suspected persons, they were going about to each of the Bishops and requiring their subscriptions, in order that it might appear that this was done with the consent of them all; for this reason we hastened to refer the matter to your honour, and to present this our testimony, declaring that we are the objects of a conspiracy, under which we are suffering by and through them, and demanding of you that having in your mind the fear of God, and the pious commands of our most religious Emperor, you would no longer tolerate these persons, but condemn their conduct in sending whom they pleased without our consent.
I Adamantius Bishop have subscribed this letter, Ischyras, Ammon, Peter, Ammonianus, Tyrannus, Taurinus, Sarapammon, Ælurion, Harpocration, Moses, Optatus, Anubion, Saprion, Apollonius, Ischyrion, Arbæthion, Potamon, Paphnutius, Heraclides, Theodorus, Agathammon, Gaius, Pistus, Athas, Nicon, Pelagius, Theon, Paninuthius, Nonnus, Ariston, Theodorus, Irenæus, Blastammon, Philippus, Apollos, Dioscorus, Timotheus of Diospolis, Macarius, Heraclammon, Cronius, Myis, Jacobus, Ariston, Artemidorus, Phinees, Psais, Heraclides.
Another from the same.
79. The Bishops of the Catholic Church who have come from Egypt to Tyre, to the most illustrious Count Flavius Dionysius.
Perceiving that many conspiracies and plots are being formed against us through the machinations of Eusebius, Narcissus, Flacillus, Theognius, Maris, Theodorus, Patrophilus, and their fellows (against whom we wished at first to enter an objection, but were not permitted), we are constrained to have recourse to the present appeal. We observe also that great zeal is exerted in behalf of the Meletians, and that a plot is laid against the Catholic Church in Egypt in our persons. Wherefore we present this letter to you, beseeching you to bear in mind the Almighty Power of God, who defends the kingdom of our most religious and godly Emperor Constantine, and to reserve the hearing of the affairs which concern us for the most religious Emperor himself. For it is but reasonable, since you were commissioned by his Majesty, that you should reserve the matter for him upon our appealing to his piety. We can no longer endure to be the objects of the treacherous designs of the fore-mentioned Eusebius and his fellows, and therefore we demand that the case be reserved for the most religious and God-beloved Emperor, before whom we shall be able to set forth our own and the Church's just claims. And we are convinced that when his piety shall have heard our cause, he will not condemn us. Wherefore we again adjure you by Almighty God, and by our most religious Emperor, who, together with the children of his piety, has thus ever been victorious [714] and prosperous these many years, that you proceed no further, nor suffer yourselves to move at all in the Council in relation to our affairs, but reserve the hearing of them for his piety. We have likewise made the same representations to my Lords the orthodox Bishops.
80. Alexander [715] , Bishop of Thessalonica, on receiving these letters, wrote to the Count Dionysius as follows.
The Bishop Alexander to my master Dionysius.
I see that a conspiracy has evidently been formed against Athanasius; for they have determined, I know not on what grounds, to send all those to whom he has objected, without giving any information to us, although it was agreed that we should consider together who ought to be sent. Take care therefore that nothing be done rashly (for they have come to me in great alarm, saying that the wild beasts have already roused themselves, and are going to rush upon them; for they had heard it reported, that John had sent certain [716] ), lest they be beforehand with us, and concoct what schemes they please. For you know that the Colluthians who are enemies of the Church, and the Arians, and Meletians, are all of them leagued together, and are able to work much evil. Consider therefore what is best to be done, lest some mischief arise, and we be subject to censure, as not having judged the matter fairly. Great suspicions are also entertained of these persons, lest, as being devoted to the Meletians, they should go through those Churches whose Bishops are here [717] , and raise an alarm amongst them, and so disorder the whole of Egypt. For they see that this is already taking place to a great extent.
Accordingly the Count Dionysius wrote to Eusebius and his fellows as follows.
81. This is what I have already mentioned to my lords, Flacillus [718] and his fellows, that Athanasius has come forward and complained that those very persons have been sent whom he objected to; and crying out that he has been wronged and deceived. Alexander the lord of my soul [719] has also written to me on the subject; and that you may perceive that what his Goodness has said is reasonable, I have subjoined his letter to be read by you. Remember also what I wrote to you before: I impressed upon your Goodness, my lords, that the persons who were sent ought to be commissioned by the general vote and decision of all. Take care therefore lest our proceedings fall under censure, and we give just grounds of blame to those who are disposed to find fault with us. For as the accuser's side ought not to suffer any oppression, so neither ought the defendant's. And I think that there is no slight ground of blame against us, when my lord Alexander evidently disapproves of what we have done.
82. While matters were proceeding thus we withdrew from them, as from an assembly of treacherous men [720] , for whatsoever they pleased they did, whereas there is no man in the world but knows that ex parte proceedings cannot stand good. This the divine law determines; for when the blessed Apostle was suffering under a similar conspiracy and was brought to trial, he demanded, saying, The Jews from Asia ought to have been here before thee, and object, if they had aught against me [721] .' On which occasion Festus also, when the Jews wished to lay such a plot against him, as these men have now laid against me, said, It is not the manner of Romans to deliver any man to die, before that he which is accused have the accuser face to face, and have licence to answer for himself concerning the crime laid against him [722] .' But Eusebius and his fellows both had the boldness to pervert the law, and have proved more unjust even than those wrong-doers. For they did not proceed privately at the first, but when in consequence of our being present they found themselves weak, then they straightway went out, like the Jews, and took counsel together alone, how they might destroy us and bring in their heresy, as those others demanded Barabbas. For this purpose it was, as they have themselves confessed, that they did all these things.
83. Although these circumstances were amply sufficient for our vindication, yet in order that the wickedness of these men and the freedom of the truth might be more fully exhibited, I have not felt averse to repeat them again, in order to shew that they have acted in a manner inconsistently with themselves, and as men scheming in the dark have fallen foul of their own friends, and while they desired to destroy us have like insane persons wounded themselves. For in their investigation of the subject of the Mysteries, they questioned Jews, they examined Catechumens [723] ; Where were you,' they said, when Macarius came and overturned the Table?' They answered, We were within;' whereas there could be no oblation if Catechumens were present. Again, although they had written word everywhere, that Macarius came and overthrew everything, while the Presbyter was standing and celebrating the Mysteries, yet when they questioned whomsoever they pleased, and asked them, Where was Ischyras when Macarius rushed in?' those persons answered that he was lying sick in a cell. Well, then, he that was lying was not standing, nor was he that lay sick in his cell offering the oblation. Besides whereas Ischyras said that certain books had been burnt by Macarius, they who were suborned to give evidence, declared that nothing of the kind had been done, but that Ischyras spoke falsely. And what is most remarkable, although they had again written word everywhere, that those who were able to give evidence had been concealed by us, yet these persons made their appearance, and they questioned them, and were not ashamed when they saw it proved on all sides that they were slanderers, and were acting in this matter clandestinely, and according to their pleasure. For they prompted the witnesses by signs, while the Prefect threatened them, and the soldiers pricked them with their swords; but the Lord revealed the truth, and shewed them to be slanderers. Therefore also they concealed the minutes of their proceedings, which they retained themselves, and charged those who wrote them to put out of sight, and to commit to no one whomsoever. But in this also they were disappointed; for the person who wrote them was Rufus, who is now public executioner in the Augustalian [724] prefecture, and is able to testify to the truth of this; and Eusebius and his fellows sent them to Rome by the hands of their own friends, and Julius the Bishop transmitted them to me. And now they are mad, because we obtained and read what they wished to conceal.
84. As such was the character of their machinations, so they very soon shewed plainly the reasons of their conduct. For when they went away, they took the Arians with them to Jerusalem, and there admitted them to communion, having sent out a letter concerning them, part [725] of which, and the beginning, is as follows.
The holy Council by the grace of God assembled at Jerusalem, to the Church of God which is in Alexandria, and to the Bishops, Presbyters, and Deacons, in all Egypt, the Thebais, Libya, Pentapolis, and throughout the world, sends health in the Lord.
Having come together out of different Provinces to a great meeting which we have held for the consecration of the Martyry [726] of the Saviour, which has been appointed to the service of God the King of all and of His Christ, by the zeal of our most God-beloved Emperor Constantine, the grace of God hath afforded us more abundant rejoicing of heart; which our most God-beloved Emperor himself hath occasioned us by his letters, wherein he hath stirred us up to do that which is right, putting away all envy from the Church of God, and driving far from us all malice, by which the members of God have been heretofore torn asunder, and that we should with simple and peaceable minds receive Arius and his fellows, whom envy, that enemy of all goodness, has caused for a season to be excluded from the Church. Our most religious Emperor has also in his letter testified to the correctness of their faith, which he has ascertained from themselves, himself receiving the profession of it from them by word of mouth, and has now made manifest to us by subjoining to his own letters the men's orthodox opinion in writing.
85. Every one that hears of these things must see through their treachery. For they made no concealment of what they were doing; unless perhaps they confessed the truth without wishing it. For if I was the hindrance to the admittance of Arius and his fellows into the Church, and if they were received while I was suffering from their plots, what other conclusion can be arrived at, than that these things were done on their account, and that all their proceedings against me, and the story which they fabricated about the breaking of the cup and the murder of Arsenius, were for the sole purpose of introducing impiety into the Church, and of preventing their being condemned as heretics? For this was what the Emperor threatened formerly in his letters to me. And they were not ashamed to write in the manner they did, and to affirm that those persons whom the whole Ecumenical Council anathematized held orthodox sentiments. And as they undertook to say and do anything without scruple, so they were not afraid to meet together in a corner,' in order to overthrow, as far as was in their power, the authority of so great a Council.
Moreover, the price which they paid for false testimony yet more fully manifests their wickedness and impious intentions. The Mareotis, as I have already said, is a country district of Alexandria, in which there has never been either a Bishop or a Chorepiscopus [727] ; but the Churches of the whole district are subject to the Bishop of Alexandria, and each Presbyter has under his charge one of the largest villages, which are about ten or more in number [728] . Now the village in which Ischyras lives is a very small one, and possesses so few inhabitants, that there has never been a church built there, but only in the adjoining village. Nevertheless, they determined, contrary to ancient usage [729] , to nominate a Bishop for this place, and not only so, but even to appoint one, who was not so much as a Presbyter. Knowing as they did the unusual nature of such a proceeding, yet being constrained by the promises they had given in return for his false impeachment of me, they submitted even to this, lest that abandoned person, if he were ungratefully treated by them, should disclose the truth, and thereby shew the wickedness of Eusebius and his fellows. Notwithstanding this he has no church, nor a people to obey him, but is scouted by them all, like a dog [730] , although they have even caused the Emperor to write to the Receiver-General (for everything is in their power), commanding that a church should be built for him, that being possessed of that, his statement may appear credible about the cup and the table. They caused him immediately to be nominated a Bishop also, because if he were without a church, and not even a Presbyter, he would appear to be a false accuser, and a fabricator of the whole matter. At any rate he has no people, and even his own relations are not obedient to him, and as the name which he retains is an empty one, so also the following letter is ineffectual, which he keeps, making a display of it as an exposure of the utter wickedness of himself and of Eusebius and his fellows.
The Letter of the Receiver-General. [731]
Flavius Hemerius sends health to the Tax-collector of the Mareotis.
Ischyras the Presbyter having petitioned the piety of our Lords, Augusti and Cæsars, that a Church might be built in the district of Irene, belonging to Secontarurus [732] , their divinity has commanded that this should be done as soon as possible. Take care therefore, as soon as you receive the copy of the sacred Edict, which with all due veneration is placed above, and the Reports which have been formed before my devotion, that you quickly make an abstract of them, and transfer them to the Order book, so that the sacred command may be put in execution.
86. While they were thus plotting and scheming, I went up [733] and represented to the Emperor the unjust conduct of Eusebius and his fellows, for he it was who had commanded the Council to be held, and his Count presided at it. When he heard my report, he was greatly moved, and wrote to them as follows.
Constantine, Victor [734] , Maximus, Augustus, to the Bishops assembled at Tyre.
I know not what the decisions are which you have arrived at in your Council amidst noise and tumult: but somehow the truth seems to have been perverted in consequence of certain confusions and disorders, in that you, through your mutual contentiousness, which you are resolved should prevail, have failed to perceive what is pleasing to God. However, it will rest with Divine Providence to disperse the mischiefs which manifestly are found to arise from this contentious spirit, and to shew plainly to us, whether you, while assembled in that place, have had any regard for the truth, and whether you have made your decisions uninfluenced by either favour or enmity. Wherefore I wish you all to assemble with all speed before my piety in order that you may render in person a true account of your proceedings.
The reason why I have thought good to write thus to you, and why I summon you before me by letter, you will learn from what I am going to say. As I was entering on a late occasion our all-happy home of Constantinople, which bears our name (I chanced at the time to be on horseback), on a sudden the Bishop Athanasius, with certain others whom he had with him, approached me in the middle of the road, so unexpectedly, as to occasion me much amazement. God, who knoweth all things, is my witness, that I should have been unable at first sight even to recognise him, had not some of my attendants, on my naturally inquiring of them, informed me both who it was, and under what injustice he was suffering. I did not however enter into any conversation with him at that time, nor grant him an interview; but when he requested to be heard I was refusing, and all but gave orders for his removal; when with increasing boldness he claimed only this favour, that you should be summoned to appear, that he might have an opportunity of complaining before me in your presence, of the ill-treatment he has met with. As this appeared to me to be a reasonable request, and suitable to the times, I willingly ordered this letter to be written to you, in order that all of you, who constituted the Council which was held at Tyre, might hasten without delay to the Court [735] of my clemency, so as to prove by facts that you had passed an impartial and uncorrupt judgment. This, I say, you must do before me, whom not even you will deny to be a true servant of God.
For indeed through my devotion to God, peace is preserved everywhere, and the Name of God is truly worshipped even by the barbarians, who have hitherto been ignorant of the truth. And it is manifest, that he who is ignorant of the truth, does not know God either. Nevertheless, as I said before, even the barbarians have now come to the knowledge of God, by means of me, His true servant [736] , and have learned to fear Him Whom they perceive from actual facts to be my shield and protector everywhere. And from this chiefly they have come to know God, Whom they fear through the dread which they have of me. But we, who are supposed to set forth (for I will not say to guard) the holy mysteries of His Goodness, we, I say, engage in nothing but what tends to dissension and hatred, and, in short, whatever contributes to the destruction of mankind. But hasten, as I said before, and all of you with all speed come to us, being persuaded that I shall endeavour with all my might to amend what is amiss, so that those things specially may be preserved and firmly established in the law of God, to which no blame nor dishonour may attach; while the enemies of the law, who under pretence of His holy Name bring in manifold and divers blasphemies, shall be scattered abroad, and entirely crushed, and utterly destroyed.
87. When Eusebius and his fellows read this letter, being conscious of what they had done, they prevented the rest of the Bishops from going up, and only themselves went, viz. Eusebius, Theognius, Patrophilus, the other Eusebius, Ursacius, and Valens. And they no longer said anything about the cup and Arsenius (for they had not the boldness to do so), but inventing another accusation which concerned the Emperor himself, they declared before him, that Athanasius had threatened that he would cause the corn to be withheld which was sent from Alexandria to his own home [737] . The Bishops Adamantius, Anubion, Agathammon, Arbethion, and Peter, were present and heard this. It was proved also by the anger of the Emperor; for although he had written the preceding letter, and had condemned their injustice, as soon as he heard such a charge as this, he was immediately incensed, and instead of granting me a hearing, he sent me away into Gaul. And this again shews their wickedness further; for when the younger Constantine, of blessed memory, sent me back home, remembering what his father had written [738] , he also wrote as follows.
Constantine Cæsar, to the people of the Catholic Church of the city of Alexandria.
I suppose that it has not escaped the knowledge of your pious minds, that Athanasius, the interpreter of the adorable Law, was sent away into Gaul for a time, with the intent that, as the savageness of his bloodthirsty and inveterate enemies persecuted him to the hazard of his sacred life, he might thus escape suffering some irremediable calamity, through the perverse dealing of those evil men. In order therefore to escape this, he was snatched out of the jaws of his assailants, and was ordered to pass some time under my government, and so was supplied abundantly with all necessaries in this city, where he lived, although indeed his celebrated virtue, relying entirely on divine assistance, sets at nought the sufferings of adverse fortune. Now seeing that it was the fixed intention of our master Constantine Augustus, my Father, to restore the said Bishop to his own place, and to your most beloved piety, but he was taken away by that fate which is common to all men, and went to his rest before he could accomplish his wish; I have thought proper to fulfil that intention of the Emperor of sacred memory which I have inherited from him. When he comes to present himself before you, you will learn with what reverence he has been treated. Indeed it is not wonderful, whatever I have done on his behalf; for the thoughts of your longing desire for him, and the appearance of so great a man, moved my soul, and urged me thereto. May Divine Providence continually preserve you, beloved brethren.
Dated from Treveri the 15th before the Calends of July [739] .
88. This being the reason why I was sent away into Gaul, who, I ask again, does not plainly perceive the intention of the Emperor, and the murderous spirit of Eusebius and his fellows, and that the Emperor had done this in order to prevent their forming some more desperate scheme? for he listened to them in simplicity [740] . Such were the practices of Eusebius and his fellows, and such their machinations against me. Who that has witnessed them will deny that nothing has been done in my favour out of partiality, but that that great number of Bishops both individually and collectively wrote as they did in my behalf and condemned the falsehood of my enemies justly, and in accordance with the truth? Who that has observed such proceedings as these will deny that Valens and Ursacius had good reason to condemn themselves, and to write [741] as they did, to accuse themselves when they repented, choosing rather to suffer shame for a short time, than to undergo the punishment of false accusers for ever and ever [742] ?
89. Wherefore also my blessed fellow-ministers, acting justly and according to the laws of the Church, while certain affirmed that my case was doubtful, and endeavoured to compel them to annul the sentence which was passed in my favour, have now endured all manner of sufferings, and have chosen rather to be banished than to see the judgment of so many Bishops reversed. Now if those genuine Bishops had withstood by words only those who plotted against me, and wished to undo all that had been done in my behalf; or if they had been ordinary men, and not the Bishops of illustrious cities, and the heads of great Churches, there would have been room to suspect that in this instance they too had acted contentiously and in order to gratify me. But when they not only endeavoured to convince by argument, but also endured banishment, and one of them is Liberius, Bishop of Rome, (for although he did not endure [743] to the end the sufferings of banishment, yet he remained in his exile for two years, being aware of conspiracy formed against us), and since there is also the great Hosius, together with the Bishops of Italy, and of Gaul, and others from Spain, and from Egypt, and Libya, and all those from Pentapolis (for although for a little while, through fear of the threats of Constantius, he seemed not to resist them [744] yet the great violence and tyrannical power exercised by Constantius, and the many insults and stripes inflicted upon him, proved that it was not because he gave up my cause, but through the weakness of old age, being unable to bear the stripes, that he yielded to them for a season), therefore I say, it is altogether right that all, as being fully convinced, should hate and abominate the injustice and the violence which they have used towards me; especially as it is well known that I have suffered these things on account of nothing else but the Arian impiety.
90. Now if anyone wishes to become acquainted with my case, and the falsehood of Eusebius and his fellows, let him read what has been written in my behalf, and let him hear the witnesses, not one, or two, or three, but that great number of Bishops; and again let him attend to the witnesses of these proceedings, Liberius and Hosius, and their fellows, who when they saw the attempts made against us, chose rather to endure all manner of sufferings than to give up the truth, and the judgment which had been pronounced in our favour. And this they did with an honourable and righteous intention, for what they suffered proves to what straits the other Bishops were reduced. And they are memorials and records against the Arian heresy, and the wickedness of false accusers, and afford a pattern and model for those who come after, to contend for the truth unto death [745] , and to abominate the Arian heresy which fights against Christ, and is a forerunner of Antichrist, and not to believe those who attempt to speak against me. For the defence put forth, and the sentence given, by so many Bishops of high character, are a trustworthy and sufficient testimony in our behalf. __________________________________________________________________
[691] Cf. §17, note 1.
[692] Cf. §59.
[693] [poles: i.e. palm them off on the church. Cf. Lat. venditare.]
[694] Cf. §64.
[695] Cf. §64.
[696] Cf. §60.
[697] Cf. §60.
[698] [The archbishop' is Meletius; this is the first occurrence of the word; it evidently has not its later fixed sense. The historical allusion is obscure.]
[699] A village on the Mareotic lake. vid. Socr. iv. 23. Athan Opp. ed. Pat. t. 3. p. 86-89.
[700] [Prolegg. ch. ii. §3 (1) sub. fin. and ch. v. §3a.]
[701] Supr. §13.
[702] Cf. Encycl. §3.
[703] Curiosus; the Curiosi (in curis agendis) were properly the overseers of the public roads, Du Cange in voc., but they became in consequence a sort of imperial spy and were called the Emperor's eyes. Gothofr. in Cod. Theod. t. 2. p. 194. ed. 1665. Constantius confined them to the school of the Agentes in rebus (infr. Apol. ad Const. §10.), under the Master of the Offices. Gothoft. ibid. p. 192.
[704] Prov. xxv. 7, LXX, xix. 5.
[705] Cf. §12.
[706] a.d. 324.
[707] Supr. §64.
[708] cheir, infr. Apol. ad Const. §11.
[709] On the different kinds of Ducenaries, vid. Gothofr. in Cod. Theod. XI. vii. 1. Here, as in Euseb. Hist. vii. 30. the word stands for a Procurator, whose annual pay amounted to 200 sestertia, vid. Salmas. Hist. Aug. t. l. p. 533. In like manner a Centenary is one who receives 100.
[710] The title Patrician was revived by Constantine as a personal distinction. It was for life, and gave precedence over all the great officers of state except the Consul. It was usually bestowed on favourites, or on ministers as a reward of services. Gibbon, Hist. ch. 17. This Julius Constantius, who was the father of Julian, was the first who bore the title, with L. Optatus, who had been consul the foregoing year. Illustrissimus was the highest of the three ranks of honour. ibid.
[711] [Sep. 8. 335 a.d. See note on leap-year at the end of the table of Egyptian months, below, Introd. to Letters.]
[712] Colluthus formed a schism on the doctrine that God was not the cause of any sort of evil, e.g. did not inflict pain and suffering. Though a Priest, he took on himself to ordain, even to the Priesthood [§12]. St. Alexander even seems to imply that he did so for money. Theod. H. E. i. 3. [Prolegg. ch. ii. §2.]
[713] [Ath. had refused to attend a synod at Cæsarea, a.d. 334. See Thdt. H. E. i. 28, Prolegg. ch. ii. §4. and D.C.B. ii. 315 b.]
[714] Cf. Euseb. v. Const. ii. 48.
[715] Cf. §16.
[716] Cf. §§17, 65, 70.
[717] At Tyre.
[718] Perhaps president of the Council, cf. §20. [But see Prolegg. ch. ii. §5.]
[719] i.e. my beloved lord.
[720] Jer. ix. 2.
[721] Acts xxiv. 18, 19.
[722] Acts xxv. 16.
[723] Vid. §46.
[724] Vid. Encyc. §3, p. 43, note 2.
[725] Vid. de Syn. §21.
[726] [i.e. Church, see D.C.A. s.v. Martyrium.]
[727] That Chorepiscopi were real Bishops, vid. Bevereg. in Conc. Ancyr. Can. 13. Routh in Conc. Neocæs. Can. 13. referring to Rhabanus Maurus. Thomassin on the other hand denies that they were Bishops, Discipl. Eccl. i. 2. c. 1. [see D.C.A. s.v.]
[728] Ten under each Presbyter. Vales ad Socr. Hist. i. 27. Ten altogether, Montfaucon in loc. with more probability; and so Tillemont, vol. 8. p. 20. [Six villages are mentioned supr. §64, fin.]
[729] It was against the Canon of Sardica, and doubtless against ancient usage, to ordain a Bishop for so small a village, vid. Bingham, Antiqu. II. xii., who, however, maintains by instances, that at least small towns might be sees. Also it was against usage that a layman, as Ischyras, should be made a Bishop. ibid. x. 4, &c. St. Hilary, however, makes him a Deacon. Fragm. ii. 16.
[730] Dogs without owners, and almost in a wild state, abound, as is well known, in Eastern cities; vid. Psalm lix. 6, 14, 15; 2 Kings ix. 35, 36. and for the view taken in Scripture of dogs, vid. Bochart, Hieroz. ii. 56 [and Dict. Bib. s.v.].
[731] Catholicus, §14, Apol. Const. §10. [The mention, below, of Augusti and Cæsars' makes 337 the earliest likely date for this letter.]
[732] Cf. §17. note 7. [Prolegg. ch. ii. §4.]
[733] Cf. §9.
[734] Euseb. v. Const. ii. 48.
[735] stratopedon, §70. note 6.
[736] "Once in an entertainment, at which he (Constantine) received Bishops, he made the remark that he too was a Bishop; using pretty much these words in my hearing, You are Bishops of matters within the Church, I am appointed by God to be Bishop of matters external to it." Euseb. Vit. Const. iv. 24.
[737] Constantinople.
[738] [See Bright, Hist. Writ. p. xii. note 3, and on the date of this letter, Prolegg. ch. v. §3 b, and note 6 below.]
[739] June 17. a.d. 337 [see Gwatk. Stud., 136].
[740] epekouse gar haplos. Montfaucon in Onomast. (Athan. t. 2. ad calc.) points out some passages in his author, where epakouein, like hupakouein, means "to answer." vid. Apol. Const. §16 init. Orat. iii. 27 fin.
[741] Cf. §58.
[742] Here ends the second part of the Apology, as is evident by turning back to §58. (supr. p. 130) to which this paragraph is an allusion. The express object of the second part was to prove, what has now been proved by documents, that Valens and Ursacius did but succumb to plain facts which they could not resist. It is observable too from this passage that the Apology was written before their relapse, i.e. before a.d. 351 or 352. The remaining two sections are often after 357, as they mention the fall of Liberius and Hosius, and speak of Constantius in different language from any which has been found above. [Introd. to Apol. Const. and Hist. Ar.]
[743] See Hist. Ar. §41.
[744] Cf. Apol. Fug.; §5, and Hist. Ar. §45.
[745] Ecclus. iv. 28. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Additional Note on Apol. C. Arianos, §50.
List of Bishops Present at Sardica.
The materials for an authentic list are (1) the names given by Athanasius, Apol. c. Ar. 50, previous to the lists of bishops from various provinces who signed the letter of the council when in circulation. These names, given with no specification of their sees, are 77 in number. (2) The list of signatures to the letter of the council to Julius, given by Hilary, Fragm. ii., 59 in number. The signatures to the letters discovered by Maffei and printed in Migne, Patr. Gr. xxvi. 1331, sqq. Of these, 26 sign (3) the council's letter to the Mareotic Churches, and 61, in part the same, sign (4) the letter of Athanasius to the same (Letter 46 in this volume). These signatures comprise 30 names not given by Hilary, while those in (1) add six which are absent from (2) and (3) alike. This raises the total to 95. We add (5) Gratus of Carthage, present according to the Greek text of the Canons, although he afterward signed the letter in a local council of his own, like Maximin of Treveri, Verissimus of Lyons, and Arius of Palestine, who are therefore given by Athanasius in his second list (the former two being omitted from the first): also Euphrates of Cologne, who was sent by Constans to Antioch with the council's decisions (Prolegg. ch. ii. §6), and was therefore most likely present at the council itself. We thus get 97 in all.
This total is confirmed if we subtract from the 170 more or less' of Hist. Arian. 15 the 76 seceders to Philippopolis (Sabinus in Socr. ii. 16), 73 of whom sign their letter, given by Hilary. This leaves 94 more or less,' so that the list now to be given, in elucidation of that of Athanasius, has strong claims to rank as approximately correct. The numbers after the names refer to the sources (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) specified above. 1. Adolius (1), See unknown; 2. Aetius (1, 3), Thessalonica in Macedonia; 3. Alexander (1, 4), Cypara (i.e. Cyparissus?) in Achaia; 4. Alexander (2), Montemnae (?) in Achaia; 5. Alexander (1, 2, 3), Larissa in Thessaly; 6. Alypius (1, 2, 3), Megara in Achaia; 7. Amantius (1, 4), Viminacium, by deputy; 8. Ammonius (4), See unknown; 9. Anianus (1, 2, 4), Casiulo in Spain; 10. Antigonus (1, 4), Pella, or Pallene in Macedonia; 11. Appianus (4), See unknown; 12. Aprianus (1, 4), Peiabio (Petovio) in Pannonia; 13. Aprianus (4), See unknown; 14. Arius (1, 2, 3), of Palestine, See unknown (see note on Hist. Ar. 18); 15. Asclepas (1, 2, 4), Gasa; 16. Asterius (1, 2, 3), [Petra in] Arabia; 17. Athanasius (1, 2, 3, 4), Alexandria; 18. Athenodorus (1, 2, 3, 4), Platæa in Achaia; 19. Bassus (1, 2, 3), Diocletianapolis "in Macedonia" (really in Thrace); 20. Calepodius (1, 2, 3), of Campania (? Naples); 21. Calvus (2, 4), Castrum Martis in Dacia Ripensis; 22. Caloes or Chalbis' (1, 4), See unknown; 23. Castus (1, 2, 4), Saragossa in Spain; 24. Cocras (2), Asapofebiae in Achaia (= Asopus), perhaps the Socrates' of (1); 25. Cydonius (4), Cydon in Crete; 26. Diodorus (1, 2, 4), Tenedos; 27. Dionysius (1, 2, 3), Elida (Elis?) in Achaia; 28. Dioscorus (1, 2, 3), Thrace, See unknown; 29. Dometius (or Domitianus) (1, 4), Acaria Constantias (possibly Castra Constantia = Coutances); 30. Domitianus (1, 2, 3), Asturica in Spain; 31. Eliodorus (1, 2, 3), Nicopolis; 32. Eucarpus (1, 4), Opus in Achaia; 33. Eucarpus (4), See unknown; 34. Eucissus (4), Cissamus in Crete; 35. Eugenius (4 = Euagrius in 2?), Heraclea (in Lucania? texts very corrupt); 36. Eugenius (1?, 4), See unknown; 37. Eulogius (1, 4), See unknown; Euphrates, see below (97); 38. Eutasius (2), Pannonia, See unknown; 39. Euterius (1, 2), Procia de Cayndo' (corrupt); 40. Eutychius (1, 4), Methone in Achaia; 41. Eutychius (1, 2), Achia, See unknown; 42. Florentius (1, 2, 4), Emerita in Spain; 43. Fortunatianus (1, 2), Aquileia; Galba (see above (22); 44. Gaudentius (1, 2, 4), Naissus; 45. Gerontius (1, 2, 3, 4), a Macedonia in Brevi(?) in Hil.; Gratus, see below (96); 46. Helianus (1, 4), Tyrtana (?); Heliodorus, see above (31); 47. Hermogenes (1, 4), Sicyai (?); 48. Hymenaeus (1, 2, 4), Hypata in Thessaly; 49. Januarius (1, 2, 4), Beneventum in Campania; 50. John (3), See unknown; 51. Jonas (1, 2, 3), Particopolis in Macedonia; 52. Irenæus (1, 2, 4), Scyros in Achaia; 53. Julianus (1, 2, 4), of Thebes in Achaia (or Thera? see note to Letter 46); 54. Julianus (1, 4), See unknown; Julius, see below (95); Lerenius (2), see above (52); 55. Lucius (1, 2, 3, 4), Hadrianople in Thrace; 56. Lucius (Lucillus' Ath. twice) (1, 2, 4), Verona; 57. Macedonius (1, 2, 4), Ulpiana in Dardania; 58. Marcellus (2, 4, Marcellinus in 1), Ancyra; 59. Marcus (1, 2, 4), Siscia on the Save; 60. Martyrius (2, 4), Naupactus in Achaia; 61. Martyrius (1, 4), See unknown; 62. Maximus (1, 2), Luca in Tuscany; 63. Maximus (i.e. Maximinus) (4), Treviri; 64. Musonius (1, 4), Heraclea in Crete; 65. Moyses (or Musaeus, 1, 2), Thebes in Thessaly; 66. Olympius (4), Aeni in Thrace; 67. Osius (Hosius), (1, 2, 3), Cordova; 68. Palladius (1, 2, 4), Dium in Macedonia; 69. Paregorius (1, 2, 3, 4), Scupi in Dardania; 70. Patricius (1), See unknown; 71. Peter (1), See unknown; 72. Philologius (1), See unknown; 73. Plutarchus (1, 2, 3), Patrae in Achaia; 74. Porphyrius (1, 2, 3, 4), Philippi in Macedonia; 75. Prætextatus (1, 2, 4), Barcelona; 76. Protasius (1, 2, 4), Milan; 77. Protogenes (1, 2, 4), Sardica; 78. Restitutus (1, 3), See unknown; 79. Sapricius (1), See unknown; 80. Severus (4), Chalcis in Thessaly (Euboea); 81. Severus (1, 2, 3), Ravenna; Socrates (1), see above, no. 24; 82. Spudasius (1), See unknown; 83. Stercorius (1, 2, 4), Canusium in Apulia; 84. Symphorus (1, 4), Hierapythna in Crete; Titius (2), see above (40); 85. Trypho (1, 2, 4), Achaia (See uncertain from corruption of text); 86. Valens (1, 2, 3), Scio' in Dacia Ripensis; 87. Verissimus (2, 4, text of latter gives Broseus' corruptly), Lyons; 88. Vincentius (1, 2, 3), Capua; 89. Vitalis (1, 2), Aquae in Dacia Ripensis; 90. Vitalis 1, 3, 4), Vertara in Africa; 91. Ursacius (1, 2, 4), Brixia in Italy; 92. Zosimus (1, 2, 4), Lychnidus or Lignidus in Dacia; 93. Zosimus (1, 4), Horrea Margi in Moesia; 94. Zosimus (1, 4), See unknown; 95. Julius (1, 4), Rome (by deputies); 96. Gratus (5), Carthage; 97. Euphrates (5), Cologne.
The names, both of bishops and of sees, have suffered much in transcription, and the above list is the result of comparing the divergent errors of the various lists. The details of the latter will be found in the originals, and in the discussion of the Ballerini, on whose work (in Leonis M. Opp. vol. iii. pp. xlii. sqq.) our list is founded. In some cases the names of the see are clearly corrupt beyond all recognition. The signatures appended to the canons in the collections of councils, are taken (with certain uncritical adaptations) from the Hilarian list, with the addition, in some copies, of Alexander (3 supra), whose name, therefore, has probably dropped out of the Hilarian text in course of transmission.] __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Introduction to de Decretis or Defence of the Nicene Definition.
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This letter must have been written in the interval between the return of Athanasius in 346 and his flight in 356. Acacius was already (§3) Bishop of Cæsarea 339; Eusebius of Nicomedia is not referred to as though still living (he died 342). Moreover the language of §2 ("for in no long time they will turn to outrage," &c.) implies a period of actual peace, but with a prospect of the repetition of the scenes of the year 339. This actually occurred in 356. Accordingly we must probably place the tract under the sole reign of Constantius, between 351 and the end of 355.
It is written in answer to a friend who in disputing with Arians had been posed by their objection to the use of non-scriptural terms in the Nicene Definition. He accordingly asks for some account of what the council had done.
Athanasius begins his answer by stigmatising the evasions and inconsistency of the Arianisers, and describing their conduct at the council, and how they eventually subscribed to the terms now complained of (1-5). He then investigates the meaning of the divine Sonship (6-14), and how its true meaning is brought out by the other titles of the Son (15-17). Coming to the non-scriptural expressions he shews how they were forced upon the council by the evasions of the Arians (18-20), and that they express no sense not to be found in Scripture (21-24). Moreover, they had already been in use in the Church, as is shewn by extracts from Theognostus, the two Dionysii, and Origen (25-27). Lastly (28-32) he discusses the term agenetos, applied by the Arians (especially Asterius) to the Father, in contrast, not to the creation, but to the Son, who is thereby implied to be genetos. He insists on Father' not agenetos' as the divine title authorised by Scripture. Lastly he appends, in proof of what he states in §3, the letter of Eusebius to the people of Cæsarea, containing the creed of the council, which, for reasons there stated, we have inserted above, pp. 73-76.
The interest of the letter is principally threefold; first on account of its notice of the proceedings at Nicæa (cf. ad Afr. 5), one of the few primary sources of our knowledge of what took place there: secondly, on account of its fragments of early writers, especially the Dionysii, of whom more will be said in the introduction to the next tract. With regard to Theognostus, the quotations in this tract and in Serap. iv. 9 are important in view of the somewhat damaging accounts of his teaching in the few other writers (Gregory of Nyssa, Photius) who mention him.
Thirdly, the term agenetos demands attention. It is impossible to give its exact force in idiomatic English: the rendering Ingenerate' adopted by Newman is perhaps the most unfortunate one imaginable. Uncreated,' a possible substitute, is also open to objection, firstly, as not distinguishing the word from the derivatives of ktizein, poiein, demiourgein, secondly, as giving it a passive sense, which does not inherently attach to it. For lack of a better word, Unoriginate' may perhaps be adopted. That which has not (or cannot) come to be,' that which is not the result of a process,'--is what the word strictly signifies'--das Ungewordene.' It was therefore strictly applicable to the Son as well as to the Father. But throughout the earlier stages of the Arian controversy the question was embarrassed by the homophones gennetos and agennetos, generate or begotten, and unbegotten. The confusion of thought due to the resemblance of sound is reflected in the confusion of readings in the mss. Athanasius himself (Orat. i. 56) perceives the distinctive sense of agennetos. In the present tract and in Orat. i. 30, he has agenetos only in view, the idea of begetting being absent. Here (and cf. de Syn. 46, note 5) he is denying that the Father is alone agenetos, uncreated or without a becoming.' Accordingly although the word gennethenta was consecrated and safeguarded in the Creed of Nicæa (Begotten not made), and although the distinctness of the derivatives of the two verbs was felt by Athanasius, and pointed out by others (Epiph. Hær. 64, 8), the use of either group of words was avoided by Catholics as dangerous. A clear distinction of the words and of their respective applicability is made by John Damascene Fid. Orth. I. viii. (see Lightfoot, Ignat. vol. 2, excursus on Eph. §7, Thilo, ubi supra, Introd. p. 14, and Harnack, Dg. 2, p. 193 note). __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
De Decretis or Defence of the Nicene Definition
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Chapter I.--Introduction. The complaint of the Arians against the Nicene Council; their fickleness; they are like Jews; their employment of force instead of reason.
1. Thou hast done well, in signifying to me the discussion thou hast had with the advocates of Arianism, among whom were certain of the friends of Eusebius, as well as very many of the brethren who hold the doctrine of the Church. I hailed thy vigilance for the love of Christ, which excellently exposed the irreligion [746] of their heresy; while I marvelled at the effrontery which led the Arians, after all the past detection of unsoundness and futility in their arguments, nay, after the general conviction of their extreme perverseness, still to complain like the Jews, "Why did the Fathers at Nicæa use terms not in Scripture [747] , Of the essence' and One in essence?'" Thou then, as a man of learning, in spite of their subterfuges, didst convict them of talking to no purpose; and they in devising them were but acting suitably to their own evil disposition. For they are as variable and fickle in their sentiments, as chameleons in their colours [748] ; and when exposed they look confused, and when questioned they hesitate, and then they lose shame, and betake themselves to evasions. And then, when detected in these, they do not rest till they invent fresh matters which are not, and, according to the Scripture, imagine a vain thing [749] '; and all that they may be constant to their irreligion.
Now such endeavours [750] are nothing else than an obvious token of their defect of reason [751] , and a copying, as I have said, of Jewish malignity. For the Jews too, when convicted by the Truth, and unable to confront it, used evasions, such as, What sign doest Thou, that we may see and believe Thee? What dost Thou work [752] ? though so many signs were given, that they said themselves, What do we? for this man doeth many miracles [753] .' In truth, dead men were raised, lame walked, blind saw afresh, lepers were cleansed, and the water became wine, and five loaves satisfied five thousand, and all wondered and worshipped the Lord, confessing that in Him were fulfilled the prophecies, and that He was God the Son of God; all but the Pharisees, who, though the signs shone brighter than the sun, yet complained still, as ignorant men, Why dost Thou, being a man, make Thyself God [754] ?' Insensate, and verily blind in understanding! they ought contrariwise to have said, "Why hast Thou, being God, become man?" for His works proved Him God, that they might both worship the goodness of the Father, and admire the Son's Economy for our sakes. However, this they did not say; no, nor liked to witness what He was doing; or they witnessed indeed, for this they could not help, but they changed their ground of complaint again, "Why healest Thou the paralytic, why makest Thou the born-blind to see, on the sabbath day?" But this too was an excuse, and mere murmuring; for on other days as well did the Lord heal all manner of sickness, and all manner of disease [755] ,' but they complained still according to their wont, and by calling Him Beelzebub, preferred the suspicion of Atheism [756] , to a recantation of their own wickedness. And though in such sundry times and divers manners the Saviour shewed His Godhead and preached the Father to all men, nevertheless, as kicking against the pricks, they contradicted in the language of folly, and this they did, according to the divine proverb, that by finding occasions, they might separate themselves from the truth [757] .
2. As then the Jews of that day, for acting thus wickedly and denying the Lord, were with justice deprived of their laws and of the promise made to their fathers, so the Arians, Judaizing now, are, in my judgment, in circumstances like those of Caiaphas and the contemporary Pharisees. For, perceiving that their heresy is utterly unreasonable, they invent excuses, "Why was this defined, and not that?" Yet wonder not if now they practise thus; for in no long time they will turn to outrage, and next will threaten the band and the captain [758] .' Forsooth in these their heterodoxy has its support, as we see; for denying the Word of God, reason have they none at all, as is equitable. Aware then of this, I would have made no reply to their interrogations: but, since thy friendliness [759] has asked to know the transactions of the Council, I have without any delay related at once what then took place, shewing in few words, how destitute Arianism is of a religious spirit, and how their one business is to frame evasions. __________________________________________________________________
[746] eusebeia, asebeia, &c., here translated "religion, irreligion, religious, &c. &c." are technical words throughout, being taken from S. Paul's text, "Great is the mystery of godliness," eusebeias, i.e. orthodoxy. Such too seems to be the meaning of "godly admonitions," and "godly judgments," and "this godly and well-learned man," in our Ordination Services. The Latin translation is "pius," "pietas." It might be in some respects suitably rendered by "devout" and its derivatives. On its familiar use in the controversy depends the blasphemous jest of Eudoxius, Arian Bishop of Constantinople, which was received with loud laughter in the Cathedral, and remained in esteem down to Socrates' day, "The Father is asebes, as being without devotion, the Son eusebes, devout, as paying devotion to the Father." Socr. Hist. ii. 43. Hence Arius ends his Letter to Eusebius with alethos eusebie. Theod. Hist. i. 4.
[747] It appears that the Arians did not venture to speak disrespectfully of the definition of the Council till the date (a.d. 352) of this work, when Acacius headed them. Yet the plea here used, the unscriptural character of its symbol, had been suggested to Constantius on his accession, a.d. 337, by the Arian priest, the favourite of Constantia, to whom Constantine had entrusted his will, Theod. Hist. ii. 3; and Eusebius of Cæsarea glances at it, at the time of the Council, in the letter to his Church, which is subjoined to this Treatise.
[748] Alexander also calls them chameleons, Socr. i. 6. p. 12. Athanasius so calls the Meletians, Hist. Arian. §79. Cyril compares them to "the leopard which cannot change his spots." Dial. ii. init. t. v. i. Aub., Naz. Or. 28. 2. On the fickleness of the Arians, vid. infra, §4. &c. Orat. ii. 40. He says, ad Ep. Æg. 6. that they considered Creeds as yearly covenants; and de Synod. §3. 4. as State Edicts. vid. also §14. and passim. "What wonder that they fight against their fathers, when they fight against themselves?" §37.
[749] Ps. ii. 1.
[750] epicheirema. and so Orat. i. §44. init. but infra. §25. epicheiremata means more definitely reasonings or argumentations.
[751] alogias; an allusion frequent in Athanasius, to the judicial consequence of their denying the Word of God. Thus, just below, n. 3. "Denying the Word" or Reason "of God, reason have they none." Also Orat. i. §35. fin. §40. init. §62. Orat. ii. §7. init. Hence he so often calls the Arians "mad" and "deranged;" e.g. "not aware how mad' their reason' is." Orat. i. §37.
[752] John vi. 30.
[753] Ib. xi. 47.
[754] Ib. x. 33.
[755] Matt. iv. 23.
[756] Or ungodliness, atheotetos. Thus Aetius was called ho atheos, the ungodly. de Synod. §6; and Arius complains that Alexander had expelled him and his from Alexandria, hos anthropous atheous. Theodor. Hist. i. 4. "Atheism" and "Atheist" imply intention, system, and profession, and are so far too strong a rendering of the Greek. Since Christ was God, to deny Him was to deny God. The force of the term, however, seems to be, that, whereas the Son had revealed the "unknown God," and destroyed the reign of idols, the denial of the Son was bringing back idolatry and its attendant spiritual ignorance. Thus contr. Gent. §29. fin. he speaks of "the Greek idolatry as full of all Atheism" or ungodliness, and contrasts with it the knowledge of "the Guide and Framer of the Universe, the Father's Word," "that through Him we may discern His Father,' and the Greeks may know how far they have separated themselves from the truth.'" And Orat. ii. 43. he classes Arians with the Greeks, who "though they have the name of God in their mouths, incur the charge of Atheism,' because they know not the real and true God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.'" (vid. also Basil in Eunom. ii. 22.) Shortly afterwards he gives a further reason for the title, observing that Arianism was worse than previous heresies, such as Manicheism, inasmuch as the latter denied the Incarnation, but Arianism tore from God's substance His connatural Word, and, as far as its words went, infringed upon the perfections and being of the first Cause. And so ad Ep. Æg. §17. fin. he says, that it alone, beyond other heresies, "has been bold against the Godhead Itself in a mad way (manikoteron, vid. foregoing note), denying that there is a Word, and that the Father was always Father." Elsewhere he speaks more generally, as if Arianism introduced "an Atheism or rather Judaism against the Scriptures,' being next door to Heathenism, so that its disciple cannot be even named Christian; for all such tenets are contrary to the Scriptures;'" and he makes this the reason why the Nicene Fathers stopped their ears and condemned it. ad Ep. Æg. §13. For the same reason he calls the heathen atheoi, atheistical or ungodly, "who are arraigned of irreligion by Divine Scripture." contr. Gent. §14. vid. eidolon atheoteta. §46. init. Moreover, he calls the Arian persecution worse than the pagan cruelties,' and therefore "a Babylonian Atheism," Ep. Encycl. §5. as not allowing the Catholics the use of prayer and baptism, with a reference to Dan. vi. 11, &c. Thus too he calls Constantius atheist, for his treatment of Hosius; oute ton theon phobetheis ho atheos. Hist. Arian. 45. Another reason for the title seems to have lain in the idolatrous character of Arian worship on its own shewing,' viz. as worshipping One whom they yet maintained to be a creature. [Prolegg. ch. ii. §3 (2)a, sub. fin.]
[757] A reference to Prov. xviii. 1. which runs in the LXX. "a man seeketh occasions, when desirous of separating himself from friends."
[758] Apparently an allusion to Joh. xviii. 12. Elsewhere, he speaks of "the chief captain" and "the governor," with an allusion to Acts xxiii. 22-24. &c. Hist. Arian. §66. fin. vid. also §2. Apol. contr. Arian. §8. also §10. and 45. Orat. ii. §43. Ep. Encycl. §5. Against the use of violence in religion, vid. Hist. Arian. §33. 67. (Hil. ad Const. 1. 2.) On the other hand, he observes, that at Nicæa, "it was not necessity which drove the judges to" their decision, "but all vindicated the Truth from deliberate purpose." ad Ep. Æg. 13.
[759] diathesis. vid. also Hist. Arian. §45. Orat. ii. §4. where Parker maintains without reason that it should be translated, "external condition." vid. also Theod. Hist. i. 4. init. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter II.--Conduct of the Arians towards the Nicene Council. Ignorant as well as irreligious to attempt to reverse an Ecumenical Council: proceedings at Nicæa: Eusebians then signed what they now complain of: on the unanimity of true teachers and the process of tradition: changes of the Arians.
And do thou, beloved, consider whether it be not so. If, the devil having sowed their hearts with this perverseness [760] , they feel confidence in their bad inventions, let them defend themselves against the proofs of heresy which have been advanced, and then will be the time to find fault, if they can, with the definition framed against them [761] . For no one, on being convicted of murder or adultery, is at liberty after the trial to arraign the sentence of the judge, why he spoke in this way and not in that [762] . For this does not exculpate the convict, but rather increases his crime on the score of petulance and audacity. In like manner, let these either prove that their sentiments are religious (for they were then accused and convicted, and their complaints are subsequent, and it is just that those who are under a charge should confine themselves to their own defence), or if they have an unclean conscience, and are aware of their own irreligion, let them not complain of what they do not understand, or they will bring on themselves a double imputation, of irreligion and of ignorance. Rather let them investigate the matter in a docile spirit, and learning what hitherto they have not known, cleanse their irreligious ears with the spring of truth and the doctrines of religion [763] .
3. Now it happened to Eusebius and his fellows in the Nicene Council as follows:--while they stood out in their irreligion, and attempted their fight against God [764] , the terms they used were replete with irreligion; but the assembled Bishops who were three hundred more or less, mildly and charitably required of them to explain and defend themselves on religious grounds. Scarcely, however, did they begin to speak, when they were condemned [765] , and one differed from another; then perceiving the straits in which their heresy lay, they remained dumb, and by their silence confessed the disgrace which came upon their heterodoxy. On this the Bishops, having negatived the terms they had invented, published against them the sound and ecclesiastical faith; and, as all subscribed it, Eusebius and his fellows subscribed it also in those very words, of which they are now complaining, I mean, "of the essence" and "one in essence," and that "the Son of God is neither creature or work, nor in the number of things originated [766] , but that the Word is an offspring from the substance of the Father." And what is strange indeed, Eusebius of Cæsarea in Palestine, who had denied the day before, but afterwards subscribed, sent to his Church a letter, saying that this was the Church's faith, and the tradition of the Fathers; and made a public profession that they were before in error, and were rashly contending against the truth. For though he was ashamed at that time to adopt these phrases, and excused himself to the Church in his own way, yet he certainly means to imply all this in his Epistle, by his not denying the "one in essence," and "of the essence." And in this way he got into a difficulty; for while he was excusing himself, he went on to attack the Arians, as stating that "the Son was not before His generation," and as thereby rejecting His existence before His birth in the flesh. And this Acacius is aware of also, though he too through fear may pretend otherwise because of the times and deny the fact. Accordingly I have subjoined at the end the letter of Eusebius, that thou mayest know from it the disrespect towards their own doctors shewn by Christ's enemies, and singularly by Acacius himself [767] .
4. Are they not then committing a crime, in their very thought to gainsay so great and ecumenical a Council? are they not in transgression, when they dare to confront that good definition against Arianism, acknowledged, as it is, by those who had in the first instance taught them irreligion? And supposing, even after subscription, Eusebius and his fellows did change again, and return like dogs to their own vomit of irreligion, do not the present gain-sayers deserve still greater detestation, because they thus sacrifice [768] their souls' liberty to others; and are willing to take these persons as masters of their heresy, who are, as James [769] has said, double-minded men, and unstable in all their ways, not having one opinion, but changing to and fro, and now recommending certain statements, but soon dishonouring them, and in turn recommending what just now they were blaming? But this, as the Shepherd has said, is "the child of the devil [770] ," and the note of hucksters rather than of doctors. For, what our Fathers have delivered, this is truly doctrine; and this is truly the token of doctors, to confess the same thing with each other, and to vary neither from themselves nor from their fathers; whereas they who have not this character are to be called not true doctors but evil. Thus the Greeks, as not witnessing to the same doctrines, but quarrelling one with another, have no truth of teaching; but the holy and veritable heralds of the truth agree together, and do not differ. For though they lived in different times, yet they one and all tend the same way, being prophets of the one God, and preaching the same Word harmoniously [771] .
5. And thus what Moses taught, that Abraham observed; and what Abraham observed, that Noah and Enoch acknowledged, discriminating pure from impure, and becoming acceptable to God. For Abel too in this way witnessed, knowing what he had learned from Adam, who himself had learned from that Lord, who said, when He came at the end of the ages for the abolishment of sin, "I give no new commandment unto you, but an old commandment, which ye have heard from the beginning [772] ." Wherefore also the blessed Apostle Paul, who had learned it from Him, when describing ecclesiastical functions, forbade that deacons, not to say bishops, should be double-tongued [773] ; and in his rebuke of the Galatians, he made a broad declaration, "If anyone preach any other Gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be anathema, as I have said, so say I again. If even we, or an Angel from heaven should preach unto you any other Gospel than that ye have received, let him be anathema [774] ." Since then the Apostle thus speaks, let these men either anathematise Eusebius and his fellows, at least as changing round and professing what is contrary to their subscriptions; or, if they acknowledge that their subscriptions were good, let them not utter complaints against so great a Council. But if they do neither the one nor the other, they are themselves too plainly the sport of every wind and surge, and are influenced by opinions, not their own, but of others, and being such, are as little worthy of deference now as before, in what they allege. Rather let them cease to carp at what they understand not; lest so be that not knowing to discriminate, they simply call evil good and good evil, and think that bitter is sweet and sweet is bitter. Doubtless, they desire that doctrines which have been judged wrong and have been reprobated should gain the ascendancy, and they make violent efforts to prejudice what was rightly defined. Nor should there be any reason on our part for any further explanation, or answer to their excuses, neither on theirs for further resistance, but for an acquiescence in what the leaders of their heresy subscribed; for though the subsequent change of Eusebius and his fellows was suspicious and immoral, their subscription, when they had the opportunity of at least some little defence of themselves, is a certain proof of the irreligion of their doctrine. For they would not have subscribed previously had they not condemned the heresy, nor would they have condemned it, had they not been encompassed with difficulty and shame; so that to change back again is a proof of their contentious zeal for irreligion. These men also ought therefore, as I have said, to keep quiet; but since from an extraordinary want of modesty, they hope perhaps to be able to advocate this diabolical [775] irreligion better than the others, therefore, though in my former letter written to thee, I have already argued at length against them, notwithstanding, come let us now also examine them, in each of their separate statements, as their predecessors; for now not less than then their heresy shall be shewn to have no soundness in it, but to be from evil spirits. __________________________________________________________________
[760] epispeirantos tou diabolou, the allusion is to Matt. xiii. 25, and is very frequent in Athan., chiefly with a reference to Arianism. He draws it out at length, Orat. ii. §34. Elsewhere, he uses the image for the evil influences introduced into the soul upon Adam's fall, contr. Apoll. i. §15. as does S. Irenæus, Hær. iv. 40. n. 3. using it of such as lead to back-sliding in Christians. ibid. v. 10. n. 1. Gregory Nyssen, of the natural passions and of false reason misleading them, de An. et Resurr. p. 640. vid. also Leon. Ep. 156. c. 2.
[761] The Council did two things, anathematise the Arian positions (at the end of the Creed), and establish the true doctrine by the insertion of the phrases, "of the substance" and "one in substance." Athan. says that the Arians must not criticise the latter before they had cleared themselves of the former. Thus he says presently, that they were at once irreligious in their faith and ignorant in their criticism; and speaks of the Council negativing their formulæ, and substituting those which were "sound and ecclesiastical." vid. also n. 4.
[762] And so S. Leo "passim" concerning the Council of Chalcedon, "Concord will be easily established, if the hearts of all concur in that faith which, &c., no discussion being allowed whatever concerning any retractation," Ep. 94. He calls such an act a "magnum sacrilegium," Ep. 157. c. 3. "To be seeking for what has been disclosed, to retract what has been perfected, to tear up what has been laid down (definita), what is this but to be unthankful for what we gained?" Ep. 162. vid. the whole of it. He says that the attempt is "no mark of a peace-maker but a rebel." Ep. 164. c. l. fin. vid. also Epp. 145, and 156, where he says, none can assail what is once determined, but "aut antichristus aut diabolus." c. 2.
[763] Vid. Orat. iii. §28.
[764] theomachein, theomachoi. vid. Acts v. 39; xxiii. 9. are of very frequent use in Athan. as is christomachoi, in speaking of the Arians, vid. infra passim. also antimachomenoi to soteri, Ep. Encycl. §5. And in the beginning of the controversy, Alexander ap. Socr. i. 6. p. 10. b.c.p. 12. p. 13. Theod. Hist. i. 3. p. 729. And so theomachos glossa, Basil. contr. Eunom. ii. 27. fin. christomachon. Ep. 236. init. vid. also Cyril (Thesaurus, p. 19 e. p. 24 e.). theomachoi is used of other heretics, e.g. the Manichees, by Greg. Naz. Orat. 45. §8.
[765] i.e. "convicted themselves," infr. §18. init. heauton aei kategoroi, ad. Ep. Æg. §6. i.e. by their variations, vid. Tit. iii. 11 autokatakritos
[766] geneton.
[767] The party he is writing against is the Acacian, of whom he does not seem to have had much distinct knowledge. He contrasts them again and again in the passages which follow with the Eusebians of the Nicene Council, and says that he is sure that the ground they take when examined will be found substantially the same as the Eusebian. vid. §6 init. et alib. §7. init. §9. circ. fin. §10. circ. fin. §13. init. tote kai nun. §18. circ. fin. §28. fin [On Acacius see Prolegg. ch. ii. §8 (2) b.]
[768] propinontes vid. de Syn. §14.
[769] James i. 8.
[770] Hermas, Mand. ix., who is speaking immediately, as S. James, of wavering in prayer.
[771] Thus S. Basil says the same of the Grecian Sects, "We have not the task of refuting their tenets, for they suffice for the overthrow of each other." Hexaem. i. 2. vid. also Theod. Græc. Affect. i. p. 707. &c. August. Civ. Dei, xviii. 41. and Vincentius's celebrated Commonitorium passim.
[772] 1 John ii. 7.
[773] 1 Tim. iii. 8.
[774] Gal. i. 8, 9.
[775] This is Athan.'s deliberate judgment. vid. de Sent. Dion. fin., ib. §24. he speaks of Arius's "hatred of the truth." Again, "though the diabolical men rave" Orat. iii. §8. "friends of the devil, and his spirits," Ad Ep. Æg. 5. Another reason of his so accounting them, was their atrocious cruelty towards Catholics; this leads him elsewhere to break out: "O new heresy, that has put on the whole devil in irreligious doctrine and conduct!" Hist. Arian. §66, also Alexander, diabolical,' ap Theod. Hist. i. 3, p. 731. satanical,' ibid. p. 741. vid. also Socr. i. 9. p. 30 fin. Hilar. contr. Const. 17. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter III.--Two senses of the word Son, 1. adoptive; 2. essential; attempts of Arians to find a third meaning between these; e.g. that our Lord only was created immediately by God (Asterius's view), or that our Lord alone partakes the Father. The second and true sense; God begets as He makes, really; though His creation and generation are not like man's; His generation independent of time; generation implies an internal, and therefore an eternal, act in God; explanation of Prov. viii. 22.
6. They say then what the others held and dared to maintain before them; "Not always Father, not always Son; for the Son was not before His generation, but, as others, came to be from nothing; and in consequence God was not always Father of the Son; but, when the Son came to be and was created, then was God called His Father. For the Word is a creature and a work, and foreign and unlike the Father in essence; and the Son is neither by nature the Father's true Word, nor His only and true Wisdom; but being a creature and one of the works, He is improperly [776] called Word and Wisdom; for by the Word which is in God was He made, as were all things. Wherefore the Son is not true God [777] ."
Now it may serve to make them understand what they are saying, to ask them first this, what in fact a son is, and of what is that name significant [778] . In truth, Divine Scripture acquaints us with a double sense of this word:--one which Moses sets before us in the Law, When ye shall hearken to the voice of the Lord thy God, to keep all His commandments which I command thee this day, to do that which is right in the eyes of the Lord thy God, ye are children of the Lord your God [779] ;' as also in the Gospel, John says, But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God [780] :'--and the other sense, that in which Isaac is son of Abraham, and Jacob of Isaac, and the Patriarchs of Jacob. Now in which of these two senses do they understand the Son of God that they relate such fables as the foregoing? for I feel sure they will issue in the same irreligion with Eusebius and his fellows.
If in the first, which belongs to those who gain the name by grace from moral improvement, and receive power to become sons of God (for this is what their predecessors said), then He would seem to differ from us in nothing; no, nor would He be Only-begotten, as having obtained the title of Son as others from His virtue. For granting what they say, that, whereas His qualifications were fore-known [781] , He therefore received grace from the first, the name, and the glory of the name, from His very first beginning, still there will be no difference between Him and those who receive the name after their actions, so long as this is the ground on which He as others has the character of son. For Adam too, though he received grace from the first, and upon his creation was at once placed in paradise, differed in no respect either from Enoch, who was translated thither after some time from his birth on his pleasing God, or from the Apostle, who likewise was caught up to Paradise after his actions; nay, not from him who once was a thief, who on the ground of his confession, received a promise that he should be forthwith in paradise.
7. When thus pressed, they will perhaps make an answer which has brought them into trouble many times already; "We consider that the Son has this prerogative over others, and therefore is called Only-begotten, because He alone was brought to be by God alone, and all other things were created by God through the Son [782] ." Now I wonder who it was [783] that suggested to you so futile and novel an idea as that the Father alone wrought with His own hand the Son alone, and that all other things were brought to be by the Son as by an under-worker. If for the toil's sake God was content with making the Son only, instead of making all things at once, this is an irreligious thought, especially in those who know the words of Esaias, The everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, hungereth not, neither is weary; there is no searching of His understanding [784] .' Rather it is He who gives strength to the hungry, and through His Word refreshes the labouring [785] . Again, it is irreligious to suppose that He disdained, as if a humble task, to form the creatures Himself which came after the Son; for there is no pride in that God, who goes down with Jacob into Egypt, and for Abraham's sake corrects Abimelek because of Sara, and speaks face to face with Moses, himself a man, and descends upon Mount Sinai, and by His secret grace fights for the people against Amalek. However, you are false even in this assertion, for He made us, and not we ourselves [786] .' He it is who through His Word made all things small and great, and we may not divide the creation, and says this is the Father's, and this the Son's, but they are of one God, who uses His proper Word as a Hand [787] , and in Him does all things. This God Himself shews us, when He says, All these things hath My Hand made [788] ;' while Paul taught us as he had learned [789] , that There is one God, from whom all things; and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom all things [790] .' Thus He, always as now, speaks to the sun and it rises, and commands the clouds and it rains upon one place; and where it does not rain, it is dried up. And He bids the earth yield her fruits, and fashions Jeremias [791] in the womb. But if He now does all this, assuredly at the beginning also He did not disdain to make all things Himself through the Word; for these are but parts of the whole.
8. But let us suppose that the other creatures could not endure to be wrought by the absolute Hand of the Unoriginate [792] and therefore the Son alone was brought into being by the Father alone, and other things by the Son as an underworker and assistant, for this is what Asterius the sacrificer [793] has written, and Arius has transcribed [794] and bequeathed to his own friends, and from that time they use this form of words, broken reed as it is, being ignorant, the bewildered men, how brittle it is. For if it was impossible for things originate to bear the hand of God, and you hold the Son to be one of their number, how was He too equal to this formation by God alone? and if a Mediator became necessary that things originate might come to be, and you hold the Son to be originated, then must there have been some medium before Him, for His creation; and that Mediator himself again being a creature, it follows that he too needed another Mediator for his own constitution. And though we were to devise another, we must first devise his Mediator, so that we shall never come to an end. And thus a Mediator being ever in request, never will the creation be constituted, because nothing originate, as you say, can bear the absolute hand of the Unoriginate [795] . And if, on your perceiving the extravagance of this, you begin to say that the Son, though a creature, was made capable of being made by the Unoriginate, then it follows that other things also, though originated, are capable of being wrought immediately by the Unoriginate; for the Son too is but a creature in your judgment, as all of them. And accordingly the origination of the Word is superfluous, according to your irreligious and futile imagination, God being sufficient for the immediate formation of all things, and all things originate being capable of sustaining His absolute hand.
These irreligious men then having so little mind amid their madness, let us see whether this particular sophism be not even more irrational than the others. Adam was created alone by God alone through the Word; yet no one would say that Adam had any prerogative over other men, or was different from those who came after him, granting that he alone was made and fashioned by God alone, and we all spring from Adam, and consist according to succession of the race, so long as he was fashioned from the earth as others, and at first not being, afterwards came to be.
9. But though we were to allow some prerogative to the Protoplast as having been deemed worthy of the hand of God, still it must be one of honour not of nature. For he came of the earth, as other men; and the hand which then fashioned Adam, is also both now and ever fashioning and giving entire consistence to those who come after him. And God Himself declares this to Jeremiah, as I said before; Before I formed thee in the womb, I knew thee [796] ;' and so He says of all, All those things hath My hand made [797] ;' and again by Isaiah, Thus saith the Lord, thy redeemer, and He that formed thee from the womb, I am the Lord that maketh all things; that stretcheth forth the heavens alone; that spreadeth abroad the earth by Myself [798] .' And David, knowing this, says in the Psalm, Thy hands have made me and fashioned me [799] ;' and he who says in Isaiah, Thus saith the Lord who formed me from the womb to be His servant [800] ,' signifies the same. Therefore, in respect of nature, he differs nothing from us though he precede us in time, so long as we all consist and are created by the same hand. If then these be your thoughts, O Arians, about the Son of God too, that thus He subsists and came to be, then in your judgment He will differ nothing on the score of nature from others, so long as He too was not, and came to be, and the name was by grace united to Him in His creation for His virtue's sake. For He Himself is one of those, from what you say, of whom the Spirit says in the Psalms, He spake the word, and they were made; He commanded, and they were created [801] .' If so, who was it by whom God gave command [802] for the Son's creation? for a Word there must be by whom God gave command, and in whom the works are created; but you have no other to shew than the Word you deny, unless indeed you should devise again some new notion.
"Yes," they will say, "we have another;" (which indeed I formerly heard Eusebius and his fellows use), "on this score do we consider that the Son of God has a prerogative over others, and is called Only-begotten, because He alone partakes the Father, and all other things partake the Son." Thus they weary themselves in changing and in varying their phrases like colours [803] ; however, this shall not save them from an exposure, as men that are of the earth, speaking vainly, and wallowing in their own conceits as in mire.
10. For if He were called God's Son, and we the Son's sons, their fiction were plausible; but if we too are said to be sons of that God, of whom He is Son, then we too partake the Father [804] , who says, I have begotten and exalted children [805] .' For if we did not partake Him, He had not said, I have begotten;' but if He Himself begat us, no other than He is our Father [806] . And, as before, it matters not, whether the Son has something more and was made first, but we something less, and were made afterwards, as long as we all partake, and are called sons, of the same Father [807] . For the more or less does not indicate a different nature; but attaches to each according to the practice of virtue; and one is placed over ten cities, another over five; and some sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel; and others hear the words, Come, ye blessed of My Father,' and, Well done, good and faithful servant [808] .' With such ideas, however, no wonder they imagine that of such a Son God was not always Father, and such a Son was not always in being, but was generated from nothing as a creature, and was not before His generation; for such an one is other than the True Son of God.
But to persist in such teaching does not consist with piety [809] , for it is rather the tone of thought of Sadducees and the Samosatene [810] ; it remains then to say that the Son of God is so called according to the other sense, in which Isaac was son of Abraham; for what is naturally begotten from any one and does not accrue to him from without, that in the nature of things is a son, and that is what the name implies [811] . Is then the Son's generation one of human affection? (for this perhaps, as their predecessors [812] , they too will be ready to object in their ignorance;)--in no wise; for God is not as man, nor men as God. Men were created of matter, and that passible; but God is immaterial and incorporeal. And if so be the same terms are used of God and man in divine Scripture, yet the clear-sighted, as Paul enjoins, will study it, and thereby discriminate, and dispose of what is written according to the nature of each subject, and avoid any confusion of sense, so as neither to conceive of the things of God in a human way, nor to ascribe the things of man to God [813] . For this were to mix wine with water [814] , and to place upon the altar strange fire with that which is divine.
11. For God creates, and to create is also ascribed to men; and God has being, and men are said to be, having received from God this gift also. Yet does God create as men do? or is His being as man's being? Perish the thought; we understand the terms in one sense of God, and in another of men. For God creates, in that He calls what is not into being, needing nothing thereunto; but men work some existing material, first praying, and so gaining the wit to make, from that God who has framed all things by His proper Word. And again men, being incapable of self-existence, are enclosed in place, and consist in the Word of God; but God is self-existent, enclosing all things, and enclosed by none; within all according to His own goodness and power, yet without all in His proper nature [815] . As then men create not as God creates, as their being is not such as God's being, so men's generation is in one way, and the Son is from the Father in another [816] . For the offspring of men are portions of their fathers, since the very nature of bodies is not uncompounded, but in a state of flux [817] , and composed of parts; and men lose their substance in begetting, and again they gain substance from the accession of food. And on this account men in their time become fathers of many children; but God, being without parts, is Father of the Son without partition or passion; for there is neither effluence [818] of the Immaterial, nor influx from without, as among men; and being uncompounded in nature, He is Father of One Only Son. This is why He is Only-begotten, and alone in the Father's bosom, and alone is acknowledged by the Father to be from Him, saying, This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased [819] .' And He too is the Father's Word, from which may be understood the impassible and impartitive nature of the Father, in that not even a human word is begotten with passion or partition, much less the Word of God [820] . Wherefore also He sits, as Word, at the Father's right hand; for where the Father is, there also is His Word; but we, as His works, stand in judgment before Him; and, while He is adored, because He is Son of the adorable Father, we adore, confessing Him Lord and God, because we are creatures and other than He.
12. The case being thus, let who will among them consider the matter, so that one may abash them by the following question; Is it right to say that what is God's offspring and proper to Him is out of nothing? or is it reasonable in the very idea, that what is from God has accrued to Him, that a man should dare to say that the Son is not always? For in this again the generation of the Son exceeds and transcends the thoughts of man, that we become fathers of our own children in time, since we ourselves first were not and then came into being; but God, in that He ever is, is ever Father of the Son [821] . And the origination of mankind is brought home to us from things that are parallel; but, since no one knoweth the Son but the Father, and no one knoweth the Father but the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him [822] ,' therefore the sacred writers to whom the Son has revealed Him, have given us a certain image from things visible, saying, Who is the brightness of His glory, and the Expression of His Person [823] ;' and again, For with Thee is the well of life, and in Thy light shall we see light [824] ;' and when the Word chides Israel, He says, Thou hast forsaken the Fountain of wisdom [825] ;' and this Fountain it is which says, They have forsaken Me the Fountain of living waters [826] .' And mean indeed and very dim is the illustration [827] compared with what we desiderate; but yet it is possible from it to understand something above man's nature, instead of thinking the Son's generation to be on a level with ours. For who can even imagine that the radiance of light ever was not, so that he should dare to say that the Son was not always, or that the Son was not before His generation? or who is capable of separating the radiance from the sun, or to conceive of the fountain as ever void of life, that he should madly say, The Son is from nothing,' who says, I am the life [828] ,' or alien to the Father's essence,' who, says, He that hath seen Me, hath seen the Father [829] ?' for the sacred writers wishing us thus to understand, have given these illustrations; and it is unseemly and most irreligious, when Scripture contains such images, to form ideas concerning our Lord from others which are neither in Scripture, nor have any religious bearing.
13. Therefore let them tell us, from what teacher or by what tradition they derived these notions concerning the Saviour? "We have read," they will say, "in the Proverbs, The Lord created me a beginning of His ways unto His works [830] ;'" this Eusebius and his fellows used to insist on [831] , and you write me word, that the present men also, though overthrown and confuted by an abundance of arguments, still were putting about in every quarter this passage, and saying that the Son was one of the creatures, and reckoning Him with things originated. But they seem to me to have a wrong understanding of this passage also; for it has a religious and very orthodox sense, which had they understood, they would not have blasphemed the Lord of glory. For on comparing what has been above stated with this passage, they will find a great difference between them [832] . For what man of right understanding does not perceive, that what are created and made are external to the maker; but the Son, as the foregoing argument has shewn, exists not externally, but from the Father who begat Him? for man too both builds a house and begets a son, and no one would reverse things, and say that the house or the ship were begotten by the builder [833] , but the son was created and made by him; nor again that the house was an image of the maker, but the son unlike him who begat him; but rather he will confess that the son is an image of the father, but the house a work of art, unless his mind be disordered, and he beside himself. Plainly, divine Scripture, which knows better than any the nature of everything, says through Moses, of the creatures, In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth [834] ;' but of the Son it introduces not another, but the Father Himself saying, I have begotten Thee from the womb before the morning star [835] ;' and again, Thou art My Son, this day have I begotten Thee [836] .' And the Lord says of Himself in the Proverbs, Before all the hills He begets me [837] ;' and concerning things originated and created John speaks, All things were made by Him [838] ;' but preaching of the Lord, he says, The Only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He declared Him [839] .' If then son, therefore not creature; if creature, not son; for great is the difference between them, and son and creature cannot be the same, unless His essence be considered to be at once from God, and external to God.
14. Has then the passage no meaning?' for this, like a swarm of gnats, they are droning about us [840] . No surely, it is not without meaning, but has a very apposite one; for it is true to say that the Son was created too, but this took place when He became man; for creation belongs to man. And any one may find this sense duly given in the divine oracles, who, instead of accounting their study a secondary matter, investigates the time and characters [841] , and the object, and thus studies and ponders what he reads. Now as to the season spoken of, he will find for certain that, whereas the Lord always is, at length in fulness of the ages He became man; and whereas He is Son of God, He became Son of man also. And as to the object he will understand, that, wishing to annul our death, He took on Himself a body from the Virgin Mary; that by offering this unto the Father a sacrifice for all, He might deliver us all, who by fear of death were all our life through subject to bondage [842] . And as to the character, it is indeed the Saviour's, but is said of Him when He took a body and said, The Lord created me a beginning of His ways unto His works [843] .' For as it properly belongs to God's Son to be everlasting. and in the Father's bosom, so on His becoming man, the words befitted Him, The Lord created me.' For then it is said of Him, as also that He hungered, and thirsted, and asked where Lazarus lay, and suffered, and rose again [844] . And as, when we hear of Him as Lord and God and true Light, we understand Him as being from the Father, so on hearing, The Lord created,' and Servant,' and He suffered,' we shall justly ascribe this, not to the Godhead, for it is irrelevant, but we must interpret it by that flesh which He bore for our sakes: for to it these things are proper, and this flesh was none other's than the Word's. And if we wish to know the object attained by this, we shall find it to be as follows: that the Word was made flesh in order to offer up this body for all, and that we partaking of His Spirit, might be deified [845] , a gift which we could not otherwise have gained than by His clothing Himself in our created body [846] , for hence we derive our name of "men of God" and "men in Christ." But as we, by receiving the Spirit, do not lose our own proper substance, so the Lord, when made man for us, and bearing a body, was no less God; for He was not lessened by the envelopment of the body, but rather deified it and rendered it immortal [847] . __________________________________________________________________
[776] katachrestikos. This word is noticed and protested against by Alexander, Socr. Hist. i. 6. p. 11 a. by the Semiarians at Ancyra, Epiph. Hær. 73. n. 5. by Basil. contr. Eunom. ii. 23. and by Cyril, Dial. ii. t. v. i. pp. 432, 3.
[777] Vid. Ep. Æg. 12. Orat. i. §5. 6. de Synod. 15, 16. Athanas. seems to have had in mind Socr. i. 6. p. 10, 11, or the like.
[778] Vid. Orat. i. §38. The controversy turned on the question what was meant by the word Son.' Though the Arians would not allow with the Catholics that our Lord was Son by nature, and maintained that the word implied a beginning of existence, they did not dare to say that He was Son merely in the sense in which we are sons, though, as Athan. contends, they necessarily tended to this conclusion, directly they receded from the Catholic view. Thus Arius said that He was a creature, but not as one of the creatures.' Orat. ii. §19. Valens at Ariminum said the same, Jerom. adv. Lucifer. 18. Hilary says, that not daring directly to deny that He was God, the Arians merely asked whether He was a Son.' de Trin. viii. 3. Athanasius remarks upon this reluctance to speak out, challenging them to present the heresy naked,' de Sent. Dionys. 2. init. No one,' he says elsewhere, puts a light under a bushel; let them shew the world their heresy naked.' Ep. Æg. 18. vid. ibid. 10. In like manner, Basil says that (though Arius was really like Eunomius, in faith, contr. Eunom. i. 4) Aetius his master was the first to teach openly (phaneros), that the Father's substance was unlike, anomoios, the Son's. ibid. i. 1. Epiphanius Hær. 76 p. 949. seems to say that the elder Arians held the divine generation in a sense in which Aetius did not, that is, they were not so consistent and definite as he. Athan. goes on to mention some of the attempts of the Arians to find some theory short of orthodoxy, yet short of that extreme heresy, on the other hand, which they felt ashamed to avow.
[779] Deut. xiii. 18; xiv. 1.
[780] John. i. 12.
[781] Theod. Hist. i. 3.
[782] This is celebrated as an explanation of the Anomoeans. vid. Basil. contr. Eunom. ii. 20, 21. though Athan. speaks of it as belonging to the elder Arians. vid. Socr. Hist. i. 6.
[783] i.e. what is your authority? is it not a novel, and therefore a wrong doctrine? vid. infr. §13. ad Serap. i. 3. Also Orat. i. §8. Who ever heard such doctrine? or whence or from whom did they hear it? who, when they were under catechising, spoke thus to them? If they themselves confess that they now hear it for the first time, they must grant that their heresy is alien, and not from the Fathers.' vid. ii. §34. and Socr. i. 6. p. 11 c.
[784] Is. xl. 28.
[785] Ib. 29
[786] Ps. c. 3.
[787] Vid. infr. §17 Orat. ii. §31. 71. Irenæus calls the Son and Holy Spirit the Hands of God. Hær. iv. præf. vid. also Hilar. de Trin. vii. 22. This image is in contrast to that of instrument, organon, which the Arians would use of the Son. vid. Socr. i. 6. p. 11, as implying He was external to God, whereas the word Hand implies His consubstantiality with the Father.
[788] Is. lxvi. 2.
[789] mathon edidasken, implying the traditional nature of the teaching. And so S. Paul himself, 1 Cor. xv. 3, vid. for an illustration, supr. §5. init. also note 2.
[790] 1 Cor. viii. 6.
[791] Jer. i. 5.
[792] Orat. ii. §24. fin.
[793] Vid. infr. 20. Orat. i. §31. ii. §§24, 28. 37. 40. iii. §§2. 60. de Synod §§18. 19. [Prolegg. ch. ii. §3 (2) a.]
[794] Vid. also infr. §20. de Synod. §17.
[795] Vid. infr. §24. Orat. i. §15. fin. ii. §29. Epiph. Hær. 76. p. 951.
[796] Jer. i. 5.
[797] Is. lxvi. 2.
[798] Ib. xliv. 24.
[799] Ps. cxix. 73.
[800] Is. xlix. 5.
[801] Ps. cxlviii. 5 (LXX).
[802] In like manner, Men were made through the Word, when the Father Himself willed.' Orat. i. 63. The Word forms matter as injoined by, and ministering to, God.' prostattomenos kai hupourgon. ibid. ii. §22. contr. Gent. 46. vid. note on Orat. ii. 22.
[803] ad Serap. i. 3.
[804] His argument is, that if the Son but partook the Father in the sense in which we partake the Son, then the Son would not impart to us the Father, but Himself, and would be a separating as well as uniting medium between the Father and us; whereas He brings us so near to the Father, that we are the Father's children, not His, and therefore He must be Himself one with the Father, or the Father must be in Him with an incomprehensible completeness. vid. de Synod. §51. contr. Gent. 46. fin. Hence S. Augustin says, As the Father has life in Himself, so hath He given also to the Son to have life in Himself, not by participating, but in Himself. For we have not life in ourselves, but in our God. But that Father, who has life in Himself, begat a Son such, as to have life in Himself, not to become partaker of life, but to be Himself life; and of that life to make us partakers.' Serm. 127. de Verb. Evang. 9.
[805] Is. i. 2.
[806] To say God is wholly partaken, is the same as saying that God begets.' Orat. i. §16. And in like manner, our inferior participation involves such sonship as is vouchsafed to us.
[807] And so in Orat. ii. §19-22. Though the Son surpassed other things on a comparison, yet He were equally a creature with them; for even in those things which are of a created nature, we may find some things surpassing others. Star, for instance, differs from star in glory, yet it does not follow that some are sovereign, and others serve, &c.' ii. §20. And so Gregory Nyssen contr. Eunom. iii. p. 132 D. Epiph. Hær. 76. p. 970.
[808] Matt. xxv. 21, 23, 34.
[809] i.e. since it is impossible they can persist in evasions so manifest as these, nothing is left but to take the other sense of the word.
[810] Paul of Samosata [see Prolegg. ch. ii. §3 (2)a.]
[811] The force lies in the word phusei, naturally,' which the Council expressed still more definitely by essence.' Thus Cyril says, the term "Son" denotes the essential origin from the Father.' Dial. 5. p. 573. And Gregory Nyssen, the title "Son" does not simply express the being from another' vid. infra. §19.), but relationship according to nature. contr. Eunom. ii. p. 91. Again S. Basil says, that Father is a term of relationship,' oikeioseos. contr. Eunom. ii. 24. init. And hence he remarks, that we too are properly, kurios, sons of God, as becoming related to Him through works of the Spirit. ii. 23. So also Cyril, loc. cit. Elsewhere S. Basil defines father one who gives to another the origin of being according to a nature like his own;' and a son one who possesses the origin of being from another by generation,' contr. Eun. ii. 22. On the other hand, the Arians at the first denied that by nature there was any Son of God.' Theod. H. E. i. 3. p. 732.
[812] vid. Eusebius, in his Letter, supr. p. 73 sq.: also Socr. Hist. i. 8. Epiphan. Hær. 69. n. 8 and 15.
[813] One of the characteristic points in Athanasius is his constant attention to the sense of doctrine, or the meaning of writers, in preference to the words used. Thus he scarcely uses the symbol homoousion, one in substance, throughout his Orations, and in the de Synod. acknowledges the Semiarians as brethren. Hence infr. §18. he says, that orthodox doctrine is revered by all though expressed in strange language, provided the speaker means religiously, and wishes to convey by it a religious sense.' vid. also §21. He says, that Catholics are able to speak freely,' or to expatiate, parresiazometha, out of Divine Scripture.' Orat. i. §9. vid. de Sent. Dionys. §20. init. Again: The devil spoke from Scripture, but was silenced by the Saviour; Paul spoke from profane writers, yet, being a saint, he has a religious meaning.' de Syn. §39, also ad Ep. Æg. 8. Again, speaking of the apparent contrariety between two Councils, It were unseemly to make the one conflict with the other, for all their members are fathers; and it were profane to decide that these spoke well and those ill, for all of them have slept in Christ.' §43. also §47. Again: Not the phrase, but the meaning and the religious life, is the recommendation of the faithful.' ad Ep. Æg. §9.
[814] vid. Orat. iii. §35, and Isa. i. 22.
[815] Vid. also Incarn. §17. This contrast is not commonly found in ecclesiastical writers, who are used to say that God is present everywhere, in substance as well as by energy or power. S. Clement, however, expresses himself still more strongly in the same way, In substance far off (for how can the originate come close to the Unoriginate?), but most close in power, in which the universe is embosomed.' Strom. 2. circ. init. but the parenthesis explains his meaning. Vid. Cyril. Thesaur. 6. p. 44. The common doctrine of the Fathers is, that God is present everywhere in substance. Vid. Petav. de Deo, iii. 8. and 9. It may be remarked, that S. Clement continues neither enclosing nor enclosed.'
[816] In Almighty God is the perfection and first pattern of what is seen in shadow in human nature, according to the imperfection of the subject matter; and this remark applies, as to creation, so to generation. Athanasius is led to state this more distinctly in another connection in Orat. i. §21. fin. It belongs to the Godhead alone, that the Father is properly (kurios) Father, and the Son properly (kurios) Son; and in Them and Them only does it hold that the Father is ever Father, and the Son ever Son.' Accordingly he proceeds, shortly afterwards, as in the text, to argue, For God does not make men His pattern, but rather we men, for that God is properly and alone truly Father of His own Son, are also called fathers of our own children, for "of Him is every father-hood in heaven and on earth named,"' §23. The Semiarians at Ancyra quote the same text for the same doctrine. Epiphan. Hær. 73. 5. As do Cyril in Joan. i. p. 24. Thesaur. 32. p. 281. and Damascene de Fid. Orth. i. 8. The same parallel, as existing between creation and generation is insisted on by Isidor. Pel. Ep. iii. 355. Basil contr. Eun. iv. p. 280 A., Cyril Thesaur. 6. p. 43. Epiph. Hær. 69. 36. and Gregor. Naz. Orat. 20. 9. who observes that God creates with a word, Ps. cxlviii. 5, which evidently transcends human creations. Theodorus Abucara, with the same object, draws out the parallel of life, zoe, as Athan. that of being, einai. Opusc. iii. p. 420-422.
[817] Vid. de Synod. §51. Orat. i. §15, 16. rheuste. vid. Orat. i. §28. Bas. in Eun. ii. 23. rhusin. Bas. in Eun. ii. 6. Greg. Naz. Orat. 28, 22. Vid. contr. Gentes, §§41, 42; where Athan. without reference to the Arian controversy, draws out the contrast between the Godhead and human nature.
[818] S. Cyril, Dial. iv. init. p. 505 E. speaks of the thrulloumene apor& 191;oe, and disclaims it, Thesaur. 6. p. 43. Athan. disclaims it, Expos. §1. Orat. i. §21. So does Alexander, ap. Theod. Hist. i. 3. p. 743. On the other hand, Athanasius quotes it in a passage which he adduces from Theognostus, infr. §25. and from Dionysius, de Sent. D. §23. and Origen uses it, Periarchon, i. 2. It is derived from Wisd. vii. 25.
[819] Matt. iii. 17.
[820] The title Word' implies the ineffable mode of the Son's generation, as distinct from material parallels, vid. Gregory Nyssen, contr. Eunom. iii. p. 107. Chrysostom in Joan. Hom. 2. §4. Cyril Alex. Thesaur. 5. p. 37. Also it implies that there is but One Son. vid. infr. §16. As the Origin is one essence, so its Word and Wisdom is one, essential and subsisting.' Orat. iv. 1. fin.
[821] Man,' says S. Cyril, inasmuch as he had a beginning of being, also has of necessity a beginning of begetting, as what is from him is a thing generate, but....if God's essence transcend time, or origin, or interval, His generation too will transcend these; nor does it deprive the Divine Nature of the power of generating, that it doth not this in time. For other than human is the manner of divine generation; and together with God's existing is His generating implied, and the Son was in Him by generation, nor did His generation precede His existence, but He was always, and that by generation.' Thesaur. v. p. 35.
[822] Matt. xi. 27.
[823] Heb. i. 3.
[824] Ps. xxxvi. 9.
[825] Bar. iii. 12.
[826] Jer. ii. 13. Vid. infr. passim. All these titles, Word, Wisdom, Light' &c., serve to guard the title Son' from any notions of parts or dimensions, e.g. He is not composed of parts, but being impassible and single, He is impassibly and indivisibly Father of the Son...for...the Word and Wisdom is neither creature, nor part of Him Whose Word He is, nor an offspring passibly begotten.' Orat. i. §28.
[827] Ad Serap. 20.
[828] John xiv. 6.
[829] Ib. 9
[830] Prov. viii. 22, and cf. Orat. ii. throughout.
[831] Eusebius of Nicomedia quotes it in his Letter to Paulinus, ap. Theodor. Hist. i. 5. And Eusebius of Cæsarea, Demonstr. Evang. v. 1.
[832] i.e. Granting that the primâ facie impression of this text is in favour of our Lord's being a creature, yet so many arguments have been already brought, and may be added, against His creation, that we must interpret this text by them. It cannot mean that our Lord was simply created, because we have already shewn that He is not external to His Father.'
[833] Serap. 2, 6. Sent. Dion. §4.
[834] Gen. i. 1.
[835] Ps. cx. 3.
[836] Ps. ii. 7.
[837] Prov. viii. 25.
[838] John i. 3.
[839] Ib. 18
[840] peribombousin. So in ad Afros. 5. init. And Sent. D. §19. perierchontai peribombountes. And Gregory Nyssen. contr. Eun. viii. p. 234 C. hos an tous apeirous tais platonikais kalliphoniai peribombeseien. vid. also perierchontai hos hoi kantharoi. Orat. iii. fin.
[841] prosopa. vid. Orat. i. §54. ii. §8. Sent. D. 4. not persons, but characters; which must also be considered the meaning of the word, contr. Apoll. ii. 2. and 10; though it there approximates (even in phrase, ouk en diairesei prosopon) to its ecclesiastical use, which seems to have been later. Yet persona occurs in Tertull. in Prax. 27; it may be questioned, however, whether in any genuine Greek treatise till the Apollinarians.
[842] Heb. ii. 15.
[843] Prov. viii. 22.
[844] Sent. D. 9. Orat. 3, §§26-41.
[845] [See de Incar. §54. 3, and note.]
[846] Orat. 2, §70.
[847] Cf. Orat. ii. 6. [See also de Incar. §17.] __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IV.--Proof of the Catholic Sense of the Word Son. Power, Word or Reason, and Wisdom, the names of the Son, imply eternity; as well as the Father's title of Fountain. The Arians reply, that these do not formally belong to the essence of the Son, but are names given Him; that God has many words, powers, &c. Why there is but one Son and Word, &c. All the titles of the Son coincide in Him.
15. This then is quite enough to expose the infamy of the Arian heresy; for, as the Lord has granted, out of their own words is irreligion brought home to them [848] . But come now and let us on our part act on the offensive, and call on them for an answer; for now is fair time, when their own ground has failed them, to question them on ours; perhaps it may abash the perverse, and disclose to them whence they have fallen. We have learned from divine Scripture, that the Son of God, as was said above, is the very Word and Wisdom of the Father. For the Apostle says, Christ the power of God and the Wisdom of God [849] ;' and John after saying, And the Word was made flesh,' at once adds, And we saw His glory, the glory as of the Only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth [850] ,' so that, the Word being the Only-begotten Son, in this Word and in Wisdom heaven and earth and all that is therein were made. And of this Wisdom that God is Fountain we have learned from [851] Baruch, by Israel's being charged with having forsaken the Fountain of Wisdom. If then they deny Scripture, they are at once aliens to their name, and may fitly be called of all men atheists [852] , and Christ's enemies, for they have brought upon themselves these names. But if they agree with us that the sayings of Scripture are divinely inspired, let them dare to say openly what they think in secret that God was once wordless and wisdomless [853] ; and let them in their madness [854] say, There was once when He was not,' and, before His generation, Christ was not [855] ;' and again let them declare that the Fountain begat not Wisdom from itself, but acquired it from without, till they have the daring to say, The Son came of nothing;' whence it will follow that there is no longer a Fountain, but a sort of pool, as if receiving water from without, and usurping the name of Fountain [856] .
16. How full of irreligion this is, I consider none can doubt who has ever so little understanding. But since they mutter something about Word and Wisdom being only names of the Son [857] , we must ask then, If these are only names of the Son, He must be something else beside them. And if He is higher than the names, it is not lawful from the lesser to denote the higher; but if He be less than the names, yet He surely must have in Him the principle of this more honourable appellation; and this implies his advance, which is an irreligion equal to anything that has gone before. For He who is in the Father, and in whom also the Father is, who says, I and the Father are one [858] ,' whom he that hath seen, hath seen the Father, to say that He has been exalted [859] by anything external, is the extreme of madness. However, when they are beaten hence, and like Eusebius and his fellows, are in these great straits, then they have this remaining plea, which Arius too in ballads, and in his own Thalia [860] , fabled, as a new difficulty: Many words speaketh God; which then of these are we to call Son and Word, Only-begotten of the Father [861] ?' Insensate, and anything but Christians [862] ! for first, on using such language about God, they conceive of Him almost as a man, speaking and reversing His first words by His second, just as if one Word from God were not sufficient for the framing of all things at the Father's will, and for His providential care of all. For His speaking many words would argue a feebleness in them all, each needing the service of the other. But that God should have one Word, which is the true doctrine, both shews the power of God, and the perfection of the Word that is from Him, and the religious understanding of them who thus believe.
17. O that they would consent to confess the truth from this their own statement! for if they once grant that God produces words, they plainly know Him to be a Father; and acknowledging this, let them consider that, while they are loth to ascribe one Word to God, they are imagining that He is Father of many; and while they are loth to say that there is no Word of God at all, yet they do not confess that He is the Son of God,--which is ignorance of the truth, and inexperience in divine Scripture. For if God is Father of a word at all, wherefore is not He that is begotten a Son? And again, who should be Son of God, but His Word? For there are not many words, or each would be imperfect, but one is the Word, that He only may be perfect, and because, God being one, His Image too must be one, which is the Son. For the Son of God, as may be learnt from the divine oracles themselves, is Himself the Word of God, and the Wisdom, and the Image, and the Hand, and the Power; for God's offspring is one, and of the generation from the Father these titles are tokens [863] . For if you say the Son, you have declared what is from the Father by nature; and if you think of the Word, you are thinking again of what is from Him, and what is inseparable; and, speaking of Wisdom, again you mean just as much, what is not from without, but from Him and in Him; and if you name the Power and the Hand, again you speak of what is proper to essence; and, speaking of the Image, you signify the Son; for what else is like God but the offspring from Him? Doubtless the things, which came to be through the Word, these are founded in Wisdom' and what are founded in Wisdom,' these are all made by the Hand, and came to be through the Son. And we have proof of this, not from external sources, but from the Scriptures; for God Himself says by Isaiah the Prophet; My hand also hath laid the foundation of the earth, and My right hand hath spanned the heavens [864] .' And again, And I will cover thee in the shadow of My Hand, by which I planted the heavens, and laid the foundations of the earth [865] .' And David being taught this, and knowing that the Lord's Hand was nothing else than Wisdom, says in the Psalm, In wisdom hast Thou made them all; the earth is full of Thy creation [866] .' Solomon also received the same from God, and said, The Lord by wisdom founded the earth [867] ,' and John, knowing that the Word was the Hand and the Wisdom, thus preached, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; the same was in the beginning with God: all things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made [868] .' And the Apostle, seeing that the Hand and the Wisdom and the Word was nothing else than the Son, says, God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the Fathers by the Prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son, whom He hath appointed Heir of all things, by whom also He made the ages [869] .' And again, There is one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through Him [870] .' And knowing also that the Word, the Wisdom, the Son Himself was the Image of the Father, he says in the Epistle to the Colossians, Giving thanks to God and the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the Saints in light, who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of His dear Son; in whom we have redemption, even the remission of sins; who is the Image of the Invisible God, the First-born of every creature; for by Him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions or principalities or powers; all things were created by Him and for Him; and He is before all things, and in Him all things consist [871] .' For as all things are created by the Word, so, because He is the Image, are they also created in Him [872] . And thus anyone who directs his thoughts to the Lord, will avoid stumbling upon the stone of offence, but rather will go forward to the brightness in the light of truth; for this is really the doctrine of truth, though these contentious men burst with spite [873] , neither religious toward God, nor abashed at their confutation. __________________________________________________________________
[848] The main argument of the Arians was that our lord was a Son, and therefore was not eternal, but of a substance which had a beginning. [Prolegg. ch. ii. §3 (2) a.] Accordingly Athanasius says, Having argued with them as to the meaning of their own selected term "Son," let us go on to others, which on the very face make for us, such as Word, Wisdom, &c.'
[849] 1 Cor. i. 24.
[850] John i. 14.
[851] Vid. supr. §12.
[852] Vid. supr. §1. note 2, bis.
[853] alogos, asophos. Vid. infr., §26. This is a frequent argument in the controversy, viz. that to deprive the Father of His Son or substantial Word (logos), is as great a sacrilege as to deny His Reason, logos, from which the Son receives His name. Thus Orat. i. §14. fin. Athan. says, imputing to God's nature an absence of His Word (alogian or irrationality), they are most irreligious.' Vid. §19. fin. 24. Elsewhere, he says, Is a man not mad himself, who even entertains the thought that God is word-less and wisdom-less? for such illustrations and such images Scripture hath proposed, that, considering the inability of human nature to comprehend concerning God, we might even from these, however poorly and dimly, discern as far as is attainable.' Orat. ii. 32. vid. also iii. 63. iv. 12. Serap. ii. 2.
[854] Vid. above, §1, note 6.
[855] These were among the original positions of the Arians; for the former, see above, note 1; the latter is one of those specified in the Nicene Anathema.
[856] And so pege xera. Serap. ii. 2. Orat. i. §14 fin. also ii. §2, where Athanasius speaks as if those who deny that Almighty God is Father, cannot really believe in Him as a Creator. If the divine substance be not fruitful (karpogonos), but barren, as they say, as a light which enlightens not, and a dry fountain, are they not ashamed to maintain that He possesses the creative energy?' Vid. also pege theotetos, Pseudo-Dion. Div. Nom. c. 2. pege ek peges, of the Son, Epiphan. Ancor. 19. And Cyril, If thou take from God His being Father, thou wilt deny the generative power (karpogonon) of the divine nature so that It no longer is perfect. This then is a token of its perfection, and the Son who went forth from Him apart from time, is a pledge (sphragis) to the Father that He is perfect.' Thesaur. p. 37.
[857] Arius said, as the Eunomians after him, that the Son was not really, but only called, Word and Wisdom, which were simply attributes of God, and the prototypes of the Son. Vid. Socr. i. 6. Theod. H. E. i. 3, and infr. Orat. ii. 37, 38.
[858] John x. 30.
[859] beltiousthai
[860] Vid. de Syn. §15.
[861] As the Arians took the title Son in that part of its earthly sense in which it did not apply to our Lord, so they misinterpreted the title Word also; which denoted the Son's immateriality and indivisible presence in the Father, but did not express His perfection. Vid. Orat. ii. §34-36. contr. Gent. 41. ad Ep. Æg. 16. Epiph. Hær. 65. 3. Nyss. in Eun. xii. p. 349. Origen (in a passage, however, of questionable doctrine), says, As there are gods many, but to us one God the Father, and many lords, but to us one Lord Jesus Christ, so there are many words, but we pray that in us may exist the Word that was in the beginning, with God, and was God.' In Joan. tom. ii. 3. Many things, it is acknowledged, does the Father speak to the Son,' say the Semiarians at Ancyra, but the words which God speaks to the Son, are not sons. They are not substances of God, but vocal energies; but the Son, though a Word, is not such, but, being a Son, is a substance.' Epiph. Hær. 73. 12. The Semiarians are speaking against Sabellianism, which took the same ground here as Arianism; so did the heresy of the Samosatene, who according to Epiphanius, considered our Lord as the internal Word, or thought. Hær. 65. The term word in this inferior sense is often in Greek rhema. Epiph. supr. and Cyril, de Incarn. Unig. init. t. v. i. p. 679.
[862] If they understood and acknowledged the characteristic idea (charaktera) of Christianity, they would not have said that the Lord of glory was a creature.' Ad Serap. ii. 7. In Orat. i. §2, he says, Arians are not Christians because they are Arians, for Christians are called, not from Arius, but from Christ, who is their only Master. Vid. also de Syn. §38. init. Sent. D. fin. Ad Afros. 4. Their cruelty and cooperation with the heathen populace was another reason. Greg. Naz. Orat. 25. 12.
[863] All the titles of the Son of God are consistent with each other, and variously represent one and the same Person. Son' and Word,' denote His derivation; Word' and Image,' His Similitude; Word' and Wisdom,' His immateriality; Wisdom' and Hand,' His coexistence. If He is not Son, neither is He Image' Orat. ii. §2. How is there Word and Wisdom, unless He be a proper offspring of His substance? ii. §22. Vid. also Orat. i. §20. 21. and at great length Orat. iv. §20, &c. vid. also Naz. Orat. 30. n. 20. Basil. contr. Eunom. i. 18. Hilar. de Trin. vii. 11. August. in Joan. xlviii. 6. and in Psalm. xliv. (xlv.) 5.
[864] Is. xlviii. 13.
[865] Is. li. 16.
[866] Ps. civ. 24.
[867] Prov. iii. 19.
[868] John i. 1-3.
[869] Heb. i. 1, 2.
[870] 1 Cor. viii. 6.
[871] Col. i. 12-17
[872] Vid. a beautiful passage, contr. Gent. 42, &c. Again, of men, de Incarn. 3. 3; also Orat. ii. 78. where he speaks of Wisdom as being infused into the world on its creation, that it might possess a type and semblance of its Image.'
[873] diar& 191;agosin, and so Serap. ii. fin. diar& 191;egnuontai. de Syn. 34. diar& 191;eguosin heautous. Orat. ii. §23. sparattetosan heautous. Orat. ii. §64. trizeto tous odontas. Sent. D. 16. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter V.--Defence of the Council's Phrases, "from the essence," And "one in essence." Objection that the phrases are not scriptural; we ought to look at the sense more than the wording; evasion of the Arians as to the phrase "of God" which is in Scripture; their evasion of all explanations but those which the Council selected, which were intended to negative the Arian formulæ; protest against their conveying any material sense.
18. Now Eusebius and his fellows were at the former period examined at great length, and convicted themselves, as I said before; on this they subscribed; and after this change of mind they kept in quiet and retirement [874] ; but since the present party, in the fresh arrogance of irreligion, and in dizziness about the truth, are full set upon accusing the Council, let them tell us what are the sort of Scriptures from which they have learned, or who is the Saint [875] by whom they have been taught, that they have heaped together the phrases, out of nothing [876] ,' and He was not before His generation,' and once He was not,' and alterable,' and pre-existence,' and at the will;' which are their fables in mockery of the Lord. For the blessed Paul in his Epistle to the Hebrews says, By faith we understand that the ages were framed by the Word of God, so that that which is seen was not made of things which do appear [877] .' But nothing is common to the Word with the ages [878] ; for He it is who is in existence before the ages, by whom also the ages came to be. And in the Shepherd [879] it is written (since they allege this book also, though it is not of the Canon [880] ), First of all believe, that God is one, who created all things, and arranged them, and brought all things from nothing into being;' but this again does not relate to the Son, for it speaks concerning all things which came to be through Him, from whom He is distinct; for it is not possible to reckon the Framer of all with the things made by Him, unless a man is so beside himself as to say that the architect also is the same as the buildings which he rears.
Why then, when they have invented on their part unscriptural phrases, for the purposes of irreligion, do they accuse those who are religious in their use of them [881] ? For irreligiousness is utterly forbidden, though it be attempted to disguise it with artful expressions and plausible sophisms; but religiousness is confessed by all to be lawful, even though presented in strange phrases [882] , provided only they are used with a religious view, and a wish to make them the expression of religious thoughts. Now the aforesaid grovelling phrases of Christ's enemies have been shewn in these remarks to be both formerly and now replete with irreligion; whereas the definition of the Council against them, if accurately examined, will be found to be altogether a representation of the truth, and especially if diligent attention be paid to the occasion which gave rise to these expressions, which was reasonable, and was as follows:--
19. The Council [883] wishing to do away with the irreligious phrases of the Arians, and to use instead the acknowledged words of the Scriptures, that the Son is not from nothing but from God,' and is Word' and Wisdom,' and not creature or work, but a proper offspring from the Father, Eusebius and his fellows, led by their inveterate heterodoxy, understood the phrase from God' as belonging to us, as if in respect to it the Word of God differed nothing from us, and that because it is written, There is one God, from whom, all things [884] ;' and again, Old things are passed away, behold, all things are become new, and all things are from God [885] .' But the Fathers, perceiving their craft and the cunning of their irreligion, were forced to express more distinctly the sense of the words from God.' Accordingly, they wrote from the essence of God [886] ,' in order that from God' might not be considered common and equal in the Son and in things originate, but that all others might be acknowledged as creatures, and the Word alone as from the Father. For though all things be said to be from God, yet this is not in the sense in which the Son is from Him; for as to the creatures, of God' is said of them on this account, in that they exist not at random or spontaneously, nor come to be by chance [887] , according to those philosophers who refer them to the combination of atoms, and to elements of similar structure,--nor as certain heretics speak of a distinct Framer,--nor as others again say that the constitution of all things is from certain Angels;--but in that (whereas God is), it was by Him that all things were brought into being, not being before, through His Word; but as to the Word, since He is not a creature, He alone is both called and is from the Father;' and it is significant of this sense to say that the Son is from the essence of the Father,' for to nothing originate does this attach. In truth, when Paul says that all things are from God,' he immediately adds, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom all things [888] ,' in order to shew all men, that the Son is other than all these things which came to be from God (for the things which came to be from God, came to be through His Son); and that he had used his foregoing words with reference to the world as framed by God [889] , and not as if all things were from the Father as the Son is. For neither are other things as the Son, nor is the Word one among others, for He is Lord and Framer of all; and on this account did the Holy Council declare expressly that He was of the essence [890] of the Father, that we might believe the Word to be other than the nature of things originate, being alone truly from God; and that no subterfuge should be left open to the irreligious. This then was the reason why the Council wrote of the essence.'
20. Again, when the Bishops said that the Word must be described as the True Power and Image of the Father, in all things exact [891] and like the Father, and as unalterable, and as always, and as in Him without division (for never was the Word not, but He was always, existing everlastingly with the Father, as the radiance of light), Eusebius and his fellows endured indeed, as not daring to contradict, being put to shame by the arguments which were urged against them; but withal they were caught whispering to each other and winking with their eyes, that like,' and always,' and power,' and in Him,' were, as before, common to us and the Son, and that it was no difficulty to agree to these. As to like,' they said that it is written of us, Man is the image and glory of God [892] :' always,' that it was written, For we which live are alway [893] :' in Him,' In Him we live and move and have our being [894] :' unalterable,' that it is written, Nothing shall separate us from the love of Christ [895] :' as to power,' that the caterpillar and the locust are called power' and great power [896] ,' and that it is often said of the people, for instance, All the power of the Lord came out of the land of Egypt [897] :' and there are others also, heavenly ones, for Scripture says, The Lord of powers is with us, the God of Jacob is our refuge [898] .' Indeed Asterius, by title the sophist, had said the like in writing, having learned it from them, and before him Arius [899] having learned it also, as has been said. But the Bishops discerning in this too their dissimulation, and whereas it is written, Deceit is in the heart of the irreligious that imagine evil [900] ,' were again compelled on their part to collect the sense of the Scriptures, and to re-say and re-write what they had said before, more distinctly still, namely, that the Son is one in essence [901] ' with the Father: by way of signifying, that the Son was from the Father, and not merely like, but the same in likeness [902] , and of shewing that the Son's likeness and unalterableness was different from such copy of the same as is ascribed to us, which we acquire from virtue on the ground of observance of the commandments. For bodies which are like each other may be separated and become at distances from each other, as are human sons relatively to their parents (as it is written concerning Adam and Seth, who was begotten of him that he was like him after his own pattern [903] ); but since the generation of the Son from the Father is not according to the nature of men, and not only like, but also inseparable from the essence of the Father, and He and the Father are one, as He has said Himself, and the Word is ever in the Father and the Father in the Word, as the radiance stands towards the light (for this the phrase itself indicates), therefore the Council, as understanding this, suitably wrote one in essence,' that they might both defeat the perverseness of the heretics, and shew that the Word was other than originated things. For, after thus writing, they at once added, But they who say that the Son of God is from nothing, or created, or alterable, or a work, or from other essence, these the Holy Catholic Church anathematizes [904] .' And by saying this, they shewed clearly that of the essence,' and one in essence,' are destructive of those catchwords of irreligion, such as created,' and work,' and originated,' and alterable,' and He was not before His generation.' And he who holds these, contradicts the Council; but he who does not hold with Arius, must needs hold and intend the decisions of the Council, suitably regarding them to signify the relation of the radiance to the light, and from thence gaining the illustration of the truth.
21. Therefore if they, as the others, make an excuse that the terms are strange, let them consider the sense in which the Council so wrote, and anathematize what the Council anathematized; and then if they can, let them find fault with the expressions. But I well know that, if they hold the sense of the Council, they will fully accept the terms in which it is conveyed; whereas if it be the sense which they wish to complain of, all must see that it is idle in them to discuss the wording, when they are but seeking handles for irreligion. This then was the reason of these expressions; but if they still complain that such are not scriptural, that very complaint is a reason why they should be cast out, as talking idly and disordered in mind. And let them blame themselves in this matter, for they set the example, beginning their war against God with words not in Scripture. However, if a person is interested in the question, let him know, that, even if the expressions are not in so many words in the Scriptures, yet, as was said before, they contain the sense of the Scriptures, and expressing it, they convey it to those who have their hearing unimpaired for religious doctrine. Now this circumstance it is for thee to consider, and for those ill-instructed men to give ear to. It has been shewn above, and must be believed as true, that the Word is from the Father, and the only Offspring [905] proper to Him and natural. For whence may one conceive the Son to be, who is the Wisdom and the Word, in whom all things came to be, but from God Himself? However, the Scriptures also teach us this, since the Father says by David, My heart uttered a good Word [906] ,' and, From the womb before the morning star I begat Thee [907] ;' and the Son signifies to the Jews about Himself, If God were your Father, ye would love Me; for I proceeded forth from the Father [908] .' And again; Not that anyone has seen the Father, save He which is from God, He hath seen the Father [909] .' And moreover, I and My Father are one,' and, I in the Father and the Father in Me [910] ,' is equivalent to saying, I am from the Father, and inseparable from Him.' And John in saying, The Only-begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him, [911] ' spoke of what He had learned from the Saviour. Besides, what else does in the bosom' intimate, but the Son's genuine generation from the Father?
22. If then any man conceives God to be compound, as accident [912] is in essence, or to have any external envelopement [913] , and to be encompassed, or as if there is aught about Him which completes the essence, so that when we say God,' or name Father,' we do not signify the invisible and incomprehensible essence, but something about it, then let them complain of the Council's stating that the Son was from the essence of God; but let them reflect, that in thus considering they utter two blasphemies; for they make God corporeal, and they falsely say that the Lord is not Son of the very Father, but of what is about Him. But if God be simple, as He is, it follows that in saying God' and naming Father,' we name nothing as if about Him, but signify his essence itself. For though to comprehend what the essence of God is be impossible, yet if we only understand that God is, and if Scripture indicates Him by means of these titles, we, with the intention of indicating Him and none else, call Him God and Father and Lord. When then He says, I am that I am,' and I am the Lord God [914] ,' or when Scripture says, God,' we understand nothing else by it but the intimation of His incomprehensible essence Itself, and that He Is, who is spoken of [915] . Therefore let no one be startled on hearing that the Son of God is from the Essence of the Father; but rather let him accept the explanation of the Fathers, who in more explicit but equivalent language have for from God' written of the essence.' For they considered it the same thing to say that the Word was of God' and of the essence of God,' since the word God,' as I have already said, signifies nothing but the essence of Him Who Is. If then the Word is not in such sense from God, as a son, genuine and natural, from a father, but only as creatures because they are framed, and as all things are from God,' then neither is He from the essence of the Father, nor is the Son again Son according to essence, but in consequence of virtue, as we who are called sons by grace. But if He only is from God, as a genuine Son, as He is, then the Son may reasonably be called from the essence of God.
23. Again, the illustration of the Light and the Radiance has this meaning. For the Saints have not said that the Word was related to God as fire kindled from the heat of the sun, which is commonly put out again, for this is an external work and a creature of its author, but they all preach of Him as Radiance [916] , thereby to signify His being from the essence, proper and indivisible, and His oneness with the Father. This also will secure His true unchangableness and immutability; for how can these be His, unless He be proper Offspring of the Father's essence? for this too must be taken to confirm His identity with His own Father. Our explanation then having so religious an aspect, Christ's enemies should not be startled at the One in essence,' either, since this term also has a sound sense and good reasons. Indeed, if we say that the Word is from the essence of God (for after what has been said this must be a phrase admitted by them), what does this mean but the truth and eternity of the essence from which He is begotten? for it is not different in kind, lest it be combined with the essence of God as something foreign and unlike it. Nor is He like only outwardly, lest He seem in some respect or wholly to be other in essence, as brass shines like gold and silver like tin. For these are foreign and of other nature, are separated off from each other in nature and virtues, nor is brass proper to gold, nor is the pigeon born from the dove [917] ; but though they are considered like, yet they differ in essence. If then it be thus with the Son, let Him be a creature as we are, and not One in essence; but if the Son is Word, Wisdom, Image of the Father, Radiance, He must in all reason be One in essence. For unless it be proved that He is not from God, but an instrument different in nature and different in essence, surely the Council was sound in its doctrine and correct in its decree [918] .
24. Further, let every corporeal reference be banished on this subject; and transcending every imagination of sense, let us, with pure understanding and with mind alone, apprehend the genuine relation of son to father, and the Word's proper relation towards God, and the unvarying likeness of the radiance towards the light: for as the words Offspring' and Son' bear, and are meant to bear, no human sense, but one suitable to God, in like manner when we hear the phrase one in essence,' let us not fall upon human senses, and imagine partitions and divisions of the Godhead, but as having our thoughts directed to things immaterial, let us preserve undivided the oneness of nature and the identity of light; for this is proper to a son as regards a father, and in this is shewn that God is truly Father of the Word. Here again, the illustration of light and its radiance is in point [919] . Who will presume to say that the radiance is unlike and foreign to the sun? rather who, thus considering the radiance relatively to the sun, and the identity of the light, would not say with confidence, Truly the light and the radiance are one, and the one is manifested in the other, and the radiance is in the sun, so that whoso sees this, sees that also?' but such a oneness and natural property, what should it be named by those who believe and see aright, but Offspring one in essence? and God's Offspring what should we fittingly and suitably consider, but Word, and Wisdom, and Power? which it were a sin to say was foreign to the Father, or a crime even to imagine as other than with Him everlastingly. For by this Offspring the Father made all things, and extended His Providence unto all things; by Him He exercises His love to man, and thus He and the Father are one, as has been said; unless indeed these perverse men make a fresh attempt, and say that the essence of the Word is not the same as the Light which is in Him from the Father, as if the Light in the Son were one with the Father, but He Himself foreign in essence as being a creature. Yet this is simply the belief of Caiaphas and the Samosatene, which the Church cast out, but these now are disguising; and by this they fell from the truth, and were declared to be heretics. For if He partakes in fulness the light from the Father, why is He not rather that which others partake [920] , that there be no medium introduced between Him and the Father? Otherwise, it is no longer clear that all things were generated by the Son, but by Him, of whom He too partakes [921] . And if this is the Word, the Wisdom of the Father, in whom the Father is revealed and known, and frames the world, and without whom the Father doth nothing, evidently He it is who is from the Father: for all things originated partake of Him, as partaking of the Holy Ghost. And being such, He cannot be from nothing, nor a creature at all, but rather a proper Offspring from the Father, as the radiance from light. __________________________________________________________________
[874] [Prolegg. ch. ii. §6 (2).]
[875] supr. §7, note 2.
[876] ex ouk onton.
[877] Heb. xi. 3.
[878] By aion, age, seems to be meant duration, or the measure of duration, before or independent of the existence of motion, which is in measure of time. As motion, and therefore time, are creatures, so are the ages. Considered as the measure of duration, an age has a sort of positive existence, though not an ousia or substance, and means the same as world,' or an existing system of things viewed apart from time and motion. Vid. Theodt. in Hebr. i. 2. Our Lord then is the Maker of the ages thus considered, as the Apostle also tells us, Hebr. xi. 3. and God is the King of the ages, 1 Tim. i. 17. or is before all ages, as being eternal, or proaionios. However, sometimes the word is synonymous with eternity; as time is to things which are under time, so ages to things which are everlasting.' Damasc. Fid. Orth. ii. 1, and ages of ages' stands for eternity; and then the ages' or measures of duration may be supposed to stand for the ideai or ideas in the Divine Mind, which seems to have been a Platonic or Gnostic notion. Hence Synesius, Hymn iii. addresses the Almighty as aionotoke, parent of the ages. Hence sometimes God Himself is called the Age, Clem. Alex. Hymn. Pæd. iii. fin. or, the Age of ages, Pseudo-Dion. de Div. Nom. 5. p. 580. or again, ai& 240;nios. Theodoret sums up what has been said thus: Age is not any subsisting substance, but is an interval indicative of time, now infinite, when God is spoken of, now commensurate with creation, now with human life.' Hær. v. 6. If then, as Athan. says in the text, the Word is Maker of the ages, He is independent of duration altogether; He does not come to be in time, but is above and beyond it, or eternal. Elsewhere he says, The words addressed to the Son in the 144th Psalm, Thy kingdom is a kingdom of all ages,' forbid any one to imagine any interval at all in which the Word did not exist. For if every interval is measured by ages, and of all the ages the Word is King and Maker, therefore, whereas no interval at all exists prior to Him, it were madness to say, "There was once when the Everlasting (ai& 240;nios) was not." Orat. i. 12. And so Alexander; Is it not unreasonable that He who made times, and ages, and seasons, to all of which belongs was not,' should be said not to be? for, if so, that interval in which they say the Son was not yet begotten by the Father, precedes that Wisdom of God which framed all things.' Theod. Hist. i. 4. vid. also Basil de Sp. S. n. 14. Hilar. de Trin. xii. 34.
[879] Herm. Mand. 1. vid. ad Afr. 5.
[880] [Letter 39, and Prolegg. ch. iv. §4.] He calls it elsewhere a most profitable book. Incarn. 3.
[881] Athan. here retorts, as it was obvious to do, the charge brought against the Council which gave occasion for this Treatise. If the Council went beyond Scripture in the use of the word essence' (which however can hardly be granted), who made this necessary, but they who had already introduced the phrases, the Son was out of nothing,' &c., &c.? Of the essence,' and one in essence,' were directly intended to contradict and supplant the Arian unscriptural innovations, as he says below, §20. fin. 21. init. vid. also ad Afros. 6. de Synod. §36, 37. He observes in like manner that the Arian agenetos, though allowable as used by religious men, de Syn. §40. was unscriptural, Orat. i. §30, 34. Also Epiph. Hær. 76. p. 941. Basil. contr. Eunom. i. 5. Hilar. contr. Const. 16. Ambros. Incarn. 80.
[882] Vid. §10, note 3.
[883] vid. ad. Afr. 5.
[884] 1 Cor. viii. 6.
[885] 2 Cor. v. 17.
[886] Hence it stands in the Creed, from the Father, that is, from the essence of the Father.' vid. Eusebius's Letter, infr. According to the received doctrine of the Church all rational beings, and in one sense all beings whatever, are from God,' over and above the fact of their creation; and of this truth the Arians made use to deny our Lord's proper divinity. Athan. lays down elsewhere that nothing remains in consistence and life, except from a participation of the Word, which is to be considered a gift from Him, additional to that of creation, and separable in idea from it; vid. above, §17, note 5. contr. Gent. 42. de Incarn. 5. Man thus considered is, in his first estate, a son of God and born of God, or, to use the term which occurs so frequently in the Arian controversy, in the number, not only of the creatures, but of things generate, genneta. This was the sense in which the Arians said that our Lord was Son of God; whereas, as Athan. says, things originate, being works, cannot be called generate, except so far as, after their making, they partake of the begotten Son, and are therefore said to have been generated also; not at all in their own nature, but because of their participation of the Son in the Spirit.' Orat. i. 56. The question then was, as to the distinction of the Son's divine generation over that of holy men; and the Catholics answered that He was ex ousias, from the essence of God; not by participation of grace, not by resemblance, not in a limited sense, but really and simply, and therefore by an internal divine act. vid. below, §22. and infr. §31. [The above note has been modified so as to eliminate the erroneous identification of gennetos and genetos.]
[887] Cf. de Syn. §35.
[888] 1 Cor. viii. 6.
[889] When characteristic attributes and prerogatives are ascribed to God, or to the Father, this is done only to the exclusion of creatures, or of false gods, not to the exclusion of His Son who is implied in the mention of Himself. Thus when God is called only wise, or the Father the only God, or God is said to be unoriginate, agenetos, this is not in contrast to the Son, but to all things which are distinct from God. vid. Orat. iii. 8. Naz. Orat. 30, 13. Cyril. Thesaur. p 142. The words "one" and "only" ascribed to God in Scripture,' says S. Basil, are not used in contrast to the Son or the Holy Spirit, but with reference to those who are not God, and falsely called so.' Ep. 8. n. 3. On the other hand, when the Father is mentioned, the other Divine Persons are implied in Him, The Blessed and Holy Trinity,' says S. Athan. is indivisible and one in itself; and when the Father is mentioned, His Word is added, and the Spirit in the Son; and if the Son is named, in the Son is the Father, and the Spirit is not external to the Word.' ad Serap. i. 14.
[890] Vid. also ad Afros. 4. Again, "I am," to on, is really proper to God and is a whole, bounded or mutilated neither by aught before Him, nor after Him, for He neither was, nor shall be.' Naz. Orat. 30. 18 fin. Also Cyril Dial. i. p. 392. Damasc. Fid. Orth. i. 9. and the Semiarians at Ancyra, Epiph. Hær. 73. 12 init. By the essence,' however, or, substance' of God, the Council did not mean any thing distinct from God, vid. note 3 infr. but God Himself viewed in His self-existing nature (vid. Tert. in Hermog, 3.), nay, it expressly meant to negative the contrary notion of the Arians, that our Lord was from something distinct from God, and in consequence of created substance. Moreover the term expresses the idea of God positively, in contradistinction to negative epithets, such as infinite, immense, eternal, &c. Damasc. Fid. Orthod. i. 4. and as little implies any thing distinct from God as those epithets do.
[891] aparallakton
[892] 1 Cor. xi. 7.
[893] 2 Cor. iv. 11.
[894] Acts xvii. 28.
[895] Rom. viii. 35, who shall separate.
[896] Joel ii. 25.
[897] Ex. xii. 41.
[898] Ps. xlvi. 7.
[899] vid. supr. §8, note 3.
[900] Prov. xii. 20.
[901] vid. ad Afros. 5, 6. ad Serap. ii. 5. S. Ambrose tells us, that a Letter written by Eusebius of Nicomedia, in which he said, If we call Him true Son of the Father and uncreate, then are we granting that He is one in essence, homoousion,' determined the Council on the adoption of the term. de Fid. iii. n. 125. He had disclaimed of the essence,' in his Letter to Paulinus. Theod. Hist. i. 4. Arius, however, had disclaimed homoousion already, Epiph. Hær. 69. 7. It was a word of old usage in the Church, as Eusebius of Cæsarea confesses in his Letter, infr. Tertullian in Prax. 13 fin. has the translation unius substantiæ:' (vid. Lucifer de non Parc. p. 218.) as he has de substantia Patris,' in Prax. 4. and Origen perhaps used the word, vid. Pamph. Apol. 5. and Theognostus and the two Dionysii, infr. §25, 26. And before them Clement had spoken of the henosis tes monadikes ousias, the union of the single essence,' vid. Le Quien in Damasc. Fid. Orth. i. 8. Novatian too has per substantiæ communionem,' de Trinit. 31.
[902] The Arians allowed that our Lord was like and the image of the Father, but in the sense in which a picture is like the original, differing from it in substance and in fact. In this sense they even allowed the strong word aparallaktos unvarying [or rather exact] image, vid. beginning of §20. which had been used by the Catholics (vid. Alexander, ap. Theod. Hist. i. 3. p. 740.) as by the Semiarians afterwards, who even added the words kat' ousian, or according to substance.' Even this strong phrase, however, kat' ousian aparallaktos eikon, or aparallaktos homoios, did not appear to the Council an adequate safeguard of the doctrine. Athan. notices de Syn. that like' applies to qualities rather than to essence, §53. Also Basil. Ep. 8. n. 3. while in itself,' says the same Father, it is frequently used of faint similitudes and falling very far short of the original.' Ep. 9. n. 3. Accordingly, the Council determined on the word homoousion as implying, as the text expresses it, the same in likeness,' tauton te homoiosei, that the likeness might not be analogical. vid. the passage about gold and brass, §23 below, Cyril in Joan. 1. iii. c. v. p. 302. [See below de Syn. 15, note 2.]
[903] Gen. v. 3.
[904] vid. Euseb.'s Letter, supr.
[905] gennema, offspring; this word is of very frequent occurrence in Athan. He speaks of it, Orat. iv. 3. as virtually Scriptural. Yet Basil, contr. Eunom. ii. 6-8. explicitly disavows the word, as an unscriptural invention of Eunomius. That the Father begat we are taught in many places: that the Son is an offspring we never heard up to this day, for Scripture says, "unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given."' c. 7. He goes on to say that it is fearful to give Him names of our own to whom God has given a name which is above every name;' and observes that offspring is not the word which even a human father would apply to his son, as for instance we read, Child, (teknon,) go into the vineyard,' and Who art thou, my son?' moreover that fruits of the earth are called offspring (I will not drink of the offspring of this vine'), rarely animated things, except indeed in such instances as, O generation (offspring) of vipers.' Nyssen defends his brother, contr. Eunom. Orat. iii. p 105. In the Arian formula an offspring, but not as one of the offsprings,' it is synonymous with work' or creature.' On the other hand Epiphanius uses it, e.g. Hær. 76. n. 8. and Naz. Orat. 29. n. 2. Eusebius, Demonstr. Ev. iv. 2. Pseudo-Basil. adv. Eunom. iv. p. 280. fin.
[906] Ps. xlv. 1.
[907] Ib. cx. 3.
[908] John viii. 42.
[909] Ib. vi. 46.
[910] Ib. x. 30, and xiv. 10.
[911] Ib. i. 18.
[912] sumbebekos. Cf. Orat. iv. 2. also Orat. i. 36. The text embodies the common doctrine of the Fathers. Athenagoras, however, speaks of God's goodness as an accident, as colour to the body,' as flame is ruddy and the sky blue,' Legat. 24. This, however is but a verbal difference, for shortly before he speaks of His being, to ontos on, and His unity of nature, to monophues, as in the number of episumbebekota auto. Eusebius uses the word sumbebekos in the same way [but see Orat. iv. 2, note 8], Demonstr. Evang. iv. 3. And hence S. Cyril, in controversy with the Arians, is led by the course of their objections to observe, There are cogent reasons for considering these things as accidents sumbebekota in God, though they be not.' Thesaur. p. 263. vid. the following note.
[913] peribole, and so de Syn. §34. which is very much the same passage. Some Fathers, however, seem to say the reverse. E.g. Nazianzen says that neither the immateriality of God nor ingenerateness, present to us His essence.' Orat. 28. 9. And S. Augustine, arguing on the word ingenitus, says, that not every thing which is said to be in God is said according to essence.' de Trin. v. 6. And hence, while Athan. in the text denies that there are qualities or the like belonging to Him, peri auton, it is still common in the Fathers to speak of qualities, as in the passage of S. Gregory just cited, in which the words peri theon occur. There is no difficulty in reconciling these statements, though it would require more words than could be given to it here. Petavius has treated the subject fully in his work de Deo. i. 7-11. and especially ii. 3. When the Fathers say that there is no difference between the divine proprietates' and essence, they speak of the fact, considering the Almighty as He is; when they affirm a difference, they speak of Him as contemplated by us, who are unable to grasp the idea of Him as one and simple, but view His Divine Nature as if in projection (if such a word may be used), and thus divided into substance and quality as man may be divided into genus and difference.
[914] Ex. iii. 14, 15.
[915] In like manner de Synod. §34. Also Basil, The essence is not any one of things which do not attach, but is the very being of God.' contr. Eun. i. 10 fin. The nature of God is no other than Himself, for He is simple and uncompounded.' Cyril Thesaur. p. 59. When we say the power of the Father, we say nothing else than the essence of the Father.' August. de Trin. vii. 6. And so Numenius in Eusebius, Let no one deride, if I say that the name of the Immaterial is essence and being.' Præp. Evang. xi. 10.
[916] Athan.'s ordinary illustration is, as here, not from fire,' but from radiance,' apaugasma, after S. Paul [i.e. Hebrews] and the Author of the Book of Wisdom, meaning by radiance the light which a light diffuses by means of the atmosphere. On the other hand Arius in his letter to Alexander, Epiph. Hær. 69. 7. speaks against the doctrine of Hieracas that the Son was from the Father as a light from a light or as a lamp divided into two, which after all was Arian doctrine. Athanasius refers to fire, Orat. iv. §2 and 10, but still to fire and its radiance. However we find the illustration of fire from fire, Justin. Tryph. 61. Tatian contr. Græc. 5. At this early day the illustration of radiance might have a Sabellian bearing, as that of fire in Athan.'s had an Arian. Hence Justin protests against those who considered the Son as like the sun's light in the heaven,' which when it sets, goes away with it,' whereas it is as fire kindled from fire.' Tryph. 128. Athenagoras, however, like Athanasius, says as light from fire,' using also the word apo& 207;rhoia, effluence: vid. also Orig. Periarch. i. 2. n. 4. Tertull. Ap. 21. Theognostus, quoted infr. §25.
[917] vid. de Syn. §41.
[918] As of the essence' declared that our Lord was uncreate, so one in essence' declared that He was equal with the Father; no term derived from likeness,' even like in essence' answering for this purpose, for such phrases might all be understood of resemblance or representation. vid. §20, notes 8, 9.
[919] Athan. has just used the illustration of radiance in reference to of the essence:' and now he says that it equally illustrates one in essence;' the light diffused from the sun being at once contemporaneous and homogeneous with its original.
[920] Vid. §10 init. note 4.
[921] The point in which perhaps all the ancient heresies concerning our Lord's divine nature agreed, was in considering His different titles to be those of different beings or subjects, or not really and properly to belong to one and the same person; so that the Word was not the Son, or the Radiance not the Word, or our Lord was the Son, but only improperly the Word, not the true Word, Wisdom, or Radiance. Paul of Samosata, Sabellius [?], and Arius, agreed in considering that the Son was a creature, and that He was called, made after, or inhabited by the impersonal attribute called the Word or Wisdom. When the Word or Wisdom was held to be personal, it became the doctrine of Nestorius. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VI.--Authorities in Support of the Council. Theognostus; Dionysius of Alexandria; Dionysius of Rome; Origen.
25. This then is the sense in which they who met at Nicæa made use of these expressions. But next that they did not invent them for themselves (since this is one of their excuses), but spoke what they had received from their predecessors, proceed we to prove this also, to cut off even this excuse from them. Know then, O Arians, foes of Christ, that Theognostus [922] , a learned man, did not decline the phrase of the essence,' for in the second book of his Hypotyposes, he writes thus of the Son:--
"The essence of the Son is not one procured from without, nor accruing out of nothing [923] , but it sprang from the Father's essence, as the radiance of light, as the vapour [924] of water; for neither the radiance, nor the vapour, is the water itself or the sun itself, nor is it alien; but it is an effluence of the Father's essence, which, however, suffers no partition. For as the sun remains the same, and is not impaired by the rays poured forth by it, so neither does the Father's essence suffer change, though it has the Son as an Image of Itself [925] ."
Theognostus then, after previously investigating in the way of an exercise [926] , proceeds to lay down his sentiments in the foregoing words. Next, Dionysius, who was Bishop of Alexandria, upon his writing against Sabellius and expounding at large the Saviour's Economy according to the flesh, and thence proving against the Sabellians that not the Father but His Word became flesh, as John has said, was suspected of saying that the Son as a thing made and originated, and not one in essence with the Father; on this he writes to his namesake Dionysius, Bishop of Rome, to allege in his defence that this was a slander upon him. And he assured him that he had not called the Son made, nay, did confess Him to be even one in essence. And his words ran thus:--
"And I have written in another letter a refutation of the false charge they bring against me, that I deny that Christ was one in essence with God. For though I say that I have not found this term anywhere in Holy Scripture, yet my remarks which follow, and which they have not noticed, are not inconsistent with that belief. For I instanced human birth as being evidently homogeneous, and I observed that undeniably parents differed from their children only in not being the same individuals, otherwise there could be neither parents nor children. And my letter, as I said before, owing to present circumstances I am unable to produce; or I would have sent you the very words I used, or rather a copy of it all, which, if I have an opportunity, I will do still. But I am sure from recollection that I adduced parallels of things kindred with each other; for instance, that a plant grown from seed or from root, was other than that from which it sprang, yet was altogether one in nature with it [927] : and that a stream flowing from a fountain, gained a new name, for that neither the fountain was called stream, nor the stream fountain, and both existed, and the stream was the water from the fountain"
26. And that the Word of God is not a work or creature, but an offspring proper to the Father's essence and indivisible, as the great Council wrote, here you may see in the words of Dionysius, Bishop of Rome, who, while writing against the Sabellians, thus inveighs against those who dared to say so:--
"Next, I may reasonably turn to those who divide and cut to pieces and destroy that most sacred doctrine of the Church of God, the Divine Monarchy [928] , making it as it were three powers and partitive subsistences [929] and god-heads three. I am told that some among you who are catechists and teachers of the Divine Word, take the lead in this tenet, who are diametrically opposed, so to speak, to Sabellius's opinions; for he blasphemously says that the Son is the Father, and the Father the Son, but they in some sort preach three Gods, as dividing the sacred Monad into three subsistences foreign to each other and utterly separate. For it must needs be that with the God of the Universe, the Divine Word is united, and the Holy Ghost must repose [930] and habitate in God; thus in one as in a summit, I mean the God of the Universe, must the Divine Triad [931] be gathered up and brought together. For it is the doctrine of the presumptuous Marcion, to sever and divide the Divine Monarchy into three origins,--a devil's teaching, not that of Christ's true disciples and lovers of the Saviour's lessons. For they know well that a Triad is preached by divine Scripture, but that neither Old Testament nor New preaches three Gods. Equally must one censure those who hold the Son to be a work, and consider that the Lord has come into being, as one of things which really came to be; whereas the divine oracles witness to a generation suitable to Him and becoming, but not to any fashioning or making. A blasphemy then is it, not ordinary, but even the highest, to say that the Lord is in any sort a handiwork. For if He came to be Son, once He was not; but He was always, if (that is) He be in the Father, as He says Himself, and if the Christ be Word and Wisdom and Power (which, as ye know, divine Scripture says), and these attributes be powers of God. If then the Son came into being, once these attributes were not; consequently there was a time, when God was without them; which is most absurd. And why say more on these points to you, men full of the Spirit and well aware of the absurdities which come to view from saying that the Son is a work? Not attending, as I consider, to this circumstance, the authors of this opinion have entirely missed the truth, in explaining, contrary to the sense of divine and prophetic Scripture in the passage, the words, The Lord created me a beginning of His ways unto His works [932] .' For the sense of He created,' as ye know, is not one, for we must understand He created' in this place, as He set over the works made by Him,' that is, made by the Son Himself.' And He created' here must not be taken for made,' for creating differs from making. Is not He thy Father that hath bought thee? hath He not made thee and created thee [933] ?'says Moses in his great song in Deuteronomy. And one may say to them, O reckless men, is He a work, who is the First-born of every creature, who is born from the womb before the morning star [934] ,' who said, as Wisdom, Before all the hills He begets me [935] ?' And in many passages of the divine oracles is the Son said to have been [936] generated, but nowhere to have [937] come into being; which manifestly convicts those of misconception about the Lord's generation, who presume to call His divine and ineffable generation a making [938] . Neither then may we divide into three Godheads the wonderful and divine Monad; nor disparage with the name of work' the dignity and exceeding majesty of the Lord; but we must believe in God the Father Almighty, and in Christ Jesus His Son, and in the Holy Ghost, and hold that to the God of the universe the Word is united [939] . For I,' says He, and the Father are one;' and, I in the Father and the Father in Me.' For thus both the Divine Triad, and the holy preaching of the Monarchy, will be preserved."
27. And concerning the everlasting co-existence of the Word with the Father, and that He is not of another essence or subsistence, but proper to the Father's, as the Bishops in the Council said, you may hear again from the labour-loving [940] Origen also. For what he has written as if inquiring and by way of exercise, that let no one take as expressive of his own sentiments, but of parties who are contending in investigation, but what he [941] definitely declares, that is the sentiment of the labour-loving man. After his prolusions then (so to speak) against the heretics, straightway he introduces his personal belief, thus:--
"If there be an Image of the Invisible God, it is an invisible Image; nay, I will be bold to add, that, as being the likeness of the Father, never was it not. For when was that God, who, according to John, is called Light (for God is Light'), without a radiance of His proper glory, that a man should presume to assert the Son's origin of existence, as if before He was not? But when was not that Image of the Father's Ineffable and Nameless and Unutterable subsistence, that Expression and Word, and He that knows the Father? for let him understand well who dares to say, Once the Son was not,' that he is saying, Once Wisdom was not,' and Word was not,' and Life was not.'"
And again elsewhere he says:--
"But it is not innocent nor without peril, if because of our weakness of understanding we deprive God, as far as in us lies, of the Only-begotten Word ever co-existing with Him; and the Wisdom in which He rejoiced; else He must be conceived as not always possessed of joy."
See, we are proving that this view has been transmitted from father to father; but ye, O modern Jews and disciples of Caiaphas, how many fathers can ye assign to your phrases? Not one of the understanding and wise; for all abhor you, but the devil alone [942] ; none but he is your father in this apostasy, who both in the beginning sowed you with the seed of this irreligion, and now persuades you to slander the Ecumenical Council [943] , for committing to writing, not your doctrines, but that which from the beginning those who were eye-witnesses and ministers of the Word have handed down to us [944] . For the faith which the Council has confessed in writing, that is the faith of the Catholic Church; to assert this, the blessed Fathers so expressed themselves while condemning the Arian heresy; and this is a chief reason why these apply themselves to calumniate the Council. For it is not the terms which trouble them [945] , but that those terms prove them to be heretics, and presumptuous beyond other heresies. __________________________________________________________________
[922] Athanasius elsewhere calls him the admirable and excellent.' ad Serap. iv. 9. He was Master of the Catechetical school of Alexandria towards the end of the third century, being a scholar, or at least a follower of Origen. His seven books of Hypotyposes treated of the Holy Trinity, of angels, and evil spirits, of the Incarnation, and the Creation. Photius, who gives this account, Cod. 106, accuses him of heterodoxy on these points; which Athanasius in a measure admits, as far as the wording of his treatise went, when he speaks of his investigating by way of exercise.' Eusebius does not mention him at all. [His remains in Routh, Rell. iii. 409-414.]
[923] Vid. above §15. fin. God was alone,' says Tertullian, because there was nothing external to Him, extrinsecus; yet not even then alone, for He had with Him, what He had in Himself, His Reason.' in Prax. 5. Non per adoptionem spiritus filius fit extrinsecus, sed naturâ filius est. Origen. Periarch. i. 2. n. 4.
[924] From Wisdom vii. 25. and so Origen, Periarch. i. 2. n. 5. and 9. and Athan. de Sent. Dionys. 15.
[925] It is sometimes erroneously supposed that such illustrations as this are intended to explain how the Sacred Mystery in question is possible, whereas they are merely intended to shew that the words we use concerning it are not self-contradictory, which is the objection most commonly brought against them. To say that the doctrine of the Son's generation does not intrench upon the Father's perfection and immutability, or negative the Son's eternity, seems at first sight inconsistent with what the words Father and Son mean, till another image is adduced, such as the sun and radiance, in which that alleged inconsistency is seen to exist in fact. Here one image corrects another; and the accumulation of images is not, as is often thought, the restless and fruitless effort of the mind to enter into the Mystery, but is a safeguard against any one image, nay, any collection of images being supposed sufficient. If it be said that the language used concerning the sun and its radiance is but popular not philosophical, so again the Catholic language concerning the Holy Trinity may, nay must be, economical, not adequate, conveying the truth, not in the tongues of angels, but under human modes of thought and speech.
[926] en gumnasi& 139; exetasas. And so §27. of Origen, xeton kai gumnazon. Constantine too, writing to Alexander and Arius, speaks of altercation, phusikes tinos gumnasias heneka. Socr. i. 7. In somewhat a similar way, Athanasius speaks of Dionysius writing kat' oikonomian, economically, or with reference to certain persons addressed or objects contemplated, de Sent. D. 6. and 26.
[927] The Arians at Nicæa objected to this image, Socr. i. 8. as implying that the Son was a probole, issue or development, as Valentinus taught. Epiph. Hær. 69. 7. Athanasius elsewhere uses it himself.
[928] By the Monarchy is meant the doctrine that the Second and Third Persons in the Ever-blessed Trinity are ever to be referred in our thoughts to the First as the Fountain of Godhead, vid. §15. note 9, and §19, note 6. It is one of the especial senses in which God is said to be one. Cf. Orat. iii. §15. vid. also iv. §1. The Father is union, henosis,' says S. Greg. Naz. from whom and unto whom are the others.' Orat. 42. 15. also Orat. 20. 7. and Epiph. Hær. 57. 5. Tertullian, before Dionysius, uses the word Monarchia, which Praxeas had perverted into a kind of Unitarianism or Sabellianism, in Prax. 3. Irenæus too wrote on the Monarchy, i.e. against the doctrine that God is the author of evil. Eus. Hist. v. 20. [see S. Iren. fragment 33, Ante-Nic. Lib.] And before him was Justin's work de Monarchia, where the word is used in opposition to Polytheism. The Marcionites, whom Dionysius presently mentions, are also specified in the above extract by Athan. vid. also Cyril. Hier. Cat. xvi. 3. Epiphanius says that their three origins were God, the Creator, and the evil spirit. Hær. 42, 3. or as Augustine says, the good, the just, and the wicked, which may be taken to mean nearly the same thing. Hær. 22. The Apostolical Canons denounce those who baptize into Three Unoriginate; vid. also Athan. Tom. ad Antioch. 5. Naz. Orat. 20. 6. Basil denies treis archikai hupostaseis, de Sp. S. 38. which is a Platonic phrase.
[929] And so Dionysius Alex. in a fragment preserved by S. Basil, If because the subsistences are three, they say that they are partitive, memerismenas, still three there are, though these persons dissent, or they utterly destroy the Divine Trinity.' de Sp. S. n. 72. Athan. expresses the same more distinctly, ou treis hupostaseis memerismenas, Expos. Fid. §2. In S. Greg. Naz. we find ameristos en memerismenois he theotes. Orat. 31. 14. Elsewhere for mem. he substitutes aper& 191;egmenas. Orat. 20. 6. apexenomenas allelon kai diespasmenas. Orat. 23. 6. as infr. xenas allelon pantapasi kechorismenas. The passage in the text comes into question in the controversy about the ex hupostaseos e ousias of the Nicene Creed, of which infr. on the Creed itself in Eusebius's Letter.
[930] emphilochorein
[931] The word trias, usually translated Trinity, is first used by Theophilus, ad Autol. ii. 15. Gibbon remarks that the doctrine of a numerical rather than a generical unity,' which has been explicitly put forth by the Latin Church, is favoured by the Latin language; trias seems to excite the idea of substance, trinitas of qualities.' ch. 21. note 74. It is certain that the Latin view of the sacred truth, when perverted, becomes Sabellianism; and that the Greek, when perverted, becomes Arianism; and we find Arius arising in the East, Sabellius in the West. It is also certain that the word Trinitas is properly abstract; and expresses trias or a three,' only in an ecclesiastical sense. But Gibbon does not seem to observe that Unitas is abstract as well as Trinitas; and that we might just as well say in consequence, that the Latins held an abstract unity or a unity of qualities, while the Greeks by monas taught the doctrine of a one' or a numerical unity. Singularitatem hanc dico (says S. Ambrose), quod Græce monotes dicitur; singularitas ad personam pertinet, unitas ad naturam.' de Fid. v. 1. It is important, however, to understand, that Trinity' does not mean the state or condition of being three, as humanity is the condition of being man, but is synonymous with three persons. Humanity does not exist and cannot be addressed, but the Holy Trinity is a three, or a unity which exists in three. Apparently from not considering this, Luther and Calvin objected to the word Trinity, It is a common prayer,' says Calvin: Holy Trinity, one God, have mercy on us. It displeases me, and savours throughout of barbarism.' Ep. ad Polon. p. 796.
[932] Prov. viii. 22.
[933] Deut. xxxii. 6.
[934] Col. i. 15, and Ps. cx. 3.
[935] Prov. viii. 25.
[936] gegennesthai
[937] gegonenai
[938] gegonenai
[939] This extract discloses to us (in connexion with the passages from Dionysius Alex. here and in the de Sent. D.) a remarkable anticipation of the Arian controversy in the third century. 1. It appears that the very symbol of en hote ouk en, once He was not,' was asserted or implied; vid. also the following extract from Origen, §27. and Origen Periarchon, iv. 28. where mention is also made of the ex ouk onton, out of nothing,' which was the Arian symbol in opposition to of the substance.' Allusions are made besides, to the Father not being always Father,' de Sent. D. 15. and the Word being brought to be by the true Word, and Wisdom by the true Wisdom;' ibid. 25. 2. The same special text is used in defence of the heresy, and that not at first sight an obvious one, which is found among the Arians, Prov. viii. 22. 3. The same texts were used by the Catholics, which occur in the Arian controversy. e.g. Deut. xxxii. 6. against Prov. viii. 22. and such as Ps. cx. 3. Prov. viii. 25. and the two John x. 30. and xiv. 10. 4. The same Catholic symbols and statements are found, e.g. begotten not made,' one in essence,' Trinity,' adiaireton, anarchon, aeigenes, light from light,' &c. Much might be said on this circumstance, as forming part of the proof of the very early date of the development and formation of the Catholic theology, which we are at first sight apt to ascribe to the 4th and 5th centuries. [But see Introd. to de Sent. Dion.]
[940] philoponou, and so Serap. iv. 9. [This place is referred to by Socr. vi. 13.]
[941] ha men hos zeton kai gumnazon ergapse, tauta me hos autou phronountos dechestho tis, alla ton pros erin philoneikounton en to zetein, adeos horizon apophainetai, touto tou philoponou to phronema esti. alla. Certe legendum all' ha, idque omnino exigit sensus. Montfaucon. Rather for adeos read ha de hos, and put the stop at zetein instead of dechestho tis.
[942] Supr. §5.
[943] vid. supr. §4. Orat. i. §7. Ad Afros. 2, twice. Apol. contr. Arian. 7. ad Ep. Æg. 5. Epiph. Hær. 70. 9. Euseb. Vit. Const. iii. 6. The Council was more commonly called megale, vid. supr. §26. The second General Council, a.d. 381, took the name of ecumenical. vid. Can. 6. fin. but incidentally. The Council of Ephesus so styles itself in the opening of its Synodical Letter.
[944] The profession under which the decrees of Councils come to us is that of setting forth in writing what has ever been held orally or implicitly in the Church. Hence the frequent use of such phrases as engraphos exetethe with reference to them. Thus Damasus, Theod. H. E. v. 10. speaks of that apostolical faith, which was set forth in writing by the Fathers in Nicæa.' On the other hand, Ephrem of Antioch speaks of the doctrine of our Lord's perfect humanity being inculcated by our Holy Fathers, but not as yet [i.e. till the Council of Chalcedon] being confirmed by the decree of an ecumenical Council.' Phot. 229. p. 801. (engraphos, however, sometimes relates to the act of subscribing; Phot. ibid. or to Scripture, Clement. Strom. i. init. p. 321.) Hence Athan. says ad Afros. 1. and 2. that the Word of the Lord which was given through the ecumenical Council in Nicæa remaineth for ever;' and uses against its opposers the texts, Remove not the ancient landmark which thy fathers have set' (vid. also Dionysius in Eus. H. E. vii. 7.), and He that curseth his father or his mother, shall surely be put to death.' Prov. xxii. 28. Ex. xxi. 17. vid. also Athan. ad Epict. 1. And the Council of Chalcedon professes to drive away the doctrines of error by a common decree, and renew the unswerving faith of the Fathers,' Act. v. p. 452. [t. iv. 1453 ed. Col.] as,' they proceed, from of old the prophets spoke of Christ, and He Himself instructed us, and the creed of the Fathers has delivered to us,' whereas other faith it is not lawful for any to bring forth, or to write, or to draw up, or to hold, or to teach.' p. 456. [1460 ed. Col.] vid. S. Leo. supr. p. 5. note m. This, however, did not interfere with their adding without undoing. For,' says Vigilius, if it were unlawful to receive aught further after the Nicene statutes, on what authority venture we to assert that the Holy Ghost is of one substance with the Father, which it is notorious was there omitted?' contr. Eutych. v. init.; he gives other instances, some in point, others not. vid. also Eulogius, apud Phot. Cod. 23. pp. 829. 853. Yet to add to the confession of the Church is not to add to the faith, since nothing can be added to the faith. Leo, Ep. 124. p. 1237. Nay, Athan. says that the Nicene faith is sufficient to refute every heresy, ad Max. 5. fin. (also Leo. Ep. 54. p. 956. and Naz. Ep. 102. init.) excepting, however, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit; which explains his meaning. The Henoticon of Zeno says the same, but with the intention of dealing a blow at the Council of Chalcedon. Evagr. iii. 14. p. 345. Aetius at Chalcedon says that at Ephesus and Chalcedon the Fathers did not profess to draw up an exposition of faith, and that Cyril and Leo did but interpret the Creed. Conc. t. 2. p. 428. [t. iv. 1430, 1431 ed. Col. See this whole subject very amply treated in Dr. Pusey's On the Clause, And the Son, pp. 76 sqq.] Leo even says that the Apostles' Creed is sufficient against all heresies, and that Eutyches erred on a point of which our Lord wished no one of either sex in the Church to be ignorant,' and he wishes Eutyches to take the plentitude of the Creed puro et simplici corde.' Ep. 31. p. 857, 8.
[945] Supr. §21. init. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VII.--On the Arian Symbol "Unoriginate." This term afterwards adopted by them; and why; three senses of it. A fourth sense. Unoriginate denotes God in contrast to His creatures, not to His Son; Father the scriptural title instead; Conclusion.
28. This in fact was the reason, when the unsound nature of their phrases had been exposed at that time, and they were henceforth open to the charge of irreligion, that they proceeded to borrow of the Greeks the term Unoriginate [946] , that, under shelter of it, they might reckon among the things originated and the creatures, that Word of God, by whom these very things came to be; so unblushing are they in their irreligion, so obstinate in their blasphemies against the Lord. If then this want of shame arises from ignorance of the term, they ought to have learned of those who gave it them, and who have not scrupled to say that even intellect, which they derive from Good, and the soul which proceeds from intellect, though their respective origins be known, are notwithstanding unoriginated, for they understand that by so saying they do not disparage that first Origin of which the others come [947] . This being the case, let them say the like themselves, or else not speak at all of what they do not know. But if they consider they are acquainted with the subject, then they must be interrogated; for [948] the expression is not from divine Scripture [949] , but they are contentious, as elsewhere, for unscriptural positions. Just as I have related the reason and sense, with which the Council and the Fathers before it defined and published of the essence,' and one in essence,' agreeably to what Scripture says of the Saviour; so now let them, if they can, answer on their part what has led them to this unscriptural phrase, and in what sense they call God Unoriginated? In truth, I am told [950] , that the name has different senses; philosophers say that it means, first what has not yet, but may, come to be;' next, what neither exists, nor can come into being;' and thirdly, what exists indeed, but was neither originated nor had origin of being, but is everlasting and indestructible [951] .' Now perhaps they will wish to pass over the first two senses, from the absurdity which follows; for according to the first, things that already have come to be, and things that are expected to come to be, are unoriginated; and the second is more absurd still; accordingly they will proceed to the third sense, and use the word in it; though here, in this sense too, their irreligion will be quite as great. For if by unoriginated they mean what has no origin of being, nor is originated or created, but eternal, and say that the Word of God is contrary to this, who comprehends not the craft of these foes of God? who but would stone [952] such madmen? for, when they are ashamed to bring forward again those first phrases which they fabled, and which were condemned, the wretches have taken another way to signify them, by means of what they call unoriginate. For if the Son be of things originate, it follows, that He too came to be from nothing; and if He has an origin of being, then He was not before His generation; and if He is not eternal, there was once when He was not [953] .
29. If these are their sentiments they ought to signify their heterodoxy in their own phrases, and not to hide their perverseness under the cloke of the Unoriginate. But instead of this, the evil-minded men do all things with craftiness like their father, the devil; for as he attempts to deceive in the guise of others, so these have broached the term Unoriginate, that they might pretend to speak piously of God, yet might cherish a concealed blasphemy against the Lord, and under a veil might teach it to others. However, on the detecting of this sophism, what remains to them? We have found another,' say the evildoers; and then proceed to add to what they have said already, that Unoriginate means what has no author of being, but stands itself in this relation to things originated. Unthankful, and in truth deaf to the Scriptures! who do everything, and say everything, not to honour God, but to dishonour the Son, ignorant that he who dishonours the Son, dishonours the Father. For first, even though they denote God in this way, still the Word is not proved to be of things originated. For again, as being an offspring of the essence of the Father, He is of consequence with Him eternally. For this name of offspring does not detract from the nature of the Word, nor does Unoriginated take its sense from contrast with the Son, but with the things which come to be through the Son; and as he who addresses an architect, and calls him framer of house or city, does not under this designation allude to the son who is begotten from him, but on account of the art and science which he displays in his work, calls him artificer, signifying thereby that he is not such as the things made by him, and while he knows the nature of the builder, knows also that he whom he begets is other than his works; and in regard to his son calls him father, but in regard to his works, creator and maker; in like manner he who says in this sense that God is unoriginate, names Him from His works, signifying, not only that He is not originated, but that He is maker of things which are so; yet is aware withal that the Word is other than the things originate, and alone a proper offspring of the Father, through whom all things came to be and consist [954] .
30. In like manner, when the Prophets spoke of God as All-ruling, they did not so name Him, as if the Word were included in that All; (for they knew that the Son was other than things originated, and Sovereign over them Himself, according to His likeness to the Father); but because He is Ruler over all things which through the Son He has made, and has given the authority of all things to the Son, and having given it, is Himself once more the Lord of all things through the Word. Again, when they called God, Lord of the powers [955] , they said not this as if the Word was one of those powers, but because while He is Father of the Son, He is Lord of the powers which through the Son have come to be. For again, the Word too, as being in the Father, is Lord of them all, and Sovereign over all; for all things, whatsoever the Father hath, are the Son's. This then being the force of such titles, in like manner let a man call God unoriginated, if it so please him; not however as if the Word were of originated things, but because, as I said before, God not only is not originated, but through His proper Word is He the maker of things which are so. For though the Father be called such, still the Word is the Father's Image, and one in essence with Him; and being His Image, He must be distinct from things originated, and from everything; for whose Image He is, His property and likeness He hath: so that he who calls the Father unoriginated and almighty, perceives in the Unoriginated and the Almighty, His Word and His Wisdom, which is the Son. But these wondrous men, and prompt for irreligion, hit upon the term Unoriginated, not as caring for God's honour, but from malevolence towards the Saviour; for if they had regard to honour and reverent language, it rather had been right and good to acknowledge and to call God Father, than to give Him this name; for in calling God unoriginated, they are, as I said before, calling Him from things which came to be, and as a Maker only, that so they may imply the Word to be a work after their own pleasure; but he who calls God Father, in Him withal signifies His Son also, and cannot fail to know that, whereas there is a Son, through this Son all things that came to be were created.
31. Therefore it will be much more accurate to denote God from the Son and to call Him Father, than to name Him and call Him Unoriginated from His works only; for the latter term refers to the works that have come to be at the will of God through the Word, but the name of Father points out the proper offspring from His essence. And whereas the Word surpasses things originated, by so much and more also doth calling God Father surpass the calling Him Unoriginated; for the latter is non-scriptural and suspicious, as it has various senses; but the former is simple and scriptural, and more accurate, and alone implies the Son. And Unoriginated' is a word of the Greeks who know not the Son: but Father' has been acknowledged and vouchsafed by our Lord; for He knowing Himself whose Son He was, said, I in the Father and the Father in Me [956] ;' and, He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father;' and, I and the Father are one [957] ;' but nowhere is He found to call the Father Unoriginated. Moreover, when He teaches us to pray, He says not, When ye pray, say, O God Unoriginated,' but rather, When ye pray, say, Our Father, which art in heaven [958] .' And it was His Will, that the Summary of our faith should have the same bearing. For He has bid us be baptized, not in the name of Unoriginate and Originate, not into the name of Uncreate and Creature, but into the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit [959] , for with such an initiation we too are made sons verily [960] , and using the name of the Father, we acknowledge from that name the Word in the Father. But if He wills that we should call His own Father our Father, we must not on that account measure ourselves with the Son according to nature, for it is because of the Son that the Father is so called by us; for since the Word bore our body and came to be in us, therefore by reason of the Word in us, is God called our Father. For the Spirit of the Word in us names through us His own Father as ours, which is the Apostle's meaning when he says, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father [961] .'
32. But perhaps being refuted as touching the term Unoriginate also, they will say according to their evil nature, It behoved, as regards our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ also, to state from the Scriptures what is there written of Him, and not to introduce non-scriptural expressions.' Yes, it behoved, say I too; for the tokens of truth are more exact as drawn from Scripture, than from other sources [962] ; but the ill disposition and the versatile and crafty irreligion of Eusebius and his fellows, compelled the Bishops, as I said before, to publish more distinctly the terms which overthrew their irreligion; and what the Council did write has already been shewn to have an orthodox sense, while the Arians have been shewn to be corrupt in their phrases, and evil in their dispositions. The term Unoriginate, having its own sense, and admitting of a religious use, they nevertheless, according to their own idea, and as they will, use for the dishonour of the Saviour, all for the sake of contentiously maintaining, like giants [963] , their fight with God. But as they did not escape condemnation when they adduced these former phrases, so when they misconceive of the Unoriginated which in itself admits of being used well and religiously, they were detected, being disgraced before all, and their heresy everywhere proscribed. This then, as I could, have I related, by way of explaining what was formerly done in the Council; but I know that the contentious among Christ's foes will not be disposed to change even after hearing this, but will ever search about for other pretences, and for others again after those. For as the Prophet speaks, If the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots [964] ', then will they be willing to think religiously, who have been instructed in irreligion. Thou however, beloved, on receiving this, read it by thyself; and if thou approvest of it, read it also to the brethren who happen to be present, that they too on hearing it, may welcome the Council's zeal for the truth, and the exactness of its sense; and may condemn that of Christ's foes, the Arians, and the futile pretences, which for the sake of their irreligious heresy they have been at the pains to frame among themselves; because to God and the Father is due the glory, honour, and worship with His co-existent Son and Word, together with the All-holy and Life-giving Spirit, now and unto endless ages of ages. Amen. __________________________________________________________________
[946] ageneton. Opportunity will occur for noticing this celebrated word on Orat. i. 30-34. where the present passage is partly rewritten, partly transcribed. Mention is also made of it in the De Syn. 46, 47. Athanasius would seem to have been but partially acquainted with the writings of the Anomoeans, whose symbol it was, and to have argued with them from the writings of the elder Arians, who had also made use of it. [On Newman's unfortunate confusion of ageneton and agenneton, see Lightfoot, as quoted in the note on Exp. Fid. §1. Newman's reasons are stated in note 7 to Orat. i. 56.]
[947] Montfaucon quotes a passage from Plato's Phædrus, in which the human soul is called unoriginate and immortal [246 a.];' but Athan. is referring to another subject, the Platonic, or rather the Eclectic [i.e. Neo-Platonic] Trinity. Thus Theodoret, Plotinus, and Numenius, explaining the sense of Plato, say, that he taught Three principles beyond time and eternal, Good, Intellect, and the Soul of all,' de Affect. Cur. ii. p. 750. And so Plotinus himself, It is as if one were to place Good as the centre, Intellect like an immoveable circle round, and Soul a moveable circle, and moveable by appetite.' 4 Ennead. iv. c. 16. vid. Porphyry in Cyril. contr. Julian. viii. t. ult. p. 271. vid. ibid. i. p. 32. Plot. 3 Ennead. v. 2 and 3. Athan.'s testimony that the Platonists considered their three hupostaseis all unoriginate is perhaps a singular one. In 5 Ennead. iv. 1. Plotinus says what seems contrary to it, he de arche agennetos, speaking of his tagathon. Yet Plato, quoted by Theodoret, ibid. p. 749, speaks of eite archen eite archas.
[948] epei malistai, hoti malista, Orat. 1. §36. de Syn. §21. fin. hotan malista, Apol. ad Const. 23. kai malista, de Syn. §42, 54.
[949] Cf. §18, n. 8.
[950] And so de Syn. §46. we have on careful inquiry ascertained, &c.' Again, I have acquainted myself on their account [the Arians'] with the meaning of ageneton.' Orat. i. §30. This is remarkable, for Athan. was a man of liberal education, as his Orat. contr. Gent. and de Incarn. shew, especially, his acquaintance with the Platonic philosophy. Sulpicius too speaks of him as a jurisconsultus, Sacr. Hist. ii. 50. S. Gregory Naz. says, that he gave some attention, but not much, to the subjects of general education, ton enkuklion, that he might not be altogether ignorant, of what he nevertheless despised, Orat. 21. 6. In the same way S. Basil, whose cultivation of mind none can doubt, speaks slightingly of his own philosophical knowledge. He writes of his neglecting his own weakness, and being utterly unexercised in such disquisitions;' contr. Eunom. init. And so in de Sp. §5. he says, that they who have given time' to vain philosophy, divide causes into principal, cooperative,' &c. Elsewhere he speaks of having expended much time on vanity, and wasted nearly all his youth in the vain labour of pursuing the studies of that wisdom which God has made foolishness,' Ep. 223. 2. In truth, Christianity has a philosophy of its own. Thus in the commencement of his Viæ Dux Anastasius says, It is a first point to be understood, that the tradition of the Catholic Church does not proceed upon, or follow, the philosophical definitions in all respects, and especially as regards the mystery of Christ, and the doctrine of the Trinity, but a certain rule of its own, evangelical and apostolical.' p. 20.
[951] Four senses of ageneton are enumerated, Orat. i. §30. 1. What is not as yet, but is possible; 2. what neither has been nor can be; 3. what exists, but has not come to be from any cause; 4. what is not made, but is ever. Only two senses are specified in the de Syn. §46. and in these the question really lies; 1. what is, but without a cause; 2. uncreate.
[952] Ballesthosan para panton, Orat. ii. §28. An apparent allusion to the punishment of blasphemy and idolatry under the Jewish Law. vid. [Ex. xix. 13. and] reference to Ex. xxi. 17, in §27, note 2. Thus, e.g. Nazianzen: While I go up the mount with good heart, that I may become within the cloud, and may hold converse with God, for so God bids; if there be any Aaron, let him go up with me and stand near. And if there be any Nadab or Abihu, or of the elders, let him go up, but stand far off, according to the measure of his purification....But if any one is an evil and savage beast, and quite incapable of science and theology; let him stand off still further, and depart from the mount: or he will be stoned and crushed; for the wicked shall be miserably destroyed. For as stones for the bestial are true words and strong. Whether he be leopard, let him die spots and all,' &c. &c. Orat. 28. 2.
[953] The Arians argued that the word unoriginate implied originate or creature as its correlative, and therefore indirectly signified Creator; so that the Son being not unoriginate, was not the Creator. Athan. answers, that in the use of the word, whether there be a Son does not come into the question. As the idea of Father and Son does not include creation, so that of creator and creature does not include generation; and it would be as illogical to infer that there are no creatures because there is a Son as that there is no Son because there are creatures.
[954] The whole of this passage is repeated in Orat. i. 32. &c. vid. for this particular argument, Basil also, contr. Eunom. i. 16.
[955] i.e. of hosts.
[956] John xiv. 9, 10.
[957] Ib. x. 30.
[958] Matt. vi. 9.
[959] And so S. Basil, Our faith was not in Framer and Work, but in Father and Son were we sealed through the grace in baptism.' contr. Eunom. ii. 22. And a somewhat similar passage occurs Orat. ii. §41.
[960] huiopoioumetha alethos. This strong term truly' or verily' seems taken from such passages as speak of the grace and truth' of the Gospel, John i. 12-17. Again S. Basil says, that we are sons, kurios, properly,' and protos primarily,' in opposition to tropikos, figuratively,' contr. Eunom. ii. 23. S. Cyril too says, that we are sons naturally' phusikos as well as kata charin, vid. Suicer Thesaur. v. hui& 231;s. i. 3. Of these words, alethos, phusikos, kurios, and protos, the first two are commonly reserved for our Lord; e.g. ton alethos hui& 232;n, Orat. ii. §37. hemeis huioi, ouk hos ekeinos phusei kai aletheia, iii. §19. Hilary seems to deny us the title of proper' sons; de Trin. xii. 15; but his proprium' is a translation of idion, not kurios. And when Justin says of Christ ho monos legomenos kurios hui& 232;s, Apol. ii. 6. kurios seems to be used in reference to the word kurios, Lord, which he has just been using, kuriologein being sometimes used by him as others in the sense of naming as Lord,' like theologein. vid. Tryph. 56. There is a passage in Justin's ad Græc. 21. where he (or the writer) when speaking of ego eimi ho hon, uses the word in the same ambiguous sense; ouden gar onoma epi theou kuriologeisthai dunaton, 21; as if kurios, the Lord, by which I am' is translated, were a sort of symbol of that proper name of God which cannot be given. But to return; the true doctrine then is, that, whereas there is a primary and secondary sense in which the word Son is used, primary when it has its formal meaning of continuation of nature, and secondary when it is used nominally, or for an external resemblance to the first meaning, it is applied to the regenerate, not in the secondary sense, but in the primary. S. Basil and S. Gregory Nyssen consider Son to be a term of relationship according to nature' (vid. supr. §10, note 1.), also Basil in Psalm xxviii. 1. The actual presence of the Holy Spirit in the regenerate in substance (vid. Cyril, Dial. 7. p. 638.) constitutes this relationship of nature; and hence after the words quoted from S. Cyril in the beginning of the note, in which he says, that we are sons, phusikos, he proceeds, naturally, because we are in Him, and in Him alone.' vid. Athan.'s words which follow in the text at the end of §31. And hence Nyssen lays down, as a received truth, that to none does the term "proper," kuriotaton, apply, but to one in whom the name responds with truth to the nature,' contr. Eunom. iii. p. 123. And he also implies, p. 117, the intimate association of our sonship with Christ's, when he connects together regeneration with our Lord's eternal generation, neither being dia pathous, or, of the will of the flesh. If it be asked, what the distinctive words are which are incommunicably the Son's, since so much is man's, it is obvious to answer, idios hui& 232;s and monogenes, which are in Scripture, and the symbols of the essence,' and one in essence,' of the Council; and this is the value of the Council's phrases, that, while they guard the Son's divinity, they allow full scope, without risk of entrenching on it, to the Catholic doctrine of the fulness of the Christian privileges. vid. supr. §19, note.
[961] Gal. iv. 6.
[962] Cf. contr. Gent. init. Incarn. 57. ad Ep. Æg. 4. Vit. Ant. 16. And passim in Athan.
[963] And so, Orat. ii. §32, kata tous mutheuomenous gigantas. And so Nazianzen, Orat. 43. 26. speaking of the disorderly Bishops during the Arian ascendancy. Also Socr. v. 10. Sometimes the Scripture giants are spoken of, sometimes the mythological.
[964] Jer. xiii. 23. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Introduction to the de Sententia Dionysii.
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The following tract, like the last, is a letter to a person engaged in discussion with Arians, who were openly finding fault with the Definition of Nicæa, and especially with the word Co-essential (§19). Montfaucon suggests that both epistles were addressed to the same person, the de Decretis (§25) having as it were challenged the Arians to cite passages from Dionysius on behalf of their own doctrine, whereupon their opponent came back to Athanasius with a request for further help. But the language of the first sentence of our present tract seems to imply that Athanasius had not previously heard of the discussions in question. However, slender as such grounds are, the tract furnishes no more decisive indication of date. (On certain expressions which might seem to carry the date back to the lifetime of Arius, see Prolegg. ch. ii. §7.)
Dionysius the Great,' Bishop of Alexandria 233-265, was a pupil of Origen (Eus. H. E. vi. 29), and equally distinguished as a ruler of the Church and as a theologian. In all the controversies of his age (the lapsed, rebaptism, Easter, Paul of Samosata, Sabellianism, the authorship of the Apocalypse) his influence made itself felt, and his writings were very numerous (Westcott in D. C. B. i. p. 851 sq.; a good account of Dionysius in vol. I. of this series, p. 281 note). The most celebrated controversy in which he was involved was that which, a century later, gave rise to the tract before us.
About the period when personal attacks on the Nicene leaders began to be exchanged for overt objections to the Nicene Definitions, the claim was freely made that the fathers' had been condemned by the latter: in other words, that they had held with the Arians (see below §1, aei men prophaseis...nun de kai diaballein tous pateras tetolmekasi). Accordingly we find Athanasius at about the same date, viz. early in the sole reign of Constantius, vindicating on the one hand the work of the Council, on the other the orthodox reputation of Dionysius. The Arians found material for their appeal to the latter in a letter addressed by him to certain bishops in Pentapolis, called Ammon and Euphranor. Whether or no Sabellius had been a native of that province, at any rate his doctrine was at that time so popular there that the Son of God was scarcely any longer preached in the Churches.' Exercising the right of supervision over those districts which had already become vested by prescription in the Alexandrian See, Dionysius wrote to Ammon, Bishop of Berenice, (Euseb. H. E. vii. 26, who enumerates three several letters to Ammon, Telesphorus, and Euphranor, and a fourth to Ammon and Euporus: he also refers to his letters to Dionysius of Rome: Montfaucon is therefore scarcely fair in charging Eusebius with suppressing the episode ne verbum quidem de hac historia fecerit!') insisting on the distinctness of the Son from the Father. In doing so he used strong expressions akin to the language of Origen on the subordination of the Son. These expressions were at once objected to by certain orthodox churchmen (§13, it is not clear whether they belonged to Pentapolis or Alexandria), who without consulting Dionysius went to Rome (about 260), and spoke against him in the presence of his namesake, the Roman Bishop. The latter, true to the traditions of his See since the time of Callistus (see Hipp. Philos IX. vii. ditheoi este), while steering clear of Sabellianism, was especially jealous of error in the opposite direction. Accordingly he assembled a synod (de Synod. 44), and drew up a letter to Alexandria, in which he rebuked firstly the Sabellians, but secondly and more fully those who separate the Godhead or speak of the Son as a work, including under this category certain unnamed catechists and teachers of Alexandria (De Decr. 26). At the same time he wrote personally to Dionysius, informing him that he was accused of maintaining the opinions in question. In answer to this letter, Dionysius of Alexandria drew up a treatise in four books, entitled Refutation and Defence,' and addressed to his namesake of Rome, in which he explained his language, and stated his belief in a manner which put an end to the controversy. He had been charged with maintaining that the Son was made, that He was not eternal (ouk aei en ho theos pater, ouk aei en ho huios,...ouk en prin gennethe, all' en pote hote ouk en k.t.l. §14), that he denied the co-essentiality (homoousion) of the Son, and separated Him from the Father (§16, 18, cf. § 4, xenon kat' ousian k.t.l). In his Refutation and Defence, Dionysius admits the use of these expressions, withdraws the first (§15, line 1) and admits the propriety of the homoousion, although he himself prefers Scriptural language (§ 18. The section shews the unfixed use of the word. Dionysius had formerly used ousia in the sense of prote ousia, nearly as equivalent to hupostasis: but now he clearly takes it as deutera ousia, indicative not of Person but of Nature). That the Son was made, he explains as an inadequate formula, the word being applicable (in one of its many senses) to the relation of son to father (§20. The defence of Athanasius, that Dionysius referred to the Human Nature of Christ, is scarcely tenable. It is not supported by what Dionysius himself says, rather the contrary: and if his language did not refer to the Trinity, where would be its relevancy against Sabellianism?). The words en hote ouk en, and ouk en prin gennethe, he does not explain, but professes his belief in the eternal union of the Word with the Father (§§24, 25). Lastly, he repudiates the charge of dividing the Holy Trinity, or of mentioning Father and Son as though separate Beings: When I mention the Father, I have already mentioned the Son, before I pronounce His Name (§17, the closing words of the section are a complete formula of agreement with all that his Roman namesake could possibly require of him).
That Dionysius in his Refutation and Defence' merely restated, and did not (kat' oikonomian) alter, his theological position is open to no doubt. Athanasius, not the Arians, had the right to claim him as his own. He is clearly speaking optima fide when he deprecates the pressing of statements in which he had given expression to one side only, and that the less essential side, of his convictions. At the same time we cannot but see that the Arians had good prima facie ground for their appeal. Here were their special formulæ, those anathematised at Nicæa, en pote hote ouk en and the rest, adopted, and the homoousion implicitly rejected, by the most renowned bishop Alexandria had yet had. (Newman, in de Decr. 26, note 7, fails to appreciate the reference to the language of Dion. Alex.) Moreover it is only fair to admit that not only in language, but in thought also, Athanasius had advanced upon his predecessors of the Alexandrian School. The rude shock of Arianism had shewn him and the other Nicene leaders the necessity of greater consistency than had characterised the theology of Origen and his school, a consistency to be gained only by breaking with one side of it altogether. While on the one hand Origen held fast to the Godhead of the Logos (kat' ousian esti theos), and to His co-eternity with the Father (aei gennatai ho soter hupo tou patros, and see de Decr. §27); he had yet, using ousia in its first' sense, spoken of Him as heteros kat' ousian tou patros (de Orat. 15), and placed him, after the manner of Philo, as an intermediary between God and the Universe. He had spoken of the unity of the Father and the Son as moral (Cels. viii. 12, te homonoi& 139; kai te sumphoni& 139;), insisted upon the huperoche of the Father (i.e. subordination' of the Son), and spoken (De Orat) as though the highest worship of all were to be reserved for the Father (Jerome ascribes still stronger language to him). Yet there is no real doubt that, as regards the core of the question, Athanasius and not his opponents is the true successor of Origen. The essential difference between Athanasius and the Conservatives' of the period following the great council consisted in the fact that the former saw clearly what the latter failed to realise, namely the insufficiency of the formulæ of the third century to meet the problem of the fourth. We may then, without disparagement to Dionysius, admit that he was not absolutely consistent in his language; that he failed to distinguish the ambiguities which beset the words ousia, hupostasis, and even poiein and genesthai, and that he used language (ouk en prin gennethe and the like) which we, with our minds cleared by the Arian controversy, cannot reconcile with the more deliberate and guarded statements of the Refutation and Defence [965] .'
The controversy of the two Dionysii has another interesting side, as bearing upon the means then employed for dealing with questions affecting the Church as a whole,--and in particular upon the position of the Roman Church as the natural referee in such questions. (Cf. Prolegg. ch. iv. §4.) This is not the place for a general discussion of the question, or for an attempt to trace its history previous to the case before us. But it should be noted, firstly, that when the Pentapolite (?) opponents of Dionysius desire a lever against him, their first resource is not a council of local bishops, but the Roman Church: secondly, that the Roman bishop takes up the case, and writes to his Alexandrian namesake for an explanation: thirdly, that the explanation asked for is promptly given. Unfortunately the fragment of the Roman letter preserved to us by Athanasius tells us nothing of the form of the intervention, whether it was the request of one co-trustee to another for an explanation of the latter's action in a matter concerning their common trust, or whether it was coupled with any assumption of jurisdiction at all like that involved in the letter of the Bishop of Alexandria to those of Libya. At any rate, the latter alternative has no positive evidence in our documents; and the fragments of the Refutation and Defence shew the most complete and resolute independence. There is nothing in the narrative of Athanasius which implies that the Alexandrine Bishop recognised or that the Roman Bishop claimed any dogmatic authority as belonging to the Imperial See.' The letter of Dionysius of Rome is certainly highly characteristic of the indifference to theological reasoning and the close adherence to the rule of faith as the authoritative solution of all questions of doctrine which marks the genius of Rome as contrasted with that of Alexandria (see Gore, The Church and the Ministry, ch. i. sub fin., and Harnack, Dg. i. 686, who observes upon the striking family likeness between this letter and that of Leo to Flavian, and of Agatho to the Sixth Ecumenical Council). Lastly, the Roman Church, which never troubled about a precedent adverse to her imperial instinct, never forgot one which favoured it. The intervention of Dionysius was treasured up in her memory, and, when the time came, fully exploited (supr. p. 113, note 3, where the note distinguishes somewhat too carefully between the Pope' of Rome and the Bishop,' papas, of Alexandria).
The tract of Athanasius, with his extracts in de Decr. and de Syn., tell us all that we know of the history of this important controversy. Dionysius had previously (Eus. H. E. vii. 6) had some correspondence with Xystus, the previous Bishop of Rome, on the subject of the Sabellian teaching current in the Pentapolis. He was in fact during his episcopate in constant communication with Rome and with the other important churches of the Christian World. His letters are much used in the sixth and seventh books of the History of Eusebius, to whom we are indebted for most of our knowledge of his writings.
The general arrangement of the tract is as follows:--
§1-4 are prefatory, the fourth section broadly indicates the line of the defence. §§5-12 deal with the incriminated passages: Athan. gives the history of them, and lays stress on their incomplete presentation of the belief of Dionysius, as having been written for a special purpose,--as may also be said of much of the language of the Apostles. But even in themselves the expressions of Dionysius are orthodox, referring (as Athanasius claims) to Christ as man. In §§13-23 he turns to the Refutation and Defence, from which he makes copious extracts, bringing out the diametrical opposition between Dionysius and the Arians. In §§24, 25 the anti-Arian doctrine of Dionysius is summed up, and §26 recapitulates the main points of §§5-12. He concludes (§27) by claiming a verdict upon the evidence, and urging upon the Arians the alternative of abandoning their error, or of being left with the devil as their only partisan. __________________________________________________________________
[965] It may be added that the letter to Paul of Samosata quoted by Bull, Def. III. iv. 3, Petavius, Trin. I. iv. is not genuine. Posterity, which enveloped the name of Origen with storms of controversy, did not entirely spare his pupil: Basil (Ep. 41) taxes him with sowing the first seeds of the Anomoean heresy, Gennadius (Eccl. Dogm. iv.) calls him Fons Arii.' __________________________________________________________________
On the Opinion of Dionysius.
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Letter of Athanasius concerning Dionysius, Bishop of Alexandria, shewing that he too was against the Arian heresy, like the Synod of Nicæa, and that the Arians in vain libel him in claiming him as on their side.
1. The Arian appeal to Dionysius a slander against him.
You have been tardy in informing me of the present argument between yourself and the enemies of Christ; for even before your courtesy wrote to me, I had made diligent enquiry, and learnt about the matter, of which I heard with pleasure. I approved of the right opinion entertained by your piety concerning our blessed fathers, while on the present occasion I once more recognise the unreasonableness of the Arian madmen. For whereas their heresy has no ground in reason, nor express proof from holy writ, they were always resorting to shameless subterfuges and plausible fallacies. But they have now also ventured to slander the fathers: and this is not inconsistent, but fully of a piece with their perversity. For what marvel is it if men who have presumed to take counsel against the Lord and against His Christ,' are also vilifying the blessed Dionysius, Bishop of Alexandria, as a partisan and accomplice of their own? For if they are pleased to extol a man, for the support of their own heresy, even if they call him blessed, they cast upon him no slight affront, but a great one indeed; just like robbers or men of evil life who, when branded for their own practices, claim sober persons as being of their number, and thus defame their sober character.
2. The Arian position inconsistent with Holy Scripture.
If then they have confidence in their opinions and statements, let them broach their heresy nakedly, and shew from it if they think they have any religious argument whether from Scripture, or from human reason, in their defence. But if they have nothing of the kind, let them hold their peace. For they will find nothing from any quarter except the greater condemnation of themselves. Firstly from the Scriptures, in that John says, In the beginning was the Word;' whereas they say, he was not before he was begotten:' while David sings, in the character of the Father, my heart uttered a good Word' (Ps. xlv. 1, LXX), whom they allege to be in thought only, and originated from nothing. Further, whereas John once more says in the Gospel (i. 3), all things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made,' while Paul writes, there is one Lord Jesus Christ by whom are all things' (1 Cor. viii. 6), and elsewhere, all things were created in Him' (Col. i. 16), how will they have the boldness (or rather how will they escape disgrace) to oppose the sayings of the saints, by saying that the artificer of all things is a creature, and that He is a created thing in whom all things created have come into being and subsist? Nor, secondly, is any religious argument from human reason left them in their defence. For what man, Greek or barbarian, presumes to call one, whom he confesses to be God, a created thing, or to say that he was not before he was made? or what man, when he has heard Him whom he believes to be God alone say, This is My beloved Son' (Mat. iii. 17), and my heart uttered a good Word,' will venture even to say that the Word out of the heart of God has come to being out of nothing? or that the Son is a created thing and not the very offspring of Him that speaks? or again, who that hears Him whom he believes to be Lord and Saviour say, I am in the Father and the Father in Me,' and I and the Father are one' (John xiv 10; x. 30), will presume to put asunder what He has made one and maintained indivisible?
3. The Arians appeal to Dionysius as the Jews did to Abraham: but with equally little reason.
Seeing this themselves, accordingly, and having no confidence in their own position, they utter falsehoods against religious men. But it would be better for them, when isolated, and perceiving that under examination they were at a loss and put to silence on all sides, rather to have turned back from the way of error and not to claim men whom they do not know, lest being confuted by them also they should carry off all the more disgrace. But perhaps they do not wish ever to depart from this wickedness of theirs; for they emulate this characteristic of Caiaphas and his party, just as they have learned from them to deny Christ. For they too, when the Lord had done so so many works, by which He shewed Himself to be the Christ the Son of the Living God, and being convicted by him, from thenceforth in all things thinking and speaking against the Scripture, and unable for a moment to face the proofs against themselves, betook themselves to the patriarch with the words, We have Abraham to our father' (Matt. iii. 9), thus thinking to cloke their own unreasonableness. But neither did they gain anything by these words, nor will these men, by speaking of Dionysius, be able to escape the guilt of the others. For the Lord convicted the latter of their wicked deeds by the words, This did not Abraham' (John viii. 40), while the same truth again shall convict these men of their impiety and falsehood. For the Bishop Dionysius did not hold with Arius, nor was he ignorant of the truth. On the contrary, both the Jews of that day, and the new Jews of the present day inherited their mad enmity against Christ from their father the devil. Well then, a strong proof that here once more these men are saying what is not true, but are maligning the man, is the fact that neither was he condemned and expelled from the church for impiety by other bishops, as these men have been from the clergy, nor did he of his own accord leave the church as the partisan of a heresy, but died honourably within it, and his memory is retained and registered along with the fathers to the present day. For if he had held with these men, or not vindicated what he had written, without doubt he too would have been treated as these men have been.
4. The Arian appeal to Dionysius based upon an isolated fragment of his teaching to the neglect of the rest.
And indeed this would suffice for the entire refutation of the new Jews, who both deny the Lord and slander the fathers and attempt to deceive all Christians. But since they think they have, in certain parts of the bishop's letter, pretexts for their slander of him, come let us look at these also, so that even from them the futility of the reasoning may be exposed, and they may at length cease from their blasphemy against the Lord, and at any rate with the soldiers (Mat. xxvii. 54), when they see creation witnessing, confess that truly He is the Son of God, and not one of created things. They say then that in a letter the blessed Dionysius has said, that the Son of God is a creature and made, and not His own by nature, but in essence alien from the Father, just as the husbandman is from the vine, or the ship-builder from the boat, for that being a creature He was not before He came to be.' Yes, he wrote it, and we too admit that his letter runs thus. But just as he wrote this, he also wrote very many other letters, and they ought to consult those also; in order that the faith of the man may be made clear from them all, and not from this alone. For the art of a ship-builder who has constructed many triremes is judged of not from one, but from all. If therefore he simply wrote this letter of which they speak as an exposition of his faith, or if this was his only letter, let them accuse him to their hearts' content,--for this suggestion really amounts to an accusation,--but if he was led to write as he did by the occasion and the person [966] concerned, while he also wrote other letters, defending himself where he had been suspected, in that case they ought not to have neglected the reasons, and hastily cast a slur upon the man, lest they should appear to be hunting merely stray expressions, while passing over the truth to be found in his other letters. For a husbandman also treats trees of the same sort now in one way now in another, according to the character of the soil he has to do with: nor would any one blame him because he cuts one, grafts another, plants another, and another again takes up. On the contrary, upon learning the reason, he all the more admires the versatility of his skill. Well then, unless they have consulted the writing superficially let them state the main subject of the letter; for so the malignity and unscrupulous character of their design will come out. But since they do not know, or are ashamed to state it, we must state it ourselves.
5. The occasion of Dionysius' writing against the Sabellians.
At that date certain of the Bishops in Pentapolis, Upper Libya, held with Sabellius. And they were so successful with their opinions that the Son of God was scarcely any longer preached in the churches. Dionysius having heard of this, as he had the charge [967] of those churches, sends men to counsel the guilty ones to cease from their error, but as they did not cease, but waxed more shameless in their impiety, he was compelled to meet their shameless conduct by writing the said letter, and to expound from the Gospels the human nature of the Saviour, in order that since those men waxed bolder in denying the Son, and in ascribing His human actions to the Father, he accordingly by demonstrating that it was the Son and not the Father that was made man for us, might persuade the ignorant persons that the Father is not a Son, and so by degrees lead them up to the true Godhead of the Son and the knowledge of the Father. This is the main subject of the letter, and this is the reason why he wrote it, by reason of those who so shamelessly had chosen to alter the true faith.
6. Dionysius did not express his full opinion in the passages alleged.
Well then, what is there in common between the heresy of Arius and the opinion of Dionysius: or why is Dionysius to be called like Arius, when they differ widely? For the one is a teacher of the Catholic Church, while the other has been the inventor of a new heresy. And while Arius to expound his own error wrote a Thaleia in an effeminate and ridiculous style like Sotades the Egyptian, Dionysius not only wrote other letters also, but composed a defence of himself upon the suspicious points, and came out clearly as of right opinions. If then his writings are inconsistent, let them not draw him to their side, for on this assumption he is not worthy of credit. But if, when he had written his letter to Ammonius, and fallen under suspicion, he made his defence so as to better [968] what he had previously said, but did so without changing, it must be evident that he wrote the suspected passages in a qualified sense [969] . But what is written or done in such a sense men have no business to construe maliciously, or wrest each one to a meaning of his own. For even a physician frequently in accordance with his knowledge applies to the wounds he has to deal with, remedies which to some seem unsuitable with a view to nothing but health. In like manner it is the practice of a wise teacher to arrange and deliver his lessons with reference to the characters of his pupils, until he has brought them over to the way of perfection.
7. The language of the Apostles needs similar caution in particular passages.
But if they accuse the blessed man (for the arguments of the Arians about him are in fact accusations against him) simply for writing thus, what will they do when they hear even the great and blessed Apostles in the Acts, firstly Peter saying (Acts ii. 22), Ye men of Israel hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God unto us by mighty works and wonders and signs which God did by Him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves know: Him, being delivered up by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye by the hand of lawless men did crucify and slay;' and again (ib. iv. 10), In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, Whom ye crucified, Whom God raised from the dead, even in Him doth this man stand here before you whole;' and Paul, relating (ib. xiii. 22) in Antioch of Pisidia how God, when He had removed Saul, raised up David to be king; to whom also He bare witness and said, I have found David the Son of Jesse, a man after my heart, who shall do My will. Of this man's seed hath God according to promise brought unto Israel a Saviour, Jesus;' and again at Athens (ib. xvii. 30), The times of ignorance therefore God overlooked; but now He commandeth men that they should all everywhere repent: inasmuch as He hath appointed a day in the which He will judge the world in righteousness by means of the man whom He hath ordained, whereof He hath given assurance unto all men, in that He hath raised Him from the dead;' or Stephen, the great martyr, when he says, Behold I see the heavens opened and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God.' Why, it is high time for them to brazen it out (for there is nothing too daring for them) and claim that the very apostles held with Arius: for they declare Christ to have been a man from Nazareth, and passible.
8. The Apostles spoke of Christ as man, but also as God.
Well then, such being the imaginations of these men, did the Apostles, since they used the above language, regard Christ as only a man and nothing more? God forbid. The very idea is out of the question. But here too they have acted as wise master-builders and stewards of the mysteries of God. And they have good reason for it. For inasmuch as the Jews of that day, in error themselves and misleading the Gentiles, thought that the Christ was coming as a mere man of the seed of David, after the likeness of the rest of the children of David's descent, and would neither believe that He was God nor that the Word was made flesh; for this reason it was with much wisdom that the blessed Apostles began by proclaiming to the Jews the human characteristics of the Saviour, in order that by fully persuading them from visible facts, and from miracles which were done, that the Christ was come, they might go on to lead them up to faith in His Godhead, by shewing that the works He had done were not those of a man but of God. Why, Peter, who calls Christ a man capable of suffering, at once went on (Acts iii. 15) to add, He is Prince of Life,' while in the Gospel he confesses, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.' But in his Epistle he calls Him Bishop of souls and Lord both of himself and of angels and Powers. Paul, again, who calls Christ a man of the seed of David, wrote thus to the Hebrews (i. 3), Who being the brightness of His glory and the very image of His subsistence,' and to the Philippians (ii. 6), Who being in the form of God counted it not a prize to be on an equality with God.' But what can it mean to call him Prince of Life, Son of God, brightness, express image, on an equality with God, Lord, and Bishop of souls, if not that in the body He was Word of God, by whom all things were made and is as indivisible from the Father as is the brightness from the light?
9. Dionysius must be interpreted like the Apostles.
And Dionysius accordingly acted as he learned from the Apostles. For as the heresy of Sabellius was creeping on, he was compelled, as I said before, to write the aforesaid letter, and to hurl at them what is said of the Saviour in reference to His manhood and His humiliation, so as to bar them by reason of His human attributes from saying that the Father was a son, and so render easier for them the teaching concerning the Godhead of the Son, when in his other letters he calls Him from the Scriptures the word, wisdom, power, breath (Wisd. vii. 25), and brightness of the Father. For example, in the letters written in his defence, speaking as I have described, he waxes bold in the faith, and in piety towards Christ. As then the Apostles are not to be accused by reason of their human language about the Lord,--because the Lord has been made man,--but are all the more worthy of admiration for their wise reserve and seasonable teaching, so Dionysius is no Arian on account of his letter to Euphranor and Ammonius against Sabellius. For even if he did use humble phrases and examples, yet they too are from the Gospels, and his justification for them is the Saviour's coming in the flesh, on account of which not only these things, but others like them are written. For just as He is Word of God, so afterwards the Word was made flesh;' and while in the beginning was the Word; the Virgin at the consummation of the ages conceived, and the Lord has become man. And He who is indicated by both statements is one Person, for the Word was made flesh.' But the expressions used about His Godhead, and His becoming man, are to be interpreted with discrimination and suitably to the particular context. And he that writes of the human attributes of the Word knows also what concerns His Godhead: and he who expounds concerning His Godhead is not ignorant of what belongs to His coming in the flesh: but discerning each as a skilled and approved money-changer [970] ,' he will walk in the straight way of piety; when therefore he speaks of His weeping, he knows that the Lord, having become man, while he exhibits his human character in weeping, as God raises up Lazarus; and He knows that He used to hunger and thirst physically, while divinely He fed five thousand persons from five loaves; and knows that while a human body lay in the tomb, it was raised as God's body by the Word Himself.
10. The expressions of Dionysius claimed by the Arians refer to Christ as Man.
Dionysius, teaching exactly thus, in his letter to Euphranor and Ammonius wrote in view of Sabellius concerning the human predicates of the Saviour. For to the latter class belong the sayings, I am the Vine and My Father the Husbandman' (Joh. xv. 1), and faithful to Him that made Him' (Heb. iii. 2), and He created me' (Prov. viii. 22), and made so much better than the angels' (Heb. i. 4). But He was not ignorant of the passages, I am in the Father and the Father in Me' (Joh. xiv. 10), and He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.' For we know that he mentioned them in his other Epistles. For while mentioning them there, he made mention also of the human attributes of the Lord. For just as being in the form of God He counted it not a prize to be on an equality with God, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a slave' (Phil. ii. 6), and though He was rich, yet for our sakes He became poor,' so while there are high and rich descriptions of His Deity, there are also those which relate to His coming in the flesh, humble expressions and poor. But that these are used of the Saviour as man is apparent on the following grounds. The husbandman is different in essence from the vine, while the branches are of one essence and akin to it, and are in fact undivided from the vine, it and they having one and the same origin. But, as the Lord said, He is the vine, we are the branches. If then the Son is of one essence with ourselves, and has the same origin as we, let us grant that in this respect the Son is diverse in essence from the Father, like as the vine is from the husbandman. But if the Son is different from what we are, and He is the Word of the Father while we are made of earth, and are descendants of Adam, then the above expression ought not to be referred to the deity of the Word, but to His human coming. Since thus also has the Saviour said: I am the vine, ye are the branches, My Father is the husbandman.' For we are akin to the Lord according to the body, and for that reason he said (Heb. ii. 12, Ps. xxii. 22), I will declare thy name unto my brethren.' And just as the branches are of one essence with the vine, and are from it, so we also having our bodies homogeneous with the Lord's body, receive of His fulness (Joh. i. 16), and have that body as our root [971] for our resurrection and our salvation. But the Father is called the husbandman, for He it was who by His Word cultivated the Vine, namely the manhood of the Saviour, and who by His own Word prepared for us a way to a kingdom; and none cometh to the Lord except the Father draw him to Him (Joh. vi. 44).
11. The same is true of the analogous language of the Apostles.
This then being the sense of the expression, it follows that it is of the vine, so understood, that it is written: Who was faithful to Him that had created Him' (Heb. iii. 2), and made so much better than the angels' (ib. i. 4), and He created me' (Prov. viii. 22). For when He had taken that which He had to offer on our behalf, namely His body of the Virgin Mary, then it is written of Him that He had been created, and formed, and made: for such phrases are applicable to men. Moreover not after (His taking) the body has He been made better than the angels, lest He should appear to have been previously less than or equal to them. But writing to Jews, and comparing the human ministry of the Lord to Moses, he said, having been made so much better than the angels,' for by means of angels the law was spoken, because the law was given by Moses, but grace came by Jesus Christ' (Joh. i. 17), and the gift of the Spirit. And whereas in those days the law was preached from Dan to Beersheba, now their sound is gone out into all lands' (Rom. x. 18; Ps. xix. 3), and the Gentiles worship Christ, and through Him know the Father. The above things then are written of the Saviour as man, and not otherwise.
12. The passages alleged from Dionysius are, when rightly understood, strictly orthodox.
Well then, did Dionysius, as the adversaries of Christ reiterate, when writing of the human characteristics of the Son, and so calling Him a creature, mean that he was one man among others? Or when he said that the Word was not proper to the essence of the Father, did he hold that He was of one essence with us men? Certainly he did not write thus in his other epistles. but in them not only manifests a correct opinion, but as good as cries out by them against these people, saying as it were: I am not of the same opinion as you, you adversaries of God, nor did my writings furnish Arius with a pretext for impiety. But writing to Ammon and Euphranor on account of the Sabellianisers, I made mention of the vine and the husbandman and used other like expressions, in order that, by pointing out the human characteristics of the Lord, I might persuade those men not to say that it is the Father who was made man. For like as the husbandman is not the vine, so He that came in the body was not the Father but the Word; and the Word having come to be in the Vine was called the Vine, because of His bodily kinship with the branches, namely ourselves. In this sense, then, I wrote as I did to Euphranor and Ammonius, but your shamelessness I confront with the other letters written by me, so that men of sound mind may know the defence they contain, and my right mind in the faith of Christ. The Arians then ought, if their intelligence were sound, thus to have thought and held concerning the Bishop: for all things are manifest to them that understand, and right to them that find knowledge' (Prov. viii. 9). But since, not having understood the faith of the Catholic Church, they have fallen into impiety, and consequently, maimed in their intelligence, think that even straight things are crooked and call light darkness, while they think that darkness is light, it is necessary to quote also from the other letters of Dionysius, and state why they were written, to the greater condemnation of the heretic. For it was from them that we ourselves have learned to think and write as we are doing about the man.
13. But other writings of Dionysius have to be considered also. Their history.
The following is the occasion of his writing the other letters. The Bishop Dionysius having heard of the affairs in Pentapolis and having written, in zeal for religion, as I said above, his letter to Euphranor and Ammonius against the heresy of Sabellius, some of the brethren belonging to the Church, of right opinions, but without asking him, so as to learn from himself how he had written, went up to Rome; and they spoke against him in the presence of his namesake Dionysius the Bishop of Rome. And he, upon hearing it, wrote simultaneously against the partisans of Sabellius and against those who held the very opinions for uttering which Arius was cast out of the Church; calling it an equal and opposite impiety to hold with Sabellius, or with those who say that the Word of God is a thing made and formed and originated. And he wrote also to Dionysius to inform him of what they had said about him. And the latter straightway wrote back, and inscribed his books a Refutation and a Defence.' Here mark the detestable gang of the adversaries of Christ, and how they themselves have stirred up their disgrace against themselves. For Dionysius, Bishop of Rome, having written also against those who said that the Son of God was a creature and a created thing, it is manifest that not now for the first time but from of old the heresy of the Arian adversaries of Christ has been anathematised by all. And Dionysius, Bishop of Alexandria, making his defence concerning the letter he had written, appears in his turn as neither thinking as they allege, nor having held the Arian error at all.
14. Object and general method of Dionysius in his Refutation and Defence.'
And the mere fact of Dionysius having made his defence about the matters on which these people harp suffices completely to condemn the Arians, and to demonstrate their malignity. For he wrote, not in angry controversy, but to defend himself on the points where he was under suspicion. But in defending himself against charges, what does he do if not, while disposing of every charge of which he was suspected, by this very fact convict the Arian madmen of malignity? But, to complete their confusions by means of what he wrote in his defence, come, let me set before you his actual words. For from them you will learn firstly that the Arians are malicious, secondly that Dionysius has nothing to do with their error. To begin with, then, he wrote his letter as in Refutation and in Defence. But this means, surely, that he aims at refuting false statements, and defends himself for what he has written; shewing that he wrote not as Arius supposed, but that in mentioning what is said concerning the Lord in His human aspect, he was not ignorant that He was the Word and Wisdom undivided from the Father. Then he blames those who spoke against him for not quoting his language as a whole, but garbling it, and speaking not in good faith but disingenously and arbitrarily. And he compares them to those who used to impeach the letters of the blessed Apostle. But this complaint of his entirely clears him from sinister suspicion. For if he considers the detractors of Paul to be like his own, he shews precisely this, that he wrote as he did in Paul's sense. At any rate, in meeting severally the charges of his opponents, he explains all the passages cited by them: and, whereas in these latter he upsets Sabellius, in his subsequent letters he shews how sound and pious is his own faith. Accordingly whereas they would have it that Dionysius held that God was not always a Father, the Son did not always exist, but God existed apart from the Word, while the Son Himself was not before He was begotten: on the contrary, there was a time when He was not, for He is not eternal but has come later into being,'--see how he replies! Most of what he said, whether in the form of investigations, or collective inferences, or interrogatory refutations, or charges against his accusers, I omit because of the length of his discourses, inserting only what is strictly relevant to the charges against him. In answer to these, he writes after certain prefatory matter, in the first book inscribed Refutation and Defence' in the following terms.
15. Extracts from the Refutation and Defence.'
For never was there a time when God was not a father.' And this he acknowledges in what follows, that Christ is for ever, being Word and Wisdom and Power. For it is not to be supposed that God, having at first no such issue, afterwards begat a Son, but that the Son has His being not of Himself but of the Father.' And a little way on he adds on the same subject, But being the brightness of light eternal, certainly He is Himself eternal; for as the light exists always, it is evident that the brightness must exist always as well. For it is by the fact of its shining that the existence of light is perceived, and there cannot be light that does not give light. For let us come back to our examples. If there is sun, there is sunlight, there is day. If there is none of these things, it is quite impossible for there to be sun. If then the sun were eternal, the day also would be unceasing. But in fact, as that is not so, the day begins and ceases with the sun. But God is light eternal, never beginning nor ceasing. The brightness then lies before Him eternally, and is with Him without beginning and ever-begotten, shining in His Presence, being that Wisdom which said, "I was that wherein he rejoiced, and daily I was glad in his presence at all times" (Prov. viii. 30).' And again after a little he resumes the same subject with the words, The Father then being eternal, the Son is eternal, being Light of Light: for if there is a parent there is also a child. But if there were not a child, how and of whom can there be a parent? But there are both, and that eternally.' Then again he adds, God then being light, Christ is brightness; and being Spirit, for "God is a Spirit" (John iv. 24),--in like manner Christ is called the breath, for He is the "breath of the power of God" (Wisd. vii. 25).' And again, to quote the second book, he says, But only the Son, who always is with the Father and is filled of Him that IS, Himself also IS from the Father.'
16. Contrast of the language of Dionysius with that of Arius.
Now if the sense of the above statements were doubtful, there would be need of an interpreter. But since he wrote plainly and repeatedly on the same subject, let Arius gnash his teeth when he sees his own heresy subverted by Dionysius, and hears him say what he does not wish to hear: God was always Father, and the Son is not absolutely eternal, but His eternity flows from the eternity of the Father, and He coexists with Him as brightness with the light.' But let these, who have so much as imagined that Dionysius held with Arius, lay aside such a slander against him. For what have they in common, when Arius says, The Son was not before He was begotten, but there was once a time when He was not,' whereas Dionysius teaches, Now God is Light eternal, neither beginning, nor ever to end: accordingly the brightness lies before Him eternally, and coexists with Him, shining before Him without beginning and ever-begotten.' For in fact to meet the suspicion of others who allege that Dionysius in speaking of the Father does not name the Son, and again in speaking of the Son does not name the Father, but divides, removes, and separates the Son from the Father, he replies and puts them to shame in the second book, as follows.
17. Dionysius did not separate the Persons of the Holy Trinity.
Each of the names I have mentioned is inseparable and indivisible [972] from that next to it. I spoke of the Father, and before referring to the Son I designated Him too in the Father. I referred to the Son,--and even if I did not also expressly mention the Father, certainly He was to be understood beforehand in the Son. I added the Holy Spirit, but at the same time I further added both whence and through whom He proceeded. But they are ignorant that neither is the Father, qua Father, separated from the Son,--for the name carries that relationship with it,--nor is the Son expatriated from the Father. For the title Father denotes the common bond. But in their hands is the Spirit, who cannot be parted either from Him that sent or from Him that conveyed Him: How then can I, who use these names, imagine that they are sundered and utterly [973] separated from one another?' And after a little he goes on, Thus then we extend the Monad [974] indivisibly into the Triad, and conversely gather together the Triad without diminution into the Monad.'
18. Dionysius did not hold that the Son was not of one essence with the Father.
Next he confutes them upon their charge that he called the Son one of the things originated, and not of one essence with the Father (once more in the first book) as follows: Only in saying that certain things were perceived to be originated and created, I gave them as examples cursorily, as being less adequate, saying that neither was the plant [of one essence] with the husbandman, nor the boat with its builder. Then I dwelt more upon more apposite and suitable comparisons, and went at greater length into those nearer the truth, making out various proofs, which I wrote to you [975] in another letter, by means of which proofs I shewed also that the charge they allege against me is untrue, namely, that I denied Christ to be of one essence with God. For even if I argue that I have not found this word (homoousion) nor read it anywhere in the Holy Scriptures, yet my subsequent reasonings, which they have suppressed, do not discord with its meaning. For I gave the example of human birth evidently as being homogeneous, and saying that certainly the parents only differed from their children in not being themselves the children, else it would follow that there was no such thing as parents or children. And the letter, as I said before, I am prevented by circumstances from producing, else I would have sent you the exact words I then used, or rather a copy of all the letter: which I will do if I have an opportunity. But I know, and recollect, that I added several similitudes from kindred relations. For I said that a plant, sprung from a seed or root, was different from that whence it sprung, and at the same time entirely of one nature with it: and that a stream flowing from a well receives another form and name,--for the well is not called a river, nor the river a well,--and that both existed, and that the well was as it were a father, while the river was water from the well. But they pretend not to see these and the like written statements, but to be as it were blind, while they try to pelt me with two unconnected expressions like stones, from a distance, not knowing that in matters beyond our knowledge, and which require training to apprehend, frequently not only foreign, but even contrary examples serve to illustrate the problem in hand.' And in the third book he says, Life was begotten of Life, and flowed as a river from a well, and from Light unquenchable bright Light was kindled.'
19. Inconsistency of the Arian appeal to Dionysius.
Who that hears this will not set down as mad those who suspect Dionysius of holding with Arius? For lo! in these words, by arguments based on truth, he tramples upon his entire heresy. For by the simile of the Brightness he destroys the statements that He was not before He was begotten,' and There was a time when He was not,' as also by saying that His Father was never without issue. But their allegation that He was made of nothing' he destroys by saying that the Word was like a river from a well, and a shoot from a stock, and a child from a parent, and Light from Light, and Life from Life. And their barring off and separating the Word from God, he overthrows by saying that the Triad is without division and without diminution gathered together into the Monad. While their statement that the Son has no part in the Father's essence, he unequivocally tramples down by saying that the Son is of one essence with the Father. Wherein one must wonder at the impudence of the irreligious persons. How can they, when Dionysius whom they claim as their partisan says that the Son is of one essence [976] , themselves go about buzzing like gnats with the complaint that the Synod was wrong in writing of one essence?' For if Dionysius is a friend of theirs, let them not deny what their partisan holds. But if they think that the expression was wrongly used, how can they reiterate that Dionysius, who used it, held with them? the more so as he does not appear to have written these things merely by the way, but having previously written other letters [977] , he convicts of falsehood those who had charged him with not saying that the Son was of one Essence with the Father, while he refutes those who thought that he said that the Word was originated, shewing that he did not hold what they supposed, but even if he had used the expressions, he had done so merely in order to shew that it was the Son, not the Father, who had put on the originated, formed, created body; for which reason the Son also is said to have been originated, created, and formed.
20. Dionysius must be fairly interpreted, and allowed the benefit of his own explanatory statements.
Clearly since he had previously used such expressions, while bidding a long farewell to the Arians, he demands a good conscience from his hearers,--being entitled to plead the difficulty, or perhaps one may say the incomprehensibleness of the problems concerned,--namely that they may judge not of the words but of the meaning of the writer, and the more so as there is very much to shew his intention. For instance he says himself: I used the examples of such relations cursorily, as being less adequate, the plant and the husbandman for instance; while I dwelt upon the more pertinent examples, and went at greater length into those nearer the truth.' But a man who says this shews that it is nearer the truth to say that the Son is eternal and of the Father, than to say that He is originated. For by the latter the bodily nature of the Lord is denoted, but by the former, the eternity of His Godhead. In the following words, for instance, he maintains, and not only so, but deliberately and with genuine demonstrative force, that they are refuted who charged him with not saying that the Son is of one essence with the Father: even if I did not find this expression in the Scriptures, yet collecting from the actual Scriptures their general sense, I knew that, being Son and Word, He could not be outside the Essence of the Father.' For that he does not hold the Son to be a thing created or formed,--for on this point also they have quoted him repeatedly--he says in the second book as follows: But if any one of my traducers, because I called God the Creator the maker of all things, thinks that I mean that He is Maker of Christ also, let him mark that I previously called Him Father, in which term the Son also is implied. For after I said that the Father is Maker, I added neither is He Father of the things He created, if He that begat is to be called Father in the strict sense. For the wider sense of the term Father we will work out in what follows. Neither is the Father a maker, if by maker is meant simply the artificer. For among the Greeks, philosophers are called "makers" of their own discourses. And the Apostle speaks of a "doer" (poietes) "of the law" (Rom. ii. 13), for men are called "doers" of inward qualities, such as virtue and vice; as God said, "I looked for one to do justice, but he did wickedness "' (Isa. v. 7, LXX).
21. In what sense Dionysius said that the Son was made.'
Of a truth one that hears this is reminded of the divine oracle which says, whithersoever the impious turns, he is destroyed' (Prov. xii. 7, LXX). For lo! turning subtly in each direction these impious men are destroyed, having even here no excuse as touching Dionysius. For he teaches openly that the Son is not a thing made or created, while he taxes and corrects those who accuse him of having said that God was the creator (of Christ), in that they failed to notice that he had previously spoken of God as Father, in which expression the Son also is implied. But in saying thus, he shews that the Son is not one of the creatures, and that God is not the maker but the Father of His own Word. And since certain had ignorantly objected to him that he called God the maker of Christ, he defends himself in various ways, shewing that not even here is what he said open to blame. For he had said that God was the maker of Christ in regard to His flesh, which the Word took, and which was in itself created. But if any one were to suspect that this referred to the Word, here too they were bound to give him a fair hearing. For as I do not hold that the Word is a creature, and call God not His maker but His Father, even if I in passing, while referring to the Son, call God a creator, yet even here I am able to defend myself. For the Greek philosophers call themselves makers (poietai) of their own discourses (logoi), although they are their fathers; while the Divine Scripture describes us as makers (doers) even of the motions of our hearts, speaking of "doers" of the law and of judgment and justice.' So that on all sides he demonstrates not only that the Son is not a thing made or created, but also that he himself has nothing to do with Arian error.
22. The relation of the Son to the Father is essential, according to Dionysius.
For let not any Arian suppose that he says even anything of the following kind: The Son coexists with the Father, so that while the names are correlated, the things are widely removed; and whereas the Son did not always coexist with the Father, since the Son came into being, God received from that fact the additional name of Father, and His coexistence with Him dates from that time as happens in the case of men. On the contrary, let him observe and bear in mind what we have said before, and he will see that the faith of Dionysius is correct. For in saying, For there was no time when God was not Father,' and again, God at any rate is light eternal without beginning nor ever to end, accordingly the brightness is eternally before Him and coexists with Him, without beginning and ever-begotten, shining in His presence,' he should make it impossible for any one to entertain any such suspicion against him. Moreover the examples of the well and the river, and the root and the branch, and the breath and the vapour, put to shame the adversaries of Christ when they reiterate the contrary against him.
23. Dionysius did not hold that there are two Words.
But since in addition to all his own iniquities Arius has raked up this expression also as if from a dunghill, adding that, The Word is not the Father's own, but the Word that is in God is different, while this one, the Lord, is outside of and has nothing to do with the Essence of the Father, and is only called "Word" conceptually [978] , and is not by nature and of a truth Son of God, but is called Son, He too, by adoption, as a creature;'--and since saying thus he boasts among the ignorant as though here too he has Dionysius as his partisan;--look at the faith of Dionysius on these points also, how he contradicts these perversities of Arius. For in the first book he writes as follows: Now I have said that God is the well of all that is good: while the Son has been described as the river which proceeds from Him. For word is an efflux of intelligence, and, to borrow language applicable to men, the intelligence that issues by the tongue is derived from the heart through the mouth, coming out different from the word in the heart. For the latter remains, after sending forth the other, as it was. But the other is sent forth and flies forth, and is borne in every direction. And so each is in the other, and each distinct from the other: and they are one and at the same time two. Likewise the Father and the Son were said to be one, and the One in the other.' And in the fourth book he says: For as our intelligence utters the word from itself, as the prophet says, My heart uttered a good word (Ps. xlv. 1), and, while either is distinct from the other, occupying a place of its own distinct from the other, the one dwelling and stirring in the heart, the other upon the tongue,--yet they are not separated, not for a moment lost to one another, nor is the intelligence without utterance (alogos), nor the word without intelligence, but the intelligence creates the Word being manifested in it, and the Word shews forth the intelligence having originated in it, and the intelligence is as it were an internal word, and the word an issuing intelligence; the intelligence passing over into the word, while the word circulates the intelligence among the hearers: and so the intelligence through the word gains a lodgment in the souls of the hearers, entering in along with the word; and the intelligence is as it were the father of the word, existing in itself, while the word is as it were the son of the intelligence, having its origin, not of course before the latter, nor yet concurrently with it from some external source, but by springing out of it;--so the mighty Father and universal Intelligence has the Son before all things as His Word, Interpreter and Messenger.'
24. If the Arians agree with Dionysius let them use his language.
These things Arius either never heard, or heard and in his ignorance did not understand. For otherwise, had he understood, he would not have so grossly libelled the Bishop, but certainly would revile him also, as he did ourselves, because of his hatred of the truth. For being an adversary of Christ, he will not hesitate to persecute also those who hold the doctrine of Christ, as the Lord Himself has said beforehand: If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you' (Joh. xv. 20). Or, if the leaders of impiety think Dionysius was a partisan of theirs, let them write and confess what he did. Let them write about the vine and the husbandman, the boat and the shipbuilder; and let them at the same time confess, as he did in his defence, the Unity of Essence, and that the Son is of the Father's Substance, and eternal; and the relation of intelligence and word, and the well and the river, and the rest; in order that they may see from the very contrast that he used the former class of language for a special purpose, but the latter as expressing the full meaning of the Christian Faith. And consequently let them, by adopting this language, revoke what they have held inconsistently with it. For in what way does the faith of Dionysius even approximate to the mischief of Arius? Does not Arius restrict the term Word to a conceptual sense, while Dionysius calls Him the true Word of God by nature? and while the one banishes the Word from the Father, the other teaches that He is the Father's own, and inseparable from His Essence, as the word is to the intelligence and the river to the well. If then any one is able to separate and banish the word from the intelligence, or to put asunder the river and the well, and wall them off, or to say that the river is of another essence than the well, and to shew that the water is from elsewhere, or ventures to divide the brightness from the light and to say that the brightness is from another essence, then let him join Arius in his madness. For such an one will cease to have the semblance even of human intelligence. But if Nature knows that these are indivisible, and that the offspring of those objects is their very own, then let no one any longer hold with Arius or slander Dionysius, but rather on these grounds admire the plainness of his language and the correctness of his faith.
25. The teaching of Dionysius on the Word (continued).
For with reference to the madness of Arius when he says that the Word which is in God is distinct from that one of which John said, In the beginning was the Word' (Joh. i. 1), and that God's own wisdom within Himself is not the same as that to which the Apostle refers as Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God' (1 Cor. i. 24), Dionysius resists and denounces any such error, as you may see in the second book where he writes on the subject as follows: "In the beginning was the Word;" but it was not Word that sent forth the Word, for "the Word was with God." The Lord has been made wisdom (cf. 1 Cor. i. 30): He then that sent out Wisdom was not Wisdom, for "I was she," saith Wisdom, "in whom He delighted." Christ is truth: but "Blessed," saith He, "be the God of truth"' (1 Esdr. iv. 40). There He overthrows both Sabellius and Arius, and shews both heresies to be equal in impiety. For neither is the Father of the Word Himself Word, nor is the offspring of the Father a creature, but the Own-begotten of His essence. And again the Word that proceeded forth is not Father, nor again is He one word out of many; but He alone is the Father's Son, the true and genuine Son by nature, Who both now is in Him, and is eternally and indivisibly from within Him. Thus the Lord is both Wisdom and Truth, and is not in the second place after another wisdom; but He alone it is through whom the Father made all things, and in Him He made the manifold essences of created things, and through Him He is made known to whom He will, and in Him He carries on and effects His universal providence. For Him alone does Dionysius recognise as Word of God. This is the faith of Dionysius: for I have collected and copied a few statements from his letters, enough to induce you to add to their number, but to put the Arians to utter shame on account of their libel upon the Bishop. For in all, even the details, of what he wrote, he exposed their error and branded their heresy.
26. How Dionysius dealt with the Sabellians.
Hence too it is manifest that even the letter to Euphranor and Ammonius was written by him in a different sense and for a special purpose. For this his defence makes plain. And in truth this is an effective form of argument for the subversion of the madness of Sabellius, for him that wishes for a short way with those heretics, not to start from expressions applicable to the deity of the Word, such as that the Son is God's Word and Wisdom and Power, and that I and the Father are one' (John x. 30), lest they, perverting what is well said should use such expressions as a pretext for their unblushing contentiousness, when they hear the texts, I and the Father are one,' and he that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.' (John x. 30; xiv. 9); but to emphasize what is said of the Saviour as Man, as He Himself has done, such as His hungering and thirsting, and being weary, and how He is the Vine, and how He prayed and has suffered. For in so far as these are lowly expressions, it becomes all the clearer that it was not the Father that was made man. For it follows, when the Lord is called the Vine, that there must also be a husbandman: and when He prayed, that there was one to hear, and when He asked, that there was one to give. Now such things shew far more readily the madness of the Sabellians, because He that prayed was one, He that heard another, one the Vine and another the Husbandman. For whatever expressions are cited to distinguish between the Son and the Father are used of Him by reason of the flesh which He bore for our sake. For created things are distinct in nature from God. Accordingly since, the flesh being a created thing, the Word,' as John says, was made flesh' (John i. 14), although He is by nature the Father's own and inseparable from Him, yet by reason of the flesh the Father is widely distinguished from Him. For He Himself permits that what is appropriate to the flesh should be said of him, that it may be made plain that the body was His own and not that of any other. But this being the sense of these sayings, Sabellius will be the more quickly confuted, it being proved that it was not the Father that was made flesh, but His Word, who also redeemed the flesh and offered it to the Father. But thus having confuted and persuaded him, he will next be able more readily to teach him concerning the deity of the Word, how that He is the Word and Wisdom, Son and Power, Brightness and Express Image. For it is here again a necessary inference that as the Word exists, there must also exist the Father of the Word, and as Wisdom exists, there exists also its Parent, and as Brightness exists so also does the Light; and that in this manner the Son and the Father are one.
27. Conclusion.
Dionysius knew this when he wrote. And by his first letters he silenced Sabellius, and in his others he overcame the heresy of Arius. For just as the human attributes of the Saviour overthrew Sabellius, so against the Arian madmen one must use proofs drawn not from the human attributes but from what betokens the deity of the Word, lest they pervert what is said of the Lord by reason of His Body, and think that the Word is of like nature with us men, and so abide still in their madness. But if they also are taught about His deity they will condemn their own error; and when they understand that the Word was made flesh, they too will the more easily distinguish in future the human characteristics from those which fit His deity. But this being so, and the Bishop Dionysius having been shewn by his writings to be pious, what will the Arian madmen do next? Convicted on this evidence, whom will they again venture to malign? For they needs must, since they have fallen from the foundation of the Apostles and have no settled mind of their own, seek some support, and if they can find none, then malign the fathers. But no one will believe them any more even if they make efforts to libel them, for the heresy is condemned on all hands. Unless perchance they will henceforth speak of the devil, for he is their only partisan, or rather he it is who suggested their heresy to them. Who then can any longer call men Christians' whose leader is the devil, and not rather Diabolici,' so that they may bear the name not merely of adversaries of Christ, but of partisans of the devil? Unless indeed they change round, and, rejecting the impiety they have contrived, come to know the truth. For this will at once be for their own good, and it is thus that it beseems us to pray for all those that are in error. __________________________________________________________________
[966] prosopou: but see also Newman's note 2 on de Decr. §14.
[967] See Epiphanius, Hær. lxviii. 1. The arrangement is recognised as one of old standing in the sixth canon of Nicæa, Let the old customs which exist in Egypt, Libya, and Pentapolis remain in force, namely that the Bishop of Alexandria should have authority over all these regions; since this is also customary for the Bishop of Rome. Likewise also at Antioch and in the other prefectures (it is decreed) that their prerogatives should be maintained to those churches.' The canon points to the natural explanation of the arrangement: the bishops of the capitals began from a very early date to exercise a loosely defined but gradually strengthening supervision over those of the rest of the province. In particular, they came to exercise a veto (and latterly more than a veto) upon the appointments to the provincial sees (ei tis choris gnomes, ib.). The bishops of Alexandria as well as Rome had even at this date acquired something of the rank of secular potentates (dunasteia, Socr. vii. 11, ede palai), but not to the extent to which it went later on (ib. 7. and supr. Apol. Ar. §9).
[968] therapeuein. For the word, cf. Hatch, Hibb. Lect. p. 80 note.
[969] kat' oikonomian, as below §24. Cf. de Decr. §25, note 5. The word oikonomia has two main senses in Athanasius, both derived from the classical sense of management or dispensation, the adapting of means toward an end. (1) As in the present passage (cf. Origen in Migne XI. p. 77 b, oikonomikos): a use which is the lineal ancestor of the ill-sounding word economy' as a term in casuistry; (2) as applied to the Incarnation of our Lord, regarded as the Dispensation, the Divine Method for the salvation of mankind. This use is very frequent in St. Athanasius (compare Ep. Æg. 2. and Orat. ii. 11), and in earlier Fathers from Ignatius (Eph. 18 ekuophorethe hupo Marias kat' oikonomian, where Lightfoot refers to a more detailed history of the word in his unpublished note on Eph. i. 10) downwards (references in Soph. Lex. s.v.).
[970] See Westcott, Introduction to the Gospels, Appendix C, 5.
[971] Cf. Orat. i. 48, note 7, and ii. 56, note 5.
[972] This passage is somewhat differently rendered by Dr. Pusey in his letter on the Filioque (1876), p. 112.
[973] The pantelos somewhat qualifies the repudiation. Dionysius expressly maintained three Hypostases in the Holy Trinity, in contrast to the language of Rome (de Decr. 26 note 7a) and the later use of Athanasius himself. But see the Tom. ad Antioch. of 362, below, and supra p. 90, note 2. Dionysius of Rome repudiates treis memerismenas hupostaseis, while Dionysius of Alexandria (in Bas. de Sp. S.) maintains that unless three Hypostases be recognised, the divine Triad is denied.
[974] As pointed out by Newman on De Decr. 25, note 9, Trias and Monas are concrete, Trinitas and Unitas abstract terms; so that while Trinitas (and Monas) lend themselves to a Sabellian, Trias and Unitas may be pressed into an Arian sense: but each pair of terms (Greek and Latin) holds the balance evenly between the opposite misinterpretations.
[975] To you' is omitted in the extract de Decr. 25.
[976] It should be noted that Dionysius while assenting to this word, does not use it as his own.
[977] Possibly to other bishops who had questioned his teaching (Routh, Rell. iii. p. 380).
[978] See Orat. ii. 37. note 7. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Introduction to Vita S. Antoni.
------------------------
(Written between 356 and 362)
The Life of St. Antony is included in the present collection partly on account of the important influence it has exercised upon the development of the ascetic life in the Church, partly and more especially on the ground of its strong claim to rank as a work of Athanasius. If that claim were undisputed, no apology would be needed for its presence in this volume. If on the other hand its spurious and unhistorical character had been finally demonstrated, its insertion would be open to just objections. As it is, the question being still in dispute, although the balance of qualified opinion is on the side of the Athanasian authorship, it is well that the reader should have the work before him and judge for himself. To assist his judgment, it will be attempted in the following paragraphs to state the main reasons on either side. In doing so, I can honestly disclaim any bias for or against the Vita, or monasticism. Monasticism, with all its good and evil, is a great outgrowth of human life and instinct, a great fact in the history of the Christian religion; and whether its origin is to be put fifty years earlier or later (for that is the net value of the question at issue) is a somewhat small point relatively to the great problems which it offers to the theologian, the historian, and the moralist. But the point is at any rate worthy of careful and dispassionate examination. In attempting this, while holding no brief for either side, I may as well at once state my opinion on the evidence, namely that, genuine as are many of the difficulties which surround the question, the external evidence for the Vita is too strong to allow us to set it aside as spurious, and that in view of that evidence the attempts to give a positive account of the book as a spurious composition have failed.
1. Bibliography. a. Sources. The only reference to Antony in other writings of Athanasius is in Hist. Ar. 14. See also Fest. Index x. Vita Pachomii in Act. SS. Mai., Tom. iii. Appx. (written late in the fourth century, but by a person who had known Pachomius). Coptic fragments and documents (for early history of Egyptian monasticism with occasional details about Antony) in Zoega, Catalogus codd. Copticorum, (Rome, 1810), Mingarelli, Codd. copticorum reliquiæ, (Bologna, 1785), Revillout, Rapport sur une mission, etc. (in Archives des Missions scientifiques et littéraires, 3^me, série, 1879, vol. 4), Amélineau, Hist. de S. Pakhôme, &c. (Annales du Musée Guimet, vol. xvii. Paris, 1889).
b. Modern discussions. Since the Reformation the general tendency of protestant writers has been to discredit, of Roman Catholics to maintain the authority of the Vita. To the former class belong the Magdeburg Centuriators, Rivet, Basnage, Casimir Oudin; to the latter, Bellarmin, Noel Alexandre, and above all Montfaucon in the Benedictine edition of Athanasius (especially in the Vita Athanasii, Animadversio II. in Vitam et Scripta S.A., and the Monitum in Antonii Vitam, which latter may still claim the first rank in critical discussions of the problem). We may add, as more or less unbiassed defenders of the Vita, Cave (Hist. Lit. i. 193), and Tillemont (Mem. vol. vii.). All the above belong to the period before 1750. In more recent times the attack has been led by Weingarten (Ursprung des Mönchtums in nachkonst. zeitalter, reprinted in 1877 from Zeitschrift für K.G. 1876, and in Herzog, vol. x. pp. 758 sqq.), followed by Gass (in Ztsch. K.G. II. 274), and Gwatkin (Studies, &c. pp. 98-103). Israel, in Zeitsch. Wiss. Theol. 1880, p. 130, &c., characterises Weingarten's attack on the Vita as too bold.' Keim (Aus dem Urchr. 207 sqq.) and Hilgenfeld (in Zeitsch. f. Wiss. Theol. 1878) put the book in the lifetime of Ath. without absolutely pronouncing for him as the author, while Hase (J. Prot. Th. 1880), Harnack (especially in Th. Ltz. xi. 391, see also Das Mönchtum' u.s.w., Giessen, 1886), Möller, Lehrb. der K.G. i. 372, and Eichhorn (Athanasii de vita ascetica testimonia,' Halle, 1886, the most convincing discussion of recent date, and indispensable) decide without hesitation in its favour. The discussion of Bornemann (In investigando monachatus origine, quibus de causis ratio habenda sit Origenis, Leipzig, 1885) may also be mentioned as bearing on the general subject; also the articles Monastery,' Coenobium,' and Hermits' in D. C. A. The article Antony' in D. C. B. passes over the question without discussion, excepting the trite, but untenable, statement that the Vita is probably interpolated.' Farrar (Lives of the Fathers, and Contemp. Review, Nov. 1887) follows Gwatkin. Picturesque representations of Antony (from the Vita) in Kingsley's Hermits and Newman's Historical Sketches, vol. 2.
2. External evidence as to authorship and date. This is given by Montfaucon in the Monitum and reproduced by Eichhorn, pp. 36 sqq.
i. The Version of Evagrius. Evagrius, presbyter (Eustathian) and subsequently (388) Bishop at Antioch (in Italy 364-373), translated the Vita Antonii into Latin. He prefaced with a short apology (see below, Vit. Ant. §1, note 1) for the freedom of his rendering, addressed Innocentio carissimo filio.' Now this Innocent, the friend of Jerome and Evagrius, died in the summer of 374, almost exactly a year after the death of Athanasius (D. C. B. iii. 31, 251). Of this identification there is no reason to doubt; still less ground is there for the hesitation (Hist. Lit. I. 283, non una est dubitandi ratio') of Cave and others as to the identity of the version, printed by Montfaucon and transmitted by very numerous mss. (quæ ingenti numero vidi,' Migne xxv. p. clviii.) with that actually made by Evagrius. Therefore, even if we make the two very improbable assumptions that the Dedication to Innocentius falls within a few weeks or days of his death (i.e. during the journey from Italy to Syria!), and that the Vita was translated by Evagrius almost immediately upon its composition, the composition of the Vita falls within a few months of the death of Athanasius. Its antiquity then is fully conceded' even by Mr. Gwatkin (Studies, p. 103, who yet, p. 98, puts it down to the generation after Athanasius!'). The translation of Evagrius also preserves what looks like the original heading. It should be added that the Evagrian version (read in the light of its preface), entirely excludes the hypothesis that the Greek text of the Vita is interpolated. Evagrius avowedly abridges at times, while in some cases he embellishes (see §82, note 16).
ii. Jerome wrote his Vita Pauli in the Syrian desert, between 374 and 379. He mentions both the Vita and its Latin Version in the prologue: if he had seen the latter he can scarcely have been ignorant of its heading. The non-mention of Athanasius as the author is an argumentum ex silentio of the most precarious kind. Some fifteen years later (de Script Eccles. 87, 88, 125) he repeatedly mentions Athanasius as the author, and specifies Evagrius as the translator.
iii. Ephrem the Syrian (Opp. ed. 1732-43, I. p. 249) quotes Saint' Athanasius by name as the biographer of Antony. Ephrem died in 373. But little stress can be laid upon this testimony, in view of the lack of a critical sifting of the works which bear the name of this saint (so Tillemont viii. 229, and vii. 138). More important is
iv. Gregory Naz. Or. 21, Athanasius compiled the biography of the divine Antony tou monadikou biou nomothesian en plasmati diegeseos' (cf. Vita, Prologue). This oration was delivered in 380, seven years after the death of Athanasius. Gregory, it is true, is not a good judge on a point of criticism. But he expresses the opinion of his time, and confirms and is confirmed by the evidence of Evagrius and Jerome.
v. Rufinus, Hist. Eccl. I. viii. He would give an account of Antony, but ille libellus exclusit qui ab Athanasio scriptus etiam Latino Sermone editus est.' This was written 400 a.d.: if in a later work (Hist. Mon. 30, and see also 29) he happens to allude to the Vita without mentioning its author, we are not entitled to say that to Rufinus the work is anonymous' (Gwatkin, p. 103).
vi. The Life of Pachomius, which (as above mentioned) has details of Antony's life independent of the Vita, also mentions the latter (c. 1) as the work of Athanasius. Though written perhaps as late as 390, this document is of great weight as evidence in the case (see Krüger in Theol. Ltzg. 1890, p. 620).
vii. Paulinus in his prologue to the Life of Ambrose (after 400) refers to the Vita as written by Athanasius.
viii. Fifth-century historians, Palladius, Hist. Laus. 8, Socrates (H. E., i. 21) Sozomenus (i. 13) attest the established tradition of their day that Athanasius was the author of the Life.
ix. Augustine (Conf. viii. 14, 15, 19, 29) and Chrysostom (Hom. 8 on S. Matthew) mention the Vita without giving the name of the author. But we are not entitled to cite them as witnesses to its (alleged) anonymity, which they neither affirm nor imply.
The above witnesses, all of whom excepting No. viii. come within 50 years of the death of Athanasius, are a formidable array. No other work of Athanasius can boast of such external evidence in its favour. And in the face of such evidence it is impossible to place the composition later than the lifetime of the great Bishop. We have therefore to ask whether the contents of the Vita are in irreconcileable conflict with the result of the external evidence: whether they point, not indeed to a later age, for the external evidence excludes this, but to an author who during the lifetime of Athanasius (i.e. not later than the year of his death) ventured to publish a hagiographic romance in his name (Evagrian' heading, and §§71, 82).
3. Internal Evidence. It may be remarked in limine that for the existence of Antony there is not only the evidence of the Vita itself, but also that of many other fourth-century documents (see above 1.a. under sources'). Weingarten quite admits this (R. E., X. 774, but he implies the contrary in his Zeit-tafeln, ed. 3, p. 228); and Mr. Gwatkin is certainly far ahead of his evidence when he pronounces (Arian Controversy, p. 48) that Antony never existed.'
a. Origin and early history of Monasticism. According to the Vita, the desert was unknown to monachoi (solitary ascetics) at the time (about 275? Vit. §3) when Antony first adopted the ascetic life. About the year 285 he began his twenty years' sojourn in the ruined fort. To the end of this sojourn belongs the first great wave of Monastic settlement in the desert. During the later part of the great persecution monasteries' and monks begin to abound (§44, 46). The remainder of his long life (311-356) is passed mainly in his inner mountain,' where he forms the head and centre of Egyptian monasticism. Now it is contended by Weingarten and his followers that the Vita is contradicted in this important particular by all the real evidence as to the origin of monasticism, which cannot be proved to have originated before the death of Constantine. But Eichhorn has I think conclusively shewn the hastiness of this assumption. Passing over the disputable evidence of the De Vita Contemplativa ascribed to Philo, (which Weingarten endeavours, against Lucius and others, to put back to a date much earlier than the third century and out of relation to Christian asceticism [979] ), the writings of Athanasius himself are the sufficient refutation of the late date assigned to the rise of monachism.
In the writings of the supposed date (356-362) of the Vita, references to monks are very frequent (e.g. Apol. Fug. 4, Apol. Const. 29): but previous to this (339) we find them mentioned in Encyl. §3, and yet earlier, Apol. Ar. 67 (see below). In the letter to Dracontius (Letter 49 in this vol.), corporate monasticism is implied to be no novel institution. Dracontius himself (about 354) is president of a monastery, and many other similar communities are referred to. (Gwatkin deals with this letter in an unsatisfactory fashion, p. 102, see the letter itself, §§7, 9, and notes.) The letter to Amun, probably earlier than that just mentioned, is clearly (sub. fin.) addressed to the head of a monastic society. Again, the bishops Muis and Paulus of Letter 49, §7, who were monks before their consecration, had been in the monastery of Tabennæ before the death of Pachomius, which occurred almost certainly in 346 (Eichhorn 12, 13. The whole history of Pachomius, who was only a year or two older than Athanasius, although personally but little known to him, his monastery being at Tabennæ, an island near Philæ, is in conflict with Weingarten's theory). Lastly [980] one of the most characteristic and life-like of the documents relating to the case of Arsenius and the Council of Tyre, namely the letter of Pinnes to John Arcaph (Apol. Ar. 67) carries back the evidence earlier still. Pinnes is presbyter of a monastery' (mone): that mone here means a society of monks, and not a posting station (Weing. in R. E., X. p. 775) is clear from the mention of Helias the monk,' and I, Paphnutius, monk of the same monastery.' This letter proves that there were not only Catholic but Meletian monks, and these not hermits but in societies: and thus the origin of the solitary type of monasticism goes back as far as the Meletian schism. (The existence of Meletian monks is attested independently of this letter, see Eich. p. 347.) Weingarten is quite unable to deal with this obstacle to his theory. His argument is simply this: either the letter has nothing to do with monks and monasteries (he overlooks Paphnutius), or it must be rejected as spurious! What reductio ad absurdum could be more complete? In an equally desperate way he deals with the clear evidence of Aphraates, Hom. vi., as to the existence of (at any rate) solitary monasticism in Eastern Syria as early as 336. See Texte und Untersuchungen iii. 3, pp. xvi. 89, &c. (Leipzig, 1888.)
b. Historical misstatements. i. It is better to include under this head rather than under the last the title ad peregrinos fratres. Who were the foreign monks' (tous en te xene monachous)? The introduction of monasticism into the West seems to belong to the time of S. Ambrose (Aug. Conf. viii. 6, cf. Sozom. III. 14, the European nations [before 361] had no experience of monastic societies') or rather Martin of Tours (D.C.B. iii. p. 840). The statement (Encycl. Brit. Monachism') that Athanasius carried the Vita Atonii to Rome in 340 is based on a misunderstanding of Jerome (Ep. 127), who really says no more than that the existence of monachism in Egypt first became known at Rome from the visits of Athanasius and of his successor Peter. If then the peregrini fratres' are to be looked for in the West, we have a serious difficulty, and must choose between the Vita and Sozomen. But the foreign monks may have belonged to the East. (I cannot see that §93 assumes,' as Mr. Gwatkin maintains, the existence of numerous monks in the West.' What is said is simply that Antony had been heard of--ekousthe--in Spain, Gaul, and Africa.) However, the point must be left uncertain, and so far allowed to weigh against the Vita.
ii. Early intercourse of Athanasius with Antony (Prologue, and note 2). If the Benedictine text is correct, the reference must be to the period before Athanasius became deacon to Bishop Alexander, in fact to a period previous to 318 a.d. Tillemont (viii. 652), who maintains the other reading, mainly relies upon the impossibility of finding room for the intercourse in question in the early life of Athanasius. But his only source of knowledge of that period is Rufinus, a very poor authority, and Montfaucon replies with some force (Animadv. 11) that we have no sufficient information as to how Athanasius passed the years previous to his ordination by Alexander. He also suggests that Athanasius may have been one of those who followed Antony's example (§46, cf. Apol. c. Ar. 6) after his first visit to Alexandria. I may add that the notes to the Vita will call attention to several points of contact between the teaching of Antony and the earliest treatises of Athanasius. Yet the impression left on the mind is here again one of uncertainty (cf. Prolegg. ch. ii. §1 fin.).
iii. The narrative about Duke Balacius (§86: see note there) is another genuine difficulty, only to be got over if we suppose either that Athanasius in one place tells the story inaccurately, and corrects himself in the other, or that the Hist. Arian. was partly written for Athanasius by a secretary.
iv. Supposed learning of Antony. His ignorance of letters and of the Greek language does not prevent his forcibly employing the most effective arguments against Arianism (69), vindicating the Incarnation (74) much in the manner of Athanasius, and above all showing a fair acquaintance (72-74) with Platonic philosophy (see notes there). But everything in the biography points to a man of robust mind, retentive memory (3) and frequent intercourse with visitors. If he were so, he can scarcely have been ignorant of the theological controversies of his day, or of the current philosophical ideas. Nor can I see that the philosophy of his argument against the Greeks goes beyond what that would imply. His allusion to Plato does not look like a first-hand citation. And even an Athanasius would not so entirely rise out of the biographical habits of his day as to mingle nothing of his own with the speeches of his hero (Equidem quid Antonio quid Athanasio tribuendum sit uix diiudicari posse concedo,' Eich. p. 52).
c. Inconsistencies with Athanasius. It is the most serious objection to the Athanasian authorship of the Vita that Athanasius (with the exception of the antilegomenon' Hist. Ar. 14) nowhere else mentions Antony by name. Especially in the letter to Dracontius, who at first refused the Episcopate in the supposed interests of his soul, we might, it is argued, have expected a reference to the deep reverence of Antony (§67) for even the lowest clergy (the persons enumerated, Letter 49, §7, are bishops who had previously been monks, and have nothing to do with this question). That is true. We might have expected it. But as a matter of fact Athanasius uses another argument instead (see Letter 49, §3, note 8^a). It does not follow that he did not know of the Antony of the Vita. But although the letter in question has been pressed unduly, the general objection, as an argumentum ex silentio on a rather large scale, remains [981] . Some more detailed points must now be considered.
a. Demons and Miracles. The writings of Athanasius are singularly free from the tendency to indulge in the marvellous. The death of Arius he regards as a judgment, and relates it with a certain awe-struck sobriety. The pheme of Julian's death in the Narrat. ad Ammon. comes less under the head of ecclesiastical miracle than under that of ta theia ton pregmaton (Herod. ix. 100, cf. Grote v. 260 sq.); whereas the Vita swarms with miraculous and demoniacal stories, some (passed over in silence by Newman and other apologists for the Life) indescribably silly (e.g. §§53, 63). Hence even Cave allows that the Vita contains things tanto viro indigna.' But it must be observed (1) that Antony disclaims, and his biographer disclaims for him, inherent miraculous power. His miracles are wrought by Christ in answer to prayer, and he prefers that those who desire his help should obtain what they want by praying for themselves (cf. also §49). (2) That again and again (esp. §§16-43) he insists on the absolute subjection of all evil powers to God, and their powerlessness to injure believers in Christ. (3) That Athanasius recognises semeia (in the sense of miracles, see Letter 49, §9, note 9) as a known phenomenon in the case both of bishops and of monks. (4) That his language about demons and the power of the sign of the Cross in dispersing them is quite of a piece with what is related in the Vita (see notes passim). (5) On the clairvoyance of Antony, and one or two kindred matters which offer points of contact with phenomena that have been recently the subject of careful research, notes will be found below giving modern references. On the whole, one could wish that Athanasius, who is in so many ways surprisingly in touch with the modern mind (supra, introd. to de Incar and Prolegg. ch. iv. §2 d and §3), had not written a biography revealing such large credulity. But we must measure this credulity of his not by the evidential methods of our own day, but by those of his own. If we compare the Vita, not with our modern biographies but with those, say, of Paul and Hilarion by Jerome, its superiority is striking (this is pointed out by W. Israël in Zeitschr für Wiss. Theol. 1878, pp. 130, 137, 145, 153). For myself I should certainly prefer to believe that Athanasius had not written many things in the Vita: but I would far rather he had written them all than the one passage Hist. Ar. §38 fin.
b. Theology. That there should be certain characteristic differences from the theology of Athanasius is what one would expect in an account of Antony that bore any relation to the historical person. Such is the anthropomorphic tendency, shewn especially in the corporeal nature ascribed to demons. Such perhaps is a tinge of naive semi-pelagianism about the Hermit's language (§20 and elsewhere); we cannot forget the connection of Cassian's Collations with Egyptian monasticism. Once again, Antony's shame of the body is not in the spirit of the writer ad Amunem' (Gwatkin, Studies, p. 102). Lastly, in Antony's account of the heathen gods (§76) we miss the characteristic Euhemerism of Athanasius (see supra, pp. 10, 62, &c.). Throughout, in fact, the ruder monastic instinct crops up from under the Athanasian style and thought of the biographer. But the latter is also unmistakable (see the notes passim), and the differences have been certainly made too much of. I will give one example from Mr. Gwatkin, who says (ubi supra), Athanasius does not speak of pronoia like the Vita (c. 49, 66, 74), for de Fuga 25 specially refers to his providential escape from Syrianus, and c. Gent. 47, pronoia ton panton is very incidental.' Now certainly the constant introduction of pronoia, which Mr. Gwatkin has understated, is a marked feature of the Vita. But I am not prepared to say that Athanasius could not speak in this way. The word is common, and even characteristic, in his writings. A few examples will support this statement; more will be referred to in the index to this volume.
De Incarn. 2.1. ten ton holon pronoian kath' heauton ouk einai mothologousin.
14. 6. tou dia tes idias pronoias...didaskontos peri tou patros.
Epist. Æg. 15. blepontes...panta taxei kai pronoi& 139; kinoumena.
Apol. Fug. 17. emele gar autois...mete ten horismenen para tes Pronoias krisin prolambanein (and so in §§9, 16, 22, 25 of this short tract).
Orat. iii. 37. O Pater en to Uio ton panton ten pronoian poieitai.
If each one of these and numberless other references to Providence is very incidental,' those in the Vita may surely claim the benefit (whatever that may be) of the same formula.
The above are the principal materials for a decision as to the genuineness of the Vita: and I do not see how they can justify any opinion but that stated at the outset. Against the Vita we have certain historical difficulties (intercourse with Athanasius, peregrini fratres, Balacius), and arguments ex silentio, a kind of evidence seldom conclusive. For it, we have a quite unusual array of external evidence, including an almost contemporary version, the absence of any room for its date at a safe distance from its traditional author, and the many points of contact, as well as the characteristic differences between the Vita and the writings of Athanasius. Moreover on the kindred question of the origin of monasticism, Weingarten's theory breaks down, and leads him to suicidal steps in more than one direction. Although, therefore, it is permissible to keep an open mind on the subject, we must recognise that the enterprise of the recent assailants of the Vita is at present at a dead halt, that overwhelming probability is against them.
But if Athanasius wrote the Vita, it does not follow that all its less edifying details are true, nor that its portraiture is free from subjectivity [982] . At the same time, to the present writer at least, the lineaments of a genuine man, homoiopathous hemin, stand out from the story. Doubtless there is idealisation, panegyric, an absence of sinfulness (Gwatkin, Studies, p. 100). But the moderate value set on miracles (38, 56), the absence of the element of fear from his religion (42, &c.), his serene courtesy (73) and uniform cheerfulness (67, 70), the caution against being tempted to excess in ascetic exercises (25), the ready half-humorous good sense (73, 85) of the man, are human touches which belong to flesh and blood, not to hagiographic imagination. But here the question is one of individual taste. At any rate the Vita embodies the best spirit of early monasticism. It was the pure desire to serve God and fulfil the spirit of the Gospel that led Antony to part with all that might make the world precious to him, and to betake himself to his long voluntary martyrdom of solitude, privation, and prayer. We see nothing but tenderness and love of men in his character, nothing of the fierce bloodthirsty fanaticism which in persons like Senuti made fifth-century monasticism a reproach to the Christian name. Had Antony lived in our time, he might have felt that the solitary life was a renunciation of the highest vocation of which man is capable, the ministry to the material and spiritual needs of others. But it is not given to man to see all aspects of truth at once and to our bustling, comfort-loving age, even the life of Antony has its lesson.
The Vita has undoubtedly exercised a powerful and wide-spread influence. Upon it Jerome modelled his highly idealised tales of Paul and Hilarion; at Rome and all over the West it kindled the flame of monastic aspirations; it awoke in Augustine (Conf. viii. ubi supra) the resolution to renounce the world and give himself wholly to God. The ingens numerus of Latin manuscripts, and the imitation of its details in countless monastic biographies, testify to its popularity in the middle ages. Like monasticism itself, its good influence was not without alloy; but on the whole we may claim for it that it tended to stimulate the nobler of the impulses which underlie the monastic life.
A few words may be added on the evidence of the Vita as to the form and motive of early monachism. In the Life of Antony, the stages are (1) ascetics living in the towns and villages, not withdrawn from society (§§3, 4); (2) solitary monasticism in the desert, away from human society; and, as the fame of Antony increases, (3) the formation (§44) of clusters of cells centering round some natural leader, the germ of the laura (such as the community of Tabennæ under Pachomius). Of organised monastic communities the Vita tells us nothing. With regard to the motive of the earliest monasticism, this has been variously sought in (1) the development of the ascetic element present in Christianity from the very first; (2) in the influence of the Alexandrian School, especially Origen, who again is influenced by the spirit of revolt against the body and detachment from the world which characterised neo-Platonism (see Bornemann's work mentioned above); (3) in the persecutions, which drove Christians to the desert (Eus. H. E. vi. 42), which some adopted as their home; (4) to the (not necessarily conscious) imitation of analogous heathen institutions, especially the societies of hagneuontes which were gathered round or in the temples of Serapis (Weingarten, R. E., X. 779-785. Revillout, p. 480 n, refers to Zoega, p. 542, for the fact that Pachomius himself was a monk of Serapis before his forced baptism by his Christian neighbours; and that after it he continued his ascetic life with no external difference. (5) To the desire to avoid civil obligations, already marked in the Rescript of Valens (Cod. Th. xii. 1. 63, quidam ignauiæ sectatores desertis civitatum muneribus, &c.). Of the above motives the Vita gives no support to any but the first, which it directly confirms, and perhaps indirectly to the second. The date of the Vita depends mainly on the view to be taken of §82, where see note 16. __________________________________________________________________
[979] See the note in Vol. I. of this Series, p. 117, D.C.B. iv. 368, Theod. Ltzg. xiii. 493-499.
[980] The silence of Ep. Fest. X. (338) is made much of by Weingarten, but there is nothing there to lead up to a reference to desert monasticism.
[981] It is fortified by the silence of Eusebius' (1) as to monks in general (but yet see H. E. II. 17, vol. i., p. 116, note in this series); (2) as to the part played by Antony at Alexandria during the persecution (H. E. VII. 32, VIII. 13, IX. 6); (3) as to Constantine's letter to Antony (§81).
[982] The life of Senuti (or Schnoudi'), by his disciple Visa, may be consulted in illustration of this point. See edition by Amélineau in vol. 4 of the Memoires de la Mission archéologique Française au Caire, 1888. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Life of Antony.
Table of Contents.
------------------------
Prologue.
§§1, 2. Birth and beginnings of Antony.
§§3, 4. His early ascetic life.
§§5, 6. Early conflicts with the devil.
§7. Details of his life at this time (271-285?)
§§8-10. His life in the tombs, and combats with demons there.
§11. He goes to the desert and overcomes temptations on the way.
§§12, 13. How Antony took up his abode in a ruined fort across the Nile, and how he defeated the demons. His twenty years' sojourn there.
§§14, 15. How he left the fort, and how monasticism began to flourish in Egypt. Antony its leader.
§§16-43. His address to monks, rendered from Coptic, exhorting them to perseverance, and encouraging them against the wiles of Satan.
§44. The growth of the monastic life at this time (about A.D. 305).
§45. How Antony renewed his ascetic endeavours at this time.
§46. How he sought martyrdom at Alexandria during the Persecution (311).
§47. How he lived at this time.
§48. How he delivered a woman from an evil spirit.
§§49, 50. How at this time he betook himself to his inner mountain.'
§§51-53. How he there combated the demons.
§54. Of the miraculous spring, and how he edified the monks of the outer' mountain, and of Antony's sister.
§§55, 56. How humanely he counselled those who resorted to him.
§57. Of the case of Fronto, healed by faith and prayer.
§58. Of a certain virgin, and of Paphnutius the confessor.
§59. Of the two brethren, and how one perished of thirst.
§60. Of the death of Amun, and Antony's vision thereof.
§61, 62. Of Count Archelaus and the virgin Polycration.
§§63, 64. Strange tales of the casting out of demons.
§65. Of Antony's vision concerning the forgiveness of his sins.
§66. Of the passage of souls, and how some were hindered of Satan.
§67. How Antony reverenced all ordained persons.
§68. How he rejected the schism of Meletius and the heresies of Manes and Arius.
§69. How he confuted the Arians.
§§70, 71. How he visited Alexandria, and healed and converted many, and how Athanasius escorted him from the city.
§§72-79. How he reasoned with divers Greeks and philosophers at the outer' mountain.
§80. How he confuted the philosophers by healing certain vexed with demons.
§81. How the Emperors wrote to Antony, and of his answer.
§82. How he saw in a vision the present doings of the Arians.
§§83, 84. That his healings were done by Christ alone, through prayer.
§85. How wisely he answered a certain duke.
§86. Of the Duke Balacius, and how, warned by Antony, he met with a miserable end.
§87. How he bore the infirmities of the weak, and of his great benefits to all Egypt.
§88. Of his discernment, and how he was a counsellor to all.
§§89, 90. How, when now 105 years old, he counselled the monks, and gave advice concerning burial.
§91. Of his sickness and his last will.
§92. Of Antony's death.
§93. How Antony remained hale until his death, and how the fame of him filled all the world.
§94. The end.
[Antony's answers to a philosopher, and to Didymus, are given by Socrates IV. 23, 25: the following is from Hanmer's translation of Socr. I. 21: "The same time lived Antony the monk in the deserts of Ægypt. But inasmuch as Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, hath lately set forth in a several volume, intituled of his life, his manners and converasiton, how openly he buckled with divils, how he over-reached their slights and subtle combats, and wrought many marvellous and strange miracles, I think it superfluous on my part to intreat thereof.']
For the translation of the text I am indebted to my friend and colleague the Rev. H. Ellershaw, jun. __________________________________________________________________
Life of Antony.
------------------------
The life and conversation of our holy Father, Antony: written and sent to the monks in foreign parts by our Father among the Saints, Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria.
Athanasius [983] the bishop to the brethren in foreign parts.
You have entered upon a noble rivalry with the monks of Egypt by your determination either to equal or surpass them in your training in the way of virtue. For by this time there are monasteries among you, and the name of monk receives public recognition. With reason, therefore, all men will approve this determination, and in answer to your prayers God will give its fulfilment. Now since you asked me to give you an account of the blessed Antony's way of life, and are wishful to learn how he began the discipline, who and what manner of man he was previous to this, how he closed his life, and whether the things told of him are true, that you also may bring yourselves to imitate him, I very readily accepted your behest, for to me also the bare recollection of Antony is a great accession of help. And I know that you, when you have heard, apart from your admiration of the man, will be wishful to emulate his determination; seeing that for monks the life of Antony is a sufficient pattern of discipline. Wherefore do not refuse credence to what you have heard from those who brought tidings of him; but think rather that they have told you only a few things, for at all events they scarcely can have given circumstances of so great import in any detail. And because I at your request have called to mind a few circumstances about him, and shall send as much as I can tell in a letter, do not neglect to question those who sail from here: for possibly when all have told their tale, the account will hardly be in proportion to his merits. On account of this I was desirous, when I received your letter, to send for certain of the monks, those especially who were wont to be more frequently with him, that if I could learn any fresh details I might send them to you. But since the season for sailing was coming to an end and the letter-carrier urgent, I hastened to write to your piety what I myself know, having seen him many times, and what I was able to learn from him, for I was his attendant for a long time, and poured water on his hands [984] ; in all points being mindful of the truth, that no one should disbelieve through hearing too much, nor on the other hand by hearing too little should despise the man. __________________________________________________________________
[983] This heading, preserved in the Evagrian version, is probably the original one. Compare the statement to the same effect in Vit. Pachom. 63. The preface to the Evagrian version is important as bearing on the question of interpolation. It runs as follows: Evagrius, presbyter, to his dearest son Innocent, greeting in the Lord. A word-for-word translation from one language to another obscures the sense and as it were chokes the corn with luxuriant grass. For in slavishly following cases and constructions, the language scarcely explains by lengthy periphrasis what it might state by concise expression. To avoid this, I have at your request rendered the Life of the blessed Antony in such a way as to give the full sense, but cut short somewhat of the words. Let others try to catch syllables and letters; do you seek the meaning.'
[984] Cf. 2 Kings iii. 11: the expression merely refers to personal attendance (contrast §§47, 93). The text is uncertain, as some mss., both Greek and Latin read, was able to learn from him who was his attendant,' &c. The question of textual evidence requires further sifting. In support of the statement in the text we may cite Ap. c. Ar. 6, where Ath. is called one of the ascetics,' which may, but need not, refer to something of the kind. __________________________________________________________________
1. Antony you must know was by descent an Egyptian: his parents were of good family and possessed considerable wealth [985] , and as they were Christians he also was reared in the same Faith. In infancy he was brought up with his parents, knowing nought else but them and his home. But when he was grown and arrived at boyhood, and was advancing in years, he could not endure to learn [986] letters, not caring to associate with other boys; but all his desire was, as it is written of Jacob, to live a plain man at home [987] . With his parents he used to attend the Lord's House, and neither as a child was he idle nor when older did he despise them; but was both obedient to his father and mother and attentive to what was read, keeping in his heart what was profitable in what he heard. And though as a child brought up in moderate affluence, he did not trouble his parents for varied or luxurious fare, nor was this a source of pleasure to him; but was content simply with what he found nor sought anything further.
2. After the death of his father and mother he was left alone with one little sister: his age was about eighteen or twenty, and on him the care both of home and sister rested. Now it was not six months after the death of his parents, and going according to custom into the Lord's House, he communed with himself and reflected as he walked how the Apostles [988] left all and followed the Saviour; and how they in the Acts [989] sold their possessions and brought and laid them at the Apostles' feet for distribution to the needy, and what and how great a hope was laid up for them in heaven. Pondering over these things he entered the church, and it happened the Gospel was being read, and he heard the Lord saying to the rich man [990] , If thou wouldest be perfect, go and sell that thou hast and give to the poor; and come follow Me and thou shalt have treasure in heaven.' Antony, as though God had put him in mind of the Saints, and the passage had been read on his account, went out immediately from the church, and gave the possessions of his forefathers to the villagers--they were three hundred acres [991] , productive and very fair--that they should be no more a clog upon himself and his sister [992] . And all the rest that was movable he sold, and having got together much money he gave it to the poor, reserving a little however for his sister's sake. __________________________________________________________________
[985] At Coma in Upper Egypt, see Sozom. i. 13.
[986] Cf. St. Aug. de Doctr. Christ. Prologue.
[987] Gen. xxv. 27.
[988] Matt. iv. 20.
[989] Acts iv. 35.
[990] Matt. xix. 21.
[991] arourai. The arura was 100 Egyptian cubits square, see Herod. ii. 168.
[992] Or, perhaps, in order that they (the villagers) might have no occasion to trouble himself and his sister,' i.e. on condition of future immunity from taxes, &c. (so Neander). __________________________________________________________________
3. And again as he went into the church, hearing the Lord say in the Gospel [993] , be not anxious for the morrow,' he could stay no longer, but went out and gave those things also to the poor. Having committed his sister to known and faithful virgins, and put her into a convent [994] to be brought up, he henceforth devoted himself outside his house to discipline [995] , taking heed to himself and training himself with patience. For there were not yet so many monasteries [996] in Egypt, and no monk at all knew of the distant desert; but all who wished to give heed to themselves practised the discipline in solitude near their own village. Now there was then in the next village an old man who had lived the life of a hermit from his youth up. Antony, after he had seen this man, imitated him in piety. And at first he began to abide in places outside the village: then if he heard of a good man anywhere, like the prudent bee, he went forth and sought him, nor turned back to his own palace until he had seen him; and he returned, having got from the good man as it were supplies for his journey in the way of virtue. So dwelling there at first, he confirmed his purpose not to return to the abode of his fathers nor to the remembrance of his kinsfolk; but to keep all his desire and energy for perfecting his discipline. He worked, however, with his hands, having heard, he who is idle let him not eat [997] ,' and part he spent on bread and part he gave to the needy. And he was constant in prayer, knowing that a man ought to pray in secret unceasingly [998] . For he had given such heed to what was read that none of the things that were written fell from him to the ground, but he remembered all, and afterwards his memory served him for books.
4. Thus conducting himself, Antony was beloved by all. He subjected himself in sincerity to the good men whom he visited, and learned thoroughly where each surpassed him in zeal and discipline. He observed the graciousness of one; the unceasing prayer of another; he took knowledge of another's freedom from anger and another's loving-kindness; he gave heed to one as he watched, to another as he studied; one he admired for his endurance, another for his fasting and sleeping on the ground; the meekness of one and the long-suffering of another he watched with care, while he took note of the piety towards Christ and the mutual love which animated all. Thus filled, he returned to his own place of discipline, and henceforth would strive to unite the qualities of each, and was eager to show in himself the virtues of all. With others of the same age he had no rivalry; save this only, that he should not be second to them in higher things. And this he did so as to hurt the feelings of nobody, but made them rejoice over him. So all they of that village and the good men in whose intimacy he was, when they saw that he was a man of this sort, used to call him God-beloved. And some welcomed him as a son, others as a brother. __________________________________________________________________
[993] Matt. vi. 34.
[994] Parthenon: the earliest use of the word in this sense. Perhaps a house occupied by Virgins is implied in Apol. c. Ar. 15. But at this time virgins generally lived with their families. See D.C.A. 2021^b (the reference to Tertullian is not relevant), Eichhorn, pp. 4, sqq., 28-30.
[995] askes*s (so throughout the Vita).
[996] Probably the word has in this place the sense of a monk's cell (D.C.A. 1220), as below, §39.
[997] 2 Thess. iii. 10.
[998] Matt. vi. 7; 1 Thess. v. 17. __________________________________________________________________
5. But the devil, who hates and envies what is good, could not endure to see such a resolution in a youth, but endeavoured to carry out against him what he had been wont to effect against others. First of all he tried to lead him away from the discipline, whispering to him the remembrance of his wealth, care for his sister, claims of kindred, love of money, love of glory, the various pleasures of the table and the other relaxations of life, and at last the difficulty of virtue and the labour of it; he suggested also the infirmity of the body and the length of the time. In a word he raised in his mind a great dust of debate, wishing to debar him from his settled purpose. But when the enemy saw himself to be too weak for Antony's determination, and that he rather was conquered by the other's firmness, overthrown by his great faith and falling through his constant prayers, then at length putting his trust in the weapons which are [999] in the navel of his belly' and boasting in them--for they are his first snare for the young--he attacked the young man, disturbing him by night and harassing him by day, so that even the onlookers saw the struggle which was going on between them. The one would suggest foul thoughts and the other counter them with prayers: the one fire him with lust, the other, as one who seemed to blush, fortify his body with faith, prayers, and fasting. And the devil, unhappy wight, one night even took upon him the shape of a woman and imitated all her acts simply to beguile Antony. But he, his mind filled with Christ and the nobility inspired by Him, and considering the spirituality of the soul, quenched the coal of the other's deceit. Again the enemy suggested the ease of pleasure. But he like a man filled with rage and grief turned his thoughts to the threatened fire and the gnawing worm, and setting these in array against his adversary, passed through the temptation unscathed. All this was a source of shame to his foe. For he, deeming himself like God, was now mocked by a young man; and he who boasted himself against flesh and blood was being put to flight by a man in the flesh. For the Lord was working with Antony--the Lord who for our sake took flesh [1000] and gave the body victory over the devil, so that all who truly fight can say [1001] , not I but the grace of God which was with me.'
6. At last when the dragon could not even thus overthrow Antony, but saw himself thrust out of his heart, gnashing his teeth as it is written, and as it were beside himself, he appeared to Antony like a black boy, taking a visible shape [1002] in accordance with the colour of his mind. And cringing to him, as it were, he plied him with thoughts no longer, for guileful as he was, he had been worsted, but at last spoke in human voice and said, Many I deceived, many I cast down; but now attacking thee and thy labours as I had many others, I proved weak.' When Antony asked, Who art thou who speakest thus with me? he answered with a lamentable voice, I am the friend of whoredom, and have taken upon me incitements which lead to it against the young. I am called the spirit of lust. How many have I deceived who wished to live soberly, how many are the chaste whom by my incitements I have over-persuaded! I am he on account of whom also the prophet reproves those who have fallen, saying [1003] , "Ye have been caused to err by the spirit of whoredom." For by me they have been tripped up. I am he who have so often troubled thee and have so often been overthrown by thee.' But Antony having given thanks to the Lord, with good courage said to him, Thou art very despicable then, for thou art black-hearted and weak as a child. Henceforth I shall have no trouble from thee [1004] , "for the Lord is my helper, and I shall look down on mine enemies."' Having heard this, the black one straightway fled, shuddering at the words and dreading any longer even to come near the man. __________________________________________________________________
[999] Job xl. 16 (v. 11, LXX): the descriptions of behemoth and leviathan are allegorically referred to Satan, cf. Orat. i. 1, note 5. and below, §24, Ep. Æg. 3.
[1000] Cf. de Incar. 8. 2; 10. 5.
[1001] 1 Cor. xv. 10.
[1002] For visible appearances of devils, see Phantasms of the Living,' vol. 2, p. 266, &c. (Trübner, 1886).
[1003] Hosea iv. 12.
[1004] Ps. cxviii. 7. __________________________________________________________________
7. This was Antony's first struggle against the devil, or rather this victory was the Saviour's work in Antony [1005] , Who condemned sin in the flesh that the ordinance of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh but after the spirit.' But neither did Antony, although the evil one had fallen, henceforth relax his care and despise him; nor did the enemy as though conquered cease to lay snares for him. For again he went round as a lion seeking some occasion against him. But Antony having learned from the Scriptures that the devices [1006] of the devil are many, zealously continued the discipline, reckoning that though the devil had not been able to deceive his heart by bodily pleasure, he would endeavour to ensnare him by other means. For the demon loves sin. Wherefore more and more he repressed the body and kept it in subjection [1007] , lest haply having conquered on one side, he should be dragged down on the other. He therefore planned to accustom himself to a severer mode of life. And many marvelled, but he himself used to bear the labour easily; for the eagerness of soul, through the length of time it had abode in him, had wrought a good habit in him, so that taking but little initiation from others he shewed great zeal in this matter. He kept vigil to such an extent that he often continued the whole night without sleep; and this not once but often, to the marvel of others. He ate once a day, after sunset, sometimes once in two days, and often even in four. His food was bread and salt, his drink, water only. Of flesh and wine it is superfluous even to speak, since no such thing was found with the other earnest men. A rush mat served him to sleep upon, but for the most part he lay upon the bare ground. He would not anoint himself with oil, saying it behoved young men to be earnest in training and not to seek what would enervate the body; but they must accustom it to labour, mindful of the Apostle's words [1008] , when I am weak, then am I strong.' For,' said he, the fibre of the soul is then sound when the pleasures of the body are diminished.' And he had come to this truly wonderful conclusion, that progress in virtue, and retirement from the world for the sake of it, ought not to be measured by time, but by desire and fixity of purpose.' He at least gave no thought to the past, but day by day, as if he were at the beginning of his discipline, applied greater pains for advancement, often repeating to himself the saying of Paul [1009] : Forgetting the things which are behind and stretching forward to the things which are before.' He was also mindful of the words spoken by the prophet Elias [1010] , the Lord liveth before whose presence I stand to-day.' For he observed that in saying to-day' the prophet did not compute the time that had gone by: but daily as though ever commencing he eagerly endeavoured to make himself fit to appear before God, being pure in heart and ever ready to submit to His counsel, and to Him alone. And he used to say to himself that from the life of the great Elias the hermit ought to see his own as in a mirror. __________________________________________________________________
[1005] Rom. viii. 3 and 4.
[1006] Eph. vi. 11.
[1007] 1 Cor. ix. 27; Ath. (with many fathers and uncials) appears to have read hupopiazo, the reading which is followed by the Authorised Version.
[1008] 2 Cor. xii. 10.
[1009] Phil. iii. 14.
[1010] 1 Kings xviii. 15. __________________________________________________________________
8. Thus tightening his hold upon himself, Antony departed to the tombs, which happened to be at a distance from the village; and having bid one of his acquaintances to bring him bread at intervals of many days, he entered one of the tombs, and the other having shut the door on him, he remained within alone. And when the enemy could not endure it, but was even fearful that in a short time Antony would fill the desert with the discipline, coming one night with a multitude of demons, he so cut him with stripes that he lay on the ground speechless from the excessive pain. For he affirmed that the torture had been so excessive that no blows inflicted by man could ever have caused him such torment. But by the Providence of God--for the Lord never overlooks them that hope in Him--the next day his acquaintance came bringing him the loaves. And having opened the door and seeing him lying on the ground as though dead, he lifted him up and carried him to the church in the village, and laid him upon the ground. And many of his kinsfolk and the villagers sat around Antony as round a corpse. But about midnight he came to himself and arose, and when he saw them all asleep and his comrade alone watching, he motioned with his head for him to approach, and asked him to carry him again to the tombs without waking anybody.
9. He was carried therefore by the man, and as he was wont, when the door was shut he was within alone. And he could not stand up on account of the blows, but he prayed as he lay. And after he had prayed, he said with a shout, Here am I, Antony; I flee not from your stripes, for even if you inflict more nothing shall separate me [1011] from the love of Christ. And then he sang, though a camp be set against me, my heart shall not be afraid [1012] .' These were the thoughts and words of this ascetic. But the enemy, who hates good, marvelling that after the blows he dared to return, called together his hounds and burst forth, Ye see,' said he, that neither by the spirit of lust nor by blows did we stay the man, but that he braves us, let us attack him in another fashion.' But changes of form for evil are easy for the devil, so in the night they made such a din that the whole of that place seemed to be shaken by an earthquake, and the demons as if breaking the four walls of the dwelling seemed to enter through them, coming in the likeness of beasts and creeping things. And the place was on a sudden filled with the forms of lions, bears, leopards, bulls, serpents, asps, scorpions, and wolves, and each of them was moving according to his nature. The lion was roaring, wishing to attack, the bull seeming to toss with its horns, the serpent writhing but unable to approach, and the wolf as it rushed on was restrained; altogether the noises of the apparitions, with their angry ragings, were dreadful. But Antony, stricken and goaded by them, felt bodily pains severer still. He lay watching, however, with unshaken soul, groaning from bodily anguish; but his mind was clear, and as in mockery he said, If there had been any power in you, it would have sufficed had one of you come, but since the Lord hath made you weak, you attempt to terrify me by numbers: and a proof of your weakness is that you take the shapes of brute beasts.' And again with boldness he said, If you are able, and have received power against me, delay not to attack; but if you are unable, why trouble me in vain? For faith in our Lord is a seal and a wall of safety to us.' So after many attempts they gnashed their teeth upon him, because they were mocking themselves rather than him.
10. Nor was the Lord then forgetful of Antony's wrestling, but was at hand to help him. So looking up he saw the roof as it were opened, and a ray of light descending to him. The demons suddenly vanished, the pain of his body straightway ceased, and the building was again whole. But Antony feeling the help, and getting his breath again, and being freed from pain, besought the vision which had appeared to him, saying, Where wert thou? Why didst thou not appear at the beginning to make my pains to cease?' And a voice came to him, Antony, I was here, but I waited to see thy fight; wherefore since thou hast endured, and hast not been worsted, I will ever be a succour to thee, and will make thy name known everywhere.' Having heard this, Antony arose and prayed, and received such strength that he perceived that he had more power in his body than formerly. And he was then about thirty-five years old. __________________________________________________________________
[1011] Rom. viii. 35.
[1012] Ps. xxvii. 3. __________________________________________________________________
11. And on the day following he went forth still more eagerly bent on the service of God and having fallen in with the old man he had met previously, he asked him to dwell with him in the desert. But when the other declined on account of his great age, and because as yet there was no such custom, Antony himself set off forthwith to the mountain. And yet again the enemy seeing his zeal and wishing to hinder it, cast in his way what seemed to be a great silver dish. But Antony, seeing the guile of the Evil One, stood, and having looked on the dish, he put the devil in it to shame, saying, Whence comes a dish in the desert? This road is not well-worn, nor is there here a trace of any wayfarer; it could not have fallen without being missed on account of its size; and he who had lost it having turned back, to seek it, would have found it, for it is a desert place. This is some wile of the devil. O thou Evil One, not with this shalt thou hinder my purpose; let it go with thee to destruction. [1013] ' And when Antony had said this it vanished like smoke from the face of fire. __________________________________________________________________
[1013] Cf. Acts viii. 20. __________________________________________________________________
12. Then again as he went on he saw what was this time not visionary, but real gold scattered in the way. But whether the devil showed it, or some better power to try the athlete and show the Evil One that Antony truly cared nought for money, neither he told nor do we know. But it is certain that that which appeared was gold. And Antony marvelled at the quantity, but passed it by as though he were going over fire; so he did not even turn, but hurried on at a run to lose sight of the place. More and more confirmed in his purpose, he hurried to the mountain, and having found a fort, so long deserted that it was full of creeping things, on the other side of the river; he crossed over to it and dwelt there. The reptiles, as though some one were chasing them, immediately left the place. But he built up the entrance completely, having stored up loaves for six months--this is a custom of the Thebans, and the loaves often remain fresh a whole year--and as he found water within, he descended as into a shrine, and abode within by himself, never going forth nor looking at any one who came. Thus he employed a long time training himself, and received loaves, let down from above, twice in the year.
13. But those of his acquaintances who came, since he did not permit them to enter, often used to spend days and nights outside, and heard as it were crowds within clamouring, dinning, sending forth piteous voices and crying, Go from what is ours. What dost thou even in the desert? Thou canst not abide our attack.' So at first those outside thought there were some men fighting with him, and that they had entered by ladders; but when stooping down they saw through a hole there was nobody, they were afraid, accounting them to be demons, and they called on Antony. Them he quickly heard, though he had not given a thought to the demons, and coming to the door he besought them to depart and not to be afraid, for thus,' said he, the demons make their seeming onslaughts against those who are cowardly. Sign yourselves therefore with the cross [1014] , and depart boldly, and let these make sport for themselves.' So they departed fortified with the sign of the Cross. But he remained in no wise harmed by the evil spirits, nor was he wearied with the contest, for there came to his aid visions from above, and the weakness of the foe relieved him of much trouble and armed him with greater zeal. For his acquaintances used often to come expecting to find him dead, and would hear him singing [1015] , Let God arise and let His enemies be scattered, let them also that hate Him flee before His face. As smoke vanisheth, let them vanish; as wax melteth before the face of fire, so let the sinners perish from the face of God;' and again, All nations compassed me about, and in the name of the Lord I requited them [1016] .' __________________________________________________________________
[1014] Cf. de Incarn. xlvii. 2.
[1015] Ps. lxviii. 1.
[1016] Ps. cxviii. 10. Evagr. renders by vindicavi in eis.' __________________________________________________________________
14. And so for nearly twenty years he continued training himself in solitude, never going forth, and but seldom seen by any. After this, when many were eager and wishful to imitate his discipline, and his acquaintances came and began to cast down and wrench off the door by force, Antony, as from a shrine, came forth initiated in the mysteries and filled with the Spirit of God. Then for the first time he was seen outside the fort by those who came to see him. And they, when they saw him, wondered at the sight, for he had the same habit of body as before, and was neither fat, like a man without exercise, nor lean from fasting and striving with the demons, but he was just the same as they had known him before his retirement. And again his soul was free from blemish, for it was neither contracted as if by grief, nor relaxed by pleasure, nor possessed by laughter or dejection, for he was not troubled when he beheld the crowd, nor overjoyed at being saluted by so many. But he was altogether even as being guided by reason, and abiding in a natural state. Through him the Lord healed the bodily ailments of many present, and cleansed others from evil spirits. And He gave grace to Antony in speaking, so that he consoled many that were sorrowful, and set those at variance at one, exhorting all to prefer the love of Christ before all that is in the world. And while he exhorted and advised them to remember the good things to come, and the loving-kindness of God towards us, Who spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all [1017] ,' he persuaded many to embrace the solitary life. And thus it happened in the end that cells arose even in the mountains, and the desert was colonised by monks, who came forth from their own people, and enrolled themselves for the citizenship in the heavens.
15. But when he was obliged to cross the Arsenoitic Canal [1018] --and the occasion of it was the visitation of the brethren--the canal was full of crocodiles. And by simply praying, he entered it, and all they with him, and passed over in safety. And having returned to his cell, he applied himself to the same noble and valiant exercises; and by frequent conversation he increased the eagerness of those already monks, stirred up in most of the rest the love of the discipline, and speedily by the attraction of his words cells multiplied, and he directed them all as a father. __________________________________________________________________
[1017] Rom. viii. 32.
[1018] Between the Nile and the Fayûm. __________________________________________________________________
16. One day when he had gone forth because all the monks had assembled to him and asked to hear words from him, he spoke to them in the Egyptian tongue as follows: The Scriptures are enough for instruction [1019] , but it is a good thing to encourage one another in the faith, and to stir up with words. Wherefore you, as children, carry that which you know to your father; and I as the elder share my knowledge and what experience has taught me with you. Let this especially be the common aim of all, neither to give way having once begun, nor to faint in trouble, nor to say: We have lived in the discipline a long time: but rather as though making a beginning daily let us increase our earnestness. For the whole life of man is very short, measured by the ages to come, wherefore all our time is nothing compared with eternal life. And in the world everything is sold at its price, and a man exchanges one equivalent for another; but the promise of eternal life is bought for a trifle. For it is written, "The days of our life in them are threescore years and ten, but if they are in strength, fourscore years, and what is more than these is labour and sorrow [1020] ." Whenever, therefore, we live full fourscore years, or even a hundred in the discipline, not for a hundred years only shall we reign, but instead of a hundred we shall reign for ever and ever. And though we fought on earth, we shall not receive our inheritance on earth, but we have the promises in heaven; and having put off the body which is corrupt, we shall receive it incorrupt.
17. Wherefore, children, let us not faint nor deem that the time is long, or that we are doing something great, "for the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed to us-ward [1021] ." Nor let us think, as we look at the world, that we have renounced anything of much consequence, for the whole earth is very small compared with all the heaven. Wherefore if it even chanced that we were lords of all the earth and gave it all up, it would be nought worthy of comparison with the kingdom of heaven. For as if a man should despise a copper drachma to gain a hundred drachmas of gold; so if a man were lord of all the earth and were to renounce it, that which he gives up is little, and he receives a hundredfold. But if not even the whole earth is equal in value to the heavens, then he who has given up a few acres leaves as it were nothing; and even if he have given up a house or much gold he ought not to boast nor be low-spirited. Further, we should consider that even if we do not relinquish them for virtue's sake, still afterwards when we die we shall leave them behind--very often, as the Preacher saith [1022] , to those to whom we do not wish. Why then should we not give them up for virtue's sake, that we may inherit even a kingdom? Therefore let the desire of possession take hold of no one, for what gain is it to acquire these things which we cannot take with us? Why not rather get those things which we can take away with us--to wit, prudence, justice, temperance, courage, understanding, love, kindness to the poor, faith in Christ, freedom from wrath, hospitality? If we possess these, we shall find them of themselves preparing for us a welcome there in the land of the meek-hearted.
18. And so from such things let a man persuade himself not to make light of it, especially if he considers that he himself is the servant of the Lord, and ought to serve his Master. Wherefore as a servant would not dare to say, because I worked yesterday, I will not work today; and considering the past will do no work in the future; but, as it is written in the Gospel, daily shows the same readiness to please his master, and to avoid risk: so let us daily abide firm in our discipline, knowing that if we are careless for a single day the Lord will not pardon us, for the sake of the past, but will be wrath against us for our neglect. As also we have heard in Ezekiel [1023] ; and as Judas because of one night destroyed his previous labour.
19. Wherefore, children, let us hold fast our discipline, and let us not be careless. For in it the Lord is our fellow-worker, as it is written, "to all that choose the good, God worketh with them for good [1024] ." But to avoid being heedless, it is good to consider the word of the Apostle, "I die daily [1025] ." For if we too live as though dying daily, we shall not sin. And the meaning of that saying is, that as we rise day by day we should think that we shall not abide till evening; and again, when about to lie down to sleep, we should think that we shall not rise up. For our life is naturally uncertain, and Providence allots it to us daily. But thus ordering our daily life, we shall neither fall into sin, nor have a lust for anything, nor cherish wrath against any, nor shall we heap up treasure upon earth. But, as though under the daily expectation of death, we shall be without wealth, and shall forgive all things to all men, nor shall we retain at all the desire of women or of any other foul pleasure. But we shall turn from it as past and gone, ever striving and looking forward to the day of Judgment. For the greater dread and danger of torment ever destroys the ease of pleasure, and sets up the soul if it is like to fall.
20. Wherefore having already begun and set out in the way of virtue, let us strive the more that we may attain those things that are before. And let no one turn to the things behind, like Lot's wife, all the more so that the Lord hath said, "No man, having put his hand to the plough, and turning back, is fit for the kingdom of heaven [1026] ." And this turning back is nought else but to feel regret, and to be once more worldly-minded. But fear not to hear of virtue, nor be astonished at the name. For it is not far from us, nor is it without ourselves, but it is within us, and is easy if only we are willing. That they may get knowledge, the Greeks live abroad and cross the sea, but we have no need to depart from home for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, nor to cross the sea for the sake of virtue. For the Lord aforetime hath said, "The kingdom of heaven is within you [1027] ." Wherefore virtue hath need at our hands of willingness alone, since it is in us and is formed from us. For when the soul hath its spiritual faculty in a natural state virtue is formed. And it is in a natural state when it remains as it came into existence. And when it came into existence it was fair and exceeding honest. For this cause Joshua, the son of Nun, in his exhortation said to the people, "Make straight your heart unto the Lord God of Israel [1028] ," and John, "Make your paths straight [1029] ." For rectitude of soul consists in its having its spiritual part in its natural state as created. But on the other hand, when it swerves and turns away from its natural state, that is called vice of the soul. Thus the matter is not difficult. If we abide as we have been made, we are in a state of virtue, but if we think of ignoble things we shall be accounted evil. If, therefore, this thing had to be acquired from without, it would be difficult in reality; but if it is in us, let us keep ourselves from foul thoughts. And as we have received the soul as a deposit, let us preserve it for the Lord, that He may recognise His work as being the same as He made it.
21. And let us strive that wrath rule us not nor lust overcome us, for it is written, "The wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God. And lust, when it hath conceived, beareth sin, and the sin when it is full grown bringeth forth death [1030] ." Thus living, let us keep guard carefully, and as it is written, "keep our hearts with all watchfulness [1031] ." For we have terrible and crafty foes--the evil spirits--and against them we wrestle, as the Apostle said, "Not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities and against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places [1032] ." Great is their number in the air around us [1033] , and they are not far from us. Now there are great distinctions among them; and concerning their nature and distinctions much could be said, but such a description is for others of greater powers than we possess. But at this time it is pressing and necessary for us only to know their wiles against ourselves.
22. First, therefore, we must know this: that the demons have not been created like what we mean when we call them by that name; for God made nothing evil, but even they have been made good. Having fallen, however, from the heavenly wisdom, since then they have been grovelling on earth. On the one hand they deceived the Greeks with their displays, while out of envy of us Christians they move all things in their desire to hinder us from entry into the heavens; in order that we should not ascend up thither from whence they fell. Thus there is need of much prayer and of discipline, that when a man has received through the Spirit the gift of discerning spirits, he may have power to recognise their characteristics: which of them are less and which more evil; of what nature is the special pursuit of each, and how each of them is overthrown and cast out. For their villainies and the changes in their plots are many. The blessed Apostle and his followers knew such things when they said, "for we are not ignorant of his devices [1034] ;" and we, from the temptations we have suffered at their hands, ought to correct one another under them. Wherefore I, having had proof of them, speak as to children.
23. The demons, therefore, if they see all Christians, and monks especially, labouring cheerfully and advancing, first make an attack by temptation and place hindrances to hamper our way, to wit, evil thoughts. But we need not fear their suggestions, for by prayer, fasting, and faith in the Lord their attack immediately fails. But even when it does they cease not, but knavishly by subtlety come on again. For when they cannot deceive the heart openly with foul pleasures they approach in different guise, and thenceforth shaping displays they attempt to strike fear, changing their shapes, taking the forms of women, wild beasts, creeping things, gigantic bodies, and troops of soldiers. But not even then need ye fear their deceitful displays. For they are nothing and quickly disappear, especially if a man fortify himself beforehand with faith and the sign of the cross [1035] . Yet are they bold and very shameless, for if thus they are worsted they make an onslaught in another manner, and pretend to prophesy and foretell the future, and to shew themselves of a height reaching to the roof and of great breadth; that they may stealthily catch by such displays those who could not be deceived by their arguments. If here also they find the soul strengthened by faith and a hopeful mind, then they bring their leader to their aid.
24. And he said they often appeared as the Lord revealed the devil to Job, saying, "His eyes are as the morning star. From his mouth proceed burning lamps and hearths of fire are cast forth. The smoke of a furnace blazing with the fire of coals proceeds from his nostrils. His breath is coals and from his mouth issues flame [1036] ." When the prince of the demons appears in this wise, the crafty one, as I said before, strikes terror by speaking great things, as again the Lord convicted him saying to Job, for "he counteth iron as straw, and brass as rotten wood, yea he counteth the sea as a pot of ointment, and the depth of the abyss as a captive, and the abyss as a covered walk [1037] ." And by the prophet, "the enemy said, I will pursue and overtake [1038] ," and again by another, "I will grasp the whole world in my hand as a nest, and take it up as eggs that have been left [1039] ." Such, in a word, are their boasts and professions that they may deceive the godly. But not even then ought we, the faithful, to fear his appearance or give heed to his words. For he is a liar and speaketh of truth never a word. And though speaking words so many and so great in his boldness, without doubt, like a dragon he was drawn with a hook by the Saviour [1040] , and as a beast of burden he received the halter round his nostrils, and as a runaway his nostrils were bound with a ring, and his lips bored with an armlet [1041] . And he was bound by the Lord as a sparrow, that we should mock him. And with him are placed the demons his fellows, like serpents and scorpions to be trodden underfoot by us Christians. And the proof of this is that we now live opposed to him. For he who threatened to dry the sea and seize upon the world, behold now cannot stay our discipline, nor even me speaking against him. Let us then heed not his words, for he is a liar: and let us not fear his visions, seeing that they themselves are deceptive. For that which appears in them is no true light, but they are rather the preludes and likenesses of the fire prepared for the demons who attempt to terrify men with those flames in which they themselves will be burned. Doubtless they appear; but in a moment disappear again, hurting none of the faithful, but bringing with them the likeness of that fire which is about to receive themselves. Wherefore it is unfitting that we should fear them on account of these things; for through the grace of Christ all their practices are in vain.
25. Again they are treacherous, and are ready to change themselves into all forms and assume all appearances. Very often also without appearing they imitate the music of harp and voice, and recall the words of Scripture. Sometimes, too, while we are reading they immediately repeat many times, like an echo, what is read. They arouse us from our sleep to prayers; and this constantly, hardly allowing us to sleep at all. At another time they assume the appearance of monks and feign the speech of holy men, that by their similarity they may deceive and thus drag their victims where they will. But no heed must be paid them even if they arouse to prayer, even if they counsel us not to eat at all, even though they seem to accuse and cast shame upon us for those things which once they allowed. For they do this not for the sake of piety or truth, but that they may carry off the simple to despair; and that they may say the discipline is useless, and make men loathe the solitary life as a trouble and burden, and hinder those who in spite of them walk in it.
26. Wherefore the prophet sent by the Lord declared them to be wretched, saying: "Wo is he who giveth his neighbours to drink muddy destruction [1042] ." For such practices and devices are subversive of the way which leads to virtue. And the Lord Himself, even if the demons spoke the truth,--for they said truly "Thou art the Son of God [1043] "--still bridled their mouths and suffered them not to speak; lest haply they should sow their evil along with the truth, and that He might accustom us never to give heed to them even though they appear to speak what is true. For it is unseemly that we, having the holy Scriptures and freedom from the Saviour, should be taught by the devil who hath not kept his own order but hath gone from one mind to another [1044] . Wherefore even when he uses the language of Scripture He forbids him, saying: "But to the sinner said God, Wherefore dost thou declare My ordinances and takest My covenant in thy mouth [1045] ?" For the demons do all things--they prate, they confuse, they dissemble, they confound--to deceive the simple. They din, laugh madly, and whistle; but if no heed is paid to them forthwith they weep and lament as though vanquished.'
27. The Lord therefore, as God, stayed the mouths of the demons: and it is fitting that we, taught by the saints, should do like them and imitate their courage. For they when they saw these things used to say: "When the sinner rose against me, I was dumb and humble, and kept silence from good words [1046] ." And again: "But I was as a deaf man and heard not, and as a dumb man who openeth not his mouth, and I became as a man who heareth not [1047] ." So let us neither hear them as being strangers to us, nor give heed to them even though they arouse us to prayer and speak concerning fasting. But let us rather apply ourselves to our resolve of discipline, and let us not be deceived by them who do all things in deceit, even though they threaten death. For they are weak and can do nought but threaten.
28. Already in passing I have spoken on these things, and now I must not shrink from speaking on them at greater length, for to put you in remembrance will be a source of safety. Since the Lord visited earth [1048] , the enemy is fallen and his powers weakened. Wherefore although he could do nothing, still like a tyrant, he did not bear his fall quietly, but threatened, though his threats were words only. And let each one of you consider this, and he will be able to despise the demons. Now if they were hampered with such bodies as we are, it would be possible for them to say, "Men when they are hidden we cannot find, but whenever we do find them we do them hurt." And we also by lying in concealment could escape them, shutting the doors against them. But if they are not of such a nature as this, but are able to enter in, though the doors be shut, and haunt all the air, both they and their leader the devil, and are wishful for evil and ready to injure; and, as the Saviour said, "From the beginning the devil is a manslayer and a father of vice [1049] ;" while we, though this is so, are alive, and spend our lives all the more in opposing him; it is plain they are powerless. For place is no hindrance to their plots, nor do they look on us as friends that they should spare us; nor are they lovers of good that they should amend. But on the contrary they are evil, and nothing is so much sought after by them as wounding them that love virtue and fear God. But since they have no power to effect anything, they do nought but threaten. But if they could, they would not hesitate, but forthwith work evil (for all their desire is set on this), and especially against us. Behold now we are gathered together and speak against them, and they know when we advance they grow weak. If therefore they had power they would permit none of us Christians to live, for godliness is an abomination to a sinner [1050] . But since they can do nothing they inflict the greater wounds on themselves; for they can fulfil none of their threats. Next this ought to be considered, that we may be in no fear of them: that if they had the power they would not come in crowds, nor fashion displays, nor with change of form would they frame deceits. But it would suffice that one only should come and accomplish that which he was both able and willing to do: especially as every one who has the power neither slays with display nor strikes fear with tumult, but forthwith makes full use of his authority as he wishes. But the demons as they have no power are like actors on the stage changing their shape and frightening children with tumultuous apparition and various forms: from which they ought rather to be despised as shewing their weakness. At least the true angel of the Lord sent against the Assyrian had no need for tumults nor displays from without, nor noises nor rattlings, but in quiet he used his power and forthwith destroyed a hundred and eighty-five thousand. But demons like these, who have no power, try to terrify at least by their displays [1051] .
29. But if any one having in mind the history of Job [1052] should say, Why then hath the devil gone forth and accomplished all things against him; and stripped him of all his possessions, and slew his children, and smote him with evil ulcers? let such a one, on the other hand, recognise that the devil was not the strong man, but God who delivered Job to him to be tried. Certainly he had no power to do anything, but he asked, and having received it, he hath wrought what he did. So also from this the enemy is the more to be condemned, for although willing he could not prevail against one just man. For if he could have, he would not have asked permission. But having asked not once but also a second time, he shows his weakness and want of power. And it is no wonder if he could do nothing against Job, when destruction would not have come even on his cattle had not God allowed it. And he has not the power over swine, for as it is written in the Gospel, they besought the Lord, saying, "Let us enter the swine [1053] ." But if they had power not even against swine, much less have they any over men formed [1054] in the image of God.
30. So then we ought to fear God only, and despise the demons, and be in no fear of them. But the more they do these things the more let us intensify our discipline against them, for a good life and faith in God is a great weapon. At any rate they fear the fasting, the sleeplessness, the prayers, the meekness, the quietness, the contempt of money and vainglory, the humility, the love of the poor, the alms, the freedom from anger of the ascetics, and, chief of all, their piety towards Christ. Wherefore they do all things that they may not have any that trample on them, knowing the grace given to the faithful against them by the Saviour, when He says, "Behold I have given to you power to tread upon serpents and scorpions, and upon all the power of the enemy [1055] ."
31. Wherefore if they pretend to foretell the future, let no one give heed, for often they announce beforehand that the brethren are coming days after. And they do come. The demons, however, do this not from any care for the hearers, but to gain their trust, and that then at length, having got them in their power, they may destroy them. Whence we must give no heed to them, but ought rather to confute them when speaking, since we do not need them. For what wonder is it, if with more subtle bodies than men have [1056] , when they have seen them start on their journey, they surpass them in speed, and announce their coming? Just as a horseman getting a start of a man on foot announces the arrival of the latter beforehand, so in this there is no need for us to wonder at them. For they know none of those things which are not yet in existence; but God only is He who knoweth all things before their birth [1057] . But these, like thieves, running off first with what they see, proclaim it: to how many already have they announced our business--that we are assembled together, and discuss measures against them, before any one of us could go and tell these things. This in good truth a fleet-footed boy could do, getting far ahead of one less swift. But what I mean is this. If any one begins to walk from the Thebaid, or from any other district, before he begins to walk, they do not know whether he will walk. But when they have seen him walking they run on, and before he comes up report his approach. And so it falls out that after a few days the travellers arrive. But often the walkers turn back, and the demons prove false.'
32. So, too, with respect to the water of the river, they sometimes make foolish statements. For having seen that there has been much rain in the regions of Ethiopia, and knowing that they are the cause of the flood of the river before the water has come to Egypt they run on and announce it. And this men could have told, if they had as great power of running as the demons. And as David's spy [1058] going up to a lofty place saw the man approaching better than one who stayed down below, and the forerunner himself announced, before the others came up, not those things which had not taken place, but those things which were already on the way and were being accomplished, so these also prefer to labour, and declare what is happening to others simply for the sake of deceiving them. If, however, Providence meantime plans anything different for the waters or wayfarers--for Providence can do this--the demons are deceived, and those who gave heed to them cheated.'
33. Thus in days gone by arose the oracles of the Greeks, and thus they were led astray by the demons. But thus also thenceforth their deception was brought to an end by the coming of the Lord [1059] , who brought to nought the demons and their devices. For they know nothing of themselves, but, like thieves, what they get to know from others they pass on, and guess at rather than foretell things. Therefore if sometimes they speak the truth, let no one marvel at them for this. For experienced physicians also, since they see the same malady in different people, often foretell what it is, making it out by their acquaintance with it. Pilots, too, and farmers, from their familiarity with the weather, tell at a glance the state of the atmosphere, and forecast whether it will be stormy or fine. And no one would say that they do this by inspiration, but from experience and practice. So if the demons sometimes do the same by guesswork, let no one wonder at it or heed them. For what use to the hearers is it to know from them what is going to happen before the time? Or what concern have we to know such things, even if the knowledge be true? For it is not productive of virtue, nor is it any token of goodness. For none of us is judged for what he knows not, and no one is called blessed because he hath learning and knowledge. But each one will be called to judgment in these points--whether he have kept the faith and truly observed the commandments.'
34. Wherefore there is no need to set much value on these things, nor for the sake of them to practise a life of discipline and labour; but that living well we may please God. And we neither ought to pray to know the future, nor to ask for it as the reward of our discipline; but our prayer should be that the Lord may be our fellow-helper for victory over the devil. And if even once we have a desire to know the future, let us be pure in mind, for I believe that if a soul is perfectly pure and in its natural state, it is able [1060] , being clear-sighted, to see more and further than the demons--for it has the Lord who reveals to it--like the soul of Elisha, which saw what was done [1061] by Gehazi, and beheld the hosts [1062] standing on its side.'
35. When, therefore, they come by night to you and wish to tell the future, or say, "we are the angels," give no heed, for they lie. Yea even if they praise your discipline and call you blessed, hear them not, and have no dealings with them; but rather sign yourselves and your houses, and pray, and you shall see them vanish. For they are cowards, and greatly fear the sign of the Lord's Cross, since of a truth in it the Saviour stripped them, and made an example of them [1063] . But if they shamelessly stand their ground, capering and changing their forms of appearance, fear them not, nor shrink, nor heed them as though they were good spirits. For the presence either of the good or evil by the help of God can easily be distinguished. The vision of the holy ones is not fraught with distraction: "For they will not strive, nor cry, nor shall any one hear their voice [1064] ." But it comes so quietly and gently that immediately joy, gladness and courage arise in the soul. For the Lord who is our joy is with them, and the power of God the Father. And the thoughts of the soul remain unruffled and undisturbed, so that it, enlightened as it were with rays, beholds by itself those who appear. For the love of what is divine and of the things to come possesses it, and willingly it would be wholly joined with them if it could depart along with them. But if, being men, some fear the vision of the good, those who appear immediately take fear away; as Gabriel [1065] did in the case of Zacharias, and as the angel [1066] did who appeared to the women at the holy sepulchre, and as He did who said to the shepherds in the Gospel, "Fear not." For their fear arose not from timidity, but from the recognition of the presence of superior beings. Such then is the nature of the visions of the holy ones.'
36. But the inroad and the display of the evil spirits is fraught with confusion, with din, with sounds and cryings such as the disturbance of boorish youths or robbers would occasion. From which arise fear in the heart, tumult and confusion of thought, dejection, hatred towards them who live a life of discipline, indifference, grief, remembrance of kinsfolk and fear of death, and finally desire of evil things, disregard of virtue and unsettled habits. Whenever, therefore, ye have seen ought and are afraid, if your fear is immediately taken away and in place of it comes joy unspeakable, cheerfulness, courage, renewed strength, calmness of thought and all those I named before, boldness and love toward God,--take courage and pray. For joy and a settled state of soul show the holiness of him who is present. Thus Abraham beholding the Lord rejoiced [1067] ; so also John [1068] at the voice of Mary, the God-bearer [1069] , leaped for gladness. But if at the appearance of any there is confusion, knocking without, worldly display, threats of death and the other things which I have already mentioned, know ye that it is an onslaught of evil spirits.'
37. And let this also be a token for you: whenever the soul remains fearful there is a presence of the enemies. For the demons do not take away the fear of their presence as the great archangel Gabriel did for Mary and Zacharias, and as he did who appeared to the women at the tomb; but rather whenever they see men afraid they increase their delusions that men may be terrified the more; and at last attacking they mock them, saying, "fall down and worship." Thus they deceived the Greeks, and thus by them they were considered gods, falsely so called. But the Lord did not suffer us to be deceived by the devil, for He rebuked him whenever he framed such delusions against Him, saying: "Get behind me, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve [1070] ." More and more, therefore, let the deceiver be despised by us; for what the Lord hath said, this for our sakes He hath done: that the demons hearing like words from us may be put to flight through the Lord who rebuked them in those words.'
38. And it is not fitting to boast at the casting forth of the demons, nor to be uplifted by the healing of diseases: nor is it fitting that he who casts out devils should alone be highly esteemed, while he who casts them not out should be considered nought. But let a man learn the discipline of each one and either imitate, rival, or correct it. For the working of signs is not ours but the Saviour's work: and so He said to His disciples: "Rejoice not that the demons are subject to you, but that your names are written in the heavens [1071] ." For the fact that our names are written in heaven is a proof of our virtuous life, but to cast out demons is a favour of the Saviour who granted it. Wherefore to those who boasted in signs but not in virtue, and said: "Lord, in Thy name did we not cast out demons, and in Thy name did many mighty works [1072] ?" He answered, "Verily I say unto you, I know you not;" for the Lord knoweth not the ways of the wicked. But we ought always to pray, as I said above, that we may receive the gift of discerning spirits; that, as it is written [1073] , we may not believe every spirit.'
39. I should have liked to speak no further and to say nothing from my own promptings, satisfied with what I have said: but lest you should think that I speak at random and believe that I detail these things without experience or truth; for this cause even though I should become as a fool, yet the Lord who heareth knoweth the clearness of my conscience, and that it is not for my own sake, but on account of your affection towards me and at your petition that I again tell what I saw of the practices of evil spirits. How often have they called me blessed and I have cursed them in the name of the Lord! How often have they predicted the rising of the river, and I answered them, "What have you to do with it?" Once they came threatening and surrounded me like soldiers in full armour. At another time they filled the house with horses, wild beasts and creeping things, and I sang: "Some in chariots and some in horses, but we will boast in the name of the Lord our God [1074] ;" and at the prayers they were turned to flight by the Lord. Once they came in darkness, bearing the appearance of a light, and said, "We are come to give thee a light, Antony." But I closed my eyes and prayed, and immediately the light of the wicked ones was quenched. And a few months after they came as though singing psalms and babbling the words of Scripture, "But I like a deaf man, heard not [1075] ." Once they shook the cell [1076] with an earthquake, but I continued praying with unshaken heart. And after this they came again making noises, whistling and dancing. But as I prayed and lay singing psalms to myself they forthwith began to lament and weep, as if their strength had failed them. But I gave glory to the Lord who had brought down and made an example of their daring and madness.'
40. Once a demon exceeding high appeared with pomp, and dared to say, "I am the power of God and I am Providence, what dost thou wish that I shall give thee?" But I then so much the more breathed upon him [1077] , and spoke the name of Christ, and set about to smite him. And I seemed to have smitten him, and forthwith he, big as he was, together with all his demons, disappeared at the name of Christ. At another time, while I was fasting, he came full of craft, under the semblance of a monk, with what seemed to be loaves, and gave me counsel, saying, "Eat and cease from thy many labours. Thou also art a man and art like to fall sick." But I, perceiving his device, rose up to pray; and he endured it not, for he departed, and through the door there seemed to go out as it were smoke. How often in the desert has he displayed what resembled gold, that I should only touch it and look on it. But I sang psalms against him, and he vanished away. Often they would beat me with stripes, and I repeated again and again, "Nothing shall separate me from the love of Christ [1078] ," and at this they rather fell to beating one another. Nor was it I that stayed them and destroyed their power, but it was the Lord, who said, "I beheld Satan as lightning fall from Heaven; [1079] " but I, children, mindful of the Apostle's words, transferred [1080] this to myself, that you might learn not to faint in discipline, nor to fear the devil nor the delusions of the demons.'
41. And since I have become a fool in detailing these things, receive this also as an aid to your safety and fearlessness; and believe me for I do not lie. Once some one knocked at the door of my cell, and going forth I saw one who seemed of great size and tall. Then when I enquired, "Who art thou?" he said, "I am Satan." Then when I said, "Why art thou here?" he answered, "Why do the monks and all other Christians blame me undeservedly? Why do they curse me hourly?" Then I answered, "Wherefore dost thou trouble them?" He said, "I am not he who troubles them, but they trouble themselves, for I am become weak. Have they not read [1081] ," "The swords of the enemy have come to an end, and thou hast destroyed the cities?" "I have no longer a place, a weapon, a city. The Christians are spread everywhere, and at length even the desert is filled with monks. Let them take heed to themselves, and let them not curse me undeservedly." Then I marvelled at the grace of the Lord, and said to him: "Thou who art ever a liar and never speakest the truth, this at length, even against thy will, thou hast truly spoken. For the coming of Christ hath made thee weak, and He hath cast thee down and stripped thee." But he having heard the Saviour's name, and not being able to bear the burning from it, vanished.'
42. If, therefore, the devil himself confesses that his power is gone, we ought utterly to despise both him and his demons; and since the enemy with his hounds has but devices of this sort, we, having got to know their weakness, are able to despise them. Wherefore let us not despond after this fashion, nor let us have a thought of cowardice in our heart, nor frame fears for ourselves, saying, I am afraid lest a demon should come and overthrow me; lest he should lift me up and cast me down; or lest rising against me on a sudden he confound me. Such thoughts let us not have in mind at all, nor let us be sorrowful as though we were perishing; but rather let us be courageous and rejoice always, believing that we are safe. Let us consider in our soul that the Lord is with us, who put the evil spirits to flight and broke their power. Let us consider and lay to heart that while the Lord is with us, our foes can do us no hurt. For when they come they approach us in a form corresponding to the state in which they discover us [1082] , and adapt their delusions to the condition of mind in which they find us. If, therefore, they find us timid and confused, they forthwith beset the place, like robbers, having found it unguarded; and what we of ourselves are thinking, they do, and more also. For if they find us faint-hearted and cowardly, they mightily increase our terror, by their delusions and threats; and with these the unhappy soul is thenceforth tormented. But if they see us rejoicing in the Lord, contemplating the bliss of the future, mindful of the Lord, deeming all things in His hand, and that no evil spirit has any strength against the Christian, nor any power at all over any one--when they behold the soul fortified with these thoughts--they are discomfited and turned backwards. Thus the enemy, seeing Job fenced round with them, withdrew from him; but finding Judas unguarded, him he took captive. Thus if we are wishful to despise the enemy, let us ever ponder over the things of the Lord, and let the soul ever rejoice in hope. And we shall see the snares of the demon are like smoke, and the evil ones themselves flee rather than pursue. For they are, as I said before, exceeding fearful, ever looking forward to the fire prepared for them.'
43. And for your fearlessness against them hold this sure sign--whenever there is any apparition, be not prostrate with fear, but whatsoever it be, first boldly ask, Who art thou? And from whence comest thou? And if it should be a vision of holy ones they will assure you, and change your fear into joy. But if the vision should be from the devil, immediately it becomes feeble, beholding your firm purpose of mind. For merely to ask, Who art thou [1083] ? and whence comest thou? is a proof of coolness. By thus asking, the son of Nun learned who his helper was; nor did the enemy escape the questioning of Daniel [1084] .' __________________________________________________________________
[1019] Compare c. Gent. 1, de Synod. 6.
[1020] Ps. xc. 10. LXX.
[1021] Rom. viii. 18.
[1022] Eccl. iv. 8, vi. 2.
[1023] Ezek. xviii. 26.
[1024] Rom. viii. 28, R.V. Marg.
[1025] 1 Cor. xv. 31.
[1026] Phil. iii. 13; Gen. xix. 26; Luke ix. 62
[1027] Luke xvii. 21 (from memory).
[1028] Josh. xxiv. 23.
[1029] Matt. iii. 3.
[1030] James i. 20 and 15.
[1031] Prov. iv. 23.
[1032] Eph. vi. 12.
[1033] This is not quite the view of Athanasius himself, who regards the air as cleared of evil spirits by the Death of Christ, de Incar. xxv. 5: but Athan. does not mean that their power over the wicked is done away; nor does Antony ascribe to them any power over the Christian, see §§24, 28, 41.
[1034] 2 Cor. ii. 11.
[1035] See above, §13.
[1036] Job xli. 18, 19, 20 (vv. 9-11, LXX.), see above §5, note 15.
[1037] Job xli. 27 sq.
[1038] Exod. xv. 9.
[1039] Isai. x. 14, cf. Ep Æg. 2.
[1040] Job xli. 1.
[1041] Ibid. 2. Cf. Job xl. 19-24
[1042] Habak. ii. 15. LXX.
[1043] Luke iv. 41.
[1044] hetera anth' heteron, as in de Incar. 11. 4.
[1045] Ps. l. 16, Ep Æg. 3.
[1046] Ps. xxxix. 2.
[1047] Ps. xxxviii. 14.
[1048] Cf. de Incar. 47, 48.
[1049] John viii. 44.
[1050] Ecclesiasticus i. 25.
[1051] 2 Kings xix. 35.
[1052] Job i. and ii.
[1053] Matt. viii. 31.
[1054] Cf. de Incar. 3. 3, and passim.
[1055] Luke x. 19.
[1056] This materialistic view of demons may be paralleled from Origen and other fathers (D.C.B. i. 809), but is not Athanasian. But it would be congenial to the Coptic mind; compare the story told by Cassian of the Monk Serapion, who, on being convinced that God is a Spirit,' cried out, You have taken my God from me' (and see D.C.B. 1. p. 120).
[1057] Susann. 42.
[1058] 2 Sam. xviii. 24.
[1059] De Incar. 47.
[1060] Compare below, §§59, 62, for examples. This quite goes beyond any teaching of Athanasius himself; at the same time it finds a point of contact in what he says about dreams in c. Gent. 30 (manteuomenos kai progignoskon), and about the soul's capacity for objective thought, ib. 33, de Incar. 17. 3.
[1061] 2 Kings v. 26.
[1062] 2 Kings vi. 17.
[1063] Col. ii. 15.
[1064] Matt. xii. 19, cf. Isai. xlii. 2.
[1065] Luke i. 13.
[1066] Matt. xxviii. 5.
[1067] John viii. 56.
[1068] Luke i. 41.
[1069] theotokos, as in Orat. iii. 14 (where see note 3).
[1070] Matt. iv. 10.
[1071] Luke x. 20.
[1072] Matt. vii. 22.
[1073] 1 John iv. 1.
[1074] Ps. xx. 7.
[1075] Ps. xxxviii. 14.
[1076] monasterion
[1077] See D.C.A. p. 652.
[1078] Rom. viii. 35.
[1079] Luke x. 18.
[1080] 1 Cor. iv. 6.
[1081] Ps. ix. 6.
[1082] An important psychological observation.' (Schaff. Ch. Hist.)
[1083] Josh. v. 13.
[1084] Susann. 51-59 __________________________________________________________________
44. While Antony was thus speaking all rejoiced; in some the love of virtue increased, in others carelessness was thrown aside, the self-conceit of others was stopped; and all were persuaded to despise the assaults of the Evil One, and marvelled at the grace given to Antony from the Lord for the discerning of spirits. So their cells were in the mountains, like filled with holy bands of men who sang psalms, loved reading, fasted, prayed, rejoiced in the hope of things to come, laboured in alms-giving, and preserved love and harmony one with another. And truly it was possible, as it were, to behold a land set by itself, filled with piety and justice. For then there was neither the evil-doer, nor the injured, nor the reproaches of the tax-gatherer: but instead a multitude of ascetics; and the one purpose of them all was to aim at virtue. So that any one beholding the cells again, and seeing such good order among the monks, would lift up his voice and say, How goodly are thy dwellings, O Jacob, and thy tents, O Israel; as shady glens and as a garden [1085] by a river; as tents which the Lord hath pitched, and like cedars near waters [1086] .' __________________________________________________________________
[1085] LXX. gardens.'
[1086] Num. xxiv. 5, 6. __________________________________________________________________
45. Antony, however, according to his custom, returned alone to his own cell, increased his discipline, and sighed daily as he thought of the mansions in Heaven, having his desire fixed on them, and pondering over the shortness of man's life. And he used to eat and sleep, and go about all other bodily necessities with shame when he thought of the spiritual faculties of the soul. So often, when about to eat with any other hermits, recollecting the spiritual food, he begged to be excused, and departed far off from them, deeming it a matter for shame if he should be seen eating by others. He used, however, when by himself, to eat through bodily necessity, but often also with the brethren; covered with shame on these occasions, yet speaking boldly words of help. And he used to say that it behoved a man to give all his time to his soul rather than his body, yet to grant a short space to the body through its necessities; but all the more earnestly to give up the whole remainder to the soul and seek its profit, that it might not be dragged down by the pleasures of the body, but, on the contrary, the body might be in subjection to the soul. For this is that which was spoken by the Saviour: Be not anxious for your life what ye shall eat, nor for your body what ye shall put on. And do ye seek not what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, and be not of a doubtful mind. For all these things the nations of the world seek after. But your Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. Howbeit seek ye first His Kingdom, and all these things shall be added unto you [1087] .' __________________________________________________________________
[1087] Matt. vi. 31; Luke xii. 29. __________________________________________________________________
46. After this the Church was seized by the persecution which then [1088] took place under Maximinus, and when the holy martyrs were led to Alexandria, Antony also followed, leaving his cell, and saying, Let us go too, that if called, we may contend or behold them that are contending. And he longed to suffer martyrdom, but not being willing to give himself up, he ministered to the confessors in the mines and in the prisons. And he was very zealous in the judgment hall to stir up to readiness those who were summoned when in their contest, while those who were being martyred he received and brought on their way until they were perfected. The judge, therefore, beholding the fearlessness of Antony and his companions, and their zeal in this matter, commanded that no monk should appear in the judgment hall, nor remain at all in the city. So all the rest thought it good to hide themselves that day, but Antony gave so little heed to the command that he washed his garment, and stood all next day on a raised place before them, and appeared in his best before the governor. Therefore when all the rest wondered at this, and the governor saw and passed by with his array, he stood fearlessly, shewing the readiness of us Christians. For, as I said before, he prayed himself to be a martyr, wherefore he seemed as one grieved that he had not borne his witness. But the Lord was keeping him for our profit and that of others, that he should become a teacher to many of the discipline which he had learned from the Scriptures. For many only beholding his manner of life were eager to be imitators of his ways. So he again ministered as usual to the confessors, and as though he were their fellow captive he laboured in his ministry. __________________________________________________________________
[1088] a.d. 303-311. __________________________________________________________________
47. And when at last the persecution ceased, and the blessed Bishop Peter [1089] had borne his testimony, Antony departed, and again withdrew to his cell, and was there daily a martyr to his conscience, and contending in the conflicts of faith. And his discipline was much severer, for he was ever fasting, and he had a garment of hair on the inside, while the outside was skin, which he kept until his end. And he neither bathed his body with water to free himself from filth, nor did he ever wash his feet, nor even endure so much as to put them into water, unless compelled by necessity. Nor did any one even see him unclothed, nor his body naked at all, except after his death, when he was buried. __________________________________________________________________
[1089] Martyred on Nov. 25, 311, cf. Eus. H. E. vii. 32. __________________________________________________________________
48. When therefore he had retired and determined to fix a time, after which neither to go forth himself nor admit anybody, Martinian, a military officer, came and disturbed Antony. For he had a daughter afflicted with an evil spirit. But when he continued for a long while knocking at the door, and asking him to come out and pray to God for his child, Antony, not bearing to open, looked out from above and said, Man, why dost thou call on me? I also am a man even as you. But if you believe on Christ whom I serve, go, and according as you believe, pray to God, and it shall come to pass.' Straightway, therefore, he departed, believing and calling upon Christ, and he received his daughter cleansed from the devil. Many other things also through Antony the Lord did, who saith, Seek and it shall be given unto you [1090] .' For many of the sufferers, when he would not open his door, slept outside his cell, and by their faith and sincere prayers were healed. __________________________________________________________________
[1090] Luke xi. 9. __________________________________________________________________
49. But when he saw himself beset by many, and not suffered to withdraw himself according to his intent as he wished, fearing because of the signs which the Lord wrought by him, that either he should be puffed up, or that some other should think of him above what he ought to think, he considered and set off to go into the upper Thebaid, among those to whom he was unknown. And having received loaves from the brethren, he sat down by the bank of the river, looking whether a boat would go by, that, having embarked thereon, he might go up the river with them. While he was considering these things, a voice came to him from above, Antony, whither goest thou and wherefore?' But he no way disturbed, but as he had been accustomed to be called [1091] often thus, giving ear to it, answered, saying, Since the multitude permit me not to be still, I wish to go into the upper Thebaid on account of the many hindrances that come upon me here, and especially because they demand of me things beyond my power.' But the voice said unto him, Even though you should go into the Thebaid, or even though, as you have in mind, you should go down to the Bucolia [1092] , you will have to endure more, aye, double the amount of toil. But if you wish really to be in quiet, depart now into the inner desert.' And when Antony said, Who will show me the way for I know it not?' immediately the voice pointed out to him Saracens about to go that way. So Antony approached, and drew near them, and asked that he might go with them into the desert. And they, as though they had been commanded by Providence, received him willingly. And having journeyed with them three days and three nights, he came to a very lofty mountain, and at the foot of the mountain ran a clear spring, whose waters were sweet and very cold; outside there was a plain and a few uncared-for palm trees.
50. Antony then, as it were, moved by God, loved the place [1093] , for this was the spot which he who had spoken with him by the banks of the river had pointed out. So having first received loaves from his fellow travellers, he abode in the mountain alone, no one else being with him. And recognising it as his own home, he remained in that place for the future. But the Saracens, having seen the earnestness of Antony, purposely used to journey that way, and joyfully brought him loaves, while now and then the palm trees also afforded him a poor and frugal relish. But after this, the brethren learning of the place, like children mindful of their father, took care to send to him. But when Antony saw that the bread was the cause of trouble and hardships to some of them, to spare the monks this, he resolved to ask some of those who came to bring him a spade, an axe, and a little corn. And when these were brought, he went over the land round the mountain, and having found a small plot of suitable ground, tilled it; and having a plentiful supply of water for watering, he sowed. This doing year by year, he got his bread from thence, rejoicing that thus he would be troublesome to no one, and because he kept himself from being a burden to anybody. But after this, seeing again that people came, he cultivated a few pot-herbs, that he who came to him might have some slight solace after the labour of that hard journey. At first, however, the wild beasts in the desert, coming because of the water, often injured his seeds and husbandry. But he, gently laying hold of one of them, said to them all, Why do you hurt me, when I hurt none of you? Depart, and in the name of the Lord come not nigh this spot.' And from that time forward, as though fearful of his command, they no more came near the place. __________________________________________________________________
[1091] See on this subject Phantasms of the Living,' vol. 1, p. 480 sq. (Trübner, 1886).
[1092] In Lower Egypt.
[1093] Mount Colzim, seven hours distant from the Red Sea, where an old cloister still preserves his name and memory (Schaff, Ch. Hist. Nic, p. 183). __________________________________________________________________
51. So he was alone in the inner mountain, spending his time in prayer and discipline. And the brethren who served him asked that they might come every month and bring him olives, pulse and oil, for by now he was an old man. There then he passed his life, and endured such great wrestlings, Not against flesh and blood [1094] ,' as it is written, but against opposing demons, as we learned from those who visited him. For there they heard tumults, many voices, and, as it were, the clash of arms. At night they saw the mountain become full of wild beasts, and him also fighting as though against visible beings, and praying against them. And those who came to him he encouraged, while kneeling he contended and prayed to the Lord. Surely it was a marvellous thing that a man, alone in such a desert, feared neither the demons who rose up against him, nor the fierceness of the four-footed beasts and creeping things, for all they were so many. But in truth, as it is written, He trusted in the Lord as Mount Sion [1095] ,' with a mind unshaken and undisturbed; so that the demons rather fled from him, and the wild beasts, as it is written [1096] , kept peace with him.'
52. The devil, therefore, as David says in the Psalms [1097] , observed Antony and gnashed his teeth against him. But Antony was consoled by the Saviour and continued unhurt by his wiles and varied devices. As he was watching in the night the devil sent wild beasts against him. And almost all the hyenas in that desert came forth from their dens and surrounded him; and he was in the midst, while each one threatened to bite. Seeing that it was a trick of the enemy he said to them all: If ye have received power against me I am ready to be devoured by you; but if ye were sent against me by demons, stay not, but depart, for I am a servant of Christ.' When Antony said this they fled, driven by that word as with a whip.
53. A few days after, as he was working (for he was careful to work hard), some one stood at the door and pulled the plait which he was working, for he used to weave baskets, which he gave to those who came in return for what they brought him. And rising up he saw a beast like a man to the thighs but having legs and feet like those of an ass. And Antony only signed himself and said, I am a servant of Christ. If thou art sent against me, behold I am here.' But the beast together with his evil spirits fled, so that, through his speed, he fell and died. And the death of the beast was the fall of the demons. For they strove in all manner of ways to lead Antony from the desert and were not able. __________________________________________________________________
[1094] Eph. vi. 12.
[1095] Ps. cxxv. 1.
[1096] Job v. 23.
[1097] Ps. xxxv. 16. __________________________________________________________________
54. And once being asked by the monks to come down and visit them and their abodes after a time, he journeyed with those who came to him. And a camel carried the loaves and the water for them. For all that desert is dry, and there is no water at all that is fit to drink, save in that mountain from whence they drew the water, and in which Antony's cell was. So when the water failed them on their way, and the heat was very great, they all were in danger. For having gone round the neighbourhood and finding no water, they could walk no further, but lay on the ground and despairing of themselves, let the camel go. But the old man seeing that they were all in jeopardy, groaning in deep grief, departed a little way from them, and kneeling down he stretched forth his hands and prayed. And immediately the Lord made water to well forth where he had stood praying, and so all drank and were revived. And having filled their bottles they sought the camel and found her, for the rope happened to have caught in a stone and so was held fast. Having led it and watered it they placed the bottles on its back and finished their journey in safety. And when he came to the outer cells all saluted him, looking on him as a father. And he too, as though bringing supplies from the mountain, entertained them with his words and gave them a share of help. And again there was joy in the mountains, zeal for improvement and consolation through their mutual faith. Antony also rejoiced when he beheld the earnestness of the monks, and his sister grown old in virginity, and that she herself also was the leader of other virgins. __________________________________________________________________
55. So after certain days he went in again to the mountain. And henceforth many resorted to him, and others who were suffering ventured to go in. To all the monks therefore who came to him, he continually gave this precept: Believe on the Lord and love Him; keep yourselves from filthy thoughts and fleshly pleasures, and as it is written in the Proverbs, be not deceived "by the fulness of the belly [1098] ." Pray continually; avoid vainglory; sing psalms before sleep and on awaking; hold in your heart the commandments of Scripture; be mindful of the works of the saints that your souls being put in remembrance of the commandments may be brought into harmony with the zeal of the saints.' And especially he counselled them to meditate continually on the apostle's word, Let not the sun go down upon your wrath [1099] .' And he considered this was spoken of all commandments in common, and that not on wrath alone, but not on any other sin of ours, ought the sun to go down. For it was good and needful that neither the sun should condemn us for an evil by day nor the moon for a sin by night, or even for an evil thought. That this state may be preserved in us it is good to hear the apostle and keep his words, for he says, Try your own selves and prove your own selves [1100] .' Daily, therefore, let each one take from himself the tale of his actions both by day and night; and if he have sinned, let him cease from it; while if he have not, let him not be boastful. But let him abide in that which is good, without being negligent, nor condemning his neighbours, nor justifying himself, until the Lord come who searcheth out hidden things [1101] ,' as saith the blessed apostle Paul. For often unawares we do things that we know not of; but the Lord seeth all things. Wherefore committing the judgment to Him, let us have sympathy one with another. Let us bear each other's burdens [1102] : but let us examine our own selves and hasten to fill up that in which we are lacking. And as a safeguard against sin let the following be observed. Let us each one note and write down our actions and the impulses of our soul as though we were going to relate them to each other. And be assured that if we should be utterly ashamed to have them known, we shall abstain from sin and harbour no base thoughts in our mind. For who wishes to be seen while sinning? or who will not rather lie after the commission of a sin, through the wish to escape notice? As then while we are looking at one another, we would not commit carnal sin, so if we record our thoughts as though about to tell them to one another, we shall the more easily keep ourselves free from vile thoughts through shame lest they should be known. Wherefore let that which is written be to us in place of the eyes of our fellow hermits, that blushing as much to write as if we had been caught, we may never think of what is unseemly. Thus fashioning ourselves we shall be able to keep the body in subjection, to please the Lord, and to trample on the devices of the enemy.
56. This was the advice he gave to those who came to him. And with those who suffered he sympathised and prayed. And oft-times the Lord heard him on behalf of many: yet he boasted not because he was heard, nor did he murmur if he were not. But always he gave the Lord thanks and besought the sufferer to be patient, and to know that healing belonged neither to him nor to man at all, but only to the Lord, who doeth good when and to whom He will. The sufferers therefore used to receive the words of the old man as though they were a cure, learning not to be downhearted but rather to be long-suffering. And those who were healed were taught not to give thanks to Antony but to God alone. __________________________________________________________________
[1098] Prov. xxiv. 15, LXX.
[1099] Eph. iv. 26.
[1100] 2 Cor. xiii. 5.
[1101] 1 Cor. iv. 5; Rom. ii. 16.
[1102] Gal. vi. 6. __________________________________________________________________
57. Wherefore a man, Fronto by name, who was an officer of the Court and had a terrible disease, for he used to bite his own tongue and was in danger of injury to his eyes, having come to the mountain, asked Antony to pray for him. But Antony said to him, Depart and thou shalt be healed.' But when he was violent and remained within some days, Antony waited and said, If thou stayest here, thou canst not be healed. Go, and having come into Egypt thou shalt see the sign wrought in thee.' And he believed and went. And as soon as he set eyes on Egypt his sufferings ceased, and the man became whole according to the word of Antony, which the Saviour had revealed to him in prayer. __________________________________________________________________
58. There was also a maiden from Busiris Tripolitana, who had a terrible and very hideous disorder. For the runnings of her eyes, nose, and ears fell to the ground and immediately became worms. She was paralysed also and squinted. Her parents having heard of monks going to Antony, and believing on the Lord who healed [1103] the woman with the issue of blood, asked to be allowed, together with their daughter, to journey with them. And when they suffered them, the parents together with the girl, remained outside the mountain with Paphnutius, the confessor and monk; but the monks went in to Antony. And when they only wished to tell about the damsel, he anticipated them, and detailed both the sufferings of the child and how she journeyed with them. Then when they asked that she should be admitted, Antony did not allow it, but said, Go, and if she be not dead, you will find her healed: for the accomplishment of this is not mine, that she should come to me, wretched man that I am, but her healing is the work of the Saviour, who in every place sheweth His pity to them that call upon Him. Wherefore the Lord hath inclined to her as she prayed, and His loving-kindness hath declared to me that He will heal the child where she now is.' So the wonder took place; and going out they found the parents rejoicing and the girl whole. __________________________________________________________________
[1103] Matt. ix. 20. __________________________________________________________________
59. But when two brethren were coming to him, the water failed on the way, and one died and the other was at the point of death, for he had no strength to go on, but lay upon the ground expecting to die. But Antony sitting in the mountain called two monks, who chanced to be there, and urged them saying, Take a pitcher of water and run on the road towards Egypt. For of two men who were coming, one is already dead and the other will die unless you hasten. For this has been revealed to me as I was praying.' The monks therefore went, and found one lying dead, whom they buried, and the other they restored with water and led him to the old man. For it was a day's journey [1104] . But if any one asks, why he did not speak before the other died, the question ought not to be asked. For the punishment of death was not Antony's but God's, who also judged the one and revealed the condition of the other. But the marvel here was only in the case of Antony: that he sitting in the mountain had his heart watchful, and had the Lord to show him things afar off. __________________________________________________________________
[1104] For similar cases, cf. Phantasms of the Living,' vol. 2, p. 368, &c. __________________________________________________________________
60. And this is so, for once again he was sitting on the mountain, and looking up saw in the air some one being borne upwards, and there was much joy among those who met him. Then wondering and deeming a company of that kind to be blessed, he prayed to learn what this might be. And immediately a voice came to him: This is the soul of Amun, the monk at Nitria.' Now Amun had persevered in the discipline up to old age; and the distance from Nitria to the mountain where Antony was, was thirteen days' journey. The companions of Antony therefore, seeing the old man amazed, asked to learn, and heard that Amun was just dead [1105] . And he was well known, for he had stayed there very often, and many signs had been wrought by his means. And this is one of them. Once when he had need to cross the river called Lycus (now it was the season of the flood), he asked his comrade Theodorus to remain at a distance, that they should not see one another naked as they swam the water. Then when Theodorus was departed he again felt ashamed even to see himself naked. While, therefore, he was pondering filled with shame, on a sudden he was borne over to the other side. Theodorus, therefore, himself being a good man, approached, and seeing Amun across first without a drop of water falling from him, enquired how he had got over. And when he saw that Amun was unwilling to tell him, he held him by the feet and declared that he would not let him go before he had learned it from him. So Amun seeing the determination of Theodorus especially from what he had said, and having asked him to tell no man before his death, told him that he had been carried and placed on the further side. And that he had not even set foot on the water, nor was that possible for man, but for the Lord alone and those whom He permits, as He did for the great apostle Peter [1106] . Theodorus therefore told this after the death of Amun. And the monks to whom Antony spoke concerning Amun's death marked the day; and when the brethren came up from Nitria thirty days after, they enquired of them and learned that Amun had fallen asleep at that day and hour in which the old man had seen his soul borne upwards. And both these and the others marvelled at the purity of Antony's soul, how he had immediately learned that which was taking place at a distance of thirteen days' journey, and had seen the soul as it was taken up. __________________________________________________________________
[1105] The same story is told (by Bede in his Life) of St. Cuthbert, who saw the soul of St. Aidan being carried to heaven. Amun was probably the recipient of the letter, No. 48 in this volume.
[1106] Matt. xiv. 28. __________________________________________________________________
61. And Archelaus too, the Count, on a time having found him in the outer mountain, asked him merely to pray for Polycratia of Laodicea, an excellent and Christian [1107] maiden, for she suffered terribly in the stomach and side through over much discipline, and was altogether weakly of body. Antony prayed therefore, and the Count noted the day in which the prayer was made, and having departed to Laodicea he found the maiden whole. And having enquired when and on what day she was relieved of her infirmity, he produced the paper on which he had written the time of the prayer, and having read it he immediately shewed the writing on the paper. And all wondered when they knew that the Lord had relieved her of pain at the time when Antony was praying and invoking the goodness of the Saviour on her behalf.
62. And concerning those who came to him, he often foretold some days or sometimes a month beforehand what was the cause of their coming. For some came only for the sake of seeing him, others through sickness, and others suffering from evil spirits. And all thought the labour of the journey neither trouble nor loss. For each one returned aware that he had received benefit. But though saying such things and beholding such sights, he used to ask that no one should wonder at him for this; but should rather marvel at the Lord for having granted to us men to know Him as far as our powers extended. __________________________________________________________________
[1107] Christophoros, lit. Christ-bearing. __________________________________________________________________
63. Afterwards, on another occasion, having descended to the outer cells, he was asked to enter a vessel and pray with the monks, and he alone perceived an exceedingly unpleasant smell. But those on board said that the stench arose from the fish and salt meat in the ship. He replied however, the smell was different from that; and while he was speaking, a youth with an evil spirit, who had come and hidden himself in the ship, cried out. But the demon being rebuked in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ departed from him, and the man became whole. And all knew that the evil smell arose from the demon.
64. And another, a person of rank, came to him, possessed by a demon; and the demon was so terrible that the man possessed did not know that he was coming to Antony. But he even ate the excreta from his body. So those who brought him besought Antony to pray for him. And Antony pitying the young man prayed and kept watch with him all the night. And about dawn the young man suddenly attacked Antony and gave him a push. But when those who came with him were angry, Antony said, Be not angry with the young man, for it is not he, but the demon which is in him. And being rebuked and commanded to go into dry places, the demon became raging mad, and he has done this. Wherefore give thanks to the Lord, for his attack on me thus is a sign of the departure of the evil spirit.' When Antony had said this, straightway the young man had become whole, and having come at last to his right mind, knew where he was, and saluted the old man and gave thanks to God. __________________________________________________________________
65. And many monks have related with the greatest agreement and unanimity that many other such like things were done by him. But still these do not seem as marvellous as certain other things appear to be. For once, when about to eat, having risen up to pray about the ninth hour, he perceived that he was caught up in the spirit, and, wonderful to tell, he stood and saw himself, as it were, from outside himself, and that he was led in the air by certain ones. Next certain bitter and terrible beings stood in the air and wished to hinder him from passing through. But when his conductors opposed them, they demanded whether he was not accountable to them. And when they wished to sum up the account from his birth, Antony's conductors stopped them, saying, The Lord hath wiped out the sins from his birth, but from the time he became a monk, and devoted himself to God, it is permitted you to make a reckoning.' Then when they accused him and could not convict him, his way was free and unhindered. And immediately he saw himself, as it were, coming and standing by himself, and again he was Antony as before. Then forgetful of eating, he remained the rest of the day and through the whole of the night groaning and praying. For he was astonished when he saw against what mighty opponents our wrestling is, and by what labours we have to pass through the air. And he remembered that this is what the Apostle said, according to the prince of the power of the air [1108] .' For in it the enemy hath power to fight and to attempt to hinder those who pass through. Wherefore most earnestly he exhorted, Take up the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day [1109] ,' that the enemy, having no evil thing to say against us, may be ashamed [1110] .' And we who have learned this, let us be mindful of the Apostle when he says, whether in the body I know not, or whether out of the body I know not; God knoweth [1111] .' But Paul was caught up unto the third heaven, and having heard things unspeakable he came down; while Antony saw that he had come to the air, and contended until he was free. __________________________________________________________________
[1108] Eph. ii. 2.
[1109] Eph. vi. 13.
[1110] Tit. ii. 8.
[1111] 2 Cor. xii. 2. __________________________________________________________________
66. And he had also this favour granted him. For as he was sitting alone on the mountain, if ever he was in perplexity in his meditations, this was revealed to him by Providence in prayer. And the happy man, as it is written, was taught of God [1112] . After this, when he once had a discussion with certain men who had come to him concerning the state of the soul and of what nature its place will be after this life, the following night one from above called him, saying, Antony, rise, go out and look.' Having gone out therefore (for he knew whom he ought to obey) looking up, he beheld one standing and reaching to the clouds, tall, hideous, and fearful, and others ascending as though they were winged. And the figure stretched forth his hands, and some of those who were ascending were stayed by him, while others flew above, and having escaped heaven-ward, were borne aloft free from care. At such, therefore, the giant gnashed his teeth, but rejoiced over those who fell back. And forthwith a voice came to Antony, Understandest thou what thou seest?' And his understanding was opened, and he understood that it was the passing of souls, and that the tall being who stood was the enemy who envies the faithful. And those whom he caught and stopped from passing through are accountable to him, while those whom he was unable to hold as they passed upwards had not been subservient to him. So having seen this, and as it were being reminded, he struggled the more daily to advance towards those things which were before. And these visions he was unwilling to tell, but as he spent much time in prayer, and was amazed, when those who were with him pressed him with questions and forced him, he was compelled to speak, as a father who cannot withhold ought from his children. And he thought that as his conscience was clear, the account would be beneficial for them, that they might learn that discipline bore good fruit, and that visions were oftentimes the solace of their labours. __________________________________________________________________
[1112] Isai. liv. 13; John vi. 45. __________________________________________________________________
67. Added to this he was tolerant in disposition and humble in spirit. For though he was such a man, he observed the rule of the Church most rigidly, and was willing that all the clergy should be honoured above himself [1113] . For he was not ashamed to bow his head to bishops and presbyters, and if ever a deacon came to him for help he discoursed with him on what was profitable, but gave place to him in prayer, not being ashamed to learn himself. For often he would ask questions, and desired to listen to those who were present, and if any one said anything that was useful he confessed that he was profited. And besides, his countenance had a great and wonderful grace. This gift also he had from the Saviour. For if he were present in a great company of monks, and any one who did not know him previously, wished to see him, immediately coming forward he passed by the rest, and hurried to Antony, as though attracted by his appearance. Yet neither in height nor breadth was he conspicuous above others, but in the serenity of his manner and the purity of his soul. For as his soul was free from disturbances, his outward appearance was calm; so from the joy of his soul he possessed a cheerful countenance, and from his bodily movements could be perceived the condition of his soul, as it is written, When the heart is merry the countenance is cheerful, but when it is sorrowful it is cast down [1114] .' Thus Jacob recognised the counsel Laban had in his heart, and said to his wives, The countenance of your father is not as it was yesterday and the day before [1115] .' Thus Samuel recognised David, for he had mirthful eyes, and teeth white as milk. Thus Antony was recognised, for he was never disturbed, for his soul was at peace; he was never downcast, for his mind was joyous. __________________________________________________________________
[1113] This was by no means universal among monks: Athan. argues to Dracontius (cc. 8, 9) against the monastic tendency to think little of the clergy. Here, he propounds the example of Antony for the imitation of the peregrini fratres.'
[1114] Prov. xv. 13.
[1115] Gen. xxxi. 5; 1 Sam. xvi. 12, xvii. 32 __________________________________________________________________
68. And he was altogether wonderful in faith and religious, for he never held communion with the Meletian schismatics, knowing their wickedness and apostacy from the beginning; nor had he friendly dealings with the Manichæans or any other heretics; or, if he had, only as far as advice that they should change to piety. For he thought and asserted that intercourse with these was harmful and destructive to the soul. In the same manner also he loathed the heresy of the Arians, and exhorted all neither to approach them nor to hold their erroneous belief. And once when certain Arian madmen came to him, when he had questioned them and learned their impiety, he drove them from the mountain, saying that their words were worse than the poison of serpents. __________________________________________________________________
69. And once also the Arians having lyingly asserted that Antony's opinions were the same as theirs, he was displeased and wroth against them. Then being summoned by the bishops and all the brethren, he descended from the mountain, and having entered Alexandria [1116] , he denounced the Arians, saying that their heresy was the last of all and a forerunner of Antichrist. And he taught the people that the Son of God was not a created being, neither had He come into being from non-existence, but that He was the Eternal Word and Wisdom of the Essence of the Father. And therefore it was impious to say, there was a time when He was not,' for the Word was always co-existent with the Father. Wherefore have no fellowship with the most impious Arians. For there is no communion between light and darkness [1117] . For you are good Christians, but they, when they say that the Son of the Father, the Word of God, is a created being, differ in nought from the heathen, since they worship that which is created, rather than God the creator [1118] . But believe ye that the Creation itself is angry with them because they number the Creator, the Lord of all, by whom all things came into being, with those things which were originated. __________________________________________________________________
[1116] July 25-27, 338, Fest. Ind. x.
[1117] 2 Cor. vi. 14.
[1118] Orat. ii. 23, &c. This was an argument much used against Arianism. Antony's arguments may be compared with those of Ath. in Ep. Æg. 13. __________________________________________________________________
70. All the people, therefore, rejoiced when they heard the anti-Christian heresy anathematised by such a man. And all the people in the city ran together to see Antony; and the Greeks and those who are called their Priests, came into the church, saying, We ask to see the man of God,' for so they all called him. For in that place also the Lord cleansed many of demons, and healed those who were mad. And many Greeks asked that they might even but touch the old man, believing that they should be profited. Assuredly as many became Christians in those few days as one would have seen made in a year. Then when some thought that he was troubled by the crowds, and on this account turned them all away from him, he said, undisturbedly, that there were not more of them than of the demons with whom he wrestled in the mountain.
71. But when he was departing, and we were setting him forth on his way, as we [1119] arrived at the gate a woman from behind cried out, Stay, thou man of God, my daughter is grievously vexed by a devil. Stay, I beseech thee, lest I too harm myself with running.' And the old man when he heard her, and was asked by us, willingly stayed. And when the woman drew near, the child was cast on the ground. But when Antony had prayed and called upon the name of Christ, the child was raised whole, for the unclean spirit was gone forth. And the mother blessed God, and all gave thanks. And Antony himself also rejoiced, departing to the mountain as though it were to his own home. __________________________________________________________________
[1119] This seems to imply Athanasius as the (real or ostensible) narrator. __________________________________________________________________
72. And Antony also was exceeding prudent, and the wonder was that although he had not learned letters, he was a ready-witted and sagacious man. At all events two Greek philosophers once came, thinking they could try their skill on Antony; and he was in the outer mountain, and having recognised who they were from their appearance, he came to them and said to them by means of an interpreter, Why, philosophers, did ye trouble yourselves so much to come to a foolish man?' And when they said that he was not a foolish man, but exceedingly prudent, he said to them, If you came to a foolish man, your labour is superfluous; but if you think me prudent become as I am, for we ought to imitate what is good. And if I had come to you I should have imitated you; but if you to me, become as I am, for I am a Christian.' But they departed with wonder, for they saw that even demons feared Antony.
73. And again others such as these met him in the outer mountain and thought to mock [1120] him because he had not learned letters. And Antony said to them, What say ye? which is first, mind or letters? And which is the cause of which--mind of letters or letters of mind?' And when they answered mind is first and the inventor of letters, Antony said, Whoever, therefore, hath a sound mind hath not need of letters.' This answer amazed both the bystanders and the philosophers, and they departed marvelling that they had seen so much understanding in an ignorant man. For his manners were not rough as though he had been reared in the mountain and there grown old, but graceful and polite, and his speech was seasoned with the divine salt, so that no one was envious, but rather all rejoiced over him who visited him.
74. After this again certain others came; and these were men who were deemed wise among the Greeks, and they asked him a reason for our faith in Christ. But when they attempted to dispute concerning the preaching of the divine Cross and meant to mock, Antony stopped for a little, and first pitying their ignorance, said, through an interpreter, who could skilfully interpret his words, Which is more beautiful, to confess the Cross or to attribute to those whom you call gods adultery and the seduction of boys? For that which is chosen by us is a sign of courage and a sure token of the contempt of death, while yours are the passions of licentiousness. Next, which is better, to say that the Word of God was not changed, but, being the same, He took a human body for the salvation and well-being of man, that having shared in human birth He might make man partake in the divine and spiritual nature [1121] ; or to liken the divine to senseless animals and consequently to worship four-footed beasts, creeping things and the likenesses of men? For these things, are the objects of reverence of you wise men. But how do you dare to mock us, who say that Christ has appeared as man, seeing that you, bringing the soul from heaven, assert that it has strayed and fallen from the vault of the sky into body [1122] ? And would that you had said that it had fallen into human body alone, and not asserted that it passes and changes into four-footed beasts and creeping things. For our faith declares that the coming of Christ was for the salvation of men. But you err because you speak of soul as not generated. And we, considering the power and loving-kindness of Providence, think that the coming of Christ in the flesh was not impossible with God. But you, although calling the soul the likeness of Mind [1123] , connect it with falls and feign in your myths that it is changeable, and consequently introduce the idea that Mind itself is changeable by reason of the soul. For whatever is the nature of a likeness, such necessarily is the nature of that of which it is a likeness. But whenever you think such a thought concerning Mind, remember that you blaspheme even the Father of Mind Himself [1124] .
75. But concerning the Cross, which would you say to be the better, to bear it, when a plot is brought about by wicked men, nor to be in fear of death brought about under any form whatever [1125] ; or to prate about the wanderings of Osiris and Isis, the plots of Typhon, the flight of Cronos, his eating his children and the slaughter of his father. For this is your wisdom. But how, if you mock the Cross, do you not marvel at the resurrection? For the same men who told us of the latter wrote the former. Or why when you make mention of the Cross are you silent about the dead who were raised, the blind who received their sight, the paralytics who were healed, the lepers who were cleansed, the walking upon the sea, and the rest of the signs and wonders, which shew that Christ is no longer a man but God? To me you seem to do yourselves much injustice and not to have carefully read our Scriptures. But read and see that the deeds of Christ prove Him to be God come upon earth for the salvation of men.
76. But do you tell us your religious beliefs. What can you say of senseless creatures except senselessness and ferocity? But if, as I hear, you wish to say that these things are spoken of by you as legends, and you allegorize the rape of the maiden Persephone of the earth; the lameness of Hephæstus of fire; and allegorize the air as Hera, the sun as Apollo, the moon as Artemis, and the sea as Poseidon; none the less, you do not worship God Himself, but serve the creature rather than God who created all things. For if because creation is beautiful you composed such legends, still it was fitting that you should stop short at admiration and not make gods of the things created; so that you should not give the honour of the Creator to that which is created. Since, if you do, it is time for you to divert the honour of the master builder to the house built by him; and of the general to the soldier. What then can you reply to these things, that we may know whether the Cross hath anything worthy of mockery?'
77. But when they were at a loss, turning hither and thither, Antony smiled and said--again through an interpreter--Sight itself carries the conviction of these things. But as you prefer to lean upon demonstrative arguments, and as you, having this art, wish us also not to worship God, until after such proof, do you tell first how things in general and specially the recognition of God are accurately known. Is it through demonstrative argument or the working of faith? And which is better, faith which comes through the inworking (of God) or demonstration by arguments?' And when they answered that faith which comes through the inworking was better and was accurate knowledge, Antony said, You have answered well, for faith arises from disposition of soul, but dialectic from the skill of its inventors. Wherefore to those who have the inworking through faith, demonstrative argument is needless, or even superfluous. For what we know through faith this you attempt to prove through words, and often you are not even able to express what we understand. So the inworking through faith is better and stronger than your professional arguments.'
78. We Christians therefore hold the mystery not in the wisdom of Greek arguments, but in the power of faith richly supplied to us by God through Jesus Christ. And to show that this statement is true, behold now, without having learned letters, we believe in God, knowing through His works His providence over all things. And to show that our faith is effective, so now we are supported by faith in Christ, but you by professional logomachies. The portents of the idols among you are being done away, but our faith is extending everywhere. You by your arguments and quibbles have converted none from Christianity to Paganism. We, teaching the faith on Christ, expose your superstition, since all recognise that Christ is God and the Son of God. You by your eloquence do not hinder the teaching of Christ. But we by the mention of Christ crucified put all demons to flight, whom you fear as if they were gods. Where the sign of the Cross is [1126] , magic is weak and witchcraft has no strength.
79. Tell us therefore where your oracles are now? Where are the charms of the Egyptians? Where the delusions of the magicians? When did all these things cease and grow weak except when the Cross of Christ arose? Is It then a fit subject for mockery, and not rather the things brought to nought by it, and convicted of weakness? For this is a marvellous thing, that your religion was never persecuted, but even was honoured by men in every city, while the followers of Christ are persecuted, and still our side flourishes and multiplies over yours. What is yours, though praised and honoured, perishes, while the faith and teaching of Christ, though mocked by you and often persecuted by kings, has filled the world. For when has the knowledge of God so shone forth? or when has self-control and the excellence of virginity appeared as now? or when has death been so despised except when the Cross of Christ has appeared? And this no one doubts when he sees [1127] the martyr despising death for the sake of Christ, when he sees for Christ's sake the virgins of the Church keeping themselves pure and undefiled. __________________________________________________________________
[1120] Cf. c. Gent. 1, de Incar. 1, 41, 48. 7.
[1121] Cf. de Incar. 54. 3; 2 Pet. i. 4.
[1122] Cf. Plat. Phædr. 274 B: but the resemblances is not close and the relation of this passage to the Phædrus is probably mediate. I cannot see that the doctrine referred to here is necessarily different from that of Plotinus (Enn. IV. iii. 15).
[1123] Plotinus (Enn. V. i. 3) taught that the soul was, as it were, an image of Mind, as the uttered word is of the word in the soul (cf. Philo. Vit. Mos. iii. 13).
[1124] It is certainly startling to find Antony, ignorant of Greek and of letters, reasoning with philosophers upon the doctrines of Neoplatonism. His whole life, excepting two short visits to Alexandria, had been spent out of ear-shot of such discussions. Yet it is not easy to say exactly how much a man of strong mind and retentive memory may have picked up from the conversation of those who visited him upon subjects so widely discussed as these speculations were.
[1125] De Incar. 24. 3.
[1126] De Incar. 47. 4.
[1127] Compare de Incar. 48. 2. __________________________________________________________________
80. And these signs are sufficient to prove that the faith of Christ alone is the true religion. But see! you still do not believe and are seeking for arguments. We however make our proof "not in the persuasive words of Greek wisdom [1128] " as our teacher has it, but we persuade by the faith which manifestly precedes argumentative proof. Behold there are here some vexed with demons;'--now there were certain who had come to him very disquieted by demons, and bringing them into the midst he said,--Do you cleanse them either by arguments and by whatever art or magic you choose, calling upon your idols, or if you are unable, put away your strife with us and you shall see the power of the Cross of Christ.' And having said this he called upon Christ, and signed the sufferers two or three times with the sign of the Cross. And immediately the men stood up whole, and in their right mind, and forthwith gave thanks unto the Lord. And the philosophers, as they are called, wondered, and were astonished exceedingly at the understanding of the man and at the sign which had been wrought. But Antony said, Why marvel ye at this? We are not the doers of these things, but it is Christ who worketh them by means of those who believe on Him. Believe, therefore, also yourselves, and you shall see that with us there is no trick of words, but faith through love which is wrought in us towards Christ; which if you yourselves should obtain you will no longer seek demonstrative arguments, but will consider faith in Christ sufficient.' These are the words of Antony. And they marvelling at this also, saluted him and departed, confessing the benefit they had received from him [1129] . __________________________________________________________________
[1128] 1 Cor. ii. 4.
[1129] The above argument with the philosophers runs upon the general lines of that of Athanasius c. Gent. The point which we miss here is the Euhemerism upon which Athanasius so strongly insists. This latter view would be naturally less congenial to Antony's mind than the view that the gods were merely demons. __________________________________________________________________
81. And the fame of Antony came even unto kings. For Constantine Augustus, and his sons Constantius and Constans the Augusti wrote letters to him, as to a father, and begged an answer from him. But he made nothing very much of the letters, nor did he rejoice at the messages, but was the same as he had been before the Emperors wrote to him. But when they brought him the letters he called the monks and said, Do not be astonished if an emperor writes to us, for he is a man; but rather wonder that God wrote the Law for men and has spoken to us [1130] through His own Son.' And so he was unwilling to receive the letters, saying that he did not know how to write an answer to such things. But being urged by the monks because the emperors were Christians, and lest they should take offence on the ground that they had been spurned, he consented that they should be read, and wrote an answer approving them because they worshipped Christ, and giving them counsel on things pertaining to salvation: not to think much of the present, but rather to remember the judgment that is coming, and to know that Christ alone was the true and Eternal King.' He begged them to be merciful and to give heed to justice and the poor. And they having received the answer rejoiced. Thus he was dear to all, and all desired to consider him as a father. __________________________________________________________________
[1130] Heb. i. 2. __________________________________________________________________
82. Being known to be so great a man, therefore, and having thus given answers to those who visited him, he returned again to the inner mountain, and maintained his wonted discipline. And often when people came to him, as he was sitting or walking, as it is written in Daniel [1131] , he became dumb, and after a season he resumed the thread of what he had been saying before to the brethren who were with him. And his companions perceived that he was seeing a vision. For often when he was on the mountains he saw what was happening in Egypt, and told it to Serapion the bishop [1132] , who was indoors with him, and who saw that Antony was wrapped in a vision. Once as he was sitting and working, he fell, as it were, into a trance, and groaned much at what he saw. Then after a time, having turned to the bystanders with groans and trembling, he prayed, and falling on his knees remained so a long time. And having arisen the old man wept. His companions, therefore, trembling and terrified, desired to learn from him what it was. And they troubled him much, until he was forced to speak. And with many groans he spake as follows: O, my children, it were better to die before what has appeared in the vision come to pass.' And when again they asked him, having burst into tears, he said, Wrath is about to seize the Church, and it is on the point of being given up to men who are like senseless beasts. For I saw the table of the Lord's House, and mules standing around it on all sides in a ring, and kicking the things therein, just like a herd kicks when it leaps in confusion. And you saw,' said he, how I groaned, for I heard a voice saying, "My altar shall be defiled."' These things the old man saw, and after two years the present [1133] inroad of the Arians and the plunder of the churches took place, when they violently carried off the vessels, and made the heathen carry them; and when they forced the heathen from the prisons to join in their services, and in their presence did upon the Table as they would. Then we all understood that these kicks of the mules signified to Antony what the Arians, senselessly like beasts, are now doing. But when he saw this vision, he comforted those with him, saying, Be not downcast, my children; for as the Lord has been angry, so again will He heal us, and the Church shall soon again receive her own order, and shall shine forth as she is wont. And you shall behold the persecuted restored, and wickedness again withdrawn to its own hiding-place, and pious faith speaking boldly in every place with all freedom. Only defile [1134] not yourselves with the Arians, for their teaching is not that of the Apostles, but that of demons and their father the devil; yea, rather, it is barren and senseless, and without light understanding, like the senselessness of these mules.' __________________________________________________________________
[1131] Dan. iv. 19 (v. 16 (LXX).
[1132] Of Thmuis, the friend and correspondent of Athanasius: see below, §91.
[1133] Cf. below, what the Arians are now doing.' This incidental notice of time fixes the date of the present passage. Weingarten in vain attempts to extract some other sense from the Greek, which is plainness itself. It also fixes the date of Antony's death to within two years of the troubles in question. The Benedictines refer the troubles to the intrusion of Gregory in 341' (really 339), and the apparently unprecedented character ascribed to the outrages by Antony is in favour of this, as well as the fact (Encyc. 3) that in 339 the heathen are said to have offered sacrifice in the churches. But the latter is only in superficial agreement with the Greek text of the present passage, which speaks of Arian sunaxeis at which heathen were impressed to be present, apparently to make some show of a congregation. The Evagrian version, indeed, adds that the Gentiles on this occasion also carried on idolatrous rites in the Church and polluted the baptisteries; but Evagrius is in the habit of interpolating little details from his own knowledge or opinion (e.g. 16, Ita exorsus,' &c., 26, qui vinctas hominum linguas solvebat,' 58, qui effosso pro Christo oculo sub Maximiano,' &c.), and in this case appears to borrow from Encycl. 3. Again, the writer of the Vita was not present (the bystanders' supra; they troubled him;' they asked him;'...and infr. those with him') when the Vision took place: but when, two years later, it was interpreted by events, he was in the company of those who had been with Antony at the time (infr. then we all understood'). This (on the assumption of Athanasian authorship) excludes the year 339, when Athanasius fled to Italy, and compels us to refer the Vision to the troubles of 356 (Apol. Fug. 6, 7. Hist. Ar. 55, 56, Ep. ad Lucif.), after which Athanasius fled to the desert and was in the company of the monks. This conclusion is in independent agreement with (1) the fact, decisive by itself, that Antony is still alive in 345, when Nestorius became Prefect of Egypt (§86, note 3), i.e. six years after the troubles of 339; (2) the evidence that Antony was still living about 353 a.d. (Epist. Ammon. de Pachom. et Theod. 20, 21, in Act. SS. Mai. tom. iii. Appendix 70 C E, Tillemont vii. 123), and (3) the statement of Jerome (Chron.) that Antony died in 356. Against it Weingarten urges the prophecy of restored peace to the Church (infr.) as pointing to a time after the overthrow of Arianism. This is of little weight, for the prophecy expresses only what must have been the hope and belief of all. The prologue, which Tillemont (viii. 227) thinks must have been written in a time of peace at Alexandria, is not sufficiently explicit on the point to weigh against the plain sense of the present passage.
[1134] Cf. the Second Letter to monks (Letter 53). __________________________________________________________________
83. Such are the words of Antony, and we ought not to doubt whether such marvels were wrought by the hand of a man. For it is the promise of the Saviour, when He saith, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say to this mountain, remove hence and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you [1135] .' And again, Verily, verily, I say unto you, if ye shall ask the father in My name He will give it you. Ask and ye shall receive [1136] .' And He himself it is who saith to His disciples and to all who believe on Him, Heal the sick, cast out demons; freely ye have received, freely give [1137] .'
84. Antony, at any rate, healed not by commanding, but by prayer and speaking the name of Christ. So that it was clear to all that it was not he himself who worked, but the Lord who showed mercy by his means and healed the sufferers. But Antony's part was only prayer and discipline, for the sake of which he stayed in the mountain, rejoicing in the contemplation of divine things, but grieving when troubled by much people, and dragged to the outer mountain. For all judges used to ask him to come down, because it was impossible for them to enter on account of their following of litigants. But nevertheless they asked him to come that they might but see him. When therefore he avoided it and refused to go to them, they remained firm, and sent to him all the more the prisoners under charge of soldiers, that on account of these he might come down. Being forced by necessity, and seeing them lamenting, he came into the outer mountain, and again his labour was not unprofitable. For his coming was advantageous and serviceable to many; and he was of profit to the judges, counselling them to prefer justice to all things; to fear God, and to know, that with what judgment they judged, they should be judged [1138] .' But he loved more than all things his sojourn in the mountain. __________________________________________________________________
[1135] Matt. xvii. 20.
[1136] John xvi. 23.
[1137] Matt. x. 8.
[1138] Matt. vii. 2. __________________________________________________________________
85. At another time, suffering the same compulsion at the hands of them who had need, and after many entreaties from the commander of the soldiers, he came down, and when he was come he spoke to them shortly of the things which make for salvation, and concerning those who wanted him, and was hastening away. But when the duke, as he is called, entreated him to stay, he replied that he could not linger among them, and persuaded him by a pretty simile, saying, Fishes, if they remain long on dry land, die. And so monks lose their strength if they loiter among you and spend their time with you. Wherefore as fish must hurry to the sea, so must we hasten to the mountain. Lest haply if we delay we forget the things within us.' And the general having heard this and many other things from him, was amazed and said, Of a truth this man is the servant of God. For, unless he were beloved of God, whence could an ignorant man have such great understanding?' __________________________________________________________________
86. And a certain general, Balacius by name, persecuted us Christians bitterly on account of his regard for the Arians--that name of ill-omen. And as his ruthlessness was so great that he beat virgins, and stripped and scourged monks, Antony at this time wrote a letter as follows, and sent it to him. I see wrath coming upon thee, wherefore cease to persecute the Christians, lest haply wrath catch hold of thee, for even now it is on the point of coming upon thee [1139] .' But Balacius laughed and threw the letter on the ground, and spit on it, and insulted the bearers, bidding them tell this to Antony: Since thou takest thought for the monks, soon I will come after thee also.' And five days had not passed before wrath came upon him. For Balacius and Nestorius, the Prefect of Egypt [1140] , went forth to the first halting-place from Alexandria, which is called Chæreu, and both were on horseback, and the horses belonged to Balacius, and were the quietest of all his stable. But they had not gone far towards the place when the horses began to frisk with one another as they are wont to do; and suddenly the quieter, on which Nestorius sat [1141] , with a bite dismounted Balacius, and attacked him, and tore his thigh so badly with its teeth that he was borne straight back to the city, and in three days died. And all wondered because what Antony had foretold had been so speedily fulfilled. __________________________________________________________________
[1139] In Hist. Ar. 14 the letter is sent not to Balacius but to Gregory, who died on June 26, 345 (Gwatkin, p. 105).
[1140] Nestorius was prefect 345-352' (Index to Fest. Letters, where the year 345' is from August 344 to August 345).
[1141] In the Hist. Ar. it is simply stated that Balacius was bitten by his own horse. The present passage looks like a more careful restatement. __________________________________________________________________
87. Thus, therefore, he warned the cruel. But the rest who came to him he so instructed that they straightway forgot their lawsuits, and felicitated those who were in retirement from the world. And he championed those who were wronged in such a way that you would imagine that he, and not the others, was the sufferer. Further, he was able to be of such use to all, that many soldiers and men who had great possessions laid aside the burdens of life, and became monks for the rest of their days. And it was as if a physician had been given by God to Egypt. For who in grief met Antony and did not return rejoicing? Who came mourning for his dead and did not forthwith put off his sorrow? Who came in anger and was not converted to friendship? What poor and low-spirited man met him who, hearing him and looking upon him, did not despise wealth and console himself in his poverty? What monk, having being neglectful, came to him and became not all the stronger? What young man having come to the mountain and seen Antony, did not forthwith deny himself pleasure and love temperance? Who when tempted by a demon, came to him and did not find rest? And who came troubled with doubts and did not get quietness of mind? __________________________________________________________________
88. For this was the wonderful thing in Antony's discipline, that, as I said before, having the gift of discerning spirits, he recognised their movements, and was not ignorant whither any one of them turned his energy and made his attack. And not only was he not deceived by them himself, but cheering those who were troubled with doubts, he taught them how to defeat their plans, telling them of the weakness and craft of those who possessed them. Thus each one, as though prepared by him for battle, came down from the mountain, braving the designs of the devil and his demons. How many maidens who had suitors, having but seen Antony from afar, remained maidens for Christ's sake. And people came also from foreign parts to him, and like all others, having got some benefit, returned, as though set forward by a father. And certainly when he died, all as having been bereft of a father, consoled themselves solely by their remembrances of him, preserving at the same time his counsel and advice. __________________________________________________________________
89. It is worth while that I should relate, and that you, as you wish it, should hear what his death was like. For this end of his is worthy of imitation. According to his custom he visited the monks in the outer mountain, and having learned from Providence that his own end was at hand, he said to the brethren, This is my last visit to you which I shall make. And I shall be surprised if we see each other again in this life. At length the time of my departure is at hand, for I am near a hundred and five years old.' And when they heard it they wept, and embraced, and kissed the old man. But he, as though sailing from a foreign city to his own, spoke joyously, and exhorted them Not to grow idle in their labours, nor to become faint in their training, but to live as though dying daily. And as he had said before, zealously to guard the soul from foul thoughts, eagerly to imitate the Saints, and to have nought to do with the Meletian schismatics, for you know their wicked and profane character. Nor have any fellowship with the Arians, for their impiety is clear to all. Nor be disturbed if you see the judges protect them, for it shall cease, and their pomp is mortal and of short duration. Wherefore keep yourselves all the more untainted by them, and observe the traditions of the fathers, and chiefly the holy faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, which you have learned from the Scripture, and of which you have often been put in mind by me.'
90. But when the brethren were urging him to abide with them and there to die, he suffered it not for many other reasons, as he showed by keeping silence, and especially for this:--The Egyptians are wont to honour with funeral rites, and to wrap in linen cloths at death the bodies of good men, and especially of the holy martyrs; and not to bury them underground, but to place them on couches, and to keep them in their houses, thinking in this to honour the departed. And Antony often urged the bishops to give commandment to the people on this matter. In like manner he taught the laity and reproved the women, saying, that this thing was neither lawful nor holy at all. For the bodies of the patriarchs and prophets are until now preserved in tombs, and the very body of the Lord was laid in a tomb, and a stone was laid upon it, and hid it until He rose on the third day [1142] .' And thus saying, he showed that he who did not bury the bodies of the dead after death transgressed the law, even though they were sacred. For what is greater or more sacred than the body of the Lord? Many therefore having heard, henceforth buried the dead underground, and gave thanks to the Lord that they had been taught rightly. __________________________________________________________________
[1142] Cf. John xix. 41; Matt. xxvii. 60. __________________________________________________________________
91. But he, knowing the custom, and fearing that his body would be treated this way, hastened, and having bidden farewell to the monks in the outer mountain entered the inner mountain, where he was accustomed to abide. And after a few months he fell sick. Having summoned those who were there--they were two in number who had remained in the mountain fifteen years, practising the discipline and attending on Antony on account of his age--he said to them, I, as it is written [1143] , go the way of the fathers, for I perceive that I am called by the Lord. And do you be watchful and destroy not your long discipline, but as though now making a beginning, zealously preserve your determination. For ye know the treachery of the demons, how fierce they are, but how little power they have. Wherefore fear them not, but rather ever breathe Christ, and trust Him. Live as though dying daily. Give heed to yourselves, and remember the admonition you have heard from me. Have no fellowship with the schismatics, nor any dealings at all with the heretical Arians. For you know how I shunned them on account of their hostility to Christ, and the strange doctrines of their heresy. Therefore be the more earnest always to be followers first of God and then of the Saints; that after death they also may receive you as well-known friends into the eternal habitations. Ponder over these things and think of them, and if you have any care for me and are mindful of me as of a father, suffer no one to take my body into Egypt, lest haply they place me in the houses [1144] , for to avoid this I entered into the mountain and came here. Moreover you know how I always put to rebuke those who had this custom, and exhorted them to cease from it. Bury my body, therefore, and hide it underground yourselves, and let my words be observed by you that no one may know the place [1145] but you alone. For at the resurrection of the dead I shall receive it incorruptible from the Saviour. And divide my garments. To Athanasius the bishop give one sheepskin and the garment whereon I am laid, which he himself gave me new, but which with me has grown old. To Serapion the bishop give the other sheepskin, and keep the hair garment yourselves [1146] . For the rest fare ye well, my children, for Antony is departing, and is with you no more.' __________________________________________________________________
[1143] Josh. xxiii. 14.
[1144] Cf. St. Aug. Serm. 361. 12, D.C.A. p. 251.
[1145] The body of Antony was discovered by a revelation' in 561, and translated to Alexandria. When the Saracens conquered Egypt it was transferred to Constantinople, and lastly in the tenth century was carried to Vienne by a French Seigneur. The first and last links of this history are naturally precarious. The translation to Alexandria is vouched for by Victor of Tunis (Chron.) who was in the neighbourhood at the time.
[1146] Jerome, in his life of Paul of Thebes, relates that Antony received from Paul, and ever afterwards wore on festivals, his tunic of palm-leaves. If this legacy more glorious than the purple of a king' (Vit. Paul. c. 13) had any existence, it would certainly not have been forgotten by Antony in disposing of his worldly goods. The silence of the Life of Antony throws discredit on Jerome's whole account of Paul. __________________________________________________________________
92. Having said this, when they had kissed him, he lifted up his feet, and as though he saw friends coming to him and was glad because of them--for as he lay his countenance appeared joyful--he died and was gathered to the fathers. And they afterward, according to his commandment, wrapped him up and buried him, hiding his body underground. And no one knows to this day where it was buried, save those two only. But each of those who received the sheepskin of the blessed Antony and the garment worn by him guards it as a precious treasure. For even to look on them is as it were to behold Antony; and he who is clothed in them seems with joy to bear his admonitions. __________________________________________________________________
93. This is the end of Antony's life in the body and the above was the beginning of the discipline. Even if this account is small compared with his merit, still from this reflect how great Antony, the man of God, was. Who from his youth to so great an age preserved a uniform zeal for the discipline, and neither through old age was subdued by the desire of costly food, nor through the infirmity of his body changed the fashion of his clothing, nor washed even his feet with water, and yet remained entirely free from harm. For his eyes were undimmed and quite sound and he saw clearly; of his teeth he had not lost one, but they had become worn to the gums through the great age of the old man. He remained strong both in hands and feet; and while all men were using various foods, and washings and divers garments, he appeared more cheerful and of greater strength. And the fact that his fame has been blazoned everywhere; that all regard him with wonder, and that those who have never seen him long for him, is clear proof of his virtue and God's love of his soul. For not from writings, nor from worldly wisdom, nor through any art, was Antony renowned, but solely from his piety towards God. That this was the gift of God no one will deny. For from whence into Spain and into Gaul, how into Rome and Africa, was the man heard of who abode hidden in a mountain, unless it was God who maketh His own known everywhere, who also promised this to Antony at the beginning? For even if they work secretly, even if they wish to remain in obscurity, yet the Lord shows them as lamps to lighten all, that those who hear may thus know that the precepts of God are able to make men prosper and thus be zealous in the path of virtue. __________________________________________________________________
94. Read these words, therefore, to the rest of the brethren that they may learn what the life of monks ought to be; and may believe that our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ glorifies those who glorify Him: and leads those who serve Him unto the end, not only to the kingdom of heaven, but here also--even though they hide themselves and are desirous of withdrawing from the world--makes them illustrious and well known everywhere on account of their virtue and the help they render others. And if need be, read this among the heathen, that even in this way they may learn that our Lord Jesus Christ is not only God and the Son of God, but also that the Christians who truly serve Him and religiously believe on Him, prove, not only that the demons, whom the Greeks themselves think to be gods, are no gods, but also tread them under foot and put them to flight, as deceivers and corrupters of mankind, through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Introduction to Ad Episcopos Ægypti Et Libyæ Epistola Encyclica.
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Written A.D. 356.
This letter was addressed by St. Athanasius to the bishops of his Province after his expulsion by Syrianus (Feb. 8, 356), and when the nomination of George the contractor to the Alexandrian See was already known (§7). But no details of the persecution of the orthodox in Egypt had reached Athanasius when he wrote, in fact he mentions it as only beginning (§5). This points to about the Easter of 356; see Prolegg. ch. ii. §8 (1). The tract thus opens the series of anti-Arian works composed during the third exile.' It has indeed been inferred (by Baronius and others) from §22 that the letter was written thirty-six years after the Nicene Synod, i.e. in 361. But it was certainly written before the arrival of George, and in the passage referred to it is the first condemnation of Arius by Alexander, and not the Council of Nicæa, that is placed thirty-six years ago. The primary purpose of the letter is to warn the bishops against a formulary which was on the point of being circulated for their acceptance on pain of banishment (§5). The creed in question cannot now be identified,--but it was very possibly the Sirmian Creed of 351 (de Synod. 27), not formally Arian, but evading the Nicene test (§10). He begins, accordingly, after a general warning (1-4) against being imposed upon by mere words, and a statement (5) of the tactics of his opponents, by urging the bishops to hold to the faith of Nicæa, in contrast to the shifting professions of its opponents (6-8), and to be satisfied with nothing short of an explicit repudiation of Arianism (9-11). In the Second Part of the Letter he turns to doctrine. He states (12) the original Arian position, and confronts it (13) with passages from Scripture. He challenges the Arians (14) to state any clear belief as to the nature of the Word, which shall reconcile their premises with the language of Holy Writ (15, 16). He explains Prov. viii. 22 of the Incarnation, and taxes the Arians with denying this truth, like the heathen (17). He next taxes them with dissimulation, especially Arius in his profession to Constantine (18); he describes the death of Arius, and presses the charge of complicity with a man already judged by God (19). He urges the bishops (20, 21) to steadfastness and confessorship, reprobates the coalition of Meletians (22) and Arians, and finally expresses the conviction (23) that the Emperor Constantius will put an end to these outrages when informed of the true facts of the case.
The last section is an anticipation of the Apol. ad Constantium, which Athanasius was probably preparing at the same time. Not till two years later does he cast aside all hope of the Emperor and launch out in the bitter invective of the Arian History' (see Apol. pro Fuga 26, note 7).
The place where this Encyclical was written is quite uncertain, but it was most probably in the Libyan desert, or in Cyrenaica (Prolegg. ubi supr. note 10). His language (infr. §5, note 7) would naturally be such as not to give, through so public a document, a clue to his pursuers.
It may be added that in many mss., and in the editions previous to 1698, this tract was counted as the first of the five' (or in some cases six') Orationes contra Arianos. For a discussion of this error, see Montfaucon's Monita to this tract and to the four Orationes. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
To the Bishops of Egypt.
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Chapter I.
1. Christ warned His followers against false prophets.
All things whatsoever our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, as Luke wrote, both hath done and taught [1147] ,' He effected after having appeared for our salvation; for He came, as John saith, not to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved [1148] .' And among the rest we have especially to admire this instance of His goodness, that He was not silent concerning those who should fight against us, but plainly told us beforehand, that, when those things should come to pass, we might straightway be found with minds established by His teaching. For He said, There shall arise false prophets and false Christs, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, the very elect shall be deceived. Behold, I have told you before [1149] .' Manifold indeed and beyond human conception are the instructions and gifts of grace which He has laid up in us; as the pattern of heavenly conversation, power against demons, the adoption of sons, and that exceeding great and singular grace, the knowledge of the Father and of the Word Himself, and the gift of the Holy Ghost. But the mind of man is prone to evil exceedingly; moreover, our adversary the devil, envying us the possession of such great blessings, goeth about seeking to snatch away the seed of the word which is sown within us. Wherefore as if by His prophetic warnings He would seal up His instructions in our hearts as His own peculiar treasure, the Lord said, Take heed that no man deceive you: for many shall come in My name, saying, I am he; and the time draweth near; and they shall deceive many: go ye not therefore after them [1150] .' This is a great gift which the Word has bestowed upon us, that we should not be deceived by appearances, but that, howsoever these things are concealed, we should all the more distinguish them by the grace of the Spirit. For whereas the inventor of wickedness and great spirit of evil, the devil, is utterly hateful, and as soon as he shews himself is rejected [1151] of all men,--as a serpent, as a dragon, as a lion seeking whom he may seize upon and devour,--therefore he conceals and covers what he really is, and craftily personates that Name which all men desire, so that deceiving by a false appearance, he may thenceforth fix fast in his own chains those whom he has led astray. And as if one that desired to kidnap the children of others during the absence of their parents, should personate their appearance, and so putting a cheat on the affections of the offspring, should carry them far away and destroy them; in like manner this evil and wily spirit the devil, having no confidence in himself, and knowing the love which men bear to the truth, personates its appearance, and so spreads his own poison among those that follow after him.
2. Satan pretending to be holy, is detected by the Christian.
Thus he deceived Eve, not speaking his own, but artfully adopting the words of God, and perverting their meaning. Thus he suggested evil to the wife of Job, persuading her to feign affection for her husband, while he taught her to blaspheme God. Thus does the crafty spirit mock men by false displays, deluding and drawing each into his own pit of wickedness. When of old he deceived the first man Adam, thinking that through him he should have all men subject unto him, he exulted with great boldness and said, My hand hath found as a nest the riches of the people; and as one gathereth eggs that are left, have I gathered all the earth; and there is none that shall escape me or speak against me [1152] .' But when the Lord came upon earth, and the enemy made trial of His human Economy, being unable to deceive the flesh which He had taken upon Him, from that time forth he, who promised himself the occupation of the whole world, is for His sake mocked even by children: that proud one is mocked as a sparrow [1153] . For now the infant child lays his hand upon the hole of the asp, and laughs at him that deceived Eve [1154] ; and all that rightly believe in the Lord tread under foot him that said, I will ascend above the heights of the clouds: I will be like the Most High [1155] .' Thus he suffers and is dishonoured; and although he still ventures with shameless confidence to disguise himself, yet now, wretched spirit, he is detected the rather by them that bear the Sign on their foreheads [1156] ; yea, more, he is rejected of them, and is humbled, and put to shame. For even if, now that he is a creeping serpent, he shall transform himself into an angel of light, yet his deception will not profit him; for we have been taught that though an angel from heaven preach unto us any other gospel than that we have received, he is anathema [1157] .'
3. And although, again, he conceal his natural falsehood, and pretend to speak truth with his lips; yet are we not ignorant of his devices [1158] ,' but are able to answer him in the words spoken by the Spirit against him; But unto the ungodly, said God, why dost thou preach My laws?' and, Praise is not seemly in the mouth of a sinner [1159] .' For even though he speak the truth, the deceiver is not worthy of credit. And whereas Scripture shewed this, when relating his wicked artifices against Eve in Paradise, so the Lord also reproved him,--first in the mount, when He laid open the folds of his breast-plate [1160] ,' and shewed who the crafty spirit was, and proved that it was not one of the saints [1161] , but Satan that was tempting Him. For He said, Get thee behind Me Satan; for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve [1162] .' And again, when He put a curb in the mouths of the demons that cried after Him from the tombs. For although what they said was true, and they lied not then, saying, Thou art the Son of God,' and the Holy One of God [1163] ;' yet He would not that the truth should proceed from an unclean mouth, and especially from such as them, lest under pretence thereof they should mingle with it their own malicious devices, and sow these also while men slept. Therefore He suffered them not to speak such words, neither would He have us to suffer such, but hath charged us by His own mouth, saying, Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheeps' clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves [1164] ;' and by the mouth of His Holy Apostles, Believe not every spirit [1165] .' Such is the method of our adversary's operations; and of the like nature are all these inventions of heresies, each of which has for the father of its own device the devil, who changed and became a murderer and a liar from the beginning. But being ashamed to profess his hateful name, they usurp the glorious Name of our Saviour which is above every name [1166] ,' and deck themselves out in the language of Scripture, speaking indeed the words, but stealing away the true meaning thereof; and so disguising by some artifice their false inventions, they also become the murderers of those whom they have led astray.
4. It profits not to receive part of Scripture, and reject part.
For whence do Marcion and Manichæus receive the Gospel while they reject the Law? For the New Testament arose out of the Old, and bears witness to the Old; if then they reject this, how can they receive what proceeds from it? Thus Paul was an Apostle of the Gospel, which God promised afore by His prophets in the holy Scriptures [1167] :' and our Lord Himself said, ye search the Scriptures, for they are they which testify of Me [1168] .' How then shall they confess the Lord unless they first search the Scriptures which are written concerning Him? And the disciples say that they have found Him, of whom Moses and the Prophets did write [1169] .' And what is the Law to the Sadducees if they receive not the Prophets [1170] ? For God who gave the Law, Himself promised in the Law that He would raise up Prophets also, so that the same is Lord both of the Law and of the Prophets, and he that denies the one must of necessity deny the other also. And again, what is the Old Testament to the Jews, unless they acknowledge the Lord whose coming was expected according to it? For had they believed the writings of Moses, they would have believed the words of the Lord; for He said, He wrote of Me [1171] .' Moreover, what are the Scriptures to him [1172] of Samosata, who denies the Word of God and His incarnate Presence [1173] , which is signified and declared both in the Old and New Testament? And of what use are the Scriptures to the Arians also, and why do they bring them forward, men who say that the Word of God is a creature, and like the Gentiles serve the creature more than' God the Creator [1174] ?' Thus each of these heresies, in respect of the peculiar impiety of its invention, has nothing in common with the Scriptures. And their advocates are aware of this, that the Scriptures are very much, or rather altogether, opposed to the doctrines of every one of them; but for the sake of deceiving the more simple sort (such as are those of whom it is written in the Proverbs, The simple believeth every word [1175] ),' they pretend like their father the devil [1176] ' to study and to quote the language of Scripture, in order that they may appear by their words to have a right belief, and so may persuade their wretched followers to believe what is contrary to the Scriptures. Assuredly in every one of these heresies the devil has thus disguised himself, and has suggested to them words full of craftiness. The Lord spake concerning them, that there shall arise false Christs and false prophets, so that they shall deceive many [1177] .' Accordingly the devil has come, speaking by each and saying, I am Christ, and the truth is with me;' and he has made them, one and all, to be liars like himself. And strange it is, that while all heresies are at variance with one another concerning the mischievous inventions which each has framed, they are united together only by the common purpose of lying [1178] . For they have one and the same father that has sown in them all the seeds, of falsehood. Wherefore the faithful Christian and true disciple of the Gospel, having grace to discern spiritual things, and having built the house of his faith upon a rock, stands continually firm and secure from their deceits. But the simple person, as I said before, that is not thoroughly grounded in knowledge, such an one, considering only the words that are spoken and not perceiving their meaning, is immediately drawn away by their wiles. Wherefore it is good and needful for us to pray that we may receive the gift of discerning spirits, so that every one may know, according to the precept of John, whom he ought to reject, and whom to receive as friends and of the same faith. Now one might write at great length concerning these things, if one desired to go into details respecting them; for the impiety and perverseness of heresies will appear to be manifold and various, and the craft of the deceivers to be very terrible. But since holy Scripture is of all things most sufficient [1179] for us, therefore recommending to those who desire to know more of these matters, to read the Divine word, I now hasten to set before you that which most claims attention, and for the sake of which principally I have written these things.
5. Attempt of Arians to substitute a Creed for the Nicene.
I heard during my sojourn in these parts [1180] (and they were true and orthodox brethren that informed me), that certain professors of Arian opinions had met together, and drawn a confession of faith to their own liking, and that they intend to send word to you, that you must either subscribe to what pleases them, or rather to what the devil has inspired them with, or in case of refusal must suffer banishment. They are indeed already beginning to molest the Bishops of these parts; and thereby are plainly manifesting their disposition. For inasmuch as they frame this document only for the purpose of inflicting banishment or other punishments, what does such conduct prove them to be, but enemies of the Christians, and friends of the devil and his angels? and especially since they spread abroad what they like contrary to the mind of that gracious Prince, our most religious Emperor Constantius [1181] . And this they do with great craftiness, and, as appears to me, chiefly with two ends in view; first, that by obtaining your subscriptions, they may seem to remove the evil repute that rests upon the name of Arius, and may escape notice themselves as if not professing his opinions; and again, that by putting forth these statements they may cast a shade over the Council of Nicæa [1182] , and the confession of faith which was then put forth against the Arian heresy. But this proceeding does but prove the more plainly their own maliciousness and heterodoxy. For had they believed aright, they would have been satisfied with the confession put forth at Nicæa by the whole Ecumenic Council; and had they considered themselves calumniated and falsely called Arians, they ought not to have been so eager to innovate upon what was written against Arius, lest what was directed against him might seem to be aimed at them also. This, however, is not the course they pursue, but they conduct the struggle in their own behalf, just as if they were Arius. Observe how entirely they disregard the truth, and how everything they say and do is for the sake of the Arian heresy. For in that they dare to question those sound definitions of the faith, and take upon themselves to produce others contrary to them, what else do they but accuse the Fathers, and stand up in defence of that heresy which they opposed and protested against? And what they now write proceeds not from any regard for the truth, as I said before, but rather they do it as in mockery and by an artifice, for the purpose of deceiving men; that by sending about their letters they may engage the ears of the people to listen to these notions, and so put off the time when they will be brought to trial; and that by concealing their impiety from observation, they may have room to extend their heresy, which, like a gangrene [1183] ,' eats its way everywhere.
6. Accordingly they disturb and disorder everything, and yet not even thus are they satisfied with their own proceedings. For every year, as if they were going to draw up a contract, they meet together and pretend to write about the faith, whereby they expose themselves the more to ridicule and disgrace, because their expositions are rejected, not by others, but by themselves. For had they had any confidence in their previous statements, they would not have desired to draw up others; nor again, leaving these last, would they now have set down the one in question, which no doubt true to their custom they will again alter, after a very short interval, and as soon as they shall find a pretence for their customary plotting against certain persons. For when they have a design against any, then it is that they make a great show of writing about the faith; that, as Pilate washed his hands, so they by writing may destroy those who rightly believe in Christ, hoping that, as making definitions about the faith, they may appear, as I have repeatedly said, to be free from the charge of false doctrine. But they will not be able to hide themselves, nor to escape; for they continually become their own accusers even while they defend themselves. Justly so, since instead of answering those who bring proof against them, they do but persuade themselves to believe whatever they wish. And when is an acquittal obtained, upon the criminal becoming his own judge? Hence it is that they are always writing, and always altering their own previous statements, and thus they shew an uncertain faith [1184] ,' or rather a manifest unbelief and perverseness. And this, it appears to me, must needs be the case with them; for since, having fallen away from the truth, and desiring to overthrow that sound confession of faith which was drawn up at Nicæa, they have, in the language of Scripture, loved to wander, and have not refrained their feet [1185] ;' therefore, like Jerusalem of old, they labour and toil in their changes, sometimes writing one thing, and sometimes another, but only for the sake of gaining time, and that they may continue enemies of Christ, and deceivers of mankind.
7. The party of Acacius really Arians.
Who, then, that has any real regard for truth, will be willing to suffer these men any longer? who will not justly reject their writing? who will not denounce their audacity, that being but few [1186] in number, they would have their decisions to prevail over everything, and as desiring the supremacy of their own meetings, held in corners and suspicious in their circumstances, would forcibly cancel the decrees of an uncorrupt, pure, and Ecumenic Council? Men who have been promoted by Eusebius and his fellows for advocating this Antichristian heresy, venture to define articles of faith, and while they ought to be brought to judgment as criminals, like Caiaphas, they take upon themselves to judge. They compose a Thalia, and would have it received as a standard of faith, while they are not yet themselves determined what they believe. Who does not know that Secundus [1187] of Pentapolis, who was several times degraded long ago, was received by them for the sake of the Arian madness; and that George [1188] , now of Laodicea, and Leontius the Eunuch, and before him Stephanus, and Theodorus of Heraclea [1189] , were promoted by them? Ursacius and Valens also, who from the first were instructed by Arius as young men [1190] , though they had been formerly degraded from the Priesthood, afterwards got the title of Bishops on account of their impiety; as did also Acacius, Patrophilus [1191] , and Narcissus, who have been most forward in all manner of impiety. These were degraded in the great Synod of Sardica; Eustathius also now of Sebastea, Demophilus and Germinius [1192] , Eudoxius, and Basil, who are supporters of that impiety, were advanced in the same manner. Of Cecropius [1193] , and him they called Auxentius, and of Epictetus [1194] the impostor, it were superfluous for me to speak, since it is manifest to all men, in what manner, on what pretexts, and by what enemies of ours these were promoted, that they might bring their false charges against the orthodox Bishops who were the objects of their designs. For although they resided at the distance of eighty posts, and were unknown to the people, yet on the ground of their impiety they purchased for themselves the title of Bishop. For the same reason also they have now [1195] hired one George of Cappadocia, whom they wish to impose upon you. But no respect is due to him any more than to the rest; for there is a report in these parts that he is not even a Christian, but is devoted to the worship of idols; and he has a hangman's temper [1196] . And this person, such as he is described to be, they have taken into their ranks, that they may be able to injure, to plunder, and to slay; for in these things he is a great proficient, but is ignorant of the very principles of the Christian faith.
8. Words are bad, though Scriptural, which proceed from bad men.
Such are the machinations of these men against the truth: but their designs are manifest to all the world, though they attempt in ten thousand ways, like eels, to elude the grasp, and to escape detection as enemies of Christ. Wherefore I beseech you, let no one among you be deceived, no one seduced by them; rather, considering that a sort of judaical impiety is invading the Christian faith, be ye all zealous for the Lord; hold fast, every one, the faith we have received from the Fathers, which they who assembled at Nicæa recorded in writing, and endure not those who endeavour to innovate thereon. And however they may write phrases out of the Scripture, endure not their writings; however they may speak the language of the orthodox, yet attend not to what they say; for they speak not with an upright mind, but putting on such language like sheeps' clothing, in their hearts they think with Arius, after the manner of the devil, who is the author of all heresies. For he too made use of the words of Scripture, but was put to silence by our Saviour. For if he had indeed meant them as he used them, he would not have fallen from heaven; but now having fallen through his pride, he artfully dissembles in his speech, and oftentimes maliciously endeavours to lead men astray by the subtleties and sophistries of the Gentiles. Had these expositions of theirs proceeded from the orthodox, from such as the great Confessor Hosius, and Maximinus [1197] of Gaul, or his successor [1198] , or from such as Philogonius and Eustathius [1199] , Bishops of the East [1200] , or Julius and Liberius of Rome, or Cyriacus of Moesia [1201] , or Pistus and Aristæus of Greece, or Silvester and Protogenes of Dacia, or Leontius and Eupsychius of Cappadocia, or Cæcilianus of Africa, or Eustorgius of Italy, or Capito of Sicily, or Macarius of Jerusalem, or Alexander of Constantinople, or Pæderos of Heraclea, or those great Bishops Meletius, Basil, and Longianus, and the rest from Armenia and Pontus, or Lupus and Amphion from Cilicia, or James [1202] and the rest from Mesopotamia, or our own blessed Alexander, with others of the same opinions as these;--there would then have been nothing to suspect in their statements, for the character of apostolical men is sincere and incapable of fraud.
9. For such words do but serve as their cloak.
But when they proceed from those who are hired to advocate the cause of heresy, and since, according to the divine proverb, The words of the wicked are to lie in wait,' and The mouth of the wicked poureth out evil things,' and The counsels of the wicked are deceit [1203] :' it becomes us to watch and be sober, brethren, as the Lord has said, lest any deception arise from subtlety of speech and craftiness; lest any one come and pretend to say, I preach Christ,' and after a little while he be found to be Antichrist. These indeed are Antichrists, whosoever come to you in the cause of the Arian madness. For what defect is there among you, that any one need to come to you from without? Or, of what do the Churches of Egypt and Libya and Alexandria stand so much in need, that these men should make a purchase [1204] of the Episcopate instead of wood and goods, and intrude into Churches which do not belong to them? Who is not aware, who does not perceive clearly, that they do all this in order to support their impiety? Wherefore although they should make themselves dumb, or although they should bind on their garments larger borders than the Pharisees, and pour themselves forth in long speeches, and practise the tones of their voice [1205] , they ought not to be believed; for it is not the mode of speaking, but the intentions of the heart and a godly conversation that recommend the faithful Christian. And thus the Sadducees and Herodians, although they have the law in their mouths, were put to rebuke by our Saviour, who said unto them, Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God [1206] :' and all men witnessed the exposure of those who pretended to quote the words of the Law, as being in their minds heretics and enemies of God [1207] . Others indeed they deceived by these professions, but when our Lord became man they were not able to deceive Him; for the Word was made Flesh,' who knoweth the thoughts of men that they are vain.' Thus He exposed the carping of the Jews, saying, If God were your Father, ye would love Me, for I proceeded forth from the Father, and am come to you [1208] .' In like manner these men seem now to act; for they disguise their real sentiments, and then make use of the language of Scripture for their writings, which they hold forth as a bait for the ignorant, that they may inveigle them into their own wickedness.
10. They ought first to condemn Arius, if they are to be heard.
Consider, whether this be not so. If, when there is no reason for their doing so, they write confessions of faith, it is a superfluous, and perhaps also a mischievous proceeding, because, when there is no enquiry, they offer occasion for controversy of words, and unsettle the simple hearts of the brethren, disseminating among them such notions as have never entered into their minds. And if they are attempting to write a defence of themselves in regard to the Arian heresy, they ought first to have removed the seeds of those evils which have sprung up, and to have proscribed those who produced them, and then in the room of former statements to set forth others which are sound; or else let them openly vindicate the opinions of Arius, that they may no longer covertly but openly shew themselves enemies of Christ, and that all men may fly from them as from the face of a serpent. But now they keep back those opinions, and for a pretence write on other matters; just as if a surgeon, when summoned to attend a person wounded and suffering, should upon coming in to him say not a word concerning his wounds, but proceed to discourse about his sound limbs. Such an one would be chargeable with utter stupidity, for saying nothing on the matter for which he came, but discoursing on those other points in which he was not needed. Yet just in the same manner these men omit those matters which concern their heresy, and take upon themselves to write on other subjects; whereas if they had any regard for the Faith, or any love for Christ, they ought first to have removed out of the way those blasphemous expressions uttered against Him, and then in the room of them to speak and to write the sound words. But this they neither do themselves, nor permit those that desire to do so, whether it be from ignorance, or through craft and artifice.
11. No profit to do right in one way, if we do wrong in another.
If they do this from ignorance they must be charged with rashness, because they affirm positively concerning things that they know not; but if they dissemble knowingly, their condemnation is the greater, because while they overlook nothing in consulting for their own interests, in writing about faith in our Lord they make a mockery, and do anything rather than speak the truth; they keep back those particulars respecting which their heresy is accused, and merely bring forward the language of the Scriptures. Now this is a manifest theft of the truth, and a practice full of all iniquity; and so I am sure your piety will readily perceive it to be from the following illustrations. No person being accused of adultery defends himself as innocent of theft; nor would any one in prosecuting a charge of murder suffer the accused parties to defend themselves by saying, We have not committed perjury, but have preserved the deposit which was entrusted to us.' This would be mere child's play, instead of a refutation of the charge and a demonstration of the truth. For what has murder to do with a deposit, or adultery with theft? The vices are indeed related to each other as proceeding from the same heart; yet in respect to the refutation of an alleged offence, they have no connection with each other. Accordingly as it is written in the Book of Joshua [1209] the son of Nun, when Achan was charged with theft, he did not excuse himself with the plea of his zeal in the wars; but being convicted of the offence was stoned by all the people. And when Saul was charged with negligence and a breach of the law, he did not benefit his cause by alleging his conduct on other matters [1210] . For a defence on one count will not operate to obtain an acquittal on another count; but if all things should be done according to law and justice, a man must defend himself in those particulars wherein he is accused, and must either disprove the past, or else confess it with the promise that he will desist, and do so no more. But if he is guilty of the crime, and will not confess, but in order to conceal the truth speaks on other points instead of the one in question, he shews plainly that he has acted amiss, nay, and is conscious of his delinquency. But what need of many words, seeing that these persons are themselves accusers of the Arian heresy? For since they have not the boldness to speak out, but conceal their blasphemous expressions, it is plain that they know that this heresy is separate and alien from the truth. But since they themselves conceal it and are afraid to speak, it is necessary for me to strip off the veil from their impiety, and to expose the heresy to public view, knowing as I do the statements which Arius and his fellows formerly made, and how they were cast out of the Church, and degraded from the Clergy. But here first I ask for pardon [1211] of the foul words which I am about to produce, since I use them, not because I thus think, but in order to convict the heretics. __________________________________________________________________
[1147] Acts i. 1.
[1148] John iii. 17.
[1149] Matt. xxiv. 24, 25.
[1150] Luke xxi. 8.
[1151] balletai, vid. p. 170, note 6.
[1152] Is. x. 14. LXX., cf. p. 202, note 8.
[1153] Vid. Job xli. 5; xl. 24. LXX.
[1154] Isa. xi. 8; 2 Cor. xi. 3.
[1155] Is. xiv. 14.
[1156] Ezek. ix. 4. LXX.
[1157] Gal. i. 8, 9.
[1158] 2 Cor. ii. 11.
[1159] Ps. 1. 16; Ecclus. xv. 9.
[1160] Job xli. 13, v. 4. LXX. and cf. Orat. i. 1, and Vit. Ant. supr. p. 197, note 15.
[1161] Or sacred writers, hagion.
[1162] Matt. iv. 10.
[1163] Matt. viii. 29; Mark i. 24.
[1164] Matt. vii. 15.
[1165] 1 John iv. 1.
[1166] Phil. ii. 9.
[1167] Rom. i. 2.
[1168] John v. 39.
[1169] John i. 45.
[1170] Vid. Prideaux, Conn. ii. 5. (vol. 3, p. 474. ed. 1725).
[1171] John v. 46.
[1172] See Prolegg. ch. ii. §3 (2) a.
[1173] See Orat. i. 49.
[1174] Rom. i. 25.
[1175] Prov. xiv. 15.
[1176] John viii. 44.
[1177] Matt. xxiv. 24.
[1178] vid. Orat. ii. §18.
[1179] Cf. p. 4, note 2.
[1180] [Probably Cyrenaica, see above, Introd. sub. fin.]
[1181] Cf. §23, and Apol. Const. 32.
[1182] Cf. de Syn. 7.
[1183] 2 Tim. ii. 17.
[1184] Cf. de Syn. §§3, 6.
[1185] Jer. xiv. 10.
[1186] Cf. de Syn. 5, note.
[1187] Cf. de Syn. 12; Prolegg. ch. ii. §3 (1), &c.
[1188] p. 104, note 3.
[1189] Supr. p. 119.
[1190] Supr. p. 107, note 9.
[1191] Omitted supr. p. 123.
[1192] De Syn. §9.
[1193] Of Nicomedia, see D.C.B. s.v.
[1194] Vid. Hist. Ar. §74 fin.
[1195] Hist. Ar. 75.
[1196] Cf. de Syn. 37.
[1197] Supr. Apol. Ar. 50.
[1198] Paulinus of Treveri, cf. supr. p. 130, note 10.
[1199] At Nicæa, as most of the others.
[1200] i.e. of Antioch.
[1201] [Unknown.]
[1202] [Of Nisibis. See D.C.B. iii. p. 325 and foll.]
[1203] Prov. xii. 6; xv. 28; xii. 5.
[1204] Ap. ad Const. §28. Hist. Arian. §73, supr.
[1205] Vid. Basil. Ep. 223. 3.
[1206] Matt. xxii. 29.
[1207] theomachoi
[1208] John i. 14; Ps. xciv. 11; John viii. 43, heko, vid. Hipp. contr. Noet. 16. and de Syn. 16.
[1209] Josh. vii. 20, & c.
[1210] 1 Sam. xv.
[1211] Cf. Orat. i. §25 note. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter II.
12. Arian statements.
Now the Bishop Alexander of blessed memory cast Arius out of the Church for holding and maintaining the following opinions: God was not always a Father: The Son was not always: But whereas all things were made out of nothing, the Son of God also was made out of nothing: And since all things are creatures, He also is a creature and a thing made: And since all things once were not, but were afterwards made, there was a time when the Word of God Himself was not; and He was not before He was begotten, but He had a beginning of existence: For He has then originated when God has chosen to produce Him: For He also is one among the rest of His works. And since He is by nature changeable, and only continues good because He chooses by His own free will, He is capable of being changed, as are all other things, whenever He wishes. And therefore God, as foreknowing that He would be good, gave Him by anticipation that glory which He would have obtained afterwards by His virtue; and He is now become good by His works which God foreknew.' Accordingly they say, that Christ is not truly God, but that He is called God on account of His participation in God's nature, as are all other creatures. And they add, that He is not that Word which is by nature in the Father, and is proper to His Essence, nor is He His proper wisdom by which He made this world; but that there is another Word [1212] which is properly in the Father, and another Wisdom which is properly in the Father, by which Wisdom also He made this Word; and that the Lord Himself is called the Word (Reason) conceptually in regard of things endued with reason, and is called Wisdom conceptually in regard of things endued with wisdom. Nay, they say that as all things are in essence separate and alien from the Father, so He also is in all respects separate and alien from the essence of the Father, and properly belongs to things made and created, and is one of them; for He is a creature, and a thing made, and a work. Again, they say [1213] that God did not create us for His sake, but Him for our sakes. For they say, God was alone, and the Word was not with Him, but afterwards when He would produce us, then He made Him; and from the time He was made, He called Him the Word, and the Son, and the Wisdom, in order that He might create us by Him. And as all things subsisted by the will of God, and did not exist before; so He also was made by the will of God, and did not exist before. For the Word is not the proper and natural Offspring of the Father, but has Himself originated by grace: for God who existed made by His will the Son who did not exist, by which will also He made all things, and produced, and created, and willed them to come into being.' Moreover they say also, that Christ is not the natural and true power of God; but as the locust and the cankerworm are called a power [1214] , so also He is called the power of the Father. Furthermore he said, that the Father is secret from the Son, and that the Son can neither see nor know the Father perfectly and exactly. For having a beginning of existence, He cannot know Him that is without beginning; but what He knows and sees, He knows and sees in a measure proportionate to His own measure, as we also know and see in proportion to our powers. And he added also, that the Son not only does not know His own Father exactly, but that He does not even know His own essence.
13. Arguments from Scripture against Arian statements.
For maintaining these and the like opinions Arius was declared a heretic; for myself, while I have merely been writing them down, I have been cleansing myself by thinking of the contrary doctrines, and by holding fast the sense of the true faith. For the Bishops who all assembled from all parts at the Council of Nicæa, began to hold their ears at these statements, and all with one voice condemned this heresy on account of them, and anathematized it, declaring it to be alien and estranged from the faith of the Church. It was no compulsion which led the judges to this decision, but they all deliberately vindicated the truth [1215] : and they did so justly and rightly. For infidelity is coming in through these men, or rather a Judaism counter to the Scriptures, which has close upon it Gentile superstition, so that he who holds these opinions can no longer be even called a Christian, for they are all contrary to the Scriptures. John, for instance, saith, In the beginning was the Word [1216] ;' but these men say, He was not, before He was begotten.' And again he wrote, And we are in Him that is true, even in His Son Jesus Christ; this is the true God, and eternal life [1217] ;' but these men, as if in contradiction to this, allege that Christ is not the true God, but that He is only called God, as are other creatures, in regard of His participation in the divine nature. And the Apostle blames the Gentiles, because they worship the creatures, saying, They served the creature more than' God the Creator [1218] .' But if these men say that the Lord is a creature, and worship Him as a creature, how do they differ from the Gentiles? If they hold this opinion, is not this passage also against them; and does not the blessed Paul write as blaming them? The Lord also says, I and My Father are One:' and He that hath seen Me, hath seen the Father [1219] ;' and the Apostle who was sent by Him to preach, writes, Who being the Brightness of His glory, and the express Image of His Person [1220] .' But these men dare to separate them, and to say that He is alien from the essence and eternity of the Father; and impiously to represent Him as changeable, not perceiving, that by speaking thus, they make Him to be, not one with the Father, but one with created things. Who does not see, that the brightness cannot be separated from the light, but that it is by nature proper to it, and co-existent with it, and is not produced after it? Again, when the Father says, This is My beloved Son [1221] ,' and when the Scriptures say that He is the Word' of the Father, by whom the heavens were established [1222] ,' and in short, All things were made by Him [1223] ;' these inventors of new doctrines and fictions represent that there is another Word, and another Wisdom of the Father, and that He is only called the Word and the Wisdom conceptually on account of things endued with reason, while they perceive not the absurdity of this.
14. Arguments from Scripture against Arian statements.
But if He be styled the Word and the Wisdom by a fiction on our account, what He really is they cannot tell [1224] . For if the Scriptures affirm that the Lord is both these, and yet these men will not allow Him to be so, it is plain that in their godless opposition to the Scriptures they would deny His existence altogether. The faithful are able to conclude this truth both from the voice of the Father Himself, and from the Angels that worshipped Him, and from the Saints that have written concerning Him; but these men, as they have not a pure mind, and cannot bear to hear the words of divine men who teach of God, may be able to learn something even from the devils who resemble them, for they spoke of Him, not as if there were many besides, but, as knowing Him alone, they said, Thou art the Holy One of God,' and the Son of God [1225] .' He also who suggested to them this heresy, while tempting Him, in the mount, said not, If Thou also be a Son of God,' as though there were others besides Him, but, If Thou be the [1226] Son of God,' as being the only one. But as the Gentiles, having fallen from the notion of one God, have sunk into polytheism, so these wonderful men, not believing that the Word of the Father is one, have come to adopt the idea of many words, and they deny Him that is really God and the true Word, and have dared to conceive of Him as a creature, not perceiving how full of impiety is the thought. For if He be a creature, how is He at the same time the Creator of creatures? or how the Son and the Wisdom and the Word? For the Word is not created, but begotten; and a creature is not a Son, but a production. And if all creatures were made by Him, and He is also a creature, then by whom was He made? Things made must of necessity originate through some one; as in fact they have originated through the Word; because He was not Himself a thing made, but the Word of the Father. And again, if there be another wisdom in the Father beside the Lord, then Wisdom has originated in wisdom: and if the Word of God be the Wisdom of God, then the Word has originated in a word: and if the Son be the Word of God, then the Son must have been made in the Son.
15. Arguments from Scripture against Arian statements.
How is it that the Lord has said, I am in the Father, and the Father in Me [1227] ,' if there be another in the Father, by whom the Lord Himself also was made? And how is it that John, passing over that other, relates of this One, saying, All things were made by Him; and without Him was not any thing made [1228] ?' If all things that were made by the will of God were made by Him, how can He be Himself one of the things that were made? And when the Apostle says, For whom are all things, and by whom are all things [1229] ,' how can these men say, that we were not made for Him, but He for us? If it be so, He ought to have said, For whom the Word was made;' but He saith not so, but, For whom are all things, and by whom are all things,' thus proving these men to be heretical and false. But further, as they have had the boldness to say that there is another Word in God, and since they cannot bring any clear proof of this from the Scriptures, let them but shew one work of His, or one work of the Father that was done without this Word; so that they may seem to have some ground at least for their own idea. The works of the true Word are manifest to all, so as for Him to be contemplated by analogy from them. For as, when we see the creation, we conceive of God as the Creator of it; so when we see that nothing is without order therein, but that all things move and continue with order and providence, we infer a Word of God who is over all and governs all. This too the holy Scriptures testify, declaring that He is the Word of God, and that all things were made by Him, and without Him was not any thing made [1230] .' But of that other Word, of whom they speak, there is neither word nor work that they have to shew. Nay, even the Father Himself, when He says, This is My beloved Son [1231] ,' signifies that besides Him there is none other
16. Arians parallel to the Manichees.
It appears then that so far as these doctrines are concerned, these wonderful men have now joined themselves to the Manichees. For these also confess the existence of a good God, so far as the mere name goes, but they are unable to point out any of His works either visible or invisible. But inasmuch as they deny Him who is truly and indeed God, the Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things invisible, they are mere inventors of fables. And this appears to me to be the case with these evil-minded men. They see the works of the true Word who alone is in the Father, and yet they deny Him, and make to themselves another Word [1232] , whose existence they are unable to prove either by His Works or by the testimony of others. Unless it be that they have adopted a fabulous notion of God, that He is a composite being like man, speaking and then changing His words, and as a man exercising understanding and wisdom; not perceiving to what absurdities they are reduced by such an opinion. For if God has a succession of words [1233] , they certainly must consider Him as a man. And if those words proceed from Him and then vanish away, they are guilty of a greater impiety, because they resolve into nothing what proceeds from the self-existent God. If they conceive that God doth at all beget, it were surely better and more religious to say that He is the begetter of One Word, who is the fulness of His Godhead, in whom are hidden the treasures of all knowledge [1234] , and that He is co-existent with His Father, and that all things were made by Him; rather than to suppose God to be the Father of many words which are nowhere to be found, or to represent Him who is simple in His nature as compounded of many [1235] , and as being subject to human passions and variable. Next whereas the Apostle says, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God [1236] ,' these men reckon Him but as one among many powers; nay, worse than this, they compare Him, transgressors as they are, with the cankerworm and other irrational creatures which are sent by Him for the punishment of men. Next, whereas the Lord says, No one knoweth the Father, save the Son [1237] ;' and again, Not that any man hath seen the Father save He which is of the Father [1238] ;' are not these indeed enemies of God which say that the Father is neither seen nor known of the Son perfectly? If the Lord says, As the Father knoweth Me, even so know I the Father [1239] ,' and if the Father knows not the Son partially, are they not mad to say idly that the Son knows the Father only partially, and not fully? Next, if the Son has a beginning of existence, and all things likewise have a beginning, let them say, which is prior to the other. But indeed they have nothing to say, neither can they with all their craft prove such a beginning of the Word. For He is the true and proper Offspring of the Father, and in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God [1240] .' For with regard to their assertion, that the Son knows not His own essence, it is superfluous to reply to it, except only so far as to condemn their madness; for how does not the Word know Himself, when He imparts to all men the knowledge of His Father and of Himself, and blames those who know not themselves?
17. Arguments from Scripture against Arian statements.
But it is written [1241] , say they, The Lord created me in the beginning of His ways for His works.' O untaught and insensate that ye are! He is called also in the Scriptures, servant [1242] ,' and son of a handmaid,' and lamb,' and sheep,' and it is said that He suffered toil, and thirst, and was beaten, and has suffered pain. But there is plainly a reasonable ground and cause [1243] , why such representations as these are given of Him in the Scriptures; and it is because He became man and the Son of man, and took upon Him the form of a servant, which is the human flesh: for the Word,' says John, was made flesh [1244] .' And since He became man, no one ought to be offended at such expressions; for it is proper to man to be created, and born, and formed, to suffer toil and pain, to die and to rise again from the dead. And as, being Word and Wisdom of the Father, He has all the attributes of the Father, His eternity, and His unchangeableness, and the being like Him in all respects and in all things [1245] , and is neither before nor after, but co-existent with the Father, and is the very form [1246] of the Godhead, and is the Creator, and is not created: (for since He is in essence like [1247] the Father, He cannot be a creature, but must be the Creator, as Himself hath said, My Father worketh hitherto, and I work [1248] :') so being made man, and bearing our flesh, He is necessarily said to be created and made, and that is proper to all flesh; however, these men, like Jewish vintners, who mix their wine with water [1249] , debase the Word, and subject His Godhead to their notions of created things. Wherefore the Fathers were with reason and justice indignant, and anathematized this most impious heresy; which these persons are now cautious of and keep back, as being easy to be disproved and unsound in every part of it. These that I have set down are but a few of the arguments which go to condemn their doctrines; but if any one desires to enter more at large into the proof against them, he will find that this heresy is not far removed from heathenism, and that it is the lowest and the very dregs of all the other heresies. These last are in error either concerning the body or the incarnation of the Lord, falsifying the truth, some in one way and some in another, or else they deny that the Lord has sojourned here at all, as the Jews erroneously suppose. But this one alone more madly than the rest has dared to assail the very Godhead, and to assert that the Word is not at all, and that the Father was not always a father; so that one might reasonably say that that Psalm was written against them; The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God [1250] . Corrupt are they, and become abominable in their doings.'
18. If the Arians felt they were right, they would speak openly.
But,' say they, we are strong, and are able to defend our heresy by our many devices.' They would have a better answer to give, if they were able to defend it, not by artifice nor by Gentile sophisms, but by the simplicity of their faith. If however they have confidence in it, and know it to be in accordance with the doctrines of the Church, let them openly express their sentiments; for no man when he hath lighted a candle putteth it under the bushel [1251] , but on the candlestick, and so it gives light to all that come in. If therefore they are able to defend it, let them record in writing the opinions above imputed to them, and expose their heresy bare to the view of all men, as they would a candle, and let them openly accuse the Bishop Alexander, of blessed memory, as having unjustly ejected [1252] Arius for professing these opinions; and let them blame the Council of Nicæa for putting forth a written confession of the true faith in place of their impiety. But they will not do this, I am sure, for they are not so ignorant of the evil nature of those notions which they have invented and are ambitious of sowing abroad; but they know well enough, that although they may at first lead astray the simple by vain deceit, yet their imaginations will soon be extinguished, as the light of the ungodly [1253] ,' and themselves branded everywhere as enemies of the Truth. Therefore although they do all things foolishly, and speak as fools, yet in this at least they have acted wisely, as children of this world [1254] ,' hiding their candle under the bushel, that it may be supposed to give light, and lest, if it appear, it be condemned and extinguished. Thus when Arius himself, the author of the heresy, and the associate of Eusebius, was summoned through the interest of Eusebius and his fellows to appear before Constantine Augustus of blessed memory [1255] , and was required to present a written declaration of his faith, the wily man wrote one, but kept out of sight the peculiar expressions of his impiety, and pretended, as the Devil did, to quote the simple words of Scripture, just as they are written. And when the blessed Constantine said to him, If thou holdest no other opinions in thy mind besides these, take the Truth to witness for thee; the Lord is thy avenger if thou swear falsely:' the unfortunate man swore that he held no other, and that he had never either spoken or thought otherwise than as he had now written. But as soon as he went out he dropped down, as if paying the penalty of his crime, and falling headlong burst asunder in the midst [1256] .'
19. Significance of the death of Arius.
Death, it is true, is the common end of all men, and we ought not to insult the dead, though he be an enemy, for it is uncertain whether the same event may not happen to ourselves before evening. But the end of Arius was not after an ordinary manner, and therefore it deserves to be related. Eusebius and his fellows threatening to bring him into the Church, Alexander, the Bishop of Constantinople, resisted them; but Arius trusted to the violence and menace of Eusebius. It was the Sabbath, and he expected to join communion on the following day. There was therefore a great struggle between them; the others threatening, Alexander praying. But the Lord being judge of the case, decided against the unjust party: for the sun had not set, when the necessities of nature compelled him to that place, where he fell down, and was forthwith deprived of communion with the Church and of his life together. The blessed Constantine hearing of this at once, was struck with wonder to find him thus convicted of perjury. And indeed it was then evident to all that the threats of Eusebius and his fellows had proved of no avail and the hope of Arius had become vain. It was shewn too that the Arian madness was rejected from communion by our Saviour both here and in the Church of the first-born in heaven. Now who will not wonder to see the unrighteous ambition of these men, whom the Lord has condemned;--to see them vindicating the heresy which the Lord has pronounced excommunicate (since He did not suffer its author to enter into the Church), and not fearing that which is written, but attempting impossible things? For the Lord of hosts hath purposed, and who shall disannul it [1257] ?' and whom God hath condemned, who shall justify? Let them however in defence of their own imaginations write what they please; but do you, brethren, as bearing the vessels of the Lord [1258] ,' and vindicating the doctrines of the Church, examine this matter, I beseech you; and if they write in other terms than those above recorded as the language of Arius, then condemn them as hypocrites, who hide the poison of their opinions, and like the serpent flatter with the words of their lips. For, though they thus write, they have associated with them those who were formerly rejected with Arius, such as Secundus of Pentapolis, and the clergy who were convicted at Alexandria; and they write to them in Alexandria. But what is most astonishing, they have caused us and our friends to be persecuted, although the most religious Emperor Constantine sent us back in peace to our country and Church, and shewed his concern for the harmony of the people. But now they have caused the Churches to be given up to these men, thus proving to all that for their sake the whole conspiracy against us and the rest has been carried on from the beginning.
20. While they are friends of Arius, in vain their moderate words.
Now while such is their conduct, how can they claim credit for what they write? Had the opinions they have put in writing been orthodox, they would have expunged from their list of books the Thalia of Arius, and have rejected the scions of the heresy, viz. those disciples of Arius, and the partners of his impiety and his punishment. But since they do not renounce these, it is manifest to all that their sentiments are not orthodox, though they write them over ten thousand times [1259] . Wherefore it becomes us to watch, lest some deception be conveyed under the clothing of their phrases, and they lead away certain from the true faith. And if they venture to advance the opinions of Arius, when they see themselves proceeding in a prosperous course, nothing remains for us but to use great boldness of speech, remembering the predictions of the Apostle, which he wrote to forewarn us of such like heresies, and which it becomes us to repeat. For we know that, as it is written, in the latter times some shall depart from the sound faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils, that turn from the truth [1260] ;' and, as many as will live godly in Christ shall suffer persecution. But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived.' But none of these things shall prevail over us, nor separate us from the love of Christ [1261] ,' though the heretics threaten us with death. For we are Christians, not Arians [1262] ; would that they too, who have written these things, had not embraced the doctrines of Arius! Yea, brethren, there is need now of such boldness of speech; for we have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear [1263] ,' but God hath called us to liberty [1264] .' And it were indeed disgraceful to us, most disgraceful, were we, on account of Arius or of those who embrace and advocate his sentiments, to destroy the faith which we have received from our Saviour through His Apostles. Already very many in these parts, perceiving the craftiness of these writers, are ready even unto blood to oppose their wiles, especially since they have heard of your firmness. And seeing that the refutation of the heresy has gone forth from you [1265] , and it has been drawn forth from its concealment, like a serpent from his hole, the Child that Herod sought to destroy is preserved among you, and the Truth lives in you, and the Faith thrives among you.
21. To make a stand for the Faith equivalent to martyrdom.
Wherefore I exhort you, keeping in your hands the confession which was framed by the Fathers at Nicæa, and defending it with great zeal and confidence in the Lord, be ensamples to the brethren everywhere, and shew them that a struggle is now before us in support of the Truth against heresy, and that the wiles of the enemy are various. For the proof of a martyr lies [1266] not only in refusing to burn incense to idols; but to refuse to deny the Faith is also an illustrious testimony of a good conscience. And not only those who turned aside unto idols were condemned as aliens, but those also who betrayed the Truth. Thus Judas was degraded from the Apostolical office, not because he sacrificed to idols, but because he proved a traitor; and Hymenæus and Alexander fell away not by betaking themselves to the service of idols, but because they made shipwreck concerning the faith [1267] .' On the other hand, the Patriarch Abraham received the crown, not because he suffered death, but because he was faithful unto God; and the other Saints, of whom Paul speaks [1268] , Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephtha, David and Samuel, and the rest, were not made perfect by the shedding of their blood, but by faith they were justified; and to this day they are the objects of our admiration, as being ready even to suffer death for piety towards the Lord. And if one may add an instance from our own country, ye know how the blessed Alexander contended even unto death against this heresy, and what great afflictions and labours, old man as He was, he sustained, until in extreme age he also was gathered to his fathers. And how many beside have undergone great toil, in their teachings against this impiety, and now enjoy in Christ the glorious reward of their confession! Wherefore, let us also, considering that this struggle is for our all, and that the choice is now before us, either to deny or to preserve the faith, let us also make it our earnest care and aim to guard what we have received, taking as our instruction the Confession drawn up at Nicæa, and let us turn away from novelties, and teach our people not to give heed to seducing spirits [1269] ,' but altogether to withdraw from the impiety of the Arian madmen, and from the coalition which the Meletians have made with them.
22. Coalition of sordid Meletians with insane Arians.
For you perceive how, though they were formerly at variance with one another, they have now, like Herod and Pontius, agreed together in order to blaspheme our Lord Jesus Christ. And for this they truly deserve the hatred of every man, because they were at enmity with one another on private grounds, but have now become friends and join hands, in their hostility to the Truth and their impiety towards God. Nay, they are content to do or suffer anything, however contrary to their principles, for the satisfaction of securing their several aims; the Meletians for the sake of pre-eminence and the mad love of money, and the Arian madmen for their own impiety. And thus by this coalition they are able to assist one another in their malicious designs, while the Meletians put on the impiety of the Arians, and the Arians from their own wickedness concur in their baseness, so that by thus mingling together their respective crimes, like the cup of Babylon [1270] , they may carry on their plots against the orthodox worshippers of our Lord Jesus Christ. The wickedness and falsehood of the Meletians were indeed even before this evident unto all men; so too the impiety and godless heresy of the Arians have long been known everywhere and to all; for the period of their existence has not been a short one. The former became schismatics five and fifty years ago, and it is thirty-six years since the latter were pronounced heretics [1271] , and they were rejected from the Church by the judgment of the whole Ecumenic Council. But by their present proceedings they have proved at length, even to those who seem openly to favour them, that they have carried on their designs against me and the rest of the orthodox Bishops from the very first solely for the sake of advancing their own impious heresy. For observe, that which was long ago the great object of Eusebius and his fellows is now brought about. They have caused the Churches to be snatched out of our hands, they have banished as they pleased, the Bishops and Presbyters who refused to communicate with them; and the people who withdrew from them they have excluded from the Churches, which they have given up into the hands of the Arians who were condemned so long ago, so that with the assistance of the hypocrisy of the Meletians they can without fear pour forth in them their impious language, and make ready, as they think, the way of deceit for Antichrist [1272] , who sowed among them the seeds of this heresy.
23. Conclusion.
Let them however thus dream and imagine vain things. We know that when our gracious Emperor shall hear of it, he will put a stop to their wickedness, and they will not continue long, but according to the words of Scripture, the hearts of the impious shall quickly fail them [1273] .' But let us, as it is written, put on the words of holy Scripture [1274] ,' and resist them as apostates who would set up fanaticism in the house of the Lord. And let us not fear the death of the body, nor let us emulate their ways; but let the word of Truth be preferred before all things. We also, as you all know, were formerly required [1275] by Eusebius and his fellows either to put on their impiety, or to expect their hostility; but we would not engage ourselves with them, but chose rather to be persecuted by them, than to imitate the conduct of Judas. And assuredly they have done what they threatened; for after the manner of Jezebel, they engaged the treacherous Meletians to assist them, knowing how the latter resisted the blessed martyr Peter, and after him the great Achillas, and then Alexander, of blessed memory, in order that, as being practised in such matters, the Meletians might pretend against us also whatever might be suggested to them, while Eusebius and his fellows gave them an opening for persecuting and for seeking to kill me. For this is what they thirst after; and they continue to this day to desire to shed my blood. But of these things I have no care; for I know and am persuaded that they who endure shall receive a reward from our Saviour; and that ye also, if ye endure as the Fathers did, and shew yourselves examples to the people, and overthrow these strange and alien devices of impious men, shall be able to glory, and say, We have kept the Faith [1276] ;' and ye shall receive the crown of life,' which God hath promised to them that love Him [1277] .' And God grant that I also together with you may inherit the promises, which, were given, not to Paul only, but also to all them that have loved the appearing [1278] ' of our Lord, and Saviour, and God, and universal King, Jesus Christ; through whom to the Father be glory and dominion in the Holy Spirit, both now and for ever, world without end [1279] . Amen. __________________________________________________________________
[1212] Cf. De Syn. §§15, 18.
[1213] De Syn. 15-19.
[1214] Joel ii. 25. [With this entire section, compare Socr. i. 5, de Decr. 6, de Syn. 15, Orat. i. 5. 6, ad Afros 5, Vit. Ant. 69, and the Depositio Arii.']
[1215] Cf. Ep. ad Jov. (Letter 56, below), §2. Theod. H. E. v. 9. p. 205, l. 17. vid. Keble on Primitive Trad. p. 122. 10. Let each boldly set down his faith in writing, having the fear of God before his eyes.' Conc. Chalced. Sess. 1. Hard. t. 2. 273. Give diligence without fear, favour, or dislike, to set out the faith in its purity.' ibid. p. 285.
[1216] John i. 1.
[1217] 1 John v. 20.
[1218] Rom. i. 25. supr. §4, and note on Or. i. 8, also Vit. Ant. 69.
[1219] John x. 30; xiv. 9, and Or. i. 34, note.
[1220] Heb. i. 3.
[1221] Matt. xvii. 5.
[1222] Ps. xxxiii. 6.
[1223] John i. 3.
[1224] Cf. de. Decr. 6, note 5.
[1225] Mark i. 24; Matt. viii. 29.
[1226] [Matt. iv. 3; Luke iv. 3. No existing text appears to bear out Athanasius in his insertion of the definite article.]
[1227] John xiv. 10.
[1228] John i. 3.
[1229] Heb. ii. 10.
[1230] Joh. i. 3.
[1231] Matt. xvii. 5.
[1232] Vid. passage in Orat. ii. 39 fin.
[1233] de Decr. 16, note 4.
[1234] Cf. Col. ii. 3, 9.
[1235] de Decr. 22 note 9.
[1236] 1 Cor. i. 24.
[1237] Matt. xi. 27.
[1238] John vi. 46.
[1239] John x. 15.
[1240] John i. 1.
[1241] Orat. ii. 18-72; Prov. viii. 22.
[1242] Ps. cxvi. 16, &c.
[1243] de Decr. 14.
[1244] John i. 14.
[1245] De Syn. 26, and note.
[1246] eidos, ibid. §52, note.
[1247] Orat. i. 20, note.
[1248] John v. 17.
[1249] Isa. i. 22, cf. Orat. iii. §35, also de Decr. 10 end.
[1250] Ps. liii. 1.
[1251] Matt. v. 15.
[1252] Infr. §21, note.
[1253] Job xviii. 5.
[1254] Luke xvi. 8.
[1255] Vid. Letter 54.
[1256] Acts i. 18.
[1257] Is. xiv. 27.
[1258] Is. lii. 11.
[1259] Cf. De Syn. 6, 9.
[1260] 1 Tim. iv. 1; Tit. i. 14; 2 Tim. iii. 12
[1261] Rom. viii. 35.
[1262] Orat. i. 2, 10.
[1263] Rom. viii. 15.
[1264] Gal. v. 13.
[1265] i.e. from Egypt.
[1266] Vid. Suicer Thes. in voc. mart. iii. [D.C.A. 1118 sqq.]
[1267] 1 Tim. i. 19.
[1268] Heb. xi. 32, &c.
[1269] 1 Tim. iv. 1.
[1270] Rev. xviii. 6.
[1271] This apodeixis or declaration is ascribed to S. Alexander (as Montfaucon would explain it, supr. introd. p. 222). Cf. Ap. Ar. 23, above, §§18, 19. It should be observed that an additional reason for assigning this Letter to the year 356, is its resemblance in parts to the Orations which were written not long after. [This is not a strong reason, there being no proof that the Orations were written early in the exile.]
[1272] De Syn. 5, note 10.
[1273] Prov. x. 20, LXX.
[1274] 2 Kings xvii. 9, LXX.
[1275] Apol. Ar. §59.
[1276] 2 Tim. iv. 7.
[1277] James i. 12.
[1278] 2 Tim. iv. 8.
[1279] [Cf. the doxology at the end of Apol. pro Fuga, and (with a difference) that of Hist. Ar. 80, contrasting that in de Decr. 32. Dr. Bright observes that Athan. felt himself free to use both forms, although at Antioch they became symbols respectively of the Arianisers and the Orthodox.'] __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Introduction to Apologia Ad Constantium.
------------------------
This address to the Emperor in defence against certain serious charges (see below) was completed about the time of the intrusion of George, who arrived at Alexandria on Feb. 24, 357. The main, or apologetic, part of the letter was probably composed before George's actual arrival, in fact at about the same date as the encyclical letter which immediately precedes; §§27 and following (see 27, note 2) forming an added expostulation upon hearing of the general expulsion of Catholic Bishops, and of the outrages [1280] at Alexandria. It is quite uncertain whether it ever reached the emperor; whether it did so or not, his attitude toward Athanasius was in no way affected by it. It had probably been begun with the idea of its being actually delivered in the presence of Constantius (see §§3, 6, 8, 16 I see you smile,' 22), but, although by a rhetorical fiction the form of an oral defence is kept up to the end, the concluding sections (27, 32 init.) shew that any such idea had been renounced before the Apology was completed. The first 26 sections are directed to the refutation of four personal charges, quite different from those of the earlier period, rebutted in the Apology against the Arians. They were (1) that Athanasius had poisoned the mind of Constans against his brother (2-5). To this Ath. replies that he had never spoken to the deceased Augustus except in the presence of witnesses, and that the history of his own movements when in the West entirely precluded any such possibility. The third and fourth sections thus incidentally supply important details for the life of Athanasius. (2) That he had written letters to the tyrant' Magnentius (6-13), a charge absurd in itself, and only to be borne out by forgery, but also amply disproved by his known affection toward Constans, the victim of the tyrant.' (3) That he had (14-18) used the new church in the Cæsareum,' before it was completed or dedicated, for the Easter festival of 355 (Tillem. viii. 149). This Athanasius admits, but pleads necessity and precedent, adding that no disrespect was intended toward the donor, nor any anticipation of its formal consecration. (4) That he had disobeyed an imperial order to leave Alexandria and go to Italy (19-26, see esp. 19, n. 4, and Fest. Ind. xxvi. Constantius is at Milan July 21, 353--Gwatkin p. 292). This charge involves the whole history of the attempts to dislodge Athanasius from Alexandria, which culminated in the events of 356. He replies to the charge, that the summons in question had come in the form of an invitation in reply to an alleged letter of his own asking leave to go to Italy, a letter which, as his amanuenses would testify, he had never written. Of the later visit (355, Fest. Ind. xxvii.) of Diogenes, he merely says that Diogenes brought neither letter nor orders. Syrianus, he seems to allow, had verbally ordered him to Italy (Constantius was again at Milan,--Gwatkin ubi supra) but without written authority. As against these supposed orders, Ath. had a letter from the emperor (§23) exhorting him to remain at Alexandria, whatever reports he might hear. Syrianus had, at the urgent remonstrance of the clergy and people, consented to refer the matter back to Constantius (24), but without waiting to do this, he had suddenly made his famous night attack upon the bishop when holding a vigil service in the Church of Theonas. Thereupon Athanasius had set out for Italy to lay the matter before the emperor in person (27 init.). But on reaching, as it would seem, the Libyan portion of his Province, he was turned back by the news of the Council of Milan, and the wholesale banishment which followed. Here we pass to the second part of the Apology. He explains his return to the desert by the three reports which had reached him: first, that just mentioned; secondly, that of further military outrages, about Easter 356 (or possibly those of George in 357, see Apol. Fug. 6; the clear statements of Fest. Ind. and Hist. Aceph. compel us [1281] to place these in the latter year, although on à priori grounds we might have followed Tillem., Bright, &c., in placing them in 356), and of the nomination of George; thirdly, of the letters of Constantius to the Alexandrians and to the Princes of Abyssinia. He had accordingly gone into hiding, in fear, not of the Emperor, but of the violence of his officers, and as of bounden duty to all (32). He concludes with an outspoken denunciation of the treatment of the virgins, and by an urgent entreaty to Constantius which supposes the imperial listener to be already more than half appeased' (Bright). The Apology is the most carefully written work of Athanasius, and has been justly praised for its artistic finish and its rhetorical skill' as well as for the force and the sustained calmness and dignity of its diction. (So Montfaucon, Newman, Gwatkin, &c. Fialon, pp. 286, 292, gives some interesting examples of apparent imitation of Demosthenes in this and in the two following tracts.) But the violent contrast between its almost affectionate respectfulness and the chilly reserve of the Apol. pro Fuga, or still more the furious invective of the Arian History, is startling, and gives a prima facie justification to Gibbon, who (vol. 3, p. 87, Smith's Ed.) charges the great bishop with simulating respect to the emperor's face while denouncing him behind his back. But although the de Fuga (see introd. there) was written very soon after our present Apology, there is no ground for making them simultaneous, while its tone (see Ap. Fug. 26, note 7) is very different from that of the later Hist. Arian. Doubtless much of the material for the invectives of the latter was already ancient history when the tract before us was composed. But Constantius was the Emperor, the first personage in the Christian world, and Athanasius with the feeling of his age, with the memory of the solemn assurances he had received from the Emperor (§§23, 25, 27, Apol. Ar. 51-56, Hist. Ar. 21-24), would hope all things,' even against hope,' so long as there was any apparent chance of influencing Constantius for good; would hope in spite of all appearances that the outrages, banishments, and intrigues against the faith of Nicæa were the work of the officers, the Arian bishops, the eunuchs of the Court, and not of Augustus' himself (see Bright, Introd. to this Apology, pp. lxiii.-lxv.). __________________________________________________________________
[1280] See Apol. Fug. 6, note 5.
[1281] See also note 1, supr., and the discussion Prolegg. ch. ii. §8 (1). __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Defence Before Constantius.
------------------------
1. Knowing that you have been a Christian for many years [1282] , most religious Augustus, and that you are godly by descent, I cheerfully undertake to answer for myself at this time;--for I will use the language of the blessed Paul, and make him my advocate before you, considering that he was a preacher of the truth, and that you are an attentive hearer of his words.
With respect to those ecclesiastical matters, which have been made the ground of a conspiracy against me, it is sufficient to refer your Piety to the testimony of the many Bishops who have written in my behalf [1283] ; enough too is the recantation of Ursacius and Valens [1284] to prove to all men, that none of the charges which they set up against me had any truth in them. For what evidence can others produce so strong, as what they declared in writing? We lied, we invented these things; all the accusations against Athanasius are full of falsehood.' To this clear proof may be added, if you will vouchsafe to hear it, this circumstance that the accusers brought no evidence against Macarius the presbyter while we were present; but in our absence [1285] , when they were by themselves, they managed the matter as they pleased. Now, the Divine Law first of all, and next our own Laws [1286] , have expressly declared, that such proceedings are of no force whatsoever. From these things your piety, as a lover of God and of the truth, will, I am sure, perceive that we are free from all suspicion, and will pronounce our opponents to be false accusers. __________________________________________________________________
[1282] [cf. Acts xxvi. 2.] Constantius, though here called a Christian, was not baptized till his last illness, a.d. 361, and then by the Arian Bishop of Antioch, Euzoius. At this time he was 39 years of age. Theodoret represents him making a speech to his whole army on one occasion, exhorting them to Baptism previous to going to war; and recommending all to go thence who could not make up their mind to the Sacrament. H. E. iii. 1. Constantius, his grandfather, had rejected idolatry and acknowledged the One God, according to Eusebius, V. Const. i. 14, though it does not appear that he had embraced Christianity.
[1283] Supr. Apol. Ar. 1.
[1284] Apol. Ar. 1, 58.
[1285] ib. 13, 27, &c.
[1286] Cf. Apol. Ar. ii. 51. __________________________________________________________________
2. The first charge, of setting Constans against Constantius.
But as to the slanderous charge which has been preferred against me before your Grace, respecting correspondence with the most pious Augustus, your brother Constans [1287] , of blessed and everlasting memory (for my enemies report this of me, and have ventured to assert it in writing), the former events [1288] are sufficient to prove this also to be untrue. Had it been alleged by another set of persons, the matter would indeed have been a fit subject of enquiry, but it would have required strong evidence, and open proof in presence of both parties: but when the same persons who invented the former charge, are the authors also of this, is it not reasonable to conclude from the issue of the one, the falsehood of the other? For this cause they again conferred together in private, thinking to be able to deceive your Piety before I was aware. But in this they failed: you would not listen to them as they desired, but patiently gave me an opportunity to make my defence. And, in that you were not immediately moved to demand vengeance, you acted only as was righteous in a Prince, whose duty it is to wait for the defence of the injured party. Which if you will vouchsafe to hear, I am confident that in this matter also you will condemn those reckless men, who have no fear of that God, who has commanded us not to speak falsely before the king [1289] . __________________________________________________________________
[1287] Prolegg. ch. ii. §6 (3); cf. Lucifer. Op. p. 91. (ed. Ven. 1778.) Theod. H. E. ii. 13; infr. Hist. Arian. §50.
[1288] Vid. Apol. contr. Arian. passim.
[1289] Vid. Ecclus. vii. 5. __________________________________________________________________
3. He never saw Constans alone.
But in truth I am ashamed even to have to defend myself against charges such as these, which I do not suppose that even the accuser himself would venture to make mention of in my presence. For he knows full well that he speaks untruly, and that I was never so mad, so reft of my senses, as even to be open to the suspicion of having conceived any such thing. So that had I been questioned by any other on this subject, I would not even have answered, lest, while I was making my defence, my hearers should for a time have suspended their judgment concerning me. But to your Piety I answer with a loud and clear voice, and stretching forth my hand, as I have learned from the Apostle, I call God for a record upon my soul [1290] ,' and as it is written in the histories of the Kings (let me be allowed to say the same), The Lord is witness, and His Anointed is witness [1291] ,' I have never spoken evil of your Piety before your brother Constans, the most religious Augustus of blessed memory. I did not exasperate him against you, as these have falsely accused me. But whenever in my interviews with him he has mentioned your Grace (and he did mention you at the time that Thalassus [1292] came to Pitybion, and I was staying at Aquileia), the Lord is witness, how I spoke of your Piety in terms which I would that God would reveal unto your soul, that you might condemn the falsehood of these my calumniators. Bear with me, most gracious Augustus, and freely grant me your indulgence while I speak of this matter. Your most Christian brother was not a man of so light a temper, nor was I a person of such a character, that we should communicate together on a subject like this, or that I should slander a brother to a brother, or speak evil of an emperor before an emperor. I am not so mad, Sire, nor have I forgotten that divine utterance which says, Curse not the king, no, not in thy thought; and curse not the rich in thy bedchamber: for a bird of the air shall carry the voice, and that which hath wings shall tell the matter [1293] .' If then those things, which are spoken in secret against you that are kings, are not hidden, it is not incredible that I should have spoken against you in the presence of a king, and of so many bystanders? For I never saw your brother by myself, nor did he ever converse with me in private, but I was always introduced in company with the Bishop of the city where I happened to be, and with others that chanced to be there. We entered the presence together, and together we retired. Fortunatian [1294] , Bishop of Aquileia, can testify this, the father Hosius is able to say the same, as also are Crispinus, Bishop of Padua, Lucillus of a Verona, Dionysius of Lëis, and Vincentius of Campania. And although Maximinus of Treveri, and Protasius of Milan, are dead, yet Eugenius, who was Master of the Palace [1295] , can bear witness for me; for he stood before the veil [1296] , and heard what we requested of the Emperor, and what he vouchsafed to reply to us. __________________________________________________________________
[1290] 2 Cor. i. 23.
[1291] 1 Sam. xii. 5.
[1292] Hist. Arian. 22. vid. Apol. Ar. 51. [Pitybion' is Patavia, now Padua.]
[1293] Eccles. x. 20.
[1294] All these names of Bishops occur among the subscriptions at Sardica. supr. Ap. Ar. 50. [See also D.C.B. s. vv.] Leis is Lauda, or Laus Pompeia, hodie Lodi Vecchio; Ughelli, Ital. Sacr. t. 4. p. 656.
[1295] Or, master of the offices; one of the seven Ministers of the Court under the Empire; He inspected the discipline of the civil and military schools, and received appeals from all parts of the Empire.' Gibbon, ch. 17. [cf. Gwatkin, p. 285.]
[1296] pro tou belou. The Veil, which in the first instance was an appendage to the images of pagan deities, formed at this time part of the ceremonial of the imperial Court. It hung over the entrance of the Emperor's bedchamber, where he gave his audiences. It also hung before the secretarium of the Judges. vid. Hofman in voc. Gothofred in Cod. Theod. i. tit. vii. 1. __________________________________________________________________
4. The movements of Athanasius refute this charge.
This certainly is sufficient for proof, yet suffer me nevertheless to lay before you an account of my travels, which will further lead you to condemn the unfounded calumnies of my opponents. When I left Alexandria [1297] , I did not go to your brother's head-quarters, or to any other persons, but only to Rome; and having laid my case before the Church (for this was my only concern), I spent my time in the public worship. I did not write to your brother, except when Eusebius and his fellows had written to him to accuse me, and I was compelled while yet at Alexandria to defend myself; and again when I sent to him volumes [1298] containing the holy Scriptures, which he had ordered me to prepare for him. It behoves me, while I defend my conduct, to tell the truth to your Piety. When however three years had passed away, he wrote to me in the fourth year [1299] , commanding me to meet him (he was then at Milan); and upon enquiring the cause (for I was ignorant of it, the Lord is my witness), I learnt that certain Bishops [1300] had gone up and requested him to write to your Piety, desiring that a Council might be called. Believe me, Sire, this is the truth of the matter; I lie not. Accordingly I went down to Milan, and met with great kindness from him; for he condescended to see me, and to say that he had despatched letters to you, requesting that a Council might be called. And while I remained in that city, he sent for me again into Gaul (for the father Hosius was going thither), that we might travel from thence to Sardica. And after the Council, he wrote to me while I continued at Naissus [1301] , and I went up, and abode afterwards at Aquileia; where the letters of your Piety found me. And again, being invited thence by your departed brother, I returned into Gaul, and so came at length to your Piety. __________________________________________________________________
[1297] [a.d. 339.]
[1298] puktia, a bound book, vid. Montf. Coll. Nov. infr. Tillemont (t. viii. p. 86.) considers that Athan. alludes in this passage to the Synopsis Scr. Sacr. which is among his works; but Montfaucon, Collect. Nov. t. 2. p. xxviii. contends that a copy of the Gospels is spoken of. [cf. D.C.B. i. 651.]
[1299] [a.d. 342.]
[1300] Tillemont supposes that Constans was present at the Council of Milan [345], at which Eudoxius, Martyrius, and Macedonius, sent to the west with the Eusebian Creed, made their appearance to no purpose. [But this was long after the events related in the text, cf. Prolegg. ii. §6, sub. fin.]
[1301] [Easter 344, see Fest. Ind. xvi.] Naissus was situated in Upper Dacia, and according to some was the birthplace of Constantine. The Bishop of the place, Gaudentius, whose name occurs among the subscriptions at Sardica, had protected S. Paul of Constantinople and incurred the anathemas of the Easterns at Philippopolis. Hil. Fragm. iii. 27. __________________________________________________________________
5. No possible time or place for the alleged offence.
Now what place and time does my accuser specify, at which I made use of these expressions according to his slanderous imputation? In whose presence was I so mad as to give utterance to the words which he has falsely charged me with speaking? Who is there ready to support the charge, and to testify to the fact? What his own eyes have seen that ought he to speak [1302] , as holy Scripture enjoins. But no; he will find no witnesses of that which never took place. But I take your Piety to witness, together with the Truth, that I lie not. I request you, for I know you to be a person of excellent memory, to call to mind the conversation I had with you, when you condescended to see me, first at Viminacium [1303] , a second time at Cæsarea in Cappadocia, and a third [1304] time at Antioch. Did I speak evil before you even of Eusebius and his fellows who had persecuted me? Did I cast imputations upon any of those that have done me wrong? If then I imputed nothing to any of those against whom I had a right to speak, how could I be so possessed with madness as to slander an Emperor before an Emperor, and to set a brother at variance with a brother? I beseech you, either cause me to appear before you that the thing may be proved, or else condemn these calumnies, and follow the example of David, who says, Whoso privily slandereth his neighbour, him will I destroy [1305] .' As much as in them lies, they have slain me; for the mouth that belieth, slayeth the soul [1306] .' But your long-suffering has prevailed against them, and given me confidence to defend myself, that they may suffer condemnation, as contentious and slanderous persons. Concerning your most religious brother, of blessed memory, this may suffice: for you will be able, according to the wisdom which God has given you, to gather much from the little I have said, and to recognise the fictitious charge. __________________________________________________________________
[1302] Prov. xxv. 7, LXX.
[1303] In Moesia.
[1304] [Prolegg. ch. ii. §5 fin., §6 (3).]
[1305] Ps. ci. 5.
[1306] Wisd. i. 11. __________________________________________________________________
6. The second charge, of corresponding with Magnentius.
With regard to the second calumny, that I have written letters to the tyrant [1307] (his name I am unwilling to pronounce), I beseech you investigate and try the matter, in whatever way you please, and by whomsoever you may approve of. The extravagance of the charge so confounds me, that I am in utter uncertainty how to act. Believe me, most religious Prince, many times did I weigh the matter in my mind, but was unable to believe that any one could be so mad as to utter such a falsehood. But when this charge was published abroad by the Arians, as well as the former, and they boasted that they had delivered to you a copy of the letter, I was the more amazed, and I used to pass sleepless nights contending against the charge, as if in the presence of my accusers; and suddenly breaking forth into a loud cry, I would immediately fall to my prayers, desiring with groans and tears that I might obtain a favourable hearing from you. And now that by the grace of the Lord, I have obtained such a hearing, I am again at a loss how I shall begin my defence; for as often as I make an attempt to speak, I am prevented by my horror at the deed. In the case of your departed brother, the slanderers had indeed a plausible pretence for what they alleged; because I had been admitted to see him, and he had condescended to write to your brotherly affection concerning me; and he had often sent for me to come to him, and had honoured me when I came. But for the traitor Magnentius, the Lord is witness, and His Anointed is witness [1308] ,' I know him not, nor was ever acquainted with him. What correspondence then could there be between persons so entirely unacquainted with each other? What reason was there to induce me to write to such a man? How could I have commenced my letter, had I written to him? Could I have said, You have done well to murder the man who honoured me, whose kindness I shall never forget?' Or, I approve of your conduct in destroying our Christian friends, and most faithful brethren?' or, I approve of your proceedings in butchering those who so kindly entertained me at Rome; for instance, your departed Aunt Eutropia [1309] , whose disposition answered to her name, that worthy man, Abuterius, the most faithful Spirantius, and many other excellent persons?' __________________________________________________________________
[1307] [On Magnentius, see Prolegg. ch. ii. §7 sub. fin.; Gwatkin, Studies, p. 143 sq.]
[1308] 1 Sam. xii. 5.
[1309] Nepotian, the son of Eutropia, Constantine's sister, had taken up arms against Magnentius, got possession of Rome, and enjoyed the title of Augustus for about a month. Magnentius put him to death, and his mother, and a number of his adherents, some of whom are here mentioned. __________________________________________________________________
7. This charge utterly incredible and absurd.
Is it not mere madness in my accuser even to suspect me of such a thing? What, I ask again, could induce me to place confidence in this man? What trait did I perceive in his character on which I could rely? He had murdered his own master; he had proved faithless to his friends; he had violated his oath; he had blasphemed God, by consulting poisoners and sorcerers [1310] contrary to his Law. And with what conscience could I send greeting to such a man, whose madness and cruelty had afflicted not me only, but all the world around me? To be sure, I was very greatly indebted to him for his conduct, that when your departed brother had filled our churches with sacred offerings, he murdered him. For the wretch was not moved by the sight of these his gifts, nor did he stand in awe of the divine grace which had been given to him in baptism: but like an accursed and devilish spirit, he raged against him, till your blessed brother suffered martyrdom at his hands; while he, henceforth a criminal like Cain, was driven from place to place, groaning and trembling [1311] ,' to the end that he might follow the example of Judas in his death, by becoming his own executioner, and so bring upon himself a double weight of punishment in the judgment to come. __________________________________________________________________
[1310] Bingh. Antiqu. xvi. 5. §5, &c.
[1311] Gen. iv. 12. LXX. vid. Hist. Ar. §7. __________________________________________________________________
8. Disproof of It.
With such a man the slanderer thought that I had been on terms of friendship, or rather he did not think so, but like an enemy invented an incredible fiction: for he knows full well that he has lied. I would that, whoever he is, he were present here, that I might put the question to him on the word of Truth itself (for whatever we speak as in the presence of God, we Christians consider as an oath [1312] ); I say, that I might ask him this question, which of us rejoiced most in the well-being of the departed Constans? who prayed for him most earnestly? The facts of the foregoing charge prove this; indeed it is plain to every one how the case stands. But although he himself knows full well, that no one who was so disposed towards the departed Constans, and who truly loved him, could be a friend to his enemy, I fear that being possessed with other feelings towards him than I was, he has falsely attributed to me those sentiments of hatred which were entertained by himself. __________________________________________________________________
[1312] Vid. Chrys. in Eph. Nicene Lib., Series I. vol. xiii. p. 58. __________________________________________________________________
9. Athanasius could not write to one who did not even know him.
For myself, I am so surprised at the enormity of the thing, that I am quite uncertain what I ought to say in my defence. I can only declare, that I condemn myself to die ten thousand deaths, if even the least suspicion attaches to me in this matter. And to you, Sire, as a lover of the truth, I confidently make my appeal. I beseech you, as I said before, investigate this affair, and especially with the testimony of those who were once sent by him as ambassadors to you. These are the Bishops Sarvatius [1313] and Maximus and the rest, with Clementius and Valens. Enquire of them, I beseech you, whether they brought letters to me. If they did, this would give me occasion to write to him. But if he did not write to me, if he did not even know me, how could I write to one with whom I had no acquaintance? Ask them whether, when I saw Clementius and his fellows, and spoke of your brother of blessed memory, I did not, in the language of Scripture, wet my garments with tears [1314] , when I remembered his kindness of disposition and his Christian spirit. Learn of them how anxious I was, on hearing of the cruelty of the beast, and finding that Valens and his company had come by way of Libya, lest he should attempt a passage also, and like a robber murder those who held in love and memory the departed Prince, among whom I account myself second to none. __________________________________________________________________
[1313] Sarbatius, or Servatius, and Maximus occur in the lists of Gallic subscriptions [supr. p. 127]. The former is supposed to be S. Servatius or Servatio of Tungri, concerning whom at Ariminum, vid. Sulp. Sev. Hist. ii. 59. vid. also Greg. Turon. Hist. Franc ii. 5. where however the Bened. Ed. prefers to read Aravatius, a Bishop, as he considers, of the fifth century.
[1314] Ps. vi. 6. __________________________________________________________________
10. His loyalty towards Constantius and his brother.
How with this apprehension of such a design on their part, was there not an additional probability of my praying for your Grace? Should I feel affection for his murderer, and entertain dislike towards you his brother who avenged his death? Should I remember his crime, and forget that kindness of yours which you vouchsafed to assure me by letter [1315] should remain the same towards me after your brother's death of happy memory, as it had been during his lifetime? How could I have borne to look upon the murderer? Must I not have thought that the blessed Prince beheld me, when I prayed for your safety? For brothers are by nature mirrors of each other. Wherefore as seeing you in him, I never should have slandered you before him; and as seeing him in you, never should I have written to his enemy, instead of praying for your safety. Of this my witnesses are, first of all, the Lord who has heard and has given to you entire the kingdom of your forefathers: and next those persons who were present at the time, Felicissimus, who was Duke of Egypt, Rufinus, and Stephanus, the former of whom was Receiver-general, the latter, Master there; Count Asterius, and Palladius Master of the palace, Antiochus and Evagrius Official Agents [1316] . I had only to say, Let us pray for the safety of the most religious Emperor, Constantius Augustus,' and all the people immediately cried out with one voice, O Christ send help to Constantius;' and they continued praying thus for some time [1317] . __________________________________________________________________
[1315] Cf. §23.
[1316] 1. The Rationales or Receivers, in Greek writers Catholici (logothetai being understood, Vales. ad Euseb. vii. 10.), were the same as the Procurators (Gibbon, Hist. ch. xvii. note 148.), who succeeded the Provincial Quæstors in the early times of the Empire. They were in the department of the Comes Sacrarum Largitionum, or High Treasurer of the Revenue (Gothofr. Cod. Theod. t. 6. p. 327). Both Gothofr. however and Pancirolus, p. 134. Ed. 1623, place Rationales also under the Comes Rerum Privatarum. Pancirolus, p. 120. mentions the Comes Rationalis Summarum Ægypti as distinct from other functionaries. Gibbon, ch. xvii. seems to say that there were in all 29, of whom 18 were counts. 2. Stephanus, magistros ekei. Tillemont translates, Master of the camp of Egypt,' vol. viii. p. 137. 3. The Master of the offices or of the palace has been noticed above, p. 239, note 4. 4. agentiseribous, agentes in rebus. These were functionaries under the Master of the offices, whose business it was to announce the names of the consuls and the edicts or victories of the Empire. They at length became spies of the Court, vid. Gibbon, ch. xvii. Gothofr. Cod. Th. vi. 27.
[1317] Presbyterurn Eraclium mihi successorem polo. A populo acclamatum est, Deo gratias, Christo laudes; dictum est vicies terties. Exaudi Christe, Augustino vita; dictum est sexies decies. Te patrem, te episcopum; dictum est octies.' August. Ep. 213. __________________________________________________________________
11. Challenge to the accusers as to the alleged letter.
Now I have already called upon God, and His Word, the Only-begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ, to witness for me, that I have never written to that man, nor received letters from him. And as to my accuser, give me leave to ask him a few short questions concerning this charge also. How did he come to the knowledge of this matter? Will he say that he has got copies of the letter? for this is what the Arians laboured to prove. Now in the first place, even if he can shew writing resembling mine, the thing is not yet certain; for there are forgers, who have often imitated the hand [1318] even of you who are Emperors. And the resemblance will not prove the genuineness of the letter, unless my customary amanuensis shall testify in its favour. I would then again ask my accusers, Who provided you with these copies? and whence were they obtained? I had my writers [1319] , and he his servants, who received his letters from the bearers, and gave them into his hand. My assistants are forthcoming; vouchsafe to summon the others (for they are most probably still living), and enquire concerning these letters. Search into the matter, as though Truth were the partner of your throne. She is the defence of Kings, and especially of Christian Kings; with her you will reign most securely, for holy Scripture says, Mercy and truth preserve the king, and they will encircle his throne in righteousness [1320] .' And the wise Zorobabel gained a victory over the others by setting forth the power of Truth, and all the people cried out, Great is the truth, and mighty above all things [1321] .' __________________________________________________________________
[1318] Apol. Ar. 45.
[1319] Vid. Rom. xvi. 22. Lucian is spoken of as the amanuensis of the Confessors who wrote to S. Cyprian, Ep. 16. Ed. Ben. Jader perhaps of Ep. 80. [Epp. 23, 79, Hartel.] S. Jerome was either secretary or amanuensis to Pope Damasus, vid. Ep. ad Ageruch. (123. n. 10. Ed. Vallars.) vid. Lami de Erud. 24, Ap. p. 258.
[1320] Prov. xx. 28.
[1321] 1 Esdr. iv. 41. __________________________________________________________________
12. Truth the defence of Thrones.
Had I been accused before any other, I should have appealed to your Piety; as once the Apostle appealed unto Cæsar, and put an end to the designs of his enemies against him. But since they have had the boldness to lay their charge before you, to whom shall I appeal from you? to the Father of Him who says, I am the Truth [1322] ,' that He may incline your heart into clemency:--
O Lord Almighty, and King of eternity, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who by Thy Word hast given this Kingdom to Thy servant Constantius; do Thou shine into his heart, that he, knowing the falsehood that is set against me, may both favourably receive this my defence; and may make known unto all men, that his ears are firmly set to hearken unto the Truth, according as it is written, Righteous lips alone are acceptable unto the King [1323] .' For Thou hast caused it to be said by Solomon, that thus the throne of the kingdom shall be established.
Wherefore at least enquire into this matter, and let the accusers understand that your desire is to learn the truth; and see, whether they will not shew their falsehood by their very looks; for the countenance is a test of the conscience as it is written, A merry heart maketh a cheerful countenance, but by sorrow of the heart the spirit is broken [1324] .' Thus they who had conspired against Joseph [1325] were convicted by their own consciences; and the craft of Laban towards Jacob was shewn in his countenance [1326] . And thus you see the suspicious alarm of these persons, for they fly and hide themselves; but on our part frankness in making our defence. And the question between us is not one regarding worldly wealth, but concerning the honour of the Church. He that has been struck by a stone, applies to a physician; but sharper than a stone are the strokes of calumny; for as Solomon has said, A false witness is a maul, and a sword, and a sharp arrow [1327] ,' and its wounds Truth alone is able to cure; and if Truth be set at nought, they grow worse and worse. __________________________________________________________________
[1322] John xiv. 6.
[1323] Prov. xvi. 13, xxv. 5.
[1324] Prov. xv. 13.
[1325] Gen. xlii. 21; xxxi. 2.
[1326] Vid. Vit. Ant. §67.
[1327] Prov. xxv. 18. __________________________________________________________________
13. This charge rests on forgery.
It is this that has thrown the Churches everywhere into such confusion; for pretences have been devised, and Bishops of great authority, and of advanced age [1328] , have been banished for holding communion with me. And if matters had stopped here, our prospect would be favourable through your gracious interposition. But that the evil may not extend itself, let Truth prevail before you; and leave not every Church under suspicion, as though Christian men, nay even Bishops, could be guilty of plotting and writing in this manner. Or if you are unwilling to investigate the matter, it is but right that we who offer our defence, should be believed, rather than our calumniators. They, like enemies, are occupied in wickedness; we, as earnestly contending for our cause, present to you our proofs. And truly I wonder how it comes to pass, that while we address you with fear and reverence, they are possessed of such an impudent spirit, that they dare even to lie before the Emperor. But I pray you, for the Truth's sake, and as it is written [1329] , search diligently' in my presence, on what grounds they affirm these things, and whence these letters were obtained. But neither will any of my servants be proved guilty, nor will any of his people be able to tell whence they came; for they are forgeries. And perhaps one had better not enquire further. They do not wish it, lest the writer of the letters should be certain of detection. For the calumniators alone, and none besides, know who he is. __________________________________________________________________
[1328] Hist. Arian. 72, &c.
[1329] Joel i. 7, LXX. __________________________________________________________________
14. The third charge, of using an undedicated Church.
But forasmuch as they have informed against me in the matter of the great Church [1330] , that a communion was holden there before it was completed, I will answer to your Piety on this charge also; for the parties who are hostile towards me constrain me to do so. I confess this did so happen; for, as in what I have hitherto said, I have spoken no lie, I will not now deny this. But the facts are far otherwise than they have represented them. Suffer me to declare to you, most religious Augustus, that we kept no day of dedication (it would certainly have been unlawful to do so, before receiving orders from you), nor were we led to act as we did through premeditation. No Bishop or other Clergyman was invited to join in our proceedings; for much was yet wanting to complete the building. Nay the congregation was not held on a previous notice, which might give them a reason for informing against us. Every one knows how it happened; hear me, however, with your accustomed equity and patience. It was the feast of Easter [1331] , and the multitude assembled together was exceeding great, such as Christian kings would desire to see in all their cities. Now when the Churches were found to be too few to contain them, there was no little stir among the people, who desired that they might be allowed to meet together in the great Church, where they could all offer up their prayers for your safety. And this they did; for although I exhorted them to wait awhile, and to hold service in the other Churches, with whatever inconvenience to themselves, they would not listen to me; but were ready to go out of the city, and meet in desert places in the open air, thinking it better to endure the fatigue of the journey, than to keep the feast in such a state of discomfort. __________________________________________________________________
[1330] [In the Cæsareum, see Hist. Ar. 55, and Fest. Ind. xxxviii. xl. It had been begun by Gregory, and was built at the expense of Constantius (infr. end of §18).]
[1331] a.d. 355. __________________________________________________________________
15. Want of room the cause, precedent the justification.
Believe me, Sire, and let Truth be my witness in this also, when I declare that in the congregations held during the season of Lent, in consequence of the narrow limits of the places, and the vast multitude of people assembled, a great number of children, not a few of the younger and very many of the older women, besides several young men, suffered so much from the pressure of the crowd, that they were obliged to be carried home; though by the Providence of God, no one is dead. All however murmured, and demanded the use of the great Church. And if the pressure was so great during the days which preceded the feast, what would have been the case during the feast itself? Of course matters would have been far worse. It did not therefore become me to change the people's joy into grief, their cheerfulness into sorrow, and to make the festival a season of lamentation.
And that the more, because I had a precedent in the conduct of our Fathers. For the blessed Alexander, when the other places were too small, and he was engaged in the erection of what was then considered a very large one, the Church of Theonas [1332] , held his congregations there on account of the number of the people, while at the same time he proceeded with the building. I have seen the same thing done at Treveri and at Aquileia, in both which places, while the building was proceeding, they assembled there during the feasts, on account of the number of the people and they never found any one to accuse them in this manner. Nay, your brother of blessed memory was present, when a communion was held under these circumstances at Aquileia. I also followed this course. There was no dedication, but only a service of prayer. You, at least I am sure, as a lover of God will approve of the people's zeal, and will pardon me for being unwilling to hinder the prayers of so great a multitude. __________________________________________________________________
[1332] S. Epiphanius mentions nine Churches in Alexandria. Hær. 69. 2. Athan. mentions in addition that of Quirinus. Hist. Arian. §10. [See the plan of Larsow, appended to his Fest-briefe.] The Church mentioned in the text was built at the Emperor's expense; and apparently upon the Emperor's ground, as on the site was or had been a Basilica, which bore first the name of Hadrian, then of Licinius, Epiph. ibid. Hadrian had built in many cities temples without idols, which were popularly considered as intended by him for Christian worship, and went after his name. Lamprid. Vit. Alex. Sev. 43. The Church in question was built in the Cæsareum. Hist. Arian. 74. There was a magnificent Temple, dedicated to Augustus, as epibaterios, on the harbour of Alexandria, Philon. Legat. ad Caium, pp. 1013, 4. ed. 1691, and called the Cæsareum. It was near the Emperor's palace, vid. Acad. des. Inscript. vol. 9. p. 416. [Vid. supr. note 5^b, and cf. Apol. de Fuga 24.] __________________________________________________________________
16. Better to pray together than separately.
But here again I would ask my accuser, where was it right that the people should pray? in the deserts, or in a place which was in course of building for the purpose of prayer? Where was it becoming and pious that the people should answer, Amen [1333] ? in the deserts, or in what was already called the Lord's house? Where would you, most religious Prince, have wished your people to stretch forth their hands, and to pray for you? Where Greeks, as they passed by, might stop and listen, or in a place named after yourself, which all men have long called the Lord's house, even since the foundations of it were laid? I am sure that you prefer your own place; for you smile, and that tells me so. But,' says the accuser, it ought to have been in the Churches. They were all, as I said before, too small and confined to admit the multitude. Then again, in which way was it most becoming that their prayers should be made? Should they meet together in parts and separate companies, with danger from the crowded state of the congregation? or, when there was now a place that would contain them all, should they assemble in it, and speak as with one and the same voice in perfect harmony? This was the better course, for this shewed the unanimity of the multitude: in this way God will readily hear prayer. For if, according to the promise of our Saviour Himself [1334] , where two shall agree together as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them, how shall it be when so great an assembly of people with one voice utter their Amen to God? Who indeed was there that did not marvel at the sight? Who but pronounced you happy when they saw so great a multitude met together in one place? How did the people themselves rejoice to see each other, having been accustomed heretofore to assemble in separate places! The circumstance was a source of pleasure to all; of vexation to the calumniator alone. __________________________________________________________________
[1333] Bingham, Antiqu. xv. 3. §25. [D.C.A. 75.] Suicer, Thesaur. in voc. auen, Gavanti, Thesaur. vol. i. p. 89. ed. 1763.
[1334] Matt. xviii. 19. __________________________________________________________________
17. Better to pray in a building than in the desert.
Now then, I would also meet the other and only remaining objection of my accuser. He says, the building was not completed, and prayer ought not to have been made there. But the Lord said, But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and shut the door [1335] .' What then will the accuser answer? or rather what will all prudent and true Christians say? Let your Majesty ask the opinion of such: for it is written of the other, The foolish person will speak foolishness [1336] ;' but of these, Ask counsel of all that are wise [1337] .' When the Churches were too small, and the people so numerous as they were, and desirous to go forth into the deserts, what ought I to have done? The desert has no doors, and all who choose may pass through it, but the Lord's house is enclosed with walls and doors, and marks the difference between the pious and the profane. Will not every wise person then, as well as your Piety, Sire, give the preference to the latter place? For they know that here prayer is lawfully offered, while a suspicion of irregularity attaches to it there. Unless indeed no place proper for it existed, and the worshippers dwelt only in the desert, as was the case with Israel; although after the tabernacle was built, they also had thenceforth a place set apart for prayer. O Christ, Lord and true King of kings, Only-begotten Son of God, Word and Wisdom of the Father, I am accused because the people prayed Thy gracious favour, and through Thee besought Thy Father, who is God over all, to save Thy servant, the most religious Constantius. But thanks be to Thy goodness, that it is for this that I am blamed, and for the keeping of Thy laws. Heavier had been the blame, and more true had been the charge, had we passed by the place which the Emperor was building, and gone forth into the desert to pray. How would the accuser then have vented his folly! With what apparent reason would he have said, He despised the place which you are building; he does not approve of your undertaking; he passed it by in derision; he pointed to the desert to supply the want of room; he prevented the people when they wished to offer up their prayers.' This is what he wished to say, and sought an occasion of saying it; and finding none he is vexed, and so forthwith invents a charge against me. Had he been able to say this, he would have confounded me with shame; as now he injures me, copying the accuser's ways, and watching for an occasion against those that pray. Thus has he perverted to a wicked purpose his knowledge of Daniel's [1338] history. But he has been deceived; for he ignorantly imagined, that Babylonian practices were in fashion with you, and knew not that you are a friend of the blessed Daniel, and worship the same God, and do not forbid, but wish all men to pray, knowing that the prayer of all is, that you may continue to reign in perpetual peace and safety. __________________________________________________________________
[1335] Matt. vi. 6.
[1336] Is. xxxii. 6. Sept.
[1337] Tob. iv. 18.
[1338] Dan. vi. 11. __________________________________________________________________
18. Prayers first do not interfere with dedication afterwards.
This is what I have to complain of on the part of my accuser. But may you, most religious Augustus, live through the course of many years to come, and celebrate the dedication of the Church. Surely the prayers which have been offered for your safety by all men, are no hindrance to this celebration. Let these unlearned persons cease such misrepresentations, but let them learn from the example of the Fathers; and let them read the Scriptures. Or rather let them learn of you, who are so well instructed in such histories, how that Joshua the son of Josedek the priest, and his brethren, and Zorobabel the wise, the son of Salathiel, and Ezra the priest and scribe of the law, when the temple was in course of building after the captivity, the feast of tabernacles being at hand (which was a great feast and time of assembly and prayer in Israel), gathered [1339] the people together with one accord in the great court within the first gate, which is toward the East, and prepared the altar to God, and there offered their gifts, and kept the feast. And so afterwards they brought hither their sacrifices, on the sabbaths and the new moons, and the people offered up their prayers. And yet the Scripture says expressly, that when these things were done, the temple of God was not yet built; but rather while they thus prayed, the building of the house was advancing. So that neither were their prayers deferred in expectation of the dedication, nor was the dedication prevented by the assemblies held for the sake of prayer. But the people thus continued to pray; and when the house was entirely finished, they celebrated the dedication, and brought their gifts for that purpose, and all kept the feast for the completion of the work. And thus also have the blessed Alexander, and the other Fathers done. They continued to assemble their people, and when they had completed the work they gave thanks unto the Lord, and celebrated the dedication. This also it befits you to do, O Prince, most careful in your inquiries. The place is ready, having been already sanctified by the prayers which have been offered in it, and requires only the presence of your Piety. This only is wanting to its perfect beauty. Do you then supply this deficiency, and there make your prayers unto the Lord, for whom you have built this house. That you may do so is the prayer of all men. __________________________________________________________________
[1339] Ezr. iii. 6; Neh. viii. __________________________________________________________________
19. Fourth charge, of having disobeyed an Imperial order.
And now, if it please you, let us consider the remaining accusation, and permit me to answer it likewise. They have dared to charge me with resisting your commands, and refusing to leave my Church. Truly I wonder they are not weary of uttering their calumnies; I however am not yet weary of answering them, I rather rejoice to do so; for the more abundant my defence is, the more entirely must they be condemned. I did not resist the commands of your Piety, God forbid; I am not a man that would resist even the Quæstor [1340] of the city, much less so great a Prince. On this matter I need not many words, for the whole city will bear witness for me. Nevertheless, permit me again to relate the circumstances from the beginning; for when you hear them, I am sure you will be astonished at the presumption of my enemies. Montanus, the officer of the Palace [1341] , came and brought me a letter, which purported to be an answer to one from me, requesting that I might go into Italy, for the purpose of obtaining a supply of the deficiencies which I thought existed in the condition of our Churches. Now I desire to thank your Piety, which condescended to assent to my request, on the supposition that I had written to you, and has made provision [1342] for me to undertake the journey, and to accomplish it without trouble. But here again I am astonished at those who have spoken falsehood in your ears, that they were not afraid, seeing that lying belongs to the Devil, and that liars are alien from Him who says, I am the Truth [1343] .' For I never wrote to you, nor will my accuser be able to find any such letter; and though I ought to have written every day, if I might thereby behold your gracious countenance, yet it would neither have been pious to desert the Churches, nor right to be troublesome to your Piety, especially since you are willing to grant our requests in behalf of the Church, although we are not present to make them. Now may it please you to order me to read what Montanus commanded me to do. This is as follows [1344] .*** __________________________________________________________________
[1340] logiste, auditor of accounts? vid. Demosth. de Corona, p. 290. ed. 1823. Arist. Polit. vi. 8.
[1341] Vid. Cod. Theod. vi. 30 [summer of 353 a.d. Prolegg. ch. ii. §7 fin.]
[1342] Apol. Ar. 70, note 5.
[1343] John xiv. 6.
[1344] Lost, or never introduced. __________________________________________________________________
20. History of his disobeying it.
Now I ask again, whence have my accusers obtained this letter also? I would learn of them who it was that put it into their hands? Do you cause them to answer. By this you may perceive that they have forged this, as they spread abroad also the former letter, which they published against me, with reference to the ill-named Magnentius. And being convicted in this instance also, on what pretence next will they bring me to make my defence? Their only concern is, to throw everything into disorder and confusion; and for this end I perceive they exercise their zeal. Perhaps they think that by frequent repetition of their charges, they will at last exasperate you against me. But you ought to turn away from such persons, and to hate them; for such as themselves are, such also they imagine those to be who listen to them; and they think that their calumnies will prevail even before you. The accusation of Doeg [1345] prevailed of old against the priests of God: but it was the unrighteous Saul, who hearkened unto him. And Jezebel was able to injure the most religious Naboth [1346] by her false accusations; but then it was the wicked and apostate Ahab who hearkened unto her. But the most holy David, whose example it becomes you to follow, as all pray that you may, favours not such men, but was wont to turn away from them and avoid them, as raging dogs. He says, Whoso privily slandereth his neighbour, him will I destroy [1347] .' For he kept the commandment which says, Thou shalt not receive a false report [1348] .' And false are the reports of these men in your sight. You, like Solomon, have required of the Lord (and you ought to believe yourself to have obtained your desire), that it would seem good unto Him to remove far from you vain and lying words [1349] . __________________________________________________________________
[1345] 1 Sam. xxii. 9.
[1346] 1 Kings xxi. 10.
[1347] Ps. ci. 5.
[1348] Ex. xxiii. 1.
[1349] Prov. xxx. 8. __________________________________________________________________
21. Forasmuch then as the letter owed its origin to a false story, and contained no order that I should come to you, I concluded that it was not the wish of your Piety that I should come. For in that you gave me no absolute command, but merely wrote as in answer to a letter from me, requesting that I might be permitted to set in order the things which seemed to be wanting, it was manifest to me (although no one told me this) that the letter which I had received did not express the sentiments of your Clemency. All knew, and I also stated in writing, as Montanus is aware, that I did not refuse to come, but only that I thought it unbecoming to take advantage of the supposition that I had written to you to request this favour, fearing also lest the false accusers should find in this a pretence for saying that I made myself troublesome to your Piety. Nevertheless, I made preparations, as Montanus also knows, in order that, should you condescend to write to me, I might immediately leave home, and readily answer your commands; for I was not so mad as to resist such an order from you. When then in fact your Piety did not write to me, how could I resist a command which I never received? or how can they say that I refused to obey, when no orders were given me? Is not this again the mere fabrication of enemies, pretending that which never took place? I fear that even now, while I am engaged in this defence of myself, they may allege against me that I am doing that which I have never obtained your permission to do. So easily is my conduct made matter of accusation by them, and so ready are they to vent their calumnies in despite of that Scripture, which says, Love not to slander another, lest thou be cut off [1350] .' __________________________________________________________________
[1350] Prov. xx. 13, LXX. __________________________________________________________________
22. Arrivals of Diogenes and of Syrianus.
After a period of six and twenty months, when Montanus had gone away, there came Diogenes the Notary [1351] ; but he brought me no letter, nor did we see each other, nor did he charge me with any commands as from you. Moreover when the General Syrianus entered Alexandria [1352] , seeing that certain reports were spread abroad by the Arians, who declared that matters would now be as they wished, I enquired whether he had brought any letters on the subject of these statements of theirs. I confess that I asked for letters containing your commands. And when he said that he had brought none, I requested that Syrianus himself, or Maximus the Prefect of Egypt, would write to me concerning this matter. Which request I made, because your Grace has written to me, desiring that I would not suffer myself to be alarmed by any one, nor attend to those who wished to frighten me, but that I would continue to reside in the Churches without fear. It was Palladius, the Master of the Palace, and Asterius, formerly Duke of Armenia, who brought me this letter. Permit me to read a copy of it. It is as follows: __________________________________________________________________
[1351] [August, 355 a.d. See Hist. Aceph. iii. Fest. Ind. xxv., xxvii.] Notaries were the immediate attendants on magistrates, whose judgments, &c., they recorded and promulgated. Their office was analogous in the Imperial Court. vid. Gothofred in Cod. Theod. VI. x. Ammian. Marcell. tom. 3. P. 464. ed. Erfurt, 1808. Pancirol. Notit. p. 143. Hofman in voc. Schari enumerates with references the civil officers, &c., to whom they were attached in Dissert. 1, de Notariis Ecclesiæ, p. 49.
[1352] [Jan. 5, 356.] __________________________________________________________________
23. A copy [1353] of the letter as follows:
Constantius Victor Augustus to Athanasius [1354] . It is not unknown to your Prudence, how constantly I prayed that success might attend my late brother Constans in all his undertakings, and your wisdom will easily judge how greatly I was afflicted, when I learnt that he had been cut off by the treachery of villains. Now forasmuch as certain persons are endeavouring at this time to alarm you, by setting before your eyes that lamentable tragedy, I have thought good to address to your Reverence this present letter, to exhort you, that, as becomes a Bishop, you would teach the people to conform to the established [1355] religion, and, according to your custom, give yourself up to prayer together with them. For this is agreeable to our wishes; and our desire is, that you should at every season be a Bishop in your own place.
And in another hand:--May divine Providence preserve you, beloved Father, many years. __________________________________________________________________
[1353] Vid. another translation of the Latin, Hist. Arian. §24.
[1354] Spring of 350.
[1355] kechreostemenen vid. kratouse pistei, infr. §31. __________________________________________________________________
24. Why Athanasius did not obey the Imperial Order.
On the subject of this letter, my opponents conferred with the magistrates. And was it not reasonable that I, having received it, should demand their letters, and refuse to give heed to mere pretences? And were they not acting in direct contradiction to the tenor of your instructions to me, while they failed to shew me the commands of your Piety? I therefore, seeing they produced no letters from you, considered it improbable that a mere verbal communication should be made to them, especially as the letter of your Grace had charged me not to give ear to such persons. I acted rightly then, most religious Augustus, that as I had returned to my country under the authority of your letters, so I should only leave it by your command; and might not render myself liable hereafter to a charge of having deserted the Church, but as receiving your order might have a reason for my retiring. This was demanded for me by all my people, who went to Syrianus together with the Presbyters, and the greatest part, to say the least, of the city with them. Maximus, the Prefect of Egypt, was also there: and their request was that either he would send me a declaration of your wishes in writing, or would forbear to disturb the Churches, while the people themselves were sending a deputation to you respecting the matter. When they persisted in their demand, Syrianus at last perceived the reasonableness of it, and consented, protesting by your safety (Hilary was present and witnessed this) that he would put an end to the disturbance, and refer the case to your Piety. The guards of the Duke, as well as those of the Prefect of Egypt, know that this is true; the Prytanis [1356] of the city also remembers the words; so that you will perceive that neither I, nor any one else, resisted your commands. __________________________________________________________________
[1356] The Mayor, Tillem. vol. viii. p. 152. __________________________________________________________________
25. The irruption of Syrianus.
All demanded that the letters of your Piety should be exhibited. For although the bare word of a King is of equal weight and authority with his written command, especially if he who reports it, boldly affirms in writing that it has been given him; yet when they neither openly declared that they had received any command, nor, as they were requested to do, gave me assurance of it in writing, but acted altogether as by their own authority; I confess, I say it boldly, I was suspicious of them. For there were many Arians about them, who were their companions at table, and their counsellors; and while they attempted nothing openly, they were preparing to assail me by stratagem and treachery. Nor did they act at all as under the authority of a royal command, but, as their conduct betrayed, at the solicitation of enemies. This made me demand more urgently that they should produce letters from you, seeing that all their undertakings and designs were of a suspicious nature; and because it was unseemly that after I had entered the Church, under the authority of so many letters from you, I should retire from it without such a sanction. When however Syrianus gave his promise, all the people assembled together in the Churches with feelings of joyfulness and security. But three and twenty days after [1357] , he burst into the Church with his soldiers, while we were engaged in our usual services, as those who entered in there witnessed; for it was a vigil, preparatory to a communion on the morrow. And such things were done that night as the Arians desired and had beforehand denounced against us. For the General brought them with him; and they were the instigators and advisers of the attack. This is no incredible story of mine, most religious Augustus; for it was not done in secret, but was noised abroad everywhere. When therefore I saw the assault begun, I first exhorted the people to retire, and then withdrew myself after them, God hiding and guiding me, as those who were with me at the time witness. Since then, I have remained by myself, though I have all confidence to answer for my conduct, in the first place before God, and also before your Piety, for that I did not flee and desert my people, but can point to the attack of the General upon us, as a proof of persecution. His proceedings have caused the greatest astonishment among all men; for either he ought not to have made a promise, or not to have broken it after he had made it. __________________________________________________________________
[1357] [Feb. 8, 356: cf. Apol. Fug. 24.] __________________________________________________________________
26. How Athanasius acted when this took place.
Now why did they form this plot against me, and treacherously lay an ambush to take me, when it was in their power to enforce the order by a written declaration? The command of an Emperor is wont to give great boldness to those entrusted with it; but their desire to act secretly made the suspicion stronger that they had received no command. And did I require anything so very absurd? Let your Majesty's candour decide. Will not every one say, that such a demand was reasonable for a Bishop to make? You know, for you have read the Scriptures, how great an offence it is for a Bishop to desert his Church, and to neglect the flocks of God. For the absence of the Shepherd gives the wolves an opportunity to attack the sheep. And this was what the Arians and all the other heretics desired, that during my absence they might find an opportunity to entrap the people into impiety. If then I had fled, what defence could I have made before the true Bishops? or rather before Him Who has committed to me His flock? He it is Who judges the whole earth, the true King of all, our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Would not every one have rightly charged me with neglect of my people? Would not your Piety have blamed me, and have justly asked, After you had returned under the authority of our letters, why did you withdraw without such authority, and desert your people?' Would not the people themselves at the day of judgment have reasonably imputed to me this neglect of them, and have said, He that had the oversight of us fled, and we were neglected, there being no one to put us in mind of our duty?' When they said this, what could I have answered? Such a complaint was made by Ezekiel against the Pastors of old [1358] ; and the blessed Apostle Paul, knowing this, has charged every one of us through his disciple, saying, Neglect not the gift that is in thee, which was given thee, with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery [1359] .' Fearing this, I wished not to flee, but to receive your commands, if indeed such was the will of your Piety. But I never obtained what I so reasonably requested, and now I am falsely accused before you; for I resisted no commands of your Piety; nor will I now attempt to return to Alexandria, until your Grace shall desire it. This I say beforehand, lest the slanderers should again make this a pretence for accusing me. __________________________________________________________________
[1358] Ez. xxxiv. 2, &c.
[1359] 1 Tim. iv. 14. __________________________________________________________________
27. Athanasius leaves Alexandria to go to Constantius, but is stopped by the news of the banishment of the Bishops.
Observing these things, I did not give sentence against myself, but hastened to come to your Piety, with this my defence, knowing your goodness, and remembering your faithful promises, and being confident that, as it is written in the divine Proverbs, Just speeches are acceptable to a gracious king [1360] .' But when I had already entered upon my journey, and had passed through the desert [1361] , a report suddenly reached me [1362] , which at first I thought to be incredible, but which afterwards proved to be true. It was rumoured everywhere that Liberius, Bishop of Rome, the great Hosius of Spain, Paulinus of Gaul, Dionysius and Eusebius of Italy, Lucifer of Sardinia, and certain other Bishops and Presbyters and Deacons, had been banished [1363] because they refused to subscribe to my condemnation. These had been banished: and Vincentius of Capua, Fortunatian of Aquileia, Heremius of Thessalonica, and all the Bishops of the West, were treated with no ordinary force, nay were suffering extreme violence and grievous injuries, until they could be induced to promise that they would not communicate with me. While I was astonished and perplexed at these tidings, behold another report [1364] overtook me, respecting them of Egypt and Libya, that nearly ninety Bishops had been under persecution, and that their Churches were given up to the professors of Arianism; that sixteen had been banished, and of the rest, some had fled, and others were constrained to dissemble. For the persecution was said to be so violent in those parts, that at Alexandria, while the brethren were praying during Easter and on the Lord's days in a desert place near the cemetery, the General came upon them with a force of soldiery, more than three thousand in number, with arms, drawn swords, and spears; whereupon outrages, such as might be expected to follow so unprovoked an attack, were committed against women and children, who were doing nothing more than praying to God. It would perhaps be unseasonable to give an account of them now, lest the mere mention of such enormities should move us all to tears. But such was their cruelty, that virgins were stripped, and even the bodies of those who died from the blows they received were not immediately given up for burial, but were cast out to the dogs, until their relatives, with great risk to themselves, came secretly and stole them away, and much effort was necessary, that no one might know it. __________________________________________________________________
[1360] Prov. xvi. 13. quoted otherwise, supr. §12.
[1361] [Probably the Libyan desert, as Const. was now in Italy.]
[1362] In this chapter he breaks off his Oratorical form, and ends his Apology much more in the form of a letter, vid. however ton logon kairon, infr. §§34, 35 init. prosphoneso, §35.
[1363] Council of Milan 355, see Apol. Fug. 5.
[1364] Vid. Hist. Ar. §§31, 32, 54, 70, &c. [Prolegg. ch, ii. §8 (1).] __________________________________________________________________
28. The news of the intrusion of George.
The rest of their proceedings will perhaps be thought incredible, and will fill all men with astonishment, by reason of their extreme atrocity. It is necessary however to speak of them, in order that your Christian zeal and piety may perceive that their slanders and calumnies against us are framed for no other end, than that they may drive us out of the Churches, and introduce their own impiety in our place. For when the lawful Bishops, men of advanced age, had some of them been banished, and others forced to fly, heathens and catechumens, those who hold the first places in the senate and men who are notorious for their wealth, were straightway commissioned by the Arians to preach the holy faith instead of Christians [1365] . And enquiry was no longer made, as the Apostle enjoined, if any be blameless [1366] :' but according to the practice of the impious Jeroboam, he who could give most money was named Bishop; and it made no difference to them, even if the man happened to be a heathen, so long as he furnished them with money. Those who had been Bishops from the time of Alexander, monks and ascetics, were banished: and men practised only in calumny corrupted, as far as in them lay, the Apostolic rule, and polluted the Churches. Truly their false accusations against us have gained them much, that they should be able to commit iniquity, and to do such things as these in your time; so that the words of Scripture may be applied to them, Woe unto those through whom My name is blasphemed among the Gentiles [1367] .' __________________________________________________________________
[1365] Hist Ar. §73.
[1366] Tit. i. 8.
[1367] Rom. ii. 24. __________________________________________________________________
29. Athanasius has heard of his own proscription.
Such were the rumours that were noised abroad; and although everything was thus turned upside down, I still did not relinquish my earnest desire of coming to your Piety, but was again setting forward on my journey. And I did so the more eagerly, being confident that these proceedings were contrary to your wishes, and that if your Grace should be informed of what was done, you would prevent it for the time to come. For I could not think that a righteous king could wish Bishops to be banished, and virgins to be stripped, or the Churches to be in any way disturbed. While I thus reasoned and hastened on my journey, behold a third report reached me, to the effect that letters had been written to the Princes of Auxumis, desiring that Frumentius [1368] , Bishop of Auxumis, should be brought from thence, and that search should be made for me even as far as the country of the Barbarians, that I might be handed over to the Commentaries [1369] (as they are called) of the Prefects, and that all the laity and clergy should be compelled to communicate with the Arian heresy, and that such as would not comply with this order should be put to death. To shew that these were not merely idle rumours, but that they were confirmed by facts, since your Grace has given me leave, I produce the letter. My enemies were constantly reading it, and threatening each one with death. __________________________________________________________________
[1368] [Prolegg. ch. ii. §§4, 7, 8 (1).]
[1369] That is, the prison. The official books,' Montfaucon (apparently) in Onomast. vid. Gothofr. Cod. Theod. ix. 3. 1. 5. However, in ix. 30. p. 243. he says, Malim pro ipsa custodia accipere. And so Du Cange in voc., and this meaning is here followed, vid. supr. Apol. contr. Arian. §8, where commentarius is translated jailor.' __________________________________________________________________
30. A copy of the letter of Constantius against Athanasius.
Victor Constantius Maximus Augustus to the Alexandrians.
Your city, preserving its national character, and remembering the virtue of its founders, has habitually shewn itself obedient unto us, as it does at this day; and we on our part should consider ourselves greatly wanting in our duty, did not our good will eclipse even that of Alexander himself. For as it belongs to a temperate mind, to behave itself orderly in all respects, so it is the part of royalty, on account of virtue, permit me to say, such as yours, to embrace you above all others; you, who rose up as the first teachers of wisdom who were the first to acknowledge [1370] God; who moreover have chosen for yourselves the most consummate masters; and have cordially acquiesced in our opinion, justly abominating that impostor and cheat, and dutifully uniting yourselves to those venerable men who are beyond all admiration. And yet, who is ignorant, even among those who live in the ends of the earth, what violent party spirit was displayed in the late proceedings? with which we know not anything that has ever happened, worthy to be compared. The majority of the citizens had their eyes blinded, and a man who had come forth from the lowest dens of infamy obtained authority among them, entrapping into falsehood, as under cover of darkness, those who were desirous to know the truth;--one who never provided for them any fruitful and edifying discourse, but corrupted their minds with unprofitable subtleties. His flatterers shouted and applauded him; they were astonished at his powers, and they still probably murmur secretly; while the majority of the more simple sort took their cue from them. And thus all went with the stream, as if a flood had broken in, while everything was entirely neglected. One of the multitude was in power;--how can I describe him more truly than by saying, that he was superior in nothing to the meanest of the people, and that the only kindness which he shewed to the city was, that he did not thrust her citizens down into the pit. This noble-minded and illustrious person did not wait for judgment to proceed against him, but sentenced himself to banishment, as he deserved. So that now it is for the interest of the Barbarians to remove him out of the way, lest he lead some of them into impiety, for he will make his complaint, like distressed characters in a play, to those who first fall in with him. To him however we will now bid a long farewell. For yourselves there are few with whom I can compare you: I am bound rather to honour you separately above all others, for the great virtue and wisdom which your actions, that are celebrated almost through the whole world, proclaim you to possess. Go on in this sober course. I would gladly have repeated to me a description of your conduct in such terms of praise as it deserves; O you who have eclipsed your predecessors in the race of glory, and will be a noble example both to those who are now alive, and to all who shall come after, and alone have chosen for yourselves the most perfect of beings as guide for your conduct, both in word and deed, and hesitated not a moment, but manfully transferred your affections, and gave yourselves up to the other side, leaving those grovelling [1371] and earthly teachers, and stretching forth towards heavenly things, under the guidance of the most venerable George [1372] , than whom no man is more perfectly instructed therein. Under him you will continue to have a good hope respecting the future life, and will pass your time in this present world, in rest and quietness. Would that all the citizens together would lay hold on his words, as a sacred anchor, so that we might need neither knife nor cautery for those whose souls are diseased! Such persons we most earnestly advise to renounce their zeal in favour of Athanasius, and not even to remember the foolish things which he spoke so plentifully among them. Otherwise they will bring themselves before they are aware into extreme peril, from which we know not any one who will be skilful enough to deliver such factious persons. For while that pestilent fellow Athanasius is driven from place to place, being convicted of the basest crimes, for which he would only suffer the punishment he deserves, if one were to kill him ten times over, it would be inconsistent in us to suffer those flatterers and juggling ministers of his to exult against us; men of such a character as it is a shame even to speak of, respecting whom orders have long ago been given to the magistrates, that they should be put to death. But even now perhaps they shall not die, if they desist from their former offences, and repent at last. For that most pestilent fellow Athanasius led them on, and corrupted the whole state, and laid his impious and polluted hands upon the most holy things. __________________________________________________________________
[1370] On the reading, cf. infr. note 6.
[1371] ton chamai, vid. contr. Euseb. H. E. vii. 27.
[1372] Of Cappadocia, de Syn. 37, note 3. __________________________________________________________________
31. Letter of Constantius to the Ethiopians against Frumentius.
The following is the letter which was written to the Princes of Auxumis respecting Frumentius, Bishop of that place.
Constantius Victor Maximus Augustus, to Æzanes and Sazanes.
It is altogether a matter of the greatest care and concern to us, to extend the knowledge of the supreme God [1373] ; and I think that the whole race of mankind claims from us equal regard in this respect, in order that they may pass their lives in hope, being brought to a proper knowledge of God, and having no differences with each other in their enquiries concerning justice and truth. Wherefore considering that you are deserving of the same provident care as the Romans, and desiring to shew equal regard for your welfare, we command that the same doctrine be professed in your Churches as in theirs. Send therefore speedily into Egypt the Bishop Frumentius to the most venerable Bishop George, and the rest who are there, who have especial authority to appoint to these offices, and to decide questions concerning them. For of course you know and remember (unless you alone pretend to be ignorant of that which all men are well aware of) that this Frumentius was advanced to his present rank by Athanasius, a man who is guilty of ten thousand crimes; for he has not been able fairly to clear himself of any of the charges brought against him, but was at once deprived of his see, and now wanders about destitute of any fixed abode, and passes from one country to another, as if by this means he could escape his own wickedness. Now if Frumentius shall readily obey our commands, and shall submit to an enquiry into all the circumstances of his appointment, he will shew plainly to all men, that he is in no respect opposed to the laws of the Church and the established [1374] faith. And being brought to trial, when he shall have given proof of his general good conduct, and submitted an account of his life to those who are to judge of these things, he shall receive his appointment from them, if it shall indeed appear that he has any right to be a Bishop. But if he shall delay and avoid the trial, it will surely be very evident, that he has been induced by the persuasions of the wicked Athanasius, thus to indulge impiety against God, choosing to follow the course of him whose wickedness has been made manifest. And our fear is lest he should pass over into Auxumis and corrupt your people, by setting before them accursed and impious statements, and not only unsettle and disturb the Churches, and blaspheme the supreme God, but also thereby cause utter overthrow and destruction to the several nations whom he visits. But I am sure that Frumentius will return home, perfectly acquainted with all matters that concern the Church, having derived much instruction, which will be of great and general utility, from the conversation of the most venerable George, and such other of the Bishops, as are excellently qualified to communicate such knowledge. May God continually preserve you, most honoured brethren. __________________________________________________________________
[1373] he tou kreittonos gnosis, vid. ton kreittona, infr. And so in Arius's Thalia, the Eternal Father, in contrast to the Son, is called ho kreitton, ton kreittona, de Synod. §15. So again, theon ton [onta] sunientas, supr. §30, and suneton theou in the Thalia, Orat. i. 5. Again, sophias exegetas, supr. §30 and ton sophias metachonton, kata panta sophon in the Thalia, ibid. And ton exegeton tous akrous heilesthe, supr. §30, and touton kat' ichnos elthon in the Thalia.
[1374] kratouse, supr. §23, note 6. __________________________________________________________________
32. He defends his Flight.
Hearing, nay almost seeing, these things, through the mournful representations of the messengers, I confess I turned back again into the desert, justly concluding, as your Piety will perceive, that if I was sought after, that I might be sent as soon as I was discovered to the Prefects [1375] , I should be prevented from ever coming to your Grace; and that if those who would not subscribe against me, suffered so severely as they did, and the laity who refused to communicate with the Arians were ordered for death, there was no doubt at all but that ten thousand new modes of destruction would be devised by the calumniators against me; and that after my death, they would employ against whomsoever they wished to injure, whatever means they chose, venting their lies against us the more boldly, for that then there would no longer be any one left who could expose them. I fled, not because I feared your Piety (for I know your long-suffering and goodness), but because from what had taken place, I perceived the spirit of my enemies, and considered that they would make use of all possible means to accomplish my destruction, from fear that they would be brought to answer for what they had done contrary to the intentions of your Excellency. For observe, your Grace commanded that the Bishops should be expelled only out of the cities and the province. But these worthy persons presumed to exceed your commands, and banished aged men and Bishops venerable for their years into desert and unfrequented and frightful places, beyond the boundaries of three provinces [1376] . Some of them were sent off from Libya to the great Oasis; others from the Thebais to Ammoniaca in Libya [1377] . Neither was it from fear of death that I fled; let none of them condemn me as guilty of cowardice; but because it is the injunction of our Saviour [1378] that we should flee when we are persecuted, and hide ourselves when we are sought after, and not expose ourselves to certain dangers, nor by appearing before our persecutors inflame still more their rage against us. For to give one's self up to one's enemies to be murdered, is the same thing as to murder one's self; but to flee, as our Saviour has enjoined, is to know our time, and to manifest a real concern for our persecutors, lest if they proceed to the shedding of blood, they become guilty of the transgression of the law, Thou shalt not kill [1379] .' And yet these men by their calumnies against me, earnestly wish that I should suffer death. What they have again lately done proves that this is their desire and murderous intention. You will be astonished, I am sure, Augustus, most beloved of God, when you hear it; it is indeed an outrage worthy of amazement. What it is, I pray you briefly to hear. __________________________________________________________________
[1375] Supr. §29.
[1376] Egypt was divided into three Provinces till Hadrian's time, Egypt, Libya, and Pentapolis; Hadrian made them four; Epiphanius speaks of them as seven. Hær. 68. i. By the time of Arcadius they had become eight. vid. Orlendini Orbis Sacer et Prof. vol. i. p. 118. vid. supr. Encyc. §3, n. 2, Apol. Ar. §83.
[1377] Hist. Ar. 72.
[1378] Vid. Apol. de Fug. init.; Matt. x. 23.
[1379] Exod. xx. 13. __________________________________________________________________
33. Conduct of the Arians towards the consecrated Virgins.
The Son of God, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, having become man for our sakes, and having destroyed death, and delivered our race from the bondage of corruption [1380] , in addition to all His other benefits bestowed this also upon us, that we should possess upon earth, in the state of virginity [1381] , a picture of the holiness of Angels. Accordingly such as have attained this virtue, the Catholic Church has been accustomed to call the brides of Christ. And the heathen who see them express their admiration of them as the temples of the Word. For indeed this holy and heavenly profession is nowhere [1382] established, but only among us Christians, and it is a very strong argument that with us is to be found the genuine and true religion. Your most religious father Constantine Augustus, of blessed memory, honoured the Virgins above all the rest, and your Piety in several letters has given them the titles of the honourable and holy women. But now these worthy Arians who have slandered me, and by whom conspiracies have been formed against most of the Bishops, having obtained the consent and cooperation of the magistrates, first stripped them, and then caused them to be suspended upon what are called the Hermetaries [1383] , and scourged them on the ribs so severely three several times, that not even real malefactors have ever suffered the like. Pilate, to gratify the Jews of old, pierced one of our Saviour's sides with a spear. These men have exceeded the madness of Pilate, for they have scourged not one but both His sides; for the limbs of the Virgins are in an especial manner the Saviour's own. All men shudder at hearing the bare recital of deeds like these. These men alone not only did not fear to strip and to scourge those undefiled limbs, which the Virgins had dedicated solely to our Saviour Christ; but, what is worse than all, when they were reproached by every one for such extreme cruelty, instead of manifesting any shame, they pretended that it was commanded by your Piety. So utterly presumptuous are they and full of wicked thoughts and purposes. Such a deed as this was never heard of in past persecutions [1384] : or supposing that it ever occurred before, yet surely it was not befitting either that Virginity should suffer such outrage and dishonour, in the time of your Majesty, a Christian, or that these men should impute to your Piety their own cruelty. Such wickedness belongs only to heretics, to blaspheme the Son of God, and to do violence to His holy Virgins. __________________________________________________________________
[1380] 2 Tim. i. 10; Rom. viii. 21.
[1381] Cf. Ep. Fest. i. 3, Ep. ad Amun, also de Incar. 27, 48, 51.
[1382] [Revillout (in the work quoted supr. p. 188), p. 479 sq. states the contrary with regard to Egypt. He refers to the opening of Plutarch's de Is. et Osir., also to Brunet de Presle Serapeum.]
[1383] A rack, or horse, Tillemont. vol. viii. p. 169.
[1384] Vid. Hist. Ar. §§40, 64. __________________________________________________________________
34. He expostulates with Constantius.
Now when such enormities as these were again perpetrated by the Arians, I surely was not wrong in complying with the direction of Holy Scripture, which says, Hide thyself for a little moment, until the wrath of the Lord be overpast [1385] .' This was another reason for my withdrawing myself, Augustus, most beloved of God; and I refused not, either to depart into the desert, or, if need were, to be let down from a wall in a basket [1386] . I endured everything, I even dwelt among wild beasts, that your favour might return to me, waiting for an opportunity to offer to you this my defence, confident as I am that they will be condemned, and your goodness manifested unto me. O, Augustus, blessed and most beloved of God, what would you have had me to do? to come to you while my calumniators were inflamed with rage against me, and were seeking to kill me; or, as it is written, to hide myself a little, that in the mean time they might be condemned as heretics, and your goodness might be manifested unto me? or would you have had me, Sire, to appear before your magistrates, in order that though you had written merely in the way of threatening, they not understanding your intention, but being exasperated against me by the Arians, might kill me on the authority of your letters, and on that ground ascribe the murder to you? It would neither have been becoming in me to surrender, and give myself up that my blood might be shed, nor in you, as a Christian King, to have the murder of Christians, and those too Bishops, imputed unto you. __________________________________________________________________
[1385] Is. xxvi. 20, LXX.
[1386] 2 Cor. xi. 33. __________________________________________________________________
35. It was therefore better for me to hide myself, and to wait for this opportunity. Yes, I am sure that from your knowledge of the sacred Scriptures you will assent and approve of my conduct in this respect. For you will perceive that, now those who exasperated you against us have been silenced, your righteous clemency is apparent, and it is proved to all men that you never persecuted the Christians at all, but that it was they who made the Churches desolate, that they might sow the seeds of their own impiety everywhere; on account of which I also, had I not fled, should long ago have suffered from their treachery. For it is very evident that they who scrupled not to utter such calumnies against me, before the great Augustus, and who so violently assailed Bishops and Virgins, sought also to compass my death. But thanks be to the Lord who has given you the kingdom. All men are confirmed in their opinion of your goodness, and of their wickedness, from which I fled at the first, that I might now make this appeal unto you, and that you might find some one towards whom you may shew kindness. I beseech you, therefore, forasmuch as it written, A soft answer turneth away wrath,' and righteous thoughts are acceptable unto the King [1387] ;' receive this my defence, and restore all the Bishops and the rest of the Clergy to their countries and their Churches; so that the wickedness of my accusers may be made manifest, and that you, both now and in the day of judgment, may have boldness to say to our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, the King of all, "None of Thine have I lost [1388] ," but these are they who designed the ruin of all, while I was grieved for those who perished, and for the Virgins who were scourged, and for all other things that were committed against the Christians; and I brought back them that were banished, and restored them to their own Churches.' __________________________________________________________________
[1387] Prov. xv. 1; xvi. 13. vid. §27, note 1.
[1388] John xviii. 9. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Introduction to Apologia de Fuga.
------------------------
The date of this Defence of his Flight must be placed early enough to fall within the lifetime, or very close to the death (§1. n. 1), of Leontius of Antioch, and late enough to satisfy the references (§6) to the events at the end of May 357 (see notes there), and to the lapse of Hosius, the exact date of which again depends upon that of the Sirmian Council of 357, which, if held the presence of Constantius, must have fallen as late as August (Gwatk. Stud. 157, n. 3). Athanasius not only refers to the lapse of Hosius, but by the quotation he makes from Gal. ii. 5, appears to know of its merely temporary nature (see D.C.B. iii. 173). How early, then, does the first-named condition compel us to place the Defence?' Upon the news of the death of Leontius reaching Italy (Soz. iv. 12), Eudoxius obtained the leave of Constantius (who was in Italy, April 28 to July 3, 357, and again, Nov. 10 to Dec. 10, Gwatk. p. 292), to repair to Antioch. There he got himself elected bishop, assembled a council (Acacius and other Homoeans), and wrote a synodal letter, expelling from the Antiochene Church those who dissented. Some of the latter repaired to Ancyra with a letter from the semi-Arian George of Laodicea; at Ancyra, Basil assembled a small council (before Easter, April 12, 358, see D.C.B. i. 281, Epiph. Hær. 73), which wrote to the Emperor protesting against the proceedings of Eudoxius. To gain room for these events, at the very least five months, and probably more, must be allowed to elapse between the death of Leontius and April 12, 358. Leontius must therefore have died in the summer (Gwatk. p. 153, note), or at the very latest in October, 357. We cannot, therefore, place the Apology much after this date, for the reference to Hosius shews--in addition to many other indications--how quickly Athanasius in his hiding-place was informed of current events.
The Apology was drawn forth by the charge of cowardice circulated against him by the Arianising party, especially by the three bishops named in §1. After a preamble upon the motives of his accusers (1, 2), he shews that his own case is but part of a general system (3-5) of expatriation directed against orthodox bishops. He then refers to the circumstance of the attack upon himself, and dwells at length upon the tyranny of George (6, 7) and the banishment of Egyptian and Libyan bishops. This brings him to the argument (8-22) which gives its name to the tract. After pressing the point that if flight be evil, those who persecute are the responsible cause (8, 9), and hinting at the real motive of their mortification at his escape (10), he defends his flight by the example first (10, 11) of the Scripture Saints, secondly of the Lord Himself (12-15). From the latter, he returns to the conduct of the Saints, who, unlike the Lord (16), were unaware of their appointed time, yet fled or not (17) as circumstances and the direction of the Spirit required them to do. The Saints if they fled were not moved to do so by cowardice, else how could their flight so frequently have been the occasion of divine communications (18-20), and how could such good (21, 22) have resulted from it? As a pendant to this vindication of flight on principle comes a short (23) but weighty rebuke of persecution as inherently devilish to de diokein diabolikon estin epicheirema. From principle, Athanasius now passes to fact. He gives a graphic description (24) of the night attack on the Church of Theonas, and shews (25, 26) how fully his action on that occasion is covered by the examples of the ancient Saints of God. He concludes (26, 27) with a somewhat exasperated denunciation of his opponents, and a prayer for the frustration of their intrigues.
The Apology is a locus classicus on the duty of Christians under persecution. Athanasius was not the first great bishop who felt called upon to defend his conduct in retreating until the tyranny be overpast' (see Cyprian, Ep. 20. August. Ep. 228). His principles are laid down with regard to the common welfare. Rashness must be avoided, with its tendency to a reaction (17, end), and its presumption in forestalling the time appointed by Providence for our death. But neither must that time be evaded. When our end must come, we must face it quietly. Accordingly (22) it is a duty to escape when we can, and to hide when sought for rather than to follow the exceptional (ib.) action of certain martyrs in courting death.
It is uncertain to whom the Defence' was addressed: it was perhaps a memorandum' to be circulated wherever opportunity offered. The tract has always been justly admired for its lucidity, force, and dignity. It is quoted largely by Socrates (ii. 28, iii. 8) and by Theodoret (H. E. ii. 15). __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Defence of His Flight.
------------------------
1. Athanasius charged with cowardice for escaping.
I hear that Leontius [1389] , now at Antioch, and Narcissus [1390] of the city of Nero, and George [1391] , now at Laodicea, and the Arians who are with them, are spreading abroad many slanderous reports concerning me, charging me with cowardice, because forsooth, when I myself was sought by them, I did not surrender myself into their hands. Now as to their imputations and calumnies, although there are many things that I could write, which even they are unable to deny, and which all who have heard of their proceedings know to be true, yet I shall not be prevailed upon to make any reply to them, except only to remind them of the words of our Lord, and of the declaration of the Apostle, that a lie is of the Devil,' and that, revilers shall not inherit the kingdom of God [1392] .' For it is sufficient thereby to prove, that neither their thoughts nor their words are according to the Gospel, but that after their own pleasure, whatsoever themselves desire, that they think to be good. __________________________________________________________________
[1389] Leontius died in the summer of 357, probably before Ath. wrote.
[1390] De Syn. 17.
[1391] Apol. Ar. 48.
[1392] John viii. 44; 1 Cor. vi. 10. __________________________________________________________________
2. Insincerity of this charge.
But forasmuch as they pretend to charge me with cowardice, it is necessary that I should write somewhat concerning this, whereby it shall be proved that they are men of wicked minds, who have not read the sacred Scriptures: or if they have read them, that they do not believe the divine inspiration of the oracles they contain. For had they believed this, they would not dare to act contrary to them, nor imitate the malice of the Jews who slew the Lord. For God having given them a commandment, Honour thy father and thy mother,' and, He that curseth father or mother, let him die the death [1393] ;' that people established a contrary law, changing the honour into dishonour, and alienating to other uses the money which was due from the children to their parents. And though they had read what David did, they acted in contradiction to his example, and accused the guiltless for plucking the ears of corn, and rubbing them in their hands on the Sabbath day [1394] . Not that they cared either for the laws, or for the Sabbath, for they were guilty of greater transgressions of the law on that day: but being wicked-minded, they grudged the disciples the way of salvation, and desired that their own private notions should have the sole pre-eminence. They however have received the reward of their iniquity, having ceased to be an holy nation, and being counted henceforth as the rulers of Sodom, and as the people of Gomorrah [1395] . And these men likewise, not less than they, seem to me to have received their punishment already in their ignorance of their own folly. For they understand not what they say, but think that they know things of which they are ignorant; while the only knowledge that is in them is to do evil, and to frame devices more and more wicked day by day. Thus they reproach us with our present flight, not for the sake of virtue, as wishing us to shew manliness by coming forward (how is it possible that such a wish can be entertained by enemies in behalf of those who run not with them in the same career of madness?); but being full of malice, they pretend this, and buzz [1396] all around that such is the case, thinking, foolish as indeed they are, that through fear of their revilings, we shall yet be induced to give ourselves up to them. For this is what they desire: to accomplish this they have recourse to all kinds of schemes: they pretend themselves to be friends, while they search as enemies, to the end that they may glut themselves with our blood, and put us also out of the way, because we have always opposed and do still oppose their impiety, and confute and brand their heresy. __________________________________________________________________
[1393] Matt. xv. 4.
[1394] Luke vi. 1. sqq.
[1395] Isa. i. 10, 11.
[1396] peribombein, Nic. Def. 14, note 1; Greg. Naz. Orat. 27. n. 2. __________________________________________________________________
3. Outrages of the Arians against the Bishops.
For whom have they ever persecuted and taken, that they have not insulted and injured as they pleased? Whom have they ever sought after and found, that they have not handled in such a manner, that either he has died a miserable death, or has been ill-treated in every way? Whatever the magistrates appear to do, it is their work; and the others are merely the tools of their will and wickedness. In consequence, where is there a place that has not some memorial of their malice? Who has ever opposed them, without their conspiring against him, inventing pretexts for his ruin after the manner of Jezebel? Where is there a Church that is not at this moment lamenting the success of their plots against her Bishops? Antioch is mourning for the orthodox Confessor Eustathius [1397] ; Balaneæ for the most admirable Euphration [1398] ; Paltus and Antaradus for Kymatius [1399] and Carterius; Adrianople for that lover of Christ, Eutropius, and his successor Lucius, who was often loaded with chains by their means, and so perished; Ancyra mourns for Marcellus, Berrhoea [1400] for Cyrus [1401] , Gaza for Asclepas. Of all these, after inflicting many outrages, they by their intrigues procured the banishment; but for Theodulus and Olympius, Bishops of Thrace, and for us and our Presbyters, they caused diligent search to be made, to the intent that if we were discovered we should suffer capital punishment: and probably we should have so perished, had we not fled at that very time contrary to their intentions. For letters to that effect were delivered to the Proconsul Donatus against Olympius and his fellows, and to Philagrius against me. And having raised a persecution against Paul, Bishop of Constantinople, as soon as they found him, they caused him to be openly strangled [1402] at a place called Cucusus in Cappadocia, employing as their executioner for the purpose Philip, who was Prefect. He was a patron of their heresy, and the tool of their wicked designs. __________________________________________________________________
[1397] Vid. Hist. Arian. §4. also Theodoret Hist. i. 20. [Prolegg. ch. ii. §4.] The name of Euphration occurs de Syn. 17 as the Bishop to whom Eusebius of Cæsarea wrote an heretical letter. Balaneæ is on the Syrian coast. Paltus also and Antaradus are in Syria, and these persecutions took place about a.d. 338; that of Eutropius, and of Lucius his successor, about 331, shortly after the proceedings against Eustathius. Cyrus too was banished under pretence of Sabellianism about 338. For Asclepas, Theodulus, and Olympius vid. Hist. Arian. §19. and supr. Apol. Ar. 44, 45.
[1398] Hist. Arian. 5.
[1399] Tom. ad Ant.
[1400] Beroea, Hist. Ar. 5.
[1401] Tom. ad Ant.
[1402] a.d. 350, infr. Hist. Arian. §4; for Cucusus, see D.C.B. i. 529, 530. __________________________________________________________________
4. Proceedings after the Council of Milan.
Are they then satisfied with all this, and content to be quiet for the future? By no means; they have not given over yet, but like the horseleach [1403] in the Proverbs, they revel more and more in their wickedness, and fix themselves upon the larger dioceses. Who can adequately describe the enormities they have already perpetrated? who is able to recount all the deeds that they have done? Even very lately, while the Churches were at peace, and the people worshipping in their congregations, Liberius, Bishop of Rome, Paulinus [1404] , Metropolitan of Gaul, Dionysius [1405] , Metropolitan of Italy, Lucifer [1406] , Metropolitan of the Sardinian islands, and Eusebius [1407] of Italy, all of them good Bishops and preachers of the truth, were seized and banished [1408] , on no pretence whatever, except that they would not unite themselves to the Arian heresy, nor subscribe to the false accusations and calumnies which they had invented against me. __________________________________________________________________
[1403] Hist. Arian. §65; Prov. xxx. 15.
[1404] Of Treveri.
[1405] Of Milan.
[1406] Of Cagliari.
[1407] Of Vercellæ.
[1408] [Council of Milan, 355.] __________________________________________________________________
5. In praise of Hosius.
Of the great Hosius [1409] , who answers to his name, that confessor of a happy old age, it is superfluous for me to speak, for I suppose it is known unto all men that they caused him also to be banished; for he is not an obscure person, but of all men the most illustrious, and more than this. When was there a Council held, in which he did not take the lead [1410] , and by right counsel convince every one? Where is there a Church that does not possess some glorious monuments of his patronage? Who has ever come to him in sorrow, and has not gone away rejoicing? What needy person ever asked his aid, and did not obtain what he desired? And yet even on this man they made their assault, because knowing the calumnies which they invent in behalf of their iniquity, he would not subscribe to their designs against us. And if afterwards, upon the repeated stripes above measure that were inflicted upon him, and the conspiracies that were formed against his kinsfolk, he yielded [1411] to them for a time [1412] , as being old and infirm in body, yet at least their wickedness is shewn even in this circumstance; so zealously did they endeavour by all means to prove that they were not truly Christians. __________________________________________________________________
[1409] Hist. Ar. 42.
[1410] [Nicæa and Sardica are specially referred to, but see Prolegg. ch. ii. §3 (1) note 5, sub. fin.]
[1411] [Apol. Ar. 89, Hist. Ar. 45, 357 a.d.]
[1412] Gal. ii. 5. __________________________________________________________________
6. Outrages of George upon the Alexandrians.
After this they again fastened themselves upon Alexandria, seeking anew to put us to death: and their proceedings were now worse than before. For on a sudden the Church was surrounded by soldiers, and sounds of war took the place of prayers. Then George [1413] of Cappadocia who was sent by them, having arrived during the season of Lent [1414] , brought an increase of evils which they had taught him. For after Easter week, Virgins were thrown into prison; Bishops were led away in chains by soldiers; houses of orphans and widows were plundered, and their loaves taken away; attacks were made upon houses, and Christians thrust forth in the night, and their dwellings sealed up: brothers of clergymen were in danger of their lives on account of their brethren. These outrages were sufficiently dreadful, but more dreadful than these followed. For on the week that succeeded the Holy Pentecost [May 11], when the people after their fast had gone out to the cemetery to pray, because that all refused communion with George, that abandoned person, on learning this, stirred up against them the commander Sebastian, a Manichee; who straightway with a multitude of soldiers with arms, drawn swords, bows, and spears, proceeded to attack the people, though it was the Lord's day [1415] : and finding a few praying (for the greater part had already retired on account of the lateness of the hour), he committed such outrages as became a disciple of these men. Having lighted a pile, he placed certain virgins near the fire, and endeavoured to force them to say that they were of the Arian faith: and when he saw that they were getting the mastery, and cared not for the fire, he immediately stripped them naked, and beat them in the face in such a manner, that for some time they could hardly be recognised. __________________________________________________________________
[1413] Apol. Const. 30, note 5, and reff.
[1414] [Comp. Encyc. §4. The present passage certainly appears to put the arrival of George in the Lent immediately following the irruption of Syrianus: but see Prolegg. ch. ii. §8 (1), note 5, below, Fest. Index, xxix., and the explanation in Chron. Aceph. that the party of George took possession of the Churches (in June 356), eight months before George arrived in person. Cf. Introd. to Apol. Const.]
[1415] [Sunday, May 18, 357. The Roman martyrology celebrates these victims on May 21, which suits the reference of the present passage to 357.] __________________________________________________________________
7. Outrages of George.
And having seized upon forty men, he beat them after a new fashion. Cutting some sticks fresh from the palm tree, with the thorns still upon them [1416] , he scourged them on the back so severely, that some of them were for a long time under surgical treatment on account of the thorns which had broken off in their flesh, and others unable to bear up under their sufferings died. All those whom they had taken, and the virgin, they sent away together into banishment to the great Oasis. And the bodies of those who had perished they would not at first suffer to be given up to their friends, but concealed them in any way they pleased, and cast them out without burial [1417] , in order that they might not appear to have any knowledge of these cruel proceedings. But herein their deluded minds greatly misled them. For the relatives of the dead, both rejoicing at the confession, and grieving for the bodies of their friends, published abroad so much the more this proof of their impiety and cruelty. Moreover they immediately banished out of Egypt and Libya the following Bishops [1418] , Ammonius, Muïus [1419] , Gaïus, Philo [1420] , Hermes, Plenius, Psenosiris, Nilammon, Agathus, Anagamphus, Marcus, Ammonius, another Marcus, Dracontius [1421] , Adelphius [1422] , Athenodorus, and the Presbyters, Hierax [1423] , and Dioscorus; whom they drove forth under such cruel treatment, that some of them died on the way, and others in the place of their banishment. They caused also more than thirty Bishops to take to flight; for their desire was, after the example of Ahab, if it were possible, utterly to root out the truth. Such are the enormities of which these impious men have been guilty. __________________________________________________________________
[1416] Hist. Arian. §72.
[1417] Ibid. §72 fin. Apol. Const. 27.
[1418] Ibid. and see Hist. Ar. §72.
[1419] Hieron. V. Hilar. §30. [Rather see Letter 49. 7, notes 3 (a and b), and Vit. Pachom. 72, where the same names occur together.]
[1420] Hieron. V. Hilar. §30. [Rather see Letter 49. 7, notes 3 (a and b), and Vit. Pachom. 72, where the same names occur together.]
[1421] Letter 49.
[1422] Letter 60.
[1423] Letter 49. 10. __________________________________________________________________
8. If it is wrong to flee, it is worse to persecute.
But although [1424] they have done all this, yet they are not ashamed of the evils they have already contrived against me, but proceed now to accuse me, because I have been able to escape their murderous hands. Nay, they bitterly bewail themselves, that they have not effectually put me out of the way; and so they pretend to reproach me with cowardice, not perceiving that by thus murmuring against me, they rather turn the blame upon themselves. For if it be a bad thing to flee, it is much worse to persecute; for the one party hides himself to escape death, the other persecutes with a desire to kill; and it is written in the Scriptures that we ought to flee; but he that seeks to destroy transgresses the law, nay, and is himself the occasion of the other's flight. If then they reproach me with my flight, let them be more ashamed of their own persecution [1425] . Let them cease to conspire, and they who flee will forthwith cease to do so. But they, instead of giving over their wickedness, are employing every means to obtain possession of my person, not perceiving that the flight of those who are persecuted is a strong argument against those who persecute. For no man flees from the gentle and the humane, but from the cruel and the evil-minded. Every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt [1426] ,' fled from Saul, and took refuge with David. But this is the reason why these men desire to cut off those who are in concealment, that there may be no evidence forthcoming of their wickedness. But herein their minds seem to be blinded with their usual error. For the more the flight of their enemies becomes known, so much the more notorious will be the destruction or the banishment which their treachery has brought upon them [1427] ; so that whether they kill them outright, their death will be the more loudly noised abroad against them, or whether they drive them into banishment, they will but be sending forth everywhere monuments of their own iniquity. __________________________________________________________________
[1424] Cited by Socrates iii. 8.
[1425] Apol. Ar. §4.
[1426] 1 Sam. xxii. 2.
[1427] Hist. Arian. §§34, 35. __________________________________________________________________
9. The accusation shews the mind of the accusers.
Now if they had been of sound mind, they would have seen that they were in this strait, and that they were falling foul of their own arguments. But since they have lost all judgment, they are still led on to persecute, and seek to destroy, and yet perceive not their own impiety. It may be they even venture to accuse Providence itself (for nothing is beyond the reach of their presumption), that it does not deliver up to them those whom they desire; certain as it is, according to the saying of our Saviour, that not even a sparrow can fall into the snare without our Father which is in heaven [1428] . But when these accursed ones obtain possession of any one, they immediately forget not only all other, but even themselves; and raising their brow in very haughtiness, they neither acknowledge times and seasons, nor respect human nature in those whom they injure. Like the tyrant of Babylon [1429] , they attack more furiously; they shew pity to none, but mercilessly upon the ancient,' as it is written, they very heavily lay the yoke,' and they add to the grief of them that are wounded [1430] .' Had they not acted in this manner; had they not driven into banishment those who spoke in my defence against their calumnies, their representations might have appeared to some persons sufficiently plausible. But since they have conspired against so many other Bishops of high character, and have spared neither the great confessor Hosius, nor the Bishop of Rome, nor so many others from the Spains and the Gauls, and Egypt, and Libya, and the other countries, but have committed such cruel outrages against all who have in any way opposed them in my behalf; is it not plain that their designs have been directed rather against me than against any other, and that their desire is miserably to destroy me as they have done others? To accomplish this they vigilantly watch for an opportunity, and think themselves injured, when they see those safe, whom they wished not to live. __________________________________________________________________
[1428] Matt. x. 29.
[1429] Encyc. 5.
[1430] Is. xlvii. 6; Ps. lxix. 26. __________________________________________________________________
10. Their real grievance is not that Athanasius is a coward, but that he is free.
Who then does not perceive their craftiness? Is it not very evident to every one that they do not reproach me with cowardice from regard to virtue, but that being athirst for blood, they employ these their base devices as nets, thinking thereby to catch those whom they seek to destroy? That such is their character is shewn by their actions, which have convicted them of possessing dispositions more savage than wild beasts, and more cruel than Babylonians. But although the proof against them is sufficiently clear from all this, yet since they still dissemble with soft words after the manner of their father the devil [1431] ,' and pretend to charge me with cowardice, while they are themselves more cowardly than hares; let us consider what is written in the Sacred Scriptures respecting such cases as this. For thus they will be shewn to fight against the Scriptures no less than against me, while they detract from the virtues of the Saints.
For if they reproach men for hiding themselves from those who seek to destroy them, and accuse those who flee from their persecutors, what will they do when they see Jacob fleeing from his brother Esau, and Moses withdrawing into Midian for fear of Pharaoh? What excuse will they make for David, after all this idle talk, for fleeing from his house on account of Saul, when he sent to kill him, and for hiding himself in the cave, and for changing his appearance, until he withdrew from Abimelech [1432] , and escaped his designs against him? What will they say, they who are ready to say anything, when they see the great Elijah, after calling upon God and raising the dead, hiding himself for fear of Ahab, and fleeing from the threats of Jezebel? At which time also the sons of the prophets, when they were sought after, hid themselves with the assistance of Obadiah, and lay concealed in caves [1433] . __________________________________________________________________
[1431] John viii. 44.
[1432] Achish, 1 Sam. xxi. 13 [but cf. title of Ps. xxxiv.]
[1433] 1 Kings xviii. 15; Hist. Ar. §53. __________________________________________________________________
11. Examples of Scripture Saints in defence of flight.
Perhaps they have not read these histories; as being out of date; yet have they no recollection of what is written in the Gospel? For the disciples also withdrew and hid themselves for fear of the Jews; and Paul, when he was sought after by the governor at Damascus, was let down from the wall in a basket, and so escaped his hands. As the Scripture then relates these things of the Saints, what excuse will they be able to invent for their wickedness? To reproach them with cowardice would be an act of madness, and to accuse them of acting contrary to the will of God, would be to shew themselves entirely ignorant of the Scriptures. For there was a command under the law [1434] that cities of refuge should be appointed, in order that they who were sought after to be put to death, might at least have some means of saving themselves. And when He Who spake unto Moses, the Word of the Father, appeared in the end of the world, He also gave this commandment, saying, But when they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another:' and shortly after He says, When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place (whoso readeth, let him understand); then let them which be in Judæa flee into the mountains: let him which is on the housetop not come down to take any thing out of his house: neither let him which is in the field return back to take his clothes [1435] .' Knowing these things, the Saints regulated their conduct accordingly. For what our Lord has now commanded, the same also He spoke by His Saints before His coming in the flesh: and this is the rule which is given unto men to lead them to perfection--what God commands, that to do. __________________________________________________________________
[1434] Ex. xxi. 13.
[1435] Matt. x. 23; xxiv. 15. __________________________________________________________________
12. The Lord an example of timely flight.
Wherefore also the Word Himself, being made man for our sakes, condescended to hide Himself when He was sought after, as we do: and also when He was persecuted, to flee and avoid the designs of His enemies. For it became Him, as by hunger and thirst and suffering, so also by hiding Himself and fleeing, to shew that He had taken our flesh, and was made man. Thus at the very first, as soon as He became man, when He was a little child, He Himself by His Angel commanded Joseph, Arise, and take the young Child and His Mother, and flee into Egypt; for Herod will seek the young Child's life [1436] .' And when Herod was dead, we find Him withdrawing to Nazareth by reason of Archelaus his son. And when afterwards He was shewing Himself to be God, and made whole the withered hand, the Pharisees went out, and held a council against Him, how they might destroy Him; but when Jesus knew it, He withdrew Himself from thence [1437] . So also when He raised Lazarus from the dead, from that day forth,' says the Scripture, they took counsel for to put Him to death. Jesus therefore walked no more openly among the Jews; but went thence into the country near to the wilderness [1438] .' Again, when our Saviour said, Before Abraham was, I am,' the Jews took up stones to cast at Him; but Jesus hid Himself, and went out of the temple [1439] .' And going through the midst of them, He went His way,' and so passed by [1440] .' __________________________________________________________________
[1436] Matt. ii. 13.
[1437] Matt. xii. 15.
[1438] John xi. 53, 54.
[1439] John viii. 58, 59.
[1440] Luke iv. 30. __________________________________________________________________
13. Example of Our Lord.
When they see these things, or rather even hear of them, for see they do not, will they not desire, as it is written, to become fuel of fire [1441] ,' because their counsels and their words are contrary to what the Lord both did and taught? Also when John was martyred, and his disciples buried his body, when Jesus heard of it, He departed thence by ship into a desert place apart [1442] .' Thus the Lord acted, and thus He taught. Would that these men were even now ashamed of their conduct, and confined their rashness to man, nor proceeded to such extreme madness as even to charge our Saviour with cowardice! for it is against Him that they now utter their blasphemies. But no one will endure such madness; nay it will be seen that they do not understand the Gospels. The cause must be a reasonable and just one, which the Evangelists represent as weighing with our Saviour to withdraw and to flee; and we ought therefore to assign the same for the conduct of all the Saints. (For whatever is written concerning our Saviour in His human nature, ought to be considered as applying to the whole race of mankind [1443] ; because He took our body, and exhibited in Himself human infirmity.) Now of this cause John has written thus, They sought to take Him: but no man laid hands on Him, because His hour was not yet come [1444] .' And before it came, He Himself said to His Mother, Mine hour is not yet come [1445] :' and to them who were called His brethren, My time is not yet come [1446] .' And again, when His time was come, He said to the disciples, Sleep on now, and take your rest: for behold, the hour is at hand, and the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners [1447] .' __________________________________________________________________
[1441] Is. ix. 5.
[1442] Matt. xiv. 13.
[1443] Cf. Orat. i. 43.
[1444] John vii. 30.
[1445] John ii. 4.
[1446] John vii. 6.
[1447] Matt. xxvi. 45. __________________________________________________________________
14. An hour and a time for all men.
Now in so far as He was God and the Word of the Father, He had no time; for He is Himself the Creator of times [1448] . But being made man, He shews by speaking in this manner that there is a time allotted to every man; and that not by chance, as some of the Gentiles imagine in their fables, but a time which He, the Creator, has appointed to every one according to the will of the Father. This is written in the Scriptures, and is manifest to all men. For although it be hidden and unknown to all, what period of time is allotted to each, and how it is allotted; yet every one knows this, that as there is a time for spring and for summer, and for autumn and for winter, so, as it is written [1449] , there is a time to die, and a time to live. And so the time of the generation which lived in the days of Noah was cut short, and their years were contracted, because the time of all things was at hand. But to Hezekiah were added fifteen years. And as God promises to them that serve Him truly, I will fulfil the number of thy days [1450] ,' Abraham dies full of days,' and David besought God, saying, Take me not away in the midst of my days [1451] .' And Eliphaz, one of the friends of Job, being assured of this truth, said, Thou shalt come to thy grave like ripe corn, gathered in due time, and like as a shock of corn cometh in in his season [1452] .' And Solomon confirming his words, says, The souls of the unrighteous are taken away untimely [1453] .' And therefore he exhorts in the book of Ecclesiastes, saying, Be not overmuch wicked, neither be thou hard: why shouldest thou die before thy time [1454] ?' __________________________________________________________________
[1448] De Decr. 18, note 5.
[1449] Eccles. iii. 2.
[1450] Ex. xxiii. 26; Gen. xxv. 8.
[1451] Ps. cii. 24.
[1452] Job v. 26, LXX.
[1453] Vid. Prov. x. 27
[1454] Eccles. vii. 17. __________________________________________________________________
15. The Lord's hour and time.
Now as these things are written in the Scriptures, the case is clear, that the saints know that a certain time is measured to every man, but that no one knows the end of that time is plainly intimated by the words of David, Declare unto me the shortness of my days [1455] .' What he did not know, that he desired to be informed of. Accordingly the rich man also, while he thought that he had yet a long time to live, heard the words, Thou fool, this night they are requiring thy soul: then whose shall those things be which thou hast provided [1456] ?' And the Preacher speaks confidently in the Holy Spirit, and says, Man also knoweth not his time [1457] .' Wherefore the Patriarch Isaac said to his son Esau, Behold, I am old, and I know not the day of my death [1458] .' Our Lord therefore, although as God, and the Word of the Father, He both knew the time measured out by Him to all, and was conscious of the time for suffering, which He Himself had appointed also to His own body; yet since He was made man for our sakes, He hid Himself when He was sought after before that time came, as we do; when He was persecuted, He fled; and avoiding the designs of His enemies He passed by, and so went through the midst of them [1459] .' But when He had brought on that time which He Himself had appointed, at which He desired to suffer in the body for all men, He announces it to the Father, saying, Father, the hour is come; glorify Thy Son [1460] .' And then He no longer hid Himself from those who sought Him, but stood willing to be taken by them; for the Scripture says, He said to them that came unto Him, Whom seek ye [1461] ?' and when they answered, Jesus of Nazareth,' He saith unto them, I am He whom ye seek.' And this He did even more than once; and so they straightway led Him away to Pilate. He neither suffered Himself to be taken before the time came, nor did He hide Himself when it was come; but gave Himself up to them that conspired against Him, that He might shew to all men that the life and death of man depend upon the divine sentence; and that without our Father which is in heaven, neither a hair of man's head can become white or black, nor a sparrow ever fall into the snare [1462] . __________________________________________________________________
[1455] Ps. cii. 23, LXX.
[1456] Luke xii. 20.
[1457] Eccles. ix. 12.
[1458] Gen. xxvii. 2.
[1459] Luke iv. 30.
[1460] John xvii. 1.
[1461] John xviii. 4, 5.
[1462] Matt. v. 36; x. 29. __________________________________________________________________
6. The Lord's example followed by the Saints.
Our Lord therefore, as I said before, thus offered Himself for all; and the Saints having received this example from their Saviour (for all of them before His coming, nay always, were under His teaching), in their conflicts with their persecutors acted lawfully in flying, and hiding themselves when they were sought after. And being ignorant, as men, of the end of the time which Providence had appointed unto them, they were unwilling at once to deliver themselves up into the power of those who conspired against them. But knowing on the other hand what is written, that the portions' of man are in God's hand [1463] ,' and that the Lord killeth [1464] ,' and the Lord maketh alive,' they the rather endured unto the end, wandering about [1465] ,' as the Apostle has said, in sheepskins, and goatskins, being destitute, tormented, wandering in deserts,' and hiding themselves in dens and caves of the earth;' until either the appointed time of death arrived, or God who had appointed their time spake unto them, and stayed the designs of their enemies, or else delivered up the persecuted to their persecutors, according as it seemed to Him to be good. This we may well learn respecting all men from David: for when Joab instigated him to slay Saul, he said, As the Lord liveth, the Lord shall smite him; or his day shall come to die; or he shall descend into battle, and be delivered to the enemies; the Lord forbid that I should stretch forth my hand against the Lord's anointed [1466] .' __________________________________________________________________
[1463] Ps. xxxi. 15.
[1464] 1 Sam. ii. 6.
[1465] Heb. xi. 37, 38.
[1466] 1 Sam. xxvi. 10, 11. __________________________________________________________________
17. A time to flee and a time to stay.
And if ever in their flight they came unto those that sought after them, they did not do so without reason: but when the Spirit spoke unto them, then as righteous men they went and met their enemies; by which they also shewed their obedience and zeal towards God. Such was the conduct of Elijah, when, being commanded by the Spirit, he shewed himself unto Ahab [1467] ; and of Micaiah the prophet when he came to the same Ahab; and of the prophet who cried against the altar in Samaria, and rebuked Rehoboam [1468] ; and of Paul when he appealed unto Cæsar. It was not certainly through cowardice that they fled: God forbid. The flight to which they submitted was rather a conflict and war against death. For with wise caution they guarded against these two things; either that they should offer themselves up without reason (for this would have been to kill themselves, and to become guilty of death, and to transgress the saying of the Lord, What God hath joined let not man put asunder [1469] '), or that they should willingly subject themselves to the reproach of negligence, as if they were unmoved by the tribulations which they met with in their flight, and which brought with them sufferings greater and more terrible than death. For he that dies, ceases to suffer; but he that flies, while he expects daily the assaults of his enemies, esteems death lighter. They therefore whose course was consummated in their flight did not perish dishonourably, but attained as well as others the glory of martyrdom. Therefore it is that Job was accounted a man of mighty fortitude, because he endured to live under so many and such severe sufferings, of which he would have had no sense, had he come to his end. Wherefore the blessed Fathers thus regulated their conduct also; they shewed no cowardice in fleeing from the persecutor, but rather manifested their fortitude of soul in shutting themselves up in close and dark places, and living a hard life. Yet did they not desire to avoid the time of death when it arrived; for their concern was neither to shrink from it when it came, nor to forestall the sentence determined by Providence, nor to resist His dispensation, for which they knew themselves to be preserved; lest by acting hastily, they should become to themselves the cause of terror: for thus it is written, He that is hasty, with his lips, shall bring terror upon himself [1470] .' __________________________________________________________________
[1467] 1 Kings xxi. 18.
[1468] i.e. Jeroboam, 1 Kings xiii. 2.
[1469] Matt. xix. 6.
[1470] Prov. xiii. 3, LXX. __________________________________________________________________
18. The Saints who fled were no cowards.
Of a truth no one can possibly doubt that they were well furnished with the virtue of fortitude. For the Patriarch Jacob who had before fled from Esau, feared not death when it came, but at that very time blessed the Patriarchs, each according to his deserts. And the great Moses, who previously had hid himself from Pharaoh, and had withdrawn into Midian for fear of him, when he received the commandment, Return into Egypt [1471] ,' feared not to do so. And again, when he was bidden to go up into the mountain Abarim [1472] and die, he delayed not through cowardice, but even joyfully proceeded thither. And David, who had before fled from Saul, feared not to risk his life in war in defence of his people; but having the choice of death or of flight set before him, when he might have fled and lived, he wisely preferred death. And the great Elijah, who had at a former time hid himself from Jezebel, shewed no cowardice when he was commanded by the Spirit to meet Ahab, and to reprove Ahaziah. And Peter, who had hid himself for fear of the Jews, and the Apostle Paul who was let down in a basket, and fled, when they were told, Ye must bear witness at Rome [1473] ,' deferred not the journey; yea, rather, they departed rejoicing [1474] ; the one as hastening to meet his friends, received his death with exultation; and the other shrunk not from the time when it came, but gloried in it, saying, For I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand [1475] .' __________________________________________________________________
[1471] Vid. Ex. iii. 10
[1472] Deut. xxxii. 49.
[1473] Vid. Acts xxiii. 11. [The reference to the Roman martyrdom of the two great Apostles should be noted. The tradition is as old as Clem. Rom.; much older than that of the Roman Episcopate of one of them.]
[1474] Vid. Euseb. Hist. ii. 25.
[1475] 2 Tim. iv. 6. __________________________________________________________________
19. The Saints courageous in their flight, and divinely favoured.
These things both prove that their previous flight was not the effect of cowardice; and testify that their after conduct also was of no ordinary character: and they loudly proclaim that they possessed in a high degree the virtue of fortitude. For neither did they withdraw themselves on account of a slothful timidity, on the contrary, they were at such times under the practice of a severer discipline than at others; nor were they condemned for their flight, or charged with cowardice, by such as are now so fond of criminating others. Nay they were blessed through that declaration of our Lord, Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness sake. [1476] ' Nor yet were these their sufferings without profit to themselves; for having tried them as gold in the furnace,' as Wisdom has said, God found them worthy of Himself [1477] . And then they shone the more like sparks,' being saved from them that persecuted them, and delivered from the designs of their enemies, and preserved to the end that they might teach the people; so that their flight and escape from the rage of them that sought after them, was according to the dispensation of the Lord. And so they became dear in the sight of God, and had the most glorious testimony to their fortitude. __________________________________________________________________
[1476] Matt. v. 10.
[1477] Wisd. iii. 57. __________________________________________________________________
20. Same Subject Continued.
Thus, for example, the Patriarch Jacob was favoured in his flight with many, even divine visions, and remaining quiet himself, he had the Lord on his side, rebuking Laban, and hindering the designs of Esau; and afterwards he became the Father of Judah, of whom sprang the Lord according to the flesh; and he dispensed the blessings to the Patriarchs. And when Moses the beloved of God was in exile, then it was that he saw that great sight, and being preserved from his persecutors, was sent as a prophet into Egypt, and being made the minister of those mighty wonders and of the Law, he led that great people in the wilderness. And David when he was persecuted wrote the Psalm, My heart uttered a good word [1478] ;' and, Our God shall come even visibly, and shall not keep silence [1479] .' And again he speaks more confidently, saying, Mine eye hath seen his desire upon mine enemies [1480] ;' and again, In God have I put my trust; I will not be afraid what man can do unto me [1481] .' And when he fled and escaped from the face of Saul to the cave,' he said, He hath sent from heaven and hath saved me. He hath given them to reproach that would tread me under their feet. God hath sent His mercy and truth, and hath delivered my soul from the midst of lions [1482] .' Thus he too was saved according to the dispensation of God, and afterwards became king, and received the promise, that from his seed our Lord should issue. And the great Elijah, when he withdrew to mount Carmel, called upon God, and destroyed at once more than four hundred prophets of Baal; and when there were sent to take him two captains of fifty with their hundred men, he said, Let fire come down from heaven [1483] ,' and thus rebuked them. And he too was preserved, so that he anointed Elisha in his own stead, and became a pattern of discipline for the sons of the prophets. And the blessed Paul, after writing these words, what persecutions I endured; but out of them all the Lord delivered me, and will deliver [1484] ;' could speak more confidently and say, But in all these things we are more than conquerors, for nothing shall separate us from the love of Christ [1485] .' For then it was that he was caught up to the third heaven, and admitted into paradise, where he heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter [1486] .' And for this end was he then preserved, that from Jerusalem even unto Illyricum' he might fully preach the Gospel [1487] .' __________________________________________________________________
[1478] Ps. xlv. 1.
[1479] Ps. l. 3, LXX.
[1480] Ps. liv. 7.
[1481] Ps. lvi. 11.
[1482] Ps. lvii. 3.
[1483] 2 Kings i. 10.
[1484] 2 Tim. iii. 11.
[1485] Rom. viii. 35, 37.
[1486] 2 Cor. xii. 4.
[1487] Rom. xv. 19. __________________________________________________________________
21. The Saints fled for our sakes.
The flight of the saints therefore was neither blameable nor unprofitable. If they had not avoided their persecutors, how would it have come to pass that the Lord should spring from the seed of David? Or who would have preached the glad tidings of the word of truth? It was for this that the persecutors sought after the saints, that there might be no one to teach, as the Jews charged the Apostles; but for this cause they endured all things, that the Gospel might be preached. Behold, therefore, in that they were thus engaged in conflict with their enemies, they passed not the time of their flight unprofitably, nor while they were persecuted, did they forget the welfare of others: but as being ministers of the good word, they grudged not to communicate it to all men; so that even while they fled, they preached the Gospel, and gave warning of the wickedness of those who conspired against them, and confirmed the faithful by their exhortations. Thus the blessed Paul, having found it so by experience, declared beforehand, As many as will live godly in Christ, shall suffer persecution [1488] .' And so he straightway prepared them that fled for the trial, saying, Let us run with patience the race that is set before us [1489] ;' for although there be continual tribulations, yet tribulation worketh patience, and patience experience, and experience hope, and hope maketh not ashamed [1490] .' And the Prophet Isaiah when such-like affliction was expected, exhorted and cried aloud, Come, my people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors; hide thyself as it were for a little moment, until the indignation be overpast [1491] .' And so also the Preacher, who knew the conspiracies against the righteous, and said, If thou seest the oppression of the poor, and violent perverting of judgment and justice in a province, marvel not at the matter: for He that is higher than the highest regardeth, and there be higher than they: moreover there is the profit of the earth [1492] .' He had his own father David for an example, who had himself experienced the sufferings of persecution, and who supports them that suffer by the words, Be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart, all ye that put your trust in the Lord [1493] ;' for them that so endure, not man, but the Lord Himself (he says), shall help them, and deliver them, because they put their trust in Him:' for I also waited patiently for the Lord, and He inclined unto me, and heard my calling; He brought me up also out of the lowest pit, and out of the mire and clay [1494] .' Thus is shewn how profitable to the people and productive of good is the flight of the Saints, howsoever the Arians may think otherwise. __________________________________________________________________
[1488] 2 Tim. iii. 12.
[1489] Heb. xii. 1.
[1490] Rom. v. 4.
[1491] Is. xxvi. 20.
[1492] Eccles. v. 8, 9. LXX.
[1493] Ps. xxxi. 24.
[1494] Ps. xxxvii. 40; xl. 1. __________________________________________________________________
22. Same subject concluded.
Thus the Saints, as I said before, were abundantly preserved in their flight by the Providence of God, as physicians for the sake of them that had need. And to all men generally, even to us, is this law given, to flee when persecuted, and to hide when sought after, and not rashly tempt the Lord, but wait, as I said above, until the appointed time of death arrive, or the Judge determine something concerning them, according as it shall seem to Him to be good: that men should be ready, that, when the time calls, or when they are taken, they may contend for the truth even unto death. This rule the blessed Martyrs observed in their several persecutions. When persecuted they fled, while concealing themselves they shewed fortitude, and when discovered they submitted to martyrdom. And if some of them came and presented themselves to their persecutors [1495] , they did not do so without reason; for immediately in that case they were martyred, and thus made it evident to all that their zeal, and this offering up of themselves to their enemies, were from the Spirit. __________________________________________________________________
[1495] Vid. instances and passages collected in Pearson's Vind. Ignat. part ii. 0. 9; also Gibbon, ch. xvi. p. 428. Mosheim de Reb. Ante Const. p, 941. [See D.C.A. p. 1119 (3).] __________________________________________________________________
23. Persecution is from the Devil.
Seeing therefore that such are the commands of our Saviour, and that such is the conduct of the Saints, let these persons, to whom one cannot give a name suitable to their character,--let them, I say, tell us, from whom they learnt to persecute? They cannot say, from the Saints [1496] . No, but from the Devil (that is the only answer which is left to them);--from him who says, I will persue, I will overtake [1497] .' Our Lord commanded to flee, and the saints fled: but persecution is a device of the Devil, and one which he desires to exercise against all. Let them say then, to which we ought to submit ourselves; to the words of the Lord, or to their fabrications? Whose conduct ought we to imitate, that of the Saints, or that of those whose example these men have adopted? But since it is likely they cannot determine this question (for, as Esaias said, their minds and their consciences are blinded, and they think bitter to be sweet,' and light darkness [1498] ') let some one come forth from among us Christians, and put them to rebuke, and cry with a loud voice, It is better to trust in the Lord, than to attend to the foolish sayings of these men; for the "words" of the Lord have "eternal life [1499] ," but the things which these utter are full of iniquity and blood.' __________________________________________________________________
[1496] Hist. Arian. §§33, 67.
[1497] Ex. xv. 9.
[1498] Is. v. 20.
[1499] John vi. 68. __________________________________________________________________
24. Irruption of Syrianus.
This were sufficient to put a stop to the madness of these impious men, and to prove that their desire is for nothing else, but only through a love of contention to utter revilings and insults. But forasmuch as having once dared to fight against Christ, they have now become officious, let them enquire and learn into the manner of my withdrawal from their own friends. For the Arians were mixed with the soldiers in order to exasperate them against me, and, as they were unacquainted with my person, to point me out to them. And although they are destitute of all feelings of compassion, yet when they hear the circumstances they will surely be quiet for very shame. It was now night [1500] , and some of the people were keeping a vigil preparatory to a communion on the morrow, when the General Syrianus suddenly came upon us with more than five thousand soldiers, having arms and drawn swords, bows, spears, and clubs, as I have related above. With these he surrounded the Church, stationing his soldiers near at hand, in order that no one might be able to leave the Church and pass by them. Now I considered that it would be unreasonable in me to desert the people during such a disturbance, and not to endanger myself in their behalf; therefore I sat down upon my throne, and desired the Deacon to read a Psalm, and the people to answer, For His mercy endureth for ever [1501] ,' and then all to withdraw and depart home. But the General having now made a forcible entry, and the soldiers having surrounded the sanctuary for the purpose of apprehending us, the Clergy and those of the laity, who were still there, cried out, and demanded that we too should withdraw. But I refused, declaring that I would not do so, until they had retired one and all. Accordingly I stood up, and having bidden prayer, I then made my request of them, that all should depart before me, saying that it was better that my safety should be endangered, than that any of them should receive hurt. So when the greater part had gone forth, and the rest were following, the monks who were there with us and certain of the Clergy came up and dragged us away. And thus (Truth is my witness), while some of the soldiers stood about the sanctuary, and others were going round the Church, we passed through, under the Lord's guidance, and with His protection withdrew without observation, greatly glorifying God that we had not betrayed the people, but had first sent them away, and then had been able to save ourselves, and to escape the hands of them which sought after us. __________________________________________________________________
[1500] Apol. Const. 25.
[1501] Ps. cxxxvi. 1 [on psalmody at Alexandria, cf. Aug. Conf. x. 33.] __________________________________________________________________
25. Athanasius's wonderful escape.
Now when Providence had delivered us in such an extraordinary manner, who can justly lay any blame upon me, because we did not give ourselves up into the hands of them that sought after us, nor return and present ourselves before them? This would have been plainly to shew ingratitude to the Lord, and to act against His commandment, and in contradiction to the practice of the Saints. He who censures me in this matter must presume also to blame the great Apostle Peter, because though he was shut up and guarded by soldiers, he followed the angel that summoned him, and when he had gone forth from the prison and escaped in safety, he did not return and surrender himself, although he heard what Herod had done. Let the Arian in his madness censure the Apostle Paul, because when he was let down from the wall and had escaped in safety, he did not change his mind, and return and give himself up; or Moses, because he returned not out of Midian into Egypt, that he might be taken of them that sought after him; or David, because when he was concealed in the cave, he did not discover himself to Saul. As also the sons of the prophets remained in their caves, and did not surrender themselves to Ahab. This would have been to act contrary to the commandment, since the Scripture says, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God [1502] .' __________________________________________________________________
[1502] Deut. vi. 16; Matt. iv. 7. __________________________________________________________________
26. He acted according to the example of the Saints. Character of his accusers.
Being careful to avoid such an offence, and instructed by these examples, I so ordered my conduct; and I do not undervalue the favour and the help which have been shewn me of the Lord, howsoever these in their madness may gnash their teeth [1503] against us. For since the manner of our retreat was such as we have described, I do not think that any blame whatever can attach to it in the minds of those who are possessed of a sound judgment: seeing that according to holy Scripture, this pattern has been left us by the Saints for our instruction. But there is no atrocity, it would seem, which these men neglect to practise, nor will they leave anything undone which may shew their own wickedness and cruelty. And indeed their lives are only in accordance with their spirit and the follies of their doctrines; for there are no sins that one could charge them with, how heinous soever, that they do not commit without shame. Leontius [1504] for instance being censured for his intimacy with a certain young woman, named Eustolium, and prohibited from living with her, mutilated himself for her sake, in order that he might be able to associate with her freely. He did not however clear himself from suspicion, but rather on this account he was degraded from his rank as Presbyter. [Although the heretic Constantius by violence caused him to be named a Bishop [1505] .] Narcissus [1506] , besides being charged with many other transgressions, was degraded three times by different Councils; and now he is among them, most wicked man. And George [1507] , who was a Presbyter, was deposed for his wickedness, and although he had nominated himself a Bishop, he was nevertheless a second time deposed in the great Council of Sardica. And besides all this, his dissolute life was notorious, for he is condemned even by his own friends, as making the end of existence, and its happiness, to consist in the commission of the most disgraceful crimes. __________________________________________________________________
[1503] Sent. Dion. 16. Hist. Ar. §§68. 72.
[1504] Hist. Arian. §28 [but see D.C.B. iii. 688].
[1505] [The bracketed passage is omitted by some good witnesses to the text. The respectful tone of the Apology to Const.' is exchanged for cold reserve in this Apology,' and for unmeasured invective in Hist. Ar.]
[1506] De Syn. 17, &c.
[1507] Apol. Ar. 8, note 3. __________________________________________________________________
27. Conclusion.
Thus each surpasses the other in his own peculiar vices. But there is a common blot that attaches to them all, in that through their heresy they are enemies of Christ, and are no longer called Christians [1508] , but Arians. They ought indeed to accuse each other of the sins they are guilty of, for they are contrary to the faith of Christ; but they rather conceal them for their own sakes. And it is no wonder, that being possessed of such a spirit, and implicated in such vices, they persecute and seek after those who follow not the same impious heresy as themselves; that they delight to destroy them, and are grieved if they fail of obtaining their desires, and think themselves injured, as I said before, when they see those alive whom they wish to perish. May they continue to be injured in such sort, that they may lose the power of inflicting injuries, and that those whom they persecute may give thanks unto the Lord, and say in the words of the twenty-sixth Psalm, The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom then shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom then shall I be afraid? When the wicked, even mine enemies and my foes, came upon me to eat up my flesh, they stumbled and fell [1509] ;' and again the thirtieth Psalm, Thou hast saved my soul from adversities; thou hast not shut me up into the hands of mine enemies; thou hast set my foot in a large room [1510] ' in Christ Jesus our Lord, through whom to the Father in the Holy Spirit be glory and power for ever and ever. Amen. __________________________________________________________________
[1508] Vid. supr. Ep. Æg. 20 infr. Hist. Arian. §§17. 34 fin. 41 init. 59 fin. 64 init. De. Decr. 16, note 5.
[1509] Ps. xxvii. 1.
[1510] Ps. xxxi. 7, 8. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Introduction to Historia Arianorum.
------------------------
(Written 358.)
This History takes up the narrative from the admission of Arius to communion at the dedication' synod of Jerusalem (adjourned Council of Tyre) in 335, as described in Apol. c. Ar. 84. It has been commonly assumed from its abrupt beginning (the tauta, referring to an antecedent narrative) that the History has lost its earlier chapters, which contained the story of Arianism ab ovo. Montfaucon suggests in fact that the copyists omitted the first chapters on account of their identity in substance with the great Apology. But this seems to require reconsideration. If the alleged missing chapters were different [1511] in form from the second part of the Apology, they would not have been omitted: for such repetitions of the same matter in other words are very frequent in the works of Athanasius: but if they were identical in form, they are not lost, and the conclusion is that the History was written with the express intention of continuing the Apology. The customary inference from the abrupt commencement of the History may be dismissed with a non sequitur. Such a commencement was natural under the circumstances: we may compare the case of Xenophon, whose Hellenica' begin with the words Meta de tauta, ou pollais hemerais husteron..., the reference being to the end of the history of Thucydides. The view here maintained is clinched by the fact that Athanasius at this very time reissued his Apology against the Arians with an appendix (§§89, 90) on the lapse of Hosius and Liberius [1512] .
The History of the Arians, then, is a complete work, and written to continue the narrative of the second part of the Apology. Being in fact a manifesto against Constantius, it naturally takes up the tale just before his entry upon the scene as the patron of Arianism. The substantially Athanasian authorship of the History cannot be questioned. The writer occasionally, like many others ancient and modern, speaks of himself in the third person (references §21, note 5, see also Orat. i. 3); but in other places he clearly identifies himself with Athanasius. The only passage which appears to distinguish the writer from Athanasius (§52, see note), may be due to the bishop's habitual (Apol. Const. 11) employment of an amanuensis, but more probably the text is corrupt; in any case the passage cannot weigh against the clear sense of §21. The immediate Athanasian authorship of the piece has been questioned partly on the ground of its alleged incompleteness, partly on that of several slight discrepancies with other writings. On this twofold ground it is inferred that the Arian History has passed through some obscure process of re-editing (Gwatkin, Studies, p. 99, §14 dependent on the Vita [Antonii] 86,' p. 127, not an uncorrupted work') by a later hand. I am quite unconvinced of this. The incompleteness of the work is, as I think I have shewn above, an unnecessary hypothesis, while the mistakes or inconsistencies may well be due to circumstances of composition. It was written in hiding, perhaps while moving from place to place, certainly under more pressure of highly wrought agitation and bitterness of spirit than any other work of Athanasius. The most accurate of men when working at leisure make strange slips at times (e.g. §13, note 4); the mistakes in the History are not more than one might expect in such a work. The principal are, §21 (see note 3), §14 (reference in note 8), §11, prin genesthai tauta (cf. Encycl. 5), §47 (inverting order of events in §39).
The date of the History is at first sight a difficulty. The fall of Liberius is dealt with in Part V., which must therefore have been written not earlier than 358 (the exact chronology of the lapse of Liberius is not certain), while yet in §4 Leontius, who died in the summer or autumn of 357, is still bishop of Antioch. We must therefore suppose that the History was begun at about the time when the Apologia de Fuga was finished (cf. the bitter conclusion of that tract) and completed when the lapse of Liberius was known in Egypt. A more accurate determination of date is not permitted by our materials.
The tract before us is in effect a fierce anonymous pamphlet against Constantius. Even apart from the references in the letters to the Monks and to Serapion (see below), the work bears clear marks of having been intended for secret circulation (for the practice, see Fialon, pp. 193-199). Instead of the "pious" Emperor who was so well versed in Scripture, whose presence would gladden a dedication festival, whose well-known humanity forbade the supposition that he could have perpetrated a deliberate injustice, we find a Costyllius (or "Connikin") whose misdeeds could only be palliated by the imbecility which rendered him the slave of his own servant--inhuman towards his nearest of kin,--false and crafty, a Pharaoh, a Saul, an Ahab, a Belshazzar, more cruel than Pilate or Maximian, ignorant of the Gospels, a patron of heresy, a precursor of Antichrist, an enemy of Christ, as if himself, Antichrist, and--the words must be written--self-abandoned to the future doom of fire' (Bright, Introd. p. lxxviii., and see §§9, 30, 32, 34, 40, 45, 46, 51, 53, 67-70, 74, 80). There are certainly many passages which one could wish that Athanasius had not written,--one, not necessary to specify, in which he fully condescends to the coarse brutality of the age, mingling it unpardonably with holy things. But Athanasius was human, and exasperated by inhuman vindictiveness and perfidy. If in the passages referred to he falls below himself, and speaks in the spirit of his generation, there are not wanting passages equal in nobility to anything he ever wrote. Once more to quote Dr. Bright: The beautiful description of the Archbishop's return from his second exile, and of its moral and religious effect upon Alexandrian Church society (25), the repeated protests against the principle of persecution as alien to the mind of the Church of Christ (29, 33, 67), the tender allusion to sympathy for the poor as instinctive in human nature (63), the vivid picture--doubtless somewhat coloured by imagination--of the stand made by Western bishops, and notably for a time by Liberius, against the tyrannous dictation of Constantius in matters ecclesiastical (34 sqq. 76), the generous estimate of Hosius and Liberius in the hour of their infirmity (41, 45), the three golden passages which describe the union maintained by a common faith and a sincere affection between friends who are separated from each other (40), the all-sufficient presence of God with His servants in their extremest solitude (47), and the future joy when heaven would be to sufferers for the truth as a calm haven to sailors after a storm (79). It is in such contexts that we see the true Athanasius, and touch the source of his magnificent insuperable constancy' (p. lxxix.). Nothing could be more just, or more happily put. It ought to be noted before leaving this part of the subject, that the language put into the mouth of Constantius and the Arians (33 fin. 1, 3, 9, 12, 15, 30, 42, 45, 60), is not so much a report of their words as a representationad invidiam of what is assumed to have been in their minds.' Other instances of this are to be found in Athanasius (Ep. Æg. 18, Orat. iii. 17), and he uses the device advisedly (de Syn. 7, middle).
The letter to Serapion on the death of Arius, and the letter to Monks, which in mss. and printed editions are prefixed to this treatise, will be found in the collection of letters below (No. 54 and 52). They have been removed from their time-honoured place in accordance with the general arrangement of this volume, though not without hesitation, and apart from any intention to dogmatise on the relation they bear to the present tract.
The Arian History' has commonly been called the Hist. Arianorum ad Monachos,' or even the Epistola ad Monachos;' even at the present day it is sometimes cited simply as ad Monachos.' The History has derived this title from the fact, that in the Codices and editions, the Letter and History are frequently joined together without any sign of division. At the same time the correctness of this collocation is not entirely free from doubt.
Serapion (Letter 54 §1) had written to Athanasius asking for three things,--a history of recent events relating to himself, an exposé of the Arian heresy, and an exact account of the death of Arius. The latter Athanasius furnishes in the letter just referred to. For the two former, he refers Serapion to a document he had written for the monks (haper egrapsa tois monachois), and which he now sends to Serapion. He begs Serapion at the end of his letter not on any account to part with the letters he has received, nor to copy them (he gave, he adds, the same directions to the monks, cf. Letter 52. 3), but to send them back with such corrections and additions as he might think desirable. He refers him to his letter to the monks for an explanation of the circumstances which render this precaution necessary. The monks (ib. 1) had apparently made the same request as Serapion afterwards made. It has been conjectured that the four Orations' against Arianism, or the first three, are the treatise on the heresy addressed to the monks and subsequently sent to Serapion. But the description of that treatise egrapsa di oligon (Letter 52. 1) is quite inapplicable to the longest treatise extant among the works of Athanasius. Still less, even if the Arian History were a fragment (see above), could we suppose that the accompanying treatise formed the missing first part. We must therefore acquiesce in the conclusion that the treatise in question has perished. Accordingly we cannot be sure (although it is generally regarded as highly probable [1513] ) that the historical portion is preserved to us in the Arian History.' In any case the Letter to Monks is quite unconnected with it in its subject matter, and ends with the blessing, as the History does with the doxology, in the form of an independent document.
While admitting, therefore, the naturalness of the traditional arrangement, we may fairly treat the two as distinct, and permit the Arian History to launch the reader without preamble in medias res.
As the tract is long, and various in its subject-matter, the following scheme of contents may be found useful. It will be noted that chronological order is observed in Parts I.-IV, i.e. till 355, when the existing persecution of Constantius, the main theme of the History (Letter 52, §1), is reached. The history of this persecution is dealt with (Parts V.-VII.) with much more fulness, and is grouped round subjects each of which covers more or less the same period. Part VIII. deals with the more recent events in Egypt.
Part I. Proceedings of the Arians from the Council of Tyre till the return of the Exiles (335-337).
§§1-3. General character of their proceedings.
§§4-7. Persecution of the orthodox bishops.
§8. Restoration of the exiles after Constantine's death.
Part II. Second Exile of Athanasius, till the Council of Sardica (337-343).
§9. Renewed intrigues against Athanasius.
§10. Gregory intruded by Constantius as bishop.
§11. Athanasius at Rome. Negotiations for a Council there.
§§12-14. Violent proceedings of Gregory. Case of Duke Balacius.
Part III. From Sardica till the Death of Constans (343-350).
§15. The meeting of the Synod. Dismay of the Arianising bishops.
§16. Their flight from the Synod.
§17. Proceedings of the Synod.
§§18, 19. Continued persecution after it.
§20. The infamous plot of Stephen against the Sardican legates at Antioch.
§§21, 22. Constantius changes his mind and recalls Athanasius with a solemn oath to defend him for the future.
§§23, 24. Letters of Constantius at this time.
§25. Return of Athanasius (346).
§26. Recantation of Valens and Ursacius.
§27. Peace and joy of the Church.
Part IV. From the Death of Constans to the Council of Milan (351-355).
§28. Renewed intrigues of the Arianising party.
§§29, 30. Valens, Ursacius, and the Emperor return to Arianism.
§§31, 32. Constantius again persecutes the Church.
§33. Wickedness of persecution. Western bishops banished by Constantius [at Milan].
§34. How they diffused the truth wherever they went.
Part V. Liberius (355-358).
§35-37. Firmness of Liberius and rage of Constantius.
§38. Concerning the eunuchs at the Court.
§39, 40. Liberius rebukes the Emperor and is cruelly exiled.
§41. After two years of exile, Liberius gives way under force.
Part VI. Hosius (355-358).
§42. Intrigues against Hosius.
§43. Vain attempts of Constantius to gain him over.
§44. Letter of Hosius remonstrating with the Emperor.
§§45, 46. Lapse of Hosius, his fidelity to Athanasius, recantation, and death.
§47. Monstrosity of the above proceedings.
Part VII. The attacks upon Athanasius (351-356).
§47. Athanasius isolated by the exile of other bishops.
§48. Attacks upon Athanasius himself (353-356).
§§49, (50), 51. Hypocrisy of the Emperor's pretended regard for his Father and Brother.
§§52, 53. Impropriety of Imperial intervention in Church affairs.
§54. The Churches at Alexandria given to the Arians.
§55. Violence of Cataphronius, Prefect of Egypt.
§§56, 57. Sack of the great church: divine judgments.
§58. Scenes of persecution.
§§59, 60. Savagery of Duke Sebastian. Martyrdom of Eutychius (356).
§§61-63. Cruel treatment of the poor, and of the clergy.
Part VIII. Further details of the Persecution in Egypt (357).
§64. The Arian persecution more cruel than that of Maximian.
§65. Martyrdom of Secundus of Barka.
§§66, 67. Persecution the disgrace of the new heresy.
§68, 69. Constantius worse than Ahab, &c., and inhuman toward his own family.
§70. His fickleness, lack of character, and tyranny.
§71. Novelty of this persecution on the part of pretended Christians.
§72. Cruel exile of bishops and torture of monks and lay people.
§73. Venal appointments to fill the vacancies thus created.
§74. The predicted signs of Antichrist applied to Constantius.
§75. Arrival of George at Alexandria.
§76, 77. Further marks of Antichrist in the tyranny of Constantius over the Church.
§78, 79. The Meletians the allies of Arianism in Egypt.
§80. Duty of separating from heretics.
§81. Appendix to §48. Second protest of the Church of Alexandria against the proceedings of Syrianus (356). __________________________________________________________________
[1511] i.e. slight modifications excepted, see Montf. in Migne, P.G. xxv. 318, note 46, and 389, note 60.
[1512] For another example of hastily inferred mutiliation, see §48, note 3.
[1513] See Eichhorn, p. 61; Bright. p. lxxiv. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
History of the Arians.
------------------------
Part I.
Arian Persecution Under Constantine.
And not long after they put in execution the designs for the sake of which they had had recourse to these artifices; for they no sooner had formed their plans, but they immediately admitted Arius and his fellows to communion. They set aside the repeated condemnations which had been passed upon them, and again pretended the imperial authority [1514] in their behalf. And they were not ashamed to say in their letters, since Athanasius suffered, all jealousy [1515] has ceased, and let us henceforward receive Arius and his fellows;' adding, in order to frighten their hearers, because the Emperor has commanded it.' Moreover, they were not ashamed to add, for these men profess orthodox opinions;' not fearing that which is written, Woe unto them that call bitter sweet, that put darkness for light [1516] ;' for they are ready to undertake anything in support of their heresy. Now is it not hereby plainly proved to all men, that we both suffered heretofore, and that you now persecute us, not under the authority of an Ecclesiastical sentence [1517] , but on the ground of the Emperor's threats, and on account of our piety towards Christ? As also they conspired in like manner against other Bishops, fabricating charges against them also; some of whom fell asleep in the place of their exile, having attained the glory of Christian confession; and others are still banished from their country, and contend still more and more manfully against their heresy, saying, Nothing shall separate us from the love of Christ [1518] ?'
2. Arians sacrifice morality and integrity to party.
And hence also you may discern its character, and be able to condemn it more confidently. The man who is their friend and their associate in impiety, although he is open to ten thousand charges for other enormities which he has committed; although the evidence and proof against him are most clear; he is approved of by them, and straightway becomes the friend of the Emperor, obtaining an introduction by his impiety; and making very many pretences, he acquires confidence before the magistrates to do whatever he desires. But he who exposes their impiety, and honestly advocates the cause of Christ, though he is pure in all things, though he is conscious of no delinquencies, though he meets with no accuser; yet on the false pretences which they have framed against him, is immediately seized and sent into banishment under a sentence of the Emperor, as if he were guilty of the crimes which they wish to charge upon him, or as if, like Naboth, he had insulted the King; while he who advocates the cause of their heresy is sought for and immediately sent to take possession of the other's Church; and henceforth confiscations and insults, and all kinds of cruelty are exercised against those who do not receive him. And what is the strangest of all, the man whom the people desire, and know to be blameless [1519] , the Emperor takes away and banishes; but him whom they neither desire, nor know, he sends to them from a distant place with soldiers and letters from himself. And henceforward a strong necessity is laid upon them, either to hate him whom they love; who has been their teacher, and their father in godliness; and to love him whom they do not desire, and to trust their children to one of whose life and conversation and character they are ignorant; or else certainly to suffer punishment, if they disobey the Emperor.
3. Recklessness of their proceedings.
In this manner the impious are now proceeding, as heretofore, against the orthodox; giving proof of their malice and impiety amongst all men everywhere. For granting that they have accused Athanasius; yet what have the other Bishops done? On what grounds can they charge them? Has there been found in their case too the dead body of an Arsenius? Is there a Presbyter Macarius, or has a cup been broken amongst them? Is there a Meletian to play the hypocrite? No: but as their proceedings against the other Bishops shew the charges which they have brought against Athanasius, in all probability, to be false; so their attacks upon Athanasius make it plain, that their accusations of the other Bishops are unfounded likewise. This heresy has come forth upon the earth like some great monster, which not only injures the innocent with its words, as with teeth [1520] ; but it has also hired external power to assist it in its designs. And strange it is that, as I said before, no accusation is brought against any of them; or if any be accused, he is not brought to trial; or if a shew of enquiry be made, he is acquitted against evidence, while the convicting party is plotted against, rather than the culprit put to shame. Thus the whole party of them is full of idleness; and their spies, for Bishops [1521] they are not, are the vilest of them all. And if any one among them desire to become a Bishop, he is not told, a Bishop must be blameless [1522] ;' but only, Take up opinions contrary to Christ, and care not for manners. This will be sufficient to obtain favour for you, and friendship with the Emperor.' Such is the character of those who support the tenets of Arius. And they who are zealous for the truth, however holy and pure they shew themselves, are yet, as I said before, made culprits, whenever these men choose, and on whatever pretences it may seem good to them to invent. The truth of this, as I before remarked, you may clearly gather from their proceedings.
4. Arians persecute Eustathius and others.
There was one Eustathius [1523] , Bishop of Antioch, a Confessor, and sound in the Faith. This man, because he was very zealous for the truth, and hated the Arian heresy, and would not receive those who adopted its tenets, is falsely accused before the Emperor Constantine, and a charge invented against him, that he had insulted his mother [1524] . And immediately he is driven into banishment, and a great number of Presbyters and Deacons with him. And immediately after the banishment of the Bishop, those whom he would not admit into the clerical order on account of their impiety were not only received into the Church by them, but were even appointed the greater part of them to be Bishops, in order that they might have accomplices in their impiety. Among these was Leontius the eunuch [1525] , now of Antioch, and his predecessor Stephanus, George of Laodicea, and Theodosius who was of Tripolis, Eudoxius of Germanicia, and Eustathius [1526] , now of Sebastia.
5. Did they then stop here? No. For Eutropius [1527] , who was Bishop of Adrianople, a good man, and excellent in all respects, because he had often convicted Eusebius, and had advised them who came that way, not to comply with his impious dictates, suffered the same treatment as Eustathius, and was cast out of his city and his Church. Basilina [1528] was the most active in the proceedings against him. And Euphration of Balanea, Kymatius of Paltus, Carterius of Antaradus [1529] , Asclepas of Gaza, Cyrus of Beroea in Syria, Diodorus of Asia, Domnion of Sirmium, and Ellanicus of Tripolis, were merely known to hate the heresy; and some of them on one pretence or another, some without any, they removed under the authority of royal letters, drove them out of their cities, and appointed others whom they knew to be impious men, to occupy the Churches in their stead.
6. Case of Marcellus.
Of Marcellus [1530] , the Bishop of Galatia, it is perhaps superfluous for me to speak; for all men have heard how Eusebius and his fellows, who had been first accused by him of impiety, brought a counter-accusation against him, and caused the old man to be banished. He went up to Rome, and there made his defence, and being required by them, he offered a written declaration of his faith, of which the Council of Sardica approved. But Eusebius and his fellows made no defence, nor, when they were convicted of impiety out of their writings, were they put to shame, but rather assumed greater boldness against all. For they had an introduction to the Emperor from the women [1531] , and were formidable to all men.
7. Martyrdom of Paul of Constantinople.
And I suppose no one is ignorant of the case of Paul [1532] , Bishop of Constantinople; for the more illustrious any city is, so much the more that which takes place in it is not concealed. A charge was fabricated against him also. For Macedonius his accuser, who has now become Bishop in his stead (I was present myself at the accusation), afterwards held communion with him, and was a Presbyter under Paul himself. And yet when Eusebius with an evil eye wished to seize upon the Bishopric of that city (he had been translated in the same manner from Berytus to Nicomedia), the charge was revived against Paul; and they did not give up their plot, but persisted in the calumny. And he was banished first into Pontus by Constantine, and a second time by Constantius he was sent bound with iron chains to Singara in Mesopotamia, and from thence transferred to Emesa, and a fourth time he was banished to Cucusus in Cappadocia, near the deserts of Mount Taurus; where, as those who were with him have declared, he died by strangulation at their hands. And yet these men who never speak the truth, though guilty of this, were not ashamed after his death to invent another story, representing that he had died from illness; although all who live in that place know the circumstances. And even Philagrius [1533] , who was then Deputy-Governor [1534] of those parts, and represented all their proceedings in such manner as they desired, was yet astonished at this; and being grieved perhaps that another, and not himself, had done the evil deed, he informed Serapion the Bishop, as well as many other of our friends, that Paul was shut up by them in a very confined and dark place, and left to perish of hunger; and when after six days they went in and found him still alive, they immediately set upon the man, and strangled him. This was the end of his life; and they said that Philip who was Prefect was their agent in the perpetration of this murder. Divine Justice, however, did not overlook this; for not a year passed, when Philip was deprived of his office in great disgrace, so that being reduced to a private station, he became the mockery of those whom he least desired to be the witnesses of his fall. For in extreme distress of mind, groaning and trembling like Cain [1535] , and expecting every day that some one would destroy him, far from his country and his friends, he died, like one astounded at his misfortunes, in a manner that he least desired. Moreover these men spare not even after death those against whom they have invented charges whilst living. They are so eager to shew themselves formidable to all, that they banish the living, and shew no mercy on the dead; but alone of all the world they manifest their hatred to them that are departed, and conspire against their friends, truly inhuman as they are, and haters of that which is good, savage in temper beyond mere enemies, in behalf of their impiety, who eagerly plot the ruin of me and of all the rest, with no regard to truth, but by false charges.
8. Restoration of the Catholics.
Perceiving this to be the case, the three brothers, Constantine, Constantius, and Constans, caused all after the death of their father to return to their own country and Church; and while they wrote letters concerning the rest to their respective Churches, concerning Athanasius they wrote the following; which likewise shews the violence of the whole proceedings, and proves the murderous disposition of Eusebius and his fellows.
A copy of the Letter of Constantine Cæsar to the people of the Catholic Church in the city of the Alexandrians.
I suppose that it has not escaped the knowledge of your pious minds [1536] , &c.
This is his letter; and what more credible witness of their conspiracy could there be than he, who knowing these circumstances has thus written of them? __________________________________________________________________
[1514] §33.
[1515] phthonos.
[1516] Is. v. 20.
[1517] Infr. §76.
[1518] Rom. viii. 35.
[1519] 1 Tim. iii. 2.
[1520] Vid. Dan. vii. 5, 7.
[1521] Cf. §49. [The play on words cannot be rendered.]
[1522] 1 Tim. iii. 2.
[1523] Apol. Fug. 3, note 9.
[1524] If the common slander of the day concerning S. Helena was imputed to S. Eustathius, Constantine was likely to feel it keenly. Stabulariam,' says S. Ambrose, hanc primo fuisse asserunt, sic cognitam Constantio.' de Ob. Theod. 42, Stabularia, i.e. an innkeeper; so Rahab is sometimes considered to be cauponaria sive tabernaria et meretrix,' Cornel. à Lap. in Jos. ii. 1. ex homilias gunaikos ou semnes oude kata nomon sunelthouses. Zosim, Hist. ii. p. 78. Constantinus ex concubina Helena procreatus. Hieron. in Chron. Euseb. p. 773. (ed. Vallars.) Tillemont however maintains (Empereurs, t. 4. p. 613), and Gibbon fully admits (Hist. ch. 14. p. 190), the legitimacy of Constantine. The latter adds, Eutropius (x. 2.) expresses in a few words the real truth, and the occasion of the error, "ex obscuriori matrimonio ejus filius."' [Cf. Soz. ii. 19.]
[1525] Below, §28, note.
[1526] Ep. Æg. 7.
[1527] Ap. Fug. 3.
[1528] Julian's mother.
[1529] [The text must be corrected thus; see Apol. Fug. 3.]
[1530] Apol. Ar. 32.
[1531] i.e. Constantia, Constantine's sister.
[1532] Ap. Fug. 3. For the presence of Ath. at CP. in 337, see Prolegg. ii. §5 fin.]
[1533] [Cf. Prolegg. ch. ii. §6 (1) note 3.]
[1534] Vicarius, i.e. vicarius Præfecti, agens vicem Præfecti;' Gothofred in Cod. Theod. i. tit. 6. vid. their office, &c., drawn out at length, ibid. t. 6, p. 334.
[1535] Gen. iv. 12, LXX. supr. p. 241.
[1536] Given above, Apol. contr. Arian. §87. __________________________________________________________________
Part II.
First Arian Persecution under Constantius.
9. Eusebius and his fellows, however, seeing the declension of their heresy, wrote to Rome, as well as to the Emperors Constantine and Constans, to accuse [1537] Athanasius: but when the persons who were sent by Athanasius disproved the statements which they had written, they were put to shame by the Emperors; and Julius, Bishop of Rome, wrote to say [1538] that a Council ought to be held, wherever we should desire, in order that they might exhibit the charges which they had to make, and might also freely defend themselves concerning those things of which they too were accused. The Presbyters also who were sent by them, when they saw themselves making an exposure, requested that this might be done. Whereupon these men, whose conduct is suspicious in all that they do, when they see that they are not likely to get the better in an Ecclesiastical trial, betake themselves to Constantius alone, and thenceforth bewail themselves, as to the patron of their heresy. Spare,' they say, the heresy; you see that all men have withdrawn from us; and very few of us are now left. Begin to persecute, for we are being deserted even of those few, and are left destitute. Those persons whom we forced over to our side, when these men were banished, they now by their return have persuaded again to take part against us. Write letters therefore against them all, and send out Philagrius a second time [1539] as Prefect of Egypt, for he is able to carry on a persecution favourably for us, as he has already shewn upon trial, and the more so, as he is an apostate. Send also Gregory as Bishop to Alexandria, for he too is able to strengthen our heresy.'
10. Violent Intrusion of Gregory.
Accordingly Constantius at once writes letters, and commences a persecution against all, and sends Philagrius as Prefect with one Arsacius an eunuch; he sends also Gregory with a military force. And the same consequences followed as before [1540] . For gathering together a multitude of herdsmen and shepherds, and other dissolute youths belonging to the town, armed with swords and clubs, they attacked in a body the Church which is called the Church of Quirinus [1541] ; and some they slew, some they trampled under foot, others they beat with stripes and cast into prison or banished. They haled away many women also, and dragged them openly into the court, and insulted them, dragging them by the hair. Some they proscribed; from some they took away their bread [1542] for no other reason, but that they might be induced to join the Arians, and receive Gregory, who had been sent by the Emperor.
11. The Easterns decline the Council at Rome.
Athanasius, however, before these things happened [1543] , at the first report of their proceedings, sailed to Rome, knowing the rage of the heretics, and for the purpose of having the Council held as had been determined. And Julius wrote letters to them, and sent the Presbyters Elpidius and Philoxenus, appointing a day [1544] , that they might either come, or consider themselves as altogether suspected persons. But as soon as Eusebius and his fellows heard that the trial was to be an Ecclesiastical one, at which no Count would be present, nor soldiers stationed before the doors, and that the proceedings would not be regulated by royal order (for they have always depended upon these things to support them against the Bishops, and without them they have no boldness even to speak); they were so alarmed that they detained the Presbyters till after the appointed time, and pretended an unseemly excuse, that they were not able to come now on account of the war which was begun by the Persians [1545] . But this was not the true cause of their delay, but the fears of their own consciences. For what have Bishops to do with war? Or if they were unable on account of the Persians to come to Rome, although it is at a distance and beyond sea, why did they like lions [1546] go about the parts of the East and those which are near the Persians, seeking who was opposed to them, that they might falsely accuse and banish them?
12. At any rate, when they had dismissed the Presbyters with this improbable excuse, they said to one another, Since we are unable to get the advantage in an Ecclesiastical trial, let us exhibit our usual audacity.' Accordingly they write to Philagrius, and cause him after a while to go out with Gregory into Egypt. Whereupon the Bishops are severely scourged and cast into chains [1547] . Sarapammon, for instance, Bishop and Confessor, they drive into banishment; Potammon, Bishop and Confessor, who had lost an eye in the persecution, they beat with stripes on the neck so cruelly, that he appeared to be dead before they came to an end. In which condition he was cast aside, and hardly after some hours, being carefully attended and fanned, he revived, God granting him his life; but a short time after he died of the sufferings caused by the stripes, and attained in Christ to the glory of a second martyrdom. And besides these, how many monks were scourged, while Gregory sat by with Balacius the Duke!' how many Bishops were wounded! how many virgins were beaten!
13. Cruelties of Gregory at Alexandria.
After this the wretched Gregory called upon all men to have communion with him. But if thou didst demand of them communion, they were not worthy of stripes: and if thou didst scourge them as if evil persons, why didst thou ask it of them as if holy? But he had no other end in view, except to fulfil the designs of them that sent him, and to establish the heresy. Wherefore he became in his folly a murderer and an executioner, injurious, crafty, and profane; in one word, an enemy of Christ. He so cruelly persecuted the Bishop's aunt, that even when she died he would not suffer her to be buried [1548] . And this would have been her lot; she would have been cast away without burial, had not they who attended on the corpse carried her out as one of their own kindred. Thus even in such things he shewed his profane temper. And again when the widows and other mendicants [1549] had received alms, he commanded what had been given them to be seized, and the vessels in which they carried their oil and wine to be broken, that he might not only shew impiety by robbery, but in his deeds dishonour the Lord; from whom very shortly [1550] he will hear those words, Inasmuch as thou hast dishonoured these, thou hast dishonoured Me [1551] .'
14. Profaneness of Gregory and death of Balacius.
And many other things he did, which exceed the power of language to describe, and which whoever should hear would think to be incredible. And the reason why he acted thus was, because he had not received his ordination according to ecclesiastical rule, nor had been called to be a Bishop by apostolical tradition [1552] ; but had been sent out from court with military power and pomp, as one entrusted with a secular government. Wherefore he boasted rather to be the friend of Governors, than of Bishops and Monks. Whenever, therefore, our Father Antony wrote to him from the mountains, as godliness is an abomination to a sinner, so he abhorred the letters of the holy man. But whenever the Emperor, or a General, or other magistrate, sent him a letter, he was as much overjoyed as those in the Proverbs, of whom the Word has said indignantly, Woe unto them who leave the path of uprightness who rejoice to do evil, and delight in the frowardness of the wicked [1553] .' And so he honoured with presents the bearers of these letters; but once when Antony wrote to him he caused Duke Balacius to spit upon the letter, and to cast it from him. But Divine Justice did not overlook this; for no long time after, when the Duke was on horseback, and on his way to the first halt [1554] , the horse turned his head, and biting him on the thigh, threw him off; and within three days he died. __________________________________________________________________
[1537] Apol. c. Ar. 3.
[1538] Ib. 20.
[1539] §7, note 1, Encycl. 3.
[1540] Upon the Commission, Apol. Ar. 15.
[1541] Cyrinus.
[1542] Vid. infr. §63.
[1543] [A misstatement, cf. supra pp. 91, 95, note 1.]
[1544] prothesmian, Apol. Ar. 25, note 6 [a.d. 340].
[1545] Apol. Ar. 25, note 8.
[1546] 1 Pet. v. 8.
[1547] Apol. Ar. 30 and foll.
[1548] Cf. Apol. Const. §27 fin.
[1549] anexodon, vid. infr. §60. Tillemont translates it, prisoners. Montfaucon has been here followed; vid. Collect. Nov. t. 2. p. xliii.
[1550] hoson oudepo, as §32. George was pulled to pieces by the populace, a.d. 362. This was written a.d. 358, or later. [There is the common confusion in this note between Gregory and George. Gregory had died June 26, 345.]
[1551] Vid. Matt. xxv. 45.
[1552] [Prolegg. ch. iv. §4.].
[1553] Prov. ii. 13, 14, LXX.
[1554] monen. vid. supr. Ap. Ar. 29, note 2. This halt or station which lay up the Nile was called Cereu (V. Ant. §86), or Chæreu, or the land or property of Chæreas, vid. Naz. Orat. 21, 29, who says it was the place where the people met Athanasius on his return from exile on Constantius's death. [The incident is related differently in Vit. Ant. ubi supra: see note there.] __________________________________________________________________
Part III.
Restoration of the Catholics on the Council of Sardica
15. While they were proceeding in like measures towards all, at Rome about fifty Bishops assembled [1555] , and denounced Eusebius and his fellows as persons suspected, afraid to come, and also condemned as unworthy of credit the written statement they had sent; but us they received, and gladly embraced our communion. While these things were taking place, a report of the Council held at Rome, and of the proceedings against the Churches at Alexandria, and through all the East, came to the hearing of the Emperor Constans [1556] . He writes to his brother Constantius, and immediately they both determine [1557] that a Council shall be called, and matters be brought to a settlement, so that those who had been injured may be released from further suffering, and the injurious be no longer able to perpetrate such outrages. Accordingly there assemble at the city of Sardica both from the East and West to the number of one hundred and seventy Bishops [1558] , more or less; those who came from the West were Bishops only, having Hosius for their father, but those from the East brought with them instructors of youth and advocates, Count Musonianus, and Hesychius [1559] the Castrensian; on whose account they came with great alacrity, thinking that everything would be again managed by their authority. For thus by means of these persons they have always shewn themselves formidable to any whom they wished to intimidate, and have prosecuted their designs against whomsoever they chose. But when they arrived and saw that the cause was to be conducted as simply an ecclesiastical one, without the interference of the Count or of soldiers; when they saw the accusers who came from every church and city, and the evidence which was brought against them, when they saw the venerable Bishops Arius and Asterius [1560] , who came up in their company, withdrawing from them and siding with us [1561] , and giving an account of their cunning, and how suspicious their conduct was, and that they were fearing the consequences of a trial, lest they should be convicted by us of being false informers, and it should be discovered by those whom they produced in the character of accusers, that they had themselves suggested all they were to say, and were the contrivers of the plot. Perceiving this to be the case, although they had come with great zeal, as thinking that we should be afraid to meet them, yet now when they saw our alacrity, they shut themselves up in the Palace [1562] (for they had their abode there), and proceeded to confer with one another in the following manner: We came hither for one result; and we see another; we arrived in company with Counts, and the trial is proceeding without them. We are certainly condemned. You all know the orders that have been given. Athanasius and his fellows have the reports of the proceedings in the Mareotis [1563] , by which he is cleared, and we are covered with disgrace. Why then do we delay? why are we so slow? Let us invent some excuse and be gone, or we shall be condemned if we remain. It is better to suffer the shame of fleeing, than the disgrace of being convicted as false accusers. If we flee, we shall find some means of defending our heresy; and even if they condemn us for our flight, still we have the Emperor as our patron, who will not suffer the people to expel us from the Churches.'
16. Secession of the Easterns at Sardica.
Thus then they reasoned with themselves and Hosius and all the other Bishops repeatedly signified to them the alacrity of Athanasius and his fellows, saying, They are ready with their defence, and pledge themselves to prove you false accusers.' They said also, If you fear the trial, why did you come to meet us? either you ought not to have come, or now that you have come, not to flee.' When they heard this, being still more alarmed, they had recourse to an excuse even more unseemly than that they pretended at Antioch, viz. that they betook themselves to flight because the Emperor had written to them the news of his victory over the Persians. And this excuse they were not ashamed to send by Eustathius a Presbyter of the Sardican Church. But even thus their flight did not succeed according to their wishes; for immediately the holy Council, of which the great Hosius was president, wrote to them plainly, saying, Either come forward and answer the charges which are brought against you, for the false accusations which you have made against others, or know that the Council will condemn you as guilty, and declare Athanasius and his fellows free and clear from all blame.' Whereupon they were rather impelled to flight by the alarms of conscience, than to compliance with the proposals of the letter; for when they saw those who had been injured by them, they did not even turn their faces to listen to their words, but fled with greater speed.
17. Proceedings of the Council of Sardica.
Under these disgraceful and unseemly circumstances their flight took place. And the holy Council, which had been assembled out of more than five and thirty provinces, perceiving the malice of the Arians, admitted Athanasius and his fellows to answer to the charges which the others had brought against them, and to declare the sufferings which they had undergone. And when they had thus made their defence, as we said before, they approved and so highly admired their conduct that they gladly embraced their communion, and wrote letters to all quarters, to the diocese of each, and especially to Alexandria and Egypt, and the Libyas, declaring Athanasius and his friends to be innocent, and free from all blame, and their opponents to be calumniators, evil-doers, and everything rather than Christians. Accordingly they dismissed them in peace; but deposed Stephanus and Menophantus, Acacius and George of Laodicea, Ursacius and Valens, Theodorus and Narcissus. For against Gregory, who had been sent to Alexandria by the Emperor, they put forth a proclamation to the effect that he had never been made a Bishop, and that he ought not to be called a Christian. They therefore declared the ordinations which he professed to have conferred to be void, and commanded that they should not be even named in the Church, on account of their novel and illegal nature. Thus Athanasius and his friends were dismissed in peace (the letters concerning them are inserted at the end on account of their length [1564] ), and the Council was dissolved.
18. Arian Persecution after Sardica.
But the deposed persons, who ought now to have remained quiet, with those who had separated after so disgraceful a flight, were guilty of such conduct, that their former proceedings appear trifling in comparison of these. For when the people of Adrianople would not have communion with them, as men who had fled from the Council, and had proved culprits, they carried their complaints to the Emperor Constantius, and succeeded in causing ten of the laity to be beheaded, belonging to the Manufactory of arms [1565] there, Philagrius, who was there again as Count, assisting their designs in this matter also. The tombs of these persons, which we have seen in passing [1566] by, are in front of the city. Then as if they had been quite successful, because they had fled lest they should be convicted of false accusation, they prevailed with the Emperor to command whatsoever they wished to be done. Thus they caused two Presbyters and three Deacons to be banished from Alexandria into Armenia. As to Arius and Asterius, the one Bishop of Petræ [1567] in Palestine, the other Bishop in Arabia, who had withdrawn from their party, they not only banished into upper Libya, but also caused them to be treated with insult.
19. Tyrannical measures against the Alexandrians.
And as to Lucius [1568] , Bishop of Adrianople, when they saw that he used great boldness of speech against them, and exposed their impiety, they again, as they had done before, caused him to be bound with iron chains on the neck and hands, and so drove him into banishment, where he died, as they know. And Diodorus a Bishop [1569] they remove; but against Olympius of Æni, and Theodulus of Trajanople [1570] , both Bishops of Thrace, good and orthodox men, when they perceived their hatred of the heresy, they brought false charges. This Eusebius and his fellows had done first of all, and the Emperor Constantius wrote letters on the subject; and next these men [1571] revived the accusation. The purport of the letter was, that they should not only be expelled from their cities and churches, but should also suffer capital punishment, wherever they were discovered. However surprising this conduct may be, it is only in accordance with their principles; for as being instructed by Eusebius and his fellows in such proceedings, and as heirs of their impiety and evil principles, they wished to shew themselves formidable at Alexandria, as their fathers had done in Thrace. They caused an order to be written, that the ports and gates of the cities should be watched, lest availing themselves of the permission granted by the Council, the banished persons should return to their churches. They also cause orders to be sent to the magistrates at Alexandria, respecting Athanasius and certain Presbyters, named therein, that if either the Bishop [1572] , or any of the others, should be found coming to the city or its borders, the magistrate should have power to behead those who were so discovered. Thus this new Jewish heresy does not only deny the Lord, but has also learnt to commit murder.
20. Plot against the Catholic Legates at Antioch.
Yet even after this they did not rest; but as the father of their heresy goeth about like a lion, seeking whom he may devour, so these obtaining the use of the public posts [1573] went about, and whenever they found any that reproached them with their flight, and that hated the Arian heresy, they scourged them, cast them into chains, and caused them to be banished from their country; and they rendered themselves so formidable, as to induce many to dissemble, many to fly into the deserts, rather than willingly even to have any dealings with them. Such were the enormities which their madness prompted them to commit after their flight. Moreover they perpetrate another outrageous act, which is indeed in accordance with the character of their heresy, but is such as we never heard of before, nor is likely soon to take place again, even among the more dissolute of the Gentiles, much less among Christians. The holy Council had sent as Legates the Bishops Vincentius [1574] of Capua (this is the Metropolis of Campania), and Euphrates of Agrippina [1575] (this is the Metropolis of Upper Gaul), that they might obtain the Emperor's consent to the decision of the Council, that the Bishops should return to their Churches, inasmuch as he was the author of their expulsion. The most religious Constans had also written to his brother [1576] , and supported the cause of the Bishops. But these admirable men, who are equal to any act of audacity, when they saw the two Legates at Antioch, consulted together and formed a plot, which Stephanus [1577] undertook by himself to execute, as being a suitable instrument for such purposes. Accordingly they hire a common harlot, even at the season of the most holy Easter, and stripping her introduce her by night into the apartment of the Bishop Euphrates. The harlot who thought that it was a young man who had sent to invite her, at first willingly accompanied them; but when they thrust her in, and she saw the man asleep and unconscious of what was going on, and when presently she distinguished his features, and beheld the face of an old man, and the array of a Bishop, she immediately cried aloud, and declared that violence was used towards her. They desired her to be silent, and to lay a false charge against the Bishop; and so when it was day, the matter was noised abroad, and all the city ran together; and those who came from the Palace were in great commotion, wondering at the report which had been spread abroad, and demanding that it should not be passed by in silence. An enquiry, therefore, was made, and her master gave information concerning those who came to fetch the harlot, and these informed against Stephanus; for they were his Clergy. Stephanus, therefore, is deposed [1578] , and Leontius the eunuch appointed in his place, only that the Arian heresy may not want a supporter.
21. Constantius' change of mind.
And now the Emperor Constantius, feeling some compunctions, returned to himself; and concluding from their conduct towards Euphrates, that their attacks upon the others were of the same kind, he gives orders that the Presbyters and Deacons who had been banished from Alexandria into Armenia should immediately be released. He also writes publicly to Alexandria [1579] , commanding that the clergy and laity who were friends of Athanasius should suffer no further persecution. And when Gregory died about ten months [1580] after, he sends for Athanasius with every mark of honour, writing to him no less than three times a very friendly letter [1581] in which he exhorted him to take courage and come. He sends also a Presbyter and a Deacon, that he may be still further encouraged to return; for he thought that, through alarm at what had taken place before, I [1582] did not care to return. Moreover he writes to his brother Constans, that he also would exhort me to return. And he affirmed that he had been expecting Athanasius a whole year, and that he would not permit any change to be made, or any ordination to take place, as he was preserving the Churches for Athanasius their Bishop.
22. Athanasius visits Constantius.
When therefore he wrote in this strain, and encouraged him by means of many (for he caused Polemius, Datianus, Bardion, Thalassus [1583] , Taurus [1584] , and Florentius, his Counts, in whom Athanasius could best confide, to write also): Athanasius committing the whole matter to God, who had stirred the conscience of Constantius to do this, came with his friends to him; and he gave him a favourable audience [1585] , and sent him away to go to his country and his Churches, writing at the same time to the magistrates in the several places, that whereas he had before commanded the ways to be guarded, they should now grant him a free passage. Then when the Bishop complained of the sufferings he had undergone, and of the letters which the Emperor had written against him, and besought him that the false accusations against him might not be revived by his enemies after his departure, saying [1586] , If you please, summon these persons; for as far as we are concerned they are at liberty to stand forth, and we will expose their conduct;' he would not do this, but commanded that whatever had been before slanderously written against him should all be destroyed and obliterated, affirming that he would never again listen to any such accusations, and that his purpose was fixed and unalterable. This he did not simply say, but sealed his words with oaths, calling upon God to be witness of them. And so encouraging him with many other words, and desiring him to be of good courage, he sends the following letters to the Bishops and Magistrates.
23. Constantius Augustus, the Great, the Conqueror, to the Bishops and Clergy of the Catholic Church.
The most Reverend Athanasius has not been deserted by the grace of God [1587] , &c.
Another Letter.
From Constantius to the people of Alexandria.
Desiring as we do your welfare in all respects [1588] , &c.
Another Letter.
Constantius Augustus, the Conqueror, to Nestorius, Prefect of Egypt.
It is well known that an order was heretofore given by us, and that certain documents are to be found prejudicial to the estimation of the most reverend Bishop Athanasius; and that these exist among the Orders [1589] of your worship. Now we desire your Sobriety, of which we have good proof, to transmit to our Court, in compliance with this our order, all the letters respecting the fore-mentioned person, which are found in your Order-book.
24. The following is the letter which he wrote after the death of the blessed Constans. It was written in Latin, and is here translated into Greek [1590] .
Constantius Augustus, the Conqueror, to Athanasius.
It is not unknown to your Prudence, that it was my constant prayer, that prosperity might attend my late brother Constans in all his undertakings; and your wisdom may therefore imagine how greatly I was afflicted when I learnt that he had been taken off by most unhallowed hands. Now whereas there are certain persons who at the present truly mournful time are endeavouring to alarm you, I have therefore thought it right to address this letter to your Constancy, to exhort you that, as becomes a Bishop, you would teach the people those things which pertain to the divine religion, and that, as you are accustomed to do, you would employ your time in prayers together with them, and not give credit to vain rumours, whatever they may be. For our fixed determination is, that you should continue, agreeably to our desire, to perform the office of a Bishop in your own place. May Divine Providence preserve you, most beloved parent, many years.
25. Return of Athanasius from second exile.
Under these circumstances, when they had at length taken their leave, and begun their journey, those who were friendly rejoiced to see a friend; but of the other party, some were confounded at the sight of him; others not having the confidence to appear, hid themselves; and others repented of what they had written against the Bishop. Thus all the Bishops of Palestine [1591] , except some two or three, and those men of suspected character, so willingly received Athanasius, and embraced communion with him, that they wrote to excuse themselves, on the ground that in what they had formerly written, they had acted, not according to their own wishes, but by compulsion. Of the Bishops of Egypt and the Libyan provinces, of the laity both of those countries and of Alexandria, it is superfluous for me to speak. They all ran [1592] together, and were possessed with unspeakable delight, that they had not only received their friends alive contrary to their hopes; but that they were also delivered from the heretics who were as tyrants and as raging dogs towards them. Accordingly great was their joy [1593] , the people in the congregations encouraging one another in virtue. How many unmarried women, who were before ready to enter upon marriage, now remained virgins to Christ! How many young men, seeing the examples of others, embraced the monastic life! How many fathers persuaded their children, and how many were urged by their children, not to be hindered from Christian asceticism! How many wives persuaded their husbands, and how many were persuaded by their husbands, to give themselves to prayer [1594] , as the Apostle has spoken! How many widows and how many orphans, who were before hungry and naked, now through the great zeal of the people, were no longer hungry, and went forth clothed! In a word, so great was their emulation in virtue, that you would have thought every family and every house a Church, by reason of the goodness of its inmates, and the prayers which were offered to God. And in the Churches there was a profound and wonderful peace, while the Bishops wrote from all quarters, and received from Athanasius the customary letters of peace.
26. Recantation of Ursacius and Valens.
Moreover Ursacius and Valens, as if suffering the scourge of conscience, came to another mind, and wrote to the Bishop himself a friendly and peaceable letter [1595] , although they had received no communication from him. And going up to Rome they repented, and confessed that all their proceedings and assertions against him were founded in falsehood and mere calumny. And they not only voluntarily did this, but also anathematized the Arian heresy, and presented a written declaration of their repentance, addressing to the Bishop Julius the following letter in Latin, which has been translated into Greek. The copy was sent to us in Latin by Paul [1596] , Bishop of Treveri.
Translation from the Latin.
Ursacius and Valens to my Lord the most blessed Pope Julius.
Whereas it is well known that we [1597] , &c.
Translation from the Latin.
The Bishops Ursacius and Valens to my Lord and Brother, the Bishop Athanasius.
Having an opportunity of sending [1598] , &c.
After writing these, they also subscribed the letters of peace which were presented to them by Peter and Irenæus, Presbyters of Athanasius, and by Ammonius a layman, who were passing that way, although Athanasius had sent no communication to them even by these persons.
27. Triumph of Athanasius.
Now who was not filled with admiration at witnessing these things, and the great peace that prevailed in the Churches? who did not rejoice to see the concord of so many Bishops? who did not glorify the Lord, beholding the delight of the people in their assemblies? How many enemies repented! How many excused themselves who had formerly accused him falsely! How many who formerly hated him, now shewed affection for him! How many of those who had written against him, recanted their assertions? Many also who had sided with the Arians, not through choice but by necessity, came by night and excused themselves. They anathematized the heresy, and besought him to pardon them, because, although through the plots and calumnies of these men they appeared bodily on their side, yet in their hearts they held communion with Athanasius, and were always with him. Believe me, this is true. __________________________________________________________________
[1555] Apol. Ar. 1, note 1.
[1556] Apol. Const. 4, note 8.
[1557] Below, §50.
[1558] Vid. supr. pp. 127, note 10, and 147.
[1559] Apol. Ar. 36, notes 8, 9.
[1560] Below, §18.
[1561] [Cf. §21, note 5.]
[1562] The word Palatium sometimes stands for the space or limits set apart in cities for the Emperor, Cod. Theod. XV. i. 47. sometimes for the buildings upon it, ibid. VII. x. 2, which were one of the four public works mentioned in the Laws. ibid. XV. i. 35. and 36. None but great officers of state were admitted into it. XV. i. 47. Even the judges might not lodge in it, except there was no Prætorium, VII. x. 2. Gothofr. in VII. x. 1 enumerates (with references) the Palatia in Antioch, Daphne, Constantinople, Hereclea, Milan, Treves, &c. It was a great mark then of imperial favour that the Eastern bishops were accommodated in the Palatium at Sardica.
[1563] Apol. Ar. §83, &c.
[1564] Not found there, but in Apol. contr. Ar. §§37, foll.
[1565] De Fabricis, vid. Gothofr. in Cod. Theod. x. 21.
[1566] [Apparently on his way from Treveri (see 21, n. 3) back to Alexandria in 346.]
[1567] [See pp. 148, 128 note, and infr., Tom. ad Ant. §8. In the text Petræ is wrongly placed in Palestine. The slip is one of many in this tract; see Introd. above.]
[1568] Apol. Ar. 45, Apol. Fug. 3.
[1569] Of Tenedos, vid. Apol. Ar. 50, supr. §5.
[1570] Apol. Ar. 45, note 2.
[1571] Acacius, &c.
[1572] This accounts for Ath.'s caution, Apol. Ar. 51, and below §21.
[1573] Apol. Ar. 70, note 5.
[1574] Ap. Const. 3, note 3.
[1575] Cologne.
[1576] Infr. §50.
[1577] Bishop of Antioch, cf. §4, above.
[1578] [Between Easter and Midsummer 344.]
[1579] [Probably about August 344.]
[1580] [June 26, 345. Athanasius received some at least of the letters at Aquileia, where he spent Easter, 345 (Apol. Ar. 51, Fest. Ind. xvii.). He then went to see Constans at Treveri, apparently in May, 346 (Apol. Const. 4, Gwatkin, Stud. 127, n.). This compels us to assume that the first invitation to Ath. to return must have been wrung (infr. 49, 50) from Constantius before the death of Gregory. The statement in the text is therefore so far inexact, but the lung illness of Gregory must have made his death a matter of daily expectation, cf. Prolegg. ch. ii. §6 (3) fin.]
[1581] Apol. Ar. 51.
[1582] [Here for once Ath. speaks in the first person, cf. §§15, 26, 64, 69, and 51, note 2a.]
[1583] Apol. Const. 3.
[1584] At Ariminum.
[1585] Apol. Ar. 54; Apol. Const. 5.
[1586] Below, §44.
[1587] Vid. Apol. contr. Arian. §54.
[1588] Ib. §55.
[1589] Or Acta Publica, vid. supr. Ap. Ar. 56.
[1590] Another translation, Apol. Const. 23.
[1591] Apol. Ar. 57.
[1592] Oct. 21, 346.
[1593] Apol. Ar. 53.
[1594] 1 Cor. vii. 5.
[1595] Apol. Ar. 58 [a.d. 347].
[1596] Paulinus, supr. pp. 130, 227.
[1597] Vid. Apol. contr. Ar. §58.
[1598] Ibid. __________________________________________________________________
Part IV.
Second Arian Persecution under Constantius
28. But the inheritors of the opinions and impiety of Eusebius and his fellows, the eunuch Leontius [1599] , who ought not to remain in communion even as a layman [1600] , because he mutilated himself that he might henceforward be at liberty to sleep with one Eustolium, who is a wife as far as he is concerned, but is called a virgin; and George and Acacius, and Theodorus, and Narcissus, who are deposed by the Council; when they heard and saw these things, were greatly ashamed. And when they perceived the unanimity and peace that existed between Athanasius and the Bishops (they were more than four hundred [1601] , from great Rome, and all Italy, from Calabria, Apulia, Campania, Bruttia, Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, and the whole of Africa; and those from Gaul, Britain, and Spain, with the great Confessor Hosius; and also those from Pannonia, Noricum, Siscia, Dalmatia, Dardania, Dacia, Moesia, Macedonia, Thessaly, and all Achaia, and from Crete, Cyprus, and Lycia, with most of those from Palestine, Isauria, Egypt, the Thebais, the whole of Libya, and Pentapolis); when I say they perceived these things, they were possessed with envy and fear; with envy, on account of the communion of so many together; and with fear, lest those who had been entrapped by them should be brought over by the unanimity of so great a number, and henceforth their heresy should be triumphantly exposed, and everywhere proscribed.
29. Relapse of Ursacius and Valens.
First of all they persuade Ursacius, Valens and their fellows to change sides again, and like dogs [1602] to return to their own vomit, and like swine to wallow again in the former mire of their impiety; and they make this excuse for their retractation, that they did it through fear of the most religious Constans. And yet even had there been cause for fear, yet if they had confidence in what they had done, they ought not to have become traitors to their friends. But when there was no cause for fear, and yet they were guilty of a lie, are they not deserving of utter condemnation? For no soldier was present, no Palatine or Notary [1603] had been sent, as they now send them, nor yet was the Emperor there, nor had they been invited by any one, when they wrote their recantation. But they voluntarily went up to Rome, and of their own accord recanted and wrote it down in the Church, where there was no fear from without, where the only fear is the fear of God, and where every one has liberty of conscience. And yet although they have a second time become Arians, and then have devised this unseemly excuse for their conduct, they are still without shame.
30. Constantius changes sides again.
In the next place they went in a body to the Emperor Constantius, and besought him, saying, When we first made our request to you, we were not believed; for we told you, when you sent for Athanasius, that by inviting him to come forward, you are expelling our heresy. For he has been opposed to it from the very first, and never ceases to anathematize it. He has already written letters against us into all parts of the world, and the majority of men have embraced communion with him; and even of those who seemed to be on our side, some have been gained over by him, and others are likely to be. And we are left alone, so that the fear is, lest the character of our heresy become known, and henceforth both we and you gain the name of heretics. And if this come to pass, you must take care that we be not classed with the Manichæans. Therefore begin again to persecute, and support the heresy, for it accounts you its king.' Such was the language of their iniquity. And the Emperor, when in his passage through the country on his hasty march against Magnentius [1604] , he saw the communion of the Bishops with Athanasius, like one set on fire, suddenly changed his mind, and no longer remembered his oaths, but was alike forgetful of what he had written and regardless of the duty he owed his brother. For in his letters to him, as well as in his interview with Athanasius, he took oaths that he would not act otherwise than as the people should wish, and as should be agreeable to the Bishops. But his zeal for impiety caused him at once to forget all these things. And yet one ought not to wonder that after so many letters and so many oaths Constantius had altered his mind, when we remember that Pharaoh of old, the tyrant of Egypt, after frequently promising and by that means obtaining a remission of his punishments, likewise changed, until he at last perished together with his associates.
31. Constantius begins to persecute.
He compelled then the people in every city to change their party; and on arriving at Arles and Milan [1605] , he proceeded to act entirely in accordance with the designs and suggestions of the heretics; or rather they acted themselves, and receiving authority from him, furiously attacked every one. Letters and orders were immediately sent hither to the Prefect, that for the future the corn should be taken from Athanasius and given to those who favoured the Arian doctrines, and that whoever pleased might freely insult them that held communion with him; and the magistrates were threatened if they did not hold communion with the Arians. These things were but the prelude to what afterwards took place under the direction of the Duke Syrianus. Orders were sent also to the more distant parts, and Notaries despatched to every city, and Palatines, with threats to the Bishops and Magistrates, directing the Magistrates to urge on the Bishops, and informing the Bishops that either they must subscribe against Athanasius, and hold communion with the Arians, or themselves undergo the punishment of exile, while the people who took part with them were to understand that chains, and insults, and scourgings, and the loss of their possessions, would be their portion. These orders were not neglected, for the commissioners had in their company the Clergy of Ursacius and Valens, to inspire them with zeal, and to inform the Emperor if the Magistrates neglected their duty. The other heresies, as younger sisters of their own [1606] , they permitted to blaspheme the Lord, and only conspired against the Christians, not enduring to hear orthodox language concerning Christ. How many Bishops in consequence, according to the words of Scripture, were brought before rulers and kings [1607] , and received this sentence from magistrates, Subscribe, or withdraw from your churches, for the Emperor has commanded you to be deposed!' How many in every city were roughly handled, lest they should accuse them as friends of the Bishops! Moreover letters were sent to the city authorities, and a threat of a fine was held out to them, if they did not compel the Bishops of their respective cities to subscribe. In short, every place and every city was full of fear and confusion, while the Bishops were dragged along to trial, and the magistrates witnessed the lamentations and groans of the people.
32. Persecution by Constantius.
Such were the proceedings of the Palatine commissioners; on the other hand, those admirable persons, confident in the patronage which they had obtained, display great zeal, and cause some of the Bishops to be summoned before the Emperor, while they persecute others by letters, inventing charges against them; to the intent that the one might be overawed by the presence of Constantius, and the other, through fear of the commissioners and the threats held out to them in these pretended accusations, might be brought to renounce their orthodox and pious opinions. In this manner it was that the Emperor forced so great a multitude of Bishops, partly by threats, and partly by promises, to declare, We will no longer hold communion with Athanasius.' For those who came for an interview, were not admitted to his presence, nor allowed any relaxation, not so much as to go out of their dwellings, until they had either subscribed, or refused and incurred banishment thereupon. And this he did because he saw that the heresy was hateful to all men. For this reason especially he compelled so many to add their names to the small number [1608] of the Arians, his earnest desire being to collect together a crowd of names, both from envy of the Bishop, and for the sake of making a shew in favour of the Arian impiety, of which he is the patron; supposing that he will be able to alter the truth, as easily as he can influence the minds of men. He knows not, nor has ever read, how that the Sadducees and the Herodians, taking unto them the Pharisees, were not able to obscure the truth; rather it shines out thereby more brightly every day, while they crying out, We have no king but Cæsar [1609] ,' and obtaining the judgment of Pilate in their favour, are nevertheless left destitute, and wait in utter shame, expecting shortly [1610] to become bereft, like the partridge [1611] , when they shall see their patron near his death.
33. Persecution is from the Devil.
Now if it was altogether unseemly in any of the Bishops to change their opinions merely from fear of these things, yet it was much more so, and not the part of men who have confidence in what they believe, to force and compel the unwilling. In this manner it is that the Devil, when he has no truth on his side [1612] , attacks and breaks down the doors of them that admit him with axes and hammers [1613] . But our Saviour is so gentle that He teaches thus, If any man wills to come after Me,' and, Whoever wills to be My disciple [1614] ;' and coming to each He does not force them, but knocks at the door and says, Open unto Me, My sister, My spouse [1615] ;' and if they open to Him, He enters in, but if they delay and will not, He departs from them. For the truth is not preached with swords or with darts, nor by means of soldiers; but by persuasion and counsel. But what persuasion is there where fear of the Emperor prevails? or what counsel is there, when he who withstands them receives at last banishment and death? Even David, although he was a king, and had his enemy in his power, prevented not the soldiers by an exercise of authority when they wished to kill his enemy, but, as the Scripture says, David persuaded his men by arguments, and suffered them not to rise up and put Saul to death [1616] . But he, being without arguments of reason, forces all men by his power, that it may be shewn to all, that their wisdom is not according to God, but merely human, and that they who favour the Arian doctrines have indeed no king but Cæsar; for by his means it is that these enemies of Christ accomplish whatsoever they wish to do. But while they thought that they were carrying on their designs against many by his means, they knew not that they were making many to be confessors, of whom are those who have lately [1617] made so glorious a confession, religious men, and excellent Bishops, Paulinus [1618] Bishop of Treveri, the metropolis of the Gauls, Lucifer, Bishop of the metropolis of Sardinia, Eusebius of Vercelli in Italy, and Dionysius of Milan, which is the metropolis of Italy. These the Emperor summoned before him, and commanded them to subscribe against Athanasius, and to hold communion with the heretics; and when they were astonished at this novel procedure, and said that there was no Ecclesiastical Canon to this effect, he immediately said, Whatever I will, be that esteemed a Canon; the "Bishops" of Syria let me thus speak. Either then obey, or go into banishment.'
34. Banishment of the Western Bishops spread the knowledge of the truth.
When the Bishops heard this they were utterly amazed, and stretching forth their hands to God, they used great boldness of speech against him teaching him that the kingdom was not his, but God's, who had given it to him, Whom also they bid him fear, lest He should suddenly take it away from him. And they threatened him with the day of judgment, and warned him against infringing Ecclesiastical order, and mingling Roman sovereignty with the constitution [1619] of the Church, and against introducing the Arian heresy into the Church of God. But he would not listen to them, nor permit them to speak further, but threatened them so much the more, and drew his sword against them, and gave orders for some of them to be led to execution; although afterwards, like Pharaoh, he repented. The holy men therefore shaking off the dust, and looking up to God, neither feared the threats of the Emperor, nor betrayed their cause before his drawn sword; but received their banishment, as a service pertaining to their ministry. And as they passed along, they preached the Gospel in every place and city [1620] , although they were in bonds, proclaiming the orthodox faith, anathematizing the Arian heresy, and stigmatizing the recantation of Ursacius and Valens. But this was contrary to the intention of their enemies; for the greater was the distance of their place of banishment, so much the more was the hatred against them increased, while the wanderings of these men were but the heralding of their impiety. For who that saw them as they passed along, did not greatly admire them as Confessors, and renounce and abominate the others, calling them not only impious men, but executioners and murderers, and everything rather than Christians? __________________________________________________________________
[1599] On the suneisaktai, vid. [D.C.A. 1939 sqq. Bright, Notes on Canons, p. 839], Mosheim de Rebus Ante Const. p. 599, Routh, Reliqu. Sacr. t. 2. p. 606. t. 3. p. 445. Basnag. Diss. vii. 19. in Ann. Eccles. t. 2. Muratori, Anecdot. Græc. p. 218. Dodwell, Dissert. Cyprian. iii. Bevereg. in Can. Nic. 3. Suicer. Thesaur. in voc. &c. &c. It is conjectured by Beveridge, Dodwell, Van Espen, &c., that Leontius gave occasion to the first Canon of the Nicene Council, peri ton tolmonton heautous ektemnein
[1600] Can. Ap. 17. but vid. Morin. de Pæn. p. 185.
[1601] After Sardica, vid. Apol. Ar. 50, note 10.
[1602] [351 a.d.] Cf. 2 Pet. ii. 22.
[1603] Apol. Const. 19.
[1604] [351 a.d.]
[1605] [353 and 355.]
[1606] De Syn. 12, note 11.
[1607] Mark xiii. 9.
[1608] Cf. de Syn. 5, note, and above Ep. Æg. 7.
[1609] John xix. 15, and Orat. i. 8, note.
[1610] hoson oudepo, above, 13; Const. died Nov. 3, 361 aged 45.
[1611] Jer. xvii. 11, LXX.
[1612] Vid. note on §67 [and Bright, Hist. Writings of Ath. p. lxviii. note 9].
[1613] Vid. Ps. lxxiv. 6
[1614] Matt. xvi. 24.
[1615] Cant. v. 2.
[1616] 1 Sam. xxvi. 9.
[1617] Apol. Const. 27; Apol. Fug. 4, and below, §76.
[1618] §26, and references there.
[1619] diatage, cf. §36.
[1620] Infr. §40, vid. Acts viii. 4; Phil. i. 13. __________________________________________________________________
Part V.
Persecution and Lapse of Liberius
35. Now it had been better if from the first Constantius had never become connected with this heresy at all; or being connected with it, if he had not yielded so much to those impious men; or having yielded to them, if he had stood by them only thus far, so that judgment might come upon them all for these atrocities alone. But as it would seem, like madmen, having fixed themselves in the bonds of impiety, they are drawing down upon their own heads a more severe judgment. Thus from the first [1621] they spared not even Liberius, Bishop of Rome, but extended [1622] their fury even to those parts; they respected not his bishopric, because it was an Apostolical throne; they felt no reverence for Rome, because she is the Metropolis of Romania [1623] ; they remembered not that formerly in their letters they had spoken of her Bishops as Apostolical men. But confounding all things together, they at once forgot everything, and cared only to shew their zeal in behalf of impiety. When they perceived that he was an orthodox man and hated the Arian heresy, and earnestly endeavoured to persuade all persons to renounce and withdraw from it, these impious men reasoned thus with themselves: If we can persuade Liberius, we shall soon prevail over all.' Accordingly they accused him falsely before the Emperor; and he, expecting easily to draw over all men to his side by means of Liberius, writes to him, and sends a certain eunuch called Eusebius with letters and offerings, to cajole him with the presents, and to threaten him with the letters. The eunuch accordingly went to Rome, and first proposed to Liberius to subscribe against Athanasius, and to hold communion with the Arians, saying, The Emperor wishes it, and commands you to do so.' And then shewing him the offerings, he took him by the hand, and again besought him saying, Obey the Emperor, and receive these.'
36. The Eunuch Eusebius attempts Liberius in vain.
But the Bishop endeavoured to convince him, reasoning with him thus: How is it possible for me to do this against Athanasius? how can we condemn a man, whom not one [1624] Council only, but a second [1625] assembled from all parts of the world, has fairly acquitted, and whom the Church of the Romans dismissed in peace? who will approve of our conduct, if we reject in his absence one, whose presence [1626] amongst us we gladly welcomed, and admitted him to our communion? This is no Ecclesiastical Canon; nor have we had transmitted to us any such tradition [1627] from the Fathers, who in their turn received from the great and blessed Apostle Peter [1628] . But if the Emperor is really concerned for the peace of the Church, if he requires our letters respecting Athanasius to be reversed, let their proceedings both against him and against all the others be reversed also; and then let an Ecclesiastical Council be called at a distance from the Court, at which the Emperor shall not be present, nor any Count be admitted, nor magistrate to threaten us, but where only the fear of God and the Apostolical rule [1629] shall prevail; that so in the first place, the faith of the Church may be secure, as the Fathers defined it in the Council of Nicæa, and the supporters of the Arian doctrines may be cast out, and their heresy anathematized. And then after that, an enquiry being made into the charges brought against Athanasius, and any other besides, as well as into those things of which the other party is accused, let the culprits be cast out, and the innocent receive encouragement and support. For it is impossible that they who maintain an impious creed can be admitted as members of a Council: nor is it fit that an enquiry into matters of conduct should precede the enquiry concerning the faith [1630] ; but all diversity of opinions on points of faith ought first to be eradicated, and then the enquiry made into matters of conduct. Our Lord Jesus Christ did not heal them that were afflicted, until they shewed and declared what faith they had in Him. These things we have received from the Fathers; these report to the Emperor; for they are both profitable for him and edifying to the Church. But let not Ursacius and Valens be listened to, for they have retracted their former assertions, and in what they now say they are not to be trusted.'
37. Liberius refuses the Emperor's offering.
These were the words of the Bishop Liberius. And the eunuch, who was vexed, not so much because he would not subscribe, as because he found him an enemy to the heresy, forgetting that he was in the presence of a Bishop, after threatening him severely, went away with the offerings; and next commits an offence, which is foreign to a Christian, and too audacious for a eunuch. In imitation of the transgression of Saul, he went to the Martyry [1631] of the Apostle Peter, and then presented the offerings. But Liberius having notice of it, was very angry with the person who kept the place, that he had not prevented him, and cast out the offerings as an unlawful sacrifice, which increased the anger of the mutilated creature against him. Consequently he exasperates the Emperor against him, saying, The matter that concerns us is no longer the obtaining the subscription of Liberius, but the fact that he is so resolutely opposed to the heresy, that he anathematizes the Arians by name.' He also stirs up the other eunuchs to say the same; for many of those who were about Constantius, or rather the whole number of them, are eunuchs [1632] , who engross all the influence with him, and it is impossible to do anything there without them. The Emperor accordingly writes to Rome, and again Palatines, and Notaries, and Counts are sent off with letters to the Prefect, in order that either they may inveigle Liberius by stratagem away from Rome and send him to the Court to him, or else persecute him by violence.
38. The evil influence of Eunuchs at Court.
Such being the tenor of the letters, there also fear and treachery forthwith became rife throughout the whole city. How many were the families against which threats were held out! How many received great promises on condition of their acting against Liberius! How many Bishops hid themselves when they saw these things! How many noble women retired to country places in consequence of the calumnies of the enemies of Christ! How many ascetics were made the objects of their plots! How many who were sojourning there, and had made that place their home, did they cause to be persecuted! How often and how strictly did they guard the harbour [1633] and the approaches to the gates, lest any orthodox person should enter and visit Liberius! Rome also had trial of the enemies of Christ, and now experienced what before she would not believe, when she heard how the other Churches in every city were ravaged by them. It was the eunuchs who instigated these proceedings against all. And the most remarkable circumstance in the matter is this; that the Arian heresy which denies the Son of God, receives its support from eunuchs, who, as both their bodies are fruitless, and their souls barren of virtue, cannot bear even to hear the name of son. The Eunuch of Ethiopia indeed, though he understood not what he read [1634] , believed the words of Philip, when he taught him concerning the Saviour; but the eunuchs of Constantius cannot endure the confession of Peter [1635] , nay, they turn away when the Father manifests the Son, and madly rage against those who say, that the Son of God is His genuine Son, thus claiming as a heresy of eunuchs, that there is no genuine and true offspring of the Father. On these grounds it is that the law forbids such persons to be admitted into any ecclesiastical Council [1636] ; notwithstanding which they have now regarded these as competent judges of ecclesiastical causes, and whatever seems good to them, that Constantius decrees, while men with the name of Bishops dissemble with them. Oh! who shall be their historian? who shall transmit the record of these things to another generation? who indeed would believe it, were he to hear it, that eunuchs who are scarcely entrusted with household services (for theirs is a pleasure-loving race, that has no serious concern but that of hindering in others what nature has taken from them); that these, I say, now exercise authority in ecclesiastical matters, and that Constantius in submission to their will treacherously conspired against all, and banished Liberius!
39. Liberius's speech to Constantius.
For after the Emperor had frequently written to Rome, had threatened, sent commissioners, devised schemes, on the persecution [1637] subsequently breaking out at Alexandria, Liberius is dragged before him, and uses great boldness of speech towards him. Cease,' he said, to persecute the Christians; attempt not by my means to introduce impiety into the Church. We are ready to suffer anything rather than to be called Arian madmen. We are Christians; compel us not to become enemies of Christ. We also give you this counsel: fight not against Him who gave you this empire, nor shew impiety towards Him instead of thankfulness [1638] ;' persecute not them that believe in Him, lest you also hear the words, It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks [1639] .' Nay, I would that you might hear them, that you might obey, as the holy Paul did. Behold, here we are; we are come, before they fabricate charges. For this cause we hastened hither, knowing that banishment awaits us at your hands, that we might suffer before a charge encounters us, and that all may clearly see that all the others too have suffered as we shall suffer, and that the charges brought against them were fabrications of their enemies, and all their proceedings were mere calumny and falsehood.'
40. Banishment of Liberius and others.
These were the words of Liberius at that time, and he was admired by all men for them. But the Emperor instead of answering [1640] , only gave orders for their banishment, separating each of them from the rest, as he had done in the former cases. For he had himself devised this plan in the banishments which he inflicted, that so the severity of his punishments might be greater than that of former tyrants and persecutors [1641] . In the former persecution Maximian, who was then Emperor, commanded a number of Confessors to be banished together [1642] , and thus lightened their punishment by the consolation which he gave them in each other's society. But this man was more savage than he; he separated those who had spoken boldly and confessed together, he put asunder those who were united by the bond of faith, that when they came to die they might not see one another; thinking that bodily separation can disunite also the affections of the mind, and that being severed from each other, they would forget the concord and unanimity which existed among them. He knew not that however each one may remain [1643] apart from the rest, he has nevertheless with him that Lord, whom they confessed in one body together, who will also provide (as he did in the case of the Prophet Elisha [1644] ) that more shall be with each of them, than there are soldiers with Constantius. Of a truth iniquity is blind; for in that they thought to afflict the Confessors, by separating them from one another, they rather brought thereby a great injury upon themselves. For had they continued in each other's company, and abode together, the pollutions of those impious men would have been proclaimed from one place only; but now by putting them asunder, they have made their impious heresy and wickedness to spread abroad and become known in every place [1645] .
41. Lapse of Liberius.
Who that shall hear what they did in the course of these proceedings will not think them to be anything rather than Christians? When Liberius sent Eutropius, a Presbyter, and Hilarius, a Deacon, with letters to the Emperor, at the time that Lucifer and his fellows made their confession, they banished the Presbyter on the spot, and after stripping Hilarius [1646] the Deacon and scourging him on the back, they banished him too, clamouring at him, Why didst thou not resist Liberius instead of being the bearer of letters from him.' Ursacius and Valens, with the eunuchs who sided with them, were the authors of this outrage. The Deacon, while he was being scourged, praised the Lord, remembering His words, I gave My back to the smiters [1647] ;' but they while they scourged him laughed and mocked him, feeling no shame that they were insulting a Levite. Indeed they acted but consistently in laughing while he continued to praise God; for it is the part of Christians to endure stripes, but to scourge Christians is the outrage of a Pilate or a Caiaphas. Thus they endeavoured at the first to corrupt the Church of the Romans, wishing to introduce impiety into it as well as others. But Liberius after he had been in banishment two years gave way, and from fear of threatened death subscribed. Yet even this only shews their violent conduct, and the hatred of Liberius against the heresy, and his support of Athanasius, so long as he was suffered to exercise a free choice. For that which men are forced by torture to do contrary to their first judgment, ought not to be considered the willing deed of those who are in fear, but rather of their tormentors. They however attempted everything in support of their heresy, while the people in every Church, preserving the faith which they had learnt, waited for the return of their teachers, and condemned the Antichristian heresy, and all avoid it, as they would a serpent. __________________________________________________________________
[1621] In contrast to date of his fall.
[1622] ten manian exeteinan; vid. ekteinai ten manian, §42. And so in the letter of the Council of Chalcedon to Pope Leo; which says that Dioscorus, kat' autou tes ampelou ten phulaken para tou soteros epitetrammenou ten manian exeteine, legomen de tes ses hosiotetos. Hard. Conc. t. 2. p. 656. [Cf. Prolegg. ch. iv. §4.]
[1623] By Romania is meant the Roman Empire, according to Montfaucon after Nannius. vid. Præfat. xxxiv. xxxv. And so Epiph. Hær, lxvi, 1 fin, p. 618, and lxviii. 2 init. p. 728, Nil. Ep. i. 75. vid. Du Cange Gloss. Græc. in voc.
[1624] At Alexandria.
[1625] At Sardica.
[1626] Vid. Apol. Ar. 29.
[1627] paradosis, vid. §14.
[1628] Apol. Ar. §35.
[1629] ton apostolon diataxis, cf. §34.
[1630] Vid. Pallavicin. Conc. Trid. vi. 7. Sarpi. Hist. ii. 37.
[1631] [1 Sam. xiii. 9. cf. D.C.A. 1132, s.v. Martyrium.]
[1632] Vid. Gibbon, Hist. ch. 19 init.
[1633] Ostia, vid. Gibbon, Hist. ch. 31, p. 303.
[1634] Acts viii. 27.
[1635] Matt. xvi. 16, allusion to Liberius? vid. Hard. Conc. t. 2. p. 305 E.
[1636] Can. Nic. 1.
[1637] [356 a.d.]
[1638] Cf. §34.
[1639] Acts ix. 5.
[1640] [But see Theodoret, Hist. ii. 16.]
[1641] Cf. infr. §60.
[1642] §64 [a.d. 355].
[1643] Cf. §47.
[1644] 2 Kings vi. 16.
[1645] Cf. §34.
[1646] This Hilary afterwards followed Lucifer of Calaris in his schism. He is supposed to be the author of the Comments on S. Paul's Epistles attributed to S. Ambrose, who goes under the name of Ambrosiaster.
[1647] Isa. l. 6. __________________________________________________________________
Part VI.
Persecution and Lapse of Hosius
42. But although they had done all this, yet these impious men thought they had accomplished nothing, so long as the great Hosius escaped their wicked machinations. And now they undertook to extend their fury [1648] to that great old man. They felt no shame at the thought that he is the father [1649] of the Bishops; they regarded not that he had been a Confessor [1650] ; they reverenced not the length of his Episcopate, in which he had continued more than sixty years; but they set aside everything, and looked only to the interests of their heresy, as being of a truth such as neither fear God, nor regard man [1651] . Accordingly they went to Constantius, and again employed such arguments as the following: We have done everything; we have banished the Bishop of the Romans; and before him a very great number of other Bishops, and have filled every place with alarm. But these strong measures of yours are as nothing to us, nor is our success at all more secure, so long as Hosius remains. While he is in his own place, the rest also continue in their Churches, for he is able by his arguments and his faith to persuade all men against us. He is the president of Councils [1652] , and his letters are everywhere attended to. He it was who put forth the Nicene Confession, and proclaimed everywhere that the Arians were heretics. If therefore he is suffered to remain, the banishment of the rest is of no avail, for our heresy will be destroyed. Begin then to persecute him also and spare him not, ancient as he is. Our heresy knows not to honour even the hoary hairs of the aged.'
43. Brave resistance of Hosius.
Upon hearing this, the Emperor no longer delayed, but knowing the man, and the dignity of his years, wrote to summon him. This was when he first [1653] began his attempt upon Liberius. Upon his arrival he desired him, and urged him with the usual arguments, with which he thought also to deceive the others, that he would subscribe against us, and hold communion with the Arians. But the old man, scarcely bearing to hear the words, and grieved that he had even ventured to utter such a proposal, severely rebuked him, and after gaining his consent, withdrew to his own country and Church. But the heretics still complaining, and instigating him to proceed (he had the eunuchs also to remind him and to urge him further), the Emperor again wrote in threatening terms; but still Hosius, while he endured their insults, was unmoved by any fear of their designs against him, and remaining firm to his purpose, as one who had built the house of his faith upon the rock, he spake boldly against the heresy, regarding the threats held out to him in the letters but as drops of rain and blasts of wind. And although Constantius wrote frequently, sometimes flattering him with the title of Father, and sometimes threatening and recounting the names of those who had been banished, and saying, Will you continue the only person to oppose the heresy? Be persuaded and subscribe against Athanasius; for whoever subscribes against him thereby embraces with us the Arian cause;' still Hosius remained fearless, and while suffering these insults, wrote an answer in such terms as these. We have read the letter, which is placed at the end [1654] .
44. Hosius to Constantius the Emperor sends health in the Lord.'
I was a Confessor at the first, when a persecution arose in the time of your grandfather Maximian; and if you shall persecute me, I am ready now, too, to endure anything rather than to shed innocent blood and to betray the truth. But I cannot approve of your conduct in writing after this threatening manner. Cease to write thus; adopt not the cause of Arius, nor listen to those in the East, nor give credit to Ursacius, Valens and their fellows. For whatever they assert, it is not on account of Athanasius, but for the sake of their own heresy. Believe my statement, O Constantius, who am of an age to be your grandfather. I was present at the Council of Sardica, when you and your brother Constans of blessed memory assembled us all together; and on my own account I challenged the enemies of Athanasius, when they came to the church where I abode [1655] , that if they had anything against him they might declare it; desiring them to have confidence, and not to expect otherwise than that a right judgment would be passed in all things. This I did once and again, requesting them, if they were unwilling to appear before the whole Council, yet to appear before me alone; promising them also, that if he should be proved guilty, he should certainly be rejected by us; but if he should be found to be blameless, and should prove them to be calumniators, that if they should then refuse to hold communion with him, I would persuade him to go with me into the Spains. Athanasius was willing to comply with these conditions, and made no objection to my proposal; but they, altogether distrusting their cause, would not consent. And on another occasion Athanasius came to your Court [1656] , when you wrote for him, and his enemies being at the time in Antioch, he requested that they might be summoned either altogether or separately, in order that they might either convict him, or be convicted [1657] , and might either in his presence prove him to be what they represented, or cease to accuse him when absent. To this proposal also you would not listen, and they equally rejected it. Why then do you still give ear to them that speak evil of him? How can you endure Valens and Ursacius, although they have retracted and made a written confession of their calumnies [1658] ? For it is not true, as they pretend, that they were forced to confess; there were no soldiers at hand to influence them; your brother was not cognizant of the matter [1659] . No, such things were not done under his government, as are done now; God forbid. But they voluntarily went up to Rome, and in the presence of the Bishop and Presbyters wrote their recantation, having previously addressed to Athanasius a friendly and peaceable letter. And if they pretend that force was employed towards them, and acknowledge that this is an evil thing, which you also disapprove of; then do you cease to use force; write no letters, send no Counts; but release those that have been banished, lest while you are complaining of violence, they do but exercise greater violence. When was any such thing done by Constans? What Bishop suffered banishment? When did he appear as arbiter of an Ecclesiastical trial? When did any Palatine of his compel men to subscribe against any one, that Valens and his fellows should be able to affirm this? Cease these proceedings, I beseech you, and remember that you are a mortal man. Be afraid of the day of judgment, and keep yourself pure thereunto. Intrude not yourself into Ecclesiastical matters, neither give commands unto us concerning them; but learn them from us. God has put into your hands the kingdom; to us He has entrusted the affairs of His Church; and as he who would steal the empire from you would resist the ordinance of God, so likewise fear on your part lest by taking upon yourself the government of the Church, you become guilty of a great offence. It is written, "Render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's, and unto God the things that are God's [1660] ." Neither therefore is it permitted unto us to exercise an earthly rule, nor have you, Sire, any authority to burn incense [1661] . These things I write unto you out of a concern for your salvation. With regard to the subject of your letters, this is my determination; I will not unite myself to the Arians; I anathematize their heresy. Neither will I subscribe against Athanasius, whom both we and the Church of the Romans and the whole Council pronounced to be guiltless. And yourself also, when you understood this, sent for the man, and gave him permission to return with honour to his country and his Church. What reason then can there be for so great a change in your conduct? The same persons who were his enemies before, are so now also; and the things they now whisper to his prejudice (for they do not declare them openly in his presence), the same they spoke against him, before you sent for him; the same they spread abroad concerning him when they come to the Council. And when I required them to come forward, as I have before said, they were unable to produce their proofs; had they possessed any, they would not have fled so disgracefully. Who then persuaded you so long after to forget your own letters and declarations? Forbear, and be not influenced by evil men, lest while you act for the mutual advantage of yourself and them, you render yourself responsible. For here you comply with their desires, hereafter in the judgment you will have to answer for doing so alone. These men desire by your means to injure their enemy, and wish to make you the minister of their wickedness, in order that through your help they may sow the seeds [1662] of their accursed heresy in the Church. Now it is not a prudent thing to cast one's self into manifest danger for the pleasure of others. Cease then, I beseech you, O Constantius, and be persuaded by me. These things it becomes me to write, and you not to despise.'
45. Lapse of Hosius, due to cruel persecution.
Such were the sentiments, and such the letter, of the Abraham-like old man, Hosius, truly so called [1663] . But the Emperor desisted not from his designs, nor ceased to seek an occasion against him; but continued to threaten him severely, with a view either to bring him over by force, or to banish him if he refused to comply. And as the Officers and Satraps of Babylon [1664] , seeking an occasion against Daniel, found none except in the law of his God; so likewise these present Satraps of impiety were unable to invent any charge against the old man (for this true Hosius, and his blameless life were known to all), except the charge of hatred to their heresy. They therefore proceeded to accuse him; though not under the same circumstances as those others accused Daniel to Darius, for Darius was grieved to hear the charge, but as Jezebel accused Naboth, and as the Jews applied themselves to Herod. And they said, He not only will not subscribe against Athanasius, but also on his account condemns us; and his hatred to the heresy is so great, that he also writes to others, that they should rather suffer death, than become traitors to the truth. For, he says, our beloved Athanasius also is persecuted for the Truth's sake, and Liberius, Bishop of Rome, and all the rest, are treacherously assailed.' When this patron of impiety, and Emperor of heresy [1665] , Constantius, heard this, and especially that there were others also in the Spains of the same mind as Hosius, after he had tempted them also to subscribe, and was unable to compel them to do so, he sent for Hosius, and instead of banishing him, detained him a whole year in Sirmium. Godless, unholy, without natural affection, he feared not God, he regarded not his father's affection for Hosius, he reverenced not his great age, for he was now a hundred years old [1666] ; but all these things this modern Ahab, this second Belshazzar of our times, disregarded for the sake of impiety. He used such violence towards the old man, and confined him so straitly, that at last, broken by suffering, he was brought, though hardly, to hold communion with Valens, Ursacius, and their fellows, though he would not subscribe against Athanasius. Yet even thus he forgot not his duty, for at the approach of death, as it were by his last testament, he bore witness to the force which had been used towards him, and anathematized the Arian heresy, and gave strict charge that no one should receive it.
46. Arbitrary expulsion of so many bishops.
Who that witnessed these things, or that has merely heard of them, will not be greatly amazed, and cry aloud unto the Lord, saying, Wilt Thou make a full end of Israel [1667] ?' Who that is acquainted with these proceedings, will not with good reason cry out and say, A wonderful and horrible thing is done in the land;' and, The heavens are astonished at this, and the earth is even more horribly afraid [1668] .' The fathers of the people and the teachers of the faith are taken away, and the impious are brought into the Churches? Who that saw when Liberius, Bishop of Rome, was banished, and when the great Hosius, the father [1669] of the Bishops, suffered these things, or who that saw so many Bishops banished out of Spain and the other parts, could fail to perceive, however little sense he might possess, that the charges [1670] against Athanasius also and the rest were false, and altogether mere calumny? For this reason those others also endured all suffering, because they saw plainly that the conspiracies laid against these were founded in falsehood. For what charge was there against Liberius? or what accusation against the aged Hosius? who bore even a false witness against Paulinus, and Lucifer, and Dionysius, and Eusebius? or what sin could be lain to the account of the rest of the banished Bishops, and Presbyters, and Deacons? None whatever; God forbid. There were no charges against them on which a plot for their ruin might be formed; nor was it on the ground of any accusation that they were severally banished. It was an insurrection of impiety against godliness; it was zeal for the Arian heresy, and a prelude to the coming of Antichrist, for whom Constantius is thus preparing the way. __________________________________________________________________
[1648] ekteinai ten manian
[1649] Ap. Fug. 5.
[1650] Under Maximian.
[1651] Luke xviii. 2.
[1652] Of Nicæa and Sardica (Ap. Fug. 5).
[1653] i.e. two years before his fall.
[1654] Transferred by copyists hither.
[1655] [i.e. at Sardica, cf. Apol. Ar. 36.]
[1656] Cf. §22.
[1657] Apol. Const. 5.
[1658] Apol. Ar. 58.
[1659] §29.
[1660] Matt. xxii. 21.
[1661] [The language of Hosius is figurative. The first mention of incense as a rite in Christian worship is in ps.-Dionys., about a.d. 500, cf. D.C.A. p. 830 sq.]
[1662] Vid. de Decr. 2, note 6. It is remarkable, this letter having so much its own character, and being so unlike Athanasius's writings in style, that a phrase characteristic of him should here occur in it. Did Athan. translate it from Latin?
[1663] ho alethos Osios. kataskopoi, ou gar episkopoi, supr. §3. infr. §§48, 76 fin. and so alethos Eusebie, Theod. Hist. i. 4. 'Onesimon, ton pote soi achreston, nuni de euchreston, Philem. 10. De Syn. 26, note 6.
[1664] Dan. vi. 5.
[1665] §§9, 30, 54.
[1666] oute ton Theon phobebeis ho atheos, oute tou patros ten diathesin aidestheis ho anosios, oute to geras aischuntheis ho astorgos.
[1667] Ez. xi. 13.
[1668] Jer. v. 30; ii. 12.
[1669] Cf. §15.
[1670] Vid. in Apol. contr. Ar. and ad Const. __________________________________________________________________
Part VII.
Persecution at Alexandria
47. After' he had accomplished all that he desired against the Churches in Italy, and the other parts; after he had banished some, and violently oppressed others, and filled every place with fear, he at last turned his fury, as it had been some pestilential disorder, against Alexandria. This was artfully contrived by the enemies of Christ; for in order that they might have a show of the signatures of many Bishops, and that Athanasius might not have a single Bishop in his persecution to whom he could even complain, they therefore anticipated his proceedings, and filled every place with terror, which they kept up to second them in the prosecution of their designs. But herein they perceived not through their folly that they were not exhibiting the deliberate choice of the Bishops, but rather the violence which themselves had employed; and that, although his brethren should desert him, and his friends and acquaintance stand afar off, and no one be found to sympathise with him and console him, yet far above all these, a refuge with his God was sufficient for him. For Elijah also was alone in his persecution, and God was all in all to the holy man. And the Saviour has given us an example herein, who also was left alone, and exposed to the designs of His enemies, to teach us, that when we are persecuted and deserted by men, we must not faint, but place our hope in Him, and not betray the Truth. For although at first truth may seem to be afflicted, yet even they who persecute shall afterwards acknowledge it.
48. Attacks upon the Alexandrian Church.
Accordingly they urge on the Emperor, who first writes a menacing letter, which he sends to the Duke and the soldiers. The Notaries Diogenius and Hilarius [1671] , and certain Palatines with them, were the bearers of it; upon whose arrival those terrible and cruel outrages were committed against the Church, which I have briefly related a little above [1672] , and which are known to all men from the protests put forth by the people, which are inserted at the end of this history, so that any one may read them. Then after these proceedings on the part of Syrianus, after these enormities had been perpetrated, and violence offered to the Virgins, as approving of such conduct and the infliction of these evils upon us, he writes again to the senate and people of Alexandria, instigating the younger men, and requiring them to assemble together, and either to persecute Athanasius, or consider themselves as his enemies. He however had withdrawn before these instructions reached them, and from the time when Syrianus broke into the Church; for he remembered that which was written, Hide thyself as it were for a little moment, until the indignation be overpast [1673] .' One Heraclius, by rank a Count, was the bearer of this letter, and the precursor of a certain George that was despatched by the Emperor as a spy, for one that was sent from him cannot be a Bishop [1674] ; God forbid. And so indeed his conduct and the circumstances which preceded his entrance sufficiently prove.
49 and 50. Hypocrisy of the pretended respect of Constantius for his brother's memory.
Heraclius then published the letter, which reflected great disgrace upon the writer. For whereas, when the great Hosius wrote to Constantius, he had been unable to make out any plausible pretext for his change of conduct, he now invented an excuse much more discreditable to himself and his advisers. He said, From regard to the affection I entertained towards my brother of divine and pious memory, I endured for a time the coming of Athanasius among you.' This proves that he has both broken his promise, and behaved ungratefully to his brother after his death. He then declares him to be, as indeed he is, deserving of divine and pious remembrance;' yet as regards a command of his, or to use his own language, the affection' he bore him, even though he complied merely for the sake' of the blessed Constans, he ought to deal fairly by his brother, and make himself heir to his sentiments as well as to the Empire. But, although, when seeking to obtain his just rights, he deposed Vetranio, with the question, To whom does the inheritance belong after a brother's death [1675] ?' yet for the sake of the accursed heresy of the enemies of Christ, he disregards the claims of justice, and behaves undutifully towards his brethren. Nay, for the sake of this heresy, he would not consent to observe even his father's wishes without infringement; but, in what he may gratify these impious men, he pretends to adopt his intention, while in order to distress the others, he cares not to shew the reverence which is due unto a father. For in consequence of the calumnies of Eusebius and his fellows, his father sent the Bishop for a time into Gaul to avoid the cruelty of his persecutors (this was shewn by the blessed Constantine, the brother of the former, after their father's death, as appears by his letters [1676] ), but he would not be persuaded by Eusebius and his fellows to send the person whom they desired for a Bishop, but prevented the accomplishment of their wishes, and put a stop to their attempts with severe threats.
51. How Constantius shews his respect for his father and brother.
If therefore, as he declares in his letters, he desired to observe his sire's practice, why did he first send out Gregory, and now this George, the eater of stores [1677] ? Why does he endeavour so earnestly to introduce into the Church these Arians, whom his father named Porphyrians [1678] , and banish others while he patronises them? Although his father admitted Arius to his presence, yet when Arius perjured himself and burst asunder [1679] he lost the compassion of his father; who, on learning the truth, condemned him as an heretic. Why moreover, while pretending to respect the Canon of the Church, has he ordered the whole course of his conduct in opposition to them? For where is there a Canon that a Bishop should be appointed from Court? Where is there a Canon [1680] that permits soldiers to invade Churches? What tradition is there allowing counts and ignorant eunuchs to exercise authority in Ecclesiastical matters, and to make known by their edicts the decisions of those who bear the name of Bishops? He is guilty of all manner of falsehood for the sake of this unholy heresy. At a former time he sent out Philagrius as Prefect a second time [1681] , in opposition to the opinion of his father, and we see what has taken place now. Nor for his brother's sake' does he speak the truth. For after his death he wrote not once nor twice, but three times to the Bishop, and repeatedly promised him that he would not change his behaviour towards him, but exhorted him to be of good courage, and not suffer any one to alarm him, but to continue to abide in his Church in perfect security. He also sent his commands by Count Asterius, and Palladius the Notary, to Felicissimus, who was then Duke, and to the Prefect Nestorius, that if either Philip the Prefect, or any other should venture to form any plot against Athanasius, they should prevent it.
52. The Emperor has no right to rule the Church.
Wherefore when Diogenes came, and Syrianus laid in wait for us, both he and we [1682] and the people demanded to see the Emperor's letters, supposing that, as it is written, Let not a falsehood be spoken before the king [1683] ;' so when a king has made a promise, he will not lie, nor change. If then for his brother's sake he complied,' why did he also write those letters upon his death? And if he wrote them for his memory's sake,' why did he afterwards behave so very unkindly towards him, and persecute the man, and write what he did, alleging a judgment of Bishops, while in truth he acted only to please himself? Nevertheless his craft has not escaped detection, but we have the proof of it ready at hand. For if a judgment had been passed by Bishops, what concern had the Emperor with it? Or if it was only a threat of the Emperor, what need in that case was there of the so-named Bishops? When was such a thing heard of before from the beginning of the world? When did a judgment of the Church receive its validity from the Emperor? or rather when was his decree ever recognised by the Church? There have been many Councils held heretofore; and many judgments passed by the Church; but the Fathers never sought the consent of the Emperor thereto, nor did the Emperor busy himself with the affairs of the Church [1684] . The Apostle Paul had friends among them of Cæsar's household, and in his Epistle to the Philippians he sent salutations from them; but he never took them as his associates in Ecclesiastical judgments. Now however we have witnessed a novel spectacle, which is a discovery of the Arian heresy. Heretics have assembled together with the Emperor Constantius, in order that he, alleging the authority of the Bishops, may exercise his power against whomsoever he pleases, and while he persecutes may avoid the name of persecutor; and that they, supported by the Emperor's government, may conspire the ruin of whomsoever they will [1685] and these are all such as are not as impious as themselves. One might look upon their proceedings as a comedy which they are performing on the stage, in which the pretended Bishops are actors, and Constantius the performer of their behests, who makes promises to them, as Herod did to the daughter of Herodias, and they dancing before him accomplish through false accusations the banishment and death of the true believers in the Lord.
53. Despotic interference of Constantius.
Who indeed has not been injured by their calumnies? Whom have not these enemies of Christ conspired to destroy? Whom has Constantius failed to banish upon charges which they have brought against them? When did he refuse to hear them willingly? And what is most strange, when did he permit any one to speak against them, and did not more readily receive their testimony, of whatever kind it might be? Where is there a Church which now enjoys the privilege of worshipping Christ freely? If a Church be a maintainer of true piety, it is in danger; if it dissemble, it abides in fear. Every place is full of hypocrisy and impiety, so far as he is concerned; and wherever there is a pious person and a lover of Christ (and there are many such everywhere, as were the prophets and the great Elijah) they hide themselves, if so be that they can find a faithful friend like Obadiah, and either they withdraw into caves and dens of the earth, or pass their lives in wandering about in the deserts. These men in their madness prefer such calumnies against them as Jezebel invented against Naboth, and the Jews against the Saviour; while the Emperor, who is the patron of the heresy, and wishes to pervert the truth, as Ahab wished to change the vineyard into a garden of herbs, does whatever they desire him to do, for the suggestions he receives from them are agreeable to his own wishes.
54. Constantius gives up the Alexandrian Churches to the heretics.
Accordingly he banished, as I said before the genuine Bishops, because they would not profess impious doctrines, to suit his own pleasure; and so he now sent Count Heraclius to proceed against Athanasius, who has publicly made known his decrees, and announced the command of the Emperor to be, that unless they complied with the instructions contained in his letters, their bread [1686] should be taken away, their idols overthrown, and the persons of many of the city-magistrates and people delivered over to certain slavery. After threatening them in this manner, he was not ashamed to declare publicly with a loud voice, The Emperor disclaims Athanasius, and has commanded that the Churches be given up to the Arians.' And when all wondered to hear this, and made signs to one another, exclaiming, What! has Constantius become a heretic?' instead of blushing as he ought, the man all the more obliged the senators and heathen magistrates and wardens [1687] of the idol temples to subscribe to these conditions, and to agree to receive as their Bishop whomsoever [1688] the Emperor should send them. Of course Constantius was strictly upholding the Canon of the Church, when he caused this to be done; when instead of requiring letters from the Church, he demanded them of the market-place, and instead of the people he asked them of the wardens of the temples. He was conscious that he was not sending a Bishop to preside over Christians, but a certain intruder for those who subscribed to his terms.
55. Irruption into the great Church.
The Gentiles accordingly, as purchasing by their compliance the safety of their idols, and certain of the trades [1689] , subscribed, though unwillingly, from fear of the threats which he had held out to them; just as if the matter had been the appointment of a general, or other magistrate. Indeed what as heathen, were they likely to do, except whatever was pleasing to the Emperor? But the people having assembled in the great Church (for it was the fourth day of the week), Count Heraclius on the following day [1690] takes with him Cataphronius the Prefect of Egypt, and Faustinus the Receiver-General [1691] , and Bithynus a heretic; and together they stir up the younger men of the common multitude [1692] who worshipped idols, to attack the Church, and stone the people, saying that such was the Emperor's command. As the time of dismissal however had arrived, the greater part had already left the Church, but there being a few women still remaining, they did as the men had charged them, whereupon a piteous spectacle ensued. The few women had just risen from prayer and had sat down when the youths suddenly came upon them naked with stones and clubs. Some of them the godless wretches stoned to death; they scourged with stripes the holy persons of the Virgins, tore off their veils and exposed their heads, and when they resisted the insult, the cowards kicked them with their feet. This was dreadful, exceedingly dreadful; but what ensued was worse, and more intolerable than any outrage. Knowing the holy character of the virgins, and that their ears were unaccustomed to pollution, and that they were better able to bear stones and swords than expressions of obscenity, they assailed them with such language. This the Arians suggested to the young men, and laughed at all they said and did; while the holy Virgins and other godly women fled from such words as they would from the bite of asps, but the enemies of Christ assisted them in the work, nay even, it may be, gave utterance to the same; for they were well-pleased with the obscenities which the youths vented upon them.
56. The great Church pillaged.
After this, that they might fully execute the orders they had received (for this was what they earnestly desired, and what the Count and the Receiver-General instructed them to do), they seized upon the seats, the throne, and the table which was of wood [1693] , and the curtains [1694] of the Church, and whatever else they were able, and carrying them out burnt them before the doors in the great street, and cast frankincense upon the flame. Alas! who will not weep to hear of these things, and, it may be, close his ears, that he may not have to endure the recital, esteeming it hurtful merely to listen to the account of such enormities? Moreover they sang the praises of their idols, and said, Constantius hath become a heathen, and the Arians have acknowledged our customs;' for indeed they scruple not even to pretend heathenism, if only their heresy may be established. They even were ready to sacrifice a heifer which drew the water for the gardens in the Cæsareum [1695] ; and would have sacrificed it, had it not been a female [1696] ; for they said that it was unlawful for such to be offered among them.
57. Thus acted the impious [1697] Arians in conjunction with the heathens, thinking that these things tended to our dishonour. But Divine justice reproved their iniquity, and wrought a great and remarkable sign, thereby plainly shewing to all men, that as in their acts of impiety they had dared to attack none other but the Lord, so in these proceedings also they were again attempting to do dishonour unto Him. This was more manifestly proved by the marvellous event which now came to pass. One of these licentious youths ran into the Church, and ventured to sit down upon the throne; and as he sat there the wretched man uttered with a nasal sound some lascivious song. Then rising up he attempted to pull away the throne, and to drag it towards him; he knew not that he was drawing down vengeance upon himself. For as of old the inhabitants of Azotus, when they ventured to touch [1698] the Ark, which it was not lawful for them even to look upon, were immediately destroyed by it, being first grievously tormented by emerods; so this unhappy person who presumed to drag the throne, drew it upon himself, and, as if Divine justice had sent the wood to punish him, he struck it into his own bowels; and instead of carrying out the throne, he brought out by his blow his own entrails; so that the throne took away his life, instead of his taking it away. For, as it is [1699] written of Judas, his bowels gushed out; and he fell down and was carried away, and the day after he died. Another also entered the Church with boughs of trees [1700] and, as in the Gentile manner he waved them in his hands and mocked, he was immediately struck with blindness, so as straightway to lose his sight, and to know no longer where he was; but as he was about to fall, he was taken by the hand and supported by his companions out of the place, and when on the following day he was with difficulty brought to his senses, he knew not either what he had done or suffered in consequence of his audacity.
58. General Persecution at Alexandria.
The Gentiles, when they beheld these things, were seized with fear, and ventured on no further outrage; but the Arians were not even yet touched with shame, but, like the Jews when they saw the miracles, were faithless and would not believe, nay, like Pharaoh, they were hardened; they too having placed their hopes below, on the Emperor and his eunuchs. They permitted the Gentiles, or rather the more abandoned of the Gentiles, to act in the manner before described; for they found that Faustinus, who is the Receiver-General by style, but is a vulgar [1701] person in habits, and profligate in heart, was ready to play his part with them in these proceedings, and to stir up the heathen. Nay, they undertook to do the like themselves, that as they had modelled their heresy upon all other heresies together [1702] , so they might share their wickedness with the more depraved of mankind. What they did through the instrumentality of others I described above; the enormities they committed themselves surpass the bounds of all wickedness; and they exceed the malice of any hangman. Where is there a house which they did not ravage? where is there a family they did not plunder on pretence of searching for their opponents? where is there a garden they did not trample under foot? what tomb [1703] did they not open, pretending they were seeking for Athanasius, though their sole object was to plunder and spoil all that came in their way? How many men's houses were sealed up [1704] ! The contents of how many persons' lodgings did they give away to the soldiers who assisted them! Who had not experience of their wickedness? Who that met them but was obliged to hide himself in the market-place? Did not many an one leave his house from fear of them, and pass the night in the desert? Did not many an one, while anxious to preserve his property from them, lose the greater part of it? And who, however inexperienced of the sea, did not choose rather to commit himself to it, and to risk all its dangers, than to witness their threatenings? Many also changed their residences, and removed from street to street, and from the city to the suburbs. And many submitted to severe fines, and when they were unable to pay, borrowed of others, merely that they might escape their machinations.
59. Violence of Sebastianus.
For they made themselves formidable to all men, and treated all with great arrogance, using the name of the Emperor, and threatening them with his displeasure. They had to assist them in their wickedness the Duke Sebastianus, a Manichee, and a profligate young man; the [1705] Prefect, the Count, and the Receiver-General as a dissembler. Many Virgins who condemned their impiety, and professed the truth, they brought out from the houses; others they insulted as they walked along the streets, and caused their heads to be uncovered by their young men. They also gave permission to the females of their party to insult whom they chose; and although the holy and faithful women withdrew on one side, and gave them the way, yet they gathered round them like Bacchanals and Furies [1706] , and esteemed it a misfortune if they found no means to injure them, and spent that day sorrowfully on which they were unable to do them some mischief. In a word, so cruel and bitter were they against all, that all men called them hangmen, murderers, lawless, intruders, evil-doers, and by any other name rather than that of Christians.
60. Martyrdom of Eutychius.
Moreover, imitating the savage practices of Scythians, they seized upon Eutychius a Subdeacon, a man who had served the Church honourably, and causing him to be scourged on the back with a leather whip, till he was at the point of death, they demanded that her should be sent away to the mines; and not simply to any mine, but to that of Phæno [1707] , where even a condemned murderer is hardly able to live a few days. And what was most unreasonable in their conduct, they would not permit him even a few hours to have his wounds dressed, but caused him to be sent off immediately, saying, If this is done, all men will be afraid, and henceforward will be on our side.' After a short interval, however, being unable to accomplish his journey to the mine on account of the pain of his stripes, he died on the way. He perished rejoicing, having obtained the glory of martyrdom. But the miscreants were not even yet ashamed, but in the words of Scripture, having bowels without mercy [1708] ,' they acted accordingly, and now again perpetrated a satanic deed. When the people prayed them to spare Eutychius and besought them for him, they caused four honourable and free citizens to be seized, one of whom was Hermias who washed the beggars' feet [1709] ; and after scourging them very severely, the Duke cast them into the prison. But the Arians, who are more cruel even than Scythians, when they had seen that they did not die from the stripes they had received, complained of the Duke and threatened, saying, We will write and tell the eunuchs [1710] , that he does not flog as we wish.' Hearing this he was afraid, and was obliged to beat the men a second time; and they being beaten, and knowing for what cause they suffered and by whom they had been accused, said only, We are beaten for the sake of the Truth, but we will not hold communion with the heretics: beat us now as thou wilt; God will judge thee for this.' The impious men wished to expose them to danger in the prison, that they might die there; but the people of God observing their time, besought him for them, and after seven days or more they were set at liberty.
61. Ill-treatment of the poor.
But the Arians, as being grieved at this, again devised another yet more cruel and unholy deed; cruel in the eyes of all men, but well suited to their antichristian heresy. The Lord commanded that we should remember the poor; He said, Sell that ye have, and give alms' and again I was a hungred, and ye gave Me meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave Me drink; for inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of these little ones, ye have done it unto Me [1711] .' But these men, as being in truth opposed to Christ, have presumed to act contrary to His will in this respect also. For when the Duke gave up the Churches to the Arians, and the destitute persons and widows were unable to continue any longer in them, the widows sat down in places which the Clergy entrusted with the care of them appointed. And when the Arians saw that the brethren readily ministered unto them and supported them, they persecuted the widows also, beating them on the feet, and accused those who gave to them before the Duke. This was done by means of a certain soldier named Dynamius. And it was well-pleasing to Sebastian [1712] , for there is no mercy in the Manichæans; nay, it is considered a hateful thing among them to shew mercy to a poor man [1713] . Here then was a novel subject of complaint; and a new kind of court now first invented by the Arians. Persons were brought to trial for acts of kindness which they had performed; he who shewed mercy was accused, and he who had received a benefit was beaten; and they wished rather that a poor man should suffer hunger, than that he who was willing to shew mercy should give to him. Such sentiments these modern Jews, for such they are, have learned from the Jews of old, who when they saw him who had been blind from his birth recover his sight, and him who had been a long time sick of the palsy made whole, accused [1714] the Lord who had bestowed these benefits upon them, and judged them to be transgressors who had experienced His goodness [1715] .
62. Ill-treatment of the poor.
Who was not struck with astonishment at these proceedings? Who did not execrate both the heresy, and its defenders? Who failed to perceive that the Arians are indeed more cruel than wild beasts? For they had no prospect of gain [1716] from their iniquity, for the sake of which they might have acted in this manner; but they rather increased the hatred of all men against themselves. They thought by treachery and terror to force certain persons into their heresy, so that they might be brought to communicate with them; but the event turned out quite the contrary. The sufferers endured as martyrdom whatever they inflicted upon them, and neither betrayed nor denied the true faith in Christ. And those who were without and witnessed their conduct, and at last even the heathen, when they saw these things, execrated them as antichristian, as cruel executioners; for human nature is prone to pity and sympathise with the poor. But these men have lost even the common sentiments of humanity; and that kindness which they would have desired to meet with at the hands of others, had themselves been sufferers, they would not permit others to receive, but employed against them the severity and authority of the magistrates, and especially of the Duke.
63. Ill-treatment of the Presbyters and Deacons.
What they have done to the Presbyters and Deacons; how they drove them into banishment under sentence passed upon them by the Duke and the magistrates, causing the soldiers to bring out their kinsfolk from the houses [1717] , and Gorgonius, the commander of the police [1718] to beat them with stripes; and how (most cruel act of all) with much insolence they plundered the loaves [1719] of these and of those who were now dead; these things it is impossible for words to describe, for their cruelty surpasses all the powers of language. What terms could one employ which might seem equal to the subject? What circumstances could one mention first, so that those next recorded would not be found more dreadful, and the next more dreadful still? All their attempts and iniquities [1720] were full of murder and impiety; and so unscrupulous and artful are they, that they endeavour to deceive by promises of protection, and by bribing with money [1721] , that so, since they cannot recommend themselves by fair means, they may thereby make some display to impose on the simple. __________________________________________________________________
[1671] Ap. Const. 22, 24, below, §81.
[1672] §31, &c.
[1673] Is. xxvi. 20.
[1674] kataskopou, ouk episkopos, vid. §45, note 6.
[1675] [a.d. 350, cf. Gibbon Hist. ch. xviii. vol. ii. p. 378.]
[1676] Apol. Ar. 87.
[1677] George had been pork-contractor to the army, and had been detected in peculation. vid. de Syn. 37, note 3.
[1678] Constantine called the Arians by this title after the philosopher Porphyry, the great enemy of Christianity. Socrates has preserved the Edict. Hist. i. 9.
[1679] De Morte Arii 3, &c.
[1680] Encycl. 2; Apol. Ar. 36.
[1681] §7, note 1.
[1682] The amanuensis here appears to speak for himself: but the Benedictines, with great probability, conjecture tote kai for autos te kai.
[1683] Ecclus. vii. 5 [Apol. Const. 2].
[1684] [This may well be taken as a statement of what ought to be; but in view of the history of the fourth century it can only be called a rhetorical exaggeration. See supr. §15, Apol. Ar. 36, ekeleusan, Prolegg. ch. ii. §6 (1) init., and D.C.A. p. 475, with reff. there given.]
[1685] hois an ethelosi, and just before hon an etheloi. [And more strikingly just below, §53 fin. ha thelousi prattei, epei kai autos haper ethelen ekouse par' auton.] This is a very familiar phrase with Athan. i.e. hos ethelesen, haper ethelesan, hotan thelosin, ous ethelesan, &c. &c. Some instances are given supr. Apol. Ar. 2, note 3, and de Syn. 13, note 6.
[1686] Cf. §§31, 63, note 6.
[1687] Encycl. §5.
[1688] [Observe that George has not yet arrived. Heraclius arrived as his precursor' (supr. §48) along with Cataphronius the new Prefect, on June 10, 356; see §55.]
[1689] ton ergasion,--trades, or workmen. vid. supr. Apol. Ar. 15. Montfaucon has a note upon the word in the Collect. Nov. t. 2. p. xxvi. where he corrects his Latin in loc. of the former passage very nearly in conformity to the rendering given of it above, p. 108. In Onomastico monuimus, hic ergasias "officinarum operas" commodius exprimere.' And he quotes an inscription [C.I.G. i. 3924] touto to heroon stephanoi he ergasia ton bapheon.
[1690] [i.e. Thursday, June 13, 356, three days after the arrival of Heraclius and Cataphronius. The church in question was apparently that of Theonas, or the Cæsareum (p. 298). According to Hist. Aceph. the churches were formally handed over to the Arians on June 15, i.e. on the Saturday. The Hist. Aceph. here fits minutely the scattered notices of Athan.: see Prolegg. ch. ii. §8 (1).]
[1691] Catholicus, ib. 10, note 4.
[1692] ton agoraion, vid. Acts xvii. 5. agora has been used just above. vid. Suicer. Thesaur. in voc.
[1693] Vid. Fleury's Church History, xxii. 7. p. 129, note k. [Oxf. tr. 1843.] By specifying the material, Athan. implies that altars were sometimes not of wood. [cf. D.C.A. 61 sq.]
[1694] Curtains were at the entrance, and before the chancel. vid. Bingh. Antiqu. viii. 6. §8. Hofman. Lex. in voc. velum. also Chrysost. Hom. iii. in Eph.
[1695] The royal quarter in Alexandria, vid. Apol. Const. 15. In other Palatia an aqueduct was necessary, e.g. vid. Cod. Theod. xv. 2. even at Daphne, though it abounded in springs, ibid. 1, 2.
[1696] Vid. Herodot. ii. 41. who says that cows and heifers were sacred to Isis. vid. Jablonski Pantheon Æg. i. 1. §15. who says that Isis was worshipped in the shape of a cow, and therefore the cows received divine honours. Yet bulls were sacrificed to Apis, ibid. iv. 2. §9. vid. also Schweighæuser in loc. Herod.
[1697] Vid. note on de Decr. §1. This is a remarkable instance of the special and technical sense of the words, eusebeia, asebountes, &c. being here contrasted with pagan blasphemy, &c.
[1698] 1 Sam. 5, 6.
[1699] Acts i. 18.
[1700] [meta thallon; phallon pro vera lectione probabiliter haberi posse arbitror.' Montf. Coll. Nov. t. ii.]
[1701] agoraion, see §§55, note 11, above.
[1702] Cf. Ep. Æg. 17, and §31, note 8.
[1703] Vid. Socr. Hist. iv. 13.
[1704] Apol. Fug. 6.
[1705] Cf. §55.
[1706] Vid. de Syn. 31, note 4, also Greg. Naz. Orat. 35. 3. Epiph. Hær. 69. 3. Theod. Hist. i. 3. (P. 730. ed. Schulze).
[1707] The mines of Phæno lie almost in a direct line between Petræ and Zoar, which is at the southern extremity of the Dead Sea. They formed the place of punishment of Confessors in the Maximinian Persecution, Euseb. de Mart. Pal. 7, and in the Arian Persecution at Alexandria after Athan. Theod. H. E. iv. 19, p. 996. Phæno was once the seat of a Bishopric, which sent a Bishop to the Councils at Ephesus, the Ecumenical, and the Latrocinium. vid. Reland. Palestine, pp. 951, 952. Montfaucon in loc. Athan. Le Quien. Or. Christ. t. 3. p. 745.
[1708] Prov. xii. 10.
[1709] Ermeian louonta tous anexodous, Inauspicato verterat Hermantius, qui angiportos non pervios lavabat;' Montfaucon, Coll. Nov. t. 2. p. xliii. who translates as above, yet not satisfactorily, especially as there is no article before louonta. Tillemont says, qui avait "quelle charge" dans la police de la ville,' understanding by anexodoi, inclusi sive incarcerati homines;' whereas they are ii qui ana tas exodous in exitibus viarum, stipem cogunt.' Montf. ibid. For the custom of washing the feet vid. Bingh. Antiqu. xii. 4. §10.
[1710] Cf. §38.
[1711] Luke xii. 33; Matt. xxv. 35, 40.
[1712] Cf. §81.
[1713] They would give money, but thought it wrong to give food. Ath. was possibly unaware of this distinction. See Bright, Introd. to Hist. Tracts, p. lxxi. note 7.]
[1714] Joh. ix.; Matt. ix. 3.
[1715] Vid. de Decr. §1.
[1716] Cf. note on Orat. i. §8.
[1717] §59.
[1718] strategou, infr. §81, note.
[1719] tous artous [i.e. their stated allowance: see also Apol. Ar. 18], the word occurs Encycl. 4, Apol. Fug. 6, supr. §§31, 54, in this sense: but Nannius, Hermant, and Tillemont, with some plausibility understand it as a Latin term naturalized, and translate most cruel of all, with much insolence they tore the "limbs" of the dead,' alleging that merely to take away loaves' was not so cruel' as to take away lives,' which the Arians had done [the parallels refute this, apart from linguistic grounds].
[1720] asebemata
[1721] p. 227, note 8, infr. §73. __________________________________________________________________
Part VIII.
Persecution in Egypt.
64. Who would call them even by the name of Gentiles; much less by that of Christians? Would any one regard their habits and feelings as human, and not rather those of wild beasts, seeing their cruel and savage conduct? They are more worthless than public hangmen; more audacious than all other heretics. To the Gentiles they are much inferior, and stand far apart and separate from them [1722] . I have heard from our fathers, and I believe their report to be a faithful one, that long ago, when a persecution arose in the time [1723] of Maximian, the grandfather of Constantius, the Gentiles concealed our brethren the Christians, who were sought after, and frequently suffered the loss of their own substance, and had trial of imprisonment, solely that they might not betray the fugitives. They protected those who fled to them for refuge, as they would have done their own persons, and were determined to run all risks on their behalf. But now these admirable persons, the inventors of a new heresy, act altogether the contrary part; and are distinguished for nothing but their treachery. They have appointed themselves as executioners, and seek to betray all alike, and make those who conceal others the objects of their plots, esteeming equally as their enemy both him that conceals and him that is concealed. So murderous are they; so emulous in their evil-doings of the wickedness of Judas.
65. Martyrdom of Secundus of Barka.
The crimes these men have committed cannot adequately be described. I would only say, that as I write and wish to enumerate all their deeds of iniquity, the thought enters my mind, whether this heresy be not the fourth daughter of the horse-leach [1724] in the Proverbs, since after so many acts of injustice, so many murders, it hath not yet said, It is enough.' No; it still rages, and goes about [1725] seeking after those whom it has not yet discovered, while those whom it has already injured, it is eager to injure anew. After the night attack, after the evils committed in consequence of it, after the persecution brought about by Heraclius, they cease not yet to accuse us falsely before the Emperor (and they are confident that as impious persons they will obtain a hearing), desiring that something more than banishment may be inflicted upon us, and that hereafter those who do not consent to their impieties may be destroyed. Accordingly, being now emboldened in an extreme degree, that most abandoned Secundus [1726] of Pentapolis, and Stephanus [1727] his accomplice, conscious that their heresy was a defence of any injustice they might commit, on discovering a Presbyter at Barka who would not comply with their desires (he was called Secundus, being of the same name, but not of the same faith with the heretic), they kicked him till he died [1728] . While he was thus suffering he imitated the Saint, and said, Let no one avenge my cause before human judges; I have the Lord for my avenger, for whose sake I suffer these things at their hands.' They however were not moved with pity at these words, nor did they feel any awe of the sacred season; for it was during the time of Lent [1729] that they thus kicked the man to death.
66. Persecution the weapon of Arianism.
O new heresy, that hast put on the whole devil in impiety and wicked deeds! For in truth it is but a lately invented evil; and although certain heretofore appear to have adopted its doctrines, yet they concealed them, and were not known to hold them. But Eusebius and Arius, like serpents coming out of their holes, have vomited forth the poison of this impiety; Arius daring to blasphemy openly, and [1730] Eusebius defending his blasphemy. He was not however able to support the heresy, until, as I said before, he found a patron [1731] for it in the Emperor. Our fathers called an Ecumenical Council, when three hundred of them, more or less [1732] , met together and condemned the Arian heresy, and all declared that it was alien and strange to the faith of the Church. Upon this its supporters, perceiving that they were dishonoured, and had now no good ground of argument to insist upon, devised a different method, and attempted to vindicate it by means of external power. And herein one may especially admire the novelty as well as wickedness of their device, and how they go beyond all other heresies. For these support their madness by persuasive arguments calculated to deceive the simple; the Greeks, as the Apostle has said, make their attack with excellency and persuasiveness of speech, and with plausible fallacies; the Jews, leaving the divine Scriptures, now, as the Apostle again has said, contend about fables and endless genealogies [1733] ;' and the Manichees and Valentinians with them, and others, corrupting the divine Scriptures, put forth fables in terms of their own inventions. But the Arians are bolder than them all, and have shewn that the other heresies are but their younger sisters [1734] , whom, as I have said, they surpass in impiety, emulating them all, and especially the Jews in their iniquity. For as the Jews, when they were unable to prove the charges which they pretended to allege against Paul, straightway led him to the chief captain and the governor; so likewise these men, who surpass the Jews in their devices, make use only of the power of the judges; and if any one so much as speaks against them, he is dragged before the Governor or the General.
67. Arianism worse than other heresies, because of Persecution.
The other heresies also, when the very Truth has refuted them on the clearest evidence, are wont to be silent, being simply confounded by their conviction. But this modern and accursed heresy, when it is overthrown by argument, when it is cast down and covered with shame by the very Truth, forthwith endeavours to coerce by violence and stripes and imprisonment those whom it has been unable to persuade by argument, thereby acknowledging itself to be anything rather than godly. For it is the part of true godliness not to compel [1735] , but to persuade, as I said before. Thus our Lord Himself, not as employing force, but as offering to their free choice, has said to all, If any man will follow after Me [1736] ;' and to His disciples, Will ye also go away [1737] ?' This heresy, however, is altogether alien from godliness; and therefore how otherwise should it act, than contrary to our Saviour, seeing also that it has enlisted that enemy of Christ, Constantius, as it were Antichrist himself [1738] , to be its leader in impiety? He for its sake has earnestly endeavoured to emulate Saul in savage cruelty. For when the priests gave victuals to David, Saul commanded, and they were all destroyed, in number three hundred and five [1739] ; and this man, now that all avoid the heresy, and confess a sound faith in the Lord, annuls a Council of full three hundred Bishops, banishes the Bishops themselves, and hinders the people from the practice of piety, and from their prayers to God, preventing their public assemblies. And as Saul overthrew Nob, the city of the priests, so this man, advancing even further in wickedness, has given up the Churches to the impious. And as he honoured Doeg the accuser before the true priests, and persecuted David, giving ear to the Ziphites; so this man prefers heretics to the godly, and still persecutes them that flee from him, giving ear to his own eunuchs, who falsely accuse the orthodox. He does not perceive that whatever he does or writes in behalf of the heresy of the Arians, involves an attack [1740] upon the Saviour.
68. Constantius worse than Saul, Ahab, and Pilate. His past conduct to his own relations.
Ahab himself did not act so cruelly towards the priests of God, as this man has acted towards the Bishops. For he was at least pricked in his conscience, when Naboth had been murdered, and was afraid at the sight [1741] of Elijah, but this man neither reverenced the great Hosius, nor was wearied or pricked in conscience, after banishing so many Bishops; but like another Pharaoh, the more he is afflicted, the more he is hardened, and imagines greater wickedness day by day. And the most extraordinary instance of his iniquity was the following. It happened that when the Bishops were condemned to banishment, certain other persons also received their sentence on charges of murder or sedition or theft, each according to the quality of his offence. These men after a few months he released, on being requested to do so, as Pilate did Barabbas; but the servants of Christ he not only refused to set at liberty, but even sentenced them to more unmerciful punishment in the place of their exile, proving himself an undying evil [1742] ' to them. To the others through congeniality of disposition he became a friend; but to the orthodox he was an enemy on account of their true faith in Christ. Is it not clear to all men from hence, that the Jews of old when they demanded Barabbas, and crucified the Lord, acted but the part which these present enemies of Christ are acting together with Constantius? nay, that he is even more bitter than Pilate. For Pilate, when he perceived [1743] the injustice of the deed, washed his hands; but this man, while he banishes the saints, gnashes his teeth against them more and more.
69. But what wonder is it if, after he has been led into impious errors, he is so cruel towards the Bishops, since the common feelings of humanity could not induce him to spare even his own kindred. His uncles [1744] he slew; his cousins he put out of the way; he commiserated not the sufferings of his father-in-law, though he had married his daughter, or of his kinsmen; but he has ever been a transgressor of his oaths towards all. So likewise he treated his brother in an unholy manner; and now he pretends to build his sepulchre, although he delivered up to the barbarians his betrothed wife Olympias, whom his brother had protected till his death, and had brought up as his intended consort. Moreover he attempted to set aside his wishes, although he boasts to be his heir [1745] ; for so he writes, in terms which any one possessed of but a small measure of sense would be ashamed of. But when I compare his letters, I find that he does not possess common understanding, but that his mind is solely regulated by the suggestions of others, and that he has no mind of his own at all. Now Solomon says, If a ruler hearken to lies, all his servants are wicked [1746] .' This man proves by his actions that he is such an unjust one, and that those about him are wicked.
70. Inconstancy of Constantius.
How then, being such an one, and taking pleasure in such associates, can he ever design anything just or reasonable, entangled as he is in the iniquity of his followers, men who verily bewitch him, or rather who have trampled his brains under their heels? Wherefore he now writes letters [1747] , and then repents that he has written them, and after repenting is again stirred up to anger, and then again laments his fate, and being undetermined what to do, he shews a soul destitute of understanding. Being then of such a character, one must fairly pity him, because that under the semblance and name of freedom he is the slave of those who drag him on to gratify their own impious pleasure. In a word, while through his folly and inconstancy, as the Scripture saith [1748] , he is willing to comply with the desires of others, he has given himself up to condemnation, to be consumed by fire in the future judgment; at once consenting to do whatever they wish, and gratifying them in their designs against the Bishops, and in their exertion of authority over the Churches. For behold, he has now again thrown into disorder all the Churches of Alexandria [1749] and of Egypt and Libya, and has publicly given orders, that the Bishops of the Catholic Church and faith be cast out of their churches, and that they be all given up to the professors of the Arian doctrines [1750] . The General began to carry this order into execution; and straightway Bishops were sent off in chains, and Presbyters and Monks bound with iron, after being almost beaten to death with stripes. Disorder prevails in every place; all Egypt and Libya are in danger, the people being indignant at this unjust command, and seeing in it the preparation for the coming of Antichrist, and beholding their property plundered by others, and given up into the hands of the heretics.
71. This wickedness unprecedented.
When was ever such iniquity heard of? when was such an evil deed ever perpetrated, even in times of persecution? They were heathens who persecuted formerly; but they did not bring their idols into the Churches. Zenobia [1751] , was a Jewess, and a supporter of Paul of Samosata; but she did not give up the Churches to the Jews for Synagogues. This is a new piece of iniquity. It is not simply persecution, but more than persecution, it is a prelude and preparation [1752] for the coming of Antichrist. Even if it be admitted that they invented false charges against Athanasius and the rest of the Bishops whom they banished, yet what is this to their later practices? What charges have they to allege against the whole of Egypt and Libya and Pentapolis [1753] ? For they have begun no longer to lay their plots against individuals, in which case they might be able to frame a lie against them; but they have set upon all in a body, so that if they merely choose to invent accusations against them, they must be condemned. Thus their wickedness has blinded their understanding [1754] ; and they have required, without any reason assigned, that the whole body of the Bishops shall be expelled, and thereby they shew that the charges they framed against Athanasius and the rest of the Bishops whom they banished were false, and invented for no other purpose than to support the accursed heresy of the Arian enemies of Christ. This is now no longer concealed, but has become most manifest to all men. He commanded Athanasius to be expelled out of the city, and gave up the Churches to them. And the Presbyters and Deacons that were with him, who had been appointed by Peter and Alexander, were also expelled and driven into banishment; and the real Arians, who not through any suspicions arising from circumstances, but on account of the heresy had been expelled at first together with Arius himself by the Bishop Alexander,--Secundus in Libya, in Alexandria Euzoius [1755] the Chananæan, Julius, Ammon, Marcus, Irenæus, Zosimus, and Sarapion surnamed Pelycon, and in Libya Sisinnius, and the younger men with him, associates in his impiety; these have obtained possession of the Churches.
72. Banishment of Egyptian Bishops.
And the General Sebastian wrote to the governors and military authorities in every place; and the true Bishops were persecuted, and those who professed impious doctrines were brought in in their stead. They banished Bishops who had grown old in orders, and had been many years in the Episcopate, having been ordained by the Bishop Alexander; Ammonius [1756] , Hermes, Anagamphus, and Marcus, they sent to the Upper Oasis; Muis, Psenosiris, Nilammon, Plenes, Marcus, and Athenodorus to Ammoniaca, with no other intention than that they should perish in their passage through the deserts. They had no pity on them though they were suffering from illness, and indeed proceeded on their journey with so much difficulty on account of their weakness, that they were obliged to be carried in litters, and their sickness was so dangerous that the materials for their burial accompanied them. One of them indeed died, but they would not even permit the body to be given up to his friends for interment. With the same purpose they banished also the Bishop Dracontius to the desert places about Clysma, Philo to Babylon, Adelphius to Psinabla in the Thebais, and the Presbyters Hierax and Dioscorus to Syene. They likewise drove into exile Ammonius, Agathus, Agathodæmon, Apollonius, Eulogius, Apollos, Paphnutius, Gaius, and Flavius, ancient Bishops, as also the Bishops Dioscorus, Ammonius, Heraclides, and Psais; some of whom they gave up to work in the stone-quarries, others they persecuted with an intention to destroy, and many others they plundered. They banished also forty of the laity, with certain virgins whom they had before exposed to the fire [1757] ; beating them so severely with rods taken from palm-trees, that after lingering five days some of them died, and others had recourse to surgical treatment on account of the thorns left in their limbs, from which they suffered torments worse than death [1758] . But what is most dreadful to the mind of any man of sound understanding, though characteristic of these miscreants, is this: When the virgins during the scourging called upon the Name of Christ, they gnashed their teeth against them with increased fury. Nay more, they would not give up the bodies of the dead to their friends for burial, but concealed them that they might appear to be ignorant of the murder. They did not however escape detection; the whole city perceived it, and all men withdrew from them as executioners, as malefactors and robbers. Moreover they overthrew monasteries, and endeavoured to cast monks into the fire; they plundered houses, and breaking into the house of certain free citizens where the Bishop had deposited a treasure, they plundered and took it away. They scourged the widows on the soles of their feet, and hindered them from receiving their alms.
73. Character of Arian nominees.
Such were the iniquities practised by the Arians; and as to their further deeds of impiety, who could hear the account of them without shuddering? They had caused these venerable old men and aged Bishops to be sent into banishment; they now appointed in their stead profligate heathen youths, whom they thought to raise at once to the highest dignity, though they were not even Catechumens [1759] . And others who were accused of bigamy [1760] , and even of worse crimes, they nominated Bishops on account of the wealth and civil power which they possessed, and sent them out as it were from a market, upon their giving them gold. And now more dreadful calamities befel the people. For when they rejected these mercenary dependents of the Arians, so alien from themselves, they were scourged, they were proscribed, they were shut up in prison by the General (who did all this readily, being a Manichee), in order that they might no longer seek after their own Bishops, but be forced to accept those whom they abominated, men who were now guilty of the same mockeries as they had before practised among their idols.
74. The Episcopal appointments of Constantius a mark of Antichrist.
Will not every just person break forth into lamentations at the sight or hearing of these things, at perceiving the arrogance and extreme injustice of these impious men? The righteous lament in the place of the impious [1761] .' After all these things, and now that the impiety has reached such a pitch of audacity, who will any longer venture to call this Costyllius [1762] a Christian, and not rather the image of Antichrist? For what mark of Antichrist is yet wanting? How can he in any way fail to be regarded as that one? or how can the latter fail to be supposed such a one as he is? Did not the Arians and the Gentiles offer those sacrifices in the great Church in the Cæsareum [1763] , and utter their blasphemies against Christ as by His command? And does not the vision of Daniel thus describe [1764] Antichrist; that he shall make war with the saints, and prevail against them, and exceed all that have been before him in evil deeds and shall humble three kings, and speak words against the Most High, and shall think to change times and laws? Now what other person besides Constantius has ever attempted to do these things? He is surely such a one as Antichrist would be. He speaks words against the Most High by supporting this impious heresy: he makes war against the saints by banishing the Bishops; although indeed he exercises this power but for a little while [1765] to his own destruction. Moreover he has surpassed those before him in wickedness, having devised a new mode of persecution; and after he had overthrown three kings, namely Vetranio, Magnentius, and Gallus, he straightway undertook the patronage of impiety; and like a giant [1766] he has dared in his pride to set himself up against the Most High. He has thought to change laws, by transgressing the ordinance of the Lord given us through His Apostles, by altering the customs of the Church, and inventing a new kind of appointments. For he sends from strange places, distant a fifty days' journey [1767] , Bishops attended by soldiers to people unwilling to receive them; and instead of an introduction to the acquaintance of their people, they bring with them threatening messages and letters to the magistrates. Thus he sent Gregory from Cappadocia [1768] to Alexandria; he transferred Germinius from Cyzicus to Sirmium; he removed Cecropius from Laodicea to Nicomedia.
75. Arrival of George at Alexandria, and proceedings of Constantius in Italy.
Again he transferred from Cappadocia to Milan one Auxentius [1769] , an intruder rather than a Christian, whom he commanded to stay there, after he had banished for his piety towards Christ Dionysius the Bishop of the place, a godly man. But this person was as yet even ignorant of the Latin language, and unskilful in everything except impiety. And now one George, a Cappadocian, who was contractor of stores [1770] at Constantinople, and having embezzled all monies that he received, was obliged to fly, he commanded to enter Alexandria with military pomp, and supported by the authority of the General. Next, finding one Epictetus [1771] a novice, a bold young man, he loved him [1772] , perceiving that he was ready for wickedness; and by his means he carries on his designs against those of the Bishops whom he desires to ruin. For he is prepared to do everything that the Emperor wishes; who accordingly availing himself of his assistance, has committed at Rome a strange act, but one truly resembling the malice of Antichrist. Having made preparations in the Palace instead of the Church, and caused some three of his own eunuchs to attend instead of the people, he then compelled three [1773] ill-conditioned spies [1774] (for one cannot call them Bishops), to ordain forsooth as Bishop one Felix [1775] , a man worthy of them, then in the Palace. For the people perceiving the iniquitous proceedings of the heretics would not allow them to enter the Churches [1776] , and withdrew themselves far from them.
76. Tyrannous banishment of Bishops by Constantius.
Now what is yet wanting to make him Antichrist? or what more could Antichrist do at his coming than this man has done? Will he not find when he comes that the way has been already prepared for him by this man easily to deceive the people? Again [1777] , he claims to himself the right of deciding causes, which he refers to the Court instead of the Church, and presides at them in person. And strange it is to say, when he perceives the accusers at a loss, he takes up the accusation himself, so that the injured party may no longer be able to defend himself on account of the violence which he displays. This he did in the proceedings against Athanasius. For when he saw the boldness of the Bishops Paulinus, Lucifer, Eusebius, and Dionysius, and how out of the recantation of Ursacius and Valens [1778] they confuted those who spoke against the Bishop, and advised that Valens and his fellows should no longer be believed, since they had already retracted what they now asserted, he immediately stood up [1779] and said, I am now the accuser of Athanasius; on my account you must believe what these assert.' And then, when they said,--But how can you be an accuser, when the accused person is not present? for if you are his accuser, yet he is not present, and therefore cannot be tried. And the cause is not one that concerns Rome, so that you should be believed as being the Emperor; but it is a matter that concerns a Bishop; for the trial ought to be conducted on equal terms both to the accuser and the accused. And besides, how can you accuse him? for you could not be present to witness the conduct of one who lived at so great a distance from you; and if you speak but what you have heard from these, you ought also to give credit to what he says; but if you will not believe him, while you do believe them, it is plain that they assert these things for your sake, and accuse Athanasius only to gratify you?'--when he heard this, thinking that what they had so truly spoken was an insult to himself, he sent them into banishment; and being exasperated against Athanasius, he wrote in a more savage strain, requiring that he should suffer what has now befallen him, and that the Churches should be given up to the Arians, and that they should be allowed to do whatever they pleased.
77. Constantius the precursor of Antichrist.
Terrible indeed, and worse than terrible are such proceedings; yet conduct suitable to him who assumes the character of Antichrist. Who that beheld him taking the lead of his pretended Bishops, and presiding in Ecclesiastical causes, would not justly exclaim that this was the abomination of desolation [1780] ' spoken of by Daniel? For having put on the profession of Christianity, and entering into the holy places, and standing therein, he lays waste the Churches, transgressing their Canons, and enforcing the observance of his own decrees. Will any one now venture to say that this is a peaceful time with Christians, and not a time of persecution? A persecution indeed, such as never arose before, and such as no one perhaps will again stir up, except the son of lawlessness [1781] ,' do these enemies of Christ exhibit, who already present a picture of him in their own persons. Wherefore it especially behoves us to be sober, lest this heresy which has reached such a height of impudence, and has diffused itself abroad like the poison of an adder [1782] ,' as it is written in the Proverbs, and which teaches doctrines contrary to the Saviour; lest, I say, this be that falling away [1783] ,' after which He shall be revealed, of whom Constantius is surely the forerunner [1784] . Else wherefore is he so mad against the godly? wherefore does he contend for it as his own heresy, and call every one his enemy who will not comply with the madness of Arius, and admit gladly the allegations of the enemies of Christ, and dishonour so many venerable Councils? why did he command that the Churches should be given up to the Arians? was it not that, when that other comes, he may thus find a way to enter into them, and may take to himself him who has prepared those places for him? For the ancient Bishops who were ordained by Alexander, and by his predecessor Achillas, and by Peter before him, have been cast out; and those introduced whom the companions of soldiers nominated; and they nominated only such as promised to adopt their doctrines.
78. Alliance of Meletians with Arians.
This was an easy proposition for the Meletians to comply with; for the greater part, or rather the whole of them, have never had a religious education, nor are they acquainted with the sound faith [1785] ' in Christ, nor do they know at all what Christianity is, or what writings we Christians possess. For having come out, some of them from the worship of idols, and others from the senate, or from the first civil offices, for the sake of the miserable exemption [1786] from duty and for the patronage they gained, and having bribed [1787] the Meletians who preceded them, they have been advanced to this dignity even before they had been under instruction. And even if they pretended to have been such, yet what kind of instruction is to be obtained among the Meletians? But indeed without even pretending to be under instruction, they came at once, and immediately were called Bishops, just as children receive a name. Being then persons of this description, they thought the thing of no great consequence, nor even supposed that piety was different from impiety. Accordingly from being Meletians they readily and speedily became Arians; and if the Emperor should command them to adopt any other profession, they are ready to change again to that also. Their ignorance of true godliness quickly brings them to submit to the prevailing folly, and that which happens to be first taught them. For it is nothing to them to be carried about by every wind [1788] and tempest, so long as they are only exempt from duty, and obtain the patronage of men; nor would they scruple probably to change again [1789] to what they were before, even to become such as they were when they were heathens. Any how, being men of such an easy temper, and considering the Church as a civil senate, and like heathen being idolatrously minded, they put on the honourable name [1790] of the Saviour, under which they polluted the whole of Egypt, by causing so much as the name of the Arian heresy to be known therein. For Egypt has heretofore been the only country, throughout which the profession of the orthodox faith was boldly maintained [1791] ; and therefore these misbelievers have striven to introduce jealousy there also, or rather not they, but the devil who has stirred them up, in order that when his herald Antichrist shall come, he may find that the Churches in Egypt also are his own, and that the Meletians have already been instructed in his principles, and may recognise himself as already formed [1792] in them.
79. Behaviour of the Meletians contrasted with that of the Alexandrian Christians.
Such is the effect of that iniquitous order which was issued by Constantius. On the part of the people there was displayed a ready alacrity to submit to martyrdom, and an increased hatred of this most impious heresy; and yet lamentations for their Churches, and groans burst from all, while they cried unto the Lord, Spare Thy people, O Lord, and give not Thine heritage unto Thine enemies to reproach [1793] ;' but make haste to deliver us out of the hand of the lawless [1794] . For behold, they have not spared Thy servants, but are preparing the way for Antichrist.' For the Meletians will never resist him, nor will they care for the truth, nor will they esteem it an evil thing to deny Christ. They are men who have not approached the word with sincerity; like the chameleon [1795] they assume every various appearance; they are hirelings of any who will make use of them. They make not the truth their aim, but prefer before it their present pleasure; they say only, Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die [1796] .' Such a profession and faithless temper is more worthy of Epicritian [1797] players than of Meletians. But the faithful servants of our Saviour, and the true Bishops who believe with sincerity, and live not for themselves, but for the Lord; these faithfully believing in our Lord Jesus Christ, and knowing, as I said before, that the charges which were alleged against the truth were false, and plainly fabricated for the sake of the Arian heresy (for by the recantation [1798] of Ursacius and Valens they detected the calumnies which were devised against Athanasius, for the purpose of removing him out of the way, and of introducing into the Churches the impieties of the enemies of Christ); these, I say, perceiving all this, as defenders and preachers of the truth, chose rather, and endured to be insulted and driven into banishment, than to subscribe against him, and to hold communion with the Arian madmen. They forgot not the lessons they had taught to others; yea, they know well that great dishonour remains for the traitors, but for them which confess the truth, the kingdom of heaven; and that to the careless and such as fear Constantius will happen no good thing; but for them that endure tribulations here, as sailors reach a quiet haven after a storm, as wrestlers receive a crown after the combat, so these shall obtain great and eternal joy and delight in heaven;--such as Joseph obtained after those tribulations; such as the great Daniel had after his temptations and the manifold conspiracies of the courtiers against him; such as Paul now enjoys, being crowned by the Saviour; such as the people of God everywhere expect. They, seeing these things, were not infirm of purpose, but waxed strong in faith [1799] , and increased in their zeal more and more. Being fully persuaded of the calumnies and impieties of the heretics, they condemn the persecutor, and in heart and mind run together the same course with them that are persecuted, that they also may obtain the crown of Confession.
80. Duty of separating from heretics.
One might say much more against this detestable and antichristian heresy, and might demonstrate by many arguments that the practices of Constantius are a prelude to the coming of Antichrist. But seeing that, as the Prophet [1800] has said, from the feet even to the head there is no reasonableness in it, but it is full of all filthiness and all impiety, so that the very name of it ought to be avoided as a dog's vomit or the poison of serpents; and seeing that Costyllius openly exhibits the image of the adversary [1801] ; in order that our words may not be too many, it will be well to content ourselves with the divine Scripture, and that we all obey the precept which it has given us both in regard to other heresies, and especially respecting this. That precept is as follows; Depart ye, depart ye, go ye out from thence, touch no unclean thing; go ye out of the midst of them, and be ye separate, that bear the vessels of the Lord [1802] .' This may suffice [1803] to instruct us all, so that if any one has been deceived by them, he may go out from them, as out of Sodom, and not return again unto them, lest he suffer the fate of Lot's wife; and if any one has continued from the beginning pure from this impious heresy, he may glory in Christ and say, We have not stretched out our hands to a strange god [1804] ; neither have we worshipped the works of our own hands, nor served the creature [1805] more than Thee, the God that hast created all things through Thy word, the Only-Begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom to Thee the Father together with the same Word in the Holy Spirit be glory and power for ever and ever. Amen.'
81. The Second Protest [1806] .
The people of the Catholic Church in Alexandria, which is under the government of the most Reverend Bishop Athanasius, make this public protest by those whose names are under-written.
We have already protested against the nocturnal assault which was committed upon ourselves and the Lord's house; although in truth there needed no protest in respect to proceedings with which the whole city has been already made acquainted. For the bodies of the slain which were discovered were exposed in public, and the bows and arrows and other arms found in the Lord's house loudly proclaim the iniquity.
But whereas after our Protest already made, the most illustrious Duke Syrianus endeavours to force all men to agree with him, as though no tumult had been made, nor any had perished (wherein is no small proof that these things were not done according to the wishes of the most gracious Emperor Augustus Constantius; for he would not have been so much afraid of the consequences of this transaction, had he acted therein by command); and whereas also, when we went to him, and requested him not to do violence to any, nor to deny what had taken place, he ordered us, being Christians, to be beaten with clubs; thereby again giving proof of the nocturnal assault which has been directed against the Church:--
We therefore make also this present Protest, certain of us being now about to travel to the most religious Emperor Augustus: and we adjure Maximus the Prefect of Egypt, and the Controllers [1807] , in the name of Almighty God, and for the sake of the salvation of the most religious Augustus Constantius, to relate all these things to the piety of Augustus, and to the authority of the most illustrious Prefects [1808] . We adjure also the masters of vessels, to publish these things everywhere, and to carry them to the ears of the most religious Augustus, and to the Prefects and the Magistrates in every place, in order that it may be known that a war has been waged against the Church, and that, in the times of Augustus Constantius, Syrianus has caused virgins and many others to become martyrs.
As it dawned upon the fifth before the Ides of February [1809] , that is to say, the fourteenth of the month Mechir, while we were keeping vigil [1810] in the Lord's house, and engaged in our prayers (for there was to be a communion on the Preparation [1811] ); suddenly about midnight, the most illustrious Duke Syrianus attacked us and the Church with many legions of soldiers [1812] armed with naked swords and javelins and other warlike instruments, and wearing helmets on their heads; and actually while we were praying, and while the lessons were being read, they broke down the doors. And when the doors were burst open by the violence of the multitude, he gave command, and some of them were shooting; others shouting, their arms rattling, and their swords flashing in the light of the lamps; and forthwith virgins were being slain, many men trampled down, and falling over one another as the soldiers came upon them, and several were pierced with arrows and perished. Some of the soldiers also were betaking themselves to plunder, and were stripping the virgins, who were more afraid of being even touched by them than they were of death. The Bishop continued sitting upon his throne, and exhorted all to pray. The Duke led on the attack, having with him Hilarius the notary, whose part in the proceedings was shewn in the sequel. The Bishop was seized, and barely escaped being torn to pieces; and having fallen into a state of insensibility, and appearing as one dead, he disappeared from among them, and has gone we know not whither. They were eager to kill him. And when they saw that many had perished, they gave orders to the soldiers to remove out of sight the bodies of the dead. But the most holy virgins who were left behind were buried in the tombs, having attained the glory of martyrdom in the times of the most religious Constantius. Deacons also were beaten with stripes even in the Lord's house, and were shut up there.
Nor did matters stop even here: for after all this had happened, whosoever pleased broke open any door that he could, and searched, and plundered what was within. They entered even into those places which not even all Christians are allowed to enter. Gorgonius, the commander of the city force [1813] , knows this, for he was present. And no unimportant evidence of the nature of this hostile assault is afforded by the circumstance, that the armour and javelins and swords borne by those who entered were left in the Lord's house. They have been hung up in the Church until this time, that they might not be able to deny it: and although they sent several times Dynamius the soldier [1814] , as well as the Commander [1815] of the city police, desiring to take them away, we would not allow it, until the circumstance was known to all.
Now if an order has been given that we should be persecuted we are all ready to suffer martyrdom. But if it be not by order of Augustus, we desire Maximus the Prefect of Egypt and all the city magistrates to request of him that they may not again be suffered thus to assail us. And we desire also that this our petition may be presented to him, that they may not attempt to bring in hither any other Bishop: for we have resisted unto death [1816] , desiring to have the most Reverend Athanasius, whom God gave us at the beginning, according to the succession of our fathers; whom also the most religious Augustus Constantius himself sent to us with letters and oaths. And we believe that when his Piety is informed of what has taken place, he will be greatly displeased, and will do nothing contrary to his oaths, but will again give orders that our Bishop Athanasius shall remain with us.
To the Consuls to be elected [1817] after the Consulship of the most illustrious Arbæthion and Collianus [1818] , on the seventeenth Mechir [1819] , which is the day before the Ides of February. __________________________________________________________________
[1722] §§20, 29.
[1723] [303 a.d.]
[1724] Prov. xxx. 15.
[1725] perierchetai, 1 Pet. v. 8. supr. §20, and ad Adelph. §2 fin.
[1726] Ep. Æg. 7.
[1727] Cf. Hist. Aceph. ix., de Syn. 12, Thdt. H. E. ii. 28.
[1728] In like manner the party of Dioscorus at the Latrocinium, or Eutychian Council of Ephesus, a.d. 449, kicked to death Flavian, Patriarch of Constantinople.
[1729] Encyc. 4.
[1730] Apol. Ar. 59.
[1731] §45.
[1732] Apol. Ar. 23.
[1733] 1 Tim. i. 4.
[1734] Cf. §31.
[1735] The early theory about persecution seems to have been this,--that that was a bad cause which depended' upon it, but that, when a cause' was good, there was nothing wrong in using force in due subordination' to argument [so Pius IX. in Encycl. Quanta cura,' speaks of the 'officium coercendi sancitis poenis violatores catholicæ religionis]; that there was as little impropriety in the civil magistrate's inducing individuals' by force, when they were incapable of higher motives, as by those secular blessings which follow on Christianity. Our Lord's kingdom was not of this world, that is, it did not depend on this world; but, as subduing, engrossing, and swaying this world, it at times condescended to make use of this world's weapons against itself. The simple question was whether a cause depended on force for its existence.' S. Athanasius declared and the event proved, that Arianism was so dependent. When Emperors ceased to persecute, Arianism ceased to be; it had no life in itself. Again, all cruel persecution, or long continued, or on a large scale, was wrong, as arguing an absence' of moral and rational grounds in the cause' so maintained. Again, there was an evident impropriety' in ecclesiastical functionaries using secular weapons, as there would be in their engaging in a secular pursuit, or forming secular connections; whereas the soldier might as suitably, and should as dutifully, defend religion with the sword, as the scholar with his pen. And further there was an abhorrence of cruelty natural to us, which it was a duty to cherish and maintain. All this being considered, there is no inconsistency in S. Athanasius denouncing persecution, and in Theodosius decreeing that the heretical teachers, who usurped the sacred titles of Bishops or Presbyters,' should be exposed to the heavy penalties of exile and confiscation.' Gibbon, Hist. ch. 27. For a list of passages from the Fathers on the subject, vid. Limborch on the Inquisition, vol. 1. Bellarmin. de Laicis, c. 21, 22, and of authors in favour of persecution, vid. Gerhard de Magistr. Polit. p. 741, &c. [But vide supr., Apol. Fug. 23: persecution is a device of the devil;' see also Socr. vii. 3.]
[1736] Matt. xvi. 24.
[1737] John vi. 67.
[1738] Cf. De Syn. 5, note 10.
[1739] 1 Sam. xxii. 18, LXX.
[1740] Apol. Ar. 23.
[1741] 1 Kings xxi. 20.
[1742] A quotation from Homer, Od. xii. 118.
[1743] Matt. xxvii. 24.
[1744] [See above, p. 134, note 8, and ref. there; also Gibbon, ch. xviii. vol. ii. p. 364 sqq.]
[1745] Cf. §60, note 6.
[1746] Prov. xxix. 12.
[1747] Cf. §51.
[1748] Prov. vii. 22, LXX.
[1749] Apol. Const. 27.
[1750] §54.
[1751] [This is certainly false,' see Encyclop. Brit., art. Palmyra, p. 201, note 4.]
[1752] §67, note 8.
[1753] Cf. §3.
[1754] Wisd. ii. 21.
[1755] Cf. Dep. Ar.
[1756] Cf. Ap. Fug. 7.
[1757] Ap. Fug. 6.
[1758] Ib. 7.
[1759] Vid. Hallier, de Ordin. part 2. i. 1, art. 2.
[1760] digunaiois, not digamois. On the latter, vid. Suicer, Thess. in voc. digamia. Tertull. de Monogam.
[1761] Prov. xxviii. 28, LXX.
[1762] An irregularly formed diminutive, or a quasi diminutive from Constantius, as Agathyllus from Agathocles, Heryllus from Heracles, &c. vid. Matth. Gr. Gramm. §102. ed. 1820. [Curtius, §347]
[1763] Ap. Const. 14, supr. §55.
[1764] Dan. vii. 25.
[1765] Constantius died at 45, having openly apostatized for about six years. Julian died at 32, after a reign of a year and a half. vid. supr. §32. vid. also Bellarmin. de Notis Eccl. 17 and 18.
[1766] Vid. de Decr. §32, note 8, Orat. ii. §32, Naz. Orat. 43, 26. Socr. Hist. v. 10, p. 268.
[1767] Ep. Æg. 7.
[1768] Encycl. 2.
[1769] Cf. de Syn. §§1, 8, and Ep. Æg. 7.
[1770] Cf. supr. §56, note 8.
[1771] Epictetus above, p. 226, is called hupokrites, which Montfaucon translated stage-player.' It is a question whether more than actor' is meant by it, alluding to the mockery of an ordination in which he seems to have taken part. Though an Asiatic apparently by birth, he was made Bishop of Civita Vecchia. We hear of him at the conference between Constantius and Liberius. Theod. H. E. ii. 13. Then he assists in the ordination of Felix. Afterwards he made a martyr of S. Ruffinian by making him run before his carriage; and he ends his historical career by taking a chief part among the Arians at Ariminum. vid. Tillem. t. vi. p. 380. &c. Ughell. Ital. t. 10. p. 56.
[1772] The Greek is 'Epikteton tina...neoteron...egapesen, horon, k. t. l. So in the account of the neaniskos, O de 'Iesous emblepsas auto, egapesen auton. Mark x. 21.
[1773] i.e. to keep up the canonical number; and cf. the case of Novatian, in Euseb. H. E. vi. 43. On the custom, vid. Bingh. Antiqu. ii. 11, §4.
[1774] §48, note 5.
[1775] Cf. Tillemont, Mem. t. 6. p. 778. Bolland. Catal. Pontif. ch. 21. p. 390. [Döllinger, Fables respecting the Popes;' D.C.B. ii. 480. Felix figures in the middle ages as the orthodox rival of the Arian' Liberius.]
[1776] Cf. Theod. Hist. ii. 17.
[1777] §§44, 52.
[1778] Cf. Apol. Ar. 58.
[1779] §33.
[1780] Dan. ix. 27.
[1781] 2 Thess. ii. 8.
[1782] Prov. xxiii. 32.
[1783] 2 Thess. ii. 3.
[1784] De Syn. 5, note 10.
[1785] Cf. Tit. i. 13, ii. 2.
[1786] Cf. Ap. Ar. 56.
[1787] Ib. 59, Ep. Æg. 22.
[1788] Cf. Eph. iv. 14
[1789] Ap. Ar. 59, 63.
[1790] Cf. James ii. 7
[1791] Cf. Apol. Ar. 52.
[1792] Ctr. Gal. iv. 19
[1793] Joel ii. 17.
[1794] anomon, Cf. 2 Thess. ii. 8
[1795] de Decr. 1, note 3.
[1796] 1 Cor. xv. 32.
[1797] Histrionum genus, Montf. [The allusion is obscure. Epicrates was a comedian of the 4th. cent. b.c.]
[1798] Apol. Ar. 58.
[1799] Cf. Rom. iv. 20
[1800] Isa. i. 6.
[1801] Cf. 2 Thess. ii. 4.
[1802] Is. lii. 11.
[1803] [A somewhat characteristic phrase of Athanasius.]
[1804] Ps. xliv. 20.
[1805] Ep. Æg. 13 note 1.
[1806] Of the two Protests referred to supr. §48, the first was omitted by the copyists, as being already contained, as Montfaucon seems to say, in the Apology against the Arians; yet if it be the one to which allusion is made in the beginning of the Protest which follows, it is not found there, nor does it appear what document of a.d. 356 could properly have a place in a set of papers which end with a.d. 350.
[1807] Ap. Ar. 73, note.
[1808] i.e. Prætorian.
[1809] Febr. 9.
[1810] Ap. Const. 25; Ap. Fug. 24.
[1811] Friday vid. Encyc. 4, note 9.
[1812] i.e. more than 5,000, Ap. Fug. 24.
[1813] strategou. There were two strategoi or duumvirs at the head of the police force at Alexandria; they are mentioned in the plural in Euseb. vii. 11, where S. Dionysius speaks of their seizing him. vid. Du Cange, Gloss. Græc. in voc.
[1814] strategou. There were two strategoi or duumvirs at the head of the police force at Alexandria; they are mentioned in the plural in Euseb. vii. 11, where S. Dionysius speaks of their seizing him. vid. Du Cange, Gloss. Græc. in voc.
[1815] ton tes taxeos, supr. §61, stratiotou
[1816] Apol. Ar. 38.
[1817] Since the Consuls came into office on the first of January, and were proclaimed in each city, it is strange that the Alexandrians here speak in February as if ignorant of their names. The phrase, however, is found elsewhere. Thus in this very year the Chron. Aceph. dates Jan. 5 as post Consulatum Arbitionis et Loliani.' And in Socr. Hist. ii. 29, in the instance of the year 351, when there were no Consuls, and in 346, when there was a difference on the subject between the Emperors who were eventually themselves Consuls, the first months are dated in like manner from the Consuls of the foregoing year.
[1818] Lollianus.
[1819] Feb. 12, Leap year; see note below, at the end of Introd. to Letters. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Introduction to Four Discourses Against the Arians.
------------------------
Written Between 356 And 360.
There is no absolutely conclusive evidence as to the date of these Discourses, in fact they would appear from the language of ii. 1 to have been issued at intervals. The best judges, however, are agreed in assigning them to the fruitful period of the third exile.' The Discourses cannot indeed be identified with the lost account of the Arian heresy addressed to certain Egyptian monks (see Introd. to Arian Hist. supra); but the demand for such a treatise may have set Athanasius upon the composition of a more comprehensive refutation of the heresy. It was only at this period (Blasphemy' of Sirmium, 357) that the doctrinal controversy began to emerge from the mass of personalities and intrigues which had encumbered it for the first generation after the great Council; only now that the various parties were beginning to formulate their position; only now that the great mass of Eastern Conservatism' was beginning to see the nature of the issue as between the Nicene doctrine and the essential Arianism of its more resolute opponents. The situation seemed to clear, the time had come for gathering up the issues of the combat and striking a decisive blow. To this situation of affairs the treatise before us exactly corresponds. Characteristic of this period is the anxiety to conciliate and win over the so-called semi-Arians (of the type of Basil of Ancyra) who stumbled at the homoousion, but whose fundamental agreement with Athanasius was daily becoming more clear. Accordingly we find that Athanasius pointedly avoids the famous test word in these Discourses [1820] (with the exception of the fourth: see Orat. i. 20, note 5, 58, note 10: it only occurs i. 9, note 12, but see Orat. iv. 9, 12), and even adopts (not as fully adequate de Syn. 53, but as true so far as it goes), the semi-Arian' formula like in essence' (Or. i. 21, note 8, 20, 26, iii. 26, he does not use the single compound word homoiousios: see further, Introd. to de Synodis). Although, therefore, demonstrative proof is lacking, there is tolerable certainty as to the date of our Discourses. And their purpose is no less manifest: they are a decisive blow of the kind described above, aimed at the very centre of the question, and calculated to sever the abnormal alliance between conservatives who really thought with Athanasius and men like Valens or Eudoxius, whose real convictions, so far as they had any, were Arian. Moreover they gather up all the threads of controversy against Arianism proper, refute its appeal to Scripture, and leave on record for all time the issues of the great doctrinal contest of the fourth century. They have naturally become, as Montfaucon observes, the mine whence subsequent defenders of the Divinity of our Redeemer have drawn their material. There are doubtless arguments which a modern writer would scarcely adopt (e.g. ii. 63, iii. 65 init., &c.), and the repeated labelling of the Arians as madmen (fanatics' in this translation), enemies of Christ, disciples of Satan, &c., &c., is at once tedious and by its very frequency unimpressive (see ii. 43 note 8 for Newman's famous list of animal nicknames). But the serious reader will pass sicco pede over such features, and will appreciate the richness, fulness, and versatility' of the use of Scripture, the steady grasp of certain primary truths, especially of the Divine Unity and of Christ's real or genuine natural and Divine Sonship (i. 15, ii. 2-5, 22, 23, 73, iii. 62), the keen penetration with which Arian objections are analysed (i. 14, 27, 29, ii. 26, iii. 59), Arian imputations disclaimed, Arian statements old and new, the bolder and the more cautious, compared, Arian evasions pointed out, Arian logic traced to its conclusions, and Arianism shewn to be inconsistent, irreverent' (Bright, Introd. p. lxviii.). Above all, we see in these Discourses what strikes us in all the writings of Athanasius from the de Incarnatione to the end, his firm hold of the Soteriological aspect of the question at issue, of its vital importance to the reality of Redemption and Grace, to the reality of the knowledge of God vouchsafed to sinful man in Christ (ii. 69, 70, cf. i. 35, 49, 50, ii. 67, &c., &c). The Theology and Christology of Athanasius is rooted in the idea of Redemption: our fellowship with God, our adoption as sons of God, would be unaccomplished, had not Christ imparted to us what was His Own to give (i. 12, 16, cf. Harnack, Dogmengesch., 2. 205). Among other points of interest we may observe the anticipatory rejection of the later heresies of Macedonius (i. 48, iii. 24), Nestorius (ii. 8 note 3, &c., and the frequent application of theotokos to the B.M.V. iii. 14, 29, &c.), and Eutyches (ii. 10 note 6, &c.), the emphatic vindication of worship as the exclusive prerogative of Divinity (ii. 23, iii. 32, we invoke no creature') and of the unique sinless conception of Christ (iii. 33), lastly the cautious and reasonable discussion (iii. 42 sqq.) of our Saviour's human knowledge.
Although apparently composed at different times (see above) the four Discourses' form a single work. The fourth alone ends with the usual doxology, thus announcing itself as the conclusion of the four-fold treatise. At the same time, the relation of the fourth Discourse to the others is by no means clear. It is largely occupied with a polemic against a heresy at the opposite extreme from Arianism, Monarchianism in one or other of its forms. Newman, in his introductory excursus, expresses the opinion that it consists of a series of fragmentary notes against several heresies, which for some unknown reason came to be incorporated, possibly by Athanasius himself or by his secretaries, in the great anti-Arian Manifesto. Zahn Marcell. pp. 198-208 shews convincingly that the system of Marcellus, either in itself or in its supposed logical consequences, is the main object of criticism all along. If we trace throughout the Discourses the purpose of conciliating the Conservative' and Semi-Arian party, we can well understand that Athanasius may have appended to them a section directed against Monarchianism, which, in the persons of Marcellus and Photinus (whose names, however, are characteristically absent), must have been felt by him to be a legitimate stumbling-block in their path toward peace. At any rate the fourth oration has always been associated with the others as forming part of one work.
There is, however, some confusion in early citations, in mss., and in early editions as to the number of Orations' against the Arians. The confusion is due to the frequent practice of reckoning the Ep. Æg. as the first (or in one or two cases as the fourth; the Basel ms. counts de Incar. c. Ar. as the fifth, and our fourth as the sixth). Montfaucon (Monitum Migne xxvi. p. 10) ascribes this to the arrangement in many mss. by which the Ep. Æg. comes immediately before the Orations.' Being itself directed against the Arians it has come to be labelled logos protos
The title Orations' is consecrated by long use, and cannot be displaced, but it is unfortunate as implying, to our ears, oratorical delivery, for which the Discourses were never meant. The original Greek term (logos) is common to these Discourses with the c. Gentes, de Incarnatione, &c., &c.
A full analysis of these Discourses is given by Bishop Kaye (Council of Nicæa, in Works,' vol. v.); his strictures on Newman's notes are occasionally very just. The Discourses are more concisely analysed by Ceillier (vol. v., pp. 218, sqq.) See also Dorner, Doctr. of Person of Christ, Part I., Div. 3, i. 3. The headings of Newman, prefixed to the chapters,' will supply the place of an analysis for readers of this volume.
The translation which follows is that of Cardinal Newman, published in 1844 (the year before his secession), in the Oxford Library of the Fathers.' The copious and elaborate notes and discussions which accompany it have always been acknowledged to be a masterpiece of their illustrious author. The modern reader sits down to study Athanasius, and rises from his task filled with Newman. Like all the work of Newman included in this volume, translation and notes alike have been touched by the present editor with a reverent and a sparing hand. The translation, which shews great care and fidelity, coupled with remarkable ingenuity and close study of characteristic phrases and idioms, has been, with two main exceptions, but little altered. These exceptions are (1) the substitution throughout of essence' for substance,' (2) an attempt to remedy the most unfortunate, though not unconsidered, confusion of gennetos and genetos under the single rendering generate.' A good rendering for the latter word and its cognates is indeed not easy to find (see above, p. 149); but it was felt impossible, even in deference to so great a name, after the note in Lightfoot's Ignatius, to leave the matter as it stood.
With regard to the notes, the historical matter and the abundant cross references have been thoroughly overhauled and in some cases modified without indication of the change. Moreover, some theological notes of minor importance have been expunged to economise space, while for the same reason, mere references have in many cases been reluctantly substituted for the extensive patristic quotations. The notes to Orat. iv., which are less important theologically, have been very much curtailed. With these exceptions, all doctrinal notes proper have been left exactly as they first appeared, even where they maintain views which appear untenable: any additions or explanations by the present editor are enclosed in square brackets, which also in a very few cases denote additional or corrected references made under Dr. Pusey's authority in the reprint of 1877.
It is necessary to apologise to the reader for the hesitation which has been felt in touching, even to this slight extent, the work of John Henry Newman. The only apology which the editor of this volume cares to offer is for having done the little that seemed absolutely needed.
It may be added that the Cardinal published in 1881 (4th ed., 1888) a free translation' of the first three Discourses, based upon the Oxford translation, but of a totally different kind, amounting to a somewhat highly condensed paraphrase of the original in the luminous English of the Cardinal himself, rather than bound, as the older translation is, to the style of Athanasius. The new rendering includes the de Decretis and the de Synodis; almost all the notes are in a second volume.
The most convenient edition of the Greek text is that of Dr. Bright (Oxford, 1872), with an Introduction on the Life and Writings of Athanasius (rewritten for D.C.B., vol. i., pp. 179 sqq.).
Table of Contents of the Four Discourses.
The following Table of Contents of Orat. i-iii. (the contents of Orat. iv. will be tabulated at the end of Exc. C.) must be supplemented by the fuller headings prefixed to Newman's chapters.'
Orat. i. 1-4. Introductory.
i. 5-7. a. The Arian doctrine as represented in the Thalia.'
i. 8-10. b. Significance of the Controversy.
General Subject of the Discourses: The Sonship of Christ.
i. 11-13. The Divine Sonship: (1) Eternal
i. 14-16. (2) Though real, not like earthly Sonship.
i. 17-21. (3) The true Sonship.
i. 22-29. Objections to the above discussed.
i. 30-34. (4) On the term agenetos
i. 35, 36. (5) On the unchangeableness of the Son.
Orat. i. 37-iii. 58. (6) Discussion of controverted texts.
i. 37-64. Texts bearing on the exaltation of the Son (viz. Phil. ii. 9; Ps. xlv. 7, 8; Heb. i. 4).
(Excursus B. On the Arian formula prin gennethenai ouk en.)
ii. 1-82. b. Texts bearing on the creation' of the Son (viz. Heb. iii. 2; Acts ii. 36; Prov. viii. 22; the latter occupying §§18-82).
iii. 1-25. g. Texts from the Fourth Gospel on the relation of the Son to the Father.
iii. 26-58. d. Texts bearing more directly on the Incarnation (Matt. xxviii. 18; Joh. iii. 35; Mark xiii. 32, Luke ii. 52, human knowledge, &c., of Christ, §§42-53; Matt. xxvi. 39, &c.).
iii. 58-67. (7) The Divine Sonship in relation to the Divine Will. __________________________________________________________________
[1820] Not that he was willing to suppress the term and surrender the Nicene cause, far from it; but he sees the relative importance of things and words. This shews the absurdity of the taunt, that the Nicene theologians fought ferociously over a single iota.' __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Four Discourses Against the Arians.
Discourse I.
------------------------
Chapter I.--Introduction. Reason for writing; certain persons indifferent about Arianism; Arians not Christians, because sectaries always take the name of their founder.
1. Of all other heresies which have departed from the truth it is acknowledged that they have but devised [1821] a madness, and their irreligiousness has long since become notorious to all men. For that [1822] their authors went out from us, it plainly follows, as the blessed John has written, that they never thought nor now think with us. Wherefore, as saith the Saviour, in that they gather not with us, they scatter with the devil, and keep an eye on those who slumber, that, by this second sowing of their own mortal poison, they may have companions in death. But, whereas one heresy, and that the last, which has now risen as harbinger [1823] of Antichrist, the Arian, as it is called, considering that other heresies, her elder sisters, have been openly proscribed, in her craft and cunning, affects to array herself in Scripture language [1824] , like her father the devil, and is forcing her way back into the Church's paradise,--that with the pretence of Christianity, her smooth sophistry (for reason she has none) may deceive men into wrong thoughts of Christ,--nay, since she has already seduced certain of the foolish, not only to corrupt their ears, but even to take and eat with Eve, till in their ignorance which ensues they think bitter sweet, and admire this loathsome heresy, on this account I have thought it necessary, at your request, to unrip the folds of its breast-plate [1825] ,' and to shew the ill savour of its folly. So while those who are far from it may continue to shun it, those whom it has deceived may repent; and, opening the eyes of their heart, may understand that darkness is not light, nor falsehood truth, nor Arianism good; nay, that those [1826] who call these men Christians are in great and grievous error, as neither having studied Scripture, nor understanding Christianity at all, and the faith which it contains.
2. For what have they discovered in this heresy like to the religious Faith, that they vainly talk as if its supporters said no evil? This in truth is to call even Caiaphas [1827] a Christian, and to reckon the traitor Judas still among the Apostles, and to say that they who asked Barabbas instead of the Saviour did no evil, and to recommend Hymenæus and Alexander as right-minded men, and as if the Apostle slandered them. But neither can a Christian bear to hear this, nor can he consider the man who dared to say it sane in his understanding. For with them for Christ is Arius, as with the Manichees Manichæus; and for Moses and the other saints they have made the discovery of one Sotades [1828] , a man whom even Gentiles laugh at, and of the daughter of Herodias. For of the one has Arius imitated the dissolute and effeminate tone, in writing Thaliæ on his model; and the other he has rivalled in her dance, reeling and frolicking in his blasphemies against the Saviour; till the victims of his heresy lose their wits and go foolish, and change the Name of the Lord of glory into the likeness of the image of corruptible man [1829] ,' and for Christians come to be called Arians, bearing this badge of their irreligion. For let them not excuse themselves; nor retort their disgrace on those who are not as they, calling Christians after the names of their teachers [1830] , that they themselves may appear to have that Name in the same way. Nor let them make a jest of it, when they feel shame at their disgraceful appellation; rather, if they be ashamed, let them hide their faces, or let them recoil from their own irreligion. For never at any time did Christian people take their title from the Bishops among them, but from the Lord, on whom we rest our faith. Thus, though the blessed Apostles have become our teachers, and have ministered the Saviour's Gospel, yet not from them have we our title, but from Christ we are and are named Christians. But for those who derive the faith which they profess from others, good reason is it they should bear their name, whose property they have become [1831] .
3. Yes surely; while all of us are and are called Christians after Christ, Marcion broached a heresy a long time since and was cast out; and those who continued with him who ejected him remained Christians; but those who followed Marcion were called Christians no more, but henceforth Marcionites. Thus Valentinus also, and Basilides, and Manichæus, and Simon Magus, have imparted their own name to their followers; and some are accosted as Valentinians, or as Basilidians, or as Manichees, or as Simonians; and other, Cataphrygians from Phrygia, and from Novatus Novatians. So too Meletius, when ejected by Peter the Bishop and Martyr, called his party no longer Christians, but Meletians [1832] , and so in consequence when Alexander of blessed memory had cast out Arius, those who remained with Alexander, remained Christians; but those who went out with Arius, left the Saviour's Name to us who were with Alexander, and as to them they were hence-forward denominated Arians. Behold then, after Alexander's death too, those who communicate with his successor Athanasius, and those with whom the said Athanasius communicates, are instances of the same rule; none of them bear his name, nor is he named from them, but all in like manner, and as is usual, are called Christians. For though we have a succession of teachers and become their disciples, yet, because we are taught by them the things of Christ, we both are, and are called, Christians all the same. But those who follow the heretics, though they have innumerable successors in their heresy, yet anyhow bear the name of him who devised it. Thus, though Arius be dead, and many of his party have succeeded him, yet those who think with him, as being known from Arius, are called Arians. And, what is a remarkable evidence of this, those of the Greeks who even at this time come into the Church, on giving up the superstition of idols, take the name, not of their catechists, but of the Saviour, and begin to be called Christians instead of Greeks: while those of them who go off to the heretics, and again all who from the Church change to this heresy, abandon Christ's name, and henceforth are called Arians, as no longer holding Christ's faith, but having inherited Arius's madness.
4. How then can they be Christians, who for Christians are Ario-maniacs [1833] ? or how are they of the Catholic Church, who have shaken off the Apostolical faith, and become authors of fresh evils? who, after abandoning the oracles of divine Scripture, call Arius's Thaliæ a new wisdom? and with reason too, for they are announcing a new heresy. And hence a man may marvel, that, whereas many have written many treatises and abundant homilies upon the Old Testament and the New, yet in none of them is a Thalia found; nay nor among the more respectable of the Gentiles, but among those only who sing such strains over their cups, amid cheers and jokes, when men are merry, that the rest may laugh; till this marvellous Arius, taking no grave pattern, and ignorant even of what is respectable, while he stole largely from other heresies, would be original in the ludicrous, with none but Sotades for his rival. For what beseemed him more, when he would dance forth against the Saviour, than to throw his wretched words of irreligion into dissolute and loose metres? that, while a man,' as Wisdom says, is known from the utterance of his word [1834] ,' so from those numbers should be seen the writer's effeminate soul and corruption of thought [1835] . In truth, that crafty one did not escape detection; but, for all his many writhings to and fro, like the serpent, he did but fall into the error of the Pharisees. They, that they might transgress the Law, pretended to be anxious for the words of the Law, and that they might deny the expected and then present Lord, were hypocritical with God's name, and were convicted of blaspheming when they said, Why dost Thou, being a man, make Thyself God,' and sayest, I and the Father are one [1836] ?' And so too, this counterfeit and Sotadean Arius, feigns to speak of God, introducing Scripture language [1837] , but is on all sides recognised as godless [1838] Arius, denying the Son, and reckoning Him among the creatures. __________________________________________________________________
[1821] epinoesasai. This is almost a technical word, and has occurred again and again already, as descriptive of heretical teaching in opposition to the received traditionary doctrine. It is also found passim in other writers. Thus Socrates, speaking of the decree of the Council of Alexandria, 362, against Apollinaris; for not originating, epinoesantes, any novel devotion, did they introduce it into the Church, but what from the beginning the Ecclesiastical Tradition declared.' Hist. iii. 7. The sense of the word epinoia which will come into consideration below, is akin to this, being the view taken by the mind of an object independent of (whether or not correspondent to) the object itself. [But see Bigg. B. L. p. 168, sq.]
[1822] to gar exelthein...delon an eie, i.e. to and so infr. §43. to de kai proskuneisthai...delon an eie.
[1823] de Syn. 5.
[1824] Vid. infr. §4 fin. That heresies before the Arian appealed to Scripture we learn from Tertullian, de Præscr. 42, who warns Catholics against indulging themselves in their own view of isolated texts against the voice of the Catholic Church. vid. also Vincentius, who specifies obiter Sabellius and Novation. Commonit. 2. Still Arianism was contrasted with other heresies on this point, as in these two respects; (1.) they appealed to a secret tradition, unknown even to most of the Apostles, as the Gnostics, Iren. Hær. iii. 1 or they professed a gift of prophecy introducing fresh revelations, as Montanists, de Syn. 4, and Manichees, Aug. contr. Faust. xxxii. 6. (2.) The Arians availed themselves of certain texts as objections, argued keenly and plausibly from them, and would not be driven from them. Orat. ii. §18. c. Epiph. Hær. 69. 15. Or rather they took some words of Scripture, and made their own deductions from them; viz. Son,' made,' exalted,' &c. Making their private irreligiousness as if a rule, they misinterpret all the divine oracles by it.' Orat. i. §52. vid. also Epiph. Hær. 76. 5 fin. Hence we hear so much of their thrulletai phonai, lexeis, epe, rheta, sayings in general circulation, which were commonly founded on some particular text. e.g. infr., §22, amply providing themselves with words of craft, they used to go about,' &c. Also ano kai kato peripherontes, de Decr. §13. to rh& 208;to tethrullekasi ta pantachou. Orat. 2. §18. to poluthrulleton sophisma, Basil. contr. Eunom. ii. 14. ten poluthrulleton dialektiken, Nyssen. contr. Eun. iii. p. 125. ten thrulloumenen apor& 191;oen, Cyril. Dial. iv. p. 505. ten poluthrulleton phonen, Socr. ii. 43.
[1825] Job xli. 13 (v. 4. LXX).
[1826] These Orations and Discourses seem written to shew the vital importance of the point in controversy, and the unchristian character of the heresy, without reference to the word homoousion. He has [elsewhere] insisted that the enforcement of the symbol was but the rejection of the heresy, and accordingly he is here content to bring out the Catholic sense, as feeling that, if persons understood and embraced it, they would not scruple at the word. He seems to allude to what may be called the liberal or indifferent feeling as swaying the person for whom he writes, also infr. §7 fin. §9. §10 init. §15 fin. §17. §21. §23. He mentions in Apollin. i. 6. one Rhetorius, who was an Egyptian, whose opinion, he says, it was fearful to mention.' S. Augustine tells us that this man taught that all heresies were in the right path, and spoke truth,' which,' he adds, is so absurd as to seem to me incredible.' Hær 72. vid. also Philastr. Hær. 91.
[1827] de Decr. §§2, 24, 27.
[1828] de Syn. §1.
[1829] Vid. Hil. de Trin. viii. 28; Rom. i. 25.
[1830] He seems to allude to Catholics being called Athanasians; vid. however next §. Two distinctions are drawn between such a title as applied to Catholics, and again to heretics, when they are taken by Catholics as a note against them. S. Augustine says, Arians call Catholics Athanasians or Homoüsians, not other heretics too. But ye not only by Catholics but also by heretics, those who agree with you and those who disagree, are called Pelagians; as even by heresies are Arians called Arians. But ye, and ye only, call us Traducianists, as Arians call us Homoüsians, as Donatists Macarians, as Manichees Pharisees, and as the other heretics use various titles.' Op. imp. i. 75. It may be added that the heretical name adheres, the Catholic dies away. S. Chrysostom draws a second distinction, Are we divided from the Church? have we heresiarchs? are we called from man? is there any leader to us, as to one there is Marcion, to another Manichæus, to another Arius, to another some other author of heresy? for if we too have the name of any, still it is not those who began the heresy, but our superiors and governors of the Church. We have not "teachers upon earth,"' &c. in Act. Ap. Hom. 33 fin.
[1831] Vid. foregoing note. Also, Let us become His disciples, and learn to live according to Christianity; for whoso is called by other name besides this, is not of God.' Ignat. ad Magn. 10. Hegesippus speaks of Menandrians, and Marcionites, and Carpocratians, and Valentinians, and Basilidians, and Saturnilians,' who each in his own way and that a different one brought in his own doctrine.' Euseb. Hist. iv. 22. There are, and there have been, my friends, many who have taught atheistic and blasphemous words and deeds, coming in the name of Jesus; and they are called by us from the appellation of the men, whence each doctrine and opinion began....Some are called Marcians, others Valentinians, others Basilidians, others Saturnilians,' &c. Justin. Tryph. 35. Iren. Hær. i. 23. When men are called Phrygians, or Novatians, or Valentinians, or Marcionites, or Anthropians, or by any other name, they cease to be Christians; for they have lost Christ's Name, and clothe themselves in human and foreign titles.' Lact. Inst. iv. 30. A. How are you a Christian, to whom it is not even granted to bear the name of Christian? for you are not called Christian but Marcionite. M. And you are called of the Catholic Church; therefore ye are not Christians either. A. Did we profess man's name, you would have spoken to the point; but if we are called from being all over the world, what is there bad in this?' Adamant. Dial. §1, p. 809. Epiph. Hær. 42. p. 366. ibid. 70. 15. vid. also Hær. 75. 6 fin. Cyril Cat. xviii. 26. Christian is my name, Catholic my surname.' Pacian. Ep. 1. If you ever hear those who are called Christians, named, not from the Lord Jesus Christ, but from some one else, say Marcionites, Valentinians, Mountaineers, Campestrians, know that it is not Christ's Church, but the synagogue of Antichrist.' Jerom. adv. Lucif. fin.
[1832] Vid. de Syn. 12. [Prolegg. ch. ii. §2.]
[1833] de Syn. 13, note 4. Manes also was called mad; Thou must hate all heretics, but especially him who even in name is a maniac.' Cyril. Catech. vi. 20, vid. also ibid. 24 fin.--a play upon the name, vid. de Syn. 26, Scotinus.'
[1834] Vid. Ecclus. iv. 24.
[1835] It is very difficult to gain a clear idea of the character of Arius. [Prolegg. ch. ii. §2.] Epiphanius's account of Arius is as follows:--From elation of mind the old man swerved from the mark. He was in stature very tall, downcast in visage, with manners like wily serpent, captivating to every guileless heart by that same crafty bearing. For ever habited in cloke and vest, he was pleasant of address, ever persuading souls and flattering; wherefore what was his very first work but to withdraw from the Church in one body as many as seven hundred women who professed virginity.?' Hær. 69. 3, cf. ib. §9 for a strange description of Arius attributed to Constantine, also printed in the collections of councils: Hard. i. 457.
[1836] John x. 30.
[1837] §1, note 4.
[1838] And so godless or atheist Aetius, de Syn. 6, note 3, cf. note on de Decr. 1, for an explanation of the word. In like manner Athan. says, ad Serap. iii. 2, that if a man says that the Son is a creature, who is word and Wisdom, and the Expression, and the Radiance, whom whoso seeth seeth the Father,' he falls under the text, Whoso denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father.' Such a one,' he continues, will in no long time say, as the fool, There is no God.' In like manner he speaks of those who think the Son to be the Spirit as without (exo) the Holy Trinity, and atheists' (Serap. iv. 6), because they really do not believe in the God that is, and there is none other but He. Cf. also Serap. i. 30. Eustathius speaks of the Arians as anthropous atheous, who were attempting kratesai tou theiou. ap. Theod. Hist. i. 7. p. 760. Naz. speaks of the heathen polutheos atheia. Orat. 25. 15. and he calls faith and regeneration a denial of atheism, atheias, and a confession of godhead, theotetos,' Orat. 23. 12. He calls Lucius, the Alexandrian Anti-pope, on account of his cruelties, this second Arius, the more copious river of the atheistic spring, tes atheou peges.' Orat. 25. 11. Palladius, the Imperial officer, is aner atheos. ibid. 12. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter II.--Extracts from the Thalia of Arius. Arius maintains that God became a Father, and the Son was not always; the Son out of nothing; once He was not; He was not before his generation; He was created; named Wisdom and Word after God's attributes; made that He might make us; one out of many powers of God; alterable; exalted on God's foreknowledge of what He was to be; not very God; but called so as others by participation; foreign in essence from the Father; does not know or see the Father; does not know Himself.
5. Now the commencement of Arius's Thalia and flippancy, effeminate in tune and nature, runs thus:--
According to faith of God's elect, God's prudent ones,
Holy children, rightly dividing, God's Holy Spirit receiving,
Have I learned this from the partakers of wisdom,
Accomplished, divinely taught, and wise in all things.
Along their track, have I been walking, with like opinions.
I the very famous, the much suffering for God's glory;
And taught of God, I have acquired wisdom and knowledge.'
And the mockeries which he utters in it, repulsive and most irreligious, are such as these [1839] :--God was not always a Father;' but once God was alone, and not yet a Father, but afterwards He became a Father.' The Son was not always;' for, whereas all things were made out of nothing, and all existing creatures and works were made, so the Word of God Himself was made out of nothing,' and once He was not,' and He was not before His origination,' but He as others had an origin of creation.' For God,' he says, was alone, and the Word as yet was not, nor the Wisdom. Then, wishing to form us, thereupon He made a certain one, and named Him Word and Wisdom and Son, that He might form us by means of Him.' Accordingly, he says that there are two wisdoms, first, the attribute co-existent with God, and next, that in this wisdom the Son was originated, and was only named Wisdom and Word as partaking of it. For Wisdom,' saith he, by the will of the wise God, had its existence in Wisdom.' In like manner, he says, that there is another Word in God besides the Son, and that the Son again, as partaking of it, is named Word and Son according to grace. And this too is an idea proper to their heresy, as shewn in other works of theirs, that there are many powers; one of which is God's own by nature and eternal; but that Christ, on the other hand, is not the true power of God; but, as others, one of the so-called powers, one of which, namely, the locust and the caterpillar [1840] , is called in Scripture, not merely the power, but the great power.' The others are many and are like the Son, and of them David speaks in the Psalms, when he says, The Lord of hosts' or powers [1841] .' And by nature, as all others, so the Word Himself is alterable, and remains good by His own free will, while He chooseth; when, however, He wills, He can alter as we can, as being of an alterable nature. For therefore,' saith he, as foreknowing that He would be good, did God by anticipation bestow on Him this glory, which afterwards, as man, He attained from virtue. Thus in consequence of His works fore-known [1842] , did God bring it to pass that He being such, should come to be.'
6. Moreover he has dared to say, that the Word is not the very God;' though He is called God, yet He is not very God,' but by participation of grace, He, as others, is God only in name.' And, whereas all beings are foreign and different from God in essence, so too is the Word alien and unlike in all things to the Father's essence and propriety,' but belongs to things originated and created, and is one of these. Afterwards, as though he had succeeded to the devil's recklessness, he has stated in his Thalia, that even to the Son the Father is invisible,' and the Word cannot perfectly and exactly either see or know His own Father;' but even what He knows and what He sees, He knows and sees in proportion to His own measure,' as we also know according to our own power. For the Son, too, he says, not only knows not the Father exactly, for He fails in comprehension [1843] , but He knows not even His own essence;'--and that the essences of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, are separate in nature, and estranged, and disconnected, and alien [1844] , and without participation of each other [1845] ;' and, in his own words, utterly unlike from each other in essence and glory, unto infinity.' Thus as to likeness of glory and essence,' he says that the Word is entirely diverse from both the Father and the Holy Ghost. With such words hath the irreligious spoken; maintaining that the Son is distinct by Himself, and in no respect partaker of the Father. These are portions of Arius's fables as they occur in that jocose composition.
7. Who is there that hears all this, nay, the tune of the Thalia, but must hate, and justly hate, this Arius jesting on such matters as on a stage [1846] ? who but must regard him, when he pretends to name God and speak of God, but as the serpent counselling the woman? who, on reading what follows in his work, but must discern in his irreligious doctrine that error, into which by his sophistries the serpent in the sequel seduced the woman? who at such blasphemies is not transported? The heaven,' as the Prophet says, was astonished, and the earth shuddered [1847] ' at the transgression of the Law. But the sun, with greater horror, impatient of the bodily contumelies, which the common Lord of all voluntarily endured for us, turned away, and recalling his rays made that day sunless. And shall not all human kind at Arius's blasphemies be struck speechless, and stop their ears, and shut their eyes, to escape hearing them or seeing their author? Rather, will not the Lord Himself have reason to denounce men so irreligious, nay, so unthankful, in the words which He has already uttered by the prophet Hosea, Woe unto them, for they have fled from Me; destruction upon them, for they have transgressed against Me; though I have redeemed them, yet they have spoken lies against Me [1848] .' And soon after, They imagine mischief against Me; they turn away to nothing [1849] .' For to turn away from the Word of God, which is, and to fashion to themselves one that is not, is to fall to what is nothing. For this was why the Ecumenical [1850] Council, when Arius thus spoke, cast him from the Church, and anathematized him, as impatient of such irreligion. And ever since has Arius's error been reckoned for a heresy more than ordinary, being known as Christ's foe, and harbinger [1851] of Antichrist. Though then so great a condemnation be itself of special weight to make men flee from that irreligious heresy [1852] , as I said above, yet since certain persons called Christian, either in ignorance or pretence, think it, as I then said, little different from the Truth, and call its professors Christians; proceed we to put some questions to them, according to our powers, thereby to expose the unscrupulousness of the heresy. Perhaps, when thus caught, they will be silenced, and flee from it, as from the sight of a serpent. __________________________________________________________________
[1839] de Syn. §15. [where the metre of the Thalia is discussed in a note.]
[1840] de Syn. §18; Joel ii. 25.
[1841] Ps. xxiv. 10.
[1842] de Syn. 26, note 7, de Decr. 6, note 8.
[1843] Vid. de Syn. 15, note 6. katalepsis was originally a Stoic word, and even when considered perfect, was, properly speaking, attributable only to an imperfect being. For it is used in contrast to the Platonic doctrine of ideai, to express the hold of things obtained by the mind through the senses; it being a Stoical maxim, nihil esse in intellectu quod non fuerit in sensu. In this sense it is also used by the Fathers, to mean real and certain knowledge after inquiry, though it is also ascribed to Almighty God. As to the position of Arius, since we are told in Scripture that none knoweth the things of a man save the spirit of man which is in him,' if katalepsis be an exact and complete knowledge of the object of contemplation, to deny that the Son comprehended the Father, was to deny that He was in the Father, i.e. the doctrine of the perichoresis, de Syn. 15, anepimiktoi, or to maintain that He was a distinct, and therefore a created, being. On the other hand Scripture asserts that, as the Holy Spirit which is in God, searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God,' so the Son, as being in the bosom of the Father,' alone hath declared Him.' vid. Clement. Strom. v. 12. And thus Athan. speaking of Mark xiii. 32, 'If the Son is in the Father and the Father in the Son, and the Father knows the day and the hour, it is plain that the Son too, being in the Father, and knowing the things in the Father, Himself also knows the day and the hour." Orat. iii. 44.
[1844] de Decr. 25, note 2.
[1845] de Syn. 15.
[1846] Ep. Encycl. 6; Epiph. Hær. 73. 1.
[1847] Jer. ii. 12.
[1848] Hos. vii. 13.
[1849] Ib. 15. lxx.
[1850] de Decr. 27, note 1.
[1851] Ib. 3, note 1, §1, note 3.
[1852] And so Vigilius of the heresies about the Incarnation, Etiamsi in erroris eorum destructionem nulli conderentur libri, hoc ipsum solum, quod hæretici sunt pronunciati, orthodoxorum securitati sufficeret. contr. Eutych. i. p. 494. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter III.--The Importance of the Subject. The Arians affect Scripture language, but their doctrine new, as well as unscriptural. Statement of the Catholic doctrine, that the Son is proper to the Father's substance, and eternal. Restatement of Arianism in contrast, that He is a creature with a beginning: the controversy comes to this issue, whether one whom we are to believe in as God, can be so in name only, and is merely a creature. What pretence then for being indifferent in the controversy? The Arians rely on state patronage, and dare not avow their tenets.
8. If then the use of certain phrases of divine Scripture changes, in their opinion, the blasphemy of the Thalia into reverent language, of course they ought also to deny Christ with the present Jews, when they see how they study the Law and the Prophets; perhaps too they will deny the Law [1853] and the Prophets like Manichees [1854] , because the latter read some portions of the Gospels. If such bewilderment and empty speaking be from ignorance, Scripture will teach them, that the devil, the author of heresies, because of the ill savour which attaches to evil, borrows Scripture language, as a cloak wherewith to sow the ground with his own poison also, and to seduce the simple. Thus he deceived Eve; thus he framed former heresies; thus he persuaded Arius at this time to make a show of speaking against those former ones, that he might introduce his own without observation. And yet, after all, the man of craft did not escape. For being irreligious towards the Word of God, he lost his all at once [1855] , and betrayed to all men his ignorance of other heresies too [1856] ; and having not a particle of truth in his belief, does but pretend to it. For how can he speak truth concerning the Father, who denies the Son, that reveals concerning Him? or how can he be orthodox concerning the Spirit, while he speaks profanely of the Word that supplies the Spirit? and who will trust him concerning the Resurrection, denying, as he does, Christ for us the first-begotten from the dead? and how shall he not err in respect to His incarnate presence, who is simply ignorant of the Son's genuine and true generation from the Father? For thus, the former Jews also, denying the Word, and saying, We have no king but Cæsar [1857] ,' were forthwith stripped of all they had, and forfeited the light of the Lamp, the odour of ointment, knowledge of prophecy, and the Truth itself; till now they understand nothing, but are walking as in darkness. For who was ever yet a hearer of such a doctrine [1858] ? or whence or from whom did the abettors and hirelings [1859] of the heresy gain it? who thus expounded to them when they were at school [1860] ? who told them, Abandon the worship of the creation, and then draw near and worship a creature and a work [1861] ?' But if they themselves own that they have heard it now for the first time, how can they deny that this heresy is foreign, and not from our fathers [1862] ? But what is not from our fathers, but has come to light in this day, how can it be but that of which the blessed Paul [1863] has foretold, that in the latter times some shall depart from the sound faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils, in the hypocrisy of liars; cauterized in their own conscience, and turning from the truth [1864] ?'
9. For, behold, we take divine Scripture, and thence discourse with freedom of the religious Faith, and set it up as a light upon its candlestick, saying:--Very Son of the Father, natural and genuine, proper to His essence, Wisdom Only-begotten, and Very and Only Word of God is He; not a creature or work, but an offspring proper to the Father's essence. Wherefore He is very God, existing one [1865] in essence with the very Father; while other beings, to whom He said, I said ye are Gods [1866] ,' had this grace from the Father, only by participation [1867] of the Word, through the Spirit. For He is the expression of the Father's Person, and Light from Light, and Power, and very Image of the Father's essence. For this too the Lord has said, He that hath seen Me, hath seen the Father [1868] .' And He ever was and is and never was not. For the Father being everlasting, His Word and His Wisdom must be everlasting [1869] . On the other hand, what have these persons to shew us from the infamous Thalia? Or, first of all, let them read it themselves, and copy the tone of the writer; at least the mockery which they will encounter from others may instruct them how low they have fallen; and then let them proceed to explain themselves. For what can they say from it, but that God was not always a Father, but became so afterwards; the Son was not always, for He was not before His generation; He is not from the Father, but He, as others, has come into subsistence out of nothing; He is not proper to the Father's essence, for He is a creature and work?' And Christ is not very God, but He, as others, was made God by participation; the Son has not exact knowledge of the Father, nor does the Word see the Father perfectly; and neither exactly understands nor knows the Father. He is not the very and only Word of the Father, but is in name only called Word and Wisdom, and is called by grace Son and Power. He is not unalterable, as the Father is, but alterable in nature, as the creatures, and He comes short of apprehending the perfect knowledge of the Father.' Wonderful this heresy, not plausible even, but making speculations against Him that is, that He be not, and everywhere putting forward blasphemy for reverent language! Were any one, after inquiring into both sides, to be asked, whether of the two he would follow in faith, or whether of the two spoke fitly of God,--or rather let them say themselves, these abettors of irreligion, what, if a man be asked concerning God (for the Word was God'), it were fit to answer [1870] . For from this one question the whole case on both sides may be determined, what is fitting to say,--He was, or He was not; always, or before His birth; eternal, or from this and from then; true, or by adoption, and from participation and in idea [1871] ; to call Him one of things originated, or to unite Him to the Father; to consider Him unlike the Father in essence, or like and proper to Him; a creature, or Him through whom the creatures were originated; that He is the Father's Word, or that there is another word beside Him, and that by this other He was originated, and by another wisdom; and that He is only named Wisdom and Word, and is become a partaker of this wisdom, and second to it?
10. Which of the two theologies sets forth our Lord Jesus Christ as God and Son of the Father, this which you vomited forth, or that which we have spoken and maintain from the Scriptures? If the Saviour be not God, nor Word, nor Son, you shall have leave to say what you will, and so shall the Gentiles, and the present Jews. But if He be Word of the Father and true Son, and God from God, and over all blessed for ever [1872] ,' is it not becoming to obliterate and blot out those other phrases and that Arian Thalia, as but a pattern of evil, a store of all irreligion, into which, whoso falls, knoweth not that giants perish with her, and reacheth the depths of Hades [1873] ?' This they know themselves, and in their craft they conceal it, not having the courage to speak out, but uttering something else [1874] . For if they speak, a condemnation will follow; and if they be suspected, proofs from Scripture will be cast [1875] at them from every side. Wherefore, in their craft, as children of this world, after feeding their so-called lamp from the wild olive, and fearing lest it should soon be quenched (for it is said, the light of the wicked shall be put out [1876] ,') they hide it under the bushel [1877] of their hypocrisy, and make a different profession, and boast of patronage of friends and authority of Constantius, that what with their hypocrisy and their professions, those who come to them may be kept from seeing how foul their heresy is. Is it not detestable even in this, that it dares not speak out, but is kept hid by its own friends, and fostered as serpents are? for from what sources have they got together these words? or from whom have they received what they venture to say [1878] ? Not any one man can they specify who has supplied it. For who is there in all mankind, Greek or Barbarian, who ventures to rank among creatures One whom he confesses the while to be God and says, that He was not till He was made? or who is there, who to the God in whom he has put faith, refuses to give credit, when He says, This is My beloved Son [1879] ,' on the pretence that He is not a Son, but a creature? rather, such madness would rouse an universal indignation. Nor does Scripture afford them any pretext; for it has been often shewn, and it shall be shewn now, that their doctrine is alien to the divine oracles. Therefore, since all that remains is to say that from the devil came their mania (for of such opinions he alone is sower [1880] ), proceed we to resist him--for with him is our real conflict, and they are but instruments;--that, the Lord aiding us, and the enemy, as he is wont, being overcome with arguments, they may be put to shame, when they see him without resource who sowed this heresy in them, and may learn, though late, that, as being Arians, they are not Christians. __________________________________________________________________
[1853] de Syn. 33.
[1854] Faustus, in August. contr. Faust. ii. 1. admits the Gospels (vid. Beausobre Manich. t. i. p. 291, &c.), but denies that they were written by the reputed authors. ibid. xxxii. 2. but nescio quibus Semi-judæis. ibid. xxxiii. 3. Accordingly they thought themselves at liberty to reject or correct parts of them. They rejected many of the facts, e.g. our Lord's nativity, circumcision, baptism, temptation, &c. ibid. xxxii. 6.
[1855] de Decr. 1, note 6.
[1856] [A note on the intimate mutual connexion of all heresies is omitted here.]
[1857] Joh. xix. 15.
[1858] de Decr. 7, note 2.
[1859] dorodokoi, and so kerdos tes philochrematias, infr. §53. He mentions prostasias philon, §10. And so S. Hilary speaks of the exemptions from taxes which Constantius granted the Clergy as a bribe to Arianize; contr. Const. 10. And again, of resisting Constantius as hostem blandientem, qui non dorsa cædit, sed ventrem palpat, non proscribit ad vitam, sed ditat in mortem, non caput gladio desecat, sed animum auro occidit. ibid. 5. vid. Coustant. in loc. Liberius says the same, Theod H. E. ii. 13. And S. Gregory Naz. speaks of philochrusous mallon e philochristous. Orat. 21. 21. On the other hand, Ep. Æg. 22, Athan. contrasts the Arians with the Meletians, as not influenced by secular views. [Prolegg. ch. ii. §3 (2) c. (2).]
[1860] de Syn. §3 and 9.
[1861] Vid. de Decr. 1. note. This consideration, as might be expected, is insisted on by the Fathers. vid. Cyril. Dial. iv. p. 511, &c. v. p. 566. Greg. Naz. 40, 42; Hil. Trin. viii. 28; Ambros. de fid. i. n. 69 and 104.
[1862] Ib. 4, note 8.
[1863] 1 Tim. iv. 1, 2; Tit. i. 14.
[1864] This passage is commonly taken by the Fathers to refer to the Oriental sects of the early centuries, who fulfilled one or other of those conditions which it specifies. It is quoted against the Marcionists by Clement. Strom. iii. 6. Of the Carpocratians apparently, Iren. Hær. i. 25; Epiph. Hær. 27. 5. Of the Valentinians, Epiph. Hær. 31. 34. Of the Montanists and others, ibid. 48. 8. Of the Saturnilians (according to Huet.) Origen in Matt. xx. 16. Of apostolic heresies, Cyril. Cat. iv. 27. Of Marcionites, Valentinians, and Manichees, Chrysost. de Virg. 5. Of Gnostics and Manichees, Theod. Hær. ii. præf. Of Encratites, ibid. v. fin. Of Eutyches, Ep. Anon. 190 (apud Garner. Diss. v. Theod. p. 901. Pseudo-Justin seems to consider it fulfilled in the Catholics of the fifth century, as being Anti-Pelagians. Quæst. 22. vid. Bened. note in loc. Besides Athanasius, no early author occurs to the writer of this, by whom it is referred to the Arians, cf. Depos. Ar. supr. p. 71, note 29.
[1865] [This is the only occurrence of the word homoousios in these three Discourses.]
[1866] Ps. lxxxii. 6.
[1867] de Decr. §14 fin.; de Syn. §51.
[1868] John xiv. 9.
[1869] de Decr. 15, note 6.
[1870] That is, Let them tell us, is it right to predicate this or to predicate that of God (of one who is God), for such is the Word, viz. that He was from eternity or was created,' &c., &c.
[1871] kat' epinoian, vid. Orat. ii. §38.
[1872] Rom. ix. 5.
[1873] Prov. ix. 18. LXX.
[1874] de Decr. 6. note 5; de Syn. 32.
[1875] de Decr. 26, note 6.
[1876] Job xviii. 5.
[1877] Ep. Æg. 18.
[1878] §8, note 5.
[1879] Matt. iii. 17.
[1880] de Decr. 2, note 6. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IV.--That the Son is Eternal and Increate. These attributes, being the points in dispute, are first proved by direct texts of Scripture. Concerning the eternal power' of God in Rom. i. 20, which is shewn to mean the Son. Remarks on the Arian formula, Once the Son was not,' its supporters not daring to speak of a time when the Son was not.'
11. At his suggestion then ye have maintained and ye think, that there was once when the Son was not;' this is the first cloke of your views of doctrine which has to be stripped off. Say then what was once when the Son was not, O slanderous and irreligious men [1881] ? If ye say the Father, your blasphemy is but greater; for it is impious to say that He was once,' or to signify Him by the word once.' For He is ever, and is now, and as the Son is, so is He, and is Himself He that is, and Father of the Son. But if ye say that the Son was once, when He Himself was not, the answer is foolish and unmeaning. For how could He both be and not be? In this difficulty, you can but answer, that there was a time when the Word was not; for your very adverb once' naturally signifies this. And your other, The Son was not before His generation,' is equivalent to saying, There was once when He was not,' for both the one and the other signify that there is a time before the Word. Whence then this your discovery? Why do ye, as the heathen, rage, and imagine vain phrases against the Lord [1882] and against His Christ?' for no holy Scripture has used such language of the Saviour, but rather always' and eternal' and coexistent always with the Father.' For, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God [1883] .' And in the Apocalypse he thus speaks [1884] ; Who is and who was and who is to come.' Now who can rob who is' and who was' of eternity? This too in confutation of the Jews hath Paul written in his Epistle to the Romans, Of whom as concerning the flesh is Christ, who is over all, God blessed for ever [1885] ;' while silencing the Greeks, he has said, The visible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal Power and Godhead [1886] ;' and what the Power of God is, he teaches us elsewhere himself, Christ the Power of God and the Wisdom of God [1887] .' Surely in these words he does not designate the Father, as ye often whisper one to another, affirming that the Father is His eternal power.' This is not so; for he says not, God Himself is the power,' but His is the power.' Very plain is it to all that His' is not He;' yet not something alien but rather proper to Him. Study too the context and turn to the Lord;' now the Lord is that Spirit [1888] ;'and you will see that it is the Son who is signified.
12. For after making mention of the creation, he naturally speaks of the Framer's Power as seen in it, which Power, I say, is the Word of God, by whom all things have been made. If indeed the creation is sufficient of itself alone, without the Son, to make God known, see that you fall not, from thinking that without the Son it has come to be. But if through the Son it has come to be, and in Him all things consist [1889] ,' it must follow that he who contemplates the creation rightly, is contemplating also the Word who framed it, and through Him begins to apprehend the Father [1890] . And if, as the Saviour also says, No one knoweth the Father, save the Son, and he to whom the Son shall reveal Him [1891] ,' and if on Philip's asking, Shew us the Father,' He said not, Behold the creation,' but, He that hath seen Me, hath seen the Father [1892] ,' reasonably doth Paul,--while accusing the Greeks of contemplating the harmony and order of the creation without reflecting on the Framing Word within it (for the creatures witness to their own Framer) so as through the creation to apprehend the true God, and abandon their worship of it,--reasonably hath he said, His Eternal Power and Godhead [1893] ,' thereby signifying the Son. And where the sacred writers say, Who exists before the ages,' and By whom He made the ages [1894] ,' they thereby as clearly preach the eternal and everlasting being of the Son, even while they are designating God Himself. Thus, if Isaiah says, The Everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth [1895] ;' and Susanna said, O Everlasting God [1896] ;' and Baruch wrote, I will cry unto the Everlasting in my days,' and shortly after, My hope is in the Everlasting, that He will save you, and joy is come unto me from the Holy One [1897] ;' yet forasmuch as the Apostle, writing to the Hebrews, says, Who being the radiance of His glory and the Expression of His Person [1898] ;' and David too in the eighty-ninth Psalm, And the brightness of the Lord be upon us,' and, In Thy Light shall we see Light [1899] ,' who has so little sense as to doubt of the eternity of the Son [1900] ? for when did man see light without the brightness of its radiance, that he may say of the Son, There was once, when He was not,' or Before His generation He was not.' And the words addressed to the Son in the hundred and forty-fourth Psalm, Thy kingdom is a kingdom of all ages [1901] ,' forbid any one to imagine any interval at all in which the Word did not exist. For if every interval in the ages is measured, and of all the ages the Word is King and Maker, therefore, whereas no interval at all exists prior to Him [1902] , it were madness to say, There was once when the Everlasting was not,' and From nothing is the Son.' And whereas the Lord Himself says, I am the Truth [1903] ,' not I became the Truth;' but always, I am,--I am the Shepherd,--I am the Light,'--and again, Call ye Me not, Lord and Master? and ye call Me well, for so I am,' who, hearing such language from God, and the Wisdom, and Word of the Father, speaking of Himself, will any longer hesitate about the truth, and not forthwith believe that in the phrase I am,' is signified that the Son is eternal and without beginning?
13. It is plain then from the above that the Scriptures declare the Son's eternity; it is equally plain from what follows that the Arian phrases He was not,' and before' and when,' are in the same Scriptures predicated of creatures. Moses, for instance, in his account of the generation of our system, says, And every plant of the field, before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew; for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground [1904] .' And in Deuteronomy, When the Most High divided to the nations [1905] .' And the Lord said in His own Person, If ye loved Me, ye would rejoice because I said, I go unto the Father, for My Father is greater than I. And now I have told you before it come to pass, that when it is come to pass, ye might believe [1906] .' And concerning the creation He says by Solomon, Or ever the earth was, when there were no depths, I was brought forth; when there were no fountains abounding with water. Before the mountains were settled, before the hills, was I brought forth [1907] .' And, Before Abraham was, I am [1908] .' And concerning Jeremiah He says, Before I formed thee in the womb, I knew thee [1909] .' And David in the Psalm says, Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever the earth and the world were made, Thou art, God from everlasting and world without end [1910] .' And in Daniel, Susanna cried out with a loud voice and said, O everlasting God, that knowest the secrets, and knowest all things before they be [1911] .' Thus it appears that the phrases once was not,' and before it came to be,' and when,' and the like, belong to things originate and creatures, which come out of nothing, but are alien to the Word. But if such terms are used in Scripture of things originate, but ever' of the Word, it follows, O ye enemies of God, that the Son did not come out of nothing, nor is in the number of originated things at all, but is the Father's Image and Word eternal, never having not been, but being ever, as the eternal Radiance [1912] of a Light which is eternal. Why imagine then times before the Son? or wherefore blaspheme the Word as after times, by whom even the ages were made? for how did time or age at all subsist when the Word, as you say, had not appeared, through' whom all things have been made and without' whom not one thing was made [1913] ?' Or why, when you mean time, do you not plainly say, a time was when the Word was not?' But while you drop the word time' to deceive the simple, you do not at all conceal your own feeling, nor, even if you did, could you escape discovery. For you still simply mean times, when you say, There was when He was not,' and He was not before His generation.' __________________________________________________________________
[1881] Athan. observes that this formula of the Arians is a mere evasion to escape using the word time.' vid. also Cyril. Thesaur. iv. pp. 19, 20. Else let them explain,--There was,' what when the Son was not?' or what was before the Son? since He Himself was before all times and ages, which He created, de Decr. 18, note 5. Thus, if when' be a word of time, He it is who was when' He was not, which is absurd. Did they mean, however, that it was the Father who was' before the Son? This was true, if before' was taken, not to imply time, but origination or beginning. And in this sense the first verse of S. John's Gospel may be interpreted In the Beginning,' or Origin, i.e. in the Father was the Word.' Thus Athan. himself understands that text, Orat. iv. §1. vid. also Orat. iii. §9; Nyssen. contr. Eunom. iii. p. 106; Cyril. Thesaur. 32. p. 312.
[1882] Ps. ii. 1.
[1883] John i. 1.
[1884] Rev. i. 4. tade legei. [On legei, &c., in citations, see Lightf. on Gal. iii. 16, Winer, Gram. §58, 9 g, Grimm-Thayer, s.v. II. 1. e.]
[1885] Rom. ix. 5.
[1886] Ib. i. 20.
[1887] 1 Cor. i. 24. Athan. has so interpreted this text supr. de Decr. 15. It was either a received interpretation, or had been adduced at Nicæa, for Asterius had some years before these Discourses replied to it, vid. de Syn. 18, and Orat. ii. §37.
[1888] 2 Cor. iii. 16, 17. S. Athanasius observes, Serap. i. 4-7, that the Holy Ghost is never in Scripture called simply Spirit' without the addition of God' or of the Father' or from Me' or of the article, or of Holy,' or Comforter,' or of truth,' or unless He has been spoken of just before. Accordingly this text is understood of the third Person in the Holy Trinity by Origen, contr. Cels. vi. 70; Basil de Sp. S. n. 32; Pseudo-Athan. de comm. ess. 6. On the other hand, the word pneuma, Spirit, is used more or less distinctly for our Lord's Divine Nature whether in itself or as incarnate, in Rom. i. 4, 1 Cor. xv. 45, 1 Tim. iii. 16, Hebr. ix. 14, 1 Pet. iii. 18, John vi. 63, &c. [But cf. also Milligan Resurr. 238 sq.] Indeed the early Fathers speak as if the Holy Spirit,' which came down upon S. Mary might be considered the Word. E.g. Tertullian against the Valentinians, If the Spirit of God did not descend into the womb "to partake in flesh from the womb," why did He descend at all?' de Carn. Chr. 19. vid. also ibid. 5 and 14. contr. Prax. 26, Just. Apol. i. 33. Iren. Hær. v. 1. Cypr. Idol Van. 6. Lactant. Instit. iv. 12. vid. also Hilar. Trin. ii. 27; Athan. logos en to pneumati eplatte to soma. Serap. i. 31 fin. en to logo en to pneuma ibid. iii. 6. And more distinctly even as late as S. Maximus, auton anti sporas sullabousa ton logon, kekueke, t. 2. p. 309. The earliest ecclesiastical authorities are S. Ignatius ad Smyrn. init. and S. Hermas (even though his date were a.d. 150), who also says plainly: Filius autem Spiritus Sanctus est. Sim. v. 5, 2, cf. ix. 1. The same use of Spirit' for the Word or Godhead of the Word, is also found in Tatian. adv. Græc. 7. Athenag. Leg. 10. Theoph. ad Autol. ii. 10. Iren. Hær. iv. 36. Tertull. Apol. 23. Lact. Inst. iv. 6, 8. Hilar. Trin. ix. 3, and 14. Eustath. apud Theod. Eran. iii. p. 235. Athan. contr. Apoll. i. 8. Apollinar. ap. Theod. Eran. i. p. 71, and the Apollinarists passim. Greg. Naz. Ep. 101. ad Cledon. p. 85. Ambros. Incarn. 63. Severian. ap. Theod. Eran. ii. p. 167. Vid. Grot. ad Marc. ii. 8; Bull, Def. F. N. i. 2, §5; Coustant. Præf. in Hilar. 57, &c. Montfaucon in Athan. Serap. iv. 19. [see also Tertullian, de Orat. init.]
[1889] Col. i. 17.
[1890] Vid. contr. Gent. 45-47.
[1891] Matt. xi. 27.
[1892] John xiv. 8, 9.
[1893] Rom. i. 20.
[1894] Heb. i. 2.
[1895] Is. xl. 28.
[1896] Hist. Sus. 42.
[1897] Bar. iv. 20, 22.
[1898] Heb. i. 3.
[1899] Ps. xc. 17; xxxvi. 9.
[1900] de Decr. 12, 27.
[1901] Ps. cxlv. 13.
[1902] Vid. de Decr. 18, note 5. The subject is treated at length in Greg. Nyss. contr. Eunom. i. t. 2. Append. p. 93-101. vid. also Ambros. de Fid. i. 8-11. As time measures the material creation, ages' were considered to measure the immaterial, as the duration of Angels. This had been a philosophical distinction, Timæus says eikon esti chronos to agennato chrono, hon aiona potagoreuomes. vid. also Philon. Quod Deus Immut. 6. Euseb. Laud. C. 1 prope fin., p. 501. Naz. Or. 38. 8.
[1903] John xiv. 6; x. 14; viii. 12; xiii. 13
[1904] Gen. ii. 5.
[1905] Deut. xxxii. 8.
[1906] John xiv. 28, 29.
[1907] Prov. viii. 23.
[1908] John viii. 58.
[1909] Jer. i. 5.
[1910] Ps. xc. 2.
[1911] Hist. Sus. 42.
[1912] de Decr. 23, note 4.
[1913] John i. 3. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter V.--Subject Continued. Objection, that the Son's eternity makes Him coordinate with the Father, introduces the subject of His Divine Sonship, as a second proof of His eternity. The word Son is introduced in a secondary, but is to be understood in real sense. Since all things partake of the Father in partaking of the Son, He is the whole participation of the Father, that is, He is the Son by nature; for to be wholly participated is to beget.
14. When these points are thus proved, their profaneness goes further. If there never was, when the Son was not,' say they, but He is eternal, and coexists with the Father, you call Him no more the Father's Son, but brother [1914] .' O insensate and contentious! For if we said only that He was eternally with the Father, and not His Son, their pretended scruple would have some plausibility; but if, while we say that He is eternal, we also confess Him to be Son from the Father, how can He that is begotten be considered brother of Him who begets? And if our faith is in Father and Son, what brotherhood is there between them? and how can the Word be called brother of Him whose Word He is? This is not an objection of men really ignorant, for they comprehend how the truth lies; but it is a Jewish pretence, and that from those who, in Solomon's words, through desire separate themselves [1915] ' from the truth. For the Father and the Son were not generated from some pre-existing origin [1916] , that we may account Them brothers, but the Father is the Origin of the Son and begat Him; and the Father is Father, and not born the Son of any; and the Son is Son, and not brother. Further, if He is called the eternal offspring [1917] of the Father, He is rightly so called. For never was the essence of the Father imperfect, that what is proper to it should be added afterwards [1918] ; nor, as man from man, has the Son been begotten, so as to be later than His Father's existence, but He is God's offspring, and as being proper Son of God, who is ever, He exists eternally. For, whereas it is proper to men to beget in time, from the imperfection of their nature [1919] , God's offspring is eternal, for His nature is ever perfect [1920] . If then He is not a Son, but a work made out of nothing, they have but to prove it; and then they are at liberty, as if imagining about a creature, to cry out, There was once when He was not;' for things which are originated were not, and have come to be. But if He is Son, as the Father says, and the Scriptures proclaim, and Son' is nothing else than what is generated from the Father; and what is generated from the Father is His Word, and Wisdom, and Radiance; what is to be said but that, in maintaining Once the Son was not,' they rob God of His Word, like plunderers, and openly predicate of Him that He was once without His proper Word and Wisdom, and that the Light was once without radiance, and the Fountain was once barren and dry [1921] ? For though they pretend alarm at the name of time, because of those who reproach them with it, and say, that He was before times, yet whereas they assign certain intervals, in which they imagine He was not, they are most irreligious still, as equally suggesting times, and imputing to God an absence of Reason [1922] .
15. But if on the other hand, while they acknowledge with us the name of Son,' from an unwillingness to be publicly and generally condemned, they deny that the Son is the proper offspring of the Father's essence, on the ground that this must imply parts and divisions [1923] ; what is this but to deny that He is very Son, and only in name to call Him Son at all? And is it not a grievous error, to have material thoughts about what is immaterial, and because of the weakness of their proper nature to deny what is natural and proper to the Father? It does but remain, that they should deny Him also, because they understand not how God is [1924] , and what the Father is, now that, foolish men, they measure by themselves the Offspring of the Father. And persons in such a state of mind as to consider that there cannot be a Son of God, demand our pity; but they must be interrogated and exposed for the chance of bringing them to their senses. If then, as you say, the Son is from nothing,' and was not before His generation,' He, of course, as well as others, must be called Son and God and Wisdom only by participation; for thus all other creatures consist, and by sanctification are glorified. You have to tell us then, of what He is partaker [1925] . All other things partake of the Spirit, but He, according to you, of what is He partaker? of the Spirit? Nay, rather the Spirit Himself takes from the Son, as He Himself says; and it is not reasonable to say that the latter is sanctified by the former. Therefore it is the Father that He partakes; for this only remains to say. But this, which is participated, what is it or whence [1926] ? If it be something external provided by the Father, He will not now be partaker of the Father, but of what is external to Him; and no longer will He be even second after the Father, since He has before Him this other; nor can He be called Son of the Father, but of that, as partaking which He has been called Son and God. And if this be unseemly and irreligious, when the Father says, This is My Beloved Son [1927] ,' and when the Son says that God is His own Father, it follows that what is partaken is not external, but from the essence of the Father. And as to this again, if it be other than the essence of the Son, an equal extravagance will meet us; there being in that case something between this that is from the Father and the essence of the Son, whatever that be [1928] .
16. Such thoughts then being evidently unseemly and untrue, we are driven to say that what is from the essence of the Father, and proper to Him, is entirely the Son; for it is all one to say that God is wholly participated, and that He begets; and what does begetting signify but a Son? And thus of the Son Himself, all things partake according to the grace of the Spirit coming from Him [1929] ; and this shews that the Son Himself partakes of nothing, but what is partaken from the Father, is the Son; for, as partaking of the Son Himself, we are said to partake of God; and this is what Peter said that ye may be partakers in a divine nature [1930] ;' as says too the Apostle, Know ye not, that ye are a temple of God?' and, We are the temple of a living God [1931] .' And beholding the Son, we see the Father; for the thought [1932] and comprehension of the Son, is knowledge concerning the Father, because He is His proper offspring from His essence. And since to be partaken no one of us would ever call affection or division of God's essence (for it has been shewn and acknowledged that God is participated, and to be participated is the same thing as to beget); therefore that which is begotten is neither affection nor division of that blessed essence. Hence it is not incredible that God should have a Son, the Offspring of His own essence; nor do we imply affection or division of God's essence, when we speak of Son' and Offspring;' but rather, as acknowledging the genuine, and true, and Only-begotten of God, so we believe. If then, as we have stated and are shewing, what is the Offspring of the Father's essence be the Son, we cannot hesitate, rather we must be certain, that the same [1933] is the Wisdom and Word of the Father, in and through whom He creates and makes all things; and His Brightness too, in whom He enlightens all things, and is revealed to whom He will; and His Expression and Image also, in whom He is contemplated and known, wherefore He and His Father are one [1934] ,' and whoso looketh on Him looketh on the Father; and the Christ, in whom all things are redeemed, and the new creation wrought afresh. And on the other hand, the Son being such Offspring, it is not fitting, rather it is full of peril, to say, that He is a work out of nothing, or that He was not before His generation. For he who thus speaks of that which is proper to the Father's essence, already blasphemes the Father Himself [1935] ; since he really thinks of Him what he falsely imagines of His offspring. __________________________________________________________________
[1914] This was an objection urged by Eunomius, cf. de Syn. 51, note 8. It is implied also in the Apology of the former, §24, and in Basil. contr. Eunom. ii. 28. Aetius was in Alexandria with George of Cappadocia, a.d. 356-8, and Athan. wrote these Discourses in the latter year, as the de Syn. at the end of the next. It is probable then that he is alluding to the Anomoean arguments as he heard them reported, vid. de Syn. l.c. where he says, they say, "as you have written,"' §51. 'Anomoios kat' ousian is mentioned infr. §17. As the Arians here object that the First and Second Persons of the Holy Trinity are adelphoi, so did they say the same in the course of the controversy of the Second and Third. vid. Serap. i. 15. iv. 2.
[1915] Prov. xviii. 1.
[1916] Vid. de Syn. §51.
[1917] In other words, by the Divine gennesis is not meant an act but an eternal and unchangeable fact, in the Divine Essence. Arius. not admitting this, objected at the outset of the controversy to the phrase always Father, always Son,' Theod. H. E. i. 4. p. 749, and Eunomius argues that, if the Son is co-eternal with the Father, the Father was never such in act, energos, but was argos.' Cyril. Thesaur. v. p. 41. S. Cyril answers that works,' erga, are made exothen, from without;' but that our Lord, as S. Athanasius here says, is neither a work' nor from without.' And hence he says elsewhere that, while men are fathers first in posse then in act, God is dunamei te kai energei& 139; pater. Dial. 2. p. 458. (vid. supr. p. 65. note m). Victorinus in like manner, says, that God is potentia et actione Deus sed in æterna, Adv. Ar. i. p. 202; and he quotes S. Alexander, speaking apparently in answer to Arius, of a semper generans generatio. And Arius scoffs at aeigennes and agennetogenes. Theod. Hist. i. 4. p. 749. And Origen had said, ho soter aei gennatai. ap. Routh. Reliq. t. 4. p. 304 and S. Dionysius calls Him the Radiance, anarchon kai aeigenes. Sent. Dion 15. S. Augustine too says, Semper gignit Pater, et semper nascitur Filius. Ep. 238. n. 4. Petav. de Trin. ii. 5. n. 7, quotes the following passage from Theodorus Abucara, Since the Son's generation does but signify His having His existence from the Father, which He has ever, therefore He is ever begotten. For it became Him, who is properly (kurios) the Son, ever to be deriving His existence from the Father, and not as we who derive its commencement only. In us generation is a way to existence; in the Son of God it denotes the existence itself; in Him it has not existence for its end, but it is itself an end, telos, and is perfect, teleion.' Opusc 26.
[1918] de Decr. 22, note 9.
[1919] Infr. §26 fin., and de Decr. 12, note 2.
[1920] Vid. supr. note 4. A similar passage is found in Cyril. Thesaur. v. p. 42, Dial. ii. fin. This was retorting the objection; the Arians said, How can God be ever perfect, who added to Himself a Son?' Athan. answers, How can the Son not be eternal, since God is ever perfect?' vid. Greg. Nyssen, contr. Eunom. Append. p. 142. Cyril. Thesaur. x. p. 78. As to the Son's perfection, Aetius objects ap. Epiph. Hær. 76. pp. 925, 6, that growth and consequent accession from without were essentially involved in the idea of Sonship; whereas S. Greg. Naz. speaks of the Son as not atele proteron, eita teleion, hosper nomos tes hemeteras geneseos, Orat. 20. 9 fin. In like manner, S. Basil argues against Eunomius, that the Son is teleios, because He is the Image, not as if copied, which is a gradual work, but as a charakter, or impression of a seal, or as the knowledge communicated from master to scholar, which comes to the latter and exists in him perfect, without being lost to the former. contr. Eunom. ii. 16 fin.
[1921] de Decr. 12, 15.
[1922] Ib. 22, note 1, infr. §19.
[1923] De Decr. §§10, 11.
[1924] Infr. §23.
[1925] De Syn. §45, 51.
[1926] Nic. Def. 9, note 4.
[1927] Matt. iii. 17.
[1928] Here is taught us the strict unity of the Divine Essence. When it is said that the First Person of the Holy Trinity communicates divinity to the Second, it is meant that that one Essence which is the Father, also is the Son. Hence the force of the word homoousion, which was in consequence accused of Sabellianism, but was distinguished from it by the particle homou, together,' which implied a difference as well as unity; whereas tautoousion or sunousion implied, with the Sabellians, an identity or a confusion. The Arians, on the other hand, as in the instance of Eusebius, &c., supr. p. 75, note 7; de Syn. 26, note 3; considered the Father and the Son two ousiai. The Catholic doctrine is that, though the Divine Essence is both the Father Ingenerate and also the Only-begotten Son, it is not itself agennetos or gennete; which was the objection urged against the Catholics by Aetius, Epiph. Hær. 76. 10. Cf. de Decr. §30, Orat. iii. §36 fin., Expos. Fid. 2. vid. de Syn. 45, note 1. Vera et æterna substantia in se tota permanens, totam se coæternæ veritati nativitatis indulsit.' Fulgent. Resp. 7. And S. Hilary, Filius in Patre est et in Filio Pater, non per transfusionem, refusionemque mutuam, sed per viventis naturæ perfectam nativitatem.' Trin. vii. 31.
[1929] De Decr. §31.
[1930] 2 Pet. i. 4.
[1931] 1 Cor. iii. 16; 2 Cor. vi. 16.
[1932] ennoia, vid. de Syn. §48 fin.
[1933] de Decr. 17, 24.
[1934] John x. 30.
[1935] de Decr. 1, note. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VI.--Subject Continued. Third proof of the Son's eternity, viz. from other titles indicative of His coessentiality; as the Creator; One of the Blessed Trinity; as Wisdom; as Word; as Image. If the Son is a perfect Image of the Father, why is He not a Father also? because God, being perfect, is not the origin of a race. Only the Father a Father because the Only Father, only the Son a Son because the Only Son. Men are not really fathers and really sons, but shadows of the True. The Son does not become a Father, because He has received from the Father to be immutable and ever the same.
17. This is of itself a sufficient refutation of the Arian heresy; however, its heterodoxy will appear also from the following:--If God be Maker and Creator, and create His works through the Son, and we cannot regard things which come to be, except as being through the Word, is it not blasphemous, God being Maker, to say, that His Framing Word and His Wisdom once was not? it is the same as saying, that God is not Maker, if He had not His proper Framing Word which is from Him, but that that by which He frames, accrues to Him from without [1936] , and is alien from Him, and unlike in essence. Next, let them tell us this,--or rather learn from it how irreligious they are in saying, Once He was not,' and, He was not before His generation;'--for if the Word is not with the Father from everlasting, the Triad is not everlasting; but a Monad was first, and afterwards by addition it became a Triad; and so as time went on, it seems what we know concerning God grew and took shape [1937] . And further, if the Son is not proper offspring of the Father's essence, but of nothing has come to be, then of nothing the Triad consists, and once there was not a Triad, but a Monad; and a Triad once with deficiency, and then complete; deficient, before the Son was originated, complete when He had come to be; and henceforth a thing originated is reckoned with the Creator, and what once was not has divine worship and glory with Him who was ever [1938] . Nay, what is more serious still, the Triad is discovered to be unlike Itself, consisting of strange and alien natures and essences. And this, in other words, is saying, that the Triad has an originated consistence. What sort of a religion then is this, which is not even like itself, but is in process of completion as time goes on, and is now not thus, and then again thus? For probably it will receive some fresh accession, and so on without limit, since at first and at starting it took its consistence by way of accessions. And so undoubtedly it may decrease on the contrary, for what is added plainly admits of being subtracted.
18. But this is not so: perish the thought; the Triad is not originated; but there is an eternal and one Godhead in a Triad, and there is one Glory of the Holy Triad. And you presume to divide it into different natures; the Father being eternal, yet you say of the Word which is seated by Him, Once He was not;' and, whereas the Son is seated by the Father, yet you think to place Him far from Him. The Triad is Creator and Framer, and you fear not to degrade It to things which are from nothing; you scruple not to equal servile beings to the nobility of the Triad, and to rank the King, the Lord of Sabaoth with subjects [1939] . Cease this confusion of things unassociable, or rather of things which are not with Him who is. Such statements do not glorify and honour the Lord, but the reverse; for he who dishonours the Son, dishonours also the Father. For if the doctrine of God is now perfect in a Triad, and this is the true and only Religion, and this is the good and the truth, it must have been always so, unless the good and the truth be something that came after, and the doctrine of God is completed by additions. I say, it must have been eternally so; but if not eternally, not so at present either, but at present so, as you suppose it was from the beginning,--I mean, not a Triad now. But such heretics no Christian would bear; it belongs to Greeks, to introduce an originated Triad, and to level It with things originate; for these do admit of deficiencies and additions; but the faith of Christians acknowledges the blessed Triad as unalterable and perfect and ever what It was, neither adding to It what is more, nor imputing to It any loss (for both ideas are irreligious), and therefore it dissociates It from all things generated, and it guards as indivisible and worships the unity of the Godhead Itself; and shuns the Arian blasphemies, and confesses and acknowledges that the Son was ever; for He is eternal, as is the Father, of whom He is the Eternal Word,--to which subject let us now return again.
19. If God be, and be called, the Fountain of wisdom and life--as He says by Jeremiah, They have forsaken Me the Fountain of living waters [1940] ;' and again, A glorious high throne from the beginning, is the place of our sanctuary; O Lord, the Hope of Israel, all that forsake Thee shall be ashamed, and they that depart from Me shall be written in the earth, because they have forsaken the Lord, the Fountain of living waters [1941] ;' and in the book of Baruch it is written, Thou hast forsaken the Fountain of wisdom [1942] ,'--this implies that life and wisdom are not foreign to the Essence of the Fountain, but are proper to It, nor were at any time without existence, but were always. Now the Son is all this, who says, I am the Life [1943] ,' and, I Wisdom dwell with prudence [1944] .' Is it not then irreligious to say, Once the Son was not?' for it is all one with saying, Once the Fountain was dry, destitute of Life and Wisdom.' But a fountain it would then cease to be; for what begetteth not from itself, is not a fountain [1945] . What a load of extravagance! for God promises that those who do His will shall be as a fountain which the water fails not, saying by Isaiah the prophet, And the Lord shall satisfy thy soul in drought, and make thy bones fat; and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not [1946] .' And yet these, whereas God is called and is a Fountain of wisdom, dare to insult Him as barren and void of His proper Wisdom. But their doctrine is false; truth witnessing that God is the eternal Fountain of His proper Wisdom; and, if the Fountain be eternal, the Wisdom also must needs be eternal. For in It were all things made, as David says in the Psalm, In Wisdom hast Thou made them all [1947] ;' and Solomon says, The Lord by Wisdom hath formed the earth, by understanding hath He established the heavens [1948] .' And this Wisdom is the Word, and by Him, as John says, all things were made,' and without Him was made not one thing [1949] .' And this Word is Christ; for there is One God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we for Him; and One Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through Him [1950] .' And if all things are through Him, He Himself is not to be reckoned with that all.' For he who dares [1951] to call Him, through whom are things, one of that all,' surely will have like speculations concerning God, from whom are all. But if he shrinks from this as unseemly, and excludes God from that all, it is but consistent that he should also exclude from that all the Only-Begotten Son, as being proper to the Father's essence. And, if He be not one of the all [1952] , it is sin to say concerning Him, He was not,' and He was not before His generation.' Such words may be used of the creatures; but as to the Son, He is such as the Father is, of whose essence He is proper Offspring, Word, and Wisdom [1953] . For this is proper to the Son, as regards the Father, and this shews that the Father is proper to the Son; that we may neither say that God was ever without Word [1954] , nor that the Son was non-existent. For wherefore a Son, if not from Him? or wherefore Word and Wisdom, if not ever proper to Him?
20. When then was God without that which is proper to Him? or how can a man consider that which is proper, as foreign and alien in essence? for other things, according to the nature of things originate, are without likeness in essence with the Maker; but are external to Him, made by the Word at His grace and will, and thus admit of ceasing to be, if it so pleases Him who made them [1955] ; for such is the nature of things originate [1956] . But as to what is proper to the Father's essence (for this we have already found to be the Son), what daring is it in irreligion to say that This comes from nothing,' and that It was not before generation,' but was adventitious [1957] , and can at some time cease to be again? Let a person only dwell upon this thought, and he will discern how the perfection and the plenitude of the Father's essence is impaired by this heresy; however, he will see its unseemliness still more clearly, if he considers that the Son is the Image and Radiance of the Father, and Expression, and Truth. For if, when Light exists, there be withal its Image, viz. Radiance, and, a Subsistence existing, there be of it the entire Expression, and, a Father existing, there be His Truth (viz. the Son); let them consider what depths of irreligion they fall into, who make time the measure of the Image and Form of the Godhead. For if the Son was not before His generation, Truth was not always in God, which it were a sin to say; for, since the Father was, there was ever in Him the Truth, which is the Son, who says, I am the Truth [1958] .' And the Subsistence existing, of course there was forthwith its Expression and Image; for God's Image is not delineated from without [1959] , but God Himself hath begotten it; in which seeing Himself, He has delight, as the Son Himself says, I was His delight [1960] .' When then did the Father not see Himself in His own Image? or when had He not delight, that a man should dare to say, the Image is out of nothing,' and The Father had not delight before the Image was originated?' and how should the Maker and Creator see Himself in a created and originated essence? for such as is the Father, such must be the Image.
21. Proceed we then to consider the attributes of the Father, and we shall come to know whether this Image is really His. The Father is eternal, immortal, powerful, light, King, Sovereign, God, Lord, Creator, and Maker. These attributes must be in the Image, to make it true that he that hath seen' the Son hath seen the Father [1961] .' If the Son be not all this, but, as the Arians consider, originate, and not eternal, this is not a true Image of the Father, unless indeed they give up shame, and go on to say, that the title of Image, given to the Son, is not a token of a similar essence [1962] , but His name [1963] only. But this, on the other hand, O ye enemies of Christ, is not an Image, nor is it an Expression. For what is the likeness of what is out of nothing to Him who brought what was nothing into being? or how can that which is not, be like Him that is, being short of Him in once not being, and in its having its place among things originate? However, such the Arians wishing Him to be, devised for themselves arguments such as this;--If the Son is the Father's offspring and Image, and is like in all things [1964] to the Father, then it necessarily holds that as He is begotten, so He begets, and He too becomes father of a son. And again, he who is begotten from Him, begets in his turn, and so on without limit; for this is to make the Begotten like Him that begat Him.' Authors of blasphemy, verily, are these foes of God! who, sooner than confess that the Son is the Father's Image [1965] , conceive material and earthly ideas concerning the Father Himself, ascribing to Him severings and [1966] effluences and influences. If then God be as man, let Him become also a parent as man, so that His Son should be father of another, and so in succession one from another, till the series they imagine grows into a multitude of gods. But if God be not as man, as He is not, we must not impute to Him the attributes of man. For brutes and men, after a Creator has begun them, are begotten by succession; and the son, having been begotten of a father who was a son, becomes accordingly in his turn a father to a son, in inheriting from his father that by which he himself has come to be. Hence in such instances there is not, properly speaking, either father or son, nor do the father and the son stay in their respective characters, for the son himself becomes a father, being son of his father, but father of his son. But it is not so in the Godhead; for not as man is God; for the Father is not from a father; therefore doth He not beget one who shall become a father; nor is the Son from effluence of the Father, nor is He begotten from a father that was begotten; therefore neither is He begotten so as to beget. Thus it belongs to the Godhead alone, that the Father is properly [1967] father, and the Son properly son, and in Them, and Them only, does it hold that the Father is ever Father and the Son ever Son.
22. Therefore he who asks why the Son is not to beget a son, must inquire why the Father had not a father. But both suppositions are unseemly and full of impiety. For as the Father is ever Father and never could become Son, so the Son is ever Son and never could become Father. For in this rather is He shewn to be the Father's Expression and Image, remaining what He is and not changing, but thus receiving from the Father to be one and the same. If then the Father change, let the Image change; for so is the Image and Radiance in its relation towards Him who begat It. But if the Father is unalterable, and what He is that He continues, necessarily does the Image also continue what He is, and will not alter. Now He is Son from the Father; therefore He will not become other than is proper to the Father's essence. Idly then have the foolish ones devised this objection also, wishing to separate the Image from the Father, that they might level the Son with things originated. __________________________________________________________________
[1936] de Decr. 25, note 2.
[1937] Vid. Orat. iv. §13.
[1938] §8, note 8.
[1939] De Decr. §31.
[1940] Jer. ii. 13.
[1941] Ib. xvii. 12, 13.
[1942] Bar. iii. 12.
[1943] John xiv. 6.
[1944] Prov. viii. 12.
[1945] Supr. §15.
[1946] Isa. lviii. 11.
[1947] Ps. civ. 24.
[1948] Prov. iii. 19.
[1949] John i. 3. See Westcott's additional note on the passage.]
[1950] 1 Cor. viii. 6.
[1951] Vid. Petav. de Trin. ii. 12, §4.
[1952] De Decr. §30.
[1953] De Decr. §17.
[1954] alogon. Vid. note on de Decr. §§1, 15, where other instances are given from Athan. and Dionysius of Rome; vid. also Orat. iv. 2, 4. Sent. D. 23. Origen, supr. p. 48. Athenag. Leg. 10. Tat. contr. Græc. 5. Theoph. ad. Autol. ii. 10. Hipp. contr. Noet. 10. Nyssen. contr. Eunom. vii. p. 215. viii. pp. 230, 240. Orat, Catech. 1. Naz. Orat. 29. 17 fin. Cyril. Thesaur. xiv. p. 145 (vid. Petav. de Trin. vi. 9). It must not be supposed from these instances that the Fathers meant that our Lord was literally what is called the attribute of reason or wisdom in the Divine Essence, or in other words, that He was God merely viewed as He is wise; which would be a kind of Sabellianism. But, whereas their opponents said that He was but called Word and Wisdom after the attribute (vid. de Syn. 15, note), they said that such titles marked, not only a typical resemblance to the attribute, but so full a correspondence and (as it were) coincidence in nature with it, that whatever relation that attribute had to God, such in kind had the Son;--that the attribute was His symbol, and not His mere archetype; that our Lord was eternal and proper to God, because that attribute was, which was His title, vid. Ep. Æg. 14, that our Lord was that Essential Reason and Wisdom,--not by which the Father is wise, but without which the Father was not wise;--not, that is, in the way of a formal cause, but in fact. Or, whereas the Father Himself is Reason and Wisdom, the Son is the necessary result of that Reason and Wisdom, so that, to say that there was no Word, would imply there was no Divine Reason; just as a radiance implies a light; or, as Petavius remarks, l.c. quoting the words which follow shortly after in the text, the eternity of the Original implies the eternity of the Image; tes hupostaseos huparchouses, pantos euthus einai dei ton charaktera kai ten eikona tautes, §20. vid. also infr. §31, de Decr. §13, p. 21, §§20, 23, pp. 35, 40. Theod. H. E. i. 3. p. 737.
[1955] This was but the opposite aspect of the tenet of our Lord's consubstantiality or eternal generation. For if He came into being at the will of God, by the same will He might cease to be; but if His existence is unconditional and necessary, as God's attributes might be, then as He had no beginning, so can He have no end; for He is in, and one with, the Father, who has neither beginning nor end. On the question of the will of God' as it affects the doctrine, vid. Orat. iii. §59, &c.
[1956] §29, note.
[1957] De Decr. 22, note 9.
[1958] John xiv. 6.
[1959] Athan. argues from the very name Image for our Lord's eternity. An Image, to be really such, must be an expression from the Original, not an external and detached imitation. vid. supr. note 10, infr. §26. Hence S. Basil, He is an Image not made with the hand, or a work of art, but a living Image,' &c. vid. also contr. Eunom. ii. 16, 17. Epiph. Hær. 76. 3. Hilar. Trin. vii. 41 fin. Origen observes that man, on the contrary, is an example of an external or improper image of God. Periarch. i. 2. §6. It might have been more direct to have argued from the name of Image to our Lord's consubstantiality rather than eternity, as, e.g. S. Gregory Naz. He is Image as one in essence, homoousion,...for this is the nature of an image, to be a copy of the archetype.' Orat. 30. 20. vid. also de Decr. §§20, 23, but for whatever reason Athan. avoids the word homoousion in these Discourses. S. Chrys. on Col. i. 15.
[1960] Prov. viii. 30.
[1961] John xiv. 9.
[1962] homoias ousias. And so §20 init. homoion kat' ousian, and homoios tes ousias, §26. homoios kat' ousian, iii. 26. and homoios kata ten ousian tou patros. Ep. Æg. 17. Also Alex. Ep. Encycl. 2. Considering what he says in the de Syn. §38, &c., in controversy with the semi-Arians a year or two later, this use of their formula, in preference to the homoousion (vid. foregoing note), deserves our attention.
[1963] De Decr. §16.
[1964] De Syn. 27 (5) note 1, and infr. §40.
[1965] The objection is this, that, if our Lord be the Father's Image, He ought to resemble Him in being a Father. S. Athanasius answers that God is not as man; with us a son becomes a father because our nature is rheuste, transitive and without stay, ever shifting and passing on into new forms and relations; but that God is perfect and ever the same, what He is once that He continues to be; God the Father remains Father, and God the Son remains Son. Moreover men become fathers by detachment and transmission, and what is received is handed on in a succession; whereas the Father, by imparting Himself wholly, begets the Son: and a perfect nativity finds its termination in itself. The Son has not a Son, because the Father has not a Father. Thus the Father is the only true Father, and the Son alone true Son; the Father only a Father, the Son only a Son; being really in their Persons what human fathers are but by office, character, accident, and name; vid. De Decr. 11, note 6. And since the Father is unchangeable as Father, in nothing does the Son more fulfil the idea of a perfect Image than in being unchangeable too. Thus S. Cyril also, Thesaur. 10. p. 124. And this perhaps may illustrate a strong and almost startling implication of some of the Greek Fathers, that the First Person in the Holy Trinity, is not God [in virtue of His Fatherhood]. E.g. ei de theos ho hui& 232;s, ouk epei hui& 231;s; homoios kai ho pater, ouk epei pater, theos; all' epei ousia toiade, heis esti pater kai ho hui& 232;s theos. Nyssen. t. i. p. 915. vid. Petav. de Deo i. 9. §13. Should it be asked, What is the Father if not God?' it is enough to answer, the Father.' Men differ from each other as being individuals, but the characteristic difference between Father and Son is, not that they are individuals, but that they are Father and Son. In these extreme statements it must be ever borne in mind that we are contemplating divine things according to our notions. not in fact: i.e. speaking of the Almighty Father, as such; there being no real separation between His Person and His Substance. It may be added, that, though theologians differ in their decisions, it would appear that our Lord is not the Image of the Father's person, but of the Father's substance; in other words, not of the Father considered as Father, but considered as God. That is, God the Son is like and equal to God the Father, because they are both the same God. De Syn. 49. note 4, also next note.
[1966] Ep. Eus. 7, de Decr. 11, note 8.
[1967] kurios, de Decr. 11, note 6. Elsewhere Athan. says, The Father being one and only is Father of a Son one and only; and in the instance of Godhead only have the names Father and Son stay, and are ever; for of men if any one be called father, yet he has been son of another; and if he be called son, yet is he called father of another; so that in the case of men the names father and son do not properly, kurios, hold.' ad Serap. i. 16. also ibid. iv. 4 fin. and 6. vid. also kurios, Greg. Naz. Orat. 29. 5. alethos, Orat. 25, 16. ontos, Basil. contr. Eunom. i. 5. p. 215. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VII.--Objections to the Foregoing Proof. Whether, in the generation of the Son, God made One that was already, or One that was not.
22 (continued). Ranking Him among these, according to the teaching of Eusebius, and accounting Him such as the things which come into being through Him, Arius and his fellows revolted from the truth, and used, when they commenced this heresy, to go about with dishonest phrases which they had got together; nay, up to this time some of them [1968] , when they fall in with boys in the market-place, question them, not out of divine Scripture, but thus, as if bursting with the abundance of their heart [1969] ;'--He who is, did He make him who was not, from that which was [not], or him who was? therefore did He make the Son, whereas He was, or whereas He was not [1970] ?' And again, Is the Unoriginate one or two?' and Has He free will, and yet does not alter at His own choice, as being of an alterable nature? for He is not as a stone to remain by Himself unmoveable.' Next they turn to silly women, and address them in turn in this womanish language; Hadst thou a son before bearing? now, as thou hadst not, so neither was the Son of God before His generation.' In such language do the disgraceful men sport and revel, and liken God to men, pretending to be Christians, but changing God's glory into an image made like to corruptible man [1971] .'
23. Words so senseless and dull deserved no answer at all; however, lest their heresy appear to have any foundation, it may be right, though we go out of the way for it, to refute them even here, especially on account of the silly women who are so readily deceived by them. When they thus speak, they should have inquired of an architect, whether he can build without materials; and if he cannot, whether it follows that God could not make the universe without materials [1972] . Or they should have asked every man, whether he can be without place; and if he cannot, whether it follows that God is in place, that so they may be brought to shame even by their audience. Or why is it that, on hearing that God has a Son, they deny Him by the parallel of themselves; whereas, if they hear that He creates and makes, no longer do they object their human ideas? they ought in creation also to entertain the same, and to supply God with materials, and so deny Him to be Creator, till they end in grovelling with Manichees. But if the bare idea of God transcends such thoughts, and, on very first hearing, a man believes and knows that He is in being, not as we are, and yet in being as God, and creates not as man creates, but yet creates as God, it is plain that He begets also not as men beget, but begets as God. For God does not make man His pattern; but rather we men, for that God is properly, and alone truly [1973] , Father of His Son, are also called fathers of our own children; for of Him is every fatherhood in heaven and earth named [1974] .' And their positions, while unscrutinized, have a shew of sense; but if any one scrutinize them by reason, they will be found to incur much derision and mockery.
24. For first of all, as to their first question, which is such as this, how dull and vague it is! they do not explain who it is they ask about, so as to allow of an answer, but they say abstractedly, He who is,' him who is not.' Who then is,' and what are not,' O Arians? or who is,' and who is not?' what are said to be,' what not to be?' for He that is, can make things which are not, and which are, and which were before. For instance, carpenter, and goldsmith, and potter, each, according to his own art, works upon materials previously existing, making what vessels he pleases; and the God of all Himself, having taken the dust of the earth existing and already brought to be, fashions man; that very earth, however, whereas it was not once, He has at one time made by His own Word. If then this is the meaning of their question, the creature on the one hand plainly was not before its origination, and men, on the other, work the existing material; and thus their reasoning is inconsequent, since both what is' becomes, and what is not' becomes, as these instances shew. But if they speak concerning God and His Word, let them complete their question and then ask, Was the God, who is,' ever without Reason? and, whereas He is Light, was He ray-less? or was He always Father of the Word? Or again in this manner. Has the Father who is' made the Word who is not,' or has He ever with Him His Word, as the proper offspring of His substance? This will shew them that they do but presume and venture on sophisms about God and Him who is from Him. Who indeed can bear to hear them say that God was ever without Reason? this is what they fall into a second time, though endeavouring in vain to escape it and to hide it with their sophisms. Nay, one would fain not hear them disputing at all, that God was not always Father, but became so afterwards (which is necessary for their fantasy, that His Word once was not), considering the number of the proofs already adduced against them; while John besides says, The Word was [1975] ,' and Paul again writes, Who being the brightness of His glory [1976] ,' and, Who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen [1977] .'
25. They had best have been silent; but since it is otherwise, it remains to meet their shameless question with a bold retort [1978] . Perhaps on seeing the counter absurdities which beset themselves, they may cease to fight against the truth. After many prayers [1979] then that God would be gracious to us, thus we might ask them in turn; God who is, has He so become, whereas He was not? or is He also before His coming into being? whereas He is, did He make Himself, or is He of nothing, and being nothing before, did He suddenly appear Himself? Unseemly is such an enquiry, both unseemly and very blasphemous, yet parallel with theirs; for the answer they make abounds in irreligion. But if it be blasphemous and utterly irreligious thus to inquire about God, it will be blasphemous too to make the like inquiries about His Word. However, by way of exposing a question so senseless and so dull, it is necessary to answer thus:--whereas God is, He was eternally; since then the Father is ever, His Radiance ever is, which is His Word. And again, God who is, hath from Himself His Word who also is; and neither hath the Word been added, whereas He was not before, nor was the Father once without Reason. For this assault upon the Son makes the blasphemy recoil upon the Father; as if He devised for Himself a Wisdom, and Word, and Son from without [1980] ; for whichever of these titles you use, you denote the offspring from the Father, as has been said. So that this their objection does not hold; and naturally; for denying the Logos they in consequence ask questions which are illogical. As then if a person saw the sun, and then inquired concerning its radiance, and said, Did that which is make that which was, or that which was not,' he would be held not to reason sensibly, but to be utterly mazed, because he fancied what is from the Light to be external to it, and was raising questions, when and where and whether it were made; in like manner, thus to speculate concerning the Son and the Father and thus to inquire, is far greater madness, for it is to conceive of the Word of the Father as external to Him, and to idly call the natural offspring a work, with the avowal, He was not before His generation.' Nay, let them over and above take this answer to their question;--The Father who was, made the Son who was, for the Word was made flesh [1981] ;' and, whereas He was Son of God, He made Him in consummation of the ages also Son of Man, unless forsooth, after the Samosatene, they affirm that He did not even exist at all, till He became man.
26. This is sufficient from us in answer to their first question. And now on your part, O Arians, remembering your own words, tell us whether He who was needed one who was not for the framing of the universe, or one who was? You said that He made for Himself His Son out of nothing, as an instrument whereby to make the universe. Which then is superior, that which needs or that which supplies the need? or does not each supply the deficiency of the other? You rather prove the weakness of the Maker, if He had not power of Himself to make the universe, but provided for Himself an instrument from without [1982] , as carpenter might do or shipwright, unable to work anything without adze and saw! Can anything be more irreligious? yet why should one dwell on its heinousness, when enough has gone before to shew that their doctrine is a mere fantasy? __________________________________________________________________
[1968] This miserable procedure, of making sacred and mysterious subjects a matter of popular talk and debate, which is a sure mark of heresy, had received a great stimulus about this time by the rise of the Anomoeans. Eusebius's testimony to the profaneness which attended Arianism upon its rise will be given de Syn. 2, note 1. The Thalia is another instance of it. S. Alexander speaks of the interference, even judicial, in its behalf against himself, of disobedient women, di' entuchias gunaikarion atakton ha epatesan, and of the busy and indecent gadding about of the younger, ek tou peritrochazein pasan aguian asemnos. ap. Theod. H. E. i. 3. p. 730, also p. 747; also of the men's buffoon conversation, p. 731. Socrates says that in the Imperial Court, the officers of the bedchamber held disputes with the women, and in the city in every house there was a war of dialectics.' Hist. ii. 2. This mania raged especially in Constantinople, and S. Gregory Naz. speaks of Jezebels in as thick a crop as hemlock in a field.' Orat. 35. 3, cf. de Syn. 13, n. 4. He speaks of the heretics as aiming at one thing only, how to make good or refute points of argument,' making every market-place resound with their words, and spoiling every entertainment with their trifling and offensive talk.' Orat. 27. 2. The most remarkable testimony of the kind though not concerning Constantinople, is given by S. Gregory Nyssen, and often quoted, Men of yesterday and the day before, mere mechanics, off-hand dogmatists in theology, servants too and slaves that have been flogged, runaways from servile work, are solemn with us and philosophical about things incomprehensible....With such the whole city is full; its smaller gates, forums, squares, thoroughfares; the clothes-venders, the money-lenders, the victuallers. Ask about pence, and he will discuss the Generate and Ingenerate; inquire the price of bread, he answers, Greater is the Father, and the Son is subject; say that a bath would suit you, and he defines that the Son is out of nothing.' t. 2. p. 898.
[1969] Matt. xii. 34.
[1970] This objection is found in Alex. Ep. Encycl. 2. ho on theos ton me onta ek tou me ontos. Again, onta gegenneke e ouk onta. Greg. Orat. 29. 9. who answers it. Pseudo-Basil. contr. Eunom. iv. p. 281. 2. Basil calls the question poluthrulleton, contr. Eunom. ii. 14. It will be seen to be but the Arian formula of He was not before His generation,' in another shape; being but this, that the very fact of His being begotten or a Son, implies a beginning, that is, a time when He was not: it being by the very force of the words absurd to say that God begat Him that was,' or to deny that God begat Him that was not.' For the symbol, ouk en prin gennethe, vid. Excursus B. at the end of this Discourse.
[1971] Rom. i. 23, and §2.
[1972] De Decr. § 11, esp. note 6.
[1973] De Decr. 31, note 5
[1974] Eph. iii. 15.
[1975] John i. 1.
[1976] Heb. i. 3.
[1977] Rom. ix. 5.
[1978] Vid. Basil, contr. Eunom. ii. 17.
[1979] This cautious and reverent way of speaking is a characteristic of S. Athanasius, ad Serap. i. 1. vid. ii. init. ad Epict. 13 fin. ad Max. init. contr. Apoll. i. init. I must ask another question, bolder, yet with a religious intention; be propitious, O Lord, &c.' Orat. iii. 63, cf. de Decr. 12, note 8, 15, note 6, de Syn. 51, note 4.
[1980] De Decr. 25, note 2.
[1981] John i. 14.
[1982] organon, de Decr. 7, n. 6, de Syn. 27, note 11. This was alleged by Arius, Socr. i. 6. and by Eusebius, Eccles. Theol. i. 8. supr. Ep. Eus., and by the Anomoeans, supr. de Decr. 7, note 1. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VIII.--Objections Continued. Whether we may decide the question by the parallel of human sons, which are born later than their parents. No, for the force of the analogy lies in the idea of connaturality. Time is not involved in the idea of Son, but is adventitious to it, and does not attach to God, because He is without parts and passions. The titles Word and Wisdom guard our thoughts of Him and His Son from this misconception. God not a Father, as a Creator, in posse from eternity, because creation does not relate to the essence of God, as generation does.
26. (continued). Nor is answer needful to their other very simple and foolish inquiry, which they put to silly women; or none besides that which has been already given, namely, that it is not suitable to measure divine generation by the nature of men. However, that as before they may pass judgment on themselves, it is well to meet them on the same ground, thus:--Plainly, if they inquire of parents concerning their son, let them consider whence is the child which is begotten. For, granting the parent had not a son before his begetting, still, after having him, he had him, not as external or as foreign, but as from himself, and proper to his essence and his exact image, so that the former is beheld in the latter, and the latter is contemplated in the former. If then they assume from human examples that generation implies time, why not from the same infer that it implies the Natural and the Proper [1983] , instead of extracting serpent-like from the earth only what turns to poison? Those who ask of parents, and say, Had you a son before you begot him?' should add, And if you had a son, did you purchase him from without as a house or any other possession?' And then you would be answered, He is not from without, but from myself. For things which are from without are possessions, and pass from one to another; but my son is from me, proper and similar to my essence, not become mine from another, but begotten of me; wherefore I too am wholly in him, while I remain myself what I am [1984] .' For so it is; though the parent be distinct in time, as being man, who himself has come to be in time, yet he too would have had his child ever coexistent with him, but that his nature was a restraint and made it impossible. For Levi too was already in the loins of his great-grandfather, before his own actual generation, or that of his grandfather. When then the man comes to that age at which nature supplies the power, immediately, with nature, unrestrained, he becomes father of the son from himself.
27. Therefore, if on asking parents about children, they get for answer, that children which are by nature are not from without, but from their parents, let them confess in like manner concerning the Word of God, that He is simply from the Father. And if they make a question of the time, let them say what is to restrain God--for it is necessary to prove their irreligion on the very ground on which their scoff is made--let them tell us, what is there to restrain God from being always Father of the Son; for that what is begotten must be from its father is undeniable. Moreover, they will pass judgment on themselves in attributing [1985] such things to God, if, as they questioned women on the subject of time, so they inquire of the sun concerning its radiance, and of the fountain concerning its issue. They will find that these, though an offspring, always exist with those things from which they are. And if parents, such as these, have in common with their children nature and duration, why, if they suppose God inferior to things that come to be [1986] , do they not openly say out their own irreligion? But if they do not dare to say this openly, and the Son is confessed to be, not from without, but a natural offspring from the Father, and that there is nothing which is a restraint to God (for not as man is He, but more than the sun, or rather the God of the sun), it follows that the Word is from Him and is ever co-existent with Him, through whom also the Father caused that all things which were not should be. That then the Son comes not of nothing but is eternal and from the Father, is certain even from the nature of the case; and the question of the heretics to parents exposes their perverseness; for they confess the point of nature, and now have been put to shame on the point of time.
28. As we said above, so now we repeat, that the divine generation must not be compared to the nature of men, nor the Son considered to be part of God, nor the generation to imply any passion whatever; God is not as man; for men beget passibly, having a transitive nature, which waits for periods by reason of its weakness. But with God this cannot be; for He is not composed of parts, but being impassible and simple, He is impassibly and indivisibly Father of the Son. This again is strongly evidenced and proved by divine Scripture. For the Word of God is His Son, and the Son is the Father's Word and Wisdom; and Word and Wisdom is neither creature nor part of Him whose Word He is, nor an offspring passibly begotten. Uniting then the two titles, Scripture speaks of Son,' in order to herald the natural and true offspring of His essence; and, on the other hand, that none may think of the Offspring humanly, while signifying His essence, it also calls Him Word, Wisdom, and Radiance; to teach us that the generation was impassible, and eternal, and worthy of God. [1987] What affection then, or what part of the Father is the Word and the Wisdom and the Radiance? So much may be impressed even on these men of folly; for as they asked women concerning God's Son, so [1988] let them inquire of men concerning the Word, and they will find that the word which they put forth is neither an affection of them nor a part of their mind. But if such be the word of men, who are passible and partitive, why speculate they about passions and parts in the instance of the immaterial and indivisible God, that under pretence of reverence [1989] they may deny the true and natural generation of the Son? Enough was said above to shew that the offspring from God is not an affection; and now it has been shewn in particular that the Word is not begotten according to affection. The same may be said of Wisdom; God is not as man; nor must they here think humanly of Him. For, whereas men are capable of wisdom, God partakes in nothing, but is Himself the Father of His own Wisdom, of which whoso partake are given the name of wise. And this Wisdom too is not a passion, nor a part, but an Offspring proper to the Father. Wherefore He is ever Father, nor is the character of Father adventitious to God, lest He seem alterable; for if it is good that He be Father, but has not ever been Father, then good has not ever been in Him.
29. But, observe, say they, God was always a Maker, nor is the power of framing adventitious to Him; does it follow then, that, because He is the Framer of all, therefore His works also are eternal, and is it wicked to say of them too, that they were not before origination? Senseless are these Arians; for what likeness is there between Son and work, that they should parallel a father's with a maker's function? How is it that, with that difference between offspring and work, which has been shewn, they remain so ill-instructed? Let it be repeated then, that a work is external to the nature, but a son is the proper offspring of the essence; it follows that a work need not have been always, for the workman frames it when he will; but an offspring is not subject to will, but is proper to the essence [1990] . And a man may be and may be called Maker, though the works are not as yet; but father he cannot be called, nor can he be, unless a son exist. And if they curiously inquire why God, though always with the power to make, does not always make (though this also be the presumption of madmen, for who hath known the mind of the Lord, or who hath been His Counsellor?' or how shall the thing formed say to' the potter, why didst thou make me thus [1991] ?' however, not to leave even a weak argument unnoticed), they must be told, that although God always had the power to make, yet the things originated had not the power of being eternal [1992] . For they are out of nothing, and therefore were not before their origination; but things which were not before their origination, how could these coexist with the ever-existing God? Wherefore God, looking to what was good for them, then made them all when He saw that, when originated, they were able to abide. And as, though He was able, even from the beginning in the time of Adam, or Noah, or Moses, to send His own Word, yet He sent Him not until the consummation of the ages (for this He saw to be good for the whole creation), so also things originated did He make when He would, and as was good for them. But the Son, not being a work, but proper to the Father's offspring, always is; for, whereas the Father always is, so what is proper to His essence must always be; and this is His Word and His Wisdom. And that creatures should not be in existence, does not disparage the Maker; for He hath the power of framing them, when He wills; but for the offspring not to be ever with the Father, is a disparagement of the perfection of His essence. Wherefore His works were framed, when He would, through His Word; but the Son is ever the proper offspring of the Father's essence. __________________________________________________________________
[1983] Supr. de Decr. 6. The question was, What was that sense of Son which would apply to the Divine Nature? The Catholics said that its essential meaning could apply, viz. consubstantiality, whereas the point of posteriority to the Father depended on a condition, time, which could not exist in the instance of God. ib. 10. The Arians on the other hand said, that to suppose a true Son, was to think of God irreverently, as implying division, change, &c. The Catholics replied that the notion of materiality was quite as foreign from the Divine Essence as time, and as the Divine Sonship was eternal, so was it also clear both of imperfection or extension.
[1984] It is from expressions such as this that the Greek Fathers have been accused of tritheism. The truth is, every illustration, as being incomplete on one or other side of it, taken by itself, tends to heresy. The title Son by itself suggests a second God, as the title Word a mere attribute, and the title Instrument a creature. All heresies are partial views of the truth, and are wrong, not so much in what they say, as in what they deny. The truth, on the other hand, is a positive and comprehensive doctrine, and in consequence necessarily mysterious and open to misconception. vid. de Syn. 41, note 1. When Athan, implies that the Eternal Father is in the Son, though remaining what He is, as a man in his child, he is intent only upon the point of the Son's connaturality and equality, which the Arians denied. Cf. Orat. iii. §5; Ps.-Ath. Dial. i. (Migne xxviii. 1144 C.). S. Cyril even seems to deny that each individual man may be considered a separate substance except as the Three Persons are such (Dial. i. p. 409); and S. Gregory Nyssen is led to say that, strictly speaking, the abstract man, which is predicated of separate individuals, is still one, and this with a view of illustrating the Divine Unity. ad Ablab. t. 2. p. 449. vid. Petav. de Trin. iv. 9.
[1985] [But see Or. iii. 65, note 2.]
[1986] S. Athanasius's doctrine is, that, God containing in Himself all perfection, whatever is excellent in one created thing above another, is found in its perfection in Him. If then such generation as radiance from light is more perfect than that of children from parents, that belongs, and transcendently, to the All-perfect God.
[1987] This is a view familiar to the Fathers, viz. that in this consists our Lord's Sonship, that He is the Word, or as S. Augustine says, Christum ideo Filium quia Verbum. Aug. Ep. 120. 11. Cf. de Decr. §17. If I speak of Wisdom, I speak of His offspring;' Theoph. ad Autolyc. i. 3. The Word, the genuine Son of Mind;' Clem. Protrept. p. 58. Petavius discusses this subject accurately with reference to the distinction between Divine Generation and Divine Procession. de Trin. vii. 14.
[1988] Orat. iii. 67.
[1989] Heretics have frequently assigned reverence as the cause of their opposition to the Church; and if even Arius affected it, the plea may be expected in any other. O stultos et impios metus,' says S. Hilary, et irreligiosam de Deo sollicitudinem.' de Trin. iv. 6. It was still more commonly professed in regard to the Catholic doctrine of the Incarnation. Cf. Acta Archelai [Routh. Rell. v. 169]. August. contr. Secund. 9, contr. Faust. xi. 3. As the Manichees denied our Lord a body, so the Apollinarians denied Him a rational soul, still under pretence of reverence because, as they said, the soul was necessarily sinful. Leontius makes this their main argument, ho nous hamartetikos esti. de Sect. iv. p. 507. vid. also Greg. Naz. Ep. 101. ad Cledon. p. 89; Athan. in Apoll. i. 2. 14. Epiph. Ancor. 79. 80. Athan., &c., call the Apollinarian doctrine Manichæan in consequence. vid. in Apoll. ii. 8. 9. &c. Again, the Eranistes in Theodoret, who advocates a similar doctrine, will not call our Lord man. Eranist. ii. p. 83. Eutyches, on the other hand, would call our Lord man, but refused to admit His human nature, and still with the same profession. Leon. Ep. 21. 1 fin. Forbid it,' he says at Constantinople, that I should say that the Christ was of two natures, or should discuss the nature, phusiologein, of my God.' Concil. t. 2. p. 157 [Act. prima conc. Chalc. t. iv. 1001 ed. Col.] A modern argument for Universal Restitution takes a like form; Do not we shrink from the notion of another's being sentenced to eternal punishment; and are we more merciful than God?' vid. Matt. xvi. 22, 23.
[1990] Vid. Orat. iii. §59, &c.
[1991] Rom. xi. 34; ib. ix. 20.
[1992] Athan.'s argument is as follows: that, as it is of the essence of a son to be connatural' with the father, so is it of the essence of a creature to be of nothing,' ex ouk onton; therefore, while it was not impossible from the nature of the case,' for Almighty God to be always Father, it was impossible for the same reason that He should be always a Creator. vid. infr. §58: where he takes, They shall perish,' in the Psalm, not as a fact but as the definition of the nature of a creature. Also ii. §1, where he says, It is proper to creatures and works to have said of them, ex ouk onton and ouk en prin gennethe.' vid. Cyril. Thesaur. 9. p. 67. Dial. ii. p. 460. on the question of being a Creator in posse, vid. supra, Ep. Eus. 11 note 3. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IX.--Objections Continued. Whether is the Unoriginate one or two? Inconsistent in Arians to use an unscriptural word; necessary to define its meaning. Different senses of the word. If it means without Father,' there is but One Unoriginate; if without beginning or creation,' there are two. Inconsistency of Asterius. Unoriginate' a title of God, not in contrast with the Son, but with creatures, as is Almighty,' or Lord of powers.' Father' is the truer title, as not only Scriptural, but implying a Son, and our adoption as sons.
30. These considerations encourage the faithful, and distress the heretical, perceiving, as they do, their heresy overthrown thereby. Moreover, their further question, whether the Unoriginate be one or two [1993] ,' shews how false are their views, how treacherous and full of guile. Not for the Father's honour ask they this, but for the dishonour of the Word. Accordingly, should any one, not aware of their craft, answer, the Unoriginated is one,' forthwith they spirit out their own venom, saying, Therefore the Son is among things originated,' and well have we said, He was not before His generation.' Thus they make any kind of disturbance and confusion, provided they can but separate the Son from the Father, and reckon the Framer of all among His works. Now first they may be convicted on this score, that, while blaming the Nicene Bishops for their use of phrases not in Scripture, though these not injurious, but subversive of their irreligion, they themselves went off upon the same fault, that is, using words not in Scripture [1994] , and those in contumely of the Lord, knowing neither what they say nor whereof they affirm [1995] .' For instance, let them ask the Greeks, who have been their instructors (for it is a word of their invention, not Scripture), and when they have been instructed in its various significations, then they will discover that they cannot even question properly, on the subject which they have undertaken. For they have led me to ascertain [1996] that by unoriginate' is meant what has not yet come to be, but is possible to be, as wood which is not yet become, but is capable of becoming, a vessel; and again what neither has nor ever can come to be, as a triangle quadrangular, and an even number odd. For a triangle neither has nor ever can become quadrangular; nor has even ever, nor can ever, become odd. Moreover, by unoriginate' is meant, what exists, but has not come into being from any, nor having a father at all. Further, Asterius, the unprincipled sophist, the patron too of this heresy, has added in his own treatise, that what is not made, but is ever, is unoriginate [1997] .' They ought then, when they ask the question, to add in what sense they take the word unoriginate,' and then the parties questioned would be able to answer to the point.
31. But if they still are satisfied with merely asking, Is the Unoriginate one or two?' they must be told first of all, as ill-educated men, that many are such and nothing is such, many, which are capable of origination, and nothing, which is not capable, as has been said. But if they ask according as Asterius ruled it, as if what is not a work but was always' were unoriginate, then they must constantly be told that the Son as well as the Father must in this sense be called unoriginate. For He is neither in the number of things originated, nor a work, but has ever been with the Father, as has already been shewn, in spite of their many variations for the sole sake of speaking against the Lord, He is of nothing' and He was not before His generation.' When then, after failing at every turn, they betake themselves to the other sense of the question, existing but not generated of any nor having a father,' we shall tell them that the unoriginate in this sense is only one, namely the Father; and they will gain nothing by their question [1998] . For to say that God is in this sense Unoriginate, does not shew that the Son is a thing originated, it being evident from the above proofs that the Word is such as He is who begat Him. Therefore if God be unoriginate, His Image is not originated, but an Offspring [1999] , which is His Word and His Wisdom. For what likeness has the originated to the unoriginate? (one must not weary of using repetition;) for if they will have it that the one is like the other, so that he who sees the one beholds the other, they are like to say that the Unoriginate is the image of creatures; the end of which is a confusion of the whole subject, an equalling of things originated with the Unoriginate, and a denial of the Unoriginate by measuring Him with the works; and all to reduce the Son into their number.
32. However, I suppose even they will be unwilling to proceed to such lengths, if they follow Asterius the sophist. For he, earnest as he is in his advocacy of the Arian heresy, and maintaining that the Unoriginate is one, runs counter to them in saying, that the Wisdom of God is unoriginate and without beginning also. The following is a passage out of his work [2000] : The Blessed Paul said not that he preached Christ the power of God or the wisdom of God, but, without the article, God's power and God's wisdom [2001] ;' thus preaching that the proper power of God Himself, which is natural to Him and co-existent with Him unoriginatedly, is something besides.' And again, soon after: However, His eternal power and wisdom, which truth argues to be without beginning and unoriginate; this must surely be one.' For though, misunderstanding the Apostle's words, he considered that there were two wisdoms; yet, by speaking still of a wisdom coexistent with Him, he declares that the Unoriginate is not simply one, but that there is another Unoriginate with Him. For what is coexistent, coexists not with itself, but with another. If then they agree with Asterius, let them never ask again, Is the Unoriginate one or two,' or they will have to contest the point with him; if, on the other hand, they differ even from him, let them not rely upon his treatise, lest, biting one another, they be consumed one of another [2002] .' So much on the point of their ignorance; but who can say enough on their crafty character? who but would justly hate them while possessed by such a madness? for when they were no longer allowed to say out of nothing' and He was not before His generation,' they hit upon this word unoriginate,' that, by saying among the simple that the Son was originate,' they might imply the very same phrases out of nothing,' and He once was not;' for in such phrases things originated and creatures are implied.
33. If they have confidence in their own positions, they should stand to them, and not change about so variously [2003] ; but this they will not, from an idea that success is easy, if they do but shelter their heresy under colour of the word unoriginate.' Yet after all, this term is not used in contrast with the Son, clamour as they may, but with things originated; and the like may be found in the words Almighty,' and Lord of the Powers [2004] .' For if we say that the Father has power and mastery over all things by the Word, and the Son rules the Father's kingdom, and has the power of all, as His Word, and as the Image of the Father, it is quite plain that neither here is the Son reckoned among that all, nor is God called Almighty and Lord with reference to Him, but to those things which through the Son come to be, and over which He exercises power and mastery through the Word. And therefore the Unoriginate is specified not by contrast to the Son, but to the things which through the Son come to be. And excellently: since God is not as things originated, but is their Creator and Framer through the Son. And as the word Unoriginate' is specified relatively to things originated, so the word Father' is indicative of the Son. And he who names God Maker and Framer and Unoriginate, regards and apprehends things created and made; and he who calls God Father, thereby conceives and contemplates the Son. And hence one might marvel at the obstinacy which is added to their irreligion, that, whereas the term unoriginate' has the aforesaid good sense, and admits of being used religiously [2005] , they, in their own heresy, bring it forth for the dishonour of the Son, not having read that he who honoureth the Son honoureth the Father, and he who dishonoureth the Son, dishonoureth the Father [2006] . If they had any concern at all [2007] for reverent speaking and the honour due to the Father, it became them rather, and this were better and higher, to acknowledge and call God Father, than to give Him this name. For, in calling God unoriginate, they are, as I said before, calling Him from His works, and as Maker only and Framer, supposing that hence they may signify that the Word is a work after their own pleasure. But that he who calls God Father, signifies Him from the Son being well aware that if there be a Son, of necessity through that Son all things originate were created. And they, when they call Him Unoriginate, name Him only from His works, and know not the Son any more than the Greeks; but he who calls God Father, names Him from the Word; and knowing the Word, he acknowledges Him to be Framer of all, and understands that through Him all things have been made.
34. Therefore it is more pious and more accurate to signify God from the Son and call Him Father, than to name Him from His works only and call Him Unoriginate [2008] . For the latter title, as I have said, does nothing more than signify all the works, individually and collectively, which have come to be at the will of God through the Word; but the title Father has its significance and its bearing only from the Son. And, whereas the Word surpasses things originated, by so much and more doth calling God Father surpass the calling Him Unoriginate. For the latter is unscriptural and suspicious, because it has various senses; so that, when a man is asked concerning it, his mind is carried about to many ideas; but the word Father is simple and scriptural, and more accurate, and only implies the Son. And Unoriginate' is a word of the Greeks, who know not the Son; but Father' has been acknowledged and vouchsafed by our Lord. For He, knowing Himself whose Son He was, said, I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me;' and, He that hath seen Me, hath seen the Father,' and I and the Father are One [2009] ;' but nowhere is He found to call the Father Unoriginate. Moreover, when He teaches us to pray, He says not, When ye pray, say, O God Unoriginate,' but rather, When ye pray, say, Our Father, which art in heaven [2010] .' And it was His will that the Summary [2011] of our faith should have the same bearing, in bidding us be baptized, not into the name of Unoriginate and originate, nor into the name of Creator and creature, but into the Name of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. For with such an initiation we too, being numbered among works, are made sons, and using the name of the Father, acknowledge from that name the Word also in the Father Himself [2012] . A vain thing then is their argument about the term Unoriginate,' as is now proved, and nothing more than a fantasy. __________________________________________________________________
[1993] The word angen[n]eton was in the philosophical schools synonymous with God;' hence by asking whether there were two Unoriginates, the Arians implied that there were two Gods, if Christ was God in the sense in which the Father was. Hence Athan. retorts, phaskontes, ou legomen duo ageneta, legousi duo theous. Orat. iii. 16, also ii. 38. Plato used agenneton of the Supreme God [not so; he used ageneton, see note 2 on de Decr. 28]; the Valentinians, Tertull. contr. Val. 7; and Basilides, Epiph. Hær. 31. 10. S. Clement uses it, see de Syn. 47, note 7. [The earlier Arians apparently argued mainly, like Asterius, from agenetos (cf. Epiph. 64. 8), the later (kainoi, Epiph. Hær. 73. 19) Anomoeans rather from agennetos]; viz. that he agennesia is the very ousia of God, not an attribute. So Aetius in Epiph. Hær. 76. S. Athanasius does not go into this question, but rather confines himself to the more popular form of it, viz. the Son is by His very name not agenetos, but genetos, but all geneta are creatures; which he answers, as de Decr. §28, by saying that Christianity had brought in a new idea into theology, viz. the sacred doctrine of a true Son, ek tes ousias. This was what the Arians had originally denied hen to agenneton hen de to hup' autou alethos, kai ouk ek tes ousias autou gegonos. Euseb. Nic. ap. Theod. H. E. i. 6. When they were urged what according to them was the middle idea to which the Son answered, if they would not accept the Catholic, they would not define but merely said, gennema, all' ouk hos hen ton gennematon. [See pp. 149, 169, and the reference there to Lightfoot.]
[1994] De Decr. 18.
[1995] 1 Tim. i. 7.
[1996] De Decr. 28, note 4.
[1997] The two first senses here given answer to the two first mentioned, de Decr. §28. and, as he there says, are plainly irrelevant. The third in the de Decr. which, as he there observes, is ambiguous and used for a sophistical purpose, is here divided into third and fourth, answering to the two senses which alone are assigned in the de Syn. §46 [where see note 5], and on them the question turns. This is an instance, of which many occur, how Athan. used his former writings and worked over again his former ground, and simplified or cleared what he had said. In the de Decr. after 350, we have three senses of ageneton, two irrelevant and the third ambiguous; here in Orat. i. (358), he divides the third into two; in the de Syn. (359), he rejects and omits the two first, leaving the two last, which are the critical senses.
[1998] These two senses of agenneton unbegotten and unmade were afterwards [but see notes on de Decr. 28] expressed by the distinction of nn and n, agenneton and ageneton. vid. Damasc. F. O. i. 8. p. 135. and Le Quien's note.
[1999] §20, note 5.
[2000] De Syn. §18, infr. ii. 37.
[2001] 1 Cor. i. 24.
[2002] Gal. v. 15.
[2003] De Syn. 9, note 2.
[2004] The passage which follows is written with his de Decr. before him. At first he but uses the same topics, but presently he incorporates into this Discourse an actual portion of his former work, with only such alterations as an author commonly makes in transcribing. This, which is not unfrequent with Athan., shews us the care with which he made his doctrinal statements, though they seem at first sight written off. It also accounts for the diffuseness and repetition which might be imputed to his composition, what seems superfluous being often only the insertion of an extract from a former work.
[2005] De Syn. §47.
[2006] John v. 23.
[2007] Here he begins a close transcript of the de Decr. §30, the last sentence, however, of the paragraph being an addition.
[2008] For analogous arguments against the word agenneton, see Basil, contr. Eunom. i. 5. p. 215. Greg. Naz. Orat. 31. 23. Epiph. Hær. 76. p. 941. Greg. Nyss. contr. Eunom. vi. p. 192, &c. Cyril. Dial. ii. Pseudo-Basil. contr. Eunom. iv. p. 283.
[2009] John xiv. 11; xiv. 9; x. 30. These three texts are found together frequently in Athan. particularly in Orat. iii. where he considers the doctrines of the Image' and the perichoresis. vid. Index of Texts, also Epiph. Hær. 64. 9. Basil. Hexaem. ix. fin. Cyr. Thes. xii. p. 111. [add in S. Joan, 168, 847] Potam. Ep. ap. Dacher. t. 3. p. 299. Hil. Trin. vii. 41. et supr.
[2010] Luke xi. 2.
[2011] De Syn. 28, note 5.
[2012] Here ends the extract from the de Decretis. The sentence following is added as a close. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter X.--Objections Continued. How the Word has free will, yet without being alterable. He is unalterable because the Image of the Father, proved from texts.
35. As to their question whether the Word is alterable [2013] , it is superfluous to examine it; it is enough simply to write down what they say, and so to shew its daring irreligion. How they trifle, appears from the following questions:--Has He free will, or has He not? is He good from choice according to free will, and can He, if He will, alter, being of an alterable nature? or, as wood or stone, has He not His choice free to be moved and incline hither and thither?' It is but agreeable to their heresy thus to speak and think; for, when once they have framed to themselves a God out of nothing and a created Son, of course they also adopt such terms, as being suitable to a creature. However, when in their controversies with Churchmen they hear from them of the real and only Word of the Father, and yet venture thus to speak of Him, does not their doctrine then become the most loathsome that can be found? is it not enough to distract a man on mere hearing, though unable to reply, and to make him stop his ears, from astonishment at the novelty of what he hears them say, which even to mention is to blaspheme? For if the Word be alterable and changing, where will He stay, and what will be the end of His development? how shall the alterable possibly be like the Unalterable? How should he who has seen the alterable, be considered to have seen the Unalterable? At what state must He arrive, for us to be able to behold in Him the Father? for it is plain that not at all times shall we see the Father in the Son, because the Son is ever altering, and is of changing nature. For the Father is unalterable and unchangeable, and is always in the same state and the same; but if, as they hold, the Son is alterable, and not always the same, but of an ever-changing nature, how can such a one be the Father's Image, not having the likeness of His unalterableness [2014] ? how can He be really in the Father, if His purpose is indeterminate? Nay, perhaps, as being alterable, and advancing daily, He is not perfect yet. But away with such madness of the Arians, and let the truth shine out, and shew that they are foolish. For must not He be perfect who is equal to God? and must not He be unalterable, who is one with the Father, and His Son proper to His essence? and the Father's essence being unalterable, unalterable must be also the proper Offspring from it. And if they slanderously impute alteration to the Word, let them learn how much their own reason is in peril; for from the fruit is the tree known. For this is why he who hath seen the Son hath seen the Father; and why the knowledge of the Son is knowledge of the Father.
36. Therefore the Image of the unalterable God must be unchangeable; for Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever [2015] .' And David in the Psalm says of Him, Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of Thine hands. They shall perish, but Thou remainest; and they all shall wax old as doth a garment. And as a vesture shalt Thou fold them up, and they shall be changed, but Thou art the same, and Thy years shall not fail [2016] .' And the Lord Himself says of Himself through the Prophet, See now that I, even I am He,' and I change not [2017] .' It may be said indeed that what is here signified relates to the Father; yet it suits the Son also to say this, specially because, when made man, He manifests His own identity and unalterableness to such as suppose that by reason of the flesh He is changed and become other than He was. More trustworthy are the saints, or rather the Lord, than the perversity of the irreligious. For Scripture, as in the above-cited passage of the Psalter, signifying under the name of heaven and earth, that the nature of all things originate and created is alterable and changeable, yet excepting the Son from these, shews us thereby that He is no wise a thing originate; nay teaches that He changes everything else, and is Himself not changed, in saying, Thou art the same, and Thy years shall not fail [2018] .' And with reason; for things originate, being from nothing [2019] , and not being before their origination, because, in truth, they come to be after not being, have a nature which is changeable; but the Son, being from the Father, and proper to His essence, is unchangeable and unalterable as the Father Himself. For it were sin to say that from that essence which is unalterable was begotten an alterable word and a changeable wisdom. For how is He longer the Word, if He be alterable? or can that be Wisdom which is changeable? unless perhaps, as accident in essence [2020] , so they would have it, viz. as in any particular essence, a certain grace and habit of virtue exists accidentally, which is called Word and Son and Wisdom, and admits of being taken from it and added to it. For they have often expressed this sentiment, but it is not the faith of Christians; as not declaring that He is truly Word and Son of God, or that the wisdom intended is true Wisdom. For what alters and changes, and has no stay in one and the same condition, how can that be true? whereas the Lord says, I am the Truth [2021] .' If then the Lord Himself speaks thus concerning Himself, and declares His unalterableness, and the Saints have learned and testify this, nay and our notions of God acknowledge it as religious, whence did these men of irreligion draw this novelty? From their heart as from a seat of corruption did they vomit it forth [2022] . __________________________________________________________________
[2013] treptos, not changeable' but of a moral nature capable of improvement. Arius maintained this in the strongest terms at starting. On being asked whether the Word of God is capable of altering as the devil altered, they scrupled not to say, "Yea, He is capable."' Alex. ap. Socr. i. 6. p. 11.
[2014] Supr. §22. init.
[2015] Heb. xiii. 8.
[2016] Ps. cii. 26-28
[2017] Deut. xxxii. 39; Mal. iii. 6.
[2018] Heb. i. 12.
[2019] §29, note.
[2020] Nic. Def. 21. note 9.
[2021] John xiv. 6.
[2022] De Syn. §16 fin. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XI.--Texts Explained; And First, Phil. II. 9, 10 Various texts which are alleged against the Catholic doctrine: e.g. Phil. ii. 9, 10. Whether the words Wherefore God hath highly exalted' prove moral probation and advancement. Argued against, first, from the force of the word Son;' which is inconsistent with such an interpretation. Next, the passage examined. Ecclesiastical sense of highly exalted,' and gave,' and wherefore;' viz. as being spoken with reference to our Lord's manhood. Secondary sense; viz. as implying the Word's exaltation' through the resurrection in the same sense in which Scripture speaks of His descent in the Incarnation; how the phrase does not derogate from the nature of the Word.
37. But since they allege the divine oracles and force on them a misinterpretation, according to their private sense [2023] , it becomes necessary to meet them just so far as to vindicate these passages, and to shew that they bear an orthodox sense, and that our opponents are in error. They say then, that the Apostle writes, Wherefore God also hath highly exalted Him, and given Him a Name which is above every name; that in the Name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and things in earth and things under the earth [2024] ;' and David, Wherefore God even Thy God, hath anointed Thee with the oil of gladness above Thy fellows [2025] .' Then they urge, as something acute: If He was exalted and received grace, on a wherefore,' and on a wherefore' He was anointed, He received a reward of His purpose; but having acted from purpose, He is altogether of an alterable nature.' This is what Eusebius [2026] and Arius have dared to say, nay to write; while their partizans do not shrink from conversing about it in full market-place, not seeing how mad an argument they use. For if He received what He had as a reward of His purpose, and would not have had it, unless He had needed it, and had His work to shew for it, then having gained it from virtue and promotion, with reason had He therefore' been called Son and God, without being very Son. For what is from another by nature, is a real offspring, as Isaac was to Abraham, and Joseph to Jacob, and the radiance to the sun; but the so called sons from virtue and grace, have but in place of nature a grace by acquisition, and are something else besides [2027] the gift itself; as the men who have received the Spirit by participation, concerning whom Scripture saith, I begat and exalted children, and they rebelled against Me [2028] .' And of course, since they were not sons by nature, therefore, when they altered, the Spirit was taken away and they were disinherited; and again on their repentance that God who thus at the beginning gave them grace, will receive them, and give light, and call them sons again.
38. But if they say this of the Saviour also, it follows that He is neither very God nor very Son, nor like the Father, nor in any wise has God for a Father of His being according to essence, but of the mere grace given to Him, and for a Creator of His being according to essence, after the similitude of all others. And being such, as they maintain, it will be manifest further that He had not the name Son' from the first, if so be it was the prize of works done and of that very same advance which He made when He became man, and took the form of the servant; but then, when, after becoming obedient unto death,' He was, as the text says, highly exalted,' and received that Name' as a grace, that in the Name of Jesus every knee should bow [2029] .' What then was before this, if then He was exalted, and then began to be worshipped, and then was called Son, when He became man? For He seems Himself not to have promoted the flesh at all, but rather to have been Himself promoted through it, if, according to their perverseness, He was then exalted and called Son, when He became man. What then was before this? One must urge the question on them again, to make it understood what their irreligious doctrine results in [2030] . For if the Lord be God, Son, Word, yet was not all these before He became man, either He was something else beside these, and afterwards became partaker of them for His virtue's sake, as we have said; or they must adopt the alternative (may it return upon their heads!) that He was not before that time, but is wholly man by nature and nothing more. But this is no sentiment of the Church. but of the Samosatene and of the present Jews. Why then, if they think as Jews, are they not circumcised with them too, instead of pretending Christianity, while they are its foes? For if He was not, or was indeed, but afterwards was promoted, how were all things made by Him, or how in Him, were He not perfect, did the Father delight [2031] ? And He, on the other hand, if now promoted, how did He before rejoice in the presence of the Father? And, if He received His worship after dying, how is Abraham seen to worship Him in the tent [2032] , and Moses in the bush? and, as Daniel saw, myriads of myriads, and thousands of thousands were ministering unto Him? And if, as they say, He had His promotion now, how did the Son Himself make mention of that His glory before and above the world, when He said, Glorify Thou Me, O Father, with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was [2033] .' If, as they say, He was then exalted, how did He before that bow the heavens and come down;' and again, The Highest gave His thunder [2034] ?' Therefore, if, even before the world was made, the Son had that glory, and was Lord of glory and the Highest, and descended from heaven, and is ever to be worshipped, it follows that He had not promotion from His descent, but rather Himself promoted the things which needed promotion; and if He descended to effect their promotion, therefore He did not receive in reward the name of the Son and God, but rather He Himself has made us sons of the Father, and deified men by becoming Himself man.
39. Therefore He was not man, and then became God, but He was God, and then became man, and that to deify us [2035] . Since, if when He became man, only then He was called Son and God, but before He became man, God called the ancient people sons, and made Moses a god of Pharaoh (and Scripture says of many, God standeth in the congregation of Gods [2036] '), it is plain that He is called Son and God later than they. How then are all things through Him, and He before all? or how is He first-born of the whole creation [2037] ,' if He has others before Him who are called sons and gods? And how is it that those first partakers [2038] do not partake of the Word? This opinion is not true; it is a device of our present Judaizers. For how in that case can any at all know God as their Father? for adoption there could not be apart from the real Son, who says, No one knoweth the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him [2039] .' And how can there be deifying apart from the Word and before Him? yet, saith He to their brethren the Jews, If He called them gods, unto whom the Word of God came [2040] .' And if all that are called sons and gods, whether in earth or in heaven, were adopted and deified through the Word, and the Son Himself is the Word, it is plain that through Him are they all, and He Himself before all, or rather He Himself only is very Son [2041] , and He alone is very God from the very God, not receiving these prerogatives as a reward for His virtue, nor being another beside them, but being all these by nature and according to essence. For He is Offspring of the Father's essence, so that one cannot doubt that after the resemblance of the unalterable Father, the Word also is unalterable.
40. Hitherto we have met their irrational conceits with the true conceptions [2042] implied in the Word Son,' as the Lord Himself has given us. But it will be well next to cite the divine oracles, that the unalterableness of the Son and His unchangeable nature, which is the Father's, as well as their perverseness, may be still more fully proved. The Apostle then, writing to the Philippians, says, Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus; who, being in the form of God, thought it not a prize to be equal with God; but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men. And, being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, becoming obedient to death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also highly exalted Him, and gave Him a Name which is above every name; that in the Name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father [2043] .' Can anything be plainer and more express than this? He was not from a lower state promoted: but rather, existing as God, He took the form of a servant, and in taking it, was not promoted but humbled Himself. Where then is there here any reward of virtue, or what advancement and promotion in humiliation? For if, being God, He became man, and descending from on high He is still said to be exalted, where is He exalted, being God? this withal being plain, that, since God is highest of all, His Word must necessarily be highest also. Where then could He be exalted higher, who is in the Father and like the Father in all things [2044] ? Therefore He is beyond the need of any addition; nor is such as the Arians think Him. For though the Word has descended in order to be exalted, and so it is written, yet what need was there that He should humble Himself, as if to seek that which He had already? And what grace did He receive who is the Giver of grace [2045] ? or how did He receive that Name for worship, who is always worshipped by His Name? Nay, certainly before He became man, the sacred writers invoke Him, Save me, O God, for Thy Name's sake [2046] ;'and again, Some put their trust in chariots, and some in horses, but we will remember the Name of the Lord our God [2047] .' And while He was worshipped by the Patriarchs, concerning the Angels it is written, Let all the Angels of God worship Him [2048] .'
41. And if, as David says in the 71st Psalm, His Name remaineth before the sun, and before the moon, from one generation to another [2049] ,' how did He receive what He had always, even before He now received it? or how is He exalted, being before His exaltation the Most High? or how did He receive the right of being worshipped, who before He now received it, was ever worshipped? It is not a dark saying but a divine mystery [2050] . In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God;' but for our sakes afterwards the Word was made flesh [2051] .' And the term in question, highly exalted,' does not signify that the essence of the Word was exalted, for He was ever and is equal to God [2052] ,' but the exaltation is of the manhood. Accordingly this is not said before the Word became flesh; that it might be plain that humbled' and exalted' are spoken of His human nature; for where there is humble estate, there too may be exaltation; and if because of His taking flesh humbled' is written, it is clear that highly exalted' is also said because of it. For of this was man's nature in want, because of the humble estate of the flesh and of death. Since then the Word, being the Image of the Father and immortal, took the form of the servant, and as man underwent for us death in His flesh, that thereby He might offer Himself for us through death to the Father; therefore also, as man, He is said because of us and for us to be highly exalted, that as by His death we all died in Christ, so again in the Christ Himself we might be highly exalted, being raised from the dead, and ascending into heaven, whither the forerunner Jesus is for us entered, not into the figures of the true, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us [2053] .' But if now for us the Christ is entered into heaven itself, though He was even before and always Lord and Framer of the heavens, for us therefore is that present exaltation written. And as He Himself, who sanctifies all, says also that He sanctifies Himself to the Father for our sakes, not that the Word may become holy, but that He Himself may in Himself sanctify all of us, in like manner we must take the present phrase, He highly exalted Him,' not that He Himself should be exalted, for He is the highest, but that He may become righteousness for us [2054] , and we may be exalted in Him, and that we may enter the gates of heaven, which He has also opened for us, the forerunners saying, Lift up your gates, O ye rulers, and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors, and the King of Glory shall come in [2055] .' For here also not on Him were shut the gates, as being Lord and Maker of all, but because of us is this too written, to whom the door of paradise was shut. And therefore in a human relation, because of the flesh which He bore, it is said of Him, Lift up your gates,' and shall come in,' as if a man were entering; but in a divine relation on the other hand it is said of Him, since the Word was God,' that He is the Lord' and the King of Glory.' Such our exaltation the Spirit foreannounced in the eighty-ninth Psalm, saying, And in Thy righteousness shall they be exalted, for Thou art the glory of their strength [2056] .' And if the Son be Righteousness, then He is not exalted as being Himself in need, but it is we who are exalted in that Righteousness, which is He [2057] .
42. And so too the words gave Him' are not written because of the Word Himself; for even before He became man He was worshipped, as we have said, by the Angels and the whole creation in virtue of being proper to the Father; but because of us and for us this too is written of Him. For as Christ died and was exalted as man, so, as man, is He said to take what, as God, He ever had, that even such a grant of grace might reach to us. For the Word was not impaired in receiving a body, that He should seek to receive a grace, but rather He deified that which He put on, and more than that, gave' it graciously to the race of man. For as He was ever worshipped as being the Word and existing in the form of God, so being what He ever was, though become man and called Jesus, He none the less has the whole creation under foot, and bending their knees to Him in this Name, and confessing that the Word's becoming flesh, and undergoing death in flesh, has not happened against the glory of His Godhead, but to the glory of God the Father.' For it is the Father's glory that man, made and then lost, should be found again; and, when dead, that he should be made alive, and should become God's temple. For whereas the powers in heaven, both Angels and Archangels, were ever worshipping the Lord, as they are now worshipping Him in the Name of Jesus, this is our grace and high exaltation, that even when He became man, the Son of God is worshipped, and the heavenly powers will not be astonished at seeing all of us, who are of one body with Him [2058] , introduced into their realms. And this had not been, unless He who existed in the form of God had taken on Him a servant's form, and had humbled Himself, yielding His body to come unto death.
43. Behold then what men considered the foolishness of God because of the Cross, has become of all things most honoured. For our resurrection is stored up in it; and no longer Israel alone, but henceforth all the nations, as the Prophet hath foretold, leave their idols and acknowledge the true God, the Father of the Christ. And the illusion of demons is come to nought, and He only who is really God is worshipped in the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ [2059] . For the fact that the Lord, even when come in human body and called Jesus, was worshipped and believed to be God's Son, and that through Him the Father was known, shows, as has been said, that not the Word, considered as the Word, received this so great grace, but we. For because of our relationship to His Body we too have become God's temple, and in consequence are made God's sons, so that even in us the Lord is now worshipped, and beholders report, as the Apostle says, that God is in them of a truth [2060] . As also John says in the Gospel, As many as received Him, to them gave He power to become children of God [2061] ;' and in his Epistle he writes, By this we know that He abideth in us by His Spirit which He hath given us [2062] .' And this too is an evidence of His goodness towards us that, while we were exalted because that the Highest Lord is in us, and on our account grace was given to Him, because that the Lord who supplies the grace has become a man like us, He on the other hand, the Saviour, humbled Himself in taking our body of humiliation [2063] ,' and took a servant's form, putting on that flesh which was enslaved to sin [2064] . And He indeed has gained nothing from us for His own promotion: for the Word of God is without want and full; but rather we were promoted from Him; for He is the Light, which lighteneth every man, coming into the world [2065] .' And in vain do the Arians lay stress upon the conjunction wherefore,' because Paul has said, Wherefore, hath God highly exalted Him.' For in saying this he did not imply any prize of virtue, nor promotion from advance [2066] , but the cause why the exaltation was bestowed upon us. And what is this but that He who existed in form of God, the Son of a noble [2067] Father, humbled Himself and became a servant instead of us and in our behalf? For if the Lord had not become man, we had not been redeemed from sins, not raised from the dead, but remaining dead under the earth; not exalted into heaven, but lying in Hades. Because of us then and in our behalf are the words, highly exalted' and given.'
44. This then I consider the sense of this passage, and that, a very ecclesiastical sense [2068] . However, there is another way in which one might remark upon it, giving the same sense in a parallel way; viz. that, though it does not speak of the exaltation of the Word Himself, so far as He is Word [2069] (for He is, as was just now said, most high and like His Father), yet by reason of His becoming man it indicates His resurrection from the dead. For after saying, He hath humbled Himself even unto death,' He immediately added, Wherefore He hath highly exalted Him;' wishing to shew, that, although as man He is said to have died, yet, as being Life, He was exalted on the resurrection; for He who descended, is the same also who rose again [2070] .' He descended in body, and He rose again because He was God Himself in the body. And this again is the reason why according to this meaning he brought in the conjunction Wherefore;' not as a reward of virtue nor of advancement, but to signify the cause why the resurrection took place; and why, while all other men from Adam down to this time have died and remained dead, He only rose in integrity from the dead. The cause is this, which He Himself has already taught us, that, being God, He has become man. For all other men, being merely born of Adam, died, and death reigned over them; but He, the Second Man, is from heaven, for the Word was made flesh [2071] ,' and this Man is said to be from heaven and heavenly [2072] , because the Word descended from heaven; wherefore He was not held under death. For though He humbled Himself, yielding His own Body to come unto death, in that it was capable of death [2073] , yet He was highly exalted from earth, because He was God's Son in a body. Accordingly what is here said, Wherefore God also hath highly exalted Him,' answers to Peter's words in the Acts, Whom God raised up, having loosed the bonds of death, because it was not possible that He should be holden of it [2074] .' For as Paul has written, Since being in form of God He became man, and humbled Himself unto death, therefore God also hath highly exalted Him,' so also Peter says, Since, being God, He became man, and signs and wonders proved Him to beholders to be God, therefore it was not possible that He should be holden of death.' To man it was not possible to succeed in this; for death belongs to man; wherefore, the Word, being God, became flesh, that, being put to death in the flesh, He might quicken all men by His own power.
45. But since He Himself is said to be exalted,' and God gave' Him, and the heretics think this a defect [2075] or affection in the essence [2076] of the Word, it becomes necessary to explain how these words are used. He is said to be exalted from the lower parts of the earth, because death is ascribed even to Him. Both events are reckoned His, since it was His Body [2077] , and none other's, that was exalted from the dead and taken up into heaven. And again, the Body being His, and the Word not being external to it, it is natural that when the Body was exalted, He, as man, should, because of the body, be spoken of as exalted. If then He did not become man, let this not be said of Him: but if the Word became flesh, of necessity the resurrection and exaltation, as in the case of a man, must be ascribed to Him, that the death which is ascribed to Him may be a redemption of the sin of men and an abolition of death, and that the resurrection and exaltation may for His sake remain secure for us. In both respects he hath said of Him, God hath highly exalted Him,' and God hath given to Him;' that herein moreover he may show that it is not the Father that hath become flesh, but it is His Word, who has become man, and receives after the manner of men from the Father, and is exalted by Him, as has been said. And it is plain, nor would any one dispute it, that what the Father gives, He gives through. the Son. And it is marvellous and overwhelming verily; for the grace which the Son gives from the Father, that the Son Himself is said to receive; and the exaltation, which the Son bestows from the Father, with that the Son is Himself exalted. For He who is the Son of God, became Himself the Son of Man; and, as Word, He gives from the Father, for all things which the Father does and gives, He does and supplies through Him; and as the Son of Man, He Himself is said after the manner of men to receive what proceeds from Him, because His Body is none other than His, and is a natural recipient of grace, as has been said. For He received it as far as His man's nature [2078] was exalted; which exaltation was its being deified. But such an exaltation the Word Himself always had according to the Father's Godhead and perfection, which was His [2079] . __________________________________________________________________
[2023] Vid. de Syn. 4, note 6. and cf. Tertull. de Præscr. 19. Rufinus H. E. ii. 9. Vincent. Comm. 2. Hippolytus has a passage very much to the same purpose, contr. Noet. 9 fin.
[2024] Phil. ii. 9, 10.
[2025] Ps. xlv. 7.
[2026] Of Nicomedia. vid. Theod. H. E. i. 5.
[2027] §39 end.
[2028] Is. i. 2. LXX.
[2029] Phil. ii. 8.
[2030] The Arians perhaps more than other heretics were remarkable for bringing objections against the received view, rather than forming a consistent theory of their own. Indeed the very vigour and success of their assault upon the truth lay in its being a mere assault, not a positive and substantive teaching. They therefore, even more than others, might fairly be urged on to the consequences of their positions. Now the text in question, as it must be interpreted if it is to serve as an objection, was an objection also to the received doctrine of the Arians. They considered that our Lord was above and before all creatures from the first, and their Creator; how then could He be exalted above all? They surely, as much as Catholics, were obliged to explain it of our Lord's manhood. They could not then use it as a weapon against the Church, until they took the ground of Paul of Samosata.
[2031] Prov. viii. 30.
[2032] De Syn. 27 (15).
[2033] John xvii. 5.
[2034] Ps. xviii. 9, 13.
[2035] [De Incar. 54, and note.]
[2036] Ps. lxxxii. 1; Heb. LXX.
[2037] Col. i. 15. vid. infr. ii. §62.
[2038] In this passage Athan. considers that the participation of the Word is deification, as communion with the Son is adoption: also that the old Saints, inasmuch as they are called gods' and sons,' did partake of the Divine Word and Son, or in other words were gifted with the Spirit. He asserts the same doctrine very strongly in Orat. iv. §22. On the other hand, infr. 47, he says expressly that Christ received the Spirit in Baptism that He might give it to man.' There is no real contradiction in such statements; what was given in one way under the Law, was given in another and fuller under the Gospel.
[2039] Matt. xi. 27.
[2040] John x. 35.
[2041] p. 157, note 6.
[2042] tais ennoiais chromenoi, pros tas epinoias apentesamen. cf. ouchi epinoia, paranoia de mallon, &c. Basil. contr. Eunom. i. 6. init.
[2043] Phil. ii. 5-11.
[2044] homoios kata panta, de Syn. 21, note 10.
[2045] p. 162, note 3.
[2046] Ps. liv. 1.
[2047] Ib. xx. 7.
[2048] Heb. i. 6.
[2049] Ps. lxxii. 17, 5, LXX.
[2050] Scripture is full of mysteries, but they are mysteries of fact, not of words. Its dark sayings or ænigmata are such, because in the nature of things they cannot be expressed clearly. Hence contrariwise, Orat. ii. §77 fin. he calls Prov. viii. 22. an enigma, with an allusion to Prov. i. 6. Sept. In like manner S. Ambrose says, Mare est scriptura divina, habens in se sensus profundos, et altitudinem propheticorum ænigmatum, &c. Ep. ii. 3. What is commonly called explaining away' Scripture, is this transference of the obscurity from the subject to the words used.
[2051] John i. 1, 14.
[2052] Phil. ii. 6.
[2053] Heb. vi. 20; ix. 24.
[2054] When Scripture says that our Lord was exalted, it means in that sense in which He could be exalted; just as, in saying that a man walks or eats, we speak of him not as a spirit, but as in that system of things to which the ideas of walking and eating belong. Exaltation is not a word which can belong to God; it is unmeaning, and therefore is not applied to Him in the text in question. Thus, e.g. S. Ambrose: Ubi humiliatus, ibi obediens. Ex eo enim nascitur obedientia, ex quo humilitas et in eo desinit,' &c. Ap. Dav. alt. n. 39.
[2055] Ps. xxiv. 7.
[2056] Ps. lxxxix. 17, 18, LXX.
[2057] 1 Cor. i. 30.
[2058] Infr. §43.
[2059] [De Incar. §§46, 51, &c.]
[2060] ontos en humin ho theos. 1 Cor. xiv. 25. Athan. interprets en in not among; as also in 1 John iii. 24, just afterwards. Vid. en emoi. Gal. i. 24. entos humon, Luke xvii. 21, eskenosen en hemin, John i. 14, on which text Hooker says, It pleased not the Word or Wisdom of God to take to itself some one person among men, for then should that one have been advanced which was assumed and no more, but Wisdom, to the end she might save many, built her house of that Nature which is common unto all; she made not this or that man her habitation, but dwelt in us.' Eccl. Pol. v. 52. §3. S. Basil in his proof of the divinity of the Holy Spirit has a somewhat similar passage to the text, de Sp. S. c. 24.
[2061] John i. 12.
[2062] 1 John iii. 24.
[2063] Phil. iii. 21.
[2064] It was usual to say against the Apollinarians, that, unless our Lord took on Him our nature, as it is, He had not purified and changed it, as it is, but another nature; The Lord came not to save Adam as free from sin, that He should become like unto him; but as, in the net of sin and now fallen, that God's mercy might raise him up with Christ.' Leont. contr. Nestor. &c. ii. p. 996. Accordingly, Athan. says elsewhere, Had not sinlessness appeared [cf. Rom. viii. 3, pempsas] "in the nature which had sinned," how was sin condemned in the flesh?' in Apoll. ii. 6. It was necessary for our salvation,' says S. Cyril, that the Word of God should become man, that human flesh "subject to corruption" and "sick with the lust of pleasures," He might make His own; and, "whereas He is life and lifegiving," He might "destroy the corruption," &c....For by this means, might sin in our flesh become dead.' Ep. ad Success. i. p. 138. And S. Leo, Non alterius naturæ erat ejus caro quam nostra, nec alio illi quam cæteris hominibus anima est inspirata principio, quæ excelleret, non diversitate generis, sed sublimitate virtutis.' Ep. 35 fin. vid. also Ep. 28. 3. Ep. 31. 2. Ep. 165. 9. Serm. 22. 2. and 25. 5. It may be asked whether this doctrine does not interfere with that of the immaculate conception [i.e. that Christ was conceived sinless]; but that miracle was wrought in order that our Lord might not be born in original sin, and does not affect, or rather includes, His taking flesh of the substance of the Virgin, i.e. of a fallen nature. If indeed sin were of the substance' of our fallen nature, as some heretics have said, then He could not have taken our nature without partaking our sinfulness; but if sin be, as it is, a fault of the will, then the Divine Power of the Word could sanctify the human will, and keep it from swerving in the direction of evil. Hence We say not that Christ by the felicity of a flesh separated from sense could not feel the desire of sin, but that by perfection of virtue, and by a flesh not begotten through concupiscence of the flesh, He had not the desire of sin;' Aug. Op. Imperf. iv. 48. On the other hand, S. Athanasius expressly calls it Manichean doctrine to consider ten phusin of the flesh hamartian, kai ou ten praxin. contr. Apoll. i. 12 fin. or phusiken einai ten hamartian. ibid. i. 14 fin. His argument in the next ch. is on the ground that all natures are from God, but God made man upright nor is the author of evil (vid. also Vit. Anton. 20); not as if,' he says, the devil wrought in man a nature (God forbid!) for of a nature the evil cannot be maker (demiourgos) as is the impiety of the Manichees, but he wrought a bias of nature by transgression, and so death reigned over all men.' Wherefore, saith he, the Son of God came to destroy the works of the devil;' what works? that nature, which God made sinless, and the devil biassed to the transgression of God's command and the finding out of sin which is death, did God the Word raise again, so as to be secure from the devil's bias and the finding out of sin. And therefore the Lord said, "The prince of this world cometh and findeth nothing in Me."' vid. also §19. Ibid. ii. 6. he speaks of the devil having introduced the law of sin.' vid. also §9.
[2065] John i. 9.
[2066] prokopes internal advance,' Luke ii. 52.
[2067] eugenous
[2068] ekklesiastikos, vid. Serap. iv. 15. contr. Gent. 6. 7. 33.
[2069] Orat. ii. §8.
[2070] Eph. iv. 10, but anastas for anabas.
[2071] John i. 14.
[2072] In Apoll. i. 2.
[2073] It was a point in controversy with the extreme Monophysites, that is, the Eutychians, whether our Lord's body was naturally subject to death, the Catholics maintaining the affirmative, as Athanasius here. Eutyches asserted that our Lord had not a human nature, by which he meant among other things that His manhood was not subject to the laws of a body, but so far as He submitted to them, He did so by an act of will in each particular case; and this, lest it should seem that He was moved by the pathe against His will akousios; and consequently that His manhood was not subject to death. But the Catholics maintained that He had voluntarily placed Himself under those laws, and died naturally, vid. Athan. contr. Apol. i. 17, and that after the resurrection His body became incorruptible, not according to nature, but by grace. vid. Leont. de Sect. x. p. 530. Anast. Hodeg. c. 23. To express their doctrine of the huperphues of our Lord's manhood the Eutychians made use of the Catholic expression ut voluit.' vid. Athan. l.c. Eutyches ap. Leon. Ep. 21. quomodo voluit et scit,' twice. vid. also Eranist. i. p. 11. ii. p. 105. Leont. contr. Nest. i. p. 967. Pseudo-Athan. Serm. adv. Div. Hær. §8. (t. 2. p. 570.)
[2074] Acts ii. 24.
[2075] elattoma, ad Adelph. 4.
[2076] At first sight it would seem as if S. Athanasius here used ousia essence for subsistence, or person; but this is not true except with an explanation. Its direct meaning is here, as usual, essence, though indirectly it comes to imply subsistence. He is speaking of that Divine Essence which, though also the Almighty Father's, is as simply and entirely the Word's as if it were only His. Nay, even when the Essence of the Father is spoken of in a sort of contrast to that of the Son, as in the phrase ousia ex ousias, harsh as such expressions are, it is not accurate to say that ousia is used for subsistence or person, or that two ousiai are spoken of (vid. de Syn. 52, note 8), except, that is, by Arians, as Eusebius, supr. Ep. Eus. §6 [or by Origen, Prolegg. ii. §3 (2) a.] Just below we find phusis tou logou, §51 init.
[2077] This was the question which came into discussion in the Nestorian controversy, when, as it was then expressed, all that took place in respect to the Eternal Word as man, belonged to His Person, and therefore might be predicated of Him; so that it was heretical not to confess the Word's body (or the body of God in the Person of the Word), the Word's death (as Athan, in the text), the Word's exaltation, and the Word's, or God's, Mother, who was in consequence called theotokos, which was the expression on which the controversy mainly turned. Cf. Orat. iii. 31, a passage as precise as if it had been written after the Nestorian and Eutychian controversies, though without the technical words then adopted.
[2078] ton anthropon.
[2079] ten patriken heautou theoteta, cf. de Syn. 45, note 1. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XII.--Texts Explained; Secondly, Psalm xlv. 7, 8. Whether the words therefore,' anointed,' &c., imply that the Word has been rewarded. Argued against first from the word fellows' or partakers.' He is anointed with the Spirit in His manhood to sanctify human nature. Therefore the Spirit descended on Him in Jordan, when in the flesh. And He is said to sanctify Himself for us, and give us the glory He has received. The word wherefore' implies His divinity. Thou hast loved righteousness,' &c., do not imply trial or choice.
46. Such an explanation of the Apostle's words confutes the irreligious men; and what the sacred poet says admits also the same orthodox sense, which they misinterpret, but which in the Psalmist is manifestly religious. He says then, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever; a sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of Thy Kingdom. Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated iniquity, therefore God, even Thy God, hath anointed Thee with the oil of gladness above Thy fellows [2080] .' Behold, O ye Arians, and acknowledge even hence the truth. The Singer speaks of us all as fellows' or partakers' of the Lord: but were He one of things which come out of nothing and of things originate, He Himself had been one of those who partake. But, since he hymned Him as the eternal God, saying, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever,' and has declared that all other things partake of Him, what conclusion must we draw, but that He is distinct from originated things, and He only the Father's veritable Word, Radiance, and Wisdom, which all things originate partake [2081] , being sanctified by Him in the Spirit [2082] ? And therefore He is here anointed,' not that He may become God, for He was so even before; nor that He may become King, for He had the Kingdom eternally, existing as God's Image, as the sacred Oracle shews; but in our behalf is this written, as before. For the Israelitish kings, upon their being anointed, then became kings, not being so before, as David, as Hezekiah, as Josiah, and the rest; but the Saviour on the contrary, being God, and ever ruling in the Father's Kingdom, and being Himself He that supplies the Holy Ghost, nevertheless is here said to be anointed, that, as before, being said as man to be anointed with the Spirit, He might provide for us men, not only exaltation and resurrection, but the indwelling and intimacy of the Spirit. And signifying this the Lord Himself hath said by His own mouth in the Gospel according to John, I have sent them into the world, and for their sakes do I sanctify Myself, that they may be sanctified in the truth [2083] .' In saying this He has shown that He is not the sanctified, but the Sanctifier; for He is not sanctified by other, but Himself sanctifies Himself, that we may be sanctified in the truth. He who sanctifies Himself is Lord of sanctification. How then does this take place? What does He mean but this? I, being the Father's Word, I give to Myself, when becoming man, the Spirit; and Myself, become man, do I sanctify in Him, that henceforth in Me, who am Truth (for "Thy Word is Truth"), all may be sanctified.'
47. If then for our sake He sanctifies Himself, and does this when He is become man, it is very plain that the Spirit's descent on Him in Jordan was a descent upon us, because of His bearing our body. And it did not take place for promotion to the Word, but again for our sanctification, that we might share His anointing, and of us it might be said, Know ye not that ye are God's Temple, and the Spirit of God dwelleth in you [2084] ?' For when the Lord, as man, was washed in Jordan, it was we who were washed in Him and by Him [2085] . And when He received the Spirit, we it was who by Him were made recipients of It. And moreover for this reason, not as Aaron or David or the rest, was He anointed with oil, but in another way above all His fellows, with the oil of gladness,' which He Himself interprets to be the Spirit, saying by the Prophet, The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because the Lord hath anointed Me [2086] ;' as also the Apostle has said, How God anointed Him with the Holy Ghost. [2087] ' When then were these things spoken of Him but when He came in the flesh and was baptized in Jordan, and the Spirit descended on Him? And indeed the Lord Himself said, The Spirit shall take of Mine;' and I will send Him;' and to His disciples, Receive ye the Holy Ghost [2088] .' And notwithstanding, He who, as the Word and Radiance of the Father, gives to others, now is said to be sanctified, because now He has become man, and the Body that is sanctified is His. From Him then we have begun to receive the unction and the seal, John saying, And ye have an unction from the Holy One;' and the Apostle, And ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise [2089] .' Therefore because of us and for us are these words. What advance then of promotion, and reward of virtue or generally of conduct, is proved from this in our Lord's instance? For if He was not God, and then had become God, if not being King He was preferred to the Kingdom, your reasoning would have had some faint plausibility. But if He is God and the throne of His kingdom is everlasting, in what way could God advance? or what was there wanting to Him who was sitting on His Father's throne? And if, as the Lord Himself has said, the Spirit is His, and takes of His, and He sends It, it is not the Word, considered as the Word and Wisdom, who is anointed with the Spirit which He Himself gives, but the flesh assumed by Him which is anointed in Him and by Him [2090] ; that the sanctification coming to the Lord as man, may come to all men from Him. For not of Itself, saith He, doth the Spirit speak, but the Word is He who gives It to the worthy. For this is like the passage considered above; for as the Apostle has written, Who existing in form of God thought it not a prize to be equal with God, but emptied Himself, and took a servant's form,' so David celebrates the Lord, as the everlasting God and King, but sent to us and assuming our body which is mortal. For this is his meaning in the Psalm, All thy garments [2091] smell of myrrh, aloes, and cassia;' and it is represented by Nicodemus and by Mary's company, when the one came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about an hundred pounds weight;' and the others [2092] the spices which they had prepared' for the burial of the Lord's body.
48. What advancement then was it to the Immortal to have assumed the mortal? or what promotion is it to the Everlasting to have put on the temporal? what reward can be great to the Everlasting God and King in the bosom of the Father? See ye not, that this too was done and written because of us and for us, that us who are mortal and temporal, the Lord, become man, might make immortal, and bring into the everlasting kingdom of heaven? Blush ye not, speaking lies against the divine oracles? For when our Lord Jesus Christ had been among us, we indeed were promoted, as rescued from sin; but He is the same [2093] ; nor did He alter, when He became man (to repeat what I have said), but, as has been written, The Word of God abideth for ever [2094] .' Surely as, before His becoming man, He, the Word, dispensed to the saints the Spirit as His own [2095] , so also when made man, He sanctifies all by the Spirit and says to His Disciples, Receive ye the Holy Ghost.' And He gave to Moses and the other seventy; and through Him David prayed to the Father, saying, Take not Thy Holy Spirit from me [2096] .' On the other hand, when made man, He said, I will send to you the Paraclete, the Spirit of truth [2097] ;' and He sent Him, He, the Word of God, as being faithful. Therefore Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever [2098] ,' remaining unalterable, and at once gives and receives, giving as God's Word, receiving as man. It is not the Word then, viewed as the Word, that is promoted; for He had all things and has them always; but men, who have in Him and through Him their origin [2099] of receiving them. For, when He is now said to be anointed in a human respect, we it is who in Him are anointed; since also when He is baptized, we it is who in Him are baptized. But on all these things the Saviour throws much light, when He says to the Father, And the glory which Thou gavest Me, I have given to them, that they may be one, even as We are one [2100] .' Because of us then He asked for glory, and the words occur, took' and gave' and highly exalted,' that we might take, and to us might be given, and we might be exalted in Him; as also for us He sanctifies Himself, that we might be sanctified in Him [2101] .
49. But if they take advantage of the word wherefore,' as connected with the passage in the Psalm, Wherefore God, even Thy God, hath anointed Thee,' for their own purposes, let these novices in Scripture and masters in irreligion know, that, as before, the word wherefore' does not imply reward of virtue or conduct in the Word, but the reason why He came down to us, and of the Spirit's anointing which took place in Him for our sakes. For He says not, Wherefore He anointed Thee in order to Thy being God or King or Son or Word;' for so He was before and is for ever, as has been shewn; but rather, Since Thou art God and King, therefore Thou wast anointed, since none but Thou couldest unite man to the Holy Ghost, Thou the Image of the Father, in which [2102] we were made in the beginning; for Thine is even the Spirit.' For the nature of things originate could give no warranty for this, Angels having transgressed, and men disobeyed [2103] . Wherefore there was need of God and the Word is God; that those who had become under a curse, He Himself might set free. If then He was of nothing, He would not have been the Christ or Anointed, being one among others and having fellowship as the rest [2104] . But, whereas He is God, as being Son of God, and is everlasting King, and exists as Radiance and Expression [2105] of the Father, therefore fitly is He the expected Christ, whom the Father announces to mankind, by revelation to His holy Prophets; that as through Him we have come to be, so also in Him all men might be redeemed from their sins, and by Him all things might be ruled [2106] . And this is the cause of the anointing which took place in Him, and of the incarnate presence of the Word [2107] , which the Psalmist foreseeing, celebrates, first His Godhead and kingdom, which is the Father's, in these tones, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever; a sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of Thy Kingdom [2108] ;' then announces His descent to us thus, Wherefore God, even Thy God, hath anointed Thee with the oil of gladness above Thy fellows [2109] .'
50. What is there to wonder at, what to disbelieve, if the Lord who gives the Spirit, is here said Himself to be anointed with the Spirit, at a time when, necessity requiring it, He did not refuse in respect of His manhood to call Himself inferior to the Spirit? For the Jews saying that He cast out devils in Beelzebub, He answered and said to them, for the exposure of their blasphemy, But if I through the Spirit of God cast out demons [2110] .' Behold, the Giver of the Spirit here says that He cast out demons in the Spirit; but this is not said, except because of His flesh. For since man's nature is not equal of itself to casting out demons, but only in power of the Spirit, therefore as man He said, But if I through the Spirit of God cast out demons.' Of course too He signified that the blasphemy offered to the Holy Ghost is greater than that against His humanity, when He said, Whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him;' such as were those who said, Is not this the carpenter's son [2111] ?' but they who blaspheme against the Holy Ghost, and ascribe the deeds of the Word to the devil, shall have inevitable punishment [2112] . This is what the Lord spoke to the Jews, as man; but to the disciples shewing His Godhead and His majesty, and intimating that He was not inferior but equal to the Spirit, He gave the Spirit and said, Receive ye the Holy Ghost,' and I send Him,' and He shall glorify Me,' and Whatsoever He heareth, that He shall speak [2113] .' As then in this place the Lord Himself, the Giver of the Spirit, does not refuse to say that through the Spirit He casts out demons, as man; in like manner He the same, the Giver of the Spirit, refused not to say, The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me [2114] ,' in respect of His having become flesh, as John hath said; that it might be shewn in both these particulars, that we are they who need the Spirit's grace in our sanctification, and again who are unable to cast out demons without the Spirit's power. Through whom then and from whom behoved it that the Spirit should be given but through the Son, whose also the Spirit is? and when were we enabled to receive It, except when the Word became man? and, as the passage of the Apostle shews, that we had not been redeemed and highly exalted, had not He who exists in form of God taken a servant's form, so David also shews, that no otherwise should we have partaken the Spirit and been sanctified, but that the Giver of the Spirit, the Word Himself, hast spoken of Himself as anointed with the Spirit for us. And therefore have we securely received it, He being said to be anointed in the flesh; for the flesh being first sanctified in Him [2115] , and He being said, as man, to have received for its sake, we have the sequel of the Spirit grace, receiving out of His fulness [2116] .'
51. Nor do the words, Thou hast loved righteousness and hated iniquity,' which are added in the Psalm, show, as again you suppose, that the Nature of the Word is alterable, but rather by their very force signify His unalterableness. For since of things originate the nature is alterable, and the one portion had transgressed and the other disobeyed, as has been said, and it is not certain how they will act, but it often happens that he who is now good afterwards alters and becomes different, so that one who was but now righteous, soon is found unrighteous, wherefore there was here also need of one unalterable, that men might have the immutability of the righteousness of the Word as an image and type for virtue [2117] . And this thought commends itself strongly to the right-minded. For since the first man Adam altered, and through sin death came into the world, therefore it became the second Adam to be unalterable; that, should the Serpent again assault, even the Serpent's deceit might be baffled, and, the Lord being unalterable and unchangeable, the Serpent might become powerless in his assault against all. For as when Adam had transgressed, his sin reached unto all men, so, when the Lord had become man and had overthrown the Serpent, that so great strength of His is to extend through all men, so that each of us may say, For we are not ignorant of his devices. [2118] ' Good reason then that the Lord, who ever is in nature unalterable, loving righteousness and hating iniquity, should be anointed and Himself sent, that, He, being and remaining the same [2119] , by taking this alterable flesh, might condemn sin in it [2120] ,' and might secure its freedom, and its ability [2121] henceforth to fulfil the righteousness of the law' in itself, so as to be able to say, But we are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwelleth in us [2122] .'
52. Vainly then, here again, O Arians, have ye made this conjecture, and vainly alleged the words of Scripture; for God's Word is unalterable, and is ever in one state, not as it may happen [2123] , but as the Father is; since how is He like the Father, unless He be thus? or how is all that is the Father's the Son's also, if He has not the unalterableness and unchangeableness of the Father [2124] ? Not as being subject to laws [2125] , and biassed to one side, does He love the one and hate the other, lest, if from fear of falling away He chooses the one, we admit that He is alterable otherwise also; but, as being God and the Father's Word, He is a just judge and lover of virtue, or rather its dispenser. Therefore being just and holy by nature, on this account He is said to love righteousness and to hate iniquity; as much as to say, that He loves and chooses the virtuous, and rejects and hates the unrighteous. And divine Scripture says the same of the Father; The Righteous Lord loveth righteousness; Thou hatest all them that work iniquity [2126] ,' and The Lord loveth the gates of Sion, more than all the dwellings of Jacob [2127] ;' and, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated [2128] ;' and in Isaiah there is the voice of God again saying, I the Lord love righteousness, and hate robbery of unrighteousness [2129] .' Let them then expound those former words as these latter; for the former also are written of the Image of God: else, misinterpreting these as those, they will conceive that the Father too is alterable. But since the very hearing others say this is not without peril, we do well to think that God is said to love righteousness and to hate robbery of unrighteousness, not as if biassed to one side, and capable of the contrary, so as to select the latter and not choose the former, for this belongs to things originated, but that, as a judge, He loves and takes to Him the righteous and withdraws from the bad. It follows then to think the same concerning the Image of God also, that He loves and hates no otherwise than thus. For such must be the nature of the Image as is Its Father, though the Arians in their blindness fail to see either that image or any other truth of the divine oracles. For being forced from the conceptions or rather misconceptions [2130] of their own hearts, they fall back upon passages of divine Scripture, and here too from want of understanding, according to their wont, they discern not their meaning; but laying down their own irreligion as a sort of canon of interpretation [2131] , they wrest the whole of the divine oracles into accordance with it. And so on the bare mention of such doctrine, they deserve nothing but the reply, Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God [2132] ;' and if they persist in it, they must be put to silence, by the words, Render to' man the things that are' man's, and to God the things that are' God's [2133] . __________________________________________________________________
[2080] Ps. xlv. 7, 8.
[2081] p. 156, note 4.
[2082] It is here said that all things originate' partake the Son and are sanctified' by the Spirit. How a gennesis or adoption through the Son is necessary for every creature in order to its consistence, life, or preservation, has been explained, p. 162, note 3. Sometimes the Son was considered as the special Principle of reason, as by Origen, ap. Athan. Serap. iv. 9. vid. himself. de Incarn. 11. These offices of the Son and the Spirit are contrasted by S. Basil, in his de Sp. S. ton prostattonta kurion, ton demiourgounta logon, to stereoun pneuma, &c. c. 16. n. 38.
[2083] John xvii. 18, 19, vid. Cyril, Thesaur. 20.
[2084] 1 Cor. iii. 16.
[2085] Pusey on Baptism, 2nd Ed. pp. 275-293.
[2086] Isai. lxi. 1.
[2087] Acts x. 38.
[2088] John xvi. 14, 7; xx. 22.
[2089] 1 John ii. 20; Eph. i. 13.
[2090] Elsewhere Athan. says that our Lord's Godhead was the immediate anointing or chrism of the manhood He assumed, in Apollin. ii. 3, Orat. iv. §36. vid. Origen. Periarch. ii. 6. n. 4. And S. Greg. Naz. still more expressly, and from the same text as Athan. Orat. x. fin. Again, This [the Godhead] is the anointing of the manhood, not sanctifying by an energy as the other Christs [anointed] but by a presence of Him whole who anointed, holou tou chriontos; whence it came to pass that what anointed was called man and what was anointed was made God.' Orat. xxx. 20. Damasc. F. O. iii. 3. Dei Filius, sicut pluvia in vellus, toto divinitatis unguento nostram se fudit in carnem. Chrysolog. Serm. 60. It is more common, however, to consider that the anointing was the descent of the Spirit, as Athan. says at the beginning of this section, according to Luke iv. 18; Acts x. 38.
[2091] Ps. xlv. 8. Our Lord's manhood is spoken of as a garment; more distinctly afterwards, As Aaron was himself, and did not change on putting round him the high priest's garment, but remaining the same, was but clothed,' &c, Orat. ii. 8. On the Apollinarian abuse of the idea, vid. note in loc.
[2092] John xix. 39; Luke xxiv. 1.
[2093] p. 159, note 8.
[2094] Isai. xl. 8. logos but rhema. LXX.
[2095] §39, note 4.
[2096] Ps. li. 11.
[2097] John xv. 26.
[2098] Heb. xiii. 8.
[2099] The word origin, arche, implies the doctrine, more fully brought out in other passages of the Fathers, that our Lord has deigned to become an instrumental cause, as it may be called, of the life of each individual Christian. For at first sight it may be objected to the whole course of Athan.'s argument thus;--What connection is there between the sanctification of Christ's manhood and ours? how does it prove that human nature is sanctified because a particular specimen of it was sanctified in Him? S. Chrysostom explains, Hom. in Matt. lxxxii. 5. And just before, It sufficed not for Him to be made man, to be scourged, to be sacrificed; but He assimilates us to Him (anaphurei heauton hemin), nor merely by faith, but really, has He made us His body.' Again, That we are commingled (anakerasthomen) into that flesh, not merely through love, but really, is brought about by means of that food which He has bestowed upon us.' Hom. in Joann. 46. 3. And so S. Cyril writes against Nestorius: Since we have proved that Christ is the Vine, and we branches as adhering to a communion with Him, not spiritual merely but bodily, why clamours he against us thus bootlessly, saying that, since we adhere to Him, not in a bodily way, but rather by faith and the affection of love according to the Law, therefore He has called, not His own flesh the vine, but rather the Godhead?' in Joann. lib. 10. Cap. 2. pp. 863, 4. And Nyssen, Orat. Catech. 37. Decoctâ quasi per ollam carnis nostræ cruditate, sanctificavit in æternum nobis cibum carnem suam. Paulin. Ep. 23. Of course in such statements nothing material is implied; Hooker says, The mixture of His bodily substance with ours is a thing which the ancient Fathers disclaim. Yet the mixture of His flesh with ours they speak of, to signify what our very bodies through mystical conjunction receive from that vital efficacy which we know to be in His, and from bodily mixtures they borrow divers similitudes rather to declare the truth than the manner of coherence between His sacred and the sanctified bodies of saints.' Eccl. Pol. v. 56. §10. But without some explanation of this nature, language such as S. Athanasius's in the text seems a mere matter of words. vid. infr. §50 fin.
[2100] John xvii. 22.
[2101] Cyril, Thesaur. 20. p. 197.
[2102] §51, note 1.
[2103] angelon men parabanton, anthropon de parakousanton. vid. infr. §51. init. Cf. ad Afr. 7. vid. de Decr. 19, note 3. infr. Orat. ii. iii. Cyril. in Joann. lib. v. 2. On the subject of the sins of Angels, vid. Huet. Origen. ii. 5. §16. Petav. Dogm. t. 3. p. 87. Dissert. Bened. in Cyril. Hier. iii. 5. Natal. Alex. Hist. Æt. i. Diss. 7.
[2104] De Decr. 10, note 4.
[2105] Heb. i. 3.
[2106] The word wherefore is here declared to denote the fitness why the Son of God should become the Son of man. His Throne, as God, is for ever; He has loved righteousness; therefore He is equal to the anointing of the Spirit, as man. And so S. Cyril on the same text, as in l. c. in the foregoing note. Cf. Leon Ep. 64. 2. vid. de Incarn. 7 fin. 10. In illud Omn. 2. Cyril. in Gen. i. p. 13.
[2107] ensarkos parousia. This phrase which has occurred above, §8. is very frequent with Athan. vid. also Cyril. Catech. iii. 11. xii. 15. xiv. 27, 30, Epiph. Hær. 77. 17. The Eutychians avail themselves of it at the Council of Constantinople, vid. Hard. Conc. t. 2. pp. 164, 236.
[2108] Ps. xlv. 6.
[2109] Ib. 7
[2110] Matt. xii. 28.
[2111] Matt. xii. 32; xiii. 55.
[2112] [Cf. Prolegg. ch. iii. §1 (22).].
[2113] John xx. 22; xvi. 13, 14.
[2114] Is. lxi. 1.
[2115] §48, note 7.
[2116] John i. 16.
[2117] Vid. de Incarn. 13. 14. vid. also Gent. 41 fin. and Nic. Def. 17, note 5. Cum justitia nulla esset in terra doctorem misit, quasi vivam legem. Lactant. Instit. iv. 25. The Only-begotten was made man like us,...as if lending us His own stedfastness.' Cyril. in Joann. lib. v. 2. p. 473; vid. also Thesaur. 20. p. 198. August. de Corr. et Grat. 10-12. Damasc. F. O. iv. 4. But the words of Athan. embrace too many subjects to illustrate distinctly in a note.
[2118] 2 Cor. ii. 11.
[2119] §48, note 1.
[2120] Rom. viii. 3; ib. 4.
[2121] Cf. de Incarn. 7, Orat. ii. 68.
[2122] Rom. viii. 9.
[2123] haplos, ouk haplos horisthe, all' akribos exetasthe. Socr. i. 9. p. 31.
[2124] John xvii. 10, §35, note 2.
[2125] Eunomius said that our Lord was utterly separate from the Father, by natural law,' nomo phuseos; S. Basil observes, as if the God of all had not power over Himself, heautou kurios, but were in bondage under the decrees of necessity.' contr. Eunom. ii. 30.
[2126] Ps. xi. 7; v. 5.
[2127] Ib. lxxxvii. 2.
[2128] Mal. i. 2, 3.
[2129] Is. lxi. 8.
[2130] ennoion mallon de paranoion, vid. §40, note 1.
[2131] Instead of professing to examine Scripture or to acquiesce in what they had been taught, the Arians were remarkable for insisting on certain abstract positions or inferences on which they make the whole controversy turn. Vid. Socrates' account of Arius's commencement, If God has a Son, he must have a beginning of existence,' &c. &c., and so the word ageneton.
[2132] Matt. xxii. 29.
[2133] Ib. xxii. 21. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIII.--Texts Explained; Thirdly, Hebrews i. 4. Additional texts brought as objections; e.g. Heb. i. 4; vii. 22. Whether the word better' implies likeness to the Angels; and made' or become' implies creation. Necessary to consider the circumstances under which Scripture speaks. Difference between better' and greater;' texts in proof. Made' or become' a general word. Contrast in Heb. i. 4, between the Son and the Works in point of nature. The difference of the punishments under the two Covenants shews the difference of the natures of the Son and the Angels. Become' relates not to the nature of the Word, but to His manhood and office and relation towards us. Parallel passages in which the term is applied to the Eternal Father.
53. But it is written, say they, in the Proverbs, The Lord created me the beginning of His ways, for His Works [2134] ;' and in the Epistle to the Hebrews the Apostle says, Being made so much better than the Angels, as He hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent Name than they [2135] .' And soon after, Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus, who was faithful to Him that made Him [2136] .' And in the Acts, Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made that same Jesus whom ye have crucified both Lord and Christ [2137] .' These passages they brought forward at every turn, mistaking their sense, under the idea that they proved that the Word of God was a creature and work and one of things originate; and thus they deceive the thoughtless, making the language of Scripture their pretence, but instead of the true sense sowing upon it the poison of their own heresy. For had they known, they would not have been irreligious against the Lord of glory [2138] ,' nor have wrested the good words of Scripture. If then henceforward openly adopting Caiaphas's way, they have determined on judaizing, and are ignorant of the text, that verily God shall dwell upon the earth [2139] , let them not inquire into the Apostolical sayings; for this is not the manner of Jews. But if, mixing themselves up with the godless Manichees [2140] , they deny that the Word was made flesh,' and His Incarnate presence, then let them not bring forward the Proverbs, for this is out of place with the Manichees. But if for preferment-sake, and the lucre of avarice which follows [2141] , and the desire for good repute, they venture not on denying the text, The Word was made flesh,' since so it is written, either let them rightly interpret the words of Scripture, of the embodied presence of the Saviour, or, if they deny their sense, let them deny that the Lord became man at all. For it is unseemly, while confessing that the Word became flesh,' yet to be ashamed at what is written of Him, and on that account to corrupt the sense.
54. For it is written, So much better than the Angels;' let us then first examine this. Now it is right and necessary, as in all divine Scripture, so here, faithfully to expound the time of which the Apostle wrote, and the person [2142] , and the point; lest the reader, from ignorance missing either these or any similar particular, may be wide of the true sense. This understood that inquiring eunuch, when he thus besought Philip, I pray thee, of whom doth the Prophet speak this? of himself, or of some other man [2143] ?' for he feared lest, expounding the lesson unsuitably to the person, he should wander from the right sense. And the disciples, wishing to learn the time of what was foretold, besought the Lord, Tell us,' said they, when shall these things be? and what is the sign of Thy coming [2144] ?' And again, hearing from the Saviour the events of the end, they desired to learn the time of it, that they might be kept from error themselves, and might be able to teach others; as, for instance, when they had learned, they set right the Thessalonians [2145] , who were going wrong. When then one knows properly these points, his understanding of the faith is right and healthy; but if he mistakes any such points, forthwith he falls into heresy. Thus Hymenæus and Alexander and their fellows [2146] were beside the time, when they said that the resurrection had already been; and the Galatians were after the time, in making much of circumcision now. And to miss the person was the lot of the Jews, and is still, who think that of one of themselves is said, Behold, the Virgin shall conceive, and bear a Son, and they shall call his Name Emmanuel, which is being interpreted, God with us [2147] ;' and that, A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up to you [2148] ,' is spoken of one of the Prophets; and who, as to the words, He was led as a sheep to the slaughter [2149] ,' instead of learning from Philip, conjecture them spoken of Isaiah or some other of the former Prophets [2150] .
55. (3.) Such has been the state of mind under which Christ's enemies have fallen into their execrable heresy. For had they known the person, and the subject, and the season of the Apostle's words, they would not have expounded of Christ's divinity what belongs to His manhood, nor in their folly have committed so great an act of irreligion. Now this will be readily seen, if one expounds properly the beginning of this lection. For the Apostle says, God who at sundry times and divers manners spake in times past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son [2151] ;' then again shortly after he says, when He had by Himself purged our sins, He sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become so much better than the Angels, as He hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent Name than they [2152] .' It appears then that the Apostle's words make mention of that time, when God spoke unto us by His Son, and when a purging of sins took place. Now when did He speak unto us by His Son, and when did purging of sins take place? and when did He become man? when, but subsequently to the Prophets in the last days? Next, proceeding with his account of the economy in which we were concerned, and speaking of the last times, he is naturally led to observe that not even in the former times was God silent with men, but spoke to them by the Prophets. And, whereas the prophets ministered, and the Law was spoken by Angels, while the Son too came on earth, and that in order to minister, he was forced to add, Become so much better than the Angels,' wishing to shew that, as much as the son excels a servant, so much also the ministry of the Son is better than the ministry of servants. Contrasting then the old ministry and the new, the Apostle deals freely with the Jews, writing and saying, Become so much better than the Angels.' This is why throughout he uses no comparison, such as become greater,' or more honourable,' lest we should think of Him and them as one in kind, but better' is his word, by way of marking the difference of the Son's nature from things originated. And of this we have proof from divine Scripture; David, for instance, saying in the Psalm, One day in Thy courts is better than a thousand [2153] :' and Solomon crying out, Receive my instruction and not silver, and knowledge rather than choice gold. For wisdom is better than rubies; and all the things that may be desired are not to be compared to it [2154] .' Are not wisdom and stones of the earth different in essence and separate in nature? Are heavenly courts at all akin to earthly houses? Or is there any similarity between things eternal and spiritual, and things temporal and mortal? And this is what Isaiah says, Thus saith the Lord unto the eunuchs that keep My sabbaths, and choose the things that please Me, and take hold of My Covenant; even unto them will I give in Mine house, and within My walls, a place and a name better than of sons and of daughters: I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off [2155] .' In like manner there is nought akin between the Son and the Angels; so that the word better' is not used to compare but to contrast, because of the difference of His nature from them. And therefore the Apostle also himself, when he interprets the word better,' places its force in nothing short of the Son's excellence over things originated, calling the one Son, the other servants; the one, as a Son with the Father, sitting on the right; and the others, as servants, standing before Him, and being sent, and fulfilling offices.
56. Scripture, in speaking thus, implies, O Arians, not that the Son is originate, but rather other than things originate, and proper to the Father, being in His bosom. (4.) Nor [2156] does even the expression become,' which here occurs, shew that the Son is originate, as ye suppose. If indeed it were simply become' and no more, a case might stand for the Arians; but, whereas they are forestalled with the word Son' throughout the passage, shewing that He is other than things originate, so again not even the word become' occurs absolutely [2157] , but better' is immediately subjoined. For the writer thought the expression immaterial, knowing that in the case of one who was confessedly a genuine Son, to say become' is the same with saying that He had been made, and is, better.' For it matters not even if we speak of what is generate, as become' or made;' but on the contrary, things originate cannot be called generate, God's handiwork as they are, except so far as after their making they partake of the generate Son, and are therefore said to have been generated also, not at all in their own nature, but because of their participation of the Son in the Spirit [2158] . And this again divine Scripture recognises; for it says in the case of things originate, All things came to be through Him, and without Him nothing came to be [2159] ,' and, In wisdom hast Thou made them all [2160] ;' but in the case of sons which are generate, To Job there came to be seven sons and three daughters [2161] ,' and, Abraham was an hundred years old when there came to be to him Isaac his son [2162] ;' and Moses said [2163] , If to any one there come to be sons.' Therefore since the Son is other than things originate, alone the proper offspring of the Father's essence, this plea of the Arians about the word become' is worth nothing.
(5.) If moreover, baffled so far, they should still violently insist that the language is that of comparison, and that comparison in consequence implies oneness of kind, so that the Son is of the nature of Angels, they will in the first place incur the disgrace of rivalling and repeating what Valentinus held, and Carpocrates, and those other heretics, of whom the former said that the Angels were one in kind with the Christ, and Carpocrates that Angels are framers of the world [2164] . Perchance it is under the instruction of these masters that they compare the Word of God with the Angels.
57. Though surely amid such speculations, they will be moved by the sacred poet, saying, Who is he among the gods that shall be like unto the Lord [2165] ,' and, Among the gods there is none like unto Thee, O Lord [2166] .' However, they must be answered, with the chance of their profiting by it, that comparison confessedly does belong to subjects one in kind, not to those which differ. No one, for instance, would compare God with man, or again man with brutes, nor wood with stone, because their natures are unlike; but God is beyond comparison, and man is compared to man, and wood to wood, and stone to stone. Now in such cases we should not speak of better,' but of rather' and more;' thus Joseph was comely rather than his brethren, and Rachel than Leah; star [2167] is not better than star, but is the rather excellent in glory; whereas in bringing together things which differ in kind, then better' is used to mark the difference, as has been said in the case of wisdom and jewels. Had then the Apostle said, by so much has the Son precedence of the Angels,' or by so much greater,' you would have had a plea, as if the Son were compared with the Angels; but, as it is, in saying that He is better,' and differs as far as Son from servants, the Apostle shews that He is other than the Angels in nature.
(6.) Moreover by saying that He it is who has laid the foundation of all things [2168] ,' he shews that He is other than all things originate. But if He be other and different in essence from their nature, what comparison of His essence can [2169] there be, or what likeness to them? though, even if they have any such thoughts, Paul shall refute them, who speaks to the very point, For unto which of the Angels said He at any time, Thou art My Son, this day have I begotten Thee? And of the Angels He saith, Who maketh His Angels spirits, and His ministers a flame of fire [2170] .'
58. Observe here, the word made' belongs to things originate, and he calls them things made; but to the Son he speaks not of making, nor of becoming, but of eternity and kingship, and a Framer's office, exclaiming, Thy Throne, O God, is for ever and ever;' and, Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the works of Thine hands; they shall perish, but Thou remainest.' From which words even they, were they but willing, might perceive that the Framer is other than things framed, the former God, the latter things originate, made out of nothing. For what has been said, They shall perish,' is said, not as if the creation were destined for destruction, but to express the nature of things originate by the issue to which they tend [2171] . For things which admit of perishing, though through the grace [2172] of their Maker they perish not, yet have come out of nothing, and themselves witness that they once were not. And on this account, since their nature is such, it is said of the Son, Thou remainest,' to shew His eternity; for not having the capacity of perishing, as things originate have, but having eternal duration, it is foreign to Him to have it said, He was not before His generation,' but proper to Him to be always, and to endure together with the Father. And though the Apostle had not thus written in his Epistle to the Hebrews, still his other Epistles, and the whole of Scripture, would certainly forbid their entertaining such notions concerning the Word. But since he has here expressly written it, and, as has been above shewn, the Son is Offspring of the Father's essence, and He is Framer, and other things are framed by Him, and He is the Radiance and Word and Image and Wisdom of the Father, and things originate stand and serve in their place below the Triad, therefore the Son is different in kind and different in essence from things originate, and on the contrary is proper to the Father's essence and one in nature with it [2173] . And hence it is that the Son too says not, My Father is better than I [2174] ,' lest we should conceive Him to be foreign to His Nature, but greater,' not indeed in greatness, nor in time, but because of His generation from the Father Himself [2175] , nay, in saying greater' He again shows that He is proper to His essence.
59. (7). And the Apostle's own reason for saying, so much better than the Angels,' was not any wish in the first instance to compare the essence [2176] of the Word to things originate (for He cannot be compared, rather they are incommeasurable), but regarding the Word's visitation in the flesh, and the Economy which He then sustained, he wished to show that He was not like those who had gone before Him; so that, as much as He excelled in nature those who were sent afore by Him, by so much also the grace which came from and through Him was better than the ministry through Angels [2177] . For it is the function of servants, to demand the fruits and no more; but of the Son and Master to forgive the debts and to transfer the vineyard.
(8.) Certainly what the Apostle proceeds to say shews the excellence of the Son over things originate; Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip. For if the word spoken by Angels was stedfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense of reward; how shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation; which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard Him [2178] .' But if the Son were in the number of things originate, He was not better than they, nor did disobedience involve increase of punishment because of Him; any more than in the Ministry of Angels there was not, according to each Angel, greater or less guilt in the transgressors, but the Law was one, and one was its vengeance on transgressors. But, whereas the Word is not in the number of originate things, but is Son of the Father, therefore, as He Himself is better and His acts better and transcendent, so also the punishment is worse. Let them contemplate then the grace which is through the Son, and let them acknowledge the witness which He gives even from His works, that He is other than things originated, and alone the very Son in the Father and the Father in Him. And the Law [2179] was spoken by Angels, and perfected no one [2180] , needing the visitation of the Word, as Paul hath said; but that visitation has perfected the work of the Father. And then, from Adam unto Moses death reigned [2181] ; but the presence of the Word abolished death [2182] . And no longer in Adam are we all dying [2183] ; but in Christ we are all reviving. And then, from Dan to Beersheba was the Law proclaimed, and in Judæa only was God known; but now, unto all the earth has gone forth their voice, and all the earth has been filled with the knowledge of God [2184] , and the disciples have made disciples of all the nations [2185] , and now is fulfilled what is written, They shall be all taught of God [2186] .' And then what was revealed was but a type; but now the truth has been manifested. And this again the Apostle himself describes afterwards more clearly, saying, By so much was Jesus made a surety of a better testament;' and again, But now hath He obtained a more excellent ministry, by how much also He is the Mediator of a better covenant, which was established upon better promises.' And, For the Law made nothing perfect, but the bringing in of a better hope did.' And again he says, It was therefore necessary that the patterns of things in the heavens should be purified with these; but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these [2187] .' Both in the verse before us, then, and throughout, does he ascribe the word better' to the Lord, who is better and other than originated things. For better is the sacrifice through Him, better the hope in Him; and also the promises through Him, not merely as great compared with small, but the one differing from the other in nature, because He who conducts this economy, is better' than things originated.
60. (9.) Moreover the words He is become surety' denote the pledge in our behalf which He has provided. For as, being the Word,' He became flesh [2188] ' and become' we ascribe to the flesh, for it is originated and created, so do we here the expression He is become,' expounding it according to a second sense, viz. because He has become man. And let these contentious men know, that they fail in this their perverse purpose; let them know that Paul does not signify that His essence [2189] has become, knowing, as he did, that He is Son and Wisdom and Radiance and Image of the Father; but here too he refers the word become' to the ministry of that covenant, in which death which once ruled is abolished. Since here also the ministry through Him has become better, in that what the Law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin condemned sin in the flesh [2190] ,' ridding it of the trespass, in which, being continually held captive, it admitted not the Divine mind. And having rendered the flesh capable of the Word, He made us walk, no longer according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit, and say again and again, But we are not in the flesh but in the Spirit,' and, For the Son of God came into the world, not to judge the world, but to redeem all men, and that the world might be saved through Him [2191] .' Formerly the world, as guilty, was under judgment from the Law; but now the Word has taken on Himself the judgment, and having suffered in the body for all, has bestowed salvation to all [2192] . With a view to this has John exclaimed, The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ [2193] .' Better is grace than the Law, and truth than the shadow.
61. (10.) Better' then, as has been said, could not have been brought to pass by any other than the Son, who sits on the right hand of the Father. And what does this denote but the Son's genuineness, and that the Godhead of the Father is the same as the Son's [2194] ? For in that the Son reigns in His Father's kingdom, is seated upon the same throne as the Father, and is contemplated in the Father's Godhead, therefore is the Word God, and whoso beholds the Son, beholds the Father; and thus there is one God. Sitting then on the right, yet He does not place His Father on the left [2195] ; but whatever is right [2196] and precious in the Father, that also the Son has, and says, All things that the Father hath are Mine [2197] .' Wherefore also the Son, though sitting on the right, also sees the Father on the right, though it be as become man that He says, I saw the Lord always before My face, for He is on My right hand, therefore I shall not fall [2198] .' This shews moreover that the Son is in the Father and the Father in the Son; for the Father being on the right, the Son is on the right; and while the Son sits on the right of the Father, the Father is in the Son. And the Angels indeed minister ascending and descending; but concerning the Son he saith, And let all the Angels of God worship Him [2199] .' And when Angels minister, they say, I am sent unto thee,' and, The Lord has commanded;' but the Son, though He say in human fashion, I am sent [2200] ,' and comes to finish the work and to minister, nevertheless says, as being Word and Image, I am in the Father, and the Father in Me;' and, He that hath seen Me, hath seen the Father;' and, The Father that abideth in Me, He doeth the works [2201] ;' for what we behold in that Image are the Father's works.
(11.) What has been already said ought to shame those persons who are fighting against the very truth; however, if, because it is written, become better,' they refuse to understand become,' as used of the Son, as has been and is [2202] ;' or again as referring to the better covenant having come to be [2203] , as we have said, but consider from this expression that the Word is called originate, let them hear the same again in a concise form, since they have forgotten what has been said.
62. If the Son be in the number of the Angels, then let the word become' apply to Him as to them, and let Him not differ at all from them in nature; but be they either sons with Him, or be He an Angel with them; sit they one and all together on the right hand of the Father, or be the Son standing with them all as a ministering Spirit, sent forth to minister Himself as they are. But if on the other hand Paul distinguishes the Son from things originate, saying, To which of the Angels said He at any time, Thou art My Son?' and the one frames heaven and earth, but they are made by Him; and He sitteth with the Father, but they stand by ministering, who does not see that he has not used the word become' of the essence of the Word, but of the ministration come through Him? For as, being the Word,' He became flesh,' so when become man, He became by so much better in His ministry, than the ministry which came by the Angels, as Son excels servants and Framer things framed. Let them cease therefore to take the word become' of the substance of the Son, for He is not one of originated things; and let them acknowledge that it is indicative of His ministry and the Economy which came to pass.
(12.) But how He became better in His ministry, being better in nature than things originate, appears from what has been said before, which, I consider, is sufficient in itself to put them to shame. But if they carry on the contest, it will be proper upon their rash daring to close with them, and to oppose to them those similar expressions which are used concerning the Father Himself. This may serve to shame them to refrain their tongue from evil, or may teach them the depth of their folly. Now it is written, Become my strong rock and house of defence, that Thou mayest save me [2204] .' And again, The Lord became a defence for the oppressed [2205] ,' and the like which are found in divine Scripture. If then they apply these passages to the Son, which perhaps is nearest to the truth, then let them acknowledge that the sacred writers ask Him, as not being originate, to become to them a strong rock and house of defence;' and for the future let them understand become,' and He made,' and He created,' of His incarnate presence. For then did He become a strong rock and house of defence,' when He bore our sins in His own body upon the tree, and said, Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest [2206] .'
63. But if they refer these passages to the Father, will they, when it is here also written, Become' and He became,' venture so far as to affirm that God is originate? Yea, they will dare, as they thus argue concerning His Word; for the course of their argument carries them on to conjecture the same things concerning the Father, as they devise concerning His Word. But far be such a notion ever from the thoughts of all the faithful! for neither is the Son in the number of things originated, nor do the words of Scripture in question, Become,' and He became,' denote beginning of being, but that succour which was given to the needy. For God is always, and one and the same; but men have come to be afterwards through the Word, when the Father Himself willed it; and God is invisible and inaccessible to originated things, and especially to men upon earth. When then men in infirmity invoke Him, when in persecution they ask help, when under injuries they pray, then the Invisible, being a lover of man, shines forth upon them with His beneficence, which He exercises through and in His proper Word. And forthwith the divine manifestation is made to every one according to his need, and is made to the weak health, and to the persecuted a refuge' and house of defence;' and to the injured He says, While thou speakest I will say, Here I am [2207] .' Whatever defence then comes to each through the Son, that each says that God has come to be to himself, since succour comes from God Himself through the Word. Moreover the usage of men recognises this, and every one will confess its propriety. Often succour comes from man to man; one has undertaken toil for the injured, as Abraham for Lot; and another has opened his home to the persecuted, as Obadiah to the sons of the prophets; and another has entertained a stranger, as Lot the Angels; and another has supplied the needy, as Job those who begged of him. And then, should one and the other of these benefited persons say, Such a one became an assistance to me,' and another and to me a refuge,' and to another a supply,' yet in so saying would not be speaking of the original becoming or of the essence of their benefactors, but of the beneficence coming to themselves from them; so also when the saints say concerning God, He became' and become Thou,' they do not denote any original becoming, for God is without beginning and unoriginate, but the salvation which is made to be unto men from Him.
64. This being so understood, it is parallel also respecting the Son, that whatever, and however often, is said, such as, He became' and become,' should ever have the same sense: so that as, when we hear the words in question, become better than the Angels' and He became,' we should not conceive any original becoming of the Word, nor in any way fancy from such terms that He is originate; but should understand Paul's words of His ministry and Economy when He became man. For when the Word became flesh and dwelt among us [2208] ' and came to minister and to grant salvation to all, then He became to us salvation, and became life, and became propitiation; then His economy in our behalf became much better than the Angels, and He became the Way and became the Resurrection. And as the words Become my strong rock' do not denote that the essence of God Himself became, but His lovingkindness, as has been said, so also here the having become better than the Angels,' and, He became,' and, by so much is Jesus become a better surety,' do not signify that the essence of the Word is originate (perish the thought!), but the beneficence which towards us came to be through His becoming Man; unthankful though the heretics be, and obstinate in behalf of their irreligion. __________________________________________________________________
[2134] Prov. viii. 22. vid. Orat. ii. §§19-72.
[2135] Heb. i. 4; iii. 1.
[2136] Vid. Orat. ii. §§2-11.
[2137] Acts ii. 36. vid. Orat. ii. §§11-18.
[2138] 1 Cor. ii. 8.
[2139] Zech. ii. 10; vid. 1 Kings viii. 27; Bar. iii. 37
[2140] Vid. the same contrast, de Syn. §33; supr. §8; Orat. iv. §23.
[2141] §8, note 6.
[2142] De Decr. 14, note 2.
[2143] Acts viii. 34.
[2144] Matt. xxiv. 3.
[2145] Vid. 1 Thess. iv. 13; 2 Thess. ii. 1, &c.
[2146] 2 Tim. ii. 17, 18; 1 Tim. i. 20.
[2147] Is. vii. 14; Matt. i. 23.
[2148] Deut. xviii. 15.
[2149] Is. liii. 7.
[2150] The more common evasion on the part of the Jews was to interpret the prophecy of their own sufferings in captivity. It was an idea of Grotius that the prophecy received a first fulfilment in Jeremiah. vid. Justin Tryph. 72 et al., Iren. Hær. iv. 33. Tertull. in Jud. 9, Cyprian. Testim. in Jud. ii. 13, Euseb. Dem. iii. 2, &c. [cf. Driver and Neubauer Jewish commentaries on Is. lii. and Is. liii. and Introduction to English Translation of these pp. xxxvii. sq.]
[2151] Heb. i. 1, 2.
[2152] Ib. 3, 4.
[2153] Ps. lxxxiv. 10.
[2154] Prov. viii. 10, 11.
[2155] Is. lvi. 4, 5.
[2156] There is apparently much confusion in the arrangement of the paragraphs that follow; though the appearance may perhaps arise from Athan.'s incorporating some passage from a former work into his text, cf. note on §32. It is easy to suggest alterations, but not anything satisfactory. The same ideas are scattered about. Thus sunkritikos occurs in (3) and (5). The Son's seat on the right, and Angels in ministry, (3) fin. (10) (11). Become' interpreted as is originated and is,' (4) and (11). The explanation of become,' (4) (9) (11) (14). The Word's epidemia is introduced in (7) and (8) parousia being the more common word; epidemia occurs Orat. ii. §67 init. Serap. i. 9. Vid. however, §61, notes. If a change must be suggested, it would be to transfer (4) after (8) and (10) after (3).
[2157] apolelumenos. vid. also Orat. ii. 54. 62. iii. 22. Basil. contr. Eunom. i. p. 244. Cyril. Thesaur. 25, p. 236. dialelumenos. Orat. iv. 1.
[2158] [The note, referred to above, p. 169, in which Newman defends the treatment of geneton and genneton as synonymous, while yet admitting that they are expressly distinguished by Ath. in the text, is omitted for lack of space.]
[2159] John i. 3.
[2160] Ps. civ. 24.
[2161] Job i. 2.
[2162] Gen. xxi. 5.
[2163] Cf. Deut. xxi. 15.
[2164] These tenets and similar ones were common to many branches of the Gnostics, who paid worship to the Angels, or ascribed to them the creation; the doctrine of their consubstantiality with our Lord arose from their belief in emanation. S. Athanasius here uses the word homogenes, not homoousios which was usual with them (vid. Bull. D. F. N. ii. 1, §2) as with the Manichees after them, Beausobre, Manich. iii. 8.
[2165] Ps. lxxxix. 7.
[2166] Ib. lxxxvi. 8.
[2167] Orat. ii. §20.
[2168] Heb. i. 10.
[2169] De Syn. 45, note 9.
[2170] Heb. i. 7.
[2171] §29, note 10.
[2172] De Decr. 19, note 3.
[2173] Here again is a remarkable avoidance of the word homoousion. He says that the Son is heterogenes kai heteroousios ton geneton, kai tes tou patros ousias idios kai homophues. vid. §§20, 21, notes.
[2174] John xiv. 28.
[2175] Athan. otherwise explains this text, Incarn. contr. Arian. 4. if it be his. This text is thus taken by Basil. contr. Eun. iv. p. 289. Naz. Orat. 30. 7, &c. &c.
[2176] §§60. 62. 64. ii. §18.
[2177] He also applies this text to our Lord's economy and ministry de Sent. D. 11. in Apoll. ii. 15.
[2178] Heb. ii. 1-3.
[2179] Part of this chapter, as for instance (7) (8) is much more finished in point of style than the general course of his Orations. It may be indeed only the natural consequence of his warming with his subject, but this beautiful passage looks very much like an insertion. Some words of it are found in Sent. D. 11. written few years sooner [cf. supr. 33, note 2.]
[2180] Heb. vii. 19.
[2181] Rom. v. 14.
[2182] 2 Tim. i. 10.
[2183] 1 Cor. xv. 22.
[2184] Is. xi. 9; vid. Ps. lxxvi. 1, and xix. 4.
[2185] Matt. xxviii. 19.
[2186] John vi. 45; Is. liv. 13.
[2187] Heb. vii. 22; viii. 6; vii. 19; ix. 23
[2188] John i. 14.
[2189] §45, note.
[2190] Rom. viii. 3.
[2191] John iii. 17.
[2192] Vid. Incarn. passim. Theod. Eranist. iii. pp. 196-198, &c. &c. It was the tendency of all the heresies concerning the Person of Christ to explain away or deny the Atonement. The Arians, after the Platonists, insisted on the pre-existing Priesthood, as if the incarnation and crucifixion were not of its essence. The Apollinarians resolved the Incarnation into a manifestation, Theod. Eran. i. The Nestorians denied the Atonement, Procl. ad Armen. p. 615. And the Eutychians, Leont. Ep. 28, 5.
[2193] John i. 17.
[2194] De Syn. 45, note 1.
[2195] Cf. August. de Fid. et Symb. 14. Does this passage of Athan.'s shew that the Anthropomorphites were stirring in Egypt already?
[2196] dexion
[2197] John xvi. 15.
[2198] Ps. xvi. 8.
[2199] Heb. i. 6.
[2200] Vid. John xvii. 3; Mark x. 45.
[2201] John xiv. 10, 9.
[2202] Of His divine nature, (4) (8).
[2203] Of His human nature, and (10).
[2204] Ps. xxx. 3.
[2205] Ib. ix. 9.
[2206] Matt. xi. 28.
[2207] Is. lviii. 9.
[2208] John i. 14. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Excursus B. On §22 (Note 3).
On the Meaning of the Formula prin gennethenai ouk en, in the Nicene Anathema.
It was observed on p. 75, note 4(b), that there were two clauses in the Nicene Anathema which required explanation. One of them, ex heteras hupostaseos e ousias, has been discussed in the Excursus, pp. 77-82; the other, prin gennethenai ouk en, shall be considered now.
Bishop Bull has suggested a very ingenious interpretation of it, which is not obvious, but which, when stated, has much plausibility, as going to explain, or rather to sanction, certain modes of speech in some early Fathers of venerable authority, which have been urged by heterodox writers, and given up by Catholics of the Roman School, as savouring of Arianism. The foregoing pages have made it abundantly evident that the point of controversy between Catholics and Arians was, not whether our Lord was God, but whether He was Son of God; the solution of the former question being involved in that of the latter. The Arians maintained that the very word Son' implied a beginning,' or that our Lord was not Very God; the Catholics said that it implied connaturality,' or that He was Very God as one with God. Now five early writers, Athenagoras, Tatian, Theophilus, Hippolytus, and Novatian, of whom the authority of Hippolytus is very great, not to speak of Theophilus and Athenagoras, whatever be thought of Tatian and of Novatian, seem to speak of the divine generation as taking place immediately before the creation of the world, that is, as if not eternal, though at the same time they teach that our Lord existed before that generation. In other words they seem to teach that He was the Word from eternity, and became the Son at the beginning of all things; some of them expressly considering Him, first as the logos endiathetos, or Reason, in the Father, or (as may be speciously represented) a mere attribute; next, as the logos prophorikos, or Word, terms which are explained, note on de Syn. 26 (5). This doctrine, when divested of figure and put into literal statement, might appear nothing more or less than this,--that at the beginning of the world the Son was created after the likeness of the Divine attribute of Reason, as its image or expression, and thereby became the Divine Word, was made the instrument of creation, called the Son from that ineffable favour and adoption which God had bestowed on Him, and in due time sent into the world to manifest God's perfections to mankind;--which, it is scarcely necessary to say, is the doctrine of Arianism.
Thus S. Hippolytus says,--
Ton de ginomenon archegon kai sumboulon kai ergaten egenna logon, hon logon echon en heauto a& 231;raton te onta to ktizomeno, kosmo, horaton poiei; proteran phonen phthengomenos, kai phos ek photos gennon, proeken te ktisei kurion. contr. Noet. 10.
And S. Theophilus:--
Echon oun ho theos ton heautou logon endiatheton en tois idiois splanchnois, egennesen auton meta tes heautou sophias exereuxamenos pro ton holon...hopote de ethelesen ho theos poiesai hosa ebouleusato, touton ton logon egennese prophorikon, prototokon pases ktiseos. ad Autol. ii. 10-22.
Bishop Bull, Defens. F. N. iii. 5-8, meets this representation by maintaining that the gennesis which S. Hippolytus and other writers spoke of, was but a metaphorical generation, the real and eternal truth being shadowed out by a succession of events in the economy of time, such as is the Resurrection (Acts xiii. 33), nay, the Nativity; and that of these His going forth to create the worlds was one. And he maintains (ibid. iii. 9) that such is the mode of speaking adopted by the Fathers after the Nicene Council as well as before. And then he adds (which is our present point), that it is even alluded to and recognised in the Creed of the Council, which anathematizes those who say that the Son was not before His generation,' i.e. who deny that the Son was before His generation,' which statement accordingly becomes indirectly a Catholic truth.
I am not aware whether any writer has preceded or followed this great authority in this view [2209] . The more obvious mode of understanding the Arian formula is this, that it is an argument ex absurdo, drawn from the force of the word Son, in behalf of the Arian doctrine; it being, as they would say, a truism, that, whereas He was begotten, He was not before He was begotten,' and the denial of it a contradiction in terms. This certainly does seem to myself the true force of the formula; so much so, that if Bishop Bull's explanation be admissible, it must, in order to its being so, first be shewn to be reducible to this sense, and to be included under it.
The point at issue between the two interpretations is this; whether the clause prin gennethenai ouk en is intended for a denial of the contrary proposition, He was before His generation,' as Bishop Bull says; or whether it is what Aristotle calls an enthymematic sentence, assuming the falsity, as confessed on all hands, of that contrary proposition, as self-contradictory, and directly denying, not it, but He was from everlasting.' Or, in other words, whether it opposes the position of the five writers, or the great Catholic doctrine itself; and whether in consequence the Nicene Fathers are in their anathema indirectly sanctioning that position, or stating that doctrine. Bull considers that both sides contemplated the proposition, He was before His generation,'--and that the Catholics asserted or defended it; some reasons shall here be given for the contrary view.
1. Now first, let me repeat, what was just now observed by the way, that the formula in question, when taken as an enthymematic sentence, or reductio ad absurdum, exactly expresses the main argument of the Arians, which they brought forward in so many shapes, as feeling that their cause turned upon it, He is a son, therefore He had a beginning.' Thus Socrates records Arius's words in the beginning of the controversy, (1) If the Father begat the Son, He who is begotten has a beginning of existence; (2) therefore once the Son was not, en hote ouk en; (3) therefore He has His subsistence from nothing, ex ouk onton echei ten hupostasin.' H. E. i. 5. The first of these propositions exactly answers to the ouk en prin gennethenai taken enthymematically; and it may be added that when so taken, the three propositions will just answer to the three first formulæ anathematized at Nicæa, two of which are indisputably the same as two of them; viz. hoti en pote dte ouk en; & 234;ti prin gennethenai ouk en; & 234;ti ex ouk onton egeneto. On the other hand, we hear nothing in the controversy of the position which Bull conceives to be opposed by Arius (He was before His generation'), that is, supposing the formula in question does not allude to it; unless indeed it is worth while to except the statement reprobated in the Letter of the Arians to Alexander, onta proteron, gennethenta eis hui& 231;n, which is explained, de Syn. 16. note 12.
2. Next, it should be observed that the other formulæ here, as elsewhere, mentioned, are enthymematic also, or carry their argument with them, and that, an argument resolvable often into the original argument derived from the word Son.' Such are ho on ton me onta ek tou ontos e ton onta; and hen to ageneton e duo; and in like manner as regards the question of the trepton; Has He free will' (thus Athanasius states the Arian objection) or has He not? is He good from choice according to free will, and can He, if He will, alter, being of an alterable nature? as wood or stone, has He not His choice free to be moved, and incline hither and thither?' supr. §35. That is, they wished the word treptos to carry with it its own self-evident application to our Lord, with the alternative of an absurdity; and so to prove His created nature.
3. In §32, S. Athanasius observes that the formula of the ageneton was the later substitute for the original formulæ of Arius; when they were no longer allowed to say, "out of nothing," and "He was not before His generation,"' they hit upon this word Unoriginate, that, by saying among the simple that the Son was originate, they might imply the very same phrases "out of nothing" and "He once was not." Here he does not in so many words say that the argument from the ageneton was a substitute for the ouk en prin gennethenai, yet surely it is not unfair so to understand him. But it is plain that the ageneton was brought forward merely to express by an appeal to philosophy and earlier Fathers, that to be a Son was to have a beginning and a creation, and not to be God. This therefore will be the sense of the ouk en prin gennethenai. Nay, when the Arians asked, Is the ageneton one or two,' they actually did assume that it was granted by their opponents that the Father only was agenetos; which it was not, if the latter held, nay, if they had sanctioned at Nicæa, as Bull says, that our Lord en prin gennethe; and moreover which they knew and confessed was not granted, if their own formula ouk en prin gennethenai was directed against this statement.
4. Again, it is plain that the ouk en prin gennethenai is used by S. Athanasius as the same objection with ho on ton me onta ek tou ontos, &c. E.g. he says, We might ask them in turn, God who is, has He so become, whereas He was not?' or is He also before His generation? whereas He is, did He make Himself, or is He of nothing. &c., §25. Now the ho on ton me onta, &c., is evidently an argument, and that, grounded on the absurdity of saying ho on ton onta. S. Alexander's Encyclical Letter (vid. Socr. i. 6), compared with Arius's original positions and the Nicene Anathemas as referred to above, is a strong confirmation. In these three documents the formulæ agree together, except one; and that one, which in Arius's language is he who is begotten has a beginning of existence,' is in the Nicene Anathema, ouk en prin gennethenai, but in S. Alexander's circular, ho on theos ton me onta ek tou me ontos pepoieken. The absence of the ouk en prin, &c., in S. Alexander is certainly remarkable. Moreover the two formulæ are treated as synonymous by Greg. Naz. Orat. 29. 9. Cyril, Thesaur. 4. p. 29 fin., and by Basil as quoted below. But indeed there is an internal correspondence between them, shewing that they have but one meaning. They are really but the same sentence in the active and in the passive voice.
5. A number of scattered passages in Athanasius lead us to the same conclusion. For instance, if the Arian formula had the sense which is here maintained, of being an argument against our Lord's eternity, the Catholic answer would be, He could not be before His generation because His generation is eternal, as being from the Father.' Now this is precisely the language Athanasius uses, when it occurs to him to introduce the words in question. Thus in Orat. ii. §57 he says, The creatures began to come to be (ginesthai); but the Word of God, not having beginning (archen) of being, surely did not begin to be, nor begin to come to be, but was always. And the works have a beginning (archen) in the making, and the beginning precedes things which come to be; but the Word not being of such, rather Himself becomes the Framer of those things which have a beginning. And the being of things originate is measured by their becoming (en to ginesthai), and at some beginning (origin) doth God begin to make them through the Word, that it may be known that they were not before their origination (prin genesthai); but the Word hath His being in no other origin than the Father (vid. supr. §11, note 1), whom they themselves allow to be unoriginate, so that He too exists unoriginately in the Father, being His offspring not His creature.' We shall find that other Fathers say just the same. Again, we have already come to a passage where for His generation,' he substitutes making,' a word which Bull would not say that either the Nicene Council or S. Hippolytus would use; clearly shewing that the Arians were not quoting and denying a Catholic statement in the ouk en prin, &c., but laying down one of their own. Who is there in all mankind, Greek or Barbarian, who ventures to rank among creatures One whom he confesses the while to be God, and says that "He was not before He was made,' prin poiethe."' Orat. i. §10. Arius, who is surely the best explainer of his own words, says the same; that is, he interprets generation' by making,' or confesses that he is bringing forward an argument, not opposing a dogma; Before His generation,' he says, or creation, or destination (horisthe), Rom. i. 4), or founding (vid. Prov. viii. 23), He was not; for He was not ingenerate.' Theod., Hist. i. 4. Eusebius of Nicomedia also, in a passage which has already come before us, says distinctly, "It is plain to any one," that what has been made was not before its generation; but what came to be has an origin of being.' De Syn. §17.
6. If there are passages in Athanasius which seem to favour the opposite interpretation, that is, to imply that the Catholics held or allowed, as Bp. Bull considers, that before His generation, He was,' they admit of an explanation. E.g. "How is He not in the number of the creatures, if, as they say, He was not before His generation? for it is proper to the creatures and works, not to be before their generation.' Orat. ii. §22. This might be taken to imply that the Arians said, He was not,' and Catholics He was.' But the real meaning is this, How is He not a creature, if the formula be true, which they use, "He was not before His generation?" for it may indeed properly be said of creatures that "they were not before their generation."' And so again when he says, if the Son was not before His generation, Truth was not always in God,' supr. §20, he does not thereby imply that the Son was before His generation, but he means, if it be true that, &c.,' if the formula holds,' if it can be said of the Son, "He was not, &c."' Accordingly, shortly afterwards, in a passage already cited, he says the same of the Almighty Father in the way of parallel; God who is, hath He so become, whereas He was not, or "is He too before His generation?"' (§25), not implying here any generation at all, but urging that the question is idle and irrelevant, that the formula is unmeaning and does not apply to, cannot be said of, Father or Son.
7. Such an explanation of these passages, as well as the view here taken of the formula itself, receive abundant confirmation from S. Gregory Nazianzen and S. Hilary. What has been maintained is, that when S. Athanasius says, if the Son is not before His generation, then, &c.,' he does but mean, if it can be said,' if the words can be used or applied in this case.' Now the two Fathers just mentioned both decide that it is not true, either that the Son was before His generation, or that He was not; in other words, that the question is unmeaning and irrelevant, which is just the interpretation which has been here given to Athanasius. But again, in thus speaking, they thereby assert also that they did not hold, that they do not allow, that formula which Bull considers the Nicene Fathers defended and sanctioned, as being Catholic and in use both before the Council and after, viz. He was before His generation.' Thus S. Gregory in the passage in which he speaks of did He that is make Him that is not, &c.,' and before His generation, &c.,' as one and the same, expressly says, In His case, to be begotten is concurrent with existence and is from the beginning,' and that in contrast to the instance of men; who he says, do fulfil in a manner He who is, &c.' (Levi being in the loins of Abraham), i.e. fulfil Bull's proposition, He was before generation.' He proceeds, I say that the question is irrelevant, not the answer difficult.' And presently after, mentioning some idle inquiries by way of parallel, he adds, more ill-instructed, be sure, is it to decide whether what was generated from the beginning was or was not before generation, pro tes genneseos.' Orat. 29. 9.
8. S. Hilary, on the other hand, is so full on the subject in his de Trin. xii., and so entirely to the point for which I would adduce him, that but a few extracts of what might be made are either necessary or practicable. He states and argues on the formula expressly as an objection; Adjiciant hæc arguta satis atque auditu placentia; Si, inquit, natus est, coepit; et cum coepit, non fuit; et cum non fuit, non patitur ut fuerit. Atque idcirco piæ intelligentiæ, sermonem esse contendant, Non fuit ante quam nasceretur, quia ut esset, qui non erat, natus est.' n. 18. He answers the objection in the same way. Unigenitus Deus neque non fuit aliquando non filius, neque fuit aliquid ante quam filius, neque quidquam aliquid ipse nisi filius,' n. 15, which is in express words to deny, He was before His generation.' Again, as Gregory, Ubi pater auctor est, ibi et nativitas est; et vero ubi auctor æternus est, ibi et nativitatis æternitas est,' n. 21. And he substitutes being always born' for being before birth;' Numquid ante tempora æterna esse, id ipsum sit quod est, eum qui erat nasci? quia nasci quod erat, jam non nasci est, sed se ipsum demutare nascendo....Non est itaque id ipsum, natum ante tempora æterna semper esse, et esse antequam nasci.' n. 30. And he concludes, in accordance with the above explanation of the passages of Athanasius which I brought as if objections, thus: Cum itaque natum semper esse, nihil aliud sit confitendum esse, quam natum, id sensui, antequam nascitur vel fuisse, vel non fuisse non subjacet. n. 31.'
9. It may seem superfluous to proceed, but as Bishop Bull is an authority not lightly to be set aside, a passage from S. Basil shall be added. Eunomius objects, God begat the Son either being or not being, &c....to him that is, there needs not generation.' He replies that Eunomius, because animals first are not, and then are generated, and he who is born to-day, yesterday did not exist, transfers this conception to the subsistence of the Only-begotten; and says, since He has been generated, He was not before His generation, pro tes genneseos,' contr. Eunom. ii. 14. And he solves the objection as the other Fathers, by saying that our Lord is from everlasting, speaking of S. John, in the first words of his Gospel, as te a& 187;dioteti tou patros tou monogenous sunapton ten gennesin. §15.
These then being the explanations which the contemporary and next following Fathers give of the Arian formula which was anathematized at Nicæa, it must be observed that the line of argument which Bishop Bull is pursuing, does not lead him to assign any direct reasons for the substitution of a different interpretation in their place. He is engaged, not in commenting on the Nicene Anathema, but in proving that the Post-Nicene Fathers admitted that view or statement of doctrine which he conceives also implied in that anathema; and thus the sense of the anathema, instead of being the subject of proof, is, as he believes, one of the proofs of the point which he is establishing. However, since these other collateral evidences which he adduces, may be taken to be some sort of indirect comment upon the words of the Anathema, the principal of them in point of authority, and that which most concerns us, shall here be noticed: it is a passage from the second Oration of Athanasius.
While commenting on the words, arche hodon eis ta erga in the text, The Lord has created me the beginning of His ways unto the works,' S. Athanasius is led to consider the text first born of every creature,' prototokos pases ktiseos: and he says that He who was monogenes from eternity, became by a sunkatabasis at the creation of the world prototokos. This doctrine Bp. Bull considers declaratory of a going forth, proeleusis, or figurative birth from the Father, at the beginning of all things.
It will be observed that the very point to be proved is this, viz. not that there was a sunkatabasis merely, but that according to Athanasius there was a gennesis or proceeding from the Father, and that the word prototokos marks it. Bull's words are, that Catholici quidam Doctores, qui post exortam controversiam Arianam vixerunt,...illam tou logou....ex Patre progressionem (quod et sunkatabasin, hoc est, condescensionem eorum nonnulli appellarunt), ad condendum hæc universa agnovere; atque ejus etiam progressionis respectu ipsum ton logon a Deo Patre quasi natum fuisse et omnis creaturæ primogenitum in Scripturis dici confessi sunt.' D. F. N. iii. 9. §1. Now I consider that S. Athanasius does not, as this sentence says, understand by primogenitus that our Lord was progressionis respectu a Deo Patre quasi natus.' He does not seem to me to speak of a generation or birth of the Son at all, though figurative, but of the birth of all things, and that in Him.
That Athanasius does not call the sunkatabasis of the Word a birth, as denoted by the term prototokos, is plain from his own avowal in the passage to which Bull refers. Nowhere in the Scriptures,' he says, is He called prototokos tou Theou, first-born of God, nor creature of God, but Only-begotten, Word, Wisdom, have their relation to the Father, and are proper to Him.' ii. 62. Here surely he expressly denies Bull's statement that first-born' means a Deo natus,' born of God.' Such additions as para tou patros, he says, are reserved for monogenes and logos.
He goes on to say what the term prototokos does mean; viz. instead of having any reference to a proeleusis from the Father, it refers solely to the creatures; our Lord is not called prototokos, because His proeleusis is a type of His eternal generation,' but because by that proeleusis He became the Prototype of all creation.' He, as it were, stamped His image, His Sonship, upon creation, and became the first-born in the sense of being the Archetypal Son. If this is borne out by the passage, Athanasius, it is plain, does not speak of any gennesis whatever at the era of creation, though figurative; prototokos does but mean monogenes proteuon en te ktisei, or arche tes ktiseos, or prototupon gennema, or monos gennetos en tois genetois; and no warrant is given, however indirect, to the idea that in the Nicene Anathema, the Fathers implied an allowance of the proposition, He was before His generation.'
As the whole passage occurs in the Discourse which immediately follows, it is not necessary to enter formally into the proof of this view of it, when the reader will soon be able to judge of it for himself. But it may be well to add two passages, one from Athenagoras, the other from S. Cyril, not in elucidation of the words of Athanasius, but of the meaning which I would put upon them.
The passage from Athenagoras is quoted by Bull himself, who of course is far from denying the doctrine of our Lord's Archetypal office; and does but wish in addition to find in Athanasius the doctrine of a gennesis. Athenagoras says that the Son is the first offspring, proton gennema, of the Father, not as come to be, genomenon (for God being Eternal Mind had from the beginning in Himself the Word, as having Reason eternally, logikos on), but that while as regards matter heavy and light were mixed together' (the passage is corrupt here), He went forth, proelthon, as an idea and energy', i.e. as an Agent to create, and a Form and Rule to create by. And then he goes on to quote the very text on which Athanasius is employed when he explains prototokos. And the Prophetic Spirit confirms this doctrine, saying, The Lord hath created me a beginning (origin) of His ways, for His works.' Leg. 10.
And so S. Cyril, He is Only-begotten according to nature, as being alone from the Father, God from God, Light kindled from Light; and He is First-born for our sakes, that, as if to some immortal root the whole creation might be ingrafted and might bud forth from the Everlasting. For all things were made by Him, and consist for ever and are preserved in Him.' Thesaur. 25 p. 238.
In conclusion it may be suggested whether the same explanation which has here been given of Athanasius's use of prototokos does not avail more exactly to the defence of two of the five writers from the charge of inaccurate doctrine, than that which Bull has preferred.
As to Athenagoras, we have already seen that he does not speak of a gennesis at all in his account of creation, but simply calls the Son proton gennema, i.e. prototupon gennema.
Nor does Tatian approach nearer to the doctrine of a gennesis. He says that at the creation the Word ergon prototokon tou patros ginetai. touton ismen tou kosmou ten archen. ad Græc. 5. Here the word ergon, which at first sight promises a difficulty, does in fact explain both himself and Athenagoras. He says that at creation the Word became, ginetai, not a Son (figuratively), as Bull would grant to the parties whom he is opposing, but a work. It was His great condescension, sunkatabasis, to be accounted the first of the works, as being their type; that as they were to be raised to an adoption and called sons, so He for that purpose might stoop to creation, and be called a work. As Tatian uses the word arche in the concluding clause, there is great reason to think that he is alluding to the very text which Athanasius and Athenagoras expressly quote, in which Wisdom is said to be created a beginning, arche, of ways, unto the works, eis ta erga.'
As to Novatian, Bishop Bull himself observes that it is a question whether he need be understood to speak of any generation but that which is eternal; nor does Pamelius otherwise explain him. __________________________________________________________________
[2209] Waterland expresses the view here taken, and not Bishop Bull's; vol. i. p. 114. Bull's language, on the other hand, is very strong: Sæpe olim, ut verum ingenue fateai, animum meum subiit admiratio, quid effato isto, Filius priusquam nasceretur, non erat,' sibi voluerint Ariani. De nativitate Christi ex beatissima Virgine dictum non esse exponendum constat....Itaque de nativitate Filii loquuntur, quæ hujus universi creationem antecessit. Quis vero, inquam, sensus dicti hujus "Filius non erat, sive non existebat, priusquam nasceretur ex Patre ante conditum mundum?" Ego sane nullus dubito, quin hoc pronunciatum Arianorum oppositum fuerit Catholicorum istorum sententiæ, qui docerent, Filium quidem paulo ante conditum mundum inexplicabili quodam modo ex Patre progressum fuisse ad constituendum universa, &c. D. F. N. iii. 9. §2. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Discourse II.
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Chapter XIV.--Texts explained; Fourthly, Hebrews iii. 2 Introduction; the Regula Fidei counter to an Arian sense of the text; which is not supported by the word servant,' nor by made' which occurs in it; (how can the Judge be among the works' which God will bring into judgment?') nor by faithful;' and is confuted by the immediate context, which is about Priesthood; and by the foregoing passage, which explains the word faithful' as meaning trustworthy, as do 1 Pet. iv. fin. and other texts. On the whole made may safely be understood either of the divine generation or the human creation.
1. I did indeed think that enough had been said already against the hollow professors of Arius's madness, whether for their refutation or in the truth's behalf, to insure a cessation and repentance of their evil thoughts and words about the Saviour. They, however, for whatever reason, still do not succumb; but, as swine and dogs wallow [2210] in their own vomit and their own mire, rather invent new expedients for their irreligion. Thus they misunderstand the passage in the Proverbs, The Lord hath created me a beginning of His ways for His works [2211] ,' and the words of the Apostle, Who was faithful to Him that made Him [2212] ,' and straightway argue, that the Son of God is a work and a creature. But although they might have learned from what is said above, had they not utterly lost their power of apprehension, that the Son is not from nothing nor in the number of things originate at all, the Truth witnessing [2213] it (for, being God, He cannot be a work, and it is impious to call Him a creature, and it is of creatures and works that we say, out of nothing,' and it was not before its generation'), yet since, as if dreading to desert their own fiction, they are accustomed to allege the aforesaid passages of divine Scripture, which have a good meaning, but are by them practised on, let us proceed afresh to take up the question of the sense of these, to remind the faithful, and to shew from each of these passages that they have no knowledge at all of Christianity. Were it otherwise, they would not have shut themselves up in the unbelief [2214] of the present Jews [2215] , but would have inquired and learned [2216] that, whereas In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,' in consequence, it was when at the good pleasure of the Father the Word became man, that it was said of Him, as by John, The Word became flesh [2217] ;' so by Peter, He hath made Him Lord and Christ [2218] ';--as by means of Solomon in the Person of the Lord Himself, The Lord created me a beginning of His ways for His works [2219] ;' so by Paul, Become so much better than the Angels [2220] ;' and again, He emptied Himself, and took upon Him the form of a servant [2221] ;' and again, Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Jesus, who was faithful to Him that made Him [2222] .' For all these texts have the same force and meaning, a religious one, declarative of the divinity of the Word, even those of them which speak humanly concerning Him, as having become the Son of man. But, though this distinction is sufficient for their refutation, still, since from a misconception of the Apostle's words (to mention them first), they consider the Word of God to be one of the works, because of its being written, Who was faithful to Him that made Him,' I have thought it needful to silence this further argument of theirs, taking in hand [2223] , as before, their statement.
2. If then He be not a Son, let Him be called a work, and let all that is said of works be said of Him, nor let Him and Him alone be called Son, nor Word, nor Wisdom; neither let God be called Father, but only Framer and Creator of things which by Him come to be; and let the creature be Image and Expression of His framing will, and let Him, as they would have it, be without generative nature, so that there be neither Word, nor Wisdom, no, nor Image, of His proper substance. For if He be not Son [2224] , neither is He Image [2225] . But if there be not a Son, how then say you that God is a Creator? since all things that come to be are through the Word and in Wisdom, and without This nothing can be, whereas you say He hath not That in and through which He makes all things. For if the Divine Essence be not fruitful itself [2226] , but barren, as they hold, as a light that lightens not, and a dry fountain, are they not ashamed to speak of His possessing framing energy? and whereas they deny what is by nature, do they not blush to place before it what is by will [2227] ? But if He frames things that are external to Him and before were not, by willing them to be, and becomes their Maker, much more will He first be Father of an Offspring from His proper Essence. For if they attribute to God the willing about things which are not, why recognise they not that in God which lies above the will? now it is a something that surpasses will, that He should be by nature, and should be Father of His proper Word. If then that which comes first, which is according to nature, did not exist, as they would have it in their folly, how could that which is second come to be, which is according to will? for the Word is first, and then the creation. On the contrary the Word exists, whatever they affirm, those irreligious ones; for through Him did creation come to be, and God, as being Maker, plainly has also His framing Word, not external, but proper to Him;--for this must be repeated. If He has the power of will, and His will is effective, and suffices for the consistence of the things that come to be, and His Word is effective, and a Framer, that Word must surely be the living Will [2228] of the Father, and an essential [2229] energy, and a real Word, in whom all things both consist and are excellently governed. No one can even doubt, that He who disposes is prior to the disposition and the things disposed. And thus, as I said, God's creating is second to His begetting; for Son implies something proper to Him and truly from that blessed and everlasting Essence; but what is from His will, comes into consistence from without, and is framed through His proper Offspring who is from It.
3. As we have shewn then they are guilty of great extravagance who say that the Lord is not Son of God, but a work, and it follows that we all of necessity confess that He is Son. And if He be Son, as indeed He is, and a son is confessed to be not external to his father but from him, let them not question about the terms, as I said before, which the sacred writers use of the Word Himself, viz. not to Him that begat Him,' but to Him that made Him;' for while it is confessed what His nature is, what word is used in such instances need raise no question [2230] . For terms do not disparage His Nature; rather that Nature draws to Itself those terms and changes them. For terms are not prior to essences, but essences are first, and terms second. Wherefore also when the essence is a work or creature, then the words He made,' and He became,' and He created,' are used of it properly, and designate the work. But when the Essence is an Offspring and Son, then He made,' and He became,' and He created,' no longer properly belong to it, nor designate a work; but He made' we use without question for He begat.' Thus fathers often call the sons born of them their servants, yet without denying the genuineness of their nature; and often they affectionately call their own servants children, yet without putting out of sight their purchase of them originally; for they use the one appellation from their authority as being fathers, but in the other they speak from affection. Thus Sara called Abraham lord, though not a servant but a wife; and while to Philemon the master the Apostle joined Onesimus the servant as a brother, Bathsheba, although mother, called her son servant, saying to his father, Thy servant Solomon [2231] ;'--afterwards also Nathan the Prophet came in and repeated her words to David, Solomon thy servant [2232] .' Nor did they mind calling the son a servant, for while David heard it, he recognised the nature,' and while they spoke it, they forgot not the genuineness,' praying that he might be made his father's heir, to whom they gave the name of servant; for to David he was son by nature.
4. As then, when we read this, we interpret it fairly, without accounting Solomon a servant because we hear him so called, but a son natural and genuine, so also, if, concerning the Saviour, who is confessed to be in truth the Son, and to be the Word by nature, the saints say, Who was faithful to Him that made Him,' or if He say of Himself, The Lord created me,' and, I am Thy servant and the Son of Thine handmaid [2233] ,' and the like, let not any on this account deny that He is proper to the Father and from Him; but, as in the case of Solomon and David, let them have a right idea of the Father and the Son. For if, though they hear Solomon called a servant, they acknowledge him to be a son, are they not deserving of many deaths [2234] , who, instead of preserving the same explanation in the instance of the Lord, whenever they hear Offspring,' and Word,' and Wisdom,' forcibly misinterpret and deny the generation, natural and genuine, of the Son from the Father; but on hearing words and terms proper to a work, forthwith drop down to the notion of His being by nature a work, and deny the Word; and this, though it is possible, from His having been made man, to refer all these terms to His humanity? And are they not proved to be an abomination' also unto the Lord,' as having diverse weights [2235] ' with them, and with this estimating those other instances, and with that blaspheming the Lord? But perhaps they grant that the word servant' is used under a certain understanding, but lay stress upon Who made' as some great support of their heresy. But this stay of theirs also is but a broken reed; for if they are aware of the style of Scripture, they must at once give sentence against [2236] themselves. For as Solomon, though a son, is called a servant, so, to repeat what was said above, although parents call the sons springing from themselves made' and created' and becoming,' for all this they do not deny their nature. Thus Hezekiah, as it is written in Isaiah, said in his prayer, From this day I will make children, who shall declare Thy righteousness, O God of my salvation [2237] .' He then said, I will make;' but the Prophet in that very book and the Fourth of Kings, thus speaks, And the sons who shall come forth of thee [2238] .' He uses then make' for beget,' and he calls them who were to spring from him, made,' and no one questions whether the term has reference to a natural offspring. Again, Eve on bearing Cain said, I have gotten a man from the Lord [2239] ;' thus she too used gotten' for brought forth.' For, first she saw the child, yet next she said, I have gotten.' Nor would any one consider, because of I have gotten,' that Cain was purchased from without, instead of being born of her. Again, the Patriarch Jacob said to Joseph, And now thy two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, which became thine in Egypt, before I came unto thee into Egypt, are mine [2240] .' And Scripture says about Job, And there came to him seven sons and three daughters [2241] .' As Moses too has said in the Law, If sons become to any one,' and If he make a son [2242] .' Here again they speak of those who are begotten, as become' and made,' knowing that, while they are acknowledged to be sons, we need not make a question of they became,' or I have gotten,' or I made [2243] .' For nature and truth draw the meaning to themselves.
5. This being so [2244] , when persons ask whether the Lord is a creature or work, it is proper to ask of them this first, whether He is Son and Word and Wisdom. For if this is shewn, the surmise about work and creation falls to the ground at once and is ended. For a work could never be Son and Word; nor could the Son be a work. And again, this being the state of the case, the proof is plain to all, that the phrase, To Him who made Him' does not serve their heresy, but rather condemns it. For it has been shewn that the expression He made' is applied in divine Scripture even to children genuine and natural; whence, the Lord being proved to be the Father's Son naturally and genuinely, and Word, and Wisdom, though He made' be used concerning Him, or He became,' this is not said of Him as if a work, but the saints make no question about using the expression,--for instance in the case of Solomon, and Hezekiah's children. For though the fathers had begotten them from themselves, still it is written, I have made,' and I have gotten,' and He became.' Therefore God's enemies, in spite of their repeated allegation of such phrases [2245] , ought now, though late in the day, after what has been said, to disown their irreligious thoughts, and think of the Lord as of a true Son, Word, and Wisdom of the Father, not a work, not a creature. For if the Son be a creature, by what word then and by what wisdom was He made Himself [2246] ? for all the works were made through the Word and the Wisdom, as it is written, In wisdom hast Thou made them all,' and, All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made [2247] .' But if it be He who is the Word and the Wisdom, by which all things come to be, it follows that He is not in the number of works, nor in short of things originate, but the Offspring of the Father.
6. For consider how grave an error it is, to call God's Word a work. Solomon says in one place in Ecclesiastes, that God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil [2248] .' If then the Word be a work, do you mean that He as well as others will be brought into judgment? and what room is there for judgment, when the Judge is on trial? who will give to the just their blessing, who to the unworthy their punishment, the Lord, as you must suppose, standing on trial with the rest? by what law shall He, the Lawgiver, Himself be judged? These things are proper to the works, to be on trial, to be blessed and to be punished by the Son. Now then fear the Judge, and let Solomon's words convince you. For if God shall bring the works one and all into judgment, but the Son is not in the number of things put on trial, but rather is Himself the Judge of works one and all, is not the proof clearer than the sun, that the Son is not a work but the Father's Word, in whom all the works both come to be and come into judgment? Further, if the expression, Who was faithful,' is a difficulty to them, from the thought that faithful' is used of Him as of others, as if He exercises faith and so receives the reward of faith, they must proceed at this rate to find fault with Moses for saying, God faithful and true [2249] ,' and with St. Paul for writing, God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able [2250] .' But when the saints spoke thus, they were not thinking of God in a human way, but they acknowledged two senses of the word faithful' in Scripture, first believing,' then trustworthy,' of which the former belongs to man, the latter to God. Thus Abraham was faithful, because He believed God's word; and God faithful, for, as David says in the Psalm, The Lord is faithful in all His words [2251] ,' or is trustworthy, and cannot lie. Again, If any faithful woman have widows [2252] ,' she is so called for her right faith; but, It is a faithful saying [2253] ,' because what He hath spoken has a claim on our faith, for it is true, and is not otherwise. Accordingly the words, Who is faithful to Him that made Him,' implies no parallel with others, nor means that by having faith He became well-pleasing; but that, being Son of the True God, He too is faithful, and ought to be believed in all He says and does, Himself remaining unalterable and not changed [2254] in His human Economy and fleshly presence.
7. Thus then we may meet these men who are shameless, and from the single expression He made,' may shew that they err in thinking that the Word of God is a work. But further, since the drift also of the context is orthodox, shewing the time and the relation to which this expression points, I ought to shew from it also how the heretics lack reason; viz. by considering, as we have done above, the occasion when it was used and for what purpose. Now the Apostle is not discussing things before the creation when he thus speaks, but when the Word became flesh;' for thus it is written, Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession Jesus, who was faithful to Him that made Him.' Now when became He Apostle,' but when He put on our flesh? and when became He High Priest of our profession,' but when, after offering Himself for us, He raised His Body from the dead, and, as now, Himself brings near and offers to the Father those who in faith approach Him, redeeming all, and for all propitiating God? Not then as wishing to signify the Essence of the Word nor His natural generation from the Father, did the Apostle say, Who was faithful to Him that made Him'--(perish the thought! for the Word is not made, but makes)--but as signifying His descent to mankind and High-priesthood which did become'--as one may easily see from the account given of the Law and of Aaron. I mean, Aaron was not born a high-priest, but a man; and in process of time, when God willed, he became a high-priest; yet became so, not simply, nor as betokened by his ordinary garments, but putting over them the ephod, the breastplate [2255] , the robe, which the women wrought at God's command, and going in them into the holy place, he offered the sacrifice for the people; and in them, as it were, mediated between the vision of God and the sacrifices of men. Thus then the Lord also, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God;' but when the Father willed that ransoms should be paid for all and to all, grace should be given, then truly the Word, as Aaron his robe, so did He take earthly flesh, having Mary for the Mother of His Body as if virgin earth [2256] , that, as a High Priest, having He as others an offering, He might offer Himself to the Father, and cleanse us all from sins in His own blood, and might rise from the dead.
8. For what happened of old was a shadow of this; and what the Saviour did on His coming, this Aaron shadowed out according to the Law. As then Aaron was the same and did not change by putting on the high-priestly dress [2257] , but remaining the same was only robed, so that, had any one seen him offering, and had said, Lo, Aaron has this day become high-priest,' he had not implied that he then had been born man, for man he was even before he became high-priest, but that he had been made high-priest in his ministry, on putting on the garments made and prepared for the high-priesthood; in the same way it is possible in the Lord's instance also to understand aright, that He did not become other than Himself on taking the flesh, but, being the same as before, He was robed in it; and the expressions He became' and He was made,' must not be understood as if the Word, considered as the Word [2258] , were made, but that the Word, being Framer of all, afterwards [2259] was made High Priest, by putting on a body which was originate and made, and such as He can offer for us; wherefore He is said to be made. If then indeed the Lord did not become man [2260] , that is a point for the Arians to battle; but if the Word became flesh,' what ought to have been said concerning Him when become man, but Who was faithful to Him that made Him?' for as it is proper to the Word to have it said of Him, In the beginning was the Word,' so it is proper to man to become' and to be made.' Who then, on seeing the Lord as a man walking about, and yet appearing to be God from His works, would not have asked, Who made Him man? and who again, on such a question, would not have answered, that the Father made Him man, and sent Him to us as High Priest? And this meaning, and time, and character, the Apostle himself, the writer of the words, Who is faithful to Him that made Him,' will best make plain to us, if we attend to what goes before them. For there is one train of thought, and the lection is all about One and the Same. He writes then in the Epistle to the Hebrews thus; Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself likewise took part of the same; that through death He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. For verily He took not on Him the nature of Angels; but He took on Him the seed of Abraham. Wherefore in all things it behoved Him to be made like unto His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people. For in that He Himself hath suffered being tempted, He is able to succour them that are tempted. Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of a heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Jesus; who was faithful to Him that made Him [2261] .'
9. Who can read this whole passage without condemning the Arians, and admiring the blessed Apostle, who has spoken well? for when was Christ made,' when became He Apostle,' except when, like us, He took part in flesh and blood?' And when became He a merciful and faithful High Priest,' except when in all things He was made like unto His brethren?' And then was He made like,' when He became man, having put upon Him our flesh. Wherefore Paul was writing concerning the Word's human Economy, when he said, Who was faithful to Him that made Him,' and not concerning His Essence. Have not therefore any more the madness to say that the Word of God is a work; whereas He is Son by nature Only-begotten, and then had brethren,' when He took on Him flesh like ours; which moreover, by Himself offering Himself, He was named and became merciful and faithful,'--merciful, because in mercy to us He offered Himself for us, and faithful, not as sharing faith with us, nor as having faith in any one as we have, but as deserving to receive faith in all He says and does, and as offering a faithful sacrifice, one which remains and does not come to nought. For those which were offered according to the Law, had not this faithfulness, passing away with the day and needing a further cleansing; but the Saviour's sacrifice, taking place once, has perfected everything, and is become faithful as remaining for ever. And Aaron had successors, and in a word the priesthood under the Law exchanged its first ministers as time and death went on; but the Lord having a high priesthood without transition and without succession, has become a faithful High Priest,' as continuing for ever; and faithful too by promise, that He may hear [2262] and not mislead those who come to Him. This may be also learned from the Epistle of the great Peter, who says, Let them that suffer according to the will of God, commit their souls to a faithful Creator [2263] .' For He is faithful as not changing, but abiding ever, and rendering what He has promised.
10. Now the so-called gods of the Greeks, unworthy the name, are faithful neither in their essence nor in their promises; for the same are not everywhere, nay, the local deities come to nought in course of time, and undergo a natural dissolution; wherefore the Word cries out against them, that faith is not strong in them,' but they are waters that fail,' and there is no faith in them.' But the God of all, being one really and indeed and true, is faithful, who is ever the same, and says, See now, that I, even I am He,' and I change not [2264] ;' and therefore His Son is faithful,' being ever the same and unchanging, deceiving neither in His essence nor in His promise;--as again says the Apostle writing to the Thessalonians, Faithful is He who calleth you, who also will do it [2265] ;' for in doing what He promises, He is faithful to His words.' And he thus writes to the Hebrews as to the word's meaning unchangeable;' If we believe not, yet He abideth faithful; He cannot deny Himself [2266] .' Therefore reasonably the Apostle, discoursing concerning the bodily presence of the Word, says, an Apostle and faithful to Him that made Him,' shewing us that, even when made man, Jesus Christ' is the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever [2267] ' is unchangeable. And as the Apostle makes mention in his Epistle of His being made man when mentioning His High Priesthood, so too he kept no long silence about His Godhead, but rather mentions it forthwith, furnishing to us a safeguard on every side, and most of all when he speaks of His humility, that we may forthwith know His loftiness and His majesty which is the Father's. For instance, he says, Moses as a servant, but Christ as a Son [2268] ;' and the former faithful in his house,' and the latter over the house,' as having Himself built it, and being its Lord and Framer, and as God sanctifying it. For Moses, a man by nature, became faithful, in believing God who spoke to Him by His Word; but [2269] the Word was not as one of things originate in a body, nor as creature in creature, but as God in flesh [2270] , and Framer of all and Builder in that which was built by Him. And men are clothed in flesh in order to be and to subsist; but the Word of God was made man in order to sanctify the flesh, and, though He was Lord, was in the form of a servant; for the whole creature is the Word's servant, which by Him came to be, and was made.
11. Hence it holds that the Apostle's expression, He made,' does not prove that the Word is made, but that body, which He took like ours; and in consequence He is called our brother, as having become man. But if it has been shewn, that, even though the word made' be referred to the Very Word, it is used for begat,' what further perverse expedient will they be able to fall upon, now that the present discussion has cleared up the word in every point of view, and shewn that the Son is not a work, but in Essence indeed the Father's offspring, while in the Economy, according to the good pleasure [2271] of the Father, He was on our behalf made, and consists as man? For this reason then it is said by the Apostle, Who was faithful to Him that made Him;' and in the Proverbs, even creation is spoken of. For so long as we are confessing that He became man, there is no question about saying, as was observed before, whether He became,' or He has been made,' or created,' or formed,' or servant,' or son of an handmaid,' or son of man,' or was constituted,' or took His journey,' or bridegroom,' or brother's son,' or brother.' All these terms happen to be proper to man's constitution; and such as these do not designate the Essence of the Word, but that He has become man. __________________________________________________________________
[2210] kuliomenoi, Orat. iii. 16.
[2211] Prov. viii. 22. Cf. i. 53 and infr. 19-72.
[2212] Heb. iii. 2.
[2213] Vid. infr. note on 35.
[2214] Cf. Rom. xi. 32
[2215] ton nun 'Ioudaion, means literally the Jews of this day,' as here and Orat. i. 8. 10. 38. Orat. ii. 1. b. iii. 28. c. But elsewhere this and similar phrases as distinctly mean the Arians, being used in contrast to the Jews. Their likeness to the Jews is drawn out, Orat. iii. 27. de Decr. i.
[2216] erotontes emanthanon; and so mathon edidasken, Orat. iii. 9. de Decr. 7. supr. p. 13, note a.
[2217] John i. 14.
[2218] Acts ii. 36.
[2219] Prov. viii. 22.
[2220] Heb. i. 4.
[2221] Phil. ii. 7.
[2222] Heb. iii. 1, 2; Sent. D. 11.
[2223] By laubanontes par' auton to lemma, accepting the proposition they offer,' he means that he is engaged in going through certain texts brought against the Catholic view, instead of bringing his own proofs, vid. Orat. i. 37. Yet after all it is commonly his way, as here, to start with some general exposition of the Catholic doctrine which the Arian sense of the text in question opposes, and thus to create a prejudice or proof against the latter. vid. Orat. i. 10. 38. 40. init. 53. d. ii. 5. 12. init. 32-34. 35. 44. init. which refers to the whole discussion, 18-43. 73. 77. iii. 18. init. 36. init. 42. 54. 51. init. &c. On the other hand he makes the ecclesiastical sense the rule of interpretation, touto [to skopo, the general drift of Scripture doctrine] hosper kanoni chresamenoi prosechomen te anagnosei tes theopneustou graphes, iii. 28. fin. This illustrates what he means when he says that certain texts have a good,' pious,' orthodox' sense, i.e. they can be interpreted (in spite, if so be, of appearances) in harmony with the Regula Fidei. vid. infr. §43, note; also notes on 35. and iii. 58.
[2224] §22, note.
[2225] i.e. in any true sense of the word image;' or, so that He may be accounted the aparallaktos eikon of the Father, vid. de Syn. 23, note 1. The ancient Fathers consider, that the Divine Sonship is the very consequence (so to speak) of the necessity that exists, that One who is Infinite Perfection should subsist again in a Perfect Image of Himself, which is the doctrine to which Athan. goes on to allude, and the idea of which (he says) is prior to that of creation. A redundatio in imaginem is synonymous with a generatio Filii. Cf. Thomassin, de Trin. 19. 1.
[2226] For karpogonos he ousia, de Decr. 15. n. 9. gennetikos, Orat. iii. 66. iv. 4. fin. agonos. i. 14. fin. Sent. Dion. 15. 19. he phusike gonimotes, Damasc. F. O. i. 8. p. 133. akarpos, Cyr. Thes. p. 45. Epiph. Hær. 65 p. 609. b. Vid. the gennesis and the ktisis contrasted together Orat. i. 29. de Decr. 11. n. 6, de Syn. 51, n. 4. The doctrine in the text is shortly expressed, infr. Orat. iv. 4 fin. ei agonos kai anenergetos
[2227] Orat. iii. 59, &c.
[2228] Orat. iii. 63. c.
[2229] enousios, infr. 28.
[2230] §1, note 13.
[2231] 1 Kings i. 19.
[2232] ver. 26.
[2233] Ps. cxvi. 16.
[2234] pollakis apololenai dikaioi, vid. infr. §28.
[2235] Prov. xx. 23.
[2236] Apol. c. Ar. 36.
[2237] Is. xxxviii. 19, LXX.
[2238] 2 Kings xx. 18; Is. xxxix. 7.
[2239] Gen. iv. 1, and infr. 44. note on Qanâ.
[2240] Gen. xlviii. 5, LXX.
[2241] Job i. 2, LXX.
[2242] Cf. Deut. xxi. 15; vid. Lev. xxv. 21, LXX.
[2243] Serap. ii. 6. b.
[2244] That is, while the style of Scripture justifies us in thus interpreting the word made,' doctrinal truth obliges us to do so. He considers the Regula Fidei the principle of interpretation, and accordingly he goes on at once to apply it. vid. supr. §1, note 13.
[2245] lexeidia, Orat. iii. 59. a Sent. D. 4. c.
[2246] Orat. iii. 62 init. infr. §22, note.
[2247] Ps. civ. 24; John i. 3.
[2248] Eccles. xii. 14.
[2249] Combines Greek of Deut. xxxii. 4 and Ex. xxxiv. 6; cf. Rev. iii. 14.
[2250] 1 Cor. x. 13.
[2251] Ps. cxlv. 14. LXX.
[2252] 1 Tim. v. 16.
[2253] Tit. iii. 8, &c.
[2254] atreptos kai me alloioumenos; vid. supr. de Decr. 14. it was the tendency of Arianism to consider that in the Incarnation some such change actually was undergone by the Word, as they had from the first maintained in the abstract was possible; that whereas He was in nature treptos, He was in fact alloioumenos. This was implied in the doctrine that His superhuman nature supplied the place of a soul in His manhood. Hence the semi-Arian Sirmian Creed anathematizes those who said, ton logon tropen hupomemenekota, vid. De Syn. 27. 12). This doctrine connected them with the Apollinarian and Eutychian Schools, to the former of which Athan. compares them, contr. Apoll. i. 12. while, as opposing the latter, Theodoret entities his first Dialogue Atreptos
[2255] Exod. xxix. 5.
[2256] anergastou ges is an allusion to Adam's formation from the ground; and so Irenæus, Hær. iii. 21. fin. and many later fathers.
[2257] This is one of those distinct and luminous protests by anticipation against Nestorianism, which in consequence may be abused to the purpose of the opposite heresy. Such expressions as peritithemenos ten estheta, ekalupteto, endusamenos soma, were familiar with the Apollinarians, against whom S. Athanasius is, if possible, even more decided. Theodoret objects Hær. v. 11. p. 422. to the word prokalumma, as applied to our Lord's manhood, as implying that He had no soul; vid. also Naz. Ep. 102. fin. (ed. 1840). In Naz. Ep. 101. p. 90. parapetasma is used to denote an Apollinarian idea. Such expressions were taken to imply that Christ was not in nature man, only in some sense human; not a substance, but an appearance; yet pseudo-Athan. contr. Sabell. Greg. 4. has parapepetasmenen and kalumma, ibid. init. S. Cyril. Hieros. katapetasma, Catech. xii. 26. xiii. 32. after Hebr. x. 20. and Athan. ad Adelph. 5. e. Theodor. parapetasma, Eran. i. p. 22. and prokalumma, ibid. p. 23. and adv. Gent. vi. p. 877. and stole, Eran. 1. c. S. Leo has caro Christi velamen, Ep. 59. p. 979. vid. also Serm. 22. p. 70. Serm. 25. p. 84.
[2258] he logos esti. cf. i. 43. Orat. ii. 74. e. iii. 38 init. 39. b. 41 init. 45 init. 52. b. iv. 23. f.
[2259] The Arians considered that our Lord's Priesthood preceded His Incarnation, and belonged to His Divine Nature, and was in consequence the token of an inferior divinity. The notice of it therefore in this text did but confirm them in their interpretation of the words made, &c. For the Arians, vid. Epiph. Hær. 69, 37. Eusebius too had distinctly declared, Qui videbatur, erat agnus Dei; qui occultabatur sacerdos Dei. advers. Sabell. i. p. 2. b. vid. also Demonst. i. 10. p. 38. iv. 16. p. 193. v. 3. p. 223. contr. Marc. pp. 8 and 9. 66. 74. 95. Even S. Cyril of Jerusalem makes a similar admission, Catech. x. 14. Nay S. Ambrose calls the Word, plenum justitiæ sacerdotalis, de fug. sæc. 3. 14. S. Clement Alex. before them speaks once or twice of the logos archiereus, e.g. Strom. ii. 9 fin. and Philo still earlier uses similar language, de Profug. p. 466. (whom S. Ambrose follows), de Somniis p. 597. vid. Thomassin. de Incarn. x. 9. Nestorius on the other hand maintained that the Man Christ Jesus was the Priest, relying on the text which has given rise to this note; Cyril, adv. Nest. p. 64. and Augustine and Fulgentius may be taken to countenance him, de Consens. and Evang. i. 6. ad Thrasim. iii. 30. The Catholic doctrine is, that the Divine Word is Priest in and according to His manhood. vid. the parallel use of prototokos, infr. 62-64. As He is called Prophet and even Apostle for His humanity,' says S. Cyril Alex. so also Priest.' Glaph. ii. p. 58. and so Epiph. loc. cit. Thomassin loc. cit. makes a distinction between a divine Priesthood or Mediatorship, such as the Word may be said to sustain between the Father and all creatures, and an earthly one for the sake of sinners. vid. also Huet Origenian. ii. 3. §4, 5. For the history of the controversy among Protestants as to the Nature to which His Mediatorship belongs, vid. Petav. Incarn. xii. 3. 4. [Herzog-Plitt Art. Stancar.]
[2260] [One of the few passages in which Ath. glances at the Arian Christology. A long note is omitted here on the subject of Or. i. 8, note 3.]
[2261] Heb. ii. 14-18; iii. 2.
[2262] Or, answer, vid. infr. iii. 27.
[2263] 1 Pet. iv. 19.
[2264] Vid. Jer. ix. 3. and xv. 18; Deut. xxxii. 20, LXX.; ib. xxxii. 39; Mal. iii. 6.
[2265] 1 Thess. v. 24.
[2266] 2 Tim. ii. 13.
[2267] Heb. xiii. 8.
[2268] Heb. iii. 5, 6.
[2269] Here is a protest beforehand against the Monophysite doctrine, but such anticipations of various heresies are too frequent, as we proceed, to require or bear notice.
[2270] theos en sarki, vid. logos en s. iii. 54. a. th. en somati, ii. 12. c. 15. a. l. en som. Sent. D. 8 fin.
[2271] kat' eudokian Orat.iii. 64. init. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XV.--Texts explained; Fifthly, Acts ii. 36. The Regula Fidei must be observed; madeapplies to our Lord's manhood; and to His manifestation; and to His office relative to us; and is relative to the Jews. Parallel instance in Gen. xxvii. 29, 37. The context contradicts the Arian interpretation.
11 (continued). The same is the meaning of the passage in the Acts which they also allege, that in which Peter says, that He hath made both Lord and Christ that same Jesus whom ye have crucified.' For here too it is not written, He made for Himself a Son,' or He made Himself a Word,' that they should have such notions. If then it has not escaped their memory, that they speak concerning the Son of God, let them make search whether it is anywhere written, God made Himself a Son,' or He created for Himself a Word;' or again, whether it is anywhere written in plain terms, The Word is a work or creation;' and then let them proceed to make their case, the insensate men, that here too they may receive their answer. But if they can produce nothing of the kind, and only catch at such stray expressions as He made' and He has been made,' I fear lest, from hearing, In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth,' and He made the sun and the moon,' and He made the sea,' they should come in time to call the Word the heaven, and the Light which took place on the first day, and the earth, and each particular thing that has been made, so as to end in resembling the Stoics, as they are called, the one drawing out their God into all things [2272] , the other ranking God's Word with each work in particular; which they have well nigh done already, saying that He is one of His works.
12. But here they must have the same answer as before, and first be told that the Word is a Son, as has been said above [2273] , and not a work, and that such terms are not to be understood of His Godhead, but the reason and manner of them investigated. To persons who so inquire, the human Economy will plainly present itself, which He undertook for our sake. For Peter, after saying, He hath made Lord and Christ,' straightway added, this Jesus whom ye crucified;' which makes it plain to any one, even, if so be, to them, provided they attend to the context, that not the Essence of the Word, but He according to His manhood is said to have been made. For what was crucified but the body? and how could be signified what was bodily in the Word, except by saying He made?' Especially has that phrase, He made,' a meaning consistent with orthodoxy; in that he has not said, as I observed before, He made Him Word,' but He made Him Lord,' nor that in general terms [2274] , but towards' us, and in the midst of' us, as much as to say, He manifested Him.' And this Peter himself, when he began this primary teaching, carefully [2275] expressed, when he said to them, Ye men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man manifested of God towards you by miracles, and wonders, and signs, which God did by Him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves know [2276] .' Consequently the term which he uses in the end, made', this He has explained in the beginning by manifested,' for by the signs and wonders which the Lord did, He was manifested to be not merely man, but God in a body and Lord also, the Christ. Such also is the passage in the Gospel according to John, Therefore the more did the Jews persecute Him, because He not only broke the Sabbath, but said also that God was His own Father, making Himself equal with God [2277] .' For the Lord did not then fashion Himself to be God, nor indeed is a made God conceivable, but He manifested it by the works, saying, Though ye believe not Me, believe My works, that ye may know that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me [2278] .' Thus then the Father has made' Him Lord and King in the midst of us, and towards us who were once disobedient; and it is plain that He who is now displayed as Lord and King, does not then begin to be King and Lord, but begins to shew His Lordship, and to extend it even over the disobedient.
13. If then they suppose that the Saviour was not Lord and King, even before He became man and endured the Cross, but then began to be Lord, let them know that they are openly reviving the statements of the Samosatene. But if, as we have quoted and declared above, He is Lord and King everlasting, seeing that Abraham worships Him as Lord, and Moses says, Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven [2279] ;' and David in the Psalms, The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit Thou on My right hand [2280] ;' and, Thy Throne, O God, is for ever and ever; a sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of Thy Kingdom [2281] ;' and, Thy Kingdom is an everlasting Kingdom [2282] ;' it is plain that even before He became man, He was King and Lord everlasting, being Image and Word of the Father. And the Word being everlasting Lord and King, it is very plain again that Peter said not that the Essence of the Son was made, but spoke of His Lordship over us, which became' when He became man, and, redeeming all by the Cross, became Lord of all and King. But if they continue the argument on the ground of its being written, He made,' not willing that He made' should be taken in the sense of He manifested,' either from want of apprehension, or from their Christ-opposing purpose, let them attend to another sound exposition of Peter's words. For he who becomes Lord of others, comes into the possession of beings already in existence; but if the Lord is Framer of all and everlasting King, and when He became man, then gained possession of us, here too is a way in which Peter's language evidently does not signify that the Essence of the Word is a work, but the after-subjection of all things, and the Saviour's Lordship which came to be over all. And this coincides with what we said before [2283] ; for as we then introduced the words, Become my God and defence,' and the Lord became a refuge for the oppressed [2284] ,' and it stood to reason that these expressions do not shew that God is originate, but that His beneficence becomes' towards each individual, the same sense has the expression of Peter also.
14. For the Son of God indeed, being Himself the Word, is Lord of all; but we once were subject from the first to the slavery of corruption and the curse of the Law, then by degrees fashioning for ourselves things that were not, we served, as says the blessed Apostle, them which by nature are no Gods [2285] ,' and, ignorant of the true God, we preferred things that were not to the truth; but afterwards, as the ancient people when oppressed in Egypt groaned, so, when we too had the Law engrafted [2286] ' in us, and according to the unutterable sighings [2287] of the Spirit made our intercession, O Lord our God, take possession of us [2288] ,' then, as He became for a house of refuge' and a God and defence,' so also He became our Lord. Nor did He then begin to be, but we began to have Him for our Lord. For upon this, God being good and Father of the Lord, in pity, and desiring to be known by all, makes His own Son put on Him a human body and become man, and be called Jesus, that in this body offering Himself for all, He might deliver all from false worship and corruption, and might Himself become of all Lord and King. His becoming therefore in this way Lord and King, this it is that Peter means by, He hath made Him Lord,' and hath sent Christ;' as much as to say, that the Father in making Him man (for to be made belongs to man), did not simply make Him man, but has made Him in order to His being Lord of all men, and to His hallowing all through the Anointing. For though the Word existing in the form of God took a servant's form, yet the assumption of the flesh did not make a servant [2289] of the Word, who was by nature Lord; but rather, not only was it that emancipation of all humanity which takes place by the Word, but that very Word who was by nature Lord, and was then made man, hath by means of a servant's form been made Lord of all and Christ, that is, in order to hallow all by the Spirit. And as God, when becoming a God and defence,' and saying, I will be a God to them,' does not then become God more than before, nor then begins to become God, but, what He ever is, that He then becomes to those who need Him, when it pleaseth Him, so Christ also being by nature Lord and King everlasting, does not become Lord more than He was at the time He is sent forth, nor then begins to be Lord and King, but what He is ever, that He then is made according to the flesh; and, having redeemed all, He becomes thereby again Lord of quick and dead. For Him henceforth do all things serve, and this is David's meaning in the Psalm, The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit Thou on My right hand, until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool [2290] .' For it was fitting that the redemption should take place through none other than Him who is the Lord by nature, lest, though created by the Son, we should name another Lord, and fall into the Arian and Greek folly, serving the creature beyond the all-creating God [2291] .
15. This, at least according to my nothingness, is the meaning of this passage; moreover, a true and a good meaning have these words of Peter as regards the Jews. For Jews, astray from the truth, expect indeed the Christ as coming, but do not reckon that He undergoes a passion, saying what they understand not; We know that, when the Christ cometh, He abideth for ever, and how sayest Thou, that He must be lifted up [2292] ?' Next they suppose Him, not the Word coming in flesh, but a mere man, as were all the kings. The Lord then, admonishing Cleopas and the other, taught them that the Christ must first suffer; and the rest of the Jews that God was come among them, saying, If He called them gods to whom the word of God came, and the Scripture cannot be broken, say ye of Him whom the Father hath sanctified and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest, because I said, I am the Son of God [2293] ?'
16. Peter then, having learned this from the Saviour, in both points set the Jews right, saying, "O Jews, the divine Scriptures announce that Christ cometh, and you consider Him a mere man as one of David's descendants, whereas what is written of Him shews Him to be not such as you say, but rather announces Him as Lord and God, and immortal, and dispenser of life. For Moses has said, Ye shall see your Life hanging before your eyes [2294] .' And David in the hundred and ninth Psalm, The Lord said unto My Lord, Sit Thou on My right hand, till I make Thine enemies Thy footstool [2295] ;' and in the fifteenth, Thou shalt not leave my soul in hades, neither shalt Thou suffer Thy Holy One to see corruption [2296] .' Now that these passages have not David for their scope he himself witnesses, avowing that He who was coming was His own Lord. Nay you yourselves know that He is dead, and His remains are with you. That the Christ then must be such as the Scriptures say, you will plainly confess yourselves. For those announcements come from God, and in them falsehood cannot be. If then ye can state that such a one has come before, and can prove him God from the signs and wonders which he did, ye have reason for maintaining the contest, but if ye are not able to prove His coming, but are expecting such an one still, recognise the true season from Daniel, for his words relate to the present time. But if this present season be that which was of old, afore-announced, and ye have seen what has taken place among us, be sure that this Jesus, whom ye crucified, this is the expected Christ. For David and all the Prophets died, and the sepulchres of all are with you, but that Resurrection which has now taken place, has shewn that the scope of these passages is Jesus. For the crucifixion is denoted by Ye shall see your Life hanging,' and the wound in the side by the spear answers to He was led as a sheep to the slaughter [2297] ,' and the resurrection, nay more, the rising of the ancient dead from out their sepulchres (for these most of you have seen), this is, Thou shalt not leave My soul in hades,' and He swallowed up death in strength [2298] ,' and again, God will wipe away.' For the signs which actually took place shew that He who was in a body was God, and also the Life and Lord of death. For it became the Christ, when giving life to others, Himself not to be detained by death; but this could not have happened, had He, as you suppose, been a mere man. But in truth He is the Son of God, for men are all subject to death. Let no one therefore doubt, but the whole house of Israel know assuredly that this Jesus, whom ye saw in shape a man, doing signs and such works, as no one ever yet had done, is Himself the Christ and Lord of all. For though made man, and called Jesus, as we said before, He received no loss by that human passion, but rather, in being made man, He is manifested as Lord of quick and dead. For since, as the Apostle said, in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe [2299] .' And so, since we men would not acknowledge God through His Word, nor serve the Word of God our natural Master, it pleased God to shew in man His own Lordship, and so to draw all men to Himself. But to do this by a mere man beseemed not [2300] ; lest, having man for our Lord, we should become worshippers of man [2301] . Therefore the Word Himself became flesh, and the Father called His Name Jesus, and so made' Him Lord and Christ, as much as to say, He made Him to rule and to reign;' that while in the Name of Jesus, whom ye crucified, every knee bows, we may acknowledge as Lord and King both the Son and through Him the Father."
17. The Jews then, most of them [2302] , hearing this, came to themselves and forthwith acknowledged the Christ, as it is written in the Acts. But, the Ario-maniacs on the contrary choose to remain Jews, and to contend with Peter; so let us proceed to place before them some parallel phrases; perhaps it may have some effect upon them, to find what the usage is of divine Scripture. Now that Christ is everlasting Lord and King, has become plain by what has gone before, nor is there a man to doubt about it; for being Son of God, He must be like Him [2303] , and being like, He is certainly both Lord and King, for He says Himself, He that hath seen Me, hath seen the Father.' On the other hand, that Peter's mere words, He hath made Him both Lord and Christ,' do not imply the Son to be a creature, may be seen from Isaac's blessing, though this illustration is but a faint one for our subject. Now he said to Jacob, Become thou lord over thy brother;' and to Esau, Behold, I have made him thy lord [2304] .' Now though the word made' had implied Jacob's essence and the coming into being, even then it would not be right in them as much as to imagine the same of the Word of God, for the Son of God is no creature as Jacob was; besides, they might inquire and so rid themselves of that extravagance. But if they do not understand it of his essence nor of his coming into being, though Jacob was by nature creature and work, is not their madness worse than the Devil's [2305] , if what they dare not ascribe in consequence of a like phrase even to things by nature originate, that they attach to the Son of God, saying that He is a creature? For Isaac said Become' and I have made,' signifying neither the coming into being nor the essence of Jacob (for after thirty years and more from his birth he said this); but his authority over his brother, which came to pass subsequently.
18. Much more then did Peter say this without meaning that the Essence of the Word was a work; for he knew Him to be God's Son, confessing, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God [2306] ;' but he meant His Kingdom and Lordship which was formed and came to be according to grace, and was relatively to us. For while saying this, he was not silent about the Son of God's everlasting Godhead which is the Father's; but He had said already, that He had poured the Spirit on us; now to give the Spirit with authority, is not in the power of creature or work, but the Spirit is God's Gift [2307] . For the creatures are hallowed by the Holy Spirit; but the Son, in that He is not hallowed by the Spirit, but on the contrary Himself the Giver of it to all [2308] , is therefore no creature, but true Son of the Father. And yet He who gives the Spirit, the same is said also to be made; that is, to be made among us Lord because of His manhood, while giving the Spirit because He is God's Word. For He ever was and is, as Son, so also Lord and Sovereign of all, being like in all things [2309] to the Father, and having all that is the Father's [2310] as He Himself has said [2311] . __________________________________________________________________
[2272] Brucker de Zenon. §7. n. 14.
[2273] §1, note 13.
[2274] haplos.
[2275] meta paratereseos. vid. infr. 44. e. 59. b. 71. e. Orat. iii. 52. b.
[2276] Acts ii. 22.
[2277] John v. 16, 18.
[2278] John x. 38. not to the letter.
[2279] Gen. xix. 24.
[2280] Ps. cx. 1.
[2281] Ps. xlv. 6.
[2282] Ps. cxlv. 13.
[2283] §62, cf. Serm. Maj. de Fid. 1.
[2284] Ps. lxxi. 3. stony rock, E. V. Ps. ix. 9. dejence.
[2285] Gal. iv. 8.
[2286] James i. 21.
[2287] Rom. viii. 26.
[2288] Is. xxvi. 13. LXX.
[2289] ouk edoulon ton logon; though, as he said supr. §10, the Word became a servant, as far as He was man. He says the same thing Ep. Æg 17. So say Naz. Orat. 32. 18. Nyssen. ad Simpl. (t. 2. p. 471.) Cyril. Alex. adv. Theodor. p. 223. Hilar. de Trin. xi. Ambros. 1. Epp. 46, 3.
[2290] Ps. cx. 1.
[2291] Vid. Rom. i. 25. and so both text and application very frequently, e.g. Ep. Æg. 4. e. 13. c. Vid. supr. i. 8, note 8, infr. iii. 16. note
[2292] John xii. 34, not to the letter.
[2293] John x. 36.
[2294] Deut. xxviii. 66. Vid. [de Incar. 35. The text is frequently thus explained by the Fathers].
[2295] Ps. cx. 1.
[2296] Ps. xvi. 10.
[2297] Is. liii. 7.
[2298] Is. xxv. 8.
[2299] 1 Cor. i. 21.
[2300] In the text the Mediatorial Lordship is made an office of God the Word; still, not as God, but as man. Cf. Augustine, Trin. i. 27. 28. In like manner the Priesthood is the office of God in the form of man, supr. 8, note 4. And so again none but the Eternal Son could be prototokos, yet He is so called when sent as Creator and as incarnate. infr. 64.
[2301] Infr. iii. 32 fin.
[2302] hoi pleistoi. [An exaggeration, cf. Rom. xi. 7, &c.]
[2303] §22, note.
[2304] Gen. xxvii. 29, 37.
[2305] Alluding to the temptation.
[2306] Matt. xvi. 16.
[2307] theou doron. And so more distinctly S. Basil, doron tou theou to pneuma. de Sp. S. 57, and more frequently the later Latins, as in the Hymn, Altissimi Donum Dei;' and the earlier, e.g. Hil. de Trin. ii. 29. and August. Trin. xv. 29. v. 15, Petav. Trin. vii. 13, §20.
[2308] Supr. ch. xii.
[2309] homoios kata panta. vid. infr. §22, note 4.
[2310] Vid. infr. note on Orat. iii. 1.
[2311] Vid. John xvi. 15 __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVI.--Introductory to Proverbs viii. 22, that the Son is not a Creature. Arian formula, a creature but not as one of the creatures; but each creature is unlike all other creatures; and no creature can create. The Word then differs from all creatures in that in which they, though otherwise differing, all agree together, as creatures; viz. in being an efficient cause; in being the one medium or instrumental agent in creation; moreover in being the revealer of the Father; and in being the object of worship.
18. (continued). Now in the next place let us consider the passage in the Proverbs, The Lord created me a beginning of His ways for His works [2312] ;' although in shewing that the Word is no work, it has been also shewn that He is no creature. For it is the same to say work or creature, so that the proof that He is no work is a proof also that He is no creature. Whereas one may marvel at these men, thus devising excuses to be irreligious, and nothing daunted at the refutations which meet them upon every point. For first they set about deceiving the simple by their questions, [2313] Did He who is make from that which was not one that was not or one that was [2314] ?' and, Had you a son before begetting him [2315] ?' And when this had been proved worthless, next they invented the question, Is the Unoriginate one or two [2316] ?' Then, when in this they had been confuted, straightway they formed another, Has He free-will and an alterable nature [2317] ?' But being forced to give up this, next they set about saying, Being made so much better than the Angels [2318] ;' and when the truth exposed this pretence, now again, collecting them all together, they think to recommend their heresy by work' and creature [2319] .' For they mean those very things over again, and are true to their own perverseness, putting into various shapes and turning to and fro the same errors, if so be to deceive some by that variousness. Although then abundant proof has been given above of this their reckless expedient, yet, since they make all places sound with this passage from the Proverbs, and to many who are ignorant of the faith of Christians, seem to say somewhat, it is necessary to examine separately, He created' as well as Who was faithful to Him that made Him [2320] ;' that, as in all others, so in this text also, they may be proved to have got no further than a fantasy.
19. And first let us see the answers, which they returned to Alexander of blessed memory, in the outset, while their heresy was in course of formation. They wrote thus: He is a creature, but not as one of the creatures; a work, but not as one of the works; an offspring, but not as one of the offsprings [2321] .' Let every one consider the profligacy and craft of this heresy; for knowing the bitterness of its own malignity, it makes an effort to trick itself out with fair words, and says, what indeed it means, that He is a creature, yet thinks to be able to screen itself by adding, but not as one of the creatures.' However, in thus writing, they rather convict themselves of irreligion; for if, in your opinion, He is simply a creature, why add the pretence [2322] , but not as one of the creatures?' And if He is simply a work, how not as one of the works?' In which we may see the poison of the heresy. For by saying, offspring, but not as one of the offsprings,' they reckon many sons, and one of these they pronounce to be the Lord; so that according to them He is no more Only begotten, but one out of many brethren, and is called [2323] offspring and son. What use then is this pretence of saying that He is a creature and not a creature? for though ye shall say, Not as one of the creatures,' I will prove this sophism of yours to be foolish. For still ye pronounce Him to be one of the creatures; and whatever a man might say of the other creatures, such ye hold concerning the Son, ye truly fools and blind [2324] .' For is any one of the creatures just what another is [2325] , that ye should predicate this of the Son as some prerogative [2326] ? And all the visible creation was made in six days:--in the first, the light which He called day; in the second the firmament; in the third, gathering together the waters, He bared the dry land, and brought out the various fruits that are in it; and in the fourth, He made the sun and the moon and all the host of the stars; and on the fifth, He created the race of living things in the sea, and of birds in the air; and on the sixth, He made the quadrupeds on the earth, and at length man. And the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made [2327] ;' and neither the light is as the night, nor the sun as the moon; nor the irrational as rational man; nor the Angels as the Thrones, nor the Thrones as the Authorities, yet they are all creatures, but each of the things made according to its kind exists and remains in its own essence, as it was made.
20. Let the Word then be excepted from the works, and as Creator be restored to the Father, and be confessed to be Son by nature; or if simply He be a creature, then let Him be assigned the same condition as the rest one with another, and let them as well as He be said every one of them to be a creature but not as one of the creatures, offspring or work, but not as one of the works or offsprings.' For ye say that an offspring is the same as a work, writing generated or made [2328] .' For though the Son excel the rest on a comparison, still a creature He is nevertheless, as they are; since in those which are by nature creatures one may find some excelling others. Star, for instance, differs from star in glory, and the rest have all of them their mutual differences when compared together; yet it follows not for all this that some are lords, and others servants to the superior, nor that some are efficient causes [2329] , others by them come into being, but all have a nature which comes to be and is created, confessing in their own selves their Framer: as David says in the Psalms, The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament sheweth His handy work [2330] ;' and as Zorobabel the wise says, All the earth calleth upon the Truth, and the heaven blesseth it: all works shake and tremble at it [2331] .' But if the whole earth hymns the Framer and the Truth, and blesses, and fears it, and its Framer is the Word, and He Himself says, I am the Truth [2332] ,' it follows that the Word is not a creature, but alone proper to the Father, in whom all things are disposed, and He is celebrated by all, as Framer; for I was by Him disposing [2333] ;' and My Father worketh hitherto, and I work [2334] .' And the word hitherto' shews His eternal existence in the Father as the Word; for it is proper to the Word to work the Father's works and not to be external to Him.
21. But if what the Father worketh, that the Son worketh also [2335] , and what the Son createth, that is the creation of the Father, and yet the Son be the Father's work or creature, then either He will work His own self, and will be His own creator (since what the Father worketh is the Son's work also), which is absurd and impossible; or, in that He creates and worketh the things of the Father, He Himself is not a work nor a creature; for else being Himself an efficient cause [2336] , He may cause that to be in the case of things caused, which He Himself has become, or rather He may have no power to cause at all.
For how, if, as you hold, He is come of nothing, is He able to frame things that are nothing into being? or if He, a creature, withal frames a creature, the same will be conceivable in the case of every creature, viz. the power to frame others. And if this pleases you, what is the need of the Word, seeing that things inferior can be brought to be by things superior? or at all events, every thing that is brought to be could have heard in the beginning God's words, Become' and be made,' and so would have been framed. But this is not so written, nor could it be. For none of things which are brought to be is an efficient cause, but all things were made through the Word: who would not have wrought all things, were He Himself in the number of the creatures. For neither would the Angels be able to frame, since they too are creatures, though Valentinus, and Marcion, and Basilides think so, and you are their copyists; nor will the sun, as being a creature, ever make what is not into what is; nor will man fashion man, nor stone devise stone, nor wood give growth to wood. But God is He who fashions man in the womb, and fixes the mountains, and makes wood grow; whereas man, as being capable of science, puts together and arranges that material, and works things that are, as he has learned; and is satisfied if they are but brought to be, and being conscious of what his nature is, if he needs aught, knows to ask [2337] it of God.
22. If then God also wrought and compounded out of materials, this indeed is a gentile thought, according to which God is an artificer and not a Maker, but yet even in that case let the Word work the materials, at the bidding and in the service of God [2338] . But if He calls into existence things which existed not by His proper Word, then the Word is not in the number of things non-existing and called; or we have to seek another Word [2339] , through whom He too was called; for by the Word the things which were not have come to be. And if through Him He creates and makes, He is not Himself of things created and made; but rather He is the Word of the Creator God and is known from the Father's works which He Himself worketh, to be in the Father and the Father in Him,' and He that hath seen Him hath seen the Father [2340] ,' because the Son's Essence is proper to the Father, and He in all points like Him [2341] . How then does He create through Him, unless it be His Word and His Wisdom? and how can He be Word and Wisdom, unless He be the proper offspring of His Essence [2342] , and did not come to be, as others, out of nothing? And whereas all things are from nothing, and are creatures, and the Son, as they say, is one of the creatures too and of things which once were not, how does He alone reveal the Father, and none else but He know the Father? For could He, a work, possibly know the Father, then must the Father be also known by all according to the proportion of the measures of each: for all of them are works as He is. But if it be impossible for things originate either to see or to know, for the sight and the knowledge of Him surpasses all (since God Himself says, No one shall see My face and live [2343] '), yet the Son has declared, No one knoweth the Father, save the Son [2344] ,' therefore the Word is different from all things originate, in that He alone knows and alone sees the Father, as He says, Not that any one hath seen the Father, save He that is from the Father,' and no one knoweth the Father save the Son [2345] ,' though Arius think otherwise. How then did He alone know, except that He alone was proper to Him? and how proper, if He were a creature, and not a true Son from Him? (For one must not mind saying often the same thing for religion's sake.) Therefore it is irreligious to think that the Son is one of all things; and blasphemous and unmeaning to call Him a creature, but not as one of the creatures, and a work, but not as one of the works, an offspring, but not as one of the offsprings;' for how not as one of these, if, as they say, He was not before His generation [2346] ? for it is proper to the creatures and works not to be before their origination, and to subsist out of nothing, even though they excel other creatures in glory; for this difference of one with another will be found in all creatures, which appears in those which are visible [2347] .
23. Moreover if, as the heretics hold, the Son were creature or work, but not as one of the creatures, because of His excelling them in glory, it were natural that Scripture should describe and display Him by a comparison in His favour with the other works; for instance, that it should say that He is greater than Archangels, and more honourable than the Thrones, and both brighter than sun and moon, and greater than the heavens. But he is not in fact thus referred to; but the Father shews Him to be His own proper and only Son, saying, Thou art My Son,' and This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. [2348] ' Accordingly the Angels ministered unto Him, as being one beyond themselves; and they worship Him, not as being greater in glory, but as being some one beyond all the creatures, and beyond themselves, and alone the Father's proper Son according to essence [2349] . For if He was worshipped as excelling them in glory, each of things subservient ought to worship what excels itself. But this is not the case [2350] ; for creature does not worship creature, but servant Lord, and creature God. Thus Peter the Apostle hinders Cornelius who would worship him, saying, I myself also am a man [2351] .' And an Angel, when John would worship him in the Apocalypse, hinders him, saying, See thou do it not; for I am thy fellow-servant, and of thy brethren the Prophets, and of them that keep the sayings of this book: worship God [2352] .' Therefore to God alone appertains worship, and this the very Angels know, that though they excel other beings in glory, yet they are all creatures and not to be worshipped [2353] , but worship the Lord. Thus Manoah, the father of Samson, wishing to offer sacrifice to the Angel, was thereupon hindered by him, saying, Offer not to me, but to God [2354] .' On the other hand, the Lord is worshipped even by the Angels; for it is written, Let all the Angels of God worship Him [2355] ;' and by all the Gentiles, as Isaiah says, The labour of Egypt and merchandize of Ethiopia and of the Sabeans, men of stature, shall come over unto thee, and they shall be thy servants;' and then, they shall fall down unto thee, and shall make supplication unto thee, saying, Surely God is in thee, and there is none else, there is no God [2356] .' And He accepts His disciples' worship, and certifies them who He is, saying, Call ye Me not Lord and Master? and ye say well, for so I am.' And when Thomas said to Him, My Lord and my God [2357] ,' He allows his words, or rather accepts him instead of hindering him. For He is, as the other Prophets declare, and David says in the Psalm, the Lord of hosts, the Lord of Sabaoth,' which is interpreted, the Lord of Armies,' and God True and Almighty, though the Arians burst [2358] at the tidings.
24. But He had not been thus worshipped, nor been thus spoken of, were He a creature merely. But now since He is not a creature, but the proper offspring of the Essence of that God who is worshipped, and His Son by nature, therefore He is worshipped and is believed to be God, and is Lord of armies, and in authority, and Almighty, as the Father is; for He has said Himself, All things that the Father hath, are Mine [2359] .' For it is proper to the Son, to have the things of the Father, and to be such that the Father is seen in Him, and that through Him all things were made, and that the salvation of all comes to pass and consists in Him. __________________________________________________________________
[2312] Prov. viii. 22. [This text, which had been immemorially applied to the Logos (supr. p. 168, note 7), and which in the false rendering of the LXX. strongly favoured the Arian side], is presently explained at greater length than any other of the texts he handles, forming the chief subject of the Oration henceforth, after an introduction which extends down to 44.
[2313] From the methodical manner in which the successive portions of his foregoing Oration are here referred to, it would almost seem as if he were answering in course some Arian work. vid. also supr. Orat. i. 37, 53. infr. Orat. iii. 26. He does not seem to be tracing the controversy historically.
[2314] Supr. ch. vii.
[2315] Ch. viii.
[2316] Ch. ix.
[2317] Ch. x.
[2318] Ch. xiii.
[2319] Ch. xiv. and xv.
[2320] Ch. xiv. Heb. iii. 2
[2321] Vid. Arius's letter, de Syn. 16. This was the sophism by means of which Valens succeeded with the Fathers of Arminium. vid. S. Jerome in Luciferian. 18. vid. also in Eusebius, supr. Ep. Eus. 6.
[2322] De Syn. 32.
[2323] huion chrematizein. The question between Catholics and Arians was whether our Lord was a true Son, or only called Son. Since they whisper something about Word and Wisdom as only names of the Son, &c.' onomata monon, supr. i. 26, note 1, and de Decr. 16, note 10. And so the title of Image is not a token of a similar substance, but His name only,' supr. i. 21, and so infr. 38. where tois onomasi is synonymous with kat' epinoian, as Sent. D. 22. f. a. Vid. also 39. Orat. iii. 11. 18. not named Son, but ever Son,' iv. 24. fin. Ep. Æg. 16. We call Him so, and mean truly what we say; they say it, but do not confess it.' Chrysost. in Act. Hom. 33. 4. vid. also nothois hosper onomasi, Cyril. de Trin. ii. p. 418. Non hæc nuda nomina, Ambros. de Fid. i. 17. Yet, since the Sabellians equally failed here, also considering the Sonship as only a notion or title, vid. Orat. iv. 2. (where in contrast, The Father is Father, and the Son Son,' vid. supr. p. 319, note 1.) 12. 23. 25. the word real' was used as against them, and in opposition to anupostatos logos by the Arians, and in consequence failed as a test of orthodox teaching; e.g. by Arius, supr. p. 97. by Euseb. in Marc. pp. 19, d. 35, b. 161, c. by Asterius, infr. 37. by Palladius and Secundus in the Council of Aquileia ap. Ambros. Opp. t. 2. p. 791. (ed. Bened.) by Maximinus ap. August. contr. Max. i. 6.
[2324] Matt. xxiii. 19.
[2325] And so S. Ambrose, Quæ enim creatura non sicut alia creatura non est? Homo non ut Angelus, terra non ut coelum. de Fid. i. n. 130, and a similar passage in Nyss. contr. Eun. iii. p. 132, 3.
[2326] exaireton. vid. infr. Orat. iii. 3. init. iv. 28. init. Euseb. Eccl. Theol. pp. 47. b. 73. b. 89. b. 124. a. 129. c. Theodor. H. E. p. 732. Nyss. contr. Eunom. iii. p. 133. a. Epiph. Hær. 76. p. 970. Cyril. Thes. p. 160.
[2327] Rom. i. 20.
[2328] gennethenta e poiethenta; as if they were synonymous; in opposition to which the Nicene Creed says, gennethenta e poiethenta. In like manner Arius in his letter to Eusebius uses the words, prin gennethe etoi ktisthe, e oristhe, e themeliothe, Theodor. H. E. p. 750. And to Alexander, achronos gennetheis kai pro ai& 240;non ktistheis kai themeliotheis; de Syn. 16. And Eusebius to Paulinus, ktiston kai themelioton kai genneton Theod. p. 752. The different words profess to be Scriptural, and to explain each other; created' being in Prov. viii. 22. made' in the passages considered in the last two chapters, appointed' or declared' in Rom. i. 4. and founded' or established' in Prov. viii. 23. which is discussed infr. 22, &c. vid. also 52.
[2329] 21, note 2.
[2330] Ps. xix. 1.
[2331] 1 Esdr. iv. 36.
[2332] John xiv. 6.
[2333] Prov. viii. 30, LXX.
[2334] John v. 17.
[2335] Orat. iii. 11. note.
[2336] poietikon aition, also, infr. 27. and Orat. iii. 14. and contr. Gent. 9 init. No creature can create, vid. e.g. about Angels, August. de Civ. Dei xii. 24. de Trin. iii. 13-18. Damasc. F. O. ii. 3. Cyril in Julian, ii. p. 62. Our reason rejects the idea that the Creator should be a creature, for creation is by the Creator.' Hil. Trin. xii. 5. pos dunatai to ktizomenon ktizein; e pos ho ktizon ktizetai; Athan. ad Afros. 4 fin. Vid. also Serap. i. 24, 6. iii. 4, e. The Gnostics who attributed creation to Angels are alluded to infr. Orat. iii. 12. Epiph. Hær. 52. 53, 163, &c. Theodor. Hær. i. 1 and 3.
[2337] De Decr. 11.
[2338] prostattomenos kai hupourgon. It is not quite clear that Athan. accepts these words in his own person, as has been assumed de Decr. 9. note 2, de Syn. 27 (3). Vid. de Decr. 7. and infr. 24. and 31, which, as far as they go, are against the use of the word. Also S. Basil objects to hupourgos contr. Eunom. ii. 21. and S. Cyril in Joan. p. 48. though S. Basil speaks of ton prostattonta kurion. i. 46, note 3. and S. Cyril of the Son's hupotage, Thesaur. p. 255. Vid. ministering, huperetounta, to the Father of all.' Just. Tryph. p. 72. The Word become minister, huperetes, of the Creator,' Origen Hom. in Joan. p. 61. also Constit. Ap. viii. 12. but Pseudo-Athan. objects to hupereton, de Comm. Essent. 30. and Athan. apparently, infr. 28. Again, Whom did He order, præcepit?' Iren. Hær. iii. 8. n. 3. The Father bids, entelletai (allusion to Ps. xxxiii. 9. vid. infr. 31), the Word accomplishes....He who commands, keleuon, is the Father, He who obeys, hupakouon, the Son....The Father willed, ethelesen, the Son did it.' Hippol. contr. Noet. 14. on which Fabricius's note. S. Hilary speaks of the Son as subditus per obedientiæ obsequelam.' de Syn. 51. Vid. below, on §31. In note 8 there the principle is laid down for the use of these expressions. [Supr. p. 87, note 2.]
[2339] Cf. Ep. Æg. 14. vid. also supr. p. 155. and Orat. iii. 2. 64. Aug. in Joan. Tract. i. 11. Vid. a parallel argument with reference to the Holy Spirit. Serap. i. 25. b.
[2340] Vid. John xiv. 9, 10.
[2341] ten kata panta homoioteta: vid. parallel instances, de Syn. 26 (5) note 1, which add, homoios kata panta, Orat. i. 40. kata panta kai en pasi, Ep. Æg. 17, c. tou patros homoios, Orat. ii. 17. Orat. iii. 20, a. not homoios, as the Church preaches, but hos autoi thelousi' (vid. p. 289, note 4), also de Syn. 53, note 9.
[2342] As Sonship is implied in Image' (supr. §2, note 2), so it is implied in Word' and Wisdom.' Orat. iv. 15. Orat. iii. 29 init. de Decr. 17. And still more pointedly, Orat. iv. 24 fin. vid. also supr. i. 28, note 5. And so Image is implied in Sonship: being Son of God He must be like Him,' supr. 17. And so Image' is implied in Word;' en te idi& 139; eikoni, hetis estin ho logos autou, infr. 82, d. also 34, c. On the contrary, the very root of heretical error was the denial that these titles implied each other, vid. supr. 27, de Decr. 17, 24, notes.
[2343] Vid. Ex. xxxiii. 20.
[2344] Matt. xi. 27.
[2345] John vi. 46, not to the letter.
[2346] Vid. supr. 1. and Exc. B.
[2347] Greek text dislocated.
[2348] Ps. ii. 7; Matt. iii. 17.
[2349] De Decr. 10.
[2350] Vid. Orat. iii. 12.
[2351] Acts x. 26.
[2352] Rev. xxii. 9.
[2353] [A note, to the effect that worship' is an ambiguous term, is omitted here.]
[2354] Vid. Judg. xiii. 16.
[2355] Heb. i. 6.
[2356] Is. xlv. 14.
[2357] John xiii. 13; xx. 28.
[2358] diar& 191;egnuosin heautous; also ad Adelph. 8. and vid. supr. note on de Decr. 17. vid. also diar& 191;egnuontai, de Syn. 54, kai diar& 191;agoien, Marcell. ap. Euseb. Eccl. Theol. p. 116. also p. 40 trizosi tous odontos, de Fug. 26. init. trizetosan, ad Adelph. 8. Hist. Ar. 68. fin. and literally 72. a. koptousin heautous. In illud Omnia 5.
[2359] John xvi. 15. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVII.--Introduction to Proverbs viii. 22 continued. Absurdity of supposing a Son or Word created in order to the creation of other creatures; as to the creation being unable to bear God's immediate hand, God condescends to the lowest. Moreover, if the Son a creature, He too could not bear God's hand, and an infinite series of media will be necessary. Objected, that, as Moses who led out the Israelites was a man, so our Lord; but Moses was not the Agent in creation:--again, that unity is found in created ministrations, but all such ministrations are defective and dependent:--again, that He learned to create, yet could God's Wisdom need teaching? and why should He learn, if the Father worketh hitherto? If the Son was created to create us, He is for our sake, not we for His.
24 (continued). And here it were well to ask them also this question [2360] , for a still clearer refutation of their heresy;--Wherefore, when all things are creatures, and all are brought into consistence from nothing, and the Son Himself, according to you, is creature and work, and once was not, wherefore has He made all things through Him' alone, and without Him was made not one thing [2361] ?' or why is it, when all things' are spoken of, that no one thinks the Son is signified in the number, but only things originate; whereas when Scripture speaks of the Word, it does not understand Him as being in the number of all,' but places Him with the Father, as Him in whom Providence and salvation for all' are wrought and effected by the Father, though all things surely might at the same command have come to be, at which He was brought into being by God alone? For God is not wearied by commanding [2362] , nor is His strength unequal to the making of all things, that He should alone create the only Son [2363] , and need His ministry and aid for the framing of the rest. For He lets nothing stand over, which He wills to be done; but He willed only [2364] , and all things subsisted, and no one hath resisted His will [2365] .' Why then were not all things brought into being by God alone at that same command, at which the Son came into being? Or let them tell us, why did all things through Him come to be, who was Himself but originate? How void of reason! however, they say concerning Him, that God willing to create originate nature, when He saw that it could not endure the untempered hand of the Father, and to be created by Him, makes and creates first and alone one only, and calls Him Son and Word, that, through Him as a medium, all things might thereupon be brought to be [2366] .' This they not only have said, but they have dared to put it into writing, namely, Eusebius, Arius, and Asterius who sacrificed [2367] .
25. Is not this a full proof of that irreligion, with which they have drugged themselves with much madness, till they blush not to be intoxicate against the truth? For if they shall assign the toil of making all things as the reason why God made the Son only, the whole creation will cry out against them as saying unworthy things of God; and Isaiah too who has said in Scripture, The Everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary: there is no searching of His understanding [2368] .' And if God made the Son alone, as not deigning to make the rest, but committed them to the Son as an assistant, this on the other hand is unworthy of God, for in Him there is no pride. Nay the Lord reproves the thought, when He says, Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing?' and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father which is in heaven.' And again, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air, for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them; are ye not much better than they? Which of you by taking thought, can add one cubit unto his stature? And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: and yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore if God so clothe the grass of the field which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall He not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith [2369] ?' If then it be not unworthy of God to exercise His Providence, even down to things so small, a hair of the head, and a sparrow, and the grass of the field, also it was not unworthy of Him to make them. For what things are the subjects of His Providence, of those He is Maker through His proper Word. Nay a worse absurdity lies before the men who thus speak; for they distinguish [2370] between the creatures and the framing; and consider the latter the work of the Father, the creatures the work of the Son; whereas either all things must be brought to be by the Father with the Son, or if all that is originate comes to be through the Son, we must not call Him one of the originated things.
26. Next, their folly may be exposed thus:--if even the Word be of originated nature, how, whereas this nature is too feeble to be God's own handywork, could He alone of all endure to be made by the unoriginate and unmitigated Essence of God, as ye say? for it follows either that, if He could endure it, all could endure it, or, it being endurable by none, it was not endurable by the Word, for you say that He is one of originate things. And again, if because originate nature could not endure to be God's own handywork, there arose need of a mediator [2371] , it must follow, that, the Word being originate and a creature, there is need of medium in His framing also, since He too is of that originate nature which endures not to be made of God, but needs a medium. But if some being as a medium be found for Him, then again a fresh mediator is needed for that second, and thus tracing back and following out, we shall invent a vast crowd of accumulating mediators; and thus it will be impossible that the creation should subsist, as ever wanting a mediator, and that medium not coming into being without another mediator; for all of them will be of that originate nature which endures not to be made of God alone, as ye say. How abundant is that folly, which obliges them to hold that what has already come into being, admits not of coming! Or perhaps they opine that they have not even come to be, as still seeking their mediator; for, on the ground of their so irreligious and futile notion [2372] , what is would not have subsistence, for want of the medium.
27. But again they allege this:--Behold, through Moses too did He lead the people from Egypt, and through him He gave the Law, yet he was a man; so that it is possible for like to be brought into being by like.' They should veil their face when they say this, to save their much shame. For Moses was not sent to frame the world, nor to call into being things which were not, or to fashion men like himself, but only to be the minister of words to the people, and to King Pharaoh. And this is a very different thing, for to minister is of things originate as of servants, but to frame and to create is of God alone, and of His proper Word and His Wisdom. Wherefore, in the matter of framing, we shall find none but God's Word; for all things are made in Wisdom,' and without the Word was made not one thing.' But as regards ministrations there are, not one only, but man out of their whole number, whomever the Lord will send. For there are many Archangels, many Thrones, and Authorities, and Dominions, thousands of thousands, and myriads of myriads, standing before Him [2373] , ministering and ready to be sent. And many Prophets, and twelve Apostles, and Paul. And Moses himself was not alone, but Aaron with him, and next other seventy were filled with the Holy Ghost. And Moses was succeeded by Joshua the son of Nun, and he by the Judges, and they not by one, but by a number of Kings. If then the Son were a creature and one of things originate, there must have been many such sons, that God might have many such ministers, just as there is a multitude of those others. But if this is not to be seen, but while the creatures are many, the Word is one, any one will collect from this, that the Son differs from all, and is not on a level with the creatures, but proper to the Father. Hence there are not many Words, but one only Word of the one Father, and one Image of the one God [2374] . But behold,' they say, there is one sun only [2375] , and one earth.' Let them maintain, senseless as they are, that there is one water and one fire, and then they may be told that everything that is brought to be, is one in its own essence; but for the ministry and service committed to it, by itself it is not adequate nor sufficient alone. For God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of heaven, to give light upon the earth and to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years.' And then he says, And God made two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: He made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven, to give light upon the earth, and to rule over the day and over the night [2376] .'
28. Behold there are many lights, and not the sun only, nor the moon only, but each is one in essence, and yet the service of all is one and common; and what each lacks, is supplied by the other, and the office of lighting is performed by all [2377] . Thus the sun has authority to shine throughout the day and no more; and the moon through the night; and the stars together with them accomplish the seasons and years, and become for signs, each according to the need that calls for it. Thus too the earth is not for all things, but for the fruits only, and to be a ground to tread on for the living things that inhabit it. And the firmament is to divide between waters and waters, and to be a place to set the stars in. So also fire and water, with other things, have been brought into being to be the constituent parts of bodies; and in short no one thing is alone, but all things that are made, as if members of each other, make up as it were one body, namely, the world. If then they thus conceive of the Son, let all men throw stones [2378] at them, considering the Word to be a part of this universe, and a part insufficient without the rest for the service committed to Him. But if this be manifestly irreligious, let them acknowledge that the Word is not in the number of things originate, but the sole and proper Word of the Father, and their Framer. But,' say they, though He is a creature and of things originate; yet as from a master and artificer has He [2379] learned to frame, and thus ministered [2380] to God who taught Him.' For thus the Sophist Asterius, on the strength of having learned to deny the Lord, has dared to write, not observing the absurdity which follows. For if framing be a thing to be taught, let them beware lest they say that God Himself be a Framer not by nature but by science, so as to admit of His losing the power. Besides, if the Wisdom of God attained to frame by teaching, how is He still Wisdom, when He needs to learn? and what was He before He learned? For it was not Wisdom, if it needed teaching; it was surely but some empty thing, and not essential Wisdom [2381] , but from advancement it had the name of Wisdom, and will be only so long Wisdom as it can keep what it has learned. For what has accrued not by any nature, but from learning, admits of being one time unlearned. But to speak thus of the Word of God, is not the part of Christians but of Greeks.
29. For if the power of framing accrues to anyone from teaching, these insensate men are ascribing jealousy and weakness [2382] to God;--jealousy, in that He has not taught many how to frame, so that there may be around Him, as Archangels and Angels many, so framers many; and weakness, in that He could not make by Himself, but needed a fellow-worker, or under-worker; and that, though it has been already shewn that created nature admits of being made by God alone, since they consider the Son to be of such a nature and so made. But God is deficient in nothing: perish the thought! for He has said Himself, I am full [2383] .' Nor did the Word become Framer of all from teaching; but being the Image and Wisdom of the Father, He does the things of the Father. Nor hath He made the Son for the making of things created; for behold, though the Son exists, still [2384] the Father is seen to work, as the Lord Himself says, My Father worketh hitherto and I work [2385] .' If however, as you say, the Son came into being for the purpose of making the things after Him, and yet the Father is seen to work even after the Son, you must hold even in this light the making of such a Son to be superfluous. Besides, why, when He would create us, does He seek for a mediator at all, as if His will did not suffice to constitute whatever seemed good to Him? Yet the Scriptures say, He hath done whatsoever pleased Him [2386] ,' and Who hath resisted His will [2387] ?' And if His mere will [2388] is sufficient for the framing of all things, you make the office of a mediator superfluous; for your instance of Moses, and the sun and the moon has been shewn not to hold. And here again is an argument to silence you. You say that God, willing the creation of originated nature, and deliberating concerning it, designs and creates the Son, that through Him He may frame us; now, if so, consider how great an irreligion [2389] you have dared to utter.
30. First, the Son appears rather to have been for us brought to be, than we for Him; for we were not created for Him, but He is made for us [2390] ; so that He owes thanks to us, not we to Him, as the woman to the man. For the man,' says Scripture, was not created for the woman, but the woman for the man.' Therefore, as the man is the image and glory of God, and the woman the glory of the man [2391] ,' so we are made God's image and to His glory; but the Son is our image, and exists for our glory. And we were brought into being that we might be; but God's Word was made, as you must hold, not that He might be [2392] ; but as an instrument [2393] for our need, so that not we from Him, but He is constituted from our need. Are not men who even conceive such thoughts, more than insensate? For if for us the Word was made, He has not precedence [2394] of us with God; for He did not take counsel about us having Him within Him, but having us in Himself, counselled, as they say, concerning His own Word. But if so, perchance the Father had not even a will for the Son at all; for not as having a will for Him, did He create Him, but with a will for us, He formed Him for our sake; for He designed Him after designing us; so that, according to these irreligious men, henceforth the Son, who was made as an instrument, is superfluous, now that they are made for whom He was created. But if the Son alone was made by God alone, because He could endure it, but we, because we could not, were made by the Word, why does He not first take counsel about the Word, who could endure His making, instead of taking counsel about us? or why does He not make more of Him who was strong, than of us who were weak? or why making Him first, does He not counsel about Him first? or why counselling about us first, does He not make us first, His will being sufficient for the constitution of all things? But He creates Him first, yet counsels first about us; and He wills us before the Mediator; and when He wills to create us, and counsels about us, He calls us creatures; but Him, whom He frames for us, He calls Son and proper Heir. But we, for whose sake He made Him, ought rather to be called sons; or certainly He, who is His Son, is rather the object of His previous thoughts and of His will, for whom He makes all us. Such the sickness, such the vomit [2395] of the heretics. __________________________________________________________________
[2360] These sections 24-26 are very similar to de Decr. 7, 8, yet not in wording or order, as is the case with other passages.
[2361] John i. 3.
[2362] De Decr. 7.
[2363] monos monon, also infr. 30. this phrase is synonymous with not as one of the creatures,' vid. monos hupo monou, supr. p. 12. also p. 75. note 6. vid. monos, de Syn. 26, fin. note 2, though that term is somewhat otherwise explained by S. Greg. Naz. monos ouch hos ta somata, Orat. 25, 16. Eunomius understood by monogenes, not monos gennetheis but para monou. It should be observed, however, that this is a sense in which some of the Greek Fathers understand the term, thus contrasting generation with procession. vid. Petav. Trin. vii. 11. §3.
[2364] §§29, 31.
[2365] Rom. ix. 19.
[2366] Vid. de Decr. §8. supr. p. 2. also Cyril. Thesaur. pp. 150, 241. de Trin. p. 523. Basil contr. Eunom. ii. 21. vid. also infr. 29. Orat. iv. 11, 12.
[2367] De Decr. 8.
[2368] Is. xl. 28.
[2369] Matt. x. 29; vi. 25-30
[2370] diairousin, as supr. de Decr. 7.
[2371] Vid. ib. 8. vid. also a similar argument in Epiphanius Hær. 76. p. 951. but the arguments of Ath. in these Orations are so generally adopted by the succeeding Fathers, that it is impossible and needless to enumerate the instances of agreement.
[2372] And so de Decr. 8.
[2373] i. 62. and Ambros. de Fid. iii. 106.
[2374] §36, note 4.
[2375] Vid. Euseb. Demon. iv. 5 fin.
[2376] Gen. i. 14-18
[2377] §48.
[2378] §4, note 2.
[2379] Cyril. in Joan. p. 47, c.
[2380] §22, note 1.
[2381] ousiodes sophia. vid. Orat. iv. 1.
[2382] i. 27.
[2383] Is. i. 11.
[2384] vid. p. 315, note 6. Serap. ii. 2. fin.
[2385] John v. 17.
[2386] Ps. cxv. 3.
[2387] Rom. ix. 19.
[2388] §24, note 5.
[2389] Notes on §58, and de Decr. 1.
[2390] Vid. Orat. iv. 11.
[2391] 1 Cor. xi. 7, 9.
[2392] Cf. infr. ch. 20.
[2393] organon, supr. i. 26, n. 5.
[2394] protos hemon, §63, note.
[2395] emetoi kai nautiai` nautiai sea-sickness; Epictetus, in a somewhat similar sense, There is great danger of pouring forth straightway, what one has not digested.' Enchirid. 46. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVIII.--Introduction to Proverbs viii. 22 continued. Contrast between the Father's operations immediately and naturally in the Son, instrumentally by the creatures; Scripture terms illustrative of this. Explanation of these illustrations; which should be interpreted by the doctrine of the Church; perverse sense put on them by the Arians, refuted. Mystery of Divine Generation. Contrast between God's Word and man's word drawn out at length. Asterius betrayed into holding two Unoriginates; his inconsistency. Baptism how by the Son as well as by the Father. On the Baptism of heretics. Why Arian worse than other heresies.
31. But the sentiment of Truth [2396] in this matter must not be hidden, but must have high utterance. For the Word of God was not made for us, but rather we for Him, and in Him all things were created [2397] .' Nor for that we were weak, was He strong and made by the Father alone, that He might frame us by means of Him as an instrument; perish the thought! it is not so. For though it had seemed good to God not to make things originate, still had the Word been no less with God, and the Father in Him. At the same time, things originate could not without the Word be brought to be; hence they were made through Him,--and reasonably. For since the Word is the Son of God by nature proper to His essence, and is from Him, and in Him [2398] , as He said Himself, the creatures could not have come to be, except through Him. For as the light enlightens all things by its radiance, and without its radiance nothing would be illuminated, so also the Father, as by a hand [2399] , in the Word wrought all things, and without Him makes nothing. For instance, God said, as Moses relates, Let there be light,' and Let the waters be gathered together,' and let the dry land appear,' and Let Us make man [2400] ;' as also Holy David in the Psalm, He spake and they were made; He commanded and they were created [2401] .' And He spoke [2402] , not that, as in the case of men, some under-worker might hear, and learning the will of Him who spoke might go away and do it; for this is what is proper to creatures, but it is unseemly so to think or speak of the Word. For the Word of God is Framer and Maker, and He is the Father's Will [2403] . Hence it is that divine Scripture says not that one heard and answered, as to the manner or nature of the things which He wished made; but God only said, Let it become,' and he adds, And it became;' for what He thought good and counselled, that forthwith the Word began to do and to finish. For when God commands others, whether the Angels, or converses with Moses, or commands Abraham, then the hearer answers; and the one says, Whereby shall I know [2404] ?' and the other, Send some one else [2405] ;' and again, If they ask me, what is His Name, what shall I say to them [2406] ?' and the Angel said to Zacharias, Thus saith the Lord [2407] ;' and he asked the Lord, O Lord of hosts, how long wilt Thou not have mercy on Jerusalem?' and waits to hear good words and comfortable. For each of these has the Mediator [2408] Word, and the Wisdom of God which makes known the will of the Father. But when that Word Himself works and creates, then there is no questioning and answer, for the Father is in Him and the Word in the Father; but it suffices to will, and the work is done; so that the word He said' is a token of the will for our sake, and It was so,' denotes the work which is done through the Word and the Wisdom, in which Wisdom also is the Will of the Father. And God said' is explained in the Word,' for, he says, Thou hast made all things in Wisdom;' and By the Word of the Lord were the heavens made fast;' and There is one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by Him [2409] .'
32. It is plain from this that the Arians are not fighting with us about their heresy; but while they pretend us, their real fight is against the Godhead Itself. For if the voice were ours which says, This it My Son [2410] ,' small were our complaint of them; but if it is the Father's voice, and the disciples heard it, and the Son too says of Himself, Before all the mountains He begat me [2411] ,' are they not fighting against God, as the giants [2412] in story, having their tongue, as the Psalmist says, a sharp sword [2413] for irreligion? For they neither feared the voice of the Father, nor reverenced the Saviour's words, nor trusted the Saints, one of whom writes, Who being the Brightness of His glory and the Expression of His subsistence,' and Christ the power of God and the Wisdom of God [2414] ;' and another says in the Psalm, With Thee is the well of life, and in Thy Light shall we see light,' and Thou madest all things in Wisdom [2415] ;' and the Prophets say, And the Word of the Lord came to me [2416] ;' and John, In the beginning was the Word;' and Luke, As they delivered them unto us which from the beginning were eye-witnesses and ministers of the Word [2417] ;' and as David again says, He sent His Word and healed them [2418] .' All these passages proscribe in every light the Arian heresy, and signify the eternity of the Word, and that He is not foreign but proper to the Father's Essence. For when saw any one light without radiance? or who dares to say that the expression can be different from the subsistence? or has not a man himself lost his mind [2419] who even entertains the thought that God was ever without Reason and without Wisdom? For such illustrations and such images has Scripture proposed, that, considering the inability of human nature to comprehend God, we might be able to form ideas even from these however poorly and dimly, and as far as is attainable [2420] . And as the creation contains abundant matter for the knowledge of the being of a God and a Providence (for by the greatness and beauty of the creatures proportionably the Maker of them is seen [2421] '), and we learn from them without asking for voices, but hearing the Scriptures we believe, and surveying the very order and the harmony of all things, we acknowledge that He is Maker and Lord and God of all, and apprehend His marvellous Providence and governance over all things; so in like manner about the Son's Godhead, what has been above said is sufficient, and it becomes superfluous, or rather it is very mad to dispute about it, or to ask in an heretical way, How can the Son be from eternity? or how can He be from the Father's Essence, yet not a part? since what is said to be of another, is a part of him; and what is divided, is not whole.
33. These are the evil sophistries of the heterodox; yet, though we have already shewn their shallowness, the exact sense of these passages themselves and the force of these illustrations will serve to shew the baseless nature of their loathsome tenet. For we see that reason is ever, and is from him and proper to his essence, whose reason it is, and does not admit a before and an after. So again we see that the radiance from the sun is proper to it, and the sun's essence is not divided or impaired; but its essence is whole and its radiance perfect and whole [2422] , yet without impairing the essence of light, but as a true offspring from it. We understand in like manner that the Son is begotten not from without but from the Father, and while the Father remains whole, the Expression of His Subsistence is ever, and preserves the Father's likeness and unvarying Image, so that he who sees Him, sees in Him the Subsistence too, of which He is the Expression. And from the operation of the Expression we understand the true Godhead of the Subsistence, as the Saviour Himself teaches when He says, The Father who dwelleth in Me, He doeth the works [2423] ' which I do; and I and the Father are one,' and I in the Father and the Father in Me [2424] .' Therefore let this Christ--opposing heresy attempt first to divide [2425] the examples found in things originate, and say, Once the sun was without his radiance,' or, Radiance is not proper to the essence of light,' or It is indeed proper, but it is a part of light by division; and then let it divide Reason, and pronounce that it is foreign to mind, or that once it was not, or that it was not proper to its essence, or that it is by division a part of mind.' And so of His Expression and the Light and the Power, let it do violence to these as in the case of Reason and Radiance; and instead let it imagine what it will [2426] . But if such extravagance be impossible for them, are they not greatly beside themselves, presumptuously intruding into what is higher than things originate and their own nature, and essaying impossibilities [2427] ?
34. For if in the case of these originate and irrational things offsprings are found which are not parts of the essences from which they are, nor subsist with passion, nor impair the essences of their originals, are they not mad again in seeking and conjecturing parts and passions in the instance of the immaterial and true God, and ascribing divisions to Him who is beyond passion and change, thereby to perplex the ears of the simple [2428] and to pervert them from the Truth? for who hears of a son but conceives of that which is proper to the father's essence? who heard, in his first catechising [2429] , that God has a Son and has made all things by His proper Word, but understood it in that sense in which we now mean it? who on the rise of this odious heresy of the Arians, was not at once startled at what he heard, as strange [2430] , and a second sowing, besides that Word which had been sown from the beginning? For what is sown in every soul from the beginning is that God has a Son, the Word, the Wisdom, the Power, that is, His Image and Radiance; from which it at once follows that He is always; that He is from the Father; that He is like; that He is the eternal offspring of His essence; and there is no idea involved in these of creature or work. But when the man who is an enemy, while men slept, made a second sowing [2431] , of He is a creature,' and There was once when He was not,' and How can it be?' thenceforth the wicked heresy of Christ's enemies rose as tares, and forthwith, as bereft of every right thought, they meddle [2432] like robbers, and venture to say, How can the Son always exist with the Father?' for men come of men and are sons, after a time; and the father is thirty years old, when the son begins to be, being begotten; and in short of every son of man, it is true that he was not before his generation. And again they whisper, How can the Son be Word, or the Word be God's Image? for the word of men is composed of syllables [2433] , and only signifies the speaker's will, and then is over [2434] and is lost.'
35. They then afresh, as if forgetting the proofs which have been already urged against them, pierce themselves through [2435] ' with these bonds of irreligion, and thus argue. But the word of truth [2436] confutes them as follows:--if they were disputing concerning any man, then let them exercise reason in this human way, both concerning His Word and His Son; but if of God who created man, no longer let them entertain human thoughts, but others which are above human nature. For such as he that begets, such of necessity is the offspring; and such as is the Word's Father, such must be also His Word. Now man, begotten in time, in time [2437] also himself begets the child; and whereas from nothing he came to be, therefore his word [2438] also is over and continues not. But God is not as man, as Scripture has said; but is existing and is ever; therefore also His Word is existing [2439] and is everlastingly with the Father, as radiance of light. And man's word is composed of syllables, and neither lives nor operates anything, but is only significant of the speaker's intention, and does but go forth and go by, no more to appear, since it was not at all before it was spoken; wherefore the word of man neither lives nor operates anything, nor in short is man. And this happens to it, as I said before, because man who begets it, has his nature out of nothing. But God's Word is not merely pronounced, as one may say, nor a sound of accents, nor by His Son is meant His command [2440] ; but as radiance of light, so is He perfect offspring from perfect [2441] . Hence He is God also, as being God's Image; for the Word was God [2442] ' says Scripture. And man's words avail not for operation; hence man works not by means of words but of hands, for they have being, and man's word subsists not. But the Word of God,' as the Apostle says, is living and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in His sight; but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of Him with whom we have to do. [2443] ' He is then Framer of all, and without Him was made not one thing [2444] ,' nor can anything be made without Him.
36. Nor must we ask why the Word of God is not such as our word, considering God is not such as we, as has been before said; nor again is it right to seek how the word is from God, or how He is God's radiance, or how God begets, and what is the manner of His begetting [2445] . For a man must be beside himself to venture on such points; since a thing ineffable and proper to God's nature, and known to Him alone and to the Son, this he demands to be explained in words. It is all one as if they sought where God is, and how God is, and of what nature the Father is. But as to ask such questions is irreligious, and argues an ignorance of God, so it is not holy to venture such questions concerning the generation of the Son of God, nor to measure God and His Wisdom by our own nature and infirmity. Nor is a person at liberty on that account to swerve in his thoughts from the truth, nor, if any one is perplexed in such inquiries, ought he to disbelieve what is written. For it is better in perplexity to be silent and believe, than to disbelieve on account of the perplexity: for he who is perplexed may in some way obtain mercy [2446] , because, though he has questioned, he has yet kept quiet; but when a man is led by his perplexity into forming for himself doctrines which beseem not, and utters what is unworthy of God, such daring recurs a sentence without mercy. For in such perplexities divine Scripture is able to afford him some relief, so as to take rightly what is written, and to dwell upon our word as an illustration; that as it is proper to us and is from us, and not a work external to us, so also God's Word is proper to Him and from Him, and is not a work; and yet is not like the word of man, or else we must suppose God to be man. For observe, many and various are men's words which pass away day by day; because those that come before others continue not, but vanish. Now this happens because their authors are men, and have seasons which pass away, and ideas which are successive; and what strikes them first and second, that they utter; so that they have many words, and yet after them all nothing at all remaining; for the speaker ceases, and his word forthwith is spent. But God's Word is one and the same, and, as it is written, The Word of God endureth for ever [2447] ,' not changed, not before or after other, but existing the same always. For it was fitting, whereas God is One, that His Image should be One also, and His Word One and One His Wisdom [2448] .
37. Wherefore I am in wonder how, whereas God is One, these men introduce, after their private notions, many images and wisdoms and words [2449] , and say that the Father's proper and natural Word is other than the Son, by whom He even made the Son [2450] and that He who is really Son is but notionally [2451] called Word, as vine, and way, and door, and tree of life; and that He is called Wisdom also in name, the proper and true Wisdom of the Father, which coexist ingenerately [2452] with Him, being other than the Son, by which He even made the Son, and named Him Wisdom as partaking of it. This they have not confined to words, but Arius composed in his Thalia, and the Sophist Asterius wrote, what we have stated above, as follows: Blessed Paul said not that he preached Christ, the Power of God or the Wisdom of God,' but without the addition of the article, God's power' and God's wisdom [2453] ,' thus preaching that the proper Power of God Himself which is natural to Him, and co-existent in Him ingenerately, is something besides, generative indeed of Christ, and creative of the whole world, concerning which he teaches in his Epistle to the Romans thus,--The invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal Power and Godhead [2454] .' For as no one would say that the Godhead there mentioned was Christ, but the Father Himself, so, as I think, His eternal Power and Godhead also is not the Only Begotten Son, but the Father who begat Him [2455] .' And he teaches that there is another power and wisdom of God, manifested through Christ. And shortly after the same Asterius says, However His eternal power and wisdom, which truth argues to be without beginning and ingenerate, the same must surely be one. For there are many wisdoms which are one by one created by Him, of whom Christ is the first-born and only-begotten; all however equally depend on their Possessor. And all the powers are rightly called His who created and uses them:--as the Prophet says that the locust, which came to be a divine punishment of human sins, was called by God Himself not only a power, but a great power; and blessed David in most of the Psalms invites, not the Angels alone, but the Powers to praise God.'
38. Now are they not worthy of all hatred for merely uttering this? for if, as they hold, He is Son, not because He is begotten of the Father and proper to His Essence, but that He is called Word only because of things rational [2456] , and Wisdom because of things gifted with wisdom, and Power because of things gifted with power, surely He must be named a Son because of those who are made sons: and perhaps because there are things existing, He has even His existence [2457] , in our notions only [2458] . And then after all what is He? for He is none of these Himself, if they are but His names [2459] : and He has but a semblance of being, and is decorated with these names from us. Rather this is some recklessness of the devil, or worse, if they are not unwilling that they should truly subsist themselves, but think that God's Word is but in name. Is not this portentous, to say that Wisdom coexists with the Father, yet not to say that this is the Christ, but that there are many created powers and wisdoms, of which one is the Lord whom they go on to compare to the caterpillar and locust? and are they not profligate, who, when they hear us say that the Word coexists with the Father, forthwith murmur out, Are you not speaking of two Unoriginates?' yet in speaking themselves of His Unoriginate Wisdom,' do not see that they have already incurred themselves the charge which they so rashly urge against us [2460] ? Moreover, what folly is there in that thought of theirs, that the Unoriginate Wisdom coexisting with God is God Himself! for what coexists does not coexist with itself, but with some one else, as the Evangelists say of the Lord, that He was together with His disciples; for He was not together with Himself, but with His disciples;--unless indeed they would say that God is of a compound nature, having wisdom a constituent or complement of His Essence, unoriginate as well as Himself [2461] , which moreover they pretend to be the framer of the world, that so they may deprive the Son of the framing of it. For there is nothing they would not maintain, sooner than hold the truth concerning the Lord.
39. For where at all have they found in divine Scripture, or from whom have they heard, that there is another Word and another Wisdom besides this Son, that they should frame to themselves such a doctrine? True, indeed, it is written, Are not My words like fire, and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces [2462] ?' and in the Proverbs, I will make known My words unto you [2463] ;' but these are precepts and commands, which God has spoken to the saints through His proper and only true Word, concerning which the Psalmist said, I have refrained my feet from every evil way, that I may keep Thy words [2464] .' Such words accordingly the Saviour signifies to be distinct from Himself, when He says in His own person, The words which I have spoken unto you [2465] .' For certainly such words are not offsprings or sons, nor are there so many words that frame the world, nor so many images of the One God, nor so many who have become men for us, nor as if from many such there were one who has become flesh, as John says; but as being the only Word of God was He preached by John, The Word was made flesh,' and all things were made by Him [2466] .' Wherefore of Him alone, our Lord Jesus Christ, and of His oneness with the Father, are written and set forth the testimonies, both of the Father signifying that the Son is One, and of the saints, aware of this and saying that the Word is One, and that He is Only-Begotten. And His works also are set forth; for all things, visible and invisible, have been brought to be through Him, and without Him was made not one thing [2467] .' But concerning another or any one else they have not a thought, nor frame to themselves words or wisdoms, of which neither name nor deed are signified by Scripture, but are named by these only. For it is their invention and Christ-opposing surmise, and they make the most [2468] of the name of the Word and the Wisdom; and framing to themselves others, they deny the true Word of God, and the real and only Wisdom of the Father, and thereby, miserable men, rival the Manichees. For they too, when they behold the works of God, deny Him the only and true God, and frame to themselves another, whom they can shew neither by work, nor in any testimony drawn from the divine oracles.
40. Therefore, if neither in the divine oracles is found another wisdom besides this Son, nor from the fathers [2469] have we heard of any such, yet they have confessed and written of the Wisdom coexisting with the Father unoriginately, proper to Him, and the Framer of the world, this must be the Son who even according to them is eternally coexistent with the Father. For He is Framer of all, as it is written, In Wisdom hast Thou made them all [2470] .' Nay, Asterius himself, as if forgetting what he wrote before, afterwards, in Caiaphas's [2471] fashion, involuntarily, when urging the Greeks, instead of naming many wisdoms, or the caterpillar, confesses but one, in these words;--God the Word is one, but many are the things rational; and one is the essence and nature of Wisdom, but many are the things wise and beautiful.' And soon afterwards he says again:--Who are they whom they honour with the title of God's children? for they will not say that they too are words, nor maintain that there are many wisdoms. For it is not possible, whereas the Word is one, and Wisdom has been set forth as one, to dispense to the multitude of children the Essence of the Word, and to bestow on them the appellation of Wisdom.' It is not then at all wonderful, that the Arians should battle with the truth, when they have collisions with their own principles and conflict with each other, at one time saying that there are many wisdoms, at another maintaining one; at one time classing wisdom with the caterpillar, at another saying that it coexists with the Father and is proper to Him; now that the Father alone is unoriginate, and then again that His Wisdom and His Power are unoriginate also. And they battle with us for saying that the Word of God is ever, yet forget their own doctrines, and say themselves that Wisdom coexists with God unoriginately [2472] . So dizzied [2473] are they in all these matters, denying the true Wisdom, and inventing one which is not, as the Manichees who make to themselves another God, after denying Him that is.
41. But let the other heresies and the Manichees also know that the Father of the Christ is One, and is Lord and Maker of the creation through His proper Word. And let the Ario-maniacs know in particular, that the Word of God is One, being the only Son proper and genuine from His Essence, and having with His Father the oneness of Godhead indivisible, as we said many times, being taught it by the Saviour Himself. Since, were it not so, wherefore through Him does the Father create, and in Him reveal Himself to whom He will, and illuminate them? or why too in the baptismal consecration is the Son named together with the Father? For if they say that the Father is not all-sufficient, then their answer is irreligious [2474] , but if He be, for this it is right to say, what is the need of the Son for framing the worlds, or for the holy laver? For what fellowship is there between creature and Creator? or why is a thing made classed with the Maker in the consecration of all of us? or why, as you hold, is faith in one Creator and in one creature delivered to us? for if it was that we might be joined to the Godhead, what need of the creature? but if that we might be united to the Son a creature, superfluous, according to you, is this naming of the Son in Baptism, for God who made Him a Son is able to make us sons also. Besides, if the Son be a creature, the nature of rational creatures being one, no help will come to creatures from a creature [2475] , since all [2476] need grace from God. We said a few words just now on the fitness that all things should be made by Him; but since the course of the discussion has led us also to mention holy Baptism, it is necessary to state, as I think and believe, that the Son is named with the Father, not as if the Father were not all-sufficient, not without meaning, and by accident; but, since He is God's Word and own Wisdom, and being His Radiance, is ever with the Father, therefore it is impossible, if the Father bestows grace, that He should not give it in the Son, for the Son is in the Father as the radiance in the light. For, not as if in need, but as a Father in His own Wisdom hath God founded the earth, and made all things in the Word which is from Him, and in the Son confirms the Holy Laver. For where the Father is, there is the Son, and where the light, there the radiance; and as what the Father worketh, He worketh through the Son [2477] , and the Lord Himself says, What I see the Father do, that do I also;' so also when baptism is given, whom the Father baptizes, him the Son baptizes; and whom the Son baptizes, he is consecrated in the Holy Ghost [2478] . And again as when the sun shines, one might say that the radiance illuminates, for the light is one and indivisible, nor can be detached, so where the Father is or is named, there plainly is the Son also; and is the Father named in Baptism? then must the Son be named with Him [2479] .
42. Therefore, when He made His promise to the saints, He thus spoke; I and the Father will come, and make Our abode in him;' and again, that, as I and Thou are One, so they may be one in Us.' And the grace given is one, given from the Father in the Son, as Paul writes in every Epistle, Grace unto you, and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ [2480] .' For the light must be with the ray, and the radiance must be contemplated together with its own light. Whence the Jews, as denying the Son as well as they, have not the Father either; for, as having left the Fountain of Wisdom [2481] ,' as Baruch reproaches them, they put from them the Wisdom springing from it, our Lord Jesus Christ (for Christ,' says the Apostle, is God's power and God's wisdom [2482] ),' when they said, We have no king but Cæsar [2483] .' The Jews then have the penal award of their denial; for their city as well as their reasoning came to nought. And these too hazard the fulness of the mystery, I mean Baptism; for if the consecration is given to us into the Name of Father and Son, and they do not confess a true Father, because they deny what is from Him and like His Essence, and deny also the true Son, and name another of their own framing as created out of nothing, is not the rite administered by them altogether empty and unprofitable, making a show, but in reality being no help towards religion? For the Arians do not baptize into Father and Son, but into Creator and creature, and into Maker and work [2484] . And as a creature is other than the Son, so the Baptism, which is supposed to be given by them, is other than the truth, though they pretend to name the Name of the Father and the Son, because of the words of Scripture, For not he who simply says, O Lord,' gives Baptism; but he who with the Name has also the right faith [2485] . On this account therefore our Saviour also did not simply command to baptize, but first says, Teach;' then thus: Baptize into the Name of Father, and Son, and Holy Ghost;' that the right faith might follow upon learning, and together with faith might come the consecration of Baptism.
43. There are many other heresies too, which use the words only, but not in a right sense, as I have said, nor with sound faith [2486] , and in consequence the water which they administer is unprofitable, as deficient in piety, so that he who is sprinkled [2487] by them is rather polluted [2488] by irreligion than redeemed. So Gentiles also, though the name of God is on their lips, incur the charge of Atheism [2489] , because they know not the real and very God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. So Manichees and Phrygians [2490] , and the disciples of the Samosatene, though using the Names, nevertheless are heretics, and the Arians follow in the same course, though they read the words of Scripture, and use the Names, yet they too mock those who receive the rite from them, being more irreligious than the other heresies, and advancing beyond them, and making them seem innocent by their own recklessness of speech. For these other heresies lie against the truth in some certain respect, either erring concerning the Lord's Body, as if He did not take flesh of Mary, or as if He has not died at all, nor become man, but only appeared, and was not truly, and seemed to have a body when He had not, and seemed to have the shape of man, as visions in a dream; but the Arians are without disguise irreligious against the Father Himself. For hearing from the Scriptures that His Godhead is represented in the Son as in an image, they blaspheme, saying, that it is a creature, and everywhere concerning that Image, they carry about [2491] with them the phrase, He was not,' as mud in a wallet [2492] , and spit it forth as serpents [2493] their venom. Then, whereas their doctrine is nauseous to all men, forthwith, as a support against its fall, they prop up the heresy with human [2494] patronage, that the simple, at the sight or even by the fear may overlook the mischief of their perversity. Right indeed is it to pity their dupes; well is it to weep over them, for that they sacrifice their own interest for that immediate phantasy which pleasures furnish, and forfeit their future hope. In thinking to be baptized into the name of one who exists not, they will receive nothing; and ranking themselves with a creature, from the creation they will have no help, and believing in one unlike [2495] and foreign to the Father in essence, to the Father they will not be joined, not having His own Son by nature, who is from Him, who is in the Father, and in whom the Father is, as He Himself has said; but being led astray by them, the wretched men henceforth remain destitute and stripped of the Godhead. For this phantasy of earthly goods will not follow them upon their death; nor when they see the Lord whom they have denied, sitting on His Father's throne, and judging quick and dead, will they be able to call to their help any one of those who have now deceived them; for they shall see them also at the judgment-seat, repenting for their deeds of sin and irreligion. __________________________________________________________________
[2396] §35, note 2.
[2397] Col. i. 16.
[2398] De Syn. 42, note 1.
[2399] hos dia cheiros. vid. supr. p. 155, note 6. And so in Orat. iv. 26, a. de Incarn. contr. Arian. 12. a. krataia cheir tou patros. Method. de Creat. ap. Phot. cod. 235. p. 937. Iren. Hær. iv. 20. n. 1. v. 1 fin. and. 5. n. 2. and 6. n. 1. Clement. Protrept. p. 93. (ed. Potter.) Tertull. contr. Hermog. 45. Cypr. Testim. ii. 4. Euseb. in Psalm cviii. 27. Clement. Recogn. viii. 43. Clement. Hom. xvi. 12. Cyril. Alex. frequently, e.g. in Joan. pp. 876, 7. Thesaur. p. 154. Pseudo-Basil. cheir demiourgike, contr. Eunom. v. p. 297. Job. ap. Phot. 222. p. 582. and August. in Joann. 48, 7. though he prefers another use of the word.
[2400] Gen. i. 3, 9, 26.
[2401] Ps. clxviii. 5.
[2402] Vid. de Decr. 9. contr. Gent. 46. Iren. Hær. iii. 8. n. 3. Origen contr. Cels. ii. 9. Tertull. adv. Prax. 12. fin. Patres Antioch. ap. Routh t. 2. p. 468. Prosper in Psalm. 148. (149.) Basil. de Sp. S. n. 20. Hilar. Trin. iv. 16. vid. supr. §22, note. Didym. de Sp. S. 36. August. de Trin. i. 26. On this mystery vid. Petav. Trin. vi. 4.
[2403] boule. And so boulesis presently; and zosa boule, supr. 2. and Orat. iii. 63. fin. and so Cyril Thes. p. 54, who uses it expressly (as it is always used by implication), in contrast to the kata boulesin of the Arians, though Athan. uses kata to boulema, e.g. Orat. iii. 31. where vid. note; autos tou patros thelema. Nyss. contr. Eunom. xii. p. 345. The principle to be observed in the use of such words is this; that we must ever speak of the Father's will, command, &c., and the Son's fulfilment, assent, &c., as one act. vid. notes on Orat. iii. 11 and 15. infr. [Cf. p. 87. note 2.]
[2404] Gen. xv. 8.
[2405] Ex. iv. 13.
[2406] Ib. iii. 13.
[2407] Zech. i. 3, 12.
[2408] §16, note 7.
[2409] Ps. civ. 24; xxxiii. 6; 1 Cor. viii. 6
[2410] Vid. Matt. xvii. 5.
[2411] Prov. viii. 25, LXX.
[2412] tous mutheuomenous gigantas, vid. supr. de Decr. fin. Also hos tous gigantas Orat.iii. 42. In Hist. Arian. 74. he calls Constantius a gigas. The same idea is implied in the word theomachos so frequently applied to Arianism, as in this sentence.
[2413] Ps. lvii. 4.
[2414] Heb. i. 3; 1 Cor. i. 24.
[2415] Ps. xxxvi. 9; civ. 24.
[2416] Jer. ii. 1.
[2417] John i. 1; Luke i. 2.
[2418] Ps. cvii. 20.
[2419] Vid. p. 150, n. 6, also Gent. 40 fin. where what is here, as commonly, applied to the Arians, is, before the rise of Arianism, applied to unbelievers.
[2420] Vid. de Decr. 12, 16, notes i. 26, n. 2, ii. 36, n. 1. de Syn. 41, n. 1. In illud Omnia 3 fin. vid. also 6. Aug. Confess. xiii. 11. And again, Trin. xv. 39. And S. Basil contr. Eunom. ii. 17.
[2421] Wisd. xiii. 5.
[2422] The Second Person in the Holy Trinity is not a quality of attribute or relation, but the One Eternal Substance; not a part of the First Person, but whole or entire God; nor does the generation impair the Father's Substance, which is, antecedently to it, whole and entire God. Thus there are two Persons, in Each Other ineffably, Each being wholly one and the same Divine Substance, yet not being merely separate aspects of the Same, Each being God as absolutely as if there were no other Divine Person but Himself. Such a statement indeed is not only a contradiction in the terms used, but in our ideas, yet not therefore a contradiction in fact; unless indeed any one will say that human words can express in one formula, or human thought embrace in one idea, the unknown and infinite God. Basil. contr. Eun. i. 10. vid. infr. §38, n. 3.
[2423] John xiv. 10.
[2424] John x. 30.
[2425] dielein, vid. §25, note 3.
[2426] Hist. Ar. 52, n. 4.
[2427] In illud. Omn. 6. init.
[2428] Cf. p. 69, notes 7 and 8.
[2429] De Decr. 7, n. 2; De Syn. 3, n. 2; Or. i. 8.
[2430] He here makes the test of the truth of explicit doctrinal statements to lie in their not shocking, or their answering to the religious sense of the Christian.
[2431] Vid. supr. de Decr. 2. n. 6. Tertullian de Carn. Christ. 17. S. Leo, as Athan. makes seed' in the parable apply peculiarly to faith in distinction to obedience. Serm. 69. 5 init.
[2432] periergazontai. This can scarcely be, as Newman suggests, an error of the press for perierchontai. The Latin translates circumire coeperunt.
[2433] Orat. iv. 1.
[2434] pepautai, Orat. iv. 2.
[2435] Vid. 1 Tim. vi. 10.
[2436] ho tes aletheias logos elenchei. This and the like are usual forms of speech with Athan. and others. In some instances the words aletheia, logos, &c., are almost synonymous with the Regula Fidei; vid. para ten aletheian, infr. 36. and Origen de Princ. Præf. 1. and 2.
[2437] Orat. i. 21.
[2438] For this contrast between the Divine Word and the human which is Its shadow, vid. also Orat. iv. 1. circ. fin. Iren. Hær. ii. 13. n. 8. Origen. in Joan. i. p. 25. e. Euseb. Demonstr. v. 5. p. 230. Cyril, Cat. xi. 10. Basil, Hom. xvi. 3. Nyssen contr. Eunom. xii. p. 350. Orat. Cat. i. p. 478. Damasc. F. O. i. 6. August. in Psalm xliv. 5.
[2439] Vid. Serap. i. 28, a.
[2440] §31, n. 7.
[2441] De Syn. 24, n. 9; infr. 36. note.
[2442] John i. 1.
[2443] Heb. iv. 12, 13.
[2444] John i. 3.
[2445] Eusebius has some forcible remarks on this subject. As, he says, we do not know how God can create out of nothing, so we are utterly ignorant of the Divine Generation. It is written, He who believes, not he who knows, has eternal life. The sun's radiance itself is but an earthly image, and gives us no true idea of that which is above all images. Eccl. Theol. i. 12. So has S. Greg. Naz. Orat. 29. 8. vid. also Hippol. in Noet. 16. Cyril, Cat. xi. 11. and 19. and Origen, according to Mosheim, Ante Const. p 619. And instances in Petav. de Trin. v. 6. §2. and 3.
[2446] Cf. August. Ep. 43. init. vid. also de Bapt. contr. Don. iv. 23.
[2447] Vid. Ps. cxix. 89
[2448] Vid. supr. 35. Orat. iv. 1. also presently, He is likeness and image of the sole and true God, being Himself also,' 49. monos en mono, Orat. iii. 21. holos holou eikon. Serap. i. 16, a. The Offspring of the Ingenerate,' says S. Hilary, is One from One, True from True, Living from Living, Perfect from Perfect, Power of Power, Wisdom of Wisdom, Glory of Glory.' de Trin. ii. 8. teleios teleion gegenneken, pneuma pneuma. Epiph. Hær. p. 495. As Light from Light, and Life from Life, and Good from Good; so from Eternal Eternal. Nyss. contr. Eunom. i. p. 164. App.
[2449] polloi logoi, vid. de Decr. 16, n. 4. infr. 39 init. and oud' ek pollon heis, Sent. D. 25. a. also Ep. Æg. 14. c. Origen in Joan. tom. ii. 3. Euseb. Demonstr. v. 5. p. 229 fin. contr. Marc. p. 4 fin. contr. Sabell. init. August. in Joan. Tract. i. 8. also vid. Philo's use of logoi for Angels as commented on by Burton, Bampt. Lect. p. 556. The heathens called Mercury by the name of logos. vid. Benedictine note f. in Justin, Ap. i. 21.
[2450] This was the point in which Arians and [Marcellus] agreed, vid infr. Orat. iv. init. also §§22, 40, and de Decr. 24, n. 9, also Sent D. 25. Ep. Æg. 14 fin. Epiph. Hær. 72. p. 835. b.
[2451] That is, they allowed Him to be really Son,' and argued that He was but notionally Word.' vid. §19, n. 3.
[2452] agennetos, vid. Euseb. Eccl. Theol. p. 106. d.
[2453] 1 Cor. i. 24.
[2454] Rom. i. 20.
[2455] Or. i. 11, n. 7.
[2456] logika, vid. Ep. Æg. 13 fin.
[2457] Of course this line of thought consistently followed, leads to a kind of Pantheism; for what is the Supreme Being, according to it, but an ideal standard of perfection, the sum total of all that we see excellent in the world in the highest degree, a creation of our minds, without real objective existence? The true view of our Lord's titles, on the other hand, is that He is That properly and in perfection, of which in measure and degree the creatures partake from and in Him. Vid. supr. de Decr. 17, n. 5.
[2458] kat' epinoian, in idea or notion. This is a phrase of very frequent occurrence, both in Athan. and other writers. We have found it already just above, and de Syn. 15. Or. i. 9, also Orat. iv. 2, 3. de Sent. D. 2, Ep. Æg 12, 13, 14. It denotes our idea or conception of a thing in contrast to the thing itself. Thus, the sun is to a savage a bright circle in the sky; a man is a rational animal,' according to a certain process of abstraction; a herb may be medicine upon one division, food in another; virtue may be called a mean; and faith is to one man an argumentative conclusion, to another a moral peculiarity, good or bad. In like manner, the Almighty is in reality most simple and uncompounded, without parts, passions, attributes, or properties; yet we speak of Him as good or holy, or as angry or pleased, denoting some particular aspect in which our infirmity views, in which also it can view, what is infinite and incomprehensible. That is, He is kat' epinoian holy or merciful, being in reality a Unity which is all mercifulness and also all holiness, not in the way of qualities but as one indivisible perfection; which is too great for us to conceive as It is.
[2459] §19.
[2460] The Anomoean in Max. Dial. i. a. urges against the Catholic that, if the Son exists in the Father, God is compound. Athan. here retorts that Asterius speaks of Wisdom as a really existing thing in the Divine Mind. Vid. next note.
[2461] On this subject vid. Orat. iv. n. 2. Nothing is more remarkable than the confident tone in which Athan. accuses Arians as here, and [Marcellus] in Orat. iv. 2. of considering the Divine Nature as compound, as if the Catholics were in no respect open to such a charge. Nor are they; though in avoiding it, they are led to enunciate the most profound and ineffable mystery. Vid. supr. §33, n. 1. The Father is the One Simple Entire Divine Being, and so is the Son; They do in no sense share divinity between Them; Each is holos Theos. This is not ditheism or tritheism, for they are the same God; nor is it Sabellianism, for They are eternally distinct and substantive Persons; but it is a depth and height beyond our intellect, how what is Two in so full a sense can also in so full a sense be One, or how the Divine Nature does not come under number. vid. notes on Orat. iii. 27 and 36. Thus, being uncompounded in nature,' says Athan. He is Father of One Only Son.' de Decr. 11. In truth the distinction into Persons, as Petavius remarks, avails especially towards the unity and simplicity of God.' vid. de Deo, ii. 4, 8.
[2462] Jer. xxiii. 29.
[2463] Prov. i. 23.
[2464] Ps. cxix. 101.
[2465] Joh. vi. 63.
[2466] John i. 14, 3.
[2467] Cf. Orat. i. 19, note 5.
[2468] katachrontai, vid. supr. p. 154, note 3.
[2469] Ib. note 2.
[2470] Ps. civ. 24.
[2471] Vid. John xi. 50
[2472] Asterius held, 1. that there was an Attribute called Wisdom; 2. that the Son was created by and called after that Attribute; or 1. that Wisdom was ingenerate and eternal, 2. that there were created wisdoms, words, powers many, of which the Son was one.
[2473] skotodiniosi, Orat. iii. 42. init.
[2474] He says that it is contrary to all our notions of religion that Almighty God cannot create, enlighten, address, and unite Himself to His creatures immediately. This seems to be implied in saying that the Son was created for creation, illumination, &c.; whereas in the Catholic view the Son is but that Divine Person who in the Economy of grace is creator, enlightener, &c. God is represented all-perfect but acting according to a certain divine order. This is explained just below. Here the remark is in point about the right and wrong sense of the words commanding,' obeying,' &c. supr. §31, note 7.
[2475] §16, note 7.
[2476] Supr. p. 162, note 3.
[2477] Vid. notes on Orat. iii. 1-15. e.g. and 11 and 15.
[2478] Orat. iii. 15. note.
[2479] Vid. supr. 33, note 1. and notes on iii. 3-6. When the Father is mentioned, His Word is with Him, and the Spirit who is in the Son. And if the Son be named, in the Son is the Father, and the Spirit is not external to the Word.' ad Serap. i. 14. and vid. Hil. Trin. vii. 31. Passages like these are distinct from such as the one quoted from Athan. supr. p. 76, note 3, where it is said that in Father' is implied Son,' i.e. argumentatively as a correlative. vid. Sent. D. 17. de Decr. 19, n. 6. The latter accordingly Eusebius does not scruple to admit in Sabell. i. ap. Sirm. t. i. p. 8, a. Pater statim, ut dictus fuit pater, requirit ista vox filium, &c.;' for here no perichoresis is implied, which is the doctrine of the text, and is not the doctrine of an Arian who considered the Son an instrument. Yet Petavius observes as to the very word perich. that one of its first senses in ecclesiastical writers was this which Arians would not disclaim; its use to express the Catholic doctrine here spoken of was later. vid. de Trin. iv. 16.
[2480] Vid. John xiv. 23, and John xvii. 21; Rom. i. 7, &c.
[2481] Bar. iii. 12.
[2482] 1 Cor. i. 24.
[2483] John xix. 15.
[2484] De Decr. 31; Or. i. 34.
[2485] The prima facie sense of this passage is certainly unfavourable to the validity of heretical baptism; vid. Coust. Pont. Rom. Ep. p. 227. Voss. de Bapt. Disp. 19 and 20. Forbes Instruct. Theol. x. 2, 3, and 12. Hooker's Eccl. Pol. v. 62. §5-11. On Arian Baptism in particular vid. Jablonski's Diss. Opusc. t. iv. p. 113. [And, in violent contrast to Athan., Siricius (bishop of Rome) letter to Himerius, a.d. 385. (Coust. 623.)]
[2486] ten p. hugiainousan. Dep. Ar. 5, note 6.
[2487] rhantizomenon, Bingh. Antiqu. xi. 11. §5.
[2488] Cf. Cyprian, Ep. 76 fin. (ed. Ben.) and Ep. 71 cir. init. Optatus ad Parmen. i. 12.
[2489] atheotetos. vid. supr. de Decr. 1, note 1, Or. i. 4, note 1. Atheist' or rather godless' was the title given by pagans to those who denied, and by the Fathers to those who professed, polytheism. Thus Julian says that Christians preferred atheism to godliness.' vid. Suicer Thes. in voc.
[2490] Montanists.
[2491] peripherousi, §34. n. 5.
[2492] Instead of provisions.
[2493] Cf. Ep. Æg. 19. Hist. Ar. 66. and so Arians are dogs (with allusion to 2 Pet. ii. 22.), de Decr. 4. Hist. Ar. 29. lions, Hist. Ar. 11. wolves, Ap. c. Arian. 49. hares, de Fug. 10. chameleons, de Decr. init. hydras, Orat. iii. 58 fin. eels, Ep. Æg. 7 fin. cuttlefish, Orat. iii. 59. gnats, de Decr. 14 init. Orat. iii. 59. init. beetles, Orat. iii. fin. leeches, Hist. Ar. 65 init. de Fug. 4. [swine, Or. ii. 1.] In many of these instances the allusion is to Scripture. On names given to heretics in general, vid. the Alphabetum bestialitatis hereticæ ex Patrum Symbolis, in the Calvinismus bestiarum religio attributed to Raynaudus and printed in the Apopompæus of his works. Vid. on the principle of such applications infr. Orat. iii. 18.
[2494] Orat. i. 9.
[2495] Orat. iii. 4. note. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIX.--Texts explained; Sixthly, Proverbs viii. 22. Proverbs are of a figurative nature, and must be interpreted as such. We must interpret them, and in particular this passage, by the Regula Fidei. He created me' not equivalent to I am a creature.' Wisdom a creature so far forth as Its human body. Again, if He is a creature, it is as a beginning of ways,' an office which, though not an attribute, is a consequence, of a higher and divine nature. And it is for the works,' which implied the works existed, and therefore much more He, before He was created. Also the Lord' not the Father created' Him, which implies the creation was that of a servant.
44. We have gone through thus much before the passage in the Proverbs, resisting the insensate fables which their hearts have invented, that they may know that the Son of God ought not to be called a creature, and may learn lightly to read what admits in truth of a right [2496] explanation. For it is written, The Lord created me a beginning of His ways, for His works [2497] ;' since, however, these are proverbs, and it is expressed in the way of proverbs, we must not expound them nakedly in their first sense, but we must inquire into the person, and thus religiously put the sense on it. For what is said in proverbs, is not said plainly, but is put forth latently [2498] , as the Lord Himself has taught us in the Gospel according to John, saying, These things have I spoken unto you in proverbs, but the time cometh when I shall no more speak unto you in proverbs, but openly [2499] .' Therefore it is necessary to unfold the sense [2500] of what is said, and to seek it as something hidden, and not nakedly to expound as if the meaning were spoken plainly,' lest by a false interpretation we wander from the truth. If then what is written be about Angel, or any other of things originate, as concerning one of us who are works, let it be said, created me;' but if it be the Wisdom of God, in whom all things originate have been framed, that speaks concerning Itself, what ought we to understand but that He created' means nothing contrary to He begat?' Nor, as forgetting that It is Creator and Framer, or ignorant of the difference between the Creator and the creatures, does It number Itself among the creatures; but It signifies a certain sense, as in proverbs, not plainly,' but latent; which It inspired the saints to use in prophecy, while soon after It doth Itself give the meaning of He created' in other but parallel expressions, saying, Wisdom made herself a house [2501] .' Now it is plain that our body is Wisdom's house [2502] , which It took on Itself to become man; hence consistently does John say, The Word was made flesh [2503] ;' and by Solomon Wisdom says of Itself with cautious exactness [2504] , not I am a creature,' but only The Lord created me a beginning of His ways for His works [2505] ,' yet not created me that I might have being,' nor because I have a creature's beginning and origin.'
45. For in this passage, not as signifying the Essence of His Godhead, nor His own everlasting and genuine generation from the Father, has the Word spoken by Solomon, but on the other hand His manhood and Economy towards us. And, as I said before, He has not said I am a creature,' or I became a creature,' but only He created [2506] .' For the creatures, having a created essence, are originate, and are said to be created, and of course the creature is created: but this mere term He created' does not necessarily signify the essence or the generation, but indicates something else as coming to pass in Him of whom it speaks, and not simply that He who is said to be created, is at once in His Nature and Essence a creature [2507] . And this difference divine Scripture recognises, saying concerning the creatures, The earth is full of Thy creation,' and the creation itself groaneth together and travaileth together [2508] ;' and in the Apocalypse it says, And the third part of the creatures in the sea died which had life;' as also Paul says, Every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be refused if it be received with thanksgiving [2509] ;' and in the book of Wisdom it is written, Having ordained man through Thy wisdom, that he should have dominion over the creatures which Thou hast made [2510] .' And these, being creatures, are also said to be created, as we may further hear from the Lord, who says, He who created them, made them male and female [2511] ;' and from Moses in the Song, who writes, Ask now of the days that are past, which were before thee since the day that God created man upon the earth, and from the one side of heaven unto the other [2512] .' And Paul in Colossians, Who is the Image of the Invisible God, the Firstborn of every creature, for in Him were all things created that are in heaven, and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers; all things were created through Him, and for Him, and He is before all [2513] .'
46. That to be called creatures, then, and to be created belongs to things which have by nature a created essence, these passages are sufficient to remind us, though Scripture is full of the like; on the other hand that the single word He created' does not simply denote the essence and mode of generation, David shews in the Psalm, This shall be written for another generation, and the people that is created shall praise the Lord [2514] ;' and again, Create in me a clean heart, O God [2515] ;' and Paul in Ephesians says, Having abolished the law of commandments contained in ordinances, for to create in Himself of two one new man [2516] ;' and again, Put ye on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness [2517] .' For neither David spoke of any people created in essence, nor prayed to have another heart than that he had, but meant renovation according to God and renewal; nor did Paul signify two persons created in essence in the Lord, nor again did he counsel us to put on any other man; but he called the life according to virtue the man after God,' and by the created' in Christ he meant the two people who are renewed in Him. Such too is the language of the book of Jeremiah; The Lord created a new salvation for a planting, in which salvation men shall walk to and fro [2518] ;' and in thus speaking, he does not mean any essence of a creature, but prophesies of the renewal of salvation among men, which has taken place in Christ for us. Such then being the difference between the creatures' and the single word He created,' if you find anywhere in divine Scripture the Lord called creature,' produce it and fight; but if it is nowhere written that He is a creature, only He Himself says about Himself in the Proverbs, The Lord created me,' shame upon you, both on the ground of the distinction aforesaid and for that the diction is like that of proverbs; and accordingly let He created' be understood, not of His being a creature, but of that human nature which became His, for to this belongs creation. Indeed is it not evidently unfair in you, when David and Paul say He created,' then indeed not to understand it of the essence and the generation, but the renewal; yet, when the Lord says He created' to number His essence with the creatures? and again when Scripture says, Wisdom built her an house, she set it upon seven pillars [2519] ,' to understand house' allegorically, but to take He created' as it stands, and to fasten on it the idea of creature? and neither His being Framer of all has had any weight with you, nor have you feared His being the sole and proper Offspring of the Father, but recklessly, as if you had enlisted against Him, do ye fight, and think less of Him than of men.
47. For the very passage proves that it is only an invention of your own to call the Lord creature. For the Lord, knowing His own Essence to be the Only-begotten Wisdom and Offspring of the Father, and other than things originate and natural creatures, says in love to man, The Lord created me a beginning of His ways,' as if to say, My Father hath prepared for Me a body, and has created Me for men in behalf of their salvation.' For, as when John says, The Word was made flesh [2520] ,' we do not conceive the whole Word Himself to be flesh [2521] , but to have put on flesh and become man, and on hearing, Christ hath become a curse for us,' and He hath made Him sin for us who knew no sin [2522] ,' we do not simply conceive this, that whole Christ has become curse and sin, but that He has taken on Him the curse which lay against us (as the Apostle has said, Has redeemed us from the curse,' and has carried,' as Isaiah has said, our sins,' and as Peter has written, has borne them in the body on the wood [2523] '); so, if it is said in the Proverbs He created,' we must not conceive that the whole Word is in nature a creature, but that He put on the created body [2524] and that God created Him for our sakes, preparing for Him the created body, as it is written, for us, that in Him we might be capable of being renewed and deified. What then deceived you, O senseless, to call the Creator a creature? or whence did you purchase for you this new thought, to parade it [2525] ? For the Proverbs say He created,' but they call not the Son creature, but Offspring; and, according to the distinction in Scripture aforesaid of He created' and creature,' they acknowledge, what is by nature proper to the Son, that He is the Only-begotten Wisdom and Framer of the creatures, and when they say He created,' they say it not in respect of His Essence, but signify that He was becoming a beginning of many ways; so that He created' is in contrast to Offspring,' and His being called the Beginning of ways [2526] ' to His being the Only-begotten Word.
48. For if He is Offspring, how call ye Him creature? for no one says that He begets what He creates, nor calls His proper offspring creatures; and again, if He is Only-begotten, how becomes He beginning of the ways?' for of necessity, if He was created a beginning of all things, He is no longer alone, as having those who came into being after Him. For Reuben, when he became a beginning of the children [2527] , was not only-begotten, but in time indeed first, but in nature and relationship one among those who came after him. Therefore if the Word also is a beginning of the ways,' He must be such as the ways are, and the ways must be such as the Word, though in point of time He be created first of them. For the beginning or initiative of a city is such as the other parts of the city are, and the members too being joined to it, make the city whole and one, as the many members of one body; nor does one part of it make, and another come to be, and is subject to the former, but all the city equally has its government and constitution from its maker. If then the Lord is in such sense created as a beginning' of all things, it would follow that He and all other things together make up the unity of the creation, and He neither differs from all others, though He become the beginning' of all, nor is He Lord of them, though older in point of time; but He has the same manner of framing and the same Lord as the rest. Nay, if He be a creature, as you hold, how can He be created sole and first at all, so as to be beginning of all? when it is plain from what has been said, that among the creatures not any is of a constant [2528] nature and of prior formation, but each has its origination with all the rest, however it may excel others in glory. For as to the separate stars or the great lights, not this appeared first, and that second, but in one day and by the same command, they were all called into being. And such was the original formation of the quadrupeds, and of birds, and fishes, and cattle, and plants; thus too has the race made after God's Image come to be, namely men; for though Adam only was formed out of earth, yet in him was involved the succession of the whole race.
49. And from the visible creation, we clearly discern that His invisible things also, being perceived by the things that are made [2529] ,' are not independent of each other; for it was not first one and then another, but all at once were constituted after their kind. For the Apostle did not number individually, so as to say whether Angel, or Throne, or Dominion, or Authority,' but he mentions together all according to their kind, whether Angels, or Archangels, or Principalities [2530] :' for in this way is the origination of the creatures. If then, as I have said, the Word were creature He must have been brought into being, not first of them, but with all the other Powers, though in glory He excel the rest ever so much. For so we find it to be in their case, that at once they came to be, with neither first nor second, and they differ from each other in glory, some on the right of the throne, some all around, and some on the left, but one and all praising and standing in service before the Lord [2531] . Therefore if the Word be creature He would not be first or beginning of the rest; yet if He be before all, as indeed He is, and is Himself alone First and Son, it does not follow that He is beginning of all things as to His Essence [2532] , for what is the beginning of all is in the number of all. And if He is not such a beginning, then neither is He a creature, but it is very plain that He differs in essence and nature from the creatures, and is other than they, and is Likeness and Image of the sole and true God, being Himself sole also. Hence He is not classed with creatures in Scripture, but David rebukes those who dare even to think of Him as such, saying, Who among the gods is like unto the Lord [2533] ?' and Who is like unto the Lord among the sons of God?' and Baruch, This is our God, and another shall not be reckoned with Him [2534] .' For the One creates, and the rest are created; and the One is the own Word and Wisdom of the Father's Essence, and through this Word things which came to be, which before existed not, were made.
50. Your famous assertion then, that the Son is a creature, is not true, but is your fantasy only; nay Solomon convicts you of having many times slandered him. For he has not called Him creature, but God's Offspring and Wisdom, saying, God in Wisdom established the earth,' and Wisdom built her an house [2535] .' And the very passage in question proves your irreligious spirit; for it is written, The Lord created me a beginning of His ways for His works.' Therefore if He is before all things, yet says He created me' (not that I might make the works,' but) for the works,' unless He created' relates to something later than Himself, He will seem later than the works, finding them on His creation already in existence before Him, for the sake of which He is also brought into being. And if so, how is He before all things notwithstanding? and how were all things made through Him and consist in Him? for behold, you say that the works consisted before Him, for which He is created and sent. But it is not so; perish the thought! false is the supposition of the heretics. For the Word of God is not creature but Creator; and says in the manner of proverbs, He created me' when He put on created flesh. And something besides may be understood from the passage itself; for, being Son and having God for His Father, for He is His proper Offspring, yet here He names the Father Lord; not that He was servant, but because He took the servant's form. For it became Him, on the one hand being the Word from the Father, to call God Father: for this is proper to son towards father; on the other, having come to finish the work, and taken a servant's form, to name the Father Lord. And this difference He Himself has taught by an apt distinction, saying in the Gospels, I thank Thee, O Father,' and then, Lord of heaven and earth [2536] .' For He calls God His Father, but of the creatures He names Him Lord; as shewing clearly from these words, that, when He put on the creature [2537] , then it was He called the Father Lord. For in the prayer of David the Holy Spirit marks the same distinction, saying in the Psalms, Give Thy strength unto Thy Child, and help the Son of Thine handmaid [2538] .' For the natural and true child of God is one, and the sons of the handmaid, that is, of the nature of things originate, are other. Wherefore the One, as Son, has the Father's might; but the rest are in need of salvation.
51. (But if, because He was called child, they idly talk, let them know that both Isaac was named Abraham's child, and the son of the Shunamite was called young child.) Reasonably then, we being servants, when He became as we, He too calls the Father Lord, as we do; and this He has so done from love to man, that we too, being servants by nature, and receiving the Spirit of the Son, might have confidence to call Him by grace Father, who is by nature our Lord. But as we, in calling the Lord Father, do not deny our servitude by nature (for we are His works, and it is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves [2539] '), so when the Son, on taking the servant's form, says, The Lord created me a beginning of His ways,' let them not deny the eternity of His Godhead, and that in the beginning was the Word,' and all things were made by Him,' and in Him all things were created [2540] .' __________________________________________________________________
[2496] kalos anaginoskein....orthen echon ten dianoian, i.e. the text admits of an interpretation consistent with the analogy of faith, and so met' eusebeias just below. vid. §1. n. 13. Such phrases are frequent in Athan.
[2497] Prov. viii. 22. Athanasius follows the Sept. rendering of the Hebrew Qanâ. by ektise. The Hebrew sense is appealed to by Eusebius, Eccles. Theol. iii. 2, 3. S. Epiphanius, Hær. 69. 25. and S. Jerome in Isai. 26. 13. Cf. Bas. c. Eun. ii. 20, and Greg. Nyss. c. Eun. 1. p. 34.
[2498] This passage of Athan. has been used by many later fathers.
[2499] John xvi. 25.
[2500] Here, as in so many other places, he is explaining what is obscure or latent in Scripture by means of the Regula Fidei. Cf. Vincentius, Commonit. 2. Vid. especially the first sentence of the following paragraph, ti dei noein k.t.l. vid. supr. note 1.
[2501] Prov. ix. 1.
[2502] Ut intra intemerata viscera ædificante sibi Sapientia domum, Verbum caro fieret. Leon. Ep. 31, 2. Didym. de Trin. iii. 3. p. 337. (ed. 1769.) August. Civ. D. xvii. 20. Cyril in Joann. p. 384, 5. Max. Dial. iii. p. 1029. (ap. Theodor. ed. Schutz.) vid. supr. Or. i. 11, note 8. Hence S. Clement. Alex. ho logos heauton genna. Strom. v. 3.
[2503] John i. 14.
[2504] §12, n. 4.
[2505] The passage is in like manner interpreted of our Lord's human nature by Epiph. Hær. 69, 20-25. Basil. Ep. viii. 8. Naz. Orat. 30, 2. Nyss. contr. Eunom. i. p. 34. et al. Cyril. Thesaur. p. 154. Hilar. de Trin. xii. 36-49. Ambros. de Fid. i. 15. August. de Fid. et Symb. 6.
[2506] He seems here to say that it is both true that The Lord created,' and yet that the Son was not created. Creatures alone are created, and He was not a creature. Rather something belonging or relating to Him, something short of His substance or nature, was created. However, it is a question in controversy whether even His Manhood can be called a creature, though many of the Fathers (including Athan. in several places) seem so to call it. On the whole it would appear, (1.) that if creature,' like Son,' be a personal term, He is not a creature; but if it be a word of nature, He is a creature; (2.) that our Lord is a creature in respect to the flesh (vid. infr. 47); (3.) that since the flesh is infinitely beneath His divinity, it is neither natural nor safe to call Him a creature (cf. Thom. Aq. Sum. Th. iii. xvi. 8, non dicimus, quod Æthiops est albus, sed quod est albus secundum dentes') and (4.) that, if the flesh is worshipped, still it is worshipped as in the Person of the Son, not by a separate act of worship. Cf. infr. Letter 60. ad Adelph. 3. Epiph. has imitated this passage, Ancor. 51. introducing the illustration of a king and his robe, &c.
[2507] to legomenon ktizesthai te phusei kai te ousi& 139; ktisma. also infr. 60. Without meaning that the respective terms are synonymous, is it not plain that in a later phraseology this would have been, not simply that He is in His Person a creature,' or that His Person is created?' Athan.'s use of the phrase ousia tou logou has already been noticed, supr. i. 45, and passages from this Oration are given in another connexion, supr. p. 70, note 15. The term is synonymous with the Divine Nature as existing in the Person of the Word. [Cf. Prolegg. ch. ii. §3 (2) b.] In the passage in the text the ousia of the Word is contrasted to the ousia of creatures; and it is observable that it is implied that our Lord has not taken on Him a created ousia. He said not, Athan. remarks, I became a creature, for the creatures have a created essence;' he adds that He created' signifies, not essence, but something taking place in Him peri ekeinon, i.e. some adjunct or accident (e.g. notes on de Decr. 22), or as he says supr. §8, envelopment or dress. And infr. §51, he contrasts the ousia and the anthropinon of the Word; as in Orat. i. 41. ousia and he anthropotes; and phusis and sarx, iii. 34. init. and logos and sarx, 38. init. And He speaks of the Son taking on Him the economy,' infr. 76, and of the hupostasis tou logou being one with ho anthropos, iv. 25, c. It is observed, §8, note, how this line of teaching might be wrested to the purposes of the Apollinarian and Eutychian heresies; and, considering Athan.'s most emphatic protests against their errors in his later works, as well as his strong statements in Orat. iii. there is no hazard in this admission. His ordinary use of anthropos for the manhood might quite as plausibly be perverted on the other hand into a defence of Nestorianism. Vid. also the Ed. Ben. on S. Hilary, præf. p. xliii. who uses natura absolutely for our Lord's Divinity, as contrasted to the dispensatio, and divides His titles into naturalia and assumpta.
[2508] Ps. civ. 24. LXX.; Rom. viii. 22.
[2509] Rev. viii. 9; 1 Tim. iv. 4.
[2510] Wisd. ix. 2.
[2511] Matt. xix. 4. (ho ktisas).
[2512] Deut. iv. 32.
[2513] Col. i. 15-17
[2514] Ps. cii. 18. LXX.
[2515] Ps. li. 12.
[2516] Eph. ii. 15.
[2517] Eph. iv. 22; vid. Cyr. Thes. p. 156.
[2518] Jer. xxxi. 22. vid. also supr. p. 85, where he notices that this is the version of the Septuagint, Aquila's being The Lord created a new thing in woman.' Athan. has preserved Aquila's version in three other places, in Psalm xxx. 12; lix. 5; lxv. 18.
[2519] Prov. ix. 1.
[2520] John i. 14.
[2521] §10. n. 6.
[2522] Gal. iii. 13; 2 Cor. v. 21.
[2523] Gal. iii. 13; Is. liii. 4; 1 Pet. ii. 24
[2524] Here he says that, though our Lord's flesh is created or He is created as to the flesh, it is not right to call Him a creature. This is very much what S. Thomas says, as referred to in §45, note 1, in the words of the Schools, that Æthiops, albus secundum dentes, non est albus. But why may not our Lord be so called upon the principle of the communicatio Idiomatum (infr. note on iii. 31.) as He is said to be born of a Virgin, to have suffered, &c.? The reason is this:--birth, passion, &c., confessedly belong to His human nature, without adding according to the flesh;' but creature' not implying humanity, might appear a simple attribute of His Person, if used without limitation. Thus, as S. Thomas adds, though we may not absolutely say Æthiops est albus, we may say crispus est,' or in like manner, calvus est.' Since crispus, or calvus, can but refer to the hair. Still more does this remark apply in the case of Sonship,' which is a personal attribute altogether; as is proved, says Petav. de Incarn. vii. 6 fin. by the instance of Adam, who was in all respects a man like Seth, yet not a son. Accordingly, we may not call our Lord, even according to the manhood, an adopted Son.
[2525] pompeuete, infr. 82.
[2526] archen hodon; and so in Justin's Tryph. 61. The Bened. Ed. in loc. refers to a similar application of the word to our Lord in Tatian contr. Gent. 5. Athenag. Ap. 10. Iren. Hær. iv. 20. n. 3. Origen. in Joan. tom. 1. 39. Tertull. adv. Prax. 6. and Ambros. de Fid. iii. 7.
[2527] arche teknon, Gen. xlix. 3.
[2528] Cf. p. 157, note 7.
[2529] Rom. i. 20.
[2530] Vid. Col. i. 16
[2531] i. 61; ii. 27.
[2532] He says that, though none could be a beginning' of creation, who was a creature, yet still that such a title belongs not to His essence. It is the name of an office which the Eternal Word alone can fill. His Divine Sonship is both superior and necessary to that office of a Beginning.' Hence it is both true (as he says) that if the Word is a creature, He is not a beginning;' and yet that that beginning' is in the number of the creatures.' Though He becomes the beginning,' He is not a beginning as to His essence,' vid. supr. i. 49, and infr. §60. where he says, He who is before all, cannot be a beginning of all, but is other than all,' which implies that the beginning of all is not other than all. vid. §8, note 4, on the Priesthood, and §16, n. 7.
[2533] Ps. lxxxix. 6.
[2534] Bar. iii. 35.
[2535] Vid. Prov. iii. 19; ix. 1.
[2536] Matt. xi. 25.
[2537] to ktiston, i.e. soma, §47.
[2538] Ps. lxxxvi. 16.
[2539] Ps. c. 3.
[2540] John i. 1, 3; Col. i. 16. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XX.--Texts Explained; Sixthly, Proverbs viii. 22 Continued. Our Lord is said to be created for the works,' i.e. with a particular purpose, which no mere creatures are ever said to be. Parallel of Isai. xlix. 5, &c. When His manhood is spoken of, a reason for it is added; not so when His Divine Nature; Texts in proof.
51 (continued). For the passage in the Proverbs, as I have said before, signifies, not the Essence, but the manhood of the Word; for if He says that He was created for the works,' He shews His intention of signifying, not His Essence, but the Economy which took place for His works,' which comes second to being. For things which are in formation and creation are made specially that they may be and exist [2541] , and next they have to do whatever the Word bids them, as may be seen in the case of all things. For Adam was created, not that He might work, but that first he might be man; for it was after this that he received the command to work. And Noah was created, not because of the ark, but that first he might exist and be a man; for after this he received commandment to prepare the ark. And the like will be found in every case on inquiring into it;--thus the great Moses first was made a man, and next was entrusted with the government of the people. Therefore here too we must suppose the like; for thou seest, that the Word is not created into existence, but, In the beginning was the Word,' and He is afterwards sent for the works' and the Economy towards them. For before the works were made, the Son was ever, nor was there yet need that He should be created; but when the works were created and need arose afterwards of the Economy for their restoration, then it was that the Word took upon Himself this condescension and assimilation to the works; which He has shewn us by the word He created.' And through the Prophet Isaiah willing to signify the like, He says again: And now thus saith the Lord, who formed me from the womb to be His servant, to gather together Jacob unto Him and Israel, I shall be brought together and be glorified before the Lord [2542] .'
52. See here too, He is formed, not into existence, but in order to gather together the tribes, which were in existence before He was formed. For as in the former passage stands He created,' so in this He formed;' and as there for the works,' so here to gather together;' so that in every point of view it appears that He created' and He formed' are said after the Word was.' For as before His forming the tribes existed, for whose sake He was formed, so does it appear that the works exist, for which He was created. And when in the beginning was the Word,' not yet were the works, as I have said before; but when the works were made and the need required, then He created' was said; and as if some son, when the servants were lost, and in the hands of the enemy by their own carelessness, and need was urgent, were sent by his father to succour and recover them, and on setting out were to put over him the like dress [2543] with them, and should fashion himself as they, lest the capturers, recognising him [2544] as the master, should take to flight and prevent his descending to those who were hidden under the earth by them; and then were any one to inquire of him, why he did so, were to make answer, My Father thus formed and prepared me for his works,' while in thus speaking, he neither implies that he is a servant nor one of the works, nor speaks of the beginning of His origination, but of the subsequent charge given him over the works,--in the same way the Lord also, having put over Him our flesh, and being found in fashion as a man,' if He were questioned by those who saw Him thus and marvelled, would say, The Lord created Me the beginning of His ways for His works,' and He formed Me to gather together Israel.' This again the Spirit [2545] foretells in the Psalms, saying, Thou didst set Him over the works of Thine hands [2546] ;' which elsewhere the Lord signified of Himself, I am set as King by Him upon His holy hill of Sion [2547] .' And as, when He shone [2548] in the body upon Sion, He had not His beginning of existence or of reign, but being God's Word and everlasting King, He vouchsafed that His kingdom should shine in a human way in Sion, that redeeming them and us from the sin which reigned in them, He might bring them under His Father's Kingdom, so, on being set for the works,' He is not set for things which did not yet exist, but for such as already were and needed restoration.
53. He created' then and He formed' and He set,' having the same meaning, do not denote the beginning of His being, or of His essence as created, but His beneficent renovation which came to pass for us. Accordingly, though He thus speaks, yet He taught also that He Himself existed before this, when He said, Before Abraham came to be, I am [2549] ;' and when He prepared the heavens, I was present with Him;' and I was with Him disposing things [2550] .' And as He Himself was before Abraham came to be, and Israel had come into being after Abraham, and plainly He exists first and is formed afterwards, and His forming signifies not His beginning of being but His taking manhood, wherein also He collects together the tribes of Israel; so, as being always with the Father,' He Himself is Framer of the creation, and His works are evidently later than Himself, and He created' signifies, not His beginning of being, but the Economy which took place for the works, which He effected in the flesh. For it became Him, being other than the works, nay rather their Framer, to take upon Himself their renovation [2551] , that, whereas He is created for us, all things may be now created in Him. For when He said He created,' He forthwith added the reason, naming the works,' that His creation for the works might signify His becoming man for their renovation. And this is usual with divine Scripture [2552] ; for when it signifies the fleshly origination of the Son, it adds also the cause [2553] for which He became man; but when he speaks or His servants declare anything of His Godhead, all is said in simple diction, and with an absolute sense, and without reason being added. For He is the Father's Radiance; and as the Father is, but not for any reason, neither must we seek the reason of that Radiance. Thus it is written, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God [2554] ;' and the wherefore it assigns not [2555] ; but when the Word was made flesh [2556] ,' then it adds the reason why, saying, And dwelt among us.' And again the Apostle saying, Who being in the form of God,' has not introduced the reason, till He took on Him the form of a servant;' for then he continues, He humbled Himself unto death, even the death of the cross [2557] ;' for it was for this that He both became flesh and took the form of a servant.
54. And the Lord Himself has spoken many things in proverbs; but when giving us notices about Himself, He has spoken absolutely [2558] ; I in the Father and the Father in Me,' and I and the Father are one,' and, He that hath seen Me, hath seen the Father,' and I am the Light of the world,' and, I am the Truth [2559] ;' not setting down in every case the reason, nor the wherefore, lest He should seem second to those things for which He was made. For that reason would needs take precedence of Him, without which not even He Himself had come into being. Paul, for instance, separated an Apostle for the Gospel, which the Lord had promised afore by the Prophets [2560] ,' was thereby made subordinate to the Gospel, of which he was made minister, and John, being chosen to prepare the Lord's way, was made subordinate to the Lord; but the Lord, not being made subordinate to any reason why He should be Word, save only that He is the Father's Offspring and Only-begotten Wisdom, when He becomes man, then assigns the reason why He is about to take flesh. For the need of man preceded His becoming man, apart from which He had not put on flesh [2561] . And what the need was for which He became man, He Himself thus signifies, I came down from heaven, not to do Mine own will, but the will of Him that sent Me. And this is the will of Him which hath sent Me, that of all which He hath given Me, I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day. And this is the will of My Father, that every one which seeth the Son and believeth on Him may have everlasting life, and I will raise him up at the last day [2562] .' And again; I am come a light into the world, that whosoever believeth on Me, should not abide in darkness [2563] .' And again he says; To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth [2564] .' And John has written: For this was manifested the Son of God, that He might destroy the works of the devil [2565] .'
55. To give a witness then, and for our sakes to undergo death, to raise man up and destroy the works of the devil [2566] , the Saviour came, and this is the reason of His incarnate presence. For otherwise a resurrection had not been, unless there had been death; and how had death been, unless He had had a mortal body? This the Apostle, learning from Him, thus sets forth, Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself likewise took part of the same; that through death He might bring to nought him that had the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage [2567] .' And, Since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead [2568] .' And again, For what the Law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh; that the ordinance of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit [2569] .' And John says, For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved [2570] .' And again, the Saviour has spoken in His own person, For judgment am I come into this world, that they who see not might see, and that they which see might become blind [2571] .' Not for Himself then, but for our salvation, and to abolish death, and to condemn sin, and to give sight to the blind, and to raise up all from the dead, has He come; but if not for Himself, but for us, by consequence not for Himself but for us is He created. But if not for Himself is He created, but for us, then He is not Himself a creature, but, as having put on our flesh, He uses such language. And that this is the sense of the Scriptures, we may learn from the Apostle, who says in Ephesians, Having broken down the middle wall of partition between us, having abolished in His flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances, to create in Himself of twain one new man, so making peace [2572] .' But if in Him the twain are created, and these are in His body, reasonably then, bearing the twain in Himself, He is as if Himself created; for those who were created in Himself He made one, and He was in them, as they. And thus, the two being created in Him, He may say suitably, The Lord created me.' For as by receiving our infirmities, He is said to be infirm Himself, though not Himself infirm, for He is the Power of God, and He became sin for us and a curse, though not having sinned Himself, but because He Himself bare our sins and our curse, so [2573] , by creating us in Him, let Him say, He created me for the works,' though not Himself a creature.
56. For if, as they hold, the Essence of the Word being of created nature, therefore He says, The Lord created me,' being a creature, He was not created for us; but if He was not created for us, we are not created in Him; and, if not created in Him, we have Him not in ourselves but externally; as, for instance, as receiving instruction from Him as from a teacher [2574] . And it being so with us, sin has not lost its reign over the flesh, being inherent and not cast out of it. But the Apostle opposes such a doctrine a little before, when he says, For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus [2575] ;' and if in Christ we are created, then it is not He who is created, but we in Him; and thus the words He created' are for our sake. For because of our need, the Word, though being Creator, endured words which are used of creatures; which are not proper to Him, as being the Word, but are ours who are created in Him. And as, since the Father is always, so is His Word, and always being, always says I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him [2576] ,' and I am in the Father and the Father in Me [2577] ;' so, when for our need He became man, consistently does He use language, as ourselves, The Lord hath created Me,' that, by His dwelling in the flesh, sin might perfectly be expelled from the flesh, and we might have a free mind [2578] . For what ought He, when made man, to say? In the beginning I was man?' this were neither suitable to Him nor true; and as it beseemed not to say this, so it is natural and proper in the case of man to say, He created' and He made' Him. On this account then the reason of He created' is added, namely, the need of the works; and where the reason is added, surely the reason rightly explains the lection. Thus here, when He says He created,' He sets down the cause, the works;' on the other hand, when He signifies absolutely the generation from the Father, straightway He adds, Before all the hills He begets me [2579] ;' but He does not add the wherefore,' as in the case of He created,' saying, for the works,' but absolutely, He begets me,' as in the text, In the beginning was the Word [2580] .' For, though no works had been created, still the Word' of God was,' and the Word was God.' And His becoming man would not have taken place, had not the need of men become a cause. The Son then is not a creature. __________________________________________________________________
[2541] He says in effect, Before the generation of the works, they were not; but Christ on the contrary' (not, was before His generation,' as Bull's hypothesis, supr. Exc. B. would require, but) is from everlasting,' vid. §57, note.
[2542] Isai. xlix. 5. LXX.
[2543] §7.
[2544] Vid. the well-known passage in S. Ignatius, ad Eph. 19 [and Lightfoot's note].
[2545] Supr. 20.
[2546] Heb. ii. 7.
[2547] Ps. ii. 6. LXX.
[2548] epelampse, vid. of the Holy Spirit, Serap. i. 20, c.
[2549] John viii. 58.
[2550] Prov. viii. 27, 30, LXX.
[2551] p. 335, note 1.
[2552] ethos esti te thei& 139; graphe: and so Orat. iii. 18, b. And tes graphes ethos echouses, ibid. 30, d.
[2553] Vid. Naz. Orat. 30. 2.
[2554] John i. 1.
[2555] Naz. ibid.
[2556] John i. 14.
[2557] Phil. ii. 6-8.
[2558] Infr. 62.
[2559] John xiv. 6, 9, 10; x. 30; viii. 12
[2560] Rom. i. 1, 2.
[2561] It is the general teaching of the Fathers that our Lord would not have been incarnate had not man sinned. [But see Prolegg. ch. iv. §3, c.] Cf. de Incarn. 4. vid. Thomassin. at great length de Incarn. ii. 5-11. also Petav. de Incarn. ii. 17, 7-12. Vasquez. in 3 Thom. Disp. x. 4 and 5.
[2562] John vi. 38-40
[2563] Ib. xii. 46.
[2564] Ib. xviii. 37.
[2565] 1 John iii. 8.
[2566] Two ends of our Lord's Incarnation are here mentioned; that He might die for us, and that He might renew us, answering nearly to those specified in Rom. iv. 25. who was delivered for our offences and raised again for our justification.' The general object of His coming, including both of these, is treated of in Incarn. esp. §§4-20. and in the two books against Apollinaris. Vid. supr. §8. §9. Also infr. Orat. iv. 6. And Theodoret, Eran. iii. p. 196, 7. Vigil. Thaps. contr. Eutych. i. p. 496. (B. P. ed. 1624.) and S. Leo speaks of the whole course of redemption, i.e. incarnation, atonement, regeneration, justification, &c., as one sacrament, not drawing the line distinctly between the several agents, elements, or stages in it, but considering it to lie in the intercommunion of Christ's and our persons. Serm. 63. 14. He speaks of His fortifying us against our passions and infirmities, both sacramento susceptionis and exemplo. Serm. 65, 2. and of a duplex remedium cujus aliud in sacramento, aliud in exemplo. Serm. 67, 5. also 69, 5. The tone of his teaching is throughout characteristic of the Fathers, and very like that of S. Athanasius.
[2567] Heb. ii. 14, 15.
[2568] 1 Cor. xv. 21.
[2569] Rom. viii. 3, 4.
[2570] John iii. 17.
[2571] Ib. ix. 39.
[2572] Eph. ii. 14, 15.
[2573] The word autos, Himself,' is all along used, where a later writer would have said His Person;' vid. supr. §45, n. 2; still there is more to be explained in this passage, which, taken in the letter, would speak a language very different from Athan.'s, as if the infirmities or the created nature of the Word were not more real than His imputed sinfulness. (vid. on the other hand infr. iii. 31-35). But nothing is more common in theology than comparisons which are only parallel to a certain point as regards the matter in hand, especially since many doctrines do not admit of exact illustrations. Our Lord's real manhood and imputed sinfulness were alike adjuncts to His Divine Person, which was of an Eternal and Infinite Nature; and therefore His Manhood may be compared to an Attribute, or to an accident, without meaning that it really was either.
[2574] Note on iii. 19.
[2575] Eph. ii. 10.
[2576] Prov. viii. 30.
[2577] John xiv. 10.
[2578] eleutheron to phronema. vid. also beginning of the paragraph, where sanctification is contrasted to teaching. vid. also note on 79, infr. Contr. Apoll. i. 20. fin. ibid. ii. 6. also Orat. iii. 33, where vid. note, and 34. vid. for arche, Orat. i. 48, note 7. Also vid. infr. Orat. iii. 56, a. iv. 33, a. Naz. Epp. ad Cled. 1. and 2. (101, 102. Ed. Ben.) Nyssen. ad Theoph. in Apoll. p. 696. Leo, Serm. 26, 2. Serm. 72, 2. vid. Serm. 22, 2. ut corpus regenerati fiat caro Crucifixi. Serm. 63, 6. Hæc est nativitas nova dum homo nascitur in Deo; in quo homine Deus natus est, carne antiqui seminis suscepta, sine semine antiquo, ut illam novo semine, id est, spiritualiter, reformaret, exclusis antiquitatis sordibus expiatam. Tertull. de Carn. Christ. 17. vid. supr. i. 51, note 5. and note on 64 infr. 65 and 70. and on iii. 34.
[2579] Prov. viii. 25.
[2580] John i. 1. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXI.--Texts Explained; Sixthly, Proverbs viii. 22, Continued. Our Lord not said in Scripture to be created,' or the works to be begotten.' In the beginning' means in the case of the works from the beginning.' Scripture passages explained. We are made by God first, begotten next; creatures by nature, sons by grace. Christ begotten first, made or created afterwards. Sense of First-born of the dead;' of First-born among many brethren;' of First-born of all creation,' contrasted with Only-begotten.' Further interpretation of beginning of ways,' and for the works.' Why a creature could not redeem; why redemption was necessary at all. Texts which contrast the Word and the works.
57. For had He been a creature, He had not said, He begets me,' for the creatures are from without, and are works of the Maker; but the Offspring is not from without nor a work, but from the Father, and proper to His Essence. Wherefore they are creatures; this God's Word and Only-begotten Son. For instance, Moses did not say of the creation, In the beginning He begat,' nor In the beginning was,' but In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth [2581] .' Nor did David say in the Psalm, Thy hands have "begotten me,"' but made me and fashioned me [2582] ,' everywhere applying the word made' to the creatures. But to the Son contrariwise; for he has not said I made,' but I begat [2583] ,' and He begets me,' and My heart uttered a good Word [2584] .' And in the instance of the creation, In the beginning He made;' but in the instance of the Son, In the beginning was the Word [2585] .' And there is this difference, that the creatures are made upon the beginning, and have a beginning of existence connected with an interval; wherefore also what is said of them, In the beginning He made,' is as much as saying of them, From the beginning He made:'--as the Lord, knowing that which He had made, taught, when He silenced the Pharisees, with the words, He which made them from the beginning, made them male and female [2586] ;' for from some beginning, when they were not yet, were originate things brought into being and created. This too the Holy Spirit has signified in the Psalms, saying, Thou, Lord, at the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth [2587] ;' and again, O think upon Thy congregation which Thou hast purchased from the beginning [2588] ;' now it is plain that what takes place at the beginning, has a beginning of creation, and that from some beginning God purchased His congregation. And that In the beginning He made,' from his saying made,' means began to make,' Moses himself shews by saying, after the completion of all things, And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because that in it He had rested from all His work which God began to make [2589] .' Therefore the creatures began to be made; but the Word of God, not having beginning of being, certainly did not begin to be, nor begin to come to be, but was ever. And the works have their beginning in their making, and their beginning precedes their coming to be; but the Word, not being of things which come to be, rather comes to be Himself the Framer of those which have a beginning. And the being of things originate is measured by their becoming [2590] , and from some beginning does God begin to make them through the Word, that it may be known that they were not before their origination; but the Word has His being, in no other beginning [2591] than the Father, whom [2592] they allow to be without beginning, so that He too exists without beginning in the Father, being His Offspring, not His creature.
58. Thus does divine Scripture recognise the difference between the Offspring and things made, and shew that the Offspring is a Son, not begun from any beginning, but eternal; but that the thing made, as an external work of the Maker, began to come into being. John therefore delivering divine doctrine [2593] about the Son, and knowing the difference of the phrases, said not, In the beginning has become' or been made,' but In the beginning was the Word;' that we might understand Offspring' by was,' and not account of Him by intervals, but believe the Son always and eternally to exist. And with these proofs, how, O Arians, misunderstanding the passage in Deuteronomy, did you venture a fresh act of irreligion [2594] against the Lord, saying that He is a work,' or creature,' or indeed offspring?' for offspring and work you take to mean the same thing; but here too you shall be shewn to be as unlearned as you are irreligious. Your first passage is this, Is not He thy Father that bought thee? did He not make thee and create thee [2595] ?' And shortly after in the same Song he says, God that begat thee thou didst desert, and forgattest God that nourished thee [2596] .' Now the meaning conveyed in these passages is very remarkable; for he says not first He begat,' lest that term should be taken as indiscriminate with He made,' and these men should have a pretence for saying, Moses tells us indeed that God said from the beginning, "Let Us make man [2597] ,"' but he soon after says himself, God that begat thee thou didst desert,' as if the terms were indifferent; for offspring and work are the same. But after the words bought' and made,' he has added last of all begat,' that the sentence might carry its own interpretation; for in the word made' he accurately denotes what belongs to men by nature, to be works and things made; but in the word begat' he shews God's lovingkindness exercised towards men after He had created them. And since they have proved ungrateful upon this, thereupon Moses reproaches them, saying first, Do ye thus requite the Lord?' and then adds, Is not He thy Father that bought thee? Did He not make thee and create thee [2598] ?' And next he says, They sacrificed unto devils, not to God, to gods whom they knew not. New gods and strange came up, whom your fathers knew not; the God that begat thee thou didst desert [2599] .'
59. For God not only created them to be men, but called them to be sons, as having begotten them. For the term begat' is here as elsewhere expressive of a Son, as He says by the Prophet, I begat sons and exalted them;' and generally, when Scripture wishes to signify a son, it does so, not by the term created,' but undoubtedly by that of begat.' And this John seems to say, He gave to them power to become children of God, even to them that believe on His Name; which were begotten not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God [2600] .' And here too the cautious distinction [2601] is well kept up, for first he says become,' because they are not called sons by nature but by adoption; then he says were begotten,' because they too had received at any rate the name of son. But the People, as says the Prophet, despised' their Benefactor. But this is God's kindness to man, that of whom He is Maker, of them according to grace He afterwards becomes Father also; becomes, that is, when men, His creatures, receive into their hearts, as the Apostle says, the Spirit of His Son, crying, Abba, Father [2602] .' And these are they who, having received the Word, gained power from Him to become sons of God; for they could not become sons, being by nature creatures, otherwise than by receiving the Spirit of the natural and true Son. Wherefore, that this might be, The Word became flesh,' that He might make man capable of Godhead. This same meaning may be gained also from the Prophet Malachi, who says, Hath not One God created us? Have we not all one Father [2603] ?' for first he puts created,' next Father,' to shew, as the other writers, that from the beginning we were creatures by nature, and God is our Creator through the Word; but afterwards we were made sons, and thenceforward God the Creator becomes our Father also. Therefore Father' is proper to the Son; and not creature,' but Son' is proper to the Father. Accordingly this passage also proves, that we are not sons by nature, but the Son who is in us [2604] ; and again, that God is not our Father by nature, but of that Word in us, in whom and because of whom we cry, Abba, Father [2605] .' And so in like manner, the Father calls them sons in whomsoever He sees His own Son, and says, I begat;' since begetting is significant of a Son, and making is indicative of the works. And thus it is that we are not begotten first, but made; for it is written, Let Us make man [2606] ;' but afterwards, on receiving the grace of the Spirit, we are said thenceforth to be begotten also; just as the great Moses in his Song with an apposite meaning says first He bought,' and afterwards He begat;' lest, hearing He begat,' they might forget their own original nature; but that they might know that from the beginning they are creatures, but when according to grace they are said to be begotten, as sons, still no less than before are men works according to nature.
60. And that creature and offspring are not the same, but differ from each other in nature and the signification of the words, the Lord Himself shews even in the Proverbs. For having said, The Lord created me a beginning of His ways;' He has added, But before all the hills He begat me.' If then the Word were by nature and in His Essence [2607] a creature, and there were no difference between offspring and creature, He would not have added, He begat me,' but had been satisfied with He created,' as if that term implied He begat;' but, as it is, after saying, He created me a beginning of His ways for His works,' He has added, not simply begat me,' but with the connection of the conjunction But,' as guarding thereby the term created,' when he says, But before all the hills He begat me.' For begat me' succeeding in such close connection to created me,' makes the meaning one, and shews that created' is said with an object [2608] , but that begat me' is prior to created me.' For as, if He had said the reverse, The Lord begat me,' and went on, But before the hills He created me,' created' would certainly precede begat,' so having said first created,' and then added But before all the hills He begat me,' He necessarily shews that begat' preceded created.' For in saying, Before all He begat me,' He intimates that He is other than all things; it having been shewn to be true [2609] in an earlier part of this book, that no one creature was made before another, but all things originate subsisted at once together upon one and the same command [2610] . Therefore neither do the words which follow created,' also follow begat me;' but in the case of created' is added beginning of ways,' but of begat me,' He says not, He begat me as a beginning,' but before all He begat me.' But He who is before all is not a beginning of all, but is other than all [2611] ; but if other than all (in which all' the beginning of all is included), it follows that He is other than the creatures; and it becomes a clear point, that the Word, being other than all things and before all, afterwards is created a beginning of the ways for works,' because He became man, that, as the Apostle has said, He who is the Beginning' and First-born from the dead, in all things might have the preeminence [2612] .'
61. Such then being the difference between created' and begat me,' and between beginning of ways' and before all,' God, being first Creator, next, as has been said, becomes Father of men, because of His Word dwelling in them. But in the case of the Word the reverse; for God, being His Father by nature, becomes afterwards both His Creator and Maker, when the Word puts on that flesh which was created and made, and becomes man. For, as men, receiving the Spirit of the Son, become children through Him, so the Word of God, when He Himself puts on the flesh of man, then is said both to be created and to have been made. If then we are by nature sons, then is He by nature creature and work; but if we become sons by adoption and grace, then has the Word also, when in grace towards us He became man, said, The Lord created me.' And in the next place, when He put on a created nature and became like us in body, reasonably was He therefore called both our Brother and First-born [2613] .' For though it was after us [2614] that He was made man for us, and our brother by similitude of body, still He is therefore called and is the First-born' of us, because, all men being lost, according to the transgression of Adam, His flesh before all others was saved and liberated, as being the Word's body [2615] ; and henceforth we, becoming incorporate with It, are saved after Its pattern. For in It the Lord becomes our guide to the Kingdom of Heaven and to His own Father, saying, I am the way' and the door [2616] ,' and through Me all must enter.' Whence also is He said to be First-born from the dead [2617] ,' not that He died before us, for we had died first; but because having undergone death for us and abolished it, He was the first to rise, as man, for our sakes raising His own Body. Henceforth He having risen, we too from Him and because of Him rise in due course from the dead.
62. But if He is also called First-born of the creation [2618] ,' still this is not as if He were levelled to the creatures, and only first of them in point of time (for how should that be, since He is Only-begotten?'), but it is because of the Word's condescension [2619] to the creatures, according to which He has become the Brother' of many.' For the term Only-begotten' is used where there are no brethren, but First-born [2620] ' because of brethren. Accordingly it is nowhere written in the Scriptures, the first-born of God,' nor the creature of God;' but Only-begotten' and Son' and Word' and Wisdom,' refer to Him as proper to the Father [2621] . Thus, We have seen His glory, the glory as of the Only-begotten of the Father [2622] ;' and God sent His Only-begotten Son [2623] ;' and O Lord, Thy Word endureth for ever [2624] ;' and In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God;' and Christ the Power of God and the Wisdom of God [2625] ;' and This is My beloved Son;' and Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God [2626] .' But first-born' implied the descent to the creation [2627] ; for of it has He been called first-born; and He created' implies His grace towards the works, for for them is He created. If then He is Only-begotten, as indeed He is, First-born' needs some explanation; but if He be really First-born, then He is not Only-begotten [2628] . For the same cannot be both Only-begotten and First-born, except in different relations;--that is, Only-begotten, because of His generation from the Father, as has been said; and First-born, because of His condescension to the creation and His making the many His brethren. Certainly, those two terms being inconsistent with each other, one should say that the attribute of being Only-begotten has justly the preference in the instance of the Word, in that there is no other Word, or other Wisdom, but He alone is very Son of the Father. Moreover [2629] , as was before [2630] said, not in connection with any reason, but absolutely [2631] it is said of Him, The Only-begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father [2632] ;' but the word First-born' has again the creation as a reason in connection with it, which Paul proceeds to say, for in Him all things were created [2633] .' But if all the creatures were created in Him, He is other than the creatures, and is not a creature, but the Creator of the creatures.
63. Not then because He was from the Father was He called First-born,' but because in Him the creation came to be; and as before the creation He was the Son, through whom was the creation, so also before He was called the First-born of the whole creation, not the less was the Word Himself with God and the Word was God. But this also not understanding, these irreligious men go about saying, If He is First-born of all creation, it is plain that He too is one of the creation.' Senseless men! if He is simply First-born [2634] of the whole creation,' then He is other than the whole creation; for he says not, He is First-born above the rest of the creatures,' lest He be reckoned to be as one of the creatures, but it is written, of the whole creation,' that He may appear other than the creation [2635] . Reuben, for instance, is not said to be first-born of all the children of Jacob [2636] , but of Jacob himself and his brethren; lest he should be thought to be some other beside the children of Jacob. Nay, even concerning the Lord Himself the Apostle says not, that He may become First-born of all,' lest He be thought to bear a body other than ours, but among many brethren [2637] ,' because of the likeness of the flesh. If then the Word also were one of the creatures, Scripture would have said of Him also that He was First-born of other creatures; but in fact, the saints saying that He is First-born of the whole creation [2638] ,' the Son of God is plainly shewn to be other than the whole creation and not a creature. For if He is a creature, He will be First-born of Himself. How then is it possible, O Arians, for Him to be before and after Himself? next, if He is a creature, and the whole creation through Him came to be, and in Him consists, how can He both create the creation and be one of the things which consist in Him? Since then such a notion is in itself unseemly, it is proved against them by the truth, that He is called First-born among many brethren' because of the relationship of the flesh, and First-born from the dead,' because the resurrection of the dead is from Him and after Him; and First-born of the whole creation,' because of the Father's love to man, which brought it to pass that in His Word not only all things consist [2639] ,' but the creation itself, of which the Apostle speaks, waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God, shall be delivered' one time from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God [2640] .' Of this creation thus delivered, the Lord will be First-born, both of it and of all those who are made children, that by His being called first, those that come after Him may abide [2641] , as depending on the Word as a beginning [2642] .
64. And I think that the irreligious men themselves will be shamed from such a thought; for if the case stands not as we have said, but they will rule it that He is First-born of the whole creation' as in essence--a creature among creatures, let them reflect that they will be conceiving Him as brother and fellow of the things without reason and life. For of the whole creation these also are parts; and the First-born' must be first indeed in point of time but only thus, and in kind and similitude [2643] must be the same with all. How then can they say this without exceeding all measures of irreligion? or who will endure them, if this is their language? or who can but hate them even imagining such things? For it is evident to all, that neither for Himself, as being a creature, nor as having any connection according to essence with the whole creation, has He been called First-born' of it: but because the Word, when at the beginning He framed the creatures, condescended to things originate, that it might be possible for them to come to be. For they could not have endured His nature, which was untempered splendour, even that of the Father, unless condescending by the Father's love for man He had supported them and taken hold of them and brought them into existence [2644] ; and next, because, by this condescension of the Word, the creation too is made a son [2645] through Him, that He might be in all respects First-born' of it, as has been said, both in creating, and also in being brought for the sake of all into this very world. For so it is written, When He bringeth the First-born into the world, He saith, Let all the Angels of God worship Him [2646] .' Let Christ's enemies hear and tear themselves to pieces, because His coming into the world is what makes Him called First-born' of all; and thus the Son is the Father's Only-begotten,' because He alone is from Him, and He is the First-born of creation,' because of this adoption of all as sons [2647] . And as He is First-born among brethren and rose from the dead the first fruits of them that slept [2648] ;' so, since it became Him in all things to have the preeminence [2649] ,' therefore He is created a beginning of ways,' that we, walking along it and entering through Him who says, I am the Way' and the Door,' and partaking of the knowledge of the Father, may also hear the words, Blessed are the undefiled in the Way,' and Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God [2650] .'
65. And thus since the truth declares that the Word is not by nature a creature, it is fitting now to say, in what sense He is beginning of ways.' For when the first way, which was through Adam, was lost, and in place of paradise we deviated unto death, and heard the words, Dust thou art, and unto dust [2651] shalt thou return,' therefore the Word of God, who loves man, puts on Him created flesh at the Father's will [2652] , that whereas the first man had made it dead through the transgression, He Himself might quicken it in the blood of His own body [2653] , and might open for us a way new and living,' as the Apostle says, through the veil, that is to say, His flesh [2654] ;' which he signifies elsewhere thus, Wherefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creation; old things are passed away, behold all things are become new [2655] .' But if a new creation has come to pass, some one must be first of this creation; now a man, made of earth only, such as we are become from the transgression, he could not be. For in the first creation, men had become unfaithful, and through them that first creation had been lost; and there was need of some one else to renew the first creation, and preserve the new which had come to be. Therefore from love to man none other than the Lord, the beginning' of the new creation, is created as the Way,' and consistently says, The Lord created me a beginning of ways for His works;' that man might walk no longer according to that first creation, but there being as it were a beginning of a new creation, and with the Christ a beginning of its ways,' we might follow Him henceforth, who says to us, I am the Way:'--as the blessed Apostle teaches in Colossians, saying, He is the Head of the body, the Church, who is the Beginning, the First-born from the dead, that in all things He might have the preeminence.'
66. For if, as has been said, because of the resurrection from the dead He is called a beginning, and then a resurrection took place when He, bearing our flesh, had given Himself to death for us, it is evident that His words, He created me a beginning of ways,' is indicative not of His essence [2656] , but of His bodily presence. For to the body death was proper [2657] ; and in like manner to the bodily presence are the words proper, The Lord created me a beginning of His ways.' For since the Saviour was thus created according to the flesh, and had become a beginning of things new created, and had our first fruits, viz. that human flesh which He took to Himself, therefore after Him, as is fit, is created also the people to come, David saying, Let this be written for another generation, and the people that shall be created shall praise the Lord [2658] .' And again in the twenty-first Psalm, The generation to come shall declare unto the Lord, and they shall declare His righteousness, unto a people that shall be born whom the Lord made [2659] .' For we shall no more hear, In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die [2660] ,' but Where I am, there ye' shall be also;' so that we may say, We are His workmanship, created unto good works [2661] .' And again, since God's work, that is, man, though created perfect, has become wanting through the transgression, and dead by sin, and it was unbecoming that the work of God should remain imperfect (wherefore all the saints were praying concerning this, for instance in the hundred and thirty-seventh Psalm, saying, Lord, Thou shalt requite for me; despise not then the works of Thine hands [2662] '); therefore the perfect [2663] Word of God puts around Him an imperfect body, and is said to be created for the works;' that, paying the debt [2664] in our stead, He might, by Himself, perfect what was wanting to man. Now immortality was wanting to him, and the way to paradise. This then is what the Saviour says, I glorified Thee on the earth, I perfected the work which Thou hast given Me to do [2665] ;' and again, The works which the Father hath given Me to perfect, the same works that I do, bear witness of Me;' but the works [2666] ' He here says that the Father had given Him to perfect, are those for which He is created, saying in the Proverbs, The Lord created me a beginning of His ways, for His works;' for it is all one to say, The Father hath given me the works,' and The Lord created me for the works.'
67. When then received He the works to perfect, O God's enemies? for from this also He created' will be understood. If ye say, At the beginning when He brought them into being out of what was not,' it is an untruth; for they were not yet made; whereas He appears to speak as taking what was already in being. Nor is it pious to refer to the time which preceded the Word's becoming flesh, lest His coming should thereupon seem superfluous, since for the sake of these works that coming took place. Therefore it remains for us to say that when He has become man, then He took the works. For then He perfected them, by healing our wounds and vouchsafing to us the resurrection from the dead. But if, when the Word became flesh, then were given to Him the works, plainly when He became man, then also is He created for the works. Not of His essence then is He created' indicative, as has many times been said, but of His bodily generation. For then, because the works were become imperfect and mutilated from the transgression, He is said in respect to the body to be created; that by perfecting them and making them whole, He might present the Church unto the Father, as the Apostle says, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but holy and without blemish [2667] .' Mankind then is perfected in Him and restored, as it was made at the beginning, nay, with greater grace. For, on rising from the dead, we shall no longer fear death, but shall ever reign in Christ in the heavens. And this has been done, since the own Word of God Himself, who is from the Father, has put on the flesh, and become man. For if, being a creature, He had become man, man had remained just what he was, not joined to God; for how had a work been joined to the Creator by a work [2668] ? or what succour had come from like to like, when one as well as other needed it [2669] ? And how, were the Word a creature, had He power to undo God's sentence, and to remit sin, whereas it is written in the Prophets, that this is God's doing? For who is a God like unto Thee, that pardoneth iniquity, and passeth by transgression [2670] ?' For whereas God has said, Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return [2671] ,' men have become mortal; how then could things originate undo sin? but the Lord is He who has undone it, as He says Himself, Unless the Son shall make you free [2672] ;' and the Son, who made free, has shewn in truth that He is no creature, nor one of things originate, but the proper Word and Image of the Father's Essence, who at the beginning sentenced, and alone remitteth sins. For since it is said in the Word, Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return,' suitably through the Word Himself and in Him the freedom and the undoing of the condemnation has come to pass.
68. Yet,' they say, though the Saviour were a creature, God was able to speak the word only and undo the curse.' And so another will tell them in like manner, Without His coming among us at all, God was able just to speak and undo the curse;' but we must consider what was expedient for mankind, and not what simply is possible with God [2673] . He could have destroyed, before the ark of Noah, the then transgressors; but He did it after the ark. He could too, without Moses, have spoken the word only and have brought the people out of Egypt; but it profited to do it through Moses. And God was able without the judges to save His people; but it was profitable for the people that for a season judges should be raised up to them. The Saviour too might have come among us from the beginning, or on His coming might not have been delivered to Pilate; but He came at the fulness of the ages [2674] ,' and when sought for said, I am He [2675] .' For what He does, that is profitable for men, and was not fitting in any other way; and what is profitable and fitting, for that He provides [2676] . Accordingly He came, not that He might be ministered unto, but that He might minister [2677] ,' and might work our salvation. Certainly He was able to speak the Law from heaven, but He saw that it was expedient to men for Him to speak from Sinai; and that He has done, that it might be possible for Moses to go up, and for them hearing the word near them the rather to believe. Moreover, the good reason of what He did may be seen thus; if God had but spoken, because it was in His power, and so the curse had been undone, the power had been shewn of Him who gave the word, but man had become such as Adam was before the transgression, having received grace from without [2678] , and not having it united to the body; (for he was such when he was placed in Paradise) nay, perhaps had become worse, because he had learned to transgress. Such then being his condition, had he been seduced by the serpent, there had been fresh need for God to give command and undo the curse; and thus the need had become interminable [2679] , and men had remained under guilt not less than before, as being enslaved to sin; and, ever sinning, would have ever needed one to pardon them, and had never become free, being in themselves flesh, and ever worsted by the Law because of the infirmity of the flesh.
69. Again, if the Son were a creature, man had remained mortal as before, not being joined to God; for a creature had not joined creatures to God, as seeking itself one to join it [2680] ; nor would a portion of the creation have been the creation's salvation, as needing salvation itself. To provide against this also, He sends His own Son, and He becomes Son of Man, by taking created flesh; that, since all were under sentence of death, He, being other than them all, might Himself for all offer to death His own body; and that henceforth, as if all had died through Him, the word of that sentence might be accomplished (for all died [2681] ' in Christ), and all through Him might thereupon become free from sin and from the curse which came upon it, and might truly abide [2682] for ever, risen from the dead and clothed in immortality and incorruption. For the Word being clothed in the flesh, as has many times been explained, every bite of the serpent began to be utterly staunched from out it; and whatever evil sprung from the motions of the flesh, to be cut away, and with these death also was abolished, the companion of sin, as the Lord Himself says [2683] , The prince of this world cometh, and findeth nothing in Me;' and For this end was He manifested,' as John has written, that He might destroy the works of the devil [2684] .' And these being destroyed from the flesh, we all were thus liberated by the kinship of the flesh, and for the future were joined, even we, to the Word. And being joined to God, no longer do we abide upon earth; but, as He Himself has said, where He is, there shall we be also; and henceforward we shall fear no longer the serpent, for he was brought to nought when he was assailed by the Saviour in the flesh, and heard Him say, Get thee behind Me, Satan [2685] ,' and thus he is cast out of paradise into the eternal fire. Nor shall we have to watch against woman beguiling us, for in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the Angels [2686] ;' and in Christ Jesus it shall be a new creation,' and neither male nor female, but all and in all Christ [2687] ;' and where Christ is, what fear, what danger can still happen?
70. But this would not have come to pass, had the Word been a creature; for with a creature, the devil, himself a creature, would have ever continued the battle, and man, being between the two, had been ever in peril of death, having none in whom and through whom he might be joined to God and delivered from all fear. Whence the truth shews us that the Word is not of things originate, but rather Himself their Framer. For therefore did He assume the body originate and human, that having renewed it as its Framer, He might deify it [2688] in Himself, and thus might introduce us all into the kingdom of heaven after His likeness. For man had not been deified if joined to a creature, or unless the Son were very God; nor had man been brought into the Father's presence, unless He had been His natural and true Word who had put on the body. And as we had not been delivered from sin and the curse, unless it had been by nature human flesh, which the Word put on (for we should have had nothing common with what was foreign), so also the man had not been deified, unless the Word who became flesh had been by nature from the Father and true and proper to Him. For therefore the union was of this kind, that He might unite what is man by nature to Him who is in the nature of the Godhead, and his salvation and deification might be sure. Therefore let those who deny that the Son is from the Father by nature and proper to His Essence, deny also that He took true human flesh [2689] of Mary Ever-Virgin [2690] ; for in neither case had it been of profit to us men, whether the Word were not true and naturally Son of God, or the flesh not true which He assumed. But surely He took true flesh, though Valentinus rave; yea the Word was by nature Very God, though Ario-maniacs rave [2691] ; and in that flesh has come to pass the beginning [2692] of our new creation, He being created man for our sake, and having made for us that new way, as has been said.
71. The Word then is neither creature nor work; for creature, thing made, work, are all one; and were He creature and thing made, He would also be work. Accordingly He has not said, He created Me a work,' nor He made Me with the works,' lest He should appear to be in nature and essence [2693] a creature; nor, He created Me to make works,' lest, on the other hand, according to the perverseness of the irreligious, He should seem as an instrument [2694] made for our sake. Nor again has He declared, He created Me before the works,' lest, as He really is before all, as an Offspring, so, if created also before the works, He should give Offspring' and He created' the same meaning. But He has said with exact discrimination [2695] , for the works;' as much as to say, The Father has made Me, into flesh, that I might be man,' which again shews that He is not a work but an offspring. For as he who comes into a house, is not part of the house, but is other than the house, so He who is created for the works, must be by nature other than the works. But if otherwise, as you hold, O Arians, the Word of God be a work, by what [2696] Hand and Wisdom did He Himself come into being? for all things that came to be, came by the Hand and Wisdom of God, who Himself says, My hand hath made all these things [2697] ;' and David says in the Psalm, And Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of Thy hands [2698] ;' and again, in the hundred and forty-second Psalm, I do remember the time past, I muse upon all Thy works, yea I exercise myself in the works of Thy hands [2699] .' Therefore if by the Hand of God the works are wrought, and it is written that all things were made through the Word,' and without Him was not made one thing [2700] ,' and again, One Lord Jesus, through whom are all things [2701] ,' and in Him all things consist [2702] ,' it is very plain that the Son cannot be a work, but He is the Hand [2703] of God and the Wisdom. This knowing, the martyrs in Babylon, Ananias, Azarias, and Misael, arraign the Arian irreligion. For when they say, O all ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord,' they recount things in heaven, things on earth, and the whole creation, as works; but the Son they name not. For they say not, Bless, O Word, and praise, O Wisdom;' to shew that all other things are both praising and are works; but the Word is not a work nor of those that praise, but is praised with the Father and worshipped and confessed as God [2704] , being His Word and Wisdom, and of the works the Framer. This too the Spirit has declared in the Psalms with a most apposite distinction, the Word of the Lord is true, and all His works are faithful [2705] ;' as in another Psalm too He says, O Lord, how manifold are Thy works! in Wisdom hast Thou made them all [2706] .'
72. But if the Word were a work, then certainly He as others had been made in Wisdom; nor would Scripture distinguish Him from the works, nor while it named them works, preach Him as Word and own Wisdom of God. But, as it is, distinguishing Him from the works, He shews that Wisdom is Framer of the works, and not a work. This distinction Paul also observes, writing to the Hebrews, The Word of God is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, reaching even to the dividing of soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart, neither is there any creature hidden before Him, but all things are naked and open unto the eyes of Him with whom is our account [2707] .' For behold he calls things originate creature;' but the Son he recognises as the Word of God, as if He were other than the creatures. And again saying, All things are naked and open to the eyes of Him with whom is our account,' he signifies that He is other than all of them. For hence it is that He judges, but each of all things originate is bound to give account to Him. And so also, when the whole creation is groaning together with us in order to be set free from the bondage of corruption, the Son is thereby shewn to be other than the creatures. For if He were creature, He too would be one of those who groan, and would need one who should bring adoption and deliverance to Himself as well as others. But if the whole creation groans together, for the sake of freedom from the bondage of corruption, whereas the Son is not of those that groan nor of those who need freedom, but He it is who gives sonship and freedom to all, saying to the Jews of His time [2708] , The servant remains not in the house for ever, but the Son remaineth for ever; if then the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed [2709] ;' it is clearer than the light from these considerations also, that the Word of God is not a creature but true Son, and by nature genuine, of the Father. Concerning then The Lord hath created me a beginning of the ways,' this is sufficient, as I think, though in few words, to afford matter to the learned to frame more ample refutations of the Arian heresy. __________________________________________________________________
[2581] Gen. i. 1.
[2582] Ps. cxix. 73.
[2583] Ps. ii. 7.
[2584] Ps. xlv. 1.
[2585] John i. 1.
[2586] Matt. xix. 4.
[2587] Ps. cii. 25.
[2588] Ps. lxxiv. 2.
[2589] Gen. ii. 3.
[2590] Supr. i. 29, n. 10.
[2591] arche, vid. Orat. iv. 1.
[2592] In this passage was from the beginning' is made equivalent with was not before generation,' and both are contrasted with without beginning' or eternal;' vid. the bearing of this on Bishop Bull's explanation of the Nicene Anathema, supr. Exc. B, where this passage is quoted.
[2593] theologon, vid. §71, note.
[2594] The technical sense of eusebeia, asebeia, pietas, impietas, for orthodoxy, heterodoxy,' has been noticed supr. p. 150, and derived from 1 Tim. iii. 16. The word is contrasted ch. iv. 8. with the (perhaps Gnostic) profane and old-wives fables,' and with bodily exercise.'
[2595] Deut. xxxii. 6. LXX.
[2596] Ibid. 18.
[2597] Gen. i. 26.
[2598] Deut. xxxii. 6.
[2599] Ibid. 17.
[2600] John i. 12, 13.
[2601] paratereseos, §12, note.
[2602] De Decr. 31 fin.
[2603] Mal. ii. 10.
[2604] ton en hemin hui& 231;n. vid. also supr. 10. circ. fin. 56. init. and ton en autois oikounta logon. 61. init. Also Orat. i. 50 fin. iii. 23-25. and de Decr. 31 fin. Or. i. 48, note 7, §56, n. 5. infr. notes on 79.
[2605] Gal. iv. 6.
[2606] Gen. i. 26.
[2607] §45, note 2.
[2608] Ch. 20.
[2609] pp. 367, 374.
[2610] §48.
[2611] §6, note 49.
[2612] Col. i. 18.
[2613] Rom. viii. 29. Bishop Bull's hypothesis about the sense of prototokos tes ktiseos has been commented on supr. p. 347. As far as Athan.'s discussion proceeds in this section, it only relates to prototokos of men (i.e. from the dead), and is equivalent to the beginning of ways.'
[2614] Marcellus seems to have argued against Asterius from the same texts (Euseb. in Marc. p. 12), that, since Christ is called first-born from the dead,' though others had been recalled to life before Him, therefore He is called first-born of creation,' not in point of time, but of dignity. vid. Montacut. Not. p. 11. Yet Athan. argues contrariwise. Orat. iv. 29.
[2615] §10. n. 7; Orat. iii. 31. note.
[2616] John xiv. 6; x. 9.
[2617] Rev. i. 5.
[2618] Here again, though speaking of the first-born of creation,' Athan. simply views the phrase as equivalent to first-born of the new creation or "brother" of many;' and so infr. first-born because of the brotherhood He has made with many.'
[2619] Bp. Bull considers sunkatabasis as equivalent to a figurative gennesis, an idea which (vid. supr. p. 346 sq.) seems quite foreign from Athan.'s meaning. In Bull's sense of the word, Athan. could not have said that the senses of Only-begotten and First-born were contrary to each other, Or. i. 28. Sunkatabenai occurs supr. 51 fin. of the Incarnation. What is meant by it will be found infr. 78-81. viz. that our Lord came to implant in the creatures a type and semblance of His Image;' which is just what is here maintained against Bull. The whole passage referred to is a comment on the word sunkatabasis, and begins and ends with an introduction of that word. Vid. also c. Gent. 47.
[2620] Vid. Rom. viii. 29.
[2621] This passage has been urged against Bull supr. Exc. B. All the words (says Athan.) which are proper to the Son, and describe Him fitly, are expressive of what is internal' to the Divine Nature, as Begotten, Word, Wisdom, Glory, Hand, &c., but (as he adds presently) the first-born,' like beginning of ways,' is relative to creation; and therefore cannot denote our Lord's essence or Divine subsistence, but something temporal, an office, character, or the like.
[2622] John i. 14.
[2623] 1 John iv. 9.
[2624] Ps. cxix. 89.
[2625] 1 Cor. i. 24.
[2626] Matt. iii. 17; xvi. 16.
[2627] This passage is imitated by Theodoret. in Coloss. i. 15, but the passages from the Fathers referable to these Orations are too many to enumerate.
[2628] This passage is imitated by Theodoret. in Coloss. i. 15, but the passages from the Fathers referable to these Orations are too many to enumerate.
[2629] We now come to a third and wider sense of prototokos, as found (not in Rom. viii. 29, and Col. i. 18, but) in Col. i. 15, where by creation' Athan. understands all things visible and invisible.' As then for the works' was just now taken to argue that created' was used in a relative and restricted sense, the same is shewn as regards first-born' by the words for in Him all things were created.'
[2630] i. 52.
[2631] apolelumenos; supr. i. 56, note 6, and §§53, 56, and so apolutos Theophylact to express the same distinction in loc. Coloss.
[2632] John i. 18.
[2633] Col. i. 16.
[2634] It would be perhaps better to translate first-born to the creature,' to give Athan.'s idea; tes ktiseos not being a partitive genitive, or prototokos a superlative (though he presently so considers it), but a simple appellative and tes kt. a common genitive of relation, as the king of a country,' the owner of a house.' First-born of creation' is like author, type, life of creation.' Hence S. Paul goes on at once to say, for in Him all things were made,' not simply by and for,' as at the end of the verse; or as Athan. says here, because in Him the creation came to be.' On the distinction of dia and en, referring respectively to the first and second creations, vid. In illud Omn. 2. (Supr. p. 88.)
[2635] To understand this passage, the Greek idiom must be kept in view. Cf. Milton's imitation the fairest of her daughters Eve.' Vid. as regards the very word protos, John i. 15; and supr. §30, note 3, also pleisten e emprosthen 3 Maccab. 7, 21. Accordingly as in the comparative to obviate this exclusion, we put in the word other' (ante alios immanior omnes), so too in the Greek superlative, Socrates is wisest of "other" heathen.' Athanasius then says in this passage, that first-born of creatures' implies that our Lord was not a creature; whereas it is not said of Him first-born of brethren,' lest He should he excluded from men, but first-born "among" brethren,' where among' is equivalent to other.'
[2636] Gen. xlix. 3, LXX. Vid. also contr. Gent. 41 sq. where the text Col. i. 15 is quoted.
[2637] Rom. viii. 29.
[2638] Col. i. 15.
[2639] Ib. i. 17.
[2640] Rom. viii. 19, 21. Thus there are two senses in which our Lord is first-born to the creation;' viz. in its first origin, and in its restoration after man's fall; as he says more clearly in the next section.
[2641] De Decr. 19, n. 3.
[2642] i. 48, n. 7.
[2643] §20.
[2644] He does not here say with Asterius that God could not create man immediately, for the Word is God, but that He did not create him without at the same time infusing a grace or presence from Himself into his created nature to enable it to endure His external plastic hand; in other words, that he was created in Him, not as something external to Him (in spite of the dia supr.63, n. 1. vid. supr. de Decr. 19. 3. and Gent. 47. where the sunkatabasis is spoken of.
[2645] As God created Him, in that He created human nature in Him, so is He first-born, in that human nature is adopted in Him. Leo Serm. 63. 3.
[2646] Heb. i. 6.
[2647] Thus he considers that first-born' is mainly a title, connected with the Incarnation, and also connected with our Lord's office at the creation (vid. parallel of Priesthood, §8, n. 4). In each economy it has the same meaning; it belongs to Him as the type, idea, or rule on which the creature was made or new-made, and the life by which it is sustained. Both economies are mentioned Incarn. 13, 14. Orat. i. 51. iii. 20. infr. 76. init. He came ten tou archetupou plasin anastesasthai heauto contr.Apoll. ii. 5. And so again, he idea hoper logon eirekasi. Clem. Strom. v. 3. idean ideon kai archen lekteon ton prototokon pases ktiseos Origen. contr. Cels. vi. 64. fin. Whatever God was about to make in the creature, was already in the Word, nor would be in the things, were it not in the Word.' August. in Psalm xliv. 5. He elsewhere calls the Son, ars quædam omnipotentis atque sapientis Dei, plena omnium rationum viventium incommutabilium.' de Trin. vi. 11. And so Athan. infr. iii. 9. fin. Eusebius, in commenting on the very passage which Athan. is discussing (Prov. viii. 22), presents a remarkable contrast to these passages, as making the Son, not the idea, but the external minister of the Father's idea. de Eccl. Theol. pp. 164, 5. vid. supr. §31, n. 7.
[2648] 1 Cor. xv. 20.
[2649] Col. i. 18.
[2650] Ps. cxix. 1; Matt. v. 8.
[2651] Gen. iii. 19.
[2652] §31, n. 8.
[2653] Vid. Or. i. §48, 7, i. 51, 5, supr. 56, 5. Irenæus, Hær. iii. 19, n. 1. Cyril. in Joan. lib. ix. cir. fin. This is the doctrine of S. Athanasius and S. Cyril, one may say, passim.
[2654] Heb. x. 20.
[2655] 2 Cor. v. 17.
[2656] §45, n. 2.
[2657] Athanasius here says that our Lord's body was subject to death; and so Incarn. 20, e. also 8, b. 18. init. Orat. iii. 56. And so ton anthropon sathrothenta. Orat. iv. 33. And so S. Leo in his Tome lays down that in the Incarnation, suscepta est ab æternitate mortalitas. Ep. 28. 3. And S. Austin, Utique vulnerabile atque mortale corpus habuit [Christus] contr. Faust. xiv. 2. A Eutychian sect denied this doctrine (the Aphthartodocetæ), and held that our Lord's manhood was naturally indeed corrupt, but became from its union with the Word incorrupt from the moment of conception; and in consequence it held that our Lord did not suffer and die, except by miracle. vid. Leont. c. Nest. ii. (Canis. t. i. pp. 563, 4, 8.) vid. supr. i. 43 and 44, notes; also infr. 76, note. And further, note on iii. 57.
[2658] Ps. cii. 18.
[2659] Ib. xxii. 32.
[2660] Gen. ii. 17.
[2661] John xiv. 3; Eph. ii. 10.
[2662] Ps. cxxxviii. 8.
[2663] Cf. Orat. iv. 11.
[2664] anth' hemon ten opheilen apodidous, and so the Lord's death lutron panton. Incarn. V.D. 25. lutron katharsion. Naz. Orat. 30, 20. fin. also supr. 9, 13, 14, 47, 55, 67. In Illud. Omn. 2 fin.
[2665] John xvii. 4.
[2666] Ib. v. 36.
[2667] Eph. v. 27.
[2668] Vid. de Decr. 10, 2. 4; Or. i. 49, §16, n. 7. Iren. Hær. iii. 20.
[2669] Cf. infr. Orat. iv. 6. vid. also iii. 33 init. August. Trin. xiii. 18. Id. in Psalm 129, n. 12. Leon. Serm. 28, n. 3. Basil. in Psalm 48, n. 4. Cyril. de rect. fid. p. 132. vid. also Procl. Orat. i. p. 63. (ed. 1630.) Vigil. contr. Eutych. v. p. 529, e. Greg. Moral. xxiv. init. Job. ap. Phot. 222. p. 583.
[2670] Mic. vii. 18.
[2671] Gen. iii. 19.
[2672] Vid. John viii. 36.
[2673] Vid. also Incarn. 44. In this statement Athan. is supported by Naz. Orat. 19, 13. Theodor. adv. Gent. vi. p. 876, 7. August. de Trin. xiii. 13. It is denied in a later age by S. Anselm, but S. Thomas and the schoolmen side with the Fathers. vid. Petav. Incarn. ii. 13. However, it will be observed from what follows that Athan. thought the Incarnation still absolutely essential for the renewal of human nature in holiness. Cf. de Incarn. 7. That is, we might have been pardoned, we could not have been new-made, without the Incarnation; and so supr. 67.
[2674] Gal. iv. 4.
[2675] John xviii. 5.
[2676] Was it not in His power, had He wished it, even in a day to bring on the whole rain [of the deluge]? in a day, nay in a moment?' Chrysost. in Gen. Hom. 24, 7. He proceeds to apply this principle to the pardon of sin. On the subject of God's power as contrasted with His acts, Petavius brings together the statements of the Fathers, de Deo, v. 6.
[2677] Vid. Matt. xx. 28
[2678] Athan. here seems to say that Adam in a state of innocence had but an external divine assistance, not an habitual grace; this, however, is contrary to his own statements already referred to, and the general doctrine of the fathers. vid. e.g. Cyril. in Joan. v. 2. August. de Corr. et Grat. 31. vid also infr. §76, note.
[2679] eis apeiron, de Decr. 8.
[2680] De Decr. 10.
[2681] 2 Cor. v. 14.
[2682] diameinosin, §63, n. 8; §73, Gent. 41, Serm. Maj. de Fid. 5.
[2683] John xiv. 30. echei t. rec. heuriskei Ath. et al.
[2684] 1 John iii. 8.
[2685] Matt. xvi. 23.
[2686] Mark xii. 25.
[2687] Gal. vi. 15; iii. 28.
[2688] en heauto theopoiese. supr. p. 65, note 5. vid. also ad Adelph. 4. a. Serap. i. 24, e. and §56, note 5. and iii. 33. De Decr. 14. Orat. i. 42. vid. also Orat. iii. 23. fin. 33. init. 34. fin. 38, b. 39, d. 48. fin. 53. For our becoming theoi vid. Orat. iii. 25. theoi kata charin. Cyr. in Joan. p. 74. theophoroumetha. Orat. iii. 23, c. 41, a. 45 init. christophoroi. ibid. theoumetha. iii. 48 fin. 53. Theodor. H. E. i. p. 846. init.
[2689] §45, n. 2.
[2690] Vid. also Athan. in Luc. (Migne xxvii. 1393 c). This title, which is commonly applied to S. Mary by later writers, is found Epiph. Hær. 78, 5. Didym. Trin. i. 27. p. 84. Rufin. Fid. i. 43. Lepor. ap Cassian. Incarn. i. 5. Leon. Ep. 28, 2. Cæsarius has aeipais. Qu. 20. On the doctrine itself vid. a letter of S. Ambrose and his brethren to Siricius, and the Pope's letter in response. (Coust. Ep. Pont. p. 669-682.) Also Pearson On the Creed, Art. 3. [§§9, 10, p. 267 in Bohn's ed.] He replies to the argument from until' in Matt. i. 25, by referring to Gen. xxviii 15; Deut. xxxiv. 6; 1 Sam. xv. 35; 2 Sam. vi. 23; Matt. xxviii. 20. He might also have referred to Psalm cx. 1; 1 Cor. xv. 25. which are the more remarkable, because they were urged by the school of Marcellus as a proof that our Lord's kingdom would have an end, and are explained by Euseb. Eccl. Theol. iii. 13, 14. Vid. also Cyr. Cat. 15, 29; where the true meaning of until' (which may be transferred to Matt. i. 25), is well brought out. He who is King before He subdued His enemies, how shall He not the rather be King, after He has got the mastery over them?'
[2691] De Syn. 13, n. 4.
[2692] i. 48, n. 7.
[2693] §45, note 2.
[2694] organon, note on iii. 31.
[2695] §12, note.
[2696] §22, n. 2.
[2697] Is. lxvi. 2.
[2698] Ps. cii. 25.
[2699] Ib. cxliii. 5.
[2700] John i. 3.
[2701] 1 Cor. viii. 9.
[2702] Col. i. 17.
[2703] §31, n. 4.
[2704] theologoumenos. vid. de Decr. 31, n. 5. also Incarn. c. Ar. 3. 19, Serap. i. 28. 29. 31. contr. Sab. Greg. and passim ap. Euseb. contr. Marcell. e.g. p. 42, d. 86, a. 99, d. 122, c. 124, b. &c. kuriologein, In Illud. Omn. 6, contr. Sab. Greg. §4, f.
[2705] Ps. xxxiii. 4.
[2706] Ib. civ. 24.
[2707] Heb. iv. 12, 13.
[2708] §1, n. 6.
[2709] John viii. 35, 36. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXII.--Texts Explained; Sixthly, the Context of Proverbs viii. 22 Vz. 22-30 It is right to interpret this passage by the Regula Fidei. Founded' is used in contrast to superstructure; and it implies, as in the case of stones in building, previous existence. Before the world' signifies the divine intention and purpose. Recurrence to Prov. viii. 22, and application of it to created Wisdom as seen in the works. The Son reveals the Father, first by the works, then by the Incarnation.
But since the heretics, reading the next verse, take a perverse view of that also, because it is written, He founded me before the world [2710] ,' namely, that this is said of the Godhead of the Word and not of His incarnate Presence [2711] , it is necessary, explaining this verse also, to shew their error.
73. It is written, The Lord in Wisdom founded the earth [2712] ;' if then by Wisdom the earth is founded, how can He who founds be founded? nay, this too is said after the manner of proverbs [2713] , and we must in like manner investigate its sense; that we may know that, while by Wisdom the Father frames and founds the earth to be firm and steadfast [2714] , Wisdom Itself is founded for us, that It may become beginning and foundation of our new creation and renewal. Accordingly here as before, He says not, Before the world He hath made me Word or Son,' lest there should be as it were a beginning of His making. For this we must seek before all things, whether He is Son [2715] , and on this point specially search the Scriptures [2716] ;' for this it was, when the Apostles were questioned, that Peter answered, saying, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God [2717] .' This also the father [2718] of the Arian heresy asked as one of his first questions; If Thou be the Son of God [2719] ;' for he knew that this is the truth and the sovereign principle of our faith; and that, if He were Himself the Son, the tyranny of the devil would have its end; but if He were a creature, He too was one of those descended from that Adam whom he deceived, and he had no cause for anxiety. For the same reason the Jews of the day [2720] were angered, because the Lord said that He was Son of God, and that God was His proper Father. For had He called Himself one of the creatures, or said, I am a work,' they had not been startled at the intelligence, nor thought such words blasphemy, knowing, as they did, that even Angels had come among their fathers; but since He called Himself Son, they perceived that such was not the note of a creature, but of Godhead and of the Father's nature [2721] . The Arians then ought, even in imitation of their own father the devil, to take some special pains [2722] on this point; and if He has said, He founded me to be Word or Son,' then to think as they do; but if He has not so spoken, not to invent for themselves what is not.
74. For He says not, Before the world He founded me as Word or Son,' but simply, He founded me,' to shew again, as I have said, that not for His own sake [2723] but for those who are built upon Him does He here also speak, after the way of proverbs. For this knowing, the Apostle also writes, Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ; but let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon [2724] .' And it must be that the foundation should be such as the things built on it, that they may admit of being well compacted together. Being then the Word, He has not, as Word [2725] , any such as Himself, who may be compacted with Him; for He is Only-begotten; but having become man, He has the like of Him, those namely the likeness of whose flesh He has put on. Therefore according to His manhood He is founded, that we, as precious stones, may admit of building upon Him, and may become a temple of the Holy Ghost who dwelleth in us. And as He is a foundation, and we stones built upon Him, so again He is a Vine and we knit to Him as branches,--not according to the Essence of the Godhead; for this surely is impossible; but according to His manhood, for the branches must be like the vine, since we are like Him according to the flesh. Moreover, since the heretics have such human notions, we may suitably confute them with human resemblances contained in the very matter they urge. Thus He saith not, He made me a foundation,' lest He might seem to be made and to have a beginning of being, and they might thence find a shameless occasion of irreligion; but, He founded me.' Now what is founded is founded for the sake of the stones which are raised upon it; it is not a random process, but a stone is first transported from the mountain and set down in the depth of the earth. And while a stone is in the mountain, it is not yet founded; but when need demands, and it is transported, and laid in the depth of the earth, then forthwith if the stone could speak, it would say, He now founded me, who brought me hither from the mountain.' Therefore the Lord also did not when founded take a beginning of existence; for He was the Word before that; but when He put on our body, which He severed and took from Mary, then He says He hath founded me;' as much as to say, Me, being the Word, He hath enveloped in a body of earth.' For so He is founded for our sakes, taking on Him what is ours [2726] , that we, as incorporated and compacted and bound together in Him through the likeness of the flesh, may attain unto a perfect man, and abide [2727] immortal and incorruptible.
75. Nor let the words before the world' and before He made the earth' and before the mountains were settled' disturb any one; for they very well accord with founded' and created;' for here again allusion is made to the Economy according to the flesh. For though the grace which came to us from the Saviour appeared, as the Apostle says, just now, and has come when He sojourned among us; yet this grace had been prepared even before we came into being, nay, before the foundation of the world, and the reason why is kindly and wonderful. It beseemed not that God should counsel concerning us afterwards, lest He should appear ignorant of our fate. The God of all then,--creating us by His own Word, and knowing our destinies better than we, and foreseeing that, being made good [2728] ,' we should in the event be transgressors of the commandment, and be thrust out of paradise for disobedience,--being loving and kind, prepared beforehand in His own Word, by whom also He created us [2729] , the Economy of our salvation; that though by the serpent's deceit we fell from Him, we might not remain quite dead, but having in the Word the redemption and salvation which was afore prepared for us, we might rise again and abide immortal, what time He should have been created for us a beginning of the ways,' and He who was the First-born of creation' should become first-born' of the brethren,' and again should rise first-fruits of the dead.' This Paul the blessed Apostle teaches in his writings; for, as interpreting the words of the Proverbs before the world' and before the earth was,' he thus speaks to Timothy [2730] ; Be partaker of the afflictions of the Gospel according to the power of God, who hath saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began, but is now made manifest by the appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death, and brought to light life [2731] .' And to the Ephesians; Blessed be God even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessing in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, according as He hath chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestinated us to the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself [2732] .'
76. How then has He chosen us, before we came into existence, but that, as he says himself, in Him we were represented [2733] beforehand? and how at all, before men were created, did He predestinate us unto adoption, but that the Son Himself was founded before the world,' taking on Him that economy which was for our sake? or how, as the Apostle goes on to say, have we an inheritance being predestinated,' but that the Lord Himself was founded before the world,' inasmuch as He had a purpose, for our sakes, to take on Him through the flesh all that inheritance of judgment which lay against us, and we henceforth were made sons in Him? and how did we receive it before the world was,' when we were not yet in being, but afterwards in time, but that in Christ was stored the grace which has reached us? Wherefore also in the Judgment, when every one shall receive according to his conduct, He says, Come, ye blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world [2734] .' How then, or in whom, was it prepared before we came to be, save in the Lord who before the world' was founded for this purpose; that we, as built upon Him, might partake, as well-compacted stones, the life and grace which is from Him? And this took place, as naturally suggests itself to the religious mind, that, as I said, we, rising after our brief death, may be capable of an eternal life, of which we had not been capable [2735] , men as we are, formed of earth, but that before the world' there had been prepared for us in Christ the hope of life and salvation. Therefore reason is there that the Word, on coming into our flesh, and being created in it as a beginning of ways for His works,' is laid as a foundation according as the Father's will [2736] was in Him before the world, as has been said, and before land was, and before the mountains were settled, and before the fountains burst forth; that, though the earth and the mountains and the shapes of visible nature pass away in the fulness of the present age, we on the contrary may not grow old after their pattern, but may be able to live after them, having the spiritual life and blessing which before these things have been prepared for us in the Word Himself according to election. For thus we shall be capable of a life not temporary, but ever afterwards abide [2737] and live in Christ; since even before this our life had been founded and prepared in Christ Jesus.
77. Nor in any other way was it fitting that our life should be founded, but in the Lord who is before the ages, and through whom the ages were brought to be; that, since it was in Him, we too might be able to inherit that everlasting life. For God is good; and being good always, He willed this, as knowing that our weak nature needed the succour and salvation which is from Him. And as a wise architect, proposing to build a house, consults also about repairing it, should it at any time become dilapidated after building, and, as counselling about this, makes preparation and gives to the workmen materials for a repair; and thus the means of the repair are provided before the house; in the same way prior to us is the repair of our salvation founded in Christ, that in Him we might even be new-created. And the will and the purpose were made ready before the world,' but have taken effect when the need required, and the Saviour came among us. For the Lord Himself will stand us in place of all things in the heavens, when He receives us into everlasting life. This then suffices to prove that the Word of God is not a creature, but that the sense of the passage is right [2738] . But since that passage, when scrutinized, has a right sense in every point of view, it may be well to state what it is; perhaps many words may bring these senseless men to shame. Now here I must recur to what has been said before, for what I have to say relates to the same proverb and the same Wisdom. The Word has not called Himself a creature by nature, but has said in proverbs, The Lord created me;' and He plainly indicates a sense not spoken plainly' but latent [2739] , such as we shall be able to find by taking away the veil from the proverb. For who, on hearing from the Framing Wisdom, The Lord created me a beginning of His ways,' does not at once question the meaning, reflecting how that creative Wisdom can be created? who on hearing the Only-begotten Son of God say, that He was created a beginning of ways,' does not investigate the sense, wondering how the Only-begotten Son can become a Beginning of many others? for it is a dark saying [2740] ; but a man of understanding,' says he, shall understand a proverb and the interpretation, the words of the wise and their dark sayings [2741] .'
78. Now the Only-begotten and very Wisdom [2742] of God is Creator and Framer of all things; for in Wisdom hast Thou made them all [2743] ,' he says, and the earth is full of Thy creation.' But that what came into being might not only be, but be good [2744] , it pleased God that His own Wisdom should condescend [2745] to the creatures, so as to introduce an impress and semblance of Its Image on all in common and on each, that what was made might be manifestly wise works and worthy of God [2746] . For as of the Son of God, considered as the Word, our word is an image, so of the same Son considered as Wisdom is the wisdom which is implanted in us an image; in which wisdom we, having the power of knowledge and thought, become recipients of the All-framing Wisdom; and through It we are able to know Its Father. For he who hath the Son,' saith He, hath the Father also;' and he that receiveth Me, receiveth Him that sent Me [2747] .' Such an impress then of Wisdom being created in us, and being in all the works, with reason does the true and framing Wisdom take to Itself what belongs to its own impress, and say, The Lord created me for His works;' for what the wisdom in us says, that the Lord Himself speaks as if it were His own; and, whereas He is not Himself created, being Creator, yet because of the image of Him created in the works [2748] , He says this as if of Himself. And as the Lord Himself has said, He that receiveth you, receiveth Me [2749] ,' because His impress is in us, so, though He be not among the creatures, yet because His image and impress is created in the works, He says, as if in His own person, The Lord created me a beginning of His ways for His works.' And therefore has this impress of Wisdom in the works been brought into being, that, as I said before, the world might recognise in it its own Creator the Word, and through Him the Father. And this is what Paul said, Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shewed it unto them: for the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made [2750] .' But if so, the Word is not a creature in essence [2751] ; but the wisdom which is in us and so called, is spoken of in this passage in the Proverbs.
79. But if this too fails to persuade them, let them tell us themselves, whether there is any wisdom in the creatures or not [2752] ? If not how is it that the Apostle complains, For after that in the Wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God [2753] ?' or how is it if there is no wisdom, that a multitude of wise men [2754] ' are found in Scripture? for a wise man feareth and departeth from evil [2755] ;' and through wisdom is a house builded [2756] ;' and the Preacher says, A man's wisdom maketh his face to shine;' and he blames those who are headstrong thus, Say not thou, what is the cause that the former days were better than these? for thou dost not inquire in wisdom concerning this [2757] .' But if, as the Son of Sirach says, He poured her out upon all His works; she is with all flesh according to His gift, and He hath given her to them that love Him [2758] ,' and this outpouring is a note, not of the Essence of the Very [2759] Wisdom and Only-begotten, but of that wisdom which is imaged in the world, how is it incredible that the All-framing and true Wisdom Itself, whose impress is the wisdom and knowledge poured out in the world, should say, as I have already explained, as if of Itself, The Lord created me for His works?' For the wisdom in the world is not creative, but is that which is created in the works, according to which the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament sheweth His handywork [2760] .' This if men have within them [2761] , they will acknowledge the true Wisdom of God; and will know that they are made really [2762] after God's Image. And, as some son of a king, when the father wished to build a city [2763] , might cause his own name to be printed upon each of the works that were rising, both to give security to them of the works remaining, by reason of the show of his name on everything, and also to make them remember him and his father from the name, and having finished the city might be asked concerning it, how it was made, and then would answer, It is made securely, for according to the will of my father, I am imaged in each work, for my name was made in the works;' but saying this, he does not signify that his own essence is created, but the impress of himself by means of his name; in the same manner, to apply the illustration, to those who admire the wisdom in the creatures, the true Wisdom makes answer, The Lord created me for the works,' for my impress is in them; and I have thus condescended for the framing of all things.
80. Moreover, that the Son should be speaking of the impress that is within us as if it were Himself, should not startle any one, considering (for we must not shrink from repetition [2764] ) that, when Saul was persecuting the Church, in which was His impress and image, He said, as if He were Himself under persecution, Saul, why persecutest thou Me [2765] ?' Therefore (as has been said), as, supposing the impress itself of Wisdom which is in the works had said, The Lord created me for the works,' no one would have been startled, so, if He, the True and Framing Wisdom, the Only-begotten Word of God, should use what belongs to His image as about Himself, namely, The Lord created me for the works,' let no one, overlooking the wisdom created in the world and in the works, think that He created' is said of the Substance of the Very [2766] Wisdom, lest, diluting the wine with water [2767] , he be judged a defrauder of the truth. For It is Creative and Framer; but Its impress is created in the works, as the copy of the image. And He says, Beginning of ways,' since such wisdom becomes a sort of beginning. and, as it were, rudiments of the knowledge of God; for a man entering, as it were, upon this way first, and keeping it in the fear of God (as Solomon says [2768] , The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom'), then advancing upwards in his thoughts and perceiving the Framing Wisdom which is in the creation, will perceive in It also Its Father [2769] , as the Lord Himself has said, He that hath seen Me, hath seen the Father,' and as John writes, He who acknowledgeth the Son, hath the Father also [2770] .' And He says, Before the world He founded me [2771] ,' since in Its impress the works remain settled and eternal. Then, lest any, hearing concerning the wisdom thus created in the works, should think the true Wisdom, God's Son, to be by nature a creature, He has found it necessary to add, Before the mountains, and before the earth, and before the waters, and before all hills He begets me,' that in saying, before every creature' (for He includes all the creation under these heads), He may shew that He is not created together with the works according to Essence. For if He was created for the works,' yet is before them, it follows that He is in being before He was created. He is not then a creature by nature and essence, but as He Himself has added, an Offspring. But in what differs a creature from an offspring, and how it is distinct by nature, has been shewn in what has gone before.
81. But since He proceeds to say, When He prepared the heaven, I was present with Him [2772] ,' we ought to know that He says not this as if without Wisdom the Father prepared the heaven or the clouds above (for there is no room to doubt that all things are created in Wisdom, and without It was made not even one [2773] thing); but this is what He says, All things took place in Me and through Me, and when there was need that Wisdom should be created in the works, in My Essence indeed I was with the Father, but by a condescension [2774] to things originate, I was disposing over the works My own impress, so that the whole world as being in one body, might not be at variance but in concord with itself.' All those then who with an upright understanding, according to the wisdom given unto them, come to contemplate the creatures, are able to say for themselves, By Thy appointment all things continue [2775] ;' but they who make light of this must be told, Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools;' for that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God has revealed it unto them; for the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived by the things that are made, even His eternal Power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse. Because that when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, but served the creature more than the Creator of all, who is blessed for ever. Amen [2776] .' And they will surely be shamed at hearing, For, after that in the wisdom of God (in the mode we have explained above), the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of the preaching to save them that believe [2777] .' For no longer, as in the former times, God has willed to be known by an image and shadow of wisdom, that namely which is in the creatures, but He has made the true Wisdom Itself to take flesh, and to become man, and to undergo the death of the cross; that by the faith in Him, henceforth all that believe may obtain salvation. However, it is the same Wisdom of God, which through Its own Image in the creatures (whence also It is said to be created), first manifested Itself, and through Itself Its own Father; and afterwards, being Itself the Word, has become flesh [2778] ,' as John says, and after abolishing death and saving our race, still more revealed Himself and through Him His own Father, saying, Grant unto them that they may know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent [2779] .'
82. Hence the whole earth is filled with the knowledge of Him; for the knowledge of Father through Son and of Son from Father is one and the same, and the Father delights in Him, and in the same joy the Son rejoices in the Father, saying, I was by Him, daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him [2780] .' And this again proves that the Son is not foreign, but proper to the Father's Essence. For behold, not because of us has He come to be, as the irreligious men say, nor is He out of nothing (for not from without did God procure for Himself a cause of rejoicing), but the words denote what is His own and like. When then was it, when the Father rejoiced not? but if He ever rejoiced, He was ever, in whom He rejoiced. And in whom does the Father rejoice, except as seeing Himself in His own Image, which is His Word? And though in sons of men also He had delight, on finishing the world, as it is written in these same Proverbs [2781] , yet this too has a consistent sense. For even thus He had delight, not because joy was added to Him, but again on seeing the works made after His own Image; so that even this rejoicing of God is on account of His Image. And how too has the Son delight, except as seeing Himself in the Father? for this is the same as saying, He that hath seen Me, hath seen the Father,' and I am in the Father and the Father in Me [2782] .' Vain then is your vaunt as is on all sides shewn, O Christ's enemies, and vainly did ye parade [2783] and circulate everywhere your text, The Lord created me a beginning of His ways,' perverting its sense, and publishing, not Solomon's meaning, but your own comment [2784] . For behold your sense is proved to be but a fantasy; but the passage in the Proverbs, as well as all that is above said, proves that the Son is not a creature in nature and essence, but the proper Offspring of the Father, true Wisdom and Word, by whom all things were made,' and without Him was made not one thing. [2785] ' __________________________________________________________________
[2710] Prov. viii. 23.
[2711] Or. i. 49, n. 2.
[2712] Prov. iii. 19.
[2713] Cf. 44, n. 3.
[2714] §69. 3.
[2715] Serap. ii. 7, 8.
[2716] Vid. supr. pp. 74, 172, and notes. vid. also Serap. i. 32 init. iv. fin. contr. Apoll. i. 6, 8, 9, 11, 22; ii. 8, 9, 13, 14, 17-19. The doctrine of the Church should be proved, not announced (apodeiktikos ouk apophantikos); therefore shew that Scripture thus teaches.' Theod. Eran. p. 199. Ambros. de Incarn. 14. Non recipio quod extra Scripturam de tuo infers. Tertull. Carn. Christ. 7. vid. also 6. Max. dial. v. 29. Heretics in particular professed to be guided by Scripture. Tertull. Præscr. 8. For Gnostics vid. Tertullian's grave sarcasm: Utantur hæretici omnes scripturis ejus, cujus utuntur etiam mundo.' Carn. Christ. 6. For Arians, vid. supr. Or. i. 1, n. 4. And so Marcellus, We consider it unsafe to lay down doctrine concerning things which we have not learned with exactness from the divine Scriptures.' (leg. peri hon para ton). Euseb. Eccl. Theol. p. 177, d. And Macedonians, vid. Leont. de Sect. iv. init. And Monophysites, I have not learned this from Scripture; and I have a great fear of saying what it is silent about.' Theod. Eran. p. 215; also Hilar. ad Const. ii. 9. Hieron. c. Lucif. 27. August. Ep. 120, 13.
[2717] Matt. xvi. 16.
[2718] Ep. Æg. 4. Sent. D. 3. c. infr. 59 init. 67. fin. note infr. on iii. 8.
[2719] Matt. iv. 3.
[2720] §1, n. 6.
[2721] patriken, vid. de Syn. 45, n. 1.
[2722] periergazesthai, vid. iii. 18.
[2723] §60, n. 2.
[2724] 1 Cor. iii. 10, 11; Didym. Trin. iii. 3. p. 341.
[2725] §8, note 3^a.
[2726] Letter 59. 6. Leon. Ep. 28. 3.
[2727] diameinomen, 69, n. 3.
[2728] Gen. i. 31.
[2729] i. 49, n. 10.
[2730] Didym. Trin. iii. 3. p. 342.
[2731] 2 Tim. i. 8-10.
[2732] Eph. i. 3-5.
[2733] Cf. 64, notes 3, 5.
[2734] Matt. xxv. 34.
[2735] The Catholic doctrine seems to be, that Adam innocent was mortal, yet would not in fact have died; that he had no principle of eternal life within him, but was sustained continually by divine power, till such time as immortality should have been given him. vid. Incarn. 4. Cf. Augustine, de pecc. mer. i. 3. Gen. ad lit. vi. 20. Pope Pius V. condemned the assertion of Baius, Immortalitas primi hominis non erat gratiæ beneficium sed naturalis conditio. His decision of course is here referred to only historically.
[2736] Cf. 31. n. 8.
[2737] 74, n. 5.
[2738] §44, n. 1.
[2739] Cf. 73, n. 2. and reff.
[2740] ainigma, supr. i. 41, n. 9.
[2741] Prov. i. 5, 6.
[2742] autosophia vid. infr. note on iv. 2.
[2743] Ps. civ. 24. Sept.
[2744] supr. de Decr. 19, n. 3.
[2745] Cf. 64, notes 2 and 5.
[2746] Didymus argues in favour of interpreting the passage of created wisdom at length, Trin. iii. 3. He says that the context makes this interpretation necessary.
[2747] 1 John ii. 23; Matt. x. 40.
[2748] Athan. here considers wisdom as the image of the Creator in the Universe. He explains it of the Church, de Incarn. contr. Ar. 6. if it be his [but see Prolegg. ch. iii. §1 (36)]; (and so Didym. Trin. iii. 3 fin.) Cf. Jerome, in Eph. iv. 23, 24. Naz. Orat. 30, 2. Epiphanius says, Scripture has nowhere confirmed this passage (Prov. viii. 22), nor has any Apostle referred it to Christ.' (vid. also Basil. contr. Eunom. ii. 20.) Hær. 69. pp. 743-745. He proceeds to shew how it may apply to Him.
[2749] Matt. x. 40.
[2750] Rom. i. 19, 20.
[2751] Cf. 45, n. 2.
[2752] Vid. Epiph. Hær. 69.
[2753] 1 Cor. i. 21.
[2754] Vid. Wisd. vi. 24
[2755] Prov. xiv. 16.
[2756] Ib. xxiv.
[2757] Eccles. viii. 1; vii. 10.
[2758] Ecclus. i. 9, 10.
[2759] Cf. 78, n. 1.
[2760] Ps. xix. 1.
[2761] Cf. contr. Gent. 2, 30, 40, &c. vid. also Basil. de Sp. S. n. 19. Cyril. in Joan. p. 75.
[2762] De Decr. 31, n. 5.
[2763] This is drawn out somewhat differently, and very strikingly in contr. Gent. 43. The Word indeed is regarded more as the Governor than the Life of the world, but shortly before he spoke of the Word as the Principle of permanence. 41 fin.
[2764] to auto gar legein ouk okneteon: where Petavius, de Trin. ii. 1. §8. ingeniously but without any authority reads ouk oknei theon. It is quite a peculiarity of Athan. to repeat and to apologize for doing so. The very same words occur supr. 22, c. Orat. iii. 54, a. Serap. i. 19, b. 27, e. Vid. also 2, c. 41, d. 67, a. 69, b. iii. 39 init. vid. especially supr. p. 47, note 6.
[2765] Acts ix. 4.
[2766] Cf. above, 79, n. 8.
[2767] Isa. i. 22. Infr. iii. 35. Ep. Æg. §17. Ambros. de Fid. iii. 65. p. 157. note 4.
[2768] Prov. i. 7, LXX.
[2769] The whole of this passage might be illustrated at great length from the contr. Gent. and the Incarn. V. D. vid. supr. notes on 79. Cf. c. Gent. 34, and Incarn. 11, 41, 42, &c. Vid. also Basil. contr. Eunom. ii. 16.
[2770] John xiv. 9; 1 John ii. 23. and so Cyril in Joan. p. 864. vid. Wetstein in loc.
[2771] Vid. Prov. viii. 24-26.
[2772] Ib. viii. 27.
[2773] John i. 3.
[2774] Here again the sunkatabasis has no reference whatever to a figurative gennesis, as Bishop Bull contends, but to His impressing the image of Wisdom on the works, or what He above calls the Son's image, on which account He is prototokos
[2775] Vid. Ps. cxix. 91
[2776] Rom. i. 19-25
[2777] 1 Cor. i. 21.
[2778] John i. 14.
[2779] Vid. ib. xvii. 3.
[2780] Prov. viii. 30.
[2781] Prov. viii. 31.
[2782] John xiv. 9, 10.
[2783] enepompeusate. The ancients said pompeuein "to use bad language," and the coarse language of the procession, pompeia. This arose from the custom of persons in the Bacchanalian cars using bad language towards by-standers, and their retorting it.' Erasm. Adag. p. 1158. He quotes Menander, epi ton hamaxon eisi pompeiai tines sphodra loidoroi.
[2784] dianoian, epinoian, supr. Or. i. 52, n. 7.
[2785] John i. 3. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Discourse III.
------------------------
Chapter XXIII.--Texts Explained; Seventhly, John xiv. 10 Introduction. The doctrine of the coinherence. The Father and the Son Each whole and perfect God. They are in Each Other, because their Essence is One and the Same. They are Each Perfect and have One Essence, because the Second Person is the Son of the First. Asterius's evasive explanation of the text under review; refuted. Since the Son has all that the Father has, He is His Image; and the Father is the One God, because the Son is in the Father.
1. The Ario-maniacs, as it appears, having once made up their minds to transgress and revolt from the Truth, are strenuous in appropriating the words of Scripture, When the impious cometh into a depth of evils, he despiseth [2786] ;' for refutation does not stop them, nor perplexity abash them; but, as having a whore's forehead,' they refuse to be ashamed [2787] ' before all men in their irreligion. For whereas the passages which they alleged, The Lord created me [2788] ,' and Made better than the Angels [2789] ,' and First-born [2790] ,' and Faithful to Him that made Him [2791] ' have a right sense [2792] , and inculcate religiousness towards Christ, so it is that these men still, as if bedewed with the serpent's poison, not seeing what they ought to see, nor understanding what they read, as if in vomit from the depth of their irreligious heart, have next proceeded to disparage our Lord's words, I in the Father and the Father in Me [2793] ;' saying, How can the One be contained in the Other and the Other in the One?' or How at all can the Father who is the greater be contained in the Son who is the less?' or What wonder, if the Son is in the Father,' considering it is written even of us, In Him we live and move and have our being [2794] ?' And this state of mind is consistent with their perverseness, who think God to be material, and understand not what is True Father' and True Son,' nor Light Invisible' and Eternal,' and Its Radiance Invisible,' nor Invisible Subsistence,' and Immaterial Expression' and Immaterial Image.' For did they know, they would not dishonour and ridicule the Lord of glory, nor interpreting things immaterial after a material manner, pervert good words. It were sufficient indeed, on hearing only words which are the Lord's, at once to believe, since the faith of simplicity is better than an elaborate process of persuasion; but since they have endeavoured to profane even this passage to their own heresy, it becomes necessary to expose their perverseness and to shew the mind of the truth, at least for the security of the faithful. For when it is said, I in the Father and the Father in Me,' They are not therefore, as these suppose, discharged into Each Other, filling the One the Other, as in the case of empty vessels, so that the Son fills the emptiness of the Father and the Father that of the Son [2795] , and Each of Them by Himself is not complete and perfect (for this is proper to bodies, and therefore the mere assertion of it is full of irreligion), for the Father is full and perfect, and the Son is the Fulness of Godhead. Nor again, as God, by coming into the Saints, strengthens them, thus is He also in the Son. For He is Himself the Father's Power and Wisdom, and by partaking of Him things originate are sanctified in the Spirit; but the Son Himself is not Son by participation, but is the Father's own Offspring [2796] . Nor again is the Son in the Father, in the sense of the passage, In Him we live and move and have our being;' for, He as being from the Fount [2797] of the Father is the Life, in which all things are both quickened and consist; for the Life does not live in life [2798] , else it would not be Life, but rather He gives life to all things.
2. But now let us see what Asterius the Sophist says, the retained pleader [2799] for the heresy. In imitation then of the Jews so far, he writes as follows; It is very plain that He has said, that He is in the Father and the Father again in Him, for this reason, that neither the word on which He was discoursing is, as He says, His own, but the Father's, nor the works belong to Him, but to the Father who gave Him the power.' Now this, if uttered at random by a little child, had been excused from his age; but when one who bears the title of Sophist, and professes universal knowledge [2800] , is the writer, what a serious condemnation does he deserve! And does he not shew himself a stranger to the Apostle [2801] , as being puffed up with persuasive words of wisdom, and thinking thereby to succeed in deceiving, not understanding himself what he says nor whereof he affirms [2802] ? For what the Son has said as proper and suitable to a Son only, who is Word and Wisdom and Image of the Father's Essence, that he levels to all the creatures, and makes common to the Son and to them; and he says, lawless [2803] man, that the Power of the Father receives power, that from this his irreligion it may follow to say that in a son [2804] the Son was made a son, and the Word received a word's authority; and, far from granting that He spoke this as a Son, He ranks Him with all things made as having learned it as they have. For if the Son said, I am in the Father and the Father in Me,' because His discourses were not His own words but the Father's, and so of His works, then,--since David says, I will hear what the Lord God shall say in me [2805] ,' and again Solomon [2806] , My words are spoken by God,' and since Moses was minister of words which were from God, and each of the Prophets spoke not what was his own but what was from God, Thus saith the Lord,' and since the works of the Saints, as they professed, were not their own but God's who gave the power, Elijah for instance and Elisha invoking God that He Himself would raise the dead, and Elisha saying to Naaman, on cleansing him from the leprosy, that thou mayest know that there is a God in Israel [2807] ,' and Samuel too in the days of the harvest praying to God to grant rain, and the Apostles saying that not in their own power they did miracles but in the Lord's grace--it is plain that, according to Asterius such a statement must be common to all, so that each of them is able to say, I in the Father and the Father in me;' and as a consequence that He is no longer one Son of God and Word and Wisdom, but, as others, is only one out of many.
3. But if the Lord said this, His words would not rightly have been, I in the Father and the Father in Me,' but rather, I too am in the Father, and the Father is in Me too,' that He may have nothing of His own and by prerogative [2808] , relatively to the Father, as a Son, but the same grace in common with all. But it is not so, as they think; for not understanding that He is genuine Son from the Father, they belie Him who is such, whom alone it befits to say, I in the Father and the Father in Me.' For the Son is in the Father, as it is allowed us to know, because the whole Being of the Son is proper to the Father's essence [2809] , as radiance from light, and stream from fountain; so that whoso sees the Son, sees what is proper to the Father, and knows that the Son's Being, because from the Father, is therefore in the Father. For the Father is in the Son, since the Son is what is from the Father and proper to Him, as in the radiance the sun, and in the word the thought, and in the stream the fountain: for whoso thus contemplates the Son, contemplates what is proper to the Father's Essence, and knows that the Father is in the Son. For whereas the Form [2810] and Godhead of the Father is the Being of the Son, it follows that the Son is in the Father and the Father in the Son [2811] .
4. On this account and reasonably, having said before, I and the Father are One,' He added, I in the Father and the Father in Me, [2812] ' by way of shewing the identity [2813] of Godhead and the unity of Essence. For they are one, not [2814] as one thing divided into two parts, and these nothing but one, nor as one thing twice named, so that the Same becomes at one time Father, at another His own Son, for this Sabellius holding was judged an heretic. But They are two, because the Father is Father and is not also Son, and the Son is Son and not also Father [2815] ; but the nature is one; (for the offspring is not unlike [2816] its parent, for it is his image), and all that is the Father's, is the Son's [2817] . Wherefore neither is the Son another God, for He was not procured from without, else were there many, if a godhead be procured foreign from the Father's [2818] ; for if the Son be other, as an Offspring, still He is the Same as God; and He and the Father are one in propriety and peculiarity of nature, and in the identity of the one Godhead, as has been said. For the radiance also is light, not second to the sun, nor a different light, nor from participation of it, but a whole and proper offspring of it. And such an offspring is necessarily one light; and no one would say that they are two lights [2819] , but sun and radiance two, yet one the light from the sun enlightening in its radiance all things. So also the Godhead of the Son is the Father's; whence also it is indivisible; and thus there is one God and none other but He. And so, since they are one, and the Godhead itself one, the same things are said of the Son, which are said of the Father, except His being said to be Father [2820] :--for instance [2821] , that He is God, And the Word was God [2822] ;' Almighty, Thus saith He which was and is and is to come, the Almighty [2823] ;' Lord, One Lord Jesus Christ [2824] ;' that He is Light, I am the Light [2825] ;' that He wipes out sins, that ye may know,' He says, that the Son of man hath power upon earth to forgive sins [2826] ;' and so with other attributes. For all things,' says the Son Himself, whatsoever the Father hath, are Mine [2827] ;' and again, And Mine are Thine.'
5. And on hearing the attributes of the Father spoken of a Son, we shall thereby see the Father in the Son; and we shall contemplate the Son in the Father, when what is said of the Son is said of the Father also. And why are the attributes of the Father ascribed to the Son, except that the Son is an Offspring from Him? and why are the Son's attributes proper to the Father, except again because the Son is the proper Offspring of His Essence? And the Son, being the proper Offspring of the Father's Essence, reasonably says that the Father's attributes are His own also; whence suitably and consistently with saying, I and the Father are One,' He adds, that ye may know that I am in the Father and the Father in Me [2828] .' Moreover, He has added this again, He that hath seen Me, hath seen the Father [2829] ;' and there is one and the same sense in these three [2830] passages. For he who in this sense understands that the Son and the Father are one, knows that He is in the Father and the Father in the Son; for the Godhead of the Son is the Father's, and it is in the Son; and whoso enters into this, is convinced that He that hath seen the Son, hath seen the Father;' for in the Son is contemplated the Father's Godhead. And we may perceive this at once from the illustration of the Emperor's image. For in the image is the shape and form of the Emperor, and in the Emperor is that shape which is in the image. For the likeness of the Emperor in the image is exact [2831] ; so that a person who looks at the image, sees in it the Emperor; and he again who sees the Emperor, recognises that it is he who is in the image [2832] . And from the likeness not differing, to one who after the image wished to view the Emperor, the image might say, I and the Emperor are one; for I am in him, and he in me; and what thou seest in me, that thou beholdest in him, and what thou hast seen in him, that thou holdest in me [2833] .' Accordingly he who worships the image, in it worships the Emperor also; for the image is his form and appearance. Since then the Son too is the Father's Image, it must necessarily be understood that the Godhead and propriety of the Father is the Being of the Son.
6. And this is what is said, Who being in the form of God [2834] ,' and the Father in Me.' Nor is this Form [2835] of the Godhead partial merely, but the fulness of the Father's Godhead is the Being of the Son, and the Son is whole God. Therefore also, being equal to God, He thought it not a prize to be equal to God;' and again since the Godhead and the Form of the Son is none other's than the Father's [2836] , this is what He says, I in the Father.' Thus God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself [2837] ;' for the propriety of the Father's Essence is that Son, in whom the creation was then reconciled with God. Thus what things the Son then wrought are the Father's works, for the Son is the Form of that Godhead of the Father, which wrought the works. And thus he who looks at the Son, sees the Father; for in the Father's Godhead is and is contemplated the Son; and the Father's Form which is in Him shews in Him the Father; and thus the Father is in the Son. And that propriety and Godhead which is from the Father in the Son, shews the Son in the Father, and His inseparability from Him; and whoso hears and beholds that what is said of the Father is also said of the Son, not as accruing to His Essence by grace or participation, but because the very Being of the Son is the proper Offspring of the Father's Essence, will fitly understand the words, as I said before, I in the Father, and the Father in Me;' and I and the Father are One [2838] .' For the Son is such as the Father is, because He has all that is the Father's. Wherefore also is He implied together with the Father. For, a son not being, one cannot say father; whereas when we call God a Maker, we do not of necessity intimate the things which have come to be; for a maker is before his works [2839] . But when we call God Father, at once with the Father we signify the Son's existence. Therefore also he who believes in the Son, believes also in the Father: for he believes in what is proper to the Father's Essence; and thus the faith is one in one God. And he who worships and honours the Son, in the Son worships and honours the Father; for one is the Godhead; and therefore one [2840] the honour and one the worship which is paid to the Father in and through the Son. And he who thus worships, worships one God; for there is one God and none other than He. Accordingly when the Father is called the only God, and we read that there is one God [2841] , and I am,' and beside Me there is no God,' and I the first and I the last [2842] ,' this has a fit meaning. For God is One and Only and First; but this is not said to the denial of the Son [2843] , perish the thought; for He is in that One, and First and Only, as being of that One and Only and First the Only Word and Wisdom and Radiance. And He too is the First, as the Fulness of the Godhead of the First and Only, being whole and full God [2844] . This then is not said on His account, but to deny that there is other such as the Father and His Word. __________________________________________________________________
[2786] Prov. xviii. 3, LXX.
[2787] Jer. iii. 3.
[2788] Supr. ch. xix.
[2789] Ch. xiii.
[2790] Ch. xxi.
[2791] Ch. xiv.
[2792] ii. 44, n. 1.
[2793] John xiv. 10.
[2794] Acts xvii. 28. Vid. supr. ii. 41, note 11. The doctrine of the perichoresis, which this objection introduces, is the test of orthodoxy opposed to Arianism. Cf. de Syn. 15, n. 4. This is seen clearly in the case of Eusebius, whose language approaches to Catholic more nearly than Arians in general. After all his strong assertions, the question recurs, is our Lord a distinct being from God, as we are, or not? he answers in the affirmative, vid. supr. p. 75, n. 7, whereas we believe that He is literally and numerically one with the Father, and therefore His Person dwells in the Father's Person by an ineffable union. And hence the language of Dionysius [of Rome] supr. de Decr. 26. the Holy Ghost must repose and habitate in God,' emphilochorein to theo kai endiaitasthai. And hence the strong figure of S. Jerome (in which he is followed by S. Cyril, Thesaur. p. 51), Filius locus est Patris, sicut et Pater locus est Filii.' in Ezek. iii. 12. So Athan. contrasts the creatures who are en memerismenois topois and the Son. Serap. iii. 4. Cf. even in the Macrostich Creed, language of this character, viz. All the Father embosoming the Son, and all the Son hanging and adhering to the Father, and alone resting on the Father's breast continually.' De Syn. 26 (7), where vid. note 3.
[2795] This is not inconsistent with S. Jerome as quoted in the foregoing note. Athan. merely means that such illustrations cannot be taken literally, as if spoken of natural subjects. The Father is the topos or locus of the Son, because when we contemplate the Son in His fulness as holos theos, we merely view the Father as that Person in whom God the Son is; our mind abstracts His Essence which is the Son for the moment from Him, and regards Him merely as Father. Thus in Illud. Omn. 4, supr. p. 89. It is, however, but an operation of the mind, and not a real emptying of Godhead from the Father, if such words may be used. Father and Son are both the same God, though really and eternally distinct from each other; and Each is full of the Other, that is, their Essence is one and the same. This is insisted on by S. Cyril, in Joan. p. 28. And by S. Hilary, Trin. vii. fin. vid. also iii. 23. Cf. the quotation from S. Anselm made by Petavius, de Trin. iv. 16 fin. [Cf. D.C.B. s.v. Metangismonitae.]
[2796] Vid. de Decr. 10, n. 4, 19, n. 3; Or. i. 15, n. 6. On the other hand Eusebius considers the Son, like a creature, ex autes tes patrikes [not ousias, but] metousias, hosper apo peges, ep' auton procheomenes pleroumenon. Eccl. Theol. i. 2. words which are the more observable, the nearer they approach to the language of Athan. in the text and elsewhere. Vid. infr. by way of contrast, oude kata metousian autou, all' holon idion autou gennema. 4.
[2797] De Decr. 15, n. 9.
[2798] i.e. Son does not live by the gift of life, for He is life, and does but give it, not receive. S. Hilary uses different language with the same meaning, de Trin. ii. 11. Other modes of expression for the same mystery are found infr. 3. also 6 fin. Vid. de Syn. 45, n. 1. and Didymus he patrike theotes. p. 82. and S. Basil, ex hou echei to einai. contr. Eunom. ii. 12 fin. Just above Athan. says that the Son is the fulness of the Godhead.' Thus the Father is the Son's life because the Son is from Him, and the Son the Father's because the Son is in Him. All these are but different ways of signifying the perichoresis
[2799] sunegorou, infr. §60.
[2800] panta ginoskein epangellomenos. Gorgias, according to Cicero de fin. ii. init. was the first who ventured in public to say proballete, give me a question.' This was the epangelma of the Sophists; of which Aristotle speaks. Rhet. ii. 24 fin. Vid. Cressol. Theatr. Rhet. iii. 11.
[2801] 1 Cor. ii. 4.
[2802] 1 Tim. i. 7.
[2803] paranomos. infr. 47, c. Hist. Ar. 71, 75, 79. Ep. Æg. 16, d. Vid. anomos. 2 Thess. ii. 8.
[2804] en hui& 254;, but en to hui& 254;. Ep. Æg. 14 fin. vid. Or. ii. 22, note 2.
[2805] Ps. lxxxv. 8, LXX.
[2806] 1 Kings viii. 59, or x. 24?
[2807] 2 Kings v. 8, 15.
[2808] Or. ii. 19, n. 6.
[2809] Since the Father and the Son are the numerically One God, it is but expressing this in other words to say that the Father is in the Son and the Son in the Father, for all They have and all They are is common to Each, excepting Their being Father and Son. A perichoresis of Persons is implied in the Unity of Essence. This is the connexion of the two texts so often quoted; the Son is in the Father and the Father in the Son,' because the Son and the Father are one.' And the cause of this unity and perichoresis is the Divine gennesis. Thus S. Hilary, Trin. ii. 4. vid. Or. ii. 33, n. 1.
[2810] eidous. Petavius here prefers the reading idiou; theotes and to hidion occur together infr. 6. and 56. eidos occurs Orat. i. 20, a. de Syn. 52. vid. de Syn. 52, n. 6. infr. 6, 16, Ep. Æg. 17, contr. Sabell. Greg. 8, c. 12, vid. infr. §§6, 16, notes.
[2811] In accordance with §1, note 10, Thomassin observes that by the mutual coinherence or indwelling of the Three Blessed Persons is meant not a commingling as of material liquids, nor as of soul with body, nor as the union of our Lord's Godhead and humanity, but it is such that the whole power, life, substance, wisdom, essence, of the Father, should be the very essence, substance, wisdom, life, and power of the Son.' de Trin. xxviii. 1. S. Cyril adopts Athan.'s language to express this doctrine in Joan. p. 105. de Trin. vi. p. 621, in Joan. p. 168. Vid. infr. tautotes ousias, 21. patrike theotes tou huiou, 26. and 41. and de Syn. 45, n. 1. vid. also Damasc. F. O. i. 8. pp. 139, 140.
[2812] John x. 30.
[2813] De Syn. 45, n. 1.
[2814] Infr. Orat. iv. 9.
[2815] Infr. 11.
[2816] anomoion; and so anomoios kata panta. Orat. i. 6. kat' ousian. 17. Orat. ii. 43. tes ousias. infr. 14. vid. anomoiotes. infr. 8, c.
[2817] Cf. in illud. Omn. 4. As the Father is I am (ho on) so His Word is I Am and God over all.' Serap. i. 28, a; ib. ii. 2.
[2818] Cf. i. 6.
[2819] Doctrine of the Una Res, de Syn. 45, n. 1.
[2820] Ib. 49, n. 4.
[2821] Parallel to de Syn. 49.
[2822] John i. 1.
[2823] Rev. i. 8.
[2824] 1 Cor. viii. 6.
[2825] John viii. 12.
[2826] Luke v. 24.
[2827] John xvi. 15; xvii. 10.
[2828] John x. 30, 38; xiv. 10.
[2829] Ib. xiv. 9.
[2830] Here these three texts, which so often occur together, are recognized as three;' so are they by Eusebius Eccl. Theol. iii. 19; and he says that Marcellus and those who Sabellianize with him,' among whom he included Catholics, were in the practice of adducing them, thrullountes; which bears incidental testimony to the fact that the doctrine of the perichoresis was the great criterion between orthodox and Arian. Many instances of the joint use of the three are given supr. i. 34, n. 7. to which may be added Orat. ii. 54 init. iii. 16 fin. 67 fin. iv. 17, a. Serap. ii. 9, c. Serm. Maj. de fid. 29. Cyril. de Trin. p. 554. in Joann. p. 168. Origen Periarch. p. 56. Hil. Trin. ix. 1. Ambros. Hexaem. 6. August. de Cons. Ev. i. 7.
[2831] aparallaktos, de Syn. 23, n. 1.
[2832] Vid. Basil. Hom. contr. Sab. p. 192. The honour paid to the Imperial Statues is well known. Ambros. in Psalm cxviii. x. 25. vid. also Chrysost. Hom. on Statues, passim, fragm. in Act. Conc. vii. (t. 4, p. 89. Hard.) Socr. vi. 18. The Seventh Council speaks of the images sent by the Emperors into provinces instead of their coming in person; Ducange in v. Lauratum. Vid. a description of the imperial statutes and their honours in Gothofred, Cod. Theod. t. 5, pp. 346, 7. and in Philostorg. xii. 12. vid. also Molanus de Imaginibus ed. Paquot, p. 197.
[2833] Athanasius guards against what is defective in this illustration in the next chapter, but independent of such explanation a mistake as to his meaning would be impossible; and the passage affords a good instance of the imperfect and partial character of all illustrations of the Divine Mystery. What it is taken to symbolize is the unity of the Father and Son, for the Image is not a Second Emperor but the same. vid. Sabell. Greg. 6. But no one, who bowed before the Emperor's Statue can be supposed to have really worshipped it; whereas our Lord is the Object of supreme worship, which terminates in Him, as being really one with Him whose Image He is. From the custom of paying honour to the Imperial Statues, the Cultus Imaginum was introduced into the Eastern Church. The Western Church, not having had the civil custom, resisted. vid. Döllinger, Church History, vol. 3. p. 55. E. Tr. The Fathers, e.g. S. Jerome, set themselves against the civil custom, as idolatrous, comparing it to that paid to Nebuchadnezzar's statue. vid. Hieron. in Dan. iii. 18. Incense was burnt before those of the Emperors; as afterwards before the images of the Saints.
[2834] Phil. ii. 6.
[2835] eidos, vid. infr. 16, note.
[2836] Here first the Son's eidos is the eidos of the Father, then the Son is the eidos of the Father's Godhead, and then in the Son is the eidos of the Father. These expressions are equivalent, if Father and Son are, each separately, holos theos. vid. infr. §16, note. S. Greg. Naz. uses the word opisthia (Exod. xxxiii. 23), which forms a contrast to eidos, for the Divine Works. Orat. 28, 3.
[2837] 2 Cor. v. 19.
[2838] John xiv. 10; x. 30.
[2839] Vid. supr. de Decr. 30; Or. i. 33. This is in opposition to the Arians, who said that the title Father implied priority of existence. Athan. says that the title Maker' does, but that the title father' does not. vid. supr. p. 76, n. 3; Or. i. 29, n. 10: ii. 41, n. 11.
[2840] Athan. de Incarn. c. Ar. 19, c. vid. Ambros. de fid. iii. cap. 12, 13. Naz. Orat. 23, 8. Basil. de Sp. S. n. 64.
[2841] Mark xii. 29.
[2842] Ex. iii. 14; Deut. xxxii. 39, LXX.; Is. xliv. 6
[2843] De Decr. 19, n. 6.
[2844] Vid. supr. 1, note 10; ii. 41 fin. also infr. iv. 1. Pseudo-Ath. c. Sab. Greg. 5-12. Naz. Orat. 40, 41. Synes. Hymn. iii. pp. 328, 9. Ambros. de Fid. i. n. 18. August. Ep. 170, 5. vid. Or. ii. 38, n. 6. and infr. note on 36 fin. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXIV.--Texts Explained; Eighthly, John xvii. 3. and the Like. Our Lord's divinity cannot interfere with His Father's prerogatives, as the One God, which were so earnestly upheld by the Son. One' is used in contrast to false gods and idols, not to the Son, through whom the Father spoke. Our Lord adds His Name to the Father's, as included in Him. The Father the First, not as if the Son were not First too, but as Origin.
7. Now that this is the sense of the Prophet is clear and manifest to all; but since the irreligious men, alleging such passages also, dishonour the Lord and reproach us, saying, Behold God is said to be One and Only and First; how say ye that the Son is God? for if He were God, He had not said, "I Alone," nor "God is One [2845] ;"' it is necessary to declare the sense of these phrases in addition, as far as we can, that all may know from this also that the Arians are really contending with God [2846] . If there then is rivalry of the Son towards the Father, then be such words uttered against Him; and if according to what is said to David concerning Adonijah and Absalom [2847] , so also the Father looks upon the Son, then let Him utter and urge such words against Himself, lest He the Son, calling Himself God, make any to revolt from the Father. But if he who knows the Son, on the contrary, knows the Father, the Son Himself revealing Him to him, and in the Word he shall rather see the Father, as has been said, and if the Son on coming, glorified not Himself but the Father, saying to one who came to Him, Why callest thou Me good? none is good save One, that is, God [2848] ;' and to one who asked, what was the great commandment in the Law, answering, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is One Lord [2849] ;' and saying to the multitudes, I came down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him that sent Me [2850] ;' and teaching the disciples, My Father is greater than I,' and He that honoureth Me, honoureth Him that sent Me [2851] ;' if the Son is such towards His own Father, what is the difficulty [2852] , that one must need take such a view of such passages? and on the other hand, if the Son is the Father's Word, who is so wild, besides these Christ-opposers, as to think that God has thus spoken, as traducing and denying His own Word? This is not the mind of Christians; perish the thought; for not with reference to the Son is it thus written, but for the denial of those falsely called gods, invented by men.
8. And this account of the meaning of such passages is satisfactory; for since those who are devoted to gods falsely so called, revolt from the True God, therefore God, being good and careful for mankind, recalling the wanderers, says, I am Only God,' and I Am,' and Besides Me there is no God,' and the like; that He may condemn things which are not, and may convert all men to Himself. And as, supposing in the daytime when the sun was shining, a man were rudely to paint a piece of wood, which had not even the appearance of light, and call that image the cause of light, and if the sun with regard to it were to say, I alone am the light of the day, and there is no other light of the day but I,' he would say this, with regard, not to his own radiance, but to the error arising from the wooden image and the dissimilitude of that vain representation; so it is with I am,' and I am Only God,' and There is none other besides Me,' viz. that He may make men renounce falsely called gods, and that they may recognise Him the true God instead. Indeed when God said this, He said it through His own Word, unless forsooth the modern [2853] Jews add this too, that He has not said this through His Word; but so hath He spoken, though they rave, these followers of the devil [2854] . For the Word of the Lord came to the Prophet, and this was what was heard; nor is there a thing which God says or does, but He says and does it in the Word. Not then with reference to Him is this said, O Christ's enemies, but to things foreign to Him and not from [2855] Him. For according to the aforesaid illustration, if the sun had spoken those words, he would have been setting right the error and have so spoken, not as having his radiance without him, but in the radiance shewing his own light. Therefore not for the denial of the Son, nor with reference to Him, are such passages, but to the overthrow of falsehood. Accordingly God spoke not such words to Adam at the beginning, though His Word was with Him, by whom all things came to be; for there was no need, before idols came in; but when men made insurrection against the truth and named for themselves gods such as they would [2856] , then it was that need arose of such words, for the denial of gods that were not. Nay I would add, that they were said even in anticipation of the folly of these Christ-opposers [2857] , that they might know, that whatsoever god they devise external to the Father's Essence, he is not True God, nor Image and Son of the Only and First.
9. If then the Father be called the only true God, this is said not to the denial of Him who said, I am the Truth [2858] ,' but of those on the other hand who by nature are not true, as the Father and His Word are. And hence the Lord Himself added at once, And Jesus Christ whom Thou didst send [2859] .' Now had He been a creature, He would not have added this, and ranked Himself with His Creator (for what fellowship is there between the True and the not true?); but as it is, by adding Himself to the Father, He has shewn that He is of the Father's nature; and He has given us to know that of the True Father He is True Offspring. And John too, as he had learned [2860] , so he teaches this, writing in his Epistle, And we are in the True, even in His Son Jesus Christ; This is the True God and eternal life [2861] .' And when the Prophet says concerning the creation, That stretcheth forth the heavens alone [2862] ,' and when God says, I only stretch out the heavens,' it is made plain to every one, that in the Only is signified also the Word of the Only, in whom all things were made,' and without whom was made not one thing.' Therefore, if they were made through the Word, and yet He says, I Only,' and together with that Only is understood the Son, through whom the heavens were made, so also then, if it be said, One God,' and I Only,' and I the First,' in that One and Only and First is understood the Word coexisting, as in the Light the Radiance. And this can be understood of no other than the Word alone. For all other things subsisted out of nothing through the Son, and are greatly different in nature; but the Son Himself is natural and true Offspring from the Father; and thus the very passage which these insensates have thought fit to adduce, I the First,' in defence of their heresy, doth rather expose their perverse spirit. For God says, I the First and I the Last;' if then, as though ranked with the things after Him, He is said to be first of them, so that they come next to Him, then certainly you will have shewn that He Himself precedes the works in time only [2863] ; which, to go no further, is extreme irreligion; but if it is in order to prove that He is not from any, nor any before Him, but that He is Origin and Cause of all things, and to destroy the Gentile fables, that He has said I the First,' it is plain also, that when the Son is called First-born, this is done not for the sake of ranking Him with the creation, but to prove the framing and adoption of all things [2864] through the Son. For as the Father is First, so also is He both First [2865] , as Image of the First, and because the First is in Him, and also Offspring from the Father, in whom the whole creation is created and adopted into sonship. __________________________________________________________________
[2845] Deut. xxxii. 39; vi. 4, &c.
[2846] theomachoi. vid. Acts v. 39.
[2847] 2 Sam. xv. 13; 1 Kings i. 11.
[2848] Luke xviii. 19, and vid. Basil. Ep. 236, 1.
[2849] Mark xii. 29.
[2850] John vi. 38; xiv. 28.
[2851] John v. 23, cf. xiii. 20.
[2852] §58, note.
[2853] hoi nun, cf. Or. ii. 1, note 6, and Hist. Ar. 61, fin.
[2854] diabolikoi. vid. supr. p. 187, and de Decr. 5, note 2. vid. also Orat. ii. 38, a. 73, a. 74 init. Ep. Æg. 4 and 6. In the passage before us there seems an allusion to false accusation or lying, which is the proper meaning of the word; diaballon occurs shortly before. And so in Apol. ad Const. when he calls Magnentius diabolos, it is as being a traitor, 7. and soon after he says that his accuser was ton diabolou propon analabon, where the word has no article, and diabeblemai and dieblethen have preceded. vid. also Hist. Ar. 52 fin. And so in Sent. D. his speaking of the Arians' father the devil,' 3, c. is explained 4, b. by tous pateras diaballonton and tes eis ton episkopon diaboles.
[2855] para, vid. §24 end, and John xv. 26
[2856] ohus ethelon, infr. §10, n. 1.
[2857] Who worship one whom they themselves call a creature, vid. supr. Or. i. 8, n. 8, ii. 14, n. 7, 21, n. 2, and below, §16 notes.
[2858] John xiv. 6.
[2859] Ib. xvii. 3.
[2860] mathon edidaxe, de Decr. 7, n. 8; Or. ii. 1, note 6^a.
[2861] 1 John v. 20.
[2862] Isai. xliv. 24.
[2863] He says that in I the first' the question of time does not come in, else creatures would come second' to the Creator, as if His and their duration admitted of a common measure. First' then does not imply succession, but is equivalent to arche; a word which, as Father,' does not imply that the Son is not from eternity.
[2864] ii. 62, n. 2.
[2865] It is no inconsistency to say that the Father is first, and the Son first also, for comparison or number does not enter into mystery. Since Each is holos theos, Each, as contemplated by our finite reason, at the moment of contemplation excludes the Other. Though we say' Three Persons, Person hardly denotes one abstract idea,' certainly not as containing under it three individual subjects, but it is a term' applied to the One God in three ways. It is the doctrine of the Fathers, that, though we use words expressive of a Trinity, yet that God is beyond number, and that Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, though eternally distinct from each other, can scarcely be viewed together in common, except as One' substance, as if they could not be generalized into Three Any whatever; and as if it were, strictly speaking, incorrect to speak of a' Person, or otherwise than of the' Person, whether of Father, or of Son, or of Spirit. The question has almost been admitted by S. Austin, whether it is not possible to say that God is One' Person (Trin. vii. 8), for He is wholly and entirely Father, and at the same time wholly and entirely Son, and wholly and entirely Holy Ghost. Some references to the Fathers shall be given on that subject, infr. 36 fin. vid. also supr. §6, n. 11. Meanwhile the doctrine here stated will account for such expressions as God from God,' i.e. the One God (who is the Son) from the One God (who is the Father); vid. supr. de Syn. 52, note 8. Again, he ousia haute tes ousias tes patrikes esti gennema. de Syn. 48, b. Vid. also infr. Orat. iv. 1 and 2. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXV.--Texts Explained; Ninthly, John x. 30; xvii. 11, &c. Arian explanation, that the Son is one with the Father in will and judgment; but so are all good men, nay things inanimate; contrast of the Son. Oneness between Them is in nature, because oneness in operation. Angels not objects of prayer, because they do not work together with God, but the Son; texts quoted. Seeing an Angel, is not seeing God. Arians in fact hold two Gods, and tend to Gentile polytheism. Arian explanation that the Father and Son are one as we are one with Christ, is put aside by the Regula Fidei, and shewn invalid by the usage of Scripture in illustrations; the true force of the comparison; force of the terms used. Force of in us;' force of as;' confirmed by S. John. In what sense we are in God' and His sons.'
10. However here too they introduce their private fictions, and contend that the Son and the Father are not in such wise one,' or like,' as the Church preaches, but, as they themselves would have it [2866] . For they say, since what the Father wills, the Son wills also, and is not contrary either in what He thinks or in what He judges, but is in all respects concordant [2867] with Him, declaring doctrines which are the same, and a word consistent and united with the Father's teaching, therefore it is that He and the Father are One; and some of them have dared to write as well as say this [2868] . Now what can be more unseemly or irrational than this? for if therefore the Son and the Father are One and if in this way the Word is like the Father, it follows forthwith [2869] that the Angels [2870] too, and the other beings above us, Powers and Authorities, and Thrones and Dominions, and what we see, Sun and Moon, and the Stars, should be sons also, as the Son; and that it should be said of them too, that they and the Father are one, and that each is God's Image and Word. For what God wills, that will they; and neither in judging nor in doctrine are they discordant, but in all things are obedient to their Maker. For they would not have remained in their own glory, unless, what the Father willed, that they had willed also. He, for instance, who did not remain, but went astray, heard the words, How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning [2871] ?' But if this be so, how is only He Only-begotten Son and Word and Wisdom? or how, whereas so many are like the Father, is He only an Image? for among men too will be found many like the Father, numbers, for instance, of martyrs, and before them the Apostles and Prophets, and again before them the Patriarchs. And many now too keep the Saviour's command, being merciful as their Father which is in heaven [2872] ,' and observing the exhortation, Be ye therefore followers of God as dear children, and walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us [2873] ;' many too have become followers of Paul as he also of Christ [2874] . And yet no one of these is Word or Wisdom or Only-begotten Son or Image; nor did any one of them make bold to say, I and the Father are One,' or, I in the Father, and the Father in Me [2875] ;' but it is said of all of them, Who is like unto Thee among the gods, O Lord? and who shall be likened to the Lord among the sons of Gods [2876] ?' and of Him on the contrary that He only is Image true and natural of the Father. For though we have been made after the Image [2877] , and called both image and glory of God, yet not on our own account still, but for that Image and true Glory of God inhabiting us, which is His Word, who was for us afterwards made flesh, have we this grace of our designation.
11. This their notion then being evidently unseemly and irrational as well as the rest, the likeness and the oneness must be referred to the very Essence of the Son; for unless it be so taken, He will not be shown to have anything beyond things originate, as has been said, nor will He be like the Father, but He will be like the Father's doctrines; and He differs from the Father, in that the Father is Father [2878] , but the doctrines and teaching are the Father's. If then in respect to the doctrines and the teaching the Son is like the Father, then the Father according to them will be Father in name only, and the Son will not be an exact Image, or rather will be seen to have no propriety at all or likeness of the Father; for what likeness or propriety has he who is so utterly different from the Father? for Paul taught like the Saviour, yet was not like Him in essence [2879] .' Having then such notions, they speak falsely; whereas the Son and the Father are one in such wise as has been said, and in such wise is the Son like the Father Himself and from Him, as we may see and understand son to be towards father, and as we may see the radiance towards the sun. Such then being the Son, therefore when the Son works, the Father is the Worker [2880] , and the Son coming to the Saints, the Father is He who cometh in the Son [2881] , as He promised when He said, I and My Father will come, and will make Our abode with him [2882] ;' for in the Image is contemplated the Father, and in the Radiance is the Light. Therefore also, as we said just now, when the Father gives grace and peace, the Son also gives it, as Paul signifies in every Epistle, writing, Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.' For one and the same grace is from the Father in the Son, as the light of the sun and of the radiance is one, and as the sun's illumination is effected through the radiance; and so too when he prays for the Thessalonians, in saying, Now God Himself even our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ, may He direct our way unto you [2883] ,' he has guarded the unity of the Father and of the Son. For he has not said, May they direct,' as if a double grace were given from two Sources, This and That, but May He direct,' to shew that the Father gives it through the Son;--at which these irreligious ones will not blush, though they well might.
12. For if there were no unity, nor the Word the own Offspring of the Father's Essence, as the radiance of the light, but the Son were divided in nature from the Father, it were sufficient that the Father alone should give, since none of originate things is a partner with his Maker in His givings; but, as it is, such a mode of giving shews the oneness of the Father and the Son. No one, for instance, would pray to receive from God and the Angels [2884] , or from any other creature, nor would any one say, May God and the Angel give thee;' but from Father and the Son, because of Their oneness and the oneness of Their giving. For through the Son is given what is given; and there is nothing but the Father operates it through the Son; for thus is grace secure to him who receives it. And if the Patriarch Jacob, blessing his grandchildren Ephraim and Manasses, said, God which fed me all my life long unto this day, the Angel which delivered me from all evil, bless the lads [2885] ,' yet none of created and natural Angels did he join to God their Creator, nor rejecting God that fed him, did he from Angel ask the blessing on his grandsons; but in saying, Who delivered me from all evil,' he shewed that it was no created Angel, but the Word of God, whom he joined to the Father in his prayer, through whom, whomsoever He will, God doth deliver. For knowing that He is also called the Father's Angel of great Counsel [2886] ,' he said that none other than He was the Giver of blessing, and Deliverer from evil. Nor was it that he desired a blessing for himself from God but for his grandchildren from the Angel, but whom He Himself had besought saying, I will not let Thee go except Thou bless me [2887] ' (for that was God, as he says himself, I have seen God face to face'), Him he prayed to bless also the sons of Joseph. It is proper then to an Angel to minister at the command of God, and often does he go forth to cast out the Amorite, and is sent to guard the people in the way; but these are not his doings, but of God who commanded and sent him, whose also it is to deliver, whom He will deliver. Therefore it was no other than the Lord God Himself whom he had seen, who said to him, And behold I am with thee, to guard thee in all the way whither thou [2888] goest;' and it was no other than God whom he had seen, who kept Laban from his treachery, ordering him not to speak evil words to Jacob; and none other than God did he himself beseech, saying, Rescue me from the hand of my brother Esau, for I fear him [2889] ;' for in conversation too with his wives he said, God hath not suffered Laban to injure me.'
13. Therefore it was none other than God Himself that David too besought concerning his deliverance, When I was in trouble, I called upon the Lord, and He heard me; deliver my soul, O Lord, from lying lips and from a deceitful tongue [2890] .' To Him also giving thanks he spoke the words of the Song in the seventeenth Psalm, in the day in which the Lord delivered him from the hand of all his enemies and from the hand of Saul, saying, I will love Thee, O Lord my strength; the Lord is my strong rock and my defence and deliverer [2891] .' And Paul, after enduring many persecutions, to none other than God gave thanks, saying, Out of them all the Lord delivered me; and He will deliver in Whom we trust [2892] .' And none other than God blessed Abraham and Isaac; and Isaac praying for Jacob, said, May God bless thee and increase thee and multiply thee, and thou shalt be for many companies of nations, and may He give thee the blessing of Abraham my father [2893] .' But if it belong to none other than God to bless and to deliver, and none other was the deliverer of Jacob than the Lord Himself and Him that delivered him the Patriarch besought for his grandsons, evidently none other did he join to God in his prayer, than God's Word, whom therefore he called Angel, because it is He alone who reveals the Father. Which the Apostle also did when he said, Grace unto you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ [2894] .' For thus the blessing was secure, because of the Son's indivisibility from the Father, and for that the grace given by Them is one and the same. For though the Father gives it, through the Son is the gift; and though the Son be said to vouchsafe it, it is the Father who supplies it through and in the Son; for I thank my God,' says the Apostle writing to the Corinthians, always on your behalf, for the grace of God which is given you in Christ Jesus [2895] .' And this one may see in the instance of light and radiance; for what the light enlightens, that the radiance irradiates; and what the radiance irradiates, from the light is its enlightenment. So also when the Son is beheld, so is the Father, for He is the Father's radiance; and thus the Father and the Son are one.
14. But this is not so with things originate and creatures; for when the Father works, it is not that any Angel works, or any other creature; for none of these is an efficient cause [2896] , but they are of things which come to be; and moreover being separate and divided from the only God, and other in nature, and being works, they can neither work what God works, nor, as I said before, when God gives grace, can they give grace with Him. Nor, on seeing an Angel would a man say that he had seen the Father; for Angels, as it is written, are ministering spirits sent forth to minister [2897] ,' and are heralds of gifts given by Him through the Word to those who receive them. And the Angel on his appearance, himself confesses that he has been sent by his Lord; as Gabriel confessed in the case of Zacharias, and also in the case of Mary, bearer of God [2898] . And he who beholds a vision of Angels, knows that he has seen the Angel and not God. For Zacharias saw an Angel; and Isaiah saw the Lord. Manoah, the father of Samson, saw an Angel; but Moses beheld God. Gideon saw an Angel, but to Abraham appeared God. And neither he who saw God, beheld an Angel, nor he who saw an Angel, considered that he saw God; for greatly, or rather wholly, do things by nature originate differ from God the Creator. But if at any time, when the Angel was seen, he who saw it heard God's voice, as took place at the bush; for the Angel of the Lord was seen in a flame of fire out of the bush, and the Lord called Moses out of the bush, saying, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob [2899] ,' yet was not the Angel the God of Abraham, but in the Angel God spoke. And what was seen was an Angel; but God spoke in him [2900] . For as He spoke to Moses in the pillar of a cloud in the tabernacle, so also God appears and speaks in Angels. So again to the son of Nun He spake by an Angel. But what God speaks, it is very plain He speaks through the Word, and not through another. And the Word, as being not separate from the Father, nor unlike and foreign to the Father's Essence, what He works, those are the Father's works, and His framing of all things is one with His; and what the Son gives, that is the Father's gift. And he who hath seen the Son, knows that, in seeing Him, he has seen, not Angel, nor one merely greater than Angels, nor in short any creature, but the Father Himself. And he who hears the Word, knows that he hears the Father; as he who is irradiated by the radiance, knows that he is enlightened by the sun.
15. For divine Scripture wishing us thus to understand the matter, has given such illustrations, as we have said above, from which we are able both to press the traitorous Jews, and to refute the allegation of Gentiles who maintain and think, on account of the Trinity, that we profess many gods [2901] . For, as the illustration shows, we do not introduce three Origins or three Fathers, as the followers of Marcion and Manichæus; since we have not suggested the image of three suns, but sun and radiance. And one is the light from the sun in the radiance; and so we know of but one origin; and the All-framing Word we profess to have no other manner of godhead, than that of the Only God, because He is born from Him. Rather then will the Ario-maniacs with reason incur the charge of polytheism or else of atheism [2902] , because they idly talk of the Son as external and a creature, and again the Spirit as from nothing. For either they will say that the Word is not God; or saying that He is God [2903] , because it is so written, but not proper to the Father's Essence, they will introduce many because of their difference of kind (unless forsooth they shall dare to say that by participation only, He, as all things else, is called God; though, if this be their sentiment, their irreligion is the same, since they consider the Word as one among all things). But let this never even come into our mind. For there is but one form [2904] of Godhead, which is also in the Word; and one God, the Father, existing by Himself according as He is above all, and appearing in the Son according as He pervades all things, and in the Spirit according as in Him He acts in all things through the Word [2905] . For thus we confess God to be one through the Triad, and we say that it is much more religious than the godhead of the heretics with its many kinds [2906] , and many parts, to entertain a belief of the One Godhead in a Triad.
16. For if it be not so, but the Word is a creature and a work out of nothing, either He is not True God because He is Himself one of the creatures, or if they name Him God from regard for the Scriptures, they must of necessity say that there are two Gods [2907] , one Creator, the other creature, and must serve two Lords, one Unoriginate, and the other originate and a creature; and must have two faiths, one in the True God, and the other in one who is made and fashioned by themselves and called God. And it follows of necessity in so great blindness, that, when they worship the Unoriginate, they renounce the originate, and when they come to the creature, they turn from the Creator. For they cannot see the One in the Other, because their natures and operations are foreign and distinct [2908] . And with such sentiments, they will certainly be going on to more gods, for this will be the essay [2909] of those who revolt from the One God. Wherefore then, when the Arians have these speculations and views, do they not rank themselves with the Gentiles? for they too, as these, worship the creature rather than God the Creator of all [2910] , and though they shrink from the Gentile name, in order to deceive the unskilful, yet they secretly hold a like sentiment with them. For their subtle saying which they are accustomed to urge, We say not two Unoriginates [2911] ,' they plainly say to deceive the simple; for in their very professing We say not two Unoriginates,' they imply two Gods, and these with different natures, one originate and one Unoriginate. And though the Greeks worship one Unoriginate and many originate, but these one Unoriginate and one originate, this is no difference from them; for the God whom they call originate is one out of many, and again the many gods of the Greeks have the same nature with this one, for both he and they are creatures. Unhappy are they, and the more for that their hurt is from thinking against Christ; for they have fallen from the truth, and are greater traitors than the Jews in denying the Christ, and they wallow [2912] with the Gentiles, hateful [2913] as they are to God, worshipping the creature and many deities. For there is One God, and not many, and One is His Word, and not many; for the Word is God, and He alone has the Form [2914] of the Father. Being then such, the Saviour Himself troubled the Jews with these words, The Father Himself which hath sent Me, hath borne witness of Me; ye have neither heard His voice at any time nor seen His Form; and ye have not His Word abiding in you; for whom He hath sent, Him ye believe not [2915] .' Suitably has He joined the Word' to the Form,' to shew that the Word of God is Himself Image and Expression and Form of His Father; and that the Jews who did not receive Him who spoke to them, thereby did not receive the Word, which is the Form of God. This too it was that the Patriarch Jacob having seen, received a blessing from Him and the name of Israel instead of Jacob, as divine Scripture witnesses, saying, And as he passed by the Form of God, the Sun rose upon him [2916] .' And This it was who said, He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father,' and, I in the Father and the Father in Me,' and, I and the Father are one [2917] ;' for thus God is One, and one the faith in the Father and Son; for, though the Word be God, the Lord our God is one Lord; for the Son is proper to that One, and inseparable according to the propriety and peculiarity of His Essence.
17. The Arians, however, not even thus abashed, reply, Not as you say, but as we will [2918] ;' for, whereas you have overthrown our former expedients, we have invented a new one, and it is this:--So are the Son and the Father One, and so is the Father in the Son and the Son in the Father, as we too may become one in Him. For this is written in the Gospel according to John, and Christ desired it for us in these words, Holy Father, keep through Thine own Name, those whom Thou hast given Me, that they may be one, as We are [2919] .' And shortly after; Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on Me through their Word; that they all may be one, as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that Thou hast sent Me. And the glory which Thou gavest Me I have given them, that they may be one, even as We are one; I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that Thou didst send Me [2920] .' Then, as having found an evasion, these men of craft [2921] add, If, as we become one in the Father, so also He and the Father are one, and thus He too is in the Father, how pretend you from His saying, "I and the Father are One," and "I in the Father and the Father in Me," that He is proper and like [2922] the Father's Essence? for it follows either that we too are proper to the Father's Essence, or He foreign to it, as we are foreign.' Thus they idly babble; but in this their perverseness I see nothing but unreasoning audacity and recklessness from the devil [2923] , since it is saying after his pattern, We will ascend to heaven, we will be like the Most High.' For what is given to man by grace, this they would make equal to the Godhead of the Giver. Thus hearing that men are called sons, they thought themselves equal to the True Son by nature such [2924] . And now again hearing from the Saviour, that they may be one as We are [2925] ,' they deceive themselves, and are arrogant enough to think that they may be such as the Son is in the Father and the Father in the Son; not considering the fall of their father the devil [2926] ,' which happened upon such an imagination.
18. If then, as we have many times said, the Word of God is the same with us, and nothing differs from us except in time, let Him be like us, and have the same place with the Father as we have; nor let Him be called Only-begotten, nor Only Word or Wisdom of the Father; but let the same name be of common application to all us who are like Him. For it is right, that they who have one nature, should have their name in common, though they differ from each other in point of time. For Adam was a man, and Paul a man, and he who is now born is a man, and time is not that which alters the nature of the race [2927] . If then the Word also differs from us only in time, then we must be as He. But in truth neither we are Word or Wisdom, nor is He creature or work; else why are we all sprung from one, and He the Only Word? but though it be suitable in them thus to speak, in us at least it is unsuitable to entertain their blasphemies. And yet, needless [2928] though it be to refine upon [2929] these passages, considering their so clear and religious sense, and our own orthodox belief, yet that their irreligion may be shewn here also, come let us shortly, as we have received from the fathers, expose their heterodoxy from the passage. It is a custom [2930] with divine Scripture to take the things of nature as images and illustrations for mankind; and this it does, that from these physical objects the moral impulses of man may be explained; and thus their conduct shewn to be either bad or righteous. For instance, in the case of the bad, as when it charges, Be ye not like to horse and mule which have no understanding [2931] .' Or as when it says, complaining of those who have become such, Man, being in honour, hath no understanding, but is compared unto the beasts that perish.' And again, They were as wanton horses [2932] .' And the Saviour to expose Herod said, Tell that fox [2933] ;' but, on the other hand, charged His disciples, Behold I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves; be ye therefore wise as serpents and harmless as doves [2934] .' And He said this, not that we may become in nature beasts of burden, or become serpents and doves; for He hath not so made us Himself, and therefore nature does not allow of it; but that we might eschew the irrational motions of the one, and being aware of the wisdom of that other animal, might not be deceived by it, and might take on us the meekness of the dove.
19. Again, taking patterns for man from divine subjects, the Saviour says; Be ye merciful, as your Father which is in heaven is merciful [2935] ;' and, Be ye perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect [2936] .' And He said this too, not that we might become such as the Father; for to become as the Father, is impossible for us creatures, who have been brought to be out of nothing; but as He charged us, Be ye not like to horse,' not lest we should become as draught animals, but that we should not imitate their want of reason, so, not that we might become as God, did He say, Be ye merciful as your Father,' but that looking at His beneficent acts, what we do well, we might do, not for men's sake, but for His sake, so that from Him and not from men we may have the reward. For as, although there be one Son by nature, True and Only-begotten, we too become sons, not as He in nature and truth, but according to the grace of Him that calleth, and though we are men from the earth, are yet called gods [2937] , not as the True God or His Word, but as has pleased God who has given us that grace; so also, as God do we become merciful, not by being made equal to God, nor becoming in nature and truth benefactors (for it is not our gift to benefit but belongs to God), but in order that what has accrued to us from God Himself by grace, these things we may impart to others, without making distinctions, but largely towards all extending our kind service. For only in this way can we anyhow become imitators, and in no other, when we minister to others what comes from Him. And as we put a fair and right [2938] sense upon these texts, such again is the sense of the lection in John. For he does not say, that, as the Son is in the Father, such we must become:--whence could it be? when He is God's Word and Wisdom, and we were fashioned out of the earth, and He is by nature and essence Word and true God (for thus speaks John, We know that the Son of God is come, and He hath given us an understanding to know Him that is true, and we are in Him that is true, even in His Son Jesus Christ; this is the true God and eternal life [2939] ') and we are made sons through Him by adoption and grace, as partaking of His Spirit (for as many as received Him,' he says, to them gave He power to become children of God, even to them that believe on His Name [2940] '), and therefore also He is the Truth (saying, I am the Truth,' and in His address to His Father, He said, Sanctify them through Thy Truth, Thy Word is Truth [2941] '); but we by imitation [2942] become virtuous [2943] and sons:--therefore not that we might become such as He, did He say that they may be one as We are;' but that as He, being the Word, is in His own Father, so that we too, taking an examplar and looking at Him, might become one towards each other in concord and oneness of spirit, nor be at variance as the Corinthians, but mind the same thing, as those five thousand in the Acts [2944] , who were as one.
20. For it is as sons,' not as the Son; as gods,' not as He Himself; and not as the Father, but merciful as the Father.' And, as has been said, by so becoming one, as the Father and the Son, we shall be such, not as the Father is by nature in the Son and the Son in the Father, but according to our own nature, and as it is possible for us thence to be moulded and to learn how we ought to be one, just as we learned also to be merciful. For like things are naturally one with like; thus all flesh is ranked together in kind [2945] ; but the Word is unlike us and like the Father. And therefore, while He is in nature and truth one with His own Father, we, as being of one kind with each other (for from one were all made, and one is the nature of all men), become one with each other in good disposition [2946] , having as our copy the Son's natural unity with the Father. For as He taught us meekness from Himself, saying, Learn of Me for I am meek and lowly in heart [2947] ,' not that we may become equal to Him, which is impossible, but that looking towards Him, we may remain meek continually, so also here wishing that our good disposition towards each other should be true and firm and indissoluble, from Himself taking the pattern, He says, that they may be one as We are,' whose oneness is indivisible; that is, that they learning from us of that indivisible Nature, may preserve in like manner agreement one with another. And this imitation of natural conditions is especially safe for man, as has been said; for, since they remain and never change, whereas the conduct of men is very changeable, one may look to what is unchangeable by nature, and avoid what is bad and remodel himself on what is best.
21. And for this reason also the words, that they may be one in Us,' have a right sense. If, for instance, it were possible for us to become as the Son in the Father, the words ought to run, that they may be one in Thee,' as the Son is in the Father; but, as it is, He has not said this; but by saying in Us' He has pointed out the distance and difference; that He indeed is alone in the Father alone, as Only Word and Wisdom; but we in the Son, and through Him in the Father. And thus speaking, He meant this only, By Our unity may they also be so one with each other, as We are one in nature and truth; for otherwise they could not be one, except by learning unity in Us.' And that in Us' has this signification, we may learn from Paul, who says, These things I have in a figure transferred to myself and to Apollos, that ye may learn in us not to be puffed up above that is written [2948] .' The words in Us' then, are not in the Father,' as the Son is in Him; but imply an example and image, instead of saying, Let them learn of Us.' For as Paul to the Corinthians, so is the oneness of the Son and the Father a pattern and lesson to all, by which they may learn, looking to that natural unity of the Father and the Son, how they themselves ought to be one in spirit towards each other. Or if it needs to account for the phrase otherwise, the words in Us' may mean the same as saying, that in the power of the Father and the Son they may be one, speaking the same things [2949] ; for without God this is impossible. And this mode of speech also we may find in the divine writings, as In God will we do great acts;' and In God I shall leap over the wall [2950] ;' and In Thee will we tread down our enemies [2951] .' Therefore it is plain, that in the Name of Father and Son we shall be able, becoming one, to hold firm the bond of charity. For, dwelling still on the same thought, the Lord says, And the glory which Thou gavest Me, I have given to them, that they may be one as We are one.' Suitably has He here too said, not, that they may be in Thee as I am,' but as We are;' now he who says as' [2952] , signifies not identity, but an image and example of the matter in hand.
22. The Word then has the real and true identity of nature with the Father; but to us it is given to imitate it, as has been said; for He immediately adds, I in them and Thou in Me; that they may be made perfect in one.' Here at length the Lord asks something greater and more perfect for us; for it is plain that the Word has come to be in us [2953] , for He has put on our body. And Thou Father in Me;' for I am Thy Word, and since Thou art in Me, because I am Thy Word, and I in them because of the body, and because of Thee the salvation of men is perfected in Me, therefore I ask that they also may become one, according to the body that is in Me and according to its perfection; that they too may become perfect, having oneness with It, and having become one in It; that, as if all were carried by Me, all may be one body and one spirit, and may grow up unto a perfect man [2954] .' For we all, partaking of the Same, become one body, having the one Lord in ourselves. The passage then having this meaning, still more plainly is refuted the heterodoxy of Christ's enemies. I repeat it; if He had said simply and absolutely [2955] that they may be one in Thee,' or that they and I may be one in Thee,' God's enemies had had some plea, though a shameless one; but in fact He has not spoken simply, but, As Thou, Father, in Me, and I in Thee, that they may be all one.' Moreover, using the word as,' He signifies those who become distantly as He is in the Father; distantly not in place but in nature; for in place nothing is far from God [2956] , but in nature only all things are far from Him. And, as I said before, whoso uses the particle as' implies, not identity, nor equality, but a pattern of the matter in question, viewed in a certain respect [2957] .
23. Indeed we may learn also from the Saviour Himself, when He says, For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale's belly, so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth [2958] .' For Jonah was not as the Saviour, nor did Jonah go down to hades; nor was the whale hades; nor did Jonah, when swallowed up, bring up those who had before been swallowed by the whale, but he alone came forth, when the whale was bidden. Therefore there is no identity nor equality signified in the term as,' but one thing and another; and it shews a certain kind [2959] of parallel in the case of Jonah, on account of the three days. In like manner then we too, when the Lord says as,' neither become as the Son in the Father, nor as the Father is in the Son. For we become one as the Father and the Son in mind and agreement [2960] of spirit, and the Saviour will be as Jonah in the earth; but as the Saviour is not Jonah, nor, as he was swallowed up, so did the Saviour descend into hades, but it is but a parallel, in like manner, if we too become one, as the Son in the Father, we shall not be as the Son, nor equal to Him; for He and we are but parallel. For on this account is the word as' applied to us; since things differing from others in nature, become as they, when viewed in a certain relation [2961] . Wherefore the Son Himself, simply and without any condition is in the Father; for this attribute He has by nature; but for us, to whom it is not natural, there is needed an image and example, that He may say of us, As Thou in Me, and I in Thee.' And when they shall be so perfected,' He says, then the world knows that Thou hast sent Me, for unless I had come and borne this their body, no one of them had been perfected, but one and all had remained corruptible. [2962] Work Thou then in them, O Father, and as Thou hast given to Me to bear this, grant to them Thy Spirit, that they too in It may become one, and may be perfected in Me. For their perfecting shews that Thy Word has sojourned among them; and the world seeing them perfect and full of God [2963] , will believe altogether that Thou hast sent Me, and I have sojourned here. For whence is this their perfecting, but that I, Thy Word, having borne their body, and become man, have perfected the work, which Thou gavest Me, O Father? And the work is perfected, because men, redeemed from sin, no longer remain dead; but being deified [2964] , have in each other, by looking at Me, the bond of charity [2965] .'
24. We then, by way of giving a rude view of the expressions in this passage, have been led into many words, but blessed John will shew from his Epistle the sense of the words, concisely and much more perfectly than we can. And he will both disprove the interpretation of these irreligious men, and will teach how we become in God and God in us; and how again we become One in Him, and how far the Son differs in nature from us, and will stop the Arians from any longer thinking that they shall be as the Son, lest they hear it said to them, Thou art a man and not God,' and Stretch not thyself, being poor, beside a rich man [2966] .' John then thus writes; Hereby know we that we dwell in Him and He in us, because He hath given us of His Spirit [2967] .' Therefore because of the grace of the Spirit which has been given to us, in Him we come to be, and He in us [2968] ; and since it is the Spirit of God, therefore through His becoming in us, reasonably are we, as having the Spirit, considered to be in God, and thus is God in us. Not then as the Son in the Father, so also we become in the Father; for the Son does not merely partake the Spirit, that therefore He too may be in the Father; nor does He receive the Spirit, but rather He supplies It Himself to all; and the Spirit does not unite the Word to the Father [2969] , but rather the Spirit receives from the Word. And the Son is in the Father, as His own Word and Radiance; but we, apart from the Spirit, are strange and distant from God, and by the participation of the Spirit we are knit into the Godhead; so that our being in the Father is not ours, but is the Spirit's which is in us and abides in us, while by the true confession we preserve it in us, John again saying, Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him and he in God [2970] .' What then is our likeness and equality to the Son? rather, are not the Arians confuted on every side? and especially by John, that the Son is in the Father in one way, and we become in Him in another, and that neither we shall ever be as He, nor is the Word as we; except they shall dare, as commonly, so now to say, that the Son also by participation of the Spirit and by improvement of conduct [2971] came to be Himself also in the Father. But here again is an excess of irreligion, even in admitting the thought. For He, as has been said, gives to the Spirit, and whatever the Spirit hath, He hath from [2972] the Word.
25. The Saviour, then, saying of us, As Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they too may be one in Us,' does not signify that we were to have identity with Him; for this was shewn from the instance of Jonah; but it is a request to the Father, as John has written, that the Spirit should be vouchsafed through Him to those who believe, through whom we are found to be in God, and in this respect to be conjoined in Him. For since the Word is in the Father, and the Spirit is given from [2973] the Word, He wills that we should receive the Spirit, that, when we receive It, thus having the Spirit of the Word which is in the Father, we too may be found on account of the Spirit to become One in the Word, and through Him in the Father. And if He say, as we,' this again is only a request that such grace of the Spirit as is given to the disciples may be without failure or revocation [2974] . For what the Word has by nature [2975] , as I said, in the Father, that He wishes to be given to us through the Spirit irrevocably; which the Apostle knowing, said, Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?' for the gifts of God' and grace of His calling are without repentance [2976] .' It is the Spirit then which is in God, and not we viewed in our own selves; and as we are sons and gods [2977] because of the Word in us [2978] , so we shall be in the Son and in the Father, and we shall be accounted to have become one in Son and in Father, because that that Spirit is in us, which is in the Word which is in the Father. When then a man falls from the Spirit for any wickedness, if he repent upon his fall, the grace remains irrevocably to such as are willing [2979] ; otherwise he who has fallen is no longer in God (because that Holy Spirit and Paraclete which is in God has deserted him), but the sinner shall be in him to whom he has subjected himself, as took place in Saul's instance; for the Spirit of God departed from him and an evil spirit was afflicting him [2980] . God's enemies hearing this ought to be henceforth abashed, and no longer to feign themselves equal to God. But they neither understand (for the irreligious,' he saith, does not understand knowledge' [2981] ) nor endure religious words, but find them heavy even to hear. __________________________________________________________________
[2866] hos autoi thelousi. vid. §8, n. 12. not as you say, but as we will.' This is a common phrase with Athan. vid. supr. Or. i. 13, n. 6. and especially Hist. Ar. 52, n. 4. (vid. also Sent. Dion. 4, 14). It is here contrasted to the Church's doctrine, and connected with the word idios; for which de Syn. 3, n. 6; Or. i. 37, n. 1. Vid. also Letter 54. fin. Also contr. Apoll. ii. 5 init. in contrast with the euangelikos horos.
[2867] sumphonos. vid. infr. 23, de Syn. 48, and 53, n. 9. the Arian sumphonia is touched on de Syn. 23, n. 3. Besides Origen, Novatian, the Creed of Lucian, and (if so) S. Hilary, as mentioned in the former of these notes, one' is explained as oneness of will by S. Hippolytus, contr. Noet. 7, where he explains John x. 30. by xvii. 22. like the Arians; and, as might be expected, by Eusebius Eccl. Theol. iii. p. 193. and by Asterius ap. Euseb. contr. Marc. pp. 28, 37. The passages of the Fathers in which this text is adduced are collected by Maldonat. in loc.
[2868] Asterius, §2, init.
[2869] hora. vid. de Syn. 34, n. 4. also Orat. ii. 6, b. iv. 19, c. d. Euseb. contr. Marc. p. 47, b. p. 91, b. Cyril. Dial. p. 456. Thesaur. p. 255 fin.
[2870] This argument is found de Syn. 48. vid. also Cyril. de Trin. i. p. 407.
[2871] Is. xiv. 12.
[2872] Luke vi. 36 (cf. Tisch. in loc.)
[2873] Eph. v. 1, 2.
[2874] 1 Cor. xi. 1.
[2875] John x. 30; xiv. 10.
[2876] Vid. Ps. lxxxvi. 8; lxxxix. 6.
[2877] Aug. de Trin. vii. fin.
[2878] Cf. Serap. i. 16. de Syn. 51. and infr. §19, note. And so S. Cyril, cf. Or. i. 21-24, de Decr. 11, n. 6, Thesaur. p. 133, Naz. Orat. 29, 5. vid. also 23, 6 fin. 25, 16. vid. also the whole of Basil, adv. Eun. ii. 23. One must not say,' he observes, that these names properly and primarily, kurios kai protos belong to men, and are given by us but by a figure katachrestikos (ii. 39, n. 7) to God. For our Lord Jesus Christ, referring us back to the Origin of all and True Cause of beings says, "Call no one your father upon earth, for One is your Father, which is in heaven."' He adds, that if He is properly and not metaphorically even our Father (de Decr. 31, n. 5), much more is He the pater tou kata phusin huiou. Vid. also Euseb. contr. Marc. p. 22, c. Eccl. Theol. i. 12. fin. ii. 6. Marcellus, on the other hand, said that our Lord was kurios logos, not kurios hui& 231;s. ibid. ii. 10 fin. vid. supr. ii. 19, note 3.
[2879] kat' ousian homoios, Or. i. 21, n. 8.
[2880] Supr. §6.
[2881] And so ergazomenou tou patros, ergazesthai kai ton hui& 231;n. In illud Omn. 1, d. Cum luce nobis prodeat, In Patre totus Filius, et totus in Verbo Pater. Hymn. Brev. in fer. 2. Ath. argues from this oneness of operation the oneness of substance. And thus S. Chrysostom on the text under review argues that if the Father and Son are one kata ten dunamin, they are one also in ousia. in Joan. Hom. 61, 2, d. Tertullian in Prax. 22. and S. Epiphanius, Hær. 57. p. 488. seem to say the same on the same text. vid. Lampe in loc. And so S. Athan. trias adiairetos te phusei, kai mia tautes he energeia. Serap. i. 28, f. hen thelema patros kai huiou kai boulema, epei kai he phusis mia. In illud Omn. 5. Various passages of the Fathers to the same effect (e.g. of S. Ambrose, si unius voluntatis et operationis, unius est essentiæ, de Sp. ii. 12. fin. and of S. Basil, on mia energeia, touton kai ousia mia, of Greg. Nyss. and Cyril. Alex.) are brought together in the Lateran Council. Concil. Hard. t. 3, p. 859, &c. The subject is treated at length by Petavius Trin. iv. 15.
[2882] John xiv. 23.
[2883] 1 Thess. iii. 11.
[2884] Vid. Basil de Sp. S. c. 13. Chrysostom on Col. 2. And Theodoret on Col. iii. 17. says, Following this rule, the Synod of Laodicea, with a view to cure this ancient disorder, passed a decree against the praying to Angels, and leaving our Lord Jesus Christ.' All supplication, prayer, intercession, and thanksgiving is to be addressed to the Supreme God, through the High Priest who is above all Angels, the Living Word and God....But angels we may not fitly call upon, since we have not obtained a knowledge of them which is above men.' Origen contr. Cels. v. 4, 5. vid. also for similar statements Voss. de Idololatr. i. 9. The doctrine of the Gnostics, who worshipped Angels, is referred to supr. Orat. i. 56, fin. note 1.
[2885] Gen. xlviii. 15, 16. vid. Serap. i. 14. And on the doctrine vid. de Syn. 27 (15, 16). Infr. §14, he shews that his doctrine, when fully explained, does not differ from S. Augustine, for he says, what was seen was an Angel, but God spoke in him,' i.e. sometimes the Son is called an Angel, but when an Angel was seen, it was not the Son; and if he called himself God, it was not he who spoke, but the Son was the unseen speaker. vid. Benedictine Monitum in Hil. Trin. iv. For passages vid. Tertull. de Præscr. p. 447, note f. Oxf. Transl.
[2886] Is. ix. 6, LXX.
[2887] Gen. xxxii. 26, 30.
[2888] Gen. xxviii. 15, LXX.
[2889] Ib. xxxi. 7; xxxii. 11.
[2890] Ps. cxx. 1, 2.
[2891] Ps. xviii. 1, 2.
[2892] Vid. 2 Tim. iii. 11; 2 Cor. i. 10.
[2893] Gen. xxviii. 3, 4, LXX.
[2894] Rom. i. 7, &c.
[2895] 1 Cor. i. 4.
[2896] Or. ii. 21, n. 2.
[2897] Heb. i. 14.
[2898] tes theotokou Marias. [Prolegg. ch. iv. §5.] vid. also infr. 29, 33. Orat. iv. 32. Incarn. c. Ar. 8, 22. supr. Or. i. 45, n. 3. As to the history of this title, Theodoret, who from his party would rather be disinclined towards it, says that the most ancient (ton palai kai propalai) heralds of the orthodox faith taught to name and believe the Mother of the Lord theotokon, according to the Apostolical tradition.' Hær. iv. 12. And John of Antioch, whose championship of Nestorius and quarrel with S. Cyril are well known, writes to the former. This title no ecclesiastical teacher has put aside; those who have used it are many and eminent, and those who have not used it have not attacked those who used it.' Concil. Eph. part i. c. 25 (Labb.). Socrates Hist. vii. 32. says that Origen, in the first tome of his Comment on the Romans (vid. de la Rue in Rom. lib. i. 5. the original is lost), treated largely of the word; which implies that it was already in use. Interpreting,' he says, how theotokos is used, he discussed the question at length.' Constantine implies the same in a passage which divines, e.g. Pearson (On the Creed, notes on Art. 3.), have not dwelt upon (or rather have apparently overlooked, in arguing from Ephrem. ap. Phot. Cod. 228, p. 776. that the literal phrase Mother of God' originated in S. Leo). [See vol. 1, p. 569 of this Series.]
[2899] Vid. Ex. iii. 2-6.
[2900] §12, note 2.
[2901] Serap. i. 28 fin. Naz. Orat. 23, 8. Basil. Hom. 24 init. Nyssen. Orat. Catech. 3. p. 481.
[2902] Infr. §64. Ep. Æg. 14.
[2903] Infr. §16, notes.
[2904] eidos.
[2905] And so infr. 25, 36 fin. Serap. i. 20, b. vid. also ibid. 28, f. a. 30, a. 31, d. iii. 1, b. 5 init. et fin. Eulogius ap. Phot. cod. p. 865. Damascen. F. O. i. 7. Basil de Sp. S. 47, e. Cyr. Cat. xvi. 4. ibid. 24. Pseudo-Dion. de Div. Nom. i. p. 403. Pseudo-Athan. c. Sab. Greg. 10, e.
[2906] polueidous
[2907] Vid. p. 75, note 7; de Syn. 27 (2), and 50, note 5. The Arians were in the dilemma of holding two gods or worshipping the creature, unless they denied to our Lord both divinity and worship. vid. de Decr. 6, note 5, Or. i. 30, n. 1. But every substance,' says S. Austin, which is not God, is a creature, and which is not a creature, is God.' de Trin. i. 6. And so S. Cyril in Joan. p. 52. vid. also Naz. Orat. 31, 6. Basil. contr. Eunom. ii. 31.
[2908] §11, n. 4.
[2909] epicheirema, de Decr. 1, note.
[2910] Vid. supr. ii. 14, n. 7. Petavius gives a large collection of passages, de Trin. ii. 12. §5. from the Fathers in proof of the worship of Our Lord evidencing His Godhead. On the Arians as idolaters vid. supr. Or. i. 8, n. 8. also Ep. Æg. 4, 13. and Adelph. 3 init. Serap. i. 29, d. Theodoret in Rom. i. 25.
[2911] Or. i. 30, n. 1.
[2912] sunkuliontai, vid. Orat. i. 23. ii. 1 init.; Decr. 9 fin.; Gent. 19, c. cf. 2 Pet. ii. 22.
[2913] theostugeis, infr. Letter 54. 1 fin.
[2914] eidos; also in Gen. xxxii. 30, 31. Sept. [a substitute for Heb. face.'] vid. Justin Tryph. 126. and supr. de Syn. 56, n. 6. for the meaning of the word. It was just now used for kind.' Athan. says, de Syn. ubi supr. there is but one form of Godhead;' yet the word is used of the Son as synonymous with image.' It would seem as if there are a certain class of words, all expressive of the One Divine Substance, which admit of more appropriate application either ordinarily or under circumstances, to This or That Divine Person who is also that One Substance. Thus Being' is more descriptive of the Father as the pege theotetos, and He is said to be the Being of the Son;' yet the Son is really the One Supreme Being also. On the other hand the words morphe and eidos [on them see Lightfoot, Philipp. p. 128] are rather descriptive of the Divine Substance in the Person of the Son, and He is called the form of the Father,' yet there is but one Form and Face of Divinity, who is at once Each of Three Persons; while Spirit' is appropriated to the Third Person, though God is a Spirit. Thus again S. Hippolytus says ek [tou patros] dunamis logos, yet shortly before, after mentioning the Two Persons, he adds, dunamin de mian, contr. Noet. 7 and 11. And thus the word Subsistence,' hupostasis, which expresses the One Divine Substance, has been found more appropriate to express that Substance viewed personally. Other words may be used correlatively of either Father or Son; thus the Father is the Life of the Son, the Son the Life of the Father; or, again, the Father is in the Son and the Son in the Father. Others in common, as the Father's Godhead is the Son's,' he patrike huiou theotes, as indeed the word ousia itself. Other words on the contrary express the Substance in This or That Person only, as Word,' Image,' &c.
[2915] John v. 37.
[2916] Gen. xxxii. 31, LXX.
[2917] John xiv. 9, 10; x. 30.
[2918] §10, n. 1.
[2919] John xvii. 11.
[2920] Ib. 20-23.
[2921] hoi dolioi. crafty as they are, also infr. 59.
[2922] Or. i. 21, n. 8, cf. infr. §67.
[2923] diaboliken vid. §8, n. 10., cf. Isa. xiv. 14.
[2924] Supr. p. 171, note 5.
[2925] John viii. 44.
[2926] ii. 73, n. 7.
[2927] De Decr. 10; Or. i. 26, n. 1.
[2928] Cf. Hist. Ar. 80, n. 11.
[2929] periergazesthai; vid. Or. ii. 34, n. 5.
[2930] Orat. ii. 53, n. 4; Orat. iv. 33 init.
[2931] Ps. xxxii. 9; xlix. 20.
[2932] Jer. v. 8.
[2933] Luke xiii. 32.
[2934] Matt. x. 16.
[2935] Luke vi. 36.
[2936] Matt. v. 48.
[2937] theoi, §§23 end, 25, and ii. 70, n. 1.
[2938] ii. 44, n. 1.
[2939] 1 John v. 20.
[2940] John i. 12.
[2941] Ib. xiv. 6; xvii. 17.
[2942] kata mimesin. Clem. Alex. Pædag. i. 3. p. 102. ed. Pott. Naz. Ep. 102. p. 95. (Ed. Ben.) Leo in various places, supr. ii. 55, n. 1. Iren. Hær. v. 1. August. Serm. 101, 6. August. Trin. iv. 17. also ix. 21. and Eusebius, kata ten autou mimesin. Eccl. Theol. iii. 19, a. For inward grace as opposed to teaching, vid. supr. Orat. ii. 56, n. 5, and 79, n. 10.
[2943] enaretoi so panaretos Clem. Rom. Ep. i.
[2944] Acts iv. 4, 32.
[2945] Cf. ii. 23, 42.
[2946] diathesei, de Decr. 2, note 5; Ep. ad Mon. (1) init. Hipp. c. Noet. 7.
[2947] Matt. xi. 29.
[2948] 1 Cor. iv. 6.
[2949] Vid. 1 Cor. i. 10
[2950] Ps. lx. 12; xviii. 29.
[2951] Ps. xliv. 5. Vid. Olear. de Styl. N. T. p. 4. (ed. 1702.) [Winer. xlviii. a.]
[2952] This remark which comes in abruptly is pursued presently, vid. §23.
[2953] Cf. de Decr. 31. fin.
[2954] Vid. Eph. iv. 13
[2955] Cf. ii. 62, n. 13.
[2956] Vid. de Decr. 11, n. 5, which is explained by the present passage. When Ath. there says, without all in nature,' he must mean as here, far from all things in nature.' S. Clement loc. cit. gives the same explanation, as there noticed. It is observable that the contr. Sab. Greg. 10 (which the Benedictines consider not Athan.'s) speaks as de Decr. supr. Eusebius says the same thing, de Incorpor. i. init. ap. Sirm. Op. p. 68. vid. S. Ambros. Quomodo creatura in Deo esse potest, &c. de Fid. i. 106. and supr. §1, n. 10.
[2957] Vid. Glass. Phil. Sacr. iii. 5. can. 27. and Dettmars, de Theol. Orig. ap. Lumper. Hist. Patr. t. 10, p. 212. Vid. also supr. ii. 55, n. 8.
[2958] Matt. xii. 40.
[2959] homoioteta pos, and so at the end of 22. kata ti theoroumenon. [A note, discussing certain views of Coplestone, Toplady, and Blanco White, is omitted here.]
[2960] sumphonia, 10, n. 2.
[2961] Cyril in Joan. p. 227, &c.
[2962] Cf. ii. 65, n. 3.
[2963] theophoroumenous. ii. 70, n. 1.
[2964] §19. n. 3.
[2965] sundesmon tes agapes, 21. circ. fin.
[2966] Ez. xxviii. 2; Prov. xxiii. 4, LXX.
[2967] 1 John iv. 13.
[2968] Cf. 22, n. 6.
[2969] [i.e. not by grace] Vid. the end of this section and 25 init. supr. Or. i. 15. also Cyril Hier. Cat. xvi. 24. Epiph. Ancor. 67 init. Cyril in Joan. pp. 929, 930.
[2970] 1 John iv. 15.
[2971] beltiosei praxeos, and so ad Afros. tropon beltiosis. 8. Supr. Or. i. 37, 43. it is rather some external advance.
[2972] §8, note 11.
[2973] ek.
[2974] Cf. ii. 63, n. 8.
[2975] kata phusin, supr. de Decr. 31, n. 5.
[2976] Rom. viii. 35; vid. xi. 29.
[2977] theoi, Or. ii. 70, n. 1.
[2978] Cf. ii. 59, n. 5.
[2979] Cf. Or. i. 37, end.
[2980] 1 Sam. xvi. 14.
[2981] Prov. xxix. 7. noei, Ath. sunesei. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXVI.--Introductory to Texts from the Gospels on the Incarnation. Enumeration of texts still to be explained. Arians compared to the Jews. We must recur to the Regula Fidei. Our Lord did not come into, but became, man, and therefore had the acts and affections of the flesh. The same works divine and human. Thus the flesh was purified, and men were made immortal. Reference to I Pet. iv. 1.
26. For behold, as if not wearied in their words of irreligion, but hardened with Pharaoh, while they hear and see the Saviour's human attributes in the Gospels [2982] , they have utterly forgotten, like the Samosatene, the Son's paternal Godhead [2983] , and with arrogant and audacious tongue they say, How can the Son be from the Father by nature, and be like Him in essence,' who says, All power is given unto Me;' and The Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son;' and The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into His hand; he that believeth in the Son hath everlasting life;' and again, All things were delivered unto Me of My Father, and no one knoweth the Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him;' and again, All that the Father hath given unto Me, shall come to Me [2984] .' On this they observe, If He was, as ye say, Son by nature, He had no need to receive, but He had by nature as a Son.' "Or how can He be the natural and true Power of the Father, who near upon the season of the passion says, Now is My soul troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save Me from this hour; but for this came I unto this hour. Father, glorify Thy Name. Then came there a voice from heaven, saying, I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again [2985] .' And He said the same another time; Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me;' and When Jesus had thus said, He was troubled in spirit and testified and said, Verily, verily, I say unto you, that one of you shall betray Me [2986] .'" Then these perverse men argue; If He were Power, He had not feared, but rather He had supplied power to others.' Further they say; If He were by nature the true and own Wisdom of the Father,' how is it written, And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man [2987] ?' In like manner, when He had come into the parts of Cæsarea Philippi, He asked the disciples whom men said that He was; and when He was at Bethany He asked where Lazarus lay; and He said besides to His disciples, How many loaves have ye [2988] ? How then,' say they, is He Wisdom, who increased in wisdom and was ignorant of what He asked of others?' This too they urge; "How can He be the own Word of the Father, without whom the Father never was, through whom He makes all things, as ye think, who said upon the Cross My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?' and before that had prayed, Glorify Thy Name,' and, O Father, glorify Thou Me with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was.' And He used to pray in the deserts and charge His disciples to pray lest they should enter into temptation; and, The spirit indeed is willing,' He said, but the flesh is weak.' And, Of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, nor the Angels, neither the Son [2989] .'" Upon this again say the miserable men, "If the Son were, according to your interpretation [2990] , eternally existent with God, He had not been ignorant of the Day, but had known as Word; nor had been forsaken as being coexistent; nor had asked to receive glory, as having it in the Father; nor would have prayed at all; for, being the Word, He had needed nothing; but since He is a creature and one of things originate, therefore He thus spoke, and needed what He had not; for it is proper to creatures to require and to need what they have not."
27. This then is what the irreligious men allege in their discourses; and if they thus argue, they might consistently speak yet more daringly; Why did the Word become flesh at all?' and they might add; For how could He, being God, become man?' or, How could the Immaterial bear a body?' or they might speak with Caiaphas still more Judaically, Wherefore at all did Christ, being a man, make Himself God [2991] ?' for this and the like the Jews then muttered when they saw, and now the Ario-maniacs disbelieve when they read, and have fallen away into blasphemies. If then a man should carefully parallel the words of these and those, he will of a certainty find them both arriving at the same unbelief, and the daring of their irreligion equal, and their dispute with us a common one. For the Jews said; How, being a man, can He be God?' And the Arians, If He were very God from God, how could He become man?' And the Jews were offended then and mocked, saying, Had He been Son of God, He had not endured the Cross;' and the Arians standing over against them, urge upon us, How dare ye say that He is the Word proper to the Father's Essence, who had a body, so as to endure all this?' Next, while the Jews sought to kill the Lord, because He said that God was His own Father and made Himself equal to Him, as working what the Father works, the Arians also, not only have learned to deny, both that He is equal to God and that God is the own and natural Father of the Word, but those who hold this they seek to kill. Again, whereas the Jews said, Is not this the Son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? how then is it that He saith, Before Abraham was, I am, and I came down from heaven [2992] ?' the Arians on the other hand make response [2993] and say conformably, How can He be Word or God who slept as man, and wept, and inquired?' Thus both parties deny the Eternity and Godhead of the Word in consequence of those human attributes which the Saviour took on Him by reason of that flesh which He bore.
28. Such error then being Judaic, and Judaic after the mind of Judas the traitor, let them openly confess themselves scholars of Caiaphas and Herod, instead of cloking Judaism with the name of Christianity, and let them deny outright, as we have said before, the Saviour's appearance in the flesh, for this doctrine is akin to their heresy; or if they fear openly to Judaize and be circumcised [2994] , from servility towards Constantius and for their sake whom they have beguiled, then let them not say what the Jews say; for if they disown the name, let them in fairness renounce the doctrine. For we are Christians, O Arians, Christians we; our privilege is it well to know the Gospels concerning the Saviour, and neither, with Jews to stone Him, if we hear of His Godhead and Eternity, nor with you to stumble at such lowly sayings as He may speak for our sakes as man. If then you would become Christians [2995] , put off Arius's madness, and cleanse [2996] with the words of religion those ears of yours which blaspheming has defiled; knowing that, by ceasing to be Arians, you will cease also from the malevolence of the present Jews. Then at once will truth shine on you out of darkness, and ye will no longer reproach us with holding two Eternals [2997] , but ye will yourselves acknowledge that the Lord is God's true Son by nature, and not as merely eternal [2998] , but revealed as co-existing in the Father's eternity. For there are things called eternal of which He is Framer; for in the twenty-third Psalm it is written, Lift up your gates, O ye rulers, and be ye lift up, ye everlasting gates [2999] ;' and it is plain that through Him these things were made; but if even of things everlasting He is the Framer, who of us shall be able henceforth to dispute that He is anterior to those things eternal, and in consequence is proved to be Lord not so much from His eternity, as in that He is God's Son; for being the Son, He is inseparable from the Father, and never was there when He was not, but He was always; and being the Father's Image and Radiance, He has the Father's eternity. Now what has been briefly said above may suffice to shew their misunderstanding of the passages they then alleged; and that of what they now allege from the Gospels they certainly give an unsound interpretation [3000] , we may easily see, if we now consider the scope [3001] of that faith which we Christians hold, and using it as a rule, apply ourselves, as the Apostle teaches, to the reading of inspired Scripture. For Christ's enemies, being ignorant of this scope, have wandered from the way of truth, and have stumbled [3002] on a stone of stumbling, thinking otherwise than they should think.
29. Now the scope and character of Holy Scripture, as we have often said, is this,--it contains a double account of the Saviour; that He was ever God, and is the Son, being the Father's Word and Radiance and Wisdom [3003] ; and that afterwards for us He took flesh of a Virgin, Mary Bearer of God [3004] , and was made man. And this scope is to be found throughout inspired Scripture, as the Lord Himself has said, Search the Scriptures, for they are they which testify of Me [3005] .' But lest I should exceed in writing, by bringing together all the passages on the subject, let it suffice to mention as a specimen, first John saying, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him, and without Him was made not one thing [3006] ;' next, And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of one Only-begotten from the Father [3007] ;' and next Paul writing, Who being in the form of God, thought it not a prize to be equal with God, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and being found in fashion like a man, He humbled Himself, becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross [3008] .' Any one, beginning with these passages and going through the whole of the Scripture upon the interpretation [3009] which they suggest, will perceive how in the beginning the Father said to Him, Let there be light,' and Let there be a firmament,' and Let us make man [3010] ;' but in fulness of the ages, He sent Him into the world, not that He might judge the world, but that the world by Him might be saved, and how it is written Behold, the Virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a Son, and they shall call his Name Emmanuel, which, being interpreted, is God with us [3011] .'
30. The reader then of divine Scripture may acquaint himself with these passages from the ancient books; and from the Gospels on the other hand he will perceive that the Lord became man; for the Word,' he says, became flesh, and dwelt among us [3012] .' And He became man, and did not come into man; for this it is necessary to know, lest perchance these irreligious men fall into this notion also, and beguile any into thinking, that, as in former times the Word was used to come into each of the Saints, so now He sojourned in a man, hallowing him also, and manifesting [3013] Himself as in the others. For if it were so, and He only appeared in a man, it were nothing strange, nor had those who saw Him been startled, saying, Whence is He? and wherefore dost Thou, being a man, make Thyself God? for they were familiar with the idea, from the words, And the Word of the Lord came' to this or that of the Prophets [3014] . But now, since the Word of God, by whom all things came to be, endured to become also Son of man, and humbled Himself, taking a servant's form, therefore to the Jews the Cross of Christ is a scandal, but to us Christ is God's power' and God's wisdom [3015] ;' for the Word,' as John says, became flesh' (it being the custom [3016] of Scripture to call man by the name of flesh,' as it says by Joel the Prophet, I will pour out My Spirit upon all flesh;' and as Daniel said to Astyages, I do not worship idols made with hands, but the Living God, who hath created the heaven and the earth, and hath sovereignty over all flesh [3017] ;' for both he and Joel call mankind flesh).
31. Of old time He was wont to come to the Saints individually, and to hallow those who rightly [3018] received Him; but neither, when they were begotten was it said that He had become man, nor, when they suffered, was it said that He Himself suffered. But when He came among us from Mary once at the end of the ages for the abolition of sin (for so it was pleasing to the Father, to send His own Son made of a woman, made under the Law'), then it is said, that He took flesh and became man, and in that flesh He suffered for us (as Peter says, Christ therefore having suffered for us in the flesh [3019] ,' that it might be shewn, and that all might believe, that whereas He was ever God, and hallowed those to whom He came, and ordered all things according to the Father's will [3020] , afterwards for our sakes He became man, and bodily [3021] ,' as the Apostle says, the Godhead dwelt in the flesh; as much as to say, Being God, He had His own body, and using this as an instrument [3022] , He became man for our sakes.' And on account of this, the properties of the flesh are said to be His, since He was in it, such as to hunger, to thirst, to suffer, to weary, and the like, of which the flesh is capable; while on the other hand the works proper to the Word Himself, such as to raise the dead, to restore sight to the blind, and to cure the woman with an issue of blood, He did through His own body [3023] . And the Word bore the infirmities of the flesh, as His own, for His was the flesh; and the flesh ministered to the works of the Godhead, because the Godhead was in it, for the body was God's [3024] . And well has the Prophet said carried [3025] ;' and has not said, He remedied our infirmities,' lest, as being external to the body, and only healing it, as He has always done, He should leave men subject still to death; but He carries our infirmities, and He Himself bears our sins, that it might be shewn that He has become man for us, and that the body which in Him bore them, was His own body; and, while He received no hurt [3026] Himself by bearing our sins in His body on the tree,' as Peter speaks, we men were redeemed from our own affections [3027] , and were filled with the righteousness [3028] of the Word.
32. Whence it was that, when the flesh suffered, the Word was not external to it; and therefore is the passion said to be His: and when He did divinely His Father's works, the flesh was not external to Him, but in the body itself did the Lord do them. Hence, when made man, He said [3029] , If I do not the works of the Father, believe Me not; but if I do, though ye believe not Me, believe the works, that ye may know that the Father is in Me and I in Him.' And thus when there was need to raise Peter's wife's mother, who was sick of a fever, He stretched forth His hand humanly, but He stopped the illness divinely. And in the case of the man blind from the birth, human was the spittle which He gave forth from the flesh, but divinely did He open the eyes through the clay. And in the case of Lazarus, He gave forth a human voice as man; but divinely, as God, did He raise Lazarus from the dead [3030] . These things were so done, were so manifested, because He had a body, not in appearance, but in truth [3031] ; and it became the Lord, in putting on human flesh, to put it on whole with the affections proper to it; that, as we say that the body was His own, so also we may say that the affections of the body were proper to Him alone, though they did not touch Him according to His Godhead. If then the body had been another's, to him too had been the affections attributed; but if the flesh is the Word's (for the Word became flesh'), of necessity then the affections also of the flesh are ascribed to Him, whose the flesh is. And to whom the affections are ascribed, such namely as to be condemned, to be scourged, to thirst, and the cross, and death, and the other infirmities of the body, of Him too is the triumph and the grace. For this cause then, consistently and fittingly such affections are ascribed not to another [3032] , but to the Lord; that the grace also may be from Him [3033] , and that we may become, not worshippers of any other, but truly devout towards God, because we invoke no originate thing, no ordinary [3034] man, but the natural and true Son from God, who has become man, yet is not the less Lord and God and Saviour.
33. Who will not admire this? or who will not agree that such a thing is truly divine? for if the works of the Word's Godhead had not taken place through the body, man had not been deified; and again, had not the properties of the flesh been ascribed to the Word, man had not been thoroughly delivered from them [3035] ; but though they had ceased for a little while, as I said before, still sin had remained in him and corruption, as was the case with mankind before Him; and for this reason:--Many for instance have been made holy and clean from all sin; nay, Jeremiah was hallowed [3036] even from the womb, and John, while yet in the womb, leapt for joy at the voice of Mary Bearer of God [3037] ; nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression [3038] ;' and thus man remained mortal and corruptible as before, liable to the affections proper to their nature. But now the Word having become man and having appropriated [3039] what pertains to the flesh, no longer do these things touch the body, because of the Word who has come in it, but they are destroyed [3040] by Him, and henceforth men no longer remain sinners and dead according to their proper affections, but having risen according to the Word's power, they abide [3041] ever immortal and incorruptible. Whence also, whereas the flesh is born of Mary Bearer of God [3042] , He Himself is said to have been born, who furnishes to others an origin of being; in order that He may transfer our origin into Himself, and we may no longer, as mere earth, return to earth, but as being knit into the Word from heaven, may be carried to heaven by Him. Therefore in like manner not without reason has He transferred to Himself the other affections of the body also; that we, no longer as being men, but as proper to the Word, may have share in eternal life. For no longer according to our former origin in Adam do we die; but henceforward our origin and all infirmity of flesh being transferred to the Word, we rise from the earth, the curse from sin being removed, because of Him who is in us [3043] , and who has become a curse for us. And with reason; for as we are all from earth and die in Adam, so being regenerated from above of water and Spirit, in the Christ we are all quickened; the flesh being no longer earthly, but being henceforth made Word [3044] , by reason of God's Word who for our sake became flesh.'
34. And that one may attain to a more exact knowledge of the impassibility of the Word's nature and of the infirmities ascribed to Him because of the flesh, it will be well to listen to the blessed Peter; for he will be a trustworthy witness concerning the Saviour. He writes then in his Epistle thus; Christ then having suffered for us in the flesh [3045] .' Therefore also when He is said to hunger and thirst and to toil and not to know, and to sleep, and to weep, and to ask, and to flee, and to be born, and to deprecate the cup, and in a word to undergo all that belongs to the flesh [3046] , let it be said, as is congruous, in each case Christ then hungering and thirsting "for us in the flesh;"' and saying He did not know, and being buffeted, and toiling "for us in the flesh;"' and being exalted too, and born, and growing "in the flesh;"' and fearing and hiding "in the flesh;"' and saying, "If it be possible let this cup pass from Me [3047] ," and being beaten, and receiving, "for us in the flesh;"' and in a word all such things for us in the flesh.' For on this account has the Apostle himself said, Christ then having suffered,' not in His Godhead, but for us in the flesh,' that these affections may be acknowledged as, not proper to the very Word by nature, but proper by nature to the very flesh.
Let no one then stumble at what belongs to man, but rather let a man know that in nature the Word Himself is impassible, and yet because of that flesh which He put on, these things are ascribed to Him, since they are proper to the flesh, and the body itself is proper to the Saviour. And while He Himself, being impassible in nature, remains as He is, not harmed [3048] by these affections, but rather obliterating and destroying them, men, their passions as if changed and abolished [3049] in the Impassible, henceforth become themselves also impassible and free [3050] from them for ever, as John taught, saying, And ye know that He was manifested to take away our sins, and in Him is no sin [3051] .' And this being so, no heretic shall object, Wherefore rises the flesh, being by nature mortal? and if it rises, why not hunger too and thirst, and suffer, and remain mortal? for it came from the earth, and how can its natural condition pass from it?' since the flesh is able now to make answer to this so contentious heretic, I am from earth, being by nature mortal, but afterwards I have become the Word's flesh,' and He carried' my affections, though He is without them; and so I became free from them, being no more abandoned to their service because of the Lord who has made me free from them. For if you object to my being rid of that corruption which is by nature, see that you object not to God's Word having taken my form of servitude; for as the Lord, putting on the body, became man, so we men are deified by the Word as being taken to Him through His flesh, and henceforward inherit life everlasting.'
35. These points we have found it necessary first to examine, that, when we see Him doing or saying aught divinely through the instrument [3052] of His own body, we may know that He so works, being God, and also, if we see Him speaking or suffering humanly, we may not be ignorant that He bore flesh and became man, and hence He so acts and so speaks. For if we recognise what is proper to each, and see and understand that both these things and those are done by One [3053] , we are right in our faith, and shall never stray. But if a man looking at what is done divinely by the Word, deny the body, or looking at what is proper to the body, deny the Word's presence in the flesh, or from what is human entertain low thoughts concerning the Word, such a one, as a Jewish vintner [3054] , mixing water with the wine, shall account the Cross an offence, or as a Gentile, will deem the preaching folly. This then is what happens to God's enemies the Arians; for looking at what is human in the Saviour, they have judged Him a creature. Therefore they ought, looking also at the divine works of the Word, to deny [3055] the origination of His body, and henceforth to rank themselves with Manichees [3056] . But for them, learn they, however tardily, that the Word became flesh;' and let us, retaining the general scope [3057] of the faith, acknowledge that what they interpret ill, has a right interpretation [3058] . __________________________________________________________________
[2982] This Oration alone, and this entirely, treats of texts from the Gospels; hitherto from the Gospel according to St. John, and now chiefly from the first three. Hence they lead Athan. to treat more distinctly of the doctrine of the Incarnation, and to anticipate a refutation of both Nestorius and Eutyches.
[2983] §1, n. 13.
[2984] Matt. xxviii. 18; John v. 22; iii. 35, 36; Matt. xi. 27; John vi. 37; infr. §§35-41.
[2985] John xii. 27, 28.
[2986] Matt. xxvi. 39; John xiii. 21; infr. §§53-58.
[2987] Luke ii. 52; infr. §§50-53.
[2988] Matt. xvi. 13; John xi. 34; Mark vi. 38; infr. §27.
[2989] Matt. xxvii. 46; John xii. 28; xvii. 5; Matt. xxvi. 41; Mark xiii. 32; infr. §§42-50.
[2990] dianoian, ii. 44, a. 53, c.; iv. 17, d. &c.
[2991] De Decr. 1; Or. i. 4.
[2992] John vi. 42; viii. 58.
[2993] epakouousin. Montfaucon (Onomasticon in t. 2 fin.) so interprets this word. vid. Apol. contr. Ar. 88. note 7.
[2994] Or. i. 38.
[2995] Apol. Fug. 27, n. 10.
[2996] De Decr. 2, n. 9, c. Sab. Greg. 6 fin.
[2997] Cf. de Decr. 25, n. 4. The peculiarity of the Catholic doctrine, as contrasted with the heresies on the subject of the Trinity, is that it professes a mystery. It involves, not merely a contradiction in the terms used, which would be little, for we might solve it by assigning different senses to the same word, or by adding some limitation (e.g. if it were said that Satan was an Angel and not an Angel, or man was mortal and immortal), but an incongruity in the ideas which it introduces. To say that the Father is wholly and absolutely the one infinitely-simple God, and then that the Son is also, and yet that the Father is eternally distinct from the Son, is to propose ideas which we cannot harmonize together; and our reason is reconciled to this state of the case only by the consideration (though fully by means of it) that no idea of ours can embrace the simple truth, so that we are obliged to separate it into portions, and view it in aspects, and adumbrate it under many ideas, if we are to make any approximation towards it at all; as in mathematics we approximate to a circle by means of a polygon, great as is the dissimilarity between the two figures. [Cf. Prolegg. ch. ii. §3 (2) b.]
[2998] ouch haplos a& 188;dios, i.e. aidios is not one of our Lord's highest titles, for things have it which the Son Himself has created, and whom of course He precedes. Instead of two aidia then, as the Arians say, there are many aidia; and our Lord's high title is not this, but that He is the Son,' and thereby eternal in the Father's eternity,' or there was not ever when He was not, and Image' and Radiance.' The same line of thought is implied throughout his proof of our Lord's eternity in Orat. i. ch. 4 6. This is worth remarking, as constituting a special distinction between ancient and modern Scripture proofs of the doctrine, and as coinciding with what was said supr. Or. ii. 1, n. 13, 44, n. 1. His mode of proof is still more brought out by what he proceeds to say about the skopos, or general bearing or drift of the Christian faith, and its availableness as a kanon or rule of interpretation.
[2999] Ps. xxiv. 7.
[3000] Cf. 26, n. 9.
[3001] skopos, vid. 58. fin.
[3002] Rom. ix. 32.
[3003] Or. i. 28, n. 5.
[3004] theotokou. vid. supr. 14, n. 3. Vid. S. Cyril's quotations in his de Recta Fide, p. 49, &c.; and Cyril himself, Adv. Nest. i. p. 18. Procl. Hom. i. p. 60. Theodor. ap. Conc. Eph. (p. 1529. Labbe.) Cassian. Incarn. iv. 2. Hil. Trin. ii. 25. Ambros. Virgin. i. n. 47. Chrysost. ap. Cassian. Incarn. vii. 30. Jerom. in Ezek. 44 init. Capreolus of Carthage, ap. Sirm. Opp. t. i. p. 216. August. Serm. 291, 6. Hippolytus, ap. Theod. Eran. i. p. 55, &c. Ignatius, Ep. ad Eph. 7.
[3005] John v. 39.
[3006] Ib. i. 1-3.
[3007] v. 14.
[3008] Phil. ii. 6-8.
[3009] Cf. 26, n. 9.
[3010] Gen. i. 3, 6, 26; de Syn. 28 (14).
[3011] Matt. i. 23.
[3012] John i. 14.
[3013] touto chromenos organo infr.42. and organon pros ten energeian kai ten eklampsin tes theotetos. 53. This was a word much used afterwards by the Apollinarians, who looked on our Lord's manhood as merely a manifestation of God. vid. Or. ii. 8, n. 3. vid. schema organikon in Apoll. i. 2, 15. vid. a parallel in Euseb. Laud. Const. p. 536. However, it is used freely by Athan. e.g. infr. 35, 53. Incarn. 8, 9, 41, 43, 44. This use of organon must not be confused with its heretical application to our Lord's Divine Nature, vid. Basil de Sp. S. n. 19 fin. of which de Syn. 27 (3). It may be added that phanerosis is a Nestorian as well as Eutychian idea; Facund. Tr. Cap. ix. 2, 3. and the Syrian use of parsopa Asseman. B. O. t. 4. p. 219. Thus both parties really denied the Atonement. vid. supr. Or. i. 60, n. 5; ii. 8, n. 4.
[3014] Ad Epict. 11, ad Max. 2.
[3015] 1 Cor. i. 24.
[3016] Infr. iv. 33 init.
[3017] Joel ii. 28; Bel and Dr. 5.
[3018] Or. i. 39, n. 4.
[3019] Gal. iv. 4; 1 Pet. iv. 1.
[3020] kata to boulema. vid. Orat. i. 63. infr. §63, notes. Cf. supr. ii. 31, n. 7, for passages in which Ps. xxxiii. 9. is taken to shew the unity of Father and Son from the instantaneousness of the accomplishment upon the willing, as well as the Son's existence before creation. Hence the Son not only works kata to boulema, but is the boule of the Father. ibid. note 8. For the contrary Arian view, even when it is highest, vid Euseb. Eccl. Theol. iii. 3. quoted ii. 64, n. 5. In that passage the Father's neumata are spoken of, a word common with the Arians. Euseb. ibid. p. 75, a. de Laud. Const. p. 528, Eunom. Apol. 20 fin. The word is used of the Son's command given to the creation, in Athan. contr. Gent. e.g. 42, 44, 46. S. Cyril. Hier. frequently as the Arians, uses it of the Father. Catech. x. 5, xi. passim, xv. 25, &c. The difference between the orthodox and Arian views on this point is clearly drawn out by S. Basil contr. Eunom. i. 21.
[3021] Col. ii. 9.
[3022] touto chromenos organo infr.42. and organon pros ten energeian kai ten eklampsin tes theotetos. 53. This was a word much used afterwards by the Apollinarians, who looked on our Lord's manhood as merely a manifestation of God. vid. Or. ii. 8, n. 3. vid. schema organikon in Apoll. i. 2, 15. vid. a parallel in Euseb. Laud. Const. p. 536. However, it is used freely by Athan. e.g. infr. 35, 53. Incarn. 8, 9, 41, 43, 44. This use of organon must not be confused with its heretical application to our Lord's Divine Nature, vid. Basil de Sp. S. n. 19 fin. of which de Syn. 27 (3). It may be added that phanerosis is a Nestorian as well as Eutychian idea; Facund. Tr. Cap. ix. 2, 3. and the Syrian use of parsopa Asseman. B. O. t. 4. p. 219. Thus both parties really denied the Atonement. vid. supr. Or. i. 60, n. 5; ii. 8, n. 4.
[3023] Orat. iv. 6. and fragm. ex Euthym. p. 1275. ed. Ben. This interchange [of language] is called theologically the antidosis or communicatio idiomaton. Nyssen. in Apoll. t. 2. pp. 697, 8. Leon. Ep. 28, 51. Ambros. de fid. ii. 58. Nyssen. de Beat. p. 767. Cassian. Incarn. vi. 22. Aug. contr. Serm. Ar. c. 8 init. Plain and easy as such statements seem, they are of the utmost importance in the Nestorian and Eutychian controversies.
[3024] theou en soma. also ad Adelph. 3. ad Max. 2. and so ten ptocheusasan phusin theou holen genomenen. c. Apoll. ii. 11. to pathos tou logou. ibid. 16, c. sarx tou logou. infr. 34. soma sophias infr.53. also Or. ii. 10, n. 7. pathos Christou tou theou mou. Ignat. Rom. 6. ho theos peponthen. Melit. ap. Anast. Hodeg. 12. Dei passiones. Tertull. de Carn. Christ. 5. Dei interemptores. ibid. caro Deitatis. Leon. Serm. 65 fin. Deus mortuus et sepultus. Vigil. c. Eut. ii. p. 502. vid. supr. Or. i. 45, n. 3. Yet Athan. objects to the phrase, God suffered in the flesh,' i.e. as used by the Apollinarians. vid. contr. Apoll. ii. 13 fin. [Cf. Harnack, Dogmg. ed. 1. vol. i. pp. 131, 628. notes.]
[3025] Is. liii. 4.
[3026] ouden eblapteto. (1 Pet. ii. 24.) Cf. de Incarn. 17, 54, 34; Euseb. de Laud. Const. p. 536. and 538. also Dem. Evang. vii. p. 348. Vigil. contr. Eutych. ii. p. 503. (B. P. ed. 1624.) Anast. Hodeg. c. 12. p. 220 (ed. 1606.) also p. 222. Vid also the beautiful passage in Pseudo-Basil: Hom. in Sanct. Christ. Gen. (t. 2. p. 596. ed. Ben.) also Rufin. in Symb. 12. Cyril. Quod unus est Christus. p. 776. Damasc. F. O. iii. 6 fin. August. Serm. 7. p. 26 init. ed. 1842. Suppl. 1.
[3027] pathon, vid. §33, n. 2.
[3028] Orat. i. 51.
[3029] John x. 37, 38. vid. Incarn. 18. Cf. Leo, Serm. 54, 2. Suscepit nos in suam proprietatem illa natura, quæ nec nostris sua, nec suis nostra consumeret, &c.' Serm. 72, p. 286, vid. also Ep. 165, 6. Serm. 30, 5. Cyril Cat. iv. 9. Amphiloch. ap. Theod. Eran. i. p. 66. also pp. 30, 87, 8. ed. 1614.
[3030] Cf. Leo's Tome (Ep. 28.) 4. When He touched the leper, it was the man that was seen; but something beyond man, when He cleansed him, &c.' Ambros. Epist. i. 46, n. 7. Hil. Trin. x. 23 fin. vid. infr. 56 note, and S. Leo's extracts in his Ep. 165. Chrysol. Serm. 34 and 35. Paul. ap. Conc. Eph. (p. 1620. Labbe.) These are instances of what is theologically called the theandrike energeia [a condemned formula], i.e. the union of the energies of both Natures in one act.
[3031] me phantasi& 139; all' alethos. vid. Incarn. 18, d. ad Epict. 7, c. The passage is quoted by S. Cyril. Apol. adv. Orient p. 194.
[3032] ouk allou, alla tou kuriou; and so ouk heterou tinos, Incarn. 18; also Orat. i. 45. supr. p. 244. and Orat. iv. 35. Cyril Thes. p. 197. and Anathem. 11. who defends the phrase against the Orientals.
[3033] Cf. Procl. ad Armen. p. 615, ed. 1630.
[3034] koinon opposed to idion. vid. infr. §51, Cyril Epp. p. 23, e. communem, Ambros. de Fid. i. 94.
[3035] Or. i. 5 n. 5, ii. 56 n. 5, 68, n. 1, infr. note 6.
[3036] Vid. Jer. i. 5. And so S. Jerome, S. Leo, &c., as mentioned in Corn. a Lap. in loc. S. Jerome implies a similar gift in the case of Asella, ad Marcell. (Ep. xxiv. 2.) And so S. John Baptist, Maldon. in Luc. i. 16. It is remarkable that no ancient writer (unless indeed we except S. Austin), [Patrol. Lat. xlvii. 1144?] refers to the instance of S. Mary;--perhaps from the circumstance of its not being mentioned in Scripture.
[3037] theotokou. For instances of this word vid. Alexandr. Ep. ad Alex. ap. Theodor. H. E. i. 4. p. 745. (al. 20). Athan. (supra); Cyril. Cat. x. 19. Julian Imper. ap. Cyril c. Jul. viii. p. 262. Amphiloch. Orat. 4. p. 41. (if Amphil.) ed. 1644. Nyssen. Ep. ad Eustath. p. 1093. Chrysost. apud. Suicer Symb. p. 240. Greg. Naz. Orat. 29, 4 Ep. 181. p. 85. ed. Ben. Antiochus and Ammon. ap. Cyril. de Recta Fid. pp. 49, 50. Pseudo-Dion. contr. Samos. 5. Pseudo-Basil. Hom. t. 2. p. 600 ed. Ben.
[3038] Rom. v. 14.
[3039] idiopoioumenou. vid. also [Incar. 8.] infr. §38. ad Epict. 6, e. fragm. ex Euthym. (t. i. p. 1275. ed. Ben.) Cyril. in Joann. p. 151, a. For idion, which occurs so frequently here, vid. Cyril. Anathem. 11. And oikeiotai. contr. Apoll. ii. 16, e. Cyril. Schol. de Incarn. p. 782, d. Concil. Eph. pp. 1644, d. 1697, b. (Hard.) Damasc. F. O. iii. 3. p. 208. ed. Ven. Vid. Petav. de Incarn. iv. 15.
[3040] Vid. Or. i. §§45, 46, ii. 65, note. Vid. also iv. 33. Incarn. c. Arian. 12. contr. Apoll. i. 17. ii. 6. Since God the Word willed to annul the passions, whose end is death, and His deathless nature was not capable of them...He is made flesh of the Virgin, in the way He knoweth, &c.' Procl. ad Armen. p. 616. also Leo. Serm. 22. pp. 69. 71. Serm. 26. p. 88. Nyssen contr. Apoll. t. 2 p. 696. Cyril. Epp. p. 138, 9. in Joan. p. 95. Chrysol. Serm. 148.
[3041] ii. 69, n. 3, &c.
[3042] theotokou. supr. 14, n. 3. For mater Dei' vid. before S. Leo, Ambros. de Virg. ii. 7. Cassian. Incarn. ii. 5. vii. 25. Vincent. Lir. Commonit. 21. It is obvious that theotokos, though framed as a test against Nestorians, was equally effective against Apollinarians [?] and Eutychians, who denied that our Lord had taken human flesh at all, as is observed by Facundus Def. Trium. Cap. i. 4. Cf. Cyril. Epp. pp. 106, 7. Yet these sects, as the Arians, maintained the term. vid. supr. Or. ii. 8, n. 5.
[3043] ii. 59. n. 5.
[3044] logotheises tes sarkos. This strong term is here applied to human nature generally; Damascene speaks of the logosis of the flesh, but he means especially our Lord's flesh. F. O. iv. 18. p. 286. (Ed. Ven.) for the words theousthai, &c. vid. supr. ii. 70, n. 1.
[3045] 1 Pet. iv. 1.
[3046] Cf. Chrysost. in Joann. Hom. 67. 1 and 2. Cyril de Rect. Fid. p. 18. As a man He doubts, as a man He is troubled; it is not His Power (virtus) that is troubled, not His Godhead, but His soul, &c.' Ambros. de Fid. ii. n. 56. vid. a beautiful passage in S. Basil's Hom. iv. 5. in which he insists on our Lord's having wept to shew us how to weep neither too much nor too little.
[3047] Mat. xxvi. 39.
[3048] blaptomenos, §31, n. 15.
[3049] Cf. 33, n. 6.
[3050] Vid. Or. ii. 56, n. 5. Cf. Cyril. de Rect. Fid. p. 18.
[3051] 1 John iii. 5.
[3052] Cf. 31, n. 10.
[3053] Vid. infr. 39-41. and 56, n. 7. Cf. Procl. ad Armen. p. 615. Leo's Tome (Ep. 28, 3) also Hil. Trin. ix. 11 fin. Vagit infans, sed in coelo est, &c.' ibid. x. 54. Ambros. de Fid. ii. 77. Erat vermis in cruce sed dimittebat peccata. Non habebat speciem, sed plenitudinem divinitatis, &c. Id. Epist. i. 46, n. 5. Theoph. Ep. Pasch. 6. ap. Conc. Ephes. p. 1404. Hard.
[3054] Vid. Is. i. 22, LXX.; Or. ii. 80; de Decr. 10.
[3055] Thus heresies are partial views of the truth, starting from some truth which they exaggerate, and disowning and protesting against other truth, which they fancy inconsistent with it. vid. supr. Or. i. 26, n. 2.
[3056] De Syn. 33; Or. i. 8.
[3057] Cf. §28, n. 11.
[3058] Cf. §30, n. 7. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXVII.--Texts Explained; Tenthly, Matthew xi. 27; John iii. 35, &c. These texts intended to preclude the Sabellian notion of the Son; they fall in with the Catholic doctrine concerning the Son; they are explained by so' in John v. 26. (Anticipation of the next chapter.) Again they are used with reference to our Lord's human nature; for our sake, that we might receive and not lose, as receiving in Him. And consistently with other parts of Scripture, which shew that He had the power, &c., before He received it. He was God and man, and His actions are often at once divine and human.
35 (continued). For, The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into His hand;' and, All things were given unto Me of My Father;' and, I can do nothing of Myself, but as I hear, I judge [3059] ;' and the like passages do not shew that the Son once had not these prerogatives--(for had not He eternally what the Father has, who is the Only Word and Wisdom of the Father in essence, who also says, All that the Father hath are Mine [3060] ,' and what are Mine, are the Father's? for if the things of the Father are the Son's and the Father hath them ever, it is plain that what the Son hath, being the Father's, were ever in the Son),--not then because once He had them not, did He say this, but because, whereas the Son hath eternally what He hath, yet He hath them from the Father.
36. For lest a man, perceiving that the Son has all that the Father hath, from the exact likeness and identity of that He hath, should wander into the irreligion of Sabellius, considering Him to be the Father, therefore He has said Was given unto Me,' and I received,' and Were delivered to Me [3061] ,' only to shew that He is not the Father, but the Father's Word, and the Eternal Son, who because of His likeness to the Father, has eternally what He has from Him, and because He is the Son, has from the Father what He has eternally. Moreover that Was given' and Were delivered,' and the like, do not impair [3062] the Godhead of the Son, but rather shew Him to be truly [3063] Son, we may learn from the passages themselves. For if all things are delivered unto Him, first, He is other than that all which He has received; next, being Heir of all things, He alone is the Son and proper according to the Essence of the Father. For if He were one of all, then He were not heir of all [3064] ,' but every one had received according as the Father willed and gave. But now, as receiving all things, He is other than them all, and alone proper to the Father. Moreover that Was given' and Were delivered' do not shew that once He had them not, we may conclude from a similar passage, and in like manner concerning them all; for the Saviour Himself says, As the Father hath life in Himself, so hath He given also to the Son to have life in Himself [3065] .' Now from the words Hath given,' He signifies that He is not the Father; but in saying so,' He shews the Son's natural likeness and propriety towards the Father. If then once the Father had not, plainly the Son once had not; for as the Father, so' also the Son has. But if this is irreligious to say, and religious on the contrary to say that the Father had ever, is it not unseemly in them when the Son says that, as' the Father has, so' also the Son has, to say that He has not so [3066] ,' but otherwise? Rather then is the Word faithful, and all things which He says that He has received, He has always, yet has from the Father; and the Father indeed not from any, but the Son from the Father. For as in the instance of the radiance, if the radiance itself should say, All places the light hath given me to enlighten, and I do not enlighten from myself, but as the light wills,' yet, in saying this, it does not imply that it once had not, but it means, I am proper to the light, and all things of the light are mine;' so, and much more, must we understand in the instance of the Son. For the Father, having given all things to the Son, in the Son still [3067] hath all things; and the Son having, still the Father hath them; for the Son's Godhead is the Father's Godhead, and thus the Father in the Son exercises His Providence [3068] over all things.
37. And while such is the sense of expressions like these, those which speak humanly concerning the Saviour admit of a religious meaning also. For with this end have we examined them beforehand, that, if we should hear Him asking where Lazarus is laid [3069] , or when He asks on coming into the parts of Cæsarea, Whom do men say that I am?' or, How many loaves have ye?' and, What will ye that I shall do unto you [3070] ?' we may know, from what has been already said, the right [3071] sense of the passages, and may not stumble as Christ's enemies the Arians. First then we must put this question to the irreligious, why they consider Him ignorant? for one who asks, does not for certain ask from ignorance; but it is possible for one who knows, still to ask concerning what He knows. Thus John was aware that Christ, when asking, How many loaves have ye?' was not ignorant, for he says, And this He said to prove him, for He Himself knew what He would do [3072] .' But if He knew what He was doing, therefore not in ignorance, but with knowledge did He ask. From this instance we may understand similar ones; that, when the Lord asks, He does not ask in ignorance, where Lazarus lies, nor again, whom men do say that He is; but knowing the thing which He was asking, aware what He was about to do. And thus with ease is their clever point exploded; but if they still persist [3073] on account of His asking, then they must be told that in the Godhead indeed ignorance is not, but to the flesh ignorance is proper, as has been said. And that this is really so, observe how the Lord who inquired where Lazarus lay, Himself said, when He was not on the spot but a great way off, Lazarus is dead [3074] ,' and where he was dead; and how that He who is considered by them as ignorant, is He Himself who foreknew the reasonings of the disciples, and was aware of what was in the heart of each, and of what was in man,' and, what is greater, alone knows the Father and says, I in the Father and the Father in Me. [3075] '
38. Therefore this is plain to every one, that the flesh indeed is ignorant, but the Word Himself, considered as the Word, knows all things even before they come to be. For He did not, when He became man, cease to be God [3076] ; nor, whereas He is God does He shrink from what is man's; perish the thought; but rather, being God, He has taken to Him the flesh, and being in the flesh deifies the flesh. For as He asked questions in it, so also in it did He raise the dead; and He shewed to all that He who quickens the dead and recalls the soul, much more discerns the secret of all. And He knew where Lazarus lay, and yet He asked; for the All-holy Word of God, who endured all things for our sakes, did this, that so carrying our ignorance, He might vouchsafe to us the knowledge of His own only and true Father, and of Himself, sent because of us for the salvation of all, than which no grace could be greater. When then the Saviour uses the words which they allege in their defence, Power is given to Me,' and, Glorify Thy Son,' and Peter says, Power is given unto Him,' we understand all these passages in the same sense, that humanly because of the body He says all this. For though He had no need, nevertheless He is said to have received what He received humanly, that on the other hand, inasmuch as the Lord has received, and the grant is lodged with Him, the grace may remain sure. For while mere man receives, he is liable to lose again (as was shewn in the case of Adam, for he received and he lost [3077] ), but that the grace may be irrevocable, and may be kept sure [3078] by men, therefore He Himself appropriates [3079] the gift; and He says that He has received power, as man, which He ever had as God, and He says, Glorify Me,' who glorifies others, to shew that He hath a flesh which has need of these things. Wherefore, when the flesh receives, since that which receives is in Him, and by taking it He hath become man, therefore He is said Himself to have received.
39. If then (as has many times been said) the Word has not become man, then ascribe to the Word, as you would have it, to receive, and to need glory, and to be ignorant; but if He has become man (and He has become), and it is man's to receive, and to need, and to be ignorant, wherefore do we consider the Giver as receiver, and the Dispenser to others do we suspect to be in need, and divide the Word from the Father as imperfect and needy, while we strip human nature of grace? For if the Word Himself, considered as Word, has received and been glorified for His own sake, and if He according to His Godhead is He who is hallowed and has risen again, what hope is there for men? for they remain as they were, naked, and wretched, and dead, having no interest in the things given to the Son. Why too did the Word come among us, and become flesh? if that He might receive these things, which He says that He has received, He was without them before that, and of necessity will rather owe thanks Himself to the body [3080] , because, when He came into it, then He receives these things from the Father, which He had not before His descent into the flesh. For on this shewing He seems rather to be Himself promoted because of the body [3081] , than the body promoted because of Him. But this notion is Judaic. But if that He might redeem mankind [3082] , the Word did come among us; and that He might hallow and deify them, the Word became flesh (and for this He did become), who does not see that it follows, that what He says that He received, when He became flesh, that He mentions, not for His own sake, but for the flesh? for to it, in which He was speaking, pertained the gifts given through Him from the Father. But let us see what He asked, and what the things altogether were which He said that He had received, that in this way also they may be brought to feeling. He asked then glory, yet He had said, All things were delivered unto Me [3083] .' And after the resurrection, He says that He has received all power; but even before that He had said, All things were delivered unto Me,' He was Lord of all, for all things were made by Him;' and there is One Lord by whom are all things [3084] .' And when He asked glory, He was as He is, the Lord of glory; as Paul says, If they had known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory [3085] ;' for He had that glory which He asked when He said, the glory which I had with Thee before the world was [3086] .'
40. Also the power which He said He received after the resurrection, that He had before He received it, and before the resurrection. For He of Himself rebuked Satan, saying, Get thee behind Me, Satan [3087] ;' and to the disciples He gave the power against him, when on their return He said, I beheld Satan, as lightning, fall from heaven [3088] .' And again, that what He said that He had received, that He possessed before receiving it, appears from His driving away the demons, and from His unbinding what Satan had bound, as He did in the case of the daughter of Abraham; and from His remitting sins, saying to the paralytic, and to the woman who washed His feet, Thy sins be forgiven thee [3089] ;' and from His both raising the dead, and repairing the first nature of the blind, granting to him to see. And all this He did, not waiting till He should receive, but being possessed of power [3090] .' From all this it is plain that what He had as Word, that when He had become man and was risen again, He says that He received humanly [3091] ; that for His sake men might henceforward upon earth have power against demons, as having become partakers of a divine nature; and in heaven, as being delivered from corruption, might reign everlastingly. Thus we must acknowledge this once for all, that nothing which He says that He received, did He receive as not possessing before; for the Word, as being God, had them always; but in these passages He is said humanly to have received, that, whereas the flesh received in Him, henceforth from it the gift might abide [3092] surely for us. For what is said by Peter, receiving from God honour and glory, Angels being made subject unto Him [3093] ,' has this meaning. As He inquired humanly, and raised Lazarus divinely, so He received' is spoken of Him humanly, but the subjection of the Angels marks the Word's Godhead.
41. Cease then, O abhorred of God [3094] , and degrade not the Word; nor detract from His Godhead, which is the Father's [3095] , as though He needed or were ignorant; lest ye be casting your own arguments against the Christ, as the Jews who once stoned Him. For these belong not to the Word, as the Word; but are proper to men and, as when He spat, and stretched forth the hand, and called Lazarus, we did not say that the triumphs were human, though they were done through the body, but were God's, so, on the other hand, though human things are ascribed to the Saviour in the Gospel, let us, considering the nature of what is said and that they are foreign to God, not impute them to the Word's Godhead, but to His manhood. For though the Word became flesh,' yet to the flesh are the affections proper; and though the flesh is possessed by God in the Word, yet to the Word belong the grace and the power. He did then the Father's works through the flesh; and as truly contrariwise were the affections of the flesh displayed in Him; for instance, He inquired and He raised Lazarus, He chid [3096] His Mother, saying, My hour is not yet come,' and then at once He made the water wine. For He was Very God in the flesh, and He was true flesh in the Word. Therefore from His works He revealed both Himself as Son of God, and His own Father, and from the affections of the flesh He shewed that He bore a true body, and that it was His own. __________________________________________________________________
[3059] John iii. 35; Matt. xi. 27; John v. 30
[3060] John xvi. 15; xvii. 10.
[3061] John x. 18; Mat. xxviii. 18.
[3062] Or. i. 45; ad Adelph. 4.
[3063] Or. ii. 19, n. 3.
[3064] Heb. i. 2.
[3065] John v. 26.
[3066] Or. ii. 55, n. 8.
[3067] palin. vid. Or. i. 15, n. 6. Thus iteration is not duplication in respect to God; though how this is, is the inscrutable Mystery of the Trinity in Unity. Nothing can be named which the Son is in Himself, as distinct from the Father; we are but told His relation towards the Father, and thus the sole meaning we are able to attach to Person is a relation of the Son towards the Father; and distinct from and beyond that relation, He is but the One God, who is also the Father. This sacred subject has been touched upon supr. Or. iii. 9, n. 8. In other words, there is an indestructible essential relation existing in the One Indivisible infinitely simple God, such as to constitute Him, viewed on each side of that relation (what in human language we call) Two (and in like manner Three), yet without the notion of number really coming in. When we speak of Person,' we mean nothing more than the One God in substance, viewed relatively to Him the One God, as viewed in that Correlative which we therefore call another Person. These various statements are not here intended to explain, but to bring home to the mind what it is which faith receives. We say Father, Son, and Spirit,' but when we would abstract a general idea of Them in order to number Them, our abstraction really does hardly more than carry us back to the One Substance. Such seems the meaning of such passages as Basil. Ep. 8, 2; de Sp. S. c. 18; Chrysost. in Joan. Hom. ii. 3 fin. In respect of the Adorable and most Royal Trinity, first' and second' have no place; for the Godhead is higher than number and times.' Isid. Pel. Ep. 3, 18. Eulog. ap. Phot. 230. p. 864. August. in Joan. 39, 3 and 4; de Trin. v. 10. Unity is not number, but is itself the principle of all things.' Ambros. de Fid. i. n. 19. A trine numeration then does not make number, which they rather run into, who make some difference between the Three.' Boeth. Trin. unus Deus, p. 959. The last remark is found in Naz. Orat. 31, 18. Many of these references are taken from Thomassin de Trin. 17.
[3068] §§11, n. 4, 15, n. 11.
[3069] Vid. infr. 46; John xi. 34.
[3070] Matt. xvi. 13; Mark vi. 38; Matt. xx. 32
[3071] ii. 44, n. 1.
[3072] John vi. 6.
[3073] Petavius refers to this passage in proof that S. Athanasius did not in his real judgment consider our Lord ignorant, but went on to admit it in argument after having first given his own real opinion. vid. §45, n. 2.
[3074] John xi. 14.
[3075] John ii. 25; xiv. 11.
[3076] Or. ii. 8, n. 3.
[3077] Or. ii. 68.
[3078] ii. 69, n. 3.
[3079] idiopoieitai, cf. 33, n. 5.
[3080] Infr. 51.
[3081] Or. i. 38.
[3082] Redemption an internal work. vid. supr. ii. 55, n. 1.
[3083] Luke x. 22.
[3084] 1 Cor. viii. 6.
[3085] 1 Cor. ii. 8.
[3086] Joh. xvii. 5.
[3087] Luke iv. 8.
[3088] Luke x. 18, 19.
[3089] Vid. ib. xiii. 16; Matt. ix. 5; Luke vii. 48.
[3090] Is. ix. 6, LXX.
[3091] Or. i. 45.
[3092] diameine, Or. ii. 69, 3.
[3093] 2 Pet. i. 17; 1 Pet. iii. 22.
[3094] theostugeis, supr. §16, n. 7. infr. §58, de Mort. Ar. 1. In illud Omn. 6.
[3095] §1, n. 11.
[3096] John ii. 4. epeplette; and so epetimese, Chrysost. in loc. Joan. and Theophyl. hos despotes epitima, Theodor. Eran. ii. p. 106. entrepei, Anon. ap. Corder. Cat. in loc. memphetai, Alter Anon. ibid. epitima ouk atimazon alla diorthoumenos, Euthym. in loc. ouk epeplexen, Pseudo-Justin. Quæst. ad Orthod. 136. It is remarkable that Athan. dwells on these words as implying our Lord's humanity (i.e. because Christ appeared to decline a miracle), when one reason assigned for them by the Fathers is that He wished, in the words ti moi kai soi, to remind S. Mary that He was the Son of God and must be about His Father's business.' Repeliens ejus intempestivam festinationem,' Iren. Hær. iii. 16, n. 7. It is observable that epiplettei and epitima are the words used by Cyril, &c. (infr. §54, note 4), for our Lord's treatment of His own sacred body. But they are very vague words, and have a strong meaning or not, as the case may be. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXVIII.--Texts Explained; Eleventhly, Mark xiii. 32 and Luke ii. 52 Arian explanation of the former text is against the Regula Fidei; and against the context. Our Lord said He was ignorant of the Day, by reason of His human nature. If the Holy Spirit knows the Day, therefore the Son knows; if the Son knows the Father, therefore He knows the Day; if He has all that is the Father's, therefore knowledge of the Day; if in the Father, He knows the Day in the Father; if He created and upholds all things, He knows when they will cease to be. He knows not as Man, argued from Matt. xxiv. 42. As He asked about Lazarus's grave, &c., yet knew, so He knows; as S. Paul says, whether in the body I know not,' &c., yet knew, so He knows. He said He knew not for our profit, that we be not curious (as in Acts i. 7, where on the contrary He did not say He knew not). As the Almighty asks of Adam and of Cain, yet knew, so the Son knows[as God]. Again, He advanced in wisdom also as man, else He made Angels perfect before Himself. He advanced, in that the Godhead was manifested in Him more fully as time went on.
42. These things being so, come let us now examine into But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, neither the Angels of God, nor the Son [3097] ;' for being in great ignorance as regards these words, and being stupefied [3098] about them, they think they have in them an important argument for their heresy. But I, when the heretics allege it and prepare themselves with it, see in them the giants [3099] again fighting against God. For the Lord of heaven and earth, by whom all things were made, has to litigate before them about day and hour; and the Word who knows all things is accused by them of ignorance about a day; and the Son who knows the Father is said to be ignorant of an hour of a day; now what can be spoken more contrary to sense, or what madness can be likened to this? Through the Word all things have been made, times and seasons and night and day and the whole creation; and is the Framer of all said to be ignorant of His work? And the very context of the lection shews that the Son of God knows that hour and that day, though the Arians fall headlong in their ignorance. For after saying, nor the Son,' He relates to the disciples what precedes the day, saying, This and that shall be, and then the end.' But He who speaks of what precedes the day, knows certainly the day also, which shall be manifested subsequently to the things foretold. But if He had not known the hour, He had not signified the events before it, as not knowing when it should be. And as any one, who, by way of pointing out a house or city to those who were ignorant of it, gave an account of what comes before the house or city, and having described all, said, Then immediately comes the city or the house,' would know of course where the house or the city was (for had he not known, he had not described what comes before lest from ignorance he should throw his hearers far out of the way, or in speaking he should unawares go beyond the object), so the Lord saying what precedes that day and that hour, knows exactly, nor is ignorant, when the hour and the day are at hand.
43. Now why it was that, though He knew, He did not tell His disciples plainly at that time, no one may be curious [3100] where He has been silent; for Who hath known the mind of the Lord, or who hath been His counsellor [3101] ?' but why, though He knew, He said, no, not the Son knows,' this I think none of the faithful is ignorant, viz. that He made this as those other declarations as man by reason of the flesh. For this as before is not the Word's deficiency [3102] , but of that human nature [3103] whose property it is to be ignorant. And this again will be well seen by honestly examining into the occasion, when and to whom the Saviour spoke thus. Not then when the heaven was made by Him, nor when He was with the Father Himself, the Word disposing all things [3104] ,' nor before He became man did He say it, but when the Word became flesh [3105] .' On this account it is reasonable to ascribe to His manhood everything which, after He became man, He speaks humanly. For it is proper to the Word to know what was made, nor be ignorant either of the beginning or of the end of these (for the works are His), and He knows how many things He wrought, and the limit of their consistence. And knowing of each the beginning and the end, He knows surely the general and common end of all. Certainly when He says in the Gospel concerning Himself in His human character, Father, the hour is come, glorify Thy Son [3106] ,' it is plain that He knows also the hour of the end of all things, as the Word, though as man He is ignorant of it, for ignorance is proper to man [3107] , and especially ignorance of these things. Moreover this is proper to the Saviour's love of man; for since He was made man, He is not ashamed, because of the flesh which is ignorant [3108] , to say I know not,' that He may shew that knowing as God, He is but ignorant according to the flesh [3109] . And therefore He said not, no, not the Son of God knows,' lest the Godhead should seem ignorant, but simply, no, not the Son,' that the ignorance might be the Son's as born from among men.
44. On this account, He alludes to the Angels, but He did not go further and say, not the Holy Ghost;' but He was silent, with a double intimation; first that if the Spirit knew, much more must the Word know, considered as the Word, from whom the Spirit receives [3110] ; and next by His silence about the Spirit, He made it clear, that He said of His human ministry, no, not the Son.' And a proof of it is this; that, when He had spoken humanly [3111] No, not the Son knows,' He yet shews that divinely He knew all things. For that Son whom He declares not to know the day, Him He declares to know the Father; for No one,' He says, knoweth the Father save the Son [3112] .' And all men but the Arians would join in confessing, that He who knows the Father, much more knows the whole of the creation; and in that whole, its end. And if already the day and the hour be determined by the Father, it is plain that through the Son are they determined, and He knows Himself what through Him has been determined [3113] , for there is nothing but has come to be and has been determined through the Son. Therefore He, being the Framer of the universe, knows of what nature, and of what magnitude, and with what limits, the Father has willed it to be made; and in the how much and how far is included its period. And again, if all that is the Father's, is the Son's (and this He Himself has [3114] said), and it is the Father's attribute to know the day, it is plain that the Son too knows it, having this proper to Him from the Father. And again, if the Son be in the Father and the Father in the Son, and the Father knows the day and the hour, it is clear that the Son, being in the Father and knowing the things of the Father, knows Himself also the day and the hour. And if the Son is also the Father's Very Image, and the Father knows the day and the hour, it is plain that the Son has this likeness [3115] also to the Father of knowing them. And it is not wonderful if He, through whom all things were made, and in whom the universe consists, Himself knows what has been brought to be, and when the end will be of each and of all together; rather is it wonderful that this audacity, suitable as it is to the madness of the Ario-maniacs, should have forced us to have recourse to so long a defence. For ranking the Son of God, the Eternal Word, among things originate, they are not far from venturing to maintain that the Father Himself is second to the creation; for if He who knows the Father knows not the day nor the hour, I fear lest the knowledge of the creation, or rather of the lower portion of it, be greater, as they in their madness would say, than knowledge concerning the Father.
45. But for them, when they thus blaspheme the Spirit, they must expect no remission ever of such irreligion, as the Lord has said [3116] ; but let us, who love Christ and bear Christ within us, know that the Word, not as ignorant, considered as Word, has said I know not,' for He knows, but as shewing His manhood [3117] , in that to be ignorant is proper to man, and that He had put on flesh that was ignorant [3118] , being in which, He said according to the flesh, I know not.' And for this reason, after saying, No not the Son knows,' and mentioning the ignorance of the men in Noah's day, immediately He added, Watch therefore, for ye know not in what hour your Lord doth come,' and again, In such an hour as ye think not, the Son of man cometh [3119] .' For I too, having become as you for you, said no, not the Son.' For, had He been ignorant divinely, He must have said, Watch therefore, for I know not,' and, In an hour when I think not;' but in fact this hath He not said; but by saying Ye know not' and When ye think not,' He has signified that it belongs to man to be ignorant; for whose sake He too having a flesh like theirs and having become man, said No, not the Son knows,' for He knew not in flesh, though knowing as Word. And again the example from Noah exposes the shamelessness of Christ's enemies; for there too He said not, I knew not,' but They knew not until the flood came [3120] .' For men did not know, but He who brought the flood (and it was the Saviour Himself) knew the day and the hour in which He opened the cataracts of heaven and broke up the great deep, and said to Noah, Come thou and all thy house into the ark [3121] .' For were He ignorant, He had not foretold to Noah, Yet seven days and I will bring a flood upon the earth.' But if in describing the day He makes use of the parallel of Noah's time, and He did know the day of the flood, therefore He knows also the day of His own coming.
46. Moreover, after narrating the parable of the Virgins, again He shews more clearly who they are who are ignorant of the day and the hour, saying, Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour [3122] .' He who said shortly before, No one knoweth, no not the Son,' now says not I know not,' but ye know not.' In like manner then, when His disciples asked about the end, suitably said He then, no, nor the Son,' according to the flesh because of the body; that He might shew that, as man, He knows not; for ignorance is proper to man [3123] . If however He is the Word, if it is He who is to come, He to be Judge, He to be the Bridegroom, He knoweth when and in what hour He cometh, and when He is to say, Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light [3124] .' For as, on becoming man, He hungers and thirsts and suffers with men, so with men as man He knows not; though divinely, being in the Father Word and Wisdom, He knows, and there is nothing which He knows not. In like manner also about Lazarus [3125] He asks humanly, who was on His way to raise him, and knew whence He should recall Lazarus's soul; and it was a greater thing to know where the soul was, than to know where the body lay; but He asked humanly, that He might raise divinely. So too He asks of the disciples, on coming into the parts of Cæsarea, though knowing even before Peter made answer. For if the Father revealed to Peter the answer to the Lord's question, it is plain that through the Son [3126] was the revelation, for No one knoweth the Son,' saith He, save the Father, neither the Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him [3127] .' But if through the Son is revealed the knowledge both of the Father and the Son, there is no room for doubting that the Lord who asked, having first revealed it to Peter from the Father, next asked humanly; in order to shew, that asking after the flesh, He knew divinely what Peter was about to say. The Son then knew, as knowing all things, and knowing His own Father, than which knowledge nothing can be greater or more perfect.
47. This is sufficient to confute them; but to shew still further that they are hostile to the truth and Christ's enemies, I could wish to ask them a question. The Apostle in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians writes, I knew a man in Christ, above fourteen years ago, whether in the body I do not know, or whether out of the body I do not know; God knoweth [3128] .' What now say ye? Knew the Apostle what had happened to him in the vision, though he says I know not,' or knew he not? If he knew not, see to it, lest, being familiar with error, ye err in the trespass [3129] of the Phrygians [3130] , who say that the Prophets and the other ministers of the Word know neither what they do nor concerning what they announce. But if he knew when he said I know not,' for he had Christ within him revealing to him all things, is not the heart of God's enemies indeed perverted and self-condemned?' for when the Apostle says, I know not,' they say that he knows; but when the Lord says, I know not,' they say that He does not know. For if since Christ was within him, Paul knew that of which he says, I know not,' does not much more Christ Himself know, though He say, I know not?' The Apostle then, the Lord revealing it to him, knew what happened to him; for on this account he says, I knew a man in Christ;' and knowing the man, he knew also how the man was caught away. Thus Elisha, who beheld Elijah, knew also how he was taken up; but though knowing, yet when the sons of the Prophets thought that Elijah was cast upon one of the mountains by the Spirit, he knowing from the first what he had seen, tried to persuade them; but when they urged it, he was silent, and suffered them to go after him. Did he then not know, because he was silent? he knew indeed, but as if not knowing, he suffered them, that they being convinced, might no more doubt about the taking up of Elijah. Therefore much more Paul, himself being the person caught away, knew also how he was caught; for Elijah knew; and had any one asked, he would have said how. And yet Paul says I know not,' for these two reasons, as I think at least; one, as he has said himself, lest because of the abundance of the revelations any one should think of him beyond what he saw; the other, because, our Saviour having said I know not,' it became him also to say I know not,' lest the servant should appear above his Lord, and the disciple above his Master.
48. Therefore He who gave to Paul to know, much rather knew Himself; for since He spoke of the antecedents of the day, He also knew, as I said before, when the Day and when the Hour, and yet though knowing, He says, No, not the Son knoweth.' Why then said He at that time I know not,' what He as Lord [3131] , knew? as we may by searching conjecture, for our profit [3132] , as I think at least, did He this; and may He grant to what we are now proposing a true meaning! On both sides did the Saviour secure our advantage; for He has made known what comes before the end, that, as He said Himself, we might not be startled nor scared, when they happen, but from them may expect the end after them. And concerning the day and the hour He was not willing to say according to His divine nature, I know,' but after the flesh, I know not,' for the sake of the flesh which was ignorant [3133] , as I have said before; lest they should ask Him further, and then either He should have to pain the disciples by not speaking, or by speaking might act to the prejudice of them and us all. For whatever He does, that altogether He does for our sakes, since also for us the Word became flesh.' For us therefore He said No, not the Son knoweth;' and neither was He untrue in thus saying (for He said humanly, as man, I know not'), nor did He suffer the disciples to force Him to speak, for by saying I know not' He stopped their inquiries. And so in the Acts of the Apostles it is written, when He went upon the Angels, ascending as man, and carrying up to heaven the flesh which He bore, on the disciples seeing this, and again asking, When shall the end be, and when wilt Thou be present?' He said to them more clearly, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons which the Father hath put in His own power [3134] .' And He did not then say, No, not the Son,' as He said before humanly, but, It is not for you to know.' For now the flesh had risen and put off its mortality and been deified; and no longer did it become Him to answer after the flesh when He was going into the heavens; but henceforth to teach after a divine manner, It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father hath put in His own power; but ye shall receive Power [3135] .' And what is that Power of the Father but the Son? for Christ is God's Power and God's Wisdom.'
49. The Son then did know, as being the Word; for He implied this in what He said,--I know but it is not for you to know;' for it was for your sakes that sitting also on the mount I said according to the flesh, No, not the Son knoweth,' for the profit of you and all. For it is profitable to you to hear so much both of the Angels and of the Son, because of the deceivers which shall be afterwards; that though demons should be transfigured as Angels, and should attempt to speak concerning the end, you should not believe, since they are ignorant; and that, if Antichrist too, disguising himself, should say, I am Christ,' and should try in his turn to speak of that day and end, to deceive the hearers, ye, having these words from Me, No, not the Son,' may disbelieve him also. And further, not to know when the end is, or when the day of the end, is expedient for man, lest knowing, they might become negligent of the time between, awaiting the days near the end; for they will argue that then only must they attend to themselves [3136] . Therefore also has He been silent of the time when each shall die, lest men, being elated on the ground of knowledge, should forthwith neglect themselves for the greater part of their time. Both then, the end of all things and the limit of each of us hath the Word concealed from us (for in the end of all is the end of each, and in the end of each the end of all is comprehended), that, whereas it is uncertain and always in prospect, we may advance day by day as if summoned, reaching forward to the things before us and forgetting the things behind [3137] . For who, knowing the day of the end, would not be dilatory with the interval? but, if ignorant, would not be ready day by day? It was on this account that the Saviour added, Watch therefore, for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come;' and, In such an hour as ye think not, the Son of man cometh [3138] .' For the advantage then which comes of ignorance has He said this; for in saying it, He wishes that we should always be prepared; for you,' He says, know not; but I, the Lord, know when I come, though the Arians do not wait for Me, who am the Word of the Father.'
50. The Lord then, knowing what is good for us beyond ourselves, thus secured the disciples; and they, being thus taught, set right those of Thessalonica [3139] when likely on this point to run into error. However, since Christ's enemies do not yield even to these considerations, I wish, though knowing that they have a heart harder than Pharaoh, to ask them again concerning this. In Paradise God asks, Adam, where art Thou [3140] ' and He inquires of Cain also, Where is Abel thy brother [3141] ?' What then say you to this? for if you think Him ignorant and therefore to have asked, you are already of the party of the Manichees, for this is their bold thought; but if, fearing the open name, ye force yourselves to say, that He asks knowing, what is there extravagant or strange in the doctrine, that ye should thus fall, on finding that the Son, in whom God then inquired, that same Son who now is clad in flesh, inquires of the disciples as man? unless forsooth, having become Manichees, you are willing to blame [3142] the question then put to Adam and all that you may give full play [3143] to your perverseness. For being exposed on all sides, you still make a whispering [3144] from the words of Luke, which are rightly said, but ill understood by you. And what this is, we must state, that so also their corrupt [3145] meaning may be shewn.
51. Now Luke says, And Jesus advanced in wisdom and stature, and in grace with God and man [3146] .' This then is the passage, and since they stumble in it, we are compelled to ask them, like the Pharisees and the Sadducees, of the person concerning whom Luke speaks. And the case stands thus. Is Jesus Christ man, as all other men, or is He God bearing flesh? If then He is an ordinary [3147] man as the rest, then let Him, as a man, advance; this however is the sentiment of the Samosatene, which virtually indeed you entertain also, though in name you deny it because of men. But if He be God bearing flesh, as He truly is, and the Word became flesh,' and being God descended upon earth, what advance had He who existed equal to God? or how had the Son increase, being ever in the Father? For if He who was ever in the Father, advanced, what, I ask, is there beyond the Father from which His advance might be made? Next it is suitable here to repeat what was said upon the point of His receiving and being glorified. If He advanced [3148] when He became man, it is plain that, before He became man, He was imperfect; and rather the flesh became to Him a cause of perfection, than He to the flesh. And again, if, as being the Word, He advances, what has He more to become than Word and Wisdom and Son and God's Power? For the Word is all these, of which if one can anyhow partake as it were one ray, such a man becomes all perfect among men, and equal to Angels. For Angels, and Archangels, and Dominions, and all the Powers, and Thrones, as partaking the Word, behold always the face of His Father. How then does He who to others supplies perfection, Himself advance later than they? For Angels even ministered to His human birth, and the passage from Luke comes later than the ministration of the Angels. How then at all can it even come into thought of man? or how did Wisdom advance in wisdom? or how did He who to others gives grace (as Paul says in every Epistle, knowing that through Him grace is given, The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all'), how did He advance in grace? for either let them say that the Apostle is untrue, and presume to say that the Son is not Wisdom, or else if He is Wisdom as Solomon said, and if Paul wrote, Christ God's Power and God's Wisdom,' of what advance did Wisdom admit further?
52. For men, creatures as they are, are capable in a certain way of reaching forward and advancing in virtue [3149] . Enoch, for instance, was thus translated, and Moses increased and was perfected; and Isaac by advancing became great [3150] ;' and the Apostle said that he reached forth [3151] ' day by day to what was before him. For each had room for advancing, looking to the step before him. But the Son of God, who is One and Only, what room had He for reaching forward? for all things advance by looking at Him; and He, being One and Only, is in the Only Father, from whom again He does not reach forward, but in Him abideth ever [3152] . To men then belongs advance; but the Son of God, since He could not advance, being perfect in the Father, humbled Himself for us, that in His humbling we on the other hand might be able to increase. And our increase is no other than the renouncing things sensible, and coming to the Word Himself; since His humbling is nothing else than His taking our flesh. It was not then the Word, considered as the Word, who advanced; who is perfect from the perfect Father [3153] , who needs nothing, nay brings forward others to an advance; but humanly is He here also said to advance, since advance belongs to man [3154] . Hence the Evangelist, speaking with cautious exactness [3155] , has mentioned stature in the advance; but being Word and God He is not measured by stature, which belongs to bodies. Of the body then is the advance; for, it advancing, in it advanced also the manifestation [3156] of the Godhead to those who saw it. And, as the Godhead was more and more revealed, by so much more did His grace as man increase before all men. For as a child He was carried to the Temple; and when He became a boy, He remained there, and questioned the priests about the Law. And by degrees His body increasing, and the Word manifesting Himself [3157] in it, He is confessed henceforth by Peter first, then also by all, Truly this is the Son of God [3158] ;' however wilfully the Jews, both the ancient and these modern [3159] , shut fast their eyes, lest they see that to advance in wisdom is not the advance of Wisdom Itself, but rather the manhood's advance in It. For Jesus advanced in wisdom and grace;' and, if we may speak what is explanatory as well as true, He advanced in Himself; for Wisdom builded herself an house,' and in herself she gave the house advancement.
53. (What moreover is this advance that is spoken of, but, as I said before, the deifying and grace imparted from Wisdom to men, sin being obliterated in them and their inward corruption, according to their likeness and relationship to the flesh of the Word?) For thus, the body increasing in stature, there developed in it the manifestation of the Godhead also, and to all was it displayed that the body was God's Temple [3160] , and that God was in the body. And if they urge, that The Word become flesh' is called Jesus, and refer to Him the term advanced,' they must be told that neither does this impair [3161] the Father's Light [3162] , which is the Son, but that it still shews that the Word has become man, and bore true flesh. And as we said [3163] that He suffered in the flesh, and hungered in the flesh, and was fatigued in the flesh, so also reasonably may He be said to have advanced in the flesh; for neither did the advance, such as we have described it, take place with the Word external to the flesh, for in Him was the flesh which advanced and His is it called, and that as before, that man's advance might abide [3164] and fail not, because of the Word which is with it. Neither then was the advance the Word's, nor was the flesh Wisdom, but the flesh became the body of Wisdom [3165] . Therefore, as we have already said, not Wisdom, as Wisdom, advanced in respect of Itself; but the manhood advanced in Wisdom, transcending by degrees human nature, and being deified, and becoming and appearing to all as the organ [3166] of Wisdom for the operation and the shining forth [3167] of the Godhead. Wherefore neither said he, The Word advanced,' but Jesus, by which Name the Lord was called when He became man; so that the advance is of the human nature in such wise as we explained above. __________________________________________________________________
[3097] Mark xiii. 32. S. Basil takes the words oud' ho hui& 231;s, ei me ho pater, to mean, nor does the Son know, except the Father knows,' or nor would the Son but for, &c.' or nor does the Son know, except as the Father knows.' The cause of the Son's knowing is from the Father.' Ep. 236, 2. S. Gregory alludes to the same interpretation, oud' ho hui& 232;s e hos hoti ho pater. Since the Father knows, therefore the Son.' Naz. Orat. 30, 16. S. Irenæus seems to adopt the same when he says, The Son was not ashamed to refer the knowledge of that day to the Father;' Hær. ii. 28, n. 6. as Naz, supr. uses the words epi ten aitian anapherestho. And so Photius distinctly, eis archen anapheretai. Not the Son, but the Father, that is, whence knowledge comes to the Son as from a fountain.' Epp. p. 342. ed. 1651.
[3098] skotodiniontes, de Decr. §18 init.; Or. ii. 40, n. 5.
[3099] gigantas theomachountas, ii. 32, n. 4.
[3100] Cf. §18, n. 3.
[3101] Rom. xi. 34.
[3102] Or. i. 45.
[3103] Cf. ii. 45, n. 2.
[3104] Prov. viii. 27, LXX.
[3105] John i. 14.
[3106] Ib. xvii. 1.
[3107] Though our Lord, as having two natures, had a human as well as a divine knowledge, and though that human knowledge was not only limited because human, but liable to ignorance in matters in which greater knowledge was possible; yet it is the doctrine of the [later] Church, that in fact He was not ignorant even in His human nature, according to its capacity, since it was from the first taken out of its original and natural condition, and deified' by its union with the Word. As then (supr. ii. 45, note 1) His manhood was created, yet He may not be called a creature even in His manhood, and as (supr. ii. 14, note 5) His flesh was in its abstract nature a servant, yet He is not a servant in fact, even as regards the flesh; so, though He took on Him a soul which left to itself had been partially ignorant, as other human souls, yet as ever enjoying the beatific vision from its oneness with the Word, it never was ignorant really, but knew all things which human soul can know. vid. Eulog. ap. Phot. 230. p. 884. As Pope Gregory expresses it, Novit in natura, non ex natura humanitatis.' Epp. x. 39. However, this view of the sacred subject was received by the Church only after S. Athanasius's day, and it cannot be denied that others of the most eminent Fathers seem to impute ignorance to our Lord as man, as Athan. in this passage. Of course it is not meant that our Lord's soul has the same perfect knowledge as He has as God. This was the assertion of a General of the Hermits of S. Austin at the time of the Council of Basel, when the proposition was formally condemned, animam Christi Deum videre tam clare et intense quam clare et intense Deus videt seipsum. vid. Berti Opp. t. 3. p. 42. Yet Fulgentius had said, I think that in no respect was full knowledge of the Godhead wanting to that Soul, whose Person is one with the Word: whom Wisdom so assumed that it is itself that same Wisdom.' ad Ferrand. iii. p. 223. ed. 1639. Yet, ad Trasmund. i. 7. he speaks of ignorance attaching to our Lord's human nature.
[3108] Cf. §48.
[3109] And so Athan. ad Serap. ii. 9. S. Basil on the question being asked him by S. Amphilochius, says that he shall give him the answer he had heard from a boy from the fathers,' but which was more fitted for pious Christians than for cavillers, and that is, that our Lord says many things to men in His human aspect; as "Give me to drink,"...yet He who asked was not flesh without a soul, but Godhead using flesh which had one.' Ep. 236, 1. He goes on to suggest another explanation which has been mentioned §42, note 1. Cf. Cyril Trin. pp. 623, 4. vid. also Thes. p. 220. As he submitted as man to hunger and thirst, so....to be ignorant." p. 221. vid. also Greg. Naz. Orat. 30, 15. Theodoret expresses the same opinion very strongly, speaking of a gradual revelation to the manhood from the Godhead, but in an argument where it was to his point to do so; in Anath. 4. t. v. p. 23. ed. Schulze. Theodore of Mopsuestia also speaks of a revelation made by the Word. ap. Leont. c. Nest (Canis. i. p. 579.)
[3110] Or. i. 47; Serap. i. 20 fin.
[3111] Leporius, in his Retractation, which S. Augustine subscribed, writes, That I may in this respect also leave nothing to be cause of suspicion to any one, I then said, nay I answered when it was put to me, that our Lord Jesus Christ was ignorant as He was man, (secundum hominem). But now not only do I not presume to say so, but I even anathematize my former opinion expressed on this point,' ap. Sirm. t. i. p. 210. A subdivision also of the Eutychians were called by the name of Agnoetæ from their holding that our Lord was ignorant of the day of judgment. They said,' says Leontius, that He was ignorant of it, as we say that He underwent toil.' de Sect. 5. circ. fin. Felix of Urgela held the same doctrine according to Agobard's testimony, see §46, n. 2. Montfaucon observes on the text, that the assertion of our Lord's ignorance seems to have been condemned in no one in ancient times, unless joined to other error.' And Petavius, after drawing out the authorities for and against it, says, Of these two opinions, the latter, which is now received both by custom and by the agreement of divines, is deservedly preferred to the former. For it is more agreeable to Christ's dignity, and more befitting His character and office of Mediator and Head, that is, Fountain of all grace and wisdom, and moreover of Judge, who is concerned in knowing the time fixed for exercising that function. In consequence, the former opinion, though formerly it received the countenance of some men of high eminence, was afterwards marked as a heresy.' Incarn. xi. 1. §15.
[3112] Mat. xi. 27.
[3113] Or. ii. 41, iii. 9, 46.
[3114] John xvi. 15.
[3115] Basil. Ep. 236, 1. Cyril. Thes. p. 220. Ambros. de fid. v. 197. Hence the force of the word living' commonly joined to such words as eikon, sphragis, boule, energeia, when speaking of our Lord, e.g. Naz. Orat. 30, 20, c. Vid. §63, fin. note.
[3116] Or. i. 50, n. 7.
[3117] It is a question to be decided, whether our Lord speaks of actual ignorance in His human Mind, or of the natural ignorance of that Mind considered as human; ignorance in or ex natura; or, which comes to the same thing, whether He spoke of a real ignorance, or of an economical or professed ignorance, in a certain view of His incarnation or office, as when He asked, How many loaves have ye?' when He Himself knew what He would do,' or as He is called sin, though sinless. Thus it has been noticed, supr. ii. 55, n. 7, that Ath. seems to make His infirmities altogether only imputative, not real, as if shewing that the subject had not in his day been thoroughly worked out. In like manner S. Hilary, who, if the passage be genuine, states so clearly our Lord's ignorance, de Trin. ix. fin. yet, as Petavius observes, seems elsewhere to deny to Him those very affections of the flesh to which he has there paralleled it. And this view of Athan.'s meaning is favoured by the turn of his expressions. He says such a defect belongs to that human nature whose property it is to be ignorant;' §43. that since He was made man, He is not ashamed, because of the flesh which is ignorant, to say, "I know not;"' ibid. and, as here, that as shewing His manhood, in that to be ignorant is proper to man, and that He had put on a flesh that was ignorant, being in which, He said according to the flesh, "I know not;"' that He might shew that as man He knows not;' §46. that as man' (i.e. on the ground of being man, not in the capacity of man), He knows not;' ibid. and that, He asks about Lazarus humanly,' even when He was on His way to raise him,' which implied surely knowledge in His human nature. The reference to the parallel of S. Paul's professed ignorance when he really knew, §47. leads us to the same suspicion. And so for our profit as I think, did He this.' §§48-50. The natural want of precision on such questions in the early ages was shewn or fostered by such words as oikonomikos, which, in respect of this very text, is used by S. Basil to denote both our Lord's Incarnation, Ep. 236, 1 fin. and His gracious accommodation of Himself and His truth, Ep. 8, 6. and with the like variety of meaning, with reference to the same text, by Cyril. Trin. p. 623. and Thesaur. p. 224. (And the word dispensatio in like manner, Ben. note on Hil. x. 8.) In the latter Ep. S. Basil suggests that our Lord economizes by a feigned ignorance.' §6. And S. Cyril. Thesaur. p. 224. And even in de Trin. vi. he seems to recognise the distinction laid down just now between the natural and actual state of our Lord's humanity; and so Hilary, Trin. ix. 62. And he gives reasons why He professed ignorance, n. 67. viz. as S. Austin words it, Christum se dixisse nescientem, in quo alios facit occultando nescientes. Ep. 180, 3. S. Austin follows him, saying, Hoc nescit quod nescienter facit. Trin. i. 23. Pope Gregory says that the text is most certainly to be referred to the Son not as He is Head, but as to His body which we are.' Ep x. 39. And S. Ambrose de fid. v. 222. And so Cæsarius, Qu. 20. and Photius Epp. p. 366. Chrysost. in Matt. Hom. 77, 3. Theodoret, however, but in controversy, is very severe on the principle of Economy. If He knew the day, and wishing to conceal it, said He was ignorant, see what a blasphemy is the result. Truth tells an untruth.' l. c, pp. 23, 4.
[3118] §48.
[3119] Matt. xxiv. 42, 44.
[3120] Matt. xxiv. 39.
[3121] Gen. vii. 1.
[3122] Matt. xxv. 13.
[3123] The mode in which Athan. here expresses himself, is as if he did not ascribe ignorance literally, but apparent ignorance, to our Lord's soul, vid. supr. 45. n. 2; not certainly in the broad sense in which heretics have done so. As Leontius, e.g. reports of Theodore of Mopsuestia, that he considered Christ to be ignorant so far, as not to know, when He was tempted, who tempted Him;' contr. Nest. iii. (Canis. t. i. p. 579.) and Agobard of Felix the Adoptionist that he held Our Lord Jesus Christ according to the flesh truly to have been ignorant of the sepulchre of Lazarus, when He said to his sisters, Where have ye laid him?' and was truly ignorant of the day of judgment; and was truly ignorant what the two disciples were saying, as they walked by the way, of what had been done at Jerusalem; and was truly ignorant whether He was more loved by Peter than by the other disciples, when He said, Simon Peter, Lovest thou Me more than these?' B. P. t. 9. p. 1177. [Cf. Prolegg. ch. iv. §5.]
[3124] Eph. v. 14.
[3125] §37.
[3126] Cf. 44, n. 4.
[3127] Luke x. 22.
[3128] 2 Cor. xii. 2. S. Augustine understands the passage differently, i.e. that S. Paul really did not know whether or not he was in the body. Gen. ad lit. xii. 14.
[3129] paranomian, §2, n. 5.
[3130] Cf. Jerome, He speaks not in ecstasy, as Montanus, Prisca, and Maximilla rave;' Præf. in Naum. In like manner Tertullian speaks of amentia, as the spiritalis vis qua constat prophetia;' de Anim. 21. Cf. Eusebius, Hist. v. 16. Epiphanius too, noticing the failure of Maximilla's prophecies, says, Whatever the prophets have said, they spoke with understanding, following the sense.' Hær. 48. p. 403. In the de Syn. 4. Athan. speaks of the Montanists as making a fresh beginning of Christianity; i.e. they were the first heretics who professed to prophesy and to introduce a new or additional revelation.
[3131] despotes, §56, 6.
[3132] This expression, which repeatedly occurs in this and the following sections, surely implies that there was something economical in our Lord's profession of ignorance. He said with a purpose, not as a mere plain fact or doctrine. [But see Prolegg. ch. iv. §5.]
[3133] 43, n. 9; 45, n. 3.
[3134] Acts i. 7.
[3135] Vid. Basil. Ep. 8, 6. Cyril. Thes. p. 222. Ambros. de fid. v. 212. Chrysost. and Hieron. in loc. Matt.
[3136] Vid. Hilar. in Matt. Comment. 26, 4; de Trin. ix. 67; Ambros. de Fid. v. c. 17. Isidor. Pelus. Epp. i. 117. Chrysost. in Matt. Hom. 77, 2 and 3.
[3137] Vid. Phil. iii. 13.
[3138] Matt. xxiv. 42; Luke xii. 40.
[3139] Vid. 2 Thess. ii. 1, 2.
[3140] Gen. iii. 9; iv. 9. This seems taken from Origen, in Matt. t. 10. §14. vid. also Pope Gregory and Chrysost. infr.
[3141] S. Chrysostom, S. Ambrose, and Pope Gregory, in addition to the instances in the text, refer to I will go down now, and see whether they have done, &c., and if not, I will know.' Gen. xviii. 21. The Lord came down to see the city and the tower, &c.' Gen. xi. 5. God looked down from heaven upon the children of men to see, &c.' Ps. liii. 3. It may be they will reverence My Son.' Matt. xxi. 37; Luke xx. 13. Seeing a fig-tree afar off, having leaves, He came, if haply He might find, &c.' Mark xi. 13. Simon, lovest thou Me?' John xxi. 15. vid. Ambros. de Fid. v. c. 17. Chrys. in Matt. Hom. 77, 3. Greg. Epp. x. 39. Vid. also the instances, supr. §37. Other passages may be added, such as Gen. xxii. 12. vid. Berti Opp. t. 3. p. 42. But the difficulty of the passage lies in its signifying that there is a sense in which the Father knows what the Son knows not.
[3142] Or. i. 8, n. 2.
[3143] neanieuesthe, vid. Decr. 18 init. de Fug. 4. b.
[3144] tonthoruzete, vid. Decr. 16.
[3145] diephtharmene, §58 fin.
[3146] Luke ii. 52.
[3147] §32, n. 7.
[3148] De Syn. 24, n. 9, vid. supr. §39; Orat. iv. 11.
[3149] It is the doctrine of the [medieval and modern] Church that Christ, as man, was perfect in knowledge from the first, as if ignorance were hardly separable from sin, and were the direct consequence or accompaniment of original sin. Cf. Aug. de Pecc. Mer. ii. 48. As to the limits of Christ's perfect knowledge as man, Petavius observes, that we must consider that the soul of Christ knew all things that are or ever will be or ever have been, but not what are only in posse, not in fact.' Incarn. xi. 3, 6.
[3150] Vid. Gen. xxvi. 13.
[3151] Phil. iii. 13.
[3152] §4, n. 10.
[3153] Or. ii. 36, n. 4.
[3154] Vid. Serm. Maj. de Fid. 18.
[3155] Or. ii. 12, n. 4.
[3156] §31, n. 10.
[3157] It is remarkable, considering the tone of his statements in the present chapter, that here and in what follows Athan. should resolve our Lord's advance in wisdom merely to its gradual manifestation through the flesh [but he says expressly the Manhood advanced in wisdom!'] and it increases the proof that his statements are not to be taken in the letter, and as if fully brought out and settled. Naz. says the same, Ep. ad Cled. 101. p. 86. which is the more remarkable since he is chiefly writing against the Apollinarians, who considered a phanerosis the great end of our Lord's coming; and Cyril. c. Nest. iii. p. 87. Theod. Hor. v. 13. On the other hand, S. Epiphanius speaks of Him as growing in wisdom as man. Hær. 77. p. 1019-24. and S. Ambrose, Incarn. 71-14. Vid. however Ambr. de fid. as quoted supr. §45, n. 2.
[3158] Matt. xvi. 16; xxvii. 54.
[3159] Or. ii. 1, n. 6.
[3160] Or. ii. 10, n. 7; iii. 58.
[3161] i. 45.
[3162] iii. 16, n. 8.
[3163] §34.
[3164] ii. 69, n. 3.
[3165] §31, n. 12.
[3166] 31, n. 10.
[3167] Or. ii. 52, n. 6. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXIX.--Texts Explained; Twelfthly, Matthew xxvi. 39; John xii. 27, &c. Arian inferences are against the Regula Fidei, as before. He wept and the like, as man. Other texts prove Him God. God could not fear. He feared because His flesh feared.
54. Therefore as, when the flesh advanced, He is said to have advanced, because the body was His own, so also what is said at the season of His death, that He was troubled, that He wept, must be taken in the same sense [3168] . For they, going up and down [3169] , as if thereby recommending their heresy anew, allege; "Behold, He wept,' and said, Now is My soul troubled,' and He besought that the cup might pass away; how then, if He so spoke, is He God, and Word of the Father?" Yea, it is written that He wept, O God's enemies, and that He said, I am troubled,' and on the Cross He said, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani,' that is, My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?' and He besought that the cup might pass away [3170] . Thus certainly it is written; but again I would ask you (for the same rejoinder must of necessity be made to each of your objections [3171] ), If the speaker is mere man, let him weep and fear death, as being man; but if He is the Word in flesh [3172] (for one must not be reluctant to repeat), whom had He to fear being God? or wherefore should He fear death, who was Himself Life, and was rescuing others from death? or how, whereas He said, Fear not him that kills the body [3173] ,' should He Himself fear? And how should He who said to Abraham, Fear not, for I am with thee,' and encouraged Moses against Pharaoh, and said to the son of Nun, Be strong, and of a good courage [3174] ,' Himself feel terror before Herod and Pilate? Further, He who succours others against fear (for the Lord,' says Scripture, is on my side, I will not fear what man shall do unto me [3175] '), did He fear governors, mortal men? did He who Himself was come against death, feel terror of death? Is it not both unseemly and irreligious to say that He was terrified at death or hades, whom the keepers of the gates of hades [3176] saw and shuddered? But if, as you would hold, the Word was in terror wherefore, when He spoke long before of the conspiracy of the Jews, did He not flee, nay said when actually sought, I am He?' for He could have avoided death, as He said, I have power to lay down My life, and I have power to take it again;' and No one taketh it from Me [3177] .'
55. But these affections were not proper to the nature of the Word, as far as He was Word; but in the flesh which was thus affected was the Word, O Christ's enemies and unthankful Jews! For He said not all this prior to the flesh; but when the Word became flesh,' and has become man, then is it written that He said this, that is, humanly. Surely He of whom this is written was He who raised Lazarus from the dead, and made the water wine, and vouchsafed sight to the man born blind, and said, I and My Father are one [3178] .' If then they make His human attributes a ground for low thoughts concerning the Son of God, nay consider Him altogether man from the earth, and not [3179] from heaven, wherefore not from His divine works recognise the Word who is in the Father, and henceforward renounce their self-willed [3180] irreligion? For they are given to see, how He who did the works is the same as He who shewed that His body was passible by His permitting [3181] it to weep and hunger, and to shew other properties of a body. For while by means of such He made it known that, though God impassible, He had taken a passible flesh; yet from the works He shewed Himself the Word of God, who had afterwards become man, saying, Though ye believe not Me, beholding Me clad in a human body, yet believe the works, that ye may know that "I am in the Father, and the Father in Me. [3182] " And Christ's enemies seem to me to shew plain shamelessness and blasphemy;' for, when they hear I and the Father are one [3183] ,' they violently distort the sense, and separate the unity of the Father and the Son; but reading of His tears or sweat or sufferings, they do not advert to His body, but on account of these rank in the creation Him by whom the creation was made. What then is left for them to differ from the Jews in? for as the Jews blasphemously ascribed God's works to Beelzebub, so also will these, ranking with the creatures the Lord who wrought those works, undergo the same condemnation as theirs without mercy.
56. But they ought, when they hear I and the Father are one,' to see in Him the oneness of the Godhead and the propriety of the Father's Essence; and again when they hear, He wept' and the like, to say that these are proper to the body; especially since on each side they have an intelligible ground, viz. that this is written as of God and that with reference to His manhood. For in the incorporeal, the properties of body had not been, unless He had taken a body corruptible and mortal [3184] ; for mortal was Holy Mary, from whom was His body. Wherefore of necessity when He was in a body suffering, and weeping, and toiling, these things which are proper to the flesh, are ascribed to Him together with the body. If then He wept and was troubled, it was not the Word, considered as the Word, who wept and was troubled, but it was proper to the flesh; and if too He besought that the cup might pass away, it was not the Godhead that was in terror, but this affection too was proper to the manhood. And that the words Why hast Thou forsaken Me?' are His, according to the foregoing explanations (though He suffered nothing, for the Word was impassible), is notwithstanding declared by the Evangelists; since the Lord became man, and these things are done and said as from a man, that He might Himself lighten [3185] these very sufferings of the flesh, and free it from them [3186] . Whence neither can the Lord be forsaken by the Father, who is ever in the Father, both before He spoke, and when He uttered this cry. Nor is it lawful to say that the Lord was in terror, at whom the keepers of hell's gates shuddered [3187] and set open hell, and the graves did gape, and many bodies of the saints arose and appeared to their own people [3188] . Therefore be every heretic dumb, nor dare to ascribe terror to the Lord whom death, as a serpent, flees, at whom demons tremble, and the sea is in alarm; for whom the heavens are rent and all the powers are shaken. For behold when He says, Why hast Thou forsaken Me?' the Father shewed that He was ever and even then in Him; for the earth knowing its Lord [3189] who spoke, straightway trembled, and the vail was rent, and the sun was hidden, and the rocks were torn asunder, and the graves, as I have said, did gape, and the dead in them arose; and, what is wonderful, they who were then present and had before denied Him, then seeing these signs, confessed that truly He was the Son of God [3190] .'
57. And as to His saying, If it be possible, let the cup pass,' observe how, though He thus spake, He rebuked [3191] Peter, saying, Thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.' For He willed [3192] what He deprecated, for therefore had He come; but His was the willing (for for it He came), but the terror belonged to the flesh. Wherefore as man He utters this speech also, and yet both were said by the Same, to shew that He was God, willing in Himself, but when He had become man, having a flesh that was in terror. For the sake of this flesh He combined His own will with human weakness [3193] , that destroying this affection He might in turn make man undaunted in face of death. Behold then a thing strange indeed! He to whom Christ's enemies impute words of terror, He by that so-called [3194] tenor renders men undaunted and fearless. And so the Blessed Apostles after Him from such words of His conceived so great a contempt of death, as not even to care for those who questioned them, but to answer, We ought to obey God rather than men [3195] .' And the other Holy Martyrs were so bold, as to think that they were rather passing to life than undergoing death. Is it not extravagant then, to admire the courage of the servants of the Word, yet to say that the Word Himself was in terror, through whom they despised death? But from that most enduring purpose and courage of the Holy Martyrs is shewn, that the Godhead was not in terror, but the Saviour took away our terror. For as He abolished death by death, and by human means all human evils, so by this so-called terror did He remove our terror, and brought about that never more should men fear death. His word and deed go together. For human were the sayings, Let the cup pass,' and Why hast Thou forsaken Me?' and divine the act whereby the Same did cause the sun to fail and the dead to rise. Again He said humanly, Now is My soul troubled;' and He said divinely, I have power to lay down My life, and power to take it again [3196] .' For to be troubled was proper to the flesh, and to have power to lay down His life [3197] and take it again, when He will, was no property of men but of the Word's power. For man dies, not by his own power, but by necessity of nature and against his will; but the Lord, being Himself immortal, but having a mortal flesh, had power, as God, to become separate from the body and to take it again, when He would. Concerning this too speaks David in the Psalm, Thou shalt not leave My soul in hades, neither shalt Thou suffer Thy Holy One to see corruption [3198] .' For it beseemed that the flesh, corruptible as it was, should no longer after its own nature remain mortal, but because of the Word who had put it on, should abide incorruptible. For as He, having come in our body, was conformed to our condition, so we, receiving Him, partake of the immortality that is from Him.
58. Idle then is the excuse for stumbling, and petty the notions concerning the Word, of these Ario-maniacs, because it is written, He was troubled,' and He wept.' For they seem not even to have human feeling, if they are thus ignorant of man's nature and properties; which do but make it the greater wonder, that the Word should be in such a suffering flesh, and neither prevented those who were conspiring against Him, nor took vengeance of those who were putting Him to death, though He was able, He who hindered some from dying, and raised others from the dead. And He let His own body suffer, for therefore did He come, as I said before, that in the flesh He might suffer, and thenceforth the flesh might be made impassible and immortal [3199] , and that, as we have many times said, contumely and other troubles might determine upon Him and come short of others after Him, being by Him annulled utterly; and that henceforth men might for ever abide [3200] incorruptible, as a temple of the Word [3201] . Had Christ's enemies thus dwelt on these thoughts, and recognised the ecclesiastical scope as an anchor for the faith, they would not have made shipwreck of the faith, nor been so shameless as to resist those who would fain recover them from their fall, and to deem those as enemies who are admonishing them to be religious [3202] . __________________________________________________________________
[3168] dianoi& 139;, §26 et passim.
[3169] ano kai kato, vid. de Decr. 14, n. 1; Or. ii. 34, n. 5.
[3170] John xi. 35; xii. 27; Matt. xxvi. 39; Mark xv. 34.
[3171] Cf. ii. 80.
[3172] §53, n. 2.
[3173] Luke xii. 4.
[3174] Gen. xv. 1; xxvi. 24; Exod. iv. 12, &c.; Josh. i. 6.
[3175] Ps. cxviii. 6.
[3176] Job xxxviii. 17. LXX.; De Syn. 8, below, §56.
[3177] John xviii. 5; x. 18.
[3178] Ib. x. 30.
[3179] anthropon holon, Orat. iv. 35 fin.
[3180] idian, Orat. i. 52 fin.
[3181] This our Lord's suspense or permission, at His will, of the operations of His manhood is a great principle in the doctrine of the Incarnation. Cf. Theophylact, in Joh. xi. 34. And Cyril, fragm. in Joan. p. 685. Leon. Ep. 35, 3. Aug. in Joan. xlix. 18. vid. note on §57, sub. fin. The Eutychians perverted this doctrine, as if it implied that our Lord was not subject to the laws of human nature, and that He suffered merely by permission of the Word.' Leont. ap. Canis. t. i. p. 563. In like manner Marcion or Manes said that His flesh appeared from heaven in resemblance, hos ethelesen.' Athan. contr. Apoll. ii. 3.
[3182] John x. 38; xiv. 10.
[3183] Ib. x. 30.
[3184] Or. i. 43, 44, notes; ii. 66, n. 7. Serm. Maj. de Fid. 9. Tertull. de Carn. Chr. 6.
[3185] §44, nn. 2, 6.
[3186] ii. 56, n. 5.
[3187] Job xxxviii. 17, LXX.
[3188] Vid. Matt. xxvii. 52, 53, similar passage supr. p. 88.
[3189] despoten, §14, &c.
[3190] Vid. Matt. xxvii. 54. Vid. Or. ii. 16; 35, n. 2. Cf. Leo's Tome (Ep. 28.) 4. Nyssen, contr. Eunom. iv. p. 161. Ambros. Epist. i. 46. n. 7. vid. Hil. Trin. x. 48. Also vid. Athan. Sent. D. fin. Serm. Maj. de Fid. 24.
[3191] Matt. xvi. 23, cf. §§40, 41.
[3192] [The human will of the Saviour is in absolute harmony with the Divine, though psychologically distinct.] Cf. Anast. Hodeg. i. p. 12.
[3193] It is observable that, as elsewhere we have seen Athan. speak of the nature of the Word, and of, not the nature of man as united to Him, but of flesh, humanity, &c. (vid. Or. ii. 45, n. 2.) so here, instead of speaking of two wills, he speaks of the Word's willing and human weakness, terror, &c. In another place he says still more pointedly, The will was of the Godhead alone; since the whole nature of the Word was manifested in the second Adam's human form and visible flesh.' contr. Apoll. ii. 10. Cf. S. Leo on the same passage: The first request is one of infirmity, the second of power; the first He asked in our [character], the second in His own....The inferior will give way to the superior,' &c. Serm. 56, 2. vid. a similar passage in Nyssen. Antirrh. adv. Apol. 32. vid. also 31. An obvious objection may be drawn from such passages, as if the will of the flesh' were represented as contrary (vid. foregoing note) to the will of the Word. The whole of our Lord's prayer is offered by Him as man, because it is a prayer; the first part is not from Him as man, but the second, which corrects it, from Him as God [i.e. the first part is not human as contrasted with the second]; but the former part is from the sinless infirmity of our nature, the latter from His human will expressing its acquiescence in His Father's, that is, in His Divine Will. His Will,' says S. Greg. Naz. was not contrary to God, being all deified, theothen holon.'
[3194] nomizomene, vid. Orat. i. 10.
[3195] Acts v. 29.
[3196] John xii. 27; x. 18.
[3197] This might be taken as an illustration of the ut voluit supr. Or. i. 44, n. 11. And so the expressions in the Evangelists, Into Thy hands I commend My Spirit,' He bowed the head,' He gave up the ghost,' are taken to imply that His death was His free act. vid. Ambros. in loc. Luc. Hieron. in loc. Matt. also Athan. Serm. Maj. de Fid. 4. It is Catholic doctrine that our Lord, as man, submitted to death of His free will, and not as obeying an express command of the Father. Cf. S. Chrysostom on John x. 18. Theophylact. in Hebr. xii. 2; Aug. de Trin. iv. 16.
[3198] Ps. xvi. 10.
[3199] Or. ii. 65, n. 3.
[3200] Ib. 69, n. 3.
[3201] §53.
[3202] Thus ends the exposition of texts, which forms the body of these Orations. It is remarkable that he ends as he began, with reference to the ecclesiastical scope, or Regula Fidei, which has so often come under our notice, vid. Or. ii. 35. n. 2. 44, n. 1, as if distinctly to tell us, that Scripture did not so force its meaning on the individual as to dispense with an interpreter, and as if his own deductions were not to be viewed merely in their own logical power, great as that power often is, but as under the authority of the Catholic doctrines which they subserve. Vid. Or. iii. 18, n. 3. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXX.--Objections continued, as in Chapters vii.--x. Whether the Son is begotten of the Father's will? This virtually the same as whether once He was not? and used by the Arians to introduce the latter question. The Regula Fidei answers it at once in the negative by contrary texts. The Arians follow the Valentinians in maintaining a precedent will; which really is only exercised by God towards creatures. Instances from Scripture. Inconsistency of Asterius. If the Son by will, there must be another Word before Him. If God is good, or exist, by His will, then is the Son by His will. If He willed to have reason or wisdom, then is His Word and Wisdom at His will. The Son is the Living Will, and has all titles which denote connaturality. That will which the Father has to the Son, the Son has to the Father. The Father wills the Son and the Son wills the Father.
58. (continued). But [3203] , as it seems, a heretic is a wicked thing in truth, and in every respect his heart is depraved [3204] and irreligious. For behold, though convicted on all points, and shewn to be utterly bereft of understanding, they feel no shame; but as the hydra of Gentile fable, when its former serpents were destroyed, gave birth to fresh ones, contending against the slayer of the old by the production of new, so also they, hostile [3205] and hateful to God [3206] , as hydras [3207] , losing their life in the objections which they advance, invent for themselves other questions Judaic and foolish, and new expedients, as if Truth were their enemy, thereby to shew the rather that they are Christ's opponents in all things.
59. After so many proofs against them, at which even the devil who is their father [3208] had himself been abashed and gone back, again as from their perverse heart they mutter forth other expedients, sometimes in whispers, sometimes with the drone [3209] of gnats; Be it so,' say they; interpret these places thus, and gain the victory in reasonings and proofs; still you must say that the Son has received being from the Father at His will and pleasure;' for thus they deceive many, putting forward the will and the pleasure of God. Now if any of those who believe aright [3210] were to say this in simplicity, there would be no cause to be suspicious of the expression, the right intention [3211] prevailing over that somewhat simple use of words [3212] . But since the phrase is from the heretics [3213] and the words of heretics are suspicious, and, as it is written, The wicked are deceitful,' and The words of the wicked are deceit [3214] ,' even though they but make signs [3215] , for their heart is depraved, come let us examine this phrase also, lest, though convicted on all sides, still, as hydras, they invent a fresh word, and by such clever language and specious evasion, they sow again that irreligion of theirs in another way. For he who says, The Son came to be at the Divine will,' has the same meaning as another who says, Once He was not,' and The Son came to be out of nothing,' and He is a creature.' But since they are now ashamed of these phrases, these crafty ones have endeavoured to convey their meaning in another way, putting forth the word will,' as cuttlefish their blackness, thereby to blind the simple [3216] , and to keep in mind their peculiar heresy. For whence [3217] bring they by will and pleasure?' or from what Scripture? let them say, who are so suspicious in their words and so inventive of irreligion. For the Father who revealed from heaven His own Word, declared, This is My beloved Son;' and by David He said, My heart uttered a good Word;' and John He bade say, In the beginning was the Word;' and David says in the Psalm, With Thee is the well of life, and in Thy light shall we see light;' and the Apostle writes, Who being the Radiance of Glory,' and again, Who being in the form of God,' and, Who is the Image of the invisible God [3218] .'
60. All everywhere tell us of the being of the Word, but none of His being by will,' nor at all of His making; but they, where, I ask, did they find will or pleasure precedent [3219] ' to the Word of God, unless forsooth, leaving the Scriptures, they simulate the perverseness of Valentinus? For Ptolemy the Valentinian said that the Unoriginate had a pair of attributes, Thought and Will, and first He thought and then He willed; and what He thought, He could not put forth [3220] , unless when the power of the Will was added. Thence the Arians taking a lesson, wish will and pleasure to precede the Word. For them then, let them rival the doctrine of Valentinus; but we, when we read the divine discourses, found He was' applied to the Son, but of Him only did we hear as being in the Father and the Father's Image; while in the case of things originate only, since also by nature these things once were not, but afterwards came to be [3221] , did we recognise a precedent will and pleasure, David saying in the hundred and thirteenth Psalm, As for our God He is in heaven, He hath done whatsoever pleased Him,' and in the hundred and tenth, The works of the Lord are great, sought out unto all His good pleasure;' and again, in the hundred and thirty-fourth, Whatsoever the Lord pleased, that did He in heaven, and in earth, and in the sea, and in all deep places [3222] .' If then He be work and thing made, and one among others, let Him, as others, be said by will' to have come to be, and Scripture shews that these are thus brought into being. And Asterius, the advocate [3223] for the heresy, acquiesces, when he thus writes, For if it be unworthy of the Framer of all, to make at pleasure, let His being pleased be removed equally in the case of all, that His Majesty be preserved unimpaired. Or if it be befitting God to will, then let this better way obtain in the case of the first Offspring. For it is not possible that it should be fitting for one and the same God to make things at His pleasure, and not at His will also.' In spite of the Sophist having introduced abundant irreligion in his words, namely, that the Offspring and the thing made are the same, and that the Son is one offspring out of all offsprings that are, He ends with the conclusion that it is fitting to say that the works are by will and pleasure.
61. Therefore if He be other than all things, as has been above shewn [3224] , and through Him the works rather came to be, let not by will' be applied to Him, or He has similarly come to be as the things consist which through Him come to be. For Paul, whereas he was not before, became afterwards an Apostle by the will of God [3225] ;' and our own calling, as itself once not being, but now taking place afterwards, is preceded by will, and, as Paul himself says again, has been made according to the good pleasure of His will [3226] .' And what Moses relates, Let there be light,' and Let the earth appear,' and Let Us make man,' is, I think, according to what has gone before [3227] , significant of the will of the Agent. For things which once were not but happened afterwards from external causes, these the Framer counsels to make; but His own Word begotten from Him by nature, concerning Him He did not counsel beforehand; for in Him the Father makes, in Him frames, other things whatever He counsels; as also James the Apostle teaches, saying, Of His own will begat He us with the Word of truth [3228] .' Therefore the Will of God concerning all things, whether they be begotten again or are brought into being at the first, is in His Word, in whom He both makes and begets again what seems right to Him; as the Apostle [3229] again signifies, writing to Thessalonica; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.' But if, in whom He makes, in Him also is the will, and in Christ is the pleasure of the Father, how can He, as others, come into being by will and pleasure? For if He too came to be as you maintain, by will, it follows that the will concerning Him consists in some other Word, through whom He in turn comes to be; for it has been shewn that God's will is not in the things which He brings into being, but in Him through whom and in whom all things made are brought to be. Next, since it is all one to say By will' and Once He was not,' let them make up their minds to say, Once He was not,' that, perceiving with shame that times are signified by the latter, they may understand that to say by will' is to place times before the Son; for counselling goes before things which once were not, as in the case of all creatures. But if the Word is the Framer of the creatures, and He coexists with the Father, how can to counsel precede the Everlasting as if He were not? for if counsel precedes, how through Him are all things? For rather He too, as one among others is by will begotten to be a Son, as we too were made sons by the Word of Truth; and it rests, as was said, to seek another Word, through whom He too has come to be, and was begotten together with all things, which were according to God's pleasure.
62. If then there is another Word of God, then be the Son originated by a word; but if there be not, as is the case, but all things by Him have come to be, which the Father has willed, does not this expose the many-headed [3230] craftiness of these men? that feeling shame at saying work,' and creature,' and God's Word was not before His generation,' yet in another way they assert that He is a creature, putting forward will,' and saying, Unless He has by will come to be, therefore God had a Son by necessity and against His good pleasure.' And who is it then who imposes necessity on Him, O men most wicked, who draw everything to the purpose of your heresy? for what is contrary to will they see; but what is greater and transcends it has escaped their perception. For as what is beside purpose is contrary to will, so what is according to nature transcends and precedes counselling [3231] . A man by counsel builds a house, but by nature he begets a son; and what is in building began to come into being at will, and is external to the maker; but the son is proper offspring of the father's essence, and is not external to him; wherefore neither does he counsel concerning him, lest he appear to counsel about himself. As far then as the Son transcends the creature, by so much does what is by nature transcend the will [3232] . And they, on hearing of Him, ought not to measure by will what is by nature; forgetting however that they are hearing about God's Son, they dare to apply human contrarieties in the instance of God, necessity' and beside purpose,' to be able thereby to deny that there is a true Son of God. For let them tell us themselves,--that God is good and merciful, does this attach to Him by will or not? if by will, we must consider that He began to be good, and that His not being good is possible; for to counsel and choose implies an inclination two ways, and is incidental to a rational nature. But if it be too unseemly that He should be called good and merciful upon will, then what they have said themselves must be retorted on them,--therefore by necessity and not at His pleasure He is good;' and, who is it that imposes this necessity on Him?' But if it be unseemly to speak of necessity in the case of God, and therefore it is by nature that He is good, much more is He, and more truly, Father of the Son by nature and not by will.
63. Moreover let them answer us this:--(for against their shamelessness I wish to urge a further question, bold indeed, but with a religious intent; be propitious, O Lord [3233] !)--the Father Himself, does He exist, first having counselled, then being pleased, or before counselling? For since they are so bold in the instance of the Word, they must receive the like answer, that they may know that this their presumption reaches even to the Father Himself. If then they shall themselves take counsel about will, and say that even He is from will, what then was He before He counselled, or what gained He, as ye consider, after counselling? But if such a question be unseemly and self-destructive, and shocking even to ask (for it is enough only to hear God's Name for us to know and understand that He is He that Is), will it not also be against reason to have parallel thoughts concerning the Word of God, and to make pretences of will and pleasure? for it is enough in like manner only to hear the Name of the Word, to know and understand that He who is God not by will, has not by will but by nature His own Word. And does it not surpass all conceivable madness, to entertain the thought only, that God Himself counsels and considers and chooses and proceeds to have a good pleasure, that He be not without Word and without Wisdom, but have both? for He seems to be considering about Himself, who counsels about what is proper to His Essence. There being then much blasphemy in such a thought, it will be religious to say that things originate have come to be by favour and will,' but the Son is not a work of will, nor has come after [3234] , as the creation, but is by nature the own Offspring of God's Essence. For being the own Word of the Father, He allows us not to account [3235] of will as before Himself, since He is Himself the Father's Living Counsel [3236] , and Power, and Framer of the things which seemed good to the Father. And this is what He says of Himself in the Proverbs; Counsel is mine and security, mine is understanding, and mine strength [3237] .' For as, although Himself the Understanding,' in which He prepared the heavens, and Himself Strength and Power' (for Christ is God's Power and God's Wisdom' [3238] ), He here has altered the terms and said, Mine is understanding' and Mine strength,' so while He says, Mine is counsel,' He must Himself be the Living [3239] Counsel of the Father; as we have learned from the Prophet also, that He becomes the Angel of great Counsel [3240] ,' and was called the good pleasure of the Father; for thus we must refute them, using human illustrations [3241] concerning God.
64. Therefore if the works subsist by will and favour,' and the whole creature is made at God's good pleasure,' and Paul was called to be an Apostle by the will of God,' and our calling has come about by His good pleasure and will,' and all things have come into being through the Word, He is external to the things which have come to be by will, but rather is Himself the Living Counsel of the Father, by which all these things have come to be; by which David also gives thanks in the seventy-second Psalm. Thou hast holden me by my right hand; Thou shalt guide me with Thy Counsel [3242] .' How then can the Word, being the Counsel and Good Pleasure of the Father, come into being Himself by good pleasure and will,' like every one else? unless, as I said before, in their madness they repeat that He has come into being through Himself, or through some other [3243] . Who then is it through whom He has come to be? let them fashion another Word; and let them name another Christ, rivalling the doctrine of Valentinus [3244] ; for Scripture it is not. And though they fashion another, yet assuredly he too comes into being through some one; and so, while we are thus reckoning up and investigating the succession of them, the many-headed [3245] heresy of the Atheists [3246] is discovered to issue in polytheism [3247] and madness unlimited; in the which, wishing the Son to be a creature and from nothing, they imply the same thing in other words by pretending the words will and pleasure, which rightly belong to things originate and creatures. Is it not irreligious then to impute the characteristics of things originate to the Framer of all? and is it not blasphemous to say that will was in the Father before the Word? for if will precedes in the Father, the Son's words are not true, I in the Father;' or even if He is in the Father, yet He will hold but a second place, and it became Him not to say I in the Father,' since will was before Him, in which all things were brought into being and He Himself subsisted, as you hold. For though He excel in glory, He is not the less one of the things which by will come into being. And, as we have said before, if it be so, how is He Lord and they servants [3248] ? but He is Lord of all, because He is one with the Father's Lordship; and the creation is all in bondage, since it is external to the Oneness of the Father, and, whereas it once was not, was brought to be.
65. Moreover, if they say that the Son is by will, they should say also that He came to be by understanding; for I consider understanding and will to be the same. For what a man counsels, about that also he has understanding; and what he has in understanding, that also he counsels. Certainly the Saviour Himself has made them correspond, as being cognate, when He says, Counsel is mine and security; mine is understanding, and mine strength [3249] .' For as strength and security are the same (for they mean one attribute), so we may say that Understanding and Counsel are the same, which is the Lord. But these irreligious men are unwilling that the Son should be Word and Living Counsel; but they fable that there is with God [3250] , as if a habit [3251] , coming and going [3252] , after the manner of men, understanding, counsel, wisdom; and they leave nothing undone, and they put forward the Thought' and Will' of Valentinus, so that they may but separate the Son from the Father, and may call Him a creature instead of the proper Word of the Father. To them then must be said what was said to Simon Magus; the irreligion of Valentinus perish with you [3253] ;' and let every one rather trust to Solomon, who says, that the Word is Wisdom and Understanding. For he says, The Lord by Wisdom founded the earth, by Understanding He established the heavens.' And as here by Understanding, so in the Psalms, By the Word of the Lord were the heavens made.' And as by the Word the heavens, so He hath done whatsoever pleased Him.' And as the Apostle writes to Thessalonians, the will of God is in Christ Jesus [3254] .' The Son of God then, He is the Word' and the Wisdom;' He the Understanding' and the Living Counsel;' and in Him is the Good Pleasure of the Father;' He is Truth' and Light' and Power' of the Father. But if the Will of God is Wisdom and Understanding, and the Son is Wisdom, he who says that the Son is by will,' says virtually that Wisdom has come into being in wisdom, and the Son is made in a son, and the Word created through the Word [3255] ; which is incompatible with God and is opposed to His Scriptures. For the Apostle proclaims the Son to be the own Radiance and Expression, not of the Father's will [3256] , but of His Essence [3257] Itself, saying, Who being the Radiance of His glory and the Expression of His Subsistence [3258] .' But if, as we have said before, the Father's Essence and Subsistence be not from will, neither, as is very plain, is what is proper to the Father's Subsistence from will; for such as, and so as, that Blessed Subsistence, must also be the proper Offspring from It. And accordingly the Father Himself said not, This is the Son originated at My will,' nor the Son whom I have by My favour,' but simply My Son,' and more than that, in whom I am well pleased;' meaning by this, This is the Son by nature; and in Him is lodged My will about what pleases Me.'
66. Since then the Son is by nature and not by will, is He without the pleasure of the Father and not with the Father's will? No, verily; but the Son is with the pleasure of the Father, and, as He says Himself, The Father loveth the Son, and sheweth Him all things [3259] .' For as not from will' did He begin to be good, nor yet is good without will and pleasure (for what He is, that also is His pleasure), so also that the Son should be, though it came not from will,' yet it is not without His pleasure or against His purpose. For as His own Subsistence is by His pleasure, so also the Son, being proper to His Essence, is not without His pleasure. Be then the Son the object of the Father's pleasure and love; and thus let every one religiously account of [3260] the pleasure and the not-unwillingness of God. For by that good pleasure wherewith the Son is the object of the Father's pleasure, is the Father the object of the Son's love, pleasure, and honour; and one is the good pleasure which is from Father in Son, so that here too we may contemplate the Son in the Father and the Father in the Son. Let no one then, with Valentinus, introduce a precedent will; nor let any one, by this pretence of counsel,' intrude between the Only Father and the Only Word; for it were madness to place will and consideration between them. For it is one thing to say, Of will He came to be,' and another, that the Father has love and good pleasure towards His Son who is His own by nature. For to say, Of will He came to be,' in the first place implies that once He was not; and next it implies an inclination two ways, as has been said, so that one might suppose that the Father could even not will the Son. But to say of the Son, He might not have been,' is an irreligious presumption reaching even to the Essence of the Father, as if what is His own might not have been. For it is the same as saying, The Father might not have been good.' And as the Father is always good by nature, so He is always generative [3261] by nature; and to say, The Father's good pleasure is the Son,' and The Word's good pleasure is the Father,' implies, not a precedent will, but genuineness of nature, and propriety and likeness of Essence. For as in the case of the radiance and light one might say, that there is no will preceding radiance in the light, but it is its natural offspring, at the pleasure of the light which begat it, not by will and consideration, but in nature and truth, so also in the instance of the Father and the Son, one might rightly say, that the Father has love and good pleasure towards the Son, and the Son has love and good pleasure towards the Father.
67. Therefore call not the Son a work of good pleasure; nor bring in the doctrine of Valentinus into the Church; but be He the Living Counsel, and Offspring in truth and nature, as the Radiance from the Light. For thus has the Father spoken, My heart uttered a good Word;' and the Son conformably, I in the Father and the Father in Me [3262] .' But if the Word be in the heart, where is will? and if the Son in the Father, where is good pleasure? and if He be Will Himself, how is counsel in Will? it is unseemly; lest the Word come into being in a word, and the Son in a son, and Wisdom in a wisdom, as has been repeatedly [3263] said. For the Son is the Father's All; and nothing was in the Father before the Word; but in the Word is will also, and through Him the objects of will are carried into effect, as holy Scriptures have shewn. And I could wish that the irreligious men, having fallen into such want of reason [3264] as to be considering about will, would now ask their childbearing women no more, whom they used to ask, Hadst thou a son before conceiving him [3265] ?' but the father, Do ye become fathers by counsel, or by the natural law of your will?' or Are your children like your nature and essence [3266] ?' that, even from fathers they may learn shame, from whom they assumed this proposition [3267] about birth, and from whom they hoped to gain knowledge in point. For they will reply to them, What we beget, is like, not our good pleasure [3268] , but like ourselves; nor become we parents by previous counsel, but to beget is proper to our nature; since we too are images of our fathers.' Either then let them condemn themselves [3269] , and cease asking women about the Son of God, or let them learn from them, that the Son is begotten not by will, but in nature and truth. Becoming and suitable to them is a refutation from human instances [3270] , since the perverse-minded men dispute in a human way concerning the Godhead. Why then are Christ's enemies still mad? for this, as well as their other pretences, is shewn and proved to be mere fantasy and fable; and on this account, they ought, however late, contemplating the precipice of folly down which they have fallen, to rise again from the depth and to flee the snare of the devil, as we admonish them. For Truth is loving unto men and cries continually, If because of My clothing of the body ye believe Me not, yet believe the works, that ye may know that "I am in the Father and the Father in Me," and "I and the Father are one," and "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father [3271] ."' But the Lord according to His wont is loving to man, and would fain help them that are fallen,' as the praise of David [3272] says; but the irreligious men, not desirous to hear the Lord's voice, nor bearing to see Him acknowledged by all as God and God's Son, go about, miserable men, as beetles, seeking with their father the devil pretexts for irreligion. What pretexts then, and whence will they be able next to find? unless they borrow blasphemies of Jews and Caiaphas, and take atheism from Gentiles? for the divine Scriptures are closed to them, and from every part of them they are refuted as insensate and Christ's enemies. __________________________________________________________________
[3203] This chapter is in a very different style from the foregoing portions of this Book, and much more resembles the former two; not only in its subject and the mode of treating it, but in the words introduced, e.g. epispeirousi, epinoousi, gonguzousi, kath' humas, atopon, lexeidion, heis ton panton, &c. And the references are to the former Orations.
[3204] See 50, n. 10; Serap. i. 18.
[3205] theomachoi, de Decr. 3, n. 1; Or. ii. 32, n. 4. Vid. Dissert. by Bucher on the word in Acts v. 39. ap. Thesaur. Theol. Phil. N. T. t. 2.
[3206] theostugeis, §40.
[3207] §64, note.
[3208] Or. ii. 73, n. 7.
[3209] peribombousi. De Decr. 14, n. 1; also de Fug. 2, 6. Naz. Orat. 27, 2. c.
[3210] S. Ignatius speaks of our Lord as Son of God according to the will (thelema) and power of God.' ad Smyrn. 1. S. Justin as God and Son according to His will, boulen.' Tryph. 127, and begotten from the Father at His will, thelesei.' ibid. 61. and he says, dunamei kai boule autou. ibid. 128. S. Clement issuing from the Father's will itself quicker than light.' Gent. 10 fin. S. Hippolytus, Whom God the Father, willing, bouletheis, begat as He willed, hos ethelesen. contr. Noet. 16. Origen, ek thelematos. ap. Justin. ad. Menn. vid. also cum filius charitatis etiam voluntatis. Periarch. iv. 28.
[3211] dianoias interpretation, §26, n. 9.
[3212] Cf. Ep. Æg. 8. and supr. ii. 3. Also Letter 54 fin. Vid. supr. de Decr. 10, n. 3. And vid. Leont. contr. Nest. iii. 41. (p. 581. Canis.) He here seems alluding to the Semi-Arians, Origen, and perhaps the earlier Fathers.
[3213] Tatian had said thelemati propeda ho logos. Gent. 5. Tertullian had said, Ut primum voluit Deus ea edere, ipsum primum protulit sermonem. adv. Prax. 6. Novatian, Ex quo, quando ipse voluit, Sermo filius natus est. de Trin. 31. And Constit. Apost. ton pro ai& 240;non eudoki& 139; tou patros gennethenta. vii. 41. Pseudo-Clem. Genuit Deus voluntate præcedente. Recognit. iii. 10. Eusebius, kata gnomen kai proairesin bouletheis ho theos; ek tes tou patros boules kai dunameos. Dem. iv. 3. Arius, thelemati kai boule hupeste. ap. Theod. H. E. i. 4. p. 750. vid. also de Syn. 16.
[3214] Prov. xii. 5, 6. LXX.
[3215] De Decr. 20.
[3216] p. 69. n. 8.
[3217] And so supr. de Decr. 18, by what Saint have they been taught "at will?"' That is, no one ever taught it in the sense in which they explained it; that he has just said, He who says "at will" has the same meaning as he who says "Once He was not."' Cf. below §§61, 64, 66. Certainly as the earlier Fathers had used the phrase, so those who came after Arius. Thus Nyssen in the passage in contr. Eun. vii. referred to in the next note. And Hilar. Syn. 37. The same father says, unitate Patris et virtute. Psalm xci. 8. and ut voluit, ut potuit, ut scit qui genuit. Trin. iii. 4. And he addresses Him as non invidum bonorum tuorum in Unigeniti tui nativitate. ibid. vi. 21. S. Basil too speaks of our Lord as autozoen kai autoagathon, from the quickening Fountain, the Father's goodness, agathotetos.' contr. Eun. ii. 25. And Cæsarius calls Him agapen patros. Quæst. 39. Vid. Ephrem. Syr. adv. Scrut. R. vi. 1. Oxf. Tra. and note there. Maximus Taurin. says, that God is per omnipotentiam Pater. Hom. de trad. Symb. p. 270. ed. 1784, vid. also Chrysol. Serm. 61. Ambros. de Fid. iv. 8. Petavius refers in addition to such passages as one just quoted from S. Hilary, which speak of God as not invidus, so as not to communicate Himself, since He was able. Si non potuit, infirmus; si non voluit, invidus. August. contr. Maxim. iii. 7.
[3218] Matt. iii. 17; Ps. xlv. 1; John i. 1; Ps. xxxvi. 9; Heb. i. 3; Phil. ii. 26; Col. i. 15.
[3219] proegoumenen and 61 fin. The antecedens voluntas has been mentioned in Recogn. Clem. supr. note 11. For Ptolemy vid. Epiph. Hær. p. 215. The Catholics, who allowed that our Lord was thelesei, explained it as a sundromos thelesis, and not a proegoumene; as Cyril. Trin. ii. p. 56. And with the same meaning S. Ambrose, nec voluntas ante Filium nec potestas. de Fid. v. 224. And S. Gregory Nyssen, His immediate union, amesos sunapheia, does not exclude the Father's will, boulesin, nor does that will separate the Son from the Father.' contr. Eunom. vii. p. 206, 7. vid. the whole passage. The alternative which these words, sundromos and proegoumene, expressed was this; whether an act of Divine Purpose or Will took place before the Generation of the Son, or whether both the Will and the Generation were eternal, as the Divine Nature was eternal. Hence Bull says, with the view of exculpating Novatian, Cum Filius dicitur ex Patre, quando ipse voluit, nasci. Velle illud Patris æternum fuisse intelligendum. Defens. F. N. iii. 8. §8.
[3220] proballein, de Syn. 16, n. 8.
[3221] epigegone, Or. i. 25, 28 fin. iii. 6.
[3222] Ps. cxv. 3; cxi. 2. LXX.; cxxxv. 6.
[3223] Cf. ii. n. 1.
[3224] Cf. ii. 18-43.
[3225] 1 Cor. i. 1, &c.
[3226] Eph. i. 5.
[3227] ii. 31 seqq.
[3228] James i. 18.
[3229] 1 Thess. v. 18.
[3230] 64, note 4.
[3231] Thus he makes the question a nugatory one, as if it did not go to the point, and could not be answered, or might be answered either way, as the case might be. Really Nature and Will go together in the Divine Being, but in order, as we regard Him, Nature is first, Will second, and the generation belongs to Nature, not to Will. And so supr. Or. i. 29; ii. 2. In like manner S. Epiphanius, Hær. 69, 26. vid. also Ancor. 51. vid. also Ambros. de Fid. iv. 4. vid. others, as collected in Petav. Trin. vi. 8. §§14-16.
[3232] Two distinct meanings may be attached to by will' (as Dr. Clark observes, Script. Doct. p. 142. ed. 1738), either a concurrence or acquiescence, or a positive act. S. Cyril uses it in the former sense, when he calls it sundromos, as quoted §60, n. 1; and when he says (with Athan. infr.) that the Father wills His own subsistence, theleges esti, but is not what He is from any will, ek bouleseos tinos,' Thes. p. 56; Dr. Clark would understand it in the latter sense, with a view of inferring that the Son was subsequent to a Divine act, i.e. not eternal; but what Athan. says leads to the conclusion, that it does not matter which sense is taken. He does not meet the Arian objection, if not by will therefore by necessity,' by speaking of a concomitant will, or merely saying that the Almighty exists or is good, by will, with S. Cyril, but he says that nature transcends will and necessity also.' Accordingly, Petavius is even willing to allow that the ek boules is to be ascribed to the gennesis in the sense which Dr. Clark wishes, i.e. he grants that it may precede the gennesis, i.e. in order, not in time, in the succession of our ideas, Trin. vi. 8, §§20, 21; and follows S. Austin, Trin. xv. 20. in preferring to speak of our Lord rather as voluntas de voluntate, than, as Athan. is led to do, as the voluntas Dei.
[3233] Vid. Or. i. 25, n. 2. Also Serap. i. 15, 16 init. 17, 20; iv. 8, 14. Ep. Æg. 11 fin. Didym. Trin. iii. 3. p. 341. Ephr. Syr. adv. Hær. Serm. 55 init. (t. 2. p. 557.) Facund. Tr. Cap. iii. 3 init.
[3234] epigegonos, §60, n. 3.
[3235] logisasthai tina boulesin, as §66 (Latin version inexact).
[3236] agathou patros agathon boulema. Clem. Ped. iii. circ. fin. sophia, chrestotes, dunamis, thelema pantokratorikon. Strom. v. p. 547. Voluntas et potestas patris. Tertull. Orat. 4. Natus ex Patri quasi voluntas ex mente procedens. Origen. Periarch. i. 2. §6. S. Jerome notices the same interpretation of by the will of God' in the beginning of Comment. in Ephes. But cf. Aug. Trin. xv. 20. And so Cæsarius, agape ex agapes. Qu. 39.
[3237] Prov. viii. 14.
[3238] 1 Cor. i. 24.
[3239] zosa boule. supr. Or. ii. 2. Cyril in Joan. p. 213. zosa dunamis. Sabell. Greg. 5. c. zosa eikon. Naz. Orat. 30, 20. c. zosa energeia. Syn. Antioch. ap. Routh. Reliqu. t. 2. p. 469. zosa ischus. Cyril. in Joan. p. 951. zosa sophia. Origen. contr. Cels. iii. fin. zon logos. Origen. ibid. zon organon (heretically) Euseb. Dem. iv. 2.
[3240] Is. ix. 6.
[3241] Or. ii. 33, n. 12.
[3242] Ps. lxxiii. 23, 24.
[3243] di' heterou tinos. This idea has been urged against the Arians again and again, as just above, §61; e.g. de Decr. 8, 24; Or. i. 15, below 65, sub. fin. vid. also Epiph. Hær. 76. p. 951. Basil. contr. Eunom. ii. 11. c. 17, a. &c.
[3244] §60.
[3245] polukephalos hairesis. And so poluk. panourgia, §62. The allusion is to the hydra, with its ever-springing heads, as introduced §58, n. 5. and with a special allusion to Asterius who is mentioned, §60, and in de Syn. 18. is called poluk. sophistes.
[3246] Or. ii. 43, n. 4.
[3247] §16, n. 4.
[3248] Or. i. 57; ii. 23.
[3249] Prov. viii. 14.
[3250] peri ton theon. vid. de Decr. 22, n. 1; Or. i. 15. Also Orat. i. 27, where (n. 2 a.), it is mistranslated. Euseb. Eccl. Theol. iii. p. 150. vid. de Syn. 34, n. 7.
[3251] hexin. vid. Or. ii. 38, n. 6; iv. 2, n. 7.
[3252] sumbainousan kai aposumbainousan, vid. de Decr. 11, n. 7, and 22, n. 9, sumbama, Euseb. Eccl. Theol. iii. p. 150. in the same, though a technical sense. vid. also Serap. i. 26; Naz. Orat. 31, 15 fin.
[3253] Acts viii. 20.
[3254] Prov. iii. 19; Ps. xxxiii. 6; cxxxv. 6, cxv. 3; 1 Thess. v. 18.
[3255] Read a word,' cf. p. 394, n. 6.
[3256] De Syn. 53, n. 9.
[3257] ousia and hupostasis are in these passages made synonymous; and so infr. Orat. iv. 1, f. And in iv. 33 fin. to the Son is attributed he patrike hupostasis. Vid. also ad Afros. 4. quoted supr. Exc. A, pp. 77, sqq. Up. might have been expected too in the discussion in the beginning of Orat. iii. did Athan. distinguish between them. It is remarkable how seldom it occurs at all in these Orations, except as contained in Heb. i. 3. Vid. also p. 70, note 13. Yet the phrase treis hupostaseis is certainly found in Illud Omn. fin. and in Incarn. c. Arian. 10. (if genuine) and apparently in Expos. Fid. 2. Vid. also Orat. iv. 25 init.
[3258] Heb. i. 3.
[3259] John iii. 35; v. 20.
[3260] 63, n. 3.
[3261] Or. i. 14, n. 4; ii. 2, n. 3.
[3262] Ps. xlv. 1; John xiv. 10.
[3263] §2, n. 6, &c.
[3264] De Decr. i. n. 6.
[3265] Or. i. 26.
[3266] tes ousias homoia, vid. Or. i. 21, n. 8. Also ii. 42, b. iii. 11, 14 sub. fin., 17, n. 5.
[3267] Or. ii. 1, n. 13.
[3268] 65, n. 8.
[3269] De Decr. 3, n. 2; Orat. i. 27, ii. 4; Apol. c. Ar. 36.
[3270] Cf. 63, n. 9.
[3271] John x. 38, 30; xiv. 9; cf. §5, n. 3.
[3272] Ps. cxlvi. 8. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Excursus C.
Introductory [3273] to the Fourth Discourse against the Arians.
------------------------
The fourth Discourse, as has been already observed (p. 304), stands on a footing of its own. To begin with, it is not quoted in antiquity, as the first three are, as part of the work of Ath. against the Arians (details in Newman, p. 499). Again, the fact that not only the Ep. Æg., but even the dubious de Incar. c. Arian., are in some mss. included in the Orationes, while our present oration appears sometimes as the fifth' sometimes as the sixth,' cast a shade of doubt upon its claim to be included in the Pentabiblus against the Arians' referred to by Photius. In addition to these external considerations, Newman lays stress on the apparent want of continuity in its argument; on its non-conformity to the structural plan of Orat. i.-iii., on the use of the term homoousion (§§10, 22, contrast Orat. i. §9, p. 311, note 12); on certain peculiarities of style which seem characteristic of disjointed notes rather than of a systematic treatise; on the reference to Eusebius' (of Cæsarea) as apparently still living (§8); and on the general absence of personal reference to opponents, while yet a definite and extant system seems to be combated.
Now a comparison with the works of Eusebius against Marcellus leaves little doubt that the system combated by Athan. is that of the latter (described briefly Prolegg. ch. ii. §3 (2) c).
After laying down as a thesis (§1) the substantive existence of the divine Word or Wisdom, Athan. proceeds to combat the idea that the Word has no personality distinct from that of the Father. Setting aside the alternative errors of Sabellius (§2) and Arius (§3), he taxes with the consequence of involving two 'Archai a view that the Word had a substantive existence and was then united to the Father (cf. Euseb. c. Marcell. 32 A, 108 A, 106 C, D). This consequence can only be avoided by falling into the Sabellian alternative of a theos diphues (cf. Tertullian's Deum versipellem'), unless the true solution, that of the eternal divine gennesis, be accepted (§3 worked out in 4, 5). The argument, apparently interrupted by an anti-Arian digression §§6, 7, is resumed §8, whence it proceeds without break to §24. Eusebius, insisting against Marcellus on the eternity of Christ's Kingdom, inconsistently defends those who deny the eternity of His Person. But if so, how inconsistent are those who deny the Son any pre-existence, while yet repelling the Arian formulæ with indignation! In §§9-12, taking Joh. x. 30 as his text, Athan. asks his opponents in what sense Christ and the Father are one,' distinguishing from his own answer that of Sabellius (9, 10), and that of Marcellus (11, 12), whom he presses with the paradoxical character of his explanation of the divine gennesis. In §§13, 14, he examines the (Marcellian, not Sabellian) doctrine of platusmos and sustole, charging it with Sabellianism as its consequence. Next (§§15-24) Ath. turns upon the radically weak point of the system of Marcellus (Prolegg. ubi supra), and asks What do his followers mean by the Son?' Do they mean merely (a) the man, Christ (§20, Photinus), or (b) the union of Word and Man, or (c) the Word regarded as Incarnate? The latter was the answer (§22) of Marcellus himself. This last point leads to a discussion (§24) of those O.T. passages on which Marcellus notoriously relied. §25, which Zahn understands as a direct polemic against Sabellius, is far more probably, as Newman maintains in his note, a supplemental argument against Marcellianism, for the view combated is said to lead inevitably to Sabellianism. The concluding portion, §§26-36, turns the argument of §24, that Scripture declares the identity of Son and Word, against those who (adopting alternative (a) supra) drift from Marcellianism toward the Samosatene rather than toward the Sabellian position (on the connection of the two see Prolegg. ch. ii. §3 (2) a and c). Even here, the name of Photinus, to whose position the section specially applies, is significantly withheld.
Such is the course of the argument in the Fourth Oration; and with the exception of §§6, 7, and again possibly §25, it forms a homogeneous, if not a finished and elaborated piece of argument. Its date and composition may be left an open question; but its purpose as an appendix to Orat. i.-iii., is we think open to little doubt (supr. p. 304). Of Sabellius, who left no writings [3274] , the age of Athanasius knew little, except that he identified Father and Son (huiopator), and denied the Trinity of Persons. Most that is told us of Sabellius from the fourth century onwards requires careful sifting, in order to eliminate what really belongs to Marcellus, Photinus, or others who were taxed with Sabellianism, and combated as Sabellians.' But with the simple patri-passianism which is the one undoubted element in the teaching of Sabellius, Marcellus had little or nothing in common. The criticism of Marcellus that Sabellius knew not the Word' reveals the true difference between them. To Sabellius, creation and redemption were the work of the one God under successive changes of manifestation; to Marcellus, they were the realisation of a process eternally latent in God; but both Marcellus and apparently Sabellius referred to the divine Nature what the theology of the Church has consistently referred to the divine Will.
The following table will make the foregoing scheme clear.
§1. Introductory. Thesis: the co-eternal personality of the Son or Word.
§§2-5. Those who, while rejecting Arianism, would avoid Sabellianism, must accept the eternal divine Generation of the Son.
§§6, 7. [Digression: the humiliation of the Word explained against the Arians.]
§8. The eternity of Christ's Kingdom and of His Person implied each in the other.
§§9-12. In what sense Christ and the Father are, and are not, one. The divine gennesis.
§§13, 14. The doctrine of divine dilatation and contraction denies true personal distinctions in the Godhead.
§§15-24. The Son and the Word identical. Refutation of the three alternative suppositions, and of the argument alleged from the O.T. in support of them.
§25. Final refutation of the doctrine of dilatation.
§§26-36. The Scriptural identification of Son and Word refutes the restriction of the former title to the man Jesus. __________________________________________________________________
[3273] The above Excursus is substituted for the longer introduction of Newman (republished in Latin in his Tracts, Theological and Ecclesiastical, 1872), and is in the main a condensation of the more recent and final discussion of Zahn (Marcellus, 1867, pp. 198 seqq.). The result of the latter is to confirm the main contention of Newman, viz. that the system, rather than the person, of Marcellus is throughout in view. Earlier discussions pointing the same way are cited: In Eusebii contra Marcellum libros Observationes, auctore K.S.C.,' Lips. 1787 (cited by Newman); Rettberg, Marcelliana, Præf. p. 7; Kuhn, Kathol. Dogm. ii. p. 344, note 1 (by Zahn).
[3274] The Articles Sabellianism and Sabellius (both sub. fin.) in D.C.B. vol. iv., state the contrary, but the present writer follows the standard discussion of Zahn, of which the learned articles in question do not seem to take account. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Discourse IV.
------------------------
§§1-5. The substantiality of the Word proved from Scripture. If the One Origin be substantial, Its Word is substantial. Unless the Word and Son be a second Origin, or a work, or an attribute (and so God be compounded), or at the same time Father, or involve a second nature in God, He is from the Father's Essence and distinct from Him. Illustration of John x. 30, drawn from Deut. iv. 4.
1. The Word is God from God; for the Word was God [3275] ,' and again, Of whom are the Fathers, and of whom Christ, who is God over all, blessed for ever. Amen [3276] .' And since Christ is God from God, and God's Word, Wisdom, Son, and Power, therefore but One God is declared in the divine Scriptures. For the Word, being Son of the One God, is referred to Him of whom also He is; so that Father and Son are two, yet the Monad of the Godhead is indivisible and inseparable. And thus too we preserve One Beginning of Godhead and not two Beginnings, whence there is strictly a Monarchy. And of this very Beginning the Word is by nature Son, not as if another beginning, subsisting by Himself, nor having come into being externally to that Beginning, lest from that diversity a Dyarchy and Polyarchy should ensue; but of the one Beginning He is own Son, own Wisdom, own Word, existing from It. For, according to John, in' that Beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,' for the Beginning was God; and since He is from It, therefore also the Word was God.' And as there is one Beginning and therefore one God, so one is that Essence and Subsistence which indeed and truly and really is, and which said I am that I am [3277] ,' and not two, that there be not two Beginnings; and from the One, a Son in nature and truth, is Its own Word, Its Wisdom, Its Power, and inseparable from It. And as there is not another essence, lest there be two Beginnings, so the Word which is from that One Essence has no dissolution, nor is a sound significative, but is an essential Word and essential Wisdom, which is the true Son. For were He not essential, God will be speaking into the air [3278] , and having a body, in nothing differently from men; but since He is not man, neither is His Word according to the infirmity of man [3279] . For as the Beginning is one Essence, so Its Word is one, essential, and subsisting, and Its Wisdom. For as He is God from God, and Wisdom from the Wise, and Word from the Rational, and Son from Father, so is He from Subsistence Subsistent, and from Essence Essential and Substantive, and Being from Being.
2. Since were He not essential Wisdom and substantive Word, and Son existing, but simply Wisdom and Word and Son in the Father, then the Father Himself would have a nature compounded of Wisdom and Word. But if so, the forementioned absurdities would follow; and He will be His own Father, and the Son begetting and begotten by Himself; or Word, Wisdom, Son, is a name only, and He does not subsist who owns, or rather who is, these titles. If then He does not subsist, the names are idle and empty, unless we say that God is Very Wisdom [3280] and Very Word. But if so, He is His own Father and Son; Father, when Wise, Son, when Wisdom; but these things are not in God as a certain quality; away with the dishonourable [3281] thought; for it will issue in this, that God is compounded of essence and quality [3282] . For whereas all quality is in essence, it will clearly follow that the Divine Monad, indivisible as it is, must be compound, being severed into essence and accident [3283] . We must ask then these headstrong men; The Son was proclaimed as God's Wisdom and Word; how then is He such? if as a quality, the absurdity has been shewn; but if God is that Very Wisdom, then it is the absurdity of Sabellius; therefore He is so, as an Offspring in a proper sense from the Father Himself, according to the illustration of light. For as there is light from fire, so from God is there a Word, and Wisdom from the Wise, and from the Father a Son. For in this way the Monad remains undivided and entire, and Its Son, Word not unessential, nor not subsisting, but essential truly. For were it not so, all that is said would be said notionally [3284] and verbally [3285] . But if we must avoid that absurdity, then is a true Word essential. For as there is a Father truly, so Wisdom truly. In this respect then they are two; not because, as Sabellius said, Father and Son are the same, but because the Father is Father and the Son Son, and they are one, because He is Son of the Essence of the Father by nature, existing as His own Word. This the Lord said, viz. I and the Father are One [3286] ;' for neither is the Word separated from the Father, nor was or is the Father ever Wordless; on this account He says, I in the Father and the Father in Me [3287] .'
3. And again, Christ is the Word of God. Did He then subsist by Himself, and subsisting, has He become joined to the Father, or did God make Him or call Him His Word? If the former, I mean if He subsisted by Himself and is God, then there are two Beginnings; and moreover, as is plain, He is not the Father's own, as being not of the Father, but of Himself. But if on the contrary He be made externally, then is He a creature. It remains then to say that He is from God Himself; but if so, that which is from another is one thing, and that from which it is, is a second; according to this then there are two. But if they be not two, but the names belong to the same, cause and effect will be the same, and begotten and begetting, which has been shewn absurd in the instance of Sabellius. But if He be from Him, yet not another, He will be both begetting and not begetting; begetting because He produces from Himself, and not begetting, because it is nothing other than Himself. But if so, the same is called Father and Son notionally. But if it be unseemly so to say, Father and Son must be two; and they are one, because the Son is not from without, but begotten of God. But if any one shrinks from saying Offspring,' and only says that the Word exists with God, let such a one fear lest, shrinking from what is said in Scripture, he fall into absurdity, making God a being of double nature. For not granting that the Word is from the Monad, but simply as if He were joined to the Father, he introduces a twofold essence, and neither of them Father of the other. And the same of Power. And we may see this more clearly, if we consider it with reference to the Father; for there is One Father, and not two, but from that One the Son. As then there are not two Fathers, but One, so not two Beginnings, but One, and from that One the Son essential.
4. But the Arians we must ask contrariwise: (for the Sabellianisers must be confuted from the notion of a Son, and the Arians from that of a Father:) let us say then--Is God wise and not word-less: or on the contrary, is He wisdom-less and word-less [3288] ? if the latter, there is an absurdity at once; if the former, we must ask, how is He wise and not word-less? does He possess the Word and the Wisdom from without, or from Himself? If from without, there must be one who first gave to Him, and before He received He was wisdom-less and word-less. But if from Himself, it is plain that the Word is not from nothing, nor once was not; for He was ever; since He of whom He is the Image, exists ever. But if they say that He is indeed wise and not word-less, but that He has in Himself His own wisdom and own word, and that, not Christ, but that by which He made Christ, we must answer that, if Christ in that word was brought to be, plainly so were all things; and it must be He of whom John says, All things were made by Him,' and the Psalmist, In Wisdom hast Thou made them all [3289] .' And Christ will be found to speak untruly, I in the Father,' there being another in the Father. And the Word became flesh [3290] ' is not true according to them. For if He in whom all things came to be,' Himself became flesh, but Christ is not in the Father, as Word by whom all things came to be,' then Christ has not become flesh, but perhaps Christ was named Word. But if so, first, there will be another besides the name, next, all things were not by Him brought to be, but in that other, in whom Christ also was made. But if they say that Wisdom is in the Father as a quality or that He is Very Wisdom [3291] , the absurdities will follow already mentioned. For He will be compound [3292] , and will prove His own Son and Father [3293] . Moreover, we must confute and silence them on the ground, that the Word which is in God cannot be a creature nor out of nothing; but if once a Word be in God, then He must be Christ who says, I am in the Father and the Father in Me [3294] ,' who also is therefore the Only-begotten, since no other was begotten from Him. This is One Son, who is Word, Wisdom, Power; for God is not compounded of these, but is generative [3295] of them. For as He frames the creatures by the Word, so according to the nature of His own Essence has He the Word as an Offspring, through whom He frames and creates and dispenses all things. For by the Word and the Wisdom all things have come to be, and all things together remain according to His ordinance [3296] . And the same concerning the word Son;' if God be without Son [3297] , then is He without Work; for the Son is His Offspring through whom He works [3298] ; but if not, the same questions and the same absurdities will follow their audacity.
5. From Deuteronomy; But ye that did attach yourselves unto the Lord your God are alive every one of you this day [3299] .' From this we may see the difference, and know that the Son of God is not a creature. For the Son says, I and the Father are One,' and, I in the Father, and the Father in Me;' but things originate, when they make advance, are attached unto the Lord. The Word then is in the Father as being His own; but things originate, being external, are attached, as being by nature foreign, and attached by free choice. For a son which is by nature, is one [3300] with him who begat him; but he who is from without, and is made a son, will be attached to the family. Therefore he immediately adds, What nation is there so great who hath God drawing nigh unto them [3301] ?' and elsewhere, I a God drawing nigh [3302] ;' for to things originate He draws nigh, as being strange to Him, but to the Son, as being His own, He does not draw nigh, but He is in Him. And the Son is not attached to the Father, but co-exists with Him; whence also Moses says again in the same Deuteronomy, Ye shall obey His voice, and apply yourselves unto Him [3303] ;' but what is applied, is applied from without. __________________________________________________________________
[3275] John i. 1.
[3276] Rom. ix. 5.
[3277] Exod. iii. 14.
[3278] 1 Cor. xiv. 9.
[3279] Or. ii. 7.
[3280] Or. ii. 19, n. 3, and below, §4.
[3281] §9.
[3282] Cf. ad Afros. 8.
[3283] Cf. Euseb. Eccl. Theol. p. 121. His opinion was misstated supr., p. 164 sq. note 9.
[3284] Cf. ii. 38, n. 2.
[3285] Cf. i. 52, n. 1.
[3286] John x. 30.
[3287] Ib. xiv. 10.
[3288] Or. i. 19, n. 5.
[3289] John i. 3; Ps. civ. 24.
[3290] John i. 14.
[3291] §2.
[3292] §9, fin.
[3293] §10.
[3294] John xiv. 20.
[3295] iii. 66, n. 3.
[3296] Ps. cxix. 91.
[3297] Or. ii. 2, n. 3.
[3298] Or. ii. 41; iii. 11, n. 4.
[3299] Deut. iv. 4.
[3300] i. 26, n. 2.
[3301] Deut. iv. 7, LXX.
[3302] Jer. xxiii. 23, LXX.
[3303] Deut. xiii. 4. __________________________________________________________________
§§6, 7. When the Word and Son hungered, wept, and was wearied, He acted as our Mediator, taking on Him what was ours, that He might impart to us what was His.
6. But in answer to the weak and human notion of the Arians, their supposing that the Lord is in want, when He says, Is given unto Me,' and I received,' and if Paul says, Wherefore He highly exalted Him,' and He set Him at the right hand [3304] ,' and the like, we must say that our Lord, being Word and Son of God, bore a body, and became Son of Man, that, having become Mediator between God, and men, He might minister the things of God to us, and ours to God. When then He is said to hunger and weep and weary, and to cry Eloi, Eloi, which are our human affections, He receives them from us and offers to the Father [3305] , interceding for us, that in Him they may be annulled [3306] . And when it is said, All power is given unto Me,' and I received,' and Wherefore God highly exalted Him,' these are gifts given from God to us through Him. For the Word was never in want [3307] , nor has come into being [3308] ; nor again were men sufficient to minister these things for themselves, but through the Word they are given to us; therefore, as if given to Him, they are imparted to us. For this was the reason of His becoming man, that, as being given to Him, they might pass on to us [3309] . For of such gifts mere man had not become worthy; and again the mere Word had not needed them [3310] ; the Word then was united to us, and then imparted to us power, and highly exalted us [3311] . For the Word being in man, highly exalted man himself; and, when the Word was in man, man himself received. Since then, the Word being in flesh, man himself was exalted, and received power, therefore these things are referred to the Word, since they were given on His account; for on account of the Word in man were these gifts given. And as the Word became flesh [3312] ,' so also man himself received the gifts which came through the Word. For all that man himself has received, the Word is said to have received [3313] ; that it might be shewn, that man himself, being unworthy to receive, as far as his own nature is concerned, yet has received because of the Word become flesh. Wherefore if anything be said to be given to the Lord, or the like, we must consider that it is given, not to Him as needing it, but to man himself through the Word. For every one interceding for another, receives the gift in his own person, not as needing, but on his account for whom he intercedes.
7. For as He takes our infirmities, not being infirm [3314] , and hungers not hungering, but sends up what is ours that it may be abolished, so the gifts which come from God instead of our infirmities, doth He too Himself receive, that man, being united to Him, may be able to partake them. Hence it is that the Lord says, All things whatsoever Thou hast given Me, I have given them,' and again, I pray for them [3315] .' For He prayed for us, taking on Him what is ours, and He was giving what He received. Since then, the Word being united to man himself, the Father, regarding Him, vouchsafed to man to be exalted, to have all power and the like; therefore are referred to the Word Himself, and are as if given to Him, all things which through Him we receive. For as He for our sake became man, so we for His sake are exalted. It is no absurdity then, if, as for our sake He humbled Himself, so also for our sake He is said to be highly exalted. So He gave to Him,' that is, to us for His sake;' and He highly exalted Him [3316] ,' that is, us in Him.' And the Word Himself, when we are exalted, and receive, and are succoured, as if He Himself were exalted and received and were succoured, gives thanks to the Father, referring what is ours to Himself, and saying, All things, whatsoever Thou hast given Me, I have given unto them [3317] .' __________________________________________________________________
[3304] Matt. xxviii. 18; John x. 18; Phil. ii. 9; Eph. i. 20.
[3305] De Decr. 14; Or. ii. 8, 9.
[3306] Or. iii. 33, n. 6, and 34.
[3307] Or. i. 43.
[3308] Or. i. 43; ii. 65, 67.
[3309] Or. i. 42, 45.
[3310] Or. i. 48; iii. 38.
[3311] Or. i. 41, 42.
[3312] John i. 14.
[3313] iii. 38.
[3314] Or. ii. 60; iii. 37.
[3315] John xvii. 7-9.
[3316] Phil. ii. 9.
[3317] John xvii. 7, 8. __________________________________________________________________
§8. Arians date the Son's beginning earlier than Marcellus, &c.
8. Eusebius and his fellows, that is, the Ario-maniacs, ascribing a beginning of being to the Son, yet pretend not to wish Him to have a beginning of kingship [3318] . But this is ridiculous; for he who ascribes to the Son a beginning of being, very plainly ascribes to Him also a beginning of reigning; so blind are they, confessing what they deny. Again, those who say that the Son is only a name, and that the Son of God, that is, the Word of the Father, is unessential and non-subsistent, pretend to be angry with those who say, Once He was not.' This is ridiculous also; for they who give Him no being at all, are angry with those who at least grant Him to be in time. Thus these also confess what they deny, in the act of censuring the others. And again Eusebius and his fellows, confessing a Son, deny that He is the Word by nature, and would have the Son called Word notionally; and the others confessing Him to be Word, deny Him to be Son, and would have the Word called Son notionally, equally void of footing. __________________________________________________________________
[3318] Euseb. c. Marcell. pp. 6, 32, 49, &c. &c. __________________________________________________________________
§§9, 10. Unless Father and Son are two in name only, or as parts and so each imperfect, or two gods, they are coessential, one in Godhead, and the Son from the Father.
9. I and the Father are One [3319] .' You say that the two things are one, or that the one has two names, or again that the one is divided into two. Now if the one is divided into two, that which is divided must need be a body, and neither part perfect, for each is a part and not a whole. But if again the one have two names, this is the expedient of Sabellius, who said that Son and Father were the same, and did away with either, the Father when there is a Son, and the Son when there is a Father. But if the two are one, then of necessity they are two, but one according to the Godhead, and according to the Son's coessentiality with the Father, and the Word's being from the Father Himself; so that there are two, because there is Father, and Son, namely the Word; and one because one God. For if not, He would have said, I am the Father,' or I and the Father am;' but, in fact, in the I' He signifies the Son, and in the And the Father,' Him who begat Him; and in the One' the one Godhead and His coessentiality [3320] . For the Same is not, as the Gentiles hold, Wise and Wisdom, or the Same Father and Word; for it were unfit for Him to be His own Father, but the divine teaching knows Father and Son, and Wise and Wisdom, and God and Word; while it ever guards Him indivisible and inseparable and indissoluble in all respects.
10. But if any one, on hearing that the Father and the Son are two, misrepresent us as preaching two Gods (for this is what some feign to themselves, and forthwith mock, saying, You hold two Gods'), we must answer to such, If to acknowledge Father and Son, is to hold two Gods, it instantly [3321] follows that to confess but one we must deny the Son and Sabellianise. For if to speak of two is to fall into Gentilism, therefore if we speak of one, we must fall into Sabellianism. But this is not so; perish the thought! but, as when we say that Father and Son are two, we still confess one God, so when we say that there is one God, let us consider Father and Son two, while they are one in the Godhead, and in the Father's Word being indissoluble and indivisible and inseparable from Him. And let the fire and the radiance from it be a similitude of man, which are two in being and in appearance, but one in that its radiance is from it indivisibly. __________________________________________________________________
[3319] John x. 30.
[3320] Here again is the word homoousion. Contrast the language of Orat. iii. when commenting on the same text, in the same way; e.g. hen te idioteti kai oikeioteti tes phuseos, kai te tautoteti tes mias theotetos, §4.
[3321] Cf. Or. iii. 10, note 4. __________________________________________________________________
§§11, 12. Marcellus and his disciples, like Arians, say that the Word was, not indeed created, but issued, to create us, as if the Divine silence were a state of inaction, and when God spake by the Word, He acted; or that there was a going forth and return of the Word; a doctrine which implies change and imperfection in Father and Son.
11. They fall into the same folly with the Arians; for Arians also say that He was created for us, that He might create us, as if God waited till our creation for His issue, as the one party say, or His creation, as the other. Arians then are more bountiful to us than to the Son; for they say, not we for His sake, but He for ours, came to be; that is, if He was therefore created, and subsisted, that God through Him might create us. And these, as irreligious or more so, give to God less than to us. For we oftentimes, even when silent, yet are active in thinking, so as to form the results of our thoughts into images; but God they would have inactive when silent, and when He speaks then to exert strength; if, that is, when silent He could not make, and when speaking He began to create. For it is just to ask them, whether the Word, when He was in God, was perfect, so as to be able to make. If on the one hand He was imperfect, when in God, but by being begotten became perfect [3322] , we are the cause of His perfection, that is, if He has been begotten for us; for on our behalf He has received the power of making. But if He was perfect in God, so as to be able to make, His generation is superfluous; for He, even when in the Father, could frame the world; so that either He has not been begotten, or He was begotten, not for us, but because He is ever from the Father. For His generation evidences, not that we were created, but that He is from God; for He was even before our creation.
12. And the same presumption will be proved against them concerning the Father; for if, when silent, He could not make, of necessity He has gained power by begetting, that is, by speaking. And whence has He gained it? and wherefore? If, when He had the Word within Him, He could make, He begets needlessly, being able to make even in silence. Next, if the Word was in God before He was begotten, then being begotten He is without and external to Him. But if so, how says He now, I in the Father and the Father in Me [3323] ?' but if He is now in the Father, then always was He in the Father, as He is now, and needless is it to say, For us was He begotten, and He reverts after we are formed, that He may be as He was.' For He was not anything which He is not now, nor is He what He was not; but He is as He ever was, and in the same state and in the same respects; otherwise He will seem to be imperfect and alterable. For if, what He was, that He shall be afterwards, as if now He were not so, it is plain, He is not now what He was and shall be. I mean, if He was before in God, and afterwards shall be again, it follows that now the Word is not in God. But the Lord refutes such persons when He says, I in the Father and the Father in Me;' for so is He now as He ever was. But if so He now is, as He was ever, it follows, not that at one time He was begotten and not at another, nor that once there was silence with God, and then He spake, but there is ever a Father [3324] , and a Son who is His Word, not in name [3325] alone a Word, nor the Word in notion only a Son, but existing coessential [3326] with the Father, not begotten for us, for we are brought into being for Him. For, if He were begotten for us, and in His begetting we were created, and in His generation the creature consists, and then He returns that He may be what He was before, first, He that was begotten will be again not begotten. For if His progression be generation, His return will be the close [3327] of that generation, for when He has come to be in God, God will be silent again. But if He shall be silent, there will be what there was when He was silent, stillness and not creation, for the creation will cease to be. For, as on the Word's outgoing, the creation came to be, and existed, so on the Word's retiring, the creation will not exist. What use then for it to come into being, if it is to cease? or why did God speak, that then He should be silent? and why did He issue One whom He recalls? and why did He beget One whose generation He willed to cease? Again it is uncertain what He shall be. For either He will ever be silent, or He will again beget, and will devise a different creation (for He will not make the same, else that which was made would have remained, but another); and in due course He will bring that also to a close, and will devise another, and so on without end [3328] . __________________________________________________________________
[3322] De Syn. 24, n. 9; Or. i. 14, n. 7.
[3323] John xiv. 10.
[3324] i. 21, n. 1.
[3325] ii. 19, n. 3.
[3326] homoousios, 9, n. 2.
[3327] paula. cf. ii. 34, 35.
[3328] eis apeiron, ii. 68. __________________________________________________________________
§§13, 14. Such a doctrine precludes all real distinctions of personality in the Divine Nature. Illustration of the Scripture doctrine from 2 Cor. vi. 11, &c.
13. This perhaps he [3329] borrowed from the Stoics, who maintain that their God contracts and again expands with the creation, and then rests without end. For what is dilated is first straitened; and what is expanded is at first contracted; and it is what it was, and does but undergo an affection. If then the Monad being dilated became a Triad, and the Monad was the Father [3330] , and the Triad is Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, first the Monad being dilated, underwent an affection and became what it was not; for it was dilated, whereas it had not been dilate. Next, if the Monad itself was dilated into a Triad, and that, Father and Son and Holy Ghost, then Father and Son and Spirit prove the same, as Sabellius held, unless the Monad which he speaks of is something besides the Father, and then he ought not to speak of dilatation, since the Monad was to make Three, so that there was a Monad, and then Father, Son, and Spirit. For if the Monad were dilated, and expanded itself, it must itself be that which was expanded. And a Triad when dilated is no longer a Monad, and when a Monad it is not yet a Triad. And so, He that was Father was not yet Son and Spirit; but, when become These, is no longer only Father. And a man who thus should lie, must ascribe a body to God, and represent Him as passible; for what is dilatation, but an affection of that which is dilated? or what the dilated, but what before was not so, but was strait indeed; for it is the same, in time only differing from itself.
14. And this the divine Apostle knows, when he writes to the Corinthians, Be ye not straitened in us, but be ye yourselves dilated, O Corinthians [3331] ;' for he advises identical persons to change from straitness to dilatation. And as, supposing the Corinthians being straitened were in turn dilated, they had not been others, but still Corinthians, so if the Father was dilated into a Triad, the Triad again is the Father alone. And he says again the same thing, Our heart is dilated [3332] ;' and Noah says, May God dilate for Japheth [3333] ,' for the same heart and the same Japheth is in the dilatation. If then the Monad dilated, it would dilate for others; but if it dilated for itself, then it would be that which was dilated; and what is that but the Son and Holy Spirit? And it is well to ask him, when thus speaking, what was the action [3334] of this dilatation? or, in very truth, wherefore at all it took place? for what does not remain the same, but is in course of time dilated, must necessarily have a cause of dilatation. If then it was in order that Word and Spirit should be with Him, it is beside the purpose to say, First Monad, and then dilated;' for Word and Spirit were not afterwards, but ever, or God would be wordless [3335] , as the Arians hold. So that if Word and Spirit were ever, ever was it dilated, and not at first a Monad; but if it were dilated afterwards, then afterwards is there a Word. But if for the Incarnation it was dilated, and then became a Triad, then before the Incarnation there was not yet a Triad. And it will seem even that the Father became flesh, if, that is, He be the Monad, and was dilated in the Man; and thus perhaps there will only be a Monad, and flesh, and thirdly Spirit; if, that is, He was Himself dilated; and there will be in name only a Triad. It is absurd too to say that it was dilated for creating; for it were possible for it, remaining a Monad, to make all; for the Monad did not need dilatation, nor was wanting in power before being dilated; it is absurd surely and impious, to think or speak thus in the case of God. Another absurdity too will follow. For if it was dilated for the sake of the creation, and while it was a Monad the creation was not, but upon the Consummation it will be again a Monad after dilatation, then the creation too will come to nought. For as for the sake of creating it was dilated, so, the dilatation ceasing, the creation will cease also. __________________________________________________________________
[3329] i.e. Marcellus, cf. §§14, 25, &c.
[3330] Cf. §25.
[3331] 2 Cor. vi. 12, 13.
[3332] Ib. vi. 11.
[3333] Gen. ix. 27, LXX.
[3334] energeia [Prolegg. ch. ii. §3 (2) c.]
[3335] Or. i. 19. __________________________________________________________________
§§15-24. Since the Word is from God, He must be Son. Since the Son is from everlasting, He must be the Word; else either He is superior to the Word, or the Word is the Father. Texts of the New Testament which state the unity of the Son with the Father; therefore the Son is the Word. Three hypotheses refuted--1. That the Man is the Son; 2. That the Word and Man together are the Son; 3. That the Word became Son on His incarnation. Texts of the Old Testament which speak of the Son. If they are merely prophetical, then those concerning the Word may be such also.
15. Such absurdities will be the consequence of saying that the Monad is dilated into a Triad. But since those who say so venture to separate Word and Son, and to say that the Word is one and the Son another, and that first was the Word and then the Son, come let us consider this doctrine also. Now their presumption takes various forms; for some say that the man whom the Saviour assumed is the Son [3336] ; and others both that the man and the Word then became Son, when they were united [3337] . And others say that the Word Himself then became Son when He became man [3338] ; for from being Word, they say, He has become Son, not being Son before, but only Word. Now both are Stoic [3339] doctrines, whether to say that God was dilated or to deny the Son, but especially is it absurd to name the Word, yet deny Him to be Son. For if the Word be not from God, reasonably might they deny Him to be Son; but if He is from God, how see they not that what exists from anything is son of him from whom it is? Next, if God is Father of the Word, why is not the Word Son of His own Father? for one is and is called father, whose is the son; and one is and is called son of another, whose is the father. If then God is not Father of Christ, neither is the Word Son; but if God be Father, then reasonably also the Word is Son. But if afterwards there is Father, and first God, this is an Arian thought [3340] . Next, it is absurd that God should change; for that belongs to bodies; but if they argue that in the instance of creation He became afterwards a Maker, let them know that the change is in the things [3341] which afterwards came to be, and not in God.
16. If then the Son too were a work, well might God begin to be a Father towards Him as others; but if the Son is not a work, then ever was the Father and ever the Son [3342] . But if the Son was ever, He must be the Word; for if the Word be not Son, and this is what a man waxes bold to say, either he holds that Word to be Father or the Son superior to the Word. For the Son being in the bosom of the Father [3343] ,' of necessity either the Word is not before the Son (for nothing is before Him who is in the Father), or if the Word be other than the Son, the Word must be the Father in whom is the Son. But if the Word is not Father but Word, the Word must be external to the Father, since it is the Son who is in the bosom of the Father.' For not both the Word and the Son are in the bosom, but one must be, and He the Son, who is Only-begotten. And it follows for another reason, if the Word is one, and the Son another, that the Son is superior to the Word; for no one knoweth the Father save the Son [3344] ,' not the Word. Either then the Word does not know, or if He knows, it is not true that no one knows.' And the same of He that hath seen Me, hath seen the Father,' and I and the Father are One,' for this is uttered by the Son, not the Word, as they would have it, as is plain from the Gospel; for according to John when the Lord said, I and the Father are One,' the Jews took up stones to stone Him. Jesus [3345] answered them, Many good works have I shewed you from My Father, for which of those works do ye stone Me? The Jews answered Him, saying, For a good work we stone Thee not, but for blasphemy, and because that Thou, being a man, makest Thyself God. Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? If he called them gods unto whom the Word of God came, and the Scripture cannot be broken, say ye of Him, whom the Father hath sanctified and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest, because I said, I am the Son of God? If I do not the works of My Father, believe Me not. But if I do, though ye believe not Me, believe the works, that ye may know and believe that the Father is in Me, and I in the Father.' And yet, as far as the surface of the words intimated, He said neither I am God,' nor I am Son of God,' but I and the Father are One.'
17. The Jews then, when they heard One,' thought like Sabellius that He said that He was the Father, but our Saviour shews their sin by this argument: Though I had said "God," you should have remembered what is written, "I said, Ye are gods;"' then to clear up I and the Father are One,' He has explained the Son's oneness with the Father in the words, Because I said, I am the Son of God.' For if He did not say it in words, still He has referred the sense of are One' to the Son. For nothing is one with the Father, but what is from Him. What is that which is from Him but the Son? And therefore He adds, that ye may know that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me.' For, when expounding the One,' He said that the union and the inseparability lay, not in This being That, with which It was One, but in His being in the Father and the Father in the Son. For thus He overthrows both Sabellius, in saying, I am' not, "the Father," but, the Son of God;' and Arius, in saying, are One.' If then the Son and the Word are not the same, it is not that the Word is one with the Father, but the Son; nor he that hath seen the Word hath seen the Father,' but he that hath seen' the Son. And from this it follows, either that the Son is greater than the Word, or the Word has nothing beyond the Son. For what can be greater or more perfect than One,' and I in the Father and the Father in Me,' and He that hath seen Me, hath seen the Father?' for these utterances also belong to the Son. And hence the same John says, He that hath seen Me, hath seen Him that sent Me,' and, He that receiveth Me, receiveth Him that sent Me;' and, I am come a light into the world, that whosoever believeth in Me, should not abide in darkness. And, if any one hear My words and observe them not, I judge him not; for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world. The word which he shall hear, the same shall judge him in the last day, because I go unto the Father [3346] .' The preaching, He says, judges him who has not observed the commandment; for if,' He says, I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin; but now they shall have no cloke [3347] ,' He says, having heard My words, through which those who observe them shall reap salvation.
18. Perhaps they will have so little shame as to say, that this utterance belongs not to the Son but to the Word; but from what preceded it appeared plainly that the speaker was the Son. For He who here says, I came not to judge the world but to save [3348] ,' is shewn to be no other than the Only-begotten Son of God, by the same John's saying before [3349] , For God so loved the world that He gave His Only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. He that believeth on Him is not condemned, but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the Name of the Only-begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil [3350] .' If He who says, For I came not to judge the world, but that I might save it,' is the Same as says, He that seeth Me, seeth Him that sent Me [3351] ,' and if He who came to save the world and not judge it is the Only-begotten Son of God, it is plain that it is the same Son who says, He that seeth Me, seeth Him that sent Me.' For He who said, He that believeth on Me,' and, If any one hear My words, I judge him not,' is the Son Himself, of whom Scripture says, He that believeth on Him is not condemned, but He that believeth not is condemned already, because He hath not believed in the Name of the Only-begotten Son of God.' And again: And this is the condemnation' of him who believeth not on the Son, that light hath come into the world,' and they believed not in Him, that is, in the Son; for He must be the Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world [3352] .' And as long as He was upon earth according to the Incarnation, He was Light in the world, as He said Himself, While ye have light, believe in the light, that ye may be the children of light;' for I,' says He, am come a light into the world [3353] .'
19. This then being shewn, it follows that the Word is the Son. But if the Son is the Light, which has come into the world, beyond all dispute the world was made by the Son. For in the beginning of the Gospel, the Evangelist, speaking of John the Baptist, says, He was not that Light, but that he might bear witness concerning that Light [3354] .' For Christ Himself was, as we have said before, the True Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world. For if He was in the world, and the world was made by Him [3355] ,' of necessity He is the Word of God, concerning whom also the Evangelist witnesses that all things were made by Him. For either they will be compelled to speak of two worlds, that the one may have come into being by the Son and the other by the Word, or, if the world is one and the creation one, it follows that Son and Word are one and the same before all creation, for by Him it came into being. Therefore if as by the Word, so by the Son also all things came to be, it will not be contradictory, but even identical to say, for instance, In the beginning was the Word,' or, In the beginning was the Son.' But if because John did not say, In the beginning was the Son,' they shall maintain that the attributes of the Word do not suit with the Son, it at once follows that the attributes of the Son do not suit with the Word. But it was shewn that to the Son belongs, I and the Father are One,' and that it is He Who is in the bosom of the Father,' and, He that seeth Me, seeth Him that sent Me [3356] ;' and that the world was brought into being by Him,' is common to the Word and the Son; so that from this the Son is shewn to be before the world; for of necessity the Framer is before the things brought into being. And what is said to Philip must belong, according to them, not to the Word, but to the Son. For, Jesus said,' says Scripture, Have I been so long time with you, and yet thou hast not known Me, Philip? He that hath seen Me, hath seen the Father. And how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father? Believest thou not, that I am in the Father and the Father in Me? the words that I speak unto you, I speak not of Myself, but the Father that dwelleth in Me, He doeth the works. Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me, or else, believe Me for the very works' sake. Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that believeth on Me, the works that I do shall he do also, and greater works than these shall he do, because I go unto the Father. And whatsoever ye shall ask in My Name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son [3357] .' Therefore if the Father be glorified in the Son, the Son must be He who said, I in the Father and the Father in Me;' and He who said, He that hath seen Me, hath seen the Father;' for He, the same who thus spoke, shews Himself to be the Son, by adding, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.'
20. If then they say that the Man whom the Word wore, and not the Word, is the Son of God the Only-begotten, the Man must be by consequence He who is in the Father, in whom also the Father is; and the Man must be He who is One with the Father, and who is in the bosom of the Father, and the True Light. And they will be compelled to say that through the Man Himself the world came into being, and that the Man was He who came not to judge the world but to save it; and that He it was who was in being before Abraham came to be. For, says Scripture, Jesus said to them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, before Abraham was, I am [3358] .' And is it not absurd to say, as they do, that one who came of the seed of Abraham after two and forty generations [3359] , should exist before Abraham came to be? is it not absurd, if the flesh, which the Word bore, itself is the Son, to say that the flesh from Mary is that by which the world was made? and how will they retain He was in the world?' for the Evangelist, by way of signifying the Son's antecedence to the birth according to the flesh, goes on to say, He was in the world.' And how, if not the Word but the Man is the Son, can He save the world, being Himself one of the world? And if this does not shame them, where shall be the Word, the Man being in the Father? And where will the Word stand to the Father, the Man and the Father being One? But if the Man be Only-begotten, what will be the place of the Word? Either one must say that He comes second, or, if He be above the Only-begotten, He must be the Father Himself. For as the Father is One, so also the Only-begotten from Him is One; and what has the Word above the Man, if the Word is not the Son? For, while Scripture says that through the Son and the Word the world was brought to be, and it is common to the Word and to the Son to frame the world, yet Scripture proceeds to place the sight of the Father, not in the Word but in the Son, and to attribute the saving of the world, not to the Word, but to the Only-begotten Son. For, saith it, Jesus said, Have I been so long while with you, and yet hast thou not known Me, Philip? He that hath seen Me, hath seen the Father.' Nor does Scripture say that the Word knows the Father, but the Son; and that not the Word sees the Father, but the Only-begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father.
21. And what more does the Word contribute to our salvation than the Son, if, as they hold, the Son is one, and the Word another? for the command is that we should believe, not in the Word, but in the Son. For John says, He that believeth on the Son, hath everlasting life; but he that believeth not the Son, shall not see life [3360] .' And Holy Baptism, in which the substance of the whole faith is lodged, is administered not in the Word, but in Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. If then, as they hold, the Word is one and the Son another, and the Word is not the Son, Baptism has no connection with the Word. How then are they able to hold that the Word is with the Father, when He is not with Him in the giving of Baptism? But perhaps they will say, that in the Father's Name the Word is included? Wherefore then not the Spirit also? or is the Spirit external to the Father? and the Man indeed (if the Word is not Son) is named after the Father, but the Spirit after the Man? and then the Monad, instead of dilating into a Triad, dilates according to them into a Tetrad, Father, Word, Son, and Holy Ghost. Being brought to shame on this ground, they have recourse to another, and say that not the Man by Himself whom the Lord bore, but both together, the Word and the Man, are the Son; for both joined together are named Son, as they say. Which then is cause of which? and which has made which a Son? or, to speak more clearly, is the Word a Son because of the flesh? or is the flesh called Son because of the Word? or is neither the cause, but the concurrence of the two? If then the Word be a Son because of the flesh, of necessity the flesh is Son, and all those absurdities follow which have been already drawn from saying that the Man is Son. But if the flesh is called Son because of the Word, then even before the flesh the Word certainly, being such, was Son. For how could a being make other sons, not being himself a son, especially when there was a father [3361] ? If then He makes sons for Himself, then is He Himself Father; but if for the Father, then must He be Son, or rather that Son, by reason of Whom the rest are made sons.
22. For if, while He is not Son, we are sons, God is our Father and not His. How then does He appropriate the name instead, saying, My Father,' and I from the Father [3362] ?' for if He be common Father of all, He is not His Father only, nor did He alone come out from the Father. But he says, that He is sometimes called our Father also, because He has Himself become partaker in our flesh. For on this account the Word has become flesh, that, since the Word is Son, therefore, because of the Son dwelling in us [3363] , He may be called our Father also; for He sent forth,' says Scripture, the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father [3364] .' Therefore the Son in us, calling upon His own Father, causes Him to be named our Father also. Surely in whose hearts the Son is not, of them neither can God be called Father. But if because of the Word the Man is called Son, it follows necessarily, since the ancients [3365] are called sons even before the Incarnation, that the Word is Son even before His sojourn among us; for I begat sons,' saith Scripture; and in the time of Noah, When the sons of God saw,' and in the Song, Is not He thy Father [3366] ?' Therefore there was also that True Son, for whose sake they too were sons. But if, as they say again, neither of the two is Son, but it depends on the concurrence of the two, it follows that neither is Son; I say, neither the Word nor the Man, but some cause, on account of which they were united; and accordingly that cause which makes the Son will precede the uniting. Therefore in this way also the Son was before the flesh. When this then is urged, they will take refuge in another pretext, saying, neither that the Man is Son, nor both together, but that the Word was Word indeed simply in the beginning, but when He became Man, then He was named [3367] Son; for before His appearing He was not Son but Word only; and as the Word became flesh,' not being flesh before, so the Word became Son, not being Son before. Such are their idle words; but they admit of an obvious refutation.
23. For if simply, when made Man, He has become Son, the becoming Man is the cause. And if the Man is cause of His being Son, or both together, then the same absurdities result. Next, if He is first Word and then Son, it will appear that He knew the Father afterwards, not before; for not as being Word does He know Him, but as Son. For No one knoweth the Father but the Son.' And this too will result, that He has come afterwards to be in the bosom of the Father [3368] ,' and afterwards He and the Father have become One; and afterwards is, He that hath seen Me, hath seen the Father [3369] .' For all these things are said of the Son. Hence they will be forced to say, The Word was nothing but a name. For neither is it He who is in us with the Father, nor whoso has seen the Word, hath seen the Father, nor was the Father known to any one at all, for through the Son is the Father known (for so it is written, And he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him'), and, the Word not being yet Son, not yet did any know the Father. How then was He seen by Moses, how by the fathers? for He says Himself in the Kingdoms, Was I not plainly revealed to the house of thy father [3370] ?' But if God was revealed, there must have been a Son to reveal, as He says Himself, And he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him.' It is irreligious then and foolish to say that the Word is one and the Son another, and whence they gained such an idea it were well to ask them. They answer, Because no mention is made in the Old Testament of the Son, but of the Word; and for this reason they are positive in their opinion that the Son came later than the Word, because not in the Old, but in the New only, is He spoken of. This is what they irreligiously say; for first to separate between the Testaments, so that the one does not hold with the other, is the device of Manichees and Jews, the one of whom oppose the Old, and the other the New [3371] . Next, on their shewing, if what is contained in the Old is of older date, and what in the New of later, and times depend upon the writing, it follows that I and the Father are One,' and Only-begotten,' and He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father [3372] ,' are later, for these testimonies are adduced not from the Old but from the New.
24. But it is not so; for in truth much is said in the Old also about the Son, as in the second Psalm, Thou art My Son, this day have I begotten Thee [3373] ;' and in the ninth the title [3374] , Unto the end concerning the hidden things of the Son, a Psalm of David;' and in the forty-fourth, Unto the end, concerning the things that shall be changed to the Sons of Korah for understanding, a song about the Well-beloved;' and in Isaiah, I will sing to my Well-beloved a song of my Well-beloved touching my vineyard. My Well-beloved hath a vineyard [3375] ;' Who is this Well-beloved' but the Only-begotten Son? as also in the hundred and ninth, From the womb I begat Thee before the morning star [3376] ,' concerning which I shall speak afterwards; and in the Proverbs, Before the hills He begat me;' and in Daniel, And the form of the Fourth is like the Son of God [3377] ;' and many others. If then from the Old be ancientness, ancient must be the Son, who is clearly described in the Old Testament in many places. Yes,' they say, so it is, but it must be taken prophetically.' Therefore also the Word must be said to be spoken of prophetically; for this is not to be taken one way, that another. For if Thou art My Son' refer to the future, so does By the Word of the Lord were the heavens established;' for it is not said were brought to be,' nor He made.' But that established' refers to the future, it states elsewhere: The Lord reigned [3378] ,' followed by He so established the earth that it can never be moved.' And if the words in the forty-fourth Psalm for My Well-beloved' refer to the future, so does what follows upon them, My heart uttered a good Word.' And if From the womb' relates to a man, therefore also From the heart.' For if the womb is human, so is the heart corporeal. But if what is from the heart is eternal, then what is From the womb' is eternal. And if the Only-begotten' is in the bosom,' therefore the Well-beloved' is in the bosom.' For Only-begotten' and Well-beloved' are the same, as in the words This is My Well-beloved Son [3379] .' For not as wishing to signify His love towards Him did He say Well-beloved,' as if it might appear that He hated others, but He made plain thereby His being Only-begotten, that He might shew that He alone was from Him. And hence the Word, with a view of conveying to Abraham the idea of Only-begotten,' says, Offer thy son thy well-beloved [3380] ;' but it is plain to any one that Isaac was the only son from Sara. The Word then is Son, not lately come to be, or named Son, but always Son. For if not Son, neither is He Word; and if not Word, neither is He Son. For that which is from the father is a son; and what is from the Father, but that Word that went forth from the heart, and was born from the womb? for the Father is not Word, nor the Word Father, but the one is Father, and the other Son; and one begets, and the other is begotten. __________________________________________________________________
[3336] Vid. §20.
[3337] Vid. §21.
[3338] Vid. §22 fin.
[3339] Cf. Ritt. and Prell. (Ed. 5) §398 (?).
[3340] §§8, 13.
[3341] Cf. i. 29.
[3342] Or. i. 14, n. 4.
[3343] John i. 18.
[3344] Matt. xi. 27.
[3345] John x. 32-38
[3346] John xii. 45; Matt. x. 40; John xii. 46-48.
[3347] John xv. 22.
[3348] John xii. 47.
[3349] Ib. iii. 16-19.
[3350] Ib. iii. 18, 19.
[3351] Ib. xxii. 45.
[3352] Ib. i. 9.
[3353] Ib. xxii. 36, 46.
[3354] Ib. i. 8.
[3355] Ib. i. 10.
[3356] John x. 30; i. 18; xii. 45.
[3357] Ib. xiv. 9-13.
[3358] John viii. 58.
[3359] Vid. Matt. i. 17
[3360] John iii. 36.
[3361] Cf. iii. 11, n. 1.
[3362] John v. 17; xvi. 28.
[3363] Or. ii. 60. n. 5.
[3364] Gal. iv. 6.
[3365] Below, §29.
[3366] Is. i. 2, LXX.; Gen. vi. 2; Deut. xxxii. 6
[3367] Or. ii. 19, n. 3.
[3368] Matt. xi. 27; John i. 18.
[3369] John xiv. 9.
[3370] 1 Sam. ii. 27, LXX.
[3371] Cf. i. 53, n. 7; iii. 35, n. 5.
[3372] John x. 30; i. 18; xiv. 9.
[3373] Ps. ii. 7.
[3374] Ib. ix. title xlv. title.
[3375] Is. v. 1.
[3376] Ps. cx. 3, LXX.
[3377] Prov. viii. 25, LXX.; Dan. iii. 25.
[3378] Cf. Exp. in Ps. xcii.
[3379] Ps. xxxiii. 6; xciii. 1; xlv. 1; Matt. iii. 17.
[3380] Gen. xxii. 2. __________________________________________________________________
§25. Marcellian illustration from 1 Cor. xii. 4, refuted.
25. Arius then raves in saying that the Son is from nothing, and that once He was not, while Sabellius also raves in saying that the Father is Son, and again, the Son Father [3381] , in subsistence [3382] One, in name Two; and he [3383] raves also in using as an example the grace of the Spirit. For he says, As there are "diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit," so also the Father is the same [3384] , but is dilated into Son and Spirit.' Now this is full of absurdity; for if as with the Spirit, so it is with God, the Father will be Word and Holy Spirit, to one becoming Father, to another Son, to another Spirit, accommodating himself to the need of each, and in name indeed Son and Spirit, but in reality Father only; having a beginning in that He becomes a Son, and then ceasing to be called Father, and made man in name, but in truth not even coming among us; and untrue in saying I and the Father,' but in reality being Himself the Father, and the other absurdities which result in the instance of Sabellius. And the name of the Son and the Spirit will necessarily cease, when the need has been supplied; and what happens will altogether be but make-belief, because it has been displayed, not in truth, but in name. And the Name of Son ceasing, as they hold, then the grace of Baptism will cease too; for it was given in the Son [3385] . Nay, what will follow but the annihilation of the creation? for if the Word came forth that we might be created [3386] , and when He was come forth, we were, it is plain that when He retires into the Father, as they say, we shall be no longer. For He will be as He was; so also we shall not be, as then we were not; for when He is no more gone forth, there will no more be a creation. This then is absurd. __________________________________________________________________
[3381] §13.
[3382] hupostasei, iii. 65, n. 9.
[3383] i.e. Marcellus.
[3384] (1 Cor. xii. 4.) So Marcellus, §13.
[3385] §21.
[3386] ii. 24, n. 6; iv. 11, n. 4. __________________________________________________________________
§§26-36. That the Son is the Co-existing Word, argued from the New Testament. Texts from the Old Testament continued; especially Ps. cx. 3. Besides, the Word in Old Testament may be Son in New, as Spirit in Old Testament is Paraclete in New. Objection from Acts x. 36; answered by parallels, such as 1 Cor. i. 5. Lev. ix. 7. &c. Necessity of the Word's taking flesh, viz. to sanctify, yet without destroying, the flesh.
26. But that the Son has no beginning of being, but before He was made man was ever with the Father, John makes clear in his first Epistle, writing thus: That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled of the Word of Life; and the Life was manifested, and we have seen it; and we bear witness and declare unto you that Eternal Life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us [3387] .' While he says here that the Life,' not became,' but was with the Father,' in the end of his Epistle he says the Son is the Life, writing, And we are in Him that is True, even in His Son, Jesus Christ; this is the True God and Eternal Life [3388] .' But if the Son is the Life, and the Life was with the Father, and if the Son was with the Father, and the same Evangelist says, And the Word was with God [3389] ,' the Son must be the Word, which is ever with the Father. And as the Son' is Word,' so God' must be the Father.' Moreover, the Son, according to John, is not merely God' but True God;' for according to the same Evangelist, And the Word was God;' and the Son said, I am the Life [3390] .' Therefore the Son is the Word and Life which is with the Father. And again, what is said in the same John, The Only-begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father [3391] ,' shews that the Son was ever. For whom John calls Son, Him David mentions in the Psalm as God's Hand [3392] , saying, Why stretchest Thou not forth Thy Right Hand out of Thy bosom [3393] ?' Therefore if the Hand is in the bosom, and the Son in the bosom, the Son will be the Hand, and the Hand will be the Son, through whom the Father made all things; for it is written, Thy Hand made all these things,' and He led out His people with His Hand [3394] ;' therefore through the Son. And if this is the changing of the Right Hand of the Most Highest,' and again, Unto the end, concerning the things that shall be changed, a song for My Well-beloved [3395] ;' the Well-beloved then is the Hand that was changed; concerning whom the Divine Voice also says, This is My Beloved Son.' This My Hand' then is equivalent to This My Son.'
27. But since there are ill-instructed men who, while resisting the doctrine of a Son, think little of the words, From the womb before the morning star I begat Thee [3396] ;' as if this referred to His relation to Mary, alleging that He was born of Mary before the morning star,' for that to say womb' could not refer to His relation towards God, we must say a few words here. If then, because the womb' is human, therefore it is foreign to God, plainly heart' too has a human meaning [3397] , for that which has heart has womb also. Since then both are human, we must deny both, or seek to explain both. Now as a word is from the heart, so is an offspring from the womb; and as when the heart of God is spoken of, we do not conceive of it as human, so if Scripture says from the womb,' we must not take it in a corporeal sense. For it is usual with divine Scripture to speak and signify in the way of man what is above man. Thus speaking of the creation it says, Thy hands made me and fashioned me,' and, Thy hand made all these things,' and, He commanded and they were created [3398] .' Suitable then is its language about everything; attributing to the Son propriety' and genuineness,' and to the creation the beginning of being.' For the one God makes and creates; but Him He begets from Himself, Word or Wisdom. Now womb' and heart' plainly declare the proper and the genuine; for we too have this from the womb; but our works we make by the hand.
28. What means then, say they, Before the morning star?' I would answer, that if Before the morning star' shews that His birth from Mary was wonderful, many others besides have been born before the rising of the star. What then is said so wonderful in His instance, that He should record it as some choice prerogative [3399] , when it is common to many? Next, to beget differs from bringing forth; for begetting involves the primary foundation, but to bring forth is nothing else than the production of what exists. If then the term belongs to the body, let it be observed that He did not then receive a beginning of coming to be when he was evangelized to the shepherds by night, but when the Angel spoke to the Virgin. And that was not night, for this is not said; on the contrary, it was night when He issued from the womb. This difference Scripture makes, and says on the one hand that He was begotten before the morning star, and on the other speaks of His proceeding from the womb, as in the twenty-first Psalm, Thou art he that drew Me from the womb [3400] .' Besides, He did not say, before the rising of the morning star,' but simply before the morning star.' If then the phrase must be taken of the body, then either the body must be before Adam, for the stars were before Adam, or we have to investigate the sense of the letter. And this John enables us to do, who says in the Apocalypse, I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. Blessed are they who make broad their robes, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city. For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever maketh and loveth a lie. I Jesus have sent My Angel, to testify these things in the Churches. I am the Root and the Offspring of David, the Bright and Morning Star. And the Spirit and the Bride say, Come; and let him that heareth say, Come; and let him that is athirst, Come; and whosoever will, let him take of the water of life freely [3401] .' If then the Offspring of David' be the Bright and Morning Star,' it is plain that the flesh of the Saviour is called the Morning Star,' which the Offspring from God preceded; so that the sense of the Psalm is this, I have begotten Thee from Myself before Thy appearance in the flesh;' for before the Morning Star' is equivalent to before the Incarnation of the Word.'
29. Thus in the Old also, statements are plainly made concerning the Son; at the same time it is superfluous to argue the point; for if what is not stated in the Old is of later date, let them who are thus disputatious, say where in the Old is mention made of the Spirit, the Paraclete? for of the Holy Spirit there is mention, but nowhere of the Paraclete. Is then the Holy Spirit one, and the Paraclete another, and the Paraclete the later, as not mentioned in the Old? but far be it to say that the Spirit is later, or to distinguish the Holy Ghost as one and the Paraclete as another; for the Spirit is one and the same, then and now hallowing and comforting those who are His recipients; as one and the same Word and Son led even then to adoption of sons those who were worthy [3402] . For sons under the Old were made such through no other than the Son. For unless even before Mary there were a Son who was of God, how is He before all, when they are sons before Him? and how also First-born,' if He comes second after many? But neither is the Paraclete second, for He was before all, nor the Son later; for in the beginning was the Word [3403] .' And as the Spirit and Paraclete are the same, so the Son and Word are the same; and as the Saviour says concerning the Spirit, But the Paraclete which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in My Name [3404] ,' speaking of One and Same, and not distinguishing, so John describes similarly when he says, And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of one Only-begotten from the Father [3405] .' For here too he does not distinguish but witnesses the identity. And as the Paraclete is not one and the Holy Ghost another, but one and the same, so Word is not one, and Son another, but the Word is Only-Begotten; for He says not the glory of the flesh itself, but of the Word. He then who dares distinguish between Word and Son, let him distinguish between Spirit and Paraclete; but if the Spirit cannot be distinguished, so neither can the Word, being also Son and Wisdom and Power. Moreover, the word Well-beloved' even the Greeks who are skilful in phrases know to be equivalent with Only-begotten.' For Homer speaks thus of Telemachus, who was the only-begotten of Ulysses, in the second book of the Odyssey:
O'er the wide earth, dear youth, why seek to run,
An only child, a well-beloved [3406] son?
He whom you mourn, divine Ulysses, fell
Far from his country, where the strangers dwell.
Therefore he who is the only son of his father is called well-beloved.
30. Some of the followers of the Samosatene, distinguishing the Word from the Son, pretend that the Son is Christ, and the Word another; and they ground this upon Peter's words in the Acts, which he spoke well, but they explain badly [3407] . It is this: The Word He sent to the children of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ; this is Lord of all [3408] .' For they say that since the Word spoke through Christ, as in the instance of the Prophets, Thus saith the Lord,' the prophet was one and the Lord another. But to this it is parallel to oppose the words in the first to the Corinthians, waiting for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall also confirm you unto the end unblameable in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ [3409] .' For as one Christ does not confirm the day of another Christ, but He Himself confirms in His own day those who wait for Him, so the Father sent the Word made flesh, that being made man He might preach by means of Himself. And therefore he straightway adds, This is Lord of all;' but Lord of all is the Word.
31. And Moses said unto Aaron, Go unto the altar and offer thy sin-offering, and thy burnt-offering, and make an atonement for thyself and for the people; and offer the offering of the people, and make an atonement for them, as the Lord commanded Moses [3410] .' See now here, though Moses be one, Moses himself speaks as if about another Moses, as the Lord commanded Moses.' In like manner then, if the blessed Peter speak of the Divine Word also, as sent to the children of Israel by Jesus Christ, it is not necessary to understand that the Word is one and Christ another, but that they were one and the same by reason of the uniting which took place in His divine and loving condescension and becoming man. And even if He be considered in two ways [3411] , still it is without any division of the Word, as when the inspired John says, And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us [3412] .' What then is said well and rightly [3413] by the blessed Peter, the followers of the Samosatene, understanding badly and wrongly, stand not in the truth. For Christ is understood in both ways in Divine Scripture, as when it says Christ God's power and God's wisdom [3414] .' If then Peter says that the Word was sent through Jesus Christ unto the children of Israel, let him be understood to mean, that the Word incarnate has appeared to the children of Israel, so that it may correspond to And the Word became flesh.' But if they understand it otherwise, and, while confessing the Word to be divine, as He is, separate from Him the Man that He has taken, with which also we believe that He is made one, saying that He has been sent through Jesus Christ, they are, without knowing it, contradicting themselves. For those who in this place separate the divine Word from the divine Incarnation, have, it seems, a degraded notion of the doctrine of His having become flesh, and entertain Gentile thoughts, as they do, conceiving that the divine Incarnation is an alteration of the Word. But it is not so; perish the thought.
32. For in the same way that John here preaches that incomprehensible union. the mortal being swallowed up of life [3415] ,' nay, of Him who is Very Life (as the Lord said to Martha, I am the Life [3416] '), so when the blessed Peter says that through Jesus Christ the Word was sent, he implies the divine union also. For as when a man heard The Word became flesh,' he would not think that the Word ceased to be, which is absurd, as has been said before, so also hearing of the Word which has been united to the flesh, let him understand the divine mystery one and simple. More clearly however and indisputably than all reasoning does what was said by the Archangel to the Bearer of God herself, shew the oneness of the Divine Word and Man. For he says, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the Power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that Holy Thing which shall be born of thee, shall be called the Son of God [3417] .' Irrationally then do the followers of the Samosatene separate the Word who is clearly declared to be made one with the Man from Mary. He is not therefore sent through that Man; but He rather in Him sent, saying, Go ye, teach all nations [3418] .'
33. And this is usual with Scripture [3419] , to express itself in inartificial and simple phrases. For so also in Numbers we shall find, Moses said to Raguel the Midianite, the father-in-law of Moses; for there was not one Moses who spoke, and another whose father-in-law was Raguel, but Moses was one. And if in like manner the Word of God is called Wisdom and Power and Right-Hand and Arm and the like, and if in His love to man He has become one with us, putting on our first-fruits and blended with it, therefore the other titles also have, as was natural, become the Word's portions. For that John has said, that in the beginning was the Word, and He with God and Himself God, and all things through Him, and without Him nothing made, shews clearly that even man is the formation of God the Word. If then after taking him, when enfeebled [3420] , into Himself, He renews him again through that sure renewal unto endless permanence, and therefore is made one with him in order to raise him to a diviner lot, how can we possibly say that the Word was sent through the Man who was from Mary, and reckon Him, the Lord of Apostles, with the other Apostles, I mean prophets, who were sent by Him? And how can Christ be called a mere man? on the contrary, being made one with the Word, He is with reason called Christ and Son of God, the prophet having long since loudly and clearly ascribed the Father's subsistence to Him, and said, And I will send My Son Christ [3421] ,' and in the Jordan, This is My Well-beloved Son.' For when He had fulfilled His promise, He shewed, as was suitable, that He was He whom He said He had sent.
34. Let us then consider Christ in both ways, the divine Word made one in Mary with Him which is from Mary. For in her womb the Word fashioned for Himself His house, as at the beginning He formed Adam from the earth; or rather more divinely, concerning whom Solomon too says openly, knowing that the Word was also called Wisdom, Wisdom builded herself an house [3422] ;' which the Apostle interprets when he says, Which house are we [3423] ,' and elsewhere calls us a temple, as far as it is fitting to God to inhabit a temple, of which the image, made of stones, He by Solomon commanded the ancient people to build; whence, on the appearance of the Truth, the image ceased. For when the ruthless men wished to prove the image to be the truth, and to destroy that true habitation which we surely believe His union with us to be, He threatened them not; but knowing that their crime was against themselves, He says to them, Destroy this Temple, and in three days I will raise it up [3424] ,' He, our Saviour, surely shewing thereby that the things about which men busy themselves, carry their dissolution with them. For unless the Lord had built the house, and kept the city, in vain did the builders toil, and the keepers watch [3425] . And so the works of the Jews are undone, for they were a shadow; but the Church is firmly established; it is founded on the rock,' and the gates of hades shall not prevail against it [3426] .' Theirs [3427] it was to say, Why dost Thou, being a man, make Thyself God [3428] ?' and their disciple is the Samosatene; whence to his followers with reason does he teach his heresy. But we did not so learn Christ, if so be that we heard' Him, and were taught from Him, putting off the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts,' and taking up the new, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness [3429] .' Let Christ then in both ways be religiously considered.
35. But if Scripture often calls even the body by the name of Christ, as in the blessed Peter's words to Cornelius, when he teaches him of Jesus of Nazareth, whom God anointed with the Holy Ghost,' and again to the Jews, Jesus of Nazareth, a Man approved of God for you [3430] ,' and again the blessed Paul to the Athenians, By that Man, whom He ordained, giving assurance to all men, in that He raised Him from the dead [3431] ' (for we find the appointment and the mission often synonymous with the anointing; from which any one who will may learn, that there is no discordance in the words of the sacred writers, but that they but give various names to the union of God the Word with the Man from Mary, sometimes as anointing, sometimes as mission, sometimes as appointment), it follows that what the blessed Peter says is right [3432] , and he proclaims in purity the Godhead of the Only begotten, without separating the subsistence of God the Word from the Man from Mary (perish the thought! for how should he, who had heard in so many ways, I and the Father are one,' and He that hath seen Me, hath seen the Father [3433] ?)' In which Man, after the resurrection also, when the doors were shut, we know of His coming to the whole band [3434] of the Apostles, and dispersing all that was hard to believe in it by His words, Handle Me and see, for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see Me have [3435] .' And He did not say, This,' or this Man which I have taken to Me,' but Me.' Wherefore the Samosatene will gain no allowance, being refuted by so many arguments for the union of God the Word, nay by God the Word Himself, who now brings the news to all, and assures them by eating, and permitting to them that handling of Him which then took place. For certainly he who gives food to others, and they who give him, touch hands. For they gave Him,' Scripture says, a piece of a broiled fish and of an honey-comb, and' when He had eaten before them, He took the remains and gave to them [3436] .' See now, though not as Thomas was allowed, yet by another way, He afforded to them full assurance, in being touched by them; but if you would now see the scars, learn from Thomas. Reach hither thy hand and thrust it into My side, and reach hither thy finger and behold My hands [3437] ;' so says God the Word, speaking of His own [3438] side and hands, and of Himself as whole man and God together, first affording to the Saints even perception of the Word through the body [3439] , as we may consider, by entering when the doors were shut; and next standing near them in the body and affording full assurance. So much may be conveniently said for confirmation of the faithful, and correction of the unbelieving.
36. And so let Paul of Samosata also stand corrected on hearing the divine voice of Him who said My body,' not Christ besides Me who am the Word,' but Him [3440] with Me, and Me with Him.' For I the Word am the chrism, and that which has the chrism from Me is the Man [3441] ; not then without Me could He be called Christ, but being with Me and I in Him. Therefore the mention of the mission of the Word shews the uniting which took place with Jesus, born of Mary, Whose Name means Saviour, not by reason of anything else, but from the Man's being made one with God the Word. This passage has the same meaning as the Father that sent Me,' and I came not of Myself, but the Father sent Me [3442] .' For he has given the name of mission [3443] to the uniting with the Man, with Whom the Invisible nature might be known to men, through the visible. For God changes not place, like us who are hidden in places, when in the fashion of our littleness He displays Himself in His existence in the flesh; for how should He, who fills the heaven and the earth? but on account of the presence in the flesh the just have spoken of His mission. Therefore God the Word Himself is Christ from Mary, God and Man; not some other Christ but One and the Same; He before ages from the Father, He too in the last times from the Virgin; invisible [3444] before even to the holy powers of heaven, visible now because of His being one with the Man who is visible; seen, I say, not in His invisible Godhead but in the operation [3445] of the Godhead through the human body and whole Man, which He has renewed by its appropriation to Himself. To Him be the adoration and the worship, who was before, and now is, and ever shall be, even to all ages. Amen. __________________________________________________________________
[3387] 1 John i. 1, 2.
[3388] Ib. v. 20.
[3389] John i. 1.
[3390] Ib. xiv. 6.
[3391] Ib. i. 18.
[3392] ii. 31, n. 4.
[3393] Ps. lxxiv. 11, LXX.
[3394] Vid. Is. lxvi. 2; Deut. vii. 8.
[3395] Ps. lxxvii. 10, LXX.; xlv. title.
[3396] Ib. cx. 3, LXX.
[3397] §24.
[3398] Ps. cxix. 73; cxlviii. 5.
[3399] exairetou, ii. 19, n. 6.
[3400] Ps. xxii. 9.
[3401] Rev. xxii. 13-17
[3402] Cf. i. 39, n. 4.
[3403] John i. 1.
[3404] Ib. xiv. 26.
[3405] Ib. i. 14.
[3406] mounos e& 241;n agapetos, line 365.
[3407] Cf. ii. 1, n. 13.
[3408] Acts x. 36.
[3409] 1 Cor. i. 7, 8.
[3410] Lev. ix. 7.
[3411] Cf. iii. 29, init.
[3412] John i. 14.
[3413] ii. 44, n. 1.
[3414] 1 Cor. i. 24.
[3415] 2 Cor. v. 4.
[3416] John xi. 25.
[3417] Luke i. 35.
[3418] Matt. xxviii. 19.
[3419] Cf. ii. 53, n. 4.
[3420] sathrothenta, cf. ii. 66, n. 7.
[3421] Vid. 2 Esdr. vii. 28, 29; Acts iii. 20.
[3422] Prov. ix. 1.
[3423] Heb. iii. 6.
[3424] John ii. 19.
[3425] Vid. Ps. cxxvii. 1.
[3426] Vid. Matt. vii. 25; xvi. 18.
[3427] ekeinon, John x. 33
[3428] De Decr. 1; Or. i. 4, iii. 27; de Syn. 50.
[3429] Eph. iv. 20-24
[3430] Acts x. 38; ii. 22.
[3431] Acts xvii. 31.
[3432] ii. 44, n. 1.
[3433] John x. 30; xiv. 9.
[3434] xunoris.
[3435] Luke xxiv. 39.
[3436] Ib. xxiv. 42, 43, vid. Wetstein in loc.
[3437] John xx. 27.
[3438] Cf. iii. 33, n. 5.
[3439] Vid. 1 John i. 1
[3440] i.e. ton Chr. vid. Matt. xxvi. 26.
[3441] Or. i. 47, n. 11.
[3442] John vi. 44, viii. 42.
[3443] §35, line 8.
[3444] De Syn. 27 (15).
[3445] energeia, §14, n. 5. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Introduction to de Synodis.
------------------------
(Written 359, Added to After 361.)
The de Synodis is the last of the great and important group of writings of the third exile. With the exception of §§30, 31, which were inserted at a later recension after the death of Constantius (cf. Hist. Ar. 32 end), the work was all written in 359, the year of the dated' creed (§4 apo tes nun hupateias) and of the fateful assemblies of Rimini and Seleucia. It was written moreover after the latter council had broken up (Oct. 1), but before the news had reached Athanasius of the Emperor's chilling reception of the Ariminian deputies, and of the protest of the bishops against their long detention at that place. The documents connected with the last named episode reached him only in time for his postscript (§55). Still less had he heard of the melancholy surrender of the deputies of Ariminum at Niké on Oct. 10, or of the final catastrophe (cf. the allusion in the inserted §30, also Prolegg. ch. ii. §8 (2) fin.).
The first part only (see Table infra) of the letter is devoted to the history [3446] of the twin councils. Athanasius is probably mistaken in ascribing the movement for a great council to the Acacian or Homoean anxiety to eclipse and finally set aside the Council of Nicæa. The Semi-Arians, who were ill at ease and anxious to dissociate themselves from the growing danger of Anomoeanism, and who at this time had the ear of Constantius, were the persons who desired a doctrinal settlement. It was the last effort of Eastern Conservatism' (yet see Gwatkin, Studies, p. 163) to formulate a position which without admitting the obnoxious homoousion should yet condemn Arianism, conciliate the West, and restore peace to the Christian world. The failure of the attempt, gloomy and ignominious as it was, was yet the beginning of the end, the necessary precursor of the downfall of Arianism as a power within the Church. The cause of this failure is to be found in the intrigues of the Homoeans, Valens in the West, Eudoxius and Acacius in the East. Nicæa was chosen by Constantius for the venue of the great Synod. But Basil, then in high favour, suggested Nicomedia, and thither the bishops were summoned. Before they could meet, the city was destroyed by an earthquake, and the venue was changed to Nicæa again. Now the Homoeans saw their opportunity. Their one chance of escaping disaster was in the principle divide et impera.' The Council was divided into two: the Westerns were to meet at Ariminum, the Easterns at Seleucia in Cilicia, a place with nothing to recommend it excepting the presence of a strong military force. Hence also the conference of Homoean and Semi-Arian bishops at Sirmium, who drew up in the presence of Constantius, on Whitsun-Eve, the famous dated' or third Sirmian' Creed. Its wording (homoiou kata panta) shows the predominant influence of the Semi-Arians, in spite of the efforts of Valens to get rid of the test words, upon which the Emperor insisted. Basil moreover issued a separate memorandum to explain the sense in which he signed the creed, emphasising the absolute likeness of the Son to the Father (Bright, Introd., lxxxiii., Gwatkin, pp. 168 sq.), and accepting the Nicene doctrine in everything but the name. But for all Basil might say, the Dated Creed by the use of the word homoion had opened the door to any evasion that an Arian could desire: for homoion is a relative term admitting of degrees: what is only like' is ipso facto to some extent unlike (see below, §53). The party of Basil, then, entered upon the decisive contest already outmanoeuvred, and doomed to failure. The events which followed are described by Athanasius (§§8-12). At Ariminum the Nicene, at Seleucia the Semi-Arian cause carried all before it. The Dated Creed, rejected with scorn at Ariminum, was unsuccessfully propounded in an altered form by Acacius at Seleucia. The rupture between Homoeans and Semi-Arians was complete. So far only does Athanasius carry his account of the Synods: at this point he steps in with a fresh blow at the link which united Eastern Conservatism with the mixed multitude of original Arians like Euzoius and Valens, ultra Arians like Aetius and Eunomius, and Arianising opportunists like Acacius, Eudoxius, and their tribe. In the latter he recognises deadly foes who are to be confuted and exposed without any thought of compromise; in the former, brethren who misunderstand their own position, and whom explanation will surely bring round to their natural allies. In this twofold aim the de Synodis stands in the lines of the great anti-Arian discourses (supra, p. 304). But with the eye of a general Athanasius suits his attack to the new position. With the Arians, he has done with theological argument; he points indignantly to their intrigues and their brow-beating, to their lack of consistent principle, their endless synods and formularies (§§21-32); concisely he exposes the hollowness of their objection to the Nicene formula, the real logical basis upon which their position rests (§33-40, see Bright, xc.-xcii.). But to the Semi-Arians he turns with a serious and carefully stated vindication of the homoousion. The time has come to press it earnestly upon them as the only adequate expression of what they really mean, as the only rampart which can withstand the Arian invasion. This, the last portion (§§41-54) of the letter, is the raison d'être of the whole: the account of the Synods is merely a means to this end, not his main purpose; the exposure of Arian principles and of Arian variations subserves the ultimate aim of detaching from them those of whom Athanasius was now hoping better things. It may be said that he over-rated the hopefulness of affairs as far as the immediate future was concerned. The weak acceptance by the Seleucian majority (or rather by their delegates) of the Arian creed of Niké, the triumph of Acacius, Eudoxius and their party as Constantius drifted in the last two years of his life nearer and nearer to ultra-Arianism (de Syn. 30, 31, his rupture with Basil, Theodt. ii. 27), the ascendancy of Arianism under Valens, and the eventual consolidation of a Semi-Arian sect under the name of Macedonius, all this at the first glance is a sad commentary upon the hopefulness of the de Synodis. But (1) even if this were all the truth, Athanasius was right: he was acting a noble part. In the de Synodis even Athanasius rises above himself.' Driven to bay by the pertinacity of his enemies, exasperated as we see him in the de Fuga and Arian History, yet no sooner is he cheered with the news of hope than the importunate jealousies of forty years are hushed (contrast Ep. Æg. 7) in a moment, as though the Lord had spoken peace to the tumult of the grey old exile's troubled soul' (Gwatkin, Studies, p. 176, Arian Controv., p. 98). The charity that hopeth all things is always justified of her works. (2) Athanasius, however, was right in his estimate of the position. Not only did many of the Semi-Arians (e.g. the fifty-nine in 365) accept the homoousion, but it was from the ranks of the Semi-Arians that the men arose who led the cause of Nicæa to its ultimate victory in the East. There accompanied Basil of Ancyra from the Seleucian Synod to Constantinople a young deacon and ascetic, who read and welcomed the appeal of Athanasius. Writing a few months later, this young theologian, Basil of Cæsarea, adopts the words of the de Synodis: one God we confess, one in nature not in number, for number belongs to the category of quantity,...neither Like nor Unlike, for these terms belong to the category of quality (cf. below, §53)...He that is essentially God is Coessential with Him that is essentially God....If I am to state my own opinion, I accept "Like in essence" with the addition of "exactly" as identical in sense with "Coessential"...but "exactly like" [without "essence"] I suspect....Accordingly since "Coessential" is the term less open to abuse, on this ground I too adopt it' (Epp. 8, 9, the Greek in Gwatkin, Studies, p. 242) [3447] . Basil the Great is, not indeed the only, but the conspicuous and abundant justification of the insight of Athanasius in the de Synodis.
Turning to subordinate parts of the Letter, we may note the somewhat unfair use made of the unlucky blunder of the Dated Creed, as though its compilers thereby admitted that their faith had no earlier origin. The dating of the creed was doubtless an offence against good taste as well as ecclesiastical propriety' (as sad a blunder in its way as Macaulay's celebrated letter to his constituents from Windsor Castle'), and it was only in human nature to make the most of it. More serious is the objection taken to the revolting title Augoustou tou aioniou (which set a bad precedent for later times, Bright, lxxxiv, note 4) in contrast to the denial of the eternity of the Son. At any rate, lending itself as it did to such obvious criticisms, we are not surprised to read (§29) that the copies of the creed were hastily called in and a fresh recension substituted for it.
Lastly it must be remembered that Athanasius does not aim at giving a complete catalogue of Arian or Arianising creeds, any more than at giving a full history of the double council. Accordingly we miss (1) the confession of Arius and Euzoius, presented to Constantine in 330; (2) The confession colourless in wording, but heterodox in aim,' drawn up at Sirmium [3448] against Photinus in 347 (Hil. Fragm. 2. 21 sq. Hefele, vol. i. p. 192); (3) The formulary propounded by the Emperor at Milan in 355 (Hil. Syn. 78); (4) The confession of the council of Ancyra [3449] , 358, alluded to §41, see n. 9); (5) The Anomoean Ecthesis of Eudoxius and Aetius, Constantinople 359 (Thdt. H. E. ii. 27).
In the de Synodis we have a worthy conclusion of the anti-Arian writings which are the legacy and the record of the most stirring and eventful period of the noble life of our great bishop.
The translation of this tract by Newman has been more closely revised than those of the de Decretis' and the first three Discourses,' as it appeared somewhat less exact in places. In §§10, 11, the Athanasian version has been followed, as, inaccurate as the version certainly is in places, this seemed more suitable to an edition of Athanasius; moreover, it appears to preserve some more original readings than the Hilarian text. The notes have been curtailed to some extent, especially those containing purely historical matter.
Table of Contents.
Part I. History of the Double Council.
§1. The reason of any new council having been called.
§2. The superfluity of such assemblies.
§§3, 4. Monstrosity of a dated creed.
§5. Necessity of the Nicene Council.
§6. Its decisions make any fresh council unnecessary.
§7. The true motives of the promoters of the new councils.
§§8-11. Proceedings of the 400 at Ariminum.
§8. The Dated' Creed propounded.
§9. Rejection of the Dated Creed and deposition of Valens, &c.
§10. The Council's Letter to the Emperor.
§11. Decree of the Council.
§12. Proceedings of the 160 at Seleucia Trachea.
Deposition of Acacius, &c., and report to the Emperor.
§13, 14. Reflections on the two councils, especially as to the divergence of the Arians from the Fathers and from each other.
Part II. History of Arian Creeds.
§15. The belief of Arius as expressed in his Thalia.
§16. Letter of Arius to Alexander.
§17. Statements of early partizans of Arius.
§§18, 19. Extracts from Asterius the sophist.
§20. The true character of this doctrine.
Arian Councils and their formularies.
§21. Jerusalem (335). Letter announcing reception of Arius to Communion.
§22. Antioch (Dedication' 341). First creed.
§23. Second (Lucianic) Creed.
§24. Third creed (of Theophronius).
§25. Fourth creed (342; revision of the Nicene).
§26. (344) Fifth creed: the Macrostich' (the fourth with additions and explanations).
§27. Sirmium (against Photinus, 351, fourth of Antioch with 27 anathemas), the First' Sirmian.
§28. Second Sirmian' (357, the blasphemy').
§29. Creed propounded by the Acacians at Seleucia (359, the Dated' Creed revised in the Homoean sense).
[§30. Creed of Niké and Constantinople (359, 360, a new recension of the Dated' Creed, rejecting Hypostasis' as well as Essence.')
§31. A further Anomoean creed published under the patronage of Constantius at Antioch (361)].
§32. Reflections on the significance of these many changes.
Part III. Appeal to the Semi-Arians.
a. §§33-40. Homoeans confuted.
§33. The terms objected to give offence only because misunderstood.
§34. The true Divinity of Christ implies Coessential.'
§35. To reject the term implies that Christ is a creature.
§36. The objection to unscriptural' language condemns the Arians.
§37, 38. If the Son is truly Like' the Father, he is Coessential.'
§39. The sense, not the occurrence of the terms in Scripture, must be attended to.
§40. Alleged obscurity of the Nicene formula.
b. §§41-54. Semi-Arians conciliated.
§41. The party of Basil of Ancyra are with us on the main question.
§42. Coessential' conveys a meaning which they would adopt.
§43, 44. Alleged rejection of the term by the 70 bishops at Antioch, subsequent to its recognition by Dionysius of Alexandria.
§45. We must not hastily assume contradictions between the Fathers.
§46, 47. Parallel of the word Unoriginate.'
§48. Coessential' guards the acknowledged attributes of the Son.
§49. The Son is all that the Father is, except Father.
§50. If the Son is not Coessential, the Unity of the Godhead is lost.
§51. The Son cannot impart to man what is not His own; The oneness of Essence does not imply a common or prior essence.
§52. The Son not an independent God.
§53. Coessential' why preferable to Like in Essence.'
§54. Appeal for union among those who are really agreed.
Postscript (supplementing Part I.)
§55. Reply of Constantius to the Council of Ariminum, and remonstrance of the bishops upon receipt of it. __________________________________________________________________
[3446] He undertakes to tell haper he& 240;raka kai egnon akribos, words which have given rise to the romantic but ill-founded tradition that, ubiquitious and untiring in his exile, he was a secret spectator of the proceedings of his enemies at these distant gatherings. (So Gibbon and, as far as Seleucia is concerned, Tillemont. Montfaucon, as usual, takes the more sober and likely view.)
[3447] Observe also that the Semi-Arian document of reconciliation in 363 (Socr. iii. 25) adopts the point pressed in de Syn. 41.
[3448] This is, strictly speaking, the first' Sirmian creed, but in the Table below that of 351 is counted as such.
[3449] The Semi-Arian digest of three confessions,' number 5 in Newman's list of Sirmian creeds, is left out of the reckoning here, as the confused statement of Soz. iv. 15, is the sole evidence for its existence. It cannot be the confession referred to in Hil. Fragm. vi. 6, 7. But see Newman, Arians, Appendix iii. note 5; Gwatkin, Studies, pp. 162, 189, sub fin. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Councils of Ariminum and Seleucia.
------------------------
Part I. History of the Councils.
Reason why two Councils were called. Inconsistency and folly of calling any; and of the style of the Arian formularies; occasion of the Nicene Council; proceedings at Ariminum; Letter of the Council to Constantius; its decree. Proceedings at Seleucia; reflections on the conduct of the Arians.
1. Perhaps news has reached even yourselves concerning the Council, which is at this time the subject of general conversation; for letters both from the Emperor and the Prefects [3450] were circulated far and wide for its convocation. However, you take that interest in the events which have occurred, that I have determined upon giving you an account of what I have seen myself, and accurately ascertained, which may save you from the suspense attendant on the reports of others; and this the more, because there are parties who are in the habit of misrepresenting what has happened. At Nicæa then, which had been fixed upon, the Council has not met, but a second edict was issued, convening the Western Bishops at Ariminum in Italy, and the Eastern at Seleucia the Rugged, as it is called, in Isauria. The professed reason of such a meeting was to treat of the faith touching our Lord Jesus Christ; and those who alleged it, were Ursacius, Valens, and one Germinius [3451] from Pannonia; and from Syria, Acacius, Eudoxius, and Patrophilus [3452] of Scythopolis. These men who had always been of the Arian party, and understood neither how they believe or whereof they affirm,' and were silently deceiving first one and then another, and scattering the second sowing [3453] of their heresy, influenced some who seemed to be somewhat, and the Emperor Constantius among them, being a heretic [3454] , on some pretence about the Faith, to call a Council; under the idea that they should be able to put into the shade the Nicene Council, and prevail upon all to turn round, and to establish irreligion everywhere instead of the Truth.
2. Now here I marvel first, and think that I shall carry every sensible man whatever with me, that, whereas a General Council had been fixed, and all were looking forward to it, it was all of a sudden divided into two, so that one part met here, and the other there. However, this was surely the doing of Providence, in order in the respective Councils to exhibit the faith without guile or corruption of the one party, and to expose the dishonesty and duplicity of the other. Next, this too was on the mind of myself and my true brethren here, and made us anxious, the impropriety of this great gathering which we saw in progress; for what pressed so much, that the whole world was to be put in confusion, and those who at the time bore the profession of clergy, should run about far and near, seeking how best to learn to believe in our Lord Jesus Christ? Certainly if they were believers already, they would not have been seeking, as though they were not. And to the catechumens, this was no small scandal; but to the heathen, it was something more than common, and even furnished broad merriment [3455] , that Christians, as if waking out of sleep at this time of day, should be enquiring how they were to believe concerning Christ; while their professed clergy, though claiming deference from their flocks, as teachers, were unbelievers on their own shewing, in that they were seeking what they had not. And the party of Ursacius, who were at the bottom of all this, did not understand what wrath they were storing up (Rom. ii. 5) against themselves, as our Lord says by His saints, Woe unto them, through whom My Name is blasphemed among the Gentiles' (Is. lii. 5; Rom. ii. 24); and by His own mouth in the Gospels (Matt. xviii. 6), Whoso shall offend one of these little ones, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea, than,' as Luke adds, that he should offend one of these little ones' (Luke xvii. 2).
3. What defect of teaching was there for religious truth in the Catholic Church [3456] , that they should enquire concerning faith now, and should prefix this year's Consulate to their profession of faith? For Ursacius and Valens and Germinius and their friends have done what never took place, never was heard of among Christians. After putting into writing what it pleased them to believe, they prefix to it the Consulate, and the month and the day of the current year [3457] ; thereby to shew all sensible men, that their faith dates, not from of old, but now, from the reign of Constantius [3458] ; for whatever they write has a view to their own heresy. Moreover, though pretending to write about the Lord, they nominate another master for themselves, Constantius, who has bestowed on them this reign of irreligion [3459] ; and they who deny that the Son is everlasting, have called him Eternal Emperor; such foes of Christ are they in addition to irreligion. But perhaps the dates in the holy Prophets form their excuse for the Consulate; so bold a pretence, however, will serve but to publish more fully their ignorance of the subject. For the prophecies of the saints do indeed specify their times (for instance, Isaiah and Hosea lived in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah; Jeremiah in the days of Josiah; Ezekiel and Daniel prophesied under Cyrus and Darius; and others in other times); yet they were not laying the foundations of divine religion; it was before them, and was always, for before the foundation of the world God prepared it for us in Christ. Nor were they signifying the respective dates of their own faith; for they had been believers before these dates. But the dates did but belong to their own preaching. And this preaching spoke beforehand of the Saviour's coming, but directly of what was to happen to Israel and the nations; and the dates denoted not the commencement of faith, as I said before, but of the prophets themselves, that is, when it was they thus prophesied. But our modern sages, not in historical narration, nor in prediction of the future, but, after writing, The Catholic Faith was published,' immediately add the Consulate and the month and the day, that, as the saints specified the dates of their histories, and of their own ministries, so these may mark the date of their own faith. And would that they had written, touching their own [3460] ' (for it does date from today); and had not made their essay as touching the Catholic,' for they did not write, Thus we believe,' but the Catholic Faith was published.'
4. The boldness then of their design shews how little they understand the subject; while the novelty of their phrase matches the Arian heresy. For thus they shew, when it was they began their own faith, and that from that same time present they would have it proclaimed. And as according to the Evangelist Luke, there was made a decree' (Luke ii. 1) concerning the taxing, and this decree before was not, but began from those days in which it was made by its framer, they also in like manner, by writing, The Faith is now published,' shewed that the sentiments of their heresy are novel, and were not before. But if they add of the Catholic Faith,' they fall before they know it into the extravagance of the Phrygians, and say with them, To us first was revealed,' and from us dates the Faith of Christians.' And as those inscribe it with the names of Maximilla and Montanus [3461] , so do these with Constantius, Master,' instead of Christ. If, however, as they would have it, the faith dates from the present Consulate, what will the Fathers do, and the blessed Martyrs? nay, what will they themselves do with their own catechumens, who departed to rest before this Consulate? how will they wake them up, that so they may obliterate their former lessons, and may sow in turn the seeming discoveries which they have now put into writing [3462] ? So ignorant they are on the subject; with no knowledge but that of making excuses, and those unbecoming and unplausible, and carrying with them their own refutation.
5. As to the Nicene Council, it was not a common meeting, but convened upon a pressing necessity, and for a reasonable object. The Syrians, Cilicians, and Mesopotamians, were out of order in celebrating the Feast, and kept Easter with the Jews [3463] ; on the other hand, the Arian heresy had risen up against the Catholic Church, and found supporters in Eusebius and his fellows, who were both zealous for the heresy, and conducted the attack upon religious people. This gave occasion for an Ecumenical Council, that the feast might be everywhere celebrated on one day, and that the heresy which was springing up might be anathematized. It took place then; and the Syrians submitted, and the Fathers pronounced the Arian heresy to be the forerunner of Antichrist [3464] , and drew up a suitable formula against it. And yet in this, many as they are, they ventured on nothing like the proceedings [3465] of these three or four men [3466] . Without pre-fixing Consulate, month, and day, they wrote concerning Easter, It seemed good as follows,' for it did then seem good that there should be a general compliance; but about the faith they wrote not, It seemed good,' but, Thus believes the Catholic Church;' and thereupon they confessed how they believed, in order to shew that their own sentiments were not novel, but Apostolical; and what they wrote down was no discovery of theirs, but is the same as was taught by the Apostles. [3467]
6. But the Councils which they are now setting in motion, what colourable pretext have they [3468] ? If any new heresy has risen since the Arian, let them tell us the positions which it has devised, and who are its inventors? and in their own formula, let them anathematize the heresies antecedent to this Council of theirs, among which is the Arian, as the Nicene Fathers did, that it may appear that they too have some cogent reason for saying what is novel. But if no such event has happened, and they have it not to shew, but rather they themselves are uttering heresies, as holding Arius's irreligion, and are exposed day by day, and day by day shift their ground [3469] , what need is there of Councils, when the Nicene is sufficient, as against the Arian heresy, so against the rest, which it has condemned one and all by means of the sound faith? For even the notorious Aetius, who was surnamed godless [3470] , vaunts not of the discovering of any mania of his own, but under stress of weather has been wrecked upon Arianism, himself and the persons whom he has beguiled. Vainly then do they run about with the pretext that they have demanded Councils for the faith's sake; for divine Scripture is sufficient above all things; but if a Council be needed on the point, there are the proceedings of the Fathers, for the Nicene Bishops did not neglect this matter, but stated the doctrine so exactly, that persons reading their words honestly, cannot but be reminded by them of the religion towards Christ announced in divine Scripture [3471] .
7. Having therefore no reason on their side, but being in difficulty whichever way they turn, in spite of their pretences, they have nothing left but to say; Forasmuch as we contradict our predecessors, and transgress the traditions of the Fathers, therefore we have thought good that a Council should meet [3472] ; but again, whereas we fear lest, should it meet at one place, our pains will be thrown away, therefore we have thought good that it be divided into two; that so when we put forth our documents to these separate portions, we may overreach with more effect, with the threat of Constantius the patron of this irreligion, and may supersede the acts of Nicæa, under pretence of the simplicity of our own documents.' If they have not put this into words, yet this is the meaning of their deeds and their disturbances. Certainly, many and frequent as have been their speeches and writings in various Councils, never yet have they made mention of the Arian heresy as objectionable; but, if any present happened to accuse the heresies, they always took up the defence of the Arian, which the Nicene Council had anathematized; nay, rather, they cordially welcomed the professors of Arianism. This then is in itself a strong argument, that the aim of the present Councils was not truth, but the annulling of the acts of Nicæa; but the proceedings of them and their friends in the Councils themselves, make it equally clear that this was the case:--For now we must relate everything as it occurred.
8. When all were in expectation that they were to assemble in one place, whom the Emperor's letters convoked, and to form one Council, they were divided into two; and, while some betook themselves to Seleucia called the Rugged, the others met at Ariminum, to the number of those four hundred bishops and more, among whom were Germinius, Auxentius, Valens, Ursacius, Demophilus, and Gaius [3473] . And, while the whole assembly was discussing the matter from the Divine Scriptures, these men produced [3474] a paper, and, reading out the Consulate, they demanded that it should be preferred to every Council, and that no questions should be put to the heretics beyond it, nor inquiry made into their meaning, but that it should be sufficient by itself;--and what they had written ran as follows:--
The Catholic Faith [3475] was published in the presence of our Master the most religious and gloriously victorious Emperor, Constantius, Augustus, the eternal and august, in the Consulate of the most illustrious Flavii, Eusebius and Hypatius, in Sirmium on the 11th of the Calends of June [3476] .
We believe in one Only and True God, the Father Almighty, Creator and Framer of all things:
And in one Only-begotten Son of God, who, before all ages, and before all origin, and before all conceivable time, and before all comprehensible essence, was begotten impassibly from God: through whom the ages were disposed and all things were made; and Him begotten as the Only-begotten, Only from the Only Father, God from God, like to the Father who begat Him, according to the Scriptures; whose origin no one knoweth save the Father alone who begat Him. We know that He, the Only-begotten Son of God, at the Father's bidding came from the heavens for the abolishment of sin, and was born of the Virgin Mary, and conversed with the disciples, and fulfilled the Economy according to the Father's will, and was crucified, and died and descended into the parts beneath the earth, and regulated the things there, Whom the gate-keepers of hell saw (Job xxxviii. 17, LXX.) and shuddered; and He rose from the dead the third day, and conversed with the disciples, and fulfilled all the Economy, and when the forty days were full, ascended into the heavens, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father, and is coming in the last day of the resurrection in the glory of the Father, to render to every one according to his works.
And in the Holy Ghost, whom the Only-begotten of God Himself, Jesus Christ, had promised to send to the race of men, the Paraclete, as it is written, I go to My Father, and I will ask the Father, and He shall send unto you another Paraclete, even the Spirit of Truth. He shall take of Mine and shall teach and bring to your remembrance all things' (Job. xiv. 16, 17, 26; xvi. 14).
But whereas the term essence,' has been adopted by the Fathers in simplicity, and gives offence as being misconceived by the people, and is not contained in the Scriptures, it has seemed good to remove it, that it be never in any case used of God again, because the divine Scriptures nowhere use it of Father and Son. But we say that the Son is like the Father in all things, as also the Holy Scriptures say and teach [3477] .
9. When this had been read, the dishonesty of its framers was soon apparent. For on the Bishops proposing that the Arian heresy should be anathematized together with the other heresies too, and all assenting, Ursacius and Valens and those with them refused; till in the event the Fathers condemned them, on the ground that their confession had been written, not in sincerity, but for the annulling of the acts of Nicæa, and the introduction instead of their unhappy heresy. Marvelling then at the deceitfulness of their language and their unprincipled intentions, the Bishops said: Not as if in need of faith have we come hither; for we have within us faith, and that in soundness: but that we may put to shame those who gainsay the truth and attempt novelties. If then ye have drawn up this formula, as if now beginning to believe, ye are not so much as clergy, but are starting with school; but if you meet us with the same views with which we have come hither, let there be a general unanimity, and let us anathematize the heresies, and preserve the teaching of the Fathers. Thus pleas for Councils will not longer circulate about, the Bishops at Nicæa having anticipated them once for all, and done all that was needful for the Catholic Church [3478] .' However, even then, in spite of this general agreement of the Bishops, still the above-mentioned refused. So at length the whole Council, condemning them as ignorant and deceitful men, or rather as heretics, gave their suffrages in behalf of the Nicene Council, and gave judgment all of them that it was enough; but as to the forenamed Ursacius and Valens, Germinius, Auxentius, Gaius, and Demophilus, they pronounced them to be heretics, deposed them as not really Christians, but Arians, and wrote against them in Latin what has been translated in its substance into Greek, thus:--
10. Copy of an Epistle from the Council to Constantius Augustus [3479] .
We believe that what was formerly decreed was brought about both by God's command and by order of your piety. For we the bishops, from all the Western cities, assembled together at Ariminum, both that the Faith of the Catholic Church might be made known, and that gainsayers might be detected. For, as we have found after long deliberation, it appeared desirable to adhere to and maintain to the end, that faith which, enduring from antiquity, we have received as preached by the prophets, the Gospels, and the Apostles through our Lord Jesus Christ, Who is Keeper of your Kingdom and Patron of your power. For it appeared wrong and unlawful to make any change in what was rightly and justly defined, and what was resolved upon in common at Nicæa along with the Emperor your father, the most glorious Constantine,--the doctrine and spirit of which [definition] went abroad and was proclaimed in the hearing and understanding of all men. For it alone was the conqueror and destroyer of the heresy of Arius, by which not that only but the other heresies [3480] also were destroyed, to which of a truth it is perilous to add, and full of danger to minish aught from it, since if either be done, our enemies will be able with impunity to do whatever they will. Accordingly Ursacius and Valens, since they had been from of old abettors and sympathisers of the Arian dogma, were properly declared separate from our communion, to be admitted to which they asked to be allowed a place of repentance and pardon for the transgressions of which they were conscious, as the documents drawn up by them testify. By which means forgiveness and pardon on all charges has been obtained. Now the time of these transactions was when the council was assembled at Milan [3481] , the presbyters of the Roman Church being also present. But knowing at the same time that Constantine of worthy memory had with all accuracy and deliberation published the Faith then drawn up; when he had been baptized by the hands of men, and had departed to the place which was his due, [we think it] unseemly to make a subsequent innovation and to despise so many saints, confessors, martyrs, who compiled and drew up this decree; who moreover have continued to hold in all matters according to the ancient law of the Church; whose faith God has imparted even to the times of your reign through our Master Jesus Christ, through whom also it is yours to reign and rule over the world in our day [3482] . Once more then the pitiful men of wretched mind with lawless daring have announced themselves as the heralds of an impious opinion, and are attempting to upset every summary of truth. For when according to your command the synod met, those men laid bare the design of their own deceitfulness. For they attempted in a certain unscrupulous and disorderly manner to propose to us an innovation, having found as accomplices in this plot Germinius, Auxentius [3483] , and Gaius, the stirrers up of strife and discord, whose teaching by itself has gone beyond every pitch of blasphemy. But when they perceived that we did not share their purpose, nor agree with their evil mind, they transferred themselves to our council, alleging that it might be advisable to compile something instead. But a short time was enough to expose their plans. And lest the Churches should have a recurrence of these disturbances, and a whirl of discord and confusion throw everything into disorder, it seemed good to keep undisturbed the ancient and reasonable institutions, and that the above persons should be separated from our communion. For the information therefore of your clemency, we have instructed our legates to acquaint you with the judgment of the Council by our letter, to whom we have given this special direction, to establish the truth by resting their case upon the ancient and just decrees; and they will also assure your piety that peace would not be accomplished by the removal of those decrees as Valens and Ursacius alleged. For how is it possible for peace-breakers to bring peace? on the contrary, by their means strife and confusion will arise not only in the other cities, but also in the Church of the Romans. On this account we ask your clemency to regard our legates with favourable ears and a serene countenance and not to suffer aught to be abrogated to the dishonour of the dead; but allow us to abide by what has been defined and laid down by our forefathers, who, we venture to say, we trust in all things acted with prudence and wisdom and the Holy Spirit; because by these novelties not only are the faithful made to disbelieve, but the infidels also are embittered [3484] . We pray also that you would give orders that so many Bishops who are detained abroad, among whom are numbers who are broken with age and poverty, may be enabled to return to their own country, lest the Churches suffer, as being deprived of their Bishops. This, however, we ask with earnestness, that nothing be innovated upon existing creeds, nothing withdrawn; but that all remain incorrupt which has continued in the times of your Father's piety and to the present time; and that you will not permit us to be harassed, and estranged from our sees; but that the Bishops may in quiet give themselves always to prayers and worship, which they do always offer for your own safety and for your reign, and for peace, which may the Divinity bestow on you for ever. But our legates are conveying the subscriptions and titles of the Bishops, and will also inform your piety from the Holy Scriptures themselves.
11. Decree of the Council [3485] .
As far as it was fitting and possible, dearest brethren, the general Council and the holy Church have had patience, and have generously displayed the Church's forbearance towards Ursacius and Valens, Gaius, Germinius, and Auxentius; who by so often changing what they had believed, have troubled all the Churches, and still are endeavouring to foist their heretical spirit upon the faith of the orthodox. For they wish to annul the formulary passed at Nicæa, which was framed against the Arian heresy. They have presented to us besides a creed drawn up by themselves from without, and utterly alien to the most holy Church; which we could not lawfully receive. Even before this, and now, have they been pronounced heretics and gainsayers by us, whom we have not admitted to our communion, but condemned and deposed them in their presence by our voices. Now then, what seems good to you, again declare, that each one's vote may be ratified by his subscription.
The Bishops answered with one accord, It seems good that the aforenamed heretics should be condemned, that the Catholic faith may remain in peace.
Matters at Ariminum then had this speedy issue; for there was no disagreement there, but all of them with one accord both put into writing what they decided upon, and deposed the Arians [3486] .
12. Meanwhile the transactions in Seleucia the Rugged were as follows: it was in the month called by the Romans September, by the Egyptians Thoth, and by the Macedonians Gorpiæus, and the day of the month according to the Egyptians the 16th [3487] , upon which all the members of the Council assembled together. And there were present about a hundred and sixty; and whereas there were many who were accused among them, and their accusers were crying out against them, Acacius, and Patrophilus, and Uranius of Tyre, and Eudoxius, who usurped the Church of Antioch, and Leontius [3488] , and Theodotus [3489] , and Evagrius, and Theodulus, and George who has been driven from the whole world [3490] , adopt an unprincipled course. Fearing the proofs which their accusers had to shew against them, they coalesced with the rest of the Arian party (who were mercenaries in the cause of irreligion for this purpose, and were ordained by Secundus, who had been deposed by the great Council), the Libyan Stephen, and Seras, and Polydeuces, who were under accusation upon various charges, next Pancratius, and one Ptolemy a Meletian [3491] . And they made a pretence [3492] of entering upon the question of faith, but it was clear they were doing so from fear of their accusers; and they took the part of the heresy, till at length they were divided among themselves. For, whereas those with Acacius and his fellows lay under suspicion and were very few, the others were the majority; therefore Acacius and his fellows, acting with the boldness of desperation, altogether denied the Nicene formula, and censured the Council, while the others, who were the majority, accepted the whole proceedings of the Council, except that they complained of the word Coessential,' as obscure and so open to suspicion. When then time passed, and the accusers pressed, and the accused put in pleas, and thereby were led on further by their irreligion and blasphemed the Lord, thereupon the majority of Bishops became indignant [3493] , and deposed Acacius, Patrophilus, Uranius, Eudoxius, and George the contractor [3494] , and others from Asia, Leontius, and Theodosius, Evagrius and Theodulus, and excommunicated Asterius, Eusebius, Augarus, Basilicus, Phoebus, Fidelius, Eutychius, and Magnus. And this they did on their non-appearance, when summoned to defend themselves on charges which numbers preferred against them. And they decreed that so they should remain, until they made their defence and cleared themselves of the offences imputed to them. And after despatching the sentence pronounced against them to the diocese of each, they proceeded to Constantius, the most irreligious [3495] Augustus, to report to him their proceedings, as they had been ordered. And this was the termination of the Council in Seleucia.
13. Who then but must approve of the conscientious conduct of the Bishops at Ariminum? who endured such labour of journey and perils of sea, that by a sacred and canonical resolution they might depose the Arians, and guard inviolate the definitions of the Fathers. For each of them deemed that, if they undid the acts of their predecessors, they were affording a pretext to their successors to undo what they themselves then were enacting [3496] . And who but must condemn the fickleness of Eudoxius, Acacius, and their fellows, who sacrifice the honour due to their own fathers to partizanship and patronage of the Ario-maniacs [3497] ? for what confidence can be placed in their acts, if the acts of their fathers be undone? or how call they them fathers and themselves successors, if they set about impeaching their judgment? and especially what can Acacius say of his own master, Eusebius, who not only gave his subscription in the Nicene Council, but even in a letter [3498] signified to his flock, that that was true faith, which the Council had declared? for, if he explained himself in that letter in his own way [3499] , yet he did not contradict the Council's terms, but even charged it upon the Arians, that their position that the Son was not before His generation, was not even consistent with His being before Mary. What then will they proceed to teach the people who are under their teaching? that the Fathers erred? and how are they themselves to be trusted by those, whom they teach to disobey their Teachers? and with what eyes too will they look upon the sepulchres of the Fathers whom they now name heretics? And why do they defame the Valentinians, Phrygians, and Manichees, yet give the name of saint to those whom they themselves suspect of making parallel statements? or how can they any longer be Bishops, if they were ordained by persons whom they accuse of heresy [3500] ? But if their sentiments were wrong and their writings seduced the world, then let their memory perish altogether; when, however, you cast out their books, go and cast out their remains too from the cemeteries, so that one and all may know that they are seducers, and that you are parricides.
14. The blessed Apostle approves of the Corinthians because, he says, ye remember me in all things, and keep the traditions as I delivered them to you' (1 Cor. xi. 2); but they, as entertaining such views of their predecessors, will have the daring to say just the reverse to their flocks: We praise you not for remembering your fathers, but rather we make much of you, when you hold not their traditions.' And let them go on to accuse their own unfortunate birth, and say, We are sprung not of religious men but of heretics.' For such language, as I said before, is consistent in those who barter their Fathers' fame and their own salvation for Arianism, and fear not the words of the divine proverb, There is a generation that curseth their father' (Prov. xxx. 11; Ex. xxi. 17), and the threat lying in the Law against such. They then, from zeal for the heresy, are of this obstinate temper; you, however, be not troubled at it, nor take their audacity for truth. For they dissent from each other, and, whereas they have revolted from their Fathers, are not of one and the same mind, but float about with various and discordant changes. And, as quarrelling with the Council of Nicæa, they have held many Councils themselves, and have published a faith in each of them, and have stood to none [3501] , nay, they will never do otherwise, for perversely seeking, they will never find that Wisdom which they hate. I have accordingly subjoined portions both of Arius's writings and of whatever else I could collect, of their publications in different Councils; whereby you will learn to your surprise with what object they stand out against an Ecumenical Council and their own Fathers without blushing. __________________________________________________________________
[3450] [On the Prefects, see Gibbon, ch. xvii., and Gwatkin, pp. 272-281.]
[3451] [Cf. Hist. Ar. 74, D.C.B. ii. 661.] At a later date he approached very nearly to Catholicism.
[3452] [See Prolegg. ch. ii. §3 (1), and, on the Arian leaders at this time, §8 (2).]
[3453] Cf. de Decr. §2.
[3454] Infr. §12, note.
[3455] Cf. Ammianus, Hist. xxi. 16. Eusebius. Vit. Const. ii. 61.
[3456] Cf. Orat. ii. §34. And Hilary de Syn. 91; ad Const. ii. 7.
[3457] Cf. Hil. ad Const. ii. 4, 5.
[3458] Cf. Tertull. de Præscr. 37; Hil. de Trin. vi. 21; Vincent. Lir. Commonit. 24; Jerom. in Lucif. 27; August. de Bapt. contr. Don. iii. 3.
[3459] [Cf. Hist. Ar. §§52, 66, 76, 44, and Prolegg. ch. ii. §3 (2), c. 2, and §6 (1).]
[3460] He who speaketh of his own, ek ton idion, speaketh a lie.' Athan. contr. Apoll. i. fin...The Simonists, Dositheans, &c....each privately (idios) and separately has brought in a private opinion.' Hegesippus, ap Euseb. Hist. iv. 22. Sophronius at Seleucia cried out, If to publish day after day our own private (idian) will, be a profession of faith, accuracy of truth will fail us.' Socr. ii. 40.
[3461] Vid. supr. Orat. iii. §47.
[3462] Cf. Tertull. Præscr. 29; Vincent, Comm. 24; Greg. Naz. ad Cledon Ep. 102, p. 97.
[3463] Cf. D.C.A. i. 588 sqq.
[3464] prodromos, præcursor, is almost a received word for the predicted apostasy or apostate (vid. note on S. Cyril's Cat. xv. 9), but the distinction was not always carefully drawn between the apostate and the Antichrist. [Cf. both terms applied to Constantius, Hist. Ar. passim, and by Hilary and Lucifer.]
[3465] At Seleucia Acacius said, If the Nicene faith has been altered once and many times since, no reason why we should not dictate another faith now.' Eleusius the Semi-Arian answered, This Council is called, not to learn what it does not know, not to receive a faith which it does not possess, but walking in the faith of the fathers' (meaning the Council of the Dedication. a.d. 341. vid. infr. §22), it swerves not from it in life or death.' On this Socrates (Hist. ii. 40) observes, How call you those who met at Antioch Fathers, O Eleusius, you who deny their Fathers,' &c.
[3466] oligoi tines, says Pope Julius, supr. p. 118, cf. tines, p. 225.
[3467] Infr. §9, note.
[3468] Ad Ep. Æg. 10.
[3469] Vid. de Decr. init. and §4. We shall have abundant instances of the Arian changes as this Treatise proceeds. Cf. Hilary contr. Constant. 23. Vincent. Comm. 20.
[3470] Vid. de Decr. 1. note.
[3471] Vid. de Decr. 32, note.
[3472] Cf. the opinion of Nectarius and Sisinnius. Socr. v. 10.
[3473] [On Demophilus and Gaius see D.C.B. i. 812, 387 (20); on Auxentius, ad Afr. note 9.]
[3474] [See Prolegg. ch. ii. §8 (2), and Introd. to this Tract.]
[3475] 8th Confession, or 3rd Sirmian, of 359, vid. §29, infr.
[3476] May 22, 359, Whitsun-Eve.
[3477] On the last clause, see Prolegg. ubi supra.
[3478] [Cf. Tom. ad. Ant. 5, Soz. iii. 12.]
[3479] Cf. Socr. ii. 39; Soz. iv. 10; Theod. H. E. ii. 19; Niceph. i. 40. The Latin original is preserved by Hilary, Fragm. viii., but the Greek is followed here, as stated supr. Introd.
[3480] The Hilarian Latin is much briefer here.
[3481] 347.
[3482] The whole passage is either much expanded by Athan., or much condensed by Hilary.
[3483] Auxentius, omitted in Hilary's copy. A few words are wanting in the Latin in the commencement of one of the sentences which follow. [See above, note 3.]
[3484] The Greek here mistranslates credulitatem' as though it were crudelitatem.' The original sense is the heathen are kept back from believing.
[3485] This Decree is also preserved in Hilary, who has besides preserved the Catholic Definition' of the Council, in which it professes its adherence to the Creed of Nicæa, and, in opposition to the Sirmian Confession which the Arians had proposed, acknowledges in particular both the word and the meaning of substance:' substantiæ nomen et rem, a multis sanctis Scripturis insinuatam mentibus nostris, obtinere debere sui firmitatem.' Fragm. vii. 3. [The decree is now re-translated from the Greek.]
[3486] [On the subsequent events at Ariminum, see Prolegg. ubi supra.]
[3487] i.e. Sep. 14, 359 (Egyptian leap-year.) Gorpiæus was the first month of the Syro-Macedonic year among the Greeks, dating according to the era of the Seleucidæ. The original transactions at Ariminum had at this time been finished as much as two months, and its deputies were waiting for Constantius at Constantinople.
[3488] [Of Tripolis, D.C.B. iii. 688 (3).]
[3489] [Theodosius' infr.]
[3490] There is little to observe of these Acacian Bishops in addition to [the names and sees in Epiph. Hær. lxxiii. 26] except that George is the Cappadocian, the notorious intruder into the see of S. Athanasius. [For his expulsion see Fest. Ind. xxx, and on the composition of the council, see Gwatkin, note G, p. 190.]
[3491] The Meletian schismatics of Egypt had formed an alliance with the Arians from the first. Cf. Ep. Æg. 22. vid. also Hist. Arian. 31, 78. After Sardica the Arians attempted a coalition with the Donatists of Africa. Aug. contr. Cresc. iii. 38.
[3492] Acacius had written to the Semi-Arian Macedonius of Constantinople in favour of the kata panta homoion, and of the Son's being tes autes ousias, and this the Council was aware of. Soz. iv. 22. Acacius made answer that no one ancient or modern was ever judged by his writings. Socr. ii. 40.
[3493] They also confirmed the Semi-Arian Confession of the Dedication, 341. of which infr. §22. After this the Acacians drew up another Confession, which Athan. has preserved, infr. §29. in which they persist in their rejection of all but Scripture terms. This the Semi-Arian majority rejected, and proceeded to depose its authors.
[3494] Pork contractor to the troops, hupodekten, Hist. Arian. 75. vid. Naz. Orat. 21. 16.
[3495] [Cf. supr. pp. 237, 267.]
[3496] Supr. §5, note 1.
[3497] On the word 'Areiomanitai, Gibbon observes, The ordinary appellation with which Athanasius and his followers chose to compliment the Arians, was that of Ariomanites,' ch. xxi. note 61. Rather, the name originally was a state title, injoined by Constantine, vid. Petav. de Trin. i. 8 fin. Naz. Orat. p. 794. note e. [Petavius states this, but without proof.] Several meanings are implied in this title; the real reason for it was the fanatical fury with which it spread and maintained itself; and hence the strange paronomasia of Constantine, 'Ares areie, with an allusion to Hom. Il. v. 31. A second reason, or rather sense, of the appellation was that, denying the Word, they have forfeited the gift of reason, e.g. ton 'Areiomaniton ten alogian. de Sent. Dion. init. 24 fin. Orat. ii. §32, iii. §63. [The note, which is here much condensed, gives profuse illustrations of this figure of speech.]
[3498] Vid. supr. pp. 152, 74.
[3499] hos ethelesen. vid. also de Decr. §3. hos ethelesan. ad Ep. Æg. 5.
[3500] §5, note 1.
[3501] Ad Ep. Æg. 6. __________________________________________________________________
Part II. History of Arian Opinions.
Arius's own sentiments; his Thalia and Letter to S. Alexander; corrections by Eusebius and others; extracts from the works of Asterius; letter of the Council of Jerusalem; first Creed of Arians at the Dedication of Antioch; second, Lucian's on the same occasion; third, by Theophronius; fourth, sent to Constans in Gaul; fifth, the Macrostich sent into Italy; sixth, at Sirmium; seventh, at the same place; and eighth also, as given above in §8; ninth, at Seleucia; tenth, at Constantinople; eleventh, at Antioch.
15. Arius and those with him thought and professed thus: God made the Son out of nothing, and called Him His Son;' The Word of God is one of the creatures;' and Once He was not;' and He is alterable; capable, when it is His Will, of altering.' Accordingly they were expelled from the Church by the blessed Alexander. However, after his expulsion, when he was with Eusebius and his fellows, he drew up his heresy upon paper, and imitating in the Thalia no grave writer, but the Egyptian Sotades, in the dissolute tone of his metre [3502] , he writes at great length, for instance as follows:--
Blasphemies of Arius.
God Himself then, in His own nature, is ineffable by all men. Equal or like Himself He alone has none, or one in glory. And Ingenerate we call Him, because of Him who is generate by nature. We praise Him as without beginning because of Him who has a beginning. And adore Him as everlasting, because of Him who in time has come to be. The Unbegun made the Son a beginning of things originated; and advanced Him as a Son to Himself by adoption. He has nothing proper to God in proper subsistence. For He is not equal, no, nor one in essence [3503] with Him. Wise is God, for He is the teacher of Wisdom [3504] . There is full proof that God is invisible to all beings; both to things which are through the Son, and to the Son He is invisible. I will say it expressly, how by the Son is seen the Invisible; by that power by which God sees, and in His own measure, the Son endures to see the Father, as is lawful. Thus there is a Triad, not in equal glories. Not intermingling with each other [3505] are their subsistences. One more glorious than the other in their glories unto immensity. Foreign from the Son in essence is the Father, for He is without beginning. Understand that the Monad was; but the Dyad was not, before it was in existence. It follows at once that, though the Son was not, the Father was God. Hence the Son, not being (for He existed at the will of the Father), is God Only-begotten [3506] , and He is alien from either. Wisdom existed as Wisdom by the will of the Wise God. Hence He is conceived in numberless conceptions [3507] : Spirit, Power, Wisdom, God's glory, Truth, Image, and Word. Understand that He is conceived to be Radiance and Light. One equal to the Son, the Superior is able to beget; but one more excellent, or superior, or greater, He is not able. At God's will the Son is what and whatsoever He is. And when and since He was, from that time He has subsisted from God. He, being a strong God, praises in His degree the Superior. To speak in brief, God is ineffable to His Son. For He is to Himself what He is, that is, unspeakable. So that nothing which is called comprehensible [3508] does the Son know to speak about; for it is impossible for Him to investigate the Father, who is by Himself. For the Son does not know His own essence, For, being Son, He really existed, at the will of the Father. What argument then allows, that He who is from the Father should know His own parent by comprehension? For it is plain that for that which hath a beginning to conceive how the Unbegun is, or to grasp the idea, is not possible.
16. And what they wrote by letter to the blessed Alexander, the Bishop, runs as follows:--
To Our Blessed Pope [3509] and Bishop, Alexander, the Presbyters and Deacons send health in the Lord.
Our faith from our forefathers, which also we have learned from thee, Blessed Pope, is this:--We acknowledge One God, alone Ingenerate, alone Everlasting, alone Unbegun, alone True, alone having Immortality, alone Wise, alone Good, alone Sovereign; Judge, Governor, and Providence of all, unalterable and unchangeable, just and good, God of Law and Prophets and New Testament; who begat an Only-begotten Son before eternal times, through whom He has made both the ages and the universe; and begat Him, not in semblance, but in truth; and that He made Him subsist at His own will, unalterable and unchangeable; perfect creature of God, but not as one of the creatures; offspring, but not as one of things begotten; nor as Valentinus pronounced that the offspring of the Father was an issue [3510] ; nor as Manichæus taught that the offspring was a portion of the Father, one in essence [3511] ; or as Sabellius, dividing the Monad, speaks of a Son-and-Father [3512] ; nor as Hieracas, of one torch from another, or as a lamp divided into two [3513] ; nor that He who was before, was afterwards generated or new-created into a Son [3514] , as thou too thyself, Blessed Pope, in the midst of the Church and in session hast often condemned; but, as we say, at the will of God, created before times and before ages, and gaining life and being from the Father, who gave subsistence to His glories together with Him. For the Father did not, in giving to Him the inheritance of all things, deprive Himself of what He has ingenerately in Himself; for He is the Fountain of all things. Thus there are Three Subsistences. And God, being the cause of all things, is Unbegun and altogether Sole, but the Son being begotten apart from time by the Father, and being created and founded before ages, was not before His generation, but being begotten apart from time before all things, alone was made to subsist by the Father. For He is not eternal or co-eternal or co-unoriginate with the Father, nor has He His being together with the Father, as some speak of relations [3515] , introducing two ingenerate beginnings, but God is before all things as being Monad and Beginning of all. Wherefore also He is before the Son; as we have learned also from thy preaching in the midst of the Church. So far then as from God He has being, and glories, and life, and all things are delivered unto Him, in such sense is God His origin. For He is above Him, as being His God and before Him. But if the terms from Him,' and from the womb,' and I came forth from the Father, and I am come [3516] ' (Rom. xi. 36; Ps. cx. 3; John xvi. 28), be understood by some to mean as if a part of Him, one in essence or as an issue, then the Father is according to them compounded and divisible and alterable and material, and, as far as their belief goes, has the circumstances of a body, Who is the Incorporeal God.
This is a part of what Arius and his fellows vomited from their heretical hearts.
17. And before the Nicene Council took place, similar statements were made by Eusebius and his fellows, Narcissus, Patrophilus, Maris, Paulinus, Theodotus, and Athanasius of [A]nazarba [3517] . And Eusebius of Nicomedia wrote over and above to Arius, to this effect, Since your sentiments are good, pray that all may adopt them; for it is plain to any one, that what has been made was not before its origination; but what came to be has a beginning of being.' And Eusebius of Cæsarea in Palestine, in a letter to Euphration the Bishop [3518] , did not scruple to say plainly that Christ was not true God [3519] . And Athanasius of [A]nazarba uncloked the heresy still further, saying that the Son of God was one of the hundred sheep. For writing to Alexander the Bishop, he had the extreme audacity to say: Why complain of Arius and his fellows, for saying, The Son of God is made as a creature out of nothing, and one among others? For all that are made being represented in parable by the hundred sheep, the Son is one of them. If then the hundred are not created and originate, or if there be beings beside that hundred, then may the Son be not a creature nor one among others; but if those hundred are all originate, and there is nothing besides the hundred save God alone, what absurdity do Arius and his fellows utter, when, as comprehending and reckoning Christ in the hundred, they say that He is one among others?' And George who now is in Laodicea, and then was presbyter of Alexandria, and was staying at Antioch, wrote to Alexander the Bishop; Do not complain of Arius and his fellows, for saying, "Once the Son of God was not," for Isaiah came to be son of Amos, and, whereas Amos was before Isaiah came to be, Isaiah was not before, but came to be afterwards.' And he wrote to the Arians, Why complain of Alexander the Pope, saying, that the Son is from the Father? for you too need not fear to say that the Son was from God.' For if the Apostle wrote (1 Cor. xi. 12), All things are from God,' and it is plain that all things are made of nothing, though the Son too is a creature and one of things made, still He may be said to be from God in that sense in which all things are said to be from God.' From him then those who hold with Arius learned to simulate the phrase from God,' and to use it indeed, but not in a good meaning. And George himself was deposed by Alexander for certain reasons, and among them for manifest irreligion; for he was himself a presbyter, as has been said before.
18. On the whole then such were their statements, as if they all were in dispute and rivalry with each other, which should make the heresy more irreligious, and display it in a more naked form. And as for their letters I had them not at hand, to dispatch them to you; else I would have sent you copies; but, if the Lord will, this too I will do, when I get possession of them. And one Asterius [3520] from Cappadocia, a many-headed Sophist, one of the fellows of Eusebius, whom they could not advance into the Clergy, as having done sacrifice in the former persecution in the time of Constantius's grandfather, writes, with the countenance of Eusebius and his fellows, a small treatise, which was on a par with the crime of his sacrifice, yet answered their wishes; for in it, after comparing, or rather preferring, the locust and the caterpillar to Christ, and saying that Wisdom in God was other than Christ, and was the Framer as well of Christ as of the world, he went round the Churches in Syria and elsewhere, with introductions from Eusebius and his fellows, that as he once made trial of denying, so now he might boldly oppose the truth. The bold man intruded himself into forbidden places, and seating himself in the place of Clergy [3521] , he used to read publicly this treatise of his, in spite of the general indignation. The treatise is written at great length, but portions of it are as follows:--
For the Blessed Paul said not that he preached Christ, His, that is, God's, own Power' or Wisdom,' but without the article, God's Power and God's Wisdom' (1 Cor. i. 24), preaching that the own power of God Himself was distinct, which was con-natural and co-existent with Him unoriginately, generative indeed of Christ, creative of the whole world; concerning which he teaches in his Epistle to the Romans, thus, The invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things which are made, even His eternal power and divinity' (Rom. i. 20). For as no one would say that the Deity there mentioned was Christ, but the Father Himself, so, as I think, His eternal power is also not the Only-begotten God (Joh. i. 18), but the Father who begat Him. And he tells us of another Power and Wisdom of God, namely, that which is manifested through Christ, and made known through the works themselves of His Ministry.
And again:--
Although His eternal Power and Wisdom, which truth argues to be Unbegun and Ingenerate, would appear certainly to be one and the same, yet many are those powers which are one by one created by Him, of which Christ is the First-born and Only-begotten. All however equally depend upon their Possessor, and all His powers are rightly called His, who created and uses them; for instance, the Prophet says that the locust, which became a divine punishment of human sin, was called by God Himself, not only a power of God, but a great power (Joel ii. 25). And the blessed David too in several of the Psalms, invites, not Angels alone, but Powers also to praise God. And while he invites them all to the hymn, he presents before us their multitude, and is not unwilling to call them ministers of God, and teaches them to do His will.
19. These bold words against the Saviour did not content him, but he went further in his blasphemies, as follows:
The Son is one among others; for He is first of things originate, and one among intellectual natures; and as in things visible the sun is one among phenomena, and it shines upon the whole world according to the command of its Maker, so the Son, being one of the intellectual natures, also enlightens and shines upon all that are in the intellectual world.
And again he says, Once He was not, writing thus:--And before the Son's origination, the Father had pre-existing knowledge how to generate; since a physician too, before he cured, had the science of curing [3522] .' And he says again: The Son was created by God's beneficent earnestness; and the Father made Him by the superabundance of His Power.' And again: If the will of God has pervaded all the works in succession, certainly the Son too, being a work, has at His will come to be and been made.' Now though Asterius was the only person to write all this, Eusebius and his fellows felt the like in common with him.
20. These are the doctrines for which they are contending; for these they assail the ancient Council, because its members did not propound the like, but anathematized the Arian heresy instead, which they were so eager to recommend. This was why they put forward, as an advocate of their irreligion, Asterius who sacrificed, a sophist too, that he might not spare to speak against the Lord, or by a show of reason to mislead the simple. And they were ignorant, the shallow men, that they were doing harm to their own cause. For the ill savour of their advocate's idolatrous sacrifice betrayed still more plainly that the heresy is Christ's foe. And now again, the general agitations and troubles which they are exciting, are in consequence of their belief, that by their numerous murders and their monthly Councils, at length they will undo the sentence which has been passed against the Arian heresy [3523] . But here too they seem ignorant, or to pretend ignorance, that even before Nicea that heresy was held in detestation, when Artemas [3524] was laying its foundations, and before him Caiaphas's assembly and that of the Pharisees his contemporaries. And at all times is this gang of Christ's foes detestable, and will not cease to be hateful, the Lord's Name being full of love, and the whole creation bending the knee, and confessing that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father' (Phil. ii. 11).
21. Yet so it is, they have convened successive Councils against that Ecumenical One, and are not yet tired. After the Nicene, Eusebius and his fellows had been deposed; however, in course of time they intruded themselves without shame upon the Churches, and began to plot against the Bishops who withstood them, and to substitute in the Church men of their own heresy. Thus they thought to hold Councils at their pleasure, as having those who concurred with them, whom they had ordained on purpose for this very object. Accordingly, they assemble at Jerusalem, and there they write thus:--
The Holy Council assembled in Jerusalem [3525] by the grace of God, &c....their orthodox teaching in writing [3526] , which we all confessed to be sound and ecclesiastical. And he reasonably recommended that they should be received and united to the Church of God, as you will know yourselves from the transcript of the same Epistle, which we have transmitted to your reverences. We believe that yourselves also, as if recovering the very members of your own body, will experience great joy and gladness, in acknowledging and recovering your own bowels, your own brethren and fathers; since not only the Presbyters, Arius and his fellows, are given back to you, but also the whole Christian people and the entire multitude, which on occasion of the aforesaid men have a long time been in dissension among you. Moreover it were fitting, now that you know for certain what has passed, and that the men have communicated with us and have been received by so great a Holy Council, that you should with all readiness hail this your coalition and peace with your own members, specially since the articles of the faith which they have published preserve indisputable the universally confessed apostolical tradition and teaching.
22. This was the beginning of their Councils, and in it they were speedy in divulging their views, and could not conceal them. For when they said that they had banished all jealousy, and, after the expulsion of Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, recommended the reception of Arius and his friends, they shewed that their measures against Athanasius himself then, and before against all the other Bishops who withstood them, had for their object their receiving Arius and his fellows, and introducing the heresy into the Church. But although they had approved in this Council all Arius's malignity, and had ordered to receive his party into communion, as they had set the example, yet feeling that even now they were short of their wishes, they assembled a Council at Antioch under colour of the so-called Dedication [3527] and, since they were in general and lasting odium for their heresy, they publish different letters, some of this sort, and some of that and what they wrote in one letter was as follows:--
We have not been followers of Arius,--how could Bishops, such as we, follow a Presbyter?--nor did we receive any other faith beside that which has been handed down from the beginning. But, after taking on ourselves to examine and to verify his faith, we admitted him rather than followed him; as you will understand from our present avowals.
For we have been taught from the first, to believe [3528] in one God, the God of the Universe, the Framer and Preserver of all things both intellectual and sensible.
And in One Son of God, Only-begotten, who existed before all ages, and was with the Father who had begotten Him, by whom all things were made, both visible and invisible, who in the last days according to the good pleasure of the Father came down; and has taken flesh of the Virgin, and jointly fulfilled all His Father's will, and suffered and risen again, and ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father, and cometh again to judge quick and dead, and remaineth King and God unto all ages.
And we believe also in the Holy Ghost; and if it be necessary to add, we believe concerning the resurrection of the flesh, and the life everlasting.
23. Here follows what they published next at the same Dedication in another Epistle, being dissatisfied with the first, and devising something newer and fuller:
We believe [3529] , conformably to the evangelical and apostolical tradition, in One God, the Father Almighty, the Framer, and Maker, and Provider of the Universe, from whom are all things.
And in One Lord Jesus Christ, His Son, Only-begotten God (Joh. i. 18), by whom are all things, who was begotten before all ages from the Father, God from God, whole from whole, sole from sole [3530] , perfect from perfect, King from King, Lord from Lord, Living Word, Living Wisdom, true Light, Way, Truth, Resurrection, Shepherd, Door, both unalterable and [3531] unchangeable; exact Image [3532] of the Godhead, Essence, Will, Power and Glory of the Father; the first born of every creature, who was in the beginning with God, God the Word, as it is written in the Gospel, and the Word was God' (John i. 1); by whom all things were made, and in whom all things consist; who in the last days descended from above, and was born of a Virgin according to the Scriptures, and was made Man, Mediator [3533] between God and man, and Apostle of our faith, and Prince of life, as He says, I came down from heaven, not to do Mine own will, but the will of Him that sent Me' (John vi. 38); who suffered for us and rose again on the third day, and ascended into heaven, and sat down on the right hand of the Father, and is coming again with glory and power, to judge quick and dead.
And in the Holy Ghost, who is given to those who believe for comfort, and sanctification, and initiation, as also our Lord Jesus Christ enjoined His disciples, saying, Go ye, teach all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost' (Matt. xxviii. 19); namely of a Father who is truly Father, and a Son who is truly Son, and of the Holy Ghost who is truly Holy Ghost, the names not being given without meaning or effect, but denoting accurately the peculiar subsistence, rank, and glory of each that is named, so that they are three in subsistence, and in agreement one [3534] .
Holding then this faith, and holding it in the presence of God and Christ, from beginning to end, we anathematize every heretical heterodoxy [3535] . And if any teaches, beside the sound and right faith of the Scriptures, that time, or season, or age [3536] , either is or has been before the generation of the Son, be he anathema. Or if any one says, that the Son is a creature as one of the creatures, or an offspring as one of the offsprings, or a work as one of the works, and not the aforesaid articles one after another, as the divine Scriptures have delivered, or if he teaches or preaches beside what we received, be he anathema. For all that has been delivered in the divine Scriptures, whether by Prophets or Apostles, do we truly and reverentially both believe and follow [3537] .
24. And one Theophronius [3538] , Bishop of Tyana, put forth before them all the following statement of his personal faith. And they subscribed it, accepting the faith of this man:--
God [3539] knows, whom I call as a witness upon my soul, that so I believe:--in God the Father Almighty, the Creator and Maker of the Universe, from whom are all things.
And in His Only-begotten Son, Word, Power, and Wisdom, our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things; who has been begotten from the Father before the ages, perfect God from perfect God [3540] , and was with God in subsistence, and in the last days descended, and was born of the Virgin according to the Scriptures, and was made man, and suffered, and rose again from the dead, and ascended into the heavens, and sat down on the right hand of His Father, and cometh again with glory and power to judge quick and dead, and remaineth for ever:
And in the Holy Ghost, the Paraclete, the Spirit of truth (Joh. xv. 26), which also God promised by His Prophet to pour out (Joel ii. 28) upon His servants, and the Lord promised to send to His disciples: which also He sent, as the Acts of the Apostles witness.
But if any one teaches, or holds in his mind, aught beside this faith, be he anathema; or with Marcellus of Ancyra [3541] , or Sabellius, or Paul of Samosata, be he anathema, both himself and those who communicate with him.
25. Ninety Bishops met at the Dedication under the Consulate of Marcellinus and Probinus, in the 14th of the Indiction [3542] , Constantius the most irreligious being present. Having thus conducted matters at Antioch at the Dedication, thinking that their composition was deficient still, and fluctuating moreover in their own opinions, again they draw up afresh another formulary, after a few months, professedly concerning the faith, and despatch Narcissus, Maris, Theodorus, and Mark into Gaul [3543] . And they, as being sent from the Council, deliver the following document to Constans Augustus of blessed memory, and to all who were there:
We believe [3544] in One God, the Father Almighty, Creator and Maker of all things; from whom all fatherhood in heaven and on earth is named. (Eph. iii. 15.)
And in His Only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, who before all ages was begotten from the Father, God from God, Light from Light, by whom all things were made in the heavens and on the earth, visible and invisible, being Word, and Wisdom, and Power, and Life, and True Light; who in the last days was made man for us, and was born of the Holy Virgin; who was crucified, and dead, and buried, and rose again from the dead the third day, and was taken up into heaven, and sat down on the right hand of the Father; and is coming at the consummation of the age, to judge quick and dead, and to render to every one according to his works; whose Kingdom endures indissolubly into the infinite ages [3545] ; for He shall be seated on the right hand of the Father, not only in this age but in that which is to come.
And in the Holy Ghost, that is, the Paraclete; which, having promised to the Apostles, He sent forth after His ascension into heaven, to teach them and to remind of all things; through whom also shall be sanctified the souls of those who sincerely believe in Him.
But those who say, that the Son was from nothing, or from other subsistence and not from God, and, there was time when He was not, the Catholic Church regards as aliens [3546] .
26. As if dissatisfied with this, they hold their meeting again after three years, and dispatch Eudoxius, Martyrius, and Macedonius of Cilicia [3547] , and some others with them, to the parts of Italy, to carry with them a faith written at great length, with numerous additions over and above those which have gone before. They went abroad with these, as if they had devised something new.
We believe [3548] in one God the Father Almighty, the Creator and Maker of all things, from whom all fatherhood in heaven and on earth is named.
And in His Only-begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ, who before all ages was begotten from the Father, God from God, Light from Light, by whom all things were made, in heaven and on the earth, visible and invisible, being Word and Wisdom and Power and Life and True Light, who in the last days was made man for us, and was born of the Holy Virgin, crucified and dead and buried, and rose again from the dead the third day, and was taken up into heaven, and sat down on the right hand of the Father, and is coming at the consummation of the age to judge quick and dead, and to render to every one according to his works, whose Kingdom endures unceasingly unto the infinite ages; for He sitteth on the right hand of the Father not only in this age, but also in that which is to come.
And we believe in the Holy Ghost, that is, the Paraclete, which, having promised to the Apostles, He sent forth after the ascension into heaven, to teach them and to remind of all things: through whom also shall be sanctified the souls of those who sincerely believe in Him.
But those who say, (1) that the Son was from nothing, or from other subsistence and not from God; (2) and that there was a time or age when He was not, the Catholic and Holy Church regards as aliens. Likewise those who say, (3) that there are three Gods: (4) or that Christ is not God; (5) or that before the ages He was neither Christ nor Son of God; (6) or that Father and Son, or Holy Ghost, are the same; (7) or that the Son is Ingenerate; or that the Father begat the Son, not by choice or will; the Holy and Catholic Church anathematizes.
(1.) For neither is safe to say that the Son is from nothing, (since this is no where spoken of Him in divinely inspired Scripture,) nor again of any other subsistence before existing beside the Father, but from God alone do we define Him genuinely to be generated. For the divine Word teaches that the Ingenerate and Unbegun, the Father of Christ, is One [3549] .
(2.) Nor may we, adopting the hazardous position, There was once when He was not,' from unscriptural sources, imagine any interval of time before Him, but only the God who has generated Him apart from time; for through Him both times and ages came to be. Yet we must not consider the Son to be co-unbegun and co-ingenerate with the Father; for no one can be properly called Father or Son of one who is co-unbegun and co-ingenerate with Him [3550] . But we acknowledge [3551] that the Father who alone is Unbegun and Ingenerate, hath generated inconceivably and incomprehensibly to all: and that the Son hath been generated before ages, and in no wise to be ingenerate Himself like the Father, but to have the Father who generated Him as His beginning; for the Head of Christ is God.' (1 Cor. xi. 3.)
(3.) Nor again, in confessing three realities and three Persons, of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost according to the Scriptures, do we therefore make Gods three; since we acknowledge the Self-complete and Ingenerate and Unbegun and Invisible God to be one only [3552] , the God and Father (Joh. xx. 17) of the Only-begotten, who alone hath being from Himself, and alone vouchsafes this to all others bountifully.
(4.) Nor again, in saying that the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is one only God, the only Ingenerate, do we therefore deny that Christ also is God before ages: as the disciples of Paul of Samosata, who say that after the incarnation He was by advance [3553] made God, from being made by nature a mere man. For we acknowledge, that though He be subordinate to His Father and God, yet, being before ages begotten of God, He is God perfect according to nature and true [3554] , and not first man and then God, but first God and then becoming man for us, and never having been deprived of being.
(5.) We abhor besides, and anathematize those who make a pretence of saying that He is but the mere word of God and unexisting, having His being in another,--now as if pronounced, as some speak, now as mental [3555] ,--holding that He was not Christ or Son of God or mediator or image of God before ages; but that He first became Christ and Son of God, when He took our flesh from the Virgin, not quite four hundred years since. For they will have it that then Christ began His Kingdom, and that it will have an end after the consummation of all and the judgment [3556] . Such are the disciples of Marcellus and Scotinus [3557] of Galatian Ancyra, who, equally with Jews, negative Christ's existence before ages, and His Godhead, and unending Kingdom, upon pretence of supporting the divine Monarchy. We, on the contrary, regard Him not as simply God's pronounced word or mental, but as Living God and Word, existing in Himself, and Son of God and Christ; being and abiding with His Father before ages, and that not in foreknowledge only [3558] , and ministering to Him for the whole framing whether of things visible or invisible. For He it is, to whom the Father said, Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness [3559] ' (Gen. i. 26), who also was seen in His own Person [3560] by the patriarchs, gave the law, spoke by the prophets, and at last, became man, and manifested His own Father to all men, and reigns to never-ending ages. For Christ has taken no recent dignity, but we have believed Him to be perfect from the first, and like in all things to the Father [3561] .
(6.) And those who say that the Father and Son and Holy Ghost are the same, and irreligiously take the Three Names of one and the same Reality and Person, we justly proscribe from the Church, because they suppose the illimitable and impassible Father to be limitable withal and passible through His becoming man: for such are they whom Romans call Patripassians, and we Sabellians [3562] . For we acknowledge that the Father who sent, remained in the peculiar state of His unchangeable Godhead, and that Christ who was sent fulfilled the economy of the Incarnation.
(7.) And at the same time those who irreverently say that the Son has been generated not by choice or will, thus encompassing God with a necessity which excludes choice and purpose, so that He begat the Son unwillingly, we account as most irreligious and alien to the Church; in that they have dared to define such things concerning God, beside the common notions concerning Him, nay, beside the purport of divinely inspired Scripture. For we, knowing that God is absolute and sovereign over Himself, have a religious judgment that He generated the Son voluntarily and freely; yet, as we have a reverent belief in the Son's words concerning Himself (Prov. viii. 22), The Lord created me a beginning of His ways for His works,' we do not understand Him to have been originated like the creatures or works which through Him came to be. For it is irreligious and alien to the ecclesiastical faith, to compare the Creator with handiworks created by Him, and to think that He has the same manner of origination with the rest. For divine Scripture teaches us really and truly that the Only-begotten Son was generated sole and solely [3563] . Yet [3564] , in saying that the Son is in Himself, and both lives and exists like the Father, we do not on that account separate Him from the Father, imagining place and interval between their union in the way of bodies. For we believe that they are united with each other without mediation or distance [3565] , and that they exist inseparable; all the Father embosoming the Son, and all the Son hanging and adhering to the Father, and alone resting on the Father's breast continually [3566] . Believing then in the All-perfect Triad, the most Holy, that is, in the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and calling the Father God, and the Son God, yet we confess in them, not two Gods, but one dignity of Godhead, and one exact harmony of dominion, the Father alone being Head over the whole universe wholly, and over the Son Himself, and the Son subordinated to the Father; but, excepting Him, ruling over all things after Him which through Himself have come to be, and granting the grace of the Holy Ghost unsparingly to the saints at the Father's will. For that such is the account of the Divine Monarchy towards Christ, the sacred oracles have delivered to us.
Thus much, in addition to the faith before published in epitome, we have been compelled to draw forth at length, not in any officious display, but to clear away all unjust suspicion concerning our opinions, among those who are ignorant of our affairs: and that all in the West may know, both the audacity of the slanders of the heterodox, and as to the Orientals, their ecclesiastical mind in the Lord, to which the divinely inspired Scriptures bear witness without violence, where men are not perverse.
27. However they did not stand even to this; for again at Sirmium [3567] they met together [3568] against Photinus [3569] and there composed a faith again, not drawn out into such length, not so full in words; but subtracting the greater part and adding in its place, as if they had listened to the suggestions of others, they wrote as follows:--
We believe [3570] in One God, the Father Almighty, the Creator and Maker of all things, from whom all fatherhood in heaven and earth is named [3571] '
And in His Only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus the Christ, who before all the ages was begotten from the Father, God from God, Light from Light, by whom all things were made, in heaven and on the earth, visible and invisible, being Word and Wisdom and True Light and Life, who in the last of days was made man for us, and was born of the Holy Virgin, and crucified and dead and buried, and rose again from the dead the third day, and was taken up into heaven, and sat down on the right hand of the Father, and is coming at the consummation of the age, to judge quick and dead, and to render to every one according to his works; whose Kingdom being unceasing endures unto the infinite ages; for He shall sit on the right hand of the Father, not only in this age, but also in that which is to come.
And in the Holy Ghost, that is, the Paraclete; which, having promised to the Apostles to send forth after His ascension into heaven, to teach and to remind them of all things, He did send; through whom also are sanctified the souls of those who sincerely believe in Him.
(1.) But those who say that the Son was from nothing or from other subsistence [3572] and not from God, and that there was time or age when He was not, the Holy and Catholic Church regards as aliens.
(2.) Again we say, Whosoever says that the Father and the Son are two Gods, be he anathema [3573] .
(3.) And whosoever, saying that Christ is God, before ages Son of God, does not confess that He has subserved the Father for the framing of the universe, be he anathema [3574] .
(4.) Whosoever presumes to say that the Ingenerate, or a part of Him, was born of Mary, be he anathema.
(5.) Whosoever says that according to foreknowledge [3575] the Son is before Mary and not that, generated from the Father before ages, He was with God, and that through Him all things were originated, be he anathema.
(6.) Whosoever shall pretend that the essence of God is dilated or contracted [3576] , be he anathema.
(7.) Whosoever shall say that the essence of God being dilated made the Son, or shall name the dilation of His essence Son, be he anathema.
(8.) Whosoever calls the Son of God the mental or pronounced Word [3577] , be he anathema.
(9.) Whosoever says that the Son from Mary is man only, be he anathema.
(10.) Whosoever, speaking of Him who is from Mary God and man, thereby means God the Ingenerate [3578] , be he anathema.
(11.) Whosoever shall explain I God the First and I the Last, and besides Me there is no God,' (Is. xliv. 6), which is said for the denial of idols and of gods that are not, to the denial of the Only-begotten, before ages God, as Jews do, be he anathema.
(12.) Whosoever hearing The Word was made flesh,' (John i. 14), shall consider that the Word has changed into flesh, or shall say that He has undergone alteration by taking flesh, be he anathema [3579] .
(13.) Whosoever hearing the Only-begotten Son of God to have been crucified, shall say that His Godhead has undergone corruption, or passion. or alteration, or diminution, or destruction, be he anathema.
(14.) Whosoever shall say that Let Us make man' (Gen. i. 26), was not said by the Father to the Son, but by God to Himself, be he anathema [3580] .
(15.) Whosoever shall say that Abraham saw, not the Son, but the Ingenerate God or part of Him, be he anathema [3581] .
(16.) Whosoever shall say that with Jacob, not the Son as man, but the Ingenerate God or part of Him, has wrestled, be he anathema [3582] .
(17.) Whosoever shall explain, The Lord rained fire from the Lord' (Gen. xix. 24), not of the Father and the Son, and says that He rained from Himself, be he anathema. For the Son, being Lord, rained from the Father Who is Lord.
(18.) Whosoever, hearing that the Father is Lord and the Son Lord and the Father and Son Lord, for there is Lord from Lord, says there are two Gods, be he anathema. For we do not place the Son in the Father's Order, but as subordinate to the Father; for He did not descend upon Sodom without the Father's will, nor did He rain from Himself, but from the Lord, that is, the Father authorising it. Nor is He of Himself set down on the right hand, but He hears the Father saying, Sit Thou on My right hand' (Ps. cx. 1).
(19.) Whosoever says that the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost are one Person, be he anathema.
(20.) Whosoever, speaking of the Holy Ghost as Paraclete, shall mean the Ingenerate God, be he anathema [3583] .
(21.) Whosoever shall deny, what the Lord taught us, that the Paraclete is other than the Son, for He hath said, And another Paraclete shall the Father send to you, whom I will ask,' (John xiv. 16) be he anathema.
(22.) Whosoever shall say that the Holy Ghost is part of the Father or of the Son [3584] be he anathema.
(23.) Whosoever shall say that the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost are three Gods, be he anathema.
(24.) Whosoever shall say that the Son of God at the will of God has come to be, as one of the works, be he anathema.
(25.) Whosoever shall say that the Son has been generated, the Father not wishing it [3585] , be he anathema. For not by compulsion, led by physical necessity, did the Father, as He wished not, generate the Son, but He at once willed, and, after generating Him from Himself apart from time and passion, manifested Him.
(26.) Whosoever shall say that the Son is without beginning and ingenerate, as if speaking of two unbegun and two ingenerate, and making two Gods, be he anathema. For the Son is the Head, namely the beginning of all: and God is the Head, namely the beginning of Christ; for thus to one unbegun beginning of the universe do we religiously refer all things through the Son.
(27.) And in accurate delineation of the idea of Christianity we say this again; Whosoever shall not say that Christ is God, Son of God, as being before ages, and having subserved the Father in the framing of the Universe, but that from the time that He was born of Mary, from thence He was called Christ and Son, and took an origin of being God, be he anathema.
28. Casting aside the whole of this, as if they had discovered something better, they propound another faith, and write at Sirmium in Latin what is here translated into Greek [3586] .
Whereas [3587] it seemed good that there should be some discussion concerning faith, all points were carefully investigated and discussed at Sirmium in the presence of Valens, and Ursacius, and Germinius, and the rest.
It is held for certain that there is one God, the Father Almighty, as also is preached in all the world.
And His One Only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, generated from Him before the ages; and that we may not speak of two Gods, since the Lord Himself has said, I go to My Father and your Father, and My God and your God' (John xx. 17). On this account He is God of all, as also the Apostle taught: Is He God of the Jews only, is He not also of the Gentiles? yea of the Gentiles also: since there is one God who shall justify the circumcision from faith, and the uncircumcision through faith' (Rom. iii. 29, 30); and every thing else agrees, and has no ambiguity.
But since many persons are disturbed by questions concerning what is called in Latin Substantia,' but in Greek Usia,' that is, to make it understood more exactly, as to Coessential,' or what is called, Like-in-Essence,' there ought to be no mention of any of these at all, nor exposition of them in the Church, for this reason and for this consideration, that in divine Scripture nothing is written about them, and that they are above men's knowledge and above men's understanding; and because no one can declare the Son's generation, as it is written, Who shall declare His generation' (Is. liii. 8)? for it is plain that the Father only knows how He generated the Son, and again the Son how He has been generated by the Father. And to none can it be a question that the Father is greater: for no one can doubt that the Father is greater in honour and dignity and Godhead, and in the very name of Father, the Son Himself testifying, The Father that sent Me is greater than I' (John x. 29; xiv. 28). And no one is ignorant, that it is Catholic doctrine, that there are two Persons of Father and Son, and that the Father is greater, and the Son subordinated to the Father together with all things which the Father has subordinated to Him, and that the Father has no beginning, and is invisible, and immortal, and impassible; but that the Son has been generated from the Father, God from God, Light from Light, and that His origin, as aforesaid, no one knows, but the Father only. And that the Son Himself and our Lord and God, took flesh, that is, a body, that is, man, from Mary the Virgin, as the Angel preached beforehand; and as all the Scriptures teach, and especially the Apostle himself, the doctor of the Gentiles, Christ took man of Mary the Virgin, through which He has suffered. And the whole faith is summed up [3588] , and secured in this, that a Trinity should ever be preserved, as we read in the Gospel, Go ye and baptize all the nations in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost' (Matt. xxviii. 19). And entire and perfect is the number of the Trinity; but the Paraclete, the Holy Ghost, sent forth through the Son, came according to the promise, that He might teach and sanctify the Apostles and all believers [3589] .
29. After drawing up this, and then becoming dissatisfied, they composed the faith which to their shame they paraded with the Consulate.' And, as is their wont, condemning this also, they caused Martinian the notary to seize it from the parties who had the copies of it [3590] . And having got the Emperor Constantius to put forth an edict against it, they form another dogma afresh, and with the addition of certain expressions, according to their wont, they write thus in Isauria.
We decline [3591] not to bring forward the authentic faith published at the Dedication at Antioch [3592] ; though certainly our fathers at the time met together for a particular subject under investigation. But since Coessential' and Like-in-essence,' have troubled many persons in times past and up to this day, and since moreover some are said recently to have devised the Son's Unlikeness' to the Father, on their account we reject Coessential' and Like-in-essence,' as alien to the Scriptures, but Unlike' we anathematize, and account all who profess it as aliens from the Church. And we distinctly confess the Likeness' of the Son to the Father, according to the Apostle, who says of the Son, Who is the Image of the Invisible God' (Col. i. 15).
And we confess and believe in one God, the Father Almighty, the Maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible.
And we believe also in our Lord Jesus Christ, His Son, generated from Him impassibly before all the ages, God the Word, God from God, Only-begotten, light, life, truth, wisdom, power, through whom all things were made, in the heavens and on the earth, whether visible or invisible. He, as we believe, at the end of the world, for the abolishment of sin, took flesh of the Holy Virgin, and was made man, and suffered for our sins, and rose again, and was taken up into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father, and is coming again in glory, to judge quick and dead.
We believe also in the Holy Ghost, which our Saviour and Lord named Paraclete, having promised to send Him to the disciples after His own departure, as He did send; through whom He sanctifieth those in the Church who believe, and are baptized in the Name of Father and Son and Holy Ghost.
But those who preach aught beside this faith the Catholic Church regards as aliens. And that to this faith that is equivalent which was published lately at Sirmium, under sanction of his religiousness the Emperor, is plain to all who read it.
30. Having written thus in Isauria, they went up to Constantinople [3593] , and there, as if dissatisfied, they changed it, as is their wont, and with some small additions against using even Subsistence' of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, they transmitted it to those at Ariminum, and compelled even those in the said parts to subscribe, and those who contradicted them they got banished by Constantius. And it runs thus:--
We believe [3594] in One God, Father Almighty, from whom are all things;
And in the Only-begotten Son of God, begotten from God before all ages and before every beginning, by whom all things were made, visible and invisible, and begotten as only-begotten, only from the Father only [3595] , God from God, like to the Father that begat Him according to the Scriptures; whose origin no one knows, except the Father alone who begat Him. He as we acknowledge, the Only-begotten Son of God, the Father sending Him, came hither from the heavens, as it is written, for the undoing of sin and death, and was born of the Holy Ghost, of Mary the Virgin according to the flesh, as it is written, and convened with the disciples, and having fulfilled the whole Economy according to the Father's will, was crucified and dead and buried and descended to the parts below the earth; at whom hades itself shuddered: who also rose from the dead on the third day, and abode with the disciples, and, forty days being fulfilled, was taken up into the heavens, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father, to come in the last day of the resurrection in the Father's glory, that He may render to every man according to his works.
And in the Holy Ghost, whom the Only-begotten Son of God Himself, Christ, our Lord and God, promised to send to the race of man, as Paraclete, as it is written, the Spirit of truth' (Joh. xvi. 13), which He sent unto them when He had ascended into the heavens.
But the name of Essence,' which was set down by the Fathers in simplicity, and, being unknown by the people, caused offence, because the Scriptures contain it not, it has seemed good to abolish, and for the future to make no mention of it at all; since the divine Scriptures have made no mention of the Essence of Father and Son. For neither ought Subsistence to be named concerning Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. But, we say that the Son is Like the Father, as the divine Scriptures say and teach; and all the heresies, both those which have been afore condemned already, and whatever are of modern date, being contrary to this published statement, be they anathema [3596] .
31. However, they did not stand even to this: for coming down from Constantinople to Antioch, they were dissatisfied that they had written at all that the Son was Like the Father, as the Scriptures say;' and putting their ideas upon paper [3597] , they began reverting to their first doctrines, and said that the Son is altogether unlike the Father,' and that the Son is in no manner like the Father,' and so much did they change, as to admit those who spoke the Arian doctrine nakedly and to deliver to them the Churches with licence to bring forward the words of blasphemy with impunity [3598] . Because then of the extreme shamelessness of their blasphemy they were called by all Anomoeans, having also the name of Exucontian [3599] , and the heretical Constantius for the patron of their irreligion, who persisting up to the end in irreligion, and on the point of death, thought good to be baptized [3600] ; not however by religious men, but by Euzoius [3601] , who for his Arianism had been deposed, not once, but often, both when he was a deacon, and when he was in the see of Antioch.
32. The forementioned parties then had proceeded thus far, when they were stopped and deposed. But well I know, not even under these circumstances will they stop, as many as have now dissembled, [3602] but they will always be making parties against the truth, until they return to themselves and say, Let us rise and go to our fathers, and we will say unto them, We anathematize the Arian heresy, and we acknowledge the Nicene Council;' for against this is their quarrel. Who then, with ever so little understanding, will bear them any longer? who, on hearing in every Council some things taken away and others added, but perceives that their mind is shifty and treacherous against Christ? who on seeing them embodying to so great a length both their professions of faith, and their own exculpation, but sees that they are giving sentence against themselves, and studiously writing much which may be likely by their officious display and abundance of words to seduce the simple and hide what they are in point of heresy? But as the heathen, as the Lord said, using vain words in their prayers (Mat. vi. 7), are nothing profited; so they too, after all this outpouring, were not able to quench the judgment pronounced against the Arian heresy, but were convicted and deposed instead; and rightly; for which of their formularies is to be accepted by the hearer? or with what confidence shall they be catechists to those who come to them? for if they all have one and the same meaning, what is the need of many? But if need has arisen of so many, it follows that each by itself is deficient, not complete; and they establish this point better than we can, by their innovating on them all and remaking them. And the number of their Councils, and the difference of their statements is a proof that those who were present at them, while at variance with the Nicene, are yet too feeble to harm the Truth. __________________________________________________________________
[3502] Cf. Orat. i. §§2-5; de Sent. D. 6; Socr. i. 9. The Arian Philostorgius tells us that Arius wrote songs for the sea and for the mill and for the road, and then set them to suitable music,' Hist. ii. 2. It is remarkable that Athanasius should say the Egyptian Sotades, and again in Sent. D. 6. There were two Poets of the name; one a writer of the Middle Comedy, Athen. Deipn. vii. 11; but the other, who is here spoken of, was a native of Maronea in Crete, according to Suidas (in voc.), under the successors of Alexander, Athen. xiv. 4. He wrote in Ionic metre, which was of infamous name from the subjects to which he and others applied it. vid. Suid. ibid. Horace's Ode. Miserarum est neque amori, &c.' is a specimen of this metre, and some have called it Sotadic; but Bentley shews in loc. that Sotades wrote in the Ionic a majore. Athenæus implies that all Ionic metres were called Sotadic, or that Sotades wrote in various Ionic metres. The Church adopted the Doric music, and forbade the Ionic and Lydian. The name Thalia' commonly belonged to convivial songs; Martial contrasts the lasciva Thalia' with carmina sanctiora,' Epigr. vii. 17. vid. Thaliarchus, the master of the feast,' Horat. Od. i. 9. [The metre of the fragments of the Thalia' is obscure, there are no traces of the Ionic foot, but very distinct anapæstic cadences. In fact the lines resemble ill-constructed or very corrupt anapæstic tetrameters catalectic, as in a comic Parabasis. For Sotades, the Greek text here reads corruptly Sosates.]
[3503] This passage ought to have been added supr. p. 163, note 8, as containing a more direct denial of the homoousion
[3504] That is, Wisdom, or the Son, is but the disciple of Him who is Wise, and not the attribute by which He is Wise, which is what the Sabellians said, vid. Orat. iv. §2, and what Arius imputed to the Church.
[3505] anepimiktoi, that is, he denied the perichoresis, vid. supr. Orat. iii. 3, &c.
[3506] [John i. 18, best mss., and cf. Hort, Two Diss. p. 26.
[3507] epinoiais, that is, our Lord's titles are but names, or figures, not properly belonging to Him, but [cf. Bigg. B. L. p. 168 sq.]
[3508] kata katalepsin, that is, there is nothing comprehensible in the Father for the Son to know and declare. On the other hand the doctrine of the Anomoeans was, that all men could know Almighty God perfectly.
[3509] [The ordinary title of eminent bishops, especially of the bishop of Alexandria.]
[3510] What the Valentinian probole was is described in Epiph. Hær. 31, 13 [but see D.C.B. iv. 1086 sqq.] Origen protests against the notion of probole, Periarch. iv. p. 190, and Athanasius Expos. §1. The Arian Asterius too considers probole to introduce the notion of teknogonia, Euseb. contr. Marc. i. 4. p. 20. vid. also Epiph. Hær. 72. 7. Yet Eusebius uses the word proballesthai. Eccl. Theol. i. 8. On the other hand Tertullian uses it with a protest against the Valentinian sense. Justin has problethen gennema, Tryph. 62. And Nazianzen calls the Almighty Father proboleus of the Holy Spirit. Orat. 29. 2. Arius introduces the word here as an argumentum ad invidiam. Hil. de Trin. vi. 9.
[3511] The Manichees adopting a material notion of the divine substance, considered that it was divisible, and that a portion of it was absorbed by the power of darkness.
[3512] huiopatora. The term is ascribed to Sabellius, Ammon. in Caten. Joan. i. 1. p. 14: to Sabellius and [invidiously to] Marcellus, Euseb. Eccl. Theol. ii. 5: Cf., as to Marcellus, Cyr. Hier. Catech. xv. 9. also iv. 8. xi. 16; Epiph. Hær. 73. 11 fin.: to Sabellians, Athan. Expos. Fid. 2. and 7, and Greg. Nyssen. contr. Eun. xii. p. 733: to certain heretics, Cyril. Alex. in Joann. p. 243: to Praxeas and Montanus, Mar. Merc. p. 128: to Sabellius, Cæsar. Dial. i. p. 550: to Noetus, Damasc. Hær. 57.
[3513] [On Hieracas, see D.C.B. iii. 24; also Epiph. Hær. 67; Hil. Trin. vi. 12.]
[3514] Bull considers that the doctrine of such Fathers is here spoken of as held that our Lord's sunkatabasis to create the world was a gennesis, and certainly such language as that of Hippol. contr. Noet. §15. favours the supposition. But one class of [Monarchians] may more probably be intended, who held that the Word became the Son upon His incarnation, such as Marcellus, vid. Euseb. Eccles. Theol. i. 1. contr. Marc. ii. 3. vid. also Eccles. Theol. ii. 9. p. 114 b. med' allote allen k.t.l. Also the Macrostich says, We anathematize those who call Him the mere Word of God, not allowing Him to be Christ and Son of God before all ages, but from the time He took on Him our flesh: such are the followers of Marcellus and Photinus, &c.' infr. §26. Again, Athanasius, Orat. iv. 15, says that, of those who divide the Word from the Son, some called our Lord's manhood the Son, some the two Natures together, and some said that the Word Himself became the Son when He was made man.' It makes it more likely that Marcellus is meant, that Asterius seems to have written against him before the Nicene Council, and that Arius in other of his writings borrowed from Asterius. vid. de Decret. §8.
[3515] Eusebius's letter to Euphration, which is mentioned just after, expresses this more distinctly--If they coexist, how shall the Father be Father and the Son Son? or how the One first, the Other second? and the One ingenerate and the other generate?' Acta Conc. 7. p. 301. The phrase ta pros ti Bull well explains to refer to the Catholic truth that the Father or Son being named; the Other is therein implied without naming. Defens. F. N. iii. 9. §4. Hence Arius, in his Letter to Eusebius, complains that Alexander says, aei ho theos, aei ho hui& 231;s hama pater, hama hui& 231;s. Theod. H. E. i. 4.
[3516] heko, and so Chrys. Hom. 3. Hebr. init. Epiph. Hær. 73. 31, and 36.
[3517] Most of these original Arians were attacked in a work of Marcellus's which Eusebius answers. Now he replies to Asterius,' says Eusebius, now to the great Eusebius' [of Nicomedia], and then he turns upon that man of God, that indeed thrice blessed person Paulinus [of Tyre]. Then he goes to war with Origen....Next he marches out against Narcissus, and pursues the other Eusebius,' [himself]. In a word, he counts for nothing all the Ecclesiastical Fathers, being satisfied with no one but himself.' contr. Marc. i. 4. [On Maris (who was not at Ariminum, and scarcely at Antioch in 363) see D.C.B. s.v. (2). On Theodotus see vol. i. of this series, p. 320, note 37. On Paulinus, ib. p. 369.]
[3518] [Of Balaneæ, see Ap. Fug. 3; Hist. Ar. 5.]
[3519] Quoted, among other passages from Eusebius, in the 7th General Council, Act. 6. p. 409. [Mansi. xiii. 701 D]. The Son Himself is God, but not Very God.' [But see Prolegg. ubi supr. note 5].
[3520] Asterius has been mentioned above, p. 155, note 2, &c. Philostorgius speaks of him as adopting Semi-Arian terms; and Acacius gives an extract from him containing them, ap. Epiph. Hær. 72. 6. He seems to be called many-headed with an allusion to the Hydra, and to his activity in the Arian cause and his fertility in writing. He wrote comments on Scripture. [See Prolegg. ii. §3 (2) a, sub. fin.]
[3521] None but the clergy might enter the Chancel, i.e. in Service time. Hence Theodosius was made to retire by S. Ambrose. Theod. v. 17. The Council of Laodicea, said to be held a.d. 372, forbids any but persons in orders, hieratikoi, to enter the Chancel and then communicate. Can. 19. vid. also 44. Conc. t. i. pp. 788, 789. It is doubtful what orders the word hieratikoi is intended to include. vid. Bingham, Antiqu. viii. 6. §7.
[3522] Ep. Æg. 13.
[3523] Vid. infr. §32.
[3524] [On Artemas or Artemon and Theodotus, see Prolegg. ii. §3 (2) a.]
[3525] [See Apol. Ar. 84; Hist. Ar. 1; Prolegg. ii. §5. The first part of the letter will be found supr. Apol. Ar. p. 144.]
[3526] This is supposed to be the same Confession which is preserved by Socr. i. 26. and Soz. ii. 27. and was presented to Constantine by Arius in 330.
[3527] [Prolegg. ch. ii. §6 (2).]
[3528] 1st Confession or 1st of Antioch, a.d. 341. [See Socr. ii. 10.]
[3529] 2nd Confession or 2nd of Antioch, a.d. 341. This formulary is that known as the Formulary of the Dedication. It is quoted as such by Socr. ii. 39, 40. Soz. iv. 15. and infr. §29. [On its attribution to Lucian, see Prolegg. ubi supr., and Caspari Alte. u. Neue Q. p. 42 note.]
[3530] Vid. 10th Confession, infr. §30.
[3531] These strong words and those which follow, whether Lucian's or not, mark the great difference between this confession and the foregoing. The words unalterable and unchangeable' are formal anti-Arian symbols, as the trepton or alterable was one of the most characteristic parts of Arius's creed. vid. Orat. i. §35, &c.
[3532] On aparallaktos eikon kat' ousian, which was synonymous with homoiousios, vid. infr. §38. supr. p. 163, note 9. It was in order to secure the true sense of aparallakton that the Council adopted the word homoousion 'Aparallakton is accordingly used as a familiar word by Athan. de Decr. §§20, 24. Orat. iii. §36. contr. Gent. 41. 46. fin. Philostorgius ascribing it to Asterius, and Acacius quotes a passage from his writings containing it; cf. S. Alexander ten kata panta homoioteta autou ek phuseos apomaxamenos, in Theod. H. E. i. 4. Charakter, Hebr. i. 3. contains the same idea. Basil. contr. Eunom. i. 18.
[3533] This statement perhaps is the most Catholic in the Creed; not that the former are not more explicit in themselves, or that in a certain true sense our Lord may not be called a Mediator before He became incarnate, but because the Arians, even Eusebius, like Philo and the Platonists, consider Him as made in the beginning the Eternal Priest of the Father,' Demonst. v. 3. de Laud. C. 3, 11, an intermediate divine power,' §§26, 27, and notes.
[3534] On this phrase, which is justified by S. Hilary, de Syn. 32, and is protested against in the Sardican Confession, Theod. H. E. ii. 6 [see Prolegg. ubi supr.]
[3535] The whole of these anathemas are [a compromise]. The Council anathematizes every heretical heterodoxy;' not, as Athanasius observes, supr., §7, the Arian.
[3536] Our Lord was, as they held, before time, but still created.
[3537] This emphatic mention of Scripture is also virtually an Arian evasion, admitting of a silent reference to themselves as interpreters of Scripture.
[3538] On this Creed see Prolegg. ubi supr.
[3539] 3rd Confession or 3rd of Antioch, a.d. 341.
[3540] It need scarcely be said, that perfect from perfect' is a symbol on which the Catholics laid stress, Athan. Orat. ii. 35. Epiph. Hær. 76. p. 945. but it admitted of an evasion. An especial reason for insisting on it in the previous centuries had been the Sabellian doctrine, which considered the title Word' when applied to our Lord to be adequately explained by the ordinary sense of the term, as a word spoken by us. In consequence they insisted on His to teleion, perfection, which became almost synonymous with His personality. (Thus the Apollinarians, e.g. denied that our Lord was perfect man, because His person was not human. Athan. contr. Apoll. i. 2.) And Athan. condemns the notion of the logos en to theo ateles, gennetheis teleios, Orat. iv. 11. The Arians then, as being the especial opponents of the Sabellians, insisted on nothing so much as our Lord's being a real, living, substantial, Word. vid. Eusebius passim. The Father,' says Acacius against Marcellus, begat the Only-begotten, alone alone, and perfect perfect; for there is nothing imperfect in the Father, wherefore neither is there in the Son, but the Son's perfection is the genuine offspring of His perfection, and superperfection.' ap. Epiph. Hær. 72. 7. Teleios then was a relative word, varying with the subject matter, vid. Damasc. F. O. i. 8. p. 138. and when the Arians said that our Lord was perfect God, they meant, perfect, in that sense in which He is God'--i.e. as a secondary divinity.--Nay, in one point of view, holding as they did no real condescension or assumption of a really new state, they would use the term of His divine Nature more freely than the Catholics sometimes had. Nor was the Word,' says Hippolytus, before the flesh and by Himself, perfect Son, though being perfect Word, Only-begotten; nor could the flesh subsist by itself without the Word, because that in the Word it has its consistence: thus then He was manifested One perfect Son of God.' contr. Noet. 15.
[3541] [See Prolegg.] Marcellus wrote his work against Asterius in 335, the year of the Arian Council of Jerusalem, which at once took cognisance of it, and cited Marcellus to appear before them. The next year a Council held at Constantinople condemned and deposed him.
[3542] a.d. 341.
[3543] [Cf. Prolegg. ii. §6 (3) init.]
[3544] 4th Confession, or 4th of Antioch, a.d. 342. The fourth, fifth, and sixth Confessions are the same, and with them agree the Creed of Philippopolis [a.d. 343, see Gwatkin, Stud. p. 119, espec. note 2].
[3545] These words, which answer to those [of our present Nicene' Creed], are directed against the doctrine of Marcellus [on which see Prolegg. ii. §3 (2) c, 3]. Cf. Eusebius, de Eccl. Theol. iii. 8. 17. cont. Marc. ii. 4.
[3546] S. Hilary, as we have seen above, p. 78, by implication calls this the Nicene Anathema; but it omits many of the Nicene clauses, and evades our Lord's eternal existence, substituting for once He was not,' there was time when He was not.' It seems to have been considered sufficient for Gaul, as used now, for Italy as in the 5th Confession or Macrostich, and for Africa as in the creed of Philippopolis.
[3547] Little is known of Macedonius who was Bishop of Mopsuestia, or of Martyrius; and too much of Eudoxius. This Long Confession, or Macrostich, which follows, is remarkable; [see Prolegg, ch. ii. §6 (3), Gwatkin, p. 125 sq.]
[3548] 5th Confession or Macrostich, a.d. 344. [Published by the Council which deposed Stephen and elected Leontius bishop of Antioch.]
[3549] It is observable that here and in the next paragraph the only reasons they give against using the only two Arian formulas which they condemn is that they are not found in Scripture. Here, in their explanation of the ex ouk onton, or from nothing, they do but deny it with Eusebius's evasion, supr. p. 75, note 5.
[3550] They argue after the usual Arian manner, that the term Son' essentially implies beginning, and excludes the title co-unoriginate;' but see supr. §16, note 1, and p. 154, note 5.
[3551] [The four lines which follow are cited by Lightfoot, Ign. p. 91. ed. 2, as from de Syn. §3.]
[3552] Cf. §28, end.
[3553] ek prokopes, de Decr. §10, note 10.
[3554] These strong words, theon kata phusin teleion kai alethe are of a different character from any which have occurred in the Arian Confessions. They can only be explained away by considering them used in contrast to the Samosatene doctrine; so that perfect according to nature' and true,' will not be directly connected with God' so much as opposed to, by advance,' by adoption,' &c.
[3555] The use of the words endiathetos and prophorikos, mental and pronounced, to distinguish the two senses of logos, reason and word, came from the school of the Stoics, and is found in Philo, and was under certain limitations allowed in Catholic theology, Damasc. F. O. ii. 21. To use either absolutely and to the exclusion of the other would have involved some form of Sabellianism, or Arianism as the case might be; but each might correct the defective sense of either. S. Theophilus speaks of our Lord as at once endiathetos and prophorikos. ad Autol. ii. 10 and 22, S. Cyril as endiathetos, in Joann. p. 39. but see also Thesaur. p. 47. When the Fathers deny that our Lord is the prophorikos logos, they only mean that that title is not, even as far as its philosophical idea went, an adequate representative of Him, a word spoken being insubstantive, vid. Orat. ii. 35; Hil. de Syn. 46; Cyr. Catech. xi. 10; Damas. Ep. ii. p. 203; Cyril in Joann. p. 31; Iren. Hær. ii. 12. n. 5. Marcellus is said by Eusebius to have considered our Lord as first the one and then the other. Eccl. Theol. ii. 15.
[3556] This passage seems taken from Eusebius, and partly from Marcellus's own words. S. Cyril speaks of his doctrine in like terms. Catech. xv. 27.
[3557] i.e. Photinus. [A note illustrating the frequency of similar nicknames is omitted. On Photinus, see Prolegg. ch. ii. §3. ad fin.]
[3558] Cf. Euseb. contr. Marc. i. 2.
[3559] Cf. §27, notes.
[3560] autoprosopos and so Cyril Hier. Catech. xv. 14 and 17 (It means, not in personation'), and Philo contrasting divine appearances with those of Angels. Leg. Alleg. iii. 62. On the other hand, Theophilus on the text, The voice of the Lord God walking in the garden,' speaks of the Word, assuming the person, prosopon, of the Father,' and in the person of God,' ad Autol. ii. 22. the word not then having its theological sense.
[3561] homoion kata panta. Here again we have a strong Semi-Arian or almost Catholic formula introduced by the bye. Of course it admitted of evasion, but in its fulness it included essence.' [See above §8, note 1, and Introd.]
[3562] See vol. i. of this series, p. 295, note 1. In the reason which the Confession alleges against that heretical doctrine it is almost implied that the divine nature of the Son suffered on the Cross. They would naturally fall into this notion directly they gave up our Lord's absolute divinity. It would naturally follow that our Lord had no human soul, but that His pre-existent nature stood in the place of it:--also that His Mediatorship was no peculiarity of His Incarnation. vid. §23, note 2. §27, Anath. 12, note.
[3563] The Confession still insists upon the unscripturalness of the Catholic positions. On the main subject of this paragraph the thelesei gennethen, cf. Orat. iii. 59, &c. The doctrine of the monogenes has already partially come before us in de Decr. §§7-9. pp. 154 sq. Monos, not as the creatures. vid. p. 75, note 6.
[3564] The following passage is in its very form an interpolation or appendix, while its doctrine bears distinctive characters of something higher than the old absolute separation between the Father and the Son. [Eusebius of Cæs. had] considered Them as two ousiai, homoiai like, but not as homoousioi; his very explanation of the word teleios was independent' and distinct.' Language then, such as that in the text, was the nearest assignable approach to the reception of the homoousion; [and in fact, to] the doctrine of the perichoresis, of which supr. Orat. iii.
[3565] De Decr. §8.
[3566] De Decr. §26.
[3567] Sirmium [Mitrowitz on the Save] was a city of lower Pannonia, not far from the Danube, and was the great bulwark of the Illyrian provinces of the Empire. There Vetranio assumed the purple; and there Constantius was born. The frontier war caused it to be from time to time the Imperial residence. We hear of Constantius at Sirmium in the summer of 357. Ammian. xvi. 10. He also passed there the ensuing winter. ibid. xvii. 12. In October, 358, after the Sarmatian war, he entered Sirmium in triumph, and passed the winter there. xvii. 13 fin. and with a short absence in the spring, remained there till the end of May, 359.
[3568] [Cf. Prolegg. ch. ii. §7]. The leading person in this Council was Basil of Ancyra. Basil held a disputation with Photinus. Silvanus too of Tarsus now appears for the first time: while, according to Socrates, Mark of Arethusa drew up the Anathemas; the Confession used was the same as that sent to Constans, of the Council of Philippopolis, and the Macrostich.
[3569] S. Hilary treats their creed as a Catholic composition. de Syn. 39-63. Philastrius and Vigilius call the Council a meeting of holy bishops' and a Catholic Council,' de Hær. 65. in Eutych. v. init. What gave a character and weight to this Council was, that it met to set right a real evil, and was not a mere pretence with Arian objects.
[3570] 6th Confession, or 1st Sirmian, a.d. 351.
[3571] Eph. iii. 15.
[3572] Vid. p. 77, sqq.
[3573] This Anathema which has occurred in substance in the Macrostich, and again infr. Anath. 18 and 23. is a disclaimer of their in fact holding a supreme and a secondary God. In the Macrostich it is disclaimed upon a simple Arian basis. The Semi-Arians were more open to this imputation; Eusebius, as we have seen above, distinctly calling our Lord a second and another God. vid. p. 75, note 7. It will be observed that this Anathema contradicts the one which immediately follows, and the 11th, in which Christ is called God; except, on the one hand the Father and Son are One God, which was the Catholic doctrine, or, on the other, the Son is God in name only, which was the pure Arian or Anomoean.
[3574] The language of Catholics and heretics is very much the same on this point of the Son's ministration, with this essential difference of sense, that Catholic writers mean a ministration internal to the divine substance and an instrument connatural with the Father, and Arius meant an external and created medium of operation. Thus S. Clement calls our Lord the All-harmonious Instrument (organon) of God.' Protrept. p. 6; Eusebius an animated and living instrument (organon empsuchon), nay, rather divine and vivific of every substance and nature.' Demonstr. iv. 4. S. Basil, on the other hand, insists that the Arians reduced our Lord to an inanimate instrument,' organon apsuchon, though they called Him hupourgon teleiotaton, most perfect minister or underworker. adv. Eunom. ii. 21. Elsewhere he makes them say, the nature of a cause is one, and the nature of an instrument, organou, another;....foreign then in nature is the Son from the Father, since such is an instrument from a workman.' De Sp. S. n. 6 fin. vid. also n. 4 fin. 19, and 20. And so S. Gregory, The Father signifies, the Word accomplishes, not servilely, nor ignorantly, but with knowledge and sovereignty, and to speak more suitably, in a father's way, patrikos. Orat. 30. 11. Cf. S. Cyril, in Joann. p. 48. Explanations such as these secure for the Catholic writers some freedom in their modes of speaking, e.g. Athan. speaks of the Son, as enjoined and ministering,' prostattomenos, kai hupourgon, Orat. ii. §22. Thus S. Irenæus speaks of the Father being well-pleased and commanding, keleuontos, and the Son doing and framing. Hær. iv. 75. S. Basil too, in the same treatise in which are some of the foregoing protests, speaks of the Lord ordering,' prostassonta, and the word framing.' de Sp. S. n. 38, S. Cyril of Jerusalem, of Him who bids, entelletai, bidding to one who is present with Him,' Cat. xi. 16. vid. also hupereton te boule, Justin. Tryph. 126, and hupourgon, Theoph. ad Autol. ii. 10. hexupereton thelemati, Clem. Strom. vii. p. 832.
[3575] §26, n. 7.
[3576] Orat. iv. §13.
[3577] §26, n. 4.
[3578] §26 (2) n. (2).
[3579] The 12th and 13th Anathemas are intended to meet the charge which is alluded to §26 (6), note 2, that Arianism involved the doctrine that our Lord's divine nature suffered. [But see Gwatkin, p. 147.] Athanasius brings this accusation against them distinctly in his work against Apollinaris. contr. Apoll. i. 15. vid. also Ambros. de Fide, iii. 31. Salig in his de Eutychianismo ant. Eutychen takes notice of none of the passages in the text.
[3580] This Anathema is directed against Marcellus, who held the very opinion which it denounces, that the Almighty spake with Himself. Euseb. Eccles. Theol. ii. 15. The Jews said that Almighty God spoke to the Angels. Basil. Hexaem. fin. Others that the plural was used as authorities on earth use it in way of dignity. Theod. in Gen. 19. As to the Catholic Fathers, as is well known, they interpreted the text in the sense here given. See Petav.
[3581] This again, in spite of the wording. which is directed against the Catholic doctrine [or Marcellus?] is a Catholic interpretation. vid. [besides Philo de Somniis. i. 12.) Justin. Tryph. 56. and 126. Iren. Hær. iv. 10. n. 1. Tertull. de carn. Christ. 6. adv. Marc. iii. 9. adv. Prax. 16. Novat. de Trin. 18. Origen. in Gen. Hom. iv. 5. Cyprian. adv. Jud. ii. 5. Antioch. Syn. contr. Paul. apud Routh. Rell. t. 2. p. 469. Athan. Orat. ii. 13. Epiph. Ancor. 29 and 39. Hær. 71. 5. Chrysost. in Gen. Hom. 41. 7. These references are principally from Petavius; also from Dorscheus, who has written an elaborate commentary on this Council, &c. The Catholic doctrine is that the Son has condescended to become visible by means of material appearances. Augustine seems to have been the first who changed the mode of viewing the texts in question, and considered the divine appearance, not God the Son, but a created Angel. Vid. de Trin. ii. passim. Jansenius considers that he did so from a suggestion of S. Ambrose, that the hitherto received view had been the origo hæresis Arianæ, vid. his Augustinus, lib. prooem. c. 12. t. 2. p. 12.
[3582] This and the following Canon are Catholic in their main doctrine, and might be illustrated, if necessary, as the foregoing.
[3583] It was an expedient of the later Macedonians to deny that the Holy Spirit was God because it was not usual to call Him Ingenerate. They asked the Catholics whether the Holy Spirit was Ingenerate, generate, or created, for into these three they divided all things. vid. Basil in Sabell. et Ar. Hom. xxiv. 6. But, as the Arians had first made the alternative only between Ingenerate and created, and Athan. de Decr. §28. shews that generate is a third idea really distinct from one and the other, so S. Greg. Naz. adds. processive, ekporeuton, as an intermediate idea, contrasted with Ingenerate, yet distinct from generate. Orat. xxxi. 8. In other words, Ingenerate means, not only not generate, but not from any origin. vid. August. de Trin. xv. 26.
[3584] Supra (16).
[3585] §26 (7).
[3586] [The blasphemia' of Potamius, bishop of Lisbon; see Prolegg. ch. ii. §8 (2), Hil. de Syn. 11; Socr. ii. 30].
[3587] 7th Confession, or 2nd Sirmian, a.d. 357.
[3588] kephalaion. vid. de Decr. §31. p. 56; Orat. i. §34; Epiph. Hær. 73. 11.
[3589] It will be observed that this Confession; 1. by denying two Gods,' and declaring that the One God is the God of Christ, implies that our Lord is not God. 2. It says that the word substance,' and its compounds, ought not to be used as being unscriptural, mysterious, and leading to disturbance; 3. it holds that the Father is greater than the Son in honour, dignity, and godhead;' 4. that the Son is subordinate to the Father with all other things; 5. that it is the Father's characteristic to be invisible and impassible. They also say that our Lord, hominem suscepisse per quem compassus est, a word which Phoebadius condemns in his remarks on this Confession; where, by the way, he uses the word spiritus' in the sense of Hilary and the Ante-Nicene Fathers, in a connection which at once explains the obscure words of the supposititious Sardican Confession (vid. above, §9, note 3), and turns them into another evidence of this additional heresy involved in Arianism. Impassibilis Deus,'says Phoebadius, quia Deus Spiritus...non ergo passibilis Dei Spiritus, licet in homine suo passus.' Now the Sardican Confession is thought ignorant, as well as unauthoritative, e.g. by Natalis Alex. Sæc. 4. Diss. 29, because it imputes to Valens and Ursacius the following belief, which he supposes to be Patripassianism, but which exactly answers to this aspect and representation of Arianism: hoti ho logos kai hoti to pneuma kai estaurothe kai esphage kai apethanen kai aneste. Theod. H. E. ii. 6. p. 844.
[3590] Socrates [wrongly] connects this with the blasphemia.' Hist. ii. 30.
[3591] 9th Confession, at Seleucia a.d. 359.
[3592] The Semi-Arian majority in the Council had just before been confirming the Creed of the Dedication; hence this beginning. vid. supr. §11. The present creed, as if to propitiate the Semi-Arian majority, adds an anathema upon the Anomoean as well as on the Homoüsion and Homoeusion.
[3593] These two sections seem to have been inserted by Athan. after his Letter was finished, and contain later occurrences in the history of Ariminum, than were contemplated when he wrote supr. §11. vid. note 7 in loc. It should be added that at this Council Ulfilas the Apostle of the Goths, who had hitherto followed the Council of Nicæa, conformed, and thus became the means of spreading through his countrymen the Creed of Ariminum.
[3594] 10th Confession at Niké and Constantinople, a.d. 359, 360.
[3595] monos ek monou. This phrase may be considered a symptom of Anomoean influence; monos para, or hupo, monon being one special formula adopted by Eunomius, explanatory of monogenes, in accordance with the original Arian theory, mentioned de Decr. §7. supr. p. 154, that the Son was the one instrument of creation. Eunomius said that He alone was created by the Father alone; all other things being created by the Father, not alone, but through Him whom alone He had first created. vid. Cyril. Thesaur. 25. Basil contr. Eunom. ii. 21. Acacius ap. Epiph. Hær. 72. 7. p. 839.
[3596] Here as before, instead of speaking of Arianism, the Confession anathematizes all heresies, vid. supr. §23, n. 4.
[3597] 11th Confession at Antioch, a.d. 361. [Socr. ii. 45. The occasion was the installation of Euzoius in place of Meletius.]
[3598] Acacius, Eudoxius, and the rest, after ratifying at Constantinople the Creed framed at Niké and subscribed at Ariminum, appear next at Antioch a year and a half later, when they throw off the mask, and, avowing the Anomoean Creed, revert,' as S. Athanasius says, to their first doctrines,' i.e. those with which Arius started.
[3599] From ex ouk onton, out of nothing,' one of the original Arian positions concerning the Son. Theodoret says that they were also called Hexakionitæ, from the nature of their place of meeting, Hær. iv. 3. and Du Cange confirms it so far as to show that there was a place or quarter of Constantinople Hexakionium. [Cf. Soph. Lex. s.v.]
[3600] This passage shews that Athanasius did not insert these sections till two years after the composition of the work itself; for Constantine died a.d. 361.
[3601] Euzoius, now Arian Bishop of Antioch, was excommunicated with Arius in Egypt and at Nicæa, and was restored with him to the Church at the Council of Jerusalem.
[3602] hupekrinanto. Hypocrites is almost a title of the Arians (with an apparent allusion to 1 Tim. iv. 2. vid. Socr. i. p. 5, Orat. i. §8). __________________________________________________________________
Part III. On the Symbols Of the Essence' And Coessential.'
We must look at the sense not the wording. The offence excited is at the sense; meaning of the Symbols; the question of their not being in Scripture. Those who hesitate only at coessential,' not to be considered Arians. Reasons why coessential' is better than like-in-essence,' yet the latter may be interpreted in a good sense. Explanation of the rejection of coessential' by the Council which condemned the Samosatene; use of the word by Dionysius of Alexandria; parallel variation in the use of Unoriginate; quotation from Ignatius and another; reasons for using coessential;' objections to it; examination of the word itself; further documents of the Council of Ariminum.
33. But since they are thus minded both towards each other and towards those who preceded them, proceed we to ascertain from them what absurdity they have seen, or what they complain of in the received phrases, that they have proved disobedient to parents' (Rom. i. 30), and contend against an Ecumenical Council [3603] ? The phrases "of the essence" and "coessential,"' say they, do not please us, for they are an offence to some and a trouble to many.' This then is what they allege in their writings; but one may reasonably answer them thus: If the very words were by themselves a cause of offence to them, it must have followed, not that some only should have been offended, and many troubled, but that we also and all the rest should have been affected by them in the same way; but if on the contrary all men are well content with the words, and they who wrote them were no ordinary persons but men who came together from the whole world, and to these testify in addition the 400 Bishops and more who now met at Ariminum, does not this plainly prove against those who accuse the Council, that the terms are not in fault, but the perverseness of those who misinterpret them? How many men read divine Scripture wrongly, and as thus conceiving it, find fault with the Saints? such were the former Jews, who rejected the Lord, and the present Manichees who blaspheme the Law [3604] ; yet are not the Scriptures the cause to them, but their own evil humours. If then ye can shew the terms to be actually unsound, do so and let the proof proceed, and drop the pretence of offence created, lest you come into the condition of the Pharisees of old. For when they pretended offence at the Lord's teaching, He said, Every plant, which My heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up' (Matt. xv. 13). By which He shewed that not the words of the Father planted by Him were really an offence to them, but that they misinterpreted what was well said, and offended themselves. And in like manner they who at that time blamed the Epistles of the Apostle, impeached, not Paul, but their own deficient learning and distorted minds.
34. For answer, what is much to the purpose, Who are they whom you pretend are offended and troubled at these terms? of those who are religious towards Christ not one; on the contrary they defend and maintain them. But if they are Arians who thus feel, what wonder they should be distressed at words which destroy their heresy? for it is not the terms which offend them, but the proscription of their irreligion which afflicts them. Therefore let us have no more murmuring against the Fathers, nor pretence of this kind; or next [3605] you will be making complaints of the Lord's Cross, because it is to Jews an offence and to Gentiles foolishness,' as said the Apostle [3606] (1 Cor. i. 23, 24). But as the Cross is not faulty, for to us who believe it is Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God,' though Jews rave, so neither are the terms of the Fathers faulty, but profitable to those who honestly read, and subversive of all irreligion, though the Arians so often burst with rage as being condemned by them. Since then the pretence that persons are offended does not hold, tell us yourselves, why is it you are not pleased with the phrase of the essence' (this must first be enquired about), when you yourselves have written that the Son is generated from the Father? If when you name the Father, or use the word God,' you do not signify essence, or understand Him according to essence, who is that He is, but signify something else about Him [3607] , not to say inferior, then you should not have written that the Son was from the Father, but from what is about Him or in Him [3608] ; and so, shrinking from saying that God is truly Father, and making Him compound who is simple, in a material way, you will be authors of a newer blasphemy. And, with such ideas, you must needs consider the Word, and the title Son,' not as an essence but as a name [3609] only, and in consequence hold your own views as far as names only, and be talking, not of what you believe to exist, but of what you think not to exist.
35. But this is more like the crime of the Sadducees, and of those among the Greeks who had the name of Atheists. It follows that you will deny that even creation is the handy-work of God Himself that is; at least, if Father' and God' do not signify the very essence of Him that is, but something else, which you imagine: which is irreligious, and most shocking even to think of. But if, when we hear it said, I am that I am,' and, In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,' and, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord,' and, Thus saith the Lord Almighty' (Ex. iii. 14; Gen. i. 1; Deut. vi. 4), we understand nothing else than the very simple, and blessed, and incomprehensible essence itself of Him that is, (for though we be unable to master what He is, yet hearing Father,' and God,' and Almighty,' we understand nothing else to be meant than the very essence of Him that is [3610] ); and if ye too have said, that the Son is from God, it follows that you have said that He is from the essence' of the Father. And since the Scriptures precede you which say, that the Lord is Son of the Father, and the Father Himself precedes them, who says, This is My beloved Son' (Matt. iii. 17), and a son is no other than the offspring from his father, is it not evident that the Fathers have suitably said that the Son is from the Father's essence? considering that it is all one to say rightly from God,' and to say from the essence.' For all the creatures, though they be said to have come into being from God, yet are not from God as the Son is; for they are not offsprings in their nature, but works. Thus, it is said, in the beginning God,' not generated,' but made the heaven and the earth, and all that is in them' (Gen. i. 1). And not, who generates,' but who maketh His angels spirits, and His ministers a flame of fire' (Ps. civ. 4). And though the Apostle has said, One God, from whom all things' (1 Cor. viii. 6), yet he says not this, as reckoning the Son with other things; but, whereas some of the Greeks consider that the creation was held together by chance, and from the combination of atoms [3611] ; and spontaneously from elements of similar structure [3612] , and has no cause; and others consider that it came from a cause, but not through the Word; and each heretic has imagined things at his will, and tells his fables about the creation; on this account the Apostle was obliged to introduce from God,' that he might thereby certify the Maker, and shew that the universe was framed at His will. And accordingly he straightway proceeds: And one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom all things' (1 Cor. viii. 6), by way of excepting the Son from that all' (for what is called God's work, is all done through the Son; and it is not possible that the things framed should have one origin with their Framer), and by way of teaching that the phrase of God,' which occurs in the passage, has a different sense in the case of the works, from what it bears when used of the Son; for He is offspring, and they are works: and therefore He, the Son, is the proper offspring of His essence, but they are the handywork of his will.
36. The Council, then, comprehending this [3613] , and aware of the different senses of the same word, that none should suppose, that the Son was said to be from God' like the creation, wrote with greater explicitness, that the Son was from the essence.' For this betokens the true genuineness of the Son towards the Father; whereas, by the simple phrase from God,' only the Creator's will in framing is signified. If then they too had this meaning, when they wrote that the Word was from the Father,' they had nothing to complain of in the Council; but if they meant of God,' in the instance of the Son, as it is used of the creation, then as understanding it of the creation, they should not name the Son, or they will be manifestly mingling blasphemy with religiousness; but either they have to cease reckoning the Lord with the creatures, or at least to refrain from unworthy and unbecoming statements about the Son. For if He is a Son, He is not a creature; but if a creature, then not a Son. Since these are their views, perhaps they will be denying the Holy Laver also, because it is administered into Father and into Son and not into Creator and Creature, as they account it. But,' they say, all this is not written: and we reject these words as unscriptural.' But this, again, is an unblushing excuse in their mouths. For if they think everything must be rejected which is not written, wherefore, when the Arian party invent such a heap of phrases, not from Scripture [3614] , Out of nothing,' and the Son was not before His generation,' and Once He was not,' and He is alterable,' and the Father is ineffable and invisible to the Son,' and the Son knows not even His own essence;' and all that Arius has vomited in his light and irreligious Thalia, why do not they speak against these, but rather take their part, and on that account contend with their own Fathers? And, in what Scripture did they on their part find Unoriginate,' and the term essence,' and there are three subsistences,' and Christ is not very God,' and He is one of the hundred sheep,' and God's Wisdom is ingenerate and without beginning, but the created powers are many, of which Christ is one?' Or how, when in the so-called Dedication, Acacius and Eusebius and their fellows used expressions not in Scripture, and said that the First-born of the creation' was the exact Image of the essence and power and will and glory,' do they complain of the Fathers, for making mention of unscriptural expressions, and especially of essence? For they ought either to complain of themselves, or to find no fault with the Fathers.
37. Now, if certain others made excuses of the expressions of the Council, it might perhaps have been set down, either to ignorance or to caution. There is no question, for instance, about George of Cappadocia [3615] , who was expelled from Alexandria; a man, without character in years past, nor a Christian in any respect; but only pretending to the name to suit the times, and thinking religion to be a' means of gain' (1 Tim. vi. 5). And therefore there is no reason to complain of his making mistakes about the faith, considering he knows neither what he says, nor whereof he affirms; but, according to the text, goeth after all, as a bird' (1 Tim. i. 7; Prov. vii. 22, 23, not LXX.?) But when Acacius, and Eudoxius, and Patrophilus say this, do not they deserve the strongest reprobation? for while they write what is unscriptural themselves, and have accepted many times the term essence' as suitable, especially on the ground of the letter [3616] of Eusebius, they now blame their predecessors for using terms of the same kind. Nay, though they say themselves, that the Son is God from God,' and Living Word,' Exact Image of the Father's essence;' they accuse the Nicene Bishops of saying, that He who was begotten is of the essence' of Him who begat Him, and Coessential' with Him. But what marvel if they conflict with their predecessors and their own Fathers, when they are inconsistent with themselves, and fall foul of each other? For after publishing, in the so-called Dedication at Antioch, that the Son is exact Image of the Father's essence, and swearing that so they held and anathematizing those who held otherwise, nay, in Isauria, writing down, We do not decline the authentic faith published in the Dedication at Antioch [3617] ,' where the term essence' was introduced, as if forgetting all this, shortly after, in the same Isauria, they put into writing the very contrary, saying, We reject the words coessential,' and like-in-essence,' as alien to the Scriptures, and abolish the term essence,' as not contained therein [3618] .
38. Can we then any more account such men Christians? or what sort of faith have they who stand neither to word nor writing, but alter and change every thing according to the times? For if, O Acacius and Eudoxius, you do not decline the faith published at the Dedication,' and in it is written that the Son is Exact Image of God's essence,' why is it ye write in Isauria, we reject the Like in essence?' for if the Son is not like the Father according to essence, how is He exact image of the essence?' But if you are dissatisfied at having written Exact Image of the essence,' how is it that ye anathematize those who say that the Son is Unlike?' for if He be not according to essence like, He is surely unlike: and the Unlike cannot be an Image. And if so, then it does not hold that he that hath seen the Son, hath seen the Father' (John xiv. 9), there being then the greatest possible difference between Them, or rather the One being wholly Unlike the Other. And Unlike cannot possibly be called Like. By what artifice then do you call Unlike like, and consider Like to be unlike, and pretend to say that the Son is the Father's Image? for if the Son be not like the Father in essence, something is wanting to the Image, and it is not a complete Image, nor a perfect radiance [3619] . How then read you, In Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily?' and, from His fulness all we received' (Coloss. ii. 9; John i. 16)? how is it that you expel the Arian Aetius as an heretic, though ye say the same with him? for he is your companion, O Acacius, and he became Eudoxius's master in this so great irreligion [3620] ; which was the reason why Leontius the Bishop made him deacon, that using the name of the diaconate as sheep's clothing, he might be able with impunity to pour forth the words of blasphemy.
39. What then has persuaded you to contradict each other, and to procure to yourselves so great a disgrace? You cannot give any good account of it; this supposition only remains, that all you do is but outward profession and pretence, to secure the patronage of Constantius and the gain from thence accruing. And ye make nothing of accusing the Fathers, and ye complain outright of the expressions as being unscriptural; and, as it is written, opened your legs to every one that passed by' (Ez. xvi. 25); so as to change as often as they wish, in whose pay and keep you are. Yet, though a man use terms not in Scripture, it makes no difference so that his meaning be religious [3621] . But the heretic, though he use scriptural terms, yet, as being equally dangerous and depraved, shall be asked in the words of the Spirit, Why dost thou preach My laws, and takest My covenant in thy mouth' (Ps. l. 16)? Thus whereas the devil, though speaking from the Scriptures, is silenced by the Saviour, the blessed Paul, though he speaks from profane writers, The Cretans are always liars,' and, For we are His offspring,' and, Evil communications corrupt good manners,' yet has a religious meaning, as being holy,--is doctor of the nations, in faith and verity,' as having the mind of Christ' (Tit. i. 12; Acts xvii. 28; 1 Cor. xv. 33; 1 Tim. ii. 7; 1 Cor. ii. 16), and what he speaks, he utters religiously. What then is there even plausible, in the Arian terms, in which the caterpillar' (Joel ii. 25) and the locust' are preferred to the Saviour, and He is reviled with Once Thou wast not,' and Thou wast created,' and Thou art foreign to God in essence,' and, in a word, no irreverence is unused among them? But what did the Fathers omit in the way of reverence? or rather, have they not a lofty view and a Christ-loving religiousness? And yet these, they wrote, We reject;' while those others they endure in their insults towards the Lord, and betray to all men, that for no other cause do they resist that great Council but that it condemned the Arian heresy. For it is on this account again that they speak against the term Coessential, about which they also entertain wrong sentiments. For if their faith was right, and they confessed the Father as truly Father, believed the Son to be genuine Son, and by nature true Word and Wisdom of the Father, and as to saying that the Son is from God,' if they did not use the words of Him, as of themselves, but understood Him to be the proper offspring of the Father's essence, as the radiance is from light, they would not every one of them have found fault with the Fathers; but would have been confident that the Council wrote suitably; and that this is the right faith concerning our Lord Jesus Christ.
40. But,' say they, the sense of such expressions is obscure to us;' for this is another of their pretences,--We reject them [3622] ,' say they, because we cannot master their meaning.' But if they were true in this profession, instead of saying, We reject them,' they should ask instruction from the well informed; else ought they to reject whatever they cannot understand in divine Scripture, and to find fault with the writers. But this were the venture of heretics rather than of us Christians; for what we do not understand in the sacred oracles, instead of rejecting, we seek from persons to whom the Lord has revealed it, and from them we ask for instruction. But since they thus make a pretence of the obscurity of such expressions, let them at least confess what is annexed to the Creed, and anathematize those who hold that the Son is from nothing,' and He was not before His generation,' and the Word of God is a creature and work,' and He is alterable by nature,' and from another subsistence;' and in a word let them anathematize the Arian heresy, which has originated such irreligion. Nor let them say any more, We reject the terms,' but that we do not yet understand them;' by way of having some reason to shew for declining them. But I know well, and am sure, and they know it too, that if they could confess all this and anathematize the Arian heresy, they would no longer deny those terms of the Council. For on this account it was that the Fathers, after declaring that the Son was begotten from the Father's essence, and Co-essential with Him, thereupon added, But those who say'--what has just been quoted, the symbols of the Arian heresy,--we anathematize;' I mean, in order to shew that the statements are parallel, and that the terms in the Creed imply the disclaimers subjoined, and that all who confess the terms, will certainly understand the disclaimers. But those who both dissent from the latter and impugn the former, such men are proved on every side to be foes of Christ.
41. Those who deny the Council altogether, are sufficiently exposed by these brief remarks; those, however, who accept everything else that was defined at Nicæa, and doubt only about the Coessential, must not be treated as enemies; nor do we here attack them as Ario-maniacs, nor as opponents of the Fathers, but we discuss the matter with them as brothers with brothers [3623] , who mean what we mean, and dispute only about the word. For, confessing that the Son is from the essence of the Father, and not from other subsistence, and that He is not a creature nor work, but His genuine and natural offspring, and that He is eternally with the Father as being His Word and Wisdom, they are not far from accepting even the phrase, Coessential.' Now such is Basil, who wrote from Ancyra concerning the faith [3624] . For only to say like according to essence,' is very far from signifying of the essence,' by which, rather, as they say themselves, the genuineness of the Son to the Father is signified. Thus tin is only like to silver, a wolf to a dog, and gilt brass to the true metal; but tin is not from silver, nor could a wolf be accounted the offspring of a dog. [3625] But since they say that He is of the essence' and Like-in-essence,' what do they signify by these but Coessential [3626] ?' For, while to say only Like-in-essence,' does not necessarily convey of the essence,' on the contrary, to say Coessential,' is to signify the meaning of both terms, Like-in-essence,' and of the essence.' And accordingly they themselves in controversy with those who say that the Word is a creature, instead of allowing Him to be genuine Son, have taken their proofs against them from human illustrations of son and father [3627] , with this exception that God is not as man, nor the generation of the Son as issue of man, but such as may be ascribed to God, and is fit for us to think. Thus they have called the Father the Fount of Wisdom and Life, and the Son the Radiance of the Eternal Light, and the Offspring from the Fountain, as He says, I am the Life,' and, I Wisdom dwell with Prudence' (John xiv. 6; Prov. viii. 12). But the Radiance from the Light, and Offspring from Fountain, and Son from Father, how can these be so fitly expressed as by Coessential?' And is there any cause of fear, lest, because the offspring from men are coessential, the Son, by being called Coessential, be Himself considered as a human offspring too? perish the thought! not so; but the explanation is easy. For the Son is the Father's Word and Wisdom; whence we learn the impassibility and indivisibility of such a generation from the Father [3628] . For not even man's word is part of him, nor proceeds from him according to passion [3629] ; much less God's Word; whom the Father has declared to be His own Son, lest, on the other hand, if we merely heard of Word,' we should suppose Him, such as is the word of man, impersonal; but that, hearing that He is Son, we may acknowledge Him to be living Word and substantive Wisdom.
42. Accordingly, as in saying offspring,' we have no human thoughts, and, though we know God to be a Father, we entertain no material ideas concerning Him, but while we listen to these illustrations and terms, we think suitably of God, for He is not as man, so in like manner, when we hear of coessential,' we ought to transcend all sense, and, according to the Proverb, understand by the understanding what is set before us' (Prov. xxiii. 1); so as to know, that not by will, but in truth, is He genuine from the Father, as Life from Fountain, and Radiance from Light. Else [3630] why should we understand offspring' and son,' in no corporeal way, while we conceive of coessential' as after the manner of bodies? especially since these terms are not here used about different subjects, but of whom offspring' is predicated, of Him is coessential' also. And it is but consistent to attach the same sense to both expressions as applied to the Saviour, and not to interpret offspring' in a good sense, and coessential' otherwise; since to be consistent, ye who are thus minded and who say that the Son is Word and Wisdom of the Father, should entertain a different view of these terms also, and understand Word in another sense, and Wisdom in yet another. But, as this would be absurd (for the Son is the Father's Word and Wisdom, and the Offspring from the Father is one and proper to His essence), so the sense of Offspring' and Coessential' is one, and whoso considers the Son an offspring, rightly considers Him also as coessential.'
43. This is sufficient to shew that the meaning of the beloved ones [3631] is not foreign nor far from the Coessential.' But since, as they allege [3632] (for I have not the Epistle in question), the Bishops who condemned the Samosatene [3633] have said in writing that the Son is not coessential with the Father, and so it comes to pass that they, for caution and honour towards those who have so said, thus feel about that expression, it will be to the purpose cautiously to argue with them this point also. Certainly it is unbecoming to make the one conflict with the others; for all are fathers; nor is it religious to settle, that these have spoken well, and those ill; for all of them fell asleep in Christ. Nor is it right to be disputatious, and to compare the respective numbers of those who met in the Councils, lest the three hundred seem to throw the lesser into the shade; nor to compare the dates, lest those who preceded seem to eclipse those that came after. For all, I say, are fathers; and yet not even the three hundred laid down nothing new, nor was it in any self-confidence that they became champions of words not in Scripture, but they fell back upon fathers, as did the others, and used their words. For there have been two of the name of Dionysius, much older than the seventy who deposed the Samosatene, of whom one was of Rome, and the other of Alexandria. But a charge had been laid by some persons against the Bishop of Alexandria before the Bishop of Rome, as if he had said that the Son was made, and not coessential with the Father. And, the synod at Rome being indignant, the Bishop of Rome expressed their united sentiments in a letter to his namesake. And so the latter, in defence, wrote a book with the title of Refutation and Defence;' and thus he writes to the other:
44. And [3634] I wrote in another Letter a refutation of the false charge which they bring against me, that I deny that Christ is coessential with God. For though I say that I have not found or read this term anywhere in holy Scripture, yet my remarks which follow, and which they have not noticed, are not inconsistent with that belief. For I instanced a human production, which is evidently homogeneous, and I observed that undeniably fathers differed from their children, only in not being the same individuals; otherwise there could be neither parents nor children. And my Letter, as I said before, owing to present circumstances, I am unable to produce, or I would have sent you the very words I used, or rather a copy of it all; which, if I have an opportunity, I will do still. But I am sure from recollection, that I adduced many parallels of things kindred with each other, for instance, that a plant grown from seed or from root, was other than that from which it sprang, and yet altogether one in nature with it; and that a stream flowing from a fountain, changed its appearance and its name, for that neither the fountain was called stream, nor the stream fountain, but both existed, and that the fountain was as it were father, but the stream was what was generated from the fountain.
45. Thus the Bishop. If then any one finds fault with those who met at Nicæa, as if they contradicted the decisions of their predecessors, he might reasonably find fault also with the seventy, because they did not keep to the statements of their own predecessors; but such were the Dionysii and the Bishops assembled on that occasion at Rome. But neither these nor those is it pious to blame; for all were charged with the embassy of Christ, and all have given diligence against the heretics, and the one party condemned the Samosatene, while the other condemned the Arian heresy. And rightly have both these and those written, and suitably to the matter in hand. And as the blessed Apostle, writing to the Romans, said, The Law is spiritual, the Law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good' (Rom. vii. 14, 12); and soon after, What the Law could not do, in that it was weak' (ib. viii. 3), but wrote to the Hebrews, The Law has made no one perfect' (Heb. vii. 19); and to the Galatians, By the Law no one is justified' (Gal. iii. 11), but to Timothy, The Law is good, if a man use it lawfully' (1 Tim. i. 8); and no one would accuse the Saint of inconsistency and variation in writing, but rather would admire how suitably he wrote to each, to teach the Romans and the others to turn from the letter to the spirit, but to instruct the Hebrews and Galatians to place their hopes, not in the Law, but in the Lord who had given the Law;--so, if the Fathers of the two Councils made different mention of the Coessential, we ought not in any respect to differ from them, but to investigate their meaning, and this will fully show us the agreement of both the Councils. For they who deposed the Samosatene took Coessential in a bodily sense, because Paul had attempted sophistry and said, Unless Christ has of man become God, it follows that He is Coessential with the Father; and if so, of necessity there are three essences, one the previous essence, and the other two from it;' and therefore guarding against this they said with good reason, that Christ was not Coessential [3635] . For the Son is not related to the Father as he imagined. But the Bishops who anathematized the Arian heresy, understanding Paul's craft, and reflecting that the word Coessential' has not this meaning when used of things immaterial [3636] , and especially of God, and acknowledging that the Word was not a creature, but an offspring from the essence, and that the Father's essence was the origin and root and fountain of the Son, and that he was of very truth His Father's likeness, and not of different nature, as we are, and separate from the Father, but that, as being from Him, He exists as Son indivisible, as radiance is with respect to Light, and knowing too the illustrations used in Dionysius's case, the fountain,' and the defence of Coessential' and before this the Saviour's saying, symbolical of unity [3637] , I and the Father are one' and he that hath seen Me hath seen the Father' (John x. 30; xiv. 9), on these grounds reasonably asserted on their part, that the Son was Coessential. And as, according to a former remark, no one would blame the Apostle, if he wrote to the Romans about the Law in one way, and to the Hebrews in another; in like manner, neither would the present Bishops find fault with the ancient, having regard to their interpretation, nor again in view of theirs and of the need of their so writing about the Lord, would the ancient censure their successors. Yes surely, each Council has a sufficient reason for its own language; for since the Samosatene held that the Son was not before Mary, but received from her the origin of His being, therefore those who then met deposed him and pronounced him heretic; but concerning the Son's Godhead writing in simplicity, they arrived not at accuracy concerning the Coessential, but, as they understood the word, so spoke they about it. For they directed all their thoughts to destroy the device of the Samosatene, and to shew that the Son was before all things, and that, instead of becoming God from man, He, being God, had put on a servant's form, and being Word, had become flesh, as John says (Phil. ii. 7; Joh. i. 14). This is how they dealt with the blasphemies of Paul; but when Eusebius, Arius, and their fellows said that though the Son was before time, yet was He made and one of the creatures, and as to the phrase from God,' they did not believe it in the sense of His being genuine Son from Father, but maintained it as it is said of the creatures, and as to the oneness [3638] of likeness [3639] between the Son and the Father, did not confess that the Son is like the Father according to essence, or according to nature as a son resembles his father, but because of Their agreement of doctrines and of teaching [3640] ; nay, when they drew a line and an utter distinction between the Son's essence and the Father, ascribing to Him an origin of being, other than the Father, and degrading Him to the creatures, on this account the Bishops assembled at Nicæa, with a view to the craft of the parties so thinking, and as bringing together the sense from the Scriptures, cleared up the point, by affirming the Coessential;' that both the true genuineness of the Son might thereby be known, and that to things originate might be ascribed nothing in common with Him. For the precision of this phrase detects their pretence, whenever they use the phrase from God,' and gets rid of all the subtleties with which they seduce the simple. For whereas they contrive to put a sophistical construction on all other words at their will, this phrase only, as detecting their heresy, do they dread; which the Fathers set down as a bulwark [3641] against their irreligious notions one and all.
46. Let then all contention cease, nor let us any longer conflict, though the Councils have differently taken the phrase Coessential,' for we have already assigned a sufficient defence of them; and to it the following may be added:--We have not derived the word Unoriginate' from Scripture, (for no where does Scripture call God Unoriginate,) yet since it has many authorities in its favour, I was curious about the term, and found that it too has different senses [3642] . Some, for instance, call what is, but is neither generated, nor has any personal cause at all, unoriginate; and others, the uncreate. As then a person, having in view the former of these senses, viz. that which has no personal cause,' might say that the Son was not unoriginate, yet would not blame any one whom he perceived to have in view the other meaning, not a work or creature but an eternal offspring,' and to affirm accordingly that the Son was unoriginate, (for both speak suitably with a view to their own object); so, even granting that the Fathers have spoken variously concerning the Coessential, let us not dispute about it, but take what they deliver to us in a religious way, when especially their anxiety was directed in behalf of religion.
47. Ignatius, for instance, who was appointed Bishop in Antioch after the Apostles, and became a martyr of Christ, writes concerning the Lord thus: There is one physician, fleshly and spiritual, originate and unoriginate [3643] ,' God in man, true life in death, both from Mary and from God;' whereas some teachers who followed Ignatius, write in their turn, One is the Unoriginate, the Father, and one the genuine Son from Him, true offspring, Word and Wisdom of the Father [3644] .' If therefore we have hostile feelings towards these writers, then have we right to quarrel with the Councils; but if, knowing their faith in Christ, we are persuaded that the blessed Ignatius was right in writing that Christ was originate on account of the flesh (for He became flesh), yet unoriginate, because He is not in the number of things made and originated, but Son from Father; and if we are aware too that those who have said that the Unoriginate is One, meaning the Father, did not mean to lay down that the Word was originated and made, but that the Father has no personal cause, but rather is Himself Father of Wisdom, and in Wisdom has made all things that are originated; why do we not combine all our Fathers in religious belief, those who deposed the Samosatene as well as those who proscribed the Arian heresy, instead of making distinctions between them and refusing to entertain a right opinion of them? I repeat, that those, in view of the sophistical explanation of the Samosatene, wrote, He is not coessential [3645] ;' and these, with an apposite meaning, said that He was. For myself, I have written these brief remarks, from my feeling towards persons who were religious to Christ-ward; but were it possible to come by the Epistle which we are told that the former wrote, I consider we should find further grounds for the aforesaid proceeding of those blessed men. For it is right and meet thus to feel, and to maintain a good conscience toward the Fathers, if we be not spurious children, but have received the traditions from them, and the lessons of religion at their hands.
48. Such then, as we confess and believe, being the sense of the Fathers, proceed we even in their company to examine once more the matter, calmly and with a kindly sympathy, with reference to what has been said before, viz. whether the Bishops collected at Nicæa do not really prove to have thought aright. For if the Word be a work and foreign to the Father's essence, so that He is separated from the Father by the difference of nature, He cannot be one in essence with Him, but rather He is homogeneous by nature with the works, though He surpass them in grace [3646] . On the other hand, if we confess that He is not a work but the genuine offspring of the Father's essence, it would follow that He is inseparable from the Father, being connatural, because He is begotten from Him. And being such, good reason He should be called Coessential. Next, if the Son be not such from participation, but is in His essence the Father's Word and Wisdom, and this essence is the offspring of the Father's essence [3647] , and its likeness as the radiance is of the light, and the Son says, I and the Father are One,' and, he that hath seen Me, hath seen the Father' (John x. 30; xiv. 9), how must we understand these words? or how shall we so explain them as to preserve the oneness of the Father and the Son? Now as to its consisting in agreement [3648] of doctrines, and in the Son's not disagreeing with the Father, as the Arians say, such an interpretation is a sorry one; for both the Saints, and still more Angels and Archangels, have such an agreement with God, and there is no disagreement among them. For he who disagreed, the devil, was beheld to fall from the heavens, as the Lord said. Therefore if by reason of agreement the Father and the Son are one, there would be things originated which had this agreement with God, and each of these might say, I and the Father are One.' But if this be absurd, and so it truly is, it follows of necessity that we must conceive of Son's and Father's oneness in the way of essence. For things originate, though they have an agreement with their Maker, yet possess it only by influence [3649] , and by participation, and through the mind; the transgression of which forfeits heaven. But the Son, being an offspring from the essence, is one by essence, Himself and the Father that begat Him.
49. This is why He has equality with the Father by titles expressive of unity [3650] , and what is said of the Father, is said in Scripture of the Son also, all but His being called Father [3651] . For the Son Himself said, All things that the Father hath are Mine' (John xvi. 15); and He says to the Father, All Mine are Thine, and Thine are Mine' (John xvii. 10),--as for instance [3652] , the name God; for the Word was God;'--Almighty, Thus saith He that is, and that was, and that is to come, the Almighty' (John i. 1; Apoc. i. 8):--the being Light, I am,' He says, the Light' (John viii. 12):--the Operative Cause, All things were made by Him,' and, whatsoever I see the Father do, I do also' (John i. 3; v. 19):--the being Everlasting, His eternal power and godhead,' and, In the beginning was the Word,' and, He was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world;'--the being Lord, for, The Lord rained fire and brimstone from the Lord,' and the Father says, I am the Lord,' and, Thus saith the Lord, the Almighty God;' and of the Son Paul speaks thus, One Lord Jesus Christ, through whom all things' (Rom. i. 20; John i. 1, 9; Gen. xix. 24; Isa. xlv. 5; Am. v. 16; 1 Cor. viii. 6). And on the Father Angels wait, and again the Son too is worshipped by them, And let all the Angels of God worship Him;' and He is said to be Lord of Angels, for the Angels ministered unto Him,' and the Son of Man shall send His Angels.' The being honoured as the Father, for that they may honour the Son,' He says, as they honour the Father;'--being equal to God, He counted it not a prize to be equal with God' (Heb. i. 6; Matt. iv. 11; xxiv. 31; John v. 23; Phil. ii. 6):-- the being Truth from the True, and Life from the Living, as being truly from the Fountain, even the Father;--the quickening and raising the dead as the Father, for so it is written in the Gospel. And of the Father it is written, The Lord thy God is One Lord,' and, The God of gods, the Lord, hath spoken, and hath called the earth;' and of the Son, The Lord God hath shined upon us,' and, The God of gods shall be seen in Sion.' And again of God, Isaiah says, Who is a God like unto Thee, taking away iniquities and passing over unrighteousness?' (Deut. vi. 4; Ps. l. 1; cxviii. 27; lxxxiv. 7, LXX.; Mic. vii. 18). But the Son said to whom He would, Thy sins are forgiven thee;' for instance, when, on the Jews murmuring, He manifested the remission by His act, saying to the paralytic, Rise, take up thy bed, and go unto thy house.' And of God Paul says, To the King eternal;' and again of the Son, David in the Psalm, Lift up your gates, O ye rulers, and be ye lift up ye everlasting doors, and the King of glory shall come in.' And Daniel heard it said, His Kingdom is an everlasting Kingdom, and His Kingdom shall not be destroyed' (Matt. ix. 5; Mark ii. 11; 1 Tim. i. 17; Ps. xxiv. 7; Dan. iv. 3; vii. 14). And in a word, all that you find said of the Father, so much will you find said of the Son, all but His being Father, as has been said.
50. If then any think of other beginning, and other Father, considering the equality of these attributes, it is a mad thought. But if, since the Son is from the Father, all that is the Father's is the Son's as in an image and Expression, let it be considered dispassionately, whether an essence foreign from the Father's essence admit of such attributes; and whether such a one be other in nature and alien in essence, and not coessential with the Father. For we must take reverent heed, lest transferring what is proper to the Father to what is unlike Him in essence, and expressing the Father's godhead by what is unlike in kind and alien in essence, we introduce another essence foreign to Him, yet capable of the properties of the first essence [3653] , and lest we be silenced by God Himself, saying, My glory I will not give to another,' and be discovered worshipping this alien God, and be accounted such as were the Jews of that day, who said, Wherefore dost Thou, being a man, make Thyself God?' referring, the while, to another source the things of the Spirit, and blasphemously saying, He casteth out devils through Beelzebub' (Isa. xlii. 8; John x. 33; Luke xi. 15). But if this is shocking, plainly the Son is not unlike in essence, but coessential with the Father; for if what the Father has is by nature the Son's, and the Son Himself is from the Father, and because of this oneness of godhead and of nature He and the Father are one, and He that hath seen the Son hath seen the Father, reasonably is He called by the Fathers Coessential;' for to what is other in essence, it belongs not to possess such prerogatives.
51. And again, if, as we have said before, the Son is not such by participation, but, while all things originated have by participation the grace of God, He is the Father's Wisdom and Word of which all things partake [3654] , it follows that He, being the deifying and enlightening power of the Father, in which all things are deified and quickened, is not alien in essence from the Father, but coessential. For by partaking of Him, we partake of the Father; because that the Word is the Father's own. Whence, if He was Himself too from participation, and not from the Father His essential Godhead and Image, He would not deify [3655] , being deified Himself. For it is not possible that He, who merely possesses from participation, should impart of that partaking to others, since what He has is not His own, but the Giver's; and what He has received, is barely the grace sufficient for Himself. However, let us fairly examine the reason why some, as is said, decline the Coessential,' whether it does not rather shew that the Son is coessential with the Father. They say then, as you have written, that it is not right to say that the Son is coessential with the Father, because he who speaks of coessential' speaks of three, one essence pre-existing, and that those who are generated from it are coessential: and they add, If then the Son be coessential with the Father, then an essence must be previously supposed, from which they have been generated; and that the One is not Father and the Other Son, but they are brothers together. [3656] ' As to all this, though it be a Greek interpretation, and what comes from them does not bind us [3657] , still let us see whether those things which are called coessential and are collateral, as derived from one essence presupposed, are coessential with each other, or with the essence from which they are generated. For if only with each other, then are they other in essence and unlike, when referred to that essence which generated them; for other in essence is opposed to coessential; but if each be coessential with the essence which generated them, it is thereby confessed that what is generated from any thing, is coessential with that which generated it; and there is no need of seeking for three essences, but merely to seek whether it be true that this is from that [3658] . For should it happen that there were not two brothers, but that only one had come of that essence, he that was generated would not be called alien in essence, merely because there was no other from the essence than he; but though alone, he must be coessential with him that begat him. For what shall we say about Jephtha's daughter; because she was only-begotten, and he had not,' says Scripture, other child' (Jud. xi. 34); and again, concerning the widow's son, whom the Lord raised from the dead, because he too had no brother, but was only-begotten, was on that account neither of these coessential with him that begat? Surely they were, for they were children, and this is a property of children with reference to their parents. And in like manner also, when the Fathers said that the Son of God was from His essence, reasonably have they spoken of Him as coessential. For the like property has the radiance compared with the light. Else it follows that not even the creation came out of nothing. For whereas men beget with passion [3659] , so again they work upon an existing subject matter, and otherwise cannot make. But if we do not understand creation in a human way [3660] , when we attribute it to God, much less seemly is it to understand generation in a human way, or to give a corporeal sense to Coessential; instead of receding from things originate, casting away human images, nay, all things sensible, and ascending [3661] to the Father [3662] , lest we rob the Father of the Son in ignorance, and rank Him among His own creatures.
52. Further, if, in confessing Father and Son, we spoke of two beginnings or two Gods as Marcion and Valentinus [3663] , or said that the Son had any other mode of godhead, and was not the Image and Expression of the Father, as being by nature born from Him, then He might be considered unlike; for such essences are altogether unlike each other. But if we acknowledge that the Father's godhead is one and sole, and that of Him the Son is the Word and Wisdom; and, as thus believing, are far from speaking of two Gods, but understand the oneness of the Son with the Father to be, not in likeness of their teaching, but according to essence and in truth, and hence speak not of two Gods but of one God; there being but one Form [3664] of Godhead, as the Light is one and the Radiance; (for this was seen by the Patriarch Jacob, as Scripture says, The sun rose upon him when the Form of God passed by,' Gen. xxxii. 31, LXX.); and beholding this, and understanding of whom He was Son and Image, the holy Prophets say, The Word of the Lord came to me;' and recognising the Father, who was beheld and revealed in Him, they made bold to say, The God of our fathers hath appeared unto me, the God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob' (Exod. iii. 16); this being so, wherefore scruple we to call Him coessential who is one with the Father, and appears as doth the Father, according to likeness and oneness of godhead? For if, as has been many times said, He has it not to be proper to the Father's essence, nor to resemble, as a Son, we may well scruple: but if this be the illuminating and creative Power, specially proper to the Father, without Whom He neither frames nor is known (for all things consist through Him and in Him); wherefore, perceiving the fact, do we decline to use the phrase conveying it? For what is it to be thus connatural with the Father, but to be one in essence with Him? for God attached not to Him the Son from without [3665] , as needing a servant; nor are the works on a level with the Creator, and honoured as He is, or to be thought one with the Father. Or let a man venture to make the distinction, that the sun and the radiance are two lights, or different essences; or to say that the radiance accrued to it over and above, and is not a simple and pure offspring from the sun; such, that sun and radiance are two, but the light one, because the radiance is an offspring from the Sun. But, whereas not more divisible, nay less divisible is the nature [3666] of the Son towards the Father, and the godhead not accruing to the Son, but the Father's godhead being in the Son, so that he that hath seen the Son hath seen the Father in Him; wherefore should not such a one be called Coessential?
53. Even this is sufficient to dissuade you from blaming those who have said that the Son was coessential with the Father, and yet let us examine the very term Coessential,' in itself, by way of seeing whether we ought to use it at all, and whether it be a proper term, and is suitable to apply to the Son. For you know yourselves, and no one can dispute it, that Like is not predicated of essence, but of habits, and qualities; for in the case of essences we speak, not of likeness, but of identity. Man, for instance, is said to be like man, not in essence, but according to habit and character; for in essence men are of one nature. And again, man is not said to be unlike dog, but to be of different nature. Accordingly while the former are of one nature and coessential, the latter are different in both. Therefore, in speaking of Like according to essence, we mean like by participation; (for Likeness is a quality, which may attach to essence), and this would be proper to creatures for they, by partaking, are made like to God. For when He shall appear,' says Scripture, we shall be like Him' (1 John iii. 2), like, that is, not in essence but in sonship, which we shall partake from Him. If then ye speak of the Son as being by participation, then indeed call Him Like-in-essence; but thus spoken of, He is not Truth, nor Light at all, nor in nature God. For things which are from participation, are called like, not in reality, but from resemblance to reality; so that they may swerve, or be taken from those who share them. And this, again, is proper to creatures and works. Therefore, if this be out of place, He must be, not by participation, but in nature and truth Son, Light, Wisdom, God; and being by nature, and not by sharing, He would properly be called, not Like-in-essence, but Coessential. But what would not be asserted, even in the case of others (for the Like has been shewn to be inapplicable to essences), is it not folly, not to say violence, to put forward in the case of the Son, instead of the Coessential?'
54. This is why the Nicene Council was correct in writing, what it was becoming to say, that the Son, begotten from the Father's essence, is coessential with Him. And if we too have been taught the same thing, let us not fight with shadows, especially as knowing, that they who have so defined, have made this confession of faith, not to misrepresent the truth, but as vindicating the truth and religiousness towards Christ, and also as destroying the blasphemies against Him of the Ario-maniacs. For this must be considered and noted carefully, that, in using unlike-in-essence, and other-in-essence, we signify not the true Son, but some one of the creatures, and an introduced and adopted Son, which pleases the heretics; but when we speak uncontroversially of the Coessential, we signify a genuine Son born of the Father; though at this Christ's enemies often burst with rage [3667] . What then I have learned myself, and have heard men of judgment say, I have written in few words; but do you, remaining on the foundation of the Apostles, and holding fast the traditions of the Fathers, pray that now at length all strife and rivalry may cease, and the futile questions of the heretics may be condemned, and all logomachy [3668] ; and the guilty and murderous heresy of the Arians may disappear, and the truth may shine again in the hearts of all, so that all every where may say the same thing' (1 Cor. i. 10), and think the same thing [3669] , and that, no Arian contumelies remaining, it may be said and confessed in every Church, One Lord, one faith, one baptism' (Eph. iv. 5), in Christ Jesus our Lord, through whom to the Father be the glory and the strength, unto ages of ages. Amen.
Postscript.
55. After I had written my account of the Councils [3670] , I had information that the most irreligious [3671] Constantius had sent Letters to the Bishops remaining in Ariminum; and I have taken pains to get copies of them from true brethren and to send them to you, and also what the Bishops answered; that you may know the irreligious craft of the Emperor, and the firm and unswerving purpose of the Bishops towards the truth.
Interpretation of the Letter [3672] .
Constantius, Victorious and Triumphant, Augustus, to all Bishops who are assembled at Ariminum.
That the divine and adorable Law is our chief care, your excellencies are not ignorant; but as yet we have been unable to receive the twenty Bishops sent by your wisdom, and charged with the legation from you, for we are pressed by a necessary expedition against the Barbarians; and as ye know, it beseems to have the soul clear from every care, when one handles the matters of the Divine Law. Therefore we have ordered the Bishops to await our return at Adrianople; that, when all public affairs are well arranged, then at length we may hear and weigh their suggestions. Let it not then be grievous to your constancy to await their return, that, when they come back with our answer to you, ye may be able to bring matters to a close which so deeply affect the well-being of the Catholic Church.
This was what the Bishops received at the hands of three emissaries.
Reply of the Bishops.
The letter of your humanity we have received, most God-beloved Lord Emperor, which reports that, on account of stress of public affairs, as yet you have been unable to attend to our deputies; and in which you command us to await their return, until your godliness shall be advised by them of what we have defined conformably to our ancestors. However, we now profess and aver at once by these presents, that we shall not recede from our purpose, as we also instructed our deputies. We ask then that you will with serene countenance command these letters of our mediocrity to be read; but also that you will graciously receive those, with which we charged our deputies. This however your gentleness comprehends as well as we, that great grief and sadness at present prevail, because that, in these your most happy days, so many Churches are without Bishops. And on this account we again request your humanity, most God-beloved Lord Emperor, that, if it please your religiousness, you would command us, before the severe winter weather sets in, to return to our Churches, that so we may be able, unto God Almighty and our Lord and Saviour Christ, His Only-begotten Son, to fulfil together with our flocks our wonted prayers in behalf of your imperial sway, as indeed we have ever performed them, and at this time make them.
Additional Note.
The list of Sirmian confessions' published by Newman as an Excursus to the de Synodis is omitted here. It will be found printed as Appendix iii.' to his Arians of the Fourth Century.
The Excursus on a Creed ascribed (at the Council of Ephesus, see Hard. Conc. i. 1640, Hahn. §83; Routh Rell. iii. 367) to the 70 bishops who condemned Paul of Samosata, at Antioch a.d. 269, and containing the formula homoousion (against this, supr. §§43-47), is also omitted, as bearing only very indirectly on the de Synodis. Caspari Alte und Neue Quellen (xi), p. 161, has thoroughly investigated the Confession since Newman wrote, and has proved (what Newman half suspected) that the document is of Apollinarian origin. As Caspari was unaware of Newman's discussion, this result comes as the result of two independent investigations pursued on very different lines.] __________________________________________________________________
[3603] The subject before us, naturally rises out of what has gone before. The Anomoean creed was hopeless; but with the Semi-Arians all that remained was the adjustment of phrases. Accordingly, Athan. goes on to propose such explanations as might clear the way for a re-union of Christendom. §47, note.
[3604] Vid. Orat. i. 8; iv. 23.
[3605] hora. vid. Orat. i. §15; iv. §10; Serap. ii. 1. kairos de Decr. §15. init.
[3606] The Apostle' is a common title of S. Paul in antiquity. Cf. August. ad Bonifac. iii. 3.
[3607] Cf. de Decr. 22, note 1.
[3608] De Decr. 24, note 9.
[3609] Vid. supr. Orat. i. §15; de Decr. §22, note 1.
[3610] De Decr. 29, note 7.
[3611] Democritus, or Epicurus.
[3612] Anaxagoras.
[3613] De Decr. §19.
[3614] De Decr. 18, note 8.
[3615] [Prolegg. ch. ii. §8 (1).]
[3616] Supr. p. 73.
[3617] Supr. §29.
[3618] Supr. §8.
[3619] It must not be supposed from this that he approves [as adequate] the phrase homoios kat' ousian or homoiousios, in this Treatise, for infr. §53. he rejects it on the ground that when we speak of like,' we imply qualities, not essence. Yet he himself frequently uses it, as other Fathers, and Orat. i. §26. uses homoios tes ousias.
[3620] [Prolegg. ch. ii. §8 (2) a.]
[3621] Vid. p. 162, note 8. Cf. Greg. Naz. Orat. 31. 24. vid. also Hil. contr. Constant. 16. August. Ep. 238. n. 4-6. Cyril. Dial. i. p. 391. Petavius refers to other passages. de Trin. v. 5. §6.
[3622] §8.
[3623] [See Prolegg. ch. ii. §8 (2) c.]
[3624] [Ath. is referring to the Council of Ancyra, 358.]
[3625] So also de Decr. §23. p. 40. Pseudo-Ath. Hyp. Mel. et Euseb. Hil. de Syn. 89. The illustration runs into this position, Things that are like, [need] not be the same.' vid. §39. note 5. On the other hand, Athan. himself contends for the tauton te homoiosei, the same in likeness.' de Decr. §20.
[3626] Vid. Socr. iii. 25. p. 204. a.b. Una substantia religiose prædicabitur quæ ex nativitatis proprietate et ex naturæ similitudine ita indifferens sit, ut una dicatur. Hil. de Syn. 67.
[3627] Here at last Athan. alludes to the Ancyrene Synodal Letter, vid. Epiph. Hær. 73, 5 and 7. about which he has kept a pointed silence above, when tracing the course of the Arian confessions. That is, he treats the Semi-Arians as tenderly as S. Hilary, as soon as they break company with the Arians. The Ancyrene Council of 358 was a protest against the blasphemia' or second Sirmian Confession
[3628] It is usual with the Fathers to use the two terms Son' and Word,' to guard and complete the ordinary sense of each other, vid. p. 157, note 6; and p. 167, note 4. The term Son, used by itself, was abused into Arianism; and the term Word into Sabellianism; again the term Son might be accused of introducing material notions, and the term Word of imperfection and transitoriness. Each of them corrected the other. Orat. i. §28. iv. §8. Euseb. contr. Marc. ii. 4. p. 54. Isid. Pel. Ep. iv. 141. So S. Cyril says that we learn from His being called Son that He is from Him, to ex autou; from His being called Wisdom and Word, that He is in Him,' to en auto. Thesaur. iv. p. 31. However, S. Athanasius observes, that properly speaking the one term implies the other, i.e. in its fulness. Orat. iii. §3. iv. §24 fin. On the other hand the heretics accused Catholics of inconsistency, or of a union of opposite errors, because they accepted all the Scripture images together. Vigilius of Thapsus, contr. Eutych. ii. init. vid. also i. init. and Eulogius, ap. Phot. 225, p. 759.
[3629] De Decr. §10.
[3630] Vid. Epiph. Hær. 73. 3, &c.
[3631] §54, note 2.
[3632] Vid. Hilar. de Syn. 81 init.; Epiph. Hær. 73. 12.
[3633] There were three Councils held against Paul of Samosata, of the dates of 264, 269, and an intermediate year. The third is spoken of in the text, which contrary to the opinion of Pagi, S. Basnage, and Tillemont, Pearson fixes at 265 or 266.
[3634] Vid. p. 167, and a different translation, p. 183.
[3635] This is in fact the objection which Arius urges against the Coessential, supr. §16, when he calls it the doctrine of Manichæus and Hieracas, vid. §16, note 11. The same objection is protested against by S. Basil, contr. Eunom. i. 19. Hilar. de Trin. iv. 4. Yet, while S. Basil agrees with Athan. in his account of the reason of the Council's rejection of the word, S. Hilary on the contrary reports that Paul himself accepted it, i.e. in a Sabellian sense, and therefore the Council rejected it. Male homoüsion Samosatenus confessus est, sed numquid melius Arii negaverunt.' de Syn. 86.
[3636] Cf. Soz. iii. 18. The heretical party, starting with the notion in which their heresy in all its shades consisted, that the Son was a distinct being from the Father, concluded that like in essence' was the only term which would express the relation of the Son to the Father. Here then the word coessential' did just enable the Catholics to join issue with them, as exactly expressing what the Catholics wished to express, viz. that there was no such distinction between Them as made the term like' necessary, but that as material parent and offspring are individuals under one common species, so the Eternal Father and Son are Persons under one common individual essence.
[3637] §49.
[3638] ten tes homoioseos henoteta: and so pp. 163, note 9, 165, 166. And Basil. tautoteta tes phuseos, Ep. 8. 3: [but] tautoteta tes ousias, Cyril in Joan. lib. iii. c. v. p. 302. [cf. tautoousion, p. 315, note 6.] It is uniformly asserted by the Catholics that the Father's godhead, theotes, is the Son's; e.g. infr. §52; supr. p. 329 b, line 8; p. 333, note 5; Orat. i. 49 fin. ii. §18. §73. fin. iii. §26; iii. §5 fin. iii. §53; mian ten theoteta kai to idion tes ousias tou patros. §56 supr. p. 84 fin. vid. §52. note. This is an approach to the doctrine of the Una Res, defined in the fourth Lateran Council [in 1215, see Harnack Dogmg. iii. 447, note, and on the doctrine of the Greek Fathers, Prolegg. ch. ii. §3 (2) b.]
[3639] Vid. Epiph. Hær. 73. 9 fin.
[3640] §23, note 3.
[3641] epiteichisma; in like manner sundesmon pisteos. Epiph. Ancor. 6; cf. Hær. 69. 70; Ambros. de Fid. iii. 15.
[3642] [In this passage the difficulties and confusion which surround the terms agenetos and agennetos (supr. p. 149, &c.) come to a head. The question is (assuming, as proved by Lightfoot, the validity of the distinction of the two in Athan.) which word is to be read here. The mss. are divided throughout between the two readings, but it is clear (so Lightf. and Zahn on Ign. Eph. 7) that one word alone is in view throughout the present passage. That word, then, is pronounced by Lightf., partly on the strength of the quotation from the unnamed teachers (infr. note 7), partly on the ground of a reference to §26 (see note 10 there), to be agennetos. With all deference to so great an authority, I cannot hesitate to pronounce for agenetos. (1.) The parallelism of the two senses with the third and fourth senses of agen. Orat. i. 30. is almost decisive by itself. (2.) Ath.'s explanation of Ignatius. viz. that Christ is genetos on account of the flesh (he would have referred gennetos to His Essence, Orat. i. 56, certainly not to the flesh), while as Son and Word He is distinct from geneta and poiemata, is even more decisive. (3.) His explanation §46, sub fin. that the Son is agenetos because He is aidion gennema would lose all sense if agennetos were read. As a matter of fact, agennetos is the specific, agenetos the generic term: the former was not applicable to the Eternal Son; the latter was, except in the first of the two senses distinguished in the text; a sense, however, more properly coming under the specific idea of agennetos. This was the ambiguity which made the similarity of the two words so dangerous a weapon in Arian hands. The above note does not of course affect the true reading of Ign. Eph. 7, as to which Lightfoot and Zahn speak with authority: but it seems clear that Athan., however mistakenly, quotes Ign. with the reading agenetos.]
[3643] Ign. ad Eph. [Lightf. Ign. p. 90, Zahn Patr. Apost. ii. p. 338.]
[3644] Not known, but cf. Clement. Strom. vi. 7. p. 769. hen men to agenneton, ho pantokrator theos, hen de kai to progennethen di' ou ta panta egeneto, kai choris autou egeneto oude hen.
[3645] [On the subject of the rejection of the homoousion at this Council of Antioch, see Prolegg. ch. ii. §3 (2) b.]
[3646] De Decr. §1.
[3647] §51, note.
[3648] §23, note 3, yet vid. Hipp. contr. Noet. 7.
[3649] kinesei vid. Cyril. contr. Jul. viii. p. 274. Greg. Nyss. de Hom. Op. p. 87.
[3650] §45.
[3651] By the Son being equal to the Father,' is but meant that He is His exact image;' it does not imply any distinction of essence. Cf. Hil. de Syn. 73. But this implies some exception, for else He would not be like or equal, but the same. ibid. 72. Hence He is the Father's image in all things except in being the Father, plen tes agennesias kai tes patrotetos. Damasc. de Imag. iii. 18. p. 354. vid. also Basil. contr. Eun. ii. 28; Theod. Inconfus. p. 91; Basil. Ep. 38. 7 fin. [Through missing this point the] Arians asked why the Son was not the beginning of a theogonia. Supr. p. 319 a, note 1. vid. infr. note 8.
[3652] Vid. Orat. iii. §4.
[3653] Arianism was in the dilemma of denying Christ's divinity, or introducing a second God. The Arians proper went off on the former side of the alternative, the Semi-Arians on the latter; and Athan., as here addressing the Semi Arians, insists on the greatness of the latter error. This of course was the objection which attached to the words homoiousion, aparallaktos eikon, &c., when disjoined from the homoousion; and Eusebius's language, supr. p. 75, note 7, shews us that it is not an imaginary one.
[3654] De Decr. §10. p. 15, note 4.
[3655] etheopoiese Orat.ii. §70. de Decr. §14.
[3656] Cf. supr. p. 314, note 1, Cyr. Thesaur. pp. 22, 23.
[3657] Cf. p. 169, note 4^a [and on ousia as a philosophical and theological term, Prolegg. ch. ii. §3 (2) b. On the divergence of its theological use from its philosophical sense, see] Anastasius, Hodeg. 6. and Theorian, Legat. ad Arm. pp. 441, 2. Socr. iii. 25. Damascene, speaking of the Jacobite use of phusis and hupostasis says, Who of holy men ever thus spoke? unless ye introduce to us your S. Aristotle, as a thirteenth Apostle, and prefer the idolater to the divinely inspired.' cont. Jacob. 10. p. 399. and so again Leontius, speaking of Philoponus, who from the Monophysite confusion of nature and hypostasis was led into Tritheism. He thus argued, taking his start from Aristotelic principles; for Aristotle says that there are of individuals particular substances as well as one common.' De Sect. v. fin.
[3658] The argument, when drawn out, is virtually this: if, because two subjects are coessential, a third is pre-supposed of which they partake, then, since either of these two is coessential with that of which both partake, a new third must be supposed in which it and the pre-existing substance partake and thus an infinite series of things coessential must be supposed. Vid. Basil. Ep. 52. n. 2. [Cf. Aristot. Frag. 183, p. 1509 b 23.]
[3659] Orat. i. §28.
[3660] Vid. de Decr. §11, note 6: also Cyril, Thesaur. iv. p. 29: Basil. contr. Eun. ii. 23: Hil. de Syn. 17.
[3661] Naz. Orat. 28. 2.
[3662] S. Basil says in like manner that, though God is Father kurios properly, supr. p. 156, note 1, 157, note 6, 171, note 5, 319, note 3), yet it comes to the same thing if we were to say that He is tropikos and ek metaphoras, figuratively, such, contr. Eun. ii. 24; gennesis implies two things,--passion, and relationship, oikeiosis phuseos; accordingly we must take the latter as an indication of the divine sense of the term. Cf. also supr. p. 158, note 7, p. 322, Orat. ii. 32, iii. 18, 67, and Basil. contr. Eunom. ii. 17; Hil. de Trin. iv. 2. Vid. also Athan. ad Serap. i. 20. and Basil. Ep. 38. n. 5. and what is said of the office of faith in each of these.
[3663] Supr. p. 167, note 7, and p. 307.
[3664] henos ontos eidous theotetos: for the word eidos, cf. Orat. iii. 16 is generally applied to the Son, as in what follows, and is synonymous [?] with hypostasis; but it is remarkable that here it is almost synonymous with ousia or phusis. Indeed in one sense nature, substance, and hypostasis, are all synonymous, i.e. as one and all denoting the Una Res, which is Almighty God. The apparent confusion is useful as reminding us of this great truth; vid. note 8, infr.
[3665] De Decr. §31.
[3666] [phusis is here (as the apodosis of the clause shows) as well as in the next section, used as a somewhat more vague equivalent for ousia, not, as Newman contends in an omitted note, for person,' a use which is scarcely borne out by the (no doubt somewhat fluctuating) senses of phusis in the passages quoted by him from Alexander (in Theod. H. E. i. 4, cf. Origen's use of ousia, Prolegg. ch. ii. §3 (2) a) and Cyril c. Nest. iii. p. 91. phusis and ousia are nearly equivalent in the manifesto of Basil of Ancyra, whom Ath. has in view here, see Epiph. Hær. 73. 12-22.]
[3667] p. 171, note 6.
[3668] And so tais logomachiais, Basil de Sp. S. n. 16. It is used with an allusion to the fight against the Word, as christomachein and theomachein. Thus logomachein meletesantes, kai loipon pneumatomachountes, esontai met' oligon nekroi te alogi& 139;. Serap. iv. 1.
[3669] Cf. Hil. de Syn. 77, and appendix, note 3, also supr. p. 303, and note. The homoousion was not imposed upon Ursacius and Valens, a.d. 347, by Pope Julius; nor in the Council of Aquileia in 381, was it offered by S. Ambrose to Palladius and Secundianus. S. Jerome's account of the apology made by the Fathers of Ariminum is of the same kind. We thought,' they said, the sense corresponded to the words, nor in the Church of God, where there is simplicity, and a pure confession, did we fear that one thing would be concealed in the heart, another uttered by the lips. We were deceived by our good opinion of the bad.' ad Lucif. 19.
[3670] §11, note 7.
[3671] §12, note 2.
[3672] These two Letters are both in Socr. ii. 37. And the latter is in Theod. H. E. ii. 15. p. 878. in a different version from the Latin original. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Introduction to Tomus Ad Antiochenos.
------------------------
The word tome' (tomos) means either a section, or, in the case of such a document as that before us, a concise statement. It is commonly applied to synodical letters (cf. the Tome' of Leo, a.d. 450, to Flavian).
Upon the accession of Julian (November, 361) the Homoean ascendancy which had marked the last six years of Constantius collapsed. A few weeks after his accession (Feb. 362) an edict recalled all the exiled Bishops. On Feb. 21 Athanasius re-appeared in Alexandria. He was joined there by Lucifer of Cagliari and Eusebius of Vercellæ, who were in exile in Upper Egypt. Once more free, he took up the work of peace which had busied him in the last years of his exile (see Prolegg. ch. ii. §9). With a heathen once more on the throne of the Cæsars, there was everything to sober Christian party spirit, and to promise success to the council which met under Athanasius during the ensuing summer. Among the twenty-one bishops who formed the assembly the most notable are Eusebius of Vercellæ, Asterius of Petra, and Dracontius of Lesser Hermopolis and Adelphius of Onuphis, the friends and correspondents of Athanasius. The rest, with the exception of Anatolius of Euboea, were all from Egypt and Marmarica, and (probably three only) from S.W. Asia. The council (Newman, Arians, v. i.; Gwatkin, Stud. p. 205, Krüger, Lucif. 45-53, was occupied with four problems: (1) The terms on which communion should be vouchsafed to those Arians who desired to re-unite (§§3, 8). They were to be asked for nothing beyond the Nicene test, and an express anathema against Arianism, including the doctrine that the Holy Spirit is a Creature. The latter point had been rising into prominence of late, and had called forth from Athanasius his four Discourses to Serapion of Thmuis. The emphatic way in which the point is pressed in §3, implies that an attempt was being made in some quarter to subscribe the Nicene Creed, while maintaining the Arian position with regard to the Holy Spirit. The language of §3 cannot be reconciled with the hypothesis (Gwatkin, Studies, 233), that no formal requirement was made by this council on the subject. The person aimed at was possibly Acacius, who (Serap. iv. 7) had treated the subject with levity, and yet was now disposed to come to terms (as he did a year later, Socr. iii. 25). It is true that we find the names of Macedonius and his followers (N.B. not Eleusius) in the number of the 59 who betook themselves to Liberius (Socr. iv. 12), and neither in their letter nor in his reply is there any allusion to the doctrine of the Holy Spirit; and that Basil (Ep. 204), with the sanction of Athanasius (cf. below, Letters 62, 63), did not press the test upon those who were otherwise orthodox. But the council of 362 has Syrian circumstances specially in view; and however we may explain it, its language is too clear to be mistaken. (On the general subject, cf. Letter 55.) (2) The Arian Christology also occupied the council (§7). The integrity of Christ's human nature on the one hand, its perfect Union with the Word on the other, are clearly emphasised. This question had begun to come into prominent discussion in several parts of the Christian world (e.g. at Corinth, see infr. Letter 59), and was soon to give rise to the system of Apollinarius, who, however, it is interesting to note, was a party, by his legates, to the present decision. (3) The state of the Church at Antioch was the most practical problem before the council. Meletius was returning to the presidency of the main body of the Antiochene church, whose chief place of worship was the Palaea' (§3). Since the deposition of Eustathius (c. 330), the intransigent or protestant' body had been without a bishop, and were headed by the respected presbyter Paulinus. Small in numbers, and dependent for a church upon the good will of the Arians, they were yet strong in the unsullied orthodoxy of their antecedents, in the sympathy of the West and of Athanasius himself, who had given offence at Antioch in 346 by worshipping with them alone. Clearly the right course was that they should reunite with the main body under Meletius, and this was what the council recommended (§3), although, perhaps in deference to the more uncompromising spirits, the union is treated (ib. and 4) as a return of the larger body to the smaller, instead of vice versa. (For the sequel, see Prolegg. ubi supra.) (4) With the rivalry of parties at Antioch, a weighty question of theological terminology was indirectly involved. The word hupostasis had been used in the Nicene anathema as a synonym of ousia (see Excursus A, pp. 77 sqq. above), and in this sense it was commonly used by Athanasius in agreement with the New Testament use of the word (Westcott on Heb. i. 3), with Dionysius of Rome, and with the West, to whom hupostasis was etymologically identified with Substantia' their (perhaps imperfect) equivalent for ousia. On the other hand, the general tendency of Eastern Theology had been to use hupostasis in the sense of Subject or Person, for which purpose it expressed the idea of individual essence less ambiguously than prosopon. This was the use of the word adopted by Origen, Dionysius Alex. (supr. de Sent. Dionys.), Alexander of Alexandria (in his letter Thdt. H. E. i. 4. p. 16, l. 19), and by Athanasius himself in an earlier work (p. 90, supr.) At Antioch the Eustathians appear to have followed the Nicene and Western usage, using the word to emphasise the Individual Unity of God as against Arian or Subordinationist views, while the Meletians protested against the Marcellian monarchianism by insisting on three Hypostases in the Godhead. The contradiction was mainly verbal, the two parties being substantially at one as to the doctrine, but varying in its expression. Hence the wise and charitable decision of the council, which came naturally from one who, like Athanasius, could use either expression, though he had come to prefer the Western to the Eastern use [3673] .
The Tome was carried to Antioch by the five bishops named at the beginning of §1, and there subscribed by Paulinus and Karterius of Antaradus. As to its effect among the friends of Meletius our information is only inferential (see Gwatkin, Studies, p. 208). On the supposed disciplinary legislation of this council in relation to the Syntagma Doctrinæ, see Prolegg. ch. ii. §§9.
N.B. The translation of the present tract as well as that of the ad Afros and of Letters 56, 59, 60, 61, was made independently of that by Dr. Bright in his Later Treatises of S. Athanasius (see Prolegg. ch. i. §2), but has been carefully collated with it, and in not a few cases improved by its aid. For a fuller commentary on these pieces than has been possible in this volume, the reader is referred to Dr. Bright's work. __________________________________________________________________
[3673] It may be well to trace briefly the sense of these technical terms, the history and significance of which is a forcible reminder of the inability of Theology to bring the Infinite within the categories of the Finite, to do more than guard our Faith by pointing out the paths which experience has shewn to lead to some false limitation of the fulness of the Revelation of God in Christ. The distinction (drawn out Prolegg. ch. ii. §3 (2) b) between the primary and secondary sense of ousia in Greek metaphysics does not easily fit the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. The ousia common to Father and Son is not the name of a Species, as Man' applies to Peter and Paul. But neither can the idea of prote ousia be reconciled with inherence in three distinct personal existences. (Cf. supr. p. 409, note 7.) But here the word hupostasis comes in to help our imagination. The word (see Socr. H. E. iii. 7. Westcott, ubi supr. and Newman, Arians, App. 4), from various literal senses came to be transferred to the philosophical vocabulary, doing duty as verbal substantive not only for huphestanai but for hupokeisthai. Like the concrete hupokeimenon it was applied (a) to matter as underlying form, (b) to substance as underlying attributes. In this latter use it served to distinguish prote from deutera ousia, expressing moreover a complete self-contained existence in a way that ousia did not. When therefore the idea of personal individuality has to be expressed, hupostasis is more suitable than ousia. But the ambiguity of the latter word remains. Those who preferred to speak of mia hupostasis thought of the Divine Essence rather as prote ousia, and of One Personal God, with whom Father, Son, and Spirit were each absolutely and fully identified (perichoresis), while with those who preferred preis hupostaseis the idea of the Divine ousia approximated to deutera ousia, and guarded against Tritheism solely by holding fast to the Monarchia of the Father. The corrective to each position lay in the recognition of the other, i.e. of its own incompleteness. (See further Prolegg. ubi supr. and Zahn, Marcell. p. 87, sq.) __________________________________________________________________
Tome or Synodal Letter to the People of Antioch.
------------------------
To our beloved and much-desired fellow-ministers Eusebius [3674] , Lucifer [3675] , Asterius [3676] , Kymatius, and Anatolius, Athanasius and the bishops present in Alexandria from Italy and Arabia, Egypt and Libya; Eusebius, Asterius, Gaius, Agathus, Ammonius, Agathodæmon, Dracontius, Adelphius, Hermæon, Marcus, Theodorus, Andreas, Paphnutius, another Marcus, Zoilus, Menas, George, Lucius, Macarius and the rest, all greeting in Christ.
We are persuaded that being ministers of God and good stewards ye are sufficient to order the affairs of the Church in every respect. But since it has come to us, that many who were formerly separated from us by jealousy now wish for peace, while many also having severed their connection with the Arian madmen are desiring our communion, we think it well to write to your courtesy what ourselves and the beloved Eusebius and Asterius have drawn up: yourselves being our beloved and truly most-desired fellow-ministers. We rejoice at the said tidings, and pray that even if any be left still far from us, and if any appear to be in agreement with the Arians, he may promptly leave their madness, so that for the future all men everywhere may say, One Lord, one faith [3677] .' For as the psalmist says, what is so good or pleasant as for brethren to dwell in unity [3678] . But our dwelling is the Church, and our mind ought to be the same. For thus we believe that the Lord also will dwell with us, who says, I will dwell with them and walk in them [3679] ' and Here will I dwell for I have a delight therein [3680] .' But by here' what is meant but there where one faith and religion is preached?
2. Mission of Eusebius and Asterius.
We then of Egypt truly wished to go to you along with our beloved Eusebius and Asterius, for many reasons, but chiefly that we might embrace your affection and together enjoy the said peace and concord. But since, as we declared in our other letters, and as ye may learn from our fellow-ministers, the needs of the church detain us, with much regret we begged the same fellow-ministers of ours, Eusebius and Asterius, to go to you in our stead. And we thank their piety in that although they might have gone at once to their dioceses, they preferred to go to you at all costs, on account of the pressing need of the Church. They therefore having consented, we consoled ourselves with the consideration that you and they being there, we all were present with you in mind.
3. The Meletians' to be acknowledged, and all who renounce heresy, especially as to the Holy Spirit.
As many then as desire peace with us, and specially those who assemble in the Old [Church] [3681] and those again who are seceding from the Arians, do ye call to yourselves, and receive them as parents their sons, and welcome them as tutors and guardians; and unite them to our beloved Paulinus and his people, without requiring more from them than to anathematise the Arian heresy and confess the faith confessed by the holy fathers at Nicæa, and to anathematise also those who say that the Holy Spirit is a Creature and separate from the Essence of Christ. For this is in truth a complete renunciation of the abominable heresy of the Arians, to refuse to divide the Holy Trinity, or to say that any part of it is a creature. For those who, while pretending to cite the faith confessed at Nicæa, venture to blaspheme the Holy Spirit, do nothing more than in words deny the Arian heresy while they retain it in thought. But let the impiety of Sabellius and of Paul of Samosata also be anathematised by all, and the madness of Valentinian and Basilides, and the folly of the Manichæans. For if this be done, all evil suspicion will be removed on all hands, and the faith of the Catholic Church alone be exhibited in purity.
4. The parties at Antioch to unite.
But that we, and they who have ever remained in communion with us, hold this faith, we think no one of yourselves nor any one else is ignorant. But since we rejoice with all those who desire re-union, but especially with those that assemble in the Old [church], and as we glorify the Lord exceedingly, as for all things so especially for the good purpose of these men, we exhort you that concord be established with them on these terms, and, as we said above, without further conditions, without namely any further demand upon yourselves on the part of those who assemble in the Old [church], or Paulinus and his fellows propounding anything else, or aught beyond the Nicene definition.
5. The creed of Sardica not an authorised formula. Question of hypostasis.'
And prohibit even the reading or publication of the paper, much talked of by some, as having been drawn up concerning the Faith at the synod of Sardica. For the synod made no definition of the kind. For whereas some demanded, on the ground that the Nicene synod was defective, the drafting of a creed, and in their haste even attempted it [3682] , the holy synod assembled in Sardica was indignant, and decreed that no statement of faith should be drafted, but that they should be content with the Faith confessed by the fathers at Nicæa, inasmuch as it lacked nothing but was full of piety, and that it was undesirable for a second creed to be promulged, lest that drafted at Nicæa should be deemed imperfect, and a pretext be given to those who were often wishing to draft and define a creed. So that if a man propound the above or any other paper, stop them, and persuade them rather to keep the peace. For in such men we perceive no motive save only contentiousness. For as to those whom some were blaming for speaking of three Subsistences [3683] , on the ground that the phrase is unscriptural and therefore suspicious, we thought it right indeed to require nothing beyond the confession of Nicæa, but on account of the contention we made enquiry of them, whether they meant, like the Arian madmen, subsistences foreign and strange, and alien in essence from one another, and that each Subsistence was divided apart by itself, as is the case with creatures in general and in particular with those begotten of men, or like different substances, such as gold, silver, or brass;--or whether, like other heretics, they meant three Beginnings and three Gods, by speaking of three Subsistences.
They assured us in reply that they neither meant this nor had ever held it. But upon our asking them what then do you mean by it, or why do you use such expressions?' they replied, Because they believed in a Holy Trinity, not a trinity in name only, but existing and subsisting in truth, both a Father truly existing and subsisting, and a Son truly substantial and subsisting, and a Holy Spirit subsisting and really existing do we acknowledge,' and that neither had they said there were three Gods or three beginnings, nor would they at all tolerate such as said or held so, but that they acknowledged a Holy Trinity but One Godhead, and one Beginning, and that the Son is coessential with the Father, as the fathers said; while the Holy Spirit is not a creature, nor external, but proper to and inseparable from the Essence of the Father and the Son.
6. The question of one Subsistence (Hypostasis) or three, not to be pressed.
Having accepted then these men's interpretation and defence of their language, we made enquiry of those blamed by them for speaking of One Subsistence, whether they use the expression in the sense of Sabellius, to the negation of the Son and the Holy Spirit, or as though the Son were non-substantial, or the Holy Spirit impersonal [3684] . But they in their turn assured us that they neither meant this nor had ever held it, but we use the word Subsistence thinking it the same thing to say Subsistence or Essence;' But we hold that there is One, because the Son is of the Essence of the Father, and because of the identity of nature. For we believe that there is one Godhead, and that it has one nature, and not that there is one nature of the Father, from which that of the Son and of the Holy Spirit are distinct.' Well, thereupon they who had been blamed for saying there were three Subsistences agreed with the others, while those who had spoken of One Essence, also confessed the doctrine of the former as interpreted by them. And by both sides Arius was anathematised as an adversary of Christ, and Sabellius, and Paul of Samosata, as impious men, and Valentinus and Basilides as aliens from the truth, and Manichæus as an inventor of mischief. And all, by God's grace, and after the above explanations, agree together that the faith confessed by the fathers at Nicæa is better than the said phrases, and that for the future they would prefer to be content to use its language.
7. The human Nature of Christ complete, not Body only.
But since also certain seemed to be contending together concerning the fleshly Economy of the Saviour, we enquired of both parties. And what the one confessed, the others also agreed to, that the Word did not, as it came to the prophets, so dwell in a holy man at the consummation of the ages, but that the Word Himself was made flesh, and being in the Form of God, took the form of a servant [3685] , and from Mary after the flesh became man for us, and that thus in Him the human race is perfectly and wholly delivered from sin and quickened from the dead, and given access to the kingdom of the heavens. For they confessed also that the Saviour had not a body without a soul, nor without sense or intelligence; for it was not possible, when the Lord had become man for us, that His body should be without intelligence: nor was the salvation effected in the Word Himself a salvation of body only, but of soul also. And being Son of God in truth, He became also Son of Man, and being God's Only-begotten Son, He became also at the same time firstborn among many brethren [3686] .' Wherefore neither was there one Son of God before Abraham, another after Abraham [3687] : nor was there one that raised up Lazarus, another that asked concerning him; but the same it was that said as man, Where does Lazarus lie [3688] ;' and as God raised him up: the same that as man and in the body spat, but divinely as Son of God opened the eyes of the man blind from his birth [3689] ; and while, as Peter says [3690] , in the flesh He suffered, as God opened the tomb and raised the dead. For which reasons, thus understanding all that is said in the Gospel, they assured us that they held the same truth about the Word's Incarnation and becoming Man.
8. Questions of words must not be suffered to divide those who think alike.
These things then being thus confessed, we exhort you not hastily to condemn those who so confess, and so explain the phrases they use, nor to reject them, but rather to accept them as they desire peace and defend themselves, while you check and rebuke, as of suspicious views, those who refuse so to confess and to explain their language. But while you refuse toleration to the latter, counsel the others also who explain and hold aright, not to enquire further into each other's opinions, nor to fight about words to no useful purpose, nor to go on contending with the above phrases, but to agree in the mind of piety. For they who are not thus minded, but only stir up strife with such petty phrases, and seek something beyond what was drawn up at Nicæa, do nothing except give their neighbour turbid confusion to drink [3691] ,' like men who grudge peace and love dissensions. But do ye, as good men and faithful servants and stewards of the Lord, stop and check what gives offence and is strange, and value above all things peace of that kind, faith being sound. Perhaps God will have pity on us, and unite what is divided, and, there being once more one flock [3692] , we shall all have one leader, even our Lord Jesus Christ.
9. The above terms unanimously agreed upon.
These things, albeit there was no need to require anything beyond the synod of Nicæa, nor to tolerate the language of contention, yet for the sake of peace, and to prevent the rejection of men who wish to believe aright, we enquired into. And what they confessed, we put briefly into writing, we namely who are left in Alexandria, in common with our fellow-ministers, Asterius and Eusebius. For most of us had gone away to our dioceses. But do you on your part read this in public where you are wont to assemble, and be pleased to invite all to you thither. For it is right that the letter should be there first read, and that there those who desire and strive for peace should be re-united. And then, when they are re-united, in the spot where all the laity think best, in the presence of your courtesy, the public assemblies should be held, and the Lord be glorified by all together. The brethren who are with me greet you. I pray that you may be well, and remember us to the Lord; both I, Athanasius, and likewise the other bishops assembled, sign, and those sent by Lucifer, bishop of the island of Sardinia, two deacons, Herennius and Agapetus; and from Paulinus, Maximus and Calemerus, deacons also. And there were present certain monks of Apolinarius [3693] the bishop, sent from him for the purpose.
10. Signatures.
The names of the several bishops to whom the letter is addressed are: Eusebius of the city of Virgilli in Gaul [3694] , Lucifer of the island of Sardinia, Asterius of Petra, Arabia, Kymatius of Paltus, Coele-Syria, Anatolius of Euboea.
Senders: the Pope Athanasius, and those present with him in Alexandria, viz.: Eusebius, Asterius, and the others above-mentioned, Gaius of Paratonium [3695] in Hither Libya, Agathus of Phragonis and part of Elearchia in Egypt, Ammonius of Pachnemunis [3696] and the rest of Elearchia, Agathodæmon of Schedia [3697] and Menelaitas, Dracontius of Lesser Hermupolis, Adelphius of Onuphis [3698] in Lychni, Hermion of Tanes [3699] , Marcus of Zygra [3700] , Hither Libya, Theodorus of Athribis [3701] , Andreas of Arsenoe, Paphnutius of Sais, Marcus of Philæ, Zoilus of Andrôs [3702] , Menas of Antiphra [3703] .
Eusebius also signs the following in Latin, of which the translation is:
I Eusebius, according to your exact confession made on either side by agreement concerning the Subsistences, also add my agreement; further concerning the Incarnation of our Saviour, namely that the Son of God has become Man, taking everything upon Himself without sin, like the composition of our old man, I ratify the text of the letter. And whereas the Sardican paper is ruled out, to avoid the appearance of issuing anything beyond the creed of Nicæa, I also add my consent, in order that the creed of Nicæa may not seem by it to be excluded, and [I agree] that it should not be published. I pray for your health in the Lord.
I Asterius agree to what is above written, and pray for your health in the Lord.
11. The Tome' signed at Antioch.
And after this Tome was sent off from Alexandria, thus signed by the aforesaid, [the recipients] in their turn signed it:
I Paulinus hold thus, as I received from the fathers, that the Father perfectly exists and subsists, and that the Son perfectly subsists, and that the Holy Spirit perfectly subsists. Wherefore also I accept the above explanation concerning the Three Subsistences, and the one Subsistence, or rather Essence, and those who hold thus. For it is pious to hold and confess the Holy Trinity in one Godhead. And concerning the Word of the Father becoming Man for us, I hold as it is written, that, as John says, the Word was made Flesh, not in the sense of those most impious persons who say that He has undergone a change, but that He has become Man for us, being born of the holy Virgin Mary and of the Holy Spirit. For the Saviour had a body neither without soul, nor without sense, nor without intelligence. For it were impossible, the Lord being made Man for us, that His body should be without intelligence. Wherefore I anathematise those who set aside the Faith confessed at Nicæa, and who do not say that the Son is of the Father's Essence, and coessential with the Father. Moreover I anathematise those who say that the Holy Spirit is a Creature made through the Son. Once more I anathematise the heresy of Sabellius and of Photinus [3704] , and every heresy, walking in the Faith of Nicæa, and in all that is above written. I Karterius [3705] pray for your health. __________________________________________________________________
[3674] Eusebius of Vercellæ, exiled (Hist. Ar. 33; Ap. Fug. 4) after Milan 355. See D.C.B. ii. 374 (93).
[3675] Lucifer of Calaris: cf. Letters 50, 51, below, and Hist. Ar. 33; Apol. Fug. 4.
[3676] The following are all the details that can be collected with regard to the bishops named in the text. Asterius (Hist. Ar. 18 note); Kymatius of Paltus in Syria Prima (Apol. Fug. 3; Hist. Ar. 5); Anatolius of Euboea (not in D.C.B.); Gaius (Apol. Fug. 7; Hist. Ar. 72, D.C.B. i. 387, No. 19??); Agathus, Hist. Ar. 72 (not in D.C.B.); Ammonius (see Hist. Ar. 72 sub.-fin.; Ap. Fug. 7, Letter 49. 7, and infr. Appendix, note 1 as to names in D.C.B.); Agathodæmon (Hist. Ar. ibid.); Dracontius and Adelphius (Letters 49, 60); Hermæon (Hermion in §10) unknown, unless the Hermes' of Hist. Ar. 72; Marcus (2), (cf. D.C.B iii. 825 (7) for works ascribed to one or the other); Paphnutius, (Hist. Ar. 72; D. C B. iv. 184 (4)); Zoilus of Andropolis (Harduin, &c., suo jure, identify him with the bishop of the Syrian Larissa, who signs at Antioch in 363, Conc. i. 742; D.C.B. iv. 1220); Andreas, George, Lucius, Macarius, Menas, and Theodore, are unknown and not in D.C.B. The names all recur (excepting those of George, Lucius, Macarius), in §10, where the sees are specified.
[3677] Eph. iv. 5.
[3678] See Ps. cxxxiii. 1.
[3679] 2 Cor. vi. 16, and Lev. xxvi. 12.
[3680] Ps. cxxxii. 14.
[3681] 'En te palaia, cf. Theodt. H. E. i. 3: possibly the old Town is meant, viz. the main part of Antioch on the left bank of the Orontes, so called in distinction from the New' town of Seleucu Callinicus which occupied the Island in the river. The Old' Church, or Church of the Apostles, was situated in the Old Town, and was at present occupied by the orthodox party of Meletius. The old orthodox party of Paulinus had only one small church in the New Town, granted for their use out of respect for Paulinus by the Arian Bishop Euzoius (Socr. H. E. iii. 9.).
[3682] The draft is given by Theodt. H. E. ii. 8; it insists vehemently on the One Hypostasis.'
[3683] upostaseis
[3684] anousiou, anupostatou, the words are rendered unessential' and not subsisting' in another connection, supr. p. 434, &c.
[3685] Phil. ii. 7, &c.
[3686] Rom. viii. 29.
[3687] John viii. 58.
[3688] Ib. xi. 34.
[3689] Mark viii. 22, &c.
[3690] 1 Pet. iv. 1.
[3691] Hab. ii. 15.
[3692] John x. 16.
[3693] Of Laodicea, the later heresiarch.
[3694] i.e. Vercellæ, in Cisalpine' Gaul, or Lombardy.
[3695] In Marmarica or Libya Siccior' near the Ras el Harzeit.
[3696] Capital of the Sebennytic nome, near Handahur.
[3697] A town and custom-house near Andropolis, between Alxa. and the Canopic arm of the Nile.
[3698] Chief town of a nome in the Delta.
[3699] Zoan.'
[3700] West of Alxa. toward the Libyan dessert, and not far from Zygra in Marmarica.
[3701] A very important town near the head of the Tanite arm. See Amm. Marc. xxii. 16. 6, who calls it one of the four largest cities in Egypt proper.
[3702] i.e. Andropolis (above, note 11).
[3703] West of Alxa. toward the Libyan dessert, and not far from Zygra in Marmarica.
[3704] See Prolegg. ch. ii. §3 (2) ad fin. This is remarkable as the first Eastern condemnation of Photinus by name from the Nicene side. He had been condemned at Sirmium in 347, and under pressure from the East apparently at Milan in 345 and 347, as well as in the Councils of Antioch in 344, and Sirmium in 351 (supr. pp. 463, 464). On the document of Paulinus, see Epiph. Hær. lxxvii. 20, 21, also Dr. Bright's note.
[3705] Bishop of Antaradus on the Syrian coast (D.C.B. i. 410 (3)); see de Fuga, 3, and Hist. Ar. 5. note 6a. __________________________________________________________________
Appendix.
Exile of Athanasius under Julian, 362-363.
------------------------
The fragment which follows, containing an interesting report of a story told by Athanasius to Ammonius, Bishop of Pachnemunis, is inserted here as furnishing undesignedly important details as to the movements of Athanasius in 363. See Prolegg. ch. v. §3 h, also ch. ii. §9. It is excerpted by Montfaucon from an account of the Abbat Theodore, written for Theophilus, Bishop of Alexandria (385-412) by a certain Ammon (Acta SS. Maii, Tom. iii. Append., pp. 63-71). The writer was at that time a bishop (see unknown): he was born about 335, as he was seventeen years old when he embraced the monastic life a year and more' after the proclamation of Gallus as Cæsar (Mar. 15, 351). About the time of the expulsion of Athanasius by Syrianus he retired to Nitria, where he remained many years, and finally returned to Alexandria, where he appears (infra) as one of the clergy; the date of his elevation to the Episcopate cannot be fixed, but it obviously cannot be as early as 356-7 (so D.C.B. i. 102 (2), and probably is much later even than 362, in which year he would still be hardly twenty-eight. (He mentions the objections to the election of Athanasius, who was probably 30 in 328, on the ground of his youth.) Accordingly (apart from the different form of his name) he cannot [3706] be identified with either of the Ammonii referred to in Tom. ad. Ant. 1, note 3; Hist. Ar. 72, &c. The elder of the two does not concern us here: the younger (supr. pp. 483, 486), is the Ammonius to whom Athanasius told the story in the hearing of Ammon, and was now dead. Of Hermon, Bishop of Bubastis, mentioned as present along with Ammonius, Theophilus, and Ammon when the story was told, nothing is known (except that the date D.C.B. iii. 4 (2) is over 25 years too early). As he is not of blessed memory,' he was possibly still living during the Episcopate of Theophilus and Ammon. (There is nothing to identify him with the bishop of Tanes in Tom. Ant. 1, 10.)
The story itself is given at second-hand, from Ammon's recollection of a statement by Athanasius some 12 to 15 years (at least) before he wrote. The prophetic details about Jovian may therefore be put down to natural accretion (Letter 56, note 2). But (apart from the fact that Julian's death must have been rumoured long before the tardy official announcement of it, Tillem. Emp. iv. 449 sqq., Prolegg. ubi supr.) that Athanasius told of the pheme of Julian's death among the monks of the Thebaid need not be doubted. The story is one of a very large class, many of which are fairly authenticated. To say nothing of the pheme at the battle of Mycale; we have in recent times the authority of Mr. R. Stuart Poole, of the British Museum, for the fact that on the night of the death of the Duke of Cambridge (July 9, 1850), Mr. Pooles's brother suddenly took out his watch and said, "Note the time, the Duke of Cambridge is dead," and that the time proved to be correct;' also the case of Mr. Edmonds who saw at Leicester, early in the morning of Nov. 4, 1837, an irruption of water into the works of the Thames tunnel, by which a workman was drowned; (other curious cases in Phantasms of the Living' vol. 2, pp. 367 sqq.). The letter or memoir from which this Narratio' is taken, was published by the Bollandists from a Medicean ms., and it bears every internal mark of genuineness. In what way it is integrally connected with the Vita Antonii (Gwatkin, Studies, p. 101), except by the fact that it happens to mention Antony, I fail to see. On the subject of Theodore of Tabenne, the main subject of the memoir, see Amélineau's S. Pakhôme ( ut supra, p. 188), also infr. Letter 58, note 3.
"As I think your holiness was present and heard, when his blessedness Pope Athanasius, in the presence of other clergy of Alexandria and of my insignificance, formerly related in the Great Church something about Theodorus [3707] , to the Ammonius of blessed memory, bishop of Elearchia [3708] , and to Hermon, bishop of the city of Bumastica [3709] ; I write only what is necessary to put your reverence in mind of what he said. When the famous bishops were wondering at the Blessed Antony, Pope Athanasius--for Antony was often with him--said to them:--
I saw also at that season great men of God, who are lately dead, Theodorus chief of the Tabennesian monks, and the father of the monks around [3710] Antinoopolis, called Abbas Pammon. For when I was pursued by Julian, and was expecting to be slain by him--for this news was shewn me by good friends--these two came to me on the same day at Antinoopolis. And having planned to hide with Theodorus, I embarked on his vessel, which was completely covered in, while Abbas Pammon accompanied us. And when the wind was unfavourable, I was very anxious and prayed; and the monks with Theodore got out and towed the boat. And as Abbas Pammon was encouraging me in my anxiety, I said Believe me when I say that my heart is never so trustful in time of peace as in time of persecution. For I have good confidence that suffering for Christ, and strengthened by His mercy, even though I am slain, I shall find mercy with Him.' And while I was still saying this, Theodorus fixed his eyes on Abbas Pammon and smiled, while the other nearly laughed. So I said to them, Why have you laughed at my words, do you convict me of cowardice?' and Theodorus said to Abbas Pammon, Tell him why we smiled.' At which the latter said, You ought to tell him.' So Theodorus said, in this very hour Julian has been slain in Persia' for so God had declared beforehand concerning him: the haughty man, the despiser and the boaster, shall finish nothing [3711] . But a Christian Emperor shall arise who shall be illustrious, but shall live only a short time [3712] . Wherefore you ought not to harass yourselves by departing into the Thebaid, but secretly to go to the Court, for you will meet him by the way, and having been kindly received by him, will return to your Church. And he soon shall be taken by God.' And so it happened. From which cause I believe, that many who are well pleasing to God live unnoticed, especially among the monks. For those men unnoticed also, such as the blessed Amun and the holy Theodorus [3713] in the mountain of Nitria, and the servant of God, the happy old man Pammon." __________________________________________________________________
[3706] The Articles in D.C.B. i. 102 (2) and (3), combine variously data belonging to three distinct persons. (1) The old bishop ordained by Alexander (see unknown, see Hist. Ar. 72 init.). Signs the synodal letter of the Sardican Council; is one of the infirm prelates cruelly expelled by George, along with coffins to bury them in case of the journey being fatal (see also Apol. Fug. 7). (2) Another Ammonius, probably not a signatory of Sardica (cf. Apol. Ar. 50, with Ep. Fest. for 347), but a contemporary of Serapion, sent by Athanasius with Serap. to Constantius in 353. He had been a monk, but was then (Dracont. 7) bishop of Pachnemunis and part of Elearchia (Tom. 10), in which capacity, along with other exiles of 356-7 (Hist. Ar. 72; Ap. Fug. 7), he attends the Council of 362. He is the Ammonius of blessed memory' in the text. (3) Ammon, born 335, baptized 352, monk at Tabenne and Nitria 352-367 (?), then at Alexandria, and finally (about 390) bishop of an unknown see in Egypt: wrote a short account of S. Theodore for Pope Theophilus.
[3707] Cf. Vit. Ant. 60, and see below, letters 57, 58, and Acta SS. Maii, vol. iii. pp. 334-357, and Appx.; also D.C.B. iv. 954 (53).
[3708] Tom. Ant. 4.
[3709] i.e. Bubastis.
[3710] Opposite Hermupolis Magna in Upper Egypt.
[3711] Habak. ii. 5.
[3712] Cf. Letter 56, note 2.
[3713] On this Theodore, see D.C.B. s.v. no. (67). __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Introduction to Ad Afros Epistola Synodica.
------------------------
(Written About 369.)
The synodical letter which follows was written after the accession of Damasus to the Roman see (366). Whether it was written before any Western synod had formally condemned Auxentius of Milan (see Letter 59. 1) may be doubted: the complaint (§10) is rather that he still retains possession of his see, which in fact he did until 374, the year after the death of Athanasius. At any rate, Damasus had had time to hold a large synod, the letter of which had reached Athanasius. The history of the synods held by Damasus seems hopelessly obscure, and the date of our encyclical is correspondingly doubtful. Damasus certainly held at one time a synod of some 90 bishops from Italy and the Gauls, the letter of which was sent to Illyricum and to the East (Thdt. H. E. ii. 22; Soz. vi. 23; Hard. Conc. i. 771: the Latin of the copy sent to Illyricum is dated Siricio et Ardabure vv. cl. coss.,' an additional element of confusion). The name of Sabinus at the end of the Latin copy sent to the East seems to fix the date of this synod (D.C.B. i. 294) to 372. Thus the synod referred to §1 below must have been an earlier one, the acts of which are lost. It cannot have been held before the end of 367 or beginning of 368 (Montf. Vit. Ath.), as the earlier period of the episcopate of Damasus was fully occupied by different matters. Accordingly our encyclical falls between 368 and 372, probably as soon as Damasus had been able to assemble so large a synod, and Athanasius to write in reply (§10). It may be added that the letter of the Damasine synod of 372 refers in ambiguous terms to the condemnation of Auxentius as having already taken place, (damnatum esse liquet:' was this because they felt unable to dislodge him? see Tillem. viii. 400).
The occasion of the letter is two-fold: principally to counteract the efforts that were being made in the West, and especially in Africa (still later in the time of S. Augustine, see Collat. cum Maximin. 4; and for earlier Arian troubles in Africa, Nicene Lib. vol. i. p. 287), to represent the council of Ariminum as a final settlement of the Faith, and so to set aside the authority of the Nicene definition. The second object is involved in the first. The head and centre of the dying efforts of Arianism in the Roman West was apparently Auxentius, one of the last survivors of the victory of Ariminum.' That he should be still undisturbed in his see, while working far and wide to the damage of the Catholic cause, was to Athanasius a distressing surprise, and he was urging the Western bishops to put an end to such an anomaly.
In the encyclical before us he begins (1-3) by contrasting the synod of Nicæa with that of Ariminum, and pointing out the real history of the latter, going over again to some extent the ground of the earlier sections of the de Synodis. He touches (3. end) on the disastrous termination of the Council. He then proceeds to vindicate the Nicene creed (4-8) as essentially Scriptural, i.e. as the only possible bar to the unscriptural formulæ of the Arians. This he illustrates (5, 6) by an account, substantially identical with that in the de Decretis, of the evasions of every other test by the Asian bishops at Nicæa. He repeatedly urges that the formula was no invention of the Nicene Fathers (6, 9), appealing to the admission of Eusebius to this effect. He attacks the Homoean position, shewing that its characteristic watchword merely dissembles the alternative between Anomoeanism and the true co-essentiality of the Son (7). The most novel argument in the Letter is that of §4, where he refutes the repudiation of ousia and hupostasis in the creed of Niké by an argument from Scripture, starting from Ex. iii. 14 (as de Decr. 22 and de Syn. 29), and turning upon the equivalence of the two terms in question. This would appeal to Westerns, and expresses the usual view of Ath. himself (Tom. ad Ant. Introd.) but would not have much force with those who were accustomed to the Eastern terminology.
The insistence (in §11) that the Nicene formula involves the Godhead of the Spirit should be noted. It seems to imply that, as a rule, such an explicit assurance as is insisted upon in Tom ad Ant. 3, would be superfluous.
The completeness of the work of Athanasius, now very near his end, in winning over all Egypt to unanimity in faith and in personal attachment to himself, is quaintly reflected in the naive assurance (§10) that the bishops of Egypt and the Libyas are all of one mind, and we always sign for one another if any chance not to be present.'
The translation has been carefully compared with that of Dr. Bright (supr. p. 482). __________________________________________________________________
To the Bishops of Africa.
Letter of Ninety Bishops of Egypt and Libya, including Athanasius.
------------------------
1. Pre-Eminence of the Council of Nicæa. Efforts to exalt that of Ariminum at its expense.
The letters are sufficient which were written by our beloved fellow-minister Damasus, bishop of the Great Rome, and the large number of bishops who assembled along with him; and equally so are those of the other synods which were held, both in Gaul and in Italy, concerning the sound Faith which Christ gave us, the Apostles preached, and the Fathers, who met at Nicæa from all this world of ours, have handed down. For so great a stir was made at that time about the Arian heresy, in order that they who had fallen into it might be reclaimed, while its inventors might be made manifest. To that council, accordingly, the whole world has long ago agreed, and now, many synods having been held, all men have been put in mind, both in Dalmatia and Dardania, Macedonia, Epirus and Greece, Crete, and the other islands, Sicily, Cyprus, Pamphylia, Lycia, and Isauria, all Egypt and the Libyas, and most of the Arabians have come to know it, and marvelled at those who signed it, inasmuch as even if there were left among them any bitterness springing up from the root of the Arians; we mean Auxentius, Ursacius, Valens and their fellows, by these letters they have been cut off and isolated. The confession arrived at at Nicæa was, we say once more, sufficient and enough by itself, for the subversion of all irreligious heresy, and for the security and furtherance of the doctrine of the Church. But since we have heard that certain wishing to oppose it are attempting to cite a synod supposed to have been held at Ariminum, and are eagerly striving that it should prevail rather than the other, we think it right to write and put you in mind, not to endure anything of the sort: for this is nothing else but a second growth of the Arian heresy. For what else do they wish for who reject the synod held against it, namely the Nicene, if not that the cause of Arius should prevail? What then do such men deserve, but to be called Arians, and to share the punishment of the Arians? For they were not afraid of God, who says, Remove not the eternal boundaries which thy fathers placed [3714] ,' and He that speaketh against father or mother, let him die the death [3715] :' they were not in awe of their fathers, who enjoined that they who hold the opposite of their confession should be anathema.
2. The Synod of Nicæa contrasted with the local Synods held since.
For this was why an ecumenical synod has been held at Nicæa, 318 bishops assembling to discuss the faith on account of the Arian heresy, namely, in order that local synods should no more be held on the subject of the Faith, but that, even if held, they should not hold good. For what does that Council lack, that any one should seek to innovate? It is full of piety, beloved; and has filled the whole world with it. Indians have acknowledged it, and all Christians of other barbarous nations. Vain then is the labour of those who have often made attempts against it. For already the men we refer to have held ten or more synods, changing their ground at each, and while taking away some things from earlier decisions, in later ones make changes and additions. And so far they have gained nothing by writing, erasing, and using force, not knowing that every plant that the Heavenly Father hath not planted shall be plucked up [3716] .' But the word of the Lord which came through the ecumenical Synod at Nicæa, abides for ever [3717] . For if one compare number with number, these who met at Nicæa are more than those at local synods, inasmuch as the whole is greater than the part. But if a man wishes to discern the reason of the Synod at Nicæa, and that of the large number subsequently held by these men, he will find that while there was a reasonable cause for the former, the others were got together by force, by reason of hatred and contention. For the former council was summoned because of the Arian heresy, and because of Easter, in that they of Syria, Cilicia and Mesopotamia differed from us, and kept the feast at the same season as the Jews. But thanks to the Lord, harmony has resulted not only as to the Faith, but also as to the Sacred Feast. And that was the reason of the synod at Nicæa. But the subsequent ones were without number, all however planned in opposition to the ecumenical.
3. The true nature of the proceedings at Ariminum.
This being pointed out, who will accept those who cite the synod of Ariminum, or any other, against the Nicene? or who could help hating men who set at nought their fathers' decisions, and put above them the newer ones, drawn up at Ariminum with contention and violence? or who would wish to agree with these men, who do not accept even their own? For in their own ten or more synods, as I said above, they wrote now one thing, now another, and so came out clearly as themselves the accusers of each one. Their case is not unlike that of the Jewish traitors in old times. For just as they left the one well of the living water, and hewed for themselves broken cisterns, which cannot hold water, as the prophet Jeremiah has it [3718] , so these men, fighting against the one ecumenical synod, hewed for themselves' many synods, and all appeared empty, like a sheaf without strength [3719] .' Let us not then tolerate those who cite the Ariminian or any other synod against that of Nicæa. For even they who cite that of Ariminum appear not to know what was done there, for else they would have said nothing about it. For ye know, beloved, from those who went from you to Ariminum, how Ursacius and Valens, Eudoxius [3720] and Auxentius [3721] (and there Demophilus [3722] also was with them), were deposed, after wishing to write something to supersede the Nicene decisions. For on being requested to anathematise the Arian heresy, they refused, and preferred to be its ringleaders. So the bishops, like genuine servants of the Lord and orthodox believers (and there were nearly 200 [3723] ), wrote that they were satisfied with the Nicene alone, and desired and held nothing more or less than that. This they also reported to Constantius, who had ordered the assembling of the synod. But the men who had been deposed at Ariminum went off to Constantius, and caused those who had reported against them to be insulted, and threatened with not being allowed to return to their dioceses, and to be treated with violence in Thrace that very winter, to compel them to tolerate their innovations.
4. The Nicene formula in accordance with Scripture.
If then any cite the synod of Ariminum, firstly let them point out the deposition of the above persons, and what the bishops wrote, namely that none should seek anything beyond what had been agreed upon by the fathers at Nicæa, nor cite any synod save that one. But this they suppress, but make much of what was done by violence in Thrace [3724] ; thus shewing that they are dissemblers of the Arian heresy, and aliens from the sound Faith. And again, if a man were to examine and compare the great synod itself, and those held by these people, he would discover the piety of the one and the folly of the others. They who assembled at Nicæa did so not after being deposed: and secondly, they confessed that the Son was of the Essence of the Father. But the others, after being deposed again and again, and once more at Ariminum itself, ventured to write that it ought not to be said that the Son had Essence or Subsistence. This enables us to see, brethren, that they of Nicæa breathe the spirit of Scripture, in that God says in Exodus [3725] , I am that I am,' and through Jeremiah, Who is in His substance [3726] and hath seen His word;' and just below, if they had stood in My subsistence [3727] and heard My words:' now subsistence is essence, and means nothing else but very being, which Jeremiah calls existence, in the words, and they heard not the voice of existence [3728] .' For subsistence, and essence, is existence: for it is, or in other words exists. This Paul also perceiving wrote to the Hebrews, who being the brightness of his glory, and the express Image of his subsistence [3729] .' But the others, who think they know the Scriptures and call themselves wise, and do not choose to speak of subsistence in God (for thus they wrote at Ariminum and at other synods of theirs), were surely with justice deposed, saying as they did, like the fool did in his heart [3730] , God is not.' And again the fathers taught at Nicæa that the Son and Word is not a creature, nor made, having read all things were made through Him [3731] ,' and in Him were all things created, and consist [3732] ;' while these men, Arians rather than Christians, in their other synods have ventured to call Him a creature, and one of the things that are made, things of which He Himself is the Artificer and Maker. For if through Him all things were made' and He too is a creature, He would be the creator of Himself. And how can what is being created create? or He that is creating be created?
5. How the test Coessential' came to be adopted at Nicæa.
But not even thus are they ashamed, although they say such things as cause them to be hated by all; citing the Synod of Ariminum, only to shew that there also they were deposed. And as to the actual definition of Nicæa, that the Son is coessential with the Father, on account of which they ostensibly oppose the synod, and buzz around everywhere like gnats about the phrase, either they stumble at it from ignorance, like those who stumble at the stone of stumbling that was laid in Sion [3733] ; or else they know, but for that very reason are constantly opposing and murmuring, because it is an accurate declaration and full in the face of their heresy. For it is not the phrases that vex them, but the condemnation of themselves which the definition contains. And of this, once again, they are themselves the cause, even if they wish to conceal the fact of which they are perfectly aware,--But we must now mention it, in order that hence also the accuracy of the great synod may be shewn. For [3734] the assembled bishops wished to put away the impious phrases devised by the Arians, namely made of nothing,' and that the Son was a thing made,' and a creature,' and that there was a time when He was not,' and that He is of mutable nature.' And they wished to set down in writing the acknowledged language of Scripture, namely that the Word is of God by nature Only-begotten, Power, Wisdom of the Father, Very God, as John says, and as Paul wrote, brightness of the Father's glory and express image of His person [3735] . But Eusebius and his fellows, drawn on by their own error, kept conferring together as follows: Let us assent. For we also are of God: for "there is one God of whom are all things [3736] ," and "old things are passed away, behold all things are made new, but all things are of God [3737] ."' And they considered what is written in the Shepherd [3738] , Before all things believe that God is one, who created and set all things in order, and made them to exist out of nothing.' But the Bishops, beholding their craftiness, and the cunning of their impiety, expressed more plainly the sense of the words of God,' by writing that the Son is of the Essence of God, so that whereas the Creatures, since they do not exist of themselves without a cause, but have a beginning of their existence, are said to be of God,' the Son alone might be deemed proper to the Essence of the Father. For this is peculiar to one who is Only-begotten and true Word in relation to a Father, and this was the reason why the words of the essence' were adopted. Again [3739] , upon the bishops asking the dissembling minority if they agreed that the Son was not a Creature, but the Power and only Wisdom of the Father, and the Eternal Image, in all respects exact, of the Father, and true God, Eusebius and his fellows were observed exchanging nods with one another, as much as to say this applies to us men also, for we too are called "the image and glory of God [3740] ," and of us it is said, "For we which live are alway [3741] ," and there are many Powers, and "all the power [3742] of the Lord went out of the land of Egypt," while the caterpillar and the locust are called His "great power [3743] ." And "the Lord of powers [3744] is with us, the God of Jacob is our help." For we hold that we are proper [3745] to God, and not merely so, but insomuch that He has even called us brethren. Nor does it vex us, even if they call the Son Very God. For when made He exists in verity.'
6. The Nicene test not unscriptural in sense, nor a novelty.
Such was the corrupt mind of the Arians. But here too the Bishops, beholding their craftiness, collected from the Scriptures the figures of brightness, of the river and the well, and of the relation of the express Image to the Subsistence, and the texts, in thy light shall we see light [3746] ,' and I and the Father are one [3747] .' And lastly they wrote more plainly, and concisely, that the Son was coessential with the Father; for all the above passages signify this. And their murmuring, that the phrases are unscriptural, is exposed as vain by themselves, for they have uttered their impieties in unscriptural terms: (for such are of nothing' and there was a time when He was not'), while yet they find fault because they were condemned by unscriptural terms pious in meaning. While they, like men sprung from a dunghill, verily spoke of the earth [3748] ,' the Bishops, not having invented their phrases for themselves, but having testimony from their Fathers, wrote as they did. For ancient bishops, of the Great Rome and of our city, some 130 years ago, wrote [3749] and censured those who said that the Son was a creature and not coessential with the Father. And Eusebius knew this, who was bishop of Cæsarea, and at first an accomplice [3750] of the Arian heresy; but afterwards, having signed at the Council of Nicæa, wrote to his own people affirming as follows: we know that certain eloquent and distinguished bishops and writers even of ancient date used the word "coessential" with reference to the Godhead of the Father and the Son.'
7. The position that the Son is a Creature inconsistent and untenable.
Why then do they go on citing the Synod of Ariminum, at which they were deposed? Why do they reject that of Nicæa, at which their Fathers signed the confession that the Son is of the Father's Essence and coessential with Him? Why do they run about? For now they are at war not only with the bishops who met at Nicæa, but with their own great bishops and their own friends. Whose heirs or successors then are they? How can they call men fathers, whose confession, well and apostolically drawn up, they will not accept? For if they think they can object to it, let them speak, or rather answer, that they may be convicted of falling foul of themselves, whether they believe the Son when He says, I and my Father are one,' and he that hath seen Me hath seen the Father [3751] .' Yes,' they must answer, since it is written we believe it.' But if they are asked how they are one, and how he that hath seen the Son hath seen the Father, of course, we suppose they will say, by reason of resemblance,' unless they have quite come to agree with those who hold the brother-opinion to theirs, and are called [3752] Anomoeans. But if once more they are asked, how is He like?' they brasen it out and say, by perfect virtue and harmony, by having the same will with the Father, by not willing what the Father wills not.' But let them understand that one assimilated to God by virtue and will is liable also to the purpose of changing; but the Word is not thus, unless He is like' in part, and as we are, because He is not like [God] in essence also. But these characteristics belong to us, who are originate, and of a created nature. For we too, albeit we cannot become like God in essence, yet by progress in virtue imitate God, the Lord granting us this grace, in the words, Be ye merciful as your Father is merciful:' be ye perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect [3753] .' But that originate things are changeable, no one can deny, seeing that angels transgressed, Adam disobeyed, and all stand in need of the grace of the Word. But a mutable thing cannot be like God who is truly unchangeable, any more than what is created can be like its creator. This is why, with regard to us, the holy man said, Lord, who shall be likened unto thee [3754] ,' and who among the gods is like unto thee, Lord [3755] ;' meaning by gods those who, while created, had yet become partakers of the Word, as He Himself said, If he called them gods to whom the word of God came [3756] .' But things which partake cannot be identical with or similar to that whereof they partake. For example, He said of Himself, I and the Father are one [3757] ,' implying that things originate are not so. For we would ask those who allege the Ariminian Synod, whether a created essence can say, what things I see my Father make, those I make also [3758] .' For things originate are made and do not make; or else they made even themselves. Why, if, as they say, the Son is a Creature and the Father is His Maker, surely the Son would be His own maker, as He is able to make what the Father makes, as He said. But such a supposition is absurd and utterly untenable, for none can make himself.
8. The Son's relation to the Father essential, not merely ethical.
Once more, let them say whether things originate could say [3759] , all things whatsoever the Father hath are Mine.' Now, He has the prerogative of creating and making, of Eternity, of omnipotence, of immutability. But things originate cannot have the power of making, for they are creatures; nor eternity, for their existence has a beginning; nor of omnipotence and immutability, for they are under sway, and of changeable nature, as the Scriptures say. Well then, if these prerogatives belong to the Son, they clearly do so, not on account of His virtue, as said above, but essentially, even as the synod said, He is of no other essence' but of the Father's, to whom these prerogatives are proper. But what can that be which is proper to the Father's essence, and an offspring from it, or what name can we give it, save coessential?' For that which a man sees in the Father, that sees he also in the Son; and that not by participation, but essentially. And this is [the meaning of] I and the Father are one,' and he that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.' Here especially once more it is easy to shew their folly. If it is from virtue, the antecedent of willing and not willing, and of moral progress, that you hold the Son to be like the Father; while these things fall under the category of quality; clearly you call God compound of quality and essence. But who will tolerate you when you say this? For God, who compounded all things to give them being, is not compound, nor of similar nature to the things made by Him through the Word. Far be the thought. For He is simple essence, in which quality is not, nor, as James says, any variableness or shadow of turning [3760] .' Accordingly, if it is shewn that it is not from virtue (for in God there is no quality, neither is there in the Son), then He must be proper to God's essence. And this you will certainly admit if mental apprehension is not utterly destroyed in you. But what is that which is proper to and identical with the essence of God, and an Offspring from it by nature, if not by this very fact coessential with Him that begat it? For this is the distinctive relation of a Son to a Father, and he who denies this, does not hold that the Word is Son in nature and in truth.
9. The honest repudiation of Arianism involves the acceptance of the Nicene test.
This then the Fathers perceived when they wrote that the Son was coessential with the Father, and anathematised those who say that the Son is of a different Subsistence [3761] : not inventing phrases for themselves, but learning in their turn, as we said, from the Fathers who had been before them. But after the above proof, their Ariminian Synod is superfluous, as well as any [3762] other synod cited by them as touching the Faith. For that of Nicæa is sufficient, agreeing as it does with the ancient bishops also, in which too their fathers signed, whom they ought to respect, on pain of being thought anything but Christians. But if even after such proofs, and after the testimony of the ancient bishops, and the signature of their own Fathers, they pretend as if in ignorance to be alarmed at the phrase coessential,' then let them say and hold, in simpler terms and truly, that the Son is Son by nature, and anathematise as the synod enjoined those who say that the Son of God is a Creature or a thing made, or of nothing, or that there was once a time when He was not, and that He is mutable and liable to change, and of another Subsistence. And so let them escape the Arian heresy. And we are confident that in sincerely anathematising these views, they ipso facto confess that the Son is of the Father's Essence, and coessential with Him. For this is why the Fathers, having said that the Son was coessential, straightway added, but those who say that He is a creature, or made, or of nothing, or that there was once a time when He was not,' the Catholic Church anathematises: namely in order that by this means they might make it known that these things are meant by the word coessential.' And the meaning Coessential' is known from the Son not being a Creature or thing made: and because he that says coessential' does not hold that the Word is a Creature: and he that anathematises the above views, at the same time holds that the Son is coessential with the Father; and he that calls Him coessential,' calls the Son of God genuinely and truly so; and he that calls Him genuinely Son understands the texts, I and the Father are one,' and he that hath seen Me hath seen the Father [3763] .'
10. Purpose of this Letter; warning against Auxentius of Milan.
Now it would be proper to write this at greater length. But since we write to you who know, we have dictated it concisely, praying that among all the bond of peace might be preserved, and that all in the Catholic Church should say and hold the same thing. And we are not meaning to teach, but to put you in mind. Nor is it only ourselves that write, but all the bishops of Egypt and the Libyas, some ninety in number. For we all are of one mind in this, and we always sign for one another if any chance not to be present. Such being our state of mind, since we happened to be assembled, we wrote, both to our beloved Damasus, bishop of the Great Rome, giving an account of Auxentius [3764] who has intruded upon the church at Milan; namely that he not only shares the Arian heresy, but is also accused of many offences, which he committed with Gregory [3765] , the sharer of his impiety; and while expressing our surprise that so far he has not been deposed and expelled from the Church, we thanked [Damasus] for his piety and that of those who assembled at the Great Rome, in that by expelling Ursacius and Valens, and those who hold with them, they preserved the harmony of the Catholic Church. Which we pray may be preserved also among you, and therefore entreat you not to tolerate, as we said above, those who put forward a host of synods held concerning the Faith, at Ariminum, at Sirmium, in Isauria, in Thrace, those in Constantinople, and the many irregular ones in Antioch. But let the Faith confessed by the Fathers at Nicæa alone hold good among you, at which all the fathers, including those of the men who now are fighting against it, were present, as we said above, and signed: in order that of us too the Apostle may say, Now I praise you that ye remember me in all things, and as I handed the traditions to you, so ye hold them fast [3766] .'
11. Godhead of the Spirit also involved in the Nicene Creed.
For this Synod of Nicæa is in truth a proscription of every heresy. It also upsets those who blaspheme the Holy Spirit, and call Him a Creature. For the Fathers, after speaking of the faith in the Son, straightway added, And we believe in the Holy Ghost,' in order that by confessing perfectly and fully the faith in the Holy Trinity they might make known the exact form of the Faith of Christ, and the teaching of the Catholic Church. For it is made clear both among you and among all, and no Christian can have a doubtful mind on the point, that our faith is not in the Creature, but in one God, Father Almighty, maker of all things visible and invisible: and in one Lord Jesus Christ His Only-begotten Son, and in one Holy Ghost; one God, known in the holy and perfect Trinity, baptized into which, and in it united to the Deity, we believe that we have also inherited the kingdom of the heavens, in Christ Jesus our Lord, through whom to the Father be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen. __________________________________________________________________
[3714] Prov. xxii. 28.
[3715] Ex. xxi. 17.
[3716] Matt. xv. 13.
[3717] 1 Pet. i. 25.
[3718] ii. 13.
[3719] Hos. viii. 7, LXX.
[3720] Eudoxius was at Seleucia, not at Ariminum.
[3721] See note on §10 infr.
[3722] Bishop of Beroea in Macedonia Tertia, and from 370-380 successor of Eudoxius as Arian bishop of CP.
[3723] There were some 400 in all, so that the orthodox majority must have been far more than 200 (see de Syn. 8, 33). But Gwatkin (Stud. 170, note 3), inclines to accept the statement in the text.
[3724] i.e. at Niké, 359.
[3725] Ex. iii. 14.
[3726] hupostemati, Jer. xxiii. 18, LXX.
[3727] hupostasei, v. 22.
[3728] huparxis, Jer. ix. 10, LXX.
[3729] Heb. i. 3.
[3730] Ps. xiv. 1.
[3731] John i. 3.
[3732] Col. i. 16.
[3733] Rom. ix. 33.
[3734] This passage repeats in substance the account in de Decr. 19.
[3735] hupostasis
[3736] 1 Cor. viii. 6.
[3737] 2 Cor. v. 17, 18.
[3738] Herm. Mand. 1.
[3739] Cf. de Decr. §20, ubi supr.
[3740] 1 Cor. xi. 7.
[3741] Ps. cxv. 18 (v. 26, LXX.); cf. 2 Cor. iv. 11.
[3742] dunamis, Ex. xii. 41
[3743] Joel ii. 25.
[3744] dunameon, Ps. xlvi. 7.
[3745] idious.
[3746] Ps. xxxvi. 9.
[3747] John x. 30.
[3748] John iii. 31.
[3749] See de Syn. §43, and de Sent. Dionys. 18, 19, also supr. p. 76.
[3750] But see Socrates, ii. 21, and D.C.B. ii. p. 347.
[3751] John x. 30, and xiv. 9.
[3752] Cf. de Syn. §31 (a chapter added after the death of Constantius). The Anomoean sect, headed by Eunomius, and deriving its intellectual impetus from Aetias, belongs to the second generation of the Arian movement (their watchword is characterised as recent in the creed of Niké, 359 a.d.), and was comparatively unfamiliar to Athanasius. Cf. Prolegg. ch. ii. §8.
[3753] Luke vi. 36; Matt. v. 48.
[3754] Ps. lxxxiii. 1, LXX.
[3755] Ps. lxxxvi. 8.
[3756] John x. 35.
[3757] Ib. x. 30.
[3758] Ib. v. 19: the word poieo is taken in the sense of making.
[3759] John xvi. 15.
[3760] James i. 17.
[3761] hupostasis
[3762] Omit he with most mss.
[3763] John x. 30, and xiv. 9.
[3764] Auxentius (not in D.C.B.) was a native of Cappadocia (Hist. Ar. 75), and had been ordained presbyter at Alexandria by Gregory (next note). Upon the expulsion of the somewhat weak-kneed Dionysius after the council at Milan (355) he was appointed to that see by Constantius, although according to Athanasius (ubi supr.) he knew no Latin, nor any thing else except irreligion (a busybody rather than a Christian'). He took a leading part along with Valens and others at the Council of Ariminum (de Syn. 8, 10) and was included in the deposition of Arian leaders by that synod. Under the orthodox Valentinian he maintained his see in spite of the efforts of Philaster, Evagrius, and Eusebius of Vercellæ, and in spite of the condemnations passed upon him by various Western synods (362-371, see ad Epict. 1). In 364, Hilary travelled to Milan on purpose to expose him before Valentinian. In a discussion ordered by the latter, Hilary extorted from Auxentius a confession which satisfied the Emperor, but not Hilary himself, whose persistent denunciation of its insincerity caused his dismissal from the town. Auxentius seems after this to have intrigued to obtain Illyrian signatures to the creed of ( Niké or) Ariminum (Hard. Conc. 1. pp. 771, 773). Upon his death (374) Ambrose was elected bishop of Milan, but was confronted by the Arian party with a rival bishop in the person of a second Auxentius, said to have been a pupil of Ulfilas.
[3765] The intrusive bishop of Alexandria, 339-346. He had ordained his fellow-countryman Auxentius (Hilar. in Aux. 8).
[3766] 1 Cor. xi. 2. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Letters of Athanasius,
with Two Ancient Chronicles of His Life.
------------------------
The Letters cannot be arranged in strict sequence of time without breaking into the homogeneity of the corpus of Easter Letters. Accordingly we divide them into two parts: (1) all that remain of the Easter or Festal Epistles: (2) Personal Letters. From the latter class we exclude synodical or encyclical documents, or treatises merely inscribed to a friend, such as those printed above pp. 91, 149, 173, 222, &c., &c., the ad Serapionem, ad Marcellinum, &c. There remain a number of highly interesting letters, the survivals of what must have been a large correspondence, all of which, excepting six (Nos. 52, 54, 56, 59, 60, 61), now appear in English for the first time. They are arranged as nearly as possible in strict chronological order, though this is in some cases open to doubt (e.g. 60, 64, &c.). They mostly belong to the later half of the episcopate of Athanasius, and are therefore placed after the Festal Collection, which however itself extends to the end of the Bishop's life. The immemorial numbering of the latter collection is of course retained, although many of the forty-five are no longer to be found.
Prefixed to the Letters are two almost contemporary chronicles, the one preserved in the same ms. as Letters 46, 47, the other prefixed to the Syriac ms., which is our sole channel for the bulk of the Easter Letters. A memorandum appended to Letter 64 specifies certain fragments not included in this volume. The striking fragment Filiis suis has been conjecturally placed among the remains of Letter 29.
For the arrangement of the Letters, the reader is referred to the general Table of Contents to this volume. We now give
a. The Historia Acephala or Maffeian fragment, with short introduction.
b. The Chronicon Prævium or Festal Index, with introduction to it and to the Festal Letters. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
A.--The Historia Acephala.
------------------------
This most important document was brought to light in 1738 by the Marchese F. Scipio Maffei ( 1755), from a Latin ms. (uncial parchment) in the Chapter Library at Verona. It was reprinted from Maffei's Osservazioni Letterarie in the Padua edition of Athanasius; also in 1769 by Gallandi (Bibl. Patr. v. 222), from which edition (the reprint in Migne, xxvi. 1443 sqq. being full of serious misprints) the following version has been made. The Latin text (including letters 46, 47, and a Letter of the Council of Sardica) is very imperfect, but the annalist is so careful in his reckonings, and so often repeats himself, that the careful reader can nearly always use the document to make good its own gaps or wrong readings. Beyond this (except the insertion of the consuls for 372, §17 ad fin.) the present editor has not ventured [3767] to go. The importance and value of the fragment must now be shewn.
The annalist evidently writes under the episcopate of Theophilus, to which he hurriedly brings down his chronology after the death of Athanasius (§19). At the fortieth anniversary of the episcopate of Athanasius, June 8, 368, he makes a pause (§17) in order to reckon up his dates. This passage is the key of the whole of his chronological data. He accounts for the period of forty years (thus placing the accession of Ath. at June 8, 328, in agreement with the Index), shewing how it is exactly made up by the periods of exile' and of quiet' previously mentioned. To quiet' he assigns xxii years v months and x days,' to exile' xvii years vi months xx days; total xl years. He then shews how the latter is made up by the several exiles he has chronicled. As the text stands we have the following sum:
Table A.
Exiles
(1)
xc months
iii days
[(2)]
(3)
lxxii "
xiv "
(4)
xv "
xxii "
(5)
iv "
exact result'
xvii years
vi months
xx days
Now the exact result of the figures as they stand is 182 months, 9 days, i.e. 15 years 2 months and 9 days, or 2 years 4 months and 11 days too little. Moreover of the well-known five exiles,' only four are accounted for. An exile has thus dropped out, and an item of 2 years 4 months 11 days. Now this corresponds exactly with the interval from Epiphi 17 (July 11), 335 (departure for Tyre, Fest. Ind. viii), to Athyr 27 (Nov. 23), 337 (return to Alexandria F. I. x). The annalist then (followed apparently by Theodt. H. E. ii. 1) reckoned the first exile at the above figure. But what of the first figure in our table, xc months iii days? It again exactly coincides with the interval from Pharm. 21 (Apr. 16, Easter Monday), 339 to Paophi 24 (Oct. 21), 346, on which day (§1) Athan. returned from his second exile. This double coincidence cannot be an accident. It demonstrates beyond all dispute that the missing item of ann. ii, mens. iv, d. xii' has dropped out after Treveris in Galliis,' and that mens. xc, dies iii' relates to the second exile, so that, in §1 also, the annalist wrote not annos vi' but annos vii menses vi dies iii,' which he repeats §17 by its equivalent mens. xc, d. iii,' while words have dropped out in §1 to the effect of what is supplied in brackets. (Hefele, ii. 50, Eng. Tr., is therefore in error here).
I would add that the same obvious principle of correcting a clearly corrupt figure by the writer's own subsequent reference to it, enables us also to correct the last figures of §2 by those of §5, to correct the items by the sum total of §§6, 7, and lastly to correct the corrupt readings Gregorius' for Georgius, and Constans' for Constantius, by the many uncorrupt places which shew that the annalist himself was perfectly aware of the right names.
In one passage alone (§13 Athyr' twice for Mechir, cf. Fest. Ind. viii) is conjecture really needed; but even here the consuls are correctly given, and support the right date.
We are now in a position to construct tables of exiles' and quiet' periods from the Historia as corrected by itself.
Table B. Exiles &c., of Athanasius.
Exiles lasted
No.
Years
Months
Days
beginning
(a) ii
iv
xi
(b) Epiphi 17, 335 (July 11)
vii
vi
iii
(b) Pharmuthi 21, 339 (Apr. 16)
vi
xiv
Mechir 13, 356 (Feb. 8)
iii
xxii
Paophi 27, 362 (Oct. 24)
iv
Paophi 8, 365 (Oct. 5)
Total Exiles
xvii
vi
xx
Quiet periods lasting
No.
Years
Months
Days
beginning
vii
iii (b)
Payni 14, 328 (June 8)
iv
xxiv (b)
(b) Athyr 27, 337 (Nov. 23)
ix
iii
xix (§5)
Paophi 24, 346 (Oct. 21)
viii
(§10)
Mechir 27, 362 (Feb. 21)
vii
xvii (b)
(c) Mechir 19, 364 (Feb. 14)
ii
iv
vii (a)
Mechir 7, 366 (Feb. 1)
Total quiet' (to June 8, 368)
xxii
N.B. In the above Table, (a) denotes dates or figures directly implied in the existing text, (b) those implied by it in combination with other sources, (c) those based on conjectural emendation of the existing text. All unmarked data are expressly given.
Table B shews the deliberate and careful calculation which runs through the system of our annalist. Once or twice he indulges in a round figure, exiles 1 and 5 are each a day too long by the Egyptian calendar, and this is set off by his apparently reckoning the fifth quiet period as two days too short. But the writer clearly knew his own mind. In fact, the one just ground on which we might distrust his chronology is its systematic character. He has a thorough scheme of his own, which he carries out to a nicety. Now such a chronology is not necessarily untrustworthy. Its consistency may be artificial; on the other hand, it may be due to accurate knowledge of the facts. Whether this is so or not must be ascertained partly from a writer's known opportunities and capacity, partly from his agreement or discrepancy with other sources of knowledge. Now our annalist wrote in the time of Theophilus (385-412), and may therefore rank as a contemporary of Athanasius (cf. Prolegg. ch. v.) His opportunities therefore were excellent. As to his capacity, his work bears every trace of care and skill. He is no historian, nor a stylist, but as an annalist he understood what he was doing. As to agreement with other data, we remark to begin with that it was the publication of this fragment in the 18th century that first shed a ray of light on the Erebus and Chaos of the chronology of the Council of Sardica and its adjacent events; that it at once justified the critical genius of Montfaucon, Tillemont and others, against the objections with which their date for the death of Athanasius [3768] was assailed, and here again upset the confused chronological statements of the fifth-century historians in favour of the incidental evidence of many more primary authorities [3769] . But most important of all is its confirmation by the evidence of the Festal Letters discovered in 1842, and especially by their Index, the so-called Chronicon Athanasianum.' It is evident at a glance that our annalist is quite independent of the Index, as he gives many details which it does not contain. But neither can the Index be a compilation from the annalist. Each writer had access to information not embodied in the other, and there is no positive evidence that either used the other in any way. When they agree, therefore, their evidence has the greatest possible weight. Their main heads of agreement are indicated in the Chronological Table, Prolegg. sub fin.
It remains to notice shortly the two digressions on the doings of Eudoxius and the Anomoeans (§§2, 12 of Migne, paragraphs II, IX of Gallandi). Here the annalist is off his own ground, and evidently less well informed. In §2 we learn nothing of interest: but the Ecthesis' of the Anomoeans in par. IX is of importance, and only too evidently authentic. It still awaits a critical examination, and it is not easy to give it its exact place in the history of the later Arianism. Apparently it belongs to the period 360-364, when the Anomoeans were organising their schism (Gwatkin, pp. 226, 180) the names being those of the ultra-Arians condemned by the Homoeans in 360 (Prolegg. ch. ii. §8 fin.).
The contrast between the vagueness of statement in these digressions, and the writer's firmness of touch in dealing with Alexandrian affairs is most significant.
The fragment runs as follows: __________________________________________________________________
[3767] The corrections were made before he could obtain the essay and text of Sievers (Zeitsch. Hist. Theol. 1868), where he now finds them nearly all anticipated. Sievers' discussion has been carefully and gratefully used, but his text is defective, especially from the accidental omission of one of the key-clauses of the whole (§17).
[3768] But our annalist gives May 3, while Fest. Ind. gives May 2, the day solemnised in the Coptic Martyrologies (Mai, Script. Vett. vol. 4, part 2, pp. 29, 114), and doubtless the right one. Perhaps, if Athanasius died in the night of May 2-3, the former day might be chosen for his commemoration, while our annalist may still be literally exact.
[3769] See Tillem. viii. 719 sqq. __________________________________________________________________
Historia Acephala.
I. 1. The Emperor Constantius also wrote concerning the return of Athanasius, and among the Emperor's letters this one too is to be found.
2. And it came to pass after the death of Gregory that Athanasius returned from the city of Rome and the parts of Italy, and entered Alexandria Paophi xxiv, Coss. Constantius IV, Constans III (October 21, 346); that is after [vii] years vi [months and iii days,] and remained quiet at Alexandria ix [3770] years iii [3771] months [and xix days].
II. Now after his return, Coss. Limenius [3772] and Catulinus (349), Theodore [3773] , Narcissus [3774] , and George, with others, came to Constantinople, wishing to persuade Paul to communicate with them, who received them not even with a word, and answered their greeting with an anathema. So they took to themselves Eusebius of Nicomedia [3775] , and laid snares for the most blessed Paul, and lodging a calumny against him concerning Constans and Magnentius, expelled him from CP. that they might have room there, and sow the Arian heresy. Now the people of CP., desiring the most blessed Paul, raised continual riots to prevent his being taken from the city, for they loved his sound doctrine. The Emperor, however, was angry, and sent Count Hermogenes to cast him out; but the people, hearing this, dragged forth Hermogenes through the midst of the town. From which matter they obtained a pretext against the Bishop, and exiled him to Armenia. Theodore and the rest wishing to place in the See of that Town Eudoxius, an ally and partisan of the Arian heresy, ordained [Bishop] of Germanicia, while the people were stirred to riot, and would not allow any one to sit in the See of blessed Paul,--they took Macedonius, a presbyter of Paul, and ordained him bishop of the town of CP., whom the whole assembly of bishops condemned, since against his own father he had disloyally received laying on of hands from heretics.
However, after Macedonius had communicated with them and signed, they brought in pretexts of no importance, and removing him from the Church, they instal the aforesaid Eudoxius of Antioch [3776] , whence [the partakers] in this secession are called Macedonians, making shipwreck concerning the Holy Spirit.
III. 3. After this time Athanasius, hearing that there was to be disturbance against him, the Emperor Constantius [3777] being in residence at Milan (353), sent to court a vessel with v Bishops, Serapion of Thmuis, Triadelphus of Nicotas, Apollo of Upper Cynopolis, Ammonius of Pachemmon,...and iii Presbyters of Alexandria, Peter the Physician, Astericus, and Phileas. After their setting sail from Alexandria, Coss. Constantius VI Augustus, and Constantius [3778] Cæsar II, Pachom xxiv (May 19, 353), presently four days after Montanus of the Palace entered Alexandria Pachom xxviii, and gave a letter of the same Constantius [3779] Augustus to the bishop Athanasius, forbidding him to come to court, on which account the bishop was exceedingly desolate, and the whole people much troubled [3780] . So Montanus, accomplishing nothing, set forth, leaving the bishop at Alexandria.
4. Now after a while Diogenes, Imperial Notary, came to Alexandria in the month of Mensor (August, 355) Coss. Arbetion and Lollianus: that is ii years and v months [3781] from when Montanus left Alexandria. And Diogenes pressed every one urgently to compel the bishop to leave the town, and afflicted all not a little. Now on the vi day of the month Thoth, he made a sharp attempt to besiege the church, and he spent iv months in his efforts, that is from the month Mensor, or from the [first] day of those intercalated until the xxvi day of Choiac (Dec. 23). But as the people and the judges strongly resisted Diogenes, Diogenes returned without success on the xxvi day of the said month Choiac, Coss. Arbetion and Lollianus, after iv months as aforesaid.
IV. 5. Now Duke Syrianus, and Hilary the Notary, came from Egypt to Alexandria on the tenth day of Tybi (Jan. 6, 356) after Coss. Arbetion and Lollianus. And sending in front all the legions of soldiers throughout Egypt and Libya, the Duke and the Notary entered the Church of Theonas with their whole force of soldiers by night, on the xiii day of Mechir, during the night preceding the xiv. And breaking the doors of the Church of Theonas, they entered with an infinite force of soldiers. But bishop Athanasius escaped their hands, and was saved, on the aforesaid xiv of Mechir [3782] . Now this happened ix years iii months and xix days from the Bishop's return from Italy. But when the Bishop was delivered, his presbyters and people remained in possession of the Churches, and holding communion iv months, until there entered Alexandria the prefect Cataphronius and Count Heraclius in the month Pahyni xvi day, Coss. Constantius [3783] VIII and Julianus Cæsar I (June 10, 356).
V. 6. And four days after they entered [3784] the Athanasians were ejected from the Churches, and they were handed over to those who belonged to George [3785] , and were expecting him as Bishop. So they received the Churches on the xxi day of Pahyni. Moreover George [3786] arrived at Alexandria, Coss. Constantius [3787] IX, and Julianus Cæsar II, Mechir xxx (Feb. 24, 357), that is, eight months and xi days from when his party received the Churches. So George [3788] entered Alexandria, and kept the Churches xviii whole months: and then the common people attacked him in the Church of Dionysius, and he was hardly delivered with danger and a great struggle on the i day of the month Thoth, Coss. Tatianus and Cerealis (Aug. 29, 358). Now George [3789] was ejected from Alexandria on the x [3790] day after the riot, namely v of Paophi (Oct. 2). But they who belonged to Bishop Athanasius, ix days after the departure of George, that is on the xiv of Pa[ophi], cast out the men of George [3791] , and held the Churches two months and xiv days; until there came Duke Sebastian from Egypt and cast them out, and again assigned the Churches to the party of George on the xxviii day of the month Choiac (Dec. 24).
7. Now ix whole months after the departure of George from Alexandria, Paulus the Notary arrived Pahyni xxix, Coss. Eusebius, Hypatius (June 23, 359), and published an Imperial Order on behalf of George, and coerced many in vengeance for him. And [ii years and] v months after, George came to Alexandria Athyr xxx (Coss. Taurus, and Florentius) from court (Nov. 26, 361), that is iii years and two months after he had fled. And at Antioch they of the Arian heresy, casting out the Paulinians from the Church, appointed Meletius. When he would not consent to their evil mind, they ordained Euzoius a presbyter of George [3792] of Alexandria in his stead.
VI. 8. Now George, having entered Alexandria as aforesaid on the xxx Athyr, remained safely in the town iii days, that is [till] iii Choiac. For, on the iv day of that same month, the prefect Gerontius announced the death of the Emperor Constantius, and that Julianus alone held the whole Empire. Upon which news, the citizens of Alexandria and all shouted against George, and with one accord placed him under custody. And he was in prison bound with iron from the aforesaid iv day of Choiac, up to the xxvii of the same month, xxiv days. For on the xxviii day of the same month early in the morning, nearly all the people of that town led forth George from prison, and also the Count who was with him, the Superintendent of the building of the Church which is called Cæsareum, and killed them both, and carried their bodies round through the midst of the town, that of George on a camel, but that of Dracontius, men dragging it by ropes; and so having insulted them, at about the vii hour of the day, they burnt the bodies of each.
VII. 9. Now in the next....day of Mechir the x day of the month, after Coss. Taurus and Florentius (Feb. 4, 362), an order of the Emperor Julian was published commanding those things to be restored to the idols and temple attendants and the public account, which in former times had been taken away from them.
10. But after iii days, Mechir xiv, an order was given of the same Emperor Julian, also of the Vicar Modestus, to Gerontius prefect, ordering all Bishops hitherto defeated by factions and exiled to return to their towns and provinces. Now this letter was published on the following day Mechir xv, while subsequently an edict also of the prefect Gerontius was published, by which the Bishop Athanasius was ordered to return to his Church. And xii days after the publication of this Edict Athanasius was seen at Alexandria, and entered the Church in the same month Mechir, xxvii day, so that there is from his flight which took place in the times of Syrianus and Hilary till his return, when Julianus....Mechir xxvii. He remained in the Church until Paophi xxvi, Coss. Mamertinus and Nevitta (Oct. 23, 362), viii whole months.
11. Now on the aforesaid day, Paophi xxvii, he [the prefect] published an Edict of the Emperor Julianus, that Athanasius, Bishop, should retire from Alexandria, and no sooner was the Edict published, than the Bishop left the town and abode round about Thereu [3793] . Soon after his departure Olympus the prefect, in obedience to the same [3794] Pythiodorus, and those who were with him, most difficult persons, sent into exile Paulus and Astericius, presbyters of Alexandria, and directed them to live at the town of Andropolis.
VIII. 12. Now Olympus the same prefect, in the month Mensor, xxvi day, Coss. Julianus Augustus IV. and Sallustius (Aug. 20, 363), announced that Julian the Emperor was dead, and that Jovianus a Christian was Emperor. And in the following month, Thoth xviii, a letter of the Emperor Jovianus came to Olympus the prefect that only the most high God should be worshipped, and Christ, and that the peoples, holding communion in the Churches, should practise religion. Moreover Paulus and Astericius, the aforesaid presbyters, returned from exile at the town of Andropolis, and entered Alexandria, on the x day of Thoth, after x months.
13. Now Bishop Athanasius, having tarried as aforesaid at Thereon, went up to the higher parts of Egypt as far as Upper Hermopolis in the Thebaid, and as far as Antinoopolis. And while he was staying in these places, it was learned that the Emperor Julian was dead, and that Jovian a Christian was Emperor. So the Bishop entered Alexandria secretly, his arrival not being known to many, and went by sea to meet the Emperor Jovian, and afterwards, Church affairs being settled [3795] , received a letter, and came to Alexandria and entered into the Church on the xix day of Athyr [3796] Coss. Jovianus and Varronianus. From his leaving Alexandria according to the order of Julian until he arrived on the aforesaid xix day of Athyr [3797] after one year and iii months, and xxii days.
IX. Now at CP. Eudoxius of Germanicia held the Church, and there was a division between him and Macedonius; but by means of Eudoxius there went forth another worse heresy from the spurious [teaching] of the Arians, Aetius and Patricius [3798] of Nicæa, who communicated with Eunomius, Heliodorus, and Stephen. And Eudoxius adopting this, communicated with Euzoius, Bishop at Antioch, of the Arian sect, and they deposed on a pretext Seleucius [3799] and Macedonius, and Hypatian [3800] , and other xv Bishops belonging to them, since they would not receive Unlike' nor Creature of the Uncreated.' Now their Exposition is as follows:--
Exposition of Patricius [3801] and Aetius, who communicated with Eunomius, Heliodorus, and Stephen.
These are the attributes of God, Unbegotten, without origin, Eternal, not to be commanded, Immutable, All-seeing, Infinite, Incomparable, Almighty, knowing the future without foresight; without beginning [3802] . These do not belong to the Son, for He is commanded, is under command, is made from nothing, has an end, is not compared [with the Father], the Father surpasses Him...of Christ is found: as pertaining to the Father, He is ignorant of the future. He was not God, but Son of God; God of those who are after Him: and in this He possesses invariable likeness with the Father, namely He sees all things because all things...because He is not changed in goodness; [but] not like in the quality of Godhead, nor in nature. But if we said that He was born of the quality of Godhead, we say that He resembles the offspring of serpents [3803] , and that is an impious saying: and like as a statue produces rust from itself, and will be consumed by the rust itself, so also the Son, if He is produced from the nature of the Father, will consume the Father. But from the work, and the newness of work, the Son is naturally God, and not from the Nature, but from another nature like as the Father, but not from Him. For He was made the image of God, and we are out of God, and from God. Inasmuch as all things are from God, and the Son also, as if from something [else]. Like as iron if it has rust will be diminished, like as a body if it produces worms is eaten up, like as a wound if it produce discharges will be consumed by them, so [thinks] he who says that the Son is from the Nature of the Father; now let him who does not say that the Son is like the Father be put outside the Church and be anathema. If we shall say that the Son of God is God, we bring in Two without beginning: we call Him Image of God; he who calls Him out from God' Sabellianises. And he who says that he is ignorant of the nativity of God Manicheanizes: if any one shall say that the Essence of the Son is like the Essence of the Father unbegotten, he blasphemes. For just as snow and white lead are similar in whiteness but dissimilar in kind, so also the Essence of the Son is other than the Essence of the Father. But snow has a different whiteness [3804] ...
Be pleased to hear that the Son is like the Father in His operations; like as Angels cannot comprehend the Nature of Archangels, let them please to understand, nor Archangels the Nature of a Cherubin, nor Cherubins the Nature of the Holy Spirit, nor the Holy Spirit the Nature of the Only-begotten, nor the Only-begotten the nature of the Unbegotten God.
14. Now when the Bishop Athanasius was about coming from Antioch to Alexandria, the Arians Eudoxius, Theodore, Sophronius, Euzoius and Hilary took counsel and appointed Lucius, a presbyter of George, to seek audience of the Emperor Jovian at the Palace, and to say what is contained in the copies [3805] . Now here we have omitted some less necessary matter.
X. 15. Now after Jovian, Valentinian and Valens having been somewhat rapidly summoned to the throne, a decree of theirs, circulated everywhere, which also was delivered at Alexandria on Pachon x, Coss. Valentinian and Valens (May 5, 365), to the effect that the Bishops deposed and expelled from their Churches under Constantius, who had in the time of Julian's reign reclaimed for themselves and taken back their Bishopric, should now be cast out anew from the Churches, a penalty being laid on the courts of a fine of ccc pounds of gold, unless that is they should have [ba]nished the Bishops from the Churches and towns. On which account at Alexandria great confusion and riot arose, insomuch that the whole Church was troubled, since also the officials were few in number with the prefect Flavian and his staff: and on account of the imperial order and the fine of gold they were urgent that the Bishops should leave the town; the Christian multitude resisting and gainsaying the officials and the judge, and maintaining that the Bishop Athanasius did not come under this definition nor under the Imperial order, because neither did Constantius banish him, but even restored him. Likewise also Julian persecuted him; he recalled all, and him for the sake of idolatry he cast out anew, but Jovian brought him back. This opposition and riot went on until the next month Payni, on the xiv day; for on this day the prefect Flavian made a report, declaring that he had consulted the Emperors on this very point which was stirred at Alexandria, and so they all became quiet in a short time [3806] .
XI. 16. iv months and xxiv days after, that is on Paophi viii, the Bishop Athanasius left the Church secretly by night, and retired to a villa near the New River [3807] . But the prefect Flavian and Duke Victorinus not knowing that he had retired, on the same night arrived at the Church of Dionysius with a force of soldiers: and having broken the back door, and entered the upper parts of the house in search of the Bishop's apartment, they did not find him, for, not long before he had retired, and he remained, staying at the aforesaid property from the above day, Paophi viii, till Mechir vi, that is iv whole months (Oct. 5-Jan. 31). After this, the Imperial notary Bresidas, in the same month Mechir came to Alexandria with an Imperial letter, ordering the said Bishop Athanasius to return to Town, and hold the Churches as usual; and on the vii day of the month Mechir, after Coss. Valentinian and Valens, that is Coss. Gratian and Degalaifus, the said notary Bresidas with Duke Victorinus and Flavian the Prefect assembled at the palace and announced to the officers of the courts who were present, and the people, that the Emperors had ordered the Bishop to return to town, and straightway the said Bresidas the notary went forth with the officers of the courts, and a multitude of the people of the Christians to the aforesaid villa, and taking the Bishop Athanasius with the Imperial order, led him in to the Church which is called that of Dionysius on the vii day of the mouth Mechir.
XII. 17. From Coss. Gratian and Dagalaifus (366) to the next consulships of Lupicinus and Jovinus (367) and that of [Valentinian II. and] Valens II. on Payni xiv (June 8, 368) in [this] Consulship xl [years of the Bishopric] of Athanasius are finished. Out of which [years] he abode at Treveri in Gaul [ii years iv months xi days [3808] , and in Italy and the West] xc months and iii days. At Alexandria [and] in uncertain places in hiding, when he was being harassed by Hilary the notary and the Duke, lxxii months and xiv days. In Egypt and Antioch upon journeys xv months and xxii days: upon the property near the new river iv months. The result will be exactly vi [3809] months and xvii years and [3810] xx days. Moreover, he remained in quiet at Alexandria xxii years and v months x days. But also, he twice stayed a little time outside Alexandria in his last journey and at Tyre and at CP. Accordingly, the result will be as I have stated above, xl years of the episcopate of Athanasius until Payni [x]iv, Coss. Valentinian and Valens. And in the following consulate of Valentinian and Victor, Payni xiv, i year, and in the following consulships of Valentinian [III] and Valens III Payni xiv, and in the following Consulships of Gratian and Probus, [and the next of Modestus and Arintheus], and another consulship of Valentinian [IV] and Valens IV, on Pachon viii he falls asleep (May 3, 373).
XIII. 18. Now in the aforesaid consulship of Lupicinus and Jovinus, Lucius being specially desirous to claim for himself the episcopate of the Arians a long time after he had left Alexandria, arrived in the aforesaid consulship, and entered the town secretly by night on the xxvi day of the month Thoth (Sept. 24, 367): and as it is said, abode in a certain small house keeping in hiding for that day. But next day he went to a house where his mother was staying; and his arrival being known at once all over the town, the whole people assembled and blamed his entry. And Duke Trajanus and the Prefect were extremely displeased at his irrational and bold arrival, and sent officials to cast him out of the town. So the officials came to Lucius, and considering all of them that the people were angry and very riotous against him they feared to bring him out of the house by themselves, lest he should be killed by the multitude. And they reported this to the judges. And presently the judges themselves, Duke Trajan, and the Prefect Tatianus [came] to the place with many soldiers, entered the house and brought out Lucius themselves at the vii hour of the day, on the xxvii day of Thoth. Now while Lucius was following the judges, and the whole people of the town after them, Christians and Pagans, and of divers religions, all alike with one breath, and with one mind, and of one accord, did not cease, from the house whence he was led, through the middle of the town, as far as the house of the Duke, from shouting, and hurling at him withal insults and criminal charges, and from crying, Let him be taken out of the town.' However, the Duke took him into his house, and he stayed with him for the remaining hours of the day, and the whole night, and on the following the xxviii of the same month, the Duke early in the morning, and taking him in charge as far as Nicopolis [3811] , handed him over to soldiers to be escorted from Egypt.
19. Now whereas Athanasius died on the viii of the month Pachon, the v day before he fell asleep, he ordained Peter, one of the ancient presbyters, Bishop, who carried on the Episcopate, following him in all things. After whom Timothy his B[rother] succeeded to the Episcopate for iv years. After him Theophilus from [being] deacon was ordained Bishop (385). The End. __________________________________________________________________
[3770] Corrected from §§5, 17, infr.; text xvi.'
[3771] Corrected from §5; text 6 months.'
[3772] Text Hypatius.'
[3773] Of Heraclea.
[3774] Cf. Apol. Fug. 1, &c., &c.
[3775] Bishop of CP. 338-341. On his death Paul was restored, but Maccdonius appointed by the Arians. This was in 341-2. The final expulsion and death of Paul was about the date given in the text; but the events of several years are lumped together without clear distinction.
[3776] In 360.
[3777] Text Constans.' This passage (3-5), is used by Soz. iv. 9.
[3778] Text Constans.' This passage (3-5), is used by Soz. iv. 9.
[3779] Text Constans.' This passage (3-5), is used by Soz. iv. 9.
[3780] Fatigatus,' Soz. etarachthesan
[3781] Cf. Apol. Const. 22; read ii years ii months.
[3782] Text throughout Methir.'
[3783] Text Constans.' This passage (3-5), is used by Soz. iv. 9.
[3784] Supr. p. 290.
[3785] Text Gregory;' §§6, 7 are used by Soz. iv. 10, §8 by Soz. v. 7.
[3786] Text Gregory;' §§6, 7 are used by Soz. iv. 10, §8 by Soz. v. 7.
[3787] Text Constans.' This passage (3-5), is used by Soz. iv. 9.
[3788] Text Gregory;' §§6, 7 are used by Soz. iv. 10, §8 by Soz. v. 7.
[3789] Text Gregory;' §§6, 7 are used by Soz. iv. 10, §8 by Soz. v. 7.
[3790] Read 34th.'
[3791] Text Gregory;' §§6, 7 are used by Soz. iv. 10, §8 by Soz. v. 7.
[3792] Text Gregory;' §§6, 7 are used by Soz. iv. 10, §8 by Soz. v. 7.
[3793] Compare Chereu' in Vit. Ant. 86.
[3794] The previous reference to him has dropped out; see Fest. Ind. xxxv.
[3795] Used by Soz. vi. 5.
[3796] Read Mechir, i.e. Feb. 14, 364.
[3797] Read Mechir, i.e. Feb. 14, 364.
[3798] Can this be the Hypatius of Philst. ix. 19? For Heliodorus and Stephen, see Hist. Ar. p. 294; de Syn. 12; Theod. H. E. ii. 28 and Gwatkin, Studies, pp. 226, 180 note.
[3799] i.e. Eleusius.
[3800] i.e. Eustathius.
[3801] Can this be the Hypatius of Philst. ix. 19? For Heliodorus and Stephen see Hist. Ar. p. 294; de Syn. 12; Theod. H. E. ii. 28 and Gwatkin, Studies, pp. 226, 180 note.
[3802] Lat. dominio' for arche.
[3803] Cf. Matt. iii. 7
[3804] Text imperfect, Externo autem conniventes oculos egressi.'
[3805] i.e. the memoranda printed as Appendix to Letter 56. §14 is used, but badly, by Soz. vi. 5.
[3806] §§15, 16 are used by Soz. vi. 12.
[3807] i.e. in the western suburb.
[3808] i.e. July 11, 335, to Nov. 23, 337, see above, p. 496.
[3809] Migne xi. (misprint).
[3810] The following 14 words are left out by an error in Sievers.
[3811] A short distance east of Alexandria, see Dict. Gr. and Rom. Geog. s.v. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
B.--The Festal Letters, and Their Index,
Or Chronicon Athanasianum.
------------------------
The latter document is from the hand, it would seem, of the original collector of the Easter Letters of Athanasius (yet see infr. note 6a). He gives, in a paragraph corresponding to each Easter in the episcopate of Athanasius, a summary of the calendar data for the year, a notice of the most important events, and especially particulars as to the Letter for the Easter in question, viz., Whether any peculiar circumstances attended its publication, and whether for some reason the ordinary Letter was omitted.
The variations of practice which had rendered the Paschal Feast a subject of controversy from very early times (see Dict. Christ. Antiq. Easter) had given rise to the custom of the announcement of Easter at a convenient interval beforehand by circular letters. In the third century the Bishops of Alexandria issued such letters (e.g. Dionysius in Eus. H. E. vii. 20), and at the Council of Nicæa, where the Easter question was dealt with (ad Afros. 2), the Alexandrian see was requested to undertake the duty of announcing the correct date to the principal foreign Churches as well as to its own suffragan sees. (This is doubted in the learned article Paschal Letters D.C.A. p. 1562, but the statement of Cyril. Alex. in his Prologus Paschalis' is express: cf. Ideler 2, 259. The only doubt is, whether the real reference is to Sardica, see Index xv. and Ep. 18.) This was probably due to the astronomical learning for which Alexandria was famous [3812] . At any rate we have fragments of the Easter letters of Dionysius and of Theophilus, and a collection of the Letters of Cyril [3813] .
The Easter letters of Athanasius were, until 1842, only known to us by allusions in Jerome (de V. illustr. 87) and others, and by fragments in Cosmas Indicopleustes purporting to be taken from the 2nd, 5th, 6th, 22nd, 24th, 28th, 29th, 40th, and 45th. Cardinal Mai had also shortly before the discovery of the Corpus' unearthed a minute fragment of the 13th. But in 1842 Archdeacon Tattam brought home from the Monastery of the Theotokos in the desert of Skete a large number of Syriac mss., which for over a century European scholars had been vainly endeavouring to obtain. Among these, when deposited in the British Museum, Cureton discovered a large collection of the Festal Letters of Athanasius, with the Index,' thus realising the suspicion of Montfaucon (Migne xxvi.) that the lost treasure might be lurking in some Eastern monastery. Another consignment of mss. from the same source produced some further portions, which were likewise included in the translation revised for the present volume [3814] .
(1) Number of Festal Letters of Athanasius.--This question, which is of first-rate importance for the chronology of the period, must be regarded as settled, at any rate until some discovery which shall revolutionise all existing data. The number 45, which was the maximum known to antiquity [3815] , is confirmed by the Index, and by the fact that the citations from Cosmas (see above) tally with the order of the Letters in this Syriac version in every case where the letter is preserved entire, while Letter 39, preserved by a different writer, also tallies with the reference to it in the Index. It is therefore unassailably established on our existing evidence that the last Easter letter of Ath. was his 45th,' in other words that 45 is the full or normal number of his festal letters. This clinches the reckoning of the Index and Hist. Aceph. that he was bishop for 45 Easters (329-373 inclusive), i.e. for parts of 46 years (328-373 inclusive). Moreover it corroborates, and is rivetted firm by, the statement of Cyril. Alex. Ep. 1, that Athan. graced the see of Alexandria fully 46 years.' Il le dit en voulant faire son eloge: de sorte qu'il y a tout lieu de croire qu'il n'a point passé les 46 ans: car pour peu qu'il fust entré dans la 47^me année, S. Cyrille auroit dû naturellement luy donner 47 ans [3816] .' So Tillemont (viii. 719), whose opinion is all the more valuable from the fact that he is unable to harmonise it with his date for the accession of Ath., and accordingly forgets, p. 720 (sub. fin.), what he has said on the previous page.
But we observe that many of the 45 Letters are represented in the corpus' by blanks. This is doubtless often the result of accidental loss. But the Index informs us that in several years, owing to his adversities, the Pope was unable to write.' This however may be fairly understood to refer to the usual public or circular letter. Often when unable to write this, he sent a few cordial lines to some friend (Letter 12) or to the clergy (17, 18) or people (29? see notes there) of Alexandria, in order that the true Easter might be kept (cf. the Arian blunder in 340, Ind. xii, with the note to Serapion Letter 12 from Rome). But occasionally the Index is either corrupt or mistaken, e.g. No. xiii, where the Pope is stated to have written no letter, while yet the Corpus' contains one, apparently entire and of the usual public kind. We may therefore still hope for letters or fragments for any of the missing' years.
(2) The Festal Letters are fully worthy to rank with any extant writings of Athanasius. The same warmth, vigour, and simplicity pervades them as we find elsewhere in his writings, especially in such gems as the letter to Dracontius (Ep. 49). Their interest, however (apart from chronology), is mainly personal and practical. Naturally the use and abuse of Fast and Festival occupy a prominent place throughout. Repeatedly he insists on the joyfulness of Christian feasts, and on the fact that they are typical of, and intended to colour, the whole period of the Christian's life. We gather from Ep. 12 that Lent was kept less strictly in Egypt than in some other Christian countries. He insists not only upon fasting, but upon purity and charity, especially toward the poor (Ep. 1. 11, cf. Ep. 47. 4, &c.). We trace the same ready command of Scripture, the same grave humour in the unexpected turn given to some familiar text (Ep. 39) as we are used to in Athanasius. The Eucharist is a feeding upon the Word (4. 3), and to be prepared for by amendment of life, repentance, and confession of sin (i.e. to God, Ep. 7. 10). Of special importance is the Canon of Holy Scripture in Ep. 39, on which see Prolegg. ch. iv § 4.
It should be observed that the interval before Easter at which notice was given varied greatly. Some letters (e.g. 1, 2, 20) by a natural figure of speech, refer to the Feast as actually come; but others (17, 18) were certainly written as early as the preceding Easter. Letter 4 was written not long before Lent, but was (§ 1) unusually late. The statement of Cassian referred to below (note to Ep. 17) is therefore incorrect at any rate for our period.
(3) The Index to the Festal Letters.--This chronicle, so constantly referred to throughout this volume, is of uncertain date, but probably (upon internal evidence) only somewhat later' (Hefele, E. Tr. vol. ii. p. 50) than Athanasius himself. Its special value is in the points where it agrees with the Hist. Aceph. (supr. Prolegg. ch. v.), where we recognise the accredited reckoning of the Alexandrian Church as represented by Cyril and Proterius (see Tillem. ubi supr.). The writer undoubtedly makes occasional slips (cf. Index iii. with Letter iv. and p. 512, note 1, Index xiii. with Letter [3817] xiii.!), and the text would be a miracle if it had come down to us uncorrupt (see notes passim): but on the main dates he is consistent with himself, with the Chron. Aceph. and (so far as they come in contact) with the notices of the Alexandrian bishops above mentioned.
The writer's method, however, must be attended to if we are to avoid a wrong impression as to his accuracy. Firstly, his year is not the Julian but the Egyptian year (infr. Table C) from Aug. 29 to Aug. 28. Each year is designated by the new consuls who come into office in the fifth month. Secondly, in each year he takes a leading event or events, round which he groups antecedent or consequent facts, which often belong to other years. Two or three examples will make this clear. (a) Year Aug. 30, 335-Aug. 28, 336: leading event, exile of Athanasius (he reaches CP. Oct. 30, 335, leaves for Gaul [Feb. 7], both in the same Egyptian year). Antecedent: His departure for Tyre July 11, 335, at end of previous Egyptian Year. (b) The eventful' year Aug. 337-Aug. 338: leading event, triumphant return of Athanasius from Gaul, Oct. 21, 337. Antecedent: death of Constantine on previous 22nd of May (i.e. 337 [3818] ). (g) Year 342-3: leading event, Council of Sardica (summons issued, at any rate, before end of Aug. 343). Consequent events: temporary collapse of Arian party and recantation of Ursacius and Valens (344-347? Further examples in Gwatkin, Studies, p. 105). Bearing this in mind, the discriminating student will derive most important help from the study of the Index: when its data agree with those derived from other good sources, they must be allowed first-rate authority. This is the principle followed in the Prolegomena (ch. v.) and throughout this volume. On the main points in dispute, as strewn above, we have to reckon with a compact uniform chronological system, checked and counter-checked by careful calculations (Hist. Aceph.), and transmitted by two independent channels; in agreement, moreover, as concerns the prior and posterior limits, with the reckoning adopted by the successors of Athanasius in the see.
N.B.--The translation of the Index and Festal Letters is revised by Miss Payne Smith from that contained in the Oxford Library of the Fathers.' A German translation by Larsow was published at Berlin 1852. The Latin Version (from an Italian translation) of Card. Mai is in Migne, xxvi. 1351 sqq.
The following Tables bear specially on the Festal Index.
Table C. The Egyptian Year.
After the final settlement of Egypt by Augustus as a province of the Roman Empire, the use of the Julian form of computation was established in Alexandria, the first day of the new Calendar being fixed to the 28th of August, the 1st of Thot of the year in which the innovation took place; from which period, six, instead of five, supplementary days were added at the end of every fourth year; so that the form of the Alexandrian year was as follows. The months from Phamenoth 5 (Mar. 1) onwards are unaffected by leap-year.
Thot
29 August
Pharmuthi
27 March
Paophi
28 September
Pachon
26 April
Athyr
28 October
Paoni (Payni)
26 May
Choiak
27 November
Epiphi
25 June
Tybi
27 December
Mesori
25 July
Mechir
26 January
Epagomena
24 August
Phamenoth
25 February
N.B.--In leap-years, the Diocletian year (see p. 503, note 4) began on the previous Aug. 30, which was accordingly the First of Thot, owing to the additional epagomenon' which preceded it. Accordingly all the months to Phamenoth inclusive begin a day late. Then, the Julian intercalary day coming in as Feb. 29, Pharmuthi and the succeeding months begin as shewn above. (See Ideler, vol. I, pp. 161, 164, also 140, 142.)
Table D. Of the Chronological Information Given in the Index to the Paschal Letters.
------------------------
N.B.--The Year of our Lord, the Golden Numbers, and Dominical Letter, and the date of Easter according to the Modern Reckoning, are added. The age of the Moon on Easter-day is apparently given from observations or reckoned by some lost system (see Index x. xxii.); in about one case out of three it varies from the modern reckoning, perhaps once or twice from corruption of text. The Epact is a day too little for 342, 344, 361, 362, 363 (see Galle in Larsow;. F.B. 48, sqq.).
Easter Day.
Number of Letter.
Year of Diocl.
Year of our Lord.
Egyptian Calendar.
Roman Calendar.
Modern Reckon-ing.
Day of Lunar Month.
Epact (age of Moon on Mar. 22).
Sunday Letter and Concur-rentes.
Indict^n.
Golden Num-bers.
...
44
328
19 Pharm.
XVIII Kal. Mai
14 April
18
25
1 F
1
6
I
45
329
11 Pharm.
VIII Id. April
6 April
22
6
2 E
2
7
II
46
330
24 Pharm.
XIII Kal. Mai
19 April
15
17
3 D
3
8
III
47
331
16 Pharm.
III Id. April
11 April
18
28
4 C
4
9
IV
48
332
7 Pharm.
IV Non. April
2 April
20
9
6 A
5
10
V
49
333
20 Pharm.
XVI I Kal. Mai
[3819] 15 April
15
20
7 G
6
11
VI
50
334
12 Pharm.
VII Id. April
7 April
17
1
1 F
7
12
VII
51
335
4 Pharm.
III Kal. April
30 March
20
12
2 E
8
13
VIII
52
336
23 Pharm.
XIV Kal. Mai
18 April
20
23
4 C
9
14
IX
53
337
8 Pharm.
III Non. April
3 April
16
4
5 B
10
15
X
54
338
30 Pham^th.
VII Kal. April
26 March
18½
15
6 A
11
16
XI
55
339
20 Pharm.
XVII Kal. Mai
15 April
20
26
7 G
12
17
XII
56
340
4 Pharm.
III Kal. April
30 March
15
7
2 E
13
18
XIII
57
341
24 Pharm.
XIII Kal. Mai
19 April
16
18
3 D
14
19
XIV
58
342
16 Pharm.
III Id. April
11 April
16
29
4 C
15
1
XV
59
343
1 Pharm.
VI Kal. April
27 March
15
11
5 B
1
2
XVI
60
344
20 Pharm.
XVII Kal. Mai
15 April
19
21
7 G
2
3
XVII
61
345
12 Pharm.
VII Id. April
7 April
19
3
1 F
3
4
XVIII
62
346
4 Pharm.
III Kal. April
[3820] 30 March
21
14
2 E
4
5
XIX
63
347
17 Pharm.
Prid. Id. April
12 April
15
25
3 D
5
6
XX
64
348
8 Pharm.
III Non. April
3 April
18
6
5 B
6
7
XXI
65
349
30 Pham^th.
VII Kal. April
[3821] 26 March
19
17
6 A
7
8
XXII
66
350
13 Pharm.
VI Id. April
8 April
19
28
7 G
8
9
XXIII
67
351
5 Pharm.
Prid. Kal. April
31 March
18
9
1 F
9
10
XXIV
68
352
24 Pharm.
XIII Kal. Mai
19 April
18
20
3 D
10
11
XXV
69
353
16 Pharm.
III Id April
11 April
21
1
4 C
11
12
XXVI
70
354
1 Pharm.
VI Kal. April
27 March
17
12
5 B
12
13
XXVII
71
355
21 Pharm.
XVI Kal. Mai
16 April
18
23
6 A
13
14
XXVIII
72
356
12 Pharm.
VII Id. April
7 April
17
4
1 F
14
15
XXIX
73
357
27 Pham^th.
X Kal. April
23 March
17
15
2 E
15
16
XXX
74
358
17 Pharm.
Prid Id. April
12 April
17
26
3 D
1
17
XXXI
75
359
9 Pharm.
Prid. Non. April
4 April
20
7
4 C
2
18
XXXII
76
360
28 Pharm.
IX Kal. Mai
23 April
21
18
6 A
3
19
XXXIII
77
361
13 Pharm.
VI Id. April
8 April
17
29
7 G
4
1
XXXIV
78
362
5 Pharm.
Prid. Kal. April
31 March
25
[3822] 10
1 F
5
2
XXXV
79
363
25 Pharm.
XII Kal. Mai
20 April
20
21
2 E
6
3
XXXVI
80
364
9 Pharm.
Prid. Non. April
4 April
16
3
4 C
7
4
XXXVII
81
365
1 Pharm.
VI Kal. April
27 March
19
14
5 B
8
5
XXXVIII
82
366
21 Pharm.
XVI Kal. Mai
16 April
20
25
6 A
9
6
XXXIX
83
367
6 Pharm.
Kal. April
1 April
16
6
7 G
10
7
XL
84
368
25 Pharm.
XII Kal. Mai
20 April
16
17
2 E
11
8
XLI
85
369
17 Pharm.
Prid. Id. April
12 April
15
28
3 D
12
9
XLII
86
370
2 Pharm.
V Kal. April
28 March
15
9
4 C
13
10
XLIII
87
371
22 Pharm.
XV Kal. Mai
17 April
16
20
5 B
14
11
XLIV
88
372
13 Pharm.
VI Id. April
8 April
19
1
7 G
15
12
XLV
89
373
5 Pharm.
Prid. Kal. April
31 March
21
12
1 F
1
13 __________________________________________________________________
[3812] So Leo Magnus (Ep. ad Marcian. Imp.) apud Ægyptios huius supputationis antiquitus tradita peritia.'
[3813] We trace differences of opinion in spite of the authority of the Alexandrian Pope in Index' xii, xv, xxi, and Ep. 18.
[3814] Further details in Migne, P.G. xxvi. 1339 sqq. and Preface (by Williams?) to Oxford Transl. of Fest. Epp. (Parker, 1854.)
[3815] The very late Arabic Life of Ath. alone gives 47 (Migne xxv. p. ccli.), a statement which we may safely ignore in view of the general character of the document which is crowded with incredible trivialities and follies' (Montf.), outbidding by far the unparalleled rubbish' (id.) of the worst of the Greek biographies (see Migne xxv. p. liv. sq.).
[3816] The italics are ours. Cf. Rufin. H. E. ii. 3, xlvi anno sacerdotii sui.'
[3817] Some phenomena might suggest (Hefele, ii. 88, note) that the Index was originally prefixed to another collection of the letters, and was copied by a collector or transcriber of our present corpus; cf. Index xiii., note 17^b, and p. 527, note 1.
[3818] Misunderstood by Hefele, vol. ii. p. 88 (E. Tra.).
[3819] According to the usual Antegregorian rule, Easter would fall on April 22.
[3820] According to the usual rule, Easter would fall on March 23; see Letter 18, note 3.
[3821] According to rule, Easter would fall on April 23, which perhaps was the day really observed, as it agrees with the age of the moon; but see note on Index No. xxi.
[3822] Read Moon 20, Epact 11. __________________________________________________________________
Index.
An Index of the months of each year, and of the days, and of the Indictions, and of the Consulates, and of the Governors in Alexandria, and of all the Epacts, and of those [days] which are named of the Gods [3823] ,' and the reason [any Letter] was not sent, and the returns from exile [3824] --from the Festal Letters of Pope Athanasius.
The Festal Letters of Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, which he sent year by year, to the several cities and all the provinces subject to him; that is, from Pentapolis, and on to Libya, Ammoniaca, the greater and the lesser Oasis, Egypt, and Augustamnica, with the Heptanomis of [3825] the upper and middle Thebais; [commencing] from the 44th [3826] year of the Diocletian Era, in which the Paschal Festival was on xvi [3827] Pharmuthi; xviii Kal. Mai; xviii Moon; when Alexander, his predecessor, having departed this life on xxii Pharmuthi [3828] , he [Athan.] succeeded him after the Paschal festival on xiv Pauni, Indict. i, Januarius and Justus being Consuls, the governor Zenius of Italy being the Præfect of Egypt, Epact xxv; Gods, i.
I. (Aug. 29, 328, to Aug. 28, a.d. 329.) In this year, Easter-day was on xi Pharmuthi; viii. Id. Ap.; xxii Moon; Coss. Constantinus Aug. viii, Constantinus Cæs. IV; the same governor Zenius being Præfect of Egypt; Indict. ii; Epact vi; Gods, ii. This was the first Letter he [Athan.] sent; for he was ordained Bishop in the preceding year after the Paschal feast, Alexander, as is known, having despatched one for that year, before he was released from life. This was in the 45th of the Diocletian era.
II. (329-330.) In this year, Easter-day was on xxiv Pharmuthi; xiii Kal. Mai; xv Moon; Coss. Gallicianus, Symmachus; the governor Magninianus the Cappadocian being Præfect of Egypt; Indict. iii; Epact xvii; Gods, iii. In this year he went through the Thebais.
III. (330-331.) In this year, Easter-day was on xvi Pharmuthi; xviii Moon; iii Id. Ap.; Coss. Annius Bassus, Ablavius; the governor Hyginus [3829] of Italy, Præfect of Egypt; Epact xxviii; Indict. iv. He sent this Letter while journeying on his return from the Imperial Court. For in this year he went to the Imperial Court to the Emperor Constantine the Great, having been summoned before him, on account of an accusation his enemies made, that he had been appointed when too young. He appeared, was thought worthy of favour and honour, and returned [3830] when the fast was half finished.
IV. (331-332.) In this year, Easter-day was on xvii [3831] Pharmuthi; xx Moon; iv Non. Apr.; Epact ix; Gods, vi; Coss. Pacatianus, Hilarianus; the same governor Hyginus, Præfect of Egypt; Indict. v. In this year he went through Pentapolis, and was in Ammoniaca.
V. (332-333.) In this year, Easter-day was on xx Pharmuthi; xv Moon; xvii Kal. Mai; Epact xx; Gods, vii; Coss. Dalmatius, Zenophilus; the governor Paternus [3832] , Præfect of Egypt; Indict. vi.
VI. (333-334.) In this year, Easter-day was on xii Pharmuthi; xvii Moon; vii Id. Apr.; Indict. vii; Epact i; Gods, i; Coss. Optatus, Paulinus; the same governor Paternus [3833] Præfect of Egypt. In this year he went through the lower country. In it he was summoned to a Synod, his enemies having previously devised mischief against him in Cæsarea of Palestine; but becoming aware of the conspiracy, he excused himself from attending.
VII. (334-335.) In this year, Easter-day was on xiv [3834] Pharmuthi; xx Moon; iii Kal. Ap.; Indict. viii; Epact xii; Gods, ii; Coss. Constantius [3835] , Albinus; the same governor Paternus, Præfect of Egypt.
VIII. (335-336.) In this year, Easter-day was on xxiii Pharmuthi, xx Moon; xiv Kal. Mai; Indict. ix; Epact xxiii; Gods, iv; Coss. Nepotianus, Facundus; the governor Philagrius, the Cappadocian, Præfect of Egypt. In this year he went to that Synod of his enemies which was assembled at Tyre. Now he journeyed from this place on xvii Epiphi [3836] , but when a discovery was made of the plot against him, he removed thence and fled in an open boat to Constantinople. Arriving there on ii Athyr [3837] , after eight days he presented himself before the Emperor Constantine, and spoke plainly. But his enemies, by various secret devices, influenced the Emperor, who suddenly condemned him to exile, and he set out on the tenth of Athyr [3838] to Gaul, to Constans Cæsar, the son of Augustus. On this account he wrote no Festal Letter.
IX. (336-7.) In this year, Easter-day was on viii Pharmuthi; xvi Moon; iv [3839] Non. Ap.; Indict. x; Epact iv; Gods, v; Coss. Felicianus, Titianus; the governor Philagrius, the Cappadocian, Præfect of Egypt. He was in Treviri of Gaul, and on this account was unable to write a Festal Letter.
X. (337-8.) In this year, Easter-day was on xxx Phamenoth; vii Kal. Ap.; xix [3840] Moon, Indict. xi; Epact xv; Gods, vi; Coss. Ursus, Polemius; the governor Theodorus [3841] , of Heliopolis, Præfect of Egypt. In this year, Constantine having died on xxvii Pachon [3842] , Athanasius, now liberated, returned from Gaul triumphantly on xxvii [3843] Athyr. In this year, too, there were many events. Antony, the great leader, came to Alexandria, and though he remained there only two days, shewed himself wonderful in many things, and healed many. He went away on the third of Messori. [3844]
XI. (338-9.) In this year, Easter-day was on xx Pharmuthi; xx Moon; xvii Kal. Mai; Epact xxvi; Gods, vii; Indict. xii; Coss. Constantius II, Constans I [3845] ; the governor Philagrius, the Cappadocian, Præfect of Egypt. In this year, again, there were many tumults. On the xxii Phamenoth [3846] he was pursued in the night, and the next day he fled from the Church of Theonas, after he had baptized many. Then, four days after, Gregorius the Cappadocian entered the city as Bishop.
XII. (339-340.) In this year, Easter-day was on xiv [3847] Pharmuthi; xv Moon; iii Kal. Ap.; Epact vii; Gods, ii; Indict. xiii; Coss. Acyndinus, Proclus; the same governor Philagrius, Præfect of Egypt. Gregorius continued his acts of violence, and therefore [Ath.] wrote no Festal Letter. The Arians proclaimed [Easter] on xxvii Phamenoth, and were much ridiculed on account of this error. Then altering it in the middle of the fast, they kept it with us on iv [3848] Pharmuthi, as above. He [Athanasius] gave notice of it to the presbyters of Alexandria in a short note, not being able to send a letter as usual, on account of his flight and the treachery.
XIII. (340-341.) In this year, Easter-day was on xxiv Pharmuthi; xvi Moon; xiii. Kal. Mai; Epact xviii; Gods, iii; Indict. xiv; Coss. Marcellinus, Probinus; the governor Longinus, of Nicæa, Præfect of Egypt. Augustamnica was separated. [3849] On account of Gregorius continuing in the city, and exercising violence, although this illness commenced, the Pope did not write a Festal Letter even this time [3850] .
XIV. (341-2.) In this year, Easter-day was on xvi Pharmuthi; xx [3851] Moon; iii Id. Ap.; Epact xxix; Gods, iv; Indict. xv; Coss. Constantius III, Constans II; the governor Longinus of Nicæa, Præfect of Egypt. Because Gregorius was in the city, [though] severely ill, the Pope was unable to send [any Letter].
XV. (342-3.) In this year, Easter-day was on i Pharmuthi; xv Moon; vi Kal. Ap.; Epact xi; Gods, v; Indict. i; Coss. Placidus, Romulus; the same governor Longinus, of Nicæa, Præfect of Egypt. In this year the Synod of Sardica was held [3852] ; and when the Arians had arrived, they returned to Philippopolis, for Philagrius gave them this advice there. In truth, they were blamed everywhere, and were even anathematised by the Church of Rome, and having written a recantation to Pope Athanasius, Ursacius and Valens were put to shame. There was an agreement made at Sardica respecting Easter, and a decree was issued to be binding for fifty years, which the Romans and Alexandrians everywhere announced in the usual manner. Again he [Athan.] wrote a Festal Letter.
XVI. (343-4.) In this year, Easter-day was on xx Pharmuthi; xix Moon; xvii Kal. Mai; Epact xxi; Gods, vi[i], Coss. Leontius, Sallustius; the governor Palladius, of Italy, Præfect of Egypt; Indict. ii. Being at Naissus on his return from the Synod, he there celebrated Easter [3853] . Of this Easter-day he gave notice in few words to the presbyters of Alexandria, but he was unable to do so to the country.
XVII. (344-5.) In this year, Easter-day was on xii Pharmuthi; xviii Moon; vii. Id. Ap.; Epact ii; Gods, i; Indict. iii; Coss. Amantius, Albinus; the governor Nestorius of Gaza, Præfect of Egypt. Having travelled to Aquileia, he kept Easter there. Of this Easter-day, he gave notice in few words to the presbyters of Alexandria, but not to the country.
XVIII. (345-6.) In this year, Easter-day was on iv Pharmuthi; xxi [3854] Moon; iii Kal. Ap.; Epact xiv; Gods, ii; Indict. iv; Coss. Constantius [3855] Aug. IV, Constans Aug. III; the same governor Nestorius of Gaza, Præfect of Egypt. Gregorius having died on the second of Epiphi [3856] , he returned from Rome and Italy, and entered the city and the Church. Moreover he was thought worthy of a grand reception, for on the xxiv Paophi [3857] , the people and all those in authority met him a hundred miles distant, and he continued in honour. He had already sent the Festal Letter for this year, in few words, to the presbyters.
XIX. (346-7.) In this year, Easter-day was on xvii Pharmuthi xv. Moon; Prid. Id. Apr.; Epact xxv; Gods, iii; Indict. v; Coss. Rufinus, Eusebius; the same governor Nestorius of Gaza, Præfect of Egypt. He wrote this Letter while residing here in Alexandria, giving notice of some things which he had not been able to do before.
XX. (347-8.) In this year, Easter-day was on vii Pharmuthi; xviii Moon; iii Non. Ap.; Epact vi; Gods, v [3858] Indict. vi; Coss. Philippus, Salia; the same governor Nestorius of Gaza, Præfect of Egypt. This Letter also he sent while residing in Alexandria.
XXI. (348-9.) In this year, Easter-day was on xxx Phamenoth;...xix Moon,...vii Kal. Ap.; Epact xvii; Gods, vi; Indict. vii. But because the Romans refused, for they said they held a tradition from the Apostle Peter not to pass the twenty-sixth day of Pharmuthi, nor..the thirtieth of Phamenoth, xxi Moon,.................. [3859] , vii Kal. Ap.; Coss. Limenius, Catullinus; the same governor Nestorius of Gaza, Præfect of Egypt. He sent this also while residing in Alexandria.
XXII. (349-50.) In this year, Easter-day was on xiii Pharmuthi; xix Moon, the second hour; vi Id. Ap.; Epact xxviii; Gods, vii; Indict. viii; Coss. Sergius, Nigrianus; the same governor Nestorius of Gaza, Præfect of Egypt. In this year, Constans was slain by Magnentius, and Constantius held the empire alone; then he wrote to the Pope [Athan.], telling him to fear nothing because of the death of Constans, but to confide in him as he had done in Constans while living.
XXIII. (350-1.) In this year, Easter day was on v Pharmuthi; Moon xviii; Prid. Kal. Ap.; Epact ix; Gods, i; Indict. ix; the Consulship after that of Sergius and Nigrianus; the same governor Nestorius of Gaza, again Præfect of Egypt.
XXIV. (351-2.) In this year, Easter-day was on xxiv Pharmuthi; xviii Moon; xiii Kal. Mai, Epact xx; Gods, iii; Indict. x, Coss. Constantius Aug. V, Constantius Cæsar I; the same governor Nestorius of Gaza, Præfect of Egypt. Gallus was proclaimed Cæsar [3860] , and his name changed into Constantius.
XXV. (352-3.) In this year, Easter-day was on xvi Pharmuthi; xxi Moon; iii Id. Ap.; Epact i; Gods, iv; Indict. xi; Coss. Constantius Aug. VI, Constantius Cæsar II; the governor Sebastianus of Thrace, præfect of Egypt. In this year, Serapion [3861] , Bishop of Thmuis, and Triadelphus of Nicion, and the presbyters Petrus and Astricius, with others, were sent to the emperor Constantius, through fear of mischief from the Arians. They returned, having effected nothing. In this year, Montanus, Silentiarius of the Palace, [was sent]...against [the] [3862] Bishop, but, a tumult having been excited, he retired, having failed to effect anything.
XXVI. (353-4.) In this year, Easter-day was on i [3863] Pharmuthi; xvii Moon; vi Kal. Ap.; Epact xii; Gods, v; Indict. xii; Coss. Constantius Aug. VII, Constantius Cæsar III.; the same governor Sebastianus of Thrace, Præfect of Egypt.
XXVII. (354-5.) In this year, Easter-day was on xxi Pharmuthi; xviii Moon; xvi Kal. Mai; Epact xxiii; Gods, vi; Indict. xiii; Coss. Arbetion, Lollianus; the governor Maximus the Elder of Nicæa, Prefect of Egypt. In this year, Diogenes, the Secretary of the Emperor, entered with the design of seizing the Bishop. But he, too, having raged in vain, went away quietly.
XXVIII. (355-6.) In this year, Easter-day was on xii Pharmuthi; xvii Moon; vii Id. Ap.; Epact iv; Gods, i; Indict. xiv, Coss. Constantius Aug. VIII, Julianus Cæsar I; the same governor Maximus the Elder of Nicæa, Præfect of Egypt, who was succeeded by Cataphronius of Byblus. In this year, Syrianus Dux, having excited a tumult in the Church on the thirteenth of Mechir, on the fourteenth [3864] at night entered Theonas with his soldiers; but he was unable to capture [Athanasius], for he escaped in a miraculous manner.
XXIX (356-7.) In this year, Easter-day was on xxvii Phamenoth; xvii Moon; x Kal. Ap., Epact xv; Gods, ii; Indict. xv; Coss. Constantius Aug. IX, Julianus Cæsar II; the same governor Cataphronius, of Byblus, Præfect of Egypt, to whom succeeded Parnassius. Then Georgius entered on the thirtieth of Mechir, and acted with excessive violence. But Athanasius, the Bishop, had fled, and was sought for in the city with much oppression, many being in danger on this account. Therefore no Festal Letter was written [3865] .
XXX. (357-8.) In this year, Easter-day was on xvii Pharmuthi; Prid. Id. Ap.; xvii Moon; Epact xxvi; Gods, iii; Indict. i; Coss. Tatianus, Cerealis; the governor Parius of Corinth, Præfect of Egypt. Athanasius, the Bishop, lay concealed in the city of Alexandria. But Georgius left on the fifth of Paophi [3866] being driven away by the multitude. On this account, neither this year was the Pope able to send a Festal Letter.
XXXI. (358-9.) In this year, Easter-day was on ix [3867] Pharmuthi; Prid. Non. Ap.; xx Moon; Epact vii; Gods, iv; Indict. ii; Coss. Eusebius, Hypatius; the same governor Parius, who was succeeded by Italicianus of Italy for three months; after him Faustinus, of Chalcedon. Neither this year did the Pope write [any Letter].
XXXII. (359-60.) In this year, Easter-day was on xxviii Pharmuthi; ix Kal. Mai; xxi Moon; Epact xviii; Gods, vi; Indict. iii; Coss. Constantius Aug. X, Julianus Cæsar III; the governor Faustinus, of Chalcedon, Præfect of Egypt. This Præfect and Artemius Dux, having entered a private house and a small cell, in search of Athanasius the Bishop, bitterly tortured Eudæmonis, a perpetual virgin. On this account no [Letter] was written this year.
XXXIII. (360-1.) In this year, Easter-day was on xiii Pharmuthi, vi Id. Ap.; xvii Moon; Epact xxix; Gods, vii; Indict. iv; Coss. Taurus, Florentius; the same governor Faustinus [3868] , Præfect of Egypt, who was succeeded by Gerontius the Armenian. He was unable to send [a Letter]. In this year, Constantius died [3869] , and Julianus holding the empire alone, there was a cessation of the persecution against the Orthodox. For commands were issued everywhere from the emperor Julianus, that the Orthodox ecclesiastics who had been persecuted in the time of Constantius should be let alone.
XXXIV. (361-2.) In this year, Easter-day was on v [3870] Pharmuthi; Prid. Kal. Ap.; xxv Moon; Epact x; Gods, i; Indict. v; Coss. Mamertinus, Nevitta; the same governor Gerontius, who was succeeded by Olympus of Tarsus. In this year, in Mechir, Athanasius the Bishop returned to the Church, after his flight, by the command of Julianus Augustus, who pardoned all the Bishops and Clergy in exile, as was before said. This year, then, he wrote [a Letter].
XXXV. (362-3.) In this year, Easter-day was on xxv Pharmuthi; xii Kal. Mai; xx Moon; Epact xxi; Gods, ii; Indict. vi; Coss. Julianus Augustus IV, Sallustius; the same governor Olympus, Præfect of Egypt. Pythiodorus Trico of Thebes, a Philosopher, brought a decree of Julianus on the twenty-seventh of Paophi, and set it in action against the Bishop first, and uttered many threats. So he [Athan.] left the city at once, and went up to the Thebais. And when after eight months Julianus died, and his death was announced, Athanasius returned secretly by night to Alexandria. Then on the eighth of Thoth, he embarked [3871] at the Eastern Hierapolis, and met the emperor Jovian, by whom he was dismissed with honour. He sent this festal Letter to all the country, while being driven by persecution from Memphis to the Thebais, and it was delivered as usual.
XXXVI. (363-4). In this year, Easter-day was on ix Pharmuthi; Prid. Non. Ap.; xvi Moon; Epact iii; Gods, iv; Indict. vii; Coss. Jovianus Aug., Varronianus; the governor Aerius, of Damascus, Præfect; who was succeeded by Maximus of Rapheotis, and he again by Flavianus the Illyrian. In this year, the Pope returned to Alexandria and the Church on the twenty-fifth of Mechir. He sent the Festal Letter, according to custom, from Antioch to all the Bishops in all the province.
XXXVII. (364-5.) In this year, Easter-day was on i Pharmuthi; v[i] Kal. Ap.; xix Moon; Epact xiv; Gods, v; Indict. viii; Coss. Valentinianus Aug. I, Valens Aug.; the same Flavianus, the Illyrian, being governor. We received the Cæsareum; but again, the Pope being persecuted [3872] with accusations, withdrew [3873] to the garden of the new river. But a few days [3874] after, Barasides, the notary, came to him with the Præfect and obtained an entrance for him into the Church. Then, an earthquake happening on the twenty-seventh of Epiphi [3875] , the sea returned from the East, and destroyed many persons, and much damage was caused.
XXXVIII. (365-6.) In this year, Easter-day was on xxi Pharmuthi; xvi Kal. Mai; xx Moon; Epact xxv; Gods, vi; Indict. ix; in the first year of the Consulship of Gratianus, the son of Augustus, and Daglaiphus; the same governor Flavianus, Præfect. On the twenty-seventh of Epiphi, the heathen made an attack, and the Cæsareum was burnt and consequently many of the citizens suffered great distress, while the authors of the calamity were condemned and exiled. After this, Proclianus the Macedonian, became chief.
XXXIX. (366-7.) In this year, Easter-day was on vi [3876] Pharmuthi; Kal. Ap.; xvi Moon; Epact vi; Gods, vii; Indict. x; Coss. Lupicinus, Jovinus; the same Proclianus being governor, who was succeeded by Tatianus of Lycia. In this year, when Lucius had attempted an entrance on the twenty-sixth of Thoth [3877] , and lay concealed by night in a house on the side of the enclosure of the Church; and when Tatianus the Præfect and Trajanus Dux brought him out, he left the city, and was rescued in a wonderful manner, while the multitude sought to kill him. In this year he [Ath.] wrote, forming a Canon of the Holy Scriptures.
XL. (367-8.) In this year, Easter-day was on xxv Pharmuthi; xii Kal. Mai; xvi Moon; Epact xvii; Gods, ii; Indict. xi; Coss. Valentinianus Aug. II, Valens Aug. II; the same governor Tatianus, Præfect. He [Athan.] began to build anew the Cæsareum, on the 6th of Pachon, having been honoured with an imperial command by Trajanus Dux. He also discovered the incendiaries, and immediately cleared away the rubbish of the burnt ruins, and restored the edifice in the month Pachon.
XLI. (368-9.) In this year, Easter-day was on xvii [3878] Pharmuthi; Prid. Id. Ap.; xv Moon; Epact xxviii; Gods, iii; Indict. xii; Coss. Valentinianus (son of Augustus) I, Victor; the same Tatianus being governor. The Pope began to build that Church in Mendidium which bears his name, on the twenty-fifth [3879] of the month Thoth, at the beginning of the eighty-fifth year of the Diocletian Era.
XLII. (369-70.) In this year, Easter-day was on ii Pharmuthi; v [3880] Kal. Ap.; xv Moon; Epact ix; Gods, iv; Indict. xiii; Coss. Valentinianus Aug. III, Valens Aug. III; the same Tatianus being governor, who was succeeded by Olympius Palladius, of Samosata. The Pope finished the Church, called after his name, at the close of the eighty-sixth year of the Diocletian Era; in which also he celebrated the dedication, on the fourteenth [3881] of Mesori.
XLIII. (370-1.) In this year, Easter-day was on xxii Pharmuthi; xv Kal. Mai; xvi Moon; Epact xx; Gods, v; Indict. xiv; Coss. Gratianus Aug. II, Probus; the same Palladius being governor; who was succeeded as Præfect of Egypt by Ælius Palladius, of Palestine, who was called Cyrus.
XLIV. (371-2.) In this year, Easter-day was on xiii Pharmuthi; vi Id. Ap.; xix Moon; Epact i; Gods, vii [3882] , Indict. xv; Coss. Modestus, Arintheus; the same Ælius Palladius the governor, called Cyrus, Præfect of Egypt.
XLV. (372-3.) In this year, Easter-day was on v Pharmuthi; Prid. Kal. Ap.; xxi Moon; Epact xii; Gods, i; Indict. i; Coss. Valentinianus IV, Valens IV; the same governor Ælius Palladius, Præfect of Egypt. At the close of this year, on the seventh of Pachon [3883] , he [Athan.] departed this life in a wonderful manner.
The end of the heads of the Festal Letters of holy Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria. __________________________________________________________________
[3823] The Gods' correspond to the Concurrentes,' i.e. to the days of the week upon which Mar. 24 occurs in the year in question. (See Table, and Ideler, 2. 261), and so to the Sunday letters,' which follow the gods' in inverse order, a' corresponding to years when there were 6 gods,' b to 5, &c., f to 1, g to 7.
[3824] The meaning of these words is doubtful. Larslow renders them the answers from abroad.'
[3825] Read and.'
[3826] i.e. the year beginning Aug. 30, 327 (328 being leap-year). The Diocletian' era, or era of the martyrs,' was that used by the Egyptian Christians. It is incorrectly described in D.C.A. s.v. Era; see Ideler, ut supr.
[3827] Read xix (April 14). The corruption is easy in Syriac.
[3828] April 17.
[3829] The heading to Ep. 3 gives Florentius.
[3830] This ought to have been placed under iv; but see p. 512, note 7.
[3831] Read vii.
[3832] Vid. Ep. Fest. v. n. 2.
[3833] The headings of Letters 6, 7, give Philagrius.
[3834] Read iv, as below, No. xii.
[3835] i.e. Julius C.; the Syr. has Constantinus, by an error.
[3836] July 11, 335.
[3837] Oct. 30, 335.
[3838] Read Mechir,' Feb. 5, 336 (Gwatkin, p. 137, the correction is due to Sievers).
[3839] Read iii.
[3840] xviii½,' heading of Letter 10.
[3841] Superseded by Philagrius (see heading, and Prolegg. ch. ii. §6 (1) note).
[3842] May 22, 337.
[3843] Nov. 23, 337.
[3844] July 27, 338, supr. p. 214.
[3845] The Syriac has erroneously Constantius I., Constans II.
[3846] Mar. 18, 339.
[3847] Read iv. as above, No. vii.
[3848] Read iv. as above, No. vii.
[3849] i.e. made a separate province.' This had been known (Gothofr. in Cod. Th. xii. i. 34) to fall between 325 and 342; and Augustamnica is not mentioned as a province in 338-9, supr. p. 101.
[3850] This and the similar notice at the end of xiv are incorrect. The Index may have been written for a collection which lacked Letters 13, 14.
[3851] The Syriac has xvi, which is an error.
[3852] The summons for the Council was issued in this year,' i.e. before August, 343, but the proceedings fall in the autumn and winter, i.e. in the next Egyptian year, and the sequel (about Ursac. and Valens) refers to what took place about 347.
[3853] Easter, i.e. Apr. 15, 344, at Nish, or Nissa, in Servia.
[3854] The Syriac in this place has xxiv. But we find xxi in the heading to the Letter itself.
[3855] The Syriac has Constantinus.
[3856] June 26 of the previous year (345).
[3857] Oct. 21, 346.
[3858] Text iv.'
[3859] The text is imperfect and apparently very corrupt; xix Moon' fits Pharm. 28 (Apr. 23), which was the true Easter, and probably observed at Alexandria, while the Romans, refusing to go beyond Apr. 21, kept Easter on Pham. 30 (Mar. 26), on which day the Moon was really xxi days old. See Table D, and Letter 18. Letter 21 is lost.
[3860] In the previous year, Mar. 15, 351.
[3861] Cf. Letters 49, 54.
[3862] Text corrupt.
[3863] Text iv.'
[3864] Feb. 8-9, 356.
[3865] But see Letter 29, note 1.
[3866] Oct. 2, 358.
[3867] Text xix.'
[3868] Or Pausanias. This name is written vaguely in the Syriac, varying in all the three places in which it occurs.
[3869] Nov. 23, 361.
[3870] Text xv.'
[3871] Prolegg. ch. v. §3, h.
[3872] May 5, 365.
[3873] Oct. 5, 365.
[3874] Feb. i. 366.
[3875] July 21, 365; so also Chron. Pasch. and Amm. Marc. xxvi. 10, specially mentioning Alexandria.
[3876] Text xvi.'
[3877] Sep. 24, 367; cf. Hist. Aceph.
[3878] Text xxvii.'
[3879] Sept. 22, 368.
[3880] Text iv.'
[3881] Aug. 7, 370.
[3882] The Syr. has and not one,' which must be incorrect.
[3883] [May 2, 373.] __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
I. Festal Letters.
Letter I.--For 329. Easter-day xi Pharmuthi; viii Id. April; Ær. Dioclet. 45; Coss. Constantinus Aug. VIII. Constantinus Cæs. IV; Præfect. Septimius Zenius; Indict. II.
Of Fasting, and Trumpets, and Feasts.
Come, my beloved, the season calls us to keep the feast. Again, the Sun of Righteousness [3884] , causing His divine beams to rise upon us, proclaims beforehand the time of the feast, in which, obeying Him, we ought to celebrate it, lest when the time has passed by, gladness likewise may pass us by. For discerning the time is one of the duties most urgent on us, for the practice of virtue; so that the blessed Paul, when instructing his disciple, teaches him to observe the time, saying, Stand (ready) in season, and out of season [3885] '--that knowing both the one and the other, he might do things befitting the season, and avoid the blame of unseasonableness. For thus the God of all, after the manner of wise Solomon [3886] , distributes everything in time and season, to the end that, in due time, the salvation of men should be everywhere spread abroad. Thus the Wisdom of God [3887] ,' our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, not out of season, but in season, passed upon holy souls, fashioning the friends of God and the prophets [3888] ;' so that although very many were praying for Him, and saying, O that the salvation of God were come out of Sion [3889] !'--the Spouse also, as it is written in the Song of Songs, was praying and saying, O that Thou wert my sister's son, that sucked the breasts of my mother [3890] !' that Thou wert like the children of men, and wouldest take upon Thee human passions for our sake!--nevertheless, the God of all, the Maker of times and seasons, Who knows our affairs better than we do, while, as a good physician, He exhorts to obedience in season--the only one in which we may be healed--so also does He send Him not unseasonably, but seasonably, saying, In an acceptable time have I heard Thee, and in the day of salvation I have helped Thee [3891] .'
2. And, on this account, the blessed Paul, urging us to note this season, wrote, saying, Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation [3892] .' At set seasons also He called the children of Israel to the Levitical feasts by Moses, saying, Three times in a year ye shall keep a feast to Me [3893] ' (one of which, my beloved, is that now at hand), the trumpets of the priests sounding and urging its observance; as the holy Psalmist commanded, saying, Blow with the trumpet in the new moon, on the [solemn] day of your feast [3894] .' Since this sentence enjoins upon us to blow both on the new moons, and on the solemn [3895] days, He hath made a solemn day of that in which the light of the moon is perfected in the full; which was then a type, as is this of the trumpets. At one time, as has been said, they called to the feasts; at another time to fasting and to war. And this was not done without solemnity, nor by chance, but this sound of the trumpets was appointed, so that every man should come to that which was proclaimed. And this ought to be learned not merely from me, but from the divine Scriptures, when God was revealed to Moses, and said, as it is written in the book of Numbers; And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Make to thee two trumpets; of silver shalt thou make them, and they shall be for thee to call the congregation [3896] ;'--very properly for those who here love Him. So that we may know that these things had reference to the time of Moses--yea, were to be observed so long as the shadow lasted, the whole being appointed for use, till the time of reformation [3897] .' For' (said He) if ye shall go out to battle in your land against your enemies that rise up against you [3898] ' (for such things as these refer to the land, and no further), then ye shall proclaim with the trumpets, and shall be remembered before the Lord, and be delivered from your enemies.' Not only in wars did they blow the trumpet, but under the law, there was a festal trumpet also. Hear him again, going on to say, And in the day of your gladness, and in your feasts, and your new moons, ye shall blow with the trumpets [3899] .' And let no man think it a light and contemptible matter, if he hear the law command respecting trumpets; it is a wonderful and fearful thing. For beyond any other voice or instrument, the trumpet is awakening and terrible; so Israel received instruction by these means, because he was then but a child. But in order that the proclamation should not be thought merely human, being superhuman, its sounds resembled those which were uttered when they trembled before the mount [3900] ; and they were reminded of the law that was then given them, and kept it.
3. For the law was admirable, and the shadow was excellent, otherwise, it would not have wrought fear, and induced reverence in those who heard; especially in those who at that time not only heard but saw these things. Now these things were typical, and done as in a shadow. But let us pass on to the meaning, and henceforth leaving the figure at a distance, come to the truth, and look upon the priestly trumpets of our Saviour, which cry out, and call us, at one time to war, as the blessed Paul saith; We wrestle not with flesh and blood, but with principalities, with powers, with the rulers of this dark world, with wicked spirits in heaven [3901] .' At another time the call is made to virginity, and self-denial, and conjugal harmony, saying, To virgins, the things of virgins; and to those who love the way of abstinence, the things of abstinence; and to those who are married [3902] , the things of an honourable marriage; thus assigning to each its own virtues and an honourable recompense. Sometimes the call is made to fasting, and sometimes to a feast. Hear again the same [Apostle] blowing the trumpet, and proclaiming, Christ our Passover is sacrificed; therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness [3903] .' If thou wouldest listen to a trumpet much greater than all these, hear our Saviour saying; In that last and great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink [3904] .' For it became the Saviour not simply to call us to a feast, but to the great feast;' if only we will be prepared to hear, and to conform to the proclamation of every trumpet.
4. For since, as I before said, there are divers proclamations, listen, as in a figure, to the prophet blowing the trumpet; and further, having turned to the truth, be ready for the announcement of the trumpet, for he saith, Blow ye the trumpet in Sion: sanctify a fast [3905] .' This is a warning trumpet, and commands with great earnestness, that when we fast, we should hallow the fast. For not all those who call upon God, hallow God, since there are some who defile Him; yet not Him--that is impossible--but their own mind concerning Him; for He is holy, and has pleasure in the saints [3906] . And therefore the blessed Paul accuses those who dishonour God; Transgressors of the law dishonour God [3907] .' So then, to make a separation from those who pollute the fast, he saith here, sanctify a fast.' For many, crowding to the fast, pollute themselves in the thoughts of their hearts, sometimes by doing evil against their brethren, sometimes by daring to defraud. And, to mention nothing else, there are many who exalt themselves above their neighbours, thereby causing great mischief. For the boast of fasting did no good to the Pharisee, although he fasted twice in the week [3908] , only because he exalted himself against the publican. In the same manner the Word blamed the children of Israel on account of such a fast as this, exhorting them by Isaiah the Prophet, and saying, This is not the fast and the day that I have chosen, that a man should humble his soul; not even if thou shouldest bow down thy neck like a hook, and shouldest strew sackcloth and ashes under thee; neither thus shall ye call the fast acceptable [3909] .' That we may be able to shew what kind of persons we should be when we fast, and of what character the fast should be, listen again to God commanding Moses, and saying, as it is written in Leviticus [3910] , And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, In the tenth day of this seventh month, there shall be a day of atonement; a convocation, and a holy day shall it be to you; and ye shall humble your souls, and offer whole burnt-offerings unto the Lord.' And afterwards, that the law might be defined on this point, He proceeds to say; Every soul that shall not humble itself, shall be cut off from the people [3911] .'
5. Behold, my brethren, how much a fast can do, and in what manner the law commands us to fast. It is required that not only with the body should we fast, but with the soul. Now the soul is humbled when it does not follow wicked opinions, but feeds on becoming virtues. For virtues and vices are the food of the soul, and it can eat either of these two meats, and incline to either of the two, according to its own will. If it is bent toward virtue, it will be nourished by virtues, by righteousness, by temperance, by meekness, by fortitude, as Paul saith; Being nourished by the word of truth [3912] .' Such was the case with our Lord, who said, My meat is to do the will of My Father which is in heaven [3913] .' But if it is not thus with the soul, and it inclines downwards, it is then nourished by nothing but sin. For thus the Holy Ghost, describing sinners and their food, referred to the devil when He said, I have given him to be meat to the people of Æthiopia [3914] .' For this is the food of sinners. And as our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, being heavenly bread, is the food of the saints, according to this; Except ye eat My flesh, and drink My blood [3915] ;' so is the devil the food of the impure, and of those who do nothing which is of the light, but work the deeds of darkness. Therefore, in order to withdraw and turn them from vices, He commands them to be nourished with the food of virtue; namely, humbleness of mind, lowliness to endure humiliations, the acknowledgment of God. For not only does such a fast as this obtain pardon for souls, but being kept holy, it prepares the saints, and raises them above the earth.
6. And indeed that which I am about to say is wonderful, yea it is of those things which are very miraculous; yet not far from the truth, as ye may be able to learn from the sacred [3916] writings. That great man Moses, when fasting, conversed with God, and received the law. The great and holy Elijah, when fasting, was thought worthy of divine visions, and at last was taken up like Him who ascended into heaven. And Daniel, when fasting, although a very young man, was entrusted with the mystery, and he alone understood the secret things of the king, and was thought worthy of divine visions. But because the length of the fast of these men was wonderful, and the days prolonged, let no man lightly fall into unbelief; but rather let him believe and know, that the contemplation of God, and the word which is from Him, suffice to nourish those who hear, and stand to them in place of all food. For the angels are no otherwise sustained than by beholding at all times the face of the Father, and of the Saviour who is in heaven. And thus Moses, as long as he talked with God, fasted indeed bodily, but was nourished by divine words. When he descended among men, and God was gone up from him, he suffered hunger like other men. For it is not said that he fasted longer than forty days--those in which he was conversing with God. And, generally, each one of the saints has been thought worthy of similar transcendent nourishment.
7. Wherefore, my beloved, having our souls nourished with divine food, with the Word, and according to the will of God, and fasting bodily in things external, let us keep this great and saving feast as becomes us. Even the ignorant Jews received this divine food, through the type, when they ate a lamb in the passover. But not understanding the type, even to this day they eat the lamb, erring in that they are without the city and the truth. As long as Judæa and the city existed, there were a type, and a lamb, and a shadow, since the law thus commanded [3917] : These things shall not be done in another city; but in the land of Judæa, and in no place without [the land of Judæa]. And besides this, the law commanded them to offer whole burnt-offerings and sacrifices, there being no other altar than that in Jerusalem. For on this account, in that city alone was there an altar and temple built, and in no other city were they permitted to perform these rites, so that when that city should come to an end, then those things that were figurative might also be done away.
8. Now observe; that city, since the coming of our Savior, has had an end, and all the land of the Jews has been laid waste; so that from the testimony of these things (and we need no further proof, being assured by our own eyes of the fact) there must, of necessity, be an end of the shadow. And not from me should these things be learned, but the sacred voice of the prophet foretold, crying; Behold upon the mountains the feet of Him that bringeth good tidings, and publisheth peace [3918] ;' and what is the message he published, but that which he goes on to say to them, Keep thy feasts, O Judah; pay to the Lord thy vows. For they shall no more go to that which is old; it is finished; it is taken away: He is gone up who breathed upon the face, and delivered thee from affliction [3919] .' Now who is he that went up? a man may say to the Jews, in order that even the boast of the shadow may be done away; neither is it an idle thing to listen to the expression, It is finished; he is gone up who breathed.' For nothing was finished before he went up who breathed. But as soon as he went up, it was finished. Who was he then, O Jews, as I said before? If Moses, the assertion would be false; for the people were not yet come to the land in which alone they were commanded to perform these rites. But if Samuel, or any other of the prophets, even in that case there would be a perversion of the truth; for hitherto these things were done in Judæa, and the city was standing. For it was necessary that while that stood, these things should be performed. So that it was none of these, my beloved, who went up. But if thou wouldest hear the true matter, and be kept from Jewish fables, behold our Saviour who went up, and breathed upon the face, and said to His disciples, Receive ye the Holy Ghost [3920] .' For as soon as these things were done, everything was finished, for the altar was broken, and the veil of the temple was rent; and although the city was not yet laid waste, the abomination was ready to sit in the midst of the temple, and the city and those ancient ordinances to receive their final consummation.
9. Since then we have passed beyond that time of shadows, and no longer perform rites under it, but have turned, as it were, unto the Lord; for the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty [3921] ;'--as we hear the sacred trumpet, no longer slaying a material lamb, but that true Lamb that was slain, even our Lord Jesus Christ; Who was led as a sheep to the slaughter, and was dumb as a lamb before her shearers [3922] ;' being purified by His precious blood, which speaketh better things than that of Abel, having our feet shod with the preparation of the Gospel, holding in our hands the rod and staff of the Lord, by which that saint was comforted, who said [3923] , Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me;' and to sum up, being in all respects prepared, and careful for nothing, because, as the blessed Paul saith, The Lord is at hand [3924] ;' and as our Saviour saith, In an hour when we think not, the Lord cometh;--Let us keep the Feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. Putting off the old man and his deeds, let us put on the new man [3925] , which is created in God,' in humbleness of mind, and a pure conscience; in meditation of the law by night and by day. And casting away all hypocrisy and fraud, putting far from us all pride and deceit, let us take upon us love towards God and towards our neighbour, that being new [creatures], and receiving the new wine, even the Holy Spirit, we may properly keep the feast, even the month of these new [fruits] [3926] .
10. We [3927] begin the holy fast on the fifth day of Pharmuthi (March 31), and adding to it according to the number of those six holy and great days, which are the symbol of the creation of this world, let us rest and cease (from fasting) on the tenth day of the same Pharmuthi (April 5), on the holy sabbath of the week. And when the first day of the holy week dawns and rises upon us, on the eleventh day of the same month (April 6), from which again we count all the seven weeks one by one, let us keep feast on the holy day of Pentecost--on that which was at one time to the Jews, typically, the feast of weeks, in which they granted forgiveness and settlement of debts; and indeed that day was one of deliverance in every respect. Let us keep the feast on the first day of the great week, as a symbol of the world to come, in which we here receive a pledge that we shall have everlasting life hereafter. Then having passed hence, we shall keep a perfect feast with Christ, while we cry out and say, like the saints, I will pass to the place of the wondrous tabernacle, to the house of God; with the voice of gladness and thanksgiving, the shouting of those who rejoice [3928] ;' whence pain and sorrow and sighing have fled, and upon our heads gladness and joy shall have come to us! May we be judged worthy to be partakers in these things.
11. Let us remember the poor, and not forget kindness to strangers; above all, let us love God with all our soul, and might, and strength, and our neighbour as ourselves. So may we receive those things which the eye hath not seen, nor the ear heard, and which have not entered into the heart of man, which God hath prepared for those that love Him [3929] , through His only Son, our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ; through Whom, to the Father alone, by the Holy Ghost, be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.
Salute one another with a kiss. All the brethren who are with me salute you.
Here endeth the first Festal Letter of holy Athanasius. __________________________________________________________________
[3884] Mal. iv. 2.
[3885] 2 Tim. iv. 2. The due celebration of the feast is spoken of as producing a permanent beneficial effect on the Christian. Cf. Letter 4.
[3886] Eccl. iii. 7. Cf. S. Cyril. Homil. Pasch. V.
[3887] 1 Cor. i. 24.
[3888] Wisd. vii. 27.
[3889] Ps. xiv. 7.
[3890] Cant. viii. 1.
[3891] Isa. xlix. 8.
[3892] 2 Cor. vi. 2.
[3893] Exod. xxiii. 14.
[3894] Ps. lxxxi. 3, cf. Num. x. 8.
[3895] Or appointed, and so passim.
[3896] Num. x. 1, 2.
[3897] Heb. ix. 10.
[3898] Numb. x. 9.
[3899] Ib. x. 10.
[3900] Exod. xix. 16.
[3901] Eph. vi. 12.
[3902] Cf. 1 Cor. vii. 2, 5.
[3903] Ib. v. 7, 8.
[3904] John vii. 37.
[3905] Joel ii. 15.
[3906] Ps. xvi. 3.
[3907] Rom. ii. 23.
[3908] Luke xviii. 12.
[3909] Is. lviii. 5.
[3910] Levit. xxiii. 26, sq.
[3911] Ib. xxiii. 29.
[3912] 1 Tim. iv. 6.
[3913] John iv. 34.
[3914] Ps. lxxiv. 14, LXX.
[3915] John vi. 53.
[3916] The word in the Syriac is priestly.' But in this and in other places, it appears to be for the Greek Ieros. Cf. ta hiera grammata. 2 Tim. iii. 15.
[3917] Deut. xii. 11, 13, 14.
[3918] Nah. i. 15.
[3919] Nah. i. 15; ii. 1, LXX.
[3920] John xx. 22.
[3921] 2 Cor. iii. 17.
[3922] Is. liii. 7.
[3923] Ps. xxiii. 4.
[3924] Phil. iv. 5.
[3925] Luke xii. 40; 1 Cor. v. 8; Ephes. iv. 22-24.
[3926] Alluding to Deut. xvi. 1, LXX.
[3927] We should not have much difficulty in fixing upon many of the phrases and expressions used by S. Athan. towards the close of his Epistles, by referring to the concluding sentences in the Paschal Letters of S. Cyril, who seems herein to have closely imitated his illustrious predecessor in the Patriarchate. The Syriac translator must frequently have had before him the following expressions: archomenoi tes hagias tessarakostes--episunaptontes--sunaptontes exes--periluontes tas nesteias--katapauontes tas nesteias--hespera bathei& 139; sabbatou--te epiphoskouse kuriake.
[3928] Ps. xlii. 4.
[3929] 1 Cor. ii. 9; Is. lxiv. 4. __________________________________________________________________
Letter II.--For 330. Easter-day xxiv Pharmuthi; xiii Kal. Mai; Æra Dioclet. 46; Coss. Gallicianus, Valerius Symmachus; Præfect, Magninianus; Indict. iii.
Again, my brethren, is Easter come and gladness; again the Lord hath brought us to this season; so that when, according to custom, we have been nourished with His words, we may duly keep the feast. Let us celebrate it then, even heavenly joy, with those saints who formerly proclaimed a like feast, and were ensamples to us of conversation in Christ. For not only were they entrusted with the charge of preaching the Gospel, but, if we enquire, we shall see, as it is written, that its power was displayed in them. Be ye therefore followers of me [3930] ,' he wrote to the Corinthians. Now the apostolic precept exhorts us all, for those commands which he sent to individuals, he at the same time enjoined upon every man in every place, for he was a teacher of all nations in faith and truth [3931] .' And, generally, the commands of all the saints urge us on similarly, as Solomon makes use of proverbs, saying, Hear, my children, the instruction of a father, and attend to know understanding; for I give you a good gift, forsake ye not my word: for I was an obedient son to my father, and beloved in the sight of my mother [3932] .' For a just father brings up [his children] well, when he is diligent in teaching others in accordance with his own upright conduct, so that when he meets with opposition, he may not be ashamed on hearing it said, Thou therefore that teachest others, teachest thou not thyself [3933] ?' but rather, like the good servant, may both save himself and gain others; and thus, when the grace committed to him has been doubled, he may hear, Thou good and faithful servant, thou hast been faithful in a little, I will set thee over much: enter into the joy of thy Lord [3934] .'
2. Let us [3935] then, as is becoming, as at all times, yet especially in the days of the feast, be not hearers only, but doers of the commandments of our Saviour; that having imitated the behaviour of the saints, we may enter together into the joy of our Lord which is in heaven, which is not transitory, but truly abides; of which evil doers having deprived themselves, there remains to them as the fruit of their ways, sorrow and affliction, and groaning with torments. Let a man see what these become like, that they bear not the likeness [3936] of the conversation of the saints, nor of that right understanding, by which man at the beginning was rational, and in the image of God. But they are compared to their disgrace to beasts without understanding, and becoming like them in unlawful pleasures, they are spoken of as wanton horses [3937] ; also, for their craftiness, and errors, and sin laden with death, they are called a generation of vipers,' as John saith [3938] . Now having thus fallen, and grovelling in the dust like the serpent [3939] , having their minds set on nothing beyond visible things, they esteem these things good, and rejoicing in them, serve their own lusts and not God.
3. Yet even in this state, the man-loving Word, who came for this very reason, that He might seek and find that which was lost, sought to restrain them from such folly, crying and saying, Be ye not as the horse and the mule which have no understanding, whose cheeks ye hold in with bit and bridle [3940] .' Because they were careless and imitated the wicked, the prophet prays in spirit and says, Ye are to me like merchant-men of Phoenicia [3941] .' And the avenging Spirit protests against them in these words, Lord, in Thy city Thou wilt despise their image [3942] .' Thus, being changed into the likeness of fools, they fell so low in their understanding, that by their excessive reasoning, they even likened the Divine Wisdom to themselves, thinking it to be like their own arts. Therefore, professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of the corruptible image of man, and birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things. Wherefore God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient [3943] .' For they did not listen to the prophetic voice that reproved them (saying), To what have ye likened the Lord, and with what have ye compared Him [3944] ?' neither to David, who prayed concerning such as these, and sang, All those that make them are like unto them, and all those who put their trust in them [3945] .' Being blind to the truth, they looked upon a stone as God, and hence, like senseless creatures, they walked in darkness, and, as the prophet cried, They hear indeed, but they do not understand; they see indeed, but they do not perceive; for their heart is waxen fat, and with their ears they hear heavily [3946] .'
4. Now those who do not observe the feast, continue such as these even to the present day, feigning indeed and devising names of feasts [3947] , but rather introducing days of mourning than of gladness; For there is no peace to the wicked, saith the Lord [3948] .' And as Wisdom saith, Gladness and joy are taken from their mouth [3949] .' Such are the feasts of the wicked. But the wise servants of the Lord, who have truly put on the man which is created in God [3950] , have received gospel words, and reckon as a general commandment that given to Timothy, which saith, Be thou an example to the believers in word, in conversation, in love, in faith, in purity [3951] .' So well do they keep the Feast, that even the unbelievers, seeing their order [3952] , may say, God is with them of a truth [3953] .' For as he who receives an apostle receives Him who sent him [3954] , so he who is a follower of the saints, makes the Lord in every respect his end and aim, even as Paul, being a follower of Him, goes on to say, As I also of Christ [3955] .' For there were first our Saviour's own words, who from the height of His divinity, when conversing with His disciples, said, Learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest to your souls [3956] .' Then too when He poured water into a basin, and girded Himself with a towel, and washed His disciples' feet, He said to them, Know what I have done. Ye call Me Master and Lord, and ye say well, for so I am. If therefore I, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, ye also ought to wash one another's feet: for I have given you an example, that as I have done to you, ye also should do [3957] .'
5. Oh! my brethren, how shall we admire the loving-kindness of the Saviour? With what power, and with what a trumpet should a man cry out, exalting these His benefits! That not only should we bear His image, but should receive from Him an example and pattern of heavenly conversation; that as He hath begun, we should go on, that suffering, we should not threaten, being reviled, we should not revile again, but should bless them that curse, and in everything commit ourselves to God who judgeth righteously [3958] . For those who are thus disposed, and fashion themselves according to the Gospel, will be partakers of Christ, and imitators of apostolic conversation, on account of which they shall be deemed worthy of that praise from him, with which he praised the Corinthians, when he said, I praise you that in everything ye are mindful of me [3959] .' Afterwards, because there were men who used his words, but chose to hear them as suited their lusts, and dared to pervert them, as the followers of Hymenæus and Alexander, and before them the Sadducees, who as he said, having made shipwreck of faith,' scoffed at the mystery of the resurrection, he immediately proceeded to say, And as I have delivered to you traditions, hold them fast [3960] .' That means, indeed, that we should think not otherwise than as the teacher has delivered.
6. For not only in outward form did those wicked men dissemble, putting on as the Lord says sheep's clothing, and appearing like unto whited sepulchres; but they took those divine words in their mouth, while they inwardly cherished evil intentions. And the first to put on this appearance was the serpent, the inventor of wickedness from the beginning--the devil,--who, in disguise, conversed with Eve, and forthwith deceived her. But after him and with him are all inventors of unlawful heresies, who indeed refer to the Scriptures, but do not hold such opinions as the saints have handed down, and receiving them as the traditions of men, err, because they do not rightly know them nor their [3961] power. Therefore Paul justly praises the Corinthians [3962] , because their opinions were in accordance with his traditions. And the Lord most righteously reproved the Jews, saying, Wherefore do ye also transgress the commandments of God on account of your traditions [3963] .' For they changed the commandments they received from God after their own understanding, preferring to observe the traditions of men. And about these, a little after, the blessed Paul again gave directions to the Galatians who were in danger thereof, writing to them, If any man preach to you aught else than that ye have received, let him be accursed [3964] .'
7. For there is no fellowship whatever between the words of the saints and the fancies of human invention; for the saints are the ministers of the truth, preaching the kingdom of heaven, but those who are borne in the opposite direction have nothing better than to eat, and think their end is that they shall cease to be, and they say, Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die [3965] .' Therefore blessed Luke reproves the inventions of men, and hands down the narrations of the saints, saying in the beginning of the Gospel, Since many have presumed to write narrations of those events of which we are assured, as those who from the beginning were witnesses and ministers of the Word have delivered to us; it hath seemed good to me also, who have adhered to them all from the first, to write correctly in order to thee, O excellent Theophilus, that thou mayest know the truth concerning the things in which thou hast been instructed [3966] .' For as each of the saints has received, that they impart without alteration, for the confirmation of the doctrine of the mysteries. Of these the (divine) word would have us disciples, and these should of right be our teachers, and to them only is it necessary to give heed, for of them only is the word faithful and worthy of all acceptation [3967] ;' these not being disciples because they heard from others, but being eye-witnesses and ministers of the Word, that which they had heard from Him have they handed down.
Now some have related the wonderful signs performed by our Saviour, and preached His eternal Godhead. And others have written of His being born in the flesh of the Virgin, and have proclaimed the festival of the holy passover, saying, Christ our Passover is sacrificed [3968] ;' so that we, individually and collectively, and all the churches in the world may remember, as it is written, That Christ rose from the dead, of the seed of David, according to the Gospel [3969] .' And let us not forget that which Paul delivered, declaring it to the Corinthians; I mean His resurrection, whereby He destroyed him that had the power of death, that is, the devil [3970] ;' and raised us up together with Him, having loosed the bands of death, and vouchsafed a blessing instead of a curse, joy instead of grief, a feast instead of mourning, in this holy joy of Easter, which being continually in our hearts, we always rejoice, as Paul commanded; We pray without ceasing; in everything we give thanks [3971] .' So we are not remiss in giving notice of its seasons, as we have received from the Fathers. Again we write, again keeping to the apostolic traditions, we remind each other when we come together for prayer; and keeping the feast in common, with one mouth we truly give thanks to the Lord. Thus giving thanks unto Him, and being followers of the saints, we shall make our praise in the Lord all the day [3972] ,' as the Psalmist says. So, when we rightly keep the feast, we shall be counted worthy of that joy which is in heaven.
8. We begin the fast of forty days on the 13th of the month Phamenoth (Mar. 9). After we have given ourselves to fasting in continued succession, let us begin the holy Paschal [3973] week on the 18th of the month Pharmuthi (April 13). Then resting on the 23rd of the same month Pharmuthi (April 18), and keeping the feast afterwards on the first of the week, on the 24th (April 19), let us add to these the seven weeks of the great Pentecost, wholly rejoicing and exulting in Christ Jesus our Lord, through Whom to the Father be glory and dominion in the Holy Ghost, for ever and ever. Amen.
The brethren which are with me salute you. Salute one another with a holy kiss [3974] .
Here endeth the second Festal Letter of the holy lord Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria. __________________________________________________________________
[3930] 1 Cor. iv. 16.
[3931] 1 Tim. ii. 7. Cf. Letter iii.
[3932] Prov. iv. 1.
[3933] Rom. ii. 21.
[3934] Mat. xxv. 21.
[3935] We have here the first fragment extant of the original Greek text. It is to be found in Cosmas Indicopleustes. p. 316.
[3936] Syr. eikon.
[3937] Jer. v. 8.
[3938] i.e. the Baptist, Matt. iii. 7; Luke iii. 7.
[3939] Cf. Vit. Anton. supr. p. 202.
[3940] Ps. xxxii. 9. Cf. Orat. iii. 18.
[3941] Is. xxiii. 2, LXX.
[3942] Ps. lxxiii. 20.
[3943] Rom. i. 22, 28, and cf. c. Gent. 19. 2.
[3944] Is. xl. 18.
[3945] Ps. cxv. 8.
[3946] Is. vi. 9.
[3947] Syr. schematisamenos. The allusion in this sentence is evidently to the conduct of Jeroboam, as recorded 1 Kings xii. 32, 33. The phraseology of the Syriac resembles that of the Syr. version in v. 33.
[3948] Is. xlviii. 22.
[3949] Vid. Letter iii. note.
[3950] Eph. iv. 24.
[3951] 1 Tim. iv. 12.
[3952] taxis, Syr. Cf. Col. ii. 5, blepon humon ten taxin.
[3953] 1 Cor. xiv. 25.
[3954] Matt. x. 40.
[3955] 1 Cor. xi. 1.
[3956] Matt. xi. 29.
[3957] John xiii. 12.
[3958] 1 Pet. ii. 21-23
[3959] 1 Cor. xi. 2.
[3960] 1 Tim. i. 19; 2 Tim. ii. 18; 1 Cor. xi. 2
[3961] Matt. xxii. 29.
[3962] 1 Cor. xi. 2.
[3963] Matt. xv. 3.
[3964] Gal. i. 9.
[3965] Is. xxii. 13.
[3966] Luke i. 1.
[3967] 1 Tim. i. 15.
[3968] 1 Cor. v. 7.
[3969] 2 Tim. ii. 8.
[3970] Heb. ii. 14.
[3971] 1 Thess. v. 17.
[3972] Ps. xxxv. 28.
[3973] In Syriac there is but one word pescha' to express the Passover and Easter feasts, it is therefore sometimes rendered Easter, and sometimes Passover, in the following pages.
[3974] The twenty-fifth Paschal Letter of S. Cyril ends with the same words. This is the usual form in which our author concludes his Paschal Letters. S. Cyril employs it but once, as above. __________________________________________________________________
Letter III.--For 331. Easter-day xvi Pharmuthi; iii Id. April; Æra Dioclet. 47; Coss. Annius Bassus, Ablabius; Præfect, Florentius; Indict. iv.
Again, my beloved brethren, the day of the feast draws near to us, which, above all others, should be devoted to prayer, which the law commands to be observed, and which it would be an unholy thing for us to pass over in silence. For although we have been held under restraint by those who afflict us, that, because of them, we should not announce to you this season; yet thanks be to God, who comforteth the afflicted [3975] ,' that we have not been overcome by the wickedness of our accusers and silenced; but obeying the voice of truth, we together with you cry aloud in the day of the feast. For the God of all hath commanded, saying, Speak [3976] , and the children of Israel shall keep the Passover.' And the Spirit exhorts in the Psalm; Blow the trumpet in the new moons [3977] , in the solemn day of your feast.' And the prophet cries; Keep thy feasts, O Judah [3978] .' I do not send word to you as though you were ignorant; but I publish it to those who know it, that ye may perceive that although men have separated us, yet God having made us companions, we approach the same feast, and worship the same Lord continually. And we do not keep the festival as observers of days, knowing that the Apostle reproves those who do so, in those words which he spake; Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years [3979] .' But rather do we consider the day solemn because of the feast; so that all of us, who serve God in every place, may together in our prayers be well-pleasing to God. For the blessed Paul, announcing the nearness of gladness like this, did not announce days, but the Lord, for whose sake we keep the feast, saying, Christ, our Passover, is sacrificed [3980] ;' so that we all, contemplating the eternity of the Word, may draw near to do Him service.
2. For what else is the feast, but the service of the soul? And what is that service, but prolonged prayer to God, and unceasing thanksgiving [3981] ? The unthankful departing far from these are rightly deprived of the joy springing therefrom: for joy and gladness are taken from their mouth [3982] .' Therefore, the [divine] word doth not allow them to have peace; For there is no peace to the wicked, saith the Lord [3983] ,' they labour in pain and grief. So, not even to him who owed ten thousand talents did the Gospel grant forgiveness in the sight of the Lord [3984] . For even he, having received forgiveness of great things, was forgetful of kindness in little ones, so that he paid the penalty also of those former things. And justly indeed, for having himself experienced kindness, he was required to be merciful to his fellow servant. He too that received the one talent, and bound it up in a napkin, and hid it in the earth, was in consequence cast out for unthankfulness, hearing the words, Thou wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I have not strawed; thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and on my return, I should have received mine own. Take therefore the talent from him, and give it to him that hath ten talents [3985] .' For, of course, when he was required to deliver up to his lord that which belonged to him, he should have acknowledged the kindness of him who gave it, and the value of that which was given. For he who gave was not a hard man, had he been so, he would not have given even in the first instance; neither was that which was given unprofitable and vain, for then he had not found fault. But both he who gave was good, and that which was given was capable of bearing fruit. As therefore he who withholdeth corn in seed-time is cursed [3986] ,' according to the divine proverb, so he who neglects grace, and hides it without culture, is properly cast out as a wicked and unthankful person. On this account, he praises those who increased [their talents], saying, Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful in a little, I will place thee over much; enter into the joy of thy Lord [3987] .'
3. This was right and reasonable; for, as the Scripture declares, they had gained as much as they had received. Now, my beloved, our will ought to keep pace with the grace of God, and not fall short; lest while our will remains idle, the grace given us should begin to depart, and the enemy finding us empty and naked, should enter [into us], as was the case with him spoken of in the Gospel, from whom the devil went out; for having gone through dry places, he took seven other spirits more wicked than himself; and returning and finding the house empty, he dwelt there, and the last state of that man was worse than the first [3988] .' For the departure from virtue gives place for the entrance of the unclean spirit. There is, moreover, the apostolic injunction, that the grace given us should not be unprofitable; for those things which he wrote particularly to his disciple, he enforces on us through him [3989] , saying, Neglect not the gift that is in thee. For he who tilleth his land shall be satisfied with bread; but the paths of the slothful are strewn with thorns;' so that the Spirit forewarns a man not to fall into them, saying, Break up your fallow ground, sow not among thorns [3990] .' For when a man despises the grace given him; and forthwith falls into the cares of the world, he delivers himself over to his lusts; and thus in the time of persecution he is offended [3991] , and becomes altogether unfruitful. Now the prophet points out the end of such negligence, saying, Cursed is he who doeth the work of the Lord carelessly [3992] .' For a servant of the Lord should be diligent and careful, yea, moreover, burning like a flame, so that when, by an ardent spirit, he has destroyed all carnal sin, he may be able to draw near to God who, according to the expression of the saints, is called a consuming fire [3993] .'
4. Therefore, the God of all, Who maketh His angels [spirits],' is a spirit, and His ministers a flame of fire [3994] .' Wherefore, in the departure from Egypt, He forbade the multitude to touch the mountain, where God was appointing them the law, because they were not of this character. But He called blessed Moses to it, as being fervent in spirit, and possessing unquenchable grace, saying, Let Moses alone draw near [3995] .' He entered into the cloud also, and when the mountain was smoking, he was not injured; but rather, through the words of the Lord, which are choice silver purified in the earth [3996] ,' he descended purified. Therefore the blessed Paul, when desirous that the grace of the Spirit given to us should not grow cold, exhorts, saying, Quench not the Spirit [3997] .' For so shall we remain partakers of Christ [3998] , if we hold fast to the end the Spirit given at the beginning. For he said, Quench not;' not because the Spirit is placed in the power of men, and is able to suffer anything from them; but because bad and unthankful men are such as manifestly wish to quench it, since they, like the impure, persecute the Spirit with unholy deeds. For the holy Spirit of discipline will flee deceit, nor dwell in a body that is subject unto sin; but will remove from thoughts that are without understanding [3999] .' Now they being without understanding, and deceitful, and lovers of sin, walk still as in darkness, not having that Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world [4000] .' Now a fire such as this laid hold of Jeremiah the prophet, when the word was in him as a fire, and he said, I pass away from every place, and am not able to endure it [4001] .' And our Lord Jesus Christ, being good and a lover of men, came that He might cast this upon earth, and said, And what? would that it were already kindled [4002] !' For He desired, as He testified in Ezekiel [4003] , the repentance of a man rather than his death; so that evil should be entirely consumed in all men, that the soul, being purified, might be able to bring forth fruit; for the word which is sown by Him will be productive, some thirty, some sixty, some an hundred [4004] . Thus, for instance, those who were with Cleopas [4005] , although infirm at first from lack of knowledge, yet afterwards were inflamed with the words of the Saviour, and brought forth the fruits of the knowledge of Him. The blessed Paul also, when seized by this fire, revealed it not to flesh and blood, but having experienced the grace, he became a preacher of the Word. But not such were those nine lepers who were cleansed from their leprosy, and yet were unthankful to the Lord who healed them; nor Judas, who obtained the lot of an apostle, and was named a disciple of the Lord, but at last, while eating bread with the Saviour, lifted up his heel against Him, and became a traitor [4006] .' But such men have the due reward of their folly, since their expectation will be vain through their ingratitude; for there is no hope for the ungrateful, the last fire, prepared for the devil and his angels, awaits those who have neglected divine light. Such then is the end of the unthankful.
5. But the faithful and true servants of the Lord, knowing that the Lord loves the thankful, never cease to praise Him, ever giving thanks unto the Lord. And whether the time is one of ease or of affliction, they offer up praise to God with thanksgiving, not reckoning these things of time, but worshipping the Lord, the God of times [4007] . Thus of old time, Job, who possessed fortitude above all men, thought of these things when in prosperity; and when in adversity, he patiently endured, and when he suffered, gave thanks. As also the humble David, in the very time of affliction sang praises and said, I will bless the Lord at all times [4008] .' And the blessed Paul, in all his Epistles, so to say, ceased not to thank God. In times of ease, he failed not, and in afflictions he gloried, knowing that tribulation worketh patience, and patience experience, and experience hope, and that hope maketh not ashamed [4009] .' Let us, being followers of such men, pass no season without thanksgiving, but especially now, when the time is one of tribulation, which the heretics excite against us, will we praise the Lord, uttering the words of the saints; All these things have come upon us, yet have we not forgotten Thee [4010] .' For as the Jews at that time, although suffering an assault from the tabernacles [4011] of the Edomites, and oppressed by the enemies of Jerusalem, did not give themselves up, but all the more sang praises to God; so we, my beloved brethren, though hindered from speaking the word of the Lord, will the more proclaim it, and being afflicted, we will sing Psalms [4012] , in that we are accounted worthy to be despised, and to labour anxiously for the truth. Yea, moreover, being grievously vexed, we will give thanks. For the blessed Apostle, who gave thanks at all times, urges us in the same manner to draw near to God saying, Let your requests, with thanksgiving, be made known unto God [4013] .' And being desirous that we should always continue in this resolution, he says, At all times give thanks; pray without ceasing [4014] .' For he knew that believers are strong while employed in thanksgiving, and that rejoicing they pass over the walls of the enemy, like those saints who said, Through Thee will we pierce through our enemies, and by my God I will leap over a wall [4015] .' At all times let us stand firm, but especially now, although many afflictions overtake us, and many heretics are furious against us. Let us then, my beloved brethren, celebrate with thanksgiving the holy feast which now draws near to us, girding up the loins of our minds [4016] ,' like our Saviour Jesus Christ, of Whom it is written, Righteousness shall be the girdle of His loins, and faithfulness the girdle of His reins [4017] .' Each one of us having in his hand the staff which came out of the root of Jesse, and our feet shod with the preparation of the Gospel [4018] , let us keep the feast as Paul saith, Not with the old leaven, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth [4019] ;' reverently trusting that we are reconciled through Christ, and not departing from faith in Him, nor do we defile ourselves together with heretics, and strangers to the truth, whose conversation and whose will degrade them. But rejoicing in afflictions, we break through the furnace of iron and darkness, and pass, unharmed, over that terrible Red Sea. Thus also, when we look upon the confusion of heretics, we shall, with Moses, sing that great song of praise, and say, We will sing unto the Lord, for He is to be gloriously praised [4020] .' Thus, singing praises, and seeing that the sin which is in us has been cast into the sea, we pass over to the wilderness. And being first purified by the fast of forty days, by prayers, and fastings, and discipline, and good works, we shall be able to eat the holy Passover in Jerusalem.
6. The beginning of the fast of forty days is on the fifth of Phamenoth (Mar. 1); and when, as I have said, we have first been purified and prepared by those days, we begin the holy week of the great Easter on the tenth of Pharmuthi (Apr. 5), in which, my beloved brethren, we should use more prolonged prayers, and fastings, and watchings, that we may be enabled to anoint our lintels with precious blood, and to escape the destroyer [4021] . Let us rest then, on the fifteenth of the month Pharmuthi (Apr. 10), for on the evening of that Saturday we hear the angels' message, Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is risen [4022] .' Immediately afterwards that great Sunday receives us, I mean on the sixteenth of the same month Pharmuthi (April 11), on which our Lord having risen, gave us peace towards our neighbours. When then we have kept the feast according to His will, let us add from that first day in the holy week, the seven weeks of Pentecost, and as we then receive the grace of the Spirit, let us at all times give thanks to the Lord; through Whom to the Father be glory and dominion, in the Holy Ghost, for ever and ever. Amen.
Salute one another with a holy kiss. The brethren who are with me salute you. I pray, brethren beloved and longed for, that ye may have health, and that ye may be mindful of us in the Lord.
Here endeth the third Festal Letter of holy Athanasius. __________________________________________________________________
[3975] 2 Cor. vii. 6. The historical reference is not quite certain, but the Index iii. is clearly right in its statement that Ath. was absent at this time, as well as in 332.
[3976] Eipon, kai,' as LXX. not Peshito.
[3977] Cf. S. Cyril. Hom. Pasch. xxx. near the beginning.
[3978] Numb. ix. 2; Ps. lxxxi. 3; Nah. i. 15
[3979] Gal. iv. 10.
[3980] 1 Cor. v. 7.
[3981] Cf. Clemens Alex. Strom. 7. 1. adialeiptos agape. Also 1 Thess. v. 16, 17, both in the Greek and in the Syriac vers. and Letter 11.
[3982] Apparently a quotation from Scripture, perhaps from Jer. vii. the phraseology of v. 28. being transferred to the sentiment of v. 34. The expression has already occurred, Letter 2. 4.
[3983] Is. xlviii. 22.
[3984] Matt. xviii. 24.
[3985] Matt. xxv. 26.
[3986] Prov. xi. 26.
[3987] Matt. xxv. 23.
[3988] Ib. xii. 43-45.
[3989] Cf. Letter 2, near beginning.
[3990] 1 Tim. iv. 14; Prov. xii. 11; Ib. xv. 19; Jer. iv. 3.
[3991] skandalizetai, Matt. xiii. 21.
[3992] Jer. xlviii. 10.
[3993] Deut. iv. 24; ix. 3; and Heb. xii. 29.
[3994] Ps. civ. 4.
[3995] Exod. xxiv. 2.
[3996] Ps. xii. 6.
[3997] 1 Thess. v. 19.
[3998] Conf. S. Athan. Expos. in Psalmos, t. i. p, 863. pur hosper noeton, ten tou hagiou Pneumatos methexin embalon.
[3999] Wisd. i. 5.
[4000] John i. 9.
[4001] Jer. xx. 9, cf. Letter 49. 5.
[4002] Luke xii. 49.
[4003] Ezek. xviii. 23, 32.
[4004] Mark iv. 20.
[4005] Luke xxiv.
[4006] Ps. xli. 9; John xiii. 18.
[4007] Cf. Letter 1. 1, note 12.
[4008] Ps. xxxiv. 1.
[4009] Rom. v. 3.
[4010] Ps. xliv. 17.
[4011] Compare Ps. lxxxiii. 6.
[4012] Cf. James v. 13
[4013] Phil. iv. 6.
[4014] 1 Thess. v. 17.
[4015] Ps. xviii. 29.
[4016] 1 Pet. i. 13.
[4017] Is. xi. 5.
[4018] Ib. xi. 1; Eph. vi. 15.
[4019] 1 Cor. v. 8.
[4020] Exod. xv. 1.
[4021] Exod. xii. 7, 23.
[4022] Luke xxiv. 5. __________________________________________________________________
Letter IV.--For 332. Easter-day vii Pharmuthi [4023] , iv Non. Apr.; Æra Dioclet. 48; Coss. Fabius Pacatianus, Mæcilius Hilarianus; Præfect, Hyginus [4024] ; Indict. v.
He sent this Letter from the Emperor's Court by a soldier [4025] .
I send unto you, my beloved, late and beyond the accustomed time [4026] ; yet I trust you will forgive the delay, on account of my protracted journey, and because I have been tried with illness. Being hindered by these two causes, and unusually severe storms having occurred, I have deferred writing to you. But notwithstanding my long journeys, and my grievous sickness, I have not forgotten to give you the festal notification, and, in discharge of my duty, I now announce to you the feast. For although the date of this letter is later [4027] than that usual for this announcement, it should still be considered well-timed, since our enemies having been put to shame and reproved by the Church, because they persecuted us without a cause [4028] , we may now sing a festal song of praise, uttering the triumphant hymn against Pharaoh; We will sing unto the Lord, for He is to be gloriously praised; the horse and his rider He hath cast into the sea [4029] .'
2. It is well, my beloved, to proceed from feast to feast; again festal meetings, again holy vigils arouse our minds, and compel our intellect to keep vigil unto contemplation of good things. Let us not fulfil these days like those that mourn, but, by enjoying spiritual food, let us seek to silence our fleshly lusts [4030] . For by these means we shall have strength to overcome our adversaries, like blessed Judith [4031] , when having first exercised herself in fastings and prayers, she overcame the enemies, and killed Olophernes. And blessed Esther, when destruction was about to come on all her race, and the nation of Israel was ready to perish, defeated the fury of the tyrant by no other means than by fasting and prayer to God, and changed the ruin of her people into safety [4032] . Now as those days are considered feasts for Israel, so also in old time feasts were appointed when an enemy was slain, or a conspiracy against the people broken up, and Israel delivered. Therefore blessed Moses of old time ordained the great feast of the Passover, and our celebration of it, because, namely, Pharaoh was killed, and the people were delivered from bondage. For in those times it was especially, when those who tyrannized over the people had been slain, that temporal feasts and holidays were observed in Judæa [4033] .
3. Now, however, that the devil, that tyrant against the whole world, is slain, we do not approach a temporal feast, my beloved, but an eternal and heavenly. Not in shadows do we shew it forth, but we come to it in truth. For they being filled with the flesh of a dumb lamb, accomplished the feast, and having anointed their door-posts with the blood, implored aid against the destroyer [4034] . But now we, eating of the Word of the Father, and having the lintels of our hearts sealed with the blood of the New Testament [4035] , acknowledge the grace given us from the Saviour, who said, Behold, I have given unto you to tread upon serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy [4036] .' For no more does death reign; but instead of death henceforth is life, since our Lord said, I am the life [4037] ;' so that everything is filled with joy and gladness; as it is written, The Lord reigneth, let the earth rejoice.' For when death reigned, sitting down by the rivers of Babylon, we wept [4038] ,' and mourned, because we felt the bitterness of captivity; but now that death and the kingdom of the devil is abolished, everything is entirely filled with joy and gladness. And God is no longer known only in Judæa, but in all the earth, their voice hath gone forth, and the knowledge of Him hath filled all the earth [4039] .' What follows, my beloved, is obvious; that we should approach such a feast, not with filthy raiment, but having clothed our minds with pure garments. For we need in this to put on our Lord Jesus [4040] , that we may be able to celebrate the feast with Him. Now we are clothed with Him when we love virtue, and are enemies to wickedness, when we exercise ourselves in temperance and mortify lasciviousness, when we love righteousness before iniquity, when we honour sufficiency, and have strength of mind, when we do not forget the poor, but open our doors to all men, when we assist humble-mindedness, but hate pride.
4. By these things Israel of old, having first, as in a figure, striven for the victory, came to the feast, for these things were then foreshadowed and typified. But we, my beloved, the shadow having received its fulfilment, and the types being accomplished, should no longer consider the feast typical, neither should we go up to Jerusalem which is here below, to sacrifice the Passover, according to the unseasonable observance of the Jews, lest, while the season passes away, we should be regarded as acting unseasonably [4041] ; but, in accordance with the injunction of the Apostles, let us go beyond the types, and sing the new song of praise. For perceiving this, and being assembled together with the Truth [4042] , they drew near, and said unto our Saviour, Where wilt Thou that we should make ready for Thee the Passover [4043] ?' For no longer were these things to be done which belonged to Jerusalem which is beneath; neither there alone was the feast to be celebrated, but wherever God willed it to be. Now He willed it to be in every place, so that in every place incense and a sacrifice might be offered to Him [4044] .' For although, as in the historical account, in no other place might the feast of the Passover be kept save only in Jerusalem, yet when the things pertaining to that time were fulfilled, and those which belonged to shadows had passed away, and the preaching of the Gospel was about to extend everywhere; when indeed the disciples were spreading the feast in all places, they asked the Saviour, Where wilt Thou that we shall make ready?' The Saviour also, since He was changing the typical for the spiritual, promised them that they should no longer eat the flesh of a lamb, but His own, saying, Take, eat and drink; this is My body, and My blood [4045] .' When we are thus nourished by these things, we also, my beloved, shall truly keep the feast of the Passover.
5. We begin on the first of Pharmuthi (Mar. 27), and rest on the sixth of the same month (Apr. 1), on the evening of the seventh day; and the holy first day of the week having risen upon us on the seventh of the same Pharmuthi (Apr. 2), celebrate we too the days of holy Pentecost following thereon, shewing forth through them the world to come [4046] , so that henceforth we may be with Christ for ever, praising God over all in Christ Jesus, and through Him, with all saints, we say unto the Lord, Amen. Salute one another with a holy kiss. All the brethren who are with me salute you. We have sent this letter from the Court, by the hand of an attendant officer [4047] , to whom it was given by Ablavius [4048] , the Præfect of the Prætorium, who fears God in truth. For I am at the Court, having been summoned by the emperor Constantine to see him. But the Meletians, who were present there, being envious, sought our ruin before the Emperor. But they were put to shame and driven away thence as calumniators, being confuted by many things. Those who were driven away were Callinicus, Ision, Eudæmon, and Geloeus [4049] Hieracammon, who, on account of the shame of his name, calls himself Eulogius.
Here endeth the fourth Festal Letter of holy Athanasius. __________________________________________________________________
[4023] The Syriac text has 17th instead of 7th. There is the same error in the index. The correct day is given towards the end of the Letter.
[4024] There is sometimes a difficulty, in the absence of independent testimony, in ascertaining the exact orthography of the proper names, from the loose manner in which they are written in the Syriac. Here, however, it is clearly Hyginus, as in Sozomen, lib. ii. c. 25, Larsow writes it Eugenius. He has also the 46th instead of the 48th of the Diocletian Æra. The word Fabius' is not clear. In Baronii Annal. Eccles, however, we find it Ovinius.
[4025] See note 6 at the end of the Letter.
[4026] In the index it is stated that the third, but not that the fourth, Letter was sent late, but see Letter 3, note 1.
[4027] i.e. too late to give notice of the beginning of Lent, infr. §5, and Letter 5, §6.
[4028] Constantine, in his letter, supr. p. 133, speaks of the envy of the accusers of Athan. and of their unsuccessful efforts to criminate him.
[4029] Exod. xv. 1.
[4030] tois tes sarkos epitimontes pathesin. S. Cyril. Hom. Pasch. xx.
[4031] Judith xiii. 8.
[4032] Esther iv. 16.
[4033] Cf. Esther ix. 20-28; Judith ix. xv.
[4034] Conf. S. Cyril. Hom. Pasch. xxiv. p. 293. Ed. Paris, 1638.
[4035] Matt. xxvi. 28.
[4036] Luke x. 19, Vit. Ant. 30.
[4037] John xiv. 6.
[4038] Ps. xcvii. 1; cxxxvii. 1.
[4039] Ib. lxxvi. 1; xix. 4.
[4040] Cf. Rom. xiii. 14.
[4041] Cf. Letter i. (beginning)
[4042] sun te alethei& 139;. I understand this as referring to Christ. Vid. John xiv. 6.
[4043] Matt. xxvi. 17.
[4044] Mal. i. 11.
[4045] Matt. xxvi. 26-28
[4046] Cf. Bingham, xx. ch. 6; Cass. Coll. xxi. 11; Cyril uses the same comparison towards the end of his 26th Paschal discourse.
[4047] Officilius.' Cureton considers this may be an error for the Latin Officialis.
[4048] Ablavius, Præfect of the East, the minister and favourite of Constantine the Great, was murdered after the death of the latter. He was consul in the preceding year. Zozimus ii. 40. (Smith's Dict. of Gr. and Rom. Biography.)
[4049] The name means Laughable.' __________________________________________________________________
Letter V.--For 333. Easter-day [4050] , Coss. Dalmatius and Zenophilus; Præfect, Paternus [4051] ; vi Indict.; xvii Kal. Maii, xx Pharmuthi; xv Moon; vii Gods; Æra Dioclet. 49.
We duly proceed, my brethren, from feasts to feasts, duly from prayers to prayers, we advance from fasts to fasts, and join holy-days to holy-days. Again the time has arrived which brings to us a new beginning [4052] , even the announcement of the blessed Passover, in which the Lord was sacrificed. We eat, as it were, the food of life, and constantly thirsting we delight our souls at all times, as from a fountain, in His precious blood. For we continually and ardently desire; He stands ready for those who thirst; and for those who thirst there is the word of our Saviour, which, in His loving-kindness, He uttered on the day of the feast; If any man thirst, let him come to Me and drink [4053] .' Nor was it then alone when any one drew near to Him, that He cured his thirst; but whenever any one seeks, there is free access for him to the Saviour. For the grace of the feast is not limited to one time, nor does its splendid brilliancy decline; but it is always near, enlightening the minds of those who earnestly desire it [4054] . For therein is constant virtue, for those who are illuminated in their minds, and meditate on the divine Scriptures day and night, like the man to whom a blessing is given, as it is written in the sacred Psalms; Blessed is the man who hath not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stood in the way of sinners, nor sat in the seat of corrupters. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law doth he meditate day and night [4055] .' For it is not the sun, or the moon, or the host of those other stars which illumines him, but he glitters with the high effulgence of God over all.
2. For it is God, my beloved, even the God Who at first established the feast for us, Who vouchsafes the celebration of it year by year. He both brought about the slaying of His Son for salvation, and gave us this reason for the holy feast, to which every year bears witness, as often as at this season the feast is proclaimed. This also leads us on from the cross through this world to that which is before us, and God produces even now from it the joy of glorious salvation, bringing us to the same assembly, and in every place uniting all of us in spirit; appointing us common prayers, and a common grace proceeding from the feast. For this is the marvel of His loving-kindness, that He should gather together in the same place those who are at a distance; and make those who appear to be far off in the body, to be near together in unity of spirit.
3. Wherefore then, my beloved, do we not acknowledge the grace as becometh the feast? Wherefore do we not make a return to our Benefactor? It is indeed impossible to make an adequate return to God; still, it is a wicked thing for us who receive the gracious gift, not to acknowledge it. Nature itself manifests our inability; but our own will reproves our unthankfulness. Therefore the blessed Paul, when admiring the greatness of the gift of God, said, And who is sufficient for these things [4056] ?' For He made the world free by the blood of the Saviour; then, again, He has caused the grave to be trodden down by the Saviour's death, and furnished a way to the heavenly gates free from obstacles to those who are going up [4057] . Wherefore, one of the saints, while he acknowledged the grace, but was insufficient to repay it, said, What shall I render unto the Lord for all He has done unto me [4058] ?' For instead of death he had received life, instead of bondage [4059] , freedom, and instead of the grave, the kingdom of heaven. For of old time, death reigned from Adam to Moses;' but now the divine voice hath said, To-day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise.' And the saints, being sensible of this, said, Except the Lord had helped me, my soul had almost dwelt in hell. [4060] .' Besides all this, being powerless to make a return, he yet acknowledged the gift, and wrote finally, saying, I will take the cup of salvation, and call on the name of the Lord; precious in His sight is the death of His saints [4061] .'
With regard to the cup, the Lord said, Are ye able to drink of that cup which I am about to drink of?' And when the disciples assented, the Lord said, Ye shall indeed drink of My cup; but that ye should sit on My right hand, and on My left, is not Mine to give; but to those for whom it is prepared [4062] .' Therefore, my beloved, let us be sensible of the gift, though we are found insufficient to repay it. As we have ability, let us meet the occasion. For although nature is not able, with things unworthy of the Word, to return a recompense for such benefits, yet let us render Him thanks while we persevere in piety. And how can we more abide in piety than when we acknowledge God, Who in His love to mankind has bestowed on us such benefits? (For thus we shall obediently keep the law, and observe its commandments. And, further, we shall not, as unthankful persons, be accounted transgressors of the law, or do those things which ought to be hated, for the Lord loveth the thankful); when too we offer ourselves to the Lord, like the saints, when we subscribe ourselves entirely [as] living henceforth not to ourselves, but to the Lord Who died for us, as also the blessed Paul did, when he said, I am crucified with Christ, yet I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me [4063] .'
4. Now our life, my brethren, truly consists in our denying all bodily things, and continuing stedfast in those only of our Saviour. Therefore the present season requires of us, that we should not only utter such words, but should also imitate the deeds of the saints. But we imitate them, when we acknowledge Him who died, and no longer live unto ourselves, but Christ henceforth lives in us; when we render a recompense to the Lord to the utmost of our power, though when we make a return we give nothing of our own, but those things which we have before received from Him, this being especially of His grace, that He should require, as from us, His own gifts. He bears witness to this when He says, My offerings are My own gifts [4064] .' That is, those things which you give Me are yours, as having received them from Me, but they are the gifts of God. And let us offer to the Lord every virtue, and that true holiness which is in Him, and in piety let us keep the feast to Him with those things which He has hallowed for us. Let us thus engage in the holy fasts, as having been prescribed by Him, and by means of which we find the way to God. But let us not be like the heathen, or the ignorant Jews, or as the heretics and schismatics of the present time. For the heathen think the accomplishment of the feast is in the abundance of food; the Jews, erring in the type and shadow, think it still such; the schismatics keep it in separate places, and with vain imaginations. But let us, my brethren, be superior to the heathen, in keeping the feast with sincerity of soul, and purity of body; to the Jews, in no longer receiving the type and the shadow, but as having been gloriously illumined with the light of truth, and as looking upon the Sun of Righteousness [4065] ; to the schismatics, in not rending the coat of Christ, but in one house, even in the Catholic Church, let us eat the Passover of the Lord, Who, by ordaining His holy laws, guided us towards virtue, and counselled the abstinence of this feast. For the Passover is indeed abstinence from evil for exercise of virtue, and a departure from death unto life. This may be learnt even from the type of old time. For then they toiled earnestly to pass from Egypt to Jerusalem, but now we depart from death to life; they then passed from Pharaoh to Moses, but now we rise from the devil to the Saviour. And as, at that time, the type of deliverance bore witness every year, so now we commemorate our salvation. We fast meditating on death, that we may be able to live; and we watch, not as mourners, but as they that wait for the Lord, when He shall have returned from the wedding, so that we may vie with each other in the triumph, hastening to announce the sign of victory over death.
5. Would therefore, O my beloved, that as the word requires, we might here so govern ourselves at all times and entirely, and so live, as never to forget the noble acts of God, nor to depart from the practice of virtue! As also the Apostolic voice exhorts; Remember Jesus Christ, that He rose from the dead [4066] .' Not that any limited season of remembrance was appointed, for at all times He should be in our thoughts. But because of the slothfulness of many, we delay from day to day. Let us then begin in these days. To this end a time of remembrance is permitted, that it may show forth to the saints the reward of their calling, and may exhort the careless while reproving them [4067] . Therefore in all the remaining days, let us persevere in virtuous conduct, repenting as is our duty, of all that we have neglected, whatever it may be; for there is no one free from defilement, though his course may have been but one hour on the earth, as Job, that man of surpassing fortitude, testifies. But, stretching forth to those things that are to come [4068] ,' let us pray that we may not eat the Passover unworthily, lest we be exposed to dangers. For to those who keep the feast in purity, the Passover is heavenly food; but to those who observe it profanely and contemptuously, it is a danger and reproach. For it is written, Whosoever shall eat and drink unworthily, is guilty of the death of our Lord [4069] .' Wherefore, let us not merely proceed to perform the festal rites, but let us be prepared to draw near to the divine Lamb, and to touch heavenly food. Let us cleanse our hands, let us purify the body. Let us keep our whole mind from guile; not giving up ourselves to excess, and to lusts, but occupying ourselves entirely with our Lord, and with divine doctrines; so that, being altogether pure, we may be able to partake of the Word. [4070]
6. We begin the holy fast on the fourteenth of Pharmuthi (Apr. 9), on the [first] evening of the week [4071] ; and having ceased on the nineteenth of the same month Pharmuthi (Apr. 14), the first day of the holy week dawns upon us on the twentieth of the same month Pharmuthi (Apr. 15), to which we join the seven weeks of Pentecost; with prayers, and fellowship with our neighbour, and love towards one another, and that peaceable will which is above all. For so shall we be heirs of the kingdom of heaven, through our Lord Jesus Christ, through Whom to the Father be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen. All the brethren who are with me salute you. Salute one another with a holy kiss.
Here endeth the fifth Festal Letter of holy Athanasius. __________________________________________________________________
[4050] See supr. Table D, and note. The full moon (Moon xiv') was really on Pharm. 20, but seems to have been calculated to fall on the previous day.
[4051] The Syriac seems to represent Paterius,' not Paternus' as Larsow writes it. A former præfect of Egypt was called Paterius, according to Gelas. Cyz. in Hard. Conc. i. 459.
[4052] Cf. Rev. iii. 14, c. Apoll. i. 20.
[4053] John vii. 37. The Syriac is rather obscure here.
[4054] Vid. note 2, to Letter 1.
[4055] Ps. i. 1, 2.
[4056] 2 Cor. ii. 17.
[4057] This sentence is preserved in the original Greek in Cosmas, Topogr. Christ. p. 316.
[4058] Ps. cxvi. 12.
[4059] Pseudo-Ath. in Matt. xxi. 9. (Migne xxviii. 1025), after quoting the same passage from the Epistle to the Romans, says, all' epedemesen ho Kurios hemon 'Iesous Christos lutroumenos tous aichmalotous, kai zoopoion tous tethanatomenous
[4060] Rom. v. 14; Luke xxiii. 43; Ps. xciv. 17
[4061] Ps. cxvi. 13, 15.
[4062] Matt. xx. 22, 23.
[4063] Gal. ii. 20.
[4064] Num. xxviii. 2, LXX.
[4065] Mal. iv. 2.
[4066] 2 Tim. ii. 8.
[4067] The reasoning of Athan. is to this effect. The due observance of such festival will have its effect in quickening our habitual meditation on the resurrection. The same mode of reasoning might be applied to all the other Christian festivals.
[4068] Job xiv. 4 (LXX.); Phil. iii. 13.
[4069] 1 Cor. xi. 27.
[4070] Cf. 2 Pet. i. 4
[4071] Syr. sabbath.' __________________________________________________________________
Letter VI.--For 334. Easter-day, xii Pharmuthi, vii Id. April; xvii Moon; Æra Dioclet. 50; Coss. Optatus Patricius, Anicius Paulinus; Præfect, Philagrius [4072] , the Cappadocian; vii Indict.
Now again, my beloved, has God brought us to the season of the feast, and through His loving-kindness we have reached the period of assembly for it. For that God who brought Israel out of Egypt, even He at this time calls us to the feast, saying by Moses, Observe the month of new fruits [4073] , and keep the Passover to the Lord thy God [4074] :' and by the prophet, Keep thy feasts, O Judah; pay to the Lord thy vows [4075] .' If then God Himself loves the feast, and calls us to it, it is not right, my brethren, that it should be delayed, or observed carelessly; but with alacrity and zeal we should come to it, so that having begun joyfully here, we may also receive an earnest of that heavenly feast. For if we diligently celebrate the feast here, we shall doubtless receive the perfect joy which is in heaven, as the Lord says; With desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I say unto you, that I will not eat it, until it is fulfilled with you in the kingdom of God [4076] .' Now we eat it if, understanding the reason of the feast, and acknowledging the Deliverer, we conduct ourselves in accordance with His grace, as Paul saith; So that we may keep the Feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth [4077] .' For the Lord died in those days, that we should no longer do the deeds of death. He gave His life, that we might preserve our own from the snares of the devil. And, what is most wonderful, the Word became flesh, that we should no longer live in the flesh, but in spirit should worship God, who is Spirit. He who is not so disposed, abuses the days, and does not keep the feast, but like an unthankful person finds fault with the grace, and honours the days overmuch, while he does not supplicate the Lord who in those days redeemed him. Let him by all means hear, though fancying that he keeps the feast, the Apostolic voice reproving him; Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years: I fear lest I have laboured among you in vain [4078] .'
2. For the feast is not on account of the days; but for the Lord's sake, who then suffered for us, we celebrate it, for our Passover Christ, is sacrificed [4079] .' Even as Moses, when teaching Israel not to consider the feast as pertaining to the days, but to the Lord, said, It is the Lord's Passover [4080] .' To the Jews, when they thought they were keeping the Passover, because they persecuted the Lord, the feast was useless; since it no longer bore the name of the Lord, even according to their own testimony. It was not the Passover of the Lord, but that of the Jews [4081] . The Passover was named after the Jews, my brethren, because they denied the Lord of the Passover. On this account, the Lord, turning away His face from such a doctrine of theirs, saith, Your new moons and your sabbaths My soul hateth [4082] .'
3. So now, those who keep the Passover in like manner, the Lord again reproves, as He did those lepers who were cleansed, when He loved the one as thankful, but was angry with the others as ungrateful, because they did not acknowledge their Deliverer, but thought more of the cure of the leprosy than of Him who healed them. But one of them when he saw that he was healed, turned back, and with a loud voice glorified God, and fell on his face at the feet of Jesus giving Him thanks; and he was a Samaritan. And Jesus answering said, Were there not ten cleansed? but those nine--whence are there none found who returned to give glory to God, but this stranger [4083] ?' And there was more given to him than to the rest; for being cleansed from his leprosy, he heard from the Lord, Arise, go thy way, thy faith hath saved thee [4084] .' For he who gives thanks, and he who glorifies, have kindred feelings, in that they bless their Helper for the benefits they have received. So the Apostle exhorts all men to this, saying, Glorify God with your body;' and the prophet commands, saying, Give glory to God.' Although testimony was borne by Caiaphas [4085] against our Redeemer, and He was set at nought by the Jews, and was condemned by Pilate in those days, yet exalted exceedingly and most mighty was the voice of the Father which came to Him; I have glorified, and will glorify again [4086] .' For those things which He suffered for our sake have passed away; but those which belong to Him as the Saviour remain for ever.
4. But in our commemoration of these things, my brethren, let us not be occupied with meats, but let us glorify the Lord, let us become fools for Him who died for us, even as Paul said; For if we are foolish, it is to God; or if we are sober-minded, it is to you; since because one died for all men, therefore all were dead to Him; and He died for all, that we who live should not henceforth live to ourselves, but to Him who died for us, and rose again [4087] .' No longer then ought we to live to ourselves, but, as servants to the Lord. And not in vain should we receive the grace, as the time is especially an acceptable one [4088] , and the day of salvation hath dawned, even the death of our Redeemer [4089] . For even for our sakes the Word came down, and being incorruptible, put on a corruptible body for the salvation of all of us. Of which Paul was confident, saying, This corruptible must put on incorruption [4090] .' The Lord too was sacrificed, that by His blood He might abolish death. Full well did He once, in a certain place, blame those who participated vainly in the shedding of His blood, while they did not delight themselves in the flesh of the Word, saying, What profit is there in my blood, that I go down to corruption [4091] ?' This does not mean that the descent of the Lord was without profit, for it gained the whole world; but rather that after He had thus suffered, sinners would prefer to suffer loss than to profit by it. For He regarded our salvation as a delight and a peculiar gain; while on the contrary He looked upon our destruction as loss.
5. Also in the Gospel, He praises those who increased the grace twofold, both him who made ten talents of five, and him who made four talents of two, as those who had profited, and turned them to good account; but him who hid the talent He cast out as wanting, saying to him, Thou wicked servant! oughtest thou not to have put My money to the exchangers? then at My coming I should have received Mine own with interest. Take, therefore, from him the talent, and give it to him that hath ten talents. For to every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have more abundantly; but from him that hath not, shall be taken away even that which he hath. And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth [4092] .' For it is not His will that the grace we have received should be unprofitable; but He requires us to take pains to render Him His own fruits, as the blessed Paul saith; The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, and peace [4093] .' Having therefore this right resolution, and owing no man anything, but rather giving everything to every man, he was a teacher of the like rightness of principle, saying, Render to all their dues [4094] .' He was like those sent by the householder to receive the fruits of the vineyard from the husbandmen [4095] ; for he exhorted all men to render a return. But Israel despised and would not render, for their will was not right, nay moreover they killed those that were sent, and not even before the Lord of the vineyard were they ashamed, but even He was slain by them. Verily, when He came and found no fruit in them, He cursed them through the fig-tree, saying, Let there be henceforth no fruit from thee [4096] ;' and the fig-tree was dead and fruitless so that even the disciples wondered when it withered away.
6. Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by the prophet; I will take away from them the voice of joy and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the scent of myrrh, and the light of a lamp, and the whole land shall be destroyed [4097] .' For the whole service of the law has been abolished from them, and henceforth and for ever they remain without a feast. And they observe not the Passover; for how can they? They have no abiding place, but they wander everywhere. And they eat unleavened bread contrary to the law, since they are unable first to sacrifice the lamb, as they were commanded to do when eating unleavened bread. But in every place they transgress the law, and as the judgments of God require, they keep days of grief instead of gladness. Now the cause of this to them was the slaying of the Lord, and that they did not reverence the Only-Begotten. At this time the altogether wicked heretics and ignorant schismatics are in the same case; the one in that they slay the Word, the other in that they rend the coat. They too remain expelled from the feast, because they live without godliness and knowledge, and emulate the conduct shewn in the matter of Bar-Abbas the robber, whom the Jews desired instead of the Saviour. Therefore the Lord cursed them under the figure of the fig-tree. Yet even thus He spared them in His loving-kindness, not destroying them root and all. For He did not curse the root, but [said], that no man should eat fruit of it thenceforth. When He did this, He abolished the shadow, causing it to wither; but preserved the root, so that we might [not] [4098] be grafted upon it; they too, if they abide not in unbelief, may attain to be grafted into their own olive tree [4099] .' Now when the Lord had cursed them because of their negligence, He removed from them the new moons, the true lamb, and that which is truly the Passover.
7. But to us it came: there came too the solemn day, in which we ought to call to the feast with a trumpet [4100] , and separate ourselves to the Lord with thanksgiving, considering it as our own festival [4101] . For we are bound to celebrate it, not to ourselves but to the Lord; and to rejoice, not in ourselves but in the Lord, who bore our griefs and said, My soul is sorrowful unto death [4102] .' For the heathen, and all those who are strangers to our faith, keep feasts according to their own wills, and have no peace, since they commit evil against God. But the saints, as they live to the Lord also keep the feast to Him, saying, I will rejoice in Thy salvation,' and, my soul shall be joyful in the Lord.' The commandment is common to them, Rejoice, ye righteous, in the Lord [4103] '--so that they also may be gathered together, to sing that common and festal Psalm, Come, let us rejoice [4104] ,' not in ourselves, but, in the Lord.'
8. For thus the patriarch Abraham rejoiced not to see his own day, but that of the Lord; and thus looking forward he saw it, and was glad [4105] .' And when he was tried, by faith he offered up Isaac, and sacrificed his only-begotten son--he who had received the promises. And, in offering his son, he worshipped the Son of God. And, being restrained from sacrificing Isaac, he saw the Messiah in the ram [4106] , which was offered up instead as a sacrifice to God. The patriarch was tried, through Isaac, not however that he was sacrificed, but He who was pointed out in Isaiah; He shall be led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers he shall be speechless [4107] ;' but He took away the sin of the world. And on this account [Abraham] was restrained from laying his hand on the lad, lest the Jews, taking occasion from the sacrifice of Isaac, should reject the prophetic declarations concerning our Saviour, even all of them, but more especially those uttered by the Psalmist; Sacrifice and offering Thou wouldest not; a body Thou hast prepared Me [4108] ;' and should refer all such things as these to the son of Abraham.
9. For the sacrifice was not properly the setting to rights [4109] of Isaac, but of Abraham who also offered, and by that was tried. Thus God accepted the will of the offerer, but prevented that which was offered from being sacrificed. For the death of Isaac did not procure freedom to the world, but that of our Saviour alone, by whose stripes we all are healed [4110] . For He raised up the falling, healed the sick, satisfied those who were hungry, and filled the poor, and, what is more wonderful, raised us all from the dead; having abolished death, He has brought us from affliction and sighing to the rest and gladness of this feast, a joy which reacheth even to heaven. For not we alone are affected by this, but because of it, even the heavens rejoice with us, and the whole church of the firstborn, written in heaven [4111] , is made glad together, as the prophet proclaims, saying, Rejoice, ye heavens, for the Lord hath had mercy upon Israel. Shout, ye foundations of the earth. Cry out with joy, ye mountains, ye high places, and all the trees which are in them, for the Lord hath redeemed Jacob, and Israel hath been glorified [4112] .' And again; Rejoice, and be glad, ye heavens; let the hills melt into gladness, for the Lord hath had mercy on His people, and comforted the oppressed of the people [4113] .'
10. The whole creation keeps a feast, my brethren, and everything that hath breath praises the Lord [4114] , as the Psalmist [says], on account of the destruction of the enemies, and our salvation. And justly indeed; for if there is joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth [4115] , what should there not be over the abolition of sin, and the resurrection of the dead? Oh what a feast and how great the gladness in heaven! how must all its hosts joy and exult, as they rejoice and watch in our assemblies, those that are held continually, and especially those at Easter? For they look on sinners while they repent; on those who have turned away their faces, when they become converted; on those who formerly persisted in lusts and excess, but who now humble themselves by fastings and temperance; and, finally, on the enemy who lies weakened, lifeless, bound hand and foot, so that we may mock at him; Where is thy victory, O Death? where is thy sting, O Grave [4116] ?' Let us then sing unto the Lord a song of victory.
11. Who then will lead us to such a company of angels as this? Who, coming with a desire for the heavenly feast, and the angelic holiday, will say like the prophet, I will pass to the place of the wondrous tabernacle, unto the house of God; with the voice of joy and praise, with the shouting of those who keep festival [4117] ?' To this course the saints also encourage us, saying, Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob [4118] .' But not for the impure is this feast, nor is the ascent thereto for sinners; but it is for the virtuous and diligent; and for those who live according to the aim of the saints; for, Who shall ascend to the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in His holy place, but he that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not devoted his soul to vanity, nor sworn deceitfully to his neighbour. For he,' as the Psalmist adds, when he goes up, shall receive a blessing from the Lord [4119] .' Now this clearly also refers to what the Lord gives to them at the right hand, saying, Come, ye blessed, inherit the kingdom prepared for you [4120] .' But the deceitful, and he that is not pure of heart, and possesses nothing that is pure (as the Proverb saith, To a deceitful man there is nothing good [4121] '), shall assuredly, being a stranger, and of a different race from the saints, be accounted unworthy to eat the Passover, for a foreigner shall not eat of it [4122] .' Thus Judas, when he thought he kept the Passover, because he plotted deceit against the Saviour, was estranged from the city which is above, and from the apostolic company. For the law commanded the Passover to be eaten with due observance; but he, while eating it, was sifted of the devil [4123] , who had entered his soul.
12. Wherefore let us not celebrate the feast after an earthly manner, but as keeping festival in heaven with the angels. Let us glorify the Lord, by chastity, by righteousness, and other virtues. And let us rejoice, not in ourselves, but in the Lord, that we may be inheritors with the saints. Let us keep the feast then, as Moses. Let us watch like David who rose seven times, and in the middle of the night gave thanks for the righteous judgments of God. Let us be early, as he said, In the morning I will stand before Thee, and Thou wilt look upon me: in the morning Thou wilt hear my voice [4124] .' Let us fast like Daniel; let us pray without ceasing, as Paul commanded; all of us recognising the season of prayer, but especially those who are honourably married; so that having borne witness to these things, and thus having kept the feast, we may be able to enter into the joy of Christ in the kingdom of heaven [4125] . But as Israel, when going up to Jerusalem, was first purified in the wilderness, being trained to forget the customs of Egypt, the Word by this typifying to us the holy fast of forty days, let us first be purified and freed from defilement [4126] , so that when we depart hence, having been careful of fasting, we may be able to ascend to the upper chamber [4127] with the Lord, to sup with Him; and may be partakers of the joy which is in heaven. In no other manner is it possible to go up to Jerusalem, and to eat the Passover, except by observing the fast of forty days.
13. We begin the fast of forty days on the first day of the month Phamenoth (Feb. 25); and having prolonged it till the fifth of Pharmuthi (Mar. 31), suspending it upon the Sundays and the Saturdays [4128] preceding them, we then begin again on the holy days of Easter, on the sixth of Pharmuthi (Apr, 1), and cease on the eleventh of the same month (Apr. 6), late in the evening [4129] of the Saturday, whence dawns on us the holy Sunday, on the twelfth of Pharmuthi (Apr. 7), which extends its beams, with unobscured grace, to all the seven weeks of the holy Pentecost. Resting on that day, let us ever keep Easter joy in Christ Jesus our Lord, through Whom, to the Father, be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen. All the brethren who are with me salute you. Salute one another with a holy kiss.
Here endeth the sixth Festal Letter of the holy and God-clad Athanasius. __________________________________________________________________
[4072] The index gives still Paternus for Letters 6 and 7. On Philagrius, see p. 93, note 2.
[4073] Cf. i. 9, n. 12.
[4074] Deut. xvi. 1.
[4075] Nahum i. 15.
[4076] Luke xxii. 15, 16.
[4077] 1 Cor. v. 8.
[4078] Gal. iv. 10, 11.
[4079] 1 Cor. v. 7.
[4080] Exod. xii. 11.
[4081] Cf. John vi. 4. And the passover, a feast of the Jews, was nigh.' Cf. Origenis Comment. in Joannem, tom. x. §11. p. 172. ed. 1759.
[4082] Is. i. 14.
[4083] Luke xvii. 15, &c.
[4084] Ib. 19
[4085] 1 Cor. vi. 20; Is. xlii. 12; Matt. xxvi. 65.
[4086] John xii. 28.
[4087] 2 Cor. v. 13-15
[4088] Ib. vi. 1, 2.
[4089] Cf. S. Cyril. Hom. Pasch. xxiv. sub init.
[4090] 1 Cor. xv. 53.
[4091] Ps. xxx. 9.
[4092] Matt. xxv. 26-30
[4093] Gal. v. 22.
[4094] Rom. xiii. 7.
[4095] Matt. xxi. 33.
[4096] Ib. 19
[4097] Jer. xxv. 10.
[4098] The negative (which is here placed within brackets) is found in the Syriac text; but there is little doubt that it is an error.
[4099] Rom. xi. 23.
[4100] Cf. Letter i. S. Cyril, Hom. i. de Festis Pasch. vol. v. pt. 2, p. 6.
[4101] The Passover is no longer to be a feast of the Jews: it is to be celebrated by Christians as a festival of the Lord. Vid. §2. n. 10.
[4102] Matt. xxvi. 38.
[4103] Ps. ix. 14, xxxv. 9; Ib. xxxiii. 1.
[4104] Ps. xcv. 1.
[4105] John viii. 56; Heb. xi. 17.
[4106] Gen. xxii. 15. The Syriac, here rendered by ram,' is the usual word for sheep, common gender. It is the same word that is used directly after in the quotation from Isaiah, and rendered lamb.'
[4107] Is. liii. 7.
[4108] Ps. xl. 6.
[4109] The phrase setting to rights' is used for want of one that would better express the meaning. The Syriac noun is that used to render diorthosis in Heb. ix. 10, from a verb to make straight, set upright, or right.'
[4110] Is. liii. 5.
[4111] Heb. xii. 23.
[4112] Is. xliv. 23.
[4113] Is. xlix. 13.
[4114] Ps. cl. 6.
[4115] Luke xv. 7.
[4116] 1 Cor. xv. 55. Cf. Incarn. 27.
[4117] Ps. xlii. 4.
[4118] Is. ii. 3.
[4119] Ps. xxiv. 3.
[4120] Matt. xxv. 34.
[4121] Prov. xiii. 13, LXX.
[4122] Exod. xii. 43.
[4123] Cf. Luke xxii. 31.
[4124] Ps. v. 3.
[4125] A line or two is preserved here in the original Greek in Cosmas Topog. Christ. p. 316.
[4126] Gregory Nazianzen speaks of the Lenten fast as katharsis proeortios, vol. i. p. 715. §30. ed. Ben. fol. Par. 1778.
[4127] Cf. Luke xiv. 15
[4128] The Saturdays and Sundays during Lent were not observed as fasts, with the exception of the day before Easter-day. S. Ambrose says, Quadragesima tot's præter Sabbatum et Dominicam jejunatur diebus. vol. i. p. 545, §34. ed. Par. 1686-90.
[4129] Cf. Dionys Alex. ad Basilid. in Routh Rell. Sac. iii. 226. __________________________________________________________________
Letter VII.--For 335. Easter-day iv Pharmuthi, iii Kal. April; xx Moon; Ær. Dioclet. 51; Coss. Julius Constantius, the brother of Augustus, Rufinus Albinus; Præfect, the same Philagrius; viii Indict.
The blessed Paul [4130] wrote to the Corinthians [4131] that he always bore in his body the dying of Jesus, not as though he alone should make that boast, but also they and we too, and in this let us be followers of him, my brethren. And let this be the customary boast of all of us at all times. In this David participated, saying in the Psalms, For thy sake we die all the day; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter [4132] .' Now this is becoming in us, especially in the days of the feast, when a commemoration of the death of our Saviour is held. For he who is made like Him in His death, is also diligent in virtuous practices, having mortified his members which are upon the earth [4133] , and crucifying the flesh with the affections and lusts, he lives in the Spirit, and is conformed to the Spirit [4134] . He is always mindful of God, and forgets Him not, and never does the deeds of death. Now, in order that we may bear in our body the dying of Jesus, he immediately adds the way of such fellowship, saying, we having the same spirit of faith, as it is written, I believed, and therefore have I spoken; we also believe, and therefore speak [4135] .' He adds also, speaking of the grace that arises from knowledge; For He that raised up Jesus, will also raise us up with Jesus, and will present us before Him with you [4136] .'
2. When by such faith and knowledge the saints have embraced this true life, they receive, doubtless, the joy which is in heaven; for which the wicked not caring, are deservedly deprived of the blessedness arising from it. For, let the wicked be taken away, so that he shall not see the glory of the Lord [4137] .' For although, when they shall hear the universal proclamation of the promise, Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead [4138] ,' they shall rise and shall come even to heaven, knocking and saying, Open to us [4139] ;' nevertheless the Lord will reprove them, as those who put the knowledge of Himself far from them, saying, I know you not.' But the holy Spirit cries against them, The wicked shall be turned into hell, even all the nations that forget God. [4140] .' Now we say that the wicked are dead, but not in an ascetic life opposed to sin; nor do they, like the saints, bear about dying in their bodies. But it is the soul which they bury in sins and follies, drawing near to the dead, and satisfying it with dead nourishment; like young eagles which, from high places, fly upon the carcases of the dead, and which the law prohibited, commanding figuratively, Thou shalt not eat the eagle, nor any other bird that feedeth on a dead carcase [4141] ;' and it pronounced unclean whatsoever eateth the dead. But these kill the soul with lusts, and say nothing but, let us eat and drink, for to morrow we die [4142] .' And the kind of fruit those have who thus love pleasures, he immediately describes, adding, And these things are revealed in the ears of the Lord of Hosts, that this sin shall not be forgiven you until ye die [4143] .' Yea, even while they live they shall be ashamed, because they consider their belly their lord; and when dead, they shall be tormented, because they have made a boast of such a death. To this effect also Paul bears witness, saying, Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats; but God shall destroy both it and them [4144] .' And the divine word declared before concerning them; The death of sinners is evil, and those who hate the righteous commit sin [4145] .' For bitter is the worm, and grievous the darkness, which wicked men inherit.
3. But the saints, and they who truly practise virtue, mortify their members which are upon the earth, fornication, uncleanness passions, evil concupiscence [4146] ;' and, as the result of this, are pure and without spot, confiding in the promise of our Saviour, who said, Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God [4147] .' These, having become dead to the world, and renounced the merchandise of the world, gain an honourable death; for, precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints [4148] .' They are also able, preserving the Apostolic likeness, to say, I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me [4149] .' For that is the true life, which a man lives in Christ; for although they are dead to the world, yet they dwell as it were in heaven, minding those things which are above, as he who was a lover of such a habitation said, While we walk on earth, our dwelling is in heaven [4150] .' Now those who thus live, and are partakers in such virtue, are alone able to give glory to God, and this it is which essentially constitutes a feast and a holiday [4151] . For the feast does not consist in pleasant intercourse at meals, nor splendour [4152] of clothing, nor days of leisure, but in the acknowledgment of God, and the offering of thanksgiving and of praise to Him [4153] . Now this belongs to the saints alone, who live in Christ; for it is written, The dead shall not praise Thee, O Lord, neither all those who go down into silence; but we who live will bless the Lord, from henceforth even for ever [4154] .' So was it with Hezekiah, who was delivered from death, and therefore praised God, saying, Those who are in hades cannot praise Thee; the dead cannot bless Thee; but the living shall bless Thee, as I also do [4155] .' For to praise and bless God belongs to those only who live in Christ, and by means of this they go up to the feast; for the Passover is not of the Gentiles, nor of those who are yet Jews in the flesh; but of those who acknowledge the truth in Christ [4156] , as he declares who was sent to proclaim such a feast; Our Passover, Christ, is sacrificed [4157] .'
4. Therefore, although wicked men press forward to keep the feast, and as at a feast praise God, and intrude into the Church of the saints, yet God expostulates, saying to the sinner, Why dost thou talk of My ordinances?' And the gentle Spirit rebukes them, saying, Praise is not comely in the mouth of a sinner [4158] .' Neither hath sin any place in common with the praise of God; for the sinner has a mouth speaking perverse things, as the Proverb saith, The mouth of the wicked answereth evil things [4159] .' For how is it possible for us to praise God with an impure mouth? since things which are contrary to each other cannot coexist. For what communion has righteousness with iniquity? or, what fellowship is there between light and darkness? So exclaims Paul, a minister of the Gospel [4160] .
Thus it is that sinners, and all those who are aliens from the Catholic Church, heretics, and schismatics, since they are excluded from glorifying (God) with the saints, cannot properly even continue observers of the feast. But the righteous man, although he appears dying to the world, uses boldness of speech, saying, I shall not die, but live, and narrate all Thy marvelous deeds [4161] .' For even God is not ashamed to be called the God [4162] of those who truly mortify their members which are upon the earth [4163] , but live in Christ; for He is the God of the living, not of the dead. And He by His living Word quickeneth all men, and gives Him to be food and life to the saints; as the Lord declares, I am the bread of life [4164] .' The Jews, because they were weak in perception, and had not exercised the senses of the soul in virtue, and did not comprehend this discourse about bread, murmured against Him, because He said, I am the bread which came down from heaven, and giveth life unto men [4165] .'
5. For sin has her own special bread, of her death, and calling to those who are lovers of pleasure and lack understanding, she saith, Touch with delight secret bread, and sweet waters which are stolen [4166] ;' for he who merely touches them knows not that that which is born from the earth perishes with her. For even when the sinner thinks to find pleasure, the end of that food is not pleasant, as the Wisdom of God saith again, Bread of deceit is pleasant to a man; but afterwards his mouth shall be filled with gravel [4167] .' And, Honey droppeth from the lips of a whorish woman, which for a time is sweet to thy palate; but at the last thou shalt find it more bitter than gall, and sharper than a two-edged sword [4168] .' Thus then he eats and rejoices for a little time; afterwards he spurneth it when he hath removed his soul afar. For the fool knoweth not that those who depart far from God shall perish. And besides, there is the restraint of the prophetic admonition which says, What hast thou to do in the way of Egypt, to drink the waters of Gihon? And what hast thou to do in the way of Asshur, to drink the waters of the rivers [4169] ?' And the Wisdom of God which loves mankind forbids these things, crying, But depart quickly, tarry not in the place, neither fix thine eye upon it; for thus thou shalt pass over strange waters, and depart quickly from the strange river [4170] .' She also calls them to herself, For wisdom hath builded her house, and supported it on seven pillars; she hath killed her sacrifices, and mingled her wine in the goblets, and prepared her table; she hath sent forth her servants, inviting to the goblet with a loud proclamation, and saying, Whoso is foolish, let him turn in to me; and to them that lack understanding she saith, Come, eat of my bread, and drink of the wine I have mingled for you [4171] .' And what hope is there instead of these things? Forsake folly that ye may live, and seek understanding that ye may abide [4172] .' For the bread of Wisdom is living fruit, as the Lord said; I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever [4173] .' For when Israel ate of the manna, which was indeed pleasant and wonderful, yet he died, and he who ate it did not in consequence live for ever, but all that multitude died in the wilderness. The Lord teaches, saying, I am the bread of life: your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead. This is the bread which came down from heaven, that a man should eat thereof, and not die [4174] .'
6. Now wicked men hunger for bread like this, for effeminate souls will hunger; but the righteous alone, being prepared, shall be satisfied, saying, I shall behold Thy face in righteousness; I shall be satisfied when Thy glory is seen by me [4175] .' For he who partakes of divine bread always hungers with desire; and he who thus hungers has a never-failing gift, as Wisdom promises, saying, The Lord will not slay the righteous soul with famine.' He promises too in the Psalms, I will abundantly bless her provision; I will satisfy her poor with bread.' We may also hear our Saviour saying, Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled [4176] .' Well then do the saints and those who love the life which is in Christ raise themselves to a longing after this food. And one earnestly implores, saying, As the hart panteth after the fountains of waters, so panteth my soul after Thee, O God! My soul thirsteth for the living God, when shall I come and see the face of God?' And another; My God, my God, I seek Thee early; my soul thirsteth for Thee; often does my flesh, in a dry and pathless land, and without water. So did I appear before Thee in holiness to see Thy power and Thy glory [4177] .'
7. Since these things are so, my brethren, let us mortify our members which are on the earth [4178] , and be nourished with living bread, by faith and love to God, knowing that without faith it is impossible to be partakers of such bread as this. For our Saviour, when He called all men to him, and said, If any man thirst, let him [come] to Me and drink [4179] ,' immediately spoke of the faith without which a man cannot receive such food; He that believeth on Me, as the Scripture saith, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water [4180] .' To this end He continually nourished His believing disciples with His words, and gave them life by the nearness of His divinity, but to the Canaanitish woman, because she was not yet a believer, He deigned not even a reply, although she stood greatly in need of food from Him. He did this not from scorn, far from it (for the Lord is loving to men and good, and on that account He went into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon); but because of her unbelief, and because she was of those who had not the word. And He did it righteously, my brethren; for there would have been nothing gained by her offering her supplication before believing, but by her faith she would support her petition; For He that cometh to God, must first believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that seek Him;' and that without faith it is impossible for a man to please Him [4181] .' This Paul teaches. Now that she was hitherto an unbeliever, one of the profane, He shews, saying, It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs [4182] .' She then, being convinced by the power of the word, and having changed her ways, also gained faith; for the Lord no longer spoke to her as a dog, but conversed with her as a human being, saying, O woman, great is thy faith [4183] !' As therefore she believed, He forthwith granted to her the fruit of faith, and said, Be it to thee as thou desirest. And her daughter was healed in the self-same hour.'
8. For the righteous man, being nurtured in faith and knowledge, and the observance of divine precepts, has his soul always in health. Wherefore it is commanded to receive to ourselves him who is weak in the faith [4184] ,' and to nourish him, even if he is not yet able to eat bread, but herbs, for he that is weak eateth herbs.' For even the Corinthians were not able to partake of such bread, being yet babes, and like babes they drank milk. For every one that partaketh of milk is unskilful in the word of righteousness [4185] ,' according to the words of that divine man. The Apostle exhorts his beloved son Timothy, in his first Epistle, to be nourished with the word of faith, and the good doctrine whereto he had attained.' And in the second, Preserve thou the form of sound words which thou hast heard of me, in faith and love which are in Christ Jesus [4186] .' And not only here, my brethren, is this bread the food of the righteous, neither are the saints on earth alone nourished by such bread and such blood; but we also eat them in heaven, for the Lord is the food even of the exalted spirits, and the angels, and He is the joy of all the heavenly host [4187] . And to all He is everything, and He has pity upon all according to His loving-kindness. Already hath the Lord given us angels' food [4188] , and He promises to those who continue with Him in His trials, saying, And I promise to you a kingdom, as My Father hath promised to Me; that ye shall eat and drink at My table in My kingdom, and sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel [4189] .' O what a banquet is this, my brethren, and how great is the harmony and gladness of those who eat at this heavenly table! For they delight themselves not with that food which is cast out, but with that which produces life everlasting. Who then shall be deemed worthy of that assembly? Who is so blessed as to be called, and accounted worthy of that divine feast? Truly, blessed is he who shall eat bread in Thy kingdom [4190] .'
9. Now he who has been counted worthy of the heavenly calling, and by this calling has been sanctified, if he grow negligent in it, although washed becomes defiled: counting the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified a profane thing, and despising the Spirit of grace,' he hears the words, Friend, how camest thou in hither, not having wedding garments?' For the banquet of the saints is spotless and pure; for many are called, but few chosen [4191] .' Judas to wit, though he came to the supper, because he despised it went out from the presence of the Lord, and having abandoned his Life [4192] , hanged himself. But the disciples who continued with the Redeemer shared in the happiness of the feast. And that young man who went into a far country, and there wasted his substance, living in dissipation, if he receive a desire for this divine feast, and, coming to himself, shall say, How many hired servants of my father have bread to spare, while I perish here with hunger!' and shall next arise and come to his father, and confess to him, saying, I have sinned against heaven and before thee, and am not worthy to be called thy son; make me as one of thy hired servants [4193] ;'--when he shall thus confess, then he shall be counted worthy of more than he prayed for. For the father does not receive him as a hired servant, neither does he look upon him as a stranger, but he kisses him as a son, he brings him back to life as from the dead, and counts him worthy of the divine feast, and gives him his former and precious robe. So that, on this account, there is singing and gladness in the paternal home.
10. For this is the work of the Father's loving-kindness and goodness, that not only should He make him alive from the dead, but that He should render His grace illustrious through the Spirit. Therefore, instead of corruption, He clothes him with an incorruptible garment; instead of hunger, He kills the fatted calf; instead of far journeys, [the Father] watched for his return, providing shoes for his feet; and, what is most wonderful, placed a divine signet-ring upon his hand; whilst by all these things He begot him afresh in the image of the glory of Christ. These are the gracious gifts of the Father, by which the Lord honours and nourishes those who abide with Him, and also those who return to Him and repent. For He promises, saying, I am the bread of life; he that cometh unto Me shall not hunger, and he that believeth on Me shall never thirst [4194] .' We too shall be counted worthy of these things, if at all times we cleave to our Saviour, and if we are pure, not only in these six days of Easter [4195] , but consider the whole course of our life as a feast [4196] , and continue near and do not go far off, saying to Him, Thou hast the words of eternal life, and whither shall we go [4197] ?' Let those of us who are far off return, confessing our iniquities, and having nothing against any man, but by the spirit mortifying the deeds of the body [4198] . For thus, having first nourished the soul here, we shall partake with angels at that heavenly and spiritual table; not knocking and being repulsed like those five foolish virgins [4199] , but entering with the Lord, like those who were wise and loved the bridegroom; and shewing the dying of Jesus in our bodies [4200] , we shall receive life and the kingdom from Him.
11. We begin the fast of forty days on the twenty-third of Mechir (Feb. 17), and the holy fast of the blessed feast on the twenty-eighth of Phamenoth (Mar. 24); and having joined to these six days after them, in fastings and watchings, as each one is able, let us rest on the third of the month Pharmuthi (Mar. 29), on the evening of the seventh day. Also that day which is holy and blessed in everything, which possesses the name of Christ, namely the Lord's day [4201] , having risen upon us on the fourth of Pharmuthi (Mar. 30), let us afterwards keep the holy feast of Pentecost. Let us at all times worship the Father in Christ, through Whom to Him and with Him be glory and dominion by the Holy Ghost for ever and ever. Amen. All the brethren who are with me salute you: salute one another with a holy kiss.
There is no eighth or ninth, for he did not send them, for the reason before mentioned [4202] .
Here endeth the seventh Festal Letter of holy Athanasius the Patriarch. __________________________________________________________________
[4130] The twentieth Letter, as far as it is extant, bears a great resemblance with this. In both, the comparison between natural and spiritual food is enlarged upon, and several of the same quotations are adduced in them, to illustrate the character of sinners and their food, as contrasted with righteous, and the nourishment they derive from God.
[4131] 2 Cor. iv. 10.
[4132] Ps. xliv. 22.
[4133] Col. iii. 5.
[4134] Gal. v. 25.
[4135] 2 Cor. iv. 13.
[4136] Ib. 14, reading with R.V. marg. and Vulg. against Text. Rec. and Pesh.
[4137] Is. xxvi. 10 (LXX.).
[4138] Eph. v. 14.
[4139] Matt. xxv. 11.
[4140] Luke xiii. 25; Ps. ix. 17.
[4141] Lev. xi. 13.
[4142] Is. xxii. 13.
[4143] Ib. 14
[4144] 1 Cor. vi. 13.
[4145] Ps. xxxiv. 21.
[4146] Col. iii. 5.
[4147] Matt. v. 8.
[4148] Ps. cxvi. 15.
[4149] Gal. ii. 20.
[4150] The quotation is uncertain, but see ad Diognet. v. 9; cf. also Phil. iii. 20, with which the passage in the text is coupled, and ascribed to the Apostle,' in the probably spurious Homily on Matt. xxi. 2 (Migne xxviii. p. 177).
[4151] Cf. Letter iii. What else is the feast, but the service of God?'
[4152] Cf. 1 Tim. ii. 9 sub fin.
[4153] Cf. Letter vi. 3, note 14.
[4154] Ps. cxv. 17, 18.
[4155] Is. xxxviii. 18.
[4156] Vid. Letter vi. 2, note 10.
[4157] 1 Cor. v. 7.
[4158] Ps. l. 16; Ecclus. xv. 9. These two texts are also quoted in juxta-position, supr. p. 224.
[4159] Prov. xv. 28.
[4160] 2 Cor. vi. 14.
[4161] Ps. cxviii. 17.
[4162] Cf. Heb. xi. 16
[4163] Cf. Col. iii. 5
[4164] John vi. 48.
[4165] Ib. 51
[4166] Prov. ix. 17.
[4167] Ib. xx. 17.
[4168] Ib. v. 3.
[4169] Jer. ii. 18.
[4170] Prov. ix. 18, LXX.
[4171] Prov. ix. 1-5.
[4172] Ib. 6
[4173] John vi. 51.
[4174] Ib. 48-51.
[4175] Ps. xvii. 15.
[4176] Prov. x. 3; Matt. v. 6; Ps. cxxxii. 15, he notices the various reading of the LXX, on the latter, Exp. in Ps. in loc.
[4177] Ps. xlii. 1; lxiii. 1, 2.
[4178] Col. iii. 5.
[4179] John vii. 37.
[4180] Ib. 38
[4181] Heb. xi. 6.
[4182] Matt. xv. 26.
[4183] Ib. 28
[4184] Rom. xiv. 1.
[4185] 1 Cor. iii. 1; Heb. v. 13.
[4186] 1 Tim. iv. 6; 2 Tim. i. 13.
[4187] Cf. Letter i. 6.
[4188] Cf. Ps. lxxviii. 25.
[4189] Luke xxii. 29, 30.
[4190] Ib. xiv. 15.
[4191] Heb. x. 29; Matt. xxii. 12; Ib. 14.
[4192] Cf. Col. iii. 4
[4193] Luke xv. 17.
[4194] John vi. 35.
[4195] Vid. Suicer. Thes. in. voc. apokreos, and the notes of Valesius on Euseb. Orat. in laud. Constant. ch. ix. With us, Easter-week includes the six days following Easter-Sunday; with the Greeks, the ebdomas ton paschon was applied to the preceding six days, as here.
[4196] Vid. supr. Letters 5. 1, 7, 3. init.
[4197] John vi. 68.
[4198] Rom. viii. 13.
[4199] Matt. xxv. 1-12.
[4200] 2 Cor. iv. 10.
[4201] kurionumos--kuriake L. Vid. Suicer Thes. sub. voc. kuriake. Expos. in Psalm. cxvii. 24.
[4202] See the Index. This notice suggests that the present collection of letters has undergone a recension since its union with the Index. __________________________________________________________________
Letter X.--For 338. Coss. Ursus and Polemius; Præf. the same Theodorus, of Heliopolis, and of the Catholics [4203] . After him, for the second year, Philagrius; Indict. xi; Easter-day, vii Kal. Ap. [4204] xxx Phamenoth; Moon 18½; Æra Dioclet. 54.
[4205] Although I have travelled all this distance from you, my brethren, I have not forgotten the custom which obtains among you, which has been delivered to us by the fathers [4206] , so as to be silent without notifying to you the time of the annual holy feast, and the day for its celebration. For although I have been hindered by those afflictions of which you have doubtless heard, and severe trials have been laid upon me, and a great distance has separated us; while the enemies of the truth have followed our tracks, laying snares to discover a letter from us, so that by their accusations, they might add to the pain of our wounds; yet the Lord, strengthening and comforting us in our afflictions, we have not feared, even when held fast in the midst of such machinations and conspiracies, to indicate and make known to you our saving Easter-feast, even from the ends of the earth. Also when I wrote to the presbyters of Alexandria, I urged that these letters might be sent to you through their instrumentality, although I knew the fear imposed on them by the adversaries. Still, I exhorted them to be mindful of the apostolic boldness of speech, and to say, Nothing separates us from the love of Christ; neither affliction, nor distress, nor persecution, nor famine, nor nakedness, nor peril, nor sword [4207] .' Thus, keeping the feast myself, I was desirous that you also, my beloved, should keep it; and being conscious that an announcement like this is due from me, I have not delayed to discharge this duty, fearing to be condemned by the Apostolic counsel; Render to every man his due [4208] .'
2. While I then committed all my affairs to God, I was anxious to celebrate the feast with you, not taking into account the distance between us. For although place separate us, yet the Lord the Giver of the feast, and Who is Himself our feast [4209] , Who is also the Bestower of the Spirit [4210] , brings us together in mind, in harmony, and in the bond of peace [4211] . For when we mind and think the same things, and offer up the same prayers on behalf of each other, no place can separate us, but the Lord gathers and unites us together. For if He promises, that when two or three are gathered together in His name, He is in the midst of them [4212] ,' it is plain that being in the midst of those who in every place are gathered together, He unites them, and receives the prayers of all of them, as if they were near, and listens to all of them, as they cry out the same Amen [4213] . I have [4214] borne affliction like this, and all those trials which I mentioned, my brethren, when I wrote to you.
3. And that we may not distress you at all, I would now (only) briefly remind you of these things, because it is not becoming in a man to forget, when more at ease, the pains he experienced in tribulation; lest, like an unthankful and forgetful person, he should be excluded from the divine assembly. For at no time should a man freely praise God, more than when he has passed through afflictions; nor, again, should he at any time give thanks more than when he finds rest from toil and temptations. As Hezekiah, when the Assyrians perished, praised the Lord, and, gave thanks, saying, The Lord is my salvation [4215] ; and I will not cease to bless Thee with harp all the days of my life, before the house of the Lord [4216] .' And those valiant and blessed three who were tried in Babylon, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, when they were in safety and the fire became to them as dew, gave thanks, praising and saying words of glory to God [4217] .' I too like them have written, my brethren, having these things in mind; for even in our time, God hath made possible those things which are impossible to men. And those things which could not be accomplished by man, the Lord has shewn to be easy of accomplishment, by bringing us to you. For He does not give us as a prey to those who seek to swallow us up. For it is not so much us, as the Church, and the faith and godliness which they planned to overwhelm with wickedness.
4. But God, who is good, multiplied His loving-kindness towards us, not only when He granted the common salvation of us all through His Word, but now also, when enemies have persecuted us, and have sought to seize upon us. As the blessed Paul saith in a certain place, when describing the incomprehensible riches of Christ: But God, being rich in mercy, for the great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in follies and sins, quickened us with Christ [4218] .' For the might of man and of all creatures, is weak and poor; but the Might which is above man, and uncreated, is rich and incomprehensible, and has no beginning, but is eternal. He does not then possess one method only of healing, but being rich, He works in divers manners for our salvation by means of His Word, Who is not restricted or hindered in His dealings towards us; but since He is rich and manifold, He varies Himself according to the individual capacity of each soul. For He is the Word and the Power and the Wisdom of God, as Solomon testifies concerning Wisdom, that being one, it can do all things, and remaining in itself, it maketh all things new; and passing upon holy souls, fashioneth the friends of God and the prophets [4219] .' To those then who have not yet attained to the perfect way He becomes like a sheep giving milk, and this was administered by Paul: I have fed you with milk, not with meat [4220] .' To those who have advanced beyond the full stature of childhood, but still are weak as regards perfection, He is their food, according to their capacity, being again administered by Paul [4221] , Let him that is weak eat herbs.' But as soon as ever a man begins to walk in the perfect way, he is no longer fed with the things before mentioned, but he has the Word for bread, and flesh for food, for it is written, Strong meat is for those who are of full age, for those who, by reason of their capacity, have their senses exercised [4222] .' And further, when the word is sown it does not yield a uniform produce of fruit in this human life, but one various and rich; for it bringeth forth, some an hundred, and some sixty, and some thirty [4223] , as the Saviour teaches--that Sower of grace, and Bestower of the Spirit [4224] . And this is no doubtful matter, nor one that admits no confirmation; but it is in our power to behold the field which is sown by Him; for in the Church the word is manifold and the produce [4225] rich. Not with virgins alone is such a field adorned; nor with monks alone, but also with honourable matrimony and the chastity of each one. For in sowing, He did not compel the will beyond the power. Nor is mercy confined to the perfect, but it is sent down also among those who occupy the middle and the third ranks, so that He might rescue all men generally to salvation. To this intent He hath prepared many mansions [4226] with the Father, so that although the dwelling-place is various in proportion to the advance in moral attainment, yet all of us are within the wall, and all of us enter within the same fence, the adversary being cast out, and all his host expelled thence. For apart from light there is darkness, and apart from blessing there is a curse, the devil also is apart from the saints, and sin far from virtue. Therefore the Gospel rebukes Satan, saying, Get thee behind Me, Satan [4227] .' But us it calls to itself, saying, Enter ye in at the strait gate.' And again, Come, blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom which is prepared for you [4228] .' So also the Spirit cried aforetime in the Psalms, saying, Enter into His gates with psalms [4229] .' For through virtue a man enters in unto God, as Moses did into the thick cloud where God was. But through vice a man goes out from the presence of the Lord; as Cain [4230] when he had slain his brother, went out, as far as his will was concerned, from before the face of God; and the Psalmist enters, saying, And I will go in to the altar of God, even to the God that delighteth my youth [4231] .' But of the devil the Scripture beareth witness, that the devil went out from before God, and smote Job [4232] with sore boils. For this is the characteristic of those who go out from before God--to smite and to injure the men of God. And this is the characteristic of those who fall away from the faith--to injure and persecute the faithful. The saints on the other hand, take such to themselves and look upon them as friends; as also the blessed David, using openness of speech, says, Mine eyes are on the faithful of the earth, that they may dwell with me.' But those that are weak in the faith [4233] , Paul urges that we should especially take to ourselves. For virtue is philanthropic [4234] , just as in men of an opposite character, sin is misanthropic. So Saul, being a sinner, persecuted David, whereas David, though he had a good opportunity, did not kill Saul. Esau too persecuted Jacob, while Jacob overcame his wickedness by meekness. And those eleven sold Joseph, but Joseph, in his loving-kindness, had pity on them.
5. But what need we many words? Our Lord and Saviour, when He was persecuted by the Pharisees, wept for their destruction. He was injured, but He threatened [4235] not; not when He was afflicted, not even when He was killed. But He grieved for those who dared to do such things. He, the Saviour, suffered for man, but they despised and cast from them life, and light, and grace. All these were theirs through that Saviour Who suffered in our stead. And verily for their darkness and blindness, He wept. For if they had understood the things which are written in the Psalms, they would not have been so vainly daring against the Saviour, the Spirit having said, Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?' And if they had considered the prophecy of Moses, they would not have hanged Him Who was their Life [4236] . And if they had examined with their understanding the things which were written, they would not have carefully fulfilled the prophecies which were against themselves, so as for their city to be now desolate, grace taken from them, and they themselves without the law, being no longer called children, but strangers. For thus in the Psalms was it before declared, saying, The strange children have acted falsely by Me.' And by Isaiah the prophet; I have begotten and brought up children, and they have rejected Me. [4237] ' And they are no longer named the people of God, and a holy nation, but rulers of Sodom, and people of Gomorrah; having exceeded in this even the iniquity of the Sodomites, as the prophet also saith, Sodom is justified before thee [4238] .' For the Sodomites raved against angels, but these against the Lord and God and King of all, and these dared to slay the Lord of angels, not knowing that Christ, who was slain by them, liveth. But those Jews who had conspired against the Lord died, having rejoiced a very little in these temporal things, and having fallen away from those which are eternal. They were ignorant of this--that the immortal promise has not respect to temporal enjoyment, but to the hope of those things which are everlasting. For through many tribulations, and labours, and sorrows, the saint enters into the kingdom of heaven; but when he arrives where sorrow, and distress, and sighing, shall flee away, he shall thenceforward enjoy rest; as Job, who, when tried here, was afterwards the familiar friend of the Lord. But the lover of pleasures, rejoicing for a little while, afterwards passes a sorrowful life; like Esau, who had temporal food, but afterwards was condemned thereby.
6. We may take as a type of this distinction, the departure of the children of Israel and the Egyptians from Egypt. For the Egyptians, rejoicing a little while in their injustice against Israel, when they went forth, were all drowned in the deep; but the people of God, being for a time smitten and injured, by the conduct of the taskmasters, when they came out of Egypt, passed through the sea unharmed, and walked in the wilderness as an inhabited place. For although the place was unfrequented by man and desolate, yet, through the gracious gift of the law, and through converse with angels, it was no longer desert, but far more than an inhabited country. As also Elisha [4239] , when he thought he was alone in the wilderness, was with companies of angels; so in this case, though the people were at first afflicted and in the wilderness, yet those who remained faithful afterwards entered the land of promise. In like manner those who suffer temporal afflictions here, finally having endured, attain comfort, while those who here persecute are trodden under foot, and have no good end. For even the rich man [4240] , as the Gospel affirms, having indulged in pleasure here for a little while, suffered hunger there, and having drunk largely here, he there thirsted exceedingly. But Lazarus, after being afflicted in worldly things, found rest in heaven, and having hungered for bread ground from corn, he was there satisfied with that which is better than manna, even the Lord who came down and said, I am the bread which came down from heaven, and giveth life to mankind [4241] .'
7. Oh! my dearly beloved, if we shall gain comfort from afflictions, if rest from labours, if health after sickness, if from death immortality, it is not right to be distressed by the temporal ills that lay hold on mankind. It does not become us to be agitated because of the trials which befall us. It is not right to fear if the gang that contended with Christ, should conspire against godliness; but we should the more please God through these things, and should consider such matters as the probation and exercise of a virtuous life. For how shall patience be looked for, if there be not previously labours and sorrows? Or how can fortitude be tested with no assault from enemies? Or how shall magnanimity be exhibited, unless after contumely and injustice? Or how can long-suffering be proved, unless there has first been the calumny of Antichrist [4242] ? And, finally, how can a man behold virtue with his eyes, unless the iniquity of the very wicked has previously appeared? Thus even our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ comes before us, when He would shew men how to suffer, Who when He was smitten bore it patiently, being reviled He reviled not again, when He suffered He threatened not, but He gave His back to the smiters, and His cheeks to buffetings, and turned not His face from spitting [4243] ; and at last, was willingly led to death, that we might behold in Him the image of all that is virtuous and immortal, and that we, conducting ourselves after these examples, might truly tread on serpents and scorpions, and on all the power of the enemy [4244] .
8. Thus too Paul, while he conducted himself after the example of the Lord, exhorted us, saying, Be ye followers of me, as I also am of Christ [4245] .' In this way he prevailed against all the divisions of the devil, writing, I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Jesus Christ [4246] .' For the enemy draws near to us in afflictions, and trials, and labours, using every endeavour to ruin us. But the man who is in Christ, combating those things that are contrary, and opposing wrath by long-suffering, contumely by meekness, and vice by virtue, obtains the victory, and exclaims, I can do all things through Christ Who strengtheneth me;' and, In all these things we are conquerors through Christ Who loved us [4247] .' This is the grace of the Lord, and these are the Lord's means of restoration for the children of men. For He suffered to prepare freedom from suffering for those who suffer in Him, He descended that He might raise us up, He took on Him the trial of being born, that we might love Him Who is unbegotten, He went down to corruption, that corruption might put on immortality, He became weak for us, that we might rise with power, He descended to death, that He might bestow on us immortality, and give life to the dead. Finally, He became man, that we who die as men might live again, and that death should no more reign over us; for the Apostolic word proclaims, Death shall not have the dominion over us [4248] .'
9. Now because they did not thus consider these matters, the Ario-maniacs [4249] , being opponents of Christ, and heretics, smite Him who is their Helper with their tongue, and blaspheme Him who set [them] free, and hold all manner of different opinions against the Saviour. Because of His coming down, which was on behalf of man, they have denied His essential Godhead; and seeing that He came forth from the Virgin, they doubt His being truly the Son of God, and considering Him as become incarnate in time, they deny His eternity; and, looking upon Him as having suffered for us, they do not believe in Him as the incorruptible Son from the incorruptible Father. And finally, because He endured for our sakes, they deny the things which concern His essential eternity; allowing the deed of the unthankful, these despise the Saviour, and offer Him insult instead of acknowledging His grace. To them may these words justly be addressed: Oh! unthankful opponent of Christ, altogether wicked, and the slayer of his Lord, mentally blind, and a Jew in his mind, hadst thou understood the Scriptures, and listened to the saints, who said, Cause Thy face to shine, and we shall be saved;' or again, Send out Thy light and Thy truth [4250] ;'--then wouldest thou have known that the Lord did not descend for His own sake, but for ours; and for this reason, thou wouldest the more have admired His loving kindness. And hadst thou considered what the Father is, and what the Son, thou wouldest not have blasphemed the Son, as of a mutable nature [4251] . And hadst thou understood His work of loving-kindness towards us, thou wouldest not have alienated the Son from the Father, nor have looked upon Him as a stranger [4252] , Who reconciled us to His Father. I know these [words] are grievous, not only to those who dispute with Christ [4253] , but also to the schismatics; for they are united together, as men of kindred feelings. For they have learned to rend the seamless coat [4254] of God: they think it not strange to divide the indivisible Son from the Father [4255] .
10. I know indeed, that when these things are spoken, they will gnash their teeth upon us, with the devil who stirs them up, since they are troubled by the declaration of the true glory concerning the Redeemer. But the Lord, Who always has scoffed at the devil, does the same even now, saying, I am in the Father, and the Father in Me [4256] .' This is the Lord, Who is manifested in the Father, and in Whom also the Father is manifested; Who, being truly the Son of the Father, at last became incarnate for our sakes, that He might offer Himself to the Father in our stead, and redeem us through His oblation and sacrifice. This is He Who once brought the people of old time out of Egypt; but Who afterwards redeemed all of us, or rather the whole race of men, from death, and brought them up from the grave. This is He Who in old time was sacrificed as a lamb, He being signified in the lamb; but Who afterwards was slain for us, for Christ our Passover is sacrificed [4257] .' This is He Who delivered us from the snare of the hunters, from the opponents of Christ, I say, and from the schismatics, and again rescued us His Church. And because we were then victims of deceit, He has now delivered us by His own self.
11. What then is our duty, my brethren, for the sake of these things, but to praise and give thanks to God, the King of all? And let us first exclaim in the words of the Psalms, Blessed be the Lord, Who hath not given us over as a prey to their teeth [4258] .' Let us keep the feast in that way which He hath dedicated for us unto salvation--the holy day Easter--so that we may celebrate the feast which is in heaven with the angels. Thus anciently, the people of the Jews, when they came out of affliction into a state of ease, kept the feast, staging a song of praise for their victory. So also the people in the time of Esther, because they were delivered from the edict of death, kept a feast to the Lord [4259] , reckoning it a feast, returning thanks to the Lord, and praising Him for having changed their condition. Therefore let us, performing our vows to the Lord, and confessing our sins, keep the feast to the Lord, in conversation, moral conduct, and manner of life; praising our Lord, Who hath chastened us a little, but hath not utterly failed nor forsaken us, nor altogether kept silence from us. For if, having brought us out of the deceitful and famous Egypt of the opponents of Christ, He hath caused us to pass through many trials and afflictions, as it were in the wilderness, to His holy Church, so that from hence, according to custom, we can send to you, as well as receive letters from you; on this account especially I both give thanks to God myself, and exhort you to thank Him with me and on my behalf, this being the Apostolic custom, which these opponents of Christ, and the schismatics, wished to put an end to, and to break off. The Lord did not permit it, but both renewed and preserved that which was ordained by Him through the Apostle, so that we may keep the feast together, and together keep holy-day, according to the tradition and commandment of the fathers.
12. We begin the fast of forty days on the nineteenth of the month Mechir (Feb. 13); and the holy Easter-fast on the twenty-fourth of the month Phamenoth (Mar. 20). We cease from the fast on the twenty-ninth of the month Phamenoth (Mar. 25), late in the evening of the seventh day. And we thus keep the feast on the first day of the week which dawns on the thirtieth of the month Phamenoth (Mar. 26); from which, to Pentecost, we keep holy-day, through seven weeks, one after the other. For when we have first meditated properly on these things, we shall attain to be counted worthy of those which are eternal, through Christ Jesus our Lord, through Whom to the Father be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen. Greet one another with a holy kiss, remembering us in your holy prayers. All the brethren who are with me salute you, at all times remembering you. And I pray that ye may have health in the Lord, my beloved brethren, whom we love above all.
Here endeth the tenth Letter of holy Athanasius. __________________________________________________________________
[4203] The text is difficult; possibly the Syriac translator is responsible for the difficulty. But we know from Ath. (supr. p. 273) that the reappointment of Philagrius was in the express interest of the Arians: it is, therefore, probable that Theodorus was not unfavourable to Athanasius. See Prolegg. ch. ii. §6 (1), and Sievers, pp. 101, 102.
[4204] In the Chron. Pasch. tom. ii. p. 202, Easter-day is wrongly given as falling on viii. Kal. Ap.
[4205] See Prolegg. ch. v. §3 b. The letter may have been finished (see §§3, 11) after Ath. had returned home, but the language of §1 seems to be applicable only to his residence at Treveri, and §11 may be reconciled to this supposition. In this case (§1 sub. fin.) it was probably begun as early as the Easter of 337; cf. Letters 17 and 18.
[4206] See above, p. 500.
[4207] Rom. viii. 35.
[4208] Rom. xiii. 7; cf. Ep. iii. init.
[4209] Cf. 1 Cor. v. 7
[4210] Cf. Orat. i. 50; ii. 18; Luke xi. 13.
[4211] Cf. Eph. iv. 3
[4212] Matt. xviii. 20.
[4213] Cf. Apol. Const. 16.
[4214] Thus far Athan. has been referring to the circumstances attending his exile for the last two years. The principal subject of the remaining part consists of the duty incumbent on us to praise and thank God for deliverance from affliction, and to exercise forgiveness towards our enemies. He several times (e.g. §§3, 10) speaks of his restoration to the Church of Alexandria.
[4215] The Syriac translator must have found in the Greek copy the reading of the Codex Alex. Kurie--the rendering of Jehovah,' not that of the Vatican text. Thee
[4216] Is. xxxviii. 20.
[4217] Song of Three Children,' 25-28.
[4218] Eph. ii. 4, 5.
[4219] Wisd. vii. 27; cf. Ep. i.
[4220] 1 Cor. iii. 2.
[4221] Rom. xiv. 2. The sense in the last few lines, and in those that follow, is clear, though the construction appears somewhat obscure. Milks, herbs, and meat are severally mentioned in connection with the different advances made in the Christian course. The translation of Larsow is less satisfactory.
[4222] Heb. v. 14.
[4223] Matt. xiii. 8. In the Syriac text, as published by Mr. Cureton, as well as in the German translation by Larsow, there is a hiatus, here, the next two or three pages, as far as the words He wept,' (§5 init.) being wanting. Two more leaves were afterwards discovered among the fragments in the British Museum by the learned Editor. One of them belongs to this part; the other to the eleventh Letter.
[4224] Vid. note 9, supr.
[4225] Syr. virtue,' a letter (rish) having been inserted by mistake.
[4226] John xiv. 2.
[4227] Matt. iv. 10.
[4228] Matt. vii. 13; xxv. 34.
[4229] Ps. c. 4.
[4230] Gen. iv. 16; Exod. xix. 9.
[4231] Ps. xliii. 4.
[4232] Job ii. 7. In the ms. Jesus is written by mistake for Job.
[4233] Ps. ci. 6; Rom. xiv. 1.
[4234] Cf. Letter xi. sub. init.
[4235] The Syriac is was persecuted'--which supplies no good sense.
[4236] Ps. ii. 1; Deut. xxviii. 66.
[4237] Ps. xviii. 45; Is. i. 2.
[4238] Ezek. xvi. 48, cf. Lam. iv. 6.
[4239] The reference is to 2 Kings vi. 13-17, though the wilderness' agrees better with the history of Elijah, 1 Kings xix. 4-8.
[4240] Luke xvi. 19.
[4241] John vi. 51.
[4242] i.e. Arians. See Index to this vol. s.v.
[4243] 1 Pet. ii. 23; Isa. l. 6.
[4244] Cf. Pseudo-Ath. de Pass. et Cruc. 19.
[4245] 1 Cor. xi. 1.
[4246] Rom. viii. 38, 39.
[4247] Phil. iv. 13; Rom. viii. 37.
[4248] Rom. vi. 9, 14, cf. de Pass. et Cruc. 11.
[4249] The Syriac mistranslates Arius and Manetes.
[4250] Ps. xliii. 3, lxxx. 7.
[4251] Cf. Orat. i. 35; ii. 6, and notes there.
[4252] Cf. supr. p. 70.
[4253] i.e. the Arians.
[4254] Syr. chiton. The words translated rend' and seamless' are cognate in the Syriac, and answer to schizein and its derivatives.
[4255] The Arians were thence called Diatomitai. Vid. Damascen. de hæresib. apud Cotel. eccles. Gr. monum. p. 298.
[4256] John xiv. 11.
[4257] 1 Cor. v. 7.
[4258] Ps. cxxiv. 6.
[4259] Cf. Esth. iii. 9; ix. 21; Letter iv. p. 32. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XI.--For 339. Coss. Constantius Augustus II, Constans I; Præfect, Philagrius the Cappadocian, for the second time; Indict. xii; Easter-day xvii Kal. Mai, xx Pharmuthi; Æra Dioclet. 55.
The blessed Paul, being girt about with every virtue [4260] , and called faithful of the Lord--for he was conscious of nothing in himself but what was a virtue and a praise [4261] , or what was in harmony with love and godliness--clave to these things more and more, and was carried up even to heavenly places, and was borne to Paradise [4262] ; to the end that, as he surpassed the conversation of men, he should be exalted above men. And when he descended, he preached to every man; We know in part, and we prophesy in part; here I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known [4263] .' For, in truth, he was known to those saints who are in heaven, as their fellow-citizen [4264] . And in relation to all that is future and perfect, the things known by him here were in part; but with respect to those things which were committed and entrusted to him by the Lord, he was perfect; as he said, We who are perfect, should be thus minded [4265] .' For as the Gospel of Christ is the fulfilment and accomplishment of the ministration which was supplied by the law of Israel, so future things will be the accomplishment of such as now exist, the Gospel being then fulfilled, and the faithful receiving those things which, not seeing now, they yet hope for, as Paul saith; For what a man seeth, why doth he also hope for? But if we hope for those things we see [not], we then by patience wait for them [4266] .' Since then that blessed man was of such a character, and apostolic grace was committed to him, he wrote, wishing that all men should be as he was [4267] .' For virtue is philanthropic [4268] , and great is the company of the kingdom of heaven, for thousands of thousands and myriads of myriads there serve the Lord. And though a man enters it through a strait and narrow way, yet having entered, he beholds immeasurable space, and a place greater than any other, as they declare, who were eye-witnesses and heirs of these things. Thou didst place afflictions before us.' But afterwards, having related their afflictions, they say, Thou broughtest us forth into a wide place;' and again, In affliction Thou hast enlarged us [4269] .' For truly, my brethren, the course of the saints here is straitened; since they either toil painfully through longing for those things which are to come, as he who said, Woe is me that my pilgrimage is prolonged [4270] ;' or they are distressed and spent for the salvation of other men, as Paul wrote to the Corinthians, saying, Lest, when I come to you, God should humble me, and I should bewail many of those who have sinned already, and not repented for the uncleanness and fornication and lasciviousness which they have committed [4271] .' As Samuel bewailed the destruction of Saul, and Jeremiah wept for the captivity of the people. But after this affliction, and sorrow, and sighing, when they depart from this world, a certain divine gladness, and pleasure, and exultation receives them, from which misery and sorrow, and sighing, flee away.
2. Since we are thus circumstanced, my brethren, let us never loiter in the path of virtue; for hereto he counsels us, saying, Be ye followers of me, as I also am of Christ [4272] .' For he gave this advice not to the Corinthians only, since he was not their Apostle only, but being a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and verity [4273] ,' he admonished us all through them; and in short, the things he wrote to each particular person are commandments common to all men [4274] . On this account in writing to different people, some he exhorted as, for instance, in the Epistles to the Romans, and the Ephesians, and Philemon. Some he reproved, and was indignant with them, as in the case of the Corinthians and Galatians. To some he gave advice, as to the Colossians and Thessalonians. The Philippians he approved of, and rejoiced in them. The Hebrews he taught that the law was a shadow to them [4275] . But to his elect sons, Timothy and Titus, when they were near, he gave instruction; when far away, he put them in remembrance. For he was all things to all men; and being himself a perfect man, he adapted his teaching to the need of every one, so that by all means he might rescue some of them. Therefore his word was not without fruit; but in every place it is planted and productive even to this day.
3. And wherefore, my beloved? For it is right that we should search into the apostolic mind. Not only in the beginning of the Epistles, but towards their close, and in the middle of them, he used persuasions and admonitions. I hope therefore that, by your prayers, I shall in no respect falsely represent the plan of that holy man. As he was well skilled in these divine matters, and knew the power of the divine teaching, he deemed it necessary, in the first place, to make known the word concerning Christ, and the mystery regarding Him; and then afterwards to point to the correction of habits, so that when they had learned to know the Lord, they might earnestly desire to do those things which He commanded. For when the Guide to the laws is unknown, one does not readily pass on to the observance of them. Faithful Moses, the minister of God, adopted this method; for when he promulgated the words of the divine dispensation of laws, he first proclaimed the matters relating to the knowledge of God: Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is one Lord [4276] .' Afterwards, having shadowed Him forth to the people, and taught of Him in Whom they ought to believe, and informed their minds of Him Who is truly God, he proceeds to lay down the law relating to those things whereby a man may be well-pleasing to Him, saying, Thou shalt not commit adultery; thou shalt not steal;' together with the other commandments. For also, according to the Apostolic teaching, He that draweth near to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that seek Him [4277] .' Now He is sought by means of virtuous deeds, as the prophet saith; Seek ye the Lord, and when ye have found Him, call upon Him; when He is near to you, let the wicked forsake his ways, and the lawless man his thoughts [4278] .'
4. It will also be well if a man is not offended at the testimony of the Shepherd, saying in the beginning of his book, Before all things believe that there is one God, Who created and established all these things, and from non-existence called them into being [4279] .' And, further, the blessed Evangelists--who recorded the words of the Lord--in the beginning of the Gospels, wrote the things concerning our Saviour; so that, having first made known the Lord, the Creator, they might be believed when narrating the events that took place. For how could they have been believed, when writing respecting him who [was blind] from his mother's womb, and those other blind men who recovered their sight, and those who rose from the dead, and the changing of water into wine, and those lepers who were cleansed; if they had not taught of Him as the Creator, writing, In the beginning was the Word [4280] ?' Or, according to Matthew, that He Who was born of the seed of David, was Emmanuel, and the Son of the living God? He from Whom the Jews, with the Arians, turn away their faces, but Whom we acknowledge and worship. The Apostle therefore, as was meet, sent to different people, but his own son he especially reminded, that he should not despise the things in which he had been instructed by him,' and enjoined on him, Remember Jesus Christ, who rose from the dead, of the seed of David, according to my Gospel [4281] .' And speaking of these things being delivered to him, to be always had in remembrance, he immediately writes to him, saying, Meditate on these things: be engaged in them. [4282] ' For constant meditation, and the remembrance of divine words, strengthens piety towards God, and produces a love to Him inseparable and not merely formal [4283] ; as he, being of this mind, speaks about himself and others like-minded, saying boldly, Who shall separate us from the love of God [4284] ?' For [4285] such men, being confirmed in the Lord, and possessing an unshaken disposition towards Him, and being one in spirit (for [4286] he who is joined to the Spirit is one spirit'), are sure as the mount Sion;' and although ten thousand trials may rage against them, they are founded upon a rock, which is Christ [4287] . In Him the careless take no delight; and having no continuous purpose of good, they are sullied by temporal attacks, and esteem nothing more highly than present things, being unstable and deserving reproof as regards the faith. For either the care of this world, or the deceitfulness of riches, chokes them [4288] ;' or, as Jesus said in that parable which had reference to them, since they have not established the faith that has been preached to them, but continue only for a time, immediately, in time of persecution, or when affliction ariseth through the word, they are offended. Now those who meditate evil we say, [think] not truth, but falsehood and not righteousness, but iniquity, for their tongue learns to speak lies. They have done evil, and have not ceased that they might repent. For, persevering with delight in wicked actions, they hasten thereto without turning back, even treading under foot the commandment with regard to neighbours, and, instead of loving them, devise evil against them, as the saint testifies, saying, And those who seek me evil have spoken vanity, and imagined deceit all the day [4289] .' But that the cause of such meditation is none other than the want of instruction, the divine proverb has already declared; The son that forsaketh the commandment of his father meditateth evil words [4290] .' But such meditation, because it is evil, the Holy Spirit blames in these words, and reproves too in other terms, saying, Your hands are polluted with blood, your fingers with sins; your lips have spoken lawlessness, and your tongue imagineth iniquity: no man speaketh right things, nor is there true judgment [4291] .' But what the end is of such perverse imagining, He immediately declares, saying, They trust in vanities and speak falsehood; for they conceive mischief, and bring forth lawlessness. They have hatched the eggs of an asp, and woven a spider's web; and he who is prepared to eat of their eggs, when he breaks them finds gall, and a basilisk therein [4292] .' Again, what the hope of such is, He has already announced. Because righteousness does not overtake them, when they waited for light, they had darkness; when they waited for brightness, they walked in a thick cloud. They shall grope for the wall like the blind, and as those who have no eyes shall they grope; they shall fall at noon-day as at midnight; when dead, they shall groan. They shall roar together as a bear, or as a dove [4293] .'
This is the fruit of wickedness, these rewards are given to its familiars, for perverseness does not deliver its own. But in truth, against them it sets itself, and it tears them first, and on them especially it summons ruin. Woe to them against whom these are brought; for it is sharper than a two-edged sword [4294] ,' slaying beforehand and very swiftly those who will lay hold of it. For their tongue, according to the testimony of the Psalmist, is a sharp sword, and their teeth spears and arrows [4295] .' But the wonderful part is that while often he against whom men imagine [harm] suffers nothing, they are pierced by their own spears: for they possess, even in themselves, before they reach others, anger, wrath, malice, guile, hatred, bitterness. Although they may not be able to bring these upon others, they forthwith return upon and against themselves, as he prays, saying, Let their sword enter into their own heart.' There is also such a proverb as this: The wicked is held fast by the chain of his sins [4296] .'
5. The Jews in their imaginings, and in their agreeing to act unjustly against the Lord, forgot that they were bringing wrath upon themselves. Therefore does the Word lament for them, saying, Why do the people exalt themselves, and the nations imagine vain things [4297] ?' For vain indeed was the imagination of the Jews, meditating death against the Life [4298] , and devising unreasonable things against the Word of the Father [4299] .' For who that looks upon their dispersion, and the desolation of their city, may not aptly say, Woe unto them, for they have imagined an evil imagination, saying against their own soul, let us bind the righteous man, because he is not pleasing to us [4300] .' And full well is it so, my brethren; for when they erred concerning the Scriptures, they knew not that he who diggeth a pit for his neighbour falleth therein; and he who destroyeth a hedge, a serpent shall bite him [4301] .' And if they had not turned their faces from the Lord, they would have feared what was written before in the divine Psalms: The heathen are caught in the pit which they made; in the snare which they hid is their own foot taken. The Lord is known when executing judgments: by the works of his hands is the sinner taken [4302] .' Let them observe this, and how that the snare they know not shall come upon them, and the net they hid take them [4303] .' But they understood not these things, for had they done so, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory [4304] .'
6. Therefore the righteous and faithful servants of the Lord, who are made disciples for the kingdom of heaven, and bring forth from it things new and old;' and who meditate on the words of the Lord, when sitting in the house, when lying down or rising up, and when walking by the way [4305] ;'--since they are of good hope because of the promise of the Spirit which said, Blessed is the man that hath not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stood in the way of sinners, nor sat in the seat of corrupters; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law doth he meditate day and night [4306] ;'--being grounded in faith, rejoicing in hope, fervent in spirit, they have boldness to say, My mouth shall speak wisdom, and the meditation of my heart shall be of understanding.' And again, I have meditated on all Thy works, and on the work of Thy hands has been my meditation.' And, If I have remembered Thee on my bed, and in the morning have meditated on Thee [4307] .' Afterwards, advancing in boldness, they say, The meditation of my heart is before Thee at all times [4308] .' And what is the end of such an one? He cites immediately; The Lord is my Helper and my Redeemer [4309] .' For to those who thus examine themselves, and conform their hearts to the Lord, nothing adverse shall happen; for indeed, their heart is strengthened by confidence in the Lord, as it is written, They who trust in the Lord are as mount Sion: he who dwelleth in Jerusalem shall not be moved for ever [4310] .' For if at any time, the crafty one shall be presumptuously bold against them, chiefly that he may break the rank of the saints, and cause a division among brethren; even in this the Lord is with them, not only as an avenger on their behalf, but also when they have already been beaten, as a deliverer for them. For this is the divine promise; The Lord shall fight for you [4311] .' Henceforth, although afflictions and trials from without overtake them, yet, being fashioned after the apostolic words, and being stedfast in tribulations, and persevering in prayers [4312] ' and in meditation on the law, they stand against those things which befall them, are well-pleasing to God, and give utterance to the words which are written, Afflictions and distresses are come upon me; but Thy commandments are my meditation [4313] .'
7. And whereas, not only in action, but also in the thoughts of the mind, men are moved to deeds of virtue, he afterwards adds, saying, Mine eyes prevent the dawn, that I might meditate on Thy words [4314] .' For it is meet that the spiritual meditations of those who are whole should precede their bodily actions. And does not our Saviour, when intending to teach this very thing begin with the thoughts of the mind? saying, Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her, hath already committed adultery:' and, Whosoever shall be angry with his brother, is guilty of murder [4315] .' For where there is no wrath, murder is prevented; and where lust is first removed, there can be no accusation of adultery. Hence meditation on the law is necessary, my beloved, and uninterrupted converse with virtue, that the saint may lack nothing, but be perfect to every good work [4316] .' For by these things is the promise of eternal life, as Paul wrote to Timothy, calling constant meditation exercise, and saying, Exercise thyself unto godliness; for bodily exercise profiteth little; but godliness is profitable for all things, since it has the promise of the present life, and of that which is eternal [4317] .'
8. Worthy of admiration is the virtue of that man, my brethren! for through Timothy he enjoins upon all [4318] , that they should have regard to nothing more than to godliness, but above everything to adjudge the chief place to faith in God. For what grace has the unrighteous man, though he may feign to keep the commandments? Nay rather, the unrighteous man is unable even to keep a portion of the law, for as is his mind, such of necessity must be his actions; as the Spirit says, reproving such; The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God.' After this the Word, shewing that actions correspond with thoughts, says, They are corrupt; they are profane in their machinations [4319] .' The unrighteous man then, in every respect corrupts his body; stealing, committing adultery, cursing, being drunken, and doing such like things. Even as Jeremiah, the prophet, convicts Israel of these things, crying out and saying, Oh, that I had a lodge far off in the wilderness! then would I leave my people and depart from them: for they are all adulterers, an assembly of oppressors, who draw out their tongue as a bow; lying and not truth has prevailed upon the earth, and they proceed from iniquities to iniquities; but Me they have not known [4320] .' Thus, for wickedness and falsehood, and for deeds, in which they [proceed] from iniquity to iniquity, he reproves their practices; but, because they knew not the Lord, and were faithless, he charges them with unrighteousness.
9. For faith and godliness are allied to each other, and sisters; and he who believes in Him is godly, and he also who is godly, believes the more [4321] . He therefore who is in a state of wickedness, undoubtedly also wanders from the faith; and he who falls from godliness, falls from the true faith. Paul, for instance, bearing testimony to the same point, advises his disciple, saying, Avoid profane conversations; for they increase unto more ungodliness, and their word takes hold as doth a canker, of whom are Hymenæus and Philetus [4322] .' In what their wickedness consisted he declares, saying, Who have erred from the faith, saying that the resurrection is already past [4323] .' But again, desirous of shewing that faith is yoked with godliness, the Apostle says, And all those who will live godly in Jesus Christ shall suffer persecution [4324] .' Afterwards, that no man should renounce godliness through persecution, he counsels them to preserve the faith, adding, Thou, therefore, continue in the things thou hast learned, and hast been assured of [4325] .' And as when brother is helped by brother, they become as a wall to each other; so faith and godliness, being of like growth, hang together, and he who is practised in the one, of necessity is strengthened by the other. Therefore, wishing the disciple to be exercised in godliness unto the end, and to contend for the faith, he counsels them, saying, Fight the good fight of faith, and lay hold on eternal life [4326] .' For if a man first put away the wickedness of idols, and rightly confesses Him Who is truly God, he next fights by faith with those who war against Him.
10. For of these two things we speak of--faith and godliness--the hope is the same, even everlasting life; for he saith, Fight the good fight of faith; lay hold on eternal life.' And, exercise thyself unto godliness, for it hath the promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come [4327] .' For this cause, the Ario-maniacs, who now have gone out from the Church, being opponents of Christ, have digged a pit of unbelief, into which they themselves have been thrust; and, since they have advanced in ungodliness, they overthrow the faith of the simple [4328] ;' blaspheming the Son of God, and saying that He is a creature, and has His being from things which are not. But as then against the adherents of Philetus and Hymenæus, so now the Apostle forewarns all men against ungodliness like theirs, saying, The foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are His; and, Let every one that nameth the name of the Lord depart from iniquity [4329] .' For it is well that a man should depart from wickedness and deeds of iniquity, that he may be able properly to celebrate the feast; for he who is defiled with the pollutions of the wicked is not able to sacrifice the Passover to the Lord our God. Hence, the people who were then in Egypt said, We cannot sacrifice the Passover in Egypt to the Lord our God [4330] .' For God, Who is over all, willed that they should go far away from the servants of Pharaoh, and from the furnace of iron; so that being set free from wickedness, and having carefully put away from them all strange notions, they might receive the knowledge of God and of virtuous actions. For He saith, Go far from them: depart from the midst of them, and touch not the unclean things [4331] .' For a man will not otherwise depart from sin, and lay hold on virtuous deeds, than by meditation on his acts; and when he has been practised by exercise in godliness, he will lay hold on the confession of faith [4332] , which also Paul, after he had fought the fight, possessed, namely, the crown of righteousness which was laid up; which the righteous Judge will give, not to him alone, but to all who are like him.
11. For such meditation and exercise in godliness, being at all times the habit of the saints, is urgent on us at the present time, when the divine word desires us to keep the feast with them if we are in this disposition. For what else is the feast, but the constant worship of God, and the recognition of godliness, and unceasing prayers from the whole heart with agreement? So Paul wishing us to be ever in this disposition, commands, saying, Rejoice evermore; pray without ceasing; in everything give thanks [4333] .' Not therefore separately, but unitedly and collectively, let us all keep the feast together, as the prophet exhorts, saying, O come, let us rejoice in the Lord; let us make a joyful noise unto God our Saviour [4334] .' Who then is so negligent, or who so disobedient to the divine voice, as not to leave everything, and run to the general and common assembly of the feast? which is not in one place only, for not one place alone keeps the feast; but into all the earth their song has gone forth, and to the ends of the world their words.' And the sacrifice is not offered in one place, but in every nation, incense and a pure sacrifice is offered unto God [4335] .' So when in like manner from all in every place, praise and prayer shall ascend to the gracious and good Father, when the whole Catholic Church which is in every place, with gladness and rejoicing, celebrates together the same worship to God, when all men in common send up a song of praise and say, Amen [4336] ; how blessed will it not be, my brethren! who will not, at that time, be engaged, praying rightly? For the walls of every adverse power, yea even of Jericho especially, falling down, and the gift [4337] of the Holy Spirit being then richly poured upon all men, every man perceiving the coming of the Spirit shall say, We are all filled in the morning with Thy favour, and we rejoice and are made glad in our days [4338] .'
12. Since this is so, let us make a joyful noise with the saints, and let no one of us fail of his duty in these things; counting as nothing the affliction or the trials which, especially at this time, have been enviously directed against us by the party of Eusebius. Even now they wish to injure us, and by their accusations to compass our death, because of that godliness, whose helper is the Lord. But, as faithful servants of God, knowing that He is our salvation in the time of trouble:--for our Lord promised beforehand, saying, Blessed are ye when men revile you and persecute you, and say all manner of evil against you falsely, for My sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad, for your reward is great in heaven [4339] .' Again, it is the Redeemer's own word, that affliction shall not befall every man in this world, but only those who have a holy fear of Him:--on this account, the more the enemies hem us in, the more let us be at liberty; although they revile us, let us come together; and the more they would turn us aside from godliness, let us the more boldly preach it saying, All these things are come upon us, yet have we not forgotten Thee [4340] ,' and we have not done evil with the Ario-maniacs, who say that Thou hast existence from those things that exist not. The Word which is eternally with the Father, is also from Him.
13. Let us therefore keep the feast, my brethren, celebrating it not at all as an occasion of distress and mourning, neither let us mingle with heretics through temporal trials brought upon us by godliness. But if anything that would promote joy and gladness should offer, let us attend to it; so that our heart may not be sad, like that of Cain; but that, like faithful and good servants of the Lord, we may hear the words, Enter into the joy of thy Lord [4341] .' For we do not institute days of mourning and sorrow, as some may consider these of Easter to be, but we keep the feast, being filled with joy and gladness. We keep it then, not regarding it after the deceitful error of the Jews, nor according to the teaching of the Arians, which takes away the Son from the Godhead, and numbers Him among creatures; but we look to the correct doctrine we derive from the Lord. For the guile of the Jews, and the unbounded impiety of the Arians, cause nothing but sad reflections, for the former at the beginning slew the Lord; but these latter take away His position of having conquered that death to which the Jews brought Him, in that they say He is not the Creator, but a creature. For if He were a creature, He would have been holden by death; but if He was not holden by death, according to the Scriptures, He is not a creature, but the Lord of the creatures, and the subject [4342] of this immortal feast.
14. For the Lord of death would abolish death, and being Lord, what He would was accomplished; for we have all passed from death unto life. But the imagination of the Jews, and of those who are like them, was vain, since the result was not such as they contemplated, but turned out adverse to themselves; and at both of them He that sitteth in the heaven shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision [4343] .' Hence, when our Saviour was led to death, He restrained the women who followed Him weeping, saying, Weep not for Me [4344] ;' meaning to shew that the Lord's death is an event, not of sorrow but of joy, and that He Who dies for us is alive. For He does not derive His being from those things which are not, but from the Father. It is truly a subject of joy, that we can see the signs of victory against death, even our own incorruptibility, through the body of the Lord. For since He rose gloriously, it is clear that the resurrection of all of us will take place; and since His body remained without corruption, there can be no doubt regarding our incorruption [4345] . For as by one man [4346] , as saith Paul (and it is the truth), sin passed upon all men, so by the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, we shall all rise. For,' he says, this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality [4347] .' Now this came to pass in the time of the Passion, in which our Lord died for us, for our Passover, Christ, is sacrificed [4348] .' Therefore, because He was sacrificed, let each of us feed upon Him, and with alacrity and diligence partake of His sustenance; since He is given to all without grudging, and is in every one a well of water flowing to everlasting life [4349] .'
15. We begin the fast of forty days on the ninth of the month Phamenoth (Mar. 5); and having, in these days, served the Lord with abstinence, and first purified ourselves [4350] , we commence also the holy Easter on the fourteenth of the month Pharmuthi (April 9). Afterwards, extending the fast to the seventh day, on the seventeenth [4351] of the month, let us rest late in the evening. And the light of the Lord having first dawned upon us, and the holy Sunday on which our Lord rose shining upon us, we should rejoice and be glad with the joy which arises from good works, during the seven weeks which remain--to Pentecost--giving glory to the Father, and saying, This is the day which the Lord hath made: we will rejoice and be glad in it, [4352] ' through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, through Whom to the same, and to His Father, be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen. Salute one another with a holy kiss. All the brethren who are with me salute you. That ye may have health in the Lord, I pray, brethren beloved.
Here endeth the eleventh Letter of holy Athanasius. __________________________________________________________________
[4260] Cf. Eph. vi. 14
[4261] Cf. 1 Cor. iv. 4
[4262] 2 Cor. xii. 4.
[4263] 1 Cor. xiii. 9, 12.
[4264] Cf. Eph. ii. 19
[4265] Phil. iii. 15.
[4266] Rom. viii. 24, 25.
[4267] 1 Cor. vii. 7.
[4268] Cf. Letter 10, §4.
[4269] Ps. lxvi. 11, 12; iv. 1.
[4270] Ib. cxx. 5, LXX.
[4271] 2 Cor. xii. 21.
[4272] 1 Cor. xi. 1.
[4273] 1 Tim. ii. 7.
[4274] Cf. Letter ii. §1, and Letter iii. §5.
[4275] Vid. Letter vii. 8, note 17.
[4276] Deut. vi. 4.
[4277] Heb. xi. 6.
[4278] Is. lv. 6, 7.
[4279] Herm. Mand. 1.
[4280] John i. 1.
[4281] 2 Tim. iii. 14; ii. 8.
[4282] 1 Tim. iv. 15.
[4283] The Syriac word here rendered not merely formal is one which stems to take no other meaning than inexpiable'--a sense scarcely admissible in this place. The Greek was probably agapen pros auton achoriston kai ouk aphosioumenen. This supposition would account for the Syriac misapprehension of the word.
[4284] Rom. viii. 35.
[4285] The Syriac text from here to the words, There is also such a proverb as this' (end of §), was discovered after Cureton's edition of the Syriac, and is absent in Larsow.
[4286] 1 Cor. vi. 17.
[4287] Ps. cxxv. 1; 1 Cor. x. 4; Matt. vii. 25
[4288] Matt. xiii. 22.
[4289] Ps. xxxviii. 12.
[4290] Prov. xix. 27, LXX.
[4291] Is. lix. 3, 4.
[4292] Ib. lix. 4, 5.
[4293] Ib. lix. 9-11.
[4294] Heb. iv. 12.
[4295] Ps. lvii. 4.
[4296] Ib. xxxvii. 15; Prov. v. 22.
[4297] Ps. ii. 1.
[4298] The parallel clause of this sentence would seem to determine that by Life' here we must understand Christ.
[4299] aloga kata tou Logou tou Patros. Cf. Suicer. Thes. s.v. Alogos tom. i. p. 199.
[4300] Is. iii. 9, 10, LXX.; cf. Wisd. ii. 12.
[4301] Eccl. x. 8.
[4302] Ps. ix. 15.
[4303] Ib. xxxv. 8.
[4304] 1 Cor. ii. 8.
[4305] Matt. xiii. 52; Deut. vi. 7.
[4306] Ps. i. 1.
[4307] Ib. xlix. 3; cxliii. 5; lxiii. 6.
[4308] Ib. xix. 14.
[4309] Ib
[4310] Ib. cxxv. 1, LXX.
[4311] Exod. xiv. 14.
[4312] Rom. xii. 12.
[4313] Ps. cxix. 143.
[4314] Ib. cxix. 148.
[4315] Matt. v. 28, 22.
[4316] 2 Tim. iii. 17.
[4317] 1 Tim. iv. 7, 8.
[4318] Cf. Letter 3, §3, note 17; Apol. Const. 26.
[4319] Ps. xiv. 1, 2.
[4320] Jer. ix. 2.
[4321] Cf. John vii. 17
[4322] 2 Tim. ii. 16, 17.
[4323] Ib. ii. 18.
[4324] Ib. iii. 12.
[4325] Ib. iii. 14.
[4326] 1 Tim. iv. 7.
[4327] 1 Tim. iv. 7, 8.
[4328] Rom. xvi. 18.
[4329] 2 Tim. ii. 19.
[4330] Exod. viii. 26.
[4331] 2 Cor. vi. 17.
[4332] The Syriac appears to be a translation of kratesei tes homologias tes pisteos (cf. Heb. iv. 14).
[4333] 1 Thess. v. 16-18
[4334] Ps. xcv. 1.
[4335] Ib. xix. 4; Mal. i. 11.
[4336] For a parallel passage to this, vid. Letter x. 2.
[4337] Cf. Letter x. 2, note 9. Vid. also John vii. 39; Rom. v. 5; John xx. 22
[4338] Ps. xc. 14, LXX.
[4339] Matt. v. 11, 12.
[4340] Ps. xliv. 17.
[4341] Matt. xxv. 21.
[4342] Syr. hupothesis. Cf. Letter x. 2, note 8.
[4343] Ps. ii. 4.
[4344] Luke xxiii. 28.
[4345] Cf. de Incarn. §50.
[4346] Rom. v. 12.
[4347] 1 Cor. xv. 53.
[4348] Ib. v. 7.
[4349] John iv. 14.
[4350] Cf. Letter vi. 11.
[4351] Read nineteenth.
[4352] Ps. cxviii. 24. __________________________________________________________________
*XII.--(Probably for 340 a.d.) To the Beloved Brother, and our fellow Minister Serapion [4353] .
Thanks be to Divine Providence for those things which, at all times, it vouchsafes to us; for it has vouchsafed to us now to come to the season of the festival. Having, therefore, according to custom, written the Letter respecting the festival, I have sent it to you, my beloved; that through you all the brethren may be able to know the day of rejoicing. But because some Meletians, being come from Syria, have boasted that they had received what does not belong to them, I mean, that they also were reckoned in the Catholic Church; on this account, I have sent to you a copy of one letter of our fellow-ministers who are of Palestine, that when it reaches you, you may know the fraud of the pretenders in this matter. For because they boasted, as I have said before, it was necessary for me to write to the Bishops who are in Syria, and immediately those of Palestine sent us a reply, having agreed in [4354] the judgment against them, as you may learn from this example. That you may not have to consider the letters of all the Bishops one after the other, I have sent you one, which is of like character with the rest, in order that from it you may know the purport of all of them. I know also that when they are convicted in this matter, they will incur perfect odium at the hands of all men. And thus far concerning the pretenders. But I have further deemed it highly necessary and very urgent, to make known to your modesty--for I have written this to each one--that you should proclaim the fast of forty days to the brethren, and persuade them to fast, lest, while all the world is fasting, we who are in Egypt should be derided, as the only people who do not fast, but take our pleasure in these days. For if, on account of the Letter [not] being yet read, we do not fast, we should take away this pretext, and it should be read before the fast of forty days, so that they may not make this an excuse for neglect or fasting. Also, when it is read, they may be able to learn about the fast. But O, my beloved, whether in this way or any other, persuade and teach them to fast the forty days. For it is a disgrace that when all the world does this, those alone who are in Egypt, instead of fasting, should find their pleasure. For even I being grieved because men deride us for this, have been constrained to write to you. When therefore you receive the letters, and have read them and given the exhortation, write to me in return, my beloved, that I also may rejoice upon learning it.
2. But I have also thought it necessary to inform [4355] you of the fact, that Bishops have succeeded those who have fallen asleep. In Tanis in the stead of Elias [4356] , is Theodorus. In Arsenoitis, Silvanus [4357] instead of Calosiris. In Paralus, Nemesion is instead of Nonnus [4358] . In Bucolia [4359] is Heraclius. In Tentyra, Andronicus is instead of Saprion [4360] , his father. In Thebes, Philon instead of Philon. In Maximianopolis, Herminus instead of Atras. In the lower Apollon is Sarapion instead of Plution. In Aphroditon, Serenus is in the place of Theodorus. In Rhinocoruron, Salomon. In Stathma, Arabion, and in Marmarica. In the eastern Garyathis, Andragathius [4361] in the place of Hierax. In the southern Garyathis, Quintus [4362] instead of Nicon [4363] . So that to these you may write, and from these receive the canonical Letters.
Salute one another with a holy kiss. All the brethren who are with me salute you.
He wrote this from Rome. There is no twelfth Letter. __________________________________________________________________
[4353] This Letter being introduced (as it is in the ms.) after the eleventh, with the remark at the end of it, that there is no twelfth; together with the exhortations concerning fasting contained in it, was probably written in lieu of a twelfth. Serapion was doubtless the Bishop of Thmuis (see Letter 54).
[4354] Or, fulfilled the judgment.' Cureton.
[4355] There is a similar notification of the appointment of fresh Bishops appended to the nineteenth Letter.
[4356] Larsow writes Ilius.' Tanis is situate in Augustamnica Prima. Vid. Quatremère Mémoires geogr. et histor. sur l'Egypte, tom. i. p. 284, &c. (L.) The word Tanis is the LXX. rendering of Zoan.' In the Apol. c. Ar. 50, we have a list of ninety-four Egyptian Bishops, among others, who subscribed to the letter of the Council of Sardica. A reference to this list explains some names which otherwise would have been obscure. For a list of the Egyptian Bishoprics, the reader is referred to Neale's Hist. of the Holy Eastern Church. Gen. Introd. vol. i. pp. 115, 116. To the list there given must be added the names of Bucolia, Stathma, the Eastern Garyathis, the Southern Garyathis. There were two Egyptian Bishops named Elias who subscribed their names to the letter of the Council of Sardica.
[4357] Silvanus was succeeded by Andreas, as we learn from the postscript to the nineteenth Letter.
[4358] An Egyptian Bishop named Nonnus was present at the Synod of Tyre. Apol. c. Ar. §79.
[4359] For a dissertation on the situation of Bucolia, see the treatise by Quatremère, already referred, to (tom. i. pp. 224-233). In p. 233, he writes; La contrée de l'Elearchie ou des Bucolies est, si je ne me trompe, parfaitement identique avec la province de Baschmour.
[4360] An Egyptian Bishop of the name of Saprion was at the Synod of Tyre. Apol. c. Ar. §79. He is Serapion' in Vit. Pach. 20.
[4361] Apol. Ar. 50.
[4362] Apol. Ar. 50.
[4363] Apol. Ar. 79. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XIII.--(For 341.) Coss. Marcellinus, Probinus; Præf. Longinus; Indict. xiv; Easter-day, xiii Kal. Maii, xxiv Pharmuthi; Æra Dioclet. 57.
Again, my beloved brethren, I am ready to notify to you the saving feast [4364] , which will take place according to annual custom. For although the opponents of Christ [4365] have oppressed you together with us with afflictions and sorrows; yet, God having comforted us by our mutual faith [4366] , behold, I write to you even from Rome. Keeping the feast here with the brethren, still I keep it with you also in will and in spirit, for we send up prayers in common to God, Who hath granted us not only to believe in Him, but also now to suffer for His sake [4367] .' For troubled as we are, because we are so far from you, He moves us to write, that by a letter we might comfort ourselves, and provoke one another to good [4368] . For, indeed, numerous afflictions and bitter persecutions directed against the Church have been against us. For heretics, corrupt in their mind, untried in the faith, rising against the truth, violently persecute the Church, and of the brethren, some are scourged and others torn with stripes, and hardest of all, their insults reach even to the Bishops. Nevertheless, it is not becoming, on this account, that we should neglect the feast. But we should especially remember it, and not at all forget its commemoration from time to time. Now the unbelievers do not consider that there is a season for feasts, because they spend all their lives in revelling and follies; and the feasts which they keep are an occasion of grief rather than of joy. But to us in this present life they are above all an uninterrupted passage [to heaven]--it is indeed our season. For such things as these serve for exercise and trial, so that, having approved ourselves zealous and chosen servants of Christ, we may be fellow-heirs with the saints [4369] . For thus Job: The whole world is a place of trial to men upon the earth [4370] .' Nevertheless, they are proved in this world by afflictions, labours, and sorrows, to the end that each one may receive of God such reward as is meet for him, as He saith by the prophet, I am the Lord, Who trieth the hearts, and searcheth the reins, to give to every one according to his ways [4371] .'
2. Not that He first knows the things of a man on his being proved (for He knows them all before they come to pass), but because He is good and philanthropic, He distributes to each a due reward according to his actions, so that every man may exclaim, Righteous is the judgment of God! As the prophet says again, The Lord trieth the just, and discerneth the reins [4372] .' Again, for this cause He tries each one of us, either that to those who know it not, virtue may be manifested by means of those who are proved, as was said respecting Job; Thinkest thou that I was revealed to thee for any other cause, than that thou shouldest be seen righteous [4373] ?' or that, when men come to a sense of their deeds, they may be able to know of what manner they are, and so may either repent of their wickedness, or abide confirmed in the faith. Now the blessed Paul, when troubled by afflictions, and persecutions, and hunger and thirst, in everything was a conqueror, through Jesus Christ, Who loved us [4374] .' Through suffering he was weak indeed in body, yet, believing and hoping, he was made strong in spirit, and his strength was made perfect in weakness [4375] .
3. The other saints also, who had a like confidence in God, accepted a like probation with gladness, as Job said, Blessed be the name of the Lord [4376] .' But the Psalmist, Search me, O Lord, and try me: prove my reins and my heart [4377] .' For since, when the strength is proved, it convinceth the foolish, they perceiving the cleansing and the advantage resulting from the divine fire, were not discouraged in trials like these, but they rather delighted in them, suffering no injury at all from the things which happened, but being seen to shine more brightly, like gold from the fire [4378] , as he said, who was tried in such a school of discipline as this; Thou hast tried my heart, Thou hast visited me in the night-season; Thou hast proved me, and hast not found iniquity in me, so that my mouth shall not speak of the works of men [4379] .' But those whose actions are not restrained by law, who know of nothing beyond eating and drinking and dying, account trials as danger. They soon stumble at them, so that, being untried in the faith, they are given over to a reprobate mind, and do those things which are not seemly [4380] . Therefore the blessed Paul, when urging us to such exercises as these, and having before measured himself by them, says, Therefore I take pleasure in afflictions, in infirmities.' And again, Exercise thyself unto godliness [4381] .' For since he knew the persecutions that befel those who chose to live in godliness, he wished his disciples to meditate beforehand on the difficulties connected with godliness; that when trials should come, and affliction arise, they might be able to bear them easily, as having been exercised in these things. For in those things wherewith a man has been conversant in mind, he ordinarily experiences a hidden joy. In this way, the blessed martyrs, becoming at first conversant with difficulties, were quickly perfected in Christ, regarding as nought the injury of the body, while they contemplated the expected rest.
4. But all those who call their lands by their own names [4382] ,' and have wood, and hay, and stubble [4383] in their thoughts; such as these, since they are strangers to difficulties, become aliens from the kingdom of heaven. Had they however known that tribulation perfecteth patience, and patience experience, and experience hope, and hope maketh not ashamed,' they would have exercised themselves, after the example of Paul, who said, I keep under my body and bring it into subjection, lest when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway [4384] .' They would easily have borne the afflictions which were brought upon them to prove them from time to time, if the prophetic admonition [4385] had been listened to by them; It is good for a man to take up Thy yoke in his youth; he shall sit alone and shall be silent, because he hath taken Thy yoke upon him. He will give his cheek to him who smiteth him; he will be filled with reproaches. Because the Lord does not cast away for ever; for when He abases, He is gracious, according to the multitude of His tender mercies [4386] .' For though all these things should proceed from the enemies, stripes, insults, reproaches, yet shall they avail nothing against the multitude of God's tender mercies; for we shall quickly recover from them since they are merely temporal, but God is always gracious, pouring out His tender mercies on those who please [Him]. Therefore, my beloved brethren, we should not look at these temporal things, but fix our attention on those which are eternal. Though affliction may come, it will have an end, though insult and persecution, yet are they nothing to the hope which is set [before us]. For all present matters are trifling compared with those which are future; the sufferings of this present time not being worthy to be compared with the hope that is to come [4387] . For what can be compared with the kingdom? or what is there in comparison with life eternal? Or what is all we could give here, to that which we shall inherit yonder? For we are heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ [4388] .' Therefore it is not right, my beloved, to consider afflictions and persecutions, but the hopes which are laid up for us because of persecutions.
5. Now to this the example of Issachar, the patriarch, may persuade, as the Scripture [4389] saith, Issachar desires that which is good, resting between the heritages; and when he saw that the rest was good, and the land fertile [4390] , he bowed his shoulder to labour, and became a husbandman.' Being consumed by divine love, like the spouse in the Canticles, he gathered abundance from the holy Scriptures, for his mind was captivated not by the old alone, but by both the heritages. And hence as it were, spreading his wings, he beheld afar off the rest' which is in heaven, and,--since this land' consists of such beautiful works,--how much more truly the heavenly [country] must also [consist] of such [4391] ; for the other is ever new, and grows not old. For this land' passes away, as the Lord said; but that which is ready to receive the saints is immortal. Now when Issachar, the patriarch, saw these things, he joyfully made his boast of afflictions and toils, bowing his shoulders that he might labour. And he did not contend with those who smote him, neither was he disturbed by insults; but like a strong man triumphing the more by these things, and the more earnestly tilling his land, he received profit from it. The Word scattered the seed, but he watchfully cultivated it, so that it brought forth fruit, even a hundred-fold.
6. Now what does this mean, my beloved, but that we also, when the enemies are arrayed against us, should glory in afflictions [4392] , and that when we are persecuted, we should not be discouraged, but should the rather press after the crown of the high calling [4393] in Christ Jesus our Lord? and that being insulted, we should not be disturbed, but should give our cheek to the smiter, and bow the shoulder? For the lovers of pleasure and the lovers of enmity are tried, as saith the blessed Apostle James, when they are drawn away by their own lusts and enticed [4394] .' But let us, knowing that we suffer for the truth, and that those who deny the Lord smite and persecute us, count it all joy, my brethren,' according to the words of James, when we fall into trials of various temptations, knowing that the trial of our faith worketh patience [4395] .' Let us rejoice as we keep the feast, my brethren, knowing that our salvation is ordered in the time of affliction. For our Saviour did not redeem us by inactivity, but by suffering for us He abolished death. And respecting this, He intimidated to us before, saying, In the world ye shall have tribulation [4396] .' But He did not say this to every man, but to those who diligently and faithfully perform good service to Him, knowing beforehand, that they should be persecuted who would live godly toward Him.
7. But evil-doers and sorcerers will wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived [4397] .' If therefore, like those expounders of dreams and false prophets who professed to give signs, these ignorant men being drunk, not with wine, but with their own wickedness, make a profession of priesthood, and glory in their threats, believe them not; but since we are tried, let us humble ourselves, not being drawn away by them. For so God warned His people by Moses, saying, If there shall rise up among you a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, and shall give signs and tokens, and the sign or the token shall come to pass which he spake to thee, saying, Let us go and serve strange gods, which ye have not known; ye shall not hearken unto the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams. For the Lord your God trieth you, that He may know whether you will love the Lord your God with all your heart [4398] .' So we, when we are tried by these things, will not separate ourselves from the love of God. But let us now keep the feast, my beloved, not as introducing a day of suffering, but of joy in Christ, by Whom we are fed every day. Let us be mindful of Him Who was sacrificed in the days of the Passover; for we celebrate this, because Christ the Passover was sacrificed [4399] . He Who once brought His people out of Egypt, and hath now abolished death, and him that had the power of death, that is the devil [4400] , will likewise now turn him to shame, and again grant aid to those who are troubled, and cry unto God day and night [4401] .
8. We begin the fast of forty days on the thirteenth of Phamenoth (9 Mar.), and the holy week of Easter on the eighteenth of Pharmuthi (Apr. 13); and resting on the seventh day, being the twenty-third (Apr. 18), and the first of the great week having dawned on the twenty-fourth of the same month Pharmuthi (Apr. 19), let us reckon from it till Pentecost. And at all times let us sing praises, calling on Christ, being delivered from our enemies by Christ Jesus our Lord, through Whom to the Father be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen. Greet one another with a holy kiss. All those who are here with me salute you. I pray, my beloved brethren, that ye may have health in the Lord.
He wrote this also from Rome. Here endeth the thirteenth Letter. __________________________________________________________________
[4364] Vid. Letter x. 1.
[4365] The Arians (hoi christomachoi).
[4366] Cf. Rom. i. 12
[4367] Phil. i. 29.
[4368] Cf. Heb. x. 24
[4369] Cf. Col. i. 12
[4370] Job vii. 1. not LXX.
[4371] Jer. xvii. 10.
[4372] Ib. xx. 12.
[4373] Job xl. 8, 9, (3, 4, LXX.).
[4374] Rom. viii. 37.
[4375] 2 Cor. xii. 9.
[4376] Job i. 21.
[4377] Ps. xxvi. 2.
[4378] Cf. Mal. iii. 3; 1 Pet. i. 7.
[4379] Ps. xvii. 3, 4, LXX.
[4380] Rom. i. 28.
[4381] 2 Cor. xii. 10; 1 Tim. iv. 7.
[4382] Ps. xlix. 11 (Larsow mistakes the reference)
[4383] Cf. 1 Cor. iii. 12.
[4384] Rom. v. 3; 1 Cor. ix. 27.
[4385] Lam. iii. 27.
[4386] Cf. Serapion Epistola ad Monachos, in Mai Spicileg. Rom. tom. iv. p. li. (L.)
[4387] Cf. Rom. viii. 18; 2 Cor. iv. 17.
[4388] Rom. viii. 17.
[4389] Gen. xlix. 14.
[4390] Jarchi interprets the passage figuratively of Issachar being strong to bear the yoke of the law. The Jerusalem Targum thus paraphrases the verse. And he saw the rest of the world to come, that it was good, and the portion of the land of Israel, that it was pleasant; therefore he inclined his shoulders to work in the law, and his brethren brought gifts unto him.
[4391] Larsow's rendering of the above is followed.
[4392] Rom. v. 3.
[4393] Cf. Phil. iii. 14 to brabeion tes ano kleseos.
[4394] James i. 14.
[4395] Ib. i. 2.
[4396] John xvi. 33.
[4397] 2 Tim. iii. 13.
[4398] Deut. xiii. 1-3.
[4399] 1 Cor. v. 7.
[4400] Heb. ii. 14.
[4401] Luke xviii. 7. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XIV.--(For 342.) Coss. Augustus Constantius III, Constans II, Præf. the same Longinus; Indict. xv; Easter-day iii Id. Apr., xvi Pharmuthi; Æra Dioclet. 58.
The gladness of our feast, my brethren, is always near at hand, and never fails those who wish to celebrate it [4402] . For the Word is near, Who is all things on our behalf, even our Lord Jesus Christ, Who, having promised that His habitation with us should be perpetual, in virtue thereof cried, saying, Lo, I am with you all the days of the world [4403] .' For as He is the Shepherd, and the High Priest, and the Way and the Door, and everything at once to us, so again, He is shewn to us as the Feast, and the Holy day, according to the blessed Apostle; Our Passover, Christ, is sacrificed [4404] .' He it was who was expected, He caused a light to shine at the prayer of the Psalmist, who said, My Joy, deliver me from those who surround me [4405] ;' this being indeed true rejoicing, this being a true feast, even deliverance from wickedness, whereto a man attains by thoroughly adopting an upright conversation, and being approved in his mind of godly submission towards God [4406] . For thus the saints all their lives long were like men rejoicing at a feast. One found rest in prayer to God, as blessed David [4407] , who rose in the night, not once but seven times. Another gave glory in songs of praise, as great Moses, who sang a song of praise for the victory over Pharaoh, and those task-masters [4408] . Others performed worship with unceasing diligence, like great Samuel and blessed Elijah; who have ceased from their course, and now keep the feast in heaven, and rejoice in what they formerly learnt through shadows, and from the types recognise the truth.
2. But what sprinklings shall we now employ, while we celebrate the feast? Who will be our guide, as we haste to this festival? None can do this, my beloved, but Him Whom you will name with me, even our Lord Jesus Christ Who said, I am the Way.' For it is He Who, according to the blessed John, taketh away the sin of the world [4409] .' He purifies our souls, as Jeremiah the prophet says in a certain place, Stand in the ways and see, and enquire, and look which is the good path, and ye shall find in it cleansing for your souls [4410] .' Of old time, the blood of he-goats and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkled upon those who were unclean, were fit only to purify the flesh [4411] ; but now, through the grace of God the Word, every man is thoroughly cleansed. Following Him, we may, even here, as on the threshold of the Jerusalem which is above, meditate beforehand on the feast which is eternal, as also the blessed Apostles, together following the Saviour Who was their Leader, have now become teachers of a like grace, saying, Behold, we have left all, and followed Thee [4412] .' For the following of the Lord, and the feast which is of the Lord, is not accomplished by words only, but by deeds, every enactment of laws and every command involving a distinct performance. For as great Moses, when administering the holy laws, exacted a promise from the people [4413] , respecting the practice of them, so that having promised, they might not neglect them, and be accused as liars, thus also, the celebration of the least of the Passover raises no question, and demands no reply; but when the word is given, the performance of it follows, for He saith, And the children of Israel shall keep the Passover [4414] ;' intending that there should be a ready performance of the commandment, while the command should aid its execution. But respecting these matters, I have confidence in your wisdom, and your care for instruction. Such points as these have been touched upon by us often and in various Letters.
3. But now, which is above all things most necessary, I wish to remind you, and myself with you, how that the command would have us come to the Paschal feast not profanely and without preparation, but with sacramental and doctrinal rites, and prescribed observances, as indeed we learn from the historical account, A man who is of another nation, or bought with money, or uncircumcised, shall not eat the Passover [4415] .' Neither should it be eaten in any' house, but He commands it to be done in haste; inasmuch as before we groaned and were made sad by the bondage to Pharaoh, and the commands of the task-masters. For when in former time the children of Israel acted in this way, they were counted worthy to receive the type, which existed for the sake of this feast, nor is the feast now introduced on account of the type. As also the Word of God, when desirous of this, said to His disciples, With desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you [4416] .' Now that is a wonderful account, for a man might have seen them at that time girded as for a procession or a dance, and going out with staves, and sandals, and unleavened bread. These things, which took place before in shadows, were typical. But now the Truth is nigh unto us, the Image of the invisible God [4417] ,' our Lord Jesus Christ, the true Light, Who instead of a staff, is our sceptre, instead of unleavened bread, is the bread which came down from heaven, Who, instead of sandals, hath furnished us with the preparation of the Gospel [4418] , and Who, to speak briefly, by all these hath guided us to His Father. And if enemies afflict us and persecute us, He again, instead of Moses, will encourage us with better words, saying, Be of good cheer; I have overcome the wicked one [4419] .' And if after we have passed over the Red Sea heat should again vex us or some bitterness of the waters befall us, even thence again the Lord will appear to us, imparting to us of His sweetness, and His life-giving fountain, saying, If any man thirst, let him come to Me, and drink [4420] .'
4. Why therefore do we tarry, and why do we delay, and not come with all eagerness and diligence to the feast, trusting that it is Jesus who calleth us? Who is all things for us, and was laden in ten thousand ways for our salvation; Who hungered and thirsted for us, though He gives us food and drink in His saving gifts [4421] . For this is His glory, this the miracle of His divinity, that He changed our sufferings for His happiness. For, being life, He died that He might make us alive, being the Word, He became flesh, that He might instruct the flesh in the Word, and being the fountain of life, He thirsted our thirst, that thereby He might urge us to the feast, saying, If any man thirst, let him come to Me, and drink [4422] .' At that time, Moses proclaimed the beginning of the feast, saying, This month is the beginning of months to you [4423] .' But the Lord, Who came down in the end of the ages [4424] , proclaimed a different day, not as though He would abolish the law, far from it, but that He should establish the law, and be the end of the law. For Christ is the end of the law to every one that believeth in righteousness;' as the blessed Paul saith, Do we make void the law by faith? far from it: we rather establish the law [4425] .' Now these things astonished even the officers who were sent by the Jews, so that wondering they said to the Pharisees, No man ever thus spake [4426] .' What was it then that astonished those officers, or what was it which so affected the men as to make them marvel? It was nothing but the boldness and authority of our Saviour. For when of old time prophets and scribes studied the Scriptures, they perceived that what they read did not refer to themselves, but to others. Moses, for instance, A prophet will the Lord raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto me; to him hearken in all that he commands you.' Isaiah again, Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and ye shall call his name Emmanuel [4427] .' And others prophesied in different and various ways, concerning the Lord. But by the Lord, of Himself, and of no other, were these things prophesied; to Himself He limited them all, saying, If any man thirst, let him come to Me [4428] '--not to any other person, but to Me.' A man may indeed hear from those concerning My coming, but he must not henceforth drink from others, but from Me.
5. Therefore let us also, when we come to the feast, no longer come as to old shadows, for they are accomplished, neither as to common feasts, but let us hasten as to the Lord, Who is Himself the feast [4429] , not looking upon it as an indulgence and delight of the belly, but as a manifestation of virtue. For the feasts of the heathen are full of greediness, and utter indolence, since they consider they celebrate a feast when they are idle [4430] ; and they work the works of perdition when they feast. But our feasts consist in the exercise of virtue and the practice of temperance; as the prophetic word testifies in a certain place, saying, The fast of the fourth, and the fast of the fifth, and the fast of the seventh, and the fast of the tenth [month], shall be to the house of Judah for gladness, and rejoicing, and for pleasant feasts [4431] .' Since therefore this occasion for exercise is set before us, and such a day as this is come, and the prophetic voice has gone forth that the feast shall be celebrated, let us give all diligence to this good proclamation, and like those who contend on the race course, let us vie with each other in observing the purity of the fast [4432] , by watchfulness in prayers, by study of the Scriptures, by distributing to the poor, and let us be at peace with our enemies. Let us bind up those who are scattered abroad, banish pride, and return to lowliness of mind, being at peace with all men, and urging the brethren unto love. Thus also the blessed Paul was often engaged in fastings and watchings, and was willing to be accursed for his brethren. Blessed David again, having humbled himself by fastings, used boldness, saying, O Lord my God, if I have done this, if there is any iniquity in my hands, if I have repaid those who dealt evil with me, then may I fall from my enemies as a vain man [4433] .' If we do these things, we shall conquer death; and receive an earnest [4434] of the kingdom of heaven.
6. We begin the holy Easter feast on the tenth of Pharmuthi (April 5), desisting from the holy fasts on the fifteenth of the same month Pharmuthi (April 10), on the evening of the seventh day. And let us keep the holy feast on the sixteenth of the same month Pharmuthi (April 11); adding one by one [the days] till the holy Pentecost, passing on to which, as through a succession of feasts, let us keep the festival to the Spirit, Who is even now near us, in Jesus Christ, through Whom and with Whom to the Father be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.
The fifteenth and sixteenth are wanting. __________________________________________________________________
[4402] Cf. Letter v. 1.
[4403] Matt. xxviii. 20.
[4404] 1 Cor. v. 7.
[4405] Ps. xxxi. 7, LXX.
[4406] Cf. Letter iii. 2.
[4407] Ps. cxix. 62, 164.
[4408] Exod. xv.
[4409] John xiv. 6; i. 29.
[4410] Jer. vi. 16.
[4411] Heb. ix. 13.
[4412] Mark x. 28.
[4413] Exod. xix. 8.
[4414] Ib. xii. 47.
[4415] Ib. xii. 43-48.
[4416] Luke xxii. 15.
[4417] Col. i. 15.
[4418] Eph. vi. 15.
[4419] John xvi. 33; cf. 1 John ii. 13.
[4420] Ib. vii. 37.
[4421] Cf. supr. p. 88.
[4422] John vii. 37.
[4423] Exod. xii. 2.
[4424] Heb. ix. 26.
[4425] Rom. x. 4; iii. 31.
[4426] John vii. 46.
[4427] Deut. xviii. 15; Is. vii. 14. These two texts are also quoted together in Orat. i. §54.
[4428] John vii. 37.
[4429] Cf. 1 Cor. v. 7
[4430] Cf. Letter vii. 3.
[4431] Zech. viii. 19.
[4432] Cf. 1 Cor. ix. 24-27.
[4433] Rom. ix. 3; Ps. vii. 3, 4, LXX.
[4434] Syr. 'Ar& 191;abon. Cf. Eph. i. 13, 14, &c. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XVII.--(For 345.) Coss. Amantius, Albinus; Præf. Nestorius of Gaza; Indict. iii; Easter-day, vii Id. Apr., xii Pharmuthi; Moon 19; Æra Dioclet. 61.
Athanasius to the Presbyters and Deacons of Alexandria, and to the beloved brethren, greeting in Christ.
According to custom, I give you notice respecting Easter, my beloved, that you also may notify the same to the districts of those who are at a distance, as is usual. Therefore, after this present festival [4435] , I mean this which is on the twentieth of the month Pharmuthi, the Easter-day following will be on the vii Id. April, or according to the Alexandrians on the twelfth of Pharmuthi. Give notice therefore in all those districts, that Easter-day will be on the vii Id. April, or according to the Alexandrian reckoning on the twelfth of Pharmuthi. That you may be in health in Christ, I pray, my beloved brethren. __________________________________________________________________
[4435] Observe that Athan. gives notice at Easter, a.d. 344, upon what day Easter is to be observed in a.d. 345, and not immediately after the succeeding Epiphany, as Cassian asserts to have been the custom of the Patriarch of Alexandria. (Cassian. Collat. x. 1.) Cf. Letters 2, 4, 10, 18, &c. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XVIII.--(For 346.) Coss. Augustus Constantius IV, Constans III; Præf. the same Nestorius; Indict. iv; Easter-day iii Kal. Apr., iv Pharmuthi; Moon 21; Æra Dioclet. 62.
Athanasius, to the Presbyters and Deacons of Alexandria, brethren beloved in the Lord, greeting.
You have done well, dearly beloved brethren, that you have given the customary notice of the holy Easter in those districts; for I have seen and acknowledged your exactness. By other letters I have also given you notice, that when this year is finished, ye may know concerning the next. Yet now I have thought it necessary to write the same things that, when you have it exactly, you also may write with care. Therefore, after the conclusion of this feast, which is now drawing to its close, on the twelfth of the month Pharmuthi, which is on the vii Id. Apr. [4436] , Easter-day will be on the iii Kal, April; the fourth of Pharmuthi, according to the Alexandrians. When therefore the feast is finished, give notice again in these districts, according to early custom, thus: Easter Sunday is on the iii Kal. April, which is the fourth of Pharmuthi, according to the Alexandrian reckoning. And let no man hesitate concerning the day, neither let any one contend, saying, It is requisite that Easter should be held on the twenty-seventh of the month Phamenoth; for it was discussed in the holy Synod [4437] , and all there settled it to be on the iii Kal. April. I say then that it is on the fourth of the month Pharmuthi; for the week before this is much too early [4438] . Therefore let there be no dispute, but let us act as becometh us. For I have thus written to the Romans also. Give notice then as it has been notified to you, that it is on the iii Kal. April; the fourth of Pharmuthi, according to the Alexandrian reckoning.
That ye may have health in the Lord, I pray, my dearly beloved brethren. __________________________________________________________________
[4436] The number vii is omitted in the ms.
[4437] Sardica, in 343.
[4438] The 14th day of the Moon, reckoning from the time of mean New Moon, took place on Sunday the 23rd. According to the rule which obtained in later times and continued in use until the Gregorian reformation of the Calendar, the 14th day of the Ecclesiastical Moon took place on Saturday the 22nd, which would make Easter-day happen on the 23rd. It would seem, therefore, that the decision of the Synod referred to, brought the Ecclesiastical Moon into closer accordance with that of the heavens, than the later Calendar would have done. In 357 Easter was apparently kept on Mar. 23. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XIX.--(For 347.) Coss. Rufinus, Eusebius; Præf. the same Nestorius; Indict. v; Easter-day, Prid. Id. Apr., Pharmuthi xvii; Æra Dioclet. 63; Moon 15.
Blessed is God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ [4439] ,' for such an introduction is fitting for an Epistle, and more especially now, when it brings thanksgiving to the Lord, in the Apostle's words, because He hath brought us from a distance, and granted us again to send openly to you, as usual, the Festal Letters. For this is the season of the feast, my brethren, and it is near; being not now proclaimed by trumpets, as the history records [4440] , but being made known and brought near to us by the Saviour, Who suffered on our behalf and rose again, even as Paul preached, saying, Our Passover, Christ, is sacrificed [4441] .' Henceforth the feast of the Passover is ours, not that of a stranger, nor is it any longer of the Jews [4442] . For the time of shadows is abolished, and those former things have ceased, and now the month of new things [4443] is at hand, in which every man should keep the feast, in obedience to Him who said, Observe the month of new things, and keep the Passover to the Lord thy God [4444] .' Even the heathen fancy they keep festival, and the Jews hypo-critically feign to do so. But the feast of the heathen He reproves, as the bread [4445] of mourners, and He turns His face from that of the Jews, as being outcasts, saying, Your new moons and your sabbaths My soul hateth [4446] .'
2. For actions not done lawfully and piously, are not of advantage, though they may be reputed to be so, but they rather argue hypocrisy in those who venture upon them. Therefore, although such persons feign to offer sacrifices, yet they hear from the Father, Your whole burnt-offerings are not acceptable, and your sacrifices do not please Me; and although ye bring fine flour, it is vanity, incense also is an abomination unto Me [4447] .' For God does not need anything [4448] ; and, since nothing is unclean to Him, He is full in regard to them, as He testifies, by Isaiah, saying, I am full [4449] .' Now there was a law given about these things, for the instruction of the people, and to prefigure things to come, for Paul saith to the Galatians; Before faith came, we were kept guarded under the law, being shut up in the faith which should afterwards be revealed unto us; wherefore the law was our instructor in Christ, that we might be justified by faith [4450] .' But the Jews knew not, neither did they understand, therefore they walked in the daytime as in darkness, feeling for, but not touching, the truth we possess, which [was contained] in the law; conforming to the letter, but not submitting to the spirit. And when Moses was veiled, they looked on him, but turned away their faces from him when he was uncovered. For they knew not what they read, but erroneously substituted one thing for another. The prophet, therefore, cried against them, saying, Falsehood and faithlessness have prevailed among them.' The Lord also therefore said concerning them, The strange children have dealt falsely with Me; the strange children have waxen old [4451] .' But how gently does He reprove them, saying, Had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed Me, for he wrote of Me [4452] .' But being faithless, they went on to deal falsely with the law, affirming things after their own pleasure, but not understanding the Scripture; and, further, as they had hypocritically made a pretence of the plain text of Scripture, and had confidence in this, He is angry with them, saying by Isaiah, Who hath required these of your hands [4453] ?' And by Jeremiah, since they were very bold, he threatens, Gather together your whole burnt-offerings with your sacrifices, and eat flesh, for I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning whole burnt-offerings and sacrifices [4454] .' For they did not act as was right, neither was their zeal according to law, but they rather sought their own pleasure in such days, as the prophet accuses them, beating down their bondsmen, and gathering themselves together for strifes and quarrels, and they smote the lowly with the fist, and did all things that tended to their own gratification. For this cause, they continue without a feast until the end, although they make a display now of eating flesh, out of place and out of season. For, instead of the legally-appointed lamb, they have learned to sacrifice to Baal; instead of the true unleavened bread, they collect the wood, and their fathers kindle the fire, and their wives prepare the dough, that they may make cakes to the host of heaven, and pour out libations to strange gods, that they may provoke Me to anger, saith the Lord [4455] .' They have the just reward of such devices, since, although they pretend to keep the Passover, yet joy and gladness is taken from their mouth, as saith Jeremiah, There hath been taken away from the cities of Judah, and the streets of Jerusalem, the voice of those who are glad, and the voice of those who rejoice; the voice of the bridegroom, and the voice of the bride [4456] .' Therefore now, he who among them sacrificeth an ox, is as he who smiteth a man, and he who sacrificeth a lamb is as he who killeth a dog, he that offereth fine flour, is as [if he offered] swine's blood, he that giveth frankincense for a memorial, is as a blasphemer [4457] .' Now these things will never please God, neither thus hath the word required of them. But He saith, These have chosen their own ways; and their abominations are what their soul delighteth in [4458] .'
3. And what does this mean my brethren? For it is right for us to investigate the saying of the prophet, and especially on account of heretics who have turned their mind against the law. By Moses then, God gave commandment respecting sacrifices, and all the book called Leviticus is entirely taken up with the arrangement of these matters, so that He might accept the offerer. So through the Prophets, He blames him who despised these things, as disobedient to the commandment saying, I have not required these at your hands. Neither did I speak to your fathers respecting sacrifices, nor command them concerning whole burnt-offerings [4459] .' Now it is the opinion of some, that the Scriptures do not agree together, or that God, Who gave the commandment, is false. But there is no disagreement whatever, far from it, neither can the Father, Who is truth, lie; for it is impossible that God should lie [4460] ,' as Paul affirms. But all these things are plain to those who rightly consider them, and to those who receive with faith the writings of the law. Now it appears to me--may God grant, by your prayers, that the remarks I presume to make may not be far from the truth--that not at first were the commandment and the law concerning sacrifices, neither did the mind of God, Who gave the law, regard whole burnt-offerings, but those things which were pointed out and prefigured by them. For the law contained a shadow of good things to come.' And, Those things were appointed until the time of reformation [4461] .'
4. Therefore, the whole law did not treat of sacrifices, though there was in the law a commandment concerning sacrifices, that by means of them it might begin to instruct men and might withdraw them from idols, and bring them near to God, teaching them for that present time. Therefore neither at the beginning, when God brought the people out of Egypt, did He command them concerning sacrifices or whole burnt-offerings, nor even when they came to mount Sinai. For God is not as man, that He should be careful about these things beforehand; but His commandment was given, that they might know Him Who is truly God, and His Word, and might despise those which are falsely called gods, which are not, but appear in outward show. So He made Himself known to them in that He brought them out of Egypt, and caused them to pass through the Red Sea. But when they chose to serve Baal, and dared to offer sacrifices to those that have no existence, and forgot the miracles which were wrought in their behalf in Egypt, and thought of returning thither again; then indeed, after the law, that commandment concerning sacrifices was ordained as law; so that with their mind, which at one time had meditated on those which are not, they might turn to Him Who is truly God, and learn not, in the first place, to sacrifice, but to turn away their faces from idols, and conform to what God commanded. For when He saith, I have not spoken concerning sacrifices, neither given commandment concerning whole burnt-offerings,' He immediately adds, But this is the thing which I commanded them, saying, Obey My voice, and I will be to you a God, and ye shall be to Me a people, and ye shall walk in all the ways that I command you [4462] .' Thus then, being before instructed and taught, they learned not to do service to any one but the Lord. They attained to know what time the shadow should last, and not to forget the time that was at hand, in which no longer should the bullock of the herd be a sacrifice to God, nor the ram of the flock, nor the he-goat [4463] , but all these things should be fulfilled in a purely spiritual manner, and by constant prayer, and upright conversation, with godly words; as David sings, May my meditation be pleasing to Him. Let my prayer be set forth before Thee as incense, and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice [4464] .' The Spirit also, who is in him, commands, saying, Offer unto God the sacrifice of praise, and pay to the Lord thy vows. Offer the sacrifice of righteousness, and put your trust in the Lord [4465] .'
5. Samuel, that great man, no less clearly reproved Saul, saying, Is not the word better than a gift [4466] ?' For hereby a man fulfils the law, and pleases God, as He saith, The sacrifice of praise shall glorify Me.' Let a man learn what this means, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice [4467] ,' and I will not condemn the adversaries. But this wearied them, for they were not anxious to understand, for had they known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory [4468] .' And what their end is, the prophet foretold, crying, Woe unto their soul, for they have devised an evil thought, saying, let us bind the just man, because he is not pleasing to us [4469] .' The end of such abandonment as this can be nothing but error, as the Lord, when reproving them, saith, Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures [4470] .' Afterwards when, being reproved, they should have come to their senses, they rather grew insolent, saying, We are Moses' disciples; and we know that God spake to Moses [4471] ;' dealing the more falsely by that very expression, and accusing themselves. For had they believed him to whom they hearkened, they would not have denied the Lord, Who spake by Moses, when He was present. Not so did the eunuch in the Acts, for when he heard, Understandest thou what thou readest [4472] ?' he was not ashamed to confess his ignorance, and implored to be taught. Therefore, to him who became a learner, the grace of the Spirit was given. But as for those Jews who persisted in their ignorance; as the proverb saith, Death came upon them. For the fool dies in his sins [4473] .'
6. Like these too, are the heretics, who, having fallen from true discernment, dare to invent to themselves atheism. For the fool saith in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, and become abominable in their doings [4474] .' Of such as are fools in their thoughts, the actions are wicked, as He saith, can ye, being evil, speak good things [4475] ;' for they were evil, because they thought wickedness. Or how can those do just acts, whose minds are set upon fraud? Or how shall he love, who is prepared beforehand to hate? How shall he be merciful, who is bent upon the love of money? How shall he be chaste, who looks upon a woman to lust after her? For from the heart proceed evil thoughts, fornications, adulteries, murders [4476] .' By them the fool is wrecked, as by the waves of the sea, being led away and enticed by his fleshly pleasures; for this stands written, All flesh of fools is greatly tempest-tossed [4477] .' While he associates with folly, he is tossed by a tempest, and perishes, as Solomon says in the Proverbs, The fool and he who lacketh understanding shall perish together, and shall leave their wealth to strangers [4478] .' Now they suffer such things, because there is not among them one sound of mind to guide them. For where there is sagacity, there the Word, who is the Pilot of souls, is with the vessel; for he that hath understanding shall possess guidance [4479] ;' but they who are without guidance fall like the leaves. Who has so completely fallen away as Hymenæus and Philetus, who held evil opinions respecting the resurrection, and concerning faith in it suffered shipwreck? And Judas being a traitor, fell away from the Pilot, and perished with the Jews [4480] . But the disciples since they were wise, and therefore remained with the Lord, although the sea was agitated, and the ship covered with the waves, for there was a storm, and the wind was contrary, yet fell not away. For they awoke the Word, Who was sailing with them [4481] , and immediately the sea became smooth at the command of its Lord, and they were saved. They became preachers and teachers at the same time; relating the miracles of our Saviour, and teaching us also to imitate their example. These things were written on our account and for our profit, so that through these signs we may acknowledge the Lord Who wrought them.
7. Let us, therefore, in the faith of the disciples, hold frequent converse with our Master. For the world is like the sea to us, my brethren, of which it is written, This is the great and wide sea, there go the ships; the Leviathan, which Thou hast created to play therein [4482] .' We float on this sea, as with the wind, through our own free-will, for every one directs his course according to his will, and either, under the pilotage of the Word, he enters into rest, or, laid hold on by pleasure, he suffers shipwreck, and is in peril by storm. For as in the ocean there are storms and waves, so in the world there are many afflictions and trials. The unbelieving therefore when affliction or persecution ariseth is offended [4483] ,' as the Lord said. For not being confirmed in the faith, and having his regard towards temporal things, he cannot resist the difficulties which arise from afflictions. But like that house, built on the sand by the foolish man, so he, being without understanding [4484] , falls before the assault of temptations, as it were by the winds. But the saints, having their senses exercised in self-possession [4485] , and being strong in faith, and understanding the word, do not faint under trials; but although, from time to time, circumstances of greater trial are set against them, yet they continue faithful, and awaking the Lord Who is with them, they are delivered. So, passing through water and fire, they find relief and duly keep the feast, offering up prayers with thanksgiving to God Who has redeemed them. For either being tempted they are known, like Abraham, or suffering they are approved, like Job, or being oppressed and deceitfully treated, like Joseph, they patiently endure it, or being persecuted, they are not overtaken; but as it is written, through God they leap over the wall [4486] ' of wickedness, which divides and separates between brethren, and turns them from the truth. In this manner the blessed Paul, when he took pleasure in infirmities, in reproach, in necessities, in persecutions, and in distresses for Christ, rejoiced, and wished all of us to rejoice saying, Rejoice always; in everything give thanks [4487] .'
8. For what is so fitting for the feast, a turning from wickedness, and a pure conversation, and prayer offered without ceasing to God, with thanksgiving? Therefore let us, my brethren, looking forward to celebrate the eternal joy in heaven, keep the feast here also, rejoicing at all times, praying incessantly, and in everything giving thanks to the Lord. I give thanks to God, for those other wonders He has done, and for the various helps that have now been granted us, in that though He hath chastened us sore, He did not deliver us over to death, but brought us from a distance even as from the ends of the earth, and hath united us again with you. I have been mindful while I keep the feast, to give you also notice of the great feast of Easter, that so we may go up together, as it were, to Jerusalem, and eat the Passover, not separately but as in one house [4488] ; let us not as sodden in water, water down the word of God; neither let us, as having broken its bones, destroy the commands of the Gospel. But as roasted with fire, with bitterness, being fervent in spirit, in fastings and watchings, with lying on the ground, let us keep it with penitence and thanksgiving.
9. We begin the fast of forty days on the sixth day of Phamenoth (Mar. 2); and having passed through that properly, with fasting and prayers, we may be able to attain to the holy day. For he who neglects to observe the fast of forty days, as one who rashly and impurely treads on holy things, cannot celebrate the Easter festival. Further, let us put one another in remembrance, and stimulate one another not to be negligent, and especially that we should fast those days, so that fasts may receive us in succession, and we may rightly bring the feast to a close.
10. The fast of forty days begins then, as was already said, on the sixth of Phamenoth (Mar. 2), and the great week of the Passion on the eleventh of Pharmuthi (Apr. 6). And let us rest from the fast on the sixteenth of it (Apr. 11), on the seventh day, late in the evening. Let us keep the feast when the first of the week dawns upon us, on the seventeenth of the same month Pharmuthi (Apr. 12). Let us then add, one after the other, the seven holy weeks of Pentecost, rejoicing and praising God, that He hath by these things made known to us beforehand, joy and rest everlasting, prepared in heaven for us and for those who truly believe in Christ Jesus our Lord; through Whom, and with Whom, be glory and dominion to the Father, with the Holy Ghost, for ever and ever. Amen.
Salute one another with a holy kiss. The brethren who are with me salute you.
[4489] I have also thought it necessary to inform you of the appointment of Bishops, which has taken place in the stead of our blessed fellow-ministers, that ye may know to whom to write, and from whom ye should receive letters. In Syene, therefore, Nilammon, instead of Nilammon of the same name. In Latopolis, Masis, instead of Ammonius. In Coptos, Psenosiris [4490] , instead of Theodorus [4491] . In Panopolis, because Artemidorus [4492] desired it, on account of his old age, and weakness of body, Arius is appointed coadjutor. In Hypsele, Arsenius, having become reconciled to the Church. In Lycopolis, Eudæmon [4493] in the stead of Plusianus [4494] . In Antinoöpolis, Arion [4495] , instead of Ammonius and Tyrannus [4496] . In Oxyrynchus, Theodorus, instead of Pelagius. In Nilopolis, instead of Theon, Amatus [4497] , and Isaac, who are reconciled to each other. In Arsenoitis, Andreas [4498] , instead of Silvanus [4499] . In Prosopitis, Triadelphus, instead of Serapammon [4500] . In Diosphacus, on the river side, Theodorus, instead of Serapammon. In Sais, Paphnutius, instead of Nemesion. In Xois, Theodorus, instead of Anubion; and there is also with him Isidorus, who is reconciled to the Church. In Sethroitis, Orion [4501] , instead of Potammon [4502] . In Clysma, Tithonas [4503] , instead of Jacob; and there is with him Paulus, who has been reconciled to the Church. __________________________________________________________________
[4439] Eph. i. 3.
[4440] Cf. Letter i. 1.
[4441] 1 Cor. v. 7, cf. Letter i.
[4442] Cf. Letter 6, §2, and note.
[4443] Deut. xvi. 1, LXX.
[4444] Deut. xvi. 1, LXX., cf. Letter 1, §9, and note.
[4445] Hos. ix. 4.
[4446] Is. i. 14.
[4447] Ib. i. 13; Jer. vi. 20.
[4448] Orat.ii. 28, 29.
[4449] Is. i. 11.
[4450] Gal. iii. 23, 24. Athan. reads into S. Paul's words the thought that the Law itself, however misunderstood by the Jews, involved the faith of Christ.
[4451] Ps. xviii. 44, 45, LXX.
[4452] John v. 46.
[4453] Is. i. 12.
[4454] Jer. vii. 21, 22.
[4455] Ib. vii. 18.
[4456] Ib. vii. 34.
[4457] Is. lxvi. 3.
[4458] Ib
[4459] Is. i. 12; Jer. vii. 22.
[4460] Heb. vi. 18.
[4461] Ib. x. 1; ix. 10.
[4462] Jer. vii. 22, 23.
[4463] Exod. xii. 5.
[4464] Ps. civ. 34; cxli. 2.
[4465] Ib. l. 14; iv. 5.
[4466] Ecclus. xviii. 17.
[4467] Ps. l. 23; Hosea vi. 6; Matt. ix. 13
[4468] 1 Cor. ii. 8.
[4469] Is. iii. 9, 10; Wisd. ii. 12.
[4470] Matt. xxii. 29.
[4471] John ix. 28, 29.
[4472] Acts viii. 30.
[4473] Prov. xxiv. 9, LXX., cf. Ps. lv. 15.
[4474] Ps. xiv. 1.
[4475] Matt. xii. 34.
[4476] Ib. xv. 19.
[4477] Prov. xxvi. 10, LXX.
[4478] Not Proverbs, but Ps. xlix. 10.
[4479] Prov. i. 5, LXX.
[4480] Supr. Letter 7, §9.
[4481] Mark iv. 37-41
[4482] Ps. civ. 25, 26.
[4483] Mark iv. 17.
[4484] Luke vi. 49.
[4485] Heb. v. 14.
[4486] Ps. xviii. 29.
[4487] 1 Thess. v. 18.
[4488] Exod. xii. 8, 9, 46.
[4489] Vid. Letter 2, note.
[4490] Supr.p. 127?
[4491] Supr.p. 142.
[4492] Supr.p. 136, &c.
[4493] p. 127?
[4494] p. 136.
[4495] p. 127?
[4496] p. 142.
[4497] p. 127.
[4498] Cf. Tom. ad Ant. 10.
[4499] Supr. Letter 12.
[4500] pp. 127, 273.
[4501] p. 127.
[4502] p. 273.
[4503] Tithoes, p. 127. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XX.--(For 348.) Coss. Philippus, Salia; Præfect the same Nestorius; Indict. vi; Easter-day iii Non. Apr., viii Pharmuthi; Æra Dioclet. 64; Moon 18.
Let us now keep the feast, my brethren, for as our Lord then gave notice to His disciples, so He now tells us beforehand, that after some days is the Passover [4504] ,' in which the Jews indeed betrayed the Lord, but we celebrate His death as a feast, rejoicing because we then obtained rest from our afflictions. We are diligent in assembling ourselves together, for we were scattered in time past and were lost, and are found. We were far off, and are brought nigh, we were strangers, and have become His, Who suffered for us, and was nailed on the cross, Who bore our sins, as the prophet [4505] saith, and was afflicted for us, that He might put away from all of us grief, and sorrow, and sighing. When we thirst, He satisfies us on the feast-day itself; standing and crying, If any man thirst, let him come to Me, and drink [4506] .' For such is the love of the saints at all times, that they never once leave off, but offer the uninterrupted, constant sacrifice to the Lord, and continually thirst, and ask of Him to drink [4507] ; as David sang, My God, my God, early will I seek Thee, my soul thirsteth for Thee; many times my heart and flesh longeth for Thee in a barren land, without a path, and without water. Thus was I seen by Thee in the sanctuary [4508] .' And Isaiah the prophet says, From the night my spirit seeketh Thee early, O God, because Thy commandments are light [4509] .' And another says, My soul fainteth for the longing it hath for Thy judgments at all times.' And again he says, For Thy judgments I have hoped, and Thy law will I keep at all times [4510] .' Another boldly cries out, saying, Mine eye is ever towards the Lord.' And with him one says, The meditation of my heart is before Thee at all times.' And Paul further advises, At all times give thanks; pray without ceasing [4511] .' Those who are thus continually engaged, are waiting entirely on the Lord, and say, Let us follow on to know the Lord: we shall find Him ready as the morning, and He will come to us as the early and the latter rain for the earth [4512] .' For not only does He satisfy them in the morning; neither does He give them only as much to drink as they ask; but He gives them abundantly according to the multitude of His lovingkindness, vouchsafing to them at all times the grace of the Spirit. And what it is they thirst for He immediately adds, saying, He that believeth on Me.' For, as cold waters are pleasant to those who are thirsty [4513] ,' according to the proverb, so to those who believe in the Lord, the coming of the Spirit is better than all refreshment and delight.
2. It becomes us then in these days of the Passover, to rise early with the saints, and approach the Lord with all our soul, with purity of body, with confession and godly faith in Him; so that when we have here first drunk, and are filled with these divine waters which [flow] from Him, we may be able to sit at table with the saints in heaven, and may share in the one voice of gladness which is there. From this sinners, because it wearied them, are rightly cast out, and hear the words, Friend, how camest thou in hither, not having a wedding garment [4514] ?' Sinners indeed thirst, but not for the grace of the Spirit; but being inflamed with wickedness, they are wholly set on fire by pleasures, as saith the Proverb, All day long he desires evil desires.' But the Prophet cries against them, saying, Wo unto those who rise up early, and follow strong drink; who continue until the evening, for wine inflameth them [4515] .' And since they run wild in wantonness, they dare to thirst for the destruction of others. Having first drunk of lying and unfaithful waters, those things have come upon them, which are stated by the Prophet; My wound,' saith he, is grievous, whence shall I be healed; it hath surely been to me like deceitful waters, in which there is no trust [4516] .' Secondly, while they drink with their companions, they lead astray and disturb the right mind, and turn away the simple from it. And what does he cry? Wo unto him who causeth his neighbour to drink turbid destruction, and maketh him drunk, that he may look upon his caverns [4517] .' But those who dissemble, and steal away the truth, quench their hearts. Having first drunk of these things, they go on to say those things which the whore saith in the Proverbs, Lay hold with delight on hidden bread, and sweet stolen waters [4518] .' They lay snares secretly, because they have not the freedom of virtue, nor the boldness of Wisdom [4519] , who praises herself in the gates, and employs freedom of speech in the broad ways, preaching on high walls. For this reason, they are bidden to lay hold with delight [4520] ,' because, having the choice between faith and pleasures, they steal the sweetness of truth, and disguise their own bitter waters [to escape] from the blame of their wickedness, which would have been speedy and public. On this account, the wolf puts on the skin of the sheep, sepulchres deceive by their whitened exteriors [4521] . Satan, that is [4522] ... __________________________________________________________________
[4504] Matt. xxvi. 2.
[4505] Isa. liii. 4.
[4506] John vii. 37.
[4507] Cf. Letter vii. 5-7. The striking similarity between the seventh and the twentieth Letters has been already noticed.
[4508] Ps. lxiii. 1, 2, LXX.
[4509] Is. xxvi. 9.
[4510] Ps. cxix. 20, 43, 44.
[4511] Ib. xxv. 15; xix. 14; 1 Thess. v. 17.
[4512] Hos. vi. 3.
[4513] John vii. 38; Prov. xxv. 25.
[4514] Matt. xxii. 12.
[4515] Prov. xxi. 26; Is. v. 11.
[4516] Jer. xv. 18.
[4517] Hab. ii. 15, LXX.
[4518] Prov. ix. 17.
[4519] Ib. viii. 2.
[4520] Cf. Letter vii. §5.
[4521] Matt. vii. 15; xxiii. 27.
[4522] The Syriac ms. (which is imperfect) ends here. The fragments that follow are derived from different sources, mention whereof is made in the notes. __________________________________________________________________
From Letter XXII [4523] .--(For 350.)
Where our Lord Jesus Christ, who took upon Him to die for all, stretched forth His hands, not somewhere on the earth beneath, but in the air itself, in order that the Salvation effected by the Cross might be shewn to be for all men everywhere: destroying the devil who was working in the air: and that He might consecrate our road up to Heaven, and make it free. __________________________________________________________________
[4523] The above fragments are from Cosmos Indicopleustes: the Greek in Migne xxvi. 1432, sqq. __________________________________________________________________
From Letter XXIV [4524] .--(For 352.)
And at that time when they went forth and crossed over Egypt, their enemies were the sport of the sea; but now, when we pass over from earth to Heaven, Satan himself henceforth falls like lightning from Heaven. __________________________________________________________________
[4524] The above fragments are from Cosmas Indicopleustes: the Greek in Migne xxvi. 1432, sqq. __________________________________________________________________
From Letter XXVII.--(For 355.) From the twenty-seventh Festal Letter of Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria and Confessor; of which the commencement is, Again the season of the day of the living Passover [4525] .'
For who is our joy and boast, but our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Who suffered for us, and by Himself made known to us the Father? For He is no other than He Who of old time spoke by the Prophets; but now He saith to every man, I Who speak am near [4526] .' Right well is this word spoken, for He does not at one time speak, at another keep silence; but continually and at all times, from the beginning without ceasing, He raises up every man, and speaks to every man in his heart. __________________________________________________________________
[4525] The fragment here given of the twenty-seventh Letter, as well as fragments of the twenty-ninth and forty-fourth, are from Syriac translations, discovered by Mr. Cureton as quoted by Severus Patriarch of Antioch, in his work against Johannes Grammaticus contained in the Syriac collection of the British Museum (Cod. Add. 12, 157, fol. 202), and published by him with the preceding Letters. Their style would argue them to be part of the same translation.
[4526] John iv. 26. __________________________________________________________________
From Letter XXVIII [4527] .--(For 356.)
...In order that while He might become a sacrifice for us all, we, nourished up in the words of truth, and partaking of His living doctrine, might be able with the saints to receive also the joy of Heaven. For thither, as He called the disciples to the upper chamber, so does the Word call us with them to the divine and incorruptible banquet; having suffered for us here, but there, preparing the heavenly tabernacles for those who most readily hearken to the summons, and unceasingly, and [gazing] at the goal, pursue the prize of their high calling; where for them who come to the banquet, and strive with those who hinder them, there is laid up both a crown, and incorruptible joy. For even though, humanly speaking, the labour of such a journey is great, yet the Saviour Himself has rendered even it light and kindly. __________________________________________________________________
[4527] From Cosmas, see Migne xxvi. p. 1433. __________________________________________________________________
Another Fragment.
But let us, brethren, who have received the vineyard from the Saviour, and are invited to the heavenly banquet, inasmuch as the Feast is now drawing nigh, take the branches of the palm [4528] trees, and proving conquerors of sin, let us too like those, who on that occasion went to meet the Saviour, make ourselves ready by our conduct, both to meet Him when He comes, and to go in with Him and partake of the immortal food, and from thenceforth live eternally in the heavens. __________________________________________________________________
[4528] John xii. 13. __________________________________________________________________
From Letter XXIX [4529] .--(For 357.) From the twenty-ninth Letter, of which the beginning is, Sufficient for this present time is that which we have already written.'
The Lord proved the disciples [4530] , when He was asleep on the pillow, at which time a miracle was wrought, which is especially calculated to put even the wicked to shame. For when He arose, and rebuked the sea, and silenced the storm, He plainly shewed two things; that the storm of the sea was not from the winds, but from fear of its Lord Who walked upon it, and that the Lord Who rebuked it was not a creature, but rather its Creator, since a creature is not obedient to another creature. For although the Red Sea was divided before by Moses [4531] , yet it was not Moses who did it, for it came to pass, not because he spoke, but because God commanded. And if the sun stood still in Gibeon [4532] , and the moon in the valley of Ajalon, yet this was the work, not of the son of Nun, but of the Lord, Who heard his prayer. He it was Who both rebuked the sea, and on the cross caused the sun to be darkened [4533] . __________________________________________________________________
[4529] If these fragments are authentic, the statement in the Index, that this year no letter could be sent, is an error.
[4530] Mark iv. 37-41
[4531] Exod. xiv. 21.
[4532] Josh. x. 12.
[4533] Matt. xxvii. 45. __________________________________________________________________
Another Fragment [4534] .
And whereas what is human comes to an end, what is divine does not. For which reason also when we are dead, and when our nature is tired out, he raises us up, and leads us up [though] born of earth to heaven. __________________________________________________________________
[4534] From Cosmas; Migne xxvi. 1436. __________________________________________________________________
Another Fragment [4535] .
Here begins a letter of S. Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, to his children. May God comfort you. I know moreover that not only this thing saddens you, but also the fact that while others have obtained the churches by violence, you are meanwhile cast out from your places. For they hold the places, but you the Apostolic Faith. They are, it is true, in the places, but outside of the true Faith; while you are outside the places indeed, but the Faith, within you. Let us consider whether is the greater, the place or the Faith. Clearly the true Faith. Who then has lost more, or who possesses more? He who holds the place, or he who holds the Faith? Good indeed is the place, when the Apostolic Faith is preached there, holy is it if the Holy One dwell there. (After a little:) But ye are blessed, who by faith are in the Church, dwell upon the foundations of the faith, and have full satisfaction, even the highest degree of faith which remains among you unshaken. For it has come down to you from Apostolic tradition, and frequently has accursed envy wished to unsettle it, but has not been able. On the contrary, they have rather been cut off by their attempts to do so. For this is it that is written, Thou art the Son of the Living God [4536] ,' Peter confessing it by revelation of the Father, and being told, Blessed art thou Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood did not reveal it to thee,' but My Father Who is in heaven,' and the rest. No one therefore will ever prevail against your Faith, most beloved brethren. For if ever God shall give back the churches (for we think He will) yet without [4537] such restoration of the churches the Faith is sufficient for us. And lest, speaking without the Scriptures, I should [seem to] speak too strongly, it is well to bring you to the testimony of Scriptures, for recollect that the Temple indeed was at Jerusalem; the Temple was not deserted, aliens had invaded it, whence also the Temple being at Jerusalem, those exiles went down to Babylon by the judgment of God, who was proving, or rather correcting them; while manifesting to them in their ignorance punishment [by means] of blood-thirsty enemies [4538] . And aliens indeed had held the Place, but knew not the Lord of the Place, while in that He neither gave answer nor spoke, they were deserted by the truth. What profit then is the Place to them?
For behold they that hold the Place are charged by them that love God with making it a den of thieves, and with madly making the Holy Place a house of merchandise, and a house of judicial business for themselves to whom it was unlawful to enter there. For this and worse than this is what we have heard, most beloved, from those who are come from thence. However really, then, they seem to hold the church, so much the more truly are they cast out. And they think themselves to be within the truth, but are exiled, and in captivity, and [gain] no advantage by the church alone. For the truth of things is judged... __________________________________________________________________
[4535] The following fragment (Migne, ib. p. 1189), was published by Montfaucon from a Colbertine Latin ms. of about 800 a.d. He conjectured that it belonged to a Festal Letter. On this hypothesis, which is, however, as Mai observes, by no means self-evident, we append it to the above fragments of Letter 29, since internal evidence connects it with the handing over of the churches at Alexandria to the partisans of George, June, 356. At any rate, in spite of the heading of the fragment, its beginning is clearly not preserved.
[4536] Matt. xvi. 16, 17.
[4537] Text corrupt.
[4538] Lat. somewhat obscure. __________________________________________________________________
From Letter XXXIX.--(For 367.) Of the particular books and their number, which are accepted by the Church. From the thirty-ninth Letter of Holy Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, on the Paschal festival; wherein he defines canonically what are the divine books which are accepted by the Church.
...1. They have [4539] fabricated books which they call books of tables [4540] , in which they shew stars, to which they give the names of Saints. And therein of a truth they have inflicted on themselves a double reproach: those who have written such books, because they have perfected themselves in a lying and contemptible science; and as to the ignorant and simple, they have led them astray by evil thoughts concerning the right faith established in all truth and upright in the presence of God.
...2. But [4541] since we have made mention of heretics as dead, but of ourselves as possessing the Divine Scriptures for salvation; and since I fear lest, as Paul wrote to the Corinthians [4542] , some few of the simple should be beguiled from their simplicity and purity, by the subtilty of certain men, and should henceforth read other books--those called apocryphal--led astray by the similarity of their names with the true books; I beseech you to bear patiently, if I also write, by way of remembrance, of matters with which you are acquainted, influenced by the need and advantage of the Church.
3. In proceeding to make mention of these things, I shall adopt, to commend my undertaking, the pattern of Luke the Evangelist, saying on my own account: Forasmuch as some have taken in hand [4543] ,' to reduce into order for themselves the books termed apocryphal, and to mix them up with the divinely inspired Scripture, concerning which we have been fully persuaded, as they who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the Word, delivered to the fathers; it seemed good to me also, having been urged thereto by true brethren, and having learned from the beginning, to set before you the books included in the Canon, and handed down, and accredited as Divine; to the end that any one who has fallen into error may condemn those who have led him astray; and that he who has continued stedfast in purity may again rejoice, having these things brought to his remembrance.
4. There are, then, of the Old Testament, twenty-two books in number; for, as I have heard, it is handed down that this is the number of the letters among the Hebrews; their respective order and names being as follows. The first is Genesis, then Exodus, next Leviticus, after that Numbers, and then Deuteronomy. Following these there is Joshua, the son of Nun, then Judges, then Ruth. And again, after these four books of Kings, the first and second being reckoned as one book, and so likewise the third and fourth as one book. And again, the first and second of the Chronicles are reckoned as one book. Again Ezra, the first and second [4544] are similarly one book. After these there is the book of Psalms, then the Proverbs, next Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs. Job follows, then the Prophets, the twelve being reckoned as one book. Then Isaiah, one book, then Jeremiah with Baruch, Lamentations, and [4545] the epistle, one book; afterwards, Ezekiel and Daniel, each one book. Thus far constitutes the Old Testament.
5. Again it is not tedious to speak of the [books] of the New Testament. These are, the four Gospels, according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Afterwards, the Acts of the Apostles and Epistles (called Catholic), seven, viz. of James, one; of Peter, two; of John, three; after these, one of Jude. In addition, there are fourteen Epistles of Paul, written in this order. The first, to the Romans; then two to the Corinthians; after these, to the Galatians; next, to the Ephesians; then to the Philippians; then to the Colossians; after these, two to the Thessalonians, and that to the Hebrews; and again, two to Timothy; one to Titus; and lastly, that to Philemon. And besides, the Revelation of John.
6. These are fountains of salvation, that they who thirst may be satisfied with the living words they contain. In these alone is proclaimed the doctrine of godliness. Let no man add to these, neither let him take ought from these. For concerning these the Lord put to shame the Sadducees, and said, Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures.' And He reproved the Jews, saying, Search the Scriptures, for these are they that testify of Me [4546] .'
7. But for greater exactness I add this also, writing of necessity; that there are other books besides these not indeed included in the Canon, but appointed by the Fathers to be read by those who newly join us, and who wish for instruction in the word of godliness. The Wisdom of Solomon, and the Wisdom of Sirach, and Esther, and Judith, and Tobit, and that which is called the Teaching of the Apostles, and the Shepherd. But the former, my brethren, are included in the Canon, the latter being [merely] read; nor is there in any place a mention of apocryphal writings. But they are an invention of heretics, who write them when they choose, bestowing upon them their approbation, and assigning to them a date, that so, using them as ancient writings, they may find occasion to lead astray the simple. __________________________________________________________________
[4539] This section is preserved in the Coptic (Memphitic) Life of S. Theodore (Amélineau Ann. du Musée Guimet. xvii. p. 239). Its contents and the context in which it is quoted appear decisive for its identification as part of Letter 39. But the Letter from which the fragment comes is stated in the context to have been received by Theodore in the spring previous to his death. If Theodore died in 364, as seems probable on other grounds (see p. 569, note 3), the speech from which our fragment comes must have been written for him by his biographer. This is not unlikely, nor does it throw any suspicion on the genuineness of the fragment itself.
[4540] Copt. apogrammon: astrological charts or tables appear to be meant.
[4541] The remainder of the thirty-ninth Letter has long been before the world, having been preserved, with the heading of the Letter, in the original Greek, by Theodorus Balsamon. It may be found in the first volume of the Benedictine edition of the works of S. Athan. tom. i. p. 767. ed. 1777. [Migne, ubi supra]. A Syriac translation of it was discovered by Cureton in an anonymous Commentary on the Scriptures in the collection of the British Museum (Cod. 12, 168). This translation commences only at the quotation from S. Luke. The Syriac is apparently the work of a different translator.
[4542] 2 Cor. xi. 3.
[4543] Luke i. 1.
[4544] i.e. Ezra and Nehemiah.
[4545] i.e. Baruch vi.--The Syriac has the conjunction, which is rejected by the Benedictine editors.
[4546] Matt. xxii. 29; John v. 39. __________________________________________________________________
From Letter XL [4547] .--(For 368.)
Ye are they that have continued with Me in My temptations; and I appoint unto you a kingdom, as My Father hath appointed unto Me, that ye may eat and drink at My table in My kingdom [4548] .' Being called, then, to the great and heavenly Supper, in that upper room which has been swept, let us cleanse ourselves,' as the Apostle exhorted, from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God [4549] ;' that so, being spotless within and without,--without, clothing ourselves with temperance and justice; within, by the Spirit, rightly dividing the word of truth--we may hear, Enter into the joy of thy Lord [4550] .' __________________________________________________________________
[4547] The following fragments are, except Letter 44, preserved in the original Greek, by Cosmas (Migne xxvi. 1440 sqq.).
[4548] Luke xxii. 28-30
[4549] 2 Cor. vii. 1.
[4550] Matt. xxv. 21. __________________________________________________________________
From Letter XLII.--(For 370.)
For we have been called, brethren, and are now called together, by Wisdom, and according to the Evangelical parable, to that great and heavenly Supper, and sufficient for every creature; I mean, to the Passover,--to Christ, Who is sacrificed; for Christ our Passover is sacrificed.' (And afterwards:) They, therefore, that are thus prepared shall hear, Enter into the joy of thy Lord [4551] .' __________________________________________________________________
[4551] Ib. and 1 Cor. v. 7. __________________________________________________________________
From Letter XLIII.--(For 371.)
Of us, then, whose also is the Passover, the calling is from above, and our conversation is in heaven,' as Paul says; For we have here no abiding city, but we seek that which is to come [4552] ,' whereto, also, looking forward, we properly keep the feast. (And again, afterwards:) Heaven truly is high, and its distance from us infinite; for the heaven of heavens,' says he, is the Lord's [4553] .' But not, on that account, are we to be negligent or fearful, as though the way thereto were impossible; but rather should we be zealous. Yet not, as in the case of those who formerly, removing from the east and finding a plain in Senaar, began [to build a tower], is there need for us to bake bricks with fire, and to seek slime for mortar; for their tongues were confounded, and their work was destroyed. But for us the Lord has consecrated a way through His blood, and has made it easy. (And again:) For not only has He afforded us consolation respecting the distance, but also in that He has come and opened the door for us which was once shut. For, indeed, it was shut from the time He cast out Adam from the delight of Paradise, and set the Cherubim and the flaming sword, that turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life--now, however, opened wide. And He that sitteth upon the Cherubim having appeared with greater grace and loving-kindness, led into Paradise with himself the thief who confessed, and having entered heaven as our forerunner, opened the gates to all. (And again:) Paul also, pressing toward the mark for the prize of the high calling [4554] ,' by it was taken up to the third heaven, and having seen those things which are above, and then descended, he teaches us, announcing what is written to the Hebrews, and saying, For ye are not come unto the mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire, and clouds, and darkness, and a tempest, and to the voice of words. But ye are come unto Mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, and to the general assembly and Church of the first-born, which are written in heaven [4555] .' Who would not wish to enjoy the high companionship with these! Who not desire to be enrolled with these, that he may hear with them, Come, ye blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world [4556] .' __________________________________________________________________
[4552] Phil. iii. 20; Heb. xiii. 14.
[4553] Ps. cxv. 16.
[4554] Phil. iii. 14.
[4555] Heb. xii. 18-23
[4556] Matt. xxv. 34. __________________________________________________________________
From Letter XLIV.--(For 372.) And again, from the forty-fourth Letter, of which the commencement is, All that our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ did instead of us and for us [4557] .'
When therefore the servants of the Chief Priests and the Scribes saw these things, and heard from Jesus, Whosoever is athirst, let him come to Me and drink [4558] ;' they perceived that this was not a mere man like themselves, but that this was He Who gave water to the saints, and that it was He Who was announced by the prophet Isaiah. For He was truly the splendour of the light [4559] , and the Word of God. And thus as a river from the fountain he gave drink also of old to Paradise; but now to all men He gives the same gift of the Spirit, and says, If any man thirst, let him come to Me and drink.' Whosoever believeth on Me, as saith the Scripture, rivers of living water shall flow out of his belly [4560] .' This was not for man to say, but for the living God, Who truly vouchsafes life, and gives the Holy Spirit. __________________________________________________________________
[4557] See Letter 27, note 1.
[4558] John vii. 37.
[4559] Cf. Heb. i. 3
[4560] John vii. 37, 38. __________________________________________________________________
From Letter XLV.--(For 373.)
Let us all take up our sacrifices, observing distribution to the poor, and enter into the holy place, as it is written; whither also our forerunner Jesus is entered for us, having obtained eternal redemption [4561] .'...(From the same:)...And this is a great proof that, whereas we were strangers, we are called friends; from being formerly aliens, we are become fellow-citizens with the saints, and are called children of the Jerusalem which is above, whereof that which Solomon built was a type. For if Moses made all things according to the pattern shewed him in the mount, it is clear that the service performed in the tabernacle was a type of the heavenly mysteries, whereto the Lord, desirous that we should enter, prepared for us the new and abiding way. And as all the old things were a type of the new, so the festival that now is, is a type of the joy which is above, to which coming with psalms and spiritual songs, let us begin the fasts [4562] . __________________________________________________________________
[4561] Heb. vi. 20; ix. 12.
[4562] This fragment is the latest writing of Athanasius that we possess. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
II. Personal Letters.
Letter XLVI.--Letter [4563] to the Mareotis from Sardica, a.d. 343-4.
Athanasius to the presbyters and deacons and the people of the Catholic Church in the Mareotis, brethren beloved and longed for, greeting in the Lord.
The holy council has praised your piety in Christ. They have all acknowledged your spirit and fortitude in all things, in that ye did not fear threats, and though you had to bear insults and persecutions against your piety you held out. Your letters when read out to all produced tears and enlisted universal sympathy. They loved you though absent, and reckoned your persecutions as their own. Their letter to you is a proof of their affection: and although it would suffice to include you along with the holy Church of Alexandria [4564] , yet the holy synod has written separately to you in order that ye may be encouraged not to give way on account of your sufferings, but to give thanks to God; because your patience shall have good fruit.
Formerly the character of the heretics was not evident. But now it is revealed and laid open to all. For the holy synod has taken cognisance of the calumnies these men have concocted against you, and has had them in abhorrence, and has deposed Theodore, Valens, Ursacius, in Alexandria [4565] and the Mareotis by consent of all. The same notice has been given to other Churches also. And since the cruelty and tyranny practised by them against the Churches can no longer be borne, they have been cast out from the episcopate and expelled from the communion of all. Moreover of Gregory they were unwilling even to make mention, for since the man has lacked the very name of bishop, they thought it superfluous to name him. But on account of those who are deceived by him they have mentioned his name; not because he seemed worthy of mention, but that those deceived by him might thereby recognise his infamy and blush at the kind of man with whom they have communicated. You will learn what has been written about them from the previous document [4566] : and though not all of the bishops came together to sign, yet it was drawn up by all, and they signed for all. Salute one another with a holy kiss. All the brethren salute you.
I, Protogenes [4567] , bishop, desire that you may be preserved in the Lord, beloved and longed for.
I, Athenodorus*, bishop, desire that ye may be preserved in the Lord, most beloved brethren. [Other signatures] Julian, Ammonius, Aprianus, Marcellus, Gerontius*, Porphyrius*, Zosimus, Asclepius, Appian, Eulogius, Eugenius, Liodorus (26), Martyrius, Eucarpus, Lucius*, Caloes. Maximus: by letters from the Gauls I desire that ye may be preserved in the Lord, beloved. We, Arcidamus and Philoxenus, presbyters, and Leo a deacon, from Rome, desire that ye may be preserved. I, Gaudentius, bishop of Naissus, desire that ye may be preserved in the Lord. [Also] Florentius of Meria in Pannonia, Ammianus (9), of Castellum in Pannonia, Januarius of Beneventum, Prætextatus of Narcidonum in Pannonia, Hyperneris (48) of Hypata in Thessaly, Castus of Cæsaraugusta, Severus of Calcisus in Thessaly, Julian of Therae Heptapolis [4568] , Lucius of Verona, Eugenius (35) of Hecleal Cycbinae [4569] , Zosimus (92) of Lychni [4570] Sunosion in Apulia [4571] , Hermogenes of Syceon [4572] , Thryphos of Magara, Paregorius* of Caspi, Caloes (21) of Castromartis, Ireneus of Syconis, Macedonius of Lypianum, Martyrius of Naupacti, Palladius of Dius, Broseus (87) of Lu[g]dunum in Gaul, Ursacius of Brixia, Amantius of Viminacium, by the presbyter Maximus, Alexander of Gypara in Achaia, Eutychius of Mothona, Aprianus of Petavio in Pannonia, Antigonus of Pallene in Macedonia, Dometius* of Acaria Constantias, Olympius of Enorodope [4573] , Zosimus of Oreomarga, Protasius of Milan, Mark of Siscia on the Save, Eucarpus of Opûs in Achaia, Vitalis* of Vertara in Africa, Helianus of Tyrtana, Symphorus of Herapythae in Crete, Mosinius (64) of Heracla, Eucissus of Chisamus [4574] , Cydonius of Cydonia [4575] . __________________________________________________________________
[4563] This and the following letters were first printed by Scipio Maffei from a Latin ms. in the Chapter Library of Verona, along with the Historia Acephala. They were included in Galland, Bibl. Patr. vol. 5, and in Justiniani's Ed. of Athanasius (Padua, 1777). The letters are printed in Migne, xxvi. 1333, sqq., along with one (from the same source) addressed by the Council to the Mareotic Churches. Hefele doubts their genuineness, but without reason (ii. 166, E. Tra.) The list of signatures (an independent source of information, supr. p. 147) alone proves the contrary. The two letters may be taken as a supplement to the documents given, Apol. c. Ar. 37-50 (see also p. 147), with which they have many points of resemblance. The Latin is very bad and occasionally without sense; it bears clear traces of being a rendering by an unskilful hand from Greek.
[4564] In the letter referred to in note 1.
[4565] i.e. has given notice to those places of their deposition.
[4566] The letter of the Council.
[4567] For the probably correct names and sees, see p. 147, sq. The asterisk denotes signatories of the letter of the Council to the Mareotis, the numbers in brackets denote those of the list on pp. 147, sq.
[4568] Thera was divided into seven districts. Herod. iv. 153.
[4569] These two sees are a puzzle.
[4570] These two sees are a puzzle.
[4571] Probably Canusium, the name of Stercorius being lost, lurks in this corruption.
[4572] In Galatia?
[4573] Æni in Thrace. D.C.B. iv. 75 (3).
[4574] In Crete, near Cydonia.
[4575] 59 signatures, to which add Stercorius (note 8) and Athanasius, making 61. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XLVII.--To the Church of Alexandria on the same occasion.
Athanasius to all the presbyters and deacons of the holy Catholic Church at Alexandria and the Parembola, brethren most beloved, greeting.
In writing this I must begin my letter, most beloved brethren, by giving thanks to Christ. But now this is especially fitting, since both many things and great, done by the Lord, deserve our thanks [4576] , and those who believe in Him ought not to be ungrateful for His many benefits. We thank the Lord therefore, who always manifests us to all in the faith, who also has at this time done many wonderful things for the Church. For what the heretical party of Eusebius and heirs of Arius have maintained and spread abroad, all the bishops who assembled have pronounced false and fictitious. And the very men who are thought terrible by many, like those who are called giants, were counted as nothing, and rightly so, for just as the darkness is illuminated when light comes, so, iniquity is unveiled by the coming of the just, and when the good are present, the worthless are exposed.
For you yourselves, beloved, are not ignorant what the successors of the ill-named heresy of Eusebius did, namely Theodore, Narcissus, Valens, Ursacius, and the worst of them all, George, Stephen, Acacius, Menophantus, and their colleagues, for their madness is manifest to all; nor has it escaped your observation what they committed against the Churches. For you were the first they injured, your Church the first they tried to corrupt. But they who did so many great things, and were, as I said above, terrible to the minds of all, have been so frightened as to pass all imagination. For not only did they fear the Roman Synod, not only when invited to it did they excuse themselves, but, now also having arrived at Sardica, so conscience-stricken were they, that when they had seen the judges, they were astonished. So they fainted in their minds. Verily, one might say to them: Death, where is thy sting, Death, where is thy victory?' For neither did it go as they wished, for them to give judgment as they pleased; this time they could not over-reach whom they would. But they saw faithful men, that cared for justice, nay rather, they saw our Lord Himself among them, like the demons of old from the tombs; for being sons of falsehood, they could not bear to see the truth. So Theodore, Narcissus, and Ursacius, with their friends said as follows [4577] : Stay, what have we to do with you, men of Christ? We know that you are true, and fear to be convicted: we shrink from confessing our calumnies to your face. We have nothing to do with you; for you are Christians, while we are foes to Christ; and while with you truth is powerful, we have learned to over-reach. We thought our deeds were hid; we did not think that we were now coming to judgment; why do you expose our deeds before their time; and by exposing us vex us before the day?' and although they are of the worst character and walk in darkness, yet they have learnt at last that there is no agreement between light and darkness, and no concord between Christ and Belial. Accordingly, beloved brethren, since they knew what they had done, and saw their victims [4578] ready as accusers, and the witnesses before their eyes, they followed the example of Cain and fled like him; in that they greatly wandered [4579] , for they imitated his flight, and so have received his condemnation. For the holy council knows their works; it has heard our blood crying aloud, heard from themselves the voices of the wounded. All the Bishops know how they have sinned, and how many things they have done against our Churches and others; and accordingly they have expelled these men from the Churches like Cain. For who did not weep when your letter was read? who did not groan to see whom those men had exiled? Who did not reckon your tribulations his own? Most beloved brethren, you suffered formerly when they were committing evil against you, and perhaps it is no long time since the war has ceased. Now, however, all the Bishops who assembled and heard what you have suffered, grieved and lamented just as you did when you suffered the injuries and [4580] they shared your grief at that time....
On account of these deeds then, and all the others which they have committed against the Churches, the holy general council has deposed them all, and not only has judged them aliens from the Church, but has held them unworthy to be called Christians. For how can men be called Christians who deny Christ? And how can men be admitted to church who do evil against the Churches? Accordingly, the holy council has sent to the Churches everywhere, that they may be marked among all, so that they who were deceived by them may now return to full assurance and truth. Do not therefore fail, beloved brethren; like servants of God, and professors of the faith of Christ, be tried in the Lord, and let not tribulation cast you down, neither let troubles caused by the heretics who plot against you make you sad. For you have the sympathy of the whole world in your grief, and what is more, it bears you all in mind. Now I think that those deceived by them will, when they see the severe sentence of the Council, turn aside from them and reject their impiety. If, however, even after this their hand is lifted up, do you not be astonished, nor fear if they rage; but pray and raise your hands to God, and be sure that the Lord will not tarry but will perform all things according to your will. I could wish indeed to write you a longer letter with a detailed account of what has taken place, but since the presbyters and deacons are competent to tell you in person of all they have seen, I have refrained from writing much. One thing alone I charge you, considering it a necessity, that having the fear of the Lord before your eyes you will put Him first, and carry on all things with your wonted concord as men of wisdom and understanding. Pray for us, bearing in mind the necessities of the widows [4581] , especially since the enemies of truth have taken away what belongs to them. But let your love overcome the malice of the heretics. For we believe that according to your prayers the Lord will be gracious and permit me to see you speedily. Meanwhile you will learn the proceedings at the Synod by what all the Bishops have written to you, and from the appended letter you will perceive the deposition of Theodore, Narcissus, Stephen, Acacius, George, Menophantus, Ursacius and Valens. For Gregory they did not wish to mention: since they thought it superfluous to name a man who lacked the very name of bishop. Yet for the sake of those deceived by him they have mentioned his name, not that his name was worthy of mention, but in order that those deceived by him may learn his infamy and blush for the sort of man they have communicated with [4582] ....I pray that you may be preserved in the Lord, brethren most beloved and longed for. __________________________________________________________________
[4576] Latin hardly translateable.
[4577] Cf. Hist. Ar. and Introd. Fialon, p. 209, remarks on the uncritical adoption (by Fleury and his plagiarist Rohrbacher) of these satirical colloquies as an authentic account of what was actually said.
[4578] Lat. quæcunque miserrimos videntes accusatores, testes præ oculis habentes:' apparently a barbarous rendering of idontes kai tous par' auton pathontas, tous kategorous, tous elenchous pro ophthalmon echontes, as in Apol. Ar. 45.
[4579] Granditer erraverunt,' either for makran apephugon, or for sphodra eplemmelesan: no verb elsewhere used in this connection in Athanasius exactly corresponds to erraverunt,' nor is the flight to Philippopolis elsewhere compared, as here, to that of Cain. But the latter comparison is often used by Ath. in other connections.
[4580] illis...erat dolor communis illo tempore quo processistis. The Latin has quite lost the sense.
[4581] For the philoptochia of Athanasius, cf. Hist. Ar. 61, Vit. Ant. 17, 30, and the stress laid on the hardship of the artoi (as here) in Encycl. 4, Hist. Ar. ubi supr. and 72.
[4582] ....tamen, et hoc cum illis.' __________________________________________________________________
Letter XLVIII.--Letter to Amun [4583] . Written before 354 a.d.
All things made by God are beautiful and pure, for the Word of God has made nothing useless or impure. For we are a sweet savour of Christ in them that are being saved [4584] ,' as the Apostle says. But since the devil's darts are varied and subtle, and he contrives to trouble those who are of simpler mind, and tries to hinder the ordinary exercises of the brethren, scattering secretly among them thoughts of uncleanness and defilement; come let us briefly dispel the error of the evil one by the grace of the Saviour, and confirm the mind of the simple. For to the pure all things are pure,' but both the conscience and all that belongs to the unclean are defiled [4585] . I marvel also at the craft of the devil, in that, although he is corruption and mischief itself, he suggests thoughts under the show of purity; but with the result of a snare rather than a test. For with the object, as I said before, of distracting ascetics from their customary and salutary meditation, and of appearing to overcome them, he stirs some such buzzing thoughts as are of no profit in life, vain questions and frivolities which one ought to put aside. For tell me, beloved and most pious friend, what sin or uncleanness there is in any natural secretion,--as though a man were minded to make a culpable matter of the cleanings of the nose or the sputa from the mouth? And we may add also the secretions of the belly, such as are a physical necessity of animal life. Moreover if we believe man to be, as the divine Scriptures say, a work of God's hands, how could any defiled work proceed from a pure Power? and if, according to the divine Acts of the Apostles [4586] , we are God's offspring,' we have nothing unclean in ourselves. For then only do we incur defilement, when we commit sin, that foulest of things. But when any bodily excretion takes place independently of will, then we experience this, like other things, by a necessity of nature. But since those whose only pleasure is to gainsay what is said aright, or rather what is made by God, pervert even a saying in the Gospels, alleging that not that which goeth in defileth a man, but that which goeth out [4587] ,' we are obliged to make plain this unreasonableness,--for I cannot call it a question--of theirs. For firstly, like unstable persons, they wrest the Scriptures [4588] to their own ignorance. Now the sense of the divine oracle is as follows. Certain persons, like these of today, were in doubt about meats. The Lord Himself, to dispel their ignorance, or it may be to unveil their deceitfulness, lays down that, not what goes in defiles the man, but what goes out. Then he adds exactly whence they go out, namely from the heart. For there, as he knows, are the evil treasures of profane thoughts and other sins. But the Apostle teaches the same thing more concisely, saying, But meat shall not bring us before God [4589] .' Moreover, one might reasonably say no natural secretion will bring us before him for punishment. But possibly medical men (to put these people to shame even at the hands of outsiders) will support us on this point, telling us that there are certain necessary passages accorded to the animal body, to provide for the dismissal of the superfluity of what is secreted in our several parts; for example, for the superfluity of the head, the hair and the watery discharges from the head, and the purgings of the belly, and that superfluity again of the seminative channels. What sin then is there in God's name, elder most beloved of God, if the Master who made the body willed and made these parts to have such passages? But since we must grapple with the objections of evil persons, as they may say, If the organs have been severally fashioned by the Creator, then there is no sin in their genuine use,' let us stop them by asking this question: What do you mean by use? That lawful use which God permitted when He said, Increase and multiply, and replenish the earth [4590] ,' and which the Apostle approves in the words, Marriage is honourable and the bed undefiled [4591] ,' or that use which is public, yet carried on stealthily and in adulterous fashion? For in other matters also which go to make up life, we shall find differences according to circumstances. For example, it is not right to kill, yet in war it is lawful and praiseworthy to destroy the enemy; accordingly not only are they who have distinguished themselves in the field held worthy of great honours, but monuments are put up proclaiming their achievements. So that the same act is at one time and under some circumstances unlawful, while under others, and at the right time, it is lawful and permissible. The same reasoning applies to the relation of the sexes. He is blessed who, being freely yoked in his youth, naturally begets children. But if he uses nature licentiously, the punishment of which the Apostle [4592] writes shall await whoremongers and adulterers.
For there are two ways in life, as touching these matters. The one the more moderate and ordinary, I mean marriage; the other angelic and unsurpassed, namely virginity. Now if a man choose the way of the world, namely marriage, he is not indeed to blame; yet he will not receive such great gifts as the other. For he will receive, since he too brings forth fruit, namely thirtyfold [4593] . But if a man embrace the holy and unearthly way, even though, as compared with the former, it be rugged and hard to accomplish, yet it has the more wonderful gifts: for it grows the perfect fruit, namely an hundredfold. So then their unclean and evil objections had their proper solution long since given in the divine Scriptures. Strengthen then, father, the flocks [4594] under you, exhorting them from the Apostolic writings, guiding them from the Evangelical, counselling them from the Psalms, and saying, quicken me according to Thy Word [4595] ;' but by Thy Word,' is meant that we should serve Him with a pure heart. For knowing this, the Prophet says, as if interpreting himself, Make me a clean heart, O God [4596] ,' lest filthy thoughts trouble me. David again, And stablish me with Thy free spirit [4597] ,' that even if ever thoughts disturb me, a certain strong power from Thee may stablish me, acting as a support. Giving then this and the like advice, say with regard to those who are slow to obey the truth, I will teach Thy ways unto the wicked,' and, confident in the Lord that you will persuade them to desist from such wickedness, sing and sinners shall be converted unto Thee [4598] .' And be it granted, that they who raise malicious questions may cease from such vain labour, and that they who doubt in their simplicity may be strengthened with a free spirit;' while as many of you as surely know the truth, hold it unbroken and unshaken in Christ Jesus our Lord, with whom be to the Father glory and might, together with the Holy Spirit, for ever and ever. Amen. __________________________________________________________________
[4583] See Migne xxvi. 1169, sqq.; Prolegg. ch. ii, §7. Amun, probably the Nitrian monk (supr. p. 212, and D.C.B. i. 102 init.). At any rate, Athanasius addresses his correspondent as elder' and father,' which accords well with the language of Vit. Ant. ubi supr. The letter states clearly Athanasius' opinion as to the relative value of the celibate and married state. It also shews the healthy good sense of the great bishop in dealing with the morbid scrupulosity which even at that early date had begun to characterise certain circles in the Monastic world.
[4584] 2 Cor. ii. 15.
[4585] Tit. i. 15.
[4586] Acts xvii. 28.
[4587] Matt. xv. 11.
[4588] 2 Pet. iii. 16.
[4589] 1 Cor. viii. 8.
[4590] Gen. i. 28.
[4591] Heb. xiii. 4.
[4592] Heb. xiii. 4.
[4593] See Mark iv. 20, &c.
[4594] This is a clear reference to the Monastic Societies which had now long existed in the Nitrian desert.
[4595] Ps. cxix. 107.
[4596] Ps. li. 10.
[4597] Ib. 12
[4598] Ib. li. 13. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XLIX.--Letter to Dracontius [4599] . Written a.d. 354 or 355.
I am at a loss how to write. Am I to blame you for your refusal? or for having regard to the trials, and hiding for fear of the Jews [4600] ? In any case, however it may be, what you have done is worthy of blame, beloved Dracontius. For it was not fitting that after receiving the grace you should hide, nor that, being a wise man, you should furnish others with a pretext for flight. For many are offended when they hear it; not merely that you have done this, but that you have done it having regard to the times and to the afflictions which are weighing upon the Church. And I fear lest, in flying for your own sake, you prove to be in peril in the sight of the Lord on account of others. For if he that offendeth one of the little ones, should rather choose that a mill stone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depths of the sea [4601] ,' what can be in store for you, if you prove an offence to so many? For the surprising unanimity about your election in the district [4602] of Alexandria will of necessity be broken up by your retirement: and the episcopate of the district will be grasped at by many,--and many unfit persons, as you are well aware. And many heathen who were promising to become Christians upon your election will remain heathen, if your piety sets at nought the grace given you.
2. What defence will you offer for such conduct? With what arguments will you be able to wash away and efface such an impeachment? How will you heal those who on your account are fallen and offended? Or how will you be able to restore the broken peace? Beloved Dracontius, you have caused us grief instead of joy, groaning instead of consolation. For we expected to have you with us as a consolation; and now we behold you in flight, and that you will be convicted in judgment, and when upon your trial will repent it. And Who shall have pity upon thee [4603] ,' as the Prophet says, who will turn his mind to you for peace, when he sees the brethren for whom Christ died injured on account of your flight? For you must know, and not be in doubt, that while before your election you lived to yourself, after it, you live for your flock. And before you had received the grace of the episcopate, no one knew you; but after you became one, the laity expect you to bring them food, namely instruction from the Scriptures. When then they expect, and suffer hunger, and you are feeding yourself [4604] only, and our Lord Jesus Christ comes and we stand before Him, what defence will you offer when He sees His own sheep hungering? For had you not taken the money, He would not have blamed you. But He would reasonably do so if upon taking it you dug and buried it,--in the words which God forbid that your piety should ever hear: Thou oughtest to have given my money to the bankers, that when I came I might demand it of them [4605] .'
3. I beseech you, spare yourself and us. Yourself, lest you run into peril; us, lest we be grieved because of you. Take thought of the Church, lest many of the little ones be injured on your account, and the others be given an occasion of withdrawing. Nay but if you feared the times and acted as you did from timidity, your mind is not manly; for in such a case you ought to manifest zeal for Christ, and rather meet circumstances boldly, and use the language of blessed Paul: in all these things we are more than conquerors [4606] ;' and the more so in that we ought to serve not the time, but the Lord [4607] . But if the organising of the Churches is distasteful to you, and you do not think the ministry of the episcopate has its reward, why, then you have brought yourself to despise the Saviour that ordered these things. I beseech you, dismiss such ideas, nor tolerate those who advise you in such a sense, for this is not worthy of Dracontius. For the order the Lord has established by the Apostles abides fair and firm; but the cowardice of the brethren shall cease [4608] .
4. For if all were of the same mind as your present advisers, how would you have become a Christian, since there would be no bishops? Or if our successors are to inherit this state of mind, how will the Churches be able to hold together? Or do your advisers think that you have received nothing, that they despise it? If so surely they are wrong. For it is time for them to think that the grace of the Font is nothing, if some are found to despise it. But you have received it, beloved Dracontius; do not tolerate your advisers nor deceive yourself. For this will be required of you by the God who gave it. Have you not heard the Apostle say, Neglect not the gift that is in thee [4609] ?' or have you not read how he accepts the man that had doubled his money, while he condemned the one that had hidden it? But may it come to pass that you may quickly return, in order that you too may be one of those who are praised. Or tell me, whom do your advisers wish you to imitate? For we ought to walk by the standard of the saints and the fathers, and imitate them, and to be sure that if we depart from them we put ourselves also out of their fellowship. Whom then do they wish you to imitate? The one who hesitated, and while wishing to follow, delayed it and took counsel because of his family [4610] , or blessed Paul, who, the moment the stewardship was entrusted to him, straightway conferred not with flesh and blood [4611] ?' For although he said, I am not worthy to be called an Apostle [4612] ,' yet, knowing what he had received, and being not ignorant of the giver, he wrote, For woe is me if I preach not the gospel [4613] .' But, as it was woe to me' if he did not preach, so, in teaching and preaching the gospel, he had his converts as his joy and crown [4614] . This explains why the saint [4615] was zealous to preach as far as Illyricum, and not to shrink from proceeding to Rome [4616] , or even going as far as the Spains [4617] , in order that the more he laboured, he might receive so much the greater reward for his labour. He boasted then that he had fought the good fight, and was confident that he should receive the great crown [4618] . Therefore, beloved Dracontius, whom are you imitating in your present action? Paul, or men unlike him? For my part, I pray that you, and myself, may prove an imitator of all the saints.
5. Or possibly there are some who advise you to hide, because you have given your word upon oath not to accept the office if elected. For I hear that they are buzzing in your ears to this effect, and consider that they are thus acting conscientiously. But if they were truly conscientious, they would above all have feared God, Who imposed this ministry upon you. Or if they had read the divine Scriptures, they would not have advised you contrary to them. For it is time for them to blame Jeremiah also, and to impeach the great Moses, in that they did not listen to their advice, but fearing God fulfilled their ministry, and prophesying were made perfect. For they also when they had received their mission and the grace of Prophecy, refused. But afterwards they feared, and did not set at nought Him that sent them. Whether then you be of stammering utterance, and slow of tongue, yet fear God that made you, or if you call yourself too young to preach, yet reverence Him Who knew you before you were made. Or if you have given your word (now their word was to the saints as an oath), yet read Jeremiah, how he too had said, I will not name the Name of the Lord [4619] ,' yet afterwards he feared the fire kindled within him, and did not do as he had said, nor hid himself as if bound by an oath, but reverenced Him that had entrusted to him his office, and fulfilled the prophetic call. Or are you not aware, beloved, that Jonah also fled, but met with the fate that befel him, after which he returned and prophesied?
6. Do not then entertain counsels opposite to this. For the Lord knows our case better than we ourselves, and He knows to whom He is entrusting His Churches. For even if a man be not worthy, yet let him not look at his former life, but let him carry out his ministry, lest, in addition to his life he incur also the curse of negligence. I ask you, beloved Dracontius, whether knowing this, and being a wise man, you are not pricked in your soul? Do you not feel anxious lest any of those entrusted to you should perish? Do you not burn, as with a fire in your conscience? Are you not in fear of the day of judgment, in which none of your present advisers will be there to aid you? For each shall give account of those entrusted to his hands. For how did his excuse benefit the man who hid the money? Or how did it benefit Adam to say, The woman beguiled me [4620] ?' Beloved Dracontius, even if you are really weak, yet you ought to take up the charge, lest, the Church being unoccupied, the enemies injure it, taking advantage of your flight. You should gird yourself up, so as not to leave us alone in the struggle; you should labour with us, in order to receive the reward also along with all.
7. Make haste then, beloved, and tarry no longer, nor suffer those who would prevent you: but remember Him that has given, and come hither to us who love you, who give you Scriptural advice, in order that you may both be installed by ourselves, and, as you minister in the churches make remembrance of us. For you are not the only one who has been elected from among monks, nor the only one to have presided over a monastery, or to have been beloved by monks. But you know that not only was Serapion a monk, and presided over that number of monks; you were not unaware of how many monks Apollos was father; you know Agathon, and are not ignorant of Ariston. You remember Ammonius who went abroad [4621] with Serapion. Perhaps you have also heard of Muitus [4622] in the upper Thebaid, and can learn about Paul [4623] at Latopolis, and many others. And yet these, when elected, did not gainsay; but taking Elisha as an example, and knowing the story of Elijah, and having learnt all about the disciples and apostles, they grappled with the charge, and did not despise the ministry, and were not inferior to themselves, but rather look for the reward of their labour, advancing themselves, and guiding others onward. For how many have they turned away from the idols? How many have they caused to cease from their familiarity with demons by their warning? How many servants have they brought to the Lord, so as to cause those who saw such wonders to marvel at the sight? Or is it not a great wonder to make a damsel live as a virgin, and a young man live in continence, and an idolater come to know Christ?
8. Let not monks then prevent you, as though you alone had been elected from among monks; nor do you make excuses, to the effect that you will deteriorate. For you may even grow better if you imitate Paul, and follow up the actions of the Saints. For you know that men like those, when appointed stewards of the mysteries, all the more pressed forward to the mark of their high calling [4624] . When did Paul meet martyrdom and expect to receive his crown, if not after being sent to teach? When did Peter make his confession, if not when he was preaching the Gospel, and had become a fisher of men [4625] ? When was Elijah taken up, if not after completing his prophetic career? When did Elisha gain a double share of the Spirit, if not after leaving all to follow Elijah? Or why did the Saviour choose disciples, if not to send them out as apostles?
9. So take these as an example, beloved Dracontius, and do not say, or believe those who say, that the bishop's office is an occasion of sin, nor that it gives rise to temptations to sin. For it is possible for you also as a bishop to hunger and thirst [4626] , as Paul did. You can drink no wine, like Timothy [4627] , and fast constantly too, like Paul [4628] , in order that thus fasting after his example you may feast others with your words, and while thirsting for lack of drink, water others by teaching. Let not your advisers, then, allege these things. For we know both bishops who fast, and monks who eat. We know bishops who drink no wine, as well as monks who do. We know bishops who work [4629] wonders, as well as monks who do not. Many also of the bishops have not even married, while monks have been [4630] fathers of children; just as conversely we know bishops who are fathers of children and monks of the completest kind [4631] .' And again, we know clergy who suffer hunger, and monks who fast. For it is possible in the latter way, and not forbidden in the former. But let a man, wherever he is, strive earnestly; for the crown is given not according to position, but according to action.
10. Do not then suffer those who give contrary advice. But rather hasten and delay not; the more so as the holy festival is approaching; so that the laity may not keep the feast without you, and you bring great danger upon yourself. For who will in your absence preach them the Easter sermon? Who will announce to them the great day of the Resurrection, if you art in hiding? Who will counsel them, if you are in flight, to keep the feast fittingly? Ah, how many will be the better if you appear, how many be injured if you fly! And who will think well of you for this? and why do they advise you not to take up the bishop's office, when they themselves wish to have presbyters [4632] ? For if you are bad, let them not associate with you. But if they know that you are good, let them not envy the others. For if, as they say, teaching and government is an occasion of sin, let them not be taught themselves, nor have presbyters, lest they deteriorate, both they and those who teach them. But do not attend to these human sayings, nor suffer those who give such advice, as I have often already said. But rather make haste and turn to the Lord, in order that, taking thought for his sheep, you may remember us also. But to this end I have bidden our beloved Hierax, the presbyter, and Maximus the reader go, and bid you by word of mouth also, that you may be able thus to learn both with what feelings I have written, and the danger that results from gainsaying the ordinance of the Church. __________________________________________________________________
[4599] Dracontius, Bishop of Hermupolis Parva, was one of the bishops expelled from their sees, 356-7. His place of exile was the desert near Clysma,' i.e. the gulf of Suez (Hist. Ar. 75, cf. Hieron. Vit. Hilar. 30). We find him in 362 at the Council of Alexandria. The present letter, written to urge Dracontius not to refuse the Episcopate, was written just before Easter (§10), when persecution was expected (§3), and after the mission of Serapion, Ammonius and others to Constantius, a.d. 353. It was probably written, therefore, early either in 354 or 355. The letter is one of the masterpieces of Athanasius: its unforced warmth, vigour, and affection can fail to touch no one who reads it. It is, like the letter to Amun, one of our most important documents for the history of Egyptian Monasticism. (Migne xxv. 524 sqq.)
[4600] Cf. Joh. iii. 2; xix. 38.
[4601] Matt. xviii. 6.
[4602] Hermupolis Parva was in the nome, or department, of Alexandria (anciently called the nome of Hermupolis in the Delta), and lay on a canal 44 miles east of the Capital; it is identified with Damanhur. Agathammon, a Meletian bishop of this district,' is mentioned in the list, Apol. Ar. 71, where the district of Sais' seems to include a much wider area than the ancient Saite nome (Maspero. Hist. Anc. 4, p. 24).
[4603] Jer. xv. 5.
[4604] Cf. Ezek. xxxiv. 2.
[4605] See Matt. xxv. 27, and Luke xix. 23. It is not clear whether by the money' received by Drac. is meant his actual consecration, or merely his election.
[4606] Rom. viii. 37.
[4607] Rom. xii. 11, and Westcott and Hort on various reading.
[4608] It should be observed that the fear of Dracontius was, not that he would suffer in dignity by becoming a bishop, but lest he should deteriorate spiritually (§8, init.). Cf. the dying soliloquy of Pope Eugenius IV.: Gabriele, hadst thou never been Pope nor Cardinal it had been better for thy salvation.' See also S. Bernard, de Consideratione.
[4609] 1 Tim. iv. 14.
[4610] Luke ii. 61.
[4611] Gal. i. 16.
[4612] 1 Cor. xv. 9.
[4613] Ib. ix. 16.
[4614] 1 Thes. ii. 19.
[4615] Reading to hagi& 251; as proposed by Montf.
[4616] Rom. i. 15.
[4617] Ib. xv. 19, 28.
[4618] 2 Tim. iv. 7, 8.
[4619] Jer. xx. 9.
[4620] Gen. iii. 12.
[4621] In 353, see Fest. Ind. xxv.; Sozom. iv. 9.
[4622] Perhaps the Muis' of the Sardican subscriptions (Apol. Ar.) and the Move' of Vit. Pachom. c. 72.
[4623] Paulus, perhaps identical with the Philo' of Sard. subsc. and Vit. Pach. ubi supr. A Philo' and Muius' also occur close together in Apol. Fug. 7 (note 9).
[4624] Phil. iii. 14.
[4625] Matt. iv. 19.
[4626] Phil. iv. 12.
[4627] 1 Tim. v. 23.
[4628] 2 Cor. xi. 27.
[4629] semeia. At the end of §7 this word can only be rendered wonders.' But here it appears at least probable that it has the different sense of miracles.'
[4630] Probably the reference is to married men who had subsequently become monks. Or else, as monks at this time lived in many cases in the world, not in communities, it may refer to married men leading an ascetic life.
[4631] ex holoklerou genous.
[4632] This is not our earliest notice of ordained persons in monastic societies. see Apol. Ar. 67. __________________________________________________________________
Letter L.--First Letter to Lucifer [4633] .
To our lord, and most beloved brother the Bishop and Confessor Lucifer. Athanasius greeting in the Lord.
Being well in body by God's favour, we have now sent our most beloved deacon Eutyches, that your most pious holiness, as is much desired by us, may be pleased to inform us of the safety of yourself and those with you. For we believe it is by the life of you Confessors and servants of God that the state of the Catholic Church is renewed; and that what heretics have assayed to rend in pieces, our Lord Jesus Christ by your means restores whole.
For although the forerunners of Antichrist have by the power of this world done everything to put out the lantern of truth, yet the Deity by your confession shews its light all the clearer, so that none can fail to see their deceit. Heretofore perhaps they were able to dissimulate: now they are called Antichrists. For who can but execrate them, and fly from their communion like a taint, or the poison of a serpent? The whole Church everywhere is mourning, every city groans, aged bishops are suffering in exile, and heretics dissembling, who while denying Christ have made themselves publicans, sitting in the Churches and exacting revenue [4634] . O new kind of men and of persecution which the devil has devised, namely to use such cruelty, and even ministers as the agents of evil. But although they act thus, and have gone all lengths in pride and blasphemy, yet your confession, your piety and wisdom, will be the very greatest comfort and solace to the brotherhood. For it has been reported to us that your holiness has written to Constantius Augustus; and we wonder more and more that dwelling as it were among scorpions you yet preserve freedom of spirit, in order, by advice or teaching or correction, to bring those in error to the light of truth. I ask then, and all confessors join me in asking, that you will be good enough to send us a copy; so that all may perceive, not by hearsay only but by letters, the valour of your spirit, and the confidence and firmness of your faith. Those who are with me salute your holiness. I salute all those who are with you. May the deity ever keep you safe and sound and mindful of us, most beloved lord, and true man of God.
Upon receiving this letter, blessed Lucifer sent the books which he had addressed to Constantius; and when he had read them Athanasius sent the following letter: __________________________________________________________________
[4633] Lucifer, bishop of Calaris (Cagliari) in Sardinia, exiled by Constantius after the Council of Milan (Prolegg. ch. ii. §7), first to Germanicia, then to Eleutheropolis in Palestine, at both of which places he was subjected to harsh treatment, lastly to the Thebaid. The violence of his advocacy of the Nicene faith, coupled with extreme personal abusiveness, may have aggravated his sufferings. On his part in the events of 362, see Prolegg. ch. ii. §9. The present letters exist only in Latin (Migne xxvi. 1181), and are probably a translation from the Greek. Athan. may have known Latin, but there is no evidence that he ever wrote in that language. The play on the name Lucifer in Letter 51 proves nothing to the contrary. Dr. Bright (in D.C.B. i. 198, note) expresses a doubt as to the genuineness of our letters which is I think unsupported by internal evidence. The main difficulty is in the reconciliation of the apparent references (51 init.) to the events of 356 as recent with the clear references to the de Athanasio and Moriendum pro Filio Dei of Lucifer, neither of which works were penned before 358, while the latter in its final form mentions the translation of Eudoxius to CP., and therefore falls as late as 360 (for proof of this, see Krüger, Lucifer, pp. 102-109). But on close examination, the language of Letter 51 is satisfied by the events of 359, the vindictive commission of Paul Catena and the search for Athanasius among the Monasteries (cf. Letter 53, note 1). The respectful reference to Constantius in Letter 50 is of a purely formal character. The reference to the parents of Athanasius as still living is of great interest as one of the very few notices of the family of the great bishop (Prolegg. ch. ii. §1). The agitated tone of the Epistles reminds us of the Arian History, and they may be set down to about the year 359. On Lucifer, the monograph of Krüger is the standard authority.
[4634] An exact description of George in 357 and 358. __________________________________________________________________
Letter LI.--Second Letter to Lucifer.
To the most glorious lord and deservedly much-desired fellow-Bishop Lucifer, Athanasius greeting in the Lord.
Although I believe that tidings have reached your holiness also of the persecution which the enemies of Christ have just now attempted to raise, seeking our blood, yet our own most beloved messengers can tell your piety about it. For to such a length did they dare to carry their madness by means of the soldiers, that they not only banished the Clergy of the city, but also went out to the Hermits, and laid their fatal hands upon Solitaries. Hence I also withdrew far away, lest those who entertained me should suffer trouble at their hands. For whom do Arians spare, who have spared not even their own souls? Or how can they give up their infamous actions while they persist in denying Christ our Lord the only Son of God? This is the root of their wickedness; on this foundation of sand they build up the perversity of their ways, as we find it written in the thirteenth Psalm, The fool said in his heart there is no God;' and presently follows, Corrupt are they and become abominable in their works [4635] .' Hence the Jews who denied the Son of God, deserved to be called a sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evil doers, children without law [4636] .' Why without law?'--because you have deserted the Lord. And so the most blessed Paul, when he had begun not only to believe in the Son of God, but also to preach His deity, wrote, I know nothing against myself [4637] .' Accordingly we too, according to your confession of faith, desire to hold the Apostolic tradition, and to live according to the commands of the divine law, that we may be found along with you in that band in which now Patriarchs, Prophets, Apostles and Martyrs are rejoicing. So then, though the Arian madness, aided by external power, was so active that our brethren on account of their fury could not even see the open air with freedom, yet by God's favour, according to your prayers, I have been able, though with trouble and danger, to see the brother who is wont to bring me necessaries and the letters of your holiness, along with those of others. And so we have received the books of your most wise and religious soul, in which we have seen the image of an Apostle, the confidence of a Prophet, the teaching of truth, the doctrine of true faith, the way of heaven, the glory of martyrdom, the triumphs against the Arian heresy, the unimpaired tradition of our Fathers, the right rule of the Church's order. O truly Lucifer, who according to your name bring the light of truth, and have set it on a candlestick to give light to all. For who, except the Arians, does not clearly see from your teaching the true faith and the taint of the Arians. Forcibly and admirably, like light from darkness, you have separated the truth from the subtilty and dishonesty of heretics, defended the Catholic Church, proved that the arguments of the Arians are nothing but a kind of hallucination, and taught that the diabolical gnashings of the teeth are to be despised. How good and welcome are your exhortations to martyrdom; how highly to be desired have you shewn death to be on behalf of Christ the Son of the living God [4638] . What love you have shewn for the world to come and for the heavenly life. You seem to be a true temple of the Saviour, Who dwells in you and utters these exact words through you, and has given such grace to your discourses. Beloved as you were before among all, now such passionate affection for you is settled in the minds of all, that they call you the Elijah of our times; and no wonder. For if they who seem to please God are called Sons of God, much more proper is it to give that name to the associates of the Prophets, namely the Confessors, and especially to you. Believe me, Lucifer, it is not you only who has uttered this, but the Holy Spirit with you. Whence comes so great a memory for the Scriptures? Whence an unimpaired sense and understanding of them? Whence has such an order of discourse been framed? Whence did you get such exhortations to the way of heaven, whence such confidence against the devil, and such proofs against heretics, unless the Holy Spirit had been lodged in you? Rejoice therefore to see that you are already there where also are your predecessors the martyrs, that is, among the band of angels. We also rejoice, having you as an example of valour, and patience, and liberty. For I blush to say anything of what you have written about my name [4639] , lest I should appear a flatterer. But I know and believe that the Lord Himself, Who has revealed all knowledge to your holy and religious spirit, will reward you for this labour also with a reward in the kingdom of the heavens. Since then you are such a man, we ask the Lord in prayer that you may pray for us, that in His mercy He may now deign to look down upon the Catholic Church, and deliver all His servants from the hands of persecutors; in order that all they too who have fallen on account of temporal fear may at length be enabled to raise themselves and return to the way of righteousness, led away from which they are wandering, poor people, not knowing in what a pit they are. In particular I ask, if I have said anything amiss, you would be good enough to overlook it, for from so great a fountain my unskilfulness has not been able to draw what it might have done. But as to our brethren, I ask you again to overlook my not having been able to see them. For truth itself is my witness that I wished and longed to compass this, and was greatly grieved at being unable. For my eyes ceased not from tears, nor my spirit from groaning, because we are not permitted even to see the brethren. But God is my witness, that on account of their persecution I have not been able to see even the parents whom I have [4640] . For what is there that the Arians leave undone? They watch the roads, observe those who enter and leave the city, search the vessels, go round the deserts, ransack houses, harass the brethren, cause unrest to everybody. But thanks be to God, in so doing they are more and more incurring the execration of all, and coming to be truly known for what your holiness has called them: slaves of Antichrist. And, poor wretches, hated as they are, they persist in their malice, until they shall be condemned to the death of their ancestor Pharaoh. Those with me salute your piety. Pray salute those who are with you. May God's divine grace preserve you, mindful of us and ever blessed, worthily called man of God, servant of Christ, partner of the Apostles, comfort of the brotherhood, master of truth, and in all things most longed for. __________________________________________________________________
[4635] Ps. xiv. 1.
[4636] Isa. i. 4.
[4637] 1 Cor. iv. 4.
[4638] Lucifer had written among other books one called Moriendum pro Dei Filio.' His two books pro sancto Athanasio' are referred to below.
[4639] Lucifer's two books pro Athanasio.
[4640] Parentes quos habeo.' Can this refer to literal parents? (1) he was now over 60 years old; (2) some 6 years later, under Valens, he hid, according to the tale in Socr. iv. 13, for four months in his father's tomb (see Prolegg. ch. ii. §9). __________________________________________________________________
Letter LII.--First Letter to Monks [4641] . (Written 358-360).
1. To those in every place [4642] who are living a monastic life, who are established in the faith of God, and sanctified in Christ, and who say, Behold, we have forsaken all, and followed Thee [4643] ,' brethren dearly beloved and longed for, heartiest greeting in the Lord.
1. In compliance with your affectionate request, which you have frequently urged upon me, I have written a short account of the sufferings which ourselves and the Church have undergone, refuting, according to my ability, the accursed heresy of the Arian madmen, and proving how entirely it is alien from the Truth. And I thought it needful to represent to your Piety what pains the writing of these things has cost me, in order that you may understand thereby how truly the blessed Apostle has said, O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God [4644] ;' and may kindly bear with a weak man such as I am by nature. For the more I desired to write, and endeavoured to force myself to understand the Divinity of the Word, so much the more did the knowledge thereof withdraw itself from me; and in proportion as I thought that I apprehended it, in so much I perceived myself to fail of doing so. Moreover also I was unable to express in writing even what I seemed to myself to understand; and that which I wrote was unequal to the imperfect shadow of the truth which existed in my conception.
2. Considering therefore how it is written in the Book of Ecclesiastes, I said, I will be wise, but it was far from me; That which is far off, and exceeding deep, who shall find it out [4645] ?' and what is said in the Psalms, The knowledge of Thee is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it [4646] ;' and that Solomon says, It is the glory of God to conceal a thing [4647] ;' I frequently designed to stop and to cease writing; believe me, I did. But lest I should be found to disappoint you, or by my silence to lead into impiety those who have made enquiry of you, and are given to disputation, I constrained myself to write briefly, what I have now sent [4648] to your piety. For although a perfect apprehension of the truth is at present far removed from us by reason of the infirmity of the flesh, yet it is possible, as the Preacher himself has said, to perceive the madness of the impious, and having found it, to say that it is more bitter than death [4649] .' Wherefore for this reason, as perceiving this and able to find it out, I have written, knowing that to the faithful the detection of impiety is a sufficient information wherein piety consists. For although it be impossible to comprehend what God is, yet it is possible to say what He is not [4650] . And we know that He is not as man; and that it is not lawful to conceive of any originated nature as existing in Him. So also respecting the Son of God, although we are by nature very far from being able to comprehend Him; yet is it possible and easy to condemn the assertions of the heretics concerning Him, and to say, that the Son of God is not such; nor is it lawful even to conceive in our minds such things as they speak, concerning His Godhead; much less to utter them with the lips.
3. Accordingly I have written as well as I was able; and you, dearly beloved, receive these communications not as containing a perfect exposition of the Godhead of the Word, but as being merely a refutation of the impiety of the enemies of Christ, and as containing and affording to those who desire it, suggestions for arriving at a pious and sound faith in Christ. And if in anything they are defective (and I think they are defective in all respects), pardon it with a pure conscience, and only receive favourably the boldness of my good intentions in support of godliness. For an utter condemnation of the heresy of the Arians, it is sufficient for you to know the judgment given by the Lord in the death of Arius, of which you have already been informed by others. For what the Holy God hath purposed, who shall scatter [4651] ?' and whom the Lord condemned who shall justify [4652] ? After such a sign given, who do not now acknowledge, that the heresy is hated of God, however it may have men for its patrons? Now when you have read this account, pray for me, and exhort one another so to do. And immediately send it back to me, and suffer no one whatever to take a copy of it, nor transcribe it for yourselves [4653] . But like good money-changers [4654] be satisfied with the reading; but read it repeatedly if you desire to do so. For it is not safe that the writings of us babblers and private persons should fall into the hands of them that shall come after. Salute one another in love, and also all that come unto you in piety and faith. For if any man' as the Apostle has said, love not the Lord, let him be anathema. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you [4655] . Amen.' __________________________________________________________________
[4641] This beautiful and striking Letter (Migne xxv. 691) formed the introduction to a work, which the Author, as he says in the course of it, thought unworthy of being preserved for posterity. Some critics have supposed it to be the Orations against the Arians; but this opinion can hardly be maintained (supr. p. 267). The Epistle was written in 358, or later, before the Epistle to Serapion. On its relation to the Arian History,' see above, pp. 267, 268.
[4642] This appears inconsistent with the directions below, §3 (note 3). The heading is, therefore, of doubtful genuineness.
[4643] Matt. xix. 27.
[4644] Rom. xi. 33.
[4645] Eccles. vii. 23, 24.
[4646] Ps. cxxxix. 6.
[4647] Prov. xxv. 2.
[4648] Probably a lost writing.
[4649] Eccles. vii. 26.
[4650] Newman observes in loc. "This negative character of our knowledge, whether of the Father or of the Son, is insisted on by other writers.....All we can know about the Divine Nature is, that it is not to be known; and whatever positive statements we make concerning God, relate not to His Nature, but to the accompaniments of His Nature.' Damasc. F.O. i. 4; S. Basil c. Eunom. i. 10, Totum ab animo rejicite; quidquid occurrerit, negate....dicite non est illud.' August. Enarrat. 2. in Psalm xxvi. 8. Cyril, Catech. xi. 11. Anonym. in Append. Aug. Oper. t. 5. p. 383." [Patr. Lat. xxxix. 2175.]
[4651] Is. xiv. 27.
[4652] Rom. viii. 33, 34, so quoted Ep. Æg. 19.
[4653] Letter 54, fin.
[4654] "On this celebrated text, as it may be called, which is cited so frequently by the Fathers, vid. Coteler. in Const. Apol. ii. 36. in Clement Hom. ii. 51. Potter in Clem. Strom. i. p. 425. Vales. in Euseb. Hist. vii. 7." [Westcott, Introd. to Study of Gospels, Appendix C.]
[4655] 1 Cor. xvi. 22, 23. __________________________________________________________________
Letter LIII.--Second Letter [4656] to Monks.
Athanasius, Archbishop [4657] of Alexandria, to the Solitaries.
Athanasius to those who practise a solitary life, and are settled in faith in God, most beloved brethren, greeting in the Lord.
I thank the Lord who hath given to you to believe in Him, that ye too may have with the saints eternal life. But because there are certain persons who hold with Arius and go about the monasteries with no other object save that under colour of visiting you, and returning from us they may deceive the simple; whereas there are certain who, while they affirm that they do not hold with Arius, yet compromise themselves and worship with his party; I have been compelled, at the instance of certain most sincere brethren, to write at once in order that keeping faithfully and without guile the pious faith which God's grace works in you, you may not give occasion of scandal to the brethren. For when any sees you, the faithful in Christ, associate and communicate with such people, [or worshipping along with them], certainly they will think it a matter of indifference and will fall into the mire of irreligion. Lest, then, this should happen, be pleased, beloved, to shun those who hold the impiety [of Arius], and moreover to avoid those who, while they pretend not to hold with Arius, yet worship with the impious. And we are specially bound to fly from the communion of men whose opinions we hold in execration. [If then any come to you, and, as blessed John [4658] says, brings with him right doctrine, say to him, All hail, and receive such an one as a brother.] But if any pretend that he confesses the right faith, but appear to communicate with those others, exhort him to abstain from such communion, and if he promise to do so, treat him as a brother, but if he persist in a contentious spirit, him avoid. [I might greatly lengthen my letter, adding from the divine Scriptures the outline of this teaching. But since, being wise men, you can anticipate those who write, and rather, being intent upon self-denial, are fit to instruct others also, I have dictated a short letter, as from one loving friend to others, in the confidence] that living as you do you will preserve a pure and sincere faith, and that those persons, seeing that you do not join with them in worship, will derive benefit, fearing lest they be accounted as impious, and as those who hold with them. __________________________________________________________________
[4656] This short letter, like those to Lucifer, was printed at first in Latin, evidently the almost servile rendering of a Greek original. The latter was discovered by Montfaucon after the completion of the Benedictine edition, and printed in his Nova Collectio Patrum' (1706). (Migne xxvi. 1185.) The date is fixed a parte post in an interesting manner. We read in the Life of Pachomius, §88 (the story is also found in the Coptic documents in the collection of Zoega p. 36), that when Duke Artemius came to the monastery of Pabau in search of Athanasius, the steward of the community replied, Although Athanasius is our Father under God, we have never seen his face.' The Duke answered by a request for the prayers of the brethren before he left. The abbat Psarphi' replied that the Father' had forbidden the monks to pray with strangers who consorted with the Arians,--a clear allusion to the letter before us. Now Duke Artemius was in search of Athanasius in 359-60 (Fest. Ind.). Accordingly our letter was issued before that date. The Greek text is evidently imperfect: the square brackets in the translation denote passages supplied from the Latin. The first part of the letter (down to the words along with'...) is preserved in a contemporary inscription (Boeckh. C.I.G. iv. 8607) on the walls of an ancient Egyptian tomb at Abd-el-Kurna, which in those later days had become a monastic cell. The remainder is effaced. (See Fialon, p. 134, who has failed to notice the identity of the inscription with our present letter.)
[4657] This first heading is from the inscription mentioned above, note 1, and is important as recording a very early use of the title archbishop.' See also Letter 55, note 1, supr. p. 137, note 6, and Epiph. vol. ii. p. 188 c (Migne).
[4658] 2 John 10. __________________________________________________________________
Letter LIV.--To Serapion, concerning the death of Arius.
Athanasius to Serapion [4659] , a brother and fellow-minister, health in the Lord.
I have read the letters of your piety, in which you have requested me to make known to you the events of my times relating to myself, and to give an account of that most impious heresy of the Arians, in consequence of which I have endured these sufferings, and also of the manner of the death of Arius. With two out of your three demands I have readily undertaken to comply, and have sent to your Godliness what I wrote to the Monks; from which you will be able to learn my own history as well as that of the heresy. But with respect to the other matter, I mean the death, I debated with myself for a long time, fearing lest any one should suppose that I was exulting in the death of that man. But yet, since a disputation which has taken place amongst you concerning the heresy, has issued in this question, whether Arius died after previously communicating with the Church; I therefore was necessarily desirous of giving an account of his death, as thinking that the question would thus be set at rest, considering also that by making this known I should at the same time silence those who are fond of contention. For I conceive that when the wonderful circumstances connected with his death become known, even those who before questioned it will no longer venture to doubt that the Arian heresy is hateful in the sight of God.
2. I was not at Constantinople when he died, but Macarius the Presbyter was, and I heard the account of it from him. Arius had been invited by the Emperor Constantine, through the interest of Eusebius and his fellows; and when he entered the presence the Emperor enquired of him, whether he held the Faith of the Catholic Church? And he declared upon oath that he held the right Faith, and gave in an account of his Faith in writing, suppressing the points for which he had been cast out of the Church by the Bishop Alexander, and speciously alleging expressions out of the Scriptures. When therefore he swore that he did not profess the opinions for which Alexander had excommunicated him, [the Emperor] dismissed him, saying [4660] , If thy Faith be right, thou hast done well to swear; but if thy Faith be impious, and thou hast sworn, God judge of thee according to thy oath.' When he thus came forth from the presence of the Emperor, Eusebius and his fellows, with their accustomed violence, desired to bring him into the Church. But Alexander, the Bishop of Constantinople of blessed memory, resisted them, saying that the inventor of the heresy ought not to be admitted to communion; whereupon Eusebius and his fellows threatened, declaring, As we have caused him to be invited by the Emperor, in opposition to your wishes, so to-morrow, though it be contrary to your desire, Arius shall have communion with us in this Church.' It was the Sabbath when they said this.
3. When the Bishop Alexander heard this, he was greatly distressed, and entering into the church, he stretched forth his hands unto God, and bewailed himself; and casting himself upon his face in the chancel, he prayed, lying upon the pavement. Macarius also was present, and prayed with him, and heard his words. And he besought these two things, saying, If Arius is brought to communion to-morrow, let me Thy servant depart, and destroy not the pious with the impious; but if Thou wilt spare Thy Church (and I know that Thou wilt spare), look upon the words of Eusebius and his fellows, and give not thine inheritance to destruction and reproach [4661] , and take off Arius, lest if he enter into the Church, the heresy also may seem to enter with him, and henceforward impiety be accounted for piety.' When the Bishop had thus prayed, he retired in great anxiety; and a wonderful and extraordinary circumstance took place. While Eusebius and his fellows threatened, the Bishop prayed; but Arius, who had great confidence in Eusebius and his fellows, and talked very wildly, urged by the necessities of nature withdrew, and suddenly, in the language of Scripture, falling headlong he burst asunder in the midst [4662] ,' and immediately expired as he lay, and was deprived both of communion and of his life together.
4. Such has been the end of Arius: and Eusebius and his fellows, overwhelmed with shame, buried their accomplice, while the blessed Alexander, amidst the rejoicings of the Church, celebrated the Communion with piety and orthodoxy, praying with all the brethren, and greatly glorifying God, not as exulting in his death (God forbid!), for it is appointed unto all men once to die [4663] ,' but because this thing had been shewn forth in a manner transcending human judgments. For the Lord Himself judging between the threats of Eusebius and his fellows, and the prayer of Alexander, condemned the Arian heresy, shewing it to be unworthy of communion with the Church, and making manifest to all, that although it receive the support of the Emperor and of all mankind, yet it was condemned by the Church herself. So the antichristian gang of the Arian madmen has been shewn to be unpleasing to God and impious; and many of those who before were deceived by it changed their opinions. For none other than the Lord Himself who was blasphemed by them condemned the heresy which rose up against Him, and again shewed that howsoever the Emperor Constantius may now use violence to the Bishops in behalf of it, yet it is excluded from the communion of the Church, and alien from the kingdom of heaven. Wherefore also let the question which has arisen among you be henceforth set at rest; (for this was the agreement made among you), and let no one join himself to the heresy, but let even those who have been deceived repent. For who shall receive what the Lord condemned? And will not he who takes up the support of that which He has made excommunicate, be guilty of great impiety, and manifestly an enemy of Christ?
5. Now this is sufficient to confound the contentious; read it therefore to those who before raised this question, as well as what was briefly addressed to the Monks against the heresy, in order that they may be led thereby more strongly to condemn the impiety and wickedness of the Arian madmen. Do not however consent to give a copy of these to any one, neither transcribe them for yourself (I have signified the same to the Monks also); but as a sincere friend, if anything is wanting in what I have written, add it, and immediately send them back to me. For you will be able to learn from the letter which I have written to the Brethren, what pains it has cost me to write it, and also to perceive that it is not safe for the writings of a private person to be published (especially if they relate to the highest and chief doctrines), for this reason;--lest what is imperfectly expressed through infirmity or the obscurity of language, do hurt to the reader. For the majority of men do not consider the faith, or the aim of the writer, but either through envy or a spirit of contention, receive what is written as themselves choose, according to an opinion which they have previously formed, and misinterpret it to suit their pleasure. But the Lord grant that the Truth and a sound [4664] faith in our Lord Jesus Christ may prevail among all, and especially among those to whom you read this. Amen. __________________________________________________________________
[4659] On this letter (Migne xxv. 686) in relation to other writings, see above, Letter 52, note 1, and pp. 267, 268. Serapion would seem to have been the right-hand man of Athan. among the bishops of Egypt. The dates of his birth and episcopate are not certain, but the tone of the letters to him imply that he is junior to Athanasius. The theory of Ceillier, based on a precarious inference from the words of an untrustworthy writer (Philip of Side) that this Serapion (the name was very common) had presided over the catechetical school before Peter, i.e. at the end of the third century, is quite out of the question. Moreover, no Serapion appears among the Egyptian bishops at Tyre in 335 (p. 142), but the name occurs among the Alexandrian presbyterate of the same date (pp. 139, 140), while two bishops of the name sign the Sardican decrees (p. 127). It is then not unlikely that Athan. selected Serapion for the very important (Amm. Marc. xxii. 16) see of Thmuis in the Delta between 337 and 339 (supr. Letter 12, note 1). In 353 the trusted suffragan is chosen for a difficult and perilous mission to Constantius (supr. pp. 497, 504). For some reason we miss his name from the list of exiles in 356-7 (pp. 257, 297), nor is he named as present at the Council of Confessors' in 362. During the third exile, however, Ath. addressed to him our present letter, and an important dogmatic treatise (Prolegg. ch. iii. §1, no. 22). Serapion was a friend and legatee of S. Antony (supr. p. 220). The date of Serapion's death is not known, but he is said to have been living after 368 (Leont. adv. fraud. Apoll. in Galland. xii. 701, see Bright, Later Treat. p. 44). For further details, and for writings ascribed to him, see D.C.B. iv. 613 (9). On the death of Arius, see Prolegg, ch. ii. §5.
[4660] Ep. Æg. 18.
[4661] Joel ii. 17.
[4662] Acts i. 18.
[4663] Heb. ix. 27.
[4664] hugiainousan, vid. supr. p. 71, §5. fin. __________________________________________________________________
Letter LV.--Letter to Rufinianus.
To our lord, son, and most desired fellow-minister Rufinianus [4665] . Athanasius greeting in the Lord.
You write what is proper for a beloved son to write to a father: accordingly, I embraced you when you came near me in writing, most desired Rufinianus. And I, though I might write to you as a son both in the opening and the middle and the close, refrained, lest my commendation and testimony should be made known by writing. For you are my letter, as it is written [4666] , known and read in the heart. That you then are in such case, believe, yea believe. I address you, and invite you to write. For by doing so you afford me the highest gratification. But since in an honourable and church-like spirit, such as becomes your piety, you ask me about those who were drawn away by necessity but not corrupted by error, and wish me to write what resolution has been come to about them, whether in synods or elsewhere; know, most desired Lord, that to begin with [4667] , when violence was ceased, a synod [4668] has been held, bishops from foreign parts being present; while others have been held by our fellow-ministers resident in Greece, as well as by those in Spain and Gaul [4669] : and the same decision was come to here and everywhere, namely, in the case of those who had fallen and been leaders of impiety, to pardon them upon their repentance, but not to give them the position of clergy: but in the case of men not deliberate in impiety, but drawn away by necessity and violence, that they should not only receive pardon, but should occupy the position of clergy: the more so, in that they offered a plausible defence, and what had happened seemed due to a certain special purpose [4670] . For they assured us that they had not gone over to impiety; but lest certain most impious persons should be elected and ruin the Churches they elected rather to acquiesce in the violence and to bear the burden, than to lose the people. But in saying this, they appeared to us to say what was plausible; for they alleged in excuse Aaron the brother of Moses, who in the wilderness acquiesced in the people's transgression; and that he had had as his excuse the danger of the people returning to Egypt and abiding in idolatry. For there was reason in the view, that if they remained in the wilderness they might cease from their impiety: but if they went into Egypt they would become ruined and increase the impiety in their midst. For this reason, then, they have been allowed to rank as clergy, those who had been deceived and suffered violence being pardoned. I give this information to your piety in the confidence that you will both accept [4671] what has been resolved upon, and not charge those who assembled, as I have said, with remissness. But be good enough to read it to the clergy and laity under you, that they may be informed, and may not blame you for being thus minded about such persons. For it would not be fitting for me to write, when your piety is able to do so, and to announce our mind with regard to them, and carry out all that remains to be done. Thanks to the Lord that filled you [4672] with all utterance and with all knowledge. Let then those that repent openly anathematise by name the error of Eudoxius and Euzoius. For they blasphemed still, and wrote that He was a creature, ringleaders of the Arian heresy. But let them confess the faith confessed by the fathers at Nicæa, and that they put no other synod before that one. Greet the brotherhood with you. That with us greets you in the Lord. __________________________________________________________________
[4665] This letter (Migne xxvi. 1180) deals with one of the questions which occupied the council of 362 (supr. p. 481), and was probably written not long after, although the contents furnish no precise terminus ad quem. The personality and see of Rufinianus are uncertain. The latter must have been distant from Alexandria: the Coptic documents call him Rufinus the archbishop,' which seems to place him outside Egypt. The mention of Eudoxius and Euzoius sub. fin. possibly points to Syria. I suspect that he is the Lucinianus' associated with Eusebius' (of Vercellæ?) in the little fragment (4) quoted in note 7 below, which comes from a letter of Ath. dealing with the same subject. The Coptic Acts' of Revillout, p. 462 (as referred to supr. p. 188) give part of a letter of Rufinianus himself, which shews that the correspondence of which our letter is the principal relic bore on the Christological decision of the Council of 362: Sound is the idea of perfection for the Divinity, as for the Economy of the Manhood: Sound is the doctrine of the Divinity in a single essence. Pure, and wholesome for the souls of the faithful, is the Confession of the Holy Triad. Perfect then is the Economy of the Manhood of the Saviour, and Perfect is His Soul also; nothing is lacking to Him. It is thus that It was manifested to us.'
[4666] 2 Cor. iii. 2.
[4667] Immediately after the death of Constantius.
[4668] At Alexandria, a.d. 362, see above p. 481.
[4669] These unnamed councils are all connected with the general return of the exiled orthodox bishops on Julian's accession. They are possibly the same as are referred to again in the opening of the letter to Epict. below, p. 570.
[4670] oikonomia
[4671] Do you, then, who confess all this, abstain, I pray, from condemning those who confess the same. But explain the words they use, nor, ignoring the latter, repel their authors. Nay, entreat and advise them, that they be willing to come to one mind.' ad Eus. Lucin., &c., supr. note 1.
[4672] 1 Cor. i. 5. __________________________________________________________________
Letter LVI.--To the Emperor Jovian.
Copy of a letter of the Emperor Jovian, sent to Athanasius, the most holy Archbishop of Alexandria.
To the most religious and friend of God, Athanasius, Jovian.
Admiring exceedingly the achievements of your most honourable life, and of your likeness to the God of all, and of your affection toward our Saviour Christ, we accept you, most honoured bishop. And inasmuch as you have not flinched from all labour, nor from the fear of your persecutors, and, regarding dangers and threats of the sword as dung, holding the rudder of the orthodox faith which is dear to you, are contending even until now for the truth, and continue to exhibit yourself as a pattern to all the people of the faithful, and an example of virtue:--our imperial Majesty recalls you, and desires that you should return to the office of the teaching of salvation. Return then to the holy Churches, and tend the people of God, and send up to God with zeal your prayers for our clemency. For we know that by your supplication we, and all who hold with us [the Christian faith], shall have great assistance from the supreme God.
56. Letter of Athanasius to Jovian [4673] concerning the Faith.
1. A desire to learn and a yearning for heavenly things is suitable to a religious Emperor; for thus you will truly have your heart' also in the hand of God [4674] .' Since then your Piety desired [4675] to learn from us the faith of the Catholic Church, giving thanks for these things to the Lord, we counselled above all things to remind your Piety of the faith confessed by the Fathers at Nicæa. For this certain set at nought, while plotting against us in many ways, because we would not comply with the Arian heresy, and they have become authors of heresy and schisms in the Catholic Church. For the true and pious faith in the Lord has become manifest to all, being both known and read [4676] ' from the Divine Scriptures. For in it both the saints were made perfect and suffered martyrdom, and now are departed in the Lord; and the faith would have abode inviolate always had not the wickedness of certain heretics presumed to tamper with it. For a certain Arius and those with him attempted to corrupt it, and to introduce impiety in its place, affirming that the Son of God was from nought, and a creature, and a thing made and changeable. But with these words they deceived many, so that even they that seemed to be somewhat were carried away [4677] ,' with their blasphemy. And yet our holy Fathers, as we said before, came promptly together at the Synod at Nicæa, and anathematised them, and confessed in writing the faith of the Catholic Church, so that, this being everywhere preached, the heresy kindled by the heretics might be quenched. This faith then was everywhere in every Church sincerely known and preached. But since now certain who wish to renew the Arian heresy have presumed to set at nought this faith confessed at Nicæa by the Fathers, and while pretending to confess it, do in fact deny it, explaining away the Coessential [4678] ,' and blaspheming of their own accord [4679] against the Holy Spirit, in affirming that It is a creature, and came into being as a thing made by the Son, we hasten as of bounden duty, in view of the injury resulting to the people from such blasphemy, to hand to your Piety the faith confessed at Nicæa; in order that thy religiousness may know what has been written with all accuracy, and how far wrong they are who teach contrary to it.
2. For know, most religious Augustus, that these things have been preached from time immemorial, and this faith the Fathers who met at Nicæa confessed; and to it have assented all the Churches in every quarter, both those in Spain, and Britain, and the Gauls, and all Italy and Dalmatia, Dacia and Moesia, Macedonia and all Greece, and in all Africa and Sardinia, and Cyprus and Crete, as well as Pamphylia, Lycia and Isauria, and those in Egypt and the Libyas, Pontus and Cappadocia, and those near at hand to us [4680] , and the Churches in the East, except a few who hold with Arius. For of all those above mentioned we have both learnt the opinion by experience, and we have letters. And you know, O most religious Augustus, that even if some few speak against this faith, they cannot create a demurrer [4681] , inasmuch as the whole world [4682] holds the Apostolic faith. For they having long been infected by the Arian heresy, now the more obstinately oppose the truth. And that your Piety may know, although you know already, yet we hasten to append the faith confessed by the Bishops at Nicæa. The faith then confessed at Nicæa by the Fathers is as follows:--
3. We believe [4683] , &c., &c.
4. By this faith, Augustus, all must needs abide, as Divine and Apostolic, and none must unsettle it by plausibilities, and contentions about words, which is what the Arian madmen have done, saying that the Son of God is from nought, and that once there was when He was not, and that He is created, and made and changeable. For for this cause, as we said before, the Synod at Nicæa anathematised such heresy, but confessed the faith of the truth. For they have not merely said that the Son is like [4684] the Father, lest He should be believed merely like God, instead of Very God from God; but they wrote Coessential,' which was peculiar to a genuine and true Son, truly and naturally from the Father. Nor yet did they make the Holy Spirit alien from the Father and the Son, but rather glorified Him together with the Father and the Son, in the one faith of the Holy Triad, because there is in the Holy Triad also one Godhead.
Appendix to Letter LVI.
Petition made at Antioch to Jovian the Emperor on the part of Lucius [4685] and Bernicianus, and certain other Arians against Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria.
First Petition which they made as the Emperor was departing to Camp, at the Roman Gate.
May it please your Might and your Majesty and your Piety to hear us. The Emperor: Who are you and where from?' The Arians: Christians, my Lord.' Emperor: Where from, and from what city?' The Arians: Alexandria.'--Emperor: What do you want?' The Arians: May it please your Might and your Majesty, give us a Bishop.' Emperor: I ordered the former one, whom you had before, Athanasius, to occupy the See.' The Arians: May it please your Might: he has been many years both in banishment, and under accusation.' Suddenly a soldier answered in indignation: May it please your Majesty, enquire of them who they are and where from, for these are the leavings and refuse of Cappadocia, the remains of that unholy George who desolated the city and the world.' The Emperor on hearing this set spurs to his horse, and departed to the Camp.
Second Petition of the Arians.
We have accusations and clear proofs against Athanasius, in that ten and twenty years ago he was deprived by the ever memorable Constantine and Constantius, and incurred banishment under the most religious and philosophical and blessed Julian.' Emperor: Accusations ten, twenty, and thirty years old are now obsolete. Don't speak to me about Athanasius, for I know why he was accused, and how he was banished.'
Third Petition of the Arians.
And now again, we have certain other accusations against Athanasius.' Emperor: The rights of the case will not appear by means of crowded numbers, and clamours, but choose two from yourselves, and from the party of the majority other two, for I cannot answer each one severally.' Those from the majority: These are the leavings from the unholy George, who desolated our province, and who would not allow a counsellor to dwell in the cities.' The Arians: May it please you, any one you will except Athanasius.' Emperor: I told you that the case of Athanasius was already settled,' (and then angrily) feri, feri [4686] !' The Arians: May it please you, if you send Athanasius, our city is ruined, and no one assembles with him.' Emperor: Yet I took pains, and ascertained that he holds right opinions and is orthodox, and teaches aright.' The Arians: With his mouth he utters what is right, but in his soul he harbours guile.' Emperor: That will do, you have testified of him, that he utters what is right and teaches aright, but if he teaches and speaks aright with his tongue, but harbours evil thoughts in his soul, it concerns him before God. For we are men, and hear what is said; but what is in the heart God knows.' The Arians: Authorise our holding communion together.' Emperor: Why, who prevents you?' The Arians: May it please you, he proclaims us as sectarians and dogmatisers.' Emperor: It is his duty, and that of those who teach aright.' The Arians: May it please your Might; we cannot bear this man, and he has taken away the lands of the Churches.' Emperor: Oh then, it is on account of property you are come here, and not on account of the faith'--then he added--go away, and keep the peace.' Once more he added to the Arians: Go away to the Church, to-morrow you have a Communion, and after the dismissal, there are Bishops here, and here is Nemesinus [4687] , each one of you shall sign as he believes: Athanasius is here too; whoever does not know the word of faith, let him learn from Athanasius. You have to-morrow and the day after, for I am going out to Camp.' And a certain lawyer [4688] belonging to the Cynics petitioned the Emperor: May it please your Majesty, on account of Bishop Athanasius, the Receiver-General [4689] seized my houses.' Emperor: If the Receiver-General seized your houses what has that to do with Athanasius?' Another lawyer, Patalas, said: I have a complaint against Athanasius.' Emperor: And what have you to do with Christians, being a heathen?' But certain of the majority of them of Antioch took Lucius and brought him to the Emperor, saying: May it please your Might and your Majesty, look whom they wanted to make a Bishop!'
Another petition made at the porch of the palace [4690] on the part of Lucius:--May it please your Might, listen to me.' The Emperor stopped and said: I ask you, Lucius, how did you come here, by sea or by land?' Lucius: May it please you, by sea.' Emperor: Well, Lucius, may the God of the world, and the radiant sun, and moon, be angry with those men that made the voyage with you, for not casting you into the sea; and may that ship never again have fair winds, nor find a haven with her passengers when in a storm.' And through Euzoius [4691] the unbelieving Arians asked Probatius and his fellows, the successors of Eusebius [4692] and Bardio as eunuchs, that they might be granted an audience. The Emperor learned this, and tortured the eunuchs and said: If any one wants to make a petition against Christians let this be his fate.' And so the Emperor dismissed them. __________________________________________________________________
[4673] Cf. Prolegg, ch. ii. §9, and ch. v. §3, h. and supr. p. 487. Athanasius, on the first news of Julian's death, by a secret and rapid journey, succeeded in meeting Jovian, when still beyond the Euphrates on his return from the East. He thus secured the ear of the new Emperor before the Arian deputation from Alexandria could reach him. The letter before us (Migne xxvi. 813) was drawn up at Antioch, as it would seem in response to a request from Jovian on a doctrinal statement. The short letter of Jovian prefixed to the Epistle is a formal authorisation for the bishop's return to his see, with which, taught by his experience under Julian, he was careful to arm himself. The documents given as an appendix are notes made at Antioch, and carefully preserved, of the reception given by Jovian to the Arian deputation. They are probably the exemplaria' referred to in Hist. Aceph. §14 (see note there). They are characteristic, and interesting in many ways; among others, as shewing how accurately Jovian had been primed by Athanasius with the leading facts of his case.
[4674] Prov. xxi. 1. The letter as given by Theodoret adds, and you will peacefully enjoy a long reign:' probably the words were erased from our text on account of Jovian's premature death. If genuine, they stamp the prediction supr. p. 487, as, at least in part, a vaticinium ex eventu.
[4675] Very probably orally, see Prolegg. ubi supr.
[4676] 2 Cor. iii. 2.
[4677] Gal. ii. 6, 13.
[4678] This reference is explained above, Prolegg. ch. ii. §9 sub fin.
[4679] 'Autoi, i.e. adding this, as a feature of their own, to the Arianism they shared with their predecessors. Acacius seems to be specially referred to; he had just signed the Homousios with explanations; cf. Pseudo-Ath. de Hypocr. Melet. et Euseb.
[4680] This points to Antioch as the place of composition, which is fairly certain on other grounds.
[4681] prokrima, a præjudicium' or prima facie objection in their favour.
[4682] A pardonable exaggeration, but its very use is significant; cf. de Syn. 33, and Bright's note, Later Treatises, p. 20.
[4683] Ut supr. p. 75; the other authorities for the text of the creed in Hahn §73, note. Cf. Hort, p. 54 sqq. The only important variant here not noticed by Hort is ton hena kurion.
[4684] See above, pp. 83 and 84, note 4, also Prolegg. ii. §8 (2) b.
[4685] Originally Arian deacon (p. 70), and presently bishop of the Arians at Alexandria; see Hist. Aceph. p. 499, and Prolegg ch. ii. §10.
[4686] i.e. strike, strike! probably a direction to the guard to silence the petitioners.
[4687] Possibly an imperial notary or registrar, see D.C.B. iv. 15.
[4688] Scholastikos
[4689] katholikos
[4690] In the New Town, on the island of the Orontes.
[4691] Originally one of the Arian clergy of Alexandria (supr. p. 70), now Arian bishop of Antioch.
[4692] Hist. Ar. 35, &c. __________________________________________________________________
Letter LVII.--First Letter to Orsisius [4693] .
And having spent a few days there, he saith to the Abbat Theodorus: Since the Passover is nigh, visit the brethren after your manner; and as the Lord shall dispose me, I will do. And he embraced him, and sent him away, having written a letter by him to the Abbat Orsisius and the brethren, to the following effect:'--
I have seen your fellow-worker and father of the brethren, Theodorus, and in him the master of our father Pachomius. And I rejoiced to see the sons of the Church, and they made me glad by their presence. But the Lord is their recompenser. And as Theodorus was about to leave me for you, he said to me: Remember me. And I said to him: If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand be forgotten, yea let my tongue cleave to my throat if I remember thee not [4694] . __________________________________________________________________
[4693] Orsisius was chosen abbat of Tabenne in Upper Egypt, a.d. 347, in succession to Petronius. Presently, however, he resigned in favour of Theodorus, the favourite disciple of Pachomius. The two letters which follow are from the life of Pachomius, §§92, 96, Acta SS. for May, vol. iii. (Also in Migne xxvi. 977.) They belong, the first to the year 363 a.d., not long before the death of Julian (D.C.B. i. 199a), the second to the summer of the following year, 364 (infr. note 3). Both letters are characteristic; the second a moving and simple consolation to mourners.
[4694] Ps. cxxxvii. 6, LXX. __________________________________________________________________
Letter LVIII.--Second Letter to Orsisius.
But the most holy Archbishop Athanasius, when he heard about our father Theodorus, was grieved, and sent this letter to the Abbat Orsisius and the brethren to console them for his decease, as follows:'--
Athanasius to Orsisius, Abbat, father of monks, and to all with him who practise the solitary life, and are settled in faith in God, beloved brethren most longed for in the Lord, greeting.
I have heard about the decease of the blessed Theodorus [4695] , and the tidings caused me great anxiety, knowing as I did his value to you. Now if it had not been Theodorus, I should have used many words to you, with tears, considering what follows after death. But since it is Theodorus whom you and I have known, what need I say in my letter save Blessed is' Theodorus, who hath not walked in the council of the ungodly [4696] ?' But if he is blessed that feareth the Lord [4697] ,' we may now confidently call him blessed, having the firm assurance that he has reached as it were a haven, and has a life without care. Would that the same had also befallen each one of us; would that each of us in his running might thus arrive; would that each of us, on his voyage, might moor his own bark there in the stormless haven, so that, at rest with the fathers, he might say, here will I dwell, for I have a delight therein [4698] .' Wherefore, brethren beloved and most longed-for, weep not for Theodorus, for he is not dead, but sleepeth [4699] .' Let none weep when he remembers him, but imitate his life. For one must not grieve over one that is gone to the place where grief is not. This I write to you all in common; but especially to you, beloved and most longed for Orsisius, in order that now that he is fallen asleep, you may take up the whole charge, and take his place among the brethren. For while he survived, you two were as one, and when one was away, the work of both was carried on: and when both were there you were as one, discoursing to the beloved ones what made for their good. Thus act, then, and so doing write and tell me of the safety of yourself and of the brotherhood. And I exhort you all to pray together that the Lord may grant further peace to the Churches. For we now kept festival with joy, both Easter and Pentecost, and we rejoice in the benefits of the Lord. I write to you all. Greet all who fear the Lord. Those with me greet you. I pray that you may be well in the Lord, beloved and much-longed-for brethren. __________________________________________________________________
[4695] On Theodore see Amelineau, S. Pakhôme, &c., pp. xcv.-xcvii. The death of Theodore is fixed for April 27, 364, on the following grounds. He died (Vit. Pachom. 95) of a short and sudden illness, on Pachon 2 (April 27), and shortly after Easter. Moreover his death took place 18 years after that of Pachomius. But Ammon (as he tells us himself, supr. p. 487) became a Christian and a monk a year and more' after March 15, 351 (proclamation of Gallus as Cæsar), and six years after the death of Pachomius. (Ep. Amm. 4, 5.) This dates the latter event a little less than five years before March 15, 351. But Pachomius died, according to his Life, on Pachon 14 (May 9), of an epidemic which attacked the community after Easter. This double condition is satisfied by the year 346, in which Easter fell on Pharm. 4, forty days before the day of Pachomius' decease. If then Pachomius died in 346, Theodore died in 364. Against this result we have (1) the fact that in that year April 27 was twenty-three days after Easter; but the Easter gathering of the monks would last over April 11 (Low Sunday), and the death of Theodore would come suddenly enough a fortnight later; (2) the fragment (supr. p. 551) probably belonging to Letter 39, which a coptic life of Theodore makes him state that he received before his last Easter. But this cannot be correct; for all known data forbid us to place the death of Theodore as late as 367. (Tillemont's tentative opinion, vii. 691, 761, is bound up with an obsolete chronology of the exiles of Athan.) On the other hand Theodore cannot have died as early as 363. Athanasius was with him (supr. p. 487) in the summer of that year, and when our present letter was written Ath. had clearly kept Easter at home, which suits 364, but excludes 363.
[4696] Ps. i. 1.
[4697] Ps. cxii. 1.
[4698] Ib. cxxxii. 14.
[4699] Matt. ix. 24. __________________________________________________________________
Letter LIX.--To Epictetus.
To my Lord, beloved brother, and most-longed-for fellow-minister Epictetus [4700] , Athanasius greeting in the Lord. I thought that all vain talk of all heretics, many as they may be, had been stopped by the Synod which was held at Nicæa. For the Faith there confessed by the Fathers according to the divine Scriptures is enough by itself at once to overthrow all impiety, and to establish the religious belief in Christ. For this reason at the present time, at the assembling of diverse synods, both in Gaul and Spain, and great Rome [4701] , all who came together, as though moved by one spirit, unanimously anathematised those who still were secretly holding with Arius, namely Auxentius of Milan, Ursacius, Valens, and Gaius of Pannonia. And they wrote everywhere, that, whereas the above-said were devising the names of synods to cite on their side, no synod should be cited in the Catholic Church save only that which was held at Nicæa, which was a monument of victory over all heresy, but especially the Arian, which was the main reason of the synod assembling when it did. How then, after all this, are some attempting to raise doubts or questions? If they belong to the Arians, this is not to be wondered at, that they find fault with what was drawn up against themselves, just as the Gentiles when they hear that the idols of the heathen are silver and gold, the work of men's hands [4702] ,' think the doctrine of the divine Cross folly. But if those who desire to reopen everything by raising questions belong to those who think they believe aright, and love what the fathers have declared, they are simply doing what the prophet describes, giving their neighbour turbid confusion to drink [4703] , and fighting about words to no good purpose, save to the subversion of the simple.
2. I write this after reading the memoranda submitted by your piety, which I could wish had not been written at all, so that not even any record of these things should go down to posterity. For who ever yet heard the like? Who ever taught or learned it? For from Sion shall come forth the law of God, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem [4704] ;' but whence came forth this? What lower region has vomited the statement that the Body born of Mary is coessential with the Godhead of the Word? or that the Word has been changed into flesh, bones, hair, and the whole body, and altered from its own nature? Or who ever heard in a Church, or even from Christians, that the Lord wore a body putatively, not in nature; or who ever went so far in impiety as to say and hold, that this Godhead, which is coessential with the Father, was circumcised and became imperfect instead of perfect; and that what hung upon the tree was not the body, but the very creative Essence and Wisdom? Or who that hears that the Word transformed for Himself a passible body, not of Mary, but of His own Essence, could call him who said this a Christian? Or who devised this abominable impiety, for it to enter even his imagination, and for him to say that to pronounce the Lord's Body to be of Mary is to hold a Tetrad instead of a Triad in the Godhead? Those who think thus, saying that the Body of the Saviour which He put on from Mary, is of the Essence of the Triad. Or whence again have certain vomited an impiety as great as those already mentioned; saying namely, that the body is not newer than the Godhead of the Word, but was coeternal with it always, since it was compounded of the Essence of Wisdom. Or how did men called Christians venture even to doubt whether the Lord, Who proceeded from Mary, while Son of God by Essence and Nature, is of the seed of David according to the flesh [4705] , and of the flesh of the Holy Mary? Or who have been so venturesome as to say that Christ Who suffered in the flesh and was crucified is not Lord, Saviour, God, and Son of the Father [4706] ? Or how can they wish to be called Christians who say that the Word has descended upon a holy man as upon one of the prophets, and has not Himself become man, taking the body from Mary; but that Christ is one person, while the Word of God, Who before Mary and before the ages was Son of the Father, is another? Or how can they be Christians who say that the Son is one, and the Word of God another?
3. Such were the contents of the memoranda; diverse statements, but one in their sense and in their meaning; tending to impiety. It was for these things that men who make their boast in the confession of the fathers drawn up at Nicæa were disputing and quarrelling with one another. But I marvel that your piety suffered it, and that you did not stop those who said such things, and propound to them the right faith, so that upon hearing it they might hold their peace, or if they opposed it might be counted as heretics. For the statements are not fit for Christians to make or to hear, on the contrary they are in every way alien from the Apostolic teaching. For this reason, as I said above, I have caused what they say to be baldly inserted in my letter, so that one who merely hears may perceive the shame and impiety therein contained. And although it would be right to denounce and expose in full the folly of those who have had such ideas, yet it would be a good thing to close my letter here and write no more. For what is so manifestly shewn to be evil, it is not necessary to waste time in exposing further, lest contentious persons think the matter doubtful. It is enough merely to answer such things as follows: we are content with the fact that this is not the teaching of the Catholic Church, nor did the fathers hold this. But lest the inventors of evil things [4707] ' make entire silence on our part a pretext for shamelessness, it will be well to mention a few points from Holy Scripture, in case they may even thus be put to shame, and cease from these foul devices.
4. Whence did it occur to you, sirs, to say that the Body is of one Essence with the Godhead of the Word? For it is well to begin at this point, in order that by shewing this opinion to be unsound, all the others too may be proved to be the same. Now from the divine Scriptures we discover nothing of the kind. For they say that God came in a human body. But the fathers who also assembled at Nicæa say that, not the body, but the Son Himself is coessential with the Father, and that while He is of the Essence of the Father, the body, as they admitted according to the Scriptures, is of Mary. Either then deny the Synod of Nicæa, and as heretics bring in your doctrine from the side; or, if you wish to be children of the fathers, do not hold the contrary of what they wrote. For here again you may see how monstrous it is: If the Word is coessential with the body which is of earthly nature, while the Word is, by your own confession, coessential with the Father, it will follow that even the Father Himself is coessential with the body produced from the earth. And why any longer blame the Arians for calling the Son a creature, when you go off to another form of impiety, saying that the Word was changed into flesh and bones and hair and muscles and all the body, and was altered from its own nature? For it is time for you to say openly that He was born of earth; for from earth is the nature of the bones and of all the body. What then is this great folly of yours, that you fight even with one another? For in saying that the Word is coessential with the Body, you distinguish the one from the other [4708] , while in saying that He has been changed into flesh, you imagine a change of the Word Himself. And who will tolerate you any longer if you so much as utter these opinions? For you have gone further in impiety than any heresy. For if the Word is coessential with the Body, the commemoration and the work of Mary are superfluous [4709] , inasmuch as the body could have existed before Mary, just as the Word also is eternal: if, that is, it is as you say co-essential with the Body. Or what need was there even of the Word coming among us, to put on what was coessential with Himself, or to change His own nature and become a body? For the Deity does not take hold [4710] of itself, so as to put on what is of its own Essence, any more than the Word sinned, in that it ransoms the sins of others, in order that changing into a body it should offer itself a sacrifice for itself, and ransom itself.
5. But this is not so, far be the thought. For he takes hold of the seed of Abraham [4711] ,' as the apostle said; whence it behoved Him to be made like His brethren in all things, and to take a Body like us. This is why Mary is truly presupposed, in order that He may take it from her, and offer it for us as His own. And this Isaiah pointed to in his prophecy, in the words: Behold the Virgin [4712] ,' while Gabriel is sent to her--not simply to a virgin, but to a virgin betrothed to a man [4713] ,' in order that by means of the betrothed man he might shew that Mary was really a human being. And for this reason Scripture also mentions her bringing forth, and tells of her wrapping Him in swaddling clothes; and therefore, too, the paps which He sucked were called blessed [4714] . And He was offered as a sacrifice, in that He Who was born had opened the womb [4715] . Now all these things are proofs that the Virgin brought forth. And Gabriel preached the Gospel to her without uncertainty, saying not merely what is born in thee,' lest the body should be thought to be extraneously induced upon her, but of thee,' that what was born might be believed to be naturally from her, inasmuch as Nature clearly shews that it is impossible for a virgin to produce milk unless she has brought forth, and impossible for a body to be nourished with milk and wrapped in swaddling clothes unless it has previously been naturally brought forth. This is the meaning of His being circumcised on the eighth day: of Symeon taking Him in his arms, of His becoming a young child, and growing when He was twelve years old, and of His coming to His thirtieth year. For it was not, as some suppose, the very Essence of the Word that was changed, and was circumcised, because it is incapable of alteration or change. For the Saviour Himself says, Behold, behold, it is I, and I change not [4716] ,' while Paul writes: Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever [4717] .' But in the Body which was circumcised, and carried, and ate and drank, and was weary, and was nailed on the tree and suffered, there was the impassible and incorporeal Word of God. This Body it was that was laid in a grave, when the Word had left it, yet was not parted from it, to preach, as Peter says, also to the spirits in prison [4718] .
6. And this above all shews the foolishness of those who say that the Word was changed into bones and flesh. For if this had been so, there were no need of a tomb. For the Body would have gone by itself to preach to the spirits in Hades. But as it was, He Himself went to preach, while the Body Joseph wrapped in a linen cloth, and laid it away at Golgotha [4719] . And so it is shewn to all that the Body was not the Word, but Body of the Word. And it was this that Thomas handled when it had risen from the dead, and saw in it the print of the nails, which the Word Himself had undergone, seeing them fixed in His own Body, and though able to prevent it, did not do so. On the contrary, the incorporeal Word made His own the properties of the Body, as being His own Body. Why, when the Body was struck by the attendant, as suffering Himself He asked, Why smitest thou Me [4720] ?' And being by nature intangible, the Word yet said, I gave My back to the stripes, and My cheeks to blows, and hid not My face from shame and spitting [4721] .' For what the human Body of the Word suffered, this the Word, dwelling in the body, ascribed to Himself, in order that we might be enabled to be partakers of the Godhead of the Word [4722] . And verily it is strange that He it was Who suffered and yet suffered not. Suffered, because His own Body suffered, and He was in it, which thus suffered; suffered not, because the Word, being by Nature God, is impassible. And while He, the incorporeal, was in the passible Body, the Body had in it the impassible Word, which was destroying the infirmities inherent in the Body. But this He did, and so it was, in order that Himself taking what was ours and offering it as a sacrifice, He might do away with it, and conversely might invest us with what was His, and cause the Apostle to say: This corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal put on immortality [4723] .'
7. Now this did not come to pass putatively, as some have supposed: far be the thought: but the Saviour having in very truth become Man, the salvation of the whole man was brought about. For if the Word were in the Body putatively, as they say, and by putative is meant imaginary, it follows that both the salvation and the resurrection of man is apparent only, as the most impious Manichæus held. But truly our salvation is not merely apparent, nor does it extend to the body only, but the whole man, body and soul alike, has truly obtained salvation in the Word Himself. That then which was born of Mary was according to the divine Scriptures human by nature, and the Body of the Lord was a true one; but it was this, because it was the same as our body, for Mary was our sister inasmuch as we all are from Adam. And no one can doubt of this when he remembers what Luke wrote. For after He had risen from the dead, when some thought that they did not see the Lord in the body derived from Mary, but were beholding a spirit instead, He said, See My hands and My feet, and the prints of the nails, that it is I Myself: handle Me and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see Me to have. And when He had said thus, He shewed them His hands and His feet [4724] .' Whence they can be refuted who have ventured to say that the Lord was transformed into flesh and bones. For He did not say, As ye see Me to be flesh and bone,' but as ye see Me to have,' in order that it might not be thought that the Word Himself was changed into these things, but that He might be believed to have them after His resurrection as well as before His death.
8. These things being thus demonstrated, it is superfluous to touch upon the other points, or to enter upon any discussion relating to them, since the body in which the Word was is not coessential with the Godhead, but was truly born of Mary, while the Word Himself was not changed into bones and flesh, but came in the flesh. For what John said, The Word was made flesh [4725] ,' has this meaning, as we may see by a similar passage; for it is written in Paul: Christ has become a curse for us [4726] .' And just as He has not Himself become a curse, but is said to have done so because He took upon Him the curse on our behalf, so also He has become flesh not by being changed into flesh, but because He assumed on our behalf living flesh, and has become Man. For to say the Word became flesh,' is equivalent to saying the Word has become man;' according to what is said in Joel: I will pour forth of My Spirit upon all flesh [4727] ;' for the promise did not extend to the irrational animals, but is for men, on whose account the Lord is become Man. As then this is the sense of the above text, they all will reasonably condemn themselves who have thought that the flesh derived from Mary existed before her, and that the Word, prior to her, had a human soul, and existed in it always even before His coming. And they too will cease who have said that the Flesh was not accessible to death, but belonged to the immortal Nature. For if it did not die, how could Paul deliver to the Corinthians that Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures [4728] ,' or how did He rise at all if He did not also die? Again, they will blush deeply who have even entertained the possibility of a Tetrad instead of a Triad resulting, if it were said that the Body was derived from Mary. For if (they argue) we say the Body is of one Essence with the Word, the Triad remains a Triad; for then the Word imports no foreign element into it; but if we admit that the Body derived from Mary is human, it follows, since the Body is foreign in Essence, and the Word is in it, that the addition of the Body causes a Tetrad instead of a Triad.
9. When they argue thus, they fail to perceive the contradiction in which they involve themselves. For even though they say that the Body is not from Mary, but is coessential with the Word, yet none the less (the very point they dissemble, to avoid being credited with their real opinion) this on their own premises can be proved to involve a Tetrad. For as the Son, according to the Fathers, is coessential with the Father, but is not the Father Himself, but is called coessential, as Son with Father, so the Body, which they call coessential with the Word, is not the Word Himself, but a distinct entity. But if so, on their own shewing, their Triad will be a Tetrad [4729] . For the true, really perfect and indivisible Triad is not accessible to addition as is the Triad imagined by these persons. And how do these remain Christians who imagine another God in addition to the true one? For, once again, in their other fallacy one can see how great is their folly. For if they think because it is contained and stated in the Scriptures, that the Body of the Saviour is human and derived from Mary, that a Tetrad is substituted for a Triad, as though the Body created an addition, they go very far wrong, so much so as to make the creature equal to the Creator, and suppose that the Godhead can receive an addition. And they have failed to perceive that the Word is become Flesh, not by reason of an addition to the Godhead, but in order that the flesh may rise again. Nor did the Word proceed from Mary that He might be bettered, but that He might ransom the human race. How then can they think that the Body, ransomed and quickened by the Word, made an addition in respect of Godhead to the Word that had quickened it? For on the contrary, a great addition has accrued to the human Body itself from the fellowship and union of the Word with it. For instead of mortal it is become immortal; and, though an animal [4730] body, it is become spiritual, and though made from earth it entered the heavenly gates. The Triad, then, although the Word took a body from Mary, is a Triad, being inaccessible to addition or diminution; but it is always perfect, and in the Triad one Godhead is recognised, and so in the Church one God is preached, the Father of the Word.
10. For this reason they also will henceforth keep silence, who once said that He who proceeded from Mary is not very Christ, or Lord, or God. For if He were not God in the Body, how came He, upon proceeding from Mary, straightway to be called Emmanuel, which is being interpreted God with us [4731] ?' Why again, if the Word was not in the flesh, did Paul write to the Romans of whom is Christ after the flesh, Who is above all God blessed for ever. Amen [4732] ?' Let them therefore confess, even they who previously denied that the Crucified was God, that they have erred; for the divine Scriptures bid them, and especially Thomas, who, after seeing upon Him the print of the nails, cried out My Lord and my God [4733] !' For the Son, being God, and Lord of glory [4734] , was in the Body which was ingloriously nailed and dishonoured; but the Body, while it suffered, being pierced on the tree, and water and blood flowed from its side, yet because it was a temple of the Word was filled full of the Godhead. For this reason it was that the sun, seeing its creator suffering in His outraged body, withdrew its rays and darkened the earth. But the body itself being of mortal nature, beyond its own nature rose again by reason of the Word which was in it; and it has ceased from natural corruption, and, having put on the Word which is above man, has become incorruptible.
11. But with regard to the imagination of some, who say that the Word came upon one particular man, the Son of Mary, just as it came upon each of the Prophets, it is superfluous to discuss it, since their madness carries its own condemnation manifestly with it. For if He came thus, why was that man born of a virgin, and not like others of a man and woman? For in this way each of the saints also was begotten. Or why, if the Word came thus, is not the death of each one said to have taken place on our behalf, but only this man's death? Or why, if the Word sojourned among us in the case of each one of the prophets, is it said only in the case of Him born of Mary that He sojourned here once at the consummation of the ages [4735] ?' Or why, if He came as He had come in the saints of former times, did the Son of Mary alone, while all the rest had died without rising as yet, rise again on the third day? Or why, if the Word had come in like manner as He had done in the other cases, is the Son of Mary alone called Emmanuel, as though a Body filled full of the Godhead were born of her? For Emmanuel is interpreted God with us.' Or why, if He came thus, is it not said that when each of the saints ate, drank, laboured, and died, that He (the Word) ate, drank, laboured, and died, but only in the case of the Son of Mary. For what that Body suffered is said to have been suffered by the Word. And while we are merely told of the others that they were born, and begotten, it is said in the case of the Son of Mary alone that The Word was made Flesh.'
12. This proves that while to all the others the Word came, in order that they might prophesy, from Mary the Word Himself took flesh, and proceeded forth as man; being by nature and essence the Word of God, but after the flesh man of the seed of David, and made of the flesh of Mary, as Paul said [4736] . Him the Father pointed out both in Jordan and on the Mount, saying, This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased [4737] .' Him the Arians denied, but we recognising worship, not dividing the Son and the Word, but knowing that the Son is the Word Himself, by Whom all things are made, and by Whom we were redeemed. And for this reason we wonder how any contention at all has arisen among you about things so clear. But thanks to the Lord, much as we were grieved at reading your memoranda, we were equally glad at their conclusion. For they departed with concord, and peacefully agreed in the confession of the pious and orthodox faith. This fact has induced me, after much previous consideration, to write these few words; for I am anxious lest by my silence this matter should cause pain rather than joy to those whose concord occasions joy to ourselves. I therefore ask your piety in the first place, and secondly those who hear, to take my letter in good part, and if anything is lacking in it in respect of piety, to set that right, and inform me. But if it is written, as from one unpractised in speech, below the subject and imperfectly, let all allow for my feebleness in speaking. Greet all the brethren with you. All those with us greet you; may you live in good health in the Lord, beloved and truly longed for. __________________________________________________________________
[4700] Of Epictetus, bishop of Corinth, nothing else is known. This letter reflects the uncertainty, which attended the victory of the Nicene Creed, as to the relation of the Historical Christ to the Eternal Son. The questions raised at Corinth were those which troubled the Eastern Church generally, and which came to a head in the system of Apollinarius, whose distinctive tenet, however, is not mentioned in this letter. Persons anxious to place the Nicene doctrine in intelligible connection with the matter of the Gospel Narrative had debated the question before Epictetus, and with deference to his ruling. Their tentative solutions (§2 infr.) fall into two classes, both of which, in attempting to solve the problem, proceed upon the assumption incidentally combated by Athan., that the Manhood of Christ was a Hypostasis or Person, which if invested with Divine attributes, would introduce a fourth hypostatic entity into the Trinity. To avoid this, one class identified the Logos and the Anthropos, either by assuming that the Logos was changed into flesh, or that the flesh was itself non-natural and of the Divine Essence. The other class excluded the Man Jesus from the Trinity, explaining His relation to God on the lines of Photinus or the later Nestorians. Both alternatives are already glanced at (supr. p. 485) by the Council of 362. In the present case, both classes of suggestions seem to have been made tentatively and bona fide (§12). The letter must have been written before the two books against Apollinarianism, which (if genuine) fall about 372. Its more exact date depends on the identification of the Councils referred to in §1 (nun genomenon), and is therefore very doubtful. At any rate Apollinarianism proper is not alluded to, and Apollinarius is said to have expressed to Serapion of Thmuis his high opinion of our Letter (see Letter 54, note 1). It was much quoted in the Christological controversies of the next 80 years, e.g. by the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon, by Theodoret, Cyril, and Leo the Great (see Migne xxvi. 1050; Bright, Later Treatises, pp. 43 sq., and D.C.B. s.v. Epictetus and Apollinaris the younger).
[4701] Are these those referred to in the letter to Ruf., and held a.d. 362-3, or are they to be identified with one or other of those held under Damasus (see Introd. to ad Afros.)?
[4702] Ps. cxv. 4.
[4703] Hab. ii. 15, LXX.
[4704] Isa. ii. 3; Mic. iv. 2.
[4705] Rom. i. 3.
[4706] This opinion seems to belong to that next to be mentioned, the two, however, are separately dealt with below, cc. 10 and 11.
[4707] Rom. i. 30.
[4708] heteron pros heteron semainete
[4709] Letter 61, §3.
[4710] Heb. ii. 16.
[4711] Heb. ii. 16.
[4712] Isa. vii. 14.
[4713] Luke i. 27.
[4714] Ib. xi. 27.
[4715] Ib. ii. 23.
[4716] Mal. iii. 6.
[4717] Heb. xiii. 8.
[4718] 1 Pet. iii. 19.
[4719] Mark xv. 46.
[4720] John xviii. 23.
[4721] Isa. l. 6.
[4722] 2 Pet. i. 4, above, p. 65, note 5.
[4723] 1 Cor. xv. 53.
[4724] Luke xxiv. 39.
[4725] Joh. i. 14.
[4726] Gal. iii. 13.
[4727] Joel ii. 28.
[4728] 1 Cor. xv. 3.
[4729] The argument rests on the principle that the Trinity is a trinity of Persons, not of Essences: the opponents implicitly tax the Nicene doctrine with the consequence that if truly man, Christ is a distinct Personality from the Son.
[4730] psuchikon.
[4731] Matt. i. 23.
[4732] Rom. ix. 5.
[4733] John xx. 28.
[4734] 1 Cor. ii. 8.
[4735] Heb. ix. 26.
[4736] Cf. Rom. i. 3; Gal. iv. 4.
[4737] Matt. iii. 17, and xvii. 5. __________________________________________________________________
Letter LX.--To Adelphius [4738] , Bishop and Confessor: against the Arians.
We have read what your piety has written to us, and genuinely approve your piety toward Christ. And above all we glorify God, Who has given you such grace as not only to have right opinions, but also, so far as that is possible, not to be ignorant of the devices [4739] of the devil. But we marvel at the perversity of the heretics, seeing that they have fallen into such a pit of impiety that they no longer retain even their senses, but have their understanding corrupted on all sides. But this attempt is a plot of the devil, and an imitation of the disobedient Jews. For as the latter, when refuted on all sides, kept devising excuses to their own hurt, if only they could deny the Lord and bring upon themselves what was prophesied against them, in like manner these men, seeing themselves proscribed on all hands, and perceiving that their heresy has become abominable to all, prove themselves inventors of evil things [4740] ,' in order that, not ceasing their fightings against the truth, they may remain consistent and genuine adversaries of Christ. For whence has this new mischief of theirs sprung forth? How have they even ventured to utter this new blasphemy against the Saviour? But the impious man, it seems, is a worthless object, and truly reprobate concerning the Faith [4741] .' For formerly, while denying the Godhead of the only-begotten Son of God, they pretended at any rate to acknowledge His coming in the Flesh. But now, gradually going from bad to worse, they have fallen from this opinion of theirs, and become Godless on all hands, so as neither to acknowledge Him as God, nor to believe that He has become man. For if they believed this they would not have uttered such things as your piety has reported against them.
2. You, however, beloved and most truly longed-for, have done what befitted the tradition of the Church and your piety toward the Lord, in refuting, admonishing, and rebuking such men. But since, instigated by their father the devil, they knew not nor understood,' as it is written, but go on still in darkness [4742] ,' let them learn from your piety that this error of theirs belongs to Valentinus and Marcion, and to Manichæus, of whom some substituted [the idea of] Appearance for Reality, while the others, dividing what is indivisible, denied the truth that the Word was made Flesh, and dwelt among us [4743] .' Why then, as they hold with those people, do they not also take up the heritage of their names? For it is reasonable, as they hold their error, to have their names as well, and for the future to be called Valentinians, Marcionists, and Manichæans. Perhaps even thus, being put to shame by the ill savour of the names, they may be enabled to perceive into what a depth of impiety they have fallen. And it would be within our rights not to answer them at all, according to the apostolic advice [4744] : A man that is heretical, after a first and second admonition refuse, knowing that such an one is perverted, and sinneth, being self-condemned;' the more so, in that the Prophet says about such men: The fool shall utter foolishness, and his heart shall imagine vain things [4745] .' But since, like their leader, they too go about like lions seeking whom among the simple they shall devour [4746] , we are compelled to write in reply to your piety, that the brethren being once again instructed by your admonition may still further reprobate the vain teaching of those men.
3. We do not worship a creature. Far be the thought. For such an error belongs to heathens and Arians. But we worship the Lord of Creation, Incarnate, the Word of God. For if the flesh also is in itself a part of the created world, yet it has become God's body. And we neither divide the body, being such, from the Word, and worship it by itself [4747] , nor when we wish to worship the Word do we set Him far apart from the Flesh, but knowing, as we said above, that the Word was made flesh,' we recognise Him as God also, after having come in the flesh. Who, accordingly, is so senseless as to say to the Lord: Leave the Body that I may worship Thee;' or so impious as to join the senseless Jews in saying, on account of the Body, Why dost Thou, being a man, make Thyself God [4748] ?' But the leper was not one of this sort, for he worshipped God in the Body, and recognised that He was God, saying, Lord, if Thou wilt Thou canst make me clean [4749] .' Neither by reason of the Flesh did he think the Word of God a creature: nor because the Word was the maker of all creation did he despise the Flesh which He had put on. But he worshipped the Creator of the universe as dwelling in a created temple, and was cleansed. So also the woman with an issue of blood, who believed, and only touched the hem of His garment, was healed [4750] , and the sea with its foaming waves heard the incarnate Word, and ceased its storm [4751] , while the man blind from birth was healed by the fleshly spitting of the Word [4752] . And, what is greater and more startling (for perhaps this even offended those most impious men), even when the Lord was hanging upon the actual cross (for it was His Body and the Word was in it), the sun was darkened and the earth shook, the rocks were rent, and the vail of the temple rent, and many bodies of the saints which slept arose.
4. These things then happened, and no one doubted, as the Arians now venture to doubt, whether one is to believe the incarnate Word; but even from beholding the man, they recognised that He was their maker, and when they heard a human voice, they did not, because it was human, say that the Word was a creature. On the contrary, they trembled, and recognised nothing less than that it was being uttered from a holy Temple. How then can the impious fail to fear lest as they refused to have God in their knowledge, they may be given up to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not fitting [4753] ?' For Creation does not worship a creature. Nor again did she on account of His Flesh refuse to worship her Lord. But she beheld her maker in the Body, and in the Name of Jesus every knee' bowed, yea and shall bow, of things in heaven and things on earth and things under the earth, and every tongue shall confess,' whether the Arians approve or no, that Jesus is Lord, to the Glory of God the Father [4754] .' For the Flesh did not diminish the glory of the Word; far be the thought: on the contrary, it was glorified by Him. Nor, because the Son that was in the form of God took upon Him the form of a servant [4755] was He deprived of His Godhead. On the contrary, He is thus become the Deliverer of all flesh and of all creation. And if God sent His Son brought forth from a woman, the fact causes us no shame but contrariwise glory and great grace. For He has become Man, that He might deify us in Himself, and He has been born of a woman, and begotten of a Virgin, in order to transfer to Himself our erring generation [4756] , and that we may become henceforth a holy race, and partakers of the Divine Nature,' as blessed Peter wrote [4757] . And what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh [4758] .'
5. Seeing then that Flesh was taken by the Word to deliver all men, raise all from the dead, and make redemption for sins, must not they appear ungrateful, and be worthy of all hatred, who make light of the Flesh, as well as those who on account of it charge the Son of God with being a thing created or made? For they as good as cry to God and say: Send not Thine Only-begotten Son in the Flesh, cause Him not to take flesh of a virgin, lest He redeem us from death and sin. We do not wish Him to come in the body, lest He should undergo death on our behalf: we do not desire the Word to be made flesh, lest in it He should become our Mediator to gain access to thee, and we so inhabit the heavenly mansions. Let the gates of the heavens be shut lest Thy Word consecrate for us the road thither through the veil, namely His Flesh [4759] .' These are their utterances, vented with diabolical daring, by the error they have devised. For they who do not wish to worship the Word made flesh, are ungrateful for His becoming man. And they who divide the Word from the Flesh do not hold that one redemption from sin has taken place, or one destruction of death. But where at all will these impious men find the Flesh which the Saviour took, apart from Him, that they should even venture to say we do not worship the Lord with the Flesh, but we separate the Body, and worship Him alone.' Why, the blessed Stephen saw in the heavens the Lord standing on [God's] right hand [4760] , while the Angels said to the disciples, He shall so come in like manner as ye beheld Him going into heaven [4761] :' and the Lord Himself says, addressing the Father, I will that where I am, they also may be with Me [4762] .' And surely if the Flesh is inseparable from the Word, does it not follow that these men must either lay aside their error, and for the future worship the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, or, if they do not worship or serve the Word Who came in the Flesh, be cast out on all sides, and count no longer as Christians but either as heathens, or among the Jews.
6. Such then, as we have above described, is the madness and daring of those men. But our faith is right, and starts from the teaching of the Apostles and tradition of the fathers, being confirmed both by the New Testament and the Old. For the Prophets say: Send out Thy Word and Thy Truth [4763] ,' and Behold the Virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call His name Emmanuel, which is being interpreted God with us [4764] .' But what does that mean, if not that God has come in the Flesh? While the Apostolic tradition teaches in the words of blessed Peter, Forasmuch then as Christ suffered for us in the Flesh;' and in what Paul writes, Looking for the blessed hope and appearing of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ, Who gave Himself for us that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto Himself a people for His own possession, and zealous of good works [4765] .' How then has He given Himself, if He had not worn flesh? For flesh He offered, and gave Himself for us, in order that undergoing death in it, He might bring to nought him that had the power of death, that is, the devil [4766] .' Hence also we always give thanks in the name of Jesus Christ, and we do not set at nought the grace which came to us through Him. For the coming of the Saviour in the flesh has been the ransom and salvation of all creation. So then, beloved and most longed-for, let what I have said put in mind those who love the Lord, while as to those who have imitated the behaviour of Judas, and deserted the Lord to join Caiaphas, let them by these things be taught better, if maybe they are willing, if maybe they are ashamed. And let them know that in worshipping the Lord in the flesh we do not worship a creature, but, as we said above, the Creator Who has put on the created body.
7. But we should like your piety to ask them this. When Israel was ordered to go up to Jerusalem to worship at the temple of the Lord, where was the ark, and above it the Cherubim of glory overshadowing the Mercy-seat [4767] ,' did they do well or the opposite? If they did ill, how came it that they who despised this law were liable to punishment? for it is written that if a man make light of it and go not up, he shall perish from among the people [4768] . But if they did well, and in this proved well-pleasing to God, are not the Arians, abominable and most shameful of any heresy, many times worthy of destruction, in that while they approve the former People for the honour paid by them to the Temple, they will not worship the Lord Who is in the flesh as in a temple? And yet the former temple was constructed of stones and gold, as a shadow. But when the reality came, the type ceased from thenceforth, and there did not remain, according to the Lord's utterance, one stone upon another that was not broken down [4769] . And they did not, when they saw the temple of stones, suppose that the Lord who spoke in the temple was a creature; nor did they set the Temple at nought and retire far off to worship. But they came to it according to the Law, and worshipped the God who uttered His oracles from the Temple. Since then this was so, how can it be other than right to worship the Body of the Lord, all-holy and all-reverend as it is, announced as it was by the archangel Gabriel, formed by the Holy Spirit, and made the Vesture of the Word? It was at any rate a bodily hand that the Word stretched out to raise her that was sick of a fever [4770] : a human voice that He uttered to raise Lazarus from the dead [4771] ; and, once again, stretching out His hands upon the Cross, He overthrew the prince of the power of the air, that now works [4772] in the sons of disobedience, and made the way clear for us into the heavens.
8. Therefore he that dishonours the Temple dishonours the Lord in the Temple; and he that separates the Word from the Body sets at nought the grace given to us in Him. And let not the most impious Arian madmen suppose that, since the Body is created, the Word also is a creature, nor let them, because the Word is not a creature, disparage His Body. For their error is matter for wonder, in that they at once confuse and disturb everything, and devise pretexts only in order to number the Creator among the creatures.
But let them listen. If the Word were a creature, He would not assume the created body to quicken it. For what help can creatures derive from a creature that itself needs salvation? But since the Word being Creator has Himself made the creatures, therefore also at the consummation of the ages [4773] He put on the creature, that He as creator might once more consecrate it, and be able to recover it. But a creature could never be saved by a creature, any more than the creatures were created by a creature, if the Word was not creator. Accordingly let them not lie against the divine Scriptures nor give offence to simple brethren; but if they are willing let them change their mind in their turn, and no longer worship the creature instead of God, Who made all things. But if they wish to abide by their impieties, let them alone take their fill of them, and let them gnash their teeth like their father the devil, because the Faith of the Catholic Church knows that the Word of God is creator and maker of all things; and we know that while in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God [4774] ,' now that He has become also man for our salvation we worship Him, not as though He had come in the body equalising Himself with it, but as Master, assuming the form of the servant, and Maker and Creator coming in a creature in order that, in it delivering all things, He might bring the world nigh to the Father, and make all things to be at peace, things in heaven and things on the earth. For thus also we recognise His Godhead, even the Father's, and worship His Incarnate Presence, even if the Arian madmen burst themselves in sunder.
Greet all that love the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray that you may be well, and remember us to the Lord, beloved and truly most longed-for. If need be this is to be read to Hieracas [4775] the presbyter. __________________________________________________________________
[4738] Adelphius is named in the Tome' (above, p. 486), as bishop of Onuphis. Previously he had been exiled by the Arians to the Thebaid (above, pp. 297, &c.). Hence in the title of this letter he is styled Confessor.' The letter (Migne xxvi, 1072) is directed against the Arian Christology. Although Ath. treats it (§1) as a new blasphemy,' it had been held by the Arians from the first; Epiph. Anc. 33, traces it back to Lucian; but doubtless it had by this time been brought more to the front in their teaching. We know that it occupied a prominent place in the Eunomian system. (References in Dorner III. i. 3.) After briefly refuting the doctrinal error, Athanasius turns to the Arian charge of creature-worship brought against the Nicene doctrine. Not forgetting to remind them that their own doctrine was really open to this charge, Ath. points out at greater length that the object of Catholic worship is not the human nature of Christ as such, but the Word Incarnate; and that the human Saviour is worshipped because He is the Word Himself. The date proposed by Montfaucon is adopted, though there is nothing to fix it absolutely. Its style closely resembles that of the writings of the third Exile.' (See also Bright, Later Tr., p. 61.)
[4739] 2 Cor. ii. 11.
[4740] Rom. i. 30.
[4741] 2 Tim. iii. 8.
[4742] Ps. lxxxii. 5.
[4743] John i. 14.
[4744] Tit. iii. 10, 11.
[4745] Isa. xxxii. 6, LXX.
[4746] 1 Pet. v. 8.
[4747] As some modern devotions at least tend to do.
[4748] John x. 33.
[4749] Matt. viii. 2.
[4750] Matt. ix. 20.
[4751] Ib. viii. 26.
[4752] John ix. 6.
[4753] Rom. i. 28.
[4754] Phil. ii. 10, 11.
[4755] Ib. vv. 6, 7.
[4756] planetheisan gennesin.
[4757] 2 Pet. i. 4.
[4758] Rom. viii. 3.
[4759] Heb. x. 20.
[4760] Acts vii. 55.
[4761] Ib. i. 11.
[4762] John xvii. 24.
[4763] Ps. xliii. 3.
[4764] Matt. i. 23, and Isa. vii. 14.
[4765] Tit. ii. 13, 14.
[4766] Heb. ii. 14.
[4767] Heb. ix. 5.
[4768] Cf. Lev. xvii. 9; Num. ix. 13.
[4769] Matt. xxiv. 2.
[4770] Mark i. 31.
[4771] Joh. xi. 43.
[4772] Eph. ii. 2. Athan. here omits the tou pneumatos, thus increasing the difficulty of the gen. particp.
[4773] Heb. ix. 26.
[4774] John i. 1.
[4775] Perhaps the Hierax' of pp. 257, 297, 560, above. __________________________________________________________________
Letter LXI.--Letter to Maximus. (Written about 371 a.d.)
To our beloved and most truly longed-for son, Maximus [4776] , philosopher, Athanasius greeting in the Lord.
Having read the letter now come from you, I approve your piety: but, marvelling at the rashness of those who understand neither what they say nor whereof they confidently affirm [4777] ,' I had really decided to say nothing. For to reply upon matters which are so plain and which are clearer than light, is simply to give an excuse for shamelessness to such lawless men. And this we have learned from the Saviour. For when Pilate had washed his hands, and acquiesced in the false accusation of the Jews of that day, the Lord answered him no more, but rather warned his wife in a dream, so that He that was being judged might be believed to be God not in word, but in power. While after vouchsafing Caiaphas no reply to his folly, He Himself by his promise [4778] brought all over to knowledge. Accordingly for some time I delayed, and have reluctantly yielded to your zeal for the truth, in view of the argumentativeness of men without shame. And I have dictated nothing beyond what your letter contains, in order that the adversary may from henceforth be convinced on the points to which he has objected, and may keep his tongue from evil and his lips that they speak no guile [4779] .' And would that they would no longer join the Jews who passed by of old in reproaching Him that hung upon the Tree: If thou be the Son of God save Thyself [4780] .' But if even after this they will not give in, yet do you remember the apostolic injunction, and a man that is heretical after a first and second admonition refuse, knowing that such an one is perverted and sinneth being self-condemned [4781] .' For if they are Gentiles, or of the Judaisers, who are thus daring, let them, as Jews, think the Cross of Christ a stumbling-block, or as Gentiles, foolishness [4782] . But if they pretend to be Christians let them learn that the crucified Christ is at once Lord of Glory, and the Power of God and Wisdom of God [4783] .
2. But if they are in doubt whether He is God at all, let them reverence Thomas, who handled the Crucified and pronounced Him Lord and God [4784] . Or let them fear the Lord Himself, who said, after washing the feet of the disciples: Ye call Me Lord and Master [4785] , and ye say well, for so I am.' But in the same body in which He was when he washed their feet, He also carried up our sins to the Tree [4786] . And He was witnessed to as Master of Creation, in that the Sun withdrew his beams and the earth trembled and the rocks were rent, and the executioners recognised that the Crucified was truly Son of God. For the Body they beheld was not that of some man, but of God, being in which, even when being crucified, He raised the dead. Accordingly it is no good venture of theirs to say that the Word of God came into a certain holy man; for this was true of each of the prophets and of the other saints, and on that assumption He would clearly be born and die in the case of each one of them. But this is not so, far be the thought. But once for all at the consummation of the ages [4787] , to put away sin' the Word was made flesh [4788] ' and proceeded forth from Mary the Virgin, Man after our likeness, as also He said to the Jews, Wherefore seek ye to kill Me, a man that hath told you the truth [4789] ?' And we are deified not by partaking of the body of some man, but by receiving the Body of the Word Himself.
3. And at this also I am much surprised, how they have ventured to entertain such an idea as that the Word became man in consequence of His Nature. For if this were so, the commemoration of Mary would be superfluous. [4790] For neither does Nature know of a Virgin bearing apart from a man. Whence by the good pleasure of the Father, being true God, and Word and Wisdom of the Father by nature, He became man in the body for our salvation, in order that having somewhat to offer [4791] for us He might save us all, as many as through fear of death were all their life-time subject to bondage. [4792] ' For it was not some man that gave Himself up for us; since every man is under sentence of death, according to what was said to all in Adam, earth thou art and unto earth thou shalt return. [4793] ' Nor yet was it any other of the creatures, since every creature is liable to change. But the Word Himself offered His own Body on our behalf that our faith and hope might not be in man, but that we might have our faith in God the Word Himself. Why, even now that He is become man we behold His Glory, glory as of one only-begotten of His Father--full of grace and truth. [4794] ' For what He endured by means of the Body, He magnified as God. And while He hungered in the flesh, as God He fed the hungry. And if anyone is offended by reason of the bodily conditions, let him believe by reason of what God works. For humanly He enquires where Lazarus is laid, but raises him up divinely. Let none then laugh, calling Him a child, and citing His age, His growth, His eating, drinking and suffering, lest while denying what is proper for the body, he deny utterly also His sojourn among us. And just as He has not become Man in consequence of His nature, in like manner it was consistent that when He had taken a body He should exhibit what was proper to it, lest the imaginary theory of Manichæus should prevail. Again it was consistent that when He went about in the body, He should not hide what belonged to the Godhead, lest he of Samosata should find an excuse to call Him man, as distinct in person from God the Word.
4. Let then the unbelievers perceive this, and learn that while as a Babe He lay in a manger, He subjected the Magi and was worshipped by them; and while as a Child He came down to Egypt, He brought to nought the hand-made objects of its idolatry [4795] : and crucified in the flesh, He raised the dead long since turned to corruption. And it has been made plain to all that not for His own sake but for ours He underwent all things, that we by His sufferings might put on freedom from suffering and incorruption [4796] , and abide unto life eternal.
5. This then I have concisely dictated, following, as I said above, the lines of your own letter, without working out any point any further but only mentioning what relates to the Holy Cross, in order that the despisers may be taught better upon the points where they were offended, and may worship the Crucified. But do you thoroughly persuade the unbelievers; perhaps somehow they may come from ignorance to knowledge, and believe aright. And even though what your own letter contains is sufficient, yet it is as well to have added what I have for the sake of reminder in view of contentious persons; not so much in order that being refuted in their venturesome statements they may be put to shame, as that being reminded they may not forget the truth. For let what was confessed by the Fathers at Nicæa prevail. For it is correct, and enough to overthrow every heresy however impious, and especially that of the Arians which speaks against the Word of God, and as a logical consequence profanes His Holy Spirit. Greet all who hold aright. All that are with us greet you. __________________________________________________________________
[4776] Maximus, probably the Cynic philosopher who plays so strange and grotesque a part in the history of S. Gregory Nazianzen's tenure of the see of Constantinople (the identification is questioned by Bright, p. 72, but without very cogent reasons), was the son of Alexandrian parents, persons of high social standing, who had suffered much for the Faith. He himself was an ardent opponent of Arianism and heathenism, and was banished under Valens (further particulars in Dict. Gr. and Rom. Biogr. s.v. Maximus Alexandrinus). The present letter compliments him on his success in refuting heretics, some of whom advocated the Arian Christology; others the doctrine of Paul of Samosata and Photinus. The Epistle has much in common with those to Epictetus and Adelphius; Montfaucon's date for it is adopted. (See Migne xxvi. 1085; Bright, Lat. Tr., p. 72.)
[4777] 1 Tim. i. 7.
[4778] Mark xv. 5; Matt. xxvi. 64; xxvii. 19
[4779] Ps. xxxiv. 13.
[4780] Matt. xxvii. 40; Luke xxviii. 37.
[4781] Tit. iii. 10, 11.
[4782] 1 Cor. i. 23.
[4783] Cf. 1 Cor. i. 24, and ii. 8.
[4784] John xx. 28.
[4785] Ath. quotes John xiii. 13 in this, the order of several mss. and later fathers, both here and elsewhere.
[4786] 1 Pet. ii. 24.
[4787] Heb. ix. 26.
[4788] John i. 14.
[4789] Ib. viii. 40.
[4790] Cf. Ad Epict. 5 (supr. p. 572.)
[4791] Cf. Heb. viii. 3
[4792] Ib. ii. 15.
[4793] Gen. iii. 19, LXX.
[4794] John i. 14 b.
[4795] Cf. de Incarn. 36. 4.
[4796] Cf. 1 Cor. xv. 53. __________________________________________________________________
Letter LXII.--To John and Antiochus. [4797]
Athanasius to John and Antiochus, our beloved sons and fellow-presbyters in the Lord, greeting.
I was glad to receive your letter just now, the more so as you wrote from Jerusalem. I thank you for informing me about the brethren that there assembled, and about those who wish, on account of disputed points, to disturb the simple. But about these things let the Apostle charge them not to give heed to those who contend about words, and seek nothing else than to tell and hear some new thing [4798] . But do you, having your foundation sure, even Jesus Christ our Lord, and the confession of the fathers concerning the faith, avoid those who wish to say anything more or less than that, and rather aim at the profit of the brethren, that they may fear God and keep His commandments, in order that both by the teaching of the fathers, and by the keeping of the commandments, they may be able to appear well-pleasing to the Lord in the day of judgment. But I have been utterly astonished at the boldness of those who venture to speak against our beloved Basil the bishop, a true servant of God. For from such vain talk they can be convicted of not loving even the confession of the fathers.
Greet the brethren. They that are with me greet you. I pray that ye may be well in the Lord, beloved and much-desired sons. __________________________________________________________________
[4797] Of John and Antiochus nothing is known, unless the latter is the later bishop of Ptolemais and enemy of Chrysostom. Both men seem to belong to the class of well-meaning mischief-makers, given to retailing invidious stories. Hence the polite reserve of our little note (Migne xxvi. 115, and its laconic dismissal of the gossip about Basil, the new bishop of the Cappadocian Cæsarea (supr. p. 449). The main interest of this and the following letter, which seem to date from the winter 371-372, consists in the testimony of the high esteem of Athanasius for Basil, as well as his indifference to words where no essential principle was involved. The two recipients of this letter either lived or were visitors at Jerusalem. On Basil's difficulties at this time, see D.C.B. i. 288 a, 293, and on his relations with Athan., cf. Prolegg. ch. ii. §10.
[4798] 2 Tim. ii. 14; Acts xvii. 21. __________________________________________________________________
Letter LXIII.--Letter to the Presbyter Palladius [4799] .
To our beloved son Palladius, presbyter, Athanasius the Bishop greeting in the Lord.
I was glad to receive also the letter written by you alone, the more so that you breathe orthodoxy in it, as is your wont. And having learnt not for the first time, but long ago, the reason of your staying at present with our beloved Innocent [4800] , I am pleased with your piety. Since then you are acting as you are, write and let me know how are the brethren there, and what the enemies of the truth think about us. But whereas you have also told me of the monks at Cæsarea, and I have learned from our beloved Dianius [4801] that they are vexed, and are opposing our beloved bishop Basil, I am glad you have informed me, and I have pointed out [4802] to them what is fitting, namely that as children they should obey their father, and not oppose what he approves. For if he were suspected as touching the truth, they would do well to combat him. But if they are confident, as we all are, that he is a glory to the Church, contending rather on behalf of the truth and teaching those who require it, it is not right to combat such an one, but rather to accept with thanks his good conscience. For from what the beloved Dianius has related, they appear to be vexed without cause. For he, as I am confident, to the weak becomes weak to gain the weak [4803] . But let our beloved friends look at the scope of his truth, and at his special purpose [4804] , and glorify the Lord Who has given such a bishop to Cappadocia as any district must pray to have. And do you, beloved, be good enough to point out to them the duty of obeying, as I write. For this is at once calculated to render them well disposed toward their father, and will preserve peace to the churches. I pray that you may be well in the Lord, beloved son. __________________________________________________________________
[4799] On the general subject and date of this letter see note 1 to Letter 62. Of Palladius, who is clearly a resident at Cæsarea, nothing further is known. The tone of this letter is more confiding than that of the previous one. (Migne ib. 1167.)
[4800] Perhaps a bishop in the neighbourhood of Cæsarea. See D.C.B. s.v. Innocentius (4).
[4801] Namesake of a predecessor of Basil, otherwise unknown.
[4802] The letter here referred to is lost. The monks in question had raised a cry against Basil on account of the reserve with which he spoke of the Divine Personality of the Holy Spirit. (See supr. p. 481.)
[4803] 1 Cor. ix. 22.
[4804] oikonomian __________________________________________________________________
Letter LXIV.--To Diodorus (fragment).
To my lord, son, and most beloved fellow-minister Diodorus [bishop of Tyre] [4805] , Athanasius greeting in the Lord.
I thank my Lord, Who is everywhere establishing His doctrine, and chiefly so by means of His own sons, such as actual fact shews you to be. For before your Reverence wrote, we knew how great grace has been brought to pass in Tyre by means of your perseverance. And we rejoice with you that by your means Tyre also has learned the right word of piety. And I indeed took an opportunity of writing to you, longed-for and beloved: but I marvel at your not having replied to my letter. Be not then slow to write at once, knowing that you give me refreshment, as a son to his father, and make me exceeding glad, as a herald of truth. And enter upon no controversy with the heretics, but overcome their argumentativeness with silence, their ill-will with courtesy. For thus your speech shall be with grace, seasoned with salt [4806] ,' while they [will be judged] by the conscience of all.... __________________________________________________________________
[4805] This fragment (Migne xxvi. 1261) is given by Facundus, Def. Tr. Cap. iv. 2, who claims it as addressed to Diodorus of Tarsus, the famous Antiochene confessor and master of Chrysostom and Theodore. Unfortunately this is impossible, as Diodore became bishop of Tarsus not before 378, i.e. after Athan. was dead. The letter itself decides for Diodorus of Tyre, whom Paulinus of Antioch had quite unwarrantably ordained to this see (cf. Rufin, H. E. ii. 21). Whether (as has been held on the authority of Rufinus) Diodorus, or (as Le Quien, Or. Chr. ii. 865 sq. holds) Zeno, the nominee of Meletius, was first in the field in the unseemly scramble, is doubtful. Zeno is already bishop in 365 (Soz. vi. 12); the date of the appointment of Diodorus, whose claim is at any rate no better than that of Paulinus himself, is quite uncertain (see also Prolegg. ch. ii. §§9, 10). Diodorus was the friend and correspondent of Epiphanius, and of Timothy, bishop of Alexandria, second from Athanasius. Facundus confuses him in these particulars also with his namesake of Tarsus, but the mistake is thoroughly sifted by Tillemont, Mem. viii. pp. 238, 712. The letter is important, along with Letter 56, and the correspondence of S. Basil, as illustrating the attitude of Athanasius with regard to the unhappy schism of Antioch.
[4806] Col. iv. 6. __________________________________________________________________
Memorandum.--On other Letters ascribed to Athanasius.
The above Collection of Letters is complete upon the principle stated in the Introduction (supr., p. 495). But one or two fragments have been excluded which may be specified here.
(1.) Fragment of a letter to Eupsychius;' probably the Nicene Father referred to Ep. Æg. 8, (cf. D.C.B. ii. 299 (4)). The Greek is given by Montf. in Ath. Opp. 1. p. 1293 (Latin, ib. p. 1287). It was cited in Conc. Nic. II. Act vi., but although it has affinities with Orat. ii. 8 (high-priestly dress'), it has the appearance of a polemical argument against Monophysitism. (Migne xxvi. 1245.)
(2.) To Epiphanius' (Migne xxvi. 1257). Against certain, who contentiously follow the Jews in celebrating Easter. (From Chron. Pasch. pag. 4 postremæ editionis.')
(3.) Fragments of an Epistola ad Antiochenos' (not our Tomus,' supr., p. 483): also a polemic against Monophysitism, and almost Nestorian in doctrine: Jesus Christus...non est Ipse' [i.e. ante sæcula et in sæcula, Heb. xiii. 8], and duas personas' asserted of Christ. From Facundus, who says the letter was written against the Apollinarians, and who gives it on the authority of Peter, Ath.'s successor (Migne xxvi. 1259).
(4.) Ad Eusebium, Lucinianum, et socios.' (In Migne xxvi. 1325 sq., from Mai, Script. Vet. 11. 583 sq.) A minute fragment. Cf. supr., Letter 55, notes 1, 7.
(5.) Spurious letters (in Migne xxviii.) to Jovian, to Castor (2), to a bishop of the Persians,' and to and from popes Liberius, Marcus, Julius and Felix (made up out of late and spurious decretals, &c., &c.). __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Indexes __________________________________________________________________
Index of Scripture References
Genesis
[1]1:1 [2]1:1 [3]1:1 [4]1:1 [5]1:1 [6]1:3 [7]1:3 [8]1:3 [9]1:6 [10]1:6-11 [11]1:9 [12]1:11 [13]1:14-18 [14]1:20 [15]1:26 [16]1:26 [17]1:26 [18]1:26 [19]1:26 [20]1:26 [21]1:26 [22]1:28 [23]1:31 [24]2:3 [25]2:5 [26]2:15 [27]2:16 [28]2:17 [29]3 [30]3:9 [31]3:12 [32]3:15 [33]3:19 [34]3:19 [35]3:19 [36]4:1 [37]4:12 [38]4:12 [39]4:16 [40]5:3 [41]6:2 [42]7:1 [43]9:27 [44]11:5 [45]14:14 [46]14:14 [47]15:1 [48]15:8 [49]18:21 [50]19:24 [51]19:24 [52]19:24 [53]19:26 [54]21:5 [55]22:2 [56]22:12 [57]22:15 [58]25:8 [59]25:27 [60]26:13 [61]27 [62]27:2 [63]27:29 [64]27:37 [65]28:3-4 [66]28:15 [67]31:5 [68]31:7 [69]32:11 [70]32:26 [71]32:30 [72]32:30-31 [73]32:31 [74]32:31 [75]42:21 [76]48:5 [77]48:15-16 [78]49:3 [79]49:3 [80]49:10 [81]49:14
Exodus
[82]3:2-6 [83]3:10 [84]3:13 [85]3:14 [86]3:14 [87]3:14 [88]3:14 [89]3:14 [90]3:14-15 [91]3:16 [92]4:12 [93]4:13 [94]8:26 [95]12:2 [96]12:5 [97]12:7 [98]12:8-9 [99]12:11 [100]12:23 [101]12:41 [102]12:41 [103]12:43 [104]12:43-48 [105]12:46 [106]12:47 [107]14:14 [108]14:21 [109]15 [110]15:1 [111]15:1 [112]15:9 [113]15:9 [114]19:8 [115]19:9 [116]19:13 [117]19:16 [118]20:3 [119]20:4 [120]20:13 [121]21:13 [122]21:17 [123]21:17 [124]21:17 [125]21:17 [126]23:1 [127]23:14 [128]23:26 [129]24:2 [130]29:5 [131]33:11 [132]33:20 [133]33:23 [134]34:6
Leviticus
[135]9:7 [136]9:7 [137]11:13 [138]17:9 [139]23:26 [140]23:29 [141]25:21 [142]26:12
Numbers
[143]3 [144]6:25 [145]7 [146]9:2 [147]9:13 [148]10:1-2 [149]10:8 [150]10:9 [151]10:10 [152]11 [153]12 [154]17 [155]18 [156]21 [157]24:5-6 [158]24:5-17 [159]26 [160]28:2
Deuteronomy
[161]4:4 [162]4:4 [163]4:7 [164]4:19 [165]4:24 [166]4:32 [167]6:4 [168]6:4 [169]6:4 [170]6:4 [171]6:4-5 [172]6:7 [173]6:13 [174]6:16 [175]7:8 [176]12:11 [177]12:13 [178]12:14 [179]13:1-3 [180]13:4 [181]13:18 [182]16:1 [183]16:1 [184]16:1 [185]16:1 [186]17:6 [187]18:15 [188]18:15 [189]21:15 [190]21:15 [191]21:23 [192]28:66 [193]28:66 [194]28:66 [195]28:66 [196]30:14 [197]32:4 [198]32:6 [199]32:6 [200]32:6 [201]32:6 [202]32:6 [203]32:8 [204]32:17 [205]32:18 [206]32:20 [207]32:39 [208]32:39 [209]32:39 [210]32:49 [211]34:6
Joshua
[212]1:6 [213]2:1 [214]5:13 [215]7:20 [216]10:12 [217]23:14 [218]24:23
Judges
[219]11:34 [220]13:16 [221]19 [222]19:29 [223]19:29
1 Samuel
[224]2:6 [225]2:27 [226]5 [227]6 [228]12:5 [229]12:5 [230]13:9 [231]15 [232]15:35 [233]16:12 [234]16:14 [235]21:13 [236]22:2 [237]22:9 [238]22:18 [239]26:9 [240]26:10-11 [241]26:21
2 Samuel
[242]6:23 [243]15:13 [244]18:24
1 Kings
[245]1:11 [246]1:19 [247]1:26 [248]8:27 [249]8:59 [250]10:24 [251]12:32-33 [252]13:2 [253]18:15 [254]18:15 [255]19:4-8 [256]21:10 [257]21:18 [258]21:20
2 Kings
[259]1:10 [260]3:11 [261]5:8 [262]5:15 [263]5:26 [264]6:13-17 [265]6:16 [266]6:17 [267]9:35-36 [268]17:9 [269]19:35 [270]20:18
Ezra
[271]3:6
Esther
[272]3:9 [273]4:16 [274]9:20-28 [275]9:21
Job
[276]1 [277]1:2 [278]1:2 [279]1:21 [280]2:7 [281]5:23 [282]5:26 [283]7:1 [284]14:4 [285]14:16-17 [286]14:26 [287]16:14 [288]18:5 [289]18:5 [290]18:14 [291]38:17 [292]38:17 [293]38:17 [294]40:8-9 [295]40:16 [296]40:19-24 [297]40:24 [298]41:1 [299]41:5 [300]41:13 [301]41:13 [302]41:18-20 [303]41:27
Psalms
[304]1:1 [305]1:1 [306]1:1-2 [307]1:5 [308]1:5 [309]1:6 [310]1:16 [311]2:1 [312]2:1 [313]2:1 [314]2:1 [315]2:4 [316]2:6 [317]2:7 [318]2:7 [319]2:7 [320]2:7 [321]2:18 [322]2:18 [323]2:23 [324]2:24 [325]2:25 [326]2:25 [327]2:26-28 [328]3 [329]3 [330]4 [331]4:4 [332]4:4 [333]4:5 [334]4:24 [335]4:24 [336]4:24 [337]4:24 [338]4:24 [339]4:24 [340]4:24 [341]4:24 [342]4:24 [343]4:25-26 [344]4:34 [345]5:3 [346]6:6 [347]7:3-4 [348]7:20 [349]7:20 [350]9:6 [351]9:9 [352]9:9 [353]9:14 [354]9:15 [355]9:17 [356]10:1 [357]10:1 [358]10:1 [359]10:1 [360]10:1 [361]10:3 [362]10:3 [363]10:3 [364]10:3 [365]10:3 [366]10:3 [367]11:7 [368]12:1 [369]12:6 [370]14:1 [371]14:1 [372]14:1 [373]14:1-2 [374]14:7 [375]15:3 [376]15:3 [377]15:4 [378]15:4-7 [379]15:5 [380]15:8 [381]15:16 [382]15:17-18 [383]15:18 [384]16:3 [385]16:8 [386]16:10 [387]16:10 [388]16:12 [389]16:13 [390]16:15 [391]16:15 [392]16:16 [393]16:16 [394]17:3-4 [395]17:15 [396]18:1-2 [397]18:6 [398]18:7 [399]18:9 [400]18:10 [401]18:13 [402]18:17 [403]18:24 [404]18:27 [405]18:27 [406]18:29 [407]18:29 [408]18:44-45 [409]18:45 [410]19:1 [411]19:1 [412]19:1 [413]19:1 [414]19:3 [415]19:4 [416]19:14 [417]19:14 [418]19:20 [419]19:43 [420]19:44 [421]19:62 [422]19:73 [423]19:73 [424]19:73 [425]19:89 [426]19:89 [427]19:90 [428]19:91 [429]19:91 [430]19:101 [431]19:107 [432]19:143 [433]19:164 [434]20:1-2 [435]20:7 [436]20:7 [437]22:9 [438]22:16 [439]22:22 [440]22:32 [441]23:4 [442]24:3 [443]24:6 [444]24:7 [445]24:7 [446]24:7 [447]24:7 [448]24:7 [449]24:10 [450]25:1 [451]25:1 [452]26:2 [453]27:1 [454]27:1 [455]27:3 [456]30:3 [457]30:9 [458]30:12 [459]31:7 [460]31:7-8 [461]31:15 [462]31:24 [463]32:9 [464]32:9 [465]32:14 [466]32:15 [467]33:1 [468]33:4 [469]33:6 [470]33:6 [471]33:6 [472]33:6 [473]33:9 [474]33:9 [475]34 [476]34:1 [477]34:13 [478]34:21 [479]35:8 [480]35:16 [481]35:28 [482]36:1 [483]36:9 [484]36:9 [485]36:9 [486]36:9 [487]37:6 [488]37:40 [489]38:8 [490]38:8 [491]38:12 [492]38:14 [493]38:14 [494]39:2 [495]39:6 [496]40 [497]40:6 [498]41:9 [499]42:1 [500]42:4 [501]42:4 [502]43:3 [503]43:3 [504]43:4 [505]44:5 [506]44:5 [507]44:17 [508]44:17 [509]44:20 [510]44:22 [511]45:1 [512]45:1 [513]45:1 [514]45:1 [515]45:1 [516]45:1 [517]45:1 [518]45:1 [519]45:1 [520]45:1 [521]45:6 [522]45:6 [523]45:7 [524]45:7 [525]45:7-8 [526]45:7-8 [527]45:7-8 [528]45:8 [529]45:8 [530]45:13 [531]45:13 [532]45:14 [533]46:7 [534]46:7 [535]46:8 [536]47:7-9 [537]48:5 [538]48:5 [539]48:5 [540]49:3 [541]49:10 [542]49:11 [543]49:12 [544]50:1 [545]50:3 [546]50:6 [547]50:14 [548]50:16 [549]50:16 [550]50:16 [551]50:23 [552]51:10 [553]51:11 [554]51:12 [555]51:12 [556]51:13 [557]52 [558]53:1 [559]53:3 [560]54:1 [561]54:7 [562]55:4 [563]55:15 [564]56:11 [565]57:3 [566]57:4 [567]57:4 [568]59:6 [569]59:14 [570]59:15 [571]60:11 [572]60:12 [573]63:1-2 [574]63:6 [575]63:11 [576]66:11-12 [577]68:1 [578]68:5 [579]69:26 [580]71:3 [581]72:1 [582]72:5 [583]72:17 [584]73:20 [585]73:23-24 [586]74:2 [587]74:6 [588]74:11 [589]74:14 [590]76:1 [591]76:1 [592]77:10 [593]78:25 [594]81:3 [595]81:3 [596]82:1 [597]82:5 [598]82:6 [599]82:6 [600]82:6 [601]83:1 [602]83:6 [603]84:7 [604]84:10 [605]84:70 [606]85:8 [607]86:8 [608]86:8 [609]86:8 [610]86:16 [611]87:1-3 [612]87:2 [613]87:4 [614]88:7 [615]89:6 [616]89:6 [617]89:7 [618]89:17-18 [619]89:47 [620]90:2 [621]90:10 [622]90:14 [623]90:17 [624]91:8 [625]94:11 [626]94:17 [627]95:1 [628]95:1 [629]97:1 [630]104:24 [631]110:3 [632]110:3 [633]118 [634]118 [635]119:148 [636]120:5 [637]125:1 [638]132:14 [639]135 [640]143:5 [641]143:5
Proverbs
[642]1:5 [643]1:5-6 [644]1:6 [645]1:7 [646]1:23 [647]2:13-14 [648]3:19 [649]3:19 [650]3:19 [651]3:19 [652]3:19 [653]4:1 [654]4:23 [655]5:3 [656]5:22 [657]7:22 [658]7:22-23 [659]8:2 [660]8:9 [661]8:10-11 [662]8:12 [663]8:12 [664]8:14 [665]8:14 [666]8:22 [667]8:22 [668]8:22 [669]8:22 [670]8:22 [671]8:22 [672]8:22 [673]8:22 [674]8:22 [675]8:22 [676]8:22 [677]8:22 [678]8:22 [679]8:22 [680]8:22 [681]8:22 [682]8:22 [683]8:22 [684]8:22 [685]8:22 [686]8:22 [687]8:22 [688]8:22 [689]8:22 [690]8:22 [691]8:22 [692]8:22 [693]8:22 [694]8:22 [695]8:22 [696]8:22 [697]8:22 [698]8:22 [699]8:22 [700]8:22 [701]8:22 [702]8:22 [703]8:22 [704]8:22 [705]8:22 [706]8:22-30 [707]8:23 [708]8:23 [709]8:23 [710]8:23 [711]8:24-26 [712]8:25 [713]8:25 [714]8:25 [715]8:25 [716]8:25 [717]8:25 [718]8:25 [719]8:27 [720]8:27 [721]8:27 [722]8:27 [723]8:30 [724]8:30 [725]8:30 [726]8:30 [727]8:30 [728]8:30 [729]8:30 [730]8:30 [731]8:31 [732]9:1 [733]9:1 [734]9:1 [735]9:1 [736]9:1-5 [737]9:6 [738]9:17 [739]9:17 [740]9:18 [741]9:18 [742]10:3 [743]10:20 [744]10:27 [745]11:26 [746]12:5-6 [747]12:6 [748]12:7 [749]12:10 [750]12:11 [751]12:20 [752]13:3 [753]13:13 [754]14:15 [755]14:16 [756]14:24 [757]15:1 [758]15:13 [759]15:13 [760]15:28 [761]16:13 [762]16:13 [763]18:1 [764]18:1 [765]18:3 [766]18:3 [767]18:3 [768]19:5 [769]19:27 [770]20:13 [771]20:14 [772]20:17 [773]20:23 [774]20:28 [775]21:1 [776]21:26 [777]22:28 [778]22:28 [779]23:1 [780]23:4 [781]23:32 [782]24:9 [783]24:15 [784]25:2 [785]25:7 [786]25:7 [787]25:18 [788]25:25 [789]26:10 [790]28:28 [791]29:7 [792]29:12 [793]30:8 [794]30:11 [795]30:15 [796]30:15 [797]30:19
Ecclesiastes
[798]3:2 [799]3:7 [800]4:8 [801]5:8-9 [802]7:17 [803]7:23-24 [804]7:26 [805]7:29 [806]7:29 [807]8:1 [808]9:12 [809]10:8 [810]10:20 [811]12:14
Song of Solomon
[812]1:6-7 [813]2 [814]3:1-2 [815]5:2 [816]6:1 [817]8:1
Isaiah
[818]1:2 [819]1:2 [820]1:2 [821]1:2 [822]1:4 [823]1:6 [824]1:10-11 [825]1:11 [826]1:11 [827]1:11 [828]1:12 [829]1:12 [830]1:14 [831]1:14 [832]1:22 [833]1:22 [834]1:22 [835]1:22 [836]2:3 [837]2:3 [838]2:4 [839]3:9-10 [840]3:9-10 [841]5:1 [842]5:7 [843]5:11 [844]5:20 [845]5:20 [846]6 [847]6:5 [848]6:8 [849]6:9 [850]7:14 [851]7:14 [852]7:14 [853]7:14 [854]7:14 [855]8:4 [856]8:4 [857]9:5 [858]9:6 [859]9:6 [860]9:6 [861]9:6 [862]9:6 [863]10:14 [864]10:14 [865]11:5 [866]11:8 [867]11:9 [868]11:9 [869]11:10 [870]14:12 [871]14:14 [872]14:14 [873]14:27 [874]14:27 [875]19:1 [876]22:13 [877]22:13 [878]22:14 [879]23:2 [880]25:8 [881]26:9 [882]26:10 [883]26:13 [884]26:20 [885]26:20 [886]26:20 [887]32:6 [888]32:6 [889]35:3 [890]38:18 [891]38:19 [892]38:20 [893]39:7 [894]40:8 [895]40:18 [896]40:28 [897]40:28 [898]40:28 [899]40:29 [900]42:8 [901]42:8 [902]42:12 [903]44:6 [904]44:6 [905]44:9 [906]44:23 [907]44:24 [908]44:24 [909]45:5 [910]45:14 [911]47:6 [912]48:13 [913]48:22 [914]48:22 [915]49:5 [916]49:5 [917]49:5 [918]49:8 [919]49:13 [920]50:6 [921]50:6 [922]50:6 [923]51:16 [924]52 [925]52:5 [926]52:11 [927]52:11 [928]53 [929]53:3 [930]53:4 [931]53:4 [932]53:4 [933]53:5 [934]53:7 [935]53:7 [936]53:7 [937]53:7 [938]53:8 [939]53:8 [940]54:13 [941]54:13 [942]55:6-7 [943]56:4-5 [944]58:5 [945]58:9 [946]58:11 [947]59:3-4 [948]59:4-5 [949]59:9-11 [950]60:8 [951]61:1 [952]61:1 [953]61:8 [954]63:1 [955]63:9 [956]64:4 [957]65:1-2 [958]66:2 [959]66:2 [960]66:2 [961]66:2 [962]66:3 [963]66:3
Jeremiah
[964]1:5 [965]1:5 [966]1:5 [967]1:5 [968]2:1 [969]2:12 [970]2:13 [971]2:13 [972]2:18 [973]3:3 [974]4:3 [975]5:8 [976]5:8 [977]5:30 [978]6:16 [979]6:20 [980]7:18 [981]7:21-22 [982]7:22 [983]7:22-23 [984]7:28 [985]7:34 [986]7:34 [987]9:2 [988]9:2 [989]9:3 [990]9:10 [991]11:19 [992]13:23 [993]14:10 [994]15:5 [995]15:18 [996]17:10 [997]17:11 [998]17:12-13 [999]20:9 [1000]20:9 [1001]20:12 [1002]22:10 [1003]23:18 [1004]23:22 [1005]23:23 [1006]23:29 [1007]25:10 [1008]31:22 [1009]31:22 [1010]31:34 [1011]48:10
Lamentations
[1012]3:27 [1013]4:6 [1014]4:20
Ezekiel
[1015]3:12 [1016]9:4 [1017]11:13 [1018]16:25 [1019]16:48 [1020]18:23 [1021]18:26 [1022]18:32 [1023]28:2 [1024]34:2 [1025]34:2 [1026]44
Daniel
[1027]3:18 [1028]3:25 [1029]4:3 [1030]4:19 [1031]6:5 [1032]6:11 [1033]6:11 [1034]6:13 [1035]7:5 [1036]7:7 [1037]7:13 [1038]7:14 [1039]7:25 [1040]9:24 [1041]9:24 [1042]9:27
Hosea
[1043]4:12 [1044]6:3 [1045]6:6 [1046]7:13 [1047]7:15 [1048]8:7 [1049]9:4 [1050]11:1
Joel
[1051]1:7 [1052]2:15 [1053]2:17 [1054]2:17 [1055]2:25 [1056]2:25 [1057]2:25 [1058]2:25 [1059]2:25 [1060]2:25 [1061]2:28 [1062]2:28 [1063]2:28 [1064]2:32
Amos
[1065]5:16
Micah
[1066]4:2 [1067]7:18 [1068]7:18
Nahum
[1069]1:15 [1070]1:15 [1071]1:15 [1072]1:15
Habakkuk
[1073]2:5 [1074]2:15 [1075]2:15 [1076]2:15 [1077]2:15
Zechariah
[1078]1:3 [1079]1:12 [1080]2:10 [1081]8:19
Malachi
[1082]1:2-3 [1083]1:11 [1084]1:11 [1085]2:10 [1086]3:3 [1087]3:6 [1088]3:6 [1089]3:6 [1090]3:6 [1091]4:2 [1092]4:2
Matthew
[1093]1 [1094]1:17 [1095]1:23 [1096]1:23 [1097]1:23 [1098]1:23 [1099]1:23 [1100]1:25 [1101]1:25 [1102]2:13 [1103]3:3 [1104]3:7 [1105]3:7 [1106]3:9 [1107]3:17 [1108]3:17 [1109]3:17 [1110]3:17 [1111]3:17 [1112]3:17 [1113]3:17 [1114]3:17 [1115]3:17 [1116]3:17 [1117]4:3 [1118]4:3 [1119]4:7 [1120]4:10 [1121]4:10 [1122]4:10 [1123]4:11 [1124]4:19 [1125]4:20 [1126]4:23 [1127]5:6 [1128]5:8 [1129]5:8 [1130]5:10 [1131]5:11-12 [1132]5:15 [1133]5:21-44 [1134]5:22 [1135]5:28 [1136]5:36 [1137]5:48 [1138]5:48 [1139]6:6 [1140]6:7 [1141]6:7 [1142]6:9 [1143]6:30 [1144]6:31 [1145]6:33 [1146]6:34 [1147]7:2 [1148]7:6 [1149]7:6 [1150]7:6 [1151]7:13 [1152]7:15 [1153]7:15 [1154]7:22 [1155]7:25 [1156]7:25 [1157]8:2 [1158]8:26 [1159]8:29 [1160]8:29 [1161]8:31 [1162]9:3 [1163]9:5 [1164]9:5 [1165]9:13 [1166]9:20 [1167]9:20 [1168]9:24 [1169]9:36 [1170]10:8 [1171]10:16 [1172]10:17 [1173]10:22 [1174]10:22 [1175]10:23 [1176]10:23 [1177]10:23 [1178]10:29 [1179]10:29 [1180]10:29 [1181]10:40 [1182]10:40 [1183]10:40 [1184]10:40 [1185]10:40 [1186]10:40 [1187]11:13 [1188]11:25 [1189]11:25 [1190]11:27 [1191]11:27 [1192]11:27 [1193]11:27 [1194]11:27 [1195]11:27 [1196]11:27 [1197]11:27 [1198]11:27 [1199]11:27 [1200]11:27 [1201]11:27 [1202]11:27 [1203]11:28 [1204]11:28 [1205]11:28 [1206]11:29 [1207]11:29 [1208]12:8 [1209]12:15 [1210]12:19 [1211]12:28 [1212]12:28 [1213]12:32 [1214]12:32 [1215]12:34 [1216]12:34 [1217]12:36 [1218]12:40 [1219]12:43-45 [1220]13:8 [1221]13:21 [1222]13:22 [1223]13:25 [1224]13:52 [1225]14:13 [1226]14:28 [1227]15:3 [1228]15:4 [1229]15:11 [1230]15:13 [1231]15:13 [1232]15:19 [1233]15:26 [1234]15:28 [1235]16:13 [1236]16:13 [1237]16:16 [1238]16:16 [1239]16:16 [1240]16:16 [1241]16:16 [1242]16:16-17 [1243]16:18 [1244]16:22-23 [1245]16:23 [1246]16:23 [1247]16:24 [1248]16:24 [1249]17:5 [1250]17:5 [1251]17:5 [1252]17:20 [1253]18:6 [1254]18:6 [1255]18:6 [1256]18:19 [1257]18:20 [1258]18:20 [1259]18:24 [1260]19:4 [1261]19:4 [1262]19:4 [1263]19:6 [1264]19:21 [1265]19:27 [1266]20:16 [1267]20:22-23 [1268]20:28 [1269]20:32 [1270]21:2 [1271]21:19 [1272]21:33 [1273]21:37 [1274]22:12 [1275]22:12 [1276]22:21 [1277]22:21 [1278]22:29 [1279]22:29 [1280]22:29 [1281]22:29 [1282]22:29 [1283]23:19 [1284]23:34 [1285]24:2 [1286]24:3 [1287]24:24 [1288]24:24-25 [1289]24:31 [1290]24:35 [1291]24:39 [1292]24:42 [1293]24:42 [1294]24:42 [1295]24:42 [1296]24:44 [1297]25:1-12 [1298]25:11 [1299]25:13 [1300]25:21 [1301]25:21 [1302]25:21 [1303]25:21 [1304]25:21 [1305]25:23 [1306]25:23 [1307]25:26 [1308]25:26-30 [1309]25:27 [1310]25:31-36 [1311]25:34 [1312]25:34 [1313]25:34 [1314]25:34 [1315]25:35 [1316]25:40 [1317]25:45 [1318]26:2 [1319]26:17 [1320]26:26 [1321]26:26-28 [1322]26:28 [1323]26:38 [1324]26:39 [1325]26:39 [1326]26:39 [1327]26:39 [1328]26:39 [1329]26:41 [1330]26:41 [1331]26:45 [1332]26:64 [1333]26:64 [1334]26:65 [1335]27:24 [1336]27:40 [1337]27:42 [1338]27:45 [1339]27:46 [1340]27:46 [1341]27:52-53 [1342]27:54 [1343]27:54 [1344]27:60 [1345]28:5 [1346]28:18 [1347]28:18 [1348]28:18 [1349]28:18 [1350]28:19 [1351]28:19 [1352]28:19 [1353]28:19 [1354]28:19 [1355]28:19 [1356]28:20 [1357]28:20
Mark
[1358]1:7-11 [1359]1:24 [1360]1:24 [1361]1:31 [1362]2:11 [1363]4:17 [1364]4:20 [1365]4:20 [1366]4:37-41 [1367]4:37-41 [1368]6:38 [1369]6:38 [1370]8:22 [1371]8:29 [1372]8:38 [1373]10:21 [1374]10:28 [1375]10:45 [1376]11:13 [1377]12:25 [1378]12:29 [1379]12:29 [1380]12:29 [1381]13:9 [1382]13:31 [1383]13:32 [1384]13:32 [1385]13:32 [1386]13:32 [1387]13:32 [1388]13:32 [1389]13:32 [1390]13:32 [1391]15:5 [1392]15:34 [1393]15:46
Luke
[1394]1 [1395]1:1 [1396]1:1 [1397]1:2 [1398]1:13 [1399]1:27 [1400]1:35 [1401]1:41 [1402]2:1 [1403]2:23 [1404]2:52 [1405]2:52 [1406]2:52 [1407]2:52 [1408]2:52 [1409]2:52 [1410]2:52 [1411]2:52 [1412]2:61 [1413]3:7 [1414]4:3 [1415]4:8 [1416]4:18 [1417]4:30 [1418]4:30 [1419]4:41 [1420]5:24 [1421]5:24 [1422]6:1 [1423]6:36 [1424]6:36 [1425]6:36 [1426]6:49 [1427]7:48 [1428]9:27 [1429]9:62 [1430]10:16 [1431]10:18 [1432]10:18-19 [1433]10:19 [1434]10:19 [1435]10:20 [1436]10:22 [1437]10:22 [1438]10:22 [1439]10:22 [1440]10:22 [1441]11:2 [1442]11:9 [1443]11:13 [1444]11:15 [1445]11:27 [1446]11:49 [1447]12:4 [1448]12:12 [1449]12:20 [1450]12:29 [1451]12:33 [1452]12:40 [1453]12:40 [1454]12:49 [1455]13:21 [1456]13:25 [1457]13:32 [1458]14:15 [1459]14:15 [1460]15:7 [1461]15:17 [1462]16:8 [1463]16:19 [1464]17:2 [1465]17:15 [1466]17:19 [1467]17:21 [1468]17:21 [1469]18:2 [1470]18:7 [1471]18:12 [1472]18:19 [1473]18:19 [1474]19:23 [1475]20:13 [1476]21:8 [1477]21:8 [1478]21:15 [1479]21:33 [1480]22:15 [1481]22:15-16 [1482]22:28-30 [1483]22:29-30 [1484]22:31 [1485]23:28 [1486]23:43 [1487]23:43 [1488]24 [1489]24:1 [1490]24:5 [1491]24:11 [1492]24:39 [1493]24:39 [1494]24:42-43 [1495]28:37
John
[1496]1:1 [1497]1:1 [1498]1:1 [1499]1:1 [1500]1:1 [1501]1:1 [1502]1:1 [1503]1:1 [1504]1:1 [1505]1:1 [1506]1:1 [1507]1:1 [1508]1:1 [1509]1:1 [1510]1:1 [1511]1:1 [1512]1:1 [1513]1:1 [1514]1:1 [1515]1:1 [1516]1:1 [1517]1:1 [1518]1:1 [1519]1:1 [1520]1:1 [1521]1:1 [1522]1:1 [1523]1:1 [1524]1:1-3 [1525]1:1-3 [1526]1:3 [1527]1:3 [1528]1:3 [1529]1:3 [1530]1:3 [1531]1:3 [1532]1:3 [1533]1:3 [1534]1:3 [1535]1:3 [1536]1:3 [1537]1:3 [1538]1:3 [1539]1:3 [1540]1:3 [1541]1:3 [1542]1:3 [1543]1:3 [1544]1:3 [1545]1:3 [1546]1:3 [1547]1:3 [1548]1:3 [1549]1:8 [1550]1:9 [1551]1:9 [1552]1:9 [1553]1:9 [1554]1:10 [1555]1:12 [1556]1:12 [1557]1:12 [1558]1:12-13 [1559]1:12-17 [1560]1:14 [1561]1:14 [1562]1:14 [1563]1:14 [1564]1:14 [1565]1:14 [1566]1:14 [1567]1:14 [1568]1:14 [1569]1:14 [1570]1:14 [1571]1:14 [1572]1:14 [1573]1:14 [1574]1:14 [1575]1:14 [1576]1:14 [1577]1:14 [1578]1:14 [1579]1:14 [1580]1:14 [1581]1:14 [1582]1:14 [1583]1:14 [1584]1:14 [1585]1:14 [1586]1:14 [1587]1:14 [1588]1:14 [1589]1:14 [1590]1:14 [1591]1:14 [1592]1:14 [1593]1:15 [1594]1:16 [1595]1:16 [1596]1:16 [1597]1:17 [1598]1:17 [1599]1:18 [1600]1:18 [1601]1:18 [1602]1:18 [1603]1:18 [1604]1:18 [1605]1:18 [1606]1:18 [1607]1:18 [1608]1:18 [1609]1:18 [1610]1:22 [1611]1:45 [1612]2:4 [1613]2:4 [1614]2:19 [1615]2:25 [1616]3:2 [1617]3:3 [1618]3:5 [1619]3:16-19 [1620]3:17 [1621]3:17 [1622]3:17 [1623]3:18-19 [1624]3:31 [1625]3:35 [1626]3:35 [1627]3:35 [1628]3:35 [1629]3:35 [1630]3:36 [1631]4:14 [1632]4:20 [1633]4:20 [1634]4:24 [1635]4:26 [1636]4:34 [1637]5:16 [1638]5:17 [1639]5:17 [1640]5:17 [1641]5:17 [1642]5:17 [1643]5:18 [1644]5:19 [1645]5:19 [1646]5:19 [1647]5:22 [1648]5:22 [1649]5:23 [1650]5:23 [1651]5:23 [1652]5:23 [1653]5:25 [1654]5:26 [1655]5:26 [1656]5:26 [1657]5:30 [1658]5:36 [1659]5:37 [1660]5:39 [1661]5:39 [1662]5:39 [1663]5:46 [1664]5:46 [1665]6:4 [1666]6:6 [1667]6:30 [1668]6:35 [1669]6:37 [1670]6:38 [1671]6:38 [1672]6:38-40 [1673]6:42 [1674]6:44 [1675]6:44 [1676]6:45 [1677]6:45 [1678]6:46 [1679]6:46 [1680]6:46 [1681]6:48 [1682]6:48-51 [1683]6:51 [1684]6:51 [1685]6:51 [1686]6:53 [1687]6:62-64 [1688]6:63 [1689]6:63 [1690]6:67 [1691]6:68 [1692]6:68 [1693]6:69 [1694]7:6 [1695]7:17 [1696]7:30 [1697]7:37 [1698]7:37 [1699]7:37 [1700]7:37 [1701]7:37 [1702]7:37 [1703]7:37 [1704]7:37 [1705]7:37-38 [1706]7:38 [1707]7:38 [1708]7:39 [1709]7:46 [1710]8:12 [1711]8:12 [1712]8:35-36 [1713]8:36 [1714]8:40 [1715]8:40 [1716]8:42 [1717]8:43 [1718]8:44 [1719]8:44 [1720]8:44 [1721]8:44 [1722]8:44 [1723]8:56 [1724]8:56 [1725]8:58 [1726]8:58 [1727]8:58 [1728]8:58 [1729]8:58-59 [1730]9 [1731]9:6 [1732]9:28-29 [1733]9:32 [1734]9:39 [1735]10:15 [1736]10:15 [1737]10:16 [1738]10:17-18 [1739]10:18 [1740]10:18 [1741]10:18 [1742]10:18 [1743]10:29 [1744]10:29 [1745]10:29 [1746]10:29 [1747]10:30 [1748]10:30 [1749]10:30 [1750]10:30 [1751]10:30 [1752]10:30 [1753]10:30 [1754]10:30 [1755]10:30 [1756]10:30 [1757]10:30 [1758]10:30 [1759]10:30 [1760]10:30 [1761]10:30 [1762]10:30 [1763]10:30 [1764]10:30 [1765]10:30 [1766]10:30 [1767]10:30 [1768]10:30 [1769]10:30 [1770]10:30 [1771]10:30 [1772]10:30 [1773]10:30 [1774]10:30 [1775]10:30 [1776]10:30 [1777]10:30 [1778]10:30 [1779]10:32-38 [1780]10:33 [1781]10:33 [1782]10:33 [1783]10:33 [1784]10:35 [1785]10:35 [1786]10:36 [1787]10:37 [1788]10:37-38 [1789]10:38 [1790]10:38 [1791]10:38 [1792]10:38 [1793]11:14 [1794]11:25 [1795]11:34 [1796]11:34 [1797]11:34 [1798]11:35 [1799]11:43 [1800]11:47 [1801]11:50 [1802]11:53-54 [1803]12:13 [1804]12:27 [1805]12:27 [1806]12:27 [1807]12:27-28 [1808]12:28 [1809]12:28 [1810]12:32 [1811]12:34 [1812]12:45 [1813]12:46 [1814]12:46-48 [1815]12:47 [1816]13:12 [1817]13:13 [1818]13:13 [1819]13:18 [1820]13:21 [1821]13:31 [1822]14:2 [1823]14:3 [1824]14:6 [1825]14:6 [1826]14:6 [1827]14:6 [1828]14:6 [1829]14:6 [1830]14:6 [1831]14:6 [1832]14:6 [1833]14:6 [1834]14:6 [1835]14:6 [1836]14:6 [1837]14:6 [1838]14:6 [1839]14:6 [1840]14:6 [1841]14:6 [1842]14:8-9 [1843]14:9 [1844]14:9 [1845]14:9 [1846]14:9 [1847]14:9 [1848]14:9 [1849]14:9 [1850]14:9 [1851]14:9 [1852]14:9 [1853]14:9 [1854]14:9 [1855]14:9 [1856]14:9 [1857]14:9 [1858]14:9 [1859]14:9 [1860]14:9-10 [1861]14:9-10 [1862]14:9-10 [1863]14:9-10 [1864]14:9-10 [1865]14:9-10 [1866]14:9-10 [1867]14:9-13 [1868]14:10 [1869]14:10 [1870]14:10 [1871]14:10 [1872]14:10 [1873]14:10 [1874]14:10 [1875]14:10 [1876]14:10 [1877]14:10 [1878]14:10 [1879]14:10 [1880]14:10 [1881]14:10 [1882]14:10 [1883]14:11 [1884]14:11 [1885]14:16 [1886]14:20 [1887]14:23 [1888]14:23 [1889]14:26 [1890]14:27 [1891]14:28 [1892]14:28 [1893]14:28-29 [1894]14:30 [1895]14:48 [1896]15:1 [1897]15:20 [1898]15:22 [1899]15:26 [1900]15:26 [1901]15:26 [1902]16:7 [1903]16:13 [1904]16:14 [1905]16:15 [1906]16:15 [1907]16:15 [1908]16:15 [1909]16:15 [1910]16:15 [1911]16:15 [1912]16:15 [1913]16:15 [1914]16:15 [1915]16:15 [1916]16:15 [1917]16:15 [1918]16:23 [1919]16:25 [1920]16:28 [1921]16:28 [1922]16:33 [1923]16:33 [1924]17:1 [1925]17:1 [1926]17:3 [1927]17:3 [1928]17:3 [1929]17:3 [1930]17:3 [1931]17:3 [1932]17:3 [1933]17:4 [1934]17:5 [1935]17:5 [1936]17:7-8 [1937]17:7-9 [1938]17:10 [1939]17:10 [1940]17:11 [1941]17:17 [1942]17:18-19 [1943]17:20-23 [1944]17:21 [1945]17:22 [1946]17:24 [1947]18:4-5 [1948]18:5 [1949]18:5 [1950]18:9 [1951]18:12 [1952]18:23 [1953]18:37 [1954]19:15 [1955]19:15 [1956]19:15 [1957]19:38 [1958]19:39 [1959]19:41 [1960]20:17 [1961]20:17 [1962]20:22 [1963]20:22 [1964]20:22 [1965]20:27 [1966]20:28 [1967]20:28 [1968]21:15 [1969]22:36 [1970]22:45 [1971]22:46
Acts
[1972]1:1 [1973]1:7 [1974]1:7 [1975]1:11 [1976]1:18 [1977]1:18 [1978]1:18 [1979]2:1 [1980]2:22 [1981]2:22 [1982]2:24 [1983]2:24 [1984]2:36 [1985]2:36 [1986]2:36 [1987]2:36 [1988]2:36 [1989]2:36 [1990]2:38 [1991]3:9 [1992]3:15 [1993]3:20 [1994]3:26 [1995]4:4 [1996]4:10 [1997]4:12 [1998]4:32 [1999]4:35 [2000]5 [2001]5:29 [2002]5:39 [2003]5:39 [2004]5:39 [2005]6 [2006]6 [2007]7:55 [2008]8:4 [2009]8:20 [2010]8:20 [2011]8:27 [2012]8:30 [2013]8:34 [2014]8:37 [2015]9:4 [2016]9:5 [2017]10:26 [2018]10:36 [2019]10:36 [2020]10:38 [2021]10:38 [2022]10:38 [2023]13:22 [2024]13:33 [2025]14:15 [2026]15 [2027]17:5 [2028]17:21 [2029]17:27 [2030]17:28 [2031]17:28 [2032]17:28 [2033]17:28 [2034]17:28 [2035]17:28 [2036]17:30 [2037]17:31 [2038]20:28 [2039]20:29 [2040]21:20 [2041]23:9 [2042]23:11 [2043]23:22-24 [2044]24:18-19 [2045]25:16 [2046]26:2 [2047]26:26
Romans
[2048]1:1 [2049]1:1-2 [2050]1:2 [2051]1:3 [2052]1:3 [2053]1:4 [2054]1:4 [2055]1:4 [2056]1:7 [2057]1:7 [2058]1:12 [2059]1:15 [2060]1:17 [2061]1:19-20 [2062]1:19-25 [2063]1:20 [2064]1:20 [2065]1:20 [2066]1:20 [2067]1:20 [2068]1:20 [2069]1:20 [2070]1:20 [2071]1:20 [2072]1:21-22 [2073]1:22 [2074]1:23 [2075]1:25 [2076]1:25 [2077]1:25 [2078]1:25 [2079]1:25 [2080]1:25 [2081]1:25 [2082]1:26 [2083]1:26 [2084]1:28 [2085]1:28 [2086]1:28 [2087]1:30 [2088]1:30 [2089]1:30 [2090]2:5 [2091]2:13 [2092]2:16 [2093]2:21 [2094]2:23 [2095]2:24 [2096]2:24 [2097]3:10 [2098]3:21 [2099]3:22 [2100]3:26 [2101]3:26 [2102]3:29-30 [2103]4:20 [2104]4:25 [2105]5:1-8 [2106]5:3 [2107]5:3 [2108]5:3 [2109]5:4 [2110]5:5 [2111]5:5-8 [2112]5:12 [2113]5:14 [2114]5:14 [2115]5:14 [2116]5:14 [2117]5:14 [2118]6:9 [2119]6:14 [2120]7:12 [2121]7:14 [2122]8 [2123]8 [2124]8:1 [2125]8:3 [2126]8:3 [2127]8:3 [2128]8:3 [2129]8:3 [2130]8:3 [2131]8:3 [2132]8:3 [2133]8:3-4 [2134]8:9 [2135]8:13 [2136]8:15 [2137]8:17 [2138]8:18 [2139]8:18 [2140]8:19 [2141]8:19-21 [2142]8:21 [2143]8:21 [2144]8:22 [2145]8:24-25 [2146]8:26 [2147]8:28 [2148]8:29 [2149]8:29 [2150]8:29 [2151]8:29 [2152]8:29 [2153]8:32 [2154]8:33-34 [2155]8:35 [2156]8:35 [2157]8:35 [2158]8:35 [2159]8:35 [2160]8:35 [2161]8:35 [2162]8:35 [2163]8:35 [2164]8:37 [2165]8:37 [2166]8:37 [2167]8:37 [2168]8:38-39 [2169]9:3 [2170]9:5 [2171]9:5 [2172]9:5 [2173]9:5 [2174]9:5 [2175]9:19 [2176]9:19 [2177]9:32 [2178]9:33 [2179]10:4 [2180]10:9 [2181]10:9 [2182]10:11 [2183]10:13 [2184]10:13 [2185]10:18 [2186]10:20 [2187]11:7 [2188]11:23 [2189]11:32 [2190]11:33 [2191]11:34 [2192]11:34 [2193]11:36 [2194]12:11 [2195]12:12 [2196]12:15 [2197]13:7 [2198]13:7 [2199]13:14 [2200]14:1 [2201]14:1 [2202]14:2 [2203]14:10 [2204]15:19 [2205]15:19 [2206]15:28 [2207]16:18 [2208]16:22
1 Corinthians
[2209]1:1 [2210]1:4 [2211]1:5 [2212]1:5 [2213]1:7-8 [2214]1:10 [2215]1:10 [2216]1:21 [2217]1:21 [2218]1:21 [2219]1:21 [2220]1:23 [2221]1:23-24 [2222]1:24 [2223]1:24 [2224]1:24 [2225]1:24 [2226]1:24 [2227]1:24 [2228]1:24 [2229]1:24 [2230]1:24 [2231]1:24 [2232]1:24 [2233]1:24 [2234]1:24 [2235]1:24 [2236]1:24 [2237]1:30 [2238]1:30 [2239]1:30 [2240]1:30 [2241]1:30 [2242]2:4 [2243]2:4 [2244]2:8 [2245]2:8 [2246]2:8 [2247]2:8 [2248]2:8 [2249]2:8 [2250]2:9 [2251]2:9 [2252]2:9 [2253]2:10 [2254]2:16 [2255]3:1 [2256]3:2 [2257]3:10-11 [2258]3:12 [2259]3:16 [2260]3:16 [2261]4:1 [2262]4:4 [2263]4:4 [2264]4:5 [2265]4:6 [2266]4:6 [2267]4:16 [2268]5:3 [2269]5:4 [2270]5:4 [2271]5:7 [2272]5:7 [2273]5:7 [2274]5:7 [2275]5:7 [2276]5:7 [2277]5:7 [2278]5:7 [2279]5:7 [2280]5:7 [2281]5:7 [2282]5:7 [2283]5:7-8 [2284]5:8 [2285]5:8 [2286]5:8 [2287]5:13 [2288]6:10 [2289]6:13 [2290]6:17 [2291]6:18 [2292]6:20 [2293]7:1 [2294]7:2 [2295]7:5 [2296]7:5 [2297]7:7 [2298]7:17 [2299]7:18 [2300]7:27 [2301]8:5 [2302]8:6 [2303]8:6 [2304]8:6 [2305]8:6 [2306]8:6 [2307]8:6 [2308]8:6 [2309]8:6 [2310]8:6 [2311]8:6 [2312]8:6 [2313]8:6 [2314]8:6 [2315]8:6 [2316]8:6 [2317]8:8 [2318]8:9 [2319]9:16 [2320]9:22 [2321]9:24-27 [2322]9:27 [2323]9:27 [2324]10:4 [2325]10:13 [2326]10:23 [2327]11:1 [2328]11:1 [2329]11:1 [2330]11:1 [2331]11:2 [2332]11:2 [2333]11:2 [2334]11:2 [2335]11:2 [2336]11:3 [2337]11:7 [2338]11:7 [2339]11:7 [2340]11:9 [2341]11:12 [2342]11:25 [2343]11:27 [2344]12:4 [2345]12:4 [2346]12:26 [2347]13:9 [2348]13:9 [2349]13:12 [2350]14:9 [2351]14:25 [2352]14:25 [2353]14:33 [2354]15 [2355]15 [2356]15:3 [2357]15:3 [2358]15:3 [2359]15:3-4 [2360]15:3-4 [2361]15:5 [2362]15:9 [2363]15:9 [2364]15:10 [2365]15:20 [2366]15:21 [2367]15:21 [2368]15:22 [2369]15:25 [2370]15:28 [2371]15:28 [2372]15:31 [2373]15:32 [2374]15:33 [2375]15:53 [2376]15:53 [2377]15:53 [2378]15:53 [2379]15:53 [2380]15:55 [2381]16:22-23
2 Corinthians
[2382]1:10 [2383]1:23 [2384]2:11 [2385]2:11 [2386]2:11 [2387]2:11 [2388]2:15 [2389]2:17 [2390]2:17 [2391]3:2 [2392]3:2 [2393]3:16-17 [2394]3:17 [2395]4:10 [2396]4:10 [2397]4:11 [2398]4:11 [2399]4:11 [2400]4:11 [2401]4:13 [2402]4:14 [2403]4:17 [2404]5:4 [2405]5:10 [2406]5:13-15 [2407]5:14 [2408]5:14 [2409]5:16 [2410]5:17 [2411]5:17 [2412]5:17-18 [2413]5:19 [2414]5:21 [2415]6:1-2 [2416]6:2 [2417]6:11 [2418]6:11 [2419]6:12-13 [2420]6:14 [2421]6:14 [2422]6:14 [2423]6:14-15 [2424]6:16 [2425]6:16 [2426]6:17 [2427]7:1 [2428]7:6 [2429]10:15 [2430]11:3 [2431]11:3 [2432]11:27 [2433]11:33 [2434]12:2 [2435]12:2 [2436]12:4 [2437]12:4 [2438]12:9 [2439]12:10 [2440]12:10 [2441]12:21 [2442]13:5 [2443]13:14
Galatians
[2444]1:8-9 [2445]1:8-9 [2446]1:9 [2447]1:9 [2448]1:16 [2449]1:24 [2450]2 [2451]2:5 [2452]2:5 [2453]2:6 [2454]2:13 [2455]2:20 [2456]2:20 [2457]3:11 [2458]3:13 [2459]3:13 [2460]3:13 [2461]3:13 [2462]3:16 [2463]3:19 [2464]3:23-24 [2465]4:4 [2466]4:4 [2467]4:4 [2468]4:6 [2469]4:6 [2470]4:6 [2471]4:8 [2472]4:10 [2473]4:10-11 [2474]4:19 [2475]5:13 [2476]5:15 [2477]5:22 [2478]5:25 [2479]6:6 [2480]6:15 [2481]6:17
Ephesians
[2482]1:3 [2483]1:3-5 [2484]1:5 [2485]1:10 [2486]1:10 [2487]1:13 [2488]1:13-14 [2489]1:20 [2490]2:2 [2491]2:2 [2492]2:2 [2493]2:4-5 [2494]2:10 [2495]2:10 [2496]2:14 [2497]2:14-15 [2498]2:15 [2499]2:15-16 [2500]2:19 [2501]3:15 [2502]3:15 [2503]3:15 [2504]3:18 [2505]4:3 [2506]4:4 [2507]4:5 [2508]4:5 [2509]4:10 [2510]4:13 [2511]4:14 [2512]4:20-24 [2513]4:22 [2514]4:22-24 [2515]4:24 [2516]4:26 [2517]4:30 [2518]5:1-2 [2519]5:14 [2520]5:14 [2521]5:25 [2522]5:27 [2523]6:11 [2524]6:12 [2525]6:12 [2526]6:12 [2527]6:13 [2528]6:14 [2529]6:15 [2530]6:15
Philippians
[2531]1:13 [2532]1:29 [2533]2:5-11 [2534]2:6 [2535]2:6 [2536]2:6 [2537]2:6 [2538]2:6 [2539]2:6 [2540]2:6 [2541]2:6-7 [2542]2:6-8 [2543]2:6-8 [2544]2:7 [2545]2:7 [2546]2:7 [2547]2:8 [2548]2:9 [2549]2:9 [2550]2:9 [2551]2:9 [2552]2:9-10 [2553]2:9-10 [2554]2:9-10 [2555]2:10-11 [2556]2:11 [2557]2:26 [2558]3:13 [2559]3:13 [2560]3:13 [2561]3:13 [2562]3:14 [2563]3:14 [2564]3:14 [2565]3:14 [2566]3:14 [2567]3:15 [2568]3:20 [2569]3:20 [2570]3:21 [2571]4:5 [2572]4:6 [2573]4:12 [2574]4:13
Colossians
[2575]1:12 [2576]1:12-17 [2577]1:15 [2578]1:15 [2579]1:15 [2580]1:15 [2581]1:15 [2582]1:15 [2583]1:15 [2584]1:15 [2585]1:15 [2586]1:15 [2587]1:15 [2588]1:15 [2589]1:15 [2590]1:15-17 [2591]1:15-18 [2592]1:16 [2593]1:16 [2594]1:16 [2595]1:16 [2596]1:16 [2597]1:16 [2598]1:16 [2599]1:16 [2600]1:17 [2601]1:17 [2602]1:17 [2603]1:17 [2604]1:18 [2605]1:18 [2606]1:18 [2607]1:20 [2608]2 [2609]2 [2610]2:3 [2611]2:5 [2612]2:9 [2613]2:9 [2614]2:9 [2615]2:14 [2616]2:15 [2617]2:15 [2618]2:15 [2619]3:4 [2620]3:5 [2621]3:5 [2622]3:5 [2623]3:5 [2624]3:17 [2625]4:6
1 Thessalonians
[2626]2:19 [2627]3:11 [2628]4:13 [2629]5:16-17 [2630]5:16-18 [2631]5:17 [2632]5:17 [2633]5:17 [2634]5:17 [2635]5:18 [2636]5:18 [2637]5:18 [2638]5:19 [2639]5:23 [2640]5:24
2 Thessalonians
[2641]2:1 [2642]2:1-2 [2643]2:3 [2644]2:4 [2645]2:8 [2646]2:8 [2647]2:8 [2648]3:10
1 Timothy
[2649]1:4 [2650]1:7 [2651]1:7 [2652]1:7 [2653]1:7 [2654]1:8 [2655]1:10 [2656]1:15 [2657]1:17 [2658]1:17 [2659]1:19 [2660]1:19 [2661]1:19 [2662]1:20 [2663]2:5 [2664]2:7 [2665]2:7 [2666]2:7 [2667]2:9 [2668]3:2 [2669]3:2 [2670]3:8 [2671]3:16 [2672]3:16 [2673]3:16 [2674]4:1 [2675]4:1 [2676]4:1 [2677]4:1-2 [2678]4:2 [2679]4:4 [2680]4:6 [2681]4:6 [2682]4:7 [2683]4:7 [2684]4:7-8 [2685]4:7-8 [2686]4:12 [2687]4:14 [2688]4:14 [2689]4:14 [2690]4:15 [2691]5:16 [2692]5:23 [2693]6:5 [2694]6:5 [2695]6:10 [2696]6:15
2 Timothy
[2697]1:8-10 [2698]1:10 [2699]1:10 [2700]1:13 [2701]2:8 [2702]2:8 [2703]2:13 [2704]2:14 [2705]2:16-17 [2706]2:17 [2707]2:17 [2708]2:17-18 [2709]2:18 [2710]2:18 [2711]2:19 [2712]3:8 [2713]3:11 [2714]3:11 [2715]3:12 [2716]3:12 [2717]3:12 [2718]3:13 [2719]3:14 [2720]3:14 [2721]3:15 [2722]3:16 [2723]3:17 [2724]4:2 [2725]4:6 [2726]4:7 [2727]4:7-8 [2728]4:8
Titus
[2729]1:8 [2730]1:12 [2731]1:13 [2732]1:14 [2733]1:14 [2734]1:15 [2735]2:2 [2736]2:8 [2737]2:13-14 [2738]3:8 [2739]3:10-11 [2740]3:10-11 [2741]3:11
Philemon
[2742]1:10
Hebrews
[2743]1:1-2 [2744]1:1-2 [2745]1:2 [2746]1:2 [2747]1:2 [2748]1:3 [2749]1:3 [2750]1:3 [2751]1:3 [2752]1:3 [2753]1:3 [2754]1:3 [2755]1:3 [2756]1:3 [2757]1:3 [2758]1:3 [2759]1:3 [2760]1:3 [2761]1:3 [2762]1:3 [2763]1:3 [2764]1:3-4 [2765]1:4 [2766]1:4 [2767]1:4 [2768]1:4 [2769]1:4 [2770]1:4 [2771]1:4 [2772]1:4 [2773]1:4 [2774]1:6 [2775]1:6 [2776]1:6 [2777]1:6 [2778]1:6 [2779]1:7 [2780]1:10 [2781]1:12 [2782]1:14 [2783]2:1-3 [2784]2:7 [2785]2:9 [2786]2:9 [2787]2:10 [2788]2:12 [2789]2:14 [2790]2:14 [2791]2:14 [2792]2:14 [2793]2:14-15 [2794]2:14-18 [2795]2:15 [2796]2:15 [2797]2:16 [2798]2:16 [2799]3:1-2 [2800]3:2 [2801]3:2 [2802]3:2 [2803]3:2 [2804]3:2 [2805]3:2 [2806]3:2 [2807]3:5-6 [2808]3:6 [2809]4:12 [2810]4:12 [2811]4:12 [2812]4:12-13 [2813]4:12-13 [2814]4:14 [2815]5:13 [2816]5:14 [2817]5:14 [2818]6:4 [2819]6:18 [2820]6:20 [2821]6:20 [2822]7:19 [2823]7:19 [2824]7:22 [2825]8:3 [2826]9:1 [2827]9:5 [2828]9:10 [2829]9:10 [2830]9:10 [2831]9:13 [2832]9:14 [2833]9:26 [2834]9:26 [2835]9:26 [2836]9:26 [2837]9:26 [2838]9:27 [2839]10:1 [2840]10:20 [2841]10:20 [2842]10:20 [2843]10:20 [2844]10:24 [2845]10:29 [2846]11:3 [2847]11:3 [2848]11:3 [2849]11:6 [2850]11:6 [2851]11:16 [2852]11:17 [2853]11:32 [2854]11:37-38 [2855]12:1 [2856]12:18-23 [2857]12:23 [2858]12:29 [2859]13:4 [2860]13:4 [2861]13:8 [2862]13:8 [2863]13:8 [2864]13:8 [2865]13:8 [2866]13:8 [2867]13:14
James
[2868]1:2 [2869]1:8 [2870]1:12 [2871]1:14 [2872]1:17 [2873]1:18 [2874]1:20 [2875]1:21 [2876]2:7 [2877]5:13
1 Peter
[2878]1:7 [2879]1:12 [2880]1:13 [2881]1:25 [2882]2:21-23 [2883]2:22 [2884]2:23 [2885]2:24 [2886]2:24 [2887]2:24 [2888]3:19 [2889]3:22 [2890]4:1 [2891]4:1 [2892]4:1 [2893]4:1 [2894]4:19 [2895]5:8 [2896]5:8 [2897]5:8
2 Peter
[2898]1:4 [2899]1:4 [2900]1:4 [2901]1:4 [2902]1:4 [2903]1:4 [2904]1:17 [2905]2:22 [2906]2:22 [2907]2:22 [2908]3:16
1 John
[2909]1:1 [2910]1:1-2 [2911]2:7 [2912]2:13 [2913]2:20 [2914]2:23 [2915]2:23 [2916]3:2 [2917]3:5 [2918]3:8 [2919]3:8 [2920]3:24 [2921]3:24 [2922]4:1 [2923]4:1 [2924]4:9 [2925]4:13 [2926]4:15 [2927]5:20 [2928]5:20 [2929]5:20 [2930]5:20 [2931]5:20
2 John
[2932]1:10 [2933]1:10
Revelation
[2934]1:4 [2935]1:5 [2936]1:8 [2937]1:8 [2938]3:14 [2939]3:14 [2940]4:8 [2941]8:9 [2942]18:6 [2943]19:13 [2944]22:9 [2945]22:13-17
Tobit
[2946]4:18 [2947]12:7
Judith
[2948]9 [2949]13:8 [2950]15
Wisdom of Solomon
[2951]1:5 [2952]1:11 [2953]1:11 [2954]2:12 [2955]2:12 [2956]2:21 [2957]2:23 [2958]3:57 [2959]6:18 [2960]6:24 [2961]7:25 [2962]7:25 [2963]7:25 [2964]7:25 [2965]7:27 [2966]7:27 [2967]9:2 [2968]13:5 [2969]13:5 [2970]14:12 [2971]14:12 [2972]14:12 [2973]14:21
Baruch
[2974]3:12 [2975]3:12 [2976]3:12 [2977]3:35 [2978]3:37 [2979]4:20 [2980]4:22 [2981]6
1 Esdras
[2982]4:36 [2983]4:40 [2984]4:41
2 Esdras
[2985]7:28-29
Sirach
[2986]1:9-10 [2987]1:25 [2988]4:24 [2989]4:28 [2990]7:5 [2991]7:5 [2992]15:9 [2993]15:9 [2994]18:17 [2995]30:4 __________________________________________________________________
Index of Greek Words and Phrases
* aidia: [2996]1 [2997]2 * aidion gennema: [2998]1 * aidios: [2999]1 * agape ex agapes: [3000]1 * agapen patros: [3001]1 * agen: [3002]1 * ageneton: [3003]1 [3004]2 [3005]3 [3006]4 [3007]5 [3008]6 [3009]7 [3010]8 [3011]9 [3012]10 [3013]11 * agenetos: [3014]1 [3015]2 [3016]3 [3017]4 [3018]5 [3019]6 [3020]7 [3021]8 [3022]9 [3023]10 [3024]11 [3025]12 [3026]13 [3027]14 [3028]15 [3029]16 [3030]17 * agenneton: [3031]1 [3032]2 [3033]3 [3034]4 [3035]5 * agennetos: [3036]1 [3037]2 [3038]3 [3039]4 [3040]5 [3041]6 [3042]7 [3043]8 [3044]9 * agennetos, (ho Theos: [3045]1 * agen[n]etos: [3046]1 * agathotetos: [3047]1 * agathou patros agathon boulema: [3048]1 * agapen pros auton achoriston kai ouk aphosioumenen: [3049]1 * angelon men parabanton, anthropon de parakousanton: [3050]1 * angen: [3051]1 * ageneton: [3052]1 * agennetos: [3053]1 * agennesia: [3054]1 [3055]2 * agennetogenes: [3056]1 * agentiseribous: [3057]1 * agora: [3058]1 * adeos: [3059]1 * adelphoi: [3060]1 * adialeiptos agape: [3061]1 * adiaireton, anarchon, aeigenes: [3062]1 * aei ho theos, aei ho hui& 231;s hama pater, hama hui& 231;s: [3063]1 * aei gennatai ho soter hupo tou patros: [3064]1 * aei men prophaseis: [3065]1 * aeigennes: [3066]1 * aeipais: [3067]1 * atheotetos: [3068]1 [3069]2 * atheias: [3070]1 * akathekon, apoxenizein, epakouein: [3071]1 * akeraion: [3072]1 * akoas: [3073]1 * akoas buei: [3074]1 * akousios: [3075]1 * aletheia, logos: [3076]1 * alethos: [3077]1 [3078]2 * alethos Eusebie: [3079]1 * alethos, phusikos, kurios: [3080]1 * alethos eusebie: [3081]1 * all' ha: [3082]1 * all' epedemesen ho Kurios hemon 'Iesous Christos lutroumenos tous aichmalotous, kai zoopoion tous tethanatomenous: [3083]1 * alloioumenos: [3084]1 * alogian: [3085]1 * alogias: [3086]1 * ameristos en memerismenois he theotes: [3087]1 * ana tas exodous: [3088]1 * anexodoi: [3089]1 * aner atheos: [3090]1 * anomoion: [3091]1 * anomoios: [3092]1 [3093]2 * anomoios kata panta: [3094]1 * anomon: [3095]1 * anabas: [3096]1 * anakerasthomen: [3097]1 * anakephalaiosis: [3098]1 [3099]2 * anaktisai: [3100]1 * anaktisai ta hola, huper panton, pathein: [3101]1 * anarithmeton plethos: [3102]1 * anastas: [3103]1 * anaphurei heauton hemin: [3104]1 * anexodon: [3105]1 * anepimiktoi: [3106]1 * anepimiktoi: [3107]1 [3108]2 * anergastou ges: [3109]1 * anth' hemon ten opheilen apodidous: [3110]1 * anthropinon: [3111]1 * anthropous atheous: [3112]1 * anomoiotes: [3113]1 * anousiou, anupostatou: [3114]1 * anti panton: [3115]1 * antidosis: [3116]1 * antipsuchon: [3117]1 * antimachomenoi to soteri: [3118]1 * anupostatos logos: [3119]1 * apartisma aphtharsias: [3120]1 * aperitton: [3121]1 * apo tes nun hupateias: [3122]1 * apo& 207;rhoia: [3123]1 * aparallakton: [3124]1 [3125]2 * aparallakton eikona: [3126]1 * aparallaktos: [3127]1 [3128]2 * aparallaktos eikon kat' ousian: [3129]1 * aparallaktos eikon: [3130]1 * aparallaktos homoios: [3131]1 * aparallaktos eikon, apekribomene emphereia: [3132]1 * aper& 191;egmenas: [3133]1 * apexenomenas allelon kai diespasmenas: [3134]1 * apogrammon: [3135]1 * apodeixis: [3136]1 * apodeiktikos ouk apophantikos: [3137]1 * apokreos: [3138]1 * apolutos: [3139]1 * apolelumenos: [3140]1 [3141]2 * apomaphorizomenai: [3142]1 * aporiai: [3143]1 * aposunagogos: [3144]1 * argos: [3145]1 * areiomaniton: [3146]1 * arche: [3147]1 [3148]2 [3149]3 * arche hodon eis ta erga: [3150]1 * arche zoes,: [3151]1 * arche teknon: [3152]1 * arche tes ktiseos: [3153]1 * archen: [3154]1 [3155]2 * archen hodon;: [3156]1 * arche: [3157]1 [3158]2 * archomenoi tes hagias tessarakostes--episunaptontes--sunaptontes exes--: [3159]1 * arche: [3160]1 * archieresian: [3161]1 * archikai hupostaseis: [3162]1 * architektonema: [3163]1 * asebes: [3164]1 * asebemata: [3165]1 * aschematistos: [3166]1 * atele proteron, eita teleion, hosper nomos tes hemeteras geneseos: [3167]1 * auen: [3168]1 * aphtharsia: [3169]1 [3170]2 [3171]3 [3172]4 * aphthartoi dia tes anastaseos: [3173]1 * achorista pragmata duo; ho hui& 232;s ten kata panta homoioteta autou ek phuseos apomaxamenos; di' esoptrou akelidotou kai empsuchou theias eikonos; mesiteuousa phusis monogenes; tas te hupostasei duo phuseis: [3174]1 * achronos gennetheis kai pro ai& 240;non ktistheis kai themeliotheis;: [3175]1 * hagion: [3176]1 * hagneuontes: [3177]1 * hamartian, kai ou ten praxin: [3178]1 * haplos: [3179]1 * haplos, ouk haplos horisthe, all' akribos exetasthe: [3180]1 * ha thelousi prattei, epei kai autos haper ethelen ekouse par' auton: [3181]1 * ha men hos zeton kai gumnazon ergapse, tauta me hos autou phronountos dechestho tis, alla ton pros erin philoneikounton en to zetein, adeos horizon apophainetai, touto tou philoponou to phronema esti. alla: [3182]1 * angelos, huperetes: [3183]1 * agonos: [3184]1 * atheoi: [3185]1 * akarpos: [3186]1 * alle ekklesia: [3187]1 * allos ho Pater allos ho hui& 231;s: [3188]1 * aloga kata tou Logou tou Patros.: [3189]1 * alogon: [3190]1 * alogon kai asophon ton theon: [3191]1 * alogos: [3192]1 * alogos, asophos: [3193]1 * alupos anodunos amerimnos zoe: [3194]1 * amesos sunapheia: [3195]1 * anarchon kai aeigenes: [3196]1 * anthropon: [3197]1 * anthropon holon: [3198]1 * anthropos: [3199]1 [3200]2 [3201]3 [3202]4 [3203]5 [3204]6 * anthropos teleios: [3205]1 * anomos: [3206]1 * ano kai kato: [3207]1 * ano kai kato peripherontes: [3208]1 * arourai: [3209]1 * arretos: [3210]1 * artoi: [3211]1 * arche: [3212]1 * arche: [3213]1 * askes*s: [3214]1 * atreptos kai me alloioumenos: [3215]1 * aulos: [3216]1 * haper egrapsa tois monachois: [3217]1 * hate ton Kurion enoikon echousa: [3218]1 * ebdomas ton paschon: [3219]1 * ego apostello: [3220]1 * ego gar doso: [3221]1 * ego eimi ho hon: [3222]1 * engraphos: [3223]1 * engraphos exetethe: [3224]1 * egenethe: [3225]1 [3226]2 * egennethe: [3227]1 * enkuklein: [3228]1 * etheopoiese: [3229]1 * ek: [3230]1 [3231]2 * ek bouleseos tinos: [3232]1 * ek boules: [3233]1 * ek thelematos: [3234]1 * ek theou: [3235]1 * ek metaphoras: [3236]1 * ek prokopes: [3237]1 [3238]2 * ek tes homoiotetos: [3239]1 * ek tes ousias: [3240]1 [3241]2 [3242]3 [3243]4 * ek tes ousias tou patros einai, kai me ex heteras hupostaseos ton huion: [3244]1 * ek tes ousias tou patros, homoousian to Patri: [3245]1 * ek tes [hupostaseos e] ousias tou Patros: [3246]1 * ek ton idion: [3247]1 * ek tou thelematos: [3248]1 * ek tou thelematos tou Patros: [3249]1 * ek tou peritrochazein pasan aguian asemnos: [3250]1 * ekeleusan: [3251]1 * ekeinon: [3252]1 * ekklesiastikos: [3253]1 * ekporeuton: [3254]1 * ektos kat' ousian: [3255]1 * ekteinai ten manian: [3256]1 [3257]2 * ekuophorethe hupo Marias kat' oikonomian: [3258]1 * elattoma: [3259]1 * elatton para ton patera ho hui& 232;s: [3260]1 * eleutheron to phronema: [3261]1 * emphilochorein: [3262]1 * emphilochorein to theo kai endiaitasthai: [3263]1 * en: [3264]1 [3265]2 * en emoi: [3266]1 * en heauto theopoiese: [3267]1 * en iso: [3268]1 * en homoiomati anthropou: [3269]1 * en hupostasei triada: [3270]1 * en gumnasi& 139; exetasas: [3271]1 * en mono to heautou Patri holos on kata panta: [3272]1 * en memerismenois topois: [3273]1 * en sarki: [3274]1 * en te idi& 139; eikoni, hetis estin ho logos autou: [3275]1 * en to ginesthai: [3276]1 * en to logo en to pneuma: [3277]1 * en to toichi& 251;: [3278]1 * en to hui& 254;: [3279]1 * en tritai& 251; diastemati: [3280]1 * en hui& 254;: [3281]1 * enaretoi: [3282]1 * energeia: [3283]1 * energeia drastike: [3284]1 * energeia drastike: [3285]1 * energeiai: [3286]1 * enanthropesanta: [3287]1 * endiathetos: [3288]1 [3289]2 [3290]3 * enepompeusate: [3291]1 * energos: [3292]1 * energeia: [3293]1 * energei& 139;: [3294]1 * energei& 139; gennetike: [3295]1 * ennoion mallon de paranoion: [3296]1 * enousios: [3297]1 * entelletai: [3298]1 * entos humon: [3299]1 * entelletai: [3300]1 * entrepei: [3301]1 * ex heteras hupostaseos: [3302]1 [3303]2 [3304]3 [3305]4 [3306]5 * ex heteras hupostaseos e ousias: [3307]1 [3308]2 [3309]3 [3310]4 * ex heteras hupostaseos kai me ek tou theou: [3311]1 * ex heteras ousias: [3312]1 [3313]2 * ex heteras tinos hupostaseos te kai ousias: [3314]1 * ex holoklerou genous: [3315]1 * ex homilias gunaikos ou semnes oude kata nomon sunelthouses: [3316]1 * ex hupostaseos: [3317]1 [3318]2 [3319]3 [3320]4 [3321]5 [3322]6 [3323]7 [3324]8 [3325]9 * ex hupostaseos e ousias: [3326]1 * ex autes tes patrikes: [3327]1 * ex ouk onton: [3328]1 [3329]2 [3330]3 [3331]4 [3332]5 [3333]6 [3334]7 [3335]8 * ex ouk onton echei ten hupostasin: [3336]1 * ex ousias: [3337]1 [3338]2 [3339]3 [3340]4 [3341]5 [3342]6 [3343]7 [3344]8 [3345]9 [3346]10 [3347]11 [3348]12 [3349]13 [3350]14 [3351]15 [3352]16 * ex ousias tou patros: [3353]1 * ex hou echei to einai: [3354]1 * exaireton: [3355]1 * exairetou: [3356]1 * exomologoumenos en metanoia dia tou hi& 153;reos lambanei ten aphesin chariti Christou: [3357]1 * exousi& 139; homou kai ousi& 139; patros monogenous huiou: [3358]1 * epangelma: [3359]1 * epekeina pases ousias: [3360]1 * epelampse: [3361]1 * epeplette: [3362]1 * epekouse gar haplos: [3363]1 * epi ten aitian anapherestho: [3364]1 * epi ton hamaxon eisi pompeiai tines: [3365]1 * epibasis: [3366]1 [3367]2 * ep?keina ousias: [3368]1 * epakouein: [3369]1 * epakouousin: [3370]1 * epei malistai, hoti malista: [3371]1 * epetimese: [3372]1 * epibebeken: [3373]1 * epibainein: [3374]1 [3375]2 * epibainon: [3376]1 * epibaterios: [3377]1 * epibebekenai: [3378]1 * epigegone: [3379]1 * epigegonos: [3380]1 * epidemia: [3381]1 [3382]2 * epinoesantes: [3383]1 * epinoesasai: [3384]1 * epinoiais: [3385]1 * epiplettei: [3386]1 * epispeirantos tou diabolou: [3387]1 * epispeirousi, epinoousi, gonguzousi, kath' humas, atopon, lexeidion, heis ton panton: [3388]1 * episumbebekota auto: [3389]1 * epiteichisma: [3390]1 * epitima ouk atimazon alla diorthoumenos: [3391]1 * epitima: [3392]1 * epicheirema: [3393]1 [3394]2 * epicheiremata: [3395]1 * ergazomenou tou patros, ergazesthai kai ton hui& 231;n: [3396]1 * ergasias: [3397]1 * erotontes emanthanon: [3398]1 * eskenosen en hemin: [3399]1 * etarachthesan: [3400]1 * heauton aei kategoroi: [3401]1 * heautou kurios: [3402]1 * hexupereton thelemati: [3403]1 * heterogenes kai heteroousios ton geneton, kai tes tou patros ousias idios kai homophues: [3404]1 * hen thelema patros kai huiou kai boulema, epei kai he phusis mia: [3405]1 * hen men to agenneton, ho pantokrator theos, hen de kai to progennethen di' ou ta panta egeneto, kai choris autou egeneto oude hen: [3406]1 * hen to ageneton e duo: [3407]1 * hen to agenneton hen de to hup' autou alethos, kai ouk ek tes ousias autou gegonos: [3408]1 * hen te idioteti kai oikeioteti tes phuseos, kai te tautoteti tes mias theotetos: [3409]1 * egrapsa di oligon: [3410]1 * ethos esti te thei& 139; graphe: [3411]1 * ekthesis": [3412]1 * ektise: [3413]1 * emele gar autois: [3414]1 * emetoi kai nautiai` nautiai: [3415]1 * endoxon: [3416]1 * ennoia: [3417]1 * ensarkos parousia: [3418]1 * exo: [3419]1 * exothen: [3420]1 * erga: [3421]1 * ergon: [3422]1 * ergon prototokon tou patros ginetai. touton ismen tou kosmou ten archen: [3423]1 * eti de hetton to pneuma to hagion: [3424]1 * echei: [3425]1 * henos ontos eidous theotetos: [3426]1 * henosis: [3427]1 * henosis tes monadikes ousias: [3428]1 * hexin: [3429]1 * hetera anth' heteron: [3430]1 * heteron echousa to kat' ousian hupokeimenon,: [3431]1 * heteron pros heteron semainete: [3432]1 * heteros kat' ousian kai hupokeimenon: [3433]1 * heteros kat' ousian kai hupokeimenon ho hui& 232;s tou patros: [3434]1 * heteros kat' ousian tou patros: [3435]1 * heteros para ton patera: [3436]1 * egapesen, horon, k. t. l: [3437]1 * ethelesen: [3438]1 * ekousthe: [3439]1 * ephanizeto: [3440]1 * he: [3441]1 * he agennesia: [3442]1 * he anthropotes: [3443]1 * he ano Ierousalem: [3444]1 * he idea hoper logon eirekasi: [3445]1 * he hupokeimene ousia hos hule, hule: [3446]1 * he de arche agennetos: [3447]1 * he de ge anaimaktos thusia exilasmos: [3448]1 * he ktistike: [3449]1 * he ousia haute tes ousias tes patrikes esti gennema: [3450]1 * he patrike hupostasis: [3451]1 * he patrike theotes: [3452]1 * he patrike huiou theotes: [3453]1 * he tou kat' eikona charis: [3454]1 * he tou kreittonos gnosis: [3455]1 * he philarchos kai philarguros prothesis; christemporian; phrenoblabous; idiotropon; homostoichois sullabais; theegorous apostolous; & 135;ntidiastolen tes patrikes maieuseos; melancholiken; philotheos sapheneia anosiourgias; phlenaphon muthon: [3456]1 * he phusike gonimotes: [3457]1 * hegoumenos: [3458]1 * hemeis huioi, ouk hos ekeinos phusei kai aletheia: [3459]1 * e hupostaseos: [3460]1 * ede palai: [3461]1 * heko: [3462]1 [3463]2 * en hote ouk en: [3464]1 [3465]2 [3466]3 [3467]4 * en pote hote ouk en: [3468]1 * en prin gennethe: [3469]1 * idea: [3470]1 * idean ideon kai archen lekteon ton prototokon pases ktiseos: [3471]1 * idian: [3472]1 * idious: [3473]1 * idiou; theotes: [3474]1 * idios: [3475]1 * idiopoieitai: [3476]1 * idiopoioumenou: [3477]1 * idiomaton: [3478]1 * hiera anagraphe: [3479]1 * hierateion: [3480]1 * hieratikoi: [3481]1 * hieratikoi: [3482]1 * ideai: [3483]1 [3484]2 * idion: [3485]1 [3486]2 [3487]3 * idion tou Logou: [3488]1 * idios tou Patros: [3489]1 * idios hui& 232;s: [3490]1 * idios;: [3491]1 * idontes kai tous par' auton pathontas, tous kategorous, tous elenchous pro ophthalmon echontes: [3492]1 * hina genetui theia: [3493]1 * oligoi tines: [3494]1 * omoousion: [3495]1 [3496]2 [3497]3 * onomata monon: [3498]1 * opisthia: [3499]1 * organou: [3500]1 * organon apsuchon: [3501]1 * orthen echon ten dianoian: [3502]1 * ho alethos Osios. kataskopoi, ou gar episkopoi: [3503]1 * ho atheos: [3504]1 * ho anthropos: [3505]1 * ho anthr. tou soteros: [3506]1 * ho ontos theos: [3507]1 * ho on theos ton me onta ek tou me ontos: [3508]1 * ho on theos ton me onta ek tou me ontos pepoieken: [3509]1 * ho on ton onta: [3510]1 * ho on ton me onta: [3511]1 * ho on ton me onta ek tou ontos: [3512]1 * ho on ton me onta ek tou ontos e ton onta: [3513]1 * ho on: [3514]1 * ho Theos: [3515]1 * ho Kuriakos anthropus: [3516]1 * ho de 'Ar. metagrapsas dedoke tois idiois: [3517]1 * ho deuteros theos: [3518]1 * ho theos peponthen: [3519]1 * ho theos: [3520]1 * ho kreitton, ton kreittona: [3521]1 * ho ktisas: [3522]1 * ho kuriakos anthropos: [3523]1 * ho logos heauton genna: [3524]1 * ho monos legomenos kurios hui& 232;s: [3525]1 * ho nous hamartetikos esti: [3526]1 * ho panu boomenos: [3527]1 * ho soter aei gennatai: [3528]1 * ho tes aletheias logos elenchei: [3529]1 * homonumos: [3530]1 * homoias ousias: [3531]1 * homou: [3532]1 * homogenes: [3533]1 * homoioteta pos: [3534]1 * homoiousion: [3535]1 [3536]2 [3537]3 [3538]4 * homoiousion, aparallaktos eikon: [3539]1 * homoiousios: [3540]1 [3541]2 [3542]3 * homoiopathous hemin: [3543]1 * homoousioi: [3544]1 * homoousion: [3545]1 [3546]2 [3547]3 [3548]4 [3549]5 [3550]6 [3551]7 [3552]8 [3553]9 [3554]10 [3555]11 [3556]12 [3557]13 [3558]14 [3559]15 [3560]16 [3561]17 [3562]18 [3563]19 [3564]20 [3565]21 [3566]22 [3567]23 [3568]24 [3569]25 [3570]26 [3571]27 [3572]28 [3573]29 [3574]30 [3575]31 [3576]32 [3577]33 [3578]34 [3579]35 [3580]36 [3581]37 [3582]38 [3583]39 [3584]40 [3585]41 [3586]42 [3587]43 [3588]44 [3589]45 [3590]46 [3591]47 [3592]48 [3593]49 [3594]50 [3595]51 [3596]52 [3597]53 [3598]54 * homoousion e tautoousion: [3599]1 * homoousion 'Aparallakton: [3600]1 * homoousion to patri: [3601]1 * homoousion, homoiousion: [3602]1 * homoousios: [3603]1 [3604]2 [3605]3 [3606]4 [3607]5 [3608]6 [3609]7 * homo-: [3610]1 * horisthe: [3611]1 * onta: [3612]1 * onta gegenneke e ouk onta: [3613]1 * onta proteron, gennethenta eis hui& 231;n: [3614]1 * ontos: [3615]1 * ontos en humin ho theos: [3616]1 * organon: [3617]1 [3618]2 [3619]3 [3620]4 [3621]5 [3622]6 [3623]7 * organon empsuchon: [3624]1 * organon pros ten energeian kai ten eklampsin tes theotetos: [3625]1 [3626]2 * holos holou eikon: [3627]1 * holos Theos: [3628]1 * holos theos: [3629]1 * holos theos: [3630]1 [3631]2 * holou tou chriontos: [3632]1 * homoion: [3633]1 [3634]2 [3635]3 [3636]4 [3637]5 [3638]6 [3639]7 * homoion kata panta: [3640]1 [3641]2 [3642]3 * homoion kata tas graphas: [3643]1 * homoion kat' ousian: [3644]1 [3645]2 [3646]3 * homoios: [3647]1 [3648]2 [3649]3 * homoios kata panta: [3650]1 [3651]2 * homoios kata panta: [3652]1 * homoios kata ten ousian tou patros: [3653]1 * homoios kat' ousian: [3654]1 [3655]2 [3656]3 * homoios tes ousias: [3657]1 [3658]2 * homoiou kata panta: [3659]1 * hoper ego boulomai touto kanon: [3660]1 * hoper en prin genetai sarx: [3661]1 * hoson oudepo: [3662]1 [3663]2 * hotan malista: [3664]1 * hoti en pote: [3665]1 * hoti ho logos kai hoti to pneuma kai estaurothe kai esphage kai apethanen kai aneste: [3666]1 * upostaseis: [3667]1 * hugious: [3668]1 * hugiainouses didaskalias: [3669]1 * hugiainousan: [3670]1 * hugianouses: [3671]1 * hugious did: [3672]1 * humin: [3673]1 * humon: [3674]1 * huper autou: [3675]1 * hupothesis: [3676]1 [3677]2 * hupostasin, hen autoi hoi hairetikoi ousian prosagoreuousi: [3678]1 * hupostasis: [3679]1 [3680]2 [3681]3 [3682]4 [3683]5 [3684]6 [3685]7 [3686]8 [3687]9 [3688]10 [3689]11 [3690]12 [3691]13 [3692]14 [3693]15 [3694]16 [3695]17 [3696]18 [3697]19 [3698]20 [3699]21 [3700]22 [3701]23 [3702]24 [3703]25 [3704]26 [3705]27 [3706]28 [3707]29 [3708]30 [3709]31 [3710]32 [3711]33 [3712]34 [3713]35 [3714]36 [3715]37 * hupostasis tou logou: [3716]1 * hupo, monon: [3717]1 * hup' opsei panton: [3718]1 * hupakouein: [3719]1 * hupakouon: [3720]1 * hupekrinanto: [3721]1 * huper: [3722]1 * huperaulon: [3723]1 * hupera& 203;lon: [3724]1 * huperekeina pases ousias: [3725]1 * huperaulos: [3726]1 * huperoche: [3727]1 * huperphues: [3728]1 * huperetes: [3729]1 * hupereton: [3730]1 * hupereton te boule: [3731]1 * huperetounta: [3732]1 * hupourgos: [3733]1 * hupodekten: [3734]1 * hupokrites: [3735]1 * hupopiazo: [3736]1 * hupostasei: [3737]1 [3738]2 * hupostaseis: [3739]1 [3740]2 * hupostaseos: [3741]1 [3742]2 * hupostemati: [3743]1 * hupotage: [3744]1 * hupourgon teleiotaton: [3745]1 * hule: [3746]1 * huparxis: [3747]1 * onomasthe: [3748]1 * homoiothe kata panta: [3749]1 * hos anthropous atheous: [3750]1 * hos an tous apeirous tais platonikais kalliphoniai peribombeseien: [3751]1 * hos ethelesen, haper ethelesan, hotan thelosin, ous ethelesan: [3752]1 * hos epi somatos henos: [3753]1 * hos ethelesan: [3754]1 [3755]2 * hos ethelesen: [3756]1 [3757]2 [3758]3 * hos he sophia tou sophou hui& 232;s, ousia ousias: [3759]1 * hos autoi thelousi: [3760]1 * hos autoi thelousi': [3761]1 * hos de ezeteito tes pisteos ho tropos: [3762]1 * hos despotes epitima: [3763]1 * hos dia cheiros: [3764]1 * hos hoi& 231;n te en: [3765]1 * hos tous gigantas: [3766]1 * hora: [3767]1 [3768]2 * hosper ex haluseo: [3769]1 * hosper kanoni chresamenoi prosechomen te anagnosei tes theopneustou graphes: [3770]1 * on mia energeia, touton kai ousia mia: [3771]1 * hon an etheloi: [3772]1 * he logos esti: [3773]1 * 'Autoi: [3774]1 * 'Ar& 191;abon: [3775]1 * 'Alexandreus to genei, aner logios, dunatos on en tais graphais: [3776]1 * 'Anomoion: [3777]1 * 'Anomoios kat' ousian: [3778]1 * 'Ares areie: [3779]1 * 'Areiomanitai: [3780]1 [3781]2 * 'Archai: [3782]1 * 'En te palaia: [3783]1 * 'Epikteton tina: [3784]1 * 'Onesimon, ton pote soi achreston, nuni de euchreston: [3785]1 * Alogos: [3786]1 * Anthropos: [3787]1 [3788]2 [3789]3 * Atreptos: [3790]1 * Echon oun ho theos ton heautou logon endiatheton en tois idiois splanchnois, egennesen auton meta tes heautou sophias exereuxamenos pro ton holon...hopote de ethelesen ho theos poiesai hosa ebouleusato, touton ton logon egennese prophorikon, prototokon pases ktiseos: [3791]1 * rhupon: [3792]1 * rhusin: [3793]1 * rhema: [3794]1 [3795]2 * rhantizomenon: [3796]1 * rheuste: [3797]1 * rhematia.: [3798]1 * rhupose: [3799]1 * Ermeian louonta tous anexodous: [3800]1 * Ermeneia: [3801]1 * Ieros: [3802]1 * O Pater en to Uio ton panton ten pronoian poieitai: [3803]1 * O logos en pros ton Theon, kai Theos en ho Logos: [3804]1 * Omoiousios: [3805]1 * Omoousion: [3806]1 * Up: [3807]1 * to kat' eikona': [3808]1 * Augoustou tou aioniou: [3809]1 * Archiepiskopos: [3810]1 * Ballesthosan para panton: [3811]1 * Diatomitai: [3812]1 * Didache ton ib' apostolon: [3813]1 * Eite oun philosopheteon eite me philosopheteon, philosopheteon: [3814]1 * Eipon, kai: [3815]1 * Zephurinon andra idioten kai apeiron ton ekklesiastikon horon: [3816]1 * Thee: [3817]1 * Theos: [3818]1 * Kurion: [3819]1 * Kurion 'Iesoun: [3820]1 * Logoi: [3821]1 * Logos: [3822]1 [3823]2 [3824]3 [3825]4 * Logos apo siges proelthon: [3826]1 * Mian phusin tou Logou sesarkomenen: [3827]1 * Monos: [3828]1 * Meta de tauta, ou pollais hemerais husteron: [3829]1 * Monas: [3830]1 [3831]2 [3832]3 * Mone: [3833]1 * Omoousion: [3834]1 * Omoousios to Patri, ek tes ousias tou Patros: [3835]1 * Or: [3836]1 * Parthenon: [3837]1 * Peri agalmaton: [3838]1 * Stuloi: [3839]1 * Sunkatabenai: [3840]1 * Scholastikos: [3841]1 * Tanis: [3842]1 * Teleios: [3843]1 * Ton de ginomenon archegon kai sumboulon kai ergaten egenna logon, hon logon echon en heauto a& 231;raton te onta to ktizomeno, kosmo, horaton poiei; proteran phonen phthengomenos, kai phos ek photos gennon, proeken te ktisei kurion: [3844]1 * Trias: [3845]1 * Trias de estin ouch heos onomatos monon...alla alethei& 139; kai huparxei trias...eipatosan palin...trias estin e duas: [3846]1 * Trias: [3847]1 * Triberon: [3848]1 * Tropikoi: [3849]1 * Charakter: [3850]1 * Christos: [3851]1 * Christophoros: [3852]1 * a: [3853]1 [3854]2 [3855]3 * aitia tes theotetos: [3856]1 * aionotoke: [3857]1 * ai& 240;nios: [3858]1 [3859]2 * hai men gar kata nomon: [3860]1 * ainigma: [3861]1 * aion: [3862]1 * auton anti sporas sullabousa ton logon, kekueke: [3863]1 * autos: [3864]1 * autos tou patros thelema: [3865]1 * autotheos: [3866]1 * autotheos, autoagathos, alethinos theos: [3867]1 * auton: [3868]1 * autos te kai: [3869]1 * auton: [3870]1 * autou: [3871]1 * autozoen kai autoagathon: [3872]1 * autozoe: [3873]1 * autokatakritos: [3874]1 * autoprosopos: [3875]1 * autosophia: [3876]1 * akarie: [3877]1 * b: [3878]1 [3879]2 [3880]3 [3881]4 * balletai: [3882]1 * belon: [3883]1 * beltiosei praxeos: [3884]1 * beltiousthai: [3885]1 * beteranos: [3886]1 * blepontes: [3887]1 * blepon humon ten taxin: [3888]1 * blaptomenos: [3889]1 * boulesin: [3890]1 * boulesis: [3891]1 * bouletai: [3892]1 * boule: [3893]1 * boule: [3894]1 * boulen: [3895]1 * bouletheis: [3896]1 * g: [3897]1 [3898]2 [3899]3 [3900]4 * genesthai: [3901]1 * genesis: [3902]1 * geneta: [3903]1 * genetos: [3904]1 [3905]2 * gennema: [3906]1 * gennema, all' ouk hos hen ton gennematon: [3907]1 * gennesis: [3908]1 [3909]2 [3910]3 [3911]4 [3912]5 [3913]6 [3914]7 [3915]8 [3916]9 [3917]10 [3918]11 [3919]12 [3920]13 [3921]14 [3922]15 [3923]16 [3924]17 [3925]18 [3926]19 [3927]20 [3928]21 [3929]22 [3930]23 [3931]24 [3932]25 * gennetos: [3933]1 [3934]2 * genos: [3935]1 * gigantas theomachountas: [3936]1 * gigas: [3937]1 * ginesthai: [3938]1 * ginetai: [3939]1 * gegennesthai: [3940]1 * gegonenai: [3941]1 [3942]2 * genesthai: [3943]1 * genomenon: [3944]1 * genomenos: [3945]1 * geneta: [3946]1 * geneta: [3947]1 [3948]2 * geneton: [3949]1 * genetos: [3950]1 * geneton: [3951]1 * genetos: [3952]1 [3953]2 [3954]3 * genetes: [3955]1 * genetes ousias: [3956]1 * geneton: [3957]1 * gennethenta: [3958]1 * gennasthai: [3959]1 * gennethenta: [3960]1 [3961]2 * gennethenta e poiethenta: [3962]1 [3963]2 * gennesis: [3964]1 * genneta: [3965]1 [3966]2 * gennete: [3967]1 * genneton: [3968]1 * gennetos: [3969]1 * gennetos: [3970]1 * gennetikos: [3971]1 * gnesios: [3972]1 * gnosis: [3973]1 [3974]2 [3975]3 [3976]4 * goraion: [3977]1 * gpostasis: [3978]1 * gramma: [3979]1 * g. ou poiethenta: [3980]1 * de hos: [3981]1 * despota: [3982]1 * ditheoi este: [3983]1 * dunamin de mian: [3984]1 * dunamis: [3985]1 [3986]2 [3987]3 * dunamis kuriou: [3988]1 * dunamis logos: [3989]1 * duo achorista pragmata: [3990]1 * duo te hupostasei pragmata hen de te homonoi& 139; kai te tautoteti tou boulematos: [3991]1 * delon an eie: [3992]1 [3993]2 * doron tou theou to pneuma: [3994]1 * daimones: [3995]1 * dexion: [3996]1 * despoten: [3997]1 * despotes: [3998]1 * deutera ousia: [3999]1 * deuteraiou: [4000]1 * deutereuon theos: [4001]1 * dechestho tis: [4002]1 * demiourgema: [4003]1 * demiourgos: [4004]1 * dia: [4005]1 [4006]2 * dia pathous: [4007]1 * dia ta polla ginetai polla: [4008]1 * dia toutou: [4009]1 [4010]2 * diabolos: [4011]1 * diathesis: [4012]1 * dianoian: [4013]1 * dianoian, epinoian: [4014]1 * diorthosis: [4015]1 * di' entuchias gunaikarion atakton ha epatesan: [4016]1 * di' heterou tinos: [4017]1 * diairousin: [4018]1 * diar& 191;agosin: [4019]1 * diar& 191;eguosin heautous: [4020]1 * diar& 191;egnuontai: [4021]1 [4022]2 * diar& 191;egnuosin heautous;: [4023]1 * diaballon: [4024]1 * diabeblemai: [4025]1 * diaboliken: [4026]1 * diabolikoi: [4027]1 * diathesei: [4028]1 * dialelumenos: [4029]1 * diameine: [4030]1 * diameinomen: [4031]1 * diameinosin: [4032]1 * dianoias: [4033]1 * dianoi& 139;: [4034]1 * diataxeis: [4035]1 [4036]2 [4037]3 * diatage: [4038]1 * digamois: [4039]1 * digamia: [4040]1 * digunaiois: [4041]1 * didaskontos peri tou patros: [4042]1 * didachai: [4043]1 * dieblethen: [4044]1 * dielein: [4045]1 * diephtharmene: [4046]1 * dte ouk en; & 234;ti prin gennethenai ouk en; & 234;ti ex ouk onton egeneto: [4047]1 * dunamei kai boule autou: [4048]1 * dunamei te kai energei& 139; pater: [4049]1 * dunameon: [4050]1 * dunamei: [4051]1 * dunasteia: [4052]1 * dorodokoi: [4053]1 * ei agonos kai anenergetos: [4054]1 * ei de theos ho hui& 232;s, ouk epei hui& 231;s; homoios kai ho pater, ouk epei pater, theos; all' epei ousia toiade, heis esti pater kai ho hui& 232;s theos: [4055]1 * eidolon atheoteta: [4056]1 * eikon: [4057]1 [4058]2 * eikon esti chronos to agennato chrono, hon aiona potagoreuomes: [4059]1 * eis archen anapheretai: [4060]1 * eis apeiron: [4061]1 [4062]2 * eis ta erga: [4063]1 * eis to einai: [4064]1 * ei tines kai alloi: [4065]1 * ei tis choris gnomes: [4066]1 * eidous: [4067]1 * eikon, sphragis, boule, energeia: [4068]1 * eis ti chorion ekrupteto: [4069]1 * eite archen eite archas: [4070]1 * eidos: [4071]1 [4072]2 [4073]3 [4074]4 [4075]5 [4076]6 [4077]7 [4078]8 [4079]9 [4080]10 [4081]11 [4082]12 [4083]13 [4084]14 * eidos;: [4085]1 * einai: [4086]1 * heis ton askeon: [4087]1 * euangelikos horos: [4088]1 * eugenous: [4089]1 * eusebeia: [4090]1 * eusebeia, asebeia: [4091]1 [4092]2 * eusebeia, asebountes: [4093]1 * eusebeias: [4094]1 * heuriskei: [4095]1 * eotera: [4096]1 * zon organon: [4097]1 * zon kai huphestos kai tou patros huparchon ektos.: [4098]1 * zon logos: [4099]1 * zoon epistemes dektikon: [4100]1 * zosa energeia: [4101]1 * zosa ischus: [4102]1 * zosa boule: [4103]1 [4104]2 * zosa dunamis: [4105]1 * zosa eikon: [4106]1 * zosa sophia: [4107]1 * zetein: [4108]1 * zoe: [4109]1 [4110]2 * zoen idian echon: [4111]1 * thanatos: [4112]1 * thea neotera: [4113]1 * thelema: [4114]1 [4115]2 * thelesis: [4116]1 * thuos: [4117]1 * thar& 191;ountes: [4118]1 * theanthropos: [4119]1 * theia: [4120]1 * theon kata phusin teleion kai alethe: [4121]1 * theon ton: [4122]1 * theos en sarki: [4123]1 * theos diphues: [4124]1 * theon: [4125]1 * theopneusta: [4126]1 * theos: [4127]1 [4128]2 * theotes: [4129]1 * theotetos: [4130]1 * theandrike energeia: [4131]1 * thelemati kai boule hupeste: [4132]1 * thelemati propeda ho logos: [4133]1 * thelesei: [4134]1 [4135]2 * thelesei gennethen: [4136]1 * theleges esti: [4137]1 * thelema ousiodes: [4138]1 * theoi: [4139]1 * theoi kata charin: [4140]1 * theoi: [4141]1 [4142]2 * theoumetha: [4143]1 * theou en soma: [4144]1 * theou doron: [4145]1 * theousthai: [4146]1 * theogonia: [4147]1 * theologon: [4148]1 * theologein: [4149]1 * theologoumenos: [4150]1 * theomachoi: [4151]1 [4152]2 [4153]3 [4154]4 * theomachos: [4155]1 * theomachos glossa: [4156]1 * theomachein: [4157]1 * theomachein, theomachoi: [4158]1 * theopoieisthai: [4159]1 * theopoiethomen: [4160]1 * theostugeis: [4161]1 [4162]2 [4163]3 * theotokon: [4164]1 * theotokos: [4165]1 [4166]2 [4167]3 [4168]4 [4169]5 [4170]6 * theotokou: [4171]1 [4172]2 [4173]3 * theophoroumetha: [4174]1 * theophoroumenous: [4175]1 * therapeuein: [4176]1 * theothen holon: [4177]1 * theoria ton theion: [4178]1 * thnetoi: [4179]1 * thrulletai phonai, lexeis, epe, rheta: [4180]1 * thrullountes: [4181]1 * thusia: [4182]1 * th. en somati: [4183]1 * katharsis proeortios: [4184]1 * kalumma: [4185]1 * kerdos tes philochrematias: [4186]1 * koptousin heautous: [4187]1 * kurios: [4188]1 [4189]2 * kai eboulomen men siope....epeide de....ananken eschon: [4190]1 * kai diar& 191;agoien: [4191]1 * kai malista: [4192]1 * kai me ek tou theou: [4193]1 * kai ta: [4194]1 * kai to soma: [4195]1 * kairos: [4196]1 * kath' heauton ousiomenos: [4197]1 * katholikos: [4198]1 * kainoi: [4199]1 * kakonoian: [4200]1 * kalos anaginoskein: [4201]1 * kanon: [4202]1 * kanon: [4203]1 * kanali& 251; etoi parodo: [4204]1 * karpogonon: [4205]1 * karpogonos: [4206]1 * karpogonos he ousia: [4207]1 * kata boulesin: [4208]1 * kata gnomen kai proairesin: [4209]1 * kata gnomen kai proairesin bouletheis ho theos; ek tes tou patros boules kai dunameos: [4210]1 * kata katalepsin: [4211]1 * kata mimesin: [4212]1 * kata panta: [4213]1 * kata panta homoion: [4214]1 * kata panta kai en pasi: [4215]1 * kata ten autou mimesin: [4216]1 * kata ten dunamin: [4217]1 * kata ten proteran genesin en to 'Adam: [4218]1 * kata ten tou theou eikona: [4219]1 * kata to boulema: [4220]1 [4221]2 [4222]3 * kata tes eid;: [4223]1 * kata tous mutheuomenous gigantas: [4224]1 * kata tou puros: [4225]1 * kata tou puros kata: [4226]1 * kata phusin: [4227]1 * kata charin: [4228]1 * kata ti theoroumenon: [4229]1 * katalepsis: [4230]1 [4231]2 * katalusis: [4232]1 * kat' epinoian: [4233]1 [4234]2 [4235]3 [4236]4 * kat' autou tes ampelou ten phulaken para tou soteros epitetrammenou ten manian exeteine, legomen de tes ses hosiotetos: [4237]1 * kat' eikona charis: [4238]1 * kat' eudokian: [4239]1 * kat' oikonomian: [4240]1 [4241]2 [4242]3 * kat' ousian: [4243]1 [4244]2 * kat' ousian aparallaktos eikon: [4245]1 * kat' ousian esti theos: [4246]1 * kat' ousian homoios: [4247]1 * kat' ousian hui& 232;n tou Theou kai patros,: [4248]1 * katabole kosmou: [4249]1 * katapetasma: [4250]1 * kataskopou, ouk episkopos: [4251]1 * katachrontai: [4252]1 * katachrestikos: [4253]1 [4254]2 [4255]3 * keleuontos: [4256]1 * keleuon: [4257]1 * kenothenai tou einai aei: [4258]1 * kephalaion: [4259]1 * kephalaion tes pisteos: [4260]1 * kechreostemenen: [4261]1 * kedemonias: [4262]1 * kinesei: [4263]1 * koinon: [4264]1 * koinonia photi: [4265]1 * kratesei tes homologias tes pisteos: [4266]1 * kratesai tou theiou: [4267]1 * krataia cheir tou patros: [4268]1 * kratouse: [4269]1 * kratouse pistei: [4270]1 * ktizein, poiein, demiourgein: [4271]1 * ktisis: [4272]1 * ktisma: [4273]1 * ktisma ho hui& 231;s: [4274]1 * ktismata: [4275]1 * ktiston kai themelioton kai genneton: [4276]1 * kuliomenoi: [4277]1 * kurios: [4278]1 [4279]2 [4280]3 [4281]4 [4282]5 [4283]6 [4284]7 [4285]8 [4286]9 [4287]10 [4288]11 * kurios kai protos: [4289]1 * kurios logos: [4290]1 * kurios hui& 231;s: [4291]1 * kurionumos: [4292]1 * kuriotaton: [4293]1 * kuriake: [4294]1 [4295]2 * kuriakon deipnon: [4296]1 * kuriakos anthropos: [4297]1 [4298]2 * kuriologein: [4299]1 [4300]2 * legei: [4301]1 * logoi: [4302]1 [4303]2 [4304]3 [4305]4 * logos: [4306]1 [4307]2 [4308]3 [4309]4 [4310]5 [4311]6 [4312]7 [4313]8 [4314]9 [4315]10 * logos apo siges proelthon: [4316]1 * logos archiereus: [4317]1 * logos en s.: [4318]1 * logos en to theo ateles, gennetheis teleios: [4319]1 * logos en to pneumati eplatte to soma: [4320]1 * logos endiathetos: [4321]1 [4322]2 * logos gnoseos: [4323]1 * logos protos: [4324]1 * logos prophorikos: [4325]1 * logos prophorikos: [4326]1 * logos sophias: [4327]1 * logos spermatikos: [4328]1 * logos phusikos: [4329]1 * logosis: [4330]1 * lutron katharsion: [4331]1 * lutron panton: [4332]1 * laura: [4333]1 * laubanontes par' auton to lemma: [4334]1 * lexeidia: [4335]1 * llenike chresis: [4336]1 * louonta: [4337]1 * logisasthai tina boulesin: [4338]1 * logika: [4339]1 * logikos on: [4340]1 * logikoi: [4341]1 * logiste: [4342]1 * logothetai: [4343]1 * logomachein meletesantes, kai loipon pneumatomachountes, esontai met' oligon nekroi te alogi& 139;: [4344]1 * logotheises tes sarkos: [4345]1 * logotheises tes sarkos: [4346]1 * loipon: [4347]1 * l. en som: [4348]1 * magistros: [4349]1 * magistros ekei: [4350]1 * mathema: [4351]1 * memphetai: [4352]1 * me phantasi& 139; all' alethos: [4353]1 * me: [4354]1 * mete ten horismenen para tes Pronoias krisin prolambanein: [4355]1 * mian ten theoteta kai to idion tes ousias tou patros: [4356]1 * monos ek monou: [4357]1 * monos en mono: [4358]1 * monos hupo monou: [4359]1 * monos gennetheis: [4360]1 * monos gennetos en tois genetois: [4361]1 * monos monon: [4362]1 * monos para: [4363]1 * monos ouch hos ta somata: [4364]1 * monos,: [4365]1 * menas pente: [4366]1 * mathon edidaxe: [4367]1 * mathon edidasken: [4368]1 * mathon edidasken: [4369]1 * makran apephugon: [4370]1 * manikoteron: [4371]1 * manteuomenos kai progignoskon: [4372]1 * mart: [4373]1 * maphorion: [4374]1 * megale: [4375]1 * meinen: [4376]1 * mem: [4377]1 * memerismenai: [4378]1 * memerismenai hupostaseis: [4379]1 * memerismenas: [4380]1 * mesiteuousa phusis monogenes: [4381]1 [4382]2 [4383]3 * meta thallon; phallon: [4384]1 * meta paratereseos: [4385]1 * metechein: [4386]1 * metechesthai: [4387]1 * met' eusebeias: [4388]1 * metaxu tes tou agen[n]etou kai tes ton geneton phuseos: [4389]1 * metousias, hosper apo peges, ep' auton procheomenes pleroumenon: [4390]1 * metoche: [4391]1 * med' allote allen k.t.l: [4392]1 * mounos e& 241;n agapetos: [4393]1 * monas: [4394]1 * mone: [4395]1 * mone: [4396]1 [4397]2 * monen: [4398]1 * monotes: [4399]1 * monai: [4400]1 [4401]2 * monasterion: [4402]1 * monachoi: [4403]1 * mono: [4404]1 * monogenes: [4405]1 * monogenes: [4406]1 [4407]2 [4408]3 [4409]4 * monogenes Theos: [4410]1 * monogenes theos: [4411]1 * monogenes proteuon en te ktisei: [4412]1 * monogenes: [4413]1 * monogene: [4414]1 * monoousion kai ouch homoousion: [4415]1 * monoousios: [4416]1 * moousion: [4417]1 * morphe: [4418]1 * mustikotera cheirotonia: [4419]1 * n: [4420]1 [4421]2 * nea Isis echrematize: [4422]1 * nothois hosper onomasi: [4423]1 * nomo phuseos: [4424]1 * nun genomenon: [4425]1 * nun de kai diaballein tous pateras tetolmekasi: [4426]1 * neumata: [4427]1 * neoteron: [4428]1 * neuma: [4429]1 * neaniskos, O de 'Iesous emblepsas auto, egapesen auton: [4430]1 * neanieuesthe: [4431]1 * nn: [4432]1 * noei: [4433]1 * nomizomene: [4434]1 * nuktomachias te ouden apeiche ta ginomena: [4435]1 * xenas allelon pantapasi kechorismenas: [4436]1 * xenon kat' ousian k.t.l: [4437]1 * xenos tou huiou kat' ousian ho Pater hoti anarchos: [4438]1 * xeton kai gumnazon: [4439]1 * xunoris: [4440]1 [4441]2 * oikeiosis phuseos: [4442]1 * oikeiotai: [4443]1 * oikeioseos: [4444]1 * oikonomia: [4445]1 [4446]2 [4447]3 * oikonomian: [4448]1 * oikonomikos: [4449]1 [4450]2 * hoi en to kanali& 251; tes 'Italias: [4451]1 * hoi dolioi: [4452]1 * hoi nun: [4453]1 * hoi peri Eusebion: [4454]1 * hoi pleistoi: [4455]1 * hoi christomachoi: [4456]1 * hois an ethelosi: [4457]1 * ou kata metousian alla kat' ousian theos: [4458]1 * ou treis hupostaseis memerismenas: [4459]1 * oude kata metousian autou, all' holon idion autou gennema: [4460]1 * ouden eblapteto: [4461]1 * ouden heteron e ten ousian tou ontos: [4462]1 * ouden gar onoma epi theou kuriologeisthai dunaton: [4463]1 * oud' ek pollon heis: [4464]1 * oud' ho hui& 231;s, ei me ho pater: [4465]1 * oud' ho hui& 232;s e hos hoti ho pater: [4466]1 * ouk aei en ho theos pater, ouk aei en ho huios: [4467]1 * ouk aei pater: [4468]1 * ouk allou, alla tou kuriou;: [4469]1 * ouk edoulon ton logon;: [4470]1 * ouk en diairesei prosopon: [4471]1 * ouk epeplexen: [4472]1 * ouk heterou tinos: [4473]1 * ouk en prin: [4474]1 [4475]2 * ouk en prin genetai: [4476]1 * ouk en prin gennethe: [4477]1 [4478]2 [4479]3 * ouk en prin gennethe, all' en pote hote ouk en k.t.l: [4480]1 * ouk en prin gennethenai: [4481]1 [4482]2 [4483]3 [4484]4 [4485]5 * ouk en prin gennethe: [4486]1 * ouk en prin gennethenai: [4487]1 * ouk oknei theon: [4488]1 * ouk eichon to piston, kath' hemeran parerchomenai; & 211; de tou Soteros thusia hapax genomene teteleioke to pan: [4489]1 * ousia: [4490]1 [4491]2 [4492]3 [4493]4 [4494]5 [4495]6 [4496]7 [4497]8 [4498]9 [4499]10 [4500]11 [4501]12 [4502]13 [4503]14 [4504]15 [4505]16 [4506]17 [4507]18 [4508]19 [4509]20 [4510]21 [4511]22 [4512]23 [4513]24 [4514]25 [4515]26 [4516]27 [4517]28 [4518]29 [4519]30 [4520]31 [4521]32 [4522]33 [4523]34 [4524]35 [4525]36 [4526]37 [4527]38 [4528]39 [4529]40 [4530]41 [4531]42 [4532]43 [4533]44 [4534]45 [4535]46 [4536]47 [4537]48 [4538]49 [4539]50 [4540]51 [4541]52 [4542]53 [4543]54 [4544]55 [4545]56 [4546]57 [4547]58 [4548]59 [4549]60 [4550]61 [4551]62 [4552]63 [4553]64 [4554]65 [4555]66 [4556]67 [4557]68 * ousia ex ousias: [4558]1 * ousia tou logou: [4559]1 * ousiai: [4560]1 [4561]2 [4562]3 * ousiai, homoiai: [4563]1 * ousian; ousia tou logou or tou huiou: [4564]1 * ousias: [4565]1 [4566]2 [4567]3 * ousias aparallakton eikona: [4568]1 * ousiodes sophia: [4569]1 * ouch haplos a& 188;dios: [4570]1 * ouchi epinoia, paranoia de mallon: [4571]1 * housia: [4572]1 * ohus ethelon: [4573]1 * oute ton Theon phobebeis ho atheos, oute tou patros ten diathesin aidestheis ho anosios, oute to geras aischuntheis ho astorgos: [4574]1 * oute ton theon phobetheis ho atheos: [4575]1 * houtos en tais ekklesiais diatassomai: [4576]1 * houtos kai ho: [4577]1 * houtos ten en Nikai& 139; piotin exetheto: [4578]1 * pathe: [4579]1 * pathos Christou tou theou mou: [4580]1 * palin: [4581]1 * panta ginoskein epangellomenos: [4582]1 * panta dokimazete: [4583]1 * panta taxei kai pronoi& 139; kinoumena: [4584]1 * papas: [4585]1 * parergon: [4586]1 * parestin a& 204;los tois enulois ta a& 203;la: [4587]1 * pempsas: [4588]1 [4589]2 * pepautai: [4590]1 * perusin: [4591]1 * pistis: [4592]1 [4593]2 [4594]3 [4595]4 [4596]5 * polis perioches: [4597]1 * puktia: [4598]1 [4599]2 * pasa gar he Ellas esiderophorei,: [4600]1 * pur hosper noeton, ten tou hagiou Pneumatos methexin embalon: [4601]1 * pos dunatai to ktizomenon ktizein; e pos ho ktizon ktizetai: [4602]1 * paugasma: [4603]1 * paula: [4604]1 * pathon: [4605]1 * palatinoi: [4606]1 * panaretos: [4607]1 * paneudaimon patris: [4608]1 * pantelos: [4609]1 * para monou: [4610]1 * para ten aletheian: [4611]1 * para tou patros: [4612]1 * para: [4613]1 * paradosis: [4614]1 [4615]2 * paradosis agraphos: [4616]1 * paranomoi: [4617]1 * paranomos: [4618]1 * parelabon: [4619]1 * par' eautou: [4620]1 * paranomian: [4621]1 * parapetasma: [4622]1 [4623]2 * parapepetasmenen: [4624]1 * paraskeue: [4625]1 * paratereseos: [4626]1 * parousia: [4627]1 * parresiazometha: [4628]1 * pater tou kata phusin huiou: [4629]1 * patrike theotes tou huiou: [4630]1 * patriken: [4631]1 * patrikos: [4632]1 * pepoiekenai: [4633]1 [4634]2 * peri ekeinon: [4635]1 * peri hon para ton: [4636]1 * peri auton: [4637]1 * peri theon: [4638]1 * peri panton presbeusui pros ton Patera: [4639]1 * peri ton theon: [4640]1 * peri ton tolmonton heautous ektemnein: [4641]1 * peri psuches kai somatos eis to pathos: [4642]1 * perierchetai: [4643]1 * perierchontai: [4644]1 * perierchontai hos hoi kantharoi: [4645]1 * perierchontai peribombountes: [4646]1 * peribole: [4647]1 * peribombein: [4648]1 * peribombousi: [4649]1 * peribombousin: [4650]1 * periergazesthai: [4651]1 * periergazesthai;: [4652]1 * periergazontai: [4653]1 * periluontes tas nesteias--katapauontes tas nesteias--hespera bathei& 139; sabbatou--te epiphoskouse kuriake: [4654]1 * peritithemenos ten estheta, ekalupteto, endusamenos soma: [4655]1 * peripherousi: [4656]1 * perich: [4657]1 * perichoresis: [4658]1 [4659]2 [4660]3 [4661]4 [4662]5 [4663]6 [4664]7 [4665]8 [4666]9 [4667]10 [4668]11 [4669]12 * pege ek peges: [4670]1 * pege theotetos: [4671]1 [4672]2 * pege xera: [4673]1 * pege: [4674]1 * plen tes agennesias kai tes patrotetos: [4675]1 * pleres eimi: [4676]1 * plethos: [4677]1 [4678]2 * planetheisan gennesin: [4679]1 * platusmos: [4680]1 [4681]2 * pleisten e emprosthen: [4682]1 * plerotheises tes exousias en to kuriako souati: [4683]1 * pneuma: [4684]1 [4685]2 [4686]3 [4687]4 [4688]5 [4689]6 * poieo: [4690]1 * poiemata: [4691]1 * poion: [4692]1 * poiein: [4693]1 * poietes: [4694]1 * poietai: [4695]1 * poietikon aition: [4696]1 * polutheos atheia: [4697]1 * pollakis apololenai dikaioi: [4698]1 * polloi logoi: [4699]1 * polueidous: [4700]1 * poluthrulleton: [4701]1 * polukephalos hairesis: [4702]1 * poluk. panourgia: [4703]1 * poluk. sophistes: [4704]1 * pompeia: [4705]1 * pompeuein: [4706]1 * pompeuete: [4707]1 * pourgon: [4708]1 * preda: [4709]1 * prin genesthai tauta: [4710]1 * prin gennethenai ouk en: [4711]1 [4712]2 [4713]3 * prin gennethe etoi ktisthe, e oristhe, e themeliothe: [4714]1 * prin poiethe: [4715]1 * prin genesthai: [4716]1 * pro tes genneseos: [4717]1 [4718]2 * pro tou belou: [4719]1 * prodromon 'Antichristou: [4720]1 * prodromos: [4721]1 * prokrima: [4722]1 * pronoia: [4723]1 [4724]2 * pronoia ton panton: [4725]1 * prosopa: [4726]1 [4727]2 * prosopon: [4728]1 [4729]2 [4730]3 * prophasis: [4731]1 * prote ousia: [4732]1 * protos: [4733]1 [4734]2 [4735]3 * proton hemin: [4736]1 * proton gennema: [4737]1 [4738]2 * protos: [4739]1 * protos hemon: [4740]1 * preptotes: [4741]1 * proeleusis: [4742]1 [4743]2 [4744]3 [4745]4 * proaionios: [4746]1 * proballein: [4747]1 * proballesthai: [4748]1 * proballete: [4749]1 * problethen gennema: [4750]1 * probletheis: [4751]1 * probole: [4752]1 [4753]2 [4754]3 * probole: [4755]1 [4756]2 [4757]3 [4758]4 * proboleus: [4759]1 * proelthon: [4760]1 * proegoumene: [4761]1 [4762]2 * proegoumenen: [4763]1 * prothesmia: [4764]1 * prothesmian: [4765]1 * prokalumma: [4766]1 [4767]2 * prokope: [4768]1 [4769]2 [4770]3 [4771]4 [4772]5 [4773]6 * prokopes: [4774]1 * pronomia: [4775]1 * propinontes: [4776]1 * propeteusainto: [4777]1 * prosopou: [4778]1 * prostassonta: [4779]1 * prostasias philon: [4780]1 * prostattomenos kai hupourgon: [4781]1 [4782]2 * prostattomenos, kai hupourgon: [4783]1 * prosphora: [4784]1 * prosphoneso: [4785]1 * prophorikos logos: [4786]1 * prophorikos: [4787]1 [4788]2 * prototokos: [4789]1 [4790]2 [4791]3 [4792]4 [4793]5 [4794]6 [4795]7 [4796]8 [4797]9 [4798]10 [4799]11 [4800]12 [4801]13 [4802]14 [4803]15 * prototokos pases ktiseos: [4804]1 * prototokos pases ktiseos: [4805]1 * prototokos tou Theou: [4806]1 * prototupon gennema: [4807]1 * prototokos: [4808]1 [4809]2 * prototokos tes ktiseos: [4810]1 * poles: [4811]1 * re: [4812]1 * sarx: [4813]1 * sarx tou logou: [4814]1 * sarx: [4815]1 [4816]2 [4817]3 [4818]4 * sumbama: [4819]1 * sumphonos: [4820]1 * sundesmon pisteos: [4821]1 * sundesmon tes agapes: [4822]1 * sundromos: [4823]1 [4824]2 * sundromos thelesis: [4825]1 * soma: [4826]1 [4827]2 [4828]3 * soma sophias: [4829]1 * sathrothenta: [4830]1 * sarkothenta: [4831]1 * sebastos: [4832]1 * semeia: [4833]1 [4834]2 * skandalizetai: [4835]1 * skopos: [4836]1 * skopos: [4837]1 * skotodiniontes: [4838]1 * skotodiniosi: [4839]1 * sophias exegetas: [4840]1 * sophia, chrestotes, dunamis, thelema pantokratorikon: [4841]1 * sparattetosan heautous: [4842]1 * spermatikos: [4843]1 * sticharia: [4844]1 * stole: [4845]1 * stratopedon: [4846]1 [4847]2 * stratopedon;: [4848]1 * strateia: [4849]1 * strategoi: [4850]1 [4851]2 * strategou: [4852]1 [4853]2 [4854]3 * stratiotou: [4855]1 * strobilous: [4856]1 * sunkatabasin: [4857]1 * sunkatabasis: [4858]1 [4859]2 [4860]3 [4861]4 [4862]5 [4863]6 [4864]7 [4865]8 [4866]9 * sunkritikos: [4867]1 * sunkuliontai: [4868]1 * sumbainousan kai aposumbainousan: [4869]1 * sumbebekos: [4870]1 * sumbebekos: [4871]1 * sumbebekota: [4872]1 * sumphonia: [4873]1 [4874]2 * sunaxeis: [4875]1 * sunesei: [4876]1 * suneisaktai: [4877]1 * suneton theou: [4878]1 * sunegorou: [4879]1 * sunientas: [4880]1 * sunousion: [4881]1 * sustole: [4882]1 [4883]2 * sphodra eplemmelesan: [4884]1 * sphodra loidoroi: [4885]1 * sphragis: [4886]1 * schizein: [4887]1 * schema organikon: [4888]1 [4889]2 * schematisamenos: [4890]1 * tagathon: [4891]1 * ta hiera grammata: [4892]1 * ta de loipa diataxomai: [4893]1 * ta theia ton pregmaton: [4894]1 * ta kai: [4895]1 * ta pros ti: [4896]1 * tade legei: [4897]1 * taxis: [4898]1 * teknon: [4899]1 * teleion: [4900]1 * teleios: [4901]1 [4902]2 * teleios ktistheis: [4903]1 * teleios teleion gegenneken, pneuma pneuma: [4904]1 * telos: [4905]1 * ten en thanato kata phusin phthoran: [4906]1 * ten idiotropon autou hupostasin; tes hupostaseos autou aperiergastou; neoteran tes hupostaseos genesin; he tou uonogenous anekdiegetos hupostasis; ten tou logou upostasin: [4907]1 * ten huper autou dunamin: [4908]1 * ten thrulloumenen apor& 191;oen: [4909]1 * ten kata panta homoioteta: [4910]1 * ten kata panta homoioteta autou ek phuseos apomaxamenos: [4911]1 * ten manian exeteinan: [4912]1 * ten patriken heautou theoteta: [4913]1 * ten poluthrulleton dialektiken: [4914]1 * ten poluthrulleton phonen: [4915]1 * ten ptocheusasan phusin theou holen genomenen: [4916]1 * ten p. hugiainousan: [4917]1 * ten tes homoioseos henoteta: [4918]1 * ten ton holon pronoian kath' heauton ouk einai mothologousin: [4919]1 * ten tou archetupou plasin anastesasthai heauto: [4920]1 * ten phusin: [4921]1 * ti dei noein k.t.l: [4922]1 * ti moi kai soi: [4923]1 * tis egno noun Kuriou: [4924]1 * tis gar ekouse: [4925]1 * to akineton: [4926]1 * to en auto: [4927]1 * to ex autou: [4928]1 * to hidion: [4929]1 * to idion tes ousias, tautotes: [4930]1 * to opheilomenon: [4931]1 * to on: [4932]1 * to ontos on: [4933]1 * to hupokeimenon: [4934]1 * to auto gar legein ouk okneteon: [4935]1 * to brabeion tes ano kleseos: [4936]1 * to gar exelthein: [4937]1 * to de diokein diabolikon estin epicheirema: [4938]1 * to de kai proskuneisthai: [4939]1 * to dialuthentas menein en to thanato kai te phthora: [4940]1 * to euangelion: [4941]1 * to kalon katechete: [4942]1 * to ktiston: [4943]1 * to legomenon ktizesthai te phusei kai te ousi& 139; ktisma: [4944]1 * to logikon: [4945]1 * to monophues: [4946]1 * to pathos tou logou: [4947]1 * to para panton opheilomenon: [4948]1 * to poion to en te ousi& 139;, to ti en einai,: [4949]1 * to poluthrulleton sophisma: [4950]1 * to teleion: [4951]1 * to [kuriakon] soma: [4952]1 * ton alethos hui& 232;n: [4953]1 * ton anthropon: [4954]1 * ton anthropon sathrothenta: [4955]1 * ton en hemin hui& 231;n: [4956]1 * ton en autois oikounta logon: [4957]1 * ton hena kurion: [4958]1 * ton Patera sumpeponthenai to hui& 254;: [4959]1 * ton Chr: [4960]1 * ton diabolou propon analabon: [4961]1 * ton kreittona: [4962]1 * ton logon: [4963]1 * ton logon tropen hupomemenekota: [4964]1 * ton pro ai& 240;non eudoki& 139; tou patros gennethenta: [4965]1 * ton prostattonta kurion: [4966]1 * ton prostattonta kurion, ton demiourgounta logon, to stereoun pneuma: [4967]1 * ton tes taxeos: [4968]1 * tode ti: [4969]1 * tomos: [4970]1 * topos: [4971]1 * tote kai: [4972]1 * tote kai nun: [4973]1 * tes atheou peges: [4974]1 * tes hupostaseos huparchouses, pantos euthus einai dei ton charaktera kai ten eikona tautes: [4975]1 * tes autes ousias: [4976]1 * tes graphes ethos echouses: [4977]1 * tes eis ton episkopon diaboles: [4978]1 * tes eusebeias: [4979]1 * tes theotokou Marias: [4980]1 * tes kt: [4981]1 * tes ktiseos: [4982]1 * tes mones tou kurizou: [4983]1 * tes oikonomias: [4984]1 * tes ousias: [4985]1 * tes ousias homoia: [4986]1 * te a& 187;dioteti tou patros tou monogenous sunapton ten gennesin: [4987]1 * te homonoi& 139; kai te sumphoni& 139;: [4988]1 * te hupostasei duo phuseis: [4989]1 * te men hupostasei tria, te de sumphoni& 139; hen: [4990]1 * ton agoraion: [4991]1 * ton apostolon diataxis: [4992]1 * ton enkuklion: [4993]1 * ton exegeton tous akrous heilesthe: [4994]1 * ton ergasion: [4995]1 * ton 'Areiomaniton ten alogian: [4996]1 * ton geneton: [4997]1 * ton logon kairon: [4998]1 * ton nun 'Ioudaion: [4999]1 * ton palai kai propalai: [5000]1 * ton sophias metachonton, kata panta sophon: [5001]1 * ton chamai: [5002]1 * to: [5003]1 * to hagi& 251;: [5004]1 * to rh& 208;to tethrullekasi ta pantachou: [5005]1 * to skopo: [5006]1 * ta homoia tois homoiois: [5007]1 * tauton te homoiosei: [5008]1 [5009]2 * tautotes boulematos: [5010]1 * tautotes ousias: [5011]1 * tautoteta tes ousias: [5012]1 * tautoteta tes phuseos: [5013]1 * tautoousion: [5014]1 [5015]2 * tais ennoiais chromenoi, pros tas epinoias apentesamen: [5016]1 * tais logomachiais: [5017]1 * tauta: [5018]1 * tapeinai lexeis: [5019]1 * teknogonia: [5020]1 * tie: [5021]1 * tines: [5022]1 * tinos philoponou gerontos: [5023]1 * tous artous: [5024]1 * tous en te xene monachous: [5025]1 * tous de legontas ex ouk onton,....e poiema, e ex heteras ousias, toutous anathematizei k. t. l: [5026]1 * tous logimoterous ton episkopon egeiras: [5027]1 * tous mutheuomenous gigantas: [5028]1 * tous pateras diaballonton: [5029]1 * touto: [5030]1 * touto chromenos organo: [5031]1 [5032]2 * toutestin ek tes ousias tou patros: [5033]1 * toutous kai parontas paredoken to 'Alexandro: [5034]1 * touton kat' ichnos elthon: [5035]1 * tois onomasi: [5036]1 * tois tes sarkos epitimontes pathesin: [5037]1 * tou dia tes idias pronoias: [5038]1 * tou kat' eikona charis: [5039]1 * tou logou: [5040]1 * tou legomenou photeinou: [5041]1 * tou monadikou biou nomothesian en plasmati diegeseos: [5042]1 * tou patros: [5043]1 [5044]2 * tou patros homoios: [5045]1 * tou pneumatos: [5046]1 * touto to heroon stephanoi he ergasia ton bapheon: [5047]1 * ton: [5048]1 * tonthoruzete: [5049]1 * trias: [5050]1 * trizosi tous odontos: [5051]1 * tropon beltiosis: [5052]1 * treis upostaseis: [5053]1 * treis archikai hupostaseis: [5054]1 * treis hupostaseis: [5055]1 [5056]2 [5057]3 * treis memerismenas hupostaseis: [5058]1 * trepton: [5059]1 * treptos: [5060]1 [5061]2 [5062]3 [5063]4 * trepton: [5064]1 * trias: [5065]1 [5066]2 [5067]3 * trias adiairetos te phusei, kai mia tautes he energeia: [5068]1 * trizeto tous odontas: [5069]1 * trizetosan: [5070]1 * tropikos: [5071]1 [5072]2 * huiopator: [5073]1 * huiopatora: [5074]1 * huiopator: [5075]1 * huiopoioumetha alethos: [5076]1 * hui& 231;s: [5077]1 [5078]2 [5079]3 * hui& 232;n homoion kai kat' ousian ek tou patros: [5080]1 * huion chrematizein: [5081]1 * phaskontes, ou legomen duo ageneta, legousi duo theous: [5082]1 * pheme: [5083]1 [5084]2 [5085]3 [5086]4 [5087]5 * phusei: [5088]1 * phusis: [5089]1 [5090]2 [5091]3 [5092]4 [5093]5 [5094]6 [5095]7 [5096]8 * phusis tou logou: [5097]1 * phanerosis: [5098]1 [5099]2 [5100]3 * phaneros: [5101]1 * phthonos: [5102]1 * phthora: [5103]1 [5104]2 [5105]3 [5106]4 [5107]5 [5108]6 [5109]7 * phthartoi: [5110]1 * phthoreas ton psuchon: [5111]1 * phthoropoios: [5112]1 * philoponou: [5113]1 * philoptochia: [5114]1 * philochrusous mallon e philochristous: [5115]1 * phrontisterion: [5116]1 * phusiken einai ten hamartian: [5117]1 * phusikos logos: [5118]1 * phusikes tinos gumnasias heneka: [5119]1 * phusikos: [5120]1 [5121]2 * phusiologein: [5122]1 * charis tes kleseos: [5123]1 * chamaileontes: [5124]1 * charakter: [5125]1 * charaktera: [5126]1 * cheir: [5127]1 * cheir demiourgike: [5128]1 * chrezonton tes autou theotetos dia tou homoiou: [5129]1 * christophoroi: [5130]1 * christomachoi: [5131]1 * christomachon: [5132]1 * christomachein: [5133]1 * psuchesthai: [5134]1 * psuche logike: [5135]1 * psuche: [5136]1 * psuchikon: [5137]1 __________________________________________________________________
Index of Pages of the Print Edition
[5138]i [5139]iii [5140]v [5141]vi [5142]vii [5143]viii [5144]xi [5145]xii [5146]xiii [5147]xiv [5148]xv [5149]xvi [5150]xvii [5151]xviii [5152]xix [5153]xx [5154]xxi [5155]xxii [5156]xxiii [5157]xxiv [5158]xxv [5159]xxvi [5160]xxvii [5161]xxviii [5162]xxix [5163]xxx [5164]xxxi [5165]xxxii [5166]xxxiii [5167]xxxiv [5168]xxxv [5169]xxxvi [5170]xxxvii [5171]xxxviii [5172]xxxix [5173]xl [5174]xli [5175]xlii [5176]xliii [5177]xliv [5178]xlv [5179]xlvi [5180]xlvii [5181]xlviii [5182]xlix [5183]l [5184]li [5185]lii [5186]liii [5187]liv [5188]lv [5189]lvi [5190]lvii [5191]lviii [5192]lix [5193]lx [5194]lxi [5195]lxii [5196]lxiii [5197]lxiv [5198]lxv [5199]lxvi [5200]lxvii [5201]lxviii [5202]lxix [5203]lxx [5204]lxxi [5205]lxxii [5206]lxxiii [5207]lxxiv [5208]lxxv [5209]lxxvi [5210]lxxvii [5211]lxxviii [5212]lxxix [5213]lxxx [5214]lxxxi [5215]lxxxii [5216]lxxxiii [5217]lxxxiv [5218]lxxxv [5219]lxxxvi [5220]lxxxvii [5221]lxxxviii [5222]lxxxix [5223]xc [5224]xci [5225]1 [5226]2 [5227]3 [5228]4 [5229]5 [5230]6 [5231]7 [5232]8 [5233]9 [5234]10 [5235]11 [5236]12 [5237]13 [5238]14 [5239]15 [5240]16 [5241]17 [5242]18 [5243]19 [5244]20 [5245]21 [5246]22 [5247]23 [5248]24 [5249]25 [5250]26 [5251]27 [5252]28 [5253]29 [5254]30 [5255]31 [5256]32 [5257]33 [5258]34 [5259]35 [5260]36 [5261]37 [5262]38 [5263]39 [5264]40 [5265]41 [5266]42 [5267]43 [5268]44 [5269]45 [5270]46 [5271]47 [5272]48 [5273]49 [5274]50 [5275]51 [5276]52 [5277]53 [5278]54 [5279]55 [5280]56 [5281]57 [5282]58 [5283]59 [5284]60 [5285]61 [5286]62 [5287]63 [5288]64 [5289]65 [5290]66 [5291]67 [5292]68 [5293]69 [5294]70 [5295]71 [5296]72 [5297]73 [5298]74 [5299]75 [5300]76 [5301]77 [5302]78 [5303]79 [5304]80 [5305]81 [5306]82 [5307]83 [5308]84 [5309]85 [5310]86 [5311]87 [5312]88 [5313]89 [5314]90 [5315]91 [5316]92 [5317]93 [5318]94 [5319]95 [5320]96 [5321]97 [5322]98 [5323]99 [5324]100 [5325]101 [5326]102 [5327]103 [5328]104 [5329]105 [5330]106 [5331]107 [5332]108 [5333]109 [5334]110 [5335]111 [5336]112 [5337]113 [5338]114 [5339]115 [5340]116 [5341]117 [5342]118 [5343]119 [5344]120 [5345]121 [5346]122 [5347]123 [5348]124 [5349]125 [5350]126 [5351]127 [5352]128 [5353]129 [5354]130 [5355]131 [5356]132 [5357]133 [5358]134 [5359]135 [5360]136 [5361]137 [5362]138 [5363]139 [5364]140 [5365]141 [5366]142 [5367]143 [5368]144 [5369]145 [5370]146 [5371]147 [5372]148 [5373]149 [5374]150 [5375]151 [5376]152 [5377]153 [5378]154 [5379]155 [5380]156 [5381]157 [5382]158 [5383]159 [5384]160 [5385]161 [5386]162 [5387]163 [5388]164 [5389]165 [5390]166 [5391]167 [5392]168 [5393]169 [5394]170 [5395]171 [5396]172 [5397]173 [5398]174 [5399]175 [5400]176 [5401]177 [5402]178 [5403]179 [5404]180 [5405]181 [5406]182 [5407]183 [5408]184 [5409]185 [5410]186 [5411]187 [5412]188 [5413]189 [5414]190 [5415]191 [5416]192 [5417]193 [5418]194 [5419]195 [5420]196 [5421]197 [5422]198 [5423]199 [5424]200 [5425]201 [5426]202 [5427]203 [5428]204 [5429]205 [5430]206 [5431]207 [5432]208 [5433]209 [5434]210 [5435]211 [5436]212 [5437]213 [5438]214 [5439]215 [5440]216 [5441]217 [5442]218 [5443]219 [5444]220 [5445]221 [5446]222 [5447]223 [5448]224 [5449]225 [5450]226 [5451]227 [5452]228 [5453]229 [5454]230 [5455]231 [5456]232 [5457]233 [5458]234 [5459]235 [5460]236 [5461]237 [5462]238 [5463]239 [5464]240 [5465]241 [5466]242 [5467]243 [5468]244 [5469]245 [5470]246 [5471]247 [5472]248 [5473]249 [5474]250 [5475]251 [5476]252 [5477]253 [5478]254 [5479]255 [5480]256 [5481]257 [5482]258 [5483]259 [5484]260 [5485]261 [5486]262 [5487]263 [5488]264 [5489]265 [5490]266 [5491]267 [5492]268 [5493]269 [5494]270 [5495]271 [5496]272 [5497]273 [5498]274 [5499]275 [5500]276 [5501]277 [5502]278 [5503]279 [5504]280 [5505]281 [5506]282 [5507]283 [5508]284 [5509]285 [5510]286 [5511]287 [5512]288 [5513]289 [5514]290 [5515]291 [5516]292 [5517]293 [5518]294 [5519]295 [5520]296 [5521]297 [5522]298 [5523]299 [5524]300 [5525]301 [5526]302 [5527]303 [5528]304 [5529]305 [5530]306 [5531]307 [5532]308 [5533]309 [5534]310 [5535]311 [5536]312 [5537]313 [5538]314 [5539]315 [5540]316 [5541]317 [5542]318 [5543]319 [5544]320 [5545]321 [5546]322 [5547]323 [5548]324 [5549]325 [5550]326 [5551]327 [5552]328 [5553]329 [5554]330 [5555]331 [5556]332 [5557]333 [5558]334 [5559]335 [5560]336 [5561]337 [5562]338 [5563]339 [5564]340 [5565]341 [5566]342 [5567]343 [5568]344 [5569]345 [5570]346 [5571]347 [5572]348 [5573]349 [5574]350 [5575]351 [5576]352 [5577]353 [5578]354 [5579]355 [5580]356 [5581]357 [5582]358 [5583]359 [5584]360 [5585]361 [5586]362 [5587]363 [5588]364 [5589]365 [5590]366 [5591]367 [5592]368 [5593]369 [5594]370 [5595]371 [5596]372 [5597]373 [5598]374 [5599]375 [5600]376 [5601]377 [5602]378 [5603]379 [5604]380 [5605]381 [5606]382 [5607]383 [5608]384 [5609]385 [5610]386 [5611]387 [5612]388 [5613]389 [5614]390 [5615]391 [5616]392 [5617]393 [5618]394 [5619]395 [5620]396 [5621]397 [5622]398 [5623]399 [5624]400 [5625]401 [5626]402 [5627]403 [5628]404 [5629]405 [5630]406 [5631]407 [5632]408 [5633]409 [5634]410 [5635]411 [5636]412 [5637]413 [5638]414 [5639]415 [5640]416 [5641]417 [5642]418 [5643]419 [5644]420 [5645]421 [5646]422 [5647]423 [5648]424 [5649]425 [5650]426 [5651]427 [5652]428 [5653]429 [5654]430 [5655]431 [5656]432 [5657]433 [5658]434 [5659]435 [5660]436 [5661]437 [5662]438 [5663]439 [5664]440 [5665]441 [5666]442 [5667]443 [5668]444 [5669]445 [5670]446 [5671]447 [5672]448 [5673]449 [5674]450 [5675]451 [5676]452 [5677]453 [5678]454 [5679]455 [5680]456 [5681]457 [5682]458 [5683]459 [5684]460 [5685]461 [5686]462 [5687]463 [5688]464 [5689]465 [5690]466 [5691]467 [5692]468 [5693]469 [5694]470 [5695]471 [5696]472 [5697]473 [5698]474 [5699]475 [5700]476 [5701]477 [5702]478 [5703]479 [5704]480 [5705]481 [5706]482 [5707]483 [5708]484 [5709]485 [5710]486 [5711]487 [5712]488 [5713]489 [5714]490 [5715]491 [5716]492 [5717]493 [5718]494 [5719]495 [5720]496 [5721]497 [5722]498 [5723]499 [5724]500 [5725]501 [5726]502 [5727]503 [5728]504 [5729]505 [5730]506 [5731]507 [5732]508 [5733]509 [5734]510 [5735]511 [5736]512 [5737]513 [5738]514 [5739]515 [5740]516 [5741]517 [5742]518 [5743]519 [5744]520 [5745]521 [5746]522 [5747]523 [5748]524 [5749]525 [5750]526 [5751]527 [5752]528 [5753]529 [5754]530 [5755]531 [5756]532 [5757]533 [5758]534 [5759]535 [5760]536 [5761]537 [5762]538 [5763]539 [5764]540 [5765]541 [5766]542 [5767]543 [5768]544 [5769]545 [5770]546 [5771]547 [5772]548 [5773]549 [5774]550 [5775]551 [5776]552 [5777]553 [5778]554 [5779]555 [5780]556 [5781]557 [5782]558 [5783]559 [5784]560 [5785]561 [5786]562 [5787]563 [5788]564 [5789]565 [5790]566 [5791]567 [5792]568 [5793]569 [5794]570 [5795]571 [5796]572 [5797]573 [5798]574 [5799]575 [5800]576 [5801]577 [5802]578 [5803]579 [5804]580 [5805]581 __________________________________________________________________
This document is from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library at Calvin College, http://www.ccel.org, generated on demand from ThML source.
References
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# Jerome: Principal Works
__________________________________________________________________
Title: NPNF2-06. Jerome: The Principal Works of St. Jerome Creator(s): Jerome, St. Schaff, Philip (1819-1893) (Editor) Freemantle, M.A., The Hon. W.H. (Translator) Print Basis: New York: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1892 Rights: Public Domain CCEL Subjects: All; Proofed; Early Church; LC Call no: BR60 LC Subjects:
Christianity
Early Christian Literature. Fathers of the Church, etc. __________________________________________________________________
A SELECT LIBRARY
OF THE
NICENE AND
POST-NICENE FATHERS
OF
THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.
SECOND SERIES
TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH WITH PROLEGOMENA AND EXPLANATORY NOTES.
VOLUMES I-VII.
UNDER THE EDITORIAL SUPERVISION OF
PHILIP SCHAFF, D.D., LL.D.,
PROFESSOR OF CHURCH HISTORY IN THE UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, NEW YORK.
AND
HENRY WACE, D.D.,
PRINCIPAL OF KING'S COLLEGE, LONDON.
VOLUME VI
JEROME: LETTERS AND SELECT WORKS
T&T CLARK
EDINBURGH
__________________________________________________
WM. B. EERDMANS PUBLISHING COMPANY
GRAND RAPIDS, MICHIGAN __________________________________________________________________
The Principal Works Of St. Jerome.
THE PRINCIPAL WORKS OF ST. JEROME.
Translated
by
the hon. w. h. fremantle, M.A.,
Canon of Canterbury Cathedral and Fellow and Tutor of Balliol College, Oxford,
with the assistance of
The rev. G. Lewis, M.A.,
Of Balliol College, Oxford, Vicar of Dodderhill near Droitwick,
and
The rev. w. g. martley, M.A.,
Of Balliol College, Oxford. __________________________________________________________________
Translator's Preface.
------------------------
The grounds on which certain works of Jerome have been selected, as most important, for translation in this edition, while others have been omitted, are given in the Prolegomena (p. xvii-xviii).
The first draught of the translation was prepared by my coadjutors and former pupils, Mr. G. Lewis and Mr. W. G. Martley, who also added most of the notes; but I have gone minutely through every part, correcting, adding, and at times re-writing, both in the ms. and in the proof, and I have composed the Prolegomena and Indices.
I have endeavoured to make the work useful not to the theologian alone, but also to the historical student. The general reader will find interest and even entertainment in the parts of the work referred to in the Index under such headings as "Pictures of Contemporary Life," "Proverbs," "Stories" and "Quotations," or by looking at the Letters to which special attention is called in the Prolegomena at p. xviii. The Table of Contents also, in which a short description is given of the purport of each Letter, will help each class of readers to select the parts suitable to them. Finally, the Life of Jerome included in the Prolegomena, though closely compressed, has been furnished with copious references, which will make it a key to the whole work. It is only to be regretted that, through the impossibility of including Jerome's work on Illustrious Men and his controversy with Rufinus in the present volume, it is necessary to send the reader for a few of the most important facts to Vol. iii of this Series.
I can hardly expect that, in a work which has been carried through amidst many pressing engagements, which has been printed two thousand miles away, and of which I have had only a single proof to correct, I have been able to avoid all mistakes. But I hope that no inaccuracies have crept in of sufficient magnitude to mar the usefulness of the work. I have felt the responsibility of making the first translation of Jerome into English, especially as a translation once made acts as a hindrance to those who might wish to attempt the same task. But I trust that the present work may be found to be not altogether an unworthy presentment of the great Latin church-writer to the English-speaking world.
W. H. Fremantle.
Canterbury, November, 1892. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Prolegomena to Jerome.
I.--Introductory.
St. Jerome's importance lies in the facts: (1) That he was the author of the Vulgate Translation of the Bible into Latin, (2) That he bore the chief part in introducing the ascetic life into Western Europe, (3) That his writings more than those of any of the Fathers bring before us the general as well as the ecclesiastical life of his time. It was a time of special interest, the last age of the old Greco-Roman civilization, the beginning of an altered world. It included the reigns of Julian (361-63), Valens (364-78), Valentinian (364-75), Gratian (375-83), Theodosius (379-95) and his sons, the definitive establishment of orthodox Christianity in the Empire, and the sack of Rome by Alaric (410). It was the age of the great Fathers, of Ambrose and Augustine in the West, of Basil, the Gregories, and Chrysostom in the East. With several of these Jerome was brought into personal contact; of Ambrose he often speaks in his writings (Apol. i. 2, iii. 14, in this series Vol. iii., pp. 484 and 526; also this Vol., pp. 74 and 496, Pref. to Origen and S. Luke; and the Pref. to Didymus on the Holy Spirit, quoted in Rufinus' Apology, ii. 24, 43, Vol. iii. of this series, pp. 470 and 480; also On Illust. Men, c. 124, Vol. iii. 383; see also Index--Ambrose); with Augustin he carried on an important correspondence (see Table of Contents); he studied under Gregory Nazianzen (80, 93; see also Illust. Men, c. 117, Vol. iii. 382) at the time of the Council at Constantinople, 381; he was acquainted with Gregory of Nyssa (Illust. Men, c. 128, Vol. iii. 338); he translated the diatribe of Theophilus of Alexandria against Chrysostom (214, 215). He ranks as one of the four Doctors of the Latin Church, and his influence was the most lasting; for, though he was not a great original thinker like Augustin, nor a champion like Ambrose, nor an organiser and spreader of Christianity like Gregory, his influence outlasted theirs. Their influence in the Middle Ages was confined to a comparatively small circle; but the monastic institutions which he introduced, the value for relics and sacred places which he defended, the deference which he showed for Episcopal authority, especially that of the Roman Pontiff, were the chief features of the Christian system for a thousand years; his Vulgate was the Bible of Western Christendom till the Reformation. To the theologian he is interesting rather for what he records than for any contribution of his own to the science; but to the historian his vivid descriptions of persons and things at an important though melancholy epoch of the world are of inestimable value. __________________________________________________________________
II.--Contemporary History.
The references in this Section, where numbers alone are given, are to the date A. D.
It seems desirable to prefix to this Introduction some account of the times of St. Jerome. General and ecclesiastical history must not be kept too far apart.
Jerome was born in the troubled times which followed the death of Constantine (337), and before Constantius became sole Emperor (353). He was still a schoolboy during the reign of Julian (361-63), and when he heard of his death. During his student life at Rome, Jovian and Valentinian were Emperors, and at Treves, where he next sojourned, the latter Emperor held his court. His first letter refers to a scene in which Ambrose, then Prefect of Liguria, seems to have taken part (370), and his settlement at Aquileia synchronises with the law of Valentinian restraining legacies to the clergy (370). He went to the East in the year of the death of Athanasius (373), and during his stay in the desert and at Antioch (374-80) occurred the death of Valentinian, the defeat and death of his brother Valens in the battle of Adrianople, the elevation of Theodosius to the purple, and the call of Gregory Nazianzen to Constantinople. He was ordained by Paulinus, one of the three Bishops of Antioch, and studied under Apollinaris, thus touching on both the chief points for which the Council of Constantinople was called (381). At that Council he was probably present, being, as stated above, a disciple of its president, Gregory Nazianzen. He was present also at the Western Council held the next year in Rome under Pope Damasus, whose trusted counsellor he became (pp. 233, 255). His later life, spent at Bethlehem (386-420), witnessed the division of the Empire between the sons of Theodosius, the fall of the Prefect Rufinus (p. 174), to whom Jerome had been denounced, the triumph of Stilicho and his death (at which he weakly rejoiced, p. 237), Alaric's sack of Rome (410) and his death, the revolt of Heraclian, the marriage of Alaric's successor, Adolphus, with the Emperor's sister, Galla Placidia, and the death of Arcadius (408); in ecclesiastical matters, it witnessed the rise of Chrysostom (398) and his exile (403) and death (407), the condemnation of Origenism (400), and the Pelagian controversy (415). It is of this period that we are now to give a sketch.
The Emperor Constantius "may be dismissed," says Gibbon, "with the remark that he inherited the defects without the abilities of his father." He died in Cilicia on November 3, 361; he had been stained in his youth by the blood of nine of his near relatives; he had fallen early under the dominion of the eunuchs of his palace; and he had done little for the defence of the empire. In ecclesiastical matters he had favoured the Arian cause, and had banished the orthodox Bishops of the principal sees, and had visited Athanasius of Alexandria with his especial displeasure. His jealousy of his cousin Julian, who had risen to fame by his just and vigorous administration and by his victories over the Germans, led him into acts which provoked the legions of Gaul and caused them to hail Julian as their Emperor. His overtures of peace were rejected by Constantius; he marched rapidly toward Constantinople, and Constantius, leaving the Persian war in which he was engaged, turned westward to meet him. The death of Constantius saved the world from civil war.
Julian's accession was hailed by all who felt the need of a strong ruler; and his first measures were just and tolerant. He recalled from exile the Bishops whom Constantius had banished; his private life was virtuous, and his love of learning endeared him to some of the best of his subjects. But his contempt of Christianity made him first impatient and then a persecutor. He forbade Christians, or Galileans as he called them, to teach in the schools, or to follow the learned professions; he restored Paganism, though it was observed that the Paganism he introduced was in many ways modified by Christian influence; and he favoured the Jews and wished them to rebuild their temple at Jerusalem. What the result of his retrogressive policy would have been it is hard to say. He died in a skirmish in the Persian war, on June 26, 363.
Jovian, who succeeded him, was a Christian; and his election showed that the anti- Christian policy of Julian had been without effect. He proclaimed a complete toleration, but died before reaching Constantinople, only six months after his election.
Valentinian, his successor, was an orthodox Christian, his brother Valens, whom he associated with himself, an Arian. Valentinian established his court at Treves, and successfully kept back the barbarians. Thither in 366 Jerome went for a time, and he describes the curious customs of the tribes whom he saw there (Against Jovinian, ii. 7, p. 394). The Emperors proclaimed toleration, which extended even to the celebration of the Eleusinian mysteries. But their inquisitorial and cruel treatment of all suspected of magic arts had a repressive effect upon learning. Their foundation of schools and endowment of physicians for the poorer citizens show that the hopes of social improvement were not extinguished. Yet the state of society in Rome and in other large cities, as given at this time by Ammianus Marcellinus (cxiv. 6, xxviii. 4. See Gibbon, iv. 77. Ed. Milman & Smith), reveals to us the causes of the fall of Rome.
In the reign of Valentinian many ecclesiastical events of great importance took place. The election of Damasus to the Popedom in 366, when the rival factions of Damasus and Ursinus filled the whole city with their conflict, and churches were stormed and strewed with the slain, showed how important the Bishopric of Rome had become. "If you would make me Pope, perhaps I might become a Christian," said Prætextatus, the worshipper of the old gods, to Damasus, who wished to convert him (see p. 428). The law of Valentinian forbidding legacies to be made to the clergy shows also their wealth and deterioration (p. 92). But this reign produced some of the greatest Bishops and leaders whom the Church has known. Athanasius died in 373. Ambrose became Bishop of Milan in 374. Basil was Bishop of Cæsarea in Cappadocia from 370 to 379.
Meanwhile, the reign of Valens in the East was unsuccessful, and ended in a great disaster. The Visigoths, and Ostrogoths, or Gruthungi, pressed by the Huns, implored permission to cross the Danube from their settlements in Dacia and to be allowed to cultivate the waste lands of Thrace and Asia Minor. This was conceded to them; but they were ill treated and cajoled, and at last asserted their rights by force; and the Emperor, who attacked them near Adrianople, was defeated and slain, and his army destroyed (378). The Goths were now a formidable force within the Empire. It was in the year before the death of Valens (377) that Stridon, the birth-place of Jerome, was destroyed.
Valentinian had died in 375, leaving two sons, Gratian, an accomplished youth of eighteen, who became Emperor of Gaul and the West, and Valentinian II., then a child, who was nominal Emperor of Italy and the central provinces, and who, with his mother Justina, had his residence at Milan. Gratian distinguished himself by his conduct of several expeditions against the German tribes beyond the Rhine, and, upon the death of his uncle Valens, nominated Theodosius to be Emperor of the East. But he afterwards yielded to idleness and frivolous pleasure, and in 383 was murdered by the agents of the usurper Maximus.
Theodosius, the son of the elder Theodosius, who had recovered Britain and Africa for the Empire, but had on a false accusation been put to death at Carthage, was called to the Empire from his retirement in Spain. He showed himself a great and capable ruler. He took the Goths in detail and gradually dispossessed them. He put down the usurper Maximus (383), and on the death of the young Valentinian (392) fought against the usurper Eugenius, and became sole Emperor (394) in the year before his death. He reformed the laws, enacting the Theodosian Code. In his reign Paganism was finally suppressed. He caused a vote to be taken in the Roman Senate for the establishment of Christian worship and the suppression of Paganism. He destroyed the temples--the destruction of the Serapeum at Alexandria in 389 being the most notable instance of this--and supported Ambrose in his vehement efforts for the suppression of Paganism. Though he loyally befriended the Empress Justina, who was an Arian, and her young son Valentinian II., he did not support their demand for the toleration of Arian worship at Milan which Ambrose had denied to them, and he suppressed Arianism throughout the Empire. To settle the doctrinal disputes raised by the teaching of Apollinaris, Bishop of the Syrian Laodicæa, who held that the Logos in Christ supplied the place of the human soul, and the disputed succession at Antioch, where the Episcopal throne was claimed by the Arian Vitalis, the Trinitarian but Arian-ordained Meletius, and Paulinus the champion of the uncompromising orthodoxy of the West, he summoned the Council of Constantinople, which met in 381. The President of the Council was Gregory Nazianzen, who had come to Constantinople in 379, and, partly through his own eloquence and other great powers, partly through the influence of Theodosius, had won his way from the position of minister of a single church, the Anastasis, to the Episcopal throne. The Egyptian Bishops opposed him and vainly endeavoured to foist in the Cynic Maximus into his place. The Council did not succeed in settling the dispute at Antioch, but they maintained the Nicene creed, and added to it all the articles after "I believe in the Holy Ghost." The Council held at Rome in the following year (382), to which Jerome went with Epiphanius, Bishop of Cyprus, and Paulinus of Antioch (p. 255), contradicted that of Constantinople on the subject of the succession at Antioch, but agreed with it on the creed. Gregory Nazianzen soon after the Council resigned the Bishopric of Constantinople, and Damasus, Bishop of Rome, died in 384.
Theodosius was, like Henry II. of England, liable to violent accesses of passion. When the people of Antioch rose in insurrection in 387, and destroyed the busts of the Emperor, he gave an order that the city should be razed and reduced to the rank of a village, from which sentence he was only deterred by the entreaties of the Governor of the city and its Bishop, John Chrysostom. When a similar rising took place at Thessalonica in 390, he was not similarly appeased, but ordered that the people when summoned to the theatre should be massacred by his soldiers, and seven thousand men, women and children were thus put to death. Ambrose, on Theodosius' coming to Milan, refused to admit him to the communion of the Church till he had undergone five months of penance and showed his repentance for his crime.
On the death of the young Valentinian in 391, Eugenius the rhetorician usurped the throne of the West. Justina fled to the court of Theodosius, who, after long preparations, marched against Eugenius, and defeated him at Aquileia in 394. Theodosius, however, did not long survive his rival. After this last success he gave himself up to ease and self-indulgence, and died 395.
The Empire was divided between the sons of Theodosius. Arcadius, who became Emperor of the East, was eighteen years of age, and Honorius, fourteen. Both were weak characters, ill suited to cope with the growing dangers of the Empire. Arcadius married Eudoxia, a woman of a worldly and violent disposition. Honorius married the daughter of Stilicho, the great semi-barbarian general, who was his cousin, having married Serena, the daughter of Honorius, brother to the great Theodosius. Arcadius' minister, Rufinus, became so unbearable in his rapacity (see Jerome's allusion to him, p. 447) that a tumult was raised against him and he was put to death (395). Honorius removed his court to Ravenna, among the pine forests of which he was more secure from invasion; and, so long as he was under the guidance of Stilicho, was able to live in security.
John Chrysostom became Bishop of Constantinople in 398, and by his sermons and ascetic discipline exerted a large influence. But intrigues were raised against him by Theophilus of Alexandria on account of his reception of the Long Monks, whom Theophilus had banished in his zeal against Origenism. And the Empress Eudoxia, whom his plain speaking had offended, endeavoured to work his ruin. He was banished, after having been once brought back to the capital by the entreaties of the people, in 404, and died in 407, having continued to exercise his influence over the Church generally from his exile at Comana in Pontus. His remains were brought to Constantinople thirty years later, and were welcomed by Theodosius II. and his consort Eudocia with tears of repentance for the fault of their predecessors. Arcadius died in 408, leaving as his heir the young Theodosius, then but seven years old. His daughter Pulcheria and the Prefect Anthemius administered the Empire successfully; the Huns, who had entered the Roman territory and encamped in Thrace, were persuaded to withdraw, and the Eastern Empire enjoyed peace during the remainder of the reign of Theodosius II.
Turning to ecclesiastical affairs, we find a certain calm settling down upon the Church after the Council of Constantinople, and an unwillingness to reopen the subjects of strife. Men used the name of heretic rather as something to frighten their opponents, and sought to identify opinions which they disliked with the Arianism of the past, which all alike condemned. There were much fewer Councils of Bishops and no General Council for fifty years (Ephesus, 431). But other subjects of dispute arose, the Christian community being saturated with Greek contentiousness. The first of these related to Origenism. The works of the great and original church teacher of Alexandria of the third century (~254) had been little studied for above a hundred years, when a new interest in them arose both in the East and the West. The earnest study of Scripture which led to the formation of the Vulgate, or translation from the original into the vulgar tongue of the Latin world, led to a wish to consult the greatest textual writer and interpreter of Scripture who had as yet appeared; and those who learned from his Bible work to admire him were led also to study his doctrinal views. It happened to Origen, as to many modern teachers, that his name came to be identified with one or two prominent doctrines; and, as men speak of Calvinism or Erastianism or Hegelianism, so they spoke of Origenism. The doctrines which they connected with Origen were taken from his most important work, the Peri 'Archon, "on First Principles." They were mainly (1) his expressions relating to the subordination of the Son to the Father, and (2) his eschatology. As to the first of these, they took isolated expressions, such as, "The Son does not see the Father," or, "the Son is darkness in comparison with the Father," and they spoke of him as the father of Arius; as to the second, they fastened upon his speculative ideas, that the coming of men's souls into this world was a fall from a previous state of being; that men may rise into an angelic state; that the material body is destined to pass away; and that in the consummation of all things all spiritual beings, including the fallen angels, will be schooled into obedience, so that the universe may be brought back into harmony. Men were incapable of entering into the general system of Origen, and still more of understanding his historical position. The Pope Anastasius who condemned him in 404 says plainly that he knows neither who Origen was nor when he lived (see Vol. iii. 433); and they consequently took his tenets in an absolute sense, and thought of him as denying the divinity of Christ, or the condemnation of the wicked, or the resurrection of the body. His views were most widely spread in Egypt, where the contrary tendency of Anthropomorphism, that is, the conception of God as the subject of human properties and passions, was also widely prevalent. Theophilus, Bishop of Alexandria, at first was generally favourable to Origen, as was also Jerome; but, through various causes, not unmixed with personal feeling, he turned against Origenism in a fanatical and persecuting temper. He procured the condemnation of Origenism by the Bishops of Egypt, Syria, and Cyprus, and also by those of Rome and Italy; and he pursued those who had fled from his persecution to Constantinople, and branded Chrysostom, who had receive them, as a heretic. In all this he was aided by Jerome, who translated his missives into Latin (see Letters 86 to 100, 113 and 114). But the whole matter was transacted without any Council being called; the Bishops were taken as speaking the general sentiment, and their decisions were reinforced by a decree of the Emperors (400).
The second controversy (which also was disposed of without any General Council) was that of Pelagianism. Pelagius and Cælestius, monks of Britain, had come to Rome in 409, and maintained the doctrine of Free Will and the possibility of a man living without sin, against the Augustinian doctrine of Grace, which asserted the helplessness of man and issued in absolute predestinarianism. They passed into Africa with the crowds who were escaping from Alaric's invasion, and there confronted the influence of Augustin. Condemned by a Council at Carthage in 413, they passed into Palestine, and procured recognition from Councils held at Jerusalem and Diospolis in 415, notwithstanding the presence of Orosius, Augustin's friend, and the accusations of the Gaulish Bishops, Heros and Lazarus. Jerome was invited to write against them (pp. 272, 279), and their followers rose against him and burnt his monasteries (p. 280, Augustin De Gest. Pel. c. 66), after which they visited Ephesus and Rome, and were at first received by the Pope Zosimus; and several Bishops, of whom the chief was Julian of Eclana, espoused their cause. But Augustin's influence prevailed in the West, while in the East little interest was taken in a controversy which was humanistic rather than strictly theological, and men's minds were being drawn to the questions of Christology, which led to the Nestorian controversy and the Council of Ephesus (431).
The forces of the barbarians, which in the reign of Valens had threatened Constantinople, were diverted to the West in the reign of the sons of Theodosius. Those who remained within the boundaries of the Empire imbibed something of Roman civilisation, and, in many cases, became servants of Rome; and, as the subjects of the Empire withdrew through love of luxury from military duties, the power of the barbarians enlisted as mercenaries increased. Alaric, who now rose to power, occupied an ambiguous position. He marched with his Gothic army into Greece (396), and, being a Christian, thought himself justified in plundering the historic fanes of the old religion. He was attacked by Stilicho near the Isthmus of Corinth, and defeated, but he contrived to transport his army across the gulf and to take possession of Epiris (397), and the ministers of Arcadius thought it prudent to make peace with him. In 398 he became at once Master-General of Illyricum and King of the Visigoths; and, his rights not being respected by the Emperor of the West, he invaded the North of Italy. He was vanquished by Stilicho in the battles of Pollentia and Verona (403); but the conqueror, who well knew the increasing weakness of Rome, made peace with Alaric and acknowledged his official position. Alaric retreated for a time, but another barbarian invader, Radagaisus or Radaghast, with a mixed host of Vandals, Suevi, and Burgundians, forced his way to Florence. He was there met by Stilicho who gained over him his last great victory on the heights of Fiesole (406). The policy of conciliation adopted by Stilicho might have converted Alaric and his Goths into the guards of the Empire; but his action was disowned, and he was treated as a traitor and put to death in 408. Then Alaric advanced to the attack upon Rome. He was induced by fair promises to raise the siege; but, finding that no faith could be placed in the court of Ravenna, he renewed the siege, and took the city on August 26, 410. The only redeeming feature in the terrible destruction which ensued was the respect of the Goths for the Christian religion. They spared the clergy and the churches and those who had taken refuge in them; and even the rich plate and ornaments of divine worship were held sacred from their rapacity. But the knell of Roman greatness had been sounded, and the end of the Empire was near at hand. Alaric on leaving Rome ravaged Italy. He marched to Rhegium, the flames of which Rufinus saw from the opposite coast while he wrote his Commentary on the Book of Numbers (Vol. iii. p. 568); but his attempt to cross into Sicily was frustrated by a storm, and he himself died before the year of the sack of Rome had closed. His successor, Adolphus, made peace with Rome, and dared to ask for the hand of Galla Placidia, the sister of Honorius. The King of the Goths was accepted as the brother-in-law of the Roman Emperor.
The Empire of the West might now be compared to a ship heaving to and fro in a troubled sea, encompassed by enemies and without captain or rudder. Britain had revolted in 409. From 409 to 413 Gaul was a prey to revolutions, and the usurper Constantine was with difficulty overcome by the Roman General Constantius, only to be followed by fresh usurpers, Jovinus, Sebastian, and Attalus. The Count Heraclian dared to invade Rome itself in 413, though defeat and death were the penalty. One by one the provinces of the Empire passed into the hands of the barbarians. The Goths settled in Aquitaine and in Spain; the Vandals turned down into Africa; the Burgundians settled in the East and North of France, and the Franks in the centre. The ruin of the Empire of the West was practically consummated at the time of Jerome's death in 419, though sixty years of disaster and disgrace intervened before its final extinction.
Meanwhile the distressed condition of Italy had driven large numbers of persons, especially of the clergy and the upper classes of society, to take refuge in the East, so as almost to justify Thierry's designation of the movement as an emigration to the Holy Land. Jerome and his friends received this tide of fugitives at Bethlehem, and corresponded with those left behind; and thus the evils of the time made the Solitary of the East the chief Doctor of the West. __________________________________________________________________
III.--Life of Jerome.
The figures in parentheses, when not otherwise indicated, refer to the pages in this volume.
For a full account of the Life, the translator must refer to an article (Hieronymus) written by him in Smith and Wace's Dictionary of Christian Biography. A shorter statement may suffice here, since the chief sources of information are contained in this volume, and to these reference will be continually made.
Childhood and Youth. A.D. 345. Jerome was born at Stridon, near Aquileia, but in Pannonia, a place which was partially destroyed in the Gothic invasion of 377 (On Illustrious Men, 135, Vol. iii. p. 304). Jerome's own property, however, remained, though in a ruinous state, in 397 (140). His father Eusebius (Ill. Men, as above) and his mother were Catholic Christians (492), but he was not baptised in infancy. The family was moderately wealthy, possessing houses (140) and slaves (Apol. i. 30, Vol. iii. p. 498), and was intimate with the richer family from which sprang Bonosus, Jerome's foster brother and friend (6). The parents were living in 373 when Jerome first went to the East (35), but probably died at the destruction of Stridon. He had a brother, Paulinian, twenty years his junior (140, 173), and we read of a sister (8, 9), and an aunt named Castorina (13).
He received a good education, but declares that he was an idle boy (Vol. iii. 498). He was at a grammar school when the Emperor Julian died (Comm. on Habakkuk iii. 14) and soon after went to Rome with his friend Bonosus (6), where he studied rhetoric (at that time the all-embracing pursuit) under Ælius Donatus (Vol. iii. 491), and frequented 363 the law-courts (Comm. on Gal., ii. 13).
363-66. He fell into sin (9, 15, 78), but was drawn into the company of young Christians who on Sundays visited the tombs of the martyrs in the Catacombs (Com. on Ezek., ch. 40, v. 5), and is believed to have been baptised by the Pope Liberius in 366 (20). He was already a keen student, though as yet having little knowledge of Greek (Rufinus Apol. ii. 9, Vol. iii. p. 464), and had begun the acquisition of a library (35).
366-70. From Rome Jerome went with Bonosus to Gaul, passing, however, through Northern Italy, where they made acquaintance with Rufinus, probably at his native place, Concordia (Ep. v. 2, comp. with iii. 3, pp. 7, 11). He stayed at Treves (7), and travelled in its neighbourhood (394), and copied mss., and wrote a mystical Commentary on Obadiah (401).
Aquileia. Returning probably by Vercellæ (1) to Italy he was for three years at Aquileia, where he entered definitively upon the twin pursuits of his life, Scriptural study and the fostering of asceticism.
370-73. A society of congenial minds gathered round him, comprising Rufinus, Bonosus, Heliodorus (afterwards Bishop of Altinum), Chromatius (afterwards Bishop of Aquileia), and his brother Eusebius, and the Archdeacon Jovinus, the monk Chrysogonus, the sub-deacon Niceas, Innocentius, and Hylas, the freedman of the wealthy but ascetic Roman lady, Melania, together with Evagrius (afterwards Bishop of Antioch), who had come to Italy with Eusebius, Bishop of Vercellæ, on his return from exile. For the mention of these in various parts of Jerome's works, the Index must be consulted. These ascetics did not form a monastery. There were as yet no Orders or Rules. The vow was merely a "purpose" (propositum) which each privately took on himself and the terms of which each man freely prescribed. The Greek word Monachus (Monk) was used, but only implied living a single or separate life. Some were hermits (5, 9, 247), some lived in cities (121, 250). Jovinian was a monk, though antiascetic (378); Heliodorus (91) and John of Jerusalem (174) were monks, though Bishops. Some members of the ascetic society at Aquileia may have resided in the same house; but there was no cenobitic discipline. Jerome visited Stridon and the neighbouring town of Æmona (12), and perhaps resided at his native place for a time, but he complains of the worldliness of the people of his native town and of the opposition of their Bishop, Lupicinus (8 n. 10). The friends at Aquileia were united in the closest friendship.
373. Rufinus' baptism (7, Ruf. Ap. i. 4, Vol. iii. 436) and the writing of Jerome's first letter on "the woman seven times struck with the axe" are the only incidents which have come down to us of this period. We only know that the society was broken up by some event which Jerome speaks of as "a sudden storm," and "a monstrous rending asunder" (5).
Jerome determined on going to the East with Evagrius and Heliodorus; Innocentius, Niceas, and Hylas accompanied him (1, 5, 6, 10). Chromatius, Eusebius, and Jovinus remained in Italy. Bonosus retired to an island in the Adriatic, where he lived the life of a hermit (5, 9). Rufinus went to Egypt and subsequently to Palestine in the company of Melania (6, 7). Jerome and his companions travelled through Thrace, Pontus, Bithynia, Galatia, at the capital of which (Ancyra) he appears to have stayed (497), Cappadocia, and Cilicia, to Antioch, their haven of rest (5). But they did not long remain together. Heliodorus made a journey to Jerusalem, where he was the guest of Florentius (6).
374. Jerome was in ill health, and at length, in the middle of Lent (36), fell into a fever of which he nearly died. To this illness belongs his anti-Ciceronian dream (36, Apol. ii. 6, Vol. iii. 462), which finally determined him to abandon secular learning and devote himself to sacred studies. The successive deaths of Innocentius and Hylas left Jerome alone with Evagrius, at whose country house he fell in with the ancient hermit Malchus (315), and was encouraged by him in the ascetic tendency. He hoped to see Rufinus, wrote to him through Florentius (4, 6), but he did not come; and he determined to embrace the life of solitude. Heliodorus had some thought of accompanying him, but, to Jerome's great chagrin) felt the call to pastoral work to be the stronger, and returned to Italy (8, 13, 123).
The Desert. 374-379. Jerome spent the next five years in the Desert of Chalcis, to the east of Antioch (7). It was peopled by hermits who, though living apart for most purposes, were under some kind of authority (4, 21). Jerome wrote to their head, Theodosius, begging to be admitted into their company (4). His life while in the desert was one of rigorous penance, of tears and groans alternating with spiritual ecstasy, and of temptations from the haunting memories of Roman life (24, 25); he lived in a cell or cavern; he earned his daily bread, and was clad in sackcloth (21, 24), but he was not wholly cut off from converse with men. He saw Evagrius frequently (7, 8); he wrote and received letters and books (7, 11); he learned Hebrew from a converted Jew (Ep. xviii. 10), and copied and translated the Gospel according to the Hebrews (Ill. Men, 2, 3, Vol. iii. 362), and his brother solitaries he found only too accessible (Ep. xvii. 3). Towards the close of his sojourn he became involved in the controversies then agitating the Church at Antioch, where Arian Vitalis, the orthodox but Arian-ordained Meletius, and the Western Paulinus disputed the possession of the bishopric (20). Jerome found himself beset with demands for a confession of faith in terms strange to his Western education (19, 20). He appealed to Pope Damasus for advice (19, 20); but he and his friends found his position intolerable. They would rather, he says, live among wild beasts than among Christians such as those about them. In the autumn of 378 he wrote to Marcus, then head of the eremite community, to say that he only begged for the "hospitality of the desert" for a few months: in the spring he would be gone (21).
379. Accordingly, in the spring of 379 he came to Antioch and attached himself to the party of Paulinus, the Western and orthodox Bishop, who ordained him presbyter, though he then and always afterwards declined the active ministry (446). He pursued his studies under the celebrated Apollinarius of Laodicæa, though not accepting his views (176), and wrote his "Dialogue against the Luciferians" (319-334).
Constantinople. 380. The next year Jerome went, with his Bishop, Paulinus, to Constantinople, and was there during the Second General Council, at which the views of his teacher, Apollinarius, were condemned, and sentence was passed in the cause of his Bishop. He placed himself under the teaching of Gregory Nazianzen (80, 93, 357; Ill. Men, 117), and became acquainted with Gregory of Nyssa (Ill. Men, 128); he translated the Chronicle of Eusebius and dedicated it to Vincentius and Gallienus, the former of whom became henceforward his companion (483, 444-446); he imbibed his admiration for Origen, translating his Homilies on Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and writing to Damasus on the meaning given by Origen to the Seraphim in Is. vi. (22).
381. These literary labours were carried on under the disadvantage of a weakness of the eyes, from which he henceforward constantly suffered. But there is in his writings not a single reference to the Council of Constantinople, and only cursory references to that held the next year at Rome, in which he was certainly called to take part (233; Ruf. Epil. to Pamph., Vol. iii. 426, 513).
Rome. 382-5. He went to Rome with his Bishop, Paulinus, and with Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis in Cyprus. At the Council which was there held he was present as a learned man whose help the Pope required. There is no ground for the notion that he became his official secretary. But for the two main objects of Jerome's life his sojourn in Rome presented great opportunities. Damasus thoroughly appreciated his eminence as a biblical scholar. He constantly sent him questions, the replies to which form short exegetical treatises, such as those reckoned among Jerome's letters on the word Hosanna and the Prodigal Son. It was also for Pope Damasus that he undertook a revised version of the Psalms, a version which was used in the Roman Church for more than eleven centuries (492, 494), and also a revised version of the New Testament, the preface to which is of much critical value (487, 488; see also p. 357, where a whole clause in 1 Cor. vii. 35 is said to have been omitted in the old version because of the difficulty of translation). He further began the collation of the various texts of the LXX. and the other Greek versions of the Old Testament, and began to form the convictions which afterwards led to his translation direct from the Hebrew (484). These biblical studies made him acquainted with the works of Origen, and he conceived a great and almost passionate admiration for that "brazen-hearted" (Chalchenterus) worker and teacher of the Church (46), and he permitted himself to use expressions too indiscriminate in praise of him and too contemptuous towards his adversaries, which were afterwards thrown in his teeth (Ruf. Ap. ii. 14, Vol. iii. 467).
For the promotion of asceticism he found in Rome a congenial soil. Epiphanius, him- self the pupil of the hermits Hesychias and Hilarion (Sozom. vi. 32, Vol. ii. 369, 370), was the guest of the noble and wealthy lady Paula, the heiress of the Æmilian race (196), who was already disposed to the ascetic life. To the circle of her family and friends Jerome was soon admitted, and she became his devoted disciple and friend during the remainder of her life (Letter cviii.). Her son, Toxotius, and her daughters, Blesilla, the young widow (47-49), Paulina, the wife of Jerome's friend, the ascetic Senator Pammachius (135), and Julia Eustochium (196), each in special ways affected the life of Jerome. Her friends, Marcella and Principia (253), Asella (42, 58), Lea (42), Furia and Titiana, Marcellina and Felicitas (60) and Fabiola, all of them belonging to the highest Roman families, formed a circle of renuntiants who sought refuge in the ascetic life from the wastefulness and immorality of those of their own quality. Marcella's house on the Aventine was their meeting place (41, 58). There they prayed and sang psalms in the Hebrew, which they had learned for the purpose (210), and read the Scriptures under the guidance of their teacher (41, 255), who wrote for them many of his expository letters, whose ascetic writings they committed to memory, and whose private letters to them (Letters xxiii.-xlvi.) reveal the various phases of the new Roman and Christian life. These are concentrated in the Treatise on the Preservation of Virginity which he addressed to Eustochium (Letter xxii.). This period also produced the first of Jerome's controversial treatises, that against Helvidius on the perpetual virginity of Mary (334-346).
384-5. This congenial scene of activity and friendship was broken up by the death of Damasus. The new Pope, Siricius, to whom many had thought of Jerome as a rival (59), was without sympathy for him: he had offended almost every class of the community by his unrestrained satire (Letters xxii., xl., liv., etc.): he had awakened suspicion by his over praise of Origen (46); and at the funeral of Blesilla, whose end was believed to have been hastened by the hard life enjoined upon her, the fury of the people was excited against Jerome and the cry was raised "The monks to the Tiber!" (53). He felt that he was vainly trying to "sing the Lord's song in a strange land" (60) and he resolved to leave Rome for ever and to seek a retreat in Palestine. His departure in August and the feelings excited by it are described in a passage in his Apology against Rufinus (Ap. iii. 22, Vol. iii. 530) and in his letter to Asella (Letter xlv.) written at the moment of his embarkation at Ostia.
385-6. Jerome sailed with Vincentius and with his brother Paulinian (Vol. iii. 530 as above) direct to Antioch. Paula and Eustochium, leaving the other members of their family, went to Cyprus to see Epiphanius; and the two parties united at Antioch (198). Thence they passed through Palestine and Jerusalem, on to Egypt, where they visited the abode of the monks of Nitria (202) and became acquainted with Didymus, "the blind seer" of Alexandria (176): and they returned to Palestine in the autumn of 386, and settled at Bethlehem for the remainder of their lives.
Bethlehem, First Period. Jerome's life at Bethlehem lasted thirty-four years. A monastery was built, of which he was the head, and a convent for women over which Paula and Eustochium successively presided (206), a church where all assembled (206, 292), and a hospice for pilgrims who came to visit the holy places from all parts of the world (140). These institutions were supported by the wealth of Paula until, through the profusion of her charities, she was so impoverished that she rather depended on Jerome and his brother, who sold the remains of their family property for their support (140). He lived in a cell, surrounded by his library, to which he constantly made additions (Ruf. Ap. ii. 8 (2), Vol. iii. 464). He lived on bread and vegetables (165), and speaks of his life as one of repentance and prayer (446), but no special austerities are mentioned in his writings, and he did not think piety increased by the absence of cleanliness (33, 34). He never officiated in the services (83), but was much absorbed in the cares (140) and discipline (Letter cxlvii.) of the monastery, and by the crowds of monks who came from all parts of the world (64, 65, 500). Sulpicius Severus (Dial. i. 8) tells us that when he was with him towards the close of his life, he had the charge of the parish of Bethlehem; and the presbyters associated with him certainly prepared candidates for baptism (446); but his call, as he often confesses, was not to the pastorate, but to the study (Letter cxii.). He had youths to whom he taught Latin classics (Ruf. Apol. ii. 8 (2), Vol. iii. 465); and he expounded the Scriptures daily to the brethren in the monastery (Apol. ii. 124, Vol. iii. 515). Sulpicius speaks of him as always reading or writing, never resting day or night. Translations, commentaries, controversial works, letters dealing with important subjects, flowed constantly from his pen, while the notes passing between him and Paula and Eustochium were without number (Ill. Men, 135, Vol. iii. 384), and every thing that he wrote was caught up by friends or by enemies and published (79). He worked amidst great distractions, not merely from the cares of the monasteries and the hospice, but from the need of entertaining persons of distinction, like Fabiola (161), from all parts of the world (153, 287, 161); from the need of replying to the letters brought by messengers from the most distant countries for those who sought advice of the renowned teacher (Letters cxvi.-cxxx.); from prolonged illnesses (188, 215); at times from poverty; from the panic of barbarian invasions (161, 252), and from the attacks of his enemies, who in the year 417 burned his monasteries (281, 282).
He spared no pains nor expense in the production of his works. He perfected his knowledge of Hebrew by the aid of a Jew who came to him like Nicodemus by night (176); he also learned Chaldee (493); and for special parts of his Bible work he obtained special aid from a distance (491, 494), obtaining funds, when his own had failed, from his old friends Chromatius and Heliodorus (492).
386-92. The list of his works during the first six years of his residence at Bethlehem comprises the completion of the Commentary on Ecclesiastes, and the translation of Didymus on the Holy Spirit; the Commentaries on Ephesians and Galatians, Titus and Philemon (498); a revision of the version of the New Testament begun in Rome; a Treatise on Psalms x.-xvi., and Translation of Origen on St. Luke and the Psalms; the Book on the Names of Hebrew Places, mainly translated from Eusebius; the Book of Hebrew Proper Names and that of Hebrew Questions on Genesis; the revision of his translation of the LXX., involving a comparison of Origen's Hexapla; a considerable part of the Vulgate; the Lives of the hermits Malchus and Hilarion; and the Catalogue of Illustrious Church Writers. The only letter preserved to us of this period is that written in the name of Paula and Eustochium to invite Marcella to come to Palestine (60).
Bethlehem, Second Period. 392-405. The second period of Jerome's stay at Bethlehem is the period of his most conspicuous activity, which was partly employed in the salutary work of finishing the Vulgate and in writing letters which rank among the finest of his compositions, but largely also in controversies, in which the worst parts of his character and influence are brought into prominence.
395, 398 and 404-5, 394-97. There were also great external hindrances to his work: the panic arising from the invasion of the Huns, on account of which the inmates of the monasteries had to leave their homes and prepare to embark at Joppa (161); there were long periods of ill health; and there was the quarrel with the Bishop of Jerusalem which led to a kind of excommunication of the monks of Bethlehem (446, 447).
The letters of this second period are those numbered 47 to 116. They comprise those to Nepotianus, nephew of Heliodorus, on the duties of the pastorate (89-96); that to Heliodorus, on the death of his nephew (123-131); that to Paulinus, the Roman Senator, afterwards Bishop of Nola, on his poem in praise of Theodosius, and on the study of Scripture (96-102); that to Furia, on the maintenance of widowhood (102-109); that to the Spanish noble Lucinius, who had sent scribes to copy Jerome's works (151-154), and to his widow Theodora (154, 155); those to Abigaus, a blind Spanish presbyter (156, 157), and to Salvina, widow of Nebridius, and closely connected with the Emperor Theodosius (163-168); that to Amandus, the Roman presbyter, on a difficult case of conscience (149-151); the letter to Oceanus, defending the second marriage of a Spanish Bishop (141-146); the letter to Læta, wife of Toxotius, son of Paula, on the education of her infant daughter (189-195); and those gems of his writings, the sketches of the lives (Epitaphia) of Fabiola (157-163) and of Paula (195-212).
The Vulgate. 391-403. The work of Jerome's life, the Vulgate version of the Scriptures, was completed in this period. The version which bore the name of Vulgate, the popular or vernacular version, in his day (44, 487-488) was a loose translation of the LXX., of which almost every copy varied from every other. His first effort, therefore, was to translate, or to revise the existing translations, from a correct version of the LXX. And this revised version he used in his familiar expositions, in the monastery (Apol. ii. 24, Vol. iii. 515), though a great part of it was lost even in his lifetime (280), and all that now remains of it is Job, the Psalms, and the Preface to the Books of Solomon (494). But even the most correct text of the LXX., as he saw at once, was insufficient. In Origen's Hexapla the versions of Theodotion, Aquila, and Symmachus were given, together with two others called Quinta and Sexta, in parallel columns with the LXX. These constantly differed; and the only mode of deciding between them was by going back to the Hebrew--"Hebraica Veritas," as he constantly terms it (80, 486, 494).
392. Accordingly, he set himself at once, in his settlement at Bethlehem, to the preliminary labours required for this task; and in the sketch of his works in the Catalogue (Vol. iii. 384; On Ill. Men, 135) he says: The New Testament I have restored according to the Greek original; the Old I have translated in accordance with the Hebrew."
393. But no portion was as yet published. In the following year he published the prophets (80) and sent other portions of his Old Testament version to Marcella at Rome, keeping the rest shut up in his closet (80), and awaiting the judgment of his friends on the portions submitted to them. He purposed from the first to publish the whole, as we see from what he calls his "helmeted preface" to the Books of Samuel and of Kings (489). But it was published in fragments, according as he had leisure to give it a final revision, or according as other circumstances were favourable. The series of Prefaces (487-494) shows that some parts were written or revised in great haste (492, 494), some parts extorted from him by the importunity of his friends (488; see Apol. ii. 25, in Vol. iii. 515); that he was subjected to severe censures and misunderstanding, as to which he was extremely sensitive; that at times he so shrank from publicity that he wished his friends only to read it privately; that he was often, especially in the later portions, dependent on his friends for the provision of the copyists (492, 494). The order of publication can be traced. The Books of Samuel and of the Kings came first, then Job and the Prophets, Ezra and Nehemiah, and the Book of Genesis. Thus far he had proceeded in the year 393 when a break of three years occurred through external hindrances, of which the panic of the invasion of the Huns was the chief.
395. He then, at the entreaty of Chromatius and Heliodorus (492), completed the Books of Solomon, intending to proceed systematically to the end.
398. But illness intervened, after which he states that the first eight books were still wanting in the copies made for the Spaniard Lucinius (153);
403. nor was the publication resumed till five years later, when the remaining books from Exodus to Ruth and the Book of Esther were brought out (489, 491).
404. The whole was then collected, by others rather than by himself, and gradually superseded all other Latin versions, and, coupled with the version of the New Testament previously made, became the received, or Vulgate, edition of the Bible.
393-404. The second period of Jerome's stay at Bethlehem is the period of his great controversies. These are no less than six in number. (1) That with Jovinian on ascetic practices. (2) That with the Origenists, in which he worked with Theophilus of Alexandria and the Western Bishops. (3) That with John, Bishop of Jerusalem. (4) That with Rufinus. (5) That with Vigilantius. (6) That with Augustin. These may be described somewhat cursorily, the reader being referred for a more detailed statement of them to the Letters and Treatises themselves and to the notices prefixed to them.
(1) Jovinian. Jovinian was a Roman monk or, rather, solitary (for many took private monastic vows without entering any order or monastery) who had perceived the danger of degrading the ordinary Christian life which lurked in the profession of asceticism. He was not, to judge by Jerome's quotations from him (347), a man of superior ability; but there are no apparent grounds for the imputations which Jerome throws upon his character. He put off the monastic dress, and lived like other men; and, though he refused to marry, maintained his right as a Christian to do so. He argued that the conditions of virginity, marriage, and widowhood were equal in God's sight, provided men lived in faith and piety; and that eating and fasting were indifferent if men gave God thanks. He seems to have had some influence, and it is stated that some who had made vows of virginity were led through his teaching marry. Certainly his views were condemned by the Pope Siricius, by Ambrose, and by Augustin.
393. He published a book in Rome, maintaining these opinions, and others of a more speculative character, which was sent to Jerome, and was at once answered by him in his treatise "Against Jovinian" (346-416). The more speculative matters he deals with calmly; but the anti-ascetic views he treats with violence and contempt. "These are the hissings of the old serpent; by these the dragon expelled man from Paradise." His intemperateness, which threw contempt upon marriage, was severely blamed by his friends at Rome, who tried to stop the publication (79; see also Ruf. Apol. ii. 44, Vol. iii. 480); but he only replied by renewed expressions of derision, and, several years later, when he has occasion to refer to Jovinian, he says, "This man, after being condemned by the authority of the Roman Church, amidst his feasts of pheasants and swine's flesh, I will not say gave up, but belched out, his life" (417).
(2) Origenism. 393-403. The second great controversy in which Jerome was engaged at this period relates to Origenism, about which a great controversy had arisen at Alexandria, leading to its condemnation by the Bishops of Palestine and Cyprus in the East, and by the Pope and the Bishop of Milan and others in the West.
The great church teacher of Alexandria in the third century was but little known in the West. Anastasius the Pope, in the year 399, declared that he neither knew who he was nor what he had written (Vol. iii. 433). Jerome, who had made acquaintance with his writings during his first sojourn in the East, conceived a strong admiration for him; he did not, indeed, accept all his views, as may be seen from the first letter in which he alludes to him (22); but on his coming to Rome he did all in his power to make him known. He was invited by Damasus to translate some of his works (485); and when he found ignorant condemnations passed upon him he praised him with his usual vehemence and without discrimination, even eulogizing the Pepi 'Archon on which the subsequent controversy mainly turned (46; Ruf. Ap. ii. 13, Vol. iii. 467). He had also quoted without blame in his Commentary on the Ephesians statements such as those relating to the pre-existence of human souls and possible restoration of Satan (Ruf. Apol. i. 448, 454). But it was rather a literary enthusiasm and an admiration of original genius than an express consent to Origen's system. His calm judgment in later years was, that his literary services to the Church were inestimable, but that his doctrinal views were to be read with the greatest caution, and that those specially impugned were heretical (176, 177, 238, 244). It must be allowed, however, that he appears in his earlier stage as the vehement panegyrist of Origen (46, 48), and in his later stage as his equally vehement condemner; and also that this change seems less the effect of conviction than of a fear of the imputation of heresy (Apol. iii. 33, Vol. iii. 535).
The monks in the deserts near Alexandria were divided, some holding Origenistic views, and some those of an opposite tendency and verging upon Anthropomorphism. Theophilus, the Bishop of Alexandria, at first sided with the Origenists, but afterwards turned against them, and became their relentless persecutor. During his former phase he was appealed to by John, Bishop of Jerusalem, in his controversy with Epiphanius and Jerome (427), and took his part so vehemently that he sent his confidant Isidore to Jerusalem, nominally to inquire, but really to crush out all opposition, as he stated in a letter to John (444). This letter fell into the hands of Jerome and his friends, and the intentions of Theophilus were frustrated. A period of suspicious silence followed (134); but when Theophilus had undergone his change he found a ready instrument in Jerome, who threw himself eagerly into the conflict (182-184), translated the encyclicals of Theophilus (185, 186, 189) which led to the condemnation of Origen in the East, and even his diatribe against St. John Chrysostom for receiving Isidore and his brethren, whom Theophilus now treated as his enemies (214). Jerome also, through his friends Pammachius, Marcella, and Eusebius (186, 256), procured the condemnation of Origen in the West.
(3) John of Jerusalem. The controversy with John of Jerusalem forms an episode in the more general controversy. John had been trained among the Origenistic ascetics, Epiphanius among the anti-Origenists. Jerome appears to have undergone no change in his sentiments as to Origen during the first period of his stay at Bethlehem [see his Preface to the Book of Hebrew Questions (486, 487) written in 388], and was on good terms with the Bishop of Jerusalem and with Rufinus, who was then living on the Mount of Olives.
393. But at the beginning of the second period a certain Aterbius came to Jerusalem and spread suspicion and alarm of heresy. Jerome, perhaps weakly, "gave him satisfaction" as to his faith (Apol. iii. 33, Vol. iii. 535), while by John and Rufinus he was treated as a busybody (id.). This produced the first estrangement, which was greatly increased by the visit of Epiphanius in the following year. The scenes which followed may be read in Jerome's treatise, "Against John of Jerusalem" (430) and in Epiphanius' letter translated by Jerome (83-85). Epiphanius was popular at Jerusalem, and after a scene in the church, in which he preached against Origenism and John against Anthropomorphism, a breach was made between the two prelates. Epiphanius came to stay at Bethlehem, and spoke of John as well nigh a heretic. John spoke of Epiphanius as "that old tard" (430). The monks of Bethlehem took part with Epiphanius; and he, to prevent their being deprived of clerical ministration by Bishop John, ordained Jerome's brother Paulinian at his monastery of Ad in the diocese of Eleutheropolis. He was then only thirty years old, and was ordained against his will, and with the employment of force and even gagging (83). Epiphanius, returning to Cyprus, wrote to John a letter explaining his conduct (83-89) which was translated by Jerome, but which did little to allay the strife. John placed the monasteries, at least partially, under an interdict (446-447), and appealed to Rome and to Alexandria, and afterwards to Rufinus, the Pretorian Prefect at Constantinople (174, 447). Theophilus at first took John's side vehemently; but the mission of his confidant Isidore miscarried (444, 445), and after some time his views of the situation changed and he made peace with Jerome and his friends.
397 or 398. John also was appeased; and Jerome, who had written a long and bitter account of the controversy in his treatise to Pammachius "Against John of Jerusalem" (424-447), seems suddenly to have let the whole matter drop; the treatise was not finished and was not published, and we read of the strife no more.
(4) Rufinus. 398-404. The quarrel with Jerome's early friend Rufinus did not, like that with John pass away. Jerome had deeply loved Rufinus (4) and highly respected Melania in early days (5, 7, 53). He had spoken of Rufinus in his Chronicle for the year 378 as "insignis monachus" (Ruf. Ap. ii. 25, 26, Vol. iii. 471); we do not read of any estrangement till some years after his return to Palestine.
392. We do not, indeed, find the warm affection which we should expect in two intimate friends who meet after a long separation; and it is possible that Jerome's omission of Rufinus' name from his Catalogue of Church Writers may indicate a coolness on one side which was resented on the other. But they admit that their friendship remained (Ruf. Ap. ii. 8 (2), vol. iii. 465), and that there was frequent intercourse between the monks of Bethlehem and those of the Mount of Olives (id.).
393-394. The visit of Aterbius (Ap. iii. 33, Vol. iii. 535) and that of Epiphanius mark the time of estrangement. Rufinus was with Bishop John in the scenes in the Church of the Resurrection, and is mentioned in Epiphanius' letter as a presbyter as to whose views he is paternally anxious (84-87). In the quarrel between John and Jerome Rufinus took decidedly the Bishop's side (84, 430, compared with 250). Jerome's mind grew full of suspicion, so that he even imputed to him that he had bribed some one in the monastery at Bethlehem to steal from the lodgings of Fabiola his translation of the letter of Epiphanius to John (Ap. iii. 4, Vol. iii. 521).
397. But when Rufinus was leaving Palestine, friendship was restored. They partook together of the Eucharist, and joined hands (Ap. iii. 33, Vol. iii. 535), and Jerome accompanied his friend some way upon his journey; but the reconciliation was short-lived. When in Rome, Rufinus prefixed to a translation of Origen's Peri 'Archon a preface (168-170) which referred in laudatory terms to Jerome as his forerunner in this work, thus seeming to expose Jerome to the suspicions and condemnation which might be expected to fall on one who undertook such a work. This work was sent to Jerome by his friends Pammachius and Oceanus (175), together with a Preface written by Rufinus to a translation of the Apology for Origen by Pamphilus the Martyr. They spoke of the alarm excited at Rome by the translation of the Peri 'Archon, and their suspicions that the translation was so made as to veil the heresies contained in the original work; they begged that Jerome would translate the work as it stood in the original, and pointed out that his own reputation for orthodoxy was at stake (175). Jerome at once complied. He sent to them a literal translation of Origen's work together with a letter describing the relation in which he had stood and still stood to Origen: he admired him as a biblical scholar, but had never accepted him as a dogmatic teacher (176, 177). He at the same time wrote a letter to Rufinus, couched in friendly terms, but remonstrating with him for the use he had made of his name (170). This letter, having been sent to Jerome's friends at Rome, was kept back by them (Ap. i. 12, Vol. iii. 489) and not delivered to Rufinus, and thus the quarrel, which might have been allayed, became irreparable.
401-404. The further progress of the dispute is described in the notice prefixed to the Apologies of Jerome and Rufinus (Vol. iii. 434-5, 482, 518). It may suffice here to say that this disgraceful and unseemly wrangle between two well-known Christian teachers, conducted publicly before the whole Church, and breeding a hatred which Jerome continued to express even after Rufinus' death (498, 500) has only one redeeming feature to the historian, namely, that it brings to our knowledge many instructive facts which would otherwise have lain hid.
396. (5) Vigilantius. The controversy with Vigilantius consists only of Jerome's letter to him (131-133) and the treatise "against Vigilantius" (417-423). He had been originally introduced to Jerome by Paulinus, Bishop of Nola, who spoke of him in high terms (123). No questions arose between them during his stay at Bethlehem. He even spoke of Jerome at times with extravagant praise (132). But he appears to have had some connection with Rufinus (Ap. iii. 19, Vol. iii. 529), and Jerome accused him afterwards of having conveyed some mss. into the monastery at Bethlehem, probably from that on the Mount of Olives (Apol. iii. 5, 19, Vol. iii. 521, 529). Jerome afterwards heard a report that Vigilantius had written and spoken against him in various places (131), and had accused him of Origenism. To this his letter is a reply. The anti-ascetic writings of Vigilantius to which Jerome's treatise is a reply have not come down to us. Gennadius (de Script. Eccl. 35) says that he was an ignorant man, but polished in words. But, whatever his ability or literary power, he was one of the few who were able to judge rightly of the ascetic and superstitious practices by which Christianity was being overlaid; and it is on this point that Jerome is most violent and contemptuous in his treatment of him. The notices prefixed to the Letter (131) and Treatise (417) will complete this statement.
394-404. (6) Augustin. The remaining controversy of this period is that with St. Augustin. The two men had at an earlier time had some friendly relations, and Alypius, Augustin's friend, had stayed with Jerome at Bethlehem. But Augustin, then coadjutor Bishop of Hippo, in a letter to Jerome (112), found fault with some of his statements in his Commentary on the Galatians, to which, no doubt, his attention had been called by Alypius. Jerome had maintained that the scene in Gal. ii. in which St. Paul rebukes St. Peter for inconsistent compliances with Judaism, was a merely feigned dispute, arranged between the two Apostles in order to make the truth clear to the members of the Church. Augustin objects that this is practically imputing falsehood to the Apostles. He touched upon other points, such as the translation of Scripture and the doctrine of marriage, in a manner savouring of assumption, considering the high position of Jerome, who was also eight years his senior. Through a strange series of misadventures, which illustrate the difficulty of communications at that epoch, this letter was never delivered to Jerome till nine years after it was written. It fell into the hands of persons who copied it, and became known in the West. Jerome heard casually that it had been seen among his works in an island in the Adriatic. It appeared as if Augustin had wished to gain credit by attacking a well-known man behind his back. And this suspicion was hardly allayed by a second letter from Augustin, which partially explained what had occurred (140), or by a third, in which, in answer to a letter from Jerome sending some of his works and warning his correspondent that, if it came to blows, the result might be like that described in Virgil, where the old Entellus strikes down young Dares, Augustin criticises both severely and ignorantly Jerome's great work of translating the Hebrew Scriptures. Jerome's patience begins to fail (189). "Send me your original letter," he says, "signed by your own hand, or else cease to attack me." And he comments in his turn somewhat sharply on some of Augustin's interpretations of the Psalms. It was only on the receipt of Augustin's reply to this letter (214), couched in terms of deep respect, and deprecating any ill feeling between Christian friends, such as had arisen in the case of Rufinus, that Jerome finally answered the original letter, written ten years before, and received a letter which completely restored friendship. Henceforward they are at one. Letters pass freely between them; Augustin consults Jerome on the difficult question of the origin of souls (272, 283), and foregoes the expression of Traducianism, to which he is inclined, in deference to Jerome's objections; and he consults him on the Pelagian question, and sends Orosius to sit at his feet. Jerome recognises that each has his proper gift, and gives a plenary adherence to all that Augustin teaches. Alypius, their original link, is joined with Augustin in the address of Jerome's last letter to him (282); Paula, the grand-daughter of Jerome's chief friend, is called by him the granddaughter of Augustin; and through this unity the families of Paula and Melania, which had been severed by the adherence of the one to Jerome and the other to Rufinus, are reunited by the coming of Pinianus and his wife, the younger Melania, from the church of Hippo to the convent at Bethlehem. The letters from which this episode is drawn are incorporated into the volume containing works of Augustin, and are not reprinted here. But no life of Jerome, however limited or unpretending, would be satisfactory without some account of the relations of the two great doctors of Latin Christianity.
Bethlehem, Third Period. 405-420. The last period of Jerome's life was passed in the midst of privations, the loss of friends, and frequent illnesses. Paula had died. Jerome was poor (500, 214, 215) and often weak (498, 500). His eyesight failed (id.). He had enemies around him (261, 262) and in the high places of the Empire (237, 499). The barbarians were sweeping across the Empire (237, 500), some, like the Isaurians, threatening the North of Palestine (214) and even penetrating at one time to Southern Syria and Egypt (id.), while the main stream, after devastating Jerome's native Dalmatia, passed on under Alaric to the sack of Rome.
410. Fugitives from Rome and Italy crowded to Bethlehem, adding greatly to Jerome's labours (499, 500). It seemed as the end of the world were at hand (260). In the sack of Rome Pammachius and Marcella died (257, 500). Eustochium followed them eight years later. The controversy with the Pelagians led to the burning of the monasteries at Bethlehem, probably also to renewed estrangement of his Bishop, John of Jerusalem, and his successor Praylus.
417. But he continued his work with no abatement of ardour or vigour, as may be seen from the Prefaces to his later Commentaries (500, 501). He had still friends about him, Pinianus, Albina, Melania, and the younger Paula (Ep. cxliii.); a few survivors even in Rome, Oceanus and the younger Fabiola (252, 253); and men in many lands who honoured and consulted him, as is seen by his letters; and, above all, the friendship of Augustin. The letters of this period take a wider range than those going before, Jerome's fame being now world-wide; their addresses embrace Dalmatia (220), Gaul (215), Rome (252, 253), and Africa (260, 261). Their contents will be best estimated from the notices prefixed to them; but we may mark as specially important the ascetic letter to Rusticus, on the solitary life (244), to Ageruchia, and those on perseverance in widowhood (230), and to Demetrias on the preservation of virginity (260-272), which contain vivid pictures of the life (233) and events (236, 237) of the time, and of the sack of Rome (237, 257); the Memoir, addressed to Principia, of Marcella, who died from her ill treatment in that great day of doom (253); the letter to Evangelus (288) containing Jerome's view of the origin and mutual relations of the three orders of the Ministry; and that to Sabinianus, the lapsed Deacon, who had introduced disorder into the monasteries at Bethlehem (289-295).
Pelagianism. The only great controversy of this period is the Pelagian, in which Jerome seems to have engaged rather at the instance of others than on his own initiative. He shows some mildness in dealing with the Pelagians, and wishes more to win than to condemn them (449, 499); his temperament was not such as to incline him, like Augustin, to take an attitude of vehement hostility to the Pelagian tenets.
414-418. But Orosius came from North Africa, where the Council of Carthage had lately been held; and when, the next year, Pelagius and Cælestius came to Palestine, and Councils were held, first at Jerusalem under Bishop John, who was favourable to the reception of Pelagius, and subsequently at Diospolis, Palestine became the centre of the controversy.
416. Augustin from Africa and Ctesiphon from Rome appealed to him (272, 280); both Orosius and Pelagius quoted his words as making for them; and at length Jerome himself felt compelled to take the pen. He resorted in this his last controversial work, as in his first against the Luciferians, to the form of dialogue. The argument must be praised for its moderation, though it must be confessed that this is gained at the expense of liveliness; it was impossible for Jerome, as a "Synergist," or believer in the co-operation of the human will with the divine, to throw himself into the fray with the eagerness of a convinced Predestinarian. But he does not scruple to brand Pelagius as a heretic; and to a heretic he would show no mercy (449). His treatise, notwithstanding its fine drawn argument, made him at once the leader of the orthodox party in the East, and the target for the enmity of their adversaries.
416-7. A crowd of Pelagian monks attacked the monasteries, slew some of their inmates, and burned or threw down the buildings, the tower in which Jerome had taken refuge alone escaping (Aug. de Gestis Pelag. 66). This violence, however, was checked by a strong letter from Pope Innocentius (280, 281) to Bishop John, who died soon after; and Jerome, to whom the Pope wrote at the same time (280), speaks of Augustin's cause as triumphant (282), and of Pelagius, like another Catiline, having left the country, though Jerusalem remains in the hands of some hostile power which he speaks of under the name of Nebuchadnezzar (282). It cannot be said, however, that Jerome's arguments produced much effect in the East. He was withstood by Theodore of Mopsuestia (see Migne's Jerome, ii. 807-14) as "saying that men sin by nature, not by will"; and from the West also a treatise opposing his views was sent to him (282) by Annianus, a deacon of Celeda, to which he was never able to reply.
His Bible work during these last fifteen years consisted entirely of Commentaries on the Prophets. Those on the Minor Prophets were finished in 406; that on Daniel in 407; that on Isaiah in 408-10; that on Ezekiel in 410-14. That on Jeremiah up to ch. xxxii. occupied the remaining years. The Prefaces to these Commentaries {499-501) are full of interest, recording the sack of Rome (499, 500), the death of Rufinus (498, 500), and the rise of Pelagianism, while the Commentary on Ezekiel itself (Book ix.) speaks of the occupation of Rome by Heraclian. His failing health and eyesight (498, 500), the Pelagian Controversy, the other trials above mentioned (499) and the care of the monasteries and pilgrims (500, 501), increased by the death of Eustochium in 418, shortened his time for work, and his Commentary on Jeremiah was cut short at ch. xxxii. by his last illness. Yet his last work is full of energy and of his old controversial vigour.
The last year of his life is believed to have been occupied by a long illness, in which he was tended by the younger Paula and Melania. The Chronicle of Prosper of Aquitaine gives September 20, 420, as the day of his death. Many legends sprung up around his memory. His remains are said to have been transferred from the place where they were buried beside those of Paula and Eustochium, near the grotto of the Nativity, to the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore at Rome, and miracles to have been wrought at his tomb. His descriptions of hermit life in the desert no doubt gave rise to the tradition that he was always attended by a lion, as represented in painting and sculpture, especially in the well-known painting of Albert Dürer. With such traditions a historical work must not be burdened. __________________________________________________________________
IV.--The Writings of Jerome.
The following is a list of the writings arranged under various heads, and showing the date of composition and the place held by each in the Edition of Vallarsi, the eleven volumes of which will be found in Migne's Patrologia, vols. xxii. to xxx. The references are to the volumes of Jerome's works (i.-xi.) in that edition.
I. Bible translations:
(1) From the Hebrew.--The Vulgate of the Old Testament, written at Bethlehem, begun 391, finished 404, vol. ix.
(2) From the Septuagint.--The Psalms as used at Rome, written in Rome, 383, and the Psalms as used in Gaul, written at Bethlehem about 388. These two are in parallel columns in vol. x. The Gallican Psaltery is collated with the Hebrew, and shows by obeli () the parts which are in the LXX. and not in the Hebrew, and by asterisks (*) the parts which are in the Hebrew and not in the Greek.
The Book of Job, forming a part of the translation of the LXX. made between 386 and 392 at Bethlehem, the rest of which was lost (Ep. 134), vol. x.
(3) From the Chaldee.--The Books of Tobit and Judith, Bethlehem, 398, vol. x.
(4) From the Greek.--The Vulgate version of the New Testament made at Rome between 382 and 385. The preface is only to the Gospels, but Jerome speaks of and quotes from his version of the other part also (De Vir. Ill. 135; Ep. 71 and 27), vol. x.
II. Commentaries:
(1) Original.--Ecclesiastes, vol. iii., Bethlehem, 388; Isaiah, vol. iv., Bethlehem, 410; Jeremiah i.-xxxii., 41, vol. iv., Bethlehem, 419; Ezekiel, vol. v., Bethlehem, 410-14; Daniel, vol. v., Bethlehem, 407; the Minor Prophets, vol. vi., Bethlehem, at various times between 391 and 406; Matthew, vol. vii., Bethlehem, 398; Galatians, Ephesians, Titus, Philemon, vol. vii, Bethlehem, 388.
(2) Translated from Origen.--Homilies on Jeremiah and Ezekiel, vol. v., Bethlehem, 381; on Luke, vol. vii., Bethlehem, 389; Canticles, vol. iii., Rome and Bethlehem, 385-87.
There is also a Commentary on Job, and a specimen of one on the Psalms, attributed to Jerome, vol. vii., and the translation of Origen's Homilies on Isaiah, also attributed to him, vol. iv.
Books illustrative of Scripture:
(1) Book of Hebrew names, or Glossary of Proper Names in the Old Testament, Bethlehem, 388, vol. iii. 1.
(2) Book of Questions on Genesis, Bethlehem, 388, vol. iii. 301.
(3) A translation of Eusebius' book on the sites and names of Hebrew places, Bethlehem, 388, vol. iii. 321.
(4) Translation of Didymus on the Holy Spirit, Rome and Bethlehem, 385-87, vol. ii. 105.
IV. Books on Church History and Controversy (all in vol. ii.):
(1) Book of Illustrious Men, or Catalogue of Ecclesiastical Writers, Bethlehem, 392.
(2) Dialogue with a Luciferian, Antioch, 379.
(3) Lives of the Hermits: Paulus, Desert, 374; Malchus and Hilarion, Bethlehem, 390.
(4) Translation of the Rule of Pachomius, Bethlehem, 404.
(5) Books of ascetic controversy, against Helvidius, Rome, 304; against Jovinian, Bethlehem, 393; against Vigilantius, Bethlehem, 406.
(6) Books of personal controversy, against John, Bishop of Jerusalem, Bethlehem, 397 or 398; against Rufinus, i. and ii. 402, iii. 404.
(7) Dialogue with a Pelagian, Bethlehem, 416.
V. General History:
Translation of the Chronicle of Eusebius, with Jerome's additions, vol. viii., Constantinople, 382.
VI. Personal:
The series of letters, vol. i. Ep. i., Aquileia, 311; 2-4, Antioch, 374; 5-17, Desert 374-79; 18, Constantinople, 381; 19-45, Rome, 382-85; 46-148, Bethlehem, 386-418.
The works attributed to Jerome, but not genuine, which are given in Vallarsi's edition are: A breviary, commentary, and preface on the Psalms, vol. vii.; some Greek fragment and a lexicon of Hebrew names; the names of places in the Acts; the ten names of God; the benedictions of the patriarchs; the ten temptations in the desert; a commentary on the Song of Deborah; Hebrew Questions in Kings and Chronicles; an exposition of Job, vol. iii.; three letters in vol. i., and fifty-one in vol. xi., together with several miscellaneous writings in vol. xi. most of which are by Pelagius.
Bibliography.--The writings of Jerome were, on the whole, well preserved, owing to the great honour in which he was held, in the Middle Ages. Considering the number of the mss., the variations are not numerous. The Editio Princeps of the Letters and a few of the Treatises appeared in Rome in 1470, and another almost contemporaneous with this in Maintz (Schöffer), after which they were reprinted in Venice (1476), Rome (1479), Parma (1480), Nürenberg (1485), and in several other places. The Editio Princeps of the Commentaries appeared in Nürenberg in 1477, and was several times reprinted in other places; that of the Translation of Origen's Homilies on St. Luke, etc., in Basle, 1475; that of the Lives of the Hermits in Nürenberg, 1476, and of the Chronicle at Milan in 1475.
But the true Editio Princeps, containing Jerome's works as a whole, is that of Erasmus (Basle, 1516-20), who bestowed on it his great critical power, aided by his strong admiration for Jerome. He was assisted by OEcolampadius and other scholars. This held its ground till 1560, when an edition appeared by Marianus Victorius, afterwards Bishop of Rieti (Rome, Paulus Manutius), which enlarged the notes and corrected the text of Erasmus, but, like him, included many spurious writings. This edition was dedicated to Pius V. and Gregory XIII., and was the favourite edition of the Roman Church. In 1684 appeared the edition of Tribbechovius of Gotha (Frankfort and Leipzig) which embodied the emendations of critics up to that date, and was published at the expense of the Protestant Frederick, Duke of Saxony. In 1693 came the Benedictine edition of Martianay and Pouget (Paris), which gave the original text of the Vulgate and a new, though still very imperfect arrangement of the Letters and Treatises. But all previous editions were thrown into the shade by that of Dominic Vallarsi the learned priest of Verona (folio ed., Verona, 1734-42; quarto, Venice, 1766-72). In this edition the Treatises are separated from the Letters, and both Letters and Treatises are arranged in order of time, the dates and the process by which they are arrived at being clearly given. I have only in one or two instances found reason to alter Vallarsi's dates. The explanatory notes, however, are not as complete as might be wished, and the references are often wrong or imperfect. This edition is reprinted by Migne, who marks the pages of it in large print in the text, and most modern writers refer to it alone, as has been done in this volume.
Literature.--Three short Lives of Jerome, composed in the Middle Ages by unknown authors (one of which was falsely attributed to Gennadius), are given by Vallarsi in his Prolegomena (vol. i. 175-214); one of these is said by Zockler to be by Sebastian of Monte Cassino. Another, written in the fourteenth century by John Andreas of Bologna, was printed at Basle in 1514; and a work by Lasserré was published at Paris in 1530, with a curious title, "La Vie de Monseigneur Sainct Hierome," with "La Vie de Madame Saincte Paule"; and later works belonging to the uncritical region of thought were published later in Madrid by Bonadies in 1595, and by Cermellus in Ferrara (1648), the latter entirely made up of quotations from Jerome's writings.
Meanwhile the critical faculty had been aroused. Erasmus and Marianus Victorius prefixed Lives of Jerome to their editions of his works in 1516 and 1565; and Baronius in his Annals and Du Pin in his Bibliotheque des Auteurs Ecclésiastiques (1686) brought to light additional facts. Martianay at the close of his edition of Jerome's works published a Life, embodying many records of Jerome from the Fathers, but with many mistakes of chronology, some of which were rectified by Tillemont in his painstaking Mémoires (Paris, 1707) and by Ceillier in his Histoire des Auteurs Ecclésiastiques (Paris, 1742). The work of Sebastiano Dolci (Ancona, 1750) is entirely taken from Jerome's own writings.
But in reference to the Life as to the Writings of Jerome a new epoch was made by Vallarsi in the Preface and the Life prefixed to his Edition of Jerome. Though somewhat dry, it is thoroughly trustworthy, and in Migne's edition more accessible than any other to those who read Latin. The Bollandist Stilling (Acta Sanctorum, vol. viii., Antwerp, 1762), is less occupied with additions to our knowledge of the man and his works than with the honouring of the Saint. The work of the learned Dane, Engelstoft (1797), gives a more comprehensive estimate of Jerome's historical position than any of his predecessors. The account of Jerome in Schrökh's Ecclesiastical History (1786) and the articles of Cölln in Ersch and Grüber's Encyclopädie and of Hagenbach in Herzog's Real-Encyclopädie are excellent. In French we have the account of Jerome's ascetic influence in Montalembert's Monks of the West (Paris, 1861); and the Histoire de St. Jérome by Collombet (Paris, 1844) is useful in the appreciation of the personal and archæological part of the subject, though accepting with uncritical partisanship the polemical attitude of Jerome. We may add for English readers the articles Hieronymus in the Dictionaries of Greek and Roman Biography and of Christian Biography.
Our own generation has produced two excellent works: that of Dr. Otto Zöckler, Hieronymus, Sein Leben und Werken (Gotha, Perthes, 1865), and that of Amédée Thierry, Saint Jérome, la Société chrétienne à Rome et l'émigration romaine en terre sainte (Paris, 1867, originally published in the Revue des Deux Mondes). The former is a lucid, impartial, and comprehensive account of Jerome's Life and Writings; the latter, a series of very vivid and interesting sketches of Jerome himself, his friends and his times, which, though generally accurate, is occasionally swayed from truth by imagination, and at times is betrayed by sympathy with the modern Roman Catholic system into mistakes of judgment. Both these writers give copious and enlightening extracts from Jerome's writings in the original; but the value of those of Thierry is lessened by the references being to the ill-arranged edition of Martianay instead of that of Vallarsi.
It will be sufficiently obvious why it has been impossible to include all the works of Jerome in the present translation, but a few explanations may be desirable.
An exact translation of the Vulgate would serve no good purpose; and, if made, would naturally form part of a series designed to illustrate the criticism of the Scriptures.
The Commentaries and works illustrative of the Scriptures would by themselves form two volumes of equal size with the present. Though they contain much that is interesting--the opinions of various writers, such as Origen, Apollinarius, Gregory Nazianzen, or Didymus, a few celebrated passages, such as that which caused the controversy between Jerome and Augustin, and a few remarkable allusions to historical events, such as the capture of Rome by Heraclian--the general tenour of them is hardly of sufficient importance to justify the labour of translation or the bulk and expense of the additional volumes. An exception might be made in favour of the Book on the Site and Names of Hebrew Places; but this is a work of Eusebius rather than Jerome (see pp. 485, 486 and Prolegomena to Eusebius, Vol. i. of this series); and it was necessary to confine the Translation of Jerome to a single volume, with the exception of the Book On Illustrious Men and the Apology against Rufinus, which will be found in Vol. iii. of this Series.
The Chronicle of Eusebius would, if translated at all, find its place in the works of Eusebius.
The Books on Church History and Controversy are given in full.
Of the Letters, which, excepting the Vulgate, form the most important legacy of Jerome to posterity, all those which have a personal or a historical interest have been translated. The only omissions are (1) the exegetical letters, to which what has been said of the Commentaries applies; (2) the letters to Augustin, which will be found in Vol. i. of the first series of this Library, annexed to the letters of Augustin to which they are replies; and (3) the encyclicals and letters of Theophilus, which have been summarised.
For a separate statement of the works which are given in this volume the reader will naturally consult the table of contents; and, for a more detailed account of the books themselves, the introductions prefixed to each. __________________________________________________________________
V.--Estimate of the Scope and Value of Jerome's Writings.
General. The writings of Jerome must be estimated not merely by their intrinsic merits, but by his historical position and influence. It has already been pointed out that he stands at the close of the old Græco-Roman civilisation: the last Roman poet of any repute, Claudian, and the last Roman historian, Ammianus Marcellinus, died before him. Augustin survived him, but the other great Fathers, both in the East and in the West, had passed away before him. The sack of Rome by Alaric (410) and its capture by Heraclian (413) took place in his lifetime, and the Empire of the West fell in the next thirty years. Communication between East and West had become rarer and mutual knowledge less. Eusebius knew no Latin, Ambrose no Greek; Rufinus, though a second-rate scholar, was welcomed in Italy on his return from the East in 397 as capable of imparting to the Latins the treasures of the Greek Church writers. The general enfeeblement of the human mind, which remains one of the problems of history, had set in. The new age of Christendom which was struggling to the birth was subject to the influence of Jerome more than to that of any of the Fathers.
Secular Learning. As regards general learning, indeed, it was impossible that any legacy should descend from him. He had systematically disparaged it (35-36, 498), though making use and even a parade of it (101, 114, 149, 178); and had defended himself by disingenuous pleas from the charge of acquiring it after his mature convictions were formed (Apol. i. 30, 31, Vol. iii. 498-499). His influence, therefore, would but increase the deep ignorance of literature which now settled upon mankind till the times of the Renaissance. His style indeed, is excellent, correct, and well balanced, full of animation and of happy phrases (see Index--Proverbs), and passing from one subject to another with great versatility. It is contrasted by Erasmus with the barbarisms of the Schoolmen, as that of the Christian Cicero. But it has also Cicero's faults, especially his diffuseness. His Latinity is remarkably pure, and with the exception of the frequent use of the infinitive to express a purpose, and of a few words of late-Latin like confortare, we are hardly aware in reading him that we are 400 years away from the Augustan Age. His mastery of style is the more remarkable because he wrote nothing but a few letters and a very poor Commentary till about his thirty-fifth year.
Letters. His letters gain their special charm from being so personal. He himself, his correspondents, and the scenes in which they moved, are made to live before our eyes. See especially his descriptions of Roman life in the Epistles to Eustochium (Ep. xxii.), to Paula on the death of Blesilla (Ep. xxxix.), to Læta (Ep. cvii.) on the education of her child, and Ageruchia (Ep. cxxiii.); his account of the lives of Fabiola (Ep. lxxvii.), of Paula (Ep. cviii.), and of Marcella (Ep. cxxvii.); his description of the clerical life in his letter to Nepotian (Ep. lii.), and of the monastic life in his letters to Rusticus (Ep. cxxv.) and to Sabinian (Ep. cxlvii.); his letters of spiritual counsel to a mother and daughter (Ep. cxvii.), to Julianus (Ep. cxviii.), and to Rusticus (Ep. cxxii.), and of hermit life in his letter to Eustochium (Ep. xxii., pp. 24-25); his satirical description of Onasus (Ep. xl.), Rufinus (p. 250), and Vigilantius (p. 417); his enthusiastic delight in the Holy Land in the letter written by him to Paula and Eustochium inviting Marcella to join them (Ep. xlvi). Other characteristic and celebrated letters are those to Asella (xlv.) on his leaving Rome; to Pammachius (lvii.) on the best method of translation, which shows the liberties taken by translators in his time; to Oceanus (lxix.) in defence of a second marriage contracted by a Spanish Bishop, the first having been before baptism; to Magnus (lxx.), indicating his use of secular literature, and showing the great range of his knowledge; to Lucinius (lxxi.) on the copying of his works; to Avitus (cxxiv.) on the book of Origen, Peri 'Archon; to Demetrias (cxxx.) on the maintenance of virginity; to Ctesiphon (cxxxiii.) on the Pelagian controversy. (See also Index, words Stories and Pictures of Contemporary Life.)
Publication. Two circumstances conduced to the vividness and importance of this series of letters. One of these is the fact that no distinct line separated private documents from those designed for publication. In the Catalogue of his works (De Vir. Ill. 135)1 he says: "Of the Letters to Paula and Eustochium, the number is infinite: I write them every day." And, when he became celebrated, he says (79) that whatever he wrote was at once laid hold of and published, alike by friends and enemies. We have therefore frequently his most confidential utterances; while on the other hand his letters frequently pass into treatises, and he turns to address others than those to whom he is writing (59, 273, 274). But the process of publication was precarious; so that between Letters xlvi. and xlvii. there is a gap of seven years (386-93) without any letter. The other circumstance is the difficulty of communication, which made letters rare and induced greater care in their composition. Both these circumstances are well illustrated by the early correspondence of Jerome with Augustin. Augustin wrote from Hippo in Africa a long and important letter to Jerome (Ep. lvi.) in the year 394, which did not reach Jerome at Bethlehem for nearly ten years. It was committed to a presbyter named Profuturus to carry to Jerome; but he, being elected to a bishopric before he started, turned back, and soon afterwards died. The letter was neither forwarded to Jerome nor returned to Augustin; but it was copied by others and became known in the West, while its somewhat severe criticisms were unknown to Jerome himself. After a time Augustin became aware by a short letter of introduction written by Jerome to a friend that his first letter had miscarried, and he wrote a second (Ep. lxvii.) much in the same strain; but Paulus, to whom it was entrusted, alleging his fear of the sea, failed to go to Bethlehem; and a copy of the letter was found a year or two afterwards by a friend of Jerome's bound up with some of Augustin's treatises in an island of the Adriatic. Jerome on hearing of this was naturally incensed; and it was not till the year 404 that he received an authentic copy of both letters direct from Augustin, and was able to return an answer. His answer, however, and a knowledge of his views are fuller than they might have been had personal communication been easier.
Knowledge. His knowledge was vast and many-sided [See especially the enumeration of Christian writers who used Pagan literature (149-151), the curious stories about marriage gathered from all ages (383-386), the descriptions of various kinds of food and medicines (392-394) and the account of Pythagoras and his doctrines (Apol. iii., 39, 40, in this Series, Vol. iii. 538)], but it was rather the curiosity of the monks of a later day than the temper of the philosopher or the historian. He was well acquainted with the history and literature of Rome and of Greece; he translated the Chronicle of Eusebius; he speaks of the various routes to India (245), of the Brahmans (97, 193, 397), of the custom of Suttee (381), and of Buddha (380). But he is quite uncritical; he makes no correction of the faults of the Chronicle, and his own additions to it reveal his credulity. He was deeply affected by the sack of Rome, and recurs to it again and again; but his reflections upon this and similar events hardly go beyond those of a mediæval chronicler. He is a recluse, and has no thought of the general interests of mankind.
Church History. This lack of criticism and of general interests combined with lack of time to prevent his making any considerable contribution to church history. That he had some faculties for this is shown by several passages in his Dialogue with a Luciferian (328-331) and his Catalogue of Ecclesiastical Writers (On Illustrious Men, Vol. iii. 361-384). But his conception of church history is shown by his declaration (315) that he intended the Lives of Malchus and Hilarion as part of a series, which when completed would have formed an ecclesiastical history. Such a history would have been nothing more than a prolix edition of Rufinus' History of the Monks. Jerome's value to the church historian is quite of another kind; it lies in the illustration of contemporary life furnished by his own life and letters and by the controversies in which he was engaged.
Theology. These controversies bring us to consider Jerome's position as a theologian. Here he is admittedly weak. He had no real interest in the subject. The first of his letters which deals with theology, that written from the Desert to Pope Damasus, points out clearly the difficulty raised by the difference of phraseology of East and West, the Eastern speaking of one Essence and three Substances, the Western, of one Substance and three Persons. But he makes no attempt to grasp the reality lying behind these expressions, and merely asks not to have the Eastern terms forced on his acceptance, while he professes in the most absolute terms his submission to the decision of the Bishop of Rome. This lack of genuine theological interest best explains his conduct in relation to Origen, his extravagant laudation of him at one time (46), his violent condemnation at another (187). He was carried away by Origen's genius and industry in the department of biblical criticism and exegesis in which he was himself absorbed, and though in his earlier discussion of the Vision of Isaiah (22), which touched the doctrine of the Trinity, he had put aside Origen's view that the Seraphim were the Son and the Spirit as wrongly expressing their relation to the Father, the doctrinal question was feebly present to his thoughts, and he repeated Origen's exposition without blame as to the pre-existence of souls and the restoration of Satan (Ruf. Apol. ii. 13, Vol. iii. 467). When the subject of Origen's orthodoxy was raised at a later time, he was unaware of any inconsistency when he fell in with the general condemnation of his doctrine. So with regard to Eusebius of Cæsarea. In the Preface to the translation of his Book on the Site and Names of Hebrew Places (485), he is "vir admirabilis"; in his controversy with Rufinus, Eusebius is nothing but a heretic. In his controversy with Augustin as to the quarrel between St. Peter and St. Paul in Gal. ii., which he interpreted as fictitious and pre-arranged with a view to bring out St. Paul's solution of the question about the Gentile converts, he was manifestly in the wrong, and eventually seems to have felt this, yet as one who was silenced rather than convinced. At a later period he says to Augustin (Ep. cxxxiv.), "If the heretics see that we hold divergent opinions they will say calumniously that this is a result of hatred, whereas it is my firm resolution to love you, to look up to you, to defer to you with admiration, and to defend your opinions as my own." His dread of heresy may be gathered from passage in the Anti-Pelagian Dialogue (i. 28) in which he expressly declares that, while sin can be forgiven, heresy, as being impiety, is subject to the threat: "They that forsake the Lord shall be consumed." It is true that in his Catalogue he shows wider sympathies, and defends himself in writing to Augustin for the admission into it of men like Philo Judæus and Seneca. But this, though it might have led him to the larger views of the heathen world held by Origen and Clement, did not prevent his condemning to eternal torments even the most virtuous of the heathen. He tells Marcella, a Roman lady (41-42), that one object he has in writing to her is to instruct her that the consul-elect Vettius Agorius Prætextatus, who was known as a model of public and domestic virtue, and who had then recently died, is in Tartarus, while their friend Lea, who had died the same day, is in heaven.
The lack of deep theological conviction is shown in his Dialogue against the Pelagians, where it is evident that he is far from that original and deep view of human corruption which Augustin maintained; indeed, he appears at times to be arguing against his own side, when he says (471) that, "Till the end we are subject to sin; not," (as the opponent falsely imputes to him) "through the fault of our nature and constitution, but through frailty and the mutability of the human will, which varies from moment to moment"--a sentence which might be taken as expressing the doctrine of Pelagius himself. It is evident that in these cases he is swayed not so much by the force of truth as by the authority of certain powerful Bishops and the wish to maintain his orthodox reputation. In his other controversies, with Helvidius, Jovinian, John, Bishop of Jerusalem, Vigilantius, and Rufinus, his method is take for granted the opinion current among the Christians of his day, and to support it by copious (sometimes excessive) quotations from Scripture, and by arguments sometimes well chosen and acutely maintained, as in the book against Helvidius (339), sometimes of the most frivolous character, as in that against Vigilantius (422). In the three last of these controversies the opposition is embittered by personal feeling, and Jerome hardly places any restraint on the contempt and hatred which it engenders.
In his criticisms on Scripture, however, he has a freer judgment, as when he says (337): Whether you think that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, or that Ezra re-edited it, in either case I make no objection;" or (349) that it was the Book of Deuteronomy which was found in the Temple in the reign of Josiah; or contrasts "the flickering flame of the Apostles" with the brightness of the lamp of Christ" (468). There are three points especially on which Jerome reached an independent conviction, and maintained it courageously. (1) He made a clear distinction between the Old Testament Canon and the Apocrypha (194, 491, 492, 493) and this although he records the fact that the Nicene Council had placed the Book of Judith in the Canon (494). For this he is justly commemorated in the Articles of the Church of England (Art. 6). (2) He maintains the essential identity of Bishops and Presbyters (288) and the development of the Episcopal out of the Presbyteral office (288, 289), in the face of the rapid tendency to the extreme exaltation of the Episcopate (92). (3) In the great work of his life, the composition of the Vulgate, he showed a clear and matured conviction, and a noble tenacity, unshaken either by popular clamour (490) or authority like that Augustin (189).
A few words may here be said on the asceticism which Jerome so eagerly promoted. If we ask how it was that he embraced it so fervently as to read it into almost every line of the Scriptures, we can only answer that it was part of the spirit of the time. Jerome had not the elevation of mind which might have enabled him to exercise a judgment upon the current which was bearing him away, or the higher critical power which would distinguish between what was in the Scriptures and what he brought to them. His habit of mind was to accept his general principles from some kind of church authority, which was partly that of the Bishops, partly the general drift of the sentiment of the Christians of his day; and having accepted them, to advocate them vehemently and without discrimination. Jerome could indeed exercise a certain moderation, even in matters of asceticism (246, 267). But his general attitude is that which disdained the common joys of life, which thought of eating, drinking, clothing or lodging, and most of all marriage, as physical indulgences which should suppressed as far as possible, rather than as the means of a noble social intercourse; and dread of impurity haunts him to such an extent as to entirely vitiate his view of society, and to cause him to disparage, and all but forbid, the married relation (29, 384, etc.). His view of monasticism in its inner principles is seen in his treatises against Helvidius, Jovinian, and Vigilantius. The reader may be specially referred to a passage in the last-named treatise, p. 423. If we ask the further question, how the tendency arose which so completely swayed him, we can only attribute it to the state of Roman society in the fourth and fifth centuries, which laid earnest men open to influences already working in other parts of the world. Jerome knew of the Brahmans and the Gymnosophists of India (97, 193, 397), and he several times mentions Buddha (380) as an example of asceticism. But students of Buddhism have failed to trace any direct filiation between the asceticism of the East and the West. [1] The existence of Essenes in Palestine and the Therapeutæ in Egypt, and the unquestionable fact that Christian asceticism originated in Egypt, make some connection with the East probable; and the system of Manes, though at once repudiated, may have exerted some subtle influence. Certain states of the human mind seem all-pervasive, like the causes of diseases which spring up at once in many different places; and principles like those of asceticism maybe communicated through chance conversations or commercial intercourse when the soil is prepared for their reception.
But it seems better to look to the social and political state of the world as the predisposing cause of monasticism. Even in the East it is thought that the miserable conditions of practical life have been the main cause of a religion of despair; and the decline and fall of the Roman Empire in the fourth and fifth centuries offered similar causes in abundance. The grace which is completely absent from the great Christian writers of that epoch is hope. Such hope as is found even in the Civitas Dei of Augustin is entirely that of the world to come. The world before them seemed hopelessly corrupt. The descriptions of private morals given by Jerome are borne out by Ammianus Marcellinus; the failure of public spirit and military valour was equally conspicuous; and Gratian and Stilicho appear on the scene only to be murdered. When the crash of Alaric's sack of Rome shook the existing world, no one realised that a new Christian world was coming, and the flight which Jerome witnessed of thousands of citizens from the sinking city to the mountains of Palestine was but one symptom of the despair which made them, to use Jerome's words, "quit the most frequented cities that in the fields and solitude they might mourn for sin and draw down on themselves the compassion of Christ" (446).
As an illustrator of Scripture, Jerome did much, and in some respects excellent work. The Book of Hebrew Names was no doubt of much use in the ages in which men were ignorant of Hebrew, although it has the clumsy arrangement of a separate glossary for each book of the Bible; it is very faulty and uncritical; there is no explanation, for instance, of Lehi in Judges, or of Engedi or Ichabod in 1 Samuel, or of Bethabara or Bethany in John, and the meanings given to words are extremely uncritical and sometimes absurd. Cherubim is said to mean a multitude of knowledge; Jezebel, "flowing with blood, a litter, a dung heap"; and Laodicæa, "the tribe beloved of the Lord, or, they have been in vomiting." It is worthless now except as showing the state of knowledge of the fourth century A.D., and that of the author of the Vulgate.
The Book of the Site and Names of Hebrew Places belongs rather to Eusebius than to Jerome, being translated from Eusebius, though with some additions. An account of it is given in the Prolegomena to Eusebius. The arrangement of this book is, like the former, very inconvenient, the names under each letter being placed in separate groups in the order of the books of Scripture in which they occur: for instance, under the letter A we have first the names in Genesis, then those in Exodus, and so on. But there is less room here for what is fanciful, and the testimony of men who lived in Palestine in the fourth and fifth centuries is of great value still to the student of sacred topography. When the places are outside the writer's knowledge, credulity is apt to creep in, as when the author tells us that in Ararat portions of the ark are still to be found.
The Book of Hebrew Questions on Genesis is simply a set of notes on passages where the reference to the Hebrew text gives a different reading from that of the LXX., which was received as authoritative up to Jerome's day. For instance, in Gen. xlvi. 26, the LXX. says that Joseph's descendants born in Egypt were nine, the Hebrew, two. Jerome accounts for the discrepancy by the supposition that the LXX. added in the sons of Ephraim and Manasseh, who were subsequently born in Egypt, and who in the LXX. are enumerated just before. Jerome states in the preface his intention to compose a similar set of notes to each book of the Old Testament, but he was never able to go beyond Genesis. What he gives us is of considerable interest and value, so that it is a matter of regret that he could not go further.
As a commentator, Jerome's fault is a lack of independence; his merit lies in giving fully the opinions of others which we might otherwise not have known. This he considers, as seen in his controversy with Rufinus, the principal task of a commentator (Apol. i. 16, Vol. iii. 491). In the passages there at issue, he states the most incongruous interpretations without criticising them, and Rufinus can hardly be blamed for suggesting that he is sometimes expressing his own opinion under that of "another." In matters of ordinary interpretation his judgment is good. But fanciful ideas are apt to intrude, as when, in the Commentary on Ecclesiastes, the city delivered by the poor wise man is made to mean the individual delivered from Satan by the better man within him, or the Church delivered from the hosts of darkness by Christ. When an occasion for the introduction of asceticism occurs, Jerome never hesitates at any process, however absurd, which will draw the passage to a sanction of his peculiar views (Against Jovin. i. 30, p. 368). We should have been glad, had space permitted, to have given a specimen of his better style of exposition, but it was found necessary to suppress this.
It is as a translator of Scripture that Jerome is best known. His Vulgate was made at the right moment and by the right man. The Latin language was still living, although Latin civilisation was dying; and Jerome was a master of it. It is only to be regretted that he did not give fuller scope to his literary power in his translation of Scripture. In his letter to Pammachius on the best method of translation (114), he advocates great freedom of treatment, even such as amounts to paraphrase, and even to the insertion of sentences congruous to the sense of the author. He takes the fact that the quotations in the New Testament from the Old often present discrepancies in words and sense as justifying similar discrepancies in a translation. He does not, however, appear in dealing with ordinary books to have used this license in any extreme way; and his translations, without departing from correctness, read as good literary composition. But from the operation of his rules of translation he expressly excepts the Scriptures. "In other books," he says (113), "my effort is not to express word by word, but meaning by meaning; but in the Holy Scriptures even the order of the words has a secret meaning" (et ordo verborum mysterium est). He even says (80): "A version made for the use of the Church, even though it may possess a literary charm, ought to disguise and avoid it as far as possible." This belief in a secret meaning in the words and their order as apart from the sense goes far to injure the Vulgate translation. His principles, indeed, are excellent, namely, (1) never to swerve needlessly from the original; (2) to avoid solecisms; (3) even by the admission of solecisms, to give the true sense. But it is evident that they must be vitiated by the supposition of a hidden sense in the arrangement of the words; and the result is a style which frequently deprives a passage of its proper elegance, and the pleasure which it should give to the reader, and a too frequent introduction of solecisms and abandonment of the attempt to make sense of a passage. It also gives an air of saintly unreality to many parts of the Scriptures and thus to produce confusion. The merits of the translation are also very various, as was the time which Jerome bestowed on the different parts. The Books of Solomon, for instance, he translated very rapidly (492), the Book of Tobit in a single day (494). For some parts he trusted to his own knowledge, for others he obtained aid at great cost of money and trouble (Preface to Job and to Tobit, 491, 494). But, while we thus go behind the scenes, we must not fail to look at the completed work as a whole. It was wrought out with noble perseverance and unflinching purpose amidst many discouragements. It was highly prized even in Jerome's lifetime, so that he is able to record that a large part of the Old Testament was translated into Greek from his version by his friend Sophronius, and was read in the Eastern Churches (492). After his death it won its way to become the Vulgate or common version of Western Christendom; it was the Bible of the Middle Ages; and in the year 1546 (eleven centuries after its author's death) was pronounced by the Council of Trent to be the only true version, and alone authorised to be printed.
A few personal details must be given to illustrate his method of composition and his surroundings. Nothing is known of his personal appearance. His health was weak, and he had several long illnesses, especially in the years 398, 404, and in the last year of his life. His eyes began to fail during his stay at Constantinople in 380-382, and he usually employed an amanuensis; but he still wrote at times, and what he wrote was more polished than what he dictated. "In the one case I constantly turn the stylus; in the other, whatever words come into my mouth I heap together in my rapid utterance" (Ep. lxxiv. 6). He composed with great rapidity, and dictated at times as much as one thousand lines in a day (Comm. on Ephes., Book ii. Preface). He often, especially when in weak health, lay on a couch (Ep. lxxiv. 6), taking down one volume after another to aid in the composition of his Commentaries. And he often sat late into the night [his book against Vigilantius was "the lucubration of a single night" (423)], the days being occupied in business of various kinds, as stated above--the monasteries, the entertainment of strangers, the teaching of boys, the exposition of Scripture to his brethren in the monastery, and, according to Sulpicius Severus, the charge of the parish of Bethlehem. As has been mentioned above, he was interrupted again and again by illness, and on several occasions was in alarm from the threatened invasions of the Huns and Isaurians, and at the end of his life from the violent adherents of Pelagius. He also suffered from poverty, and his friends one by one were taken from him. But he persevered against all obstacles; and his latest works, the Anti-Pelagian Dialogue and the Commentary on Jeremiah, show little if any diminution of power. __________________________________________________________________
[1] See a remarkable article on "The New Testament and Buddhism," by Professor Estlin Carpenter, in the Nineteenth Century for July, 1879. __________________________________________________________________
VI.--Character and Influence of Jerome.
This Introduction must be concluded with a few words on the character and influence of Jerome, which are taken from the article upon him in the Dictionary of Christian Biography. He was vain and unable to bear rivals, extremely sensitive as to the estimation in which he was held by his contemporaries, and especially by the Bishops; passionate and resentful, but at times becoming suddenly placable; scornful and violent in controversy; kind to the weak and the poor; respectful in his dealings with women; entirely without avarice; extraordinarily diligent in work, and nobly tenacious of the main objects to which he devoted his life. There was, however, something of monkish cowardice in his asceticism, and his influence was not felt by the strong.
His influence grew through his life and increased after his death. If we may use a scriptural phrase which has sometimes been applied to such influence, "He lived and reigned for a thousand years." His writings contain the whole spirit of the Church of the Middle Ages, its monasticism, its contrast of sacred things with profane, its credulity and superstition, its value for relics, its subjection to hierarchical authority, its dread of heresy, its passion for pilgrimages. To the society which was thus in a great measure formed by him, his Bible was the greatest boon which could have been given. But he founded no school and had no inspiring power; there was no courage or width of view in his spiritual legacy such as could break through the fatal circle of bondage to received authority which was closing round mankind. As Thierry says in the last words of his work on St. Jerome, "There is no continuation of his work; a few more letters of Augustin and Paulinus, and night falls over the West." __________________________________________________________________
Chronological Tables of the Life and Times of St. Jerome A.D. 345-420.
Personal.
Literary.
Contemporary History.
Contemporary History (Ecclesiastical).
345. Jerome born at Stridon (Pannonia or Dalmatia).
340. Death of Constantine.
341. Athanasius at Rome.
360. Jerome at school.
352. Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem.
363. To study at Rome. Baptism.
353. Constantius sole Emperor.
366. To Treves.
356. Eusebius of Vercellæ, and other orthodox Bishops banished by Constantius.
366-69. Jerome copies works of Hilary.
356. Death of Antony.
369. Jerome writes a mystical Commentary on Obadiah.
359. Councils of Ariminum and Seleucia.
370. To Aquileia.
370. First letter--On the woman seven times struck with the axe.
360. Julian Emperor.
373. Leaves Aquileia for the East.
361. Death of Constantius.
362. Eusebius of Vercellæ and other Bishops recalled from exile.
363. Death of Julian. Jovian Emperor.
364. Death of Jovian. Valentinian and Valens.
374. Illness at Antioch. Anti-Ciceronian dream.
374. Life of Paulus, the first hermit.
365. Apollinarius, Bishop of Laodicæa.
374-79. In Desert of Chalcis.
374-79. Jerome copies Gospel of the Hebrews and other books.
366. Invasion of the Alemanni repelled by Valentinian.
366. Damasus Pope.
379. Dialogue against the Luciferians.
367-69. Gothic war.
379-80. At Antioch.
367-70. Britain restored by the elder Theodosius.
370. Law of Valentinian against clerical legacies.
379. Ordination by Paulinus.
371. Death of Eusebius of Vercellæ and of Lucifer.
380. To Constantinople.
373. Death of Athanasius. Peter and Lucius, rival Bishops.
381. Translation of Eusebius' Chronicle.
374. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan.
381. Translation of Origen's Homilies on Jeremiah and Ezekiel.
374. Melania and Rufinus leave Rome for the East.
382-85. At Rome.
375. Death of Valentinian. Valens and Gratian Emperors.
383. Translation of Psalms from LXX. and of New Testament.
376. Theodosius, after restoring Africa, executed at Carthage.
383. Book against Helvidius (Perp. Virg. of B.M.V.)
377-80. Persian war.
385. Leaves Rome (August); to Antioch (December).
385-87. Translation of Origen on Canticles.
378. Battle of Adrianople. Valens killed. Gregory Nazianzen at Constantinople.
378. Gregory Nazianzen at Constantinople.
386. Through Palestine to Egypt, and settlement at Bethlehem.
386-90. Translation of LXX. into Latin.
379. Theodosius Emperor.
387. Revision of version of New Testament.
380. Baptism of Theodosius.
381. Council of Constantinople.
381. Peter, Bishop of Alexandria, succeeded by his brother Timothy.
388. Commentary on Ecclesiastes.
382. Council at Rome.
388. Commentary on Galatians, Ephesians, Titus, Philemon.
382. Altar of Victory in Roman Senate removed.
388. Book of Hebrew Names.
383. Death of Gratian. Maximus Emperor.
388. Questions on Genesis.
384. Treaty with Persia.
384. Death of Damasus (December).
388. Translation of Eusebius on Sites and Names of Hebrew Places.
385. Theophilus, Bishop of Alexandria, succeeds Timothy.
385. Siricius Pope.
388. Translation of Didymus on the Holy Spirit.
386. John succeeds Cyril as Bishop of Jerusalem.
386. Execution of Priscillian for heresy at Treves.
389. Translation of Origen on St. Luke.
387. Sedition of Antioch.
390. Lives of Malchus and Hilarion, hermits.
388. Death of Maximus. Valentinian II. Emperor.
389. Temple of Serapis destroyed.
391. Vulgate version of Old Testament begun.
390. Massacre of Thessalonica. Penance of Theodosius.
390. Death of Gregory Nazianzen.
392. Aterbius at Jerusalem.
392. Book of Illustrious Men.
391. Death of Valentinian II. Eugenius usurper.
392. Laws of Theodosius against Paganism.
392. Epiphanius visits Jerusalem. Schism between Jerome and John of Jerusalem, till 397.
392. Commentary on Nahum, Micah, Zephaniah, Haggai, Habakkuk.
394. Defeat of Eugenius. Theodosius sole Emperor.
393. Books against Jovinian.
394. Death of Theodosius. Arcadius (æt. 18) Emperor of the East; Honorius (æt. 14) of the West. Stilicho Minister and General in the West. Death of Rufinus the Prefect at Constantinople.
395. Augustin, Bishop of Hippo.
394. Beginning of controversy with Augustin.
395. Jerome denounced to the Emperor.
395. The Huns invade Northern Syria.
396. Alaric invades Greece.
395. Oceanus and Fabiola at Bethlehem.
397. Alaric conquered by Stilicho in Arcadia.
397. Death of Ambrose. Simplicianus, Bishop of Milan.
397. Theophilus of Alexandria turns against Origenism. Rufinus reconciled to Jerome and returns to Italy.
397. Commentary on Jonah.
398. Death of Gildo in Africa. Alaric Master-General of Illyricum and King of the Visigoths.
398. Chrysostom, Bishop of Constantinople.
398. Pope Siricius dies. Anastasius Pope.
397. Book against John, Bishop of Jerusalem.
399. Fall of Eutropius.
398. Jerome suffers from a long illness.
398. Commentary on St. Matthew.
400. Gainas, conspirator, defeated and slain.
400. Origenism condemned by Bishops of Alexandria, Rome, and Milan, and by the Emperors.
401-4. Controversy between Jerome and Rufinus.
400. (August 15). Simplicianus dies. Venerius, Bishop of Millan.
402. Against Rufinus, Books i. and ii.
402. Pope Anastasius dies. Innocentius Pope.
403. Commentary on Obadiah.
402. Death of Epiphanius.
403. Stilicho defeats Alaric at Pollentia and Verona.
404. Triumph of Honorius. Last gladiatorial shows.
404. Exile of Chrysostom to Cucusus.
404. Death of Paula.
404. Translation of the acetic rule of Pachomius.
404. Emperor's court at Ravenna.
404. Gladiatorial shows at Rome ended by the sacrifice of Telemachus, the monk.
404. Close of controversy with Augustin.
404. Against Rufinus, Book iii.
404. Death of the Empress Eudoxia.
404-5. Jerome ill for several months.
405. Northern Palestine invaded by Isaurians.
406. Stilicho defeats Radagaisus at Fæsulæ, and negotiates with Alaric.
406. Commentary on Zachariah, Malachi, Hosea, Joel, Amos--concluding Minor Prophets.
407. Gaul overrun by barbarians.
407. Death of Chrysostom at Comana.
407. Constantine usurps power in Britain and Gaul.
406. Book against Vigilantius.
408. Rome besieged by Alaric, and ransomed.
408. Disgrace and death of Stilicho.
407. Commentary on Daniel.
408. Death of Arcadius. Theodosius II. Emperor. Pulcheria Regent.
410. Death of Rufinus.
410. Commentary on Isaiah.
409. Revolt of Britain.
409. Pelagius at Rome.
412. Coelestius condemned at Carthage.
410. Sack of Rome by Alaric. Death of Alaric.
413. Pelagius in Palestine.
410. Egypt, Phoenicia, etc. threatened by barbarians (Ep. cxxvi.).
414. Orosius sent by Augustin to Jerome.
414. Commentary on Ezekiel.
411. Death of Constantine and other usurpers. Victories of Roman General Constantius.
411. Dispute between Catholic and Donatist Bishops at Carthage. Persecution of Donatists by the Civil Power.
414. Pinianus and Melania at Jerusalem.
412. Death of Theophilus, Bishop of Alexandria.
415. Synod at Jerusalem admits Pelagius.
413. Expedition and death of Heraclian, Count of Africa.
417. Monasteries of Bethlehem burnt by adherents of Pelagius.
414. Adolphus, successor of Alaric, marries Galla Placidia.
415. Goths established in Aquitaine and Spain.
415. Schism at Antioch healed. Alexander sole Bishop.
416. Dialogue against the Pelagians.
415. Council of Diospolis (Lydda) accepts Pelagius.
418. Death of Eustochium.
418-19. Commentary on Jeremiah.
417. Pope Innocentius dies. Zosimus Pope.
420. Jerome dies (September 20) at Bethlehem.
417. Death of John, Bishop of Jerusalem. Succeeded by Praylus. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
The Letters of St. Jerome.
------------------------
Letter I. To Innocent.
Not only the first of the letters but probably the earliest extant composition of Jerome (c. 370 a.d.). Innocent, to whom it is addressed, was one of the little band of enthusiasts whom Jerome gathered round him in Aquileia. He followed his friend to Syria, where he died in 374 a.d. (See Letter III., 3.)
1. You have frequently asked me, dearest Innocent, not to pass over in silence the marvellous event which has happened in our own day. I have declined the task from modesty and, as I now feel, with justice, believing myself to be incapable of it, at once because human language is inadequate to the divine praise, and because inactivity, acting like rust upon the intellect, has dried up any little power of expression that I have ever had. You in reply urge that in the things of God we must look not at the work which we are able to accomplish, but at the spirit in which it is undertaken, and that he can never be at a loss for words who has believed on the Word.
2. What, then, must I do? The task is beyond me, and yet I dare not decline it. I am a mere unskilled passenger, and I find myself placed in charge of a freighted ship. I have not so much as handled a rowboat on a lake, and now I have to trust myself to the noise and turmoil of the Euxine. I see the shores sinking beneath the horizon, "sky and sea on every side"; [2] darkness lowers over the water, the clouds are black as night, the waves only are white with foam. You urge me to hoist the swelling sails, to loosen the sheets, and to take the helm. At last I obey your commands, and as charity can do all things, I will trust in the Holy Ghost to guide my course, and I shall console myself, whatever the event. For, if our ship is wafted by the surf into the wished-for haven, I shall be content to be told that the pilotage was poor. But, if through my unpolished diction we run aground amid the rough cross-currents of language, you may blame my lack of power, but you will at least recognize my good intentions.
3. To begin, then: Vercellæ is a Ligurian town, situated not far from the base of the Alps, once important, but now sparsely peopled and fallen into decay. When the consular [3] was holding his visitation there, a poor woman and her paramour were brought before him--the charge of adultery had been fastened upon them by the husband--and were both consigned to the penal horrors of a prison. Shortly after an attempt was made to elicit the truth by torture, and when the blood-stained hook smote the young man's livid flesh and tore furrows in his side, the unhappy wretch sought to avoid prolonged pain by a speedy death. Falsely accusing his own passions, he involved another in the charge; and it appeared that he was of all men the most miserable, and that his execution was just inasmuch as he had left to an innocent woman no means of self-defence. But the woman, stronger in virtue if weaker in sex, though her frame was stretched upon the rack, and though her hands, stained with the filth of the prison, were tied behind her, looked up to heaven with her eyes, which alone the torturer had been unable to bind, and while the tears rolled down her face, said: "Thou art witness, Lord Jesus, to whom nothing is hid, who triest the reins and the heart. [4] Thou art witness that it is not to save my life that I deny this charge. I refuse to lie because to lie is sin. And as for you, unhappy man, if you are bent on hastening your death, why must you destroy not one innocent person, but two? I also, myself, desire to die. I desire to put off this hated body, but not as an adulteress. I offer my neck; I welcome the shining sword without fear; yet I will take my innocence with me. He does not die who is slain while purposing so to live."
4. The consular, who had been feasting his eyes upon the bloody spectacle, now, like a wild beast, which after once tasting blood always thirsts for it, ordered the torture to be doubled, and cruelly gnashing his teeth, threatened the executioner with like punishment if he failed to extort from the weaker sex a confession which a man's strength had not been able to keep back.
5. Send help, Lord Jesus. For this one creature of Thine every species of torture is devised. She is bound by the hair to a stake, her whole body is fixed more firmly than ever on the rack; fire is brought and applied to her feet; her sides quiver beneath the executioner's probe; even her breasts do not escape. Still the woman remains unshaken; and, triumphing in spirit over the pain of the body, enjoys the happiness of a good conscience, round which the tortures rage in vain. [5] The cruel judge rises, overcome with passion. She still prays to God. Her limbs are wrenched from their sockets; she only turns her eyes to heaven. Another confesses what is thought their common guilt. She, for the confessor's sake, denies the confession, and, in peril of her own life, clears one who is in peril of his.
6. Meantime she has but one thing to say: "Beat me, burn me, tear me, if you will; I have not done it. If you will not believe my words, a day will come when this charge shall be carefully sifted. I have One who will judge me." Wearied out at last, the torturer sighed in response to her groans; nor could he find a spot on which to inflict a fresh wound. His cruelty overcome, he shuddered to see the body he had torn. Immediately the consular cried, in a fit of passion, "Why does it surprise you, bystanders, that a woman prefers torture to death? It takes two people, most assuredly, to commit adultery; and I think it more credible that a guilty woman should deny a sin than that an innocent young man should confess one."
7. Like sentence, accordingly, was passed on both, and the condemned pair were dragged to execution. The entire people poured out to see the sight; indeed, so closely were the gates thronged by the out-rushing crowd, that you might have fancied the city itself to be migrating. At the very first stroke of the sword the head of the hapless youth was cut off, and the headless trunk rolled over in its blood. Then came the woman's turn. She knelt down upon the ground, and the shining sword was lifted over her quivering neck. But though the headsman summoned all his strength into his bared arm, the moment it touched her flesh the fatal blade stopped short, and, lightly glancing over the skin, merely grazed it sufficiently to draw blood. The striker saw, with terror, his hand unnerved, and, amazed at his defeated skill and at his drooping sword, he whirled it aloft for another stroke. Again the blade fell forceless on the woman, sinking harmlessly on her neck, as though the steel feared to touch her. The enraged and panting officer, who had thrown open his cloak at the neck to give his full strength to the blow, shook to the ground the brooch which clasped the edges of his mantle, and not noticing this, began to poise his sword for a fresh stroke. "See," cried the woman, "a jewel has fallen from your shoulder. Pick up what you have earned by hard toil, that you may not lose it."
8. What, I ask, is the secret of such confidence as this? Death draws near, but it has no terrors for her. When smitten she exults, and the executioner turns pale. Her eyes see the brooch, they fail to see the sword. And, as if intrepidity in the presence of death were not enough, she confers a favor upon her cruel foe. And now the mysterious Power of the Trinity rendered even a third blow vain. The terrified soldier, no longer trusting the blade, proceeded to apply the point to her throat, in the idea that though it might not cut, the pressure of his hand might plunge it into her flesh. Marvel unheard of through all the ages! The sword bent back to the hilt, and in its defeat looked to its master, as if confessing its inability to slay.
9. Let me call to my aid the example of the three children, [6] who, amid the cool, encircling fire, sang hymns, [7] instead of weeping, and around whose turbans and holy hair the flames played harmlessly. Let me recall, too, the story of the blessed Daniel, [8] in whose presence, though he was their natural prey, the lions crouched, with fawning tails and frightened mouths. Let Susannah also rise in the nobility of her faith before the thoughts of all; who, after she had been condemned by an unjust sentence, was saved through a youth inspired by the Holy Ghost. [9] In both cases the Lord's mercy was alike shewn; for while Susannah was set free by the judge, so as not to die by the sword, this woman, though condemned by the judge, was acquitted by the sword.
10. Now at length the populace rise in arms to defend the woman. Men and women of every age join in driving away the executioner, shouting round him in a surging crowd. Hardly a man dares trust his own eyes. The disquieting news reaches the city close at hand, and the entire force of constables is mustered. The officer who is responsible for the execution of criminals bursts from among his men, and
Staining his hoary hair with soiling dust, [10]
exclaims: "What! citizens, do you mean to seek my life? Do you intend to make me a substitute for her? However much your minds are set on mercy, and however much you wish to save a condemned woman, yet assuredly I--I who am innocent--ought not to perish." His tearful appeal tells upon the crowd, they are all benumbed by the influence of sorrow, and an extraordinary change of feeling is manifested. Before it had seemed a duty to plead for the woman's life, now it seemed a duty to allow her to be executed.
11. Accordingly a new sword is fetched, a new headsman appointed. The victim takes her place, once more strengthened only with the favor of Christ. The first blow makes her quiver, beneath the second she sways to and fro, by the third she falls wounded to the ground. Oh, majesty of the divine power highly to be extolled! She who previously had received four strokes without injury, now, a few moments later, seems to die that an innocent man may not perish in her stead.
12. Those of the clergy whose duty it is to wrap the blood-stained corpse in a winding-sheet, dig out the earth and, heaping together stones, form the customary tomb. The sunset comes on quickly, and by God's mercy the night of nature arrives more swiftly than is its wont. Suddenly the woman's bosom heaves, her eyes seek the light, her body is quickened into new life. A moment after she sighs, she looks round, she gets up and speaks. At last she is able to cry: "The Lord is on my side; I will not fear. What can man do unto me?" [11]
13. Meantime an aged woman, supported out of the funds of the church, gave back her spirit to heaven from which it came. [12] It seemed as if the course of events had been thus purposely ordered, for her body took the place of the other beneath the mound. In the gray dawn the devil comes on the scene in the form of a constable, [13] asks for the corpse of her who had been slain, and desires to have her grave pointed out to him. Surprised that she could have died, he fancies her to be still alive. The clergy show him the fresh turf, and meet his demands by pointing to the earth lately heaped up, taunting him with such words as these: "Yes, of course, tear up the bones which have been buried! Declare war anew against the tomb, and if even that does not satisfy you, pluck her limb from limb for birds and beasts to mangle! Mere dying is too good for one whom it took seven strokes to kill."
14. Before such opprobrious words the executioner retires in confusion, while the woman is secretly revived at home. Then, lest the frequency of the doctor's visits to the church might give occasion for suspicion, they cut her hair short and send her in the company of some virgins to a sequestered country house. There she changes her dress for that of a man, and scars form over her wounds. Yet even after the great miracles worked on her behalf, the laws still rage against her. So true is it that, where there is most law, there, there is also most injustice. [14]
15. But now see whither the progress of my story has brought me; we come upon the name of our friend Evagrius. [15] So great have his exertions been in the cause of Christ that, were I to suppose it possible adequately to describe them, I should only show my own folly; and were I minded deliberately to pass them by, I still could not prevent my voice from breaking out into cries of joy. Who can fittingly praise the vigilance which enabled him to bury, if I may so say, before his death Auxentius [16] of Milan, that curse brooding over the church? Or who can sufficiently extol the discretion with which he rescued the Roman bishop [17] from the toils of the net in which he was fairly entangled, and showed him the means at once of overcoming his opponents and of sparing them in their discomfiture? But
Such topics I must leave to other bards,
Shut out by envious straits of time and space. [18]
I am satisfied now to record the conclusion of my tale. Evagrius seeks a special audience of the Emperor; [19] importunes him with his entreaties, wins his favor by his services, and finally gains his cause through his earnestness. The Emperor restored to liberty the woman whom God had restored to life. __________________________________________________________________
[2] Virg. A. iii. 193.
[3] I.e. the governor of the province.
[4] Ps. vii. 9.
[5] Text corrupt.
[6] Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego.
[7] Song of the Three Holy Children.
[8] Dan. vi.
[9] Susannah 45; the youth spoken of is Daniel.
[10] Virg. A. xii. 611.
[11] Ps. cxviii. 6.
[12] Cf. Eccles. xii. 7.
[13] Lictor.
[14] An allusion to the well-known proverb, summum jus, summa injuria.
[15] A presbyter of Antioch and bishop, 388 a.d. He is mentioned again in Letters III., IV., V., XV. See Jerome De Vir. iii. 125.
[16] The predecessor of Ambrose and an Arian. He was still living when Jerome wrote, but died 374.
[17] Damasus, who having successfully made good his claim to the papacy, in 369 condemned Auxentius in a council held at Rome.
[18] Virg. G. iv. 147, 148.
[19] Valentinian I. __________________________________________________________________
Letter II. To Theodosius and the Rest of the Anchorites.
Written from Antioch, 374 a.d., while Jerome was still in doubt as to his future course. Theodosius appears to have been the head of the solitaries in the Syrian Desert.
How I long to be a member of your company, and with uplifting of all my powers to embrace your admirable community! Though, indeed, these poor eyes are not worthy to look upon it. Oh! that I could behold the desert, lovelier to me than any city! Oh! that I could see those lonely spots made into a paradise by the saints that throng them! But since my sins prevent me from thrusting into your blessed company a head laden with every transgression, I adjure you (and I know that you can do it) by your prayers to deliver me from the darkness of this world. I spoke of this when I was with you, and now in writing to you I repeat anew the same request; for all the energy of my mind is devoted to this one object. It rests with you to give effect to my resolve. I have the will but not the power; this last can only come in answer to your prayers. For my part, I am like a sick sheep astray from the flock. Unless the good Shepherd shall place me on his shoulders and carry me back to the fold, [20] my steps will totter, and in the very effort of rising I shall find my feet give way. I am the prodigal son [21] who although I have squandered all the portion entrusted to me by my father, have not yet bowed the knee in submission to him; not yet have I commenced to put away from me the allurements of my former excesses. And because it is only a little while since I have begun not so much to abandon my vices as to desire to abandon them, the devil now ensnares me in new toils, he puts new stumbling-blocks in my path, he encompasses me on every side.
The seas around, and all around the main. [22]
I find myself in mid-ocean, unwilling to retreat and unable to advance. It only remains that your prayers should win for me the gale of the Holy Spirit to waft me to the haven upon the desired shore. __________________________________________________________________
[20] Luke xv. 3-5.
[21] Luke xv. 11-32.
[22] Virg. A. v. 9. __________________________________________________________________
Letter III. To Rufinus the Monk. [23]
Written from Antioch, 374 a.d., to Rufinus in Egypt. Jerome narrates his travels and the events which have taken place since his arrival in Syria, particularly the deaths of Innocent and Hylas (§3). He also describes the life of Bonosus, who was now a hermit on an island in the Adriatic (§4). The main object of the letter is to induce Rufinus to come to Syria.
1. That God gives more than we ask Him for, [24] and that He often grants us things which "eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither have they entered into the heart of man," [25] I knew indeed before from the mystic declaration of the sacred volumes; but now, dearest Rufinus, I have had proof of it in my own case. For I who fancied it too bold a wish to be allowed by an exchange of letters to counterfeit to myself your presence in the flesh, hear that you are penetrating the remotest parts of Egypt, visiting the monks and going round God's family upon earth. Oh, if only the Lord Jesus Christ would suddenly transport me to you as Philip was transported to the eunuch, [26] and Habakkuk to Daniel, [27] with what a close embrace would I clasp your neck, how fondly would I press kisses upon that mouth which has so often joined with me of old in error or in wisdom. But as I am unworthy (not that you should so come to me but) that I should so come to you, and because my poor body, weak even when well, has been shattered by frequent illnesses; I send this letter to meet you instead of coming myself, in the hope that it may bring you hither to me caught in the meshes of love's net.
2. My first joy at such unexpected good tidings was due to our brother, Heliodorus. I desired to be sure of it, but did not dare to feel sure, especially as he told me that he had only heard it from some one else, and as the strangeness of the news impaired the credit of the story. Once more my wishes hovered in uncertainty and my mind wavered, till an Alexandrian monk who had some time previously been sent over by the dutiful zeal of the people to the Egyptian confessors (in will already martyrs [28] ), impelled me by his presence to believe the tidings. Even then, I must admit I still hesitated. For on the one hand he knew nothing either of your name or country: yet on the other what he said seemed likely to be true, agreeing as it did with the hint which had already reached me. At last the truth broke upon me in all its fulness, for a constant stream of persons passing through brought the report: "Rufinus is at Nitria, and has reached the abode of the blessed Macarius." [29] At this point I cast away all that restrained my belief, and then first really grieved to find myself ill. Had it not been that my wasted and enfeebled frame fettered my movements, neither the summer heat nor the dangerous voyage should have had power to retard the rapid steps of affection. Believe me, brother, I look forward to seeing you more than the storm-tossed mariner looks for his haven, more than the thirsty fields long for the showers, more than the anxious mother sitting on the curving shore expects her son.
3. After that sudden whirlwind [30] dragged me from your side, severing with its impious wrench the bonds of affection in which we were knit together,
The dark blue raincloud lowered o'er my head:
On all sides were the seas, on all the sky. [31]
I wandered about, uncertain where to go. Thrace, Pontus, Bithynia, the whole of Galatia and Cappadocia, Cilicia also with its burning heat, one after another shattered my energies. At last Syria presented itself to me as a most secure harbor to a shipwrecked man. Here, after undergoing every possible kind of sickness, I lost one of my two eyes; for Innocent, [32] the half of my soul, [33] was taken away from me by a sudden attack of fever. The one eye which I now enjoy, and which is all in all to me, is our Evagrius, [34] upon whom I with my constant infirmities have come as an additional burden. We had with us also Hylas, [35] the servant of the holy Melanium, [36] who by his stainless conduct had wiped out the taint of his previous servitude. His death opened afresh the wound which had not yet healed. But as the apostle's words forbid us to mourn for those who sleep, [37] and as my excess of grief has been tempered by the joyful news that has since come to me, I recount this last, that, if you have not heard it, you may learn it; and that, if you know it already, you may rejoice over it with me.
4. Bonosus, [38] your friend, or, to speak more truly, mine as well as yours, is now climbing the ladder foreshown in Jacob's dream. [39] He is bearing his cross, neither taking thought for the morrow [40] nor looking back at what he has left. [41] He is sowing in tears that he may reap in joy. [42] As Moses in a type so he in reality is lifting up the serpent in the wilderness. [43] This is a true story, and it may well put to shame the lying marvels described by Greek and Roman pens. For here you have a youth educated with us in the refining accomplishments of the world, with abundance of wealth, and in rank inferior to none of his associates; yet he forsakes his mother, his sisters, and his dearly loved brother, and settles like a new tiller of Eden on a dangerous island, with the sea roaring round its reefs; while its rough crags, bare rocks, and desolate aspect make it more terrible still. No peasant or monk is to be found there. Even the little Onesimus [44] you know of, in whose kisses he used to rejoice as in those of a brother, in this tremendous solitude no longer remains at his side. Alone upon the island--or rather not alone, for Christ is with him--he sees the glory of God, which even the apostles saw not save in the desert. He beholds, it is true, no embattled towns, but he has enrolled his name in the new city. [45] Garments of sackcloth disfigure his limbs, yet so clad he will be the sooner caught up to meet Christ in the clouds. [46] No watercourse pleasant to the view supplies his wants, but from the Lord's side he drinks the water of life. [47] Place all this before your eyes, dear friend, and with all the faculties of your mind picture to yourself the scene. When you realize the effort of the fighter then you will be able to praise his victory. Round the entire island roars the frenzied sea, while the beetling crags along its winding shores resound as the billows beat against them. No grass makes the ground green; there are no shady copses and no fertile fields. Precipitous cliffs surround his dreadful abode as if it were a prison. But he, careless, fearless, and armed from head to foot with the apostle's armor, [48] now listens to God by reading the Scriptures, now speaks to God as he prays to the Lord; and it may be that, while he lingers in the island, he sees some vision such as that once seen by John. [49]
5. What snares, think you, is the devil now weaving? What stratagems is he preparing? Perchance, mindful of his old trick, [50] he will try to tempt Bonosus with hunger. But he has been answered already: "Man shall not live by bread alone." [51] Perchance he will lay before him wealth and fame. But it shall be said to him: "They that desire to be rich fall into a trap [52] and temptations," [53] and "For me all glorying is in Christ." [54] He will come, it may be, when the limbs are weary with fasting, and rack them with the pangs of disease; but the cry of the apostle will repel him: "When I am weak, then am I strong," and "My strength is made perfect in weakness." [55] He will hold out threats of death; but the reply will be: "I desire to depart and to be with Christ." [56] He will brandish his fiery darts, but they will be received on the shield of faith. [57] In a word, Satan will assail him, but Christ will defend. Thanks be to Thee, Lord Jesus, that in Thy day I have one able to pray to Thee for me. To Thee all hearts are open, Thou searchest the secrets of the heart, [58] Thou seest the prophet shut up in the fish's belly in the midst of the sea. [59] Thou knowest then how he and I grew up together from tender infancy to vigorous manhood, how we were fostered in the bosoms of the same nurses, and carried in the arms of the same bearers; and how after studying together at Rome we lodged in the same house and shared the same food by the half savage banks of the Rhine. Thou knowest, too, that it was I who first began to seek to serve Thee. Remember, I beseech Thee, that this warrior of Thine was once a raw recruit with me. I have before me the declaration of Thy majesty: "Whosoever shall teach and not do shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven." [60] May he enjoy the crown of virtue, and in return for his daily martyrdoms may he follow the Lamb robed in white raiment! [61] For "in my Father's house are many mansions," [62] and "one star differeth from another star in glory." [63] Give me strength to raise my head to a level with the saints' heels! [64] I willed, but he performed. Do Thou therefore pardon me that I failed to keep my resolve, and reward him with the guerdon of his deserts.
I may perhaps have been tedious, and have said more than the short compass of a letter usually allows; but this, I find, is always the case with me when I have to say anything in praise of our dear Bonosus.
6. However, to return to the point from which I set out, I beseech you do not let me pass wholly out of sight and out of mind. A friend is long sought, hardly found, and with difficulty kept. Let those who will, allow gold to dazzle them and be borne along in splendor, their very baggage glittering with gold and silver. Love is not to be purchased, and affection has no price. The friendship which can cease has never been real. Farewell in Christ. __________________________________________________________________
[23] In Jerome's day this term included all--whether hermits or coenobites--who forsook the world and embraced an ascetic life.
[24] Cf. Eph. iii. 20.
[25] 1 Cor. ii. 9.
[26] Acts viii. 26-30.
[27] Bel 33-36.
[28] Priests, monks, and others who, because they would not declare themselves Arians, were banished by order of Valens to Heliopolis in Phenicia.
[29] There were two hermits of this name in Egypt, and it is not certain which is meant. One of them was a disciple of Antony.
[30] The ascetic community at Aquileia, of which Jerome and Rufinus were the leaders, had been broken up, perhaps through the efforts of Lupicinus, the bishop of Stridon.
[31] Virg. A. iii. 193, 194: v. 9.
[32] See Letter I.
[33] Hor. C. i. 3, 8.
[34] See Letter I. § 15.
[35] A freedman of Melanium.
[36] A young Roman widow who had given up the world that she might adopt the ascetic life. She accompanied Rufinus to the East and settled with him on the Mount of Olives. She is mentioned again in Letters IV., XXXIX., XLV., and others.
[37] 1 Thess. iv. 13.
[38] Jerome's foster-brother who had accompanied him on his first visit to Rome. He was now living as a hermit on a small island in the neighborhood of Aquileia. See Letter VII. § 3.
[39] Gen. xxviii. 12.
[40] Matt. vi. 34.
[41] Luke ix. 62.
[42] Ps. cxxvi. 5.
[43] Nu. xxi. 9.
[44] Of this child nothing is known.
[45] I.e. the new Jerusalem. Rev. xxi. 2; Is. iv. 3.
[46] 1 Thess. iv. 17.
[47] Joh. iv. 14; xix. 34.
[48] Eph. vi. 13-17.
[49] Rev. i. 9, 10.
[50] Gen. iii. 1-6; Matt. iv. 1-4.
[51] Matt. iv. 4.
[52] Literally "mousetrap." This variant is peculiar to Cyprian and Jerome.
[53] 1 Tim. vi. 9.
[54] 1 Cor. i. 31.
[55] 2 Cor. xii. 10, 9.
[56] Philip. i. 23.
[57] Eph. vi. 16.
[58] Acts i. 24; Rev. ii. 23.
[59] Jon. ii. 1, 2.
[60] Matt. v. 19.
[61] Rev. xiv. 4.
[62] John xiv. 2.
[63] 1 Cor. xv. 41.
[64] Quoted from Tert. de C. F. ii. 7. __________________________________________________________________
Letter IV. To Florentius.
Sent to Florentius along with the preceding letter, which Jerome requests him to deliver to Rufinus. This Florentius was a rich Italian who had retired to Jerusalem to pursue the monastic life. Jerome subsequently speaks of him as "a distinguished monk so pitiful to the needy that he was generally known as the father of the poor." (Chron. ad a.d. 381.)
1. How much your name and sanctity are on the lips of the most different peoples you may gather from the fact that I commence to love you before I know you. For as, according to the apostle, "Some men's sins are evident going before unto judgment," [65] so contrariwise the report of your charity is so widespread that it is considered not so much praiseworthy to love you as criminal to refuse to do so. I pass over the countless instances in which you have supported Christ, [66] fed, clothed, and visited Him. The aid you rendered to our brother Heliodorus [67] in his need may well loose the utterance of the dumb. With what gratitude, with what commendation, does he speak of the kindness with which you smoothed a pilgrim's path. I am, it is true, the most sluggish of men, consumed by an unendurable sickness; yet keen affection and desire have winged my feet, and I have come forward to salute and embrace you. I wish you every good thing, and pray that the Lord may establish our nascent friendship.
2. Our brother, Rufinus, is said to have come from Egypt to Jerusalem with the devout lady, Melanium. He is inseparably bound to me in brotherly love; and I beg you to oblige me by delivering to him the annexed letter. You must not, however, judge of me by the virtues that you find in him. For in him you will see the clearest tokens of holiness, whilst I am but dust and vile dirt, and even now, while still living, nothing but ashes. It is enough for me if my weak eyes can bear the brightness of his excellence. He has but now washed himself [68] and is clean, yea, is made white as snow; [69] whilst I, stained with every sin, wait day and night with trembling to pay the uttermost farthing. [70] But since "the Lord looseth the prisoners," [71] and resteth upon him who is of a contrite spirit, and that trembleth at His words, [72] perchance he may say even to me who lie in the grave of sin: "Jerome, come forth." [73]
The reverend presbyter, Evagrius, warmly salutes you. We both with united respect salute the brother, Martinianus. [74] I desire much to see him, but I am impeded by the chain of sickness. Farewell in Christ. __________________________________________________________________
[65] 1 Tim. v. 24, R.V.
[66] Matt. xxv. 34-40.
[67] See introduction to Letter XIV.
[68] Rufinus had been baptized at Aquileia about three years previously (371 a.d.).
[69] Cf. Ps. li. 7.
[70] Matt. v. 26.
[71] Ps. cxlvi. 7.
[72] Isa. lxvi. 2.
[73] Joh. xi. 43.
[74] Acc. to Vallarsi a hermit, who at this time lived near Cæsarea. __________________________________________________________________
Letter V. To Florentius.
Written a few months after the preceding (about the end of 374 a.d.) from the Syrian Desert. After dilating on his friendship for Florentius, and making a passing allusion to Rufinus, Jerome mentions certain books, copies of which he desires to be sent to him. He also speaks of a runaway slave about whom Florentius had written to him.
1. Your letter, dear friend, finds me dwelling in that quarter of the desert which is nearest to Syria and the Saracens. And the reading of it rekindles in my mind so keen a desire to set out for Jerusalem that I am almost ready to violate my monastic vow in order to gratify my affection. Wishing to do the best I can, as I cannot come in person I send you a letter instead; and thus, though absent in the body, I come to you in love and in spirit. [75] For my earnest prayer is that our infant friendship, firmly cemented as it is in Christ, may never be rent asunder by time or distance. We ought rather to strengthen the bond by an interchange of letters. Let these pass between us, meet each other on the way, and converse with us. Affection will not lose much if it keeps up an intercourse of this kind.
2. You write that our brother, Rufinus, has not yet come to you. Even if he does come it will do little to satisfy my longing, for I shall not now be able to see him. He is too far away to come hither, and the conditions of the lonely life that I have adopted forbid me to go to him. For I am no longer free to follow my own wishes. I entreat you, therefore, to ask him to allow you to have the commentaries of the reverend Rhetitius, [76] bishop of Augustodunum, [77] copied, in which he has so eloquently explained the Song of Songs. A countryman of the aforesaid brother Rufinus, the old man Paul, [78] writes that Rufinus has his copy of Tertullian, and urgently requests that this may be returned. Next I have to ask you to get written on paper by a copyist certain books which the subjoined list [79] will show you that I do not possess. I beg also that you will send me the explanation of the Psalms of David, and the copious work on Synods of the reverend Hilary, [80] which I copied for him [81] at Trêves with my own hand. Such books, you know, must be the food of the Christian soul if it is to meditate in the law of the Lord day and night. [82]
Others you welcome beneath your roof, you cherish and comfort, you help out of your own purse; but so far as I am concerned, you have given me everything when once you have granted my request. And since, through the Lord's bounty, I am rich in volumes of the sacred library, [83] you may command me in turn. I will send you what you please; and do not suppose that an order from you will give me trouble. I have pupils devoted to the art of copying. Nor do I merely promise a favor because I am asking one. Our brother, Heliodorus, [84] tells me that there are many parts of the Scriptures which you seek and cannot find. But even if you have them all, affection is sure to assert its rights and to seek for itself more than it already has.
3. As regards the present master of your slave--of whom you have done me the honor to write--I have no doubt but that he is his kidnapper. While I was still at Antioch the presbyter, Evagrius, often reproved him in my presence. To whom he made this answer: "I have nothing to fear." He declares that his master has dismissed him. If you both want him, he is here; send him whither you will. I think I am not wrong in refusing to allow a runaway to stray farther. Here in the wilderness I cannot myself execute your orders; and therefore I have asked my dear friend Evagrius to push the affair vigorously, both for your sake and for mine. I desire your welfare in Christ. __________________________________________________________________
[75] Cf. Col. ii. 5.
[76] A man of some note, as he was one of the commissioners appointed by Constantine in 313 a.d. to settle the points of issue between the Catholics and the Donatists. Jerome criticises his commentary on the Song of Songs in Letter XXXVII.
[77] Autun.
[78] See the introd. to Letter X.
[79] This list has perished.
[80] I.e. Hilary of Poitiers.
[81] Rufinus.
[82] Ps. i. 2.
[83] I.e. the Scriptures.
[84] See the introd. to Letter XIV. __________________________________________________________________
Letter VI. To Julian, a Deacon of Antioch.
This letter, written in 374 a.d., is chiefly interesting for its mention of Jerome's sister. It would seem that she had fallen into sin and had been restored to a life of virtue by the deacon, Julian. Jerome speaks of her again in the next letter (§4).
It is an old saying, "Liars are disbelieved even when they speak the truth." [85] And from the way in which you reproach me for not having written, I perceive that this has been my lot with you. Shall I say, "I wrote often, but the bearers of my letters were negligent"? You will reply, "Your excuse is the old one of all who fail to write." Shall I say, "I could not find any one to take my letters"? You will say that numbers of persons have gone from my part of the world to yours. Shall I contend that I have actually given them letters? They not having delivered them, will deny that they have received them. Moreover, so great a distance separates us that it will be hard to come at the truth. What shall I do then? Though really not to blame, I ask your forgiveness, for I think it better to fall back and make overtures for peace than to keep my ground and offer battle. The truth is that constant sickness of body and vexation of mind have so weakened me that with death so close at hand I have not been as collected as usual. And lest you should account this plea a false one, now that I have stated my case, I shall, like a pleader, call witnesses to prove it. Our reverend brother, Heliodorus, has been here; but in spite of his wish to dwell in the desert with me, he has been frightened away by my crimes. But my present wordiness will atone for my past remissness; for, as Horace says in his satire: [86]
All singers have one fault among their friends:
They never sing when asked, unasked they never cease.
Henceforth I shall overwhelm you with such bundles of letters that you will take the opposite line and beg me not to write.
I rejoice that my sister [87] --to you a daughter in Christ--remains steadfast in her purpose, a piece of news which I owe in the first instance to you. For here where I now am I am ignorant not only as to what goes on in my native land, but even as to its continued existence. Even though the Iberian viper [88] shall rend me with his baneful fangs, I will not fear men's judgment, seeing that I shall have God to judge me. As one puts it:
Shatter the world to fragments if you will:
'Twill fall upon a head which knows not fear. [89]
Bear in mind, then, I pray you, the apostle's precept [90] that we should make our work abiding; prepare for yourself a reward from the Lord in my sister's salvation; and by frequent letters increase my joy in that glory in Christ which we share together. __________________________________________________________________
[85] Aristotle is the author of this remark.
[86] Hor. S. i. 3, 1-3.
[87] Mentioned again in Letter VII., § 4.
[88] The person meant is uncertain. Probably it was Lupicinus, bishop of Stridon, for whom see the next letter.
[89] Horace, C. iii. 3, 7, 8.
[90] 1 Cor. iii. 14. __________________________________________________________________
Letter VII. To Chromatius, Jovinus, and Eusebius. [91]
This letter (written like the preceding in 374 a.d.) is addressed by Jerome to three of his former companions in the religious life. It commends Bonosus (§3), asks guidance for the writer's sister (§4), and attacks the conduct of Lupicinus, Bishop of Stridon (§5).
1. Those whom mutual affection has joined together, a written page ought not to sunder. I must not, therefore, distribute my words some to one and some to another. For so strong is the love that binds you together that affection unites all three of you in a bond no less close than that which naturally connects two of your number. [92] Indeed, if the conditions of writing would only admit of it, I should amalgamate your names and express them under a single symbol. The very letter which I have received from you challenges me in each of you to see all three, and in all three to recognize each. When the reverend Evagrius transmitted it to me in the corner of the desert which stretches between the Syrians and the Saracens, my joy was intense. It wholly surpassed the rejoicings felt at Rome when the defeat of Cannæ was retrieved, and Marcellus at Nola cut to pieces the forces of Hannibal. Evagrius frequently comes to see me, and cherishes me in Christ as his own bowels. [93] Yet as he is separated from me by a long distance, his departure has generally left me as much regret as his arrival has brought me joy.
2. I converse with your letter, I embrace it, it talks to me; it alone of those here speaks Latin. For hereabout you must either learn a barbarous jargon or else hold your tongue. As often as the lines--traced in a well-known hand--bring back to me the faces which I hold so dear, either I am no longer here, or else you are here with me. If you will credit the sincerity of affection, I seem to see you all as I write this.
Now at the outset I should like to ask you one petulant question. Why is it that, when we are separated by so great an interval of land and sea, you have sent me so short a letter? Is it that I have deserved no better treatment, not having first written to you? I cannot believe that paper can have failed you while Egypt continues to supply its wares. Even if a Ptolemy had closed the seas, King Attalus would still have sent you parchments from Pergamum, and so by his skins you could have made up for the want of paper. The very name parchment is derived from a historical incident of the kind which occurred generations ago. [94] What then? Am I to suppose the messenger to have been in haste? No matter how long a letter may be, it can be written in the course of a night. Or had you some business to attend to which prevented you from writing? No claim is prior to that of affection. Two suppositions remain, either that you felt disinclined to write or else that I did not deserve a letter. Of the two I prefer to charge you with sloth than to condemn myself as undeserving. For it is easier to mend neglect than to quicken love.
3. You tell me that Bonosus, like a true son of the Fish, has taken to the water. [95] As for me who am still foul with my old stains, like the basilisk and the scorpion I haunt the dry places. [96] Bonosus has his heel already on the serpent's head, whilst I am still as food to the same serpent which by divine appointment devours the earth. [97] He can scale already that ladder of which the psalms of degrees [98] are a type; whilst I, still weeping on its first step, hardly know whether I shall ever be able to say: "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help." [99] Amid the threatening billows of the world he is sitting in the safe shelter of his island, [100] that is, of the church's pale, and it may be that even now, like John, he is being called to eat God's book; [101] whilst I, still lying in the sepulchre of my sins and bound with the chains of my iniquities, wait for the Lord's command in the Gospel: "Jerome, come forth." [102] But Bonosus has done more than this. Like the prophet [103] he has carried his girdle across the Euphrates (for all the devil's strength is in the loins [104] ), and has hidden it there in a hole of the rock. Then, afterwards finding it rent, he has sung: "O Lord, thou hast possessed my reins. [105] Thou hast broken my bonds in sunder. I will offer to thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving." [106] But as for me, Nebuchadnezzar has brought me in chains to Babylon, to the babel that is of a distracted mind. There he has laid upon me the yoke of captivity; there inserting in my nostrils a ring of iron, [107] he has commanded me to sing one of the songs of Zion. To whom I have said, "The Lord looseth the prisoners; the Lord openeth the eyes of the blind." [108] To complete my contrast in a single sentence, whilst I pray for mercy Bonosus looks for a crown.
4. My sister's conversion is the fruit of the efforts of the saintly Julian. He has planted, it is for you to water, and the Lord will give the increase. [109] Jesus Christ has given her to me to console me for the wound which the devil has inflicted on her. He has restored her from death to life. But in the words of the pagan poet, for her
There is no safety that I do not fear. [110]
You know yourselves how slippery is the path of youth--a path on which I have myself fallen, [111] and which you are now traversing not without fear. She, as she enters upon it, must have the advice and the encouragement of all, she must be aided by frequent letters from you, my reverend brothers. And--for "charity endureth all things," [112] --I beg you to get from Pope [113] Valerian [114] a letter to confirm her resolution. A girl's courage, as you know, is strengthened when she realizes that persons in high place are interested in her.
5. The fact is that my native land is a prey to barbarism, that in it men's only God is their belly, [115] that they live only for the present, and that the richer a man is the holier he is held to be. Moreover, to use a well-worn proverb, the dish has a cover worthy of it; for Lupicinus is their priest. [116] Like lips like lettuce, as the saying goes--the only one, as Lucilius tells us, [117] at which Crassus ever laughed--the reference being to a donkey eating thistles. What I mean is that an unstable pilot steers a leaking ship, and that the blind is leading the blind straight to the pit. The ruler is like the ruled.
6. I salute your mother and mine with the respect which, as you know, I feel towards her. Associated with you as she is in a holy life, she has the start of you, her holy children, in that she is your mother. Her womb may thus be truly called golden. With her I salute your sisters, who ought all to be welcomed wherever they go, for they have triumphed over their sex and the world, and await the Bridegroom's coming, [118] their lamps replenished with oil. O happy the house which is a home of a widowed Anna, of virgins that are prophetesses, and of twin Samuels bred in the Temple! [119] Fortunate the roof which shelters the martyr-mother of the Maccabees, with her sons around her, each and all wearing the martyr's crown! [120] For although you confess Christ every day by keeping His commandments, yet to this private glory you have added the public one of an open confession; for it was through you that the poison of the Arian heresy was formerly banished from your city.
You are surprised perhaps at my thus making a fresh beginning quite at the close of my letter. But what am I to do? I cannot refuse expression to my feelings. The brief limits of a letter compel me to be silent; my affection for you urges me to speak. I write in haste, my language is confused and ill-arranged; but love knows nothing of order. __________________________________________________________________
[91] Jovinus was archdeacon of Aquileia. All three became bishops--Chromatius of Aquileia, the others of unknown sees.
[92] Chromatius and Eusebius were brothers.
[93] Philem. 12.
[94] See Pliny, H. N. xiii. 21.
[95] The Greek word IChThUS represented to the early Christians the sentence 'Iesous Christos Theou Uos Soter. Hence the fish became a favorite emblem of Christ. Tertullian connects the symbol with the water of baptism, saying: "We little fishes are born by our Fish, Jesus Christ, in water and can thrive only by continuing in the water." The allusion in the text is to the baptism of Bonosus. See Schaff, "Ante-Nicene Christianity," p. 279.
[96] Deut. viii. 15.
[97] Gen. iii. 14.
[98] Viz., Psa. cxx.-cxxxiv.
[99] Ps. cxxi. 1.
[100] See Letter III.
[101] Rev. x. 9, 10.
[102] John xi. 43.
[103] Jer. xiii. 4, 5.
[104] Job xl. 16 (said of Behemoth); cf. Letter XXII. § 11.
[105] Ps. cxxxix. 13.
[106] Ps. cxvi. 14, 15, P.B.V.
[107] Cf. 2 Kings xix. 28.
[108] Psa. cxxxvii. 3; cxlvi. 7, 8.
[109] 1 Cor. iii. 6.
[110] Virg. A. iv. 298.
[111] Jerome again refers to his own frailty in Letters XIV. § 6, XVIII. § 11, and XLVIII. § 20.
[112] 1 Cor. xiii. 7.
[113] Papa. The word "pope" was at this time used as a name of respect ("father in God") for bishops generally. Only by degrees did it come to be restricted to the bishop of Rome. Similarly the word "imperator," originally applied to any Roman general, came to be used of the Emperor alone.
[114] Bishop of Aquileia.
[115] Phi. iii. 19.
[116] Sacerdos. In the letters this word generally denotes a bishop. Lupicinus held the see of Stridon.
[117] Cic. de Fin. v. 30.
[118] Matt. xxv. 4.
[119] Luke ii. 36; Acts xxi. 9; 1 Sam. ii. 18.
[120] 2 Macc. vii. __________________________________________________________________
Letter VIII. To Niceas, Sub-Deacon of Aquileia.
Niceas, the sub-deacon, had accompanied Jerome to the East but had now returned home. In after-years he became bishop of Aquileia in succession to Chromatius. The date of the letter is 374 a.d.
The comic poet Turpilius [121] says of the exchange of letters that it alone makes the absent present. The remark, though occurring in a work of fiction, is not untrue. For what more real presence--if I may so speak--can there be between absent friends than speaking to those whom they love in letters, and in letters hearing their reply? Even those Italian savages, the Cascans of Ennius, who--as Cicero tells us in his books on rhetoric--hunted their food like beasts of prey, were wont, before paper and parchment came into use, to exchange letters written on tablets of wood roughly planed, or on strips of bark torn from the trees. For this reason men called letter-carriers tablet-bearers, [122] and letter-writers bark-users, [123] because they used the bark of trees. How much more then are we, who live in a civilized age, bound not to omit a social duty performed by men who lived in a state of gross savagery, and were in some respects entirely ignorant of the refinements of life. The saintly Chromatius, look you, and the reverend Eusebius, brothers as much by compatibility of disposition as by the ties of nature, have challenged me to diligence by the letters which they have showered upon me. You, however, who have but just left me, have not merely unknit our new-made friendship; you have torn it asunder--a process which Lælius, in Cicero's treatise, [124] wisely forbids. Can it be that the East is so hateful to you that you dread the thought of even your letters coming hither? Wake up, wake up, arouse yourself from sleep, give to affection at least one sheet of paper. Amid the pleasures of life at home sometimes heave a sigh over the journeys which we have made together. If you love me, write in answer to my prayer. If you are angry with me, though angry still write. I find my longing soul much comforted when I receive a letter from a friend, even though that friend be out of temper with me. __________________________________________________________________
[121] Turpilius, who appears to have been a dramatist of some note, died in 101 b.c. He is mentioned by Jerome in his edition of the Eusebian Chronicle.
[122] Tabellarii, from tabella, a small tablet.
[123] Librarii, from liber, bark.
[124] Cic. Lælius, 76. __________________________________________________________________
Letter IX. To Chrysogonus, a Monk of Aquileia.
A bantering letter to an indifferent correspondent. Of the same date as the preceding.
Heliodorus, [125] who is so dear to us both, and who loves you with an affection no less deep than my own, may have given you a faithful account of my feelings towards you; how your name is always on my lips, and how in every conversation which I have with him I begin by recalling my pleasant intercourse with you, and go on to marvel at your lowliness, to extol your virtue, and to proclaim your holy love.
Lynxes, they say, when they look behind them, forget what they have just seen, and lose all thought of what their eyes have ceased to behold. And so it seems to be with you. For so entirely have you forgotten our joint attachment that you have not merely blurred but erased the writing of that epistle which, as the apostle tells us, [126] is written in the hearts of Christians. The creatures that I have mentioned lurk on branches of leafy trees and pounce on fleet roes or frightened stags. In vain their victims fly, for they carry their tormentors with them, and these rend their flesh as they run. Lynxes, however, only hunt when an empty belly makes their mouths dry. When they have satisfied their thirst for blood, and have filled their stomachs with food, satiety induces forgetfulness, and they bestow no thought on future prey till hunger recalls them to a sense of their need.
Now in your case it cannot be that you have already had enough of me. Why then do you bring to a premature close a friendship which is but just begun? Why do you let slip what you have hardly as yet fully grasped? But as such remissness as yours is never at a loss for an excuse, you will perhaps declare that you had nothing to write. Had this been so, you should still have written to inform me of the fact. __________________________________________________________________
[125] See introd. to Letter XIV.
[126] 2 Cor. iii. 2. __________________________________________________________________
Letter X. To Paul, an Old Man of Concordia.
Jerome writes to Paul of Concordia, a centenarian (§2), and the owner of a good theological library (§3), to lend him some commentaries. In return he sends him his life (newly written) of Paul the hermit. [127] The date of the letter is 374 a.d.
1. The shortness of man's life is the punishment for man's sin; and the fact that even on the very threshold of the light death constantly overtakes the new-born child proves that the times are continually sinking into deeper depravity. For when the first tiller of paradise had been entangled by the serpent in his snaky coils, and had been forced in consequence to migrate earthwards, although his deathless state was changed for a mortal one, yet the sentence [128] of man's curse was put off for nine hundred years, or even more, a period so long that it may be called a second immortality. Afterwards sin gradually grew more and more virulent, till the ungodliness of the giants [129] brought in its train the shipwreck of the whole world. Then when the world had been cleansed by the baptism--if I may so call it--of the deluge, human life was contracted to a short span. Yet even this we have almost altogether wasted, so continually do our iniquities fight against the divine purposes. For how few there are, either who go beyond their hundredth year, or who, going beyond it, do not regret that they have done so; according to that which the Scripture witnesses in the book of Psalms: "the days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labor and sorrow." [130]
2. Why, say you, these opening reflections so remote and so far fetched that one might use against them the Horatian witticism:
Back to the eggs which Leda laid for Zeus,
The bard is fain to trace the war of Troy? [131]
Simply that I may describe in fitting terms your great age and hoary head as white as Christ's. [132] For see, the hundredth circling year is already passing over you, and yet, always keeping the commandments of the Lord, amid the circumstances of your present life you think over the blessedness of that which is to come. Your eyes are bright and keen, your steps steady, your hearing good, your teeth are white, your voice musical, your flesh firm and full of sap; your ruddy cheeks belie your white hairs, your strength is not that of your age. Advancing years have not, as we too often see them do, impaired the tenacity of your memory; the coldness of your blood has not blunted an intellect at once warm and wary. [133] Your face is not wrinkled nor your brow furrowed. Lastly, no tremors palsy your hand or cause it to travel in crooked pathways over the wax on which you write. The Lord shows us in you the bloom of the resurrection that is to be ours; so that whereas in others who die by inches whilst yet living, we recognize the results of sin, in your case we ascribe it to righteousness that you still simulate youth at an age to which it is foreign. And although we see the like haleness of body in many even of those who are sinners, in their case it is a grant of the devil to lead them into sin, whilst in yours it is a gift of God to make you rejoice.
3. Tully in his brilliant speech on behalf of Flaccus [134] describes the learning of the Greeks as "innate frivolity and accomplished vanity."
Certainly their ablest literary men used to receive money for pronouncing eulogies upon their kings or princes. Following their example, I set a price upon my praise. Nor must you suppose my demand a small one. You are asked to give me the pearl of the Gospel, [135] "the words of the Lord," "pure words, even as the silver which from the earth is tried, and purified seven times in the fire," [136] I mean the commentaries of Fortunatian [137] and--for its account of the persecutors--the History of Aurelius Victor, [138] and with these the Letters of Novatian; [139] so that, learning the poison set forth by this schismatic, we may the more gladly drink of the antidote supplied by the holy martyr Cyprian. In the mean time I have sent to you, that is to say, to Paul the aged, a Paul that is older still. [140] I have taken great pains to bring my language down to the level of the simpler sort. But, somehow or other, though you fill it with water, the jar retains the odor which it acquired when first used. [141] If my little gift should please you, I have others also in store which (if the Holy Spirit shall breathe favorably), shall sail across the sea to you with all kinds of eastern merchandise. __________________________________________________________________
[127] See the Life of Paul in this volume.
[128] Elogium.
[129] Gen. vi. 4.
[130] Ps. xc. 10.
[131] Hor. A. P. 147. Zeus having visited Leda in the form of a swan, she produced two eggs, from one of which came Castor and Pollux, and from the other Helen, who was the cause of the Trojan war.
[132] Rev. i. 14.
[133] A play on words: callidus, "wary," is indistinguishable in sound from calidus, "warm."
[134] The words quoted do not occur in the extant portion of Cicero's speech.
[135] Matt. xiii. 46.
[136] Ps. xii. 7, P. B. V.
[137] For some account of this writer see Jerome, De V. iii. c. xcvii.
[138] A Roman annalist some of whose works are still extant. He was contemporary with but probably older than Jerome.
[139] A puritan of the third century who seceded from the Roman church because of the laxity of its discipline.
[140] I.e. the life of Paul the Hermit, translated in this vol.
[141] Hor. Ep. I. ii. 69; cf. T. Moore: "You may break, you may shatter the vase if you will: The scent of the roses will hang round it still." __________________________________________________________________
Letter XI. To the Virgins of Æmona.
Æmona was a Roman colony not far from Stridon, Jerome's birthplace. The virgins to whom the note is addressed had omitted to answer his letters, and he now writes to upbraid them for their remissness. The date of the letter is 374 a.d.
This scanty sheet of paper shows in what a wilderness I live, and because of it I have to say much in few words. For, desirous though I am to speak to you more fully, this miserable scrap compels me to leave much unsaid. Still ingenuity makes up for lack of means, and by writing small I can say a great deal. Observe, I beseech you, how I love you, even in the midst of my difficulties, since even the want of materials does not stop me from writing to you.
Pardon, I beseech you, an aggrieved man: if I speak in tears and in anger it is because I have been injured. For in return for my regular letters you have not sent me a single syllable. Light, I know, has no communion with darkness, [142] and God's handmaidens no fellowship with a sinner, yet a harlot was allowed to wash the Lord's feet with her tears, [143] and dogs are permitted to eat of their masters' crumbs. [144] It was the Saviour's mission to call sinners and not the righteous; for, as He said Himself, "they that be whole need not a physician." [145] He wills the repentance of a sinner rather than his death, [146] and carries home the poor stray sheep on His own shoulders. [147] So, too, when the prodigal son returns, his father receives him with joy. [148] Nay more, the apostle says: "Judge nothing before the time." [149] For "who art thou that judgest another man's servant? To his own master he standeth or falleth." [150] And "let him that standeth take heed lest he fall." [151] "Bear ye one another's burdens." [152]
Dear sisters, man's envy judges in one way, Christ in another; and the whisper of a corner is not the same as the sentence of His tribunal. Many ways seem right to men which are afterwards found to be wrong. [153] And a treasure is often stowed in earthen vessels. [154] Peter thrice denied his Lord, yet his bitter tears restored him to his place. "To whom much is forgiven, the same loveth much." [155] No word is said of the flock as a whole, yet the angels joy in heaven over the safety of one sick ewe. [156] And if any one demurs to this reasoning, the Lord Himself has said: "Friend, is thine eye evil because I am good?" [157] __________________________________________________________________
[142] 2 Cor. vi. 14.
[143] Luke vii. 37 sqq.
[144] Matt. xv. 27.
[145] Matt. ix. 12, 13.
[146] Ezek. xxxiii. 11.
[147] Luke xv. 5.
[148] Luke xv. 20.
[149] 1 Cor. iv. 5.
[150] Rom. xiv. 4.
[151] 1 Cor. x. 12.
[152] Gal. vi. 2.
[153] Cf. Prov. xiv. 12.
[154] 2 Cor. iv. 7.
[155] Luke vii. 47.
[156] Luke xv. 7, 10.
[157] Matt. xx. 15. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XII. To Antony, Monk.
The subject of this letter is similar to that of the preceding. Of Antony nothing is known except that some mss. describe him as "of Æmona." The date of the letter is 374 a.d.
While the disciples were disputing concerning precedence our Lord, the teacher of humility, took a little child and said: "Except ye be converted and become as little children ye cannot enter the kingdom of heaven." [158] And lest He should seem to preach more than he practised, He fulfilled His own precept in His life. For He washed His disciples' feet, [159] he received the traitor with a kiss, [160] He conversed with the woman of Samaria, [161] He spoke of the kingdom of heaven with Mary at His feet, [162] and when He rose again from the dead He showed Himself first to some poor women. [163] Pride is opposed to humility, and through it Satan lost his eminence as an archangel. The Jewish people perished in their pride, for while they claimed the chief seats and salutations in the market place, [164] they were superseded by the Gentiles, who had before been counted as "a drop of a bucket." [165] Two poor fishermen, Peter and James, were sent to confute the sophists and the wise men of the world. As the Scripture says: "God resisteth the proud and giveth grace to the humble." [166] Think, brother, what a sin it must be which has God for its opponent. In the Gospel the Pharisee is rejected because of his pride, and the publican is accepted because of his humility. [167]
Now, unless I am mistaken, I have already sent you ten letters, affectionate and earnest, whilst you have not deigned to give me even a single line. The Lord speaks to His servants, but you, my brother servant, refuse to speak to me. Believe me, if reserve did not check my pen, I could show my annoyance in such invective that you would have to reply--even though it might be in anger. But since anger is human, and a Christian must not act injuriously, I fall back once more on entreaty, and beg you to love one who loves you, and to write to him as a servant should to his fellow-servant. Farewell in the Lord. __________________________________________________________________
[158] Matt. xviii. 3.
[159] Joh. xiii. 5.
[160] Luke xxii. 47.
[161] Joh. iv. 7.
[162] Luke vii. 40 sqq.: the heroine of this story is identified by Jerome with Mary Magdalene.
[163] Matt. xxviii. 1, 9.
[164] Matt. xxiii. 6, 7.
[165] Isa. xl. 15.
[166] 1 Pet. v. 5.
[167] Luke xviii. 9 sqq. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XIII. To Castorina, His Maternal Aunt.
An interesting letter, as throwing some light on Jerome's family relations. Castorina, his maternal aunt, had, for some reason, become estranged from him, and he now writes to her to effect a reconciliation. Whether he succeeded in doing so, we do not know. The date of the letter is 374 a.d.
The apostle and evangelist John rightly says, in his first epistle, that "whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer." [168] For, since murder often springs from hate, the hater, even though he has not yet slain his victim, is at heart a murderer. Why, you ask, do I begin in this style? Simply that you and I may both lay aside past ill feeling and cleanse our hearts to be a habitation for God. "Be ye angry," David says, "and sin not," or, as the apostle more fully expresses it, "let not the sun go down upon your wrath." [169] What then shall we do in the day of judgment, upon whose wrath the sun has gone down not one day but many years? The Lord says in the Gospel: "If thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee; leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift." [170] Woe to me, wretch that I am; woe, I had almost said, to you also. This long time past we have either offered no gift at the altar or have offered it whilst cherishing anger "without a cause." How have we been able in our daily prayers to say "Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors," [171] whilst our feelings have been at variance with our words, and our petition inconsistent with our conduct? Therefore I renew the prayer which I made a year ago in a previous letter, [172] that the Lord's legacy of peace [173] may be indeed ours, and that my desires and your feelings may find favor in His sight. Soon we shall stand before His judgment seat to receive the reward of harmony restored or to pay the penalty for harmony broken. In case you shall prove unwilling--I hope that it may not be so--to accept my advances, I for my part shall be free. For this letter, when it is read, will insure my acquittal. __________________________________________________________________
[168] 1 Joh. iii. 15.
[169] Ps. iv. 4, LXX.; Eph. iv. 26.
[170] Matt. v. 23, 24.
[171] Matt. vi. 12.
[172] This is no longer extant.
[173] John xiv. 27. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XIV. To Heliodorus, Monk.
Heliodorus, originally a soldier, but now a presbyter of the Church, had accompanied Jerome to the East, but, not feeling called to the solitary life of the desert, had returned to Aquileia. Here he resumed his clerical duties, and in course of time was raised to the episcopate as bishop of Altinum.
The letter was written in the first bitterness of separation and reproaches Heliodorus for having gone back from the perfect way of the ascetic life. The description given of this is highly colored and seems to have produced a great impression in the West. Fabiola was so much enchanted by it that she learned the letter by heart. [174] The date is 373 or 374 a.d.
1. So conscious are you of the affection which exists between us that you cannot but recognize the love and passion with which I strove to prolong our common sojourn in the desert. This very letter--blotted, as you see, with tears--gives evidence of the lamentation and weeping with which I accompanied your departure. With the pretty ways of a child you then softened your refusal by soothing words, and I, being off my guard, knew not what to do. Was I to hold my peace? I could not conceal my eagerness by a show of indifference. Or was I to entreat you yet more earnestly? You would have refused to listen, for your love was not like mine. Despised affection has taken the one course open to it. Unable to keep you when present, it goes in search of you when absent. You asked me yourself, when you were going away, to invite you to the desert when I took up my quarters there, and I for my part promised to do so. Accordingly I invite you now; come, and come quickly. Do not call to mind old ties; the desert is for those who have left all. Nor let the hardships of our former travels deter you. You believe in Christ, believe also in His words: "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and all these things shall be added unto you." [175] Take neither scrip nor staff. He is rich enough who is poor--with Christ.
2. But what is this, and why do I foolishly importune you again? Away with entreaties, an end to coaxing words. Offended love does well to be angry. You have spurned my petition; perhaps you will listen to my remonstrance. What keeps you, effeminate soldier, in your father's house? Where are your ramparts and trenches? When have you spent a winter in the field? Lo, the trumpet sounds from heaven! Lo, the Leader comes with clouds! [176] He is armed to subdue the world, and out of His mouth proceeds a two-edged sword [177] to mow down all that encounters it. But as for you, what will you do? Pass straight from your chamber to the battle-field, and from the cool shade into the burning sun? Nay, a body used to a tunic cannot endure a buckler; a head that has worn a cap refuses a helmet; a hand made tender by disuse is galled by a sword-hilt. [178] Hear the proclamation of your King: "He that is not with me is against me, and he that gathereth not with me scattereth." [179] Remember the day on which you enlisted, when, buried with Christ in baptism, you swore fealty to Him, declaring that for His sake you would spare neither father nor mother. Lo, the enemy is striving to slay Christ in your breast. Lo, the ranks of the foe sigh over that bounty which you received when you entered His service. Should your little nephew [180] hang on your neck, pay no regard to him; should your mother with ashes on her hair and garments rent show you the breasts at which she nursed you, heed her not; should your father prostrate himself on the threshold, trample him under foot and go your way. With dry eyes fly to the standard of the cross. In such cases cruelty is the only true affection.
3. Hereafter there shall come--yes, there shall come--a day when you will return a victor to your true country, and will walk through the heavenly Jerusalem crowned with the crown of valor. Then will you receive the citizenship thereof with Paul. [181] Then will you seek the like privilege for your parents. Then will you intercede for me who have urged you forward on the path of victory.
I am not ignorant of the fetters which you may plead as hindrances. My breast is not of iron nor my heart of stone. I was not born of flint or suckled by a tigress. [182] I have passed through troubles like yours myself. Now it is a widowed sister who throws her caressing arms around you. Now it is the slaves, your foster-brothers, who cry, "To what master are you leaving us?" Now it is a nurse bowed with age, and a body-servant loved only less than a father, who exclaim: "Only wait till we die and follow us to our graves." Perhaps, too, an aged mother, with sunken bosom and furrowed brow, recalling the lullaby [183] with which she once soothed you, adds her entreaties to theirs. The learned may call you, if they please,
The sole support and pillar of your house. [184]
The love of God and the fear of hell will easily break such bonds.
Scripture, you will argue, bids us obey our parents. [185] Yes, but whoso loves them more than Christ loses his own soul. [186] The enemy takes sword in hand to slay me, and shall I think of a mother's tears? Or shall I desert the service of Christ for the sake of a father to whom, if I am Christ's servant, I owe no rites of burial, [187] albeit if I am Christ's true servant I owe these to all? Peter with his cowardly advice was an offence to the Lord on the eve of His passion; [188] and to the brethren who strove to restrain him from going up to Jerusalem, Paul's one answer was: "What mean ye to weep and to break my heart? For I am ready not to be bound only, but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus." [189] The battering-ram of natural affection which so often shatters faith must recoil powerless from the wall of the Gospel. "My mother and my brethren are these whosoever do the will of my Father which is in heaven." [190] If they believe in Christ let them bid me God-speed, for I go to fight in His name. And if they do not believe, "let the dead bury their dead." [191]
4. But all this, you argue, only touches the case of martyrs. Ah! my brother, you are mistaken, you are mistaken, if you suppose that there is ever a time when the Christian does not suffer persecution. Then are you most hardly beset when you know not that you are beset at all. "Our adversary as a roaring lion walketh about seeking whom he may devour," [192] and do you think of peace? "He sitteth in the lurking-places of the villages: in the secret places doth he murder the innocent; his eyes are privily set against the poor. He lieth in wait secretly as a lion in his den; he lieth in wait to catch the poor;" [193] and do you slumber under a shady tree, so as to fall an easy prey? On one side self-indulgence presses me hard; on another covetousness strives to make an inroad; my belly wishes to be a God to me, in place of Christ, [194] and lust would fain drive away the Holy Spirit that dwells in me and defile His temple. [195] I am pursued, I say, by an enemy
Whose name is Legion and his wiles untold; [196]
and, hapless wretch that I am, how shall I hold myself a victor when I am being led away a captive?
5. My dear brother, weigh well the various forms of transgression, and think not that the sins which I have mentioned are less flagrant than that of idolatry. Nay, hear the apostle's view of the matter. "For this ye know," he writes, "that no whore-monger or unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God." [197] In a general way all that is of the devil savors of enmity to God, and what is of the devil is idolatry, since all idols are subject to him. Yet Paul elsewhere lays down the law in express and unmistakable terms, saying: "Mortify your members, which are upon the earth, laying aside fornication, uncleanness, evil concupiscence and covetousness, which are [198] idolatry, for which things' sake the wrath of God cometh." [199]
Idolatry is not confined to casting incense upon an altar with finger and thumb, or to pouring libations of wine out of a cup into a bowl. Covetousness is idolatry, or else the selling of the Lord for thirty pieces of silver was a righteous act. [200] Lust involves profanation, or else men may defile with common harlots [201] those members of Christ which should be "a living sacrifice acceptable to God." [202] Fraud is idolatry, or else they are worthy of imitation who, in the Acts of the Apostles, sold their inheritance, and because they kept back part of the price, perished by an instant doom. [203] Consider well, my brother; nothing is yours to keep. "Whosoever he be of you," the Lord says, "that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple." [204] Why are you such a half-hearted Christian?
6. See how Peter left his net; [205] see how the publican rose from the receipt of custom. [206] In a moment he became an apostle. "The Son of man hath not where to lay his head," [207] and do you plan wide porticos and spacious halls? If you look to inherit the good things of the world you can no longer be a joint-heir with Christ. [208] You are called a monk, and has the name no meaning? What brings you, a solitary, into the throng of men? The advice that I give is that of no inexperienced mariner who has never lost either ship or cargo, and has never known a gale. Lately shipwrecked as I have been myself, my warnings to other voyagers spring from my own fears. On one side, like Charybdis, self-indulgence sucks into its vortex the soul's salvation. On the other, like Scylla, lust, with a smile on her girl's face, lures it on to wreck its chastity. The coast is savage, and the devil with a crew of pirates carries irons to fetter his captives. Be not credulous, be not over-confident. The sea may be as smooth and smiling as a pond, its quiet surface may be scarcely ruffled by a breath of air, yet sometimes its waves are as high as mountains. There is danger in its depths, the foe is lurking there. Ease your sheets, spread your sails, fasten the cross as an ensign on your prow. The calm that you speak of is itself a tempest. "Why so?" you will perhaps argue; "are not all my fellow-townsmen Christians?" Your case, I reply, is not that of others. Listen to the words of the Lord: "If thou wilt be perfect go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and come and follow me." [209] You have already promised to be perfect. For when you forsook the army and made yourself an eunuch for the kingdom of heaven's sake, [210] you did so that you might follow the perfect life. Now the perfect servant of Christ has nothing beside Christ. Or if he have anything beside Christ he is not perfect. And if he be not perfect when he has promised God to be so, his profession is a lie. But "the mouth that lieth slayeth the soul." [211] To conclude, then, if you are perfect you will not set your heart on your father's goods; and if you are not perfect you have deceived the Lord. The Gospel thunders forth its divine warning: "Ye cannot serve two masters," [212] and does any one dare to make Christ a liar by serving at once both God and Mammon? Repeatedly does He proclaim, "If any one will come after me let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." [213] If I load myself with gold can I think that I am following Christ? Surely not. "He that saith he abideth in Him ought himself also so to walk even as He walked." [214]
7. I know you will rejoin that you possess nothing. Why, then, if you are so well prepared for battle, do you not take the field? Perhaps you think that you can wage war in your own country, although the Lord could do no signs in His? [215] Why not? you ask. Take the answer which comes to you with his authority: "No prophet is accepted in his own country." [216] But, you will say, I do not seek honor; the approval of my conscience is enough for me. Neither did the Lord seek it; for when the multitudes would have made Him a king he fled from them. [217] But where there is no honor there is contempt; and where there is contempt there is frequent rudeness; and where there is rudeness there is vexation; and where there is vexation there is no rest; and where there is no rest the mind is apt to be diverted from its purpose. Again, where, through restlessness, earnestness loses any of its force, it is lessened by what it loses, and that which is lessened cannot be called perfect. The upshot of all which is that a monk cannot be perfect in his own country. Now, not to aim at perfection is itself a sin.
8. Driven from this line of defence you will appeal to the example of the clergy. These, you will say, remain in their cities, and yet they are surely above criticism. Far be it from me to censure the successors of the apostles, who with holy words consecrate the body of Christ, and who make us Christians. [218] Having the keys of the kingdom of heaven, they judge men to some extent before the day of judgment, and guard the chastity of the bride of Christ. But, as I have before hinted, the case of monks is different from that of the clergy. The clergy feed Christ's sheep; I as a monk am fed by them. They live of the altar: [219] I, if I bring no gift to it, have the axe laid to my root as to that of a barren tree. [220] Nor can I plead poverty as an excuse, for the Lord in the gospel has praised an aged widow for casting into the treasury the last two coins that she had. [221] I may not sit in the presence of a presbyter; [222] he, if I sin, may deliver me to Satan, "for the destruction of the flesh that the spirit may be saved." [223] Under the old law he who disobeyed the priests was put outside the camp and stoned by the people, or else he was beheaded and expiated his contempt with his blood. [224] But now the disobedient person is cut down with the spiritual sword, or he is expelled from the church and torn to pieces by ravening demons. Should the entreaties of your brethren induce you to take orders, I shall rejoice that you are lifted up, and fear lest you may be cast down. You will say: "If a man desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work." [225] I know that; but you should add what follows: such an one "must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, chaste, of good behavior, given to hospitality, apt to teach, not given to wine, no striker but patient." [226] After fully explaining the qualifications of a bishop the apostle speaks of ministers of the third degree with equal care. "Likewise must the deacons be grave," he writes, "not double-tongued, not given to much wine, not greedy of filthy lucre, holding the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience. And let these also first be proved; then, let them minister, being found blameless." [227] Woe to the man who goes in to the supper without a wedding garment. Nothing remains for him but the stern question, "Friend, how camest thou in hither?" And when he is speechless the order will be given, "Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." [228] Woe to him who, when he has received a talent, has bound it in a napkin; and, whilst others make profits, only preserves what he has received. His angry lord shall rebuke him in a moment. "Thou wicked servant," he will say, "wherefore gavest thou not my money into the bank that at my coming I might have required mine own with usury?" [229] That is to say, you should have laid before the altar what you were not able to bear. For whilst you, a slothful trader, keep a penny in your hands, you occupy the place of another who might double the money. Wherefore, as he who ministers well purchases to himself a good degree, [230] so he who approaches the cup of the Lord unworthily shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. [231]
9. Not all bishops are bishops indeed. You consider Peter; mark Judas as well. You notice Stephen; look also on Nicolas, sentenced in the Apocalypse by the Lord's own lips, [232] whose shameful imaginations gave rise to the heresy of the Nicolaitans. "Let a man examine himself and so let him come." [233] For it is not ecclesiastical rank that makes a man a Christian. The centurion Cornelius was still a heathen when he was cleansed by the gift of the Holy Spirit. Daniel was but a child when he judged the elders. [234] Amos was stripping mulberry bushes when, in a moment, he was made a prophet. [235] David was only a shepherd when he was chosen to be king. [236] And the least of His disciples was the one whom Jesus loved the most. My brother, sit down in the lower room, that when one less honorable comes you may be bidden to go up higher. [237] Upon whom does the Lord rest but upon him that is lowly and of a contrite spirit, and that trembleth at His word? [238] To whom God has committed much, of him He will ask the more. [239] "Mighty men shall be mightily tormented." [240] No man need pride himself in the day of judgment on merely physical chastity, for then shall men give account for every idle word, [241] and the reviling of a brother shall be counted as the sin of murder. [242] Paul and Peter now reign with Christ, and it is not easy to take the place of the one or to hold the office of the other. There may come an angel to rend the veil of your temple, [243] and to remove your candlestick out of its place. [244] If you intend to build the tower, first count the cost. [245] Salt that has lost its savor is good for nothing but to be cast out and to be trodden under foot of swine. [246] If a monk fall, a priest shall intercede for him; but who shall intercede for a fallen priest?
10. At last my discourse is clear of the reefs: at last this frail bark has passed from the breakers into deep water. I may now spread my sails to the breeze; and, as I leave the rocks of controversy astern, my epilogue will be like the joyful shout of mariners. O desert, bright with the flowers of Christ! O solitude whence come the stones of which, in the Apocalypse, the city of the great king is built! [247] O wilderness, gladdened with God's especial presence! What keeps you in the world, my brother, you who are above the world? [248] How long shall gloomy roofs oppress you? How long shall smoky cities immure you? Believe me, I have more light than you. Sweet it is to lay aside the weight of the body and to soar into the pure bright ether. Do you dread poverty? Christ calls the poor blessed. [249] Does toil frighten you? No athlete is crowned but in the sweat of his brow. Are you anxious as regards food? Faith fears no famine. Do you dread the bare ground for limbs wasted with fasting? The Lord lies there beside you. Do you recoil from an unwashed head and uncombed hair? Christ is your true head. [250] Does the boundless solitude of the desert terrify you? In the spirit you may walk always in paradise. Do but turn your thoughts thither and you will be no more in the desert. Is your skin rough and scaly because you no longer bathe? He that is once washed in Christ needeth not to wash again. [251] To all your objections the apostle gives this one brief answer: "The sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory" which shall come after them, "which shall be revealed in us." [252] You are too greedy of enjoyment, my brother, if you wish to rejoice with the world here, and to reign with Christ hereafter.
11. It shall come, it shall come, that day when this corruptible shall put on incorruption, and this mortal shall put on immortality. [253] Then shall that servant be blessed whom the Lord shall find watching. [254] Then at the sound of the trumpet [255] the earth and its peoples shall tremble, but you shall rejoice. The world shall howl at the Lord who comes to judge it, and the tribes of the earth shall smite the breast. Once mighty kings shall tremble in their nakedness. Venus shall be exposed, and her son too. Jupiter with his fiery bolts will be brought to trial; and Plato, with his disciples, will be but a fool. Aristotle's arguments shall be of no avail. You may seem a poor man and country bred, but then you shall exult and laugh, and say: Behold my crucified Lord, behold my judge. This is He who was once an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and crying in a manger. [256] This is He whose parents were a workingman and a working-woman. [257] This is He, who, carried into Egypt in His mother's bosom, though He was God, fled before the face of man. This is He who was clothed in a scarlet robe and crowned with thorns. [258] This is He who was called a sorcerer and a man with a devil and a Samaritan. [259] Jew, behold the hands which you nailed to the cross. Roman, behold the side which you pierced with the spear. See both of you whether it was this body that the disciples stole secretly and by night. [260] For this you profess to believe.
My brother, it is affection which has urged me to speak thus; that you who now find the Christian life so hard may have your reward in that day. __________________________________________________________________
[174] See Ep. lxxvii. 9.
[175] Matt. vi. 33.
[176] Rev. i. 7.
[177] Rev. i. 16.
[178] A reminiscence of Tertullian.
[179] Matt. xii. 30.
[180] Nepotian, afterwards famous as the recipient of Letter LII., and the subject of Letter LX.
[181] Phi. iii. 20, R.V.
[182] Virg. A. iv. 367.
[183] Pers. iii. 18.
[184] Virg. A. xii. 59.
[185] Eph. vi. 1.
[186] Matt. x. 37.
[187] Luke ix. 59, 60.
[188] Matt. xvi. 23.
[189] Acts xxi. 13.
[190] Luke viii. 21; Matt. xii. 50.
[191] Matt. viii. 22.
[192] 1 Pet. v. 8.
[193] Ps. x. 8, 9.
[194] Phi. iii. 19.
[195] 1 Cor iii. 17.
[196] Virg. A. vii. 337.
[197] Eph. v. 5.
[198] So Jerome, although the Vulg. has "is."
[199] Col. iii. 5, 6.
[200] Matt. xxvi. 15.
[201] Publicarum libidinum victimæ; words borrowed from Tertullian, de C. F. II. 12.
[202] Rom. xii. 1.
[203] Acts v., Ananias and Sapphira.
[204] Luke xiv. 33.
[205] Matt. iv. 18-20.
[206] Matt. ix. 9.
[207] Matt. viii. 20.
[208] Rom. viii. 17.
[209] Matt. xix. 21.
[210] Matt. xix. 12.
[211] Wisd. i. 11.
[212] Luke xvi. 13.
[213] Luke ix. 23.
[214] 1 Joh. ii. 6.
[215] Matt. xiii. 58.
[216] Luke iv. 24.
[217] Joh. vi. 15.
[218] In the sacrament of baptism.
[219] 1 Cor. ix. 13, 14.
[220] Matt. iii. 10.
[221] Luke xxi. 1-4.
[222] Cf. Letter CXLVI.
[223] 1 Cor. v. 5.
[224] Deut. xvii. 5, 12.
[225] 1 Tim. iii. 1.
[226] 1 Tim. iii. 2, 3.
[227] 1 Tim. iii. 8-10.
[228] Matt. xxii. 11-13.
[229] Luke xix. 23.
[230] 1 Tim. iii. 13.
[231] 1 Cor. xi. 27.
[232] Rev. ii. 6.
[233] 1 Cor. xi. 28.
[234] Susannah 45 sqq.
[235] Amos vii. 14.
[236] 1 Sam. xvi. 11-13.
[237] Luke xiv. 10.
[238] Isa. lxvi. 2.
[239] Luke xii. 48.
[240] Wisd. vi. 6.
[241] Matt. xii. 36.
[242] Matt. v. 21, 22.
[243] Matt. xxvii. 51.
[244] Rev. ii. 5.
[245] Luke xiv. 28.
[246] Matt. v. 13.
[247] Rev. xxi. 19, 20.
[248] From Cyprian, Letter I. 14 (to Donatus).
[249] Luke vi. 20.
[250] From Cyprian, Letter LXXVII. 2 (to Nemesianus).
[251] Joh. xiii. 10.
[252] Rom. viii. 18.
[253] 1 Cor. xv. 53.
[254] Matt. xxiv. 46.
[255] 1 Thess. iv. 16.
[256] Luke ii. 7.
[257] From Tertullian, de Spect. xxx.
[258] Matt. xxvii. 28, 29.
[259] Joh. viii. 48.
[260] Matt. xxvii. 64. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XV. To Pope Damasus.
This letter, written in 376 or 377 a.d., illustrates Jerome's attitude towards the see of Rome at this time held by Damasus, afterwards his warm friend and admirer. Referring to Rome as the scene of his own baptism and as a church where the true faith has remained unimpaired (§1), and laying down the strict doctrine of salvation only within the pale of the church (§2), Jerome asks "the successor of the fisherman" two questions, viz.: (1) who is the true bishop of the three claimants of the see of Antioch, and (2) which is the correct terminology, to speak of three "hypostases" in the Godhead, or of one? On the latter question he expresses fully his own opinion.
1. Since the East, shattered as it is by the long-standing feuds, subsisting between its peoples, is bit by bit tearing into shreds the seamless vest of the Lord, "woven from the top throughout," [261] since the foxes are destroying the vineyard of Christ, [262] and since among the broken cisterns that hold no water it is hard to discover "the sealed fountain" and "the garden inclosed," [263] I think it my duty to consult the chair of Peter, and to turn to a church whose faith has been praised by Paul. [264] I appeal for spiritual food to the church whence I have received the garb of Christ. [265] The wide space of sea and land that lies between us cannot deter me from searching for "the pearl of great price." [266] "Wheresoever the body is, there will the eagles be gathered together." [267] Evil children have squandered their patrimony; you alone keep your heritage intact. The fruitful soil of Rome, when it receives the pure seed of the Lord, bears fruit an hundredfold; but here the seed corn is choked in the furrows and nothing grows but darnel or oats. [268] In the West the Sun of righteousness [269] is even now rising; in the East, Lucifer, who fell from heaven, [270] has once more set his throne above the stars. [271] "Ye are the light of the world," [272] "ye are the salt of the earth," [273] ye are "vessels of gold and of silver." Here are vessels of wood or of earth, [274] which wait for the rod of iron, [275] and eternal fire.
2. Yet, though your greatness terrifies me, your kindness attracts me. From the priest I demand the safe-keeping of the victim, from the shepherd the protection due to the sheep. Away with all that is overweening; let the state of Roman majesty withdraw. My words are spoken to the successor of the fisherman, to the disciple of the cross. As I follow no leader save Christ, so I communicate with none but your blessedness, that is with the chair of Peter. For this, I know, is the rock on which the church is built! [276] This is the house where alone the paschal lamb can be rightly eaten. [277] This is the ark of Noah, and he who is not found in it shall perish when the flood prevails. [278] But since by reason of my sins I have betaken myself to this desert which lies between Syria and the uncivilized waste, I cannot, owing to the great distance between us, always ask of your sanctity the holy thing of the Lord. [279] Consequently I here follow the Egyptian confessors [280] who share your faith, and anchor my frail craft under the shadow of their great argosies. I know nothing of Vitalis; I reject Meletius; I have nothing to do with Paulinus. [281] He that gathers not with you scatters; [282] he that is not of Christ is of Antichrist.
3. Just now, I am sorry to say, those Arians, the Campenses, [283] are trying to extort from me, a Roman Christian, their unheard-of formula of three hypostases. [284] And this, too, after the definition of Nicæa [285] and the decree of Alexandria, [286] in which the West has joined. Where, I should like to know, are the apostles of these doctrines? Where is their Paul, their new doctor of the Gentiles? I ask them what three hypostases are supposed to mean. They reply three persons subsisting. I rejoin that this is my belief. They are not satisfied with the meaning, they demand the term. Surely some secret venom lurks in the words. "If any man refuse," I cry, "to acknowledge three hypostases in the sense of three things hypostatized, that is three persons subsisting, let him be anathema." Yet, because I do not learn their words, I am counted a heretic. "But, if any one, understanding by hypostasis essence, [287] deny that in the three persons there is one hypostasis, he has no part in Christ." Because this is my confession I, like you, am branded with the stigma of Sabellianism. [288]
4. If you think fit enact a decree; and then I shall not hesitate to speak of three hypostases. Order a new creed to supersede the Nicene; and then, whether we are Arians or orthodox, one confession will do for us all. In the whole range of secular learning hypostasis never means anything but essence. And can any one, I ask, be so profane as to speak of three essences or substances in the Godhead? There is one nature of God and one only; and this, and this alone, truly is. For absolute being is derived from no other source but is all its own. All things besides, that is all things created, although they appear to be, are not. For there was a time when they were not, and that which once was not may again cease to be. God alone who is eternal, that is to say, who has no beginning, really deserves to be called an essence. Therefore also He says to Moses from the bush, "I am that I am," and Moses says of Him, "I am hath sent me." [289] As the angels, the sky, the earth, the seas, all existed at the time, it must have been as the absolute being that God claimed for himself that name of essence, which apparently was common to all. But because His nature alone is perfect, and because in the three persons there subsists but one Godhead, which truly is and is one nature; whosoever in the name of religion declares that there are in the Godhead three elements, three hypostases, that is, or essences, is striving really to predicate three natures of God. And if this is true, why are we severed by walls from Arius, when in dishonesty we are one with him? Let Ursicinus be made the colleague of your blessedness; let Auxentius be associated with Ambrose. [290] But may the faith of Rome never come to such a pass! May the devout hearts of your people never be infected with such unholy doctrines! Let us be satisfied to speak of one substance and of three subsisting persons--perfect, equal, coeternal. Let us keep to one hypostasis, if such be your pleasure, and say nothing of three. It is a bad sign when those who mean the same thing use different words. Let us be satisfied with the form of creed which we have hitherto used. Or, if you think it right that I should speak of three hypostases, explaining what I mean by them, I am ready to submit. But, believe me, there is poison hidden under their honey; the angel of Satan has transformed himself into an angel of light. [291] They give a plausible explanation of the term hypostasis; yet when I profess to hold it in the same sense they count me a heretic. Why are they so tenacious of a word? Why do they shelter themselves under ambiguous language? If their belief corresponds to their explanation of it, I do not condemn them for keeping it. On the other hand, if my belief corresponds to their expressed opinions, they should allow me to set forth their meaning in my own words.
5. I implore your blessedness, therefore, by the crucified Saviour of the world, and by the consubstantial trinity, to authorize me by letter either to use or to refuse this formula of three hypostases. And lest the obscurity of my present abode may baffle the bearers of your letter, I pray you to address it to Evagrius, the presbyter, with whom you are well acquainted. I beg you also to signify with whom I am to communicate at Antioch. Not, I hope, with the Campenses; [292] for they--with their allies the heretics of Tarsus [293] --only desire communion with you to preach with greater authority their traditional doctrine of three hypostases. __________________________________________________________________
[261] Joh. xix. 23.
[262] Cant. ii. 15.
[263] Cant. iv. 12.
[264] Rom. i. 8: I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all that your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world.
[265] I.e. holy baptism; cf. Gal. iii. 27.
[266] Matt. xiii. 46.
[267] Matt. xxiv. 28.
[268] Matt. xiii. 22, 23.
[269] Mal. iv. 2.
[270] Luke x. 18.
[271] Isa. xiv. 12.
[272] Matt. v. 14.
[273] Matt. v. 13.
[274] 2 Tim. ii. 20.
[275] Rev. ii. 27.
[276] Matt. xvi. 18.
[277] Ex. xii. 22.
[278] Gen. vii. 23.
[279] I.e. the bread of the Eucharist, at this time sent by one bishop to another in token of communion; or possibly the allusion is different, and what Jerome means to say is: "You are the oracle of God, but owing to my present situation I cannot consult you."
[280] Certain bishops banished from their sees by Valens. See Letter III. § 2.
[281] The three rival claimants of the see of Antioch. See note on Letter XVI. § 2.
[282] Matt. xii. 30.
[283] I.e. the field party. The Meletians were so called because, denied access to the churches of the city, they had to worship in the open air outside the walls.
[284] hupostasis=substantia. It is the word used in Heb. i. 3, "The express image of his person [R.V. substance]." Except at Alexandria it was usual to speak of one hypostasis as of one ousia in the Divine Nature. But at Alexandria from Origen downwards three hypostases had been ascribed to the Deity. Two explanations are given of the latter formula: (1) That at Alexandria hupostasis was taken in the sense of prosopon, so that by "three hypostases" was meant only "three persons." (2) That "three hypostases" was an inexact expression standing for "three hypostatic persons" or "a threefold hypostasis." This latter seems to be the true account of the matter. See an interesting note in Newman, Arians of the Fourth Century, Appendix IV.
[285] In the Nicene Creed the Son is declared to be "of one substance [ousia] with the Father."
[286] This decree allowed the formula of "three hypostases" to be susceptible of an orthodox interpretation. It did not, however, encourage its use.
[287] ousia.
[288] Cauterio unionis inurimur. Sabellius recognized three "aspects" in the Godhead but denied "three persons," at least in the Catholic sense.
[289] Ex. iii. 14.
[290] Ursicinus, at this time anti-pope; Auxentius, Arian bishop of Milan.
[291] 2 Cor. xi. 14.
[292] I.e. the followers of the orthodox Bishop Meletius, who, as they had no church in Antioch, were compelled to meet for worship outside the city.
[293] These appear to have been semi-Arians or Macedonians. Silvanus of Tarsus was their recognized leader. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XVI. To Pope Damasus.
This letter, written a few months after the preceding, is another appeal to Damasus to solve the writer's doubts. Jerome once more refers to his baptism at Rome, and declares that his one answer to the factions at Antioch is, "He who clings to the chair of Peter is accepted by me." Written from the desert in the year 377 or 378.
1. By her importunity the widow in the gospel at last gained a hearing, [294] and by the same means one friend induced another to give him bread at midnight, when his door was shut and his servants were in bed. [295] The publican's prayers overcame God, [296] although God is invincible. Nineveh was saved by its tears from the impending ruin caused by its sin. [297] To what end, you ask, these far-fetched references? To this end, I make answer; that you in your greatness should look upon me in my littleness; that you, the rich shepherd, should not despise me, the ailing sheep. Christ Himself brought the robber from the cross to paradise, [298] and, to show that repentance is never too late, He turned a murderer's death into a martyrdom. Gladly does Christ embrace the prodigal son when he returns to Him; [299] and, leaving the ninety and nine, the good shepherd carries home on His shoulders the one poor sheep that is left. [300] From a persecutor Paul becomes a preacher. His bodily eyes are blinded to clear the eyes of his soul, [301] and he who once haled Christ's servants in chains before the council of the Jews, [302] lives afterwards to glory in the bonds of Christ. [303]
2. As I have already written to you, [304] I, who have received Christ's garb in Rome, am now detained in the waste that borders Syria. No sentence of banishment, however, has been passed upon me; the punishment which I am undergoing is self-inflicted. But, as the heathen poet says:
They change not mind but sky who cross the sea. [305]
The untiring foe follows me closely, and the assaults that I suffer in the desert are severer than ever. For the Arian frenzy raves, and the powers of the world support it. The church is rent into three factions, and each of these is eager to seize me for its own. The influence of the monks is of long standing, and it is directed against me. I meantime keep crying: "He who clings to the chair of Peter is accepted by me." Meletius, Vitalis, and Paulinus [306] all profess to cleave to you, and I could believe the assertion if it were made by one of them only. As it is, either two of them or else all three are guilty of falsehood. Therefore I implore your blessedness, by our Lord's cross and passion, those necessary glories of our faith, as you hold an apostolic office, to give an apostolic decision. Only tell me by letter with whom I am to communicate in Syria, and I will pray for you that you may sit in judgment enthroned with the twelve; [307] that when you grow old, like Peter, you may be girded not by yourself but by another, [308] and that, like Paul, you may be made a citizen of the heavenly kingdom. [309] Do not despise a soul for which Christ died. __________________________________________________________________
[294] Matt. xv. 28.
[295] Luke xi. 7, 8.
[296] Luke xviii. 10-14.
[297] Jon. iii. 5, 10.
[298] Luke xxiii. 43.
[299] Luke xv. 20.
[300] Luke xv. 5.
[301] Acts ix. 8.
[302] Acts viii. 3.
[303] 2 Cor. xii. 10.
[304] See Letter XV.
[305] Hor. Epist. i. 11, 27.
[306] The three rival claimants of the see of Antioch. Paulinus and Meletius were both orthodox, but Meletius derived his orders from the Arians and was consequently not recognized in the West. In the East, however, he was so highly esteemed that some years after this he was chosen to preside over the Council of Constantinople (a.d. 391). Vitalis, the remaining claimant, was a follower of Apollinaris, but much respected by the orthodox on account of his high character.
[307] Matt. xix. 28.
[308] Joh. xxi. 18.
[309] Phi. iii. 20, R.V. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XVII. To the Presbyter Marcus.
In this letter, addressed to one who seems to have had some pre-eminence among the monks of the Chalcidian desert, Jerome complains of the hard treatment meted out to him because of his refusal to take any part in the great theological dispute then raging in Syria. He protests his own orthodoxy, and begs permission to remain where he is until the return of spring, when he will retire from "the inhospitable desert." Written in a.d. 378 or 379.
1. I had made up my mind to use the words of the psalmist: "While the wicked was before me I was dumb with silence; I was humbled, and I held my peace even from good" [310] and "I, as a deaf man, heard not; and I was as a dumb man that openeth not his mouth. Thus I was as a man that heareth not." [311] But charity overcomes all things, [312] and my regard for you defeats my determination. I am, indeed, less careful to retaliate upon my assailants than to comply with your request. For among Christians, as one has said, [313] not he who endures an outrage is unhappy, but he who commits it.
2. And first, before I speak to you of my belief (which you know full well), I am forced to cry out against the inhumanity of this country. A hackneyed quotation best expresses my meaning:
What savages are these who will not grant
A rest to strangers, even on their sands!
They threaten war and drive us from their coasts. [314]
I take this from a Gentile poet that one who disregards the peace of Christ may at least learn its meaning from a heathen. I am called a heretic, although I preach the consubstantial trinity. I am accused of the Sabellian impiety although I proclaim with unwearied voice that in the Godhead there are three distinct, [315] real, whole, and perfect persons. The Arians do right to accuse me, but the orthodox forfeit their orthodoxy when they assail a faith like mine. They may, if they like, condemn me as a heretic; but if they do they must also condemn Egypt and the West, Damasus and Peter. [316] Why do they fasten the guilt on one and leave his companions uncensured? If there is but little water in the stream, it is the fault, not of the channel, but of the source. I blush to say it, but from the caves which serve us for cells we monks of the desert condemn the world. Rolling in sack-cloth and ashes, [317] we pass sentence on bishops. What use is the robe of a penitent if it covers the pride of a king? Chains, squalor, and long hair are by right tokens of sorrow, and not ensigns of royalty. I merely ask leave to remain silent. Why do they torment a man who does not deserve their ill-will? I am a heretic, you say. What is it to you if I am? Stay quiet, and all is said. You are afraid, I suppose, that, with my fluent knowledge of Syriac and Greek, I shall make a tour of the churches, lead the people into error, and form a schism! I have robbed no man of anything; neither have I taken what I have not earned. With my own hand [318] daily and in the sweat of my brow [319] I labor for my food, knowing that it is written by the apostle: "If any will not work, neither shall he eat." [320]
3. Reverend and holy father, Jesus is my witness with what groans and tears I have written all this. "I have kept silence, saith the Lord, but shall I always keep silence? Surely not." [321] I cannot have so much as a corner of the desert. Every day I am asked for my confession of faith; as though when I was regenerated in baptism I had made none. I accept their formulas, but they are still dissatisfied. I sign my name to them, but they still refuse to believe me. One thing only will content them, that I should leave the country. I am on the point of departure. They have already torn away from me my dear brothers, who are a part of my very life. They are, as you see, anxious to depart--nay, they are actually departing; it is preferable, they say, to live among wild beasts rather than with Christians such as these. I myself, too, would be at this moment a fugitive were I not withheld by physical infirmity and by the severity of the winter. I ask to be allowed the shelter of the desert for a few months till spring returns; or if this seems too long a delay, I am ready to depart now. "The earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof." [322] Let them climb up to heaven alone; [323] for them alone Christ died; they possess all things and glory in all. Be it so. "But God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me and I unto the world." [324]
4. As regards the questions which you have thought fit to put to me concerning the faith, I have given to the reverend Cyril [325] a written confession which sufficiently answers them. He who does not so believe has no part in Christ. My faith is attested both by your ears and by those of your blessed brother, Zenobius, to whom, as well as to yourself, we all of us here send our best greeting. __________________________________________________________________
[310] Ps. xxxix. 1, 2, Vulg.
[311] Ps. xxxviii. 13, 14.
[312] Cf. 1 Cor. xiii. 7.
[313] Cyprian, Letter LV. Cf. Cic. T. Q. v. accipere quam facere præstat injuriam.
[314] Virg. A. i. 539-541.
[315] Subsistenets.
[316] The contemporary bishops of Rome and Alexandria.
[317] Tert. Apol. 40, s. f.
[318] 1 Cor. iv. 12.
[319] Gen. iii. 19.
[320] 2 Thess. iii. 10.
[321] Isa. xlii. 14, LXX.
[322] Ps. xxiv. 1.
[323] Was Jerome thinking of Constantine's rebuke to the Novatian bishop at Nicæa, "Plant a ladder for thyself, Acesius, and mount alone to heaven"?
[324] Gal. vi. 14.
[325] Who this was is unknown. The extant document purporting to contain this confession is not genuine. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XVIII. To Pope Damasus.
This (written from Constantinople in a.d. 381) is the earliest of Jerome's expository letters. In it he explains at length the vision recorded in the sixth chapter of Isaiah, and enlarges upon its mystical meaning. "Some of my predecessors," he writes, "make the Lord sitting upon a throne' God the Father, and suppose the seraphim to represent the Son and the Holy Spirit. I do not agree with them, for John expressly tells us [326] that it was Christ and not the Father whom the prophet saw." And again, "The word seraphim means either glow' or beginning of speech,' and the two seraphim thus stand for the Old and New Testaments. [327] Did not our heart burn within us,' said the disciples, while he opened to us the Scriptures?' [328] Moreover, the Old Testament is written in Hebrew, and this unquestionably was man's original language." Jerome then speaks of the unity of the sacred books. "Whatever," he asserts, "we read in the Old Testament we find also in the Gospel; and what we read in the Gospel is deduced from the Old Testament. [329] There is no discord between them, no disagreement. In both Testaments the Trinity is preached."
The letter is noticeable for the evidence it affords of the thoroughness of Jerome's studies. Not only does he cite the several Greek versions of Isaiah in support of his argument, but he also reverts to the Hebrew original. So far as the West was concerned he may be said to have discovered this anew. Even educated men like Augustine had ceased to look beyond the LXX., and were more or less aghast at the boldness with which Jerome rejected its time-honored but inaccurate renderings. [330]
The letter also shows that independence of judgment which always marked Jerome's work. At the time when he wrote it he was much under the sway of Origen. But great as was his admiration for the master, he was not afraid to discard his exegesis when, as in the case of the seraphim, he believed it to be erroneous. __________________________________________________________________
[326] John xii. 41.
[327] Jerome greatly prides himself on this explanation, and frequently reverts to it.
[328] Luke xxiv. 32.
[329] Cf. Augustine's dictum: "The New Testament is latent in the Old; the Old Testament is patent in the New."
[330] See Augustine's letters to Jerome, passim. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XIX. From Pope Damasus.
A letter from Damasus to Jerome, in which he asks for an explanation of the word "Hosanna" (a.d. 383). __________________________________________________________________
Letter XX. To Pope Damasus.
Jerome's reply to the foregoing. Exposing the error of Hilary of Poitiers, who supposed the expression to signify "redemption of the house of David," he goes on to show that in the gospels it is a quotation from Psa. cxviii. 25 and that its true meaning is "save now" (so A.V.). "Let us," he writes, "leave the streamlets of conjecture and return to the fountain-head. It is from the Hebrew writings that the truth is to be drawn." Written at Rome a.d. 383. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XXI. To Damasus
In this letter Jerome, at the request of Damasus, gives a minutely detailed explanation of the parable of the prodigal son. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XXII. To Eustochium.
Perhaps the most famous of all the letters. In it Jerome lays down at great length (1) the motives which ought to actuate those who devote themselves to a life of virginity, and (2) the rules by which they ought to regulate their daily conduct. The letter contains a vivid picture of Roman society as it then was--the luxury, profligacy, and hypocrisy prevalent among both men and women, besides some graphic autobiographical details (§§7, 30), and concludes with a full account of the three kinds of monasticism then practised in Egypt (§§34-36). Thirty years later Jerome wrote a similar letter to Demetrias (CXXX.), with which this ought to be compared. Written at Rome 384 a.d.
1. "Hear, O daughter, and consider, and incline thine ear; forget also thine own people and thy father's house, and the king shall desire thy beauty." [331] In this forty-fourth [332] psalm God speaks to the human soul that, following the example of Abraham, [333] it should go out from its own land and from its kindred, and should leave the Chaldeans, that is the demons, and should dwell in the country of the living, for which elsewhere the prophet sighs: "I think to see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living." [334] But it is not enough for you to go out from your own land unless you forget your people and your father's house; unless you scorn the flesh and cling to the bridegroom in a close embrace. "Look not behind thee," he says, "neither stay thou in all the plain; escape to the mountain lest thou be consumed." [335] He who has grasped the plough must not look behind him [336] or return home from the field, or having Christ's garment, descend from the roof to fetch other raiment. [337] Truly a marvellous thing, a father charges his daughter not to remember her father. "Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father it is your will to do." [338] So it was said to the Jews. And in another place, "He that committeth sin is of the devil." [339] Born, in the first instance, of such parentage we are naturally black, and even when we have repented, so long as we have not scaled the heights of virtue, we may still say: "I am black but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem." [340] But you will say to me, "I have left the home of my childhood; I have forgotten my father, I am born anew in Christ. What reward do I receive for this?" The context shows--"The king shall desire thy beauty." This, then, is the great mystery. "For this cause shall a man leave his father and his mother and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be" not as is there said, "of one flesh," [341] but "of one spirit." Your bridegroom is not haughty or disdainful; He has "married an Ethiopian woman." [342] When once you desire the wisdom of the true Solomon and come to Him, He will avow all His knowledge to you; He will lead you into His chamber with His royal hand; [343] He will miraculously change your complexion so that it shall be said of you, "Who is this that goeth up and hath been made white?" [344]
2. I write to you thus, Lady Eustochium (I am bound to call my Lord's bride "lady"), to show you by my opening words that my object is not to praise the virginity which you follow, and of which you have proved the value, or yet to recount the drawbacks of marriage, such as pregnancy, the crying of infants, the torture caused by a rival, the cares of household management, and all those fancied blessings which death at last cuts short. Not that married women are as such outside the pale; they have their own place, the marriage that is honorable and the bed undefiled. [345] My purpose is to show you that you are fleeing from Sodom and should take warning by Lot's wife. [346] There is no flattery, I can tell you, in these pages. A flatterer's words are fair, but for all that he is an enemy. You need expect no rhetorical flourishes setting you among the angels, and while they extol virginity as blessed, putting the world at your feet.
3. I would have you draw from your monastic vow not pride but fear. [347] You walk laden with gold; you must keep out of the robber's way. To us men this life is a race-course: we contend here, we are crowned elsewhere. No man can lay aside fear while serpents and scorpions beset his path. The Lord says: "My sword hath drunk its fill in heaven," [348] and do you expect to find peace on the earth? No, the earth yields only thorns and thistles, and its dust is food for the serpent. [349] "For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places." [350] We are hemmed in by hosts of foes, our enemies are upon every side. The weak flesh will soon be ashes: one against many, it fights against tremendous odds. Not till it has been dissolved, not till the Prince of this world has come and found no sin therein, [351] not till then may you safely listen to the prophet's words: "Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night nor for the arrow that flieth by day; nor for the trouble which haunteth thee in darkness; nor for the demon and his attacks at noonday. A thousand shall fall at thy side and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee." [352] When the hosts of the enemy distress you, when your frame is fevered and your passions roused, when you say in your heart, "What shall I do?" Elisha's words shall give you your answer, "Fear not, for they that be with us are more than they that be with them." [353] He shall pray, "Lord, open the eyes of thine handmaid that she may see." And then when your eyes have been opened you shall see a fiery chariot like Elijah's waiting to carry you to heaven, [354] and shall joyfully sing: "Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers: the snare is broken and we are escaped." [355]
4. So long as we are held down by this frail body, so long as we have our treasure in earthen vessels; [356] so long as the flesh lusteth against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh, [357] there can be no sure victory. "Our adversary the devil goeth about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour." [358] "Thou makest darkness," David says, "and it is night: wherein all the beasts of the forest do creep forth. The young lions roar after their prey and seek their meat from God." [359] The devil looks not for unbelievers, for those who are without, whose flesh the Assyrian king roasted in the furnace. [360] It is the church of Christ that he "makes haste to spoil." [361] According to Habakkuk, "His food is of the choicest." [362] A Job is the victim of his machinations, and after devouring Judas he seeks power to sift the [other] apostles. [363] The Saviour came not to send peace upon the earth but a sword. [364] Lucifer fell, Lucifer who used to rise at dawn; [365] and he who was bred up in a paradise of delight had the well-earned sentence passed upon him, "Though thou exalt thyself as the eagle, and though thou set thy nest among the stars, thence will I bring thee down, saith the Lord." [366] For he had said in his heart, "I will exalt my throne above the stars of God," and "I will be like the Most High." [367] Wherefore God says every day to the angels, as they descend the ladder that Jacob saw in his dream, [368] "I have said ye are Gods and all of you are children of the Most High. But ye shall die like men and fall like one of the princes." [369] The devil fell first, and since "God standeth in the congregation of the Gods and judgeth among the Gods," [370] the apostle writes to those who are ceasing to be Gods--"Whereas there is among you envying and strife, are ye not carnal and walk as men?" [371]
5. If, then, the apostle, who was a chosen vessel [372] separated unto the gospel of Christ, [373] by reason of the pricks of the flesh and the allurements of vice keeps under his body and brings it into subjection, lest when he has preached to others he may himself be a castaway; [374] and yet, for all that, sees another law in his members warring against the law of his mind, and bringing him into captivity to the law of sin; [375] if after nakedness, fasting, hunger, imprisonment, scourging and other torments, he turns back to himself and cries "Oh, wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" [376] do you fancy that you ought to lay aside apprehension? See to it that God say not some day of you: "The virgin of Israel is fallen and there is none to raise her up." [377] I will say it boldly, though God can do all things He cannot raise up a virgin when once she has fallen. He may indeed relieve one who is defiled from the penalty of her sin, but He will not give her a crown. Let us fear lest in us also the prophecy be fulfilled, "Good virgins shall faint." [378] Notice that it is good virgins who are spoken of, for there are bad ones as well. "Whosoever looketh on a woman," the Lord says, "to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart." [379] So that virginity may be lost even by a thought. Such are evil virgins, virgins in the flesh, not in the spirit; foolish virgins, who, having no oil, are shut out by the Bridegroom. [380]
6. But if even real virgins, when they have other failings, are not saved by their physical virginity, what shall become of those who have prostituted the members of Christ, and have changed the temple of the Holy Ghost into a brothel? Straightway shall they hear the words: "Come down and sit in the dust, O virgin daughter of Babylon, sit on the ground; there is no throne, O daughter of the Chaldæans: for thou shalt no more be called tender and delicate. Take the millstone and grind meal; uncover thy locks, make bare the legs, pass over the rivers; thy nakedness shall be uncovered, yea, thy shame shall be seen." [381] And shall she come to this after the bridal-chamber of God the Son, after the kisses of Him who is to her both kinsman and spouse? [382] Yes, she of whom the prophetic utterance once sang, "Upon thy right hand did stand the queen in a vesture of gold wrought about with divers colours," [383] shall be made naked, and her skirts shall be discovered upon her face. [384] She shall sit by the waters of loneliness, her pitcher laid aside; and shall open her feet to every one that passeth by, and shall be polluted to the crown of her head. [385] Better had it been for her to have submitted to the yoke of marriage, to have walked in level places, than thus, aspiring to loftier heights, to fall into the deep of hell. I pray you, let not Zion the faithful city become a harlot: [386] let it not be that where the Trinity has been entertained, there demons shall dance and owls make their nests, and jackals build. [387] Let us not loose the belt that binds the breast. When lust tickles the sense and the soft fire of sensual pleasure sheds over us its pleasing glow, let us immediately break forth and cry: "The Lord is on my side: I will not fear what the flesh can do unto me." [388] When the inner man shows signs for a time of wavering between vice and virtue, say: "Why art thou cast down, O my soul, and why art thou disquieted within me? Hope thou in God, for I shall yet praise Him who is the health of my countenance and my God." [389] You must never let suggestions of evil grow on you, or a babel of disorder win strength in your breast. Slay the enemy while he is small; and, that you may not have a crop of tares, nip the evil in the bud. Bear in mind the warning words of the Psalmist: "Hapless daughter of Babylon, happy shall he be that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us. Happy shall he be that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones." [390] Because natural heat inevitably kindles in a man sensual passion, he is praised and accounted happy who, when foul suggestions arise in his mind, gives them no quarter, but dashes them instantly against the rock. "Now the Rock is Christ." [391]
7. How often, when I was living in the desert, in the vast solitude which gives to hermits a savage dwelling-place, parched by a burning sun, how often did I fancy myself among the pleasures of Rome! I used to sit alone because I was filled with bitterness. Sackcloth disfigured my unshapely limbs and my skin from long neglect had become as black as an Ethiopian's. Tears and groans were every day my portion; and if drowsiness chanced to overcome my struggles against it, my bare bones, which hardly held together, clashed against the ground. Of my food and drink I say nothing: for, even in sickness, the solitaries have nothing but cold water, and to eat one's food cooked is looked upon as self-indulgence. Now, although in my fear of hell I had consigned myself to this prison, where I had no companions but scorpions and wild beasts, I often found myself amid bevies of girls. My face was pale and my frame chilled with fasting; yet my mind was burning with desire, and the fires of lust kept bubbling up before me when my flesh was as good as dead. Helpless, I cast myself at the feet of Jesus, I watered them with my tears, I wiped them with my hair: and then I subdued my rebellious body with weeks of abstinence. I do not blush to avow my abject misery; rather I lament that I am not now what once I was. I remember how I often cried aloud all night till the break of day and ceased not from beating my breast till tranquillity returned at the chiding of the Lord. I used to dread my very cell as though it knew my thoughts; and, stern and angry with myself, I used to make my way alone into the desert. Wherever I saw hollow valleys, craggy mountains, steep cliffs, there I made my oratory, there the house of correction for my unhappy flesh. There, also--the Lord Himself is my witness--when I had shed copious tears and had strained my eyes towards heaven, I sometimes felt myself among angelic hosts, and for joy and gladness sang: "because of the savour of thy good ointments we will run after thee." [392]
8. Now, if such are the temptations of men who, since their bodies are emaciated with fasting, have only evil thoughts to fear, how must it fare with a girl whose surroundings are those of luxury and ease? Surely, to use the apostle's words, "She is dead while she liveth." [393] Therefore, if experience gives me a right to advise, or clothes my words with credit, I would begin by urging you and warning you as Christ's spouse to avoid wine as you would avoid poison. For wine is the first weapon used by demons against the young. Greed does not shake, nor pride puff up, nor ambition infatuate so much as this. Other vices we easily escape, but this enemy is shut up within us, and wherever we go we carry him with us. Wine and youth between them kindle the fire of sensual pleasure. Why do we throw oil on the flame--why do we add fresh fuel to a miserable body which is already ablaze. Paul, it is true, says to Timothy "drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach's sake, and for thine often infirmities." [394] But notice the reasons for which the permission is given, to cure an aching stomach and a frequent infirmity. And lest we should indulge ourselves too much on the score of our ailments, he commands that but little shall be taken; advising rather as a physician than as an apostle (though, indeed, an apostle is a spiritual physician). He evidently feared that Timothy might succumb to weakness, and might prove unequal to the constant moving to and fro involved in preaching the Gospel. Besides, he remembered that he had spoken of "wine wherein is excess," [395] and had said, "it is good neither to eat flesh nor to drink wine." [396] Noah drank wine and became intoxicated; but living as he did in the rude age after the flood, when the vine was first planted, perhaps he did not know its power of inebriation. And to let you see the hidden meaning of Scripture in all its fulness (for the word of God is a pearl and may be pierced on every side) after his drunkenness came the uncovering of his body; self-indulgence culminated in lust. [397] First the belly is crammed; then the other members are roused. Similarly, at a later period, "The people sat down to eat and to drink and rose up to play." [398] Lot also, God's friend, whom He saved upon the mountain, who was the only one found righteous out of so many thousands, was intoxicated by his daughters. And, although they may have acted as they did more from a desire of offspring than from love of sinful pleasure--for the human race seemed in danger of extinction--yet they were well aware that the righteous man would not abet their design unless intoxicated. In fact he did not know what he was doing, and his sin was not wilful. Still his error was a grave one, for it made him the father of Moab and Ammon, [399] Israel's enemies, of whom it is said: "Even to the fourteenth generation they shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord forever." [400]
9. When Elijah, in his flight from Jezebel, lay weary and desolate beneath the oak, there came an angel who raised him up and said, "Arise and eat." And he looked, and behold there was a cake and a cruse of water at his head. [401] Had God willed it, might He not have sent His prophet spiced wines and dainty dishes and flesh basted into tenderness? When Elisha invited the sons of the prophets to dinner, he only gave them field-herbs to eat; and when all cried out with one voice: "There is death in the pot," the man of God did not storm at the cooks (for he was not used to very sumptuous fare), but caused meal to be brought, and casting it in, sweetened the bitter mess [402] with spiritual strength as Moses had once sweetened the waters of Mara. [403] Again, when men were sent to arrest the prophet, and were smitten with physical and mental blindness, that he might bring them without their own knowledge to Samaria, notice the food with which Elisha ordered them to be refreshed. "Set bread and water," he said, "before them, that they may eat and drink and go to their master." [404] And Daniel, who might have had rich food from the king's table, [405] preferred the mower's breakfast, brought to him by Habakkuk, [406] which must have been but country fare. He was called "a man of desires," [407] because he would not eat the bread of desire or drink the wine of concupiscence.
10. There are, in the Scriptures, countless divine answers condemning gluttony and approving simple food. But as fasting is not my present theme and an adequate discussion of it would require a treatise to itself, these few observations must suffice of the many which the subject suggests. By them you will understand why the first man, obeying his belly and not God, was cast down from paradise into this vale of tears; [408] and why Satan used hunger to tempt the Lord Himself in the wilderness; [409] and why the apostle cries: "Meats for the belly and the belly for meats, but God shall destroy both it and them;" [410] and why he speaks of the self-indulgent as men "whose God is their belly." [411] For men invariably worship what they like best. Care must be taken, therefore, that abstinence may bring back to Paradise those whom satiety once drove out.
11. You will tell me, perhaps, that, high-born as you are, reared in luxury and used to lie softly, you cannot do without wine and dainties, and would find a stricter rule of life unendurable. If so, I can only say: "Live, then, by your own rule, since God's rule is too hard for you." Not that the Creator and Lord of all takes pleasure in a rumbling and empty stomach, or in fevered lungs; but that these are indispensable as means to the preservation of chastity. Job was dear to God, perfect and upright before Him; [412] yet hear what he says of the devil: "His strength is in the loins, and his force is in the navel." [413]
The terms are chosen for decency's sake, but the reproductive organs of the two sexes are meant. Thus, the descendant of David, who, according to the promise is to sit upon his throne, is said to come from his loins. [414] And the seventy-five souls descended from Jacob who entered Egypt are said to come out of his thigh. [415] So, also, when his thigh shrank after the Lord had wrestled with him, [416] he ceased to beget children. The Israelites, again, are told to celebrate the passover with loins girded and mortified. [417] God says to Job: "Gird up thy loins as a man." [418] John wears a leathern girdle. [419] The apostles must gird their loins to carry the lamps of the Gospel. [420] When Ezekiel tells us how Jerusalem is found in the plain of wandering, covered with blood, he uses the words: "Thy navel has not been cut." [421] In his assaults on men, therefore, the devil's strength is in the loins; in his attacks on women his force is in the navel.
12. Do you wish for proof of my assertions? Take examples. Sampson was braver than a lion and tougher than a rock; alone and unprotected he pursued a thousand armed men; and yet, in Delilah's embrace, his resolution melted away. David was a man after God's own heart, and his lips had often sung of the Holy One, the future Christ; and yet as he walked upon his housetop he was fascinated by Bathsheba's nudity, and added murder to adultery. [422] Notice here how, even in his own house, a man cannot use his eyes without danger. Then repenting, he says to the Lord: "Against thee, thee only, have I sinned and done this evil in Thy sight." [423] Being a king he feared no one else. So, too, with Solomon. Wisdom used him to sing her praise, [424] and he treated of all plants "from the cedar tree that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall;" [425] and yet he went back from God because he was a lover of women. [426] And, as if to show that near relationship is no safeguard, Amnon burned with illicit passion for his sister Tamar. [427]
13. I cannot bring myself to speak of the many virgins who daily fall and are lost to the bosom of the church, their mother: stars over which the proud foe sets up his throne, [428] and rocks hollowed by the serpent that he may dwell in their fissures. You may see many women widows before wedded, who try to conceal their miserable fall by a lying garb. Unless they are betrayed by swelling wombs or by the crying of their infants, they walk abroad with tripping feet and heads in the air. Some go so far as to take potions, that they may insure barrenness, and thus murder human beings almost before their conception. Some, when they find themselves with child through their sin, use drugs to procure abortion, and when (as often happens) they die with their offspring, they enter the lower world laden with the guilt not only of adultery against Christ but also of suicide and child murder. Yet it is these who say: "Unto the pure all things are pure;' [429] my conscience is sufficient guide for me. A pure heart is what God looks for. Why should I abstain from meats which God has created to be received with thanksgiving?" [430] And when they wish to appear agreeable and entertaining they first drench themselves with wine, and then joining the grossest profanity to intoxication, they say "Far be it from me to abstain from the blood of Christ." And when they see another pale or sad they call her "wretch" or "manichæan;" [431] quite logically, indeed, for on their principles fasting involves heresy. When they go out they do their best to attract notice, and with nods and winks encourage troops of young fellows to follow them. Of each and all of these the prophet's words are true: "Thou hast a whore's forehead; thou refusest to be ashamed." [432] Their robes have but a narrow purple stripe, [433] it is true; and their head-dress is somewhat loose, so as to leave the hair free. From their shoulders flutters the lilac mantle which they call "ma-forte;" they have their feet in cheap slippers and their arms tucked up tight-fitting sleeves. Add to these marks of their profession an easy gait, and you have all the virginity that they possess. Such may have eulogizers of their own, and may fetch a higher price in the market of perdition, merely because they are called virgins. But to such virgins as these I prefer to be displeasing.
14. I blush to speak of it, it is so shocking; yet though sad, it is true. How comes this plague of the agapetæ [434] to be in the church? Whence come these unwedded wives, these novel concubines, these harlots, so I will call them, though they cling to a single partner? One house holds them and one chamber. They often occupy the same bed, and yet they call us suspicious if we fancy anything amiss. A brother leaves his virgin sister; a virgin, slighting her unmarried brother, seeks a brother in a stranger. Both alike profess to have but one object, to find spiritual consolation from those not of their kin; but their real aim is to indulge in sexual intercourse. It is on such that Solomon in the book of proverbs heaps his scorn. "Can a man take fire in his bosom," he says, "and his clothes not be burned? Can one go upon hot coals and his feet not be burned?" [435]
15. We cast out, then, and banish from our sight those who only wish to seem and not to be virgins. Henceforward I may bring all my speech to bear upon you who, as it is your lot to be the first virgin of noble birth in Rome, have to labor the more diligently not to lose good things to come, as well as those that are present. You have at least learned from a case in your own family the troubles of wedded life and the uncertainties of marriage. Your sister, Blæsilla, before you in age but behind you in declining the vow of virginity, has become a widow but seven months after she has taken a husband. Hapless plight of us mortals who know not what is before us! She has lost, at once, the crown of virginity and the pleasures of wedlock. And, although, as a widow, the second degree of chastity is hers, still can you not imagine the continual crosses which she has to bear, daily seeing in her sister what she has lost herself; and, while she finds it hard to go without the pleasures of wedlock, having a less reward for her present continence? Still she, too, may take heart and rejoice. The fruit which is an hundredfold and that which is sixtyfold both spring from one seed, and that seed is chastity. [436]
16. Do not court the company of married ladies or visit the houses of the high-born. Do not look too often on the life which you despised to become a virgin. Women of the world, you know, plume themselves because their husbands are on the bench or in other high positions. And the wife of the emperor always has an eager throng of visitors at her door. Why do you, then, wrong your husband? Why do you, God's bride, hasten to visit the wife of a mere man? Learn in this respect a holy pride; know that you are better than they. And not only must you avoid intercourse with those who are puffed up by their husbands' honors, who are hedged in with troops of eunuchs, and who wear robes inwrought with threads of gold. You must also shun those who are widows from necessity and not from choice. Not that they ought to have desired the death of their husbands; but that they have not welcomed the opportunity of continence when it has come. As it is, they only change their garb; their old self-seeking remains unchanged. To see them in their capacious litters, with red cloaks and plump bodies, a row of eunuchs walking in front of them, you would fancy them not to have lost husbands but to be seeking them. Their houses are filled with flatterers and with guests. The very clergy, who ought to inspire them with respect by their teaching and authority, kiss these ladies on the forehead, and putting forth their hands (so that, if you knew no better, you might suppose them in the act of blessing), take wages for their visits. They, meanwhile, seeing that priests cannot do without them, are lifted up into pride; and as, having had experience of both, they prefer the license of widowhood to the restraints of marriage, they call themselves chaste livers and nuns. After an immoderate supper they retire to rest to dream of the apostles. [437]
17. Let your companions be women pale and thin with fasting, and approved by their years and conduct; such as daily sing in their hearts: "Tell me where thou feedest thy flock, where thou makest it to rest at noon," [438] and say, with true earnestness, "I have a desire to depart and to be with Christ." [439] Be subject to your parents, imitating the example of your spouse. [440] Rarely go abroad, and if you wish to seek the aid of the martyrs seek it in your own chamber. For you will never need a pretext for going out if you always go out when there is need. Take food in moderation, and never overload your stomach. For many women, while temperate as regards wine, are intemperate in the use of food. When you rise at night to pray, let your breath be that of an empty and not that of an overfull stomach. Read often, learn all that you can. Let sleep overcome you, the roll still in your hands; when your head falls, let it be on the sacred page. Let your fasts be of daily occurrence and your refreshment such as avoids satiety. It is idle to carry an empty stomach if, in two or three days' time, the fast is to be made up for by repletion. When cloyed the mind immediately grows sluggish, and when the ground is watered it puts forth the thorns of lust. If ever you feel the outward man sighing for the flower of youth, and if, as you lie on your couch after a meal, you are excited by the alluring train of sensual desires; then seize the shield of faith, for it alone can quench the fiery darts of the devil. [441] "They are all adulterers," says the prophet; "they have made ready their heart like an oven." [442] But do you keep close to the footsteps of Christ, and, intent upon His words, say: "Did not our heart burn within us by the way while Jesus opened to us the Scriptures?" [443] and again: "Thy word is tried to the uttermost, and thy servant loveth it." [444] It is hard for the human soul to avoid loving something, and our mind must of necessity give way to affection of one kind or another. The love of the flesh is overcome by the love of the spirit. Desire is quenched by desire. What is taken from the one increases the other. Therefore, as you lie on your couch, say again and again: "By night have I sought Him whom my soul loveth." [445] "Mortify, therefore," says the apostle, "your members which are upon the earth." [446] Because he himself did so, he could afterwards say with confidence: "I live, yet not I, but Christ, liveth in me." [447] He who mortifies his members, and feels that he is walking in a vain show, [448] is not afraid to say: "I am become like a bottle in the frost. [449] Whatever there was in me of the moisture of lust has been dried out of me." And again: "My knees are weak through fasting; I forget to eat my bread. By reason of the voice of my groaning my bones cleave to my skin." [450]
18. Be like the grasshopper and make night musical. Nightly wash your bed and water your couch with your tears. [451] Watch and be like the sparrow alone upon the housetop. [452] Sing with the spirit, but sing with the understanding also. [453] And let your song be that of the psalmist: "Bless the Lord, O my soul; and forget not all his benefits; who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases; who redeemeth thy life from destruction." [454] Can we, any of us, honestly make his words our own: "I have eaten ashes like bread and mingled my drink with weeping?" [455] Yet, should we not weep and groan when the serpent invites us, as he invited our first parents, to eat forbidden fruit, and when after expelling us from the paradise of virginity he desires to clothe us with mantles of skins such as that which Elijah, on his return to paradise, left behind him on earth? [456] Say to yourself: "What have I to do with the pleasures of sense that so soon come to an end? What have I to do with the song of the sirens so sweet and so fatal to those who hear it?" I would not have you subject to that sentence whereby condemnation has been passed upon mankind. When God says to Eve, "In pain and in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children," say to yourself, "That is a law for a married woman, not for me." And when He continues, "Thy desire shall be to thy husband," [457] say again: "Let her desire be to her husband who has not Christ for her spouse." And when, last of all, He says, "Thou shalt surely die," [458] once more, say, "Marriage indeed must end in death; but the life on which I have resolved is independent of sex. Let those who are wives keep the place and the time that properly belong to them. For me, virginity is consecrated in the persons of Mary and of Christ."
19. Some one may say, "Do you dare detract from wedlock, which is a state blessed by God?" I do not detract from wedlock when I set virginity before it. No one compares a bad thing with a good. Wedded women may congratulate themselves that they come next to virgins. "Be fruitful," God says, "and multiply, and replenish the earth." [459] He who desires to replenish the earth may increase and multiply if he will. But the train to which you belong is not on earth, but in heaven. The command to increase and multiply first finds fulfilment after the expulsion from paradise, after the nakedness and the fig-leaves which speak of sexual passion. Let them marry and be given in marriage who eat their bread in the sweat of their brow; whose land brings forth to them thorns and thistles, [460] and whose crops are choked with briars. My seed produces fruit a hundredfold. [461] "All men cannot receive God's saying, but they to whom it is given."
Some people may be eunuchs from necessity; I am one of free will. [462] "There is a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing. There is a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together." [463] Now that out of the hard stones of the Gentiles God has raised up children unto Abraham, [464] they begin to be "holy stones rolling upon the earth." [465] They pass through the whirlwinds of the world, and roll on in God's chariot on rapid wheels. Let those stitch coats to themselves who have lost the coat woven from the top throughout; [466] who delight in the cries of infants which, as soon as they see the light, lament that they are born. In paradise Eve was a virgin, and it was only after the coats of skins that she began her married life. Now paradise is your home too. Keep therefore your birthright and say: "Return unto thy rest, O my soul." [467] To show that virginity is natural while wedlock only follows guilt, what is born of wedlock is virgin flesh, and it gives back in fruit what in root it has lost. "There shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a flower shall grow out of his roots." [468] The rod [469] is the mother of the Lord--simple, pure, unsullied; drawing no germ of life from without but fruitful in singleness like God Himself. The flower of the rod is Christ, who says of Himself: "I am the rose of Sharon and the lily of the valleys." [470] In another place He is foretold to be "a stone cut out of the mountain without hands," [471] a figure by which the prophet signifies that He is to be born a virgin of a virgin. For the hands are here a figure of wedlock as in the passage: "His left hand is under my head and his right hand doth embrace me." [472] It agrees, also, with this interpretation that the unclean animals are led into Noah's ark in pairs, while of the clean an uneven number is taken. [473] Similarly, when Moses and Joshua were bidden to remove their shoes because the ground on which they stood was holy, [474] the command had a mystical meaning. So, too, when the disciples were appointed to preach the gospel they were told to take with them neither shoe nor shoe-latchet; [475] and when the soldiers came to cast lots for the garments of Jesus [476] they found no boots that they could take away. For the Lord could not Himself possess what He had forbidden to His servants.
20. I praise wedlock, I praise marriage, but it is because they give me virgins. I gather the rose from the thorns, the gold from the earth, the pearl from the shell. "Doth the plowman plow all day to sow?" [477] Shall he not also enjoy the fruit of his labor? Wedlock is the more honored, the more what is born of it is loved. Why, mother, do you grudge your daughter her virginity? She has been reared on your milk, she has come from your womb, she has grown up in your bosom. Your watchful affection has kept her a virgin. Are you angry with her because she chooses to be a king's wife and not a soldier's? She has conferred on you a high privilege; you are now the mother-in-law of God. "Concerning virgins," says the apostle, "I have no commandment of the Lord." [478] Why was this? Because his own virginity was due, not to a command, but to his free choice. For they are not to be heard who feign him to have had a wife; for, when he is discussing continence and commending perpetual chastity, he uses the words, "I would that all men were even as I myself." And farther on, "I say, therefore, to the unmarried and widows, it is good for them if they abide even as I." [479] And in another place, "have we not power to lead about wives even as the rest of the apostles?" [480] Why then has he no commandment from the Lord concerning virginity? Because what is freely offered is worth more than what is extorted by force, and to command virginity would have been to abrogate wedlock. It would have been a hard enactment to compel opposition to nature and to extort from men the angelic life; and not only so, it would have been to condemn what is a divine ordinance.
21. The old law had a different ideal of blessedness, for therein it is said: "Blessed is he who hath seed in Zion and a family in Jerusalem:" [481] and "Cursed is the barren who beareth not:" [482] and "Thy children shall be like olive-plants round about thy table." [483] Riches too are promised to the faithful and we are told that "there was not one feeble person among their tribes." [484] But now even to eunuchs it is said, "Say not, behold I am a dry tree," [485] for instead of sons and daughters you have a place forever in heaven. Now the poor are blessed, now Lazarus is set before Dives in his purple. [486] Now he who is weak is counted strong. But in those days the world was still unpeopled: accordingly, to pass over instances of childlessness meant only to serve as types, those only were considered happy who could boast of children. It was for this reason that Abraham in his old age married Keturah; [487] that Leah hired Jacob with her son's mandrakes, [488] and that fair Rachel--a type of the church--complained of the closing of her womb. [489] But gradually the crop grew up and then the reaper was sent forth with his sickle. Elijah lived a virgin life, so also did Elisha and many of the sons of the prophets. To Jeremiah the command came: "Thou shalt not take thee a wife." [490] He had been sanctified in his mother's womb, [491] and now he was forbidden to take a wife because the captivity was near. The apostle gives the same counsel in different words. "I think, therefore, that this is good by reason of the present distress, namely that it is good for a man to be as he is." [492] What is this distress which does away with the joys of wedlock? The apostle tells us, in a later verse: "The time is short: it remaineth that those who have wives be as though they had none." [493] Nebuchadnezzar is hard at hand. The lion is bestirring himself from his lair. What good will marriage be to me if it is to end in slavery to the haughtiest of kings? What good will little ones be to me if their lot is to be that which the prophet sadly describes: "The tongue of the sucking child cleaveth to the roof of his mouth for thirst; the young children ask for bread and no man breaketh it unto them"? [494] In those days, as I have said, the virtue of continence was found only in men: Eve still continued to travail with children. But now that a virgin has conceived [495] in the womb and has borne to us a child of which the prophet says that "Government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called the mighty God, the everlasting Father," [496] now the chain of the curse is broken. Death came through Eve, but life has come through Mary. And thus the gift of virginity has been bestowed most richly upon women, seeing that it has had its beginning from a woman. As soon as the Son of God set foot upon the earth, He formed for Himself a new household there; that, as He was adored by angels in heaven, angels might serve Him also on earth. Then chaste Judith once more cut off the head of Holofernes. [497] Then Haman--whose name means iniquity--was once more burned in fire of his own kindling. [498] Then James and John forsook father and net and ship and followed the Saviour: neither kinship nor the world's ties, nor the care of their home could hold them back. Then were the words heard: "Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." [499] For no soldier goes with a wife to battle. Even when a disciple would have buried his father, the Lord forbade him, and said: "Foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay His head." [500] So you must not complain if you have but scanty house-room. In the same strain, the apostle writes: "He that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord: but he that is married careth for the things that are of the world how he may please his wife. There is difference also between a wife and a virgin. The unmarried woman careth for the things of the Lord that she may be holy both in body and in spirit. But she that is married careth for the things of the world how she may please her husband." [501]
22. How great inconveniences are involved in wedlock and how many anxieties encompass it I have, I think, described shortly in my treatise--published against Helvidius [502] --on the perpetual virginity of the blessed Mary. It would be tedious to go over the same ground now; and any one who pleases may draw from that fountain. But lest I should seem wholly to have passed over the matter, I will just say now that the apostle bids us pray without ceasing, [503] and that he who in the married state renders his wife her due [504] cannot so pray. Either we pray always and are virgins, or we cease to pray that we may fulfil the claims of marriage. Still he says: "If a virgin marry she hath not sinned. Nevertheless such shall have trouble in the flesh." [505] At the outset I promised that I should say little or nothing of the embarrassments of wedlock, and now I give you notice to the same effect. If you want to know from how many vexations a virgin is free and by how many a wife is fettered you should read Tertullian "to a philosophic friend," [506] and his other treatises on virginity, the blessed Cyprian's noble volume, the writings of Pope Damasus [507] in prose and verse, and the treatises recently written for his sister by our own Ambrose. [508] In these he has poured forth his soul with such a flood of eloquence that he has sought out, set forth, and put in order all that bears on the praise of virgins.
23. We must proceed by a different path, for our purpose is not the praise of virginity but its preservation. To know that it is a good thing is not enough: when we have chosen it we must guard it with jealous care. The first only requires judgment, and we share it with many; the second calls for toil, and few compete with us in it. "He that shall endure unto the end," the Lord says, "the same shall be saved," [509] and "many are called but few are chosen." [510] Therefore I conjure you before God and Jesus Christ and His elect angels to guard that which you have received, not readily exposing to the public gaze the vessels of the Lord's temple (which only the priests are by right allowed to see), that no profane person may look upon God's sanctuary. Uzzah, when he touched the ark which it was not lawful to touch, was struck down suddenly by death. [511] And assuredly no gold or silver vessel was ever so dear to God as is the temple of a virgin's body. The shadow went before, but now the reality is come. You indeed may speak in all simplicity, and from motives of amiability may treat with courtesy the veriest strangers, but unchaste eyes see nothing aright. They fail to appreciate the beauty of the soul, and only value that of the body. Hezekiah showed God's treasure to the Assyrians, [512] who ought never to have seen what they were sure to covet. The consequence was that Judæa was torn by continual wars, and that the very first things carried away to Babylon were these vessels of the Lord. We find Belshazzar at his feast and among his concubines (vice always glories in defiling what is noble) drinking out of these sacred cups. [513]
24. Never incline your ear to words of mischief. For men often say an improper word to make trial of a virgin's steadfastness, to see if she hears it with pleasure, and if she is ready to unbend at every silly jest. Such persons applaud whatever you affirm and deny whatever you deny; they speak of you as not only holy but accomplished, and say that in you there is no guile. "Behold," say they, "a true hand-maid of Christ; behold entire singleness of heart. How different from that rough, unsightly, countrified fright, who most likely never married because she could never find a husband." Our natural weakness induces us readily to listen to such flatterers; but, though we may blush and reply that such praise is more than our due, the soul within us rejoices to hear itself praised.
Like the ark of the covenant Christ's spouse should be overlaid with gold within and without; [514] she should be the guardian of the law of the Lord. Just as the ark contained nothing but the tables of the covenant, [515] so in you there should be no thought of anything that is outside. For it pleases the Lord to sit in your mind as He once sat on the mercy-seat and the cherubims. [516] As He sent His disciples to loose Him the foal of an ass that he might ride on it, so He sends them to release you from the cares of the world, that leaving the bricks and straw of Egypt, you may follow Him, the true Moses, through the wilderness and may enter the land of promise. Let no one dare to forbid you, neither mother nor sister nor kinswoman nor brother: "The Lord hath need of you." [517] Should they seek to hinder you, let them fear the scourges that fell on Pharaoh, who, because he would not let God's people go that they might serve Him, [518] suffered the plagues described in Scripture. Jesus entering into the temple cast out those things which belonged not to the temple. For God is jealous and will not allow the father's house to be made a den of robbers. [519] Where money is counted, where doves are sold, where simplicity is stifled where, that is, a virgin's breast glows with cares of this world; straightway the veil of the temple is rent, [520] the bridegroom rises in anger, he says: "Your house is left unto you desolate." [521] Read the gospel and see how Mary sitting at the feet of the Lord is set before the zealous Martha. In her anxiety to be hospitable Martha was preparing a meal for the Lord and His disciples; yet Jesus said to her: "Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things. But few things are needful or one. [522] And Mary hath chosen that good part which shall not be taken away from her." [523] Be then like Mary; prefer the food of the soul to that of the body. Leave it to your sisters to run to and fro and to seek how they may fitly welcome Christ. But do you, having once for all cast away the burden of the world, sit at the Lord's feet and say: "I have found him whom my soul loveth; I will hold him, I will not let him go." [524] And He will answer: "My dove, my undefiled is but one; she is the only one of her mother, she is the choice one of her that bare her." [525] Now the mother of whom this is said is the heavenly Jerusalem. [526]
25. Ever let the privacy of your chamber guard you; ever let the Bridegroom sport with you within. [527] Do you pray? You speak to the Bridegroom. Do you read? He speaks to you. When sleep overtakes you He will come behind and put His hand through the hole of the door, and your heart [528] shall be moved for Him; and you will awake and rise up and say: "I am sick of love." [529] Then He will reply: "A garden inclosed is my sister, my spouse; a spring shut up, a fountain sealed." [530]
Go not from home nor visit the daughters of a strange land, though you have patriarchs for brothers and Israel for a father. Dinah went out and was seduced. [531] Do not seek the Bridegroom in the streets; do not go round the corners of the city. For though you may say: "I will rise now and go about the city: in the streets and in the broad ways I will seek Him whom my soul loveth," and though you may ask the watchmen: "Saw ye Him whom my soul loveth?" [532] no one will deign to answer you. The Bridegroom cannot be found in the streets: "Strait and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life." [533] So the Song goes on: "I sought him but I could not find him: I called him but he gave me no answer." [534] And would that failure to find Him were all. You will be wounded and stripped, you will lament and say: "The watchmen that went about the city found me: they smote me, they wounded me, they took away my veil from me." [535] Now if one who could say: "I sleep but my heart waketh," [536] and "A bundle of myrrh is my well beloved unto me; he shall lie all night betwixt my breasts"; [537] if one who could speak thus suffered so much because she went abroad, what shall become of us who are but young girls; of us who, when the bride goes in with the Bridegroom, still remain without? Jesus is jealous. He does not choose that your face should be seen of others. You may excuse yourself and say: "I have drawn close my veil, I have covered my face and I have sought Thee there and have said: Tell me, O Thou whom my soul loveth, where Thou feedest Thy flock, where Thou makest it to rest at noon. For why should I be as one that is veiled beside the flocks of Thy companions?'" [538] Yet in spite of your excuses He will be wroth, He will swell with anger and say: "If thou know not thyself, O thou fairest among women, go thy way forth by the footsteps of the flock and feed thy goats beside the shepherd's tents." [539] You may be fair, and of all faces yours may be the dearest to the Bridegroom; yet, unless you know yourself, and keep your heart with all diligence, [540] unless also you avoid the eyes of the young men, you will be turned out of My bride-chamber to feed the goats, which shall be set on the left hand. [541]
26. These things being so, my Eustochium, daughter, lady, fellow-servant, sister--these names refer the first to your age, the second to your rank, the third to your religious vocation, the last to the place which you hold in my affection--hear the words of Isaiah: "Come, my people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee: hide thyself as it were for a little moment, until the indignation" of the Lord "be overpast." [542] Let foolish virgins stray abroad, but for your part stay at home with the Bridegroom; for if you shut your door, and, according to the precept of the Gospel, [543] pray to your Father in secret, He will come and knock, saying: "Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any man...open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me." [544] Then straightway you will eagerly reply: "It is the voice of my beloved that knocketh, saying, Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled." It is impossible that you should refuse, and say: "I have put off my coat; how shall I put it on? I have washed my feet; how shall I defile them?" [545] Arise forthwith and open. Otherwise while you linger He may pass on and you may have mournfully to say: "I opened to my beloved, but my beloved was gone." [546] Why need the doors of your heart be closed to the Bridegroom? Let them be open to Christ but closed to the devil according to the saying: "If the spirit of him who hath power rise up against thee, leave not thy place." [547] Daniel, in that upper story to which he withdrew when he could no longer continue below, had his windows open toward Jerusalem. [548] Do you too keep your windows open, but only on the side where light may enter and whence you may see the eye of the Lord. Open not those other windows of which the prophet says: "Death is come up into our windows." [549]
27. You must also be careful to avoid the snare of a passion for vainglory. "How," Jesus says, "can ye believe which receive glory one from another?" [550] What an evil that must be the victim of which cannot believe! Let us rather say: "Thou art my glorying," [551] and "He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord," [552] and "If I yet pleased men I should not be the servant of Christ," [553] and "Far be it from me to glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom the world hath been crucified unto me and I unto the world;" [554] and once more: "In God we boast all the day long; my soul shall make her boast in the Lord." [555] When you do alms, let God alone see you. When you fast, be of a cheerful countenance. [556] Let your dress be neither too neat nor too slovenly; neither let it be so remarkable as to draw the attention of passers-by, and to make men point their fingers at you. Is a brother dead? Has the body of a sister to be carried to its burial? Take care lest in too often performing such offices you die yourself. Do not wish to seem very devout nor more humble than need be, lest you seek glory by shunning it. For many, who screen from all men's sight their poverty, charity, and fasting, desire to excite admiration by their very disdain of it, and strangely seek for praise while they profess to keep out of its way. From the other disturbing influences which make men rejoice, despond, hope, and fear I find many free; but this is a defect which few are without, and he is best whose character, like a fair skin, is disfigured by the fewest blemishes. I do not think it necessary to warn you against boasting of your riches, or against priding yourself on your birth, or against setting yourself up as superior to others. I know your humility; I know that you can say with sincerity: "Lord, my heart is not haughty nor mine eyes lofty;" [557] I know that in your breast as in that of your mother the pride through which the devil fell has no place. It would be time wasted to write to you about it; for there is no greater folly than to teach a pupil what he knows already. But now that you have despised the boastfulness of the world, do not let the fact inspire you with new boastfulness. Harbor not the secret thought that having ceased to court attention in garments of gold you may begin to do so in mean attire. And when you come into a room full of brothers and sisters, do not sit in too low a place or plead that you are unworthy of a footstool. Do not deliberately lower your voice as though worn out with fasting; nor, leaning on the shoulder of another, mimic the tottering gait of one who is faint. Some women, it is true, disfigure their faces, that they may appear unto men to fast. [558] As soon as they catch sight of any one they groan, they look down; they cover up their faces, all but one eye, which they keep free to see with. Their dress is sombre, their girdles are of sackcloth, their hands and feet are dirty; only their stomachs--which cannot be seen--are hot with food. Of these the psalm is sung daily: "The Lord will scatter the bones of them that please themselves." [559] Others change their garb and assume the mien of men, being ashamed of being what they were born to be--women. They cut off their hair and are not ashamed to look like eunuchs. Some clothe themselves in goat's hair, and, putting on hoods, think to become children again by making themselves look like so many owls. [560]
28. But I will not speak only of women. Avoid men, also, when you see them loaded with chains and wearing their hair long like women, contrary to the apostle's precept, [561] not to speak of beards like those of goats, black cloaks, and bare feet braving the cold. All these things are tokens of the devil. Such an one Rome groaned over some time back in Antimus; and Sophronius is a still more recent instance. Such persons, when they have once gained admission to the houses of the high-born, and have deceived "silly women laden with sins, ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth," [562] feign a sad mien and pretend to make long fasts while at night they feast in secret. Shame forbids me to say more, for my language might appear more like invective than admonition. There are others--I speak of those of my own order--who seek the presbyterate and the diaconate simply that they may be able to see women with less restraint. Such men think of nothing but their dress; they use perfumes freely, and see that there are no creases in their leather shoes. Their curling hair shows traces of the tongs; their fingers glisten with rings; they walk on tiptoe across a damp road, not to splash their feet. When you see men acting in this way, think of them rather as bridegrooms than as clergymen. Certain persons have devoted the whole of their energies and life to the single object of knowing the names, houses, and characters of married ladies. I will here briefly describe the head of the profession, that from the master's likeness you may recognize the disciples. He rises and goes forth with the sun; he has the order of his visits duly arranged; he takes the shortest road; and, troublesome old man that he is, forces his way almost into the bedchambers of ladies yet asleep. If he sees a pillow that takes his fancy or an elegant table-cover--or indeed any article of household furniture--he praises it, looks admiringly at it, takes it into his hand, and, complaining that he has nothing of the kind, begs or rather extorts it from the owner. All the women, in fact, fear to cross the news-carrier of the town. Chastity and fasting are alike distasteful to him. What he likes is a savory breakfast--say off a plump young crane such as is commonly called a cheeper. In speech he is rude and forward, and is always ready to bandy reproaches. Wherever you turn he is the first man that you see before you. Whatever news is noised abroad he is either the originator of the rumor or its magnifier. He changes his horses every hour; and they are so sleek and spirited that you would take him for a brother of the Thracian king. [563]
29. Many are the stratagems which the wily enemy employs against us. "The serpent," we are told, "was more subtile than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made." [564] And the apostle says: "We are not ignorant of his devices." [565] Neither an affected shabbiness nor a stylish smartness becomes a Christian. If there is anything of which you are ignorant, if you have any doubt about Scripture, ask one whose life commends him, whose age puts him above suspicion, whose reputation does not belie him; one who may be able to say: "I have espoused you to one husband that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ." Or if there should be none such able to explain, it is better to avoid danger at the price of ignorance than to court it for the sake of learning. Remember that you walk in the midst of snares, and that many veteran virgins, of a chastity never called in question, have, on the very threshold of death, let their crowns fall from their hands.
If any of your handmaids share your vocation, do not lift up yourself against them or pride yourself because you are their mistress. You have all chosen one Bridegroom; you all sing the same psalms; together you receive the Body of Christ. Why then should your thoughts be different? [566] You must try to win others, and that you may attract the more readily you must treat the virgins in your train with the greatest respect. If you find one of them weak in the faith, be attentive to her, comfort her, caress her, and make her chastity your treasure. But if a girl pretends to have a vocation simply because she desires to escape from service, read aloud to her the words of the apostle: "It is better to marry than to burn." [567]
Idle persons and busybodies, whether virgins or widows; such as go from house to house calling on married women and displaying an unblushing effrontery greater than that of a stage parasite, cast from you as you would the plague. For "evil communications corrupt good manners," [568] and women like these care for nothing but their lowest appetites. They will often urge you, saying, "My dear creature, make the best of your advantages, and live while life is yours," and "Surely you are not laying up money for your children." Given to wine and wantonness, they instill all manner of mischief into people's minds, and induce even the most austere to indulge in enervating pleasures. And "when they have begun to wax wanton against Christ they will marry, having condemnation because they have rejected their first faith." [569]
Do not seek to appear over-eloquent, nor trifle with verse, nor make yourself gay with lyric songs. And do not, out of affectation, follow the sickly taste [570] of married ladies who, now pressing their teeth together, now keeping their lips wide apart, speak with a lisp, and purposely clip their words, because they fancy that to pronounce them naturally is a mark of country breeding. Accordingly they find pleasure in what I may call an adultery of the tongue. For "what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial?" [571] How can Horace go with the psalter, Virgil with the gospels, Cicero with the apostle? [572] Is not a brother made to stumble if he sees you sitting at meat in an idol's temple? [573] Although "unto the pure all things are pure," [574] and "nothing is to be refused if it be received with thanksgiving," [575] still we ought not to drink the cup of Christ, and, at the same time, the cup of devils. [576] Let me relate to you the story of my own miserable experience.
30. Many years ago, when for the kingdom of heaven's sake I had cut myself off from home, parents, sister, relations, and--harder still--from the dainty food to which I had been accustomed; and when I was on my way to Jerusalem to wage my warfare, I still could not bring myself to forego the library which I had formed for myself at Rome with great care and toil. And so, miserable man that I was, I would fast only that I might afterwards read Cicero. After many nights spent in vigil, after floods of tears called from my inmost heart, after the recollection of my past sins, I would once more take up Plautus. And when at times I returned to my right mind, and began to read the prophets, their style seemed rude and repellent. I failed to see the light with my blinded eyes; but I attributed the fault not to them, but to the sun. While the old serpent was thus making me his plaything, about the middle of Lent a deep-seated fever fell upon my weakened body, and while it destroyed my rest completely--the story seems hardly credible--it so wasted my unhappy frame that scarcely anything was left of me but skin and bone. Meantime preparations for my funeral went on; my body grew gradually colder, and the warmth of life lingered only in my throbbing breast. Suddenly I was caught up in the spirit and dragged before the judgment seat of the Judge; and here the light was so bright, and those who stood around were so radiant, that I cast myself upon the ground and did not dare to look up. Asked who and what I was I replied: "I am a Christian." But He who presided said: "Thou liest, thou art a follower of Cicero and not of Christ. For where thy treasure is, there will thy heart be also.'" [577] Instantly I became dumb, and amid the strokes of the lash--for He had ordered me to be scourged--I was tortured more severely still by the fire of conscience, considering with myself that verse, "In the grave who shall give thee thanks?" [578] Yet for all that I began to cry and to bewail myself, saying: "Have mercy upon me, O Lord: have mercy upon me." Amid the sound of the scourges this cry still made itself heard. At last the bystanders, falling down before the knees of Him who presided, prayed that He would have pity on my youth, and that He would give me space to repent of my error. He might still, they urged, inflict torture on me, should I ever again read the works of the Gentiles. Under the stress of that awful moment I should have been ready to make even still larger promises than these. Accordingly I made oath and called upon His name, saying: "Lord, if ever again I possess worldly books, or if ever again I read such, I have denied Thee." Dismissed, then, on taking this oath, I returned to the upper world, and, to the surprise of all, I opened upon them eyes so drenched with tears that my distress served to convince even the incredulous. And that this was no sleep nor idle dream, such as those by which we are often mocked, I call to witness the tribunal before which I lay, and the terrible judgment which I feared. May it never, hereafter, be my lot to fall under such an inquisition! I profess that my shoulders were black and blue, that I felt the bruises long after I awoke from my sleep, and that thenceforth I read the books of God with a zeal greater than I had previously given to the books of men.
31. You must also avoid the sin of covetousness, and this not merely by refusing to seize upon what belongs to others, for that is punished by the laws of the state, but also by not keeping your own property, which has now become no longer yours. "If have not been faithful," the Lord says, "in that which is another man's, who shall give you that which is your own?" [579] "That which is another man's" is a quantity of gold or of silver, while "that which is our own" is the spiritual heritage of which it is elsewhere said: "The ransom of a man's life is his riches." [580] "No man can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other; or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and Mammon." [581] Riches, that is; for in the heathen tongue of the Syrians riches are called mammon. The "thorns" which choke our faith [582] are the taking thought for our life. [583] Care for the things which the Gentiles seek after [584] is the root of covetousness.
But you will say: "I am a girl delicately reared, and I cannot labor with my hands. Suppose that I live to old age and then fall sick, who will take pity on me?" Hear Jesus speaking to the apostles: "Take no thought what ye shall eat; nor yet for your body what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them." [585] Should clothing fail you, set the lilies before your eyes. Should hunger seize you, think of the words in which the poor and hungry are blessed. Should pain afflict you, read "Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities," and "There was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure." [586] Rejoice in all God's judgments; for does not the psalmist say: "The daughters of Judah rejoiced because of thy judgments, O Lord"? [587] Let the words be ever on your lips: "Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither;" [588] and "We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out." [589]
32. To-day you may see women cramming their wardrobes with dresses, changing their gowns from day to day, and for all that unable to vanquish the moths. Now and then one more scrupulous wears out a single dress; yet, while she appears in rags, her boxes are full. Parchments are dyed purple, gold is melted into lettering, manuscripts are decked with jewels, while Christ lies at the door naked and dying. When they hold out a hand to the needy they sound a trumpet; [590] when they invite to a love-feast [591] they engage a crier. I lately saw the noblest lady in Rome--I suppress her name, for I am no satirist--with a band of eunuchs before her in the basilica of the blessed Peter. She was giving money to the poor, a coin apiece; and this with her own hand, that she might be accounted more religious. Hereupon a by no means uncommon incident occurred. An old woman, "full of years and rags," [592] ran forward to get a second coin, but when her turn came she received not a penny but a blow hard enough to draw blood from her guilty veins.
"The love of money is the root of all evil," [593] and the apostle speaks of covetousness as being idolatry. [594] "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and all these things shall be added unto you." [595] The Lord will never allow a righteous soul to perish of hunger. "I have been young," the psalmist says, "and now am old, yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken nor his seed begging bread." [596] Elijah is fed by ministering ravens. [597] The widow of Zarephath, who with her sons expected to die the same night, went without food herself that she might feed the prophet. He who had come to be fed then turned feeder, for, by a miracle, he filled the empty barrel. [598] The apostle Peter says: "Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have give I thee. In the name of Jesus Christ rise up and walk." [599] But now many, while they do not say it in words, by their deeds declare: "Faith and pity have I none; but such as I have, silver and gold, these I will not give thee." "Having food and raiment let us be therewith content." [600] Hear the prayer of Jacob: "If God will be with me and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat and raiment to put on, then shall the Lord be my God." [601] He prayed only for things necessary; yet, twenty years afterwards, he returned to the land of Canaan rich in substance and richer still in children. [602] Numberless are the instances in Scripture which teach men to "Beware of covetousness." [603]
33. As I have been led to touch to the subject--it shall have a treatise to itself if Christ permit--I will relate what took place not very many years ago at Nitria. A brother, more thrifty than covetous, and ignorant that the Lord had been sold for thirty pieces of silver, [604] left behind him at his death a hundred pieces of money which he had earned by weaving linen. As there were about five thousand monks in the neighborhood, living in as many separate cells, a council was held as to what should be done. Some said that the coins should be distributed among the poor; others that they should be given to the church, while others were for sending them back to the relatives of the deceased. However, Macarius, Pambo, Isidore and the rest of those called fathers, speaking by the Spirit, decided that they should be interred with their owner, with the words: "Thy money perish with thee." [605] Nor was this too harsh a decision; for so great fear has fallen upon all throughout Egypt, that it is now a crime to leave after one a single shilling.
34. As I have mentioned the monks, and know that you like to hear about holy things, lend an ear to me for a few moments. There are in Egypt three classes of monks. First, there are the coenobites, [606] called in their Gentile language Sauses, [607] or, as we should say, men living in a community. [608] Secondly, there are the anchorites, [609] who live in the desert, each man by himself, and are so called because they have withdrawn from human society. Thirdly, there is the class called Remoboth, [610] a very inferior and little regarded type, peculiar to my own province, [611] or, at least, originating there. These live together in twos and threes, but seldom in larger numbers, and are bound by no rule; but do exactly as they choose. A portion of their earnings they contribute to a common fund, out of which food is provided for all. In most cases they reside in cities and strongholds; and, as though it were their workmanship which is holy, and not their life, all that they sell is extremely dear. They often quarrel because they are unwilling, while supplying their own food, to be subordinate to others. It is true that they compete with each other in fasting; they make what should be a private concern an occasion for a triumph. In everything they study effect: their sleeves are loose, their boots bulge, their garb is of the coarsest. They are always sighing, or visiting virgins, or sneering at the clergy; yet when a holiday comes, they make themselves sick--they eat so much.
35. Having then rid ourselves of these as of so many plagues, let us come to that more numerous class who live together, and who are, as we have said, called Coenobites. Among these the first principle of union is to obey superiors and to do whatever they command. They are divided into bodies of ten and of a hundred, so that each tenth man has authority over nine others, while the hundredth has ten of these officers under him. They live apart from each other, in separate cells. According to their rule, no monk may visit another before the ninth hour; [612] except the deans [613] above mentioned, whose office is to comfort, with soothing words, those whose thoughts disquiet them. After the ninth hour they meet together to sing psalms and read the Scriptures according to usage. Then when the prayers have ended and all have sat down, one called the father stands up among them and begins to expound the portion of the day. While he is speaking the silence is profound; no man ventures to look at his neighbor or to clear his throat. The speaker's praise is in the weeping of his hearers. [614] Silent tears roll down their cheeks, but not a sob escapes from their lips. Yet when he begins to speak of Christ's kingdom, and of future bliss, and of the glory which is to come, every one may be noticed saying to himself, with a gentle sigh and uplifted eyes: "Oh, that I had wings like a dove! For then would I fly away and be at rest." [615] After this the meeting breaks up and each company of ten goes with its father to its own table. This they take in turns to serve each for a week at a time. No noise is made over the food; no one talks while eating. Bread, pulse and greens form their fare, and the only seasoning that they use is salt. Wine is given only to the old, who with the children often have a special meal prepared for them to repair the ravages of age and to save the young from premature decay. When the meal is over they all rise together, and, after singing a hymn, return to their dwellings. There each one talks till evening with his comrade thus: "Have you noticed so-and-so? What grace he has! How silent he is! How soberly he walks!" If any one is weak they comfort him; or if he is fervent in love to God, they encourage him to fresh earnestness. And because at night, besides the public prayers, each man keeps vigil in his own chamber, they go round all the cells one by one, and putting their ears to the doors, carefully ascertain what their occupants are doing. If they find a monk slothful, they do not scold him; but, dissembling what they know, they visit him more frequently, and at first exhort rather than compel him to pray more. Each day has its allotted task, and this being given in to the dean, is by him brought to the steward. This latter, once a month, gives a scrupulous account to their common father. He also tastes the dishes when they are cooked, and, as no one is allowed to say, "I am without a tunic or a cloak or a couch of rushes," he so arranges that no one need ask for or go without what he wants. In case a monk falls ill, he is moved to a more spacious chamber, and there so attentively nursed by the old men, that he misses neither the luxury of cities nor a mother's kindness. Every Lord's day they spend their whole time in prayer and reading; indeed, when they have finished their tasks, these are their usual occupations. Every day they learn by heart a portion of Scripture. They keep the same fasts all the year round, but in Lent they are allowed to live more strictly. After Whitsuntide they exchange their evening meal for a midday one; both to satisfy the tradition of the church and to avoid overloading their stomachs with a double supply of food.
A similar description is given of the Essenes by Philo, [616] Plato's imitator; also by Josephus, [617] the Greek Livy, in his narrative of the Jewish captivity.
36. As my present subject is virgins, I have said rather too much about monks. I will pass on, therefore, to the third class, called anchorites, who go from the monasteries into the deserts, with nothing but bread and salt. Paul [618] introduced this way of life; Antony made it famous, and--to go farther back still--John the Baptist set the first example of it. The prophet Jeremiah describes one such in the words: "It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth. He sitteth alone and keepeth silence, because he hath borne it upon him. He giveth his cheek to him that smiteth him, he is filled full with reproach. For the Lord will not cast off forever." [619] The struggle of the anchorites and their life--in the flesh, yet not of the flesh--I will, if you wish, explain to you at some other time. I must now return to the subject of covetousness, which I left to speak of the monks. With them before your eyes you will despise, not only gold and silver in general, but earth itself and heaven. United to Christ, you will sing, "The Lord is my portion." [620]
37. Farther, although the apostle bids us to "pray without ceasing," [621] and although to the saints their very sleep is a supplication, we ought to have fixed hours of prayer, that if we are detained by work, the time may remind us of our duty. Prayers, as every one knows, ought to be said at the third, sixth and ninth hours, at dawn and at evening. [622] No meal should be begun without prayer, and before leaving table thanks should be returned to the Creator. We should rise two or three times in the night, and go over the parts of Scripture which we know by heart. When we leave the roof which shelters us, prayer should be our armor; and when we return from the street we should pray before we sit down, and not give the frail body rest until the soul is fed. In every act we do, in every step we take, let our hand trace the Lord's cross. Speak against nobody, and do not slander your mother's son. [623] "Who art thou that judgest the servant of another? To his own lord he standeth or falleth; yea, he shall be made to stand, for the Lord hath power to make him stand." [624] If you have fasted two or three days, do not think yourself better than others who do not fast. You fast and are angry; another eats and wears a smiling face. You work off your irritation and hunger in quarrels. He uses food in moderation and gives God thanks. [625] Daily Isaiah cries: "Is it such a fast that I have chosen, saith the Lord?" [626] and again: "In the day of your fast ye find your own pleasure, and oppress all your laborers. Behold ye fast for strife and contention, and to smite with the fist of wickedness. How fast ye unto me?" [627] What kind of fast can his be whose wrath is such that not only does the night go down upon it, but that even the moon's changes leave it unchanged?
38. Look to yourself and glory in your own success and not in others' failure. Some women care for the flesh and reckon up their income and daily expenditure: such are no fit models for you. Judas was a traitor, but the eleven apostles did not waver. Phygellus and Alexander made shipwreck; but the rest continued to run the race of faith. [628] Say not: "So-and-so enjoys her own property, she is honored of men, her brothers and sisters come to see her. Has she then ceased to be a virgin?" In the first place, it is doubtful if she is a virgin. For "the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh upon the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart." [629] Again, she may be a virgin in body and not in spirit. According to the apostle, a true virgin is "holy both in body and in spirit." [630] Lastly, let her glory in her own way. Let her override Paul's opinion and live in the enjoyment of her good things. But you and I must follow better examples.
Set before you the blessed Mary, whose surpassing purity made her meet to be the mother of the Lord. When the angel Gabriel came down to her, in the form of a man, and said: "Hail, thou that art highly favored; the Lord is with thee," [631] she was terror-stricken and unable to reply, for she had never been saluted by a man before. But, on learning who he was, she spoke, and one who had been afraid of a man conversed fearlessly with an angel. Now you, too, may be the Lord's mother. "Take thee a great roll and write in it with a man's pen Maher-shalal-hash-baz." [632] And when you have gone to the prophetess, and have conceived in the womb, and have brought forth a son, [633] say: "Lord, we have been with child by thy fear, we have been in pain, we have brought forth the spirit of thy salvation, which we have wrought upon the earth." [634] Then shall your Son reply: "Behold my mother and my brethren." [635] And He whose name you have so recently inscribed upon the table of your heart, and have written with a pen upon its renewed surface [636] --He, after He has recovered the spoil from the enemy, and has spoiled principalities and powers, nailing them to His cross [637] --having been miraculously conceived, grows up to manhood; and, as He becomes older, regards you no longer as His mother, but as His bride. To be as the martyrs, or as the apostles, or as Christ, involves a hard struggle, but brings with it a great reward.
All such efforts are only of use when they are made within the church's pale; [638] we must celebrate the passover in the one house, [639] we must enter the ark with Noah, [640] we must take refuge from the fall of Jericho with the justified harlot, Rahab. [641] Such virgins as there are said to be among the heretics and among the followers of the infamous Manes [642] must be considered, not virgins, but prostitutes. For if--as they allege--the devil is the author of the body, how can they honor that which is fashioned by their foe? No; it is because they know that the name virgin brings glory with it, that they go about as wolves in sheep's clothing. [643] As antichrist pretends to be Christ, such virgins assume an honorable name, that they may the better cloak a discreditable life. Rejoice, my sister; rejoice, my daughter; rejoice, my virgin; for you have resolved to be, in reality, that which others insincerely feign.
39. The things that I have here set forth will seem hard to her who loves not Christ. But one who has come to regard all the splendor of the world as off-scourings, and to hold all things under the sun as vain, that he may win Christ; [644] one who has died with his Lord and risen again, and has crucified the flesh with its affections and lusts; [645] he will boldly cry out: "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?" and again: "I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord." [646]
For our salvation the Son of God is made the Son of Man. [647] Nine months He awaits His birth in the womb, undergoes the most revolting conditions, [648] and comes forth covered with blood, to be swathed in rags and covered with caresses. He who shuts up the world in His fist [649] is contained in the narrow limits of a manger. I say nothing of the thirty years during which he lives in obscurity, satisfied with the poverty of his parents. [650] When He is scourged He holds His peace; when He is crucified, He prays for His crucifiers. "What shall I render unto the Lord for all His benefits towards me? I will take the cup of salvation and call upon the name of the Lord. Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints." [651] The only fitting return that we can make to Him is to give blood for blood; and, as we are redeemed by the blood of Christ, gladly to lay down our lives for our Redeemer. What saint has ever won his crown without first contending for it? Righteous Abel is murdered. Abraham is in danger of losing his wife. And, as I must not enlarge my book unduly, seek for yourself: you will find that all holy men have suffered adversity. Solomon alone lived in luxury and perhaps it was for this reason that he fell. For "whom the Lord loveth, He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth." [652] Which is best--for a short time to do battle, to carry stakes for the palisades, to bear arms, to faint under heavy bucklers, that ever afterwards we may rejoice as victors? or to become slaves forever, just because we cannot endure for a single hour? [653]
40. Love finds nothing hard; no task is difficult to the eager. Think of all that Jacob bore for Rachel, the wife who had been promised to him. "Jacob," the Scripture says, "served seven years for Rachel. And they seemed unto him but a few days for the love he had to her." [654] Afterwards he himself tells us what he had to undergo. "In the day the drought consumed me and the frost by night." [655] So we must love Christ and always seek His embraces. Then everything difficult will seem easy; all things long we shall account short; and smitten with His arrows, [656] we shall say every moment: "Woe is me that I have prolonged my pilgrimage." [657] For "the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us." [658] For "tribulation worketh patience, and patience experience, and experience hope; and hope maketh not ashamed." [659] When your lot seems hard to bear read Paul's second epistle to the Corinthians: "In labors more abundant; in stripes above measure; in prisons more frequent; in deaths oft. Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one; thrice was I beaten with rods; once was I stoned; thrice I suffered shipwreck; a night and a day I have been in the deep; in journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren, in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness." [660] Which of us can claim the veriest fraction of the virtues here enumerated? Yet it was these which afterwards made him bold to say: "I have finished my course, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at that day." [661]
But we, if our food is less appetizing than usual, get sullen, and fancy that we do God a favor by drinking watered wine. And if the water brought to us is a trifle too warm, we break the cup and overturn the table and scourge the servant in fault until blood comes. "The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence and the violent take it by force." [662] Still, unless you use force you will never seize the kingdom of heaven. Unless you knock importunately you will never receive the sacramental bread. [663] Is it not truly violence, think you, when the flesh desires to be as God and ascends to the place whence angels have fallen [664] to judge angels?
41. Emerge, I pray you, for a while from your prison-house, and paint before your eyes the reward of your present toil, a reward which "eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man." [665] What will be the glory of that day when Mary, the mother of the Lord, shall come to meet you, accompanied by her virgin choirs! When, the Red Sea past and Pharaoh drowned with his host, Miriam, Aaron's sister, her timbrel in her hand, shall chant to the answering women: "Sing ye unto the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea." [666] Then shall Thecla [667] fly with joy to embrace you. Then shall your Spouse himself come forward and say: "Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away, for lo! the winter is past, the rain is over and gone." [668] Then shall the angels say with wonder: "Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun?" [669] "The daughters shall see you and bless you; yea, the queens shall proclaim and the concubines shall praise you." [670] And, after these, yet another company of chaste women will meet you. Sarah will come with the wedded; Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, with the widows. In the one band you will find your natural mother and in the other your spiritual. [671] The one will rejoice in having borne, the other will exult in having taught you. Then truly will the Lord ride upon his ass, [672] and thus enter the heavenly Jerusalem. Then the little ones (of whom, in Isaiah, the Saviour says: "Behold, I and the children whom the Lord hath given me" [673] ) shall lift up palms of victory and shall sing with one voice: "Hosanna in the highest, blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord, hosanna in the highest." [674] Then shall the "hundred and forty and four thousand" hold their harps before the throne and before the elders and shall sing the new song. And no man shall have power to learn that song save those for whom it is appointed. "These are they which were not defiled with women; for they are virgins. These are they which follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth." [675] As often as this life's idle show tries to charm you; as often as you see in the world some vain pomp, transport yourself in mind to Paradise, essay to be now what you will be hereafter, and you will hear your Spouse say: "Set me as a sunshade in thine heart and as a seal upon thine arm." [676] And then, strengthened in body as well as in mind, you, too, will cry aloud and say: "Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it." [677] __________________________________________________________________
[331] Ps. xlv. 10, 11.
[332] According to the Vulgate.
[333] Gen. xi. 31; xii. 1.
[334] Ps. xxvii. 13.
[335] Gen. xix. 17.
[336] Luke ix. 62.
[337] Matt. xxiv. 17, 18.
[338] Joh. viii. 44, R.V.
[339] 1 Joh. iii. 8.
[340] Cant. i. 5.
[341] Eph. v. 31, 32.
[342] Nu. xii. 1.
[343] Cant. i. 4.
[344] Cant. viii. 5, LXX.
[345] Heb. xiii. 4.
[346] Gen. xix. 26.
[347] Rom. xi. 20.
[348] Isa. xxxiv. 5, R.V.
[349] Gen. iii. 14, 18.
[350] Eph. vi. 12, R.V.
[351] Joh. xiv. 30. The variant is difficult to explain and may be only a slip.
[352] Ps. xci. 5-7, Vulg.
[353] 2 Kings vi. 16.
[354] 2 Kings ii. 11; vi. 17.
[355] Ps. cxxiv. 7.
[356] 2 Cor. iv. 7.
[357] Gal. v. 17.
[358] 1 Pet. v. 8.
[359] Ps. civ. 20, 21.
[360] Jer. xxix. 22.
[361] An allusion to "Maher-shalal-hash-baz," Isa. viii. 1.
[362] Hab. i. 16, LXX.
[363] Luke xxii. 31.
[364] Matt. x. 34.
[365] Isa. xiv. 12.
[366] Obad. 4.
[367] Isa. xiv. 13, 14.
[368] Gen. xxviii. 12.
[369] Ps. lxxxii. 6, 7.
[370] Ps. lxxxii. 1.
[371] 1 Cor. iii. 3.
[372] Acts ix. 15.
[373] Gal. i. 15.
[374] 1 Cor. ix. 27.
[375] Rom. vii. 23.
[376] Rom. vii. 24.
[377] Am. v. 2.
[378] Am. viii. 13.
[379] Matt. v. 28.
[380] Matt. xxv. 3, 10.
[381] Isa. xlvii. 1-3.
[382] Cant. v. 2, LXX.
[383] Ps. xlv. 10, P.B.V.
[384] Jer. xiii. 26.
[385] Ezek. xvi. 25.
[386] Isa. i. 21.
[387] Isa. xxxiv. 15; xiii. 22, R.V.
[388] Psa. cxviii. 6; lvi. 4.
[389] Ps. xlii. 11.
[390] Ps. cxxxvii. 9.
[391] 1 Cor. x. 4.
[392] Cant. i. 3, 4.
[393] 1 Tim. v. 6.
[394] 1 Tim. v. 23.
[395] Eph. v. 18.
[396] Rom. xiv. 21.
[397] Gen. ix. 20, 21.
[398] Ex. xxxii. 6.
[399] Gen. xix. 30-38.
[400] Deut. xxiii. 3: Jerome substitutes "fourteenth" for "tenth."
[401] 1 Kings xix. 4-6.
[402] 2 Kings iv. 38-41.
[403] Exod. xv. 23-25.
[404] 2 Kings vi. 18-23.
[405] Dan. i. 8.
[406] Bel. 33-39.
[407] Dan. ix. 23, A.V. marg.
[408] Ps. lxxxiv. 6, R.V.
[409] Matt. iv. 2, 3.
[410] 1 Cor. vi. 13.
[411] Phil. iii. 19.
[412] Job ii. 3.
[413] Job xl. 16, of behemoth.
[414] Ps. cxxxii. 11.
[415] Gen. xlvi. 26.
[416] Gen. xxxii. 24, 25.
[417] Exod. xii. 11.
[418] Job xxxviii. 3.
[419] Matt. iii. 4.
[420] Luke xii. 35.
[421] Ezek. xvi. 4-6.
[422] 2 Sam. xi.
[423] Ps. li. 4.
[424] Solomon was the reputed author of the Book of Wisdom.
[425] 1 Kings iv. 33.
[426] 1 Kings xi. 1-4.
[427] 2 Sam. xiii.
[428] Isa. xiv. 13.
[429] Tit. i. 15.
[430] 1 Tim. iv. 3.
[431] The Manichæans believed evil to be inseparable from matter. Hence they inculcated a rigid asceticism.
[432] Jer. iii. 3.
[433] Plebeians wore a narrow stripe, patricians a broad one.
[434] Beloved ones, viz., women who lived with the unmarried clergy professedly as spiritual sisters, but really (in too many cases) as mistresses. The evil custom was widely prevalent and called forth many protests. The councils of Elvira, Ancyra, and Nicæa passed canons against it.
[435] Prov. vi. 27, 28.
[436] Matt. xiii. 8.
[437] Cena dubia. The allusion is to Terence, Phormio, 342.
[438] Cant. i. 7, R.V.
[439] Phil. i. 23.
[440] Luke ii. 51.
[441] Eph. vi. 16.
[442] Hos. vii. 4, 6, R.V.
[443] Luke xxiv. 32.
[444] Ps. cxix. 140, P.B.V.
[445] Cant. iii. 1.
[446] Col. iii. 5.
[447] Gal. ii. 20.
[448] Ps. xxxix. 6, Vulg. That is, who knows that the world is vanity.
[449] Ps. cxix. 83, Vulg.
[450] Ps. cix. 24; cii. 5.
[451] Ps. vi. 6, P.B.V.
[452] Ps. cii. 7.
[453] 1 Cor. xiv. 15.
[454] Ps. ciii. 2-4.
[455] Ps. cii. 9.
[456] 2 Kings ii. 13.
[457] Gen. iii. 16.
[458] Gen. ii. 17.
[459] Gen. i. 28.
[460] Gen. iii. 18, 19.
[461] See Letter XLVIII. §§ 2, 3.
[462] Matt. xix. 11, 12.
[463] Eccles. iii. 5.
[464] Matt. iii. 9.
[465] Zech. ix. 16, LXX.
[466] Joh. xix. 23.
[467] Ps. cxvi. 7.
[468] Isa. xi. 1, LXX.
[469] In the Latin there is a play on words here between virga and virgo.
[470] Cant. ii. 1.
[471] Dan. ii. 45.
[472] Cant. ii. 6.
[473] Gen. vii. 2.
[474] Ex. iii. 5; Josh. v. 15.
[475] Matt. x. 10. According to Letter XXIII. § 4, these typify dead works.
[476] Joh. xix. 23, 24.
[477] Isa. xxviii. 24.
[478] 1 Cor. vii. 25.
[479] 1 Cor. vii. 7, 8.
[480] 1 Cor. ix. 5.
[481] Isa. xxxi. 9, LXX.
[482] Isa. liv. 1, LXX. (?)
[483] Ps. cxxviii. 3.
[484] Ps. cv. 37.
[485] Isa. lvi. 3.
[486] Cf. Luke xvi. 19 sqq.
[487] Gen. xxv. 1.
[488] Gen. xxx. 14-16.
[489] Gen. xxx. 1, 2.
[490] Jer. xvi. 2.
[491] Jer. i. 5.
[492] 1 Cor. vii. 26, R.V.
[493] 1 Cor. vii. 29.
[494] Lam. iv. 4.
[495] Isa. vii. 14.
[496] Isa. ix. 6.
[497] Judith xiii.
[498] Esther vii. 10.
[499] Mark viii. 34.
[500] Matt. viii. 20-22.
[501] 1 Cor. vii. 32-34.
[502] See the treatise "Against Helvidius," in this volume.
[503] 1 Thess. v. 17.
[504] 1 Cor. vii. 3, R.V.
[505] 1 Cor. vii. 28.
[506] Not extant. Jerome alludes to it again in his treatise against Jovinian.
[507] See Migne's "Patrologia," xiii., col. 347-418.
[508] Ambrose de Virg. Migne's "Patrologia," xvi., col. 187.
[509] Matt. xxiv. 13.
[510] Matt. xx. 16; xxii. 14.
[511] 2 Sam. vi. 6, 7.
[512] 2 Kings xx. 12, 13.
[513] Dan. v. 1-3.
[514] Ex. xxv. 11.
[515] 1 Kings viii. 9.
[516] Ex. xxv. 22.
[517] Matt. xxi. 1-3.
[518] Ex. vii. 16.
[519] Matt. xxi. 12, 13, R.V.
[520] Matt. xxvii. 51.
[521] Matt. xxiii. 38.
[522] R.V. marg.
[523] Luke x. 41, 42.
[524] Cant. iii. 4.
[525] Cant. vi. 9.
[526] Gal. iv. 26.
[527] Cf. Gen. xxvi. 8.
[528] R.V.
[529] Cant. v. 2, 4, 8.
[530] Cant. iv. 12.
[531] Gen. xxxiv.
[532] Cant. iii. 2, 3.
[533] Matt. vii. 14.
[534] Cant. iii. 2; v. 6.
[535] Cant. v. 7.
[536] Cant. v. 2.
[537] Cant. i. 13.
[538] Cant. i. 7, R.V.
[539] Cant. i. 8, LXX.
[540] Prov. iv. 23.
[541] Matt. xxv. 33.
[542] Isa. xxvi. 20.
[543] Matt. vi. 6.
[544] Rev. iii. 20.
[545] Cant. v. 2, 3.
[546] Cant. v. 6.
[547] Eccles. x. 4, A.V., "the spirit of the ruler."
[548] Dan. vi. 10, LXX.
[549] Jer. ix. 21.
[550] Joh. v. 44, R.V.
[551] Jer. ix. 24.
[552] 1 Cor. i. 31.
[553] Gal. i. 10.
[554] Gal. vi. 14, R.V. marg.
[555] Psa. xliv. 8; xxxiv. 2.
[556] Matt. vi. 3, 16-18.
[557] Ps. cxxxi. 1.
[558] Matt. vi. 16.
[559] Ps. liii. 5, according to the Roman Psalter.
[560] Cucullis fabrefactis, ut ad infantiam redeant, imitantur noctuas et bubones.
[561] 1 Cor. xi. 14.
[562] 2 Tim. iii. 6, 7.
[563] Diomede. See Lucretius, v. 31, and Virgil, A. i. 752.
[564] Gen. iii. 1.
[565] 2 Cor. ii. 11.
[566] Cur mens diversa sit. The ordinary text has "menda."
[567] 1 Cor. vii. 9.
[568] 1 Cor. xv. 33.
[569] 1 Tim. v. 11, 12.
[570] Persius i. 104.
[571] 2 Cor. vi. 14, 15.
[572] Viz., the epistles of St. Paul. In like manner the Psalter was often called David.
[573] 1 Cor. viii. 10.
[574] Tit. i. 15.
[575] 1 Tim. iv. 4.
[576] 1 Cor. x. 21.
[577] Matt. vi. 21.
[578] Ps. vi. 5.
[579] Luke xvi. 12.
[580] Prov. xiii. 8, R.V.
[581] Matt. vi. 24.
[582] Matt. xiii. 7, 22.
[583] Matt. vi. 25.
[584] Matt. vi. 32.
[585] Matt. vi. 25, 26.
[586] 2 Cor. xii. 10, 7.
[587] Ps. xcvii. 8.
[588] Job i. 21.
[589] 1 Tim. vi. 7.
[590] Matt. vi. 2.
[591] Terence, Eun. 236.
[592] "The eucharist was at first preceded, but at a later date was more usually followed, by the agape or love-feast. The materials of this were contributed by the members of the congregation, all of whatever station sat down to it as equals, and the meal was concluded with psalmody and prayer." (Robertson, C. H., i. p. 235.) Scandals arose in connection with the practice, and it gradually fell into disuse, though even at a later date allusions to it are not infrequent.
[593] 1 Tim. vi. 10.
[594] Col. iii. 5.
[595] Matt. vi. 33.
[596] Ps. xxxvii. 25.
[597] 1 Kings xvii. 4, 6.
[598] 1 Kings xvii. 9-16.
[599] Acts iii. 6.
[600] 1 Tim. vi. 8.
[601] Gen. xxviii. 20, 21.
[602] Gen. xxxii. 5, 10.
[603] Luke xii. 15.
[604] Matt. xxvi. 15.
[605] Acts viii. 20.
[606] From koinos bios (koinos bios), a common life.
[607] Apparently an Egyptian word. It does not occur elsewhere.
[608] In commune viventes.
[609] From anachorein (anachorein), to withdraw.
[610] These were monks who lived under no settled rule, but collected in little groups of two and three, generally in some populous place. They seem to have practised all the arts whereby a reputation for sanctity may be won, while they disparaged those who led more regular lives. Cassian (Collat. xviii. 7) draws an unfavorable picture of them. See Bingham, Antiquities, vii. ii. 4, and Dict. Xt. Ant., s.v. Sarabaitæ.
[611] Pannonia, or possibly Syria.
[612] I.e. three o'clock.
[613] Decani, "leaders of ten."
[614] Cf. Letter LII.
[615] Ps. lv. 6.
[616] See Letter LXX. § 3, De Vir. Ill. xi.
[617] Josephus, The Jewish War, ii. 8.
[618] I.e. the hermit of that name. See his Life in vol. iii. of this series.
[619] Lam. iii. 27, 28, 30, 31.
[620] Lam. iii. 24
[621] 1 Thess. v. 17.
[622] In Jerome's time the seven canonical hours of prayer had not yet been finally fixed. He mentions, however, six which correspond to the later, Mattins, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Nocturns. Cp. Letters CVII. § 9, CVIII. § 20, and CXXX § 15.
[623] Ps. l. 20.
[624] Rom. xiv. 4, R.V.
[625] Rom. xiv. 6, R.V.
[626] Isa. lviii. 5.
[627] Isaiah lviii. 3, 4, R.V. marg.
[628] 1 Tim. i. 19, 20; 2 Tim. i. 15.
[629] 1 Sam. xvi. 7.
[630] 1 Cor. vii. 34.
[631] Luke i. 28.
[632] Isa. viii. 1, i.e. "the spoil speedeth, the prey hasteth;" or, in Jerome's rendering, "quickly carry away the spoils."
[633] Isa. viii. 3. Jerome should have substituted "prophet" for "prophetess." As it stands the quotation is meaningless.
[634] Isa. xxvi. 18, Vulg.
[635] Matt. xii. 49.
[636] Prov. vii. 3; Jer. xxxi. 33.
[637] Col. ii. 14, 15.
[638] Cp. the maxim of Cyprian: Extra ecclesiam nulla salus, "Outside the church there is no salvation."
[639] Exod. xii. 46.
[640] 1 Peter iii. 20, 21.
[641] James ii. 25.
[642] Founder of the widely prevalent sect of Manichæans, which at one time numbered Augustine among its adherents. One of its leading tenets was that matter as such was essentially evil.
[643] Matt. vii. 15.
[644] Phil. iii. 8.
[645] Rom. vi. 4; Gal. v. 24.
[646] Rom. viii. 35, 38, 39.
[647] An echo of the Nicene Creed.
[648] Cp. Virgil, Ecl. iv. 61.
[649] Cp. Ps. xcv. 4, 5; Isa. xl. 12.
[650] Luke ii. 51, 52.
[651] Ps. cxvi. 12, 13, 15.
[652] Heb. xii. 6.
[653] Cp. Matt. xxvi. 40.
[654] Gen. xxix. 20.
[655] Gen. xxxi. 40.
[656] Ps. xxxviii. 2.
[657] Ps. cxx. 5, Vulg.
[658] Rom. viii. 18.
[659] Rom. v. 3-5.
[660] 2 Cor. xi. 23-27.
[661] 2 Tim. iv. 7, 8.
[662] Matt. xi. 12.
[663] Luke xi. 5-8.
[664] Is. xiv. 12, 13.
[665] 1 Cor. ii. 9.
[666] Ex. xv. 20, 21.
[667] A legendary virgin of Iconium said to have been converted by Paul.
[668] Cant. ii. 10, 11.
[669] Cant. vi. 10.
[670] Cant. vi. 9.
[671] Viz. Paula, for whom see Letter CVIII., and Marcella, for whom see Letter CXXVII.
[672] Matt. xxi. 1-9, literally "she-ass."
[673] Isa. viii. 18.
[674] Matt. xxi. 9.
[675] Rev. xiv. 1-4.
[676] Cant. viii. 6; the variant is peculiar to Jerome.
[677] Cant. viii. 7. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XXIII. To Marcella.
Jerome writes to Marcella to console her for the loss of a friend who, like herself, was the head of a religious society at Rome. The news of Lea's death had first reached Marcella when she was engaged with Jerome in the study of the 73d psalm. Later in the day he writes this letter in which, after extolling Lea, he contrasts her end with that of the consul-elect, Vettius Agorius Prætextatus, a man of great ability and integrity, whom he declares to be now "in Tartarus." Written at Rome in 384 a.d.
1. To-day, about the third hour, just as I was beginning to read with you the seventy-second psalm [678] --the first, that is, of the third book--and to explain that its title belonged partly to the second book and partly to the third--the previous book, I mean, concluding with the words "the prayers of David the son of Jesse are ended," [679] and the next commencing with the words "a psalm of Asaph" [680] --and just as I had come on the passage in which the righteous man declares: "If I say, I will speak thus; behold I should offend against the generation of thy children," [681] a verse which is differently rendered in our Latin version: [682] --suddenly the news came that our most saintly friend Lea had departed from the body. As was only natural, you turned deadly pale; for there are few persons, if any, who do not burst into tears when the earthen vessel breaks. [683] But if you wept it was not from doubt as to her future lot, but only because you had not rendered to her the last sad offices which are due to the dead. Finally, as we were still conversing together, a second message informed us that her remains had been already conveyed to Ostia.
2. You may ask what is the use of repeating all this. I will reply in the apostle's words, "much every way." [684] First, it shows that all must hail with joy the release of a soul which has trampled Satan under foot, and won for itself, at last, a crown of tranquillity. Secondly, it gives me an opportunity of briefly describing her life. Thirdly, it enables me to assure you that the consul-elect, [685] that detractor of his age, [686] is now in Tartarus. [687]
Who can sufficiently eulogize our dear Lea's mode of living? So complete was her conversion to the Lord that, becoming the head of a monastery, she showed herself a true mother [688] to the virgins in it, wore coarse sackcloth instead of soft raiment, passed sleepless nights in prayer, and instructed her companions even more by example than by precept. So great was her humility that she, who had once been the mistress of many, was accounted the servant of all; and certainly, the less she was reckoned an earthly mistress the more she became a servant of Christ. She was careless of her dress, neglected her hair, and ate only the coarsest food. Still, in all that she did, she avoided ostentation that she might not have her reward in this world. [689]
3. Now, therefore, in return for her short toil, Lea enjoys everlasting felicity; she is welcomed into the choirs of the angels; she is comforted in Abraham's bosom. And, as once the beggar Lazarus saw the rich man, for all his purple, lying in torment, so does Lea see the consul, not now in his triumphal robe but clothed in mourning, and asking for a drop of water from her little finger. [690] How great a change have we here! A few days ago the highest dignitaries of the city walked before him as he ascended the ramparts of the capitol like a general celebrating a triumph; the Roman people leapt up to welcome and applaud him, and at the news of his death the whole city was moved. Now he is desolate and naked, a prisoner in the foulest darkness, and not, as his unhappy wife [691] falsely asserts, set in the royal abode of the milky way. [692] On the other hand Lea, who was always shut up in her one closet, who seemed poor and of little worth, and whose life was accounted madness, [693] now follows Christ and sings, "Like as we have heard, so have we seen in the city of our God." [694]
4. And now for the moral of all this, which, with tears and groans, I conjure you to remember. While we run the way of this world, we must not clothe ourselves with two coats, that is, with a twofold faith, or burthen ourselves with leathern shoes, that is, with dead works; we must not allow scrips filled with money to weigh us down, or lean upon the staff of worldly power. [695] We must not seek to possess both Christ and the world. No; things eternal must take the place of things transitory; [696] and since, physically speaking, we daily anticipate death, if we wish for immortality we must realize that we are but mortal. __________________________________________________________________
[678] In the English Version Ps. lxxiii.
[679] Ps. lxxii. 20.
[680] Ps. lxxiii. title.
[681] Ps. lxxiii. 15.
[682] I.e. the Old Latin Version superseded by Jerome's Vulgate.
[683] 2 Cor. iv. 7.
[684] Rom. iii. 2.
[685] One of the most distinguished men of his day, Prætextatus, had filled the high position of Prefect of Rome. As such he ironically assured Damasus that, if he could hope to obtain the papacy, he would immediately embrace the Christian religion (Jerome, "Against John of Jerusalem," § 8).
[686] De suis sæculis detrahentem. The text is clearly corrupt, and no satisfactory emendation has yet been suggested.
[687] So the author of II. Peter speaks of God "tartartizing the angels that sinned" (ii. 4).
[688] I.e. her conduct justified her official title.
[689] Cf. Matt. vi. 2.
[690] Luke xvi. 19-24.
[691] Paulina, chief priestess of Ceres.
[692] In the Roman mythology the abode of gods and heroes. Cf. Ovid, M. i. 175, 176.
[693] Wisd. v. 4.
[694] Ps. xlviii. 8.
[695] Matt. x. 10.
[696] 2 Cor. iv. 18. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XXIV. To Marcella.
Concerning the virgin Asella. Dedicated to God before her birth, Marcella's sister had been made a church-virgin at the age of ten. From that time she had lived a life of the severest asceticism, first as a member and then as the head of Marcella's community upon the Aventine. Jerome, who subsequently wrote her a letter (XLV) on his departure from Rome, now holds her up as a model to be admired and imitated. Written at Rome a.d. 384.
1. Let no one blame my letters for the eulogies and censures which are contained in them. To arraign sinners is to admonish those in like case, and to praise the virtuous is to quicken the zeal of those who wish to do right. The day before yesterday I spoke to you concerning Lea of blessed memory, [697] and I had hardly done so, when I was pricked in my conscience. It would be wrong for me, I thought, to ignore a virgin after speaking of one who, as a widow, held a lower place. Accordingly, in my present letter, I mean to give you a brief sketch of the life of our dear Asella. Please do not read it to her; for she is sure to be displeased with eulogies of which she is herself the object. Show it rather to the young girls of your acquaintance, that they may guide themselves by her example, and may take her behavior as the pattern of a perfect life.
2. I pass over the facts that, before her birth, she was blessed while still in her mother's womb, and that, virgin-like, she was delivered to her father in a dream in a bowl of shining glass brighter than a mirror. And I say nothing of her consecration to the blessed life of virginity, a ceremony which took place when she was hardly more than ten years old, a mere babe still wrapped in swaddling clothes. For all that comes before works should be counted of grace; [698] although, doubtless, God foreknew the future when He sanctified Jeremiah as yet unborn, [699] when He made John to leap in his mother's womb, [700] and when, before the foundation of the world, He set apart Paul to preach the gospel of His son. [701]
3. I come now to the life which after her twelfth year she, by her own exertion, chose, laid hold of, held fast to, entered upon, and fulfilled. Shut up in her narrow cell she roamed through paradise. Fasting was her recreation and hunger her refreshment. If she took food it was not from love of eating, but because of bodily exhaustion; and the bread and salt and cold water to which she restricted herself sharpened her appetite more than they appeased it.
But I have almost forgotten to mention that of which I should have spoken first. When her resolution was still fresh she took her gold necklace made in the lamprey pattern (so called because bars of metal are linked together so as to form a flexible chain), and sold it without her parents' knowledge. Then putting on a dark dress such as her mother had never been willing that she should wear, she concluded her pious enterprise by consecrating herself forthwith to the Lord. She thus showed her relatives that they need hope to wring no farther concessions from one who, by her very dress, had condemned the world.
4. To go on with my story, her ways were quiet and she lived in great privacy. In fact, she rarely went abroad or spoke to a man. More wonderful still, much as she loved her virgin sister, [702] she did not care to see her. She worked with her own hands, for she knew that it was written: "If any will not work neither shall he eat." [703] To the Bridegroom she spoke constantly in prayer and psalmody. She hurried to the martyrs' shrines unnoticed. Such visits gave her pleasure, and the more so because she was never recognized. All the year round she observed a continual fast, remaining without food for two or three days at a time; but when Lent came she hoisted--if I may so speak--every stitch of canvas and fasted well-nigh from week's end to week's end with "a cheerful countenance." [704] What would perhaps be incredible, were it not that "with God all things are possible," [705] is that she lived this life until her fiftieth year without weakening her digestion or bringing on herself the pain of colic. Lying on the dry ground did not affect her limbs, and the rough sackcloth that she wore failed to make her skin either foul or rough. With a sound body and a still sounder soul [706] she sought all her delight in solitude, and found for herself a monkish hermitage in the centre of busy Rome.
5. You are better acquainted with all this than I am, and the few details that I have given I have learned from you. So intimate are you with Asella that you have seen, with your own eyes, her holy knees hardened like those of a camel from the frequency of her prayers. I merely set forth what I can glean from you. She is alike pleasant in her serious moods and serious in her pleasant ones: her manner, while winning, is always grave, and while grave is always winning. Her pale face indicates continence but does not betoken ostentation. Her speech is silent and her silence is speech. Her pace is neither too fast nor too slow. Her demeanor is always the same. She disregards refinement and is careless about her dress. When she does attend to it it is without attending. So entirely consistent has her life been that here in Rome, the centre of vain shows, wanton license, and idle pleasure, where to be humble is to be held spiritless, the good praise her conduct and the bad do not venture to impugn it. Let widows and virgins imitate her, let wedded wives make much of her, let sinful women fear her, and let bishops [707] look up to her. __________________________________________________________________
[697] Vide the preceding Letter.
[698] Rom. xi. 6.
[699] Jer. i. 5.
[700] Luke i. 41.
[701] Eph. i. 4.
[702] Probably Marcella before she was married.
[703] 2 Thess. iii. 10.
[704] Matt. vi. 17.
[705] Matt. xix. 26.
[706] Cf. Juvenal, Sat. x. 356.
[707] Sacerdotes. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XXV. To Marcella.
An explanation of the ten names given to God in the Hebrew Scriptures. The ten names are El, Elohim, Sabaôth, Eliôn, Asher yeheyeh (Ex. iii. 14), Adonai, Jah, the tetragram JHVH, and Shaddai. Written at Rome 384 a.d. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XXVI. To Marcella.
An explanation of certain Hebrew words which have been left untranslated in the versions. The words are Alleluia, Amen, Maran atha. Written at Rome 384 a.d. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XXVII. To Marcella.
In this letter Jerome defends himself against the charge of having altered the text of Scripture, and shows that he has merely brought the Latin Version of the N.T. into agreement with the Greek original. Written at Rome 384 a.d.
1. After I had written my former letter, [708] containing a few remarks on some Hebrew words, a report suddenly reached me that certain contemptible creatures were deliberately assailing me with the charge that I had endeavored to correct passages in the gospels, against the authority of the ancients and the opinion of the whole world. Now, though I might--as far as strict right goes--treat these persons with contempt (it is idle to play the lyre for an ass [709] ), yet, lest they should follow their usual habit and reproach me with superciliousness, let them take my answer as follows: I am not so dull-wilted nor so coarsely ignorant (qualities which they take for holiness, calling themselves the disciples of fishermen as if men were made holy by knowing nothing)--I am not, I repeat, so ignorant as to suppose that any of the Lord's words is either in need of correction or is not divinely inspired; but the Latin manuscripts of the Scriptures are proved to be faulty by the variations which all of them exhibit, and my object has been to restore them to the form of the Greek original, from which my detractors do not deny that they have been translated. If they dislike water drawn from the clear spring, let them drink of the muddy streamlet, and when they come to read the Scriptures, let them lay aside [710] the keen eye which they turn on woods frequented by game-birds and waters abounding in shellfish. Easily satisfied in this instance alone, let them, if they will, regard the words of Christ as rude sayings, albeit that over these so many great intellects have labored for so many ages rather to divine than to expound the meaning of each single word. Let them charge the great apostle with want of literary skill, although it is said of him that much learning made him mad. [711]
2. I know that as you read these words you will knit your brows, and fear that my freedom of speech is sowing the seeds of fresh quarrels; and that, if you could, you would gladly put your finger on my mouth to prevent me from even speaking of things which others do not blush to do. But, I ask you, wherein have I used too great license? Have I ever embellished my dinner plates with engravings of idols? Have I ever, at a Christian banquet, set before the eyes of virgins the polluting spectacle of Satyrs embracing bacchanals? or have I ever assailed any one in too bitter terms? Have I ever complained of beggars turned millionaires? Have I ever censured heirs for the funerals which they have given to their benefactors? [712] The one thing that I have unfortunately said has been that virgins ought to live more in the company of women than of men, [713] and by this I have made the whole city look scandalized and caused every one to point at me the finger of scorn. "They that hate me without a cause are more than the hairs of mine head," [714] and I am become "a proverb to them." [715] Do you suppose after this that I will now say anything rash?
3. But "when I set the wheel rolling I began to form a wine flagon; how comes it that a waterpot is the result?" [716] Lest Horace laugh at me I come back to my two-legged asses, and din into their ears, not the music of the lute, but the blare of the trumpet. [717] They may say if they will, "rejoicing in hope; serving the time," but we will say "rejoicing in hope; serving the Lord." [718] They may see fit to receive an accusation against a presbyter unconditionally; but we will say in the words of Scripture, "Against an elder [719] receive not an accusation, but before two or three witnesses. Them that sin rebuke before all." [720] They may choose to read, "It is a man's saying, and worthy of all acceptation;" we are content to err with the Greeks, that is to say with the apostle himself, who spoke Greek. Our version, therefore, is, it is "a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation." [721] Lastly, let them take as much pleasure as they please in their Gallican "geldings;" [722] we will be satisfied with the simple "ass" of Zechariah, loosed from its halter and made ready for the Saviour's service, which received the Lord on its back, and so fulfilled Isaiah's prediction: "Blessed is he that soweth beside all waters, where the ox and the ass tread under foot." [723] __________________________________________________________________
[708] XXVI.
[709] Ono lura was a Greek proverb.
[710] Reading nec diligentiam instead of et.
[711] Acts xxvi. 24.
[712] Hæreditarias sepulturas.
[713] The reference is to Letter XXII.
[714] Ps. lxix. 4.
[715] Ps. lxix. 11.
[716] Hor. A. P. 21, 22.
[717] Perhaps an allusion to the Greek proverb, onos luras ekouse kai salpingos hus. "The ass listened to the lyre, and the pig to the trumpet."
[718] Rom. xii. 11, 12. The reading kurio "Lord" is probably correct. The R.V. says, "Some ancient authorities read the opportunity," (kairo).
[719] I.e. a "presbyter."
[720] 1 Tim. v. 19, 20.
[721] 1 Tim. i. 15.
[722] Jerome's detractors suggested this word instead of the simpler "ass" in Zech. ix. 9 and Matt. xxi. 2-5. The phrase "Gallican geldings" appears to be a quotation from Plaut. Aul. iii. 5, 21.
[723] Isa. xxxii. 20, LXX. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XXVIII. To Marcella.
An explanation of the Hebrew word Selah. This word, rendered by the LXX. diapsalma and by Aquila aei, was as much a crux in Jerome's day as it is in ours. "Some," he writes, "make it a change of metre,' others a pause for breath,' others the beginning of a new subject.' According to yet others it has something to do with rhythm or marks a burst of instrumental music." Jerome himself inclines to follow Aquila and Origen, who make the word mean "forever," and suggests that it betokens completion, like the "explicit" or "feliciter" in contemporary Latin mss. Written at Rome a.d. 384. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XXIX. To Marcella.
An explanation of the Hebrew words Ephod bad (1 Sam. ii. 18) and Teraphim (Judges xvii. 5). Written at Rome to Marcella, also at Rome a.d. 384. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XXX. To Paula.
Some account of the so-called alphabetical psalms (XXXVII., CXI., CXII., CXIX., CXLV.). After explaining the mystical meaning of the alphabet, Jerome goes on thus: "What honey is sweeter than to know the wisdom of God? others, if they will, may possess riches, drink from a jewelled cup, shine in silks, and try in vain to exhaust their wealth in the most varied pleasures. Our riches are to meditate in the law of the Lord day and night, [724] to knock at the closed door, [725] to receive the three loaves' of the Trinity, [726] and, when the Lord goes before us, to walk upon the water of the world." [727] Written at Rome a.d. 384. __________________________________________________________________
[724] Ps. i. 2.
[725] Matt. vii. 7.
[726] Luke xi. 5-8.
[727] Matt. xiv. 25-33. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XXXI. To Eustochium.
Jerome writes to thank Eustochium for some presents sent to him by her on the festival of St. Peter. He also moralizes on the mystical meaning of the articles sent. The letter should be compared with Letter XLIV., of which the theme is similar. Written at Rome in 384 a.d. (on St. Peter's Day).
1. Doves, bracelets, and a letter are outwardly but small gifts to receive from a virgin, but the action which has prompted them enhances their value. And since honey may not be offered in sacrifice to God, [728] you have shown skill in taking off their overmuch sweetness and making them pungent--if I may so say--with a dash of pepper. For nothing that is simply pleasurable or merely sweet can please God. Everything must have in it a sharp seasoning of truth. Christ's passover must be eaten with bitter herbs. [729]
2. It is true that a festival such as the birthday [730] of Saint Peter should be seasoned with more gladness than usual; still our merriment must not forget the limit set by Scripture, and we must not stray too far from the boundary of our wrestling-ground. Your presents, indeed, remind me of the sacred volume, for in it Ezekiel decks Jerusalem with bracelets, [731] Baruch receives letters from Jeremiah, [732] and the Holy Spirit descends in the form of a dove at the baptism of Christ. [733] But to give you, too, a sprinkling of pepper and to remind you of my former letter, [734] I send you to-day this three-fold warning. Cease not to adorn yourself with good works--the true bracelets of a Christian woman. [735] Rend not the letter written on your heart [736] as the profane king cut with his penknife that delivered to him by Baruch. [737] Let not Hosea say to you as to Ephraim, "Thou art like a silly dove." [738]
My words are too harsh, you will say, and hardly suitable to a festival like the present. If so, you have provoked me to it by the nature of your own gifts. So long as you put bitter with sweet, you must expect the same from me, sharp words that is, as well as praise.
3. However, I do not wish to make light of your gifts, least of all the basket of fine cherries, blushing with such a virgin modesty that I can fancy them freshly gathered by Lucullus [739] himself. For it was he who first introduced the fruit at Rome after his conquest of Pontus and Armenia; and the cherry tree is so called because he brought it from Cerasus. Now as the Scriptures do not mention cherries, but do speak of a basket of figs, [740] I will use these instead to point my moral. May you be made of fruits such as those which grow before God's temple and of which He says, "Behold they are good, very good." [741] The Saviour likes nothing that is half and half, and, while he welcomes the hot and does not shun the cold, he tells us in the Apocalypse that he will spew the lukewarm out of his mouth. [742] Wherefore we must be careful to celebrate our holy day not so much with abundance of food as with exultation of spirit. For it is altogether unreasonable to wish to honor a martyr by excess who himself, as you know, pleased God by fasting. When you take food always recollect that eating should be followed by reading, and also by prayer. And if, by taking this course, you displease some, repeat to yourself the words of the Apostle: "If I yet pleased men I should not be the servant of Christ" [743] __________________________________________________________________
[728] Lev. ii. 11.
[729] Ex. xii. 8.
[730] I.e. the day of his martyrdom, his heavenly nativity.
[731] Ezek. xvi. 11.
[732] Jer. xxxvi.; Baruch vi.
[733] Matt. iii. 16.
[734] Letter XXII.
[735] 1 Tim. ii. 10.
[736] 2 Cor. iii. 2.
[737] Jer. xxxvi. 23.
[738] Hos. vii. 11.
[739] Celebrated for his campaigns against Mithridates, and also as a prince of epicures.
[740] Jer. xxiv. 1-3.
[741] Jer. xxiv. 3.
[742] Rev. iii. 15, 16.
[743] Gal. i. 10. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XXXII. To Marcella.
Jerome writes that he is busy collating Aquila's Greek version of the Old Testament with the Hebrew, inquires after Marcella's mother, and forwards the two preceding letters (XXX., XXXI.). Written at Rome in 384 a.d.
1. There are two reasons for the shortness of this letter, one that its bearer is impatient to start, and the other that I am too busy to waste time on trifles. You ask what business can be so urgent as to stop me from a chat on paper. Let me tell you, then, that for some time past I have been comparing Aquila's version [744] of the Old Testament with the scrolls of the Hebrew, to see if from hatred to Christ the synagogue has changed the text; and--to speak frankly to a friend--I have found several variations which confirm our faith. After having exactly revised the prophets, Solomon, [745] the psalter, and the books of Kings, I am now engaged on Exodus (called by the Jews, from its opening words, Eleh shemôth [746] ), and when I have finished this I shall go on to Leviticus. Now you see why I can let no claim for a letter withdraw me from my work. However, as I do not wish my friend Currentius [747] to run altogether in vain, I have tacked on to this little talk two letters [748] which I am sending to your sister Paula, and to her dear child Eustochium. Read these, and if you find them instructive or pleasant, take what I have said to them as meant for you also.
2. I hope that Albina, your mother and mine, is well. In bodily health, I mean, for I doubt not of her spiritual welfare. Pray salute her for me, and cherish her with double affection, both as a Christian and as a mother. __________________________________________________________________
[744] This version, made in the reign of Hadrian by a Jewish proselyte who is said by some to have been a renegade Christian, was marked by an exaggerated literalism and a close following of the Hebrew original. By the Church it was regarded with suspicion as being designedly anti-Christian. Jerome, however, here acquits Aquila of the charge brought against him.
[745] I.e. all the sapiential books, viz. Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Ecclesiasticus, Wisdom.
[746] Exod. i. 1, 'lh smvt, A.V., "these are the names."
[747] The name means runner. Hence the allusion to Gal. ii. 2.
[748] XXX., XXXI. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XXXIII. To Paula.
A fragment of a letter in which Jerome institutes a comparison between the industry as writers of M. T. Varro and Origen. It is noteworthy as passing an unqualified eulogium upon Origen, which contrasts strongly with the tone adopted by the writer in subsequent years (see, e.g., Letter LXXXIV.). Its date is probably 384 a.d.
1. Antiquity marvels at Marcus Terentius Varro, [749] because of the countless books which he wrote for Latin readers; and Greek writers are extravagant in their praise of their man of brass, [750] because he has written more works than one of us could so much as copy. But since Latin ears would find a list of Greek writings tiresome, I shall confine myself to the Latin Varro. I shall try to show that we of to-day are sleeping the sleep of Epimenides, [751] and devoting to the amassing of riches the energy which our predecessors gave to sound, if secular, learning.
2. Varro's writings include forty-five books of antiquities, four concerning the life of the Roman people.
3. But why, you ask me, have I thus mentioned Varro and the man of brass? Simply to bring to your notice our Christian man of brass, or, rather, man of adamant [752] --Origen, I mean--whose zeal for the study of Scripture has fairly earned for him this latter name. Would you learn what monuments of his genius he has left us? The following list exhibits them. His writings comprise thirteen books on Genesis, two books of Mystical Homilies, notes on Exodus, notes on Leviticus, * * * * also single books, [753] four books on First Principles, two books on the Resurrection, two dialogues on the same subject. [754]
* * * * * * * * * * *
4. So, you see, the labors of this one man have surpassed those of all previous writers, Greek and Latin. Who has ever managed to read all that he has written? Yet what reward have his exertions brought him? He stands condemned by his bishop, Demetrius, [755] only the bishops of Palestine, Arabia, Phenicia, and Achaia dissenting. Imperial Rome consents to his condemnation, and even convenes a senate to censure him, [756] not--as the rabid hounds who now pursue him cry--because of the novelty or heterodoxy of his doctrines, but because men could not tolerate the incomparable eloquence and knowledge which, when once he opened his lips, made others seem dumb.
5. I have written the above quickly and incautiously, by the light of a poor lantern. You will see why, if you think of those who to-day represent Epicurus and Aristippus. [757] __________________________________________________________________
[749] Of the 490 books composed by this voluminous writer only two are extant, a treatise on husbandry and an essay on the Latin language.
[750] The epithet chalkenteros , "heart of brass," is applied by Suidas to the grammarian Didymus, who, according to Athenæus, wrote 3,500 books. Of these not one is extant.
[751] Which lasted 57 years.
[752] 'Adamantios --Origen is so called by Eusebius (H. E. vi. 14, 10). It appears to have been his proper name.
[753] "They may have been detached essays on particular subjects."--Westcott.
[754] All the works mentioned have perished except the treatise on First Principles, and this in its completeness is extant only in the Latin version of Rufinus. The version made by Jerome has perished.
[755] Origen left Alexandria for good in 231 a.d., and it was in that or the following year that Demetrius convoked the synod which condemned not so much his writings as his conduct. He appears to have been excommunicated as a heretic.
[756] For Origen's condemnation in a synod held at Rome this passage is the principal authority. It is more than doubtful whether such a synod ever met; if it did it must have been when Pontianus was pope, in 231 or 232 a.d. Jerome may only mean that the great men of Rome all agreed in this condemnation.
[757] Both these philosophers were hedonists, and the latter was a sensualist as well. Jerome is probably satirizing the worldly clergy of Rome, just as in after-years he nicknames his opponent Jovinian "the Christian Epicurus." __________________________________________________________________
Letter XXXIV. To Marcella.
In reply to a request from Marcella for information concerning two phrases in Ps. cxxvii. ("bread of sorrow," v. 2, and "children of the shaken off," A.V. "of the youth," v. 4). Jerome, after lamenting that Origen's notes on the psalm are no longer extant, gives the following explanations:
The Hebrew phrase "bread of sorrow" is rendered by the LXX. "bread of idols"; by Aquila, "bread of troubles"; by Symmachus, "bread of misery." Theodotion follows the LXX. So does Origen's Fifth Version. The Sixth renders "bread of error." In support of the LXX. the word used here is in Ps. cxv. 4, translated "idols." Either the troubles of life are meant or else the tenets of heresy.
With the second phrase he deals at greater length. After showing that Hilary of Poitiers's view (viz. that the persons meant are the apostles, who were told to shake the dust off their feet, Matt. x. 14) is untenable and would require "shakers off" to be substituted for "shaken off," Jerome reverts to the Hebrew as before and declares that the true rendering is that of Symmachus and Theodotion, viz. "children of youth." He points out that the LXX. (by whom the Latin translators had been misled) fall into the same mistake at Neh. iv. 16. Finally he corrects a slip of Hilary as to Ps. cxxviii. 2, where, through a misunderstanding of the LXX., the latter had substituted "the labors of thy fruits" for "the labors of thy hands." He speaks throughout with high respect of Hilary, and says that it was not the bishop's fault that he was ignorant of Hebrew. The date of the letter is probably a.d. 384. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XXXV. From Pope Damasus.
Damasus addresses five questions to Jerome with a request for information concerning them. They are:
1. What is the meaning of the words "Whosoever slayeth Cain vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold"? (Gen. iv. 5.)
2. If God has made all things good, how comes it that He gives charge to Noah concerning unclean animals, and says to Peter, "What God hath cleansed that call not thou common"? (Acts x. 15.)
3. How is Gen. xv. 16, "in the fourth generation they shall come hither again," to be reconciled with Ex. xiii. 18, LXX, "in the fifth generation the children of Israel went up out of the land of Egypt"?
4. Why did Abraham receive circumcision as a seal of his faith? (Rom. iv. 11.)
5. Why was Isaac, a righteous man and dear to God, allowed by God to become the dupe of Jacob? (Gen. xxvii.) Written at Rome 384 a.d. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XXXVI. To Pope Damasus.
Jerome's reply to the foregoing. For the second and fourth questions he refers Damasus to the writings of Tertullian, Novatian, and Origen. The remaining three he deals with in detail.
Gen. iv. 15, he understands to mean "the slayer of Cain shall complete the sevenfold vengeance which is to be wreaked upon him."
Exodus xiii. 18, he proposes to reconcile with Gen. xv. 16, by supposing that in the one place the tribe of Levi is referred to, in the other the tribe of Judah. He suggests, however, that the words rendered by the LXX. "in the fifth generation" more probably mean "harnessed" (so A.V.) or "laden." In reply to the question about Isaac he says: "No man save Him who for our salvation has deigned to put on flesh has full knowledge and a complete grasp of the truth. Paul, Samuel, David, Elisha, all make mistakes, and holy men only know what God reveals to them." He then goes on to give a mystical interpretation of the passage suggested by the martyr Hippolytus. Written the day after the previous letter. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XXXVII. To Marcella.
Marcella had asked Jerome to lend her a copy of a commentary by Rhetitius, bishop of Augustodunum (Autun), on the Song of Songs. He now refuses to do so on the ground that the work abounds with errors, of which the two following are samples: (1) Rhetitius identifies Tharshish with Tarsus, and (2) he supposes that Uphaz (in the phrase "gold of Uphaz") is the same as Cephas. Written at Rome a.d. 384. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XXXVIII. To Marcella.
Blæsilla, the daughter of Paula and sister of Eustochium, had lost her husband seven months after her marriage. A dangerous illness had then led to her conversion, and she was now famous throughout Rome for the length to which she carried her austerities. Many censured her for what they deemed her fanaticism, and Jerome, as her spiritual adviser, came in for some of the blame. In the present letter he defends her conduct, and declares that persons who cavil at lives like hers have no claim to be considered Christians. Written at Rome in 385 a.d.
1. When Abraham is tempted to slay his son the trial only serves to strengthen his faith. [758] When Joseph is sold into Egypt, his sojourn there enables him to support his father and his brothers. [759] When Hezekiah is panic-stricken at the near approach of death, his tears and prayers obtain for him a respite of fifteen years. [760] If the faith of the apostle, Peter, is shaken by his Lord's passion, it is that, weeping bitterly, he may hear the soothing words: "Feed my sheep." [761] If Paul, that ravening wolf, [762] that little Benjamin, [763] is blinded in a trance, it is that he may receive his sight, and may be led, by the sudden horror of surrounding darkness, to call Him Lord Whom before he persecuted as man. [764]
2. So is it now, my dear Marcella, with our beloved Blæsilla. The burning fever from which we have seen her suffering unceasingly for nearly thirty days has been sent to teach her to renounce her over-great attention to that body which the worms must shortly devour. The Lord Jesus has come to her in her sickness, and has taken her by the hand, and behold, she arises and ministers unto Him. [765] Formerly her life savored somewhat of carelessness; and, fast bound in the bands of wealth, she lay as one dead in the tomb of the world. But Jesus was moved with indignation, [766] and was troubled in spirit, and cried aloud and said, Blæsilla, come forth. [767] She, at His call, has arisen and has come forth, and sits at meat with the Lord. [768] The Jews, if they will, may threaten her in their wrath; they may seek to slay her, because Christ has raised her up. [769] It is enough that the apostles give God the glory. Blæsilla knows that her life is due to Him who has given it back to her. She knows that now she can clasp the feet of Him whom but a little while ago she dreaded as her judge. [770] Then life had all but forsaken her body, and the approach of death made her gasp and shiver. What succour did she obtain in that hour from her kinsfolk? What comfort was there in their words lighter than smoke? She owes no debt to you, ye unkindly kindred, now that she is dead to the world and alive unto Christ. [771] The Christian must rejoice that it is so, and he that is vexed must admit that he has no claim to be called a Christian.
3. A widow who is "loosed from the law of her husband" [772] has, for her one duty, to continue a widow. But, you will say, a sombre dress vexes the world. In that case, John the Baptist would vex it, too; and yet, among those that are born of women, there has not been a greater than he. [773] He was called an angel; [774] he baptized the Lord Himself, and yet he was clothed in raiment of camel's hair, and girded with a leathern girdle. [775] Is the world displeased because a widow's food is coarse? Nothing can be coarser than locusts, and yet these were the food of John. The women who ought to scandalize Christians are those who paint their eyes and lips with rouge and cosmetics; whose chalked faces, unnaturally white, are like those of idols; upon whose cheeks every chance tear leaves a furrow; who fail to realize that years make them old; who heap their heads with hair not their own; who smooth their faces, and rub out the wrinkles of age; and who, in the presence of their grandsons, behave like trembling school-girls. A Christian woman should blush to do violence to nature, or to stimulate desire by bestowing care upon the flesh. "They that are in the flesh," the apostle tells us, "cannot please God." [776]
4. In days gone by our dear widow was extremely fastidious in her dress, and spent whole days before her mirror to correct its deficiencies. Now she boldly says: "We all with unveiled face, beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image, from glory to glory, even as by the spirit of the Lord." [777] In those days maids arranged her hair, and her head, which had done no harm, was forced into a waving head-dress. Now she leaves her hair alone, and her only head-dress is a veil. In those days the softest feather-bed seemed hard to her, and she could scarcely find rest on a pile of mattresses. Now she rises eager for prayer, her shrill voice cries Alleluia before every other, she is the first to praise her Lord. She kneels upon the bare ground, and with frequent tears cleanses a face once defiled with white lead. After prayer comes the singing of psalms, and it is only when her neck aches and her knees totter, and her eyes begin to close with weariness, that she gives them leave reluctantly to rest. As her dress is dark, lying on the ground does not soil it. Cheap shoes permit her to give to the poor the price of gilded ones. No gold and jewels adorn her girdle; it is made of wool, plain and scrupulously clean. It is intended to keep her clothes right, and not to cut her waist in two. Therefore, if the scorpion looks askance upon her purpose, and with alluring words tempts her once more to eat of the forbidden tree, she must crush him beneath her feet with a curse, and say, as he lies dying in his allotted dust: [778] "Get thee behind me, Satan." [779] Satan means adversary, [780] and one who dislikes Christ's commandments, is more than Christ's adversary; he is anti-christ.
5. But what, I ask you, have we ever done that men should be offended at us? Have we ever imitated the apostles? We are told of the first disciples that they forsook their boat and their nets, and even their aged father. [781] The publican stood up from the receipt of custom and followed the Saviour once for all. [782] And when a disciple wished to return home, that he might take leave of his kinsfolk, the Master's voice refused consent. [783] A son was even forbidden to bury his father, [784] as if to show that it is sometimes a religious duty to be undutiful for the Lord's sake. [785] With us it is different. We are held to be monks if we refuse to dress in silk. We are called sour and severe if we keep sober and refrain from excessive laughter. The mob salutes us as Greeks and impostors [786] if our tunics are fresh and clean. They may deal in still severer witticisms if they please; they may parade every fat paunch [787] they can lay hold of, to turn us into ridicule. Our Blæsilla will laugh at their efforts, and will bear with patience the taunts of all such croaking frogs, for she will remember that men called her Lord, Beelzebub. [788] __________________________________________________________________
[758] Gen. xxii.
[759] Gen. xxxvii., xlvi.
[760] 2 Kings xx.; Isa. xxxviii.
[761] Luke xxii. 54-62; Joh. xxi. 16.
[762] Gen. xlix. 27.
[763] Ps. lxviii. 27.
[764] Acts ix. 3-18.
[765] Cf. Mark i. 30, 31.
[766] John xi. 38, R.V. marg.
[767] Joh. xi. 38-44.
[768] Joh. xii. 2.
[769] Joh. xii. 10.
[770] Luke vii. 38.
[771] Rom. vi. 11.
[772] Rom. vii. 2.
[773] Luke vii. 28.
[774] Luke vii. 27. The word "angel" means "messenger."
[775] Matt. iii. 4.
[776] Rom. viii. 8.
[777] 2 Cor. iii. 18, R.V.
[778] Gen. iii. 14.
[779] Matt. xvi. 23.
[780] 1 Pet. v. 8.
[781] Matt. iv. 18-22.
[782] Matt. ix. 9.
[783] Luke ix. 61, 62.
[784] Matt. viii. 21.
[785] Luke xiv. 26.
[786] Cf. Letter LIV. § 5.
[787] Pinguis aqualiculus--Pers. i. 57.
[788] Matt. x. 25. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XXXIX. To Paula.
Blæsilla died within three months of her conversion, and Jerome now writes to Paula to offer her his sympathy and, if possible, to moderate her grief. He asks her to remember that Blæsilla is now in paradise, and so far to control herself as to prevent enemies of the faith from cavilling at her conduct. Then he concludes with the prophecy (since more than fulfilled) that in his writings Blæsilla's name shall never die. Written at Rome in 389 a.d.
1. "Oh that my head were waters and mine eyes a fountain of tears: that I might weep," not as Jeremiah says, "For the slain of my people," [789] nor as Jesus, for the miserable fate of Jerusalem, [790] but for holiness, mercy, innocence, chastity, and all the virtues, for all are gone now that Blæsilla is dead. For her sake I do not grieve, but for myself I must; my loss is too great to be borne with resignation. Who can recall with dry eyes the glowing faith which induced a girl of twenty to raise the standard of the Cross, and to mourn the loss of her virginity more than the death of her husband? Who can recall without a sigh the earnestness of her prayers, the brilliancy of her conversation, the tenacity of her memory, and the quickness of her intellect? Had you heard her speak Greek you would have deemed her ignorant of Latin; yet when she used the tongue of Rome her words were free from a foreign accent. She even rivalled the great Origen in those acquirements which won for him the admiration of Greece. For in a few months, or rather days, she so completely mastered the difficulties of Hebrew as to emulate her mother's zeal in learning and singing the psalms. Her attire was plain, but this plainness was not, as it often is, a mark of pride. Indeed, her self-abasement was so perfect that she dressed no better than her maids, and was only distinguished from them by the greater ease of her walk. Her steps tottered with weakness, her face was pale and quivering, her slender neck scarcely upheld her head. Still she always had in her hand a prophet or a gospel. As I think of her my eyes fill with tears, sobs impede my voice, and such is my emotion that my tongue cleaves to the roof of my mouth. As she lay there dying, her poor frame parched with burning fever, and her relatives gathered round her bed, her last words were: "Pray to the Lord Jesus, that He may pardon me, because what I would have done I have not been able to do." Be at peace, dear Blæsilla, in full assurance that your garments are always white. [791] For yours is the purity of an everlasting virginity. I feel confident that my words are true: conversion can never be too late. The words to the dying robber are a pledge of this: "Verily I say unto thee, today shalt thou be with me in paradise." [792] When at last her spirit was delivered from the burden of the flesh, and had returned to Him who gave it; [793] when, too, after her long pilgrimage, she had ascended up into her ancient heritage, her obsequies were celebrated with customary splendor. People of rank headed the procession, a pall made of cloth of gold covered her bier. But I seemed to hear a voice from heaven, saying: "I do not recognize these trappings; such is not the garb I used to wear; this magnificence is strange to me."
2. But what is this? I wish to check a mother's weeping, and I groan myself. I make no secret of my feelings; this entire letter is written in tears. Even Jesus wept for Lazarus because He loved him. [794] But he is a poor comforter who is overcome by his own sighs, and from whose afflicted heart tears are wrung as well as words. Dear Paula, my agony is as great as yours. Jesus knows it, whom Blæsilla now follows; the holy angels know it, whose company she now enjoys. I was her father in the spirit, her foster-father in affection. Sometimes I say: "Let the day perish wherein I was born," [795] and again, "Woe is me, my mother, that thou hast borne me a man of strife and a man of contention to the whole earth." [796] I cry: "Righteous art thou, O Lord...yet let me talk with thee of thy judgments. Wherefore doth the way of the wicked prosper?" [797] and "as for me, my feet were almost gone, my steps had well-nigh slipped. For I was envious at the foolish when I saw the prosperity of the wicked, and I said: How doth God know? and is there knowledge in the most high? Behold these are the ungodly who prosper in the world; they increase in riches." [798] But again I recall other words, "If I say I will speak thus, behold I should offend against the generation of thy children." [799] Do not great waves of doubt surge up over my soul as over yours? How comes it, I ask, that godless men live to old age in the enjoyment of this world's riches? How comes it that untutored youth and innocent childhood are cut down while still in the bud? Why is it that children three years old or two, and even unweaned infants, are possessed with devils, covered with leprosy, and eaten up with jaundice, while godless men and profane, adulterers and murderers, have health and strength to blaspheme God? Are we not told that the unrighteousness of the father does not fall upon the son, [800] and that "the soul that sinneth it shall die?" [801] Or if the old doctrine holds good that the sins of the fathers must be visited upon the children, [802] an old man's countless sins cannot fairly be avenged upon a harmless infant. And I have said: "Verily, I have cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocency. For all the day long have I been plagued." [803] Yet when I have thought of these things, like the prophet I have learned to say: "When I thought to know this, it was too painful for me; until I went into the sanctuary of God; then understood I their end." [804] Truly the judgments of the Lord are a great deep. [805] "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out!" [806] God is good, and all that He does must be good also. Does He decree that I must lose my husband? I mourn my loss, but because it is His will I bear it with resignation. Is an only son snatched from me? The blow is hard, yet it can be borne, for He who has taken away is He who gave. [807] If I become blind a friend's reading will console me. If I become deaf I shall escape from sinful words, and my thoughts shall be of God alone. And if, besides such trials as these, poverty, cold, sickness, and nakedness oppress me, I shall wait for death, and regard them as passing evils, soon to give way to a better issue. Let us reflect on the words of the sapiential psalm: "Righteous art thou, O Lord, and upright are thy judgments." [808] Only he can speak thus who in all his troubles magnifies the Lord, and, putting down his sufferings to his sins, thanks God for his clemency.
The daughters of Judah, we are told, rejoiced, because of all the judgments of the Lord. [809] Therefore, since Judah means confession, and since every believing soul confesses its faith, [810] he who claims to believe in Christ must rejoice in all Christ's judgments. Am I in health? I thank my Creator. Am I sick? In this case, too, I praise God's will. For "when I am weak, then am I strong;" and the strength of the spirit is made perfect in the weakness of the flesh. Even an apostle must bear what he dislikes, that ailment for the removal of which he besought the Lord thrice. God's reply was: "My grace is sufficient for thee; for my strength is made perfect in weakness." [811] Lest he should be unduly elated by his revelations, a reminder of his human weakness was given to him, just as in the triumphal car of the victorious general there was always a slave to whisper constantly, amid the cheerings of the multitude, "Remember that thou art but man." [812]
3. But why should that be hard to bear which we must one day ourselves endure? And why do we grieve for the dead? We are not born to live forever. Abraham, Moses, and Isaiah, Peter, James, and John, Paul, the "chosen vessel," [813] and even the Son of God Himself have all died; and are we vexed when a soul leaves its earthly tenement? Perhaps he is taken away, "lest that wickedness should alter his understanding...for his soul pleased the Lord: therefore hasted he to take him away from the people" [814] --lest in life's long journey he should lose his way in some trackless maze. We should indeed mourn for the dead, but only for him whom Gehenna receives, whom Tartarus devours, and for whose punishment the eternal fire burns. But we who, in departing, are accompanied by an escort of angels, and met by Christ Himself, should rather grieve that we have to tarry yet longer in this tabernacle of death. [815] For "whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord." [816] Our one longing should be that expressed by the psalmist: "Woe is me that my pilgrimage is prolonged, that I have dwelt with them that dwell in Kedar, that my soul hath made a far pilgrimage." [817] Kedar means darkness, and darkness stands for this present world (for, we are told, "the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehendeth it not" [818] ). Therefore we should congratulate our dear Blæsilla that she has passed from darkness to light, [819] and has in the first flush of her dawning faith received the crown of her completed work. Had she been cut off (as I pray that none may be) while her thoughts were full of worldly desires and passing pleasures, then mourning would indeed have been her due, and no tears shed for her would have been too many. As it is, by the mercy of Christ she, four months ago, renewed her baptism in her vow of widowhood, and for the rest of her days spurned the world, and thought only of the religious life. Have you no fear, then, lest the Saviour may say to you: "Are you angry, Paula, that your daughter has become my daughter? Are you vexed at my decree, and do you, with rebellious tears, grudge me the possession of Blæsilla? You ought to know what my purpose is both for you and for yours. You deny yourself food, not to fast but to gratify your grief; and such abstinence is displeasing to me. Such fasts are my enemies. I receive no soul which forsakes the body against my will. A foolish philosophy may boast of martyrs of this kind; it may boast of a Zeno [820] a Cleombrotus, [821] or a Cato. [822] My spirit rests only upon him "that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and that trembleth at my word. [823] Is this the meaning of your vow to me that you would lead a religious life? Is it for this that you dress yourself differently from other matrons, and array yourself in the garb of a nun? Mourning is for those who wear silk dresses. In the midst of your tears the call will come, and you, too, must die; yet you flee from me as from a cruel judge, and fancy that you can avoid falling into my hands. Jonah, that headstrong prophet, once fled from me, yet in the depths of the sea he was still mine. [824] If you really believed your daughter to be alive, you would not grieve that she had passed to a better world. This is the commandment that I have given you through my apostle, that you sorrow not for them that sleep, even as the Gentiles, which have no hope. [825] Blush, for you are put to shame by the example of a heathen. The devil's handmaid [826] is better than mine. For, while she imagines that her unbelieving husband has been translated to heaven, you either do not or will not believe that your daughter is at rest with me."
4. Why should I not mourn, you say? Jacob put on sackcloth for Joseph, and when all his family gathered round him, refused to be comforted. "I will go down," he said, "into the grave unto my son mourning." [827] David also mourned for Absalom, covering his face, and crying: "O my son, Absalom...my son, Absalom! Would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son!" [828] Moses, [829] too, and Aaron, [830] and the rest of the saints were mourned for with a solemn mourning. The answer to your reasoning is simple. Jacob, it is true, mourned for Joseph, whom he fancied slain, and thought to meet only in the grave (his words were: "I will go down into the grave unto my son mourning"), but he only did so because Christ had not yet broken open the door of paradise, nor quenched with his blood the flaming sword and the whirling of the guardian cherubim. [831] (Hence in the story of Dives and Lazarus, Abraham and the beggar, though really in a place of refreshment, are described as being in hell. [832] ) And David, who, after interceding in vain for the life of his infant child, refused to weep for it, knowing that it had not sinned, did well to weep for a son who had been a parricide--in will, if not in deed. [833] And when we read that, for Moses and Aaron, lamentation was made after ancient custom, this ought not to surprise us, for even in the Acts of the Apostles, in the full blaze of the gospel, we see that the brethren at Jerusalem made great lamentation for Stephen. [834] This great lamentation, however, refers not to the mourners, but to the funeral procession and to the crowds which accompanied it. This is what the Scripture says of Jacob: "Joseph went up to bury his father: and with him went up all the servants of Pharaoh, the elders of his house, and all the elders of the land of Egypt, and all the house of Joseph and his brethren"; and a few lines farther on: "And there went up with him both chariots and horsemen: and it was a great company." Finally, "they mourned with a great and very sore lamentation." [835] This solemn lamentation does not impose prolonged weeping upon the Egyptians, but simply describes the funeral ceremony. In like manner, when we read of weeping made for Moses and Aaron, [836] this is all that is meant.
I cannot adequately extol the mysteries of Scripture, nor sufficiently admire the spiritual meaning conveyed in its most simple words. We are told, for instance, that lamentation was made for Moses; yet when the funeral of Joshua is described [837] no mention at all is made of weeping. The reason, of course, is that under Moses--that is under the old Law--all men were bound by the sentence passed on Adam's sin, and when they descended into hell [838] were rightly accompanied with tears. For, as the apostle says, "death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned." [839] But under Jesus, [840] that is, under the Gospel of Christ, who has unlocked for us the gate of paradise, death is accompanied, not with sorrow, but with joy. The Jews go on weeping to this day; they make bare their feet, they crouch in sackcloth, they roll in ashes. And to make their superstition complete, they follow a foolish custom of the Pharisees, and eat lentils, [841] to show, it would seem, for what poor fare they have lost their birthright. [842] Of course they are right to weep, for as they do not believe in the Lord's resurrection they are being made ready for the advent of antichrist. But we who have put on Christ [843] and according to the apostle are a royal and priestly race, [844] we ought not to grieve for the dead. "Moses," the Scripture tells us, "said unto Aaron and unto Eleazar, and unto Ithamar, his sons that were left: Uncover not your heads, neither rend your clothes; lest ye die, and lest wrath come upon all the people." [845] Rend not your clothes, he says, neither mourn as pagans, lest you die. For, for us sin is death. In this same book, Leviticus, there is a provision which may perhaps strike some as cruel, yet is necessary to faith: the high priest is forbidden to approach the dead bodies of his father and mother, of his brothers and of his children; [846] to the end, that no grief may distract a soul engaged in offering sacrifice to God, and wholly devoted to the Divine mysteries. Are we not taught the same lesson in the Gospel in other words? Is not the disciple forbidden to say farewell to his home or to bury his dead father? [847] Of the high priest, again, it is said: "He shall not go out of the sanctuary, and the sanctification of his God shall not be contaminated, for the anointing oil of his God is upon him." [848] Certainly, now that we have believed in Christ, and bear Him within us, by reason of the oil of His anointing which we have received, [849] we ought not to depart from His temple--that is, from our Christian profession--we ought not to go forth to mingle with the unbelieving Gentiles, but always to remain within, as servants obedient to the will of the Lord.
5. I have spoken plainly, lest you might ignorantly suppose that Scripture sanctions your grief; and that, if you err, you have reason on your side. And, so far, my words have been addressed to the average Christian woman. But now it will not be so. For in your case, as I well know, renunciation of the world has been complete; you have rejected and trampled on the delights of life, and you give yourself daily to fasting, to reading, and to prayer. Like Abraham, [850] you desire to leave your country and kindred, to forsake Mesopotamia and the Chaldæans, to enter into the promised land. Dead to the world before your death, you have spent all your mere worldly substance upon the poor, or have bestowed it upon your children. I am the more surprised, therefore, that you should act in a manner which in others would justly call for reprehension. You call to mind Blæsilla's companionship, her conversation, and her endearing ways; and you cannot endure the thought that you have lost them all. I pardon you the tears of a mother, but I ask you to restrain your grief. When I think of the parent I cannot blame you for weeping: but when I think of the Christian and the recluse, the mother disappears from my view. Your wound is still fresh, and any touch of mine, however gentle, is more likely to inflame than to heal it. Yet why do you not try to overcome by reason a grief which time must inevitably assuage? Naomi, fleeing because of famine to the land of Moab, there lost her husband and her sons. Yet when she was thus deprived of her natural protectors, Ruth, a stranger, never left her side. [851] And see what a great thing it is to comfort a lonely woman! Ruth, for her reward, is made an ancestress of Christ. [852] Consider the great trials which Job endured, and you will see that you are over-delicate. Amid the ruins of his house, the pains of his sores, his countless bereavements, and, last of all, the snares laid for him by his wife, he still lifted up his eyes to heaven, and maintained his patience unbroken. I know what you are going to say: "All this befell him as a righteous man, to try his righteousness." Well, choose which alternative you please. Either you are holy, in which case God is putting your holiness to the proof; or else you are a sinner, in which case you have no right to complain. For if so, you endure far less than your deserts.
Why should I repeat old stories? Listen to a modern instance. The holy Melanium, [853] eminent among Christians for her true nobility (may the Lord grant that you and I may have part with her in His day!), while the dead body of her husband was still unburied, still warm, had the misfortune to lose at one stroke two of her sons. The sequel seems incredible, but Christ is my witness that my words are true. Would you not suppose that in her frenzy she would have unbound her hair, and rent her clothes, and torn her breast? Yet not a tear fell from her eyes. Motionless she stood there; then casting herself at the feet of Christ, she smiled, as though she held Him with her hands. "Henceforth, Lord," she said, "I will serve Thee more readily, for Thou hast freed me from a great burden." But perhaps her remaining children overcame her determination. No, indeed; she set so little store by them that she gave up all that she had to her only son, and then, in spite of the approaching winter, took ship for Jerusalem.
6. Spare yourself, I beseech you, spare Blæsilla, who now reigns with Christ; at least spare Eustochium, whose tender years and inexperience depend on you for guidance and instruction. Now does the devil rage and complain that he is set at naught, because he sees one of your children exalted in triumph. The victory which he failed to win over her that is gone he hopes to obtain over her who still remains. Too great affection towards one's children is disaffection towards God. Abraham gladly prepares to slay his only son, and do you complain if one child out of several has received her crown? I cannot say what I am going to say without a groan. When you were carried fainting out of the funeral procession, whispers such as these were audible in the crowd. "Is not this what we have often said. She weeps for her daughter, killed with fasting. She wanted her to marry again, that she might have grandchildren. How long must we refrain from driving these detestable monks out of Rome? Why do we not stone them or hurl them into the Tiber? They have misled this unhappy lady; that she is not a nun from choice is clear. No heathen mother ever wept for her children as she does for Blæsilla." What sorrow, think you, must not Christ have endured when He listened to such words as these! And how triumphantly must Satan have exulted, eager as he is to snatch your soul! Luring you with the claims of a grief which seems natural and right, and always keeping before you the image of Blæsilla, his aim is to slay the mother of the victress, and then to fall upon her forsaken sister. I do not speak thus to terrify you. The Lord is my witness that I address you now as though I were standing at His judgment seat. Tears which have no meaning are an object of abhorrence. Yours are detestable tears, sacrilegious tears, unbelieving tears; for they know no limits, and bring you to the verge of death. You shriek and cry out as though on fire within, and do your best to put an end to yourself. But to you and others like you Jesus comes in His mercy and says: "Why weepest thou? the damsel is not dead but sleepeth." [854] The bystanders may laugh him to scorn; such unbelief is worthy of the Jews. If you prostrate yourself in grief at your daughter's tomb you too will hear the chiding of the angel, "Why seek ye the living among the dead?" [855] It was because Mary Magdalene had done this that when she recognized the Lord's voice calling her and fell at His feet, He said to her: "Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended to my Father;" [856] that is to say, you are not worthy to touch, as risen, one whom you suppose still in the tomb.
7. What crosses and tortures, think you, must not our Blæsilla endure to see Christ angry with you, though it be but a little! At this moment she cries to you as you weep: "If ever you loved me, mother, if I was nourished at your breast, if I was taught by your precepts, do not grudge me my exaltation, do not so act that we shall be separated forever. Do you fancy that I am alone? In place of you I now have Mary the mother of the Lord. Here I see many whom before I have not known. My companions are infinitely better than any that I had on earth. Here I have the company of Anna, the prophetess of the Gospel; [857] and--what should kindle in you more fervent joy--I have gained in three short months what cost her the labor of many years to win. Both of us widows indeed, we have been both rewarded with the palm of chastity. Do you pity me because I have left the world behind me? It is I who should, and do, pity you who, still immured in its prison, daily fight with anger, with covetousness, with lust, with this or that temptation leading the soul to ruin. If you wish to be indeed my mother, you must please Christ. She is not my mother who displeases my Lord." Many other things does she say which here I pass over; she prays also to God for you. For me, too, I feel sure, she makes intercession and asks God to pardon my sins in return for the warnings and advice that I bestowed on her, when to secure her salvation I braved the ill will of her family.
8. Therefore, so long as breath animates my body, so long as I continue in the enjoyment of life, I engage, declare, and promise that Blæsilla's name shall be forever on my tongue, that my labors shall be dedicated to her honor, and that my talents shall be devoted to her praise. No page will I write in which Blæsilla's name shall not occur. Wherever the records of my utterance shall find their way, thither she, too, will travel with my poor writings. Virgins, widows, monks and priests, as they read, will see how deeply her image is impressed upon my mind. Everlasting remembrance will make up for the shortness of her life. Living as she does with Christ in heaven, she will live also on the lips of men. The present will soon pass away and give place to the future, and that future will judge her without partiality and without prejudice. As a childless widow she will occupy a middle place between Paula, the mother of children, and Eustochium the virgin. In my writings she will never die. She will hear me conversing of her always, either with her sister or with her mother. __________________________________________________________________
[789] Jer. ix. 1.
[790] Luke xix. 41.
[791] Eccles. ix. 8.
[792] Luke xxiii. 43.
[793] Cf. Eccles. xii. 7.
[794] John xi. 35, 36.
[795] Job iii. 3: cf. Jer. xx. 14.
[796] Jer. xv. 10.
[797] Jer. xii. 1.
[798] Ps. lxxiii. 2, 3, 11, 12, Vulg.
[799] Ps. lxxiii. 15.
[800] Ezek. xviii. 20.
[801] Ezek. xviii. 4.
[802] Ex. xx. 5.
[803] Ps. lxxiii. 13, 14.
[804] Ps. lxxiii. 16, 17.
[805] Ps. xxxvi. 6.
[806] Rom. xi. 33.
[807] Job i. 21.
[808] Ps. cxix. 137.
[809] Ps. xcvii. 8.
[810] Rom. x. 10.
[811] 2 Cor. xii. 8, 9, 10.
[812] Cf. Tertullian, Apol. 33.
[813] Acts ix. 15.
[814] Wisd. iv. 11, 14.
[815] 2 Cor. v. 4.
[816] 2 Cor. v. 6.
[817] Ps. cxx. 5, 6, Vulg.
[818] Joh. i. 5.
[819] Eph. v. 8.
[820] A famous stoic who committed suicide in extreme old age. See Diogenes Laertius (vii. 1) for an account of his death.
[821] An academic philosopher of Ambracia, who is said to have killed himself after reading the Phædo of Plato.
[822] Cato of Utica, who, after the battle of Thapsus (46 b.c.), committed suicide to avoid falling into the hands of Cæsar.
[823] Isa. lxvi. 2.
[824] Jon. ii. 2-7.
[825] 1 Thess. iv. 13.
[826] Viz. Paulina, wife of Prætextatus and priestess of Ceres. See Letter XXIII. § 3.
[827] Gen. xxxvii. 35.
[828] 2 Sam. xviii. 33.
[829] Deut. xxxiv. 8.
[830] Nu. xx. 29.
[831] Gen. iii. 24: cf. Ezek. i. 15-20. Here as in his Comm. on Eccles. iii. 16-22, Jerome follows Origen, who, in his homily de Engastrimytho, lays down that until Christ came to set them free the patriarchs, prophets, and saints of the Old Testament were all in hell.
[832] Apud inferos--Luke xvi. 23.
[833] 2 Sam. xvii. 1-4.
[834] Acts viii. 2.
[835] Gen. 1. 7-10.
[836] Nu. xx. 29; Deut. xxxiv. 6-8.
[837] Josh. xxiv. 30.
[838] Ad inferos. Hades is meant, not Gehenna.
[839] Rom. v. 14.
[840] The Greek form of Joshua. Cf. Acts vii. 45, A.V.
[841] I learn from Dr. Neubauer, of Oxford, that this is still a practice during mourning among the Jews of the East. He refers to Tur Joreh Deah. §378.
[842] Gen. xxv. 34.
[843] Gal. iii. 27.
[844] 1 Pet. ii. 9.
[845] Lev. x. 6, 12.
[846] Lev. xxi. 10-12.
[847] Luke ix. 59-62.
[848] Lev. xxi. 12, Vulg.
[849] 1 Joh. ii. 27.
[850] Gen. xii. 1-4.
[851] Ruth i.
[852] Matt. i. 5.
[853] Or Melania. She went with Rufinus to the East, and settled with him on the Mt. of Olives; and incurred Jerome's resentment as Rufinus' friend. See Ep. cxxxiii. 3. "She whose name of blackness attests the darkness of her perfidy."
[854] Mark v. 39.
[855] Luke xxiv. 5.
[856] Joh. xx. 17.
[857] Luke ii. 36, 37. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XL. To Marcella.
Onasus, of Segesta, the subject of this letter, was among Jerome's Roman opponents. He is here held up to ridicule in a manner which reflects little credit on the writer's urbanity. The date of the letter is 385 a.d.
1. The medical men called surgeons pass for being cruel, but really deserve pity. For is it not pitiful to cut away the dead flesh of another man with merciless knives without being moved by his pangs? Is it not pitiful that the man who is curing the patient is callous to his sufferings, and has to appear as his enemy? Yet such is the order of nature. While truth is always bitter, pleasantness waits upon evil-doing. Isaiah goes naked without blushing as a type of captivity to come. [858] Jeremiah is sent from Jerusalem to the Euphrates (a river in Mesopotamia), and leaves his girdle to be marred in the Chaldæan camp, among the Assyrians hostile to his people. [859] Ezekiel is told to eat bread made of mingled seeds and sprinkled with the dung of men and cattle. [860] He has to see his wife die without shedding a tear. [861] Amos is driven from Samaria. [862] Why is he driven from it? Surely in this case as in the others, because he was a spiritual surgeon, who cut away the parts diseased by sin and urged men to repentance. The apostle Paul says: "Am I therefore become your enemy because I tell you the truth?" [863] And so the Saviour Himself found it, from whom many of the disciples went back because His sayings seemed hard. [864]
2. It is not surprising, then, that by exposing their faults I have offended many. I have arranged to operate on a cancerous nose; [865] let him who suffers from wens tremble. I wish to rebuke a chattering daw; let the crow realize that she is offensive. [866] Yet, after all, is there but one person in Rome
"Whose nostrils are disfigured by a scar?" [867]
Is Onasus of Segesta alone in puffing out his cheeks like bladders and balancing hollow phrases on his tongue?
I say that certain persons have, by crime, perjury, and false pretences, attained to this or that high position. How does it hurt you who know that the charge does not touch you? I laugh at a pleader who has no clients, and sneer at a penny-a-liner's eloquence. What does it matter to you who are such a refined speaker? It is my whim to inveigh against mercenary priests. You are rich already, why should you be angry? I wish to shut up Vulcan and burn him in his own flames. Are you his guest or his neighbor that you try to save an idol's shrine from the fire? I choose to make merry over ghosts and owls and monsters of the Nile; and whatever I say, you take it as aimed at you. At whatever fault I point my pen, you cry out that you are meant. You collar me and drag me into court and absurdly charge me with writing satires when I only write plain prose!
So you really think yourself a pretty fellow just because you have a lucky name! [868] Why it does not follow at all. A brake is called a brake just because the light does not break through it. [869] The Fates are called "sparers," [870] just because they never spare. The Furies are spoken of as gracious, [871] because they show no grace. And in common speech Ethiopians go by the name of silverlings. Still, if the showing up of faults always angers you, I will soothe you now with the words of Persius: "May you be a catch for my lord and lady's daughter! May the pretty ladies scramble for you! May the ground you walk on turn to a rose-bed!" [872]
3. All the same, I will give you a hint what features to hide if you want to look your best. Show no nose upon your face and keep your mouth shut. You will then stand some chance of being counted both handsome and eloquent. __________________________________________________________________
[858] Isa. xx. 2.
[859] Jer. xiii. 6, 7.
[860] Ezek. iv. 9-16.
[861] Ezek. xxiv. 15-18.
[862] Amos vii. 12, 13.
[863] Gal. iv. 16.
[864] John vi. 60, 66.
[865] Nasus. A play on the name Onasus.
[866] Cf. Persius, l. 33.
[867] Virg. A. vi. 497.
[868] Onasus means "lucky" or "profitable;" it is another form of Onesimus.
[869] Quoted from Quintilian i. 6, 34 (lucus a non lucendo).
[870] Parcæ, from parcere, to spare.
[871] Eumenides, the Greek name for the Furies.
[872] Pers. ii. 37, 38. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XLI. To Marcella.
An effort having been made to convert Marcella to Montanism, [873] Jerome here summarizes for her its leading doctrines, which he contrasts with those of the Church. Written at Rome in 385 a.d.
1. As regards the passages brought together from the gospel of John with which a certain votary of Montanus has assailed you, passages in which our Saviour promises that He will go to the Father, and that He will send the Paraclete [874] --as regards these, the Acts of the Apostles inform us both for what time the promises were made, and at what time they were actually fulfilled. Ten days had elapsed, we are told, from the Lord's ascension and fifty from His resurrection, when the Holy Spirit came down, and the tongues of the believers were cloven, so that each spoke every language. Then it was that, when certain persons of those who as yet believed not declared that the disciples were drunk with new wine, Peter standing in the midst of the apostles, and of all the concourse said: "Ye men of Judæa and all ye that dwell at Jerusalem, be this known unto you and hearken to my words: for these are not drunken as ye suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day. But this is that which was spoken of by the prophet Joel. And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams: and on my servants, and on my handmaidens I will pour out...of my spirit." [875]
2. If, then, the apostle Peter, upon whom the Lord has founded the Church, [876] has expressly said that the prophecy and promise of the Lord were then and there fulfilled, how can we claim another fulfilment for ourselves? if the Montanists reply that Philip's four daughters prophesied [877] at a later date, and that a prophet is mentioned named Agabus, [878] and that in the partition of the spirit, prophets are spoken of as well as apostles, teachers and others, [879] and that Paul himself prophesied many things concerning heresies still future, and the end of the world; we tell them that we do not so much reject prophecy--for this is attested by the passion of the Lord--as refuse to receive prophets whose utterances fail to accord with the Scriptures old and new.
3. In the first place we differ from the Montanists regarding the rule of faith. We distinguish the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit as three persons, but unite them as one substance. They, on the other hand, following the doctrine of Sabellius, [880] force the Trinity into the narrow limits of a single personality. We, while we do not encourage them, yet allow second marriages, since Paul bids the younger widows to marry. [881] They suppose a repetition of marriage a sin so awful that he who has committed it is to be regarded as an adulterer. We, according to the apostolic tradition (in which the whole world is at one with us), fast through one Lent yearly; whereas they keep three in the year as though three saviours had suffered. I do not mean, of course, that it is unlawful to fast at other times through the year--always excepting Pentecost [882] --only that while in Lent it is a duty of obligation, at other seasons it is a matter of choice. With us, again, the bishops occupy the place of the apostles, but with them a bishop ranks not first but third. For while they put first the patriarchs of Pepusa [883] in Phrygia, and place next to these the ministers called stewards, [884] the bishops are relegated to the third or almost the lowest rank. No doubt their object is to make their religion more pretentious by putting that last which we put first. Again they close the doors of the Church to almost every fault, whilst we read daily, "I desire the repentance of a sinner rather than his death," [885] and "Shall they fall and not arise, saith the Lord," [886] and once more "Return ye backsliding children and I will heal your backslidings." [887] Their strictness does not prevent them from themselves committing grave sins, far from it; but there is this difference between us and them, that, whereas they in their self-righteousness blush to confess their faults, we do penance for ours, and so more readily gain pardon for them.
4. I pass over their sacraments [888] of sin, made up as they are said to be, of sucking children subjected to a triumphant martyrdom. [889] I prefer, I say, not to credit these; accusations of blood-shedding may well be false. But I must confute the open blasphemy of men who say that God first determined in the Old Testament to save the world by Moses and the prophets, but that finding Himself unable to fulfil His purpose He took to Himself a body of the Virgin, and preaching under the form of the Son in Christ, underwent death for our salvation. Moreover that, when by these two steps He was unable to save the world, He last of all descended by the Holy Spirit upon Montanus and those demented women Prisca and Maximilia; and that thus the mutilated and emasculate [890] Montanus possessed a fulness of knowledge such as was never claimed by Paul; for he was content to say, "We know in part, and we prophesy in part," and again, "Now we see through a glass darkly." [891]
These are statements which require no refutation. To expose the infidelity of the Montanists is to triumph over it. Nor is it necessary that in so short a letter as this I should overthrow the several absurdities which they bring forward. You are well acquainted with the Scriptures; and, as I take it, you have written, not because you have been disturbed by their cavils, but only to learn my opinion about them. __________________________________________________________________
[873] Montanus lived at Ardaban, in Phrygia, in the second half of the second century, and founded a sect of prophetic enthusiasts and ascetics, which was afterward joined by Tertullian.
[874] Joh. xiv. 28; xv. 26.
[875] Acts ii. 14-18.
[876] Matt. xvi. 18.
[877] Acts xxi. 9.
[878] Acts xi. 28; xxi. 10, 11.
[879] 1 Cor. xii. 28; cf. Eph. iv. 11.
[880] A presbyter of the Libyan Pentapolis who taught at Rome in the early years of the third century. He "confounded the persons" of the Trinity and was subsequently accounted a heretic. Cf. Letter XV.
[881] 1 Tim. v. 14.
[882] Viz. the period between Easter Day and Whitsunday.
[883] Called by the Montanists the New Jerusalem.
[884] Oeconomos--according to a probable emendation. The text has cenonas.
[885] Ezek. xviii. 23.
[886] Jer. viii. 4.
[887] Jer. iii. 22.
[888] Mysteria.
[889] Victuro martyre confarrata. The precise meaning of the words is obscure.
[890] Some suppose him to have been a priest of Cybele, but it would be a mistake to lay too much stress on Jerome's words.
[891] 1 Cor. xiii. 9, 12. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XLII. To Marcella.
At Marcella's request Jerome explains to her what is "the sin against the Holy Ghost" spoken of by Christ, and shows Novatian's [892] explanation of it to be untenable. Written at Rome in 385 a.d.
1. The question you send is short and the answer is clear. There is this passage in the gospel: "Whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him; but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him neither in this world nor in the world to come." [893] Now if Novatian affirms that none but Christian renegades can sin against the Holy Ghost, it is plain that the Jews who blasphemed Christ were not guilty of this sin. Yet they were wicked husbandmen, they had slain the prophets, they were then compassing the death of the Lord; [894] and so utterly lost were they that the Son of God told them that it was they whom he had come to save. [895] It must be proved to Novatian, therefore, that the sin which shall never be forgiven is not the blasphemy of men disembowelled by torture who in their agony deny their Lord, but is the captious clamor of those who, while they see that God's works are the fruit of virtue, ascribe the virtue to a demon and declare the signs wrought to belong not to the divine excellence but to the devil. And this is the whole gist of our Saviour's argument, when He teaches that Satan cannot be cast out by Satan, and that his kingdom is not divided against itself. [896] If it is the devil's object to injure God's creation, how can he wish to cure the sick and to expel himself from the bodies possessed by him? Let Novatian prove that of those who have been compelled to sacrifice before a judge's tribunal any has declared of the things written in the gospel that they were wrought not by the Son of God but by Beelzebub, the prince of the devils; [897] and then he will be able to make good his contention that this [898] is the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost which shall never be forgiven.
2. But to put a more searching question still: let Novatian tell us how he distinguishes speaking against the Son of Man from blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. For I maintain that on his principles men who have denied Christ under persecution have only spoken against the Son of Man, and have not blasphemed the Holy Ghost. For when a man is asked if he is a Christian, and declares that he is not; obviously in denying Christ, that is the Son of Man, he does no despite to the Holy Ghost. But if his denial of Christ involves a denial of the Holy Ghost, this heretic can perhaps tell us how the Son of Man can be denied without sinning against the Holy Ghost. If he thinks that we are here intended by the term Holy Ghost to understand the Father, no mention at all of the Father is made by the denier in his denial. When the apostle Peter, taken aback by a maid's question, denied the Lord, did he sin against the Son of Man or against the Holy Ghost? If Novatian absurdly twists Peter's words, "I know not the man," [899] to mean a denial not of Christ's Messiahship but of His humanity, he will make the Saviour a liar, for He foretold [900] that He Himself, that is His divine Sonship, must be denied. Now, when Peter denied the Son of God, he wept bitterly and effaced his threefold denial by a threefold confession. [901] His sin, therefore, was not the sin against the Holy Ghost which can never be forgiven. It is obvious, then, that this sin involves blasphemy, calling one Beelzebub for his actions, whose virtues prove him to be God. If Novatian can bring an instance of a renegade who has called Christ Beelzebub, I will at once give up my position and admit that after such a fall the denier can win no forgiveness. To give way under torture and to deny oneself to be a Christian is one thing, to say that Christ is the devil is another. And this you will yourself see if you read the passage [902] attentively.
3. I ought to have discussed the matter more fully, but some friends have visited my humble abode, and I cannot refuse to give myself up to them. Still, as it might seem arrogant not to answer you at once, I have compressed a wide subject into a few words, and have sent you not a letter but an explanatory note. [903] __________________________________________________________________
[892] Novatian, a Roman presbyter in the middle of the third century, held that the "lapsed," who had failed during the persecutions, could not be readmitted to the church. His sect upheld an extreme moral puritanism, as is shown in the speech of Constantine to their bishop at the Council of Nicæa: "Acesius, you should set up a ladder to heaven, and go up by yourself alone."
[893] Matt. xii. 32.
[894] Matt. xxi. 33.
[895] Matt. xviii. 11.
[896] Matt. xii. 25, 26.
[897] Matt. xii. 24.
[898] Viz. denial of Christ by Christians.
[899] Matt. xxvi. 74.
[900] Matt. xxvi. 33-35; Joh. xiii. 38.
[901] Joh. xxi. 15-17.
[902] Viz. Matt. xii. 32, quoted above.
[903] Commentariolum. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XLIII. To Marcella.
Jerome draws a contrast between his daily life and that of Origen, and sorrowfully admits his own shortcomings. He then suggests to Marcella the advantages which life in the country offers over life in town, and hints that he is himself disposed to make trial of it. Written at Rome in 385 a.d.
1. Ambrose who supplied Origen, true man of adamant and of brass, [904] with money, materials and amanuenses to bring out his countless books--Ambrose, in a letter to his friend from Athens, states that they never took a meal together without something being read, and never went to bed till some portion of Scripture had been brought home to them by a brother's voice. Night and day, in fact, were so ordered that prayer only gave place to reading and reading to prayer.
2. Have we, brute beasts that we are, ever done the like? Why, we yawn if we read for over an hour; we rub our foreheads and vainly try to suppress our languor. And then, after this great feat, we plunge for relief into worldly business once more.
I say nothing of the meals with which we dull our faculties, and I would rather not estimate the time that we spend in paying and receiving visits. Next we fall into conversation; we waste our words, we attack people behind their backs, we detail their way of living, we carp at them and are carped at by them in turn. Such is the fare that engages our attention at dinner and afterwards. Then, when our guests have retired, we make up our accounts, and these are sure to cause us either anger or anxiety. The first makes us like raging lions, and the second seeks vainly to make provision for years to come. We do not recollect the words of the Gospel: "Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be which thou hast provided?" [905] The clothing which we buy is designed not merely for use but for display. Where there is a chance of saving money we quicken our pace, speak promptly, and keep our ears open. If we hear of household losses--such as often occur--our looks become dejected and gloomy. The gain of a penny [906] fills us with joy; the loss of a half-penny [907] plunges us into sorrow. One man is of so many minds that the prophet's prayer is: "Lord, in thy city scatter their image." [908] For created as we are in the image of God and after His likeness, [909] it is our own wickedness which makes us assume masks. [910] Just as on the stage the same actor now figures as a brawny Hercules, now softens into a tender Venus, now shivers in the role of Cybele; so we--who, if we were not of the world, would be hated by the world [911] --for every sin that we commit have a corresponding mask.
3. Wherefore, seeing that we have journeyed for much of our life through a troubled sea, and that our vessel has been in turn shaken by raging blasts and shattered upon treacherous reefs, let us, as soon as may be, make for the haven of rural quietude. There such country dainties as milk and household bread, and greens watered by our own hands, will supply us with coarse but harmless fare. So living, sleep will not call us away from prayer, nor satiety from reading. In summer the shade of a tree will afford us privacy. In autumn the quality of the air and the leaves strewn under foot will invite us to stop and rest. In springtime the fields will be bright with flowers, and our psalms will sound the sweeter for the twittering of the birds. When winter comes with its frost and snow, I shall not have to buy fuel, and, whether I sleep or keep vigil, shall be warmer than in town. At least, so far as I know, I shall keep off the cold at less expense. Let Rome keep to itself its noise and bustle, let the cruel shows of the arena go on, let the crowd rave at the circus, let the playgoers revel in the theatres and--for I must not altogether pass over our Christian friends--let the House of Ladies [912] hold its daily sittings. It is good for us to cleave to the Lord, [913] and to put our hope in the Lord God, so that when we have exchanged our present poverty for the kingdom of heaven, we may be able to exclaim: "Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee." [914] Surely if we can find such blessedness in heaven we may well grieve to have sought after pleasures poor and passing here upon earth. Farewell. __________________________________________________________________
[904] For the meaning of these epithets as applied to Origen see Letter XXXIII. § 1.
[905] Luke xii. 20.
[906] Nummus. Sc. Sestertius = 4 cents = 2 pence.
[907] Obolus = 3 1-2 cents = 1 penny 3 farthings.
[908] Ps. lxxiii. 20, Vulg.
[909] Gen. i. 26.
[910] These were worn by both Greek and Roman actors.
[911] Joh. xv. 19.
[912] Ps. lxxiii. 28.
[913] Senatus Matronarum. Comp. Letter XXXIII. 4: "Rome calls together its senate to condemn him."
[914] Ps. lxxiii. 25. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XLIV. To Marcella.
Marcella had sent some small articles as a present (probably to Paula and Eustochium) and Jerome now writes in their name to thank her for them. He notices the appropriateness of the gifts, not only to the ladies, but also to himself. Written at Rome in 385 a.d.
When absent in body we are wont to converse together in spirit. [915] Each of us does what he or she can. You send us gifts, we send you back letters of thanks. And as we are virgins who have taken the veil, [916] it is our duty to show that hidden meanings lurk under your nice presents. Sackcloth, then, is a token of prayer and fasting, the chairs remind us that a virgin should never stir abroad, and the wax tapers that we should look for the bridegroom's coming with our lights burning. [917] The cups also warn us to mortify the flesh and always to be ready for martyrdom. "How bright," says the psalmist, "is the cup of the Lord, intoxicating them that drink it!" [918] Moreover, when you offer to matrons little fly-flaps to brush away mosquitoes, it is a charming way of hinting that they should at once check voluptuous feelings, for "dying flies," we are told, "spoil sweet ointment." [919] In such presents, then, as these, virgins can find a model, and matrons a pattern. To me, too, your gifts convey a lesson, although one of an opposite kind. For chairs suit idlers, sackcloth does for penitents, and cups are wanted for the thirsty. And I shall be glad to light your tapers, if only to banish the terrors of the night and the fears of an evil conscience. __________________________________________________________________
[915] Cf. Col. ii. 5.
[916] Cf. Letter CXXX. § 2.
[917] Matt. xxv. 1.
[918] Ps. xxiii. 5, according to the Gallican psalter.
[919] Eccles. x. 1, Vulg. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XLV. To Asella.
After leaving Rome for the East, Jerome writes to Asella to refute the calumnies by which he had been assailed, especially as regards his intimacy with Paula and Eustochium. Written on board ship at Ostia, in August, 385 a.d.
1. Were I to think myself able to requite your kindness I should be foolish. God is able in my stead to reward a soul which is consecrated to Him. So unworthy, indeed, am I of your regard that I have never ventured to estimate its value or even to wish that it might be given me for Christ's sake. Some consider me a wicked man, laden with iniquity; and such language is more than justified by my actual sins. Yet in dealing with the bad you do well to account them good. It is dangerous to judge another man's servant; [920] and to speak evil of the righteous is a sin not easily pardoned. The day will surely come when you and I shall mourn for others; for not a few will be in the flames.
2. I am said to be an infamous turncoat, a slippery knave, one who lies and deceives others by Satanic arts. Which is the safer course, I should like to know, to invent or credit these charges against innocent persons, or to refuse to believe them, even of the guilty? Some kissed my hands, yet attacked me with the tongues of vipers; sympathy was on their lips, but malignant joy in their hearts. The Lord saw them and had them in derision, [921] reserving my poor self and them for judgment to come. One would attack my gait or my way of laughing; another would find something amiss in my looks; another would suspect the simplicity of my manner. Such is the company in which I have lived for almost three years.
It often happened that I found myself surrounded with virgins, and to some of these I expounded the divine books as best I could. Our studies brought about constant intercourse, this soon ripened into intimacy, and this, in turn, produced mutual confidence. If they have ever seen anything in my conduct unbecoming a Christian let them say so. Have I taken any one's money? Have I not disdained all gifts, whether small or great? Has the chink of any one's coin been heard in my hand? [922] Has my language been equivocal, or my eye wanton? No; my sex is my one crime, and even on this score I am not assailed, save when there is a talk of Paula going to Jerusalem. Very well, then. They believed my accuser when he lied; why do they not believe him when he retracts? He is the same man now that he was then, and yet he who before declared me guilty now confesses that I am innocent. Surely a man's words under torture are more trustworthy than in moments of gayety, except, indeed, that people are prone to believe falsehoods designed to gratify their ears, or, worse still, stories which, till then uninvented, they have urged others to invent.
3. Before I became acquainted with the family of the saintly Paula, all Rome resounded with my praises. Almost every one concurred in judging me worthy of the episcopate. Damasus, of blessed memory, spoke no words but mine. [923] Men called me holy, humble, eloquent.
Did I ever cross the threshold of a light woman? Was I ever fascinated by silk dresses, or glowing gems, or rouged faces, or display of gold? Of all the ladies in Rome but one had power to subdue me, and that one was Paula. She mourned and fasted, she was squalid with dirt, her eyes were dim from weeping. For whole nights she would pray to the Lord for mercy, and often the rising sun found her still at her prayers. The psalms were her only songs, the Gospel her whole speech, continence her one indulgence, fasting the staple of her life. The only woman who took my fancy was one whom I had not so much as seen at table. But when I began to revere, respect, and venerate her as her conspicuous chastity deserved, all my former virtues forsook me on the spot.
4. Oh! envy, that dost begin by tearing thyself! Oh! cunning malignity of Satan, that dost always persecute things holy! Of all the ladies in Rome, the only ones that caused scandal were Paula and Melanium, who, despising their wealth and deserting their children, uplifted the cross of the Lord as a standard of religion. Had they frequented the baths, or chosen to use perfumes, or taken advantage of their wealth and position as widows to enjoy life and to be independent, they would have been saluted as ladies of high rank and saintliness. As it is, of course, it is in order to appear beautiful that they put on sackcloth and ashes, and they endure fasting and filth merely to go down into the Gehenna of fire! As if they could not perish with the crowd whom the mob applauds! [924] If it were Gentiles or Jews who thus assailed their mode of life, they would at least have the consolation of failing to please only those whom Christ Himself has failed to please. But, shameful to say, it is Christians who thus neglect the care of their own households, and, disregarding the beams in their own eyes, look for motes in those of their neighbors. [925] They pull to pieces every profession of religion, and think that they have found a remedy for their own doom, if they can disprove the holiness of others, if they can detract from every one, if they can show that those who perish are many, and sinners, a great multitude.
5. You bathe daily; another regards such over-niceness as defilement. You surfeit yourself on wild fowl and pride yourself on eating sturgeon; I, on the contrary, fill my belly with beans. You find pleasure in troops of laughing girls; I prefer Paula and Melanium who weep. You covet what belongs to others; they disdain what is their own. You like wines flavored with honey; they drink cold water, more delicious still. You count as lost what you cannot have, eat up, and devour on the moment; they believe in the Scriptures, and look for good things to come. And if they are wrong, and if the resurrection of the body on which they rely is a foolish delusion, what does it matter to you? We, on our side, look with disfavor on such a life as yours. You can fatten yourself on your good things as much as you please; I for my part prefer paleness and emaciation. You suppose that men like me are unhappy; we regard you as more unhappy still. Thus we reciprocate each other's thoughts, and appear to each other mutually insane.
6. I write this in haste, dear Lady Asella, as I go on board, overwhelmed with grief and tears; yet I thank my God that I am counted worthy of the world's hatred. [926] Pray for me that, after Babylon, I may see Jerusalem once more; that Joshua, the son of Josedech, may have dominion over me, [927] and not Nebuchadnezzar, that Ezra, whose name means helper, may come and restore me to my own country. I was a fool in wishing to sing the Lord's song in a strange land, [928] and in leaving Mount Sinai, to seek the help of Egypt. I forgot that the Gospel warns us [929] that he who goes down from Jerusalem immediately falls among robbers, is spoiled, is wounded, is left for dead. But, although priest and Levite may disregard me, there is still the good Samaritan who, when men said to him, "Thou art a Samaritan and hast a devil," [930] disclaimed having a devil, but did not disclaim being a Samaritan, [931] this being the Hebrew equivalent for our word guardian. Men call me a mischief-maker, and I take the title as a recognition of my faith. For I am but a servant, and the Jews still call my master a magician. The apostle, [932] likewise, is spoken of as a deceiver. There hath no temptation taken me but such as is common to man. [933] How few distresses have I endured, I who am yet a soldier of the cross! Men have laid to my charge a crime of which I am not guilty; [934] but I know that I must enter the kingdom of heaven through evil report as well as through good. [935]
7. Salute Paula and Eustochium, who, whatever the world may think, are always mine in Christ. Salute Albina, your mother, and Marcella, your sister; Marcellina also, and the holy Felicitas; and say to them all: "We must all stand before the judgment seat of Christ, [936] and there shall be revealed the principle by which each has lived."
And now, illustrious model of chastity and virginity, remember me, I beseech you, in your prayers, and by your intercessions calm the waves of the sea. __________________________________________________________________
[920] Rom. xiv. 4.
[921] Ps. ii. 4.
[922] Cf. 1 Sam. xii. 3.
[923] Damasus meus sermo erat, or "spoke of none but me."
[924] Ironical.
[925] Matt. vii. 3.
[926] Joh. xv. 18.
[927] Haggai i. 1.
[928] Ps. cxxxvii. 4.
[929] Luke x. 30-35.
[930] Joh. viii. 48.
[931] Joh. viii. 49.
[932] I.e. Paul. See 2 Cor. vi. 9.
[933] 1 Cor. x. 13.
[934] He means the sin of incontinence.
[935] 2 Cor. vi. 8.
[936] Rom. xiv. 10. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XLVI. Paula and Eustochium to Marcella.
Jerome writes to Marcella in the name of Paula and Eustochium, describing the charms of the Holy Land, and urging her to leave Rome and to join her old companions at Bethlehem. Much of the letter is devoted to disposing of the objection that since the Passion of Christ the Holy Land has been under a curse. The date of the letter is a.d. 386. It is written from Bethlehem, which now becomes Jerome's home for the remainder of his life.
1. Love cannot be measured, impatience knows no bounds, and eagerness can brook no delay. Wherefore we, oblivious of our weakness, and relying more on our will than our capacity, desire--pupils though we be--to instruct our mistress. We are like the sow in the proverb, [937] which sets up to teach the goddess of invention. You were the first to set our tinder alight; the first, by precept and example, to urge us to adopt our present life. As a hen gathers her chickens, so did you take us under your wing. [938] And will you now let us fly about at random with no mother near us? Will you leave us to dread the swoop of the hawk and the shadow of each passing bird of prey? Separated from you, we do what we can: we utter our mournful plaint, and more by sobs than by tears we adjure you to give back to us the Marcella whom we love. She is mild, she is suave, she is sweeter than the sweetest honey. She must not, therefore, be stern and morose to us, whom her winning ways have roused to adopt a life like her own.
2. Assuming that what we ask is for the best, our eagerness to obtain it is nothing to be ashamed of. And if all the Scriptures agree with our view, we are not too bold in urging you to a course to which you have yourself often urged us.
What are God's first words to Abraham? "Get thee out of thy country and from thy kindred unto a land that I will show thee." [939] The patriarch--the first to receive a promise of Christ--is here told to leave the Chaldees, to leave the city of confusion [940] and its rehoboth [941] or broad places; to leave also the plain of Shinar, where the tower of pride had been raised to heaven. [942] He has to pass through the waves of this world, and to ford its rivers; those by which the saints sat down and wept when they remembered Zion, [943] and Chebar's flood, whence Ezekiel was carried to Jerusalem by the hair of his head. [944] All this Abraham undergoes that he may dwell in a land of promise watered from above, and not like Egypt, from below, [945] no producer of herbs for the weak and ailing, [946] but a land that looks for the early and the latter rain from heaven. [947] It is a land of hills and valleys, [948] and stands high above the sea. The attractions of the world it entirely wants, but its spiritual attractions are for this all the greater. Mary, the mother of the Lord, left the lowlands and made her way to the hill country, when, after receiving the angel's message, she realized that she bore within her womb the Son of God. [949] When of old the Philistines had been overcome, when their devilish audacity had been smitten, when their champion had fallen on his face to the earth, [950] it was from this city that there went forth a procession of jubilant souls, a harmonious choir to sing our David's victory over tens of thousands. [951] Here, too, it was that the angel grasped his sword, and while he laid waste the whole of the ungodly city, marked out the temple of the Lord in the threshing floor of Ornan, king of the Jebusites. [952] Thus early was it made plain that Christ's church would grow up, not in Israel, but among the Gentiles. Turn back to Genesis, [953] and you will find that this was the city over which Melchizedek held sway, that king of Salem who, as a type of Christ, offered to Abraham bread and wine, and even then consecrated the mystery which Christians consecrate in the body and blood of the Saviour. [954]
3. Perhaps you will tacitly reprove us for deserting the order of Scripture, and letting our confused account ramble this way and that, as one thing or another strikes us. If so, we say once more what we said at the outset: love has no logic, and impatience knows no rule. In the Song of Songs the precept is given as a hard one: "Regulate your love towards me." [955] And so we plead that, if we err, we do so not from ignorance but from feeling.
Well, then, to bring forward something still more out of place, we must go back to yet remoter times. Tradition has it that in this city, nay, more, on this very spot, Adam lived and died. The place where our Lord was crucified is called Calvary, [956] because the skull of the primitive man was buried there. So it came to pass that the second Adam, that is the blood [957] of Christ, as it dropped from the cross, washed away the sins of the buried protoplast, [958] the first Adam, and thus the words of the apostle were fulfilled: "Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light." [959]
It would be tedious to enumerate all the prophets and holy men who have been sent forth from this place. All that is strange and mysterious to us is familiar and natural to this city and country. By its very names, three in number, it proves the doctrine of the trinity. For it is called first Jebus, then Salem, then Jerusalem: names of which the first means "down-trodden," the second "peace," and the third "vision of peace." [960] For it is only by slow stages that we reach our goal; it is only after we have been trodden down that we are lifted up to see the vision of peace. Because of this peace Solomon, [961] the man of peace, was born there, and "in peace was his place made." [962] King of kings, and lord of lords, his name and that of the city show him to be a type of Christ. Need we speak of David and his descendants, all of whom reigned here? As Judæa is exalted above all other provinces, so is this city exalted above all Judæa. To speak more tersely, the glory of the province is derived from its capital; and whatever fame the members possess is in every case due to the head.
4. You have long been anxious to break forth into speech; the very letters we have formed perceive it, and our paper already understands the question you are going to put. You will reply to us by saying: it was so of old, when "the Lord loved the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob," and when her foundations were in the holy mountains. [963] Even these verses, however, are susceptible of a deeper interpretation. But things are changed since then. The risen Lord has proclaimed in tones of thunder: "Your house is left unto you desolate." With tears He has prophesied its downfall: "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee; how often would I have gathered thy children together even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not. Behold your house is left unto you desolate." [964] The veil of the temple has been rent; [965] an army has encompassed Jerusalem, it has been stained by the blood of the Lord. Now, therefore, its guardian angels have forsaken it and the grace of Christ has been withdrawn. Josephus, himself a Jewish writer, asserts [966] that at the Lord's crucifixion there broke from the temple voices of heavenly powers, saying: "Let us depart hence." These and other considerations show that where grace abounded there did sin much more abound. [967] Again, when the apostles received the command: "Go ye and teach all nations," [968] and when they said themselves: "It was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken to you, but seeing ye put it from you...lo we turn to the Gentiles," [969] then all the spiritual importance [970] of Judæa and its old intimacy with God were transferred by the apostles to the nations.
5. The difficulty is strongly stated, and may well puzzle even those proficient in Scripture; but for all that, it admits of an easy solution. The Lord wept for the fall of Jerusalem, [971] and He would not have done so if He did not love it. He wept for Lazarus because He loved him. [972] The truth is that it was the people who sinned and not the place. The capture of a city is involved in the slaying of its inhabitants. If Jerusalem was destroyed, it was that its people might be punished; if the temple was overthrown, it was that its figurative sacrifices might be abolished. As regards its site, lapse of time has but invested it with fresh grandeur. The Jews of old reverenced the Holy of Holies, because of the things contained in it--the cherubim, the mercy-seat, the ark of the covenant, the manna, Aaron's rod, and the golden altar. [973] Does the Lord's sepulchre seem less worthy of veneration? As often as we enter it we see the Saviour in His grave clothes, and if we linger we see again the angel sitting at His feet, and the napkin folded at His head. [974] Long before this sepulchre was hewn out by Joseph, [975] its glory was foretold in Isaiah's prediction, "his rest shall be glorious," [976] meaning that the place of the Lord's burial should be held in universal honor.
6. How, then, you will say, do we read in the apocalypse written by John: "The beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall...kill them [that is, obviously, the prophets], and their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified?" [977] If the great city where the Lord was crucified is Jerusalem, and if the place of His crucifixion is spiritually called Sodom and Egypt; then as the Lord was crucified at Jerusalem, Jerusalem must be Sodom and Egypt. Holy Scripture, I reply first of all, cannot contradict itself. One book cannot invalidate the drift of the whole. A single verse cannot annul the meaning of a book. Ten lines earlier in the apocalypse it is written: "Rise and measure the temple of God, and the altar, and them that worship therein. But the court which is without the temple leave out and measure it not; for it is given unto the Gentiles; and the holy city shall they tread under foot forty and two months." [978] The apocalypse was written by John long after the Lord's passion, yet in it he speaks of Jerusalem as the holy city. But if so, how can he spiritually call it Sodom and Egypt? It is no answer to say that the Jerusalem which is called holy is the heavenly one which is to be, while that which is called Sodom is the earthly one tottering to its downfall. For it is the Jerusalem to come that is referred to in the description of the beast, "which shall ascend out of the bottomless pit, and shall make war against the two prophets, and shall overcome them and kill them, and their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city." [979] At the close of the book it is farther described thus: "And the city lieth four-square, and the length of it and the breadth are the same as the height; and he measured the city with the golden reed twelve thousand furlongs. The length and the breadth and the height of it are equal. And he measured the walls thereof, an hundred and forty and four cubits, according to the measure of a man, that is, of the angel. And the building of the wall of it was of jasper; and the city was pure gold" [980] --and so on. Now where there is a square there can be neither length nor breadth. And what kind of measurement is that which makes length and breadth equal to height? And how can there be walls of jasper, or a whole city of pure gold; its foundations and its streets of precious stones, and its twelve gates each glowing with pearls?
7. Evidently this description cannot be taken literally (in fact, it is absurd to suppose a city the length, breadth and height of which are all twelve thousand furlongs), and therefore the details of it must be mystically understood. The great city which Cain first built and called after his son [981] must be taken to represent this world, which the devil, that accuser of his brethren, that fratricide who is doomed to perish, has built of vice cemented with crime, and filled with iniquity. Therefore it is spiritually called Sodom and Egypt. Thus it is written, "Sodom shall return to her former estate," [982] that is to say, the world must be restored as it has been before. For we cannot believe that Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboim [983] are to be built again: they must be left to lie in ashes forever. We never read of Egypt as put for Jerusalem: it always stands for this world. To collect from Scripture the countless proofs of this would be tedious: I shall adduce but one passage, a passage in which this world is most clearly called Egypt. The apostle Jude, the brother of James, writes thus in his catholic epistle: "I will, therefore, put you in remembrance, though ye once knew this how that Jesus, [984] having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed them that believed not." [985] And, lest you should fancy Joshua the son of Nun to be meant, the passage goes on thus: "And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains, under darkness, unto the judgment of the great day." [986] Moreover, to convince you that in every place where Egypt, Sodom and Gomorrah are named together it is not these spots, but the present world, which is meant, he mentions them immediately in this sense. "Even as Sodom and Gomorrah," he writes, "and the cities about them, in like manner giving themselves over to fornication and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire." [987] But what need is there to collect more proofs when, after the passion and the resurrection of the Lord, the evangelist Matthew tells us: "The rocks rent, and the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose and came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city and appeared unto many"? [988] We must not interpret this passage straight off, as many people [989] absurdly do, of the heavenly Jerusalem: the apparition there of the bodies of the saints could be no sign to men of the Lord's rising. Since, therefore, the evangelists and all the Scriptures speak of Jerusalem as the holy city, and since the psalmist commands us to worship the Lord "at his footstool;" [990] allow no one to call it Sodom and Egypt, for by it the Lord forbids men to swear because "it is the city of the great king." [991]
8. The land is accursed, you say, because it has drunk in the blood of the Lord. On what grounds, then, do men regard as blessed those spots where Peter and Paul, the leaders of the Christian host, have shed their blood for Christ? If the confession of men and servants is glorious, must there not be glory likewise in the confession of their Lord and God? Everywhere we venerate the tombs of the martyrs; we apply their holy ashes to our eyes; we even touch them, if we may, with our lips. And yet some think that we should neglect the tomb in which the Lord Himself is buried. If we refuse to believe human testimony, let us at least credit the devil and his angels. [992] For when in front of the Holy Sepulchre they are driven out of those bodies which they have possessed, they moan and tremble as if they stood before Christ's judgment-seat, and grieve, too late that they have crucified Him in whose presence they now cower. If--as a wicked theory maintains--this holy place has, since the Lord's passion, become an abomination, why was Paul in such haste to reach Jerusalem to keep Pentecost in it? [993] Yet to those who held him back he said: "What mean ye to weep and to break my heart? For I am ready not to be bound only, but also to die at Jerusalem, for the name of the Lord Jesus." [994] Need I speak of those other holy and illustrious men who, after the preaching of Christ, brought their votive gifts and offerings to the brethren who were at Jerusalem?
9. Time forbids me to survey the period which has passed since the Lord's ascension, or to recount the bishops, the martyrs, the divines, who have come to Jerusalem from a feeling that their devotion and knowledge would be incomplete and their virtue without the finishing touch, unless they adored Christ in the very spot where the gospel first flashed from the gibbet. If a famous orator [995] blames a man for having learned Greek at Lilybæum instead of at Athens, and Latin in Sicily instead of at Rome (on the ground, obviously, that each province has its own characteristics), can we suppose a Christian's education complete who has not visited the Christian Athens?
10. In speaking thus we do not mean to deny that the kingdom of God is within us, [996] or to say that there are no holy men elsewhere; we merely assert in the strongest manner that those who stand first throughout the world are here gathered side by side. We ourselves are among the last, not the first; yet we have come hither to see the first of all nations. Of all the ornaments of the Church our company of monks and virgins is one of the finest; it is like a fair flower or a priceless gem. Every man of note in Gaul hastens hither. The Briton, "sundered from our world," [997] no sooner makes progress in religion than he leaves the setting sun in quest of a spot of which he knows only through Scripture and common report. Need we recall the Armenians, the Persians, the peoples of India and Arabia? Or those of our neighbor, Egypt, so rich in monks; of Pontus and Cappadocia; of Cæle-Syria and Mesopotamia and the teeming east? In fulfilment of the Saviour's words, "Wherever the body is, thither will the eagles be gathered together," [998] they all assemble here and exhibit in this one city the most varied virtues. Differing in speech, they are one in religion, and almost every nation has a choir of its own. Yet amid this great concourse there is no arrogance, no disdain of self-restraint; all strive after humility, that greatest of Christian virtues. Whosoever is last is here regarded as first. [999] Their dress neither provokes remark nor calls for admiration. In whatever guise a man shows himself he is neither censured nor flattered. Long fasts help no one here. Starvation wins no deference, and the taking of food in moderation is not condemned. "To his own master" each one "standeth or falleth." [1000] No man judges another lest he be judged of the Lord. [1001] Backbiting, so common in other parts, is wholly unknown here. Sensuality and excess are far removed from us. And in the city there are so many places of prayer that a day would not be sufficient to go round them all.
11. But, as every one praises most what is within his reach, let us pass now to the cottage-inn which sheltered Christ and Mary. [1002] With what expressions and what language can we set before you the cave of the Saviour? The stall where he cried as a babe can be best honored by silence; for words are inadequate to speak its praise. Where are the spacious porticoes? Where are the gilded ceilings? Where are the mansions furnished by the miserable toil of doomed wretches? Where are the costly halls raised by untitled opulence for man's vile body to walk in? Where are the roofs that intercept the sky, as if anything could be finer than the expanse of heaven? Behold, in this poor crevice of the earth the Creator of the heavens was born; here He was wrapped in swaddling clothes; here He was seen by the shepherds; here He was pointed out by the star; here He was adored by the wise men. This spot is holier, me-thinks, than that Tarpeian rock [1003] which has shown itself displeasing to God by the frequency with which it has been struck by lightning.
12. Read the apocalypse of John, and consider what is sung therein of the woman arrayed in purple, and of the blasphemy written upon her brow, of the seven mountains, of the many waters, and of the end of Babylon. [1004] "Come out of her, my people," so the Lord says, "that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues." [1005] Turn back also to Jeremiah and pay heed to what he has written of like import: "Flee out of the midst of Babylon, and deliver every man his soul." [1006] For "Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit." [1007] It is true that Rome has a holy church, trophies of apostles and martyrs, a true confession of Christ. The faith has been preached there by an apostle, heathenism has been trodden down, the name of Christian is daily exalted higher and higher. But the display, power, and size of the city, the seeing and the being seen, the paying and the receiving of visits, the alternate flattery and detraction, talking and listening, as well as the necessity of facing so great a throng even when one is least in the mood to do so--all these things are alike foreign to the principles and fatal to the repose of the monastic life. For when people come in our way we either see them coming and are compelled to speak, or we do not see them and lay ourselves open to the charge of haughtiness. Sometimes, also, in returning visits we are obliged to pass through proud portals and gilded doors and to face the clamor of carping lackeys. But, as we have said above, in the cottage of Christ all is simple and rustic: and except for the chanting of psalms there is complete silence. Wherever one turns the laborer at his plough sings alleluia, the toiling mower cheers himself with psalms, and the vine-dresser while he prunes his vine sings one of the lays of David. These are the songs of the country; these, in popular phrase, its love ditties: these the shepherd whistles; these the tiller uses to aid his toil.
13. But what are we doing? Forgetting what is required of us, we are taken up with what we wish. Will the time never come when a breathless messenger shall bring the news that our dear Marcella has reached the shores of Palestine, and when every band of monks and every troop of virgins shall unite in a song of welcome? In our excitement we are already hurrying to meet you: without waiting for a vehicle, we hasten off at once on foot. We shall clasp you by the hand, we shall look upon your face; and when, after long waiting, we at last embrace you, we shall find it hard to tear ourselves away. Will the day never come when we shall together enter the Saviour's cave, and together weep in the sepulchre of the Lord with His sister and with His mother? [1008] Then shall we touch with our lips the wood of the cross, and rise in prayer and resolve upon the Mount of Olives with the ascending Lord. [1009] We shall see Lazarus come forth bound with grave clothes, [1010] we shall look upon the waters of Jordan purified for the washing of the Lord. [1011] Thence we shall pass to the folds of the shepherds, [1012] we shall pray together in the mausoleum of David. [1013] We shall see the prophet, Amos, [1014] upon his crag blowing his shepherd's horn. We shall hasten, if not to the tents, to the monuments of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and of their three illustrious wives. [1015] We shall see the fountain in which the eunuch was immersed by Philip. [1016] We shall make a pilgrimage to Samaria, and side by side venerate the ashes of John the Baptist, of Elisha, [1017] and of Obadiah. We shall enter the very caves where in the time of persecution and famine the companies of the prophets were fed. [1018] If only you will come, we shall go to see Nazareth, as its name denotes, the flower [1019] of Galilee. Not far off Cana will be visible, where the water was turned into wine. [1020] We shall make our way to Tabor, [1021] and see the tabernacles there which the Saviour shares, not, as Peter once wished, with Moses and Elijah, but with the Father and with the Holy Ghost. Thence we shall come to the Sea of Gennesaret, and when there we shall see the spots where the five thousand were filled with five loaves, [1022] and the four thousand with seven. [1023] The town of Nain will meet our eyes, at the gate of which the widow's son was raised to life. [1024] Hermon too will be visible, and the torrent of Endor, at which Sisera was vanquished. [1025] Our eyes will look also on Capernaum, the scene of so many of our Lord's signs--yes, and on all Galilee besides. And when, accompanied by Christ, we shall have made our way back to our cave through Shiloh and Bethel, and those other places where churches are set up like standards to commemorate the Lord's victories, then we shall sing heartily, we shall weep copiously, we shall pray unceasingly. Wounded with the Saviour's shaft, we shall say one to another: "I have found Him whom my soul loveth; I will hold Him and will not let Him go." [1026] __________________________________________________________________
[937] Sus Minervam.
[938] 2 Esdras. i. 30; Matt. xxiii. 37.
[939] Gen. xii. 1.
[940] I.e. Babel--Gen. xi. 9.
[941] Gen. x. 11.
[942] Gen. xi. 2, 4.
[943] Ps. cxxxvii. 1.
[944] Ezek. viii. 3.
[945] Deut. xi. 10.
[946] Rom. xiv. 2.
[947] Deut. xi. 14.
[948] Deut. xi. 11.
[949] Luke i. 26-31, 39.
[950] 1 Sam. xvii. 49.
[951] 1 Sam. xviii. 6, 7.
[952] 1 Chron. xxi. 15, 18; 2 Chron. iii. 1.
[953] Gen. xiv. 18.
[954] Mysterium christianum in salvatoris sanguine et corpore dedicavit.
[955] Cant. ii. 4 b, Vulg. Hebrew = A.V.
[956] I.e. the place of a skull (Latin, Calvaria).
[957] One of Jerome's fanciful ideas. Haddam hrs is the Hebrew for "the blood."
[958] ho protoplastos = "the first-formed." The word is applied to Adam in Wisd. vii. 1.
[959] Eph. v. 14.
[960] Cf. Hymns Ancient and Modern, No. 235. "Truly Jerusalem name we that shore Vision of peace that brings joy evermore."
[961] Hebrew, Shelomoh, connected with shalem, peace.
[962] Ps. lxxvi. 2, LXX.
[963] Ps. lxxxvii. 1, 2.
[964] Matt. xxiii. 37, 38.
[965] Matt. xxvii. 51.
[966] Bellum Judaicum, vi. 5.
[967] Rom. v. 20.
[968] Matt. xxviii. 19.
[969] Acts xiii. 46.
[970] Sacramentum.
[971] Luke xix. 41.
[972] Joh. xi. 35, 36.
[973] Heb. ix. 3-5.
[974] John xx. 6, 7, 12.
[975] I.e. Joseph of Arimathæa.--Joh. xix. 38 sqq.
[976] Isa. xi. 10.
[977] Rev. xi. 7, 8, R.V.
[978] Rev. xi. 2.
[979] Rev. xi. 7, 8.
[980] Rev. xxi. 16-18.
[981] Gen. iv. 17.
[982] Ezek. xvi. 55.
[983] Deut. xxix. 23.
[984] A.V. "the Lord."
[985] Jude 5.
[986] Jude 6.
[987] Jude 7.
[988] Matt. xxvii. 51, 53.
[989] E.g. Origen in his commentary on the passage.
[990] Ps. cxxxii. 7.
[991] Matt. v. 35.
[992] Matt. xxv. 41.
[993] Acts xx. 16.
[994] Acts xxi. 13.
[995] Cicero of Cæcilius (in Q. Cæc. xii.).
[996] Luke xvii. 21.
[997] Virgil, E. i. 67.
[998] Luke xvii. 37.
[999] Cf. Matt. xix. 30.
[1000] Rom. xiv. 4.
[1001] Matt. vii. 1.
[1002] Luke ii. 7.
[1003] Otherwise called the capitol. Here stood the great temple of Jupiter, which was to the religion of Rome what the Parthenon was to that of Athens.
[1004] Rev. xvii. 4, 5, 9; i. 15; xvii; xviii.
[1005] Rev. xviii. 4.
[1006] Jer. li. 6.
[1007] Rev. xviii. 2.
[1008] Joh. xix. 25.
[1009] Acts i. 9, 12.
[1010] Joh. xi. 43, 44.
[1011] Matt. iii. 13.
[1012] Luke ii. 8.
[1013] 1 Kings ii. 10.
[1014] "Who was among the herdsmen of Tekoa"--Am. i. 1.
[1015] Sarah, Rebekah, Leah--Gen. xlix. 31.
[1016] Acts viii. 36.
[1017] 2 Kings xiii. 21.
[1018] 1 Kings xviii. 3, 4.
[1019] Lit. "sprout." In Isa. xi. 1 it is rendered by A.V. "branch."
[1020] Joh. ii. 1-11.
[1021] Matt. xvii. 1-9.
[1022] Matt. xiv. 15, sqq.
[1023] Matt. xv. 32, sqq.
[1024] Luke vii. 11, sqq.
[1025] Ps. lxxxiii. 9, 10.
[1026] Cant. iii. 4, Vulg. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XLVII. To Desiderius.
Jerome invites two of his old friends at Rome, Desiderius and his sister (or wife) Serenilla, to join him at Bethlehem. It is possible but not probable that this Desiderius is the same with Desiderius of Aquitaine, who afterwards induced Jerome to write against Vigilantius.
An interval of seven years separates this letter (of which the date is 393 a.d.) from the preceding, and all the letters written during this period have wholly perished.
1. Surprised as I have been, my excellent friend, to read the language which your kindness has prompted you to hold concerning me, I have rejoiced that I possess the testimony of one both eloquent and sincere; but when I turn from you to myself I feel vexed that, owing to my unworthiness, your words of praise and eulogy rather weigh me down than lift me up. You know, of course, that I make it a principle to raise the standard of humility, and to prepare for scaling the heights by walking for the present in the lowest places. For what am I or what is my significance that I should have the voice of learning raised to bear witness of me, or that the palm of eloquence should be laid at my feet by one whose style is so charming that it has almost deterred me from writing a letter at all? I must, however, make the attempt in order that charity which seeks not her own [1027] but always her neighbor's good, may at least return a compliment, since it cannot convey a lesson.
2. I offer my congratulations to you and to your holy and revered sister, [1028] Serenilla, who, true to her name, [1029] has trodden down the troubled waves of the world, and has passed to Christ's calm haven: a happiness which--if we may trust the augury of your name--is in store for you also. For we read that the holy Daniel was called "a man of desires," [1030] and the friend of God, because he desired to know His mysteries. Therefore, I do with pleasure what the revered Paula has asked of me. I urge and implore you both by the charity of the Lord that you will give your presence to us, and that a visit to the holy places may induce you to enrich us with this great gift. Even supposing that you do not care for our society, it is still your duty as believers to worship on the spot where the Lord's feet once stood and to see for yourselves the still fresh traces of His birth, His cross, and His passion.
3. Several of my little pieces have flown away out of their nest, and have rashly sought for themselves the honor of publication. I have not sent you any lest I should send works which you already have. But if you care to borrow copies of them, you can do so either from our holy sister, Marcella, who has her abode upon the Aventine, or from that holy man, Domnio, who is the Lot of our times. [1031] Meantime, I look for your arrival, and will give you all I have when you once come; or, if any hindrances prevent you from joining us, I will gladly send you such treatises as you shall desire. Following the example of Tranquillus [1032] and of Apollonius the Greek, [1033] I have written a book concerning illustrious men [1034] from the apostles' time to our own; and after enumerating a great number I have put myself down on the last page as one born out of due time, and the least of all Christians. [1035] Here I have found it necessary to give a short account of my writings down to the fourteenth year [1036] of the Emperor Theodosius. If you find, on procuring this treatise from the persons mentioned above, that there are any pieces mentioned which you have not already got, I will have them copied for you by degrees, if you wish it. __________________________________________________________________
[1027] 1 Cor. xiii. 5.
[1028] I.e. his wife. Cf. 1 Cor. ix. 5.
[1029] Serenilla, "calm."
[1030] Dan. ix. 23, A.V. marg. Desiderius means "one who is an object of desire."
[1031] Cf. 2 Peter ii. 7, 8.
[1032] I.e. the historian Suetonius.
[1033] Probably Apollonius of Tyre, who appears to have written an account of the principal philosophers who followed Zeno.
[1034] See this work in Vol. III. of this series.
[1035] Cf. 1 Cor. xv. 8, 9.
[1036] a.d. 392-3. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XLVIII. To Pammachius.
An "apology" for the two books "against Jovinian" which Jerome had written a short time previously, and of which he had sent copies to Rome. These Pammachius and his other friends had withheld from publication, thinking that Jerome had unduly exalted virginity at the expense of marriage. He now writes to make good his position, and to do this makes copious extracts from the obnoxious treatise. The date of the letter is 393 or 394 a.d.
1. Your own silence is my reason for not having written hitherto. For I feared that, if I were to write to you without first hearing from you, you would consider me not so much a conscientious as a troublesome correspondent. But, now that I have been challenged by your most delightful letter, a letter which calls upon me to defend my views by an appeal to first principles, I receive my old fellow-learner, companion, and friend with open arms, as the saying goes; and I look forward to having in you a champion of my poor writings; if, that is to say, I can first conciliate your judgment to give sentence in my favor, and can instruct my advocate in all those points on which I am assailed. For both your favorite, Cicero, and before him--in his one short treatise--Antonius, [1037] write to this effect, that the chief requisite for victory is to acquaint one's self carefully with the case which one has to plead.
2. Certain persons find fault with me because in the books which I have written against Jovinian I have been excessive (so they say) in praise of virginity and in depreciation of marriage; and they affirm that to preach up chastity till no comparison is left between a wife and a virgin is equivalent to a condemnation of matrimony. If I remember aright the point of the dispute, the question at issue between myself and Jovinian is that he puts marriage on a level with virginity, while I make it inferior; he declares that there is little or no difference between the two states, I assert that there is a great deal. Finally--a result due under God to your agency--he has been condemned because he has dared to set matrimony on an equality with perpetual chastity. Or, if a virgin and a wife are to be looked on as the same, how comes it that Rome has refused to listen to this impious doctrine? A virgin owes her being to a man, but a man does not owe his to a virgin. There can be no middle course. Either my view of the matter must be embraced, or else that of Jovinian. If I am blamed for putting wedlock below virginity, he must be praised for putting the two states on a level. If, on the other hand, he is condemned for supposing them equal, his condemnation must be taken as testimony in favor of my treatise. If men of the world chafe under the notion that they occupy a position inferior to that of virgins, I wonder that clergymen and monks--who both live celibate lives--refrain from praising what they consistently practise. They cut themselves off from their wives to imitate the chastity of virgins, and yet they will have it that married women are as good as these. They should either be joined again to their wives whom they have renounced, or, if they persist in living apart from them, they will have to confess--by their lives if not by their words--that, in preferring virginity to marriage, they have chosen the better course. Am I then a mere novice in the Scriptures, reading the sacred volumes for the first time? And is the line there drawn between virginity and marriage so fine that I have been unable to observe it? I could know nothing, forsooth, of the saying, "Be not righteous overmuch!" [1038] Thus, while I try to protect myself on one side, I am wounded on the other; to speak more plainly still, while I close with Jovinian in hand-to-hand combat, Manichæus stabs me in the back. Have I not, I would ask, in the very forefront of my work set the following preface: [1039] "We are no disciples of Marcion [1040] or of Manichæus, [1041] to detract from marriage. Nor are we deceived by the error of Tatian, [1042] the chief of the Encratites, [1043] into supposing all cohabitation unclean. For he condemns and reprobates not marriage only, but foods also which God has created for us to enjoy. [1044] We know that in a large house there are vessels not only of silver and of gold, but of wood also and of earth. [1045] We know, too, that on the foundation of Christ which Paul the master builder has laid, some build up gold, silver, and precious stones; others, on the contrary, hay, wood, and stubble. [1046] We are not ignorant that marriage is honorable...and the bed undefiled.' [1047] We have read the first decree of God: Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth.' [1048] But while we allow marriage, we prefer the virginity which springs from it. Gold is more precious than silver, but is silver on that account the less silver? Is it an insult to a tree to prefer its apples to its roots or its leaves? Is it an injury to corn to put the ear before the stalk and the blade? As apples come from the tree and grain from the straw, so virginity comes from wedlock. Yields of one hundredfold, of sixtyfold, and of thirtyfold [1049] may all come from one soil and from one sowing, yet they will differ widely in quantity. The yield thirtyfold signifies wedlock, for the joining together of the fingers to express that number, suggestive as it is of a loving gentle kiss or embracing, aptly represents the relation of husband and wife. The yield sixtyfold refers to widows who are placed in a position of distress and tribulation. Accordingly, they are typified by that finger which is placed under the other to express the number sixty; for, as it is extremely trying when one has once tasted pleasure to abstain from its enticements, so the reward of doing this is proportionately great. Moreover, a hundred--I ask the reader to give me his best attention--necessitates a change from the left hand to the right; but while the hand is different the fingers are the same as those which on the left hand signify married women and widows; only in this instance the circle formed by them indicates the crown of virginity." [1050]
3. Does a man who speaks thus, I would ask you, condemn marriage? If I have called virginity gold, I have spoken of marriage as silver. I have set forth that the yields an hundredfold, sixtyfold, and thirtyfold--all spring from one soil and from one sowing, although in amount they differ widely. Will any of my readers be so unfair as to judge me, not by my words, but by his own opinion? At any rate, I have dealt much more gently with marriage than most Latin and Greek writers; [1051] who, by referring the hundredfold yield to martyrs, the sixtyfold to virgins, and the thirtyfold to widows, show that in their opinion married persons are excluded from the good ground and from the seed of the great Father. [1052] But, lest it might be supposed that, though cautious at the outset, I was imprudent in the remainder of my work, have I not, after marking out the divisions of it, on coming to the actual questions immediately introduced the following: [1053] "I ask all of you of both sexes, at once those who are virgins and continent and those who are married or twice married, to aid my efforts with your prayers." Jovinian is the foe of all indiscriminately, but can I condemn as Manichæan heretics persons whose prayers I need and whose assistance I entreat to help me in my work?
4. As the brief compass of a letter does not suffer us to delay too long on a single point, let us now pass to those which remain. In explaining the testimony of the apostle, "The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband; and likewise, also, the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife," [1054] we have subjoined the following: [1055] "The entire question relates to those who are living in wedlock, whether it is lawful for them to put away their wives, a thing which the Lord also has forbidden in the Gospel. [1056] Hence, also, the apostle says: It is good for a man not to touch' a wife or a woman,' [1057] as if there were danger in the contact which he who should so touch one could not escape. Accordingly, when the Egyptian woman desired to touch Joseph he flung away his cloak and fled from her hands. [1058] But as he who has once married a wife cannot, except by consent, abstain from intercourse with her or repudiate her, so long as she does not sin, he must render unto his wife her due, [1059] because he has of his own free will bound himself to render it under compulsion." Can one who declares that it is a precept of the Lord that wives should not be put away, and that what God has joined together man must not, without consent, put asunder [1060] --can such an one be said to condemn marriage? Again, in the verses which follow, the apostle says: "But every man hath his proper gift of God, one after this manner, and another after that." [1061] In explanation of this saying we made the following remarks: [1062] "What I myself would wish, he says, is clear. But since there are diversities of gifts in the church, [1063] I allow marriage as well, that I may not appear to condemn nature. Reflect, too, that the gift of virginity is one thing, that of marriage another. For had there been one reward for married women and for virgins he would never, after giving the counsel of continence, have gone on to say: But every man hath his proper gift of God, one after this manner and another after that.' Where each class has its proper gift, there must be some distinction between the classes. I allow that marriage, as well as virginity, is the gift of God, but there is a great difference between gift and gift. Finally, the apostle himself says of one who had lived in incest and afterwards repented: Contrariwise ye ought rather to forgive him and comfort him,' [1064] and To whom ye forgive anything, I forgive also.' [1065] And, lest we might suppose a man's gift to be but a small thing, he has added: For if I forgave anything, to whom I forgave it, for your sakes forgave I it in the sight [1066] of Christ.' [1067] The gifts of Christ are different. Hence Joseph as a type of Him had a coat of many colors. [1068] So in the forty-fourth psalm [1069] we read of the Church: Upon thy right hand did stand the queen in a vesture of gold, wrought about with divers colors.' [1070] The apostle Peter, too, speaks (of husbands and wives) as being heirs together of the manifold grace of God.' [1071] In Greek the expression is still more striking, the word used being poikile, that is, many-colored.'"
5. I ask, then, what is the meaning of men's obstinate determination to shut their eyes and to refuse to look on what is as clear as day? I have said that there are diversities of gifts in the Church, and that virginity is one gift and wedlock another. And shortly after I have used the words: "I allow marriage also to be a gift of God, but there is a great difference between gift and gift." Can it be said that I condemn that which in the clearest terms I declare to be the gift of God? Moreover, if Joseph is taken as a type of the Lord, his coat of many colors is a type of virgins and widows, celibates and wedded. Can any one who has any part in Christ's tunic be regarded as an alien? Have we not spoken of the very queen herself--that is, the Church of the Saviour--as wearing a vesture of gold wrought about with divers colors? Moreover, when I came to discuss marriage in connection with the following verses, [1072] I still adhered to the same view. [1073] "This passage," I said, "has indeed no relation to the present controversy; for, following the decision of the Lord, the apostle teaches that a wife must not be put away saving for fornication, and that, if she has been put away, she cannot during the lifetime of her husband marry another man, or, at any rate, that she ought, if possible, to be reconciled to her husband. In another verse he speaks to the same effect: The wife is bound...as long as her husband liveth; but if her husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband; [1074] she is at liberty to be married to whom she will; only in the Lord,' [1075] that is to a Christian. Thus the apostle, while he allows a second or a third marriage in the Lord, forbids even a first with a heathen."
6. I ask my detractors to open their ears and to realize the fact that I have allowed second and third marriages "in the Lord." If, then, I have not condemned second and third marriages, how can I have proscribed a first? Moreover, in the passage where I interpret the words of the apostle, "Is any man called being circumcised? Let him not become uncircumcised. Is any called in uncircumcision? let him not be circumcised" [1076] (a passage, it is true, which some most careful interpreters of Scripture refer to the circumcision and slavery of the Law), do I not in the clearest terms stand up for the marriage-tie? My words are these: [1077] "If any man is called in uncircumcision, let him not be circumcised.' You had a wife, the apostle says, when you believed. Do not fancy your faith in Christ to be a reason for parting from her. For God hath called us in peace.' [1078] Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing but the keeping of the commandments of God.' [1079] Neither celibacy nor wedlock is of the slightest use without works, since even faith, the distinguishing mark of Christians, if it have not works, is said to be dead, [1080] and on such terms as these the virgins of Vesta or of Juno, who was constant to one [1081] husband, might claim to be numbered among the saints. And a little further on he says: Art thou called being a servant, care not for it; but, if thou mayest be made free, use it rather;' [1082] that is to say, if you have a wife, and are bound to her, and render her her due, and have not power of your own body--or, to speak yet more plainly--if you are the slave of a wife, do not allow this to cause you sorrow, do not sigh over the loss of your virginity. Even if you can find pretexts for parting from her to enjoy the freedom of chastity, do not seek your own welfare at the price of another's ruin. Keep your wife for a little, and do not try too hastily to overcome her reluctance. Wait till she follows your example. If you only have patience, your wife will some day become your sister."
7. In another passage we have discussed the reasons which led Paul to say: "Now concerning virgins, I have no commandment of the Lord: yet I give my judgment, as one that hath obtained mercy of the Lord to be faithful." [1083] Here also, while we have extolled virginity, we have been careful to give marriage its due. [1084] "Had the Lord commanded virginity," we said, "He would have seemed to condemn marriage and to do away with that seed-plot of humanity from which virginity itself springs. Had He cut away the root how could He have looked for fruit? Unless He had first laid the foundations, how could He have built the edifice or crowned it with a roof made to cover its whole extent?" If we have spoken of marriage as the root whose fruit is virginity, and if we have made wedlock the foundation on which the building or the roof of perpetual chastity is raised, which of my detractors can be so captious or so blind as to ignore the foundation on which the fabric and its roof are built, while he has before his eyes both the fabric and the roof themselves? Once more, in another place, we have brought forward the testimony of the apostle to this effect: "Art thou bound unto a wife? Seek not to be loosed. Art thou loosed from a wife? Seek not a wife." [1085] To this we have appended the following remarks: [1086] "Each of us has his own sphere allotted to him. Let me have mine, and do you keep yours. If you are bound to a wife, do not put her away. If I am loosed from a wife, let me not seek a wife. Just as I do not loose marriage-ties when they are once made, so do you refrain from binding together what at present is loosed from such ties." Yet another passage bears unmistakable testimony to the view which we have taken of virginity and of wedlock: [1087] "The apostle casts no snare upon us, [1088] nor does he compel us to be what we do not wish. He only urges us to what is honorable and seemly, inciting us earnestly to serve the Lord, to be anxious always to please Him, and to look for His will which He has prepared for us to do. We are to be like alert and armed soldiers, who immediately execute the orders given to them and perform them without that travail of mind [1089] which, according to the preacher, is given to the men of this world to be exercised therewith.'" [1090] At the end, also, of our comparison of virgins and married women we have summed up the discussion thus: [1091] "When one thing is good and another thing is better; when that which is good has a different reward from that which is better; and when there are more rewards than one, then, obviously, there exists a diversity of gifts. The difference between marriage and virginity is as great as that between not doing evil and doing good--or, to speak more favorably still, as that between what is good and what is still better."
8. In the sequel we go on to speak thus: [1092] "The apostle, in concluding his discussion of marriage and of virginity, is careful to observe a mean course in discriminating between them, and, turning neither to the right hand nor to the left, he keeps to the King's highway, [1093] and thus fulfils the injunction, Be not righteous overmuch.' [1094] Moreover, when he goes on to compare monogamy with digamy, he puts digamy after monogamy, just as before he subordinated marriage to virginity." Do we not clearly show by this language what is typified in the Holy Scriptures by the terms right and left, and also what we take to be the meaning of the words "Be not righteous overmuch"? We turn to the left if, following the lust of Jews and Gentiles, we burn for sexual intercourse; we turn to the right if, following the error of the Manichæans, we under a pretence of chastity entangle ourselves in the meshes of unchastity. But we keep to the King's highway if we aspire to virginity yet refrain from condemning marriage. Can any one, moreover, be so unfair in his criticism of my poor treatise as to allege that I condemn first marriages, when he reads my opinion on second ones as follows: [1095] "The apostle, it is true, allows second marriages, but only to such women as are bent upon them, to such as cannot contain, [1096] lest when they have begun to wax wanton against Christ they marry, having condemnation because they have rejected their first faith,' [1097] and he makes this concession because many are turned aside after Satan.' [1098] But they will be happier if they abide as widows. To this he immediately adds his apostolical authority, after my judgment.' Moreover, lest any should consider that authority, being human, to be of small weight, he goes on to say, and I think also that I have the spirit of God.' [1099] Thus, where he urges men to continence he appeals not to human authority, but to the Spirit of God; but when he gives them permission to marry he does not mention the Spirit of God, but allows prudential considerations to turn the balance, relaxing the strictness of his code in favor of individuals according to their several needs." Having thus brought forward proofs that second marriages are allowed by the apostle, we at once added the remarks which follow: [1100] "As marriage is permitted to virgins by reason of the danger of fornication, and as what in itself is not desirable is thus made excusable, so by reason of the same danger widows are permitted to marry a second time. For it is better that a woman should know one man (though he should be a second husband or a third) than that she should know several. In other words, it is preferable that she should prostitute herself to one rather than to many." Calumny may do its worst. We have spoken here not of a first marriage, but of a second, of a third, or (if you like) of a fourth. But lest any one should apply my words (that it is better for a woman to prostitute herself to one man than to several) to a first marriage when my whole argument dealt with digamy and trigamy, I marked my own view of these practices with the words: [1101] "All things are lawful, but all things are not expedient.' [1102] I do not condemn digamists nor yet trigamists, nor even, to put an extreme, case, octogamists. I will make a still greater concession: I am ready to receive even a whore-monger, if penitent. In every case where fairness is possible, fair consideration must be shown."
9. My calumniator should blush at his assertion that I condemn first marriages when he reads my words just now quoted: "I do not condemn digamists or trigamists, or even, to put an extreme case, octogamists." Not to condemn is one thing, to commend is another. I may concede a practice as allowable and yet not praise it as meritorious. But if I seem severe in saying, "In every case where fairness is possible, fair consideration must be shown," no one, I fancy, will judge me either cruel or stern who reads that the places prepared for virgins and for wedded persons are different from those prepared for trigamists, octogamists, and penitents. That Christ Himself, although in the flesh a virgin, was in the spirit a monogamist, having one wife, even the Church, [1103] I have shown in the latter part of my argument. [1104] And yet I am supposed to condemn marriage! I am said to condemn it, although I use such words as these: [1105] "It is an undoubted fact that the levitical priests were descended from the stock of Aaron, Eleazar, and Phinehas; and, as all these were married men, we might well be confronted with them if, led away by the error of the Encratites, we were to contend that marriage is in itself deserving of condemnation." Here I blame Tatian, the chief of the Encratites, for his rejection of marriage, and yet I myself am said to condemn it! Once more, when I contrast virgins with widows, my own words show what my view is concerning wedlock, and set forth the threefold gradation which I propose of virgins, widows--whether in practice or in fact [1106] --and wedded wives. "I do not deny"--these are my words [1107] --"the blessedness of widows who continue such after their baptism, nor do I undervalue the merit of wives who live in chastity with their husbands; but, just as widows receive a greater reward from God than wives obedient to their husbands, they, too, must be content to see virgins preferred before themselves."
10. Again, when explaining the witness of the apostle to the Galatians, "By the works of the law shall no flesh be justified," I have spoken to the following effect: "Marriages also are works of the law. And for this reason there is a curse upon such as do not produce offspring. They are permitted, it is true, even under the Gospel; but it is one thing to concede an indulgence to what is a weakness and quite another to promise a reward to what is a virtue." See my express declaration that marriage is allowed in the Gospel, yet that those who are married cannot receive the rewards of chastity so long as they render their due one to another. If married men feel indignant at this statement, let them vent their anger not on me but on the Holy Scriptures; nay, more, upon all bishops, presbyters, and deacons, and the whole company of priests and levites, who know that they cannot offer sacrifices if they fulfil the obligations of marriage. Again, when I adduce evidence from the Apocalypse, [1108] is it not clear what view I take concerning virgins, widows, and wives? "These are they who sing a new song [1109] which no man can sing except he be a virgin. These are the first fruits unto God and unto the Lamb,' [1110] and they are without spot. If virgins are the first fruits unto God, then widows and wives who live in continence must come after the first fruits--that is to say, in the second place and in the third." We place widows, then, and wives in the second place and in the third, and for this we are charged by the frenzy of a heretic with condemning marriage altogether.
11. Throughout the book I have made many remarks in a tone of great moderation on virginity, widowhood, and marriage. But for the sake of brevity, I will here adduce but one passage, and that of such a kind that no one, I think, will be found to gainsay it save some one who wishes to prove himself malicious or mad. In describing our Lord's visit to the marriage at Cana in Galilee, [1111] after some other remarks I have added these: [1112] "He who went but once to a marriage has taught us that a woman should marry but once; and this fact might tell against virginity if we failed to give marriage its due place--after virginity that is, and chaste widowhood. But, as it is only heretics who condemn marriage and tread under foot the ordinance of God, we listen with gladness to every word said by our Lord in praise of marriage. For the Church does not condemn marriage, but only subordinates it. It does not reject it altogether, but regulates it, knowing (as I have said above) that in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and of silver, but also of wood and of earth; and some to honor and some to dishonor. If a man, therefore, purge himself...he shall be a vessel unto honor meet...and prepared unto every good work.'" [1113] I listen with gladness, I say here, to every word said by the apostle in praise of marriage. Do I listen with gladness to the praise of marriage, and do I yet condemn marriage? The Church, I say, does not condemn wedlock, but subordinates it. Whether you like it or not, marriage is subordinated to virginity and widowhood. Even when marriage continues to fulfil its function, the Church does not condemn it, but only subordinates it; it does not reject it, but only regulates it. It is in your power, if you will, to mount the second step of chastity. [1114] Why are you angry if, standing on the third and lowest step, you will not make haste to go up higher?
12. Since, then, I have so often reminded my reader of my views; and since I have picked my way like a prudent traveller over every inch of the road, stating repeatedly that, while I receive marriage as a thing in itself admissible, I yet prefer continence, widowhood, and virginity, the wise and generous reader ought to have judged what seemed hard sayings by my general drift, and not to have charged me with putting forward inconsistent opinions in one and the same book. For who is so dull or so inexperienced in writing as to praise and to condemn one and the same object, as to destroy what he has built up, and to build up what he has destroyed; and when he has vanquished his opponent, to turn his sword, last of all against himself? Were my detractors country bred or unacquainted with the arts of rhetoric or of logic, I should pardon their want of insight; nor should I censure them for accusing me if I saw that their ignorance was in fault and not their will. As it is men of intellect who have enjoyed a liberal education make it their object less to understand me than to wound me, and for such I have this short answer, that they should correct my faults and not merely censure me for them. The lists are open, I cry; your enemy has marshalled his forces, his position is plain, and (if I may quote Virgil [1115] )--
The foeman calls you: meet him face to face.
Such men should answer their opponent. They ought to keep within the limits of debate, and not to wield the schoolmaster's rod. Their books should aim at showing in what my statements have fallen short of the truth, and in what they have exceeded it. For, although I will not listen to fault-finders, I will follow the advice of teachers. To direct the fighter how to fight when you yourself occupy a post of vantage on the wall is a kind of teaching that does not commend itself; and when you are yourself bathed in perfumes, it is unworthy to charge a bleeding soldier with cowardice. Nor in saying this do I lay myself open to a charge of boasting that while others have slept I only have entered the lists. My meaning simply is that men who have seen me wounded in this warfare may possibly be a little too cautious in their methods of fighting. I would not have you engage in an encounter in which you will have nothing to do but to protect yourself, your right hand remaining motionless while your left manages your shield. You must either strike or fall. I cannot account you a victor unless I see your opponent put to the sword.
13. You are, no doubt, men of vast acquirements; but we too have studied in the schools, and, like you, we have learned from the precepts of Aristotle--or, rather, from those which he has derived from Gorgias--that there are different ways of speaking; and we know, among other things, that he who writes for display uses one style, and he who writes to convince, another. [1116] In the former case the debate is desultory; to confute the opposer, now this argument is adduced and now that. One argues as one pleases, saying one thing while one means another. To quote the proverb, "With one hand one offers bread, in the other one holds a stone." [1117] In the latter case a certain frankness and openness of countenance are necessary. For it is one thing to start a problem and another to expound what is already proved. The first calls for a disputant, the second for a teacher. I stand in the thick of the fray, my life in constant danger: you who profess to teach me are a man of books. "Do not," you say, "attack unexpectedly or wound by a side-thrust. Strike straight at your opponent. You should be ashamed to resort to feints instead of force." As if it were not the perfection of fighting to menace one part and to strike another. Read, I beg of you, Demosthenes or Cicero, or (if you do not care for pleaders whose aim is to speak plausibly rather than truly) read Plato, Theophrastus, Xenophon, Aristotle, and the rest of those who draw their respective rills of wisdom from the Socratic fountain-head. Do they show any openness? Are they devoid of artifice? Is not every word they say filled with meaning? And does not this meaning always make for victory? Origen, Methodius, Eusebius, and Apollinaris [1118] write at great length against Celsus and Porphyry. [1119] Consider how subtle are the arguments, how insidious the engines with which they overthrow what the spirit of the devil has wrought. Sometimes, it is true, they are compelled to say not what they think but what is needful; and for this reason they employ against their opponents the assertions of the Gentiles themselves. I say nothing of the Latin authors, of Tertullian, Cyprian, Minutius, Victorinus, Lactantius, Hilary, lest I should appear not so much to be defending myself as to be assailing others. I will only mention the Apostle Paul, whose words seem to me, as often as I hear them, to be not words, but peals of thunder. Read his epistles, and especially those addressed to the Romans, to the Galatians, and to the Ephesians, in all of which he stands in the thick of the battle, and you will see how skilful and how careful he is in the proofs which he draws from the Old Testament, and how warily he cloaks the object which he has in view. His words seem simplicity itself: the expressions of a guileless and unsophisticated person--one who has no skill either to plan a dilemma or to avoid it. Still, whichever way you look, they are thunderbolts. His pleading halts, yet he carries every point which he takes up. He turns his back upon his foe only to overcome him; he simulates flight, but only that he may slay. He, then, if any one, ought to be calumniated; we should speak thus to him: "The proofs which you have used against the Jews or against other heretics bear a different meaning in their own contexts to that which they bear in your epistles. We see passages taken captive by your pen and pressed into service to win you a victory which in the volumes from which they are taken have no controversial bearing at all." May he not reply to us in the words of the Saviour: "I have one mode of speech for those that are without and another for those that are within; the crowds hear my parables, but their interpretation is for my disciples alone"? [1120] The Lord puts questions to the Pharisees, but does not elucidate them. To teach a disciple is one thing; to vanquish an opponent, another. "My mystery is for me," says the prophet; "my mystery is for me and for them that are mine." [1121]
14. You are indignant with me because I have merely silenced Jovinian and not instructed him. You, do I say? Nay, rather, they who grieve to hear him anathematized, and who impeach their own pretended orthodoxy by eulogizing in another the heresy which they hold themselves. I should have asked him, forsooth, to surrender peaceably! I had no right to disregard his struggles and to drag him against his will into the bonds of truth! I might use such language had the desire of victory induced me to say anything counter to the rule laid down in Scripture, and had I taken the line--so often adopted by strong men in controversy--of justifying the means by the result. As it is, however, I have been an exponent of the apostle rather than a dogmatist on my own account; and my function has been simply that of a commentator. Anything, therefore, which seems a hard saying should be imputed to the writer expounded by me rather than to me the expounder; unless, indeed, he spoke otherwise than he is represented to have done, and I have by an unfair interpretation wrested the plain meaning of his words. If any one charges me with this disingenuousness let him prove his charge from the Scriptures themselves.
I have said in my book, [1122] "If it is good for a man not to touch a woman,' then it is bad for him to touch one, for bad, and bad only, is the opposite of good. But, if though bad it is made venial, then it is allowed to prevent something which would be worse than bad," and so on down to the commencement of the next chapter. The above is my comment upon the apostle's words: "It is good for a man not to touch a woman. Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband." [1123] In what way does my meaning differ from that intended by the apostle? Except that where he speaks decidedly I do so with hesitation. He defines a dogma, I hazard an inquiry. He openly says: "It is good for a man not to touch a woman." I timidly ask if it is good for a man not to touch one. If I thus waver, I cannot be said to speak positively. He says: "It is good not to touch." I add what is a possible antithesis to "good." And immediately afterwards I speak thus: [1124] "Notice the apostle's carefulness. He does not say: It is good for a man not to have a wife,' but, It is good for a man not to touch a woman'; as if there is danger in the very touching of one--danger which he who touches cannot escape." You see, therefore, that I am not expounding the law as to husbands and wives, but simply discussing the general question of sexual intercourse--how in comparison with chastity and virginity, the life of angels, "It is good for a man not to touch a woman."
"Vanity of vanities," says the Preacher, "all is vanity." [1125] But if all created things are good, [1126] as being the handiwork of a good Creator, how comes it that all things are vanity? If the earth is vanity, are the heavens vanity too?--and the angels, the thrones, the dominations, the powers, and the rest of the virtues? [1127] No; if things which are good in themselves as being the handiwork of a good Creator are called vanity, it is because they are compared with things which are better still. For example, compared with a lamp, a lantern is good for nothing; compared with a star, a lamp does not shine at all; the brightest star pales before the moon; put the moon beside the sun, and it no longer looks bright; compare the sun with Christ, and it is darkness. "I am that I am," God says; [1128] and if you compare all created things with Him they have no existence. "Give not thy sceptre," says Esther, "unto them that be nothing" [1129] --that is to say, to idols and demons. And certainly they were idols and demons to whom she prayed that she and hers might not be given over. In Job also we read how Bildad says of the wicked man: "His confidence shall be rooted out of his tabernacle, and destruction as a king shall trample upon him. The companions also of him who is not shall abide in his tabernacle." [1130] This evidently relates to the devil, who must be in existence, otherwise he could not be said to have companions. Still, because he is lost to God, he is said not to be.
Now it was in a similar sense that I declared it to be a bad thing to touch a woman--I did not say a wife--because it is a good thing not to touch one. And I added: [1131] "I call virginity fine corn, wedlock barley, and fornication cow-dung." Surely both corn and barley are creatures of God. But of the two multitudes miraculously supplied in the Gospel the larger was fed upon barley loaves, and the smaller on corn bread. [1132] "Thou, Lord," says the psalmist, "shalt save both man and beast." [1133] I have myself said the same thing in other words, when I have spoken of virginity as gold and of wedlock as silver. [1134] Again, in discussing [1135] the one hundred and forty-four thousand sealed virgins who were not defiled with women, [1136] I have tried to show that all who have not remained virgins are reckoned as defiled when compared with the perfect chastity of the angels and of our Lord Jesus Christ. But if any one thinks it hard or reprehensible that I have placed the same interval between virginity and wedlock as there is between fine corn and barley, let him read the book of the holy Ambrose "On Widows," and he will find, among other statements concerning virginity and marriage, the following: [1137] "The apostle has not expressed his preference for marriage so unreservedly as to quench in men the aspiration after virginity; he commences with a recommendation of continence, and it is only subsequently that he stoops to mention the remedies for its opposite. And although to the strong he has pointed out the prize of their high calling, [1138] yet he suffers none to faint by the way; [1139] whilst he applauds those who lead the van, he does not despise those who bring up the rear. For he had himself learned that the Lord Jesus gave to some barley bread, lest they should faint by the way, but offered to others His own body, that they should strive to attain His kingdom;" [1140] and immediately afterwards: "The nuptial tie, then, is not to be avoided as a crime, but to be refused as a hard burden. For the law binds the wife to bring forth children in labor and in sorrow. Her desire is to be to her husband that he should rule over her. [1141] It is not the widow, then, but the bride, who is handed over to labor and sorrow in childbearing. It is not the virgin, but the married woman, who is subjected to the sway of a husband." And in another place, "Ye are bought," says the apostle, "with a price; [1142] be not therefore the servants of men." [1143] You see how clearly he defines the servitude which attends the married state. And a little farther on: "If, then, even a good marriage is servitude, what must a bad one be, in which husband and wife cannot sanctify, but only mutually destroy each other?" What I have said about virginity and marriage diffusely, Ambrose has stated tersely and pointedly, compressing much meaning into a few words. Virginity is described by him as a means of recommending continence, marriage as a remedy for incontinence. And when he descends from broad principles to particular details, he significantly holds out to virgins the prize of the high calling, yet comforts the married, that they may not faint by the way. While eulogizing the one class, he does not despise the other. Marriage he compares to the barley bread set before the multitude, virginity to the body of Christ given to the disciples. There is much less difference, it seems to me, between barley and fine corn than between barley and the body of Christ. Finally, he speaks of marriage as a hard burden, to be avoided if possible, and as a badge of the most unmistakable servitude. He makes, also, many other statements, which he has followed up at length in his three books "On Virgins."
15. From all which considerations it is clear that I have said nothing at all new concerning virginity and marriage, but have followed in all respects the judgment of older writers--of Ambrose, that is to say, and others who have discussed the doctrines of the Church. "And I would sooner follow them in their faults than copy the dull pedantry of the writers of to-day." [1144] Let married men, if they please, swell with rage because I have said, [1145] "I ask you, what kind of good thing is that which forbids a man to pray, and which prevents him from receiving the body of Christ?" When I do my duty as a husband, I cannot fulfil the requirements of continence. The same apostle, in another place, commands us to pray always. [1146] "But if we are always to pray we must never yield to the claims of wedlock for, as often as I render her due to my wife, I incapacitate myself for prayer." When I spoke thus it is clear that I relied on the words of the apostle: "Defraud ye not one the other, except it be with consent for a time, that ye may give yourselves to...prayer." [1147] The Apostle Paul tells us that when we have intercourse with our wives we cannot pray. If, then, sexual intercourse prevents what is less important--that is, prayer--how much more does it prevent what is more important--that is, the reception of the body of Christ? Peter, too, exhorts us to continence, that our "prayers be not hindered." [1148] How, I should like to know, have I sinned in all this? What have I done? How have I been in fault? If the waters of a stream are thick and muddy, it is not the river-bed which is to blame, but the source. Am I attacked because I have ventured to add to the words of the apostle these words of my own: "What kind of good thing is that which prevents a man from receiving the body of Christ?" If so, I will make answer briefly thus: Which is the more important, to pray or to receive Christ's body? Surely to receive Christ's body. If, then, sexual intercourse hinders the less important thing, much more does it hinder that which is the more important.
I have said in the same treatise [1149] that David and they that were with him could not have lawfully eaten the shew-bread had they not made answer that for three days they had not been defiled with women [1150] --not, of course, with harlots, intercourse with whom was forbidden by the law, but with their own wives, to whom they were lawfully united. Moreover, when the people were about to receive the law on Mount Sinai they were commanded to keep away from their wives for three days. [1151] I know that at Rome it is customary for the faithful always to receive the body of Christ, a custom which I neither censure nor indorse. "Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind." [1152] But I appeal to the consciences of those persons who after indulging in sexual intercourse on the same day receive the communion--having first, as Persius puts it, "washed off the night in a flowing stream," [1153] and I ask such why they do not presume to approach the martyrs or to enter the churches. [1154] Is Christ of one mind abroad and of another at home? What is unlawful in church cannot be lawful at home. Nothing is hidden from God. "The night shineth as the day" before Him. [1155] Let each man examine himself, and so let him approach the body of Christ. [1156] Not, of course, that the deferring of communion for one day or for two makes a Christian any the holier or that what I have not deserved to-day I shall deserve to-morrow or the day after. But if I grieve that I have not shared in Christ's body it does help me to avoid for a little while my wife's embraces, and to prefer to wedded love the love of Christ. A hard discipline, you will say, and one not to be borne. What man of the world could bear it? He that can bear it, I reply, let him bear it; [1157] he that cannot must look to himself. It is my business to say, not what each man can do or will do, but what the Scriptures inculcate.
16. Again, objection has been taken to my comments on the apostle in the following passage: [1158] "But lest any should suppose from the context of the words before quoted (namely, that ye may give yourselves...to prayer and come together again') that the apostle desires this consummation, and does not merely concede it to obviate a worse downfall, he immediately adds, that Satan tempt you not for your incontinency.' [1159] And come together again.' What a noble indulgence the words convey! One which he blushes to speak of in plainer words, which he prefers only to Satan's temptation, and which has its root in incontinence. Do we labor to expound this as a dark saying when the writer has himself explained his meaning? "I speak this," he says, by way of permission, and not as a command.' [1160] Do we still hesitate to speak of wedlock as a thing permitted instead of as a thing enjoined? or are we afraid that such permission will exclude second or third marriages or some other case?" What have I said here which the apostle has not said? The phrase, I suppose, "which he blushes to speak of in plainer words." I imagine that when he says "come together," and does not mention for what, he takes a modest way of indicating what he does not like to name openly--that is, sexual intercourse. Or is the objection to the words which follow--"which he prefers only to Satan's temptation, and which has its root in incontinence"? Are they not the very words of the apostle, only differently arranged--"that Satan tempt you not for your incontinency"? Or do people cavil because I said, "Do we still hesitate to speak of wedlock as a thing permitted instead of as a thing enjoined?" If this seems a hard saying, it should be ascribed to the apostle, who says, "But I speak this by way of permission, and not as a command," and not to me, who, except that I have rearranged their order, have changed neither the words nor their meaning.
17. The shortness of a letter compels me to hasten on. I pass, accordingly, to the points which remain. "I say," remarks the apostle, "to the unmarried and widows, It is good for them if they abide even as I. But if they cannot contain, let them marry; for it is better to marry than to burn." [1161] This section I have interpreted thus: [1162] "When he has granted to those who are married the use of wedlock, and has made clear his own wishes and concessions, he passes on to those who are unmarried or widows, and sets before them his own example. He calls them happy if they abide even as he, [1163] but he goes on, if they cannot contain, let them marry.' He thus repeats his former language, but only to avoid fornication,' and that Satan tempt you not for your incontinence.' And when he says, If they cannot contain, let them marry,' he gives as a reason for his words that it is better to marry than to burn.' It is only good to marry, because it is bad to burn. But take away the fire of lust, and he will not say it is better to marry.' For a thing is said to be better in antithesis to something which is worse, and not simply in contrast with what is admittedly good. It is as though he said, It is better to have one eye than none.'" Shortly afterwards, apostrophizing the apostle, I spoke thus: [1164] "If marriage is good in itself, do not compare it with a conflagration, but simply say, It is good to marry.' I must suspect the goodness of a thing which only becomes a lesser evil in the presence of a greater one. I, for my part, would have it not a lighter evil but a downright good." The apostle wishes unmarried women and widows to abstain from sexual intercourse, incites them to follow his own example, and calls them happy if they abide even as he. But if they cannot contain, and are tempted to quench the fire of lust by fornication rather than by continence, it is better, he tells them, to marry than to burn. Upon which precept I have made this comment: "It is good to marry, simply because it is bad to burn," not putting forward a view of my own, but only explaining the apostle's precept, "It is better to marry than to burn;" that is, it is better to take a husband than to commit fornication. If, then, you teach that burning or fornication is good, the good will still be surpassed by what is still better. [1165] But if marriage is only a degree better than the evil to which it is preferred, it cannot be of that unblemished perfection and blessedness which suggest a comparison with the life of angels. Suppose I say, "It is better to be a virgin than a married woman;" in this case I have preferred to what is good what is still better. But suppose I go a step further and say, "It is better to marry than to commit fornication;" in that case I have preferred, not a better thing to a good thing, but a good thing to a bad one. There is a wide difference between the two cases; for, while virginity is related to marriage as better is to good, marriage is related to fornication as good is to bad. How, I should like to know, have I sinned in this explanation? My fixed purpose was not to bend the Scriptures to my own wishes, but simply to say what I took to be their meaning. A commentator has no business to dilate on his own views; his duty is to make plain the meaning of the author whom he professes to interpret. For, if he contradicts the writer whom he is trying to expound, he will prove to be his opponent rather than his interpreter. When I am freely expressing my own opinion, and not commenting upon the Scriptures, then any one that pleases may charge me with having spoken hardly of marriage. But if he can find no ground for such a charge, he should attribute such passages in my commentaries as appear severe or harsh to the author commented on, and not to me, who am only his interpreter.
18. Another charge brought against me is simply intolerable! It is urged that in explaining the apostle's words concerning husbands and wives, "Such shall have trouble in the flesh," I have said: [1166] "We in our ignorance had supposed that in the flesh at least wedlock would have rejoicing. But if married persons are to have trouble in the flesh, the only thing in which they seemed likely to have pleasure, what motive will be left to make women marry? for, besides having trouble in spirit and soul, they will also have it even in the flesh." [1167] Do I condemn marriage if I enumerate its troubles, such as the crying of infants, the death of children, the chance of abortion, domestic losses, and so forth? Whilst Damasus of holy memory was still living, I wrote a book against Helvidius "On the Perpetual Virginity of the Blessed Mary," in which, duly to extol the bliss of virginity, I was forced to say much of the troubles of marriage. Did that excellent man--versed in Scripture as he was, and a virgin doctor of the virgin Church--find anything to censure in my discourse? Moreover, in the treatise which I addressed to Eustochium [1168] I used much harsher language regarding marriage, and yet no one was offended at it. Nay, every lover of chastity strained his ears to catch my eulogy of continence. Read Tertullian, read Cyprian, read Ambrose, and either accuse me with them or acquit me with them. My critics resemble the characters of Plautus. Their only wit lies in detraction; and they try to make themselves out men of learning by assailing all parties in turn. Thus they bestow their censure impartially upon myself and upon my opponent, and maintain that we are both beaten, although one or other of us must have succeeded.
Moreover, when in discussing digamy and trigamy I have said, [1169] "It is better for a woman to know one man, even though he be a second husband or a third, than several; it is more tolerable for her to prostitute herself to one man than to many," have I not immediately subjoined my reason for so saying? "The Samaritan woman in the Gospel, when she declares that her present husband is her sixth, is rebuked by the Lord on the ground that he is not her husband." [1170] For my own part, I now once more freely proclaim that digamy is not condemned in the Church--no, nor yet trigamy--and that a woman may marry a fifth husband, or a sixth, or a greater number still just as lawfully as she may marry a second; but that, while such marriages are not condemned, neither are they commended. They are meant as alleviations of an unhappy lot, and in no way redound to the glory of continence. I have spoken to the same effect elsewhere. [1171] "When a woman marries more than once--whether she does so twice or three times matters little--she ceases to be a monogamist. All things are lawful...but all things are not expedient.' [1172] I do not condemn digamists or trigamists, or even, to put an impossible case, octogamists. Let a woman have an eighth husband if she must; only let her cease to prostitute herself."
19. I will come now to the passage in which I am accused of saying that--at least according to the true Hebrew text--the words "God saw that it was good" [1173] are not inserted after the second day of the creation, as they are after the first, third, and remaining ones, and of adding immediately the following comment: [1174] "We are meant to understand that there is something not good in the number two, separating us as it does from unity, and prefiguring the marriage-tie. Just as in the account of Noah's ark all the animals that enter by twos are unclean, but those of which an uneven number is taken are clean." [1175] In this statement a passing objection is made to what I have said concerning the second day, whether on the ground that the words mentioned really occur in the passage, although I say that they do not occur, or because, assuming them to occur, I have understood them in a sense different from that which the context evidently requires. As regards the non-occurrence of the words in question (viz., "God saw that it was good"), let them take not my evidence, but that of all the Jewish and other translators--Aquila [1176] namely, Symmachus, [1177] and Theodotion. [1178] But if the words, although occurring in the account of the other days, do not occur in the account of this, either let them give a more plausible reason than I have done for their non-occurrence, or, failing such, let them, whether they like it or not, accept the suggestion which I have made. Furthermore, if in Noah's ark all the animals that enter by twos are unclean, whilst those of which an uneven number is taken are clean, and if there is no dispute about the accuracy of the text, let them explain if they can why it is so written. But if they cannot explain it, then, whether they will or not, they must embrace my explanation of the matter. Either produce better fare and ask me to be your guest, or else rest content with the meal that I offer you, however poor it may be. [1179]
I must now mention the ecclesiastical writers who have dealt with this question of the odd number. They are, among the Greeks, Clement, Hippolytus, Origen, Dionysius, Eusebius, Didymus; and, among ourselves, Tertullian, Cyprian, Victorinus, Lactantius, Hilary. What Cyprian said to Fortunatus about the number seven is clear from the letter which he sent to him. [1180] Or perhaps I ought to bring forward the reasonings of Pythagoras, Archytas of Tarentum, and Publius Scipio in (Cicero's) sixth book "Concerning the Common Weal." If my detractors will not listen to any of these I will make the grammar schools shout in their ears the words of Virgil:
Uneven numbers are the joy of God. [1181]
20. To say, as I have done, that virginity is cleaner than wedlock, that the even numbers must give way to the odd, that the types of the Old Testament establish the truth of the Gospel: this, it appears, is a great sin subversive of the churches and intolerable to the world. The remaining points which are censured in my treatise are, I take it, of less importance, or else resolve themselves into this. I have, therefore, refrained from answering them, both that I may not exceed the limit at my disposal, and that I may not seem to distrust your intelligence, knowing as I do that you are ready to be my champion even before I ask you. With my last breath, then, I protest that neither now nor at any former time have I condemned marriage. I have merely answered an opponent without any fear that they of my own party would lay snares for me. I extol virginity to the skies, not because I myself possess it, but because, not possessing it, I admire it all the more. Surely it is a modest and ingenuous confession to praise in others that which you lack yourself. The weight of my body keeps me fixed to the ground, but do I fail to admire the flying birds or to praise the dove because, in the words of Virgil, [1182] it
Glides on its liquid path with motionless swift wings?
Let no man deceive himself, let no man, giving ear to the voice of flattery, rush upon ruin. The first virginity man derives from his birth, the second from his second birth. [1183] The words are not mine; it is an old saying, "No man can serve two masters;" [1184] that is, the flesh and the spirit. For "the flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary the one to the other," so that we cannot do the things that we would. [1185] When, then, anything in my little work seems to you harsh, have regard not to my words, but to the Scripture, whence they are taken.
21. Christ Himself is a virgin; [1186] and His mother is also a virgin; yea, though she is His mother, she is a virgin still. For Jesus has entered in through the closed doors, [1187] and in His sepulchre--a new one hewn out of the hardest rock--no man is laid either before Him or after Him. [1188] Mary is "a garden enclosed...a fountain sealed," [1189] and from that fountain flows, according to Joel, [1190] the river which waters the torrent bed either [1191] of cords or of thorns; [1192] of cords being those of the sins by which we were beforetime bound, [1193] the thorns those which choked the seed the goodman of the house had sown. [1194] She is the east gate, spoken of by the prophet Ezekiel, [1195] always shut and always shining, and either concealing or revealing the Holy of Holies; and through her "the Sun of Righteousness," [1196] our "high priest after the order of Melchizedek," [1197] goes in and out. Let my critics explain to me how Jesus can have entered in through closed doors when He allowed His hands and His side to be handled, and showed that He had bones and flesh, [1198] thus proving that His was a true body and no mere phantom of one, and I will explain how the holy Mary can be at once a mother and a virgin. A mother before she was wedded, she remained a virgin after bearing her son. Therefore, as I was going to say, the virgin Christ and the virgin Mary have dedicated in themselves the first fruits of virginity for both sexes. [1199] The apostles have either been virgins or, though married, have lived celibate lives. Those persons who are chosen to be bishops, priests, and deacons are either virgins or widowers; or at least when once they have received the priesthood, are vowed to perpetual chastity. Why do we delude ourselves and feel vexed if while we are continually straining after sexual indulgence, we find the palm of chastity denied to us? We wish to fare sumptuously, and to enjoy the embraces of our wives, yet at the same time we desire to reign with Christ among virgins and widows. Shall there be but one reward, then, for hunger and for excess, for filth and for finery, for sackcloth and for silk? Lazarus, [1200] in his lifetime, received evil things, and the rich man, clothed in purple, fat and sleek, while he lived enjoyed the good things of the flesh but, now that they are dead, they occupy different positions. Misery has given place to satisfaction, and satisfaction to misery. And it rests with us whether we will follow Lazarus or the rich man. __________________________________________________________________
[1037] Marcus Antonius, a Roman orator spoken of by Cicero. Orator c. 5, De Oratore i. c. 21, 47, 48. His treatise "De ratione dicendi" is lost. See Quintal iii. 1, 192.
[1038] Eccl. vii. 16: see Ag. Jov. i. 14.
[1039] Against Jov. i. 3.
[1040] A Gnostic presbyter of the second century who rejected the Old Testament.
[1041] An Eastern teacher of the third century, a.d., the main feature of whose system was its uncompromising dualism.
[1042] A Syrian rhetorician converted to Christianity by Justin Martyr. He wrote a harmony of the Gospels called Diatessaron.
[1043] I.e. "the abstainers," or "the continent," a Gnostic sect in the second century.
[1044] 1 Tim. iv. 3.
[1045] 2 Tim. ii. 20.
[1046] 1 Cor. iii. 10-12.
[1047] Heb. xiii. 4.
[1048] Gen. i. 28.
[1049] Matt. xiii. 8.
[1050] From this passage compared with Ep. cxxiii. 9, and Bede De Temporum Ratione, c. 1. (De Loquetâ Digitorum), it appears that the number thirty was indicated by joining the tips of the thumb and forefinger of the left hand, sixty was indicated by curling up the forefinger of the same hand and then doubling the thumb over it, while one hundred was expressed by joining the tips of the thumb and forefinger of the right hand. See Prof. Mayor's learned note on Juv. x. 249.
[1051] E.g. Cyprian and Origen (Hom. i. in Jos.).
[1052] Paterfamilias. Vide Cypr. de Hab. Virg. 21.
[1053] Ag. Jov. i. 4.
[1054] 1 Cor. vii. 4.
[1055] Ag. Jov. i. 7.
[1056] Matt. xix. 9.
[1057] 1 Cor. vii. 1.
[1058] Gen. xxxix. 12, 13.
[1059] 1 Cor. vii. 3, R.V.
[1060] Matt. xix. 6.
[1061] 1 Cor. vii. 7.
[1062] Ag. Jov. i. 8.
[1063] 1 Cor. xii. 4.
[1064] 2 Cor. ii. 7.
[1065] 2 Cor. ii. 10.
[1066] A.V. marg.
[1067] 2 Cor. ii. 10.
[1068] Gen. xxxvii. 23.
[1069] Acc. to the Vulgate. In A.V. it is the 45th.
[1070] Ps. xlv. 10, P.B.V.
[1071] 1 Pet. iii. 7; iv. 10.
[1072] 1 Cor. vii. 8-10.
[1073] Ag. Jov. i. 10.
[1074] Rom. vii. 2.
[1075] 1 Cor. vii. 39.
[1076] 1 Cor. vii. 18.
[1077] Ag. Jov. i. 11.
[1078] 1 Cor. vii. 15, R.V.
[1079] 1 Cor. vii. 19.
[1080] Jas. ii. 17.
[1081] Univira.
[1082] 1 Cor. vii. 21.
[1083] 1 Cor. vii. 25.
[1084] Ag. Jov. i. 12.
[1085] 1 Cor. vii. 21.
[1086] Ag. Jov. i. 12.
[1087] Ag. Jov. i. 13.
[1088] 1 Cor. vii. 35.
[1089] Jerome here explains the word aperispastos (A.V. "without distraction") in 1 Cor. vii. 35.
[1090] Eccles. i. 13; iii. 10.
[1091] Ag. Jov. i. 13.
[1092] Ag. Jov. i. 14.
[1093] Nu. xx. 17.
[1094] Eccles. vii. 16.
[1095] Ag. Jov. i. 14.
[1096] 1 Cor. vii. 9.
[1097] 1 Tim. v. 11, 12, R.V.
[1098] 1 Tim. v. 15.
[1099] 1 Cor. vii. 40.
[1100] Ag. Jov. i. 14.
[1101] Ag. Jov. i. 15.
[1102] 1 Cor. vi. 12.
[1103] Eph. v. 23, 24.
[1104] Ag. Jov. i. 9.
[1105] Ag. Jov. i. 23.
[1106] Viduitas vel continentia.
[1107] Ag. Jov. i. 33.
[1108] Ag. Jov. i. 40.
[1109] Rev. xiv. 3.
[1110] Rev. xiv. 4.
[1111] Joh. ii. 1, 2.
[1112] Ag. Jov. i. 40.
[1113] 2 Tim. ii. 20, 21.
[1114] I.e. continence in marriage.
[1115] Virg. A. xi. 374, 5.
[1116] Aliud esse gumnastikos scribere, aliud dogmatikos . The words do not appear to be used in this sense in the extant works of Aristotle.
[1117] Plaut. Aul. ii. 2, 18.
[1118] The reply of Origen to Celsus is still extant; those of Methodius, Eusebius and Apollinaris to Porphyry have perished. Cf. Letter LXX. § 3.
[1119] Two philosophic opponents of Christianity who flourished, the first in the second, the second in the third, century of our era.
[1120] Matt. xiii. 10-17.
[1121] Isa. xxiv. 16, Vulg.
[1122] Ag. Jov. i. 7.
[1123] 1 Cor. vii. 1, 2.
[1124] Ag. Jov. i. 7.
[1125] Eccles. i. 2.
[1126] Gen. i. 31; 1 Tim. iv. 4.
[1127] Col. i. 16. Cf. Milton, P. L. v. 601.
[1128] Ex. iii. 14.
[1129] Esth. xiv. 11.
[1130] Job xviii. 14, 15, Vulg.
[1131] Ag. Jov. i. 7.
[1132] Matt. xiv. 15-21; xv. 32-38. Cf. Joh. vi. 5-13.
[1133] Ps. xxxvi. 7, P.B.V.
[1134] Ag. Jov. i. 3.
[1135] Ag. Jov. i. 40.
[1136] Rev. xiv. 1, 4.
[1137] Ambrose, On Widowhood, xiii. 79; xiii. 81; xi. 69.
[1138] Phil. iii. 14.
[1139] Matt. xv. 32.
[1140] Matt. xxvi. 26, 29.
[1141] Gen. iii. 16.
[1142] 1 Cor. vi. 20; vii. 23.
[1143] Cf. Eph. vi. 6.
[1144] Ter. Andria Prol. 20, 21.
[1145] Ag. Jov. i. 7.
[1146] 1 Th. v. 17.
[1147] 1 Cor. vii. 5.
[1148] 1 Pet. iii. 7.
[1149] Ag. Jov. i. 20.
[1150] 1 Sam. xxi. 4, 5.
[1151] Ex. xix. 15.
[1152] Rom. xiv. 5.
[1153] Pers. ii. 16.
[1154] That what is now known as reservation of the elements was practised in the early church there is abundant evidence to show. Justin Martyr (Apol. I. 65) writes: "The deacons communicate each of those present and carry away to the absent of the blest bread and wine and water." And those to whom the eucharist was thus taken were not bound to consume it immediately, or all at once, but might reserve a part or all for future occasions. According to Basil (Ep. 93), "in Egypt the laity for the most part had every one the communion in their own houses"--and "all those who dwell alone in the desert, when there is no priest, keep the communion at home and receive it at their own hands." So Jerome speaks (Letter CXXV. 20) of Exuperius as "carrying the Lord's body in a wicker basket, His blood in a vessel of glass." See the article "Reservation" in Smith and Cheetham's Dict. of Christian Antiquities.
[1155] Ps. cxxxix. 11, 12.
[1156] Cf. 1 Cor. xi. 28.
[1157] Cf. Matt. xix. 12.
[1158] Against Jov. i. 8.
[1159] 1 Cor. vii. 5.
[1160] 1 Cor. vii. 6, Vulg.
[1161] 1 Cor. vii. 8, 9.
[1162] Ag. Jov. i. 9.
[1163] 1 Cor. vii. 8.
[1164] Ag. Jov. i. 9.
[1165] Fornication must still be subordinated to marriage.
[1166] Ag. Jov. i. 13.
[1167] 1 Th. v. 23.
[1168] Letter XXII.
[1169] Ag. Jov. i. 14.
[1170] Joh. iv. 16-18. Jerome's version of the story is inaccurate.
[1171] Ag. Jov. i. 15.
[1172] 1 Cor. vi. 12.
[1173] Gen. i. 10.
[1174] Ag. Jov. i. 16.
[1175] Gen. vii. 2.
[1176] The author of a literal Greek version of the O.T. made in the second century.
[1177] An ebionitic translator, free, not literal, in style.
[1178] A careful reviser of the LXX. whose work was welcomed by the Church. His version of Daniel completely superseded the older one.
[1179] Cf. Hor. Ep. i. 6, 67, 68.
[1180] Cyprian, Letter to Fortunatus, xiii. 11.
[1181] Virg. E. viii. 75.
[1182] Virg. A. v. 217.
[1183] Tert. de Exh. Cast. I.
[1184] Matt. vi. 24.
[1185] Gal. v. 17.
[1186] Ag. Jov. i. 31.
[1187] Joh. xx. 19.
[1188] Joh. xix. 41.
[1189] Cant. iv. 12.
[1190] Joel iii. 18; according to the LXX. and Hebrew. A.V. has "vale of Shittim" (thorns).
[1191] LXX.
[1192] Hebrew.
[1193] Cf. Prov. v. 22.
[1194] Matt. xiii. 7.
[1195] Ezek. xliv. 2, 3.
[1196] Mal. iv. 2.
[1197] Heb. v. 10.
[1198] Joh. xx. 19, 27.
[1199] Cf. Letter XXII. § 18.
[1200] Luke xvi. 19-25. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XLIX. To Pammachius.
Jerome encloses the preceding letter, thanks Pammachius for his efforts to suppress his treatise "against Jovinian," but declares these to be useless, and exhorts him, if he still has any hesitation in his mind, to turn to the Scriptures and the commentaries made upon them by Origen and others. Written at the same time as the preceding letter.
1. Christian modesty sometimes requires us to be silent even to our friends, and to nurse our humility in peace, where the renewal of an old friendship would expose us to the charge of self-seeking. Thus, when you have kept silence I have kept silence too, and have not cared to remonstrate with you, lest I should be thought more anxious to conciliate a person of influence than to cultivate a friend. But, now that it has become a duty to reply to your letter, I will endeavor always to be beforehand with you, and not so much to answer your queries as to write independently of them. Thus, if I have shown my modesty hitherto by silence, I will henceforth show it still more by coming forward to speak.
2. I quite recognize the kindness and forethought which have induced you to withdraw from circulation some copies of my work against Jovinian. Your diligence, however, has been of no avail, for several people coming from the city have repeatedly read aloud to me passages which they have come across in Rome. In this province, also, the books have already been circulated; and, as you have read yourself in Horace, "Words once uttered cannot be recalled." [1201] I am not so fortunate as are most of the writers of the day--able, that is, to correct my trifles whenever I like. When once I have written anything, either my admirers or my ill-wishers--from different motives, but with equal zeal--sow my work broadcast among the public; and their language, whether it is that of eulogy or of criticism, is apt to run to excess. [1202] They are guided not by the merits of the piece, but by their own angry feelings. Accordingly, I have done what I could. I have dedicated to you a defence of the work in question, feeling sure that when you have read it you will yourself satisfy the doubts of others on my behalf; or else, if you too turn up your nose at the task, you will have to explain in some new manner that section of the apostle [1203] in which he discusses virginity and marriage.
3. I do not speak thus that I may provoke you to write on the subject yourself--although I know your zeal in the study of the sacred writings to be greater than my own--but that you may compel my tormentors to do so. They are educated; in their own eyes no mean scholars; competent not merely to censure but to instruct me. If they write on the subject, my view will be the sooner neglected when it is compared with theirs. Read, I pray you, and diligently consider the words of the apostle, and you will then see that--with a view to avoid misrepresentation--I have been much more gentle towards married persons than he was disposed to be. Origen, Dionysius, Pierius, Eusebius of Cæsarea, Didymus, Apollinaris, have used great latitude in the interpretation of this epistle. [1204] When Pierius, sifting and expounding the apostle's meaning, comes to the words, "I would that all men were even as I myself," [1205] he makes this comment upon them: "In saying this Paul plainly preaches abstinence from marriage." Is the fault here mine, or am I responsible for harshness? Compared with this sentence of Pierius, [1206] all that I have ever written is mild indeed. Consult the commentaries of the above-named writers and take advantage of the Church libraries; you will then more speedily finish as you would wish the enterprise which you have so happily begun. [1207]
4. I hear that the hopes of the entire city are centred in you, and that bishop [1208] and people are agreed in wishing for your exaltation. To be a bishop [1209] is much, to deserve to be one is more.
If you read the books of the sixteen prophets [1210] which I have rendered into Latin from the Hebrew; and if, when you have done so, you express satisfaction with my labors, the news will encourage me to take out of my desk some other works now shut up in it. I have lately translated Job into our mother tongue: you will be able to borrow a copy of it from your cousin, the saintly Marcella. Read it both in Greek and in Latin, and compare the old version with my rendering. You will then clearly see that the difference between them is that between truth and falsehood. Some of my commentaries upon the twelve prophets I have sent to the reverend father Domnio, also the four books of Kings--that is, the two called Samuel and the two called Malâchim. [1211] If you care to read these you will learn for yourself how difficult it is to understand the Holy Scriptures, and particularly the prophets; and how through the fault of the translators passages which for the Jews flow clearly on for us abound with mistakes. Once more, you must not in my small writings look for any such eloquence as that which for Christ's sake you disregard in Cicero. A version made for the use of the Church, even though it may possess a literary charm, ought to disguise and avoid it as far as possible; in order that it may not speak to the idle schools and few disciples of the philosophers, but may address itself rather to the entire human race. __________________________________________________________________
[1201] Hor. AP. 390.
[1202] See the Preface to Jerome's Comm. on Daniel.
[1203] 1 Cor. vii.
[1204] 1 Corinthians.
[1205] 1 Cor. vii. 7.
[1206] Master of the catechetical school of Alexandria, 265 a.d. His writings have perished. His name occurs again in Letter LXX. § 4.
[1207] Ad optata cæptaque pervenies.
[1208] Pontifex.
[1209] Sacerdos.
[1210] Thus including Daniel.
[1211] The Hebrew word for "Kings." __________________________________________________________________
Letter L. To Domnio.
Domnio, a Roman (called in Letter XLV. "the Lot of our time"), had written to Jerome to tell him that an ignorant monk had been traducing his books "against Jovinian." Jerome, in reply, sharply rebukes the folly of his critic and comments on the want of straightforwardness in his conduct. He concludes the letter with an emphatic restatement of his original position. Written in 394 a.d.
1. Your letter is full at once of affection and of complaining. The affection is your own, which prompts you unceasingly to warn me of impending danger, and which makes you on my behalf
Of safest things distrustful and afraid. [1212]
The complaining is of those who have no love for me, and seek an occasion against me in my sins. They speak against their brother, they slander their own mother's son. [1213] You write to me of these--nay, of one in particular--a lounger who is to be seen in the streets, at crossings, and in public places; a monk who is a noisy news-monger, clever only in detraction, and eager, in spite of the beam in his own eye, to remove the mote in his neighbor's. [1214] And you tell me that he preaches publicly against me, gnawing, rending, and tearing asunder with his fangs the books that I have written against Jovinian. You inform me, moreover, that this home-grown dialectician, this mainstay of the Plautine company, has read neither the "Categories" of Aristotle nor his treatise "On Interpretation," nor his "Analytics," nor yet the "Topics" of Cicero, but that, moving as he does only in uneducated circles, and frequenting no society but that of weak women, he ventures to construct illogical syllogisms and to unravel by subtle arguments what he is pleased to call my sophisms. How foolish I have been to suppose that without philosophy there can be no knowledge of these subjects; and to account it a more important part of composition to erase than to write! In vain have I perused the commentaries of Alexander; to no purpose has a skilled teacher used the "Introduction" of Porphyry to instruct me in logic; and--to make light of human learning--I have gained nothing at all by having Gregory of Nazianzum and Didymus as my catechists in the Holy Scriptures. My acquisition of Hebrew has been wasted labor; and so also has been the daily study which from my youth I have bestowed upon the Law and the Prophets, the Gospels and the Apostles.
2. Here we have a man who has reached perfection without a teacher, so as to be a vehicle of the spirit and a self-taught genius. He surpasses Cicero in eloquence, Aristotle in argument, Plato in discretion, Aristarchus in learning, Didymus, that man of brass, in the number of his books; and not only Didymus, but all the writers of his time in his knowledge of the Scriptures. It is reported that you have only to give him a theme and he is always ready--like Carneades [1215] --to argue on this side or on that, for justice or against it. The world escaped a great danger, and civil actions and suits concerning succession were saved from a yawning gulf on the day when, despising the bar, he transferred himself to the Church. For, had he been unwilling, who could ever have been proved innocent? And, if he once began to reckon the points of the case upon his fingers, and to spread his syllogistic nets, what criminal would his pleading have failed to save? Had he but stamped his foot, or fixed his eyes, or knitted his brow, or moved his hand, or twirled his beard, he would at once have thrown dust in the eyes of the jury. No wonder that such a complete Latinist and so profound a master of eloquence overcomes poor me, who--as I have been some time [1216] away (from Rome), and without opportunities for speaking Latin--am half a Greek if not altogether a barbarian. No wonder, I say, that he overcomes me when his eloquence has crushed Jovinian in person. Good Jesus! what! even Jovinian that great and clever man! So clever, indeed, that no one can understand his writings, and that when he sings it is only for himself--and for the muses!
3. Pray, my dear father, warn this man not to hold language contrary to his profession, and not to undo with his words the chastity which he professes by his garb. Whether he elects to be a virgin or a married celibate--and the choice must rest with himself--he must not compare wives with virgins, for that would be to have striven in vain against Jovinian's eloquence. He likes, I am told, to visit the cells of widows and virgins, and to lecture them with his brows knit on sacred literature. What is it that he teaches these poor women in the privacy of their own chambers? Is it to feel assured that virgins are no better than wives? Is it to make the most of the flower of their age, to eat and drink, to frequent the baths, to live in luxury, and not to disdain the use of perfumes? Or does he preach to them chastity, fasting, and neglect of their persons? No doubt the precepts that he inculcates are full of virtue. But if so, let him admit publicly what he says privately. Or, if his private teaching is the same as his public, he should keep aloof altogether from the society of girls. He is a young man--a monk, and in his own eyes an eloquent one (do not pearls fall from his lips, and are not his elegant phrases sprinkled with comic salt and humor?)--I am surprised, therefore, that he can without a blush frequent noblemen's houses, pay constant visits to married ladies, make our religion a subject of contention, distort the faith of Christ by misapplying words, and--in addition to all this--detract from one who is his brother in the Lord. He may, however, have supposed me to be in error (for "in many things we offend all," and "if any man offend not in word he is a perfect man" [1217] ). In that case he should have written to convict me or to question me, the course taken by Pammachius, a man of high attainments and position. To this latter I defended myself as best I could, and in a lengthy letter explained the exact sense of my words. He might at least have copied the diffidence which led you to extract and arrange such passages as seemed to give offence; asking me for corrections or explanations, and not supposing me so mad that in one and the same book I should write for marriage and against it.
4. Let him spare himself, let him spare me, let him spare the Christian name. Let him realize his position as a monk, not by talking and arguing, but by holding his peace and sitting still. Let him read the words of Jeremiah: "It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth. He sitteth alone and keepeth silence, because he hath borne it upon him." [1218] Or if he has really the right to apply the censor's rod to all writers, and fancies himself a man of learning because he alone understands Jovinian (you know the proverb: Balbus best knows what Balbus means); yet, as Atilius [1219] reminds us, "we are not all writers." Jovinian himself--an unlettered man of letters if ever there was one--will with most justice proclaim the fact to him. "That the bishops condemn me," he says, "is not reason but treason. I want no answers from nobodies, who, while they have authority to put me down, have not the wit to teach me. Let one write against me who has a tongue that I can understand, and whom to vanquish will be to vanquish all.
"I know full well: believe me, I have felt
The hero's force when rising o'er his shield
He hurls his whizzing spear.' [1220]
He is strong in argument, intricate and tenacious, one to fight with his head down. Often has he cried out against me in the streets from late one night till early the next. He is a well-built man, and his thews are those of an athlete. Secretly I believe him to be a follower of my teaching. He never blushes or stops to weigh his words: his only aim is to speak as loud as possible. So famous is he for his eloquence that his sayings are held up as models to our curly-headed youngsters. [1221] How often, when I have met him at meetings, has he aroused my wrath and put me into a passion! How often has he spat upon me, and then departed spat upon! But these are vulgar methods, and any of my followers can use them. I appeal to books, to those memorials which must be handed down to posterity. Let us speak by our writings, that the silent reader may judge between us; and that, as I have a flock of disciples, he may have one also--flatterers and parasites worthy of the Gnatho and Phormio [1222] who is their master."
5. It is no difficult matter, my dear Domnio, to chatter at street corners or in apothecaries' shops and to pass judgment on the world. "So-and-so has made a good speech, so-and-so a bad one; this man knows the Scriptures, that one is crazy; this man talks glibly, that never says a word at all." But who considers him worthy thus to judge every one? To make an outcry against a man in every street, and to heap, not definite charges, but vague imputations, on his head, is nothing. Any buffoon or litigiously disposed person can do as much. Let him put forth his hand, put pen to paper, and bestir himself; let him write books and prove in them all he can. Let him give me a chance of replying to his eloquence. I can return bite for bite, if I like; when hurt myself, I can fix my teeth in my opponent. I too have had a liberal education. As Juvenal says, "I also have often withdrawn my hand from the ferule." [1223] Of me, too, it may be said in the words of Horace, "Flee from him; he has hay on his horn." [1224] But I prefer to be a disciple of Him who says, "I gave my back to the smiters...I hid not my face from shame and spitting." [1225] When He was reviled He reviled not again. [1226] After the buffeting, the cross, the scourge, the blasphemies, at the very last He prayed for His crucifiers, saying, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." [1227] I, too, pardon the error of a brother. He has been deceived, I feel sure, by the art of the devil. Among the women he was held clever and eloquent; but, when my poor writings reached Rome, dreading me as a rival, he tried to rob me of my laurels. No man on earth, he resolved, should please his eloquent self, unless such as commanded respect rather than sought it, and showed themselves men to be feared more than favored. A man of consummate address, he desired, like an old soldier, with one stroke of the sword to strike down both his enemies, [1228] and to make clear to every one that, whatever view he might take, Scripture was always with him. Well, he must condescend to send me his account of the matter, and to correct my indiscreet language, not by censure but by instruction. If he tries to do this, he will find that what seems forcible on a lounge is not equally forcible in court; and that it is one thing to discuss the doctrines of the divine law amid the spindles and work-baskets of girls and another to argue concerning them among men of education. As it is, without hesitation or shame, he raises again and again the noisy shout, "Jerome condemns marriage," and, whilst he constantly moves among women with child, crying infants, and marriage-beds, he suppresses the words of the apostle just to cover me--poor me--with odium. However, when he comes by and by to write books and to grapple with me at close quarters, then he will feel it, then he will stick fast; Epicurus and Aristippus [1229] will not be near him then; the swineherds [1230] will not come to his aid; the prolific sow [1231] will not so much as grunt. For I also may say, with Turnus:
Father, I too can launch a forceful spear,
And when I strike blood follows from the wound. [1232]
But if he refuses to write, and fancies that abuse is as effective as criticism, then, in spite of all the lands and seas and peoples which lie between us, he must hear at least the echo of my cry, "I do not condemn marriage," "I do not condemn wedlock." Indeed--and this I say to make my meaning quite clear to him--I should like every one to take a wife who, because they get frightened in the night, cannot manage to sleep alone. [1233] __________________________________________________________________
[1212] Virg. A. iv. 298.
[1213] Ps. l. 20.
[1214] Matt. vii. 3-5.
[1215] A philosopher of the Academy noted for his opposition to stoicism.
[1216] Eight years.
[1217] Jas. iii. 2.
[1218] Lam. iii. 27, 28.
[1219] An early Roman dramatist of whose works only a few fragments remain. He is said to have translated the Electra of Sophocles, but for the most part to have preferred comedy to tragedy.
[1220] Virgil, Æn. xi. 283, 284.
[1221] Persius i. 29.
[1222] Characters in the Eunuchus and Phormio of Terence.
[1223] Juv. i. 15.
[1224] Hor. S. i. iv. 34.
[1225] Isa. l. 6.
[1226] 1 Pet. ii. 23.
[1227] Luke xxiii. 34.
[1228] Viz. Jerome and Jovinian.
[1229] According to both these philosophers pleasure is the highest good.
[1230] The followers of Jovinian.
[1231] Jovinian himself.
[1232] Virg. A. xii. 50, 51.
[1233] Cic. pro Cælio xv. __________________________________________________________________
Letter LI. From Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis, in Cyprus, to John, Bishop of Jerusalem.
A coolness had arisen between these two bishops in connection with the Origenistic controversy, which at this time was at its height. Epiphanius had openly charged John with being an Origenist, and had also uncanonically conferred priests' orders on Jerome's brother Paulinian, in order that the monastery at Bethlehem might henceforth be entirely independent of John. Naturally, John resented this conduct and showed his resentment. The present letter is a kind of half-apology made by Epiphanius for what he had done, and like all such, it only seems to have made matters worse. The controversy is fully detailed in the treatise "Against John of Jerusalem" in this volume, esp. §11-14.
An interesting paragraph (§9) narrates how Epiphanius destroyed at Anablatha a church-curtain on which was depicted "a likeness of Christ or of some saint"--an early instance of the iconoclastic spirit.
Originally written in Greek, the letter was (by the writer's request) rendered into Latin by Jerome. Its date is 394 a.d.
To the lord bishop and dearly beloved brother, John, Epiphanius sends greeting.
1. It surely becomes us, dearly beloved, not to abuse our rank as clergy, so as to make it an occasion of pride, but by diligently keeping and observing God's commandments, to be in reality what in name we profess to be. For, if the Holy Scriptures say, "Their lots shall not profit them," [1234] what pride in our clerical position [1235] will be able to avail us who sin not only in thought and feeling, but in speech? I have heard, of course, that you are incensed against me, that you are angry, and that you threaten to write about me--not merely to particular places and provinces, but to the uttermost ends of the earth. Where is that fear of God which should make us tremble with the trembling spoken of by the Lord--"Whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment"? [1236] Not that I greatly care for your writing what you please. For Isaiah tells us [1237] of letters written on papyrus and cast upon the waters--missives soon carried away by time and tide. I have done you no harm, I have inflicted no injury upon you, I have extorted nothing from you by violence. My action concerned a monastery whose inmates were foreigners in no way subject to your provincial jurisdiction. Moreover their regard for my insignificance and for the letters which I frequently addressed to them had commenced to produce a feeling of dislike to communion with you. Feeling, therefore, that too great strictness or scrupulosity on my part might have the effect of alienating them from the Church with its ancient faith, I ordained one of the brothers deacon, and after he had ministered as such, admitted him to the priesthood. You should, I think, have been grateful to me for this, knowing, as you surely must, that it is the fear of God which has compelled me to act in this way, and particularly when you recollect that God's priesthood is everywhere the same, and that I have simply made provision for the wants of the Church. For, although each individual bishop of the Church has under him churches which are placed in his charge, and although no man may stretch himself beyond his measure, [1238] yet the love of Christ, which is without dissimulation, [1239] is set up as an example to us all; and we must consider not so much the thing done as the time and place, the mode and motive, of doing it. I saw that the monastery contained a large number of reverend brothers, and that the reverend presbyters, Jerome and Vincent, through modesty and humility, were unwilling to offer the sacrifices permitted to their rank, and to labor in that part of their calling which ministers more than any other to the salvation of Christians. I knew, moreover, that you could not find or lay hands on this servant of God [1240] who had several times fled from you simply because he was reluctant to undertake the onerous duties of the priesthood, and that no other bishop could easily find him. Accordingly, I was a good deal surprised when, by the ordering of God, he came to me with the deacons of the monastery and others of the brethren, to make satisfaction to me for some grievance or other which I had against them. While, therefore, the Collect [1241] was being celebrated in the church of the villa which adjoins our monastery--he being quite ignorant and wholly unsuspicious of my purpose--I gave orders to a number of deacons to seize him and to stop his mouth, lest in his eagerness to free himself he might adjure me in the name of Christ. First of all, then, I ordained him deacon, setting before him the fear of God, and forcing him to minister; for he made a hard struggle against it, crying out that he was unworthy, and protesting that this heavy burden was beyond his strength. It was with difficulty, then, that I overcame his reluctance, persuading him as well as I could with passages from Scripture, and setting before him the commandments of God. And when he had ministered in the offering of the holy sacrifices, once more with great difficulty I closed his mouth and ordained him presbyter. Then, using the same arguments as before, I induced him to sit in the place set apart for the presbyters. After this I wrote to the reverend presbyters and other brothers of the monastery, chiding them for not having written to me about him. For a year before I had heard many of them complain that they had no one to celebrate for them the sacraments of the Lord. All then agreed in asking him to undertake the duty, pointing out how great his usefulness would be to the community of the monastery. I blamed them for omitting to write to me and to propose that I should ordain him, when the opportunity was given to them to do so.
2. All this I have done, as I said just now, relying on that Christian love which you, I feel sure, cherish towards my insignificance; not to mention the fact that I held the ordination in a monastery, and not within the limits of your jurisdiction. How truly blessed is the mildness and complacency of the bishops of (my own) Cyprus, as well as their simplicity, though to your refinement and discrimination it appears deserving only of God's pity! For many bishops in communion with me have ordained presbyters in my province whom I had been unable to capture, and have sent to me deacons and subdeacons [1242] whom I have been glad to receive. I myself, too, have urged the bishop Philo of blessed memory, and the reverend Theoprepus, to make provision for the Church of Christ by ordaining presbyters in those churches of Cyprus which, although they were accounted to belong to my see, happened to be close to them, and this for the reason that my province was large and straggling. But for my part I have never ordained deaconesses nor sent them into the provinces of others, [1243] nor have I done anything to rend the Church. Why, then, have you thought fit to be so angry and indignant with me for that work of God which I have wrought for the edification of the brethren, and not for their destruction? [1244] Moreover, I have been much surprised at the assertion which you have made to my clergy, that you sent me a message by that reverend presbyter, the abbot Gregory, that I was to ordain no one, and that I promised to comply, saying, "Am I a stripling, or do I not know the canons?" By God's word I am telling you the truth when I say that I know and have heard nothing of all this, and that I have not the slightest recollection of using any language of the sort. As, however, I have had misgivings, lest possibly, being only a man, I may have forgotten this among so many other matters, I have made inquiry of the reverend Gregory, and of the presbyter Zeno, who is with him. Of these, the abbot Gregory replies that he knows nothing whatever about the matter, while Zeno says that the presbyter Rufinus, in the course of some desultory remarks, spoke these words. "Will the reverend bishop, think you, venture to ordain any persons?" but that the conversation went no further. I, Epiphanius, however, have never either received the message or answered it. Do not, then, dearly beloved, allow your anger to overcome you or your indignation to get the better of you, lest you should disquiet yourself in vain; and lest you should be thought to be putting forward this grievance only to get scope for tendencies of another kind, [1245] and thus to have sought out an occasion of sinning. It is to avoid this that the prophet prays to the Lord, saying: "Turn not aside my heart to words of wickedness, to making excuses for my sins." [1246]
3. This also I have been surprised to hear, that certain persons who are in the habit of carrying tales backwards and forwards, and of always adding something fresh to what they have heard, to stir up grievances and disputes between brothers, have succeeded in disquieting you by saying that, when I offer sacrifices to God, I am wont to say this prayer on your behalf: "Grant, O Lord, to John grace to believe aright." Do not suppose me so untutored as to be capable of saying this so openly. To tell you the simple truth, my dearest brother, although I continually use this prayer mentally, I have never confided it to the ears of others, lest I should seem to dishonor you. But when I repeat the prayers required by the ritual of the mysteries, then I say on behalf of all and of you as well as others, "Guard him, that he may preach the truth," or at least this, "Do Thou, O Lord, grant him Thine aid, and guard him, that he may preach the word of truth," as occasion offers itself for the words, and as the turn comes for the particular prayer. Wherefore I beseech you, dearly beloved, and, casting myself down at your feet, I entreat you to grant to me and to yourself this one prayer, that you would save yourself, as it is written, "from an untoward generation." [1247] Withdraw, dearly beloved, from the heresy of Origen and from all heresies. For I see that all your indignation has been roused against me simply because I have told you that you ought not to eulogize one who is the spiritual father of Arius, and the root and parent of all heresies. And when I appealed to you not to go astray, and warned you of the consequences, you traversed my words, and reduced me to tears and sadness; and not me only, but many other Catholics who were present. [1248] This I take to be the origin of your indignation and of your passion on the present occasion. On this account you threaten to send out letters against me, and to circulate your version of the matter in all directions; [1249] and thus, while with a view to defending your heresy you kindle men's passions against me, you break through the charity which I have shown towards you, and act with so little discretion that you make me regret that I have held communion with you, and that I have by so doing upheld the erroneous opinions of Origen.
4. I speak plainly. To use the language of Scripture, I do not spare to pluck out my own eye if it cause me to offend, nor to cut off my hand and my foot if they cause me to do so. [1250] And you must be treated in the same way whether you are my eyes, or my hands, or my feet. For what Catholic, what Christian who adorns his faith with good works, can hear with calmness Origen's teaching and counsel, or believe in his extraordinary preaching? "The Son," he tells us, "cannot see the Father, and the Holy Spirit cannot see the Son." These words occur in his book "On First Principles;" thus we read, and thus Origen has spoken. "For as it is unsuitable to say that the Son can see the Father, it is consequently unsuitable to suppose that the Spirit can see the Son." [1251] Can any one, moreover, brook Origen's assertion that men's souls were once angels in heaven, and that having sinned in the upper world, they have been cast down into this, and have been confined in bodies as in barrows or tombs, to pay the penalty for their former sins; and that the bodies of believers are not temples of Christ, [1252] but prisons of the condemned? Again, he tampers with the true meaning of the narrative by a false use of allegory, multiplying words without limit; and undermines the faith of the simple by the most varied arguments. Now he maintains that souls, in Greek the "cool things," from a word meaning to be cool, [1253] are so called because in coming down from the heavenly places to the lower world they have lost their former heat; [1254] and now, that our bodies are called by the Greeks chains, from a word meaning chain, [1255] or else (on the analogy of our own Latin word) "things fallen," [1256] because our souls have fallen from heaven; and that the other word for body which the abundance of the Greek idiom supplies [1257] is by many taken to mean a funeral monument, [1258] because the soul is shut up within it in the same way as the corpses of the dead are shut up in tombs and barrows. If this doctrine is true what becomes of our faith? Where is the preaching of the resurrection? Where is the teaching of the apostles, which lasts on to this day in the churches of Christ? Where is the blessing to Adam, and to his seed, and to Noah and his sons? "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth." [1259] According to Origen, these words must be a curse and not a blessing; for he turns angels into human souls, compelling them to leave the place of highest rank and to come down lower, as though God were unable through the action of His blessing to grant souls to the human race, had the angels not sinned, and as though for every birth on earth there must be a fall in heaven. We are to give up, then, the teaching of apostles and prophets, of the law, and of our Lord and Saviour Himself, in spite of His language loud as thunder in the gospel. Origen, on the other hand, commands and urges--not to say binds--his disciples not to pray to ascend into heaven, lest sinning once more worse than they had sinned on earth they should be hurled down into the world again. Such foolish and insane notions he generally confirms by distorting the sense of the Scriptures and making them mean what they do not mean at all. He quotes this passage from the Psalms: "Before thou didst humble me by reason of my wickedness, I went wrong;" [1260] and this, "Return unto thy rest, O my soul;" [1261] this also, "Bring my soul out of prison;" [1262] and this, "I will make confession unto the Lord in the land of the living," [1263] although there can be no doubt that the meaning of the divine Scripture is different from the interpretation by which he unfairly wrests it to the support of his own heresy. This way of acting is common to the Manichæans, the Gnostics, the Ebionites, the Marcionites, and the votaries of the other eighty heresies, [1264] all of whom draw their proofs from the pure well of the Scriptures, not, however, interpreting it in the sense in which it is written, but trying to make the simple language of the Church's writers accord with their own wishes.
5. Of one position which he strives to maintain I hardly know whether it calls for my tears or my laughter. This wonderful doctor presumes to teach that the devil will once more be what he at one time was, that he will return to his former dignity and rise again to the kingdom of heaven. Oh horror! that a man should be so frantic and foolish as to hold that John the Baptist, Peter, the apostle and evangelist John, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the rest of the prophets, are made co-heirs of the devil in the kingdom of heaven! I pass over his idle explanation of the coats of skins, [1265] and say nothing of the efforts and arguments he has used to induce us to believe that these coats of skins represent human bodies. Among many other things, he says this: "Was God a tanner or a saddler, that He should prepare the hides of animals, and should stitch from them coats of skins for Adam and Eve?" "It is clear," he goes on, "that he is speaking of human bodies." If this is so, how is it that before the coats of skins, and the disobedience, and the fall from paradise, Adam speaks not in an allegory, but literally, thus: "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh;" [1266] or what is the ground of the divine narrative, "And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept; and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; and the rib which the Lord God had taken from man, made He a woman" [1267] for him? Or what bodies can Adam and Eve have covered with fig-leaves after eating of the forbidden tree? [1268] Who can patiently listen to the perilous arguments of Origen when he denies the resurrection of this flesh, as he most clearly does in his book of explanations of the first psalm and in many other places? Or who can tolerate him when he gives us a paradise in the third heaven, and transfers that which the Scripture mentions from earth to the heavenly places, and when he explains allegorically all the trees which are mentioned in Genesis, saying in effect that the trees are angelic potencies, a sense which the true drift of the passage does not admit? For the divine Scripture has not said, "God put down Adam and Eve upon the earth," but "He drove them out of the paradise, and made them dwell over against the paradise." [1269] He does not say "under the paradise." "He placed...cherubims and a flaming sword...to keep the way of [1270] the tree of life." [1271] He says nothing about an ascent to it. "And a river went out of Eden." [1272] He does not say "went down from Eden." "It was parted and became into four heads. The name of the first is Pison...and the name of the second is Gihon." [1273] I myself have seen the waters of Gihon, have seen them with my bodily eyes. It is this Gihon to which Jeremiah points when he says, "What hast thou to do in the way of Egypt to drink the muddy water of Gihon?" [1274] I have drunk also from the great river Euphrates, not spiritual but actual water, such as you can touch with your hand and imbibe with your mouth. But where there are rivers which admit of being seen and of being drunk, it follows that there also there will be fig-trees and other trees; and it is of these that the Lord says, "Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat." [1275] They are like other trees and timber, just as the rivers are like other rivers and waters. But if the water is visible and real, then the fig-tree and the rest of the timber must be real also, and Adam and Eve must have been originally formed with real and not phantasmal bodies, and not, as Origen would have us believe, have afterwards received them on account of their sin. But, you say, "we read that Saint Paul was caught up to the third heaven, into paradise." [1276] You explain the words rightly: "When he mentions the third heaven, and then adds the word paradise, he shows that heaven is in one place and paradise in another." Must not every one reject and despise such special pleading as that by which Origen says of the waters that are above the firmament [1277] that they are not waters, but heroic beings of angelic power, [1278] and again of the waters that are over the earth--that is, below the firmament--that they are potencies [1279] of the contrary sort--that is, demons? If so, why do we read in the account of the deluge that the windows of heaven were opened, and that the waters of the deluge prevailed? in consequence of which the fountains of the deep were opened, and the whole earth was covered with the waters. [1280]
6. Oh! the madness and folly of those who have forsaken the teaching of the book of Proverbs, "My son, keep thy father's commandment, and forsake not the law of thy mother," [1281] and have turned to error, and say to the fool that he shall be their leader, and do not despise the foolish things which are said by the foolish man, even as the scripture bears witness, "The foolish man speaketh foolishly, and his heart understandeth vanity." [1282] I beseech you, dearly beloved, and by the love which I feel towards you, I implore you--as though it were my own members on which I would have pity [1283] --by word and letter to fulfil that which is written, "Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate thee? and am not I grieved with those that rise up against thee?" [1284] Origen's words are the words of an enemy, hateful and repugnant to God and to His saints; and not only those which I have quoted, but countless others. For it is not now my intention to argue against all his opinions. Origen has not lived in my day, nor has he robbed me. I have not conceived a dislike to him nor quarrelled with him because of an inheritance or of any worldly matter; but--to speak plainly--I grieve, and grieve bitterly, to see numbers of my brothers, and of those in particular who show the most promise, and have reached the highest rank in the sacred ministry, [1285] deceived by his persuasive arguments, and made by his most perverse teaching the food of the devil, whereby the saying is fulfilled: "He derides every stronghold, and his fare is choice, and he hath gathered captives as the sand." [1286] But may God free you, my brother, and the holy people of Christ which is intrusted to you, and all the brothers who are with you, and especially the presbyter Rufinus, from the heresy of Origen, and other heresies, and from the perdition to which they lead. For, if for one word or for two opposed to the faith many heresies have been rejected by the Church, how much more shall he be held a heretic who has contrived such perverse interpretations and such mischievous doctrines to destroy the faith, and has in fact declared himself the enemy of the Church! For, among other wicked things, he has presumed to say this, too, that Adam lost the image of God, although Scripture nowhere declares that he did. Were it so, never would all the creatures in the world be subject to Adam's seed--that is, to the entire human race; yet, in the words of the apostle, everything "is tamed and hath been tamed of mankind." [1287] For never would all things be subjected to men if men had not--together with their authority over all--the image of God. But the divine Scripture conjoins and associates with this the grace of the blessing which was conferred upon Adam and upon the generations which descended from him. No one can by twisting the meaning of words presume to say that this grace of God was given to one only, and that he alone was made in the image of God (he and his wife, that is, for while he was formed of clay she was made of one of his ribs), but that those who were subsequently conceived in the womb and not born as was Adam did not possess God's image, for the Scripture immediately subjoins the following statement: "And Adam lived two hundred and thirty years, [1288] and knew Eve his wife, and she bare him a son in his image and after his likeness, and called his name Seth." [1289] And again, in the tenth generation, two thousand two hundred and forty-two years afterwards, [1290] God, to vindicate His own image and to show that the grace which He had given to men still continued in them, gives the following commandment: "Flesh...with the blood thereof shall ye not eat. And surely your blood will I require at the hand of every man that sheddeth it; for in the image of God have I made man." [1291] From Noah to Abraham ten generations passed away, [1292] and from Abraham's time to David's, fourteen more, [1293] and these twenty-four generations make up, taken together, two thousand one hundred and seventeen years. [1294] Yet the Holy Spirit in the thirty-ninth [1295] psalm, while lamenting that all men walk in a vain show, and that they are subject to sins, speaks thus: "For all that every man walketh in the image." [1296] Also after David's time, in the reign of Solomon his son, we read a somewhat similar reference to the divine likeness. For in the book of Wisdom, which is inscribed with his name, Solomon says: "God created man to be immortal, and made him to be an image of His own eternity." [1297] And again, about eleven hundred and eleven years afterwards, we read in the New Testament that men have not lost the image of God. For James, an apostle and brother of the Lord, whom I have mentioned above--that we may not be entangled in the snares of Origen--teaches us that man does possess God's image and likeness. For, after a somewhat discursive account of the human tongue, he has gone on to say of it: "It is an unruly evil...therewith bless we God, even the Father and therewith curse we men, which are made after the similitude of God." [1298] Paul, too, the "chosen vessel," [1299] who in his preaching has fully maintained the doctrine of the gospel, instructs us that man is made in the image and after the likeness of God. "A man," he says, "ought not to wear long hair, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God." [1300] He speaks of "the image" simply, but explains the nature of the likeness by the word "glory."
7. Instead of the three proofs from Holy Scripture which you said would satisfy you if I could produce them, behold I have given you seven. Who, then, will put up with the follies of Origen? I will not use a severer word and so make myself like him or his followers, who presume at the peril of their soul to assert dogmatically whatever first comes into their head, and to dictate to God, whereas they ought either to pray to Him or to learn the truth from Him. For some of them say that the image of God which Adam had previously received was lost when he sinned. Others surmise that the body which the Son of God was destined to take of Mary was the image of the Creator. Some identify this image with the soul, others with sensation, others with virtue. These make it baptism, those assert that it is in virtue of God's image that man exercises universal sway. Like drunkards in their cups, they ejaculate now this, now that, when they ought rather to have avoided so serious a risk, and to have obtained salvation by simple faith, not denying the words of God. To God they ought to have left the sure and exact knowledge of His own gift, and of the particular way in which He has created men in His image and after His likeness. Forsaking this course, they have involved themselves in many subtle questions, and through these they have been plunged into the mire of sin. But we, dearly beloved, believe the words of the Lord, and know that God's image remains in all men, and we leave it to Him to know in what respect man is created in His image. And let no one be deceived by that passage in the epistle of John, which some readers fail to understand, where he says: "Now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is." [1301] For this refers to the glory which is then to be revealed [1302] to His saints; just as also in another place we read the words "from glory to glory," [1303] of which glory the saints have even in this world received an earnest and a small portion. At their head stands Moses, whose face shone exceedingly, and was bright with the brightness of the sun. [1304] Next to him comes Elijah, who was caught up into heaven in a chariot of fire, [1305] and did not feel the effects of the flame. Stephen, too, when he was being stoned, had the face of an angel visible to all. [1306] And this which we have verified in a few cases is to be understood of all, that what is written may be fulfilled. "Every one that sanctifieth himself shall be numbered among the blessed." For, "blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." [1307]
8. These things being so, dearly beloved, keep watch over your own soul and cease to murmur against me. For the divine Scripture says: "Neither murmur ye [one against another [1308] ] as some of them also murmured, and were destroyed of serpents." [1309] Rather give way to the truth and love me who love both you and the truth. And may the God of peace, according to His mercy, grant to us that Satan may be bruised under the feet of Christians, [1310] and that every occasion of evil may be shunned, so that the bond of love and peace may not be rent asunder between us, or the preaching of the right faith be anywise hindered.
9. Moreover, I have heard that certain persons have this grievance against me: When I accompanied you to the holy place called Bethel, there to join you in celebrating the Collect, [1311] after the use of the Church, I came to a villa called Anablatha and, as I was passing, saw a lamp burning there. Asking what place it was, and learning it to be a church, I went in to pray, and found there a curtain hanging on the doors of the said church, dyed and embroidered. [1312] It bore an image either of Christ or of one of the saints; I do not rightly remember whose the image was. Seeing this, and being loth that an image of a man should be hung up in Christ's church contrary to the teaching of the Scriptures, I tore it asunder and advised the custodians of the place to use it as a winding sheet for some poor person. They, however, murmured, and said that if I made up my mind to tear it, it was only fair that I should give them another curtain in its place. As soon as I heard this, I promised that I would give one, and said that I would send it at once. Since then there has been some little delay, due to the fact that I have been seeking a curtain of the best quality to give to them instead of the former one, and thought it right to send to Cyprus for one. I have now sent the best that I could find, and I beg that you will order the presbyter of the place to take the curtain which I have sent from the hands of the Reader, and that you will afterwards give directions that curtains of the other sort--opposed as they are to our religion--shall not be hung up in any church of Christ. A man of your uprightness should be careful to remove an occasion of offence [1313] unworthy alike of the Church of Christ and of those Christians who are committed to your charge. Beware of Palladius of Galatia--a man once dear to me, but who now sorely needs God's pity--for he preaches and teaches the heresy of Origen; and see to it that he does not seduce any of those who are intrusted to your keeping into the perverse ways of his erroneous doctrine. I pray that you may fare well in the Lord. __________________________________________________________________
[1234] Jer. xii. 13, LXX.
[1235] A play on words. Clericatus ("clerical position") is a derivative of clerus (kleros), the word used in the LXX. for "lot."
[1236] Matt. v. 22.
[1237] Isa. xviii. 2, LXX.
[1238] Cf. 2 Cor. x. 14.
[1239] Rom. xii. 9.
[1240] Paulinian, Jerome's brother, at this time about 28 years of age.
[1241] I.e. the short service which preceded the eucharist. The words might, however, be rendered, "When the congregation was gathered together."
[1242] Subdeacons cannot be traced back earlier than the third century. At first their province seems to have been to keep the church doors during divine service.
[1243] It seems to be implied that John had done so.
[1244] 2 Cor. x. 8.
[1245] That is, Origenistic heresies.
[1246] Ps. cxli. 4, acc. to the Gallican Psalter.
[1247] Acts ii. 40.
[1248] Epiphanius, on a visit to Jerusalem, had preached against Origenism in the presence of John. See "Ag. John of Jerus.," § 11.
[1249] John actually did write to Theophilus of Alexandria giving a full account of the controversy from his (John's) point of view. (Ag. J. of Jerus., §37.)
[1250] Matt. xviii. 8, 9.
[1251] First Principles, i. 1; ii. 4.
[1252] 1 Cor. vi. 15, 19.
[1253] psuchai apo tou psuchesthai. The etymology is right, but the explanation of it wrong.
[1254] First Principles ii. 8.
[1255] demas as if from deo, "I bind."
[1256] ptoma, from piptein: cadaver, from cado.
[1257] soma.
[1258] sema.
[1259] Gen. i. 28; ix. 7.
[1260] Ps. cxix. 67. From memory, or perhaps from the old Latin version.
[1261] Ps. cxvi. 7.
[1262] Ps. cxlii. 7.
[1263] Ps. cxvi. 9. This form of the verse is peculiar to Jerome.
[1264] Epiphanius had written a book "against all the heresies."
[1265] In his note on Gen. iii. 21.
[1266] Gen. ii. 23.
[1267] Gen. ii. 21, 22.
[1268] Gen. iii. 7.
[1269] Gen. iii. 23, LXX.
[1270] Introitus.
[1271] Gen. iii. 24.
[1272] Gen. ii. 10.
[1273] Gen. ii. 10, 11, 13.
[1274] Jer. ii. 18, LXX. and Vulg.
[1275] Gen. ii. 16.
[1276] 2 Cor. xii. 2, 4.
[1277] In his note on Gen. i. 7.
[1278] Fortitudines angelicæ potestatis.
[1279] Virtues.
[1280] Gen. vii. 11.
[1281] Prov. vi. 20.
[1282] Isa. xxxii. 6, Vulg.
[1283] Cf. Philem. 12.
[1284] Ps. cxxxix. 21.
[1285] Sacerdotium.
[1286] Hab. i. 10, 16, 9, LXX.
[1287] Jas. iii. 7.
[1288] LXX. The Heb. text which A.V. follows gives "an hundred and thirty years."
[1289] Gen. iv. 25; v. 3; i. 26.
[1290] According to the LXX. The chronology of the Hebrew text gives a period of 1656 years (Gen. v.).
[1291] Gen. ix. 4-6; substantially as in A.V.
[1292] Gen. xi. 10-26.
[1293] Matt. i. 17.
[1294] This calculation appears to be based on the LXX.
[1295] Acc. to the Vulg., which Jerome here follows, the thirty-eighth.
[1296] Ps. xxxix. 6. "In a vain show," R.V.
[1297] Wisd. ii. 23.
[1298] Jas. iii. 8, 9.
[1299] Acts. ix. 15.
[1300] 1 Cor. xi. 7.
[1301] 1 Joh. iii. 2.
[1302] 1 Pet. v. 1.
[1303] 2 Cor. iii. 18.
[1304] Exod. xxxiv. 29 sqq.; 2 Cor. iii. 7.
[1305] 2 Kings ii. 11.
[1306] Acts vi. 15.
[1307] Matt. v. 8.
[1308] Words added by this writer.
[1309] 1 Cor. x. 10.
[1310] Rom. xvi. 20.
[1311] See note on § 1 above.
[1312] Velum...tinctum atque depictum.
[1313] Scrupulositas. __________________________________________________________________
Letter LII. To Nepotian.
Nepotian, the nephew of Heliodorus (for whom see Letter XIV.), had, like his uncle, abandoned the military for the clerical calling, and was now a presbyter at Altinum, where Heliodorus was bishop. The letter is a systematic treatise on the duties of the clergy and on the rule of life which they ought to adopt. It had a great vogue, and called forth much indignation against Jerome. Its date is 394 a.d.
1. Again and again you ask me, my dear Nepotian, in your letters from over the sea, to draw for you a few rules of life, showing how one who has renounced the service of the world to become a monk or a clergyman may keep the straight path of Christ, and not be drawn aside into the haunts of vice. As a young man, or rather as a boy, and while I was curbing by the hard life of the desert the first onslaughts of youthful passion, I sent a letter of remonstrance [1314] to your reverend uncle, Heliodorus, which, by the tears and complainings with which it was filled, showed him the feelings of the friend whom he had deserted. In it I acted the part suited to my age, and as I was still aglow with the methods and maxims of the rhetoricians, I decked it out a good deal with the flourishes of the schools. Now, however, my head is gray, my brow is furrowed, a dewlap like that of an ox hangs from my chin, and, as Virgil says,
The chilly blood stands still around my heart. [1315]
Elsewhere he sings:
Old age bears all, even the mind, away.
And a little further on:
So many of my songs are gone from me,
And even my very voice has left me now. [1316]
2. But that I may not seem to quote only profane literature, listen to the mystical teaching of the sacred writings. Once David had been a man of war, but at seventy age had chilled him so that nothing would make him warm. A girl is accordingly sought from the coasts of Israel--Abishag the Shunamite--to sleep with the king and warm his aged frame. [1317] Does it not seem to you--if you keep to the letter that killeth [1318] --like some farcical story or some broad jest from an Atellan play? [1319] A chilly old man is wrapped up in blankets, and only grows warm in a girl's embrace. Bathsheba was still living, Abigail was still left, and the remainder of those wives and concubines whose names the Scripture mentions. Yet they are all rejected as cold, and only in the one young girl's embrace does the old man become warm. Abraham was far older than David; still, so long as Sarah lived he sought no other wife. Isaac counted twice the years of David, yet never felt cold with Rebekah, old though she was. I say nothing of the antediluvians, who, although after nine hundred years their limbs must have been not old merely, but decayed with age, had no recourse to girls' embraces. Moses, the leader of the Israelites, counted one hundred and twenty years, yet sought no change from Zipporah.
3. Who, then, is this Shunamite, this wife and maid, so glowing as to warm the cold, yet so holy as not to arouse passion in him whom she warmed? [1320] Let Solomon, wisest of men, tell us of his father's favorite; let the man of peace [1321] recount to us the embraces of the man of war. [1322] "Get wisdom," he writes, "get understanding: forget it not; neither decline from the words of my mouth. Forsake her not and she shall preserve thee: love her and she shall keep thee. Wisdom is the principal thing, therefore get wisdom, and with all thy getting get understanding. Exalt her and she shall promote thee. She shall bring thee to honor when thou dost embrace her. She shall give to thine head an ornament of grace: a crown of glory shall she deliver to thee." [1323]
Almost all bodily excellences alter with age, and while wisdom alone increases all things else decay. Fasts and vigils and almsdeeds become harder. So also do sleeping on the ground, moving from place to place, hospitality to travellers, pleading for the poor, earnestness and steadfastness in prayer, the visitation of the sick, manual labor to supply money for alms-giving. All acts, in short, of which the body is the medium decrease with its decay.
Now, there are young men still full of life and vigor who, by toil and burning zeal, as well as by holiness of life and constant prayer to the Lord Jesus, have obtained knowledge. I do not speak of these, or say that in them the love of wisdom is cold, for this withers in many of the old by reason of age. What I mean is that youth, as such, has to cope with the assaults of passion, and amid the allurements of vice and the tinglings of the flesh is stifled like a fire among green boughs, and cannot develop its proper brightness. But when men have employed their youth in commendable pursuits and have meditated on the law of the Lord day and night, [1324] they learn with the lapse of time, fresh experience and wisdom come as the years go by, and so from the pursuits of the past their old age reaps a harvest of delight. Hence that wise man of Greece, Themistocles, [1325] perceiving, after the expiration of one hundred and seven years, that he was on the verge of the grave, is reported to have said that he regretted extremely having to leave life just when he was beginning to grow wise. Plato died in his eighty-first year, his pen still in his hand. Isocrates completed ninety years and nine in the midst of literary and scholastic work. [1326] I say nothing of other philosophers, such as Pythagoras, Democritus, Xenocrates, Zeno, and Cleanthes, who in extreme old age displayed the vigor of youth in the pursuit of wisdom. I pass on to the poets, Homer, Hesiod, Simonides, Stesichorus, who all lived to a great age, yet at the approach of death sang each of them a swan song sweeter than their wont. [1327] Sophocles, when charged by his sons with dotage on account of his advanced years and his neglect of his property, read out to his judges his recently composed play of OEdipus, and made so great a display of wisdom--in spite of the inroads of time--that he changed the decorous silence of the law court into the applause of the theatre. [1328] And no wonder, when Cato the censor, that most eloquent of Romans, in his old age neither blushed at the thought of learning Greek nor despaired of succeeding. [1329] Homer, for his part, relates that from the tongue of Nestor, even when quite aged and helpless, there flowed speech sweeter than honey. [1330]
Even the very name Abishag in its mystic meaning points to the greater wisdom of old men. For the translation of it is, "My father is over and above," or "my father's roaring." The term "over and above" is obscure, but in this passage is indicative of excellence, and implies that the old have a larger stock of wisdom, and that it even overflows by reason of its abundance. In another passage "over and above" forms an antithesis to "necessary." Moreover, Abishag, that is, "roaring," is properly used of the sound which the waves make, and of the murmur which we hear coming from the sea. From which it is plain that the thunder of the divine voice dwells in old men's ears with a volume of sound beyond the voices of men. Again, in our tongue Shunamite means "scarlet," a hint that the love of wisdom becomes warm and glowing through religious study. For though the color may point to the mystery of the Lord's blood, it also sets forth the warm glow of wisdom. Hence it is a scarlet thread that in Genesis the midwife binds upon the hand of Pharez--Pharez "the divider," so called because he divided the partition which had before separated two peoples. [1331] So, too, with a mystic reference to the shedding of blood, it was a scarlet cord which the harlot Rahab (a type of the church) hung in her window to preserve her house in the destruction of Jericho. [1332] Hence, in another place Scripture says of holy men: "These are they which came from the warmth of the house of the father of Rechab." [1333] And in the gospel the Lord says: "I am come to cast fire upon the earth, and fain am I to see it kindled." [1334] This was the fire which, when it was kindled in the disciples' hearts, constrained them to say: "Did not our heart burn within us while He talked with us by the way, and while He opened to us the Scriptures?" [1335]
4. To what end, you ask, these recondite references? To show that you need not expect from me boyish declamation, flowery sentiments, a meretricious style, and at the close of every paragraph the terse and pointed aphorisms which call forth approving shouts from those who hear them. Let Wisdom alone embrace me; let her nestle in my bosom, my Abishag who grows not old. Undefiled truly is she, and a virgin forever for although she daily conceives and unceasingly brings to the birth, like Mary she remains undeflowered. When the apostle says "be fervent in spirit," [1336] he means "be true to wisdom." And when our Lord in the gospel declares that in the end of the world--when the shepherd shall grow foolish, according to the prophecy of Zechariah [1337] --"the love of many shall wax cold," [1338] He means that wisdom shall decay. Hear, therefore--to quote the sainted Cyprian--"words forcible rather than elegant." [1339] Hear one who, though he is your brother in orders, is in years your father; who can conduct you from the cradle of faith to spiritual manhood; and who, while he builds up stage by stage the rules of holy living, can instruct others in instructing you. I know, of course, that from your reverend uncle, Heliodorus, now a bishop of Christ, you have learned and are daily learning all that is holy; and that in him you have before you a rule of life and a pattern of virtue. Take, then, my suggestions for what they are worth, and compare my precepts with his. He will teach you the perfection of a monk, and I shall show you the whole duty of a clergyman.
5. A clergyman, then, as he serves Christ's church, must first understand what his name means; and then, when he realizes this, must endeavor to be that which he is called. For since the Greek word kleros means "lot," or "inheritance," the clergy are so called either because they are the lot of the Lord, or else because the Lord Himself is their lot and portion. Now, he who in his own person is the Lord's portion, or has the Lord for his portion, must so bear himself as to possess the Lord and to be possessed by Him. He who possesses the Lord, and who says with the prophet, "The Lord is my portion," [1340] can hold to nothing beside the Lord. For if he hold to something beside the Lord, the Lord will not be his portion. Suppose, for instance, that he holds to gold or silver, or possessions or inlaid furniture; with such portions as these the Lord will not deign to be his portion. I, if I am the portion of the Lord, and the line of His heritage, [1341] receive no portion among the remaining tribes; but, like the Priest and the Levite, I live on the tithe, [1342] and serving the altar, am supported by its offerings. [1343] Having food and raiment, I shall be content with these, [1344] and as a disciple of the Cross shall share its poverty. I beseech you, therefore, and
Again and yet again admonish you; [1345]
do not look to your military experience for a standard of clerical obligation. Under Christ's banner seek for no worldly gain, lest having more than when you first became a clergyman, you hear men say, to your shame, "Their portion shall not profit them." [1346] Welcome poor men and strangers to your homely board, that with them Christ may be your guest. A clergyman who engages in business, and who rises from poverty to wealth, and from obscurity to a high position, avoid as you would the plague. For "evil communications corrupt good manners." [1347] You despise gold; he loves it. You spurn wealth; he eagerly pursues it. You love silence, meekness, privacy; he takes delight in talking and effrontery, in squares, and streets, and apothecaries' shops. What unity of feeling can there be where there is so wide a divergency of manners?
A woman's foot should seldom, if ever, cross the threshold of your home. To all who are Christ's virgins show the same regard or the same disregard. Do not linger under the same roof with them, and do not rely on your past continence. You cannot be holier than David or wiser than Solomon. Always bear in mind that it was a woman who expelled the tiller of paradise from his heritage. [1348] In case you are sick one of the brethren may attend you; your sister also or your mother or some woman whose faith is approved with all. But if you have no persons so connected with you or so marked out by chaste behaviour, the Church maintains many elderly women who by their ministrations may oblige you and benefit themselves so that even your sickness may bear fruit in the shape of almsdeeds. I know of cases where the recovery of the body has but preluded the sickness of the soul. There is danger for you in the service of one for whose face you constantly watch. If in the course of your clerical duty you have to visit a widow or a virgin, never enter the house alone. Let your companions be persons association with whom will not disgrace you. If you take a reader with you or an acolyte or a psalm-singer, let their character not their garb be their adornment; let them use no tongs to curl their hair; rather let their mien be an index of their chastity. You must not sit alone with a woman or see one without witnesses. If she has anything confidential to disclose, she is sure to have some nurse or housekeeper, [1349] some virgin, some widow, some married woman. She cannot be so friendless as to have none save you to whom she can venture to confide her secret. Beware of all that gives occasion for suspicion; and, to avoid scandal, shun every act that may give colour to it. Frequent gifts of handkerchiefs and garters, of face-cloths and dishes first tasted by the giver--to say nothing of notes full of fond expressions--of such things as these a holy love knows nothing. Such endearing and alluring expressions as my honey' and my darling,' you who are all my charm and my delight' the ridiculous courtesies of lovers and their foolish doings, we blush for on the stage and abhor in men of the world. How much more do we loathe them in monks and clergymen who adorn the priesthood by their vows [1350] while their vows are adorned by the priesthood. I speak thus not because I dread such evils for you or for men of saintly life, but because in all ranks and callings and among both men and women there are found both good and bad and in condemning the bad I commend the good.
6. Shameful to say, idol-priests, play-actors, jockeys, and prostitutes can inherit property: clergymen and monks alone lie under a legal disability, a disability enacted not by persecutors but by Christian emperors. [1351] I do not complain of the law, but I grieve that we have deserved a statute so harsh. Cauterizing is a good thing, no doubt; but how is it that I have a wound which makes me need it? The law is strict and far-seeing, yet even so rapacity goes on unchecked. By a fiction of trusteeship we set the statute at defiance; and, as if imperial decrees outweigh the mandates of Christ, we fear the laws and despise the Gospels. If heir there must be, the mother has first claim upon her children, the Church upon her flock--the members of which she has borne and reared and nourished. Why do we thrust ourselves in between mother and children?
It is the glory of a bishop to make provision for the wants of the poor; but it is the shame of all priests to amass private fortunes. I who was born (suppose) in a poor man's house, in a country cottage, and who could scarcely get of common millet and household bread enough to fill an empty stomach, am now come to disdain the finest wheat flour and honey. I know the several kinds of fish by name. I can tell unerringly on what coast a mussel has been picked. I can distinguish by the flavour the province from which a bird comes. Dainty dishes delight me because their ingredients are scarce and I end by finding pleasure in their ruinous cost.
I hear also of servile attention shewn by some towards old men and women when these are childless. They fetch the basin, beset the bed and perform with their own hands the most revolting offices. They anxiously await the advent of the doctor and with trembling lips they ask whether the patient is better. If for a little while the old fellow shews signs of returning vigour, they are in agonies. They pretend to be delighted, but their covetous hearts undergo secret torture. For they are afraid that their labours may go for nothing and compare an old man with a clinging to life to the patriarch Methuselah. How great a reward might they have with God if their hearts were not set on a temporal prize! With what great exertions do they pursue an empty heritage! Less labour might have purchased for them the pearl of Christ.
7. Read the divine scriptures constantly; never, indeed, let the sacred volume be out of your hand. Learn what you have to teach. "Hold fast the faithful word as you have been taught that you may be able by sound doctrine to exhort and convince the gainsayers. Continue thou in the things that thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them;" [1352] and "be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope and faith that are in you." [1353] Do not let your deeds belie your words; lest when you speak in church someone may mentally reply "Why do you not practise what you profess? Here is a lover of dainties turned censor! his stomach is full and he reads us a homily on fasting. As well might a robber accuse others of covetousness." In a priest of Christ mouth, mind, and hand should be at one.
Be obedient to your bishop and welcome him as the parent of your soul. Sons love their fathers and slaves fear their masters. "If I be a father," He says, "where is mine honour? And if I am a master where is my fear?" [1354] In your case the bishop combines in himself many titles to your respect. He is at once a monk, a prelate, and an uncle who has before now instructed you in all holy things. This also I say that the bishops should know themselves to be priests not lords. Let them render to the clergy the honour which is their due that the clergy may offer to them the respect which belongs to bishops. There is a witty saying of the orator Domitius which is here to the point: "Why am I to recognize you as leader of the Senate when you will not recognize my rights as a private member?" [1355] We should realize that a bishop and his presbyters are like Aaron and his sons. As there is but one Lord and one Temple; so also should there be but one ministry. Let us ever bear in mind the charge which the apostle Peter gives to priests: "feed the flock of God which is among you, taking the oversight thereof not by constraint but willingly as God would have you; [1356] not for filthy lucre but of a ready mind; neither as being lords over God's heritage but being ensamples to the flock," and that gladly; that "when the chief-shepherd shall appear ye may receive a crown of glory that fadeth not away." [1357] It is a bad custom which prevails in certain churches for presbyters to be silent when bishops are present on the ground that they would be jealous or impatient hearers. "If anything," writes the apostle Paul, "be revealed to another that sitteth by, let the first hold his peace. For ye may all prophesy one by one that all may learn and all may be comforted; and the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets. For God is not the author of confusion but of peace." [1358] "A wise son maketh a glad father;" [1359] and a bishop should rejoice in the discrimination which has led him to choose such for the priests of Christ.
8. When teaching in church seek to call forth not plaudits but groans. Let the tears of your hearers be your glory. A presbyter's words ought to be seasoned by his reading of scripture. Be not a declaimer or a ranter, one who gabbles without rhyme or reason; but shew yourself skilled in the deep things and versed in the mysteries of God. To mouth your words and by your quickness of utterance astonish the unlettered crowd is a mark of ignorance. Assurance often explains that of which it knows nothing; and when it has convinced others imposes on itself. My teacher, Gregory of Nazianzus, when I once asked him to explain Luke's phrase sabbaton deuteroproton , that is "the second-first Sabbath," playfully evaded my request saying: "I will tell you about it in church, and there, when all the people applaud me, you will be forced against your will to know what you do not know at all. For, if you alone remain silent, every one will put you down for a fool." There is nothing so easy as by sheer volubility to deceive a common crowd or an uneducated congregation: such most admire what they fail to understand. Hear Marcus Tullius, the subject of that noble eulogy: "You would have been the first of orators but for Demosthenes: he would have been the only one but for you." Hear what in his speech for Quintus Gallius [1360] he has to say about unskilled speakers and popular applause and then you will not be the sport of such illusions. "What I am telling you," said he, "is a recent experience of my own. One who has the name of a poet and a man of culture has written a book entitled Conversations of Poets and Philosophers. In this he represents Euripides as conversing with Menander and Socrates with Epicurus--men whose lives we know to be separated not by years but by centuries. Nevertheless he calls forth limitless applause and endless acclamations. For the theatre contains many who belong to the same school as he: like him they have never learned letters."
9. In dress avoid sombre colours as much as bright ones. Showiness and slovenliness are alike to be shunned; for the one savours of vanity and the other of pride. To go about without a linen scarf on is nothing: what is praiseworthy is to be without money to buy one. It is disgraceful and absurd to boast of having neither napkin nor handkerchief and yet to carry a well-filled purse.
Some bestow a trifle on the poor to receive a larger sum themselves and under the cloak of almsgiving do but seek for riches. Such are almshunters rather than almsgivers. Their methods are those by which birds, beasts, and fishes are taken. A morsel of bait is put on the hook--to land a married lady's purse! The church is committed to the bishop; let him take heed whom he appoints to be his almoner. It is better for me to have no money to give away than shamelessly to beg what I mean to hoard. It is arrogance too to wish to seem more liberal than he who is Christ's bishop. "All things are not open to us all." [1361] In the church one is the eye, another is the tongue, another the hand, another the foot, others ears, belly, and so on. Read Paul's epistle to the Corinthians and learn how the one body is made up of different members. [1362] The rude and simple brother must not suppose himself a saint just because he knows nothing; and he who is educated and eloquent must not measure his saintliness merely by his fluency. Of two imperfect things holy rusticity is better than sinful eloquence.
10. Many build churches nowadays; their walls and pillars of glowing marble, their ceilings glittering with gold, their altars studded with jewels. Yet to the choice of Christ's ministers no heed is paid. And let no one allege against me the wealth of the temple in Judæa, its table, its lamps, its censers, its dishes, its cups, its spoons, [1363] and the rest of its golden vessels. If these were approved by the Lord it was at a time when the priests had to offer victims and when the blood of sheep was the redemption of sins. They were figures typifying things still future and were "written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the world are come." [1364] But now our Lord by His poverty has consecrated the poverty of His house. Let us, therefore, think of His cross and count riches to be but dirt. Why do we admire what Christ calls "the mammon of unrighteousness"? [1365] Why do we cherish and love what it is Peter's boast not to possess? [1366] Or if we insist on keeping to the letter and find the mention of gold and wealth so pleasing, let us keep to everything else as well as the gold. Let the bishops of Christ be bound to marry wives, who must be virgins. [1367] Let the best-intentioned priest be deprived of his office if he bear a scar and be disfigured. [1368] Let bodily leprosy be counted worse than spots upon the soul. Let us be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth, [1369] but let us slay no lamb and celebrate no mystic passover, for where there is no temple, [1370] the law forbids these acts. Let us pitch tents in the seventh month [1371] and noise abroad a solemn fast with the sound of a horn. [1372] But if we compare all these things as spiritual with things which are spiritual; [1373] and if we allow with Paul that "the Law is spiritual" [1374] and call to mind David's words: "open thou mine eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law;" [1375] and if on these grounds we interpret it as our Lord interprets it--He has explained the Sabbath in this way: [1376] then, rejecting the superstitions of the Jews, we must also reject the gold; or, approving the gold, we must approve the Jews as well. For we must either accept them with the gold or condemn them with it.
11. Avoid entertaining men of the world, especially those whose honours make them swell with pride. You are the priest of Christ--one poor and crucified who lived on the bread of strangers. It is a disgrace to you if the consul's lictors or soldiers keep watch before your door, and if the Judge of the province has a better dinner with you than in his own palace. If you plead as an excuse your wish to intercede for the unhappy and the oppressed, I reply that a worldly judge will defer more to a clergyman who is self-denying than to one who is rich; he will pay more regard to your holiness than to your wealth. Or if he is a man who will not hear the clergy on behalf of the distressed except over the bowl, I will readily forego his aid and will appeal to Christ who can help more effectively and speedily than any judge. Truly "it is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man. It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in princes." [1377]
Let your breath never smell of wine lest the philosopher's words be said to you: "instead of offering me a kiss you are giving me a taste of wine." Priests given to wine are both condemned by the apostle [1378] and forbidden by the old Law. Those who serve the altar, we are told, must drink neither wine nor shechar. [1379] Now every intoxicating drink is in Hebrew called shechar whether it is made of corn or of the juice of apples, whether you distil from the honeycomb a rude kind of mead or make a liquor by squeezing dates or strain a thick syrup from a decoction of corn. Whatever intoxicates and disturbs the balance of the mind avoid as you would wine. I do not say that we are to condemn what is a creature of God. The Lord Himself was called a "wine-bibber" and wine in moderation was allowed to Timothy because of his weak stomach. I only require that drinkers should observe that limit which their age, their health, or their constitution requires. But if without drinking wine at all I am aglow with youth and am inflamed by the heat of my blood and am of a strong and lusty habit of body, I will readily forego the cup in which I cannot but suspect poison. The Greeks have an excellent saying which will perhaps bear translation,
Fat bellies have no sentiments refined. [1380]
12. Lay upon yourself only as much fasting as you can bear, and let your fasts be pure, chaste, simple, moderate, and not superstitious. What good is it to use no oil if you seek after the most troublesome and out-of-the-way kinds of food, dried figs, pepper, nuts, dates, fine flour, honey, pistachios? All the resources of gardening are strained to save us from eating household bread; and to pursue dainties we turn our backs on the kingdom of heaven. There are some, I am told, who reverse the laws of nature and the race; for they neither eat bread nor drink water but imbibe thin decoctions of crushed herbs and beet-juice--not from a cup but from a shell. Shame on us that we have no blushes for such follies and that we feel no disgust at such superstition! To crown all, in the midst of our dainties we seek a reputation for abstinence. The strictest fast is bread and water. But because it brings with it no glory and because we all of us live on bread and water, it is reckoned no fast at all but an ordinary and common matter.
13. Do not angle for compliments, lest, while you win the popular applause, you do despite to God. "If I yet pleased men," says the apostle, "I should not be the servant of Christ." [1381] He ceased to please men when he became Christ's servant. Christ's soldier marches on through good report and evil report, [1382] the one on the right hand and the other on the left. No praise elates him, no reproaches crush him. He is not puffed up by riches, nor does he shrink into himself because of poverty. Joy and sorrow he alike despises. The sun does not burn him by day nor the moon by night. [1383] Do not pray at the corners of the streets, [1384] lest the applause of men interrupt the straight course of your prayers. Do not broaden your fringes and for show wear phylacteries, [1385] or, despite of conscience, wrap yourself in the self-seeking of the Pharisee. [1386] Would you know what mode of apparel the Lord requires? Have prudence, justice, temperance, fortitude. [1387] Let these be the four quarters of your horizon, let them be a four-horse team to bear you, Christ's charioteer, at full speed to your goal. No necklace can be more precious than these; no gems can form a brighter galaxy. By them you are decorated, you are girt about, you are protected on every side. They are your defence as well as your glory; for every gem is turned into a shield.
14. Beware also of a blabbing tongue and of itching ears. Neither detract from others nor listen to detractors. "Thou sittest," says the psalmist, "and speakest against thy brother; thou slanderest thine own mother's son. These things hast thou done and I kept silence; thou thoughtest wickedly that I was such an one as thyself, but I will reprove thee and set them [1388] in order before thine eyes." [1389] Keep your tongue from cavilling and watch over your words. Know that in judging others you are passing sentence on yourself and that you are yourself guilty of the faults which you blame in them. It is no excuse to say: "if others tell me things I cannot be rude to them." No one cares to speak to an unwilling listener. An arrow never lodges in a stone: often it recoils upon the shooter of it. Let the detractor learn from your unwillingness to listen not to be so ready to detract. Solomon says:--"meddle not with them that are given to detraction: for their calamity shall rise suddenly; and who knoweth the destruction of them both?" [1390] --of the detractor, that is, and of the person who lends an ear to his detraction.
15. It is your duty to visit the sick, to know the homes and children of ladies who are married, and to guard the secrets of noblemen. Make it your object, therefore, to keep your tongue chaste as well as your eyes. Never discuss a woman's figure nor let one house know what is going on in another. Hippocrates, [1391] before he will teach his pupils, makes them take an oath and compels them to swear fealty to him. He binds them over to silence, and prescribes for them their language, their gait, their dress, their manners. How much more reason have we to whom the medicine of the soul has been committed to love the houses of all Christians as our own homes. Let them know us as comforters in sorrow rather than as guests in time of mirth. That clergyman soon becomes an object of contempt who being often asked out to dinner never refuses to go.
16. Let us never seek for presents and rarely accept them when we are asked to do so. For "it is more blessed to give than to receive." [1392] Somehow or other the very man who begs leave to offer you a gift holds you the cheaper for your acceptance of it; while, if you refuse it, it is wonderful how much more he will come to respect you. The preacher of continence must not be a maker of marriages. Why does he who reads the apostle's words "it remaineth that they that have wives be as though they had none" [1393] --why does he press a virgin to marry? Why does a priest, who must be a monogamist, [1394] urge a widow to marry again? How can the clergy be managers and stewards of other men's households, when they are bidden to disregard even their own interests? To wrest a thing from a friend is theft but to cheat the Church is sacrilege. When you have received money to be doled out to the poor, to be cautious or to hesitate while crowds are starving is to be worse than a robber; and to subtract a portion for yourself is to commit a crime of the deepest dye. I am tortured with hunger and are you to judge what will satisfy my cravings? Either divide immediately what you have received, or, if you are a timid almoner, send the donor to distribute his own gifts. Your purse ought not to remain full while I am in need. No one can look after what is mine better than I can. He is the best almoner who keeps nothing for himself.
17. You have compelled me, my dear Nepotian, in spite of the castigation which my treatise on Virginity has had to endure--the one which I wrote for the saintly Eustochium at Rome: [1395] --you have compelled me after ten years have passed once more to open my mouth at Bethlehem and to expose myself to the stabs of every tongue. For I could only escape from criticism by writing nothing--a course made impossible by your request; and I knew when I took up my pen that the shafts of all gainsayers would be launched against me. I beg such to hold their peace and to desist from gainsaying: for I have written to them not as to opponents but as to friends. I have not inveighed against those who sin: I have but warned them to sin no more. My judgment of myself has been as strict as my judgment of them. When I have wished to remove the mote from my neighbour's eye, I have first cast out the beam in my own. [1396] I have calumniated no one. Not a name has been hinted at. My words have not been aimed at individuals and my criticism of shortcomings has been quite general. If any one wishes to be angry with me he will have first to own that he himself suits my description. __________________________________________________________________
[1314] Letter XIV. 9 v.
[1315] Virgil, G. ii. 484.
[1316] Virgil, Ec. ix. 51, 54, 55.
[1317] 1 Kings i. 1-4.
[1318] 2 Cor. iii. 6.
[1319] So called because first devised in the Oscan town of Atella.
[1320] 1 Kings i. 4.
[1321] The name Solomon means "man of peace."
[1322] 1 Chr. xxviii. 3.
[1323] Prov. iv. 5-9.
[1324] Ps. i. 2.
[1325] A slip of the pen for Theophrastus.
[1326] Cicero, de Sen. v.
[1327] Cicero, de Sen. vii.
[1328] Id. ibid.
[1329] Cic. de Sen. viii.
[1330] Homer, Il. i. 249; Cic. de Sen. x.
[1331] Gen. xxxviii. 28, 29.
[1332] Josh. ii. 18.
[1333] 1 Chron. ii. 55, Vulg.
[1334] Luke xii. 49.
[1335] Luke xxiv. 32.
[1336] Rom. xii. 11.
[1337] Zech. xi. 15.
[1338] Matt. xxiv. 12.
[1339] Cyprian, Ep. ad Donatum.
[1340] Psa. xvi. 5; lxxiii. 26.
[1341] Ps. xvi. 5, 6.
[1342] Nu. xviii. 24.
[1343] 1 Cor. ix. 13.
[1344] 1 Tim. vi. 8.
[1345] Virgil, Æn. iii. 436.
[1346] Jer. xii. 13, LXX. There is a play on the word kleros, which means (1) portion, (2) clergy.
[1347] 1 Cor. xv. 33.
[1348] Another allusion to the word kleros.
[1349] Major domus.
[1350] The vow of celibacy is probably intended.
[1351] The disability alluded to was enacted by Valentinian.
[1352] Titus i. 9; 2 Tim. iii. 14.
[1353] 1 Pet. iii. 15.
[1354] Mal. i. 6.
[1355] Cicero, de Orat. iii. 1.
[1356] So the Vulgate.
[1357] 1 Pet. v. 4.
[1358] 1 Cor. xiv. 30-33.
[1359] Prov. x. 1.
[1360] This is not extant.
[1361] Virgil, Ec. viii. 63.
[1362] 1 Cor. xii. 12-27.
[1363] Mortariola. See Nu. vii. 24, Vulg.
[1364] 1 Cor. x. 11.
[1365] Luke xvi. 9.
[1366] Acts iii. 6.
[1367] Levit. xxi. 14.
[1368] Levit. xxi. 17-23.
[1369] Gen. i. 28.
[1370] Deut. xvi. 5.
[1371] Levit. xxiii. 40-42.
[1372] Joel ii. 15.
[1373] 1 Cor. ii. 13.
[1374] Rom. vii. 14.
[1375] Ps. cxix. 18.
[1376] Matt. xii. 1-9.
[1377] Ps. cxviii. 8, 9.
[1378] 1 Tim. iii. 3.
[1379] Levit. x. 9; the word shechar occurs in the Greek text of Luke i. 15.
[1380] Cf. Shakespeare:-- Fat paunches have lean pates, and dainty bits Make rich the ribs, but bankrupt quite the wits.
[1381] Gal. i. 10.
[1382] 2 Cor. vi. 8.
[1383] Ps. cxxi. 6.
[1384] Matt. vi. 5.
[1385] Matt. xxiii. 5.
[1386] Some irrelevant sentences are found here in the ordinary text which are obviously an interpolation.
[1387] Wisd. viii. 7, the cardinal virtues of Greek philosophy.
[1388] Viz. thy misdeeds.
[1389] Ps. l. 20, 21.
[1390] Prov. xxiv. 21, 22, Vulg.
[1391] The principal physician of this name flourished in the fifth century, b.c.
[1392] Acts xx. 35.
[1393] 1 Cor. vii. 29.
[1394] 1 Tim. iii. 2.
[1395] Viz. Letter XXII.
[1396] Matt. vii. 3-5. __________________________________________________________________
Letter LIII. To Paulinus.
Jerome urges Paulinus, bishop of Nola, (for whom see Letter LVIII.) to make a diligent study of the Scriptures and to this end reminds him of the zeal for learning displayed not only by the wisest of the pagans but also by the apostle Paul. Then going through the two Testaments in detail he describes the contents of the several books and the lessons which may be learned from them. He concludes with an appeal to Paulinus to divest himself wholly of his earthly wealth and to devote himself altogether to God. Written in 394 a.d.
1. Our brother Ambrose along with your little gifts has delivered to me a most charming letter which, though it comes at the beginning of our friendship, gives assurance of tried fidelity and of long continued attachment. A true intimacy cemented by Christ Himself is not one which depends upon material considerations, or upon the presence of the persons, or upon an insincere and exaggerated flattery; but one such as ours, wrought by a common fear of God and a joint study of the divine scriptures.
We read in old tales that men traversed provinces, crossed seas, and visited strange peoples, simply to see face to face persons whom they only knew from books. Thus Pythagoras visited the prophets of Memphis; and Plato, besides visiting Egypt and Archytas of Tarentum, most carefully explored that part of the coast of Italy which was formerly called Great Greece. In this way the influential Athenian master with whose lessons the schools [1397] of the Academy resounded became at once a pilgrim and a pupil choosing modestly to learn what others had to teach rather than over confidently to propound views of his own. Indeed his pursuit of learning--which seemed to fly before him all the world over--finally led to his capture by pirates who sold him into slavery to a cruel tyrant. [1398] Thus he became a prisoner, a bond-man, and a slave; yet, as he was always a philosopher, he was greater still than the man who purchased him. Again we read that certain noblemen journeyed from the most remote parts of Spain and Gaul to visit Titus Livius, [1399] and listen to his eloquence which flowed like a fountain of milk. Thus the fame of an individual had more power to draw men to Rome than the attractions of the city itself; and the age displayed an unheard of and noteworthy portent in the shape of men who, entering the great city, bestowed their attention not upon it but upon something else. Apollonius [1400] too was a traveller--the one I mean who is called the sorcerer [1401] by ordinary people and the philosopher by such as follow Pythagoras. He entered Persia, traversed the Caucasus and made his way through the Albanians, the Scythians, the Massagetæ, and the richest districts of India. At last, after crossing that wide river the Pison, [1402] he came to the Brahmans. There he saw Hiarcas [1403] sitting upon his golden throne and drinking from his Tantalus-fountain, and heard him instructing a few disciples upon the nature, motions, and orbits of the heavenly bodies. After this he travelled among the Elamites, the Babylonians, the Chaldeans, the Medes, the Assyrians, the Parthians, the Syrians, the Phenicians, the Arabians, and the Philistines. [1404] Then returning to Alexandria he made his way to Ethiopia to see the gymnosophists and the famous table of the sun spread in the sands of the desert. [1405] Everywhere he found something to learn, and as he was always going to new places, he became constantly wiser and better. Philostratus has written the story of his life at length in eight books.
2. But why should I confine my allusions to the men of this world, when the Apostle Paul, the chosen vessel [1406] the doctor [1407] of the Gentiles, who could boldly say: "Do ye seek a proof of Christ speaking in me?" [1408] knowing that he really had within him that greatest of guests--when even he after visiting Damascus and Arabia "went up to Jerusalem to see Peter and abode with him fifteen days." [1409] For he who was to be a preacher to the Gentiles had to be instructed in the mystical numbers seven and eight. And again fourteen years after he took Barnabas and Titus and communicated his gospel to the apostles lest by any means he should have run or had run in vain. [1410] Spoken words possess an indefinable hidden power, and teaching that passed directly from the mouth of the speaker into the ears of the disciples is more impressive than any other. When the speech of Demosthenes against Æschines was recited before the latter during his exile at Rhodes, amid all the admiration and applause he sighed "if you could but have heard the brute deliver his own periods!" [1411]
3. I do not adduce these instances because I have anything in me from which you either can or will learn a lesson, but to show you that your zeal and eagerness to learn--even though you cannot rely on help from me--are in themselves worthy of praise. A mind willing to learn deserves commendation even when it has no teacher. What is of importance to me is not what you find but what you seek to find. Wax is soft and easy to mould even where the hands of craftsman and modeller are wanting to work it. It is already potentially all that it can be made. The apostle Paul learned the Law of Moses and the prophets at the feet of Gamaliel and was glad that he had done so, for armed with this spiritual armour, he was able to say boldly "the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds;" armed with these we war "casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ; and being in a readiness to revenge all disobedience." [1412] He writes to Timothy who had been trained in the holy writings from a child exhorting him to study them diligently [1413] and not to neglect the gift which was given him with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery. [1414] To Titus he gives commandment that among a bishop's other virtues (which he briefly describes) he should be careful to seek a knowledge of the scriptures: A bishop, he says, must hold fast "the faithful word as he hath been taught that he may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and to convince the gainsayers." [1415] In fact want of education in a clergyman [1416] prevents him from doing good to any one but himself and much as the virtue of his life may build up Christ's church, he does it an injury as great by failing to resist those who are trying to pull it down. The prophet Haggai says--or rather the Lord says it by the mouth of Haggai--"Ask now the priests concerning the law." [1417] For such is the important function of the priesthood to give answers to those who question them concerning the law. And in Deuteronomy we read "Ask thy father and he will shew thee; thy elders and they will tell thee." [1418] Also in the one hundred and nineteenth psalm "thy statutes have been my songs in the house of my pilgrimage." [1419] David too, in the description of the righteous man whom he compares to the tree of life in paradise, amongst his other excellences speaks of this, "His delight is in the law of the Lord; and in his law doth he meditate day and night." [1420] In the close of his most solemn vision Daniel declares that "the righteous shall shine as the stars; and the wise, that is the learned, as the firmament." [1421] You can see, therefore, how great is the difference between righteous ignorance and instructed righteousness. Those who have the first are compared with the stars, those who have the second with the heavens. Yet, according to the exact sense of the Hebrew, both statements may be understood of the learned, for it is to be read in this way:--"They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars forever and ever." Why is the apostle Paul called a chosen vessel? [1422] Assuredly because he is a repertory of the Law and of the holy scriptures. The learned teaching of our Lord strikes the Pharisees dumb with amazement, and they are filled with astonishment to find that Peter and John know the Law although they have not learned letters. For to these the Holy Ghost immediately suggested what comes to others by daily study and meditation; and, as it is written, [1423] they were "taught of God." The Saviour had only accomplished his twelfth year when the scene in the temple took place; [1424] but when he interrogated the elders concerning the Law His wise questions conveyed rather than sought information.
4. But perhaps we ought to call Peter and John ignorant, both of whom could say of themselves, "though I be rude in speech, yet not in knowledge." [1425] Was John a mere fisherman, rude and untaught? If so, whence did he get the words "In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God and the word was God." [1426] Logos in Greek has many meanings. It signifies word and reason and reckoning and the cause of individual things by which those which are subsist. All of which things we rightly predicate of Christ. This truth Plato with all his learning did not know, of this Demosthenes with all his eloquence was ignorant. "I will destroy," it is said, "the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent." [1427] The true wisdom must destroy the false, and, although the foolishness of preaching [1428] is inseparable from the Cross, Paul speaks "wisdom among them that are perfect, yet not the wisdom of this world, nor of the princes of this world that come to nought," but he speaks "the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world." [1429] God's wisdom is Christ, for Christ, we are told, is "the power of God and the wisdom of God." [1430] He is the wisdom which is hidden in a mystery, of which also we read in the heading of the ninth psalm "for the hidden things of the son." [1431] In Him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. He also who was hidden in a mystery is the same that was foreordained before the world. Now it was in the Law and in the Prophets that he was foreordained and prefigured. For this reason too the prophets were called seers, [1432] because they saw Him whom others did not see. Abraham saw His day and was glad. [1433] The heavens which were sealed to a rebellious people were opened to Ezekiel. "Open thou mine eyes," saith David, "that I may behold wonderful things out of thy Law." [1434] For "the law is spiritual" [1435] and a revelation is needed to enable us to comprehend it and, when God uncovers His face, to behold His glory.
5. In the apocalypse a book is shewn sealed with seven seals, [1436] which if you deliver to one that is learned saying, Read this, he will answer you, I cannot, for it is sealed. [1437] How many there are to-day who fancy themselves learned, yet the scriptures are a sealed book to them, and one which they cannot open save through Him who has the key of David, "he that openeth and no man shutteth; and shutteth and no man openeth." [1438] In the Acts of the Apostles the holy eunuch (or rather "man" for so the scripture calls him [1439] ) when reading Isaiah he is asked by Philip "Understandest thou what thou readest?", makes answer:--"How can I except some man should guide me?" [1440] To digress for a moment to myself, I am neither holier nor more diligent than this eunuch, who came from Ethiopia, that is from the ends of the world, to the Temple leaving behind him a queen's palace, and was so great a lover of the Law and of divine knowledge that he read the holy scriptures even in his chariot. Yet although he had the book in his hand and took into his mind the words of the Lord, nay even had them on his tongue and uttered them with his lips, he still knew not Him, whom--not knowing--he worshipped in the book. Then Philip came and shewed him Jesus, who was concealed beneath the letter. Wondrous excellence of the teacher! In the same hour the eunuch believed and was baptized; he became one of the faithful and a saint. He was no longer a pupil but a master; and he found more in the church's font there in the wilderness than he had ever done in the gilded temple of the synagogue.
6. These instances have been just touched upon by me (the limits of a letter forbid a more discursive treatment of them) to convince you that in the holy scriptures you can make no progress unless you have a guide to shew you the way. I say nothing of the knowledge of grammarians, rhetoricians, philosophers, geometers, logicians, musicians, astronomers, astrologers, physicians, whose several kinds of skill are most useful to mankind, and may be ranged under the three heads of teaching, method, and proficiency. I will pass to the less important crafts which require manual dexterity more than mental ability. Husbandmen, masons, carpenters, workers in wood and metal, wool-dressers and fullers, as well as those artisans who make furniture and cheap utensils, cannot attain the ends they seek without instruction from qualified persons. As Horace says [1441]
Doctors alone profess the healing art
And none but joiners ever try to join.
7. The art of interpreting the scriptures is the only one of which all men everywhere claim to be masters. To quote Horace again
Taught or untaught we all write poetry. [1442]
The chatty old woman, the doting old man, and the wordy sophist, one and all take in hand the Scriptures, rend them in pieces and teach them before they have learned them. Some with brows knit and bombastic words, balanced one against the other philosophize concerning the sacred writings among weak women. Others--I blush to say it--learn of women what they are to teach men; and as if even this were not enough, they boldly explain to others what they themselves by no means understand. I say nothing of persons who, like myself have been familiar with secular literature before they have come to the study of the holy scriptures. Such men when they charm the popular ear by the finish of their style suppose every word they say to be a law of God. They do not deign to notice what Prophets and apostles have intended but they adapt conflicting passages to suit their own meaning, as if it were a grand way of teaching--and not rather the faultiest of all--to misrepresent a writer's views and to force the scriptures reluctantly to do their will. They forget that we have read centos from Homer and Virgil; but we never think of calling the Christless Maro [1443] a Christian because of his lines:--
Now comes the Virgin back and Saturn's reign,
Now from high heaven comes a Child newborn. [1444]
Another line might be addressed by the Father to the Son:--
Hail, only Son, my Might and Majesty. [1445]
And yet another might follow the Saviour's words on the cross:--
Such words he spake and there transfixed remained. [1446]
But all this is puerile, and resembles the sleight-of-hand of a mountebank. It is idle to try to teach what you do not know, and--if I may speak with some warmth--is worse still to be ignorant of your ignorance.
8. Genesis, we shall be told, needs no explanation; its topics are too simple--the birth of the world, the origin of the human race, [1447] the division of the earth, [1448] the confusion of tongues, [1449] and the descent of the Hebrews into Egypt! [1450] Exodus, no doubt, is equally plain, containing as it does merely an account of the ten plagues, [1451] the decalogue, [1452] and sundry mysterious and divine precepts! The meaning of Leviticus is of course self-evident, although every sacrifice that it describes, nay more every word that it contains, the description of Aaron's vestments, [1453] and all the regulations connected with the Levites are symbols of things heavenly! The book of Numbers too--are not its very figures, [1454] and Balaam's prophecy, [1455] and the forty-two camping places in the wilderness [1456] so many mysteries? Deuteronomy also, that is the second law or the foreshadowing of the law of the gospel,--does it not, while exhibiting things known before, put old truths in a new light? So far the five words' of the Pentateuch, with which the apostle boasts his wish to speak in the Church. [1457] Then, as for Job, [1458] that pattern of patience, what mysteries are there not contained in his discourses? Commencing in prose the book soon glides into verse and at the end once more reverts to prose. By the way in which it lays down propositions, assumes postulates, adduces proofs, and draws inferences, it illustrates all the laws of logic. Single words occurring in the book are full of meaning. To say nothing of other topics, it prophesies the resurrection of men's bodies at once with more clearness and with more caution than any one has yet shewn. "I know," Job says, "that my redeemer liveth, and that at the last day I shall rise again from the earth; and I shall be clothed again with my skin, and in my flesh shall I see God. Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another. This my hope is stored up in my own bosom." [1459] I will pass on to Jesus the son of Nave [1460] --a type of the Lord in name as well as in deed--who crossed over Jordan, subdued hostile kingdoms, divided the land among the conquering people and who, in every city, village, mountain, river, hill-torrent, and boundary which he dealt with, marked out the spiritual realms of the heavenly Jerusalem, that is, of the church. [1461] In the book of Judges every one of the popular leaders is a type. Ruth the Moabitess fulfils the prophecy of Isaiah:--"Send thou a lamb, O Lord, as ruler of the land from the rock of the wilderness to the mount of the daughter of Zion." [1462] Under the figures of Eli's death and the slaying of Saul Samuel shews the abolition of the old law. Again in Zadok and in David he bears witness to the mysteries of the new priesthood and of the new royalty. The third and fourth books of Kings called in Hebrew Malâchim give the history of the kingdom of Judah from Solomon to Jeconiah, [1463] and of that of Israel from Jeroboam the son of Nebat to Hoshea who was carried away into Assyria. If you merely regard the narrative, the words are simple enough, but if you look beneath the surface at the hidden meaning of it, you find a description of the small numbers of the church and of the wars which the heretics wage against it. The twelve prophets whose writings are compressed within the narrow limits of a single volume, [1464] have typical meanings far different from their literal ones. Hosea speaks many times of Ephraim, of Samaria, of Joseph, of Jezreel, of a wife of whoredoms and of children of whoredoms, [1465] of an adulteress shut up within the chamber of her husband, sitting for a long time in widowhood and in the garb of mourning, awaiting the time when her husband will return to her. [1466] Joel the son of Pethuel describes the land of the twelve tribes as spoiled and devastated by the palmerworm, the canker-worm, the locust, and the blight, [1467] and predicts that after the overthrow of the former people the Holy Spirit shall be poured out upon God's servants and handmaids; [1468] the same spirit, that is, which was to be poured out in the upper chamber at Zion upon the one hundred and twenty believers. [1469] These believers rising by gradual and regular gradations from one to fifteen form the steps to which there is a mystical allusion in the "psalms of degrees." [1470] Amos, although he is only "an herdman" from the country, "a gatherer of sycomore fruit," [1471] cannot be explained in a few words. For who can adequately speak of the three transgressions and the four of Damascus, of Gaza, of Tyre, of Idumæa, of Moab, of the children of Ammon, and in the seventh and eighth place of Judah and of Israel? He speaks to the fat kine that are in the mountain of Samaria, [1472] and bears witness that the great house and the little house shall fall. [1473] He sees now the maker of the grasshopper, [1474] now the Lord, standing upon a wall [1475] daubed [1476] or made of adamant, [1477] now a basket of apples [1478] that brings doom to the transgressors, and now a famine upon the earth "not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord." [1479] Obadiah, whose name means the servant of God, thunders against Edom red with blood and against the creature born of earth. [1480] He smites him with the spear of the spirit because of his continual rivalry with his brother Jacob. Jonah, fairest of doves, whose shipwreck shews in a figure the passion of the Lord, recalls the world to penitence, and while he preaches to Nineveh, announces salvation to all the heathen. Micah the Morasthite a joint heir with Christ [1481] announces the spoiling of the daughter of the robber and lays siege against her, because she has smitten the jawbone of the judge of Israel. [1482] Nahum, the consoler of the world, rebukes "the bloody city" [1483] and when it is overthrown cries:--"Behold upon the mountains the feet of him that bringeth good tidings." [1484] Habakkuk, like a strong and unyielding wrestler, [1485] stands upon his watch and sets his foot upon the tower [1486] that he may contemplate Christ upon the cross and say "His glory covered the heavens and the earth was full of his praise. And his brightness was as the light; he had horns coming out of his hand: and there was the hiding of his power." [1487] Zephaniah, that is the bodyguard and knower of the secrets of the Lord, [1488] hears "a cry from the fishgate, and an howling from the second, and a great crashing from the hills." [1489] He proclaims "howling to the inhabitants of the mortar; [1490] for all the people of Canaan are undone; all they that were laden with silver are cut off." [1491] Haggai, that is he who is glad or joyful, who has sown in tears to reap in joy, [1492] is occupied with the rebuilding of the temple. He represents the Lord (the Father, that is) as saying "Yet once, it is a little while, and I will shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land; and I will shake all nations and he who is desired [1493] of all nations shall come." [1494] Zechariah, he that is mindful of his Lord, [1495] gives us many prophecies. He sees Jesus, [1496] "clothed with filthy garments," [1497] a stone with seven eyes, [1498] a candle-stick all of gold with lamps as many as the eyes, and two olive trees on the right side of the bowl [1499] and on the left. After he has described the horses, red, black, white, and grisled, [1500] and the cutting off of the chariot from Ephraim and of the horse from Jerusalem [1501] he goes on to prophesy and predict a king who shall be a poor man and who shall sit "upon a colt the foal of an ass." [1502] Malachi, the last of all the prophets, speaks openly of the rejection of Israel and the calling of the nations. "I have no pleasure in you, saith the Lord of hosts, neither will I accept an offering at your hand. For from the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the same, my name is great among the Gentiles: and in every place incense [1503] is offered unto my name, and a pure offering." [1504] As for Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel, who can fully understand or adequately explain them? The first of them seems to compose not a prophecy but a gospel. The second speaks of a rod of an almond tree [1505] and of a seething pot with its face toward the north, [1506] and of a leopard which has changed its spots. [1507] He also goes four times through the alphabet in different metres. [1508] The beginning and ending of Ezekiel, the third of the four, are involved in so great obscurity that like the commencement of Genesis they are not studied by the Hebrews until they are thirty years old. Daniel, the fourth and last of the four prophets, having knowledge of the times and being interested in the whole world, in clear language proclaims the stone cut out of the mountain without hands that overthrows all kingdoms. [1509] David, who is our Simonides, Pindar, and Alcæus, our Horace, our Catullus, and our Serenus all in one, sings of Christ to his lyre; and on a psaltery with ten strings calls him from the lower world to rise again. Solomon, a lover of peace [1510] and of the Lord, corrects morals, teaches nature, unites Christ and the church, and sings a sweet marriage song [1511] to celebrate that holy bridal. Esther, a type of the church, frees her people from danger and, after having slain Haman whose name means iniquity, hands down to posterity a memorable day and a great feast. [1512] The book of things omitted [1513] or epitome of the old dispensation [1514] is of such importance and value that without it any one who should claim to himself a knowledge of the scriptures would make himself a laughing stock in his own eyes. Every name used in it, nay even the conjunction of the words, serves to throw light on narratives passed over in the books of Kings and upon questions suggested by the gospel. Ezra and Nehemiah, that is the Lord's helper and His consoler, are united in a single book. They restore the Temple and build up the walls of the city. In their pages we see the throng of the Israelites returning to their native land, we read of priests and Levites, of Israel proper and of proselytes; and we are even told the several families to which the task of building the walls and towers was assigned. These references convey one meaning upon the surface, but another below it.
9. [In Migne, 8.] You see how, carried away by my love of the scriptures, I have exceeded the limits of a letter yet have not fully accomplished my object. We have heard only what it is that we ought to know and to desire, so that we too may be able to say with the psalmist:--"My soul breaketh out for the very fervent desire that it hath alway unto thy judgments." [1515] But the saying of Socrates about himself--"this only I know that I know nothing" [1516] --is fulfilled in our case also. The New Testament I will briefly deal with. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are the Lord's team of four, [1517] the true cherubim or store of knowledge. [1518] With them the whole body is full of eyes, [1519] they glitter as sparks, [1520] they run and return like lightning, [1521] their feet are straight feet, [1522] and lifted up, their backs also are winged, ready to fly in all directions. They hold together each by each and are interwoven one with another: [1523] like wheels within wheels they roll along [1524] and go whithersoever the breath of the Holy Spirit wafts them. [1525] The apostle Paul writes to seven churches [1526] (for the eighth epistle--that to the Hebrews--is not generally counted in with the others). He instructs Timothy and Titus; he intercedes with Philemon for his runaway slave. [1527] Of him I think it better to say nothing than to write inadequately. The Acts of the Apostles seem to relate a mere unvarnished narrative descriptive of the infancy of the newly born church; but when once we realize that their author is Luke the physician whose praise is in the gospel, [1528] we shall see that all his words are medicine for the sick soul. The apostles James, Peter, John, and Jude, have published seven epistles at once spiritual and to the point, short and long, short that is in words but lengthy in substance so that there are few indeed who do not find themselves in the dark when they read them. The apocalypse of John has as many mysteries as words. In saying this I have said less than the book deserves. All praise of it is inadequate; manifold meanings lie hid in its every word.
10. [In Migne, 9.] I beg of you, my dear brother, to live among these books, to meditate upon them, to know nothing else, to seek nothing else. Does not such a life seem to you a foretaste of heaven here on earth? Let not the simplicity of the scripture or the poorness of its vocabulary offend you; for these are due either to the faults of translators or else to deliberate purpose: for in this way it is better fitted for the instruction of an unlettered congregation as the educated person can take one meaning and the uneducated another from one and the same sentence. I am not so dull or so forward as to profess that I myself know it, or that I can pluck upon the earth the fruit which has its root in heaven, but I confess that I should like to do so. I put myself before the man who sits idle and, while I lay no claim to be a master, I readily pledge myself to be a fellow-student. "Every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened." [1529] Let us learn upon earth that knowledge which will continue with us in heaven.
11. [In Migne, 10.] I will receive you with open hands and--if I may boast and speak foolishly like Hermagoras [1530] --I will strive to learn with you whatever you desire to study. Eusebius who is here regards you with the affection of a brother; he [1531] has made your letter twice as precious by telling me of your sincerity of character, your contempt for the world, your constancy in friendship, and your love to Christ. The letter bears on its face (without any aid from him) your prudence and the charm of your style. Make haste then, I beseech you, and cut instead of loosing the hawser which prevents your vessel from moving in the sea. The man who sells his goods because he despises them and means to renounce the world can have no desire to sell them dear. Count as money gained the sum that you must expend upon your outfit. There is an old saying that a miser lacks as much what he has as what he has not. The believer has a whole world of wealth; the unbeliever has not a single farthing. Let us always live "as having nothing and yet possessing all things." [1532] Food and raiment, these are the Christian's wealth. [1533] If your property is in your own power, [1534] sell it: if not, cast it from you. "If any man...will take away thy coat, let him have thy cloke also." [1535] You are all for delay, you wish to defer action: unless--so you argue--unless I sell my goods piecemeal and with caution, Christ will be at a loss to feed his poor. Nay, he who has offered himself to God, has given Him everything once for all. The apostles did but forsake ships and nets. [1536] The widow cast but two brass coins into the treasury [1537] and yet she shall be preferred before Croesus [1538] with all his wealth. He readily despises all things who reflects always that he must die. __________________________________________________________________
[1397] Gymnasia.
[1398] Dionysius of Syracuse.
[1399] Cf. Quint. X. i. 32.
[1400] Apollonius of Tyana, whose strange life and adventures have been written for us by Philostratus.
[1401] Magus.
[1402] Gen. ii. 11.
[1403] Philostratus iii. 7.
[1404] i.e. dwellers in Palestine.
[1405] Herod. iii. 17, 18.
[1406] Acts ix. 15.
[1407] A favourite title for theologians in the Middle Ages.
[1408] 2 Cor. xiii. 3.
[1409] Gal. i. 17, 18.
[1410] Gal. ii. 1, 2.
[1411] Cic. de Orat. iii. 56, the word brute' is inserted by Jerome.
[1412] 2 Cor. x. 4-6.
[1413] 2 Tim. iii. 14, 15.
[1414] 1 Tim. iv. 14.
[1415] Tit. i. 9.
[1416] Sancta rusticitas.
[1417] Hag. ii. 11.
[1418] Deut. xxxii. 7.
[1419] v. 54. In the Vulg. this psalm is the 118th.
[1420] Ps. i. 2.
[1421] Dan. xii. 3.
[1422] Acts ix. 15.
[1423] 1 Thess. iv. 9.
[1424] Luke ii. 46.
[1425] 2 Cor. xi. 6.
[1426] Joh. i. 1.
[1427] 1 Cor. i. 19.
[1428] 1 Cor. i. 21.
[1429] 1 Cor. ii. 6, 7.
[1430] 1 Cor. i. 24.
[1431] "Upon Muthlabben" A.V. See Perowne on the words.
[1432] 1 Sam. ix. 9.
[1433] Joh. viii. 56.
[1434] Ps. cxix. 18.
[1435] Rom. vii. 14.
[1436] Rev. v. 1.
[1437] Isa. xxix. 11.
[1438] Rev. iii. 7.
[1439] Acts viii. 27.
[1440] Acts viii. 30, 31.
[1441] Hor. Ep. II. 1. 115, 116.
[1442] Hor. Ep. II. i. 117.
[1443] Virgil's full name was Publius Vergilius Maro.
[1444] Virg. E. iv. 6, 7.
[1445] Virg. A. i. 664.
[1446] Virg. A. ii. 650.
[1447] Cc. 1-2.
[1448] C. x.
[1449] C. xi.
[1450] C. xlvi.
[1451] Cc. vii-xii.
[1452] C. xx.
[1453] C. viii.
[1454] C. xxvi.
[1455] Cc. xxiii., xxiv.
[1456] C. xxxiii. See Letter lxxviii.
[1457] 1 Cor. xiv. 19.
[1458] The mention of Job at this point is curious: it would seem that in Jerome's opinion he was coæval with or very little later than Moses.
[1459] Job xix. 25-27, Vulg.
[1460] i.e., Joshua the son of Nun whose name is so rendered by the LXX. Cf. Ecclus. xlvi. 1, A.V.
[1461] Gal. iv. 26.
[1462] Isa. xvi. 1, Vulg. the rock of the wilderness'=Moab.
[1463] Also called Coniah and Jehoiachin.
[1464] They are reckoned as forming one book in the Hebrew Bible.
[1465] Hos. i. 2.
[1466] Hos. iii. 1, 3, 4.
[1467] Joel i. 4.
[1468] Joel ii. 29.
[1469] Acts i. 13, 15.
[1470] The allusion is to Psalms cxx.-cxxxiv. One hundred and twenty is the sum of the numerals one to fifteen.
[1471] Amos vii. 14.
[1472] Amos iv. 1.
[1473] Amos vi. 11.
[1474] Amos vii. 1.
[1475] Amos vii. 7.
[1476] So the Vulgate.
[1477] So the LXX.
[1478] Amos viii. 1.
[1479] Amos viii. 11.
[1480] Edom' means red' and is connected with Adâmâh'=the earth.'
[1481] Jerome interprets the Hebrew word Morasthite' to mean my possession.'
[1482] Mic. v. 1, Vulg.
[1483] i.e., Nineveh--Nahum iii. 1.
[1484] Nahum i. 15.
[1485] The name strictly means embrace.'
[1486] Hab. ii. 1.
[1487] Hab. iii. 3, 4.
[1488] Strictly the Lord guards' or hides.'
[1489] Zeph. i. 10.
[1490] So R.V. marg. Probably a place in Jerusalem.
[1491] Zeph. i. 11, R.V.
[1492] Ps. cxxvi. 5.
[1493] So Vulg. the desire' A.V.
[1494] Hag. ii. 6, 7.
[1495] Strictly the Lord is mindful.'
[1496] i.e., Joshua the High Priest.
[1497] Zech. iii. 3.
[1498] Zech. iii. 9.
[1499] Zech. iv. 2, 3.
[1500] Zech. vi. 1-3.
[1501] Zech. ix. 10.
[1502] Zech. ix. 9.
[1503] This word is not in the Vulg.
[1504] Mal. i. 10, 11, R.V.
[1505] Jer. i. 11.
[1506] Jer. i. 13.
[1507] Jer. xiii. 23.
[1508] Lamentations cc. I.-IV., each verse in which begins with a different letter of the alphabet.
[1509] Dan. ii. 45.
[1510] See note on LII. 3, p.
[1511] The Song of Songs.
[1512] i.e. the feast of Purim--Esth. ix. 20-32.
[1513] Paraleipomena, the name given in the LXX. to the books of Chronicles.
[1514] Veteris instrumenti 'epitome.
[1515] Ps. cxix. 20, PBV.
[1516] Plato, Ap. Soc. 21, 22.
[1517] Quadriga. cf. Irenæus, Adv. Hær. III. ii. 8.
[1518] Clement of Alexandria, following Philo, makes cherub mean wisdom.
[1519] Ezek. i. 18, Vulg.
[1520] Ezek. i. 7.
[1521] Ezek. i. 14.
[1522] Ezek. i. 7.
[1523] Ezek. i. 11.
[1524] Ezek. i. 16.
[1525] Ezek. i. 20.
[1526] i.e. those of Rome, Corinth, Galatia, Ephesus, Philippi, Colosse, Thessalonica.
[1527] Onesimus.
[1528] Col. iv. 14; 2 Cor. viii. 18.
[1529] Matt. vii. 8.
[1530] A verbose rhetorician mentioned by Cic. de Inv. i. 6.
[1531] Eusebius of Cremona, who for the next five years remained with Jerome, and afterwards corresponded with him from Italy. See Letter LVII. § 2. Rufinus, Apol. i. 19. Jerome, Apol. iii. 4, 5, etc.
[1532] 2 Cor. vi. 10.
[1533] 1 Tim. vi. 8.
[1534] Cf. Acts v. 4.
[1535] Matt. v. 40.
[1536] Matt. iv. 18-22.
[1537] Mark xii. 41-44.
[1538] The last king of Lydia, celebrated for his riches. __________________________________________________________________
Letter LIV. To Furia.
A letter of guidance to a widow on the best means of preserving her widowhood (according to Jerome the second of the three degrees of chastity'). Furia had at one time thought of marrying again but eventually abandoned her intention and devoted herself to the care of her young children and her aged father. Jerome draws a vivid picture of the dangers to which she is exposed at Rome, lays down rules of conduct for her guidance, and commends her to the care of the presbyter Exuperius (afterwards bishop of Toulouse). The date of the letter is 394 a.d.
1. You beg and implore me in your letter to write to you--or rather write back to you--what mode of life you ought to adopt to preserve the crown of widowhood and to keep your reputation for chastity unsullied. My mind rejoices, my reins exult, and my heart is glad that you desire to be after marriage what your mother Titiana of holy memory was for a long time in marriage. [1539] Her prayers and supplications are heard. She has succeeded in winning afresh in her only daughter that which she herself when living possessed. It is a high privilege of your family that from the time of Camillus [1540] few or none of your house are described as contracting second marriages. Therefore it will not redound so much to your praise if you continue a widow as to your shame if being a Christian you fail to keep what heathen women have jealously guarded for so many centuries.
2. I say nothing of Paula and Eustochium, the fairest flowers of your stock; for, as my object is to exhort you, I do not wish it to appear that I am praising them. Blæsilla too I pass over who following her husband--your brother--to the grave, fulfilled in a short time of life a long time of virtue. [1541] Would that men would imitate the laudable examples of women, and that wrinkled old age would pay at last what youth gladly offers at first! In saying this I am putting my hand into the fire deliberately and with my eyes open. Men will knit their brows and shake their clenched fists at me;
In swelling tones will angry Chremes rave. [1542]
The leaders will rise as one man against my epistle; the mob of patricians will thunder at me. They will cry out that I am a sorcerer and a seducer; and that I should be transported to the ends of the earth. They may add, if they will, the title of Samaritan; for in it I shall but recognize a name given to my Lord. But one thing is certain. I do not sever the daughter from the mother, I do not use the words of the gospel: "let the dead bury their dead." [1543] For whosoever believes in Christ is alive; and he who believes in Him "ought himself also so to walk even as He walked." [1544]
3. A truce to the calumnies which the malice of backbiters continually fastens upon all who call themselves Christians to keep them through fear of shame from aspiring to virtue. Except by letter we have no knowledge of each other; and where there is no knowledge after the flesh, there can be no motive for intercourse save a religious one. "Honour thy father," [1545] the commandment says, but only if he does not separate you from your true Father. Recognize the tie of blood but only so long as your parent recognizes his Creator. Should he fail to do so, David will sing to you: "hearken, O daughter, and consider, and incline thine ear; forget also thine own people and thy father's house. So shall the king greatly desire thy beauty, for he is thy Lord." [1546] Great is the prize offered for the forgetting of a parent, "the king shall desire thy beauty." You have heard, you have considered, you have inclined your ear, you have forgotten your people and your father's house; therefore the king shall desire your beauty and shall say to you:--"thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee." [1547] What can be fairer than a soul which is called the daughter of God, [1548] and which seeks for herself no outward adorning. [1549] She believes in Christ, and, dowered with this hope of greatness [1550] makes her way to her spouse; for Christ is at once her bridegroom and her Lord.
4. What troubles matrimony involves you have learned in the marriage state itself; you have been surfeited with quails' flesh [1551] even to loathing; your mouth has been filled with the gall of bitterness; you have expelled the indigestible and unwholesome food; you have relieved a heaving stomach. Why will you again swallow what has disagreed with you? "The dog is turned to his own vomit again and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire." [1552] Even brute beasts and flying birds do not fall into the same snares twice. Do you fear extinction for the line of Camillus if you do not present your father with some little fellow to crawl upon his breast and slobber his neck? As if all who marry have children! and as if when they do come, they always resemble their forefathers! Did Cicero's son exhibit his father's eloquence? Had your own Cornelia, [1553] pattern at once of chastity and of fruitfulness, cause to rejoice that she was mother of her Gracchi? It is ridiculous to expect as certain the offspring which many, as you can see, have not got, while others who have had it have lost it again. To whom then are you to leave your great riches? To Christ who cannot die. Whom shall you make your heir? The same who is already your Lord. Your father will be sorry but Christ will be glad; your family will grieve but the angels will rejoice with you. Let your father do what he likes with what is his own. You are not his to whom you have been born, but His to whom you have been born again, and who has purchased you at a great price with His own blood. [1554]
5. Beware of nurses and waiting maids and similar venomous creatures who try to satisfy their greed by sucking your blood. They advise you to do not what is best for you but what is best for them. They are for ever dinning into your ears Virgil's lines:--
Will you waste all your youth in lonely grief
And children sweet, the gifts of love, forswear? [1555]
Wherever there is holy chastity, there is also frugal living; and wherever there is frugal living, servants lose by it. What they do not get is in their minds so much taken from them. The actual sum received is what they look to, and not its relative amount. The moment they see a Christian they at once repeat the hackneyed saying:--"The Greek! The impostor!" [1556] They spread the most scandalous reports and, when any such emanates from themselves, they pretend that they have heard it from others, managing thus at once to originate the story and to exaggerate it. A lying rumour goes forth; and this, when it has reached the married ladies and has been fanned by their tongues, spreads through the provinces. You may see numbers of these--their faces painted, their eyes like those of vipers, their teeth rubbed with pumice-stone--raving and carping at Christians with insane fury. One of these ladies,
A violet mantle round her shoulders thrown,
Drawls out some mawkish stuff, speaks through her nose,
And minces half her words with tripping tongue. [1557]
Hereupon the rest chime in and every bench expresses hoarse approval. They are backed up by men of my own order who, finding themselves assailed, assail others. Always fluent in attacking me, they are dumb in their own defence; just as though they were not monks themselves, and as though every word said against monks did not tell also against their spiritual progenitors the clergy. Harm done to the flock brings discredit on the shepherd. On the other hand we cannot but praise the life of a monk who holds up to veneration the priests of Christ and refuses to detract from that order to which he owes it that he is a Christian.
6. I have spoken thus, my daughter in Christ, not because I doubt that you will be faithful to your vows, [1558] (you would never have asked for a letter of advice had you been uncertain as to the blessedness of monogamy): but that you may realize the wickedness of servants who merely wish to sell you for their own advantage, the snares which relations may set for you and the well meant but mistaken suggestions of a father. While I allow that this latter feels love toward you, I cannot admit that it is love according to knowledge. I must say with the apostle: "I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge." [1559] Imitate rather--I cannot say it too often--your holy mother [1560] whose zeal for Christ comes into my mind as often as I remember her, and not her zeal only but the paleness induced in her by fasting, the alms given by her to the poor, the courtesy shewn by her to the servants of God, the lowliness of her garb and heart, and the constant moderation of her language. Of your father too I speak with respect, not because he is a patrician and of consular rank but because he is a Christian. Let him be true to his profession as such. Let him rejoice that he has begotten a daughter for Christ and not for the world. Nay rather let him grieve that you have in vain lost your virginity as the fruits of matrimony have not been yours. Where is the husband whom he gave to you? Even had he been lovable and good, death would still have snatched all away, and his decease would have terminated the fleshly bond between you. Seize the opportunity, I beg of you, and make a virtue of necessity. In the lives of Christians we look not to the beginnings but to the endings. Paul began badly but ended well. The start of Judas wins praise; his end is condemned because of his treachery. Read Ezekiel, "The righteousness of the righteous shall not deliver him in the day of his transgression; as for the wickedness of the wicked he shall not fall thereby in the day that he turneth from his wickedness." [1561] The Christian life is the true Jacob's ladder on which the angels ascend and descend, [1562] while the Lord stands above it holding out His hand to those who slip and sustaining by the vision of Himself the weary steps of those who ascend. But while He does not wish the death of a sinner, but only that he should be converted and live, He hates the lukewarm [1563] and they quickly cause him loathing. To whom much is forgiven, the same loveth much. [1564]
7. In the gospel a harlot wins salvation. How? She is baptized in her tears and wipes the Lord's feet with that same hair with which she had before deceived many. She does not wear a waving headdress or creaking boots, she does not darken her eyes with antimony. Yet in her squalor she is lovelier than ever. What place have rouge and white lead on the face of a Christian woman? The one simulates the natural red of the cheeks and of the lips; the other the whiteness of the face and of the neck. They serve only to inflame young men's passions, to stimulate lust, and to indicate an unchaste mind. How can a woman weep for her sins whose tears lay bare her true complexion and mark furrows on her cheeks? Such adorning is not of the Lord; a mask of this kind belongs to Antichrist. With what confidence can a woman raise features to heaven which her Creator must fail to recognize? It is idle to allege in excuse for such practices girlishness and youthful vanity. A widow who has ceased to have a husband to please, and who in the apostle's language is a widow indeed, [1565] needs nothing more but perseverance only. She is mindful of past enjoyments, she knows what gave her pleasure and what she has now lost. By rigid fast and vigil she must quench the fiery darts of the devil. [1566] If we are widows, we must either speak as we are dressed, or else dress as we speak. Why do we profess one thing, and practise another? The tongue talks of chastity, but the rest of the body reveals incontinence.
8. So much for dress and adornment. But a widow "that liveth in pleasure"--the words are not mine but those of the apostle--"is dead while she liveth." [1567] What does that mean--"is dead while she liveth"? To those who know no better she seems to be alive and not, as she is, dead in sin; yes, and in another sense dead to Christ, from whom no secrets are hid. "The soul that sinneth it shall die." [1568] "Some men's sins are open...going before to judgment: and some they follow after. Likewise also good works are manifest, and they that are otherwise cannot be hid. [1569] The words mean this:--Certain persons sin so deliberately and flagrantly that you no sooner see them than you know them at once to be sinners. But the defects of others are so cunningly concealed that we only learn them from subsequent information. Similarly the good deeds of some people are public property, while those of others we come to know only through long intimacy with them. Why then must we needs boast of our chastity, a thing which cannot prove itself to be genuine without its companions and attendants, continence and plain living? The apostle macerates his body and brings it into subjection to the soul lest what he has preached to others he should himself fail to keep; [1570] and can a mere girl whose passions are kindled by abundance of food, can a mere girl afford to be confident of her own chastity?
9. In saying this, I do not of course condemn food which God created to be enjoyed with thanksgiving, [1571] but I seek to remove from youths and girls what are incentives to sensual pleasure. Neither the fiery Etna nor the country of Vulcan, [1572] nor Vesuvius, nor Olympus, burns with such violent heat as the youthful marrow of those who are flushed with wine and filled with food. Many trample covetousness under foot, and lay it down as readily as they lay down their purse. An enforced silence serves to make amends for a railing tongue. The outward appearance and the mode of dress can be changed in a single hour. All other sins are external, and what is external can easily be cast away. Desire alone, implanted in men by God to lead them to procreate children, is internal; and this, if it once oversteps its own bounds, becomes a sin, and by a law of nature cries out for sexual intercourse. It is therefore a work of great merit, and one which requires unremitting diligence to overcome that which is innate in you; while living in the flesh not to live after the flesh; to strive with yourself day by day and to watch the foe shut up within you with the hundred eyes of the fabled Argus. [1573] This is what the apostle says in other words: "Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body." [1574] Physicians and others who have written on the nature of the human body, and particularly Galen in his books entitled On matters of health, say that the bodies of boys and of young men and of full grown men and women glow with an interior heat and consequently that for persons of these ages all food is injurious which tends to promote this heat: while on the other hand it is highly conducive to health in eating and in drinking to take things cold and cooling. Contrariwise they tell us that warm food and old wine are good for the old who suffer from humours and from chilliness. Hence it is that the Saviour says "Take heed to yourselves lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness, and cares of this life." [1575] So too speaks the apostle: "Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess." [1576] No wonder that the potter spoke thus of the vessel which He had made when even the comic poet whose only object is to know and to describe the ways of men tells us that
Where Ceres fails and Liber, Venus droops. [1577]
10. In the first place then, till you have passed the years of early womanhood, take only water to drink, for this is by nature of all drinks the most cooling. This, if your stomach is strong enough to bear it; but if your digestion is weak, hear what the apostle says to Timothy: "use a little wine for thy stomach's sake and thine often infirmities." [1578] Then as regards your food you must avoid all heating dishes. I do not speak of flesh dishes only (although of these the chosen vessel declares his mind thus: "it is good neither to eat flesh nor to drink wine" [1579] ) but of vegetables as well. Everything provocative or indigestible is to be refused. Be assured that nothing is so good for young Christians as the eating of herbs. Accordingly in another place he says: "another who is weak eateth herbs." [1580] Thus the heat of the body must be tempered with cold food. Daniel and the three children lived on pulse. [1581] They were still boys and had not come yet to that frying-pan on which the King of Babylon fried the elders [1582] who were judges. Moreover, by an express privilege of God's own giving their bodily condition was improved by their regimen. We do not expect that it will be so with us, but we look for increased vigour of soul which becomes stronger as the flesh grows weaker. Some persons who aspire to the life of chastity fall midway in their journey from supposing that they need only abstain from flesh. They load their stomachs with vegetables which are only harmless when taken sparingly and in moderation. If I am to say what I think, there is nothing which so much heats the body and inflames the passions as undigested food and breathing broken with hiccoughs. As for you, my daughter, I would rather wound your modesty than endanger my case by understatement. Regard everything as poison which bears within it the seeds of sensual pleasure. A meagre diet which leaves the appetite always unsatisfied is to be preferred to fasts three days long. It is much better to take a little every day than some days to abstain wholly and on others to surfeit oneself. That rain is best which falls slowly to the ground. Showers that come down suddenly and with violence wash away the soil.
11. When you eat your meals, reflect that you must immediately afterwards pray and read. Have a fixed number of lines of holy scripture, and render it as your task to your Lord. On no account resign yourself to sleep until you have filled the basket of your breast with a woof of this weaving. After the holy scriptures you should read the writings of learned men; of those at any rate whose faith is well known. You need not go into the mire to seek for gold; you have many pearls, buy the one pearl with these. [1583] Stand, as Jeremiah says, in more ways than one that so you may come on the true way that leads to the Father. [1584] Exchange your love of necklaces and of gems and of silk dresses for earnestness in studying the scriptures. Enter the land of promise that flows with milk and honey. [1585] Eat fine flour and oil. Let your clothing be, like Joseph's, of many colors. [1586] Let your ears like those of Jerusalem [1587] be pierced by the word of God that the precious grains of new corn may hang from them. In that reverend man Exuperius [1588] you have a man of tried years and faith ready to give you constant support with his advice.
12. Make to yourself friends of the mammon of unrighteousness that they may receive you into everlasting habitations. [1589] Give your riches not to those who feed on pheasants but to those who have none but common bread to eat, such as stays hunger while it does not stimulate lust. Consider the poor and needy. [1590] Give to everyone that asks of you, [1591] but especially unto them who are of the household of faith. [1592] Clothe the naked, feed the hungry, visit the sick. [1593] Every time that you hold out your hand, think of Christ. See to it that you do not, when the Lord your God asks an alms of you, increase riches which are none of His.
13. Avoid the company of young men. Let long baited youths dandified and wanton never be seen under your roof. Repel a singer as you would some bane. Hurry from your house women who live by playing and singing, the devil's choir whose songs are the fatal ones of sirens. Do not arrogate to yourself a widow's license and appear in public preceded by a host of eunuchs. It is a most mischievous thing for those who are weak owing to their sex and youth to misuse their own discretion and to suppose that things are lawful because they are pleasant. "All things are lawful, but all things are not expedient." [1594] No frizzled steward nor shapely foster brother nor fair and ruddy footman must dangle at your heels. Sometimes the tone of the mistress is inferred from the dress of the maid. Seek the society of holy virgins and widows; and, if need arises for holding converse with men, do not shun having witnesses, and let your conversation be marked with such confidence that the entry of a third person shall neither startle you nor make you blush. The face is the mirror of the mind and a woman's eyes without a word betray the secrets of her heart. I have lately seen a most miserable scandal traverse the entire East. The lady's age and style, her dress and mien, the indiscriminate company she kept, her dainty table and her regal appointments bespoke her the bride of a Nero or of a Sardanapallus. The scars of others should teach us caution. When he that causeth trouble is scourged the fool will be wiser.' [1595] A holy love knows no impatience. A false rumor is quickly crushed and the after life passes judgment on that which has gone before. It is not indeed possible that any one should come to the end of life's race without suffering from calumny; the wicked find it a consolation to carp at the good, supposing the guilt of sin to be less, in proportion as the number of those who commit it is greater. Still a fire of straw quickly dies out and a spreading flame soon expires if fuel to it be wanting. Whether the report which prevailed a year ago was true or false, when once the sin ceases, the scandal also will cease. I do not say this because I fear anything wrong in your case but because, owing to my deep affection for you, there is no safety that I do not fear. [1596] Oh! that you could see your sister [1597] and that it might be yours to hear the eloquence of her holy lips and to behold the mighty spirit which animates her diminutive frame. You might hear the whole contents of the old and new testaments come bubbling up out of her heart. Fasting is her sport, and prayer she makes her pastime. Like Miriam after the drowning Pharaoh she takes up her timbrel and sings to the virgin choir, "Let us sing to the Lord for He hath triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea." [1598] She teaches her companions to be music girls but music girls for Christ, to be luteplayers but luteplayers for the Saviour. In this occupation she passes both day and night and with oil ready to put in the lamps she waits the coming of the Bridegroom. [1599] Do you therefore imitate your kinswoman. Let Rome have in you what a grander city than Rome, I mean Bethlehem, has in her.
14. You have wealth and can easily therefore supply food to those who want it. Let virtue consume what was provided for self-indulgence; one who means to despise matrimony need fear no degree of want. Have about you troops of virgins whom you may lead into the king's chamber. Support widows that you may mingle them as a kind of violets with the virgins' lilies and the martyrs' roses. Such are the garlands you must weave for Christ in place of that crown of thorns [1600] in which he bore the sins of the world. Let your most noble father thus find in you his joy and support, let him learn from his daughter the lessons he used to learn from his wife. His hair is already gray, his knees tremble, his teeth fall out, his brow is furrowed through years, death is nigh even at the doors, the pyre is all but laid out hard by. Whether we like it or not, we grow old. Let him provide for himself the provision which is needful for his long journey. Let him take with him what otherwise he must unwillingly leave behind, nay let him send before him to heaven what if he declines it, will be appropriated by earth.
15. Young widows, of whom some "are already turned aside after Satan, when they have begun to wax wanton against Christ " [1601] and wish to marry, generally make such excuses as these. "My little patrimony is daily decreasing, the property which I have inherited is being squandered, a servant has spoken insultingly to me, a maid has neglected my orders. Who will appear for me before the authorities? Who will be responsible for the rents of my estates? [1602] Who will see to the education of my children, and to the bringing up of my slaves?" Thus, shameful to say, they put that forward as a reason for marrying again, which alone should deter them from doing so. For by marrying again a mother places over her sons not a guardian but a foe, not a father but a tyrant. Inflamed by her passions she forgets the fruit of her womb, and among the children who know nothing of their sad fate the lately weeping widow dresses herself once more as a bride. Why these excuses about your property and the insolence of slaves? Confess the shameful truth. No woman marries to avoid cohabiting with a husband. At least, if passion is not your motive, it is mere madness to play the harlot just to increase wealth. You do but purchase a paltry and passing gain at the price of a grace which is precious and eternal! If you have children already, why do you want to marry? If you have none, why do you not fear a recurrence of your former sterility? Why do you put an uncertain gain before a certain loss of self-respect?
A marriage-settlement is made in your favour to-day but in a short time you will be constrained to make your will. Your husband will feign sickness and will do for you what he wants you to do for him. Yet he is sure to live and you are sure to die. Or if it happens that you have sons by the second husband, domestic strife is certain to result and intestine disputes. You will not be allowed to love your first children, nor to look kindly on those to whom you have yourself given birth. You will have to give them their food secretly; yet even so your present husband will bear a grudge against your previous one and, unless you hate your sons, he will think that you still love their father. But your husband may have issue by a former wife. If so when he takes you to his home, though you should be the kindest person in the world, all the commonplaces of rhetoricians and declamations of comic poets and writers of mimes will be hurled at you as a cruel stepmother. If your stepson fall sick or have a headache you will be calumniated as a poisoner. If you refuse him food, you will be cruel, while if you give it, you will be held to have bewitched him. I ask you what benefit has a second marriage to confer great enough to compensate for these evils?
16. Do we wish to know what widows ought to be? Let us read the gospel according to Luke. "There was one Anna," he says, "a prophetess, the daughter of Phanuel of the tribe of Aser." [1603] The meaning of the name Anna is grace. Phanuel is in our tongue the face of God. Aser may be translated either as blessedness or as wealth. From her youth up to the age of fourscore and four years she had borne the burden of widowhood, not departing from the temple and giving herself to fastings and prayers night and day; therefore she earned spiritual grace, received the title daughter of the face of God,' [1604] and obtained a share in the blessedness and wealth' [1605] which belonged to her ancestry. Let us recall to mind the widow of Zarephath [1606] who thought more of satisfying Elijah's hunger than of preserving her own life and that of her son. Though she believed that she and he must die that very night unless they had food, she determined that her guest should survive. She preferred to sacrifice her life rather than to neglect the duty of almsgiving. In her handful of meal she found the seed from which she was to reap a harvest sent her by the Lord. She sows her meal and lo! a cruse of oil comes from it. In the land of Judah grain was scarce for the corn of wheat had died there; [1607] but in the house of a heathen widow oil flowed in streams. In the book of Judith--if any one is of opinion that it should be received as canonical--we read of a widow wasted with fasting and wearing the sombre garb of a mourner, whose outward squalor indicated not so much the regret which she felt for her dead husband as the temper [1608] in which she looked forward to the coming of the Bridegroom. I see her hand armed with the sword and stained with blood. I recognize the head of Holofernes which she has carried away from the camp of the enemy. Here a woman vanquishes men, and chastity beheads lust. Quickly changing her garb, she puts on once more in the hour of victory her own mean dress finer than all the splendours of the world. [1609]
17. Some from a misapprehension number Deborah among the widows, and suppose that Barak the leader of the army is her son, though the scripture tells a different story. I will mention her here because she was a prophetess and is reckoned among the judges, and again because she might have said with the psalmist:--"How sweet are thy words unto my taste! yea sweeter than honey to my mouth." [1610] Well was she called the bee [1611] for she fed on the flowers of scripture, was enveloped with the fragrance of the Holy Spirit, and gathered into one with prophetic lips the sweet juices of the nectar. Then there is Naomi, in Greek parakeklemene [1612] or she who is consoled, who, when her husband and her children died abroad, carried her chastity back home and, being supported on the road by its aid, kept with her her Moabitish daughter-in-law, that in her the prophecy of Isaiah [1613] might find a fulfilment. "Send out the lamb, O Lord, to rule over the land from the rock of the desert to the mount of the daughter of Zion." [1614] I pass on to the widow in the gospel who, though she was but a poor widow was yet richer than all the people of Israel. [1615] She had but a grain of mustard seed, but she put her leaven in three measures of flour; and, combining her confession of the Father and of the Son with the grace of the Holy Spirit, she cast her two mites into the treasury. All the substance that she had, her entire possessions, she offered in the two testaments of her faith. These are the two seraphim which glorify the Trinity with threefold song [1616] and are stored among the treasures of the church. They also form the legs of the tongs by which the live coal is caught up to purge the sinner's lips. [1617]
18. But why should I recall instances from history and bring from books types of saintly women, when in your own city you have many before your eyes whose example you may well imitate? I shall not recount their merits here lest I should seem to flatter them. It will suffice to mention the saintly Marcella [1618] who, while she is true to the claims of her birth and station, has set before us a life which is worthy of the gospel. Anna "lived with an husband seven years from her virginity"; [1619] Marcella lived with one for seven months. Anna looked for the coming of Christ; Marcella holds fast the Lord whom Anna received in her arms. Anna sang His praise when He was still a wailing infant; Marcella proclaims His glory now that He has won His triumph. Anna spoke of Him to all those who waited for the redemption of Israel; Marcella cries out with the nations of the redeemed: "A brother redeemeth not, yet a man shall redeem," [1620] and from another psalm: "A man was born in her, and the Highest Himself hath established her." [1621]
About two years ago, as I well remember, I published a book against Jovinian in which by the authority of scripture I crushed the objections raised on the other side on account of the apostle's concession of second marriages. It is unnecessary that I should repeat my arguments afresh here, as you can find them all in this treatise. That I may not exceed the limits of a letter, I will only give you this one last piece of advice. Think every day that you must die, and you will then never think of marrying again. __________________________________________________________________
[1539] i.e. a celibate.
[1540] Lucius Furius Camillus, the hero who conquered Veii and freed Rome from the Gauls.
[1541] Wisdom iv. 13.
[1542] Horace, A. P. 94: the allusion is to a scene in the Heauton Timorumenus of Terence.
[1543] Matt. viii. 22.
[1544] 1 Joh. ii. 6.
[1545] Ex. xx. 12.
[1546] Ps. xlv. 10, 11.
[1547] Cant. iv. 7.
[1548] Ps. xlv. 10.
[1549] Cf. 1 Pet. iii. 3.
[1550] Hac ambitione ditata.
[1551] Numb. xi. 20, 31-4.
[1552] 1 Pet. ii. 22.
[1553] Furia's sister-in-law Blæsilla was through her mother Paula descended from the Gracchi. See Letter CVIII. § 33.
[1554] Acts xx. 28.
[1555] Virg. A. iv. 32.
[1556] See Letter XXXVIII. § 5.
[1557] Persius i. 32 sqq.
[1558] Propositum. The word was passing from the meaning of a purpose into that of a formal vow.
[1559] Rom. x. 2.
[1560] Titiana.
[1561] Ezek. xxxiii. 12.
[1562] Gen. xxviii. 12.
[1563] Rev. iii. 16.
[1564] Luke vii. 47.
[1565] 1 Tim. v. 5.
[1566] Eph. vi. 16.
[1567] 1 Tim. v. 6.
[1568] Ezek. xviii. 20.
[1569] 1 Tim. v. 24, 25.
[1570] 1 Cor. ix. 27.
[1571] 1 Tim. iv. 4.
[1572] The island of Lemnos in the Ægean Sea.
[1573] The hundred-eyed son of Inachus appointed by Hera to be the guardian of Io.
[1574] 1 Cor. vi. 18.
[1575] Luke xxi. 34.
[1576] Eph. v. 18.
[1577] Ter. Enn. iv. 5, 6.
[1578] 1 Tim. v. 23.
[1579] Rom. xiv. 21.
[1580] Rom. xiv. 2.
[1581] Dan. i. 16.
[1582] i.e. Ahab and Zedekiah whose fate is recorded Jer. xxix. 20-23. According to Jerome tradition identified them with the elders who tempted Susannah, although these latter are said to have been stoned and not burned.
[1583] Matt. xiii. 45, 46.
[1584] Jer. vi. 16. The ways.' Vulg. VA V. More than one' is Jerome's Gloss.
[1585] Ex. xxxiii. 3.
[1586] Gen. xxxvii. 23.
[1587] Ezek. xvi. 12.
[1588] Afterwards Bishop of Tolosa (Toulouse). He is mentioned again in Letters CXXIII. and CXXV.
[1589] Luke xvi. 9.
[1590] Ps. xli. i, PBV.
[1591] Matt. v. 42.
[1592] Gal. vi. 10.
[1593] Cf. Matt. xxv. 35, 36.
[1594] 1 Cor. vi. 12.
[1595] Prov. xix. 25, Vulg.
[1596] Cf. Virg. A. iv. 298.
[1597] Her cousin Eustochium seems to be meant.
[1598] Ex. xv. 21.
[1599] Matt. xxv. 4.
[1600] Matt. xxvii. 29.
[1601] 1 Tim. v. 15, 11.
[1602] Agrorum tributa.
[1603] Luke ii. 36.
[1604] Penuel (A.V. Phanuel) means face of God' cf. Gen. xxxii. 30.
[1605] Asher = blessedness or wealth.'
[1606] 1 Kings xvii.
[1607] Joh. xii. 24.
[1608] i.e., that of penitence.
[1609] Judith xiii.
[1610] Ps. cxix. 103.
[1611] The meaning of Deborah.
[1612] Jerome appears to have read ntmy for nmy. The latter means my pleasantness.'
[1613] Made long afterwards.
[1614] Isa. xvi. 1 Vulg. the rock of the desert' is a poetical name for Moab.
[1615] Mark xii. 43.
[1616] Isa. vi. 2, 3. See Letter, XVIII. ante.
[1617] Isa. vi. 6.
[1618] See Letters XXIII., LXXVII., etc.
[1619] Luke ii. 36.
[1620] Ps. xlix. 7. Vulg.
[1621] Ps. lxxxvii. 5. __________________________________________________________________
Letter LV. To Amandus.
A very interesting letter. Amandus a presbyter of Burdigala (Bourdeaux) had written to Jerome for an explanation of three passages of scripture, viz. Matt. vi. 34, 1 Cor. vi. 18, 1 Cor. xv. 25, 26, and had in the same letter on behalf of a sister' (supposed by Thierry to have been Fabiola) put the following question: Can a woman who has divorced her first husband on account of his vices and who has during his lifetime under compulsion married again, communicate with the Church without first doing penance?' Jerome in his reply gives the explanations asked for but answers the farther question, that concerning the sister,' with an emphatic negative. Written about the year 394 a.d.
1. A short letter does not admit of long explanations; compressing much matter into a small space it can only give a few words to topics which suggest many thoughts. You ask me what is the meaning of the passage in the gospel according to Matthew, "take no thought for the morrow. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." [1622] In the holy scriptures "the morrow" signifies the time to come. Thus in Genesis Jacob says: "So shall my righteousness answer for me to-morrow." [1623] Again when the two tribes of Reuben and Gad and the half tribe of Manasseh had built an altar and when all Israel had sent to them an embassy, they made answer to Phinehas the high priest that they had built the altar lest "to-morrow" it might be said to their children, "ye have no part in the Lord." [1624] You may find many similar passages in the old instrument. [1625] While then Christ forbids us to take thought for things future, He has allowed us to do so for things present, knowing as He does the frailty of our mortal condition. His remaining words "sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof" are to be understood as meaning that it is sufficient for us to think of the present troubles of this life. Why need we extend our thoughts to contingencies, to objects which we either cannot obtain or else having obtained must soon relinquish? The Greek word kakia rendered in the Latin version "wickedness" has two distinct meanings, wickedness and tribulation, which latter the Greek call kakosin and in this passage "tribulation" would be a better rendering than "wickedness." But if any one demurs to this and insists that the word kakia must mean "wickedness" and not "tribulation" or "trouble," the meaning must be the same as in the words "the whole world lieth in wickedness" [1626] and as in the Lord's prayer in the clause, "deliver us from evil:" [1627] the purport of the passage will then be that our present conflict with the wickedness of this world should be enough for us.
2. Secondly, you ask me concerning the passage in the first epistle of the blessed apostle Paul to the Corinthians where he says: "every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body." [1628] Let us go back a little farther and read on until we come to these words, for we must not seek to learn the whole meaning of the section, from the concluding parts of it, or, if I may so say, from the tail of the chapter. [1629] "The body is not for fornication but for the Lord; and the Lord for the body. And God hath both raised up the Lord and will also raise up us [with Him] by his own power. Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them the members of an harlot? God forbid. What! Know ye not that he which is joined to an harlot is one body? For two, saith he, shall be one flesh. But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit. Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body," [1630] and so on. The holy apostle has been arguing against excess and has just before said "meats for the belly and the belly for meats: but God shall destroy both it and them." [1631] Now he comes to treat of fornication. For excess in eating is the mother of lust; a belly that is distended with food and saturated with draughts of wine is sure to lead to sensual passion. As has been elsewhere said "the arrangement of man's organs suggests the course of his vices." [1632] Accordingly all such sins as theft, manslaughter, pillage, perjury, and the like can be repented of after they have been committed; and, however much interest may tempt him, conscience always smites the offender. It is only lust and sensual pleasure that in the very hour of penitence undergo once more the temptations of the past, the itch of the flesh, and the allurements of sin; so that the very thought which we bestow on the correction of such transgressions becomes in itself a new source of sin. Or to put the matter in a different light: other sins are outside of us; and whatever we do we do against others. But fornication defiles the fornicator both in conscience and body; and in accordance with the words of the Lord, "for this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and they twain shall be one flesh," [1633] he too becomes one body with a harlot and sins against his own body by making what is the temple of Christ the body of a harlot. Not to pass over any suggestion of the Greek commentators, I shall give you one more explanation. It is one thing, they say, to sin with the body, and another to sin in the body. Theft, manslaughter, and all other sins except fornication we commit with our hands outside ourselves. Fornication alone we commit inside ourselves in our bodies and not with our bodies upon others. The preposition with' denotes the instrument used in sinning, while the preposition in' signifies the sphere of the passion is ourselves. Some again give this explanation that according to the scripture a man's body is his wife and that when a man commits fornication he is said to sin against his own body that is against his wife inasmuch as he defiles her by his own fornication and causes her though herself free from sin to become a sinner through her intercourse with him.
3. I find joined to your letter of inquiries a short paper containing the following words: "ask him, (that is me,) whether a woman who has left her husband on the ground that he is an adulterer and sodomite and has found herself compelled to take another may in the lifetime of him whom she first left be in communion with the church without doing penance for her fault." As I read the case put I recall the verse "they make excuses for their sins." [1634] We are all human and all indulgent to our own faults; and what our own will leads us to do we attribute to a necessity of nature. It is as though a young man were to say, "I am over-borne by my body, the glow of nature kindles my passions, the structure of my frame and its reproductive organs call for sexual intercourse." Or again a murderer might say, "I was in want, I stood in need of food, I had nothing to cover me. If I shed the blood of another, it was to save myself from dying of cold and hunger." Tell the sister, therefore, who thus enquires of me concerning her condition, not my sentence but that of the apostle. "Know ye not, brethren (for I speak to them that know the law,) how that the law hath dominion over a man as long as he liveth? For the woman which hath an husband is bound by the law to her husband, so long as he liveth; but if the husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband. So then, if, while her husband liveth, she be married to another man, she shall be called an adulteress." [1635] And in another place: "the wife is bound by the law as long as her husband liveth; but if her husband be dead, she is at liberty to be married to whom she will; only in the Lord." [1636] The apostle has thus cut away every plea and has clearly declared that, if a woman marries again while her husband is living, she is an adulteress. You must not speak to me of the violence of a ravisher, a mother's pleading, a father's bidding, the influence of relatives, the insolence and the intrigues of servants, household losses. A husband may be an adulterer or a sodomite, he may be stained with every crime and may have been left by his wife because of his sins; yet he is still her husband and, so long as he lives, she may not marry another. The apostle does not promulgate this decree on his own authority but on that of Christ who speaks in him. For he has followed the words of Christ in the gospel: "whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced, committeth adultery." [1637] Mark what he says: "whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery." Whether she has put away her husband or her husband her, the man who marries her is still an adulterer. Wherefore the apostles seeing how heavy the yoke of marriage was thus made said to Him: "if the case of the man be so with his wife, it is not good to marry," and the Lord replied, "he that is able to receive it, let him receive it." And immediately by the instance of the three eunuchs he shows the blessedness of virginity which is bound by no carnal tie. [1638]
4. I have not been able quite to determine what it is that she means by the words "has found herself compelled" to marry again. What is this compulsion of which she speaks? Was she overborne by a crowd and ravished against her will? If so, why has she not, thus victimized, subsequently put away her ravisher? Let her read the books of Moses and she will find that if violence is offered to a betrothed virgin in a city and she does not cry out, she is punished as an adulteress: but if she is forced in the field, she is innocent of sin and her ravisher alone is amenable to the laws. [1639] Therefore if your sister, who, as she says, has been forced into a second union, wishes to receive the body of Christ and not to be accounted an adulteress, let her do penance; so far at least as from the time she begins to repent to have no farther intercourse with that second husband who ought to be called not a husband but an adulterer. If this seems hard to her and if she cannot leave one whom she has once loved and will not prefer the Lord to sensual pleasure, let her hear the declaration of the apostle: "ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of devils: ye cannot be partakers of the Lord's table and of the table of devils," [1640] and in another place: "what communion hath light with darkness? and what concord hath Christ with Belial?" [1641] What I am about to say may sound novel but after all it is not new but old for it is supported by the witness of the old testament. If she leaves her second husband and desires to be reconciled with her first, she cannot be so now; for it is written in Deuteronomy: "When a man hath taken a wife, and married her, and it come to pass that she find no favour in his eyes, because he hath found some uncleanness in her; then let him write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house. And when she is departed out of his house, she may go and be another man's wife. And if the latter husband hate her, and write her a bill of divorcement and giveth it in her hand, and sendeth her out of his house; or if the latter husband die which took her to be his wife; her former husband, which sent her away may not take her again to be his wife, after that she is defiled; for that is abomination before the Lord: and thou shalt not cause the land to sin, which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance." [1642] Wherefore, I beseech you, do your best to comfort her and to urge her to seek salvation. Diseased flesh calls for the knife and the searing-iron. The wound is to blame and not the healing art, if with a cruelty that is really kindness a physician to spare does not spare, and to be merciful is cruel. [1643]
5. Your third and last question relates to the passage in the same epistle where the apostle in discussing the resurrection, comes to the words: "for he must reign, till he hath put all things under his feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. For he hath put all things under his feet. But when he saith, all things are put under him, it is manifest that he is excepted, which did put all things under him. And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him that God may be all in all." [1644] I am surprised that you have resolved to question me about this passage when that reverend man, Hilary, bishop of Poictiers, has occupied the eleventh book of his treatise against the Arians with a full examination and explanation of it. Yet I may at least say a few words. The chief stumbling-block in the passage is that the Son is said to be subject to the Father. Now which is the more shameful and humiliating, to be subject to the Father (often a mark of loving devotion as in the psalm "truly my soul is subject unto God" [1645] ) or to be crucified and made the curse of the cross? For "cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree." [1646] If Christ then for our sakes was made a curse that He might deliver us from the curse of the law, are you surprised that He is also for our sakes subject to the Father to make us too subject to Him as He says in the gospel: "No man cometh unto the Father but by me," [1647] and "I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me." [1648] Christ then is subject to the Father in the faithful; for all believers, nay the whole human race, are accounted members of His body. But in unbelievers, that is in Jews, heathens, and heretics, He is said to be not subject; for these members of His body are not subject to the faith. But in the end of the world when all His members shall see Christ, that is their own body, reigning, they also shall be made subject to Christ, that is to their own body, that the whole of Christ's body may be subject unto God and the Father, and that God may be all in all. He does not say "that the Father may be all in all" but that "God" may be, a title which properly belongs to the Trinity and may be referred not only to the Father but also to the Son and to the Holy Ghost. His meaning therefore is "that humanity may be subject to the Godhead." By humanity we here intend not that gentleness and kindness which the Greeks call philanthropy but the whole human race. Moreover when he says "that God may be all in all," it is to be taken in this sense. At present our Lord and Saviour is not all in all, but only a part in each of us. For instance He is wisdom in Solomon, generosity in David, patience in Job, knowledge of things to come in Daniel, faith in Peter, zeal in Phinehas and Paul, virginity in John, and other virtues in others. But when the end of all things shall come, then shall He be all in all, for then the saints shall severally possess all the virtues and all will possess Christ in His entirety. __________________________________________________________________
[1622] Matt. vi. 34.
[1623] Gen. xxx. 33, A.V. marg.
[1624] Josh. xxii. 27: A.V. and R.V. have "in time to come."
[1625] Instrumentum--a legal term introduced by Tertullian. He uses it both of the Christian dispensation and of its written record.
[1626] 1 Joh. v. 19. Where, however, the word is ento poneeo.
[1627] Matt. vi. 13. apo tou ponerou.
[1628] 1 Cor. vi. 18.
[1629] Capitulum, "Passage." The present division of the Bible into chapters did not exist in Jerome's time. It is ascribed by some to Abp. Stephen Langton and by others to Card. Hugh de St. Cher.
[1630] 1 Cor. vi. 13-18.
[1631] 1 Cor. vi. 13.
[1632] Tertullian, on Fasting, I.
[1633] Matt. xix. 5; 1 Cor. vi. 16.
[1634] Ps. clxi. 4, Vulg.
[1635] Rom. vii. 1-3.
[1636] 1 Cor. vii. 39.
[1637] Matt. v. 32.
[1638] Matt. xix. 10-12.
[1639] Deut. xxii. 23-27.
[1640] 1 Cor. x. 21.
[1641] 2 Cor. vi. 14, 15.
[1642] Deut. xxiv. 1-4.
[1643] Cf. Letter XL. § 1.
[1644] 1 Cor. xv. 25-28.
[1645] Ps. lxii. 1, Vulg.
[1646] Gal. iii. 13.
[1647] Joh. xiv. 6.
[1648] Joh. xii. 32. __________________________________________________________________
Letter LVI. From Augustine.
Augustine's first letter to Jerome (printed in his correspondence in this Library as Letter XXVIII.): through a series of accidents it was not delivered until nine years after it had been written. In it Augustine comments on Jerome's new Latin version of the O.T. and advises him in his future labours to adhere more closely to the text of the LXX. He also discusses Jerome's account (in his commentary on the epistle to the Galatians) of the quarrel between Paul and Peter at Antioch. This according to Jerome was not a real misunderstanding but only one artificially got up' to put clearly before the Church the mischief of Christians conforming to the now obsolete Mosaic Law. Augustine strongly controverts this view and maintains that it is fatal to the veracity and authority claimed for scripture. Written from Hippo about the year 394 a.d. __________________________________________________________________
Letter LVII. To Pammachius on the Best Method of Translating.
Written to Pammachius (for whom see Letter LXVI.) in a.d. 395. In the previous year Jerome had rendered into Latin Letter LI. (from Epiphanius to John of Jerusalem) under circumstances which he here describes (§2). His version soon became public and incurred severe criticism from some person not named by Jerome but supposed by him to have been instigated by Rufinus (§12). Charged with having falsified his original he now repudiates the charge and defends his method of translation ("to give sense for sense and not word for word" §5) by an appeal to the practice of classical (§5), ecclesiastical (§6), and N.T. (§§7-10) writers.
When at a subsequent period Rufinus gave to the world what was in Jerome's opinion a misleading version of Origen's First Principles, he appealed to this letter as giving him ample warranty for what he had done. See Letters LXXX, and LXXXI, and Rufinus' Preface to the peri 'Aechon in Vol. iii. of this series.
1. The apostle Paul when he appeared before King Agrippa to answer the charges which were brought against him, wishing to use language intelligible to his hearers and confident of the success of his cause, began by congratulating himself in these words: "I think myself happy, King Agrippa, because I shall answer for myself this day before thee touching all the things whereof I am accused by the Jews: especially because thou art expert in all customs and questions which are among the Jews." [1649] He had read the saying of Jesus: [1650] "Well is him that speaketh in the ears of them that will hear;" [1651] and he knew that a pleader only succeeds in proportion as he impresses his judge. On this occasion I too think myself happy that learned ears will hear my defence. For a rash tongue charges me with ignorance or falsehood; it alleges that in translating another man's letter I have made mistakes through incapacity or carelessness; it convicts me of either an involuntary error or a deliberate offence. And lest it should happen that my accuser--encouraged by a volubility which stops at nothing and by an impunity which arrogates to itself an unlimited license--should accuse me as he has already done our father (Pope) Epiphanius; I send this letter to inform you--and through you others who think me worthy of their regard--of the true order of the facts.
2. About two years ago the aforesaid Pope Epiphanius sent a letter [1652] to Bishop John, first finding fault with him as regarded some of his opinions and then mildly calling him to penitence. Such was the repute of the writer or else the elegance of the letter that all Palestine fought for copies of it. Now there was in our monastery a man of no small estimation in his country, Eusebius of Cremona, who, when he found that this letter was in everybody's mouth and that the ignorant and the educated alike admired it for its teaching and for the purity of its style, set to work to beg me to translate it for him into Latin and at the same time to simplify the argument so that he might more readily understand it; for he was himself altogether unacquainted with the Greek language. I consented to his request and calling to my aid a secretary speedily dictated my version, briefly marking on the side of the page the contents of the several chapters. The fact is that he asked me to do this merely for himself, and I requested of him in return to keep his copy private and not too readily to circulate it. A year and six months went by, and then the aforesaid translation found its way by a novel stratagem from his desk to Jerusalem. For a pretended monk--either bribed as there is much reason to believe or actuated by malice of his own as his tempter vainly tries to convince us--shewed himself a second Judas by robbing Eusebius of his literary property and gave to the adversary an occasion of railing [1653] against me. They tell the unlearned that I have falsified the original, that I have not rendered word for word, that I have put dear friend' in place of honourable sir,' and more shameful still! that I have cut down my translation by omitting the words aidesimotate Pappa. [1654] These and similar trifles form the substance of the charges brought against me.
3. At the outset before I defend my version I wish to ask those persons who confound wisdom with cunning, some few questions. Where did you get your copy of the letter? Who gave it to you? How have you the effrontery to bring forward what you have procured by fraud? What place of safety will be left us if we cannot conceal our secrets even within our own walls and our own writing-desks? Were I to press such a charge against you before a legal tribunal, I could make you amenable to the laws which even in fiscal cases appoint penalties for meddlesome informers and condemn the traitor even while they accept his treachery. For though they welcome the profit which the information gives them, they disapprove the motive which actuates the informer. A little while ago a man of consular rank named Hesychius (against whom the patriarch Gamaliel waged an implacable war) was condemned to death by the emperor Theodosius simply because he had laid hold of imperial papers through a secretary whom he had tempted. We read also in old histories [1655] that the schoolmaster who betrayed the children of the Faliscans was sent back to his boys and handed over to them in bonds, the Roman people refusing to accept a dishonourable victory. When Pyrrhus king of Epirus was lying in his camp ill from the effects of a wound, his physician offered to poison him, but Fabricius thinking it shame that the king should die by treachery sent the traitor back in chains to his master, refusing to sanction crime even when its victim was an enemy. [1656] A principle which the laws uphold, which is maintained by enemies, which warfare and the sword fail to violate, has hitherto been held unquestioned among the monks and priests of Christ. And can any one of them presume now, knitting his brow and snapping his fingers, [1657] to spend his breath in saying: "What if he did use bribes or other inducements! he did what suited his purpose." A strange plea truly to defend a fraud as though robbers, thieves, and pirates did not do the same. Certainly, when Annas and Caiaphas led hapless Judas astray, they only did what they believed to be expedient for themselves.
4. Suppose that I wish to write down in my note books this or that silly trifle, or to make comments upon the scriptures, to retort upon my calumniators, to digest my wrath, to practise myself in the use of commonplaces and to stow away sharp shafts for the day of battle. So long as I do not publish my thoughts, they are only unkind words not matter for a charge of libel; in fact they are not even unkind words for the public ear never hears them. You [1658] may bribe my slaves and tamper with my clients. You may, as the fable has it, penetrate by means of your gold to the chamber of Danaë; [1659] and then, dissembling what you have done, you may call me a falsifier; but, if you do so, you will have to plead guilty yourself to a worse charge than any that you can bring against me. One man inveighs against you as a heretic, another as a perverter of doctrine. You are silent yourself; you do not venture to answer; you assail the translator; you cavil about syllables and you fancy your defence complete if your calumnies provoke no reply. Suppose that I have made a mistake or an omission in my rendering. Your whole case turns upon this; this is the defence which you offer to your accusers. Are you no heretic because I am a bad translator? Mind, I do not say that I know you to be a heretic; I leave such knowledge to your accuser, to him who wrote the letter: [1660] what I do say is that it is the height of folly for you when you are accused by one man to attack another, and when you are covered with wounds yourself to seek comfort by wounding one who is still quiescent and unaggressive.
5. In the above remarks I have assumed that I have made alterations in the letter and that a simple translation may contain errors though not wilful ones. As, however the letter itself shews that no changes have been made in the sense, that nothing has been added, and that no doctrine has been foisted into it, "obviously their object is understanding to understand nothing;" [1661] and while they desire to arraign another's want of skill, they betray their own. For I myself not only admit but freely proclaim that in translating from the Greek (except in the case of the holy scriptures where even the order of the words is a mystery) I render sense for sense and not word for word. For this course I have the authority of Tully who has so translated the Protagoras of Plato, the OEconomicus of Xenophon, and the two beautiful orations [1662] which Æschines and Demosthenes delivered one against the other. What omissions, additions, and alterations he has made substituting the idioms of his own for those of another tongue, this is not the time to say. I am satisfied to quote the authority of the translator who has spoken as follows in a prologue [1663] prefixed to the orations. "I have thought it right to embrace a labour which though not necessary for myself will prove useful to those who study. I have translated the noblest speeches of the two most eloquent of the Attic orators, the speeches which Æschines and Demosthenes delivered one against the other; but I have rendered them not as a translator but as an orator, keeping the sense but altering the form by adapting both the metaphors and the words to suit our own idiom. I have not deemed it necessary to render word for word but I have reproduced the general style and emphasis. I have not supposed myself bound to pay the words out one by one to the reader but only to give him an equivalent in value." Again at the close of his task he says, "I shall be well satisfied if my rendering is found, as I trust it will be, true to this standard. In making it I have utilized all the excellences of the originals, I mean the sentiments, the forms of expression and the arrangement of the topics, while I have followed the actual wording only so far as I could do so without offending our notions of taste. If all that I have written is not to be found in the Greek, I have at any rate striven to make it correspond with it." Horace too, an acute and learned writer, in his Art of Poetry gives the same advice to the skilled translator:--
And care not thou with over anxious thought
To render word for word. [1664]
Terence has translated Menander; Plautus and Cæcilius the old comic poets. [1665] Do they ever stick at words? Do they not rather in their versions think first of preserving the beauty and charm of their originals? What men like you call fidelity in transcription, the learned term pestilent minuteness. [1666] Such were my teachers about twenty years ago; and even then [1667] I was the victim of a similar error to that which is now imputed to me, though indeed I never imagined that you would charge me with it. In translating the Chronicle of Eusebius of Cæsarea into Latin, I made among others the following prefatory observations: "It is difficult in following lines laid down by others not sometimes to diverge from them, and it is hard to preserve in a translation the charm of expressions which in another language are most felicitous. Each particular word conveys a meaning of its own, and possibly I have no equivalent by which to render it, and if I make a circuit to reach my goal, I have to go many miles to cover a short distance. [1668] To these difficulties must be added the windings of hyperbata, differences in the use of cases, divergencies of metaphor; and last of all the peculiar and if I may so call it, inbred character of the language. If I render word for word, the result will sound uncouth, and if compelled by necessity I alter anything in the order or wording, I shall seem to have departed from the function of a translator." [1669] And after a long discussion which it would be tedious to follow out here, I added what follows:--"If any one imagines that translation does not impair the charm of style, let him render Homer word for word into Latin, nay I will go farther still and say, let him render it into Latin prose, and the result will be that the order of the words will seem ridiculous and the most eloquent of poets scarcely articulate." [1670]
6. In quoting my own writings my only object has been to prove that from my youth up I at least have always aimed at rendering sense not words, but if such authority as they supply is deemed insufficient, read and consider the short preface dealing with this matter which occurs in a book narrating the life of the blessed Antony. [1671] "A literal translation from one language into another obscures the sense; the exuberance of the growth lessens the yield. For while one's diction is enslaved to cases and metaphors, it has to explain by tedious circumlocutions what a few words would otherwise have sufficed to make plain. I have tried to avoid this error in the translation which at your request I have made of the story of the blessed Antony. My version always preserves the sense although it does not invariably keep the words of the original. Leave others to catch at syllables and letters, do you for your part look for the meaning." Time would fail me were I to unfold the testimonies of all who have translated only according to the sense. It is sufficient for the present to name Hilary the confessor [1672] who has turned some homilies on Job and several treatises on the Psalms from Greek into Latin; yet has not bound himself to the drowsiness of the letter or fettered himself by the stale literalism of inadequate culture. Like a conqueror he has led away captive into his own tongue the meaning of his originals.
7. That secular and church writers should have adopted this line need not surprise us when we consider that the translators of the Septuagint, [1673] the evangelists, and the apostles, have done the same in dealing with the sacred writings. We read in Mark [1674] of the Lord saying Talitha cumi and it is immediately added "which is interpreted, Damsel, I say unto thee, arise." The evangelist may be charged with falsehood for having added the words "I say unto thee" for the Hebrew is only "Damsel arise." To emphasize this and to give the impression of one calling and commanding he has added "I say unto thee." Again in Matthew [1675] when the thirty pieces of silver are returned by the traitor Judas and the potter's field is purchased with them, it is written:--"Then was fulfilled that which was spoken of by Jeremy the prophet, saying, And they took the thirty pieces of silver the price of him that was valued which [1676] they of the children of Israel did value, and gave them for the potter's field, as the Lord appointed me.'" This passage is not found in Jeremiah at all but in Zechariah, in quite different words and an altogether different order. In fact the Vulgate renders it as follows:--"And I will say unto them, If it is good in your sight, give ye me a price or refuse it: So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver. And the Lord said unto me, Put them into the melting furnace and consider if it is tried as I have been tried by them. And I took the thirty pieces of silver and cast them into the house of the Lord." [1677] It is evident that the rendering of the Septuagint differs widely from the quotation of the evangelist. In the Hebrew also, though the sense is the same, the words are quite different and differently arranged. It says: "And I said unto them, If ye think good, give me my price; and, if not, forbear. So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver. And the Lord said unto me, Cast it unto the potter; [1678] a goodly price that I was priced at of them. And I took the thirty pieces of silver and cast them to the potter in the house of the Lord." [1679] They may accuse the apostle of falsifying his version seeing that it agrees neither with the Hebrew nor with the translators of the Septuagint: and worse than this, they may say that he has mistaken the author's name putting down Jeremiah when it should be Zechariah. Far be it from us to speak thus of a follower [1680] of Christ, who made it his care to formulate dogmas rather than to hunt for words and syllables. To take another instance from Zechariah, the evangelist John quotes from the Hebrew, "They shall look on him whom they pierced," [1681] for which we read in the Septuagint, "And they shall look upon me because they have mocked me," and in the Latin version, "And they shall look upon me for the things which they have mocked or insulted." Here the evangelist, the Septuagint, and our own version [1682] all differ; yet the divergence of language is atoned by oneness of spirit. In Matthew again we read of the Lord preaching flight to the apostles and confirming His counsel with a passage from Zechariah. "It is written," he says, "I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad." [1683] But in the Septuagint and in the Hebrew it reads differently, for it is not God who speaks, as the evangelist makes out, but the prophet who appeals to God the Father saying:--"Smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered." In this instance according to my judgment--and I have some careful critics with me--the evangelist is guilty of a fault in presuming to ascribe to God what are the words of the prophet. Again the same evangelist writes that at the warning of an angel Joseph took the young child and his mother and went into Egypt and remained there till the death of Herod; "that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet saying, Out of Egypt have I called my son." [1684] The Latin manuscripts do not so give the passage, but in Hosea [1685] the true Hebrew text has the following:--"When Israel was a child then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt." Which the Septuagint renders thus:--"When Israel was a child then I loved him, and called his sons out of Egypt." Are they [1686] altogether to be rejected because they have given another turn to a passage which refers primarily to the mystery of Christ? Or should we not rather pardon the shortcomings of the translators on the score of their human frailty according to the saying of James, "In many things we offend all. If any man offend not in word the same is a perfect man and able also to bridle the whole body." [1687] Once more it is written in the pages of the same evangelist, "And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene." [1688] Let these word fanciers and nice critics of all composition tell us where they have read the words; and if they cannot, let me tell them that they are in Isaiah. [1689] For in the place where we read and translate, "There shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots," [1690] in the Hebrew idiom it is written thus, "There shall come forth a rod out of the root of Jesse and a Nazarene shall grow from his root." How can the Septuagint leave out the word Nazarene,' if it is unlawful to substitute one word for another? It is sacrilege either to conceal or to set at naught a mystery.
8. Let us pass on to other passages, for the brief limits of a letter do not suffer us to dwell too long on any one point. The same Matthew says:--"Now all this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet saying, Behold a virgin shall be with child and shall bring forth a son and they shall call his name Emmanuel." [1691] The rendering of the Septuagint is, "Behold a virgin shall receive seed and shall bring forth a son, and ye shall call his name Emmanuel." If people cavil at words, obviously to receive seed' is not the exact equivalent of to be with child,' and ye shall call' differs from they shall call.' Moreover in the Hebrew we read thus, "Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Immanuel." [1692] Ahaz shall not call him so for he was convicted of want of faith, nor the Jews for they were destined to deny him, but she who is to conceive him, and bear him, the virgin herself. In the same evangelist we read that Herod was troubled at the coming of the Magi and that gathering together the scribes and the priests he demanded of them where Christ should be born and that they answered him, "In Bethlehem of Judæa: for thus it is written by the prophet; And thou Bethlehem in the land of Judah art not the least among the princes of Judah, for out of thee shall come a governour that shall rule my people Israel." [1693] In the Vulgate [1694] this passage appears as follows:--"And thou Bethlehem, the house of Ephratah, art small to be among the thousands of Judah, yet one shall come out of thee for me to be a prince in Israel." You will be more surprised still at the difference in words and order between Matthew and the Septuagint if you look at the Hebrew which runs thus:--"But thou Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel." [1695] Consider one by one the words of the evangelist:--"And thou Bethlehem in the land of Judah." For "the land of Judah" the Hebrew has "Ephratah" while the Septuagint gives "the house of Ephratah." The evangelist writes, "art not the least among the princes of Judah." In the Septuagint this is, "art small to be among the thousands of Judah," while the Hebrew gives, "though thou be little among the thousands of Judah." There is a contradiction here--and that not merely verbal--between the evangelist and the prophet; for in this place at any rate both Septuagint and Hebrew agree. The evangelist says that he is not little among the princes of Judah, while the passage from which he queries says exactly the opposite of this, "Thou art small indeed and little; but yet out of thee, small and little as thou art, there shall come forth for me a leader in Israel," a sentiment in harmony with that of the apostle, "God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty." [1696] Moreover the last clause "to rule" or "to feed my people Israel" clearly runs differently in the original.
9. I refer to these passages, not to convict the evangelists of falsification--a charge worthy only of impious men like Celsus, Porphyry, and Julian--but to bring home to my critics their own want of knowledge, and to gain from them such consideration that they may concede to me in the case of a simple letter what, whether they like it or not, they will have to concede to the Apostles in the Holy Scriptures. Mark, the disciple of Peter, begins his gospel thus:--"The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, as it is written in the prophet Isaiah: Behold I send my messenger before thy face which shall prepare thy way before thee. The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight." [1697] This quotation is made up from two prophets, Malachi that is to say and Isaiah. For the first part: "Behold I send my messenger before thy face which shall prepare thy way before thee," occurs at the close of Malachi. [1698] But the second part: "The voice of one crying, etc.," we read in Isaiah. [1699] On what grounds then has Mark in the very beginning of his book set the words: "As it is written in the prophet Isaiah, Behold I send my messenger," when, as we have said, it is not written in Isaiah at all, but in Malachi the last of the twelve prophets? Let ignorant presumption solve this nice question if it can, and I will ask pardon for being in the wrong. The same Mark brings before us the Saviour thus addressing the Pharisees: "Have ye never read what David did when he had need and was an hungred, he and they that were with him, how he went into the house of God in the days of Abiathar the highpriest, and did eat the shew-bread which is not lawful to eat but for the priests?" [1700] Now let us turn to the books of Samuel, or, as they are commonly called, of Kings, and we shall find there that the highpriest's name was not Abiathar but Ahimelech, [1701] the same that was afterwards put to death with the rest of the priests by Doeg at the command of Saul. [1702] Let us pass on now to the apostle Paul who writes thus to the Corinthians: "For had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But, as it is written, Eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him." [1703] Some writers on this passage betake themselves to the ravings of the apocryphal books and assert that the quotation comes from the Revelation of Elijah; [1704] whereas the truth is that it is found in Isaiah according to the Hebrew text: "Since the beginning of the world men have not heard nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen, O God, beside thee what thou hast prepared for them that wait for thee." [1705] The Septuagint has rendered the words quite differently: "Since the beginning of the world we have not heard, neither have our eyes seen any God beside thee and thy true works, and thou wilt shew mercy to them that wait for thee." We see then from what place the quotation is taken and yet the apostle has not rendered his original word for word, but, using a paraphrase, he has given the sense in different terms. In his epistle to the Romans the same apostle quotes these words from Isaiah: "Behold I lay in Sion a stumbling-stone and rock of offence," [1706] a rendering which is at variance with the Greek version [1707] yet agrees with the original Hebrew. The Septuagint gives an opposite meaning, "that you fall not on a stumblingstone nor on a rock of offence." The apostle Peter agrees with Paul and the Hebrew, writing: "but to them that do not believe, a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence." [1708] From all these passages it is clear that the apostles and evangelists in translating the old testament scriptures have sought to give the meaning rather than the words, and that they have not greatly cared to preserve forms or constructions, so long as they could make clear the subject to the understanding.
10. Luke the evangelist and companion of apostles describes Christ's first martyr Stephen as relating what follows in a Jewish assembly. "With threescore and fifteen souls Jacob went down into Egypt, and died himself, and our fathers were carried over [1709] into Sychem, and laid in the sepulchre that Abraham bought for a sum of money of the sons of Emmor [1710] the father of Sychem." [1711] In Genesis this passage is quite differently given, for it is Abraham that buys of Ephron the Hittite, the son of Zohar, near Hebron, for four hundred shekels [1712] of silver, a double cave, [1713] and the field that is about it, and that buries in it Sarah his wife. And in the same book we read that, after his return from Mesopotamia with his wives and his sons, Jacob pitched his tent before Salem, a city of Shechem which is in the land of Canaan, and that he dwelt there and "bought a parcel of a field where he had spread his tent at the hand of Hamor, the father of Sychem, for an hundred lambs," [1714] and that "he erected there an altar and called there upon the God of Israel." [1715] Abraham does not buy the cave from Hamor the father of Sychem, but from Ephron the son of Zohar, and he is not buried in Sychem but in Hebron which is corruptly called Arboch. Whereas the twelve patriarchs are not buried in Arboch but in Sychem, in the field purchased not by Abraham but by Jacob. I postpone the solution of this delicate problem to enable those who cavil at me to search and see that in dealing with the scriptures it is the sense we have to look to and not the words. In the Hebrew the twenty-second psalm begins with the exact words which the Lord uttered on the cross: Eli Eli lama azabthani, which means, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" [1716] Let my critics tell me why the Septuagint introduces here the words "look thou upon me." For its rendering is as follows: "My God, my God, look thou upon me, why hast thou forsaken me?" They will answer no doubt that no harm is done to the sense by the addition of a couple of words. Let them acknowledge then that, if in the haste of dictation I have omitted a few, I have not by so doing endangered the position of the churches.
11. It would be tedious now to enumerate, what great additions and omissions the Septuagint has made, and all the passages which in church-copies are marked with daggers and asterisks. The Jews generally laugh when they hear our version of this passage of Isaiah, "Blessed is he that hath seed in Zion and servants in Jerusalem." [1717] In Amos also [1718] after a description of self-indulgence [1719] there come these words: "They have thought of these things as halting and not likely to fly," a very rhetorical sentence quite worthy of Tully. But how shall we deal with the Hebrew originals in which these passages and others like them are omitted, passages so numerous that to reproduce them all would require books without number? The number of the omissions is shown alike by the asterisks mentioned above and by my own version when compared by a careful reader with the old translation. [1720] Yet the Septuagint has rightly kept its place in the churches, either because it is the first of all the versions in time, made before the coming of Christ, or else because it has been used by the apostles (only however in places where it does not disagree with the Hebrew [1721] ). On the other hand we do right to reject Aquila, the proselyte and controversial translator, who has striven to translate not words only but their etymologies as well. Who could accept as renderings of "corn and wine and oil" [1722] such words as cheima oporismos stilpnotes , or, as we might say, pouring,' and fruitgathering,' and shining'? or, because Hebrew has in addition to the article other prefixes [1723] as well, he must with an unhappy pedantry translate syllable by syllable and letter by letter thus: sun ton ouranon kai sun ten gen, a construction which neither Greek nor Latin admits of, [1724] as many passages in our own writers shew. How many are the phrases charming in Greek which, if rendered word for word, do not sound well in Latin, and again how many there are that are pleasing to us in Latin, but which--assuming the order of the words not to be altered--would not please in Greek.
12. But to pass by this limitless field of discussion and to shew you, most Christian of nobles, and most noble of Christians, what is the kind of falsification which is censured in my translation, I will set before you the opening words of the letter in the Greek original and as rendered by me, that from one count in the indictment you may form an opinion of all. The letter begins Edei hemas, agapete, me te oi& 208;sei ton kleron pheresthai which I remember to have rendered as follows: "Dearly beloved, we ought not to misuse our position as ministers to gratify our pride." See there, they cry, what a number of falsehoods in a single line! In the first place agapetos means loved,' not dearly beloved.' Then oiesis means estimate,' not pride,' for this and not oidema is the word used. Oidema signifies a swelling' but oi& 208;sis means judgment.' All the rest, say they: "not to misuse our position to gratify our pride" is your own. What is this you are saying, O pillar of learning [1725] and latter day Aristarchus, [1726] who are so ready to pass judgment upon all writers? It is all for nothing then that I have studied so long; that, as Juvenal says, [1727] "I have so often withdrawn my hand from the ferule." The moment I leave the harbour I run aground. Well, to err is human and to confess one's error wise. Do you therefore, who are so ready to criticise and to instruct me, set me right and give me a word for word rendering of the passage. You tell me I should have said: "Beloved, we ought not to be carried away by the estimation of the clergy." Here, indeed we have eloquence worthy of Plautus, here we have Attic grace, the true style of the Muses. The common proverb is true of me: "He who trains an ox for athletics loses both oil and money." [1728] Still he is not to blame who merely puts on the mask and plays the tragedy for another: his teachers [1729] are the real culprits; since they for a great price have taught him--to know nothing. I do not think the worse of any Christian because he lacks skill to express himself; and I heartily wish that we could all say with Socrates "I know that I know nothing;" [1730] and carry out the precept of another wise man, "Know thyself." [1731] I have always held in esteem a holy simplicity but not a wordy rudeness. He who declares that he imitates the style of apostles should first imitate the virtue of their lives; the great holiness of which made up for much plainness of speech. They confuted the syllogisms of Aristotle and the perverse ingenuities of Chrysippus by raising the dead. Still it would be absurd for one of us--living as we do amid the riches of Croesus and the luxuries of Sardanapalus--to make his boast of mere ignorance. We might as well say that all robbers and criminals would be men of culture if they were to hide their blood-stained swords in books of philosophy and not in trunks of trees.
13. I have exceeded the limits of a letter, but I have not exceeded in the expression of my chagrin. For, though I am called a falsifier, and have my reputation torn to shreds, wherever there are shuttles and looms and women to work them; I am content to repudiate the charge without retaliating in kind. I leave everything to your discretion. You can read the letter of Epiphanius both in Greek and in Latin; and, if you do so, you will see at once the value of my accusers' lamentations and insulting complaints. For the rest, I am satisfied to have instructed one of my dearest friends and am content simply to stay quiet in my cell and to wait for the day of judgment. If it may be so, and if my enemies allow it, I hope to write for you, not philippics like those of Demosthenes or Tully, but commentaries upon the scriptures. __________________________________________________________________
[1649] Acts xxvi. 2, 3.
[1650] i.e., the son of Sirach.
[1651] Ecclus. xxv. 9.
[1652] Letter LI. to John Bp. of Jerusalem.
[1653] Cf. Jude 9.
[1654] i.e., most reverend pope.' This title at first given to all bishops was in Jerome's time becoming restricted to metropolitans and patriarchs. Jerome, however, still uses it in the wider sense. The omission of the title here may well have seemed deliberate, as Jerome was known to entertain very bitter feelings towards John of Jerusalem.
[1655] Livy v. 27.
[1656] Plutarch, Life of Pyrrhus.
[1657] Jerome constantly speaks of Rufinus in this way. See Letter CXXV. 18 and Apol. c. Ruf. I. 13, 32.
[1658] Rufinus is meant.
[1659] Danaë, the daughter of Acrisius, was confined by her father in a brazen tower to which Zeus obtained access in the shape of a shower of gold.
[1660] Epiphanius.
[1661] Ter. And. prol. 17.
[1662] The two speeches on the Crown.
[1663] Only a small part of this is extant.
[1664] Hor. A. P. 133.
[1665] i.e. the poets of the so called New Comedy.
[1666] kakozelian .
[1667] That is, five years later. Jerome translated the Chronicle of Eusebius at Constantinople in 381-2.
[1668] Vix brevis viæ spatia consummo.
[1669] Preface, translated in this Volume, § 1.
[1670] Preface §2.
[1671] This life long supposed to have been the work of Athanasius was originally composed in Greek but had been rendered into Latin by Evagrius bishop of Antioch.
[1672] i.e., Hilary of Poitiers.
[1673] Lit. the seventy translators.
[1674] Mark v. 41.
[1675] Matthew xxvii. 9, 10.
[1676] Quod. A.V. has whom.'
[1677] Zech. xi. 12, 13, Vulg.
[1678] Statuarius.
[1679] Zech. xi. 12, 13, A.V.
[1680] Pedissequus.
[1681] Joh. xix. 37; Zech. xii. 10.
[1682] i.e., the Italic, for the Vulgate, which was not then published, accurately represents the Hebrew.
[1683] Matt. xxvi. 31; Zech. xiii. 7.
[1684] Matt. ii. 13-15.
[1685] Hos. xi. 1.
[1686] i.e., the Septuagint and Vulgate versions.
[1687] James iii. 2.
[1688] Matt. ii. 23.
[1689] Isa. xi. 1.
[1690] So A.V. the Vulg. varies slightly.
[1691] Matt. i. 22, 23; Isa. vii. 14.
[1692] A.V.
[1693] Matt. ii. 5, 6.
[1694] i.e. the Versio Itala which was vulgata or commonly used' at this time as Jerome's Version was afterwards.
[1695] Mic. v. 2.
[1696] 1 Cor. i. 27.
[1697] Mark i. 1-3; see R.V.
[1698] Mal. iii. 1.
[1699] Isa. xl. 3.
[1700] Mark ii. 25, 26.
[1701] 1 Sam. xxi. 1.
[1702] 1 Sam. xxii. 16-18.
[1703] 1 Cor. ii. 8, 9.
[1704] This book is no longer extant. It belonged to the same class as the Book of Enoch.
[1705] Isa. lxiv. 4, lxx. A.V. has what he hath prepared for him that waiteth for him.'
[1706] Rom. ix. 33.
[1707] Lit. with the old version.'
[1708] 1 Pet. ii. 8. A.V. is different.
[1709] So the Vulg.: A.V. punctuates differently.
[1710] i.e. Hamor.
[1711] Acts vii. 15-16.
[1712] Drachmæ.
[1713] Spelunca duplex.
[1714] A.V. marg.
[1715] Gen. xxxiii. 18-20. A.V. varies slightly.
[1716] Ps. xxii. 1.
[1717] Isa. xxxi. 9, LXX.
[1718] According to the LXX.
[1719] Amos vi. 4-6.
[1720] Jerome's Vulgate version supplied from the Hebrew the omissions and removed the redundancies of the old Latin version. These were due to the uncertain text of the LXX., on which alone the old Latin version was founded.
[1721] This statement is not borne out by the facts.
[1722] Cf. Deut. vii. 13.
[1723] proarthra.
[1724] Lit. with the heaven and with the earth' (Gen. i. 1). In Hebrew the preposition with' is identical in form with the sign of the accus. Hence Aquila's rendering.
[1725] Jerome apostrophises his critic.
[1726] The famous grammarian and critic of Homer.
[1727] Juv. i. 15.
[1728] Oleum perdit et impensas qui bovem mittit ad ceroma.
[1729] Rufinus and Melania, who were believed by Jerome to have instigated the theft. Their names are inserted in some copies.
[1730] Plato, Apol. Soc. 21, 22.
[1731] This saying is variously attributed to Chilon and others of the seven wise men of Greece. __________________________________________________________________
Letter LVIII. To Paulinus.
In this his second letter to Paulinus of Nola Jerome dissuades him from making a pilgrimage to the Holy Places, and describes Jerusalem not as it ought to be but as it is. He then gives his friend counsels for his life similar to those which he has previously addressed to Nepotian, praises Paulinus for his Panegyric (now no longer extant) on the Emperor Theodosius, compares his style with those of the great writers of the Latin Church, and concludes with a commendation of his messenger, that Vigilantius who was soon to become the object of his bitterest contempt. Written about the year 395 a.d.
1. "A good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things," [1732] and "every tree is known by his fruit." [1733] You measure me by the scale of your own virtues and because of your own greatness magnify my littleness. You take the lowest room at the banquet that the goodman of the house may bid you to go up higher. [1734] For what is there in me or what qualities do I possess that I should merit praise from a man of learning? that I, small and lowly as I am, should be eulogized by lips which have pleaded on behalf of our most religious sovereign? Do not, my dearest brother, estimate my worth by the number of my years. Gray hairs are not wisdom; it is wisdom which is as good as gray hairs. At least that is what Solomon says: "wisdom is the gray hair unto men." [1735] Moses too in choosing the seventy elders is told to take those whom he knows to be elders indeed, and to select them not for their years but for their discretion. [1736] And, as a boy, Daniel judges old men and in the flower of youth condemns the incontinence of age. [1737] Do not, I repeat, weigh faith by years, nor suppose me better than yourself merely because I have enlisted under Christ's banner earlier than you. The apostle Paul, that chosen vessel framed out of a persecutor, [1738] though last in the apostolic order is first in merit. For though last he has laboured more than they all. [1739] To Judas it was once said: thou art a man who didst take sweet food with me, my guide and mine acquaintance; we walked in the house of God with company:" [1740] yet the Saviour accuses him of betraying his friend and master. A line of Virgil well describes his end:
From a high beam he knots a hideous death. [1741]
The dying robber, on the contrary, exchanges the cross for paradise and turns to martyrdom the penalty of murder. How many there are nowadays who have lived so long that they bear corpses rather than bodies and are like whited sepulchres filled with dead men's bones! [1742] A newly kindled heat is more effective than a long continued lukewarmness.
2. As for you, when you hear the Saviour's counsel: "if thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and come follow me," [1743] you translate his words into action; and baring yourself to follow the bare cross [1744] you mount Jacob's ladder the easier for carrying nothing. Your dress changes with the change in your convictions, and you aim at no showy shabbiness which leaves your purse as full as before. No, with pure hands and a clear conscience you make it your glory that you are poor both in spirit and in deed. There is nothing great in wearing a sad or a disfigured face, in simulating and in showing off fasts, or in wearing a cheap cloak while you retain a large income. When Crates the Theban--a millionaire of days gone by--was on his way to Athens to study philosophy, he cast away untold gold in the belief that wealth could not be compatible with virtue. What a contrast he offers to us, the disciples of a poor Christ, who cram our pockets with gold and cling under pretext of almsgiving to our old riches. How can we faithfully distribute what belongs to another when we thus timidly keep back what is our own? [1745] When the stomach is full, it is easy to talk of fasting. What is praiseworthy is not to have been at Jerusalem but to have lived a good life while there. [1746] The city which we are to praise and to seek is not that which has slain the prophets [1747] and shed the blood of Christ, but that which is made glad by the streams of the river, [1748] which is set upon a mountain and so cannot be hid, [1749] which the apostle declares to be a mother of the saints, [1750] and in which he rejoices to have his citizenship with the righteous. [1751]
3. In speaking thus I am not laying myself open to a charge of inconsistency or condemning the course which I have myself taken. It is not, I believe, for nothing that I, like Abraham, have left my home and people. But I do not presume to limit God's omnipotence or to restrict to a narrow strip of earth Him whom the heaven cannot contain. Each believer is judged not by his residence in this place or in that but according to the deserts of his faith. The true worshippers worship the Father neither at Jerusalem nor on mount Gerizim; for "God is a spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth." [1752] "Now the spirit bloweth where it listeth," [1753] and "the earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof." [1754] When the fleece of Judæa was made dry although the whole world was wet with the dew of heaven, [1755] and when many came from the East and from the West [1756] and sat in Abraham's bosom: [1757] then God ceased to be known in Judah only and His name to be great in Israel alone; [1758] the sound of the apostles went out into all the earth and their words into the ends of the world. [1759] The Saviour Himself speaking to His disciples in the temple [1760] said: "arise, let us go hence," [1761] and to the Jews: "your house is left unto you desolate." [1762] If heaven and earth must pass away, [1763] obviously all things that are earthly must pass away also. Therefore the spots which witnessed the crucifixion and the resurrection profit those only who bear their several crosses, who day by day rise again with Christ, and who thus shew themselves worthy of an abode so holy. Those who say "the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord," [1764] should give ear to the words of the apostle: "ye are the temple of the Lord," [1765] and the Holy Ghost "dwelleth in you." [1766] Access to the courts of heaven is as easy from Britain as it is from Jerusalem; for "the kingdom of God is within you." [1767] Antony and the hosts of monks who are in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Pontus, Cappadocia, and Armenia, have never seen Jerusalem: and the door of Paradise is opened for them at a distance from it. The blessed Hilarion, though a native of and a dweller in Palestine, only set eyes on Jerusalem for a single day, not wishing on the one hand when he was so near to neglect the holy places, nor yet on the other to appear to confine God within local limits. From the time of Hadrian to the reign of Constantine--a period of about one hundred and eighty years [1768] --the spot which had witnessed the resurrection was occupied by a figure of Jupiter; while on the rock where the cross had stood, a marble statue of Venus was set up by the heathen and became an object of worship. The original persecutors, indeed, supposed that by polluting our holy places they would deprive us of our faith in the passion and in the resurrection. Even my own Bethlehem, as it now is, that most venerable spot in the whole world of which the psalmist sings: "the truth hath sprung out of the earth," [1769] was overshadowed by a grove of Tammuz, [1770] that is of Adonis; and in the very cave [1771] where the infant Christ had uttered His earliest cry lamentation was made for the paramour of Venus. [1772]
4. Why, you will say, do I make these remote allusions? To assure you that nothing is lacking to your faith although you have not seen Jerusalem and that I am none the better for living where I do. Be assured that, whether you dwell here or elsewhere, a like recompense is in store for your good works with our Lord. Indeed, if I am frankly to express my own feelings, when I take into consideration your vows and the earnestness with which you have renounced the world, I hold that as long as you live in the country one place is as good as another. Forsake cities and their crowds, live on a small patch of ground, seek Christ in solitude, pray on the mount alone with Jesus, [1773] keep near to holy places: keep out of cities, I say, and you will never lose your vocation. My advice concerns not bishops, presbyters, or the clergy, for these have a different duty. I am speaking only to a monk who having been a man of note in the world has laid the price of his possessions at the apostles' feet, [1774] to shew men that they must trample on their money, and has resolved to live a life of loneliness and seclusion and always to continue to reject what he has once rejected. Had the scenes of the Passion and of the Resurrection been elsewhere than in a populous city with court and garrison, with prostitutes, playactors, and buffoons, and with the medley of persons usually found in such centres; or had the crowds which thronged it been composed of monks; then a city would be a desirable abode for those who have embraced the monastic life. But, as things are, it would be the height of folly first to renounce the world, to forswear one's country, to forsake cities, to profess one's self a monk; and then to live among still greater numbers the same kind of life that you would have lived in your own country. Men rush here from all quarters of the world, the city is filled with people of every race, and so great is the throng of men and women that here you will have to tolerate in its full dimensions an evil from which you desired to flee when you found it partially developed elsewhere.
5. Since you ask me as a brother in what path you should walk, I will be open with you. If you wish to take duty as a presbyter, and are attracted by the work or dignity which falls to the lot of a bishop, live in cities and walled towns, [1775] and by so doing turn the salvation of others into the profit of your own soul. But if you desire to be in deed what you are in name--a monk, [1776] that is, one who lives alone, what have you to do with cities which are the homes not of solitaries but of crowds? Every mode of life has its own exponents. For instance, let Roman generals imitate men like Camillus, Fabricius, Regulus, and Scipio. Let philosophers take for models Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Let poets strive to rival Homer, Virgil, Menander, and Terence. Let writers of history follow Thucydides, Sallust, Herodotus and Livy. Let orators find masters in Lysias, the Gracchi, Demosthenes, and Tully. And, to come to our own case, let bishops and presbyters take for their examples the apostles or their companions; and as they hold the rank which these once held, let them endeavour to exhibit the same excellence. And last of all let us monks take as the patterns which we are to follow the lives of Paul, of Antony, of Julian, of Hilarion, of the Macarii. And to go back to the authority of scripture, we have our masters in Elijah and Elisha, and our leaders in the sons of the prophets; who lived in fields and solitary places and made themselves tents by the waters of Jordan. [1777] The sons of Rechab too are of the number who drank neither wine nor strong drink and who abode in tents; men whom God's voice praises through Jeremiah, [1778] and to whom a promise is made that there shall never be wanting a man of their stock to stand before God. [1779] This is probably what is meant by the title of the seventy-first psalm: "of the sons of Jonadab and of those who were first led into captivity." [1780] The person intended is Jonadab the son of Rechab who is described in the book of Kings [1781] as having gone up into the chariot of Jehu. His sons having always lived in tents until at last (owing to the inroads made by the Chaldean army) they were forced to come into Jerusalem, are described [1782] as being the first to undergo captivity; because after the freedom of their lonely life they found confinement in a city as bad as imprisonment.
6. Since you are not wholly independent but are bound to a wife who is your sister in the Lord, I entreat you--whether here or there--that you will avoid large gatherings, visits official and complimentary, and social parties, indulgences all of which tend to enchain the soul. Let your food be coarse--say cabbage and pulse--and do not take it until evening. Sometimes as a great delicacy you may have some small fish. He who longs for Christ and feeds upon the true bread cares little for dainties which must be transmuted into ordure. Food that you cannot taste when once it has passed your gullet might as well be--so far as you are concerned--bread and pulse. You have my books against Jovinian which speak yet more largely of despising the appetite and the palate. Let some holy volume be ever in your hand. Pray constantly, and bowing down your body lift up your mind to the Lord. Keep frequent vigils and sleep often on an empty stomach. Avoid tittle-tattle and all self-laudation. Flee from wheedling flatterers as from open enemies. Distribute with your own hand provisions to alleviate the miseries of the poor and of the brethren. With your own hands, I say, for good faith is rare among men. You do not believe what I say? Think of Judas and his bag. Seek not a lowly garb for a swelling soul. Avoid the society of men of the world, especially if they are in power. Why need you look again on things contempt for which has made you a monk? Above all let your sister [1783] hold aloof from married ladies. And, if women round her wear silk dresses and gems while she is meanly attired, let her neither fret nor congratulate herself. For by so doing she will either regret her resolution or sow the seeds of pride. If you are already famed as a faithful steward of your own substance, do not take other people's money to give away. You understand what I mean, for the Lord has given you understanding in all things. Be simple as a dove and lay snares for no man: but be cunning as a serpent and let no man lay snares for you. [1784] For a Christian who allows others to deceive him is almost at much at fault as one who tries to deceive others. If a man talks to you always or nearly always about money (except it be about alms-giving, a topic which is open to all) treat him as a broker rather than a monk. Besides food and clothing and things manifestly necessary give no man anything; for dogs must not eat the children's bread. [1785]
7. The true temple of Christ is the believer's soul; adorn this, clothe it, offer gifts to it, welcome Christ in it. What use are walls blazing with jewels when Christ in His poor [1786] is in danger of perishing from hunger? Your possessions are no longer your own but a stewardship is entrusted to you. Remember Ananias and Sapphira who from fear of the future kept what was their own, and be careful for your part not rashly to squander what is Christ's. Do not, that is, by an error of judgment give the property of the poor to those who are not poor; lest, as a wise man has told us, [1787] charity prove the death of charity. Look not upon
Gay trappings or a Cato's empty name. [1788]
In the words of Persius, God says:--
I know thy thoughts and read thine inmost soul. [1789]
To be a Christian is the great thing, not merely to seem one. And somehow or other those please the world most who please Christ least. In speaking thus I am not like the sow lecturing Minerva; but, as a friend warns a friend, so I warn you before you embark on your new course. I would rather fail in ability than in will to serve you; for my wish is that where I have fallen you may keep your footing.
8. It is with much pleasure that I have read the book which you have sent to me containing your wise and eloquent defence of the emperor Theodosius; and your arrangement of the subject has particularly pleased me. While in the earlier chapters you surpass others, in the latter you surpass yourself. Your style is terse and neat; it has all the purity of Tully, and yet it is packed with meaning. For, as someone has said, [1790] that speech is a failure of which men only praise the diction. You have been successful in preserving both sequence of subjects and logical connexion. Whatever sentence one takes, it is always a conclusion to what goes before or an introduction to what follows. Theodosius is fortunate in having a Christian orator like you to plead his cause. You have made his purple illustrious and have consecrated for future ages his useful laws. Go on and prosper, for, if such be your first ventures in the field, what will you not do when you become a trained soldier? Oh! that it were mine to conduct a genius like you, not (as the poets sing) through the Aonian mountains and the peaks of Helicon but through Zion and Tabor and the high places of Sinai. If I might teach you what I have learned myself and might pass on to you the mystic rolls of the prophets, then might we give birth to something such as Greece with all her learning could not shew.
9. Hear me, therefore, my fellow-servant, my friend, my brother; give ear for a moment that I may tell you how you are to walk in the holy scriptures. All that we read in the divine books, while glistening and shining without, is yet far sweeter within. "He who desires to eat the kernel must first break the nut." [1791] "Open thou mine eyes," says David, "that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law." [1792] Now, if so great a prophet confesses that he is in the darkness of ignorance; how deep, think you, must be the night of misapprehension with which we, mere babes and unweaned infants, are enveloped! Now this veil rests not only on the face of Moses, [1793] but on the evangelists and the apostles as well. [1794] To the multitudes the Saviour spoke only in parables and, to make it clear that His words had a mystical meaning, said:--"he that hath ears to hear, let him hear." [1795] Unless all things that are written are opened by Him "who hath the key of David, who openeth and no man shutteth, and shutteth and no man openeth," [1796] no one can undo the lock or set them before you. If only you had the foundation which He alone can give; nay, if even His fingers were but passed over your work; there would be nothing finer than your volumes, nothing more learned, nothing more attractive, nothing more Latin.
10. Tertullian is packed with meaning but his style is rugged and uncouth. The blessed Cyprian like a fountain of pure water flows softly and sweetly but, as he is taken up with exhortations to virtue and with the troubles consequent on persecution, he has nowhere discussed the divine scriptures. Victorinus, although he has the glory of a martyr's crown, yet cannot express what he knows. Lactantius has a flow of eloquence worthy of Tully: would that he had been as ready to teach our doctrines as he was to pull down those of others! Arnobius is lengthy and unequal, and often confused from not making a proper division of his subject. That reverend man Hilary gains in height from his Gallic buskin; yet, adorned as he is with the flowers of Greek rhetoric, he sometimes entangles himself in long periods and offers by no means easy reading to the less learned brethren. I say nothing of other writers whether dead or living; others will hereafter judge them both for good and for evil. [1797]
11. I will come to yourself, my fellow-mystic, my companion, and my friend; my friend, I say, though not yet personally known: and I will ask you not to suspect a flatterer in one so intimate. Better that you should think me mistaken or led astray by affection than that you should hold me capable of fawning on a friend. You have a great intellect and an inexhaustible store of language, your diction is fluent and pure, your fluency and purity are mingled with wisdom. Your head is clear and all your senses keen. Were you to add to this wisdom and eloquence a careful study and knowledge of scripture, I should soon see you holding our citadel against all comers; you would go up with Joab upon the roof of Zion, [1798] and sing upon the housetops what you had learned in the secret chambers. [1799] Gird up, I pray you, gird up your loins. As Horace says:--
Life hath no gifts for men except they toil. [1800]
Shew yourself as much a man of note in the church, as you were before in the senate. Provide for yourself riches which you may spend daily yet they will not fail. Provide them while you are still strong and while as yet your head has no gray hairs: before, in the words of Virgil,
Diseases creep on you, and gloomy age,
And pain, and cruel death's inclemency. [1801]
I am not content with mediocrity for you: I desire all that you do to be of the highest excellence.
How heartily I have welcomed the reverend presbyter Vigilantius, [1802] his own lips will tell you better than this letter. Why he has so soon left us and started afresh I cannot say; and, indeed, I do not wish to hurt anyone's feelings. [1803] Still, mere passer-by as he was, in haste to continue his journey, I managed to keep him back until I had given him a taste of my friendship for you. Thus you can learn from him what you want to know about me. Kindly salute your reverend sister [1804] and fellow-servant, who with you fights the good fight in the Lord. __________________________________________________________________
[1732] Matt. xii. 35.
[1733] Luke vi. 44.
[1734] Luke xiv. 10.
[1735] Wisd. iv. 9.
[1736] Nu. xi. 16.
[1737] Story of Susannah.
[1738] Acts ix. 15.
[1739] 1 Cor. xv. 10.
[1740] Ps. lv. 13: Consessu substituted for consensu of the Vulgate.
[1741] Virgil, Æn. xii. 603.
[1742] Matt. xxiii. 27.
[1743] Matt. xix. 21.
[1744] Compare Letter LII. § 5.
[1745] Cf. Luke xvi. 12.
[1746] Cicero, pro Murena, V.
[1747] Matt. xxiii. 37.
[1748] Ps. xlvi. 4.
[1749] Matt. v. 14.
[1750] Gal. iv. 26.
[1751] Phil. iii. 20, R.V.
[1752] Joh. iv. 24.
[1753] Joh. iii. 8, R.V. marg.
[1754] Ps. xxiv. 1.
[1755] Judg. vi. 36-40.
[1756] Luke xiii. 29.
[1757] Luke xvi. 22.
[1758] Ps. lxxvi. 1.
[1759] Ps. xix. 4.
[1760] Only the second sentence was spoken in the temple: the first was uttered in the chamber of the last supper.
[1761] Joh. xiv. 31.
[1762] Matt. xxiii. 38.
[1763] Luke xxi. 33.
[1764] Jer. vii. 4.
[1765] 2 Cor. vi. 16.
[1766] Rom. viii. 11.
[1767] Luke xvii. 21.
[1768] Hadrian died in 138 a.d.; Constantine became Emperor in 306 a.d.
[1769] Ps. lxxxv. 11, Vulg.
[1770] Ezek. viii. 14.
[1771] For the tradition that Christ was born in a cave Justin Martyr is the earliest authority (dial. c. Try. 78).
[1772] Adonis, killed by a boar and spending half his time in the upper, half in the lower world, is a type of summer overcoming and overcome by winter.
[1773] Cf. Luke vi.
[1774] Acts iv. 37.
[1775] Castella.
[1776] Monachus, lit. "a solitary." Men frequently at this time made vows, especially those of celibacy, without entering a monastery.
[1777] 2 Kings vi. 1, 2.
[1778] Jer. xxxv.
[1779] Jer. xxxv. 19.
[1780] This title occurs only in the LXX.
[1781] 2 Kings x. 15, 16.
[1782] Jer. xxxv. 11.
[1783] Therasia, the wife of Paulinus is meant.
[1784] Matt. x. 16.
[1785] Matt. xv. 26.
[1786] Matt. xxv. 40.
[1787] Cicero, de Off. II. xv.
[1788] Probably a quotation from memory incorrectly made up from Lucan's Nomina vana Catonis' (i. 313).
[1789] Persius, iii. 30.
[1790] Quintilian, Inst. Or. viii. Proem.
[1791] Plautus, Curc. I. i. 55.
[1792] Ps. cxix. 18.
[1793] 2 Cor. iii. 14, 15.
[1794] i.e., the new testament as well as the old may have its true meaning concealed from some.
[1795] Luke viii. 8, 10.
[1796] Rev. iii. 7.
[1797] Cf. Letter LXX. 5.
[1798] 1 Chron. xi. 5, 6.
[1799] Cf. Luke xii. 3.
[1800] Horace, Sat. I. ix. 59, 60.
[1801] Virgil, Georg. iii. 67, 68.
[1802] Afterwards noted as an assailant of Jerome's ascetic doctrines. See the introduction to Letter LXI.
[1803] The allusion seems to be to the behaviour of Vigilantius during an earthquake which occurred when he was at Bethlehem. His fright on the occasion exposed him to the ridicule of the community there. (Against Vig., i. 11.)
[1804] As before, Therasia, the wife of Paulinus is meant. __________________________________________________________________
Letter LIX. To Marcella.
An answer to five questions put to Jerome by Marcella in a letter not preserved. The questions are as follows.
(1) What are the things which eye hath not seen nor ear heard (1 Cor. ii. 9)? Jerome answers that they are spiritual things which as such can only be spiritually discerned.
(2) Is it not a mistake to identify the sheep and the goats of Christ's parable (Matt. xxv. 31 sqq.) with Christians and heathens? Are they not rather the good and the bad? For an answer to this question Jerome refers Marcella to his treatise against Jovinian (II. §§18-23).
(3) Paul says that some shall be "alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord;" and that they shall be "caught up to meet the Lord in the air" (1 Thess. iv. 15, 17). Are we to suppose this assumption to be corporeal and that those assumed will escape death? Yes, Jerome answers, but their bodies will be glorified.
(4) How is John xx. 17, "touch me not," to be reconciled with Matt. xxviii. 9, "they came and held him by the feet"? In the one case, Jerome replies, Mary Magdalen failed to recognize the divinity of Jesus; in the other the women recognized it. Accordingly they were admitted to a privilege which was denied to her.
(5) Was the risen Christ before His ascension present only with the disciples, or was He in heaven and elsewhere as well? The latter according to Jerome is the true doctrine. "The Divine Nature," he writes, "exists everywhere in its entirety. Christ, therefore, was at one and the same time with the apostles and with the angels; in the Father and in the uttermost parts of the sea. So afterwards he was with Thomas in India, with Peter at Rome, with Paul in Illyricum, with Titus in Crete, with Andrew in Achaia." The date of the letter is a.d. 395 or a.d. 396. __________________________________________________________________
Letter LX. To Heliodorus.
One of Jerome's finest letters, written to console his old friend, Heliodorus, now Bp. of Altinum, for the loss of his nephew Nepotian who had died of fever a short time previously. Jerome tries to soothe his friend's grief (1) by contrasting pagan despair or resignation with Christian hope, (2) by an eulogy of the departed both as man and presbyter, and (3) by a review of the evils which then beset the Empire and from which, as he contended, Nepotian had been removed. The letter is marked throughout with deep and sincere feeling. Its date is 396 a.d.
1. Small wits cannot grapple large themes but venturing beyond their strength fail in the very attempt; and, the greater a subject is, the more completely is he overwhelmed who cannot find words to unfold its grandeur. Nepotian who was mine and yours and ours--or rather who was Christ's and because Christ's all the more ours--has forsaken us his elders so that we are smitten with pangs of regret and overcome with a grief which is past bearing. We supposed him our heir, yet now his corpse is all that is ours. For whom shall my intellect now labour? Whom shall my poor letters desire to please? Where is he, the impeller of my work, whose voice was sweeter than a swan's last song? My mind is dazed, my hand trembles, a mist covers my eyes, stammering seizes my tongue. Whatever my words, they seem as good as unspoken seeing that he no longer hears them. My very pen seems to feel his loss, my very wax tablet looks dull and sad; the one is covered with rust, the other with mould. As often as I try to express myself in words and to scatter the flowers of this encomium upon his tomb, my eyes fill with tears, my grief returns, and I can think of nothing but his death. It was a custom in former days for children over the dead bodies of their parents publicly to proclaim their praises and (as when pathetic songs are sung) to draw tears from the eyes and sighs from the breasts of those who heard them. But in our case, behold, the order of things is changed: to deal us this blow nature has forfeited her rights. For the respect which the young man should have paid to his elders, we his elders are paying to him.
2. What shall I do then? Shall I join my tears to yours? The apostle forbids me for he speaks of dead Christians as "them which are asleep." [1805] So too in the gospel the Lord says, "the damsel is not dead but sleepeth," [1806] and Lazarus when he is raised from the dead is said to have been asleep. [1807] No, I will be glad and rejoice that "speedily he was taken away lest that wickedness should alter his understanding" for "his soul pleased the Lord." [1808] But though I am loth to give way and combat my feelings, tears flow down my cheeks, and in spite of the teachings of virtue and the hope of the resurrection a passion of regret crushes my too yielding mind. O death that dividest brothers knit together in love, how cruel, how ruthless thou art so to sunder them! "The Lord hath fetched a burning wind that cometh up from the wilderness: which hath dried thy veins and hath made thy well spring desolate." [1809] Thou didst swallow up our Jonah, but even in thy belly He still lived. Thou didst carry Him as one dead, that the world's storm might be stilled and our Nineveh saved by His preaching. He, yes He, conquered thee, He slew thee, that fugitive prophet who left His home, gave up His inheritance and surrendered his dear life into the hands of those who sought it. He it was who of old threatened thee in Hosea: "O death, I will be thy plagues; O grave, I will be thy destruction." [1810] By His death thou art dead; by His death we live. Thou hast swallowed up and thou art swallowed up. Whilst thou art smitten with a longing for the body assumed by Him, and whilst thy greedy jaws fancy it a prey, thy inward parts are wounded with hooked fangs.
3. To Thee, O Saviour Christ, do we Thy creatures offer thanks that, when Thou wast slain, Thou didst slay our mighty adversary. Before Thy coming was there any being more miserable than man who cowering at the dread prospect of eternal death did but receive life that he might perish! For "death reigned from Adam to Moses even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression." [1811] If Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob be in hell, who can be in the kingdom of heaven? If Thy friends--even those who had not sinned themselves--were yet for the sins of another liable to the punishment of offending Adam, what must we think of those who have said in their hearts "There is no God;" who "are corrupt and abominable" [1812] in their self-will, and of whom it is said "they are gone out of the way, they are become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no not one"? [1813] Even if Lazarus is seen in Abraham's bosom and in a place of refreshment, still the lower regions cannot be compared with the kingdom of heaven. Before Christ's coming Abraham is in the lower regions: after Christ's coming the robber is in paradise. And therefore at His rising again "many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and were seen in the heavenly Jerusalem." [1814] Then was fulfilled the saying: "Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light." [1815] John the Baptist cries in the desert: "repent ye; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." [1816] For "from the days of John the Baptist the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence and the violent take it by force." [1817] The flaming sword that keeps the way of paradise and the cherubim that are stationed at its doors [1818] are alike quenched and unloosed by the blood of Christ. [1819] It is not surprising that this should be promised us in the resurrection: for as many of us as living in the flesh do not live after the flesh, [1820] have our citizenship in heaven, [1821] and while we are still here on earth we are told that "the kingdom of heaven is within us." [1822]
4. Moreover before the resurrection of Christ God was "known in Judah" only and "His name was great in Israel" alone. [1823] And they who knew Him were despite their knowledge dragged down to hell. Where in those days were the inhabitants of the globe from India to Britain, from the frozen zone of the North to the burning heat of the Atlantic ocean? Where were the countless peoples of the world? Where the great multitudes?
Unlike in tongue, unlike in dress and arms? [1824]
They were crushed like fishes and locusts, like flies and gnats. For apart from knowledge of his Creator every man is but a brute. But now the voices and writings of all nations proclaim the passion and the resurrection of Christ. I say nothing of the Jews, the Greeks, and the Romans, peoples which the Lord has dedicated to His faith by the title written on His cross. [1825] The immortality of the soul and its continuance after the dissolution of the body--truths of which Pythagoras dreamed, which Democritus refused to believe, and which Socrates discussed in prison to console himself for the sentence passed upon him--are now the familiar themes of Indian and of Persian, of Goth and of Egyptian. The fierce Bessians [1826] and the throng of skinclad savages who used to offer human sacrifices in honour of the dead have broken out of their harsh discord into the sweet music of the cross and Christ is the one cry of the whole world.
5. What can we do, my soul? Whither must we turn? What must we take up first? What must we pass over? Have you forgotten the precepts of the rhetoricians? Are you so preoccupied with grief, so overcome with tears, so hindered with sobs, that you forget all logical sequence? Where are the studies you have pursued from your childhood? Where is that saying of Anaxagoras and Telamon (which you have always commended) "I knew myself to have begotten a mortal"? [1827] I have read the books of Crantor which he wrote to soothe his grief and which Cicero has imitated. [1828] I have read the consolatory writings of Plato, Diogenes, Clitomachus, Carneades, Posidonius, who at different times strove by book or letter to lessen the grief of various persons. Consequently, were my own wit to dry up, it could be watered anew from the fountains which these have opened. They set before us examples without number; and particularly those of Pericles and of Socrates's pupil Xenophon. The former of these after the loss of his two sons put on a garland and delivered a harangue; [1829] while the latter, on hearing when he was offering sacrifice that his son had been slain in war, is said to have laid down his garland; and then, on learning that he had fallen fighting bravely, is said to have put it on his head again. What shall I say of those Roman generals whose heroic virtues glitter like stars on the pages of Latin history? Pulvillus was dedicating the capitol [1830] when receiving the news of his son's sudden death, he gave orders that the funeral should take place without him. Lucius Paullus [1831] entered the city in triumph in the week which intervened between the funerals of his two sons. I pass over the Maximi, the Catos, the Galli, the Pisos, the Bruti, the Scævolas, the Metelli, the Scauri, the Marii, the Crassi, the Marcelli, the Aufidii, men who shewed equal fortitude in sorrow and war, and whose bereavements Tully has set forth in his book Of consolation. I pass them over lest I should seem to have chosen the words and woes of others in preference to my own. Yet even these instances may suffice to ensure us mortification if our faith fails to surpass the achievements of unbelief.
6. Let me come then to my proper subject. I will not beat my breast with Jacob and with David for sons dying in the Law, but I will receive them rising again with Christ in the Gospel. The Jew's mourning is the Christian's joy. "Weeping may endure for a night but joy cometh in the morning." [1832] "The night is far spent, the day is at hand." [1833] Accordingly when Moses dies, mourning is made for him, [1834] but when Joshua is buried, it is without tears or funeral pomp. [1835] All that can be drawn from scripture on the subject of lamentation I have briefly set forth in the letter of consolation which I addressed to Paula at Rome. [1836] Now I must take another path to arrive at the same goal. Otherwise I shall seem to be walking anew in a track once beaten but now long disused.
7. We know indeed that our Nepotian is with Christ and that he has joined the choirs of the saints. What here with us he groped after on earth afar off and sought for to the best of his judgment, there he sees nigh at hand, so that he can say: "as we have heard so have we seen in the city of the Lord of hosts, in the city of our God." [1837] Still we cannot bear the feeling of his absence, and grieve, if not for him, for ourselves. The greater the happiness which he enjoys, the deeper the sorrow in which the loss of a blessing so great plunges us. The sisters of Lazarus could not help weeping for him, although they knew that he would rise again. And the Saviour himself--to shew that he possessed true human feeling--mourned for him whom He was about to raise. [1838] His apostle also, though he says: "I desire to depart and to be with Christ," [1839] and elsewhere "to me to live is Christ and to die is gain," [1840] thanks God that Epaphras [1841] (who had been "sick nigh unto death") has been given back to him that he might not have sorrow upon sorrow. [1842] Words prompted not by the fear that springs of unbelief but by the passionate regret that comes of true affection. How much more deeply must you who were to Nepotian both uncle and bishop, (that is, a father both in the flesh and in the spirit), deplore the loss of one so dear, as though your heart were torn from you. Set a limit, I pray you, to your sorrow and remember the saying "in nothing overmuch." [1843] Bind up for a little while your wound and listen to the praises of one in whose virtue you have always delighted. Do not grieve that you have lost such a paragon: rejoice rather that he has once been yours. As on a small tablet men depict the configuration of the earth, so in this little scroll of mine you may see his virtues if not fully depicted at least sketched in outline. I beg that you will take the will for the performance.
8. The advice of the rhetoricians in such cases is that you should first search out the remote ancestors of the person to be eulogized and recount their exploits, and then come gradually to your hero; so as to make him more illustrious by the virtues of his forefathers, and to show either that he is a worthy successor of good men, or that he has conferred lustre upon a lineage in itself obscure. But as my duty is to sing the praises of the soul, I will not dwell upon those fleshly advantages which Nepotian for his part always despised. Nor will I boast of his family, that is of the good points belonging not to him but to others; for even those holy men Abraham and Isaac had for sons the sinners Ishmael and Esau. And on the other hand Jephthah who is reckoned by the apostle in the roll of the righteous [1844] is the son of a harlot. [1845] It is said "the soul that sinneth, it shall die." [1846] The soul therefore that has not sinned shall live. Neither the virtues nor the vices of parents are imputed to their children. God takes account of us only from the time when we are born anew in Christ. Paul, the persecutor of the church, who is in the morning the ravening wolf of Benjamin, [1847] in the evening "gave food," [1848] that is yields himself up to the sheep Ananias. [1849] Let us likewise reckon our Nepotian a crying babe and an untutored child who has been born to us in a moment fresh from the waters of Jordan.
9. Another would perhaps describe how for his salvation you left the east and the desert and how you soothed me your dearest comrade by holding out hopes of a return: and all this that you might save, if possible, both your sister, then a widow with one little child, or, should she reject your counsels, at any rate your sweet little nephew. It was of him that I once used the prophetic words: "though your little nephew cling to your neck." [1850] Another, I say, would relate how while Nepotian was still in the service of the court, beneath his uniform and his brilliantly white linen, [1851] his skin was chafed with sackcloth; how, while standing before the powers of this world, his lips were discoloured with fasting; how still in the uniform of one master he served another; and how he wore the sword-belt only that he might succour widows and wards, the afflicted and the unhappy. For my part I dislike men to delay the complete dedication of themselves to God. When I read of the centurion Cornelius [1852] that he was a just man I immediately hear of his baptism.
10. Still we may approve these things as the swathing bands of an infant faith. He who has been a loyal soldier under a strange banner is sure to deserve the laurel when he comes to serve his own king. When Nepotian laid aside his baldrick and changed his dress, he bestowed upon the poor all the pay that he had received. For he had read the words: "if thou wilt be perfect, sell that thou hast, and give to the poor and follow me," [1853] and again: "ye cannot serve two masters, God and Mammon." [1854] He kept nothing for himself but a common tunic and cloak to cover him and to keep out the cold. Made in the fashion of his province his attire was not remarkable either for elegance or for squalor. He burned daily to make his way to the monasteries of Egypt, or to visit the communities of Mesopotamia, or at least to live a lonely life in the Dalmatian islands, [1855] separated from the mainland only by the strait of Altinum. But he had not the heart to forsake his episcopal uncle in whom he beheld a pattern of many virtues and from whom he could take lessons without going abroad. In one and the same person he both found a monk to imitate and a bishop to revere. What so often happens did not happen here. Constant intimacy did not produce familiarity, nor did familiarity breed contempt. He revered him as a father and every day admired him for some new virtue. To be brief, he became a clergyman, and after passing through the usual stages was ordained a presbyter. Good Jesus! how he sighed and groaned! how he fasted and fled the eyes of all! For the first and only time he was angry with his uncle, complaining that the burthen laid upon him was too heavy for him and that his youth unfitted him for the priesthood. But the more he struggled against it, the more he drew to himself the hearts of all: his refusal did but prove him worthy of an office which he was reluctant to assume, and all the more worthy because he declared himself unworthy. We too in our day have our Timothy; we too have seen that wisdom which is as good as gray hairs; [1856] our Moses has chosen an elder whom he has known to be an elder indeed. [1857] Nepotian regarded the clerical state less as an honour than a burthen. He made it his first care to silence envy by humility, and his next to give no cause for scandal that such as assailed his youth might marvel at his continence. He helped the poor, visited the sick, stirred men up to hospitality, soothed them with soft words, rejoiced with those who rejoiced and wept with those who wept. [1858] He was a staff to the blind, food to the hungry, hope to the dejected, consolation to the bereaved. Each single virtue was as conspicuous in him as if he possessed no other. Among his fellow-presbyters while ever foremost in work, he was ever satisfied with the lowest place. Any good that he did he ascribed to his uncle: but if the result did not correspond to his expectations, he would say that his uncle knew nothing of it, that it was his own mistake. In public he recognized him as a bishop; at home he looked upon him as a father. The seriousness of his disposition was mitigated by a cheerful expression. But while his laughter was joyous it was never loud. Christ's virgins and widows he honoured as mothers and exhorted as sisters "with all purity." [1859] When he returned home he used to leave the clergyman outside and to give himself over to the hard rule of a monk. Frequent in supplication and watchful in prayer he would offer his tears not to man but to God. His fasts he regulated--as a driver does the pace of his horses--according to the weariness or vigour of his body. When at his uncle's table he would just taste what was set before him, so as to avoid superstition and yet to preserve self-control. In conversing at entertainments his habit was to propose some topic from scripture, to listen modestly, to answer diffidently, to support the right, to refute the wrong, but both without bitterness; to instruct his opponent rather than to vanquish him. Such was the ingenuous modesty which adorned his youth that he would frankly confess from what sources his several arguments came; and in this way, while disclaiming a reputation for learning, he came to be held most learned. This he would say is the opinion of Tertullian, that of Cyprian; this of Lactantius, that of Hilary; to this effect speaks Minucius Felix, thus Victorinus, after this manner Arnobius. Myself too he would sometimes quote, for he loved me because of my intimacy with his uncle. Indeed by constant reading and long-continued meditation he had made his breast a library of Christ.
11. How often in letters from beyond the sea he urged me to write something to him! How often he reminded me of the man in the gospel who sought help by night [1860] and of the widow who importuned the cruel judge! [1861] And when I silently ignored his request and made my petitioner blush by blushing to reply, he put forward his uncle to enforce his suit, knowing that as the boon was for another he would more readily ask it, and that as I held his episcopal office in respect he would more easily obtain it. Accordingly I did what he wished and in a brief essay [1862] dedicated our mutual friendship to everlasting remembrance. On receiving this Nepotian boasted that he was richer than Croesus and wealthier than Darius. He held it in his hands, devoured it with his eyes, kept it in his bosom, repeated it with his lips. And often when he unrolled it upon his couch, he fell asleep with the cherished page upon his breast. When a stranger came or a friend, he rejoiced to let them know my witness to him. The deficiencies of my little book he made good by careful punctuation and varied emphasis, so that when it was read aloud it was always he not I who seemed to please or to displease. Whence came such zeal, if not from the love of God? Whence came such untiring study of Christ's law, if not from a yearning for Him who gave it? Let others add coin to coin till their purses are chock-full; let others demean themselves to sponge on married ladies; let them be richer as monks than they were as men of the world; let them possess wealth in the service of a poor Christ such as they never had in the service of a rich devil; let the church lose breath at the opulence of men who in the world were beggars. Our Nepotian spurns gold and begs only for written books. But while he despises himself in the flesh and walks abroad more splendid than ever in his poverty, he still seeks out everything that may adorn the church.
12. In comparison with what has gone before what I am now about to say may appear trivial, but even in trifles the same spirit makes itself manifest. For as we admire the Creator not only as the framer of heaven and earth, of sun and ocean, of elephants, camels, horses, oxen, pards, bears, and lions; but also as the maker of the most tiny creatures, ants, gnats, flies, worms, and the like, whose shapes we know better than their names, and as in all alike we revere the same creative skill; so the mind that is given to Christ shews the same earnestness in things of small as of great importance, knowing that it must render an account of every idle word. [1863] Nepotian took pains to keep the altar bright, the church walls free from soot and the pavement duly swept. He saw that the doorkeeper was constantly at his post, that the doorhangings were in their places, the sanctuary clean and the vessels shining. The careful reverence that he shewed to every rite led him to neglect no duty small or great. Whenever you looked for him in church you found him there.
In Quintus Fabius [1864] antiquity admired a nobleman and the author of a history of Rome, yet his paintings gained him more renown than his writings. Our own Bezaleel [1865] also and Hiram, the son of a Tyrian woman, [1866] are spoken of in scripture as filled with wisdom and the spirit of God because they framed, the one the furniture of the tabernacle, the other that of the temple. For, as it is with fertile tillage-fields and rich plough-lands which at times go out into redundant growths of stalk or ear, so is it with distinguished talents and a mind filled with virtue. They are sure to overflow into elegant and varied accomplishments. Accordingly among the Greeks we hear of a philosopher [1867] who used to boast that everything he wore down to his cloak and ring was made by himself. We may pass the same eulogy on our friend, for he adorned both the basilicas of the church and the halls [1868] of the martyrs with sketches of flowers, foliage, and vine-tendrils, so that everything attractive in the church, whether made so by its position or by its appearance, bore witness to the labour and zeal of the presbyter set over it.
13. Go on blessed in thy goodness! What kind of ending should we expect after such a beginning! Ah! hapless plight of mortal men and vanity of all life that is not lived in Christ! Why, O my words, do you shrink back? Why do you shift and turn? I fear to come to the end, as if I could put off his death or make his life longer. "All flesh is as grass and all the glory of man as the flower of grass." [1869] Where now are that handsome face and dignified figure with which as with a fair garment his beautiful soul was clothed? The lily began to wither, alas! when the south wind blew, and the purple violet slowly faded into paleness. Yet while he burned with fever and while the fire of sickness was drying up the fountains of his veins, gasping and weary he still tried to comfort his sorrowing uncle. His countenance shone with gladness, and while all around him wept he and he only smiled. He flung aside his cloak, put out his hand, saw what others failed to see, and even tried to rise that he might welcome new comers. You would have thought that he was starting on a journey instead of dying and that in place of leaving all his friends behind him he was merely passing from some to others. [1870] Tears roll down my cheeks and, however much I steel my mind, I cannot disguise the grief that I feel. Who could suppose that at such an hour he would remember his intimacy with me, and that while he struggled for life he would recall the sweetness of study? Yet grasping his uncle's hand he said to him: "Send this tunic that I wore in the service of Christ to my dear friend, my father in age, but my brother in office, and transfer the affection hitherto claimed by your nephew to one who is as dear to you as he is to me." With these words he passed away holding his uncle's hand and with my name upon his lips.
14. I know how unwilling you were to prove the affection of your people at such a cost, and that you would have preferred to win your countrymen's love while retaining your happiness. Such expressions of feeling, pleasant as they are when all goes well, are doubly welcome in time of sorrow. All Altinum, all Italy mourned Nepotian. The earth received his body; his soul was given back to Christ. You lost a nephew, the church a priest. He who should have followed you went before you. To the office which you held, he in the judgment of all deserved to succeed. And so one family has had the honour of producing two bishops, the first to be congratulated because he has held the office, the second to be lamented because he has been taken away too soon to hold it. Plato thinks that a wise man's whole life ought to be a meditation of death; [1871] and philosophers praise the sentiment and extol it to the skies. But much more full of power are the words of the apostle: "I die daily through your glory." [1872] For to have an ideal is one thing, to realize it another. It is one thing to live so as to die, another to die so as to live. The sage and Christian must both of them die: but the one always dies out of his glory, the other into it. Therefore we also should consider beforehand the end which must one day overtake us and which, whether we wish it or not, cannot be very far distant. For though we should live nine hundred years or more, as men did before the deluge, and though the days of Methuselah [1873] should be granted us, yet that long space of time, when once it should have passed away and come to an end, would be as nothing. For to the man who has lived ten years and to him who has lived a thousand, when once the end of life comes and death's inexorable doom, all the past whether long or short is just the same; except that the older a man is, the heavier is the load of sin that he has to take with him.
First hapless mortals lose from out their life
The fairest days: disease and age come next;
And lastly cruel death doth claim his prey. [1874]
The poet Nævius too says that
Mortals must many woes perforce endure.
Accordingly antiquity has feigned that Niobe because of her much weeping was turned to stone and that other women were metamorphosed into beasts. Hesiod also bewails men's birthdays and rejoices in their deaths, and Ennius wisely says:
The mob has one advantage o'er its king:
For it may weep while tears for him are shame.
If a king may not weep, neither may a bishop; indeed a bishop has still less license than a king. For the king rules over unwilling subjects, the bishop over willing ones. The king compels submission by terror; the bishop exercises lordship by becoming a servant. The king guards men's bodies till they die; the bishop saves their souls for life eternal. The eyes of all are turned upon you. Your house is set on a watchtower; your life fixes for others the limits of their self-control. Whatever you do, all think that they may do the same. Do not so commit yourself that those who seek ground for cavil may be thought to have rightly assailed you, or that those who are eager to imitate you may be forced to do wrong. Overcome as much as you can--nay even more than you can--the sensitiveness of your mind and check the copious flow of your tears. Else your deep affection for your nephew may be construed by unbelievers as indicating despair of God. You must regretim not as dead but as absent. You must seem to be looking for him rather than have lost him.
15. But why do I try to heal a sorrow which has already, I suppose, been assuaged by time and reason? Why do I not rather unfold to you--they are not far to seek--the miseries of our rulers and the calamities of our time? He who has lost the light of life is not so much to be pitied as he is to be congratulated who has escaped from such great evils. Constantius, [1875] the patron of the Arian heresy, was hurrying to do battle with his enemy [1876] when he died at the village of Mopsus and to his great vexation left the empire to his foe. Julian [1877] , the betrayer of his own soul, the murderer of a Christian army, felt in Media the hand of the Christ whom he had previously denied in Gaul. Desiring to annex new territories to Rome, he did but lose annexations previously made. Jovian [1878] had but just tasted the sweets of sovereignty when a coal-fire suffocated him: a good instance of the transitoriness of human power. Valentinian [1879] died of a broken blood vessel, the land of his birth laid waste, and his country unavenged. His brother Valens [1880] defeated in Thrace by the Goths, was buried where he died. Gratian, betrayed by his army and refused admittance by the cities on his line of march, became the laughing-stock of his foe; and your walls, Lyons, still bear the marks of that bloody hand. [1881] Valentinian was yet a youth--I may say, a mere boy--when, after flight and exile and the recovery of his power by bloodshed, he was put to death [1882] not far from the city which had witnessed his brother's end. And not only so but his lifeless body was gibbeted to do him shame. What shall I say of Procopius, of Maximus, of Eugenius, [1883] who while they held sovereign sway were a terror to the nations, yet stood one and all as prisoners in the presence of their conquerors, and--cruellest wound of all to the great and powerful--felt the pang of an ignominious slavery before they fell by the edge of the sword.
16. Some one may say: such is the lot of kings:
The lightning ever smites the mountain-tops. [1884]
I will come therefore to persons of private position, and in speaking of these I will not go farther back than the last two years. In fact I will content myself--omitting all others--with recounting the respective fates of three recent consulars. Abundantius is a beggared exile at Pityus. [1885] The head of Rufinus has been carried on a pike to Constantinople, and his severed hand has begged alms from door to door to shame his insatiable greed. [1886] Timasius, [1887] hurled suddenly from a position of the highest rank thinks it an escape that he is allowed to live in obscurity at Assa. I am describing not the misfortunes of an unhappy few but the thread upon which human fortunes as a whole depend. I shudder when I think of the catastrophes of our time. For twenty years and more the blood of Romans has been shed daily between Constantinople and the Julian Alps. Scythia, Thrace, Macedonia, Dardania, Dacia, Thessaly, Achaia, Epirus, Dalmatia, the Pannonias--each and all of these have been sacked and pillaged and plundered by Goths and Sarmatians, Quades and Alans, Huns and Vandals and Marchmen. How many of God's matrons and virgins, virtuous and noble ladies, have been made the sport of these brutes! Bishops have been made captive, priests and those in minor orders have been put to death. Churches have been overthrown, horses have been stalled by the altars of Christ, the relics of martyrs have been dug up.
Mourning and fear abound on every side
And death appears in countless shapes and forms. [1888]
The Roman world is falling: yet we hold up our heads instead of bowing them. What courage, think you, have the Corinthians now, or the Athenians or the Lacedæmonians or the Arcadians, or any of the Greeks over whom the barbarians bear sway? I have mentioned only a few cities, but these once the capitals of no mean states. The East, it is true, seemed to be safe from all such evils: and if men were panic-stricken here, it was only because of bad news from other parts. But lo! in the year just gone by the wolves (no longer of Arabia but of the whole North [1889] ) were let loose upon us from the remotest fastnesses of Caucasus and in a short time overran these great provinces. What a number of monasteries they captured! What many rivers they caused to run red with blood! They laid siege to Antioch and invested other cities on the Halys, the Cydnus, the Orontes, and the Euphrates. They carried off troops of captives. Arabia, Phenicia, Palestine and Egypt, in their terror fancied themselves already enslaved.
Had I a hundred tongues, a hundred lips,
A throat of iron and a chest of brass,
I could not tell men's countless sufferings. [1890]
And indeed it is not my purpose to write a history: I only wish to shed a few tears over your sorrows and mine. For the rest, to treat such themes as they deserve, Thucydides and Sallust would be as good as dumb.
17. Nepotian is happy who neither sees these things nor hears them. We are unhappy, for either we suffer ourselves or we see our brethren suffer. Yet we desire to live, and regard those beyond the reach of these evils as miserable rather than blessed. We have long felt that God is angry, yet we do not try to appease Him. It is our sins which make the barbarians strong, it is our vices which vanquish Rome's soldiers: and, as if there were here too little material for carnage, civil wars have made almost greater havoc among us than the swords of foreign foes. Miserable must those Israelites have been compared with whom Nebuchadnezzar was called God's servant. [1891] Unhappy too are we who are so displeasing to God that He uses the fury of the barbarians to execute His wrath against us. Still when Hezekiah repented, one hundred and eighty-five thousand Assyrians were destroyed in one night by a single angel. [1892] When Jehosaphat sang the praises of the Lord, the Lord gave His worshipper the victory. [1893] Again when Moses fought against Amalek, it was not with the sword but with prayer that he prevailed. [1894] Therefore, if we wish to be lifted up, we must first prostrate ourselves. Alas! for our shame and folly reaching even to unbelief! Rome's army, once victor and lord of the world, now trembles with terror at the sight of the foe and accepts defeat from men who cannot walk afoot and fancy themselves dead if once they are unhorsed. [1895] We do not understand the prophet's words: "One thousand shall flee at the rebuke of one." [1896] We do not cut away the causes of the disease, as we must do to remove the disease itself. Else we should soon see the enemies' arrows give way to our javelins, their caps to our helmets, their palfreys to our chargers.
18. But I have gone beyond the office of a consoler, and while forbidding you to weep for one dead man I have myself mourned the dead of the whole world. Xerxes the mighty king who rased mountains and filled up seas, looking from high ground upon the untold host, the countless army before him, is said [1897] to have wept at the thought that in a hundred years not one of those whom he then saw would be alive. Oh! if we could but get up into a watch-tower so high that from it we might behold the whole earth spread out under our feet, then I would shew you the wreck of a world, nation warring against nation and kingdom in collision with kingdom; some men tortured, others put to the sword, others swallowed up by the waves, some dragged away into slavery; here a wedding, there a funeral; men born here, men dying there; some living in affluence, others begging their bread; and not the army of Xerxes, great as that was, but all the inhabitants of the world alive now but destined soon to pass away. Language is inadequate to a theme so vast and all that I can say must fall short of the reality.
19. Let us return then to ourselves and coming down from the skies let us look for a few moments upon what more nearly concerns us. Are you conscious, I would ask, of the stages of your growth? Can you fix the time when you became a babe, a boy, a youth, an adult, an old man? Every day we are changing, every day we are dying, and yet we fancy ourselves eternal. The very moments that I spend in dictation, in writing, in reading over what I write, and in correcting it, are so much taken from my life. Every dot that my secretary makes is so much gone from my allotted time. We write letters and reply to those of others, our missives cross the sea, and, as the vessel ploughs its furrow through wave after wave, the moments which we have to live vanish one by one. Our only gain is that we are thus knit together in the love of Christ. "Charity suffereth long and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never faileth." [1898] It lives always in the heart, and thus our Nepotian though absent is still present, and widely sundered though we are has a hand to offer to each. Yes, in him we have a hostage for mutual charity. Let us then be joined together in spirit, let us bind ourselves each to each in affection and let us who have lost a son shew the same fortitude with which the blessed pope Chromatius [1899] bore the loss of a brother. Let every page that we write echo his name, let all our letters ring with it. If we can no longer clasp him to our hearts, let us hold him fast in memory; and if we can no longer speak with him, let us never cease to speak of him. __________________________________________________________________
[1805] 1 Thess. iv. 13.
[1806] Mark v. 39.
[1807] Joh. xi. 11.
[1808] Wisd. iv. 11, 14.
[1809] Hos. xiii. 15, LXX.
[1810] Hos. xiii. 14.
[1811] Rom. v. 14.
[1812] Ps. xiv. 1.
[1813] Rom. iii. 12.
[1814] Matt. xxvii. 52, 53.
[1815] Eph. v. 14.
[1816] Matt. iii. 2.
[1817] Matt. xi. 12.
[1818] Gen. iii. 24.
[1819] Cf. Letter XXXIX. § 4.
[1820] 2 Cor. x. 3.
[1821] Phi. iii. 20.
[1822] Luke xvii. 21.
[1823] Ps. lxxvi. 1.
[1824] Virg. A. viii. 723.
[1825] Luke xxiii. 38.
[1826] A Thracian tribe.
[1827] The words are quoted by Cicero (T. Q. iii. 13) apparently from the Telamon of Ennius. They are ascribed to Anaxagoras by Diog. Laert.
[1828] In his De consolatione of which only a few fragments remain.
[1829] Val. Max. v. 10.
[1830] In the first year of the Republic. Acc. to Livy (ii. 8) his son was not really dead.
[1831] The conqueror of Macedonia. He celebrated his triumph 167 b.c.
[1832] Ps. xxx. 5.
[1833] Rom. xiii. 12.
[1834] Deut. xxxiv. 8.
[1835] Josh. xxiv. 30.
[1836] Letter XXXIX.
[1837] Ps. xlviii. 8.
[1838] Joh. xi. 35.
[1839] Phi. i. 23.
[1840] Phi. i. 21.
[1841] i.e. Epaphroditus.
[1842] Phi. ii. 27.
[1843] meden agan, ne quid nimis. A saying of one of the Seven Wise Men of Greece, 6th cent. b.c. See Grote iv. 127.
[1844] Heb. xi. 32.
[1845] Judg. xi. 1.
[1846] Ezek. xviii. 4
[1847] Gen. xlix. 27.
[1848] Dedit escam. This is the reading of the LXX. The Vulgate, like the A.V., has "shall divide the spoil." Compare Letter LXIX. 6.
[1849] Acts ix. 17. (Cf. Letter LXIX. § 6.)
[1850] Letter XIV. § 2.
[1851] For other allusions to a Roman officer's uniform see Letters LXXIX. § 2 and CXVIII. § 1.
[1852] Acts x.
[1853] Matt. xix. 21.
[1854] Matt. vi. 24.
[1855] Like Bonosus (Letter III. 4).
[1856] Wisd. iv. 9.
[1857] Nu. xi. 16. Presbyterum. This name (afterwards contracted into Priest) is taken from that of the Elders of Israel.
[1858] Rom. xii. 15.
[1859] 1 Tim. v. 2.
[1860] Luke xi. 5, 8.
[1861] Luke xviii. 1, 5.
[1862] Letter LII.
[1863] Matt. xii. 36.
[1864] Jerome here confounds two distinct persons: C. Fabius Pictor was the painter; his grandson Q. Fabius the historian.
[1865] Ex. xxxi. 2, 3.
[1866] 1 Kings vii. 14. A mistake of Jerome. It was Hiram's father who was a Tyrian.
[1867] Hippias of Elis. See Cic. Or. iii. 32.
[1868] Conciliabula.
[1869] 1 Pet. i. 24.
[1870] A similar phrase occurs in Letter CXVIII. § 4.
[1871] Plato, Phædo xii. Cic. T. Q. 1. 31.
[1872] 1 Cor. xv. 31, Vulgate.
[1873] Gen. v. 27.
[1874] Virg. G. iii. 66-68.
[1875] Died 361 a.d.
[1876] Julian.
[1877] Died 363 a.d.
[1878] Died 364 a.d.
[1879] Died 375 a.d.
[1880] Burned to death in a hut after the battle of Adrianople, 378 a.d.
[1881] Died 383 a.d. by the hand of Andragathius.
[1882] Strangled by Arbogastes at Vienne, 392 a.d.
[1883] Aspirants to the purple who were put to death, the first by Valens, the second and third by Theodosius.
[1884] Hor. C. II. x. 11, 12.
[1885] Banished by Eutropius who had owed his advancement to him.
[1886] The prime minister of Theodosius I. Shortly after the accession of Arcadius Gainas the Goth procured his assassination.
[1887] One of the generals of Theodosius I., banished to the Oasis at the instigation of Eutropius.
[1888] Virg. A. ii. 369.
[1889] i.e. the Huns have taken the place of the Chaldæans described in Hab. i. 8, LXX.
[1890] Virg. A. vi. 625-7.
[1891] Jer. xxvii. 6.
[1892] 2 Kings xix. 35.
[1893] 2 Chr. xx. 5-25.
[1894] Ex. xvii. 11.
[1895] Jornandes corroborates the account of the Huns here given by Jerome.
[1896] Isa. xxx. 17.
[1897] Herod. vii. cc. 45, 46.
[1898] 1 Cor. xiii. 4, 7, 8.
[1899] Bishop of Aquileia. His brother Eusebius was also a bishop. __________________________________________________________________
Letter LXI. To Vigilantius.
Vigilantius on his return to the West after his visit to Jerusalem (whither he had gone as the bearer of letters from Paulinus of Nola--see Letter LVIII. §11.) had openly accused Jerome of a leaning to the heresy of Origen. Jerome now writes to him in the most severe tone repudiating the charge of Origenism and fastening upon his opponent those of ignorance and blasphemy. He singles out for especial reprobation Vigilantius's explanation of the stone cut out without hands' in Daniel and urges him to repent of his sins in which case he will have as much chance of forgiveness as the devil has according to Origen! The letter is often referred to as showing Jerome's way of dealing with Origen's works. Jerome subsequently wrote a refutation of Vigilantius's work, of all his controversial writings the most violent and the least reasonable. See the translation of it in this volume. See also Letter CIX. The date of this letter is 396 a.d.
1. Since you have refused to believe your own ears, I might justly decline to satisfy you by a letter; for, if you have failed to credit the living voice, it is not likely that you will give way to a written paper. But, since Christ has shown us in Himself a pattern of perfect humility, bestowing a kiss upon His betrayer and receiving the robber's repentance upon the cross, I tell you now when absent as I have told you already when present, that I read and have read Origen only as I read Apollinaris, or other writers whose books in some things the Church does not receive. I by no means say that everything contained in such books is to be condemned, but I admit that there are things in them deserving of censure. Still, as it is my task and study by reading many authors to cull different flowers from as large a number as possible, not so much making it an object to prove all things as to choose what are good. I take up many writers that from the many I may learn many things; according to that which is written "reading all things, holding fast those that are good." [1900] Hence I am much surprised that you have tried to fasten upon me the doctrines of Origen, of whose mistaken teaching on many points you are up to the present altogether unaware. Am I a heretic? Why pray then do heretics dislike me so? And are you orthodox, you who either against your convictions and the words of your own mouth signed [1901] unwillingly and are consequently a prevaricator, or else signed deliberately and are consequently a heretic? You have taken no account of Egypt; you have relinquished all those provinces where numbers plead freely and openly for your sect; and you have singled out me for assault, me who not only censure but publicly condemn all doctrines that are contrary to the church.
2. Origen is a heretic, true; but what does that take from me who do not deny that on very many points he is heretical? He has erred concerning the resurrection of the body, he has erred concerning the condition of souls, he has erred by supposing it possible that the devil may repent, and--an error more important than these--he has declared in his commentary upon Isaiah that the Seraphim mentioned by the prophet [1902] are the divine Son and the Holy Ghost. If I did not allow that he has erred or if I did not daily anathematize his errors I should be partaker of his fault. For while we receive what is good in his writings we must on no account bind ourselves to accept also what is evil. Still in many passages he has interpreted the scriptures well, has explained obscure places in the prophets, and has brought to light very great mysteries, both in the old and in the new testament. If then I have taken over what is good in him and have either cut away or altered or ignored what is evil, am I to be regarded as guilty on the score that through my agency those who read Latin receive the good in his writings without knowing anything of the bad? If this be a crime the confessor Hilary must be convicted; for he has rendered from Greek into Latin Origen's Explanation of the Psalms and his Homilies on Job. Eusebius of Vercellæ, who witnessed a like confession, must also be held in fault; for he has translated into our tongue the Commentaries upon all the Psalms of his heretical namesake, omitting however the unsound portions and rendering only those parts which are profitable. I say nothing of Victorinus of Petavium and others who have merely followed and expanded Origen in their explanation of the scriptures. Were I to do so, I might seem less anxious to defend myself than to find for myself companions in guilt. I will come to your own case: Why do you keep copies of his treatises on Job? In these, while arguing against the devil and concerning the stars and heavens, he has said certain things which the Church does not receive. Is it for you alone, with that very wise head of yours, to pass sentence upon all writers Greek and Latin, with a wave of your censor's wand to eject some from our libraries and to admit others, and as the whim takes you to pronounce me either a Catholic or a heretic? And am I to be forbidden to reject things which are wrong and to condemn what I have often condemned already? Read what I have written upon the epistle to the Ephesians, read my other works, particularly my commentary upon Ecclesiastes, and you will clearly see that from my youth up I have never been terrified by any man's influence into acquiescence in heretical pravity.
3. It is no small gain to know your own ignorance. It is a man's wisdom to know his own measure, that he may not be led away at the instigation of the devil to make the whole world a witness of his incapacity. You are bent, I suppose, on magnifying yourself and boast in your own country that I found myself unable to answer your eloquence and that I dreaded in you the sharp satire of a Chrysippus. [1903] Christian modesty holds me back and I do not wish to lay open the retirement of my poor cell with biting words. Otherwise I should soon shew up all your bravery and your parade of triumph. [1904] But these I leave to others either to talk of or to laugh at; while for my own part as a Christian speaking to a Christian I beseech you my brother not to pretend to know more than you do, lest your pen may proclaim your innocence and simplicity, or at any rate those qualities of which I say nothing but which, though you do not see them in yourself others see in you. For then you will give everyone reason to laugh at your folly. From your earliest childhood you have been taught other lessons and have been used to a different kind of schooling. One and the same person can hardly be a tester both of gold coins on the counter and also of the scriptures, or be a connoisseur of wines and an adept in expounding prophets or apostles. [1905] As for me, you tear me limb from limb, our reverend brother Oceanus you charge with heresy, you dislike the judgment of the presbyters Vincent and Paulinian, and our brother Eusebius also displeases you. You alone are to be our Cato, the most eloquent of the Roman race, and you wish us to accept what you say as the words of prudence herself. Pray call to mind the day when I preached on the resurrection and on the reality of the risen body, and when you jumped up beside me and clapped your hands and stamped your feet and applauded my orthodoxy. Now, however, that you have taken to sea travelling the stench of the bilge water has affected your head, and you have called me to mind only as a heretic. What can I do for you? I believed the letters of the reverend presbyter Paulinus, and it did not occur to me that his judgment concerning you could be wrong. And although, the moment that you handed me the letter, I noticed a certain incoherency in your language, yet I fancied this due to want of culture and knowledge in you and not to an unsettled brain. I do not censure the reverend writer who preferred, no doubt, in writing to me to keep back what he knew rather than to accuse in his missive one who was both under his patronage and entrusted with his letter; but I find fault with myself that I have rested in another's judgment rather than my own, and that, while my eyes saw one thing, I believed on the evidence of a scrap of paper something else than what I saw.
4. Wherefore cease to worry me and to overwhelm me with your scrolls. Spare at least your money with which you hire secretaries and copyists, employing the same persons to write for you and to applaud you. Possibly their praise is due to the fact that they make a profit out of writing for you. If you wish to exercise your mind, hand yourself over to the teachers of grammar and rhetoric, learn logic, have yourself instructed in the schools of the philosophers; and when you have learned all these things you will perhaps begin to hold your tongue. And yet I am acting foolishly in seeking teachers for one who is competent to teach everyone, and in trying to limit the utterance of one who does not know how to speak yet cannot remain silent. The old Greek proverb is quite true "A lyre is of no use to an ass." [1906] For my part I imagine that even your name was given you out of contrariety. [1907] For your whole mind slumbers and you actually snore, so profound is the sleep--or rather the lethargy--in which you are plunged. In fact amongst the other blasphemies which with sacrilegious lips you have uttered you have dared to say that the mountain in Daniel [1908] out of which the stone was cut without hands is the devil, and that the stone is Christ, who having taken a body from Adam (whose sins had before connected him with the devil) is born of a virgin to separate mankind from the mountain, that is, from the devil. Your tongue deserves to be cut out and torn into fragments. Can any true Christian explain this image of the devil instead of referring it to God the Father Almighty, or defile the ears of the whole world with so frightful an enormity? If your explanation has ever been accepted by any--I will not say Catholic but--heretic or heathen, let your words be regarded as pious. If on the other hand the Church of Christ has never yet heard of such an impiety, and if yours has been the first mouth through which he who once said "I will be like the Most High" [1909] has declared that he is the mountain spoken of by Daniel, then repent, put on sackcloth and ashes, and with fast-flowing tears wash away your awful guilt; if so be that this impiety may be forgiven you, and, supposing Origen's heresy to be true, that you may obtain pardon when the devil himself shall obtain it, the devil who has never been convicted of greater blasphemy than that which he has uttered through you. Your insult offered to myself I bear with patience: your impiety towards God I cannot bear. Accordingly I may seem to have been somewhat more acrid in this latter part of my letter than I declared I would be at the outset. Yet having once before repented and asked pardon of me, it is extremely foolish in you again to commit a sin for which you must anew do penance. May Christ give you grace to hear and to hold your peace, to understand and so to speak. __________________________________________________________________
[1900] 1 Th. v. 21. "Prove all things," Vulg. and A.V.
[1901] Probably Aterbius (for whom see Jerome Apol. iii. 33, and note on Letter LXXXVI.) had brought with him some test-formula of orthodoxy which he called upon all anti-Origenists to sign.
[1902] Isa. vi. 2. See Letter XVIII.
[1903] A disciple of Cleanthes and Zeno, and after them the leading teacher of the Stoic school at Athens. He was born in 280 a.d.
[1904] This expression is given in Greek.
[1905] The father of Vigilantius is said by Jerome to have been an inn-keeper.
[1906] ono lura
[1907] Jerome subsequently (Letter CIX.) nicknamed his opponent Dormitantius (the Sleepy One'), his own name Vigilantius meaning the Wakeful.'
[1908] Dan. ii. 34, 45.
[1909] Isa. xiv. 14. __________________________________________________________________
Letter LXII. To Tranquillinus.
Tranquillinus, one of Jerome's Roman friends, had written (1) to tell him of the stand that Oceanus was making against the Origenists at Rome, and (2) to ask whether any parts of Origen's works might be studied with safety and profit. Jerome welcomes the tidings about Oceanus and answers the question of Tranquillinus in the affirmative. He classes Origen with Tertullian, Apollinaris and others whose works continued to be read in spite of their heresies. Written in 396 or 397 a.d.
1. Though I formerly doubted the fact, I have now proved that the links which bind spirit to spirit are stronger than any physical bond. For you, my reverend friend, cling to me with all your soul, and I am united to you by the love of Christ. I speak simply and sincerely to your spotless heart: the very paper on which you write, the very letters which you have formed--voiceless though they are--inspire in me a sense of your affection.
2. You tell me that many have been deceived by the mistaken teaching of Origen, and that that saintly man, my son Oceanus, is doing battle with their madness. I grieve to think that simple folk have been thrown off their balance, but I am rejoiced to know that one so learned as Oceanus is doing his best to set them right again. Moreover you ask me, insignificant though I am, for an opinion as to the advisability of reading Origen's works. Are we, you say, to reject him altogether with our brother Faustinus, or are we, as others tell us, to read him in part? My opinion is that we should sometimes read him for his learning just as we read Tertullian, Novatus, Arnobius, Apollinarius and some other church writers both Greek and Latin, and that we should select what is good and avoid what is bad in their writings according to the words of the Apostle, "Prove all things: hold fast that which is good." [1910] Those, however, who are led by some perversity in their dispositions to conceive for him too much fondness or too much aversion seem to me to lie under the curse of the Prophet:--"Woe unto them that call evil good and good evil; that put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!" [1911] For while the ability of his teaching must not lead us to embrace his wrong opinions, the wrongness of his opinions should not cause us altogether to reject the useful commentaries which he has published on the holy scriptures. But if his admirers and his detractors are bent on having a tug of war one against the other, and if, seeking no mean and observing no moderation, they must either approve or disapprove his works indiscriminately, I would choose rather to be a pious boor than a learned blasphemer. Our reverend brother, Tatian the deacon, heartily salutes you. __________________________________________________________________
[1910] 1 Th. v. 21.
[1911] Is. v. 20. __________________________________________________________________
Letter LXIII. To Theophilus.
When the dispute arose between Jerome and Epiphanius on the one side and Rufinus and John of Jerusalem on the other (see Letter LI.), Theophilus bishop of Alexandria, being appealed to by the latter sent the presbyter Isidore to report to him on the matter. Isidore reported against Jerome and consequently Theophilus refused to answer several of his letters. Finally he wrote counselling him to obey the canons of the church. Jerome replies that to do this has always been his first object. He then remonstrates with Theophilus on his too great leniency towards the Origenists and declares it to be productive of the worst results. The date of the letter is probably 397 a.d.
Jerome to the most blessed pope [1912] Theophilus.
1. Your holiness will remember that at the time when you kept silence towards me, I never ceased to do my duty by writing to you, not taking so much into account what you in the exercise of your discretion were then doing as what it became me to do. And now that I have received a letter from your grace, I see that my reading of the gospel has not been without fruit. For if the frequent prayers of a woman changed the determination of an unyielding judge, [1913] how much more must my constant appeals have softened a fatherly heart like yours?
2. I thank you for your reminder concerning the canons of the Church. Truly, "whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth." [1914] Still I would assure you that nothing is more my aim than to maintain the rights of Christ, to keep to the lines laid down by the fathers, and always to remember the faith of Rome; that faith which is praised by the lips of an apostle, [1915] and of which the Alexandrian church boasts to be a sharer.
3. Many religious persons are displeased that you are so long-suffering in regard to that shocking heresy, [1916] and that you suppose yourself able by such lenity to amend those who are attacking the Church's vitals. They believe that, while you are waiting for the penitence of a few, your action is fostering the boldness of abandoned men and making their party stronger. Farewell in Christ. __________________________________________________________________
[1912] See note on Letter LVIII.
[1913] Luke xviii. 2-5.
[1914] Heb. xii. 6.
[1915] Rom. i. 8.
[1916] That of the Origenists. __________________________________________________________________
Letter LXIV. To Fabiola.
Fabiola's visit to Bethlehem had been shortened by the threatened invasion of the Huns which compelled Jerome and his friends to take refuge for a time on the seaboard of Palestine. Fabiola here took leave of her companions and set sail for Italy, but not until Jerome had completed this letter for her use (§22). It contains a mystical account of the vestments of the High Priest worked out with Jerome's usual ingenuity and learning. Similar treatises are ascribed to Tertullian and to Hosius bishop of Cordova, but these have long since perished. Its date is 396 or 397 a.d. __________________________________________________________________
Letter LXV. To Principia.
A commentary on Ps. XLV. addressed to Marcella's friend and companion Principia (see Letter CXXVII.). Jerome prefaces what he has to say by a defence of his practice of writing for women, a practice which had exposed him to many foolish sneers. He deals with the same subject in his dedication of the Commentary of Sophronius. The date of the letter is 397 a.d. __________________________________________________________________
Letter LXVI. To Pammachius.
Pammachius a Roman senator, had lost his wife Paulina one of Paula's daughters, while she was still in the flower of her youth. It was not till two years had elapsed that Jerome ventured to write to him; and when he did so he dwelt but little on the life and virtues of Paulina. Probably there was but little to tell. The greater part of the letter is taken up with commendation of Pammachius himself who, in spite of his high rank and position, had become a monk and was now living a life of severe self-denial. Jerome speaks approvingly of the Hospice for Strangers which, in conjunction with Fabiola, Pammachius had set up at Portus, and describes his own somewhat similar institutions at Bethlehem. He also mentions Paula, Eustochium, and the dead Blæsilla, all in terms of the highest praise. The date of the letter is 397 a.d.
1. Supposing a wound to be healed and a scar to have been formed upon the skin, any course of treatment designed to remove the mark must in its effort to improve the appearance renew the smart of the original wound. After two years of inopportune silence my condolence now comes rather late; yet even so I am afraid that my present speech may be still more inopportune. I fear lest in touching the sore spot in your heart I may by my words inflame afresh a wound which time and reflection have availed to cure. For who can have ears so dull or hearts so flinty as to hear the name of your Paulina without weeping? Even though reared on the milk of Hyrcanian tigresses [1917] they must still shed tears. Who can with dry eyes see thus untimely cut down and withered an opening rose, an undeveloped bud, [1918] which has not yet formed itself into a cup nor spread forth the proud display of its crimson petals? In her a most priceless pearl is broken. In her a vivid emerald is shattered. Sickness alone shews us the blessedness of health. We realize better what we have had when we cease to have it.
2. The good ground of which we read in the parable brought forth fruit, some an hundred-fold, some sixtyfold, and some thirtyfold. [1919] In this threefold yield I recognize an emblem of the three different rewards of Christ which have fallen to three women [1920] closely united in blood and moral excellence. Eustochium culls the flowers of virginity. Paula sweeps the toilsome threshing floor of widowhood. Paulina keeps the bed undefiled of marriage. A mother with such daughters wins for herself on earth all that Christ has promised to give in heaven. Then to complete the team--if I may so call it--of four saints turned out by a single family, and to match the women's virtues by those of a man, the three have a fit companion in Pammachius who is a cherub such as Ezekiel describes, [1921] brother-in-law to the first, son-in-law to the second, husband to the third. Husband did I say? Nay, rather a most devoted brother; for the language of marriage is inadequate to describe the holy bonds of the Spirit. Of this team Jesus holds the reins, and it is of steeds like these that Habakkuk sings: "ride upon thy horses and let thy riding be salvation." [1922] With like resolve if with unlike speed they strain after the victor's palm. Their colours are different; their object is the same. They are harnessed in one yoke, they obey one driver, not waiting for the lash but answering the call of his voice with fresh efforts.
3. Let me use for a moment the language of philosophy. According to the Stoics there are four virtues so closely related and mutually coherent that he who lacks one lacks all. They are prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. [1923] While all of you possess the four, yet each is remarkable for one. You have prudence, your mother has justice, your virgin sister has fortitude, your wedded wife has temperance. I speak of you as wise, for who can be wiser than one who, despising the folly of the world, has followed Christ "the power of God and the wisdom of God"? [1924] Or what better instance can there be of justice than your mother, who having divided her substance among her offspring has taught them by her own contempt of riches the true object on which to fix their affections? Who has set a better example of courage than Eustochium, who by resolving to be a virgin has breached the gates of the nobility and broken down the pride of a consular house? The first of Roman ladies, she has brought under the yoke the first of Roman families. Has there ever been temperance greater than that of Paulina, who, reading the words of the apostle: "marriage is honourable in all and the bed undefiled," [1925] and not presuming to aspire to the happiness of her virgin sister or the continence of her widowed mother, has preferred to keep to the safe track of a lower path rather than treading on air to lose herself in the clouds? When once she had entered upon the married state, her one thought day and night was that, as soon as her union should be blessed with offspring, she would live thenceforth in the second degree of chastity, [1926] and
Though woman, foremost in the high emprise, [1927]
would induce her husband to follow a like course. She would not forsake him but looked for the day when he would become a companion in salvation. Finding by several miscarriages that her womb was not barren, she could not give up all hope of having children and had to allow her own reluctance to give way to the eagerness of her mother-in-law and the chagrin of her husband. Thus she suffered much as Rachel suffered, [1928] although instead of bringing forth like her a son of pangs and of the right hand, [1929] the heir she had longed for was no other than her husband. I have learned on good authority that her wish in submitting herself to her husband was not to take advantage of God's primitive command "Be faithful and multiply and replenish the earth" [1930] but that she only desired children that she might bring forth virgins to Christ.
4. We read that the wife of Phinehas the priest, on hearing that the ark of the Lord had been taken, was seized suddenly with the pains of travail and that she brought forth a son Ichabod and died a mother in the hands of the women who nursed her. [1931] Rachel's son is called Benjamin, that is son of excellence' or of the right hand'; but the son of the other, afterwards to be a distinguished priest of God, derives his name from the ark. [1932] The same thing has come to pass in our own day, for since Paulina fell asleep the Church has posthumously borne the monk Pammachius, a patrician by his parentage and marriage, rich in alms, and lofty in lowliness. The apostle writes to the Corinthians, "Ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men, not many noble are called." [1933] The conditions of the nascent church required this to be so that the grain of mustard seed might grow up little by little into a tree, [1934] and that the leaven of the gospel might gradually raise more and more the whole lump of the church. [1935] In our day Rome possesses what the world in days gone by knew not of. Then few of the wise or mighty or noble were Christians; now many wise powerful and noble are not Christians only but even monks. And among them all my Pammachius is the wisest, the mightiest, and the noblest; great among the great, a leader among leaders, he is the commander in chief of all monks. He and others like him are the offspring which Paulina desired to have in her life time and which she has given us in her death. "Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear; break forth into singing and cry aloud, thou that didst not travail with child"; [1936] for in a moment thou hast brought forth as many sons as there are poor men in Rome.
5. The glowing gems which in old days adorned the neck and face of Paulina now purchase food for the needy. Her silk dresses and gold brocades are exchanged for soft woollen garments intended to keep out the cold and not to expose the body to vain admiration. All that formerly ministered to luxury is now at the service of virtue. That blind man holding out his hand, and often crying aloud when there is none to hear, is the heir of Paulina, is co-heir with Pammachius. That poor cripple who can scarcely drag himself along, owes his support to the help of a tender girl. Those doors which of old poured forth crowds of visitors, are now beset only by the wretched. One suffers from a dropsy, big with death; another mute and without the means of begging, begs the more appealingly because he cannot beg; another maimed from his childhood implores an alms which he may not himself enjoy. Still another has his limbs rotted with jaundice and lives on after his body has become a corpse. To use the language of Virgil:
Had I a hundred tongues, a hundred lips,
I could not tell men's countless sufferings. [1937]
Such is the bodyguard which accompanies Pammachius wherever he walks; in the persons of such he ministers to Christ Himself; and their squalor serves to whiten his soul. Thus he speeds on his way to heaven, beneficent as a giver of games to the poor, and kind as a provider of shows for the needy. Other husbands scatter on the graves of their wives violets, roses, lilies, and purple flowers; and assuage the grief of their hearts by fulfilling this tender duty. Our dear Pammachius also waters the holy ashes and the revered bones of Paulina, but it is with the balm of almsgiving. These are the confections and the perfumes with which he cherishes the dead embers of his wife knowing that it is written: "Water will quench a flaming fire; and alms maketh an atonement for sins." [1938] What great power compassion has and what high rewards it is destined to win, the blessed Cyprian sets forth in an extensive work. [1939] It is proved also by the counsel of Daniel who desired the most impious of kings--had he been willing to hear him--to be saved by shewing mercy to the poor. [1940] Paulina's mother may well be glad of Paulina's heir. She cannot regret that her daughter's wealth has passed into new hands when she sees it still spent upon the objects she had at heart. Nay, rather she must congratulate herself that without any exertion of her own her wishes are being carried out. The sum available for distribution is the same as before: only the distributor is changed.
6. Who can credit the fact that one, who is the glory of the Furian stock and whose grandfathers and great grandfathers have been consuls, moves amid the senators in their purple clothed in sombre garb, and that, so far from blushing when he meets the eyes of his companions, he actually derides those who deride him! "There is a shame that leadeth to death and there is a shame that leadeth to life." [1941] It is a monk's first virtue to despise the judgments of men and always to remember the apostle's words:--"If I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ." [1942] In the same sense the Lord says to the prophets that He has made their face a brazen city and a stone of adamant and an iron pillar, [1943] to the end that they shall not be afraid of the insults of the people but shall by the sternness of their looks discompose the effrontery of those who sneered at them. A finely strung mind is more readily overcome by contumely than by terror. And men whom no tortures can overawe are sometimes prevailed over by the fear of shame. Surely it is no small thing for a man of birth, eloquence, and wealth to avoid the company of the powerful in the streets, to mingle with the crowd, to cleave to the poor, to associate on equal terms with the untaught, to cease to be a leader and to become one of the people. The more he humbles himself, the more he is exalted. [1944]
7. A pearl will shine in the midst of squalor and a gem of the first water will sparkle in the mire. This is what the Lord promised when He said: "Them that honour me I will honour." [1945] Others may understand this of the future when sorrow shall be turned into joy and when, although the world shall pass away, the saints shall receive a crown which shall never pass. But I for my part see that the promises made to the saints are fulfilled even in this present life. Before he began to serve Christ with his whole heart, Pammachius was a well known person in the senate. Still there were many other senators who wore the badges of proconsular rank. The whole world is filled with similar decorations. He was in the first rank it is true, but there were others in it besides him. Whilst he took precedence of some, others took precedence of him. The most distinguished privilege loses its prestige when lavished on a crowd, and dignities themselves become less dignified in the eyes of good men when held by persons who have no dignity. Thus Tully finely says of Cæsar, when he wished to advance some of his adherents, "he did not so much honour them as dishonour the honourable positions in which he placed them." [1946] To-day all the churches of Christ are talking of Pammachius. The whole world admires as a poor man one whom heretofore it ignored as rich. Can anything be more splendid than the consulate? Yet the honour lasts only for a year and when another has succeeded to the post its former occupant gives way. Each man's laurels are lost in the crowd and sometimes triumphs themselves are marred by the shortcomings of those who celebrate them. An office which was once handed down from patrician to patrician, which only men of noble birth could hold, of which the consul Marius--victor though he was over Numidia and the Teutons and the Cimbri--was held unworthy on account of the obscurity of his family, and which Scipio won before his time as the reward of valour,--this great office is now obtained by merely belonging to the army; and the shining robe of victory [1947] now envelops men who a little while ago were country boors. Thus we have received more than we have given. The things we have renounced are small; the things we possess are great. All that Christ promises is duly performed and for what we have given up we have received an hundredfold. [1948] This was the ground in which Isaac sowed his seed, [1949] Isaac who in his readiness to die [1950] bore the cross of the Gospel before the Gospel came.
8. "If thou wilt be perfect," the Lord says, "go and sell that thou hast and give to the poor....and come and follow me." [1951] If thou wilt be perfect. Great enterprises are always left to the free choice of those who hear of them. Thus the apostle refrains from making virginity a positive duty, because the Lord in speaking of eunuchs who had made themselves such for the kingdom of heaven's sake finally said: "He that is able to receive it, let him receive it." [1952] For, to quote the apostle, "it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy." [1953] If thou wilt be perfect. There is no compulsion laid upon you: if you are to win the prize it must be by the exercise of your own free will. If therefore you will to be perfect and desire to be as the prophets, as the apostles, as Christ Himself, sell not a part of your substance (lest the fear of want become an occasion of unfaithfulness, and so you perish with Ananias and Sapphira [1954] ) but all that you have. And when you have sold all, give the proceeds not to the wealthy or to the high-minded but to the poor. Give each man enough for his immediate need but do not give money to swell what a man has already. "Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn," [1955] and "the labourer is worthy of his reward." [1956] Again "they which wait at the altar are partakers with the altar." [1957] Remember also these words: "having food and raiment let us be therewith content." [1958] Where you see smoking dishes, steaming pheasants, massive silver plate, spirited nags, long-haired boy-slaves, expensive clothing, and embroidered hangings, give nothing there. For he to whom you would give is richer than you the giver. It is moreover a kind of sacrilege to give what belongs to the poor to those who are not poor. Yet to be a perfect and complete Christian it is not enough to despise wealth or to squander and fling away one's money, a thing which can be lost and found in a single moment. Crates the Theban [1959] did this, so did Antisthenes and several others, whose lives shew them to have had many faults. The disciple of Christ must do more for the attainment of spiritual glory than the philosopher of the world, than the venal slave of flying rumours and of the people's breath. It is not enough for you to despise wealth unless you follow Christ as well. And only he follows Christ who forsakes his sins and walks hand in hand with virtue. We know that Christ is wisdom. He is the treasure which in the scriptures a man finds in his field. [1960] He is the peerless gem which is bought by selling many pearls. [1961] But if you love a captive woman, that is, worldly wisdom, and if no beauty but hers attracts you, make her bald and cut off her alluring hair, that is to say, the graces of style, and pare away her dead nails. [1962] Wash her with the nitre of which the prophet speaks, [1963] and then take your ease with her and say "Her left hand is under my head, and her right hand doth embrace me." [1964] Then shall the captive bring to you many children; from a Moabitess [1965] she shall become an Israelitish woman. Christ is that sanctification without which no man shall see the face of God. Christ is our redemption, for He is at once our Redeemer and our Ransom. [1966] Christ is all, that he who has left all for Christ may find One in place of all, and may be able to proclaim freely, "The Lord is my portion." [1967]
9. I see clearly that you have a warm affection for divine learning and that far from trying--like some rash persons--to teach that of which you are yourself ignorant you make it your first object to learn what you are going to teach. Your letters in their simplicity are redolent of the prophets and savour strongly of the apostles. You do not affect a stilted eloquence, nor boylike balance shallow sentences in clauses neatly-turned. The quickly frothing foam disappears with equal quickness; and a tumour though it enlarges the size of the body is injurious to health. It is moreover a shrewd maxim, this of Cato, "Fast enough if well enough." Long ago it is true in the days of our youth we laughed outright at this dictum when the finished orator [1968] used it in his exordium. I fancy you remember the mistake [1969] shared by the speaker in our Athenæum and how the whole room resounded with the cry taken up by the students "Fast enough if well enough." According to Fabius [1970] crafts would be sure to prosper if none but craftsmen were allowed to criticise them. No man can adequately estimate a poet unless he is competent himself to write verse. No man can comprehend philosophers, unless he is acquainted with the various theories that they have held. Material and visible products are best appraised by those who make them. To what a cruel lot we men of letters are exposed you may gather from the fact that we are forced to rely on the judgment of the public; and many a man is in company a formidable opponent who would certainly be despised could he be seen alone. I have touched on this in passing to make you content, if possible, with the ear of the learned. Disregard the remarks which uneducated persons make concerning your ability; but day by day imbibe the marrow of the prophets, that you may know the mystery of Christ and share this mystery with the patriarchs.
10. Whether you read or write, whether you wake or sleep, let the herdsman's horn of Amos [1971] always ring in your ears. Let the sound of the clarion arouse your soul, let the divine love carry you out of yourself; and then seek upon your bed him whom your soul loveth, [1972] and boldly say: "I sleep, but my heart waketh." [1973] And when you have found him and taken hold of him, let him not go. And if you fall asleep for a moment and He escapes from your hands, do not forthwith despair. Go out into the streets and charge the daughters of Jerusalem: then shall you find him lying down in the noontide weary and drunk with passion, or wet with the dew of night by the flocks of his companions, or fragrant with many kinds of spices, amid the apples of the garden. [1974] There give to him your breasts, let him suck your learned bosom, let him rest in the midst of his heritage, [1975] his feathers as those of a dove overlaid with silver and his inward parts with the brightness of gold. This young child, this mere boy, who is fed on butter and honey, [1976] and who is reared among curdled mountains, [1977] quickly grows up to manhood, speedily spoils all [1978] that is opposed to him in you, and when the time is ripe plunders [the spiritual] Damascus and puts in chains the king of [the spiritual] Assyria.
11. I hear that you have erected a hospice for strangers at Portus and that you have planted a twig from the tree of Abraham [1979] upon the Ausonian shore. Like Æneas you are tracing the outlines of a new encampment; only that, whereas he, when he reached the waters of the Tiber, under pressure of want had to eat the square flat cakes which formed the tables spoken of by the oracle, [1980] you are able to build a house of bread to rival this little village of Bethlehem [1981] wherein I am staying; and here after their long privations you propose to satisfy travellers with sudden plenty. Well done. You have surpassed my poor beginning. [1982] You have reached the highest point. You have made your way from the root to the top of the tree. You are the first of monks in the first city of the world: you do right therefore to follow the first of the patriarchs. Let Lot, whose name means one who turns aside' choose the plain [1983] and let him follow the left and easy branch of the famous letter of Pythagoras. [1984] But do you make ready for yourself a monument like Sarah's [1985] on steep and rocky heights. Let the City of Books be near; [1986] and when you have destroyed the giants, the sons of Anak, [1987] make over your heritage to joy and merriment. [1988] Abraham was rich in gold and silver and cattle, in substance and in raiment: his household was so large that on an emergency he could bring a picked body of young men into the field, and could pursue as far as Dan and then slay four kings who had already put five kings to flight. [1989] Frequently exercising hospitality and never turning any man away from his door, he was accounted worthy at last to entertain God himself. He was not satisfied with giving orders to his servants and hand-maids to attend to his guests, nor did he lessen the favour he conferred by leaving others to care for them; but as though he had found a prize, he and Sarah his wife gave themselves to the duties of hospitality. With his own hands he washed the feet of his guests, upon his own shoulders he brought home a fat calf from the herd. While the strangers dined he stood by to serve them, and set before them the dishes cooked by Sarah's hands--though meaning to fast himself.
12. The regard which I feel for you, my dear brother, makes me remind you of these things; for you must offer to Christ not only your money but yourself, to be a "living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service," [1990] and you must imitate the son of man who "came not to be ministered unto but to minister." [1991] What the patriarch did for strangers that our Lord and Master did for His servants and disciples. "Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life. But," says the devil, "touch his flesh and he will curse thee to thy face." [1992] The old enemy knows that the battle with impurity is a harder one than that with covetousness. It is easy to cast off what clings to us from without, but a war within our borders involves far greater peril. We have to unfasten things joined together, we have to sunder things firmly united. Zacchæus was rich while the apostles were poor. He restored fourfold all that he had taken and gave to the poor the half of his remaining substance. He welcomed Christ as his guest, and salvation came unto his house. [1993] And yet because he was little of stature and could not reach the apostolic standard of height, he was not numbered with the twelve apostles. Now as regards wealth the apostles gave up nothing at all, but as regards will they one and all gave up the whole world. If we offer to Christ our souls as well as our riches, he will gladly receive our offering. But if we give to God only those things which are without while we give to the devil those things which are within, the division is not fair, and the divine voice says: "Hast thou not sinned in offering aright, and yet not dividing aright?" [1994]
13. That you, the leader of the patrician order, first set the example of turning monk should not be to you an occasion of boasting but rather one of humility, knowing as you do that the Son of God became the Son of man. However low you may abase yourself, you cannot be more lowly than Christ. Even supposing that you walk barefooted, that you dress in sombre garb, that you rank yourself with the poor, that you condescend to enter the tenements of the needy, that you are eyes to the blind, hands to the weak, feet to the lame, that you carry water and hew wood and make fires--even supposing that you do all this, where are the chains, the buffets, the spittings, the scourgings, the gibbet, the death which the Lord endured? And even when you have done all the things I have mentioned, you are still surpassed by your sister Eustochium as well as by Paula: for considering the weakness of their sex they have done more work relatively if less absolutely, than you. I myself was not at Rome but in the desert--would that I had continued there--at the time when your father-in-law Toxotius was still alive and his daughters were still given up to the world. But I have heard that they were too dainty to walk in the muddy streets, that they were carried about in the arms of eunuchs, that they disliked crossing uneven ground, that they found a silk dress a burthen and felt sunshine too scorching. But now, squalid and sombre in their dress, they are positive heroines in comparison with what they used to be. They trim lamps, light fires, sweep floors, clean vegetables, put heads of cabbage in the pot to boil, lay tables, hand cups, help dishes and run to and fro to wait on others. And yet there is no lack of virgins under the same roof with them. Is it then that they have no servants upon whom they can lay these duties? Surely not. They are unwilling that others should surpass them in physical toil whom they themselves surpass in rigour of mind. I say all this not because I doubt your mental ardour but that I may quicken the pace at which you are running, and in the heat of battle may add warmth to your warmth.
14. I for my part am building in this province a monastery and a hospice close by; so that, if Joseph and Mary chance to come to Bethlehem, they may not fail to find shelter and welcome. Indeed, the number of monks who flock here from all quarters of the world is so overwhelming that I can neither desist from my enterprise nor bear so great a burthen. The warning of the gospel has been all but fulfilled in me, for I did not sufficiently count the cost of the tower I was about to build; [1995] accordingly I have been constrained to send my brother Paulinian [1996] to Italy to sell some ruinous villas which have escaped the hands of the barbarians, and also the property inherited from our common parents. For I am loth, now that I have begun it, to give up ministering to the saints, lest I incur the ridicule of carping and envious persons.
15. Now that I have come to the conclusion of my letter I recall my metaphor of the four-horse team, and recollect that Blæsilla would have made a fifth had she been spared to share your resolve. I had almost forgotten to mention her, the first of you all to go to meet the Lord. You who once were five I now see to be two and three. Blæsilla and her sister Paulina rest in sweet sleep: you with the two others on either side of you will fly upward to Christ more easily. __________________________________________________________________
[1917] Virgil, Æn. iv. 367.
[1918] Quoted from a poet in the Latin Anthology.
[1919] Matt. xiii. 8.
[1920] Paula and her two daughters, Paulina and Eustochium.
[1921] Ezek. x. 8-22.
[1922] Hab. iii. 8, LXX.
[1923] Cf. Wisdom viii. 7.
[1924] 1 Cor. i. 24.
[1925] Heb. xiii. 4.
[1926] i.e., continence in marriage.
[1927] Virg. A. i. 494.
[1928] Gen. xxxv. 16.
[1929] The respective meanings of Benoni and Benjamin.
[1930] Gen. i. 28.
[1931] 1 Sam. iv. 19-22.
[1932] Ichabod means there is no glory'; glory being (apparently) a synonym for the ark.
[1933] 1 Cor. i. 26.
[1934] Matt. xiii. 31.
[1935] Matt. xiii. 33.
[1936] Isa. liv. 1.
[1937] Virg. A. vi. 625, 627.
[1938] Ecclus. iii. 30.
[1939] Viz. the treatise entitled Of Work and Alms.
[1940] Dan. iv. 27.
[1941] Ecclus. iv. 25. Est confusio adducens peccatum: et est confusio adducens gloriam et gratiam, Vulg. Jerome probably quotes from memory. A.V. follows the Greek and the Vulg.
[1942] Gal. i. 10.
[1943] Cf. Jer. i. 18; Ezek. iii. 8, 9.
[1944] Cf. Luke xiv. 11.
[1945] 1 Sam. ii. 30.
[1946] Cf. the remark of Æneas Silvius that "men should be given to places not places, to men."
[1947] Palma, i.e. tunica palmata.
[1948] Cf. Matt. xix. 29.
[1949] Gen. xxvi. 12.
[1950] Gen. xxii.
[1951] Matt. xix. 21.
[1952] Matt. xix. 12.
[1953] Rom. ix. 16.
[1954] Acts v.
[1955] 1 Cor. ix. 9.
[1956] 1 Tim. v. 18.
[1957] 1 Cor. ix. 13.
[1958] 1 Tim. vi. 8.
[1959] Cf. Letter LVIII. § 2.
[1960] Matt. xiii. 44.
[1961] Matt. xiii. 45.
[1962] Cf. Deut. xxi. 11, 12.
[1963] Jer. ii. 22.
[1964] Cant. ii. 6. A.V. his' for her.'
[1965] Jerome is thinking of Ruth.
[1966] 1 Cor. i. 30; Heb. xii. 14.
[1967] Ps. lxxiii. 26.
[1968] Quintilian.
[1969] What was the mistake? Did the orator say, "Well enough if fast enough"? The text seems obscure.
[1970] Fabius Pietor.
[1971] Cf. Letter XLVI. § 12.
[1972] Cant. iii. 1.
[1973] Cant. v. 2.
[1974] Cf. Cant. i. 7, ii. 5, v. 2.
[1975] Ps. lxviii. 13.
[1976] Isa. vii. 14, 15.
[1977] Ps. lxviii. 14, Vulg. (acc. to some mss.). Intermedios cleros--the lot or inheritance--with an allusion perhaps to the word clergy formed from clerus.
[1978] Perhaps an allusion to Isa. viii. 1. Mahershalal-hash-baz, Spoil speedeth, prey hasteth.'
[1979] i.e. the oak of Mamre under which he entertained the three angels (Gen. xviii. 1-8).
[1980] Virg. Æn. vii. 112-129.
[1981] Beth-lehem means house of bread.'
[1982] v. § 14 below.
[1983] Gen. xiii. 5-11.
[1984] The letter U. Cf. Pers. iii. 56, 57 and Conington's note.
[1985] Gen. xxiii. 19.
[1986] i.e. Kirjathsepher close to Hebron (Josh. xv. 13-15) where Sarah was buried.
[1987] Cf. Jos. xv. 14.
[1988] An allusion to the name of Abraham's heir, Isaac or laughter' (Gen. xxi. 3, 6).
[1989] Gen. xiv. 13-16.
[1990] Rom. xii. 1.
[1991] Matt. xx. 28.
[1992] Job ii. 4, 5.
[1993] Luke xix. 2-9.
[1994] Gen. iv. 7, LXX.
[1995] Luke xiv. 28.
[1996] See Letter LXI. § 31. __________________________________________________________________
Letter LXVII. From Augustine.
Jerome having written him a short letter (no longer extant) Augustine now replies. He speaks with approval of Jerome's treatise On Famous Men, incorrectly called the Epitaph (see Letter CXII. §3). He also repeats his objections to Jerome's account of the quarrel between Paul and Peter at Antioch and then concludes with a request that he will draw up a short notice of the principal heresies condemned by the Church.
Like the preceding letter of Augustine (Letter LVI.) this also failed to reach Jerome. It was however published in the West, but without Augustine's knowledge and by degrees its contents found their way to Bethlehem where they caused much annoyance and pain. The date of the letter is 397 a.d. In Augustine's correspondence in this Library it is printed in full as Letter XL. __________________________________________________________________
Letter LXVIII. To Castrutius.
Castrutius, a blind man of Pannonia, had set out for Bethlehem to visit Jerome. However, on reaching Cissa (whether that in Thrace or that on the Adriatic is uncertain) he was induced by his friends to turn back. Jerome writes to thank him for his intention and to console him for his inability to carry it out. He then tries to comfort him in his blindness (1) by referring to Christ's words concerning the man born blind (Joh. ix. 3) and (2) by telling him the story of Antony and Didymus. The date of the letter is 397 a.d.
1. My reverend son Heraclius the deacon has reported to me that in your eagerness to see me you came as far as Cissa, and that, though a Pannonian and consequently a land animal, you did not quail before the surges of the Adriatic and the dangers of the Ægean and Ionian seas. He tells me that you would have actually accomplished your purpose, had not our brethren with affectionate care held you back. I thank you all the same and regard it as a kindness shewn. For in the case of friends one must accept the will for the deed. Enemies often give us the latter, but only sincere attachment can bring us the former. And now that I am writing to you I beseech you do not regard the bodily affliction which has befallen you as due to sin. When the Apostles speculated concerning the man that was born blind from the womb and asked our Lord and Saviour: "Who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" they were told "Neither hath this man sinned nor his parents, but that the works of God should be made manifest in him." [1997] Do we not see numbers of heathens, Jews, heretics and men of various opinions rolling in the mire of lust, bathed in blood, surpassing wolves in ferocity and kites in rapacity, and for all this the plague does not come nigh their dwellings? [1998] They are not smitten as other men, and accordingly they wax insolent against God and lift up their faces even to heaven. We know on the other hand that holy men are afflicted with sicknesses, miseries, and want, and perhaps they are tempted to say "Verily I have cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocency." Yet immediately they go on to reprove themselves, "If I say, I will speak thus; behold I should offend against the generation of thy children." [1999] If you suppose that your blindness is caused by sin, and that a disease which physicians are often able to cure is an evidence of God's anger, you will think Isaac a sinner because he was so wholly sightless that he was deceived into blessing one whom he did not mean to bless. [2000] You will charge Jacob with sin, whose vision became so dim that he could not see Ephraim and Manasseh, [2001] although with the inner eye and the prophetic spirit he could foresee the distant future and the Christ that was to come of his royal line. [2002] Were any of the kings holier than Josiah? Yet he was slain by the sword of the Egyptians. [2003] Were there ever loftier saints than Peter and Paul? Yet their blood stained the blade of Nero. And to say no more of men, did not the Son of God endure the shame of the cross? And yet you fancy those blessed who enjoy in this world happiness and pleasure? God's hottest anger against sinners is when he shews no anger. Wherefore in Ezekiel he says to Jerusalem: "My jealousy will depart from thee and I will be quiet and will be no more angry." [2004] For "whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth." [2005] The father does not instruct his son unless he loves him. The master does not correct his disciple unless he sees in him signs of promise. When once the doctor gives over caring for the patient, it is a sign that he despairs. You should answer thus: "as Lazarus in his lifetime [2006] received evil things so will I now gladly suffer torments that future glory may be laid up for me." For "affliction shall not rise up the second time." [2007] If Job, a man holy and spotless and righteous in his generation, suffered terrible afflictions, his own book explains the reason why.
2. That I may not make myself tedious or exceed the due limits of a letter by repeating old stories, I will briefly relate to you an incident which happened in my childhood. The saintly Athanasius bishop of Alexandria had summoned the blessed Antony to that city to confute the heretics there. Hereupon Didymus, a man of great learning who had lost his eyes, came to visit the hermit and, the conversation turning upon the holy scriptures, Antony could not help admiring his ability and eulogizing his insight. At last he said: You do not regret, do you, the loss of your eyes? At first Didymus was ashamed to answer, but when the question had been repeated a second time and a third, he frankly confessed that his blindness was a great grief to him. Whereupon Antony said: "I am surprised that a wise man should grieve at the loss of a faculty which he shares with ants and flies and gnats, and not rejoice rather in having one of which only saints and apostles have been thought worthy." From this story you may perceive how much better it is to have spiritual than carnal vision and to possess eyes into which the mote of sin cannot fall. [2008]
Though you have failed to come this year, I do not yet despair of your coming. If the reverend deacon [2009] who is the bearer of this letter is again caught in the toils of your affection, and if you come hither in his company I shall be delighted to welcome you and shall readily acknowledge that the delay in payment is made up for by the largeness of the interest. __________________________________________________________________
[1997] Joh. ix. 2, 3.
[1998] Ps. xci. 10.
[1999] Ps. lxxiii. 13, 15.
[2000] Gen. xxvii.
[2001] Gen. xlviii. 10.
[2002] Gen. xlix. 10.
[2003] 2 Kings xxiii. 29.
[2004] Ezek. xvi. 42. In the Vulgate the tenses are different, but the sense is substantially the same.
[2005] Heb. xii. 6.
[2006] Luke xvi. 25.
[2007] Nahum i. 9.
[2008] Luke vi. 42.
[2009] Heraclius, a deacon of Pannonia, who had been sent to Bethlehem by his bishop Amabilis to procure from Jerome a long promised commentary on the Visions of Isaiah. This, which Jerome subsequently incorporated as book V. in his complete work on the prophet, Heraclius succeeded in obtaining from him. See the Preface to the Commentary. __________________________________________________________________
Letter LXIX. To Oceanus.
Oceanus, a Roman nobleman zealous for the faith, had asked Jerome to back him in a protest against Carterius a Spanish bishop who contrary to the apostolic rule that a bishop is to be "the husband of one wife" had married a second time. Jerome refuses to take the line suggested on the ground that Carterius's first marriage having preceded his baptism cannot be taken into account. He therefore advises Oceanus to let the matter drop. The date of the letter is 397 a.d.
1. I never supposed, son Oceanus, that the clemency of the Emperor would be assailed by criminals, or that persons just released from prison would after their own experience of its filth and fetters complain of relaxations allowed to others. In the gospel he who envies another's salvation is thus addressed: "Friend, is thine eye evil because I am good?" [2010] "God hath concluded them all in sin [2011] that he might have mercy upon all." [2012] "When sin abounded grace did much more abound." [2013] The first born of Egypt are slain and not even a beast belonging to Israel is left behind in Egypt. [2014] The heresy of the Cainites rises before me and the once slain viper lifts up its shattered head, destroying not partially as most often hitherto but altogether the mystery of Christ. [2015] This heresy declares that there are some sins which Christ cannot cleanse with His blood, and that the scars left by old transgressions on the body and the soul are sometimes so deep that they cannot be effaced by the remedy which He supplies. What else is this but to say that Christ has died in vain? He has indeed died in vain if there are any whom He cannot make alive. When John the Baptist points to Christ and says: "Behold the lamb of God which taketh away the sins [2016] of the world" [2017] he utters a falsehood if after all there are persons living whose sins Christ has not taken away. For either it must be shewn that they are not of the world whom the grace of Christ thus ignores: or, if it be admitted that they are of the world, we have to choose between the horns of a dilemma. Either they have been delivered from their sins, in which case the power of Christ to save all men is proved; or they remain undelivered and as it were still under the charge of misdoing, in which case Christ is proved to be powerless. But far be it from us to believe of the Almighty that He is powerless in aught. For "what things soever the Father doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise." [2018] To ascribe weakness to the Son is to ascribe it to the Father also. The shepherd carries the whole sheep and not only this or that part of it: all the epistles of the apostle [2019] speak continually of the grace of Christ. And, lest a single announcement of this grace might seem a little thing, Peter says: "Grace unto you and peace be multiplied." [2020] The Scripture promises abundance; yet we affirm scarcity.
2. To what does all this tend, you ask. I reply; you remember the question that you proposed. It was this. A Spanish bishop named Carterius, old in years and in the priesthood has married two wives, one before he was baptized, and, she having died, another since he has passed through the laver; and you are of opinion that he has violated the precept of the apostle, who in his list of episcopal qualifications commands that a bishop shall be "the husband of one wife." [2021] I am surprised that you have pilloried an individual when the whole world is filled with persons ordained in similar circumstances; I do not mean presbyters or clergy of lower rank, but speak only of bishops of whom if I were to enumerate them all one by one I should gather a sufficient number to surpass the crowd which attended the synod of Ariminum. [2022] Still it does not become me to defend one by incriminating many; nor if reason condemns a sin, to make the number of those who commit it an excuse for it. At Rome an eloquent pleader caught me, as the phrase goes, between the horns of a dilemma: whichever way I turned I was held fast. Is it sinful, said he, to marry a wife, or is it not sinful? I in my simplicity, not being wary enough to avoid the snare laid for me, replied that it was not sinful. Then he propounded another question: Is it good deeds which are done away with in baptism or is it evil? Here again my simplicity induced me to say that it was sins which were forgiven. At this point, just as I began to fancy myself secure, the horns of the dilemma commenced to close in on me from this side and from that and their points hidden before began to shew themselves. If, said he, to marry a wife is not sinful, and if baptism forgives sins, all that is not done away with is held over. On the instant a dark mist rose before my eyes as though I had been struck by a strong boxer. Yet recalling the sophism attributed to Chrysippus: [2023] "Whether you lie or whether you speak the truth, in either case you lie," I came to myself again and turned upon my opponent with a dilemma of my own. Pray tell me, I said, does baptism make a new man or does it not? He grudgingly admitted that it did. I pursued my advantage by saying, Does it make him wholly new or only partially so? He replied, Wholly. Then I asked, Is there nothing then of the old man held over in baptism? He assented. Hereupon I propounded the argument; If baptism makes a man new and creates a wholly new being, and if there is nothing of the old man held over in the new, that which once was in the old cannot be imputed to the new. At first my thorny friend held his tongue; afterwards however, making Piso's mistake, [2024] though he had nothing to say he could not remain silent. Sweat stood upon his brow, his cheeks turned pale, his lips trembled, his tongue clove to his mouth, his throat became dry; and fear (not age) made him cower. At last he broke out in these words, Have you not read how the apostle permits none to be ordained priest save the husband of one wife, and that what he lays stress upon is the fact of the marriage and not the time at which it is contracted? Now as the fellow had challenged me with syllogisms, and as I saw that he was feeling his way towards some intricate and awkward questions, I proceeded to turn his own weapons against him. I said therefore, Whom did the apostle select for the episcopate, baptized persons or catechumens? He refused to reply. I however made a fresh onslaught repeating my question a second time and a third. You would have taken him for Niobe changed to stone by excessive weeping. I turned to the audience and said: It is all the same to me, good people, whether I bind my opponent awake or sleeping; but it is easier to fetter a man who offers no resistance. If those whom the apostle admits into the ranks of the clergy are not catechumens but the faithful, and if he who is ordained bishop is always one of the faithful, being one of the faithful he cannot have the faults of a catechumen imputed to him. Such were the darts I hurled at my paralysed opponent. Such the quivering spears I cast at him. At last his mouth opened and he vomited forth the contents of his mind. Certainly, he blurted out, that is the doctrine of the apostle Paul.
3. Accordingly I bring out two epistles of the apostle, the first to Timothy, and the second to Titus. In the first is the following passage: "If a man desire the office of a bishop he desireth a good work. A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to teach, not given to wine, no striker...but patient, not a brawler, not covetous; one that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity. (For if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God?) Not a novice lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil. Moreover he must have a good report of them which are without; lest he fall into reproach and the snare of the devil." [2025] While immediately at the commencement of the epistle to Titus the following behests are laid down: "For this cause left I thee in Crete that thou shouldest set in order the things that are wanting, and ordain elders in every city, as I had appointed thee: if any be blameless, the husband of one wife, having faithful children not accused of riot or unruly. For a bishop must be blameless as the steward of God; not self-willed, not soon angry, not given to wine, no striker, not given to filthy lucre; but a lover of hospitality, a lover of good men, sober, just, holy, temperate; holding fast the faithful word as he hath been taught, that he may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and to convince the gainsayers." [2026] In both epistles commandment is given that only monogamists should be chosen for the clerical office whether as bishops or as presbyters. [2027] Indeed with the ancients these names were synonymous, one alluding to the office, the other to the age of the clergy. No one at any rate can doubt that the apostle is speaking only of those who have been baptized. If therefore it in no wise prejudices the case of one who is to be ordained bishop that before his baptism he has not possessed all the requisite qualifications (for it is asked what he is and not what he has been), why should a previous marriage--the one thing which is in itself not sinful--prove a hindrance to his ordination? You argue that as his marriage was not a sin it was not done away with at his baptism. This is news to me indeed, that what in itself was not a sin is to be reckoned as such. All fornication and contamination with open vice, impiety towards God, parricide and incest, the change of the natural use of the sexes into that which is against nature [2028] and all extraordinary lusts are washed away in the fountain of Christ. Can it be possible that the stains of marriage are indelible, and that harlotry is judged more leniently than honourable wedlock? I do not, Carterius might say, hold you to blame for the hosts of mistresses and the troops of favourites [2029] that you have kept; I do not charge you with your bloodshedding and sow-like wallowings in the mire of uncleanness: yet you are ready to drag from her grave for my confusion my poor wife, who has been dead long years, and whom I married that I might be kept from those sins into which you have fallen. Tell this to the heathen who form the church's harvest with which she stores her granaries; tell this to the catechumens who seek admission to the number of the faithful; tell them, I say, not to contract marriages before their baptism, not to enter upon honourable wedlock, but like the Scots and the Atacotti [2030] and the people of Plato's republic [2031] to have community of wives and no discrimination of children, nay more, to beware of any semblance even of matrimony; lest, after they have come to believe in Christ, He shall tell them that those whom they have had have not been concubines or mistresses but wedded wives.
4. Let every man examine his own conscience and let him deplore the violence he has done to it at every period of his life; and then when he has brought himself to deliver a true judgment on his own former misdeeds, let him give ear to the chiding of Jesus: "Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye." [2032] Truly like the scribes and pharisees we strain out the gnat and swallow the camel, we pay tithe of mint and anise, and we omit the just judgment which God requires. [2033] What parallel can be drawn between a wife and a prostitute? Is it fair to make a marriage now dissolved by death a ground of accusation, while dissolute living wins for itself a garland of praise? He, had his former wife lived, would not have married another; but as for you, how can you defend the bestial unions you indiscriminately make? Perhaps indeed you will say that you feared to contract marriage lest by so doing you might disqualify yourself for ordination. He took a wife that he might have children by her; you by taking a harlot have lost the hope of children. He withdrew into the privacy of his own chamber when he sought to obey nature and to win God's blessing: "Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth." [2034] You on the contrary outraged public decency in the hot eagerness of your lust. He covered a lawful indulgence beneath a veil of modesty; you pursued an unlawful one shamelessly before the eyes of all. For him it is written "Marriage is honourable and the bed undefiled," while to you the words are read, "but whoremongers and adulterers God wilt judge," [2035] and "if any man destroyeth the temple of God, him shall God destroy." [2036] All iniquities, we are told, are forgiven us at our baptism, and when once we have received God's mercy we need not afterwards dread from Him the severity of a judge. The apostle says:--"And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God." [2037] All sins then are forgiven; it is an honest and faithful saying. But I ask you, how comes it that, while your uncleanness is washed away, my cleanness is made unclean? You reply, "No, it is not made unclean, it remains just what it was. Had it been uncleanness, it would have been washed away like mine." I want to know what you mean by this shuffling. Your remarks seem to have no more point in them than the round end of a pestle. Is a thing sin because it is not sin? or is a thing unclean because it is not unclean? The Lord, you say, has not forgiven because He had nothing to forgive; yet because He has not forgiven, that which has not been forgiven still remains.
5. What the true effect of baptism is, and what is the real grace conveyed by water hallowed in Christ, I will presently tell you; meantime I will deal with this argument as it deserves. An ill knot,' says the common proverb, requires but an ill wedge to split it.' The text quoted by the objector, "a bishop must be the husband of one wife," admits of quite another explanation. The apostle came of the Jews and the primitive Christian church was gathered out of the remnants of Israel. Paul knew that the Law allowed men to have children by several wives, [2038] and was aware that the example of the patriarchs had made polygamy familiar to the people. Even the very priests might at their own discretion enjoy the same license. [2039] He gave commandment therefore that the priests of the church should not claim this liberty, that they should not take two wives or three together, but that they should each have but one wife at one time. Perhaps you may say that this explanation which I have given is disputed; in that case listen to another. You must not have a monopoly of bending the Law to suit your will instead of bending your will to suit the Law. Some by a strained interpretation say that wives are in this passage to be taken for churches and husbands for their bishops. A decree was made by the fathers assembled at the council of Nicæa [2040] that no bishop should be translated from one church to another, lest scorning the society of a poor yet virgin see he should seek the embraces of a wealthy and adulterous one. For as the word logismoi, that is, "disputings," refers to the fault and misdoing of sons in the faith, [2041] and as the precept concerning the management of a house refers to the right direction of body and of soul, [2042] so by the wives of the bishops we are to understand their churches. Concerning whom it is written in Isaiah, "Make haste ye women and come from the show, for it is a people of no understanding." [2043] And again "Rise up, ye women that are wealthy, [2044] and hear my voice." [2045] And in the Book of Proverbs, "Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies. The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her." [2046] In the same book too it is written, "Every wise woman buildeth her house: but the foolish plucketh it down with her hands." [2047] Nor does this, say they, derogate from the dignity of the episcopate; for the same figure is used in relation to God. Jeremiah writes: "As a wife treacherously departeth from her husband, so have ye dealt treacherously with me, O house of Israel." [2048] And the apostle employs the same comparison: "I have espoused you," he says to his converts, "to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ." [2049] The word woman is in the Greek ambiguous and should in all these places be understood as meaning wife. You will say that this interpretation is harsh and does violence to the sense. In that case give back to the scripture its simple meaning and save me from the necessity of fighting you on your own ground. [2050] I will ask you the following question, Can a man who before his baptism has kept a concubine, and after her death has received baptism and has taken a wife, become a clergyman or not? You will answer me that he can, because his first partner was a concubine and not a wife. What the apostle condemns then, it would seem, is not mere sexual intercourse but marriage contracts and conjugal rights. Many persons, we see, because of narrow circumstances refuse to take upon them the burthen of matrimony. Instead of taking wives they live with their maid-servants and bring up as their own the children which these bear to them. Thus, if through the bounty of the Emperor they gain for their mistresses the right of wearing a matron's robes, [2051] they will at once come beneath the yoke of the apostle and sorely against their will will have to receive their partners as their wedded wives. But, if their poverty prevents them from obtaining an imperial rescript such as I have mentioned, the decrees of the Church will vary with the laws of Rome. Be careful therefore not to interpret the words "the husband of one wife," that is, of one woman, as approving indiscriminate intercourse and condemning only contracts of marriage.
I bring forward all these explanations not for the purpose of resisting the true and simple sense of the words in question but to shew you that you must take the holy scriptures as they are written, and that you must not empty of its efficacy the baptismal rite ordained by the Saviour, or render vain the whole mystery of the cross.
6. Let me now fulfil the promise I made a little while ago and with all the skill of a rhetorician sing the praises of water and of baptism. In the beginning the earth was without form and void, there was no dazzling sun or pale moon, there were no glittering stars. There was nothing but matter inorganic and invisible, and even this was lost in abysmal depths and shrouded in a distorting gloom. The Spirit of God above moved, as a charioteer, over the face of the waters, [2052] and produced from them the infant world, a type of the Christian child that is drawn from the laver of baptism. A firmament is constructed between heaven and earth, and to this is allotted the name heaven,--in the Hebrew Shamayim or what comes out of the waters,'-- [2053] and the waters which are above the heavens are parted from the others to the praise of God. Wherefore also in the vision of the prophet Ezekiel there is seen above the cherubim a crystal stretched forth, [2054] that is, the compressed and denser waters. The first living beings come out of the waters; and believers soar out of the laver with wings to heaven. Man is formed out of clay [2055] and God holds the mystic waters in the hollow of his hand. [2056] In Eden a garden [2057] is planted, and a fountain in the midst of it parts into four heads. [2058] This is the same fountain which Ezekiel later on describes as issuing out of the temple and flowing towards the rising of the sun, until it heals the bitter waters and quickens those that are dead. [2059] When the world falls into sin nothing but a flood of waters can cleanse it again. But as soon as the foul bird of wickedness is driven away, the dove of the Holy Spirit comes to Noah [2060] as it came afterwards to Christ in the Jordan, [2061] and, carrying in its beak a branch betokening restoration and light, brings tidings of peace to the whole world. Pharaoh and his host, loth to allow God's people to leave Egypt, are overwhelmed in the Red Sea figuring thereby our baptism. His destruction is thus described in the book of Psalms: "Thou didst endow the sea with virtue through thy power: thou brakest the heads of the dragons in the waters: thou brakest the heads of leviathan in pieces." [2062] For this reason adders and scorpions haunt dry places [2063] and whenever they come near water behave as if rabid or insane. [2064] As wood sweetens Marah so that seventy palm-trees are watered by its streams, so the cross makes the waters of the law lifegiving to the seventy who are Christ's apostles. [2065] It is Abraham and Isaac who dig wells, the Philistines who try to prevent them. [2066] Beersheba too, the city of the oath, [2067] and [Gihon], the scene of Solomon's coronation, [2068] derive their names from springs. It is beside a well that Eliezer finds Rebekah. [2069] Rachel too is a drawer of water and wins a kiss thereby [2070] from the supplanter [2071] Jacob. When the daughters of the priests of Midian are in a strait to reach the well, Moses opens a way for them and delivers them from outrage. [2072] The Lord's forerunner at Salem (a name which means peace or perfection) makes ready the people for Christ with spring-water. [2073] The Saviour Himself does not preach the kingdom of heaven until by His baptismal immersion He has cleansed the Jordan. [2074] Water is the matter of His first miracle [2075] and it is from a well that the Samaritan woman is bidden to slake her thirst. [2076] To Nicodemus He secretly says:--"Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God." [2077] As His earthly course began with water, so it ended with it. His side is pierced by the spear, and blood and water flow forth, twin emblems of baptism and of martyrdom. [2078] After His resurrection also, when sending His apostles to the Gentiles, He commands them to baptize these in the mystery of the Trinity. [2079] The Jewish people repenting of their misdoing are sent forthwith by Peter to be baptized. [2080] Before Sion travails she brings forth children, and a nation is born at once. [2081] Paul the persecutor of the church, that ravening wolf out of Benjamin, [2082] bows his head before Ananias one of Christ's sheep, and only recovers his sight when he applies the remedy of baptism. [2083] By the reading of the prophet the eunuch of Candace the queen of Ethiopia is made ready for the baptism of Christ. [2084] Though it is against nature the Ethiopian does change his skin and the leopard his spots. [2085] Those who have received only John's baptism and have no knowledge of the Holy Spirit are baptized again, lest any should suppose that water unsanctified thereby could suffice for the salvation of either Jew or Gentile. [2086] "The voice of the Lord is upon the waters...The Lord is upon many waters...the Lord maketh the flood to inhabit it." [2087] His "teeth are like a flock of sheep that are even shorn which came up from the washing; whereof everyone bear twins, and none is barren among them." [2088] If none is barren among them, all of them must have udders filled with milk and be able to say with the apostle: "Ye are my little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you;" [2089] and "I have fed you with milk and not with meat." [2090] And it is to the grace of baptism that the prophecy of Micah refers: "He will turn again, he will have compassion upon us: he will subdue our iniquities, and will cast all our sins [2091] into the depths of the sea." [2092]
7. How then can you say that all sins are drowned in the baptismal laver if a man's wife is still to swim on the surface as evidence against him? The psalmist says:--"Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity." [2093] It would seem that we must add something to this song and say "Blessed is the man to whom the Lord imputeth not a wife." Let us hear also the declaration which Ezekiel the so called "son of man" [2094] makes concerning the virtue of him who is to be the true son of man, the Christian: "I will take you," he says, "from among the heathen...then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean from all your filthiness...a new heart also will I give you and a new spirit." [2095] "From all your filthiness" he says, "will I cleanse you." If all is taken away nothing can be left. If filthiness is cleansed, how much more is cleanness kept from defilement. "A new heart also will I give you and a new spirit." Yes, for "in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything nor uncircumcision but a new nature." [2096] Wherefore the song also which we sing is a new song, [2097] and putting off the old man [2098] we walk not in the oldness of the letter but in the newness of the spirit. [2099] This is the new stone wherein the new name is written, "which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it." [2100] "Know ye not," says the apostle, "that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life." [2101] Do we read so often of newness and of making new and yet can no renewing efface the stain which the word wife brings with it? We are buried with Christ by baptism and we have risen again by faith in the working of God who hath called Him from the dead. And "when we were dead in our sins and in the uncircumcision of our flesh, God hath quickened us together with Him, having forgiven us all trespasses; blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way nailing it to His cross." [2102] Can it be that when our whole being is dead with Christ and when all the sins noted down in the old "handwriting" are blotted out, the one word "wife" alone lives on? Time would fail me were I to try to lay before you in order all the passages in the Holy Scriptures which relate to the efficacy of baptism or to explain the mysterious doctrine of that second birth which though it is our second is yet our first in Christ.
8. Before I make an end of dictating (for I perceive that I have already exceeded the just limits of a letter) I wish to give a brief explanation of the previous verses of the epistle in which the apostle describes the life of him that is to be made a bishop. We shall thus recognize him as Doctor of the Nations [2103] not only for his praise of monogamy but also for all his precepts. At the same time I beg that no one will suppose that in what I write my design is to blacken the priests of the present day. My one object is to promote the interest of the church. Just as orators and philosophers in giving their notions of the perfect orator and the perfect philosopher do not detract from Demosthenes and Plato but merely set forth abstract ideals; so, when I describe a bishop and explain the qualifications laid down for the episcopate, I am but supplying a mirror for priests. Every man's conscience will tell him that it rests with himself what image he will see reflected there, whether one that will grieve him by its deformity or one that will gladden him by its beauty. I turn now to the passage in question. [2104] "If a man desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work." Work, you see, not rank; toil not pleasure; work that he may increase in lowliness, not grow proud by reason of elevation. "A bishop then must be blameless." The same thing that he says to Titus, "if any be blameless." [2105] All the virtues are comprehended in this one word; thus he seems to require an impossible perfection. For if every sin, even every idle word, is deserving of blame, who is there in this world that is sinless and blameless? Still he who is chosen to be shepherd of the church must be one compared with whom other men are rightly regarded as but a flock of sheep. Rhetoricians define an orator as a good man able to speak. To be worthy of so high an honour he must be blameless in life and lip. For a teacher loses all his influence whose words are rendered null by his deeds. "The husband of one wife." Concerning this requirement I have spoken above. I will now only warn you that if monogamy is insisted on before baptism the other conditions laid down must be insisted on before baptism too. For it is impossible to regard the remaining obligations as binding only on the baptized and this alone as binding also on the unbaptized. "Vigilant (or "temperate" for nephalios means both), wise, [2106] of good behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to teach." The priests who minister in God's temple are forbidden to drink wine and strong drink, [2107] to keep their wits from being stupefied with drunkenness and to enable their understanding to do its duty in God's service. By the word wise' those are excluded who plead simplicity as an excuse for a priest's folly. For if the brain be not sound, all the members will be amiss. The phrase "of good behaviour" is an extension of the previous epithet "blameless." One who has no faults is called "blameless;" one who is rich in virtues is said to be "of good behaviour." Or the words may be differently explained in accord with Tully's maxim, [2108] the main thing is that what you do you should do gracefully.' For some persons are so ignorant of their own measure [2109] and so stupid and foolish that they make themselves laughing stocks to those who see them because of their gesture or gait or dress or conversation. Fancying that they knew what is and what is not good taste they deck themselves out with finery and bodily adornments and give banquets which profess to be elegant: but all such attempts at dress and display are nastier than a beggar's rags. As regards the obligation of priests to be teachers we bare have the precepts of the old Law [2110] and the fuller instructions given on the subject to Titus. [2111] For an innocent and unobtrusive conversation does as much harm by its silence as it does good by its example. If the ravening wolves are to be frightened away it must be by the barking of dogs and by the staff of the shepherd. "Not given to wine, no striker." With the virtues they are to aim at he contrasts the vices they are to avoid.
9. We have learned what we ought to be: let us now learn what priests ought not to be. Indulgence in wine is the fault of diners out and revellers. When the body is heated with drink it soon boils over with lust. Wine drinking means self-indulgence, self-indulgence means sensual gratification, sensual gratification means a breach of chastity. He that lives in pleasure is dead while he lives, [2112] and he that drinks himself drunk is not only dead but buried. One hour's debauch makes Noah uncover his nakedness which through sixty years of sobriety he had kept covered. [2113] Lot in a fit of intoxication unwittingly adds incest to incontinence, and wine overcomes the man whom Sodom failed to conquer. [2114] A bishop that is a striker is condemned by Him who gave His back to the smiters, [2115] and when He was reviled reviled not again. [2116] "But moderate"; [2117] one good thing is set over against two evil things. Drunkenness and passion are to be held in check by moderation. "Not a brawler, not covetous." Nothing is more overweening than the assurance of the ignorant who fancy that incessant chatter will carry conviction with it and are always ready for a dispute that they may thunder with turgid eloquence against the flock committed to their charge. That a priest must avoid covetousness even Samuel teaches when he proves before all the people that he has taken nothing from any man. [2118] And the same lesson is taught by the poverty of the apostles who used to receive sustenance and refreshment from their brethren and to boast that they neither had nor wished to have anything besides food and raiment. [2119] What the epistle to Timothy calls covetousness, that to Titus openly censures as the desire for filthy lucre. [2120] "One that ruleth well his own house." Not by increasing riches, not by providing regal banquets, not by having a pile of finely-wrought plates, not by slowly steaming pheasants so that the heat may reach the bones without melting the flesh upon them; no, but by first requiring of his own household the conduct which he has to inculcate in others. "Having his children in subjection with all gravity." They must not, that is, follow the example of the sons of Eli who lay with the women in the vestibule of the Temple and, supposing religion to consist in plunder, diverted to the gratification of their own appetites all the best parts of the victims. [2121] "Not a novice lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil." I cannot sufficiently express my amazement at the great blindness which makes men discuss such questions as that of marriage before baptism and causes them to charge people with a transaction which is dead in baptism, nay even quickened into a new life with Christ, while no one regards a commandment so clear and unmistakable as this about bishops not being novices. One who was yesterday a catechumen is to-day a bishop [2122] ; one who was yesterday in the amphitheatre is to-day in the church; one who spent the evening in the circus stands in the morning at the altar: one who a little while ago was a patron of actors is now a dedicator of virgins. Was the apostle ignorant of our shifts and subterfuges? did he know nothing of our foolish arguments? He not only says that a bishop must be the husband of one wife, but he has given commandment that he must be blameless, vigilant, sober, of good behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to teach, moderate, [2123] not given to wine, no striker, not a brawler, not covetous, not a novice. Yet to all these requirements we shut our eyes and notice nothing but the wives of the aspirants. Who cannot give instances to shew the need of the warning: "lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil?" A priest [2124] who is made such in a moment knows nothing of the lowliness and meekness which mark the meanest of the faithful, he knows nothing of Christian courtesy, he is not wise enough to think little of himself. He passes from one dignity to another, yet he has not fasted, he has not wept, he has not taken himself to task for his life, he has not striven by constant meditation to amend it, he has not given his substance to the poor. Yet he is moved from one see [2125] to another, he passes, that is, from pride to pride. There can be no doubt that arrogance is what the Apostle means when he speaks of the condemnation and downfall of the devil. And all men fall into this who are in a moment made masters, actually before they are disciples. "Moreover he must have a good report of them which are without." The last requirement is like the first. One who is really "blameless" obtains the unanimous approval not only of his own household but of outsiders as well. By aliens and persons outside the church we are to understand Jews, heretics and Gentiles. A Christian bishop then must be such that they who cavil at his religion may not venture to cavil at his life. At present however we see but too many bishops who are willing, like the charioteers in the horse races, to bid money for the popular applause; while there are some so universally hated that they can wring no money from their people, a feat which clowns accomplish by means of a few gestures.
10. Such are the conditions, son Oceanus, which the master-teachers of the church ought with anxiety and fear to require of others and to observe themselves. Such too are the canons which they should follow in the choice of persons for the priesthood; for they must not interpret the law of Christ to suit private animosities and feuds or to gratify ill-feeling which is sure to recoil on the man who cherishes it. Consider how unimpeachable is the character of Carterius in whose life his ill-wishers can find nothing to censure except a marriage contracted before baptism. "He that said, Do not commit adultery, said also, Do not kill. If we commit no adultery yet if we kill, we are become transgressors of the law." [2126] "Whosoever shall keep the whole law and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all." [2127] Accordingly when they cast in our teeth a marriage entered into before baptism, we must require of them compliance with all the precepts which are given to the baptized. For they pass over much that is not allowable while they censure much that is allowed. __________________________________________________________________
[2010] Matt. xx. 15.
[2011] A.V. unbelief.'
[2012] Rom. xi. 32.
[2013] Rom. v. 20.
[2014] Ex. xii. 29, 30, 38.
[2015] The Cainites appear to have denied the efficacy of the atonement.
[2016] A.V. sin.'
[2017] Joh. i. 29.
[2018] Joh. v. 19.
[2019] i.e. Paul.
[2020] 1 Pet. i. 2.
[2021] 1 Tim. iii. 2.
[2022] This synod held in 359 a.d. was attended by about 450 bishops. It put forth an Arian formula which caused general consternation. "The whole world," says Jerome, "groaned and was astonished to find itself Arian."
[2023] See note on Letter LXI. 3.
[2024] Cf. Cic. In Pis. 1.
[2025] 1 Tim. iii. 1-7.
[2026] Tit. i. 5-9.
[2027] Rendered elders' in A.V.
[2028] Cf. Rom. i. 26, 27.
[2029] Exoleti.
[2030] A Scottish tribe, cannibals according to Jerome (Against Jov. ii. 7.)
[2031] Bk. V. 457.
[2032] Matt. vii. 5.
[2033] Matt. xxiii. 23, 24, R.V.
[2034] Gen. i. 28.
[2035] Heb. xiii. 4.
[2036] 1 Cor. iii. 17, R.V.
[2037] 1 Cor. vi. 11.
[2038] Ex. xxi. 10.
[2039] Lev. xxi. 7, 13.
[2040] Canon xv.
[2041] Cf. Ph. ii. 14, 15.
[2042] 1 Tim. iii. 4.
[2043] Isa. xxvii. 11, LXX. A.V. follows the Hebrew.
[2044] A.V. that are at ease.
[2045] Isa. xxxii. 9.
[2046] Prov. xxxi. 10, 11.
[2047] Prov. xiv. 1.
[2048] Jer. iii. 20.
[2049] 2 Cor. xi. 2.
[2050] i.e. that of strained interpretations.
[2051] V. Dict. Ant. s. v. stola and cf. Cic. Phil. ii. 18, 44.
[2052] Gen. i. 2.
[2053] It is hardly necessary to remark that this derivation is purely fanciful and has no foundation in fact.
[2054] Ezek. i. 22.
[2055] Gen. ii. 7.
[2056] Query a reference to Isa. xl. 12: the Latin is obscure.
[2057] Paradisus.
[2058] Gen. ii. 8, 10.
[2059] Ezek. xlvii. 1, 8.
[2060] Gen. viii. 8, 11.
[2061] Matt. iii. 16.
[2062] Ps. lxxiv. 13, 14 LXX.
[2063] Deut. viii. 15.
[2064] hudrophobous et lymphaticos faciunt.
[2065] Exod. xv. 23-27; Luke x. i.
[2066] Gen. xxvi. 15, 18.
[2067] Gen. xxi. 31.
[2068] 1 Kings i. 38; 2 Chron. xxxii. 30.
[2069] Gen. xxiv. 15, 16.
[2070] Gen. xxix. 10, 11.
[2071] Gen. xxvii. 36.
[2072] Exod. ii. 16, 17.
[2073] Joh. iii. 23.
[2074] Matt. iii. 13, 17.
[2075] The turning of the water into wine at Cana (Joh. ii. 1, 11).
[2076] Joh. iv. 13, 14.
[2077] Joh. iii. 5.
[2078] Joh. xix. 34: Jerome here follows Tertullian and Cyril of Jerusalem.
[2079] Matt. xxviii. 19.
[2080] Acts ii. 38.
[2081] Isa. lxvi. 7, 8.
[2082] Gen. xlix. 27.
[2083] Acts ix. 17, 18. Comp. Letter LX. 8.
[2084] Acts viii. 27-38.
[2085] Jer. xiii. 23.
[2086] Acts xix. 1-7.
[2087] Ps. xxix. 3, 10. A.V. the Lord sitteth upon the flood.'
[2088] Cant. iv. 2.
[2089] Gal. iv. 19.
[2090] 1 Cor. iii. 2.
[2091] A.V. "thou wilt cast all their sins."
[2092] Mic. vii. 19.
[2093] Ps. xxxii. 1-2.
[2094] Ezek. ii. 1.
[2095] Ezek. xxxvi. 24-26. A.V. punctuates differently.
[2096] Gal. vi. 15, nature' for creature,' a slip of memory.
[2097] Rev. xiv. 3.
[2098] Eph. iv. 22.
[2099] Rom. vii. 6.
[2100] Rev. ii. 17.
[2101] Rom. vi. 3, 4.
[2102] Col. ii. 13, 14.
[2103] Doctor Gentium.
[2104] 1 Tim. iii. 1-7.
[2105] Tit. i. 6.
[2106] A.V. sober.'
[2107] Lev. x. 9.
[2108] Cic. de Or. i. 29.
[2109] Cf. 2 Cor. x. 14.
[2110] Cf. Deut. xvii. 9-11.
[2111] Tit. i. 9-14.
[2112] Cf. 1 Tim. v. 6.
[2113] Gen. ix. 20, 21.
[2114] Gen. xix. 30-38.
[2115] Isa. l. 6.
[2116] 1 Pet. ii. 23.
[2117] A.V. patient.'
[2118] 1 Sam. xii. 3-5.
[2119] Cf. 1 Tim. vi. 8.
[2120] Tit. i. 7.
[2121] 1 Sam. ii. 12-17, 22.
[2122] The case of Ambrose.
[2123] A.V. patient.'
[2124] Sacerdos: as usual a bishop is meant.
[2125] Lit. chair.'
[2126] Jas. ii. 11.
[2127] Jas. ii. 10. __________________________________________________________________
Letter LXX. To Magnus an Orator of Rome.
Jerome thanks Magnus, a Roman orator, for his services in bringing a young man named Sebesius to apologize to him for some fault that he had committed. He then replies to a criticism of Magnus on his fondness for making quotations from profane writers, a practice which he defends by the example of the fathers of the church and of the inspired penmen of scripture. He ends by hinting that the objection really comes not from Magnus himself but from Rufinus (here nicknamed Calpurnius Lanarius). The date of the letter is 397 a.d.
1. That our friend Sebesius has profited by your advice I have learned less from your letter than from his own penitence. And strange to say the pleasure which he has given me since his rebuke is greater than the pain he caused me from his previous waywardness. There has been indeed a conflict between indulgence in the father, and affection in the son; while the former is anxious to forget the past, the latter is eager to promise dutiful behaviour in the future. Accordingly you and I must equally rejoice, you because you have successfully put a pupil to the test, I because I have received a son again.
2. You ask me at the close of your letter why it is that sometimes in my writings I quote examples from secular literature and thus defile the whiteness of the church with the foulness of heathenism. I will now briefly answer your question. You would never have asked it, had not your mind been wholly taken up with Tully; you would never have asked it had you made it a practice instead of studying Volcatius [2128] to read the holy scriptures and the commentators upon them. For who is there who does not know that both in Moses and in the prophets there are passages cited from Gentile books and that Solomon proposed questions to the philosophers of Tyre and answered others put to him by them. [2129] In the commencement of the book of Proverbs he charges us to understand prudent maxims and shrewd adages, parables and obscure discourse, the words of the wise and their dark sayings; [2130] all of which belong by right to the sphere of the dialectician and the philosopher. The Apostle Paul also, in writing to Titus, has used a line of the poet Epimenides: "The Cretians are always liars, evil beasts, slow bellies." [2131] Half of which line was afterwards adopted by Callimachus. It is not surprising that a literal rendering of the words into Latin should fail to preserve the metre, seeing that Homer when translated into the same language is scarcely intelligible even in prose. In another epistle Paul quotes a line of Menander: "Evil communications corrupt good manners." [2132] And when he is arguing with the Athenians upon the Areopagus he calls Aratus as a witness citing from him the words "For we are also his offspring;" [2133] in Greek tou gar kai genos esmen, the close of a heroic verse. And as if this were not enough, that leader of the Christian army, that unvanquished pleader for the cause of Christ, skilfully turns a chance inscription into a proof of the faith. [2134] For he had learned from the true David to wrench the sword of the enemy out of his hand and with his own blade to cut off the head of the arrogant Goliath. [2135] He had read in Deuteronomy the command given by the voice of the Lord that when a captive woman had had her head shaved, her eyebrows and all her hair cut off, and her nails pared, she might then be taken to wife. [2136] Is it surprising that I too, admiring the fairness of her form and the grace of her eloquence, desire to make that secular wisdom which is my captive and my handmaid, a matron of the true Israel? Or that shaving off and cutting away all in her that is dead whether this be idolatry, pleasure, error, or lust, I take her to myself clean and pure and beget by her servants for the Lord of Sabaoth? My efforts promote the advantage of Christ's family, my so-called defilement with an alien increases the number of my fellow-servants. Hosea took a wife of whoredoms, Gomer the daughter of Diblaim, and this harlot bore him a son called Jezreel or the seed of God. [2137] Isaiah speaks of a sharp razor which shaves "the head of sinners and the hair of their feet;" [2138] and Ezekiel shaves his head as a type of that Jerusalem which has been an harlot, [2139] in sign that whatever in her is devoid of sense and life must be removed.
3. Cyprian, a man renowned both for his eloquence and for his martyr's death, was assailed--so Firmian tells us [2140] --for having used in his treatise against Demetrius passages from the Prophets and the Apostles which the latter declared to be fabricated and made up, instead of passages from the philosophers and poets whose authority he, as a heathen, could not well gainsay. Celsus [2141] and Porphyry [2142] have written against us and have been ably answered, the former by Origen, the latter by Methodius, Eusebius, and Apollinaris. [2143] Origen wrote a treatise in eight books, the work of Methodius [2144] extended to ten thousand lines while Eusebius [2145] and Apollinaris [2146] composed twenty-five and thirty volumes respectively. Read these and you will find that compared with them I am a mere tyro in learning, and that, as my wits have long lain fallow, I can barely recall as in a dream what I have learned as a boy. The emperor Julian [2147] found time during his Parthian campaign to vomit forth seven books against Christ and, as so often happens in poetic legends, only wounded himself with his own sword. Were I to try to confute him with the doctrines of philosophers and stoics you would doubtless forbid me to strike a mad dog with the club of Hercules. It is true that he presently felt in battle the hand of our Nazarene or, as he used to call him, the Galilæan, [2148] and that a spear-thrust in the vitals paid him due recompense for his foul calumnies. To prove the antiquity of the Jewish people Josephus [2149] has written two books against Appio a grammarian of Alexandria; and in these he brings forward so many quotations from secular writers as to make me marvel how a Hebrew brought up from his childhood to read the sacred scriptures could also have perused the whole library of the Greeks. Need I speak of Philo [2150] whom critics call the second or the Jewish Plato?
4. Let me now run through the list of our own writers. Did not Quadratus [2151] a disciple of the apostles and bishop of the Athenian church deliver to the Emperor Hadrian (on the occasion of his visit to the Eleusinian mysteries) a treatise in defence of our religion. And so great was the admiration caused in everyone by his eminent ability that it stilled a most severe persecution. The philosopher Aristides, [2152] a man of great eloquence, presented to the same Emperor an apology for the Christians composed of extracts from philosophic writers. His example was afterwards followed by Justin [2153] another philosopher who delivered to Antoninus Pius and his sons [2154] and to the senate a treatise Against the Gentiles, in which he defended the ignominy of the cross and preached the resurrection of Christ with all freedom. Need I speak of Melito [2155] bishop of Sardis, of Apollinaris [2156] chief-priest of the Church of Hierapolis, of Dionysius [2157] bishop of the Corinthians, of Tatian, [2158] of Bardesanes, [2159] of Irenæus [2160] successor to the martyr Pothinus; [2161] all of whom have in many volumes explained the uprisings of the several heresies and tracked them back, each to the philosophic source from which it flows. Pantænus, [2162] a philosopher of the Stoic school, was on account of his great reputation for learning sent by Demetrius bishop of Alexandria to India, to preach Christ to the Brahmans and philosophers there. Clement, [2163] a presbyter of Alexandria, in my judgment the most learned of men, wrote eight books of Miscellanies [2164] and as many of Outline Sketches, [2165] a treatise against the Gentiles, and three volumes called the Pedagogue. Is there any want of learning in these, or are they not rather drawn from the very heart of philosophy? Imitating his example Origen [2166] wrote ten books of Miscellanies, in which he compares together the opinions held respectively by Christians and by philosophers, and confirms all the dogmas of our religion by quotations from Plato and Aristotle, from Numenius [2167] and Cornutus. [2168] Miltiades [2169] also wrote an excellent treatise against the Gentiles. Moreover Hippolytus [2170] and a Roman senator named Apollonius [2171] have each compiled apologetic works. The books of Julius Africanus [2172] who wrote a history of his own times are still extant, as also are those of Theodore who was afterwards called Gregory, [2173] a man endowed with apostolic miracles as well as with apostolic virtues. We still have the works of Dionysius [2174] bishop of Alexandria, of Anatolius [2175] chief priest of the church of Laodicea, of the presbyters Pamphilus, [2176] Pierius, [2177] Lucian, [2178] Malchion; [2179] of Eusebius [2180] bishop of Cæsarea, Eustathius [2181] of Antioch and Athanasius [2182] of Alexandria; of Eusebius [2183] of Emisa, of Triphyllius [2184] of Cyprus, of Asterius [2185] of Scythopolis, of the confessor Serapion, [2186] of Titus [2187] bishop of Bostra; and of the Cappadocians Basil, [2188] Gregory, [2189] and Amphilochius. [2190] All these writers so frequently interweave in their books the doctrines and maxims of the philosophers that you might easily be at a loss which to admire most, their secular erudition or their knowledge of the scriptures.
5. I will pass on to Latin writers. Can anything be more learned or more pointed than the style of Tertullian? [2191] His Apology and his books Against the Gentiles contain all the wisdom of the world. Minucius Felix [2192] a pleader in the Roman courts has ransacked all heathen literature to adorn the pages of his Octavius and of his treatise Against the astrologers (unless indeed this latter is falsely ascribed to him). Arnobius [2193] has published seven books against the Gentiles, and his pupil Lactantius [2194] as many, besides two volumes, one on Anger and the other on the creative activity of God. If you read any of these you will find in them an epitome of Cicero's dialogues. The Martyr Victorinus [2195] though as a writer deficient in learning is not deficient in the wish to use what learning he has. Then there is Cyprian. [2196] With what terseness, with what knowledge of all history, with what splendid rhetoric and argument has he touched the theme that idols are no Gods! Hilary [2197] too, a confessor and bishop of my own day, has imitated Quintilian's twelve books both in number and in style, and has also shewn his ability as a writer in his short treatise against Dioscorus the physician. In the reign of Constantine the presbyter Juvencus [2198] set forth in verse the story of our Lord and Saviour, and did not shrink from forcing into metre the majestic phrases of the Gospel. Of other writers dead and living I say nothing. Their aim and their ability are evident to all who read them. [2199]
6. You must not adopt the mistaken opinion, that while in dealing with the Gentiles one may appeal to their literature in all other discussions one ought to ignore it; for almost all the books of all these writers--except those who like Epicurus [2200] are no scholars--are extremely full of erudition and philosophy. I incline indeed to fancy--the thought comes into my head as I dictate--that you yourself know quite well what has always been the practice of the learned in this matter. I believe that in putting this question to me you are only the mouthpiece of another who by reason of his love for the histories of Sallust might well be called Calpurnius Lanarius. [2201] Please beg of him not to envy eaters their teeth because he is toothless himself, and not to make light of the eyes of gazelles because he is himself a mole. Here as you see there is abundant material for discussion, but I have already filled the limits at my disposal. __________________________________________________________________
[2128] Either a teacher of civil law mentioned by Pliny (viii. 40), or else one of the writers of the Augustan History.
[2129] The authority for this is Josephus.
[2130] Prov. i. 1-6.
[2131] Tit. i. 12.
[2132] 1 Cor. xv. 33. The line is also attributed to Euripides.
[2133] Acts xvii. 28.
[2134] Acts xvii. 22.
[2135] Cf. 1 Sam. xvii. 50, 51.
[2136] Deut. xxi. 10-13.
[2137] Hos. i. 2-4.
[2138] Isa. vii. 20.
[2139] Ezek. v. 1-5.
[2140] i.e. Lactantius, vide Inst. v. 4.
[2141] The author of a polemical treatise against Christianity, fragments of which are still preserved in Origen's reply. He was a Platonist.
[2142] A neoplatonist writer who flourished in the third century.
[2143] See note on Letter XLVIII. § 13.
[2144] Contemporary with Eusebius the historian. His Symposium still extant proves him to have been a warm admirer of Plato.
[2145] The learned bishop of Cæsarea (a.d. 260-340). His Church History and other works are translated or described in Vol. i. of this series.
[2146] Probably the learned Bishop of Laodicea, whose views were condemned at Constantinople in 381.
[2147] Julian was emperor from a.d. 261 to a.d. 263. He reverted from Christianity to paganism and did all in his power to harass the Church.
[2148] According to Theodoret (H. E. iii. 25) Julian's last words were "Thou hast conquered, O Galilæan."
[2149] A Jew born at Jerusalem a.d. 37. His historical works, still extant, are of great value.
[2150] See note on Letter XXII. § 35.
[2151] The author of an apology for the Christians presented to the Emperor Hadrian. Only small fragments of the work are now extant. See for him and Aristides Jerome's Book on Famous Men, in Vol. iii. of this series, c. xix. xx.
[2152] Another Athenian apologist contemporary with Quadratus. His Apology has lately been published. Cambridge, Eng., 1891.
[2153] Commonly called Justin Martyr. Born in Samaria of Greek parents, he is said to have undergone martyrdom at Rome. Fl. a.d. 140-150.
[2154] Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus.
[2155] Fl. a.d. 170. He composed an Apology addressed to the Emperor Marcus Aurelius.
[2156] A highly esteemed writer, from 171 a.d. onwards, who wrote many treatises, amongst which were an apology addressed to Marcus Aurelius, and several works against Montanism.
[2157] Fl. a.d. 171, the writer of several pastoral letters to other churches famous in their day but no longer extant.
[2158] See note on Letter XLVIII. § 3.
[2159] Born at Edessa c. 155 a.d. died 223 a.d. A mystical theologian of a gnostic type who held a high position at the court of the Abgars. His writings have perished.
[2160] Bishop of Lyons in the latter half of the second century. He was a native of Asia Minor and his younger days had known Polycarp.
[2161] Bishop of Lyons, suffered martyrdom under Marcus Aurelius.
[2162] A convert from stoicism to Christianity in the latter part of the second century who as the head of the catechetical school at Alexandria was the instructor of Clement.
[2163] Head of the catechetical school at Alexandria a.d. 190-203.
[2164] stromateis .
[2165] hupotuposeis .
[2166] See Letter XXXIII. Of Origen's Miscellanies only a few fragments remain. They appear to have discussed various topics in the light of ancient philosophy and scripture.'--Westcott.
[2167] A neoplatonic and neopythagorean philosopher who flourished in the age of the Antonines.
[2168] A Stoic philosopher, the friend and teacher of the poet Persius. Having criticised Nero's literary style too freely he was banished by that emperor.
[2169] An active Christian writer of the reign of Commodus.
[2170] Fl. a.d. 200-225, the first antipope. His Refutation of All Heresies is of great interest and value.
[2171] Fl. a.d. 186. Accused of being a Christian, he delivered in the senate an apology for the faith.
[2172] A writer of the third century who compiled a Chronicle of the world's history from the creation to his own day. It has long since perished.
[2173] Surnamed Thaumaturgus or Wonderworker. One of Origen's pupils, he wrote a Panegyric (extant) on his master. Fl. 233-270.
[2174] Head of the catechetical school, and afterwards bishop, of Alexandria. He died a.d. 265.
[2175] Trained in the school of Alexandria and praised by Eusebius for his great learning.
[2176] The intimate friend of Eusebius of Cæsarea and founder of the famous library in that city.
[2177] See note on Letter XLVIII. § 3.
[2178] A presbyter of Antioch and apparently a pupil of Malchion. He suffered martyrdom at Nicomedia a.d. 311.
[2179] A presbyter of Antioch in the reign of Aurelian. He took part in the proceedings against Paul of Samosata.
[2180] See note on § 3 above.
[2181] Bishop of Antioch at the time of the Nicene Council. One of the earliest and most vigorous opponents of Arianism.
[2182] Bishop of Alexandria from a.d. 326 to a.d. 373. The great champion of the diversity of Christ again Arius and the followers.
[2183] Flor. a.d. 341-359. After studying at Alexandria he lived for some time at Antioch where he took part in an Arian council.
[2184] A famous lawyer of Berytus converted to Christianity by Spyridon a bishop in Cyprus.
[2185] Bishop of Amasea in Pontus, a constant student of Demosthenes and himself no mean orator.
[2186] An Egyptian bishop the friend of Antony and Athanasius. Some of his writings are still extant.
[2187] This bishop is best known through the Emperor Julian's vain attempt to expel him from his see.
[2188] a.d. 329-379. Bishop of Cæsarea in Cappadocia and a strenuous champion of orthodoxy. His works are still extant.
[2189] Gregory of Nazianzus. Bishop of Sasima and for a short time of Constantinople (a.d. 379-381).
[2190] Flor. a.d. 350-400. Archbishop of Iconium. A friend of Basil and of Gregory Nazianzen.
[2191] An African writer who in his last days became a Montanist. Flor. a.d. 175-225.
[2192] A Roman lawyer of the second century. His Apology--a Dialogue entitled Octavius--is extant.
[2193] Fl. a.d. 300. A professor of rhetoric at Sicca in Africa and a heathen. He composed his apology to prove the reality of his conversion.
[2194] An African rhetorician and apologist of the fourth century. His works are extant.
[2195] A celebrated man of letters at Rome in the middle of the fourth century, the story of whose conversion is told in Augustine's Confessions (viii. 2-5).
[2196] Bishop of Carthage. He suffered martyrdom a.d. 358. His works are extant.
[2197] Bishop of Poitiers (died a.d. 368). A champion of the orthodox faith against Arianism.
[2198] A Spanish Christian of the fourth century. His "Story of the Gospels," a life of Christ in hexameter verse, still exists.
[2199] For most of the writers mentioned in this section see also Jerome's Book of Famous Men translated in Vol. iii. of this series.
[2200] For an account of Epicurus see Letter V. § 5, note. He professed to have read but little.
[2201] That Rufinus is the person meant is plain from a reference made to this passage in Apol. adv. Rufinum, i. 30 and also from Letter CII. § 3. Jerome is however mistaken in connecting this Calpurnius with Sallust. He is mentioned by Plutarch as a treacherous friend. Sallust does mention a certain Calpurinus Bestia, and Jerome has probably confounded the two. __________________________________________________________________
Letter LXXI. To Lucinius.
Lucinius was a wealthy Spaniard of Bætica who in conformity with the ascetic ideas of his time had made a vow of continence with his wife Theodora. Being much interested in the study of scripture he proposed to visit Bethlehem, and in a.d. 397 sent several scribes thither to transcribe for him Jerome's principal writings. To these on their return home Jerome now entrusts the following letter. In it he encourages Lucinius to fulfil his purpose of coming to Bethlehem, describes the books which he is sending to him, and answers two questions relating to ecclesiastical usage. He also sends him some trifling presents.
Shortly after receiving the letter (written in 398 a.d.) Lucinius died and Jerome wrote to Theodora to console her for her loss (Letter LXXV).
1. Your letter which has suddenly arrived was not expected by me, and coming in an unlooked for way it has helped to rouse me from my torpor by the glad tidings which it conveys. I hasten to embrace with the arms of love one whom my eyes have never seen, and silently say to myself:--"oh that I had wings like a dove! for then would I flee away and be at rest."' [2202] Then would I find him "whom my soul loveth." [2203] In you the Lord's words are now truly fulfilled: "many shall come from the east and west and shall sit down with Abraham." [2204] In those days the faith of my Lucinius was foreshadowed in Cornelius, "centurion of the band called the Italian band." [2205] And when the apostle Paul writes to the Romans: "whensoever I take my journey into Spain I will come to you: for I trust to see you in my journey, and to be brought on my way thitherward by you;" [2206] he shews by the tale of his previous successes what he looked to gain from that province. [2207] Laying in a short time the foundation of the gospel "from Jerusalem and round about unto Illyricum," [2208] he enters Rome in bonds, that he may free those who are in the bonds of error and superstition. Two years he dwells in his own hired house [2209] that he may give to us the house eternal which is spoken of in both the testaments. [2210] The apostle, the fisher of men, [2211] has cast forth his net, and, among countless kinds of fish, has landed you like a magnificent gilt-bream. You have left behind you the bitter waves, the salt tides, the mountain-fissures; you have despised Leviathan who reigns in the waters. [2212] Your aim is to seek the wilderness with Jesus and to sing the prophet's song: "my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land where no water is; to see thy power and thy glory, so as I have seen thee in the sanctuary," [2213] or, as he sings in another place, "lo, then would I wander far off and remain in the wilderness. I would hasten my escape from the windy storm and tempest." [2214] Since you have left Sodom and are hastening to the mountains, I beseech you with a father's affection not to look behind you. Your hands have grasped the handle of the plough, [2215] the hem of the Saviour's garment, [2216] and His locks wet with the dew of night; [2217] do not let them go. Do not come down from the housetop of virtue to seek for the clothes which you wore of old, nor return home from the field. [2218] Do not like Lot set your heart on the plain or upon the pleasant gardens; [2219] for these are watered not, as the holy land, from heaven but by Jordan's muddy stream made salt by contact with the Dead Sea.
2. Many begin but few persevere to the end. "They which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the crown." [2220] But of us on the other hand it is said: "So run that ye may obtain." [2221] Our master of the games is not grudging; he does not give the palm to one and disgrace another. His wish is that all his athletes may alike win garlands. My soul rejoices, yet the very greatness of my joy makes me feel sad. Like Ruth [2222] when I try to speak I burst into tears. Zacchæus, the convert of an hour, is accounted worthy to receive the Saviour as his guest. [2223] Martha and Mary make ready a feast and then welcome the Lord to it. [2224] A harlot washes His feet with her tears and against His burial anoints His body with the ointment of good works. [2225] Simon the leper invites the Master with His disciples and is not refused. [2226] To Abraham it is said: "Get thee out of thy country and from thy kindred and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee." [2227] He leaves Chaldæa, he leaves Mesopotamia; he seeks what he knows not, not to lose Him whom he has found. He does not deem it possible to keep both his country and his Lord; even at that early day he is already fulfilling the prophet David's words: "I am a stranger with thee and a sojourner, as all my fathers were." [2228] He is called "a Hebrew," in Greek perates, a passer-over, for not content with present excellence but forgetting those things which are behind he reaches forth to that which is before. [2229] He makes his own the words of the psalmist: "they shall go from strength to strength." [2230] Thus his name has a mystic meaning and he has opened for you a way to seek not your own things but those of another. You too must leave your home as he did, and must take for your parents, brothers, and relations only those who are linked to you in Christ. "Whosoever," He says, "shall do the will of my father...the same is my brother and sister and mother." [2231]
3. You have with you one who was once your partner in the flesh but is now your partner in the spirit; once your wife but now your sister; once a woman but now a man; once an inferior but now an equal. [2232] Under the same yoke as you she hastens toward the same heavenly kingdom.
A too careful management of one's income, a too near calculation of one's expenses--these are habits not easily laid aside. Yet to escape the Egyptian woman Joseph had to leave his garment with her. [2233] And the young man who followed Jesus having a linen cloth cast about him, when he was assailed by the servants had to throw away his earthly covering and to flee naked. [2234] Elijah also when he was carried up in a chariot of fire to heaven left his mantle of sheepskin on earth. [2235] Elisha used for sacrifice the oxen and the yokes which hitherto he had employed in his work. [2236] We read in Ecclesiasticus: "he that toucheth pitch shall be defiled therewith." [2237] As long as we are occupied with the things of the world, as long as our soul is fettered with possessions and revenues, we cannot think freely of God. "For what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? And what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? Or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel?" [2238] "Ye cannot," the Lord says, "serve God and Mammon." [2239] Now the laying aside of money is for those who are beginners in the way, not for those who are made perfect. Heathens like Antisthenes [2240] and Crates [2241] the Theban have done as much before now. But to offer one's self to God, this is the mark of Christians and apostles. These like the widow out of their penury cast their two mites into the treasury, and giving all that they have to the Lord are counted worthy to hear his words: "ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel." [2242]
4. You can see for yourself why I mention these things; without expressly saying it I am inviting you to take up your abode at the holy places. Your abundance has supported the want of many that some day their riches may abound to supply your want; [2243] you have made to yourself "friends of the mammon of unrighteousness that they may receive you into everlasting habitations." [2244] Such conduct deserves praise and merits to be compared with the virtue of apostolic times. Then, as you know, believers sold their possessions and brought the prices of them and laid them down at the apostles' feet: [2245] a symbolic act designed to shew that men must trample on covetousness. But the Lord yearns for believers' souls more than for their riches. We read in the Proverbs: "the ransom of a man's soul are his own riches." [2246] We may, indeed, take a man's own riches to be those which do not come from some one else, or from plunder; according to the precept: "honour God with thy just labours." [2247] But the sense is better if we understand a man's "own riches" to be those hidden treasures which no thief can steal and no robber wrest from him. [2248]
5. As for my poor works which from no merits of theirs but simply from your own kindness you say that you desire to have; I have given them to your servants to transcribe, I have seen the paper-copies made by them, and I have repeatedly ordered them to correct them by a diligent comparison with the originals. For so many are the pilgrims passing to and fro that I have been unable to read so many volumes. They have found me also troubled by a long illness from which this Lent I am slowly recovering as they are leaving me. If then you find errors or omissions which interfere with the sense, these you must impute not to me but to your own servants; they are due to the ignorance or carelessness of the copyists, who write down not what they find but what they take to be the meaning, and do but expose their own mistakes when they try to correct those of others. It is a false rumour which has reached you to the effect that I have translated the books of Josephus [2249] and the volumes of the holy men Papias [2250] and Polycarp. [2251] I have neither the leisure nor the ability to preserve the charm of these masterpieces in another tongue. Of Origen [2252] and Didymus [2253] I have translated a few things, to set before my countrymen some specimens of Greek teaching. The canon of the Hebrew verity [2254] --except the octoteuch [2255] which I have at present in hand--I have placed at the disposal of your slaves and copyists. Doubtless you already possess the version from the septuagint [2256] which many years ago I diligently revised for the use of students. The new testament I have restored to the authoritative form of the Greek original. [2257] For as the true text of the old testament can only be tested by a reference to the Hebrew, so the true text of the new requires for its decision an appeal to the Greek.
6. You ask me whether you ought to fast on the Sabbath [2258] and to receive the eucharist daily according to the custom--as currently reported--of the churches of Rome and Spain. [2259] Both these points have been treated by the eloquent Hippolytus, [2260] and several writers have collected passages from different authors bearing upon them. The best advice that I can give you is this. Church-traditions--especially when they do not run counter to the faith--are to be observed in the form in which previous generations have handed them down; and the use of one church is not to be annulled because it is contrary to that of another. [2261] As regards fasting, I wish that we could practise it without intermission as--according to the Acts of the Apostles [2262] --Paul did and the believers with him even in the season of Pentecost and on the Lord's Day. They are not to be accused of manichæism, for carnal food ought not to be preferred before spiritual. As regards the holy eucharist you may receive it at all times [2263] without qualm of conscience or disapproval from me. You may listen to the psalmist's words:--"O taste and see that the Lord is good;" [2264] you may sing as he does:--"my heart poureth forth a good word." [2265] But do not mistake my meaning. You are not to fast on feast-days, neither are you to abstain on the week days in Pentecost. [2266] In such matters each province may follow its own inclinations, and the traditions which have been handed down should be regarded as apostolic laws.
7. You send me two small cloaks and a sheepskin mantle from your wardrobe and ask me to wear them myself or to give them to the poor. In return I send to you and your sister [2267] in the Lord four small haircloths suitable to your religious profession and to your daily needs, for they are the mark of poverty and the outward witness of a continual penitence. To these I have added a manuscript containing Isaiah's ten most obscure visions which I have lately elucidated with a critical commentary. When you look upon these trifles call to mind the friend in whom you delight and hasten the voyage which you have for a time deferred. And because "the way of man is not in himself" but it is the Lord that "directeth his steps;" [2268] if any hindrance should interfere--I hope none may--to prevent you from coming, I pray that distance may not sever those united in affection and that I may find my Lucinius present in absence through an interchange of letters. __________________________________________________________________
[2202] Ps. lv. 6. PBV.
[2203] Cant. iii. 1.
[2204] Matt. viii. 11.
[2205] Acts x. 1.
[2206] Rom. xv. 24.
[2207] Italy.
[2208] Rom. xv. 19.
[2209] Acts xxviii. 30.
[2210] Utriusque instrumenti æternam domum. The twofold record' is that of the old and new testaments both of which speak of the church under the figure of a house. For the term "instrument" see note on Letter.
[2211] Matt. iv. 19.
[2212] Cf. Ps. civ. 26.
[2213] Ps. lxiii. 1, 2.
[2214] Ps. lv. 7, 8.
[2215] Luke ix. 62.
[2216] Matt. ix. 20.
[2217] Cant. v. 2.
[2218] Matt. xxiv. 17, 18.
[2219] Gen. xiii. 10.
[2220] Jerome quoting from memory substitutes crown' for prize.'
[2221] 1 Cor. ix. 24.
[2222] Ruth i. 14.
[2223] Luke xix. 5.
[2224] Joh. xii. 2.
[2225] Mark xiv. 8.
[2226] Matt. xxvi. 6.
[2227] Gen. xii. 1.
[2228] Ps. xxxix. 12.
[2229] Phil. iii. 13.
[2230] Ps. lxxxiv. 7.
[2231] Matt. xii. 50.
[2232] His wife Theodora.
[2233] Gen. xxxix. 12.
[2234] Mark xiv. 51, 52.
[2235] 2 Kings ii. 11, 13.
[2236] 1 Kings xix. 21.
[2237] Ecclus. xiii. 1.
[2238] 2 Cor. vi. 14, 15.
[2239] Matt. vi. 24.
[2240] A disciple of Socrates, subsequently the founder of the Cynic School. Fl. 366 b.c.
[2241] See note on Letter LXVI. § 8.
[2242] Matt. xix. 28.
[2243] 2 Cor. viii. 14.
[2244] Luke xvi. 9.
[2245] Acts iv. 34, 35.
[2246] Prov. xiii. 8, LXX.
[2247] Prov. iii. 9, LXX.
[2248] Cf. Matt. vi. 20.
[2249] See note on Letter XXII. § 35.
[2250] A writer of the sub-apostolic age who had been a disciple of the apostle John. He was bishop of Hierapolis in Phrygia.
[2251] Another sub-apostolic writer who was also a disciple of John. He became bishop of Smyrna and underwent martyrdom at the age of 86.
[2252] See note on Letter XXXIII.
[2253] The blind theologian of Alexandria by whose teaching Jerome had himself profited. See Letter XXXIV. § 3.
[2254] The old testament as translated direct from the Hebrew.
[2255] The first eight books.
[2256] This work Jerome accomplished between the years 383 and 390 a.d. Only the Psalter and Job are extant.
[2257] This task he undertook at the request of pope Damasus in 383 a.d. See Letter XXVII.
[2258] i.e. on Saturday.
[2259] At this time the communion was celebrated daily at Constantinople, in Africa, and in Spain. At Rome it was celebrated on every day of the week except Saturday (the Sabbath). See Socrates, H. E. v. 22.
[2260] A leading Roman churchman, bishop of Portus, in the early part of the third century, the rival and enemy of pope Callistus and author of many theological treatises, one of which--the Refutation of all Heresies--has recently become famous.
[2261] Compare the similar advice given by Gregory the Great to Augustine of Canterbury (Bede, H. E. 1. 27).
[2262] Nothing in the book of Acts bears out this statement. Fasting at the times mentioned was forbidden in Jerome's day.
[2263] Daily if you will and on fast days as well as on feast days.
[2264] Ps. xxxiv. 8.
[2265] Ps. xlv. 1, Vulg.
[2266] i.e. the period of fifty days between Easterday and Whitsunday. See Letter XLI. §3.
[2267] i.e. his wife Theodora.
[2268] Jer. x. 23. __________________________________________________________________
Letter LXXII. To Vitalis.
Vitalis had asked Jerome "Is Scripture credible when it tells us that Solomon and Ahaz became fathers at the age of eleven?" The difficulty had previously occurred to Jerome himself (Letter XXXVI. 10, whence perhaps Vitalis took it) and in this letter he suggests several ways in which it may be met. He is quite prepared, if necessary, to accept the alleged fact on the grounds that "there are many things in Scripture which sound incredible and yet are true" and that "nature cannot resist the Lord of nature" (§2). He is disposed, however, to regard the question as trivial and of no importance. The date of the letter is 398 a.d. __________________________________________________________________
Letter LXXIII. To Evangelus.
Evangelus had sent Jerome an anonymous treatise in which Melchisedek was identified with the Holy Ghost, and had asked him what he thought of the theory. Jerome in his reply repudiates the idea as absurd and insists that Melchisedek was a real man, possibly, as the Jews said, Shem the eldest son of Noah. The date of the letter is 398 a.d. __________________________________________________________________
Letter LXXIV. To Rufinus of Rome.
Rufinus, a Roman Presbyter (to be carefully distinguished from Rufinus of Aquileia and Rufinus the Syrian), had written to Jerome for an explanation of the judgment of Solomon (1 Kings iii. 16-28). This Jerome gives at length, treating the narrative as a parable and making the false and true mothers types of the Synagogue and the Church. The date of the letter is 398 a.d. __________________________________________________________________
Letter LXXV. To Theodora.
Theodora the wife of the learned Spaniard Lucinius (for whom see Letter LXXI.) had recently lost her husband, a bereavement which suggested the present letter. In it Jerome recounts the many virtues of Lucinius and especially his zeal in resisting the gnostic heresy of Marcus which during his life was prevalent in Spain. The date of the letter is 399 a.d.
1. So overpowered am I by the sad intelligence of the falling asleep of the holy and by me deeply revered Lucinius that I am scarcely able to dictate even a short letter. I do not, it is true, lament his fate, for I know that he has passed to better things: like Moses he can say: "I will now turn aside and see this great sight," [2269] but I am tormented with regret that I was not allowed to look upon the face of one, who was likely, as I believed, in a short time to come hither. True indeed is the prophetic warning concerning the doom of death that it divides brothers, [2270] and with harsh and cruel hand sunders those whose names are linked together in the bonds of love. But we have this consolation that it is slain by the word of the Lord. For it is said: "O death, I will be thy plagues; O grave, I will be thy destruction," and in the next verse: "An east wind shall come, the wind of the Lord shall come up from the wilderness, and his spring shall become dry, and his fountain shall be dried up." [2271] For, as Isaiah says, "there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots": [2272] and He says Himself in the Song of Songs, "I am the rose of Sharon and the lily of the valley." [2273] Our rose is the destruction of death, and died that death itself might die in His dying. But, when it is said that He is to be brought "from the wilderness," the virgin's womb is indicated, which without sexual intercourse or impregnation has given to us God in the form of an infant able to quench by the glow of the Holy Spirit the fountains of lust and to sing in the words of the psalm: "as in a dry and pathless and waterless land, so have I appeared unto thee in the sanctuary." [2274] Thus when we have to face the hard and cruel necessity of death, we are upheld by this consolation, that we shall shortly see again those whose absence we now mourn. For their end is not called death but a slumber and a falling asleep. Wherefore also the blessed apostle forbids us to sorrow concerning them which are asleep, [2275] telling us to believe that those whom we know to sleep now may hereafter be roused from their sleep, and when their slumber is ended may watch once more with the saints and sing with the angels:--"Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace among men of good will." [2276] In heaven where there is no sin, there is glory and perpetual praise and unwearied singing; but on earth where sedition reigns, and war and discord hold sway, peace must be gained by prayer, and it is to be found not among all but only among men of good will, who pay heed to the apostolic salutation: "Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ." [2277] For "His abode is in peace and His dwelling place is in Zion," [2278] that is, on a watch-tower, [2279] on a height of doctrines and of virtues, in the soul of the believer; for the angel of this latter daily beholds the face of God, [2280] and contemplates with unveiled face the glory of God.
2. Wherefore, though you are already running in the way, I urge a willing horse, as the saying goes, and implore you, while you regret in your Lucinius a true brother, to rejoice as well that he now reigns with Christ. For, as it is written in the book of Wisdom, he was "taken away lest that wickedness should alter his understanding...for his soul pleased the Lord...and he...in a short time fulfilled a long time." [2281] We may with more right weep for ourselves that we stand daily in conflict with our sins, that we are stained with vices, that we receive wounds, and that we must give account for every idle word. [2282] Victorious now and free from care he looks down upon you from on high and supports you in your struggle, nay more, he prepares for you a place near to himself; for his love and affection towards you are still the same as when, disregarding his claim on you as a husband, he resolved to treat you even on earth as a sister, or indeed I may say as a brother, for difference of sex while essential to marriage is not so to a continent tie. And since even in the flesh, if we are born again in Christ, we are no longer Greek and Barbarian, bond and free, male and female, but are all one in Him, [2283] how much more true will this be when this corruptible has put on incorruption and when this mortal has put on immortality. [2284] "In the resurrection," the Lord tells us, "they neither marry nor are given in marriage but are as the angels...in heaven." [2285] Now when it is said that they neither marry nor are given in marriage but are as the angels in heaven, there is no taking away of a natural and real body but only an indication of the greatness of the glory to come. For the words are not "they shall be angels" but "they shall be as the angels": thus while likeness to the angels is promised identity with them is refused. "They shall be," Christ tells us, "as the angels," that is like the angels; therefore they will not cease to be human. Glorious indeed they shall be, and graced with angelic splendour, but they will still be human; the apostle Paul will still be Paul, Mary will still be Mary. Then shall confusion overtake that heresy [2286] which holds out great but vague promises only that it may take away hopes which are at once modest and certain.
3. And now that I have once mentioned the word "heresy," where can I find a trumpet loud enough to proclaim the eloquence of our dear Lucinius, who, when the filthy heresy of Basilides [2287] raged in Spain and like a pestilence ravaged the provinces between the Pyrenees and the ocean, upheld in all its purity the faith of the church and altogether refused to embrace Armagil, Barbelon, Abraxas, Balsamum, and the absurd Leusibora. Such are the portentous names which, to excite the minds of unlearned men and weak women, they pretend to draw from Hebrew sources, terrifying the simple by barbarous combinations which they admire the more the less they understand them. [2288] The growth of this heresy is described for us by Irenæus, bishop of the church of Lyons, a man of the apostolic times, who was a disciple of Papias the hearer of the evangelist John. He informs us that a certain Mark, [2289] of the stock of the gnostic Basilides, came in the first instance to Gaul, that he contaminated with his teaching those parts of the country which are watered by the Rhone and the Garonne, and that in particular he misled by his errors high-born women; to whom he promised certain secret mysteries and whose affection he enlisted by magic arts and hidden indulgence in unlawful intercourse. Irenæus goes on to say that subsequently Mark crossed the Pyrenees and occupied Spain, making it his object to seek out the houses of the wealthy, and in these especially the women, concerning whom we are told that they are "led away with divers lusts, ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth." [2290] All this he wrote about three hundred years ago [2291] in the extremely learned and eloquent books which he composed under the title Against all heresies.
4. From these facts you in your wisdom will realize how worthy of praise our dear Lucinius shewed himself when he shut his ears that he might not have to hear the judgement passed upon blood shedders, [2292] and dispersed all his substance and gave to the poor that his righteousness might endure for ever. [2293] And not satisfied with bestowing his bounty upon his own country, he sent to the churches of Jerusalem and Alexandria gold enough to alleviate the want of large numbers. But while many will admire and extol in him this liberality, I for my part will rather praise him for his zeal and diligence in the study of the scriptures. With what eagerness he asked for my poor works! He actually sent six copyists (for in this province there is a dearth of scribes who understand Latin) to copy for him all that I have ever dictated from my youth until the present time. The honour was not of course paid to me who am but a little child, the least of all Christians, living in the rocks near Bethlehem because I know myself a sinner; but to Christ who is honoured in his servants [2294] and who makes this promise to them, "He that receiveth you receiveth me, and he that receiveth me receiveth him that sent me." [2295]
5. Therefore, my beloved daughter, regard this letter as the epitaph which love prompts me to write upon your husband, and if there is any spiritual work of which you think me to be capable, boldly command me to undertake it: that so ages to come may know that He who says of Himself in Isaiah, "He hath made me a polished shaft; in his quiver hath he hid me," [2296] has with His sharp arrow so wounded two men severed by an immense interval of sea and land, that, although they know each other not in the flesh, they are knit together in love in the spirit.
May you be kept holy both in body and spirit by the Samaritan--that is, saviour and keeper--of whom it is said in the psalm, "He that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep." [2297] May the watcher and the holy one who came down to Daniel [2298] come also to you, that you too may be able to say, "I sleep but my heart waketh." [2299] __________________________________________________________________
[2269] Exod. iii. 3.
[2270] Hos. xiii. 15, Vulg. Quia ipse inter fratres dividet. A.V. follows the Hebrew.
[2271] Hos. xiii. 14, 15.
[2272] Isa. xi. 1, Vulg.
[2273] Cant. ii. 1.
[2274] Ps. lxiii. 1, 2, Vulg.
[2275] 1 Thess. iv. 13.
[2276] Luke ii. 14, Vulg.
[2277] Rom. i. 7.
[2278] Ps. lxxvi. 2. "Salem" (A.V.), the Hebrew word for peace.
[2279] See Jerome's Book of Hebrew Names. Cf. also Letter CVIII. § 9.
[2280] Matt. xviii. 10.
[2281] Wisd. iv. 11-14.
[2282] Matt. xii. 36.
[2283] Gal. iii. 28.
[2284] 1 Cor. xv. 53.
[2285] Matt. xxii. 30.
[2286] Origenism.
[2287] Probably as revived by Priscillian, who was put to death 385. See Jerome On Illustrious Men, c. 121.
[2288] These terms, the meanings of which are very uncertain, are either the names of æons or magical formulæ used by the Marcosians in the celebration of their mysteries.
[2289] A gnostic of the school of Valentinus, who taught in the middle of the second century. Jerome is in error when he describes him as a disciple of Basilides.
[2290] 2 Tim. iii. 6, 7.
[2291] An error for two hundred years ago.'
[2292] Is. xxxiii. 15. Jerome's allusion may be to the execution of Priscillian in 385. Lucinius may have shared the views of Ambrose and Martin against the shedding of blood.
[2293] Ps. cxii. 9.
[2294] Luke ix. 48.
[2295] Matt. x. 40.
[2296] Isa. xlix. 2.
[2297] Ps. cxxi. 4.
[2298] Dan. iv. 13. Lit. May Hir, that is the watcher, Hir being the Hebrew word.
[2299] Cant. v. 2. __________________________________________________________________
Letter LXXVI. To Abigaus.
Abigaus the recipient of this letter was a blind presbyter of Bætica in Spain. He had asked the help of Jerome's prayers in his struggles with evil and Jerome now writes to cheer and to console him. He concludes his remarks by commending to his especial care the widow Theodora. The letter should be compared with that addressed to Castrutius (LXVIII.). It was written at the same time with the preceding.
1. Although I am conscious of many sins and every day pray on bended knees, "Remember not the sins of my youth nor my transgressions, [2300] yet because I know that it has been said by the Apostle "let a man not be lifted up with pride lest he fall into the condemnation of the devil," [2301] and that it is written in another passage, "God resisteth the proud but giveth grace to the humble," [2302] there is nothing I have striven so much to avoid from my boyhood up as a swelling mind and a stiff neck, [2303] things which always provoke against themselves the wrath of God. For I know that my master and Lord and God has said in the lowliness of His flesh: "Learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart," [2304] and that before this He has sung by the mouth of David: "Lord, remember David and all his gentleness." [2305] Again we read in another passage, "Before destruction the heart of man is haughty; and before honour is humility." [2306] Do not, then, I implore you, suppose that I have received your letter and have passed it over in silence. Do not, I beseech you, lay to my charge the dishonesty and negligence of which others have been guilty. For why should I, when called on to respond to your kind advances, continue dumb and repel by my silence the friendship which you offer? I who am always forward to seek intimate relations with the good and even to thrust myself upon their affection. "Two," we read, "are better than one....for if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow....a three fold cord is not quickly broken, and a brother that helps his brother shall be exalted." [2307] Write to me, therefore, boldly, and overcome the effect of absence by frequent colloquies.
2. You should not grieve that you are destitute of those bodily eyes which ants, flies, and creeping things have as well as men; rather you should rejoice that you possess that eye of which it is said in the Song of Songs, "Thou hast ravished my heart, my sister, my spouse; thou hast ravished my heart with one of thine eyes." [2308] This is the eye with which God is seen and to which Moses refers when he says:--"I will now turn aside and see this great sight." [2309] We even read of some philosophers of this world [2310] that they have plucked out their eyes in order to turn all their thoughts upon the pure depths of the mind. And a prophet has said "Death has entered through your windows." [2311] Our Lord too tells the Apostles: "Whosoever looketh upon a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart." [2312] Consequently they are commanded to lift up their eyes and to look on the fields, for these are white and ready for harvest. [2313]
3. You request me by my exhortations to slay in you Nebuchadnezzar and Rabshakeh and Nebuzar-adan and Holofernes. [2314] Were they alive in you, you would never have sought my aid. No, they are dead within you, and you have begun to build up the ruins of Jerusalem with the help of Zerubbabel and of Joshua the son of Josedech the high priest, of Ezra and of Nehemiah. You do not put your wages into a bag with holes, [2315] but you lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, [2316] and if you seek my friendship, it is because you believe me to be a servant of Christ.
I commend to you--although she needs no commendation but her own--my holy daughter Theodora, formerly the wife or rather the sister of Lucinius of blessed memory. Tell her that she must not grow weary of the path upon which she has entered, and that she can only reach the Holy Land by toiling through the wilderness. Warn her against supposing that the work of virtue is perfected when she has made her exodus from Egypt. Remind her that she must pass through snares innumerable to arrive at mount Nebo and the River Jordan, [2317] that she must receive circumcision anew at Gilgal, [2318] that Jericho must fall before her, overthrown by the blasts of priestly trumpets, [2319] that Adoni-zedec must be slain, [2320] that Ai and Hazor, once fairest of cities, must both fall. [2321]
The brothers who are with me in the monastery salute you, and I through you earnestly salute those reverend persons who deign to bestow upon me their regard. __________________________________________________________________
[2300] Ps. xxv. 7.
[2301] 1 Tim. iii. 6. A.V. adapted.
[2302] James iv. 6.
[2303] Cf. Ps. lxxv. 5.
[2304] Matt. xi. 29.
[2305] Ps. cxxxii. 1, Vulg. A.V. has afflictions.'
[2306] Prov. xviii. 12.
[2307] Eccl. iv. 9-12. The last clause is Jerome's own.
[2308] Cant. iv. 9.
[2309] Ex. iii. 3.
[2310] Cicero ascribes this piece of fanaticism to Democritus and Metrodorus.
[2311] Jer. ix. 21. LXX.
[2312] Matt. v. 28.
[2313] Joh. iv. 35.
[2314] The legendary oppressor of the Jews, whose fate is described in the Book of Judith.
[2315] Hagg. i. 6.
[2316] Matt. vi. 20.
[2317] Nu. xxxiii. 47, 48.
[2318] Josh. v. 2, 9.
[2319] Josh. vi. 20.
[2320] Josh. x. 1, 26.
[2321] Josh. viii; xi. 10. __________________________________________________________________
Letter LXXVII. To Oceanus.
The eulogy of Fabiola whose restless life had come to an end in 399 a.d. Jerome tells the story of her sin and of her penitence (for which see Letter LV.), of the hospital established by her at Portus, of her visit to Bethlehem, and of her earnestness in the study of scripture. He relates how he wrote for her his account of the vestments of the high priest (Letter LXIV.) and how at the time of her death he was at her request engaged upon a commentary on the forty-two halting-places of the Israelites in the wilderness (Letter LXXIX.). This last he now sends along with this letter to Oceanus. Jerome also bestows praise upon Pammachius as the companion of all Fabiola's labours. The date of the letter is 399 a.d.
1. Several years since I consoled the venerated Paula, whilst her affliction was still recent for the falling asleep of Blæsilla. [2322] Four summers ago I wrote for the bishop Heliodorus the epitaph of Nepotian, and expended what ability I possessed in giving expression to my grief at his loss. [2323] Only two years have elapsed since I sent a brief letter to my dear Pammachius on the sudden flitting of his Paulina. [2324] I blushed to say more to one so learned or to give him back his own thoughts: lest I should seem less the consoler of a friend than the officious instructor of one already perfect. But now, Oceanus my son, the duty that you lay upon me is one that I gladly accept and would even seek unasked. For when new virtues have to be dealt with, an old subject itself becomes new. In previous cases I have had to soften and restrain a mother's affection, an uncle's grief, and a husband's yearning; according to the different requirements of each I have had to apply from scripture different remedies.
2. To-day you give me as my theme Fabiola, the praise of the Christians, the marvel of the gentiles, the sorrow of the poor, and the consolation of the monks. Whatever point in her character I choose to treat of first, pales into insignificance compared with those which follow after. Shall I praise her fasts? Her alms are greater still. Shall I commend her lowliness? The glow of her faith is yet brighter. Shall I mention her studied plainness in dress, her voluntary choice of plebeian costume and the garb of a slave that she might put to shame silken robes? To change one's disposition is a greater achievement than to change one's dress. It is harder for us to part with arrogance than with gold and gems. For, even though we throw away these, we plume ourselves sometimes on a meanness that is really ostentatious, and we make a bid with a saleable poverty for the popular applause. But a virtue that seeks concealment and is cherished in the inner consciousness appeals to no judgement but that of God. Thus the eulogies which I have to bestow upon Fabiola will be altogether new: I must neglect the order of the rhetoricians and begin all I have to say only from the cradle of her conversion and of her penitence. Another writer, mindful of the school, would perhaps bring forward Quintus Maximus, "the man who by delaying rescued Rome," [2325] and the whole Fabian family; he would describe their struggles and battles and would exult that Fabiola had come to us through a line so noble, shewing that qualities not apparent in the branch still existed in the root. But as I am a lover of the inn at Bethlehem and of the Lord's stable in which the virgin travailed with and gave birth to an infant God, I shall deduce the lineage of Christ's handmaid not from a stock famous in history but from the lowliness of the church.
3. And because at the very outset there is a rock in the path and she is overwhelmed by a storm of censure, for having forsaken her first husband and having taken a second, I will not praise her for her conversion till I have first cleared her of this charge. So terrible then were the faults imputed to her former husband that not even a prostitute or a common slave could have put up with them. If I were to recount them, I should undo the heroism of the wife who chose to bear the blame of a separation rather than to blacken the character and expose the stains of him who was one body with her. I will only urge this one plea which is sufficient to exonerate a chaste matron and a Christian woman. The Lord has given commandment that a wife must not be put away "except it be for fornication, and that, if put away, she must remain unmarried." [2326] Now a commandment which is given to men logically applies to women also. For it cannot be that, while an adulterous wife is to be put away, an incontinent husband is to be retained. The apostle says: "he which is joined to an harlot is one body." [2327] Therefore she also who is joined to a whoremonger and unchaste person is made one body with him. The laws of Cæsar are different, it is true, from the laws of Christ: Papinianus [2328] commands one thing; our own Paul another. Earthly laws give a free rein to the unchastity of men, merely condemning seduction and adultery; lust is allowed to range unrestrained among brothels and slave girls, as if the guilt were constituted by the rank of the person assailed and not by the purpose of the assailant. But with us Christians what is unlawful for women is equally unlawful for men, and as both serve the same God both are bound by the same obligations. Fabiola then has put away--they are quite right--a husband that was a sinner, guilty of this and that crime, sins--I have almost mentioned their names--with which the whole neighbourhood resounded but which the wife alone refused to disclose. If however it is made a charge against her that after repudiating her husband she did not continue unmarried, I readily admit this to have been a fault, but at the same time declare that it may have been a case of necessity. "It is better," the apostle tells us, "to marry than to burn." [2329] She was quite a young woman, she was not able to continue in widowhood. In the words of the apostle she saw another law in her members warring against the law of her mind; [2330] she felt herself dragged in chains as a captive towards the indulgences of wedlock. Therefore she thought it better openly to confess her weakness and to accept the semblance of an unhappy marriage than, with the name of a monogamist, to ply the trade of a courtesan. The same apostle wills that the younger widows should marry, bear children, and give no occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully. [2331] And he at once goes on to explain his wish: "for some are already turned aside after Satan." [2332] Fabiola therefore was fully persuaded in her own mind: she thought she had acted legitimately in putting away her husband, and that when she had done so she was free to marry again. She did not know that the rigour of the gospel takes away from women all pretexts for re-marriage so long as their former husbands are alive; and not knowing this, though she contrived to evade other assaults of the devil, she at this point unwittingly exposed herself to a wound from him.
4. But why do I linger over old and forgotten matters, seeking to excuse a fault for which Fabiola has herself confessed her penitence? Who would believe that, after the death of her second husband at a time when most widows, having shaken off the yoke of servitude, grow careless and allow themselves more liberty than ever, frequenting the baths, flitting through the streets, shewing their harlot faces everywhere; that at this time Fabiola came to herself? Yet it was then that she put on sackcloth to make public confession of her error. It was then that in the presence of all Rome (in the basilica which formerly belonged to that Lateranus who perished by the sword of Cæsar [2333] ) she stood in the ranks of the penitents and exposed before bishop, presbyters, and people--all of whom wept when they saw her weep--her dishevelled hair, pale features, soiled hands and unwashed neck. What sins would such a penance fail to purge away? What ingrained stains would such tears be unable to wash out? By a threefold confession Peter blotted out his threefold denial. [2334] If Aaron committed sacrilege by fashioning molten gold into the head of a calf, his brother's prayers made amends for his transgressions. [2335] If holy David, meekest of men, committed the double sin of murder and adultery, he atoned for it by a fast of seven days. He lay upon the earth, he rolled in the ashes, he forgot his royal power, he sought for light in the darkness. [2336] And then, turning his eyes to that God whom he had so deeply offended, he cried with a lamentable voice: "Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight," and "Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation and uphold me with thy free spirit." [2337] He who by his virtues teaches me how to stand and not to fall, by his penitence teaches me how, if I fall, I may rise again. Among the kings do we read of any so wicked as Ahab, of whom the scripture says: "there was none like unto Ahab which did sell himself to work wickedness in the sight of the Lord"? [2338] For shedding Naboth's blood Elijah rebuked him, and the prophet denounced God's wrath against him: "Hast thou killed and also taken possession?...behold I will bring evil upon thee and will take away thy posterity" [2339] and so on. Yet when Ahab heard these words "he rent his clothes, and put sackcloth upon his flesh, and fasted...in sackcloth, and went softly." [2340] Then came the word of God to Elijah the Tishbite saying: "Seest thou how Ahab humbleth himself before me? Because he humbleth himself before me, I will not bring the evil in his days." [2341] O happy penitence which has drawn down upon itself the eyes of God, and which has by confessing its error changed the sentence of God's anger! The same conduct is in the Chronicles [2342] attributed to Manasseh, and in the book of the prophet Jonah [2343] to Nineveh, and in the gospel to the publican. [2344] The first of these not only was allowed to obtain forgiveness but also recovered his kingdom, the second broke the force of God's impending wrath, while the third, smiting his breast with his hands, "would not lift up so much as his eyes to heaven." Yet for all that the publican with his humble confession of his faults went back justified far more than the Pharisee with his arrogant boasting of his virtues. This is not however the place to preach penitence, neither am I writing against Montanus and Novatus. [2345] Else would I say of it that it is "a sacrifice...well pleasing to God," [2346] I would cite the words of the psalmist: "the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit," [2347] and those of Ezekiel "I prefer the repentance of a sinner rather than his death," [2348] and those of Baruch, "Arise, arise, O Jerusalem," [2349] and many other proclamations made by the trumpets of the prophets.
5. But this one thing I will say, for it is at once useful to my readers and pertinent to my present theme. As Fabiola was not ashamed of the Lord on earth, so He shall not be ashamed of her in heaven. [2350] She laid bare her wound to the gaze of all, and Rome beheld with tears the disfiguring scar which marred her beauty. She uncovered her limbs, bared her head, and closed her mouth. She no longer entered the church of God but, like Miriam the sister of Moses, [2351] she sat apart without the camp, till the priest who had cast her out should himself call her back. She came down like the daughter of Babylon from the throne of her daintiness, she took the millstones and ground meal, she passed barefooted through rivers of tears. [2352] She sat upon the coals of fire, and these became her aid. [2353] That face by which she had once pleased her second husband she now smote with blows; she hated jewels, shunned ornaments and could not bear to look upon fine linen. [2354] In fact she bewailed the sin she had committed as bitterly as if it had been adultery, and went to the expense of many remedies in her eagerness to cure her one wound.
6. Having found myself aground in the shallows of Fabiola's sin, I have dwelt thus long upon her penitence in order that I might open up a larger and quite unimpeded space for the description of her praises. Restored to communion before the eyes of the whole church, what did she do? In the day of prosperity she was not forgetful of affliction; [2355] and, having once suffered shipwreck she was unwilling again to face the risks of the sea. Instead therefore of re-embarking on her old life, she broke up [2356] and sold all that she could lay hands on of her property (it was large and suitable to her rank), and turning it into money she laid out this for the benefit of the poor. She was the first person to found a hospital, into which she might gather sufferers out of the streets, and where she might nurse the unfortunate victims of sickness and want. Need I now recount the various ailments of human beings? Need I speak of noses slit, eyes put out, feet half burnt, hands covered with sores? Or of limbs dropsical and atrophied? Or of diseased flesh alive with worms? Often did she carry on her own shoulders persons infected with jaundice or with filth. Often too did she wash away the matter discharged from wounds which others, even though men, could not bear to look at. She gave food to her patients with her own hand, and moistened the scarce breathing lips of the dying with sips of liquid. I know of many wealthy and devout persons who, unable to overcome their natural repugnance to such sights, perform this work of mercy by the agency of others, giving money instead of personal aid. I do not blame them and am far from construing their weakness of resolution into a want of faith. While however I pardon such squeamishness, I extol to the skies the enthusiastic zeal of a mind that is above it. A great faith makes little of such trifles. But I know how terrible was the retribution which fell upon the proud mind of the rich man clothed in purple for not having helped Lazarus. [2357] The poor wretch whom we despise, whom we cannot so much as look at, and the very sight of whom turns our stomachs, is human like ourselves, is made of the same clay as we are, is formed out of the same elements. All that he suffers we too may suffer. Let us then regard his wounds as though they were our own, and then all our insensibility to another's suffering will give way before our pity for ourselves.
Not with a hundred tongues or throat of bronze
Could I exhaust the forms of fell disease [2358]
which Fabiola so wonderfully alleviated in the suffering poor that many of the healthy fell to envying the sick. However she showed the same liberality towards the clergy and monks and virgins. Was there a monastery which was not supported by Fabiola's wealth? Was there a naked or bedridden person who was not clothed with garments supplied by her? Were there ever any in want to whom she failed to give a quick and unhesitating supply? Even Rome was not wide enough for her pity. Either in her own person or else through the agency of reverend and trustworthy men she went from island to island and carried her bounty not only round the Etruscan Sea, but throughout the district of the Volscians, as it stands along those secluded and winding shores where communities of monks are to be found.
7. Suddenly she made up her mind, against the advice of all her friends, to take ship and to come to Jerusalem. Here she was welcomed by a large concourse of people and for a short time took advantage of my hospitality. Indeed, when I call to mind our meeting, I seem to see her here now instead of in the past. Blessed Jesus, what zeal, what earnestness she bestowed upon the sacred volumes! In her eagerness to satisfy what was a veritable craving she would run through Prophets, Gospels, and Psalms: she would suggest questions and treasure up the answers in the desk of her own bosom. And yet this eagerness to hear did not bring with it any feeling of satiety: increasing her knowledge she also increased her sorrow, [2359] and by casting oil upon the flame she did but supply fuel for a still more burning zeal. One day we had before us the book of Numbers written by Moses, and she modestly questioned me as to the meaning of the great mass of names there to be found. Why was it, she inquired, that single tribes were differently associated in this passage and in that, how came it that the soothsayer Balaam in prophesying of the future mysteries of Christ [2360] spoke more plainly of Him than almost any other prophet? I replied as best I could and tried to satisfy her enquiries. Then unrolling the book still farther she came to the passage [2361] in which is given the list of all the halting-places by which the people after leaving Egypt made its way to the waters of Jordan. And when she asked me the meaning and reason of each of these, I spoke doubtfully about some, dealt with others in a tone of assurance, and in several instances simply confessed my ignorance. Hereupon she began to press me harder still, expostulating with me as though it were a thing unallowable that I should be ignorant of what I did not know, yet at the same time affirming her own unworthiness to understand mysteries so deep. In a word I was ashamed to refuse her request and allowed her to extort from me a promise that I would devote a special work to this subject for her use. Till the present time I have had to defer the fulfilment of my promise: as I now perceive, by the Will of God in order that it should be consecrated to her memory. As in a previous work [2362] I clothed her with the priestly vestments, so in the pages of the present [2363] she may rejoice that she has passed through the wilderness of this world and has come at last to the land of promise.
8. But let me continue the task which I have begun. Whilst I was in search of a suitable dwelling for so great a lady, whose only conception of the solitary life included a place of resort like Mary's inn; suddenly messengers flew this way and that and the whole East was terror-struck. For news came that the hordes of the Huns had poured forth all the way from Mæotis [2364] (they had their haunts between the icy Tanais [2365] and the rude Massagetæ [2366] where the gates of Alexander keep back the wild peoples behind the Caucasus); and that, speeding hither and thither on their nimble-footed horses, they were filling all the world with panic and bloodshed. The Roman army was absent at the time, being detained in Italy on account of the civil wars. Of these Huns Herodotus [2367] tells us that under Darius King of the Medes they held the East in bondage for twenty years and that from the Egyptians and Ethiopians they exacted a yearly tribute. May Jesus avert from the Roman world the farther assaults of these wild beasts! Everywhere their approach was unexpected, they outstripped rumour in speed, and, when they came, they spared neither religion nor rank nor age, even for wailing infants they had no pity. Children were forced to die before it could be said that they had begun to live; and little ones not realizing their miserable fate might be seen smiling in the hands and at the weapons of their enemies. It was generally agreed that the goal of the invaders was Jerusalem and that it was their excessive desire for gold which made them hasten to this particular city. Its walls uncared for in time of peace were accordingly put in repair. Antioch was in a state of siege. Tyre, desirous of cutting itself off from the land, sought once more its ancient island. We too were compelled to man our ships and to lie off the shore as a precaution against the arrival of our foes. No matter how hard the winds might blow, we could not but dread the barbarians more than shipwreck. It was not, however, so much for our own safety that we were anxious as for the chastity of the virgins who were with us. Just at that time also there was dissension among us, [2368] and our intestine struggles threw into the shade our battle with the barbarians. I myself clung to my long-settled abode in the East and gave way to my deep-seated love for the holy places. Fabiola, used as she was to moving from city to city and having no other property but what her baggage contained, returned to her native land; to live in poverty where she had once been rich, to lodge in the house of another, she who in old days had lodged many guests in her own, and--not unduly to prolong my account--to bestow upon the poor before the eyes of Rome the proceeds of that property which Rome knew her to have sold.
9. This only do I lament that in her the holy places lost a necklace of the loveliest. Rome recovered what it had previously parted with, and the wanton and slanderous tongues of the heathen were confuted by the testimony of their own eyes. Others may commend her pity, her humility, her faith: I will rather praise her ardour of soul. The letter [2369] in which as a young man I once urged Heliodorus to the life of a hermit she knew by heart, and whenever she looked upon the walls of Rome she complained that she was in a prison. Forgetful of her sex, unmindful of her frailty, and only desiring to be alone she was in fact there [2370] where her soul lingered. The counsels of her friends could not hold her back; so eager was she to burst from the city as from a place of bondage. Nor did she leave the distribution of her alms to others; she distributed them herself. Her wish was that, after equitably dispensing her money to the poor, she might herself find support from others for the sake of Christ. In such haste was she and so impatient of delay that you would fancy her on the eve of her departure. As she was always ready, death could not find her unprepared.
10. As I pen her praises, my dear Pammachius seems suddenly to rise before me. His wife Paulina sleeps that he may keep vigil; she has gone before her husband that he remaining behind may be Christ's servant. Although he was his wife's heir, others--I mean the poor--are now in possession of his inheritance. He and Fabiola contended for the privilege of setting up a tent like that of Abraham [2371] at Portus. The contest which arose between them was for the supremacy in shewing kindness. Each conquered and each was overcome. Both admitted themselves to be at once victors and vanquished for what each had desired to effect alone both accomplished together. They united their resources and combined their plans that harmony might forward what rivalry must have brought to nought. No sooner was the scheme broached than it was carried out. A house was purchased to serve as a shelter, and a crowd flocked into it. "There was no more travail in Jacob nor distress in Israel." [2372] The seas carried voyagers to find a welcome here on landing. Travellers left Rome in haste to take advantage of the mild coast before setting sail. What Publius once did in the island of Malta for one apostle and--not to leave room for gainsaying--for a single ship's crew, [2373] Fabiola and Pammachius have done over and over again for large numbers; and not only have they supplied the wants of the destitute, but so universal has been their munificence that they have provided additional means for those who have something already. The whole world knows that a home for strangers has been established at Portus; and Britain has learned in the summer what Egypt and Parthia knew in the spring.
11. In the death of this noble lady we have seen a fulfilment of the apostle's words:--"All things work together for good to them that fear God." [2374] Having a presentiment of what would happen, she had written to several monks to come and release her from the burthen under which she laboured; [2375] for she wished to make to herself friends of the mammon of unrighteousness that they might receive her into everlasting habitations. [2376] They came to her and she made them her friends; she fell asleep in the way that she had wished, and having at last laid aside her burthen she soared more lightly up to heaven. How great a marvel Fabiola had been to Rome while she lived came out in the behaviour of the people now that she was dead. Hardly had she breathed her last breath, hardly had she given back her soul to Christ whose it was when
Flying Rumour heralding the woe [2377]
gathered the entire city to attend her obsequies. Psalms were chaunted and the gilded ceilings of the temples were shaken with uplifted shouts of Alleluia.
The choirs of young and old extolled her deeds
And sang the praises of her holy soul. [2378]
Her triumph was more glorious far than those won by Furius over the Gauls, by Papirius over the Samnites, by Scipio over Numantia, by Pompey over Pontus. They had conquered physical force, she had mastered spiritual iniquities. [2379] I seem to hear even now the squadrons which led the van of the procession, and the sound of the feet of the multitude which thronged in thousands to attend her funeral. The streets, porches, and roofs from which a view could be obtained were inadequate to accommodate the spectators. On that day Rome saw all her peoples gathered together in one, and each person present flattered himself that he had some part in the glory of her penitence. No wonder indeed that men should thus exult in the salvation of one at whose conversion there was joy among the angels in heaven. [2380]
12. I give you this, Fabiola, [2381] the best gift of my aged powers, to be as it were a funeral offering. Oftentimes have I praised virgins and widows and married women who have kept their garments always white [2382] and who follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth. [2383] Happy indeed is she in her encomium who throughout her life has been stained by no defilement. But let envy depart and censoriousness be silent. If the father of the house is good why should our eye be evil? [2384] The soul which fell among thieves has been carried home upon the shoulders of Christ. [2385] In our father's house are many mansions. [2386] Where sin hath abounded, grace hath much more abounded. [2387] To whom more is forgiven the same loveth more. [2388] __________________________________________________________________
[2322] Letter XXXIX.
[2323] Letter LX.
[2324] Letter LXVI.
[2325] Ennius.
[2326] Matt. xix. 9; 1 Cor. vii. 11.
[2327] 1 Cor. vi. 16.
[2328] A Roman jurist of great renown who held high legal office first under Marcus Aurelius and afterwards under Severus. He was put to death by Caracalla.
[2329] 1 Cor. vii. 9.
[2330] Rom. vii. 23.
[2331] 1 Tim. v. 14.
[2332] 1 Tim. v. 15.
[2333] A senator who having conspired against Nero was by that emperor put to death. His palace on the Ælian Hill was long afterwards bestowed by Constantine upon pope Silvester who made it a church which it has ever since remained.
[2334] Joh. xviii. 15-27; xxi. 15-17.
[2335] Ex. xxxii. 30-35.
[2336] 2 Sam. xii. 16.
[2337] Ps. li. 4, 12.
[2338] 1 Kings xxi. 25.
[2339] 1 Kings xxi. 19, 21.
[2340] 1 Kings xxi. 27.
[2341] 1 Kings xxi. 28, 29.
[2342] 2 Chr. xxxiii. 12, 13.
[2343] Jon. iii. 5-10.
[2344] Luke xviii. 13.
[2345] Rigourists who denied the power of the Church to absolve persons who had fallen into sin.
[2346] Ph. iv. 18.
[2347] Ps. li. 17.
[2348] Cf. Ezek. xviii. 23.
[2349] Bar. v. 5, cf. Isa. lx. 1.
[2350] Luke ix. 26.
[2351] Nu. xii. 14.
[2352] Isa. xlvii. 1, 2.
[2353] Isa. xlvii. 14, Vulg.
[2354] Linteamina.
[2355] Ecclus. xi. 25.
[2356] Dilapidare, vendre pierre à pierre--Goelzer.
[2357] Luke xvi. 19-24.
[2358] Virg. Æn. vi. 625-627.
[2359] Eccl. i. 18.
[2360] Nu. xxiv. 15-19.
[2361] Nu. xxxiii.
[2362] Letter LXIV.
[2363] Letter LXXVIII. on the Mansions or Halting-places of Israel in the Desert.
[2364] The Sea of Azov.
[2365] The Don.
[2366] An Asiatic tribe to the East of the Caspian Sea.
[2367] Hdt. i. 106, (of the Scythians).
[2368] The Origenistic controversy in which Jerome, Paula and Epiphanius took one side, John bishop of Jerusalem, Rufinus, and Melania the other.
[2369] Letter XIV.
[2370] i.e. in the desert where many women lived as solitaries.
[2371] Like that in which Abraham entertained the angels. See Letter LXVI. 11.
[2372] Num. xxiii. 21, LXX.
[2373] Acts xxviii. 7.
[2374] Rom. viii. 28: note that Jerome substitutes fear' for love.'
[2375] The remnant of her fortune.
[2376] Luke xvi. 9.
[2377] Virg. A. xi. 139.
[2378] Virg. A. viii. 287, 288.
[2379] Eph. vi. 12.
[2380] Luke xv. 7, 10.
[2381] i.e. Letter LXXVIII. q. v.
[2382] Eccl. ix. 8; Rev. iii. 4.
[2383] Rev. xiv. 4.
[2384] Matt. xx. 15.
[2385] Luke x. 30; xv. 5.
[2386] Joh. xiv. 2.
[2387] Rom. v. 20.
[2388] Luke vii. 47. __________________________________________________________________
Letter LXXVIII. To Fabiola.
A treatise on the Forty-two Mansions or Halting-places of the Israelites, originally intended for Fabiola but not completed until after her death. Sent to Oceanus along with the preceding letter. These Mansions are made an emblem of the Christian's pilgrimage, the true Hebrew hastening to pass from earth to heaven. __________________________________________________________________
Letter LXXIX. To Salvina.
A letter of consolation addressed by Jerome to Salvina (a lady of the imperial court) on the death of her husband Nebridius. After excusing his temerity in addressing a complete stranger Jerome eulogizes the virtues of Nebridius, particularly his chastity and his bounty to the poor. He next warns Salvina (in no courtier-like terms) of the dangers that will beset her as a widow and recommends her to devote all her energies to the careful training of the son and daughter who are now her principal charge. The tone of the letter is somewhat arrogant and it can hardly be regarded as one of Jerome's happiest efforts. Salvina, however, consecrated her life to deeds of piety, and became one of Chrysostom's deaconesses. Its date is 400 a.d.
1. My desire to do my duty may, I fear, expose me to a charge of self-seeking; and although I do but follow the example of Him who said: "learn of me for I am meek and lowly of heart," [2389] the course that I am taking may be attributed to a desire for notoriety. Men may say that I am not so much trying to console a widow in affliction as endeavouring to creep into the imperial court; and that, while I make a pretext of offering comfort, I am really seeking the friendship of the great. Clearly this will not be the opinion of any one who knows the commandment: "thou shalt not respect the person of the poor," [2390] a precept given lest under pretext of shewing pity we should judge unjust judgment. For each individual is to be judged not by his personal importance but by the merits of his case. His wealth need not stand in the way of the rich man, if he makes a good use of it; and poverty can be no recommendation to the poor if in the midst of squalor and want he fails to keep clear of wrong doing. Proofs of these things are not wanting either in scriptural times or our own; for Abraham, in spite of his immense wealth, was "the friend of God" [2391] and poor men are daily arrested and punished for their crimes by law. She whom I now address is both rich and poor so that she cannot say what she actually has. For it is not of her purse that I am speaking but of the purity of her soul. I do not know her face but I am well acquainted with her virtues; for report speaks well of her and her youth makes her chastity all the more commendable. By her grief for her young husband she has set an example to all wives; and by her resignation she has proved that she believes him not lost but gone before. The greatness of her bereavement has brought out the reality of her religion. For while she forgets her lost Nebridius, she knows that in Christ he is with her still.
But why do I write to one who is a stranger to me? For three reasons. First, because (as a priest is bound to do) I love all Christians as my children and find my glory in promoting their welfare. Secondly because the father of Nebridius was bound to me by the closest ties. [2392] Lastly--and this is a stronger reason than the others--because I have failed to say no to my son Avitus. [2393] With an importunacy surpassing that of the widow towards the unjust judge [2394] he wrote to me so frequently and put before me so many instances in which I had previously dealt with a similar theme, that he overcame my modest reluctance and made the resolve to do not what would best become me but what would most nearly meet his wishes.
2. As the mother of Nebridius was sister to the empress [2395] and as he was brought up in the bosom of his aunt, another might perhaps praise him for having so much endeared himself to the unvanquished emperor. Theodosius, indeed, procured him from Africa a wife of the highest rank, [2396] who, as her native land at this time was distracted by civil wars, became a kind of hostage for its loyalty. I ought to say at the very outset that Nebridius seems to have had a presentiment that he would die early. For amid the splendour of the palace and in the high positions to which his rank and not his years entitled him he lived always as one who believed that he must soon go to meet Christ. Of Cornelius, the centurion of the Italian band, the sacred narrative tells us that God so fully accepted him as to send to him an angel; and that this angel told him that to his merit was due the mystery whereby Peter from the narrow limits of the circumcision was conveyed to the wide field of the uncircumcision. He was the first Gentile baptized by the apostle, and in him the Gentiles were set apart to salvation. Now of this man it is written: "there was a certain man in Cæsarea called Cornelius, a centurion of the band called the Italian band, a devout man and one that feared God with all his house, which gave much alms to the people, and prayed to God alway." [2397] All this that is said of him I claim--with a change of name only--for my dear Nebridius. So "devout" was this latter and so enamoured of chastity that at his marriage he was still pure. So truly did he "fear God with all his house" that forgetting his high position he spent all his time with monks and clergymen. So profuse were the alms which he gave to the people that his doors were continually beset with swarms of sick and poor. And assuredly he "prayed to God alway" that what was for the best might happen to him. Therefore "speedily was he taken away lest that wickedness should alter his understanding...for his soul pleased the Lord." [2398] Thus I may truthfully apply to him the apostle's words: "Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons: but in every nation he that feareth Him and worketh righteousness, is accepted with Him." [2399] As a soldier Nebridius took no harm from his cloak and sword-belt and troops of orderlies; for while he wore the uniform of the emperor he was enlisted in the service of God. On the other hand nothing is gained by men who while they affect coarse mantles, sombre tunics, dirt, and poverty, belie by their deeds their lofty pretensions. Of another centurion we find in the gospel this testimony from our Lord:--"I have not found so great faith, no not in Israel." [2400] And, to go back to earlier times, we read of Joseph who gave proof of his integrity both when he was in want and when he was rich, and who inculcated freedom of soul both as slave and as lord. He was made next to Pharaoh and invested with the emblems of royalty; [2401] yet so dear was he to God that, alone of all the patriarchs, he became the father of two tribes. [2402] Daniel and the three children were set over the affairs of Babylon and were numbered among the princes of the state; yet although they wore the dress of Nebuchadnezzar, in their hearts they served God. Mordecai also and Esther amid purple and silk and jewels overcame pride with humility; and although captives were so highly esteemed as to be able to impose commands upon their conquerors.
3. These remarks are intended to shew that the youth of whom I speak used his kinship to the royal family, his abundant wealth, and the outward tokens of power, as helps to virtue. For, as the preacher says, "wisdom is a defence and money is a defence" [2403] also. We must not hastily conclude that this statement conflicts with that of the Lord: "verily I say unto you that a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven; and again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven." [2404] Were it so, the salvation of Zacchæus the publican, described in scripture as a man of great wealth, would contradict the Lord's declaration. But that what is impossible with men is possible with God [2405] we are taught by the counsel of the apostle who thus writes to Timothy:--"charge them that are rich in this world that they be not highminded, nor trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God who giveth us richly all things to enjoy, that they do good, that they be rich in good works, ready to distribute. willing to communicate, laying up in store for themselves a good foundation against the time to come that they may lay hold on the true life." [2406] We have learned how a camel can pass through a needle's eye, how an animal with a hump on its back, [2407] when it has laid down its packs, can take to itself the wings of a dove [2408] and rest in the branches of the tree which has grown from a grain of mustard seed. [2409] In Isaiah we read of camels, the dromedaries of Midian and Ephah and Sheba, which carry gold and incense to the city of the Lord. [2410] On like typical camels the Ishmaelitish merchantmen [2411] bring down to the Egyptians perfume and incense and balm (of the kind that grows in Gilead good for the healing of wounds [2412] ); and so fortunate are they that in the purchase and sale of Joseph they have for their merchandise the Saviour of the world. [2413] And Æsop's fable tells us of a mouse which after eating its fill can no longer creep out as before it crept in. [2414]
4. Daily did my dear Nebridius revolve the words: "they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare" of the devil "and into many lusts." [2415] All the money that the Emperor's bounty gave him or that his badges of office procured him he laid out for the benefit of the poor. For he knew the commandment of the Lord: "If thou wilt be perfect go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and come and follow me." [2416] And because he could not literally fulfil these directions, having a wife and little children and a large household, he made to himself friends of the mammon of unrighteousness that they might receive him into everlasting habitations. [2417] He did not once for all cast away his brethren, as did the apostles who forsook father and nets and ship, [2418] but by an equality he ministered to the want of others out of his own abundance that afterwards their wealth might be a supply for his own want. [2419] The lady to whom this letter is addressed knows that what I narrate is only known to me by hearsay, but she is aware also that I am no Greek writer repaying with flattery some benefit conferred upon me. Far be such an imputation from all Christians. Having food and raiment we are therewith content. [2420] Where there is cheap cabbage and household bread, a sufficiency to eat and a sufficiency to drink, these riches are superfluous and no place is left for flattery with its sordid calculations. You may conclude therefore that, where there is no motive to tell a falsehood, the testimony given is true.
5. It must not, however, be supposed that I praise Nebridius only for his liberality in alms-giving, although we are taught the great importance of this in the words: "water will quench a flaming fire; and alms maketh an atonement for sins." [2421] I will pass on now to his other virtues each one of which is to be found but in few men. Who ever entered the furnace of the King of Babylon without being burned? [2422] Was there ever a young man whose garment his Egyptian mistress did not seize? [2423] Was there ever a eunuch's [2424] wife contented with a childless marriage bed? Is there any man who is not appalled by the struggle of which the apostle says: "I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members?" [2425] But wonderful to say Nebridius, though bred up in a palace as a companion and fellow pupil of the Augusti [2426] (whose table is supplied by the whole world and ministered to by land and sea); Nebridius, I say, though in the midst of abundance and in the flower of his age, shewed himself more modest than a girl and never gave occasion, even the slightest, for scandalous rumours. Again though he was the friend, companion, and cousin of princes and had been educated along with them--a thing which makes even strangers intimate--he did not allow pride to inflate him or frown with contempt upon others who were less fortunate than he: no, he was kind to all, and while he loved the princes as brothers he revered them as sovereigns. He used to avow that his own health and safety were dependent upon theirs. Their attendants and all those officers of the palace who by their numbers add to the grandeur of the imperial court he had so well conciliated by shewing his regard for them, that men who were in reality inferior to him were led by his attention to believe themselves his peers. It is no easy task to throw one's rank into the shade by one's virtue, or to gain the affection of men who are forced to yield you precedence. What widow was not supported by his help? What ward did not find in him a father? To him the bishops of the entire East used to bring the prayers of the unfortunate and the petitions of the distressed. Whenever he asked the Emperor for a boon, he sought either alms for the poor or ransom for captives or clemency for the afflicted. Accordingly the princes also used gladly to accede to his requests, for they knew well that their bounty would benefit not one man but many.
6. Why do I farther postpone the end? "All flesh is grass and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field." [2427] The dust has returned to the dust. [2428] He has fallen asleep in the Lord and has been laid with his fathers, full of days and of light and fostered in a good old age. For "wisdom is the grey hair unto men." [2429] "In a short time he" has "fulfilled a long time." [2430] In his place we now have his charming children. His wife is the heir of his chastity. To those who miss his father the tiny Nebridius shews him once more, for
Such were the eyes and hands and looks he bore. [2431]
A spark of the parent's excellence shines in the son: the child's face betrays like a mirror a resemblance in character.
That narrow frame contains a hero's heart. [2432]
And with him there is his sister, a basket of roses and lilies, a mixture of ivory and purple. Her face though it takes after that of her father inclines to be still more attractive; and, while her complexion is that of her mother, she is so like both her parents that the lineaments of each are reflected in her features. So sweet and honied is she that she is the pride of all her kinsfolk. The Emperor [2433] does not disdain to hold her in his arms, and the Empress [2434] likes nothing better than to nurse her on her lap. Everyone runs to be the first to catch her up. Now she clings to the neck of one, and now she is fondled in the arms of another. She prattles and stammers, and is all the sweeter for her faltering tongue.
7. You have, therefore, Salvina, those to nurse who may well represent to you your absent husband: "Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord; and the fruit of the womb is his reward." [2435] In the place of one husband you have received two children, and thus your affection has more objects than before. All that was due to him you can give to them. Temper grief with love, for if he is gone they are still with you. It is no small merit in God's eyes to bring up children well. Hear the apostle's counsel: "Let not a widow be taken into the number under threescore years old, having been the wife of one man, well reported of for good works; if she have brought up children, if she have lodged strangers, if she have washed the saints' feet, if she have relieved the afflicted, if she have diligently followed every good work." [2436] Here you learn the roll of the virtues which God requires of you, what is due to the name of widow which you bear, and by what good deeds you can attain to that second degree of chastity [2437] which is still open to you. Do not be disturbed because the apostle allows none to be chosen as a widow under threescore years old, neither suppose that he intends to reject those who are still young. Believe that you are indeed chosen by him who said to his disciple, "Let no man despise thy youth," [2438] your want of age that is, not your want of continence. If this be not his meaning, all who become widows under threescore years will have to take husbands. He is training a church still untaught in Christ, and making provision for people of all stations but especially for the poor, the charge of whom had been committed to himself and Barnabas. [2439] Thus he wishes only those to be supported by the exertions of the church who cannot labour with their own hands, and who are widows indeed, [2440] approved by their years and by their lives. The faults of his children made Eli the priest an offence to God. On the other hand He is appeased by the virtues of such as "continue in faith and charity and holiness with chastity." [2441] "O Timothy," cries the apostle, "keep thyself pure." [2442] Far be it from me to suspect you capable of doing anything wrong; still it is only a kindness to admonish one whose youth and opulence lead her into temptation. You must take what I am going to say as addressed not to you but to your girlish years. A widow "that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth." [2443] So speaks the "chosen vessel" [2444] and the words are brought out from his treasure who could boldly say: "Do ye seek a proof of Christ speaking in me?" [2445] Yet they are the words of one who in his own person admitted the weakness of the human body, saying: "The good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not that I do." [2446] And again: Therefore "I keep under my body and bring it into subjection lest that by any means when I have preached to others I myself should be a castaway." [2447] If Paul is afraid, which of us can venture to be confident? If David the friend of God and Solomon who loved God [2448] were overcome like other men, if their fall is meant to warn us and their penitence to lead us to salvation, who in this slippery life can be sure of not falling? Never let pheasants be seen upon your table, or plump turtledoves or black cock from Ionia, or any of those birds so expensive that they fly away with the largest properties. And do not fancy that you eschew meat diet when you reject pork, hare, and venison and the savoury flesh of other quadrupeds. [2449] It is not the number of feet that makes the difference but delicacy of flavour. I know that the apostle has said: "every creature of God is good and nothing to be refused if it be received with thanksgiving." [2450] But the same apostle says: "it is good neither to eat flesh nor to drink wine," [2451] and in another place: "be not drunk with wine wherein is excess." [2452] "Every creature of God is good"--the precept is intended for those who are careful how they may please their husbands. [2453] Let those feed on flesh who serve the flesh, whose bodies boil with desire, who are tied to husbands, and who set their hearts on having offspring. Let those whose wombs are burthened cram their stomachs with flesh. But you have buried every indulgence in your husband's tomb: over his bier you have cleansed with tears a face stained with rouge and whitelead; you have exchanged a white robe and gilded buskins for a sombre tunic and black shoes; and only one thing more is needed, perseverance in fasting. Let paleness and squalor be henceforth your jewels. Do not pamper your youthful limbs with a bed of down or kindle your young blood with hot baths. Hear what words a heathen poet [2454] puts into the mouth of a chaste widow: [2455]
He, my first spouse, has robbed me of my loves.
So be it: let him keep them in the tomb.
If common glass is worth so much, what must be the value of a pearl of price? [2456] If in deference to a law of nature a Gentile widow can condemn all sensual indulgence, what must we expect from a Christian widow who owes her chastity not to one who is dead but to one with whom she shall reign in heaven?
8. Do not, I pray you, regard these general remarks--applying as they do to all young women--as intended to insult you or to take you to task. I write in a spirit of apprehension, yet pray that you may never know the nature of my fears. A woman's reputation is a tender plant; it is like a fair flower which withers at the slightest blast and fades away at the first breath of wind. Especially is this so when she is of an age to fall into temptation and the authority of a husband is wanting to her. For the very shadow of a husband is a wife's safeguard. What has a widow to do with a large household or with troops of retainers? As servants, it is true, she must not despise them, but as men she ought to blush before them. If a grand establishment requires such domestics, let her at least set over them an old man of spotless morals whose dignity may guard the honour of his mistress. I know of many widows who, although they live with closed doors, have not escaped the imputation of too great intimacy with their servants. These latter become objects of suspicion when they dress above their degree, or when they are stout and sleek, or when they are of an age inclined to passion, or when knowledge of the favour in which they are secretly held betrays itself in a too confident demeanour. For such pride, however carefully concealed, is sure to break out in a contempt for fellow-servants as servants. I make these seemingly superfluous remarks that you may keep your heart with all diligence [2457] and guard against every scandal that may be broached concerning you.
9. Take no well-curled steward to walk with you, no effeminate actor, no devilish singer of poisoned sweetness, no spruce and smooth-shorn youth. Let no theatrical compliments, no obsequious adulation be associated with you. Keep with you bands of widows and virgins; and let your consolers be of your own sex. The character of the mistress is judged by that of the maid. So long as you have with you a holy mother, so long as an aunt vowed to virginity is at your side, you ought not to neglect them and at your own risk to seek the company of strangers. Let the divine scripture be always in your hands, and give yourself so frequently to prayer that such shafts of evil thoughts as ever assail the young may thereby find a shield to repel them. It is difficult, nay more it is impossible, to escape the beginnings of those internal motions which the Greeks with much significance call propatheiai that is predispositions to passion.' The fact is that suggestions of sin tickle all our minds, and the decision rests with our own hearts either to admit or to reject the thoughts which come. The Lord of nature Himself says in the gospel:--"out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies." [2458] It is clear from the testimony of another book that "the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth," [2459] and that the soul wavers between the works of the flesh and of the spirit enumerated by the apostle, [2460] desiring now the former and now the latter. For
From faults no mortal man is wholly free;
The best is he who has but few of them. [2461]
And, to quote the same poet,
At moles men cavil when they mark fair skins. [2462]
To the same effect in different words the prophet says:--"I am so troubled that I cannot speak," [2463] and in the same book, "Be ye angry and sin not." [2464] So Archytas of Tarentum [2465] once said to a careless steward: "I should have flogged you to death had I not been in a passion." For "the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God." [2466] Now what is here said of one form of perturbation may be applied to all. Just as anger is human and the repression of it Christian, so it is with other passions. The flesh always lusts after the things of the flesh, and by its allurements draws the soul to partake of deadly pleasures; but it is for us Christians to restrain the desire for sensual indulgence by an intenser love for Christ. It is for us to break in the mettlesome brute within us by fasting, in order that it may desire not lust but food and amble easily and steadily forward having for its rider the Holy Spirit.
10. Why do I write thus? To shew you that you are but human and subject, unless you guard against them, to human passions. We are all of us made of the same clay and formed of the same elements. Whether we wear silk or rags we are all at the mercy of the same desire. It does not fear the royal purple; it does not disdain the squalor of the mendicant. It is better then to suffer in stomach than in soul, to rule the body than to serve it, to lose one's balance than to lose one's chastity. Let us not lull ourselves with the delusion that we can always fall back on penitence. For this is at best but a remedy for misery. Let us shrink from incurring a wound which must be painful to cure. For it is one thing to enter the haven of salvation with ship safe and merchandise uninjured, and another to cling naked to a plank and, as the waves toss you this way and that, to be dashed again and again on the sharp rocks. A widow should be ignorant that second marriage is permitted; she should know nothing of the apostle's words:--"It is better to marry than to burn." [2467] Remove what is said to be worse, the risk of burning, and marriage will cease to be regarded as good. Of course I repudiate the slanders of the heretics; I know that "marriage is honourable...and the bed undefiled." [2468] Yet Adam even after he was expelled from paradise had but one wife. The accursed and blood-stained Lamech, descended from the stock of Cain, was the first to make out of one rib two wives; and the seedling of digamy then planted was altogether destroyed by the doom of the deluge. It is true that in writing to Timothy the apostle from fear of fornication is forced to countenance second marriage. His words are these:--"I will therefore that the younger women marry, bear children, guide the house, give none occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully." But he immediately adds as a reason for this concession; "for some are already turned aside after Satan." [2469] Thus we see that he is offering not a crown to those who stand but a helping hand to those who are down. What must a second marriage be if it is looked on merely as an alternative to the brothel! "For some," he writes, "are already turned aside after Satan." The upshot of the whole matter is that, if a young widow cannot or will not contain herself, she had better take a husband to her bed than the devil.
A noble alternative truly which is only to be embraced in preference to Satan! In old days even Jerusalem went a-whoring and opened her feet to every one that passed by. [2470] It was in Egypt that she was first deflowered and there that her teats were bruised. [2471] And afterwards when she had come to the wilderness and, impatient of the delays of her leader Moses, had said when maddened by the stings of lust: "these be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt," [2472] she received statutes that were not good and commandments that were altogether evil whereby she should not live [2473] but should be punished through them. Is it surprising then that when the apostle had said in another place of young widows: "when they have begun to wax wanton against Christ they will marry, having damnation because they have cast off their first faith," [2474] he granted to such as should wax wanton statutes of digamy that were not good and commandments that were altogether evil? For the reason which he gives for allowing a second husband would justify a woman in marrying a third or even, if she liked, a twentieth. He evidently wished to shew them that he was not so much anxious that they should take husbands as that they should avoid paramours. These things, dearest daughter in Christ, I impress upon you and frequently repeat, that you may forget those things which are behind and reach forth unto those things which are before. [2475] You have widows like yourself worthy to be your models, Judith renowned in Hebrew story and Anna the daughter of Phanuel famous in the gospel. Both these lived day and night in the temple and preserved the treasure of their chastity by prayer and by fasting. One was a type of the Church which cuts off the head of the devil [2476] and the other first received in her arms the saviour of the world and had revealed to her the holy mysteries which were to come. [2477] In conclusion I beg you to attribute the shortness of my letter not to want of language or scarcity of matter but to a deep sense of modesty which makes me fear to force myself too long upon the ears of a stranger, and causes me to dread the secret verdict of those who read my words. __________________________________________________________________
[2389] Matt. xi. 29.
[2390] Lev. xix. 15.
[2391] Isa. xli. 8; Jas. ii. 23.
[2392] Also named Nebridius, Prefect of Gaul, then of the East.
[2393] See letter CXXIV.
[2394] Luke xviii. 1-5.
[2395] Ælia Flaccilla, the wife of Theodosius who is here called "the unvanquished emperor."
[2396] Salvina was the daughter of Gildo who at the time was tributary king of Mauritania.
[2397] Acts x. 1, 2.
[2398] Wisdom iv. 11, 14.
[2399] Acts x. 34, 35.
[2400] Matt. viii. 10.
[2401] Gen. xli. 42-44.
[2402] Gen. xli. 50-52.
[2403] Eccl. vii. 12.
[2404] Matt. xix. 23, 24.
[2405] Mark x. 27.
[2406] 1 Tim. vi. 17-19: A.V. has "eternal life" in the last verse.
[2407] Animal tortuosum. The epithet recurs in Letter CVII. § 3.
[2408] Ps. lv. 6.
[2409] Matt. xiii. 31, 32.
[2410] Isa. lx. 6.
[2411] Gen. xxxvii. 25.
[2412] Jer. viii. 22.
[2413] So the Vulgate renders Zaphnath-Paaneah the name given to Joseph by Pharaoh. (Gen. xli. 45).
[2414] Horace, Epist. I. vii. 30, 31.
[2415] 1 Tim. vi. 9.
[2416] Matt. xix. 21.
[2417] Luke xvi. 9.
[2418] Matt. iv. 18-22.
[2419] 2 Cor. viii. 14.
[2420] 1 Tim. vi. 8.
[2421] Ecclus. iii. 30.
[2422] Cf. Dan. iii. 25.
[2423] Gen. xxxix. 12.
[2424] The allusion is to the word "officer" in Gen. xxxvii. 36. See A.V. margin.
[2425] Rom. vii. 23.
[2426] Arcadius and Honorius.
[2427] Isa. xl. 6.
[2428] Gen. iii. 19.
[2429] Wisd. iv. 9.
[2430] Wisd. iv. 13.
[2431] Virg. A. iii. 490.
[2432] Virg. G. iv. 82.
[2433] Arcadius.
[2434] Eudoxia.
[2435] Ps. cxxvii. 3.
[2436] 1 Tim. v. 9, 10.
[2437] The three degrees of chastity are those of a virgin, a widow, and a wife.
[2438] 1 Tim. iv. 12.
[2439] Gal. ii. 9, 10.
[2440] Cf. 1 Tim. v. 3.
[2441] 1 Tim. ii. 15. A.V. has sobriety' for chastity.'
[2442] 1 Tim. v. 22.
[2443] 1 Tim. v. 6.
[2444] Acts ix. 15.
[2445] 2 Cor. xiii. 3, Vulg.
[2446] Rom. vii. 19.
[2447] 1 Cor. ix. 27.
[2448] 1 Kings iii. 3.
[2449] Many drew a distinction between the flesh of quadrupeds and that of birds, abstaining from the former but using the latter.
[2450] 1 Tim. iv. 4.
[2451] Rom. xiv. 21.
[2452] Eph. v. 18.
[2453] 1 Cor. vii. 34.
[2454] Virgil, Æn. iv. 28, 29.
[2455] Dido, queen of Carthage.
[2456] Quoted from Tertullian (ad Mart. IV.). The same words recur in Letters CVII. § 8 and CXXX. § 9.
[2457] Prov. iv. 23.
[2458] Matt. xv. 19.
[2459] Gen. viii. 21.
[2460] Gal. v. 19-23.
[2461] Horace, Sat. I. iii. 68, 69.
[2462] Horace, Sat. I. vi. 66.
[2463] Ps. lxxvii. 4.
[2464] Ps. iv. 4, LXX. Quoted Eph. iv. 26.
[2465] A pythagorean philosopher, mathematician, general, and statesman. He was a contemporary of Plato.
[2466] Jas. i. 20.
[2467] 1 Cor. vii. 9.
[2468] Heb. xiii. 4.
[2469] 1 Tim. v. 14, 15.
[2470] Ezek. xvi. 25.
[2471] Ezek. xxiii. 3.
[2472] Exod. xxxii. 4.
[2473] Ezek. xx. 25.
[2474] 1 Tim. v. 11, 12.
[2475] Phil. iii. 13.
[2476] As Judith cut off the head of Holofernes (Judith xiii.).
[2477] Luke ii. 36-38. __________________________________________________________________
Letter LXXX. From Rufinus to Macarius.
Rufinus on his return from Bethlehem to Rome published a Latin version of Origen's treatise peri 'Archon, On First Principles. To this he prefixed the preface which is here printed among Jerome's letters. Professing to take as his model Jerome's own translations of Origen's commentaries which he greatly praises, he declares that, following his example, he has paraphrased the obscure passages of the treatise and has paraphrased the obscure passages of the treatise and has omitted as due to interpolators such parts as seem heretical. This preface with its insincere praise of Jerome (whose name, however, is not mentioned) and its avowed manipulation of Origen's text caused much perplexity at Rome (see Letters LXXXI., LXXXIII., and LXXXIV.), and gave rise to the controversy between Rufinus and Jerome described in the Prolegomena, and given at length in vol. iii. of this Series. The date is 398 a.d.
1. Large numbers of the brethren have, I know, in their zeal for the knowledge of the scriptures begged learned men skilled in Greek literature to make Origen a Roman by bringing home his teaching to Latin ears. One of these scholars, a dear brother and associate, [2478] at the request of bishop Damasus translated from Greek into Latin his two homilies on the Song of Songs and prefaced the work with an eloquent and eulogistic introduction such as could not fail to arouse in all an ardent desire to read and to study Origen. To the soul of that just man--so he declared--the words of the Song were applicable: "the king hath brought me into his chambers;" [2479] and he went on to speak thus: "while in his other books Origen surpasses all former writers, in dealing with the Song of Songs he surpasses himself." In his preface he pledges himself to give to Roman ears these homilies of Origen and as many of his other works as he can. His style is certainly attractive but I can see that he aims at a more ambitious task than that of a mere translator. Not content with rendering the words of Origen he desires to be himself the teacher. [2480] I for my part do but follow up an enterprise which he has sanctioned and commenced, but I lack his vigorous eloquence with which to adorn the sayings of this great man. I am even afraid lest my deficiencies and inadequate command of Latin may detract seriously from the reputation of one whom this writer has deservedly termed second only to the apostles as a teacher of the Church in knowledge and in wisdom.
2. Often turning this over in my mind I held my peace and refused to listen to the brethren when--as frequently happened--they urged me to undertake the work. But your persistence, most faithful brother Macarius, is so great that even want of ability cannot resist it. Thus, to escape the constant importunings to which you subject me, I have given way contrary to my resolution; yet only on these terms that, so far as is possible, I am to be free to follow the rules of translation laid down by my predecessors, and particularly those acted upon by the writer whom I have just mentioned. He has rendered into Latin more than seventy of Origen's homiletical treatises and a few also of his commentaries upon the apostle; [2481] and in these wherever the Greek text presents a stumbling block, he has smoothed it down in his version and has so emended the language used that a Latin writer can find no word that is at variance with our faith. In his steps, therefore, I propose to walk, if not displaying the same vigorous eloquence at least observing the same rules. I shall not reproduce passages in Origen's books which disagree with or contradict his own statements elsewhere. The reason of these inconsistencies I have put more fully before you in the defence of Origen's writings composed by Pamphilianus [2482] which I have supplemented by a short treatise of my own. I have given what I consider plain proofs that his books have been corrupted in numbers of places by heretics and ill-disposed persons, and particularly those which you now urge me to translate. The books peri 'Archon, that is of Principles or of Powers, are in fact in other respects extremely obscure and difficult. For they treat of subjects on which the philosophers have spent all their days and yet have been able to discover nothing. In dealing with these themes Origen has done his best to make belief in a Creator and a rational account of things created subservient to religion and not, as with the philosophers, to irreligion. Wherever then in his books I have found a statement concerning the Trinity contrary to those which in other places he has faithfully made on the same subject, I have either omitted the passage as garbled and misleading or have substituted that view of the matter which I find him to have frequently asserted. Again, wherever--in haste to get on with his theme--he is brief or obscure relying on the skill and intelligence of his readers, I, to make the passage clearer, have sought to explain it by adding any plainer statements that I have read on the point in his other books. But I have added nothing of my own. The words used may be found in other parts of his writings: they are his, not mine. I mention this here to take from cavillers all pretext for once more [2483] finding fault. But let such perverse and contentious persons look well to what they are themselves doing.
3. Meantime I have taken up this great task--if so be that God will grant your prayers--not to stop the mouths of slanderers (an impossible feat except perhaps to God) but to give to those who desire it the means of making progress in knowledge.
In the sight of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, [2484] I adjure and require everyone who shall either read or copy these books of mine, by his belief in a kingdom to come, by the mystery of the resurrection from the dead, by the eternal fire which is "prepared for the devil and his angels;" [2485] as he hopes not to inherit eternally that place where "there is weeping and gnashing of teeth," [2486] and where "their worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched," [2487] let him add nothing to what is written, let him subtract nothing, let him insert nothing, let him alter nothing, but let him compare his transcript with the copies from which it is made, let him correct it to the letter, and let him punctuate it aright. Every manuscript that is not properly corrected and punctuated he must reject: for otherwise the difficulties in the text arising from the want of punctuation will make obscure arguments still more obscure to those who read them. __________________________________________________________________
[2478] i.e. Jerome.
[2479] Cant. i. 4. See the Preface to Origen on the Canticles translated in this volume.
[2480] Rem maioris gloriæ sequitur ut pater verbi sit potius quam interpres.
[2481] i.e. St. Paul.
[2482] Or Pamphilus.
[2483] See this treatise in vol. iii. of this series. Rufinus with John of Jerusalem had been already accused of Origenism. See Letter LI. 6.
[2484] For this adjuration comp. Rev. xxii. 18, 19, and Stieren's Irenæus i. 821.
[2485] Matt. xxv. 41.
[2486] Matt. xxii. 13.
[2487] Mark ix. 44. __________________________________________________________________
Letter LXXXI. To Rufinus.
A friendly letter of remonstrance written by Jerome to Rufinus on receipt of his version of the peri 'Archon see the preceding letter). Being sent in the first instance to Pammachius this latter treacherously suppressed it and thus put an end to all hope of the reconciliation of the two friends. The date of the letter is 399 a.d.
1. That you have lingered some time at Rome your own language shews. Yet I feel sure that a yearning to see your spiritual parents [2488] would have drawn you to your native country, [2489] had not grief for your mother deterred you lest a sorrow scarce bearable away might have proved unbearable at home.
As to your complaint that men listen only to the dictates of passion and refuse to acquiesce in your judgement and mine; the Lord is witness to my conscience that since our reconciliation I have harboured no rancour in my breast to injure anyone; on the contrary I have taken the utmost pains to prevent any chance occurrence being set down to ill-will. But what can I do so long as everyone supposes that he has a right to do as he does and thinks that in publishing a slander he is requiting not originating a calumny? True friendship ought never to conceal what it thinks.
The short preface to the books peri 'Archon which has been sent to me I recognize as yours by the style. You know best with what intention it was written; but even a fool can see how it must necessarily be understood. Covertly or rather openly I am the person aimed at. I have often myself feigned a controversy to practise declamation. [2490] Thus I might now recall this well-worn artifice and praise you in your own method. [2491] But far be it from me to imitate what I blame in you. In fact I have so far restrained my feelings that I make no charge against you, and, although injured, decline for my part to injure a friend. But another time, if you wish to follow any one, pray be satisfied with your own judgement. The objects which we seek are either good or bad. If they are good, they need no help from another; and if they are bad, the fact that many sin together is no excuse. I prefer thus to expostulate with you as a friend rather than to give public vent to my indignation at the wrong I have suffered. I want you to see that when I am reconciled to anyone I become his sincere friend and do not--to borrow a figure from Plautus [2492] --while offering him bread with one hand, hold a stone in the other.
2. My brother Paulinian has not yet returned from home and I fancy that you will see him at Aquileia at the house of the reverend pope Chromatius. [2493] I am also sending the reverend presbyter Rufinus [2494] on business to Milan by way of Rome, and have requested him to communicate to you my feelings and respects. I am sending the same message to the rest of my friends; lest, as the apostle says, ye bite and devour one another, ye be consumed one of another. [2495] It only remains for you and your friends to shew your moderation by giving no offence to those who are disinclined to put up with it. For you will hardly find everyone like me. There are few who can be pleased with pretended eulogies. __________________________________________________________________
[2488] Chromatius and Eusebius of Aquileia.
[2489] Concordia, near Aquileia.
[2490] See the introduction to Letter CXVII.
[2491] i.e. insincerely.
[2492] Plautus, Aul. ii. 2, 18.
[2493] Paulinian (of whose ordination an account is given in Letter LI.) had been sent to Italy by Jerome in a.d. 398 partly to counteract the proceedings of Rufinus and partly to sell the family property at Stridon (see Letter LXVI. § 14.)
[2494] Rufinus the Syrian, to be carefully distinguished from his more famous namesake (to whom this letter is addressed) of Aquileia. He was a monk in Jerome's monastery at Bethlehem.
[2495] Gal. v. 15. __________________________________________________________________
Letter LXXXII. To Theophilus Bishop of Alexandria.
Two years after his former attempt (see Letter LXIII.) Theophilus again wrote to Jerome urging him to be reconciled with John of Jerusalem. Jerome replies that there is nothing he desires more earnestly than peace but that this must be real and not a hollow truce. He speaks very bitterly of John who has, he alleges, intrigued to procure his banishment from Palestine. He also deals with the ordination of his brother Paulinian (for which see Letter LI.) and defends himself for having translated Origen's commentaries by adducing the example of Hilary of Poitiers. This letter should be compared with the Treatise "Against John of Jerusalem" in this volume. Its date is 399 a.d.
1. Your letter shews you to possess that heritage of the Lord of which when going to the Father he said to the apostles, "peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you," [2496] and to own the happiness described in the words, "blessed are the peace-makers." [2497] You coax as a father, you teach as a master, you enjoin as a bishop. You come to me not with a rod and severity but in a spirit of kindness, gentleness, and meekness. [2498] Your opening words echo the humility of Christ who saved men not with thunder and lightning [2499] but as a wailing babe in the manger and as a silent sufferer upon the cross. You have read the prediction made in one who was a type of Him, "Lord, remember David and all his meekness," [2500] and you know how it was fulfilled afterwards in Himself. "Learn of me," He said, "for I am meek and lowly in heart." [2501] You have quoted many passages from the sacred books in praise of peace, you have flitted like a bee over the flowery fields of scripture, you have culled with cunning eloquence all that is sweet and conducive to concord. I was already running after peace, but you have made me quicken my pace: my sails were set for the voyage but your exhortation has filled them with a stronger breeze. I drink in the sweet streams of peace not reluctantly and with aversion but eagerly and with open mouth.
2. But what can I do, I who can only wish for peace and have no power to bring it about? Even though the wish may win its recompense with God, its futility must still sadden him who cherishes it. When the apostle said, "as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men," [2502] he knew quite well that the realisation of peace depends upon the consent of two parties. The prophet truly cries "They say Peace, peace: and yet there is no peace." [2503] To overthrow peace by actions while professing it in words is not hard. To point out its advantages is one thing and to strive for it another. Men's speeches may be all for unity but their actions may enforce bondage. I wish for peace as much as others; and not only do I wish for it, I ask for it. But the peace which I want is the peace of Christ; a true peace, a peace without rancour, a peace which does not involve war, a peace which will not reduce opponents but will unite friends. How can I term domination peace? I must call things by their right names. Where there is hatred there let men talk of feuds; and where there is mutual esteem, there only let peace be spoken of. For my part I neither rend the church nor separate myself from the communion of the fathers. From my very cradle, I may say, I have been reared on Catholic milk; and no one can be a better churchman than one who has never been a heretic. But I know nothing of a peace that is without love or of a communion that is without peace. In the gospel I read:--"if thou bring thy gift to the altar and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee; leave there thy gift before the altar and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift." [2504] If then we may not offer gifts that are our own unless we are at peace with our brothers; how much less can we receive the body of Christ if we cherish enmity in our hearts? How can I conscientiously approach Christ's eucharist and answer the Amen [2505] if I doubt the charity of him who ministers it?
3. Hear me, I beg you with patience and do not take truthfulness for flattery. Is any man reluctant to communicate with you? Does any turn his face away when you hold out your hand? Does any at the holy banquet offer you the kiss of Judas? [2506] At your approach the monks instead of trembling rejoice. They race to meet you and leaving their dens in the desert are fain to master you by their humility. What compels them to come forth? Is it not their love for you? What draws together the scattered dwellers in the desert? Is it not the esteem in which they hold you? A parent ought to love his children; and not only a parent but a bishop ought to be loved by his children. Neither ought to be feared. There is an old saying: [2507] "whom a man fears he hates; and whom he hates, he would fain see dead." Accordingly, while for the young the holy scripture makes fear the beginning of knowledge, [2508] it also tells us that "perfect love casteth out fear." [2509] You exact no obedience from them; therefore the monks obey you. You offer them a kiss; therefore they bow the neck. You shew yourself a common soldier; therefore they make you their general. Thus from being one among many you become one above many. Freedom is easily roused if attempts are made to crush it. No one gets more from a free man than he who does not force him to be a slave. I know the canons of the church; I know what rank her ministers hold; and from men and books I have daily up to the present learned and gathered many things. The kingdom of the mild David was quickly dismembered by one who chastised his people with scorpions and fancied that his fingers were thicker than his father's loins. [2510] The Roman people refused to brook insolence even in a king. [2511] Moses was leader of the host of Israel; he brought ten plagues upon Egypt; sky, earth, and sea alike obeyed his commands: yet he is spoken of as "very meek above all the men which were" at that time "upon the face of the earth." [2512] He maintained his forty-years' supremacy because he tempered the insolence of office with gentleness and meekness. When he was being stoned by the people he made intercession for them; [2513] nay more he wished to be blotted out of God's book sooner than that the flock committed to him should perish. [2514] He sought to imitate the Shepherd who would, he knew, carry on his shoulders even the wandering sheep. "The good Shepherd"--they are the Lord's own words--"layeth down his life for the sheep." [2515] One of his disciples can wish to be anathema from Christ for his brethren's sake, his kinsmen according to the flesh who were Israelites. [2516] If then Paul can desire to perish that the lost may not be lost, how much should good parents not provoke their children to wrath [2517] or by too great severity embitter those who are naturally mild.
4. The limits of a letter compel me to restrain myself; otherwise, indignation would make me diffuse. In an epistle which its writer regards as conciliatory but which to me appears full of malice my opponent [2518] admits that I have never calumniated him or accused him of heresy. Why then does he calumniate me by spreading a rumour that I am infected with that awful malady and am in revolt against the Church? Why is he so ready to spare his real assailants and so eager to injure me who have done nothing to injure him? Before my brother's ordination he said nothing of any dogmatic difference between himself and pope Epiphanius. What then can have "forced" him--I use his own word--publicly to argue a point which no one had yet raised? One so full of wisdom as you knows well the danger of such discussions and that silence is in such cases the safest course; except, indeed, on some occasion which renders it imperative to deal with great matters. What ability and eloquence it must have needed to compress into a single sermon--as he boasts to have done [2519] --all the topics which the most learned writers have treated in detail in voluminous treatises! But this is nothing to me: it is for the hearers of the sermon to notice and for the writer of the letter to realize. But as for me he ought of his own accord to acquit me of bringing the charge against him. I was not present and did not hear the sermon. I was only one of the many, indeed hardly one of them; for while others were crying out I held my peace. Let us confront the accused and the accuser, and let us give credit to him whose services, life, and doctrine are seen to be the best.
5. You see, do you not, that I shut my eyes to many things and touch upon others only in the most cursory manner, hinting at what I suppose rather than saying out what I think.
I understand and approve your manoeuvres; [2520] how in the interests of the peace of the Church you stop your ears when you come within range of the Sirens. Moreover, trained as you have been from childhood in sacred studies, you know exactly what is meant by each expression which you use. You knowingly employ ambiguous terms and carefully balanced sentences so as not to condemn others [2521] or repudiate us. [2522] But it is not a pure faith and a frank confession which look for quibbles or circumlocutions. What is simply believed must be professed with equal simplicity. For my part I could cry out--though it were amid the swords and fires of Babylon, "why does the answer evade the question? why is there no frank, straightforward declaration?" From beginning to end all is shrinking, compromise, ambiguity: as though he were trying to walk on spikes of corn. His blood boils with eagerness for peace; yet he will not give a straightforward answer! others are free to insult him; for, when he is insulted, he does not venture to retaliate. I meantime hold my peace: for the present I shall let it be thought that I am too busy, or ignorant, or afraid; for how would he treat me were I to accuse him, if when I praise him--as he admits himself that I do--he secretly traduces me?
6. His whole letter is less an exposition of his faith than a mass of calumnies aimed at myself. Without any of those mutual courtesies which men may use towards each other without flattery, he takes up my name again and again, flouts it, and bandies it about as though I were blotted out of the book of the living. He thinks that he has beaten me black and blue with his letter; and that I live for the trifles at which he aims, I who from my boyhood have been shut up in a monastic cell, and have always made it my aim to be rather than to seem a good man. Some of us, it is true, he mentions with respect, but only that he may afterwards wound us more deeply. As if, forsooth, we too have no open secrets to reveal! One of his charges is that we have allowed a slave to be ordained. Yet he himself has clergymen of the same class, and he must have read of Onesimus who, being made regenerate by Paul in prison, [2523] from a slave became a deacon. Then he throws out that the slave in question was a common informer; and, lest he should be compelled to prove the charge, declares he has it from hearsay only! Why, if I had chosen to repeat the talk of the crowd and to listen to scandal-mongers, he would have learned before now that I too know what all the world knows and have heard the same stories as other people. He declares farther that ordination has been given to this slave as a reward for a slander spread abroad by him. Does not such cunning and subtlety appal one? And is there any answer to eloquence so overwhelming? Which is best, to spread a calumny or to suffer from one? To accuse a man whose love you may afterwards wish for, or to pardon a sinner? And is it more tolerable that a common informer should be made a consul than that he should be made an ædile? [2524] He knows what I pass over in silence and what I say; what I myself have heard and what--from the fear of Christ--I perhaps refuse to believe.
7. He charges me with having translated Origen into Latin. In this I do not stand alone for the confessor Hilary has done the same, and we are both at one in this that while we have rendered all that is useful, we have cut away all that was harmful. Let him read our versions for himself, if he knows how (and as he constantly converses and daily associates with Italians, [2525] I think he cannot be ignorant of Latin); or else, if he cannot quite take it in, let him use his interpreters and then he will come to know that I deserve nothing but praise for the work on which he grounds a charge against me. For, while I have always allowed to Origen his great merit as an interpreter and critic of the scriptures, I have invariably denied the truth of his doctrines. Is it I then that let him loose upon the crowd? Is it I that act sponsor to other preachers like him? No, for I know that a difference must be made between the apostles and all other preachers. The former always speak the truth; but the latter being men sometimes go astray. It would be a strange defence of Origen surely to admit his faults and then to excuse them by saying that other men have been guilty of similar ones! As if, when you cannot venture to defend a man openly, you may hope to shield him by imputing his mistake to a number of others! As for the six thousand volumes of Origen of which he speaks, it is impossible that any one should have read books which have never been written: and I for my part find it easier to suppose that this falsehood is due to the man who professes to have heard it rather than to him who is said to have told it. [2526]
8. Again he avers that my brother [2527] is the cause of the disagreement which has arisen, a man who is content to stay in a monastic cell and who regards the clerical office as onerous rather than honourable. And although up to this very day he has spoon-fed us with insincere protestations of peace, he has caused commotion in the minds of the western bishops [2528] by telling them that a mere youth, hardly more than a boy, has been ordained [2529] presbyter of Bethlehem in his own diocese. If this is the truth, all the bishops of Palestine must be aware of it. For the monastery of the reverend pope Epiphanius--called the old monastery--where my brother was ordained presbyter is situated in the district of Eleutheropolis [2530] and not in that of Ælia. [2531] Furthermore his age is well known to your Holiness; and as he has now attained to thirty years I apprehend that no blame can attach to him on that score. Indeed this particular age is stamped as full and complete by the mystery of Christ's assumed manhood. Let him call to mind the ancient law, and he will see that after his twenty-fifth year a Levite might be chosen to the priesthood; [2532] or if in this passage he prefers to follow the Hebrew he will find that candidates for the priesthood must be thirty years old. And that he may not venture to say that "old things are passed away; and, behold, all things are become new," [2533] let him hear the apostle's words to Timothy, "Let no man despise thy youth." [2534] Certainly when my opponent was himself ordained bishop, he was not much older than my brother is now. And if he argues that youth is no hindrance to a bishop but that it is to a presbyter because a young elder [2535] is a contradiction in terms, I ask him this question: Why has he himself ordained a presbyter of this age or younger still, and that too to minister in another man's church? But if he cannot be at peace with my brother unless he consents to submit and to renounce the bishop who has ordained him, he shews plainly that his object is not peace but revenge, and that he will not rest satisfied with the quietude of repose and peace unless he is able to inflict to the full every penalty that he now threatens. Had he himself ordained my brother, it would have made no difference to this latter. So dearly does he love seclusion that he would even then have continued to live quietly and would not have exercised his office. And should the bishop have seen fit to rend the church on that score, he would then have owed him nothing save the respect which is due to all who offer sacrifice. [2536]
9. So much for his prolix defence of himself or I should rather say his attack on me. In this letter I have only answered him briefly and cursorily that from what I have said he may perceive what I do not say, and may know that as I am a human being I am a rational animal and well able to understand his shrewdness, and that I am not so obtuse or brutish as to catch only the sound of his words and not their meaning. I now ask of you to pardon my chagrin and to allow that if it is arrogant to answer back, it is yet more arrogant to bring baseless charges. Yet my answer has indicated what I might have said rather than has actually said it. Why do men look for peace at a distance? and why do they wish to have it enforced by word of command? Let them shew themselves peacemakers, and peace will follow at once. Why do they use the name of your holiness to terrorize us, when your letter--strange contrast to their harsh and menacing words--breathes only peace and meekness? For that the letter which Isidore the presbyter has brought for me from you does make for peace and harmony I know by this, that these insincere professors of a wish for peace have refused to deliver it to me. Let them choose whichever alternative they please. Either I am a good man or I am a bad one. If I am a good one let them leave me in quiet: if I am a bad one, why do they desire to be in bad company? Surely my opponent has learnt by experience the value of humility. He who now tears asunder things which, formerly separate, he of his own will put together, proves that in severing now what he then joined, he is acting at the instigation of another. [2537]
10. Recently he sought and obtained a decree of exile against me, and I only wish that he had been able to carry it out, [2538] so that, as the will is imputed to him for the deed, so I too not in will only but in deed might wear the crown of exile. The church of Christ has been founded by shedding its own blood not that of others, by enduring outrage not by inflicting it. Persecutions have made it grow; martyrdoms have crowned it. Or if the Christians among whom I live are unique in their love of severity and know only how to persecute and not how to undergo persecution, there are Jews here, there are heretics professing various false doctrines, and in particular the foulest of all, I mean, Manichæism. Why is it that they do not venture to say a word against them? Why am I the only person they wish to drive into exile? Am I who communicate with the church the only person of whom it can be said that he rends the church? I put it to you, is it not a fair demand either that they should expel these others as well as myself, or that, if they keep them, they should keep me too? All the same they honour men by sending them into exile, for by so doing they separate them from the company of heretics. It is a monk, [2539] shame to say, who menaces monks and obtains decrees of exile against them; and that too a monk who boasts that he holds an apostolic chair. But the monastic tribe does not succumb to terrorism: it prefers to expose its neck to the impending sword rather than to allow its hands to be tied. Is not every monk an exile from his country? Is he not an exile from the whole world? Where is the need for the public authority, the cost of a rescript, the journeyings up and down the earth to obtain one? Let him but touch me with his little finger, and I will go into exile of myself. "The earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof." [2540] Christ is not shut up in any one spot.
11. Moreover when he writes that, though I seem to be separated from communion with him, I in reality hold communion with him through you and through the church of Rome: he need not go so far afield, for I am connected with him in the same way also here in Palestine. And lest even this should appear distant, in this village of Bethlehem I hold communion with his presbyters as much as I can. Thus it is clear that a private chagrin is not to be taken for the cause of the church, and that one man's choler, or even that of several stirred up by him, ought not to be styled the displeasure of the church. Accordingly I now repeat what I said at the beginning of my letter that I for my part am desirous of Christ's peace, that I pray for harmony, and that I request you to admonish him not to exact peace but to purpose it. Let him be satisfied with the pain which he has caused by the insults that he has inflicted upon me in the past. Let him efface old wounds by a little new charity. Let him shew himself what he was before, when of his own choice he bestowed upon me his esteem. Let his words no longer be tinged with a gall that flows from the heart of another. Let him do what he wishes himself, and not what others force him to wish. Either as a pontiff, let him exercise authority over all alike, or as a follower of the apostle, let him serve all for the salvation of all. [2541] If he will shew himself such, I am ready freely to yield and to hold out my arms; he will find me a friend and a kinsman, and will perceive that in Christ I am submissive to him as to all the saints. "Charity," writes the apostle, "suffereth long and is kind; charity envieth not;...is not puffed up...beareth all things, believeth all things." [2542] Charity is the mother of all virtues, and the apostle's words about faith, hope and charity [2543] are like that threefold cord which is not quickly broken. [2544] We believe, we hope, and through our faith and hope we are joined together in the bond of charity. [2545] It is for these virtues that I and others have left our homes, it is for these that we would live peaceably without any contention in the fields and alone; paying all due veneration to Christ's pontiffs--so long as they preach the right faith--not because we fear them as lords but because we honour them as fathers deferring also to bishops as bishops, but refusing to serve under compulsion, beneath the shadow of episcopal authority, men whom we do not choose to obey. I am not so much puffed up in mind as not to know what is due to the priests of Christ. For he who receives them, receives not them but Him, whose bishops they are. [2546] But let them be content with the honour which is theirs. Let them know that they are fathers and not lords, especially in relation to those who scorn the ambitions of the world and count peace and repose the best of all things. And may Christ who is Almighty God grant to your prayers that I and my opponent may be united not in a feigned and hollow peace but in true and sincere mutual esteem, lest biting and devouring one another we be consumed one of another. [2547] __________________________________________________________________
[2496] Joh. xiv. 27.
[2497] Matt. v. 9.
[2498] 1 Cor. iv. 21.
[2499] Cf. Heb. xii. 18.
[2500] Ps. cxxxii. 1, LXX.
[2501] Matt. xi. 29.
[2502] Rom. xii. 18.
[2503] Jer. xi. 14, LXX.
[2504] Matt. v. 23, 24.
[2505] 1 Cor. xiv. 16, where in the Greek giving of thanks' is eucharist.'
[2506] Matt. xxvi. 48, 49: the kiss of peace formed an integral part of the eucharistic office from primitive till mediæval times.
[2507] Attributed by Cicero to Ennius.
[2508] Prov. i. 7.
[2509] 1 Joh. iv. 18.
[2510] 1 Kings xii. 10.
[2511] Tarquin the Proud the last king of Rome was driven into exile because of his many acts of tyranny.
[2512] Nu. xii. 3.
[2513] Exod. xvii. 4.
[2514] Exod. xxxii. 31, 32.
[2515] Joh. x. 11, R.V.; Luke xv. 4, 5.
[2516] Rom. ix. 3, 4, R.V.
[2517] Eph. vi. 4.
[2518] John, Bishop of Jerusalem, who had accused Jerome of Origenism, a charge which was brought against himself by Epiphanius (see Letter LI.).
[2519] Jerome represents John as saying that he took advantage of a verse in the lesson "to preach on faith and all the dogmas of the Church" (c. Joh. Jer. ii.).
[2520] Jerome now addresses John of Jerusalem.
[2521] The Origenists.
[2522] The orthodox.
[2523] Philemon 10.
[2524] The highest and lowest offices in the Roman magistracy. Jerome insinuates that if the ordained slave was a common informer so also was John of Jerusalem.
[2525] A hit at Rufinus.
[2526] The statement that he had read 6000 volumes of Origen was attributed to Epiphanius by Rufinus and John of Jerusalem. Cf. Apol. c. Ruf. ii. c. 13.
[2527] Paulinian, who had been ordained by Epiphanius.
[2528] Sacerdotes; lit. sacrificing priests.'
[2529] Not by himself but by Epiphanius.
[2530] Otherwise Lydda, a town in the south of Judah at this time the seat of a bishopric.
[2531] Ælia Capitolina was the name given by Hadrian to the colony established by him on the site of Jerusalem.
[2532] Nu. iv. 3, LXX. A.V. follows the Hebrew.
[2533] 2 Cor. v. 17.
[2534] 1 Tim. iv. 12.
[2535] The word presbyter' means elder.
[2536] Here as frequently in Jerome the word sacerdos' is used to denote a bishop.
[2537] Probably Isidore, who had taken a view hostile to Jerome, and who at this time fell under the displeasure of Theophilus.
[2538] The execution of the decree was stopped by the sudden death of the imperial minister Rufinus.
[2539] John of Jerusalem.
[2540] Ps. xxiv. 1.
[2541] Cf. 1 Cor. ix. 19.
[2542] 1 Cor. xiii. 4-7.
[2543] 1 Cor. xiii. 13.
[2544] Eccl. iv. 12.
[2545] Cf. Col. iii. 14.
[2546] Cf. Joh. xiii. 20.
[2547] Gal. v. 15. __________________________________________________________________
Letter LXXXIII. From Pammachius and Oceanus.
A letter from Pammachius and Oceanus in which they express the perplexity into which they have been thrown by Rufinus's version of Origen's treatise, On First Principles (see Letter LXXX.) and request Jerome to make for them a literal translation of the work. Written in 399 or 400 a.d.
1. Pammachius and Oceanus to the presbyter Jerome, health.
A reverend brother has brought to us sheets containing a certain person's translation into Latin of a treatise by Origen--entitled peri archon. These contain many things which disturb our poor wits and which appear to us to be uncatholic. We suspect also that with a view of clearing the author many passages of his books have been removed which had they been left would have plainly proved the irreligious character of his teaching. We therefore request your excellency to be so good as to bestow upon this particular matter an attention which will benefit not only ourselves but all who reside in the city; we ask you to publish in your own language the abovementioned book of Origen exactly as it was brought out by the author himself; and we desire you to make evident the interpolations which his defender has introduced. You will also confute and overthrow all statements in the sheets which we have sent to your holiness that are ignorantly made or contradict the Catholic faith. The writer in the preface to his work has, with much subtlety but without mentioning your holiness's name, implied that he has done no more than complete a work which you had yourself promised, thus indirectly suggesting that you agree with him. Remove then the suspicions men cannot help feeling and confute your assailant; for, if you ignore his implications, people will say that you admit their truth. __________________________________________________________________
Letter LXXXIV. To Pammachius and Oceanus.
A calm letter in which Jerome defines and justifies his own attitude towards Origen, but unduly minimizes his early enthusiasm for him. He admires him in the same way that Cyprian admired Tertullian but does not in any way adopt his errors. He then describes his own studies and recounts his obligations to Apollinaris, Didymus, and a Jew named Bar-anina. The rest of the letter deals with the errors of Origen, the state of the text of his writings, and the eulogy of him composed by the martyr Pamphilus (the authenticity of which Jerome assails without any sufficient reason). The date of the letter is 400 a.d.
Jerome to the brothers Pammachius and Oceanus, with all good wishes.
1. The sheets that you send me [2548] cover me at once with compliments and confusion; for, while they praise my ability, they take away my sincerity in the faith. But as both at Alexandria and at Rome and, I may say, throughout the whole world good men have made it a habit to take the same liberties with my name, esteeming me only so far that they cannot bear to be heretics without having me of the number, I will leave aside personalities and only answer specific charges. For it is of no benefit to a cause to encounter railing with railing and to retaliate for attacks upon oneself by attacks upon one's opponents. We are commanded not to return evil for evil [2549] but to overcome evil with good, [2550] to take our fill of insults, and to turn the other cheek to the smiter. [2551]
2. It is charged against me that I have sometimes praised Origen. If I am not mistaken I have only done so in two places, in the short preface (addressed to Damasus) to his homilies on the Song of Songs and in the prologue to my book of Hebrew Names. In these passages do the dogmas of the church come into question? Is anything said of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost? or of the resurrection of the flesh? or of the condition and material of the soul? I have merely praised the simplicity of his rendering and commentary and neither the faith nor the dogmas of the Church come in at all. Ethics only are dealt with and the mist of allegory is dispelled by a clear explanation. I have praised the commentator but not the theologian, the man of intellect but not the believer, the philosopher but not the apostle. But if men wish to know my real judgement upon Origen; let them read my commentaries upon Ecclesiastes, let them go through my three books upon the epistle to the Ephesians: they will then see that I have always opposed his doctrines. How foolish it would be to eulogize a system so far as to endorse its blasphemy! The blessed Cyprian takes Tertullian for his master, as his writings prove; yet, delighted as he is with the ability of this learned and zealous writer he does not join him in following Montanus and Maximilla. [2552] Apollinaris is the author of a most weighty book against Porphyry, and Eusebius has composed a fine history of the Church; yet of these the former has mutilated Christ's incarnate humanity, [2553] while the latter is the most open champion of the Arian impiety. [2554] "Woe," says Isaiah, "unto them that call evil good and good evil; that put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter." [2555] We must not detract from the virtues of our opponents--if they have any praiseworthy qualities--but neither must we praise the defects of our friends. Each several case must be judged on its own merits and not by a reference to the persons concerned. While Lucilius is rightly assailed by Horace [2556] for the unevenness of his verses, he is equally rightly praised for his wit and his charming style.
3. In my younger days I was carried away with a great passion for learning, yet I was not like some presumptuous enough to teach myself. At Antioch I frequently listened to Apollinaris of Laodicea, and attended his lectures; yet, although he instructed me in the holy scriptures, I never embraced his disputable doctrine as to their meaning. At length my head became sprinkled with gray hairs so that I looked more like a master than a disciple. Yet I went on to Alexandria and heard Didymus. [2557] And I have much to thank him for: for what I did not know I learned from him, and what I knew already I did not forget. So excellent was his teaching. Men fancied that I had now made an end of learning. Yet once more I came to Jerusalem and to Bethlehem. What trouble and expense it cost me to get Baraninas [2558] to teach me under cover of night. For by his fear of the Jews he presented to me in his own person a second edition of Nicodemus. [2559] Of all of these I have frequently made mention in my works. The doctrines of Apollinaris and of Didymus are mutually contradictory. The squadrons of the two leaders must drag me in different directions, for I acknowledge both as my masters. If it is expedient to hate any men and to loath any race, I have a strange dislike to those of the circumcision. For up to the present day they persecute our Lord Jesus Christ in the synagogues of Satan. [2560] Yet can anyone find fault with me for having had a Jew as a teacher? Does a certain person dare to bring forward against me the letter I wrote to Didymus calling him my master? It is a great crime, it would seem, for me a disciple to give to one both old and learned the name of master. And yet when I ask leave to look at the letter which has been held over so long to discredit me at last, there is nothing in it but courteous language and a few words of greeting. Such charges are both foolish and frivolous. It would be more to the point to exhibit a passage in which I have defended heresy or praised some wicked doctrine of Origen. In the portion of Isaiah which describes the crying of the two seraphim [2561] he explains these to be the Son and the Holy Ghost; but have not I altered this hateful explanation into a reference to the two testaments? [2562] I have the book in my hand as it was published twenty years ago. In numbers of my works and especially in my commentaries I have, as occasion has offered, mangled this heathen school. And if my opponents allege that I have done more than anyone else to form a collection of Origen's books, I answer that I only wish I could have the works of all theological writers that by diligent study of them, I might make up for the slowness of my own wits. I have made a collection of his books, I admit; but because I know everything that he has written I do not follow his errors. I speak as a Christian to Christians: believe one who has tried him. His doctrines are poisonous, they are unknown to the Holy Scriptures, nay more, they do them violence. I have read Origen, I repeat, I have read him; and if it is a crime to read him, I admit my guilt: indeed, these Alexandrian writings have emptied my purse. If you will believe me, I have never been an Origenist: if you will not believe me, I have now ceased to be one. But if even this fails to convince you, you will compel me in self-defence to write against your favourite, so that, if you will not believe me when I disclaim him, you will have to believe me when I attack him. But I find readier credence when I go wrong than when I shew amendment. And this is not surprising, for my would-be friends suppose me a fellow-disciple with them in the arcana of their system. I am loath, they fancy, to profess esoteric doctrines before persons who according to them are brute-like and made of clay. For it is an axiom with them that pearls ought not to be lightly cast before swine, nor that which is holy given to the dogs. [2563] They agree with David when he says: "Thy word have I hid in mine heart that I might not sin against thee;" [2564] and when in another place he describes the righteous man as one "who speaketh truth with his neighbour," [2565] that is with those who "are of the household of faith." [2566] From these passages they conclude that those of us who as yet are uninitiated ought to be told falsehoods, lest, being still unweaned babes, we should be choked by too solid food. Now that perjury and lying enter into their mysteries and form a bond between them appears most clearly from the sixth book of Origen's Miscellanies, [2567] in which he harmonizes the Christian doctrine [2568] with the conceptions of Plato.
4. What must I do then? deny that I am of Origen's opinion? They will not believe me. Swear that I am not? They will laugh and say that I deal in lies. I will do the one thing which they dread. I will bring forward their sacred rites and mysteries, and will expose the cunning whereby they delude simple folk like myself. Perhaps, although they refuse credence to my voice when I deny, they may believe my pen when I accuse. Of one thing they are particularly apprehensive, and that is that their writings may some day be taken as evidence against their master. They are ready to make statements on oath and to disclaim them afterwards with an oath as false as the first. When asked for their signatures they use shifts and seek excuses. One says: "I cannot condemn what no one else has condemned." Another says: "No decision was arrived at on the point by the Fathers." [2569] It is thus that they appeal to the judgment of the world to put off the necessity of assenting to a condemnation. Another says with yet more assurance: "how am I to condemn men whom the council of Nicæa has left untouched? For the council which condemned Arius would surely have condemned Origen too, had it disapproved of his doctrines." They were bound in other words to cure all the diseases of the church at once and with one remedy; and by parity of reasoning we must deny the majesty of the Holy Ghost because nothing was said of his nature in that council. But the question was of Arius, not of Origen; of the Son, not of the Holy Ghost. The bishops at the council proclaimed their adherence to a dogma which was at the time denied; they said nothing about a difficulty which no one had raised. And yet they covertly struck at Origen as the source of the Arian heresy: for, in condemning those who deny the Son to be of the substance of the Father, they have condemned Origen as much as Arius. On the ground taken by these persons we have no right to condemn Valentine, [2570] Marcion, [2571] or the Cataphrygians, [2572] or Manichæus, none of whom are named by the council of Nicæa, and yet there is no doubt that in time they were prior to it. But when they find themselves pressed either to subscribe or to leave the Church, you may see some strange twisting. They qualify their words, they arrange them anew, they use vague expressions; so as, if possible, to hold both our confession and that of our opponents, to be called indifferently heretics and Catholics. As if it were not in the same spirit that the Delphian Apollo (or, as he is sometimes called, Loxias) gave his oracles to Croesus and to Pyrrhus; cheating with a similar device two men widely separated in time. [2573] To make my meaning clear I will give a few examples.
5. We believe, say they, in the resurrection of the body. This confession, if only it be sincere, is free from objection. But as there are bodies celestial and bodies terrestrial [2574] and as thin air and the æther are both according to their natures called bodies, they use the word body instead of the word flesh in order that an orthodox person hearing them say body may take them to mean flesh while a heretic will understand that they mean spirit. This is their first piece of craft, and if this is found out, they devise fresh wiles, and, pretending innocence themselves, accuse us of malice. As though they were frank believers they say, "We believe in the resurrection of the flesh." Now when they have said this, the ignorant crowd thinks it ought to be satisfied, particularly because these exact words are found in the creed. [2575] If you go on to question them farther, a buzz of disapproval is heard in the ring and their backers cry out: "You have heard them say that they believe in the resurrection of the flesh; what more do you want?" the popular favour is transferred from our side to theirs, and while they are called honest, we are looked on as false accusers. But if you set your face steadily and keeping a firm hold of their admission about the flesh, proceed to press them as to whether they assert the resurrection of that flesh which is visible and tangible, which walks and speaks, they first laugh and then signify their assent. And when we inquire whether the resurrection will exhibit anew the hair and the teeth, the chest and the stomach, the hands and the feet, and all the other members of the body, then no longer able to contain their mirth they burst out laughing and tell us that in that case we shall need barbers, and cakes, and doctors, and cobblers. Do we, they ask us in turn, believe that after the resurrection men's cheeks will still be rough and those of women smooth, and that sex will differentiate their bodies as it does at present? Then if we admit this, they at once deduce from our admission conclusions involving the grossest materialism. Thus, while they maintain the resurrection of the body as a whole, they deny the resurrection of its separate members.
6. The present is not a time to speak rhetorically against a perverse doctrine. Neither the rich vocabulary of Cicero nor the fervid eloquence of Demosthenes could adequately convey the warmth of my feeling, were I to attempt to expose the quibbles by which these heretics, while verbally professing a belief in the resurrection, in their hearts deny it. For their women finger their breasts, slap their chests, pinch their legs and arms, and say, "What will a resurrection profit us if these frail bodies are to rise again? No, if we are to be like angels, [2576] we shall have the bodies of angels." That is to say they scorn to rise again with the flesh and bones wherewith even Christ rose. [2577] Now suppose for a moment that in my youth I went astray and that, trained as I was in the schools of heathen philosophy, I was ignorant, in the beginning of my faith, of the dogmas of Christianity, and fancied that what I had read in Pythagoras and Plato and Empedocles was also contained in the writings of the apostle: Supposing, I say, that I believed all this, why do you yet follow the error of a mere babe and sucking child in Christ? Why do you learn irreligion of one who as yet knew not religion? After shipwreck one has still a plank to cling to; [2578] and one may atone for sin by a frank confession. You have followed me when I have gone astray; follow me also now that I have been brought back. In youth we have wandered; now that we are old let us mend our ways. Let us unite our tears and our groans; let us weep together, and return to the Lord our Maker. [2579] Let us not wait for the repentance of the devil; for this is a vain anticipation and one that will drag us into the deep of hell. Life must be sought or lost here. If I have never followed Origen, it is in vain that you seek to discredit me: if I have been his disciple, imitate my penitence. You have believed my confession; credit also my denial.
7. But it will be said, "If you knew these things, why did you praise him in your works?" I should praise him today but that you and men like you praise his errors. I should still find his talent attractive, but that some people have been attracted by his impiety. "Read [2580] all things," says the apostle, "hold fast that which is good." [2581] Lactantius in his books and particularly in his letters to Demetrian altogether denies the subsistence of the Holy Spirit, and following the error of the Jews says that the passages in which he is spoken of refer to the Father or to the Son and that the words holy spirit' merely prove the holiness of these two persons in the Godhead. But who can forbid me to read his Institutes--in which he has written against the Gentiles with much ability--simply because this opinion of his is to be abhorred? Apollinaris [2582] has written excellent treatises against Porphyry, and I approve of his labours, although I despise his doctrine in many points because of its foolishness. If you too for your parts will but admit that Origen errs in certain things I will not say another syllable. Acknowledge that he thought amiss concerning the Son, and still more amiss concerning the Holy Spirit, point out the impiety of which he has been guilty in speaking of men's souls as having fallen from heaven, and shew that, while in word he asserts the resurrection of the flesh, he destroys the force of this language by other assertions. As, for instance, that, after many ages and one "restitution of all things," [2583] it will be the same for Gabriel as for the devil, for Paul as for Caiaphas, for virgins as for prostitutes. When once you have rejected these misstatements and have parted them with your censor's wand from the faith of the Church, I may read what is left with safety, and having first taken the antidote need no longer dread the poison. For instance it will do me no harm to say as I have said, "Whereas in his other books Origen has surpassed all other writers, in commenting on the Song of Songs he has surpassed himself"; nor will I fear to face the words with which formerly in my younger days I spoke of him as a doctor of the churches. [2584] Will it be pretended, that I was bound to accuse a man whose works I was translating by special request? that I was bound to say in my preface, "This writer whose books I translate is a heretic: beware of him, reader, read him not, flee from the viper: or, if you are bent on reading him, know that the treatises which I have translated have been garbled by heretics and wicked men; yet you need not fear, for I have corrected all the places which they have corrupted," that in other words I ought to have said: "the writer that I translate is a heretic, but I, his translator, am a Catholic." The fact is that you and your party in your anxiety to be straightforward, ingenuous, and honest, have paid too little regard to the precepts of rhetoric and to the devices of oratory. For in admitting that his books On First Principles are heretical and in trying to lay the blame of this upon others, you raise difficulties for your readers; you induce them to examine the whole life of the author and to form a judgment on the question from the remainder of his writings. I on the other hand have been wise enough to emend silently what I wished to emend: thus by ignoring the crime I have averted prejudice from the criminal. Doctors tell us that serious maladies ought not to be subjected to treatment, but should be left to nature, lest the remedies applied should intensify the disease. It is now almost one hundred and fifty years since Origen died at Tyre. [2585] Yet what Latin writer has ever ventured to translate his books On the Resurrection and On First Principles, his Miscellanies [2586] and his Commentaries or as he himself calls them his Tomes? [2587] Who has ever cared by so infamous a work to cover himself with infamy? I am not more eloquent than Hilary or truer to the faith than Victorinus who both have rendered his Homilies [2588] not in exact versions but in independent paraphrases. Recently also Ambrose appropriated his Six Days' Work, [2589] but in such a way that it expressed the views of Hippolytus and Basil rather than of Origen. You profess to take me for your model, and blind as moles in relation to others you scan me with the eyes of gazelles. Well, had I been ill-disposed towards Origen, I might have translated these very books so as to make his worst writings known to Latin readers; but this I have never done; and, though many have asked me, I have always refused. For it has never been my habit to crow over the mistakes of men whose talents I admire. Origen himself, were he still alive, would soon fall out with you his would-be patrons and would say with Jacob: "Ye have troubled me to make me to stink among the inhabitants of the land." [2590]
8. Does any one wish to praise Origen? Let him praise him as I do. From his childhood he was a great man, and truly a martyr's son. [2591] At Alexandria he presided over the school of the church, succeeding a man of great learning the presbyter Clement. So greatly did he abhor sensuality that, out of a zeal for God but yet one not according to knowledge, [2592] he castrated himself with a knife. Covetousness he trampled under foot. He knew the scriptures by heart and laboured hard day and night to explain their meaning. He delivered in church more than a thousand sermons, and published innumerable commentaries which he called tomes. These I now pass over, for it is not my purpose to catalogue his writings. Which of us can read all that he has written? and who can fail to admire his enthusiasm for the scriptures? If some one in the spirit of Judas the Zealot [2593] brings up to me his mistakes, he shall have his answer in the words of Horace:
'Tis true that sometimes Homer sleeps, but then
He's not without excuse:
The fault is venial, for his work is long. [2594]
Let us not imitate the faults of one whose virtues we cannot equal. Other men have erred concerning the faith, both Greeks and Latins, but I must not mention their names lest I should be supposed to defend Origen not by his own merits but by the errors of others. This, you will say, is to accuse them and not to excuse him. You would be right, if I had declared him not to have erred, or if I had professed a belief that the apostle Paul or an angel from heaven [2595] ought to be listened to in a depravation of the faith. But as it is seeing I frankly admit him to be wrong, I may read him on the same terms as I read others, because if he is wrong so also are they. But you may say, If error is common to many, why do you assail him alone? I answer, because he alone is praised by you as an apostle. Take away your exaggerated love for him, and I am ready to take away the greatness of my dislike. While you gather other men's faulty statements out of their books merely to defend Origen in his error, you extol this latter to the sky and will not allow that he has erred at all. Whosoever you are who are thus preaching new doctrines, I beseech you, spare the ears of the Romans, spare the faith of a church which an apostle has praised. [2596] Why after four hundred years do you try to teach us Romans doctrines of which until now we have known nothing? Why do you publicly proclaim opinions which Peter and Paul [2597] refused to profess? Until now no such teaching has been heard of, and yet the world has become christian. For my part I will hold fast in my old age the faith wherein I was born again in my boyhood. [2598] They speak of us as claytowners, [2599] made out of dirt, brutish and carnal, because, say they, we refuse to receive the things of the spirit; but of course they themselves are citizens of Jerusalem and their mother is in heaven. [2600] I do not despise the flesh in which Christ was born and rose again, or scorn the mud which, baked into a clean vessel, reigns in heaven. And yet I wonder why they who detract from the flesh live after the flesh, [2601] and cherish and delicately nurture that which is their enemy. Perhaps indeed they wish to fulfil the words of scripture: "love your enemies and bless them that persecute you." [2602] I love the flesh, but I love it only when it is chaste, when it is virginal, when it is mortified by fasting: I love not its works but itself, that flesh which knows that it must be judged, and therefore dies as a martyr for Christ, which is scourged and torn asunder and burned with fire.
9. The folly also of their contention that certain heretics and ill-disposed persons have tampered with Origen's writings may be shewn thus. Could any person be more wise, more learned, or more eloquent than were Eusebius and Didymus, Origen's supporters? Of these the former in the six volumes of his Apology [2603] asserts that Origen is of the same mind with himself; while the latter, though he tries to excuse his errors, admits that he has made them. Not being able to deny what he finds written, he endeavours to explain it away. It is one thing to say that additions have been made by heretics, but another to maintain that heretical statements are commendable. Origen's case would be unique if his writings were falsified all over the world and if in one day by an edict like that of Mithridates [2604] all the truth were shorn from his volumes. Even supposing that some one treatise of his has been tampered with, can it be possible that all his works, published as they were at different times and places, have been corrupted? Origen himself in a letter written to Fabian, bishop of Rome, [2605] expresses penitence for having made erroneous statements, and charges Ambrose [2606] with over haste in making public what was meant only for private circulation. And yet to this day his disciples search for shifts to prove that all that excites disapprobation in his writings is due not to him but to others.
10. Moreover, when they speak of Pamphilus as one who praised Origen, I am personally much obliged to them for accounting me worthy to be calumniated with that martyr. For if, sirs, you tell me that Origen's books have been tampered with by his enemies to bring them into discredit; why may not I in my turn allege that his friends and followers have attributed to Pamphilus a volume composed by themselves to vindicate their master from disrepute by the testimony of a martyr? Lo and behold, you yourselves correct in Origen's books passages which (according to you) he never wrote: and yet you are surprised if a man is said to have published a book which as a matter of fact he did not publish. But while your statements can easily be brought to the test by an appeal to Origen's published works; as Pamphilus has published nothing else, it is easier for calumny to fix a book upon him. For shew me any other work of Pamphilus; you will nowhere find any, this is his only one. How then can I know that it is by Pamphilus? You will tell me, that the style and tone ought to inform me. Well, I shall never believe that a man so learned has dedicated the first fruits of his talent to defend doubtful and discredited positions. The very name of an apology which the treatise bears implies a previous charge made; for nothing is defended that is not first attacked. I will now bring forward but a single argument, one, however, the force of which only folly and effrontery can deny. The treatise attributed to Pamphilus contains nearly the first thousand lines of Eusebius's sixth book in defence of Origen. [2607] Yet in the remaining parts of his work the writer brings forward passages by which he seeks to prove that Origen was a Catholic. Now Eusebius and Pamphilus were in such thorough harmony with each other that they seemed to have but one soul between them, and one even went so far as to adopt the other's name. [2608] How then could they have disagreed so fundamentally on this point, Eusebius in all his works proving Origen to be an Arian, and Pamphilus describing him as a supporter of the Nicene council, which had not yet been held? It is evident from this consideration that the book belongs not to Pamphilus but to Didymus or somebody else, who having cut off the head of Eusebius's sixth book supplied the other members himself. But I am willing to be generous and to allow that the book is written by Pamphilus, only by Pamphilus not yet a martyr. For he must have written the book before he underwent martyrdom. And why, you will say, was he accounted worthy of martyrdom? Surely that he might efface his error by a martyr's death, and wash away his one fault by shedding his blood. How many martyrs there have been all the world over who before their deaths have been the slaves of sins! Are we then to palliate the sins because those who committed them have afterwards become martyrs?
11. This reply to your letter, my most loving brothers, I have dictated in all haste; and, overcoming my scruples, I have taken up my pen against a man whose ability I once eulogized. I would sooner, indeed, risk my reputation than my faith. My friends have placed me in the awkward dilemma that if I say nothing I shall be held guilty, and if I offer a defence I shall be accounted an enemy. Both alternatives are hard; but of the two I will choose that which is the least so. A quarrel can be made up, but blasphemy can find no forgiveness. I leave to your judgment to discover how much labour I have expended in translating the books On First Principles; for on the one hand if one alters anything from the Greek the work becomes less a version than a perversion; and on the other hand a literal adherence to the original by no means tends to preserve the charm of its eloquence. __________________________________________________________________
[2548] i.e. Rufinus's version of Origen's treatise, On First Principles, with the Preface, translated in vol. iii. of this series. See also Letters LXXX. and LXXXI.
[2549] 1 Thess. v. 15.
[2550] Rom. xii. 21.
[2551] Matt. v. 39.
[2552] Of these the two founders of Montanism the first was a Phrygian of the second century who professed to be the special organ of the Holy Ghost while the second was a female disciple who claimed to exercise the gift of prophecy in furtherance of his aims.
[2553] Dimidiatam Christi introduxit oeconomiam. Apollinaris taught that in Christ the divine personality supplied the place of a human soul. In his view, therefore, Christ ceased to be "very man."
[2554] Eusebius, although he sided with the Arians, always claimed to be orthodox. However, as Newman says, "his acts are his confession."
[2555] Isa. v. 20.
[2556] Hor. S. 1. x. 1-4.
[2557] See Letter L. § 2.
[2558] From this Jew Jerome took lessons in Hebrew during the earlier years of his life at Bethlehem. From time to time he also consulted other Jewish scholars.
[2559] Joh. iii. 2.
[2560] Cf. Rev. ii. 9.
[2561] Isa. vi. 2.
[2562] Cf. Letter XVIII. § 14.
[2563] Matt. vii. 6.
[2564] Ps. cxix. 11.
[2565] Ps. xv. 2, 3 from memory.
[2566] Gal. vi. 10.
[2567] stromateis , lit. = tapestries.' See note on Letter LXX. § 4.
[2568] The doctrine alluded to is probably that of the Trinity.
[2569] i.e. the Bishops present at Nicæa.
[2570] The founder of a Gnostic sect in the second century. He taught first in Egypt and afterwards in Rome.
[2571] See note on Letter XLVIII. § 2.
[2572] The Montanists were so called because the headquarters of their sect were at Pepuza a small village in Phrygia.
[2573] Croesus when he asked whether he should resist Cyrus was told that, if he did so, he would overthrow a mighty kingdom, a prophecy fulfilled in his own destruction; while Pyrrhus long afterwards received an equally evasive answer in the words, "Pyrrhus the Sons of Rome may well defeat."
[2574] 1 Cor. xv. 40.
[2575] Article XI. of the Apostles' Creed speaks in the original forms of the resurrection not of "the body" but of "the flesh:" and it is still found in this shape in the Anglican office for the visitation of the sick.
[2576] Cf. Matt. xxii. 30.
[2577] Cf. Luke xxiv. 39.
[2578] A favourite metaphor with Jerome to describe the nature of Christian penitence.
[2579] Ps. xcv. 6, Vulg.
[2580] A.V. prove.'
[2581] 1 Thess. v. 21.
[2582] See note on § 2 above.
[2583] Acts iii. 21.
[2584] See Jerome's preface to his version of Origen's Homilies on Ezekiel: and his preface to his own Treatise on Hebrew Names. See also Letter XXXIII.
[2585] Origen died at Tyre about the year 255 a.d.
[2586] See note on Letter LXX. § 4.
[2587] tomoi.
[2588] Tractatus.
[2589] Hexaëmeron: an account of the creation is meant.
[2590] Gen. xxxiv. 30.
[2591] His father Leonides suffered martyrdom in the persecution of Severus.
[2592] Rom. x. 2.
[2593] i.e. Judas the Gaulonite whose fanatical rising against the Romans is mentioned in Acts v. 37.
[2594] Hor. A. P. 359, 360.
[2595] Cf. Gal. i. 8.
[2596] Rom. i. 8.
[2597] The (traditional) founders of the Roman Church.
[2598] Jerome was baptized at Rome about the year 367 a.d.
[2599] Pelusiotæ, men of Pelusium, supposed to be derived from pelos, "clay." See Jerome's Comm. on Jer. xxix. 14-20.
[2600] Gal. iv. 26.
[2601] See the description of Rufinus in Letter CXXV. 18.
[2602] Matt. v. 44 from memory.
[2603] This treatise the joint work of Eusebius and his friend Pamphilus has perished. Part of the Latin version of Rufinus still remains. Jerome at this time erroneously supposed that the two friends had written separate works in defence of Origen. (See De VV. Ill. c. 75, 81, in vol. iii. of this series.)
[2604] In accordance with this edict (promulgated in 88 b.c.) all the Romans in Pontus were massacred in one day.
[2605] This letter is no longer extant.
[2606] A wealthy Alexandrian, who employed shorthand writers to take down Origen's lectures. Euseb. Eccl. Hist. B. vi. c. 23.
[2607] If the text is sound here Jerome is again misled by supposing that Eusebius and Pamphilus had written separate books in defence of Origen.
[2608] Eusebius calls himself Eusebius Pamphili, that is, the friend of Pamphilus.' __________________________________________________________________
Letter LXXXV. To Paulinus.
Paulinus had asked Jerome two questions, (1) how can certain passages of scripture (Exod. vii. 13; Rom. ix. 16) be reconciled with Free Will? and (2) Why are the children of believers said to be holy (1 Cor. vii. 14) apart from baptismal grace? For the first of these questions Jerome refers Paulinus to his version (newly made) of Origen's treatise, On First Principles. For the second he quotes the explanation of Tertullian. Written in 400 a.d.
1. Your words urge me to write to you but your eloquence deters me from doing so. For as a letter-writer you are almost as good as Tully. You complain that my letters are short and unpolished: this is not due to carelessness but to fear of you, lest writing to you at greater length I should but send you more sentences to find fault with. Moreover, to make a clean breast of it to a good man like you, just about the time the vessels sail for the west, so many letters are demanded of me at once that, if I were to reply to all my correspondents, I should be unable to accomplish my task. Hence it happens that, neglecting the niceties of composition and not revising the work of my secretaries, I dictate whatever first comes into my head. Thus when I write to you I regard you as a friend and not as a critic.
2. Your letter propounds two questions, the first, why God hardened Pharaoh's heart, and why the apostle said: "So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy;" [2609] and other things which appear to do away with free will: the second, how those are holy who are born of believing, that is, of baptized parents, [2610] seeing that without the gift of grace afterwards received and kept they cannot be saved.
3. Your first question is most ably answered by Origen in his treatise on First Principles which, at the request of my friend Pammachius, I have recently translated. This task has occupied me so fully that I am unable to keep my word with you and must again postpone the sending my commentary on Daniel. Indeed, distinguished and devoted to me as Pammachius is, had he been alone in his request, I should have deferred it to another time, but, as it was, almost all our brothers at Rome urged the same demand declaring that many persons were in danger, and that some even accepted Origen's heretical teaching. I have found myself forced therefore to translate a book in which there is more of bad than of good, and to keep to this rule that I should neither add nor subtract but should preserve in Latin in its integrity the true sense of the Greek. You will be able to borrow a copy of my version from the aforesaid brother, though in your case the Greek will serve quite as well; neither should you, who can drink from the fountain head, turn to the muddy streamlets supplied by my poor wits.
4. Moreover, as I am speaking to an educated man, well versed both in the sacred scriptures and in secular literature, I desire to give your excellency this note of warning. Do not suppose that I am a clumsy buffoon [2611] who condemn everything that Origen has written,--as his injudicious friends falsely assert--or that I have changed my mind as suddenly as the philosopher Dionysius. [2612] The fact is that I repudiate merely his objectionable dogmas. For I know that one curse hangs over those who call evil good and over those who call good evil, over those who put bitter for sweet, and over those who put sweet for bitter. [2613] Who would go so far in praise of another man's teaching as to acquiesce in blasphemy?
5. Your second question is discussed by Tertullian in his books on Monogamy [2614] where he declares that the children of believers are called holy because they are as it were candidates for the faith and have suffered no pollution from idolatry. Consider also that the vessels of which we read in the tabernacle are called holy and everything else required for the ceremonial worship: although in strictness of speech there can be nothing holy except creatures which know of and worship God. But it is a scriptural usage sometimes to give the name of holy to those who are clean, or who have been purified, or who have made expiation. For instance, it is written of Bathsheba that she was made holy [2615] from her uncleanness, [2616] and the temple itself is called the holy place.
6. I beg that you will not silently in your mind accuse me either of vanity or of insincerity. God bears me witness in my conscience that the unavoidable circumstances mentioned above drew me back when I was just going to grapple with my commentary; and you know that what is done when the mind is pre-occupied is never well done. I gladly accept the cap that you have sent me, a mark, though small, of no small affection and just the thing to keep an old man's head warm. I am delighted alike with the gift and with the giver. __________________________________________________________________
[2609] Rom. ix. 16.
[2610] 1 Cor. vii. 14.
[2611] Cf. Hor. S. II. viii. 21.
[2612] Dionysius of Heraclea called the renegade because he abandoned the Stoic for the Cyrenaic school.
[2613] Isa. v. 20.
[2614] Ad. Ux. ii. 2.
[2615] A.V. purified.'
[2616] 2 Sam. xi. 4. __________________________________________________________________
Letter LXXXVI. To Theophilus.
Jerome congratulates Theophilus on the success of his crusade against Origenism, and speaks of the good work done in Palestine by his emissaries Priscus and Eubulus. He then (by a singular change in his sentiments) asks Theophilus to forgive John of Jerusalem for having unwittingly received an excommunicated Egyptian. The date of the Letter is 400 a.d.
Jerome to the most blessed Pope Theophilus. I have recently received despatches from your blessedness setting right your long silence and summoning me to return to my duty. So, though the reverend brothers Priscus and Eubulus have been slow in bringing me your letters, yet, as they are now hastening in the ardour of faith from end to end of Palestine and scattering and driving into their holes the basilisks of heresy, I write a few lines to congratulate you on your success. The whole world glories in your victories. An exultant crowd of all nations gazes on the standard of the cross raised by you at Alexandria and upon the shining trophies which mark your triumph over heresy. Blessings on your courage! blessings on your zeal! You have shewn that your long silence has been due to policy and not to inclination. I speak quite openly to your reverence. I grieved to find you too forbearing, and, knowing nothing of the course shaped by the pilot, I yearned for the destruction of those abandoned men. But, as I now see, you have had your hand raised and, if you have delayed to strike, it has only been that you might strike harder. As regards the welcome given to a certain person, [2617] you have no reason to be vexed with the prelate of this city; [2618] for as you gave no instructions on the point in your letter, it would have been rash in him to decide a case of which he knew nothing. Still I think that he would neither wish nor venture to annoy you in any way. __________________________________________________________________
[2617] Doubtless some Egyptian monk or ecclesiastic placed under ban by Theophilus on account of Origenism.
[2618] John of Jerusalem. He had probably, like Rufinus, been reconciled to Jerome, and seems to have taken no part in the subsequent quarrel between Jerome and Rufinus. __________________________________________________________________
Letter LXXXVII. From Theophilus to Jerome.
Theophilus informs Jerome that he has expelled the Origenists from the monasteries of Nitria, and urges him to shew his zeal for the faith by writing against the prevalent heresy. The date of the letter is 400 a.d.
Theophilus, bishop, to the well-beloved and most loving brother, the presbyter Jerome. The reverend bishop Agatho with the well-beloved deacon Athanasius is accredited to you with tidings relating to the church. When you learn their import I feel no doubt but that you will approve my resolution and will exult in the church's victory. For we have cut down with the prophet's sickle [2619] certain wicked fanatics who were eager to sow broadcast in the monasteries of Nitria the heresy of Origen. We have remembered the warning words of the apostle, "rebuke with all authority." [2620] Do you therefore on your part, as you hope to receive a share in this reward, make haste to bring back with scriptural discourses those who have been deceived. It is our desire, if possible, to guard in our days not only the Catholic faith and the rules of the church, but the people committed to our charge, and to give a quietus to all strange doctrines. __________________________________________________________________
[2619] Joel iii. 13.
[2620] Tit. ii. 15. __________________________________________________________________
Letter LXXXVIII. To Theophilus.
Replying to the preceding letter Jerome again congratulates Theophilus on the success of his efforts to put down Origenism, and informs him that they have already borne fruit as far west as Italy. He then asks him for the decrees of his council (held recently at Alexandria). The date of the letter is 400 a.d.
Jerome to the most blessed pope Theophilus. The letter of your holiness has given me a twofold pleasure, partly because it has had for its bearers those reverend and estimable men, the bishop Agatho and the deacon Athanasius, and partly because it has shewn your zeal for the faith against a most wicked heresy. The voice of your holiness has rung throughout the world, and to the joy of all Christ's churches the poisonous suggestions of the devil have been silenced. The old serpent [2621] hisses no longer, but, writhing and disembowelled, lurks in dark caverns unable to bear the shining of the sun. I have already, before the writing of your letter, sent missives to the West pointing out to those of my own language some of the quibbles employed by the heretics. I hold it due to the special providence of God that you should have written to the pope Anastasius [2622] at the same time as myself, and should thus without knowing it have been the means of confirming my testimony. Now that you have directly urged me to do so, I shall shew myself more zealous than ever to recall from their error simple souls both near and far. Nor shall I hesitate, if needful, to incur odium with some, for we ought to please God rather than men: [2623] although indeed they have been much more forward to defend their heresy than I and others have been to attack it. At the same time I beg that if you have any synodical decrees bearing upon the subject you will forward them to me, that, strengthened with the authority of so great a prelate, I may open my mouth for Christ with more freedom and confidence. The presbyter Vincent has arrived from Rome two days ago and humbly salutes you. He tells me again and again that Rome and almost the whole of Italy owe their deliverance after Christ to your letters. Shew diligence therefore, most loving and most blessed pope, and whenever opportunity offers write to the bishops of the West not to hesitate--in your own words [2624] --to cut down with a sharp sickle the sprouts of evil. __________________________________________________________________
[2621] Rev. xii. 9.
[2622] Bishop of Rome, a.d. 398-402.
[2623] Acts v. 29.
[2624] See the preceding letter. __________________________________________________________________
Letter LXXXIX. From Theophilus to Jerome.
This letter (probably earlier in date than the three preceding) commends to Jerome the monk Theodore, who, having come from Rome to declare the condemnation of Origenism by the church there, had visited the monasteries of Nitria now purged of heresy, and wished before returning to the West to see the Holy Places as well. The date of the letter is 400 a.d.
Theophilus, bishop, to the well-beloved lord and most loving brother the presbyter Jerome. I have learned the project of the monk Theodore--which will be known also to your holiness--and I approve of it. Having to leave us on a voyage for Rome, he has been unwilling to set out without first visiting and embracing as his own flesh and blood you and the reverend brothers who are with you in the monastery. You will, I am sure, rejoice in the news with which he will meet your welcome, that quiet has been restored to the church here. He has seen all the monasteries of Nitria and can tell you of the continence and meekness of the monks in them; as also how the Origenists have been put down and scattered, how peace has been restored to the church, and how the discipline of the Lord is being upheld. How gladly would I see the mask of hypocrisy laid aside by those also who near you are said to be undermining the truth. I feel obliged to write thus because the brothers in your neighbourhood [2625] are mistaken concerning them. Wherefore take heed to yourselves and shun men of this type; even as it is written:--"if any man bring not to you the faith of the church, bid him not God speed." [2626] It may, indeed, be superfluous to write thus to you who can recall the erring from their error, yet no harm is done when those careful for the faith admonish even the wise and learned. Kindly salute in my name all the brothers who are with you. __________________________________________________________________
[2625] The bishops of Palestine are meant. See Letter XCII.
[2626] 2 John 10, inexactly quoted. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XC. From Theophilus to Epiphanius.
Theophilus writes to Epiphanius to convoke a council in Cyprus for the condemnation of Origenism and asks him to transmit to Constantinople by a trustworthy messenger a copy of its decrees together with the synodical letter of Theophilus himself. His anxiety about this last point is caused by the news that certain of the excommunicated monks have set sail for Constantinople to lay their case before the bishop, John Chrysostom. The date of the letter is 400 a.d.
Theophilus to his well-beloved lord, brother, and fellow-bishop Epiphanius.
The Lord has said to his prophet "See, I have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms to root out and to pull down and to destroy and...to build and to plant." [2627] In every age he bestows the same grace upon his church, that His Body [2628] may be preserved intact and that the poison of heretical opinions may nowhere prevail over it. And now also do we see the words fulfilled. For the church of Christ "not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing" [2629] has with the sword of the gospel cut down the Origenist serpents crawling out of their caves, and has delivered from their deadly contagion the fruitful host of the monks of Nitria. I have compressed a short account of my proceedings (it was all that time would allow) into the general letter [2630] which I have addressed indiscriminately to all. As your excellency has often fought in contests of the kind before me, it is your present duty to strengthen the hands of those who are in the field and to gather together to this end the bishops of your entire island. [2631] A synodical letter should be sent to myself and the bishop of Constantinople [2632] and to any others whom you think fit; that by universal consent Origen himself may be expressly condemned and also the infamous heresy of which he was the author. I have learned that certain calumniators of the true faith, named Ammonius, Eusebius, and Euthymius, filled with a fresh access of enthusiasm in behalf of the heresy, have taken ship for Constantinople, to ensnare with their deceits as many new converts as they can and to confer anew with the old companions of their impiety. Let it be your care, therefore, to set forth the course of the matter to all the bishops throughout Isauria and Pamphylia and the rest of the neighbouring provinces: moreover, if you think fit, you can add my letter, so that all of us gathered together in one spirit with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ may deliver these men unto Satan for the destruction of the impiety which possesses them. [2633] And to ensure the speedy arrival of my despatches at Constantinople, send a diligent messenger, one of the clergy (as I send fathers from the monasteries of Nitria with others also of the monks, learned men and continent) that when they arrive they may be able themselves to relate what has been done. Above all I beg of you to offer up earnest prayers to the Lord that we may be able in this contest also to gain the victory; for no small joy has filled the hearts of the people both in Alexandria and throughout all Egypt, because a few men have been expelled from the Church that the body of it might be kept pure. Salute the brothers who are with you. The people [2634] with us salute you in the Lord. __________________________________________________________________
[2627] Jer. i. 10.
[2628] Eph. i. 23.
[2629] Eph. v. 27.
[2630] Letter XCII.
[2631] Cyprus.
[2632] i.e. John Chrysostom who had been raised to the patriarchate in 398 a.d.
[2633] Cf. 1 Cor. v. 4, 5.
[2634] Plebs. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XCI. From Epiphanius to Jerome.
An exultant letter from Epiphanius in which he describes the success of his council (convened at the suggestion of Theophilus), sends Jerome a copy of its synodical letter. and urges him to go on with his work of translating into Latin documents bearing on the Origenistic controversy. Written in 400 a.d.
To his most loving lord, son, and brother, the presbyter Jerome, Epiphanius sends greeting in the Lord. The general epistle written [2635] to all Catholics belongs particularly to you; for you, having a zeal for the faith against all heresies, particularly oppose the disciples of Origen and of Apollinaris whose poisoned roots and deeply planted impiety almighty God has dragged forth into our midst, that having been unearthed at Alexandria they might wither throughout the world. For know, my beloved son, that Amalek has been destroyed root and branch and that the trophy of the cross has been set up on the hill of Rephidim. [2636] For as when the hands of Moses were held up on high Israel prevailed, so the Lord has strengthened His servant Theophilus to plant His standard against Origen on the altar of the church of Alexandria; that in him might be fulfilled the words: "Write this for a memorial, for I will utterly put out Origen's heresy from under heaven together with that Amalek himself." And that I may not appear to be repeating the same things over and over and thus to be making my letter tedious, I send you the actual missive written to me that you may know what Theophilus has said to me, and what a great blessing the Lord has granted to my last days in approving the principles which I have always proclaimed by the testimony of so great a prelate. I fancy that by this time you also have published something and that, as I suggested in my former letter to you on this subject, you have elaborated a treatise for readers of your own language. For I hear that certain of those who have made shipwreck [2637] have come also to the West, and that, not content with their own destruction, they desire to involve others in death with them; as if they thought that the multitude of sinners lessens the guilt of sin and the flames of Gehenna do not grow in size in proportion as more logs are heaped upon them. With you and by you we send our best greetings to the reverend brothers who are with you in the monastery serving God. __________________________________________________________________
[2635] By Theophilus.
[2636] Cf. Exod. xvii. 8-14.
[2637] 1 Tim. i. 19. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XCII. The Synodical Letter of Theophilus to the Bishops of Palestine and of Cyprus.
The synodical letter of the council held at Alexandria in 400 a.d. to condemn Origenism. Written originally in Greek it was translated into Latin by Jerome.
This letter has been sent in identical terms to the Bishops of Palestine and to those of Cyprus. We reproduce the headings of both copies. That to the Bishops of Palestine commences thus: To the well-beloved lords, brothers, and fellow-bishops, Eulogius, John, Zebianus, Auxentius, Dionysius, Gennadius, Zeno, Theodosius, Dicterius, Porphyry, Saturninus, Alan, Paul, Ammonius, Helianus, Eusebius, the other Paul, and to all the Catholic bishops gathered together at the dedication festival of Ælid, [2638] Theophilus [sends] greeting in the Lord.
The Cyprians he addresses thus: To the well-beloved lords, brothers, and fellow-bishops, Epiphanius, Marcianus, Agapetus, Boethius, Helpidius, Entasius, Norbanus, Macedonius. Aristo, Zeno, Asiaticus, Heraclides, the other Zeno, Cyriacus, and Aphroditus, Theophilus [sends] greeting in the Lord.
The scope of the letter is as follows:
We have personally visited the monasteries of Nitria and find that the Origenistic heresy has made great ravages among them. It is accompanied by a strange fanaticism: men even maim themselves or cut out their tongues [2639] to show how they despise the body. I find that some men of this kind have gone from Egypt into Syria and other countries [2640] where they speak against us and the truth.
The books of Origen have been read before a council of bishops and unanimously condemned. The following are his chief errors, mainly found in the peri 'Archon.
1. The Son compared with us is truth, but compared with the Father he is falsehood.
2. Christ's kingdom will one day come to an end.
3. We ought to pray to the Father alone, not to the Son.
4. Our bodies after the resurrection will be corruptible and mortal.
5. There is nothing perfect even in heaven; the angels themselves are faulty, and some of them feed on the Jewish sacrifices.
6. The stars are conscious of their own movements, and the demons know the future by their courses.
7. Magic, if real, is not evil.
8. Christ suffered once for men; he will suffer again for the demons.
The Origenists have tried to coerce me; they have even stirred up the heathen by denouncing the destruction of the Serapeum; and have sought to withdraw from the ecclesiastical jurisdiction two persons accused of grave crimes. One of these is the woman [2641] who was wrongly placed on the list of widows by Isidore, the other Isidore himself. He is the standard-bearer of the heretical faction, and his wealth supplies them with unbounded resources for their violent enterprises. They have tried to murder me; they seized the monastery church at Nitria, and for a time prevented the bishops from entering and the offices from being performed. Now, like Zebul (Beelzebub) they go to and fro on the earth.
I have done them no harm; I have even protected them. But I would not let an old friendship (with Isidore) impair our faith and discipline. I implore you to oppose them wherever they come, and to prevent them from unsettling the brethren committed to you. __________________________________________________________________
[2638] In Æliæ encæniis. Ælia was the name given by the emperor Hadrian to the Roman colony founded by him on the site of Jerusalem.
[2639] The monk Ammonius is said to have done this and similar things.
[2640] Some fifty, led by Ammonius and his three brothers (called the Long or Tall Monks) went first to Syria and then to Constantinople.
[2641] This woman is said to have brought a charge of immorality against Isidore and then suppressed it on being placed by him on the list of widows who received the church's bounty. Isidore was now eighty years old, and there were many causes for the quarrel. Palladius, Socrates and Sozomen intimate that the real cause of Theophilus' enmity to his old confidant Isidore was that Isidore knew secrets unfavorable to Theophilus. He afterwards went with the Long Monks to Constantinople, where Chrysostom by his reception of them incurred the hatred of Theophilus. See Jerome Letter CXIII. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XCIII. From the Bishops of Palestine to Theophilus.
The synodical letter of the council of Jerusalem sent to Theophilus in reply to the preceding. The translation as before is due to Jerome.
The following is an epitome: We have done all that you wished, and Palestine is almost wholly free from the taint of heresy. We wish that not only the Origenists, but Jews, Samaritans and heathen also, could be put down. Origenism does not exist among us. The doctrines you describe are never heard here. We anathematize those who hold such doctrines, and also those of Apollinaris, and shall not receive anyone whom you excommunicate. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XCIV. From Dionysius to Theophilus.
In this letter (translated into Latin by Jerome) Dionysius, bishop of Lydda, praises Theophilus for his signal victories over Origenism and urges him to continue his efforts against that heresy. Written in 400 a.d. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XCV. From Pope Anastasius to Simplicianus.
At the request of Theophilus Anastasius, bishop of Rome, writes to Simplicianus, bishop of Milan, to inform him that he, like Theophilus, has condemned Origen whose blasphemies have been brought under his notice by Eusebius of Cremona. This latter had shown him a copy of the version by Rufinus of the treatise On First Principles. The date of the letter is 400 a.d.
To his lord and brother Simplicianus, Anastasius.
1. It is felt right that a shepherd should bestow great care and watchfulness upon his flock. In like manner too from his lofty tower the careful watchman keeps a lookout day and night on behalf of the city. So also in the hour of tempest when the sea is dangerous the shipmaster suffers keen anxiety [2642] lest the gale and the violence of the waves shall dash his vessel upon the rocks. It is with similar feelings that the reverend and honourable Theophilus our brother and fellow-bishop, ceases not to watch over the things that make for salvation, that God's people in the different churches may not by reading Origen run into awful blasphemies.
2. Being informed, then, by a letter of the aforesaid bishop, we inform your holiness that we in like manner who are set in the city of Rome in which the prince of the apostles, the glorious Peter, first founded the church and then by his faith strengthened it; to the end that no man may contrary to the commandment read these books which we have mentioned, have condemned the same; and have with earnest prayers urged the strict observance of the precepts which God and Christ have inspired the evangelists to teach. We have charged men to remember the words of the venerable apostle Paul, prophetic and full of warning:--"if any than preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed." [2643] Holding fast, therefore, this precept, we have intimated that everything written in days gone by Origen that is contrary to our faith is even by us rejected and condemned.
3. I send this letter to your holiness by the hand of the presbyter Eusebius, [2644] a man filled with a glowing faith and love for the Lord. He has shewn to me some blasphemous chapters which made me shudder as I passed judgement on them. If Origen has put forth any other writings, you are to know that they and their author are alike condemned by me. The Lord have you in safe keeping, my lord and brother deservedly held in honour. __________________________________________________________________
[2642] Magister hactenus navis hora tempestatis æquoris et periculo magnam patitur animi jactationem.
[2643] Gal. i. 8.
[2644] See the account of the meeting of Eusebius with Rufinus in the presence of Simplicianus. Ruf. Apol. i. 19. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XCVI. From Theophilus.
A translation by Jerome of Theophilus's paschal letter for the year 401 a.d. In it Theophilus refutes at length the heresies of Apollinaris and Origen. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XCVII. To Pammachius and Marcella.
With this letter Jerome sends to Pammachius and Marcella a translation of the paschal letter issued by Theophilus for the year 402 a.d. together with the Greek original. He takes the precaution of sending this latter because in the preceding year complaints have been made that his translation was not accurate. Written in 402 a.d.
1. Once more with the return of spring I enrich you with the wares of the east and send the treasures of Alexandria to Rome: as it is written, "God shall come from the south and the Holy One from Mount Paran, even a thick shadow." [2645] (Hence in the Song of Songs the joyous cry of the bride: "I sat down under his shadow with great delight and his fruit was sweet to my taste." [2646] ) Now truly is Isaiah's prophecy fulfilled: "In that day shall there be an altar to the Lord in the land of Egypt." [2647] "Where sin hath abounded, grace doth much more abound." [2648] They who fostered the infant Christ now with glowing faith defend Him in His manhood; and they who once saved Him from the hands of Herod are ready to save Him again from this blasphemer and heretic. Demetrius expelled Origen from the city of Alexander; but he is now thanks to Theophilus outlawed from the whole world. Like him to whom Luke has dedicated the Acts of the Apostles [2649] this bishop derives his name from his love to God. Where now is the wriggling serpent? [2650] In what plight does the venomous viper find himself? His is
A human face with wolfish body joined. [2651]
Where now is that heresy which crawled hissing through the world and boasted that both the bishop Theophilus and I were partisans of its errors? Where now is the yelping of those shameless hounds who, to win over the simple minded, falsely proclaimed our adherence to their cause? Crushed by the authority and eloquence of Theophilus they are now like demon-spirits only able to mutter and that from out of the earth. [2652] For they know nothing of Him who, as He comes from above, [2653] speaks only of the things that are above.
2. Would that this generation of vipers [2654] would either honestly accept our doctrines, or else consistently defend its own; that we might know whom we are to esteem and whom we are to shun. As it is they have invented a new kind of penitence, hating us as enemies though they dare not deny our faith. What, I ask, is this chagrin of theirs which neither time nor reason seems able to cure? When swords flash in battle and men fall and blood flows in streams, hostile hands are often clasped in amity and the fury of war is exchanged for an unexpected peace. The partisans of this heresy alone can make no terms with churchmen; for they repudiate mentally the verbal assent that is extorted from them. When their open blasphemy is made plain to the public ear, and when they perceive their hearers clamouring against them; then they assume an air of simplicity, declaring that they hear such doctrines for the first time and that they have no previous knowledge of them as taught by their master. And when you hold their writings in your hand, they deny with their lips what their hands have written. Why, sirs, need you beset the Propontis, [2655] shift your abode, wander through different countries, and rend with foaming mouths a distinguished prelate of Christ and his followers? If your recantations are sincere, you should replace your former zeal for error with an equal zeal for the faith. Why do you patch together from this quarter and from that these rags of cursing? And why do you rail at the lives of men whose faith you cannot resist? Do you cease to be heretics because according to you sundry persons believe us to be sinners? And does impiety cease to disfigure your lips because you can point to scars on our ears? So long as you have a leopard's spots and an Ethiopian's skin, [2656] how can it help your perfidy to know that I too am marked by moles? See, Pope Theophilus is freely allowed to prove Origen a heretic; and the disciples do not defend the master's words. They merely pretend that they have been altered by heretics and tampered with, like the works of many other writers. Thus they seek to maintain his cause not by their own belief but by other people's errors. So much I would say against heretics who in the fury of their unjust hostility to us betray the secret feelings of their minds and prove the incurable nature of the wound that rankles in their breasts.
3. But you are Christians and the lights of the senate: accept therefore from me the letter which I append. [2657] This year I send it both in Greek and Latin that the heretics may not again lyingly assert that I have made many changes in and additions to the original. I have laboured hard, I must confess, to preserve the charm of the diction by a like elegance in my version: and keeping within fixed lines and never allowing myself to deviate from these I have done my best to maintain the smooth flow of the writer's eloquence and to render his remarks in the tone in which they are made. Whether I have succeeded in these two objects or not I must leave to your judgement to determine. As for the letter itself you are to know that it is divided into four parts. In the first Theophilus exhorts believers to celebrate the Lord's passover; in the second he slays Apollinarius; in the third he demolishes Origen; while in the fourth and last he exhorts the heretics to penitence. If the polemic against Origen should seem to you to be inadequate, you are to remember that Origenism was fully treated in last year's letter; [2658] and that this which I have just translated, as it aims at brevity, was not bound to dwell farther upon the subject. Besides, its terse and clear confession of faith directed against Apollinarius is not lacking in dialectical subtlety. Theophilus first wrests the dagger from his opponent's hand, and then stabs him to the heart.
4. Entreat the Lord, therefore, that a composition which has won favour in Greek may not fail to win it also in Latin, and that what the whole East admires and praises Rome may gladly take to her heart. And may the chair of the apostle Peter by its preaching confirm the preaching of the chair of the evangelist Mark. Popular rumour, indeed, has it that the blessed pope Anastasius is of like zeal and spirit with Theophilus and that he has pursued the heretics even to the dens in which they lurk. Moreover his own letters inform us that he condemns in the West what is already condemned in the East. May he live for many years [2659] so that the reviving sprouts of heresy may in course of time by his efforts be made to wither and to die. __________________________________________________________________
[2645] Hab. iii. 3, LXX.
[2646] Cant. ii. 3.
[2647] Isa. xix. 19.
[2648] Rom. v. 20.
[2649] Acts i. 1.
[2650] The allusion is to Rufinus.
[2651] Virg. A. iii. 426.
[2652] Cf. 1 Sam. xxviii. 13.
[2653] Joh. viii. 23.
[2654] Matt. iii. 7.
[2655] Many of the Egyptian Origenists had fled to Constantinople and thrown themselves on the kindness of the patriarch John Chrysostom.
[2656] Jer. xiii. 23.
[2657] Letter XCVIII.
[2658] Letter XCVI.
[2659] He was already dead when these words were written. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XCVIII. From Theophilus.
A translation by Jerome of Theophilus's paschal letter for the year 402 a.d. Like that of the previous year (Letter XCVI.) it deals mainly with the heresies of Apollinarius and Origen. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XCIX. To Theophilus.
Jerome forwards to Theophilus a translation of the latter's paschal letter for 404 a.d. and apologizes for his delay in sending it, on the ground that ill-health and grief for the death of Paula have prevented him from doing literary work. The date of the letter is 404 a.d.
To the most blessed pope Theophilus, Jerome.
1. From the time that I received the letters of your holiness together with the paschal treatise [2660] until the present day I have been so harassed with sorrow and mourning, with anxiety, and with the different reports which have come from all quarters concerning the condition of the church, that I have hardly been able to turn your volume into Latin. You know the truth of the old saying, grief chokes utterance; and it is more than ever true when to sickness of the mind is added sickness of the body. I have now been five days in bed in a burning fever: consequently it is only by using the greatest haste that I can dictate this very letter. But I wish to shew your holiness in a few words what pains I have taken, in translating your treatise, to transfer the charm of diction which marks every sentence in the original, and to make the style of the Latin correspond in some degree with that of the Greek.
2. At the outset you use the language of philosophy; and, without appearing to particularize, you slay one [2661] while you instruct all. In the remaining sections--a task most difficult of accomplishment--you combine philosophy and rhetoric and draw together for us Demosthenes and Plato. What diatribes you have launched against self-indulgence! What eulogies you have bestowed upon the virtue of continence! With what secret stores of wisdom you have spoken of the interchange of day and night, the course of the moon, the laws of the sun, the nature of our world; always appealing to the authority of scripture lest in a paschal treatise you should appear to have borrowed anything from secular sources! To be brief, I am afraid to praise you for these things lest I should be charged with offering flattery. The book is excellent both in the philosophical portions and where, without making personal attacks, you plead the cause which you have espoused. Wherefore, I beseech you, pardon me my backwardness: I have been so completely overcome by the falling asleep of the holy and venerable Paula [2662] that except my translation of this book I have hitherto written nothing bearing on sacred subjects. As you yourself know, I have suddenly lost the comforter whom I have led about with me, not--the Lord is my witness--to minister to my own needs, but for the relief and refreshment of the saints upon whom she has waited with all diligence. Your holy and estimable daughter Eustochium (who refuses to be comforted for the loss of her mother), and with her all the brotherhood humbly salute you. Kindly send me the books which you say that you have lately written that I may translate them or, if not that, at least read them. Farewell in Christ. __________________________________________________________________
[2660] Letter C.
[2661] Origen.
[2662] See Letter CVIII. __________________________________________________________________
Letter C. From Theophilus.
A translation by Jerome of Theophilus's paschal letter for 404 a.d. In it Theophilus inculcates penitence for sinners, recommends the practice of fasting and condemns the errors of Origen. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CI. From Augustine.
A letter from Augustine in which he denies that he has written a book against Jerome and sent it to Rome but confesses that he has criticized him although without giving details. Written in 402 a.d. This and the following letters are to be found in the First Volume of the First Series of this Library. Letter LXVII. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CII. To Augustine.
Jerome's reply to the foregoing in which, it has been said, friendship struggles with suspicion and resentment. He warns Augustine not to provoke him, lest old as he is he may prove a dangerous opponent; and encloses part of his reply to the apology of Rufinus. Written in 402 a.d. See Augustine, vol. i., Letter XXXIX. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CIII. To Augustine.
A letter of introduction in which Jerome commends the deacon Præsidius to the kind offices of Augustine. Written in 403 a.d. See Augustine, vol. i., Letter XXXIX. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CIV. From Augustine.
In this letter Augustine (1) commends to Jerome the deacon Cyprian, (2) explains how it is that his first letter (Letter LVI.) has miscarried, and (3) urges Jerome to base his scriptural labours not on the Hebrew text but on the version of the LXX. The date of the letter is 403 a.d. See Augustine, vol. i., Letter LXXI. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CV. To Augustine.
Jerome's answer to the foregoing. He complains that even now he has not received Augustine's letter and asks him to send him a copy of it. Popular rumour, he declares, credits Augustine with a deliberate suppression of the letter in order that he may seem to win an easy victory over his opponent. Jerome next deals with Augustine's denial of having made a written attack upon him and concludes by refusing for the present all discussion of points of criticism. The date of the letter is 403 a.d. See Augustine, vol. i., Letter LXXII. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CVI. To Sunnias and Fretela.
A long letter in which Jerome answers a number of questions put to him by two sojourners in Getica, Sunnias and Fretela. Diligent students of scripture, these men were at a loss to understand the frequent differences between Jerome's Latin psalter of 383 a.d. (the so-called Roman psalter) and the LXX, and accordingly sent him a long list of passages with a request for explanation. Jerome in his reply deals fully with all these and points out to his correspondents that they have been misled by their edition of the LXX. (the "common" edition) which differs widely from the critical text of Origen as given in the Hexapla and used by himself. He also expresses his joy to find that even among the Getæ the scriptures are now diligently studied. The date of the letter is about 403 a.d. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CVII. To Laeta.
Laeta, the daughter-in-law of Paula, having written from Rome to ask Jerome how she ought to bring up her infant daughter (also called Paula) as a virgin consecrated to Christ, Jerome now instructs her in detail as to the child's training and education. Feeling some doubt, however, as to whether the scheme proposed by him will be practicable at Rome, he advises Laeta in case of difficulty to send Paula to Bethlehem where she will be under the care of her grandmother and aunt, the elder Paula and Eustochium. Laeta subsequently accepted Jerome's advice and sent the child to Bethlehem where she eventually succeeded Eustochium as head of the nunnery founded by her grandmother. The date of the letter is 403 a.d.
1. The apostle Paul writing to the Corinthians and instructing in sacred discipline a church still untaught in Christ has among other commandments laid down also this: "The woman which hath an husband that believeth not, and if he be pleased to dwell with her, let her not leave him. For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the believing wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the believing husband; else were your children unclean but now are they holy." [2663] Should any person have supposed hitherto that the bonds of discipline are too far relaxed and that too great indulgence is conceded by the teacher, let him look at the house of your father, a man of the highest distinction and learning, but one still walking in darkness; and he will perceive as the result of the apostle's counsel sweet fruit growing from a bitter stock and precious balsams exhaled from common canes. You yourself are the offspring of a mixed marriage; but the parents of Paula--you and my friend Toxotius--are both Christians. Who could have believed that to the heathen pontiff Albinus should be born--in answer to a mother's vows--a Christian granddaughter; that a delighted grandfather should hear from the little one's faltering lips Christ's Alleluia, and that in his old age he should nurse in his bosom one of God's own virgins? Our expectations have been fully gratified. The one unbeliever is sanctified by his holy and believing family. For, when a man is surrounded by a believing crowd of children and grandchildren, he is as good as a candidate for the faith. I for my part think that, had he possessed so many Christian kinsfolk when he was a young man, he might then have been brought to believe in Christ. For though he may spit upon my letter and laugh at it, and though he may call me a fool or a madman, his son-in-law did the same before he came to believe. Christians are not born but made. For all its gilding the Capitol is beginning to look dingy. Every temple in Rome is covered with soot and cobwebs. The city is stirred to its depths and the people pour past their half-ruined shrines to visit the tombs of the martyrs. The belief which has not been accorded to conviction may come to be extorted by very shame.
2. I speak thus to you, Laeta my most devout daughter in Christ, to teach you not to despair of your father's salvation. My hope is that the same faith which has gained you your daughter may win your father too, and that so you may be able to rejoice over blessings bestowed upon your entire family. You know the Lord's promise: "The things which are impossible with men are possible with God." [2664] It is never too late to mend. The robber passed even from the cross to paradise. [2665] Nebuchadnezzar also, the king of Babylon, recovered his reason, even after he had been made like the beasts in body and in heart and had been compelled to live with the brutes in the wilderness. [2666] And to pass over such old stories which to unbelievers may well seem incredible, did not your own kinsman Gracchus whose name betokens his patrician origin, when a few years back he held the prefecture of the City, overthrow, break in pieces, and shake to pieces the grotto of Mithras [2667] and all the dreadful images therein? Those I mean by which the worshippers were initiated as Raven, Bridegroom, Soldier, Lion, Perseus, Sun, Crab, and Father? Did he not, I repeat, destroy these and then, sending them before him as hostages, obtain for himself Christian baptism?
Even in Rome itself paganism is left in solitude. They who once were the gods of the nations remain under their lonely roofs with horned-owls and birds of night. The standards of the military are emblazoned with the sign of the Cross. The emperor's robes of purple and his diadem sparkling with jewels are ornamented with representations of the shameful yet saving gibbet. Already the Egyptian Serapis has been made a Christian; [2668] while at Gaza Marnas [2669] mourns in confinement and every moment expects to see his temple overturned. From India, from Persia, from Ethiopia we daily welcome monks in crowds. The Armenian bowman has laid aside his quiver, the Huns learn the psalter, the chilly Scythians are warmed with the glow of the faith. The Getæ, [2670] ruddy and yellow-haired, carry tent-churches about with their armies: and perhaps their success in fighting against us may be due to the fact that they believe in the same religion.
3. I have nearly wandered into a new subject, and while I have kept my wheel going, my hands have been moulding a flagon when it has been my object to frame an ewer. [2671] For, in answer to your prayers and those of the saintly Marcella, I wish to address you as a mother and to instruct you how to bring up our dear Paula, who has been consecrated to Christ before her birth and vowed to His service before her conception. Thus in our own day we have seen repeated the story told us in the Prophets, [2672] of Hannah, who though at first barren afterwards became fruitful. You have exchanged a fertility bound up with sorrow for offspring which shall never die. For I am confident that having given to the Lord your first-born you will be the mother of sons. It is the first-born that is offered under the Law. [2673] Samuel and Samson are both instances of this, as is also John the Baptist who when Mary came in leaped for joy. [2674] For he heard the Lord speaking by the mouth of the Virgin and desired to break from his mother's womb to meet Him. As then Paula has been born in answer to a promise, her parents should give her a training suitable to her birth. Samuel, as you know, was nurtured in the Temple, and John was trained in the wilderness. The first as a Nazarite wore his hair long, drank neither wine nor strong drink, and even in his childhood talked with God. The second shunned cities, wore a leathern girdle, and had for his meat locusts and wild honey. [2675] Moreover, to typify that penitence which he was to preach, he was clothed in the spoils of the hump-backed camel. [2676]
4. Thus must a soul be educated which is to be a temple of God. It must learn to hear nothing and to say nothing but what belongs to the fear of God. It must have no understanding of unclean words, and no knowledge of the world's songs. Its tongue must be steeped while still tender in the sweetness of the psalms. Boys with their wanton thoughts must be kept from Paula: even her maids and female attendants must be separated from worldly associates. For if they have learned some mischief they may teach more. Get for her a set of letters made of boxwood or of ivory and called each by its proper name. Let her play with these, so that even her play may teach her something. And not only make her grasp the right order of the letters and see that she forms their names into a rhyme, but constantly disarrange their order and put the last letters in the middle and the middle ones at the beginning that she may know them all by sight as well as by sound. Moreover, so soon as she begins to use the style upon the wax, and her hand is still faltering, either guide her soft fingers by laying your hand upon hers, or else have simple copies cut upon a tablet; so that her efforts confined within these limits may keep to the lines traced out for her and not stray outside of these. Offer prizes for good spelling and draw her onwards with little gifts such as children of her age delight in. And let her have companions in her lessons to excite emulation in her, that she may be stimulated when she sees them praised. You must not scold her if she is slow to learn but must employ praise to excite her mind, so that she may be glad when she excels others and sorry when she is excelled by them. Above all you must take care not to make her lessons distasteful to her lest a dislike for them conceived in childhood may continue into her maturer years. The very words which she tries bit by bit to put together and to pronounce ought not to be chance ones, but names specially fixed upon and heaped together for the purpose, those for example of the prophets or the apostles or the list of patriarchs from Adam downwards as it is given by Matthew and Luke. In this way while her tongue will be well-trained, her memory will be likewise developed. Again, you must choose for her a master of approved years, life, and learning. A man of culture will not, I think, blush to do for a kinswoman or a highborn virgin what Aristotle did for Philip's son when, descending to the level of an usher, he consented to teach him his letters. [2677] Things must not be despised as of small account in the absence of which great results cannot be achieved. The very rudiments and first beginnings of knowledge sound differently in the mouth of an educated man and of an uneducated. Accordingly you must see that the child is not led away by the silly coaxing of women to form a habit of shortening long words or of decking herself with gold and purple. Of these habits one will spoil her conversation and the other her character. She must not therefore learn as a child what afterwards she will have to unlearn. The eloquence of the Gracchi is said to have been largely due to the way in which from their earliest years their mother spoke to them. [2678] Hortensius [2679] became an orator while still on his father's lap. Early impressions are hard to eradicate from the mind. When once wool has been dyed purple who can restore it to its previous whiteness? An unused jar long retains the taste and smell of that with which it is first filled. [2680] Grecian history tells us that the imperious Alexander who was lord of the whole world could not rid himself of the tricks of manner and gait which in his childhood he had caught from his governor Leonides. [2681] We are always ready to imitate what is evil; and faults are quickly copied where virtues appear inattainable. Paula's nurse must not be intemperate, or loose, or given to gossip. Her bearer must be respectable, and her foster-father of grave demeanour. When she sees her grandfather, she must leap upon his breast, put her arms round his neck, and, whether he likes it or not, sing Alleluia in his ears. She may be fondled by her grandmother, may smile at her father to shew that she recognizes him, and may so endear herself to everyone, as to make the whole family rejoice in the possession of such a rosebud. She should be told at once whom she has for her other grandmother and whom for her aunt; and she ought also to learn in what army it is that she is enrolled as a recruit, and what Captain it is under whose banner she is called to serve. Let her long to be with the absent ones and encourage her to make playful threats of leaving you for them.
5. Let her very dress and garb remind her to Whom she is promised. Do not pierce her ears or paint her face consecrated to Christ with white lead or rouge. Do not hang gold or pearls about her neck or load her head with jewels, or by reddening her hair make it suggest the fires of gehenna. Let her pearls be of another kind and such that she may sell them hereafter and buy in their place the pearl that is "of great price." [2682] In days gone by a lady of rank, Prætextata by name, at the bidding of her husband Hymettius, the uncle of Eustochium, altered that virgin's dress and appearance and arranged her neglected hair after the manner of the world, desiring to overcome the resolution of the virgin herself and the expressed wishes of her mother. But lo in the same night it befell her that an angel came to her in her dreams. With terrible looks he menaced punishment and broke silence with these words, Have you presumed to put your husband's commands before those of Christ? Have you presumed to lay sacrilegious hands upon the head of one who is God's virgin? Those hands shall forthwith wither that you may know by torment what you have done, and at the end of five months you shall be carried off to hell. [2683] And farther, if you persist still in your wickedness, you shall be bereaved both of your husband and of your children.' All of which came to pass in due time, a speedy death marking the penitence too long delayed of the unhappy woman. So terribly does Christ punish those who violate His temple, [2684] and so jealously does He defend His precious jewels. I have related this story here not from any desire to exult over the misfortunes of the unhappy, but to warn you that you must with much fear and carefulness keep the vow which you have made to God.
6. We read of Eli the priest that he became displeasing to God on account of the sins of his children; [2685] and we are told that a man may not be made a bishop if his sons are loose and disorderly. [2686] On the other hand it is written of the woman that "she shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with chastity." [2687] If then parents are responsible for their children when these are of ripe age and independent; how much more must they be responsible for them when, still unweaned and weak, they cannot, in the Lord's words, "discern between their right hand and their left:" [2688] --when, that is to say, they cannot yet distinguish good from evil? If you take precautions to save your daughter from the bite of a viper, why are you not equally careful to shield her from "the hammer of the whole earth"? [2689] to prevent her from drinking of the golden cup of Babylon? to keep her from going out with Dinah to see the daughters of a strange land? [2690] to save her from the tripping dance and from the trailing robe? No one administers drugs till he has rubbed the rim of the cup with honey; [2691] so, the better to deceive us, vice puts on the mien and the semblance of virtue. Why then, you will say, do we read:--"the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son," but "the soul that sinneth it shall die"? [2692] The passage, I answer, refers to those who have discretion, such as he of whom his parents said in the gospel:--"he is of age...he shall speak for himself." [2693] While the son is a child and thinks as a child and until he comes to years of discretion to choose between the two roads to which the letter of Pythagoras points, [2694] his parents are responsible for his actions whether these be good or bad. But perhaps you imagine that, if they are not baptized, the children of Christians are liable for their own sins; and that no guilt attaches to parents who withhold from baptism those who by reason of their tender age can offer no objection to it. The truth is that, as baptism ensures the salvation of the child, this in turn brings advantage to the parents. Whether you would offer your child or not lay within your choice, but now that you have offered her, you neglect her at your peril. I speak generally for in your case you have no discretion, having offered your child even before her conception. He who offers a victim that is lame or maimed or marked with any blemish is held guilty of sacrilege. [2695] How much more then shall she be punished who makes ready for the embraces of the king a portion of her own body and the purity of a stainless soul, and then proves negligent of this her offering?
7. When Paula comes to be a little older and to increase like her Spouse in wisdom and stature and in favour with God and man, [2696] let her go with her parents to the temple of her true Father but let her not come out of the temple with them. Let them seek her upon the world's highway amid the crowds and the throng of their kinsfolk, and let them find her nowhere but in the shrine of the scriptures, [2697] questioning the prophets and the apostles on the meaning of that spiritual marriage to which she is vowed. Let her imitate the retirement of Mary whom Gabriel found alone in her chamber and who was frightened, [2698] it would appear, by seeing a man there. Let the child emulate her of whom it is written that "the king's daughter is all glorious within." [2699] Wounded with love's arrow let her say to her beloved, "the king hath brought me into his chambers." [2700] At no time let her go abroad, lest the watchmen find her that go about the city, and lest they smite and wound her and take away from her the veil of her chastity, [2701] and leave her naked in her blood. [2702] Nay rather when one knocketh at her door [2703] let her say: "I am a wall and my breasts like towers. [2704] I have washed my feet; how shall I defile them?" [2705]
8. Let her not take her food with others, that is, at her parents' table; lest she see dishes she may long for. Some, I know, hold it a greater virtue to disdain a pleasure which is actually before them, but I think it a safer self-restraint to shun what must needs attract you. Once as a boy at school I met the words: It is ill blaming what you allow to become a habit.' [2706] Let her learn even now not to drink wine "wherein is excess." [2707] But as, before children come to a robust age, abstinence is dangerous and trying to their tender frames, let her have baths if she require them, and let her take a little wine for her stomach's sake. [2708] Let her also be supported on a flesh diet, lest her feet fail her before they commence to run their course. But I say this by way of concession not by way of command; because I fear to weaken her, not because I wish to teach her self-indulgence. Besides why should not a Christian virgin do wholly what others do in part? The superstitious Jews reject certain animals and products as articles of food, while among the Indians the Brahmans and among the Egyptians the Gymnosophists subsist altogether on porridge, rice, and apples. If mere glass repays so much labour, must not a pearl be worth more labour still? [2709] Paula has been born in response to a vow. Let her life be as the lives of those who were born under the same conditions. If the grace accorded is in both cases the same, the pains bestowed ought to be so too. Let her be deaf to the sound of the organ, and not know even the uses of the pipe, the lyre, and the cithern.
9. And let it be her task daily to bring to you the flowers which she has culled from scripture. Let her learn by heart so many verses in the Greek, but let her be instructed in the Latin also. For, if the tender lips are not from the first shaped to this, the tongue is spoiled by a foreign accent and its native speech debased by alien elements. You must yourself be her mistress, a model on which she may form her childish conduct. Never either in you nor in her father let her see what she cannot imitate without sin. Remember both of you that you are the parents of a consecrated virgin, and that your example will teach her more than your precepts. Flowers are quick to fade and a baleful wind soon withers the violet, the lily, and the crocus. Let her never appear in public unless accompanied by you. Let her never visit a church or a martyr's shrine unless with her mother. Let no young man greet her with smiles; no dandy with curled hair pay compliments to her. If our little virgin goes to keep solemn eves and all-night vigils, let her not stir a hair's breadth from her mother's side. She must not single out one of her maids to make her a special favourite or a confidante. What she says to one all ought to know. Let her choose for a companion not a handsome well-dressed girl, able to warble a song with liquid notes but one pale and serious, sombrely attired and with the hue of melancholy. Let her take as her model some aged virgin of approved faith, character, and chastity, apt to instruct her by word and by example. She ought to rise at night to recite prayers and psalms; to sing hymns in the morning; at the third, sixth, and ninth hours to take her place in the line to do battle for Christ; and, lastly, to kindle her lamp and to offer her evening sacrifice. [2710] In these occupations let her pass the day, and when night comes let it find her still engaged in them. Let reading follow prayer with her, and prayer again succeed to reading. Time will seem short when employed on tasks so many and so varied.
10. Let her learn too how to spin wool, to hold the distaff, to put the basket in her lap, to turn the spinning wheel and to shape the yarn with her thumb. Let her put away with disdain silken fabrics, Chinese fleeces, [2711] and gold brocades: the clothing which she makes for herself should keep out the cold and not expose the body which it professes to cover. Let her food be herbs and wheaten bread [2712] with now and then one or two small fishes. And that I may not waste more time in giving precepts for the regulation of appetite (a subject I have treated more at length elsewhere) [2713] let her meals always leave her hungry and able on the moment to begin reading or chanting. I strongly disapprove--especially for those of tender years--of long and immoderate fasts in which week is added to week and even oil and apples are forbidden as food. I have learned by experience that the ass toiling along the high way makes for an inn when it is weary. [2714] Our abstinence may turn to glutting, like that of the worshippers of Isis and of Cybele who gobble up pheasants and turtle-doves piping hot that their teeth may not violate the gifts of Ceres. [2715] If perpetual fasting is allowed, it must be so regulated that those who have a long journey before them may hold out all through; and we must take care that we do not, after starting well, fall halfway. However in Lent, as I have written before now, those who practise self-denial should spread every stitch of canvas, and the charioteer should for once slacken the reins and increase the speed of his horses. Yet there will be one rule for those who live in the world and another for virgins and monks. The layman in Lent consumes the coats of his stomach, and living like a snail on his own juices makes ready a paunch for rich foods and feasting to come. But with the virgin and the monk the case is different; for, when these give the rein to their steeds, they have to remember that for them the race knows of no intermission. An effort made only for a limited time may well be severe, but one that has no such limit must be more moderate. For whereas in the first case we can recover our breath when the race is over, in the last we have to go on continually and without stopping.
11. When you go a short way into the country, do not leave your daughter behind you. Leave her no power or capacity of living without you, and let her feel frightened when she is left to herself. Let her not converse with people of the world or associate with virgins indifferent to their vows. Let her not be present at the weddings of your slaves and let her take no part in the noisy games of the household. As regards the use of the bath, I know that some are content with saying that a Christian virgin should not bathe along with eunuchs or with married women, with the former because they are still men, at all events in mind, and with the latter because women with child offer a revolting spectacle. For myself, however, I wholly disapprove of baths for a virgin of full age. Such an one should blush and feel overcome at the idea of seeing herself undressed. By vigils and fasts she mortifies her body and brings it into subjection. By a cold chastity she seeks to put out the flame of lust and to quench the hot desires of youth. And by a deliberate squalor she makes haste to spoil her natural good looks. Why, then, should she add fuel to a sleeping fire by taking baths?
12. Let her treasures be not silks or gems but manuscripts of the holy scriptures; and in these let her think less of gilding, and Babylonian parchment, and arabesque patterns, [2716] than of correctness and accurate punctuation. Let her begin by learning the psalter, and then let her gather rules of life out of the proverbs of Solomon. From the Preacher let her gain the habit of despising the world and its vanities. [2717] Let her follow the example set in Job of virtue and of patience. Then let her pass on to the gospels never to be laid aside when once they have been taken in hand. Let her also drink in with a willing heart the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles. As soon as she has enriched the storehouse of her mind with these treasures, let her commit to memory the prophets, the heptateuch, [2718] the books of Kings and of Chronicles, the rolls also of Ezra and Esther. When she has done all these she may safely read the Song of Songs but not before: for, were she to read it at the beginning, she would fail to perceive that, though it is written in fleshly words, it is a marriage song of a spiritual bridal. And not understanding this she would suffer hurt from it. Let her avoid all apocryphal writings, and if she is led to read such not by the truth of the doctrines which they contain but out of respect for the miracles contained in them; let her understand that they are not really written by those to whom they are ascribed, that many faulty elements have been introduced into them, and that it requires infinite discretion to look for gold in the midst of dirt. Cyprian's writings let her have always in her hands. The letters of Athanasius [2719] and the treatises of Hilary [2720] she may go through without fear of stumbling. Let her take pleasure in the works and wits of all in whose books a due regard for the faith is not neglected. But if she reads the works of others let it be rather to judge them than to follow them.
13. You will answer, How shall I, a woman of the world, living at Rome, surrounded by a crowd, be able to observe all these injunctions?' In that case do not undertake a burthen to which you are not equal. When you have weaned Paula as Isaac was weaned and when you have clothed her as Samuel was clothed, send her to her grandmother and aunt; give up this most precious of gems, to be placed in Mary's chamber and to rest in the cradle where the infant Jesus cried. Let her be brought up in a monastery, let her be one amid companies of virgins, let her learn to avoid swearing, let her regard lying as sacrilege, let her be ignorant of the world, let her live the angelic life, while in the flesh let her be without the flesh, and let her suppose that all human beings are like herself. To say nothing of its other advantages this course will free you from the difficult task of minding her, and from the responsibility of guardianship. It is better to regret her absence than to be for ever trembling for her. For you cannot but tremble as you watch what she says and to whom she says it, to whom she bows and whom she likes best to see. Hand her over to Eustochium while she is still but an infant and her every cry is a prayer for you. She will thus become her companion in holiness now as well as her successor hereafter. Let her gaze upon and love, let her "from her earliest years admire" [2721] one whose language and gait and dress are an education in virtue. [2722] Let her sit in the lap of her grandmother, and let this latter repeat to her granddaughter the lessons that she once bestowed upon her own child. Long experience has shewn Paula how to rear, to preserve, and to instruct virgins; and daily inwoven in her crown is the mystic century which betokens the highest chastity. [2723] O happy virgin! happy Paula, daughter of Toxotius, who through the virtues of her grandmother and aunt is nobler in holiness than she is in lineage! Yes, Laeta: were it possible for you with your own eyes to see your mother-in-law and your sister, and to realize the mighty souls which animate their small bodies; such is your innate thirst for chastity that I cannot doubt but that you would go to them even before your daughter, and would emancipate yourself from God's first decree of the Law [2724] to put yourself under His second dispensation of the Gospel. [2725] You would count as nothing your desire for other offspring and would offer up yourself to the service of God. But because "there is a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing," [2726] and because "the wife hath not power of her own body," [2727] and because the apostle says "Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was called" [2728] in the Lord, and because he that is under the yoke ought so to run as not to leave his companion in the mire, I counsel you to pay back to the full in your offspring what meantime you defer paying in your own person. When Hannah had once offered in the tabernacle the son whom she had vowed to God she never took him back; for she thought it unbecoming that one who was to be a prophet should grow up in the same house with her who still desired to have other children. Accordingly after she had conceived him and given him birth, she did not venture to come to the temple alone or to appear before the Lord empty, but first paid to Him what she owed; and then, when she had offered up that great sacrifice, she returned home and because she had borne her firstborn for God, she was given five children for herself. [2729] Do you marvel at the happiness of that holy woman? Imitate her faith. Moreover, if you will only send Paula, I promise to be myself both a tutor and a foster father to her. Old as I am I will carry her on my shoulders and train her stammering lips; and my charge will be a far grander one than that of the worldly philosopher; [2730] for while he only taught a King of Macedon who was one day to die of Babylonian poison, I shall instruct the handmaid and spouse of Christ who must one day be offered to her Lord in heaven. __________________________________________________________________
[2663] 1 Cor. vii. 13, 14, the word believing' is twice inserted by Jerome.
[2664] Luke xviii. 27.
[2665] Cf. Luke xxiii. 42, 43.
[2666] Dan. iv. 33-37.
[2667] The Persian sun-god, at this time one of the most popular deities of the Roman pantheon. Gracchus appears to have done this as Urban Prætor, A. C. 378.
[2668] In the year 389 a.d. the temple of Serapis at Alexandria had been pulled down and a Christian church built upon its site.
[2669] Elsewhere (Life of Hilarion § 20) Jerome relates an extraordinary story about the discomfiture of this demon.'
[2670] A well-known Thracian tribe not to be confounded with the Goths.
[2671] Cf. Hor. A.P., 21, 22. Amphora caepit Institui: currente rota cur urceus exit?
[2672] The books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings are called in the Hebrew Bible the Former Prophets.
[2673] Ex. xiii. 2.
[2674] Luke i. 41.
[2675] Matt. iii. 4.
[2676] Cf. Letter LXXIX. § 3. Apparently Jerome means that the difficulty of penitence is as great as that of the camel passing through the eye of a needle. John, he implies, by wearing the camel's hair shows that he has surmounted this.
[2677] Quintilian, Inst. I. 1.
[2678] Quint. Inst. I. 1.
[2679] The contemporary and rival of Cicero.
[2680] Horace, Epist. I. ii. 69.
[2681] Quint. Inst. I. 1.
[2682] Matt. xiii. 46.
[2683] Inferna.
[2684] Cf. 1 Cor. iii. 17.
[2685] 1 Sam. ii. 27-36.
[2686] 1 Tim. iii. 4.
[2687] 1 Tim. ii. 15 A.V. has sobriety' for chastity' but Jerome deliberately prefers the latter word.
[2688] Jon. iv. 11.
[2689] Babylon, the world-power. Jer. l. 23.
[2690] Gen. xxxiv.
[2691] Lucretius, I. 936, sqq.
[2692] Ezek. xviii. 20.
[2693] John ix. 21.
[2694] The letter Y used by Pythagoras to symbolize the diverging paths of good and evil. Cf. Persius. iii. 56.
[2695] Deut. xv. 21.
[2696] Luke ii. 52.
[2697] Cf. Luke ii. 43-46.
[2698] Luke i. 29.
[2699] Ps. xlv. 13.
[2700] Cant. i. 4.
[2701] Cant. v. 7.
[2702] Cf. Ezek. xvi. 1-10.
[2703] Cant. v. 2.
[2704] Cant. viii. 10.
[2705] Cant. v. 3.
[2706] Again quoted in Letter CXXVIII. § 4.
[2707] Eph. v. 18.
[2708] 1 Tim. v. 23.
[2709] Cp. Letter LXXIX, § 7. The heathen sage is glass, the Christian virgin the pearl.
[2710] See note on Letter XXII. § 37.
[2711] A Virgilian expression, 9, II., 121.
[2712] Simila, but as elsewhere (L. 52, 6) this is spoken of as a luxury, perhaps we should read similia = and such like.'
[2713] Jerome refers to his second book against Jovinian.
[2714] Cf. the dying words of S. Francis (which have a similar reference) I have sinned against my brother the ass.'
[2715] i.e. having vowed to abstain from bread, they indemnify themselves with flesh.
[2716] Vermiculata pictura.
[2717] Jerome tells us that he read the book with Blaesilla for this purpose.
[2718] i.e. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges.
[2719] Of these a large number are still extant. Over twenty of them are "festal epistles" announcing to the churches the correct day on which to celebrate Easter.
[2720] These include commentaries on many parts of Scripture and a work on the Trinity.
[2721] Virgil, A. viii. 507.
[2722] Comp. Ecclus. xix. 30.
[2723] The number 100 denotes virginity to which in her own person Paula could have no claim. See note on Letter XLVIII. § 2.
[2724] Gen. i. 28.
[2725] 1 Cor. vii. 1.
[2726] Eccl. iii. 5.
[2727] 1 Cor. vii. 4.
[2728] 1 Cor. vii. 20.
[2729] 1 Sam. ii. 21.
[2730] The allusion is to Aristotle who was tutor to Alexander, King of Macedon. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CVIII. To Eustochium.
This, one of the longest of Jerome's letters, was written to console Eustochium for the loss of her mother who had recently died. Jerome relates the story of Paula in detail; speaking first of her high birth, marriage, and social success at Rome, and then narrating her conversion and subsequent life as a Christian ascetic. Much space is devoted to an account of her journey to the East which included a visit to Egypt and to the monasteries of Nitria as well as a tour of the most sacred spots in the Holy Land. The remainder of the letter describes her daily routine and studies at Bethlehem, and recounts the many virtues for which she was distinguished. It then concludes with a touching description of her death and burial and gives the epitaph placed upon her grave. The date of the letter is 404 a.d.
1. If all the members of my body were to be converted into tongues, and if each of my limbs were to be gifted with a human voice, I could still do no justice to the virtues of the holy and venerable Paula. Noble in family, she was nobler still in holiness; rich formerly in this world's goods, she is now more distinguished by the poverty that she has embraced for Christ. Of the stock of the Gracchi and descended from the Scipios, the heir and representative of that Paulus whose name she bore, the true and legitimate daughter of that Martia Papyria who was mother to Africanus, she yet preferred Bethlehem to Rome, and left her palace glittering with gold to dwell in a mud cabin. We do not grieve that we have lost this perfect woman; rather we thank God that we have had her, nay that we have her still. For "all live unto" God, [2731] and they who return unto the Lord are still to be reckoned members of his family. We have lost her, it is true, but the heavenly mansions have gained her; for as long as she was in the body she was absent from the Lord [2732] and would constantly complain with tears:--"Woe is me that I sojourn in Mesech, that I dwell in the tents of Kedar; my soul hath been this long time a pilgrim." [2733] It was no wonder that she sobbed out that even she was in darkness (for this is the meaning of the word Kedar) seeing that, according to the apostle, "the world lieth in the evil one;" [2734] and that, "as its darkness is, so is its light;" [2735] and that "the light shineth in darkness and the darkness comprehended it not." [2736] She would frequently exclaim: "I am a stranger with thee and a sojourner as all my fathers were," [2737] and again, I desire "to depart and to be with Christ." [2738] As often too as she was troubled with bodily weakness (brought on by incredible abstinence and by redoubled fastings), she would be heard to say: "I keep under my body and bring it into subjection; lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway;" [2739] and "It is good neither to eat flesh nor to drink wine;" [2740] and "I humbled my soul with fasting;" [2741] and "thou wilt make all" my "bed in" my "sickness;" [2742] and "Thy hand was heavy upon me: my moisture is turned into the drought of summer." [2743] And when the pain which she bore with such wonderful patience darted through her, as if she saw the heavens opened [2744] she would say "Oh that I had wings like a dove! for then would I fly away and be at rest." [2745]
2. I call Jesus and his saints, yes and the particular angel who was the guardian and the companion of this admirable woman to bear witness that these are no words of adulation and flattery but sworn testimony every one of them borne to her character. They are, indeed, inadequate to the virtues of one whose praises are sung by the whole world, who is admired by bishops, [2746] regretted by bands of virgins, and wept for by crowds of monks and poor. Would you know all her virtues, reader, in short? She has left those dependent on her poor, but not so poor as she was herself. In dealing thus with her relatives and the men and women of her small household--her brothers and sisters rather than her servants--she has done nothing strange; for she has left her daughter Eustochium--a virgin consecrated to Christ for whose comfort this sketch is made--far from her noble family and rich only in faith and grace.
3. Let me then begin my narrative. Others may go back a long way even to Paula's cradle and, if I may say so, to her swaddling-clothes, and may speak of her mother Blæsilla and her father Rogatus. Of these the former was a descendant of the Scipios and the Gracchi; whilst the latter came of a line distinguished in Greece down to the present day. He was said, indeed, to have in his veins the blood of Agamemnon who destroyed Troy after a ten years siege. But I shall praise only what belongs to herself, what wells forth from the pure spring of her holy mind. When in the gospel the apostles ask their Lord and Saviour what He will give to those who have left all for His sake, He tells them that they shall receive an hundredfold now in this time and in the world to come eternal life. [2747] From which we see that it is not the possession of riches that is praiseworthy but the rejection of them for Christ's sake; that, instead of glorying in our privileges, we should make them of small account as compared with God's faith. Truly the Saviour has now in this present time made good His promise to His servants and handmaidens. For one who despised the glory of a single city is to-day famous throughout the world; and one who while she lived at Rome was known by no one outside it has by hiding herself at Bethlehem become the admiration of all lands Roman and barbarian. For what race of men is there which does not send pilgrims to the holy places? And who could there find a greater marvel than Paula? As among many jewels the most precious shines most brightly, and as the sun with its beams obscures and puts out the paler fires of the stars; so by her lowliness she surpassed all others in virtue and influence and, while she was least among all, was greater than all. The more she cast herself down, the more she was lifted up by Christ. She was hidden and yet she was not hidden. By shunning glory she earned glory; for glory follows virtue as its shadow; and deserting those who seek it, it seeks those who despise it. But I must not neglect to proceed with my narrative or dwell too long on a single point forgetful of the rules of writing.
4. Being then of such parentage, Paula married Toxotius in whose veins ran the noble blood of Æneas and the Julii. Accordingly his daughter, Christ's virgin Eustochium, is called Julia, as he Julius.
A name from great Iulus handed down. [2748]
I speak of these things not as of importance to those who have them, but as worthy of remark in those who despise them. Men of the world look up to persons who are rich in such privileges. We on the other hand praise those who for the Saviour's sake despise them; and strangely depreciating all who keep them, we eulogize those who are unwilling to do so. Thus nobly born, Paula through her fruitfulness and her chastity won approval from all, from her husband first, then from her relatives, and lastly from the whole city. She bore five children; Blæsilla, for whose death I consoled her while at Rome; [2749] Paulina, who has left the reverend and admirable Pammachius to inherit both her vows [2750] and property, to whom also I addressed a little book on her death; Eustochium, who is now in the holy places, a precious necklace of virginity and of the church; Rufina, whose untimely end overcame the affectionate heart of her mother; and Toxotius, after whom she had no more children. You can thus see that it was not her wish to fulfil a wife's duty, but that she only complied with her husband's longing to have male offspring.
5. When he died, her grief was so great that she nearly died herself: yet so completely did she then give herself to the service of the Lord, that it might have seemed that she had desired his death.
In what terms shall I speak of her distinguished, and noble, and formerly wealthy house; all the riches of which she spent upon the poor? How can I describe the great consideration she shewed to all and her far reaching kindness even to those whom she had never seen? What poor man, as he lay dying, was not wrapped in blankets given by her? What bedridden person was not supported with money from her purse? She would seek out such with the greatest diligence throughout the city, and would think it a misfortune were any hungry or sick person to be supported by another's food. So lavish was her charity that she robbed her children; and, when her relatives remonstrated with her for doing so, she declared that she was leaving to them a better inheritance in the mercy of Christ.
6. Nor was she long able to endure the visits and crowded receptions, which her high position in the world and her exalted family entailed upon her. She received the homage paid to her sadly, and made all the speed she could to shun and to escape those who wished to pay her compliments. It so happened that at that time [2751] the bishops of the East and West had been summoned to Rome by letter from the emperors [2752] to deal with certain dissensions between the churches, and in this way she saw two most admirable men and Christian prelates, Paulinus bishop of Antioch and Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis or, as it is now called, Constantia, in Cyprus. Epiphanius, indeed, she received as her guest; and, although Paulinus was staying in another person's house, in the warmth of her heart she treated him as if he too were lodged with her. Inflamed by their virtues she thought more and more each moment of forsaking her home. Disregarding her house, her children, her servants, her property, and in a word everything connected with the world, she was eager--alone and unaccompanied (if ever it could be said that she was so)--to go to the desert made famous by its Pauls and by its Antonies. And at last when the winter was over and the sea was open, and when the bishops were returning to their churches, she also sailed with them in her prayers and desires. Not to prolong the story, she went down to Portus accompanied by her brother, her kinsfolk and above all her own children eager by their demonstrations of affection to overcome their loving mother. At last the sails were set and the strokes of the rowers carried the vessel into the deep. On the shore the little Toxotius stretched forth his hands in entreaty, while Rufina, now grown up, with silent sobs besought her mother to wait till she should be married. But still Paula's eyes were dry as she turned them heavenwards; and she overcame her love for her children by her love for God. She knew herself no more as a mother, that she might approve herself a handmaid of Christ. Yet her heart was rent within her, and she wrestled with her grief, as though she were being forcibly separated from parts of herself. The greatness of the affection she had to overcome made all admire her victory the more. Among the cruel hardships which attend prisoners of war in the hands of their enemies, there is none severer than the separation of parents from their children. Though it is against the laws of nature, she endured this trial with unabated faith; nay more she sought it with a joyful heart: and overcoming her love for her children by her greater love for God, she concentrated herself quietly upon Eustochium alone, the partner alike of her vows and of her voyage. Meantime the vessel ploughed onwards and all her fellow-passengers looked back to the shore. But she turned away her eyes that she might not see what she could not behold without agony. No mother, it must be confessed, ever loved her children so dearly. Before setting out she gave them all that she had, disinheriting herself upon earth that she might find an inheritance in heaven.
7. The vessel touched at the island of Pontia ennobled long since as the place of exile of the illustrious lady Flavia Domitilla who under the Emperor Domitian was banished because she confessed herself a Christian; [2753] and Paula, when she saw the cells in which this lady passed the period of her long martyrdom, taking to herself the wings of faith, more than ever desired to see Jerusalem and the holy places. The strongest winds seemed weak and the greatest speed slow. After passing between Scylla and Charybdis [2754] she committed herself to the Adriatic sea and had a calm passage to Methone. [2755] Stopping here for a short time to recruit her wearied frame
She stretched her dripping limbs upon the shore:
Then sailed past Malea and Cythera's isle,
The scattered Cyclades, and all the lands
That narrow in the seas on every side. [2756]
Then leaving Rhodes and Lycia behind her, she at last came in sight of Cyprus, where falling at the feet of the holy and venerable Epiphanius, she was by him detained ten days; though this was not, as he supposed, to restore her strength but, as the facts prove, that she might do God's work. For she visited all the monasteries in the island, and left, so far as her means allowed, substantial relief for the brothers in them whom love of the holy man had brought thither from all parts of the world. Then crossing the narrow sea she landed at Seleucia, and going up thence to Antioch allowed herself to be detained for a little time by the affection of the reverend confessor Paulinus. [2757] Then, such was the ardour of her faith that she, a noble lady who had always previously been carried by eunuchs, went her way--and that in midwinter--riding upon an ass.
8. I say nothing of her journey through Coele-Syria and Phoenicia (for it is not my purpose to give you a complete itinerary of her wanderings); I shall only name such places as are mentioned in the sacred books. After leaving the Roman colony of Berytus and the ancient city of Zidon she entered Elijah's town on the shore at Zarephath and therein adored her Lord and Saviour. Next passing over the sands of Tyre on which Paul had once knelt [2758] she came to Acco or, as it is now called, Ptolemais, rode over the plains of Megiddo which had once witnessed the slaying of Josiah, [2759] and entered the land of the Philistines. Here she could not fail to admire the ruins of Dor, once a most powerful city; and Strato's Tower, which though at one time insignificant was rebuilt by Herod king of Judæa and named Cæsarea in honour of Cæsar Augustus. [2760] Here she saw the house of Cornelius now turned into a Christian church; and the humble abode of Philip; and the chambers of his daughters the four virgins "which did prophesy." [2761] She arrived next at Antipatris, a small town half in ruins, named by Herod after his father Antipater, and at Lydda, now become Diospolis, a place made famous by the raising again of Dorcas [2762] and the restoration to health of Æneas. [2763] Not far from this are Arimathæa, the village of Joseph who buried the Lord, [2764] and Nob, once a city of priests but now the tomb in which their slain bodies rest. [2765] Joppa too is hard by, the port of Jonah's flight; [2766] which also--if I may introduce a poetic fable--saw Andromeda bound to the rock. [2767] Again resuming her journey, she came to Nicopolis, once called Emmaus, where the Lord became known in the breaking of bread; [2768] an action by which He dedicated the house of Cleopas as a church. Starting thence she made her way up lower and higher Beth-horon, cities founded by Solomon [2769] but subsequently destroyed by several devastating wars; seeing on her right Ajalon and Gibeon where Joshua the son of Nun when fighting against the five kings gave commandments to the sun and moon, [2770] where also he condemned the Gibeonites (who by a crafty stratagem had obtained a treaty) to be hewers of wood and drawers of water. [2771] At Gibeah also, now a complete ruin, she stopped for a little while remembering its sin, and the cutting of the concubine into pieces, and how in spite of all this three hundred men of the tribe of Benjamin were saved [2772] that in after days Paul might be called a Benjamite.
9. To make a long story short, leaving on her left the mausoleum of Helena queen of Adiabene [2773] who in time of famine had sent corn to the Jewish people, Paula entered Jerusalem, Jebus, or Salem, that city of three names which after it had sunk to ashes and decay was by Ælius Hadrianus restored once more as Ælia. [2774] And although the proconsul of Palestine, who was an intimate friend of her house, sent forward his apparitors and gave orders to have his official residence [2775] placed at her disposal, she chose a humble cell in preference to it. Moreover, in visiting the holy places so great was the passion and the enthusiasm she exhibited for each, that she could never have torn herself away from one had she not been eager to visit the rest. Before the Cross she threw herself down in adoration as though she beheld the Lord hanging upon it: and when she entered the tomb which was the scene of the Resurrection she kissed the stone which the angel had rolled away from the door of the sepulchre. [2776] Indeed so ardent was her faith that she even licked with her mouth the very spot on which the Lord's body had lain, like one athirst for the river which he has longed for. What tears she shed there, what groans she uttered, and what grief she poured forth, all Jerusalem knows; the Lord also to whom she prayed knows. Going out thence she made the ascent of Zion; a name which signifies either "citadel" or "watch-tower." This formed the city which David formerly stormed and afterwards rebuilt. [2777] Of its storming it is written, "Woe to Ariel, to Ariel"--that is, God's lion, (and indeed in those days it was extremely strong)--"the city which David stormed:" [2778] and of its rebuilding it is said, "His foundation is in the holy mountains: the Lord loveth the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob." [2779] He does not mean the gates which we see to-day in dust and ashes; the gates he means are those against which hell prevails not [2780] and through which the multitude of those who believe in Christ enter in. [2781] There was shewn to her upholding the portico of a church the bloodstained column to which our Lord is said to have been bound when He suffered His scourging. There was shewn to her also the spot where the Holy Spirit came down upon the souls of the one hundred and twenty believers, thus fulfilling the prophecy of Joel. [2782]
10. Then, after distributing money to the poor and her fellow-servants so far as her means allowed, she proceeded to Bethlehem stopping only on the right side of the road to visit Rachel's tomb. (Here it was that she gave birth to her son destined to be not what his dying mother called him, Benoni, that is the "Son of my pangs" but as his father in the spirit prophetically named him Benjamin, that is "the Son of the right hand)." [2783] After this she came to Bethlehem and entered into the cave where the Saviour was born. [2784] Here, when she looked upon the inn made sacred by the virgin and the stall where the ox knew his owner and the ass his master's crib, [2785] and where the words of the same prophet had been fulfilled "Blessed is he that soweth beside the waters where the ox and the ass trample the seed under their feet:" [2786] when she looked upon these things I say, she protested in my hearing that she could behold with the eyes of faith the infant Lord wrapped in swaddling clothes and crying in the manger, the wise men worshipping Him, the star shining overhead, the virgin mother, the attentive foster-father, the shepherds coming by night to see "the word that was come to pass" [2787] and thus even then to consecrate those opening phrases of the evangelist John "In the beginning was the word" and "the word was made flesh." [2788] She declared that she could see the slaughtered innocents, the raging Herod, Joseph and Mary fleeing into Egypt; and with a mixture of tears and joy she cried: Hail Bethlehem, house of bread, [2789] wherein was born that Bread that came down from heaven. [2790] Hail Ephratah, land of fruitfulness [2791] and of fertility, whose fruit is the Lord Himself. Concerning thee has Micah prophesied of old, "Thou Bethlehem Ephratah art not [2792] the least among the thousands of Judah, for out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting. Therefore wilt thou [2793] give them up, until the time that she which travaileth hath brought forth: then the remnant of his brethren shall return unto the children of Israel." [2794] For in thee was born the prince begotten before Lucifer. [2795] Whose birth from the Father is before all time: and the cradle of David's race continued in thee, until the virgin brought forth her son and the remnant of the people that believed in Christ returned unto the children of Israel and preached freely to them in words like these: "It was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken to you; but seeing ye put it from you and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles." [2796] For the Lord hath said: "I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel." [2797] At that time also the words of Jacob were fulfilled concerning Him, "A prince shall not depart from Judah nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until He come for whom it is laid up, [2798] and He shall be for the expectation of the nations." [2799] Well did David swear, well did he make a vow saying: "Surely I will not come into the tabernacle of my house nor go up into my bed: I will not give sleep to mine eyes, or slumber to my eyelids, or rest to the temples of my head, [2800] until I find out a place for the Lord, an habitation for the...God of Jacob." [2801] And immediately he explained the object of his desire, seeing with prophetic eyes that He would come whom we now believe to have come. "Lo we heard of Him at Ephratah: we found Him in the fields of the wood." [2802] The Hebrew word Zo as have learned from your lessons [2803] means not her, that is Mary the Lord's mother, but him that is the Lord Himself. Therefore he says boldly: "We will go into His tabernacle: we will worship at His footstool." [2804] I too, miserable sinner though I am, have been accounted worthy to kiss the manger in which the Lord cried as a babe, and to pray in the cave in which the travailing virgin gave birth to the infant Lord. "This is my rest" for it is my Lord's native place; "here will I dwell" [2805] for this spot has my Saviour chosen. "I have prepared a lamp for my Christ." [2806] "My soul shall live unto Him and my seed shall serve Him." [2807]
After this Paula went a short distance down the hill to the tower of Edar, [2808] that is of the flock,' near which Jacob fed his flocks, and where the shepherds keeping watch by night were privileged to hear the words: "Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, goodwill toward men." [2809] While they were keeping their sheep they found the Lamb of God; whose fleece bright and clean was made wet with the dew of heaven when it was dry upon all the earth beside, [2810] and whose blood when sprinkled on the doorposts drove off the destroyer of Egypt [2811] and took away the sins of the world. [2812]
11. Then immediately quickening her pace she began to move along the old road which leads to Gaza, that is to the power' or wealth' of God, silently meditating on that type of the Gentiles, the Ethiopian eunuch, who in spite of the prophet changed his skin [2813] and whilst he read the old testament found the fountain of the gospel. [2814] Next turning to the right she passed from Bethzur [2815] to Eshcol which means "a cluster of grapes." It was hence that the spies brought back that marvellous cluster which was the proof of the fertility of the land [2816] and a type of Him who says of Himself: "I have trodden the wine press alone; and of the people there was none with me." [2817] Shortly afterwards she entered the home [2818] of Sarah and beheld the birthplace of Isaac and the traces of Abraham's oak under which he saw Christ's day and was glad. [2819] And rising up from thence she went up to Hebron, that is Kirjath-Arba, or the City of the Four Men. These are Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the great Adam whom the Hebrews suppose (from the book of Joshua the son of Nun) to be buried there. [2820] But many are of opinion that Caleb is the fourth and a monument at one side is pointed out as his. After seeing these places she did not care to go on to Kirjath-sepher, that is "the village of letters;" because despising the letter that killeth she had found the spirit that giveth life. [2821] She admired more the upper springs and the nether springs which Othniel the son of Kenaz the son of Jephunneh received in place of a south land and a waterless possession, [2822] and by the conducting of which he watered the dry fields of the old covenant. For thus did he typify the redemption which the sinner finds for his old sins in the waters of baptism. On the next day soon after sunrise she stood upon the brow of Capharbarucha, [2823] that is, "the house of blessing," the point to which Abraham pursued the Lord when he made intercession with Him. [2824] And here, as she looked down upon the wide solitude and upon the country once belonging to Sodom and Gomorrah, to Admah and Zeboim, she beheld the balsam vines of Engedi and Zoar. By Zoar I mean that "heifer of three years old" [2825] which was formerly called Bela [2826] and in Syriac is rendered Zoar that is little.' She called to mind the cave in which Lot found refuge, and with tears in her eyes warned the virgins her companions to beware of "wine wherein is excess;" [2827] for it was to this that the Moabites and Ammonites owe their origin. [2828]
12. I linger long in the land of the midday sun for it was there and then that the spouse found her bridegroom at rest [2829] and Joseph drank wine with his brothers once more. [2830] I will return to Jerusalem and, passing through Tekoa the home of Amos, [2831] I will look upon the glistening cross of Mount Olivet from which the Saviour made His ascension to the Father. [2832] Here year by year a red heifer was burned as a holocaust to the Lord and its ashes were used to purify the children of Israel. [2833] Here also according to Ezekiel the Cherubim after leaving the temple founded the church of the Lord. [2834]
After this Paula visited the tomb of Lazarus and beheld the hospitable roof of Mary and Martha, as well as Bethphage, the town of the priestly jaws.' [2835] Here it was that a restive foal typical of the Gentiles received the bridle of God, and covered with the garments of the apostles [2836] offered its lowly back [2837] for Him to sit on. From this she went straight on down the hill to Jericho thinking of the wounded man in the gospel, of the savagery of the priests and Levites who passed him by, and of the kindness of the Samaritan, that is, the guardian, who placed the half-dead man upon his own beast and brought him down to the inn of the church. [2838] She noticed the place called Adomim [2839] or the Place of Blood, so-called because much blood was shed there in the frequent incursions of marauders. She beheld also the sycamore tree [2840] of Zacchæus, by which is signified the good works of repentance whereby he trod under foot his former sins of bloodshed and rapine, and from which he saw the Most High as from a pinnacle of virtue. She was shewn too the spot by the wayside where the blind men sat who, receiving their sight from the Lord, [2841] became types of the two peoples [2842] who should believe upon Him. Then entering Jericho she saw the city which Hiel founded in Abiram his firstborn and of which he set up the gates in his youngest son Segub. [2843] She looked upon the camp of Gilgal and the hill of the foreskins [2844] suggestive of the mystery of the second circumcision: [2845] and she gazed at the twelve stones brought thither out of the bed of Jordan [2846] to be symbols of those twelve foundations on which are written the names of the twelve apostles. [2847] She saw also that fountain of the Law most bitter and barren which the true Elisha healed by his wisdom changing it into a well sweet and fertilising. [2848] Scarcely had the night passed away when burning with eagerness she hastened to the Jordan, stood by the brink of the river, and as the sun rose recalled to mind the rising of the sun of righteousness; [2849] how the priest's feet stood firm in the middle of the river-bed; [2850] how afterwards at the command of Elijah and Elisha the waters were divided hither and thither and made way for them to pass; and again how the Lord had cleansed by His baptism waters which the deluge had polluted and the destruction of mankind had defiled.
13. It would be tedious were I tell of the valley of Achor, that is, of trouble and crowds,' where theft and covetousness were condemned; [2851] and of Bethel, the house of God,' where Jacob poor and destitute slept upon the bare ground. Here it was that, having set beneath his head a stone which in Zechariah is described as having seven eyes [2852] and in Isaiah is spoken of as a corner-stone, [2853] he beheld a ladder reaching up to heaven; yes, and the Lord standing high above it [2854] holding out His hand to such as were ascending and hurling from on high such as were careless. Also when she was in Mount Ephraim she made pilgrimages to the tombs of Joshua the son of Nun and of Eleazar the son of Aaron the priest, exactly opposite the one to the other; that of Joshua being built at Timnath-serah "on the north side of the hill of Gaash," [2855] and that of Eleazar "in a hill that pertained to Phinehas his son." [2856] She was somewhat surprised to find that he who had had the distribution of the land in his own hands had selected for himself portions uneven and rocky. What shall I say about Shiloh where a ruined altar [2857] is still shewn to-day, and where the tribe of Benjamin anticipated Romulus in the rape of the Sabine women? [2858] Passing by Shechem (not Sychar as many wrongly read [2859] ) or as it is now called Neapolis, she entered the church built upon the side of Mount Gerizim around Jacob's well; that well where the Lord was sitting when hungry and thirsty He was refreshed by the faith of the woman of Samaria. Forsaking her five husbands by whom are intended the five books of Moses, and that sixth not a husband of whom she boasted, to wit the false teacher Dositheus, [2860] she found the true Messiah and the true Saviour. Turning away thence Paula saw the tombs of the twelve patriarchs, and Samaria which in honour of Augustus Herod renamed Augusta or in Greek Sebaste. There lie the prophets Elisha and Obadiah and John the Baptist than whom there is not a greater among those that are born of women. [2861] And here she was filled with terror by the marvels she beheld; for she saw demons screaming under different tortures before the tombs of the saints, and men howling like wolves, baying like dogs, roaring like lions, hissing like serpents and bellowing like bulls. They twisted their heads and bent them backwards until they touched the ground; women too were suspended head downward and their clothes did not fall off. [2862] Paula pitied them all, and shedding tears over them prayed Christ to have mercy on them. And weak as she was she climbed the mountain on foot; for in two of its caves Obadiah in a time of persecution and famine had fed a hundred prophets with bread and water. [2863] Then she passed quickly through Nazareth the nursery of the Lord; Cana and Capernaum familiar with the signs wrought by Him; the lake of Tiberias sanctified by His voyages upon it; the wilderness where countless Gentiles were satisfied with a few loaves while the twelve baskets of the tribes of Israel were filled with the fragments left by them that had eaten. [2864] She made the ascent of mount Tabor whereon the Lord was transfigured. [2865] In the distance she beheld the range of Hermon; [2866] and the wide stretching plains of Galilee where Sisera and all his host had once been overcome by Barak; and the torrent [2867] Kishon separating the level ground into two parts. Hard by also the town of Nain was pointed out to her, where the widow's son was raised. [2868] Time would fail me sooner than speech were I to recount all the places to which the revered Paula was carried by her incredible faith.
14. I will now pass on to Egypt, pausing for a while on the way at Socoh, and at Samson's well which he clave in the hollow place that was in the jaw. [2869] Here I will lave my parched lips and refresh myself before visiting Moresheth; in old days famed for the tomb of the prophet Micah, [2870] and now for its church. Then skirting the country of the Horites and Gittites, Mareshah, Edom, and Lachish, and traversing the lonely wastes of the desert where the tracks of the traveller are lost in the yielding sand, I will come to the river of Egypt called Sihor, [2871] that is "the muddy river," and go through the five cities of Egypt which speak the language of Canaan, [2872] and through the land of Goshen and the plains of Zoan [2873] on which God wrought his marvellous works. And I will visit the city of No, which has since become Alexandria; [2874] and Nitria, the town of the Lord, where day by day the filth of multitudes is washed away with the pure nitre of virtue. No sooner did Paula come in sight of it than there came to meet her the reverend and estimable bishop, the confessor Isidore, accompanied by countless multitudes of monks many of whom were of priestly or of Levitical rank. [2875] On seeing these Paula rejoiced to behold the Lord's glory manifested in them; but protested that she had no claim to be received with such honour. Need I speak of the Macarii, Arsenius, Serapion, [2876] or other pillars of Christ! Was there any cell that she did not enter? Or any man at whose feet she did not throw herself? In each of His saints she believed that she saw Christ Himself; and whatever she bestowed upon them she rejoiced to feel that she had bestowed it upon the Lord. Her enthusiasm was wonderful and her endurance scarcely credible in a woman. Forgetful of her sex and of her weakness she even desired to make her abode, together with the girls who accompanied her, among these thousands of monks. And, as they were all willing to welcome her, she might perhaps have sought and obtained permission to do so; had she not been drawn away by a still greater passion for the holy places. Coming by sea from Pelusium to Maioma on account of the great heat, she returned so rapidly that you would have thought her a bird. Not long afterwards, making up her mind to dwell permanently in holy Bethlehem, she took up her abode for three years in a miserable hostelry; till she could build the requisite cells and monastic buildings, to say nothing of a guest house for passing travellers where they might find the welcome which Mary and Joseph had missed. At this point I conclude my narrative of the journeys that she made accompanied by Eustochium and many other virgins.
15. I am now free to describe at greater length the virtue which was her peculiar charm; and in setting forth this I call God to witness that I am no flatterer. I add nothing. I exaggerate nothing. On the contrary I tone down much that I may not appear to relate incredibilities. My carping critics must not insinuate that I am drawing on my imagination or decking Paula, like Æsop's crow, with the fine feathers of other birds. Humility is the first of Christian graces, and hers was so pronounced that one who had never seen her, and who on account of her celebrity had desired to see her, would have believed that he saw not her but the lowest of her maids. When she was surrounded by companies of virgins she was always the least remarkable in dress, in speech, in gesture, and in gait. From the time that her husband died until she fell asleep herself she never sat at meat with a man, even though she might know him to stand upon the pinnacle of the episcopate. She never entered a bath except when dangerously ill. Even in the severest fever she rested not on an ordinary bed but on the hard ground covered only with a mat of goat's hair; if that can be called rest which made day and night alike a time of almost unbroken prayer. Well did she fulfil the words of the psalter: "All the night make I my bed to swim; I water my couch with my tears"! [2877] Her tears welled forth as it were from fountains, and she lamented her slightest faults as if they were sins of the deepest dye. Constantly did I warn her to spare her eyes and to keep them for the reading of the gospel; but she only said: I must disfigure that face which contrary to God's commandment I have painted with rouge, white lead, and antimony. I must mortify that body which has been given up to many pleasures. I must make up for my long laughter by constant weeping. I must exchange my soft linen and costly silks for rough goat's hair. I who have pleased my husband and the world in the past, desire now to please Christ.' Were I among her great and signal virtues to select her chastity as a subject of praise, my words would seem superfluous; for, even when she was still in the world, she set an example to all the matrons of Rome, and bore herself so admirably that the most slanderous never ventured to couple scandal with her name. [2878] No mind could be more considerate than hers, or none kinder towards the lowly. She did not court the powerful; at the same time, if the proud and the vainglorious sought her, she did not turn from them with disdain. If she saw a poor man, she supported him: and if she saw a rich one, she urged him to do good. Her liberality alone knew no bounds. Indeed, so anxious was she to turn no needy person away that she borrowed money at interest and often contracted new loans to pay off old ones. I was wrong, I admit; but when I saw her so profuse in giving, I reproved her alleging the apostle's words: "I mean not that other men be eased and ye burthened; but by an equality that now at this time your abundance may be a supply for their want, that their abundance also may be a supply for your want." [2879] I quoted from the gospel the Saviour's words: "he that hath two coats, let him impart one of them to him that hath none"; [2880] and I warned her that she might not always have means to do as she would wish. Other arguments I adduced to the same purpose; but with admirable modesty and brevity she overruled them all. "God is my witness," she said, "that what I do I do for His sake. My prayer is that I may die a beggar not leaving a penny to my daughter and indebted to strangers for my winding sheet." She then concluded with these words: "I, if I beg, shall find many to give to me; but if this beggar does not obtain help from me who by borrowing can give it to him, he will die; and if he dies, of whom will his soul be required?" I wished her to be more careful in managing her concerns, but she with a faith more glowing than mine clave to the Saviour with her whole heart and poor in spirit followed the Lord in His poverty, giving back to Him what she had received and becoming poor for His sake. She obtained her wish at last and died leaving her daughter overwhelmed with a mass of debt. This Eustochium still owes and indeed cannot hope to pay off by her own exertions; only the mercy of Christ can free her from it.
16. Many married ladies make it a habit to confer gifts upon their own trumpeters, and while they are extremely profuse to a few, withhold all help from the many. From this fault Paula was altogether free. She gave her money to each according as each had need, not ministering to self-indulgence but relieving want. No poor person went away from her empty handed. And all this she was enabled to do not by the greatness of her wealth but by her careful management of it. She constantly had on her lips such phrases as these: "Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy:" [2881] and "water will quench a flaming fire; and alms maketh an atonement for sins;" [2882] and "make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness that...they may receive you into everlasting habitations;" [2883] and "give alms...and behold all things are clean unto you;" [2884] and Daniel's words to King Nebuchadnezzar in which he admonished him to redeem his sins by almsgiving. [2885] She wished to spend her money not upon these stones, that shall pass away with the earth and the world, but upon those living stones, which roll over the earth; [2886] of which in the apocalypse of John the city of the great king is built; [2887] of which also the scripture tells us that they shall be changed into sapphire and emerald and jasper and other gems. [2888]
17. But these qualities she may well share with a few others and the devil knows that it is not in these that the highest virtue consists. For, when Job has lost his substance and when his house and children have been destroyed, Satan says to the Lord: "Skin for skin, yea all that a man hath, will he give for his life. But put forth thine hand now and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse thee to thy face." [2889] We know that many persons while they have given alms have yet given nothing which touches their bodily comfort; and while they have held out a helping hand to those in need are themselves overcome with sensual indulgences; they whitewash the outside but within they are "full of dead men's bones." [2890] Paula was not one of these. Her self-restraint was so great as to be almost immoderate; and her fasts and labours were so severe as almost to weaken her constitution. Except on feast days she would scarcely ever take oil with her food; a fact from which may be judged what she thought of wine, sauce, fish, honey, milk, eggs, and other things agreeable to the palate. Some persons believe that in taking these they are extremely frugal; and, even if they surfeit themselves with them, they still fancy their chastity safe.
18. Envy always follows in the track of virtue: as Horace says, it is ever the mountain top that is smitten by the lightning. [2891] It is not surprising that I declare this of men and women, when the jealousy of the Pharisees succeeded in crucifying our Lord Himself. All the saints have had illwishers, and even Paradise was not free from the serpent through whose malice death came into the world. [2892] So the Lord stirred up against Paula Hadad the Edomite [2893] to buffet her that she might not be exalted, and warned her frequently by the thorn in her flesh [2894] not to be elated by the greatness of her own virtues or to fancy that, compared with other women, she had attained the summit of perfection. For my part I used to say that it was best to give in to rancour and to retire before passion. So Jacob dealt with his brother Esau; so David met the unrelenting persecution of Saul. I reminded her how the first of these fled into Mesopotamia; [2895] and how the second surrendered himself to the Philistines, [2896] and chose to submit to foreign foes rather than to enemies at home. She however replied as follows:--Your suggestion would be a wise one if the devil did not everywhere fight against God's servants and handmaidens, and did he not always precede the fugitives to their chosen refuges. Moreover, I am deterred from accepting it by my love for the holy places; and I cannot find another Bethlehem elsewhere. Why may I not by my patience conquer this ill will? Why may I not by my humility break down this pride, and when I am smitten on the one cheek offer to the smiter the other? [2897] Surely the apostle Paul says "Overcome evil with good." [2898] Did not the apostles glory when they suffered reproach for the Lord's sake? Did not even the Saviour humble Himself, taking the form of a servant and being made obedient to the Father unto death, even the death of the cross, [2899] that He might save us by His passion? If Job had not fought the battle and won the victory, he would never have received the crown of righteousness, or have heard the Lord say: "Thinkest thou that I have spoken unto thee for aught else than this, that thou mightest appear righteous." [2900] In the gospel those only are said to be blessed who suffer persecution for righteousness' sake. [2901] My conscience is at rest, and I know that it is not from any fault of mine that I am suffering; moreover affliction in this world is a ground for expecting a reward hereafter.' When the enemy was more than usually forward and ventured to reproach her to her face, she used to chant the words of the psalter: "While the wicked was before me, I was dumb with silence; I held my peace even from good:" [2902] and again, "I as a deaf man heard not; and I was as a dumb man that openeth not his mouth:" [2903] and "I was as a man that heareth not, and in whose mouth are no reproofs." [2904] When she felt herself tempted, she dwelt upon the words in Deuteronomy: "The Lord your God proveth you, to know whether ye love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul." [2905] In tribulations and afflictions she turned to the splendid language of Isaiah: "Ye that are weaned from the milk and drawn from the breasts, look for tribulation upon tribulation, for hope also upon hope: yet a little while must these things be by reason of the malice of the lips and by reason of a spiteful tongue." [2906] This passage of scripture she explained for her own consolation as meaning that the weaned, that is, those who have come to full age, must endure tribulation upon tribulation that they may be accounted worthy to receive hope upon hope. She recalled to mind also the words of the apostle, "we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience, and patience experience, and experience hope: and hope maketh not ashamed" [2907] and "though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day": [2908] and "our light affliction which is but for a moment worketh in us [2909] an eternal weight of glory; while we look not at the things which are seen but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal but the things which are not seen are eternal." [2910] She used to say that, although to human impatience the time might seem slow in coming, yet that it would not be long but that presently help would come from God who says: "In an acceptable time have I heard thee, and in a day of salvation have I helped thee." [2911] We ought not, she declared, to dread the deceitful lips and tongues of the wicked, for we rejoice in the aid of the Lord who warns us by His prophet: "fear ye not the reproach of men, neither be ye afraid of their revilings; for the moth shall eat them up like a garment, and the worm shall eat them like wool": [2912] and she quoted His own words, "In your patience ye shall win your souls": [2913] as well as those of the apostle, "the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us": [2914] and in another place, "we are to suffer affliction" [2915] that we may be patient in all things that befall us, for "he that is slow to wrath is of great understanding: but he that is hasty of spirit exalteth folly." [2916]
19. In her frequent sicknesses and infirmities she used to say, "when I am weak, then am I strong:" [2917] "we have our treasure in earthen vessels" [2918] until "this corruptible shall have put on incorruption and this mortal shall have put on immortality" [2919] and again "as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also aboundeth by Christ:" [2920] and then as ye are partakers of the sufferings, so shall ye be also of the consolation. [2921] In sorrow she used to sing: "Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope thou in God for I shall yet praise him who is the health of my countenance and my God." [2922] In the hour of danger she used to say: "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me:" [2923] and again "whosoever will save his life shall lose it," and "whosoever will lose his life for my sake the same shall save it." [2924] When the exhaustion of her substance and the ruin of her property were announced to her she only said: "What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul:" [2925] and "naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away: blessed be the name of the Lord:" [2926] and Saint John's words, "Love not the world neither the things that are in the world. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world passeth away and the lust thereof." [2927] I know that when word was sent to her of the serious illnesses of her children and particularly of Toxotius whom she dearly loved, she first by her self-control fulfilled the saying: "I was troubled and I did not speak," [2928] and then cried out in the words of scripture, "He that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me." [2929] And she prayed to the Lord and said: Lord "preserve thou the children of those that are appointed to die," [2930] that is, of those who for thy sake every day die bodily. I am aware that a talebearer--a class of persons who do a great deal of harm--once told her as a kindness that owing to her great fervour in virtue some people thought her mad and declared that something should be done for her head. She replied in the words of the apostle, "we are made a spectacle unto the world and to angels and to men," [2931] and "we are fools for Christ's sake" [2932] but "the foolishness of God is wiser than men." [2933] It is for this reason she said that even the Saviour says to the Father, "Thou knowest my foolishness," [2934] and again "I am as a wonder unto many, but thou art my strong refuge." [2935] "I was as a beast before thee; nevertheless I am continually with thee." [2936] In the gospel we read that even His kinsfolk desired to bind Him as one of weak mind. [2937] His opponents also reviled him saying "thou art a Samaritan and hast a devil," [2938] and another time "he casteth out devils through Beelzebub the chief of the devils." [2939] But let us, she continued, listen to the exhortation of the apostle, "Our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience that in simplicity and sincerity...by the grace of God we have had our conversation in the world." [2940] And let us hear the Lord when He says to His apostles, "If ye were of the world the world would love his own; but because ye are not of the world...therefore the world hateth you." [2941] And then she turned to the Lord Himself, saying, "Thou knowest the secrets of the heart," [2942] and "all this is come upon us; yet have we not forgotten thee, neither have we dealt falsely in thy covenant; our heart is not turned back." [2943] "Yea for thy sake are we killed all the day long; we are counted as sheep for the slaughter." [2944] But "the Lord is on my side: I will not fear what man doeth unto me." [2945] She had read the words of Solomon, "My son, honour the Lord and thou shalt be made strong; and beside the Lord fear thou no man." [2946] These passages and others like them she used as God's armour against the assaults of wickedness, and particularly to defend herself against the furious onslaughts of envy; and thus by patiently enduring wrongs she soothed the violence of the most savage breasts. Down to the very day of her death two things were conspicuous in her life, one her great patience and the other the jealousy which was manifested towards her. Now jealousy gnaws the heart of him who harbours it: and while it strives to injure its rival raves with all the force of its fury against itself.
20. I shall now describe the order of her monastery and the method by which she turned the continence of saintly souls to her own profit. She sowed carnal things that she might reap spiritual things; [2947] she gave earthly things that she might receive heavenly things; she forewent things temporal that she might in their stead obtain things eternal. Besides establishing a monastery for men, the charge of which she left to men, she divided into three companies and monasteries the numerous virgins whom she had gathered out of different provinces, some of whom are of noble birth while others belonged to the middle or lower classes. But, although they worked and had their meals separately from each other, these three companies met together for psalm-singing and prayer. After the chanting of the Alleluia--the signal by which they were summoned to the Collect [2948] --no one was permitted to remain behind. But either first or among the first Paula used to await the arrival of the rest, urging them to diligence rather by her own modest example than by motives of fear. At dawn, at the third, sixth, and ninth hours, at evening, and at midnight they recited the psalter each in turn. [2949] No sister was allowed to be ignorant of the psalms, and all had every day to learn a certain portion of the holy scriptures. On the Lord's day only they proceeded to the church beside which they lived, each company following its own mother-superior. Returning home in the same order, they then devoted themselves to their allotted tasks, and made garments either for themselves or else for others. If a virgin was of noble birth, she was not allowed to have an attendant belonging to her own household lest her maid having her mind full of the doings of old days and of the license of childhood might by constant converse open old wounds and renew former errors. All the sisters were clothed alike. Linen was not used except for drying the hands. So strictly did Paula separate them from men that she would not allow even eunuchs to approach them; lest she should give occasion to slanderous tongues (always ready to cavil at the religious) to console themselves for their own misdoing. When a sister was backward in coming to the recitation of the psalms or shewed herself remiss in her work, Paula used to approach her in different ways. Was she quick-tempered? Paula coaxed her. Was she phlegmatic? Paula chid her, copying the example of the apostle who said: "What will ye? Shall I come to you with a rod or in love and in the spirit of meekness?" [2950] Apart from food and raiment she allowed no one to have anything she could call her own, for Paul had said, "Having food and raiment let us be therewith content." [2951] She was afraid lest the custom of having more should breed covetousness in them; an appetite which no wealth can satisfy, for the more it has the more it requires, and neither opulence nor indigence is able to diminish it. [2952] When the sisters quarrelled one with another she reconciled them with soothing words. If the younger ones were troubled with fleshly desires, she broke their force by imposing redoubled fasts; for she wished her virgins to be ill in body rather than to suffer in soul. If she chanced to notice any sister too attentive to her dress, she reproved her for her error with knitted brows and severe looks, saying; "a clean body and a clean dress mean an unclean soul. A virgin's lips should never utter an improper or an impure word, for such indicate a lascivious mind and by the outward man the faults of the inward are made manifest." When she saw a sister verbose and talkative or forward and taking pleasure in quarrels, and when she found after frequent admonitions that the offender shewed no signs of improvement; she placed her among the lowest of the sisters and outside their society, ordering her to pray at the door of the refectory instead of with the rest, and commanding her to take her food by herself, in the hope that where rebuke had failed shame might bring about a reformation. The sin of theft she loathed as if it were sacrilege; and that which among men of the world is counted little or nothing she declared to be in a monastery a crime of the deepest dye. How shall I describe her kindness and attention towards the sick or the wonderful care and devotion with which she nursed them? Yet, although when others were sick she freely gave them every indulgence, and even allowed them to eat meat; when she fell ill herself, she made no concessions to her own weakness, and seemed unfairly to change in her own case to harshness the kindness which she was always ready to shew to others.
21. No young girl of sound and vigorous constitution could have delivered herself up to a regimen so rigid as that imposed upon herself by Paula whose physical powers age had impaired and enfeebled. I admit that in this she was too determined, refusing to spare herself or to listen to advice. I will relate what I know to be a fact. In the extreme heat of the month of July she was once attacked by a violent fever and we despaired of her life. However by God's mercy she rallied, and the doctors urged upon her the necessity of taking a little light wine to accelerate her recovery; saying that if she continued to drink water they feared that she might become dropsical. I on my side secretly appealed to the blessed pope Epiphanius to admonish, nay even to compel her, to take the wine. But she with her usual sagacity and quickness at once perceived the stratagem, and with a smile let him see that the advice he was giving her was after all not his but mine. Not to waste more words, the blessed prelate after many exhortations left her chamber; and, when I asked him what he had accomplished, replied, "Only this that old as I am I have been almost persuaded to drink no more wine." I relate this story not because I approve of persons rashly taking upon themselves burthens beyond their strength (for does not the scripture say: "Burden not thyself above thy power"? [2953] ) but because I wish from this quality of perseverance in her to shew the passion of her mind and the yearning of her believing soul; both of which made her sing in David's words, "My soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth after thee." [2954] Difficult as it is always to avoid extremes, the philosophers [2955] are quite right in their opinion that virtue is a mean and vice an excess, or as we may express it in one short sentence "In nothing too much." [2956] While thus unyielding in her contempt for food Paula was easily moved to sorrow and felt crushed by the deaths of her kinsfolk, especially those of her children. When one after another her husband and her daughters fell asleep, on each occasion the shock of their loss endangered her life. And although she signed her mouth and her breast with the sign of the cross, and endeavoured thus to alleviate a mother's grief; her feelings overpowered her and her maternal instincts were too much for her confiding mind. Thus while her intellect retained its mastery she was overcome by sheer physical weakness. On one occasion a sickness seized her and clung to her so long that it brought anxiety to us and danger to herself. Yet even then she was full of joy and repeated every moment the apostle's words: "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" [2957]
The careful reader may say that my words are an invective rather than an eulogy. I call that Jesus whom she served and whom I desire to serve to be my witness that so far from unduly eulogizing her or depreciating her I tell the truth about her as one Christian writing of another; that I am writing a memoir and not a panegyric, and that what were faults in her might well be virtues in others less saintly. I speak thus of her faults to satisfy my own feelings and the passionate regret of us her brothers and sisters, who all of us love her still and all of us deplore her loss.
22. However, she has finished her course, she has kept the faith, and now she enjoys the crown of righteousness. [2958] She follows the Lamb whithersoever he goes. [2959] She is filled now because once she was hungry. [2960] With joy does she sing: "as we have heard, so have we seen in the city of the Lord of hosts, in the city of our God." [2961] O blessed change! Once she wept but now laughs for evermore. Once she despised the broken cisterns of which the prophet speaks; [2962] but now she has found in the Lord a fountain of life. [2963] Once she wore haircloth but now she is clothed in white raiment, and can say: "thou hast put off my sackcloth, and girded me with gladness." [2964] Once she ate ashes like bread and mingled her drink with weeping; [2965] saying "my tears have been my meat day and night;" [2966] but now for all time she eats the bread of angels [2967] and sings: "O taste and see that the Lord is good;" [2968] and "my heart is overflowing with a goodly matter; I speak the things which I have made touching the king." [2969] She now sees fulfilled Isaiah's words, or rather those of the Lord speaking through Isaiah: "Behold, my servants shall eat but ye shall be hungry: behold, my servants shall drink but ye shall be thirsty: behold, my servants shall rejoice, but ye shall be ashamed: behold, my servants shall sing for joy of heart, but ye shall cry for sorrow of heart, and shall howl for vexation of spirit." [2970] I have said that she always shunned the broken cisterns: she did so that she might find in the Lord a fountain of life, and that she might rejoice and sing: "as the hart panteth after the waterbrooks, so panteth my soul after Thee, O God. When shall I come and appear before God?" [2971]
23. I must briefly mention the manner in which she avoided the foul cisterns of the heretics whom she regarded as no better than heathen. A certain cunning knave, in his own estimation both learned and clever, began without my knowledge to put to her such questions as these: What sin has an infant committed that it should be seized by the devil? Shall we be young or old when we rise again? If we die young and rise young, we shall after the resurrection require to have nurses. If however we die young and rise old, the dead will not rise again at all: they will be transformed into new beings. Will there be a distinction of sexes in the next world? Or will there be no such distinction? If the distinction continues, there will be wedlock and sexual intercourse and procreation of children. If however it does not continue, the bodies that rise again will not be the same. For, he argued, "the earthy tabernacle weigheth down the mind that museth upon many things," [2972] but the bodies that we shall have in heaven will be subtle and spiritual according to the words of the apostle: "it is sown a natural body: it is raised a spiritual body." [2973] From all of which considerations he sought to prove that rational creatures have been for their faults and previous sins subjected to bodily conditions; and that according to the nature and guilt of their transgression they are born in this or that state of life. Some, he said, rejoice in sound bodies and wealthy and noble parents; others have for their portion diseased frames and poverty stricken homes; and by imprisonment in the present world and in bodies pay the penalty of their former sins. Paula listened and reported what she heard to me, at the same time pointing out the man. Thus upon me was laid the task of opposing this most noxious viper and deadly pest. It is of such that the Psalmist speaks when he writes: "deliver not the soul of thy turtle dove unto the wild beast," [2974] and "Rebuke the wild beast of the reeds;" [2975] creatures who write iniquity and speak lies against the Lord and lift up their mouths against the Most High. As the fellow had tried to deceive Paula, I at her request went to him, and by asking him a few questions involved him in a dilemma. Do you believe, said I, that there will be a resurrection of the dead or do you disbelieve? He replied, I believe. I went on: Will the bodies that rise again be the same or different? He said, The same. Then I asked: What of their sex? Will that remain unaltered or will it be changed? At this question he became silent and swayed his head this way and that as a serpent does to avoid being struck. Accordingly I continued, As you have nothing to say I will answer for you and will draw the conclusion from your premises. If the woman shall not rise again as a woman nor the man as a man, there will be no resurrection of the dead. For the body is made up of sex and members. But if there shall be no sex and no members what will become of the resurrection of the body, which cannot exist without sex and members? And if there shall be no resurrection of the body, there can be no resurrection of the dead. But as to your objection taken from marriage, that, if the members shall remain the same, marriage must inevitably be allowed; it is disposed of by the Saviour's words: "ye do err not knowing the scriptures nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage but are as the angels." [2976] When it is said that they neither marry nor are given in marriage, the distinction of sex is shewn to persist. For no one says of things which have no capacity for marriage such as a stick or a stone that they neither marry nor are given in marriage; but this may well be said of those who while they can marry yet abstain from doing so by their own virtue and by the grace of Christ. But if you cavil at this and say, how shall we in that case be like the angels with whom there is neither male nor female, hear my answer in brief as follows. What the Lord promises to us is not the nature of angels but their mode of life and their bliss. And therefore John the Baptist is called an angel [2977] even before he is beheaded, and all God's holy men and virgins manifest in themselves even in this world the life of angels. When it is said "ye shall be like the angels," likeness only is promised and not a change of nature.
24. And now do you in your turn answer me these questions. How do you explain the fact that Thomas felt the hands of the risen Lord and beheld His side pierced by the spear? [2978] And the fact that Peter saw the Lord standing on the shore [2979] and eating a piece of a roasted fish and a honeycomb. [2980] If He stood, He must certainly have had feet. If He pointed to His wounded side He must have also had chest and belly for to these the sides are attached and without them they cannot be. If He spoke, He must have used a tongue and palate and teeth. For as the bow strikes the strings, so to produce vocal sound does the tongue come in contact with the teeth. If His hands were felt, it follows that He must have had arms as well. Since therefore it is admitted that He had all the members which go to make up the body, He must have also had the whole body formed of them, and that not a woman's but a man's; that is to say, He rose again in the sex in which He died. And if you cavil farther and say: We shall eat then, I suppose, after the resurrection; or How can a solid and material body enter in contrary to its nature through closed doors? you shall receive from me this reply. Do not for this matter of food find fault with belief in the resurrection: for our Lord after raising the daughter of the ruler of the synagogue commanded food to be given her. [2981] And Lazarus who had been dead four days is described as sitting at meat with Him, [2982] the object in both cases being to shew that the resurrection was real and not merely apparent. And if from our Lord's entering in through closed doors [2983] you strive to prove that His body was spiritual and aerial, He must have had this spiritual body even before He suffered; since--contrary to the nature of heavy bodies--He was able to walk upon the sea. [2984] The apostle Peter also must be believed to have had a spiritual body for he also walked upon the waters with buoyant step. [2985] The true explanation is that when anything is done against nature, it is a manifestation of God's might and power. And to shew plainly that in these great signs our attention is asked not to a change in nature but to the almighty power of God, he who by faith had walked on water began to sink for the want of it and would have done so had not the Lord lifted him up with the reproving words, "O thou of little faith wherefore didst thou doubt?" [2986] I wonder that you can display such effrontery when the Lord Himself said, "reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless but believing," [2987] and in another place, "behold my hands and my feet that it is I myself: handle me and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see me have. And when he had thus spoken he shewed them his hands and his feet." [2988] You hear Him speak of bones and flesh, of feet and hands; and yet you want to palm off on me the bubbles and airy nothings of which the stoics rave! [2989]
25. Moreover, if you ask how it is that a mere infant which has never sinned is seized by the devil, or at what age we shall rise again seeing that we die at different ages; my only answer--an unwelcome one, I fancy--will be in the words of scripture: "The judgments of God are a great deep," [2990] and "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counsellor?" [2991] No difference of age can affect the reality of the body. Although our frames are in a perpetual flux and lose or gain daily, these changes do not make us different individuals. I was not one person at ten years old, another at thirty and another at fifty; nor am I another now when all my head is gray. [2992] According to the traditions of the church and the teaching of the apostle Paul, the answer must be this; that we shall rise as perfect men in the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. [2993] At this age the Jews suppose Adam to have been created and at this age we read that the Lord and Saviour rose again. Many other arguments did I adduce from both testaments to stifle the outcry of this heretic.
26. From that day forward so profoundly did Paula commence to loathe the man--and all who agreed with him in his doctrines--that she publicly proclaimed them as enemies of the Lord. I have related this incident less with the design of confuting in a few words a heresy which would require volumes to confute it, than with the object of shewing the great faith of this saintly woman who preferred to subject herself to perpetual hostility from men rather than by friendships hurtful to herself to provoke or to offend God.
27. To revert then to that description of her character which I began a little time ago; no mind was ever more docile than was hers. She was slow to speak and swift to hear, [2994] remembering the precept, "Keep silence and hearken, O Israel." [2995] The holy scriptures she knew by heart, and said of the history contained in them that it was the foundation of the truth; but, though she loved even this, she still preferred to seek for the underlying spiritual meaning and made this the keystone of the spiritual building raised within her soul. She asked leave that she and her daughter might read over the old and new testaments [2996] under my guidance. Out of modesty I at first refused compliance, but as she persisted in her demand and frequently urged me to consent to it, I at last did so and taught her what I had learned not from myself--for self-confidence is the worst of teachers--but from the church's most famous writers. Wherever I stuck fast and honestly confessed myself at fault she would by no means rest content but would force me by fresh questions to point out to her which of many different solutions seemed to me the most probable. I will mention here another fact which to those who are envious may well seem incredible. While I myself beginning as a young man have with much toil and effort partially acquired the Hebrew tongue and study it now unceasingly lest if I leave it, it also may leave me; Paula, on making up her mind that she too would learn it, succeeded so well that she could chant the psalms in Hebrew and could speak the language without a trace of the pronunciation peculiar to Latin. The same accomplishment can be seen to this day in her daughter Eustochium, who always kept close to her mother's side, obeyed all her commands, never slept apart from her, never walked abroad or took a meal without her, never had a penny that she could call her own, rejoiced when her mother gave to the poor her little patrimony, and fully believed that in filial affection she had the best heritage and the truest riches. I must not pass over in silence the joy which Paula felt when she heard her little granddaughter and namesake, the child of Laeta and Toxotius--who was born and I may even say conceived in answer to a vow of her parents dedicating her to virginity--when, I say, she heard the little one in her cradle sing "alleluia" and falter out the words "grandmother" and "aunt." One wish alone made her long to see her native land again; that she might know her son and his wife and child [2997] to have renounced the world and to be serving Christ. And it has been granted to her in part. For while her granddaughter is destined to take the veil, her daughter-in-law has vowed herself to perpetual chastity, and by faith and alms emulates the example that her mother has set her. She strives to exhibit at Rome the virtues which Paula set forth in all their fulness at Jerusalem.
28. What ails thee, my soul? Why dost thou shudder to approach her death? I have made my letter longer than it should be already; dreading to come to the end and vainly supposing that by saying nothing of it and by occupying myself with her praises I could postpone the evil day. Hitherto the wind has been all in my favour and my keel has smoothly ploughed through the heaving waves. But now my speech is running upon the rocks, the billows are mountains high, and imminent shipwreck awaits both you and me. We must needs cry out: "Master; save us we perish:" [2998] and "awake, why sleepest thou, O Lord?" [2999] For who could tell the tale of Paula's dying with dry eyes? She fell into a most serious illness and thus gained what she most desired, power to leave us and to be joined more fully to the Lord. Eustochium's affection for her mother, always true and tried, in this time of sickness approved itself still more to all. She sat by Paula's bedside, she fanned her, she supported her head, she arranged her pillows, she chafed her feet, she rubbed her stomach, she smoothed down the bedclothes, she heated hot water, she brought towels. In fact she anticipated the servants in all their duties, and when one of them did anything she regarded it as so much taken away from her own gain. How unceasingly she prayed, how copiously she wept, how constantly she ran to and fro between her prostrate mother and the cave of the Lord! imploring God that she might not be deprived of a companion so dear, that if Paula was to die she might herself no longer live, and that one bier might carry to burial her and her mother. Alas for the frailty and perishableness of human nature! Except that our belief in Christ raises us up to heaven and promises eternity to our souls, the physical conditions of life are the same for us as for the brutes. "There is one event to the righteous and to the wicked; to the good and to the evil; to the clean and to the unclean; to him that sacrificeth and to him that sacrificeth not: as is the good so is the sinner; and he that sweareth as he that feareth an oath." [3000] Man and beast alike are dissolved into dust and ashes.
29. Why do I still linger, and prolong my suffering by postponing it? Paula's intelligence shewed her that her death was near. Her body and limbs grew cold and only in her holy breast did the warm beat of the living soul continue. Yet, as though she were leaving strangers to go home to her own people, she whispered the verses of the psalmist: "Lord, I have loved the habitation of thy house and the place where thine honour dwelleth," [3001] and "How amiable are thy tabernacles, O Lord of hosts! My soul longeth yea even fainteth for the courts of the Lord," [3002] and "I had rather be an outcast in the house of my God than to dwell in the tents of wickedness." [3003] When I asked her why she remained silent refusing to answer my call, [3004] and whether she was in pain, she replied in Greek that she had no suffering and that all things were to her eyes calm and tranquil. After this she said no more but closed her eyes as though she already despised all mortal things, and kept repeating the verses just quoted down to the moment in which she breathed out her soul, but in a tone so low that we could scarcely hear what she said. Raising her finger also to her mouth she made the sign of the cross upon her lips. Then her breath failed her and she gasped for death; yet even when her soul was eager to break free, she turned the death-rattle (which comes at last to all) into the praise of the Lord. The bishop of Jerusalem and some from other cities were present, also a great number of the inferior clergy, both priests and levites. [3005] The entire monastery was filled with bodies of virgins and monks. As soon as Paula heard the bridegroom saying: "Rise up my love my fair one, my dove, and come away: for, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone," she answered joyfully "the flowers appear on the earth; the time to cut them has come" [3006] and "I believe that I shall see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living." [3007]
30. No weeping or lamentation followed her death, such as are the custom of the world; but all present united in chanting the psalms in their several tongues. The bishops lifted up the dead woman with their own hands, placed her upon a bier, and carrying her on their shoulders to the church in the cave of the Saviour, laid her down in the centre of it. Other bishops meantime carried torches and tapers in the procession, and yet others led the singing of the choirs. The whole population of the cities of Palestine came to her funeral. Not a single monk lurked in the desert or lingered in his cell. Not a single virgin remained shut up in the seclusion of her chamber. To each and all it would have seemed sacrilege to have withheld the last tokens of respect from a woman so saintly. As in the case of Dorcas, [3008] the widows and the poor shewed the garments Paula had given them; while the destitute cried aloud that they had lost in her a mother and a nurse. Strange to say, the paleness of death had not altered her expression; only a certain solemnity and seriousness had overspread her features. You would have thought her not dead but asleep.
One after another they chanted the psalms, now in Greek, now in Latin, now in Syriac; and this not merely for the three days which elapsed before she was buried beneath the church and close to the cave of the Lord, but throughout the remainder of the week. All who were assembled felt that it was their own funeral at which they were assisting, and shed tears as if they themselves had died. Paula's daughter, the revered virgin Eustochium, "as a child that is weaned of his mother," [3009] could not be torn away from her parent. She kissed her eyes, pressed her lips upon her brow, embraced her frame, and wished for nothing better than to be buried with her.
31. Jesus is witness that Paula has left not a single penny to her daughter but, as I said before, on the contrary a large mass of debt; and, worse even than this, a crowd of brothers and sisters whom it is hard for her to support but whom it would be undutiful to cast off. Could there be a more splendid instance of self-renunciation than that of this noble lady who in the fervour of her faith gave away so much of her wealth that she reduced herself to the last degree of poverty? Others may boast, if they will, of money spent in charity, of large sums heaped up in God's treasury, [3010] of votive offerings hung up with cords of gold. None of them has given more to the poor than Paula, for Paula has kept nothing for herself. But now she enjoys the true riches and those good things which eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither have they entered into the heart of man. [3011] If we mourn, it is for ourselves and not for her; yet even so, if we persist in weeping for one who reigns with Christ, we shall seem to envy her her glory.
32. Be not fearful, Eustochium: you are endowed with a splendid heritage. The Lord is your portion; and, to increase your joy, your mother has now after a long martyrdom won her crown. It is not only the shedding of blood that is accounted a confession: the spotless service of a devout mind is itself a daily martyrdom. Both alike are crowned; with roses and violets in the one case, with lilies in the other. Thus in the Song of Songs it is written: "my beloved is white and ruddy;" [3012] for, whether the victory be won in peace or in war, God gives the same guerdon to those who win it. Like Abraham your mother heard the words: "get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, unto a land that I will shew thee;" [3013] and not only that but the Lord's command given through Jeremiah: "flee out of the midst of Babylon, and deliver every man his soul." [3014] To the day of her death she never returned to Chaldæa, or regretted the fleshpots of Egypt or its strong-smelling meats. Accompanied by her virgin bands she became a fellow-citizen of the Saviour; and now that she has ascended from her little Bethlehem to the heavenly realms she can say to the true Naomi: "thy people shall be my people and thy God my God." [3015]
33. I have spent the labour of two nights in dictating for you this treatise; and in doing so I have felt a grief as deep as your own. I say in dictating' for I have not been able to write it myself. As often as I have taken up my pen [3016] and have tried to fulfil my promise; my fingers have stiffened, my hand has fallen, and my power over it has vanished. The rudeness of the diction, devoid as it is of all elegance or charm, bears witness to the feeling of the writer.
34. And now, Paula, farewell, and aid with your prayers the old age of your votary. Your faith and your works unite you to Christ; thus standing in His presence you will the more readily gain what you ask. In this letter "I have built" to your memory "a monument more lasting than bronze," [3017] which no lapse of time will be able to destroy. And I have cut an inscription on your tomb, which I here subjoin; that, wherever my narrative may go, the reader may learn that you are buried at Bethlehem and not uncommemorated there.
The Inscription on Paula's Tomb.
Within this tomb a child of Scipio lies,
A daughter of the farfamed Pauline house,
A scion of the Gracchi, of the stock
Of Agamemnon's self, illustrious:
Here rests the lady Paula, well-beloved
Of both her parents, with Eustochium
For daughter; she the first of Roman dames
Who hardship chose and Bethlehem for Christ.
In front of the cavern there is another inscription as follows:--
Seest thou here hollowed in the rock a grave,
'Tis Paula's tomb; high heaven has her soul.
Who Rome and friends, riches and home forsook
Here in this lonely spot to find her rest.
For here Christ's manger was, and here the kings
To Him, both God and man, their offerings made.
35. The holy and blessed Paula fell asleep on the seventh day before the Kalends of February, on the third day of the week, after the sun had set. She was buried on the fifth day before the same Kalends, in the sixth consulship of the Emperor Honorius and the first of Aristænetus. She lived in the vows of religion five years at Rome and twenty years at Bethlehem. The whole duration of her life was fifty-six years eight months and twenty-one days. __________________________________________________________________
[2731] Luke xx. 38.
[2732] 2 Cor. v. 6.
[2733] Ps. cxx. 5, 6 acc. to Jerome's latest version.
[2734] 1 Joh. v. 19.
[2735] Ps. cxxxix. 12, A.V. marg.
[2736] Joh. i. 5.
[2737] Ps. xxxix. 12.
[2738] Phil. i. 23.
[2739] 1 Cor. ix. 27.
[2740] Rom. xiv. 21.
[2741] Ps. xxxv. 13.
[2742] Ps. xli. 3.
[2743] Ps. xxxii. 4.
[2744] Cf. Acts vii. 56.
[2745] Ps. lv. 6.
[2746] Sacerdotes.
[2747] Mark x. 28-30.
[2748] Virg. A. i. 292.
[2749] See Letter XXXIX.
[2750] Of continence. See Letter LXVI. 3.
[2751] a.d. 382.
[2752] Theodosius and Valentinian.
[2753] Wife of Flavius Clemens, believed to have been a Christian martyr.
[2754] i.e. the straits of Messina.
[2755] A port on the S.W. coast of the Peloponnese.
[2756] Virg. A. iii. 126-8.
[2757] At this time one of the three bishops who claimed the see of Antioch. See Ep. xv. 2.
[2758] Acts xxi. 5.
[2759] 2 Kings xxiii. 29.
[2760] A maritime city of Palestine which subsequently to its restoration by Herod became first the civil, and then the ecclesiastical, capital of Palestine.
[2761] Acts xxi. 8, 9.
[2762] Acts ix. 36-41.
[2763] Acts ix. 32-34.
[2764] John xix. 38.
[2765] 1 Sam. xxii. 17-19.
[2766] Jon. i. 3.
[2767] Andromeda had been chained to a rock by her father to assuage the wrath of Poseidon who had sent a sea monster to ravage the country. Here she was found by Perseus who slew the monster and effected her rescue. See Josephus B. J. iii. ix. 3.
[2768] Luke xxiv. 13, 28-31.
[2769] 2 Chr. viii. 5.
[2770] Josh. x. 12-14.
[2771] Josh. ix.
[2772] Judges xix. xx. According to Judges xx. 47 the number of Benjamites who escaped was six hundred.
[2773] Josephus, A.J. xx. ii. 6.
[2774] Or more fully Ælia Capitolina, a Roman colony from which all Jews were expelled.
[2775] Prætorium. The word occurs in John xviii. 28.
[2776] Matt. xxviii. 2.
[2777] 2 Sam. v. 7, 9.
[2778] Isa. xxix. 1. Vulg.
[2779] Ps. lxxxvii. 1, 2.
[2780] Matt. xvi. 18.
[2781] Rev. xxii. 14.
[2782] Acts ii. 16-21.
[2783] Gen. xxxv. 18, 19.
[2784] This legend of the cave dates back to Justin Martyr.
[2785] Isa. i. 3.
[2786] Isa. xxxii. 20, LXX.
[2787] Luke ii. 15, rema.
[2788] Joh. i. 1, 14 logos the Vulg. has verbum' both here and in Luke.
[2789] The name means this in Hebrew.
[2790] Joh. vi. 51.
[2791] The name means this in Hebrew.
[2792] The word not' is inserted by Paula from Matt. ii. 6.
[2793] Will he' A.V. following the Hebrew.
[2794] Mic. v. 2, 3: Cf. Matt. ii. 6.
[2795] Ps. cx. 3, Vulg.
[2796] Acts xiii. 46.
[2797] Matt. xv. 24.
[2798] LXX. acc. to one reading.
[2799] Gen. xlix. 10, LXX.
[2800] This clause comes from the LXX.
[2801] Ps. cxxxii. 2-5.
[2802] Ps. cxxxii. 6, Vulg.
[2803] Jerome taught Paula Hebrew.
[2804] Ps. cxxxii. 7.
[2805] Ps. cxxxii. 14.
[2806] Ps. cxxxii. 17, Vulg.
[2807] Ps. xxii. 29, 30, LXX.
[2808] Gen. xxxv. 21; Mic. iv. 8.
[2809] Luke ii. 14.
[2810] Jud. vi. 37.
[2811] Ex. xii. 21-23.
[2812] Joh. i. 29.
[2813] Jer. xiii. 23.
[2814] Acts viii. 27-39.
[2815] This town played an important part in the wars of the Maccabees.
[2816] Nu. xiii. 23, 24.
[2817] Isa. lxiii. 3.
[2818] Cellulæ, lit. little cells.'
[2819] Joh. viii. 56: cf. Gen. xviii. 1, R.V.--q.v.
[2820] Josh. xiv. 15. In Hebrew Adam' and man' are the same word. Hence the mistake.
[2821] 2 Cor. iii. 6.
[2822] Jud. i. 13-15.
[2823] Perhaps identical with "the valley of Berachah" mentioned in 2 Chr. xx. 26.
[2824] Gen. xviii. 23-33.
[2825] Isa. xv. 5.
[2826] Gen. xiv. 2.
[2827] Eph. v. 18.
[2828] Gen. xix. 30-38.
[2829] Cant. i. 7.
[2830] Gen. xliii. 16.
[2831] Amos i. 1.
[2832] Luke xxiv. 50, 51; Acts i. 9-12.
[2833] Nu. xix. 1-10.
[2834] Ezek. x. 18, 19.
[2835] The jaw was the priest's portion and hence the epithet priestly': or else Bethphage belonged to the priests.
[2836] Matt. xxi. 1-7.
[2837] Humilia.
[2838] Luke x. 30-35.
[2839] Strictly Dâmim.
[2840] Luke xix. 4.
[2841] Matt. xx. 30-34.
[2842] i.e. the Jews and the Gentiles.
[2843] 1 Kings xvi. 34.
[2844] Josh. v. 3.
[2845] Rom. ii. 28, 29.
[2846] Josh. iv. 3, 20.
[2847] Rev. xxi. 14.
[2848] 2 Kings ii. 19-22, type and antitype are, as often, here confounded.
[2849] Mal. iv. 2.
[2850] Josh. iii. 17.
[2851] Josh. vii. 24-26.
[2852] Zech. iii. 9.
[2853] Isa. xxviii. 16.
[2854] Gen. xxviii. 12, 13.
[2855] Josh. xxiv. 30.
[2856] Josh. xxiv. 33.
[2857] Cf. 1 Sam. i. 3.
[2858] Judg. xxi. 19-23: cf. Liv. i. 9.
[2859] From Joh. iv. 5.
[2860] The founder of a Samaritan sect akin to the Essenes.
[2861] Luke vii. 28.
[2862] Other authorities for these strange phenomena are Hilary, Sulpicius, and Paulinus.
[2863] 1 Kings xviii. 4.
[2864] Matt. xiv. 13-21.
[2865] According to the common tradition, but Hermon is more likely to have been the place.
[2866] In the original Hermon and the Hermons'; an allusion to the Hebrew text of Ps. xlii. 6.
[2867] Jud. v. 21, Vulg.
[2868] Luke vii. 11-15.
[2869] Jud. xv. 17-19, R.V.
[2870] Micah i. 1, 14.
[2871] Jer. ii. 18.
[2872] Isa. xix. 18.
[2873] Ps. lxxviii. 12.
[2874] A mistake: No is Thebes.
[2875] i.e. presbyters and deacons. Cf. § 29, infra.
[2876] At that time the most famous of the Egyptian hermits.
[2877] Ps. vi. 6.
[2878] Jerome's own name had been coupled with Paula's when they both lived at Rome, but he was able to shew that his relations with her were wholly innocent.
[2879] 2 Cor. viii. 13, 14.
[2880] Luke iii. 11. The word alteram, one of two (therefore, Jerome means, retaining the second) is found in the Syriac Version of Cureton. It is not found in the Vulgate.
[2881] Matt. v. 7.
[2882] Ecclus. iii. 30.
[2883] Luke xvi. 9.
[2884] Luke xi. 41.
[2885] Dan. iv. 27, LXX.
[2886] Zech. ix. 16, LXX.
[2887] Rev. xxi. 14.
[2888] Rev. xxi. 19-21.
[2889] Job ii. 4, 5.
[2890] Matt. xxiii. 27.
[2891] Hor. C. ii. x. ii.
[2892] Wisd. ii. 24.
[2893] The enemy of Solomon--1 Kings xi. 14. Who Paula's enemy may have been we do not know.
[2894] 2 Cor. xii. 7.
[2895] Gen. xxvii. 41-46; xxviii. 1-5.
[2896] 1 Sam. xxi. 10.
[2897] Matt. v. 39.
[2898] Rom. xii. 21.
[2899] Phil. ii. 7, 8.
[2900] Job xl. 8, LXX.
[2901] Matt. v. 10.
[2902] Ps. xxxix. 1, 2, acc. to the Gallican psalter.
[2903] Ps. xxxviii. 13.
[2904] Ps. xxxviii. 14.
[2905] Deut. xiii. 3.
[2906] Isa. xxviii. 9-11, LXX.
[2907] Rom. v. 3-5.
[2908] 2 Cor. iv. 16.
[2909] Vulg.
[2910] 2 Cor. iv. 17, 18.
[2911] Isa. xlix. 8.
[2912] Isa. li. 7, 8.
[2913] Luke xxi. 19, R.V.
[2914] Rom. viii. 18.
[2915] 1 Th. iii. 4, R.V.
[2916] Prov. xiv. 29.
[2917] 2 Cor. xii. 10.
[2918] 2 Cor. iv. 7.
[2919] 1 Cor. xv. 54.
[2920] 2 Cor. i. 5.
[2921] 2 Cor. i. 7.
[2922] Ps. xlii. 11.
[2923] Luke ix. 23.
[2924] Luke ix. 24.
[2925] Matt. xvi. 26.
[2926] Job i. 21.
[2927] 1 Joh. ii. 15-17.
[2928] Ps. lxxvii. 4, Vulg.
[2929] Matt. x. 37.
[2930] Ps. lxxix. 11, LXX.
[2931] 1 Cor. iv. 9.
[2932] 1 Cor. iv. 10.
[2933] 1 Cor. i. 25.
[2934] Ps. lxix. 5.
[2935] Ps. lxxi. 7.
[2936] Ps. lxxiii. 22, 23.
[2937] Mark iii. 21.
[2938] Joh. viii. 48.
[2939] Luke xi. 15.
[2940] 2 Cor. i. 12.
[2941] Joh. xv. 19.
[2942] Cf. Ps. xliv. 21.
[2943] Ps. xliv. 17, 18.
[2944] Ps. xliv. 22.
[2945] Ps. cxviii. 6, P.B.V.
[2946] Prov. vii. 2, LXX.
[2947] Cf. 1 Cor. ix. 11.
[2948] The Gathering; perhaps used, like the Greek sunodos, for the Communion. The opening prayer came thus to be called The Collect. See note on Letter LI. § 1.
[2949] For the canonical hours see note on Letter XXII. § 37.
[2950] 1 Cor. iv. 21.
[2951] 1 Tim. vi. 8.
[2952] Cf. Sall. Cat. xi.
[2953] Ecclus. xiii. 2.
[2954] Ps. lxiii. 1.
[2955] e.g. Aristotle, E.N. ii. 6.
[2956] Ne quid nimis, in Greek Meden agan.
[2957] Rom. vii. 24.
[2958] 2 Tim. iv. 7, 8.
[2959] Rev. xiv. 4.
[2960] Cf. Luke vi. 21.
[2961] Ps. xlviii. 8.
[2962] Jer. ii. 13.
[2963] Joh. iv. 14.
[2964] Ps. xxx. 11.
[2965] Ps. cii. 9.
[2966] Ps. xlii. 3.
[2967] Cf. Ps. lxxviii. 25.
[2968] Ps. xxxiv. 8.
[2969] Ps. xlv. 1, R.V.
[2970] Isa. lxv. 13, 14.
[2971] Ps. xlii. 1, 2.
[2972] Wisd. ix. 15.
[2973] 1 Cor. xv. 44.
[2974] Ps. lxxiv. 19, R.V.
[2975] Ps. lxviii. 30, R.V.
[2976] Matt. xxii. 29, 30.
[2977] Luke vii. 27. Angel' is a Greek word and means messenger.'
[2978] Joh. xx. 26-28.
[2979] Joh. xxi. 4.
[2980] Luke xxiv. 42, 43.
[2981] Mark v. 43.
[2982] Joh. xii. 2.
[2983] Joh. xx. 19.
[2984] Matt. xiv. 25.
[2985] Matt. xiv. 29.
[2986] Matt. xiv. 31.
[2987] Joh. xx. 27.
[2988] Luke xxiv. 39, 40.
[2989] Globos stoicorum atque aëria quædam deliramenta.
[2990] Ps. xxxvi. 6.
[2991] Rom. xi. 33, 34.
[2992] Jerome was at this time about 60 years old.
[2993] Eph. iv. 13.
[2994] Jas. i. 19.
[2995] Deut. xxvii. 9, R.V.
[2996] Vetus et novum instrumentum.
[2997] Toxotius, Laeta, the younger Paula. Comp. Letter CVII.
[2998] Matt. viii. 25; Luke viii. 24.
[2999] Ps. xliv. 23.
[3000] Eccles. ix. 2.
[3001] Ps. xxvi. 8.
[3002] Ps. lxxxiv. 1, 2.
[3003] Ps. lxxxiv. 10, Vulg.
[3004] For the technical meaning of inclamatio vide Virg. A. 1. 219, with Conington's note.
[3005] i.e. presbyters and deacons--see § 14 above.
[3006] Cant. ii. 10-12, Vulg.
[3007] Ps. xxvii. 13.
[3008] Acts ix. 39.
[3009] Ps. cxxxi. 2.
[3010] Corbona. See Matt. xxvii. 6, Vulg.
[3011] 1 Cor. ii. 9.
[3012] Cant. v. 10.
[3013] Gen. xii. 1.
[3014] Jer. li. 6.
[3015] Ruth i. 16.
[3016] Stilus.
[3017] Horace, C. III. xxx. 1. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CIX. To Riparius.
Riparius, a presbyter of Aquitaine had written to inform Jerome that Vigilantius (for whom see Letter LXI.) was preaching in southern Gaul against the worship of relics and the keeping of night vigils; and this apparently with the consent of his bishop. Jerome now replies in a letter more noteworthy for its bitterness than for its logic. Nevertheless he offers to write a full confutation of Vigilantius if Riparius will send him the book containing his heresies. This Riparius subsequently did and then Jerome wrote his treatise Against Vigilantius, the most extreme and least convincing of all his works.
The date of the letter is 404 a.d.
1. Now that I have received a letter from you, if I do not answer it I shall be guilty of pride, and if I do I shall be guilty of rashness. For the matters concerning which you ask my opinion are such that they cannot either be spoken of or listened to without profanity. You tell me that Vigilantius (whose very name Wakeful is a contradiction: he ought rather to be described as Sleepy) has again opened his fetid lips and is pouring forth a torrent of filthy venom upon the relics of the holy martyrs; and that he calls us who cherish them ashmongers and idolaters who pay homage to dead men's bones. Unhappy wretch! to be wept over by all Christian men, who sees not that in speaking thus he makes himself one with the Samaritans and the Jews who hold dead bodies unclean and regard as defiled even vessels which have been in the same house with them, following the letter that killeth and not the spirit that giveth life. [3018] We, it is true, refuse to worship or adore, I say not the relics of the martyrs, but even the sun and moon, the angels and archangels, the Cherubim and Seraphim and "every name that is named, not only in this world but also in that which is to come." [3019] For we may not serve the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. [3020] Still we honour the relics of the martyrs, that we may adore Him whose martyrs they are. We honour the servants that their honour may be reflected upon their Lord who Himself says:--"he that receiveth you receiveth me." [3021] I ask Vigilantius, Are the relics of Peter and of Paul unclean? Was the body of Moses unclean, of which we are told (according to the correct Hebrew text) that it was buried by the Lord Himself? [3022] And do we, every time that we enter the basilicas of apostles and prophets and martyrs, pay homage to the shrines of idols? Are the tapers which burn before their tombs only the tokens of idolatry? I will go farther still and ask a question which will make this theory recoil upon the head of its inventor and which will either kill or cure that frenzied brain of his, so that simple souls shall be no more subverted by his sacrilegious reasonings. Let him answer me this, Was the Lord's body unclean when it was placed in the sepulchre? And did the angels clothed in white raiment merely watch over a corpse dead and defiled, that ages afterwards this sleepy fellow might indulge in dreams and vomit forth his filthy surfeit, so as, like the persecutor Julian, either to destroy the basilicas of the saints or to convert them into heathen temples?
2. I am surprised that the reverend bishop [3023] in whose diocese he is said to be a presbyter acquiesces in this his mad preaching, and that he does not rather with apostolic rod, nay with a rod of iron, shatter this useless vessel [3024] and deliver him for the destruction of the flesh that the spirit may be saved. [3025] He should remember the words that are said: "When thou sawest a thief, then thou consentedst unto him; and hast been partaker with adulterers;" [3026] and in another place, "I will early destroy all the wicked of the land; that I may cut off all wicked doers from the city of the Lord;" [3027] and again "Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate thee? and am not I grieved with those that rise up against thee? I hate them with perfect hatred." [3028] If the relics of the martyrs are not worthy of honour, how comes it that we read "Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints?" [3029] If dead men's bones defile those that touch them, how came it that the dead Elisha raised another man also dead, and that life came to this latter from the body of the prophet which according to Vigilantius must have been unclean? In that case every encampment of the host of Israel and the people of God was unclean; for they carried the bodies of Joseph and of the patriarchs with them in the wilderness, and carried their unclean ashes even into the holy land. In that case Joseph, who was a type of our Lord and Saviour, was a wicked man; for he carried up Jacob's bones with great pomp to Hebron merely to put his unclean father beside his unclean grandfather and great grandfather, that is, one dead body along with others. The wretch's tongue should be cut out, or he should be put under treatment for insanity. As he does not know how to speak, he should learn to be silent. I have myself before now seen the monster, and have done my best to bind the maniac with texts of scripture, as Hippocrates binds his patients with chains; but "he went away, he departed, he escaped, he broke out," [3030] and taking refuge between the Adriatic and the Alps of King Cotius [3031] declaimed in his turn against me. For all that a fool says must be regarded as mere noise and mouthing.
3. You may perhaps in your secret thoughts find fault with me for thus assailing a man behind his back. I will frankly admit that my indignation overpowers me; I cannot listen with patience to such sacrilegious opinions. I have read of the javelin of Phinehas, [3032] of the harshness of Elijah, [3033] of the jealous anger of Simon the zealot, [3034] of the severity of Peter in putting to death Ananias and Sapphira, [3035] and of the firmness of Paul who, when Elymas the sorcerer withstood the ways of the Lord, doomed him to lifelong blindness. [3036] There is no cruelty in regard for God's honour. Wherefore also in the Law it is said: "If thy brother or thy friend or the wife of thy bosom entice thee from the truth, thine hand shall be upon them and thou shalt shed their blood, [3037] and so shalt thou put the evil away from the midst of Israel." [3038] Once more I ask, Are the relics of the martyrs unclean? If so, why did the apostles allow themselves to walk in that funeral procession before the body--the unclean body--of Stephen? Why did they make great lamentation over him, [3039] that their grief might be turned into our joy?
You tell me farther that Vigilantius execrates vigils. In this surely he goes contrary to his name. The Wakeful one wishes to sleep and will not hearken to the Saviour's words, "What, could ye not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing but the flesh is weak." [3040] And in another place a prophet sings: "At midnight I will rise to give thanks unto thee because of thy righteous judgments." [3041] We read also in the gospel how the Lord spent whole nights in prayer [3042] and how the apostles when they were shut up in prison kept vigil all night long, singing their psalms until the earth quaked, and the keeper of the prison believed, and the magistrates and citizens were filled with terror. [3043] Paul says: "continue in prayer and watch in the same," [3044] and in another place he speaks of himself as "in watchings often." [3045] Vigilantius may sleep if he pleases and may choke in his sleep, destroyed by the destroyer of Egypt and of the Egyptians. But let us say with David: "Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep." [3046] So will the Holy One and the Watcher come to us. [3047] And if ever by reason of our sins He fall asleep, let us say to Him: "Awake, why sleepest thou, O Lord;" [3048] and when our ship is tossed by the waves let us rouse Him and say, "Master, save us: we perish." [3049]
4. I would dictate more were it not that the limits of a letter impose upon me a modest silence. I might have gone on, had you sent me the books which contain this man's rhapsodies, for in that case I should have known what points I had to refute. As it is I am only beating the air [3050] and revealing not so much his infidelity--for this is patent to all--as my own faith. But if you wish me to write against him at greater length, send me those wretched dronings of his and in my answer he shall hear an echo of John the Baptist's words "Now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees; therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire." [3051] __________________________________________________________________
[3018] 2 Cor. iii. 6.
[3019] Eph. i. 21.
[3020] Rom. i. 25.
[3021] Matt. x. 40.
[3022] Deut. xxxiv. 6.
[3023] Probably Exuperius of Toulouse.
[3024] Ps. ii. 9.
[3025] 1 Cor. v. 5.
[3026] Ps. l. 18.
[3027] Ps. ci. 8.
[3028] Ps. cxxxix. 21, 22.
[3029] Ps. cxvi. 15.
[3030] Cic. Cat. ii. 1, of Catiline.
[3031] A contemporary and ally of Augustus.
[3032] Nu. xxv. 7, 8.
[3033] 1 Kings xviii. 40.
[3034] Luke vi. 15: so called probably because he came from the most fanatical party among the Pharisees.
[3035] Acts v. 1-10.
[3036] Acts xiii. 8-11.
[3037] Deut. xiii. 6-9.
[3038] Deut. xiii. 5.
[3039] Acts viii. 2.
[3040] Matt. xxvi. 40, 41.
[3041] Ps. cxix. 62.
[3042] Luke vi. 12.
[3043] Acts xvi. 25-38.
[3044] Col. iv. 2.
[3045] 2 Cor. xi. 27.
[3046] Ps. cxxi. 4.
[3047] Dan. iv. 13. Jerome gives the Hebrew word for watcher, viz. yr
[3048] Ps. xliv. 23.
[3049] Matt. viii. 25; Luke viii. 24.
[3050] Cf. 1 Cor. ix. 26.
[3051] Matt. iii. 10. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CX. From Augustine.
Augustine's answer to Letter CII. He now tries to soothe Jerome's wounded feelings, begs him to overlook the offence that he has committed, and implores him not to break off the friendly relations hitherto maintained between them. He touches on the quarrel between Jerome and Rufinus and sincerely hopes that no such breach may ever separate Jerome from himself. The tone of the letter is throughout conciliatory and is marked in places with deep feeling. More than once Augustine dwells on Jerome's words ("would that I could embrace you and that by mutual converse we might learn one from the other," Letter CII. §2) and speaks of the comfort which they have brought to him.
The date of the letter is 404 a.d. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXI. From Augustine to Præsidius.
Augustine asks Præsidius to forward the preceding letter to Jerome and also to write himself to urge him to forgive Augustine. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXII. To Augustine.
On receiving Letter CIV. together with duly authenticated copies of Letters LVI. and LXVII. Jerome in three days completes an exhaustive reply to all the questions which Augustine had raised. He explains what is the true title of his book On Illustrious Men, deals at great length with the dispute between Paul and Peter, expounds his views with regard to the Septuagint, and shews by the story of "the gourd" how close and accurate his translations are. His language throughout is kind but rather patronising: indeed in this whole correspondence Jerome seldom sufficiently recognizes the greatness of Augustine. The date of the letter is 404 a.d. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXIII. From Theophilus to Jerome.
Theophilus, bishop of Alexandria, had compiled an invective against John Chrysostom, bishop of Constantinople who was nosy (largely through his efforts) an exile from his see. This he now sends to Jerome with a request that the latter will render it into Latin for dissemination in the West. The invective (of which only a few fragments remain) is of the most violent kind. Nevertheless Jerome translated it along with this letter, the date of which is 405 a.d. The latter part of the letter has perished.
To the well-beloved and most loving brother Jerome, Theophilus sends greeting in the Lord.
1. At the outset the verdict which is in accordance with the truth satisfies but few. But the Lord speaking by the prophet says: "my judgment goeth forth as the light:" [3052] and they who are surrounded with a horror of darkness and do not with clear comprehension perceive the nature of things, are covered with eternal shame and know by the issues of their acts that their efforts have been in vain. Wherefore we also have always desired for John who has for a time ruled the church of Constantinople grace that he might please God, and we have been slow to attribute to him the rash acts which have caused his downfall. But, not to speak of his other misdeeds, he has taken the Origenists into his confidence, has advanced many of them to the priesthood, and by committing this crime has saddened with no slight grief that man of God, Epiphanius of blessed memory, who has shone throughout all the world a bright star among bishops. And therefore he has rightly come to hear the words of doom: "Babylon is fallen, is fallen." [3053]
2. Knowing then that the Saviour has said: "judge not according to the appearance but judge righteous judgment." [3054] ... __________________________________________________________________
[3052] Hos. vi. 5, LXX.
[3053] Isa. xxi. 9.
[3054] Joh. vii. 24. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXIV. To Theophilus.
Jerome writes to Theophilus to apologize for his delay in sending Latin versions of the latter's letter (CXIII.) and invective against John Chrysostom. Possibly, however, the allusion may be not to these but to some other work of Theophilus (e.g. a paschal letter.) This delay he attributes to the disturbed state of Palestine, the severity of the winter, the prevalent famine, and his own ill-health. He now sends the translations that he has made and, while he deprecates criticism on his own work, praises that of Theophilus, quoting with particular approval the directions given by this latter for the reverent care of the vessels used in celebrating the holy communion. The date of the letter is 405 a.d.
To the most blessed pope Theophilus, Jerome.
1. My delay in sending back to your holiness your treatise translated into Latin is accounted for by the many interruptions and obstacles that I have met with. There has been a sudden raid of the Isaurians; Phoenicia and Galilee have been laid waste; Palestine has been panic-stricken, and particularly Jerusalem; we have all been engaged in making not books but walls. There has also been a severe winter and an almost unbearable famine; and these have told heavily upon me who have the charge of many brothers. Amid these difficulties the work of translation went on by night, as I could save or snatch time to give to it. At last I got it done and by Lent nothing remained but to collate the fair copy with the original. However, just then a severe illness seized me and I was brought to the threshold of death, from which I have only been saved by God's mercy and your prayers; perhaps for this very purpose that I might fulfil your behest and render with its writer's elegance the charming volume which you have adorned with the scripture's fairest flowers. But bodily weakness and sorrow of heart have, I need hardly say, dulled the edge of my intellect and obstructed the free flow of my language.
2. I admire in your work its practical aim, designed as it is to instruct by the authority of scripture ignorant persons in all the churches concerning the reverence with which they must handle holy things and minister at Christ's altar; and to impress upon them that the sacred chalices, veils, [3055] and other accessories used in the celebration of the Lord's passion are not mere lifeless and senseless objects devoid of holiness, but that rather, from their association with the body and blood of the Lord, they are to be venerated with the same awe as the body and the blood themselves.
3. Take back then your book, nay mine or better still ours; for when you flatter me you will but flatter yourself. It is for you that my brain has toiled; it is for you that I have striven with the poor resources of the Latin tongue to find an equivalent for the eloquence of the Greek. I have not indeed given a word-for-word rendering, as skilled translators do, nor have I counted out the money you have given to me coin by coin; but I have given you full weight. Some words may be missing but none of the sense is lost. Moreover I have translated into Latin and prefixed to this volume the letter that you sent to me, so that all who read it may know that I have acted under the commands of your holiness, and have not rashly and over-confidently undertaken a task that is beyond my powers. Whether I have succeeded in it I must leave to your judgment. Even though you may blame my weakness, you will at least give me credit for my good intention. __________________________________________________________________
[3055] So the embroidered cloths used in Catholic Churches to cover the sacramental elements are still called. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXV. To Augustine.
A short but most friendly letter in which Jerome excuses himself for the freedom with which he has dealt with Augustine's questions (the allusion is to Letter CXII.) and hopes that henceforth they may be able to avoid controversy and to labour like brothers in the field of scripture.
Written probably in 405 a.d. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXVI. From Augustine.
A long letter in which Augustine for the third time (see Letters LVI., LXVII.) restates his opinion about Jerome's theory of the dispute between Peter and Paul at Antioch. In doing so, however, he disclaims all desire to hurt Jerome's feelings, apologizes for the tone of his previous letters, and again explains that it is not his fault that they have failed so long to reach Jerome.
Written shortly after the preceding. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXVII. To a Mother and Daughter Living in Gaul.
A monk of Gaul had during a visit to Bethlehem asked Jerome for advice under the following circumstances. His mother was a church-widow and his sister a religious virgin but the two could not agree. They were accordingly living apart but neither by herself. For each had taken into her house a monk ostensibly to act as steward but really to be a paramour. At the request of his visitor Jerome now writes to both mother and daughter urging them to dismiss their companions; or at any rate to live together: and pointing out the grave scandal that must otherwise be caused.
From the treatise against Vigilantius (§3) we learn that ill-natured critics maintained that the persons and circumstances described in the letter were alike fictitious and that Jerome in writing it was but exercising his ingenuity on a congenial theme.
The date is a.d. 405.
Introduction.
1. A certain brother from Gaul has told me that his virgin-sister and widowed mother, though living in the same city, have separate abodes and have taken to themselves clerical protectors either as guests or stewards; and that by thus associating with strangers they have caused more scandal than by living apart. When I groaned and expressed what I felt more by silence than words; "I beseech you," said he, "rebuke them in a letter and recall them to mutual harmony; make them once more mother and daughter." To whom I replied, "a nice task this that you lay upon me, for me a stranger to reconcile two women whom you, a son and brother, have failed to influence. You speak as though I occupied the chair of a bishop instead of being shut up in a monastic cell where, far removed from the world's turmoil, I lament the sins of the past and try to avoid the temptations of the present. Moreover, it is surely inconsistent, while one buries oneself out of sight, to allow one's tongue free course through the world." "You are too fearful," he replied; "where is that old hardihood of yours which made you scour the world with copious salt,' as Horace says of Lucilius?" [3056] "It is this," I rejoined, "that makes me shy and forbids me to open my lips. For through accusing crime I have been myself made out a criminal. Men have disputed and denied my assertions until, as the proverb goes, I hardly know whether I have ears or feeling left. The very walls have resounded with curses levelled at me, and I was the song of drunkards.' [3057] Under the compulsion of an unhappy experience I have learned to be silent, thinking it better to set a watch before my mouth and to keep the door of my lips than to incline my heart to any evil thing, [3058] or, while censuring the faults of others, myself to fall into that of detraction." In answer to this he said: "Speaking the truth is not detraction. Nor will you lecture the world by administering a particular rebuke; for there are few persons, if any, open to this special charge. I beg of you, therefore, as I have put myself to the trouble of this long journey, that you will not suffer me to have come for nothing. The Lord knows that, after the sight of the holy places, my principal object in coming has been to heal by a letter from you the division between my sister and my mother." "Well," I replied, "I will do as you wish, for after all the letters will be to persons beyond the sea and words written with reference to definite persons can seldom offend other people. But I must ask you to keep what I say secret. You will take my advice with you to encourage you by the way; if it is listened to, I will rejoice as much as you; while if, as I rather think, it is rejected, I shall have wasted my words and you will have made a long journey for nothing."
The Letter.
2. In the first place my sister and my daughter, I wish you to know that I am not writing to you because I suspect anything evil of you. On the contrary I implore you to live in harmony, so as to give no ground for any such suspicions. Moreover had I supposed you fast bound in sin--far be this from you--I should never have written, for I should have known that my words would be addressed to deaf ears. Again, if I write to you somewhat sharply, I beg of you to ascribe this not to any harshness on my part but to the nature of the ailment which I attempt to treat. Cautery and the knife are the only remedies when mortification has once set in; poison is the only antidote known for poison; great pain can only be relieved by inflicting greater pain. Lastly I must say this that even if your own consciences acquit you of misdoing, yet the very rumour of such brings disgrace upon you. Mother and daughter are names of affection; they imply natural ties and reciprocal duties; they form the closest of human relations after that which binds the soul to God. If you love each other, your conduct calls for no praise: but if you hate each other, you have committed a crime. The Lord Jesus was subject to His parents. [3059] He reverenced that mother of whom He was Himself the parent; He respected the foster-father whom He had Himself fostered; for He remembered that He had been carried in the womb of the one and in the arms of the other. Wherefore also when He hung upon the cross He commended to His disciple [3060] the mother whom He had never before His passion parted from Himself.
3. Well, I shall say no more to the mother, for perhaps age, weakness, and loneliness make sufficient excuses for her; but to you the daughter I say: "Is a mother's house too small for you whose womb was not too small? When you have lived with her for ten months in the one, can you not bear to live with her for one day in the other? or are you unable to meet her gaze? Can it be that one who has borne you and reared you, who has brought you up and knows you, is dreaded by you as a witness of your home-life? If you are a true virgin, why do you fear her careful guardianship; and, if you have fallen, why do you not openly marry? Wedlock is like a plank offered to a shipwrecked man and by its means you may remedy what previously you have done amiss. I do not mean that you are not to repent of your sin or that you are to continue in evil courses; but, when a tie of the kind has been formed, I despair of breaking it altogether. However, a return to your mother will make it easier for you to bewail the virginity which you have lost through leaving her. Or if you are still unspotted and have not lost your chastity, be careful of it for you may lose it. Why must you live in a house where you must daily struggle for life and death? Can any one sleep soundly with a viper near him? No; for, though it may not attack him it is sure to frighten him. It is better to be where there is no danger, than to be in danger and to escape. In the one case we have a calm; in the other careful steering is necessary. In the one case we are filled with joy; in the other we do but avoid sorrow.
4. But you will perhaps reply: "my mother is not well-behaved, she desires the things of the world, she loves riches, she disregards fasting, she stains her eyes with antimony, she likes to walk abroad in gay attire, she hinders me from the monastic vow, and so I cannot live with her." But first of all, even though she is as you say, you will have the greater reward for refusing to forsake her with all her faults. She has carried you in her womb, she has reared you; with gentle affection she has borne with the troublesome ways of your childhood. She has washed your linen, she has tended you when sick, and the sickness of maternity was not only borne for you but caused by you. She has brought you up to womanhood, she has taught you to love Christ. You ought not to be displeased with the behaviour of a mother who has consecrated you as a virgin to the service of your spouse. Still if you cannot put up with her dainty ways and feel obliged to shun them, and if your mother really is, as people so often say, a woman of the world, you have others, virgins like yourself, the holy company of chastity. Why, when you forsake your mother, do you choose for companion a man who perhaps has left behind him a sister and mother of his own? You tell me that she is hard to get on with and that he is easy; that she is quarrelsome and that he is amiable. I will ask you one question: Did you go straight from your home to the man, or did you fall in with him afterwards? If you went straight to him, the reason why you left your mother is plain. If you fell in with him afterwards, you shew by your choice what you missed under your mother's roof. [3061] The pain that I inflict is severe and I feel the knife as much as you. "He that walketh uprightly walketh surely." [3062] Only that my conscience would smite me, I should keep silence and be slow to blame others where I am not guiltless myself. Having a beam in my own eye I should be reluctant to see the mote in my neighbour's. But as it is I live far away among Christian brothers; my life with them is honourable as eyewitnesses of it can testify; I rarely see, or am seen by, others. It is most shameless, therefore, in you to refuse to copy me in respect of self-restraint, when you profess to take me as your model. If you say: "my conscience is enough for me too. God is my judge who is witness of my life. I care not what men may say;" let me urge upon you the apostle's words: "provide things honest" not only in the sight of God but also "in the sight of all men." [3063] If any one carps at you for being a Christian and a virgin, mind it not; you have left your mother it may be said to live in a monastery among virgins, but censure on this score is your glory. When men blame a maid of God not for self-indulgence but only for insensibility to affection, what they condemn as callous disregard of a parent is really a lively devotion towards God. For you prefer to your mother Him whom you are bidden to prefer to your own soul. [3064] And if the day ever comes that she also shall so prefer Him, she will find in you not a daughter only but a sister as well.
5. "What then?" you will say, "is it a crime to have a man of religion in the house with me?" You seize me by the collar and drag me into court either to sanction what I disapprove or else to incur the dislike of many. A man of religion never separates a daughter from her mother. He welcomes both and respects both. A daughter may be as religious as she pleases; still a mother who is a widow is a guaranty for her chastity. If this person whoever he is is of the same age with yourself, he should honour your mother as though she were his own; and, if he is older, he should love you as a daughter and subject you to a mother's discipline. It is not good either for your reputation or for his that he should like you more than your mother; for his affection might appear to be less for you than for your youth. This is what I should say if a monk were not your brother and if you had no relatives able to protect you. But what excuse has a stranger for thrusting himself in where there are both a mother and a brother, the one a widow and the other a monk? It is good for you to feel that you are a daughter and a sister. However, if you cannot manage both, and if your mother is too hard a morsel to swallow, your brother at any rate should satisfy you. Or, if he is too harsh, she that bore you may prove more gentle. Why do you turn pale? Why do you get excited? Why do you blush, and with trembling lips betray the restlessness of your mind? One thing only can surpass a woman's love for her mother and brother; and that is her passion for her husband.
6. I am told, moreover, that you frequent suburban villas and their pleasant gardens in the company of relatives and intimate friends. I have no doubt that it is some female cousin or connexion who for her own satisfaction carries you about with her as a novel kind of attendant. Far be it from me to suspect that you would desire men's society; even though they should be those of your own family. But pray, maiden, answer me this; do you appear alone in your kinsfolk's society? or do you bring your favourite with you? Shameless as you may be, you will hardly venture to flaunt him in the eyes of the world. If you ever do so, your whole circle will cry out about both you and him; every one's finger will be pointed at you; and your cousins who in your presence to please you call him a monk and a man of religion, will laugh at you behind your back for having such an unnatural husband. If on the other hand you go out alone--which I rather suppose to be the case--you will find yourself clothed in sober garb among slave youths, women married or soon to be so, wanton girls, and dandies with long hair and tight-fitting vests. [3065] Some bearded fop will offer you his hand, he will hold you up if you feel tired, and the pressure of his fingers will either be a temptation to you, or will shew that you are a temptation to him. Again when you sit down to table with married men and women, you will have to see kisses in which you have no part, and dishes partaken of which are not for you. Moreover it cannot but do you harm to see other women attired in silk dresses and gold brocades. At table also whether you like it or not, you will be forced to eat flesh and that of different kinds. To make you drink wine they will praise it as a creature of God. To induce you to take baths they will speak of dirt with disgust; and, when on second thoughts you do as you are bid, they will with one voice salute you as spotless and open, a thorough lady. Meantime some singer will give to the company a selection of softly flowing airs; and as he will not venture to look at other men's wives, he will constantly fix his eyes on you who have no protector. He will speak by nods and convey by his tone what he is afraid to put into words. Amid inducements to sensuality so marked as these, even iron wills are apt to be overcome with desire; an appetite which is the more imperious in virgins because they suppose that sweetest of which they have no experience. Heathen legends tell us that sailors actually ran their ships on the rocks that they might listen to the songs of the Sirens; and that the lyre of Orpheus had power to draw to itself trees and animals and to soften flints. In the banquet-hall chastity is hard to keep. A shining skin shews a sin-stained soul.
7. As a schoolboy I have read of one--and have seen his effigy true to the life in the streets--who continued to cherish an unlawful passion even when his flesh scarcely clung to his bones, and whose malady remained uncured until death cured it. What then will become of you a young girl physically sound, dainty, stout, and ruddy, if you allow yourself free range among flesh-dishes, wines, and baths, not to mention married men and bachelors? Even if when solicited you refuse to consent, you will take the fact of your being asked as evidence that you are considered handsome. A sensual mind pursues dishonourable objects with greater zest than honourable ones; and when a thing is forbidden hankers after it with greater pleasure. Your very dress, cheap and sombre as it is, is an index of your secret feelings. For it has no creases and trails along the ground to make you appear taller than you are. Your vest is purposely ripped asunder to shew what is beneath and while hiding what is repulsive, to reveal what is fair. As you walk, the very creaking of your black and shiny shoes attracts the notice of the young men. You wear stays to keep your breasts in place, and a heaving girdle closely confines your chest. Your hair covers either your forehead or your ears. Sometimes too you let your shawl drop so as to lay bare your white shoulders; and, as if unwilling that they should be seen, you quickly conceal what you have purposely disclosed. And when in public you for modesty's sake cover your face, like a practised harlot you only shew what is likely to please.
8. You will exclaim "How do you know what I am like, or how, when you are so far away, can you see what I am doing?" Your own brother's tears and sobs have told me, his frequent and scarcely endurable bursts of grief. Would that he had lied or that his words had been words of apprehension only and not of accusation. But, believe me, liars do not shed tears. He is indignant that you prefer to himself a young man, not it is true clothed in silk or wearing his hair long but muscular and dainty in the midst of his squalor; and that this fellow holds the purse-strings, looks after the weaving, allots the servants their tasks, rules the household, and buys from the market all that is needed. He is at once steward and master, and, as he anticipates the slaves in their duties, [3066] he is carped at by all the domestics. Everything that their mistress has not given them they declare that he has stolen from them. Servants as a class are full of complaints; and no matter what you give them, it is always too little. For they do not consider how much you have but only how much you give; and they make up for their chagrin in the only way they can, that is, by grumbling. One calls him a parasite, another an impostor, another a money-seeker, another by some novel appellation that hits his fancy. They noise it abroad that he is constantly at your bed-side, that when you are sick he runs to fetch nurses, that he holds basins, airs sheets, and folds bandages for you. The world is only too ready to believe scandal, and stories invented at home soon get afloat abroad. Nor need you be surprised if your servantmen and servantmaids get up such tales about you, when even your mother and your brother complain of your conduct.
9. Do, therefore, what I advise you and entreat you to do: if possible, be reconciled with your mother; or, if this may not be, at least come to terms with your brother. Or if you are filled with an implacable hatred of relationships usually so dear, separate at all events from the man, whom you are said to prefer to your own flesh and blood, and, if even this is impossible for you, (for, if you could leave him, you would certainly return to your own) pay more regard to appearances in harbouring him as your companion. Live in a separate building and take your meals apart; for if you remain under one roof with him slanderers will say that you share with him your bed. You may thus easily get help from him when you feel you need it, and yet to a considerable degree escape public discredit. Yet you must take care not to contract the stain of which Jeremiah tells us that no nitre or fuller's soap can wash it out. [3067] When you wish him to come to see you, always have witnesses present; either friends, or freedmen, or slaves. A good conscience is afraid of no man's eyes. Let him come in unembarrassed and go out at his ease. Let his silent looks, his unspoken words and his whole carriage, though at times they may imply embarrassment, yet indicate peace of mind. Pray, open your ears and listen to the outcry of the whole city. You have already both of you lost your own names and are known each by that of the other. You are spoken of as his, and he is said to be yours. Your mother and your brother have heard this and are ready to take you in between them. They implore you to consent to this arrangement, so that the scandal of your intimacy with this man which is confined to yourself may give place to a glory common to all. You can live with your mother and he with your brother. You can more boldly shew your regard for one who is your brother's comrade; and your mother will more properly esteem one who is the friend of her son and not of her daughter. But if you frown and refuse to accept my advice, this letter will openly expostulate with you. Why,' it will say, do you beset another man's servant? Why do you make Christ's minister your slave? Look at the people and scan each face as it comes under your view. When he reads in the church all eyes are fixed upon you; and you, using the licence of a wife, glory in your shame. Secret infamy no longer contents you; you call boldness freedom; "you have a whore's forehead and refuse to be ashamed." [3068]
10. Once more you exclaim that I am over-suspicious, a thinker of evil, too ready to follow rumours. What? I suspicious? I ill-natured? I, who as I said in the beginning have taken up my pen because I have no suspicions? Or is it you that are careless, loose, disdainful? You who at the age of twenty-five have netted in your embrace a youth whose beard has scarcely grown? An excellent instructor he must be, able no doubt by his severe looks both to warn and frighten you! No age is safe from lust, yet gray hairs are some security for decent conduct. A day will surely come (for time glides by imperceptibly) when your handsome young favourite will find a wealthier or more youthful mistress. For women soon age and particularly if they live with men. You will be sorry for your decision and regret your obstinacy in a day when your means and reputation shall be alike gone, and when this unhappy intimacy shall be happily broken off. But perhaps you feel sure of your ground and see no reason to fear a breach where affection has had so long a time to develop and grow.
11. To you also, her mother, I must say a word. Your years put you beyond the reach of scandal; do not take advantage of this to indulge in sin. It is more fitting that your daughter should learn from you how to part from a companion than that you should learn from her how to give up a paramour. You have a son, a daughter, and a son-in-law, or at least one who is your daughter's partner. [3069] Why then should you seek other society than theirs, or wish to kindle anew expiring flames? It would be more becoming in you to screen your daughter's fault than to make it an excuse for your own misdoing. Your son is a monk, and, if he were to live with you, he would strengthen you in your religious profession and in your vow of widowhood. Why should you take in a complete stranger, especially in a house not large enough to hold a son and a daughter? You are old enough to have grand-children. Invite the pair home then. Your daughter went away by herself; let her return with this man. I say man' and not husband' that none may cavil. The word describes his sex and not his relation to her. Or if she blushes to accept your offer or finds the house in which she was born too narrow for her, then move both of you to her abode. However limited may be its accommodation, it can take in a mother and a brother better than a stranger. In fact, if she lives in the same house and occupies the same room with a man, she cannot long preserve her chastity. It is different when two women and two men live together. If the third person concerned--he, I mean, who fosters your old age--will not make one of the party and causes only dissension and confusion, the pair of you [3070] can do without him. But if the three of you remain together, then your brother and son [3071] will offer him a sister and a mother. Others may speak of the two strangers as step-father and son-in-law; but your son must speak of them as his foster-father and his brother.
Note.
12. Working quickly I have completed this letter in a single night anxious alike to gratify a friend and to try my hand on a rhetorical theme. Then early in the morning he has knocked at my door on the point of starting. I wish also to shew my detractors that like them I too can say the first thing that comes into my head. I have, therefore, introduced few quotations from the scriptures and have not, as in most of my books, interwoven its flowers in my discourse. The letter has been, in fact, dictated off-hand and poured forth by lamp-light so fast that my tongue has outstripped my secretaries' pens and that my volubility has baffled the expedients of shorthand. I have said this much that those who make no allowances for want of ability may make some for want of time. __________________________________________________________________
[3056] Hor. Sat. I. x. 3, 4.
[3057] Ps. lxix. 12.
[3058] Ps. cxli. 3, 4.
[3059] Luke ii. 51.
[3060] Joh. xix. 26, 27.
[3061] Viz. men's society.
[3062] Prov. x. 9.
[3063] Rom. xii. 17.
[3064] Luke xiv. 26.
[3065] Lineatos juvenes. The linea appears to have been a close-fitting jerkin.
[3066] To ingratiate himself with their mistress. Cf. 108.
[3067] Jer. ii. 22.
[3068] From Jer. iii. 3.
[3069] Contubernalis.
[3070] Viz. the mother and daughter.
[3071] Viz. the monk who was son of the widow and brother of the virgin. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXVIII. To Julian.
Jerome writes to Julian, a wealthy nobleman apparently of Dalmatia (§5), to console him for the loss of his wife and two daughters all of whom had recently died. He reminds Julian of the trials of Job and recommends him to imitate the patience of the patriarch. He also urges him to follow the example set by Pammachius and Paulinus, that is, to give up his riches and to become a monk for the sake of Christ. The date of the letter is 406 a.d.
1. At the very instant of his departure Ausonius, a son to me as he is a brother to you, gave me a late glimpse of himself but quickly hurried away again, saying good-morning and good-bye together. Yet he thought that he would return empty-handed unless he could bring you some trifle from me however hastily written. Clothed in scarlet as befitted his rank, he had already strapped on his sword-belt [3072] and sent down a requisition to have a stage-horse saddled. Still he made me send for my secretary and dictate a letter to him. This I did with such rapidity that his nimble hand could hardly keep pace with my words or manage to put down my hurried sentences. Thus hasty dictation has taken the place of careful writing; and, if I break my long silence, it is but to offer you an expression of good will. This is an impromptu letter without logical order or charm of style. You must look on me for once as a friend only; you will find, I assure you, nothing of the orator here. Bear in mind that it has been dashed off on the spur of the moment and given as a provision for the way to one in a hurry to depart.
Holy scripture says: "a tale out of season is as musick in mourning." [3073] Accordingly I have disdained the graces of rhetoric and those charms of eloquence which boys find so captivating, and have fallen back on the serious tone of the sacred writings. For in these are to be found true medicines for wounds and sure remedies for sorrow. In these a mother receives back her only son even on the bier. [3074] In these a crowd of mourners hears the words: "the maid is not dead but sleepeth." [3075] In these one that is four days dead comes forth bound at the call of the Lord. [3076]
2. I hear that in a short space of time you have suffered several bereavements, that you have buried in quick succession two young unmarried daughters, and that Faustina, most chaste and loyal of wives, your sister in the fervour of her faith and your one comfort in the loss of your children, has suddenly fallen asleep and been taken from you. You have been like a shipwrecked man, who has no sooner reached the shore than he falls into the hands of brigands, or in the eloquent language of the prophet like one "who did flee from a lion, and a bear met him; or went into the house, and leaned his hand on the wall, and a serpent bit him." [3077] Pecuniary losses have followed your bereavements; the entire province has been overrun by a barbarian enemy, and in the general devastation your private property has been destroyed, your flocks and herds have been driven off, and your poor slaves either made prisoners or else slain. To crown all, your only daughter, made all the more dear to you by the loss of the others, has for her husband a young nobleman who, to say nothing worse of him, has given you more occasion for sorrow than for rejoicing. Such is the list of the trials that have been laid upon you; such is the conflict waged by the old enemy against Julian a raw recruit to Christ's standard. If you look only to yourself your troubles are indeed great but if you look to the strong Warrior, [3078] they are but child's play and the conflict is only the semblance of one. After untold trials a wicked wife was still left to the blessed Job, the devil hoping that he might learn from her to blaspheme God. You on the other hand have been deprived of an excellent one that you might learn to go without consolation in the hour of misfortune. Yet it is far harder to put up with a wife whom you dislike than it is to mourn for one whom you dearly love. Moreover when Job's children died they found a common tomb beneath the ruins of his house, and all he could do to shew his parental affection was to rend his garments, to fall upon the ground and to worship, saying: "Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away: it has been as the Lord pleased: blessed be the name of the Lord." [3079] But you, to put the matter briefly, have been allowed to perform the obsequies of your dear ones; and those obsequies have been attended by many respectful kinsmen and comforting friends. Again Job lost all his wealth at once; and, as, one after another, the messengers of woe unfolded new calamities, he flinched as little as the sage of whom Horace writes: [3080] --
Shatter the world to atoms if you will.
Fearless will be the man on whom it falls.
But with you the case is different. The greater part of your substance has been left to you, and your trials have not been greater than you can bear. For you have not yet attained to such perfection that the devil has to marshal all his forces against you.
3. Long ago this wealthy proprietor and still wealthier father was made by a sudden stroke destitute and bereaved. But as, in spite of all that befel him, he had not sinned before God or spoken foolishly, the Lord--exulting in the victory of his servant and regarding Job's patience as His own triumph--said to the devil: "Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God and escheweth evil? and still he holdeth fast his integrity?" [3081] He finely adds the last clause because it is difficult for innocence to refrain from murmuring when it is overborne by misfortune; and to avoid making a shipwreck of faith when it sees that its sufferings are unjustly inflicted. The devil answered the Lord and said: "Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life. But put forth thine hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse thee to thy face." [3082] See how crafty the adversary is, and how hardened in sin his evil days have made him! He knows the difference between things external and internal. He knows that even the philosophers of the world call the former adiaphora, that is indifferent, and that the perfection of virtue does not consist in losing or disdaining them. It is the latter, those that are internal and objects of preference, [3083] the loss of which inevitably causes chagrin. Wherefore he boldly contradicts what God has said and declares that Job deserves no praise at all; since he has yielded up no part of himself but only what is outside himself, since he has given for his own skin the skins of his children, and since he has but laid down his purse to secure the health of his body. From this your sagacity may perceive that your trials have so far only reached the point at which you give hide for hide, skin for skin, and are ready to give all that you have for your life. The Lord has not yet stretched forth His hand upon you, or touched your flesh, or broken your bones. Yet it is when such afflictions as these are laid upon you that it is hard not to groan and not to bless' God to His face, that is to curse Him. The word bless' is used in the same way in the books of Kings where it is said of Naboth that he blessed' God and the king and was therefore stoned by the people. [3084] But the Lord knew His champion and felt sure that this great hero would even in this last and severest conflict prove unconquerable. Therefore He said: "Behold he is in thine hand; but save his life." [3085] The holy man's flesh is placed at the devil's disposal, but his vital powers are withheld. For if the devil had smitten that on which sensation and mental judgment depend, the guilt arising from a misuse of these faculties I would have lain at the door not of him who committed the sin but of him who had overthrown the balance of his mind.
4. Others may praise you if they will, and celebrate your victories over the devil. They may eulogize you for the smiling face with which you bore the loss of your daughters, or for the resolution with which, forty days after they fell asleep, you exchanged your mourning for a white robe to attend the dedication of a martyr's bones; unconcerned for a bereavement which was the concern of the whole city, and anxious only to share in a martyr's triumph. Nay, say they, when you bore your wife to burial, it was not as one dead but as one setting forth on a journey. But I shall not deceive you with flattering words or take the ground from under your feet with slippery praises. Rather will I say what it is good for you to hear: "My son, if thou come to serve the Lord, prepare thy soul for temptation," [3086] and "when thou shalt have done all those things which are commanded thee, say, I am an unprofitable servant; I have done that which was my duty to do." [3087] Say to God: "the children that thou hast taken from me were Thine own gift. The hand-maiden that Thou hast taken to Thyself Thou also didst lend to me for a season to be my solace. I am not aggrieved that Thou hast taken her back, but thankful rather that Thou hast previously given her to me."
Once upon a time a rich young man boasted that he had fulfilled all the requirements of the law, but the Lord said to him (as we read in the gospel): "One thing thou lackest: if thou wilt be perfect, go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor; and come and follow me." [3088] He who declared that he had done all things gave way at the first onset to the power of riches. Wherefore they who are rich find it hard to enter the kingdom of heaven, a kingdom which desires for its citizens souls that soar aloft free from all ties and hindrances. "Go thy way," the Lord says, "and sell" not a part of thy substance but "all that thou hast, and give to the poor;" not to thy friends or kinsfolk or relatives, not to thy wife or to thy children. I will even go farther and say: keep back nothing for yourself because you fear to be some day poor, lest by so doing you share the condemnation of Ananias and Sapphira; [3089] but give everything to the poor and make to yourself friends of the mammon of unrighteousness that they may receive you into everlasting habitations. [3090] Obey the Master's injunction "follow me," [3091] and take the Lord of the world for your possession; that you may be able to sing with the prophet, "The Lord is my portion," [3092] and like a true Levite [3093] may possess no earthly inheritance. I cannot but advise you thus if you wish to be perfect, if you desire to attain the pinnacle of the apostles' glory, if you wish to take up your cross and to follow Christ. When once you have put your hand to the plough you must not look back; [3094] when once you stand on the housetop you must think no more of your clothes within; to escape your Egyptian mistress [3095] you must abandon the cloak that belongs to this world. Even Elijah, in his quick translation to heaven could not take his mantle with him, but left in the world the garments of the world. [3096] Such conduct, you will object, is for him who would emulate the apostles, for the man who aspires to be perfect. But why should not you aspire to be perfect? Why should not you who hold a foremost place in the world hold a foremost place also in Christ's household? Is it because you have been married? Peter was married too, but when he forsook his ship and his nets he forsook his wife also. [3097] The Lord who wills that all men shall be saved and prefers the repentance of a sinner to his death [3098] has, in His almighty providence, removed from you this excuse. Your wife can no longer draw you earthwards, but you can follow her as she draws you heavenwards. Provide good things for your children who have gone home before you to the Lord. Do not let their portions go to swell their sister's fortune, but use them to ransom your own soul and to give sustenance to the needy. These are the necklaces your daughters expect from you; these are the jewels they wish to see sparkle on their foreheads. The money which they would have wasted in buying silks may well be considered saved when it provides cheap clothing for the poor. They ask you for their portions. Now that they are united to their spouse they are loth to appear poor and undistinguished: they desire to have the ornaments that befit their rank.
5. Nor may you excuse yourself on the score of your noble station and the responsibilities of wealth. Look at Pammachius and at Paulinus that presbyter of glowing faith both of whom have offered to the Lord not only their riches but themselves. In spite of the devil and his shuffling they have by no means given skin for skin, but have consecrated their own flesh and bones, yea and their very souls unto the Lord. Surely these may lead you to higher things both by their example and by their preaching, that is, by their deeds and words. You are of noble birth, so are they: but in Christ they are made nobler still. You are rich and held in repute, so once were they: but now instead of being rich and held in repute they are poor and obscure, yet, because it is for Christ's sake, they are really richer and more famous than ever. You too, it is true, shew yourself beneficent, you are said to minister to the wants of the saints, to entertain monks, and to present large sums of money to churches. This however is only the a b c of your soldiership. You despise money; the world's philosophers have done the same. One of these [3099] --to say nothing of the rest--cast the price of many possessions into the sea, saying as he did so "To the bottom with you, ye provokers of evil lusts. I shall drown you in the sea that you may never drown me in sin." If then a philosopher--a creature of vanity whom popular applause can buy and sell--laid down all his burthen at once, how can you think that you have reached virtue's crowning height when you have yielded up but a portion of yours? It is you yourself that the Lord wishes for, "a living sacrifice...acceptable unto God." [3100] Yourself, I say, and not what you have. And therefore, as he trained Israel by subjecting it to many plagues and afflictions, so does He now admonish you by sending you trials of different kinds. "For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth." [3101] The poor widow did but cast two mites into the treasury; yet because she cast in all that she had it is said of her that she surpassed all the rich in offering gifts to God. [3102] Such gifts are valued not by their weight but by the good-will with which they are made. You may have spent your substance upon numbers of people, and a portion of your fellows may have reason to rejoice in your bounty; yet those who have received nothing at your hands are still more numerous. Neither the wealth of Darius nor the riches of Croesus would suffice to satisfy the wants of the world's poor. But if you once give yourself to the Lord and resolve to follow the Saviour in the perfection of apostolic virtue, then you will come to see what your place has hitherto been, and how you have lagged in the rear of Christ's army. Hardly had you begun to mourn for your dead daughters when the fear of Christ dried the tears of paternal affection upon your cheeks. It was a great triumph of faith, true. But how much greater was that won by Abraham who was content to slay his only son, of whom he had been told that he was to inherit the world, yet did not cease to hope that after death Isaac would live again. [3103] Jephthah too offered up his virgin daughter, and for this is placed by the apostle in the roll of the saints. [3104] I would not therefore have you offer to the Lord only what a thief may steal from you or an enemy fall upon, or a proscription confiscate, what is liable to fluctuations in value now going up and now down, what belongs to a succession of masters who follow each other as fast as in the sea wave follows wave, and--to say everything in a word--what, whether you like it or not, you must leave behind you when you die. Rather offer to God that which no enemy can carry off and no tyrant take from you, which will go down with you into the grave, nay on to the kingdom of heaven and the enchantments of paradise. You already build monasteries and support in the various islands of Dalmatia a large number of holy men. But you would do better still if you were to live among these holy men as a holy man yourself. "Be ye holy, saith the Lord, for I am holy." [3105] The apostles boasted that they had left all things and had followed the Saviour. [3106] We do not read that they left anything except their ship and their nets; yet they were crowned with the approval of Him who was to be their judge. Why? Because in offering up themselves they had indeed left all that they had.
6. I say all this not in disparagement of your good works or because I wish to under-rate your generosity in almsgiving, but because I do not wish you to be a monk among men of the world and a man of the world among monks. I shall require every sacrifice of you for I hear that your mind is devoted to the service of God. If some friend, or follower, or kinsman tries to combat this counsel of mine and to recall you to the pleasures of a handsome table, be sure that he is thinking less of your soul than of his own belly, and remember that death in a moment terminates both elegant entertainments and all other pleasures provided by wealth. Within the short space of twenty days you have lost two daughters, the one eight years old and the other six; and do you suppose that one so old as you are yourself can live much longer? David tells you how long a time you can look for: "the days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow." [3107] Happy is he and to be held worthy of the highest bliss whom old age shall find a servant of Christ and whom the last day shall discover fighting for the Saviour's cause. "He shall not be ashamed when he speaketh with his enemies in the gate." [3108] On his entrance into paradise it shall be said to him: "thou in thy lifetime receivedst evil things but nowhere thou art comforted." [3109] The Lord will not avenge the same sin twice. Lazarus, formerly poor and full of ulcers, whose sores the dogs licked and who barely managed to live, poor wretch, on the crumbs that fell from the rich man's table, is now welcomed into Abraham's bosom and has the joy of finding a father in the great patriarch. It is difficult nay impossible for a man to enjoy both the good things of the present and those of the future, to satisfy his belly here and his mind yonder, to pass from the pleasures of this life to the pleasures of that, to be first in both worlds, and to be held in honour both on earth and in heaven.
7. And if in your secret thoughts you are troubled because I who give you this advice am not myself what I desire you to be, and because you have seen some after beginning well fall midway on their journey; I shall briefly plead in reply that the words which I speak are not mine but those of the Lord and Saviour, and that I urge upon you not the standard which is possible to myself but the ideal which every true servant of Christ must wish for and realize. Athletes as a rule are stronger than their backers; yet the weaker presses the stronger to put forth all his efforts. Look not upon Judas denying his Lord but upon Paul confessing Him. Jacob's father was a man of great wealth; yet, when Jacob went to Mesopotamia, he went alone and destitute leaning upon his staff. When he felt weary he had to lie down by the wayside and, delicately nurtured as he had been by his mother Rebekah, was forced to content himself with a stone for a pillow. Yet it was then [3110] that he saw the ladder set up from earth to heaven, and the angels ascending and descending on it, and the Lord above it holding out a helping hand to such as fall and encouraging the climbers to fresh efforts by the vision of Himself. Therefore is the spot called Bethel or the house of God; for there day by day there is ascending and descending. When they are careless, even holy men lose their footing; and sinners, if they wash away their stains with tears regain their place. I say this not that those coming down may frighten you but that those going up may stimulate you. For evil can never supply a model and even in worldly affairs incentives to virtue come always from the brighter side.
But I have forgotten my purpose and the limits set to my letter. I should have liked to say a great deal more. Indeed all that I can say is inadequate alike to satisfy the seriousness of the subject and the claims of your rank. But here is our Ausonius beginning to be impatient for the sheets, hurrying the secretaries, and in his impatience at the neighing of his horse, accusing my poor wits of slowness. Remember me, then, and prosper in Christ. And one thing more; follow the example set you at home by the holy Vera, [3111] who like a true follower of Christ does not fear to endure the hardships of pilgrimage. Find in a woman your leader in this high emprise.' [3112] __________________________________________________________________
[3072] Cf. Letter LX. § 9.
[3073] Ecclus. xxii. 6.
[3074] Luke vii. 11-15.
[3075] Matt. ix. 24.
[3076] Joh. xi. 39, 43, 44.
[3077] Amos v. 19.
[3078] Cf. Rev. xix. 11-16.
[3079] Job i. 20, 21, LXX.
[3080] Horace, C. III. iii. 7, 8.
[3081] Job ii. 3.
[3082] Job ii. 4, 5.
[3083] He alludes to the proegmena of the Stoics.
[3084] 1 Kings xxi. 10, Vulg. (which mistranslates the neutral verb of the Hebrew).
[3085] Job ii. 6.
[3086] Ecclus. ii. 1.
[3087] Luke xvii. 10 (adapted).
[3088] Mark x. 21.
[3089] Acts v. 1-10.
[3090] Luke xvi. 9.
[3091] Matt. ix. 9.
[3092] Ps. xvi. 5.
[3093] Nu. xviii. 20-24.
[3094] Luke ix. 62.
[3095] Gen. xxxix. 12.
[3096] 2 Kings ii. 11, 13.
[3097] But see 1 Cor. ix. 5.
[3098] 1 Tim. ii. 4; 2 Pet. iii. 9.
[3099] Crates the Theban.
[3100] Rom. xii. 1.
[3101] Heb. xii. 6.
[3102] Mark xii. 43, 44.
[3103] Cf. Heb. xi. 17-19.
[3104] Judg. xi. 34-40; Heb. xi. 32.
[3105] Lev. xix. 2; 1 Pet. i. 16.
[3106] Luke xviii. 28.
[3107] Ps. xc. 10.
[3108] Ps. cxxvii. 5 (adapted from R.V.S.)
[3109] Luke xvi. 25 (adapted).
[3110] Gen. xxviii. 12, 13. Cp. Letters CVIII. § 13, and CXXIII. § 15.
[3111] Of this lady nothing is known.
[3112] Words of Virg. A. i. 364, relating to Dido. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXIX. To Minervius and Alexander.
Minervius and Alexander two monks of Toulouse had written to Jerome asking him to explain for them a large number of passages in scripture. Jerome in his reply postpones most of these to a future time but deals with two in detail viz. (1) "we shall not all sleep but we shall all be changed," 1 Cor. xv. 51; and (2) "we shall be caught up in the clouds," 1 Thes. iv. 17. With regard to (1) Jerome prefers the reading "we shall all sleep but we shall not all be changed," and with regard to (2) he looks upon the language as metaphorical and interprets it to mean that believers will be assumed' into the company of the apostles and prophets. The date of the letter is 406 a.d. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXX. To Hedibia. [3113]
At the request of Hedibia, a lady of Gaul much interested in the study of scripture, Jerome deals with the following twelve questions. It will be noticed that several of them belong to the historical criticism of our own day.
(1) How can anyone be perfect? and How ought a widow without children to live to God?
(2) What is the meaning of Matt. xxvi. 29?
(3) How are the discrepancies in the evangelical narratives to be accounted for? How can Matt. xxviii. 1 be reconciled with Mark xvi. 1, 2.
(4) How can Matt. xxviii. 9 (Saturday evening) be reconciled with John xx. 1-18 (Sunday morning)?
(5) How can Matt. xxviii. 9 be reconciled with John xx. 17?
(6) How was it that, if there was a guard of soldiers at the sepulchre, Peter and John were allowed to go in freely? (Matt. xxvii. 66; John xx. 1-8.)
(7) How is the statement of Matthew and Mark that the apostles were ordered to go into Galilee to see Jesus there to be reconciled with that of Luke and John who make Him appear to them in Jerusalem?
(8) What is the meaning of Matt. xxvii. 50, 51?
(9) How is the statement of John xx. 22 that Jesus breathed on his apostles the Holy Ghost to be reconciled with that of Luke (Luke xxiv. 49: Acts i. 4) that He would send it to them after His ascension?
(10) What is the meaning of the passage, Rom. ix. 14-29?
(11) What is the meaning of 2 Cor. ii. 16?
(12) What is the meaning of 1 Thes. v. 23?
The date of the letter is 406 or 407 a.d. __________________________________________________________________
[3113] For Hedibia and her family, see an article in Dict. of Christ. Biog. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXXI. To Algasia.
Jerome writes to a lady of Gaul named Algasia to answer eleven questions which she had submitted to him. They were as follows:--
(1) How is Luke vii. 18, 19, to be reconciled with John i. 36?
(2) What is the meaning of Matt. xii. 20?
(3) And of Matt. xvi. 24?
(4) And of Matt. xxiv. 19, 20?
(5) And of Luke ix. 53?
(6) What is the meaning of the parable of the unjust steward?
(7) What is the meaning of Rom. v. 7?
(8) And of Rom. vii. 8?
(9) And of Rom. ix. 3?
(10) And of Col. ii. 18?
(11) And of 2 Thes. ii. 3?
The date of the letter is 406 a.d. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXXII. To Rusticus.
Rusticus and Artemia his wife having made a vow of continence broke it. Artemia proceeded to Palestine to do penance for her sin and Rusticus promised to follow her. However he failed to do so, and Jerome was asked to write this letter in the hope that it might induce him to fulfil his promise. The date is about 408 a.d.
1. I am induced to write to you, a stranger to a stranger, by the entreaties of that holy servant of Christ Hedibia [3114] and of my daughter in the faith Artemia, once your wife but now no longer your wife but your sister and fellow-servant. Not content with assuring her own salvation she has sought yours also, in former days at home and now in the holy places. She is anxious to emulate the thoughtfulness of the apostles Andrew and Philip; who after Christ had found them, desired in their turn to find, the one his brother Simon and the other his friend Nathanael. [3115] To the former of these it was said "Thou art Simon, the son of Jona: thou shalt be called Cephas which is by interpretation a stone;" [3116] while the latter, whose name Nathanael means the gift of God, was comforted by Christ's witness to him: "behold an Israelite indeed in whom is no guile." [3117] So of old Lot [3118] desired to rescue his wife as well as his two daughters, and refusing to leave blazing Sodom and Gomorrah until he was himself half-on-fire, tried to lead forth one who was tied and bound by her past sins. But in her despair she lost her composure, and looking back became a monument of an unbelieving soul. [3119] Yet, as if to make up for the loss of a single woman, Lot's glowing faith set free the whole city of Zoar. In fact when he left the dark valleys in which Sodom lay and came to the mountains, the sun rose upon him as he entered Zoar or the little City; so-called because the little faith that Lot possessed, though unable to save greater places, was at least able to preserve smaller ones. For one who had gone so far astray as to live in Gomorrah could not all at once reach the noonland where Abraham, the friend of God, [3120] entertained God and His angels. [3121] (For it was in Egypt that Joseph fed his brothers, and when the bride speaks to the Bridegroom her cry is: "tell me where thou feedest, where thou makest thy flock to rest at noon." [3122] ) Good men have always sorrowed for the sins of others. Samuel of old lamented for Saul [3123] because he neglected to treat the ulcers of pride with the balm of penitence. And Paul wept for the Corinthians [3124] who refused to wash out with their tears the stains of fornication. For the same reason Ezekiel swallowed the book where were written within and without song, and lamentation and woe; [3125] the song in praise of the righteous, the lamentation over the penitent, and the woe for those of whom it is written, "When the wicked man falleth into the depths of evil, then is he filled with scorn." [3126] It is to these that Isaiah alludes when he says: "in that day did the Lord God of hosts call to weeping and to mourning and to baldness and to girding with sackcloth: and behold joy and gladness, slaying oxen; and killing sheep, eating flesh" and saying, "let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die." [3127] Yet of such persons Ezekiel is bidden to speak thus: "O thou son of man, speak unto the house of Israel; Thus ye speak, saying, If our transgressions and our sins be upon us, and we pine away in them, how should we then live? Say unto them, As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live," and again, "turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?" [3128] Nothing makes God so angry as when men from despair of better things cleave to those which are worse; and indeed this despair in itself is a sign of unbelief. One who despairs of salvation can have no expectation of a judgment to come. For if he dreaded such, he would by doing good works prepare to meet his Judge. Let us hear what God says through Jeremiah, "withhold thy foot from a rough way and thy throat from thirst" [3129] and again "shall they fall, and not arise? Shall he turn away, and not return?" [3130] Let us hear also what God says by Isaiah: "When thou shalt turn and bewail thyself, then shalt thou be saved, and then shalt thou know where thou hast hitherto been." [3131] We do not realize the miseries of sickness till returning health reveals them to us. So sins serve as a foil to the blessedness of virtue; and light shines more brightly when it is relieved against darkness. Ezekiel uses language like that of the other prophets because he is animated by a similar spirit. "Repent," he cries, "and turn yourselves from all your transgressions; so iniquity shall not be your ruin. Cast away from you all your transgressions whereby ye have transgressed; and make you a new heart and a new spirit: for why will ye die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord." [3132] Wherefore in a subsequent passage he says: "As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked: but that the wicked turn from his way and live." [3133] These words shew us that the mind must not through disbelief in the promised blessings give way to despair; and that the soul once marked out for perdition must not refuse to apply remedies on the ground that its wounds are past curing. Ezekiel describes God as swearing, that if we refuse to believe His promise in regard to our salvation we may at least believe His oath. It is with full confidence that the righteous man prays and says, "Turn us, O God of our salvation, and cause thine anger toward us to cease," [3134] and again, "Lord, by thy favour thou hast made my mountain to stand strong: thou didst hide thy face and I was troubled." [3135] He means to say, "when I forsook the foulness of my faults for the beauty of virtue, God strengthened my weakness with His grace." Lo, I hear His promise: "I will pursue mine enemies and overtake them: neither will I turn again till they are consumed," [3136] so that I who was once thine enemy and a fugitive from thee, shall be laid hold of by thine hand. Cease not from pursuing me till my wickedness is consumed, and I return to my old husband who will give me my wool and my flax, my oil and my fine flour and will feed me with the richest foods. [3137] He it was who hedged up and enclosed my evil ways [3138] that I might find Him the true way who says in the gospel, "I am the way, the truth, and the life." [3139] Hear the words of the prophet: "they that sow in tears shall reap in joy. He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him." [3140] Say also with him: "All the night make I my bed to swim; I water my couch with my tears" [3141] : and again, "As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God? My tears have been my meat day and night," [3142] and in another place, "O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and weary land where no water is. So have I looked upon thee in the sanctuary." [3143] For although my soul has thirsted after thee, yet much more have I sought thee by the labour of my flesh and have not been able to look upon thee in thy sanctuary; not at any rate till I have first dwelt in a land barren of sin, where the weary wayfarer is no more assailed by the adversary, and where there are no pools or rivers of lust.
The Saviour also wept over the city of Jerusalem because its inhabitants had not repented; [3144] and Peter washed out his triple denial with bitter tears, [3145] thus fulfilling the words of the prophet: "rivers of waters run down mine eyes." [3146] Jeremiah too laments over his impenitent people, saying: "Oh that my head were waters and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for...my people!" [3147] And farther on he gives a reason for his lamentation: "weep ye not for the dead," he writes, "neither bemoan him: but weep sore for him that goeth away: for he shall return no more." [3148] The Jew and the Gentile therefore are not to be bemoaned, for they have never been in the Church and have died once for all (it is of these that the Saviour says: "let the dead bury their dead" [3149] ); weep rather for those who by reason of their crimes and sins go away from the Church, and who suffering condemnation for their faults shall no more return to it. It is in this sense that the prophet speaks to ministers of the Church, calling them its walls and towers, and saying to each in turn, "O wall, let tears run down." [3150] In this way, it is prophetically implied, you will fulfil the apostolic precept: "rejoice with them that do rejoice and weep with them that weep," [3151] and by your tears you will melt the hard hearts of sinners till they too weep; whereas, if they persist in evil doing they will find these words applied to them, "I...planted thee a noble vine, wholly a right seed: how then art thou turned into the degenerate plant of a strange vine unto me?" [3152] and again "saying to a stock, Thou art my father; and to a stone, Thou hast brought me forth: for they have turned their back unto me, and not their face." [3153] He means, they would not turn towards God in penitence; but in the hardness of their hearts turned their backs upon Him to insult Him. Wherefore also the Lord says to Jeremiah: "hast thou seen that which backsliding Israel hath done? She is gone up upon every high mountain and under every green tree, and there hath played the harlot. And I said after she" had played the harlot and "had done all these things, Turn thou unto me. But she returned not." [3154]
2. How hard hearted we are and how merciful God is! who even after our many sins urges us to seek salvation. Yet not even so are we willing to turn to better things. Hear the words of the Lord: "If a man put away his wife, and she go from him, and become another man's and shall afterwards desire to return to him, will he at all receive her? Will he not loathe her rather? But thou hast played the harlot with many lovers: yet return again to me, saith the Lord." In place of the last clause the true Hebrew text (which is not preserved in the Greek and Latin versions) gives the following: "thou hast forsaken me, yet return, and I will receive thee, saith the Lord." [3155] Isaiah also speaking in the same sense uses almost the same words: "Return," he cries, "O children of Israel, ye who think deep counsel and wicked. [3156] Return thou unto me and I will redeem thee. I am God, and there is no God else beside me; a just God and a Saviour; there is none beside me. Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth. [3157] Remember this and shew yourselves men: bring it again to mind, O ye transgressors. Return in heart and remember the former things of old: for I am God and there is none else." [3158] Joel also writes: "turn ye even to me with all your heart, and with fasting and with weeping and with mourning: and rend your heart and not your garments and turn unto the Lord your God; for he is gracious and merciful...and repenteth him of the evil." [3159] How great His mercy is and how excessive--if I may so say--and unspeakable is His pitifulness, the prophet Hosea tells us when he speaks in the Lord's name: "how shall I give thee up, Ephraim? how shall I deliver thee, Israel? how shall I make thee as Admah? How shall I set thee as Zeboim? Mine heart is turned within me, my repentings are kindled together. I will not execute the fierceness of mine anger." [3160] David also says in a psalm: "in death there is no remembrance of thee; in the grave who shall give thee thanks?" [3161] and in another place: "I acknowledged my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord; and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin. For this shall every one that is godly pray unto thee in a time when thou mayest be found: surely in the floods of great waters they shall not come nigh unto him." [3162]
3. Think how great that weeping must be which deserves to be compared to a flood of waters. Whosoever so weeps and says with the prophet Jeremiah "let not the apple of mine eye cease" [3163] shall straightway find the words fulfilled of him: "mercy and truth are met together: righteousness and peace have kissed each other;" [3164] so that, if righteousness and truth terrify him, mercy and peace may encourage him to seek salvation.
The whole repentance of a sinner is exhibited to us in the fifty-first [3165] psalm written by David after he had gone in unto Bathsheba the wife of Uriah the Hittite, [3166] and when, to the rebuke of the prophet Nathan he had replied, "I have sinned." Immediately that he confessed his fault he was comforted by the words: "the Lord also hath put away thy sin." [3167] He had added murder to adultery; yet bursting into tears he says: "Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving kindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions." [3168] A sin so great needed to find great mercy. Accordingly he goes on to say: "Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me. Against thee, thee only have I sinned"--as a king he had no one to fear but God--"and done this evil in thy sight; that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest and be clear when thou judgest." [3169] For "God hath concluded all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all." [3170] And such was the progress that David made that he who had once been a sinner and a penitent afterwards became a master able to say: "I will teach transgressors thy ways; and sinners shall be converted unto thee." [3171] For as "confession and beauty are before God," [3172] so a sinner who confesses his sins and says: "my wounds stink and are corrupt because of my foolishness" [3173] loses his foul wounds and is made whole and clean. But "he that covereth his sins shall not prosper." [3174]
The ungodly king Ahab, who shed the blood of Naboth to gain his vineyard, was with Jezebel, the partner less of his bed than of his cruelty, severely rebuked by Elijah. "Thus saith the Lord, hast thou killed and also taken possession?" and again, "in the place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth, shall dogs lick thy blood, even thine;" and "the dogs shall eat Jezebel by the wall of Jezreel." [3175] "And it came to pass"--the passage goes on--"when Ahab heard those words that he rent his clothes, and put sackcloth upon his flesh, and fasted, and lay in sackcloth...and the word of the Lord came to Elijah saying, Because Ahab humbleth himself before me, I will not bring the evil in his days." [3176] Ahab's sin and Jezebel's were the same; yet because Ahab repented, his punishment was postponed so as to fall upon his sons, while Jezebel persisting in her wickedness met her doom then and there.
Moreover the Lord tells us in the gospel, "the men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonas;" [3177] and again He says "I am not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance." [3178] The lost piece of silver is sought for until it is found in the mire. [3179] So also the ninety and nine sheep are left in the wilderness, while the shepherd carries home on his shoulders the one sheep which has gone astray. [3180] Wherefore also "there is joy in the presence of the angels over one sinner that repenteth." [3181] What a blessed thought it is that heavenly beings rejoice in our salvation! For it is of us that the words are said: "Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." [3182] Death and life are contrary the one to the other; there is no middle term. Yet penitence can knit death to life. The prodigal son, we are told, wasted all his substance, and in the far country away from his father "would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat." Yet, when he comes back to his father, the fatted calf is killed, a robe and a ring are given to him. [3183] That is to say, he receives again Christ's robe which he had before defiled, and hears to his comfort the injunction: "let thy garments be always white." [3184] He receives the signet of God and cries to the Lord: "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee;" and receiving the kiss of reconciliation, he says to Him: "Now is the light of thy countenance sealed upon us, O Lord." [3185]
Hear the words of Ezekiel: "as for the wickedness of the wicked, he shall not fall thereby in the day that he turneth from his wickedness; neither shall the righteous be able to live for his righteousness in the day that he sinneth." [3186] The Lord judges every man according as he finds him. It is not the past that He looks upon but the present. Bygone sins there may be, but renewal and conversion remove them. "A just man," we read "falleth seven times and riseth up again." [3187] If he falls, how is he just? and if he is just, how does he fall? The answer is that a sinner does not lose the name of just if he always repents of his sins and rises again. If a sinner repents, his sins are forgiven him not only till seven times but till seventy times seven. [3188] To whom much is forgiven, the same loveth much. [3189] The harlot washed with her tears the Saviour's feet and wiped them with her hair; and to her, as a type of the Church gathered from the nations, was the declaration made: "Thy sins are forgiven." [3190] The self-righteous Pharisee perished in his pride, while the humble publican was saved by his confession. [3191]
God makes asseveration by the mouth of the prophet Jeremiah: "At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, to pull down and to destroy it: if that nation, against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them. And at what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom to build and to plant it; if it do evil in my sight, that it obey not my voice, then I will repent of the good wherewith I said I would benefit them." And immediately he adds: "Behold, I frame evil against you, and devise a device against you: return ye now every one from his evil way, and make your ways and your doings good. And they said, there is no hope: but we will walk after our own devices, and we will every one do the imagination of his evil heart." [3192] The righteous Simeon says in the gospel: "Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising again of many," [3193] for the fall, that is, of sinners and for the rising again of the penitent. So the apostle writes to the Corinthians: "it is reported commonly that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles, that one should have his father's wife. And ye are puffed up and have not rather mourned that he that hath done this deed might be taken away from among you." [3194] And in his second epistle to the same, "lest such a one should be swallowed up with overmuch sorrow," [3195] he calls him back, and begs them to confirm their love towards him, so that he who had been destroyed by incest might be saved by penitence.
"There is no man clean from sin; even though he has lived but for one day." [3196] And the years of man's life are many in number. "The stars are not pure in his sight, [3197] and his angels he charged with folly." [3198] If there is sin in heaven, how much more must there be sin on earth? If they are stained with guilt who have no bodily temptations, how much more must we be, enveloped as we are in frail flesh and forced to cry each one of us with the apostle: "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? [3199] For in my flesh there dwelleth no good thing." [3200] For we do not what we would but what we would not; the soul desires to do one thing, the flesh is compelled to do another. If any persons are called righteous in scripture, and not only righteous but righteous in the sight of God, they are called righteous according to that righteousness mentioned in the passage I have quoted: "A just man falleth seven times and riseth up again," [3201] and on the principle laid down that the wickedness of the wicked shall not hurt him in the day that he turns to repentance. [3202] In fact Zachariah the father of John who is described as a righteous man sinned in disbelieving the message sent to him and was at once punished with dumbness. [3203] Even Job, who at the outset of his history is spoken of as perfect and upright and uncomplaining, is afterwards proved to be a sinner both by God's words and by his own confession. If Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the prophets also and the apostles were by no means free from sin and if the finest wheat had chaff mixed with it, what can be said of us of whom it is written: "What is the chaff to the wheat, saith the Lord?" [3204] Yet the chaff is reserved for future burning; as also are the tares which at present are mingled with the growing corn. For one shall come whose fan is in His hand, and shall purge His floor, and shall gather His wheat into the garner, and shall burn the chaff in the fire of hell. [3205]
4. Roaming thus through the fairest fields of scripture I have culled its loveliest flowers to weave for your brows a garland of penitence; for my aim is that, flying on the wings of a dove, you may find rest [3206] and make your peace with the Father of mercy. Your former wife, who is now your sister and fellow-servant, has told me that, acting on the apostolic precept, [3207] you and she lived apart by consent that you might give yourselves to prayer; but that after a time your feet sank beneath you as if resting on water and indeed--to speak plainly--gave way altogether. For her part she heard the Lord saying to her as to Moses: "as for thee stand thou here by me;" [3208] and with the psalmist she said of Him: "He hath set my feet upon a rock." [3209] But your house--she went on--having no sure foundation of faith fell before a whirlwind of the devil. [3210] Hers however still stands in the Lord, and does not refuse its shelter to you; you can still be joined in spirit to her to whom you were once joined in body. For, as the apostle says, "he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit" with him. [3211] Moreover, when the fury of the barbarians and the risk of captivity separated you again, you promised with a solemn oath that, if she made her way to the holy places, you would follow her either immediately or later, and that you would try to save your soul now that by your carelessness you had seemed to lose it. Perform, now, the vow which you then made in the presence of God. Human life is uncertain. Therefore, lest you may be snatched away before you have fulfilled your promise, imitate her whose teacher you ought to have been. For shame! the weaker vessel overcomes the world, and yet the stronger is overcome by it!
A woman leadeth in the high emprise;^ [3212]
and yet you will not follow her when her salvation leads you to the threshold of the faith! Perhaps, however, you desire to save the remnants of your property and to see the last of your friends and fellow-citizens and of their cities and villas. If so, amid the horrors of captivity, in the presence of exulting foes, and in the shipwreck of the province, at least hold fast to the plank of penitence; [3213] and remember your fellow-servant [3214] who daily sighs for your salvation and never despairs of it. While you are wandering about your own country (though, indeed, you no longer have a country; that which you once had, you have lost) she is interceding for you in the venerable spots which witnessed the nativity, crucifixion and resurrection of our Lord and Saviour, and in the first of which He uttered His infant-cry. She draws you to her by her prayers that you may be saved, if not by your own exertions, at any rate by her faith. Of old one lay upon his bed sick of the palsy, so powerless in all his joints that he could neither move his feet to walk nor his hands to pray; yet when he was carried to our Lord by others, he was by Him so completely restored to health as to carry the bed which a little before had carried him. [3215] You too--absent in the body but present to her faith--your fellow-servant offers to her Lord and Saviour; and with the Canaanite woman she says of you: "my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil." [3216] Souls are of no sex; therefore I may fairly call your soul the daughter of hers. For as a mother coaxes her unweaned child which is as yet unable to take solid food; so does she call you to the milk suitable for babes and offer to you the sustenance that a nursing mother gives. Thus shall you be able to say with the prophet: "I have gone astray like a lost sheep; seek thy servant; for I do not forget thy commandments." [3217] __________________________________________________________________
[3114] This lady lived in Gaul and was a diligent student of scripture. Letter CXX. is address to her.
[3115] Joh. i. 41, 45.
[3116] Joh. i. 42.
[3117] Joh. i. 47.
[3118] Gen. xix. 15-26.
[3119] Cf. Wisdom x. 7.
[3120] Jas. ii. 23.
[3121] Gen. xviii. 1.
[3122] Cant. i. 7.
[3123] 1 Sam. xv. 35.
[3124] 2 Cor. ii. 4.
[3125] Ezek. ii. 10, LXX.
[3126] Prov. xviii. 3, LXX.
[3127] Isa. xxii. 12, 13.
[3128] Ezek. xxxiii. 10, 11.
[3129] Jer. ii. 25, LXX.
[3130] Jer. viii. 4.
[3131] Isa. xxx. 15, LXX.
[3132] Ezek. xviii. 30-32.
[3133] Ezek. xxxiii. 11.
[3134] Ps. lxxxv. 4.
[3135] Ps. xxx. 7.
[3136] Ps. xviii. 37, R.V.
[3137] Hos. ii. 7-9.
[3138] Hos. ii. 6.
[3139] Joh. xiv. 6.
[3140] Ps. cxxvi. 5, 6.
[3141] Ps. vi. 6.
[3142] Ps. xlii. 1-3.
[3143] Ps. lxiii. 1-3 R.V.
[3144] Luke xix. 41.
[3145] Luke xxii. 62.
[3146] Ps. cxix. 136.
[3147] Jer. ix. 1.
[3148] Jer. xxii. 10.
[3149] Matt. viii. 22.
[3150] Lam. ii. 18.
[3151] Rom. xii. 15.
[3152] Jer. ii. 21.
[3153] Jer. ii. 27.
[3154] Jer. iii. 6, 7.
[3155] Jer. iii. 1, Vulg. The Hebrew contains nothing corresponding to the words "and I will receive thee." The Latin Version mentioned in the text is of course the old Latin.
[3156] Isa. xxxi. 6, LXX.
[3157] Isa. xlv. 21, 22.
[3158] Isa. xlvi. 8, 9, LXX.
[3159] Joel ii. 12, 13.
[3160] Hos. xi. 8, 9.
[3161] Ps. vi. 5.
[3162] Ps. xxxii. 5, 6.
[3163] Lam. ii. 18.
[3164] Ps. lxxxv. 10.
[3165] In the Vulg. the fiftieth.
[3166] Cf. the heading of the psalm in A.V.
[3167] 2 Sam. xii. 13.
[3168] Ps. li. 1.
[3169] Ps. li. 2-4.
[3170] Rom. xi. 32.
[3171] Ps. li. 13.
[3172] Ps. xcvi. 6, Vulg.
[3173] Ps. xxxviii. 5.
[3174] Prov. xxviii. 13.
[3175] 1 Kings xxi. 19, 23.
[3176] 1 Kings xxi. 27-29.
[3177] Matt. xii. 41.
[3178] Matt. ix. 13.
[3179] Luke xv. 8-10.
[3180] Luke xv. 4, 5.
[3181] Luke xv. 10.
[3182] Matt. iii. 2.
[3183] Luke xv. 11-24.
[3184] Eccles. ix. 8.
[3185] Ps. iv. 6, acc. to the Gallican and Roman psalters. The allusions throughout are to the ritual practised in Jerome's day in connection with the reception of penitents.
[3186] Ezek. xxxiii. 12.
[3187] Prov. xxiv. 16.
[3188] Cf. Matt. xviii. 21, 22.
[3189] Cf. Luke vii. 47.
[3190] Luke vii. 48.
[3191] Cf. Luke xviii. 14.
[3192] Jer. xviii. 7-12.
[3193] Luke ii. 34.
[3194] 1 Cor. v. 1, 2.
[3195] 2 Cor. ii. 7.
[3196] Job xiv. 4, 5, LXX.
[3197] Job xxv. 5.
[3198] Job iv. 18.
[3199] Rom. vii. 24.
[3200] Rom. vii. 18.
[3201] Prov. xxiv. 16.
[3202] Cf. Ezek. xxxiii. 12.
[3203] Luke i. 20-22.
[3204] Jer. xxiii. 28.
[3205] Matt. iii. 12.
[3206] Ps. lv. 6.
[3207] 1 Cor. vii. 5.
[3208] Deut. v. 31.
[3209] Ps. xl. 2.
[3210] Cf. Matt. vii. 24-27.
[3211] 1 Cor. vi. 17.
[3212] Virgil, Æneid, i. 364.
[3213] A favourite phrase with Jerome. See Letter CXVII. § 3.
[3214] Viz. Artemia.
[3215] Matt. ix. 1-7.
[3216] Matt. xv. 22.
[3217] Ps. cxix. 176. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXXIII. To Ageruchia.
An appeal to the widow Ageruchia, highborn lady of Gaul, not to marry again. It should be compared with the letters to Furia (LIV.) and to Salvina (LXXIX.) The allusion to Stilicho's treaty with Alaric fixes the date to 409 a.d.
1. I must look for a new track on the old road and devise a natural treatment, the same yet not the same, for a hackneyed and well-worn theme. [3218] It is true that there is but one road; yet one can often reach one's goal by striking across country. I have several times written letters to widows [3219] in which for their instruction I have sought out examples from scripture, weaving its varied flowers into a single garland of chastity. On the present occasion I address myself to Ageruchia; whose very name [3220] (allotted to her by the divine guidance) has proved a prophecy of her after-life. Around her stand her grandmother, her mother, and her aunt; a noble band of tried Christian women. Her grandmother, Metronia, now a widow for forty years, reminds us of Anna the daughter of Phanuel in the gospel. [3221] Her mother, Benigna, now in the fourteenth year of her widowhood, is surrounded by virgins whose chastity bears fruit a hundredfold. [3222] The sister of Celerinus, Ageruchia's father, has nursed her niece from infancy and indeed took her into her lap the moment that she was born. Deprived of the solace of her husband she has for twenty years trained her brother's child, teaching her the lessons which she has learned from her own mother.
2. I make these brief remarks to shew my young friend that in resolving not to marry again she does but perform a duty to her family; and that, while she will deserve no praise for fulfilling it, she will be justly blamed if she fails to do so. The more so that she has a posthumous son named after his father Simplicius and thus cannot plead loneliness or the want of an heir. For the lust of many shelters itself under such excuses as though the promptings of incontinence were only a desire for offspring. But why do I speak as to one who wavers when I hear that Ageruchia seeks the church's protection against the many suitors whom she meets in the palace? For the devil inflames men to vie with one another in proving the chastity of our beloved widow; and rank and beauty, youth and riches cause her to be sought after by all. But the greater the assaults that are made upon her continence, the greater will be the rewards that will follow her victory.
3. But no sooner do I clear the harbour than I find my way to the sea barred by a rock. [3223] I am confronted with the authority of the apostle Paul who in writing to Timothy thus speaks concerning widows: "I will therefore that the younger women marry, bear children, guide the house, give none occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully. For some are already turned aside after Satan." [3224] I must accordingly begin by considering the meaning of this pronouncement and examining the context of the whole passage. I must then plant my feet in the steps of the apostle and, as the saying goes, not deviate a hair's breadth from them either to this side or to that. He had previously described his ideal widow as one who had been the wife of one man, who had brought up children, who was well reported of for good works, who had relieved the afflicted with her substance, [3225] whose trust had been in God, and who had continued in prayer day and night. [3226] With her he contrasted her opposite, saying: "She that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth." And that he might warn his disciple Timothy with all needful admonition, he immediately added these words: "the younger widows refuse: for when they have begun to wax wanton against Christ they will marry; having damnation because they have cast off their first faith." [3227] It is then for these who have outraged Christ their Spouse by committing fornication against Him (for this is the sense of the Greek word katastreniasosi )--it is for these that the apostle wishes a second marriage, thinking digamy preferable to fornication; but this second marriage is a concession and not a command.
4. We must also take the passage clause by clause. "I will," he says, "that the younger women marry." Why, pray? because I would not have young women commit fornication. "That they bear children;" [3228] for what reason? That they may not be induced by fear of the consequences to kill children whom they have conceived in adultery. "That they be the heads of households." [3229] Wherefore, pray? Because it is much more tolerable that a woman should marry again than that she should be a prostitute, and better that she should have a second husband than several paramours. The first alternative brings relief in a miserable plight, but the second involves a sin and its punishment. He continues: "that they give none occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully," a brief and comprehensive precept in which many admonitions are summed up. As for instance these: that a woman must not bring discredit upon her profession of widowhood by too great attention to her dress, that she must not draw troops of young men after her by gay smiles or expressive glances, that she must not profess one thing by her words and another by her behaviour, that she must give no ground for the application to herself of the well known line:
She gave a meaning look and slyly smiled. [3230]
Lastly, that Paul may compress into a few words all the reasons for such marriages, he shews the motive of his command by saying: "for some are already turned aside after Satan." Thus he allows to the incontinent a second marriage, or in case of need a third, simply that he may rescue them from Satan, preferring that a woman should be joined to the worst of husbands rather than to the devil. To the Corinthians he uses somewhat similar language: "I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, It is good for them if they abide even as I. But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn." [3231] Why, O apostle, is it better to marry? He answers immediately: because it is worse to burn. [3232]
5. Apart from these considerations, that which is absolutely good and not merely relatively so is to be as the apostle, that is loose, not bound; free, not enslaved; caring for the things of God, not for the things of a wife. Immediately afterwards he adds: "The wife is bound by the law to her husband as long as her husband liveth, but if her husband be fallen asleep, [3233] she is at liberty to be married to whom she will; only in the Lord. But she is happier if she so abide, after my judgment: and I think also that I have the spirit of God." [3234] This passage corresponds with the former in meaning, because the spirit of the two is the same. For though the epistles are different, they are the work of one author. While her husband lives the woman is bound, and when he is dead, she is loosed. Marriage then is a bond, and widowhood is the loosing of it. The wife is bound to the husband and the husband to the wife; and so close is the tie that they have no power over their own bodies, but each stands indebted to the other. They who are under the yoke of wedlock have not the option of choosing continence. When the apostle adds the words "only in the Lord," he excludes heathen marriages of which he had spoken in another place thus: "be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? and what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? and what agreement hath the temple of God with idols?" [3235] We must not plough with an ox and an ass together; [3236] nor weave our wedding garment of different colours. He at once takes back the concession he made, and, as if repenting of his opinion, withdraws it by saying: "She is happier if she so abide," that is, unmarried; and declares that in his judgment this course is preferable. And that this may not be made light of as a merely human utterance, he claims for it the authority of the Holy Spirit, so that we are listening not to a fellowman making concessions to the weakness of the flesh but to the Holy Spirit using the apostle for his mouthpiece.
6. Again, no widow of youthful age must quiet her qualms of conscience by the plea that he gives commandment that no widow is to be taken into the number under three-score years old. [3237] He does not by this arrangement urge unmarried girls or youthful widows to marry, seeing that even of the married he says: "the time is short: it remaineth that they that have wives be as though they had none." [3238] No, he is speaking of widows who have relations able to support them, who have sons and grandsons to be responsible for their maintenance. The apostle commands these latter to shew piety at home, and to requite their parents and to relieve them adequately; that the church may not be charged, but may be free to relieve those that are widows indeed. "Honour widows," he writes, "that are widows indeed," that is, such as are desolate and have no relations to help them, who cannot labour with their hands, who are weakened by poverty and overcome by years, whose trust is in God and their only work prayer. [3239] From which it is easy to infer that the younger widows, unless they are excused by ill health, are either left to their own exertions or else are consigned to the care of their children or relations. The word honour' in this passage implies either alms or a gift, as also in the verse immediately following: "Let the elders...be counted worthy of double honour, especially they who labour in the word and doctrine." [3240] So also in the gospel when the Lord discusses that commandment of the Law which says: "Honour thy father and thy mother," [3241] He declares that it is to be interpreted not of mere words which while offering an empty shew of regard may still leave a parent's wants unrelieved, but of the actual provision of the necessaries of life. The Lord commanded that poor parents should be supported by their children and that these should pay them back when old those benefits which they had themselves received in their childhood. The scribes and pharisees on the other hand taught the children to answer their parents by saying: "It is Corban, that is to say, a gift [3242] which I have promised to the altar and engaged to present to the temple: it will relieve you as much there, as if I were to give it you directly to buy food." [3243] So it frequently happened that while father and mother were destitute their children were offering sacrifices for the priests and scribes to consume. If then the apostle compels poor widows--yet only those who are young and not broken down by sickness--to labour with their hands that the church, not charged with their maintenance, may be able to support such widows as are old, what plea can be urged by one who has abundance of this world's goods, both for her own wants and those of others, and who can make to herself friends of the mammon of unrighteousness able to receive her into everlasting habitations? [3244]
Consider too that no one is to be elected a widow, except she has been the wife of one husband. We sometimes fancy it to be the distinctive mark of the priesthood that none but monogamists shall be admitted to the altar. But not only are the twice-married excluded from the priestly office, they are debarred from receiving the alms of the church. A woman who has resorted to a second marriage is held unworthy to be supported by the faithful. And even the layman is bound by the law of the priest, for his conduct must be such as to admit of his election to the priesthood. If he has been twice married, he cannot be so elected. Therefore, as priests are chosen from the ranks of laymen, the layman also is bound by the commandment, fulfilment of which is indispensable for the attainment of the priesthood. [3245]
7. We must distinguish between what the apostle himself desires and what he is compelled to acquiesce in. If he allows me to marry again, this is due to my own incontinence and not to his wish. For he wishes all men to be as he is, and to think the things of God, and when once they are loosed no more to seek to be bound. But when he sees unstable men in danger through their incontinence of falling into the abyss of lust, he extends to them the offer of a second marriage; that, if they must wallow in the mire, it may be with one and not with many. The husband of a second wife must not consider this a harsh saying or one that conflicts with the rule laid down by the apostle. The apostle is of two minds: first, he proclaims a command, "I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, It is good for them if they abide even as I." Next. he makes a concession, "But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn." [3246] He first shews what he himself desires, then that in which he is forced to acquiesce. He wishes us--after one marriage--to abide even as he, that is, unmarried, and sets before us in his own apostolic example an instance of the blessedness of which he speaks. If however he finds that we are unwilling to do as he wishes, he makes a concession to our incontinence. Which then of the two alternatives do we choose for ourselves? The one which he prefers and which is in itself good? Or the one which in comparison with evil is tolerable, yet as it is only a substitute for evil is not altogether good? Suppose that we choose that course which the apostle does not wish but to which he only consents against his will, allowing those who seek lower ends to have their own way; in this case we carry out not the apostle's wish but our own. We read in the old testament that the daughters of the priests who have been married once and have become widows are to eat of the priests' food and that when they die they are to be buried with the same ceremonies as their father and mother. [3247] If on the other hand they take other husbands they are to be kept apart both from their father and from the sacrifices and are to be counted as strangers. [3248]
8. These restraints on marriage are observed even among the heathen; and it is our condemnation if the true faith cannot do for Christ what false ones do for the devil, who has substituted for the saving chastity of the gospel a damning chastity of his own. [3249] The Athenian hierophant disowns his manhood and weakens his passions by a perpetual restraint. [3250] The holy office of the flamen is limited to those who have been once married, and the attendants of the flamens' wives must also have had but one husband. [3251] Only monogamists are allowed to share in the sacred rites connected with the Egyptian bull. [3252] I need say nothing of the vestal virgins and those of Apollo, the Achivan Juno, Diana, and Minerva, all of whom waste away in the perpetual virginity required by their vocation. I will just glance at the queen of Carthage [3253] who was willing to burn herself rather than marry king Iarbas; at the wife of Hasdrubal [3254] who taking her two children one in each hand cast, herself into the flames beneath her rather than surrender her honour; and at Lucretia [3255] who having lost the prize of her chastity refused to survive the defilement of her soul. I will not lengthen my letter by quoting the many instances of the like virtue which you can read to your profit in my first book against Jovinian. [3256] I will merely relate one which took place in your own country and which will shew you that chastity is held in high honour even among wild and barbarous and cruel peoples. Once the Teutons who came from the remote shores of the German Ocean overran all parts of Gaul, and it was only when they had cut to pieces several Roman armies that Marius at last defeated them in an encounter at Aquæ Sextiæ. [3257] By the conditions of the surrender three hundred of their married women were to be handed over to the Romans. When the Teuton matrons heard of this stipulation they first begged the consul that they might be set apart to minister in the temples of Ceres and Venus; [3258] and then when they failed to obtain their request and were removed by the lictors, they slew their little children and next morning were all found dead in each other's arms having strangled themselves in the night. [3259]
9. Shall then a highborn lady do what these barbarian women refused to do even as prisoners of war? After losing a first husband, good or bad as the case may be, shall she make trial of a second, and thus run counter to the judgment of God? And in case that she immediately loses this second, shall she take a third? And if he too is called to his rest, shall she go on to a fourth and a fifth, and by so doing identify herself with the harlots? No, a widow must take every precaution not to overstep by an inch the bounds of chastity. For if she once oversteps them and breaks through the modesty which becomes a matron, she will soon riot in every kind of excess; so much so that the prophet's words shall be true of her "Thou hast a whore's forehead, thou refusest to be ashamed." [3260]
What then? do I condemn second marriages? not at all; but I commend first ones. Do I expel twice-married persons from the church? Far from it; but I urge those who have been once married to lives of continence. The Ark of Noah contained unclean animals as well as clean. It contained both creeping things and human beings. In a great house there are vessels of different kinds, some to honour and some to dishonour. [3261] In the gospel parable the seed sown in the good ground brings forth fruit, some an hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold. [3262] The hundredfold which comes first betokens the crown of virginity; the sixtyfold which comes next refers to the work of widows; while the thirtyfold--indicated by joining together the points of the thumb and forefinger [3263] --denotes the marriage-tie. What room is left for double marriages? None. They are not counted. Such weeds do not grow in good ground but among briers and thorns, the favourite haunts of those foxes to whom the Lord compares the impious Herod. [3264] A woman who marries more than once fancies herself worthy of praise because she is not so bad as the prostitutes, because she compares favourably with these victims of indiscriminate lust by surrendering herself to one alone and not to a number.
10. The story which I am about to relate is an incredible one; yet it is vouched for by many witnesses. A great many years ago when I was helping Damasus bishop of Rome with his ecclesiastical correspondence, and writing his answers to the questions referred to him by the councils of the east and west, I saw a married couple, both of whom were sprung from the very dregs of the people. The man had already buried twenty wives, and the woman had had twenty-two husbands. Now they were united to each other as each believed for the last time. The greatest curiosity prevailed both among men and women to see which of these two veterans would live to bury the other. The husband triumphed and walked before the bier of his often-married wife, amid a great concourse of people from all quarters, with garland and palm-branch, scattering spelt as he went along among an approving crowd. What shall we say to such a woman as that? Surely just what the Lord said to the woman of Samaria: "Thou hast had twenty-two husbands, and he by whom you are now buried is not your husband." [3265]
11. I beseech you therefore, my devout daughter in Christ, not to dwell on those passages which offer succour to the incontinent and the unhappy but rather to read those in which chastity is crowned. It is enough for you that you have lost the first and highest kind, that of virginity, and that you have passed through the third to the second; that is to say, having formerly fulfilled the obligations of a wife, that you now live in continence as a widow. Think not of the lowest grade, nay of that which does not count at all, I mean, second marriage; and do not seek for far fetched precedents to justify you in marrying again. You cannot too closely imitate your grandmother, your mother, and your aunt; whose teaching and advice as to life will form for you a rule of virtue. For if many wives in the lifetime of their husbands come to realize the truth of the apostle's words: "all things are lawful unto me but all things are not expedient," [3266] and make eunuchs of themselves for the kingdom of heaven's sake [3267] either by consent after their regeneration through the baptismal laver, or else in the ardour of their faith immediately after their marriage; why should not a widow, who by God's decree has ceased to have a husband, joyfully cry again and again with Job: "the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away," [3268] and seize the opportunity offered to her of having power over her own body instead of again becoming the servant of a man. Assuredly it is much harder to abstain from enjoying what you have than it is to regret what you have lost. Virginity is the easier because virgins know nothing of the promptings of the flesh, and widowhood is the harder because widows cannot help thinking of the license they have enjoyed in the past. And it is harder still if they suppose their husbands to be lost and not gone before; for while the former alternative brings pain, the latter causes joy.
12. The creation of the first man should teach us to reject more marriages than one. There was but one Adam and but one Eve; in fact the woman was fashioned from a rib of Adam. [3269] Thus divided they were subsequently joined together in marriage; in the words of scripture "the twain shall be one flesh," not two or three. "Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife." [3270] Certainly it is not said "to his wives." Paul in explaining the passage refers it to Christ and the church; [3271] making the first Adam a monogamist in the flesh and the second a monogamist in the spirit. As there is one Eve who is "the mother of all living," [3272] so is there one church which is the parent of all Christians. And as the accursed Lamech made of the first Eve two separate wives, [3273] so also the heretics sever the second into several churches which, according to the apocalypse of John, ought rather to be called synagogues of the devil than congregations of Christ. [3274] In the Book of Songs we read as follows:--"there are threescore queens, and fourscore concubines, and virgins without number. My dove, my undefiled is but one; she is the only one of her mother, she is the choice one of her that bare her." [3275] It is to this choice one that the same John addresses an epistle in these words, "the elder unto the elect lady and her children." [3276] So too in the case of the ark which the apostle Peter interprets as a type of the church, [3277] Noah brings in for his three sons one wife apiece and not two. [3278] Likewise of the unclean animals pairs only are taken, male and female, to shew that digamy has no place even among brutes, creeping things, crocodiles and lizards. And if of the clean animals there are seven taken of each kind, [3279] that is, an uneven number; this points to the palm which awaits virginal chastity. For on leaving the ark Noah sacrificed victims to God [3280] not of course of the animals taken by twos for these were kept to multiply their species, but of those taken by sevens some of which had been set apart for sacrifice.
13. It is true that the patriarchs had each of them more wives than one and that they had numerous concubines besides. And as if their example was not enough, David had many wives and Solomon a countless number. Judah went in to Tamar thinking her to be a harlot; [3281] and according to the letter that killeth the prophet Hosea married not only a whore but an adulteress. [3282] If these instances are to justify us let us neigh after every woman that we meet; [3283] like the people of Sodom and Gomorrah let us be found by the last day buying and selling, marrying and giving in marriage; [3284] and let us only end our marrying with the close of our lives. And if both before and after the deluge the maxim held good: "be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth:" [3285] what has that to do with us upon whom the ends of the ages are come, [3286] unto whom it is said, "the time is short," [3287] and "now the axe is laid unto the root of the trees;" [3288] that is to say, the forests of marriage and of the law must be cut down by the chastity of the gospel. There is "a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing." [3289] Owing to the near approach of the captivity Jeremiah is forbidden to take a wife. [3290] In Babylon Ezekiel says: "my wife is dead and my mouth is opened." [3291] Neither he who wished to marry nor he who had married could in wedlock prophesy freely. In days gone by men rejoiced to hear it said of them: "thy children shall be like olive plants round about thy table," and "thou shalt see thy children's children." [3292] But now it is said of those who live in continence: "he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit;" [3293] and "my soul followeth hard after thee: thy right hand upholdeth me." [3294] Then it was said "an eye for an eye;" now the commandment is "whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also." [3295] In those days men said to the warrior: "gird thy sword upon thy thigh, O most mighty;" [3296] now it is said to Peter: "put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword." [3297]
In speaking thus I do not mean to sever the law from the gospel, as Marcion [3298] falsely does. No, I receive one and the same God in both who, as the time and the object vary, is both the Beginning and the End, who sows that He may reap, who plants that He may have somewhat to cut down, and who lays the foundation that in the fulness of time He may crown the edifice. Besides, if we are to deal with symbols and types of things to come, we must judge of them not by our own opinions but in the light of the apostle's explanations. Hagar and Sarah, or Sinai and Zion, are typical of the two testaments. [3299] Leah who was tender-eyed and Rachel whom Jacob loved [3300] signify the synagogue and the church. So likewise do Hannah and Peninnah of whom the former, at first barren, afterwards exceeded the latter in fruitfulness. In Isaac and Rebekah we see an early example of monogamy: it was only to Rebekah that the Lord revealed Himself in the hour of childbirth and she alone went of herself to enquire of the Lord. [3301] What shall I say of Tamar who bore twin sons, Pharez and Zarah? [3302] At their birth was broken down that middle wall of partition which typified the division existing between the two peoples; [3303] while the binding of Zarah's hand with the scarlet thread even then marked the conscience of the Jews with the stain of Christ's blood. And how shall I speak of the whore married by the prophet [3304] who is a figure either of the church as gathered in from the Gentiles or--an interpretation which better suits the passage--of the synagogue? First adopted from among the idolaters by Abraham and Moses, this has now denied the Saviour and proved unfaithful to Him. Therefore it has long been deprived of its altar, priests, and prophets and has to abide many days for its first husband. [3305] For when the fulness of the Gentiles shall have come in, all Israel shall be saved. [3306]
14. I have tried to compress a great deal into a limited space as a draughtsman does when he delineates a large country in a small map. For I wish to deal with other questions, the first of which I shall give in Anna's words to her sister Dido:
Why waste your youth alone in ceaseless grief
Unblest with offspring, sweetest gift of love?
Think you the buried dead require this?
To whom the sufferer thus briefly replies:
'Twas you, my sister, you, who were the first
To plunge my frenzied soul into this woe.
Why could I not have lived a virgin life
Like some wild creature innocent of care?
Alas! I pledged my soul unto the dead:
I vowed a vow and I have broken it. [3307]
You set before me the joys of wedlock. I for my part will remind you of Dido's sword and pyre and funeral flames. In marriage there is not so much good to be hoped for as there is evil which may happen and must be feared. Passion when indulged always brings repentance with it; it is never satisfied, and once quenched it is soon kindled anew. Its growth or decay is a matter of habit; led like a captive by impulse it refuses to obey reason. But you will argue, the management of wealth and property requires the superintendence of a husband.' Do you mean to say that the affairs of those who live single are ruined; and that, unless you make yourself as much a slave as your own servants, you will not be able to govern your household? Do not your grandmother, your mother and your aunt enjoy even more than their old influence and respect, looked up to as they are by the whole province and by the leaders of the churches? Do not soldiers and travellers manage their domestic affairs and give entertainments to one another with no wives to help them? [3308] Why can you not have grave and elderly servants or freed-men, such as those who have nursed you in your childhood, to preside over your house, to answer public calls, to pay taxes; men who will look up to you as a patroness, who will love you as a nursling, who will revere you as a saint? "Seek first the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added unto you." [3309] If you are careful for raiment the gospel bids you "consider the lilies;" and, if for food, to go back to the fowls which "sow not neither do they reap; yet your heavenly father feedeth them." [3310] How many virgins and widows there are who have looked after their property for themselves without thereby incurring any stain of scandal!
15. Do not associate with young women or cleave to them, for it is on account of such that the apostle makes his concession of second marriage, and so you may be shipwrecked in what appears to be calm water. If Paul can say to Timothy, "the younger widows refuse," [3311] and again "love the elder women as mothers; the younger as sisters, with all purity," [3312] what plea can you urge for refusing to hear my admonitions? Avoid all persons to whom a suspicion of evil living may attach itself, and do not content yourself with the trite answer, my own conscience is enough for me; I do not care what people say of me.' That was not the principle on which the apostle acted. He provided things honest not only in the sight of God but in the sight of all men; [3313] that the name of God might not be blasphemed among the Gentiles. [3314] Though he had power to lead about a sister, a wife, [3315] he would not do so, for he did not wish to be judged by an unbeliever's conscience. [3316] And, though he might have lived by the gospel, [3317] he laboured day and night with his own hands, that he might not be burdensome to the believers. [3318] "If meat," he says, "make my brother to offend. I will eat no flesh while the world standeth." [3319] Let us then say, if a sister or a brother causes not one or two but the whole church to offend, I will not see that sister or that brother.' It is better to lose a portion of one's substance than to imperil the salvation of one's soul. It is better to lose that which some day, whether we like it or not, must be lost to us and to give it up freely, than to lose that for which we should sacrifice all that we have. Which of us can add--I will not say a cubit for that would be an immense addition--but the tenth part of a single inch to his stature? Why are we careful what we shall eat or what we shall drink? Let us "take no thought for the morrow: sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." [3320]
Jacob in his flight from his brother left behind in his father's house great riches and made his way with nothing into Mesopotamia. Moreover, to prove to us his powers of endurance, he took a stone for his pillow. Yet as he lay there he beheld a ladder set up on the earth reaching to heaven and behold the Lord stood above it, and the angels ascended and descended on it; [3321] the lesson being thus taught that the sinner must not despair of salvation nor the righteous man rest secure in his virtue. [3322] To pass over much of the story (for there is no time to explain all the points in the narrative) after twenty years he who before had passed over Jordan with his staff returned into his native land with three droves of cattle, rich in flocks and herds and richer still in children. [3323] The apostles likewise travelled throughout the world without either money in their purses, or staves in their hands, or shoes on their feet; [3324] and yet they could speak of themselves as "having nothing and yet possessing all things." [3325] "Silver and gold," say they, "have we none, but such as we have give we thee: in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk." [3326] For they were not weighed down with the burthen of riches. Therefore they could stand, as Elijah, in the crevice of the rock, they could pass through the needle's eye, and behold the back parts of the Lord. [3327]
But as for us we burn with covetousness and, even while we declaim against the love of money, we hold out our skirts to catch gold and never have enough. [3328] There is a common saying about the Megarians which may rightly be applied to all who suffer from this passion: "They build as if they are to live forever; they live as if they are to die to-morrow." We do the same, for we do not believe the Lord's words. When we attain the age which all desire we forget the nearness of that death which as human beings we owe to nature and with futile hope promise to ourselves a long length of years. No old man is so weak and decrepit as to suppose that he will not live for one year more. A forgetfulness of his true condition gradually creeps upon him; so that--earthly creature that he is and close to dissolution as he stands--he is lifted up into pride, and in imagination seats himself in heaven.
16. But what am I doing? Whilst I talk about the cargo, the vessel itself founders. He that letteth [3329] is taken out of the way, and yet we do not realize that Antichrist is near. Yes, Antichrist is near whom the Lord Jesus Christ "shall consume with the spirit of his mouth." [3330] "Woe unto them," he cries, "that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days." [3331] Now these things are both the fruits of marriage.
I shall now say a few words of our present miseries. A few of us have hitherto survived them, but this is due not to anything we have done ourselves but to the mercy of the Lord. Savage tribes in countless numbers have overrun all parts of Gaul. The whole country between the Alps and the Pyrenees, between the Rhine and the Ocean, has been laid waste by hordes of Quadi, Vandals, Sarmatians, Alans, Gepids, Herules, Saxons, Burgundians, Allemanni and--alas! for the commonweal!--even Pannonians. For "Assur also is joined with them." [3332] The once noble city of Moguntiacum [3333] has been captured and destroyed. In its church many thousands have been massacred. The people of Vangium [3334] after standing a long siege have been extirpated. The powerful city of Rheims, the Ambiani, the Altrebatæ, [3335] the Belgians on the skirts of the world, Tournay, Spires, and Strasburg have fallen to Germany: while the provinces of Aquitaine and of the Nine Nations, of Lyons and of Narbonne are with the exception of a few cities one universal scene of desolation. And those which the sword spares without, famine ravages within. I cannot speak without tears of Toulouse which has been kept from falling hitherto by the merits of its reverend bishop Exuperius. [3336] Even the Spains are on the brink of ruin and tremble daily as they recall the invasion of the Cymry; and, while others suffer misfortunes once in actual fact, they suffer them continually in anticipation.
17. I say nothing of other places that I may not seem to despair of God's mercy. All that is ours now from the Pontic Sea to the Julian Alps in days gone by once ceased to be ours. For thirty years the barbarians burst the barrier of the Danube and fought in the heart of the Roman Empire. Long use dried our tears. For all but a few old people had been born either in captivity or during a blockade, and consequently they did not miss a liberty which they had never known. Yet who will hereafter credit the fact or what histories will seriously discuss it, that Rome has to fight within her own borders not for glory but for bare life; and that she does not even fight but buys the right to exist by giving gold and sacrificing all her substance? This humiliation has been brought upon her not by the fault of her Emperors [3337] who are both most religious men, but by the crime of a half-barbarian traitor [3338] who with our money has armed our foes against us. [3339] Of old the Roman Empire was branded with eternal shame because after ravaging the country and routing the Romans at the Allia, Brennus with his Gauls entered Rome itself. [3340] Nor could this ancient stain be wiped out until Gaul, the birth-place of the Gauls, and Gaulish Greece, [3341] wherein they had settled after triumphing over East and West, were subjugated to her sway. Even Hannibal [3342] who swept like a devastating storm from Spain into Italy, although he came within sight of the city, did not dare to lay siege to it. Even Pyrrhus [3343] was so completely bound by the spell of the Roman name that destroying everything that came in his way, he yet withdrew from its vicinity and, victor though he was, did not presume to gaze upon what he had learned to be a city of kings. Yet in return for such insults--not to say such haughty pride--as theirs which ended thus happily for Rome, one [3344] banished from all the world found death at last by poison in Bithynia; while the other [3345] returning to his native land was slain in his own dominions. The countries of both became tributary to the Roman people. But now, even if complete success attends our arms, we can wrest nothing from our vanquished foes but what we have already lost to them. The poet Lucan describing the power of the city in a glowing passage says: [3346]
If Rome be weak, where shall we look for strength?
we may vary his words and say:
If Rome be lost, where shall we look for help?
or quote the language of Virgil:
Had I a hundred tongues and throat of bronze
The woes of captives I could not relate
Or ev'n recount the names of all the slain. [3347]
Even what I have said is fraught with danger both to me who say it and to all who hear it; for we are no longer free even to lament our fate, and are unwilling, nay, I may even say, afraid to weep for our sufferings.
Dearest daughter in Christ, answer me this question: will you marry amid such scenes as these? Tell me, what kind of husband will you take? One that will run or one that will fight? In either case you know what the result will be. Instead of the Fescennine song, [3348] the hoarse blare of the terrible trumpet will deafen your ears and your very brideswomen may be turned into mourners. In what pleasures can you hope to revel now that you have lost the proceeds of all your possessions, now that you see your small retinue under close blockade and a prey to the inroads of pestilence and famine? But far be it from me to think so meanly of you or to harbour any suspicions of one who has dedicated her soul to the Lord. Though nominally addressed to you my words are really meant for others such as are idle, inquisitive and given to gossip. These wander from house to house and from one married lady to another, [3349] their god is their belly and their glory is in their shame, [3350] of the scriptures they know nothing except the texts which favour second marriages, but they love to quote the example of others to justify their own self-indulgence, and flatter themselves that they are no worse than their fellow-sinners. When you have confounded the shameless proposals of such women by explaining the true drift of the apostle's meaning; then to show you by what mode of life you can best preserve your widowhood, you may read with advantage what I have written. I mean my treatise on the preservation of virginity addressed to Eustochium [3351] and my two letters to Furia [3352] and Salvina. [3353] Of these two latter you may like to know that the first is daughter-in-law to Probus some time consul, and the second daughter to Gildo formerly governour of Africa. This tract on monogamy I shall call by your name. __________________________________________________________________
[3218] Cf. Letter LX. § 6.
[3219] Letters LIV., LXXV., LXXIX., and others.
[3220] Ageruchia = Greatheart.
[3221] Luke ii. 36, 37.
[3222] See Letter XLVIII., § 2; also § 9 infra.
[3223] Cf. Letter LXXVII. § 3.
[3224] 1 Tim. v. 14, 15.
[3225] 1 Tim. v. 9, 10.
[3226] 1 Tim. v. 5.
[3227] 1 Tim. v. 11, 12.
[3228] 1 Tim. v. 14, 15.
[3229] So Vulg.
[3230] Ovid, Am. iii. 2, 83.
[3231] 1 Cor. vii. 8, 9.
[3232] Cf. Letters XLVIII. § 19, and LXXIX. § 10.
[3233] So R.V. marg.
[3234] 1 Cor. vii. 39, 40, cf. Rom. vii. 2.
[3235] 2 Cor. vi. 14-16.
[3236] Deut. xxii. 10.
[3237] 1 Tim. v. 9.
[3238] 1 Cor. vii. 29.
[3239] 1 Tim. v. 3-5, 16.
[3240] 1 Tim. v. 17.
[3241] Ex. xx. 12.
[3242] Mark vii. 11.
[3243] Text corrupt: probably quasi' should be substituted for si.'
[3244] Cf. Luke xvi. 9.
[3245] A reminiscence of Tert. de Exh. Cast. vii.
[3246] 1 Cor. vii. 8, 9.
[3247] Jerome seems to be here relying on tradition.
[3248] Lev. xxii. 12, 13.
[3249] From Tert. de Exh. Cast. xiii.
[3250] Julian, Orat. v.
[3251] See Dict. Antiq. s.v. flamen.
[3252] The sacred bull of Memphis, generally called Apis.
[3253] Dido.
[3254] Who refused to survive the fall of Carthage. The story is told by Polybius.
[3255] See Livy, I. cc. 57, 58.
[3256] Against Jov. i. 20.
[3257] The battle of Aix was fought in 102 b.c.
[3258] The priestesses in these temples seem to have been vowed to chastity.
[3259] Val. Max. vi. 1.
[3260] Jer. iii. 3.
[3261] 2 Tim. ii. 20.
[3262] Matt. xiii. 8: for this explanation of the parable see Letter XLVIII. § 2.
[3263] See Letter XLVIII. § 2 and note there.
[3264] Luke xiii. 32.
[3265] Cf. Joh. iv. 18.
[3266] 1 Cor. vi. 12.
[3267] Matt. xix. 12.
[3268] Job i. 21.
[3269] Gen. ii. 21, 22.
[3270] Gen. ii. 24, LXX.
[3271] Eph. v. 31, 32.
[3272] Gen. iii. 20.
[3273] Gen. iv. 19.
[3274] Rev. ii. 9.
[3275] Cant. vi. 8, 9.
[3276] 2 Joh. i. In Latin choice' and elect' are one word.
[3277] 1 Pet. iii. 20, 21.
[3278] Gen. vii. 13.
[3279] Gen. vii. 2.
[3280] Gen. viii. 20.
[3281] Gen. xxxviii. 12-18.
[3282] Hos. i. 2, 3.
[3283] Cf. Jer. v. 8.
[3284] Luke xvii. 27-29.
[3285] Gen. i. 28; ix. 7.
[3286] 1 Cor. x. 11, R.V.
[3287] 1 Cor. vii. 29.
[3288] Matt. iii. 10.
[3289] Eccles. iii. 5.
[3290] Jer. xvi. 2.
[3291] Cf. Ezek. xxiv. 16-18, 27.
[3292] Ps. cxxviii. 3, 6.
[3293] 1 Cor. vi. 17.
[3294] Ps. lxiii. 8.
[3295] Matt. v. 38, 39.
[3296] Ps. xlv. 3.
[3297] Matt. xxvi. 52.
[3298] A gnostic of the second century who rejected the whole of the old testament as incompatible with the new.
[3299] Gal. iv. 22-26.
[3300] Gen. xxix. 17, 18.
[3301] Gen. xxv. 22, 23.
[3302] Gen. xxxviii. 27-30.
[3303] Eph. ii. 14.
[3304] Gomer the wife of Hosea.
[3305] Hos. ii. 7; iii. 3.
[3306] Rom. xi. 25, 26.
[3307] Virg. A. iv. 32-34: 548, 552.
[3308] From Tert. de Exh. Cast. xii.
[3309] Matt. vi. 33.
[3310] Matt. vi. 26, 28.
[3311] 1 Tim. v. 11.
[3312] 1 Tim. v. 2. Jerome substitutes love' for rebuke.'
[3313] Rom. xii. 17, cf. Letter cxvii. § 4.
[3314] Rom. ii. 24.
[3315] 1 Cor. ix. 5.
[3316] 1 Cor. x. 29.
[3317] 1 Cor. ix. 14.
[3318] 1 Cor. iv. 12; 1 Thess. ii. 9; 2 Cor. xii. 14.
[3319] 1 Cor. viii. 13.
[3320] Matt. vi. 25, 27, 34.
[3321] Gen. xxviii. 11-13.
[3322] Cf. Letters cviii. § 13 and cxviii. § 7.
[3323] Gen. xxxii. 7, 10.
[3324] Matt. x. 9, 10.
[3325] 2 Cor. vi. 10.
[3326] Acts iii. 6.
[3327] 1 Kings xix. 11-13, cf. Exod. xxxiii. 21-23.
[3328] Cf. Juv. i. 88.
[3329] Jerome follows Tertullian, Irenæus, and the majority of the fathers in supposing the apostle to allude to the Roman Empire. See Letter CXXI. § 11, Comm. in Hierem. xxv. 26, Comm. in Dan. vii. 7, 8.
[3330] 2 Thess. ii. 7, 8.
[3331] Matt. xxiv. 19.
[3332] Ps. lxxxiii. 8.
[3333] Now Maintz.
[3334] Now Worms.
[3335] Tribes whose memories linger in the names Amiens and Arras.
[3336] See note on Letter LIV. § 11.
[3337] Arcadius and Honorius.
[3338] Stilicho who induced the senate to grant a subsidy to the Gothic King Alaric. See Gibbon, C. xxx.
[3339] This, one of Jerome's few criticisms on the public policy of his day, shows him to have taken a narrow and inadequate view of the issues involved.
[3340] In the year 390 b.c.
[3341] i.e. Galatia.
[3342] The great Carthaginian general in the second Punic war.
[3343] King of Epirus who invaded Italy in the years 280, 279, 276, 275 b.c.
[3344] Hannibal.
[3345] Pyrrhus.
[3346] Lucan, Phars. v. 274.
[3347] Virg. A. vi. 625-627.
[3348] See note on Letter CXXX. § 5.
[3349] 1 Tim. v. 13.
[3350] Phil. iii. 19.
[3351] Letter XXII.
[3352] Letter LIV.
[3353] Letter LXXIX. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXXIV. To Avitus.
Avitus to whom this letter is addressed is probably the same person who induced Jerome to write to Salvina (see Letter LXXIX., §I, ante). The occasion of writing is as follows. Ten years previously (that is to say in a.d. 399 or 400) Pammachius had asked Jerome to supply him with a correct version of Origen's First Principles to enable him to detect the variations introduced by Rufinus into his rendering. This Jerome willingly did (see Letters LXXXIII. and LXXXIV.) but when the work in its integrity was perused by Pammachius he thought it so erroneous in doctrine that he determined not to circulate it. However, "a certain brother" induced him to lend the ms. to him for a short time; and then, when he had got it into his hands, had a hasty and incorrect transcript made, which he forthwith published much to the chagrin of Pammachius. Falling into the hands of Avitus a copy of this much perplexed him and he seems to have appealed to Jerome for an explanation. This the latter now gives forwarding at the same time an authentic edition of his version of the First Principles. The date of the letter is a.d. 409 or 410.
1. About ten years ago that saintly man Pammachius sent me a copy of a certain person's rendering, [3354] or rather misrendering, of Origen's First Principles; with a request that in a Latin version I should give the true sense of the Greek and should set down the writer's words for good or for evil without bias in either direction. [3355] When I did as he wished and sent him the book, [3356] he was shocked to read it and locked it up in his desk lest being circulated it might wound the souls of many. However, a certain brother, who had "a zeal for God but not according to knowledge," [3357] asked for a loan of the manuscript that he might read it; and, as he promised to return it without delay, Pammachius, thinking no harm could happen in so short a time, unsuspectingly consented. Hereupon he who had borrowed the book to read, with the aid of scribes copied the whole of it and gave it back much sooner than he had promised. Then with the same rashness or--to use a less severe term--thoughtlessness he made bad worse by confiding to others what he had thus stolen. Moreover, since a bulky treatise on an abstruse subject is difficult to reproduce with accuracy, especially if it has to be taken down surreptitiously and in a hurry, order and sense were sacrificed in several passages. Whence it comes, my dear Avitus, that you ask me to send you a copy of my version as made for Pammachius and not for the public, a garbled edition of which has been published by the aforesaid brother.
2. Take then what you have asked for; but know that there are countless things in the book to be abhorred, and that, as the Lord says, you will have to walk among scorpions and serpents. [3358] It begins by saying that Christ was made God's son not born; [3359] that God the Father, as He is by nature invisible, is invisible even to the Son; [3360] that the Son, who is the likeness of the invisible Father, compared with the Father is not the truth but compared with us who cannot receive the truth of the almighty Father seems a figure of the truth so that we perceive the majesty and magnitude of the greater in the less, the Father's glory limited in the Son; [3361] that God the Father is a light incomprehensible and that Christ compared with him is but a minute brightness, although by reason of our incapacity to us he appears a great one. [3362] The Father and the Son are compared to two statues, a larger one and a small; the first filling the world and being somehow invisible through its size, the second cognisable by the eyes of men. [3363] God the Father omnipotent the writer terms good and of perfect goodness; but of the Son he says: "He is not good but an emanation and likeness of goodness; not good absolutely but only with a qualification, as the good shepherd' and the like." [3364] The Holy Spirit he places after the Father and the Son as third in dignity and honour. And while he declares that he does not know whether the Holy Spirit is created or uncreated, [3365] he has later on given his own opinion that except God the Father alone there is nothing uncreated. "The Son," he states, "is inferior to the Father, inasmuch as He is second and the Father first; and the Holy Spirit which dwells in all the saints is inferior to the Son. In the same way the power of the Father is greater than that of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Likewise the power of the Son is greater than that of the Holy Spirit, and as a consequence the Holy Spirit in its turn has greater virtue than other things called holy." [3366]
3. Then, when he comes to deal with rational creatures and to describe their lapse into earthly bodies as due to their own negligence, he goes on to say: "Surely it argues great negligence and sloth for a soul so far to empty itself as to fall into sin and allow itself to be tied to the material body of an unreasoning brute;" and in a subsequent passage: "These reasonings induce me to suppose that it is by their own free act that some are numbered with God's saints and servants, and that it was through their own fault that others fell from holiness into such negligence that they were changed into forces of an opposite kind." [3367] He maintains that after every end a fresh beginning springs forth and an end from each beginning, and that wholesale variation is possible; so that one who is now a human being may in another world become a demon, while one who by reason of his negligence is now a demon may hereafter be placed in a more material body and thus become a human being. [3368] So far does he carry this transforming process that on his theory an archangel may become the devil and the devil in turn be changed back into an archangel. "Such as have wavered or faltered but have not altogether fallen shall be made subject, for rule and government and guidance, to better things--to principalities and powers, to thrones and dominations"; and of these perhaps another human race will be formed, when in the words of Isaiah there shall be "new heavens and a new earth.' [3369] But such as have not deserved to return through humanity to their former estate shall become the devil and his angels, demons of the worst sort; and according to what they have done shall have special duties assigned to them in particular worlds." Moreover, the very demons and rulers of darkness in any world or worlds, if they are willing to turn to better things, may become human beings and so come back to their first beginning. That is to say, after they have borne the discipline of punishment and torture for a longer or a shorter time in human bodies, they may again reach the angelic pinnacles from which they have fallen. Hence it may be shewn that we men may change into any other reasonable beings, and that not once only or on emergency but time after time; we and angels shall become demons if we neglect our duty; and demons, if they will take to themselves virtues, may attain to the rank of angels.
4. Bodily substances too are to pass away utterly or else at the end of all things will become highly rarified like the sky and æther and other subtle bodies. It is clear that these principles must affect the writer's view of the resurrection. The sun also and the moon and the rest of the constellations are alive. Nay more; as we men by reason of our sins are enveloped in bodies material and sluggish; so the lights of heaven have for like reasons received bodies more or less luminous, and demons have been for more serious faults clothed with starry frames. This, he argues, is the view of the apostle who writes:--"the creation has been subjected to vanity and shall be delivered for the revealing of the sons of God." [3370] That it may not be supposed that I am imputing to him ideas of my own I shall give his actual words. "At the end and consummation of the world," he writes, "when souls and beings endowed with reason shall be released from prison by the Lord, they will move slowly or fly quickly according as they have previously been slothful or energetic. And as all of them have free will and are free to choose virtue or vice, those who choose the latter will be much worse off than they now are. But those who choose the former will improve their condition. Their movements and decisions in this direction or in that will determine their various futures; whether, that is, angels are to become men or demons, and whether demons are to become men or angels." Then after adducing various arguments in support of his thesis and maintaining that while not incapable of virtue the devil has yet not chosen to be virtuous, he has finally reasoned with much diffuseness that an angel, a human soul, and a demon--all according to him of one nature but of different wills--may in punishment for great negligence or folly be transformed into brutes. Moreover, to avoid the agony of punishment and the burning flame the more sensitive may choose to become low organisms, to dwell in water, to assume the shape of this or that animal; so that we have reason to fear a metamorphosis not only into four-footed things but even into fishes. Then, lest he should be held guilty of maintaining with Pythagoras the transmigration of souls, he winds up the wicked reasoning with which he has wounded his reader by saying: "I must not be taken to make dogmas of these things; they are only thrown out as conjectures to shew that they are not altogether overlooked."
5. In his second book he maintains a plurality of worlds; not, however, as Epicurus taught, many like ones existing at once, but a new one beginning each time that the old comes to an end. There was a world before this world of ours, and after it there will be first one and then another and so on in regular succession. He is in doubt whether one world shall be so completely similar to another as to leave no room for any difference between them, or whether one world shall never wholly be indistinguishable from another. And again a little farther on he writes: "if, as the course of the discussion makes necessary, all things can live without body, all bodily existence shall be swallowed up and that which once has been made out of nothing shall again be reduced to nothing. And yet a time will come when its use will be once more necessary." And in the same context: "but if, as reason and the authority of scripture shew, this corruptible shall put on incorruption and this mortal shall put on immortality, death shall be swallowed up in victory and corruption in incorruption. [3371] And it may be that all bodily existence shall be removed, for it is only in this that death can operate." And a little farther on: "if these things are not contrary to the faith, it may be that we shall some day live in a disembodied state. Moreover, if only he is fully subject to Christ who is disembodied, and if all must be made subject to Him, we too shall lose our bodies when we become fully subject to Him." And in the same passage: "if all are to be made subject to God, all shall lay aside their bodies; and then all bodily existence shall be brought to nought. But if through the fall of reasonable beings it is a second time required it will reappear. For God has left souls to strive and struggle, to teach them that full and complete victory is to be attained not by their own efforts but by His grace. And so to my mind worlds vary with the sins which cause them, and those are exploded theories which maintain that all worlds are alike." And again: "three conjectures occur to me with regard to the end; it is for the reader to determine which is nearest to the truth. For either we shall be bodiless when being made subject to Christ we shall be made subject to God and He shall be all in all; or as things made subject to Christ shall be with Christ Himself made subject to God and brought under one law, so all substance shall be refined into its most perfect form and rarified into æther which is a pure and uncompounded essence; or else the sphere which I have called motionless and all that it contains will be dissolved into nothing, and the sphere in which the antizone [3372] itself is contained shall be called good ground,' [3373] and that other sphere which in its revolution surrounds the earth and goes by the name of heaven shall be reserved for the abode of the saints."
6. In speaking thus does he not most clearly follow the error of the heathen and foist upon the simple faith of Christians the ravings of philosophy? In the same book he writes: "it remains that God is invisible. But if He is by nature invisible, He must be so even to the Saviour." And lower down: "no soul which has descended into a human body has borne upon it so true an impress of its previous character as Christ's soul of which He says: no man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself.'" [3374] And in another place: "we must carefully consider whether souls, when they have won salvation and have attained to the blessed life, may not cease to be souls. For as the Lord and Saviour came to seek and to save that which was lost [3375] that it might cease to be lost; so the lost soul which the Lord came to save, when saved, will cease to be a soul. We must ask ourselves whether, as the lost was not lost once and again will not be, the soul likewise may have been and again may be not a soul." [3376] And after a good many remarks upon the soul he brings in the following, "nous or" intelligence by falling becomes a soul; and by acquiring virtue this will become intelligence again. This at least is a fair inference from the case of Esau who for his old sins is condemned to lead a lower life. And concerning the heavenly bodies we must make a similar acknowledgment. The soul of the sun--or whatever else you like to call it--does not date its existence from the creation of the world; it already existed before it entered its shining and glowing body. So also with the moon and stars. From antecedent causes they have been made subject to vanity not willingly but for future reward, [3377] and are forced to do not their own will but the creator's who has assigned to them their several spheres."
7. Hellfire, moreover, and the torments with which holy scripture threatens sinners he explains not as external punishments but as the pangs of guilty consciences when by God's power the memory of our transgressions is set before our eyes. "The whole crop of our sins grows up afresh from seeds which remain in the soul, and all our dishonourable and undutiful acts are again pictured before our gaze. Thus it is the fire of conscience and the stings of remorse which torture the mind as it looks back on former self-indulgence." And again: "but perhaps this coarse and earthly body ought to be described as mist and darkness; for at the end of this world and when it becomes necessary to pass into another, the like darkness will lead to the like physical birth." In speaking thus he clearly pleads for the transmigration of souls as taught by Pythagoras and Plato. [3378] And at the end of the second book in dealing with our perfection he has said: "when we shall have made such progress as not only to cease to be flesh or body but perhaps also to cease to be souls our perfect intelligence and perception, undimmed with any mist of passion, will discern reasonable and intelligible substances face to face.
8. In the third book the following faulty statements are contained. "If we once admit that, when one vessel is made to honour and another to dishonour, [3379] this is due to antecedent causes; why may we not revert to the mystery of the soul and allow that it is loved in one and hated in another because of its past actions, before in Jacob it becomes a supplanter and before in Esau it is supplanted?" [3380] And again: "the fact that souls are made some to honour and some to dishonour is to be explained by their previous history." And in the same place: "on this hypothesis of mine a vessel made to honour which fails to fulfil its object will in another world become a vessel made to dishonour; and contrariwise a vessel which has from a previous fault been condemned to dishonour will, if it accepts correction in this present life, become in the new creation a vessel sanctified and meet for the Master's use and prepared unto every good work.'" [3381] And he immediately goes on to say: "I believe that men who begin with small faults may become so hardened in wickedness that, if they do not repent and turn to better things, they must become inhuman energies; [3382] and contrariwise that hostile and demonic beings may in course of time so far heal their wounds and check the current of their former sins that they may attain to the abode of the perfect. As I have often said, in those countless and unceasing worlds in which the soul lives and has its being some grow worse and worse until they reach the lowest depths of degradation; while others in those lowest depths grow better and better until they reach the perfection of virtue." Thus he tries to shew that men, or rather their souls, may become demons; and that demons in turn may be restored to the rank of angels. In the same book he writes: "this too must be considered; why the human soul is diversely acted upon now by influences of one kind and now by influences of another." And he surmises that this is due to conduct which has preceded birth. It is for this, he argues, that John leaps in his mother's womb when at Mary's salutation Elizabeth declares herself unworthy of her notice. [3383] And he immediately subjoins: "on the other hand infants that are hardly weaned are possessed with evil spirits and become diviners and soothsayers; [3384] indeed, some are indwelt from their earliest years with the spirit of a python. Now as they have done nothing to bring upon themselves these visitations, one who holds that nothing happens without God's permission, and that all things are governed by His justice, cannot suppose that God's providence has abandoned them without good reason."
9. Again, of the world he writes thus: "The belief commends itself to me that there was a world before this world and that after it there will be another. Do you wish to know that after the decay of this world there will be a new one? Hear the words of Isaiah: the new heavens and the new earth which I will make shall remain before me.' [3385] Do you wish to know that before the making of this world there have previously been others? Listen to the Preacher who says: the thing which hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. Is there anything whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us.' [3386] A passage which proves not only that other worlds have been but that other worlds shall be; not, however, simultaneously and side by side but one after another." And he immediately adds: "I hold that heaven is the abode of the deity, the true place of rest; and that it was there that reasonable creatures enjoyed their ancient bliss, before coming down to a lower plane and exchanging the invisible for the visible, they fell to the earth and came to need material bodies. Now that they have fallen, God the creator has made for them bodies suitable to their surroundings; and has fashioned this visible world, and has sent into it ministers to ensure the salvation and correction of the fallen. Of these ministers some have held assigned positions and have been subject to the world's necessary laws; while others have intelligently performed duties laid upon them in times and seasons determined by God's plan. To the former class belong the sun, moon, and stars called by the apostle the creation;' and these have had allotted to them the heights of heaven. Now the creation is subjected to vanity [3387] because it is encased in material bodies and visible to the eye. And yet it is made subject to vanity not willingly but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope.' Others again of the second class, at particular places and times known to their Maker only, we believe to be His angels sent to steer the world." A little farther on he says: "the affairs of the world are so ordered by Providence that while some angels fall from heaven others freely glide down to earth. The former are hurled down against their will; the latter descend from choice alone. The former are forced to continue in a distasteful service for a fixed period; the latter spontaneously embrace the task of lending a hand to those who fall." Again he writes: "whence it follows that these different movements result in the creation of different worlds; and that this world of ours will be succeeded by one quite unlike it. Now, as regards this falling and rising, this rewarding of virtue and punishment of vice, whether they take place in the past, present, or future, God, the creator, can alone apportion desert and make all things converge to one end. For He only knows why He allows some to follow their own inclination and to descend from the higher planes to the lowest; and why He visits others and giving them His hand draws them back to their former state and places them once more in heaven."
10. In discussing the end of the world he has made use of the following language. "Since, as I have often said, a new beginning springs from the end, it may be asked whether bodies will then continue to exist, or whether, when they have been annihilated, we shall live without bodies and be incorporeal as we know God to be. Now there can be no doubt but that, if bodies or, as the apostle calls them, visible things, belong only to our sensible world, the life of the disembodied will be incorporeal." And a little farther on: "when the apostle writes, the creation shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God,' [3388] I explain his words thus. Reasonable and incorporeal beings are the highest of God's creatures, for not being clothed with bodies they are not the slaves of corruption. Since where there are bodies, there corruption is sure to be found. But hereafter the creation shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption,' and then men shall receive the glory of the children of God and God shall be all in all." And in the same passage he writes: "that the final state will be an incorporeal one is rendered credible by the words of our Saviour's prayer: as thou, Father, art in me and I in thee, that they also may be one in us.' [3389] For we ought to realize what God is and what the Saviour will finally be, and how the likeness to the Father and the Son here promised to the Saints consists in this that as They are one in Themselves so we shall be one in Them. For if in the end the life of the Saints is to be assimilated to the life of God, we must either admit that the Lord of the universe is clothed with a body and that he is enveloped in matter as we are in flesh; or, if it is unbecoming to suppose this, especially in persons who have but small clues from which to infer God's majesty and to guess at the glory of His innate and transcendent nature, we are reduced to the following dilemma. Either we shall always have bodies and in that case must despair of ever being like God; or, if the blessedness of the life of God is really promised to us, the conditions of His life must be the conditions of ours."
11. These passages prove what his view is regarding the resurrection. For he evidently maintains that all bodies will perish and that we shall be incorporeal as according to him we were before we received our present bodies. Again when he comes to argue for a variety of worlds and to maintain that angels will become demons, demons either angels or men, and men in their turn demons; in a word that everything will be turned into something else, he thus sums up his own opinion: "no doubt, after an interval matter will exist afresh and bodies will be formed and a different world will be created to meet the varying wills of reasonable beings who, having forfeited the perfect bliss which continues to the end, have gradually fallen into so great wickedness as to change their nature and refuse to keep their first estate of unalloyed blessedness. Many reasonable beings, it is right to say, keep it until a second, a third, and a fourth world, and give God no ground for changing their condition. Others deteriorate so little that they seem to have lost hardly anything, and others again have to be hurled headlong into the abyss. God who orders all things alone knows how to use each class according to its deserts in a suitable sphere; for He only understands opportunities and motives and the course in which the world must be steered. Thus one who has borne away the palm for wickedness and has sunk into the lowest degradation will in the world which is hereafter to be fashioned be made a devil, a kind of first fruits of the Lord's handiwork, to be a laughing stock to the angels who have lost their first virtue." What is this but to argue that the sinful men of this world may become a devil and demons in another; and contrariwise that those who are now demons may hereafter become either men or angels? And after a lengthy discussion in which he maintains that all corporeal creatures must exchange their material for subtle and spiritual bodies and that all substance must become one pure and inconceivably bright body, of which the human mind can at present form no conception, he winds up thus:--"God shall be all in all;' that is to say, all bodily existence shall be made as perfect as possible; it shall be brought into the divine essence, than which there is none better."
12. In the fourth and last book of his work the following passages deserve the church's condemnation. "It may be that as, when men die in this world by the separation of soul and body, they are allotted different positions in hell according to the difference in their works; so when angels die, out of the system of the heavenly Jerusalem, they come down to this world as a hell and are placed on earth according to their deserts." And again: "as we have compared the souls which pass from this world to hell with those which as they come from heaven to us are in a manner dead; so we must carefully inquire whether this is true of all souls without exception. For in that case souls born on earth when they desire better things rise out of hell and assume human bodies or when they desire worse things come down to us from better worlds; and in the firmament above us likewise there are souls on their way from our world to higher ones, and others who, while they have fallen from heaven, have not sinned so grievously as to be thrust down to earth." He thus tries to prove that the firmament, that is the sky, is hell compared with heaven; and that this earth is hell compared with the firmament; and again that our world is heaven to hell. Or in other words what is hell to some is heaven to others. And not content with saying this he goes on: "at the end of all things when we shall return to the heavenly Jerusalem the hostile powers shall declare war [3390] against the people of God to breathe and exercise their valour and strengthen their resolve. For this they cannot have until they have faced and foiled their foes; of whom we read in the book of Numbers [3391] that they are overcome by reason, discipline, and tactical skill."
13. After saying that according to the apocalypse of John "the everlasting gospel" which shall be revealed in heaven [3392] as much surpasses our gospel as Christ's preaching does the sacraments [3393] of the ancient law, he has asserted what it is sacrilegious even to think; that Christ will once more suffer in the sky for the salvation of demons. And although he has not expressly said it, it is yet implied in his words that as for men God became man to set men free, so for the salvation of demons when He comes to deliver them He will become a demon. To shew that this is no gloss of mine, I must give his own words: "As Christ," he writes, "has fulfilled the shadow of the law by the shadow of the gospel, and as all law is a pattern and shadow of things done in heaven, we must inquire whether we are justified in supposing that even the heavenly law and the rites of the celestial worship are still incomplete and need the true gospel which in the apocalypse of John is called everlasting to distinguish it from ours which is only temporal, set forth in a world that shall pass away. Now if we extend our inquiry to the passion of our Lord and Saviour, it may indeed be overbold to suppose that He will suffer in heaven; yet if there is spiritual wickedness in heavenly places [3394] and if we confess without a blush that the Lord has once been crucified to destroy those things which He has destroyed by His passion; why need we fear to imagine a like occurrence in the upper world in the fulness of time, so that the nations of all realms shall be saved by a passion of Christ?"
14. Here is another blasphemy which he has spoken of the Son. "Assuming that the Son knows the Father, it would seem that by this knowledge He can comprehend Him as much as a craftsman can comprehend the rules of his art. And, doubtless, if the Father is in the Son, He is also comprehended by Him in whom He is. But if we mean by comprehension not merely that the knower takes a thing in by perception and insight but that he contains it within himself by virtue of a special faculty; in this sense we cannot say that the Son comprehends the Father. For the Father comprehends all things, and of these the Son is one; therefore, He comprehends the Son." And to shew us reasons why, while the Father comprehends the Son, the Son cannot comprehend the Father, he adds: "the curious reader may inquire whether the Father knows Himself in the same way that the Son knows Him. But if he recalls the words: the Father who sent me is greater than I,' [3395] he will allow that they must be universally true and will admit that, in knowledge as in everything else, the Father is greater than the Son, and knows Himself more perfectly and immediately than the Son can do."
15. The following passage is a convincing proof that he holds the transmigration of souls and annihilation of bodies. "If it can be shewn that an incorporeal and reasonable being has life in itself independently of the body and that it is worse off in the body than out of it; then beyond a doubt bodies are only of secondary importance and arise from time to time to meet the varying conditions of reasonable creatures. Those who require bodies are clothed with them, and contrariwise, when fallen souls have lifted themselves up to better things, their bodies are once more annihilated. They are thus ever vanishing and ever reappearing." And to prevent us from minimizing the impiety of his previous utterances he ends his work by maintaining that all reasonable beings, that is, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, angels, powers, dominations, and virtues, and even man by right of his soul's dignity, are of one and the same essence. "God," he writes, "and His only-begotten Son and the Holy Spirit are conscious of an intellectual and reasonable nature. But so also are the angels, the powers, and the virtues, as well as the inward man who is created in the image and after the likeness of God. [3396] From which I conclude that God and they are in some sort of one essence." He adds "in some sort" to escape the charge of blasphemy; and while in another place he will not allow the Son and the Holy Spirit to be of one substance with the Father lest by so doing he should appear to make the divine essence divisible, he here bestows the nature of God almighty upon angels and men.
16. This being the nature of Origen's book, is it anything short of madness to change a few blasphemous passages regarding the Son and the Holy Spirit and then to publish the rest unchanged with an unprincipled eulogy when the parts unaltered as well as the parts altered flow from the same fountain head of gross impiety? This is not the time to confute all the statements made in detail; and indeed those who have written against Arius, Eunomius, Manichæus, and various other heretics must be supposed to have answered these blasphemies as well. If anyone, therefore, wishes to read the work let him walk with his feet shod towards the land of promise; let him guard against the jaws of the serpent and the crooked jaws of the scorpion; let him read this treatise first and before he enters upon the path let him know the dangers which he will have to avoid. __________________________________________________________________
[3354] The certain person' is of course Rufinus.
[3355] See Letter LXXXIII.
[3356] See Letter LXXXIV.
[3357] Rom. x. 2, R.V.
[3358] Cf. Luke x. 19; Ezek. ii. 6.
[3359] This statement is not borne out by the existing fragments of the treatise. In fact Origen declares Christ's divinity in unambiguous language. "Being God he was made man" First Principles, I. Preface.
[3360] F. P., I. 1, 8.
[3361] F. P., I. 2, 6.
[3362] F. P., I. 2, 7.
[3363] F. P., I. 2, 8.
[3364] F. P., I. 2, 9, 13. The last words are omitted by Rufinus.
[3365] F. P., I. Preface, 4.
[3366] F. P., I. 3, 5. The words are omitted by Rufinus.
[3367] F. P., I. 5, 5.
[3368] F. P., I. 6, 2.
[3369] Isa. lxv. 17.
[3370] Rom. viii. 19-21, R.V.
[3371] 1 Cor. xv. 53, 54.
[3372] This word is doubtful.
[3373] Matt. xiii. 8.
[3374] Joh. x. 18.
[3375] Luke xix. 10.
[3376] The paralogism in this reasoning--so obvious to modern minds--is due to the confusion of the copula with the verb substantive.
[3377] Rom. viii. 20.
[3378] Phædo, 70-77.
[3379] 2 Tim. ii. 20.
[3380] Mal. i. 2, 3.
[3381] 2 Tim. ii. 21.
[3382] i.e. demons.
[3383] Luke i. 41.
[3384] Cf. Acts xvi. 16, A.V. margin.
[3385] Isa. lxvi. 22.
[3386] Eccles. i. 9, 10.
[3387] Rom. viii. 20, R.V.
[3388] Rom. viii. 21, R.V.
[3389] Joh. xvii. 21.
[3390] Reading adversariorum fortitudinum...bella consurgere.
[3391] Passim.
[3392] Rev. xiv. 6.
[3393] This term had not in Jerome's time become restricted to its later sense. Anything mysterious or sacred was called a sacrament. Here it refers to the mystic teaching of the O.T.
[3394] Eph. vi. 12.
[3395] Joh. xiv. 28.
[3396] 2 Cor. iv. 16; Gen. i. 27. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXXV. To Rusticus.
Rusticus, a young monk of Toulouse, (to be carefully distinguished from the recipient of Letter CXXII.) is advised by Jerome not to become an anchorite but to continue in a community. Rules are suggested for the monastic life and a vivid picture is drawn of the difference between a good monk and a bad. Incidentally Jerome indulges his spleen against his dead opponent Rufinus (§18). The date of the letter is 411 a.d.
1. No man is happier than the Christian, for to him is promised the kingdom of heaven. No man struggles harder than he, for he goes daily in danger of his life. No man is stronger, for he overcomes the Devil. No man is weaker, for he is overcome by the flesh. Both pairs of statements can be proved by many examples. For instance, the robber believes upon the cross and immediately hears the assuring words: "verily I say unto thee, To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise:" [3397] while Judas falls from the pinnacle of the apostolate into the abyss of perdition. Neither the close intercourse of the banquet nor the dipping of the sop [3398] nor the Lord's gracious kiss [3399] can save him from betraying as man Him whom he had known as the Son of God. Could any one have been viler than the woman of Samaria? Yet not only did she herself believe, and after her six husbands find one Lord, not only did she recognize that Messiah by the well, whom the Jews failed to recognize in the temple; she brought salvation to many and, while the apostles were away buying food, refreshed the Saviour's hunger and relieved His weariness. [3400] Was ever man wiser than Solomon? Yet love for women made even him foolish. Salt is good, and every offering must be sprinkled with it. [3401] Wherefore also the apostle has given commandment: "let your speech be alway with grace, seasoned with salt." [3402] But "if the salt have lost his savour," it is cast out. [3403] And so utterly does it lose its value that it is not even fit for the dunghill, [3404] whence believers fetch manure to enrich the barren soil of their souls.
I begin thus, Rusticus my son, to teach you the greatness of your enterprise and the loftiness of your ideal; and to shew you that only by trampling under foot youthful lusts can you hope to climb the heights of true maturity. For the path along which you walk is a slippery one and the glory of success is less than the shame of failure.
2. I need not now conduct the stream of my discourse through the meadows of virtue, nor exert myself to shew to you the beauty of its several flowers. I need not dilate on the purity of the lily, the modest blush of the rose, the royal purple of the violet, or the promise of glowing gems which their various colours hold out. For through the mercy of God you have already put your hand to the plough; [3405] you have already gone up upon the housetop like the apostle Peter. [3406] Who when he became hungry among the Jews had his hunger satisfied by the faith of Cornelius, and stilled the craving caused by their unbelief through the conversion of the centurion and other Gentiles. By the vessel let down from heaven to earth, the four corners of which typified the four gospels, he was taught that all men can be saved. Once more, this fair white sheet which in his vision was taken up again was a symbol of the church which carries believers from earth to heaven, an assurance that the Lord's promise should be fulfilled: "blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." [3407]
All this means that I take you by the hand and do my best to impress certain facts upon your mind; that, like a skilled sailor who has been through many shipwrecks, I am anxious to caution an inexperienced passenger of the risks before him. For on one side is the Charybdis of covetousness, "the root of all evil;" [3408] and on the other lurks the Scylla of detraction girt with the railing hounds of which the apostle says: "if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another." [3409] Sometimes, you must know, the quicksands of vice [3410] suck us down as we sail at ease through the calm water; and the desert of this world is not untenanted by venomous reptiles.
3. Those who navigate the Red Sea--where we must pray that the true Pharaoh may be drowned with all his host--have to encounter many difficulties and dangers before they reach the city of Auxuma. [3411] Nomad savages and ferocious wild beasts haunt the shores on either side. Thus travellers must be always armed and on the alert, and they must carry with them a whole year's provisions. Moreover, so full are the waters of hidden reefs and impassable shoals that a look-out has constantly to be kept from the masthead to direct the helmsman how to shape his course. They may count themselves fortunate if after six months they make the port of the above-mentioned city. At this point the ocean begins, to cross which a whole year hardly suffices. Then India is reached and the river Ganges--called in holy scripture Pison--"which compasseth the whole land of Havilah" [3412] and is said to carry down with it--from its source in paradise--various dyes and pigments. Here are found rubies and emeralds, glowing pearls and gems of the first water, such as high born ladies passionately desire. There are also mountains of gold which however men cannot approach by reason of the griffins, dragons, and huge monsters which haunt them; for such are the guardians which avarice needs for its treasures.
4. What, you ask, is the drift of all this? Surely it is clear enough. For if the merchants of the world undergo such hardships to win a doubtful and passing gain, and if after seeking it through many dangers they only keep it at risk of their lives; what should Christ's merchant do who "selleth all that he hath" that he may acquire the "one pearl of great price;" who with his whole substance buys a field that he may find therein a treasure which neither thief can dig up nor robber carry away? [3413]
5. I know that I must offend large numbers who will be angry with my criticisms as aimed at their own deficiencies. Yet such anger does but shew an uneasy conscience and they will pass a far severer sentence on themselves than on me. For I shall not mention names; or copy the licence of the old comedy [3414] which criticized individuals. Wise men and wise women will try to hide or rather to correct whatever they perceive to be amiss in them; they will be more angry with themselves than with me, and will not be disposed to heap curses upon the head of their monitor. For he, although he is liable to the same charges, is certainly superior in this that he is discontented with his own faults.
6. I am told that your mother is a religious woman, a widow of many years' standing; and that when you were a child she reared and taught you herself. Afterwards when you had spent some time in the flourishing schools of Gaul she sent you to Rome, sparing no expense and consoling herself for your absence by the thought of the future that lay before you. She hoped to see the exuberance and glitter of your Gallic eloquence toned down by Roman sobriety, for she saw that you required the rein more than the spur. So we are told of the greatest orators of Greece that they seasoned the bombast of Asia with the salt of Athens and pruned their vines when they grew too fast. For they wished to fill the wine-press of eloquence not with the tendrils of mere words but with the rich grape-juice of good sense. Your mother has done the same thing for you; you should, therefore, look up to her as a parent, love her as a tender nurse, and venerate her as a saint. You must not imitate those who leave their own relations and pay court to strange women. Their infamy is apparent to all, for what they aim at under the pretence of pure affection [3415] is simply illicit intercourse. I know some women of riper years, indeed a good many, who, finding pleasure in their young freedmen, make them their spiritual children and thus, pretending to be mothers to them, gradually overcome their own sense of shame and allow themselves in the licence of marriage. Other women desert their maiden sisters and unite themselves to strange widows. There are some who hate their parents and have no affection for their kin. Their state of mind is indicated by a restlessness which disdains excuses; they rend the veil of chastity and put it aside like a cobweb. Such are the ways of women; not, indeed, that men are any better. For there are persons to be seen who (for all their girded loins, sombre garb, and long beards) are inseparable from women, live under one roof with them, dine in their company, have young girls to wait upon them, and, save that they do not claim to be called husbands, are as good as married. Still it is no fault of Christianity that a hypocrite falls into sin; rather, it is the confusion of the Gentiles that the churches condemn what is condemned by all good men.
7. But if for your part you desire to be a monk and not merely to seem one, be more careful of your soul than of your property; for in adopting a religious profession you have renounced this once for all. Let your garments be squalid to shew that your mind is white; and your tunic coarse to prove that you despise the world. But give not way to pride lest your dress and language be found at variance. Baths stimulate the senses and must, therefore, be avoided; for to quench natural heat is the aim of chilling fasts. Yet even these must be moderate, for, if they are carried to excess, they weaken the stomach and by making more food necessary to it promote indigestion, that fruitful parent of unclean desires. A frugal and temperate diet is good for both body and soul.
See your mother as often as you please but not with other women, for their faces may dwell in your thoughts and so
A secret wound may fester in your breast. [3416]
The maidservants who attend upon her you must regard as so many snares laid to entrap you; for the lower their condition is the more easy is it for you to effect their ruin. John the Baptist had a religious mother and his father was a priest. [3417] Yet neither his mother's affection nor his father's wealth could induce him to live in his parents' house at the risk of his chastity. He lived in the desert, and seeking Christ with his eyes refused to look at anything else. His rough garb, his girdle made of skins, his diet of locusts and wild honey [3418] were all alike designed to encourage virtue and continence. The sons of the prophets, who were the monks of the Old Testament, built for themselves huts by the waters of Jordan and forsaking the crowded cities lived in these on pottage and wild herbs. [3419] As long as you are at home make your cell your paradise, [3420] gather there the varied fruits of scripture, let this be your favourite companion, and take its precepts to your heart. If your eye offend you or your foot or your hand, cast them from you. [3421] To spare your soul spare nothing else. The Lord says: "whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart." [3422] "Who can say," writes the wise man, "I have made my heart clean?" [3423] The stars are not pure in the Lord's sight; how much less men whose whole life is one long temptation. [3424] Woe be to us who commit fornication every time that we cherish lust. "My sword," God says, "hath drunk its fill in heaven;" [3425] much more then upon the earth with its crop of thorns and thistles. [3426] The chosen vessel [3427] who had Christ's name ever on his lips kept under his body and brought it into subjection. [3428] Yet even he was hindered by carnal desire and had to do what he would not. As one suffering violence he cries: "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" [3429] Is it likely then that you can pass without fall or wound, unless you keep your heart with all diligence, [3430] and say with the Saviour: "my mother and my brethren are these which hear the word of God and do it." [3431] This may seem cruelty, but it is really affection. What greater proof, indeed, can there be of affection than to guard for a holy mother a holy son? She too desired your eternal welfare and is content to forego seeing you for a time that she may see you for ever with Christ. She is like Hannah who brought forth Samuel not for her own solace but for the service of the tabernacle. [3432]
The sons of Jonadab, we are told, drank neither wine nor strong drink and dwelt in tents pitched wherever night overtook them. [3433] According to the psalter they were the first to undergo captivity; for, when the Chaldæans began to ravage Judah they were compelled to take refuge in cities. [3434]
8. Others may think what they like and follow each his own bent. But to me a town is a prison and solitude paradise. Why do we long for the bustle of cities, we whose very name speaks of loneliness? [3435] To fit him for the leadership of the Jewish people Moses was trained for forty years in the wilderness; [3436] and it was not till after these that the shepherd of sheep became a shepherd of men. The apostles were fishers on lake Gennesaret before they became "fishers of men." [3437] But at the Lord's call they forsook all that they had, father, net, and ship, and bore their cross daily without so much as a rod in their hands.
I say these things that, in case you desire to enter the ranks of the clergy, you may learn what you must afterwards teach, that you may offer a reasonable sacrifice [3438] to Christ, that you may not think yourself a finished soldier while still a raw recruit, or suppose yourself a master while you are as yet only a learner. It does not become one of my humble abilities to pass judgment upon the clergy or to speak to the discredit of those who are ministers in the churches. They have their own rank and station and must keep it. If ever you become one of them my published letter to Nepotian [3439] will teach you the mode of life suitable to you in that vocation. At present I am dealing with the forming and training of a monk; of one too who has put the yoke of Christ upon his neck after receiving a liberal education in his younger days.
9. The first point to be considered is whether you ought to live by yourself or in a monastery with others. [3440] For my part I should like you to have the society of holy men so as not to be thrown altogether on your resources. For if you set out upon a road that is new to you without a guide, you are sure to turn aside immediately either to the right or to the left, to lay yourself open to the assaults of error, to go too far or else not far enough, to weary yourself with running too fast or to loiter by the way and to fall asleep. In loneliness pride quickly creeps upon a man: if he has fasted for a little while and has seen no one, he fancies himself a person of some note; forgetting who he is, whence he comes, and whither he goes, he lets his thoughts riot within and outwardly indulges in rash speech. Contrary to the apostle's wish he judges another man's servants, [3441] puts forth his hand to grasp whatever his appetite desires, sleeps as long he pleases, fears nobody, does what he likes, fancies everyone inferior to himself, spends more of his time in cities than in his cell, and, while with the brothers he affects to be retiring, rubs shoulders with the crowd in the streets. What then, you will say? Do I condemn a solitary life? By no means: in fact I have often commended it. But I wish to see the monastic schools turn out soldiers who have no fear of the rough training of the desert, who have exhibited the spectacle of a holy life for a considerable time, who have made themselves last that they might be first, who have not been overcome by hunger or satiety, whose joy is in poverty, who teach virtue by their garb and mien, and who are too conscientious to invent--as some silly men do--monstrous stories of struggles with demons, designed to magnify their heroes in the eyes of the crowd and before all to extort money from it.
10. Quite recently we have seen to our sorrow a fortune worthy of Croesus brought to light by a monk's death, and a city's alms, collected for the poor, left by will to his sons and successors. After sinking to the bottom the iron has once more floated upon the surface, [3442] and men have again seen among the palm-trees the bitter waters of Marah. [3443] In this there is, however, nothing strange, for the man had for his companion and teacher one who turned the hunger of the needy into a source of wealth for himself and kept back sums left to the miserable to his own subsequent misery. Yet their cry came up to heaven and entering God's ears overcame His patience. Wherefore, He sent an angel of woe to say to this new Carmelite, this second Nabal, [3444] "Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be which thou hast provided?" [3445]
11. If I wish you then not to live with your mother, it is for the reasons given above, and above all for the two following. If she offers you delicacies to eat, you will grieve her by refusing them; and if you take them, you will add fuel to the flame that already burns within you. Again in a house where there are so many girls you will see in the daytime sights that will tempt you at night. Never take your hand or your eyes off your book; learn the psalms word for word, pray without ceasing, [3446] be always on the alert, and let no vain thoughts lay hold upon you. Direct both body and mind to the Lord, overcome wrath by patience, love the knowledge of scripture, and you will no longer love the sins of the flesh. Do not let your mind become a prey to excitement, for if this effects a lodgment in your breast it will have dominion over you and will lead you into the great transgression. [3447] Always have some work on hand, that the devil may find you busy. If apostles who had the right to live of the Gospel [3448] laboured with their own hands that they might be chargeable to no man, [3449] and bestowed relief upon others whose carnal things they had a claim to reap as having sown unto them spiritual things; [3450] why do you not provide a supply to meet your needs? Make creels of reeds or weave baskets out of pliant osiers. Hoe your ground; mark out your garden into even plots; and when you have sown your cabbages or set your plants convey water to them in conduits; that you may see with your own eyes the lovely vision of the poet:
Art draws fresh water from the hilltop near
Till the stream plashing down among the rocks
Cools the parched meadows and allays their thirst. [3451]
Graft unfruitful stocks with buds and slips that you may shortly be rewarded for your toil by plucking sweet apples from them. Construct also hives for bees, for to these the proverbs of Solomon send you, [3452] and you may learn from the tiny creatures how to order a monastery and to discipline a kingdom. Twist lines too for catching fish, and copy books; that your hand may earn your food and your mind may be satisfied with reading. For "every one that is idle is a prey to vain desires." [3453] In Egypt the monasteries make it a rule to receive none who are not willing to work; for they regard labour as necessary not only for the support of the body but also for the salvation of the soul. Do not let your mind stray into harmful thoughts, or, like Jerusalem in her whoredoms, open its feet to every chance comer. [3454]
12. In my youth when the desert walled me in with its solitude I was still unable to endure the promptings of sin and the natural heat of my blood; and, although I tried by frequent fasts to break the force of both, my mind still surged with [evil] thoughts. [3455] To subdue its turbulence I betook myself to a brother [3456] who before his conversion had been a Jew and asked him to teach me Hebrew. Thus, after having familiarised myself with the pointedness of Quintilian, the fluency of Cicero, the seriousness of Fronto and the gentleness of Pliny, I began to learn my letters anew and to study to pronounce words both harsh and guttural. What labour I spent upon this task, what difficulties I went through, how often I despaired, how often I gave over and then in my eagerness to learn commenced again, can be attested both by myself the subject of this misery and by those who then lived with me. But I thank the Lord that from this seed of learning sown in bitterness I now cull sweet fruits.
13. I will recount also another thing that I saw in Egypt. There was in a community a young Greek the flame of whose desire neither continual fasting nor the severest labour could avail to quench. He was in great danger of falling, when the father of the monastery saved him by the following device. He gave orders to one of the older brothers to pursue him with objurgations and reproaches, and then after having thus wronged him to be beforehand with him in laying a complaint against him. When witnesses were called they spoke always on behalf of the aggressor. On hearing such falsehoods he used to weep that no one gave credit to the truth; the father alone used cleverly to put in a word for him that he might not be "swallowed up with overmuch sorrow." [3457] To make the story short, a year passed in this way and at the expiration of it the young man was asked concerning his former evil thoughts and whether they still troubled him. "Good gracious," he replied, "how can I find pleasure in fornication when I am not allowed so much as to live?" Had he been a solitary hermit, by whose aid could he have overcome the temptations that assailed him?
14. The world's philosophers drive out an old passion by instilling a new one; they hammer out one nail by hammering in another. [3458] It was on this principle that the seven princes of Persia acted towards king Ahasuerus, for they subdued his regret for queen Vashti by inducing him to love other maidens. [3459] But whereas they cured one fault by another fault and one sin by another sin, we must overcome our faults by learning to love the opposite virtues. "Depart from evil," says the psalmist, "and do good; seek peace and pursue it." [3460] For if we do not hate evil we cannot love good. Nay more, we must do good if we are to depart from evil. We must seek peace if we are to avoid war. And it is not enough merely to seek it; when we have found it and when it flees before us we must pursue it with all our energies. For "it passeth all understanding;" [3461] it is the habitation of God. As the psalmist says, "in peace also is his habitation." [3462] The pursuing of peace is a fine metaphor and may be compared with the apostle's words, "pursuing hospitality." [3463] It is not enough, he means, for us to invite guests with our lips; we should be as eager to detain them as though they were robbers carrying off our savings.
15. No art is ever learned without a master. Even dumb animals and wild herds follow leaders of their own. Bees have princes, and cranes fly after one of their number in the shape of a Y. [3464] There is but one emperor and each province has but one judge. Rome was founded by two brothers, [3465] but, as it could not have two kings at once, was inaugurated by an act of fratricide. So too Esau and Jacob strove in Rebekah's womb. [3466] Each church has a single bishop, a single archpresbyter, a single archdeacon; [3467] and every ecclesiastical order is subjected to its own rulers. A ship has but one pilot, a house but one master, and the largest army moves at the command of one man. That I may not tire you by heaping up instances, my drift is simply this. Do not rely on your own discretion, but live in a monastery. For there, while you will be under the control of one father, you will have many companions; and these will teach you, one humility, another patience, a third silence, and a fourth meekness. You will do as others wish; you will eat what you are told to eat; you will wear what clothes are given you; you will perform the task allotted to you; you will obey one whom you do not like, you will come to bed tired out; you will go to sleep on your feet and you will be forced to rise before you have had sufficient rest. When your turn comes, you will recite the psalms, a task which requires not a well modulated voice but genuine emotion. The apostle says: "I will pray with the spirit and I will pray with the understanding also," [3468] and to the Ephesians, "make melody in your hearts to the Lord." [3469] For he had read the precept of the psalmist: "Sing ye praises with understanding." [3470] You will serve the brothers, you will wash the guests' feet; if you suffer wrong you will bear it in silence; the superior of the community you will fear as a master and love as a father. Whatever he may order you to do you will believe to be wholesome for you. You will not pass judgment upon those who are placed over you, for your duty will be to obey them and to do what you are told, according to the words spoken by Moses: "keep silence and hearken, O Israel." [3471] You will have so many tasks to occupy you that you will have no time for [evil] thoughts; and while you pass from one thing to another and fresh work follows work done, you will only be able to think of what you have it in charge at the moment to do.
16. But I myself have seen monks of quite a different stamp from this, men whose renunciation of the world has consisted in a change of clothes and a verbal profession, while their real life and their former habits have remained unchanged. Their property has increased rather than diminished. They still have the same servants and keep the same table. Out of cheap glasses and common earthenware they swallow gold. With servants about them in swarms they claim for themselves the name of hermits. Others who though poor think themselves discerning, walk as solemnly as pageants [3472] through the streets and do nothing but snarl [3473] at every one whom they meet. Others shrug their shoulders and croak out what is best known to themselves. While they keep their eyes fixed upon the earth, they balance swelling words upon their tongues. [3474] Only a crier is wanted to persuade you that it is his excellency the prefect who is coming along. Some too there are who from the dampness of their cells and from the severity of their fasts, from their weariness of solitude and from excessive study have a singing in their ears day and night and turn melancholy mad so as to need the poultices of Hippocrates [3475] more than exhortations from me. Great numbers are unable to break free from the crafts and trades they have previously practised. They no longer call themselves dealers but they carry on the same traffic as before; seeking for themselves not "food and raiment" [3476] as the apostle directs, but money-profits and these greater than are looked for by men of the world. In former days the greed of sellers was kept within bounds by the action of the Ædiles or as the Greeks call them market-inspectors, [3477] and men could not then cheat with impunity. But now persons who profess religion are not ashamed to seek unjust profits and the good name of Christianity is more often a cloak for fraud than a victim to it. I am ashamed to say it, yet it must be said--we are at least bound to blush for our infamy--while in public we hold out our hands for alms we conceal gold beneath our rags; and to the amazement of every one after living as poor men we die rich and with our purses well-filled.
But you, since you will not be alone but one of a community, will have no temptation to act thus. Things at first compulsory will become habitual. You will set to work unbidden and will find pleasure in your toil. You will forget things which are behind and will reach forth to those which are before. [3478] You will think less of the evil that others do than of the good you ought to do.
17. Be not led by the multitude of those who sin, neither let the host of those who perish tempt you to say secretly: "What? must all be lost who live in cities? Behold, they continue to enjoy their property, they serve churches, they frequent baths, they do not disdain cosmetics, and yet they are universally well-spoken of." To this kind of remark I have before replied and now shortly reply again that the object of this little work is not to discuss the clergy but to lay down rules for a monk. The clergy are holy men and their lives are always worthy of praise. Rouse yourself then and so live in your monastery that you may deserve to be a clergyman, that you may preserve your youth from defilement, that you may go to Christ's altar as a virgin out of her chamber. See that you are well-reported of without and that women are familiar with your reputation but not with your appearance. When you come to mature years, if, that is, you live so long, and when you have been chosen into the ranks of the clergy either by the people of the city or by its bishop, act in a way that befits a clergyman, and choose for your models the best of your brothers. For in every rank and condition of life the bad are mingled with the good.
18. Do not be carried away by some mad caprice and rush into authorship. Learn long and carefully what you propose to teach. Do not credit all that flatterers say to you, or, I should rather say, do not lend too ready an ear to those who mean to mock you. They will fawn upon you with fulsome praise and do their best to blind your judgment; yet if you suddenly look behind you, you will find that they are making gestures of derision with their hands, either a stork's neck or the flapping ears of a donkey or a thirsty dog's protruding tongue. [3479]
Never speak evil of anyone or suppose that you make yourself better by assailing the reputations of others. The charges we bring against them often come home to ourselves; we inveigh against faults which are as much ours as theirs; and so our eloquence ends by telling against ourselves. It is as though dumb persons were to criticize orators. When the grunter [3480] wished to speak he used to come forward at a snail's pace [3481] and to utter a word now and again with such long pauses between that he seemed less making a speech than gasping for breath. Then, when he had placed his table and arranged on it his pile of books, he used to knit his brow, to draw in his nostrils, to wrinkle his forehead and to snap his fingers, signs meant to engage the attention of his pupils. Then he would pour forth a torrent of nonsense and declaim so vehemently against every one that you would take him for a critic like Longinus [3482] or fancy him a second Cato the Censor [3483] passing judgment on Roman eloquence and excluding whom he pleased from the senate of the learned. As he had plenty of money he made himself still more popular by giving entertainments. Numbers of persons shared in his hospitality; and thus it was not surprising that when he went out he was surrounded always by a buzzing throng. At home he was a monster like Nero, abroad a paragon like Cato. Made up of different and opposing natures, as a whole he baffled description. You would say that he was formed of jarring elements like that unnatural and unheard of monster of which the poet tells us that it was in front a lion, behind a dragon, in the middle the goat whose name it bears.' [3484]
19. Men such as these you must never look at or associate with. Nor must you turn aside your heart unto words of evil [3485] lest the psalmist say to you: "Thou sittest and speakest against thy brother; thou slanderest thine own mother's son," [3486] and lest you become as "the sons of men whose teeth are spears and arrows," [3487] and as the man whose "words were softer than oil yet were they drawn swords." [3488] The Preacher expresses this more clearly still when he says: "Surely the serpent will bite where there is no enchantment, and the slanderer is no better." [3489] But you will say, I am not given to detraction, but how can I check others who are?' If we put forward such a plea as this it can only be that we may "practise wicked works with men that work iniquity." [3490] Yet Christ is not deceived by this device. It is not I but an apostle who says: "Be not deceived; God is not mocked." [3491] "Man looketh upon the outward appearance but the Lord looketh upon the heart." [3492] And in the proverbs Solomon tells us that as "the north wind driveth away rain, so doth an angry countenance a backbiting tongue." [3493] It sometimes happens that an arrow when it is aimed at a hard object rebounds upon the bowman, wounding the would-be wounder, and thus, the words are fulfilled, "they were turned aside like a deceitful bow," [3494] and in another passage: "whoso casteth a stone on high casteth it on his own head." [3495] So when a slanderer sees anger in the countenance of his hearer who will not hear him but stops his ears that he may not hear of blood, [3496] he becomes silent on the moment, his face turns pale, his lips stick fast, his mouth becomes parched. Wherefore the same wise man says: "meddle not with them that are given to detraction: for their calamity shall rise suddenly; and who knoweth the ruin of them both?" [3497] of him who speaks, that is, and of him who hears. Truth does not love corners or seek whisperers. To Timothy it is said, "Against an elder receive not an accusation suddenly; but him that sinneth rebuke before all, that others also may fear." [3498] When a man is advanced in years you must not be too ready to believe evil of him; his past life is itself a defence, and so also is his rank as an elder. Still, since we are but human and sometimes in spite of the ripeness of our years fall into the sins of youth, if I do wrong and you wish to correct me, accuse me openly of my fault: do not backbite me secretly. "Let the righteous smite me, it shall be a kindness, and let him reprove me; but let not the oil of the sinner enrich my head." [3499] For what says the apostle? "Whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth." [3500] By the mouth of Isaiah the Lord speaks thus: "O my people, they who call you happy cause you to err and destroy the way of your paths." [3501] How do you help me by telling my misdeeds to others? You may, without my knowing of it, wound some one else by the narration of my sins or rather of those which you slanderously attribute to me; and while you are eager to spread the news in all quarters, you may pretend to confide in each individual as though you had spoken to no one else. Such a course has for its object not my correction but the indulgence of your own failing. The Lord gives commandment that those who sin against us are to be arraigned privately or else in the presence of a witness, and that if they refuse to hear reason, the matter is to be laid before the church, and those who persist in their wickedness are to be regarded as heathen men and publicans. [3502]
20. I lay great emphasis on these points that I may deliver a young man who is dear to me from the itching both of the tongue and of the ears: that, since he has been born again in Christ, I may present him without spot or wrinkle [3503] as a chaste virgin, [3504] chaste in mind as well as in body; that the virginity of which he boasts may be more than nominal and that he may not be shut out by the bridegroom because being unprovided with the oil of good works his lamp has gone out. [3505] In Proculus you have a reverend and most learned prelate, [3506] able by the sound of his voice to do more for you than I with my written sheets and sure to direct you on your path by daily homilies. He will not suffer you to turn to the right hand or to the left or to leave the king's highway; for to this Israel pledges itself to keep in its hasty passage to the land of promise. [3507] May God hear the voice of the church's supplication. "Lord, ordain peace for us, for thou hast also wrought all our works for us." [3508] May our renunciation of the world be made freely and not under compulsion! May we seek poverty gladly to win its glory and not suffer anguish because others lay it upon us! For the rest amid our present miseries with the sword making havoc around us, he is rich enough who has bread sufficient for his need, and he is abundantly powerful who is not reduced to be a slave. Exuperius [3509] the reverend bishop of Toulouse, imitating the widow of Zarephath, [3510] feeds others though hungry himself. His face is pale with fasting, yet it is the cravings of others that torment him most. In fact he has bestowed his whole substance to meet the needs of Christ's poor. Yet none is richer than he, for his wicker basket contains the body of the Lord, and his plain glass-cup the precious blood. Like his Master he has banished greed out of the temple; and without either scourge of cords or words of chiding he has overthrown the chairs of them that sell doves, that is, the gifts of the Holy Spirit. He has upset the tables of Mammon and has scattered the money of the money-changers; zealous that the house of God may be called a house of prayer and not a den of robbers. [3511] In his steps follow closely and in those of others like him in virtue, whom the priesthood makes poor men and more than ever humble. Or if you will be perfect, go out with Abraham from your country and from your kindred, and go whither you know not. [3512] If you have substance, sell it and give to the poor. If you have none, then are you free from a great burthen. Destitute yourself, follow a destitute Christ. The task is a hard one, it is great and difficult; but the reward is also great. __________________________________________________________________
[3397] Luke xxiii. 43.
[3398] Joh. xiii. 26.
[3399] Matt. xxvi. 49.
[3400] Joh. iv.
[3401] Lev. ii. 13.
[3402] Col. iv. 6.
[3403] Matt. v. 13.
[3404] Luke xiv. 35.
[3405] Luke ix. 62.
[3406] Acts x. 3-16.
[3407] Matt. v. 8.
[3408] 1 Tim. vi. 10.
[3409] Gal. v. 15.
[3410] Lybicæ Syrtes.
[3411] An important city of Abyssinia in Jerome's day, 120 miles from the Red Sea. It is now in ruins.
[3412] Gen. ii. 11.
[3413] Matt. xiii. 45-46; vi. 19, 20.
[3414] The Old Comedy at Athens ridiculed citizens by name. Most of the extant plays of Aristophanes belong to it.
[3415] Pietas.
[3416] Virgil, Æn. iv. 67.
[3417] Pontifex.
[3418] Mark i. 6.
[3419] 2 Kings iv. 38, 39; vi. 1, 2.
[3420] i.e. garden.'
[3421] Matt. xviii. 8, 9.
[3422] Matt. v. 28.
[3423] Prov. xx. 9.
[3424] Job xxv. 5, 6.
[3425] Isa. xxxiv. 5, R.V.
[3426] Gen. iii. 18.
[3427] Acts ix. 15.
[3428] 1 Cor. ix. 27.
[3429] Rom. vii. 24.
[3430] Prov. iv. 23.
[3431] Luke viii. 21.
[3432] 1 Sam. i. 27, 28.
[3433] Jer. xxxv. 6, 7.
[3434] See Letter LVIII. § 5 and note there.
[3435] An allusion to the word monachus,' solitary' or monk.'
[3436] Acts vii. 29, 30.
[3437] Matt. iv. 19.
[3438] Rom. xii. 1.
[3439] Letter LII.
[3440] Cf. Letter CXXX. § 17.
[3441] Rom. xiv. 4.
[3442] 2 Kings vi. 5, 6.
[3443] Ex. xv. 23, 27.
[3444] 1 Sam. xxv. 38.
[3445] Luke xii. 20.
[3446] 1 Thess. v. 17.
[3447] Ps. xix. 13.
[3448] 1 Cor. ix. 14.
[3449] 1 Thess. ii. 9; 1 Cor. iv. 12.
[3450] 1 Cor. ix. 11.
[3451] Virg., G. i. 108-10.
[3452] Prov. vi. 8, LXX.
[3453] Prov. xiii. 4, LXX.
[3454] Ezek. xvi. 25.
[3455] Cf. Letter XXII. § 7.
[3456] In Letter XVIII. § 10 Jerome speaks of his teacher as one so learned in the Hebrew language that the very scribes regarded him as a Chaldæan (i.e., as a graduate of the Babylonian school of Rabbinic learning).
[3457] 2 Cor. ii. 7.
[3458] Cic., T. Q. iv. 35.
[3459] Esth. ii. 1-4.
[3460] Ps. xxxiv. 14.
[3461] Phil. iv. 7.
[3462] Ps. lxxvi. 2, LXX.
[3463] Rom. xii. 13, R.V. marg.
[3464] Pliny, N. H. x. 32.
[3465] Romulus and Remus, the first of whom slew the second.
[3466] Gen. xxv. 22.
[3467] When Jerome wrote, these terms had but recently come into use in the West; no doubt, however, the offices described by them were of older date. Archpresbyters seem to have been the forerunners of those who are now called "rural deans."
[3468] 1 Cor. xiv. 15.
[3469] Eph. v. 19.
[3470] Ps. xlvii. 7.
[3471] Deut. xxvii. 9, R.V.
[3472] Cic., Off. 1. 36.
[3473] Caninam exercent facundiam. The phrase recurs in Letter CXXXIV. § 1.
[3474] See also Lactantius, vi. 18.
[3475] The most celebrated physician of antiquity.
[3476] 1 Tim. vi. 8.
[3477] 'agoranmoi .
[3478] Phil. iii. 13.
[3479] Imitated from Persius (I. 58-60).
[3480] i.e., Rufinus who was now dead. The nickname is taken from a burlesque very popular in Jerome's day entitled "The Porker's Last Will and Testament." In this the testator's full name is set down as Marcus Grunnius Corocotta, i.e., Mark Grunter Hog. In the beginning of the twelfth book of his commentary on Isaiah Jerome mentions the "Testament" as being then a popular school book.
[3481] Plautus, Aulularia, I. 1. 10.
[3482] A Platonist of the third century after Christ, much celebrated for his learning and critical skill. "To judge like Longinus" became a synonym for accurate discrimination.
[3483] A martinet of the old school, who did his utmost to oppose what he considered the luxury of his age. He was censor in 184 b.c.
[3484] Lucr. V. 905, Munro. The words come first from Homer, Il. vi. 181.
[3485] Ps. cxli. 4, Vulg.
[3486] Ps. l. 20.
[3487] Ps. lvii. 4.
[3488] Ps. lv. 21.
[3489] Eccl. x. 11, R.V. marg.
[3490] Ps. cxli. 4.
[3491] Gal. vi. 7.
[3492] 1 Sam. xvi. 7.
[3493] Prov. xxv. 23.
[3494] Ps. lxxviii. 57.
[3495] Ecclus. xxvii. 25.
[3496] Isa. xxxiii. 15.
[3497] Prov. xxiv. 21, 22 Vulg.
[3498] 1 Tim. v. 19, 20 (inexact).
[3499] Ps. cxli. 5. LXX.
[3500] Heb. xii. 6.
[3501] Isa. iii. 12. LXX.
[3502] Matt. xviii. 15-17.
[3503] Eph. v. 27.
[3504] 2 Cor. xi. 2.
[3505] Matt. xxv. 1-10.
[3506] He was bishop of Massilia (Marseilles).
[3507] Num. xx. 17.
[3508] Isa. xxvi. 12. LXX.
[3509] Bishop of Toulouse. See Letter LIV. 11, and Pref. to Comm. on Zech.
[3510] 1 Kings xvii. 8-16.
[3511] John ii. 14-16; Matt. xxi. 12, 13.
[3512] Gen. xii. 1; Heb. xi. 8. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXXVI. To Marcellinus and Anapsychia.
Marcellinus, a Roman official of high rank, and Anapsychia his wife had written to Jerome from Africa to ask him his opinion on the vexed question of the origin of the soul. Jerome in his reply briefly enumerates the several views that have been held on the subject. For fuller information he refers his questioners to his treatise against Rufinus and also to their bishop Augustin who will, he says, explain the matter to them by word of mouth. Although it hardly appears in this letter Jerome is a decided creationist (see his Comm. on Eccles. xii. 7). But, though he vehemently condemns Rufinus (Ap. ii. 10) for professing ignorance on the subject, he assents (Letter CXXXIV.) to Augustin (Letter CXXXI.) who similarly professes ignorance but seems to lean to traducianism. The date of writing is a.d. 412.
To his truly holy lord and lady, his children worthy of the highest respect and affection, Marcellinus and Anapsychia, Jerome sends greeting.
1. I have at last received from Africa your joint letter and no longer regret the effrontery which led me, in spite of your silence to ply you both with so many missives. I hoped, indeed, by so doing to gain a reply and to learn of your welfare not indirectly from others but directly from yourselves. I well remember your little problem about the nature of the soul; although I ought not to call it little, seeing that it is one of the greatest with which the church has to deal. You ask whether it has fallen from heaven, as Pythagoras, all Platonists, and Origen suppose; or whether it is part of God's essence as the Stoics, Manes, and the Spanish Priscillianists hint. Whether souls created long since are kept in God's storehouse as some ecclesiastical writers [3513] foolishly imagine; or whether they are formed by God and introduced into bodies day by day according to that saying in the Gospel: "my Father worketh hitherto and I work;" [3514] or whether, lastly, they are transmitted by propagation. This is the view of Tertullian, Apollinaris, and most western writers who hold that soul is derived from soul as body is from body and that the conditions of life are the same for men and brutes. I have given my opinion on the matter in my reply to the treatise which Rufinus presented to Anastasius, bishop of Rome, of holy memory. He strives in this by an evasive and crafty but sufficiently foolish confession to play with the simplicity of his hearers, but only succeeds in playing with his own faith or rather want of it. My book, [3515] which has been published a good while, contains an answer to the calumnies which in his various writings Rufinus has directed against me. Your reverend father Oceanus [3516] has, I think, a copy of it. But if you cannot procure it your bishop Augustine is both learned and holy. He will teach you by word of mouth and will give you his opinion, or rather mine, in his own words.
2. I have long wished to attack the prophecies of Ezekiel and to make good the promises which I have so often given to curious readers. When, however, I began to dictate I was so confounded by the havoc wrought in the West and above all by the sack of Rome that, as the common saying has it, I forgot even my own name. Long did I remain silent knowing that it was a time to weep. [3517] This year I began again and had written three books of commentary when a sudden incursion of those barbarians of whom your Virgil speaks [3518] as the "far-wandering men of Barce" (and to whom may be applied what holy scripture says of Ishmael: "he shall dwell over against all his brethren" [3519] ) overran the borders of Egypt, Palestine, Phenicia, and Syria, and like a raging torrent carried everything before them. It was with difficulty and only through Christ's mercy that we were able to escape from their hands. But if, as the great orator says, "amid the clash of arms law ceases to be heard;" [3520] how much more truly may it be said that war puts an end to the study of holy scripture. For this requires plenty of books and silence and careful copyists and above all freedom from alarm and a sense of security. I have accordingly only been able to complete two books and these I have sent to my daughter, Fabiola, [3521] from whom you can if you like borrow them. For want of time I have not been able as yet to transcribe the rest. But when you have read these you will have seen the ante-chamber and will easily form from this a notion of the whole edifice. I trust in God's mercy and believe that, as he has helped me in the difficult opening chapters of the prophecy, so he will help me in the chapters towards the close. These describe the wars of Gog and Magog, and set forth the mode of building, the plan, and the dimensions of the holy and mysterious temple.
3. Our reverend brother Oceanus to whom you desire an introduction is a great and good man and so learned in the law of the Lord that no words of mine are needed to make him able and willing to instruct you both and to explain to you in conformity with the rules which govern our common studies, my opinion and his on all questions arising out of the scriptures. In conclusion, my truly holy lord and lady, may Christ our God by his almighty power have you in his safekeeping and cause you to live long and happily. __________________________________________________________________
[3513] The allusion is probably to Clement of Alexandria.
[3514] John v. 17.
[3515] Against Rufinus, ii. §§ 8-10; iii. §30; in neither place, however, does Jerome clearly state his own view.
[3516] See Letter LXIX, introduction. It is doubtful whether Oceanus was in holy orders although the title father' seems to imply it.
[3517] Eccl. iii. 4.
[3518] Virg., A. iv. 43. It does not appear who these barbarians were. Barce is near Cyrene in Africa.
[3519] Gen. xvi. 12. R.V. marg.
[3520] Cicero, pro Milon. 4.
[3521] This Fabiola (who must be carefully distinguished from the lady so often mentioned by Jerome) is probably the person to whom Augustine addressed a letter on communion with the spiritual world. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXXVII. To Principia.
This letter is really a memoir of Marcella (for whom see note on Letter XXIII.) addressed to her greatest friend. After describing her history, character, and favourite studies, Jerome goes on to recount her eminent services in the cause of orthodoxy at a time when, through the efforts of Rufinus, it seemed likely that Origenism would prevail at Rome (§§9, 10). He briefly relates the fall of the city and the horrors consequent upon it (§§12, 13) which appear to have been the immediate cause of Marcella's death (§14). The date of the letter is 412 a.d.
1. You have besought me often and earnestly, Principia, [3522] virgin of Christ, to dedicate a letter to the memory of that holy woman Marcella, [3523] and to set forth the goodness long enjoyed by us for others to know and to imitate. I am so anxious myself to do justice to her merits that it grieves me that you should spur me on and fancy that your entreaties are needed when I do not yield even to you in love of her. In putting upon record her signal virtues I shall receive far more benefit myself than I can possibly confer upon others. If I have hitherto remained silent and have allowed two years to go over without making any sign, this has not been owing to a wish to ignore her as you wrongly suppose, but to an incredible sorrow which so overcame my mind that I judged it better to remain silent for a while than to praise her virtues in inadequate language. Neither will I now follow the rules of rhetoric in eulogizing one so dear to both of us and to all the saints, Marcella the glory of her native Rome. I will not set forth her illustrious family and lofty lineage, nor will I trace her pedigree through a line of consuls and prætorian prefects. I will praise her for nothing but the virtue which is her own and which is the more noble, because forsaking both wealth and rank she has sought the true nobility of poverty and lowliness.
2. Her father's death left her an orphan, and she had been married less than seven months when her husband was taken from her. Then as she was young, and highborn, as well as distinguished for her beauty--always an attraction to men--and her self-control, an illustrious consular named Cerealis paid court to her with great assiduity. Being an old man he offered to make over to her his fortune so that she might consider herself less his wife than his daughter. Her mother Albina went out of her way to secure for the young widow so exalted a protector. But Marcella answered: "had I a wish to marry and not rather to dedicate myself to perpetual chastity, I should look for a husband and not for an inheritance;" and when her suitor argued that sometimes old men live long while young men die early, she cleverly retorted: "a young man may indeed die early, but an old man cannot live long." This decided rejection of Cerealis convinced others that they had no hope of winning her hand.
In the gospel according to Luke we read the following passage: "there was one Anna, a prophetess, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Aser: she was of great age, and had lived with an husband seven years from her virginity; and she was a widow of about fourscore and four years, which departed not from the temple but served God with fastings and prayers night and day." [3524] It was no marvel that she won the vision of the Saviour, whom she sought so earnestly. Let us then compare her case with that of Marcella and we shall see that the latter has every way the advantage. Anna lived with her husband seven years; Marcella seven months. Anna only hoped for Christ; Marcella held Him fast. Anna confessed him at His birth; Marcella believed in Him crucified. Anna did not deny the Child; Marcella rejoiced in the Man as king. I do not wish to draw distinctions between holy women on the score of their merits, as some persons have made it a custom to do as regards holy men and leaders of churches; the conclusion at which I aim is that, as both have one task, so both have one reward.
3. In a slander-loving community such as Rome, filled as it formerly was with people from all parts and bearing the palm for wickedness of all kinds, detraction assailed the upright and strove to defile even the pure and the clean. In such an atmosphere it is hard to escape from the breath of calumny. A stainless reputation is difficult nay almost impossible to attain; the prophet yearns for it but hardly hopes to win it: "Blessed," he says, "are the undefiled in the way who walk in the law of the Lord." [3525] The undefiled in the way of this world are those whose fair fame no breath of scandal has ever sullied, and who have earned no reproach at the hands of their neighbours. It is this which makes the Saviour say in the gospel: "agree with," or be complaisant to, "thine adversary whilst thou art in the way with him." [3526] Who ever heard a slander of Marcella that deserved the least credit? Or who ever credited such without making himself guilty of malice and defamation? No; she put the Gentiles to confusion by shewing them the nature of that Christian widowhood which her conscience and mien alike set forth. For women of the world are wont to paint their faces with rouge and white-lead, to wear robes of shining silk, to adorn themselves with jewels, to put gold chains round their necks, to pierce their ears and hang in them the costliest pearls of the Red Sea, [3527] and to scent themselves with musk. While they mourn for the husbands they have lost they rejoice at their own deliverance and freedom to choose fresh partners--not, as God wills, to obey these [3528] but to rule over them.
With this object in view they select for their partners poor men who contented with the mere name of husbands are the more ready to put up with rivals as they know that, if they so much as murmur, they will be cast off at once. Our widow's clothing was meant to keep out the cold and not to shew her figure. Of gold she would not wear so much as a seal-ring, choosing to store her money in the stomachs of the poor rather than to keep it at her own disposal. She went nowhere without her mother, and would never see without witnesses such monks and clergy as the needs of a large house required her to interview. Her train was always composed of virgins and widows, and these women serious and staid; for, as she well knew, the levity of the maids speaks ill for the mistress and a woman's character is shewn by her choice of companions. [3529]
4. Her delight in the divine scriptures was incredible. She was for ever singing, "Thy words have I hid in mine heart that I might not sin against thee," [3530] as well as the words which describe the perfect man, "his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in his law doth he meditate day and night." [3531] This meditation in the law she understood not of a review of the written words as among the Jews the Pharisees think, but of action according to that saying of the apostle, "whether, therefore, ye eat or drink or what soever ye do, do all to the glory of God." [3532] She remembered also the prophet's words, "through thy precepts I get understanding," [3533] and felt sure that only when she had fulfilled these would she be permitted to understand the scriptures. In this sense we read elsewhere that "Jesus began both to do and teach." [3534] For teaching is put to the blush when a man's conscience rebukes him; and it is in vain that his tongue preaches poverty or teaches alms-giving if he is rolling in the riches of Croesus and if, in spite of his threadbare cloak, he has silken robes at home to save from the moth.
Marcella practised fasting, but in moderation. She abstained from eating flesh, and she knew rather the scent of wine than its taste; touching it only for her stomach's sake and for her often infirmities. [3535] She seldom appeared in public and took care to avoid the houses of great ladies, that she might not be forced to look upon what she had once for all renounced. She frequented the basilicas of apostles and martyrs that she might escape from the throng and give herself to private prayer. So obedient was she to her mother that for her sake she did things of which she herself disapproved. For example, when her mother, careless of her own offspring, was for transferring all her property from her children and grandchildren to her brother's family, Marcella wished the money to be given to the poor instead, and yet could not bring herself to thwart her parent. Therefore she made over her ornaments and other effects to persons already rich, content to throw away her money rather than to sadden her mother's heart.
5. In those days no highborn lady at Rome had made profession of the monastic life, or had ventured--so strange and ignominious and degrading did it then seem--publicly to call herself a nun. It was from some priests of Alexandria, and from pope Athanasius, and subsequently from Peter, [3536] who, to escape the persecution of the Arian heretics, had all fled for refuge to Rome as the safest haven in which they could find communion--it was from these that Marcella heard of the life of the blessed Antony, then still alive, and of the monasteries in the Thebaid founded by Pachomius, and of the discipline laid down for virgins and for widows. Nor was she ashamed to profess a life which she had thus learned to be pleasing to Christ. Many years after her example was followed first by Sophronia and then by others, of whom it may be well said in the words of Ennius: [3537]
Would that ne'er in Pelion's woods
Had the axe these pinetrees felled.
My revered friend Paula was blessed with Marcella's friendship, and it was in Marcella's cell that Eustochium, that paragon of virgins, was gradually trained. Thus it is easy to see of what type the mistress was who found such pupils.
The unbelieving reader may perhaps laugh at me for dwelling so long on the praises of mere women; yet if he will but remember how holy women followed our Lord and Saviour and ministered to Him of their substance, and how the three Marys stood before the cross and especially how Mary Magdalen--called the tower [3538] from the earnestness and glow of her faith--was privileged to see the rising Christ first of all before the very apostles, he will convict himself of pride sooner than me of folly. For we judge of people's virtue not by their sex but by their character, and hold those to be worthy of the highest glory who have renounced both rank and wealth. It was for this reason that Jesus loved the evangelist John more than the other disciples. For John was of noble birth [3539] and known to the high priest, yet was so little appalled by the plottings of the Jews that he introduced Peter into his court, [3540] and was the only one of the apostles bold enough to take his stand before the cross. For it was he who took the Saviour's parent to his own home; [3541] it was the virgin son [3542] who received the virgin mother as a legacy from the Lord.
6. Marcella then lived the ascetic life for many years, and found herself old before she bethought herself that she had once been young. She often quoted with approval Plato's saying that philosophy consists in meditating on death. [3543] A truth which our own apostle indorses when he says: "for your salvation I die daily." [3544] Indeed according to the old copies our Lord himself says: "whosoever doth not bear His cross daily and come after me cannot be my disciple." [3545] Ages before, the Holy Spirit had said by the prophet: "for thy sake are we killed all the day long: we are counted as sheep for the slaughter." [3546] Many generations afterwards the words were spoken: "remember the end and thou shalt never do amiss," [3547] as well as that precept of the eloquent satirist: "live with death in your mind; time flies; this say of mine is so much taken from it." [3548] Well then, as I was saying, she passed her days and lived always in the thought that she must die. Her very clothing was such as to remind her of the tomb, and she presented herself as a living sacrifice, reasonable and acceptable, unto God. [3549]
7. When the needs of the Church at length brought me to Rome [3550] in company with the reverend pontiffs, Paulinus and Epiphanius--the first of whom ruled the church of the Syrian Antioch while the second presided over that of Salamis in Cyprus,--I in my modesty was for avoiding the eyes of highborn ladies, yet she pleaded so earnestly, "both in season and out of season" [3551] as the apostle says, that at last her perseverance overcame my reluctance. And, as in those days my name was held in some renown as that of a student of the scriptures, she never came to see me that she did not ask me some question concerning them, nor would she at once acquiesce in my explanations but on the contrary would dispute them; not, however, for argument's sake but to learn the answers to those objections which might, as she saw, be made to my statements. How much virtue and ability, how much holiness and purity I found in her I am afraid to say; both lest I may exceed the bounds of men's belief and lest I may increase your sorrow by reminding you of the blessings that you have lost. This much only will I say, that whatever in me was the fruit of long study and as such made by constant meditation a part of my nature, this she tasted, this she learned and made her own. Consequently after my departure from Rome, in case of a dispute arising as to the testimony of scripture on any subject, recourse was had to her to settle it. And so wise was she and so well did she understand what philosophers call to prepon, that is, the becoming, in what she did, that when she answered questions she gave her own opinion not as her own but as from me or some one else, thus admitting that what she taught she had herself learned from others. For she knew that the apostle had said: "I suffer not a woman to teach," [3552] and she would not seem to inflict a wrong upon the male sex many of whom (including sometimes priests) questioned her concerning obscure and doubtful points.
8. I am told that my place with her was immediately taken by you, that you attached yourself to her, and that, as the saying goes, you never let even a hair's-breadth [3553] come between her and you. You both lived in the same house and occupied the same room so that every one in the city knew for certain that you had found a mother in her and she a daughter in you. In the suburbs you found for yourselves a monastic seclusion, and chose the country instead of the town because of its loneliness. For a long time you lived together, and as many ladies shaped their conduct by your examples, I had the joy of seeing Rome transformed into another Jerusalem. Monastic establishments for virgins became numerous, and of hermits there were countless numbers. In fact so many were the servants of God that monasticism which had before been a term of reproach became subsequently one of honour. Meantime we consoled each other for our separation by words of mutual encouragement, and discharged in the spirit the debt which in the flesh we could not pay. We always went to meet each other's letters, tried to outdo each other in attentions, and anticipated each other in courteous inquiries. Not much was lost by a separation thus effectually bridged by a constant correspondence.
9. While Marcella was thus serving the Lord in holy tranquillity, there arose in these provinces a tornado of heresy which threw everything into confusion; indeed so great was the fury into which it lashed itself that it spared neither itself nor anything that was good. And as if it were too little to have disturbed everything here, it introduced a ship [3554] freighted with blasphemies into the port of Rome itself. The dish soon found itself a cover; [3555] and the muddy feet of heretics fouled the clear waters [3556] of the faith of Rome. No wonder that in the streets and in the market places a soothsayer can strike fools on the back or, catching up his cudgel, shatter the teeth of such as carp at him; when such venomous and filthy teaching as this has found at Rome dupes whom it can lead astray. Next came the scandalous version [3557] of Origen's book On First Principles, and that fortunate' disciple [3558] who would have been indeed fortunate had he never fallen in with such a master. Next followed the confutation set forth by my supporters, which destroyed the case of the Pharisees [3559] and threw them into confusion. It was then that the holy Marcella, who had long held back lest she should be thought to act from party motives, threw herself into the breach. Conscious that the faith of Rome--once praised by an apostle [3560] --was now in danger, and that this new heresy was drawing to itself not only priests and monks but also many of the laity besides imposing on the bishop [3561] who fancied others as guileless as he was himself, she publicly withstood its teachers choosing to please God rather than men.
10. In the gospel the Saviour commends the unjust steward because, although he defrauded his master, he acted wisely for his own interests. [3562] The heretics in this instance pursued the same course; for, seeing how great a matter a little fire had kindled, [3563] and that the flames applied by them to the foundations had by this time reached the housetops, and that the deception practised on many could no longer be hid, they asked for and obtained letters of commendation from the church, [3564] so that it might appear that till the day of their departure they had continued in full communion with it. Shortly afterwards [3565] the distinguished Anastasius succeeded to the pontificate; but he was soon taken away, for it was not fitting that the head of the world should be struck off [3566] during the episcopate of one so great. He was removed, no doubt, that he might not seek to turn away by his prayers the sentence of God passed once for all. For the words of the Lord to Jeremiah concerning Israel applied equally to Rome: "pray not for this people for their good. When they fast I will not hear their cry; and when they offer burnt-offering and oblation, I will not accept them; but I will consume them by the sword and by the famine and by the pestilence." [3567] You will say, what has this to do with the praises of Marcella? I reply, She it was who originated the condemnation of the heretics. She it was who furnished witnesses first taught by them and then carried away by their heretical teaching. She it was who showed how large a number they had deceived and who brought up against them the impious books On First Principles, books which were passing from hand to hand after being improved' by the hand of the scorpion. [3568] She it was lastly who called on the heretics in letter after letter to appear in their own defence. They did not indeed venture to come, for they were so conscience-stricken that they let the case go against them by default rather than face their accusers and be convicted by them. This glorious victory originated with Marcella, she was the source and cause of this great blessing. You who shared the honour with her know that I speak the truth. You know too that out of many incidents I only mention a few, not to tire out the reader by a wearisome recapitulation. Were I to say more, ill natured persons might fancy me, under pretext of commending a woman's virtues, to be giving vent to my own rancour. I will pass now to the remainder of my story.
11. The whirlwind [3569] passed from the West into the East and threatened in its passage to shipwreck many a noble craft. Then were the words of Jesus fulfilled: "when the son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?" [3570] The love of many waxed cold. [3571] Yet the few who still loved the true faith rallied to my side. Men openly sought to take their lives and every expedient was employed against them. So hotly indeed did the persecution rage that "Barnabas also was carried away with their dissimulation;" [3572] nay more he committed murder, if not in actual violence at least in will. Then behold God blew and the tempest passed away; so that the prediction of the prophet was fulfilled, "thou takest away their breath, they die, and return to their dust. [3573] In that very day his thoughts perish," [3574] as also the gospel-saying, "Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided?" [3575]
12. Whilst these things were happening in Jebus [3576] a dreadful rumour came from the West. Rome had been besieged [3577] and its citizens had been forced to buy their lives with gold. Then thus despoiled they had been besieged again so as to lose not their substance only but their lives. My voice sticks in my throat; and, as I dictate, sobs choke my utterance. The City which had taken the whole world was itself taken; [3578] nay more famine was beforehand with the sword and but few citizens were left to be made captives. In their frenzy the starving people had recourse to hideous food; and tore each other limb from limb that they might have flesh to eat. Even the mother did not spare the babe at her breast. In the night was Moab taken, in the night did her wall fall down. [3579] "O God, the heathen have come into thine inheritance; thy holy temple have they defiled; they have made Jerusalem an orchard. [3580] The dead bodies of thy servants have they given to be meat unto the fowls of the heaven, the flesh of thy saints unto the beasts of the earth. Their blood have they shed like water round about Jerusalem; and there was none to bury them." [3581]
Who can set forth the carnage of that night?
What tears are equal to its agony?
Of ancient date a sovran city falls;
And lifeless in its streets and houses lie
Unnumbered bodies of its citizens.
In many a ghastly shape doth death appear. [3582]
13. Meantime, as was natural in a scene of such confusion, one of the bloodstained victors found his way into Marcella's house. Now be it mine to say what I have heard, [3583] to relate what holy men have seen; for there were some such present and they say that you too were with her in the hour of danger. When the soldiers entered she is said to have received them without any look of alarm; and when they asked her for gold she pointed to her coarse dress to shew them that she had no buried treasure. However they would not believe in her self-chosen poverty, but scourged her and beat her with cudgels. She is said to have felt no pain but to have thrown herself at their feet and to have pleaded with tears for you, that you might not be taken from her, or owing to your youth have to endure what she as an old woman had no occasion to fear. Christ softened their hard hearts and even among bloodstained swords natural affection asserted its rights. The barbarians conveyed both you and her to the basilica of the apostle Paul, that you might find there either a place of safety or, if not that, at least a tomb. Hereupon Marcella is said to have burst into great joy and to have thanked God for having kept you unharmed in answer to her prayer. She said she was thankful too that the taking of the city had found her poor, not made her so, that she was now in want of daily bread, that Christ satisfied her needs so that she no longer felt hunger, that she was able to say in word and in deed: "naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord." [3584]
14. After a few days she fell asleep in the Lord; but to the last her powers remained unimpaired. You she made the heir of her poverty, or rather the poor through you. When she closed her eyes, it was in your arms; when she breathed her last breath, your lips received it; you shed tears but she smiled conscious of having led a good life and hoping for her reward hereafter.
In one short night I have dictated this letter in honour of you, revered Marcella, and of you, my daughter Principia; not to shew off my own eloquence but to express my heartfelt gratitude to you both; my one desire has been to please both God and my readers. __________________________________________________________________
[3522] This Roman lady, like her friend Marcella, took a great interest in the study of scripture. In Letter LXV. Jerome gives her an explanation of the 45th Psalm.
[3523] See Letter XXIII.
[3524] Luke ii. 36, 37.
[3525] Ps. cxix. 1.
[3526] Matt. v. 25.
[3527] i.e. the Indian Ocean.
[3528] Eph. v. 22.
[3529] Cf. Letter LXXIX. § 9.
[3530] Ps. cxix. 11.
[3531] Ps. i. 2.
[3532] 1 Cor. x. 31.
[3533] Ps. cxix. 104.
[3534] Acts i. 1.
[3535] 1 Tim. v. 23.
[3536] The successor of Athanasius in the see of Alexandria.
[3537] A fragment from the Medea of Ennius relating to the unlucky ship Argo which had brought Jason to Colchis. Here however the words seem altogether out of place. Unless, indeed, they are supposed to be spoken by pagans.
[3538] Magdala means tower.'
[3539] So Ewald.
[3540] Joh. xviii. 15, 16, R.V.
[3541] Joh. xix. 26, 27.
[3542] Tertullian goes so far as to call him Christ's eunuch' (de Monog. c. xvii.).
[3543] Tota philosophorum vita commentatio mortis est--Cicero, T. Q. i. 30, 74 (summarizing Plato's doctrine as given in his Phædo, p. 64).
[3544] 1 Cor. xv. 31 (apparently quoted from memory).
[3545] Luke xiv. 27; cf. ix. 23.
[3546] Ps. xliv. 22.
[3547] Ecclus. vii. 36.
[3548] Pers. v. 153 Corvington.
[3549] Rom. xii. 1.
[3550] In 382 a.d.
[3551] 2 Tim. iv. 2.
[3552] 1 Tim. ii. 12.
[3553] Literally "thickness of a nail."
[3554] The movement connected with Rufinus' translation of Origen's Peri 'Archon. His coming was likened, in the dream of his friend Macarius (Ruf. Apol. i. 11), to that of a ship laden with Eastern wares.
[3555] The same proverb occurs in Letter VII. § 5.
[3556] Cf. Ezek. xxxiv. 18.
[3557] i.e. That published by Rufinus. See Letter LXXX.
[3558] 'olbios, i.e. Macarius, a Roman Christian who wrote a book on the providence of God. To him Rufinus dedicated his version of Origen's treatise.
[3559] Apparently the Roman clergy who sided with Rufinus.
[3560] Rom. i. 8.
[3561] Siricius, the successor of Damasus. He died a.d. 398.
[3562] Luke xvi. 8.
[3563] James iii. 5.
[3564] Rufinus obtained such letters from Pope Siricius when he left Rome for Aquileia. See Jer. Apol. iii. 21.
[3565] 398 a.d.
[3566] The allusion is to the capture of Rome by Alaric in 410 a.d.
[3567] Jer. xiv. 11, 12.
[3568] Emendata manu scorpii. The scorpion is Rufinus whom Jerome accused of suppressing the worst statements of Origen so that the subtler heresy might be accepted.
[3569] i.e. the Origenistic heresy.
[3570] Luke xviii. 8.
[3571] Matt. xxiv. 12.
[3572] Gal. ii. 13. The allusion is perhaps to John of Jerusalem; possibly to Chrysostom.
[3573] Ps. civ. 29.
[3574] Ps. cxlvi. 4.
[3575] Luke xii. 20.
[3576] The Canaanite name for Jerusalem.
[3577] By Alaric the Goth, 408 a.d.
[3578] By Alaric, 410 a.d.
[3579] Isa. xv. 1.
[3580] Ps. lxxix. 1. LXX.
[3581] Ps. lxxix. 1-3.
[3582] Virg. A. ii. 361.
[3583] Virg. A. vi. 266.
[3584] Job i. 21, LXX. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXXVIII. To Gaudentius.
Gaudentius had written from Rome to ask Jerome's advice as to the bringing up of his infant daughter; whom after the religious fashion of the day he had dedicated to a life of virginity. Jerome's reply may be compared with his advice to Laeta (Letter CVII.) which it closely resembles. It is noticeable also for the vivid account which it gives of the sack of Rome by Alaric in a.d. 410. The date of the letter is a.d. 413.
1. It is hard to write to a little girl who cannot understand what you say, of whose mind you know nothing, and of whose inclinations it would be rash to prophesy. In the words of a famous orator "she is to be praised more for what she will be than for what she is." [3585] For how can you speak of self-control to a child who is eager for cakes, who babbles on her mother's knee, and to whom honey is sweeter than any words? Will she hear the deep things of the apostle when all her delight is in nursery tales? Will she heed the dark sayings of the prophets when her nurse can frighten her by a frowning face? Or will she comprehend the majesty of the gospel, when its splendour dazzles the keenest intellect? Shall I urge her to obey her parents when with her chubby hand she beats her smiling mother? For such reasons as these my dear Pacatula must read some other time the letter that I send her now. Meanwhile let her learn the alphabet, spelling, grammar, and syntax. To induce her to repeat her lessons with her little shrill voice, hold out to her as rewards cakes and mead and sweetmeats. [3586] She will make haste to perform her task if she hopes afterwards to get some bright bunch of flowers, some glittering bauble, some enchanting doll. She must also learn to spin, shaping the yarn with her tender thumb; for, even if she constantly breaks the threads, a day will come when she will no longer break them. Then when she has finished her lessons she ought to have some recreation. At such times she may hang round her mother's neck, or snatch kisses from her relations. Reward her for singing psalms that she may love what she has to learn. Her task will then become a pleasure to her and no compulsion will be necessary.
2. Some mothers when they have vowed a daughter to virginity clothe her in sombre garments, wrap her up in a dark cloak, and let her have neither linen nor gold ornaments. They wisely refuse to accustom her to what she will afterwards have to lay aside. Others act on the opposite principle. "What is the use," say they, "of keeping such things from her? Will she not see them with others? Women are fond of finery and many whose chastity is beyond question dress not for men but for themselves. Give her what she asks for, but shew her that those are most praised who ask for nothing. It is better that she should enjoy things to the full and so learn to despise them than that from not having them she should wish to have them." "This," they continue, "was the plan which the Lord adopted with the children of Israel. When they longed for the fleshpots of Egypt He sent them flights of quails and allowed them to gorge themselves until they were sick. [3587] Those who have once lived worldly lives more readily forego the pleasures of sense than such as from their youth up have known nothing of desire." For while the former--so they argue--trample on what they know, the latter are attracted by what is to them unknown. While the former penitently shun the insidious advances which pleasure makes, the latter coquet with the allurements of sense and fancying them to be as sweet as honey find them to be deadly poison. They quote the passage which says that "the lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb;" [3588] which is sweet indeed in the eater's mouth but is afterwards found more bitter than gall. [3589] This they argue, is the reason that neither honey nor wax is offered in the sacrifices of the Lord, [3590] and that oil the product of the bitter olive is burned in His temple. [3591] Moreover it is with bitter herbs that the passover is eaten, [3592] and "with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth." [3593] He that receives these shall suffer persecution in the world. Wherefore the prophet symbolically sings: "I sat alone because I was filled with bitterness." [3594]
3. What then, I reply? Is youth to run riot that self-indulgence may afterwards be more resolutely rejected? Far from it, they rejoin: "let every man, wherein he is called, therein abide. [3595] Is any called being circumcised,"--that is, as a virgin?--"let him not become uncircumcised" [3596] --that is, let him not seek the coat of marriage given to Adam on his expulsion from the paradise of virginity. [3597] "Is any called in uncircumcision,"--that is, having a wife and enveloped in the skin of matrimony? let him not seek the nakedness of virginity [3598] and of that eternal chastity which he has lost once for all. No, let him "possess his vessel in sanctification and honour," [3599] let him drink of his own wells not out of the dissolute cisterns [3600] of the harlots which cannot hold within them the pure waters of chastity. [3601] The same Paul also in the same chapter, when discussing the subjects of virginity and marriage, calls those who are married slaves of the flesh, but those not under the yoke of wedlock freemen who serve the Lord in all freedom. [3602]
What I say I do not say as universally applicable; my treatment of the subject is only partial. I speak of some only, not of all. However my words are addressed to those of both sexes, and not only to "the weaker vessel." [3603] Are you a virgin? Why then do you find pleasure in the society of a woman? Why do you commit to the high seas your frail patched boat, why do you so confidently face the great peril of a dangerous voyage? You know not what you desire, and yet you cling to her as though you had either desired her before or, to put it as leniently as possible, as though you would hereafter desire her. Women, you will say, make better servants than men. In that case choose a misshapen old woman, choose one whose continence is approved in the Lord. Why should you find pleasure in a young girl, pretty, and voluptuous? You frequent the baths, walk abroad sleek and ruddy, eat flesh, abound in riches, and wear the most expensive clothes; and yet you fancy that you can sleep safely beside a death-dealing serpent. You tell me perhaps that you do not live in the same house with her. This is only true at night. But you spend whole days in conversing with her. Why do you sit alone with her? Why do you dispense with witnesses? By so doing if you do not actually sin you appear to do so, and (so important is your influence) you embolden unhappy men by your example to do what is wrong. You too, whether virgin or widow, why do you allow a man to detain you in conversation so long? Why are you not afraid to be left alone with him? At least go out of doors to satisfy the wants of nature, and for this at any rate leave the man with whom you have given yourself more liberty than you would with your brother, and have behaved more immodestly than you would with your husband. You have some question, you say, to ask concerning the holy scriptures. If so, ask it publicly; let your maids and your attendants hear it. "Everything that is made manifest is light." [3604] He who says only what he ought does not look for a corner to say it in; he is glad to have hearers for he likes to be praised. He must be a fine teacher, on the other hand, who thinks little of men, does not care for the brothers, and labours in secret merely to instruct just one weak woman!
3a. I have wandered for a little from my immediate subject to discuss the procedure of others in such a case as yours; and while it is my object to train, nay rather to nurse, the infant Pacatula, I have in a moment drawn upon myself the hostility of many women who are by no means daughters of peace. [3605] But I shall now return to my proper theme.
A girl should associate only with girls, she should know nothing of boys and should dread even playing with them. She should never hear an unclean word, and if amid the bustle of the household she should chance to hear one, she should not understand it. Her mother's nod should be to her as much a command as a spoken injunction. She should love her as her parent, obey her as her mistress, and reverence her as her teacher. She is now a child without teeth and without ideas, but, as soon as she is seven years old, a blushing girl knowing what she ought not to say and hesitating as to what she ought, she should until she is grown up commit to memory the psalter and the books of Solomon; the gospels, the apostles and the prophets should be the treasure of her heart. She should not appear in public too freely or too frequently attend crowded churches. All her pleasure should be in her chamber. She must never look at young men or turn her eyes upon curled fops; and the wanton songs of sweet voiced girls which wound the soul through the ears must be kept from her. The more freedom of access such persons possess, the harder is it to avoid them when they come; and what they have once learned themselves they will secretly teach her and will thus contaminate our secluded Danaë by the talk of the crowd. Give her for guardian and companion a mistress and a governess, one not given to much wine or in the apostle's words idle and a tattler, but sober, grave, industrious in spinning wool [3606] and one whose words will form her childish mind to the practice of virtue. For, as water follows a finger drawn through the sand, so one of soft and tender years is pliable for good or evil; she can be drawn in whatever direction you choose to guide her. Moreover spruce and gay young men often seek access for themselves by paying court to nurses or dependants or even by bribing them, and when they have thus gently effected their approach they blow up the first spark of passion until it bursts into flame and little by little advance to the most shameless requests. And it is quite impossible to check them then, for the verse is proved true in their case: "It is ill rebuking what you have once allowed to become ingrained." [3607] I am ashamed to say it and yet I must; high born ladies who have rejected more high born suitors cohabit with men of the lowest grade and even with slaves. Sometimes in the name of religion and under the cloak of a desire for celibacy they actually desert their husbands in favour of such paramours. You may often see a Helen following her Paris without the smallest dread of Menelaus. Such persons we see and mourn for but we cannot punish, for the multitude of sinners procures tolerance for the sin.
4. The world sinks into ruin: yes! but shameful to say our sins still live and flourish. The renowned city, the capital of the Roman Empire, is swallowed up in one tremendous fire; and there is no part of the earth where Romans are not in exile. Churches once held sacred are now but heaps of dust and ashes; and yet we have our minds set on the desire of gain. We live as though we are going to die tomorrow; yet we build as though we are going to live always in this world. [3608] Our walls shine with gold, our ceilings also and the capitals of our pillars; yet Christ dies before our doors naked and hungry in the persons of His poor. The pontiff Aaron, we read, faced the raging flames, and by putting fire in his censer checked the wrath of God. The High Priest stood between the dead and the living, and the fire dared not pass his feet. [3609] On another occasion God said to Moses, "Let me alone....that I may consume this people," [3610] shewing by the words "let me alone" that he can be withheld from doing what he threatens. The prayers of His servant hindered His power. Who, think you, is there now under heaven able to stay God's wrath, to face the flame of His judgment, and to say with the apostle, "I could wish that I myself were accursed for my brethren"? [3611] Flocks and shepherds perish together, because as it is with the people, so is it with the priest. [3612] Of old it was not so. Then Moses spoke in a passion of pity, "yet now if thou wilt forgive their sin--; and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book." [3613] He is not satisfied to secure his own salvation, he desires to perish with those that perish. And he is right, for "in the multitude of people is the king's honour." [3614]
Such are the times in which our little Pacatula is born. Such are the swaddling clothes in which she draws her first breath; she is destined to know of tears before laughter and to feel sorrow sooner than joy. And hardly does she come upon the stage when she is called on to make her exit. Let her then suppose that the world has always been what it is now. Let her know nothing of the past, let her shun the present, and let her long for the future.
These thoughts of mine are but hastily mustered. For my grief for lost friends has known no intermission and only recently have I recovered sufficient composure to write an old man's letter to a little child. My affection for you, brother Gaudentius, has induced me to make the attempt and I have thought it better to say a few words than to say nothing at all. The grief that paralyses my will will excuse my brevity; whereas, were I to say nothing, the sincerity of my friendship might well be doubted. __________________________________________________________________
[3585] Spes in ea magis laudanda est quam res. Cic. de Rep. Jerome again quotes the words in Letter CXXX. § 1.
[3586] cf. Hor. 1 S. i. 25, 26.
[3587] Numb. xi. 4, 20, 31.
[3588] Prov. v. 3.
[3589] Rev. x. 9, 10.
[3590] Lev. ii. 11.
[3591] Ex. xxvii. 20.
[3592] Ex. xii. 8.
[3593] 1 Cor. v. 8.
[3594] Jer. xv. 17, LXX.
[3595] 1 Cor. vii. 24.
[3596] 1 Cor. vii. 18.
[3597] Gen. iii. 21.
[3598] Gen. iii. 25.
[3599] 1 Thess. iv. 4.
[3600] Jer. ii. 13, Cisternas dissipates.
[3601] Prov. v. 15.
[3602] 1 Cor. vii. 21, 22.
[3603] 1 Pet. iii. 7.
[3604] Eph. v. 13, R.V.
[3605] Male pacatæ, a pun on Pacatula, which means Little Peaceful.'
[3606] Lanifica. Cf. the well-known epitaph on a Roman matron: "She stayed at home and spun wool."
[3607] Already quoted in Letter CVII. § 8.
[3608] cf. Letter CXXIII. 15.
[3609] Nu. xvi. 46-48, Vulg.
[3610] Ex. xxxii. 10.
[3611] Rom. ix. 3.
[3612] Isa. xxiv. 2.
[3613] Ex. xxxii. 32.
[3614] Prov. xiv. 28. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXXIX. To Dardanus.
In answer to a question put by Dardanus, prefect of Gaul, Jerome writes concerning the Promised Land which he identifies not with Canaan but with heaven. He then points out that the present sufferings of the Jews are due altogether to the crime of which they have been guilty in the crucifixion of Christ. The date of the letter is 414 a.d. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXXX. To Demetrias.
Jerome writes to Demetrias, a highborn lady of Rome who had recently embraced the vocation of a virgin. After narrating her life's history first at Rome and then in Africa, he goes on to lay down rules and principles to guide her in her new life. These which cover the whole field of ascetic practice and include the duties of study, of prayer, of fasting, of obedience, of giving up money for Christ, and of constant industry, are in substance similar to those which thirty years before Jerome had suggested to Eustochium (Letter XXII.). The tone of the letter is however milder and less fanatical; the asceticism recommended is not so severe; there is less of rhapsody and more of common sense. This letter should also be compared with the letter addressed to Demetrias by Pelagius, which is given in Vol. xi. of Jerome's works (Migne's Patr. Lat. xxx. ed.). The date is 414 a.d.
1. Of all the subjects that I have treated from my youth up until now, either with my own pen or that of my secretaries I have dealt with none more difficult than that which now occupies me. I am going to write to Demetrias a virgin of Christ and a lady whose birth and riches make her second to none in the Roman world. If, therefore, I employ language adequate to describe her virtue, I shall be thought to flatter her; and if I suppress some details on the score that they might appear incredible, my reserve will not do justice to her undoubted merits. What am I to do then? I am unequal to the task before me, yet I cannot venture to decline it. Her grandmother and her mother are both women of mark, and they have alike authority to command, faith to seek and perseverance to obtain that which they require. It is not indeed anything very new or special that they ask of me; my wits have often been exercised upon similar themes. What they wish for is that I should raise my voice and bear witness as strongly as I can to the virtues of one who--in the words of the famous orator [3615] --is to be praised less for what she is than for what she gives promise of being. Yet, girl though she is, she has a glowing faith beyond her years, and has started from a point at which others think it a mark of signal virtue to leave off.
2. Let detraction stand aloof and envy give way; let no charge of self seeking be brought against me. I write as a stranger to a stranger, at least so far as the personal appearance is concerned. For the inner man finds itself well known by that knowledge whereby the apostle Paul knew the Colossians and many other believers whom he had never seen. How high an esteem I entertain for this virgin, nay more what a miracle of virtue I think her, you may judge by the fact that being occupied in the explanation of Ezekiel's description of the temple--the hardest piece in the whole range of scripture--and finding myself in that part of the sacred edifice wherein is the Holy of Holies and the altar of incense, I have chosen by way of a brief rest to pass from that altar to this, that upon it I might consecrate to eternal chastity a living offering acceptable to God [3616] and free from all stain. I am aware that the bishop [3617] has with words of prayer covered her holy head with the virgin's bridal-veil, reciting the while the solemn sentence of the apostle: "I wish to present you all as a chaste virgin to Christ." [3618] She stood as a queen at his right hand, her clothing of wrought gold and her raiment of needlework. [3619] Such was the coat of many colours, that is, formed of many different virtues, which Joseph wore; and similar ones were of old the ordinary dress of king's daughters. Thereupon [3620] the bride herself rejoices and says: "the king hath brought me into his chambers," [3621] and the choir of her companions responds: "the king's daughter is all glorious within." [3622] Thus she is a professed virgin. Still these words of mine will not be without their use. The speed of racehorses is quickened by the applause of spectators; prize fighters are urged to greater efforts by the cries of their backers; and when armies are drawn up for battle and swords are drawn, the general's speech does much to fire his soldiers' valour. So also is it on the present occasion. The grandmother and the mother have planted, but it is I that water and the Lord that giveth the increase. [3623]
3. It is the practice of the rhetoricians to exalt him who is the subject of their praises by referring to his forefathers and the past nobility of his race, so that a fertile root may make up for barren branches and that you may admire in the stem what you have not got in the fruit. Thus I ought now to recall the distinguished names of the Probi and of the Olybrii, and that illustrious Anician house, the representatives of which have seldom or never been unworthy of the consulship. Or I ought to bring forward Olybrius our virgin's father, whose untimely loss Rome has had to mourn. I fear to say more of him, lest I should intensify the pain of your saintly mother, and lest the commemoration of his virtues should become a renewing of her grief. He was a dutiful son, a loveable husband, a kind master, a popular citizen. He was made consul while still a boy; [3624] but the goodness of his character made him more illustrious as a senator. He was happy in his death [3625] for it saved him from seeing the ruin of his country; and happier still in his offspring, for the distinguished name of his great grandmother Demetrias has become yet more distinguished now that his daughter Demetrias has vowed herself to perpetual chastity.
4. But what am I doing? Forgetful of my purpose and filled with admiration for this young man, I have spoken in terms of praise of mere worldly advantages; whereas I should rather have commended our virgin for having rejected all these, and for having determined to regard herself not as a wealthy or a high born lady, but simply as a woman like other women. Her strength of mind almost passes belief. Though she had silks and jewels freely at her disposal, and though she was surrounded by crowds of eunuchs and serving-women, a bustling household of flattering and attentive domestics, and though the daintiest feasts that the abundance of a large house could supply were daily set before her; she preferred to all these severe fasting, rough clothing, and frugal living. For she had read the words of the Lord: "they that wear soft clothing are in kings' houses." [3626] She was filled with admiration for the manner of life followed by Elijah and by John the Baptist; both of whom confined and mortified their loins with girdles of skin, [3627] while the second of them is said to have come in the spirit and power of Elijah as the forerunner of the Lord. [3628] As such he prophesied while still in his mother's womb, [3629] and before the day of judgment won the commendation of the Judge. [3630] She admired also the zeal of Anna the daughter of Phanuel, who continued even to extreme old age to serve the Lord in the temple with prayers and fastings. [3631] When she thought of the four virgins who were the daughters of Philip, [3632] she longed to join their band and to be numbered with those who by their virginal purity have attained the grace of prophecy. With these and similar meditations she fed her mind, dreading nothing so much as to offend her grandmother and her mother. Although she was encouraged by their example, she was discouraged by their expressed wish and desire; not indeed that they disapproved of her holy purpose, but that the prize was so great that they did not venture to hope for it, or to aspire to it. Thus this poor novice in Christ's service was sorely perplexed. She came to hate all her fine apparel and cried like Esther to the Lord: "Thou knowest that I abhor the sign of my high estate"--that is to say, the diadem which she wore as queen--"and that I abhor it as a menstruous rag." [3633] Among the holy and highborn ladies who have seen and known her some have been driven by the tempest which has swept over Africa, from the shores of Gaul to a refuge in the holy places. These tell me that secretly night after night, though no one knew of it but the virgins dedicated to God in her mother's and grandmother's retinue, Demetrias, refusing sheets of linen and beds of down, spread a rug of goat's hair upon the ground and watered her face with ceaseless tears. Night after night she cast herself in thought at the Saviour's knees and implored him to accept her choice, to fulfil her aspiration, and to soften the hearts of her grandmother and of her mother.
5. Why do I still delay to relate the sequel? When her wedding day was now close at hand and when a marriage chamber was being got ready for the bride and bridegroom; secretly without any witnesses and with only the night to comfort her, she is said to have nerved herself with such considerations as these: "What ails you, Demetrias? Why are you so fearful of defending your chastity? What you need is freedom and courage. If you are so panic-stricken in time of peace, what would you do if you were called on to undergo martyrdom? If you cannot bear so much as a frown from your own, how would you steel yourself to face the tribunals of persecutors? If men's examples leave you unmoved, at least gather courage and confidence from the blessed martyr Agnes [3634] who vanquished the temptations both of youth and of a despot and by her martyrdom hallowed the very name of chastity. Unhappy girl! you know not, you know not to whom your virginity is due. It is not long since you have trembled in the hands of the barbarians and clung to your grandmother and your mother cowering under their cloaks for safety. You have seen yourself a prisoner [3635] and your chastity not in your own power. You have shuddered at the fierce looks of your enemies; you have seen with secret agony the virgins of God ravished. Your city, once the capital of the world, is now the grave of the Roman people; and will you on the shores of Libya, yourself an exile, accept an exile for a husband? Where will you find a matron to be present at your bridal? [3636] Whom will you get to escort you home? No tongue but a harsh Punic one will sing for you the wanton Fescennine verses. [3637] Away with all hesitations! Perfect love' of God casteth out fear.' [3638] Take to yourself the shield of faith, the breastplate of righteousness, the helmet of salvation, [3639] and sally forth to battle. The preservation of your chastity involves a martyrdom of its own. Why do you fear your grandmother? Why do you dread your mother? Perhaps they may themselves wish for you a course which they do not think you wish for yourself." When by these and other arguments she had wrought herself to the necessary pitch of resolution, she cast from her as so many hindrances all her ornaments and worldly attire. Her precious necklaces, costly pearls, and glowing gems she put back in their cases. Then dressing herself in a coarse tunic and throwing over herself a still courser cloak she came in at an unlooked for moment, threw herself down suddenly at her grandmother's knees, and with tears and sobs shewed her what she really was. That staid and holy woman was amazed when she beheld her granddaughter in so strange a dress. Her mother was completely overcome for joy. Both women could hardly believe that true which they had longed to be true. Their voices stuck in their throats, [3640] and, what with blushing and turning pale, with fright and with joy, they were a prey to many conflicting emotions.
6. I must needs give way here and not attempt to describe what defies description. In the effort to explain the greatness of that joy past all belief, the flow of Tully's eloquence would run dry and the bolts poised and hurled by Demosthenes would become spent and fall short. Whatever mind can conceive or speech can interpret of human gladness was seen then. Mother and child, grandmother and granddaughter kissed each other again and again. The two elder women wept copiously for joy, they raised the prostrate girl, they embraced her trembling form. In her purpose they recognized their own mind, and congratulated each other that now a virgin was to make a noble house more noble still by her virginity. She had found they said, a way to benefit her family and to lessen the calamity of the ruin of Rome. Good Jesus! What exultation there was all through the house! Many virgins sprouted out at once as shoots from a fruitful stem, and the example set by their patroness and lady was followed by a host both of clients and servants. Virginity was warmly espoused in every house and although those who made profession of it were as regards the flesh of lower rank than Demetrias they sought one reward with her, the reward of chastity. My words are too weak. Every church in Africa danced for joy. The news reached not only the cities, towns, and villages but even the scattered huts. Every island between Africa and Italy was full of it, the glad tidings ran far and wide, disliked by none. Then Italy put off her mourning and the ruined walls of Rome resumed in part their olden splendour; for they believed the full conversion of their fosterchild to be a sign of God's favour towards them. You would fancy that the Goths had been annihilated and that that concourse of deserters and slaves had fallen by a thunderbolt from the Lord on high. There was less elation in Rome when Marcellus won his first success at Nola [3641] after thousands of Romans had fallen at the Trebia, Lake Thrasymenus, and Cannæ. There was less joy among the nobles cooped up in the capitol, on whom the future of Rome depended, when after buying their lives with gold they heard that the Gauls had at length been routed. [3642] The news penetrated to the coasts of the East, and this triumph of Christian glory was heard of in the remote cities of the interior. What Christian virgin was not proud to have Demetrias as a companion? What mother did not call Juliana's womb blessed? Unbelievers may scoff at the doubtfulness of rewards to come. Meantime, in becoming a virgin you have gained more than you have sacrificed. Had you become a man's bride but one province would have known of you; while as a Christian virgin you are known to the whole world. Mothers who have but little faith in Christ are unhappily wont to dedicate to virginity only deformed and crippled daughters for whom they can find no suitable husbands. Glass beads, as the saying goes, are thought equal to pearls. [3643] Men who pride themselves on their religion give to their virgin daughters sums scarcely sufficient for their maintenance, and bestow the bulk of their property upon sons and daughters living in the world. Quite recently in this city a rich presbyter left two of his daughters who were professed virgins with a mere pittance, while he provided his other children with ample means for self-indulgence and pleasure. The same thing has been done, I am sorry to say, by many women who have adopted the ascetic life. Would that such instances were rare, but unfortunately they are not. Yet the more frequent they are the more blessed are those who refuse to follow an example which is set them by so many.
7. All Christians are loud in their praises of Christ's holy yokefellows, [3644] because they gave to Demetrias when she professed herself a virgin the money which had been set apart as a dowry for her marriage. They would not wrong her heavenly bridegroom; in fact they wished her to come to Him with all her previous riches, that these might not be wasted on the things of the world, but might relieve the distress of God's servants.
Who would believe it? That Proba, who of all persons of high rank and birth in the Roman world bears the most illustrious name, whose holy life and universal charity have won for her esteem even among the barbarians, who has made nothing of the regular consulships enjoyed by her three sons, Probinus, Olybrius, and Probus,--that Proba, I say, now that Rome has been taken and its contents burned or carried off, is said to be selling what property she has and to be making for herself friends of the mammon of unrighteousness, that these may receive her into everlasting habitations! [3645] Well may the church's ministers, whatever their degree, and those monks who are only monks in name, blush for shame that they are buying estates, when this noble lady is selling them.
Hardly had she escaped from the hands of the barbarians, hardly had she ceased weeping for the virgins whom they had torn from her arms, when she was overwhelmed by a sudden and unbearable bereavement, one too which she had had no cause to fear, the death of her loving son. [3646] Yet as one who was to be grandmother to a Christian virgin, she bore up against this death-dealing stroke, strong in hope of the future and proving true of herself the words of the lyric:
"Should the round world in fragments burst, its fall
May strike the just, may slay, but not appal." [3647]
We read in the book of Job how, while the first messenger of evil was yet speaking, there came also another; [3648] and in the same book it is written: "is there not a temptation"--or as the Hebrew better gives it--"a warfare to man upon earth?" [3649] It is for this end that we labour, it is for this end that we risk our lives in the warfare of this world, that we may be crowned in the world to come. That we should believe this to be true of men is nothing wonderful, for even the Lord Himself was tempted, [3650] and of Abraham the scripture bears witness that God tempted him. [3651] It is for this reason also that the apostle says: "we glory in tribulations....knowing that tribulation worketh patience; and patience experience; and experience hope; and hope maketh not ashamed;" [3652] and in another passage: "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword? As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter." [3653] The prophet Isaiah comforts those in like case in these words: "ye that are weaned from the milk, ye that are drawn from the breasts, look for tribulation upon tribulation, but also for hope upon hope." [3654] For, as the apostle puts it "the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us." [3655] Why I have here brought together all these passages the sequel will make plain.
Proba who had seen from the sea the smoke of her native city and had committed her own safety and that of those dear to her to a fragile boat, found the shores of Africa even more cruel than those which she had left. For one [3656] lay in wait for her of whom it would be hard to say whether he was more covetous or heartless, one who cared for nothing but wine and money, one who under pretence of serving the mildest of emperors [3657] stood forth as the most savage of all despots. If I may be allowed to quote a fable of the poets, he was like Orcus [3658] in Tartarus. Like him too he had with him a Cerberus, [3659] not three headed but many headed, ready to seize and rend everything within his reach. He tore betrothed daughters from their mothers' arms [3660] and sold high-born maidens in marriage to those greediest of men, the merchants of Syria. No plea of poverty induced him to spare either ward or widow or virgin dedicated to Christ. Indeed he looked more at the hands than at the faces of those who appealed to him. Such was the dread Charybdis and such the hound-girt Scylla which this lady encountered in fleeing from the barbarians; monsters who neither spared the shipwrecked nor heeded the cry of those made captive. Cruel wretch! [3661] at least imitate the enemy of the Roman Empire. The Brennus of our day [3662] took only what he found, but you seek what you cannot find.
Virtue, indeed, is always exposed to envy, and cavillers may marvel at the secret agreement by which Proba purchased the chastity of her numerous companions. They may allege that the count who could have taken all would not have been satisfied [3663] with a part; and that she could not have questioned his claim since in spite of her rank she was but a slave in his despotic hands. I perceive also that I am laying myself open to the attacks of enemies and that I may seem to be flattering a lady of the highest birth and distinction. Yet these men will not be able to accuse me when they learn that hitherto I have said nothing about her. I have never either in the lifetime of her husband or since his decease praised her for the antiquity of her family or for the extent of her wealth and power, subjects which others might perhaps have improved in mercenary speeches. My purpose is to praise the grandmother of my virgin in a style befitting the church, and to thank her for having aided with her goodwill the desire which Demetrias has formed. For the rest my cell, my food and clothing, my advanced years, and my narrow circumstances sufficiently refute the charge of flattery. In what remains of my letter I shall direct all my words to Demetrias herself, whose holiness ennobles her as much as her rank, and of whom it may be said that the higher she climbs the more terrible will be her fall.
For the rest
This one thing, child of God, I lay on thee;
Yea before all, and urge it many times: [3664]
Love to occupy your mind with the reading of scripture. Do not in the good ground of your breast gather only a crop of darnel and wild oats. Do not let an enemy sow tares among the wheat when the householder is asleep [3665] (that is when the mind which ever cleaves to God is off its guard); but say always with the bride in the song of songs: "By night I sought him whom my soul loveth. Tell me where thou feedest, where thou makest thy flock to rest at noon;" [3666] and with the psalmist: "my soul followeth hard after thee: thy right hand upholdeth me;" [3667] and with Jeremiah: "I have not found it hard....to follow thee," [3668] for "there is no grief in Jacob neither is there travail in Israel." [3669] When you were in the world you loved the things of the world. You rubbed your cheeks with rouge and used whitelead to improve your complexion. You dressed your hair and built up a tower on your head with tresses not your own. I shall say nothing of your costly earrings, your glistening pearls from the depths of the Red Sea, [3670] your bright green emeralds, your flashing onyxes, your liquid sapphires,--tones which turn the heads of matrons, and make them eager to possess the like. For you have relinquished the world and besides your baptismal vow have taken a new one; you have entered into a compact with your adversary and have said: "I renounce thee, O devil, and thy world and thy pomp and thy works." Observe, therefore, the treaty that you have made, and keep terms with your adversary while you are in the way of this world. Otherwise he may some day deliver you to the judge and prove that you have taken what is his; and then the judge will deliver you to the officer--at once your foe and your avenger--and you will be cast into prison; into that outer darkness [3671] which surrounds us with the greater horror as it severs us from Christ the one true light. [3672] And you shall by no means come out thence till you have paid the uttermost farthing, [3673] that is, till you have expiated your most trifling sins; for we shall give account of every idle word in the day of judgment. [3674]
8. In speaking thus I do not wish to utter an ill-omened prophecy against you but only to warn you as an apprehensive and prudent monitor who in your case fears even what is safe. What says the scripture? "If the spirit of the ruler rise up against thee, leave not thy place." [3675] We must always stand under arms and in battle array, ready to engage the foe. When he tries to dislodge us from our position and to make us fall back, we must plant our feet firmly down, and say with the psalmist, "he hath set my feet upon a rock" [3676] and "the rocks are a refuge for the conies." [3677] In this latter passage for conies' many read hedgehogs.' Now the hedgehog is a small animal, very shy, and covered over with thorny bristles. When Jesus was crowned with thorns and bore our sins and suffered for us, it was to make the roses of virginity and the lilies of chastity grow for us out of the brambles and briers which have formed the lot of women since the day when it was said to Eve, "in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband and he shall rule over thee." [3678] We are told that the bridegroom feeds among the lilies, [3679] that is, among those who have not defiled their garments, for they have remained virgins [3680] and have hearkened to the precept of the Preacher: "let thy garments be always white." [3681] As the author and prince of virginity He says boldly of Himself: "I am the rose of Sharon and the lily of the valleys." [3682] "The rocks" then "are a refuge for the conies" who when they are persecuted in one city flee into another [3683] and have no fear that the prophetic words "refuge failed me" [3684] will be fulfilled in their case. "The high hills are a refuge for the wild goats," [3685] and their food are the serpents which a little child draws out of their holes. Meanwhile the leopard lies down with the kid and the lion eats straw like the ox; [3686] not of course that the ox may learn ferocity from the lion but that the lion may learn docility from the ox.
But let us turn back to the passage first quoted, "If the spirit of the ruler rise up against thee, leave not thy place," a sentence which is followed by these words: "for yielding pacifieth great offences." [3687] The meaning is, that if the serpent finds his way into your thoughts you must "keep your heart with all diligence" [3688] and sing with David, "cleanse thou me from secret faults: keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins," and come not to "the great transgression" [3689] which is sin in act. Rather slay the allurements to vice while they are still only thoughts; and dash the little ones of the daughter of Babylon against the stones [3690] where the serpent can leave no trail. Be wary and vow a vow unto the Lord: "let them not have dominion over me: then shall I be upright and I shall be innocent from the great transgression." [3691] For elsewhere also the scripture testifies, "I will visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation." [3692] That is to say, God will not punish us at once for our thoughts and resolves but will send retribution upon their offspring, that is, upon the evil deeds and habits of sin which arise out of them. As He says by the mouth of Amos: "for three transgressions of such and such a city and for four I will not turn away the punishment thereof." [3693]
9. I cull these few flowers in passing from the fair field of the holy scriptures. They will suffice to warn you that you must shut the door of your breast and fortify your brow by often making the sign of the cross. Thus alone will the destroyer of Egypt find no place to attack you; thus alone will the first-born of your soul escape the fate of the first-born of the Egyptians; [3694] thus alone will you be able with the prophet to say: "my heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed; I will sing and give praise. Awake up, my glory; awake, psaltery and harp." [3695] For, sin stricken as she is, even Tyre is bidden to take up her harp [3696] and to do penance; like Peter she is told to wash away the stains of her former foulness with bitter tears. Howbeit, let us know nothing of penitence, lest the thought of it lead us into sin. It is a plank for those who have had the misfortune to be shipwrecked; [3697] but an inviolate virgin may hope to save the ship itself. For it is one thing to look for what you have cast away, and another to keep what you have never lost. Even the apostle kept under his body and brought it into subjection, lest having preached to others he might himself become a castaway. [3698] Heated with the violence of sensual passion he made himself the spokesman of the human race: "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" and again, "I know that in me, that is in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good, I find not. For the good that I would, I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do;" [3699] and once more: "they that are in the flesh cannot please God. But ye are not in the flesh, but in the spirit, if so be that the spirit of God dwell in you." [3700]
10. After you have paid the most careful attention to your thoughts, you must then put on the armour of fasting and sing with David: "I chastened my soul with fasting," [3701] and "I have eaten ashes like bread," [3702] and "as for me when they troubled me my clothing was sackcloth." [3703] Eve was expelled from paradise because she had eaten of the forbidden fruit. Elijah on the other hand after forty days of fasting was carried in a fiery chariot into heaven. For forty days and forty nights Moses lived by the intimate converse which he had with God, thus proving in his own case the complete truth of the saying, "man doth not live by bread only but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord." [3704] The Saviour of the world, who in His virtues and His mode of life has left us an example to follow, [3705] was, immediately after His baptism, taken up by the spirit that He might contend with the devil, [3706] and after crushing him and overthrowing him might deliver him to his disciples to trample under foot. For what says the apostle? "God shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly." [3707] And yet after the Saviour had fasted forty days, it was through food that the old enemy laid a snare for him, saying, "If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread." [3708] Under the law, in the seventh month after the blowing of trumpets and on the tenth day of the month, a fast was proclaimed for the whole Jewish people, and that soul was cut off from among his people which on that day preferred self-indulgence to self-denial. [3709] In Job it is written of behemoth that "his strength is in his loins, and his force is in the navel of his belly." [3710] Our foe uses the heat of youthful passion to tempt young men and maidens and "sets on fire the wheel of our birth." [3711] He thus fulfils the words of Hosea, "they are all adulterers, their heart is like an oven;" [3712] an oven which only God's mercy and severe fasting can extinguish. These are "the fiery darts" [3713] with which the devil wounds men and sets them on fire, and it was these which the king of Babylon used against the three children. But when he made his fire forty-nine cubits high [3714] he did but turn to his own ruin [3715] the seven weeks which the Lord had appointed for a time of salvation. [3716] And as then a fourth bearing a form like the son of God slackened the terrible heat [3717] and cooled the flames of the blazing fiery furnace, until, menacing as they looked, they became quite harmless, so is it now with the virgin soul. The dew of heaven and severe fasting quench in a girl the flame of passion and enable her soul even in its earthly tenement to live the angelic life. Therefore the chosen vessel [3718] declares that concerning virgins he has no commandment of the Lord. [3719] For you must act against nature or rather above nature if you are to forswear your natural function, to cut off your own root, to cull no fruit but that of virginity, to abjure the marriage-bed, to shun intercourse with men, and while in the body to live as though out of it.
11. I do not, however, lay on you as an obligation any extreme fasting or abnormal abstinence from food. Such practices soon break down weak constitutions and cause bodily sickness before they lay the foundations of a holy life. It is a maxim of the philosophers that virtues are means, and that all extremes are of the nature of vice; [3720] and it is in this sense that one of the seven wise men propounds the famous saw quoted in the comedy, "In nothing too much." [3721] You must not go on fasting until your heart begins to throb and your breath to fail and you have to be supported or carried by others. No; while curbing the desires of the flesh, you must keep sufficient strength to read scripture, to sing psalms, and to observe vigils. For fasting is not a complete virtue in itself but only a foundation on which other virtues may be built. The same may be said of sanctification and of that chastity without which no man shall see the Lord. [3722] Each of these is a step on the upward way, yet none of them by itself will avail to win the virgin's crown. The gospel teaches us this in the parable of the wise and foolish virgins; the former of whom enter into the bridechamber of the bridegroom, while the latter are shut out from it because not having the oil of good works [3723] they allow their lamps to fail. [3724] This subject of fasting opens up a wide field in which I have often wandered myself, [3725] and many writers have devoted treatises to the subject. I must refer you to these if you wish to learn the advantages of self-restraint and on the other hand the evils of over-feeding.
12. Follow the example of your Spouse: [3726] be subject to your grandmother and to your mother. Never look upon a man, especially upon a young man, except in their company. Never know a man whom they do not know. It is a maxim of the world that the only sure friendship is one based on an identity of likes and dislikes. [3727] You have been taught by their example as well as instructed by the holy life of your home to aspire to virginity, to recognize the commandments of Christ, to know what is expedient for you and what course you ought to choose. But do not regard what is your own as absolutely your own. Remember that part of it belongs to those who have communicated their chastity to you and from whose honourable marriages and beds undefiled [3728] you have sprung up like a choice flower. For you are destined to produce perfect fruit if only you will humble yourself under the mighty hand of God, [3729] always remembering that it is written: "God resisteth the proud and giveth grace to the humble." [3730] Now where there is grace, this is not given in return for works but is the free gift of the giver, so that the apostles' words are fulfilled: "it is not of him that willeth nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy." [3731] And yet it is ours to will and not to will; and all the while the very liberty that is ours is only ours by the mercy of God.
13. Again in selecting for yourself eunuchs and maids and servingmen look rather to their characters than to their good looks; for, whatever their age or sex, and even if mutilation ensures in them a compulsory chastity, you must take account of their dispositions, for these cannot be operated on save by the fear of Christ. When you are present buffoonery and loose talk must find no place. You should never hear an improper word; if you do hear one, you must not be carried away by it. Abandoned men often make use of a single light expression to try the gates of chastity. [3732] Leave to worldlings the privileges of laughing and being laughed at. One who is in your position ought to be serious. Cato the Censor, in old time a leading man in your city, (the same who in his last days turned his attention to Greek literature without either blushing for himself as censor or despairing of success on account of his age) is said by Lucilius [3733] to have laughed only once in his life, and the same remark is made about Marcus Crassus. These men may have affected this austere mien to gain for themselves reputation and notoriety. For so long as we dwell in the tabernacle of this body and are enveloped with this fragile flesh, we can but restrain and regulate our affections and passions; we cannot wholly extirpate them. Knowing this the psalmist says: "be ye angry and sin not;" [3734] which the apostle explains thus: "let not the sun go down upon your wrath." [3735] For, if to be angry is human, to put an end to one's anger is Christian.
14. I think it unnecessary to warn you against covetousness since it is the way of your family both to have riches and to despise them. The apostle too tells us that covetousness is idolatry, [3736] and to one who asked the Lord the question: "Good Master what good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life?" He thus replied: "If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven; and come and follow me." [3737] Such is the climax of complete and apostolic virtue--to sell all that one has and to distribute to the poor, [3738] and thus freed from all earthly encumbrance to fly up to the heavenly realms with Christ. To us, or I should rather say to you, a careful stewardship is entrusted, although in such matters full freedom of choice is left to every individual, whether old or young. Christ's words are "if thou wilt be perfect." I do not compel you, He seems to say, I do not command you, but I set the palm before you, I shew you the prize; it is for you to choose whether you will enter the arena and win the crown. Let us consider how wisely Wisdom has spoken. "Sell that thou hast." To whom is the command given? Why, to him to whom it was said, "if thou wilt be perfect." Sell not a part of thy goods but "all that thou hast." And when you have sold them, what then? "Give to the poor." Not to the rich, not to your kinsfolk, not to minister to self indulgence; but to relieve need. It does not matter whether a man is a priest or a relation or a connexion, you must think of nothing but his poverty. Let your praises come from the stomachs of the hungry and not from the rich banquets of the overfed. We read in the Acts of the Apostles how, while the blood of the Lord was still warm and believers were in the fervour of their first faith, they all sold their possessions and laid the price of them at the apostles' feet (to shew that money ought to be trampled underfoot) and "distribution was made unto every man according as he had need." [3739] But Ananias and Sapphira proved timid stewards, and what is more, deceitful ones; therefore they brought on themselves condemnation. For having made a vow they offered their money to God as if it were their own and not His to whom they had vowed it; and keeping back for their own use a part of that which belonged to another, through fear of famine which true faith never fears, they drew down on themselves suddenly the avenging stroke, which was meant not in cruelty towards them but as a warning to others. [3740] In fact the apostle Peter by no means called down death upon them as Porphyry [3741] foolishly says. He merely announced God's judgment by the spirit of prophecy, that the doom of two persons might be a lesson to many. From the time of your dedication to perpetual virginity your property is yours no longer; or rather is now first truly yours because it has come to be Christ's. Yet while your grandmother and mother are living you must deal with it according to their wishes. If, however, they die and rest in the sleep of the saints (and I know that they desire that you should survive them); when your years are riper, and your will steadier, and your resolution stronger, you will do with your money what seems best to you, or rather what the Lord shall command, knowing as you will that hereafter you will have nothing save that which you have here spent on good works. Others may build churches, may adorn their walls when built with marbles, may procure massive columns, may deck the unconscious capitals with gold and precious ornaments, may cover church doors with silver and adorn the altars with gold and gems. I do not blame those who do these things; I do not repudiate them. [3742] Everyone must follow his own judgment. And it is better to spend one's money thus than to hoard it up and brood over it. However your duty is of a different kind. It is yours to clothe Christ in the poor, to visit Him in the sick, to feed Him in the hungry, to shelter Him in the homeless, particularly such as are of the household of faith, [3743] to support communities of virgins, to take care of God's servants, of those who are poor in spirit, who serve the same Lord as you day and night, who while they are on earth live the angelic life and speak only of the praises of God. Having food and raiment they rejoice and count themselves rich. They seek for nothing more, contented if only they can persevere in their design. For as soon as they begin to seek more they are shewn to be undeserving even of those things that are needful.
The preceding counsels have been addressed to a virgin who is wealthy and a lady of rank.
15. But what I am now going to say will be addressed to the virgin alone. I shall take into consideration, that is, not your circumstances but yourself. In addition to the rule of psalmody and prayer which you must always observe at the third, sixth, and ninth hours, at evening, at midnight, and at dawn, [3744] you should determine how much time you will bind yourself to give to the learning and reading of scripture, aiming to please and instruct the soul rather than to lay a burthen upon it. When you have spent your allotted time in these studies, often kneeling down to pray as care for your soul will impel you to do; have some wool always at hand, shape the threads into yarn with your thumb, attach them to the shuttle, and then throw this to weave a web, or roll up the yarn which others have spun or lay it out for the weavers. Examine their work when it is done, find fault with its defects, and arrange how much they are to do. If you busy yourself with these numerous occupations, you will never find your days long; however late the summer sun may be in setting, a day will always seem too short on which something remains undone. By observing such rules as these you will save yourself and others, you will set a good example as a mistress, and you will place to your credit the chastity of many. For the scripture says: "the soul of every idler is filled with desires." [3745] Nor may you excuse yourself from toil on the plea that God's bounty has left you in want of nothing. No; you must labour with the rest, that being always busy you may think only of the service of the Lord. I shall speak quite plainly. Even supposing that you give all your property to the poor, Christ will value nothing more highly than what you have wrought with your own hands. You may work for yourself or to set an example to your virgins; or you may make presents to your mother and grandmother to draw from them larger sums for the relief of the poor.
16. I have all but passed over the most important point of all. While you were still quite small, bishop Anastasius of holy and blessed memory ruled the Roman church. [3746] In his days a terrible storm of heresy [3747] came from the East and strove first to corrupt and then to undermine that simple faith which an apostle has praised. [3748] However the bishop, rich in poverty and as careful of his flock as an apostle, at once smote the noxious thing on the head, and stayed the hydra's hissing. Now I have reason to fear--in fact a report has reached me to this effect--that the poisonous germs of this heresy still live and sprout in the minds of some to this day. I think, therefore, that I ought to warn you, in all kindness and affection, to hold fast the faith of the saintly Innocent, the spiritual son of Anastasius and his successor in the apostolic see; and not to receive any foreign doctrine, however wise and discerning you may take yourself to be. Men of this type whisper in corners and pretend to inquire into the justice of God. Why, they ask, was a particular soul born in a particular province? What is the reason that some are born of Christian parents, others among wild beasts and savage tribes who have no knowledge of God? Wherever they can strike the simple with their scorpion-sting and form an ulcer fitted to their purpose, there they diffuse their venom. "Is it for nothing, think you,"--thus they argue--"that a little child scarcely able to recognize its mother by a laugh or a look of joy, [3749] which has done nothing either good or evil, is seized by a devil or overwhelmed with jaundice or doomed to bear afflictions which godless men escape, while God's servants have to bear them?" Now if God's judgments, they say, are "true and righteous altogether," [3750] and if "there is no unrighteousness in Him," [3751] we are compelled by reason to believe that our souls have pre-existed in heaven, that they are condemned to and, if I may so say, buried in human bodies because of some ancient sins, and that we are punished in this valley of weeping [3752] for old misdeeds. This according to them is the prophet's reason for saying: "Before I was afflicted I went astray," [3753] and again, "Bring my soul out of prison." [3754] They explain in the same way the question of the disciples in the gospel: "Who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" [3755] and other similar passages.
This godless and wicked teaching was formerly ripe in Egypt and the East; and now it lurks secretly like a viper in its hole among many persons in those parts, defiling the purity of the faith and gradually creeping on like an inherited disease till it assails a large number. But I am sure that if you hear it you will not accept it. For you have preceptresses under God whose faith is a rule of sound doctrine. You will understand what I mean, for God will give you understanding in all things. You must not ask me on the spot to give you a refutation of this dreadful heresy and of others worse still; for were I to do so I should "criticize where I ought to forbid," [3756] and my present object is not to refute heretics but to instruct a virgin. However, I have defeated their wiles and counterworked their efforts to undermine the truth in a treatise [3757] which by God's help I have written; and if you desire to have this, I shall send it to you promptly and with pleasure. I say, if you desire to have it, for as the proverb says, wares proffered unasked are little esteemed, and a plentiful supply brings down prices, which are always highest where scarcity prevails.
17. Men often discuss the comparative merits of life in solitude and life in a community; and the preference is usually given to the first over the second. Still even for men there is always the risk that, being withdrawn from the society of their fellows, they may become exposed to unclean and godless imaginations, and in the fulness of their arrogance and disdain may look down upon everyone but themselves, and may arm their tongues to detract from the clergy or from those who like themselves are bound by the vows of a solitary life. [3758] Of such it is well said by the psalmist, "as for the children of men their teeth are spears and arrows and their tongue a sharp sword." [3759] Now if all this is true of men, how much more does it apply to women whose fickle and vacillating minds, if left to their own devices, soon degenerate. I am myself acquainted with anchorites of both sexes who by excessive fasting have so impaired their faculties that they do not know what to do or where to turn, when to speak or when to be silent. Most frequently those who have been so affected have lived in solitary cells, cold and damp. Moreover if persons untrained in secular learning read the works of able church writers, they only acquire from them a wordy fluency and not, as they might do, a fuller knowledge of the scriptures. The old saying is found true of them, although they have not the wit to speak, they cannot remain silent. They teach to others the scriptures that they do not understand themselves; and if they are fortunate enough to convince them, they take upon themselves airs as men of learning. [3760] In fact, they set up as instructors of the ignorant before they have gone to school themselves. It is a good thing therefore to defer to one's betters, to obey those set over one, to learn not only from the scriptures but from the example of others how one ought to order one's life, and not to follow that worst of teachers, one's own self-confidence. Of women who are thus presumptuous the apostle says that they "are carried about with every wind of doctrine, [3761] ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth." [3762]
18. Avoid the company of married women who are devoted to their husbands and to the world, that your mind may not become unsettled by hearing what a husband says to his wife, or a wife to her husband. Such conversations are filled with deadly venom. To express his condemnation of them the apostle has taken a verse of a profane writer and has pressed it into the service of the church. It may be literally rendered at the expense of the metre: "evil communications corrupt good manners." [3763] No; you should choose for your companions staid and serious women, particularly widows and virgins, persons of approved conversation, of few words, and of a holy modesty. Shun gay and thoughtless girls, who deck their heads and wear their hair in fringes, who use cosmetics to improve their skins and affect tight sleeves, dresses without a crease, and dainty buskins; and by pretending to be virgins more easily sell themselves into destruction. Moreover, the character and tastes of a mistress are often inferred from the behaviour of her attendants. Regard as fair and lovable and a fitting companion one who is unconscious of her good looks and careless of her appearance; who does not expose her breast out of doors or throw back her cloak to reveal her neck; who veils all of her face except her eyes, and only uses these to find her way.
19. I hesitate about what I am going to say but, as often happens, whether I like it or not, it must be said; not that I have reason to fear anything of the kind in your case, for probably you know nothing of such things and have never even heard of them, but that in advising you I may warn others. A virgin should avoid as so many plagues and banes of chastity all ringletted youths who curl their hair and scent themselves with musk; to whom may well be applied the words of Petronius Arbiter, "too much perfume makes an ill perfume." [3764] I need not speak of those who by their pertinacious visits to virgins bring discredit both on themselves and on these; for, even if nothing wrong is done by them, no wrong can be imagined greater than to find oneself exposed to the calumnies and attacks of the heathen. I do not here speak of all, but only of those whom the church itself rebukes, whom sometimes it expels, and against whom the censure of bishops and presbyters is not seldom directed. For, as it is, it is almost more dangerous for giddy girls to shew themselves in the abodes of religion than even to walk abroad. Virgins who live in communities and of whom large numbers are assembled together, should never go out by themselves or unaccompanied by their mother. [3765] A hawk often singles out one of a flight of doves, pounces on it and tears it open till it is gorged with its flesh and blood. Sick sheep stray from the flock and fall into the jaws of wolves. I know some saintly virgins who on holy days keep at home to avoid the crowds and refuse to go out when they must either take a strong escort, or altogether avoid all public places.
It is about thirty years since I published a treatise on the preservation of virginity, [3766] in which I felt constrained to oppose certain vices and to lay bare the wiles of the devil for the instruction of the virgin to whom it was addressed. My language then gave offence to a great many, for everyone applied what I said to himself and instead of welcoming my admonitions turned away from me as an accuser of his deeds. Was it any use, do you ask, thus to arm a host of remonstrants and to show by my complaints the wounds which my conscience received? Yes, I answer, for, while they have passed away, my book still remains. I have also written short exhortations to several virgins and widows, and in these smaller works I have gathered together all that there is to be said on the subject. So that I am reduced to the alternative of repeating exhortations which seem superfluous or of omitting them to the serious injury of this treatise. The blessed Cyprian has left a noble work on virginity; [3767] and many other writers, both Greek and Latin, have done the same. Indeed the virginal life has been praised both with tongue and pen among all nations and particularly among the churches. Most, however, of those who have written on the subject have addressed themselves to such as have not yet chosen virginity, and who need help to enable them to choose aright. But I and those to whom I write have made our choice; and our one object is to remain constant to it. Therefore, as our way lies among scorpions and adders, among snares and banes, let us go forward staff in hand, our loins girded and our feet shod; [3768] that so we may come to the sweet waters of the true Jordan, and enter the land of promise and go up to the house of God. Then shall we sing with the prophet: "Lord, I have loved the habitation of thy house and the place where thine honour dwelleth;" [3769] and again: "one thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life." [3770]
Happy is the soul, happy is the virgin in whose heart there is room for no other love than the love of Christ. For in Himself He is wisdom and chastity, patience and justice and every other virtue. Happy too is she who can recall a man's face without the least sigh of regret, and who has no desire to set eyes on one whom, after she has seen him, she may find herself unwilling to give up. Some there are, however, who by their ill-behaviour bring discredit on the holy profession of virginity and upon the glory of the heavenly and angelic company who have made it. These must be frankly told either to marry if they cannot contain, or to contain if they will not marry. It is also a matter for laughter or rather for tears, that when mistresses walk abroad they are preceded by maids better dressed than themselves; indeed so usual has this become that, if of two women you see one less neat than the other, you take her for the mistress as a matter of course. And yet these maids are professed virgins. Again not a few virgins choose sequestered dwellings where they will not be under the eyes of others, in order that they may live more freely than they otherwise could do. They take baths, do what they please, and try as much as they can to escape notice. We see these things and yet we put up with them; in fact, if we catch sight of the glitter of gold, we are ready to account of them as good works.
20. I end as I began, not content to have given you but a single warning. Love the holy scriptures, and wisdom will love you. Love wisdom, and it will keep you safe. Honour wisdom, and it will embrace you round about. [3771] Let the jewels on your breast and in your ears be the gems of wisdom. Let your tongue know no theme but Christ, let no sound pass your lips that is not holy, and let your words always reproduce that sweetness of which your grandmother and your mother set you the example. Imitate them, for they are models of virtue. __________________________________________________________________
[3615] Cicero in his Dialogue on the Republic. Cf. Or. xxx.
[3616] Rom. xii. 1.
[3617] Pontifex.
[3618] 2 Cor. xi. 2.
[3619] Ps. xlv. 9, 13, 14.
[3620] i.e. After receiving the veil.
[3621] Cant. i. 4.
[3622] Ps. xlv. 13.
[3623] 1 Cor. iii. 6.
[3624] In the year 395 a.d.
[3625] Which took place before the fall of Rome in 410 a.d.
[3626] Matt. xi. 8.
[3627] 2 Kings i. 8; Matt. iii. 4.
[3628] Matt. xi. 14; Luke i. 17.
[3629] Luke i. 41.
[3630] Matt. xi. 7-14. Jerome here borrows a phrase from Cyprian, de Op. et El. xv.
[3631] Luke ii. 36, 37.
[3632] Acts xxi. 9.
[3633] Esther xiv. 16.
[3634] A virgin 13 years old beheaded at Rome under Diocletian after vain efforts first made to overcome her faith by subjecting her to assault and outrage.
[3635] See § 7 for the cruelties of the Count Herælian.
[3636] Quam habitura pronubam?
[3637] Wedding songs so called from the place of their origin, Fescennia in Etruria. See Catullus LXI. for the several customs here mentioned.
[3638] 1 John iv. 18.
[3639] Eph. vi. 14-17.
[3640] Virg., A. ii. 774.
[3641] Over Hannibal, b.c. 216. Jerome is quoting from Cicero, Brutus, III.
[3642] The reference is to the siege of the Capitol by Brennus and the Gauls, b.c. 390.
[3643] See note on Letter LXXIX. § 7.
[3644] i.e. Juliana and Proba, the mother and grandmother of Demetrias.
[3645] Luke xvi. 9.
[3646] i.e. Olybrius, the father of Demetrias.
[3647] Horace, Carm. iii. 3. 7, 8.
[3648] Job i. 16.
[3649] Job vii. 1.
[3650] Matt. iv. 1, sqq.
[3651] Gen. xxii. 1.
[3652] Rom. v. 3-5.
[3653] Rom. viii. 35, 36.
[3654] Isa. xxviii. 9, 10, LXX.
[3655] Rom. viii. 18.
[3656] Heraclian, Count of Africa.
[3657] Honorius.
[3658] i.e. Pluto, king of the lower world.
[3659] Sabinus, the son-in-law of Heraclian.
[3660] Virg., A. x. 79.
[3661] Jerome here apostrophizes Heraclian.
[3662] Alaric the Goth.
[3663] Reading dedignatus for dignatus.
[3664] Virg., A. iii. 435.
[3665] Matt. xiii. 25.
[3666] Cant. iii. 1; i. 7.
[3667] Ps. lxiii. 8.
[3668] Jer. xvii. 16, LXX.
[3669] Nu. xxiii. 21, LXX.
[3670] i.e. The Indian Ocean.
[3671] Matt. viii. 12.
[3672] Joh. viii. 12.
[3673] Matt. v. 25, 26.
[3674] Matt. xii. 36.
[3675] Eccles. x. 4. Jerome takes the ruler' to be the devil.
[3676] Ps. xl. 2.
[3677] Ps. civ. 18.
[3678] Gen. iii. 16.
[3679] Cant. ii. 16.
[3680] Rev. xiv. 4.
[3681] Eccles. ix. 8.
[3682] Cant. ii. 1.
[3683] Matt. x. 23.
[3684] Ps. cxlii. 4.
[3685] Ps. civ. 18.
[3686] Isa. xi. 6-8.
[3687] Eccles. x. 4.
[3688] Prov. iv. 23.
[3689] Ps. xix. 12-14.
[3690] Ps. cxxxvii. 9.
[3691] Ps. xix. 13.
[3692] Nu. xiv. 18.
[3693] Amos i. 3.
[3694] Exod. xii. 23, 29.
[3695] Ps. lvii. 7, 8.
[3696] Isa. xxiii. 15, 16.
[3697] See Letter CXXII. § 4.
[3698] 1 Cor. ix. 27.
[3699] Rom. vii. 24, 18, 19.
[3700] Rom. viii. 8, 9.
[3701] Ps. lxix. 10.
[3702] Ps. cii. 9.
[3703] Ps. xxxv. 13, Vulg.
[3704] Deut. viii. 3.
[3705] Joh. xiii. 15; 1 Pet. ii. 21.
[3706] Matt. iv. 1.
[3707] Rom. xvi. 20.
[3708] Matt. iv. 3.
[3709] Lev. xxiii. 27, 29.
[3710] Job xl. 16. Cf. Letter XXII. § 11.
[3711] Jas. iii. 6, R.V. marg.
[3712] Hos. vii. 4, Vulg.
[3713] Eph. vi. 16.
[3714] Song of the Three Holy Children 24.
[3715] Dan. iv. 16, 25, 32.
[3716] Lev. xxv. 8.
[3717] Dan. iii. 25.
[3718] Acts ix. 15.
[3719] 1 Cor. vii. 25.
[3720] See Letter CVIII. § 20.
[3721] Meden 'agan quoted by Terence (Andria, 61).
[3722] Heb. xii. 14, R.V.
[3723] See Jerome's commentary on the parable.
[3724] Matt. xxv. 1-12.
[3725] See Letters XXII., LII., etc.
[3726] Luke ii. 51.
[3727] Sall. Cat. i. 20.
[3728] Heb. xiii. 4.
[3729] 1 Pet. v. 6.
[3730] 1 Pet. v. 5.
[3731] Rom. ix. 16.
[3732] Cf. Letter XXII. § 24.
[3733] The fragment of Lucilius (preserved by Cic. de Fin. V. 30) says nothing of Cato: possibly therefore the text is here corrupt. See for Cato Letter LII. § 3.
[3734] Ps. iv. 4, LXX.
[3735] Eph. iv. 26.
[3736] Eph. v. 5.
[3737] Matt. xix. 16, 21.
[3738] Luke xviii. 22. Cf. Letter CXIX. § 4.
[3739] Acts iv. 34, 35.
[3740] Acts v. 1-10.
[3741] A philosopher of the Neoplatonic school (fl. 232-300 a.d.). Of his books against Christianity only small fragments remain.
[3742] But see Letter LII. § 10.
[3743] Gal. vi. 10.
[3744] See note on Letter XXII. § 37.
[3745] Prov. xiii. 4, LXX. comp. Letter CXXV. § 11.
[3746] Anastasius was pope from 398 to 402 a.d.
[3747] That of the Origenists.
[3748] Rom. i. 8.
[3749] Virg. Ecl. iv. 60.
[3750] Ps. xix. 9.
[3751] Ps. xcii. 15.
[3752] Ps. lxxxiv. 6, R.V.
[3753] Ps. cxix. 67.
[3754] Ps. cxlii. 7.
[3755] John ix. 2.
[3756] A phrase borrowed from Cicero (p. Sext. Rosc.).
[3757] Apparently Letter CXXIV. concerning Origen's book on First Principles.
[3758] Cf. Letter CXXV. § 9.
[3759] Ps. lvii. 4.
[3760] Cf. Letters LIII. § 7, and LXVI. § 9.
[3761] Eph. iv. 14.
[3762] 2 Tim. iii. 7.
[3763] 1 Cor. xv. 33; the words are quoted from a lost comedy of Menander.
[3764] The words are not extant in Petronius but occur in Martial ii. 12. 4.
[3765] i.e. the head of the community.
[3766] Letter XXII. to Eustochium.
[3767] See Letter XXII. § 22 ante.
[3768] Exod. xii. 11.
[3769] Ps. xxvi. 8.
[3770] Ps. xxvii. 4.
[3771] Cf. Letter LII. § 3. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXXXI. From Augustine.
At the suggestion of Jerome, Marcellinus (for whom see Letter CXXVI.) had consulted Augustine on the difficult question of the origin of the soul but had failed to get any definite opinion from this latter. Augustine now writes to Jerome confessing his inability to decide the question and asking for advice upon it. He begins by reciting--and justifying--his own belief that the soul is immortal and incorporeal and that its fall into sin is due not to God but to its own free choice. He then goes on to say that he is quite ready to accept creationism as a solution of the difficulty if Jerome will shew him how this theory is reconcilable with the church's condemnation of Pelagius and its assertion of the doctrine of original sin. The damnation of unbaptized infants is assumed throughout.
The date of the letter is 415 a.d. Its number in the Letters of Augustine is CLXVI. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXXXII. From Augustine.
In this letter Augustine deals with the statement of James ii. 10 ("whosoever shall keep the whole law and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all") and explains it by saying that every breach of the law is a breach of love. He also takes occasion to criticise two doctrines of the schools then prevalent, (1) that all sins are equal and (2) that he who has one virtue has all and that all virtues are wanting to him who lacks one.
The date of the letter is 415 a.d. Its number in the Letters of Augustine is CLXVII. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXXXIII. To Ctesiphon.
Ctesiphon had written to Jerome for his opinion on two points in the teaching of Pelagius, (1) his quietism and (2) his denial of original sin. Jerome now refutes these two doctrines and points out that Pelagius has drawn them partly from the philosophers and partly from the heretics. He censures Rufinus, who had died 5 years before, for attributing to Sixtus bishop of Rome a book which is really the work of Xystus a Pythagorean, and for passing off as the composition of the martyr Pamphilus a panegyric of Origen really due to his friend Eusebius. In both these assertions, however, Jerome is more wrong than right. (See Prolegomena to the works of Rufinus.) The letter concludes with a promise to deal more fully with the heresy of Pelagius at some future time, a promise afterwards redeemed by the publication of a dialogue against the Pelagians.' The date of the letter is 415 a.d.
1. In acquainting me with the new controversy which has taken the place of the old you are wrong in thinking that you have acted rashly, for your conduct has been prompted by zeal and friendship. Already before the arrival of your letter many in the East have been deceived into a pride which apes humility and have said with the devil: "I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will be like the Most High." [3772] Can there be greater presumption than to claim not likeness to God but equality with Him, and so to compress into a few words the poisonous doctrines of all the heretics which in their turn flow from the statements of the philosophers, particularly of Pythagoras and Zeno the founder of the Stoic school? For those states of feeling which the Greeks call pathe and which we may describe as "passions," relating to the present or the future such as vexation and gladness, hope and fear,--these, they tell us, it is possible to root out of our minds; in fact all vice may be destroyed root and branch in man by meditation on virtue and constant practice of it. The position which they thus take up is vehemently assailed by the Peripatetics who trace themselves to Aristotle, and by the new Academics of whom Cicero is a disciple; and these overthrow not the facts of their opponents--for they have no facts--but the shadows and wishes which do duty for them. To maintain such a doctrine is to take man's nature from him, to forget that he is constituted of body as well as soul, to substitute mere wishes for sound teaching. [3773] For the apostle says:--"O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" [3774] But as I cannot say all that I wish in a short letter I will briefly touch on the points that you must avoid. Virgil writes:--
Thus mortals fear and hope, rejoice and grieve,
And shut in darkness have no sight of heaven. [3775]
For who can escape these feelings? Must we not all clap our hands when we are joyful, and shrink at the approach of sorrow? Must not hope always animate us and fear put us in terror? So in one of his Satires the poet Horace, whose words are so weighty, writes:
From faults no mortal is completely free;
He that has fewest is the perfect man. [3776]
2. Well does one of our own writers [3777] say: "the philosophers are the patriarchs of the heretics." It is they who have stained with their perverse doctrine the spotlessness of the Church, not knowing that of human weakness it is said: "Why is earth and ashes proud?" [3778] So likewise the apostle: "I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into captivity"; [3779] and again, "The good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not that I do." [3780] Now if Paul does what he wills not, what becomes of the assertion that a man may be without sin if he will? Given the will, how is it to have its way when the apostle tells us that he has no power to do what he wishes? Moreover if we ask them who the persons are whom they regard as sinless they seek to veil the truth by a new subterfuge. They do not, they say, profess that men are or have been without sin; all that they maintain is that it is possible for them to be so. Remarkable teachers truly, who maintain that a thing may be which on their own shewing, never has been; whereas the scripture says:--"The thing which shall be, it is that which hath been already of old time." [3781]
I need not go through the lives of the saints or call attention to the moles and spots which mark the fairest skins. Many of our writers, it is true, unwisely, take this course; however, a few sentences of scripture will dispose alike of the heretics and the philosophers. What says the chosen vessel? "God had concluded all in unbelief that he might have mercy upon all;" [3782] and in another place, "all have sinned and come short of the glory of God." [3783] The preacher also who is the mouthpiece of the Divine Wisdom freely protests and says: "there is not a just man upon earth, that doeth good and sinneth not:" [3784] and again, "if thy people sin against thee, for there is no man that sinneth not:" [3785] and "who can say, I have made my heart clean?" [3786] and "none is clean from stain, not even if his life on earth has been but for one day." David insists on the same thing when he says: "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me;" [3787] and in another psalm, "in thy sight shall no man living be justified." [3788] This last passage they try to explain away from motives of reverence, arguing that the meaning is that no man is perfect in comparison with God. Yet the scripture does not say: "in comparison with thee shall no man living be justified" but "in thy sight shall no man living be justified." And when it says "in thy sight" it means that those who seem holy to men to God in his fuller knowledge are by no means holy. For "man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart." [3789] But if in the sight of God who sees all things and to whom the secrets of the heart lie open [3790] no man is just; then these heretics instead of adding to man's dignity, clearly take away from God's power. I might bring together many other passages of scripture of the same import; but were I to do so, I should exceed the limits I will not say of a letter but of a volume.
3. It is with no new doctrines that in their self-applauding perfidy they deceive the simple and untaught. They cannot, however, deceive theologians who meditate in the law of the Lord day and night. [3791] Let those blush then for their leaders and companions who say that a man may be "without sin" if he will, or, as the Greeks term it anamartetos , "sinless." As such a statement sounds intolerable to the Eastern churches, they profess indeed only to say that a man may be "without sin" and do not presume to allege that he may be "sinless" as well. As if, forsooth, "sinless" and "without sin" had different meanings; whereas the only difference between them is that Latin requires two words to express what Greek gives in one. If you adopt "without sin" and reject "sinless," then condemn the preachers of sinlessness. But this you cannot do. You know [3792] very well what it is that you teach your pupils in private; and that while you say one thing with your lips you engrave another on your heart. To us, ignorant outsiders you speak in parables; but to your own followers you avow your secret meaning. And for this you claim the authority of scripture which says: "to the multitudes Jesus spake in parables;" but to his own disciples He said: "it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given." [3793]
But to return; I will shortly set forth the names of your leaders and companions to shew you who those are of whose fellowship you make your boast. Manichæus says of his elect--whom he places among Plato's orbits in heaven--that they are free from all sin, and cannot sin even if they will. To so great heights have they attained in virtue that they laugh at the works of the flesh. Then there is Priscillian in Spain whose infamy makes him as bad as Manichæus, and whose disciples profess a high esteem for you. These are rash enough to claim for themselves the twofold credit of perfection and wisdom. Yet they shut themselves up alone with women and justify their sinful embraces by quoting the lines:
The almighty father takes the earth to wife;
Pouring upon her fertilizing rain,
That from her womb new harvest he may reap. [3794]
These heretics have affinities with Gnosticism which may be traced to the impious teaching of Basilides. [3795] It is from him that you derive the assertion that without knowledge of the law it is impossible to avoid sin. But why do I speak of Priscillian who has been condemned by the whole world and put to death by the secular sword? [3796] Evagrius [3797] of Ibera in Pontus who sends letters to virgins and monks and among others to her whose name bears witness to the blackness of her perfidy, [3798] has published a book of maxims on apathy, or, as we should say, impassivity or imperturbability; a state in which the mind ceases to be agitated and--to speak simply--becomes either a stone or a God. His work is widely read, in the East in Greek and in the West in a Latin translation made by his disciple Rufinus. [3799] He has also written a book which professes to be about monks and includes in it many not monks at all whom he declares to have been Origenists, and who have certainly been condemned by the bishops. I mean Ammonius, Eusebius, Euthymius, [3800] Evagrius himself, Horus, [3801] Isidorus, [3802] and many others whom it would be tedious to enumerate. He is careful, however, to do as the physicians, of whom Lucretius says: [3803]
To children bitter wormwood still they give
In cups with juice of sweetest honey smeared.
That is to say, he has set in the forefront of his book John, [3804] an undoubted Catholic and saint, by his means to introduce to the church the heretics mentioned farther on. But who can adequately characterize the rashness or madness which has led him to ascribe a book of the Pythagorean philosopher Xystus, [3805] a heathen who knew nothing of Christ, to Sixtus [3806] a martyr and bishop of the Roman church? In this work the subject of perfection is discussed at length in the light of the Pythagorean doctrine which makes man equal with God and of one substance with Him. Thus many not knowing that its author was a philosopher and supposing that they are reading the words of a martyr, drink of the golden cup of Babylon. Moreover in its pages there is no mention of prophets, patriarchs, apostles, or of Christ; so that according to Rufinus [3807] there has been a bishop and a martyr who had nothing to do with Christ. Such is the book from which you and your followers quote passages against the church. In the same way he played fast and loose with the name of the holy martyr Pamphilus ascribing to him the first of the six books in defence of Origen written by Eusebius of Cæsarea [3808] who is admitted by every body to have been an Arian. His object in doing so was of course to commend to Latin ears Origen's four wonderful books about First Principles.
Would you have me name another of your masters in heresy? Much of your teaching is traceable to Origen. For, to give one instance only, when he comments on the psalmist's words: "My reins also instruct me in the night season," [3809] he maintains that when a holy man like yourself has reached perfection, he is free even at night from human infirmity and is not tempted by evil thoughts. You need not blush to avow yourself a follower of these men; it is of no use to disclaim their names when you adopt their blasphemies. Moreover, your teaching corresponds to Jovinian's second position. [3810] You must, therefore, take the answer which I have given to him as equally applicable to yourself. Where men's opinions are the same their destinies can hardly be different.
4. Such being the state of the case, what object is served by "silly women laden with sins, carried about with every wind of doctrine, ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth?" [3811] Or how is the cause helped by the men who dance attendance upon these, men with itching ears [3812] who know neither how to hear nor how to speak? They confound old mire with new cement and, as Ezekiel says, daub a wall with untempered mortar; so that, when the truth comes in a shower, they are brought to nought. [3813] It was with the help of the harlot Helena that Simon Magus founded his sect. [3814] Bands of women accompanied Nicolas of Antioch that deviser of all uncleanness. [3815] Marcion sent a woman before him to Rome to prepare men's minds to fall into his snares. [3816] Apelles possessed in Philumena an associate in his false doctrines. [3817] Montanus, that mouthpiece of an unclean spirit, used two rich and high born ladies Prisca and Maximilla first to bribe and then to pervert many churches. [3818] Leaving ancient history I will pass to times nearer to our own. Arius intent on leading the world astray began by misleading the Emperor's sister. [3819] The resources of Lucilla helped Donatus to defile with his polluting baptism many unhappy persons throughout Africa. [3820] In Spain the blind woman Agape led the blind man Elpidius into the ditch. [3821] He was followed by Priscillian, an enthusiastic votary of Zoroaster and a magian before he became a bishop. A woman named Galla seconded his efforts and left a gadabout sister to perpetuate a second heresy of a kindred form. [3822] Now also the mystery of iniquity is working. [3823] Men and women in turn lay snares for each other till we cannot but recall the prophet's words: "the partridge hath cried aloud, she hath gathered young which she hath not brought forth, she getteth riches and not by right; in the midst of her days she shall leave them, and at her end she shall be a fool." [3824]
5. The better to deceive men they have added to the maxim given above [3825] the saving clause "but not without the grace of God;" and this may at the first blush take in some readers. However, when it is carefully sifted and considered, it can deceive nobody. For while they acknowledge the grace of God, they tell us that our acts do not depend upon His help. Rather, they understand by the grace of God free will and the commandments of the Law. They quote Isaiah's words: "God hath given the law to aid men," [3826] and say that we ought to thank Him for having created us such that of our own free will we can choose the good and avoid the evil. Nor do they see that in alleging this the devil uses their lips to hiss out an intolerable blasphemy. For if God's grace is limited to this that He has formed us with wills of our own, and if we are to rest content with free will, not seeking the divine aid lest this should be impaired, we should cease to pray; for we cannot entreat God's mercy to give us daily what is already in our hands having been given to us once for all. Those who think thus make prayer impossible and boast that free will makes them not merely controllers of themselves but as powerful as God. For they need no external help. Away with fasting, away with every form of self-restraint! For why need I strive to win by toil what has once for all been placed within my reach? The argument that I am using is not mine; it is that put forward by a disciple of Pelagius, or rather one who is the teacher and commander of his whole army. [3827] This man, who is the opposite of Paul for he is a vessel of perdition, roams through thickets--not, as his partisans say, of syllogisms, but of solecisms, and theorizes thus: "If I do nothing without the help of God and if all that I do is His act, I cease to labour and the crown that I shall win will belong not to me but to the grace of God. It is idle for Him to have given me the power of choice if I cannot use it without His constant help. For will that requires external support ceases to be will. God has given me freedom of choice, but what becomes of this if I cannot do as I wish?" Accordingly he propounds the following dilemma: "Either once for all I use the power which is given to me, and so preserve the freedom of my will; or I need the help of another, in which case the freedom of my will is wholly abrogated."
6. Surely the man who says this is no ordinary blasphemer; the poison of his heresy is no common poison. Since our wills are free, they argue, we are no longer dependent upon God; and they forget the Apostle's words "what hast thou that thou didst not receive? Now if thou didst receive it why dost thou glory as if thou hadst not received it?" [3828] A nice return, truly, does a man make to God when to assert the freedom of his will he rebels against Him! For our parts we gladly embrace this freedom, but we never forget to thank the Giver; knowing that we are powerless unless He continually preserves in us His own gift. As the apostle says, "it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy." [3829] To will and to run are mine, but they will cease to be mine unless God brings me His continual aid. For the same apostle says "it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do." [3830] And in the Gospel the Saviour says: "my Father worketh hitherto and I work." [3831] He is always a giver, always a bestower. It is not enough for me that he has given me grace once; He must give it me always. I seek that I may obtain, and when I have obtained I seek again. I am covetous of God's bounty; and as He is never slack in giving, so I am never weary in receiving. The more I drink, the more I thirst. For I have read the song of the psalmist: "O taste and see that the Lord is good." [3832] Every good thing that we have is a tasting of the Lord. When I fancy myself to have finished the book of virtue, I shall then only be at the beginning. For "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom," [3833] and this fear is in its turn cast out by love. [3834] Men are only perfect so far as they know themselves to be imperfect. "So likewise ye," Christ says, "when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do." [3835] If he is unprofitable who has done all, what must we say of him who has failed to do so? This is why the Apostle declares that he has attained in part and apprehended in part, that he is not yet perfect, and that forgetting those things which are behind he reaches forth unto those things which are before. [3836] Now he who always forgets the past and longs for the future shews that he is not content with the present.
They are for ever objecting to us that we destroy free will. Nay, we reply, it is you who destroy it; for you use it amiss and disown the bounty of its Giver. Which really destroys freedom? the man who thanks God always and traces back his own tiny rill to its source in Him? or the man who says: "come not near to me, for I am holy; [3837] I have no need of Thee. Thou hast given me once for all freedom of choice to do as I wish. Why then dost Thou interfere again to prevent me from doing anything unless Thou Thyself first makest Thy gifts effective in me?" To such an one I would say: "your profession of belief in God's grace is insincere. For you explain this of the state in which man has been created and you do not look for God to help him in his actions. To do this, you argue, would be to surrender human freedom. Thus disdaining the aid of God you have to look to men for help."
7. Listen, only listen, to the blasphemer. "Suppose," he avers, "that I want to bend my finger or to move my hand, to sit, to stand, to walk, to run to and fro, to spit or to blow my nose, to perform the offices of nature; must the help of God be always indispensable to me?" Thankless, nay blasphemous wretch, hear the apostle's declaration: "whether therefore ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God." [3838] Hear also the words of James: "go to now, ye that say, To-day or to-morrow we will go into such a city and continue there a year, and buy, and sell, and get gain. Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow: for what is your life? It is even a vapour that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this or that. But now ye rejoice in your boastings; all such rejoicing is evil." [3839] You fancy that a wrong is inflicted on you and your freedom of choice is destroyed if you are forced to fall back on God as the moving cause of all your actions, if you are made dependent on His Will, and if you have to echo the psalmist's words: "mine eyes are ever toward the Lord: for it is he that shall pluck my feet out of the net." [3840] And so you presume rashly to maintain that each individual is governed by his own choice. But if he is governed by his own choice, what becomes of God's help? If he does not need Christ to rule him, why does Jeremiah write: "the way of man is not in himself" [3841] and "the Lord directeth his steps." [3842]
You say that the commandments of God are easy, and yet you cannot produce any one who has fulfilled them all. Answer me this: are they easy or are they difficult? If they are easy, then produce some one who has fulfilled them all. Explain also the words of the psalmist: "thou dost cause toil by thy law," [3843] and "because of the words of thy lips I have kept hard ways." [3844] And make plain our Lord's sayings in the gospel: "enter ye in at the strait gate;" [3845] and "love your enemies;" and "pray for them which persecute you." [3846] If on the other hand the commandments are difficult and if no man has kept them all, how have you presumed to say that they are easy? Do not you see that you contradict yourself? For either they are easy and countless numbers have kept them; or they are difficult and you have been too hasty in calling them easy.
8. It is a common argument with your party to say that God's commandments are either possible or impossible. So far as they are the former you admit that they are rightly laid upon us; but so far as they are the latter you allege that blame attaches not to us who have received them but to God who has imposed them on us. What! has God commanded me to be what He is, [3847] to put no difference between myself and my creator, to be greater than the greatest of the angels, to have a power which no angels possess? Sinlessness is made a characteristic of Christ, "who did no sin neither was guile found in his mouth." [3848] But if I am sinless as well as He, how is sinlessness any longer His distinguishing mark? for if this distinction exists, your theory becomes fatal to itself.
You assert that a man may be without sin if he will; and then, as though awakening from a deep sleep, you try to deceive the unwary by adding the saving clause "yet not without the grace of God." For if by his own efforts a man can keep himself without sin, what need has he of God's grace? If on the other hand he can do nothing without this, what is the use of saying that he can do what he cannot do? It is argued that a man may be without sin and perfect if he only wills it. What Christian is there who does not wish to be sinless or who would reject perfection if, as you say, it is to be had for the wishing, and if the will is sure to be followed by the power? There is no Christian who does not wish to be sinless; wishing to be so, therefore, they all will be so. Whether you like it or not you will be caught in this dilemma, that you can produce nobody or hardly anybody who is without sin, yet have to admit that everybody may be sinless if he likes. God's commandments, it is argued, are possible to keep. Who denies it? But how this truth is to be understood the chosen vessel thus most clearly explains: "what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh;" [3849] and again: "by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified." [3850] And to shew that it is not only the law of Moses that is meant or all those precepts which collectively are termed the law, the same apostle writes: "I delight in the law of God after the inward man. But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am: who shall deliver me from the body of this death? The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord." [3851] Other words of his further explain his meaning: "we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin. For that which I do I know [3852] not: for what I would that do I not, but what I hate that do I. If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good. Now then it is no more I that do it: but sin that dwelleth in me. For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) dwelleth no good thing. For to will is present with me: but how to perform that which is good I find not. For the good that I would, I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me." [3853]
9. But you will demur to this and say that I follow the teaching [3854] of the Manichæans and others who make war against the church's doctrine in the interest of their belief that there are two natures diverse from one another and that there is an evil nature which can in no wise be changed. But it is not against me that you must make this imputation but against the apostle who knows well that God is one thing and man another, that the flesh is weak and the spirit strong. [3855] "The flesh lusteth against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would." [3856] But from me you will never hear that any nature is essentially evil. Let us learn then from him who tells us so in what sense the flesh is weak. Ask him why he has said: "the good that I would, I do not; the evil which I would not, that I do." [3857] What necessity fetters his will? What compulsion commands him to do what he dislikes? And why must he do not what he wishes but what he dislikes and does not wish? He will answer you thus: "nay, but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say unto him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus? Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour and another unto dishonour?" [3858] Bring a yet graver charge against God and ask Him why, when Esau and Jacob were still in the womb, He said: "Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated." [3859] Accuse Him of injustice because, when Achan the son of Carmi stole part of the spoil of Jericho, He butchered so many thousands for the fault of one. [3860] Ask Him why for the sin of the sons of Eli the people were well-nigh annihilated and the ark captured. [3861] And why, when David sinned by numbering the people, so many thousands lost their lives. [3862] Or lastly make your own the favorite cavil of your associate Porphyry, and ask how God can be described as pitiful and of great mercy when from Adam to Moses and from Moses to the coming of Christ He has suffered all nations to die in ignorance of the Law and of His commandments. [3863] For Britain, that province so fertile in despots, the Scottish tribes, and all the barbarians round about as far as the ocean were alike without knowledge of Moses and the prophets. Why should Christ's coming have been delayed to the last times? Why should He not have come before so vast a number had perished? Of this last question the blessed apostle in writing to the Romans most wisely disposes by admitting that he does not know and that only God does. Do you too, then, condescend to remain ignorant of that into which you inquire. Leave to God His power over what is His own; He does not need you to justify His actions. I am the hapless being against whom you ought to direct your insults, I who am for ever reading the words: "by grace ye are saved," [3864] and "blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered." [3865] Yet, to lay bare my own weakness, I know that I wish to do many things which I ought to do and yet cannot. For while my spirit is strong and leads me to life my flesh is weak and draws me to death. And I have the warning of the Lord in my ears: "watch and pray that ye enter not into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." [3866]
10. It is in vain that you misrepresent me and try to convince the ignorant that I condemn free will. Let him who condemns it be himself condemned. We have been created endowed with free will; still it is not this which distinguishes us from the brutes. For human free will, as I have said before, depends upon the help of God and needs His aid moment by moment, a thing which you and yours do not choose to admit. Your position is that, if a man once has free will, he no longer needs the help of God. It is true that freedom of the will brings with it freedom of decision. Still man does not act immediately on his free will, but requires God's aid who Himself needs no aid. You yourself boast that a man's righteousness may be perfect and equal to God's; yet you confess that you are a sinner. Answer me this, then; do you or do you not wish to be free from sin? If you do, why on your principle do you not carry out your desire? And if you do not, do you not prove yourself a despiser of God's commandments? If you are a despiser, then you are a sinner. And if you are a sinner, then the scripture says: "unto the wicked God saith, what hast thou to do to declare my statutes, or that thou shouldest take my covenant in thy mouth? seeing thou hatest instruction and castest my words behind thee." [3867] So long as you are unwilling to do what God commands, so long do you cast His words behind you. And yet like a new apostle you lay down for the world what to do and what not to do. However, your words and your thoughts by no means correspond. For when you say that you are a sinner--yet that a man may be without sin if he will, you wish it to be understood that you are a saint and free from all sin. It is only out of humility [3868] that you call yourself a sinner; to give you a chance of praising others while you depreciate yourself.
11. Another of your arguments is also intolerable, one which runs thus: "To be sinless is one thing, to be able to be so is another. The first is not in our power, the second generally is. For though none ever has been sinless, yet, if a man wills to be so, he can be so." What sort of reasoning, I ask, is this? that a man can be what a man never has been! that a thing is possible which according to your own admission, no man has yet achieved! You are predicating of man a quality which, for aught you know, he may never possess! and you are assigning to any chance person a grace which you cannot shew to have marked patriarchs, prophets, or apostles. Listen to the Church's words, plain as they may seem to you or crude or ignorant. And speak what you think; preach publicly what secretly you tell your disciples. You profess to have freedom of choice; why do you not speak your thoughts freely? Your secret chambers hear one doctrine, the crowd around the platform hear another. The uneducated throng, I suppose, is not able to digest your esoteric teaching. Satisfied with the milk-diet of an infant it cannot take solid food. [3869]
I have written nothing yet, and still you menace me with the thunders of a reply; hoping, I suppose, that I may be scared by your terrors and may not venture to open my mouth. You fail to see that my purpose in writing is to force you to answer and to commit yourself plainly to doctrines which at present you maintain or ignore, as time, place, and person require. One kind of freedom I must deny to you, the freedom to deny what you have once written. An open avowal on your part of the opinions that you hold will be a victory for the church. For either the language of your reply will correspond to mine, in which case I shall count you no longer as opponents but as friends; or else you will gainsay my doctrine, in which case the making known of your opinion to all the churches will be a triumph for me. To have brought your tenets to light is to have overcome them. Blasphemy is written on the face of them, and a doctrine, which in its very statement is blasphemous, needs no refutation. You threaten me with a reply, but this nobody can escape except the man who does not write at all. How do you know what I am going to say that you talk of a reply? Perhaps I shall take your view and then you will have sharpened your wits to no purpose. Eunomians, Arians, Macedonians--all these, unlike in name, alike in impiety, give me no trouble. For they say what they think. Yours is the only heresy which blushes openly to maintain what secretly it does not fear to teach. But the frenzy of the disciples exposes the silence of the masters; for what they have heard from them in the closet they preach upon the housetop. If their auditors like what they say, their masters get the credit; and if they dislike it, only the disciples are blamed, the masters go free. In this way your heresy has grown and you have deceived many; especially those who cleave to women and are assured that they cannot sin. You are always teaching, you are always denying; you deserve to have the prophet's words applied to you: "give to them glory, O Lord, when they are in travail and in the throes of labour. Give them, O Lord; what wilt thou give? Give them a miscarrying womb and dry breasts." [3870] My temper rises and I cannot check my words. The limits of a letter do not admit of a lengthy discussion. I assail nobody by name here. It is only against the teacher of perverse doctrine that I have spoken. If resentment shall induce him to reply, he will but betray himself like a mouse which always leaves traces of its presence; and, when it comes to blows in earnest, will receive more serious wounds.
12. From my youth up until now I have spent many years in writing various works and have always tried to teach my hearers the doctrine that I have been taught publicly in church. I have not followed the philosophers in their discussions but have preferred to acquiesce in the plain words of the apostles. For I have known that it is written: "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent," [3871] and "the foolishness of God is wiser than men." [3872] This being the case, I challenge my opponents thoroughly to sift all my past writings and, if they can find anything that is faulty in them, to bring it to light. One of two things must happen. Either my works will be found edifying and I shall confute the false charges brought against me; or they will be found blameworthy and I shall confess my error. For I would sooner correct an error than persevere in an opinion proved to be wrong. And as for you, illustrious doctor, go you and do likewise: either defend the statements that you have made, and support your clever theories with corresponding eloquence, and do not when the whim takes you disown your own words; or if, as a man may do, you have made a mistake, confess it frankly and restore harmony where there has been disagreement. Recall to mind how even the soldiers did not rend the coat of the Saviour. [3873] When you see brothers at strife you laugh; and are glad that some are called by your name and others by that of Christ. Better would it be to imitate Jonah and say: "If it is for my sake that this great tempest is upon you, take me up and cast me forth into the sea." [3874] He in his humility was thrown into the deep that he might rise again in glory to be a type of the Lord. [3875] But you are lifted up in your pride to the stars, only that of you too Jesus may say: "I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven." [3876]
13. It is true that in the holy scriptures many are called righteous, as Zacharias and Elizabeth, Job, Jehosaphat, Josiah, and many others who are mentioned in the sacred writings. Of this fact I shall, if God gives me grace, give a full explanation in the work which I have promised [3877] ; in this letter it must suffice to say that they are called righteous, not because they are faultless but because their faults are eclipsed by their virtues. [3878] In fact Zacharias is punished with dumbness, [3879] Job is condemned out of his own mouth, [3880] and Jehoshaphat and Josiah who are beyond a doubt described as righteous are narrated to have done things displeasing to the Lord. The first leagued himself with the ungodly Ahab and brought upon himself the rebuke of Micaiah; [3881] and the second--though forbidden by the word of the Lord spoken by Jeremiah--went against Pharaoh-Nechoh, king of Egypt, and was slain by him. [3882] Yet they are both called righteous. Of the rest this is not the time to write; for you have asked me not for a treatise but for a letter. For a complete refutation I require leisure and then I hope to destroy all their cavils by the help of Christ. For this purpose I shall rely on the holy scriptures in which God every day speaks to those who believe. And this is the warning which I would give through you to all who are assembled within your holy and illustrious house, that they should not allow one or at the most three mannikins to taint them with the dregs of so many heresies and with the infamy--to say the least--attaching to them. A place once famous for virtue and holiness must not be defiled by the presumption of the devil and by unclean associations. And let those who supply money to such men know that they are adding to the ranks of the heretics, raising up enemies to Christ and fostering his avowed opponents. It is idle for them to profess one thing with their lips when by their actions they are proved to think another. __________________________________________________________________
[3772] Isa. xiv. 13, 14.
[3773] Cf. Letter LXXIX. § 9.
[3774] Rom. vii. 24.
[3775] Virgil, Æneid, vi. 733, 734.
[3776] Horace, Sat. I. iii. 68, 69.
[3777] Tertullian, against Hermogenes, c. ix.
[3778] Ecclus. x. 9.
[3779] Rom. vii. 23.
[3780] Rom. vii. 19.
[3781] Eccles. i. 9. Jerome inverts the words of the Preacher.
[3782] Rom. xi. 32.
[3783] Rom. iii. 23.
[3784] Eccles. vii. 20.
[3785] 1 Kings viii. 46.
[3786] Prov. xx. 9.
[3787] Ps. li. 5.
[3788] Ps. cxliii. 2.
[3789] 1 Sam. xvi. 7.
[3790] Ps. xliv. 21; Heb. iv. 13.
[3791] Ps. i. 2.
[3792] Jerome here addresses Pelagius.
[3793] Matt. xiii. 3, 11.
[3794] Virgil, Georg. ii. 325-327.
[3795] See note on Letter LXXV. § 3.
[3796] He was condemned by a council at Saragossa in 380-381 a.d. and was put to death by Maximus at Trêves in 385 a.d. at the instigation of the Spanish bishops. Martin of Tours tried to save his life in vain.
[3797] According to Sozomen (H. E. vi. c. 30) Evagrius was in his youth befriended by Gregory of Nyssa, who left him in Constantinople to assist Nectarius in dealing with theological questions. Being in danger, both as to his chastity and as to his personal safety on account of an acquaintance he had formed with a lady of rank, he withdrew to Jerusalem, where he was nursed through a severe illness by Melanium. The rest of his life he spent as an ascetic in the Egyptian desert. See also Pallad. Hist. Laus., § lxxxvi.
[3798] Viz., Melanium, who having sided with Rufinus in his controversy with Jerome, incurred the latter's displeasure. The name means black.' See Letter IV. § 2.
[3799] Viz., Rufinus of Aquileia, Jerome's former friend.
[3800] These three were known as the long brothers.' Their expulsion from Egypt by Theophilus was one of the causes which led to the downfall of John of Chrysostom.
[3801] A contemporary Egyptian monk of great celebrity.
[3802] See Letter XCII. and note.
[3803] Lucretius, i. 935-937.
[3804] Viz., John of Lycopolis, an Egyptian hermit of the latter half of the fourth century. His reputation for sanctity was only second to that of Antony. The book about monks here spoken of does not occur in the list of the writings of Evagrius in the Dict. of Chr. Biog., taken from Socrates, Gennadius and Palladius. Rufinus' History of the Monks bears a close affinity to the Historia Lausiaca of Palladius, who was closely allied to Evagrius; and it is possible that Jerome may have attributed Palladius' work to Evagrius. See Prolegomena to Rufinus, and comp. Ruf. Hist. Mon. i. with Pall. Hist. Laus., xliii.
[3805] In his references (here and in his comm. on Jeremiah, book iv., ch. 22) to the Gnomes of Sixtus or Xystus, Jerome is both inaccurate and unfair. For Rufinus merely states that the author was traditionally identified with Sixtus, bishop of Rome and martyr; and he does not endorse the statement. In its present form the book is so strongly Christian in tone and language that it is strange to find it described as Christless and heathen. Of its origin nothing certain is known, but probably it is "the production of an early Christian philosopher working up heathen material with a leaven of the Gospel" (Dict. Chr. Biog. s. v. Xystus).
[3806] It is not clear which Sixtus is meant. Sixtus I. is not known to have been a martyr and Sixtus II. can hardly be intended. For though his claim to the title is undisputed he can scarcely have written what Origen already quotes as well known.
[3807] Jerome elsewhere twits Rufinus with the same mistake (see Comm. on Jer., book iv., ch. 22). He was not, however, alone in making it, for even Augustine was for a time similarly deceived (see his Retractations, ii. 42).
[3808] Cf. Against Rufinus, i. 8, 9. There is now no doubt that Jerome was wrong and Rufinus right as to the authorship of the book. See the article entitled Eusebius in the Dict. of Christian Biog. and the prolegomena to his works as issued in this series.
[3809] Ps. xvi. 7 and Origen's Comm. ad loc.
[3810] See Against Jovinian, book ii. 1. His second position is that "persons baptized with water and the spirit cannot be tempted of the devil."
[3811] Eph. iv. 14; 2 Tim. iii. 6, 7.
[3812] 2 Tim. iv. 3.
[3813] Ezek. xiii. 10-16.
[3814] This legendary companion and disciple of Simon Magus is said to have been identified by him with Helen of Troy. According to Justin Martyr she had been a prostitute at Tyre.
[3815] Cf. Epiphanius, Adv. Hær. lib. i. tom. ii, p. 76, ed. Migne.
[3816] Jerome is alone in speaking of this emissary. It has been suggested that he may have had in mind the gnostic Marcellina, who came to Rome during the episcopate of Anicetus.
[3817] Apelles, the most famous of the disciples of Marcion, lived and taught mainly at Rome. Philumena was a clairvoyante whose revelations he regarded as inspired.
[3818] See Letter XLI.
[3819] Constantia, sister of Constantine the Great.
[3820] Lucilla, a wealthy lady of Carthage, having been condemned by its bishop Cæcilianus, is said to have procured his deposition by bribing his fellow-bishops.
[3821] Agape, a Spanish lady, was a disciple of the gnostic Marcus of Memphis (cf. Letter LXXV. § 3). She was thus one of the links between the gnosticism of the East and the Priscillianism of Spain. Elpidius was a rhetorician who spread in Spain the Zoroastrian opinions which culminated in Priscillianism.
[3822] Of these sisters nothing further is known.
[3823] 2 Th. ii. 7.
[3824] Jer. xvii. 11, Vulg.
[3825] Viz., "A man may be without sin." See for this and the other statements of Pelagius, Aug. de Gestis Pelagii, esp. c. 2 and 6. Jerome's Anti-Pelagian Dialogue takes these words as containing the essence of Pelagianism.
[3826] Isa. viii. 20, LXX.
[3827] Celestius is meant, after Pelagius the principal champion of free will.
[3828] 1 Cor. iv. 7.
[3829] Rom. ix. 16.
[3830] Phil. ii. 13.
[3831] John v. 17.
[3832] Ps. xxxiv. 8.
[3833] Ps. cxi. 10.
[3834] 1 Joh. iv. 18.
[3835] Luke xvii. 10.
[3836] Phil. iii. 12, 13.
[3837] Isa. lxv. 5, LXX.
[3838] 1 Cor. x. 31.
[3839] Jas. iv. 13-16.
[3840] Ps. xxv. 15.
[3841] Jer. x. 23.
[3842] Prov. xvi. 9.
[3843] Ps. xciv. 20, LXX and Vulg.
[3844] Ps. xvii. 4, LXX.
[3845] Matt. vii. 13.
[3846] Matt. v. 44.
[3847] autarkes, self-determined.
[3848] 1 Pet. ii. 22.
[3849] Rom. viii. 3.
[3850] Rom. iii. 20.
[3851] Rom. vii. 22-25. In the Latin as in the Greek one word does duty for grace' and thanks.'
[3852] R.V.
[3853] Rom. vii. 14-20.
[3854] This is the well known dualism of Manes (Manichæus), who held that the physical world and the human body are essentially evil.
[3855] cf. Matt. xxvi. 41.
[3856] Gal. v. 17.
[3857] Rom. vii. 19.
[3858] Rom. ix. 20, 21.
[3859] Mal. i. 2, 3; Rom. ix. 13.
[3860] Josh. vii.
[3861] 1 Sam. iv.
[3862] 2 Sam. xxiv.
[3863] This objection is dealt with at length by Augustine (Letter CXI. §§ 8-15. See Vol. I. Series I. of this Library).
[3864] Eph. ii. 5.
[3865] Ps. xxxii. 1.
[3866] Matt. xxvi. 41.
[3867] Ps. l. 16, 17.
[3868] Or rather, mock humility.
[3869] cf. 1 Cor. iii. 2.
[3870] Hos. ix. 11, 14, partly after the LXX., partly from memory.
[3871] Isa. xxix. 14, as quoted by Paul, 1 Cor. i. 19.
[3872] 1 Cor. i. 25.
[3873] Joh. xix. 23, 24.
[3874] Jon. i. 12.
[3875] Matt. xii. 39, 40.
[3876] Luke x. 18.
[3877] The Anti-Pelagian Dialogue, to which this letter is a kind of prelude.
[3878] Cf. Letter CXXIII. § 3.
[3879] Luke i. 20-22.
[3880] Job xlii. 6.
[3881] 1 Kings xxii. 19.
[3882] 2 Chr. xxxv. 20-24. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXXXIV. To Augustine.
Jerome acknowledges the receipt of Letters CXXXI. and CXXXII. and excuses himself from answering the questions raised in them on the twofold ground (1) that the times are evil and (2) that it is inexpedient that he should be supposed to differ from Augustine. He prays for the speedy extinction of Pelagianism, regrets that he cannot send Augustine a critical Latin text of the O.T., and concludes with a number of salutations from himself and those with him. The date of the letter is 416 a.d. Its number in Augustine's Letters is CLXXII. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXXXV. From Pope Innocent to Aurelius.
Shortly after the synod of Diospolis the Pelagians exulting in their success made an attack upon Jerome's monasteries at Bethlehem which they pillaged and partially burned. This gained for him the sympathy of Innocent who now (a.d. 417) asks Aurelius to transmit to him the letter which follows this.
Innocent to his most esteemed friend and brother Aurelius. [3883]
Our fellow-presbyter Jerome has informed us of your most dutiful desire to come to see us. We suffer with him as with a member of our own flock. We have been swift also to take such measures as have appeared to us expedient and practicable. As you count yourself one of us, most dear brother, make haste to transmit the following letter [3884] to the aforesaid Jerome. __________________________________________________________________
[3883] At this time bishop of Carthage and a friend of Augustine.
[3884] Letter CXXXVI. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXXXVI. From Pope Innocent to Jerome.
Innocent expresses his sympathy with Jerome and promises to take strong measures to punish his opponents if he will bring specific charges against them. The date of the letter is a.d. 417.
Innocent to his most esteemed son, the presbyter Jerome.
The apostle [3885] bears witness that contention has never done good in the church; and for this reason he gives direction that heretics should be admonished once or twice in the beginning of their heresy and not subjected to a long series of rebukes. Where this rule is negligently observed, the evil to be guarded against so far from being evaded is rather intensified.
Your grief and lamentation have so affected us that we can neither act nor advise.
To begin however, we commend you for the constancy of your faith. To quote your own words spoken many times in the ears of many, a man will gladly face misrepresentation or even personal danger on behalf of the truth; if he is looking for the blessedness that is to come. We remind you of what you have yourself preached although we are sure that you need no reminder. The spectacle of these terrible evils has so thoroughly roused us that we have hastened to put forth the authority of the apostolic see to repress the plague in all its manifestations; but as your letters name no individuals and bring no specific charges, there is no one at present against whom we can proceed. But we do all that we can; we sympathize deeply with you. And if you will lay a clear and unambiguous accusation against any persons in particular we will appoint suitable judges to try their cases; or if you, our highly esteemed son, think that it is needful for us to take yet graver and more urgent action, we shall not be slow to do so. Meantime we have written to our brother bishop John [3886] advising him to act more considerately, so that nothing may occur in the church committed to him which it is his duty to foresee and to prevent, and that nothing may happen which may subsequently prove a source of trouble to him. __________________________________________________________________
[3885] Tit. iii. 10, 11.
[3886] i.e. John of Jerusalem. See the next letter. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXXXVII. From Pope Innocent to John, Bishop of Jerusalem.
Innocent censures John for having allowed the Pelagians to effuse the disturbance at Bethlehem mentioned in the two preceding letters and exhorts him to be more watchful over his diocese in future. The date of the letter is a.d. 417. This was the year of the death of both John and Innocent, and it is probable that John never received the letter.
Innocent to his most highly esteemed brother John.
The holy virgins Eustochium and Paula [3887] have deplored to me the ravages, murders, fires and outrages of all kinds, which they say that the devil has perpetrated in the district belonging to their church; for with wonderful clemency and generosity they have left untold the name and motive of his human agent. Now although there can be no doubt as to who is the guilty person; [3888] yet you, my brother, ought to have taken precautions and to have been more careful of your flock so that no disturbance of the kind might arise; for others suffer by your negligence, and you encourage men by it to make havoc of the Lord's flock till His tender lambs, fleeced and weakened by fire, sword and persecution, their relations murdered and dead, are, as we are informed, themselves scarce alive. Does it not touch your sacred responsibility as a priest [3889] that the devil has shewn himself so powerful against you and yours? Against you, I say; for surely it speaks ill of your capacity as a priest that a crime so terrible should have been committed in the pale of your church. Where were your precautions? Where, after the blow had been struck, were your attempts at relief? Where too were your words of comfort? These ladies tell me that up to the present they have been in a state of too great apprehension to complain of what they have already suffered. I should judge more gravely of the matter had they spoken to me concerning it more freely than they have. Beware then, brother, of the wiles of the old enemy, and in the spirit of a good ruler be vigilant either to correct or to repress such evils. For they have reached my ears in the shape of rumours rather than as specific accusations. If nothing is done, the law of the Church on the subject of injuries may compel the person who has failed to defend his flock to shew cause for his negligence. __________________________________________________________________
[3887] i.e. Paula the younger, Eustochium's niece, concerning whose education Jerome had written to her mother Læta (Letter CVII.).
[3888] The attack was supposed to have been instigated by Pelagius.
[3889] In Jerome's writings this title is often given to bishops. Presbyters are by him rarely so called. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXXXVIII. To Riparius.
Jerome praises Riparius for his zeal on behalf of the Catholic faith and for his efforts to put down the Pelagians. He then describes the attack made by these heretics upon the monasteries of Bethlehem. Now, he is glad to say, they have at last been driven from Palestine. Most of them, that is, for some still linger at Joppa including one of their chief leaders. The date is a.d. 417.
That you fight Christ's battles against the enemies of the Catholic Faith your own letters have informed me as well as the reports of many persons, but I am told that you find the winds contrary and that those who ought to have been the world's champions have backed the cause of perdition to each other's ruin. You are to know that in this part of the world, without any human help and merely by the decree of Christ, Catiline [3890] has been driven not only from the capital but from the borders of Palestine. Lentulus, however, and many of his fellow-conspirators still linger to our sorrow in Joppa. I myself have thought it better to change my abode than to surrender the true faith; and have chosen to leave my pleasant home rather than to suffer contamination from heresy. For I could not communicate with men who would either have insisted on my instant submission or would else have summoned me to support my opinions by the sword. A good many, I dare say, have told you the story of my sufferings and of the vengeance which Christ's uplifted hand has on my behalf taken upon my enemies. I would beg of you, therefore, to complete the task which you have taken up and not, while you are in it, to leave Christ's church without a defender. Every one knows the weapons that must be used in this warfare; and you, I feel sure will ask for no others. You must contend with all your might against the foe; but it must be not with physical force but with that spiritual charity which is never overcome. The reverend brothers who are with me, unworthy as I am, salute you warmly. The reverend brother, the deacon Alentius, is sure to give you, my worshipful friend, a faithful narrative of all the facts. May Christ our Lord, of His almighty power, keep you safe and mindful of me, truly reverend sir and esteemed brother. __________________________________________________________________
[3890] Pelagius would naturally be understood by Catiline, and Celestius by Lentulus, who was Catiline's lieutenant. But it is known that, after the Synod of Diospolis which acquitted them, Celestius went to Africa, Ephesus, Constantinople, and Rome, while Pelagius apparently remained in Palestine, where he died. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXXXIX. To Apronius.
Of Apronius nothing is known; but from the mention of Innocent (for whom see Letter CXLIII.) it seems a fair inference that he lived in the West. Jerome here congratulates him on his steadfastness in the faith and exhorts him to come to Bethlehem. He then touches on the mischief done by Pelagius and complains that his own monastery has been destroyed by him or by his partisans. The date of the letter is a.d. 417.
I know not by what wiles of the devil it has come to pass that all your toil and the efforts of the reverend presbyter Innocent [3891] and my own prayers and wishes seem for the moment to produce no effect. God be thanked that you are well and that the fire of faith glows in you even when you are in the midst of the devil's wiles. My greatest joy is to hear that my spiritual sons are fighting in the cause of Christ; and assuredly He in whom we believe will so quicken this zeal of ours that we shall be glad freely to shed our blood in defence of His faith.
I grieve to hear that a noble family has been subverted, [3892] for what reason I cannot learn; for the bearer of the letter could give me no information. We may well grieve over the loss of our common friends and ask Christ the only potentate and Lord [3893] to have mercy upon them. At the same time we have deserved to receive punishment at God's hand for we [3894] have harboured the enemies of the Lord.
The best course you can take is to leave everything and to come to the East, before all to the holy places; for everything is now quiet here. The heretics have not, it is true, purged the venom from their breasts, but they do not venture to open their impious mouths. They are "like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear." [3895] Salute your reverend brothers on my behalf.
As for our house, [3896] so far as fleshly wealth is concerned, it has been completely destroyed by the onslaughts of the heretics; but by the mercy of Christ it is still filled with spiritual riches. To live on bread is better than to lose the faith. __________________________________________________________________
[3891] At this time in Palestine whither he had come as the bearer of letters from Augustine to Jerome and others.
[3892] The family meant is probably the one warned by Jerome in his letter to Ctesiphon (CXXXIII, § 13). In that case the troubler of its peace is of course Pelagius.
[3893] 1 Tim. vi. 15.
[3894] It would seem as if Jerome, like Augustine, had at first thought favourably of Pelagius.
[3895] Ps. lviii. 4.
[3896] i.e. the monastic establishment under Jerome's guidance at Bethlehem. See Letters CXXXV.-CXXXVII. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXL. To Cyprian the Presbyter.
Cyprian had visited Jerome at Bethlehem and had asked him to write an exposition of Psalm XC. in simple language such as might be readily understood. With this request Jerome now complies, giving a very full account of the psalm, verse by verse, and bringing the treasures of his learning and especially his knowledge of Hebrew to bear upon it. He asserts its Mosaic authorship but is careful to add that "the man of God" may have spoken not for himself but in the name of the Jewish people. He speaks of the five books into which the psalter is divisible and says that it is a mistake to ascribe all the psalms to David. An allusion to the doctrine of Pelagius shows that the letter must belong to Jerome's last years, and Vallarsi is probably right in assigning it to a.d. 418. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXLI. To Augustine
A short note in which Jerome praises Augustine for the determined stand which he has made against heresy and speaks of him as "the restorer of the ancient faith." The allusion seems to be to his action in the Pelagian controversy. If so, the date is probably 418 a.d. This letter is among those of Augustine, number 195. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXLII. To Augustine.
There is good ground for supposing this to form part of the previous letter. If so, Jerome speaks in a figure of the success gained by Pelagianism in Palestine. "Jerusalem," he says, "is in the hands of Nebuchadnezzar and will not heed the voice of Jeremiah," that is, as the context shews, Jerome himself. This letter is among those of Augustine, number 123. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXLIII. To Alypius and Augustine.
In this letter Jerome congratulates Alypius and Augustine on their success in strangling the heresy of Cælestius, the co-adjutor of Pelagius, and states that, if he can find time and secretaries, he hopes to write a refutation of the absurd errors of the Pelagian pseudodeacon Annianus. The date is 419 a.d. This letter is among those of Augustine, number 202. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXLIV. From Augustine to Optatus.
Augustine writes to Optatus, bishop of Milevis, to say that he cannot send him a copy of his letter to Jerome on the origin of the soul (Letter CXXXI.) as it is incomplete without Jerome's reply which he has not yet received. He then criticises the arguments with which Optatus combats traducianism and points out that his reasoning is inconclusive. The date of the letter is a.d. 420. The letter has been somewhat compressed in translation: the involved sentences of the original have been simplified and its redundancies curtailed.
To the blessed lord and brother, sincerely loved and longed-for, his fellow-bishop Optatus, Augustine [sends] greeting in the Lord.
1. By the hand of the reverend presbyter Saturninus I have received a letter from you, venerable sir, in which you earnestly ask me for what I have not yet got. You thus shew clearly your belief that I have already had a reply to my question on the subject. Would that I had! Knowing the eagerness of your expectation, I should never have dreamed of keeping back from you your share in the gift; but if you will believe me, dear brother, it is not so. Although five years have elapsed since I despatched to the East my letter (which was one of inquiry, not of assertion), I have so far received no reply, and am consequently unable to untie the knot as you wish me to do. Had I had both [3897] letters, I should gladly have sent you both; but I think it better not to circulate mine [3898] by itself lest he to whom it is addressed and who may still answer me as I desire should prove displeased. If I were to publish so elaborate a treatise as mine without his reply to it, he might be justly indignant, and suppose me more intent on displaying my talents than on promoting some useful end. It would look as if I were bent on starting problems too hard for him to solve. It is better to wait for the answer which he probably means to send. For I am well aware that he has other subjects to occupy him which are more serious and urgent than this question of mine. Your holiness will readily understand this if you read what he wrote to me a year later when my messenger was returning. The following is an extract from his letter: [3899]
"A most trying time has come upon us [3900] in which I have found it better to hold my peace than to speak. Consequently my studies have ceased, that I may not give occasion to what Appius calls the eloquence of dogs.' [3901] For this reason I have not been able to send any answer to your two learned and brilliant letters. Not, indeed, that I think anything in them needs correction, but that I recall the Apostle's words: One judges in this way, another in that; let every man give full expression to his own opinion.' [3902] All that a lofty intellect can draw from the well of holy scripture has been drawn by you. So much your reverence must allow me to say in praise of your ability. But though in any discussion between us our joint object is the advancement of learning, our rivals and especially the heretics will ascribe any difference of opinion between us to mutual jealousy. For my part, however, I am resolved to love you, to look up to you, to reverence and admire you, and to defend your opinions as my own. I have also in a dialogue which I have recently brought out made allusion to your holiness in suitable terms. Let us, rather, then, strain every nerve to banish from the churches that most pernicious heresy, [3903] which feigns repentance that it may have liberty to teach in our churches. For were it to come out into the light of day, it would be expelled and die."
2. You can see, worshipful brother, from this reply that my friend does not refuse to answer my inquiry; he postpones it because he is condemned to give his time to more urgent matters. Moreover, that he is well disposed towards me is clear from his friendly warning that a controversy between us begun in all charity and in the interests of learning may be misconstrued by jealous and heretical persons as due to mutual illfeeling. No; it will be better for the public to have both together, his explanation as well as my inquiry. For, as I shall have to thank him for instructing me if he is able to explain the matter, the discussion will be of no small advantage when it comes to the knowledge of the world. Those who come after us will not only know what view they ought to take of a subject thus fully argued but will also learn how under the divine mercy brothers in affection may dispute a difficult question and yet preserve each other's esteem.
3. On the other hand, if I were to publish the letter in which I raise this obscure point without the reply in which it may be set at rest, it might circulate widely and reach men who "comparing themselves," as the Apostle says, "with themselves," [3904] would misconstrue a motive which they could not understand, and would explain my feeling towards one whom I love and esteem for his immense services not as it would appear to them (for it would be invisible to them) but as their own fancy and malice would dictate. Now this is a danger which, so far as in me lies, I am bound to guard against. But if a document which I am unwilling to publish is published without my consent and placed in hands from which I would withhold it, then I shall have to resign myself to the will of God. Indeed, had I wished to keep my words permanently undivulged I should never have sent them to any one. For if (though I hope it may not be so) chance or necessity shall prevent any reply being ever given me, my letter of inquiry is still bound sooner or later to come to light. Nor will it be useless to those who read it; for, although they will nor find what they seek, they will learn how much better it is, when one is uninformed, to put questions than to make assertions; and in the meantime those whom they consult [3905] will work out the points raised by me, laying aside contention and in the interests of learning and charity trying to obtain sound opinions about them. Thus they will either arrive at the solutions they desire, or their faculties will be quickened and they will learn from the investigation that farther inquiry is useless. At present, however, as I have no reason to despair of an answer from my friend I have decided not to publish the letter I have sent him, and I trust, my dear comrade, that this decision may commend itself to you. It should do so, for you have not asked for my letter so much as for the answer to it; and this I would gladly send you if I had it to send. It is true that in your epistle you speak of "the lucid demonstration of my wisdom which in virtue of my life the Giver of light has bestowed upon me"; and if by this you mean not the way in which I have stated the problem but a solution which I have obtained of the point in question, I should like to gratify your wish. But I must admit that I have so far failed to discover how the soul can derive its sin from Adam (a truth which it is unlawful to question) and yet not itself be derived from Adam. At present I think it better to sift the matter farther than to dogmatize rashly.
4. Your letter speaks of "many old men and persons educated by learned priests whom you have failed to recall to your modest way of thinking, and to a statement of the case which is truth itself." You do not, however, explain what this mode of expression is. If your old men hold fast what they have received from learned priests, how comes it that you are troubled by a boorish mob of unlettered clerics? On the other hand, if the old men and the unlettered clerics have wickedly departed from the priests' teachings, surely these latter are the persons to correct them and restrain them from controversial excesses. Again when you say that "you as a new-fledged and inexperienced teacher have been afraid to tamper with the doctrines handed down by great and famous bishops, and that you have been loth to draw men into a better path lest you should cast discredit on the dead," do you not imply that in refusing to agree with you the objects of your solicitude are but preferring the tradition of great and famous bishops to the views of a new-fledged and inexperienced teacher? Of their conduct in the matter I say nothing, but I am most anxious to learn that "mode of expression which is truth itself," not the thing expressed, but the mode of expression.
5. For you have made it sufficiently plain to me that you disapprove of those who assert that men's souls are derived from that of the protoplast [3906] and propagated from one generation to another; but as your letter does not inform me, I have no means of knowing on what grounds and from what passages of scripture you have shewn this view to be false. What does commend itself to you is not clear either from your letter to the brothers at Cæsarea or from that which you have lately addressed to me. Only I see that you believe and write that "God has been, is, and will be the maker of men, and that there is nothing either in heaven or on earth which does not owe its existence wholly to Him." This is of course a truism which nobody can call in question. But as you affirm that souls are not propagated, you ought to explain out of what God makes them. Is it out of some pre-existing material, or is it out of nothing? For it is impossible that you should hold the opinion of Origen, Priscillian, and other heretics that it is for deeds done in a former life that souls are confined in earthly and mortal bodies. This opinion is, indeed, flatly contradicted by the apostle who says of Jacob and Esau that before they were born they had done neither good nor evil. [3907] Your view of the matter, then, is known to me though only partially, but of your reasons for supposing it to be true I know nothing. This was why in a former letter I asked you to send me your confession of faith, the one which you were vexed to find that one of your presbyters had signed dishonestly. I now again ask you for this, as well as for any passages of scripture which you have brought to bear on the question. For you say in your letter to the brothers at Cæsarea that you "have resolved to have all definitions of dogma reviewed by lay judges, sitting by general invitation, and investigating all points touching the faith." And you continue: "the divine mercy has made it possible for them to put forward their views in a positive and definite form, which your modest ability has reinforced with a great weight of evidence." Now it is this "great weight of evidence" which I am so anxious to obtain. For, so far as I can see, your one aim has been to refute your opponents when they deny that our souls are the handiwork of God. If they hold such a view, you are right in thinking that it should be condemned. Were they to say the same thing of our bodies, they would be forced to retract it, or else be held up to execration. For what Christian can deny that every single human body is the work of God? Yet when we admit that they are of divine origin we do not mean to deny that they are humanly engendered. When therefore it is asserted that our souls are procreated from a kind of immaterial seed, and that they, like our bodies, come to us from our parents, yet are made souls by the working of God, it is not by human guesses that the assertion is to be refuted, but by the witness of divine scripture. Numbers of passages may indeed be quoted from the sacred books which have canonical authority, to prove that our souls are God's handiwork. But such passages only refute those who deny that each several human soul is made by God; not at all those who while they admit this contend that, like our bodies, they are formed by divine agency through the instrumentality of parents. To refute these you must look for unmistakable texts; or, if you have already discovered such, shew your affection by communicating them to me. For though I seek them most diligently I fail to find them.
As stated shortly by yourself (at the end of your letter to the brothers at Cæsarea) your dilemma is as follows: "inasmuch as I am your son and disciple and have but recently by God's help come to consider these mysteries, I beg you with your priestly wisdom to teach me which of two opposite views I ought to hold. Am I to maintain that souls are transmitted by generation, and that they are derived in some mysterious way from Adam our first-formed father? [3908] Or am I with your brothers and the priests who are here to hold that God has been, is, and will be the author and maker of all things and all men?"
6. Of the two alternatives which you thus put forward you wish to be urged to choose one or other; and this would be the course of wisdom if your alternatives were so contrary that the choice of one would involve the rejection of the other. But as it is, instead of selecting one of them a man may say that they are both true. He may maintain that the souls of all mankind are derived from Adam our first-formed father, and yet believe and assert that God has been, is, and will be the author and maker of all things and all men. How on your principles is such a man to be confuted? Shall we say: "If they are transmitted by generation God is not their author, for He does not make them?" In that case he will reply: "Bodies too are engendered and not made by God; on your shewing, then He is not their author." Will any one maintain that God is the maker of no bodies but Adam's which He made out of the dust and Eve's which He formed out of Adam's side; and that other bodies are not made by Him because they are engendered by human parents?
7. If your opponents go so far in maintaining the derivation of souls as to deny that they are made and formed by God, you may use this argument as a weapon to confute them so far as God's help enables you. But if, while they assert that the soul's beginnings come from Adam first and then from a man's parents, they at the same time hold that the soul in every man is created and formed by God the author of all things, they can only be confuted out of scripture. Search therefore till you find a passage that is neither obscure nor capable of a double meaning; or if you have already found one, hand it on to me as I have begged you to do. But if, like myself, you have so far failed to discover any such passage, you must still strain every nerve to confute those who say that souls are in no sense God's handiwork. This seems to be your opponents position, for in your first letter you write that "they have secretly whispered scandalous doctrines and have forsaken your communion and the obedience of the church on account of this foolish, nay impious opinion." Against such men defend and uphold by every possible expedient the doctrine you have laid down in the same letter, that God has been, is, and will be the maker of souls; and that everything in heaven and on earth owes its existence wholly to Him. For this is true of every creature; and as such is to be believed, asserted, defended, and proved. God has been, is, and will be the author and maker of all things and all men as you have told your fellow-bishops of the province of Cæsarea, exhorting them to adopt the doctrine by the example of your brothers and fellow-priests. But there are two quite distinct dilemmas: (1) Is God the author and maker of all souls and bodies (the true view), or is there something in nature which He has not made (a view which is wholly erroneous)? (2) If souls are undoubtedly God's handiwork, does He make them directly, or indirectly by propagation? It is in dealing with this second dilemma that I would have you to be sober and vigilant. Else in refuting the propagation-theory you may fall incautiously into the heresy of Pelagius. Everybody knows that human bodies are propagated by generation; yet if we are right in saying that all human souls--and not only those of Adam and Eve--are created by God, it is clear that to assert their transmission by generation is not to deny their divine origin. For in this view God makes the soul as He makes the body, indirectly by a process of generation. If the truth condemns this as an error, some fresh argument must be sought to confute it. No persons could better advise you on the point (if only they were within reach) than those dead worthies whom you feared to discredit by drawing men away from them into a better path. They were, you said, great and famous bishops while you were a new-fledged and inexperienced teacher; thus you were loth to tamper with their doctrines. Would that I could know on what passages these great men rested their opinion that souls are transmitted! For in your letter to the brothers at Cæsarea, you speak of their view with a total disregard of their authority, as a new invention, an unheard-of doctrine; though we all know that, error as it may be, it is no novelty but old and of ancient date.
8. Now when we have reason to be doubtful about a point, we need not doubt that we are right in doubting. There is no doubt but that we ought to doubt things that are doubtful. For instance, the Apostle has no doubt about doubting whether he was in the body or out of the body when he was carried up into the third heaven. [3909] Whether it was thus or thus, he says, I know not; God knows. Why may not I, then, so long as I have no light, doubt whether my soul comes to me by generation or unengendered? Why may I not be doubtful about this, so long as I do not doubt that in either case it is the work of God most high? Why may I not say; "I know that my soul owes its existence to God and is altogether His handiwork; but whether it comes by generation, as the body does, or unengendered, as was Adam's soul, I know not; God knows." You wish me to assert positively one view or the other. I might do so if I knew which was right. You may have some light on the point, and if so you will find me keener to learn what I know not than to teach what I know. But if, like myself, you are in the dark, you should pray, as I do, that either through one of His servants, or with His own lips, He would teach us who said to His disciples: "Be not ye called masters; for one is your master, even Christ." [3910] Yet such knowledge is only expedient for us when He knows it to be expedient who knows both what He has to teach and what we ought to learn. Nevertheless, to you, my dear friend, I confess my eagerness. Still much as I desire to know this after which you seek, I would sooner know when the desire of all nations shall come and when the kingdom of the saints will be set up, than how my soul has come to its earthly abode. But when His disciples (who are our apostles) put this question to the all-knowing Christ, they were told: "It is not yours to know the times or the seasons which the Father hath put in His own power." [3911] What if Christ, who knows what is expedient for us, knows this knowledge not to be expedient? Through Him I know that it is not ours to know the times which God has placed in His own power; but concerning the origin of souls, I am ignorant whether it is or is not ours to know. If I could be sure that such knowledge is not for us, I should cease not only to dogmatize, but even to inquire. As it is, though the subject is so deep and dark that my fear of becoming a rash teacher is almost greater than my eagerness to learn the truth, I still wish to know it if I can do so. It may be that the knowledge for which the psalmist prays: "Lord, make me to know mine end," [3912] is much more necessary; yet I would that my beginning also might be revealed to me.
9. But even as touching this I must not be ungrateful to my Master. I know that the human soul is spiritual not corporeal, that it is endowed with reason and intelligence, and that it is not of God's essence but a thing created. It is both mortal and immortal: the first because it is subject to corruption and separable from the life of God in which it is alone blessed, the second because its consciousness must ever continue and form the source of its happiness or woe. It does not, it is true, owe its immersion in the flesh to acts done before the flesh; yet in man it is never without sin, not even when "its life has been but for one day." [3913] Of those engendered of the seed of Adam no man is born without sin, and it is necessary even for babes to be born anew in Christ by the grace of regeneration. All this I know concerning the soul, and it is much; the greater part of it, indeed, is not only knowledge but matter of faith as well. I rejoice to have learned it all and I can truly say that I know it. If there are things of which I am still ignorant (as whether God creates souls by generation or apart from it--for that He does create them I have no doubt) I would sooner know the truth than be ignorant of it. But so long as I cannot know it I had rather suspend my judgment than assert what is plainly contrary to an indisputable truth.
10. You, my brother, ask me to decide for you whether men's souls as made by the Creator come like their bodies by generation from Adam, or whether like his soul they are made without generation and separately for each individual. For in one way or the other we both admit that they are God's handiwork. Suffer me then in turn to ask you a question. Can a soul derive original sin from a source from which it is not itself derived? For unless we are to fall into the detestable heresy of Pelagius, we must both of us allow that all souls do derive original sin from Adam. And if you cannot answer my question, pray give me leave to confess my ignorance alike of your question and of my own. But if you already know what I ask, teach me and then I will teach you what you wish to know. Pray do not be displeased with me for taking this line, for though I have given you no positive answer to your question, I have shewn you how you ought to put it. When once you are clear about that, you may be quite positive where you have been doubtful. [3914]
This much I have thought it right to write to your holiness seeing that you are so sure that the transmission of souls is a doctrine to be rejected. Had I been writing to maintainers of the doctrine I might perhaps have shewn how ignorant they are of what they fancy they know and how cautious they should be not to make rash assertions.
It may perhaps perplex you that in my friend's answer as I have quoted it in this letter he mentions two letters of mine to which he has no time to reply. Only one of these deals with the problem of the soul; [3915] in the other I have asked light on another difficulty. [3916] Again when he urges me to take more pains for the removal from the church of a most pernicious heresy, he alludes to the error of the Pelagians which I earnestly beg you, my brother, at all hazards to avoid. In speculating or arguing on the origin of the soul you must never give place to this heresy with its insidious suggestions. For there is no soul, save that of the one Mediator, which does not derive original sin from Adam. Original sin is that which is fastened on the soul at its birth and from which it can only be freed by being born again. __________________________________________________________________
[3897] That is Augustine's to Jerome and the expected answer.
[3898] In Jerome's Letters, No. CXXXI.; in Augustine's, No. CLXVI.
[3899] In Jerome's Letters, No. CXXXIV.; in Augustine's, No. CLXXII.
[3900] After the Council of Diospolis Jerome suffered much from the violence of the Pelagians. See Letters CXXXVI.-CXXXIX.
[3901] i.e. railing.
[3902] Suo sensu abundet. Rom. xiv. 5, Vulg.
[3903] i.e. Pelagianism.
[3904] 2 Cor. x. 12.
[3905] At this point the text is obscure.
[3906] i.e. Adam, "our first-formed father." (Wisd. x. 1.)
[3907] Rom. ix. 11.
[3908] Wisdom x. 1.
[3909] 2 Cor. xii. 4.
[3910] Matt. xxiii. 10.
[3911] Acts i. 7.
[3912] Ps. xxxix. 4.
[3913] Job xiv. 5, LXX.
[3914] i.e. you may be quite sure that souls are created by God.
[3915] Letter CXXXI., ante.
[3916] Letter CXXXII., ante. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXLV. To Exuperantius.
Jerome advises Exuperantius, a Roman soldier, to come to Bethlehem and with his brother Quintilian to become a monk. According to Palladius (H. L. c. lxxx.) Exuperantius came to Jerome but went away again unable to endure his violence and ill-will.' The date of the letter is unknown.
Among all the favours that my friendship with the reverend brother Quintilian has conferred upon me the greatest is this that he has introduced me in the spirit to you whom I do not know personally. Who can fail to love a man who, while he wears the cloak and uniform of a soldier does the work of a prophet, and while his outer man gives promise of quite a different character, overcomes this by the inner man which is formed after the image of the creator. I come forward therefore to challenge you to an interchange of letters and beg that you will often give me occasion to reply to you that I may for the future feel less constraint in writing.
For the present I will content myself by suggesting to your discretion that you should bear in mind the apostle's words: "Art thou bound unto a wife? Seek not to be loosed. Art thou loosed from a wife? Seek not a wife;" [3917] that is, seek not that binding which is contrary to loosing. He who has contracted the obligations of marriage, is bound, and he who is bound is a slave; on the other hand he who is loosed is free. Since therefore you rejoice in the freedom of Christ, since your life is better than your profession, since you are all but on the housetop of which the Saviour speaks; you ought not to come down to take your clothes, [3918] you ought not to look behind you, you ought not having put your hand to the plough, then to let it go. [3919] Rather, if you can, imitate Joseph and leave your garment in the hand of your Egyptian mistress, [3920] that naked you may follow your Lord and Saviour. For in the gospel He says: "Whosoever doth not leave all that he hath and bear his cross and come after me cannot be my disciple." [3921] Cast from you the burthen of the things of this world, and seek not those riches which in the gospel are compared to the humps [3922] of camels. Naked and unencumbered fly up to heaven; masses of gold will but impede the wings of your virtue. I do not speak thus because I know you to be covetous, but because I have a notion that your object in remaining so long in the army is to fill that purse which the Lord has commanded you to empty. For they who have possessions and riches are bidden to sell all that they have and to give to the poor and then to follow the Saviour. [3923] Thus if your worship is rich already you ought to fulfil the command and sell your riches; or if you are still poor you ought not to amass what you will have to pay away. Christ accepts the sacrifices made for him [3924] according as he who makes them has a willing mind. Never were any men poorer than the apostles; yet never any left more for the Lord than they. The poor widow in the gospel who cast but two mites into the treasury was set before all the men of wealth because she gave all that she had. [3925] So it should be with you. Seek not for wealth which you will have to pay away; but rather give up that which you have already acquired that Christ may know his new recruit to be brave and resolute, and then when you are a great way off His Father will run with joy to meet you. He will give you a robe, will put a ring upon your finger, and will kill for you the fatted calf. [3926] Then when you are freed from all encumbrances God will soon make a way for you to cross the sea to me with your reverend brother Quintilian. I have now knocked at the door of friendship: if you open it to me you will find me a frequent visitor. __________________________________________________________________
[3917] 1 Cor. vii. 27.
[3918] Matt. xxiv. 17, 18.
[3919] Luke ix. 62.
[3920] Gen. xxxix. 12.
[3921] Luke xiv. 26, 27.
[3922] Pravitates, deformities. Matt. xix. 24.
[3923] Matt. xix. 21.
[3924] 2 Cor. viii. 12.
[3925] Luke xxi. 1-4.
[3926] Luke xv. 20-23. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXLVI. To Evangelus.
Jerome refutes the opinion of those who make deacons equal to presbyters, but in doing so himself makes presbyters equal to bishops.
The date of the letter is unknown.
1. We read in Isaiah the words, "the fool will speak folly," [3927] and I am told that some one has been mad enough to put deacons before presbyters, that is, before bishops. For when the apostle clearly teaches that presbyters are the same as bishops, must not a mere server of tables and of widows [3928] be insane to set himself up arrogantly over men through whose prayers the body and blood of Christ are produced? [3929] Do you ask for proof of what I say? Listen to this passage: "Paul and Timotheus, the servants of Jesus Christ, to all the saints in Christ Jesus which are at Philippi with the bishops and deacons." [3930] Do you wish for another instance? In the Acts of the Apostles Paul thus speaks to the priests [3931] of a single church: "Take heed unto yourselves and to all the flock, in the which the Holy Ghost hath made you bishops, to feed the church of God which He purchased with His own blood." [3932] And lest any should in a spirit of contention argue that there must then have been more bishops than one in a single church, there is the following passage which clearly proves a bishop and a presbyter to be the same. Writing to Titus the apostle says: "For this cause left I thee in Crete, that thou shouldest set in order the things that are wanting, and ordain presbyters [3933] in every city, as I had appointed thee: if any be blameless, the husband of one wife, having faithful children not accused of riot or unruly. For a bishop must be blameless as the steward of God." [3934] And to Timothy he says: "Neglect not the gift that is in thee, which was given thee by prophecy, with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery." [3935] Peter also says in his first epistle: "The presbyters which are among you I exhort, who am your fellow-presbyter and a witness of the sufferings of Christ and also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed: feed the flock of Christ [3936] ...taking the oversight thereof not by constraint but willingly, according unto God." [3937] In the Greek the meaning is still plainer, for the word used is episkopountes , that is to say, overseeing, and this is the origin of the name overseer or bishop. [3938] But perhaps the testimony of these great men seems to you insufficient. If so, then listen to the blast of the gospel trumpet, that son of thunder, [3939] the disciple whom Jesus loved [3940] and who reclining on the Saviour's breast drank in the waters of sound doctrine. One of his letters begins thus: "The presbyter unto the elect lady and her children whom I love in the truth;" [3941] and another thus: "The presbyter unto the well-beloved Gaius whom I love in the truth." [3942] When subsequently one presbyter was chosen to preside over the rest, this was done to remedy schism and to prevent each individual from rending the church of Christ by drawing it to himself. For even at Alexandria from the time of Mark the Evangelist until the episcopates of Heraclas and Dionysius the presbyters always named as bishop one of their own number chosen by themselves and set in a more exalted position, just as an army elects a general, or as deacons appoint one of themselves whom they know to be diligent and call him archdeacon. For what function, excepting ordination, belongs to a bishop that does not also belong to a presbyter? It is not the case that there is one church at Rome and another in all the world beside. Gaul and Britain, Africa and Persia, India and the East worship one Christ and observe one rule of truth. If you ask for authority, the world outweighs its capital. [3943] Wherever there is a bishop, whether it be at Rome or at Engubium, whether it be at Constantinople or at Rhegium, whether it be at Alexandria or at Zoan, his dignity is one and his priesthood is one. Neither the command of wealth nor the lowliness of poverty makes him more a bishop or less a bishop. All alike are successors of the apostles. [3944]
2. But you will say, how comes it then that at Rome a presbyter is only ordained on the recommendation of a deacon? To which I reply as follows. Why do you bring forward a custom which exists in one city only? Why do you oppose to the laws of the Church a paltry exception which has given rise to arrogance and pride? The rarer anything is the more it is sought after. In India pennyroyal is more costly than pepper. Their fewness makes deacons persons of consequence [3945] while presbyters are less thought of owing to their great numbers. But even in the church of Rome the deacons stand while the presbyters seat themselves, although bad habits have by degrees so far crept in that I have seen a deacon, in the absence of the bishop, seat himself among the presbyters and at social gatherings give his blessing to them. [3946] Those who act thus must learn that they are wrong and must give heed to the apostles words: "it is not reason that we should leave the word of God and serve tables." [3947] They must consider the reasons which led to the appointment of deacons at the beginning. They must read the Acts of the Apostles and bear in mind their true position.
Of the names presbyter and bishop the first denotes age, the second rank. In writing both to Titus and to Timothy the apostle speaks of the ordination of bishops and of deacons, but says not a word of the ordination of presbyters; for the fact is that the word bishops includes presbyters also. Again when a man is promoted it is from a lower place to a higher. Either then a presbyter should be ordained a deacon, from the lesser office, that is, to the more important, to prove that a presbyter is inferior to a deacon; or if on the other hand it is the deacon that is ordained presbyter, this latter should recognize that, although he may be less highly paid than a deacon, he is superior to him in virtue of his priesthood. In fact as if to tell us that the traditions handed down by the apostles were taken by them from the old testament, bishops, presbyters and deacons occupy in the church the same positions as those which were occupied by Aaron, his sons, and the Levites in the temple. [3948] __________________________________________________________________
[3927] Isa. xxxii. 6, R.V.
[3928] Acts vi. 1, 2.
[3929] Ad quorum preces Christi corpus sanguisque conficitur. Cp. Letter XIV. § 8.
[3930] Ph. i. 1.
[3931] Sacerdotes.
[3932] Acts xx. 28, R.V.
[3933] A.V. elders.'
[3934] Tit. i. 5-7.
[3935] 1 Tim. iv. 14.
[3936] A.V. of God.'
[3937] 1 Pet. v. 1, 2. The last clause from R.V.
[3938] episkopos.
[3939] Mark iii. 17.
[3940] Joh. xiii. 23.
[3941] 2 Joh. 1.
[3942] 3 Joh. 1.
[3943] Orbis major est urbe.
[3944] In this passage Jerome does his best to minimize the distinction between bishops and presbyters. Elsewhere also he stands up for the rights of the latter (see Letter LII. § 7).
[3945] At Rome there were only seven, that having been the number of servers' appointed by the apostles. (See Acts vi. and Sozomen H. E. vii. 19.)
[3946] Contrary to the eighteenth canon of Nicæa.
[3947] Acts vi. 2.
[3948] This analogy had become very common in Jerome's day. The germ of it is to be found in Clem. ad Cor. I. xl. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXLVII. To Sabinianus.
Jerome writes in severe but moderate language to Sabinianus, a deacon, calling on him to repent of his sins. Of these he recounts at length the two most serious, an act of adultery at Rome and an attempt to seduce a nun at Bethlehem. The date of the letter is uncertain.
1. Of old, when it had repented the Lord that he had anointed Saul to be king over Israel, [3949] we are told that Samuel mourned for him; and again, when Paul heard that there was fornication among the Corinthians and such fornication as was not so much as named among the gentiles, [3950] he besought them to repent with these tearful words: "lest, when I come again, my God will humble me among you and that I shall bewail many which have sinned already and have not repented of the uncleanness and fornication and lasciviousness which they have committed." [3951] If an apostle or a prophet, themselves immaculate, could speak thus with a clemency embracing all, how much more earnestly should a sinner like me plead with a sinner like you. You have fallen and refuse to rise; you do not so much as lift your eyes to heaven; having wasted your father's substance you take pleasure in the husks that the swine eat; [3952] and climbing the precipice of pride you fall headlong into the deep. You make your belly your God instead of Christ; you are a slave to lust; your glory is in your shame; [3953] you fatten yourself like a victim for the slaughter, and imitate the lives of the wicked, careless of their doom. "Thou knowest not that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance. But after thy hardness and impenitent heart thou treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath." [3954] Or is it that your heart is hardened, as Pharaoh's was, because your punishment is deferred and you are not smitten at the moment? The ten plagues were sent upon Pharaoh not as by an angry God but as by a warning father, and his day of grace was prolonged until he repented of his repentance. Yet doom overtook him when he pursued through the wilderness the people whom he had previously let go and presumed to enter the very sea in the eagerness of his pursuit. For only in this one way could he learn the lesson that He is to be dreaded whom even the elements obey. He had said: "I know not the Lord, neither will I let Israel go;" [3955] and you imitate him when you say: "The vision that he seeth is for many days to come, and he prophesieth of the times that are far off." [3956] Yet the same prophet confutes you with these words: "Thus saith the Lord God, There shall none of my words be prolonged any more, but the word which I have spoken shall be done." David too says of the godless (and of godlessness you have proved yourself not a slight but an eminent example), that in this world they rejoice in good fortune and say: "How doth God know? And is there knowledge in the Most High? Behold these are the ungodly who prosper in the world; they increase in riches." [3957] Then almost losing his footing and staggering where he stands he complains, saying "Verily I have cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocency." [3958] For he had previously said: "I was envious at the foolish, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. For they have no regard for death, [3959] but their strength is firm. They are not in trouble as other men are; neither are they plagued like other men. Therefore pride compasseth them about as a chain; violence covereth them as a garment. Their eyes stand out with fatness: they have more than heart could wish. They are corrupt, and speak wickedly concerning oppression: they speak loftily. They set their mouth against the heavens, and their tongue walketh through the earth." [3960]
2. Does not this whole psalm seem to you to be written of yourself? Certainly you are hale and strong; and like a new apostle of Antichrist, when you are found out in one city, you pass to another. [3961] You are in no need of money, no crushing blow strikes you down, neither are you plagued as other men who are not like you mere brute beasts. Therefore you are lifted up into pride, and lust covers you as a garment. Out of your fat and bloated carcass you breathe out words fraught with death. You never consider that you must some day die, nor feel the slightest repentance when you have satisfied your lust. You have more than heart can wish; and, not to be alone in your wrongdoing, you invent scandals concerning those who are God's servants. Though you know it not, it is against the most High that you are speaking iniquity and against the heavens that you are setting your mouth. It is no wonder that God's servants small and great are blasphemed by you, when your fathers did not scruple to call even the master of the house Beelzebub. "The disciple is not above his master nor the servant above his lord." [3962] If they did this with the green tree, what will you do with me, the dry? [3963] Much in the same way also the offended believers in the book of Malachi gave expression to feelings like yours; for they said, "It is vain to serve God: and what profit is it that we have kept his ordinance, and that we have walked mournfully before the Lord of Hosts? And now we call the proud happy; yea, they that work wickedness are set up; yea, they that tempt God are even delivered." Yet the Lord afterwards threatens them with a day of judgment; and announcing beforehand the distinction that shall then be made between the righteous and the unrighteous, speaks to them thus: "Return ye, [3964] and discern between the righteous and the wicked, between him that serveth God and him that serveth him not." [3965]
3. All this may perhaps seem to you matter for jesting, seeing that you take so much pleasure in comedies and lyrics and mimes like those of Lentulus; [3966] although so blunted is your wit that I am not disposed to allow that you can understand even language so simple. You may treat the words of prophets with contempt, but Amos will still make answer to you: "Thus saith the Lord, For three transgressions and for four shall I not turn away from him?" [3967] For inasmuch as Damascus, Gaza, Tyre, Edom, the Ammonites and the Moabites, the Jews also and the children of Israel, although God had often prophesied to them to turn and to repent, had refused to hear His voice, the Lord wishing to shew that He had most just cause for the wrath that he was going to bring upon them used the words already quoted, "For three transgressions and for four shall I not turn away from them?" It is wicked, God says, to harbour evil thoughts; yet I have allowed them to do so. It is still more wicked to carry them out; yet in My mercy and kindness I have permitted even this. But should the sinful thought have become the sinful deed? Should men in their pride have trampled thus on my tenderness? Nevertheless "I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live;" [3968] and as it is not they that are whole who need a physician but they that are sick, [3969] even after his sin I hold out a hand to the prostrate sinner and exhort him, polluted as he is in his own blood, [3970] to wash away his stains with tears of penitence. But if even then he shews himself unwilling to repent, and if, after he has suffered shipwreck, he refuses to clutch the plank which alone can save him, I am compelled at last to say: "Thus saith the Lord, For three transgressions and for four shall I not turn away from him?" For this "turning away" God accounts a punishment, inasmuch as the sinner is left to his own devices. It is thus that he visits the sins of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation; [3971] not punishing those who sin immediately but pardoning their first offences and only passing sentence on them for their last. For if it were otherwise and if God were to stand forth on the moment as the avenger of iniquity, the church would lose many of its saints; and certainly would be deprived of the apostle Paul. The prophet Ezekiel, from whom we have quoted above, repeating God's words spoken to himself speaks thus: "Open thy mouth and eat what I shall give thee. And behold," he says, "an hand was sent unto me; and, lo, a roll of a book was therein; and he spread it before me; and it was written within and without: and there was written therein lamentations, and a song, and woe." [3972] The first of these three belongs to you if you prove willing, as a sinner, to repent of your sins. The second belongs to those who are holy, who are called upon to sing praises to God; for praise does not become a sinner's mouth. And the third belongs to persons like you who in despair have given themselves over to uncleanness, to fornication, to the belly, and to the lowest lusts; men who suppose that death ends all and that there is nothing beyond it; who say: "When the overflowing scourge shall pass through it shall not come unto us." [3973] The book which the prophet eats is the whole series of the Scriptures, which in turn bewail the penitent, celebrate the righteous, and curse the desperate. For nothing is so displeasing to God as an impenitent heart. Impenitence is the one sin for which there is no forgiveness. For if one who ceases to sin is pardoned even after he has sinned, and if prayer has power to bend the judge; it follows that every impenitent sinner must provoke his judge to wrath. Thus despair is the one sin for which there is no remedy. By obstinate rejection of God's grace men turn His mercy into sternness and severity. Yet, that you may know that God does every day call sinners to repentance, hear Isaiah's words: "In that day," he says, "did the Lord God of Hosts call to weeping and to mourning and to baldness and to girding with sackcloth: and behold joy and gladness, slaying oxen, and killing sheep, eating flesh, and drinking wine; let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we shall die." After these words filled with the recklessness of despair the Scripture goes on to say: "And it was revealed in my ears by the Lord of Hosts, Surely this iniquity shall not be purged from you till ye die." [3974] Only when they become dead to sin, will their sin be forgiven them. For, so long as they live in sin, it cannot be put away.
4. Have mercy I beseech you upon your soul. Consider that God's judgment will one day overtake you. Remember by what a bishop you were ordained. The holy man was mistaken in his choice; but this he might well be. For even God repented that he had anointed Saul to be king. [3975] Even among the twelve apostles Judas was found a traitor. And Nicolas of Antioch--a deacon like yourself [3976] --disseminated the Nicolaitan heresy and all manner of uncleanness. [3977] I do not now bring up to you the many virgins whom you are said to have seduced, or the noble matrons who have suffered death [3978] because violated by you, or the greedy profligacy with which you have hied through dens of sin. For grave and serious as such sins are in themselves, they are trivial indeed when compared with those which I have now to narrate. How great must be the sin beside which seduction and adultery are insignificant? Miserable wretch that you are! when you enter the cave wherein the Son of God was born, where truth sprang out of the earth and the land did yield her increase, [3979] it is to make an assignation. Have you no fear that the babe will cry from the manger, that the newly delivered virgin will see you, that the mother of the Lord will behold you? The angels cry aloud, the shepherds run, the star shines down from heaven, the wise men worship, Herod is terrified, Jerusalem is in confusion, and meantime you creep into a virgin's cell to seduce the virgin to whom it belongs. I am filled with consternation and a shiver runs through me, soul and body, when I try to set before your eyes the deed that you have done. The whole church was keeping vigil by night and proclaiming Christ as its Lord; in one spirit though in different tongues the praises of God were being sung. Yet you were squeezing your love-notes into the openings of what is now the altar, as it was once the manger, of the Lord, choosing this place in order that your unhappy victim might find and read them when she came to kneel and worship there. Then you took your place among the singers, and with impudent nods communicated your passion to her.
5. Oh! crying shame! I can go no farther. For sobs anticipate my words, and indignation and grief choke me in the act of utterance. Oh! for the sea of Tully's eloquence! Oh! for the impetuous current of the invective of Demosthenes! Yet in this case I am sure you would both be dumb; your eloquence would fail you. A deed has been disclosed which no rhetoric can explain; a crime has been discovered which no mime can represent, nor jester play, nor comedian describe. [3980]
It is usual in the monasteries of Egypt and Syria for virgins and widows who have vowed themselves to God and have renounced the world and have trodden under foot its pleasures, to ask the mothers of their communities to cut their hair; not that afterwards they go about with heads uncovered in defiance of the apostle's command, [3981] for they wear a close-fitting cap and a veil. No one knows of this in any single case except the shearers and the shorn, but as the practice is universal, it is almost universally known. The custom has in fact become a second nature. It is designed to save those who take no baths and whose heads and faces are strangers to all unguents, from accumulated dirt and from the tiny creatures which are sometimes generated about the roots of the hair.
6. Let us see then, my good friend, how you acted in these surroundings. You promised to marry your unhappy victim; and then in that venerable cave you took from her, either as securities for her fidelity or as a pledge of the engagement, some locks of hair, some handkerchiefs, and a girdle, swearing at the same time that you would never love another as you loved her. Then you ran to the place where the shepherds were watching their flocks when they heard the angels singing over head, and there again you plighted your troth. I say no more; I do not accuse you of kissing her or of embracing her. Although I believe that there is nothing of which you are not capable, still the sacred character of stable and field forbids me to suppose you guilty except in will and determination. Unhappy man! When you first stood beside the virgin in the cave, surely a mist must have dimmed your eyes, your tongue must have been paralysed, your arms must have fallen to your sides, your chest must have heaved, your gait must have become unsteady. She had assumed the bridal-veil of Christ in the basilica of the apostle Peter and had vowed to live henceforth in the monastery, in the spots consecrated by the Lord's Cross, His Resurrection, and His Ascension; and yet after all this you dared to accept that hair, which at Christ's command she had cut off in the cave of His birth, as a token of her readiness to sleep with you. Again you used to sit beneath her window from the evening till the morning; and because owing to its height you could not come to close quarters with her, you conveyed things to her and she in her turn to you by the aid of a cord. How careful the lady superior must have been is shewn by the fact that you never saw the virgin except in church; and that, although both of you had the same inclination, you could find no means of conversing with each other except at a window under cover of night. As I was afterwards told you used to be quite sorry when the sun rose. Your face looked bloodless, shrunken, and pale; and to remove all suspicion, you used to be for ever reading Christ's gospel as if you were a deacon indeed. [3982] I and others used to attribute your paleness to fasting, and to admire your bloodless lips--so unlike the brilliant colour which they generally shewed--in the belief that they were caused by frequent vigils. You were already preparing ladders to fetch the unhappy virgin from her cell; you had already arranged your route, ordered vessels, settled a day, and thought out the details of your flight, when, behold, the angel who kept the door of Mary's chamber, who watched over the cradle of the Lord and who bore in his arms the infant Christ, in whose presence you had committed these great sins, himself and none other, betrayed you.
7. Oh! my unlucky eyes! Oh! day worthy of the most solemn curse, on which with utter consternation I read your letters, the contents of which I am forced to remember still! What obscenities they contained! What blandishments! What exultant triumph in the prospect of the virgin's dishonour. A deacon should not have even known such things, much less should he have spoken of them. Unhappy man! where can you have learned them, you who used to boast that you had been reared in the church. It is true, however, that in these letters you swear that you have never led a chaste life and that you are not really a deacon. If you try to disown them your own handwriting will convict you, and the very letters will cry out against you. But meantime you may make what you can of your sin, for what you have written is so foul that I cannot bring it up as evidence against you.
8. You threw yourself down at my knees, you prostrated yourself, you begged me--I use your own words--to spare "your half-pint of blood." Oh! miserable wretch! you thought nothing of God's judgment, and feared no vengeance but mine. I forgave you, I admit; what else being a Christian could I do? I urged you to repent, to wear sackcloth, to roll in ashes, to seek seclusion, to live in a monastery, to implore God's mercy with constant tears. You however showed yourself a pillar of confidence, and excited as you were by the viper's sting you became to me a deceitful bow; you shot at me arrows of reviling. I am become your enemy because I tell you the truth. [3983] I do not complain of your calumnies; everyone knows that you only praise men as infamous as yourself. What I lament is that you do not lament yourself, that you do not realize that you are dead, that, like a gladiator ready for Libitina, [3984] you deck yourself out for your own funeral. You wear not sackcloth but linen, you load your fingers with rings, you use toothpowder for your teeth, you arrange the stray hairs on your brown skull to the best advantage. Your bull's neck bulges out with fat and droops no whit because it has given way to lust. Moreover you are redolent of perfume, you go from one bath to another, you wage war [3985] against the hair that grows in spite of you, you walk through the forum and the streets a spruce and smooth-faced rake. Your face has become the face of a harlot: you know not how to blush. [3986] Return, unhappy man, to the Lord, and He will return to you. [3987] Repent, and He will repent of the evil that He has purposed to bring upon you.
9. Why is it that you disregard your own scars and try to defame others? Why is it that when I give you the best advice you attack me like a madman? It may be that I am as infamous as you publicly proclaim; in that case you can at least repent as heartily as I do. It may be that I am as great a sinner as you make me out; if so, you can at least imitate a sinner's tears. Are my sins your virtues? Or does it alleviate your misery that many are in the same plight as yourself? Let a few tears fall on the silk and fine linen which make you so resplendent. Realize that you are naked, torn, unclean, a beggar. [3988] It is never too late to repent. [3989] You may have gone down from Jerusalem and may have been wounded on the way; yet the Samaritan will set you upon his beast, and will bring you to the inn and will take care of you. [3990] Even if you are lying in your grave, the Lord will raise you though your flesh may stink. [3991] At least imitate those blind men for whose sake the Saviour left His home and heritage and came to Jericho. They were sitting in darkness and in the shadow of death when the light shone upon them. [3992] For when they learned that it was the Lord who was passing by they began to cry out saying: "Thou Son of David, have mercy on us." [3993] You too will have your sight restored; if you cry to Him, and cast away your filthy garments at His call. [3994] "When thou shalt turn and bewail thyself then shalt thou be saved, and then shalt thou know where thou hast hitherto been." [3995] Let Him but touch your scars and pass his hands over your eyeballs; and although you may have been born blind from the womb and although your mother may have conceived you in sin, he will purge you with hyssop and you shall be clean, he will wash you and you shall be whiter than snow. [3996] Why is it that you are bowed together and bent down to the ground, why is it that you are still prostrate in the mire? She whom Satan had bound for eighteen years came to the Saviour; and being cured by Him was made straight so that she could once more look up towards heaven. [3997] God says to you what He said to Cain: "Thou hast sinned: hold thy peace." [3998] Why do you flee from the face of God and dwell in the land of Nod? Why do you struggle in the waves [3999] when you can plant your feet upon the rock? See to it that Phinehas does not thrust you through with his spear while you are committing fornication with the Midianitish woman. [4000] Amnon did not spare Tamar, [4001] and you her brother and kinsman in the faith have had no mercy upon this virgin. But why is it that when you have defiled her you change into an Absalom and desire to kill a David who mourns over your rebellion and spiritual death? The blood of Naboth [4002] cries out against you. The vineyard also of Jezreel, that is, of God's seed, demands due vengeance upon you, seeing that you have turned it into a garden of pleasures and made it a seed-bed of lust. God sends you an Elijah to tell you of torment and of death. Bow yourself down therefore and put on sackcloth for a little while; then perhaps the Lord will say of you what He said of Ahab: "Seest thou how Ahab humbleth himself before me? Because he humbleth himself before me, [4003] I will not bring the evil in his days."
10. But possibly you flatter yourself that since the bishop who has made you a deacon is a holy man, his merits will atone for your transgressions. I have already told you that the father is not punished for the son nor the son for the father. "The soul that sinneth it shall die." [4004] Samuel too had sons who forsook the fear of the Lord and "turned aside after lucre" and iniquity. [4005] Eli also was a holy priest, but he had sons of whom we read in the Hebrew that they lay with the women that assembled at the door of the tabernacle of God, and that like you they shamelessly claimed for themselves the right to minister in His sanctuary. [4006] Wherefore the tabernacle itself was overthrown and the holy place made desolate by reason of the sins of those who were God's priests. And even Eli himself offended God by shewing too great leniency to his sons; therefore, so far from the righteousness of your bishop being able to deliver you, it is rather to be feared that your wickedness may hurl him from his seat and that falling on his back like Eli he may perish irretrievably. [4007] If the Levite Uzzah was smitten merely because he tried to hold up from falling the ark which it was his special province to carry; [4008] what punishment, think you, will be inflicted upon you who have tried to overthrow the Lord's ark when standing firm? The more estimable the bishop is who ordained you, the more detestable are you who have disappointed the expectations of so good a man. His long ignorance of your misdoings is indeed easy to account for; as it generally happens that we are the last to know the scandals which affect our homes, and are ignorant of the sins of our children and wives even when our neighbors talk of nothing else. At all events all Italy was aware of your evil life; and it was everywhere a subject of lamentation that you should still stand before the altar of Christ. For you had neither the cunning nor the forethought to conceal your vices. So hot were you, so lecherous, and so wanton, so entirely under the sway of this and that caprice of self-indulgence, that, not content with satisfying your passions, you gloried in each intrigue as a triumph and emerged from it bearing palms of victory.
11. Once more the fire of unchastity seized you, this time among savage swords and in the quarters of a married barbarian of great influence and power. You were not afraid to commit adultery in a house where the injured husband might have punished you without calling in a judge's aid. You found yourself attracted and drawn to suburban parks and gardens; and, in the husband's absence behaved as boldly and madly as if you supposed your companion to be not your paramour but your wife. She was at last captured, but you escaped through an underground passage and secretly made your way to Rome. There you hid yourself among some Samnite robbers; and on the first hint that the aggrieved husband was coming down from the Alps like a new Hannibal in search of you, you did not think yourself safe till you had taken refuge on shipboard. So hasty indeed was your flight that you chose to face a tempest at sea rather than take the consequences of remaining on shore. Somehow or other you reached Syria, and on arriving there professed a wish to go on to Jerusalem and there to serve the Lord. Who could refuse to welcome one who declared himself to be a monk; especially if he were ignorant of your tragical career and had read the letters of commendation which your bishop had addressed to other prelates? [4009] Unhappy man! you transformed yourself into an angel of light; [4010] and while you were in reality a minister of Satan, you pretended to be a minister of righteousness. You were only a wolf in sheep's clothing; [4011] and having played the adulterer once towards the wife of a man, you desired now to play the adulterer to the spouse of Christ. [4012]
12. My design in recounting these events has been to sketch for you the picture of your evil life and to set your misdeeds plainly before your eyes. I have wished to prevent you from making God's mercy and His abundant tenderness an excuse for committing new sins and to save you from crucifying to yourself the son of God afresh and putting Him to an open shame. For you may do these things if you do not read the words which follow the passage to which I have alluded. They are these: "The earth which drinketh in the rain that cometh oft upon it, and bringeth forth herbs meet for them by whom it is dressed, receiveth blessings from God: but that which beareth thorns and briers is rejected and is nigh unto cursing; whose end is to be burned." [4013] __________________________________________________________________
[3949] 1 Sam. xv. 11, 17.
[3950] 1 Cor. v. 1.
[3951] 2 Cor. xii. 21.
[3952] Luke xvi. 13, 16.
[3953] Phil. iii. 19.
[3954] Rom. ii. 4, 5.
[3955] Ex. v. 2.
[3956] Ezek. xii. 27, 28.
[3957] Ps. lxxiii. 11, 12.
[3958] Ps. lxxiii. 13.
[3959] So the Vulgate, from which Jerome quotes.
[3960] Ps. lxxiii. 3-9.
[3961] Cf. Matt. x. 23.
[3962] Matt. x. 24, 25.
[3963] Luke xxiii. 31.
[3964] So the Latin.
[3965] Mal. iii. 14, 15, 18.
[3966] A writer and actor of mimes, probably in the first century of the Empire.
[3967] Am. i. 3, LXX.
[3968] Ezek. xxxiii. 11.
[3969] Luke v. 31.
[3970] Cf. Ezek. xvi. 6.
[3971] Ex. xx. 5.
[3972] Ezek. iii. 1; ii. 9, 10, Vulg.
[3973] Is. xxviii. 15.
[3974] Isa. xxii. 12-14.
[3975] 1 Sam. xv. 11.
[3976] Acts vi. 5.
[3977] Rev. ii. 6, 15.
[3978] Women guilty of adultery were legally punishable with death until the time of Justinian.
[3979] Ps. lxxxv. 11, 12.
[3980] Mimus, scurra, atellanus.
[3981] 1 Cor. xi. 5, 6.
[3982] At the Eucharistic service the gospel was commonly though not exclusively read by a deacon. (See Const. Apost. II. 57, 5, and Sozomen, H. C. VII. 19.)
[3983] Gal. iv. 16.
[3984] The goddess who in the Roman pantheon presided over funerals. The gladiators meant are the so-called bustuarii who were engaged to fight at the funeral pile (bustum) in honour of the dead.
[3985] i.e. by the use of depilatories.
[3986] Jer. iii. 3.
[3987] Mal. iii. 7.
[3988] Rev. iii. 17.
[3989] Cf. Cyprian, Epist. ad Demet. xxv.
[3990] Luke x. 30-34.
[3991] Joh. xi. 39, 44.
[3992] Luke i. 79.
[3993] Matt. ix. 27; cf. Luke xviii. 35-38.
[3994] Mark x. 50.
[3995] Isa. xxx. 15, LXX.
[3996] Ps. li. 5, 7.
[3997] Luke xiii. 11-13.
[3998] Gen. iv. 7, LXX.
[3999] An etymological allusion. Nod = ebb and flow.'
[4000] Num. xxv. 6-8.
[4001] 2 Sam. xiii. 14.
[4002] 1 Kings xxi. 13.
[4003] 1 Kings xxi. 29.
[4004] Ezek. xviii. 4.
[4005] 1 Sam. viii. 3.
[4006] 1 Sam. ii. 12-17, 22.
[4007] 1 Sam. iv. 18.
[4008] 2 Sam. vi. 6, 7.
[4009] Sacerdotes, lit. priests.
[4010] 2 Cor. xi. 14, 15.
[4011] Matt. vii. 15.
[4012] i.e. to the church at large represented by individual virgins.
[4013] Heb. vi. 6, 7-8. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXLVIII. To the Matron Celantia.
This is an interesting letter addressed to a lady of rank, on the principles and methods of a holy life. It is not, however, the work of Jerome, of whose style it shews few traces. It has been ascribed in turn to Paulinus of Nola and Sulpicius Severus. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXLIX. On the Jewish Festivals.
The theme of this letter is the abrogation of the Jewish festivals by the evangelical law. It has no claim to be considered a work of Jerome. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CL. From Procopius to Jerome.
This letter is extant also among those of Procopius of Gaza, to whose works it properly belongs. As this Procopius flourished a century later than Jerome, the letter cannot be addressed to him. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Treatises.
The Life of Paulus the First Hermit.
------------------------
The Life of Paulus was written in the year 374 or 375 during Jerome's stay in the desert of Syria, as is seen from c. 6, and was dedicated to Paulus of Concordia as stated in Jerome's Ep. x. c. 3.
1. It has been a subject of wide-spread and frequent discussion what monk was the first to give a signal example of the hermit life. For some going back too far have found a beginning in those holy men Elias and John, of whom the former seems to have been more than a monk and the latter to have begun to prophesy before his birth. Others, and their opinion is that commonly received, maintain that Antony was the originator of this mode of life, which view is partly true. Partly I say, for the fact is not so much that he preceded the rest as that they all derived from him the necessary stimulus. But it is asserted even at the present day by Amathas and Macarius, two of Antony's disciples, the former of whom laid his master in the grave, that a certain Paul of Thebes was the leader in the movement, though not the first to bear the name, and this opinion has my approval also. Some as they think fit circulate stories such as this--that he was a man living in an underground cave with flowing hair down to his feet, and invent many incredible tales which it would be useless to detail. Nor does the opinion of men who lie without any sense of shame seem worthy of refutation. So then inasmuch as both Greek and Roman writers have handed down careful accounts of Antony, I have determined to write a short history of Paul's early and latter days, more because the thing has been passed over than from confidence in my own ability. What his middle life was like, and what snares of Satan he experienced, no man, it is thought, has yet discovered.
2. During the persecutions of Decius and Valerian, [4014] when Cornelius at Rome and Cyprian at Carthage shed their blood in blessed martyrdom, many churches in Egypt and the Thebaid were laid waste by the fury of the storm. At that time the Christians would often pray that they might be smitten with the sword for the name of Christ. But the desire of the crafty foe was to slay the soul, not the body; and this he did by searching diligently for slow but deadly tortures. In the words of Cyprian himself who suffered at his hands: they who wished to die were not suffered to be slain. We give two illustrations, both as specially noteworthy and to make the cruelty of the enemy better known.
3. A martyr, steadfast in faith, who stood fast as a conqueror amidst the racks and burning plates, was ordered by him to be smeared with honey and to be made to lie under a blazing sun with his hands tied behind his back, so that he who had already surmounted the heat of the frying-pan might be vanquished by the stings of flies. Another who was in the bloom of youth was taken by his command to some delightful pleasure gardens, and there amid white lilies and blushing roses, close by a gently murmuring stream, while overhead the soft whisper of the wind played among the leaves of the trees, was laid upon a deep luxurious feather-bed, bound with fetters of sweet garlands to prevent his escape. When all had withdrawn from him a harlot of great beauty drew near and began with voluptuous embrace to throw her arms around his neck, and, wicked even to relate! to handle his person, so that when once the lusts of the flesh were roused, she might accomplish her licentious purpose. What to do, and whither to turn, the soldier of Christ knew not. Unconquered by tortures he was being overcome by pleasure. At last with an inspiration from heaven he bit off the end of his tongue and spat it in her face as she kissed him. Thus the sensations of lust were subdued by the intense pain which followed.
4. While such enormities were being perpetrated in the lower part of the Thebaid, Paul and his newly married sister were bereaved of both their parents, he being about sixteen years of age. He was heir to a rich inheritance, highly skilled in both Greek and Egyptian learning, gifted with a gentle disposition and a deep love for God. Amid the thunders of persecution he retired to a house at a considerable distance and in a more secluded spot. But to what crimes does not the "accursed thirst for gold" impel the human heart? His brother-in-law conceived the thought of betraying the youth whom he was bound to conceal. Neither a wife's tears which so often prevail, nor the ties of blood, nor the all-seeing eye of God above him could turn the traitor from his wickedness. "He came, he was urgent, he acted with cruelty while seeming only to press the claims of affection."
5. The young man had the tact to understand this, and, conforming his will to the necessity, fled to the mountain wilds to wait for the end of the persecution. He began with easy stages, and repeated halts, to advance into the desert. At length he found a rocky mountain, at the foot of which, closed by a stone, was a cave of no great size. He removed the stone (so eager are men to learn what is hidden), made eager search, and saw within a large hall, open to the sky, but shaded by the wide-spread branches of an ancient palm. The tree, however, did not conceal a fountain of transparent clearness, the waters whereof no sooner gushed forth than the stream was swallowed up in a small opening of the same ground which gave it birth. There were besides in the mountain, which was full of cavities, many habitable places, in which were seen, now rough with rust, anvils and hammers for stamping money. The place, Egyptian writers relate, was a secret mint at the time of Antony's union with Cleopatra.
6. Accordingly, regarding his abode as a gift from God, he fell in love with it, and there in prayer and solitude spent all the rest of his life. The palm afforded him food and clothing. And, that no one may deem this impossible, I call to witness Jesus and His holy angels that I have seen and still see in that part of the desert which lies between Syria and the Saracens' country, monks of whom one was shut up for thirty years and lived on barley bread and muddy water, while another in an old cistern (called in the country dialect of Syria Gubba) kept himself alive on five dried figs a day. What I relate then is so strange that it will appear incredible to those who do not believe the words that "all things are possible to him that believeth."
7. But to return to the point at which I digressed. The blessed Paul had already lived on earth the life of heaven for a hundred and thirteen years, and Antony at the age of ninety was dwelling in another place of solitude (as he himself was wont to declare), when the thought occurred to the latter, that no monk more perfect than himself had settled in the desert. However, in the stillness of the night it was revealed to him that there was farther in the desert a much better man than he, and that he ought to go and visit him. So then at break of day the venerable old man, supporting and guiding his weak limbs with a staff, started to go: but what direction to choose he knew not. Scorching noontide came, with a broiling sun overhead, but still he did not suffer himself to be turned from the journey he had begun. Said he, "I believe in my God: some time or other He will shew me the fellow-servant whom He promised me." He said no more. All at once he beholds a creature of mingled shape, half horse half man, called by the poets Hippocentaur. At the sight of this he arms himself by making on his forehead the sign of salvation, and then exclaims, "Holloa! Where in these parts is a servant of God living?" The monster after gnashing out some kind of outlandish utterance, in words broken rather than spoken through his bristling lips, at length finds a friendly mode of communication, and extending his right hand points out the way desired. Then with swift flight he crosses the spreading plain and vanishes from the sight of his wondering companion. But whether the devil took this shape to terrify him, or whether it be that the desert which is known to abound in monstrous animals engenders that kind of creature also, we cannot decide.
8. Antony was amazed, and thinking over what he had seen went on his way. Before long in a small rocky valley shut in on all sides he sees a mannikin with hooked snout, horned forehead, and extremities like goats' feet. When he saw this, Antony like a good soldier seized the shield of faith and the helmet of hope: the creature none the less began to offer to him the fruit of the palm-trees to support him on his journey and as it were pledges of peace. Antony perceiving this stopped and asked who he was. The answer he received from him was this: "I am a mortal being and one of those inhabitants of the desert whom the Gentiles deluded by various forms of error worship under the names of Fauns, Satyrs, and Incubi. I am sent to represent my tribe. We pray you in our behalf to entreat the favour of your Lord and ours, who, we have learnt, came once to save the world, and whose sound has gone forth into all the earth.'" As he uttered such words as these, the aged traveller's cheeks streamed with tears, the marks of his deep feeling, which he shed in the fulness of his joy. He rejoiced over the Glory of Christ and the destruction of Satan, and marvelling all the while that he could understand the Satyr's language, and striking the ground with his staff, he said, "Woe to thee, Alexandria, who instead of God worshippest monsters! Woe to thee, harlot city, into which have flowed together the demons of the whole world! What will you say now? Beasts speak of Christ, and you instead of God worship monsters." He had not finished speaking when, as if on wings, the wild creature fled away. Let no one scruple to believe this incident; its truth is supported by what took place when Constantine was on the throne, a matter of which the whole world was witness. For a man of that kind was brought alive to Alexandria and shewn as a wonderful sight to the people. Afterwards his lifeless body, to prevent its decay through the summer heat, was preserved in salt and brought to Antioch that the Emperor might see it.
9. To pursue my proposed story. Antony traversed the region on which he had entered, seeing only the traces of wild beasts, and the wide waste of the desert. What to do, whither to wend his way, he knew not. Another day had now passed. One thing alone was left him, his confident belief that he could not be forsaken by Christ. The darkness of the second night he wore away in prayer. While it was still twilight, he saw not far away a she-wolf gasping with parching thirst and creeping to the foot of the mountain. He followed it with his eyes; and after the beast had disappeared in a cave he drew near and began to look within. His curiosity profited nothing: the darkness hindered vision. But, as the Scripture saith, perfect love casteth out fear. With halting step and bated breath he entered, carefully feeling his way; he advanced little by little and repeatedly listened for the sound. At length through the fearful midnight darkness a light appeared in the distance. In his eager haste he struck his foot against a stone and roused the echoes; whereupon the blessed Paul closed the open door and made it fast with a bar. Then Antony sank to the ground at the entrance and until the sixth hour or later craved admission, saying, "Who I am, whence, and why I have come, you know. I know I am not worthy to look upon you: yet unless I see you I will not go away. You welcome beasts: why not a man? I asked and I have found: I knock that it may be opened to me. But if I do not succeed, I will die here on your threshold. You will surely bury me when I am dead."
"Such was his constant cry: unmoved he stood.
To whom the hero thus brief answer made" [4015]
"Prayers like these do not mean threats; there is no trickery in tears. Are you surprised at my not welcoming you when you have come here to die?" Thus with smiles Paul gave him access, and, the door being opened, they threw themselves into each other's arms, greeted one another by name, and joined in thanksgiving to God.
10. After the sacred kiss Paul sat down and thus began to address Antony. "Behold the man whom you have sought with so much toil, his limbs decayed with age, his gray hairs unkempt. You see before you a man who ere long will be dust. But love endures all things. Tell me therefore, I pray you, how fares the human race? Are new homes springing up in the ancient cities? What government directs the world? Are there still some remaining for the demons to carry away by their delusions?" Thus conversing they noticed with wonder a raven which had settled on the bough of a tree, and was then flying gently down till it came and laid a whole loaf of bread before them. They were astonished, and when it had gone, "See," said Paul, "the Lord truly loving, truly merciful, has sent us a meal. For the last sixty years I have always received half a loaf: but at your coming Christ has doubled his soldier's rations."
11. Accordingly, having returned thanks to the Lord, they sat down together on the brink of the glassy spring. At this point a dispute arose as to who should break the bread, and nearly the whole day until eventide was spent in the discussion. Paul urged in support of his view the rites of hospitality, Antony pleaded age. At length it was arranged that each should seize the loaf on the side nearest to himself, pull towards him, and keep for his own the part left in his hands. Then on hands and knees they drank a little water from the spring, and offering to God the sacrifice of praise passed the night in vigil. At the return of day the blessed Paul thus spoke to Antony: "I knew long since, brother, that you were dwelling in those parts: long ago God promised you to me for a fellow-servant; but the time of my falling asleep now draws nigh; I have always longed to be dissolved and to be with Christ; my course is finished, and there remains for me a crown of righteousness. Therefore you have been sent by the Lord to lay my poor body in the ground, yea to return earth to earth."
12. On hearing this Antony with tears and groans began to pray that he would not desert him, but would take him for a companion on that journey. His friend replied: "You ought not to seek your own, but another man's good. It is expedient for you to lay aside the burden of the flesh and to follow the Lamb; but it is expedient for the rest of the brethren to be trained by your example. Wherefore be so good as to go and fetch the cloak Bishop Athanasius gave you, to wrap my poor body in." The blessed Paul asked this favour not because he cared much whether his corpse when it decayed were clothed or naked (why should he indeed, when he had so long worn a garment of palm-leaves stitched together?); but that he might soften his friend's regrets at his decease. Antony was astonished to find Paul had heard of Athanasius and his cloak; and, seeing as it were Christ Himself in him, he mentally worshipped God without venturing to add a single word; then silently weeping he once more kissed his eyes and hands, and set out on his return to the monastery which was afterwards seized by the Saracens. His steps lagged behind his will. Yet, exhausted as he was with fasting and broken by age, his courage proved victorious over his years.
13. At last wearied and panting for breath he completed his journey and reached his little dwelling. Here he was met by two disciples who had begun to wait upon him in his advanced age. Said they, "Where have you stayed so long, father?" He replied, "Woe to me a sinner! I do not deserve the name of monk. I have seen Elias, I have seen John in the desert, and I have really seen Paul in Paradise." He then closed his lips, beat upon his breast, and brought out the cloak from his cell. When his disciples asked him to explain the matter somewhat more fully he said, "There is a time to keep silence, and a time to speak." [4016]
14. He then went out, and without taking so much as a morsel of food returned the same way he came, longing for him alone, thirsting to see him, having eyes and thought for none but him. For he was afraid, and the event proved his anticipations correct, that in his absence his friend might yield up his spirit to Christ. And now another day had dawned and a three hours' journey still remained, when he saw Paul in robes of snowy white ascending on high among the bands of angels, and the choirs of prophets and apostles. Immediately he fell on his face, and threw the coarse sand upon his head, weeping and wailing as he cried, "Why do you cast me from you, Paul? Why go without one farewell? Have you made yourself known so late only to depart so soon?"
15. The blessed Antony used afterwards to relate that he traversed the rest of the distance at such speed that he flew along like a bird; and not without reason: for on entering the cave he saw the lifeless body in a kneeling attitude, with head erect and hands uplifted. The first thing he did, supposing him to be alive, was to pray by his side. But when he did not hear the sighs which usually come from one in prayer, he fell to kisses and tears, and he then understood that even the dead body of the saint with duteous gestures was praying to God unto whom all things live.
16. Then having wrapped up the body and carried it forth, all the while chanting hymns and psalms according to the Christian tradition, Antony began to lament that he had no implement for digging the ground. So in a surging sea of thought and pondering many plans he said: "If I return to the monastery, there is a four days' journey: if I stay here I shall do no good. I will die then, as is fitting, beside Thy warrior, O Christ, and will quickly breathe my last breath. While he turned these things over in his mind, behold, two lions from the recesses of the desert with manes flying on their necks came rushing along. At first he was horrified at the sight, but again turning his thoughts to God, he waited without alarm, as though they were doves that he saw. They came straight to the corpse of the blessed old man and there stopped, fawned upon it and lay down at its feet, roaring aloud as if to make it known that they were mourning in the only way possible to them. Then they began to paw the ground close by, and vie with one another in excavating the sand, until they dug out a place just large enough to hold a man. And immediately, as if demanding a reward for their work, pricking up their ears while they lowered their heads, they came to Antony and began to lick his hands and feet. He perceived that they were begging a blessing from him, and at once with an outburst of praise to Christ that even dumb animals felt His divinity, he said, "Lord, without whose command not a leaf drops from the tree, not a sparrow falls to the ground, grant them what thou knowest to be best." Then he waved his hand and bade them depart. When they were gone he bent his aged shoulders beneath the burden of the saint's body, laid it in the grave, covered it with the excavated soil, and raised over it the customary mound. Another day dawned, and then, that the affectionate heir might not be without something belonging to the intestate dead, he took for himself the tunic which after the manner of wicker-work the saint had woven out of palm-leaves. And so returning to the monastery he unfolded everything in order to his disciples, and on the feast-days of Easter and Pentecost he always wore Paul's tunic.
17. I may be permitted at the end of this little treatise to ask those who do not know the extent of their possessions, who adorn their homes with marble, who string house to house and field to field, what did this old man in his nakedness ever lack? Your drinking vessels are of precious stones; he satisfied his thirst with the hollow of his hand. Your tunics are of wrought gold; he had not the raiment of the meanest of your slaves. But on the other hand, poor though he was, Paradise is open to him; you with all your gold will be received into Gehenna. He though naked yet kept the robe of Christ; you, clad in your silks, have lost the vesture of Christ. Paul lies covered with worthless dust, but will rise again to glory; over you are raised costly tombs, but both you and your wealth are doomed to the burning. Have a care, I pray you, at least have a care for the riches you love. Why are even the grave-clothes of your dead made of gold? Why does not your vaunting cease even amid mourning and tears? Cannot the carcases of rich men decay except in silk?
18. I beseech you, reader, whoever you may be, to remember Jerome the sinner. He, if God would give him his choice, would much sooner take Paul's tunic with his merits, than the purple of kings with their punishment. __________________________________________________________________
[4014] a.d. 249-260.
[4015] Virg. Æn. ii, 650, and vi, 672.
[4016] Eccl. iii. 7. __________________________________________________________________
The Life of S. Hilarion.
------------------------
The life of Hilarion was written by Jerome in 390 at Bethlehem. Its object was to further the ascetic life to which he was devoted. It contains, amidst much that is legendary, some statements which attach it to genuine history, and is in any case a curious record of the state of the human mind in the 4th century. A theory started in Germany, that it was a sort of religious romance, seems destitute of foundation. It may possibly have been, in Jerome's intention, a contribution to the church history the writing of which he proposed but never executed. (See the Life of Malchus, c. 1.)
1. Before I begin to write the life of the blessed Hilarion I invoke the aid of the Holy Spirit who dwelt in him, that He who bestowed upon the saint his virtues may grant me such power of speech to relate them that my words may be adequate to his deeds. For the virtue of those who have done great deeds is esteemed in proportion to the ability with which it has been praised by men of genius. Alexander the Great of Macedon who is spoken of by Daniel as the ram, or the panther, or the he-goat, on reaching the grave of Achilles exclaimed "Happy Youth! to have the privilege of a great herald of your worth," meaning, of course, Homer. I, however, have to tell the story of the life and conversation of a man so renowned that even Homer were he here would either envy me the theme or prove unequal to it. It is true that that holy man Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis in Cyprus, who had much intercourse with Hilarion, set forth his praises in a short but widely circulated letter. Yet it is one thing to praise the dead in general terms, another to relate their characteristic virtues. And so we in taking up the work begun by him do him service rather than wrong: we despise the abuse of some who as they once disparaged my hero Paulus, [4017] will now perhaps disparage Hilarion; the former they censured for his solitary life; they may find fault with the latter for his intercourse with the world; the one was always out of sight, therefore they think he had no existence; the other was seen by many, therefore he is deemed of no account. It is just what their ancestors the Pharisees did of old! they were not pleased with [4018] John fasting in the desert, nor with our Lord and Saviour in the busy throng, eating and drinking. But I will put my hand to the work on which I have resolved, and go on my way closing my ears to the barking of Scylla's hounds.
2. The birth place of Hilarion was the village Thabatha, situate about five miles to the south of Gaza, a city of Palestine. His parents were idolaters, and therefore, as the saying is, the rose blossomed on the thorn. By them he was committed to the charge of a Grammarian at Alexandria, where, so far as his age allowed, he gave proofs of remarkable ability and character: and in a short time endeared himself to all and became an accomplished speaker. More important than all this, he was a believer in the Lord Jesus, and took no delight in the madness of the circus, the blood of the arena, the excesses of the theatre: his whole pleasure was in the assemblies of the Church.
3. At that time he heard of the famous name of Antony, which was in the mouth of all the races of Egypt. He was fired with a desire to see him, and set out for the desert. He no sooner saw him than he changed his former mode of life and abode with him about two months, studying the method of his life and the gravity of his conduct: his assiduity in prayer, his humility in his dealings with the brethren, his severity in rebuke, his eagerness in exhortation. He noted too that the saint would never on account of bodily weakness break his rule of abstinence or deviate from the plainness of his food. At last, unable to endure any longer the crowds of those who visited the saint because of various afflictions or the assaults of demons, and deeming it a strange anomaly that he should have to bear in the desert the crowds of the cities, he thought it was better for him to begin as Antony had begun. Said he: "Antony is reaping the reward of victory like a hero who has proved his bravery. I have not entered on the soldier's career." He therefore returned with certain monks to his country, and, his parents being now dead, gave part of his property to his brothers, part to the poor, keeping nothing at all for himself, for he remembered with awe the passage in the Acts of the Apostles and dreaded the example and the punishment of Ananias and Sapphira; above all he was mindful of the Lord's words, [4019] "whosoever he be of you that renounceth not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple." At this time he was about fifteen years old. Accordingly, stripped bare and armed with the weapons of Christ, he entered the wilderness which stretches to the left seven miles from Majoma, the port of Gaza, as you go along the coast to Egypt. And although the locality had a record of robbery and of blood, and his relatives and friends warned him of the danger he was incurring, he despised death that he might escape death.
4. His courage and tender years would have been a marvel to all, were it not that his heart was on fire and his eyes bright with the gleams and sparks of faith. His cheeks were smooth, his body thin and delicate, unfit to bear the slightest injury which cold or heat could inflict. What then? With no other covering for his limbs but a shirt of sackcloth, and a cloak of skins which the blessed Antony had given him when he set out, and a blanket of the coarsest sort, he found pleasure in the vast and terrible wilderness with the sea on one side and the marshland on the other. His food was only fifteen dried figs after sunset. And because the district was notorious for brigandage, it was his practice never to abide long in the same place. What was the devil to do? Whither could he turn? He who once boasted and said, [4020] "I will ascend into heaven, I will set my throne above the stars of the sky, I will be like the most High," saw himself conquered and trodden under foot by a boy whose years did not allow of sin.
5. Satan therefore tickled his senses and, as is his wont, lighted in his maturing body the fires of lust. This mere beginner in Christ's school was forced to think of what he knew not, and to revolve whole trains of thought concerning that of which he had no experience. Angry with himself and beating his bosom (as if with the blow of his hand he could shut out his thoughts) "Ass!" he exclaimed, "I'll stop your kicking, I will not feed you with barley, but with chaff. I will weaken you with hunger and thirst, I will lade you with heavy burdens, I will drive you through heat and cold, that you may think more of food than wantonness." So for three or four days afterwards he sustained his sinking spirit with the juice of herbs and a few dried figs, praying frequently and singing, and hoeing the ground that the suffering of fasting might be doubled by the pain of toil. At the same time he wove baskets of rushes and emulated the discipline of the Egyptian monks, and put into practice the Apostle's precept, [4021] "If any will not work, neither let him eat." By these practices he became so enfeebled and his frame so wasted, that his bones scarcely held together.
6. One night he began to hear the wailing of infants, the bleating of flocks, the lowing of oxen, the lament of what seemed to be women, the roaring of lions, the noise of an army, and moreover various portentous cries which made him in alarm shrink from the sound ere he had the sight. He understood that the demons were disporting themselves, and falling on his knees he made the sign of the cross on his forehead. Thus armed as he lay he fought the more bravely, half longing to see those whom he shuddered to hear, and anxiously looking in every direction. Meanwhile all at once in the bright moonlight he saw a chariot with dashing steeds rushing upon him. He called upon Jesus, and suddenly before his eyes, the earth was opened and the whole array was swallowed up. Then he said, [4022] "The horse and his rider hath He thrown into the sea." And, [4023] "Some trust in chariots, and some in horses; but we will triumph in the name of the Lord our God."
7. So many were his temptations and so various the snares of demons night and day, that if I wished to relate them, a volume would not suffice. How often when he lay down did naked women appear to him, how often sumptuous feasts when he was hungry! Sometimes as he prayed a howling wolf sprang past or a snarling fox, and when he sang a gladiatorial show was before him, and a man newly slain would seem to fall at his feet and ask him for burial.
8. Once upon a time he was praying with his head upon the ground. As is the way with men, his attention was withdrawn from his devotions, and he was thinking of something else, when a tormentor sprang upon his back and driving his heels into his sides and beating him across the neck with a horse-whip cried out "Come! why are you asleep?" Then with a loud laugh asked if he was tired and would like to have some barley.
9. From his sixteenth to his twentieth year he shielded himself from heat and rain in a little hut which he had constructed of reeds and sedge. Afterwards he built himself a small cell which remains to the present day, five feet in height, that is less than his own height, and only a little more in length. One might suppose it a tomb rather than a house.
10. He shaved his hair once a year on Easter Day, and until his death was accustomed to lie on the bare ground or on a bed of rushes. The sackcloth which he had once put on he never washed, and he used to say that it was going too far to look for cleanliness in goats' hair-cloth. Nor did he change his shirt unless the one he wore was almost in rags. He had committed the Sacred Writings to memory, and after prayer and singing was wont to recite them as if in the presence of God. It would be tedious to narrate singly the successive steps of his spiritual ascent; I will therefore set them in a summary way before my reader, and describe his mode of life at each stage, and will afterwards return to proper historical sequence.
11. From his twentieth to his twenty-seventh year, for three years his food was half a pint of lentils moistened with cold water, and for the next three dry bread with salt and water. From his twenty-seventh year onward to the thirtieth, he supported himself on wild herbs and the raw roots of certain shrubs. From his thirty-first to his thirty-fifth year, he had for food six ounces of barley bread, and vegetables slightly cooked without oil. But finding his eyes growing dim and his whole body shrivelled with a scabby eruption and dry mange, he added oil to his former food and up to the sixty-third year of his life followed this temperate course, tasting neither fruit nor pulse, nor anything whatsoever besides. Then when he saw that his bodily health was broken down, and thought death was near, from his sixty-fourth year to his eightieth he abstained from bread. The fervour of his spirit was so wonderful, that at times when others are wont to allow themselves some laxity of living he appeared to be entering like a novice on the service of the Lord. He made a sort of broth from meal and bruised herbs, food and drink together scarcely weighing six ounces, and, while obeying this rule of diet, he never broke his fast before sunset, not even on festivals nor in severe sickness. But it is now time to return to the course of event.
12. While still living in the hut, at the age of eighteen, robbers came to him by night, either supposing that he had something which they might carry off, or considering that they would be brought into contempt if a solitary boy felt no dread of their attacks. They searched up and down between the sea and the marsh from evening until daybreak without being able to find his resting place. Then, having discovered the boy by the light of day they asked him, half in jest, "What would you do if robbers came to you?" He replied, "He that has nothing does not fear robbers." Said they, "At all events, you might be killed." "I might," said he, "I might; and therefore I do not fear robbers because I am prepared to die." Then they marvelled at his firmness and faith, confessed how they had wandered about in the night, and how their eyes had been blinded, and promised to lead a stricter life in the future.
13. He had now spent twenty-two years in the wilderness and was the common theme in all the cities of Palestine, though everywhere known by repute only. The first person bold enough to break into the presence of the blessed Hilarion was a certain woman of Eleutheropolis who found that she was despised by her husband on account of her sterility (for in fifteen years she had borne no fruit of wedlock). He had no expectation of her coming when she suddenly threw herself at his feet. "Forgive my boldness," she said: "take pity on my necessity. Why do you turn away your eyes? Why shun my entreaties? Do not think of me as a woman, but as an object of compassion. It was my sex that bore the Saviour. [4024] They that are whole have no need of a physician, but they that are sick." At length, after a long time he no longer turned away, but looked at the woman and asked the cause of her coming and of her tears. On learning this he raised his eyes to heaven and bade her have faith, then wept over her as she departed. Within a year he saw her with a son.
14. This his first miracle was succeeded by another still greater and more notable. Aristæneté the wife of Elpidius who was afterwards pretorian prefect, a woman well known among her own people, still better known among Christians, on her return with her husband, from visiting the blessed Antony, was delayed at Gaza by the sickness of her three children; for there, whether it was owing to the vitiated atmosphere, or whether it was, as afterwards became clear, for the glory of God's servant Hilarion, they were all alike seized by a semi-tertian ague and despaired of by the physicians. The mother lay wailing, or as one might say walked up and down between the corpses of her three sons not knowing which she should first have to mourn for. When, however, she knew that there was a certain monk in the neighbouring wilderness, forgetting her matronly state (she only remembered she was a mother) she set out accompanied by her handmaids and eunuchs, and was hardly persuaded by her husband to take an ass to ride upon. On reaching the saint she said, "I pray you by Jesus our most merciful God, I beseech you by His cross and blood, to restore to me my three sons, so that the name of our Lord and Saviour may be glorified in the city of the Gentiles. Then shall his servants enter Gaza and the idol Marnas shall fall to the ground." At first he refused and said that he never left his cell and was not accustomed to enter a house, much less the city; but she threw herself upon the ground and cried repeatedly, "Hilarion, servant of Christ, give me back my children: Antony kept them safe in Egypt, do you save them in Syria." All present were weeping, and the saint himself wept as he denied her. What need to say more? the woman did not leave him till he promised that he would enter Gaza after sunset. On coming thither he made the sign of the cross over the bed and fevered limbs of each, and called upon the name of Jesus. Marvellous efficacy of the Name! As if from three fountains the sweat burst forth at the same time: in that very hour they took food, recognized their mourning mother, and, with thanks to God, warmly kissed the saint's hands. When the matter was noised abroad, and the fame of it spread far and wide, the people flocked to him from Syria and Egypt, so that many believed in Christ and professed themselves monks. For as yet there were no monasteries in Palestine, nor had anyone known a monk in Syria before the saintly Hilarion. It was he who originated this mode of life and devotion, and who first trained men to it in that province. The Lord Jesus had in Egypt the aged Antony: in Palestine He had the youthful Hilarion.
15. Facidia is a hamlet belonging to Rhino-Corura, a city of Egypt. From this village a woman who had been blind for ten years was brought to the blessed Hilarion, and on being presented to him by the brethren (for there were now many monks with him) affirmed that she had spent all her substance on physicians. The saint replied: "If you had given to the poor what you have wasted on physicians, the true physician Jesus would have cured you." But when she cried aloud and entreated pity, he spat into her eyes, in imitation of the Saviour, and with similar instant effect.
16. A charioteer, also of Gaza, stricken by a demon in his chariot became perfectly stiff, so that he could neither move his hand nor bend his neck. He was brought on a litter, but could only signify his petition by moving his tongue; and was told that he could not be healed unless he first believed in Christ and promised to forsake his former occupation. He believed, he promised, and he was healed: and rejoiced more in the saving of the soul than in that of the body.
17. Again, a very powerful youth called Marsitas from the neighbourhood of Jerusalem plumed himself so highly on his strength that he carried fifteen bushels of grain for a long time and over a considerable distance, and considered it as his highest glory that he could beat the asses in endurance. This man was afflicted with a grievous demon and could not endure chains, or fetters, but broke even the bolts and bars of the doors. He had bitten off the noses and ears of many: had broken the feet of some, the legs of others. He had struck such terror of himself into everybody, that he was laden with chains and dragged by ropes on all sides like a wild bull to the monastery. As soon as the brethren saw him they were greatly alarmed (for the man was of gigantic size) and told the Father. He, seated as he was, commanded him to be brought to him and released. When he was free, "Bow your head," said he, "and come." The man began to tremble; he twisted his neck round and did not dare to look him in the face, but laid aside all his fierceness and began to lick his feet as he sat. At last the demon which had possessed the young man being tortured by the saint's adjurations came forth on the seventh day.
18. Nor must we omit to tell that Orion, a leading man and wealthy citizen of Aira, on the coast of the Red Sea, being possessed by a legion of demons was brought to him. Hands, neck, sides, feet were laden with iron, and his glaring eyes portended an access of raging madness. As the saint was walking with the brethren and expounding some passage of Scripture the man broke from the hands of his keepers, clasped him from behind and raised him aloft. There was a shout from all, for they feared lest he might crush his limbs wasted as they were with fasting. The saint smiled and said, "Be quiet, and let me have my rival in the wrestling match to myself." Then he bent back his hand over his shoulder till he touched the man's head, seized his hair and drew him round so as to be foot to foot with him; he then stretched both his hands in a straight line, and trod on his two feet with both his own, while he cried out again and again, "To torment with you! ye crowd of demons, to torment!" The sufferer shouted aloud and bent back his neck till his head touched the ground, while the saint said, "Lord Jesus, release this wretched man, release this captive. Thine it is to conquer many, no less than one." What I now relate is unparalleled: from one man's lips were heard different voices and as it were the confused shouts of a multitude. Well, he too was cured, and not long after came with his wife and children to the monastery bringing many gifts expressive of his gratitude. The saint thus addressed him--"Have you not read what befell Gehazi and Simon, one of whom took a reward, the other offered it, the former in order to sell grace, the latter to buy it?" And when Orion said with tears, "Take it and give it to the poor," he replied, "You can best distribute your own gifts, for you tread the streets of the cities and know the poor. Why should I who have forsaken my own seek another man's? To many the name of the poor is a pretext for their avarice; but compassion knows no artifices. No one better spends than he who keeps nothing for himself." The man was sad and lay upon the ground. "Be not sad, my son," he said; "what I do for my own good I do also for yours. If I were to take these gifts I should myself offend God, and, moreover, the legion would return to you."
19. There is a story relating to Majomites of Gaza which it is impossible to pass over in silence. While quarrying building stones on the shore not far from the monastery he was helplessly paralysed, and after being carried to the saint by his fellow-workman immediately returned to his work in perfect health. I ought to explain that the shore of Palestine and Egypt naturally consists of soft sand and gravel which gradually becomes consolidated and hardens into rock; and thus though to the eye it remains the same it is no longer the same to the touch.
20. Another story relates to Italicus, a citizen of the same town. He was a Christian and kept horses for the circus to contend against those of the Duumvir of Gaza who was a votary of the idol god Marnas. This custom at least in Roman cities was as old as the days of Romulus, and was instituted in commemoration of the successful seizure of the Sabine women. The chariots raced seven times round the circus in honour of Consus in his character of the God of Counsel. [4025] Victory lay with the team which tired out the horses opposed to them. Now the rival of Italicus had in his pay a magician to incite his horses by certain demoniacal incantations, and keep back those of his opponent. Italicus therefore came to the blessed Hilarion and besought his aid not so much for the injury of his adversary as for protection for himself. It seemed absurd for the venerable old man to waste prayers on trifles of this sort. He therefore smiled and said, "Why do you not rather give the price of the horses to the poor for the salvation of your soul?" His visitor replied that his office was a public duty, and that he acted not so much from choice as from compulsion, that no Christian man could employ magic, but would rather seek aid from a servant of Christ, especially against the people of Gaza who were enemies of God, and who would exult over the Church of Christ more than over him. At the request therefore of the brethren who were present he ordered an earthenware cup out of which he was wont to drink to be filled with water and given to Italicus. The latter took it and sprinkled it over his stable and horses, his charioteers and his chariot, and the barriers of the course. The crowd was in a marvellous state of excitement, for the enemy in derision had published the news of what was going to be done, and the backers of Italicus were in high spirits at the victory which they promised themselves. The signal is given; the one team flies towards the goal, the other sticks fast: the wheels are glowing hot beneath the chariot of the one, while the other scarce catches a glimpse of their opponents' backs as they flit past. The shouts of the crowd swell to a roar, and the heathens themselves with one voice declare Marnas is conquered by Christ. After this the opponents in their rage demanded that Hilarion as a Christian magician should be dragged to execution. This decisive victory and several others which followed in successive games of the circus caused many to turn to the faith.
21. There was a youth in the neighbourhood of the same market-town of Gaza who was desperately in love with one of God's virgins. After he had tried again and again those touches, jests, nods, and whispers which so commonly lead to the destruction of virginity, but had made no progress by these means, he went to a magician at Memphis to whom he proposed to make known his wretched state, and then, fortified with his arts, to return to his assault upon the virgin. Accordingly after a year's instruction by the priest of Æsculapius, who does not heal souls but destroys them, he came full of the lust which he had previously allowed his mind to entertain, and buried beneath the threshold of the girl's house certain magical formulæ and revolting figures engraven on a plate of Cyprian brass. Thereupon the maid began to show signs of insanity, to throw away the covering of her head, tear her hair, gnash her teeth, and loudly call the youth by name. Her intense affection had become a frenzy. Her parents therefore brought her to the monastery and delivered her to the aged saint. No sooner was this done than the devil began to howl and confess. "I was compelled, I was carried off against my will. How happy I was when I used to beguile the men of Memphis in their dreams! What crosses, what torture I suffer! You force me to go out, and I am kept bound under the threshold. I cannot go out unless the young man who keeps me there lets me go." The old man answered, "Your strength must be great indeed, if a bit of thread and a plate can keep you bound. Tell me, how is it that you dared to enter into this maid who belongs to God?" "That I might preserve her as a virgin," said he. "You preserve her, betrayer of chastity! Why did you not rather enter into him who sent you?" "For what purpose," he answers, "should I enter into one who was in alliance with a comrade of my own, the demon of love?" But the saint would not command search to be made for either the young man or the charms till the maiden had undergone a process of purgation, for fear that it might be thought that the demon had been released by means of incantations, or that he himself had attached credit to what he said. He declared that demons are deceitful and well versed in dissimulation, and sharply rebuked the virgin when she had recovered her health for having by her conduct given an opportunity for the demon to enter.
22. It was not only in Palestine and the neighbouring cities of Egypt or Syria that he was in high repute, but his fame had reached distant provinces. An officer [4026] of the Emperor Constantius whose golden hair and personal beauty revealed his country (it lay between the Saxons and the Alemanni, was of no great extent but powerful, and is known to historians as Germany, but is now called France), had long, that is to say from infancy, been pursued by a devil, who forced him in the night to howl, groan, and gnash his teeth. He therefore secretly asked the Emperor for a post-warrant, plainly telling him why he wanted it, and having also obtained letters to the legate at Palestine came with great pomp and a large retinue to Gaza. On his inquiring of the local senators where Hilarion the monk dwelt, the people of Gaza were much alarmed, and supposing that he had been sent by the Emperor, brought him to the monastery, that they might show respect to one so highly accredited, and that, if any guilt had been incurred by them by injuries previously done by them to Hilarion it might be obliterated by their present dutifulness. The old man at the time was taking a walk on the soft sands and was humming some passage or other from the psalms. Seeing so great a company approaching he stopped, and having returned the salutes of all while he raised his hand and gave them his blessing, after an hour's interval he bade the rest withdraw, but would have his visitor together with servants and officers remain: for by the man's eyes and countenance he knew the cause of his coming. Immediately on being questioned by the servant of God the man sprang up on tiptoe, so as scarcely to touch the ground with his feet, and with a wild roar replied in Syriac in which language he had been interrogated. Pure Syriac was heard flowing from the lips of a barbarian who knew only French and Latin, and that without the absence of a sibilant, or an aspirate, or an idiom of the speech of Palestine. The demon then confessed by what means he had entered into him. Further, that his interpreters who knew only Greek and Latin might understand, Hilarion questioned him also in Greek, and when he gave the same answer in the same words and alleged in excuse many occasions on which spells had been laid upon him, and how he was bound to yield to magic arts, "I care not," said the saint, "how you came to enter, but I command you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to come out." The man, as soon as he was healed, with a rough simplicity offered him ten pounds of gold. But the saint took from him only bread, and told him that they who were nourished on such food regarded gold as mire.
23. It is not enough to speak of men; brute animals were also daily brought to him in a state of madness, and among them a Bactrian camel of enormous size amid the shouts of thirty men or more who held him tight with stout ropes. He had already injured many. His eyes were bloodshot, his mouth filled with foam, his rolling tongue swollen, and above every other source of terror was his loud and hideous roar. Well, the old man ordered him to be let go. At once those who brought him as well as the attendants of the saint fled away without exception. The saint went by himself to meet him, and addressing him in Syriac said, "You do not alarm me, devil, huge though your present body is. Whether in a fox or a camel you are just the same." Meanwhile he stood with outstretched hand. The brute raging and looking as if he would devour Hilarion came up to him, but immediately fell down, laid its head on the ground, and to the amazement of all present showed suddenly no less tameness than it had exhibited ferocity before. But the old man declared to them how the devil, for men's sake, seizes even beasts of burden; that he is inflamed by such intense hatred for men that he desires to destroy not only them but what belongs to them. As an illustration of this he added the fact that before he was permitted to try the saintly Job, he made an end of all his substance. Nor ought it to disturb anyone that [4027] by the Lord's command two thousand swine were slain by the agency of demons, since those who witnessed the miracle could not have believed that so great a multitude of demons had gone out of the man unless an equally vast number of swine had rushed to ruin, showing that it was a legion that impelled them.
24. Time would fail me if I wished to relate all the miracles which were wrought by him. For to such a pitch of glory was he raised by the Lord that the blessed Antony among the rest hearing of his life wrote to him and gladly received his letters. And if ever the sick from Syria came to him he would say to them, "Why have you taken the trouble to come so far, when you have there my son Hilarion?" Following his example, however, innumerable monasteries sprang up throughout the whole of Palestine, and all the monks flocked to him. When he saw this he praised the Lord for His grace, and exhorted them individually to the profit of their souls, telling them that the fashion of this world passes away, and that the true life is that which is purchased by suffering in the present.
25. Wishing to set the monks an example of humility and of zeal he was accustomed on fixed days before the vintage to visit their cells. When the brethren knew this they would all come together to meet him, and in company with their distinguished leader go the round of the monasteries, taking with them provisions, because sometimes as many as two thousand men were assembled. But, as time went on, all the settlements round gladly gave food to the neighbouring monks for the entertainment of the saints. Moreover, the care he took to prevent any brother however humble or poor being passed over is evidenced by the journey which he once took into the desert of Cades to visit one of his disciples. With a great company of monks he reached Elusa, as it happened on the day when the annual festival had brought all the people together to the temple of Venus. This, goddess is worshipped on account of Lucifer to whom the Saracen nation is devoted. The very town too is to a great extent semi-barbarous, owing to its situation. When therefore it was heard that Saint Hilarion was passing through (he had frequently healed many Saracens possessed by demons), they went to meet him in crowds with their wives and children, bending their heads and crying in the Syriac tongue Barech, that is, Bless. He received them with courtesy and humility, and prayed that they might worship God rather than stones; at the same time, weeping copiously, he looked up to heaven and promised that if they would believe in Christ he would visit them often. By the marvellous grace of God they did not suffer him to depart before he had drawn the outline of a church, and their priest with his garland upon his head had been signed with the sign of Christ.
26. Another year, again, when he was setting out to visit the monasteries and was drawing up a list of those with whom he must stay and whom he must see in passing, the monks knowing that one of their number was a niggard, and being at the same time desirous to cure his complaint, asked the saint to stay with him. He replied, "Do you wish me to inflict injury on you and annoyance on the brother?" The niggardly brother on hearing of this was ashamed, and with the strenuous support of all his brethren, at length obtained from the saint a reluctant promise to put his monastery on the roll of his resting places. Ten days after they came to him and found the keepers already on guard in the vineyard through which their course lay, to keep off all comers with stones and clods and slings. In the morning they all departed without having eaten a grape, while the old man smiled and pretended not to know what had happened.
27. Once when they were being entertained by another monk whose name was Sabus (we must not of course give the name of the niggard, we may tell that of this generous man), because it was the Lord's day, they were all invited by him into the vineyard so that before the hour for food came they might relieve the toil of the journey by a repast of grapes. Said the saint, "Cursed be he who looks for the refreshment of the body before that of the soul. Let us pray, let us sing, let us do our duty to God, and then we will hasten to the vineyard." When the service was over, he stood on an eminence and blessed the vineyard and let his own sheep go to their pasture. Now those who partook were not less than three thousand. And whereas the whole vineyard had been estimated at a hundred flagons, within thirty days he made it worth three hundred. The niggardly brother gathered much less than usual, and he was grieved to find that even what he had turned to vinegar. The old man had predicted this to many brethren before it happened. He particularly abhorred such monks as were led by their lack of faith to hoard for the future, and were careful about expense, or raiment, or some other of those things which pass away with the world.
28. Lastly he would not even look at one of the brethren who lived about five miles off because he ascertained that he very jealously guarded his bit of ground, and had a little money. The offender wishing to be reconciled to the old man often came to the brethren, and in particular to Hesychius who was specially dear to Hilarion. One day accordingly he brought a bundle of green chick-pea just as it had been gathered. Hesychius placed it on the table against the evening, whereupon the old man cried out that he could not bear the stench, and asked where it came from. Hesychius replied that a certain brother had sent the brethren the first fruits of his ground. "Don't you notice," said he, "the horrid stench, and detect the foul odour of avarice in the peas? Send it to the cattle, send to the brute-beasts and see whether they can eat it." No sooner was it in obedience to his command laid in the manger than the cattle in the wildest alarm and bellowing loudly broke their fastenings and fled in different directions. For the old man was enabled by grace to tell from the odour of bodies and garments, and the things which any one had touched, by what demon or with what vice the individual was distressed.
29. His sixty-third year found the old man at the head of a grand monastery and a multitude of resident brethren. There were such crowds of persons constantly bringing those who suffered from various kinds of sickness or were possessed of unclean spirits, that the whole circuit of the wilderness was full of all sorts of people. And as the saint saw all this he wept daily and called to mind with incredible regret his former mode of life. When one of the brethren asked him why he was so dejected he replied, "I have returned again to the world and have received my reward in my lifetime. The people of Palestine and the adjoining province think me of some importance, and under pretence of a monastery for the well-ordering of the brethren I have all the apparatus of a paltry life about me." The brethren, however, kept watch over him and in particular Hesychius, who had a marvellously devoted affection and veneration for the old man. After he had spent two years in these lamentations Aristæneté the lady of whom we made mention before, as being then the wife of a prefect though without any of a prefect's ostentation, came to him intending to pay a visit to Antony also. He said to her, "I should like to go myself too if I were not kept a prisoner in this monastery, and if my going could be fruitful. For it is now two days since mankind was bereaved of him who was so truly a father to them all." She believed his word and stayed where she was: and after a few days the news came that Antony had fallen asleep.
30. Some may wonder at the miracles he worked, or his incredible fasting, knowledge, and humility. Nothing so astonishes me as his power to tread under foot honour and glory. Bishops, presbyters, crowds of clergymen and monks, of Christian matrons even (a great temptation), and a rabble from all quarters in town and country were congregating about him, and even judges and others holding high positions, that they might receive at his hands the bread or oil which he had blessed. But he thought of nothing but solitude, so much so that one day he determined to be gone, and having procured an ass (he was almost exhausted with fasting and could scarcely walk) endeavoured to steal away. The news spread far and wide, and, just as if a public mourning for the desolation of Palestine were decreed, ten thousand people of various ages and both sexes came together to prevent his departure. He was unmoved by entreaties, and striking the sand with his stick kept saying: "I will not make my Lord a deceiver; I cannot look upon churches overthrown, Christ's altars trodden down, the blood of my sons poured out." All who were present began to understand that some secret had been revealed to him which he was unwilling to confess, but they none the less kept guard over him that he might not go. He therefore determined, and publicly called all to witness, that he would take neither food nor drink unless he were released. Only after seven days was he relieved from his fasting; when having bidden farewell to numerous friends, he came to Betilium attended by a countless multitude. There he prevailed upon the crowd to return and chose as his companions forty monks who had resources for the journey and were capable of travelling during fasting-time, that is, after sunset. He then visited the brethren who were in the neighbouring desert and sojourning at a place called Lychnos, and after three days came to the castle of Theubatus to see Dracontius, bishop and confessor, who was in exile there. The bishop was beyond measure cheered by the presence of so distinguished a man. At the end of another three days he set out for Babylon and arrived there after a hard journey. Then he visited Philo the bishop, who was also a confessor; for the Emperor Constantius who favoured the Arian heresy had transported both of them to those parts. Departing thence he came in three days to the town Aphroditon. There he met with a deacon Baisanes who kept dromedaries which were hired, on account of the scarcity of water in the desert, to carry travellers who wished to visit Antony. He then made known to the brethren that the anniversary of the blessed Antony's decease was at hand, and that he must spend a whole night in vigil in the very place where the saint had died. So then after three days journey through the waste and terrible desert they at length came to a very high mountain, and there found two monks, Isaac and Pelusianus, the former of whom had been one of Antony's attendants. [4028]
31. The occasion seems a fitting one, since we are on the spot itself, to describe the abode of this great man. There is a high and rocky mountain extending for about a mile, with gushing springs amongst its spurs, the waters of which are partly absorbed by the sand, partly flow towards the plain and gradually form a stream shaded on either side by countless palms which lend much pleasantness and charm to the place. Here the old man might be seen pacing to and fro with the disciples of blessed Antony. Here, so they said, Antony himself used to sing, pray, work, and rest when weary. Those vines and shrubs were planted by his own hand: that garden bed was his own design. This pool for watering the garden was made by him after much toil. That hoe was handled by him for many years. Hilarion would lie upon the saint's bed and as though it were still warm would affectionately kiss it. The cell was square, its sides measuring no more than the length of a sleeping man. Moreover on the lofty mountaintop, the ascent of which was by a zig-zag path very difficult, were to be seen two cells of the same dimensions, in which he stayed when he escaped from the crowds of visitors or the company of his disciples. These were cut out of the live rock and were only furnished with doors. When they came to the garden, "You see," said Isaac, "this garden with its shrubs and green vegetables; about three years ago it was ravaged by a troop of wild asses. One of their leaders was hidden by Antony to stand still while he thrashed the animal's sides with a stick and wanted to know why they devoured what they had not sown. And ever afterwards, excepting the water which they were accustomed to come and drink, they never touched anything, not a bush or a vegetable." The old man further asked to be shown his burial place, and they thereupon took him aside; but whether they showed him the tomb or not is unknown. It is related that the motive for secrecy was compliance with Antony's orders and to prevent Pergamius, a very wealthy man of the district, from removing the saint's body to his house and erecting a shrine to his memory.
32. Having returned to Aphroditon and keeping with him only two of the brethren, he stayed in the neighbouring desert, and practised such rigid abstinence and silence that he felt that then for the first time he had begun to serve Christ. Three years had now elapsed since the heavens had been closed and the land had suffered from drought, and it was commonly said that even the elements were lamenting the death of Antony. Hilarion did not remain unknown to the inhabitants of that place any more than to others, but men and women with ghastly faces and wasted by hunger earnestly entreated the servant of Christ, as being the blessed Antony's successor, to give them rain. Hilarion when he saw them was strangely affected with compassion and, raising his eyes to heaven and lifting up both his hands, he at once obtained their petition. But, strange to say, that parched and sandy district, after the rain had fallen, unexpectedly produced such vast numbers of serpents and poisonous animals that many who were bitten would have died at once if they had not run to Hilarion. He therefore blessed some oil with which all the husbandmen and shepherds touched their wounds, and found an infallible cure.
33. Seeing that even there surprising respect was paid to him, he went to Alexandria, intending to cross from thence to the farther oasis of the desert. And because he had never stayed in cities since he entered on the monk's life, he turned aside to some brethren at Bruchium, not far from Alexandria, whom he knew, and who welcomed the old man with the greatest pleasure. It was now night when all at once they heard his disciples saddling the ass and making ready for the journey. They therefore threw themselves at his feet and besought him not to leave them; they fell prostrate before the door, and declared they would rather die than lose such a guest. He answered: "My reason for hastening away is that I may not give you trouble. You will no doubt afterwards discover that I have not suddenly left without good cause." Next day the authorities of Gaza with the lictors of the prefect having heard of his arrival on the previous day, entered the monastery, and when they failed to find him anywhere they began to say to one another: "What we heard is true. He is a magician and knows the future." The fact was that the city of Gaza on Julian's accession to the throne, after the departure of Hilarion from Palestine and the destruction of his monastery, had presented a petition to the Emperor requesting that both Hilarion and Hesychius might be put to death, and a proclamation had been published everywhere that search should be made for them.
34. Having then left Bruchium, he entered the oasis through the trackless desert, and there abode for a year, more or less. But, inasmuch as his fame had travelled thither also, he felt that he could not be hidden in the East, where he was known to many by report and by sight, and began to think of taking ship for some solitary island, so that having been exposed to public view by the land, he might at least find concealment in the sea. Just about that time Hadrian, his disciple, arrived from Palestine with information that Julian was slain and that a Christian emperor [4029] had commenced his reign; he ought therefore, it was said, to return to the relics of his monastery. But he, when he heard this, solemnly refused to return; and hiring a camel crossed the desert waste and reached Paretonium, a city on the coast of Libya. There the ill-starred Hadrian wishing to return to Palestine and unwilling to part with the renown so long attaching to his master's name, heaped reproaches upon him, and at last having packed up the presents which he had brought him from the brethren, set out without the knowledge of Hilarion. As I shall have no further opportunity of referring to this man, I would only record, for the terror of those who despise their masters, that after a little while he was attacked by the king's-evil [4030] and turned to a mass of corruption.
35. The old man accompanied by Gazanus went on board a ship which was sailing to Sicily. Half way across the Adriatic he was preparing to pay his fare by selling a copy of the Gospels which he had written with his own hand in his youth, when the son of the master of the ship seized by a demon began to cry out and say: "Hilarion, servant of God, why is it that through you we cannot be safe even on the sea? Spare me a little until I reach land. Let me not be cast out here and thrown into the deep." The saint replied: "If my God permit you to remain, remain; but if He casts you out, why bring odium upon me a sinner and a beggar?" This he said that the sailors and merchants on board might not betray him on reaching shore. Not long after, the boy was cleansed, his father and the rest who were present having given their word that they would not reveal the name of the saint to any one.
36. On approaching Pachynus, a promontory of Sicily, he offered the master the Gospel for the passage of himself and Gazanus. The man was unwilling to take it, all the more because he saw that excepting that volume and the clothes they wore they had nothing, and at last he swore he would not take it. But the aged saint, ardent and confident in the consciousness of his poverty, rejoiced exceedingly that he had no worldly possessions and was accounted a beggar by the people of the place.
37. Once more, on thinking the matter over and fearing that merchants coming from the East might make him known, he fled to the interior, some twenty miles from the sea, and there on an abandoned piece of ground, every day tied up a bundle of firewood which he laid upon the back of his disciple, and sold at some neighbouring mansion. They thus supported themselves and were able to purchase a morsel of bread for any chance visitors. But that came exactly to pass which is written: [4031] "a city set on a hill cannot be hid." It happened that one of the shields-men [4032] who was vexed by a demon was in the basilica of the blessed Peter at Rome, when the unclean spirit within him cried out, "A few days ago Christ's servant Hilarion entered Sicily and no one knew him, and he thinks he is hidden. I will go and betray him." Immediately he embarked with his attendants in a ship lying in harbour, sailed to Pachynus and, led by the demon to the old man's hut, there prostrated himself and was cured on the spot. This, his first miracle in Sicily, brought the sick to him in countless numbers (but it brought also a multitude of religious persons); insomuch that one of the leading men who was swollen with the dropsy was cured the same day that he came. He afterwards offered the saint gifts without end, but the saint replied to him in the words of the Saviour to his disciples: [4033] "Freely ye received, freely give."
38. While this was going on in Sicily Hesychius his disciple was searching the world over for the old man, traversing the coast, penetrating deserts, clinging all the while to the belief that wherever he was he could not long be hidden. At the end of three years he heard at Methona from a certain Jew, who dealt in old-clothes, that a Christian prophet had appeared in Sicily, and was working such miracles and signs, one might think him one of the ancient saints. So he asked about his dress, gait, and speech, and in particular his age, but could learn nothing. His informant merely declared that he had heard of the man by report. He therefore crossed the Adriatic and after a prosperous voyage came to Pachynus, where he took up his abode in a cottage on the shore of the bay, and, on inquiring for tidings of the old man, discovered by the tale which every one told him where he was, and what he was doing. Nothing about him surprised them all so much as the fact that after such great signs and wonders he had not accepted even a crust of bread from any one in the district. And, to cut my story short, the holy man Hesychius fell down at his master's knees and bedewed his feet with tears; at length he was gently raised by him, and when two or three days had been spent in talking over matters, he learned from Gazanus that Hilarion no longer felt himself able to live in those parts, but wanted to go to certain barbarous races where his name and fame were unknown.
39. He therefore brought him to Epidaurus, [4034] a town in Dalmatia, where he stayed for a few days in the country near, but could not be hid. An enormous serpent, of the sort which the people of those parts call boas [4035] because they are so large that they often swallow oxen, was ravaging the whole province far and wide, and was devouring not only flocks and herds, but husbandmen and shepherds who were drawn in by the force of its breathing. He ordered a pyre to be prepared for it, then sent up a prayer to Christ, called forth the reptile, bade it climb the pile of wood, and then applied the fire. And so before all the people he burnt the savage beast to ashes. But now he began anxiously to ask what he was to do, whither to betake himself. Once more he prepared for flight, and in thought ranged through solitary lands, grieving that his miracles could speak of him though his tongue was silent.
40. At that time there was an earthquake over the whole world, following on the death of Julian, which caused the sea to burst its bounds, and left ships hanging on the edge of mountain steeps. It seemed as though God were threatening a second deluge, or all things were returning to original chaos. When the people of Epidaurus saw this, I mean the roaring waves and heaving waters and the swirling billows mountain-high dashing on the shore, fearing that what they saw had happened elsewhere might befall them and their town be utterly destroyed, they made their way to the old man, and as if preparing for a battle placed him on the shore. After making the sign of the cross three times on the sand, he faced the sea, stretched out his hands, and no one would believe to what a height the swelling sea stood like a wall before him. It roared for a long time as if indignant at the barrier, then little by little sank to its level. Epidaurus and all the region roundabout tell the story to this day, and mothers teach their children to hand down the remembrance of it to posterity. Verily, what was said to the Apostles, [4036] "If ye have faith, ye shall say to this mountain, Remove into the sea, and it shall be done," may be even literally fulfilled, provided one has such faith as the Lord commanded the Apostles to have. For what difference does it make whether a mountain descends into the sea, or huge mountains of waters everywhere else fluid suddenly become hard as rock at the old man's feet?
41. The whole country marvelled and the fame of the great miracle was in everyone's mouth, even at Salonæ. [4037] When the old man knew this was the case he escaped secretly by night in a small cutter, and finding a merchant ship after two days came to Cyprus. Between [4038] Malea and [4039] Cythera, the pirates, who had left on the shore that part of their fleet which is worked by poles instead of sails, bore down on them with two light vessels of considerable size; and besides this they were buffeted by the waves on every side. All the rowers began to be alarmed, to weep, to leave their places, to get out their poles, and, as though one message was not enough, again and again told the old man that pirates were at hand. Looking at them in the distance he gently smiled, then turned to his disciples and said, [4040] "O ye of little faith, wherefore do ye doubt? Are these more than the army of Pharaoh? Yet they were all drowned by the will of God." Thus he spake, but none the less the enemy with foaming prows kept drawing nearer and were now only a stone's throw distant. He stood upon the prow of the vessel facing them with out-stretched hand, and said, "Thus far and no farther." Marvellous to relate, the boats at once bounded back, and though urged forward by the oars fell farther and farther astern. The pirates were astonished to find themselves going back, and laboured with all their strength to reach the vessel, but were carried to the shore faster by far than they came.
42. I pass by the rest for fear I should seem in my history to be publishing a volume of miracles. I will only say this, that when sailing with a fair wind among the Cyclades he heard the voices of unclean spirits shouting in all directions from towns and villages, and running in crowds to the shore. Having then entered Paphos, the city of Cyprus renowned in the songs of the poets, the ruins of whose temples after frequent earthquakes are the only evidences at the present day of its former grandeur, he began to live in obscurity about two miles from the city, and rejoiced in having a few days rest. But not quite twenty days passed before throughout the whole island whoever had unclean spirits began to cry out that Hilarion Christ's servant had come, and that they must go to him with all speed. Salamis, Curium, Lapetha, and the other cities joined in the cry, while many declared that they knew Hilarion and that he was indeed the servant of Christ, but where he was they could not tell. So within a trifle more than thirty days, about two hundred people, both men and women, came together to him. When he saw them he lamented that they would not suffer him to be quiet, and thirsting in a kind of manner to avenge himself, he lashed them with such urgency of prayer that some immediately, others after two or three days, all within a week, were cured.
43. Here he stayed two years, always thinking of flight, and in the meantime sent Hesychius, who was to return in the spring, to Palestine to salute the brethren and visit the ashes of his monastery. When the latter returned he found Hilarion longing to sail again to Egypt, that is to the locality called [4041] Bucolia; but he persuaded him that, since there were no Christians there, but only a fierce and barbarous people, he should rather go to a spot in Cyprus itself which was higher up and more retired. After long and diligent search he found such a place twelve miles from the sea far off among the recesses of rugged mountains, the ascent to which could hardly be accomplished by creeping on hands and knees. Thither he conducted him. The old man entered and gazed around. It was indeed a lonely and terrible place; for though surrounded by trees on every side, with water streaming from the brow of the hill, a delightful bit of garden, and fruit-trees in abundance (of which, however, he never ate), yet it had close by the ruins of an ancient temple from which, as he himself was wont to relate and his disciples testify, the voices of such countless demons re-echoed night and day, that you might have thought there was an army of them. He was highly pleased at the idea of having his opponents in the neighbourhood, and abode there five years, cheered in these his last days by the frequent visits of Hesychius, for owing to the steep and rugged ascent, and the numerous ghosts (so the story ran), nobody or scarcely anybody either could or dared to go up to him. One day, however, as he was leaving his garden, he saw a man completely paralysed lying in front of the gates. He asked Hesychius who he was, or how he had been brought. Hesychius replied that he was the agent at the country-house to which the garden belonged in which they were located. Weeping much and stretching out his hand to the prostrate man he said, "I bid you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ arise and walk." The words were still on the lips of the speaker, when, with miraculous speed, the limbs were strengthened and the man arose and stood firm. Once this was noised abroad the need of many overcame even the pathless journey and the dangers of the place. The occupants of all the houses round about had nothing so much in their thoughts as to prevent the possibility of his escape, a rumour having spread concerning him to the effect that he could not stay long in the same place. This habit of his was not due to levity or childishness, but to the fact that he shunned the worry of publicity and praise, and always longed for silence and a life of obscurity.
44. In his eightieth year, during the absence of Hesychius, he wrote by way of a will a short letter with his own hand, and left him all his riches (that is to say, a copy of the gospels, and his sack-cloth tunic, cowl and cloak), for his servant had died a few days before. Many devout men therefore came to the invalid from Paphos, and specially because they had heard of his saying that he must soon migrate to the Lord and must be liberated from the bonds of the body. There came also Constantia a holy woman whose son-in-law and daughter he had anointed with oil and saved from death. He earnestly entreated them all not to let him be kept even a moment of time after death, but to bury him immediately in the same garden, just as he was, clad in his goat-hair tunic, cowl, and his peasant's cloak.
45. His body was now all but cold, and nought was left of life but reason. Yet with eyes wide open he kept repeating, "Go forth, what do you fear? Go forth, my soul, why do you hesitate? You have served Christ nearly seventy years, and do you fear death?" Thus saying he breathed his last. He was immediately buried before the city heard of his death.
46. When the holy man Hesychius heard of his decease, he went to Cyprus and, to lull the suspicions of the natives who were keeping strict guard, pretended that he wished to live in the same garden, and then in the course of about ten months, though at great peril to his life, stole the saint's body. He carried it to Majuma; and there all the monks and crowds of towns-folk going in procession laid it to rest in the ancient monastery. His tunic, cowl and cloak, were uninjured; the whole body as perfect as if alive, and so fragrant with sweet odours that one might suppose it to have been embalmed.
47. In bringing my book to an end I think I ought not to omit to mention the devotion of the holy woman Constantia who, when a message was brought her that Hilarion's body was in Palestine, immediately died, proving even by death the sincerity of her love for the servant of God. For she was accustomed to spend whole nights in vigil at his tomb, and to converse with him as if he were present in order to stimulate her prayers. Even at the present day one may see a strange dispute between the people of Palestine and the Cypriotes, the one contending that they have the body, the other the spirit of Hilarion. And yet in both places great miracles are wrought daily, but to a greater extent in the garden of Cyprus, perhaps because that spot was dearest to him. __________________________________________________________________
[4017] See life of Paulus above.
[4018] Matt. xi. 18.
[4019] Luke xiv. 33.
[4020] Isa. xiv. 14.
[4021] 2 Thess. iii. 10.
[4022] Exod. xv. 1.
[4023] Ps. xx. 7.
[4024] Luke v. 31.
[4025] He was also the god of agricultural fertility. The festival of the Consualia, supposed to have been instituted by Romulus, was on August 21.
[4026] Or secretary--Candidatus, a quæstor appointed by the Emperor to read his rescripts, etc.
[4027] Matt. viii. and Mark v.
[4028] Interpres. Probably one who spoke for him to the people, as Elijah had Elisha as his attendant.
[4029] Jovian, a.d., 363-4.
[4030] Morbo regio. The dictionaries give "jaundice" as the meaning, but it is universally used in modern times for scrofula. Here it seems to mean leprosy.
[4031] Matt. v. 14.
[4032] Scutarius, one of a corps of guards, whose prominent weapons were shields.
[4033] Matt. x. 8.
[4034] More properly in Argolis. It was the native town of Æsculapius, who was worshipped under the form of a serpent.
[4035] Boas because they can swallow oxen (boves).
[4036] Matt. xvii. 20 sq.
[4037] In Dalmatia, three miles from Diocletian's great palace (Spalatro).
[4038] The southern promontory of Greece.
[4039] Now Cerigo.
[4040] Matt. xiv. 32.
[4041] Probably the place which gave its name to one of the mouths of the Nile (Bucolicum). __________________________________________________________________
The Life of Malchus, the Captive Monk.
------------------------
The life of Malchus was written at Bethlehem, a.d., 391. Its origin and purpose are sufficiently described in chapters 1 and 2.
1. They who have to fight a naval battle prepare for it in harbours and calm waters by adjusting the helm, plying the oars, and making ready the hooks and grappling irons. They draw up the soldiers on the decks and accustom them to stand steady with poised foot and on slippery ground; so that they may not shrink from all this when the real encounter comes, because they have had experience of it in the sham fight. And so it is in my case. I have long held my peace, because silence was imposed on me by one to whom I give pain when I speak of him. But now, in preparing to write history on a wider scale I desire to practise myself by means of this little work and as it were to wipe the rust from my tongue. For I have purposed (if God grant me life, and if my censurers will at length cease to persecute me, now that I am a fugitive and shut up in a monastery) to write a history of the church of Christ [4042] from the advent of our Saviour up to our own age, that is from the apostles to the dregs of time in which we live, and to show by what means and through what agents it received its birth, and how, as it gained strength, it grew by persecution and was crowned with martyrdom; and then, after reaching the Christian Emperors, how it increased in influence and in wealth but decreased in Christian virtues. But of this elsewhere. Now to the matter in hand.
2. Maronia is a little hamlet some thirty miles to the east of Antioch in Syria. After having many owners or landlords, [4043] at the time when I was staying as a young man in Syria [4044] it came into the possession of my intimate friend, the Bishop Evagrius, [4045] whose name I now give in order to show the source of my information. Well, there was at the place at that time an old man by name Malchus, which we might render "king," a Syrian by race and speech, in fact a genuine son of the soil. His companion was an old woman very decrepit who seemed to be at death's door, both of them so zealously pious and such constant frequenters of the Church, they might have been taken for Zacharias and Elizabeth in the Gospel but for the fact that there was no John to be seen. With some curiosity I asked the neighbours what was the link between them; was it marriage, or kindred, or the bond of the Spirit? All with one accord replied that they were holy people, well pleasing to God, and gave me a strange account of them. Longing to know more I began to question the man with much eagerness about the truth of what I heard, and learnt as follows.
3. My son, said he, I used to farm a bit of ground at Nisibis [4046] and was an only son. My parents regarding me as the heir and the only survivor of their race, wished to force me into marriage, but I said I would rather be a monk. How my father threatened and my mother coaxed me to betray my chastity requires no other proof than the fact that I fled from home and parents. I could not go to the East because Persia was close by and the frontiers were guarded by the soldiers of Rome; I therefore turned my steps to the West, taking with me some little provision for the journey, but barely sufficient to ward off destitution. To be brief, I came at last to the desert of Chalcis [4047] which is situate between Immæ and Beroa farther south. There, finding some monks, I placed myself under their direction, earning my livelihood by the labour of my hands, and curbing the wantonness of the flesh by fasting. After many years the desire came over me to return to my country, and stay with my mother and cheer her widowhood while she lived (for my father, as I had already heard, was dead), and then to sell the little property and give part to the poor, settle part on the monasteries and (I blush to confess my faithlessness) keep some to spend in comforts for myself. My abbot began to cry out that it was a temptation of the devil, and that under fair pretexts some snare of the old enemy lay hid. It was, he declared, a case of the dog returning to his vomit. Many monks, he said, had been deceived by such suggestions, for the devil never showed himself openly. He set before me many examples from the Scriptures, and told me that even Adam and Eve in the beginning had been overthrown by him through the hope of becoming gods. When he failed to convince me he fell upon his knees and besought me not to forsake him, nor ruin myself by looking back after putting my hand to the plough. Unhappily for myself I had the misfortune to conquer my adviser. I thought he was seeking not my salvation but his own comfort. So he followed me from the monastery as if he had been going to a funeral, and at last bade me farewell, saying, "I see that you bear the brand of a son of Satan. I do not ask your reasons nor take your excuses. The sheep which forsakes its fellows is at once exposed to the jaws of the wolf."
4. On the road from Beroa to Edessa [4048] adjoining the high-way is a waste over which the Saracens roam to and fro without having any fixed abode. Through fear of them travellers in those parts assemble in numbers, so that by mutual assistance they may escape impending danger. There were in my company men, women, old men, youths, children, altogether about seventy persons. All of a sudden the Ishmaelites on horses and camels made an assault upon us, with their flowing hair bound with fillets, their bodies half-naked, with their broad military boots, their cloaks streaming behind them, and their quivers slung upon the shoulders. They carried their bows unstrung and brandished their long spears; for they had come not to fight, but to plunder. We were seized, dispersed, and carried in different directions. I, meanwhile, repenting too late of the step I had taken, and far indeed from gaining possession of my inheritance, was assigned, along with another poor sufferer, a woman, to the service of one and the same owner. We were led, or rather carried, high upon the camel's back through a desert waste, every moment expecting destruction, and suspended, I may say, rather than seated. Flesh half raw was our food, camel's milk our drink.
5. At length, after crossing a great river we came to the interior of the desert, where, being commanded after the custom of the people to pay reverence to the mistress and her children, we bowed our heads. Here, as if I were a prisoner, I changed my dress, that is, learnt to go naked, the heat being so excessive as to allow of no clothing beyond a covering for the loins. Some sheep were given to me to tend, and, comparatively speaking, I found this occupation a comfort, for I seldom saw my masters or fellow slaves. My fate seemed to be like that of Jacob in sacred history, and reminded me also of Moses; both of whom were once shepherds in the desert. I fed on fresh cheese and milk, prayed continually, and sang psalms which I had learnt in the monastery. I was delighted with my captivity, and thanked God because I had found in the desert the monk's estate which I was on the point of losing in my country.
6. But no condition can ever shut out the Devil. How manifold past expression are his snares! Hid though I was, his malice found me out. My master seeing his flock increasing and finding no dishonesty in me (I knew that the Apostle has given command that masters should be as faithfully served as God Himself), and wishing to reward me in order to secure my greater fidelity, gave me the woman who was once my fellow servant in captivity. On my refusing and saying I was a Christian, and that it was not lawful for me to take a woman to wife so long as her husband was alive (her husband had been captured with us, but carried off by another master), my owner was relentless in his rage, drew his sword and began to make at me. If I had not without delay stretched out my hand and taken possession of the woman, he would have slain me on the spot. Well; by this time a darker night than usual had set in and, for me, all too soon. I led my bride into an old cave; sorrow was bride's-maid; we shrank from each other but did not confess it. Then I really felt my captivity; I threw myself down on the ground, and began to lament the monastic state which I had lost, and said: "Wretched man that I am! have I been preserved for this? has my wickedness brought me to this, that in my gray hairs I must lose my virgin state and become a married man? What is the good of having despised parents, country, property, for the Lord's sake, if I do the thing I wished to avoid doing when I despised them? And yet it may be perhaps the case that I am in this condition because I longed for home. What are we to do, my soul? are we to perish, or conquer? Are we to wait for the hand of the Lord, or pierce ourselves with our own sword? Turn your weapon against yourself; I must fear your death, my soul, more than the death of the body. Chastity preserved has its own martyrdom. Let the witness for Christ lie unburied in the desert; I will be at once the persecutor and the martyr." Thus speaking I drew my sword which glittered even in the dark, and turning its point towards me said: "Farewell, unhappy woman: receive me as a martyr not as a husband." She threw herself at my feet and exclaimed: "I pray you by Jesus Christ, and adjure you by this hour of trial, do not shed your blood and bring its guilt upon me. If you choose to die, first turn your sword against me. Let us rather be united upon these terms. Supposing my husband should return to me, I would preserve the chastity which I have learnt in captivity; I would even die rather than lose it. Why should you die to prevent a union with me? I would die if you desired it. Take me then as the partner of your chastity; and love me more in this union of the spirit than you could in that of the body only. Let our master believe that you are my husband. Christ knows you are my brother. We shall easily convince them we are married when they see us so loving." I confess, I was astonished and, much as I had before admired the virtue of the woman, I now loved her as a wife still more. Yet I never gazed upon her naked person; I never touched her flesh, for I was afraid of losing in peace what I had preserved in the conflict. In this strange wedlock many days passed away. Marriage had made us more pleasing to our masters, and there was no suspicion of our flight; sometimes I was absent for even a whole month like a trusty shepherd traversing the wilderness.
7. After a long time as I sat one day by myself in the desert with nothing in sight save earth and sky, I began quickly to turn things over in my thoughts, and amongst others called to mind my friends the monks, and specially the look of the father who had instructed me, kept me, and lost me. While I was thus musing I saw a crowd of ants swarming over a narrow path. The loads they carried were clearly larger than their own bodies. Some with their forceps were dragging along the seeds of herbs: others were excavating the earth from pits and banking it up to keep out the water. One party, in view of approaching winter, and wishing to prevent their store from being converted into grass through the dampness of the ground, were cutting off the tips of the grains they had carried in; another with solemn lamentation were removing the dead. And, what is stranger still in such a host, those coming out did not hinder those going in; nay rather, if they saw one fall beneath his burden they would put their shoulders to the load and give him assistance. In short that day afforded me a delightful entertainment. So, remembering how Solomon sends us to the shrewdness of the ant and quickens our sluggish faculties by setting before us such an example, I began to tire of captivity, and to regret the monk's cell, and long to imitate those ants and their doings, where toil is for the community, and, since nothing belongs to any one, all things belong to all.
8. When I returned to my chamber, my wife met me. My looks betrayed the sadness of my heart. She asked why I was so dispirited. I told her the reasons, and exhorted her to escape. She did not reject the idea. I begged her to be silent on the matter. She pledged her word. We constantly spoke to one another in whispers; and we floated in suspense betwixt hope and fear. I had in the flock two very fine he-goats: these I killed, made their skins into bottles, and from their flesh prepared food for the way. Then in the early evening when our masters thought we had retired to rest we began our journey, taking with us the bottles and part of the flesh. When we reached the river which was about ten miles off, having inflated the skins and got astride upon them, we intrusted ourselves to the water, slowly propelling ourselves with our feet, that we might be carried down by the stream to a point on the opposite bank much below that at which we embarked, and that thus the pursuers might lose the track. But meanwhile the flesh became sodden and partly lost, and we could not depend on it for more than three days' sustenance. We drank till we could drink no more by way of preparing for the thirst we expected to endure, then hastened away, constantly looking behind us, and advanced more by night than day, on account both of the ambushes of the roaming Saracens, and of the excessive heat of the sun. I grow terrified even as I relate what happened; and, although my mind is perfectly at rest, yet my frame shudders from head to foot.
9. Three days after we saw in the dim distance two men riding on camels approaching with all speed. At once foreboding ill I began to think my master purposed putting us to death, and our sun seemed to grow dark again. In the midst of our fear, and just as we realized that our footsteps on the sand had betrayed us, we found on our right hand a cave which extended far underground. Well, we entered the cave: but we were afraid of venomous beasts such as vipers, basilisks, scorpions, and other creatures of the kind, which often resort to such shady places so as to avoid the heat of the sun. We therefore barely went inside, and took shelter in a pit on the left, not venturing a step farther, lest in fleeing from death we should run into death. We thought thus within ourselves: If the Lord helps us in our misery we have found safety: if He rejects us for our sins, we have found our grave. What do you suppose were our feelings? What was our terror, when in front of the cave, close by, there stood our master and fellow-servant, brought by the evidence of our footsteps to our hiding place? How much worse is death expected than death inflicted! Again my tongue stammers with distress and fear; it seems as if I heard my master's voice, and I hardly dare mutter a word. He sent his servant to drag us from the cavern while he himself held the camels and, sword in hand, waited for us to come. Meanwhile the servant entered about three or four cubits, and we in our hiding place saw his back though he could not see us, for the nature of the eye is such that those who go into the shade out of the sunshine can see nothing. His voice echoed through the cave: "Come out, you felons; come out and die; why do you stay? Why do you delay? Come out, your master is calling and patiently waiting for you." He was still speaking when lo! through the gloom we saw a lioness seize the man, strangle him, and drag him, covered with blood, farther in. Good Jesus! how great was our terror now, how intense our joy! We beheld, though our master knew not of it, our enemy perish. He, when he saw that he was long in returning, supposed that the fugitives being two to one were offering resistance. Impatient in his rage, and sword still in hand, he came to the cavern, and shouted like a madman as he chided the slowness of his slave, but was seized upon by the wild beast before he reached our hiding place. Who ever would believe that before our eyes a brute would fight for us?
One cause of fear was removed, but there was the prospect of a similar death for ourselves, though the rage of the lion was not so bad to bear as the anger of the man. Our hearts failed for fear: without venturing to stir a step we awaited the issue, having no wall of defence in the midst of so great dangers save the consciousness of our chastity; when, early in the morning, the lioness, afraid of some snare and aware that she had been seen took up her cub in her teeth and carried it away, leaving us in possession of our retreat. Our confidence was not restored all at once. We did not rush out, but waited for a long time; for as often as we thought of coming out we pictured to ourselves the horror of falling in with her.
10. At last we got rid of our fright; and when that day was spent, we sallied forth towards evening, and saw the camels, on account of their great speed called dromedaries, quietly chewing the cud. We mounted, and with the strength gained from the new supply of grain, after ten days travelling through the desert arrived at the Roman camp. After being presented to the tribune we told all, and from thence were sent to Sabianus, who commanded in Mesopotamia, where we sold our camels. My dear old abbot was now sleeping in the Lord; I betook myself therefore to this place, and returned to the monastic life, while I entrusted my companion here to the care of the virgins; for though I loved her as a sister, I did not commit myself to her as if she were my sister.
Malchus was an old man, I a youth, when he told me these things. I who have related them to you am now old, and I have set them forth as a history of chastity for the chaste. Virgins, I exhort you, guard your chastity. Tell the story to them that come after, that they may realize that in the midst of swords, and wild beasts of the desert, virtue is never a captive, and that he who is devoted to the service of Christ may die, but cannot be conquered. __________________________________________________________________
[4042] This purpose was never carried into effect. These Lives of the Monks may be regarded as a contribution towards it, and also the book De Viris Illustribus (translated in Vol. iii. of this series) which was written in the following year, 392.
[4043] Patronos. Properly defenders or advocates, but passing into the sense of proprietor, as in the Italian padrone.
[4044] In the year 374.
[4045] See Letters i. 15, iii. 3.
[4046] A populous city in Mesopotamia.
[4047] The desert in which Jerome spent the years 375-80. See Letters ii., v., xiv., xvii.
[4048] A city of Mesopotamia, formerly the capital of Abgarus' kingdom: at this time a great centre of Syrian Christianity. __________________________________________________________________
The Dialogue Against the Luciferians.
------------------------
Introduction.
This Dialogue was written about 379, seven years after the death of Lucifer, and very soon after Jerome's return from his hermit life in the desert of Chalcis. Though he received ordination from Paulinus, who had been consecrated by Lucifer, he had no sympathy with Lucifer's narrower views, as he shows plainly in this Dialogue. Lucifer, who was bishop of Cagliari in Sardinia, first came into prominent notice about a.d. 354, when great efforts were being made to procure a condemnation of S. Athanasius by the Western bishops. He energetically took up the cause of the saint, and at his own request was sent by Liberius, bishop of Rome, in company with the priest Pancratius and the deacon Hilarius, on a mission to the Emperor Constantius. The emperor granted a Council, which met at Milan in a.d. 354. Lucifer distinguished himself by resisting a proposition to condemn Athanasius, and did not hesitate to oppose the emperor with much violence. In consequence of this he was sent into exile from a.d. 355 to a.d. 361, the greater portion of which time was spent at Eleutheropolis in Palestine, though he afterwards removed to the Thebaid. It was at this time that his polemical writings appeared, the tone and temper of which is indicated by the mere titles De Regibus Apostaticis (of Apostate Kings), De non Conveniendo cum Hæreticis, etc. (of not holding communion with heretics). On the death of Constantius in 361, Julian permitted the exiled bishops to return; but Lucifer instead of going to Alexandria where a Council was to be held under the presidency of Athanasius for the healing of a schism in the Catholic party at Antioch (some of which held to Meletius, while others followed Eustathius), preferred to go straight to Antioch. There he ordained Paulinus, the leader of the latter section, as bishop of the Church. Eusebius of Vercellæ soon arrived with the synodal letters of the Council of Alexandria, but, finding himself thus anticipated, and shrinking from a collision with his friend, he retired immediately. Lucifer stayed, and "declared that he would not hold communion with Eusebius or any who adopted the moderate policy of the Alexandrian Council. By this Council it had been determined that actual Arians, if they renounced their heresy, should be pardoned, but not invested with ecclesiastical functions; and that those bishops who had merely consented to Arianism should remain undisturbed. It was this latter concession which offended Lucifer, and he became henceforth the champion of the principle that no one who had yielded to any compromise whatever with Arianism should be allowed to hold an ecclesiastical office." He was thus brought into antagonism with Athanasius himself, who, it has been seen, presided at Alexandria. Eventually he returned to his see in Sardinia where, according to Jerome's Chronicle, he died in 371. Luciferianism became extinct in the beginning of the following century, if not earlier. It hardly appears to have been formed into a separate organization, though an appeal was made to the emperor by some Luciferian presbyters about the year 384, and both Ambrose and Augustine speak of him as having fallen into the schism.
The argument of the Dialogue may be thus stated. It has been pointed out above that Lucifer of Cagliari, who had been banished from his see in the reign of Constantius because of his adherence to the cause of Athanasius, had, on the announcement of toleration at the accession of Julian (361), gone to Antioch and consecrated Paulinus a bishop. There were then three bishops of Antioch, Dorotheus the Arian (who had succeeded Euzoius in 376), Meletius who, though an Athanasian in opinion, had been consecrated by Arians or Semi-Arians, and Paulinus; besides Vitalis, bishop of a congregation of Apollinarians. Lucifer, in the earnestness of his anti-Arian opinion, refused to acknowledge as bishops those who had come over from Arianism, though he accepted the laymen who had been baptized by Arian bishops. This opinion led to the Luciferian schism, and forms the subject of the Dialogue.
The point urged by Orthodoxus throughout is that, since the Luciferian accepts as valid the baptism conferred by Arian bishops, it is inconsistent in him not to acknowledge the bishops who have repented of their Arian opinions. The Luciferian at first (2) in his eagerness, declares the Arians to be no better than heathen; but he sees that he has gone too far, and retracts this opinion. Still it is one thing, he says, (3) to admit a penitent neophyte, another to admit a man to be bishop and celebrate the Eucharist. We do not wish, he says (4) to preclude individuals who have fallen from repentance. And we, replies Orthodoxus, by admitting the bishops save not them only but their flocks also. "The salt," says the Luciferian (5), "which has lost its savour cannot be salted," and, "What communion has Christ with Belial?" But this, it is answered (6), would prove that Arians could not confer baptism at all. Yes, says the objector, they are like John the Baptist, whose baptism needed to be followed by that of Christ. But, it is replied, the bishop gives Christ's baptism and confers the Holy Spirit. The confirmation which follows (9) is rather a custom of the churches than the necessary means of grace.
The argument is felt to be approaching to a philosophical logomachy (10, 11), but it is resumed by the Luciferian. There is a real difference, he says (12), between the man who in his simplicity accepts baptism from an Arian bishop, and the bishop himself who understands the heresy. Yet both, it is replied (13), when they are penitent, should be received.
At this point (14) the Luciferian yields. But he wishes to be assured that what Orthodoxus recommends has been really the practice of the Church. This leads to a valuable chapter of Church history. Orthodoxus recalls the victories of the Church, which the Luciferians speak of as corrupt (15). The shame is that, though they have the true creed, they have too little faith. He then describes (17, 18) how the orthodox bishops were beguiled into accepting the creed of Ariminum, but afterwards saw their error (19). "The world groaned to find itself Arian." They did all that was possible to set things right. Why should they not be received, as all but the authors of heresy had been received at Nicæa? (20) Lucifer who was a good shepherd, and Hilary the Deacon, in separating their own small body into a sect have left the rest a prey to the wolf (20, 21). The wheat and tares must grow together (22). This has been the principle of the Church (23), as shown by Scripture (24) and Apostolic custom, and even Cyprian, when he wished penitent heretics to be re-baptized (25), could not prevail. Even Hilary by receiving baptism from the Church which always has re-admitted heretics in repentance (26, 27) acknowledges this principle. In that Church and its divisions and practice it is our duty to abide.
1. It happened not long ago that a follower of Lucifer had a dispute with a son of the Church. His loquacity was odious and the language he employed most abusive. For he declared that the world belonged to the devil, and, as is commonly said by them at the present day, that the Church was turned into a brothel. His opponent on the other hand, with reason indeed, but without due regard to time and place, urged that Christ did not die in vain, and that it was for something more than a Sardinian cloak of skins [4049] that the Son of God came down from heaven. To be brief, the dispute was not settled when night interrupted the debate, and the lighting of the street-lamps gave the signal for the assembly to disperse. The combatants therefore withdrew, almost spitting in each other's faces, an arrangement having been previously made by the audience for a meeting in a quiet porch at daybreak. Thither, accordingly, they all came, and it was resolved that the words of both speakers should be taken down by reporters.
2. When all were seated, Helladius the Luciferian said, I want an answer first to my question. Are the Arians Christians or not?
Orthodoxus. I answer with another question, Are all heretics Christians?
L. If you call a man a heretic you deny that he is a Christian.
O. No heretics, then, are Christians.
L. I told you so before.
O. If they are not Christ's, they belong to the devil.
L. No one doubts that.
O. But if they belong to the devil, it makes no difference whether they are heretics or heathen.
L. I do not dispute the point.
O. We are then agreed that we must speak of a heretic as we would of a heathen.
L. Just so.
O. Now it is decided that heretics are heathen, put any question you please.
L. What I wanted to elicit by my question has been expressly stated, namely, that heretics are not Christians. Now comes the inference. If the Arians are heretics, and all heretics are heathen, the Arians are heathen too. But if the Arians are heathen and it is beyond dispute that the church has no communion with the Arians, that is with the heathen, it is clear that your church which welcomes bishops from the Arians, that is from the heathen, receives priests of the Capitol [4050] rather than bishops, and accordingly it ought more correctly to be called the synagogue of Anti-Christ than the Church of Christ.
O. Lo! what the prophet said is fulfilled: [4051] "They have digged a pit before me, they have fallen into the midst thereof themselves."
L. How so?
O. If the Arians are, as you say, heathen, and the assemblies of the Arians are the devil's camp, how is it that you receive a person who has been baptized in the devil's camp?
L. I do receive him, but as a penitent.
O. The fact is you don't know what you are saying. Does any one receive a penitent heathen?
L. In my simplicity I replied when we began that all heretics are heathen. But the question was a captious one, and you shall have the full credit of victory in the first point. I will now proceed to the second and maintain that a layman coming from the Arians ought to be received if penitent, but not a cleric.
O. And yet, if you concede me the first point, the second is mine too.
L. Show me how it comes to be yours.
O. Don't you know that the clergy and laity have only one Christ, and that there is not one God of converts and another of bishops? Why then should not he who receives laymen receive clerics also?
L. There is a difference between shedding tears for sin, and handling the body of Christ; there is a difference between lying prostrate at the feet of the brethren, and from the high altar administering the Eucharist to the people. It is one thing to lament over the past, another to abandon sin and live the glorified life in the Church. You who yesterday impiously declared the Son of God to be a creature, you who every day, worse than a Jew, were wont to cast the stones of blasphemy at Christ, you whose hands are full of blood, whose pen was a soldier's spear, do you, the convert of a single hour, come into the Church as an adulterer might come to a virgin? If you repent of your sin, abandon your priestly functions: if you are shameless in your sin, remain what you were.
O. You are quite a rhetorician, and fly from the thicket of controversy to the open fields of declamation. But, I entreat you, refrain from common-places, and return to the ground and the lines marked out; afterwards, if you like, we will take a wider range.
L. There is no declamation in the case; my indignation is more than I can bear. Make what statements you please, argue as you please, you will never convince me that a penitent bishop should be treated like a penitent layman.
O. Since you put the whole thing in a nutshell and obstinately cling to your position, that the case of the bishop is different from that of the layman, I will do what you wish, and I shall not be sorry to avail myself of the opportunity you offer and come to close quarters. Explain why you receive a layman coming from the Arians, but do not receive a bishop.
L. I receive a layman who confesses that he has erred; and the Lord willeth not the death of a sinner, but rather that he should repent.
O. Receive then also a bishop who, as well as the layman, confesses that he has erred, and it still holds good that the Lord willeth not the death of a sinner, but rather that he should repent.
L. If he confesses his error why does he continue a bishop? Let him lay aside his [4052] episcopal functions, and I grant pardon to the penitent.
O. I will answer you in your own words. If a layman confesses his error, how is it he continues a layman? Let him lay aside his lay-priesthood, that is, his baptism, and I grant pardon to the penitent. For it is written [4053] "He made us to be a kingdom, to be priests unto his God and Father." And again, [4054] "A holy nation, a royal priesthood, an elect race." Everything which is forbidden to a Christian, is forbidden to both bishop and layman. He who does penance condemns his former life. If a penitent bishop may not continue what he was, neither may a penitent layman remain in that state on account of which he confesses himself a penitent.
L. We receive the laity, because no one will be induced to change, if he knows he must be baptized again. And then, if they are rejected, we become the cause of their destruction.
O. By receiving a layman you save a single soul: and I in receiving a bishop unite to the Church, I will not say the people of one city, but the whole [4055] province of which he is the head; if I drive him away, he will drag down many with him to ruin. Wherefore I beseech you to apply the same reason which you think you have for receiving the few to the salvation of the whole world. But if you are not satisfied with this, if you are so hard, or rather so unreasonably unmerciful as to think him who gave baptism an enemy of Christ, though you account him who received it a son, we do not so contradict ourselves: we either receive a bishop as well as the people which is constituted as a Christian people by him, or if we do not receive a bishop, we know that we must also reject his people.
5. L. Pray, have you not read what is said concerning the bishops, [4056] "Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost its savour, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out and trodden under foot of man." And then there is the fact that the priest [4057] intercedes with God for the sinful people, while there is no one to entreat for the priest. Now these two passages of Scripture tend to the same conclusion. For as salt seasons all food and nothing is so pleasant as to please the palate without it: so the bishop is the seasoning of the whole world and of his own Church, and if he lose his savour through the denial of truth, or through heresy, or lust, or, to comprehend all in one word, through sin of any kind, by what other can he be seasoned, when he was the seasoning of all? The priest, we know, offers his oblation for the layman, lays his hand upon him when submissive, invokes the return of the Holy Spirit, and thus, after inviting the prayers of the people, reconciles to the altar him who had been delivered to Satan for the destruction of the flesh that the spirit might he saved; nor does he restore one member to health until all the members have wept together with him. For a father easily pardons his son, when the mother entreats for her offspring. If then it is by the priestly order that a penitent layman is restored to the Church, and pardon follows where sorrow has gone before, it is clear that a priest who has been removed from his order cannot be restored to the place he has forfeited, because either he will be a penitent and then he cannot be a priest, or if he continues to hold office he cannot be brought back to the Church by penitential discipline. Will you dare to spoil the savour of the Church with the salt which has lost its savour? Will you replace at the altar the man who having been cast out ought to lie in the mire and be trodden under foot by all men? What then will become of the Apostle's command, [4058] "The bishop must be blameless as God's steward"? And again, [4059] "But let a man prove himself, and so let him come." What becomes of our Lord's intimation, [4060] "Neither cast your pearls before the swine"? But if you understand the words as a general admonition, how much more must care be exercised in the case of priests when so much precaution is taken where the laity are concerned? [4061] "Depart, I pray you," says the Lord by Moses, "from the tents of these wicked men, and touch nothing of theirs, lest ye be consumed in all their sins." And again in the Minor Prophets, [4062] "Their sacrifices shall be unto them as the bread of mourners; all that eat thereof shall be polluted." And in the Gospel the Lord says, [4063] "The lamp of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light." For when the bishop preaches the true faith the darkness is scattered from the hearts of all. And he gives the reason, [4064] "Neither do men light a lamp, and put it under the bushel, but on the stand; and it shineth unto all that are in the house." That is, God's motive for lighting the fire of His knowledge in the bishop is that he may not shine for himself only, but for the common benefit. And in the next sentence [4065] "If," says he, "thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is the darkness!" And rightly; for since the bishop is appointed in the Church that he may restrain the people from error, how great will the error of the people be when he himself who teaches errs. How can he remit sins, who is himself a sinner? How can an impious man make a man holy? How shall the light enter into me, when my eye is blind? O misery! Antichrist's disciple governs the Church of Christ. And what are we to think of the words, [4066] "No man can serve two masters"? And that too [4067] "What communion hath light and darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial?" In the old testament we read, [4068] "No man that hath a blemish shall come nigh to offer the offerings of the Lord." And again, [4069] "Let the priests who come nigh to the Lord their God be clean, lest haply the Lord forsake them." And in the same place, [4070] "And when they draw nigh to minister in holy things, let them not bring sin upon themselves, lest they die." And there are many other passages which it would be an endless task to detail, and which I omit for the sake of brevity. For it is not the number of proofs that avails, but their weight. And all this proves that you with a little leaven have corrupted the whole lump of the Church, and receive the Eucharist to-day from the hand of one whom yesterday you loathed like an idol.
6. O. Your memory has served you, and you have certainly given us at great length many quotations from the sacred books: but after going all round the wood, you are caught in my hunting-nets. Let the case be as you would have it, that an Arian bishop is the enemy of Christ, let him be the salt that has lost its savour, let him be a lamp without flame, let him be an eye without a pupil: no doubt your argument will take you thus far--that he cannot salt another who himself has no salt: a blind man cannot enlighten others, nor set them on fire when his own light has gone out. But why, when you swallow food which he has seasoned, do you reproach the seasoned with being saltless? Your Church is bright with his flame, and do you accuse his lamp of being extinguished? He gives you eyes, and are you blind? Wherefore, I pray you, either give him the power of sacrificing since you approve his baptism, or reject his baptism if you do not think him a priest. For it is impossible that he who is holy in baptism should be a sinner at the altar.
L. But when I receive a lay penitent, it is with laying on of hands, and invocation of the Holy Spirit, for I know that the Holy Spirit cannot be given by heretics.
O. All the paths of your propositions lead to the same meeting-point, and it is with you as with the frightened deer--while you fly from the feathers fluttering in the wind, you become entangled in the strongest of nets. For seeing that a man, baptized in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, becomes a temple of the Lord, and that while the old abode is destroyed a new shrine is built for the Trinity, how can you say that sins can be remitted among the Arians without the coming of the Holy Ghost? How is a soul purged from its former stains which has not the Holy Ghost? For it is not mere water which washes the soul, but it is itself first purified by the Spirit that it may be able to spiritually wash the souls of men. [4071] "The Spirit of the Lord," says Moses, "moved upon the face of the waters," from which it appears that there is no baptism without the Holy Ghost. Bethesda, the pool in Judea, could not cure the limbs of those who suffered from bodily weakness without the advent of an angel, [4072] and do you venture to bring me a soul washed with simple water, as though it had just come from the bath? Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, of whom it is less correct to say that He was cleansed by washing than that by the washing of Himself He cleansed all waters, no sooner raised His head from the stream than He received the Holy Ghost. Not that He ever was without the Holy Ghost, inasmuch as He was born in the flesh through the Holy Ghost; but in order to prove that to be the true baptism by which the Holy Ghost comes. So then if an Arian cannot give the Holy Spirit, he cannot even baptize, because there is no baptism of the Church without the Holy Spirit. And you, when you receive a person baptized by an Arian and afterwards invoke the Holy Ghost, ought either to baptize him, because without the Holy Ghost he could not be baptized, or, if he was baptized in the Spirit, you must not invoke the Holy Ghost for your convert who received Him at the time of baptism.
7. L. Pray tell me, have you not read [4073] in the Acts of the Apostles that those who had already been baptized by John, on their saying in reply to the Apostle's question that they had not even heard what the Holy Ghost was, afterwards obtained the Holy Ghost? Whence it is clear that it is possible to be baptized, and yet not to have the Holy Ghost.
O. I do not think that those who form our audience are so ignorant of the sacred books that many words are needed to settle this little question. But before I say anything in support of my assertion, listen while I point out what confusion, upon your view, is introduced into Scripture. What do we mean by saying that John in his baptism could not give the Holy Spirit to others, yet gave him to Christ? And who is that John? [4074] "The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make ye ready the way of the Lord, make his paths straight." He who used to say, [4075] "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of the world": I say too little, he who from his mother's womb cried out, [4076] "And whence is this to me that the mother of my Lord should come unto me," did he not give the Holy Ghost? And did [4077] Ananias give him to Paul? It perhaps looks like boldness in me to prefer him to all other men. Hear then the words of our Lord, [4078] "Among them that are born of women there hath not arisen a greater than John the Baptist." For no prophet had the good fortune both to announce the coming of Christ, and to point Him out with the finger. And what necessity is there for me to dwell upon the praises of so illustrious a man when God the Father even calls him an angel? [4079] "Behold, I send my messenger (angel) before thy face, who shall prepare thy way before thee." He must have been an angel who after lodging in his mother's womb at once began to frequent the desert wilds, and while still an infant played with serpents; who, when his eyes had once gazed on Christ thought nothing else worth looking at; who exercised his voice, worthy of a messenger of God, in the words of the Lord, which are sweeter than honey and the honey-comb. And, to delay my question no further, thus it behooved [4080] the Forerunner of the Lord to grow up. Now is it possible that a man of such character and renown did not give the Holy Ghost, while Cornelius the centurion received Him before baptism? Tell me, pray, why could he not give Him? You don't know? Then listen to the teaching of Scripture: the baptism of John did not so much consist in the forgiveness of sins as in being a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins, that is, for a future remission, which was to follow through the sanctification of Christ. For it is written, [4081] "John came, who baptized in the wilderness, and preached the baptism of repentance unto remission of sins." And soon after, [4082] "And they were baptized of him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins." For as he himself preceded Christ as His forerunner, so also his baptism was the prelude to the Lord's baptism. [4083] "He that is of the earth," he said, "speaketh of the earth; he that cometh from heaven is above all." And again, [4084] "I indeed baptize you with water, he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost." But if John, as he himself confessed, did not baptize with the Spirit, it follows that he did not forgive sins either, for no man has his sins remitted without the Holy Ghost. Or if you contentiously argue that, because the baptism of John was from heaven, therefore sins were forgiven by it, show me what more there is for us to get in Christ's baptism. Because it forgives sins, it releases from Gehenna. Because it releases from Gehenna, it is perfect. But no baptism can be called perfect except that which depends on the cross and resurrection of Christ. Thus, although John himself said, [4085] "He must increase, but I must decrease," in your perverse scrupulosity you give more than is due to the baptism of the servant, and destroy that of the master to which you leave no more than to the other. What is the drift of your assertion? Just this--it does not strike you as strange that those who had been baptized by John, should afterwards by the laying on of hands receive the Holy Ghost, although it is evident that they did not obtain even remission of sins apart from the faith which was to follow. But you who receive a person baptized by the Arians and allow him to have perfect baptism, after that admission do you invoke the Holy Ghost as if this were still some slight defect, whereas there is no baptism of Christ without the Holy Ghost? But I have wandered too far, and when I might have met my opponent face to face and repelled his attack, I have only thrown a few light darts from a distance. The baptism of John was so far imperfect that it is plain they who had been baptized by him were afterwards baptized with the baptism of Christ. For thus the history relates, [4086] "And it came to pass that while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul having passed through the upper country came to Ephesus, and found certain disciples: and he said unto them, Did ye receive the Holy Ghost when ye believed? And they said unto him, Nay, we did not so much as hear whether the Holy Ghost was given. And he said, Into what then were ye baptized? And they said, Into John's baptism. And Paul said, John baptized with the baptism of repentance, saying unto the people, that they should believe on Him which should come after him, that is, on Jesus. And when they heard this, they were baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus: And when Paul had laid his hands upon them, immediately the Holy Ghost fell on them." If then they were baptized with the true and lawful baptism of the Church, and thus received the Holy Ghost: do you follow the apostles and baptize those who have not had Christian baptism, and you will be able to invoke the Holy Ghost.
8. L. Thirsty men in their dreams eagerly gulp down the water of the stream, and the more they drink the thirstier they are. In the same way you appear to me to have searched everywhere for arguments against the point I raised, and yet to be as far as ever from being satisfied. Don't you know that the laying on of hands after baptism and then the invocation of the Holy Spirit is a custom of the Churches? Do you demand Scripture proof? You may find it in the Acts of the Apostles. And even if it did not rest on the authority of Scripture the consensus of the whole world in this respect would have the force of a command. For many other observances of the Churches, which are due to tradition, have acquired the authority of the written law, as for instance [4087] the practice of dipping the head three times in the laver, and then, after leaving the water, of [4088] tasting mingled milk and honey in representation of infancy; [4089] and, again, the practices of standing up in worship on the Lord's day, and ceasing from fasting every Pentecost; and there are many other unwritten practices which have won their place through reason and custom. So you see we follow the practice of the Church, although it may be clear that a person was baptized before the Spirit was invoked.
9. O. I do not deny that it is the practice of the Churches in the case of those who living far from the greater towns have been baptized by presbyters and deacons, for the bishop to visit them, and by the laying on of hands to invoke the Holy Ghost upon them. But how shall I describe your habit of applying the laws of the Church to heretics, and of exposing the virgin entrusted to you in the brothels of harlots? If a bishop lays his hands on men he lays them on those who have been baptized in the right faith, and who have believed that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, are three persons, but one essence. But an Arian has no faith but this (close your ears, my hearers, that you may not be defiled by words so grossly impious), that the Father alone is very God, and that Jesus Christ our Saviour is a [4090] creature, and [4091] the Holy Ghost the Servant of both. How can he then receive the Holy Ghost from the Church, who has not yet obtained remission of sins? For the Holy Ghost must have a clean abode: nor will He become a dweller in that temple which has not for its chief priest the true faith. But if you now ask how it is that a person baptized in the Church does not receive the Holy Ghost, Whom we declare to be given in true baptism, except by the hands of the bishop, let me tell you that our authority for the rule is the fact that after our Lord's ascension the Holy Ghost descended upon the Apostles. And in many places we find it the practice, more by way of honouring the [4092] episcopate than from any compulsory law. Otherwise, if the Holy Ghost descends only at the bishop's prayer, they are greatly to be pitied who in isolated houses, or in forts, or retired places, after being baptized by the presbyters and deacons have fallen asleep before the bishop's visitation. The well-being of a Church depends upon the dignity of its chief-priest, and unless some extraordinary and unique functions be assigned to him, we shall have as many schisms in the Churches as there are priests. Hence it is that without ordination and the bishop's license neither presbyter nor deacon has the power to baptize. And yet, if necessity so be, we know that even laymen may, and frequently do, baptize. For as a man receives, so too he can give; for it will hardly be said that we must believe that the eunuch whom Philip [4093] baptized lacked the Holy Spirit. The Scripture thus speaks concerning him, "And they both went down into the water; and Philip baptized him." And on leaving the water, "The Holy Spirit fell upon the eunuch." You may perhaps think that we ought to set against this the passage in which we read, "Now when the apostles which were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent unto them Peter and John: who, when they were come down, prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Ghost: for as yet he was fallen upon none of them." But why this was, the context tells us,--"Only they had been baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus. Then laid they their hands on them, and they received the Holy Ghost." And if you here say that you do the same, because the heretics have not baptized into the Holy Spirit, I must remind you that Philip was not separated from the Apostles, but belonged to the same Church and preached the same Lord Jesus Christ: that he was without question a deacon of those who afterwards laid their hands on his converts. But when you say that the Arians have not a Church, but a synagogue, and that their clergy do not worship God but creatures and idols, how can you maintain that you ought to act upon the same principle in cases so totally different?
L. You repel my attack in front with vigour and firmness: but you are smitten in the rear and leave your back exposed to the darts. Let us even grant that the Arians have no baptism, and therefore that the Holy Ghost cannot be given by them, because they themselves have not yet received remission of sins; this altogether makes for victory on my side, and all your argumentative wrestling is but laborious toil to give me the conqueror's palm. An Arian has no baptism; how is it then that he has the episcopate? There is not even a layman among them, how can there be a bishop? I may not receive a beggar, do you receive a king? You surrender your camp to the enemy, and are we to reject one of their deserters?
11. O. If you remember what has been said you would know that you have been already answered; but in yielding to the love of contradiction you have wandered from the subject, like those persons who are talkative rather than eloquent, and who, when they cannot argue, still continue to wrangle. On the present occasion it is not my aim to either accuse or defend the Arians, but rather to get safely past the turning-post of the race, and to maintain that we receive a bishop for the same reason that you receive a layman. If you grant forgiveness to the erring, I too pardon the penitent. If he that baptizes a person into our belief has had no injurious effect upon the person baptized, it follows that he who consecrates a bishop in the same faith causes no defilement to the person consecrated. Heresy is subtle, and therefore the simple-minded are easily deceived. To be deceived is the common lot of both layman and bishop. But you say, a bishop could not have been mistaken. The truth is, men are elected to the episcopate who come from the bosom of Plato and Aristophanes. How many can you find among them who are not fully instructed in these writers? Indeed all, whoever they may be, that are ordained at the present day from among the literate class make it their study not how to seek out the marrow of Scripture, but how to tickle the ears of the people with the flowers of rhetoric. We must further add that the Arian heresy goes hand in hand with the wisdom of the world, and [4094] borrows its streams of argument from the fountains of Aristotle. And so we will act like children when they try to outdo one another--whatever you say I will say: what you assert, I will assert: whatever you deny, I will deny. We allow that an Arian may baptize; then he must be a bishop. [4095] If we agree that Arian baptism is invalid, you must reject the layman, and I must not accept the bishop. I will follow you wherever you go; we shall either stick in the mud together, or shall get out together.
12. L. We pardon a layman because, when he was baptized, he had a sincere impression that he was joining the Church. He believed and was baptized in accordance with his faith.
O. That is something new for a man to be made a Christian by one who is not a Christian. When he joined the Arians into what faith was he baptized? Of course into that which the Arians held. If on the other hand we are to suppose that his own faith was correct, but that he was knowingly baptized by heretics, he does not deserve the indulgence we grant to the erring. But it is quite absurd to imagine that, going as a pupil to the master, he understands his art before he has been taught. Can you suppose that a man who has just turned from worshipping idols knows Christ better than his teacher does? If you say, he sincerely believed in the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and therefore obtained baptism, what, let me ask, is the meaning of being sincerely ignorant of what one believes? He sincerely believed. What did he believe? Surely when he heard the three names, he believed in three Gods, and was an idolater; or by the three titles he was led to believe in a God with three names, and so fell into the [4096] Sabellian heresy. Or he was perhaps trained by the Arians to believe that there is one true God, the Father, but that the Son and the Holy Spirit are creatures. What else he may have believed, I know not: for we can hardly think that a man brought up in the Capitol would have learnt the doctrine of the co-essential Trinity. He would have known in that case that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not divided in nature, but in person. He would have known also that the name of Son was implied in that of Father and the name of Father in that of Son. It is ridiculous to assert that any one can dispute concerning the faith before he believes it; that he understands a mystery before he has been initiated; that the baptizer and the baptized hold different views respecting God. Besides, it is the custom at baptism to ask, after the confession of faith in the Trinity, do you believe in Holy Church? Do you believe in the remission of sins? What Church do you say he believed in? The Church of the Arians? But they have no Church. In ours? But the man was not baptized into it: he could not believe in that whereof he was ignorant.
L. I see that you can prattle cleverly about each point that I raise; and when we let fly a dart you elude it by a harangue which serves you for a shield; I will therefore hurl a single spear which will be strong enough to pierce your defences and the hail-storm of your words. I won't allow strength any longer to be overcome by artifice. Even a layman baptized without the Church, if he be baptized according to the faith, is received only as a penitent: but a bishop either does no penance and remains a bishop, or, if he does penance he ceases to be a bishop. Wherefore we do right both in welcoming the penitent layman, and in rejecting the bishop, if he wishes to continue in his office.
O. An arrow which is discharged from the tight-drawn bow is not easy to avoid, for it reaches him at whom it was aimed before the shield can be raised to stop it. On the other hand your propositions are pointless and therefore cannot pierce an opponent. The spear then which you have hurled with all your might and about which you speak such threatening words, I turn aside, as the saying is, with my little finger. The point in dispute is not merely whether a bishop is incapable of penitence and a layman capable, but whether a heretic has received valid baptism. If he has not (and this follows from your position), how can he be a penitent, before he is a Christian? Show me that a layman coming from the Arians has valid baptism, and then I will not deny him penitence. But if he is not a Christian, if he had no priest to make him a Christian, how can he do penance when he is not yet a believer?
14. L. I beseech you lay aside the methods of the philosophers and let us talk with Christian simplicity; that is, if you are willing to follow not the logicians, but the Galilean fishermen. Does it seem right to you that an Arian should be a bishop?
O. You prove him a bishop because you receive those he has baptized. And it is here that you are to blame:--Why are there walls of separation between us when we are at one in faith and in receiving Arians?
L. I asked you before not to talk like a philosopher, but like a Christian.
O. Do you wish to learn, or to argue?
L. Of course I argue because I want to know the reason for what you do.
O. If you argue, you have already had an answer. I receive an Arian bishop for the same reason that you receive a person who is only baptized. If you wish to learn, come over to my side: for an opponent must be overcome, it is only a disciple who can be taught.
L. Before I can be a disciple, I must hear one preach whom I feel to be my master.
O. You are not dealing quite fairly: you wish me to be your teacher on the terms that you may treat me as an opponent whenever you please. I will teach you therefore in the same spirit. We agree in faith, we agree in receiving heretics, let us also be at one in our terms of communion.
L. That is not teaching, but arguing.
O. As you ask for peace with a shield in your hand, I also must carry my olive branch with a sword grafted in it.
L. I drop my hands in token of submission. You are conqueror. But in laying down my arms, I ask the meaning of the oath you force me to take.
O. Certainly, but first I congratulate you, and thank Christ my God for your good dispositions which have made you turn from the unsavoury teaching of the [4097] Sardinians to that which the whole world approves as true; and no longer say as some do, [4098] "Help, Lord; for the godly man teaseth." By their impious words they make of none effect the cross of Christ, subject the Son of God to the devil, and would have us now understand the Lord's lamentation over sinners to apply to all men, [4099] "What profit is there in my blood, when I go down to the pit?" But God forbid that our Lord should have died in vain. [4100] The strong man is bound, and his goods are spoiled. What the Father says is fulfilled, [4101] "Ask of me, and I will give thee the nations for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession." [4102] "Then the channels of water appeared, and the foundations of the world were laid bare." [4103] "In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun, and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof." The Psalmist fully possessed by God sings, [4104] "The swords of the enemy are come to an end, and the cities which thou hast overthrown."
15. And what is the position, I should like to know, of those excessively scrupulous, or rather excessively profane persons, who assert that there are more synagogues than Churches? How is it that the devil's kingdoms have been destroyed, and now at last in the consummation of the ages, the idols have fallen? If Christ has no Church, or if he has one only, in Sardinia, he has grown very poor. And if Satan owns Britain, Gaul, the East, the races of India, barbarous nations, and the whole world at the same time, how is it that the trophies of the cross have been collected in a mere corner of the earth? Christ's powerful opponent, forsooth, gave over to him the [4105] serpent of Spain: he disdained to own a poor province and its half-starved inhabitants. If they flatter themselves that they have on their side that verse of the gospel, [4106] "Howbeit when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?" let me remind them that the faith in question is that of which the Lord himself said, [4107] "Thy faith hath made thee whole." And elsewhere, of the centurion, [4108] "I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel." And again, to the Apostles, [4109] "Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith?" In another place also, [4110] "If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place, and it shall remove." For neither the centurion nor that poor woman who for twelve years was wasting away with a bloody flux, had believed in the mysteries of the Trinity, for these were revealed to the Apostles after the resurrection of Christ; so that the faith of such as believe in the mystery of the Trinity might have its due preeminence: but it was her singleness of mind and her devotion to her God that met with our Lord's approval: [4111] "For she said within herself, If I do but touch his garment, I shall be made whole." This is the faith which our Lord said was seldom found. This is the faith which even in the case of those who believe aright is hard to find in perfection. [4112] "According to your faith, be it done unto you," says God. I do not, indeed, like the sound of those words. For if it be done unto me according to my faith, I shall perish. And yet I certainly believe in God the Father, I believe in God the Son, and I believe in God the Holy Ghost. I believe in one God; nevertheless, I would not have it done unto me according to my faith. For the enemy often comes, and sows tares in the Lord's harvest. I do not mean to imply that anything is greater than the purity of heart which believes that mystery; but undoubted faith towards God it is hard indeed to find. To make my meaning plain, let us suppose a case:--I stand to pray; I could not pray, if I did not believe; but if I really believed, I should cleanse that heart of mine with which God is seen, I should beat my hands upon my breast, the tears would stream down my cheeks, my body would shudder, my face grow pale, I should lie at my Lord's feet, weep over them, and wipe them with my hair, I should cling to the cross and not let go my hold until I obtained mercy. But, as it is, frequently in my prayers I am either walking in the arcades, or calculating my interest, or am carried away by base thoughts, so as to be occupied with things the mere mention of which makes me blush. Where is our faith? Are we to suppose that it was thus that Jonah prayed? or the three youths? or Daniel in the lion's den? or the robber on the cross? I have given these illustrations that you may understand my meaning. But let every one commune with his own heart, and he will find throughout the whole of life how rare a thing it is to find a soul so faithful that it does nothing through the love of glory, nothing on account of the petty gossip of men. For he who fasts does not as an immediate consequence fast unto God, nor he who holds out his hand to a poor man, lend to the Lord. Vice is next-door neighbour to virtue. It is hard to rest content with God alone for judge.
16. L. I was reserving that passage until last, and you have anticipated my question about it. Almost all our party, or rather not mine any more, use it as a sort of controversial battering ram: as such I am exceedingly glad to see it broken to pieces and pulverized. But will you be so good as to fully explain to me, not in the character of an opponent but of a disciple, why it is that the Church receives those who come from the Arians? The truth is I am unable to answer you a word, but I do not yet give a hearty assent to what you say.
17. O. When Constantius was on the throne and Eusebius and Hypatius were Consuls, there was composed, under the pretext of unity and faith, [4113] an unfaithful creed, as it is now acknowledged to have been. For at that time, nothing seemed so characteristic of piety, nothing so befitting a servant of God, as to follow after unity, and to shun separation from communion with the rest of the world. And all the more because the current profession of faith no longer exhibited on the face of it anything profane. "We believe," said they, "in one true God, the Father Almighty. This we also confess: We believe in the only begotten Son of God, who, before all worlds, and before all their origins, [4114] was born of God. The only-begotten Son, moreover, we believe to be born alone of the Father alone, God of God, like to his Father who begot Him, according to the Scriptures; whose birth no one knows, but the Father alone who begot Him." Do we find any such words inserted here as [4115] "There was a time, when he was not?" Or, "The Son of God is a creature though not made of things which exist." No. This is surely the perfection of faith to say we believe Him to be God of God. Moreover, they called Him the only begotten, "born alone of the Father." What is the meaning of born? Surely, not made. His birth removed all suspicion of His being a creature. They added further, "Who came down from heaven, was conceived of the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, crucified by Pontius Pilate, rose again the third day from the dead, ascended into heaven, sitteth at the right hand of the Father, who will come to judge the quick and the dead." There was the ring of piety in the words, and no one thought that poison was mingled with the honey of such a proclamation.
18. As regards the term [4116] Usia, it was not rejected without a show of reason for so doing. [4117] "Because it is not found in the Scriptures," they said, "and its novelty is a stumbling-block to many, we have thought it best to dispense with it." The bishops were not anxious about the name, so long as that which it implied was secured. Lastly, at the very time when rumour was rife that there had been some insincerity in the statement of the faith, Valens, bishop of Mursa, who had drawn it up, in the presence of Taurus the pretorian prefect who attended the Synod by imperial command, declared that he was not an Arian, and that he utterly abhorred their blasphemies. However, the thing had been done in secret, and it had not extinguished the general feeling. So on another day, when crowds of bishops and laymen came together in the Church at Ariminum, Muzonius, bishop of the province of Byzacena, to whom by reason of seniority the first rank was assigned by all, spoke as follows: "One of our number has been authorized to read to you, reverend fathers, what reports are being spread and have reached us, so that the evil opinions which ought to grate upon our ears and be banished from our hearts may be condemned with one voice by us all." The whole body of bishops replied, Agreed. And so when Claudius, bishop of the province of Picenum, at the request of all present, began to read the blasphemies attributed to Valens, Valens denied they were his and cried aloud, "If anyone denies Christ our Lord, the Son of God, begotten of the Father before the worlds, let him be anathema." There was a general chorus of approval, "Let him be anathema." [4118] "If anyone denies that the Son is like the Father according to the Scriptures, let him be anathema." All replied, "Let him be anathema." "If anyone does not say that the Son of God is co-eternal with the Father, let him be anathema." There was again a chorus of approval, "Let him be anathema." "If anyone says that the Son of God is a creature, like other creatures, let him be anathema." The answer was the same, "Let him be anathema." "If anyone says that the Son was of no existing things, yet not of God the Father, let him be anathema." All shouted together, "Let him be anathema." "If anyone says, There was a time when the Son was not, let him be anathema." At this point all the bishops and the whole Church together received the words of Valens with clapping of hands and stamping of feet. And if anyone thinks we have invented the story let him examine the public records. At all events the muniment-boxes of the Churches are full of it, and the circumstance is fresh in men's memory. Some of those who took part in the Synod are still alive, and the Arians themselves (a fact which may put the truth beyond dispute) do not deny the accuracy of our account. When, therefore, all extolled Valens to the sky and penitently condemned themselves for having suspected him, the same Claudius who before had begun to read, said "There are still a few points which have escaped the notice of my lord and brother Valens; if it seem good to you, let us, in order to remove all scruples, pass a general vote of censure upon them. If anyone says that the Son of God was indeed before all worlds but was by no means before all time, so that he puts some thing before Him, let him be anathema." And many other things which had a suspicious look were condemned by Valens when Claudius recited them. If anyone wishes to learn more about them he will find the account in the acts of the Synod of Ariminum, the source from which I have myself drawn them.
19. After these proceedings the Council was dissolved. All returned in gladness to their own provinces. For the Emperor and all good men had one and the same aim, that the East and West should be knit together by the bond of fellowship. But wickedness does not long lie hid, and the sore that is healed superficially before the bad humour has been worked off breaks out again. Valens and [4119] Ursacius and others associated with them in their wickedness, eminent Christian bishops of course, began to wave their palms, and to say they had not denied that He was a creature, but that He was like other creatures. At that moment the term Usia was abolished: the Nicene Faith stood condemned by acclamation. The whole world groaned, and was astonished to find itself Arian. Some, therefore, remained in their own communion, others began to send letters to those Confessors who as adherents of Athanasius were in exile; several despairingly bewailed the better relations into which they had entered. But a few, true to human nature, defended their mistake as an exhibition of wisdom. The ship of the Apostles was in peril, she was driven by the wind, her sides beaten with the waves: no hope was now left. But the Lord awoke and bade the tempest cease; the [4120] beast died, and there was a calm once again. To speak more plainly, all the bishops who had been banished from their sees, by the clemency of the new [4121] emperor returned to their Churches. Then Egypt welcomed the [4122] triumphant Athanasius; then [4123] Hilary returned from the battle to the embrace of the Church of Gaul; then [4124] Eusebius returned and Italy laid aside her mourning weeds. The bishops who had been caught in the snare at Ariminum and had unwittingly come to be reported of as heretics, began to assemble, while they called the Body of our Lord and all that is holy in the Church to witness that they had not a suspicion of anything faulty in their own faith. We thought, said they, the words were to be taken in their natural meaning, and we had no suspicion that in the Church of God, the very home of simplicity and sincerity in the confession of truth, one thing could be kept secret in the heart, another uttered by the lips. We thought too well of bad men and were deceived. We did not suppose that the bishops of Christ were fighting against Christ. There was much besides which they said with tears, but I pass it over for brevity's sake. They were ready to condemn their [4125] former subscription as well as all the blasphemies of the Arians. Here I ask our excessively scrupulous friends what they think ought to have been done with those who made this Confession? Deprive the old bishops, they will say, and ordain new ones. The plan was tried. But how many whose conscience does not condemn them will allow themselves to be deprived. Particularly when all the people who loved their bishops flocked together, ready to stone and slay those who attempted to deprive them. The bishops should, it may be said, have kept to themselves within their own communion. That is to say, with senseless cruelty they would have surrendered the whole world to the devil. Why condemn those who were not Arians? Why rend the Church when it was continuing in the harmony of the faith? Lastly, were they by obstinacy to make Arians of orthodox believers? We know that at the Council of Nicæa, which was assembled on account of the Arian perfidy, eight Arian bishops were welcomed, and there is not a bishop in the world at the present day whose ordination is not dependent on that Council. This being so, how could they act in opposition to it, when their loyalty to it had cost them the pain of exile?
20. L. Were Arians really then received after all? Pray tell me who they were.
O. [4126] Eusebius, bishop of Nicomedia, [4127] Theognis, bishop of Nicæa, Saras, at the time presbyter of Libya, [4128] Eusebius, bishop of Cæsarea in Palestine, and others whom it would be tedious to enumerate; Arius also, the presbyter, the original source of all the trouble; Euzoius the deacon, [4129] who succeeded Eudoxius as bishop of Antioch, and Achillas, the reader. These three who were clerics of the Church of Alexandria were the originators of the heresy.
L. Suppose a person were to deny that they were welcomed back, how is he to be refuted?
O. There are men still living who took part in that Council. And if that is not enough, because owing to the time that has elapsed they are but few, and it is impossible for witnesses to be everywhere, if we read the acts and names of the bishops of the Council of Nicæa, we find that those who we saw just now were welcomed back, did subscribe the homoousion along with the rest.
L. Will you point out how, after the Council of Nicæa, they relapsed into their unfaithfulness?
O. A good suggestion, for unbelievers are in the habit of shutting their eyes and denying that things which they dislike ever happened. But how could they afterwards do anything but relapse, when it was owing to them that the Council was convened, and their letters and impious treatises which were published before the Council, remain even to the present day? Seeing, therefore, that at that time three hundred bishops or more welcomed a few men whom they might have rejected without injury to the Church, I am surprised that certain persons, who are certainly upholders of the faith of Nicæa, are so harsh as to think that [4130] three Confessors returning from exile were not bound in the interests of the world's salvation to do what so many illustrious men did of their own accord. But, to go back to our starting point, on the return of the Confessors it was determined, in a synod afterwards [4131] held at Alexandria, that, the authors of the heresy excepted (who could not be excused on the ground of error), penitents should be admitted to communion with the Church: not that they who had been heretics could be bishops, but because it was clear that those who were received had not been heretics. The West assented to this decision, and it was through this conclusion, which the necessities of the times demanded, that the world was snatched from the jaws of Satan. I have reached a very difficult subject, where I am compelled against my wishes and my purpose, to think somewhat otherwise of that saintly man Lucifer than his merits demand, and my own courtesy requires. But what am I to do? Truth opens my mouth and urges my reluctant tongue to utter the thoughts of my heart. At such a crisis of the Church, when the wolves were wildly raging, he separated off a few sheep and abandoned the remnant of the flock. He himself was a good shepherd, but he was leaving a vast spoil to the beasts of prey. I take no notice of reports originating with certain evil speakers, though maintained by them to be authenticated facts; such as that he acted thus through the love of glory, and the desire of handing down his name to posterity; or again that he was influenced by the grudge he bore against Eusebius on account of the [4132] quarrel at Antioch. I believe none of these reports in the case of such a man; and this I will constantly affirm even now--that the difference between us and him is one of words, not of things, if he really does receive those who have been baptized by the Arians.
21. L. The account I used before to hear given of these things was widely different, and, as I now think, better calculated to promote error than hope. But I thank Christ my God for pouring into my heart the light of truth, that I might no longer profanely call the Church, which is His Virgin, the harlot of the devil. There is one other point I should like you to explain. What are we to say about [4133] Hilary who does not receive even those who have been baptized by the Arians?
O. Since Hilary when he left the Church was only a deacon, and since the Church is to him, though to him alone, a mere worldly multitude, he can neither duly celebrate the Eucharist, for he has no bishops or priests, nor can he give baptism without the Eucharist. And since the man is now dead, inasmuch as he was a deacon and could ordain no one to follow him, his sect died with him. For there is no such thing as a Church without bishops. But passing over a few very insignificant persons who are in their own esteem both laymen and bishops, let me point out to you what views we should hold respecting the Church at large.
L. You have settled a great question in three words, as the saying is, and indeed while you speak, I feel that I am on your side. But when you stop, some old misgivings arise as to why we receive those who have been baptized by heretics.
O. That is just what I had in mind when I said I would point out what views we ought to hold concerning the Church at large. For many are exercised by the misgivings you speak of. I shall perhaps be tedious in my explanation, but it is worth while if the truth gains.
22. Noah's ark was a type of the Church, as the Apostle Peter says-- [4134] "In Noah's ark few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water: which also after a true likeness doth now save us, even baptism." As in the ark there were all kinds of animals, so also in the Church there are men of all races and characters. As in the one there was the leopard with the kids, the wolf with the lambs, so in the other there are found the righteous and sinners, that is, [4135] vessels of gold and silver with those of wood and of earth. The ark had its rooms: the Church has many mansions. Eight souls were saved in Noah's ark. And [4136] Ecclesiastes bids us "give a portion to seven yea, even unto eight," that is to believe both Testaments. This is why some psalms bear the inscription [4137] for the octave, and why the one hundred and nineteenth psalm is divided into portions of eight verses each beginning with its own letter for the instruction of the righteous. The beatitudes which our Lord spoke to his disciples on the mountain, thereby delineating the Church, are eight. And Ezekiel for the building of the temple employs the number eight. And you will find many other things expressed in the same way in the Scriptures. The raven also is sent forth from the ark but does not return, and afterwards the dove announces peace to the earth. So also in the Church's baptism, that most unclean bird the devil is expelled, and the dove of the Holy Spirit announces peace to our earth. The construction of the ark was such that it began with being thirty cubits broad and gradually narrowed to one. Similarly the Church, consisting of many grades, ends in deacons, presbyters, and bishops. The ark was in peril in the flood, the Church is in peril in the world. When Noah left the ark he planted a vineyard, drank thereof, and was drunken. Christ also, born in the flesh, planted the Church and suffered. The elder son made sport of his father's nakedness, the younger covered it: and the Jews mocked God crucified, the Gentiles honoured Him. The daylight would fail me if I were to explain all the mysteries of the ark and compare them with the Church. Who are the eagles amongst us? Who the doves and lions, who the stags, who the worms and serpents? So far as our subject requires I will briefly show you. It is not the sheep only who abide in the Church, nor do clean birds only fly to and fro there; but amid the grain other seed is sown, [4138] "amidst the neat corn-fields burrs and caltrops and barren oats lord it in the land." What is the husbandman to do? Root up the darnel? In that case the whole harvest is destroyed along with it. Every day the farmer diligently drives the birds away with strange noises, or frightens them with scarecrows: here he cracks a whip, there he spreads out some other object to terrify them. Nevertheless he suffers from the raids of nimble roes or the wantonness of the wild asses; here the mice convey the corn to their garners underground, there the ants crowd thickly in and ravage the corn-field. Thus the case stands. No one who has land is free from care. [4139] While the householder slept the enemy sowed tares among the wheat, and when the servants proposed to go and root them up the master forbade them, reserving for himself the separation of the chaff and the grain. [4140] There are vessels of wrath and of mercy which the Apostle speaks of in the house of God. The day then will come when the storehouses of the Church shall be opened and the Lord will bring forth the vessels of wrath; and, as they depart, the saints will say, [4141] "They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us." No one can take to himself the prerogative of Christ, no one before the day of judgment can pass judgment upon men. If the Church is already cleansed, what shall we reserve for the Lord? [4142] "There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death." When our judgment is so prone to error, upon whose opinion can we rely?
23. Cyprian of blessed memory tried to avoid broken cisterns and not to drink of strange waters: and therefore, rejecting heretical baptism, he summoned his [4143] African synod in opposition to Stephen, [4144] who was the blessed Peter's twenty-second successor in the see of Rome. They met to discuss this matter; but the attempt failed. At last those very bishops who had together with him determined that heretics must be re-baptized, reverted to the old custom and published a fresh decree. Do you ask what course we must pursue? What we do our forefathers handed down to us as their forefathers to them. But why speak of later times? When the blood of Christ was but lately shed and the apostles were still in Judæa, the Lord's body was asserted to be a phantom; the Galatians had been led away to the observance of the law, and the Apostle was a second time in travail with them; the Corinthians did not believe the resurrection of the flesh, and he endeavoured by many arguments to bring them back to the right path. Then came [4145] Simon Magus and his disciple Menander. They asserted themselves to be [4146] powers of God. Then [4147] Basilides invented the most high god Abraxas and the three hundred and sixty-five manifestations of him. Then [4148] Nicolas, one of the seven Deacons, and one whose lechery knew no rest by night or day, indulged in his filthy dreams. I say nothing of the Jewish heretics who before the coming of Christ destroyed the law delivered to them: of [4149] Dositheus, the leader of the Samaritans who rejected the prophets: of the Sadducees who sprang from his root and denied even the resurrection of the flesh: of the Pharisees who separated themselves from the Jews [4150] on account of certain superfluous observances, and took their name from the fact of their dissent: of the Herodians who accepted Herod as the Christ. I come to those heretics who have mangled the Gospels, [4151] Saturninus, and the [4152] Ophites, [4153] the Cainites and [4154] Sethites, and [4155] Carpocrates, and [4156] Cerinthus, and his successor [4157] Ebion, and the other pests, the most of which broke out while the apostle John was still alive, and yet we do not read that any of these men were re-baptized.
24. As we have made mention of that distinguished saint, let us show also from his Apocalypse that repentance unaccompanied by baptism ought to be allowed valid in the case of heretics. It is imputed (Rev. ii. 4) to the angel of Ephesus that he has forsaken his first love. In the angel of the Church of Pergamum the eating of idol-sacrifices is censured (Rev. ii. 14), and the doctrine of the Nicolaitans (ib. 15). Likewise the angel of Thyatira is rebuked (ib. 20) on account of Jezebel the prophetess, and the idol meats, and fornication. And yet the Lord encourages all these to repent, and adds a threat, moreover, of future punishment if they do not turn. Now he would not urge them to repent unless he intended to grant pardon to the penitents. Is there any indication of his having said, Let them be re-baptized who have been baptized in the faith of the Nicolaitans? or let hands be laid upon those of the people of Pergamum who at that time believed, having held the doctrine of Balaam? Nay, rather, "Repent therefore," [4158] he says, "or else I come to thee quickly, and I will make war against them with the sword of my mouth."
25. If, however, those men who were ordained by Hilary, and who have lately become sheep without a shepherd, are disposed to allege Scripture in support of what the blessed Cyprian [4159] left in his letters advocating the re-baptization of heretics, I beg them to remember that he did not anathematize those who refused to follow him. At all events, he remained in communion with such as opposed his views. He was content with exhorting them, on account of [4160] Novatus and the numerous other heretics then springing up, to receive no one who did not condemn his previous error. In fact, he thus concludes the discussion of the subject with Stephen, the Roman Pontiff: "These things, dearest brother, I have brought to your knowledge on account of our mutual respect and love unfeigned, believing, as I do, that from the sincerity of your piety and your faith you will approve such things as are alike consonant with piety and true in themselves. But I know that some persons are unwilling to abandon views which they have once entertained, and are averse to a change of purpose; they would rather, without breaking the bond of peace and concord between colleagues, adhere to their own plans, when once they have been adopted. This is a matter in which we do not force anyone, or lay down a law for anyone; let each follow his own free choice in the administration of the Church: let each be ruler in his own sphere since he must give account of his action to the Lord." In the letter also to Jubaianus on the re-baptization of heretics, towards the end, he says this: "I have written these few remarks, my dearest brother, to the best of my poor ability, without dictating to anyone, or prejudicing the case of anyone: I would not hinder a single bishop from doing what he thinks right with the full exercise of his own judgment. So far as is possible, we avoid disputes with colleagues and fellow-bishops about the heretics, and maintain with them a divine harmony and the Lord's peace, particularly since the Apostle says: [4161] But if any man seem to be contentious, we have no such custom, neither the churches of God.' With patience and gentleness we preserve charity at heart, the honour of our order, the bond of faith, the harmony of the episcopate."
26. There is another argument which I shall adduce, and against that not even Hilary, [4162] the modern Deucalion, will venture to mutter a syllable. If heretics are not baptized and must be re-baptized because they were not in the Church, Hilary himself also is not a Christian. For he was baptized in that Church which always allowed heretical baptism. Before the Synod of Ariminum was held, before Lucifer went into exile, Hilary when a deacon of the Roman Church welcomed those who came over from the heretics on account of the baptism which they had previously received. It can hardly be that Arians are the only heretics, and that we are to accept all but those whom they have baptized. You were a deacon, Hilary (the Church may say), and received those whom the Manichæans had baptized. You were a deacon, and acknowledged Ebion's baptism. All at once after Arius arose you began to be quite out of conceit with yourself. You and your household separated from us, and opened a new laver of your own. If some angel or apostle has re-baptized you, I will not disparage your procedure. But since you who raise your sword against me are the son of my womb, and nourished on the milk of my breasts, return to me what I gave you, and be, if you can, a Christian in some other way. Suppose I am a harlot, still I am your mother. You say, I do not keep the marriage bed undefiled: still what I am now I was when you were conceived. If I commit adultery with Arius, I did the same before with Praxias, with Ebion, with Cerinthus, and Novatus. You think much of them and welcome them, adulterers as they are, to your mother's home. I don't know why one adulterer more than others should offend you.
27. But if anyone thinks it open to question whether heretics were always welcomed by our ancestors, let him read the letters of the blessed Cyprian in which he applies the lash to Stephen, bishop of Rome, and his errors which had grown inveterate by usage. [4163] Let him also read the pamphlets of Hilary on the re-baptization of heretics which he published against us, and he will there find Hilary himself confessing that [4164] Julius, Marcus, Sylvester, and the other bishops of old alike welcomed all heretics to repentance; and, further, to shew that he could not justly claim possession of the true custom; the Council of Nicæa also, to which we referred not long ago, welcomed all heretics with the exception of [4165] the disciples of Paul of Samosata. And, what is more, it allows a Novatian bishop on conversion to have the rank of presbyter, [4166] a decision which condemns both Lucifer and Hilary, since the same person who is ordained is also baptized.
28. I might spend the day in speaking to the same effect, and dry up all the streams of argument with the single Sun of the Church. But as we have already had a long discussion and the protracted controversy has wearied out the attention of our audience, I will tell you my opinion briefly and without reserve. We ought to remain in that Church which was founded by the Apostles and continues to this day. If ever you hear of any that are called Christians taking their name not from the Lord Jesus Christ, but from some other, for instance, Marcionites, Valentinians, Men of the mountain or the plain, [4167] you may be sure that you have there not the Church of Christ, but the synagogue of Antichrist. For the fact that they took their rise after the foundation of the Church is proof that they are those whose coming the Apostle foretold. And let them not flatter themselves if they think they have Scripture authority for their assertions, since the devil himself quoted Scripture, and the essence of the Scriptures is not the letter, but the meaning. Otherwise, if we follow the letter, we too can concoct a new dogma and assert that such persons as wear shoes and have two coats must not be received into the Church.
L. You must not suppose that victory rests with you only. We are both conquerors, and each of us carries off the palm,--you are victorious over me, and I over my error. May I always when I argue be so fortunate as to exchange wrong opinions for better ones. I must, however, make a confession, because I best know the character of my party, and own that they are more easily conquered than convinced. __________________________________________________________________
[4049] The Sardinian cloak of skins is contrasted by Cicero (pro Scauro) with the Royal purple:--Quem purpura regalis non commovit, eum Sardorum mastruca mutavit. Jerome's meaning is that Christ came not to win the lowest place on earth, but the highest. The fact that Lucifer was Bishop of Cagliari in Sardinia gives point to the saying.
[4050] That is, of Jupiter, whose temple was in the Capitol.
[4051] Ps. lvii. 6.
[4052] Sacerdotium.
[4053] Apoc. i. 6.
[4054] 1 Pet. ii. 9.
[4055] That is diocese. The word diocese was in early times the larger expression, and contained many provinces. See Canon II of Constantinople, Bright's edition, and note.
[4056] Matt. v. 13.
[4057] Lev. ix. 7.
[4058] Tit. i. 7.
[4059] 1 Cor. xi. 28.
[4060] Matt. vii. 6.
[4061] Numb. xvi. 26.
[4062] Hos. ix. 4.
[4063] Matt. vii. 22.
[4064] Matt. v. 15.
[4065] Matt. vi. 23-24.
[4066] Matt. vi. 23-24.
[4067] 2 Cor. vi. 14, 15.
[4068] Levit. xxi. 17.
[4069] Quoted apparently from memory as giving the general sense of passages in Lev. xxi, xxii.
[4070] Quoted apparently from memory as giving the general sense of passages in Lev. xxi, xxii.
[4071] Gen. i. 2.
[4072] John v. 2 sq.
[4073] xix. 2.
[4074] Is. xi. 3; Matt. iii. 3.
[4075] John i. 29.
[4076] Luke i. 43.
[4077] Acts ix. 17.
[4078] Matt. xi. 11.
[4079] Matt. xi. 10.
[4080] We venture to read decebat' instead of dicebat.' Otherwise, we may render Thus (the Scripture) said that,' etc.
[4081] Mark i. 4.
[4082] Mark i. 5.
[4083] John iii. 31.
[4084] Matt. iii. 11.
[4085] John iii. 30.
[4086] Acts xix. 1, sqq.
[4087] Triple immersion, that is, thrice dipping the head while standing in the water, was the all but universal rule of the Church in early times. There is proof of its existence in Africa, Palestine, Egypt, at Antioch and Constantinople, in Cappadocia and Rome. See Basil, On the H. Sp. § 66, and Apostolical Canons. Gregory the Great ruled that either form was allowable, the one symbolizing the Unity of the Godhead, the other the Trinity of Persons.
[4088] This ceremony together with the kiss of peace and white robes probably dated from very early times. In the fourth century some new ceremonies were introduced, such as the use of lights and salt, the unction with oil before baptism in addition to that with chrism which continued to be administered after baptism.
[4089] At Holy Communion the first prayer of the faithful was said by all kneeling. During the rest of the liturgy all stood. At other times of service the rule was for all to kneel in prayer except on Sundays and between Easter and Whitsuntide.
[4090] The Arians said He was the creature (made out of nothing) through whom the Father gave being to all other creatures.
[4091] The Macedonians, who became nearly co-extensive with the Semi-Arians about 360, held that the Spirit not being very' God must be a creature and therefore a Servant of God.
[4092] Sacerdotium--often used by Jerome in a special sense for the Episcopate. He says of Pammachius and of himself (Letter xlv., 3) that many people thought them digni sacerdotio, meaning the Bishopric of Rome.
[4093] Acts viii. 26 sq.
[4094] "The philosophical relations of Arianism have been differently stated. Baur, Newman (The Arians, p. 17), and others, bring it into connection with Aristotle, and Athanasianism with Plato; Petavius, Ritter, and Voigt, on the contrary, derive the Arian idea of God from Platonism and Neo-Platonism. The empirical, rational, logical tendency of Arianism is certainly more Aristotelian than Platonic, and so far Baur and Newman are right; but all depends on making either revelation and faith, or philosophy and reason, the starting point and ruling power of theology." Doctor Schaff in Dict. of Chris. Biog.
[4095] Baptism was at this time, as a rule, administered by the bishop alone.
[4096] This was, approximately, the Patripassian form of the heresy, according to which the person of the Father who is one with the Son, was incarnate in Christ, and the Father might then be said to have died upon the cross. The personality of the Holy Ghost appears to have been denied. With varying shades of opinion and modes of expression the doctrine was expounded by Praxeas (circ. a.d. 200), Noetius (a.d. 220), Sabellius (a.d. 225), Beryllus and Paul of Samosata (circ. a.d. 250).
[4097] That is the followers of Lucifer, whose see was in Sardinia.
[4098] Ps. xii. 1. The Luciferians believed that few or none outside their own sect could be saved.
[4099] Ps. xxx. 9.
[4100] Mark iii. 27.
[4101] Ps. ii. 8.
[4102] Ps. xviii. 15.
[4103] Lit. In the sun hath he placed his tabernacle, and there is none who can hide himself from the heat thereof. Ps. xix. 6.
[4104] Ps. ix. 6. Sept. Vulg. Syr.
[4105] The allusion is doubtful. It probably refers to some province of Spain (perhaps that of the Ibera or Ebro), in which the views of Lucifer prevailed and which his followers considered almost the sole land of the faithful. The expression, however, is used in a more general sense by Jerome, Letter VI.
[4106] Luke xviii. 8.
[4107] Matt. ix. 22.
[4108] Matt. viii. 10.
[4109] Matt. viii. 26.
[4110] Matt. xvii. 20.
[4111] Matt. ix. 21.
[4112] Matt. ix. 29.
[4113] For an account of the "Dated Creed" here referred to, and of the Councils of Seleucia and Ariminum, a.d. 359, see Bright's History of the Church, a.d. 313-451, fourth edition, pp. 93-100.
[4114] Principium, the equivalent of the Greek 'Arche, which means beginning, or principle, or power.
[4115] These two propositions constituted the essence of the teaching of Arius.
[4116] Usia (ousia) is defined by Cyril of Alexandria as that which has existence in itself, independent of everything else to constitute it. A discussion of both it and its companion term hypostasis may be found in Newman's Arians, Appendix p. 432. Around ousia, or some compound of the word, the great Arian controversy always raged. In asserting that the son was homoousios with the Father, i.e., consubstantial or co-essential, the Church affirmed the Godhead of the Son. But the formula experienced varying fortunes. It was disowned as savouring of heterodoxy by the Council of Antioch (264-269) which was held to decide upon the views of Paulus: was imposed at Nicæa (325): considered inexpedient by the great body of the episcopate in the next generation: was most cautiously put forward by Athanasius himself (see Stanley's Hist. of Eastern Church, 1883, p. 240): does not occur in the catecheses of S. Cyril of Jerusalem (347): was momentarily abandoned by 400 bishops at Ariminum who were "tricked and worried" into the act. "They had not," says Newman, "yet got it deeply fixed in their minds as a sort of first principle, that to abandon the formula was to betray the faith."
[4117] The distinguishing principle of the doctrine of Acacius was adherence to Scriptural phraseology. See Bright's Hist., p. 69.
[4118] The teaching of Ætius and Eunomius, the Anomoeans, who were the extremists of the Arians. See Robertson's Hist. of Chris. Ch., fourth edition, pp. 236-237, etc. The other tenets anathematized are Arian or Semi-Arian.
[4119] Bishop of Singedunum (Belgrade). "He and Valens, bishop of Mursa (in Pannonia) appear at every Synod and Council from 330 till about 370, as leaders of the Arian party, both in the East and West...They are described by Athanasius as the disciples of Arius." Dict. of Chris. Biog.
[4120] Constantius.
[4121] Julian.
[4122] In August 362, "All Egypt seemed to assemble in the city (Alexandria), which blazed with lights and rang with acclamations; the air was fragrant with incense burnt in token of joy; men formed a choir to precede the Archbishop; to hear his voice, to catch a glimpse of his face, even to see his shadow, was deemed happiness." Bright, p. 115.
[4123] Bishop of Poictiers (a.d. 350). Died a.d. 368.
[4124] Bishop of Vercellae in N. Italy. Died about a.d. 370. Both he and Hilary had been sent into exile by Constantius for their opposition to Arianism.
[4125] That is, the creed of Ariminum.
[4126] Said to have been the "most prominent and most distinguished man of the entire movement." Athanasius suggested that he was the teacher rather than the disciple of Arius. He died a.d. 342.
[4127] Regarded as one of the chief opponents of Athanasius. He and others it is said saved themselves from exile by secretly substituting omoiousios for homoousios in the sentence of the Council.
[4128] Born probably, about a.d. 260. He was made bishop of Cæsarea about 313 and lived to be eighty. At the time of the Council he was the most learned man and most famous living writer. He had great influence with Constantine, and was among the most moderate Arians.
[4129] Eudoxius was deposed from the bishopric of Antioch by the Council of Seleucia, a.d. 359; but the immediate predecessor of Euzoius was Meletius, deposed a.d. 361. Baronius describes him as the worst of all the Arians. Euzoius had been the companion and intimate friend of Arius from an early age. Athanasius (Hist. Arian. p. 858) calls him the "Canaanite."
[4130] Saints Athanasius, Hilary of Poictiers, and Eusebius of Vercellae.
[4131] a.d. 328, when Athanasius was consecrated bishop.
[4132] See introduction.
[4133] This Hilary was a deacon of Rome, sent by Liberius the bishop with Lucifer and Pancratius to the Emperor Constantius. He joined the Luciferians, and wrote in their interest on the re-baptism of heretics. He appears, however, to have been reconciled before his death.
[4134] 1 Pet. iii. 20.
[4135] 2 Tim. ii. 20.
[4136] Ecc. xi. 2.
[4137] Vulg. for l ssygyt Psa. vi. xii. and 1 Chron. xv. 21. The meaning is probably "in a lower octave," or, "in the bass." According to others, an air, or key in which the psalm was to be sung, or a musical instrument with eight strings.
[4138] Virg, Georg. i. 154.
[4139] S. Matt. xiii. 24 sq.
[4140] Rom. ix. 22, 23; 2 Tim. ii. 20, 21.
[4141] 1 John ii. 19.
[4142] Prov. xiv. 12.
[4143] Stephen was willing to admit all heretical baptism, even that by Marcionites and Ophites; Cyprian would admit none. The Council was held at Carthage a.d. 255, and was followed by two in the next year.
[4144] Bishop of Rome from May 12, a.d. 254, to Aug. 2, a.d. 257. See note on ch. 25.
[4145] The words of 1 John iv. 3 would appear to support Jerome's remark.
[4146] Acts viii. 10. In the Clementine Homilies and Recognitions Simon is the constant opponent of St. Peter.
[4147] Commonly regarded as the chief among the Egyptian Gnostics. The Basilidian system is described by Irenaeus (101f).
[4148] Acts vi. 5, Rev. ii. 6, 15. As to how far Jerome's estimate of the character of Nicolas is correct, the article Nicolas in Smith's Dict. of Bible may be consulted.
[4149] Jerome here reproduces almost exactly the remark of Pseudo-Tertullian. The Dositheans were probably a Jewish or Samaritan ascetic sect, something akin to the Essenes.
[4150] The name Pharisee implies separation, but in the sense of dedication to God.
[4151] Of Antioch. One of the earliest of the Gnostics (second century).
[4152] The Ophites, whose name is derived from ophis, a serpent, were a sect which lasted from the second century to the sixth. Some of them believed that the serpent of Gen. iii. was either the Divine Wisdom, or the Christ himself, come to enlighten mankind. Their errors may in great measure, like those of the Cainites, be traced to the belief, common to all systems of Gnosticism, that the Creator of the world, who was the God of the Jews, was not the same as the Supreme Being, but was in antagonism to Him. They supposed that the Scriptures were written in the interest of the Demiurge or Creator, and that a false colouring being given to the story, the real worthies were those who are reprobated in the sacred writings.
[4153] The Cainites regarded as saints, Cain, Korah, Dathan, the Sodomites, and even the traitor Judas.
[4154] The Sethites are said to have looked upon Seth as the same person as Christ.
[4155] Carpocrates, another Gnostic, held that our Lord was the son of Joseph and Mary, and was distinguished from other men by nothing except moral superiority. He also taught the indifference of actions in themselves, and maintained that they take their quality from opinion or from legislation; he advocated community of goods and of wives, basing his views on the doctrine of natural rights. See Mosheim, Cent. ii.
[4156] Cerinthus was a native of Judæa, and after having studied at Alexandria established himself as a teacher in his own country. He afterwards removed to Ephesus, and there became prominent. He held that Jesus and the Christ were not the same person; Jesus was, he said, a real man, the son of Joseph and Mary; the Christ was an emanation which descended upon Jesus at his baptism to reveal the Most High, but which forsook him before the Passion. S. John in his Gospel and Epistles combats this error. See Westcott's Introduction to 1 John, p. xxxiv. (second ed.) etc. Cerinthus is said to have been the heretic with whom S. John refused to be under the same roof at the bath. To him as author is also referred the doctrine of the Millennium.
[4157] The Ebionites were mere humanitarians. Whether Ebion ever existed, or whether the sect took its name from the beggarliness of their doctrine, or their vow of poverty, or the poorness of spirit which they professed, is disputed.
[4158] Rev. ii. 16.
[4159] Cyprian's opinion as stated in his reply to the Numidian and Mauritanian bishops (Ep. 71) was that converts must be baptized, unless they had received the regular baptism of the Church before falling into heresy or schism, in which case imposition of hands would suffice. The question was afterwards decided against Cyprian's views by the Council of Arles (a.d. 314), which ordered that if the baptism had been administered in the name of the Trinity, converts should be admitted to the Church by imposition of hands.
[4160] For Novatus and an account of the dispute between Cyprian and Stephen, see Robertson's "Hist. of Christian Church," fourth ed., vol. i. pp. 120-127.
[4161] 1 Cor. xi. 16.
[4162] As Deucalion was left alone after the flood, so, Jerome implies, Hilary imagined himself the sole survivor after the flood of Arianism.
[4163] The advocates on each side could plead immemorial local usage. If imposition of hands was the rule at Rome, synods held at Iconium and at Synnada had established the rule of re-baptism nearly throughout Asia Minor. In Africa the same practice had been sanctioned early in the third century, but it seems to have fallen into disuse long before Cyprian's time.
[4164] Bishops of Rome--Julius 337-352; Mark Jan. 18-Oct. 7, 336; Sylvester 314-335.
[4165] Canon 19.
[4166] Canon 8. The bishop might give him the nominal honour of a bishop.
[4167] By the "men of the mountain or the plain," Jerome appears to contemptuously designate the Circumcellions who were an extreme section of the Donatists. They roamed about the country in bands of both sexes, and struck terror into the peaceable inhabitants. They were guilty of the grossest excesses, and no Catholic was safe except in the towns. Robertson's "Hist. of the Church," vol. i. fourth ed. pp. 200, 419, and the original authorities there referred to. __________________________________________________________________
The Perpetual Virginity of Blessed Mary.
------------------------
Against Helvidius.
This tract appeared about a.d. 383. The question which gave occasion to it was whether the Mother of our Lord remained a Virgin after His birth. Helvidius maintained that the mention in the Gospels of the "sisters" and "brethren" of our Lord was proof that the Blessed Virgin had subsequent issue, and he supported his opinion by the writings of Tertullian and Victorinus. The outcome of his views was that virginity was ranked below matrimony. Jerome vigorously takes the other side, and tries to prove that the "sisters" and "brethren" spoken of, were either children of Joseph by a former marriage, or first cousins, children of the sister of the Virgin. A detailed account of the controversy will be found in Farrar's "Early Days of Christianity," pp. 124 sq. When Jerome wrote this treatise both he and Helvidius were at Rome, and Damasus was Pope. The only contemporary notice preserved of Helvidius is that by Jerome in the following pages.
Jerome maintains against Helvidius three propositions:--
1st. That Joseph was only putatively, not really, the husband of Mary.
2d. That the "brethren" of the Lord were his cousins, not his own brethren.
3d. That virginity is better than the married state.
1. The first of these occupies ch. 3-8. It turns upon the record in Matt. i. 18-25, and especially on the words, "Before they came together" (c. 4), "knew her not till, &c." (5-8).
2. The second (c. 9-17) turns upon the words "first-born son" (9, 10), which, Jerome argues, are applicable not only to the eldest of several, but also to an only son: and the mention of brothers and sisters, whom Jerome asserts to have been children of Mary the wife of Cleophas or Clopas (11-16); he appeals to many Church writers in support of this view (17).
3. In support of his preference of virginity to marriage, Jerome argues that not only Mary but Joseph also remained in the virgin state (19); that, though marriage may sometimes be a holy estate, it presents great hindrances to prayer (20), and the teaching of Scripture is that the states of virginity and continency are more accordant with God's will than that of marriage (21, 22).
1. I was requested by certain of the brethren not long ago to reply to a pamphlet written by one Helvidius. I have deferred doing so, not because it is a difficult matter to maintain the truth and refute an ignorant boor who has scarce known the first glimmer of learning, but because I was afraid my reply might make him appear worth defeating. There was the further consideration that a turbulent fellow, the only individual in the world who thinks himself both priest and layman, one who, [4168] as has been said, thinks that eloquence consists in loquacity and considers speaking ill of anyone to be the witness of a good conscience, would begin to blaspheme worse than ever if opportunity of discussion were afforded him. He would stand as it were on a pedestal, and would publish his views far and wide. There was reason also to fear that when truth failed him he would assail his opponents with the weapon of abuse. But all these motives for silence, though just, have more justly ceased to influence me, because of the scandal caused to the brethren who were disgusted at his ravings. The axe of the Gospel must therefore be now laid to the root of the barren tree, and both it and its fruitless foliage cast into the fire, so that Helvidius who has never learnt to speak, may at length learn to hold his tongue.
2. I must call upon the Holy Spirit to express His meaning by my mouth and defend the virginity of the Blessed Mary. I must call upon the Lord Jesus to guard the sacred lodging of the womb in which He abode for ten months from all suspicion of sexual intercourse. And I must also entreat God the Father to show that the mother of His Son, who was a mother before she was a bride, continued a Virgin after her son was born. We have no desire to career over the fields of eloquence, we do not resort to the snares of the logicians or the thickets of Aristotle. We shall adduce the actual words of Scripture. Let him be refuted by the same proofs which he employed against us, so that he may see that it was possible for him to read what is written, and yet to be unable to discern the established conclusion of a sound faith.
3. His first statement was: "Matthew says, [4169] Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found with child of the Holy Ghost. And Joseph her husband, being a righteous man, and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privately. But when he thought on these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost." Notice, he says, that the word used is betrothed, not intrusted as you say, and of course the only reason why she was betrothed was that she might one day be married. And the Evangelist would not have said before they came together if they were not to come together, for no one would use the phrase before he dined of a man who was not going to dine. Then, again, the angel calls her wife and speaks of her as united to Joseph. We are next invited to listen to the declaration of Scripture: [4170] "And Joseph arose from his sleep, and did as the angel of the Lord commanded him, and took unto him his wife; and knew her not till she had brought forth her son."
4. Let us take the points one by one, and follow the tracks of this impiety that we may show that he has contradicted himself. He admits that she was betrothed, and in the next breath will have her to be a man's wife whom he has admitted to be his betrothed. Again, he calls her wife, and then says the only reason why she was betrothed was that she might one day be married. And, for fear we might not think that enough, "the word used," he says, "is betrothed and not intrusted, that is to say, not yet a wife, not yet united by the bond of wedlock." But when he continues, "the Evangelist would never have applied the words, before they came together to persons who were not to come together, any more than one says, before he dined, when the man is not going to dine," I know not whether to grieve or laugh. Shall I convict him of ignorance, or accuse him of rashness? Just as if, supposing a person to say, "Before dining in harbour I sailed to Africa," his words could not hold good unless he were compelled some day to dine in harbour. If I choose to say, "the apostle Paul before he went to Spain was put in fetters at Rome," or (as I certainly might) "Helvidius, before he repented, was cut off by death," must Paul on being released at once go to Spain, or must Helvidius repent after death, although the Scripture says [4171] "In sheol who shall give thee thanks?" Must we not rather understand that the preposition before, although it frequently denotes order in time, yet sometimes refers only to order in thought? So that there is no necessity, if sufficient cause intervened to prevent it, for our thoughts to be realized. When, then, the Evangelist says before they came together, he indicates the time immediately preceding marriage, and shows that matters were so far advanced that she who had been betrothed was on the point of becoming a wife. As though he said, before they kissed and embraced, before the consummation of marriage, she was found to be with child. And she was found to be so by none other than Joseph, who watched the swelling womb of his betrothed with the anxious glances, and, at this time, almost the privilege, of a husband. Yet it does not follow, as the previous examples showed, that he had intercourse with Mary after her delivery, when his desires had been quenched by the fact that she had already conceived. And although we find it said to Joseph in a dream, "Fear not to take Mary thy wife"; and again, "Joseph arose from his sleep, and did as the angel of the Lord commanded him, and took unto him his wife," no one ought to be disturbed by this, as though, inasmuch as she is called wife, she ceases to be betrothed, for we know it is usual in Scripture to give the title to those who are betrothed. The following evidence from Deuteronomy establishes the point. [4172] "If the man," says the writer, "find the damsel that is betrothed in the field, and the man force her, and lie with her, he shall surely die, because he hath humbled his neighbour's wife." And in another place, [4173] "If there be a damsel that is a virgin betrothed unto an husband, and a man find her in the city, and lie with her; then ye shall bring them both out unto the gate of that city, and ye shall stone them with stones that they die; the damsel, because she cried not, being in the city; and the man, because he hath humbled his neighbour's wife: so thou shalt put away the evil from the midst of thee." Elsewhere also, [4174] "And what man is there that hath betrothed a wife, and hath not taken her? let him go and return unto his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man take her." But if anyone feels a doubt as to why the Virgin conceived after she was betrothed rather than when she had no one betrothed to her, or, to use the Scripture phrase, no husband, let me explain that there were three reasons. First, that by the genealogy of Joseph, whose kinswoman Mary was, Mary's origin might also be shown. Secondly, that she might not in accordance with the law of Moses be stoned as an adulteress. Thirdly, that in her flight to Egypt she might have some solace, though it was that of a guardian rather than a husband. For who at that time would have believed the Virgin's word that she had conceived of the Holy Ghost, and that the angel Gabriel had come and announced the purpose of God? and would not all have given their opinion against her as an adulteress, like Susanna? for at the present day, now that the whole world has embraced the faith, the Jews argue that when Isaiah says, [4175] "Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son," the Hebrew word denotes a young woman, not a virgin, that is to say, the word is Almah, not Bethulah, a position which, farther on, we shall dispute more in detail. Lastly, excepting Joseph, and Elizabeth, and Mary herself, and some few others who, we may suppose, heard the truth from them, all considered Jesus to be the son of Joseph. And so far was this the case that even the Evangelists, expressing the prevailing opinion, which is the correct rule for a historian, call him the father of the Saviour, as, for instance, [4176] "And he (that is, Simeon) came in the Spirit into the temple: and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, that they might do concerning him after the custom of the law;" and elsewhere, [4177] "And his parents went every year to Jerusalem at the feast of the passover." And afterwards, [4178] "And when they had fulfilled the days, as they were returning, the boy Jesus tarried behind in Jerusalem; and his parents knew not of it." Observe also what Mary herself, who had replied to Gabriel with the words, [4179] "How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?" says concerning Joseph, [4180] "Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? behold, thy father and I sought thee sorrowing." We have not here, as many maintain, the utterance of Jews or of mockers. The Evangelists call Joseph father: Mary confesses he was father. Not (as I said before) that Joseph was really the father of the Saviour: but that, to preserve the reputation of Mary, he was regarded by all as his father, although, before he heard the admonition of the angel, [4181] "Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost," he had thoughts of putting her away privily; which shows that he well knew that the child conceived was not his. But we have said enough, more with the aim of imparting instruction than of answering an opponent, to show why Joseph is called the father of our Lord, and why Mary is called Joseph's wife. This also at once answers the question why certain persons are called his brethren.
5. This, however, is a point which will find its proper place further on. We must now hasten to other matters. The passage for discussion now is, "And Joseph arose from his sleep, and did as the angel of the Lord commanded him, and took unto him his wife and knew her not till she had brought forth a son, and he called his name Jesus." Here, first of all, it is quite needless for our opponent to show so elaborately that the word know has reference to coition, rather than to intellectual apprehension: as though anyone denied it, or any person in his senses could ever imagine the folly which Helvidius takes pains to refute. Then he would teach us that the adverb till implies a fixed and definite time, and when that is fulfilled, he says the event takes place which previously did not take place, as in the case before us, "and knew her not till she had brought forth a son." It is clear, says he, that she was known after she brought forth, and that that knowledge was only delayed by her engendering a son. To defend his position he piles up text upon text, waves his sword like a blind-folded gladiator, rattles his noisy tongue, and ends with wounding no one but himself.
6. Our reply is briefly this,--the words knew and till in the language of Holy Scripture are capable of a double meaning. As to the former, he himself gave us a dissertation to show that it must be referred to sexual intercourse, and no one doubts that it is often used of the knowledge of the understanding, as, for instance, "the boy Jesus tarried behind in Jerusalem, and his parents knew it not." Now we have to prove that just as in the one case he has followed the usage of Scripture, so with regard to the word till he is utterly refuted by the authority of the same Scripture, which often denotes by its use a fixed time (he himself told us so), frequently time without limitation, as when God by the mouth of the prophet says to certain persons, [4182] "Even to old age I am he." Will He cease to be God when they have grown old? And the Saviour in the Gospel tells the Apostles, [4183] "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." Will the Lord then after the end of the world has come forsake His disciples, and at the very time when seated on twelve thrones they are to judge the twelve tribes of Israel will they be bereft of the company of their Lord? Again Paul the Apostle writing to the Corinthians [4184] says, "Christ the first-fruits, afterward they that are Christ's, at his coming. Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father, when he shall have put down all rule, and all authority and power. For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet." Granted that the passage relates to our Lord's human nature, we do not deny that the words are spoken of Him who endured the cross and is commanded to sit afterwards on the right hand. What does he mean then by saying, "for he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet"? Is the Lord to reign only until His enemies begin to be under His feet, and once they are under His feet will He cease to reign? Of course His reign will then commence in its fulness when His enemies begin to be under His feet. David also in the fourth Song of Ascents [4185] speaks thus, "Behold, as the eyes of servants look unto the hand of their master, as the eyes of a maiden unto the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look unto the Lord our God, until he have mercy upon us." Will the prophet, then, look unto the Lord until he obtain mercy, and when mercy is obtained will he turn his eyes down to the ground? although elsewhere he says, [4186] "Mine eyes fail for thy salvation, and for the word of thy righteousness." I could accumulate countless instances of this usage, and cover the verbosity of our assailant with a cloud of proofs; I shall, however, add only a few, and leave the reader to discover like ones for himself.
7. The word of God says in Genesis, [4187] "And they gave unto Jacob all the strange gods which were in their hand, and the rings which were in their ears; and Jacob hid them under the oak which was by Shechem, and lost them until this day." Likewise at the end of Deuteronomy, [4188] "So Moses the servant of the Lord died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the Lord. And he buried him in the valley, in the land of Moab over against Beth-peor: but no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day." We must certainly understand by this day the time of the composition of the history, whether you prefer the view that Moses was the author of the Pentateuch or that Ezra re-edited it. In either case I make no objection. The question now is whether the words unto this day are to be referred to the time of publishing or writing the books, and if so it is for him to show, now that so many years have rolled away since that day, that either the idols hidden beneath the oak have been found, or the grave of Moses discovered; for he obstinately maintains that what does not happen so long as the point of time indicated by until and unto has not been attained, begins to be when that point has been reached. He would do well to pay heed to the idiom of Holy Scripture, and understand with us, (it was here he stuck in the mud) that some things which might seem ambiguous if not expressed are plainly intimated, while others are left to the exercise of our intellect. For if, while the event was still fresh in memory and men were living who had seen Moses, it was possible for his grave to be unknown, much more may this be the case after the lapse of so many ages. And in the same way must we interpret what we are told concerning Joseph. The Evangelist pointed out a circumstance which might have given rise to some scandal, namely, that Mary was not known by her husband until she was delivered, and he did so that we might be the more certain that she from whom Joseph refrained while there was room to doubt the import of the vision was not known after her delivery.
8. In short, what I want to know is why Joseph refrained until the day of her delivery? Helvidius will of course reply, because he heard the angel say, [4189] "that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost." And in turn we rejoin that he had certainly heard him say, [4190] "Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife." The reason why he was forbidden to forsake his wife was that he might not think her an adulteress. Is it true then, that he was ordered not to have intercourse with his wife? Is it not plain that the warning was given him that he might not be separated from her? And could the just man dare, he says, to think of approaching her, when he heard that the Son of God was in her womb? Excellent! We are to believe then that the same man who gave so much credit to a dream that he did not dare to touch his wife, yet afterwards, when he had learnt from the shepherds that the angel of the Lord had come from heaven and said to them, [4191] "Be not afraid: for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all people, for there is born to you this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord;" and when the heavenly host had joined with him in the chorus [4192] "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men of good will;" and when he had seen just Simeon embrace the infant and exclaim, [4193] "Now lettest thou thy servant depart, O Lord, according to thy word in peace: for mine eyes have seen thy salvation;" and when he had seen Anna the prophetess, the Magi, the Star, Herod, the angels; Helvidius, I say, would have us believe that Joseph, though well acquainted with such surprising wonders, dared to touch the temple of God, the abode of the Holy Ghost, the mother of his Lord? Mary at all events "kept all these sayings in her heart." You cannot for shame say Joseph did not know of them, for Luke tells us, [4194] "His father and mother were marvelling at the things which were spoken concerning Him." And yet you with marvellous effrontery contend that the reading of the Greek manuscripts is corrupt, although it is that which nearly all the Greek writers have left us in their books, and not only so, but several of the Latin writers have taken the words the same way. Nor need we now consider the variations in the copies, since the whole record both of the Old and New Testament has since that time been [4195] translated into Latin, and we must believe that the water of the fountain flows purer than that of the stream.
9. Helvidius will answer, "What you say, is in my opinion mere trifling. Your arguments are so much waste of time, and the discussion shows more subtlety than truth. Why could not Scripture say, as it said of Thamar and Judah, [4196] And he took his wife, and knew her again no more'? Could not Matthew find words to express his meaning? He knew her not,' he says, until she brought forth a son.' He did then, after her delivery, know her, whom he had refrained from knowing until she was delivered."
10. If you are so contentious, your own thoughts shall now prove your master. You must not allow any time to intervene between delivery and intercourse. You must not say, [4197] "If a woman conceive seed and bear a man child, then she shall be unclean seven days; as in the days of the separation of her sickness shall she be unclean. And in the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised. And she shall continue in the blood of her purifying three and thirty days. She shall touch no hallowed thing," and so forth. On your showing, Joseph must at once approach, her, and be subject to Jeremiah's [4198] reproof, "They were as mad horses in respect of women: every one neighed after his neighbour's wife." Otherwise, how can the words stand good, "he knew her not, till she had brought forth a son," if he waits after the time of another purifying has expired, if his lust must brook another long delay of forty days? The mother must go unpurged from her child-bed taint, and the wailing infant be attended to by the midwives, while the husband clasps his exhausted wife. Thus forsooth must their married life begin so that the Evangelist may not be convicted of falsehood. But God forbid that we should think thus of the Saviour's mother and of a just man. No midwife assisted at His birth; no women's officiousness intervened. With her own hands she wrapped Him in the swaddling clothes, herself both mother and midwife, [4199] "and laid Him," we are told, "in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn"; a statement which, on the one hand, refutes the ravings of the apocryphal accounts, for Mary herself wrapped Him in the swaddling clothes, and on the other makes the voluptuous notion of Helvidius impossible, since there was no place suitable for married intercourse in the inn.
11. An ample reply has now been given to what he advanced respecting the words before they came together, and he knew her not till she had brought forth a son. I must now proceed, if my reply is to follow the order of his argument, to the third point. He will have it that Mary bore other sons, and he quotes the passage, [4200] "And Joseph also went up to the city of David to enroll himself with Mary, who was betrothed to him, being great with child. And it came to pass, while they were there, the days were fulfilled that she should be delivered, and she brought forth her first-born son." From this he endeavours to show that the term first-born is inapplicable except to a person who has brothers, just as he is called only begotten who is the only son of his parents.
12. Our position is this: Every only begotten son is a first-born son, but not every first-born is an only begotten. By first-born we understand not only one who is succeeded by others, but one who has had no predecessor. [4201] "Everything," says the Lord to Aaron, "that openeth the womb of all flesh which they offer unto the Lord, both of man and beast, shall be thine: nevertheless the first born of man shalt thou surely redeem, and the firstling of unclean beasts shalt thou redeem." The word of God defines first-born as everything that openeth the womb. Otherwise, if the title belongs to such only as have younger brothers, the priests cannot claim the firstlings until their successors have been begotten, lest, perchance, in case there were no subsequent delivery it should prove to be the first-born but not merely the only begotten. [4202] "And those that are to be redeemed of them from a month old shalt thou redeem, according to thine estimation for the money of five shekels, after the shekel of the sanctuary (the same is twenty gerahs). But the firstling of an ox, or the firstling of a sheep, or the firstling of a goat, thou shalt not redeem; they are holy." The word of God compels me to dedicate to God everything that openeth the womb if it be the firstling of clean beasts: if of unclean beasts, I must redeem it, and give the value to the priest. I might reply and say, Why do you tie me down to the short space of a month? Why do you speak of the first-born, when I cannot tell whether there are brothers to follow? Wait until the second is born. I owe nothing to the priest, unless the birth of a second should make the one I previously had the first-born. Will not the very points of the letters cry out against me and convict me of my folly, and declare that first-born is a title of him who opens the womb, and is not to be restricted to him who has brothers? And, then, to take the case of John: we are agreed that he was an only begotten son: I want to know if he was not also a first-born son, and whether he was not absolutely amenable to the law. There can be no doubt in the matter. At all events Scripture thus speaks of the Saviour, [4203] "And when the days of her purification according to the law of Moses were fulfilled, they brought him up to Jerusalem, to present him to the Lord (as it is written in the law of the Lord, every male that openeth the womb shall be called holy to the Lord) and to offer a sacrifice according to that which is said in the law of the Lord, a pair of turtle-doves, or two young pigeons." If this law relates only to the first-born, and there can be no first-born unless there are successors, no one ought to be bound by the law of the first-born who cannot tell whether there will be successors. But inasmuch as he who has no younger brothers is bound by the law of the first-born, we gather that he is called the first-born who opens the womb and who has been preceded by none, not he whose birth is followed by that of a younger brother. Moses writes in Exodus, [4204] "And it came to pass at midnight, that the Lord smote all the first-born in the land of Egypt, from the first-born of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the first-born of the captive that was in the dungeon: And all the first-born of cattle." Tell me, were they who then perished by the destroyer, only your first-born, or, something more, did they include the only begotten? If only they who have brothers are called first-born, the only begotten were saved from death. And if it be the fact that the only begotten were slain, it was contrary to the sentence pronounced, for the only begotten to die as well as the first-born. You must either release the only begotten from the penalty, and in that case you become ridiculous: or, if you allow that they were slain, we gain our point, though we have not to thank you for it, that only begotten sons also are called first-born.
13. The last proposition of Helvidius was this, and it is what he wished to show when he treated of the first-born, that brethren of the Lord are mentioned in the Gospels. For example, [4205] "Behold, his mother and his brethren stood without, seeking to speak to him." And elsewhere, [4206] "After this he went down to Capernaum, he, and his mother, and his brethren." And again, [4207] "His brethren therefore said unto him, Depart hence, and go into Judæa, that thy disciples also may behold the works which thou doest. For no man doeth anything in secret, and himself seeketh to be known openly. If thou doest these things, manifest thyself to the world." And John adds, [4208] "For even his brethren did not believe on him." Mark also and Matthew, [4209] "And coming into his own country he taught them in their synagogues, insomuch that they were astonished, and said, Whence hath this man this wisdom, and mighty works? Is not this the carpenter's son? is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren James, and Joseph, and Simon, and Judas? And his sisters, are they not all with us?" Luke also in the Acts of the Apostles relates, [4210] "These all with one accord continued stedfastly in prayer, with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren." Paul the Apostle also is at one with them, and witnesses to their historical accuracy, [4211] "And I went up by revelation, but other of the apostles saw I none, save Peter and James the Lord's brother." And again in another place, [4212] "Have we no right to eat and drink? Have we no right to lead about wives even as the rest of the Apostles, and the brethren of the Lord, and Cephas?" And for fear any one should not allow the evidence of the Jews, since it was they from whose mouth we hear the name of His brothers, but should maintain that His countrymen were deceived by the same error in respect of the brothers into which they fell in their belief about the father, Helvidius utters a sharp note of warning and cries, "The same names are repeated by the Evangelists in another place, and the same persons are there brethren of the Lord and sons of Mary." Matthew says, [4213] "And many women were there (doubtless at the Lord's cross) beholding from afar, which had followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering unto him: among whom was Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joses, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee." Mark also, [4214] "And there were also women beholding from afar, among whom were both Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the less and of Joses, and Salome"; and in the same place shortly after, "And many other women which came up with him unto Jerusalem." Luke too, [4215] "Now there were Mary Magdalene, and Joanna, and Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them."
14. My reason for repeating the same thing again and again is to prevent him from raising a false issue and crying out that I have withheld such passages as make for him, and that his view has been torn to shreds not by evidence of Scripture, but by evasive arguments. Observe, he says, James and Joses are sons of Mary, and the same persons who were called brethren by the Jews. Observe, Mary is the mother of James the less and of Joses. And James is called the less to distinguish him from James the greater, who was the son of Zebedee, as Mark elsewhere states, [4216] "And Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses beheld where he was laid. And when the sabbath was past, they bought spices, that they might come and anoint him." And, as might be expected, he says: "What a poor and impious view we take of Mary, if we hold that when other women were concerned about the burial of Jesus, she His mother was absent; or if we invent some kind of a second Mary; and all the more because the Gospel of S. John testifies that she was there present, when the Lord upon the cross commended her, as His mother and now a widow, to the care of John. Or must we suppose that the Evangelists were so far mistaken and so far mislead us as to call Mary the mother of those who were known to the Jews as brethren of Jesus?"
15. What darkness, what raging madness rushing to its own destruction! You say that the mother of the Lord was present at the cross, you say that she was entrusted to the disciple John on account of her widowhood and solitary condition: as if upon your own showing, she had not four sons, and numerous daughters, with whose solace she might comfort herself? You also apply to her the name of widow which is not found in Scripture. And although you quote all instances in the Gospels, the words of John alone displease you. You say in passing that she was present at the cross, that you may not appear to have omitted it on purpose, and yet not a word about the women who were with her. I could pardon you if you were ignorant, but I see you have a reason for your silence. Let me point out then what John says, [4217] "But there were standing by the cross of Jesus his mother, and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene." No one doubts that there were two apostles called by the name James, James the son of Zebedee, and James the son of Alphæus. Do you intend the comparatively unknown James the less, who is called in Scripture the son of Mary, not however of Mary the mother of our Lord, to be an apostle, or not? If he is an apostle, he must be the son of Alphæus and a believer in Jesus, "For neither did his brethren believe in him." If he is not an apostle, but a third James (who he can be I cannot tell), how can he be regarded as the Lord's brother, and how, being a third, can he be called less to distinguish him from greater, when greater and less are used to denote the relations existing, not between three, but between two? Notice, moreover, that the Lord's brother is an apostle, since Paul says, [4218] "Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas, and tarried with him fifteen days. But other of the Apostles saw I none, save James the Lord's brother." And in the same Epistle, [4219] "And when they perceived the grace that was given unto me, James and Cephas and John, who were reputed to be pillars," etc. And that you may not suppose this James to be the son of Zebedee, you have only to read the Acts of the Apostles, and you will find that the latter had already been slain by Herod. The only conclusion is that the Mary who is described as the mother of James the less was the wife of Alphæus and sister of Mary the Lord's mother, the one who is called by John the Evangelist "Mary of Clopas," whether after her father, or kindred, or for some other reason. But if you think they are two persons because elsewhere we read, "Mary the mother of James the less," and here, "Mary of Clopas," you have still to learn that it is customary in Scripture for the same individual to bear different names. Raguel, Moses' father-in-law, is also called Jethro. Gedeon, [4220] without any apparent reason for the change, all at once becomes Jerubbaal. Ozias, king of Judah, has an alternative, Azarias. Mount Tabor is called Itabyrium. Again Hermon is called by the Phenicians Sanior, and by the Amorites Sanir. The same tract of country is known by three names, [4221] Negebh, Teman, and Darom in Ezekiel. Peter is also called Simon and Cephas. Judas the zealot in another Gospel is called Thaddaeus. And there are numerous other examples which the reader will be able to collect for himself from every part of Scripture.
16. Now here we have the explanation of what I am endeavouring to show, how it is that the sons of Mary, the sister of our Lord's mother, who though not formerly believers afterwards did believe, can be called brethren of the Lord. Possibly the case might be that one of the brethren believed immediately while the others did not believe until long after, and that one Mary was the mother of James and Joses, namely, "Mary of Clopas," who is the same as the wife of Alphæus, the other, the mother of James the less. In any case, if she (the latter) had been the Lord's mother S. John would have allowed her the title, as everywhere else, and would not by calling her the mother of other sons have given a wrong impression. But at this stage I do not wish to argue for or against the supposition that Mary the wife of Clopas and Mary the mother of James and Joses were different women, provided it is clearly understood that Mary the mother of James and Joses was not the same person as the Lord's mother. How then, says Helvidius, do you make out that they were called the Lord's brethren who were not his brethren? I will show how that is. In Holy Scripture there are four kinds of brethren--by nature, race, kindred, love. Instances of brethren by nature are Esau and Jacob, the twelve patriarchs, Andrew and Peter, James and John. As to race, all Jews are called brethren of one another, as in Deuteronomy, [4222] "If thy brother, an Hebrew man, or an Hebrew woman, be sold unto thee, and serve thee six years; then in the seventh year thou shalt let him go free from thee." And in the same book, [4223] "Thou shalt in anywise set him king over thee, whom the Lord thy God shall choose: one from among thy brethren shalt thou set king over thee; thou mayest not put a foreigner over thee, which is not thy brother." And again, [4224] "Thou shalt not see thy brother's ox or his sheep go astray, and hide thyself from them: thou shalt surely bring them again unto thy brother. And if thy brother be not nigh unto thee, or if thou know him not, then thou shalt bring it home to thine house, and it shall be with thee until thy brother seek after it, and thou shalt restore it to him again." And the Apostle Paul says, [4225] "I could wish that I myself were anathema from Christ for my brethren's sake, my kinsmen according to the flesh: who are Israelites." Moreover they are called brethren by kindred who are of one family, that is patria, which corresponds to the Latin paternitas, because from a single root a numerous progeny proceeds. In Genesis [4226] we read, "And Abram said unto Lot, Let there be no strife, I pray thee, between me and thee, and between my herdmen and thy herdmen; for we are brethren." And again, "So Lot chose him all the plain of Jordan, and Lot journeyed east: and they separated each from his brother." Certainly Lot was not Abraham's brother, but the son of Abraham's brother Aram. For Terah begat Abraham and Nahor and Aram: and Aram begat Lot. Again we read, [4227] "And Abram was seventy and five years old when he departed out of Haran. And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother's son." But if you still doubt whether a nephew can be called a son, let me give you an instance. [4228] "And when Abram heard that his brother was taken captive, he led forth his trained men, born in his house, three hundred and eighteen." And after describing the night attack and the slaughter, he adds, "And he brought back all the goods, and also brought again his brother Lot." Let this suffice by way of proof of my assertion. But for fear you may make some cavilling objection, and wriggle out of your difficulty like a snake, I must bind you fast with the bonds of proof to stop your hissing and complaining, for I know you would like to say you have been overcome not so much by Scripture truth as by intricate arguments. Jacob, the son of Isaac and Rebecca, when in fear of his brother's treachery he had gone to Mesopotamia, drew nigh and rolled away the stone from the mouth of the well, and watered the flocks of Laban, his mother's brother. [4229] "And Jacob kissed Rachel, and lifted up his voice, and wept. And Jacob told Rachel that he was her father's brother, and that he was Rebekah's son." Here is an example of the rule already referred to, by which a nephew is called a brother. And again, [4230] "Laban said unto Jacob. Because thou art my brother, shouldest thou therefore serve me for nought? Tell me what shall thy wages be." And so, when, at the end of twenty years, without the knowledge of his father-in-law and accompanied by his wives and sons he was returning to his country, on Laban overtaking him in the mountain of Gilead and failing to find the idols which Rachel hid among the baggage, Jacob answered and said to Laban, [4231] "What is my trespass? What is my sin, that thou hast so hotly pursued after me? Whereas thou hast felt all about my stuff, what hast thou found of all thy household stuff? Set it here before my brethren and thy brethren, that they may judge betwixt us two." Tell me who are those brothers of Jacob and Laban who were present there? Esau, Jacob's brother, was certainly not there, and Laban, the son of Bethuel, had no brothers although he had a sister Rebecca.
17. Innumerable instances of the same kind are to be found in the sacred books. But, to be brief, I will return to the last of the four classes of brethren, those, namely, who are brethren by affection, and these again fall into two divisions, those of the spiritual and those of the general relationship. I say spiritual because all of us Christians are called brethren, as in the verse, [4232] "Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity." And in another psalm the Saviour says, [4233] "I will declare thy name unto my brethren." And elsewhere, [4234] "Go unto my brethren and say to them." I say also general, because we are all children of one Father, there is a like bond of brotherhood between us all. [4235] "Tell these who hate you," says the prophet, "ye are our brethren." And the Apostle writing to the Corinthians: [4236] "If any man that is named brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner: with such a one no, not to eat." I now ask to which class you consider the Lord's brethren in the Gospel must be assigned. They are brethren by nature, you say. But Scripture does not say so; it calls them neither sons of Mary, nor of Joseph. Shall we say they are brethren by race? But it is absurd to suppose that a few Jews were called His brethren when all Jews of the time might upon this principle have borne the title. Were they brethren by virtue of close intimacy and the union of heart and mind? If that were so, who were more truly His brethren than the apostles who received His private instruction and were called by Him His mother and His brethren? Again, if all men, as such, were His brethren, it would have been foolish to deliver a special message, "Behold, thy brethren seek thee," for all men alike were entitled to the name. The only alternative is to adopt the previous explanation and understand them to be called brethren in virtue of the bond of kindred, not of love and sympathy, nor by prerogative of race, nor yet by nature. Just as Lot was called Abraham's brother, and Jacob Laban's, just as the daughters of Zelophehad received a lot among their brethren, just as Abraham himself had to wife Sarah his sister, for he says, [4237] "She is indeed my sister, on the father's side, not on the mother's," that is to say, she was the daughter of his brother, not of his sister. Otherwise, what are we to say of Abraham, a just man, taking to wife the daughter of his own father? Scripture, in relating the history of the men of early times, does not outrage our ears by speaking of the enormity in express terms, but prefers to leave it to be inferred by the reader: and God afterwards gives to the prohibition the sanction of the law, and threatens, [4238] "He who takes his sister, born of his father, or of his mother, and beholds her nakedness, hath commited abomination, he shall be utterly destroyed. He hath uncovered his sister's nakedness, he shall bear his sin."
18. There are things which, in your extreme ignorance, you had never read, and therefore you neglected the whole range of Scripture and employed your madness in outraging the Virgin, like the man in the story who being unknown to everybody and finding that he could devise no good deed by which to gain renown, burned the temple of Diana: and when no one revealed the sacrilegious act, it is said that he himself went up and down proclaiming that he was the man who had applied the fire. The rulers of Ephesus were curious to know what made him do this thing, whereupon he replied that if he could not have fame for good deeds, all men should give him credit for bad ones. Grecian history relates the incident. But you do worse. You have set on fire the temple of the Lord's body, you have defiled the sanctuary of the Holy Spirit from which you are determined to make a team of four brethren and a heap of sisters come forth. In a word, joining in the chorus of the Jews, you say, [4239] "Is not this the carpenter's son? is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren James, and Joseph, and Simon, and Judas? and his sisters, are they not all with us? The word all would not be used if there were not a crowd of them." Pray tell me, who, before you appeared, was acquainted with this blasphemy? who thought the theory worth two-pence? You have gained your desire, and are become notorious by crime. For myself who am your opponent, although we live in the [4240] same city, I don't know, as the saying is, whether you are white or black. I pass over faults of diction which abound in every book you write. I say not a word about your absurd introduction. Good heavens! I do not ask for eloquence, since, having none yourself, you applied for a supply of it to your brother Craterius. I do not ask for grace of style, I look for purity of soul: for with Christians it is the greatest of solecisms and of vices of style to introduce anything base either in word or action. I am come to the conclusion of my argument. I will deal with you as though I had as yet prevailed nothing; and you will find yourself on the horns of a dilemma. It is clear that our Lord's brethren bore the name in the same way that Joseph was called his father: [4241] "I and thy father sought thee sorrowing." It was His mother who said this, not the Jews. The Evangelist himself relates that His father and His mother were marvelling at the things which were spoken concerning Him, and there are similar passages which we have already quoted in which Joseph and Mary are called his parents. Seeing that you have been foolish enough to persuade yourself that the Greek manuscripts are corrupt, you will perhaps plead the diversity of readings. I therefore come to the Gospel of John, and there it is plainly written, [4242] "Philip findeth Nathanael, and saith unto him, We have found him of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph." You will certainly find this in your manuscript. Now tell me, how is Jesus the son of Joseph when it is clear that He was begotten of the Holy Ghost? Was Joseph His true father? Dull as you are, you will not venture to say that. Was he His reputed father? If so, let the same rule be applied to them when they are called brethren, that you apply to Joseph when he is called father.
19. Now that I have cleared the rocks and shoals I must spread sail and make all speed to reach his epilogue. Feeling himself to be a smatterer, he there produces Tertullian as a witness and quotes the words of Victorinus bishop of [4243] Petavium. Of Tertullian I say no more than that he did not belong to the Church. But as regards Victorinus, I assert what has already been proved from the Gospel--that he spoke of the brethren of the Lord not as being sons of Mary, but brethren in the sense I have explained, that is to say, brethren in point of kinship not by nature. We are, however, spending our strength on trifles, and, leaving the fountain of truth, are following the tiny streams of opinion. Might I not array against you the whole series of ancient writers? Ignatius, Polycarp, Irenæus, Justin Martyr, and many other apostolic and eloquent men, who against Ebion, Theodotus of Byzantium, and Valentinus, held these same views, and wrote volumes replete with wisdom. If you had ever read what they wrote, you would be a wiser man. But I think it better to reply briefly to each point than to linger any longer and extend my book to an undue length.
20. I now direct the attack against the passage in which, wishing to show your cleverness, you institute a comparison between virginity and marriage. I could not forbear smiling, and I thought of the proverb, did you ever see a camel dance? "Are virgins better," you ask, "than Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who were married men? Are not infants daily fashioned by the hands of God in the wombs of their mothers? And if so, are we bound to blush at the thought of Mary having a husband after she was delivered? If they find any disgrace in this, they ought not consistently even to believe that God was born of the Virgin by natural delivery. For according to them there is more dishonour in a virgin giving birth to God by the organs of generation, than in a virgin being joined to her own husband after she has been delivered." Add, if you like, Helvidius, the other humiliations of nature, the womb for nine months growing larger, the sickness, the delivery, the blood, the swaddling-clothes. Picture to yourself the infant in the enveloping membranes. Introduce into your picture the hard manger, the wailing of the infant, the circumcision on the eighth day, the time of purification, so that he may be proved to be unclean. We do not blush, we are not put to silence. The greater the humiliations He endured for me, the more I owe Him. And when you have given every detail, you will be able to produce nothing more shameful than the cross, which we confess, in which we believe, and by which we triumph over our enemies.
21. But as we do not deny what is written, so we do reject what is not written. We believe that God was born of the Virgin, because we read it. That Mary was married after she brought forth, we do not believe, because we do not read it. Nor do we say this to condemn marriage, for virginity itself is the fruit of marriage; but because when we are dealing with saints we must not judge rashly. If we adopt possibility as the standard of judgment, we might maintain that Joseph had several wives because Abraham had, and so had Jacob, and that the Lord's brethren were the issue of those wives, an invention which some hold with a rashness which springs from audacity not from piety. You say that Mary did not continue a virgin: I claim still more, that Joseph himself on account of Mary was a virgin, so that from a virgin wedlock a virgin son was born. For if as a holy man he does not come under the imputation of fornication, and it is nowhere written that he had another wife, but was the guardian of Mary whom he was supposed to have to wife rather than her husband, the conclusion is that he who was thought worthy to be called father of the Lord, remained a virgin.
22. And now that I am about to institute a comparison between virginity and marriage, I beseech my readers not to suppose that in praising virginity I have in the least disparaged marriage, and separated the saints of the Old Testament from those of the New, that is to say, those who had wives and those who altogether refrained from the embraces of women: I rather think that in accordance with the difference in time and circumstance one rule applied to the former, another to us upon whom the ends of the world have come. So long as that law remained, [4244] "Be fruitful, and multiply and replenish the earth"; and [4245] "Cursed is the barren woman that beareth not seed in Israel," they all married and were given in marriage, left father and mother, and became one flesh. But once in tones of thunder the words were heard, [4246] "The time is shortened, that henceforth those that have wives may be as though they had none": cleaving to the Lord, we are made one spirit with Him. And why? [4247] Because "He that is unmarried is careful for the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord: but he that is married is careful for the things of the world, how he may please his wife. And there is a difference also between the wife and the virgin. She that is unmarried is careful for the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit: but she that is married is careful for the things of the world, how she may please her husband." Why do you cavil? Why do you resist? The vessel of election says this; he tells us that there is a difference between the wife and the virgin. Observe what the happiness of that state must be in which even the distinction of sex is lost. The virgin is no longer called a woman. [4248] "She that is unmarried is careful for the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit." A virgin is defined as she that is holy in body and in spirit, for it is no good to have virgin flesh if a woman be married in mind.
"But she that is married is careful for the things of the world, how she may please her husband." Do you think there is no difference between one who spends her time in prayer and fasting, and one who must, at her husband's approach, make up her countenance, walk with mincing gait, and feign a shew of endearment? The virgin's aim is to appear less comely; she will wrong herself so as to hide her natural attractions. The married woman has the paint laid on before her mirror, and, to the insult of her Maker, strives to acquire something more than her natural beauty. Then come the prattling of infants, the noisy household, children watching for her word and waiting for her kiss, the reckoning up of expenses, the preparation to meet the outlay. On one side you will see a company of cooks, girded for the onslaught and attacking the meat: there you may hear the hum of a multitude of weavers. Meanwhile a message is delivered that the husband and his friends have arrived. The wife, like a swallow, flies all over the house. "She has to see to everything. Is the sofa smooth? Is the pavement swept? Are the flowers in the cups? Is dinner ready?" Tell me, pray, where amid all this is there room for the thought of God? Are these happy homes? Where there is the beating of drums, the noise and clatter of pipe and lute, the clanging of cymbals, can any fear of God be found? The parasite is snubbed and feels proud of the honour. Enter next the half-naked victims of the passions, a mark for every lustful eye. The unhappy wife must either take pleasure in them, and perish, or be displeased, and provoke her husband. Hence arises discord, the seed-plot of divorce. Or suppose you find me a house where these things are unknown, which is a rara avis indeed! yet even there the very management of the household, the education of the children, the wants of the husband, the correction of the servants, cannot fail to call away the mind from the thought of God. [4249] "It had ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women": so the Scripture says, and afterwards Abraham received the command, [4250] "In all that Sarah saith unto thee, hearken unto her voice." She who is not subject to the anxiety and pain of child-bearing and having passed the change of life has ceased to perform the functions of a woman, is freed from the curse of God: nor is her desire to her husband, but on the contrary her husband becomes subject to her, and the voice of the Lord commands him, "In all that Sarah saith unto thee, hearken unto her voice." Thus they begin to have time for prayer. For so long as the debt of marriage is paid, earnest prayer is neglected.
23. I do not deny that holy women are found both among widows and those who have husbands; but they are such as have ceased to be wives, or such as, even in the close bond of marriage, imitate virgin chastity. The Apostle, Christ speaking in him, briefly bore witness to this when he said, [4251] "She that is unmarried is careful for the things of the Lord, how she may please the Lord: but she that is married is careful for the things of the world, how she may please her husband." He leaves us the free exercise of our reason in the matter. He lays no necessity upon anyone nor leads anyone into a snare: he only persuades to that which is proper when he wishes all men to be as himself. He had not, it is true, a commandment from the Lord respecting virginity, for that grace surpasses the unassisted power of man, and it would have worn an air of immodesty to force men to fly in the face of nature, and to say in other words, I want you to be what the angels are. It is this angelic purity which secures to virginity its highest reward, and the Apostle might have seemed to despise a course of life which involves no guilt. Nevertheless in the immediate context he adds, [4252] "But I give my judgment, as one that hath obtained mercy of the Lord to be faithful. I think therefore that this is good by reason of the present distress, namely, that it is good for a man to be as he is." What is meant by present distress? [4253] "Woe unto them that are with child and to them that give suck in those days!" The reason why the wood grows up is that it may be cut down. The field is sown that it may be reaped. The world is already full, and the population is too large for the soil. Every day we are being cut down by war, snatched away by disease, swallowed up by shipwreck, although we go to law with one another about the fences of our property. It is only one addition to the general rule which is made by those who follow the Lamb, and who have not defiled their garments, for they have continued in their virgin state. Notice the meaning of defiling. I shall not venture to explain it, for fear Helvidius may be abusive. I agree with you, when you say, that some virgins are nothing but tavern women; I say still more, that even adulteresses may be found among them, and, you will no doubt be still more surprised to hear, that some of the clergy are inn-keepers and some monks unchaste. Who does not at once understand that a tavern woman cannot be a virgin, nor an adulterer a monk, nor a clergy-man a tavern-keeper? Are we to blame virginity if its counterfeit is at fault? For my part, to pass over other persons and come to the virgin, I maintain that she who is engaged in huckstering, though for anything I know she may be a virgin in body, is no longer one in spirit.
24. I have become rhetorical, and have disported myself a little like a platform orator. You compelled me, Helvidius; for, brightly as the Gospel shines at the present day, you will have it that equal glory attaches to virginity and to the marriage state. And because I think that, finding the truth too strong for you, you will turn to disparaging my life and abusing my character (it is the way of weak women to talk tittle-tattle in corners when they have been put down by their masters), I shall anticipate you. I assure you that I shall regard your railing as a high distinction, since the same lips that assail me have disparaged Mary, and I, a servant of the Lord, am favoured with the same barking eloquence as His mother. __________________________________________________________________
[4168] Ut ait ille. The sentiment, almost in the same words, is found in Tertullian against Hermogenes, ch. 1.
[4169] i. 18 sq.
[4170] S. Matt. i. 24, 25.
[4171] Ps. vi. 5.
[4172] Deut. xxii. 24, 25.
[4173] Deut. xxii. 23, 24.
[4174] Deut. xx. 7.
[4175] Is. vii. 14. See Cheyne's Isaiah, and critical note.
[4176] S. Luke ii. 27.
[4177] S. Luke ii. 41.
[4178] ib. ii. 43.
[4179] ib. i. 34.
[4180] S. Luke ii. 48.
[4181] S. Matt. i. 20.
[4182] Is. xlvi. 4.
[4183] S. Matt. xxviii. 20.
[4184] 1 Cor. xv. 23 sq.
[4185] Ps. cxxiii. 2. The songs of the up-goings or ascents (ton anabaOmon Sept., graduum Vulg.), are the fifteen psalms cxx.-cxxxiv.
[4186] Ps. cxix. 123.
[4187] Gen. xxxv. 4, Sept.
[4188] Deut. xxxiv. 5-6.
[4189] S. Matt. i. 20.
[4190] S. Matt. i. 20.
[4191] S. Luke ii. 10 sq.
[4192] S. Luke ii. 14.
[4193] ib. ii. 29.
[4194] S. Luke ii. 33.
[4195] The allusion is to the Old Latin, the Versio Itala. The quotations which follow stand differently in Jerome's Vulgate, made subsequently (391-404). The argument is that, since the copies of the Latin version substantially agree in the present case, it is futile to suppose variations in the original.
[4196] Gen. xxxviii. 26.
[4197] Lev. xii. 2-3 margin.
[4198] Jer. v. 8.
[4199] S. Luke ii. 7.
[4200] S. Luke ii. 4 sq.
[4201] Numb. xviii. 15.
[4202] Numb. xviii. 16.
[4203] S. Luke ii. 22 sq.
[4204] Exod. xii. 29.
[4205] S. Matt. xii. 46.
[4206] S. John ii. 12.
[4207] S. John vii. 3, 4.
[4208] S. John vii. 5.
[4209] S. Matt. xiii. 54, 55. S. Mark vi. 1-3.
[4210] Acts i. 14.
[4211] Gal. ii. 2; i. 19.
[4212] 1 Cor. ix. 4, 5.
[4213] S. Matt. xxvii. 55, 56. For Joses, Jerome has Joseph.
[4214] S. Mark xv. 40, 41. For Joses, Jerome has Joseph.
[4215] S. Luke xxiv. 10.
[4216] S. Mark xv. 47; xvi. 1.
[4217] S. John xix. 25.
[4218] Gal. i. 18, 19.
[4219] Gal. ii. 9.
[4220] But see Judges vi. 2.
[4221] The Heb. Negebh signifies South, and it is probable that the land of Teman was a southern portion of the land of Edom. If Darom be the right reading, it is, apparently, the same as Dedan (Ezek. xxv. 13, etc.).
[4222] Deut. xv. 12.
[4223] Deut. xvii. 15.
[4224] Deut. xxii. 1.
[4225] Rom. ix. 3, 4.
[4226] Gen. xiii. 8, 11.
[4227] Gen. xii. 4.
[4228] Gen. xiv. 14.
[4229] Gen. xxix. 11.
[4230] Gen. xxix. 15.
[4231] Gen. xxxi. 36, 37.
[4232] Ps. cxxxiii. 1.
[4233] Ps. xxii. 22.
[4234] S. John xx. 17.
[4235] Is. lxvi. 5.
[4236] 1 Cor. v. 11.
[4237] Gen. xx. 11.
[4238] Lev. xviii. 9.
[4239] S. Matt. xiii. 55: S. Mark vi. 3.
[4240] That is, Rome.
[4241] S. Luke i. 18.
[4242] S. John i. 45.
[4243] That is, Pettau in Upper Pannonia. See Jerome, De Vir. Ill. 74.
[4244] Gen. i. 28.
[4245] Probably a mistranslation of Exod. xxiii. 26.
[4246] 1 Cor. vii. 29.
[4247] ib. vii. 32, 33.
[4248] 1 Cor. vii. 34.
[4249] Gen. xviii. 11.
[4250] Gen. xxi. 12.
[4251] 1 Cor. vii. 34.
[4252] 1 Cor. vii. 25.
[4253] Matt. xxiv. 19: S. Mark xiii. 17. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Against Jovinianus.
------------------------
Book I.
Jovinianus, concerning whom we know little more than is to be found in the two following books, had published at Rome a Latin treatise containing all, or part of the opinions here controverted, viz. (1) "That a virgin is no better as such than a wife in the sight of God. (2) Abstinence is no better than a thankful partaking of food. (3) A person baptized with the Spirit as well as with water cannot sin. (4) All sins are equal. (5) There is but one grade of punishment and one of reward in the future state." In addition to this he held the birth of our Lord to have been by a "true parturition," and was thus at issue with the orthodoxy of the time, according to which the infant Jesus passed through the walls of the womb as His Resurrection body afterwards did out of the tomb or through the closed doors. Pammachius, Jerome's friend, brought Jovinian's book under the notice of Siricius, bishop of Rome, and it was shortly afterwards condemned in synods at that city and at Milan (about a.d. 390). He subsequently sent Jovinian's books to Jerome, who answered them in the present treatise in the year 393. Nothing more is known of Jovinian, but it has been conjectured from Jerome's remark in the treatise against Vigilantius, where Jovinian is said to have "amidst pheasants and pork rather belched out than breathed out his life," and by a kind of transmigration to have transmitted his opinions into Vigilantius, that he had died before 409, the date of that work.
The first book is wholly on the first proposition of Jovinianus, that relating to marriage and virginity. The first three chapters are introductory. The rest may be divided into three parts:
1 (ch. 4-13). An exposition, in Jerome's sense, of St. Paul's teaching in 1 Cor. vii.
2 (ch. 14-39). A statement of the teaching which Jerome derives from the various books of both the Old and the New Testaments.
3. A denunciation of Jovinianus (c. 40), and the praises of virginity and of single marriages derived from examples in the heathen world.
The treatise gives a remarkable specimen of Jerome's system of interpreting Scripture, and also of the methods by which asceticism was introduced into the Church, and marriage brought into disesteem.
1. Very few days have elapsed since the holy brethren of Rome sent to me the treatises of a certain Jovinian with the request that I would reply to the follies contained in them, and would crush with evangelical and apostolic vigour the [4254] Epicurus of Christianity. I read but could not in the least comprehend them. I began therefore to give them closer attention, and to thoroughly sift not only words and sentences, but almost every single syllable; for I wished first to ascertain his meaning, and then to approve, or refute what he had said. But the style is so barbarous, and the language so vile and such a heap of blunders, that I could neither understand what he was talking about, nor by what arguments he was trying to prove his points. At one moment he is all bombast, at another he grovels: from time to time he lifts himself up, and then like a wounded snake finds his own effort too much for him. Not satisfied with the language of men, he attempts something loftier.
[4255] "The mountains labour; a poor mouse is born."
[4256] "That he's gone mad ev'n mad Orestes swears."
Moreover he involves everything in such inextricable confusion that the saying of [4257] Plautus might be applied to him:--"This is what none but a Sibyl will ever read."
To understand him we must be prophets. We read Apollo's [4258] raving prophetesses. We remember, too, what [4259] Virgil says of senseless noise. [4260] Heraclitus, also, surnamed the Obscure, the philosophers find hard to understand even with their utmost toil. But what are they compared with our riddle-maker, whose books are much more difficult to comprehend than to refute? Although (we must confess) the task of refuting them is no easy one. For how can you overcome a man when you are quite in the dark as to his meaning? But, not to be tedious to my reader, the introduction to his second book, of which he has discharged himself like a sot after a night's debauch, will show the character of his eloquence, and through what bright flowers of rhetoric he takes his stately course.
2. "I respond to your invitation, not that I may go through life with a high reputation, but may live free from idle rumour. I beseech the ground, the young shoots of our plantations, the plants and trees of tenderness snatched from the whirlpool of vice, to grant me audience and the support of many listeners. We know that the Church through hope, faith, charity, is inaccessible and impregnable. In it no one is immature: all are apt to learn: none can force a way into it by violence, or deceive it by craft."
3. What, I ask, is the meaning of these portentous words and of this grotesque description? Would you not think he was in a feverish dream, or that he was seized with madness and ought to be put into the strait jacket which Hippocrates prescribed? However often I read him, even till my heart sinks within me, I am still in uncertainty of his meaning. [4261] Everything starts from, everything depends upon, something else. It is impossible to make out any connection; and, excepting the proofs from Scripture which he has not dared to exchange for his own lovely flowers of rhetoric, his words suit all matter equally well, because they suit no matter at all. This circumstance led me shrewdly to suspect that his object in proclaiming the excellence of marriage was only to disparage virginity. For when the less is put upon a level with the greater, the lower profits by comparison, but the higher suffers wrong. For ourselves, we do not follow the views of [4262] Marcion and Manichæus, and disparage marriage; nor, deceived by the error of [4263] Tatian, the leader of the Encratites, do we think all intercourse impure; he condemns and rejects not only marriage but also food which God created for the use of man. We know that in a great house, there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and earthenware. And that upon the foundation, Christ, which Paul the master-builder laid, some build gold, silver, precious stones: others, on the contrary, hay, wood, straw. We are not ignorant of the words, [4264] "Marriage is honourable among all, and the bed undefiled." We have read God's first command, [4265] "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth"; but while we honour marriage we prefer virginity which is the offspring of marriage. Will silver cease to be silver, if gold is more precious than silver? Or is despite done to tree and corn, if we prefer the fruit to root and foliage, or the grain to stalk and ear? Virginity is to marriage what fruit is to the tree, or grain to the straw. Although the hundred-fold, the sixty-fold, and the thirty-fold spring from one earth and from one sowing, yet there is a great difference in respect of number. The thirty-fold has reference to marriage. The very way the [4266] fingers are combined--see how they seem to embrace, tenderly kiss, and pledge their troth either to other--is a picture of husband and wife. The sixty-fold applies to widows, because they are placed in a position of difficulty and distress. Hence the upper finger signifies their depression, and the greater the difficulty in resisting the allurements of pleasure once experienced, the greater the reward. Moreover (give good heed, my reader), to denote a hundred, the right hand is used instead of the left: a circle is made with the same fingers which on the left hand represented widowhood, and thus the crown of virginity is expressed. In saying this I have followed my own impatient spirit rather than the course of the argument. For I had scarcely left harbour, and had barely hoisted sail, when a swelling tide of words suddenly swept me into the depths of the discussion. I must stay my course, and take in canvas for a little while; nor will I indulge my sword, anxious as it is to strike a blow for virginity. The farther back the catapult is drawn, the greater the force of the missile. To linger is not to lose, if by lingering victory is better assured. I will briefly set forth our adversary's views, and will drag them out from his books like snakes from the holes where they hide, and will separate the venomous head from the writhing body. What is baneful shall be discovered, that, when we have the power, it may be crushed.
He says that "virgins, widows, and married women, who have been once passed through the laver of Christ, if they are on a par in other respects, are of equal merit."
He endeavours to show that "they who with full assurance of faith have been born again in baptism, cannot be overthrown by the devil."
His third point is "that there is no difference between abstinence from food, and its reception with thanksgiving."
The fourth and last is "that there is one reward in the kingdom of heaven for all who have kept their baptismal vow."
4. This is the hissing of the old serpent; by counsel such as this the dragon drove man from Paradise. For he promised that if they would prefer fulness to fasting they should be immortal, as though it were an impossibility for them to fall; and while he promises they shall be as Gods, he drives them from Paradise, with the result that they who, while naked and unhampered, and as virgins unspotted enjoyed the fellowship of the Lord were cast down into the vale of tears, and sewed skins together to clothe themselves withal. But, not to detain the reader any longer, I will keep to the division given above and taking his propositions one by one will rely chiefly on the evidence of Scripture to refute them, for fear he may chatter and complain that he was overcome by rhetorical skill rather than by force of truth. If I succeed in this and with the aid of a cloud of witnesses from both Testaments prove too strong for him, I will then accept his challenge, and adduce illustrations from secular literature. I will show that even among philosophers and distinguished statesmen, the virtuous are wont to be preferred by all to the voluptuous, that is to say men like [4267] Pythagoras, [4268] Plato and [4269] Aristides, to [4270] Aristippus, [4271] Epicurus and [4272] Alcibiades. I entreat virgins of both sexes and all such as are continent, the married also and the twice married, to assist my efforts with their prayers. Jovinian is the common enemy. For he who maintains all to be of equal merit, does no less injury to virginity in comparing it with marriage than he does to marriage, when he allows it to be lawful, but to the same extent as second and third marriages. But to digamists and trigamists also he does wrong, for he places on a level with them whoremongers and the most licentious persons as soon as they have repented; but perhaps those who have been married twice or thrice ought not to complain, for the same whoremonger if penitent is made equal in the kingdom of heaven even to virgins. I will therefore explain more clearly and in proper sequence the arguments he employs and the illustrations he adduces respecting marriage, and will treat them in the order in which he states them. And I beg the reader not to be disturbed if he is compelled to read Jovinian's nauseating trash. He will all the more gladly drink Christ's antidote after the devil's poisonous concoction. Listen with patience, ye virgins; listen, I pray you, to the voice of the most voluptuous of preachers; nay rather close your ears, as you would to the Syren's fabled songs, and pass on. For a little while endure the wrongs you suffer: think you are crucified with Christ, and are listening to the blasphemies of the Pharisees.
5. First of all, he says, God declares that [4273] "therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh." And lest we should say that this is a quotation from the Old Testament, he asserts that it has been [4274] confirmed by the Lord in the Gospel--"What God hath joined together, let not man put asunder": and he immediately adds, [4275] "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth." He next repeats the names of Seth, Enos, Cainan, Mahalalel, Jared, Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech, Noah, and tells us that they all had wives and in accordance with the will of God begot sons, as though there could be any table of descent or any history of mankind without wives and children. "There," says he, "is Enoch, who walked with God and was carried up to heaven. There is Noah, the only person who, except his wife, and his sons and their wives, was saved at the deluge, although there must have been many persons not of marriageable age, and therefore presumably virgins. Again, after the deluge, when the human race started as it were anew, men and women were paired together and a fresh blessing was pronounced on procreation, [4276] "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth." Moreover, free permission was given to eat flesh, [4277] "Every moving thing that liveth shall be food for you; as the green herb have I given you all." He then flies off to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, of whom the first had three wives, the second one, the third four, Leah, Rachel, Billah, and Zilpah, and he declares that Abraham by his faith merited the blessing which he received in begetting his son. Sarah, typifying the Church, when it had ceased to be with her after the manner of women, exchanged the curse of barrenness for the blessing of child-bearing. We are informed that Rebekah went like a prophet to inquire of the Lord, and was told, [4278] "Two nations and two peoples are in thy womb," that Jacob served for his wife, and that when Rachel, thinking it was in the power of her husband to give her children, said, [4279] "Give me children, or else I die," he replied, [4280] "Am I in God's stead, who hath withheld from thee the fruit of the womb?" so well aware was he that the fruit of marriage cometh from the Lord and not from the husband. We next learn that Joseph, a holy man of spotless chastity, and all the patriarchs, had wives, and that God blessed them all alike through the lips of Moses. Judah also and Thamar are brought upon the scene, and he censures Onan, slain by the Lord, because he, grudging to raise up seed to his brother, marred the marriage rite. He refers to Moses and the leprosy of Miriam, who, because she chided her brother on account of his wife, was stricken by the avenging hand of God. He praises Samson, I may even say extravagantly panegyrizes the uxorious Nazarite. Deborah also and Barak are mentioned, because, although they had not the benefit of virginity, they were victorious over the iron chariots of Sisera and Jabin. He brings forward Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, and extols her for arming herself with the [4281] stake. He says there was no difference between Jephthah and his virgin daughter, who was sacrificed to the Lord: nay, of the two, he prefers the faith of the father to that of the daughter who met death with grief and tears. He then comes to Samuel, another Nazarite of the Lord, who from infancy was brought up in the tabernacle and was clad in a linen ephod, or, as the words are rendered, in linen vestments: he, too, we are told, begot sons without a stain upon his priestly purity. He places Boaz and his wife Ruth side by side in his repository, and traces the descent of Jesse and David from them. He then points out how David himself, for the price of two hundred foreskins and at the peril of his life, was bedded with the king's daughter. What shall I say of Solomon, whom he includes in the list of husbands, and represents as a type of the Saviour, maintaining that of him it was written, [4282] "Give the king thy judgments, O God, and thy righteousness unto the king's son"? And [4283] "To him shall be given of the gold of Sheba, and men shall pray for him continually." Then all at once he makes a jump to Elijah and Elisha, and tells us as a great secret that the spirit of Elijah rested on Elisha. Why he mentioned this he does not say. It can hardly be that he thinks Elijah and Elisha, like the rest, were married men. The next step is to Hezekiah, upon whose praises he dwells, and yet (I wonder why) forgets to mention that he said, [4284] "Henceforth I will beget children." He relates that Josiah, a righteous man, in whose time the book of Deuteronomy was found in the temple, was instructed by Huldah, wife of Shallum. Daniel also and the three youths are classed by him with the married. Suddenly he betakes himself to the Gospel, and adduces Zachariah and Elizabeth, Peter and his father-in-law, and the rest of the Apostles. His inference is thus expressed: "If they idly urge in defence of themselves the plea that the world in its early stage needed to be replenished, let them listen to the words of Paul, [4285] I desire therefore that the younger widows marry, bear children.' And [4286] Marriage is honourable and the bed undefiled.' And [4287] A wife is bound for so long time as her husband liveth; but if the husband be dead, she is free to be married to whom she will; only in the Lord.' And [4288] Adam was not beguiled, but the woman being beguiled hath fallen into transgression: but she shall be saved through the child-bearing, if they continue in faith and love and sanctification with sobriety.' Surely we shall hear no more of the famous Apostolic utterance, [4289] And they who have wives as though they had them not.' It can hardly be that you will say the reason why he wished them to be married was that some widows had already turned back after Satan: as though virgins never fell and their fall was not more ruinous. All this makes it clear that in forbidding to marry, and to eat food which God created for use, you have consciences seared as with a hot iron, and are followers of the Manichæans." Then comes much more which it would be unprofitable to discuss. At last he dashes into rhetoric and apostrophizes virginity thus: "I do you no wrong, Virgin: you have chosen a life of chastity on account of the present distress: you determined on the course in order to be holy in body and spirit: be not proud: you and your married sisters are members of the same Church."
6. I have perhaps explained his position at too great a length, and become tedious to my reader; but I thought it best to draw up in full array against myself all his efforts, and to muster all the forces of the enemy with their squadrons and generals, lest after an early victory there should spring up a series of other engagements. I will not therefore do battle with single foes, nor will I be satisfied with skirmishes in which I meet small detachments of my opponents. The battle must be fought with the whole army of the enemy, and the disorderly rabble, fighting more like brigands than soldiers, must be repulsed by the skill and method of regular warfare. In the front rank I will set the Apostle Paul, and, since he is the bravest of generals, will arm him with his own weapons, that is to say, his own statements. For the Corinthians asked many questions about this matter, and the doctor of the Gentiles and master of the Church gave full replies. What he decreed we may regard as the law of Christ speaking in him. At the same time, when we begin to refute the several arguments, I trust the reader will give me his attention even before the Apostle speaks, and will not, in his eagerness to discuss the most weighty points, neglect the premises, and rush at once to the conclusion.
7. Among other things the Corinthians asked in their letter whether after embracing the faith of Christ they ought to be unmarried, and for the sake of continence put away their wives, and whether believing virgins were at liberty to marry. And again, supposing that one of two Gentiles believed on Christ, whether the one that believed should leave the one that believed not? And in case it were allowable to take wives, would the Apostle direct that only Christian wives, or Gentiles also, should be taken? Let us then consider Paul's replies to these inquiries. [4290] "Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote: It is good for a man not to touch a woman. But, because of fornications, let each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband. Let the husband render unto the wife her due: and likewise also the wife unto the husband. The wife hath not power over her own body, but the husband: And likewise also the husband hath not power over his own body, but the wife. Defraud ye not one the other, except it be by consent for a season, that ye may give yourselves unto prayer, and may be together again, that Satan tempt you not because of your incontinency. But this I say by way of permission not of commandment. Yet I would that all men were even as I myself. Howbeit each man hath his own gift from God, one after this manner, and another after that. But I say to the unmarried and to widows, it is good for them if they abide even as I. But if they have not continency, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn." Let us turn back to the chief point of the evidence: "It is good," he says, "for a man not to touch a woman." If it is good not to touch a woman, it is bad to touch one: for there is no opposite to goodness but badness. But if it be bad and the evil is pardoned, the reason for the concession is to prevent worse evil. But surely a thing which is only allowed because there may be something worse has only a slight degree of goodness. He would never have added "let each man have his own wife," unless he had previously used the words "but, because of fornications." Do away with fornication, and he will not say "let each man have his own wife." Just as though one were to lay it down: "It is good to feed on wheaten bread, and to eat the finest wheat flour," and yet to prevent a person pressed by hunger from devouring cow-dung, I may allow him to eat barley. Does it follow that the wheat will not have its peculiar purity, because such an one prefers barley to excrement? That is naturally good which does not admit of comparison with what is bad, and is not eclipsed because something else is preferred. At the same time we must notice the Apostle's prudence. He did not say, it is good not to have a wife: but, it is good not to touch a woman: as though there were danger even in the touch: as though he who touched her, would not escape from her who "hunteth for the precious life," who causeth the young man's understanding to fly away. [4291] "Can a man take fire in his bosom, and his clothes not be burned? Or can one walk upon hot coals, and his feet not be scorched?" As then he who touches fire is instantly burned, so by the mere touch the peculiar nature of man and woman is perceived, and the difference of sex is understood. Heathen fables relate how [4292] Mithras and [4293] Ericthonius were begotten of the soil, in stone or earth, by raging lust. Hence it was that our Joseph, because the Egyptian woman wished to touch him, fled from her hands, and, as if he had been bitten by a mad dog and feared the spreading poison, threw away the cloak which she had touched. "But, because of fornications let each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband." He did not say, because of fornication let each man marry a wife: otherwise by this excuse he would have thrown the reins to lust, and whenever a man's wife died, he would have to marry another to prevent fornication, but "have his own wife." Let him he says have and use his own wife, whom he had before he became a believer, and whom it would have been good not to touch, and, when once he became a follower of Christ, to know only as a sister, not as a wife unless fornication should make it excusable to touch her. "The wife hath not power over her own body, but the husband: and likewise also the husband hath not power over his own body, but the wife." The whole question here concerns those who are married men. Is it lawful for them to do what our Lord forbade in the Gospel, and to put away their wives? Whence it is that the Apostle says, "It is good for a man not to touch a woman." But inasmuch as he who is once married has no power to abstain except by mutual consent, and may not reject an unoffending partner, let the husband render unto the wife her due. He bound himself voluntarily that he might be under compulsion to render it. "Defraud ye not one the other, except it be by consent for a season, that ye may give yourselves unto prayer." What, I pray you, is the quality of that good thing which hinders prayer? which does not allow the body of Christ to be received? So long as I do the husband's part, I fail in continency. The same Apostle in another place commands us to pray always. If we are to pray always, it follows that we must never be in the bondage of wedlock, for as often as I render my wife her due, I cannot pray. The Apostle Peter had experience of the bonds of marriage. See how he fashions the Church, and what lesson he teaches Christians: [4294] "Ye husbands in like manner dwell with your wives according to knowledge, giving honour unto the woman, as unto the weaker vessel, as being also joint-heirs of the grace of life; to the end that your prayers be not hindered." Observe that, as S. Paul before, because in both cases the spirit is the same, so S. Peter now, says that prayers are hindered by the performance of marriage duty. When he says "likewise," he challenges the husbands to imitate their wives, because he has already given them commandment: [4295] "beholding your chaste conversation coupled with fear. Whose adorning let it not be the outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing jewels of gold, or of putting on apparel: but let it be the hidden man of the heart, in the incorruptible apparel of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price." You see what kind of wedlock he enjoins. Husbands and wives are to dwell together according to knowledge, so that they may know what God wishes and desires, and give honour to the weak vessel, woman. If we abstain from intercourse, we give honour to our wives: if we do not abstain, it is clear that insult is the opposite of honour. He also tells the wives to let their husbands "see their chaste behaviour, and the hidden man of the heart, in the incorruptible apparel of a meek and quiet spirit." Words truly worthy of an apostle, and of Christ's rock! He lays down the law for husbands and wives, condemns outward ornament, while he praises continence, which is the ornament of the inner man, as seen in the incorruptible apparel of a meek and quiet spirit. In effect he says this: Since your outer man is corrupt, and you have ceased to possess the blessing of incorruption characteristic of virgins, at least imitate the incorruption of the spirit by subsequent abstinence, and what you cannot show in the body exhibit in the mind. For these are the riches, and these the ornaments of your union, which Christ seeks.
8. The words which follow, "that ye may give yourselves unto prayer, and may be together again," might lead one to suppose that the Apostle was expressing a wish and not making a concession because of the danger of a greater fall. He therefore at once adds, "lest Satan tempt you for your incontinency." It is a fine permission which is conveyed in the words "be together again." What it was that he blushed to call by its own name, and thought only better than a temptation of Satan and the effect of incontinence, we take trouble to discuss as if it were obscure, although he has explained his meaning by saying, "this I say by way of permission, not by way of command." And do we still hesitate to speak of marriage as a concession to weakness, not a thing commanded, as though second and third marriages were not allowed on the same ground, as though the doors of the Church were not opened by repentance even to fornicators, and what is more, to the incestuous? Take the case of the man who outraged his step-mother. Does not the Apostle, after delivering him, in his first Epistle to the Corinthians, to Satan for the destruction of the flesh that his spirit might be saved, in the second Epistle take the offender back and strive to prevent a brother from being swallowed up by overmuch grief. The Apostle's wish is one thing, his pardon another. If a wish be expressed, it confers a right; if a thing is only called pardonable, we are wrong in using it. If you wish to know the Apostle's real mind, you must take in what follows: "but I would that all men were as I am." Happy is the man who is like Paul! Fortunate is he who attends to the Apostle's command, not to his concession. This, says he, I wish, this I desire that ye be imitators of me, as I also am of Christ, who was a Virgin born of a Virgin, uncorrupt of her who was uncorrupt. We, because we are men, cannot imitate our Lord's nativity; but we may at least imitate His life. The former was the blessed prerogative of divinity, the latter belongs to our human condition and is part of human effort. I would that all men were like me, that while they are like me, they may also become like Christ, to whom I am like. For [4296] "he that believeth in Christ ought himself also to walk even as He walked." [4297] "Howbeit each man hath his own gift from God, one after this manner, and another after that." What I wish, he says, is clear. But since in the Church there is a diversity of gifts, I acquiesce in marriage, lest I should seem to condemn nature. At the same time consider, that the gift of virginity is one, that of marriage, another. For were the reward the same for the married and for virgins, he would never after enjoining continence have said: [4298] "Each man hath his own gift from God, one after this manner, and another after that." Where there is a distinction in one particular, there is a diversity also in other points. I grant that even marriage is a gift of God, but between gift and gift there is great diversity. In fact the Apostle himself speaking of the same person who had repented of his incestuous conduct, says: [4299] "so that contrariwise ye should rather forgive him and comfort him, and to whom ye forgive anything, I forgive also." And that we might not think a man's gift contemptible, he added, [4300] "for what I also have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, for your sakes have I forgiven it, in the presence of Christ." There is diversity in the gifts of Christ. Hence it is that by way of type Joseph has a coat of many colours. And in the forty-fifth psalm we read, [4301] "at thy right hand doth stand the queen in a vesture of gold wrought about with divers colours." And the Apostle Peter says, [4302] "as heirs together of the manifold grace of God," where the more expressive Greek word poikiles, i.e., varied, is used.
9. Then come the words [4303] "But I say to the unmarried and to widows, it is good for them if they abide even as I. But if they have not continency, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn." Having conceded to married persons the enjoyment of wedlock and pointed out his own wishes, he passes on to the unmarried and to widows, sets before them his own practice for imitation, and calls them happy if they so abide. "But if they have not continency, let them marry," just as he said before "But because of fornications," and "Lest Satan tempt you, because of your incontinency." And he gives a reason for saying "If they have not continency, let them marry," viz. "It is better to marry than to burn." The reason why it is better to marry is that it is worse to burn. Let burning lust be absent, and he will not say it is better to marry. The word better always implies a comparison with something worse, not a thing absolutely good and incapable of comparison. It is as though he said, it is better to have one eye than neither, it is better to stand on one foot and to support the rest of the body with a stick, than to crawl with broken legs. What do you say, Apostle? I do not believe you when you say "Though I be rude in speech, yet am I not in knowledge." As humility is the source of the sayings "For I am not worthy to be called an Apostle," and "To me who am the least of the Apostles," and "As to one born out of due time," so here also we have an utterance of humility. You know the meaning of language, or you would not quote [4304] Epimenides, [4305] Menander, and [4306] Aratus. When you are discussing continence and virginity you say, "It is good for a man not to touch a woman." And, "It is good for them if they abide even as I." And, "I think that this is good by reason of the present distress." And, "That it is good for a man so to be." When you come to marriage, you do not say it is good to marry, because you cannot then add "than to burn;" but you say, "It is better to marry than to burn." If marriage in itself be good, do not compare it with fire, but simply say "It is good to marry." I suspect the goodness of that thing which is forced into the position of being only the lesser of two evils. What I want is not a smaller evil, but a thing absolutely good.
10. So far the first section has been explained. Let us now come to those which follow. [4307] "But unto the married I give charge, yea not I, but the Lord. That the wife depart not from her husband (but and if she depart, let her remain unmarried, or else be reconciled to her husband): and that the husband leave not his wife. But to the rest say I, not the Lord: If any brother hath an unbelieving wife, and she is content to dwell with him, let him not leave her," and so on to the words "As God hath called each, so let him walk. And so ordain I in all the churches." This passage has no bearing on our present controversy. For he ordains, according to the mind of the Lord, that excepting the cause of fornication, a wife must not be put away, and that a wife who has been put away, may not, so long as her husband lives, be married to another, or at all events that her duty is to be reconciled to her husband. But in the case of those who are already married at the time of conversion, that is to say, supposing one of the two were a believer, he enjoins that the believer shall not put away the unbeliever. And after stating his reason, viz., that the unbeliever who is unwilling to leave the believer becomes thereby a candidate for the faith, he commands, on the other hand, that if the unbeliever reject the faithful one on account of the faith of Christ, the believer ought to depart, lest husband or wife be preferred to Christ, in comparison with Whom we must hold even life itself cheap. Yet at the present day many women despising the Apostle's command, are joined to heathen husbands, and prostitute the temples of Christ to idols. They do not understand that they are part of His body though indeed they are His ribs. The Apostle is lenient to the union of unbelievers, who having (believing) husbands, afterwards come to believe in Christ. He does not extend his indulgence to those women who, although Christians, have been married to heathen husbands. To these he elsewhere says, [4308] "Be not unequally yoked with unbelievers: for what fellowship have righteousness and iniquity? or what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what portion hath a believer with an unbeliever? And what agreement hath a temple of God with idols? For we are a temple of the living God." Although I know that crowds of matrons will be furious against me: although I know that just as they have shamelessly despised the Lord, so they will rave at me who am but a flea and the least of Christians: yet I will speak out what I think. I will say what the Apostle has taught me, that they are not on the side of righteousness, but of iniquity: not of light, but of darkness: that they do not belong to Christ, but to Belial: that they are not temples of the living God, but shrines and idols of the dead. And, if you wish to see more clearly how utterly unlawful it is for a Christian woman to marry a Gentile, consider what the same Apostle says, [4309] "A wife is bound for so long time as her husband liveth: but if the husband be dead, she is free to be married to whom she will; only in the Lord," that is, to a Christian. He who allows second and third marriages in the Lord, forbids first marriages with a Gentile. Whence Abraham also makes his servant swear upon his thigh, that is, on Christ, Who was to spring from his seed, that he would not bring an alien-born as a wife for his son Isaac. And Ezra checked an offence of this kind against God by making his countrymen put away their wives. And the prophet Malachi thus speaks, [4310] "Judah hath dealt treacherously, and an abomination is committed in Israel and in Jerusalem; for Judah hath profaned the holiness of the Lord which he loveth, and hath married the daughter of a strange god. The Lord will cut off the man that doeth this, [4311] him that teacheth and him that learneth, out of the tents of Jacob, and him that offers an offering unto the Lord of hosts." I have said this that they who compare marriage with virginity, may at least know that such marriages as these are on a lower level than digamy and trigamy.
11. In the above discussion the Apostle has taught that the believer ought not to depart from the unbeliever, but remain in marriage as the faith found them, and that each man whether married or single should continue as he was when baptized into Christ; and then he suddenly introduces the metaphors of circumcision and uncircumcision, of bond and free, and under those metaphors treats of the married and unmarried. [4312] "Was any man called being circumcised? let him not become uncircumcised. Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing: but the keeping of the commandments of God. Let each man abide in that calling wherein he was called. Wast thou called being a bondservant? Care not for it: but even if thou canst become free, use it rather. For he that was called in the Lord being a bondservant, is the Lord's freedman; likewise he that was called, being free, is Christ's bondservant. Ye were bought with a price; become not bondservants of men. Brethren, let each man, wherein he was called, therein abide with God." Some, I suppose, will find fault with the Apostle's way of reasoning. I would therefore ask first, What we are to infer from his suddenly passing in a discussion concerning husbands and wives to a comparison of Jew and Gentile, bond and free, and then returning, when this point is settled, to the question about virgins, and telling us "Concerning virgins I have no commandment from the Lord"; what has a comparison of Jew and Gentile, bond and free, to do with wedlock and virginity? In the next place, how are we to understand the words "Hath any been called in uncircumcision, let him not be circumcised"? [4313] Can a man who has lost his foreskin restore it again at his pleasure? Then, in what sense are we to explain "For he that was called in the Lord, being a bondservant, is the Lord's freedman: likewise he that was called, being free, is Christ's bondservant." Fourthly, how is it that he who commanded servants to obey their masters according to the flesh, now says, "Become not bondservants of men." Lastly, how are we to connect with slavery, or with circumcision, his saying "Brethren, let each man, wherein he was called, therein abide with God," which even contradicts his previous opinion. We heard him say "Become not bondservants of men." How can we then possibly abide in that vocation wherein we were called, when many at the time they became believers had masters according to the flesh, whose bondservants they are now forbidden to be? Moreover, what has the argument about our abiding in the vocation wherein we were called, to do with circumcision? for in another place the same Apostle cries aloud "Behold I Paul tell you that, if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing"? We must conclude, therefore, that a higher meaning should be given to circumcision and uncircumcision, bond and free, and that these words must be taken in close connection with what has gone before. "Was anyone called being circumcised? let him not become uncircumcised." If, he says, at the time you were called and became a believer in Christ, if I say, you were called being circumcised from a wife, that is, unmarried, do not marry a wife, that is, do not become uncircumcised, lest you lay upon the freedom of circumcision and chastity the burden of marriage. Again, if anyone was called in uncircumcision, let him not be circumcised. You had a wife, he says, when you believed: do not think the faith of Christ a reason for disagreement, because God called us in peace. [4314] "Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing; but the keeping of the commandments of God." For neither celibacy nor marriage availeth anything without works, since even faith, which is specially characteristic of Christians, if it have not works, is said to be dead, and vestal virgins and Juno's widows might upon these terms be numbered with the saints. "Let each man in the vocation wherein he was called, therein abide." Whether he had, or had not, a wife when he believed, let him remain in that condition in which he was when called. Accordingly he does not so strongly urge virgins to be married, as forbid divorce. And as he debars those who have wives from putting them away, so he cuts off from virgins the power of being married. "Thou wast called being a slave, heed it not; but even if thou canst become free, use it rather." Even if you have, he says, a wife, and are bound to her, and pay her due, and have not power over your own body; or if, to speak more clearly, you are the bondservant of your wife, be not sad upon that account, nor sigh for the loss of your virginity. But even if you can find some causes of discord, do not, for the sake of thoroughly enjoying the liberty of chastity, seek your own welfare by destroying another. Keep your wife awhile, and do not go too fast for her lagging footsteps: wait till she follows. If you are patient, your spouse will become a sister, "For he that was called in the Lord, being a bondservant, is the Lord's freedman: likewise, he that was called being free, is Christ's bondservant." He gives his reasons for not wishing wives to be forsaken. He therefore says, I command that Gentiles who believe on Christ do not abandon the married state in which they were before embracing the faith: for he who had a wife when he became a believer, is not so strictly devoted to the service of God as virgins and unmarried persons. But, in a manner, he has more freedom, and the reins of his bondage are relaxed; and, while he is the bondservant of a wife, he is, so to speak, the freedman of the Lord. Moreover, he who when called by the Lord had not a wife and was free from the bondage of wedlock, he is truly Christ's bondservant. What happiness to be the bondservant, not of a wife but of Christ, to serve not the flesh, but the spirit! [4315] "For he who is joined unto the Lord is one spirit." There was some fear that by saying "Wast thou called being a bondservant? Care not for it: but, even if thou canst become free, use it rather," he might seem to have flouted continence, and to have given us up to the slavery of marriage. He therefore makes a remark which removes all cavil: "Ye were bought with a price, become not servants of men." We have been redeemed with the most precious blood of Christ: the Lamb was slain for us, and having been sprinkled with hyssop and the warm drops of His blood, we have rejected poisonous pleasure. Why do we at whose baptism Pharaoh died and all his host was drowned, again turn back in our hearts to Egypt, and after the manna, angels' food, sigh for the garlic and the onions and the cucumbers, and Pharaoh's meat?
12. Having discussed marriage and continency he at length comes to virginity and says [4316] "Now concerning virgins I have no commandment of the Lord: but I give my judgement, as one that hath obtained mercy of the Lord to be faithful. I think therefore that this is good by reason of the present distress, namely, that it is good for a man to be as he is." Here our opponent goes utterly wild with exultation: this is his strongest battering-ram with which he shakes the wall of virginity. "See," says he, "the Apostle confesses that as regards virgins he has no commandment of the Lord, and he who had with authority laid down the law respecting husbands and wives, does not dare to command what the Lord has not enjoined. And rightly too. For what is enjoined is commanded, what is commanded must be done, and that which must be done implies punishment if it be not done. For it is useless to order a thing to be done and yet leave the individual free to do it or not do it. If the Lord had commanded virginity He would have seemed to condemn marriage, and to do away with the seed-plot of mankind, of which virginity itself is a growth. If He had cut off the root, how was He to expect fruit? If the foundations were not first laid, how was He to build the edifice, and put on the roof to cover all! Excavators toil hard to remove mountains; the bowels of the earth are pierced in the search for gold. And, when the tiny particles, first by the blast of the furnace, then by the hand of the cunning workman have been fashioned into an ornament, men do not call him blessed who has separated the gold from the dross, but him who wears the beautiful gold. Do not marvel then if, placed as we are, amid temptations of the flesh and incentives to vice, the angelic life be not exacted of us, but merely recommended. If advice be given, a man is free to proffer obedience; if there be a command, he is a servant bound to compliance. "I have no commandment," he says, "of the Lord: but I give my judgement, as one that hath obtained mercy of the Lord to be faithful." If you have no commandment of the Lord, how dare you give judgement without orders? The Apostle will reply: Do you wish me to give orders where the Lord has offered a favour rather than laid down a law? The great Creator and Fashioner, knowing the weakness of the vessel which he made, left virginity open to those whom He addressed; and shall I, the teacher of the Gentiles, who have become all things to all men that I might gain all, shall I lay upon the necks of weak believers from the very first the burden of perpetual chastity? Let them [4317] begin with short periods of release from the marriage bond, and give themselves unto prayer, that when they have tasted the sweets of chastity they may desire the perpetual possession of that wherewith they were temporarily delighted. The Lord, when tempted by the Pharisees, and asked whether according to the law of Moses it was permitted to put away a wife, forbade the practice altogether. After weighing His words the disciples said to Him: [4318] "If the case of the man is so with his wife, it is not expedient to marry. But He said unto them, all men cannot receive this saying, but they to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs, which were so born from their mother's womb: and there are eunuchs, which were made eunuchs by men: and there are eunuchs, which made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it." The reason is plain why the Apostle said, "concerning virgins I have no commandment of the Lord." Surely; because the Lord had previously said "All men cannot receive the word, but they to whom it is given," and "He that is able to receive it, let him receive it." [4319] The Master of the Christian race offers the reward, invites candidates to the course, holds in His hand the prize of virginity, points to the fountain of purity, and cries aloud [4320] "If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink." "He that is able to receive it, let him receive it." He does not say, you must drink, you must run, willing or unwilling: but whoever is willing and able to run and to drink, he shall conquer, he shall be satisfied. And therefore Christ loves virgins more than others, because they willingly give what was not commanded them. And it indicates greater grace to offer what you are not bound to give, than to render what is exacted of you. The apostles, contemplating the burden of a wife, exclaimed, "If the case of the man is so with his wife, it is not expedient to marry." Our Lord thought well of their view. You rightly think, said He, that it is not expedient for a man who is hastening to the kingdom of heaven to take a wife: but it is a hard matter, and all men do not receive the saying, but they to whom it has been given. Some are eunuchs by nature, others by the violence of men. Those eunuchs please Me who are such not of necessity, but of free choice. Willingly do I take them into my bosom who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake, and in order to worship Me have renounced the condition of their birth. We must now explain the words, "Those who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake." If they who have made themselves eunuchs have the reward of the kingdom of heaven, it follows that they who have not made themselves such cannot be placed with those who have. He who is able, he says, to receive it, let him receive it. It is a mark of great faith and of great virtue, to be the pure temple of God, to offer oneself a whole burnt-offering, and, according to the same apostle, to be holy both in body and in spirit. These are the eunuchs, who thinking themselves dry trees because of their impotence, hear by the mouth of [4321] Isaiah that they have a place prepared in heaven for sons and daughters. Their type is [4322] Ebed-melech the eunuch in Jeremiah, and the eunuch of Queen Candace in the [4323] Acts of the Apostles, who on account of the strength of his faith gained the name of a man. These are they to whom Clement, who was the successor of the Apostle Peter, and of whom the Apostle Paul makes mention, wrote letters, directing almost the whole of his discourse to the subject of virgin purity. After them there is a long series of apostolic men, martyrs, and men illustrious no less for holiness than for eloquence, with whom we may very easily become acquainted through their own writings. [4324] "I think, therefore," he says, "that this is good for the present distress." What is this distress which, in contempt of the marriage tie, longs for the liberty of virginity? [4325] "Woe unto them that are with child and to them that give suck in those days." We have not here a condemnation of harlots and brothels, of whose damnation there is no doubt, but of the swelling womb, and wailing infancy, the fruit as well as the work of marriage. "For it is good for a man so to be." If it is good for a man so to be, it is bad for a man not so to be. [4326] "Art thou bound unto a wife? Seek not to be loosed. Art thou loosed from a wife? Seek not a wife." Each one of us has his appointed bounds; let me have what is mine, and keep your own. If thou art bound to a wife, give her not a bill of divorce. If I am loosed from a wife, I will not seek a wife. As I do not dissolve marriages once contracted: so you should not bind what is loosed. And at the same time the meaning of the words must be taken into account. He who has a wife is regarded as a debtor, and is said to be uncircumcised, to be the servant of his wife, and like bad servants to be bound. But he who has no wife, in the first place owes no man anything, then is circumcised, thirdly is free, lastly, is loosed.
13. Let us run through the remaining points, for our author is so voluminous that we cannot linger over every detail. "But and if thou marry, thou hast not sinned." It is one thing not to sin, another to do good. "And if a virgin marry, she hath not sinned." Not that virgin who has once for all dedicated herself to the service of God: for, should one of these marry, she will have damnation, because she has made of no account her first faith. But, if our adversary objects that this saying relates to widows, we reply that it applies with still greater force to virgins, since marriage is forbidden even to widows whose previous marriage had been lawful. For virgins who marry after consecration are rather incestuous than adulterous. And, for fear he should by saying, "And if a virgin marry, she hath not sinned," again stimulate the unmarried to be married, he immediately checks himself, and by introducing another consideration, invalidates his previous concession. "Yet," says he, "such shall have tribulation in the flesh." Who are they who shall have tribulation in the flesh? They to whom he had before indulgently said "But and if thou marry, thou hast not sinned; and if a virgin marry, she hath not sinned. Yet such shall have tribulation in the flesh." We in our inexperience thought that marriage had at least the joys of the flesh. But if they who are married have tribulation even in the flesh, which is imagined to be the sole source of their pleasure, what else is there to marry for, when in the spirit, and in the mind, and in the flesh itself there is tribulation. "But I would spare you." Thus, he says, I allege tribulation as a motive, as though there were not greater obligations to refrain. "But this I say, brethren, the time is shortened, that henceforth both those that have wives may be as though they had none." I am by no means now discussing virgins, of whose happiness no one entertains a doubt. I am coming to the married. The time is short, the Lord is at hand. Even though we lived nine hundred years, as did men of old, yet we ought to think that short which must one day have an end, and cease to be. But, as things are, and it is not so much the joy as the tribulation of marriage that is short, why do we take wives whom we shall soon be compelled to lose? [4327] "And those that weep, and those that rejoice, and those that buy, and those that use the world, as though they wept not, as though they rejoiced not, as though they bought not, as though they did not use the world: for the fashion of this world passeth away." If the world, which comprehends all things, passes away, yea if the fashion and intercourse of the world vanishes like the clouds, amongst the other works of the world, marriage too will vanish away. For after the resurrection there will be no wedlock. But if death be the end of marriage, why do we not voluntarily embrace the inevitable? And why do we not, encouraged by the hope of the reward, offer to God that which must be wrung from us against our will. "He that is unmarried is careful for the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord: but he that is married is careful for the things of the world, how he may please his wife, and is [4328] divided." Let us look at the difference between the cares of the virgin, and those of the married man. The virgin longs to please the Lord, the husband to please his wife, and that he may please her he is careful for the things of the world, which will of course pass away with the world. "And he is divided," that is to say, is distracted with manifold cares and miseries. This is not the place to describe the difficulties of marriage, and to revel in rhetorical commonplaces. I think I delivered myself fully as regards this point in my argument against [4329] Helvidius, and in the book which I addressed to [4330] Eustochium. At all events [4331] Tertullian, while still a young man, gave himself full play with this subject. And my teacher, [4332] Gregory of Nazianzus, discussed virginity and marriage in some Greek verses. I now briefly beg my reader to note that in the Latin manuscripts we have the reading "there is a difference also between the virgin and the wife." The words, it is true, have a meaning of their own, and have by me, as well as by others, been so explained as showing the bearing of the passage. Yet they lack apostolic authority, since the Apostle's words are as we have translated them--"He is careful for the things of the world, how he may please his wife, [4333] and he is divided." Having laid down this, he passes to the virgins and the continent, and says "The woman that is unmarried and a virgin thinks of the things of the Lord, that she may be holy in body and in spirit." Not every unmarried woman is also a virgin. But every virgin is of course unmarried. It may be, that regard for elegance of expression led him to repeat the same idea by means of another word and speak of "a woman unmarried and a virgin"; or at least he may have wished to give to "unmarried" the definite meaning of "virgin," so that we might not suppose him to include harlots, united to no one by the fixed bonds of wedlock, among the "unmarried." Of what, then, does she that is unmarried and a virgin think? "The things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit." Supposing there were nothing else, and that no greater reward followed virginity, this would be motive enough for her choice, to think of the things of the Lord. But he immediately points out the contents of her thought--that she may be holy both in body and spirit. For there are virgins in the flesh, not in the spirit, whose body is intact, their soul corrupt. But that virgin is a sacrifice to Christ, whose mind has not been defiled by thought, nor her flesh by lust. On the other hand, she who is married thinks of the things of the world, how she may please her husband. Just as the man who has a wife is anxious for the things of the world, how he may please his wife, so the married woman thinks of the things of the world, how she may please her husband. But we are not of this world, which lieth in wickedness, the fashion of which passeth away, and concerning which the Lord said to the Apostles, [4334] "If ye were of the world, the world would love its own." And lest perchance someone might suppose that he was laying the heavy burden of chastity on unwilling shoulders, he at once adds his reasons for persuading to it, and says: [4335] "And this I say for your profit; not that I may cast a snare upon you, but for that which is seemly, and that ye may attend upon the Lord without distraction." The Latin words do not convey the meaning of the Greek. What words shall we use to render Pros to euschemon kai euprosedron to Kuri& 251; aperispastos' The difficulty of translation accounts for the fact that the clause is completely wanting in Latin manuscripts. Let us, however, use the passage as we have translated it. The Apostle does not lay a snare upon us, nor does he compel us to be what we do not wish to be; but he gives his advice as to what is fair and seemly, he would have us attend upon the Lord and ever be anxious about that service, and await the Lord's will, so that like active and well-armed soldiers we may obey orders, and may do so without distraction, which, according to [4336] Ecclesiastes, is given to the men of this world that they may be exercised thereby. But if anyone considers that his virgin, that is, his flesh, is wanton and boiling with lust, and cannot be bridled, and he must do one of two things, either take a wife or fall, let him do what he will, he does not sin if he marry. Let him do, he says, what he will, not what he ought. He does not sin if he marry a wife; yet, he does not well if he marry: [4337] "But he that standeth stedfast in his heart, having no necessity, but hath power as touching his own will, and hath determined this in his own heart, to keep his own virgin, shall do well. So then both he that giveth his own virgin in marriage doeth well; and he that giveth her not in marriage shall do better." With marked propriety he had previously said "He who marries a wife does not sin": here he tells us "He that keepeth his own virgin doeth well." But it is one thing not to sin, another to do well. [4338] "Depart from evil," he says, "and do good." The former we forsake, the latter we follow. In this last lies perfection. But whereas he says "and he that giveth his virgin in marriage doeth well," it might be supposed that our remark does not hold good; he therefore forthwith detracts from this seeming good and puts it in the shade by comparing it with another, and saying, "and he that giveth her not in marriage shall do better." If he had not intended to draw the inference of doing better, he would never have previously referred to doing well. But where there is something good and something better, the reward is not in both cases the same, and where the reward is not one and the same, there of course the gifts are different. The difference, then, between marriage and virginity is as great as that between not sinning and doing well; nay rather, to speak less harshly, as great as between good and better.
14. He has ended his discussion of wedlock and virginity, and has carefully steered between the two precepts without turning to the right hand or to the left. He has followed the royal road and fulfilled the command [4339] not to be righteous over much. Now again he compares monogamy with digamy, and as he had subordinated marriage to virginity, so he makes second marriages inferior to first, and says, [4340] "A wife is bound for so long time as her husband liveth; but if the husband be dead, she is free to be married to whom she will; only in the Lord. But she is happier if she abide as she is, after my judgement: and I think that I also have the Spirit of God." He allows second marriages, but to such persons as wish for them and are not able to contain; lest, [4341] having "waxed wanton against Christ," they desire to marry, "having condemnation, because they have rejected their first faith;" and he makes the concession because many had already turned aside after Satan. [4342] "But," says he, "they will be happier if they abide as they are," and he immediately adds the weight of Apostolic authority, "after my judgement." And that an Apostle's authority might not, like that of an ordinary man, be without weight, he added, "and I think that I also have the Spirit of God." When he incites to continence, it is not by the judgement or spirit of man, but by the judgement and Spirit of God; when, however, he grants the indulgence of marriage, he does not mention the Spirit of God, but weighs his judgement with wisdom, and adapts the severity of the strain to the weakness of the individual. In this sense we must take the whole of the following passage: [4343] "For the woman that hath a husband is bound by law to the husband while he liveth; but if the husband die, she is discharged from the law of the husband. So then if, while the husband liveth, she be joined to another man, she shall be called an adulteress: but if the husband die, she is free from the law, so that she is no adulteress, though she be joined to another man." And similarly the words to Timothy, [4344] "I desire therefore that the younger widows marry, bear children, rule the household, give none occasion to the adversary for reviling: for already some are turned aside after Satan," and so on. For as on account of the danger of fornication he allows virgins to marry, and makes that excusable which in itself is not desirable, so to avoid this same fornication, he allows second marriages to widows. For it is better to know a single husband, though he be a second or third, than to have many paramours: that is, it is more tolerable for a woman to prostitute herself to one man than to many. At all events this is so if the Samaritan woman in John's Gospel who said she had her sixth husband was reproved by the Lord because he was not her husband. For where there are more husbands than one the proper idea of a husband, who is a single person, is destroyed. At the beginning one rib was turned into one wife. "And they two," he says, "shall be one flesh": not three, or four; otherwise, how can they be any longer two, if they are several. Lamech, a man of blood and a murderer, was the first who divided one flesh between two wives. Fratricide and digamy were abolished by the same punishment--that of the deluge. The one was avenged seven times, the other seventy times seven. The guilt is as widely different as are the numbers. What the holiness of second marriage is, appears from this--that a person twice married [4345] cannot be enrolled in the ranks of the clergy, and so the Apostle tells Timothy, [4346] "Let none be enrolled as a widow under threescore years old, having been the wife of one man." The whole command concerns those widows who are supported on the alms of the Church. The age is therefore limited, so that those only may receive the food of the poor who can no longer work. And at the same time, consider that she who has had two husbands, even though she be a widow, decrepit, and in want, is not a worthy recipient of the Church's funds. But if she be deprived of the bread of charity, how much more is she deprived of that bread which cometh down from heaven, and of which if a man eat unworthily, he shall be guilty of outrage offered to the body and the blood of Christ?
15. The passages, however, which I have adduced in support of my position and in which it is permitted to widows, if they so desire, to marry again, are interpreted by some concerning those widows who had lost their husbands and were found in that condition when they became Christians. For, supposing a person baptized and her husband dead, it would not be consistent if the Apostle were to bid her marry another, when he enjoins even those who have wives to be as though they had them not. And this is why the number of wives which a man may take is not defined, because when Christian baptism has been received, even though a third or a fourth wife has been taken, she is reckoned as the first. Otherwise, if, after baptism and after the death of a first husband, a second is taken why should not a sixth after the death of the second, third, fourth, and fifth, and so on? For it is possible, that through some strange misfortune, or by the judgement of God cutting short repeated marriages, a young woman may have several husbands, while an old woman may be left a widow by her first husband in extreme age. The first Adam was married once: the second was unmarried. Let the supporters of second marriages shew us as their leader a third Adam who was twice married. But granted that Paul allowed second marriages: upon the same grounds it follows that he allows even third and fourth marriages, or a woman may marry as often as her husband dies. The Apostle was forced to choose many things which he did not like. He circumcised Timothy, and shaved his own head, practised going barefoot, let his hair grow long, and cut it at Cenchrea. And he had certainly chastised the Galatians, and blamed Peter because for the sake of Jewish observances he separated himself from the Gentiles. As then in other points connected with the discipline of the Church he was a Jew to Jews, a Gentile to Gentiles, and was made all things to all men, that he might gain all: so too he allowed second marriages to incontinent persons, and did not limit the number of marriages, in order that women, although they saw themselves permitted to take a second husband, in the same way as a third or a fourth was allowed, might blush to take a second, lest they should be compared to those who were three or four times married. If more than one husband be allowed, it makes no difference whether he be a second or a third, because there is no longer a question of single marriage. [4347] "All things are lawful, but not all things are expedient." I do not condemn second, nor third, nor, pardon the expression, eighth marriages: I will go still further and say that I welcome even a penitent whoremonger. Things that are equally lawful must be weighed in an even balance.
16. But he takes us to the Old Testament, and beginning with Adam goes on to Zacharias and Elizabeth. He next confronts us with Peter and the rest of the Apostles. We are therefore bound to traverse the same course of argument and show that chastity was always preferred to the condition of marriage. And as regards Adam and Eve we must maintain that before the fall they were virgins in Paradise: but after they sinned, and were cast out of Paradise, they were immediately married. Then we have the passage, [4348] "For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and the twain shall become one flesh," in explanation of which the Apostle straightway adds, [4349] "This mystery is great, but I speak in regard of Christ, and of the Church." Christ in the flesh is a virgin, in the spirit he is once married. For he has one Church, concerning which the same Apostle says, [4350] "Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the Church." If Christ loves the Church holily, chastely, and without spot, let husbands also love their wives in chastity. And let everyone know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour, not in the lust of concupiscence, as the Gentiles who know not God: [4351] "For God called us not for uncleanness, but in sanctification: seeing that ye have put off the old man with his doings, and have put on the new man, which is being renewed unto knowledge after the image of him that created him: where there cannot be male and female, Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bondman, freeman: but Christ is all, and in all." The link of marriage is not found in the image of the Creator. When difference of sex is done away, and we are putting off the old man, and putting on the new, then we are being born again into Christ a virgin, who was both born of a virgin, and is born again through [4352] virginity. And whereas he says "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth," it was necessary first to plant the wood and to let it grow, so that there might be an after-growth for cutting down. And at the same time we must bear in mind the meaning of the phrase, "replenish the earth." Marriage replenishes the earth, virginity fills Paradise. This too we must observe, at least if we would faithfully follow the Hebrew, that while Scripture on the first, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth days relates that, having finished the works of each, "God saw that it was good," on the second day it omitted this altogether, leaving us to understand that two is not a good number because it destroys unity, and prefigures the marriage compact. Hence it was that all the animals which Noah took into the ark by pairs were unclean. Odd numbers denote cleanness. And yet by the double number is represented another mystery: that not even in beasts and unclean birds is second marriage approved. For unclean animals went in two and two, and clean ones by sevens, so that Noah after the flood might be able to immediately offer to God sacrifices from the latter.
17. But if Enoch was translated, and Noah was preserved at the deluge, I do not think that Enoch was translated because he had a wife, but because he was [4353] the first to call upon God and to believe in the Creator; and the Apostle Paul fully instructs us concerning him in the Epistle to the Hebrews. Noah, moreover, who was preserved as a kind of second root for the human race, must of course be preserved together with his wife and sons, although in this there is a Scripture mystery. The ark, [4354] according to the Apostle Peter, was a type of the Church, in which eight souls were saved. When Noah entered into it, both he and his sons were separated from their wives; but when he landed from it, they united in pairs, and what had been separated in the ark, that is, in the Church, was joined together in the intercourse of the world. And at the same time if the ark had many compartments and little chambers, and was made with second and third stories, and was filled with different beasts, and was furnished with dwellings, great or small, according to the kind of animal, I think all this diversity in the compartments was a figure of the manifold character of the Church.
18. He raises the objection that when God gave his second blessing, permission was granted to eat flesh, which had not in the first benediction been allowed. He should know that just as divorce according to the Saviour's word was not permitted from the beginning, but on account of the hardness of our heart was a concession of Moses to the human race, so too the eating of flesh was unknown until the deluge. But after the deluge, like the quails given in the desert to the murmuring people, the poison of flesh-meat was offered to our teeth. The Apostle writing to the Ephesians [4355] teaches that God had purposed in the fulness of time to sum up and renew in Christ Jesus all things which are in heaven and in earth. Whence also the Saviour himself in the Revelation of John says, [4356] "I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending." At the beginning of the human race we neither ate flesh, nor gave bills of divorce, nor suffered circumcision for a sign. Thus we reached the deluge. But after the deluge, together with the giving of the law which no one could fulfil, flesh was given for food, and divorce was allowed to hard-hearted men, and the knife of circumcision was applied, as though the hand of God had fashioned us with something superfluous. But once Christ has come in the end of time, and Omega passed into Alpha and turned the end into the beginning, we are no longer allowed divorce, nor are we circumcised, nor do we eat flesh, for the Apostle says, [4357] "It is good not to eat flesh, nor to drink wine." For wine as well as flesh was consecrated after the deluge.
19. What shall I say of Abraham who had three wives, as Jovinianus says, and received circumcision as a sign of his faith? If we follow him in the number of his wives, let us also follow him in circumcision. We must not partly follow, partly reject him. Isaac, moreover, the husband of one wife, Rebecca, prefigures the Church of Christ, and reproves the wantonness of second marriage. And if Jacob had two pairs of wives and concubines, and our opponent will not admit that blear-eyed Leah, ugly and prolific, was a type of the synagogue, but that Rachel, beautiful and long barren, indicated the mystery of the Church, let me remind him that when Jacob did this thing he was among the Assyrians, and in Mesopotamia in bondage to a hard master. But when he wished to enter the holy land, he raised on Mount Galeed [4358] the heap of witness, in token that the lord of Mesopotamia had failed to find anything among his baggage, and there swore that he would never return to the place of his bondage; and when, [4359] after wrestling with the angel at the brook Jabbok, he began to limp, because the great muscle of his thigh was withered, he at once gained the name of Israel. [4360] Then the wife whom he once loved, and for whom he had served, was slain by the son of sorrow near Bethlehem which was destined to be the birthplace of our Lord, the herald of virginity: and the intimacies of Mesopotamia died in the land of the Gospel.
20. But I wonder why he set [4361] Judah and Tamar before us for an example, unless perchance even harlots give him pleasure; or [4362] Onan who was slain because he grudged his brother seed. Does he imagine that we approve of any sexual intercourse except for the procreation of children? As regards Moses, it is clear that he would have been in peril at the inn, if [4363] Sephora which is by interpretation a bird, had not circumcised her son, and cut off the foreskin of marriage with the knife which prefigured the Gospel. This is that Moses who when he saw a great vision and heard an angel, or the Lord speaking in the bush, [4364] could not by any means approach to him without first loosing the latchet of his shoe, that is, putting off the bonds of marriage. And we need not be surprised at this in the case of one who was a prophet, lawgiver, and the friend of God, seeing that all the people when about to draw nigh to Mount Sinai, and to hear the voice speaking to them, were commanded to sanctify themselves in three days, and keep themselves from their wives. I am out of order in violating historical sequence, but I may point out that the same thing was said by [4365] Ahimelech the priest to David when he fled to Nob: "If only the young men have kept themselves from women." And David answered, "of a truth about these three days." For the shew-bread, like the body of Christ, might not be eaten by those who rose from the marriage bed. And in passing we ought to consider the words "if only the young men have kept themselves from women." The truth is that, in view of the purity of the body of Christ, all sexual intercourse is unclean. In the law also it is enjoined that the [4366] high priest must not marry any but a virgin, nor must he take to wife a widow. If a virgin and a widow are on the same level, how is it that one is taken, the other rejected? [4367] And the widow of a priest is bidden abide in the house of her father, and not to contract a second marriage. [4368] If the sister of a priest dies in virginity, just as the priest is commanded to go to the funeral of his father and mother, so must he go to hers. But if she be married, she is despised as though she belonged not to him. He who has [4369] married a wife, and he who has planted a vineyard, an image of the propagation of children, is forbidden to go to the battle. For he who is the slave of his wife cannot be the Lord's soldier. And the laver in the tabernacle was cast from the mirrors of the women who [4370] fasted, signifying the bodies of pure virgins: And within, [4371] in the sanctuary, both cherubim, and mercy-seat, and the ark of the covenant, and the table of shew-bread, and the candle-stick, and the censer, were made of the purest gold. For silver might not be brought into the holy of holies.
21. I must not linger over Moses when my purpose is at full speed to lightly touch on each topic and to sketch the outline of a proper knowledge of my subject. I will pass to Joshua the son of Nun, who was previously called Ause, or better, as in the Hebrew, Osee, that is, Saviour. For he, [4372] according to the epistle of Jude, saved the people of Israel and led them forth out of Egypt, and brought them into the land of promise. As soon as this Joshua [4373] reached the Jordan, the waters of marriage, which had ever flowed in the land, dried up and stood in one heap; and the whole people, barefooted and on dry ground, crossed over, and came to Gilgal, and there was a second time circumcised. If we take this literally, it cannot possibly stand. For if we had two foreskins, or if another could grow after the first was cut off, there would be room for speaking of a second circumcision. But the meaning is that Joshua circumcised the people who had crossed the desert, with the Gospel knife, and he circumcised them with a stone knife, that what in the case of Moses' son was prefigured in a few might under Joshua be fulfilled in all. Moreover, the very foreskins were heaped together and buried, and covered with earth, and the fact that the reproach of Egypt was taken away, and the name of the place, Gilgal, which is by interpretation [4374] revelation, show that while the people wandered in the desert uncircumcised their eyes were blinded. Let us see what follows. After this Gospel circumcision and the consecration of twelve stones at the place of revelation, the Passover was immediately celebrated, a lamb was slain for them, and they ate the food of the Holy Land. Joshua went forth, and was met by the Prince of the host, sword in hand, that is either to shew that he was ready to fight for the circumcised people, or to sever the tie of marriage. And in the same way that Moses was commanded, so was he: [4375] "loose thy shoe, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground." For if the armed host of the Lord was represented by the trumpets of the priests, we may see in Jericho a type of the overthrow of the world by the preaching of the Gospel. And to pass over endless details (for it is not my purpose now to unfold all the mysteries of the Old Testament), [4376] five kings who previously reigned in the land of promise, and opposed the Gospel army, were overcome in battle with Joshua. I think it is clearly to be understood that before the Lord led his people from Egypt and circumcised them, sight, smell, taste, hearing, and touch had the dominion, and that to these, as to five princes, everything was subject. And when they [4377] took refuge in the cave of the body and in a place of darkness, Jesus entered the body itself and slew them, that the source of their power might be the instrument of their death.
22. But it is now time for us to raise the standard of Joshua's chastity. It is written that Moses had a wife. Now Moses is interpreted both by our Lord and by the Apostle to mean the law: [4378] "They have Moses and the prophets." And [4379] "Death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the likeness of Adam's transgression." And no one doubts that in both passages Moses signifies the law. We read that Moses, that is the law, had a wife: shew me then in the same way that Joshua the son of Nun had either wife or children, and if you can do so, I will confess that I am beaten. He certainly received the fairest spot in the division of the land of Judah, and died, not in the twenties, which are ever unlucky in Scripture--by them are reckoned the years of [4380] Jacob's service, [4381] the price of Joseph, and [4382] sundry presents which Esau who was fond of them received--but in the [4383] tens, whose praises we have often sung; and he was buried in [4384] Thamnath Sare, that is, most perfect sovereignty, or among those of a new covering, to signify the crowds of virgins, covered by the Saviour's aid on Mount Ephraim, that is, the fruitful mountain; on the north of the Mountain of Gaash, which is, being interpreted, disturbance: for [4385] "Mount Sion is on the sides of the north, the city of the Great King," is ever exposed to hatred, and in every trial says [4386] "But my feet had well nigh slipped." The book which bears the name of Joshua ends with his burial. Again in the book of Judges we read of him as though he had risen and come to life again, and by way of summary his works are extolled. We read too [4387] "So Joshua sent the people away, every man unto his inheritance, that they might possess the land." And "Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua," and so on. There immediately follows: "And Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died, being an hundred and ten years old." Moses, moreover, only saw the land of promise; he could not enter: and [4388] "he died in the land of Moab, and the Lord buried him in the valley in the land of Moab over against Beth-peor: but no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day." Let us compare the burial of the two: Moses died in the land of Moab, Joshua in the land of Judæa. The former was buried in a valley over against the house of Phogor, which is, being interpreted, reproach (for the Hebrew Phogor corresponds to Priapus [4389] ); the latter in Mount Ephraim on the north of Mount Gaash. And in the simple expressions of the sacred Scriptures there is always a more subtle meaning. The Jews gloried in children and child-bearing; and the barren woman, who had not offspring in Israel, was accursed; but blessed was he whose seed was in Sion, and his family in Jerusalem; and part of the highest blessing was, [4390] "Thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine, in the innermost parts of thy house, thy children like olive plants, round about thy table." Therefore his grave is described as placed in a valley over against the house of an idol which was in a special sense consecrated to lust. But we who fight under Joshua our leader, even to the present day know not where Moses was buried. For we despise Phogor, and all his shame, knowing that they who are in the flesh cannot please God. And the Lord before the flood had said [4391] "My spirit shall not abide in man for ever, for that he also is flesh." Wherefore, when Moses died, the people of Israel mourned for him; but Joshua like one on his way to victory was unmourned. For marriage ends at death; virginity thereafter begins to wear the crown.
23. Next he brings forward Samson, and does not consider that the Lord's Nazarite was once shaven bald by a woman. And although Samson continues to be a type of the Saviour because he loved a harlot from among the Gentiles, which harlot corresponds to the Church, and because he slew more enemies in his death than he did in his life, yet he does not set an example of conjugal chastity. And he surely reminds us [4392] of Jacob's prophecy--he was shaken by his runaway steed, bitten by an adder and fell backwards. But why he enumerated Deborah, and Barak, and the wife of Heber the Kenite, I am at a loss to understand. For it is one thing to draw up a list of military commanders in historical sequence, another to indicate certain figures of marriage which cannot be found in them. And whereas he prefers the fidelity of the father Jephthah to the tears of the virgin daughter, that makes for us. For we are not commending virgins of the world so much as those who are virgins for Christ's sake, and most Hebrews blame the father for the rash vow he made, [4393] "If thou wilt indeed deliver the children of Ammon into mine hand, then it shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, it shall be for the Lord's, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering." Supposing (they say) a dog or an ass had met him, what would he have done? Their meaning is that God so ordered events that he who had improvidently made a vow, should learn his error by the death of his daughter. And if Samuel who was brought up in the tabernacle married a wife, how does that prejudice virginity? As if at the present day also there were not many married priests, and as though the Apostle did not [4394] describe a bishop as the husband of one wife, having children with all purity. At the same time we must not forget that Samuel was a Levite, not a priest or high-priest. Hence it was that his mother made for him a linen ephod, that is, a linen garment to go over the shoulders, which was the proper dress of the Levites and of the inferior order. And so he is not named in the Psalms among the priests, but among those who call upon the name of the Lord: [4395] "Moses and Aaron among his priests, and Samuel among those who call upon his name." For [4396] Levi begat Kohath, Kohath begat Amminadab, Amminadab begat Korah, Korah begat Assir, Assir begat Elkanah, Elkanah begat Zuph, Zuph begat Tahath, Tahath begat Eliel, Eliel begat Jeroham, Jeroham begat Elkanah, Elkanah begat Samuel. And no one doubts that the priests sprang from the stock of Aaron, Eleazar, and Phinees. And seeing that they had wives, they would be rightly brought against us, if, led away by the error of the Encratites, we were to maintain that marriage deserved censure, and our high priest were not after the order of Melchizedek, without father, without mother, [4397] A'genealogetos , that is, unmarried. And much fruit truly did Samuel reap from his children! he himself pleased God, but [4398] begat such children as displeased the Lord. But if in support of second marriage, he urges the instance of Boaz and Ruth, let him know that in the Gospel (S. Matt. i. 6) to typify the Church even Rahab the harlot is reckoned among our Lord's ancestors.
24. He boasts that David bought his wife for two hundred foreskins. But he should remember that David had numerous other wives, and afterwards received Michal, Saul's daughter, whom her father had delivered to another, and when he was old got heat from the embrace of the Shunammite maiden. And I do not say this because I am bold enough to disparage holy men, but because it is one thing to live under the law, another to live under the Gospel. David slew Uriah the Hittite and committed adultery with Bathsheba. And because he was a man of blood--the reference is not, as some think, to his wars, but to the [4399] murder--he was not permitted to build a temple of the Lord. But as for us, [4400] if we cause one of the least to stumble, and if we say to a brother [4401] Raca, or [4402] use our eyes improperly, it were good that a millstone were hanged about our neck, we shall be in danger of Gehenna, and a mere glance will be reckoned to us for adultery. He passes on to Solomon, through whom wisdom itself sang its own praises. Seeing that not content with dwelling upon his praises, he calls him uxorious, I am surprised that he did not add the words of the Canticles: [4403] "There are threescore queens, and fourscore concubines, and maidens without number," and those of the First Book of Kings; [4404] And he had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines, and others without number." These are they who turned away his heart from the Lord: and yet before he had many wives, and fell into sins of the flesh, at the beginning of his reign and in his early years he built a temple to the Lord. For every one is judged not for what he will be, but for what he is. But if Jovinianus approves the example of Solomon, he will no longer be in favour of second and third marriages only, but unless he has seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines, he cannot be the king's antitype or attain to his merit. I earnestly again and again remind you, my reader, that I am compelled to speak as I do, and that I do not disparage our predecessors under the law, but am well aware that they served their generation according to their circumstances, and fulfilled the Lord's command to increase, and multiply, and replenish the earth. And what is more they were figures of those that were to come. But we to whom it is said, [4405] "The time is shortened, that henceforth those that have wives may be as though they had none," have a different command, and for us virginity is consecrated by the Virgin Saviour.
25. What folly it was to include Elijah and Elisha in a list of married men, is plain without a word from me. For, since John Baptist came in the spirit and power of Elijah, and John was a virgin, it is clear that he came not only in Elijah's spirit, but also in his bodily chastity. Then the passage relating to Hezekiah might be adduced (though Jovinianus with his wonted stupidity did not notice it), in which after his recovery and the addition of fifteen years to his life he said, "Now will I beget children." It must be remembered, however, that in the Hebrew texts the passage is not so, but runs thus: [4406] "The father to the children shall make known thy faithfulness." Nor need we wonder that Huldah, the prophetess, and wife of Shallum, was [4407] consulted by Josiah, King of Judah, when the captivity was approaching and the wrath of the Lord was falling upon Jerusalem: since it is the rule of Scripture when holy men fail, to praise women to the reproach of men. And it is superfluous to speak of Daniel, for the Hebrews to the present day affirm that the three youths were eunuchs, in accordance with the declaration of God which Isaiah utters to Hezekiah: [4408] "And of thy sons that shall issue from thee, which thou shalt beget, shall they take away: and they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the King of Babylon." And again in Daniel we read: [4409] "And the king spake unto Ashpenaz the master of his eunuchs, that he should bring in certain of the children of Israel, even of the seed royal and of the nobles: youth in whom was no blemish, but well favoured, and skilful in all wisdom, and cunning in knowledge, and understanding science." The conclusion is that if Daniel and the three youths were chosen from the seed royal, and if Scripture foretold that that there should be eunuchs of the seed royal, these men were those who were made eunuchs. If he meets us with the argument that in Ezekiel [4410] it is said that Noah, Daniel and Job in a sinful land could not free their sons and daughters, we reply that the words are used hypothetically. Noah and Job were not in existence at that time: we know that they lived many ages before. And the meaning is this: if there were such and such men in a sinful land, they shall not be able to save their own sons and daughters: because the righteousness of the father shall not save the son, nor shall the sin of one be imputed to another. [4411] "For the soul that sinneth, it shall die." This, too, must be said, that Daniel, as the history of his book shows, was taken captive with King Jehoiakim at the same time that Ezekiel was also led into captivity. How then could he have sons who was still a youth? And only three years had elapsed when he was brought in to wait upon the king. Let no one suppose that Ezekiel at this time remembers Daniel as a man, not as a youth; for "It came to pass," he says, [4412] "in the sixth year," that is of King Jehoiakim, "in the sixth month, in the fifth day of the month:" and, "as I sat in my house, and the elders of Judah sat before me." Yet on that same day it was said to him, [4413] "Though these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job were in it." Daniel was therefore a youth, and known to the people, either on account of his interpretation of the king's dreams, [4414] or on account of the release of Susannah, and the slaying of the elders. And it is clearly proved that at the time these things were spoken of Noah, Daniel, and Job, Daniel was still a youth and could not have had sons and daughters, whom he might save by his righteousness. So far concerning the Law.
26. Coming to the Gospel he sets before us Zacharias and Elizabeth, Peter and his mother-in-law, and, with a shamelessness to which we have now grown accustomed, fails to understand that they, too, ought to have been reckoned among those who served the Law. For the Gospel had no being before the crucifixion of Christ--it was consecrated by His passion and by His blood. In accordance with this rule Peter and the other Apostles (I must give Jovinianus something now and then out of my abundance) had indeed wives, but those which they had taken before they knew the Gospel. But once they were received into the Apostolate, they forsook the offices of marriage. For when Peter, representing the Apostles, says to the Lord: [4415] "Lo we have left all and followed thee," the Lord answered him, [4416] "Verily I say unto you, there is no man that hath left house or wife, or brethren, or parents, or children for the kingdom of God's sake, who shall not receive manifold more in this time, and in the world to come eternal life." But if, in order to show that all the Apostles had wives, he meets us with the words [4417] "Have we no right to lead about women or wives" (for gune in Greek has both meanings) "even as the rest of the apostles, and Cephas, and the brethren of the Lord?" let him add what is found in the Greek copies, "Have we no right to lead about women that are sisters, or wives?" This makes it clear that the writer referred to other holy women, who, in accordance with Jewish custom, ministered to their teachers of their substance, as we read was the practice with even our Lord himself. Where there is a previous reference to eating and drinking, and the outlay of money, and mention is afterwards made of women that are sisters, it is quite clear, as we have said, that we must understand, not wives, but those women who ministered of their substance. And we read the same account in the Old Testament of the Shunammite who was wont to welcome Elisha, and to put for him a table, and bread, and a candlestick, and the rest. At all events if we take gunaikas to mean wives, not women, the addition of the word sisters destroys the effect of the word wives, and shews that they were related in spirit, not by wedlock. Nevertheless, with the exception of the Apostle Peter, it is not openly stated that the Apostles had wives; and since the statement is made of one while nothing is said about the rest, we must understand that those of whom Scripture gives no such description had no wives. Yet Jovinianus, who has arrayed against us Zacharias and Elizabeth, Peter and his wife's mother, should know, that John was the son of Zacharias and Elizabeth, that is, a virgin was the offspring of marriage, the Gospel of the law, chastity of matrimony; so that by a virgin prophet the virgin Lord might be both announced and baptized. But we might say concerning Peter, that he had a mother-in-law when he believed, and no longer had a wife, although in the [4418] "Sentences" we read of both his wife and daughter. But for the present our argument must be based wholly on Scripture. He has made his appeal to the Apostles, because he thinks that they, who hold the chief authority in our moral system and are the typical Christian teachers, were not virgins. If, then, we allow that they were not virgins (and, with the exception of Peter, the point cannot be proved), yet I must tell him that it is to the Apostles that the words of Isaiah relate: [4419] "Except the Lord of hosts had left unto us a small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, we should have been like unto Gomorrah." So, then, they who were by birth Jews could not under the Gospel recover the virginity which they had lost in Judaism. And yet John, one of the disciples, who is related to have been the youngest of the Apostles, and who was a virgin when he embraced Christianity, remained a virgin, and on that account was more beloved by our Lord, and lay upon the breast of Jesus. And what Peter, who had had a wife, did not dare ask, [4420] he requested John to ask. And after the resurrection, when Mary Magdalene told them that the Lord had risen, [4421] they both ran to the sepulchre, but John outran Peter. And when they were fishing in the ship on the lake of Gennesaret, Jesus stood upon the shore, and the Apostles knew not who it was they saw; [4422] the virgin alone recognized a virgin, and said to Peter, "It is the Lord." Again, after hearing the prediction that he must be bound by another, and led whither he would not, and must suffer on the cross, Peter said, "Lord what shall this man do?" being unwilling to desert John, with whom he had always been united. Our Lord said to him, "What is that to thee if I wish him so to be?" Whence the saying went abroad among the brethren that that disciple should not die. Here we have a proof that virginity does not die, and that the defilement of marriage is not washed away by the blood of martyrdom, but virginity abides with Christ, and its sleep is not death but a passing to another state. If, however, Jovinianus should obstinately contend that John was not a virgin, (whereas we have maintained that his virginity was the cause of the special love our Lord bore to him), let him explain, if he was not a virgin, why it was that he was loved more than the other Apostles. But you say, [4423] the Church was founded upon Peter: although [4424] elsewhere the same is attributed to all the Apostles, and they all receive the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and the strength of the Church depends upon them all alike, yet one among the twelve is chosen so that when a head has been appointed, there may be no occasion for schism. But why was not John chosen, who was a virgin? Deference was paid to age, because Peter was the elder: one who was a youth, I may say almost a boy, could not be set over men of advanced age; and a good master who was bound to remove every occasion of strife among his disciples, and who had said to them, [4425] "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you," and, [4426] "He that is the greater among you, let him be the least of all," would not be thought to afford cause of envy against the youth whom he had loved. We maybe sure that John was then a boy because ecclesiastical history most clearly proves that he lived to the reign of Trajan, that is, he fell asleep in the sixty-eighth year after our Lord's passion, as I have briefly noted in my treatise on Illustrious Men. [4427] Peter is an Apostle, and John is an Apostle--the one a married man, the other a virgin; but Peter is an Apostle only, John is both an Apostle and an Evangelist, and a prophet. An Apostle, because he wrote to the Churches as a master; an Evangelist, because he composed a Gospel, a thing which no other of the Apostles, excepting Matthew, did; a prophet, for he saw in the island of Patmos, to which he had been banished by the Emperor Domitian as a martyr for the Lord, an Apocalypse containing the boundless mysteries of the future. Tertullian, more over, relates that he was sent to Rome, and that having been plunged into a jar of boiling oil he came out fresher and more active than when he went in. But his very Gospel is widely different from the rest. Matthew as though he were writing of a man begins thus: "The book of the Generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham;" Luke begins with the priesthood of Zacharias; Mark with a prophecy of the prophets Malachi and Isaiah. The first has the face of a man, on account of the genealogical table; the second, the face of a calf, on account of the priesthood; the third, the face of a lion, on account of the voice of one crying in the desert, [4428] "Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make His paths straight." But John like an eagle soars aloft, and reaches the Father Himself, and says, [4429] "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God," and so on. The virgin writer expounded mysteries which the married could not, and to briefly sum up all and show how great was the privilege of John, or rather of virginity in John, the Virgin Mother [4430] was entrusted by the Virgin Lord to the Virgin disciple.
27. But we toil to no purpose. For our opponent urges against us the Apostolic sentence and says, [4431] "Adam was first formed, then Eve; and Adam was not beguiled, but the woman being beguiled hath fallen into transgression: but she shall be saved through the child-bearing, if they continue in faith and love and sanctification with sobriety." Let us consider what led the Apostle to make this declaration: [4432] "I desire therefore that the men pray in every place, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and disputing." So in due course he lays down rules of life for the women and says "In like manner that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with braided hair, and gold or pearls or costly raiment; but (which becometh women professing godliness) through good works. Let a woman learn in quietness with all subjection. But I permit not a woman to teach, nor to have dominion over a man, but to be in quietness." And that the lot of a woman might not seem a hard one, reducing her to the condition of a slave to her husband, the Apostle recalls the ancient law and goes back to the first example: that Adam was first made, then the woman out of his rib; and that the Devil could not seduce Adam, but did seduce Eve; and that after displeasing God she was immediately subjected to the man, and began to turn to her husband; and he points out that she who was once tied with the bonds of marriage and was reduced to the condition of Eve, might blot out the [4433] old transgression by the [4434] procreation of children: provided, however, that she bring up the children themselves in the faith and love of Christ, and in sanctification and chastity; for we must not adopt the faulty reading of the Latin texts, sobrietas, but castitas, that is, [4435] sophrosune . You see how you are mastered by the witness of this passage also, and cannot but be driven to admit that what you thought was on the side of marriage tells in favour of virginity. For if the woman is saved in child-bearing, and the more the children the greater the safety of the mothers, why did he add "if they continue in faith and love and sanctification with chastity"? The woman will then be saved, if she bear not children who will remain virgins: if what she has herself lost, she attains in her children, and makes up for the loss and decay, of the root by the excellence of the flower and fruit.
28. Above, in passing, when our opponent adduced Solomon, who, although he had many wives, nevertheless built the temple, I briefly replied that it was my intention to run over the remaining points. Now that he may not cry out that both Solomon and others under the law, prophets and holy men, have been dishonoured by us, let us show what this very man with his many wives and concubines thought of marriage. For no one can know better than he who suffered through them, what a wife or woman is. Well then, he says in the Proverbs: [4436] "The foolish and bold woman comes to want bread." What bread? Surely that bread which cometh down from heaven: and he immediately adds [4437] "The earth-born perish in her house, rush into the depths of hell." Who are the earth-born that perish in her house? They of course who follow the first Adam, who is of the earth, and not the second, who is from heaven. And again in another place: "Like a worm in wood, so a wicked woman destroyeth her husband." But if you assert that this was spoken of bad wives, I shall briefly answer: What necessity rests upon me to run the risk of the wife I marry proving good or bad? [4438] "It is better," he says, "to dwell in a desert land, than with a contentious and passionate woman in a wide house." How seldom we find a wife without these faults, he knows who is married. Hence that sublime orator, Varius Geminus [4439] says well "The man who does not quarrel is a bachelor." [4440] "It is better to dwell in the corner of the housetop, than with a contentious woman in a house in common." If a house common to husband and wife makes a wife proud and breeds contempt for the husband: how much more if the wife be the richer of the two, and the husband but a lodger in her house! She begins to be not a wife, but mistress of the house; and if she offend her husband, they must part. [4441] "A continual dropping on a wintry day" turns a man out of doors, and so will a contentious woman drive a man from his own house. She floods his house with her constant nagging and daily chatter, and ousts him from his own home, that is the Church. Hence the same Solomon previously commands: [4442] "My son flows forth beyond." And the Apostle, writing to the Hebrews, says "Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things spoken, lest haply we flow forth beyond." But who can hide from himself what is thus enigmatically expressed? [4443] "The horseleech had three daughters, dearly loved, but they satisfied her not, and a fourth is not satisfied when you say Enough; the grave, and woman's love, and the earth that is not satisfied with water, and the fire that saith not, Enough." The horse-leech is the devil, the daughters of the devil are dearly loved, and they cannot be satisfied with the blood of the slain: the grave, and woman's love, and the earth dry and scorched with heat. It is not the harlot, or the adulteress who is spoken of; but woman's love in general is accused of ever being insatiable; put it out, it bursts into flame; give it plenty, it is again in need; it enervates a man's mind, and engrosses all thought except for the passion which it feeds. What we read in the parable which follows is to the same effect: "For three things the earth doth tremble, and for four which it cannot bear: for a servant when he is king: and a fool when he is filled with meat: for an odious woman when she is married to a good husband: and an handmaid that is heir to her mistress." See how a wife is classed with the greatest evils. But if you reply that it is an odious wife, I will give you the same answer as before--the mere possibility of such danger is in itself no light matter. For he who marries a wife is uncertain whether he is marrying an odious woman or one worthy of his love. If she be odious, she is intolerable. If worthy of love, her love is compared to the grave, to the parched earth, and to fire.
29. Let us come to Ecclesiastes and adduce a few corroborative passages from him also. [4444] "To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die: a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted." We brought forth young under the law with Moses, let us die under the Gospel with Christ. We planted in marriage, let us by chastity pluck up that which was planted. "A time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing: a time to love, and a time to hate: a time for war, and a time for peace." And at the same time he warns us not to prefer the law to the Gospel; nor to think that virgin purity is to be placed on a level with marriage: [4445] "Better," he says, "is the end of a thing than the beginning thereof." And he immediately adds: "Say not thou, what is the cause that the former days were better than these? for thou dost not inquire wisely concerning this." And he gives the reason why the latter days are better than the former: [4446] "For wisdom with an inheritance is good." Under the law carnal wisdom was followed by the sword of death; under the Gospel an eternal inheritance awaits spiritual wisdom. "Behold, this have I found, [4447] saith the Preacher, one man among a thousand have I found; but a woman among all those have I not found. Behold this only have I found, that God made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions." He says that he had found man upright. Consider the force of the words. The word man comprehends both male and female. "But a woman," he says, "among all these have I not found." Let us read the beginning of Genesis, and we shall find Adam, that is man, called both male and female. Having then been created by God good and upright, by our own fault we have fallen to a worse condition; and that which in Paradise had been upright, when we left Paradise was corrupt. If you object that before they sinned there was a distinction in sex between male and female, and that they could without sin have come together, it is uncertain what might have happened. For we cannot know the judgements of God, and anticipate his sentence as we choose. What really happened is plain enough,--that they who in Paradise remained in perpetual virginity, when they were expelled from Paradise were joined together. Or if Paradise admits of marriage, and there is no difference between marriage and virginity, what prevented their previous intercourse even in Paradise? They are driven out of Paradise; and what they did not there, they do on earth; so that from the very earliest days of humanity virginity was consecrated by Paradise, and marriage by earth. [4448] "Let thy garments be always white." The eternal whiteness of our garments is the purity of virginity. In the morning we sowed our seed, and in the evening let us not cease. Let us who served marriage under the law, serve virginity under the Gospel.
30. I pass to the Song of Songs, and whereas our opponent thinks it makes altogether for marriage, I shall show that it contains the mysteries of virginity. Let us hear what the bride says before that the bridegroom comes to earth, suffers, descends to the lower world, and rises again. [4449] "We will make for thee likenesses of gold with ornaments of silver while the king sits at his table." Before the Lord rose again, and the Gospel shone, the bride had not gold, but likenesses of gold. As for the silver, however, which she professes to have at the marriage, she not only had silver ornaments, but she had them in variety--in widows, in the continent, and in the married. Then the bridegroom makes answer to the bride, and teaches her that the shadow of the old law has passed away, and the truth of the Gospel has come. [4450] "Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away, for lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone." This relates to the Old Testament. Once more he speaks of the Gospel and of virginity: "The flowers appear on the earth, the time of the pruning of vines has come." Does he not seem to you to say the very same thing that the Apostle says: [4451] "The time is shortened that henceforth both those that have wives may be as though they had none"? And more plainly does he herald chastity: [4452] "The voice," he says, "of the turtle is heard in our land." The turtle, the chastest of birds, always dwelling in lofty places, is a type of the Saviour. Let us read the works of naturalists and we shall find that it is the nature of the turtle-dove, if it lose its mate, not to take another; and we shall understand that second marriage is repudiated even by dumb birds. And immediately the turtle says to its fellow: [4453] "The fig tree hath put forth its green figs," that is, the commandments of the old law have fallen, and the blossoming vines of the Gospel give forth their fragrance. Whence the Apostle also says, [4454] "We are a sweet savour of Christ." [4455] "Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away. O my dove, thou art in the clefts of the rock, in the covert of the steep place. Let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice; for sweet is thy voice, and thy countenance is comely." [4456] Whilst thou coveredst thy countenance like Moses and the veil of the law remained, I neither saw thy face, nor did I condescend to hear thy voice. I said, [4457] "Yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear." But now with unveiled face behold my glory, and shelter thyself in the cleft and steep places of the solid rock. On hearing this the bride disclosed the mysteries of chastity: [4458] "My beloved is mine, and I am his: he feedeth his flock among the lilies," that is among the pure virgin bands. Would you know what sort of a throne our true Solomon, the Prince of Peace, has, and what his attendants are like? [4459] "Behold," he says, "it is the litter of Solomon: threescore mighty men are about it, of the mighty men of Israel. They all handle the sword, and are expert in war: every man hath his sword upon his thigh." They who are about Solomon have their sword upon their thigh, like Ehud, the left-handed judge, who slew the fattest of foes, a man devoted to the flesh, and cut short all his pleasures. [4460] "I will get me," he says, "to the mountain of myrrh;" to those, that is, who have mortified their bodies; "and to the hill of frankincense," to the crowds of pure virgins; "and I will say to my bride, thou art all fair, my love, and there is no spot in thee." Whence too the Apostle: [4461] "That he might present the church to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing." [4462] "Come with me from Lebanon, my bride, with me from Lebanon. Thou shalt come [4463] and pass on from the beginning of faith, from the top of Sanir and Hermon, from the lions' dens, from the mountains of the leopards." Lebanon is, being interpreted, whiteness. Come then, fairest bride, concerning whom it is elsewhere said [4464] "Who is she that cometh up, all in white?" and pass on by way of this world, from the beginning of faith, and from Sanir, which is by interpretation, God of light, as we read in the psalm: [4465] "Thy word is a lantern unto my feet, and light unto my path;" and "from Hermon," that is, consecration: and "flee from the lions' dens, and the mountains of the leopards who cannot change their spots." Flee, he says, from the lions' dens, flee from the pride of devils, that when thou hast been consecrated to me, I may be able to say unto thee: [4466] "Thou hast ravished my heart, my sister, my bride, thou hast ravished mine heart with one of thine eyes, with one chain of thy neck." What he says is something like this--I do not reject marriage: you have a second eye, the left, which I have given to you on account of the weakness of those who cannot see the right. But I am pleased with the right eye of virginity, and if it be blinded the whole body is in darkness. And that we might not think he had in view carnal love and bodily marriage, he at once excludes this meaning by saying [4467] "Thou hast ravished my heart, my bride, my sister." The name sister excludes all suspicion of unhallowed love. "How fair are thy breasts with wine," those breasts concerning which he had said above, My beloved is mine, and I am his: "betwixt my breasts shall he lie," that is in the princely portion of the heart where the Word of God has its lodging. What wine is that which gives beauty to the breasts of the bride, and fills them with the milk of chastity? That, forsooth, of which the bridegroom goes on to speak: [4468] "I have drunk my wine with my milk. Eat, O friends: yea, drink and be drunken, my brethren." Hence the Apostles also were said to be filled with new wine; with new, he says, not with old wine; because [4469] new wine is put into fresh wine-skins, and they [4470] did not walk in oldness of the letter, but in newness of the Spirit. This is wine wherewith when youths and maidens are intoxicated, they at once thirst for virginity; they are filled with the spirit of chastity, and the prophecy of Zechariah comes to pass, at least if we follow the Hebrew literally, for he prophesied concerning virgins: [4471] "And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in the streets thereof. For what is his goodness, and what is his beauty, but the corn of the elect, and wine that giveth birth to virgins?" They are virgins of whom it is written in the forty-fifth psalm: [4472] "The virgins her companions that follow her shall be brought unto thee. With gladness and rejoicing shall they be led: they shall enter into the King's palace."
31. Then follows: [4473] "A garden shut up is my sister, my bride: a garden shut up, a fountain sealed." That which is shut up and sealed reminds us of the mother of our Lord who was a mother and a Virgin. Hence it was that no one before or after our Saviour was laid in his new tomb, hewn in the solid rock. And yet she that was ever a Virgin is the mother of many virgins. For next we read: "Thy shoots are an orchard of pomegranates with precious fruits." By pomegranates and fruits is signified the blending of all virtues in virginity. [4474] "My beloved is white and ruddy"; white in virginity, ruddy in martyrdom. And because He is white and ruddy, therefore it is immediately added [4475] "His mouth is most sweet, yea, he is altogether lovely." The virgin bridegroom having been praised by the virgin bride, in turn praises the virgin bride, and says to her: [4476] "How beautiful are thy feet in sandals, [4477] O daughter of Aminadab," which is, being interpreted, a people that offereth itself willingly. For virginity is voluntary, and therefore the steps of the Church in the beauty of chastity are praised. This is not the time for me like a commentator to explain all the mysteries of virginity from the Song of Songs; I have no doubt that the fastidious reader will turn up his nose at what has already been said.
32. Isaiah tells of the mystery of our faith and hope: [4478] "Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Emmanuel." I know that the Jews are accustomed to meet us with the objection that in Hebrew the word Almah does not mean a virgin, but a young woman. And, to speak truth, a virgin is properly called Bethulah, but a young woman, or a girl, is not Almah, but Naarah! [4479] What then is the meaning of Almah? A hidden virgin, that is, not merely virgin, but a virgin and something more, because not every virgin is hidden, shut off from the occasional sight of men. Then again, Rebecca, on account of her extreme purity, and because she was a type of the Church which she represented in her own virginity, is described in Genesis as Almah, not Bethulah, as may clearly be proved from the words of Abraham's servant, spoken by him in Mesopotamia: [4480] "And he said, O Lord, the God of my master Abraham, if now thou do prosper my way which I go: behold I stand by the fountain of water; and let it come to pass, that the maiden which cometh forth to draw, to whom I shall say, Give me, I pray thee, a little water of this pitcher to drink; and she shall say to me, Both drink thou, and I will also draw for thy camels: let the same be the woman whom the Lord hath appointed for my master's son." Where he speaks of the maiden coming forth to draw water, the Hebrew word is Almah, that is, a virgin secluded, and guarded by her parents with extreme care. Or, if this be not so, let them at least show me where the word is applied to married women as well, and I will confess my ignorance. "Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son." If virginity be not preferred to marriage, why did not the Holy Spirit choose a married woman, or a widow? For at that time Anna the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Aser, was alive, distinguished for purity, and always free to devote herself to prayers and fasting in the temple of God. If the life, and good works, and fasting without virginity can merit the advent of the Holy Spirit, she might well have been the mother of our Lord. Let us hasten to the rest: [4481] "The virgin daughter of Zion hath despised thee and laughed thee to scorn." To her whom he called daughter the prophet also gave the title virgin, for fear that if he spoke only of a daughter, it might be supposed that she was married. This is the virgin daughter whom elsewhere he thus addresses: [4482] "Sing, O barren, thou that dost not bear; break forth into singing, and cry aloud, thou that didst not travail with child: for more are the children of the desolate, than the children of the married wife, saith the Lord." This is she of whom God by the mouth of Jeremiah speaks, saying: [4483] "Can a maid forget her ornaments, or a bride her attire." Concerning her we read of a great miracle in the same prophecy [4484] --that a woman should compass a man, and that the Father of all things should be contained in a virgin's womb.
33. "Granted," says Jovinianus, "that there is a difference between marriage and virginity, what have you to say to this,--Suppose a virgin and a widow were baptized, and continued as they were, what difference will there be between them?" What we have already said concerning Peter and John, Anna and Mary, may be of service here. For if there is no difference between a virgin and a widow, both being baptized, because baptism makes a new man, upon the same principle harlots and prostitutes, if they are baptized, will be equal to virgins. If previous marriage is no prejudice to a baptized widow, and past pleasures and the exposure of their bodies to public lust are no detriment in the case of harlots, once they have approached the laver they will gain the rewards of virginity. It is one thing to unite with God a mind pure and free from any stain of memory, another to remember the foul and forced embraces of a man, and in recollection to act a part which you do not in person. Jeremiah, who was [4485] sanctified in the womb, and was known in his mother's belly, enjoyed the high privilege because he was predestined to the blessing of virginity. And when all were captured, and even the vessels of the temple were plundered by the King of Babylon, he alone was [4486] liberated by the enemy, knew not the insults of captivity, and was supported by the conquerors; and Nebuchadnezzar, though he gave Nebuzaradan no charge concerning the Holy of Holies, did give him charge concerning Jeremiah. For that is the true temple of God, and that is the Holy of Holies, which is consecrated to the Lord by pure virginity. On the other hand, Ezekiel, who was kept captive in Babylon, who saw the [4487] storm approaching from the north, and the whirlwind sweeping all before it, says, [4488] "My wife died in the evening and I did in the morning as I was commanded." For the Lord had previously told him that in that day he should open his mouth, and speak, and no longer keep silence. Mark well, that while his wife was living he was not at liberty to admonish the people. His wife died, the bond of wedlock was broken, and without the least hesitation he constantly devoted himself to the prophetic office. For he who was called being free, is truly the Lord's bondservant. I do not deny the blessedness of widows who remain such after their baptism; nor do I disparage those wives who maintain their chastity in wedlock; but as they attain a greater reward with God than married women who pay the marriage due, let widows themselves be content to give the preference to virginity. For if a chastity which comes too late, when the glow of bodily pleasure is no longer felt, makes them feel superior to married women, why should they not acknowledge themselves inferior to perpetual virginity.
34. All that goes for nothing, says Jovinianus, because even bishops, priests, and deacons, husbands of one wife, and having children, were appointed by the Apostle. Just as the Apostle [4489] says he has no commandment respecting virgins, and yet gives his advice, as one who had obtained mercy from the Lord, and is anxious throughout the whole discussion to give virginity the preference over marriage, and advises what he does not venture to command, lest he seem to lay a snare, and to put a heavier burden upon man's nature than it can bear; so also in establishing the constitution of the Church, inasmuch as the elements of the early Church were drawn from the Gentiles, he made the rules for fresh believers somewhat lighter that they might not in alarm shrink from keeping them. Then, again, the Apostles and elders wrote [4490] letters from Jerusalem that no heavier burden should be laid on Gentile believers than that they should keep themselves from idolatry, and from fornication, and from things strangled. As though they were providing for infant children, they gave them milk to drink, not solid food. Nor did they lay down rules for continence, nor hint at virginity, nor urge to fasting, nor repeat the directions [4491] given in the Gospel to the Apostles, not to have two tunics, nor scrip, nor money in their girdles, nor staff in their hand, nor shoes on their feet. And they certainly did not bid them, [4492] if they wished to be perfect, go and sell all that they had and give to the poor, and "come follow me." For if the young man who boasted of having done all that the law enjoins, when he heard this went away sorrowful, because he had great possessions, and the Pharisees derided an utterance such as this from our Lord's lips: how much more would the vast multitude of Gentiles, whose highest virtue consisted in not plundering another's goods, have repudiated the obligation of perpetual chastity and continence, when they were told in the letter to keep themselves from idols, and from fornication, seeing that fornication was heard of among them, and such fornication as was not "even among the Gentiles." But the very choice of a bishop makes for me. For he does not say: Let a bishop be chosen who marries one wife and begets children; but who marries one wife, and [4493] has his children in subjection and well disciplined. You surely admit that he is no bishop who during his episcopate begets children. The reverse is the case--if he be discovered, he will not be bound by the ordinary obligations of a husband, but will be condemned as an adulterer. Either permit [4494] priests to perform the work of marriage with the result that virginity and marriage are on a par: or if it is unlawful for priests to touch their wives, they are so far holy in that they imitate virgin chastity. But something more follows. A layman, or any believer, cannot pray unless he abstain from sexual intercourse. Now a priest must always offer sacrifices for the people: he must therefore always pray. And if he must always pray, he must always be released from the duties of marriage. For even under the old law they who used to offer sacrifices for the people not only remained in their houses, but purified themselves for the occasion by separating from their wives, nor would they drink wine or strong drink which are wont to stimulate lust. That married men are elected to the priesthood, I do not deny: the number of virgins is not so great as that of the priests required. Does it follow that because all the strongest men are chosen for the army, weaker men should not be taken as well? All cannot be strong. If an army were constituted of strength only, and numbers went for nothing, the feebler men might be rejected. As it is, men of second or third-rate strength are chosen, that the army may have its full numerical complement. How is it, then, you will say, that frequently at the ordination of priests a virgin is passed over, and a married man taken? Perhaps because he lacks other qualifications in keeping with virginity, or it may be that he is thought a virgin, and is not: or there may be a stigma on his virginity, or at all events virginity itself makes him proud, and while he plumes himself on mere bodily chastity, he neglects other virtues; he does not cherish the poor: he is too fond of money. It sometimes happens that a man has a gloomy visage, a frowning brow, a walk as though he were in a solemn procession, and so offends the people, who, because they have no fault to find with his life, hate his mere dress and gait. Many are chosen not out of affection for themselves, but out of hatred for another. In most cases the election is won by mere simplicity, while the shrewdness and discretion of another candidate elicit opposition as though they were evils. Sometimes the judgement of the commoner people is at fault, and in testing the qualities of the priesthood, the individual inclines to his own character, with the result that he looks not so much for a good candidate as for one like himself. Not unfrequently it happens that married men, who form the larger portion of the people, in approving married candidates seem to approve themselves, and it does not occur to them that the mere fact that they prefer a married person to a virgin is evidence of their inferiority to virgins. What I am going to say will perhaps offend many. Yet I will say it, and good men will not be angry with me, because they will not feel the sting of conscience. Sometimes it is the fault of the bishops, who choose into the ranks of the clergy not the best, but the cleverest, men, and think the more simple as well as innocent ones incapable; or, as though they were distributing the offices of an earthly service, they give posts to their kindred and relations; or they listen to the dictates of wealth. And, worse than all, they give promotion to the clergy who besmear them with flattery. To take the other view, if the Apostle's meaning be that marriage is necessary in a bishop, the Apostle himself ought not to have been a bishop, for he said, [4495] "Yet I would that all men were even as I myself." And John will be thought unworthy of this rank, and all the virgins, and the continent, the fairest gems that give grace and ornament to the Church. Bishop, priest, and deacon, are not honourable distinctions, but names of offices. And we do not read: [4496] "If a man seeketh the office of a bishop, he desireth a good degree," but, "he desireth a good work," because by being placed in the higher order an opportunity is afforded him, if he choose to avail himself of it, for the practice of virtue.
35. "The bishop, then, must be without reproach, so that he is the slave of no vice: "the husband of one wife," that is, in the past, not in the present; "sober," or [4497] better, as it is in the Greek, "vigilant," that is nephaleon; "chaste," for that is the [4498] meaning of sophrona; [4499] "distinguished," both by chastity and conduct: "hospitable," so that he imitates Abraham, and with strangers, nay rather in strangers, entertains Christ; "apt to teach," for it profits nothing to enjoy the consciousness of virtue, unless a man be able to instruct the people intrusted to him, so that he can exhort in doctrine, and refute the gainsayers; [4500] "not a drunkard," for he who is constantly in the Holy of Holies and offers sacrifices, will not drink wine and strong drink, since wine is a luxury. If a bishop drink at all, let it be in such a way that no one will know whether he has drunk or not. "No striker," that is, [4501] a striker of men's consciences, for the Apostle is not pointing out what a boxer, but a pontiff ought not to do. He directly teaches what he ought to do: "but gentle, not contentious, no lover of money, one that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all chastity." See what chastity is required in a bishop! If his child be unchaste, he himself cannot be a bishop, and he offends God in the same way as did [4502] Eli the priest, who had indeed rebuked his sons, but because he had not put away the offenders, fell backwards and died before the lamp of God went out. [4503] "Women in like manner must be chaste," and so on. In every grade, and in both sexes, chastity has the chief place. You see then that the blessedness of a bishop, priest, or deacon, does not lie in the fact that they are bishops, priests, or deacons, but in their having the virtues which their names and offices imply. Otherwise, if a deacon be holier than his bishop, his lower grade will not give him a worse standing with Christ. If it were so, Stephen the deacon, the first to wear the martyr's crown, would be less in the kingdom of heaven than many bishops, and than Timothy and Titus, whom I venture to make neither inferior nor yet superior to him. Just as in the legions of the army there are generals, tribunes, centurions, javelin-men, and light-armed troops, common soldiers, and companies, but once the battle begins, all distinctions of rank are dropped, and the one thing looked for is valour: so too in this camp and in this battle, in which we contend against devils, not names but deeds are needed: and under the true commander, Christ, not the man who has the highest title has the greatest fame, but he who is the bravest warrior.
36. But you will say: "If everybody were a virgin, what would become of the human race"? Like shall here beget like. If everyone were a widow, or continent in marriage, how will mortal men be propagated? Upon this principle there will be nothing at all for fear that something else may cease to exist. To put a case: if all men were philosophers, there would be no husbandmen. Why speak of husbandmen? there would be no orators, no lawyers, no teachers of the other professions. If all men were leaders, what would become of the soldiers? If all were the head, whose head would they be called, when there were no other members? You are afraid that if the desire for virginity were general there would be no prostitutes, no adulteresses, no wailing infants in town or country. Every day the blood of adulterers [4504] is shed, adulterers are condemned, and lust is raging and rampant in the very presence of the laws and the symbols of authority and the courts of justice. Be not afraid that all will become virgins: virginity is a hard matter, and therefore rare, because it is hard: "Many are called, few chosen." Many begin, few persevere. And so the reward is great for those who have persevered. If all were able to be virgins, our Lord would never have said: [4505] "He that is able to receive it, let him receive it:" and the Apostle would not have hesitated to give his advice,-- [4506] "Now concerning virgins I have no commandment of the Lord." Why then, you will say, were the organs of generation created, and why were we so fashioned by the all-wise creator, that we burn for one another, and long for natural intercourse? To reply is to endanger our modesty: we are, as it were, between two rocks, the [4507] Symplegades of necessity and virtue, on either side; and must make shipwreck of either our sense of shame, or of the cause we defend: If we reply to your suggestions, shame covers our face. If shame secures silence, in a manner we seem to desert our post, and to leave the ground clear to the raging foe. Yet it is better, as the story goes, to shut our eyes and fight like the [4508] blindfold gladiators, than not to repel with the shield of truth the darts aimed at us. I can indeed say: "Our hinder parts which are banished from sight, and the lower portions of the abdomen, which perform the functions of nature, are the Creator's work." But inasmuch as the physical conformation of the organs of generation testifies to difference of sex, I shall briefly reply: Are we never then to forego lust, for fear that we may have members of this kind for nothing? Why then should a husband keep himself from his wife? Why should a widow persevere in chastity, if we were only born to live like beasts? Or what harm does it do me if another man lies with my wife? For as the teeth were made for chewing, and the food masticated passes into the stomach, and a man is not blamed for giving my wife bread: similarly if it was intended that the organs of generation should always be performing their office, when my vigour is spent let another take my place, and, if I may so speak, let my wife quench her burning lust where she can. But what does the Apostle mean by exhorting to continence, if continence be contrary to nature? What does our Lord mean when He instructs us in the various kinds of eunuchs. [4509] Surely [4510] the Apostle who bids us emulate his own chastity, must be asked, if we are to be consistent, Why are you like other men, Paul? Why are you distinguished from the female sex by a beard, hair, and other peculiarities of person? How is it that you have not swelling bosoms, and are not broad at the hips, narrow at the chest? Your voice is rugged, your speech rough, your eyebrows more shaggy. To no purpose you have all these manly qualities, if you forego the embraces of women. I am compelled to say something and become a fool: but you have forced me to dare to speak. Our Lord and Saviour, [4511] Who though He was in the form of God, condescended to take the form of a servant, and became obedient to the Father even unto death, yea the death of the cross--what necessity was there for Him to be born with members which He was not going to use? He certainly was circumcised to manifest His sex. Why did he cause John the Apostle and John the Baptist to make themselves eunuchs through love of Him, after causing them to be born men? Let us then who believe in Christ follow His example. And if we knew Him after the flesh, let us no longer know Him according to the flesh. The substance of our resurrection bodies will certainly be the same as now, though of higher glory. For the Saviour after His descent into hell had so far the selfsame body in which He was crucified, that [4512] He showed the disciples the marks of the nails in His hands and the wound in His side. Moreover, if we deny the identity of His body because [4513] He entered though the doors were shut, and this is not a property of human bodies, we must deny also that Peter and the Lord had real bodies because they [4514] walked upon the water, which is contrary to nature. [4515] "In the resurrection of the dead they will neither marry nor be given in marriage, but will be like the angels." What others will hereafter be in heaven, that virgins begin to be on earth. If likeness to the angels is promised us (and there is no difference of sex among the angels), we shall either be of no sex as are the angels, or at all events which is clearly proved, though we rise from the dead in our own sex, we shall not perform the functions of sex.
37. But why do we argue, and why are we eager to frame a clever and victorious reply to our opponent? [4516] "Old things have passed away, behold all things have become new." I will run through the utterances of the Apostles, and as to the instances afforded by Solomon I added short expositions to facilitate their being understood, so now I will go over the passages bearing on Christian purity and continence, and will make of many proofs a connected series. By this method I shall succeed in omitting nothing relating to chastity, and shall avoid being tediously long. Amongst other passages, Paul the Apostle writes to the Romans: [4517] "What fruit then had ye at that time in the things whereof ye are now ashamed? for the end of those things is death. But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto sanctification, and the end eternal life." I suppose too that the end of marriage is death. But the compensating fruit of sanctification, fruit belonging either to virginity or to continence, is eternal life. And afterwards: [4518] "Wherefore, my brethren, ye also were made dead to the law through the body of Christ; that ye should be joined to another, even to him who was raised from the dead, that we might bring forth fruit unto God. For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions, which were through the law, wrought in our members to bring forth fruit unto death. But now we have been discharged from the law, having died to that wherein we were holden; so that we serve in newness of the Spirit, and not in oldness of the letter." "When," he says, "we were in the flesh, and not in the newness of the Spirit but in the oldness of the letter," we did those things which pertained to the flesh, and bore fruit unto death. But now because we are dead to the law, through the body of Christ, let us bear fruit to God, that we may belong to Him who rose from the dead. And elsewhere, having previously said, [4519] "I know that the law is spiritual," and having discussed at some length the violence of the flesh which frequently drives us to do what we would not, he at last continues: "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me out of the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord." And again, "So then I myself with the mind serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin." And, [4520] "There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and death." And more clearly in what follows he teaches that Christians do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit: [4521] "For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the spirit the things of the spirit. For the mind of the flesh is death; but the mind of the spirit is life and peace: because the mind of the flesh is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can it be: and they that are in the flesh cannot please God. But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you," and so on to where he says, [4522] "So then, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh: for if ye live after the flesh, ye must die; but if by the spirit ye mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God." If the [4523] wisdom of the flesh is enmity against God, and they who are in the flesh cannot please God, I think that they who perform the functions of marriage love the wisdom of the flesh, and therefore are in the flesh. The Apostle being desirous to withdraw us from the flesh and to join us to the Spirit, says afterwards: [4524] "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And be not fashioned according to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God. For I say, through the grace that was given me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think according to chastity" [4525] (not soberly as the Latin versions badly render), but "think," he says, "according to chastity," for the Greek words are eis to sophronein. Let us consider what the Apostle says: "Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God." What he says is something like this--God indeed permits marriage, He permits second marriages, and if necessary, prefers even third marriages to fornication and adultery. But we who ought to present our bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is our reasonable service, should consider, not what God permits, but what He wishes: that we may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God. It follows that what He merely permits is neither good, nor acceptable, nor perfect. And he gives his reasons for this advice: [4526] "Knowing the season, that now it is high time for you to awake out of sleep: for now is salvation nearer to us than when we first believed. The night is far spent, and the day is at hand." And lastly: "Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof." God's will is one thing, His indulgence another. Whence, writing to the Corinthians, he says, [4527] "I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ. I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able. For ye are yet carnal." He who [4528] is in the merely animal state, and does not receive the things pertaining to the Spirit of God (for he is foolish, and cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned), he is not fed with the food of perfect chastity, but with the coarse milk of marriage. As through man came death, so also through man came the resurrection of the dead. As in Adam we all die, so in Christ we shall all be made alive. Under the law we served the old Adam, under the Gospel let us serve the new Adam. For the first man Adam was made a living soul, the last Adam was made a quickening spirit. [4529] "The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is of heaven. As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy: and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly. Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption." This is so clear that no explanation can make it clearer: "Flesh and blood," he says, "cannot inherit the Kingdom of God, neither doth corruption inherit incorruption." If corruption attaches to all intercourse, and incorruption is characteristic of chastity, the rewards of chastity cannot belong to marriage. [4530] "For we know that if the earthly house of this tabernacle be dissolved, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal, in the heavens. For verily in this we groan, longing to be clothed upon with our habitation which is from heaven. We are willing to be absent from the body, and to be at home with the Lord. Wherefore also we make it our aim, whether in the body, or out of the body, to be well-pleasing unto God." And by way of more fully explaining what he did not wish them to be he says elsewhere: [4531] "I espoused you to one husband, that I might present you as a pure virgin to Christ." But if you choose to apply the words to the whole Assembly of believers, and in this betrothal to Christ include both married women, and the twice-married, and widows, and virgins, that also makes for us. For whilst he invites all to chastity and to the reward of virginity, he shows that virginity is more excellent than all these conditions. And again writing to the Galatians he says: [4532] "Because by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified." Among the works of the law is marriage, and accordingly under it they are cursed who have no children. And if under the Gospel it is permitted to have children, it is one thing to make a concession to weakness, another to hold out rewards to virtue.
38. Something else I will say to my friends who marry and after long chastity and continence begin to burn and are as wanton as the brutes: [4533] "Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now perfected in the flesh? Did ye suffer so many things in vain?" If the Apostle in the case of some persons loosens the cords of continence, and lets them have a slack rein, he does so on account of the infirmity of the flesh. This is the enemy he has in view when he once more says: [4534] "Walk by the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh." It is unnecessary now to speak of the works of the flesh: it would be tedious, and he who chooses can easily gather them from the letter of the Apostle. I will only speak of the Spirit and its fruits, love, joy, peace, long suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, [4535] continence. All the virtues of the Spirit are supported and protected by continence, which is as it were their solid foundation and crowning point. Against such there is no law. [4536] "And they that are of Christ have crucified their flesh with the passions and the lusts thereof. If we live by the Spirit, by the Spirit let us also walk." Why do we who with Christ have crucified our flesh and its passions and desires again desire to do the things of the flesh? [4537] "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth unto his own flesh, shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth unto the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap eternal life." I think that he who has a wife, so long as he reverts to the practice in question, that Satan may not tempt him, is sowing to the flesh and not to the Spirit. And he who sows to the flesh (the words are not mine, but the Apostle's) reaps corruption. God the Father chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world, that we might be holy and without spot before Him. [4538] We walked in the lusts of the flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the thoughts, and were children of wrath, even as the rest. But now He has raised us up with Him, and made us to sit with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, [4539] that we may put away according to our former manner of life the old man, which is corrupt according to the lusts of deceit, and that blessing may be applied to us which so finely concludes the mystical Epistle to the Ephesians: [4540] "Grace be with all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ in uncorruptness." [4541] "For our citizenship is in heaven; from whence also we wait for a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: who shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation, that it may be conformed to the body of his glory. [4542] Whatsoever things then are true, whatsoever are chaste, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things pertain to purity, let us join ourselves to these, let us follow these. [4543] Christ hath reconciled us in his body to God the Father through his death, and has presented us holy and without spot, and without blame before himself: in whom we have been also circumcised, not with the circumcision made with hands, to the spoiling of the body of the flesh, but with the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, wherein also we rose with him. If then we have risen with Christ, let us seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God; let us set our affections on things above, not upon the things that are upon the earth. For we are dead, and our life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ our life shall appear, then we also shall appear with him in glory. [4544] No soldier on service entangleth himself in the affairs of this life; that he may please him who enrolled him as a soldier. [4545] For the grace of God hath appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us, to the intent that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live purely and righteously and godly in this present world."
39. The day would not be long enough were I to attempt to relate all that the Apostle enjoins concerning purity. These things are those concerning which our Lord said to the Apostles: [4546] "I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit, when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he shall guide you into all the truth." After the crucifixion of Christ, we find in the [4547] Acts of the Apostles that one house, that of Philip the Evangelist, produced four virgin daughters, to the end that Cæsarea, where the Gentile Church had been consecrated in the person of Cornelius the centurion, might afford an illustration of virginity. And whereas our Lord said in the Gospel: [4548] "The law and the prophets were until John," they because they were virgins are related to have prophesied even after John. For they could not be bound by the law of the Old Testament, who had shone with the brightness of virginity. Let us pass on to James, who was called the brother of the Lord, a man of such sanctity and righteousness, and distinguished by so rigid and perpetual a virginity, that even [4549] Josephus, the Jewish historian, relates that the overthrow of Jerusalem was due to his death. He, the first bishop of the Church at Jerusalem, which was composed of Jewish believers, to whom Paul went, accompanied by Titus and Barnabas, says in his Epistle: [4550] "Be not deceived, my beloved brethren. Every good gift and every perfect boon is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, [4551] with whom there is no difference, neither shadow that is cast by turning. Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first-fruits of his creatures." Himself a virgin, he teaches virginity in a mystery. Every perfect gift cometh down from above, where marriage is unknown; and it cometh down, not from any one you please, but from the Father of lights, Who says to the apostles, "Ye are the light of the world;" with Whom there is no difference of Jew, or Gentile, nor does that shadow which was the companion of the law, trouble those who have believed from among the nations; but with His word He begat us, and with the word of truth, because some shadow, image, and likeness of truth went before in the law, that we might be the first-fruits of His creatures. And as He who was Himself the [4552] first begotten from the dead has raised all that have died in Him: so He who was a virgin, consecrated the first-fruits of His virgins in His own virgin self. Let us also consider what Peter thinks of the calling of the Gentiles: [4553] "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy begat us again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, unto an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, who by the power of God are guarded through faith unto a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time." Where we read of an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, prepared in heaven and reserved for the last time, and of the hope of eternal life when they will neither marry, nor be given in marriage, there, in other words, the privileges of virginity are described. For he shows as much in what follows: [4554] "Wherefore girding up the loins of your mind, be sober and set your hope perfectly on the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ; as children of obedience, not fashioning yourselves according to your former lusts in the time of your ignorance; but like as he which called you is holy, be ye yourselves also holy in all manner of living; because it is written, ye shall be holy; for I am holy. [4555] For we were not redeemed with contemptible things, with silver or gold; but with the precious blood of a lamb without spot, Jesus Christ, [4556] that we might purify our souls in obedience to the truth, having been begotten again not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, through the word of God, [4557] who liveth and abideth. And as living stones let us be built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood offering up spiritual sacrifices through Christ our Lord. [4558] For we are an elect race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession. [4559] Christ died for us in the flesh. Let us arm ourselves with the same conversation as did Christ; for he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin; that we should no longer live the rest of our time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God. For the time past is sufficient for us when we walked in lasciviousness, lusts, and other vices. Great and precious are the promises attaching to virginity which He has given us, [4560] that through it we may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world through lust. [4561] The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptation, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment unto the day of judgement, but chiefly them that walk after the flesh in the lust of defilement, and despise dominion, daring, self-willed. For they, as beasts of burden, without reason, think only of their belly and their lusts, railers who shall in their corruption be destroyed, and shall receive the reward of iniquity: men that count unrighteousness delight, spots and blemishes, thinking of nothing but their pleasures; having eyes full of adultery and insatiable lust, deceiving souls not yet strengthened by the love of Christ. For they utter swelling words and easily snare the unlearned with the seduction of the flesh; promising them liberty while they themselves are the slaves of vice, luxury, and corruption. For of what a man is overcome, of the same is he also brought into bondage. But if, after they had escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again overcome by that which they before overcame, the last state is become worse with them than the first. And it were better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than, after knowing it, to turn back and forsake the holy commandment delivered unto them. And it has happened unto them according to the true proverb, the dog hath turned to his own vomit again, and the sow that had washed to wallowing in the mire." I have hesitated, for fear of being tedious, to quote the whole passage of the second Epistle of Peter, and have merely shown that the Holy Spirit in prophecy foretold the teachers of this time and their heresy. Lastly, he more clearly denotes them, saying, [4562] "In the last days seducing mockers shall come, walking after their own lusts."
40. The Apostle has described Jovinianus speaking with swelling cheeks and nicely balancing his inflated utterances, promising heavenly liberty, when he himself is the slave of vice and self-indulgence, a dog returning to his vomit. For although he boasts of being a monk, he has exchanged his dirty tunic, bare feet, common bread, and drink of water, for a snowy dress, sleek skin, honey-wine and dainty dishes, for the sauces of [4563] Apicius and [4564] Paxamus, for baths and rubbings, and for the cook-shops. Is it not clear that he prefers his belly to Christ, and thinks his ruddy complexion worth the kingdom of heaven? And yet that handsome monk so fat and sleek, and of bright appearance, who always walks with the air of a bridegroom, must either marry a wife if he is to show that virginity and marriage are equal: or if he does not marry one, it is useless for him to bandy words with us when his acts are on our side. And John agrees with this almost to the letter: [4565] "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world is the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of this life, which is not of the Father, but is of the world." And, "The world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever. A new commandment have I written unto you, which thing is true both in Christ and in you; because the darkness is passing away, and the true light already shineth." And again, [4566] "Beloved, now are we the children of God, and it is not yet made manifest what we shall be. But we know that, if he shall be manifested, we shall be like him: for we shall see him even as he is. And every one that hath this hope purifieth himself, even as he is pure. [4567] Herein is our love made perfect, if we have boldness in the day of judgement: that as he is, even so may we be in this world." The Epistle of Jude also expresses nearly the same: [4568] "Hating even the garment spotted by the flesh." Let us read the Apocalypse of John, and we shall there find the Lamb upon Mount Sion, [4569] and with Him "a hundred and forty-four thousand of them that were sealed, having His name and the name of His Father written in their foreheads, who sing a new song, and no one can sing that song save they who have been redeemed out of the earth. These are they who have not defiled themselves with women, for they continued virgins. These follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth: for they were redeemed from among men, first-fruits to God and to the Lamb, and in their mouth was found no guile, and they are without spot." [4570] Out of each tribe, the tribe of Dan excepted, the place of which is taken by the tribe of Levi, twelve thousand virgins who have been sealed are spoken of as future believers, who have not defiled themselves with women. And that we may not suppose the reference to be to those who know not harlots, he immediately added: "For they continued virgins." Whereby he shows that all who have not preserved their virginity, in comparison of pure and angelic chastity and of our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, are defiled. [4571] "These are they who sing a new song which no man can sing except him that is a virgin. These are first-fruits unto God and unto the Lamb, and are without blemish." If virgins are first-fruits, it follows that widows and the continent in marriage, come after the first-fruits, that is, are in the second and third rank: nor can a lost people be saved unless it offer such sacrifices of chastity to God, and with pure victims reconcile the spotless Lamb. It would be endless work to explain the Gospel mystery of the ten virgins, five of whom were wise and five foolish. All I say now is, that as mere virginity without other works does not save, so all works without virginity, purity, continence, chastity, are imperfect. And we shall not be hindered in the least from taking this view by the objection of our opponent that our Lord was at Cana of Galilee, and joined in the marriage festivities when He turned water into wine. I shall very briefly reply, that He Who was circumcised on the eighth day, and for Whom a pair of turtle-doves and two young pigeons were offered on the day of purification, like others before He suffered, shewed His approval of Jewish custom, that He might not seem to give His enemies just cause for putting Him to death on the pretext that He destroyed the law and condemned nature. And even this was done for our sakes. For by going once to a marriage, He taught that men should marry only once. Moreover, at that time it was possible to injure virginity if marriage were not placed next to it, and the purity of widowhood in the third rank. But now when heretics are condemning wedlock, and despise the ordinance of God, we gladly hear anything he [4572] may say in praise of marriage. For the Church does not condemn marriage, but makes it subordinate; nor does she reject it, but regulates it; for she knows, as was said before, that [4573] in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and earthenware; and that some are to honour, some to dishonour; and that whoever cleanses himself will be a vessel of honour, necessary, prepared for every good work.
41. I have given enough and more than enough illustrations from the divine writings of Christian chastity and angelic virginity. But as I understand that our opponent in his commentaries summons us to the tribunal of worldly wisdom, and we are told that views of this kind are never accepted in the world, and that our religion has invented a dogma against nature, I will quickly run through Greek and Roman and Foreign History, and will show that virginity ever took the lead of chastity. Fable relates that Atalanta, the virgin of Calydonian fame, lived for the chase and dwelt always in the woods; in other words that she did not set her heart on marriage with its troubles of pregnancy and of sickness, but upon the nobler life of freedom and chastity. [4574] Harpalyce too, a Thracian virgin, is described by the famous poet; and so is [4575] Camilia, queen of the Volsci, on whom, when she came to his assistance, Turnus had no higher praise which he could bestow than to call her a virgin. "O Virgin, Glory of Italy!" And that famous daughter of [4576] Leos, the lady of the brazen house, ever a virgin, is related to have freed her country from pestilence by her voluntary death: and the blood of the virgin [4577] Iphigenia is said to have calmed the stormy winds. What need to tell of the Sibyls of Erythræ and Cumæ, and the eight others? for Varro asserts there were ten whose ornament was virginity, and divination the reward of their virginity. But if in the Æolian dialect "Sibyl" is represented by Theoboule, we must understand that a knowledge of the Counsel of God is rightly attributed to virginity alone. We read, too, that Cassandra and Chryseis, prophetesses of Apollo and Juno, were virgins. And there were innumerable priestesses of the Taurian Diana, and of Vesta. One of these, Munitia, being suspected of unchastily was [4578] buried alive, which would be in my opinion an unjust punishment, unless the violation of virginity were considered a serious crime. At all events how highly the Romans always esteemed virgins is clear from the fact that consuls and generals even in their triumphal chariots and bringing home the spoils of conquered nations, were wont to make way for them to pass. And so did men of all ranks. When [4579] Claudia, a Vestal Virgin, was suspected of unchastily, and a vessel containing the image of Cybele was aground in the Tiber, it is related that she, to prove her chastity, with her girdle drew the ship which a thousand men could not move. Yet, as [4580] the uncle of Lucan the poet says, it would have been better if this circumstance had decorated a chastity tried and proved, and had not pleaded in defence of a chastity equivocal. No wonder that we read such things of human beings, when heathen error also invented the virgin goddesses Minerva and Diana, and placed the Virgin among the twelve signs of the Zodiac, by means of which, as they suppose, the world revolves. It is a proof of the little esteem in which they held marriage that they did not even among the scorpions, centaurs, crabs, fishes, and capricorn, thrust in a husband and wife. When the thirty tyrants of Athens had slain Phidon at the banquet, they commanded his virgin daughters to come to them, naked like harlots, and there upon the ground, red with their father's blood, to act the wanton. For a little while they hid their grief, and then when they saw the revellers were intoxicated, going out on the plea of easing nature, they embraced one another and threw themselves into a well, that by death they might save their virginity. The virgin daughter of Demotion, chief of the Areopagites, having heard of the death of her betrothed, [4581] Leosthenes, who had originated the Lamian war, slew herself, for she declared that although in body she was a virgin, yet if she were compelled to accept another, she should regard him as her second husband, when she had given her heart to Leosthenes. So close a friendship long existed between Sparta and Messene that for the furtherance of certain religious rites they even exchanged virgins. Well, on one occasion when the men of Messene attempted to outrage fifty Lacedæmonian virgins, out of so many not one consented, but they all most gladly died in defence of their chastity. Whence there arose a long and grievous war, and in the long run [4582] Mamertina was destroyed. Aristoclides, tyrant of Orchomenos, fell in love with a virgin of Stymphalus, and when after the death of her father she took refuge in the temple of Diana, and embraced the image of the goddess and could not be dragged thence by force, she was slain on the spot. Her death caused such intense grief throughout Arcadia that the people took up arms and avenged the virgin's death. [4583] Aristomenes of Messene, a just man, at a time when the Lacedæmonians, whom he had conquered, were celebrating by night the festival called the [4584] Hyacinthia, carried off from the sportive bands fifteen virgins, and fleeing all night at full speed got away from the Spartan territory. His companions wished to outrage them, but he admonished them to the best of his power not to do so, and when certain refused to obey, he slew them, and restrained the rest by fear. The maidens were afterwards ransomed by their kinsmen, and on seeing Aristomenes condemned for murder would not return to their country until clasping the knees of the judges they beheld the protector of their chastity acquitted. How shall we sufficiently praise the daughters of Scedasus at Leuctra in Boeotia? It is related that in the absence of their father they hospitably entertained two youths who were passing by, and who having drunk to excess violated the virgins in the course of the night. Being unwilling to survive the loss of their virginity, the maidens inflicted deadly wounds on one another. Nor would it be right to omit mention of the Locrian virgins. They were sent to Ilium according to custom which had lasted for nearly a thousand years, and yet not one gave occasion to any idle tale or filthy rumour of virginity defiled. Could any one pass over in silence the seven virgins of Miletus who, when the Gauls spread desolation far and wide, that they might suffer no indignity at the hands of the enemy, escaped disgrace by death, and left to all virgins the lesson of their example--that noble minds care more for chastity than life? Nicanor having conquered and overthrown Thebes was himself overcome by a passion for one captive virgin, whose voluntary self-surrender he longed for. A captive maid, he thought, must be only too glad. But he found that virginity is dearer to the pure in heart than a kingdom, when with tears and grief he held her in his arms slain by her own hand. Greek writers tell also of another Theban virgin who had been deflowered by a Macedonian foe, and who, hiding her grief for a while, slew the violator of her virginity as he slept, and then killed herself with the sword, so that she would neither live when her chastity was lost, nor die before she had avenged herself.
42. To come to the Gymnosophists of India, the opinion is authoritatively handed down that Budda, the founder of their religion, had his birth through the side of a virgin. And we need not wonder at this in the case of Barbarians when cultured Greece supposed that Minerva at her birth sprang from the head of Jove, and Father Bacchus from his thigh. [4585] Speusippus also, Plato's nephew, and [4586] Clearchus in his eulogy of Plato, and [4587] Anaxelides in the second book of his philosophy, relates that Perictione, the mother of Plato, was violated by an apparition of Apollo, and they agree in thinking that the prince of wisdom was born of a virgin. [4588] Timæus writes that the [4589] virgin daughter of [4590] Pythagoras was at the head of a band of virgins, and instructed them in chastity. [4591] Diodorus, the disciple of Socrates, is said to have had five daughters skilled in dialectics and distinguished for chastity, of whom a full account is given by Philo the master of [4592] Carneades. And mighty Rome cannot taunt us as though we had invented the story of the birth of our Lord and Saviour from a virgin; for the Romans believe that the founders of their city and race were the offspring of the virgin [4593] Ilia and of Mars.
43. Let these allusions to the virgins of the world, brief and hastily gathered from many histories, now suffice. I will proceed to married women who were reluctant to survive the decease or violent death of their husbands for fear they might be forced into a second marriage, and who entertained a marvellous affection for the only husbands they had. This may teach us that second marriage was repudiated among the heathen. Dido, the sister of Pygmalion, having collected a vast amount of gold and silver, sailed to Africa, and there built Carthage. And when her hand was sought in marriage by Iarbas, king of Libya, she deferred the marriage for a while until her country was settled. Not long after, having raised a [4594] funeral pyre to the memory of her former husband Sichæus, she preferred to "burn rather than to marry." Carthage was built by a woman of chastity, and its end was a tribute to the excellence of the virtue. For the [4595] wife of Hasdrubal, when the city was captured and set on fire, and she saw that she could not herself escape capture by the Romans, took her little children in either hand and leaped into the burning ruins of her house.
44. What need to tell of the wife of [4596] Niceratus, who, not enduring to wrong her husband, inflicted death upon herself rather than subject herself to the lust of the thirty tyrants whom Lysander had set over conquered Athens? [4597] Artemisia, also, wife of Mausolus, is related to have been distinguished for chastity. Though she was queen of Caria, and is extolled by great poets and historians, no higher praise is bestowed upon her than that when her husband was dead she loved him as much as when he was alive, and built a tomb so great that even to the present day all costly sepulchres are called after his name, mausoleums. [4598] Teuta, queen of the Illyrians, owed her long sway over brave warriors, and her frequent victories over Rome, to her marvellous chastity. The Indians and almost all the Barbarians have a plurality of wives. It is a law with them that the favourite wife must be burned with her dead husband. The wives therefore vie with one another for the husband's love, and the highest ambition of the rivals, and the proof of chastity, is to be considered worthy of death. So then she that is victorious, having put on her former dress and ornaments, lies down beside the corpse, embracing and kissing it, and to the glory of chastity despises the flames which are burning beneath her. I suppose that she who dies thus, wants no second marriage. The famous Alcibiades, the friend of Socrates, when Athens was conquered, fled to Pharnabazus, who took a bribe from Lysander the Lacedæmonian leader and ordered him to be slain. He was strangled, and when his head had been cut off it was sent to Lysander as proof of the murder, but the rest of his body lay unburied. His concubine, therefore, all alone, in defiance of the command of the cruel enemy, in the midst of strangers, and in the face of peril, gave him due burial, for she was ready to die for the dead man whom she had loved when living. Let matrons, Christian matrons at all events, imitate the fidelity of concubines, and exhibit in their freedom what she in her captivity preserved.
45. Strato, ruler of Sidon, thought of dying by his own hand, that he might not be the sport of the Persians, who were close by and whose alliance he had discarded for the friendship of the king of Egypt. But he drew back in terror, and eying the sword which he had seized, awaited in alarm the approach of the enemy. His wife, knowing that he must be immediately taken, wrested the weapon from his hand, and pierced his side. When the body was properly laid out she lay down upon it in the agony of death, that she might not violate her virgin troth in the embraces of another. [4599] Xenophon, in describing the early years of the elder Cyrus, relates that when her husband Abradatas was slain, Panthea who had loved him intensely, placed herself beside the mangled body, then stabbed herself, and let her blood run into her husband's wounds. The [4600] queen whom the king her husband had shewn naked and without her knowledge to his friend, thought she had good cause for slaying the king. She judged that she was not beloved if it was possible for her to be exhibited to another. Rhodogune, daughter of Darius, after the death of her husband, put to death the nurse who was trying to persuade her to marry again. [4601] Alcestis is related in story to have voluntarily died for Admetus, and Penelope's chastity is the theme of Homer's song. Laodamia's praises are also sung by the poets, because, when [4602] Protesilaus was slain at Troy, she refused to survive him.
46. I may pass on to Roman women; and the first that I shall mention is [4603] Lucretia, who would not survive her violated chastity, but blotted out the stain upon her person with her own blood. Duilius, the first Roman who won a [4604] naval triumph, took to wife a virgin, Bilia, of such extraordinary chastity that she was an example even to an age which held unchastity to be not merely vicious but monstrous. When he was grown old and feeble he was once in the course of a quarrel taunted with having bad breath. In dudgeon he betook himself home, and on complaining to his wife that she had never told him of it so that he might remedy the fault, he received the reply that she would have done so, but she thought that all men had foul breath as he had. In either case this chaste and noble woman deserves praise, whether she was not aware there was anything wrong with her husband, or if she patiently endured, and her husband discovered his unfortunate condition not by the disgust of a wife, but by the abuse of an enemy. At all events the woman who marries a second time cannot say this. Marcia, Cato's younger daughter, on being asked after the loss of her husband why she did not marry again, replied that she could not find a man who wanted her more than her money. Her words teach us that men in choosing their wives look for riches rather than for chastity, and that many in marrying use not their eyes but their fingers. That must be an excellent thing which is won by avarice! When the same lady was mourning the loss of her husband, and the matrons asked what day would terminate her grief, she replied, "The same that terminates my life." I imagine that a woman who thus followed her husband in heart and mind had no thought of marrying again. Porcia, whom [4605] Brutus took to wife, was a virgin; Cato's wife, [4606] Marcia, was not a virgin; but Marcia went to and fro between Hortensius and Cato, and was quite content to live without Cato; while [4607] Porcia could not live without Brutus; for women attach themselves closely to particular men, and to keep to one is a strong link in the chain of affection. When a relative urged Annia to marry again (she was of full age and a goodly person), she answered, "I shall certainly not do so. For, if I find a good man, I have no wish to be in fear of losing him: if a bad one, why must I put up with a bad husband after having had a good one?" [4608] Porcia the younger, on hearing a certain lady of good character, who had a second husband, praised in her house, replied, "A chaste and happy matron never marries more than once." Marcella the elder, on being asked by her mother if she was glad she was married, answered, "So much so that I want nothing more." [4609] Valeria, sister of the Messalas, when she lost her husband Servius, would marry no one else. On being asked why not, she said that to her, her husband Servius was ever alive.
47. I feel that in giving this list of women I have said far more than is customary in illustrating a point, and that I might be justly censured by my learned reader. But what am I to do when the women of our time press me with apostolic authority, and before the first husband is buried, repeat from morning to night the precepts which allow a second marriage? Seeing they despise the fidelity which Christian purity dictates, let them at least learn chastity from the heathen. A book On Marriage, worth its weight in gold, passes under the name of [4610] Theophrastus. In it the author asks whether a wise man marries. And after laying down the conditions--that the wife must be fair, of good character, and honest parentage, the husband in good health and of ample means, and after saying that under these circumstances a wise man sometimes enters the state of matrimony, he immediately proceeds thus: "But all these conditions are seldom satisfied in marriage. A wise man therefore must not take a wife. For in the first place his study of philosophy will be hindered, and it is impossible for anyone to attend to his books and his wife. Matrons want many things, costly dresses, gold, jewels, great outlay, maid-servants, all kinds of furniture, litters and gilded coaches. Then come curtain-lectures the livelong night: she complains that one lady goes out better dressed than she: that another is looked up to by all: I am a poor despised nobody at the ladies' assemblies.' Why did you ogle that creature next door?' Why were you talking to the maid?' What did you bring from the market?' I am not allowed to have a single friend, or companion.' She suspects that her husband's love goes the same way as her hate. There may be in some neighbouring city the wisest of teachers; but if we have a wife we can neither leave her behind, nor take the burden with us. To support a poor wife, is hard: to put up with a rich one, is torture. Notice, too, that in the case of a wife you cannot pick and choose: you must take her as you find her. If she has a bad temper, or is a fool, if she has a blemish, or is proud, or has bad breath, whatever her fault may be--all this we learn after marriage. Horses, asses, cattle, even slaves of the smallest worth, clothes, kettles, wooden seats, cups, and earthenware pitchers, are first tried and then bought: a wife is the only thing that is not shown before she is married, for fear she may not give satisfaction. Our gaze must always be directed to her face, and we must always praise her beauty: if you look at another woman, she thinks that she is out of favour. She must be called my lady, her birth-day must be kept, we must swear by her health and wish that she may survive us, respect must be paid to the nurse, to the nursemaid, to the father's slave, to the foster-child, to the handsome hanger-on, to the curled darling who manages her affairs, and to the eunuch who ministers to the safe indulgence of her lust: names which are only a cloak for adultery. Upon whomsoever she sets her heart, they must have her love though they want her not. If you give her the management of the whole house, you must yourself be her slave. If you reserve something for yourself, she will not think you are loyal to her; but she will turn to strife and hatred, and unless you quickly take care, she will have the poison ready. If you introduce old women, and soothsayers, and prophets, and vendors of jewels and silken clothing, you imperil her chastity; if you shut the door upon them, she is injured and fancies you suspect her. But what is the good of even a careful guardian, when an unchaste wife cannot be watched, and a chaste one ought not to be? For necessity is but a faithless keeper of chastity, and she alone really deserves to be called pure, who is free to sin if she chooses. If a woman be fair, she soon finds lovers; if she be ugly, it is easy to be wanton. It is difficult to guard what many long for. It is annoying to have what no one thinks worth possessing. But the misery of having an ugly wife is less than that of watching a comely one. Nothing is safe, for which a whole people sighs and longs. One man entices with his figure, another with his brains, another with his wit, another with his open hand. Somehow, or sometime, the fortress is captured which is attacked on all sides. Men marry, indeed, so as to get a manager for the house, to solace weariness, to banish solitude; but a faithful slave is a far better manager, more submissive to the master, more observant of his ways, than a wife who thinks she proves herself mistress if she acts in opposition to her husband, that is, if she does what pleases her, not what she is commanded. But friends, and servants who are under the obligation of benefits received, are better able to wait upon us in sickness than a wife who makes us responsible for her tears (she will sell you enough to make a deluge for the hope of a legacy), boasts of her anxiety, but drives her sick husband to the distraction of despair. But if she herself is poorly, we must fall sick with her and never leave her bedside. Or if she be a good and agreeable wife (how rare a bird she is!), we have to share her groans in childbirth, and suffer torture when she is in danger. A wise man can never be alone. He has with him the good men of all time, and turns his mind freely wherever he chooses. What is inaccessible to him in person he can embrace in thought. And, if men are scarce, he converses with God. [4611] He is never less alone than when alone. Then again, to marry for the sake of children, so that our name may not perish, or that we may have support in old age, and leave our property without dispute, is the height of stupidity. For what is it to us when we are leaving the world if another bears our name, when even a son does not all at once take his father's title, and there are countless others who are called by the same name. Or what support in old age is he whom you bring up, and who may die before you, or turn out a reprobate? Or at all events when he reaches mature age, you may seem to him long in dying. Friends and relatives whom you can judiciously love are better and safer heirs than those whom you must make your heirs whether you like it or not. Indeed, the surest way of having a good heir is to ruin your fortune in a good cause while you live, not to leave the fruit of your labour to be used you know not how."
48. When Theophrastus thus discourses, are there any of us, Christians, whose conversation is in heaven and who daily say [4612] "I long to be dissolved, and to be with Christ," whom he does not put to the blush? Shall a joint-heir of Christ really long for human heirs? And shall he desire children and delight himself in a long line of descendants, who will perhaps fall into the clutches of Antichrist, when we read that [4613] Moses and [4614] Samuel preferred other men to their own sons, and did not count as their children those whom they saw to be displeasing to God? When Cicero after [4615] divorcing Terentia was requested by [4616] Hirtius to marry his sister, he [4617] set the matter altogether on one side, and said that he could not possibly devote himself to a wife and to philosophy. Meanwhile that excellent partner, who had herself drunk wisdom at Tully's fountains, married [4618] Sallust his enemy, and took for her third husband Messala Corvinus, and thus, as it were, passed through three degrees of eloquence. Socrates had two wives, Xantippe and Myron, grand-daughter of Aristides. They frequently quarrelled, and he was accustomed to banter them for disagreeing about him, he being the ugliest of men, with snub nose, bald forehead, rough-haired, and bandy-legged. At last they planned an attack upon him, and having punished him severely, and put him to flight, vexed him for a long time. On one occasion when he opposed Xantippe; who from above was heaping abuse upon him, the termagant soused him with dirty water, but he only wiped his head and said, "I knew that a shower must follow such thunder as that." [4619] Metella, consort of L. Sulla the [4620] Fortunate (except in the matter of his wife) was [4621] openly unchaste. It was the common talk of Athens, as I learnt in my youthful years when we soon pick up what is bad, and yet Sulla was in the dark, and first got to know the secrets of his household through the abuse of his enemies. Cn. Pompey had an impure wife [4622] Mucia, who was surrounded by eunuchs from Pontus and troops of the countrymen of Mithridates. Others thought that he knew all and submitted to it; but a comrade told him during the campaign, and the conqueror of the whole world was dismayed at the sad intelligence. [4623] M. Cato, the Censor, had a wife Actoria Paula, a woman of low origin, fond of drink, violent, and (who would believe it?) haughty to Cato. I say this for fear anyone may suppose that in marrying a poor woman he has secured peace. When [4624] Philip king of Macedon, against whom [4625] Demosthenes thundered in his Philippics, was entering his bed-room as usual, his wife in a passion shut him out. Finding himself excluded he held his tongue, and consoled himself for the insult by reading a tragic poem. [4626] Gorgias the Rhetorician recited his excellent treatise on Concord to the Greeks, then at variance among themselves, at Olympia. Whereupon [4627] Melanthius his enemy observed: "Here is a man who teaches us concord, and yet could not make concord between himself his wife, and maid-servant, three persons in one house." The truth was that his wife envied the beauty of the girl, and drove the purest of men wild with daily quarrels. Whole tragedies of Euripides are censures on women. Hence Hermione says, [4628] "The counsels of evil women have beguiled me." In the semi-barbarous and remote city [4629] Leptis it is the custom for a daughter-in-law on [4630] the second day to beg the loan of a jar from her mother-in-law. The latter at once denies the request, and we see how true was the remark of [4631] Terence, ambiguously expressed on purpose--"How is this? do all mothers-in-law hate their daughters-in-law?" We read of a certain Roman noble who, when his friends found fault with him for having divorced a wife, beautiful, chaste, and rich, put out his foot and said to them, "And the shoe before you looks new and elegant, yet no one but myself knows where it pinches." Herodotus [4632] tells us that a woman puts off her modesty with her clothes. And our own comic poet [4633] thinks the man fortunate who has never been married. Why should I refer to Pasiphaë, [4634] Clytemnestra, and Eriphyle, the first of whom, the wife of a king and swimming in pleasure, is said to have lusted for a bull, the second to have killed her: husband for the sake of an adulterer, the third to have betrayed Amphiaraus, and to have preferred a gold necklace to the welfare of her husband. In all the bombast of tragedy and the overthrow of houses, cities, and kingdoms, it is the wives and concubines who stir up strife. Parents take up arms against their children: unspeakable banquets are served: and on account of the rape of one wretched woman Europe and Asia are involved in a ten years' war. We read of some who were divorced the day after they were married, and immediately married again. Both husbands are to blame, both he who was so soon dissatisfied, and he who was so soon pleased. Epicurus the patron of pleasure (though [4635] Metrodorus his disciple married Leontia) says that a wise man can seldom marry, because marriage has many drawbacks. And as riches, honours, bodily health, and other things which we call indifferent, are neither good nor bad, but stand as it were midway, and become good and bad according to the use and issue, so wives stand on the border line of good and ill. It is, moreover, a serious matter for a wise man to be in doubt whether he is going to marry a good or a bad woman. [4636] Chrysippus ridiculously maintains that a wise man should marry, that he may not outrage Jupiter [4637] Gamelius and Genethlius. For upon that principle the Latins would not marry at all, since they have no Jupiter who presides over marriage. But if, as he thinks, the life of men is determined by the names of gods, whoever chooses to sit will offend Jupiter [4638] Stator.
49. Aristotle and Plutarch and our Seneca have written treatises on matrimony, out of which we have already made some extracts and now add a few more. "The love of beauty is the forgetting of reason and the near neighbour of madness; a foul blot little in keeping with a sound mind. It confuses counsel, breaks high and generous spirits, draws away men from great thoughts to mean ones; it makes men querulous, ill-tempered, foolhardy, cruelly imperious, servile flatterers, good for nothing, at last not even for love itself. For although in the intensity of passion it burns like a raging fire, it wastes much time through suspicions, tears, and complaints: it begets hatred of itself, and at last hates itself." The course of love is laid bare in Plato's Phædrus from beginning to end, and Lysias explains all its drawbacks--how it is led not by reason, but by frenzy, and in particular is a harsh gaoler over lovely wives. Seneca, too, relates that he knew an accomplished man who before going out used to tie his wife's garter upon his breast, and could not bear to be absent from her for a quarter of an hour; and this pair would never take a drink unless husband and wife alternately put their lips to the cup; and they did other things just as absurd in the extravagant outbursts of their warm but blind affection. Their love was of honourable birth, but it grew out of all proportion. And it makes no difference how honourable may be the cause of a man's insanity. Hence [4639] Xystus in his Sentences tells us that "He who too ardently loves his own wife is an adulterer." It is disgraceful to love another man's wife at all, or one's own too much. A wise man ought to love his wife with judgment, not with passion. Let a man govern his voluptuous impulses, and not rush headlong into intercourse. There is nothing blacker than to love a wife as if she were an adulteress. Men who say they have contracted marriage and are bringing up children, for the good of their country and of the race, should at least imitate the brutes, and not destroy their offspring in the womb; nor should they appear in the character of lovers, but of husbands. In some cases marriage has grown out of adultery: and, shameful to relate! men have tried to teach their wives chastity after having taken their chastity away. Marriages of that sort are quickly dissolved when lust is satiated. The first allurement gone, the charm is lost. What shall I say, says Seneca, of the poor men who in numbers are bribed to take the name of husband in order to evade the laws promulgated against bachelors? How can he who is married under such conditions be a guide to morality, teach chastity, and maintain the authority of a husband? It is the saying of a very learned man, that chastity must be preserved at all costs, and that when it is lost all virtue falls to the ground. This holds the primacy of all virtues in woman. This it is that makes up for a wife's poverty, enhances her riches, redeems her deformity, gives grace to her beauty; it makes her act in a way worthy of her forefathers whose blood it does not taint with bastard offspring; of her children, who through it have no need to blush for their mother, or to be in doubt about their father; and above all, of herself, since it defends her from external violation. There is no greater calamity connected with captivity than to be the victim of another's lust. The consulship sheds lustre upon men; eloquence gives eternal renown; military glory and a triumph immortalise an obscure family. Many are the spheres ennobled by splendid ability. The virtue of woman is, in a special sense, purity. It was this that made [4640] Lucretia the equal of Brutus, if it did not make her his superior, since Brutus learnt from a woman the impossibility of being a slave. It was this that made [4641] Cornelia a fit match for Gracchus, and [4642] Porcia for a second Brutus. [4643] Tanaquil is better known than her husband. His name, like the names of many other kings, is lost in the mists of antiquity. She, through a virtue rare among women, is too deeply rooted in the hearts of all ages for her memory ever to perish. Let my married sisters copy the examples of [4644] Theano, [4645] Cleobuline, Gorgente, [4646] Timoclia, the [4647] Claudias and Cornelias; and when they find the Apostle conceding second marriage to depraved women, they will read that before the light of our religion shone upon the world wives of one husband ever held high rank among matrons, that by their hands the sacred rites of Fortuna [4648] Muliebris were performed, that a priest or [4649] Flamen twice [4650] married was unknown, that the high-priests of Athens to this day [4651] emasculate themselves by drinking hemlock, and once they have been drawn in to the pontificate, cease to be men. __________________________________________________________________
[4254] From this expression and that quoted in the notice above, it would be supposed that Jerome knew Jovinianus and his mode of life. But there is no reason to think that he had this knowledge; and his imputations against his adversary must be taken as the inferences which he draws from his opinions.
[4255] Hor. Ars Poet. 139.
[4256] Pers. Sat. iii. 118.
[4257] Plautus, Pseudolus, i. 1. 23. Has quidem, pol, credo, nisi Sibylla legerit, Interpretari alium potesse neminem.
[4258] The allusion is probably to the Sybilline books.
[4259] Æn x. 640.
[4260] The philosopher of Ephesus. Flourished about b.c. 513.
[4261] Ibi est distinctio. Instead of clearness we have to make a choice between possible meanings.
[4262] Marcion lived about a.d. 150, and was co-temporary with Polycarp, who is said to have had a personal encounter with him at Rome. Unlike other Gnostics he professed to be purely Christian in his doctrines. He is specially noted for his violent treatment of Scripture: he rejected the whole of the Old Testament, while of the New he acknowledged only the Gospel of S. Luke and ten of S. Paul's Epistles, and from these he expunged whatever he did not approve of. His sect lasted until the sixth century.
[4263] By birth an Assyrian, and a pupil of Justin Martyr. His followers were called Encratites, or Temperates, from their great austerity. They also bore the names Water-drinkers and Renouncers.
[4264] Heb. xiii. The Revised Ver. translates "let marriage be, etc." There is no verb in the original, the sentence being probably designed to be a Christian proverb, and capable of serving either as an assertion or as a precept. The revised rendering is preferred by the chief modern commentators.
[4265] Gen. i. 28.
[4266] For much interesting information relating to counting on the fingers, and for authorities on the subject, see Mayor's note on Juvenal x. 249.
[4267] The philosopher of Crotona, in Italy, b.c. 580-510. See some of his sayings in Jerome's Apology, iii. 39-40.
[4268] The great teacher of the Academy at Athens; lived b.c. 428-389.
[4269] Surnamed the "Just." He was the opponent of Themistocles. He fought at Marathon (490), and although in exile did good service at Salamis (480). He was now recalled, and after commanding the Athenians at Platæa (479) died, probably in 468, so poor that he did not leave enough to pay for his funeral.
[4270] Flourished about b.c. 370. A disciple of Socrates, and founder of the Cyrenaic School of Philosophy; he was luxurious in his life, and held pleasure to be the highest good.
[4271] Epicurus (b.c. 342-270), though a disciple of Aristippus, does not appear to have deserved the odium attached to his name by Jerome and many others. "Pleasure with him was not a mere momentary and transitory sensation, but something lasting and imperishable, consisting in pure and noble enjoyments, that is, in ataraxia and aponia, or the freedom from pain and from all influences which disturb the peace of our mind, and thereby our happiness which is the result of it." See Zeller's Socrates and the Socratic Schools (Reichel's translation), second ed., p. 337 sq.
[4272] The famous Athenian, talented, reckless and unscrupulous; born about b.c. 450, assassinated 404.
[4273] Gen. ii. 24.
[4274] Matt. xix. 5.
[4275] Gen. i. 28; ix. 1.
[4276] Gen. ix. 1.
[4277] Gen. ix. 3.
[4278] Gen. xxv. 23.
[4279] Gen. xxx. 1.
[4280] Gen. xxx. 2.
[4281] Palo. Rev. Vers. tent-pin.
[4282] Ps. lxxii. 1.
[4283] Ps. lxxii. 15.
[4284] Is. xxxviii. 19. Sept.
[4285] 1 Tim. v. 14.
[4286] Hebr. xiii. 4. See note on sec. 3.
[4287] 1 Cor. vii. 39.
[4288] 1 Tim. ii. 14.
[4289] 1 Cor. vii. 29.
[4290] 1 Cor. vii. 1 sq.
[4291] Prov. vi. 27, 28.
[4292] Mithras was the God of the Sun among the Persians. His worship was introduced at Rome under the Emperors, and thence spread over the empire.
[4293] Son of Vulcan, king of Athens, and the first to drive a four-in-hand, Virg. G. iii. 113: "First to the chariot, Ericthonius dared four steeds to join, and o'er the rapid wheels victorious hang."
[4294] 1 Pet. iii. 7.
[4295] 1 Pet. iii. 2, 3.
[4296] 1 John ii. 6.
[4297] 1 Cor. vii. 7.
[4298] 2 Cor. ii. 7.
[4299] 2 Cor. ii. 7.
[4300] 2 Cor. ii. 10. Margin.
[4301] Ps. xlv. 9, 13, 14.
[4302] 1 Peter iii. 7, joined with 1 Peter iv. 10.
[4303] 1 Cor. vii. 8.
[4304] Tit. i. 12.
[4305] 1 Cor. xv. 33.
[4306] Acts xvii. 28.
[4307] 1 Cor. vii. 10 sq.
[4308] 2 Cor. vi. 14 sq.
[4309] 1 Cor. vii. 39.
[4310] Mal. ii. 11, 12.
[4311] R.V. "To the man that doeth this, him that waketh and him that answereth."
[4312] 1 Cor. vii. 18 sq.
[4313] But S. Paul hints at a surgical operation. See Josephus, Antiq. Bk. xii. c. v. sec. 1, where certain apostates from Judaism are said "to have hid their circumcision that even when they were naked [in the gymnasium] they might appear to be Greeks." See also Celsus, Bk. vii. c. xxv.
[4314] Gal. v. 19.
[4315] 1 Cor. vi. 17.
[4316] 1 Cor. vii. 25, 26.
[4317] Ferias nuptiarum. The reference is to 1 Cor. vii. 5.
[4318] Matt. xix. 10 sq.
[4319] Jerome uses the Greek word agonothetes --President of the Games.
[4320] S. John vii. 37.
[4321] Is. lvi. 3.
[4322] Jer. xxxviii. 7.
[4323] Acts viii. 27.
[4324] 1 Cor. vii. 26.
[4325] Matt. xxiv. 19, &c.
[4326] 1 Cor. vii. 27.
[4327] 1 Cor. vii. 30 sqq.
[4328] See Rev. Ver. Margin.
[4329] See the treatise on the Perp. Virginity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Rome, 384.
[4330] Ep. xxii. on the guarding of virginity. Rome, 384.
[4331] Jerome apparently, here, alludes to some early work of Tertullian not now extant.
[4332] Jerome often alludes to his relation to Gregory, in the year 381; he was present at the council of Constantinople, of which Gregory was then the bishop.
[4333] This rendering supposes kai memeristai to be joined to the preceding sentence. The Vulgate has et divisus est, and so also the Æthiopic Version.
[4334] S. John xv. 19.
[4335] 1 Cor. vii. 35.
[4336] 1 Cor. iii. 10.
[4337] 1 Cor. vii. 37, 38.
[4338] Ps. xxxvi. 27.
[4339] Eccles. vii. 16.
[4340] 1 Cor. vii. 39, 40.
[4341] 1 Tim. v. 11, 15.
[4342] 1 Cor. vii. 40.
[4343] Rom vii. 2, 3.
[4344] 1 Tim. v. 14, 15.
[4345] See 1 Tim. iii. 12. Most ancient writers interpreted S. Paul's words as referring to second marriages after loss of first wife, however happening. And certain Councils decided in the same sense, e.g. Neocæsarea (a.d. 314). Ellicott's Pastoral Ep., fifth ed., p. 41.
[4346] 1 Tim. v. 9. Other authorities, however, suppose the words to refer to an order of widows, and pertinently ask, would the Church thus limit her alms.
[4347] 1 Cor. vi. 12.
[4348] Eph. v. 31; Gen. ii.
[4349] Eph. v. 32.
[4350] Eph. v. 25; Col. iii. 9-11.
[4351] 1 Thess. iv. 7.
[4352] Lit. through a virgin. The allusion is, probably, to his baptism by a virgin, i.e., John Baptist.
[4353] But see Gen. iv. 26.
[4354] 1 Pet. iii. 20.
[4355] Eph. i. 10.
[4356] Rev. i. 8; xxii. 13.
[4357] Rom. xiv. 21.
[4358] Gen. xxxi. 46-49, where the heap itself is called Galeed.
[4359] Gen. xxxii. 25, 28, 31.
[4360] Gen. xxxv. 16, 20.
[4361] Gen. xxxviii.
[4362] Gen. xxxviii. 9.
[4363] Ex. iv. 24-26.
[4364] Ex. iii. 5.
[4365] 1 Sam. xxi. 4.
[4366] Levit. xxi. 13, 14.
[4367] The reference is, probably, to Levit. xxii. 13. But the second marriage is not there prohibited, and in the ideal polity of Ezekiel (xliv. 22) a priest might marry the widow of a priest.
[4368] Levit. xxi. 3.
[4369] Deut. xx. 6, 7, where an indulgence, not a prohibition, is clearly indicated.
[4370] Ex. xxxviii. 8. Sept. Vulg. "who watched;" Onkelos' Targum "who assembled to pray," and so the Syriac Version. The Hebrew word signifies "to go forth to war," but is applied to the temple service, a sort of militia sacra (Gesenius). Hence Rev. Version, "the serving women which served at the door of the tent of meeting;" and Margin, "the women which assembled to minister." Comp. Numb. iv. 3, 23, 30, 35, 39; and 1 Sam. ii. 22.
[4371] Ex. xxxvii.
[4372] In Jude 5, instead of "the Lord," A. B. read Jesus, and this is accepted by many ancient, authorities. Farrar observes ("Early Days of Christianity," pop. ed., p, 128) "Jesus" is the more difficult, and therefore more probable reading of A. B. It is explained by 1 Cor. x. 4, and the identification of the Messiah with the "Angel of the Lord" (Ex. xiv. 19; xxiii. 20, &c.) and with the Pillar of Fire in Philo.
[4373] Josh. iii.
[4374] Jerome derives Gilgal from nlh to uncover: the accepted derivation is from nll to roll.
[4375] Ex. iii. 5; Jos. v. 15.
[4376] Josh. x. 3.
[4377] Josh. x. 16.
[4378] S. Luke xvi. 29.
[4379] Rom. v. 14.
[4380] Gen. xxxi. 41.
[4381] Gen. xxxvii. 28.
[4382] Gen. xxxii. 14.
[4383] Joshua died at the age of 110 years. Josh. xxiv. 29.
[4384] Timnath-Serah was the original name of Joshua's inheritance (Josh. xix. 50), but in Judges ii. 9, we find the name changed to Timnath-Heres. Timnath-Serah and the tomb of its illustrious owner were shown in the time of Jerome (Letter cviii. 13). "Paula wondered greatly that he who assigned men their possessions had chosen for himself a rough and rocky spot." Jerome is looking at the inheritance with the eyes of an ardent controversialist when he describes it as "the fairest spot in the land of Judah."
[4385] Ps. xlviii. 2. The correct rendering of the Hebrew is much disputed.
[4386] Ps. lxxiii. 2.
[4387] Josh. xxiv. 28.
[4388] Deut. xxxiv. 6.
[4389] Worshipped more especially at Lampsacus on the Hellespont. He was regarded as the promoter of fertility in vegetables and animals.
[4390] Ps. cxxviii. 3.
[4391] Gen. vi. 3. R.V. Strive or rule in.
[4392] Gen. xlix. 17. Samson was of the tribe of Dan.
[4393] Judg. xi. 30, 31.
[4394] 1 Tim. iii. 2.
[4395] Ps. xcix. 6.
[4396] See 1 Chron. vi. 34-38.
[4397] Heb. vii. 3. The Greek word in the text ("without genealogy") is unknown to secular writers, and occurs here only in the New Test. It cannot mean without descent (see verse 6). Unmarried appears to be a false inference from this supposed meaning. Ignatius also (Ep. ad. Philad.) reckoned Melchizedek among celibates. Rev. Version translates, "without genealogy," i.e., his ancestry was unrecorded. See Farrar's "Early Days of Christianity," pop. ed., p. 221.
[4398] 1 Sam. ii. 22.
[4399] See, however, 1 Chron. xxii. 8.
[4400] S. Matt. xviii. 6.
[4401] S. Matt. v. 22.
[4402] S. Matt. v. 27.
[4403] Cant. vi. 8.
[4404] 1 Kings xi. 3.
[4405] 1 Cor. vii. 29.
[4406] Is. xxxviii. 19.
[4407] 2 Kings xxii. 14.
[4408] 2 Kings xx. 18.
[4409] Dan. i. 3, 4.
[4410] Ezek. xiv. 14, 20.
[4411] Ezek. xviii. 4.
[4412] Ezek. viii. 1.
[4413] Ezek. xiv. 14.
[4414] Apocryphal additions to Daniel.
[4415] Matt. xix. 27.
[4416] Luke xviii. 29, 30.
[4417] 1 Cor. ix. 5. The text has been much tampered with by the advocates or opponents of celibacy. The reading first quoted by Jerome is that of F, a manuscript of the eighth or ninth century, and is found in Tertullian; the other chief readings introduce the Greek equivalent for sister, either in the sing. or plural. The Rev. Version renders, "have we no right to lead about a wife that is a believer" (or sister). Augustine, Tertullian, Theodoret, &c., together with Cornelius-a-Lapide and Estius among the moderns, agree with Jerome in referring the passage to holy women who ministered to the Apostles as they did to the Lord Himself. The third canon of Nicæa is supposed to be directed against the practice encouraged by this interpretation of the Apostle's words.
[4418] Attributed to Clement by Jerome.
[4419] Isa. i. 9.
[4420] S. John xiii. 25.
[4421] S. John xx. 4.
[4422] S. John xxi. 7 sq.
[4423] S. Matt. xvi. 18.
[4424] S. Matt. xviii. 18: S. John xx. 22, 23.
[4425] S. John xiv. 27.
[4426] S. Matt. xx. 27: S. Luke xxii. 26.
[4427] See this book in Vol. III. of this series.
[4428] Is. xl. 3.
[4429] S. John i. 1.
[4430] S. John xix. 26, 27.
[4431] 1 Tim. ii. 13, 15.
[4432] 1 Tim. ii. 8 sqq.
[4433] Apparently, Eve's transgression imputed to her descendants.
[4434] The original admits of the rendering "by means of her child-bearing." But Ellicott and others interpret of the Incarnation.
[4435] Rev. Version, "sobriety." Sobermindedness or discretion are given by Ellicott (Notes on translation) as alternative renderings. The word cannot mean chastity, but rather "the well-balanced state of mind resulting from habitual self-restraint" in general.
[4436] Prov. vi. 26?
[4437] Prov. vii. 27; ix. 18.
[4438] Prov. xxi. 19.
[4439] Often mentioned by Seneca. A saying is reported of him: "Ho, traveller, stop. There is a miracle here: a man and his wife not at strife."
[4440] Prov. xxi. 9; xxv. 24.
[4441] Prov. xxvii. 15.
[4442] Supereffluas. Prov. iii. 21 Sept., Heb. ii. 1. The Greek word signifies to fall away like flowing water. See Schleusner on pararruomai . In Heb. ii. 1, Rev. V. translates "We drift away:" Vaughan, "We be found to have leaked, or ebbed away."
[4443] Prov. xxx. 15, 16.
[4444] Eccles. iii. 1, 2, sqq.
[4445] Eccles. vii. 10.
[4446] R.V. "Good as an inheritance."
[4447] Eccles. vii. 28, 29.
[4448] Eccles. ix. 8.
[4449] Cant. i. 10, 11. "Plaits of gold with studs of silver." R.V.
[4450] Cant. ii. 1, 10-12.
[4451] 1 Cor. vii. 29.
[4452] Cant. ii. 12.
[4453] Verse 13.
[4454] 2 Cor. ii. 15.
[4455] Cant. ii. 13, 14.
[4456] Ex. xxxiv. 33, 35; 2 Cor. iii. 7 sq.
[4457] Is. i. 15.
[4458] Cant. ii. 16.
[4459] Cant. iii. 7, 8.
[4460] Cant. iv. 6.
[4461] Eph. v. 27.
[4462] Cant. iv. 8.
[4463] Sept. R.V. "Look from the top of Amana."
[4464] Cant. viii. 5.
[4465] Ps. cxix. 105.
[4466] Cant. iv. 9.
[4467] Cant. iv. 9, 10.
[4468] Cant. v. 1.
[4469] S. Matt. ix. 17.
[4470] Rom. vii. 6.
[4471] Zech. viii. 5; ix. 17, R.V. "How great is his goodness, and how great is his beauty! Corn shall make the young men flourish, and new wine the maids."
[4472] Ps. xlv. 16, 17.
[4473] Cant. iv. 12, 13.
[4474] Cant. v. 10.
[4475] Cant. v. 16.
[4476] Cant. vii. 1.
[4477] R.V. "O Prince's daughter!" Sept., also "daughter of Nadab."
[4478] Is. vii. 14.
[4479] Delitzsch remarks, "The assertion of Jerome is untenable." See Cheyne, critical note on Is. vii. 14. The word probably denotes a female, married or unmarried, just attaining maturity. But in every other passage, the context shows that the word is used of an unmarried woman.
[4480] Gen. xxiv. 42 sq.
[4481] Is. xxxvii. 22.
[4482] Is. liv. 1.
[4483] Jerem. ii. 32.
[4484] Jer. xxxi. 22.
[4485] Jer. i. 5.
[4486] Jer. xxxix. 11; xl. i.
[4487] Ezek. i. 4.
[4488] Ezek. xxiv. 18.
[4489] 1 Cor. vii. 25.
[4490] Acts xv. 28, 29.
[4491] S. Matt. x. 10: S. Luke x. 5.
[4492] S. Matt. xix. 21.
[4493] 1 Tim. iii. 2, 4; Tit. i. 6.
[4494] Sacerdotes: that is, bishops.
[4495] 1 Cor. vii. 7.
[4496] 1 Tim. iii. 1.
[4497] V. supra, c. 27. R.V. "temperate." Ellicott observes, "under any circumstances the derivative translation Vigilant, Auth., though possibly defensible in the verb, is a needless and doubtful extension of the primary meaning."
[4498] R.V. "orderly." V. above, c. 27.
[4499] kosmion. R.V. "orderly."
[4500] Non vinolentum. R.V. "no brawler," i.e., as the Margin explains, "not quarrelsome over wine." The original is not thus a mere synonym for nephalios in v. 2.
[4501] So Chrysostom and Theodoret. The simple meaning appears to suit the context better.
[4502] 1 Sam. ii. and iv.
[4503] 1 Tim. iii. 11.
[4504] The Code of Constantine, following the Mosaic law, imposed the penalty of death for adultery. See Gibbon, ch. xliv.
[4505] S. Matt. xix. 12.
[4506] 1 Cor. vii. 25.
[4507] Two rocky islands in the Euxine, that, according to the fable, floated about, dashing against and rebounding from each other, until at length they became fixed on the passage of the Argo between them."
[4508] Andabatæ.
[4509] Matt. xix. 12.
[4510] 1 Cor. vii. 7.
[4511] Phil. ii. 6-8.
[4512] S. John xx. 20.
[4513] S. John xx. 19.
[4514] S. Matt. xiv. 28.
[4515] S. Matt. xxii. 30.
[4516] 2 Cor. v. 17.
[4517] Rom. vi. 21, 22.
[4518] Rom. vii. 4 sq.
[4519] Rom. vii. 14, 24, 25.
[4520] Rom. viii. 1, 2.
[4521] Rom. viii. 5 sq.
[4522] Rom. viii. 11, 14.
[4523] R.V. "mind."
[4524] Rom. xii. 1-3.
[4525] See ch. 27.
[4526] Rom. xiii. 11, 12, 14.
[4527] 1 Cor. iii. 1, 2, 3.
[4528] That is, under the dominion of the psyche, or principle of life common to man and the beasts, hence, natural. Opposed to the psyche is the pneuma, capable of being influenced by the Spirit of God. A man thus influenced is pneumatikos or spiritual. See also 1 Cor. xv. 44.
[4529] 1 Cor. xv. 47 sq.
[4530] 2 Cor. v. 1 sq.
[4531] 2 Cor. xi. 2.
[4532] Gal. ii. 16.
[4533] Gal. iii. 3, 4.
[4534] Gal. v. 16, 17.
[4535] Properly, self-control in the wide sense.
[4536] Gal. v. 24, 25.
[4537] Gal. vi. 7, 8.
[4538] Eph. ii. 3, 4.
[4539] Eph. iv. 22.
[4540] Eph. vi. 24.
[4541] Phil. iii. 20, 21.
[4542] Phil. iv. 8.
[4543] Coloss. ii. 11; iii. 1 sq.
[4544] 2 Tim. ii. 4.
[4545] Titus ii. 11, 12.
[4546] S. John xvi. 12, 13.
[4547] xxi. 9.
[4548] Matt. xi. 13.
[4549] The passage is not found in existing copies of Josephus.
[4550] S. James i. 16-18.
[4551] R.V. "can be no variation." The word "difference," as used by Jerome, is explained by the context.
[4552] Rev. i. 5.
[4553] 1 Pet. i. 3-5.
[4554] 1 Pet. i. 13-16.
[4555] 1 Pet. i. 18, 19.
[4556] 1 Pet. i. 22, 23.
[4557] In Jerome's rendering living and abiding,' are attributes of God. But in the original the participles may be taken as predicates of either word or God. The R.V. refers them to the former.
[4558] 1 Pet. ii. 9.
[4559] 1 Pet. iv. 1 sq.
[4560] 2 Pet. i. 4.
[4561] 2 Pet. ii. 9 sq.
[4562] 2 Pet. iii. 3.
[4563] The notorious epicure of the time of Augustus and Tiberius.
[4564] Paxamus wrote a treatise on cooking, which, Suidas states, was arranged in alphabetical order.
[4565] 1 John ii. 15 sq.
[4566] 1 John iii. 2, 3.
[4567] 1 John iv. 7. R.V. "that we may have."
[4568] Jude 23.
[4569] xiv. 1 sq.
[4570] Rev. vii. 5 sq.
[4571] Apoc. xiv. 3, 4.
[4572] or they may say.
[4573] 2 Tim. ii. 20, 21.
[4574] Virg. Æn i. 317.
[4575] Virg. Æn. vii. 803: id. xi. 535.
[4576] Leos was the hero from whom the tribe Leontis derived its name. Once when Athens was suffering from famine or plague, the oracle at Delphi demanded that his daughters should be sacrificed. The father complied. The shrine called Leocorium was erected by the Athenians to their honour.
[4577] Jerome's memory appears to be at fault. When the Greek fleet was on its way to Troy, it was detained by a calm at Aulis. The seer Calchas advised that Iphigenia, daughter of Agamemnon should be sacrificed. See Dict. of Ant.
[4578] According to the law of Numa, the punishment of a Vestal Virgin for violating the vow of chastity was stoning to death. Tarquinius Priscus first enacted that the offender should be buried alive, after being stripped of her badges of office, scourged and attired like a corpse. "From the time of the triumvirs each [Vestal] was preceded by a lictor when she went abroad; consuls and prætors made way for them, and lowered their fasces; even the tribunes of the plebs respected their holy character, and if any one passed under their litter, he was put to death."
[4579] It is said, however, that Claudia (Quinta) was a Roman matron, not a Vestal Virgin. The soothsayers announced that only a chaste woman could move the vessel referred to. Claudia, who had been accused of incontinency, took hold of the rope, and the vessel forthwith followed her. b.c. 204.
[4580] Seneca.
[4581] In the year after the death of Alexander (b.c. 323), Leosthenes defeated Alexander's general Antipater, near Thermopylæ. Antipater then threw himself into the town of Lamia (in Phthiotis in Thessaly) which thus gave its name to the war. Leosthenes pressed the siege with great vigour, but was killed by a blow from a stone.
[4582] Another name for Messana (or Messene), derived from the Mamertini, a people of Campania, some of whom were mercenaries in the army of the tyrant Agathocles, and were quartered in the town. At his death (b.c. 282) they rose and gained possession of it.
[4583] The semi-legendary hero of the second war between Sparta and Messene. He lived about b.c. 270.
[4584] The spring festival held in honour of Hyacinthus, the beautiful youth accidentally slain by Apollo, and from whose blood was said to have sprung the flower of the same name.
[4585] He succeeded Plato as president of the Academy (b.c. 347-339). His works are all lost.
[4586] One of Aristotle's pupils, and author of a number of works, none of which are extant.
[4587] Diogenes Laërtius (so named from Laërte in Cilicia), who probably lived in the 2nd century after Christ, in the Third Book of his "Lives of the Philosophers" refers to a treatise by Anaxelides on the same subject. It has therefore been conjectured that Jerome may have written Philosophica Historia for philosophiae.
[4588] Timæus of Locri, in Italy, a Pythagorean philosopher, is said to have been a teacher of Plato. There is an extant work bearing his name; but its genuineness is considered doubtful, and it is in all probability only an abridgment of Plato's dialogue of Timæus.
[4589] Damo. Pythagoras is said to have entrusted his writings to her, and to have forbidden her to give them to any one. She strictly observed the command, although she was in extreme poverty, and received many requests to sell them. According to some accounts Pythagoras had another daughter, Myia.
[4590] Flourished about b.c. 540-510.
[4591] Clement of Alexandria (died about a.d. 220) in his Stromata (i.e. literally, patchwork) or Miscellanies, Bk. iv., relates the same story and gives the names of the daughters. The Diodorus referred to in the text lived at Alexandria in the reign of Ptolemy Sorer (b.c. 323-285), by whom he was said to have been surnamed Cronos or Saturn, on account of his inability to solve at once some dialectic problem when dining with the king, perhaps with a play upon the word chronos (time), or with a sarcastic allusion to Cronos as the introducer of the arts of civilized life. The philosopher is said to have taken the disgrace so much to heart, that he wrote a treatise on the problem, and then died in despair. Another account derives his name from his teacher Apollonius Cronus.
[4592] Born about b.c. 213, died b.c. 129. He was the determined opponent of the Stoics, and maintained that neither our senses nor our understanding gives us a safe criterion of truth.
[4593] The poetical name of Rhea Silvia, daughter of Numitor and mother of Romulus and Remus.
[4594] According to the legend she stabbed herself on the funeral pyre. Jerome ignores the modifications introduced into the legend by Virgil, who, in defiance of the common chronology, makes Dido a contemporary of Æneas, and represents her as destroying herself when forsaken by the hero.
[4595] Hasdrubal and his family, with 900 deserters and desperadoes, retired into the temple of Æsculapius, as if to make a brave defence. But the commandant's heart failed him; and, slipping out alone, he threw himself at the feet of Scipio, and craved for pardon. His wife, standing on the base of the temple, was near enough to witness the sight, and reproaching her husband with cowardice, cast herself with her children into the flames which were now wrapping the Citadel round on all sides. b.c. 146.
[4596] Son of Nicias the celebrated Athenian general.
[4597] She succeeded Mausolus and reigned b.c. 352-350.
[4598] She was the wife of Agron, and assumed the sovereign power on the death of her husband, b.c. 231. War was declared against her by Rome in consequence of her having caused the assassination of an ambassador, and in 228 she obtained peace at the cost of the greater part of her dominions.
[4599] Cyropædeia, Book vii.
[4600] The wife of Candaules, also called Myrsilus. She was exhibited to Gyges, who, after the murder of her husband, married her. Herod. B. i.
[4601] The story, as is well known, formed the subject of the play by Euripides bearing the heroine's name, which was brought out about b.c. 438.
[4602] Protesilaus was the first of the Greeks to fall at Troy. According to some accounts he was slain by Hector. When her husband was slain Laodamia begged the gods to allow her to converse with him for only 3 hours. The request having been granted, Hermes led Protesilaus back to the upper world, and when he died a second time, Laodamia died with him.
[4603] The wife of L. Tarquinius Collatinus, whose rape by Sextus led to the dethronement of Tarquinius Superbus and the establishment of the republic.
[4604] Over the Carthaginian fleet near Mylæ, 260 b.c.
[4605] One of the assassins of Julius Cæsar. Jerome appears to be at fault here. Porcia, the daughter of Cato by his first wife Atilia, before marrying Brutus in 45 b.c., had been married to M. Bibulus and had borne him three children. He died in 48. After the death of Brutus in 42 she put an end to her own life, probably by the fumes of a charcoal fire.
[4606] Marcia is related to have been ceded by Cato to his friend Hortensius. She continued to live with the latter until his death, when she returned to Cato.
[4607] It has been conjectured that instead of "Marcia, Cato's younger daughter," a few lines above, we should read Porcia.
[4608] Probably the daughter of Cato by his second wife Marcia.
[4609] Jerome, apparently, makes a mistake here. Valeria, sister of the Messalas, married Sulla towards the end of his life. Valeria, the widow of Galerius, after the death of her husband in 311, rejected the proposals of Maximinus. Her consequent sufferings are related by Gibbon in his fourteenth chapter.
[4610] The Greek philosopher to whom Aristotle bequeathed his library and the originals of his own writings. He died b.c. 287, after being President of the Academy for 35 years. If he were the author of the book here referred to, it is not to be found among his extant writings.
[4611] Cicero at the beginning of the third book of the De Officiis, makes Cato quote this saying as one frequently in the mouth of Publius Scipio.
[4612] Phil. i. 23.
[4613] We hear very little of the two sons of Moses, Gershom and Eliezer. See Ex. iv. 20, xviii. 3, 1 Chron. xxiii. 14. Their promotion is nowhere recorded, and Moses appointed a person of another tribe to be his successor.
[4614] See 1 Sam. viii. 1-4 and ch. ix.
[4615] b.c. 46. "What grounds for displeasure she had given him besides her alleged extravagance it is hard to say. His letters to her during the previous year had been short and rather cold." Watson, Select Letters of Cicero, third ed. p. 397.
[4616] Hirtius was the friend personal and political of Julius Cæsar, and during Cæsar's absence in Africa he lived principally at his Tusculan estate which adjoined Cicero's villa. Hirtius and Cicero though opposed to each other in politics were on good terms, and the former is said to have received lessons in oratory from the latter.
[4617] But not long after divorcing Terentia he married Publilia, a young girl of whose property he had the management, in order to relieve himself from pecuniary difficulties. She seems to have received little affection from her husband. Watson, p. 397.
[4618] This statement is without authority. See Long's Article on Sallust in Smith's Dict. of Classical Biography.
[4619] Cæcilia Metella, the third of Sulla's five wives, had previously been married to M. Æmilius Scaurus, consul b.c. 115. She fell ill during the celebration of Sulla's triumph on account of his victory over Mithridates in 81; and as her recovery was hopeless, Sulla for religious reasons divorced her. She soon afterwards died, and Sulla honoured her memory with a splendid funeral.
[4620] The famous dictator claimed the name Felix for himself in a speech which he delivered to the people at the close of the celebration of his triumph, because he attributed his success in life to the favour of the gods.
[4621] But Sulla's youth and manhood were disgraced by the most sensual vices. He was indebted for a considerable portion of his wealth to a courtesan Nicopolis, and his death in b.c. 78 at the age of 60 was hastened by his dissolute mode of life.
[4622] Pompey, like Sulla, was married five times. Mucia, his third wife, daughter of Q. Mucius Scævola, the augur, consul b.c. 95, was divorced by Pompey in 62, and afterwards married M. Æmilius Scaurus, son of the consul by Cæcilia and thus stepson of Sulla.
[4623] Born b.c. 234, died b.c. 149. He was the great-grandfather of Cato of Utica.
[4624] b.c. 382-336.
[4625] b.c. 385-322.
[4626] Born about b.c. 480 at Leontini in Sicily. He is said to have lived 105, or even 109 years. He was held in high esteem at Athens, where he had numerous distinguished pupils and imitators.
[4627] An Athenian tragic poet, celebrated for his wit.
[4628] See the Andromache.
[4629] There were two cities of this name, Leptis Magna and Parva, in N. Africa.
[4630] Or "on another day," that is, than the marriage day implied in the context.
[4631] Terence, Hecyra II. i. 4.
[4632] Bk. I. ch. 8. "Candaules addressed Gyges as follows: Gyges, as I think you do not believe me when I speak of my wife's beauty (for the ears of men are naturally more incredulous than their eyes), you must contrive to see her naked.' But he, exclaiming loudly, answered: Sire, what a shocking proposal do you make, bidding me behold my queen naked! With her clothes a woman puts off her modesty,'" etc.
[4633] Perhaps Terence, Phormio I. iii. 21.
[4634] For these legends, see Classical Dict.
[4635] The most distinguished disciple and the intimate friend of Epicurus. His philosophy appears to have been of a more sensual kind than that of his master. He made perfect happiness to consist in having a well-constituted body. He died b.c. 277 in the 53rd year of his age, 7 years before Epicurus.
[4636] Chrysippus (b.c. 280-207) the Stoic philosopher, born at Soli in Cilicia. He opposed the prevailing scepticism and maintained the possibility of attaining certain knowledge. It was said of him "that if Chrysippus had not existed the Porch (i.e., Stoicism) could not have been." He is reported to have seldom written less than 500 lines a-day, and to have left behind him 705 works.
[4637] That is Zeus, regarded as presiding over marriages and the tutelary god of races or families.
[4638] Literally, "Jupiter who causes to stand": hence Jerome's play upon the word. Jupiter Stator was the god regarded as supporting, preserving, etc. Cic., Cat. I. 13, 31--"quem (sc. Jovem) statorem hujus urbis atque imperii vere nominamus."
[4639] The greater number of manuscripts read Sextus, an alternative name for the same person. Jerome in his version of the Chronicon of Eusebius speaks of "Xystus a Pythagorean philosopher" who flourished at the time of Christ's birth; but there is great difficulty in establishing the identity of the author of the "Sentences." See also the Prolegomena to Rufinus who translated the Sentences of Xystus, in Vol. III. of this Series.
[4640] See note above, p. 382.
[4641] Daughter of P. Scipio Africanus, and wife of Ti. Sempronius Gracchus, censor b.c. 169. The people erected a statue to her with the inscription "Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi."
[4642] See note p. 376.
[4643] Wife of Tarquinius Priscus.
[4644] Theano was the most celebrated of the female philosophers of the Pythagorean school. According to some authorities she was the wife of Pythagoras.
[4645] Cleobuline, or Cleobule, was celebrated for her riddles in hexameter verse. One on the subject of the year runs thus--"A father has 12 children, and each of these 30 daughters, on one side white, and on the other side black, and though immortal they all die."
[4646] Timoclia was a woman of Thebes, whose house at the capture of the city in b.c. 335 was broken into and pillaged by the soldiery. She was herself violated by the commander, whom she afterwards contrived to push into a well.
[4647] A vestal virgin who proved her innocence of the unchastity imputed to her by setting free a stranded ship with her girdle.
[4648] The epithet is said to have been given to the goddess at the time when Coriolanus was prevented by the entreaties of the women from destroying Rome.
[4649] The name for any Roman priest devoted to the service of one particular god. He took his distinguishing title from the deity to whom he ministered, e.g. Flamen Martialis.
[4650] Comp. Tertullian De Monogamia, last chapter--"Fortunæ, inquit, muliebri coronam non imponit, nisi univira...Pontifex Maximus et Flaminica (the wife of a Flamen) nubunt semel."
[4651] See Origen, Contra Celsum, Bk. VII. The water hemlock, or cowbane, is the variety referred to. __________________________________________________________________
Book II.
Jerome answers the second, third, and fourth propositions of Jovinianus.
I. (c. 1-4). That those who have become regenerate cannot be overthrown by the devil, Jerome (c. 1) puts it that they cannot be tempted by the devil. He quotes 1 John i. 8-ii. 2, as shewing that faithful men can be tempted and sin and need an advocate. The expressions (3) in Heb. vi. as to those who crucify the Son of God afresh do not apply to ordinary sins after baptism, as supposed by Montanus and Novatus. The epistles to the Seven Churches show that the lapsed may return. The Angels, and even our Lord Himself, (4) could be tempted.
II. (c. 5-17). That there is no difference (morally) between one who fasts and one who takes food with thanksgiving. Jovinian has quoted (5) many texts of Scripture to show that God has made animals for men's food. But (6) there are many other uses of animals besides food. And there are many warnings like 1 Cor. vi. 13, as to the danger arising from food. There are among the heathen (7) many instances of abstinence. They recognize (8) the evil of sensual allurements, and often, like Crates the Theban, (9) have cast away what would tempt them; the senses, they teach, (10) should be subject to reason; and, that (11) except for athletes (Christians do not want to be like Milo of Crotona) bread and water suffice. Horace (12), Xenophon and other eminent Greeks (13), the Essenes and the Brahmans (14), as well as philosophers like Diogenes, testify to the value of abstinence. The Old Testament stories (15) of Esau's pottage, of the lusting of Israel for the flesh-pots of Egypt, and those in the New Testament of Anna, Cornelius, &c., commend abstinence. If some heretics inculcate fasting (16) in such a way as to despise the gifts of God, and weak Christians are not to be judged for their use of flesh, those who seek the higher life (17) will find a help in abstinence.
III. (c. 18-34). The fourth proposition of Jovinianus, that all who are saved will have equal reward, is refuted (19) by the various yields of thirty, sixty, and a hundred fold in the parable of the sower, by (20) the "stars differing in glory" of 1 Cor. xv. 41. It is strange (21) to find the advocate of self-indulgence now claiming equality to the saints. But (22) as there were differences in Ezekiel between cattle and cattle, so in St. Paul between those who built gold or stubble on the one foundation. The differences of gifts (23), of punishments (24), of guilt (25), as in Pilate and the Chief Priests, of the produce of the good seed (26), of the mansions promised in heaven (27-29), of the judgment upon sins both in the church and in Scripture (30-31), of those called at different times to the vineyard (32) are arguments for the diversity of rewards. The parable of the talents (33) holds out as rewards differences of station, and so does the church (34) in its different orders.
Jerome now recapitulates (35) and appeals (36)against the licentious views of Jovinianus, which have already induced many virgins to break their vows; and which, as the new Roman heresy (37), he calls upon the Imperial City (38) to reject.
1. The second proposition of Jovinianus is that the baptized cannot be tempted [4652] by the devil. And to escape the imputation of folly in saying this, he adds: "But if any are tempted, it only shows that they were baptized with water, not with the Spirit, as we read was the case with Simon Magus." Hence it is that John says, [4653] "Whosoever is begotten of God doeth no sin, because his seed abideth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is begotten of God. In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the Devil." And at the end of the Epistle, [4654] "Whosoever is begotten of God sinneth not; but his being begotten of God keepeth him, and the evil one toucheth him not."
2. This would be a real difficulty and one for ever incapable of solution were it not solved by the witness of John himself, who immediately goes on to say, [4655] "My little children, guard yourselves from idols." If everyone that is born of God sinneth not, and cannot be tempted by the devil, how is it that he bids them beware of temptation? Again in the same Epistle we read: [4656] "If we say that we have no sins, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us." I suppose that John was baptized and was writing to the baptized: I imagine too that all sin is of the devil. Now John confesses himself a sinner, and hopes for forgiveness of sins after baptism. My friend Jovinianus says, [4657] "Touch me not, for I am clean." What then? Does the Apostle contradict himself? By no means. In the same passage he gives his reason for thus speaking: [4658] "My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye may not sin. But if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: and he is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the whole world. And hereby know we that we know him, if we keep his commandments. He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoso keepeth his word, in him verily hath the love of God been perfected. Hereby know we that we are in him: he that saith he abideth in him ought himself also to walk even as he walked." My reason for telling you, little children, that everyone who is born of God sinneth not, is that you may not sin, and that you may know that so long as you sin not you abide in the birth which God has given you. Yea, they who abide in that birth cannot sin. [4659] "For what communion hath light with darkness? Or Christ with Belial?" As day is distinct from night, so righteousness and unrighteousness, sin and good works, Christ and Antichrist cannot blend. If we give Christ a lodging-place in our hearts, we banish the devil from thence. If we sin and the devil enter through the gate of sin, Christ will immediately withdraw. Hence David after sinning says: [4660] "Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation," that is, the joy which he had lost by sinning. [4661] "He who saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him." Christ is called the truth: [4662] "I am the way, the truth, and the life." In vain do we make our boast in him whose commandments we keep not. To him that knoweth what is good, and doeth it not, it is sin. [4663] "As the body apart from the spirit is dead, even so faith apart from works is dead." And we must not think it a great matter to know the only God, when even devils believe and tremble. "He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also to walk even as he walked." Our opponent may choose whichever of the two he likes; we give him his choice. Does he abide in Christ, or not? If he abide, let him then walk as Christ walked. But if there is [4664] rashness in professing to copy the virtues of our Lord, he does not abide in Christ, for he does not walk as did Christ. [4665] "He did not sin, neither was guile found in his mouth: when he was reviled, he reviled not again, and as a lamb is dumb before its shearer, so opened he not his mouth." To Him came the prince of this world, and found nothing in Him: although He had done no sin, God made Him sin for us. But we, according to the Epistle of James, [4666] "all stumble in many things," and [4667] "no one is pure from sin, no not if his life be but a day long." [4668] For who will boast "that he has a clean heart? or who will be sure that he is pure from sin?" And we are held guilty after the similitude of Adam's transgression. Hence David says, [4669] "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me." And the blessed Job, [4670] "Though I be righteous my mouth will speak wickedness, and though I be perfect, I shall be found perverse. If I wash myself with snow water and make my hands never so clean, yet wilt thou plunge me in the ditch and mine own clothes shall abhor me." But that we may not utterly despair and think that if we sin after baptism we cannot be saved, he immediately checks the tendency: [4671] "And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and he is the propitiation for our sins. And not for ours only, but also for the whole world." He addresses this to baptized believers, and he promises them the Lord as an advocate for their offences. He does not say: If you fall into sin, you have an advocate with the Father, Christ, and He is the propitiation for your sins: you might then say that he was addressing those whose baptism had been destitute of the true faith: but what he says is this, "We have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, and he is the propitiation for our sins." And not only for the sins of John and his contemporaries, but for those of the whole world. Now in "the whole world" are included apostles and all the faithful, and a clear proof is established that sin after baptism is possible. It is useless for us to have an advocate Jesus Christ, if sin be impossible.
3. The apostle Peter, to whom it was said, [4672] "He that is bathed needeth not to wash again," and [4673] "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church," through fear of a maid-servant denied Him. Our Lord himself says, [4674] "Simon, Simon, behold Satan asked to have you, that he might sift you as wheat. But I made supplication for thee, that thy faith fail not." And in the same place, "Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." If you reply that this was said before the Passion, we certainly say after the Passion, in the Lord's prayer, [4675] "Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one." If we do not sin after baptism, why do we ask that we may be forgiven our sins, which were already forgiven in baptism? Why do we pray that we may not enter into temptation, and that we may be delivered from the evil one, if the devil cannot tempt those who are baptized? The case is different if this prayer belongs to the Catechumens, and is not adapted to faithful Christians. Paul, the chosen vessel, [4676] chastised his body, and brought it into subjection, lest after preaching to others he himself should be found a reprobate, and [4677] he tells that there was given to him "a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet" him. And to the Corinthians he writes: [4678] "I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve in his craftiness, your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is toward Christ." And elsewhere: [4679] "But to whom ye forgive anything, I forgive also: for what I also have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, for your sakes have I forgiven it in the person of Christ: that no advantage may be gained over us by Satan: for we are not ignorant of his devices." And again: [4680] "There hath no temptation taken you, but such as man can bear; but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation make also the way of escape, that ye may be able to endure it." And, [4681] "Let him that thinketh he standeth, take heed lest he fall." And to the Galatians: [4682] "Ye were running well; who did hinder you that ye should not obey the truth?" And elsewhere: [4683] "We would fain have come unto you, I Paul once and again; and Satan hindered us." And to the married he says: [4684] "Be together again, that Satan tempt you not because of your incontinency." And again: [4685] "But I say, walk by the Spirit and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are contrary the one to the other: that ye may not do the things that ye would." We are a compound of the two, and must endure the strife of the two substances. And to the Ephesians: [4686] "Our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places." Does any one think that we are safe, and that it is right to fall asleep when once we have been baptized? And so, too, in the epistle to the Hebrews: [4687] "For as touching those who were once enlightened and tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the age to come, and then fell away, it is impossible to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame." Surely we cannot deny that they have been baptized who have been illuminated, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God. But if the baptized cannot sin, how is it now that the Apostle says, "And have fallen away"? [4688] Montanus and [4689] Novatus would smile at this, for they contend that it is impossible to renew again through repentance those who have crucified to themselves the Son of God, and put Him to an open shame. He therefore corrects this mistake by saying: [4690] "But, beloved, we are persuaded better things of you, and things that accompany salvation, though we thus speak; for God is not unrighteous to forget your work and the love which ye shewed towards his name, in that ye ministered unto the Saints, and still do minister." And truly the unrighteousness of God would be great, if He merely punished sin, and did not welcome good works. I have so spoken, says the Apostle, to withdraw you from your sins, and to make you more careful through fear of despair. But, beloved, I am persuaded better things of you, and things that accompany salvation. For it is not accordant with the righteousness of God to forget good works, and the fact that you have ministered and do minister to the Saints for His name's sake, and to remember sins only. The Apostle James also, knowing that the baptized can be tempted, and fall of their own free choice, says: [4691] "Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he hath been approved, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord promised to them that love him." And that we may not think that we are tempted by God, as we read in Genesis Abraham was, he adds: "Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, and He Himself tempteth no man. But each man is tempted when he is drawn away by his own lust and enticed. Then the lust, when it hath conceived, beareth sin: and the sin, when it is full grown, bringeth forth death." God created us with free will, and we are not forced by necessity either to virtue or to vice. Otherwise, if there be necessity, there is no crown. As in good works it is God who brings them to perfection, for it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that pitieth and gives us help that we may be able to reach the goal: so in things wicked and sinful, the seeds within us give the impulse, and these are brought to maturity by the devil. When he sees that we are building upon the foundation of Christ, hay, wood, stubble, then he applies the match. Let us then build gold, silver, costly stones, and he will not venture to tempt us: although even thus there is not sure and safe possession. For the lion lurks in ambush to slay the innocent. [4692] "Potters' vessels are proved by the furnace, and just men by the trial of tribulation." And in another place it is written: [4693] "My son, when thou comest to serve the Lord, prepare thyself for temptation." Again, the same James says: [4694] "Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only. For if any one is a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a mirror: for he beholdeth himself, and goeth away, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was." It was useless to warn them to add works to faith, if they could not sin after baptism. He tells us that [4695] "whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is become guilty of all." Which of us is without sin? [4696] "God hath shut up all unto disobedience, that he might have mercy upon all." Peter also says: [4697] "The Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of temptation." And concerning false teachers: [4698] "These are springs without water, and mists driven by a storm; for whom the blackness of darkness hath been reserved. For, uttering proud words of vanity, they entice in the lusts of the flesh, by lasciviousness, those who had just escaped, and have turned back to error." Does not the Apostle in these words seem to you to have depicted the new party of ignorance? For, as it were, they open the fountains of knowledge and yet have no water: they promise a shower of doctrine like prophetic clouds which have been visited by the truth of God, and are driven by the storms of devils and vices. They speak great things, and their talk is nothing but pride: [4699] "But every one is unclean with God who is lifted up in his own heart." Like those who had just escaped from their sins, they return to their own error, and persuade men to luxury, and to the delights of eating and the gratification of the flesh. For who is not glad to hear them say: "Let us eat and drink, and reign for ever"? The wise and prudent they call corrupt, but pay more attention to the honey-tongued. John the apostle, or rather the Saviour in the person of John, writes thus to the angel of the Church of Ephesus: [4700] "I know thy works and thy toil and patience, and that thou didst bear for my name's sake, and hast not grown weary. But I have this against thee, that thou didst leave thy first love. Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I will come to thee, and will move thy candlestick out of its place, except thou repent." Similarly He urges the other churches, Smyrna, Pergamos, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, Laodicea, to repentance, and threatens them unless they return to the former works. And in Sardis He says He has a few who have not defiled their garments, and they shall walk with Him in white, for they are worthy. But they to whom He says: "Remember from whence thou art fallen"; and, "Behold the devil is about to cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried"; and, "I know where thou dwellest, even where Satan's throne is"; and, "Remember how thou hast received, and didst hear, and keep it, and repent," and so on, were of course believers, and baptized, who once stood, but fell through sin.
4. I delayed for a little while the production of proofs from the Old Testament, because, wherever the Old Testament is against them they are accustomed to cry out that [4701] the Law and the Prophets were until John. But who does not know that under the other dispensation of God all the saints of past times were of equal merit with Christians at the present day? As Abraham in days gone by pleased God in wedlock, so virgins now please him in perpetual virginity. He served the Law and his own times; let us now serve the Gospel and our times, [4702] upon whom the ends of the ages have come. David the chosen one, the man after God's own heart, who had performed all His pleasure, and who in a certain psalm had said, [4703] "Judge me, O Lord, for I have walked in mine integrity: I have trusted also in the Lord and shall not slide. Examine me, O Lord, and prove me; try my reins and my heart," even he was afterwards tempted by the devil; and repenting of his sin said, [4704] "Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving-kindness." He would have a great sin blotted out by great loving-kindness. Solomon, beloved of the Lord, and to whom God had twice revealed Himself, because he loved women forsook the love of God. It is related in the [4705] Book of Days that Manasses the wicked king was restored after the Babylonish captivity to his former rank. And Josiah, a holy man, [4706] was slain by the king of Egypt on the plain of Megiddo. [4707] Joshua also, the son of Josedech and high-priest, although he was a type of our Saviour Who bore our sins, and united to Himself a church of alien birth from among the Gentiles, is nevertheless, according to the letter of Scripture, represented in filthy garments after he attained to the priesthood, and with the devil standing at his right hand; and white raiment is afterwards restored to him. It is needless to tell how Moses and Aaron [4708] offended God at the water of strife, and did not enter the land of promise. For the blessed Job relates that even the angels and every creature can sin. [4709] "Shall mortal man," he says, "be just before God? Shall a man be spotless in his works? If he putteth no trust in his servants, and chargeth his angels with folly, how much more them that dwell in houses of clay," amongst whom are we, and made of the same clay too. [4710] "The life of man is a warfare upon earth." [4711] Lucifer fell who was sending to all nations, and he who was nurtured in a paradise of delight as one of the twelve precious stones, was wounded and went down to hell from the mount of God. Hence the Saviour says in the Gospel: [4712] "I beheld Satan falling as lightning from heaven." If he fell who stood on so sublime a height, who may not fall? If there are falls in heaven, how much more on earth! And yet though Lucifer be fallen (the old serpent after his fall), [4713] "his strength is in his loins, and his force is in the muscles of his belly. The great trees are overshadowed by him, and he sleepeth beside the reed, the rush, and the sedge." [4714] He is king over all things that are in the waters--that is to say in the seat of pleasure and luxury, of propagation of children, and of the fertilisation of the marriage bed. [4715] "For who can strip off his outer garment? Who can open the doors of his face? Nations fatten upon him, and the tribes of Phenicia divide him." And lest haply the reader in his secret thought might imagine that those tribes of Phenicia and peoples of Ethiopia only are meant by those to whom the dragon was given for food, we immediately find a reference to those who are crossing the sea of this world, and are hastening to reach the haven of salvation: [4716] "His head stands in the ships of the fishermen like an anvil that cannot be wearied: [4717] he counteth iron as straw, and brass as rotten wood. And all the gold of the sea under him is as mire. He maketh the deep to boil like a pot: he values the sea like a pot of ointment, and the blackness of the deep as a captive. He beholdeth everything that is high." And my friend Jovinianus thinks he can gain an easy mastery over him. Why speak of holy men and angels, who, being creatures of God, are of course capable of sin? He dared to tempt the Son of God, and though smitten through and through with our Lord's first and second answer, nevertheless raised his head, and when thrice wounded, withdrew only for a time, and deferred rather than removed the temptation. And we flatter ourselves on the ground of our baptism, which though it put away the sins of the past, cannot keep us for the time to come, unless the baptized keep their hearts with all diligence.
5. At length we have arrived at the question of food, and are confronted by our third difficulty. "All things were created to serve for the use of mortal men." And as man, a rational animal, in a sense the owner and tenant of the world, is subject to God, and worships his Creator, so all things living were created either for the food of men, or for clothing, or for tilling the earth, or conveying the fruits thereof, or to be the companions of man, and hence, because they are man's [4718] helpers, they have their name jumenta. [4719] What is man,' says David, that thou art mindful of him? And the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him but little lower than the angels, and crownest him with glory and honour. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thine hands; thou hast put all things under his feet: all sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field: the fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas.' Granted, he says, that the ox was created for ploughing, the horse for riding, the dog for watching, goats for their milk, sheep for their fleeces. What is the use of swine if we may not eat their flesh? of roes, stags, fallow-deer, boars, hares, and such like game? of geese, wild and tame? of wild ducks and [4720] fig-peckers? of woodcocks? of coots? of thrushes? Why do hens run about our houses? If they are not eaten, all these creatures were created by God for nothing. But what need is there of argument when Scripture clearly teaches that every moving creature, like herbs and vegetables, were given to us for food, and the Apostle cries aloud [4721] All things are clean to the clean, and nothing is to be rejected, if it be received with thanksgiving,' and [4722] tells us that men will come in the last days, forbidding to marry, and to eat meats, which God created for use? The Lord himself was called by the Pharisees a wine-bibber and a glutton, the friend of publicans and sinners, because he did not decline the invitation of Zacchæus to dinner, and went to the marriage-feast. But it is a different matter if, as you may foolishly contend, he went to the dinner intending to fast, and after the manner of deceivers said, I eat this, not that; I do not drink the wine which I created out of water. He did not make water, but wine, the type of his blood. After the resurrection he ate a fish and part of a honey-comb, not sesame nuts and service-berries. The apostle, Peter, did not wait like a Jew for the stars to peep, but went upon the house-top to dine at the sixth hour. Paul in the ship broke bread, not dried figs. When Timothy's stomach was out of order, he advised him to drink wine, not perry. In abstaining from meats they please their own fancy: as though superstitious Gentiles did not observe the [4723] rites of abstinence connected with the Mother of the Gods and with Isis."
6. I will follow in detail the views now expounded, and before I come to Scripture and show by it that fasting is pleasing to God, and chastity accepted by him, I will meet philosophic argument with argument, and will prove that we are not followers of Empedocles and Pythagoras, who on account of their doctrine of the transmigration of souls think nothing which lives and moves should be eaten, and look upon him who fells a fir-tree or an oak as equally guilty with the parricide or the poisoner: but that we worship our Creator Who made all things for the use of man. And as the ox was created for ploughing, the horse for riding, dogs for watching, goats for milk, sheep for their wool: so it was with swine and stags, and roes and hares, and other animals: but the immediate purpose of their creation was not that they might serve for food, but for other uses of men. For if everything that moves and lives was made for food, and prepared for the stomach, let my opponents tell me why elephants, lions, leopards, and wolves were created; why vipers, scorpions, bugs, lice, and fleas; why the vulture, the eagle, the crow, the hawk; why whales, dolphins, seals, and small snails were created. Which of us ever eats the flesh of a lion, a viper, a vulture, a stork, a kite, or the worms that crawl upon our shores? As then these have their proper uses, so may we say that other beasts, fishes, birds, were created not for eating, but for medicine. In short, to how many uses the flesh of vipers, from which we make our antidotes against poison, may be applied, physicians know well. Ivory dust is an ingredient in many remedies. Hyena's gall restores brightness to the eyes, and its dung and that of dogs cures gangrenous wounds. And (it may seem strange to the reader) Galen asserts in his treatise on Simples, that human dung is of service in a multitude of cases. Naturalists say that snake-skin, boiled in oil, gives wonderful relief in ear-ache. What to the uninitiated seems so useless as a bug? Yet, suppose a leech to have fastened on the throat, as soon as the odour of a bug is inhaled the leech is vomited out, and difficulty in urinating is relieved by the same application. As for the fat of pigs, geese, fowls, and pheasants, how useful they are is told in all medical works, and if you read these books you will see there that the vulture has as many curative properties as it has limbs. Peacock's dung allays the inflammation of gout. Cranes, storks, eagle's gall, hawk's blood, the ostrich, frogs, chameleons, swallow's dung and flesh--in what diseases these are suitable remedies, I could tell if it were my purpose to discuss bodily ailments and their cure. If you think proper you may read Aristotle and [4724] Theophrastus in prose, or [4725] Marcellus of Side, and our [4726] Flavius, who discourse on these subjects in hexameter verse; the [4727] second Pliny also, and [4728] Dioscorides, and others, both naturalists and physicians, who assign to every herb, every stone, every animal whether reptile, bird, or fish, its own use in the art of which they treat. So then when you ask me why the pig was created, I immediately reply, as if two boys were disputing, by asking you why were vipers and scorpions? You must not judge that anything from the hand of God is superfluous, because there are many beasts and birds which your palate rejects. But this may perhaps look more like contentiousness and pugnacity than truth. Let me tell you therefore that pigs and wild-boars, and stags, and the rest of living creatures were created, that soldiers, athletes, sailors, rhetoricians, miners, and other slaves of hard toil, who need physical strength, might have food: and also those who carry arms and provisions, who wear themselves out with the work of hand or foot, who ply the oar, who need good lungs to shout and speak, who level mountains and sleep out rain or fair. But our religion does not train boxers, athletes, sailors, soldiers, or ditchers, but followers of wisdom, who devote themselves to the worship of God, and know why they were created and are in the world from which they are impatient to depart. Hence also the Apostle says: [4729] "When I am weak, then am I strong." And [4730] "Though our outward man is decaying, yet our inward man is renewed day by day." And [4731] "I have the desire to depart and be with Christ." And, [4732] "Make not provision for the flesh to fulfil the lusts thereof." Are all commanded [4733] not to have two coats, nor food in their scrip, money in their purse, a staff in the hand, shoes on the feet? or to sell all they possess and give to the poor, and follow Jesus? Of course not: but the command is for those who wish to be perfect. On the contrary John the Baptist lays down one rule for the soldiers, another for the publicans. But the Lord says in the Gospel to him who had boasted of having kept the whole law: [4734] "If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor, and come, follow me." That He might not seem to lay a heavy burden on unwilling shoulders, He sent His hearer away with full power to please himself, saying "If thou wilt be perfect." And so I too say to you: If you wish to be perfect, it is good not to drink wine, and eat flesh. If you wish to be perfect, it is better to enrich the mind than to stuff the body. But if you are an infant and fond of the cooks and their preparations, no one will snatch the dainties out of your mouth. Eat and drink, and, if you like, with Israel rise up and play, and sing [4735] "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we shall die." Let him eat and drink, who looks for death when he has feasted, and who says with Epicurus, "There is nothing after death, and death itself is nothing." We believe Paul when he says in tones of thunder: [4736] "Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats. But God will destroy both them and it."
7. I have quoted these few passages of Scripture to show that we are at one with the philosophers. But who does not know that no universal law of nature regulates the food of all nations, and that each eats those things of which it has abundance? For instance, the Arabians and Saracens, and all the wild tribes of the desert live on camel's milk and flesh: for the camel, to suit the climate and barren soil of those regions, is easily bred and reared. They think it wicked to eat the flesh of swine. Why? Because pigs which fatten on acorns, chestnuts, roots of ferns, and barley, are seldom or never found among them: and if they were found, they would not afford the nourishment of which we spoke just now. The exact opposite is the case with the northern peoples. If you were to force them to eat the flesh of asses and camels, they would think it the same as though they were compelled to devour a wolf or a crow. In Pontus and Phrygia a pater-familias pays a good price for fat white worms with blackish heads, which breed in decayed wood. And as with us the woodcock and fig-pecker, the mullet and scar, are reputed delicacies, so with them it is a luxury to eat the [4737] xylophagus. Again, because throughout the glowing wastes of the desert clouds of locusts are found, it is customary with the peoples of the East and of Libya to feed on locusts. John the Baptist proves the truth of this. Compel a Phrygian or a native of Pontus to eat a locust, and he will think it scandalous. Force a Syrian, an African, or Arabian to swallow worms, he will have the same contempt for them as for flies, millepedes, and lizards, although the Syrians are accustomed to eat land-crocodiles, and the Africans even green lizards. In Egypt and Palestine, owing to the scarcity of cattle no one eats beef, or makes the flesh of bulls or oxen, or calves, a portion of their food. Moreover, in my province [4738] it is considered a crime to eat veal. Accordingly the Emperor Valens recently promulgated a law throughout the East, prohibiting the killing and eating of calves. He had in view the interests of agriculture, and wished to check the bad practice of the commoner sort of the people who imitated the Jews in devouring the flesh of calves, instead of fowls and sucking pigs. The Nomad tribes, and the [4739] Troglodytes, and Scythians, and the barbarous [4740] Huns with whom we have recently become acquainted, eat flesh half raw. Moreover the Icthyophagi, a wandering race on the shores of the Red Sea, broil fish on the stones made hot by the sun, and subsist on this poor food. The [4741] Sarmatians, the [4742] Chuadi, the [4743] Vandals, and countless other races, delight in the flesh of horses and wolves. Why should I speak of other nations when I myself, a youth on a visit to Gaul, heard that the Atticoti, a British tribe, eat human flesh, and that although they find herds of swine, and droves of large or small cattle in the woods, it is their custom to cut off the buttocks of the shepherds and the breasts of their women, and to regard them as the greatest delicacies? The Scots have no wives of their own; as though they read Plato's Republic and took Cato for their leader, no man among them has his own wife, but like beasts they indulge their lust to their hearts' content. The Persians, Medes, Indians, and Ethiopians, peoples on a par with Rome itself, have intercourse with mothers and grandmothers, with daughters and granddaughters. The [4744] Massagetæ and [4745] Derbices think those persons most unhappy who die of sickness--and when parents, kindred, or friends reach old age, they are murdered and devoured. It is thought better that they should be eaten by the people themselves than by the worms. The [4746] Tibareni crucify those whom they have loved before when they have grown old. The [4747] Hyrcani throw them out half alive to the birds and dogs: the Caspians leave them dead for the same beasts. The Scythians bury alive with the remains of the dead those who were beloved of the deceased. The Bactrians throw their old men to dogs which they rear for the very purpose, and when Stasanor, Alexander's general, wished to correct the practice, he almost lost his province. Force an Egyptian to drink sheep's milk: drive, if you can, a Pelusiote to eat an onion. Almost every city in Egypt venerates its own beasts and monsters, and whatever be the object of worship, that they think inviolable and sacred. Hence it is that their towns also are named after animals Leonto, Cyno, Lyco, Busyris, Thmuis, which is, being interpreted, a he-goat. And to make us understand what sort of gods Egypt always welcomed, one of their cities was recently called [4748] Antinous after Hadrian's favourite. You see clearly then that not only in eating, but also in burial, in wedlock, and in every department of life, each race follows its own practice and peculiar usages, and takes that for the law of nature which is most familiar to it. But suppose all nations alike ate flesh, and let that be everywhere lawful which the place produces. How does it concern us whose conversation is in heaven? who, as well as Pythagoras and Empedocles and all lovers of wisdom, are not bound to the circumstances of our birth, but of our new birth: who by abstinence subjugate our refractory flesh, eager to follow the allurements of lust? The eating of flesh, and drinking of wine, and fulness of stomach, is the seed-plot of lust. And so the comic poet says, [4749] "Venus shivers unless Ceres and Bacchus be with her."
8. Through the five senses, as through open windows, vice has access to the soul. The metropolis and citadel of the mind cannot be taken unless the enemy have previously entered by its doors. The soul is distressed by the disorder they produce, and is led captive by sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. If any one delights in the sports of the circus, or the struggles of athletes, the versatility of actors, the figure of women, in splendid jewels, dress, silver and gold, and other things of the kind, the liberty of the soul is lost through the windows of the eyes, and the prophet's words are fulfilled: [4750] "Death is come up into our windows." Again, our sense of hearing is flattered by the tones of various instruments and the modulations of the voice; and whatever enters the ear by the songs of poets and comedians, by the pleasantries and verses of pantomimic actors, weakens the manly fibre of the mind. Then, again, no one but a profligate denies that the profligate and licentious find a delight in sweet odours, different sorts of incense, fragrant balsam, [4751] kuphi, [4752] oenanthe, and musk, which is nothing but the skin of a foreign rat. And who does not know that gluttony is the mother of avarice, and, as it were, fetters the heart and keeps it pressed down upon the earth? For the sake of a temporary gratification of the appetite, land and sea are ransacked, and we toil and sweat our lives through, that we may send down our throats honey-wine and costly food. The desire to handle other men's persons, and the burning lust for women, is a passion bordering on insanity. To gratify this sense we languish, grow angry, throw ourselves about with joy, indulge envy, engage in rivalry, are filled with anxiety, and when we have terminated the pleasure with more or less repentance, we once more take fire, and want to do that which we again regret doing. Where, then, that which we may call the thin edge of disturbance, has entered the citadel of the mind through these doors, what will become of its liberty, its endurance, its thought of God, particularly since the sense of touch can picture to itself even bygone pleasures, and through the recollection of vice forces the soul to take part in them, and after a manner to practice what it does not actually commit?
9. At the call of reasoning such as this, many philosophers have forsaken the crowded cities, and their pleasure gardens in the suburbs with well-watered grounds, shady trees, twittering birds, crystal fountains, murmuring brooks, and many charms for eye and ear, lest through luxury and abundance of riches, the firmness of the mind should be enfeebled, and its purity debauched. For there is no good in frequently seeing objects which may one day lead to your captivity, or in making trial of things which you would find it hard to do without. Even the Pythagoreans shunned company of this kind and were wont to dwell in solitary places in the desert. The Platonists also and Stoics lived in the groves and porticos of temples, that, admonished by the sanctity of their restricted abode, they might think of nothing but virtue. Plato, moreover, himself, when [4753] Diogenes trampled on his couches with muddy feet (he being a rich man), chose a house called [4754] Academia at some distance from the city, in a spot not only lonely but unhealthy, so that he might have leisure for philosophy. His object was that by constant anxiety about sickness the assaults of lust might be defeated, and that his disciples might experience no pleasure but that afforded by the things they learned. We have read of some who took out their own eyes lest through sight they might lose the contemplation of philosophy. Hence it was that [4755] Crates the famous Theban, after throwing into the sea a considerable weight of gold, exclaimed, "Go to the bottom, ye evil lusts: I will drown you that you may not drown me." But if anyone thinks to enjoy keenly meat and drink in excess, and at the same time to devote himself to philosophy, that is to say, to live in luxury and yet not to be hampered by the vices attendant on luxury, he deceives himself. For if it be the case that even when far distant from them we are frequently caught in the snares of nature, and are compelled to desire those things of which we have a scant supply: what folly it is to think we are free when we are surrounded by the nets of pleasure! We think of what we see, hear, smell, taste, handle, and are led to desire the thing which affords us pleasure. That the mind sees and hears, and that we can neither hear nor see anything unless our senses are fixed upon the objects of sight and hearing, is an old saw. It is difficult, or rather impossible, when we are swimming in luxury and pleasure not to think of what we are doing: and it is an idle pretence which some men put forward [4756] that they can take their fill of pleasure with their faith and purity and mental uprightness unimpaired. It is a violation of nature to revel in pleasure, and the Apostle gives a caution against this very thing when he says, [4757] "She that giveth herself to pleasure is dead while she liveth."
10. The bodily senses are like horses madly racing, but the soul like a charioteer holds the reins. And as horses without a driver go at break-neck speed, so the body if it be not governed by the reasonable soul rushes to its own destruction. The philosophers make use of another illustration of the relations between soul and body; [4758] they say the body is a boy, the soul his tutor. Hence the [4759] historian tells us "that our soul directs, our body serves. The one we have in common with the gods, the other with the beasts." So then unless the vices of youth and boyhood are regulated by the wisdom of the tutor, every effort and every impulse sets strongly in the direction of wantonness. We might lose four of the senses and yet live,--that is we could do without sight, hearing, smell, and the pleasures of touch. But a human being cannot subsist without tasting food. It follows that reason must be present, that we may take food of such a kind and in such quantities as will not burden the body, or hinder the free movement of the soul: for it is the way with us that we eat, and walk, and sleep, and digest our food, and afterwards in the fulness of blood have to bear the spur of lust. [4760] "Wine is a mocker, strong drink a brawler." Whosoever has much to do with these is not wise. And we should not take such food as is difficult of digestion, or such as when eaten will give us reason to complain that we got it and lost it with much effort. The preparation of vegetables, fruit, and pulse is easy, and does not require the skill of expensive cooks: our bodies are nourished by them with little trouble on our part; and, if taken in moderation, such food is easier to digest, and at less cost, because it does not stimulate the appetite, and therefore is not devoured with avidity. No one has his stomach inflated or overloaded if he eats only one or two dishes, and those inexpensive ones: such a condition comes of pampering the taste with a variety of meats. The smells of the kitchen may induce us to eat, but when hunger is satisfied, they make us their slaves. Hence gorging gives rise to disease: and many persons find relief for the discomfort of gluttony in emetics,--what they disgraced themselves by putting in, they with still greater disgrace put out.
11. [4761] Hippocrates in his Aphorisms teaches that stout persons of a coarse habit of body, when once they have attained their full growth, unless the plethora be quickly relieved by blood-letting, develop tendencies to paralysis and the worst forms of disease: they must therefore be bled, that there may be room for fresh growth. For it is not the nature of our bodies to continue in one stay, but go on either to increase or decrease, and no animal can live which is incapable of growth. Whence [4762] Galen, a very learned man and the commentator on Hippocrates, says in his exhortation to the practice of medicine that athletes whose whole life and art consists in stuffing cannot live long, nor be healthy: and that their souls enveloped with superfluous blood and fat, and as it were covered with mud, have no refined or heavenly thoughts, but are always intent upon gluttonous and voracious feasting. Diogenes maintains that tyrants do not bring about revolutions in cities, and foment wars civil or foreign for the sake of a simple diet of vegetables and fruits, but for costly meats and the delicacies of the table. And, strange to say, Epicurus, the defender of pleasure, in all his books speaks of nothing but vegetables and fruits; and he says that we ought to live on cheap food because the preparation of sumptuous banquets of flesh involves great care and suffering, and greater pains attend the search for such delicacies than pleasures the consumption of them. Our bodies need only something to eat and drink. Where there is bread and water, and the like, nature is satisfied. Whatever more there may be does not go to meet the wants of life, but are ministers to vicious pleasure. Eating and drinking does not quench the longing for luxuries, but appeases hunger and thirst. Persons who feed on flesh want also gratifications not found in flesh. But they who adopt a simple diet do not look for flesh. Further, we cannot devote ourselves to wisdom if our thoughts are running on a well-laden table, the supply of which requires an excess of work and anxiety. The wants of nature are soon satisfied: cold and hunger can be banished with simple food and clothing. Hence the Apostle says: "Having food and clothing let us be therewith content." Delicacies and the various dishes of the feast are the nurses of avarice. The soul greatly exults when you are content with little: you have the world beneath your feet, and can exchange all its power, its feasts, and its lusts, the objects for which men rake money together, for common food, and make up for them all with a sack-cloth shirt. Take away the luxurious feasting and the gratification of lust, and no one will want riches to be used either in the belly, or beneath it. The invalid only regains his health by diminishing and carefully selecting his food, i.e., in medical phrase, by adopting a "slender diet." The same food that recovers health, can preserve it, for no one can imagine vegetables to be the cause of disease. And if vegetables do not give the strength of Milo of Crotona--a strength supplied and nourished by meat--what need has a wise man and a Christian philosopher of such strength as is required by athletes and soldiers, and which, if he had it, would only stimulate to vice? Let those persons deem meat accordant with health who wish to gratify their lust, and who, sunk in filthy pleasure, are always at heat. What a Christian wants is health, but not superfluous strength. And it ought not to disturb us if we find but few supporters; for the pure and temperate are as rare as good and faithful friends, and virtue is always scarce. Study the temperance of [4763] Fabricius, or the poverty of [4764] Curius, and in a great city you will find few worthy of your imitation. You need not fear that if you do not eat flesh, fowlers and hunters will have learnt their craft in vain.
12. We have read that some who suffered with disease of the joints and with gouty humours recovered their health by proscribing delicacies, and coming down to a simple board and mean food. For they were then free from the worry of managing a house and from unlimited feasting. Horace [4765] makes fun of the longing for food which when eaten leaves nothing but regret.
"Scorn pleasure; she but hurts when bought with pain."
And when, in the delightful retirement of the country, by way of satirizing voluptuous men, he described himself as plump and fat, his sportive verse ran thus:
"Pay me a visit if you want to laugh,
You'll find me fat and sleek with well-dress'd hide,
Like any pig from Epicurus' sty."
But even if our food be the commonest, we must avoid repletion. For nothing is so destructive to the mind as a full belly, fermenting like a wine vat and giving forth its gases on all sides. What sort of fasting is it, or what refreshment is there after fasting, when we are blown out with yesterday's dinner, and our [4766] stomach is made a factory for the closet? We wish to get credit for protracted abstinence, and all the while we devour so much that a day and a night can scarcely digest it. The proper name to give it is not fasting, but rather debauch and rank indigestion.
13. [4767] Dicæarchus in his book of Antiquities, describing Greece, relates that under Saturn, that is in the Golden Age, when the ground brought forth all things abundantly, no one ate flesh, but every one lived on field produce and fruits which the earth bore of itself. Xenophon in eight books narrates the life of Cyrus, King of the Persians, and asserts that they supported life on barley, cress, salt, and black bread. Both the aforesaid Xenophon, Theophrastus, and almost all the Greek writers testify to the frugal diet of the Spartans. [4768] Chæremon the Stoic, a man of great eloquence, has a treatise on the life of the ancient priests of Egypt, who, he says, laid aside all worldly business and cares, and were ever in the temple, studying nature and the regulating causes of the heavenly bodies; they never had intercourse with women; they never from the time they began to devote themselves to the divine service set eyes on their kindred and relations, nor even saw their children; they always abstained from flesh and wine, on account of the light-headedness and dizziness which a small quantity of food caused, and especially to avoid the stimulation of the lustful appetite engendered by this meat and drink. They seldom ate bread, that they might not load the stomach. And whenever they ate it, they mixed pounded hyssop with all that they took, so that the action of its warmth might diminish the weight of the heavier food. They used no oil except with vegetables, and then only in small quantities, to mitigate the unpalatable taste. What need, he says, to speak of birds, when they avoided even eggs and milk as flesh. The one, they said, was liquid flesh, the other was blood with the colour changed? Their bed was made of palm-leaves, called by them baiæ: a sloping footstool laid upon the ground served for a pillow, and they could go without food for two or three days. The humours of the body which arise from sedentary habits were dried up by reducing their diet to an extreme point.
14. [4769] Josephus in the second book of the history of the Jewish captivity, and in the eighteenth book of the Antiquities, and the two treatises against Apion, describes three sects of the Jews, the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes. On the last of these he bestows wondrous praise because they practised perpetual abstinence from wives, wine, and flesh, and made a second nature of their daily fast. [4770] Philo, too, a man of great learning, published a treatise of his own on their mode of life. [4771] Neanthes of Cizycus, and [4772] Asclepiades of Cyprus, at the time when Pygmalion ruled over the East, relate that the eating of flesh was unknown. Eubulus, also, who wrote the history of [4773] Mithras in many volumes, relates that among the Persians there are three kinds of Magi, the first of whom, those of greatest learning and eloquence, take no food except meal and vegetables. At Eleusis it is customary to abstain from fowls and fish and certain fruits. [4774] Bardesanes, a Babylonian, divides the Gymnosophists of India into two classes, the one called Brahmans, the other Samaneans, who are so rigidly self-restrained that they support themselves either with the fruit of trees which grow on the banks of the Ganges, or with common food of rice or flour, and when the king visits them, he is wont to adore them, and thinks the peace of his country depends upon their prayers. Euripides relates that the prophets of Jupiter in Crete abstained not only from flesh, but also from cooked food. [4775] Xenocrates the philosopher writes that at Athens out of all the laws of [4776] Triptolemus only three precepts remain in the temple of Ceres: respect to parents, reverence for the gods, and abstinence from flesh. [4777] Orpheus in his song utterly denounces the eating of flesh. I might speak of the frugality of Pythagoras, Socrates, and [4778] Antisthenes to our confusion: but it would be tedious, and would require a work to itself. At all events this is the Antisthenes who, after teaching rhetoric with renown, on hearing Socrates, is related to have said to his disciples, "Go, and seek a master, for I have now found one." He immediately, sold what he had, divided the proceeds among the people, and kept nothing for himself but a small cloak. Of his poverty and toil Xenophon in the Symposium is a witness, and so are his countless treatises, some philosophical, some rhetorical. His most famous follower was the great Diogenes, who was mightier than King Alexander in that he conquered human nature. For Antisthenes would not take a single pupil, and when he could not get rid of the persistent Diogenes he threatened him with a stick if he did not depart. The latter is said to have laid down his head and said, "No stick will be hard enough to prevent me from following you." [4779] Satyrus, the biographer of illustrious men, relates that Diogenes to guard himself against the cold, folded his cloak double: his scrip was his pantry: and when aged he carried a stick to support his feeble frame, and was commonly called "Old Hand-to-mouth," because to that very hour he begged and received food from any one. His home was the gateways and city arcades. And when he wriggled into his tub, he would joke about his movable house that adapted itself to the seasons. For when the weather was cold he used to turn the mouth of the tub towards the south: in summer towards the north; and whatever the direction of the sun might be, that way the palace of Diogenes was turned. He had a wooden dish for drinking; but on one occasion seeing a boy drinking with the hollow of his hand he is related to have dashed the cup to the ground, saying that he did not know nature provided a cup. His virtue and self-restraint were proved even by his death. It is said that, now an old man, he was on his way to the Olympic games, which used to be attended by a great concourse of people from all parts of Greece, when he was overtaken by fever and lay down upon the bank by the road-side. And when his friends wished to place him on a beast or in a conveyance, he did not assent, but crossing to the shade of a tree said, "Go your way, I pray you, and see the games: this night will prove me either conquered or conqueror. If I conquer the fever, I shall go to the games: if the fever conquers me, I shall enter the unseen world." There through the night he lay gasping for breath and did not, as we are told, so much die as banish the fever by death. I have cited the example of only one philosopher, so that our fine, erect, muscular athletes, who hardly make a shadow of a footmark in their swift passage, whose words are in their fists and their reasoning in their heels, who either know nothing of apostolic poverty and the hardness of the cross, or despise it, may at least imitate Gentile moderation.
15. So far I have dealt with the arguments and examples of philosophers. Now I will pass on to the beginning of the human race, that is, to the sphere which belongs to us. I will first point out that Adam received a command in paradise to abstain from one tree though he might eat the other fruit. The blessedness of paradise could not be consecrated without abstinence from food. So long as he fasted, he remained in paradise; he ate, and was cast out; he was no sooner cast out than he married a wife. While he fasted in paradise he continued a virgin: when he filled himself with food in the earth, he bound himself with the tie of marriage. And yet though cast out he did not immediately receive permission to eat flesh; but only the fruits of trees and the produce of the crops, and herbs and vegetables were given him for food, that even when an exile from paradise he might feed not upon flesh which was not to be found in paradise, but upon grain and fruit like that of paradise. But afterwards when [4780] God saw that the heart of man from his youth was set on wickedness continually, and that His Spirit could not remain in them because they were flesh, He by the deluge passed sentence on the works of the flesh, and, taking note of the extreme greediness of men, [4781] gave them liberty to eat flesh: so that while understanding that all things were lawful for them, they might not greatly desire that which was allowed, lest they should turn a commandment into a cause of transgression. And yet even then, fasting was in part commanded. For, seeing that some animals are called clean, some unclean, and the unclean animals were taken into Noah's ark by pairs, the clean in uneven numbers (and of course the eating of the unclean was forbidden, otherwise the term unclean would be unmeaning), fasting was in part consecrated: restraint in the use of all was taught by the prohibition of some. Why did Esau lose his birthright? Was it not on account of food? and he could not atone with tears for the impatience of his appetite. The people of Israel cast out from Egypt and on their way to the land of promise, the land flowing with milk and honey, longed for the flesh of Egypt, and the melons and garlic, saying: [4782] "Would that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the flesh pots." And again, [4783] "Who shall give us flesh to eat? We remember the fish which we did eat in Egypt for nought; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlic: but now our soul is dried away: we have nought save this manna to look to."
They despised angels' food, and sighed for the flesh of Egypt. Moses for forty days and forty nights fasted on Mount Sinai, and showed even then that man does not live on bread alone, but on every word of God. He says to the Lord, "the people is full and maketh idols." Moses with empty stomach received the law written with the finger of God. The people that ate and drank and rose up to play fashioned a golden calf, and preferred an Egyptian ox to the majesty of the Lord. The toil of so many days perished through the fulness of a single hour. Moses boldly broke the tables: for he knew that drunkards cannot hear the word of God. [4784] "The beloved grew thick, waxed fat, and became sleek: he kicked and forsook the Lord which made him, and departed from the God of his salvation." Hence also it is enjoined in the same Book of Deuteronomy: [4785] "Beware, lest when thou hast eaten and drunk, and hast built goodly houses, and when thy herds and thy flocks multiply, and thy silver and gold is multiplied, then thine heart be lifted up, and thou forget the Lord thy God." In short the people ate and their heart grew thick, lest they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart: so the people well fed and fat-fleshed could not bear the countenance of Moses who fasted, for, to correctly render the Hebrew, it was [4786] furnished with horns through his converse with God. And it was not, as some think, to show that there is no difference between virginity and marriage, but to assert his sympathy with severe fasting, that our Lord and Saviour when he was transfigured on the Mount revealed Moses and Elias with Himself in glory. Although Moses and Elias were properly types of the Law and the Prophets, as is clearly witnessed by the Gospel: [4787] "They spake of his departure which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem." For the passion of our Lord is declared not by virginity or marriage, but by the Law and the Prophets. If, however, any persons contentiously maintain that by Moses is signified marriage, by Elias virginity, let me tell them briefly that Moses died and was buried, but Elias was carried off in a chariot of fire and entered on immortality before he approached death. But the second writing of the tables could not be effected without fasting. What was lost by drunkenness was regained by abstinence, a proof that by fasting we can return to paradise, whence, though fulness, we have been expelled. In [4788] Exodus we read that the battle was fought against Amalek while Moses prayed, and the whole people fasted until the evening. [4789] Joshua, the son of Nun, bade sun and moon stand still, and the victorious army prolonged its fast for more than a day. [4790] Saul, as it is written in the first book of Kings, pronounced a curse on him who ate bread before the evening, and until he had avenged himself upon his enemies. So none of his people tasted any food. And all they of the land took food. And so binding was a solemn fast once it was proclaimed to the Lord, that Jonathan, to whom the victory was due, was taken by lot, and [4791] could not escape the charge of sinning in ignorance, and his father's hand was raised against him, and the prayers of the people scarce availed to save him. [4792] Elijah after the preparation of a forty days fast saw God on Mount Horeb, and heard from Him the words, "What doest thou here, Elijah?" There is much more familiarity in this than in the "Where art thou, Adam?" of Genesis. The latter was intended to excite the fears of one who had fed and was lost; the former was affectionately addressed to a fasting servant. [4793] When the people were assembled in Mizpeh, Samuel proclaimed a fast, and so strengthened them, and thus made them prevail against the enemy. [4794] The attack of the Assyrians was repulsed, and the might of Sennacherib utterly crushed, by the tears and sackcloth of King Hezekiah, and by his humbling himself with fasting. So also the city of Nineveh by fasting excited compassion and turned aside the threatening wrath of the Lord. And [4795] Sodom and Gomorrha might have appeased it, had they been willing to repent, and through the aid of fasting gain for themselves tears of repentance. [4796] Ahab, the most impious of kings, by fasting and wearing sackcloth, succeeded in escaping the sentence of God, and in deferring the overthrow of his house to the days of his posterity. [4797] Hannah, the wife of Elkanah, by fasting won the gift of a son. [4798] At Babylon the magicians came into peril, every interpreter of dreams, soothsayer, and diviner was slain. Daniel and the three youths gained a good report by fasting, and although they were fed on pulse, they were fairer and wiser than they who ate the flesh from the king's table. Then it is written that Daniel fasted for three weeks; he ate no pleasant bread; flesh and wine entered not his mouth; he was not anointed with oil; and the angel came to him saying, [4799] "Daniel, thou art worthy of compassion." He who in the eyes of God was worthy of compassion, afterwards was an object of terror to the lions in their den. How fair a thing is that which propitiates God, tames lions, terrifies demons! Habakkuk (although we do not find this in the Hebrew Scriptures [4800] ) was sent to him with the reaper's meal, for by a week's abstinence he had merited so distinguished a server. David, when his son was in danger after his adultery, made confession in ashes and with fasting. [4801] He tells us that he ate ashes like bread, and mingled his drink with weeping. [4802] And that his knees became weak through fasting. Yet he had certainly heard from Nathan the words, [4803] "The Lord also hath put away thy sin." Samson and Samuel drank neither wine nor strong drink, for they were children of promise, and conceived in abstinence and fasting. [4804] Aaron and the other priests when about to enter the temple, refrained from all intoxicating drink for fear they should die. Whence we learn that they die who minister in the Church without sobriety. And hence it is a reproach against Israel: [4805] "Ye gave my Nazarites wine to drink." Jonadab, the son of Rechab, commanded his sons to drink no wine for ever. And when Jeremiah offered them wine to drink, and they of their own accord refused it, the Lord spake by the prophet, saying: [4806] "Because ye have obeyed the commandment of Jonadab your father, Jonadab the son of Rechab shall not want a man to stand before me for ever." On the [4807] threshold of the Gospel appears Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, the wife of one husband, and a woman who was always fasting. Long-continued chastity and persistent fasting welcomed a Virgin Lord. His forerunner and herald, John, fed on locusts and wild honey, not on flesh; and the hermits of the desert and the monks in their cells, at first used the same sustenance. But the Lord Himself consecrated His baptism by a forty days' fast, and He taught us that the more violent devils [4808] cannot be overcome, except by prayer and fasting. [4809] Cornelius the centurion was found worthy through alms-giving and frequent fasts to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit before baptism. [4810] The Apostle Paul, after speaking of hunger and thirst, and his other labours, perils from robbers, shipwrecks, loneliness, enumerates frequent fasts. And he [4811] advises his disciple Timothy, who had a weak stomach, and was subject to many infirmities, to drink wine in moderation: "Drink no longer water," he says. The fact that he bids him no longer drink water shows that he had previously drunk water. The apostle would not have allowed this had not frequent infirmities and bodily pain demanded the concession.
16. The Apostle does indeed [4812] blame those who forbade marriage, and commanded to abstain from food, which God created for use with thanksgiving. But he has in view Marcion, and Tatian, and other heretics, who inculcate perpetual abstinence, to destroy, and express their hatred and contempt for, the works of the Creator. But we praise every creature of God, and yet prefer leanness to corpulence, abstinence to luxury, fasting to fulness. [4813] "He that laboureth laboureth for himself, and he is eager to his own destruction." And, [4814] "From the days of John the Baptist (who fasted and was a virgin) until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and men of violence take it by force." For we are afraid lest at the coming of the eternal judge we be caught, as in the days of the flood, and at the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrha, eating and drinking, and marrying, and giving in marriage. For both the flood and the fire from heaven found fulness as well as marriage ready for destruction. Nor need we wonder if the Apostle commands that everything sold in the market be bought and eaten, since with idolaters, and with those who still ate in the temples of the idols meats offered to idols as such, it passed for the highest abstinence to abstain only from food eaten by the Gentiles. And if he says to the Romans: [4815] "Let not him that eateth set at nought him that eateth not: and let not him that eateth not judge him that eateth," he does not make fasting and fulness of equal merit, but he is speaking against those believers in Christ who were still judaizing: and he warns Gentile believers, not to offend those by their food who were still too weak in faith. In brief this is clear enough in the sequel: [4816] "I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus, that nothing is unclean of itself: save that to him who accounteth anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean. For if because of meat thy brother is grieved, thou walkest no longer in love. Destroy not with thy meat him for whom Christ died. Let not then your good be evil spoken of: for the Kingdom of God is not eating and drinking." And that no one may suppose he is referring to fasting and not to Jewish superstition, he immediately explains, [4817] "One man hath faith to eat all things: but he that is weak eateth herbs." And again, [4818] "One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike. Let each man be fully assured in his own mind. He that regardeth the day, regardeth it unto the Lord: and he that eateth, eateth unto the Lord, for he giveth God thanks; and he that eateth not, unto the Lord he eateth not, and giveth God thanks." For they who were still weak in faith and thought some meats clean, some unclean: and supposed there was a difference between one day and another, for example, that the Sabbath, and the New Moons, and the Feast of Tabernacles were holier than other days, were commanded to eat herbs which are indifferently partaken of by all. But such as were of stronger faith believed all meats and all days to be alike.
17. My opponent has dared to maintain that our Lord was called by the Pharisees a wine-bibber and a glutton: and from the fact of His going to marriage feasts and from His not despising the banquets of sinners, I am to infer His wishes respecting ourselves. That Lord, so you suppose, is a glutton who fasted forty days to hallow Christian fasting; [4819] who calls them blessed that hunger and thirst; [4820] who says that He has food, not that which the disciples surmised, but such as would not perish for ever; [4821] who forbids us to think of the morrow; who, though He is said to have hungered and thirsted, and to have gone frequently to various meals, except in celebrating the mystery whereby He represented His passion, or [4822] in proving the reality of His body is nowhere described as ministering to His appetite; [4823] who tells of purple-clad Dives in hell for his feasting, and says that poor Lazarus for his abstinence was in Abraham's bosom; who, when we fast, [4824] bids us anoint our head and wash our face, that we fast not to gain glory from men, but praise from the Lord; who did indeed [4825] after His resurrection eat part of a broiled fish and of a honey-comb, not to allay hunger and to gratify His palate, but to show the reality of His own body. For whenever He raised anyone from the dead He [4826] ordered that food should be given him to eat, lest the resurrection should be thought a delusion. And this is why Lazarus after his resurrection is [4827] described as being at the feast with our Lord. We do not deny that fish and other kinds of flesh, if we choose, may be taken as food; but as we prefer virginity to marriage, so do we esteem fasting and spirituality above meats and full-bloodedness. And if Peter [4828] before dinner went to the supper chamber at the sixth hour, a chance fit of hunger does not prejudice fasting. For, if this were so, because our Lord [4829] at the sixth hour sat weary on the well of Samaria and wished to drink, all must of necessity, whether they so desire or not, drink at that time. Possibly it was the Sabbath, or the Lord's day, and he hungered at the sixth hour after two or three days' fasting; for I could never believe that the Apostle, if he had eaten a dinner only one day previous and had been blown out with a great meal, would have been hungry by noon next day. But if he did dine the day previous, and was hungry next day before luncheon, I do not think that a man who was so soon hungry ate until he was satisfied. Again, God by the mouth of Isaiah says what fast He did not choose: [4830] "In the day of your fast ye find pleasure, and afflict the lowly: ye fast for strife and debate, and to smite with the fist of wickedness. It is not such a fast that I have chosen, saith the Lord." What kind He has chosen He thus teaches: "Deal thy bread to the hungry, and bring the houseless poor into thy house. When thou seest the naked cover him, and hide not thyself from thine own flesh." He did not therefore reject fasting, but showed what He would have it to be: for that bodily hunger is not pleasing to God which is made null and void by strife, and plunder, and lust. If God does not desire fasting, how is it that in [4831] Leviticus He commands the whole people in the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, to fast until the evening, and threatens that he who does not afflict his soul shall die and be cut off from his people? How is it that the [4832] graves of lust where the people fell in their devotion to flesh remain even to this day in the wilderness? Do we not read that the stupid people gorged themselves with quails until the wrath of God came upon them? Why was the man of God at whose prophecy the hand of King Jeroboam withered, and who ate contrary to the command of God, [4833] immediately smitten? Strange that the lion which left the ass safe and sound should not spare the prophet just risen from his meal! He who, while he was fasting, had wrought miracles, no sooner ate a meal than he paid the penalty for the gratification. Joel also cries aloud: [4834] "Sanctify a fast, proclaim a time of healing," that it might appear that a fast is sanctified by other works, and that a holy fast avails for the cure of sin. Moreover, just as true virginity is not prejudiced by the counterfeit professions of the virgins of the devil, so neither is true fasting by the periodic fast and perpetual abstinence from certain kinds of food on the part of the worshippers of Isis and Cybele, particularly when a fast from bread is made up for by feasting on flesh. And just as the signs of Moses were imitated by the signs of the Egyptians which were in reality no signs at all, for the rod of Moses swallowed up the rods of the magicians: so when the devil tries to be the rival of God this does not prove that our religion is superstitious, but that we are negligent, since we refuse to do what even men of the world see clearly to be good.
18. His fourth and last contention is that there are two classes, the sheep and the goats, the just and the unjust: that the just stand on the right hand, the other on the left: and that to the just the words are spoken: [4835] "Come, ye blessed of my Father, and inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world." But that sinners are thus addressed: [4836] "Depart from me, ye cursed, into the eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels." That a good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, nor an evil tree good fruit. Hence it is that the Saviour says to the Jews: [4837] "Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father it is your will to do." He quotes the parable of the ten virgins, the wise and the foolish, and shows that the five who had no oil remained outside, but that the other five who had gotten for themselves the light of good works went into the marriage with the bridegroom. He goes back to the flood, and tells us that they who were righteous like Noah were saved, but that the sinners perished all together. We are informed that among the men of Sodom and Gomorrha no difference is made except between the two classes of the good and the bad. The righteous are delivered, the sinners are consumed by the same fire. There is one salvation for those who are released, one destruction for those who stay behind. Lot's wife is a clear warning that we must not deviate a hair's breadth from right. If, however, he says, you object and ask me why the righteous toils in time of peace, or in the midst of persecution, if he is to gain nothing nor have a greater reward, I would assert that he does this, not that he may gain a further reward but that he may not lose what he has already received. In Egypt also the ten plagues fell with equal violence upon all that sinned, and the same darkness hung over master and slave, noble and ignoble, the king and the people. Again at the Red Sea the righteous all passed over, the sinners were all overwhelmed. Six hundred thousand men, besides those who were unfit for war through age or sex, all alike fell in the desert, and two who were alike in righteousness are alike delivered. For forty years all Israel toiled and died alike. As regards food, an homer of manna was the measure for all ages: the clothes of all alike did not wear out: the hair of all alike did not grow, nor the beard increase: the shoes of all lasted the same time. Their feet grew not hard: the food in the mouths of all had the same taste. They went on their way to one resting place with equal toil and equal reward. All Hebrews had the same Passover, the same Feast of Tabernacles, the same Sabbath, the same New Moons. In the seventh, the Sabbatical Year, all prisoners were released without distinction of persons, and in the year of Jubilee all debts were forgiven to all debtors, and he who had sold land returned to the inheritance of his fathers.
19. Then, again, as regards the parable of the sower in the Gospel, we read that the good ground brought forth fruit, some a hundred fold, some sixty fold, and some thirty fold; and, on the other hand, that the bad ground admitted of three degrees of sterility: but Jovinianus makes only two classes, the good soil and the bad. [4838] And as in one Gospel our Lord promises the Apostles a hundred fold, in another seven fold, for leaving children and wives, and in the world to come life eternal; and the seven and the hundred mean the same thing: so, too, in the passage before us, the numbers describing the fertility of the soil need not create any difficulty, particularly when the Evangelist Mark gives the inverse order, thirty, sixty, and a hundred. The Lord says, [4839] "He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood abideth in me, and I in him." As, then, there are not varying degrees of Christ's presence in us, so neither are there degrees of our abiding in Christ. [4840] "Every one that loveth me will keep my word: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him." He that is righteous, loves Christ: and if a man thus loves, the Father and the Son come to him, and make their abode with him. Now I suppose that when the guest is such as this the host cannot possibly lack anything. And if our Lord says, [4841] "In my Father's house are many mansions," His meaning is not that there are different mansions in the kingdom of heaven, but He indicates the number of Churches in the whole world, for though the Church be seven-fold she is but one. "I go," He says, "to prepare a place for you," not places. If this promise is peculiar to the twelve apostles, then Paul is shut out from that place, and the chosen vessel will be thought superfluous and unworthy. John and James, because they asked more than the others, did not obtain it; and yet their dignity is not diminished, because they were equal to the rest of the apostles. [4842] "Know ye not that your bodies are a temple of the Holy Ghost?" A temple, He says, not temples, in order to show that God dwells in all alike. [4843] "Neither for these only do I pray, but for them also that believe on me through their word; as thou, Father, in me, and I in thee, are one, so they may be all one in us. And the glory which thou hast given me I have given unto them. I have loved them, as thou hast loved me. And as we are Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, one God, so may they be one people in themselves, that is, like dear children, partakers of the divine nature." Call the Church what you will, bride, sister, mother, her assembly is but one and never lacks husband, brother, or son. Her faith is one, and she is not defiled by variety of doctrine, nor divided by heresies. She continues a virgin. Whithersoever the Lamb goeth, she follows Him: she alone knows the Song of Christ.
20. "If you tell me," says he, "that one star differeth from another star in glory, I reply, that one star does differ from another star; that is, spiritual persons differ from carnal. We love all the members alike, and do not prefer the eye to the finger, nor the finger to the ear: but the loss of any one is attended by the sorrow of all the rest. We all alike come into this world, and we all alike depart from it. There is one Adam of the earth, and another from heaven. The earthly Adam is on the left hand, and will perish: the heavenly Adam is on the right hand, and will be saved. He who says to his brother, thou fool,' and raca,' will be in danger of Gehenna. And the murderer and the adulterer will likewise be sent into Gehenna. In times of persecution some are burnt, some strangled, some beheaded, some flee, or die within the walls of a prison: the struggle varies in kind, but the victors' crown is one. No difference was made between the son who had never left his father, and his brother who was welcomed as a returning penitent. To the labourers of the first hour, the third, the sixth, the ninth, and the eleventh, the same reward of a penny was given, and what may perhaps seem still more strange to you, the first to receive the reward were they who had toiled least in the vineyard."
21. Who is there even of God's elect that would not be disturbed at these and similar passages of Holy Scripture which our crafty opponent, with a perverse ingenuity, twists to the support of his own views? The Apostle John says that many Antichrists had come, and to make no difference between John himself and the lowest penitent is the preaching of a real Antichrist. At the same time, I am amazed at the portentous forms which Jovinianus, as slippery as a snake and like another Proteus, so rapidly assumes. In sexual intercourse and full feeding he is an Epicurean; in the distribution of rewards and punishments he all at once becomes a Stoic, He exchanges Jerusalem for [4844] Citium, Judæa for Cyprus, Christ for Zeno. If we may not depart a hair's breadth from virtue, and all sins are equal, and a man who in a fit of hunger steals a piece of bread is no less guilty than he who slays a man: you must, in your turn, be held guilty of the greatest crimes. The case is different if you say that you have no sin, not even the least, and if, although all apostles and prophets and all the saints (as I have maintained in dealing with [4845] his second proposition) bewail their sinfulness, you alone boast of your righteousness. But a minute ago you were barefooted: now you not only wear shoes, but decorated ones. Just now you wore a rough coat and a dirty shirt, you were grimy, and haggard, and your hand was horny with toil: now you are clad in linen and silks, and strut like an exquisite in the fashions of the Atrebates and the Laodiceans. Your cheeks are ruddy, your skin sleek, your hair smoothed down in front and behind, your belly protrudes, your shoulders are little mountains, your neck full and so loaded with fat that the half-smothered words can scarce make their escape. Surely in such extremes of dress and mode of life there must be sin on the one side or the other. I will not assert that the sin lies in the food or clothing, but that such fickleness and changing for the worse is almost censurable in itself. And what we censure, is far removed from virtue; and what is far from virtue becomes the property of vice; and what is proved to be vicious is one with sin. Now sin, according to you, is placed on the left hand, and corresponds to the goats. You must, therefore, return to your old habits if you are to be a sheep on the right hand; or, if you perversely repent of your former views and change them for others, whether you like it or not, and although you shave off your beard, you will be reckoned among the goats.
22. But what is the good of calling a [4846] one-eyed man Old One-eye, and of showing the inconsistency of an assailant, when we have to refute a whole series of statements? That the sheep and the goats on the right hand and on the left are the two classes of the righteous and the wicked, I do not deny. That a good tree does not bring forth evil fruit, nor an evil one good fruit, no one doubts. The ten virgins also, wise and foolish, we divide into good and bad. We are not ignorant that at the deluge the righteous were delivered, and sinners overwhelmed with the waters. That at Sodom and Gomorrha the just man was rescued, while the sinners were consumed by fire, is clear to everyone. We are also aware that Egypt was stricken with the ten plagues, and that Israel was saved. Even little children in our schools sing how the righteous passed through the Red Sea, and Pharaoh with his host was drowned. That six hundred thousand fell in the desert because they were unbelieving, and that two only entered the land of promise, is taught by Scripture; and so is the rest of your description of the two classes, good and bad, down to the labourers in the vineyard. But what are we to think of your assertion, that because there is a division into good and bad, the good, or the bad it may be, are not distinguished one from another, and that it makes no difference whether one is a ram in the flock or a poor little sheep? whether the sheep have the first or the second fleece? whether the flock is diseased and covered with the scab, or full of life and vigour? [4847] especially when by the authoritative utterances of His own prophet Ezekiel God clearly points out the difference between flock and flock of His rational sheep, saying, "Behold I judge between cattle and cattle, and between the rams and the he-goats, and between the fat cattle and the lean. Because ye have thrust with side and with shoulder, and pushed all the diseased with your horns, until they were scattered abroad." And that we might know what the cattle were, He immediately added: [4848] "Ye my flock, the flock of my pasture, are men." Will Paul and that penitent who had lain with his father's wife be on an equality, because the latter repented and was received into the Church: and shall the offender because he is with him on the right hand shine with the same glory as the Apostle? How is it then that tares and wheat grow side by side in the same field until the harvest, that is the end of the world? What is the significance of good and bad fish being contained in the Gospel net? Why, in Noah's ark, the type of the Church, are there different animals with different abodes according to their rank? Why standeth the queen upon the Lord's right hand, in raiment of wrought gold, in a vesture of gold? Why had Joseph, representing Christ, a coat of many colours? Why does the Apostle say to the Romans: [4849] "According as God had dealt to each man a measure of faith. For even as we have many members in one body, and all the members have not the same office: so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and severally members one of another. And having gifts differing according to the grace that was given to us, whether prophecy, let us prophesy according to the proportion of our faith; or ministry, let us give ourselves to our ministry; or he that teacheth, to his teaching; or he that exhorteth, to his exhorting: he that giveth, let him do it with liberality; he that ruleth, with diligence," and so on. And elsewhere: [4850] "One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind." To the Corinthians he says: [4851] "I have planted, Apollos watered: but God gave the increase. So then, neither is he that planteth any thing, neither he that watereth: but God that giveth the increase. Now he that planteth and he that watereth are one: and every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labour. For we are labourers together with God, ye are God's husbandry, ye are God's building." And again elsewhere: [4852] "According to the grace of God which is given unto me, as a wise master-builder I laid a foundation, and another buildeth thereon. But let each man take heed how he buildeth thereupon. For other foundation can no man lay, than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. But if any man buildeth on the foundation, gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay, stubble: each man's work shall be made manifest: for the day shall reveal it, because it is revealed in fire: and the fire itself shall prove each man's work of what sort it is. If any man's work shall abide which he built thereon, he shall receive a reward. If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as through fire." If the man whose work is burnt and is to suffer the loss of his labour, while he himself is saved, yet not without proof of fire: it follows that if a man's work remains which he has built upon the foundation, he will be saved without probation by fire, and consequently a difference is established between one degree of salvation and another. Again in another place he says: [4853] "Let a man so account of us, as of ministers of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God. Here, moreover, it is required in stewards, that a man be found faithful." Would you be assured that between one steward and another there is a great difference (I am not speaking of bad and good, but of the good themselves who stand on the right hand)? then listen to the sequel: [4854] "Know ye not that they which minister about the sacrifices, eat of the sacrifices, and they which wait upon the altar have their portion with the altar? Even so did the Lord ordain that they which proclaim the gospel should live of the gospel. But I have used none of these things: and I wrote not these things that it may be so done in my case: for it were good for me rather to die, than that any man should make my glorying void. For if I preach the gospel, I have nothing to glory of; for necessity is laid upon me; for woe is unto me if I preach not the gospel. For if I do this of mine own will, I have a reward: but if not of mine own will, I have a steward-ship intrusted to me. What then is my reward? That, when I preach the gospel, I may make the gospel without charge, so as not to use to the full my right in the gospel. For though I was free from all men, I brought myself under bondage to all, that I might gain the more." You surely cannot say that men commit sin by living by the Gospel, and partaking of the sacrifices. Of course not. The Lord himself made the rule that they who preach the Gospel, should live by the Gospel. But an Apostle who does not abuse this freedom, but labours with his hands that he may not be a burden to anyone, and toils night and day and ministers to his companions of course does this, that for his greater toil he may receive a greater reward.
23. Let us hasten to what remains. [4855] "There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are diversities of ministrations, and the same Lord. And there are diversities of operations, but the same God who worketh all things in all. But to each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit to profit withal." And again: [4856] "As the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of the body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ." But he precludes you from saying that the different members of the one body have the same rank; for he immediately describes the orders of the Church, and says: [4857] "And God hath set some in the Church, first, apostles; secondly, prophets; thirdly, teachers; then miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, governments, divers kinds of tongues. Are all apostles? are all prophets? are all teachers? are all workers of miracles? have all gifts of healings? do all speak with tongues? do all interpret? But desire earnestly the greater gifts. And a still more excellent way shew I unto you." And after discoursing more in detail of the graces of charity, he added: [4858] "Whether there be prophecies, they shall be done away; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall be done away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part: but when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away." And afterwards we read: [4859] "But now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; and the greatest of these is love. Follow after love; yet desire earnestly spiritual gifts, but rather that ye may prophesy." And again: [4860] "I would have you all speak with tongues, but rather that ye should prophesy: and greater is he that prophesieth than he that speaketh with tongues." And again: [4861] "I thank God, I speak with tongues more than you all." Where there are different gifts, and one man is greater, another less, and all are called spiritual, they are all certainly sheep, and they stand on the right hand; but there is a difference between one sheep and another. It is humility that leads the Apostle Paul to say: [4862] "I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am: and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not found vain: but I laboured more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me." But the very fact of his thus humbling himself shows the possibility of there being apostles of higher or lower rank, and God is not unjust that He will forget the work of him who is called the chosen vessel of election, and who laboured more abundantly than they all, or assign equal rewards to unequal deserts. Afterwards we read, [4863] "As in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be now alive. But each in his own order." If each is to rise in his own order, it follows that those who rise are of different degrees of merit. [4864] "All flesh is not the same flesh; but there is one flesh of men, and another flesh of beasts, and another flesh of birds, and another of fishes. There are also celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial: but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for one star differeth from another star in glory. So also is the resurrection of the dead." Like a learned commentator, you have explained this passage by saying that the spiritual differ from the carnal. It follows that in heaven there will be both spiritual and carnal persons, and not only will the sheep climb thither, but your goats also. "One star," he says, "differeth from another star in glory": this is not the distinction of sheep and goat, but of sheep and sheep, star and star. Lastly, he says, "there is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon." But for this, you might maintain that the phrase one star from another star covers the whole human race; but he introduces the sun and moon, and you cannot possibly reckon them among the goats. "So," says he, "is also the resurrection of the dead"--the just will shine with the brightness of the sun, and those of the next rank will glow with the splendour of the moon, so that one will be a Lucifer, another an Arcturus, a third an Orion, another Mazzaroth, or some other of the stars whose names are hollowed in the book of Job. [4865] [4866] "For we all," he says, "must be made manifest before the judgment-seat of Christ; that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he hath done, whether it be good or bad." And you cannot say that the mode of our manifestation before the judgment-seat of Christ is such that the good receive good things, the bad evil things; for he [4867] teaches us in the same epistle that he who soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly, and he that soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully. Surely he who sows more and he who sows less are both on the right side. And although they belong to the same class, that of the sower, yet they differ in respect of measure and number. The same Paul, writing to the Ephesians, says: [4868] "to the intent that now unto the principalities and the powers in the heavenly places might be made known through the church the manifold wisdom of God." You observe that it is a varied and manifold wisdom of God which is spoken of as existing in the different ranks of the church. And in the same epistle we read, [4869] "Unto each one of us was the grace given according to the measure of the grace of Christ": not that Christ's measure varies, but only that so much of His grace is poured out as we can receive.
24. In vain, therefore, do you multiply instances of sheep and goats, of the five wise and five foolish virgins, of Egyptians and Israelites, and so forth, because retribution is not in the present, but will be in the future. Hence we find that the day of judgment is promised at the end of all things, because the judgment is not now. For it would be absurd to call the last day the day of judgment, if God were judging at the present time. Now we sail the ship, wrestle, and fight, that at last we may reach the haven, be crowned, and triumph. But you, with no less adroitness than perversity, make the life of this world illustrate that of the world to come, although we know full well that here unrighteousness prevails, there, righteousness: [4870] "until we go into the sanctuary of God, and understand the end of those men." The saint does not die one way, the sinner another. Those who sail the same sea have the same calm and storm. A violent death is not one thing to the robber, another to the martyr. Children are not born one way of adultery and prostitution, in another of pure marriage. Certainly our Lord and the robbers incurred the same penalty of crucifixion. If the judgment of this world and of that which is to come be the same, it follows that they who were here crucified side by side, will also be esteemed of equal rank hereafter. Paul and they who bound him, sailed together, endured the same storm, escaped together to the shore when the ship was broken with the waves. You cannot deny that the prisoner and the keepers were of unequal merit. And what were the circumstances of that same shipwreck of the Apostle and the soldiers? The Apostle Paul afterwards [4871] related a vision, and said that they who were with him in the ship had been given to him by the Lord. Are we to suppose that he to whom they were given, and they who were given to him, were of one degree of merit? Ten righteous men can save a sinful city. Lot together with his daughters was delivered from the fire: his sons-in-law would also have been saved, had they been willing to leave the city. Now there was surely a great difference between Lot and his sons-in-law. One city out of the five, [4872] Zoar, was saved, and a place which lay under the same sentence as Sodom, Gomorrha, Admah, and Zeboiim, was preserved by the prayers of a holy man. Lot and Zoar were of different merit, but both of them escaped the fire. [4873] The robbers who in the absence of David had laid waste Ziklag, and made a prey of the wives and children of the inhabitants were slain on the third day in the plain, but forty men mounted on camels fled. Will you maintain that there was some difference between those who were slain and those who made good their escape? We read in the [4874] Gospel that the tower of Siloam fell upon eighteen men who perished in the ruins. Certainly our Saviour did not regard them as the only sinners: but they were punished to terrify the rest: it was like scourging a pestilent fellow to teach fools wisdom. If all sinners are punished alike, it is unjust for one to be slain while another is admonished by his comrade's death.
25. You raise the objection that all Israelites had the same measure of manna, an homer, and were alike in respect of dress, and hair, and beard, and shoes; as though we did not all alike partake of the body of Christ. In the Christian mysteries there is one means of sanctification for the master and the servant, the noble and the low-born, for the king and his soldiers, and yet, that which is one varies according to the merits of those who receive it. [4875] "Whosoever shall eat or drink unworthily shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord." Does it follow that because Judas drank of the same cup as the rest of the apostles, that he and they are of equal merit? But suppose that we do not choose to receive the sacrament, at all events we all have the same life, breathe the same air, have the same blood in our veins, are fed on the same food. Moreover, if our viands are improved by culinary skill and are made more palatable for the consumer, food of this kind does not satisfy nature, but tickles the appetite. We are all alike subject to hunger, all alike suffer with cold: we alike are shrivelled with the frost, or melted with the broiling heat. The sun and the moon, and all the company of the stars, the showers, the whole world run their course for us all alike, and, as the Gospel tells us, the same refreshing rain falls upon all, good and bad, just and unjust. If the present is a picture of the future, then the Sun of Righteousness will rise upon sinners as well as upon the righteous, upon the wicked and the holy, upon the heathen as well as upon Jews and Christians, though the Scripture says, [4876] "Unto you that fear the Lord shall the Sun of Righteousness arise." If He will rise to those that fear, He will set to the despisers and the false prophets. The sheep which stand on the right hand will be brought into the kingdom of heaven, the goats will be thrust down to hell. The parable does not contrast the sheep one with another, or on the other hand the goats, but merely makes a difference between sheep and goats. The whole truth is not taught in a single passage: we must always bear in mind the exact point of an illustration. For instance, the ten virgins are not examples of the whole human race, but of the careful and the slothful: the former are ever anticipating the advent of our Lord, the latter abandon themselves to idle slumber without a thought of future judgment. And so at the end of the parable it is said, [4877] "Watch, for ye know not the day, nor the hour." If at the deluge Noah was delivered, and the whole world perished, all men were flesh, and therefore were destroyed. You must either say that the sons of Noah and Noah for whose sake they were delivered were of unequal merit, or you must place the accursed Ham in the same rank as his father because he was delivered with him from the flood. At the passion of Christ all wavered, all were unprofitable together: there was none that did good, no not one. Will you therefore dare to say that Peter and the rest of the Apostles who fled denied the Saviour in the same sense as Caiaphas and the Pharisees and the people who cried out, [4878] "Crucify him, crucify him"? And, to say no more about the Apostles, do you think Annas and Caiaphas, and Judas the traitor guilty of no greater crime than Pilate who was compelled against his will to give sentence against our Lord? The guilt of Judas is proportioned to his former merit, and the greater the guilt, the greater the penalty too. [4879] "For the mighty shall mightily suffer torment." An evil tree does not bear good fruit, nor a good tree evil fruit. If this be so, tell me how it was that Paul though he was an evil tree and persecuted the Church of Christ, afterwards bore good fruit? And Judas, though he was a good tree and wrought miracles like the other Apostles, afterwards turned traitor and brought forth evil fruit? The truth is that a good tree does not bear evil fruit, nor an evil tree good fruit, so long as they continue in their goodness, or badness. And if we read that every Hebrew keeps the same Passover, and that in [4880] the seventh year every prisoner is set free, and that at Jubilee, that is the fiftieth year, [4881] every possession returns to its owner, all this refers not to the present, but to the future; for being in bondage during the six days of this world, on the seventh day, the true and eternal Sabbath, we shall be free, at any rate if we wish to be free while still in bondage in the world. If, however, we do not desire it, our ear will be bored in token of our disobedience, and together with our wives and children, whom we preferred to liberty, that is, with the flesh and its works, we shall be in perpetual slavery.
26. As for the parable of the sower which makes both good and bad ground bear a triple crop, and the passage from the apostle in which upon Christ as the foundation one man builds gold, silver, costly stones, another wood, hay, stubble, the meaning is perfectly clear. We know that in a great house there are different vessels, and to wish to contradict so plain a truth would be sheer impudence. Yet that Jovinianus may not triumph in a lie and quote the instance of the apostles by way of discrediting the hundred fold, sixty fold, and thirty fold, let me inform him that in [4882] Matthew and Mark a hundred fold is promised to the apostles who had left all. And I would tell him further, that in the Gospel of Luke we find much more, that is polu pleiona, and that there is absolutely no instance in the Gospels of a hundred standing for seven; and that he is convicted either of forgery, or of ignorance; and that our cause is not prejudiced by the fact that in one Gospel the enumeration begins at a hundred, in another at thirty, since it is a rule with all Scripture, and especially with the older writings, to put the lowest number first and so ascend by degrees to the higher. For instance, suppose one to say that so-and-so lived five and seventy and a hundred years, it does not follow that five and seventy are more than a hundred because they were first mentioned. If you do not on the side of good admit the difference between a hundred, sixty, and thirty, neither will you do so on the side of evil, and the seed which fell by the wayside, upon the rock, and among thorns, will be equally faulty. But if the former three, or the latter three, on the side of good, or on the side of evil respectively, are one and the same, it was foolish instead of speaking of two things to enumerate six kinds, and all the more because according to the account of the parable in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the Saviour always added: "He that hath ears to hear, let him hear." Where there is no deep inner meaning, it is useless to draw our attention to the mystic sense.
27. You give it as your opinion that, since the Father and the Son make their abode with the faithful, and since Christ is their guest, nothing is lacking. I suppose, however, that Christ's abiding with the Corinthians was one thing, with the Ephesians another: it was one thing, I say, for Him to abide with those whom Paul blamed for many sins, another for Him to dwell with those to whom the apostle revealed mysteries hidden from the beginning of the world; one thing for Him to be in Titus and Timothy, another in Paul. Certainly amongst them that have been born of women, there has not arisen a greater than John the Baptist. But the term greater implies others who are less. And [4883] "he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he." You see then that in heaven one is greatest and another is least, and that among the angels and the invisible creation there is a manifold and infinite diversity. Why do the apostles say: [4884] "Lord, increase our faith," if there is one measure for all? And why did our Lord rebuke His disciple, saying: [4885] "O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?" In Jeremiah also we read concerning the future kingdom: [4886] "Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers." And so on after: [4887] "I will put my law in their inward parts, and in their heart will I write it; and I will be their God and they shall be my people: and they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them." The context of this passage clearly shows that the prophet is describing the future kingdom, and how can there possibly be in it a least or greatest, if all are to be equal? The secret is disclosed in the Gospel: [4888] "Whosoever shall do and teach, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall teach, and not do, shall be least." [4889] The Saviour taught us at a feast to take the lowest place, lest, when one greater than us came, we should be thrust with disgrace from the higher place. If we cannot fall, but only raise ourselves by penitence, what is the meaning of the ladder at Bethel, on which the angels come from heaven to earth and descend as well as ascend? Surely while on that ladder they are reckoned among the sheep and stand on the right hand. There are angels who descend from heaven; but Jovinianus is sure that they retain their inheritance.
28. But when Jovinianus supposes that the many mansions in our Father's house are churches scattered throughout the world, who can refrain from laughing; since Scripture plainly teaches in John's Gospel that our Lord was discoursing not of the number of the churches, but of the heavenly mansions, and the eternal tabernacles for which the prophet longed? [4890] "In my Father's house," He says, "are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you I will come again, and will receive you unto myself, that where I am, there ye may be also." The place and the mansions which Christ says He would prepare for the apostles are of course in the Father's house, that is, in the kingdom of heaven, not on earth, where for the present He was leading the apostles. And at the same time regard must be had to the sense of Scripture: "I might tell you," He says, "that I go to prepare a place for you, if there were not many mansions in my Father's house, that is to say, if each individual did not prepare for himself a mansion through his own works rather than receive it through the bounty of God. The preparation is therefore not mine, but yours." This view is supported by the fact that it profited Judas nothing to have a place prepared, since he lost it by his own fault. And we must interpret in the same way what our Lord says to the sons of Zebedee, one of whom wished to sit on His left hand, the other on His right: [4891] "My cup indeed ye shall drink: but to sit on my right hand, and on my left hand, is not mine to give, but it is for them for whom it hath been prepared of my Father." It is not the Son's to give; how then is it the Father's to prepare? There are, He says, prepared in heaven, many different mansions, destined for many different virtues, and they will be awarded not to persons, but to persons' works. In vain therefore do you ask of me what rests with yourselves, a reward which my Father has prepared for those whose virtues will entitle them to rise to such dignity. Again when He says: [4892] "I will come again, and will receive you unto myself: that where I am, there ye may be also," He is speaking especially to the apostles, concerning whom it is elsewhere written, "That as I and thou, Father, are one, so they also may be one in us," inasmuch as they have believed, have been perfected, and can say, [4893] "the Lord is my portion." If, however, there are not many mansions, how is it taught in the Old Testament correspondingly with the New, that the chief priest has one rank, the priests another, the Levites another, the door-keepers another, the sacristans another? How is it that in the [4894] book of Ezekiel, where a description is given of the future Church and of the heavenly Jerusalem, the priests who have sinned are degraded to the rank of sacristans and doorkeepers, and although they are in the temple of God, that is on the right hand, they are not among the rams, but among the poorest of the sheep? How again is it that in the river which flows from the temple, and replenishes the salt sea, and gives new life to everything, we read there are many kinds of fish? Why do we read that in the kingdom of heaven there are Archangels, Angels, Thrones, Dominions, Powers, Cherubim and Seraphim, and every name which is named, not only in this present world, but also that which is to come? A difference of name is meaningless where there is not a difference of rank. An Archangel is of course an Archangel to other inferior angels, and Powers, and Dominions have other spheres over which they exercise authority. This is what we find in heaven and in the administration of God. You must not therefore smile and sneer at us, as is your wont, for making a graduated series of emperors, præfects and counts, tribunes and centurions, companies, and all the other steps in the service.
29. It is mere trifling to quote the passage: [4895] "Know ye not that your bodies are a temple of the Holy Ghost," for it is customary in Holy Scripture to speak of a single object as though it were many, and of many as though they were one. And Jovinianus himself should know that even in a temple there are many divisions--the outer and the inner courts, the vestibules, the holy place, and the Holy of Holies. There are also in a temple kitchens, pantries, oil-cellars, and cupboards for the vessels. And so in the temple of our body there are different degrees of merit. God does not dwell in all alike, nor does He impart Himself to all in the same degree. A portion of the spirit of Moses was taken and given to the seventy elders. I suppose there is a difference between the abundance of the river, and that of the rivulets. [4896] Elijah's spirit was given in double measure to Elisha, and thus double grace wrought greater miracles. Elijah while living restored a dead man to life; Elisha after death did the same. Elijah invoked famine on the people; Elisha in a single day put the enemy's forces in the power of the city which they besieged. No doubt the words, "Know ye not that your bodies are a temple of the Holy Ghost," refer to the whole assembly of the faithful, who, joined together, make up the one body of Christ. But the question now is, who in the body is worthy to be the feet of Christ, and who the head? who is His eye, and who His hand?--a distinction indicated by the [4897] two women in the Gospel, the penitent and the holy woman, one of whom held His feet, the other His head. Some authorities, however, think there was only one woman, and that she who began at His feet gradually advanced to His head. Jovinianus further urges against us our Lord's words, [4898] "I pray not for these only, but also for those who shall believe on me through their word: that as I, Father, in thee and thou in me are one, so they all may be one in us," and reminds us that the whole Christian people is one in God, and, as His well-beloved sons, are [4899] "partakers of the divine nature." We have already said, and the truth must now be inculcated more in detail, that we are not one in the Father and the Son according to nature, but according to grace. For the essence of the human soul and the essence of God are not the same, as the Manichæans constantly assert. But, says our Lord: [4900] "Thou hast loved them as thou hast loved me." You see, then, that we are privileged to partake of His essence, not in the realm of nature, but of grace, and the reason why we are beloved of the Father is that He has loved the Son; and the members are loved, those namely of the body. [4901] "For as many as received Christ, to them gave He power to become sons of God, even to them that believe on His name: which were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." The Word was made flesh that we might pass from the flesh into the Word. The Word did not cease to be what He had been; nor did the human nature lose that which it was by birth. The glory was increased, the nature was not changed. Do you ask how we are made one body with Christ? Your creator shall be your instructor: [4902] "He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood abideth in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he that eateth me, he also shall live because of me. This is the bread which came down out of heaven." But the Evangelist John, who had drunk in wisdom from the breast of Christ, agrees herewith, and says: [4903] "Hereby know we that we abide in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit. Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God abideth in him, and he in God." If you believe in Christ, as the apostles believed, you shall be made one body with them in Christ. But, if it is rash for you to claim for yourself a faith and works like theirs when you have not the same faith and works, you cannot have the same place.
30. You repeat the words bride, sister, mother, and affirm that all these are titles of the one Church and names applied to all believers. The fact goes against you. For if the Church admits but one rank, and has not many members in one body, what necessity is there for calling her bride, sister, mother? It must be that she is the bride of some, the sister of others, the mother of others. All indeed stand on the right hand, but one stands as a bridegroom, another as a brother, a third as a son. [4904] "My little children" says the Apostle, "of whom I am again in travail until Christ be formed in you." Do you think that the children who are being born and the apostle who is in travail are of equal rank? And the folly of your contention that we love all the members alike, and do not prefer the eye to the finger, nor the hand to the ear, but that if one be lost all mourn, is proved by the lesson which the apostle teaches the Corinthians: [4905] "Some members are more honourable, others excite the sense of shame: and those parts to which shame attaches are clothed with more abundant honour; whereas our comely parts have no need of our care." Do you think that the mouth and the belly, the eyes and the outlets of the body are to be classed together as of equal merit? [4906] "The lamp of thy body," he says, "is thine eye. If thine eye be blinded, thy whole body is in darkness." If you cut off a finger, or the tip of the ear, there is indeed pain, but the loss is not so great, nor is the disfigurement attended by so much pain as it would be were you to take out the eyes, mutilate the nose, or saw through a bone. Some members we can dispense with and yet live: without others life is an impossibility. Some offences are light, some heavy. It is one thing to owe ten thousand talents, another to owe a farthing. We shall have to give account of the idle word no less than of adultery; but it is not the same thing to be put to the blush, and to be put upon the rack, to grow red in the face and to ensure lasting torment. Do you think I am merely expressing my own views? Hear what the Apostle John says: [4907] "He who knows that his brother sinneth a sin not unto death, let him ask, and he shall give him life, even to him that sinneth not unto death. But he that hath sinned unto death, who shall pray for him?" You observe that if we entreat for smaller offences, we obtain pardon: if for greater ones, it is difficult to obtain our request: and that there is a great difference between sins. And so with respect to the people of Israel who had sinned a sin unto death, it is said to Jeremiah: [4908] "Pray not thou for this people, neither entreat for them, and do not withstand me, for I will not hear thee." Moreover, if it be true that we all alike enter the world and all alike leave it, and this is a precedent for the world to come, it follows that whether righteous or sinners we shall all be equally esteemed by God, because the conditions of our birth and death are now the same. And if you contend that there are two Adams, the one of the earth, the other from heaven; and that they who were in the earthly Adam stand on the left hand, those who were in the heavenly are on the right hand, before we go further, let me ask you a question concerning two brothers: Was Esau in the earthly Adam, or in the heavenly? No one doubts that you will reply, he was in the earthly. In which was Jacob? Without hesitation you will say, in the heavenly. How then was he in the heavenly when Christ had not yet come in the flesh--Christ who is called the second Adam from heaven? You must either reckon all before the incarnation of Christ in the old Adam, and even the just in the man from the earth, and then they will be on the left among your goats; or, if it be impious to give Isaac the same place as Ishmael, Jacob as Esau, the saints as sinners, the last Adam will date from the time when Christ was born of a Virgin, and your argument from the two Adams will not benefit your sheep and goats, because we have proved that in the first Adam there were both sheep and goats, and that of those who were in one and the same man, some stood on the right hand of God, others on the left: [4909] "For from Adam even until Moses death reigned over all, even over them that had not sinned after the likeness of Adam's transgression."
31. As regards your attempt to show that railing and murder, the use of the expression raca and adultery, the idle word and godlessness, are rewarded with the same punishment, I have already given you my reply, and will now briefly repeat it. You must either deny that you are a sinner if you are not to be in danger of Gehenna: or, if you are a sinner you will be sent to hell for even a light offence: [4910] "The mouth that lieth," says one, "kills the soul." I suspect that you, like other men, have occasionally told a lie: [4911] for all men are liars, that God alone may be true, [4912] and that He may be justified in His words, and may prevail when He judges. It follows either that you will not be a man lest you be found a liar: or if you are a man and are consequently a liar, you will be punished with parricides and adulterers. For you admit no difference between sins, and the gratitude of those whom you raise from the mire and set on high will not equal the rage against you of those whom for the trifling offences of daily life you have thrust into utter darkness. And if it be so that in a persecution one is stifled, another beheaded, another flees, or the fourth dies within the walls of a prison, and one crown of victory awaits various kinds of struggle, the fact tells in our favour. For in martyrdom it is the will, which gives occasion to the death, that is crowned. My duty is to resist the frenzy of the heathen, and not deny the Lord. It rests with them either to behead, or to burn, or to shut up in prison, or enforce various other penalties. But if I escape, and die in solitude, there will not at my death be the same crown for me as for them, because the confession of Christ will not have been to me as to them the cause of death. As for your remark that absolutely no difference was made between the brother who had always been with his father, and him who was afterwards welcomed as a penitent, I am willing to add, if you like, that the one drachma which was lost and was found was put with the others, and that the one sheep which the good shepherd, leaving the ninety and nine, sought and brought back, made up the full tale of a hundred. But it is one thing to be a penitent, and with tears sue for pardon, another to be always with the father. And so both the shepherd and the father say by the mouth of Ezekiel to the sheep that was carried back, and to the son that was lost, [4913] "And I will establish my covenant with thee; and thou shalt know that I am the Lord: that thou mayest remember, and be confounded, and never open thy mouth ever more, because of thy shame, when I have forgiven thee all that thou hast done." That penitents may have their due it is enough for them to feel shame instead of all other punishment. Hence in another place it is said to them, [4914] "Then shall ye remember your evil ways, and all the crimes wherewith ye were defiled, and ye shall loathe yourselves in your own sight for all the wickedness that ye have done; and ye shall know that I am the Lord, when I shall have done you good for my name's sake, and not according to your evil ways, nor according to your evil doings." The son, moreover, was reproved by his father for envying his brother's deliverance, and for being tormented by jealousy while the angels in heaven were rejoicing. The parallel, however, is not to be drawn between the merits of the two sons (one of whom was temperate, the other a prodigal) and those of the whole human race, but the characters depicted are either Jews and Christians, or saints and penitents. In the lifetime of Bishop Damasus I dedicated to him a small treatise upon this parable. [4915]
32. And if a penny was given to all the labourers, those of the first, the third, the sixth, the ninth, and the eleventh hours, and they came first for the reward who were the last to work in the vineyard, even here the persons described do not belong to one time or one age, but from the beginning of the world to the end of it there are different calls and a special meaning attaches to each. Abel and Seth were called at the first hour: Enoch and Noah at the third: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob at the sixth: Moses and the prophets at the ninth: at the eleventh the Gentiles, to whom the recompense was first given because they believed on the crucified Lord, and inasmuch as it was hard for them to believe they earned a great reward. Many kings and prophets have desired to see the things that we see, and have not seen them. But the one penny does not represent one reward, but one life, and one deliverance from Gehenna. And as by the favour of the sovereign those guilty of various crimes are released from prison, and each one, according to his toil and exertions, is in this or that condition of life, so too the penny, as it were by the favour of our Sovereign, is the discharge from prison of us all by baptism. Now our work is, according to our different virtues, to prepare for ourselves a different future.
33. So far I have replied to the separate portions of his argument; I shall now address myself to the general question. Our Lord says to his disciples, [4916] "Whosoever would become great among you, let him be least of all." If we are all to be equal in heaven, in vain do we humble ourselves here that we may be greater there. Of the two debtors who owed, one five hundred pence, the other fifty, he to whom most was forgiven loved most. And so the Saviour says, [4917] "I say to you, her sins which are many are forgiven her, for she hath loved much. But to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little." He who loves little, and has little forgiven, he will of course be of inferior rank. [4918] The householder when he set out delivered to his servants his goods, to one five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Just as in another Gospel it is written that a nobleman setting out for a far country to receive for himself a kingdom and return, called the servants, and gave them each a sum of money, with which one gained ten pounds, another five, and they, each according to his ability and the gain he had made, received ten or five cities. But one who had received a talent, or a pound, buried it in the ground, or tied it up in a napkin, and kept it until his master's return. Our first thought is that if, according to the modern Zeno, the righteous do not toil in hope of reward, but to avoid the loss of what they already have, he who buried his pound or talent that he might not lose it, did no wrong, and the caution of him who kept his money is worthy of more praise than the fruitless toil of those who wore themselves out and yet received no reward for their labour. Then observe that the very talent which was taken from the timid or negligent servant, was not given to him who had the smaller profit, but to him who had gained the most, that is, to him who had been placed over ten cities. If difference of rank is not constituted by the difference in number, why did our Lord say, "He gave to everyone according to his ability"? If the gain of five talents and ten talents is the same, why were not ten cities given to him who gained the least, and five to him who gained the most? But that our Lord is not satisfied with what we have, but always desires more, He himself shows by saying, "Wherefore didst thou not give my money to the money-changers, that so when I came I might have received it with usury?" The Apostle Paul understood this, and [4919] forgetting those things which were behind, reached forward to those things which were in front, that is, he made daily progress, and did not keep the grace given to him carefully wrapped up in a napkin, but his spirit, like the capital of a keen man of business, was renewed from day to day, and if he were not always growing larger, he thought himself growing less. Six cities of refuge are mentioned in the law, provided for fugitives who were involuntary homicides, and the cities themselves belonged to the priests. I should like to ask whether you would put those fugitives among your goats, or among our sheep. If they were goats, they would be slain like other homicides, and would not enter the cities of God's ministers. If you say they were sheep, they will not possibly be such sheep as can enjoy full liberty and feed without fear of wolves. And it will be plain to you that sheep indeed they are, but wandering sheep: that they are on the right hand, but do not stand there: they flee until the High Priest dies and descending into hell liberates their souls. The Gibeonites met the children of Israel, and although other nations were slaughtered, they were kept [4920] for hewers of wood and drawers of water. [4921] And of such value were they in God's eyes, that the family of Saul was destroyed for the wrong done to them. Where would you put them? Among the goats? But they were not slain, and they were avenged by the determination of God. Among the sheep? But holy Scripture says they were not of the same merit as the Israelites. You see then that they do indeed stand on the right hand, but are of a far inferior grade. Jonathan came between David, the holy man, and Saul, the worst of kings, and we can neither place him among the kids because he was worthy of a prophet's love, nor amongst the rams lest we make him equal to David, and particularly when we know that he was slain. He will, therefore, be among the sheep, but low down. And just as in the case of David and Jonathan, you will be bound to recognize differences between sheep and sheep. [4922] "That servant, which knew his lord's will, and made not ready, nor did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes; but he that knew not, and did things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes. And to whomsoever much is given, of him shall much be required: and to whom they commit much, of him will they ask the more." Lo! more or less is committed to different servants, and according to the nature of the trust, as well as of the sin, is the number of stripes inflicted.
34. The whole account of the land of Judah and of the tribes is typical of the church in heaven. Let us read Joshua the son of Nun, or the concluding portions of Ezekiel, and we shall see that the historical division of the land as related by the one finds a counterpart in the spiritual and heavenly promises of the other. What is the meaning of the seven and eight steps in the description of the temple? or again, what significance attaches to the fact that in the Psalter, after being taught the mystic alphabet by the [4923] one hundred and eighteenth psalm we arrive by fifteen steps at the point where we can sing: [4924] "Behold, now bless the Lord, all ye servants of the Lord: ye who stand in the house of the Lord, in the courts of the house of our God." Why did [4925] two tribes and a half dwell on the other side of Jordan, a district abounding in cattle, while the remaining nine tribes and a half either drove out the old inhabitants from their possessions, or dwelt with them? Why did the tribe of Levi [4926] receive no portion in the land, but have the Lord for their portion? And how is it that of the priests and Levites, themselves, the [4927] high priest alone entered the Holy of Holies where were the cherubim and the mercy-seat? Why did the other priests wear [4928] linen raiment only, and not have their clothing of wrought gold, blue, scarlet, purple, and fine cloth? The priests and [4929] Levites of the lower order took care of the oxen and wains: those of the higher order carried the ark of the Lord on their shoulders. If you do away with the gradations of the tabernacle, the temple, the Church, if, to use a common military phrase, all upon the right hand are to be "up to the same standard," bishops are to no purpose, priests in vain, deacons useless. Why do virgins persevere? widows toil? Why do married women practise continence? Let us all sin, and when once we have repented, we shall be on the same footing as the apostles.
35. But now we have just sighted land: the foaming billows have been rolling mountain-high: our ship has been borne aloft, or has rushed headlong into the depths beneath: little by little the haven opens to the view of the weary and exhausted sailors. We have discussed the married, widows, and virgins. We have preferred virginity to widowhood, widowhood to marriage. The passage of the apostle, in which he treats questions of this kind, has been expounded, and particular objections have been met. We also took a survey of secular literature, and inquired what was thought of virgins, and what of those who had one husband; and by way of contrast we pointed out the cares which sometimes attend wedlock. Then we passed to the second division, in which our opponent denies the possibility of sinning to those who have been baptized with complete faith. And we showed that God alone is faultless, and every creature is at fault, not because all have sinned, but because all may sin, and those who stand have cause to fear when they see the fall of men like themselves. In the third place we came to fasting, and inasmuch as our opponent's argument fell under two heads, and he appealed either to philosophy, or to Holy Scripture, we also furnished a several reply. In the fourth, that is the last section, the sheep and goats on the right hand and the left, the righteous and the wicked, were distributed into two classes, the intention being to show that there is no difference between one just man and another, or between one sinner and another. To prove the point Jovinianus had accumulated countless instances from Scripture which apparently favoured his view, and this contention we rebutted both by arguments and illustrations from Scripture, and pulverized Zeno's old opinion no less with common sense than with the words of inspiration.
36. I must in conclusion say a few words to our modern Epicurus wantoning in his gardens with his favourites of both sexes. On your side are the fat and the sleek in their festal attire. If I may mock like Socrates, add if you please, all swine and dogs, and, since you like flesh so well, vultures too, eagles, hawks, and owls. We shall never be afraid of the host of [4930] Aristippus. If ever I see a fine fellow, or a man who is no stranger to the curling-irons, with his hair nicely done and his cheeks all aglow, he belongs to your herd, or rather grunts in concert with your pigs. To our flock belong the sad, the pale, the meanly clad, who, like strangers in this world, though their tongues are silent, yet speak by their dress and bearing. [4931] "Woe is me," say they, "that my sojourning is prolonged! that I dwell among the tents of Kedar!" that is to say, in the darkness of this world, for the light shineth in the darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not. Boast not of having many disciples. The Son of God taught in Judæa, and only twelve apostles followed Him. [4932] "I have trodden the wine-press alone," He says, "and of the peoples there was no man with me." At the passion He was left alone, and even Peter's fidelity to Him wavered: on the other hand all the people applauded the doctrine of the Pharisees, saying, [4933] "Crucify him, crucify him. We have no king but Cæsar," that is in effect, we follow vice, not virtue; Epicurus, not Christ; Jovinianus, not the Apostle Paul. If many assent to your views, that only indicates voluptuousness; for they do not so much approve your utterances, as favour their own vices. In our crowded thoroughfares a false prophet may be seen any day stick in hand belabouring the fools about him, and knocking out the teeth of those who offend him, and yet he never lacks constant followers. And do you regard it as a mark of great wisdom if you have a following of many pigs, whom you are feeding to make pork for hell? Since you published your views, and set the mark of your approval on baths in which the sexes bathe together, the impatience which once threw over burning lust the semblance of a robe of modesty has been laid bare and exposed. What was once hidden is now open to the gaze of all. You have revealed your disciples, such as they are, not made them. One result of your teaching is that sin is no longer even repented of. Your virgins whom, with a depth of wisdom never found before in speech or writing, you have taught the apostle's maxim that it is better to marry than to burn, have turned secret adulterers into acknowledged husbands. [4934] It was not the apostle, the chosen vessel, who gave this advice; it was Virgil's widow:
[4935] "She calls it wedlock; thus she veils her fault."
37. About four hundred years have passed since the preaching of Christ flashed upon the world, and during that time in which His robe has been torn by countless heresies, almost the whole body of error has been derived from the Chaldæan, Syriac, and Greek languages. Basilides, the master of licentiousness and the grossest sensuality, after the lapse of so many years, and like a second [4936] Euphorbus, was changed by transmigration into Jovinian, so that the Latin tongue might have a heresy of its own. Was there no other province in the whole world to receive the gospel of pleasure, and into which the serpent might insinuate itself, except that which was founded by the teaching of Peter, upon the rock Christ? Idol temples had fallen before the standard of the Cross and the severity of the Gospel: now on the contrary lust and gluttony endeavour to overthrow the solid structure of the Cross. And so God says by Isaiah, [4937] "O my people, they which bless you cause you to err, and trouble the paths of your feet." Also by Jeremiah, [4938] "Flee out of the midst of Babylon, and save every man his life, and believe not the false prophets which say, Peace, peace, and there is no peace;" who are always repeating, [4939] "The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord." "Thy prophets have seen for thee false and foolish things; they have not laid bare thine iniquity that they might call thee to repentance: who devour God's people like bread: they have not called upon God." Jeremiah announced the captivity and was stoned by the people. [4940] Hananiah, the son of Azzur, broke the bars of wood for the present, but was preparing bars of iron for the future. False prophets always promise pleasant things, and please for a time. Truth is bitter, and they who preach it are filled with bitterness. For with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth the Lord's passover is kept, and it is eaten with bitter herbs. Admirable are your utterances and worthy of the ears of the bride of Christ standing in the midst of her virgins, and widows, and celibates! (their very name is [4941] derived from the fact that they who abstain from intercourse are fit for heaven). This is what you say: "Fast seldom, marry often. You cannot do the work of marriage unless you take mead, and flesh, and solid food. For lust strength is required. Flesh is soon spent and enervated. You need not be afraid of fornication. He who has been once baptized into Christ cannot fall, for he has the consolation of marriage to slake his lust. And if you do fall, repentance will restore you, and you who were hypocrites at baptism may have a firm faith in your repentance. Be not disturbed by the thought of a difference between the righteous and the penitent, and do not imagine that pardon even gives a lower place; rather believe that it takes away your crown. For there is one reward: he who stands on the right hand shall enter into the kingdom of heaven." Through counsels such as these your swine-herds are richer than our shepherds, and the he-goats draw after them many of the other sex: [4942] "They were as fed horses: they were mad after women": they no sooner see a woman than they neigh after her, and, shame to say! find scriptural authority for the consolation of their incontinence. But the very women, unhappy creatures! though they deserve no pity, who chant the words of their instructor (for what does God require of them but to become mothers?), have lost not only their chastity, but all sense of shame, and defend their licentious practices with an access of impudence. You have, moreover, in your army many subalterns, you have your guardsmen and your skirmishers at the outposts, the round-bellied, the well-dressed, the exquisites, and noisy orators, to defend you with tooth and nail. The noble make way for you, the wealthy print kisses on your face. For unless you had come, the drunkard and the glutton could not have entered paradise. All honor to your virtue, or rather to your vices! You have in your camp, even amazons with uncovered breasts, bare arms and knees, who challenge the men who come against them to a battle of lust. Your household is a large one, and so in your aviaries not only turtle-doves, but hoopoes are fed, which may wing their flight over the whole field of rank debauchery. Pull me to pieces and scatter me to the winds: tax me with what offences you please: accuse me of luxurious and delicate living: you would like me better if I were guilty, for I should belong to your herd.
38. But I will now address myself to you, great Rome, who with the confession of Christ have blotted out the blasphemy written on your forehead. Mighty city, mistress-city of the world, city of the Apostle's praises, shew the meaning of your name. Rome is either strength in Greek, or height in Hebrew. Lose not the excellence your name implies: let virtue lift you up on high, let not voluptuousness bring you low. By repentance, as the history of Nineveh proves, you may escape the curse wherewith the Saviour threatened you in the Apocalypse. Beware of the name of Jovinianus. It is derived from that of an idol. [4943] The Capitol is in ruins: the temples of Jove with their ceremonies have perished. Why should his name and vices flourish now in the midst of you, when even in the time of Numa Pompilius, even under the sway of kings, your ancestors gave a heartier welcome to the self-restraint of Pythagoras than they did under the consuls to the debauchery of Epicurus? __________________________________________________________________
[4652] This, according to i. 3, is "cannot be overthrown."
[4653] 1 John iii. 9, 10.
[4654] 1 John v. 18.
[4655] 1 John v. 21.
[4656] 1 John i. 8 sq.
[4657] Is. lxv. 5. Quoted from memory. The LXX and Vulg. have like A.V. and Rev., "Come not near me."
[4658] 1 John ii. 1.
[4659] 2 Cor. vi. 14, 15.
[4660] Ps. li. 12.
[4661] 1 John ii. 4.
[4662] 1 John xiv. 6.
[4663] James ii. 26.
[4664] Jerome is perhaps hinting at the opinions of Jovinianus, that there was no other distinction between men than the grand division into righteous and wicked, and drawing from this the inference that whoever had been truly baptized had nothing further to gain by progress in the Christian life.
[4665] 1 Peter ii. 22.
[4666] James iii. 2.
[4667] Job xiv. 4, 5, Sept.
[4668] Prov. xx. 9.
[4669] Ps. li. 5.
[4670] Job ix. 20, 30. Sept.
[4671] 1 John ii. 1, 2.
[4672] S. John xiii. 10.
[4673] S. Matt. xvi. 18.
[4674] S. Luke xxi. 31.
[4675] S. Matt. vi. 12.
[4676] 1 Cor. ix. 27.
[4677] 2 Cor. xii. 7.
[4678] 2 Cor. xi. 3.
[4679] 2 Cor. ii. 10, 11.
[4680] 1 Cor. x. 13.
[4681] 1 Cor. x. 12.
[4682] Gal. v. 7.
[4683] 1 Thess. ii. 18.
[4684] 1 Cor. vii. 5.
[4685] Gal. v. 16, 17.
[4686] Eph. vi. 12.
[4687] Heb. vi. 4 sq.
[4688] Various dates, ranging between a.d. 126 and a.d. 173, are assigned to the origin of Montanism. In addition to the tenet, that the church has no power to remit sin after baptism (though the power was claimed for the Montanistic prophets) and that some sins exclude for ever from the communion of the saints on earth, although the mercy of God may be extended to them hereafter, Montanus held second marriages to be no better than adultery, proscribed military service and secular life in general, denounced profane learning and amusements of every kind, advocated extreme simplicity of female dress, practised frequent and severe fasting, and inculcated the most rigorous asceticism. The sect produced a great effect on the church and lasted until the sixth century. As is well known, Tertullian in middle life lapsed into Montanism, and he was the most distinguished of its champions. Montanism has been described as an anticipation of the mediaeval system of Rome.
[4689] The founder of the schism which afterwards bore the name of Novatian was Novatus, a presbyter of Carthage who went to Rome (about a.d. 250) and there co-operated with Novatianus, one of the most distinguished of the clergy of that city. The Novatianists, whose doctrines were near akin in many respects to those of Montanists, assumed the name of Cathari, or Puritans.
[4690] Heb. vi. 9.
[4691] James i. 12 sq.
[4692] Ecclus. xxvii. 5.
[4693] Ecclus. ii. 1.
[4694] James i. 22 sq.
[4695] James ii. 10.
[4696] Rom. xi. 32.
[4697] 2 Pet. ii. 9.
[4698] 2 Pet. ii. 17, 18.
[4699] Prov. xvi. 5. Sept.
[4700] Apoc. ii. 2 sq.
[4701] Matt. xi. 13.
[4702] 1 Cor. x. 11.
[4703] Ps. xxvi. 1, 2.
[4704] Ps. li. 1.
[4705] 2 Chron. xxxiii. 12, 13.
[4706] 2 Kings xxiii. 29 sq. 2 Chron. xxxv. 20 sq.
[4707] Zech. iii. 1 sq.
[4708] Numb. xx. 13; Ps. cvi. 32.
[4709] Job v. 17.
[4710] Job vii. 1.
[4711] Jerome blends two passages, Is. xiv. 12 (in which the Sept. reading is "that sendest to;" R.V. "didst lay low") and Ezek. xxviii. 13 sq. In the passage from Isaiah the king of Babylon is compared to Lucifer, i.e. the shining one, the morning star, whose movements the Babylonians had been the first to record. See Sayce, Fresh Light from the Ancient Monuments, p. 178, and Cheyne's Isaiah. The subject of Ezekiel's prophecy is the Prince of Tyre.
[4712] S. Luke x. 18.
[4713] Job xl. 16, 21. R.V. "He lieth under the lotus trees, in the covert of the reed and the fen."
[4714] Job xli. 34. Sept. R.V. "King over the sons of pride."
[4715] Job xli. 13 sq. R.V. for the latter part of the verse has "Round about his teeth is terror, his strong scales are his pride." Jerome's words are not found in the existing Septuagint.
[4716] The Septuagint omits much in this portion of the Book of Job.
[4717] xli. 27.
[4718] That is, deriving jumenta from juvo. The derivation, however, is from jungo.
[4719] Ps. viii. 5 sq.
[4720] The Italian beccafico.
[4721] Rom. xiv. 20; 1 Tim. iv. 5.
[4722] 1 Tim. iv. 3.
[4723] Castum. Another reading is Cossum i.e. wood-worms, which were considered a delicacy in Pontus and Phrygia. The reading Castum is supported by Tert., De Iejun. cap. 16: In nostris xerophagiis blasphemias ingerens. Casto Isidis et Cybeles eos adæquas. Compare Arnob. Bk. V., and Jerome's Letter cvii. ad Lætam c. 10, and below c. 7.
[4724] See note on p. 383.
[4725] That is, of Side in Pamphylia. He lived in the reigns of Hadrian and Antoninus Pius, a.d. 117-161. Only two fragments remain of his Greek poem in forty-two books.
[4726] He appears to be Flavius the Grammarian to whom reference is made in the Book on Illustrious Men, chap. 80:--Firmianus, qui et Lactantius, Arnobii discipulus, sub Diocletiano principe accitus cum Flavio grammatico, cujus de Medicinalibus versu compositi exstant libri, etc.
[4727] Born a.d. 23. His Historia Naturalis embraces astronomy, meteorology, geography, mineralogy, zoölogy, and botany, and comprises according to the author's own account 20,000 matters of importance drawn from 2,000 volumes.
[4728] A native of Cilicia, who probably lived in the second century of the Christian era. He was a Greek physician and wrote a treatise on Materia Medica, in 5 books, which is still extant.
[4729] 2 Cor. xii. 14.
[4730] 2 Cor. iv. 16.
[4731] Phil. i. 23.
[4732] Rom. xiii. 14.
[4733] Matt. x. 9, xix. 21; Mark vi. 8.
[4734] Matt. xix. 21.
[4735] 1 Cor. xv. 85.
[4736] 1 Cor. vi. 13.
[4737] That is, the wood-worm just referred to.
[4738] Pannonia, of which Valens also was a native.
[4739] This name, which signifies dwellers in caves, was applied by Greek geographers to various peoples, but especially to the uncivilized inhabitants of the west coast of the Red Sea, along the shores of Upper Egypt and Æthiopia. The whole coast was called Troglodytice.
[4740] In 376 the Goths were driven out of their country by the Huns. They were allowed by Valens to cross the Danube, but war soon broke out and the emperor was defeated with great slaughter on Aug. 9, 378.
[4741] The Sarmatians dwelt on the N. E. of the Sea of Azov, E. of the river Don.
[4742] They were located in the S. E. of Germany.
[4743] The name given to the great confederacy of German peoples who in a.d. 409 traversed Germany and Gaul, and invaded Spain. In 429 they conquered all the Roman dominions in Africa, and in 455 they plundered Rome. Their kingdom was destroyed by Belisarius in 535.
[4744] A people of Central Asia. Cyrus the Great was slain in an expedition against them.
[4745] On the Oxus near its entrance into the Caspian Sea.
[4746] An agricultural people on the W. coast of Pontus.
[4747] Hyrcania was a province of the Persian Empire, on the S. and S. E. shores of the Caspian or Hyrcanian Sea. Jerome draws many of these details from the treatise of Porphyry Peri apoches empsuchion.
[4748] Antinous was drowned in the Nile. a.d. 122. The emperor's grief was so great that he enrolled his favourite amongst the gods, caused a temple to be erected to his honour at Mantinea, and founded the city of Antinoopolis.
[4749] Ter. Eunuch. iv. 5, 6.
[4750] Jer. ix. 21.
[4751] An Egyptian perfuming powder.
[4752] Probably an ointment made from the grape of the wild vine.
[4753] The celebrated Cynic philosopher. He died at Corinth, at the age of nearly 90, b.c. 323.
[4754] Academia was a piece of land on the Cephisus about three-quarters of a mile from Athens, originally belonging to the hero Academus. Here was a Gymnasium with plane and olive plantations, etc. Plato had a piece of land in the neighbourhood; here he taught, and after him his followers, who were hence called Academici. Cicero called his villa Academia.
[4755] Flourished about b.c. 320. Though heir to a large fortune he renounced it all, and lived and died as a true Cynic. He was called the "door-opener," because it was his practice to visit every house at Athens and rebuke its inmates.
[4756] A common form of Gnostic error revived many centuries afterwards by the Anabaptists.
[4757] 1 Tim. v. 6.
[4758] See Cicero, Repub. Bk. III.
[4759] Sallust. In Cat. ch. 1.
[4760] Prov. xx. 1.
[4761] The most celebrated physician of antiquity. Born about b.c. 460, died about 357.
[4762] Born at Pergamum a.d. 130, died probably in the year 200. His writings are considered to have had a more extensive influence on medical science than even those of Hippocrates.
[4763] Fabricius was censor in b.c. 275, and devoted himself to repressing the prevalent taste for luxury. The story of his expelling from the Senate P. Cornelius Rufinus because he possessed ten pounds' weight of silver-plate is well-known.
[4764] Curius Dentatus, Consul b.c. 290 with P. Cornelius Rufinus to whom allusion has just been made, was no less distinguished for simplicity of life than was Fabricius. He was censor b.c. 272.
[4765] Ep. Lib. I. ep. 2.
[4766] Or, "an ante-room to the closet"--Meditatorium. Comp. Tertullian, Treatise on Fasting, ch. 6.
[4767] The Peripatetic philosopher, geographer, and historian, a disciple of Aristotle and the friend of Theophrastus.
[4768] Chæremon was chief librarian of the Alexandrian library. He afterwards became one of Nero's tutors.
[4769] Wars, Book II., ch. viii. 2 sq.; Antiquities, Bk. xviii. I. 2 sq. Josephus nowhere says that the Essenes abstained from flesh and wine, or fasted daily. Philo commends them for so doing. Jerome here, as above, borrows from Porphyry. The "Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem," are here called the "History of the Jewish Captivity."
[4770] Philo the Jew. His exact date cannot be given; but he was advanced in years when he went to Rome (a.d. 40) on his famous embassy in behalf of his countrymen.
[4771] Neanthes lived about b.c. 241. He was a voluminous writer, chiefly on historical subjects.
[4772] There were many physicians of this name.
[4773] The sun-god of the Persians.
[4774] Supposed to be the same as the Bardesanes born at Edessa in Mesopotamia, who flourished in the latter half of the second century. Jerome again refers to him in the book on Illustrious Men, c. 33.
[4775] Xenocrates was born b.c. 396, died b.c. 314.
[4776] Triptolemus was the legendary inventor of the plough and of agriculture.
[4777] Poems ascribed to the mythical Orpheus are quoted by Plato. The extant poems which bear his name are forgeries of Christian grammarians and philosophers of the Alexandrine school; but some fragments of the old Orphic poetry are said to be remaining.
[4778] Antisthenes was the founder of the Cynic philosophy. He was a devoted disciple of Socrates and flourished about b.c. 366.
[4779] The distinguished Peripatetic philosopher and historian. He lived, probably, about the time of Ptolemy Philopator (b.c. 222-205).
[4780] Gen. vi. 3, 5.
[4781] Gen. viii. 21; ix. 3.
[4782] Ex. xvi. 3.
[4783] Numb. xi. 4-6.
[4784] Deut. xxxii. 15. "Beloved" (dilectus). Correctly Jeshurun, that is, the Upright, a name of Israel.
[4785] Deut. viii. 12-14.
[4786] The curious custom of representing Moses with horns arose from a mistake in the Vulgate rendering. The Hebrew verb qvl, to emit rays, is derived from a word which, meaning mostly a horn, has in the dual the signification rays of light. See Hab. iii. 4.
[4787] Luke ix. 31.
[4788] Ex. xvii. 8.
[4789] Josh. x. 13.
[4790] 1 Sam. xiv. 24. Heb. "entered into the wood." The English version follows the Hebrew. The Sept. erhista (Jerome's prandebat) is perhaps only a repetition of the preceding thought. Another rendering inserts the negative, ouk erista.
[4791] 1 Sam. xiv. 24.
[4792] 1 Kings xix. 8-11.
[4793] 1 Sam. vii. 7.
[4794] 2 Kings xviii.
[4795] Gen. xviii. 23 sq.
[4796] 1 Kings xxi. 27-29.
[4797] 1 Sam. i. 15, 17.
[4798] Dan. i and ii.
[4799] Dan. ix. 23. Heb. A man of desires. A.V. greatly beloved.
[4800] The story is in the apocryphal part of the book of Daniel.
[4801] Ps. cii. 9.
[4802] Ps. cix. 24.
[4803] 2 Sam. xii. 13.
[4804] Lev. x. 9.
[4805] Amos ii. 12.
[4806] Jer. xxxv. 18.
[4807] S. Luke ii. 36.
[4808] S. Jerome is in accord with the Vulgate, Peshito, and certain manuscripts, but the R.V. omits S. Matt. xvii. 21 (Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting) and in S. Mark ix. 29 omits the words respecting fasting. S. Luke does not refer to our Lord's supposed remark.
[4809] Acts x. 4.
[4810] 2 Cor. xi. 27.
[4811] 1 Tim. v. 23.
[4812] 1 Tim. iv. 3.
[4813] Prov. xvi. 26. Sept.
[4814] S. Matt. xi. 12.
[4815] Rom. xiv. 3.
[4816] Rom. xiv. 14 sq.
[4817] Rom. xiv. 2.
[4818] Rom. xiv. 5 sq.
[4819] S. Matt. v. 6.
[4820] S. John iv. 32.
[4821] S. Matt. v. 34. (Rather, not to be anxious about it.)
[4822] S. Luke xxiv. 42; S. John xxi. 13.
[4823] S. Luke xv. 19-31.
[4824] S. Matt. xvi. 17, 18.
[4825] See above.
[4826] S. Mark v. 43: S. Luke viii. 55. Our Lord is not related to have given the command in the case of the son of the widow of Nain, or in that of Lazarus.
[4827] S. John xii. 2.
[4828] Acts x. 10. In our version "the housetop."
[4829] S. John iv. 6.
[4830] Isa. lviii. 5 sq.
[4831] xvi. 29.
[4832] Numb. xi. 34. Tertullian also speaks of the graves remaining.
[4833] 1 Kings xiii. 24.
[4834] Joel i. 14; ii. 15. Jerome agrees with the Sept. Therapeia. The Heb. root signifies to close or bind; hence the meaning healing. But others translate Therapeia by worship, or service. The correct rendering appears to be a solemn assembly as in A.V.
[4835] S. Matt. xxv. 34.
[4836] S. Matt. xxv. 41.
[4837] S. John viii. 44.
[4838] S. Matt. xix. 29; S. Mark x. 29, 30; S. Luke xviii. 29, 30.
[4839] S. John vi. 56.
[4840] S. John xiv. 23.
[4841] S. John xiv. 2.
[4842] 1 Cor. iii. 16; vi. 19.
[4843] S. John xvii. 20-23.
[4844] In Cyprus, where Zeno the founder of the Stoic school was born.
[4845] i.e., Jovinianus. Jerome for the moment addresses the reader.
[4846] Persius I. 128, Conington's translation.
[4847] Ezek. xxxiv. 17, 20, 21.
[4848] Ezek. xxxiv. 31.
[4849] Rom. xii. 3 sq.
[4850] Rom. xiv. 5.
[4851] 1 Cor. iii. 6 sq.
[4852] 1 Cor. iii. 10 sq.
[4853] 1 Cor. iv. 1, 2.
[4854] 1 Cor. ix. 13 sq.
[4855] 1 Cor. xii. 4.
[4856] 1 Cor. xii. 12.
[4857] 1 Cor. xii. 28 sq.
[4858] 1 Cor. xiii. 8, 9, 10.
[4859] 1 Cor. xiii. 18; xiv. 1.
[4860] 1 Cor. xiv. 5.
[4861] 1 Cor. xiv. 18.
[4862] 1 Cor. xv. 9, 10.
[4863] 1 Cor. xv. 22.
[4864] 1 Cor. xv. 39.
[4865] Job ix. 9; xxxviii. 32.
[4866] 2 Cor. v. 10.
[4867] 2 Cor. ix. 6.
[4868] Eph. iii. 10.
[4869] Eph. iv. 7.
[4870] Ps. lxxiii. 17.
[4871] See Acts xxvii. 23 and the context.
[4872] Gen. xix. 18-21.
[4873] 1 Sam. xxx. 1 sq.
[4874] S. Luke xiii. 4.
[4875] 1 Cor. xi. 27.
[4876] Mal. iv. 2.
[4877] S. Matt. xxv. 13.
[4878] S. John xix. 6.
[4879] Wisd. vi. 7.
[4880] Ex. xxi. 2.
[4881] Lev. xxv. 13.
[4882] S. Matt. xix. 29; S. Mark x. 30; S. Luke xviii. 30. In S. Matthew some authorities agree with S. Luke in reading "manifold."
[4883] Matt. xi. 11.
[4884] S. Luke xvii. 5.
[4885] Matt. xiv. 31.
[4886] Jer. xxxi. 31.
[4887] Jer. xxxi. 33, 34.
[4888] S. Matt. v. 19.
[4889] S. Luke xiv. 9.
[4890] S. John xiv. 2, 3.
[4891] S. Matt. xx. 23.
[4892] S. John xiv. 3.
[4893] Ps. lxxiii. 26.
[4894] Ez. xliv. 10.
[4895] 1 Cor. vi. 19.
[4896] Correctly, a portion of two, i.e., the portion of a first-born. Deut. xxi. 17.
[4897] S. Luke vii., S. Matt. xxvi., S. Mark xiv., S. John xii.
[4898] S. John xvii. 20, 21.
[4899] 2 Pet. i. 4.
[4900] S. John xvii. 23.
[4901] S. John i. 12, 13.
[4902] S. John vi. 57 sq.
[4903] 1 John iv. 13, 15.
[4904] Gal. iv. 19.
[4905] 1 Cor. xii. 22-24.
[4906] S. Luke xi. 34.
[4907] 1 John v. 16.
[4908] Jer. vii. 16.
[4909] Rom. v. 14.
[4910] Wisd. i. 11.
[4911] Ps. cxvi. 11; Rom. iii. 4.
[4912] Ps. li. 4.
[4913] Ezek. xvi. 62, 63.
[4914] Ezek. xxxvi. 31, 32.
[4915] Letter XXI.
[4916] S. Matt. xx. 26.
[4917] S. Luke vii. 47.
[4918] S. Matt. xxv. 15 sq.
[4919] Phil. iii. 13.
[4920] Josh. ix. 27.
[4921] 2 Sam. xxi. 1.
[4922] S. Luke xii. 47, 48.
[4923] Ps. cxix. in our arrangement of the Psalter. The psalm is divided into twenty-two portions, which begin with the successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The following fifteen psalms are called in our Authorized Version, Songs of Degrees (Vulgate, graduum, steps). For the origin of the title, Wordsworth, or Neal and Littledale on Ps. cxx. may be consulted.
[4924] Ps. cxxxiv. 1.
[4925] Numb. xxxiv. 15; Josh. xiv. 3.
[4926] Numb. xviii. 20.
[4927] Lev. xvi. 2; Heb. ix. 7.
[4928] Ex. xxviii. etc.
[4929] Numb. vii. 5.
[4930] Aristippus though the disciple of Socrates, taught that pleasure was the highest good.
[4931] Ps. cxx. 5.
[4932] Is. lxiii. 3.
[4933] S. John xix. 6, 15.
[4934] Jovinianus's doctrine is said to have influenced some who had taken a vow of virginity, to marry.
[4935] Virgil Æn. iv. 172.
[4936] Pythagoras asserted that he had once been the Trojan Euphorbus.
[4937] Is. iii. 16.
[4938] Jer. li. 6; vi. 14.
[4939] Jer. vii. 4; Ps. xiv. 4; liii. 4.
[4940] Jer. xxviii. 13.
[4941] That is, cælebs from cælum.
[4942] Jer. v. 8.
[4943] That is, Jove. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Against Vigilantius.
------------------------
Introduction.
Full details respecting Vigilantius, against whom this treatise, the result of a single night's labour, is directed, may be found in a work on "Vigilantius and His Times," published in 1844 by Dr. Gilly, canon of Durham. It will perhaps, however, assist the reader if we briefly remark that he was born about 370, at Calagurris, near Convenæ (Comminges), which was a station on the Roman road from Aquitaine to Spain. His father was probably the keeper of the inn, and Vigilantius appears to have been brought up to his father's business. He was of a studious character, and Sulpicius Severus, the ecclesiastical historian, who had estates in those parts, took him into his service, and, possibly, made him manager of his estates. Having been ordained he was introduced to Jerome (then living at Bethlehem, in 395) through Paulinus of Nola, who was the friend of Sulpicius Severus. After staying with Jerome for a considerable time he begged to be dismissed, and left in great haste without giving any reason. Returning to Gaul, he settled in his native country. Jerome hearing that he was spreading reports of him as favouring the views of Origen, and in other ways defaming him and his friends, wrote him a sharp letter of rebuke (Letter LXI.). The work of Vigilantius which drew from Jerome the following treatise was written in the year a.d. 406; not "hastily, under provocation such as he may have felt in leaving Bethlehem." but after the lapse of six or seven years. The points against which he argued as being superstitious are: (1) the reverence paid to the relics of holy men by carrying them round the church in costly vessels or silken wrappings to be kissed, and the prayers offered to the dead; (2) the late watchings at the basilicas of the martyrs, with their attendant scandals, the burning of numerous tapers. alleged miracles, etc.; (3) the sending of alms to Jerusalem, which, Vigilantius urged, had better be spent among the poor in each separate diocese, and the monkish vow of poverty; (4) the exaggerated estimate of virginity.
The bishop of the diocese, Exsuperius of Toulouse, was strongly in favour of the views of Vigilantius, and they began to spread widely. Complaints having reached Jerome through the presbyter Riparius, he at once expressed his indignation, and offered to answer in detail if the work of Vigilantius were sent to him. In 406 he received it through Sisinnius, who was bearing alms to the East. It has been truly said that this treatise has less of reason and more of abuse than any other which Jerome wrote. But in spite of this the author was followed by the chief ecclesiastics of the day, and the practices impugned by Vigilantius prevailed almost unchecked till the sixteenth century.
1. The world has given birth to many monsters; in [4944] Isaiah we read of centaurs and sirens, screech-owls and pelicans. Job, in mystic language, describes Leviathan and Behemoth; Cerberus and the birds of Stymphalus, the Erymanthian boar and the Nemean lion, the Chimæra and the many-headed Hydra, are told of in poetic fables. Virgil describes Cacus. Spain has produced Geryon, with his three bodies. Gaul alone has had no monsters, but has ever been rich in men of courage and great eloquence. All at once Vigilantius, or, more correctly, Dormitantius, has arisen, animated by an unclean spirit, to fight against the Spirit of Christ, and to deny that religious reverence is to be paid to the tombs of the martyrs. Vigils, he says, are to be condemned; Alleluia must never be sung except at Easter; continence is a heresy; chastity a hot-bed of lust. And as Euphorbus is said to have been born again in the person of Pythagoras, so in this fellow the corrupt mind of Jovinianus has arisen; so that in him, no less than in his predecessor, we are bound to meet the snares of the devil. The words may be justly applied to him: [4945] "Seed of evil-doers, prepare thy children for the slaughter because of the sins of thy father." Jovinianus, condemned by the authority of the Church of Rome, amidst pheasants and swine's flesh, breathed out, or rather belched out his spirit. And now this tavern-keeper of Calagurris, who, according to the name of his [4946] native village is a Quintilian, only dumb instead of eloquent, is [4947] mixing water with the wine. According to the trick which he knows of old, he is trying to blend his perfidious poison with the Catholic faith; he assails virginity and hates chastity; he revels with worldlings and declaims against the fasts of the saints; he plays the philosopher over his cups, and soothes himself with the sweet strains of psalmody, while he smacks his lips over his cheese-cakes; nor could he deign to listen to the songs of David and Jeduthun, and Asaph and the sons of Core, except at the banqueting table. This I have poured forth with more grief than amusement, for I cannot restrain myself and turn a deaf ear to the wrongs inflicted on apostles and martyrs.
2. Shameful to relate, there are bishops who are said to be associated with him in his wickedness--if at least they are to be called bishops--who ordain no deacons but such as have been previously married; who credit no celibate with chastity--nay, rather, who show clearly what measure of holiness of life they can claim by indulging in evil suspicions of all men, and, unless the candidates for ordination appear before them with pregnant wives, and infants wailing in the arms of their mothers, will not administer to them Christ's ordinance. What are the Churches of the East to do? What is to become of the Egyptian Churches and those belonging to the Apostolic Seat, which accept for the ministry only men who are virgins, or those who practice continency, or, if married, abandon their conjugal rights? Such is the teaching of Dormitantius, who throws the reins upon the neck of lust, and by his encouragement doubles the natural heat of the flesh, which in youth is mostly at boiling point, or rather slakes it by intercourse with women; so that there is nothing to separate us from swine, nothing wherein we differ from the brute creation, or from horses, respecting which it is written: [4948] "They were toward women like raging horses; everyone neighed after his neighbour's wife." This is that which the Holy Spirit says by the mouth of David: [4949] "Be ye not like horse and mule which have no understanding." And again respecting Dormitantius and his friends: [4950] "Bind the jaws of them who draw not near unto thee with bit and bridle."
3. But it is now time for us to adduce his own words and answer him in detail. For, possibly, in his malice, he may choose once more to misrepresent me, and say that I have trumped up a case for the sake of showing off my rhetorical and declamatory powers in combating it, like the letter [4951] which I wrote to Gaul, relating to a mother and daughter who were at variance. This little treatise, which I now dictate, is due to the reverend presbyters Riparius and Desiderius, who write that their parishes have been defiled by being in his neighbourhood, and have sent me, by our brother Sisinnius, the books which he vomited forth in a drunken fit. They also declare that some persons are found who, from their inclination to his vices, assent to his blasphemies. He is a barbarian both in speech and knowledge. His style is rude. He cannot defend even the truth; but, for the sake of laymen, and poor women, laden with sins, ever learning and never coming to a knowledge of the truth, I will spend upon his melancholy trifles a single night's labour, otherwise I shall seem to have treated with contempt the letters of the reverend persons who have entreated me to undertake the task.
4. He certainly well represents his race. Sprung from a set of brigands and persons collected together from all quarters (I mean those whom Cn. Pompey, after the conquest of Spain, when he was hastening to return for his triumph, brought down from the Pyrenees and gathered together into one town, whence the name of the city Convenæ [4952] ), he has carried on their brigand practices by his attack upon the Church of God. Like his ancestors the Vectones, the Arrabaci, and the Celtiberians, he makes his raids upon the churches of Gaul, not carrying the standard of the cross, but, on the contrary, the ensign of the devil. Pompey did just the same in the East. After overcoming the Cilician and Isaurian pirates and brigands, he founded a city, bearing his own name, between Cilicia and Isauria. That city, however, to this day, observes the ordinances of its ancestors, and no Dormitantius has arisen in it; but Gaul supports a native foe, and sees seated in the Church a man who has lost his head and who ought to be put in the strait-jacket which Hippocrates recommended. Among other blasphemies, he may be heard to say, "What need is there for you not only to pay such honour, not to say adoration, to the thing, whatever it may be, which you carry about in a little vessel and worship?" And again, in the same book, "Why do you kiss and adore a bit of powder wrapped up in a cloth?" And again, in the same book, "Under the cloak of religion we see what is all but a heathen ceremony introduced into the churches: while the sun is still shining, heaps of tapers are lighted, and everywhere a paltry bit of powder, wrapped up in a costly cloth, is kissed and worshipped. Great honour do men of this sort pay to the blessed martyrs, who, they think, are to be made glorious by trumpery tapers, when the Lamb who is in the midst of the throne, with all the brightness of His majesty, gives them light?"
5. Madman, who in the world ever adored the martyrs? who ever thought man was God? Did not [4953] Paul and Barnabas, when the people of Lycaonia thought them to be Jupiter and Mercury, and would have offered sacrifices to them, rend their clothes and declare they were men? Not that they were not better than Jupiter and Mercury, who were but men long ago dead, but because, under the mistaken ideas of the Gentiles, the honour due to God was being paid to them. And we read the same respecting Peter, who, when Cornelius wished to adore him, raised him by the hand, and said, [4954] "Stand up, for I also am a man." And have you the audacity to speak of "the mysterious something or other which you carry about in a little vessel and worship?" I want to know what it is that you call "something or other." Tell us more clearly (that there may be no restraint on your blasphemy) what you mean by the phrase "a bit of powder wrapped up in a costly cloth in a tiny vessel." It is nothing less than the relics of the martyrs which he is vexed to see covered with a costly veil, and not bound up with rags or hair-cloth, or thrown on the midden, so that Vigilantius alone in his drunken slumber may be worshipped. Are we, therefore guilty of sacrilege when we enter the basilicas of the Apostles? Was the Emperor Constantius I. guilty of sacrilege when he transferred the sacred relics of Andrew, Luke, and Timothy to Constantinople? In their presence the demons cry out, and the devils who dwell in Vigilantius confess that they feel the influence of the saints. And at the present day is the Emperor Arcadius guilty of sacrilege, who after so long a time has conveyed the bones of the blessed Samuel from Judea to Thrace? Are all the bishops to be considered not only sacrilegious, but silly into the bargain, because they carried that most worthless thing, dust and ashes, wrapped in silk in golden vessel? Are the people of all the Churches fools, because they went to meet the sacred relics, and welcomed them with as much joy as if they beheld a living prophet in the midst of them, so that there was one great swarm of people from Palestine to Chalcedon with one voice re-echoing the praises of Christ? They were forsooth, adoring Samuel and not Christ, whose Levite and prophet Samuel was. You show mistrust because you think only of the dead body, and therefore blaspheme. Read the Gospel-- [4955] "The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob: He is not the God of the dead, but of the living." If then they are alive, they are not, to use your expression, kept in honourable confinement.
6. For you say that the souls of Apostles and martyrs have their abode either in the bosom of Abraham, or in the place of refreshment, or under the altar of God, and that they cannot leave their own tombs, and be present where they will. They are, it seems, of senatorial rank, and are not subjected to the worst kind of prison and the society of murderers, but are kept apart in liberal and honourable custody in the isles of the blessed and the Elysian fields. Will you lay down the law for God? Will you put the Apostles into chains? So that to the day of judgment they are to be kept in confinement, and are not with their Lord, although it is written concerning them, [4956] "They follow the Lamb, whithersoever he goeth." If the Lamb is present everywhere, the same must be believed respecting those who are with the Lamb. And while the devil and the demons wander through the whole world, and with only too great speed present themselves everywhere; are martyrs, after the shedding of their blood, to be kept out of sight shut up in a [4957] coffin, from whence they cannot escape? You say, in your pamphlet, that so long as we are alive we can pray for one another; but once we die, the prayer of no person for another can be heard, and all the more because the martyrs, though they [4958] cry for the avenging of their blood, have never been able to obtain their request. If Apostles and martyrs while still in the body can pray for others, when they ought still to be anxious for themselves, how much more must they do so when once they have won their crowns, overcome, and triumphed? A single man, Moses, oft [4959] wins pardon from God for six hundred thousand armed men; and [4960] Stephen, the follower of his Lord and the first Christian martyr, entreats pardon for his persecutors; and when once they have entered on their life with Christ, shall they have less power than before? The Apostle Paul [4961] says that two hundred and seventy-six souls were given to him in the ship; and when, after his dissolution, he has begun to be with Christ, must he shut his mouth, and be unable to say a word for those who throughout the whole world have believed in his Gospel? Shall Vigilantius the live dog be better than Paul the dead lion? I should be right in saying so after [4962] Ecclesiastes, if I admitted that Paul is dead in spirit. The truth is that the saints are not called dead, but are said to be asleep. Wherefore [4963] Lazarus, who was about to rise again, is said to have slept. And the Apostle [4964] forbids the Thessalonians to be sorry for those who were asleep. As for you, when wide awake you are asleep, and asleep when you write, and you bring before me an apocryphal book which, under the name of Esdras, is read by you and those of your feather, and in this book it is [4965] written that after death no one dares pray for others. I have never read the book: for what need is there to take up what the Church does not receive? It can hardly be your intention to confront me with Balsamus, and Barbelus, and the Thesaurus of Manichæus, and the ludicrous name of Leusiboras; though possibly because you live at the foot of the Pyrenees, and border on Iberia, you follow the incredible marvels of the ancient heretic [4966] Basilides and his so-called knowledge, which is mere ignorance, and set forth what is condemned by the authority of the whole world. I say this because in your short treatise you quote Solomon as if he were on your side, though Solomon never wrote the words in question at all; so that, as you have a second Esdras you may have a second Solomon. And, if you like, you may read the imaginary revelations of all the patriarchs and prophets, and, when you have learned them, you may sing them among the women in their weaving-shops, or rather order them to be read in your taverns, the more easily by these melancholy ditties to stimulate the ignorant mob to replenish their cups.
7. As to the question of tapers, however, we do not, as you in vain misrepresent us, light them in the daytime, but by their solace we would cheer the darkness of the night, and watch for the dawn, lest we should be blind like you and sleep in darkness. And if some persons, being ignorant and simple minded laymen, or, at all events, religious women--of whom we can truly say, [4967] "I allow that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge"--adopt the practice in honour of the martyrs, what harm is thereby done to you? Once upon a time even the Apostles [4968] pleaded that the ointment was wasted, but they were rebuked by the voice of the Lord. Christ did not need the ointment, nor do martyrs need the light of tapers; and yet that woman poured out the ointment in honour of Christ, and her heart's devotion was accepted. All those who light these tapers have their reward according to their faith, as the Apostle says: [4969] "Let every one abound in his own meaning." Do you call men of this sort idolaters? I do not deny, that all of us who believe in Christ have passed from the error of idolatry. For we are not born Christians, but become Christians by being born again. And because we formerly worshipped idols, does it follow that we ought not now to worship God lest we seem to pay like honour to Him and to idols? In the one case respect was paid to idols, and therefore the ceremony is to be abhorred; in the other the martyrs are venerated, and the same ceremony is therefore to be allowed. Throughout the whole Eastern Church, even when there are no relics of the martyrs, whenever the Gospel is to be read the candles are lighted, although the dawn may be reddening the sky, not of course to scatter the darkness, but by way of evidencing our joy. [4970] And accordingly the virgins in the Gospel always have their lamps lighted. And the Apostles are [4971] told to have their loins girded, and their lamps burning in their hands. And of John Baptist we read, [4972] "He was the lamp that burneth and shineth"; so that, under the figure of corporeal light, that light is represented of which we read in the Psalter, [4973] "Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, O Lord, and a light unto my paths."
8. Does the bishop of Rome do wrong when he offers sacrifices to the Lord over the venerable bones of the dead men Peter and Paul, as we should say, but according to you, over a worthless bit of dust, and judges their tombs worthy to be Christ's altars? And not only is the bishop of one city in error, but the bishops of the whole world, who, despite the tavern-keeper Vigilantius, enter the basilicas of the dead, in which "a worthless bit of dust and ashes lies wrapped up in a cloth," defiled and defiling all else. Thus, according to you, the sacred buildings are like the sepulchres of the Pharisees, whitened without, while within they have filthy remains, and are full of foul smells and uncleanliness. And then he dares to expectorate his filth upon the subject and to say: "Is it the case that the souls of the martyrs love their ashes, and hover round them, and are always present, lest haply if any one come to pray and they were absent, they could not hear?" Oh, monster, who ought to be banished to the ends of the earth! do you laugh at the relics of the martyrs, and in company with Eunomius, the father of this heresy, slander the Churches of Christ? Are you not afraid of being in such company, and of speaking against us the same things which he utters against the Church? For all his followers refuse to enter the basilicas of Apostles and martyrs, so that, forsooth, they may worship the dead Eunomius, whose books they consider are of more authority than the Gospels; and they believe that the light of truth was in him just as other heretics maintain that the Paraclete came into Montanus, and say that Manichæus himself was the Paraclete. You cannot find an occasion of boasting even in supposing that you are the inventor of a new kind of wickedness, for your heresy long ago broke out against the Church. It found, however, an opponent in Tertullian, a very learned man, who wrote a famous treatise which he called most correctly Scorpiacum, [4974] because, as the scorpion bends itself like a bow to inflict its wound, so what was formerly called the heresy of Cain pours poison into the body of the Church; it has slept or rather been buried for a long time, but has been now awakened by Dormitantius. I am surprised you do not tell us that there must upon no account be martyrdoms, inasmuch as God, who does not ask for the blood of goats and bulls, much less requires the blood of men. This is what you say, or rather, even if you do not say it, you are taken as meaning to assert it. For in maintaining that the relics of the martyrs are to be trodden under foot, you forbid the shedding of their blood as being worthy of no honour.
9. Respecting vigils and the frequent keeping of night-watches in the basilicas of the martyrs, I have given a brief reply in another letter [4975] which, about two years ago, I wrote to the reverend presbyter Riparius. You argue that they ought to be abjured, lest we seem to be often keeping Easter, and appear not to observe the customary yearly vigils. If so, then sacrifices should not be offered to Christ on the Lord's day lest we frequently keep the Easter of our Lord's Resurrection, and introduce the custom of having many Easters instead of one. We must not, however, impute to pious men the faults and errors of youths and worthless women such as are often detected at night. It is true that, even at the Easter vigils, something of the kind usually comes to light; but the faults of a few form no argument against religion in general, and such persons, without keeping vigil, can go wrong either in their own houses or in those of other people. The treachery of Judas did not annul the loyalty of the Apostles. And if others keep vigil badly, our vigils are not thereby to be stopped; nay, rather let those who sleep to gratify their lust be compelled to watch that they may preserve their chastity. For if a thing once done be good, it cannot be bad if often done; and if there is some fault to be avoided, the blame lies not in its being done often, but in its being done at all. And so we should not watch at Easter-tide for fear that adulterers may satisfy their long pent-up desires, or that the wife may find an opportunity for sinning without having the key turned against her by her husband. The occasions which seldom recur are those which are most eagerly longed for.
10. I cannot traverse all the topics embraced in the letters of the reverend presbyters; I will adduce a few points from the tracts of Vigilantius. He argues against the signs and miracles which are wrought in the basilicas of the martyrs, and says that they are of service to the unbelieving, not to believers, as though the question now were for whose advantage they occur, not by what power. Granted that signs belong to the faithless, who, because they would not obey the word and doctrine, are brought to believe by means of signs. Even our Lord wrought signs for the unbelieving, and yet our Lord's signs are not on that account to be impugned, because those people were faithless, but must be worthy of greater admiration because they were so powerful that they subdued even the hardest hearts, and compelled men to believe. And so I will not have you tell me that signs are for the unbelieving; but answer my question--how is it that poor worthless dust and ashes are associated with this wondrous power of signs and miracles? I see, I see, most unfortunate of mortals, why you are so sad and what causes your fear. That unclean spirit who forces you to write these things has often been tortured by this worthless dust, aye, and is being tortured at this moment, and though in your case he conceals his wounds, in others he makes confession. You will hardly follow the heathen and impious Porphyry and Eunomius, and pretend that these are the tricks of the demons, and that they do not really cry out, but feign their torments. Let me give you my advice: go to the basilicas of the martyrs, and some day you will be cleansed; you will find there many in like case with yourself, and will be set on fire, not by the martyrs' tapers which offend you, but by invisible flames; and you will then confess what you now deny, and will freely proclaim your name--that you who speak in the person of Vigilantius are really either Mercury, for greedy of gain was he; or Nocturnus, who, according to Plautus's "Amphitryon," slept while Jupiter, two nights together, had his adulterous connection with Alcmena, and thus begat the mighty Hercules; or at all events Father Bacchus, of drunken fame, with the tankard hanging from his shoulder, with his ever ruby face, foaming lips, and unbridled brawling.
11. Once, when a sudden earthquake in this province in the middle of the night awoke us all out of our sleep, you, the most prudent and the wisest of men, began to pray without putting your clothes on, and recalled to our minds the story of Adam and Eve in Paradise; they, indeed, when their eyes were opened were ashamed, for they saw that they were naked, and covered their shame with the leaves of trees; but you, who were stripped alike of your shirt and of your faith, in the sudden terror which overwhelmed you, and with the fumes of your last night's booze still hanging about you, showed your wisdom by exposing your nakedness in only too evident a manner to the eyes of the brethren. Such are the adversaries of the Church; these are the leaders who fight against the blood of the martyrs; here is a specimen of the orators who thunder against the Apostles, or, rather, such are the mad dogs which bark at the disciples of Christ.
12. I confess my own fear, for possibly it may be thought to spring from superstition. When I have been angry, or have had evil thoughts in my mind, or some phantom of the night has beguiled me, I do not dare to enter the basilicas of the martyrs, I shudder all over in body and soul. You may smile, perhaps, and deride this as on a level with the wild fancies of weak women. If it be so, I am not ashamed of having a faith like that of those who were the first to see the risen Lord; who were sent to the Apostles; who, in the person of the mother of our Lord and Saviour, were commended to the holy Apostles. Belch out your shame, if you will, with men of the world, I will fast with women; yea, with religious men whose looks witness to their chastity, and who, with the cheek pale from prolonged abstinence, show forth the chastity of Christ.
13. Something, also, appears to be troubling you. You are afraid that, if continence, sobriety, and fasting strike root among the people of Gaul, your taverns will not pay, and you will be unable to keep up through the night your diabolical vigils and drunken revels. Moreover, I have learnt from those same letters that, in defiance of the authority of Paul, nay, rather of Peter, John, and James, who gave the right hand of fellowship to Paul and Barnabas, and commanded them to remember the poor, you forbid any pecuniary relief to be sent to Jerusalem for the benefit of the saints. Now, if I reply to this, you will immediately give tongue and cry out that I am pleading my own cause. You, forsooth, were so generous to the whole community that if you had not come to Jerusalem, and lavished your own money or that of your patrons, we should all be on the verge of starvation. I say what the blessed Apostle Paul says in nearly all his Epistles; and he makes it a rule for the Churches of the Gentiles that, on the first day of the week, that is, on the Lord's day, contributions should be made by every one which should be sent up to Jerusalem for the relief of the saints, and that either by his own disciples, or by those whom they should themselves approve; and if it were thought fit, he would himself either send, or take what was collected. Also in the Acts of the Apostles, when speaking to the governor Felix, he says, [4976] "After many years I went up to Jerusalem to bring alms to my nation and offerings, and to perform my vows, amidst which they found me purified in the temple." Might he not have distributed in some other part of the world, and in the infant Churches which he was training in his own faith, the gifts he had received from others? But he longed to give to the poor of the holy places who, abandoning their own little possessions for the sake of Christ, turned with their whole heart to the service of the Lord. It would take too long now if I purposed to repeat all the passages from the whole range of his Epistles in which he advocates and urges with all his heart that money be sent to Jerusalem and to the holy places for the faithful; not to gratify avarice, but to give relief; not to accumulate wealth, but to support the weakness of the poor body, and to stave off cold and hunger. And this custom continues in Judea to the present day, not only among us, but also among the Hebrews, so that they who [4977] meditate in the law of the Lord, day and night, and have [4978] no father upon earth except the Lord alone, may be cherished by the aid of the synagogues and of the whole world; that there may be [4979] equality--not that some may be refreshed while others are in distress, but that the abundance of some may support the need of others.
14. You will reply that every one can do this in his own country, and that there will never be wanting poor who ought to be supported with the resources of the Church. And we do not deny that doles should be distributed to all poor people, even to Jews and Samaritans, if the means will allow. But the Apostle teaches that alms should be given to all, indeed, [4980] especially, however, to those who are of the household of faith. And respecting these the Saviour said in the Gospel, [4981] "Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness, who may receive you into everlasting habitations." What! Can those poor creatures, with their rags and filth, lorded over, as they are, by raging lust, can they who own nothing, now or hereafter, have eternal habitations? No doubt it is not the poor simply, but the poor in spirit, who are called blessed; those of whom it is written, [4982] "Blessed is he who gives his mind to the poor and needy; the Lord shall deliver him in the evil day." But the fact is, in supporting the poor of the common people, what is needed is not mind, but money. In the case of the saintly poor the mind has blessed exercises, since you give to one who receives with a blush, and when he has received is grieved, that while sowing spiritual things he must reap your carnal things. As for his argument that they who keep what they have, and distribute among the poor, little by little, the increase of their property, act more wisely than they who sell their possessions, and once for all give all away, not I but the Lord shall make answer: [4983] "If thou wilt be perfect, go sell all that thou hast and give to the poor, and come, follow Me." He speaks to him who wishes to be perfect, who, with the Apostles, leaves father, ship, and net. The man whom you approve stands in the second or third rank; yet we welcome him provided it be understood that the first is to be preferred to the second, and the second to the third.
15. Let me add that our monks are not to be deterred from their resolution by you with your viper's tongue and savage bite. Your argument respecting them runs thus: If all men were to seclude themselves and live in solitude, who is there to frequent the churches? Who will remain to win those engaged in secular pursuits? Who will be able to urge sinners to virtuous conduct? Similarly, if all were as silly as you, who could be wise? And, to follow out your argument, virginity would not deserve our approbation. For if all were virgins, we should have no marriages; the race would perish; infants would not cry in their cradles; midwives would lose their pay and turn beggars; and Dormitantius, all alone and shrivelled up with cold, would lie awake in his bed. The truth is, virtue is a rare thing and not eagerly sought after by the many. Would that all were as the few of whom it is said: [4984] "Many are called, few are chosen." The prison would be empty. But, indeed, a monk's function is not to teach, but to lament; to mourn either for himself or for the world, and with terror to anticipate our Lord's advent. Knowing his own weakness and the frailty of the vessel which he carries, he is afraid of stumbling, lest he strike against something, and it fall and be broken. Hence he shuns the sight of women, and particularly of young women, and so far chastens himself as to dread even what is safe.
16. Why, you will say, go to the desert? The reason is plain: That I may not hear or see you; that I may not be disturbed by your madness; that I may not be engaged in conflict with you; that the eye of the harlot nay not lead me captive: that beauty may not lead me to unlawful embraces. You will reply: "This is not to fight, but to run away. Stand in line of battle, put on your armour and resist your foes, so that, having overcome, you may wear the crown." I confess my weakness. I would not fight in the hope of victory, lest some time or other I lose the victory. If I flee, I avoid the sword; if I stand, I must either overcome or fall. But what need is there for me to let go certainties and follow after uncertainties? Either with my shield or with my feet I must shun death. You who fight may either be overcome or may overcome. I who fly do not overcome, inasmuch as I fly; but I fly to make sure that I may not be overcome. There is no safety in sleep with a serpent beside you. Possibly he will not bite me, yet it is possible that after a time he may bite me. We call women mothers who are no older than sisters and daughters, [4985] and we do not blush to cloak our vices with the names of piety. What business has a monk in the women's cells? What is the meaning of secret conversation and looks which shun the presence of witnesses? Holy love has no restless desire. Moreover, what we have said respecting lust we must apply to avarice, and to all vices which are avoided by solitude. We therefore keep clear of the crowded cities, that we may not be compelled to do what we are urged to do, not so much by nature as by choice.
17. At the request of the reverend presbyters, as I have said, I have devoted to the dictation of these remarks the labour of a single night, for my brother Sisinnius is hastening his departure for Egypt, where he has relief to give to the saints, and is impatient to be gone. If it were not so, however, the subject itself was so openly blasphemous as to call for the indignation of a writer rather than a multitude of proofs. But if Dormitantius wakes up that he may again abuse me, and if he thinks fit to disparage me with that same blasphemous mouth with which he pulls to pieces Apostles and martyrs, I will spend upon him something more than this short lucubration. I will keep vigil for a whole night in his behalf and in behalf of his companions, whether they be disciples or masters, who think no man to be worthy of Christ's ministry unless he is married and his wife is seen to be with child. __________________________________________________________________
[4944] Is. xiii. 21, 22, and xxxiv. 14-16.
[4945] Is. xix. 21. Sept.
[4946] Quintilian, the rhetorician, was born at Calagurris, in Spain, but not the same as the birthplace of Vigilantius.
[4947] Combining the cheating tavern-keeper with the heretic.
[4948] Jerem. v. 8.
[4949] Ps. xxxii. 9.
[4950] Ibid.
[4951] Letter CXVII.
[4952] From convenio, to come together.
[4953] Acts xiv. 11.
[4954] Acts x. 26.
[4955] Matt. xxii. 32.
[4956] Apoc. xiv. 4.
[4957] Another reading is, "Shut up in the altar."
[4958] Apoc. vi. 10.
[4959] Ex. xxxii. 30 sqq.
[4960] Acts vii. 59, 60.
[4961] Acts xxvii. 37.
[4962] ix. 4.
[4963] John xi. 11.
[4964] 1 Thess. iv. 13.
[4965] vii. 35 sq. The passage occurs in the Ethiopic and Arabic versions, not in the Latin. It was probably rejected in later times for dogmatic reasons.
[4966] The chief of the Egyptian Gnostics.
[4967] Rom. x. 2.
[4968] Matt. xxvi. 8; Mark xiv. 4.
[4969] Rom. xiv. 5. Let each man be fully assured in his own mind. R.V.
[4970] Matt. xxv. 1.
[4971] Luke xii. 35.
[4972] John v. 35.
[4973] Ps. cxix. 105.
[4974] i.e. antidote to the scorpion's bite.
[4975] Letter CIX.
[4976] Acts xxiv. 17, 18.
[4977] Ps. i. 2.
[4978] Deut. xviii. 2 sq.
[4979] 2 Cor. viii. 14.
[4980] Gal. vi. 10.
[4981] Luke xvi. 9.
[4982] Ps. xli. 9.
[4983] Matt. xix. 21.
[4984] Matt. xx. 16; xxii. 14.
[4985] He seems to mean that monks spoke of young ladies as Mothers of the Convents, so as to be able to frequent their society without reproach. __________________________________________________________________
To Pammachius Against John of Jerusalem.
------------------------
Introduction.
The letter against John of Jerusalem was written about the year 398 or 399, and was a product of the Origenistic controversy. Its immediate occasion was the visit of Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis in Cyprus, at Jerusalem, in 394. The bishop preached, in the Church of the Resurrection (§11), a pointed sermon against Origenism, which was thought to be so directly aimed at John that the latter sent his archdeacon to remonstrate with the preacher (§14). After many unseemly scenes, Epiphanius advised Jerome and his friends to separate from their bishop (§39). But how were they to have the ministrations of the Church? This difficulty was surmounted by Epiphanius, who took Jerome's brother to the monastery which he had founded at Ad, in the diocese of Eleutheropolis, and there ordained him against his will, even using force to overcome his opposition (Jerome, Letter LI. 1). Epiphanius attempted to defend his action (Jerome, Letter LI. 2), but John, after some time, appealed to Alexandria against Jerome and his supporters as schismatics. The bishop, Theophilus, at once took the side of John: but a letter, written by his emissary Isidore and intended for John, fell into the hands of Jerome (§37). The letter showed that Isidore was coming as a mere partisan of John, and Jerome, therefore, treated both it and the bearer with secret contempt. The dispute was thus prolonged for about four years, and, after some attempts at reconciliation, and the exhibition of much bitterness, amounting to the practical excommunication of Jerome and his friends, the dispute was stopped, perhaps by Theophilus, perhaps through the influence of Melania. The letter written to Pammachius at Rome, in 397 or 398, against John, was abruptly broken off, and it is almost certain that it was never published during Jerome's lifetime. Jerome afterwards had so much influence with Theophilus that we find him interceding for John, who had fallen under the Pontiff's displeasure (Letter LXXXVI. 1).
The date of this treatise is the subject of controversy. In §1 Jerome says that he wrote "after three years," that is, three years from the visit of Epiphanius to Jerusalem, which was in 394. This would give the date 397. At §14, also, he says that Epiphanius had been brooding over his wrongs for three years. Another note of time is found in the words of §43, that John had "lately" sought to obtain a sentence of exile against Jerome from "that wild beast who threatened the necks of the whole world," that is, the Prefect Rufinus, who died at the end of 395. All these statements point to the year 397. On the other hand, at §17, he speaks of his "Commentaries" on Ecclesiastes and Ephesians as having been written "about (ferme) ten years ago"; and the preface to Ecclesiastes says that he had read Ecclesiastes with Blesilla at Rome "about (ferme) five years ago," consequently, fifteen years before the writing of this treatise. Blesilla's death was in 384. The reading of Ecclesiastes may, therefore, have been in 383. And the fifteen years would bring us to 398. Also, at §41, Jerome says, addressing John. "You seem to have slept for thirteen years," implying that it was for thirteen years that the state of things complained of by John had existed, that is, the presence of the monks in his diocese, or, at least, their leaving their own dioceses. Jerome left Antioch, the diocese of his ordination, at the end of 385 or beginning of 386; these thirteen years, therefore, bring us to 399, the date adopted by Vallarsi. There is, however, an intimation in "Pallad. Hist. Laus.," c. 117, that Melania, the friend of Rufinus, gave assistance in the matter of "the schism of nearly 400 monks who followed Paulinus," which is admitted to relate to the schism at Bethlehem, caused by the question of the ordination of Paulinianus. We know that Melania and Rufinus left Jerusalem early in 397, and that, before their departure, Jerome and Rufinus were reconciled. It would, therefore, seem most probable that the treatise, which is written with so much animosity against John, Rufinus's fellow-worker, and contains invidious allusions to Rufinus himself (§11, "your friends, who grin like dogs and turn up their noses," Jerome's constant description of Rufinus), was written before the reconciliation of Rufinus and Jerome, that is, in the end of 386 or the beginning of 387, and that it was broken off and kept unpublished because the situation had changed. Vallarsi places it in 399. He quotes the passages which make for the later date, but strangely omits the more definite statements which make for the earlier. It should be added that the letter of Jerome (LXXXII.) to Theophilus is evidently written at the same time, and under the same feelings, as this treatise. and, if the arguments above given are valid, that letter must be placed in 397, not in 399, as stated in the note prefixed to it. The short letter (LXXXVI.) to Theophilus is, in that case, probably to be placed in 398 or 399, rather than 401, as there stated.
The treatise is a letter to Pammachius, who had been disturbed by the complaints of Bishop John to Siricius, bishop of Rome, against Jerome. Jerome begins (1) by pleading necessity for his attack on the bishop. Epiphanius has accused him of heresy (2). Let him answer plainly (3), for it is pride alone (4) which prevents this. It is said that John's letter of explanation or apology was approved by Theophilus (5); but it did not touch the point, that is, the accusation of Origenism. Only three points are treated (6), and Epiphanius adduced eight--namely (7) Origen's opinions (i.) that the Son does not see the Father; (ii.) that souls are confined in earthly bodies, as in a prison; (iii.) that the devil may be saved; (iv.) that the skins with which God clothed Adam and Eve were human bodies; (v.) that the body in the resurrection will be without sex; (vi.) that the descriptions of Paradise are allegorical: trees meaning angels, and rivers the heavenly virtues; (vii) that the waters above and below the firmament are angels and devils; (viii.) that the image of God was altogether lost at the Fall. John, instead of answering on the first head, merely expressed his faith in the Trinity (8, 9), and all through tries to make out (10) that the question between him and Epiphanius relates merely to the ordination of Paulinianus. Jerome then relates the extraordinary scenes of the altercation between Epiphanius and John (11-14). He then turns to the Origenistic notions that angels are cast down into human souls (15, 16), that the spirits of men pass into the heavenly bodies (17) and that the souls of men had a previous existence (18), and pass up and down in the scale of creation (19, 20). John, instead of answering on these points, contents himself with protesting against Manichæism (21.) Jerome presses him on the question of the origin of souls (22), pronouncing rashly for creationism. He then passes to the question of the state of the body after the resurrection (23), asserting the restoration of the flesh as it now is (24-27), both in the case of Christ (28) and in our own, adducing testimonies from the Old Testament (29-32), and discussing the appearances of our Lord after His resurrection (34-36). He then passes to a detailed examination of John's letter or "Apology" to Theophilus (37), quoting its words, and telling the story of the mission of Isidore (37, 38), and the attempts of the Count Archelaus to make peace (39). The ordination of Paulinianus, on which John lays stress, is a subterfuge (40, 41). The schism is due to the heretical tendencies of the bishop, who is everywhere denounced by Epiphanius (42, 43).
The letter is, throughout, violent and contemptuous in its tone, with an arrogant assumption that the writer is in possession of the whole truth on the difficult subject on which he writes, and that he has a right to demand from his bishop a confession of faith on each point on which he chooses to catechise him. Its importance lies in the fact that it, to a large extent, fixed the belief of churchmen on the points it deals with, and the mode of dealing with supposed heresy, for more than a thousand years.
1. If, according to the [4986] Apostle Paul, we cannot pray as we feel, and speech does not express the thoughts of our own minds, how much more dangerous is it to judge of another man's heart, and to trace and explain the meaning of the particular words and expressions which he uses? The nature of man is prone to mercy, and in considering another's sin, every one commiserates himself. Accordingly, if you blame one who offends in word, a man will say it was only simplicity; if you tax a man with craft, he to whom you speak will not admit that there is anything more in it than ignorance, so that he may avoid the suspicion of malice. And it will thus come to pass that you, the accuser, are made a slanderer, and the censured party is regarded, not as a heretic, but merely as a man without culture. You know, Pammachius, you know that it is not enmity or the lust of glory which leads me to engage in this work, but that I have been stimulated by your letters and that I act out of the fervour of my faith; and, if possible, I would have all understand that I cannot be blamed for impatience and rashness, seeing that I speak only after the lapse of three years. In fact, if you had not told me that the minds of many are troubled at the "Apology" which I am about to discuss, and are tossing to and fro on a sea of doubt, I had determined to persist in silence.
2. So away with [4987] Novatus, who would not hold out a hand to the erring! perish [4988] Montanus and his mad women! Montanus, who would hurl the fallen into the abyss that they may never rise again. Every day we all sin and make some slip or other. Being then merciful to ourselves, we are not rigorous towards others; nay, rather, we pray and beseech [4989] him either to simply tell us our own faults, or to openly defend those of other men. I dislike ambiguities; I dislike to be told what is capable of two meanings. Let us contemplate with [4990] unveiled face the glory of the Lord. Once upon a time the people of Israel halted [4991] between two opinions. But, said Elias, which is by interpretation the strong one of the Lord, [4992] "How long halt ye between two opinions? If the Lord be God, go after him; but if Baal, follow him." And the Lord himself says concerning the Jews, [4993] "the strange children lied unto me; the strange children became feeble, and limped out of their by-paths." If there really is no ground for suspecting him of heresy (as I wish and believe), why does he not speak out my opinion in my own words? He calls it simplicity; I interpret it as artfulness. He wishes to convince me that his belief is sound; let his speech, then, also be sound. And, indeed, if the ambiguity attached to a single word, or a single statement, or two or three, I could be indulgent on the score of ignorance; nor would I judge what is obscure or doubtful by the standard of what is certain and clear. But, as things are, this "simplicity" is nothing but a platform trick, like walking on tiptoe over eggs or standing corn; there is doubt and suspicion everywhere. You might suppose he was not writing an exposition of the faith, but was writing a disputation on some imaginary theme. What he is now so keen upon, we learnt long ago in the schools. He puts on our own armour to fight against us. Even if his faith be correct, and he speaks with circumspection and reserve, his extreme care rouses my suspicions. [4994] "He that walketh uprightly, walketh boldly." It is folly to bear a bad name for nothing. A charge is brought against him of which he is not conscious. Let him confidently deny the charge which hangs upon a single word, and freely turn the tables against his adversary. Let the one exhibit the same boldness in repelling the charge which the other shows in advancing it. And when he has said all that he wishes and purposes to say, and such things as are above suspicion, if his opponent persists in slander, let him try conclusions in open court. I wish no one to sit still under an imputation of heresy, lest, if he say nothing, his want of openness be interpreted, amongst those who are not aware of his innocence, as the consciousness of guilt, although there is no need to demand the presence of a man and to reduce him to silence when you have his letters in your possession.
3. We all know what [4995] he wrote to you, what charge he brought against you, wherein (as you maintain) he has slandered you. Answer the points, one by one; follow the footsteps of this letter; leave not a single jot or tittle of the slander unnoticed. For if you are careless, and accidentally pass over any thing as I believe you on your oath to have done, he will immediately cry out: "Now, now, you have got the worst of it, the whole thing turns upon this." Words do not sound the same in the ears of friends and enemies. An enemy looks for a knot even in a bulrush; a friend judges even crooked to be straight. It is a saying of secular writers that lovers are blind in their judgments, though, perhaps, you are too busy with the sacred books to pay any attention to such literature. You should never boast of what your friends think of you. That is true testimony which comes from the lips of foes. On the contrary, if a friend speaks in your behalf he will be considered not as a witness but a judge or a partisan. This is the sort of thing your enemies will say, who perhaps give no credit to you, and only wish to vex you. But I, whom you say you have never willingly injured, yet whose name you are always bound to bandy about in your letters, advise you either to openly proclaim the faith of the Church, or to speak as you believe. For that cautious mincing and weighing of words may, no doubt, deceive the unlearned; but a careful hearer and reader will quickly detect the snare, and will show in open daylight the subterranean mines by which truth is overthrown. The Arians (no one knows more about them than you) for a long time pretended that they condemned the [4996] Homoousion on account of the offence it gave, and they besmeared poisonous error with honeyed words. But at last the snake uncoiled itself, and its deadly head, which lay concealed under all its folds, was pierced by the sword of the Spirit. The Church, as you know, welcomes penitents, and is so overwhelmed by the multitude of sinners that it is forced, in the interests of the misguided flocks, to be lenient to the wounds of the shepherds. [4997] Ancient and modern heresy observes the same rule--the people hear one thing, the priests preach another.
4. And first, before I translate and insert in this book the letter which you wrote to Bishop Theophilus, and show you that I understand your excessive care and circumspection, I should like a word of expostulation with you. What is the meaning of this towering arrogance which makes you refuse to reply to those who question you respecting the faith? How is it that you regard almost as public enemies the vast multitude of brethren, and the bands of monks, who refuse to communicate with you in Palestine? The Son of God, for the sake of one sick sheep, leaving the ninety and nine on the mountains, endured the buffeting, the cross, the scourge; He took up the burden, and patiently carried on His shoulders to heaven the voluptuous woman that was a sinner. Is it for you to act the "most reverend father in God," the fastidious prelate; to stand apart in your wealth and wisdom, in your grandeur and your learning; to frown superciliously upon your fellow servants, and scarce vouchsafe a glance to those who have been redeemed with the blood of your Lord? Is this what you have learnt from the Apostles' precept to be [4998] "ready always to give answer to every man that asketh you a reason concerning the hope that is in you"? Suppose we do, as you pretend, seek occasion, and that, under the pretext of zeal for the faith, we are sowing strife, framing a schism, and fomenting quarrels. Then take away the occasion from those who wish for an occasion; so that having given satisfaction on the point of faith, and solved all the difficulties in which you are involved, you may show clearly to all that the dispute is not one of doctrine, but of [4999] order. But perhaps when questioned concerning the faith, you say that it is from wise forethought that you hold your tongue, so that it may not be said that you have proved yourself a heretic--in as much as you make satisfaction to your accusers. If that be so, then men ought not to refute any charges of which they are accused, lest, having denied them, they may be held to be guilty. The accusations of the laity, deacons, and presbyters, are, I suppose, beneath your notice. For you can, as you are perpetually boasting, make a thousand clerics in an hour. But you have to answer Epiphanius, our father in God, who, in the letters which he sent, openly calls you a heretic. Certainly you are not his superior in respect of years, of learning, of his exemplary life, or of the judgment of the whole world. If it is a question of age, you are a young man writing to an old one. If it is one of knowledge, you are a person not so very accomplished writing to a learned man, although your partisans maintain that you are a more finished speaker than Demosthenes, more sharp-witted than Chrysippus, wiser than Plato, and perhaps have persuaded you that they are right. As regards his life and devotion to the faith, I will say no more, that I may not seem to be seeking to wound you. At the time when the whole East (except our fathers in God Athanasius and Paulinus) was overrun by the Arian and Eunomian heresies; when you did not hold communion with the Westerns; then, in the very worst of the exile which made them confessors, he, though a simple convent priest, gained the ear of Eutychius, and afterwards as bishop of Cyprus was unmolested by Valens. For he was always so highly venerated that heretics on the throne thought it would redound to their own disgrace if they persecuted such a man. Write therefore to him. Answer his letter. So let the rest understand your purpose and judge of your eloquence and wisdom; do not keep all your accomplishments to yourself. Why, when you are challenged in one quarter, do you turn your arms towards another? A question is put to you in Palestine, your answer is given in Egypt. When some are blear-eyed, you anoint the eyes of others who are not affected. If you tell another what is meant to give us satisfaction, such action springs entirely from pride; if you tell him what we do not ask for, it is entirely uncalled for.
5. But you say "the bishop of Alexandria approved of my letter." What did he approve of? Your correct utterances against Arius, Photinus, and Manichæus. For who, at this time of day, accuses you of being an Arian? Who now fastens on you the guilt of Photinus and Manichæus? Those faults were long ago corrected, those enemies were shattered. You were not so foolish as to openly defend a heresy which you knew was offensive to the whole Church. You knew that if you had done this, you must have been immediately removed, and your heart was upon the pleasures of your episcopal throne. You so tuned your expressions as to neither displease the simple, nor offend your own incontestably marked by deceit and slipperiness; what, then, are we to do with the remaining five, with regard to which, because no opportunity was afforded for ambiguity, supporters. You wrote well, but nothing to the purpose. How was the bishop of Alexandria to know of what you were accused, or what things they were of which a confession was demanded from you? You ought to have set forth in detail the charges brought against you, and then have met them one by one. There is an old story which tells how a certain man, who, when he was speaking fluently, was carried along by a torrent of words, without touching the question before the court, and thus drew the wise remark from the judge, "Excellent! excellent! but to what purpose is all this excellence?" Quacks have but one lotion for all affections of the eyes. He who is accused of many things, and in dissipating the charges passes over some, confesses all that he omits to mention. Did you not reply to the letter of Epiphanius, and yourself choose the points for refutation? No doubt, in replying, you rested on the axiom, that no man is so brave as to put the sword to his own throat. Choose which alternative you like. You shall have your choice: you either replied to the letter of Epiphanius, or you did not. If you did reply, why did you take no notice of the most important, and the most numerous, of the charges brought against you? If you did not reply, what becomes of your "Apology," of which you boast amongst the simple, and which you are scattering broadcast amongst those who do not understand the matter?
6. The questions for you to answer were arranged, as I shall presently show, under eight heads. You touch only three, and pass on. As regards the rest, you maintain a magnificent silence. If you had with perfect frankness replied to seven, I should still cling to the charge which remained; and what you said nothing about, that I should hold to be the truth. But as things are, you have caught the wolf by the ears; you can neither hold fast, nor dare let go. With a sort of careless security and an air of abstraction, you skim over and touch the surface of three in which there is nothing or but little of importance. And your procedure is so dark and close that you confess more by your silence than you rebut by your arguments. Every one has the right forthwith to say to you, [5000] "If the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is the darkness." Even in answering three little questions, respecting which you seemed to say something, you are not clear from suspicion and from blame, but your replies are and you were therefore unable to cheat your hearers, you preferred to maintain unbroken silence rather than openly confess what had been covered in obscurity?
7. The questions relate to the passages in the [5001] Peri Archon. The first is this, "for as it is unfitting to say that the Son can see the Father, so neither is it meet to think that the Holy Spirit can see the Son." The second point is the statement that souls are tied up in the body as in a prison; and that before man was made in Paradise they dwelt amongst rational creatures in the heavens. Wherefore, afterwards to console itself, the soul says in the Psalms, [5002] "Before I was humbled, I went wrong"; and [5003] "Return, my soul, to thy rest"; and [5004] "Lead my soul out of prison"; and similarly elsewhere. Thirdly, he says that both the devil and demons will some time or other repent, and ultimately reign with the saints. Fourthly, he interprets the coats of skin, with which Adam and Eve were clothed after their fall and ejection from Paradise, to be human bodies, and we are to suppose of course that previously, in Paradise, they had neither flesh, sinews, nor bones. Fifthly, he most openly denies the resurrection of the flesh and the bodily structure, and the distinction of senses, both in his explanation of the first Psalm, and in many other of his treatises. Sixthly, he so allegorises Paradise as to destroy historical truth, understanding angels instead of trees, heavenly virtues instead of rivers, and he overthrows all that is contained in the history of Paradise by his figurative interpretation. Seventhly, he thinks that the waters which are said in Scripture to be above the heavens are holy and supernal essences, while those which are above the earth and beneath the earth are, on the contrary, demoniacal essences. The eighth is Origen's cavil that the image and likeness of God, in which man was created, was lost, and was no longer in man after he was expelled from Paradise.
8. These are the arrows with which you are pierced; these the weapons with which throughout the whole letter you are wounded; or I should rather say Epiphanius throws himself as a suppliant at your knees, and casts his hoary locks beneath your feet, and, for a time laying aside his episcopal dignity, prays for your salvation in words such as these: "Grant to me and to yourself the favour of your salvation; save yourself, as it is written, from this crooked generation, [5005] and forsake the heresy of Origen, and all heresies, dearly beloved." And lower down, "In the defence of heresy you kindle hatred against me, and destroy that love which I had towards you; insomuch that you would make us even repent of holding communion with you who so resolutely defend the errors and doctrines of Origen." Tell me, prince of arguers, to which, out of the eight sections, you have replied. For the present, I say nothing of the rest. Take the first blasphemy--that the Son cannot see the Father, nor the Holy Spirit the Son. By what weapons of yours has it been pierced? the answer we get is, "We believe that the Holy and Adorable Trinity are of the same substance; that they are co-eternal, and of the same glory and Godhead, and we anathematize those who say that there is any greatness, smallness, inequality, or aught that is visible in the Godhead of the Trinity. But as we say the Father is incorporeal, invisible, and eternal; so we say the Son and Holy Spirit are incorporeal, invisible, and eternal." If you did not say this, you would not hold to the Church. I do not ask whether there was not a time when you refused to say this. I will not discuss the question, whether you were fond of those who preached such doctrines; on whose side you were when, for expressing those sentiments, they underwent banishment; or who the man was that, when the presbyter Theo preached in the Church that the Holy Spirit is God, closed his ears, and excitedly rushed out of doors that he might not so much as hear the impiety. I recognize a man, as one may say, as one of the faithful, even though his repentance comes late. [5006] That unhappy man Prætextatus, who died after he had been chosen consul, a profane person and an idolater, was wont in sport to say to blessed Pope Damascus, "Make me bishop of Rome, and I will at once be a Christian." Why do you, with many words and intricate periods, take the trouble to show me that you are not an Arian? Either deny that the accused said what is imputed to him, or, if he did give utterance to such sentiments, condemn him for so speaking. You have still to learn how intense is the zeal of the orthodox. Listen to the Apostle: [5007] "If I or an angel from heaven bring you another gospel than that we have declared, let him be anathema." You would extenuate the fault and hide the name of the guilty party: as though everything were right and no one were accused of blasphemy, you frame, in artificial language, an uncalled-for profession of your faith. Speak out at once, and let your letter thus begin: "Let him be accursed who has dared to write such things." Pure faith is impatient of delay. As soon as the scorpion appears, he must be crushed under foot. David, who was proved to be a man after God's own heart, says: [5008] "Do not I hate those that hate thee, O Lord, and did not I pine away over thine enemies? I hated them with a perfect hatred." Had I heard my father, or mother, or brother say such things against my Master Christ, I would have broken their blasphemous jaws like those of a mad dog, and my hand should have been amongst the first lifted up against them. They who said to father and mother, [5009] "We know you not," these men fulfilled the will of the Lord. [5010] He that loveth father or mother more than Christ, is not worthy of Him.
9. It is alleged that your master, whom you call a Catholic, and whom you resolutely defend, said, "the Son sees not the Father, and the Holy Spirit sees not the Son." And you tell me that the Father is invisible, the Son invisible, the Holy Ghost invisible, as though the angels, both cherubim and seraphim, were not also, in accordance with their nature, invisible to our eyes. David was certainly in doubt even as regards the appearance of the heavens: [5011] "I shall see," he says, "the heavens, the works of Thy fingers." I shall see, not I see. I shall see when with unveiled face I shall behold the glory of the Lord: but [5012] now we see in part, and we know in part. The question is whether the Son sees the Father, and you say "The Father is invisible." It is disputed whether the Holy Spirit sees the Son, and you answer "The Son is invisible." The point at issue is, whether the Trinity have mutually the vision of one another; human ears cannot endure such blasphemy, and you say the Trinity is invisible. You wander in the realms of praise in all other directions; you spend your eloquence on things which no one wants to hear about. You put your hearer off the scent, to avoid telling us what we ask for. But granted that all this is superfluous. We make you a present of the fact that you are not an Arian; nay, even more, that you never have been. We allow that in the explanation of the first section no suspicion rests upon you, and that all that you said was frank and free from error. We speak to you with equal frankness. Did our father in God, Epiphanius, accuse you of being an Arian? Did he fasten upon you the heresy of [5013] Eunomius, the Godless, or that of [5014] Aerius? The point of the whole letter is that you follow the erroneous doctrines of Origen, and are associated with others in this heresy. Why, when a question is put to you on one point, do you give an answer about another; and, as if you were speaking to fools, hide the charges contained in the letters, and tell us what you said in the church in the presence of Epiphanius? A confession of faith is demanded of you, and you inflict upon us your very eloquent dissertations. I beseech my readers to remember the judgment seat of the Lord, and as you know that you must be judged for the judgment you give, favour neither me nor my opponent, and consider not the persons of the arguers, but the case itself. Let us then continue what we began.
10. You write in your letter that, before Paulinianus was made a presbyter, the pope Epiphanius never took you to task in connection with Origen's errors. To begin with, this is doubtful, and I have to consider which of the two men I should believe. He says that he did object, you deny it; he brings forward witnesses, you will not listen to them when they are produced; he even relates that [5015] another besides yourself was arraigned by him: you refuse to admit this in the case of either; he sends a letter to you by one of his clergy, and demands an answer: you are silent, dare not open your lips, and, challenged in Palestine, speak at Alexandria. Which of you is to be believed is not for me to say. I suppose that you yourself would not, in the face of so distinguished a man, venture to claim truth for yourself, and impute falsehood to him. But it is possible that each speaks from his own point of view. I will call a witness against you, and that witness is yourself. For if there were no dispute about doctrines, if you had not roused the anger of an old man, if he had given you no reply, what need was there for you, who do not excel in gifts of speech, to discuss in a single sermon in the church the whole circle of doctrine--the Trinity, the assumption of our Lord's body, the cross, hell, the nature of angels, the condition of souls, the Saviour's resurrection and our own, and this as taking place on this earth (topics perhaps omitted in your manuscript) in the presence of the masses, in the presence, too, of a man of such distinction? and to speak with such perfect assurance and to gallop through it all without stopping to draw breath? What shall we say of the ancient writers of the Church, who were scarce able to explain single difficulties in many volumes? What of the vessel of election, the Gospel trumpet, the roaring of our lion, the thunderer of the Gentiles, the river of Christian eloquence, who, when confronted by the [5016] mystery concealed from ages and generations, and by [5017] the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God, rather marvels at it than discusses it? What of Isaiah, who pointed beforehand to the Virgin? That single thing was too much for him, and he says, [5018] "Who shall declare his generation?" In our age a poor mannikin has been found, who, with one turn of the tongue, and a brilliancy exceeding that of the sun, discourses on all ecclesiastical questions. If no one asked you for the display, and everything was quiet, you were foolish to enter voluntarily upon so hazardous a discussion. If, on the other hand, the object of your speaking was the satisfaction you owed to the faith, it follows that the cause of strife was not the ordination of a [5019] priest, who, it is certain, was ordained long after. You have deceived only those who were not on the spot, and your letters flatter the ears of strangers only.
11. We were present (we know the whole case) when the bishop Epiphanius spoke against Origen in your church, and he was the ostensible, you the real object of attack. You and your crew grinned like dogs, drew in your nostrils, scratched your heads, nodded to one another, and talked of the "silly old man." Did you not, in front of the Lord's tomb, send your archdeacon to tell him to cease discussing such matters? What bishop ever gave such a command to one of his own presbyters in the presence of the people? When you were going from the Church of the Resurrection to the Church of the Holy Cross, and a crowd of all ages, and both sexes, was flowing to meet him, presenting to him their little ones, kissing his feet, plucking the fringes of his garments, and when he could not stir a step forward, and could hardly stand against the waves of the surging crowd, were not you so tortured by envy as to exclaim against "the vainglorious old man"? And you were not ashamed to tell him to his face that his stopping was of set purpose and design. Pray recall that day when the people who had been called together were kept waiting until the seventh hour by the mere hope of hearing Epiphanius, and the subject of the harangue you then delivered. You spoke, forsooth, with indignant rage against the Anthropomorphites, who, with rustic simplicity, think that God has actually the members of which we read in Scripture; and showed by your eyes, hands, and every gesture that you had the old man in view, and wished him to be suspected of that most foolish heresy. When through sheer fatigue, with dry month, head thrown back, and quivering lips, to the satisfaction of the whole people, who had longed for the end, you at last wound up, how did the crazy and "silly old man" treat you? He rose to indicate that he would say a few words, and after saluting the assembly with voice and hand proceeded thus: "All that has been said by one who is my brother in the episcopate, but my son in point of years, against the heresy of the Anthropomorphites, has been well and faithfully spoken, and my voice, too, condemns that heresy. But it is fair that, as we condemn this heresy so we should also condemn the perverse doctrines of Origen." You cannot, I think, have forgotten what a burst of laughter, what shouts of applause ensued. This is what you call in your letter his speaking to the people anything he chose, no matter what it might be. He, forsooth, was mad because he contradicted you in your own kingdom. "Anything he chose, no matter what." Either give him praise, or blame. Why, here as well as elsewhere, do you move with so uncertain a step? If what he said was good, why not openly proclaim it? if evil, why not boldly censure it? And yet, let us note with what wisdom, modesty, and humility this pillar of truth and faith, who dares to say that so illustrious a man speaks to the people what he chooses, alludes to himself. "One day I was speaking in his presence; and, taking occasion from some words in the lesson for the day, I expressed, in his hearing and in that of the whole Church, such views respecting the faith and all the doctrines of the Church as by the grace of God I unceasingly teach in the Church, and in my catechetical lectures."
12. What, I ask, is the meaning of this effrontery and bombast? All philosophers and orators attack Gorgias of Leontini for daring openly to pledge himself to answer any question which any person might choose to put to him. If the honour of the priesthood and respect for your title did not restrain me, and if I did not know what the Apostle says, [5020] "I wist not, brethren, that he was the high priest: for it is written, Thou shalt not speak evil of the ruler of thy people," how loudly and indignantly might I complain of what you relate! You, on the contrary, disparage the dignity of your title by the contempt which you throw, both in word and deed, on one who is almost the father of the whole episcopate, and a monument of the sanctity of former days. You say that on a certain day, when something in the lesson for the day stirred you up, you made a discourse in his hearing, and in that of the whole Church, concerning the faith and all the doctrines of the Church. After this we cannot but wonder at the weakness of Demosthenes; for we are told that he spent a long time in elaborating his splendid oration against Æschines. We are quite mistaken in looking up to Tully; for his merit, according to Cornelius Nepos, who was present, was nothing but this, that he delivered his famous defence of the seditious tribune Cornelius, almost word for word as it was published. Behold a Lysias [5021] and a Gracchus raised up for us! or, to name one of more modern days, Quintus Aterius, [5022] the man who had all his powers at hand like a stock of ready money, so that he needed some one to tell him when to stop, and of whom Cæsar Augustus said very well, "Our friend Quintus must have the break put on."
13. Is there any man in his right senses who would declare that in a single sermon he had discussed the faith and all the doctrines of the Church? Pray show me what that lesson is which is so seasoned with the whole savour of Scripture that its occurrence in the service induced you to enter the arena and put your wit to the hazard. And if you had not been overwhelmed by the torrent of your eloquence, you might have been convinced that it was impossible for you to speak upon the whole circle of doctrines without any deliberation. But how stands the case? You promise one thing and present another. Our custom is, for the space of forty days, to deliver public lectures to those who are to be baptized on the doctrine of the Holy and Adorable Trinity. If the lesson for the day stimulated you to discuss all doctrines in a single hour, what necessity was there to repeat the instruction of the previous forty days? But if you meant to recapitulate what you had been saying during the whole of Lent, how could one lesson on a certain day "stir you up" to speak of all these doctrines? But even here his language is ambiguous; for possibly he took occasion, from the particular lesson, to go over summarily what he was accustomed to deliver in church to the candidates for baptism during the forty days of Lent. For it is eloquence all the same whether few things are said in many words, or many things in few words. There is another permissible meaning, that, as soon as the one lesson gave him the spur, he was fired with such oratorical zeal that for forty days he never ceased speaking. But, then, even the easy-going old man, who was hanging upon his lips, and longing to know what he had never heard before, must have almost fallen from his seat asleep. However, we must put up with it; perhaps this, also, is a case of the simplicity which we know to be his manner.
14. Let us quote the rest, in which, after the labyrinths of his perplexing discussion, he expresses himself by no means ambiguously but openly, and thus concludes his wonderful homilies: "When we had thus spoken in his presence, and when out of the extreme honour which we paid him we invited him to speak after us, he praised our preaching, and said that he marvelled at it, and declared to all that it was the Catholic faith." The extreme honour you paid him is evidenced by the extreme insults offered to him, when through the archdeacon you bade him be silent, and loudly proclaimed that it was the love of praise which made him linger among the crowd. The present is the key to the past. For three whole years from that time he has brooded in silence [5023] over the wrongs he suffered, and, spurning all personal strife, has only asked for a more correct expression of your faith. You, with your endless resources, and making a profit out of the religion of the whole world, have been sending those very dignified envoys of yours hither and thither, and have been trying to awake the old man out of his sleep that he might answer you. And in truth it was right that as you had conferred such signal honour upon him he should praise your utterances, particularly such as were ex tempore. But as men have a way of sometimes praising what they do not approve, and of nourishing another's folly by meaningless commendation, he not only praised your utterances, but praised and marvelled at them as well; and what is more, to magnify the marvel, he declared to the whole people that they were in harmony with the Catholic faith. Whether he really said all this, we ourselves are witnesses. The fact is, he came to us half dead with dismay at your words, and saying that he had been too precipitate in communicating with you. And further, when he was much entreated by the whole monastery to return to you from Bethlehem, and was unable to resist the entreaties of so many, he did indeed return in the evening, but only to escape again at midnight. His letters to the pope Siricius prove the same thing, and if you read them you will see clearly in what sense he marvelled at your utterances and acknowledged them Catholic. But we are threshing chaff, and have spent many words in refuting gratuitous nonsense and old wives' fables.
15. Let us pass on to the second point. Here, as though there were nothing for his consideration, he vapours, and vents himself unconcernedly, pretending to be asleep, so that he may lull his readers also into slumber. "But we were speaking of the other matters pertaining to the faith, that is to say, that all things visible and invisible, the heavenly powers and terrestrial creatures have one and the same creator, even God, that is, the Holy Trinity, as the blessed David says, [5024] By the word of the Lord were the heavens established, and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth'; and the creation of man is a simple proof of the same; for it was God Himself who took slime from the earth, and through the grace of His own inspiration bestowed on it a reasonable soul, and one endowed with free will; not a part of His own nature (as some impiously teach), but His own workmanship. And concerning the holy angels, the belief of Christians similarly follows Holy Scripture, which says of God, [5025] "Who maketh His angels spirits, and His ministers a flaming fire." Holy Scripture does not allow us to believe that their nature is unchangeable, for it says, [5026] "And angels which kept not their own principality, but left their proper habitation, He hath kept in everlasting bonds under darkness unto the judgment of the great day"; we know, therefore, that they have changed, and having lost their own dignity and glory have become more like demons. But that the souls of men are caused by the fall of the angels, or by their conversion, we never believed, nor have we so taught (God forbid!), and we confess that the view is at variance with the teaching of the Church."
16. We want to know whether souls, before man was made in paradise, and Adam was fashioned out of the earth, were among reasonable creatures; whether they had their own rank, lived, continued, subsisted; and whether the doctrine of Origen is true, who said that all reasonable creatures, incorporeal and invisible, if they grow remiss, little by little sink to a lower level, and, according to the character of the places to which they descend, take to themselves bodies. (For instance, that they may be at first ethereal, afterward aërial.) And that when they reach the neighbourhood of earth they are invested with grossest bodies, and last of all are tied to human flesh; and that the demons themselves who, of their own choice, together with their leader the devil, have forsaken the service of God, if they begin to amend a little, are clothed with human flesh, so that, when they have undergone a process of repentance after the resurrection, and after passing through the same circuit by which they reached the flesh, they may return to proximity to God, being released even from aërial and ethereal bodies; and that then every knee will bow to God, of things in heaven, and things on earth, and things under the earth, and that God may be all to all. When these are the real questions, why do you pass over the points at issue, and, leaving the arena, fix yourself in the region of remote and utterly irrelevant discussion?
17. You believe that one God made all creatures, visible and invisible. Arius, who says that all things were created through the Son, would also confess this. If you had been accused of holding Marcion's heresy, which introduces two Gods, the one the God of goodness, the other of justice, and asserts that the former is the Creator of things invisible, the latter of things visible, your answer would have been well adapted to satisfy me on a question of that sort. You believe it is the Trinity which creates the universe. Arians and Semi-Arians deny that, blasphemously maintaining that the Holy Spirit is not the Creator, but is Himself created. But who now lays it to your charge that you are an Arian? You say that the souls of men are not a part of the nature of God, as though you were now called a Manichæan by Epiphanius. You protest against those who assert that souls are made out of angels, and say that their nature, in its fall, becomes the substance of humanity. Don't conceal what you know, nor feign a simplicity which you do not possess. Origen never said that souls are made out of angels, since he teaches that the term angels describes an office, not a nature. For in his book Peri 'Archon he says that angels, and thrones, and dominions, powers and rulers of the world, and of darkness, and [5027] every name which is named, not only in this world, but in that which is to come, become the souls of those bodies which they have taken on either through their own desire or for the sake of their appointed duties; that the sun also, himself, and the moon, and the company of all the stars, are the souls of what were once reasonable and incorporeal creatures; and that though now subject to vanity, that is to say, to fiery bodies which we, in our ignorance and inexperience, call luminaries of the world, they shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption and brought to the liberty of the glory of the sons of God. Wherefore every creature groaneth and travaileth in pain together. And the Apostle laments, saying, [5028] "Wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" This is not the time to controvert this doctrine, which is partly heathen, and partly Platonic. About ten years ago in my "Commentary" on Ecclesiastes, and in my explanation of the Epistle to the Ephesians, I think my own views were made clear to thoughtful men.
18. I now beg you, whose eloquence is so exuberant, and who expound the truth concerning all topics in the course of one sermon, to give an answer to your interrogators in concise and clear terms. When God formed man out of slime, and through the grace of His own inspiration gave him a soul, had that soul previously existed and subsisted which was afterwards bestowed by the inspiration of God, and where was it? or did it gain its capacity both to exist and to live from the power of God, on the sixth day, when the body was formed out of the slime? You are silent regarding this, and pretend you do not know what is wanted, and busy yourself with irrelevant questions. You leave Origen untouched, and rave against the absurdities of Marcion, Apollinaris, Eunomius, Manichæus, and the other heretics. You are asked for a hand and you put out a foot, and all the while covertly insinuate the doctrine to which you hold. You speak smooth things to plain men like us, but in such a way as in no degree to displease those of your own party.
19. You say that demons rather than souls are made out of angels, as though you did not know that, according to Origen, the demons themselves are souls belonging to aërial bodies, and, after being demons, destined to become human souls if they repent. You write that the angels are mutable; and, under cover of a pious opinion, introduce an impiety by maintaining that, after the lapse of many ages, souls are produced not from the angels, but from whatever it was into which the angels were first changed. I wish to make my meaning clearer; suppose a person of the rank of tribune to be degraded through his own misconduct, and to pass through the several steps of the cavalry service until he becomes a private, does he all at once cease to be a tribune [5029] and become a recruit? No; but he is first colonel, then, successively, major officer of two hundred, captain, commissary, patrol, trooper, and, lastly, a recruit; and although our tribune eventually becomes a common soldier, still he did not pass from the rank of tribune to that of recruit, but to that of colonel. Origen uses Jacob's ladder to teach that reasonable creatures by slow degrees sink to the lowest step, that is to flesh and blood; and that it is impossible for any one to be suddenly precipitated from number one hundred to number one without reaching the last by passing through the successive numbers, as in descending the rounds of a ladder; and that they change their bodies as often as they change their resting-places in going from heaven to earth. These are the tricks and artifices by which you make us out to be [5030] "Pelusiots" and "beasts of burden" and "animal men" who do "not receive the things pertaining to the Spirit." [5031] You are the "people of Jerusalem," and can make a mock even of the angels. But your mysteries are being dragged into the light, and your doctrine, which is a mere conglomerate of heathen fables, is publicly exposed in the ears of Christians. What you so much admire we long ago despised when we found it in Plato. And we despised it because we received the foolishness of Christ. And we received the foolishness of Christ because [5032] the weakness of God is wiser than men. And is it not a shame for us, who are Christians and priests of God, to entangle ourselves in words of doubtful meaning, as though we were merely jesting; to keep our phrases balanced between two meanings, in a way which deceives the speaker himself more than his hearers?
20. One of your company, when pressed by me to say what he thought concerning the soul, whether it had existed before the flesh, or not, replied that soul and body had existed together. I knew the man was a heretic, and was seeking to entangle me in my speech. At last I caught him saying that the soul gained that name from the time when it began to animate a body, whereas it was formerly called a demon, or angel of Satan, or spirit of fornication, or, on the other hand, dominion, power, agent of the spirit, or messenger. Well, but if the soul existed before Adam was made in Paradise (in any rank and condition), and lived and acted (for we cannot think that what is incorporeal and eternal is dull and torpid like a dormouse), there must have been some precedent cause to account for the soul, which at first had no body, being afterwards invested with a body. And if it is natural to the soul to be without a body, it must be contrary to nature for it to be in a body. If it is contrary to nature to be in a body, it follows that the resurrection of the body is contrary to nature. But the resurrection will not be contrary to nature; therefore, according to you, the body, which is contrary to nature, when it rises again will be without a soul.
21. You say that the soul is not of the essence of God. Well! This is what we might expect, for you condemn the impious Manichæus, to make mention of whose name is pollution. You say that angels are not turned into souls. I agree to some extent, although I know what meaning you give to the words. But, now that we have learnt what you deny, we wish to know what you believe. "Having taken slime of the earth," you say, "God fashioned man, and through the grace of His own inbreathing bestowed upon him a rational soul, and through the grace of free will, not a portion of His own divine nature (as some impiously maintain), but His own handiwork." See how he goes out of his way to be eloquent about what we did not ask for. We know that God fashioned man out of the earth; we are aware that He breathed into his face, and man became a living soul; we are not ignorant that the soul is characterized by reason and free choice, and we know that it is the workmanship of God. No one doubts that Manichæus errs in saying that the soul is the essence of God. I now ask: When was that soul made, which is the work of God, which is distinguished by free will and reason, and is not of the essence of the Creator? Was it made at the same time that man was made out of the slime, and the breath of life was breathed into his face? Or, having previously existed, and having associated with reasonable and incorporeal creatures as well as lived, was it afterwards gifted with the inbreathing of God? Here you are silent; here you feign a rustic simplicity, and make scriptural words a cloak for unscriptural tenets. Where you affirm what no one wants to know, that the soul is not a part of God's own nature (as some impiously maintain), you ought rather to have declared (and this is what we all want to know) that it is not that which previously existed, which He had before created, which had long dwelt among rational, incorporeal, and invisible creatures. You say none of these things; you bring forward Manichæus, and keep Origen out of sight, and, just as when children ask for something to eat their nursemaids put them off with some little joke, so you direct the thoughts of us poor rustics to other matters, so that we may be taken up with the fresh character on the stage, and may not ask for what we want.
22. But suppose the fact to be that you merely omit this, and that your simplicity does not mean something you are shrewd enough to conceal. Having once begun to speak of the soul, and to deduce arguments on such an important topic from man's first creation, why do you leave the discussion in mid-air, and suddenly pass to the angels, and the conditions under which the body of our Lord existed? Why do you pass by such a vast slough of difficulty, and leave us to stick in the mire? If the inbreathing of God (a view for which you have no liking, and a point which you now leave unsettled) is the creating of the human soul; whence had Eve her soul, seeing that God did not breathe into her face? But I will not dwell upon Eve, since she, as a type of the Church, was made out of one of her husband's ribs, and ought not, after so many ages, to be subjected to the calumnies of her descendants. I ask whence Cain and Abel, who were the firstborn of our first parents, had their souls? And the whole human race downwards, what, are we to think, was the origin of their souls? Did they come by propagation, like brute beasts? So that, as body springs from body, so soul from soul. Or is it the case that rational creatures, longing for bodily existence, sink by degrees to earth, and at last are tied even to human bodies? Surely (as the Church teaches in accordance with the Saviour's words, [5033] "My Father worketh hitherto and I work"; and the passage in Isaiah, [5034] "Who maketh the spirit of man in him"; and in the Psalms, [5035] "Who fashioneth one by one the hearts of them") God is daily making souls--He, with whom to will is to do, and who never ceases to be a Creator. I know what you are accustomed to say in opposition to this, and how you confront us with adultery and incest. But the dispute about these is a tedious one, and would exceed the narrow limits of the time at our disposal. The same argument may be retorted upon you, and whatever seems unworthy in the Creator of the present dispensation is again not unworthy, since it is His gift. Birth from adultery imputes no blame to the child, but to the father. As in the case of seeds, the earth which cherishes does not sin, nor the seed which is thrown into the furrows, nor the heat and moisture, under whose influence the grain bursts into bud, but some man, as for example, the thief and robber, who, by fraud and violence, plucks up the seed: so in the begetting of men, the womb, which corresponds to the earth, receives its own, and nourishes what it has received, and then gives a body to that which it nourishes, and divides into the several members the body it has formed. And among those secret recesses of the belly the hand of God is always working, and there is the same Creator of body and soul. Do not despise the goodness of your Maker, who fashioned you and made you as He chose. He Himself is the virtue of God and the wisdom of God, who, in the womb of the Virgin, built a house for Himself. Jephthah, who is reckoned by the Apostle among the saints, is the son of a harlot. But listen: Esau, born of Rebecca had Isaac, a "hairy man," both in mind and body, like good wheat, degenerates into darnel and wild oats; because the cause of vice and virtue does not lie in the seed, but in the will of him who is born. If it is an offence to be born with a human body, how is it that Isaac, Samson, John Baptist, are the children of promise? You see, I trust, what it is to have the courage of one's convictions. Suppose I am wrong, I openly say what I think. Do you, then, likewise either freely profess our opinions, or firmly maintain your own. Do not set yourself in my line of battle, so that, by feigning simplicity, you may be safe, and may be able, when you choose, to stab your opponent in the back. It is impossible for me, at the present moment, to write a book against the opinions of Origen. If Christ gives us life, we will devote another work to them. The point now is, whether the accused has answered the questions put to him, and whether his reply be clear and open.
23. Let us pass from this to the most notorious point, that relating to the resurrection of the flesh and of the body; and here, my reader, I would admonish you that you may know I speak under a sense of fear and of the judgment of God, and that you ought so to hear. For, if the pure faith is to be found in his exposition, and there is no suspicion of unfaithfulness, I am not so foolish as to seek an occasion of accusing him, and while I wish to censure another for his fault be myself censured as a slanderer. I will ask you, therefore, to read what follows on the resurrection of the flesh; and, having read it, if it satisfies you (I know it is well calculated to please the ignorant), suspend your judgment, wait a while, refrain from expressing an opinion until I have finished my reply; and if after that it satisfies you, then you shall fix on us the brand of slander. "His passion also on the cross, His death and burial, which was the saving of the world, and His resurrection in a true and not an imaginary sense, we confess; and that [5036] being the firstborn from the dead, He conveyed to heaven the firstfruits of our bodily substance which, after being laid in the tomb, He raised to life, thus giving us the hope of resurrection in the resurrection of His own body; wherefore we all hope so to rise from the dead, as He rose again; not in any foreign and strange bodies, which are but phantom shapes assumed for the moment; but as He Himself rose again in that body which was laid in the holy sepulchre at our very doors, so we, in the very bodies with which we are now clothed, and in which we are now buried, hope to rise again for the same reason and by the same [5037] command. For the bodies which, as the Apostle says, are sown in corruption, shall rise in incorruption; being sown in dishonour, they shall rise in glory. [5038] It is sown an animal body, it shall rise a spiritual body'; and of them the Saviour said in his teaching: [5039] For they who shall be worthy of that world, and of the resurrection from the dead, shall neither marry nor be given in marriage, for they can die no more, but shall be as the angels of God, since they are the sons of the resurrection.'"
24. Again, in another part of his letter, that is, towards the end of his own homilies, that he might cheat the ear of the ignorant, he makes a grand parade and noise about the Resurrection, but in ambiguous and balanced language. He says: "We have not omitted the second glorious advent of our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall come in His own glory to judge the quick and the dead; for He shall awake all the dead, and cause them to stand before His own judgment-seat; and shall render to every one according to what he has done in the body, whether it be good or bad; for every one shall either be crowned in the body because he lived a pure and righteous life, or be condemned, because he was the slave alike of pleasure and iniquity." What we read in the Gospel, that at the end of the world, [5040] if it were possible, even the elect are to be seduced, we see verified in this passage. The ignorant crowd hears of the dead and buried, hears of the resurrection of the dead in a true and not an imaginary sense, hears that the firstfruits of our bodily substance in our Lord's body have reached the heavenly regions, hears that we shall rise again not in foreign and strange bodies, which are mere phantom shapes, but, as our Lord rose in the body which lay amongst us in the holy sepulchre, so we also in the very bodies with which we are now clothed and buried shall rise again in the day of judgment. And that no one might think this too little, he adds in the last section: "And He shall render to every one according to what he did in the body, whether it were good or bad: for every one shall either be crowned in the body for his pure and righteous life, or shall be condemned, because he was the slave of pleasure and iniquity." Hearing these things the ignorant crowd suspects no artifice, no snares in all this noise about the dead, the burial of the body, and the resurrection. It believes things are as they are said to be. For there is more devotion in the ears of the people than in the priest's heart.
25. Again and again, my reader, I admonish you to be patient, and to learn what I also have learnt through patience; and yet, before I take the veil off the dragon's face, and briefly explain Origen's views respecting the resurrection (for you cannot know the efficacy of the antidote unless you see clearly what the poison is), I beg you to read his statements with caution, and to go over them again and again. Mark well that, though he nine times speaks of the resurrection of the body, he has not once introduced the resurrection of the flesh, and you may fairly suspect that he left it out on purpose. Well, Origen says in several places, and especially in his fourth book "Of the Resurrection," and in the "Exposition of the First Psalm," and in the "Miscellanies," that there is a double error common in the Church, in which both we and the heretics are implicated: "We, in our simplicity and fondness for the flesh, say that the same bones, and blood, and flesh, in a word, limbs and features, and the whole bodily structure, rise again at the last day: so that, forsooth, we shall walk with our feet, work with our hands, see with our eyes, hear with our ears, and carry about with us a belly never satisfied, and a stomach which digests our food. Consequently, believing this, we say that we must eat, drink, perform the offices of nature, marry wives, beget children. For what is the use of organs of generation, if there is to be no marriage? For what purpose are teeth, if the food is not to be masticated? What is the good of a belly and of meats, if, according to the Apostle, both it and they are to be destroyed? And the same Apostle again exclaims, [5041] Flesh and blood shall not inherit the Kingdom of God, nor shall corruption inherit incorruption.'" This, according to him, is what we in our rustic innocence maintain. But as for the heretics, amongst whom are Marcion, Apelles, Valentinus, Manes (a synonym for Mania), he says that they utterly deny the resurrection of the flesh and of the body, and allow salvation only to the soul, and hold that it is futile for us to say that we shall rise after the pattern of our Lord, since our Lord also Himself rose again in a phantom body, and not only His resurrection, but His very nativity was docetic or imaginary; that is, more apparent than real. Origen himself is dissatisfied with both opinions. He says that he shuns both errors, that of the flesh, which our party maintain, and that of the phantoms, maintained by the heretics, because both sides go to the opposite extremes, some wishing to be the same that they have been, others denying altogether the resurrection of the body. "There are four elements," he says, "known to philosophers and physicians: earth, water, air, and fire, and out of these all things and human bodies are compacted. We find earth in flesh, air in the breath, water in the moisture of the body, fire in its heat. When, then, the soul, at the command of God, lets go this perishing and feeble body, little by little all things return to their parent substances: flesh is again absorbed into the earth, the breath is mingled with the air, the moisture returns to the depths, the heat escapes to the ether. And as if you throw into the sea a pint of milk and wine, and wish again to separate what is mixed together, although the wine and milk which you threw in is not lost, and yet it is impossible to keep separate what was poured out; so the substance of flesh and blood does not perish, indeed, so far as concerns the original matter, yet they cannot again become the former structure, nor can they be altogether the same that they were." Observe that when such things are said, the firmness of the flesh, the fluidity of the blood, the density of the sinews, the interlacing of the veins, and the hardness of the bones is denied.
26. "For another reason," he says, "we confess the resurrection of our bodies, those which have been laid in the grave and have turned to dust; Paul's body will be that of Paul, Peter's that of Peter, and each will have his own; for it is not right that souls should sin in one body and be tormented in another, nor is it worthy of the Righteous Judge that one body should shed its blood for Christ and another be crowned." Who, hearing this, would think he denied the resurrection of the flesh? "And," he says, "every seed has its own law of being inherent in it by the gift of God, the Creator, which law contains in embryonic form the future growth. The bulky tree, with its trunk, boughs, fruit, leaves, is not seen in the seed, but nevertheless exists in the seed by implication or, according to the Greek expression, by the spermatikos logos. [5042] There is within the grain of corn a marrow, or vein, which, when it has been dissolved in the earth, attracts to itself the surrounding materials, and rises again in the shape of stalk, leaves, and ear; and thus, while it is one thing when it dies, it is another thing when it rises from the dead; for in the grain of wheat, roots, stalk, leaves, ears, trunk are as yet unseparated. In the same manner, in human bodies, according to the law of their being, certain original principles remain which ensure their resurrection, and a sort of marrow, that is a seed-plot of the dead, is fostered in the bosom of the earth. But when the day of judgment shall have come, and at the voice of the archangel, and the sound of the last trumpet, the earth shall totter, immediately the seeds will be instinct with life, and in a moment of time will cause the dead to burst into life; yet the flesh which they will reconstitute will not be the same flesh, nor will it be in the old forms. To give you the assurance that we speak the truth, let me quote the words of the Apostle: [5043] But some one says, How shall the dead rise? and with what body will they come? Thou fool, that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body which shall be, but a bare grain, it may be of wheat, or the seed of a vine and a tree.' And as we have already made the grain of wheat, and to some extent the planting of trees, the subject of our reasoning, let us now take the grape-stone as an example. It is a mere granule, so small that you can scarcely hold it between your two fingers. Where are the roots? where the tortuous interlacing of roots, of trunk and off-shoots? where the shade of the leaves, and the lovely clusters teeming with coming wine? What you have in your fingers is parched and scarcely discernible; nevertheless, in that dry granule, by the power of God and the secret law of propagation, the foaming new wine must have its origin. You will allow all this in the case of a tree; will you not admit such things to be possible in the case of a man? The plant which perishes is thus decked with beauty; why should we think that man, who abides, will receive back his former meanness? Do you demand that there should be flesh, bones, blood, limbs, so that you must have the barber to cut your hair, that your nose may run, your nails must be trimmed, your lower parts may gender filth or minister to lust? If you introduce these foolish and gross notions, you forget what is told us of the flesh, namely, that in it we cannot please God, and that it is an enemy; you forget, also, what is told us of the resurrection of the dead: [5044] It is sown in corruption, it shall rise in incorruption. It is sown in dishonour, it shall rise in glory. It is sown in weakness, it shall rise in power. It is sown a natural body, it shall rise a spiritual body.' Now we see with our eyes, hear with our ears, act with our hands, walk with our feet. But in that spiritual body we shall be all sight, all hearing, all action, all movement. The Lord shall transfigure [5045] the body of our humiliation and fashion it according to His own glorious body. In saying transfigure he affirms identity with the members which we now have. But a different body, spiritual and ethereal, is promised to us, which is neither tangible, nor perceptible to the eye, nor ponderable; and the change it undergoes will be suitable to the difference in its future abode. Otherwise, if there is to be the same flesh and if our bodies are to be the same, there will again be males and females, there will again be marriage; men will have the shaggy eyebrow and the flowing beard; women will have their smooth cheeks and narrow chests, and their bodies must adapt themselves to conception and parturition. Even tiny infants will rise again; old men will also rise; the former to be nursed, the latter to be supported by the staff. And, simple ones, be not deceived by the resurrection of our Lord, because He showed His side and His hands, stood on the shore, went for a walk with Cleophas, and said that He had flesh and bones. That body, because it was not born of the seed of man and the pleasure of the flesh, has its peculiar prerogatives. He ate and drank after His resurrection, and appeared in clothing, and allowed Himself to be touched, that He might make His doubting Apostles believe in His resurrection. But still He does not fail to manifest the nature of an aërial and spiritual body. For He enters when the doors are shut, and in the breaking of bread vanishes out of sight. Does it follow then that after our resurrection we shall eat and drink, and perform the offices of nature? If so, what becomes of the promise, [5046] The mortal must put on immortality.'"
27. Here we have the complete explanation of the fact that in your exposition of the faith, to deceive the ears of the ignorant, you nine times make mention of the body, and not even once of the flesh, and all the while men think that you confess the body of flesh, and that the flesh is identical with the body. If it is the same as the body, it means nothing different. I say this, for I know your answer: "I thought the body was the same as the flesh; I spoke with all simplicity." Why do you not rather call it flesh to signify the body, and speak indifferently at one time of the flesh, at another of the body, that the body may be shown to consist of flesh, and the flesh to be the body. But believe me, your silence is not the silence of simplicity. For flesh is defined one way, the body another; all flesh is body, but not every body is flesh. Flesh is properly what is comprised in blood, veins, bones, and sinews. Although the body is also called flesh, yet sometimes it is designated ethereal or aërial, because it is not subject to touch and sight; and yet it is frequently both visible and tangible. A wall is a body, but is not flesh; a stone is a body, but it is not said to be flesh. Wherefore the Apostle calls some bodies celestial, some terrestrial. A celestial body is that of the sun, moon, stars; a terrestrial body is that of fire, air, water, and the rest, which bodies being inanimate are known as consisting of material elements. You see we understand your subtleties, and publish abroad the mysteries which you utter in the bedchamber and amongst the perfect, mysteries which may not reach the ears of outsiders. You smile, and with hand uplifted and a snap of the fingers retort, [5047] "All the glory of the king's daughter is within." And, [5048] "The king led me into his bedchamber." It is clear why you spoke of the resurrection of the body and not of that of the flesh; of course it was that we in our ignorance might think that when body was spoken of flesh was meant; while yet the perfect would understand that, when body was spoken of, flesh was denied. Lastly, the Apostle, in his Epistle to the Colossians, wishing to show that the body of Christ was made of flesh, and was not spiritual, aërial, attenuated, said significantly, [5049] "And you, when you were some time alienated from Christ and enemies of His spirit in evil works, He has reconciled in the body of His flesh through death." And again in the same Epistle: [5050] "In whom ye were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands in the putting off of the body of the flesh." If by body is meant flesh only, and the word is not ambiguous, nor capable of diverse significations, it was quite superfluous to use both expressions--bodily and of flesh--as though body did not imply flesh.
28. In the symbol of our faith and hope, which was delivered by the Apostles, and is not written with paper and ink, but on fleshy tables of the heart, after the confession of the Trinity and the unity of the Church, the whole symbol of Christian dogma concludes with the resurrection of the flesh. You dwell so exclusively upon the subject of the body, harping upon it in your discourse, repeating first the body, and secondly the body, and again the body, and nine times over the body, that you do not even once name the flesh; whereas they always speak of the flesh, but say nothing of the body. I would have you know that we see through what you craftily add, and with wise precaution seek to conceal. For you make use of the same passages to prove the reality of the resurrection by means of which Origen denies it; you support questionable positions with doubtful arguments, and thus raise a storm which in a moment overthrows the settled fabric of faith. You quote the words, [5051] "It is sown an animal body: it shall rise a spiritual body." "For they shall neither marry, nor be given in marriage, but shall be as the angels in heaven." What other instances would you take if you were denying the resurrection? You intend to confess the resurrection of the flesh, you say, in a real and not an imaginary sense. After the remarks with which you smooth things over to the ears of the ignorant, to the effect that we rise again with the very bodies with which we died and were buried, why do you not go on and speak thus: "The Lord after His resurrection showed the prints of the nails in His hands, pointed to the wound of the spear in His side, and when the Apostles doubted because they thought they saw a phantom, gave them reply, [5052] Handle Me and see, for a spirit hath not flesh and blood as ye see Me have'; and specially to Thomas, [5053] Put thy finger into My hands, and thy hand into My side, and be not faithless, but believing.' Similarly after the resurrection we shall have the same members which we now use, the same flesh and blood and bones, for it is not the nature of these which is condemned in Holy Scripture, but their works. Then again, it is written in Genesis: [5054] My Spirit shall not abide in those men, because they are flesh.' And the Apostle Paul, speaking of the corrupt doctrine and works of the Jews, says: [5055] I rested not in flesh and blood.' And to the Saints, who, of course, were in the flesh, he says: [5056] But ye are not in the flesh, but in the spirit, if the Spirit of God dwells in you.' For by denying that they were in the flesh who clearly were in the flesh, he condemned not the substance of the flesh but its sins."
29. The true confession of the resurrection declares that the flesh will be glorious, but without destroying its reality. And when the Apostle says, [5057] "This is corruptible and mortal," his words denote this very body, that is to say, the flesh which was then seen. But when he adds that it puts on incorruption and immortality, he does not say that that which is put on, that is the clothing, does away with the body which it adorns in glory, but that it makes that body glorious, which before lacked glory; so that the more worthless robe of mortality and weakness being laid aside, we may be clothed with the gold of immortality, and, so to speak, with the blessedness of strength as well as virtue; since we wish not to be stripped of the flesh, but to put on over it the vesture of glory, and desire to be clothed upon with our house, which is from heaven, that mortality may be swallowed up by life. Certainly, no one is clothed upon who was not previously clothed. Accordingly, our Lord was not so transfigured on the mountain that He lost His hands and feet and other members, and suddenly began to roll along in a round shape like that of the sun or a ball; but the same members glowed with the brightness of the sun and blinded the eyes of the Apostles. Hence, also, His garments were changed, but so as to become white and glistening, not aërial, for I suppose you do not intend to maintain that His clothes also were spiritual. [5058] The Evangelist adds that His face shone like the sun; but when mention is made of His face, I reckon that His other members were beheld as well. Enoch was translated in the flesh; Elias was carried up to heaven in the flesh. They are not dead, they are inhabitants of Paradise, and even there retain the members with which they were rapt away and translated. What we aim at in fasting, they have through fellowship with God. They feed on heavenly bread, and are satisfied with every word of God, having Him as their food who is also their Lord. Listen to the Saviour saying: [5059] "And my flesh rests in hope." And elsewhere, [5060] "His flesh saw not corruption." And again, [5061] "All flesh shall see the salvation of God." And must you be for ever making the body a twofold thing? Rather quote the vision of [5062] Ezekiel, who joins bones to bones and brings them forth from their sepulchres, and then, making them to stand on their feet, binds them together with flesh and sinews, and clothes them with skin.
30. Listen to those words of thunder which fall from Job, the vanquisher of torments, who, as he scrapes away the filth of his decaying flesh with a potsherd, solaces his miseries with the hope and the reality of the resurrection: [5063] "Oh, that," he says, "my words were written! Oh, that they were inscribed in a book with an iron pen, and on a sheet of lead, that they were graven in the rock for ever! For I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that in the last day I shall rise from the earth, and again be clothed with my skin, and in my flesh shall see God, Whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. This my hope is laid up in my bosom." What can be clearer than this prophecy? No one since the days of Christ speaks so openly concerning the resurrection as he did before Christ. He wishes his words to last for ever; and that they might never be obliterated by age, he would have them inscribed on a sheet of lead, and graven on the rock. He hopes for a resurrection; nay, rather he knew and saw that Christ, his Redeemer, was alive, and at the last day would rise again from the earth. The Lord had not yet died, and the athlete of the Church saw his Redeemer rising from the grave. When he says, "And I shall again be clothed with my skin, and in my flesh see God," I suppose he does not speak as if he loved his flesh, for it was decaying and putrifying before his eyes; but in the confidence of rising again, and through the consolation of the future, he makes light of his present misery. Again he says: "I shall be clothed with my skin." What mention do we find here of an ethereal body? What of an aërial body, like to breath and wind? Where there is skin and flesh, where there are bones and sinews, and blood and veins, there assuredly is fleshy tissue and distinction of sex. "And in my flesh," he says, "I shall see God." When all flesh shall see the salvation of God, and Jesus as God, then I, also, shall see the Redeemer and Saviour, and my God. But I shall see him in that flesh which now tortures me, which now melts away for pain. Therefore, in my flesh shall I behold God, because by His own resurrection He has healed all my infirmities." Does it not seem to you that Job was then writing against Origen, and was holding a controversy similar to ours against the heretics, for the reality of the flesh in which he underwent tortures? For he could not bear to think that all his sufferings would be in vain; while the flesh he actually bore was tortured as flesh indeed, it would be some other and spiritual kind of flesh that would rise again. Wherefore he presses home and emphasizes the truth, and puts a stop to all that might lie hid in an artful confession, by speaking out plainly: "Whom I shall see for myself and my eyes shall behold and not another." If he is not to rise again in his own sex, if he is not to have the same members which were then lying on the dunghill, if he does not open the same eyes to see God with which he was then looking at the worms, where will Job then be? You do away with what constituted Job, and give me the hollow phrase, Job shall rise again; it is as if you were to order a ship to be restored after shipwreck, and then were to refuse each particular thing of which a ship is made.
31. I will speak freely, and although you screw your mouths, pull your hair, stamp your feet, and take up stones like the Jews, I will openly confess the faith of the Church. The reality of a resurrection without flesh and bones, without blood and members, is unintelligible. Where there are flesh and bones, where there are blood and members, there must of necessity be diversity of sex. Where there is diversity of sex, there John is John, Mary is Mary. You need not fear the marriage of those who, even before death, lived in their own sex without discharging the functions of sex. When it is said, "In that day they shall neither marry, nor be given in marriage," the words refer to those who can marry, and yet will not do so. For no one says of the angels, "They shall not marry, nor be given in marriage." I never heard of a marriage being celebrated among the spiritual virtues in heaven: but where there is sex, there you have man and woman. Hence it is that, although you were reluctant, you were compelled by the truth to confess that, "A man must either be crowned in the body because he lived a pure and upright life, or be condemned in the body, because he was the slave of pleasure and iniquity." Substitute flesh for body, and you have not denied the existence of male and female. Who can have any glory from a life of chastity if we have no sex which would make unchastity possible? Who ever crowned a stone for continuing a virgin? Likeness to the angels is promised us, that is, the blessedness of their angelic existence without flesh and sex will be bestowed on us in our flesh and with our sex. I am simple enough so to believe, and so know how to confess that sex can exist without the functions of the senses; that it is thus that men rise, and that it is thus that they are made equal to the angels. Nor will the resurrection of the members all at once seem superfluous, because they are to have no office, since, while we are still in this life, we strive not to perform the works of the members. Moreover, likeness to the angels does not imply a changing of men into angels, but their growth in immortality and glory.
32. But as for the arguments drawn from boys, and infants, and old men, and meats, and excrements, which you employ against the Church, they are not your own; they flow from a heathen source. For the heathen mock us with the same. You say you are a Christian; lay aside the weapons of the heathen. It is for them to learn from you to confess the resurrection of the dead, not for you to learn from them to deny it. Or if you belong to the enemy's camp, show yourself openly as an adversary, that you may share the wounds we inflict on the heathen. I will allow you your jest about the necessity of nursemaids to stop the infants from crying; of the decrepit old men, who, you fear, would be shrivelled with winter's cold. I will admit also that the barbers have learnt their craft for nothing, for do we not know that the people of Israel for forty years experienced no growth of either nails or hair; and, still more, their clothes were not worn out, nor did their shoes wax old? Enoch and Elias, concerning whom we spoke a while ago, abide all this time in the same state in which they were carried away. They have teeth, belly, organs of generation, and yet have no need of meats, or wives. Why do you slander the power of God, who can from that [5064] marrow and seed-plot of which you speak, not only produce flesh from flesh, but also make one body from another; and change water, that is worthless flesh, into the precious wine of an aërial body? the same power by which He created all things out of nothing can give back what has existed, because it is a much smaller thing to restore what has been, than to make what never was. Do you wonder that there is a resurrection from the condition of infancy and old age to that of mature manhood, seeing that a perfect man was made out of the slime of the earth without having gone through successive stages of growth? A rib is changed into a woman; and by the third mode of creating man, the poor elements of our birth which put us to the blush are changed into flesh, bound together by the members, run into veins, harden into bones. There is a fourth sort of human generation of which I can tell you. "The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee. Wherefore that [5065] holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God." Adam was created one way, Eve another, Abel another, the man Jesus Christ another. And yet, different as are all these beginnings, the nature of man remains one and the same.
33. If I wished to prove the resurrection of the flesh and of all the members, and to give the meaning of the several passages, many books would be required; but the matter in hand does not call for this. For I purposed not to reply to Origen in every detail, but to disclose the mysteries of your insincere "Apology." I have, however, tarried long in maintaining the opposite to your position, and am afraid that, in my eagerness to expose fraud, I may leave a stumbling-block in the way of the reader. I will, therefore, mass together the evidence, and glance at the proofs in passing, so that we may bring all the weight of Scripture to bear upon your poisonous argument. He who has not a wedding garment, and has not kept that command, [5066] "Let your garments be always white," is bound hand and foot that he may not recline at the banquet, or sit on a throne, or stand at the right hand of God; [5067] he is sent to Gehenna, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. [5068] "The hairs of your head are numbered." If the hairs, I suppose the teeth would be more easily numbered. But there is no object in numbering them if they are some day to perish. [5069] "The hour will come in which all who are in the tombs shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and shall come forth." They shall hear with ears, come forth with feet. This Lazarus had already done. They shall, moreover, come forth from the tombs; that is, they who had been laid in the tombs, the dead, shall come, and shall rise again from their graves. For the dew which God gives is [5070] healing to their bones. Then shall be fulfilled what God says by the prophet, [5071] "Go, my people, into thy closets for a little while, until mine anger pass." The closets signify the graves, out of which that, of course, is brought forth which had been laid therein. And they shall come out of the graves like young mules free from the halter. Their heart shall rejoice, and their bones shall rise like the sun; all flesh shall come into the presence of the Lord, and He shall command the fishes of the sea; and they shall give up the bones which they had eaten; and He shall bring joint to joint, and bone to bone; and [5072] they who slept in the dust of the earth shall arise, some to life eternal, others to shame and everlasting confusion. Then shall the just see the punishment and tortures of the wicked, for [5073] their worm shall not die, and their fire shall not be extinguished, and they shall be beheld by all flesh. As many of us, therefore, as have this hope, as we have yielded our members servants to uncleanness, and to iniquity unto iniquity, so let us yield them servants to righteousness unto holiness, that [5074] we may rise from the dead and walk in newness of life. As also the life of the Lord Jesus is manifested in our mortal body, so [5075] also He who raised up Jesus Christ from the dead shall quicken our mortal bodies on account of His Spirit Who dwelleth in us. For it is right that as we have always borne about the putting to death of Christ in our body, so the life, also, of Jesus, should be manifested in our mortal body, that is, in our flesh, which is mortal according to nature, but eternal according to grace. Stephen also [5076] saw Jesus standing on the right hand of the Father, and the [5077] hand of Moses became snowy white, and was afterwards restored to its original colour. There was still a hand, though the two states were different. The potter in [5078] Jeremiah, whose vessel, which he had made, was broken through the roughness of the stone, restored from the same lump and from the same clay that which had fallen to pieces; and, if we look at the word resurrection itself, it does not mean that one thing is destroyed, another raised up; and the addition of the word dead, points to our own flesh, for that which in man dies, that is also brought to life. [5079] The wounded man on the road to Jericho is taken to the inn with all his limbs complete, and the stripes of his offences are healed with immortality.
34. Even the graves were opened [5080] at our Lord's passion when the sun fled, the earth trembled, and many of the bodies of the saints arose, and were seen in the holy city. [5081] "Who is this," says Isaiah, "that cometh up from Edom, with shining raiment from Bozrah, so beautiful in his glistening robe?" Edom is by interpretation either earthy or bloody; Bosor either flesh, or in tribulation. In few words he shows the whole mystery of the resurrection, that is, both the reality of the flesh and the growth in glory. And the meaning is: Who is he that cometh up from the earth, cometh up from blood? According to the [5082] prophecy of Jacob, He has bound His foal to the vine, and has trodden the wine-press alone, and His garments are red with new wine from Bosor, that is from flesh, or from the tribulation of the world: for He Himself [5083] has conquered the world. And, therefore, His garments are red and shining, because He is [5084] beauteous in form more than the sons of men, and on account of the glory of His triumph they have been changed into a white robe; and then, in truth, as concerns Christ's flesh, were fulfilled the words, [5085] "Who is this that cometh up all in white, leaning upon her beloved?" And that which is written in the same book: [5086] "My beloved is white and ruddy." These men are his true followers who have not [5087] defiled their garments with women, for they have continued virgins, who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. And so they shall be in white clothing. Then shall the saying of our Lord appear perfectly realised: [5088] "All that my Father has given me, I shall not lose aught thereof, but I will raise it up again at the last day;" the whole of His humanity, forsooth, which He had taken upon Him in its entirety at His birth. Then shall the sheep which was [5089] lost, and was wandering in the lower world, be carried whole on the Saviour's shoulders, and the sheep which was sick with sin shall be supported by the mercy of the Judge. Then shall they see him who pierced Him, who shouted, [5090] "Crucify Him, crucify Him." Again and again shall they beat their breasts, they and their women, those women to whom our Lord said, as He carried His cross, [5091] "Ye daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me but weep for yourselves, and for your children." Then shall be fulfilled the prophecy of the angels, who said to the stupefied Apostles, [5092] "Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye looking with astonishment into heaven? This Jesus who is taken from you into heaven, shall come in like manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven." But what are we to think of a man saying that our Lord [5093] ate with the Apostles for forty days after His resurrection in order that they might not think Him to be a phantom, and then asserting that it was a phantom which did this very thing, which ate and which was seen by many in the flesh. That which was seen is either real, or false. If it is real, it follows that He really ate, and really had members. But if it is false, how could He be willing to give false impressions in order to prove the truth of His resurrection? For no one proves what is true by means of what is false. You will say, are we then going to eat after our resurrection? I know not. Scripture does not tell us; and yet, if the question be asked, I do not think we shall eat. For I have read that the kingdom of God is not meat and drink, while it promises [5094] such things as eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man. Moses fasted forty days and forty nights. Human nature does not allow of this, but what is impossible with men is not impossible with God. Just as, in foretelling the future, it matters not whether a person announces what will take place after ten years or after a hundred, since the knowledge of futurity is all one; so he who can fast for forty days and yet live,--not, indeed, that he can of himself fast, but that he lives by the power of God,--will also be able to live for ever without food and drink. Why did our Lord eat an honeycomb? To prove the resurrection: not to give your palate the pleasure of tasting of honey. He asked for a fish broiled on the coals that He might [5095] confirm the doubting Apostles, who did not dare approach Him because they thought they saw not a body, but a spirit. [5096] The daughter of the ruler of the synagogue was raised to life and took food. [5097] Lazarus, who had been four days dead, rose again, and comes before us at a dinner; not because he was accustomed to eat in the lower world, but because a case which presented such difficulties challenged the believer's criticism. As He showed them real hands and a real side, so He really ate with His disciples; really walked with Cleophas; conversed with men with a real tongue; really reclined at supper; with real hands took bread, blessed and brake it, and was offering it to them. And as for His suddenly vanishing out of their sight, that is the power of God, not of a shadowy phantom. Besides, even before His resurrection, when they had led Him out from Nazareth that they might cast Him down headlong from the brow of the hill, He passed through the midst of them, that is, escaped out of their hands. Can we follow Marcion, and say that because, when He was held fast, He escaped in a manner contrary to nature, therefore His birth must have been only apparent? Has not the Lord a privilege which is conceded to magicians? It is related of Apollonius of Tyana that, when standing in court before Domitian, he all at once disappeared. Do not put the power of the Lord on a level with the tricks of magicians, so that He may appear to have been what He was not, and may be thought to have eaten without teeth, walked without feet, broken bread without hands, spoken without a tongue, and showed a side which had no ribs.
35. And how was it, you will say, that they did not recognize Him on the road if He had the same body which He had before? Let me recall what Scripture says: [5098] "Their eyes were holden, that they might not know Him." And again, "Their eyes were opened, and they knew Him." Was He one person when He was not known, and another when He was known? He was surely one and the same. Whether, therefore, they knew Him, or not, depended on their sight; it did not depend upon Him Who was seen; and yet it did depend on Him in this sense, that He held their eyes that they might not know Him. Lastly, that you may see that the mistake which held them was not to be attributed to the Lord's body, but to the fact that their eyes were closed, we are told: [5099] "Their eyes were opened, and they knew Him." Wherefore, also, Mary Magdalene so long as she did not recognize Jesus, and sought the living among the dead, thought He was the gardener. Afterwards she recognized Him and then she called Him Lord. After His resurrection Jesus was standing on the shore, His disciples were in the ship. When the others did not know Him, the disciple whom Jesus loved [5100] said to Peter, "It is the Lord." For virginity is the first to recognize a virgin body. He was the same, yet was not seen alike by all as the same. And immediately it is added, [5101] "And no one durst ask Him, Who art Thou? for they knew that He was the Lord." No one durst, because they knew that He was God. They ate with Him at dinner because they saw He was a man and had flesh; not that He was one person as God, another as man: but, being one and the same Son of God, He was known as man, adored as God. I suppose I must now air my philosophy, and say that our senses are not to be relied on, and especially sight. A [5102] Carneades must be awaked from the dead to tell us the truth--that an oar seems broken in the water, porticos afar off look more magnificent, the angles of towers seem rounded in the distance, that the backs of pigeons change their colours with every movement. When Rhoda [5103] announced Peter, and told the Apostles, they did not believe that he had escaped, on account of the greatness of the danger, but suspected it was a phantom. Moreover, in passing through closed doors, He exhibited the same power as in vanishing out of sight. [5104] Lynceus, as fable relates, used to see through a wall. Could not the Lord enter when the doors were shut, unless He were a phantom? Eagles and vultures perceive dead bodies across the sea. Shall not the Saviour see His Apostles without opening the door? Tell me, sharpest of disputants, which is greater, to hang the vast weight of the earth on nothing, and to balance it on the changing surface of the waves; or that God should pass through a closed door, and the creature yield to the Creator? You allow the greater; you object to the less. Peter [5105] walked upon the waters with his heavy and solid body. The soft water does not yield: his faith doubts a little, and immediately his body understands its own nature; that we may know that it was not his body that walked on the water, but his faith.
36. I pray you, who use such elaborate arguments against the resurrection, let us have some simple talk together. Do you believe that our Lord really rose again in the same body in which He died and was buried, or do you not believe it? If you believe it, why do you make propositions which lead to the denial of the resurrection? If you do not believe, you who thus try to deceive the minds of the ignorant, and parade the word resurrection, though you mean nothing by it, listen to me. Not long ago, a certain disciple of Marcion said: "Woe to him who rises again with this flesh and these bones!" Our heart at once with joy replied, [5106] "We are buried together, and we shall rise together with Christ through baptism." "Do you speak of the resurrection of the soul, or of the flesh?" I answered, "Not that of the soul alone, but that of the flesh, which, together with the soul, is born again in the laver. And how shall that perish which has been born again in Christ?" "Because it is written," said he, [5107] "Flesh and blood shall not inherit the kingdom of God.'" "I intreat you to mind what is said--Flesh and blood shall not inherit the kingdom of God.'" "It is said that they shall not rise again." "Not at all, but only they shall not inherit the kingdom.'" "How so?" "Because,' it follows, [5108] neither shall corruption inherit incorruption.' So long then as they remain mere flesh and blood, they shall not inherit the kingdom of God. But when the [5109] corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and the mortal shall have put on immortality, and the clay of the flesh shall have been made into a vessel, then that flesh which was formerly kept down by a heavy weight upon the earth, when once it has received the wings of the spirit--wings which imply its change, not its destruction--shall fly with fresh glory to heaven; and then shall be fulfilled that which is written, [5110] Death is swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is thy boasting? O death, where is thy sting?'"
37. Reversing the order, we have given our answer respecting the state of souls and the resurrection of the flesh; and, leaving out the opening portions of the letter, we have confined ourselves to the refutation of this most remarkable treatise. For we preferred to speak of the things of God rather than of our own wrongs. [5111] "If one man sin against another, they shall pray for him to the Lord. But if he sin against God, who shall pray for him?" In these days, on the contrary, we make it our first business to pursue with undying hate those who have injured us--to those who blaspheme God we indulgently hold out the hand. John writes to Bishop Theophilus an apology, of which the introduction runs thus: "You, indeed, as a man of God, adorned with apostolic grace, have upon you the care of all the Churches, especially of that which is at Jerusalem, though you yourself are distracted with countless anxieties for the Church of God, which is under you." This is barefaced adulation, and an attempt to concentrate [5112] authority in the hands of an individual. You, who ask for ecclesiastical rules, and make use of the [5113] canons of the Council of Nicæa, and claim authority over clerics who belong to another diocese and are [5114] actually living with their own bishop, answer my question, What has Palestine to do with the bishop of Alexandria? Unless I am deceived, it is decreed in those canons that Cæsarea is the metropolis of Palestine, and Antioch of the whole of the East. You ought therefore either to appeal to the bishop of Cæsarea, with whom you know that we have communion while we disdain to communicate with you, or, if judgment were to be sought at a distance, letters ought rather to be addressed to Antioch. But I know why you were unwilling to send to Cæsarea, or to Antioch. You knew what to flee from, what to avoid. You preferred to assail with your complaints ears that were preoccupied rather than pay due honour to your metropolitan. And I do not say this because I have anything to blame in the mission itself, except certain partialities which beget suspicion, but because you ought rather to clear yourself in the actual presence of your questioners. You begin with the words, "You have sent a most devoted servant of God, the presbyter Isidore, a man of influence no less from the dignity of his very gait and dress than from that of his divine understanding, to heal those whose souls are grievously sick; would that they had any sense of their illness! A man of God sends a man of God." No difference is made between a priest and a bishop; the same dignity belongs to the sender and the sent; this is lame enough; the ship, as the saying goes, is wrecked in harbour. That Isidore, whom you extol to the sky by your praises, lies under the same imputation of heresy [5115] at Alexandria as you at Jerusalem; wherefore he appears to have come to you not as an envoy, but as a confederate. Besides, the letters in his own handwriting, which, three months before the sending of the embassy, had been sent to us [5116] through an error in the address, were delivered to the presbyter Vincentius, and to this day they are in his keeping. In these letters the writer encourages the leader of his army [5117] to plant his foot firmly upon the rock of the faith, and not to be terrified by our Jeremiads. He promises, before we had any suspicion of his mission, that he will come to Jerusalem, and that on his arrival the ranks of his adversaries will be instantly crushed. And amongst the rest he uses these words: "As smoke vanishes in the air, and wax melts beside the fire, so shall they be scattered who are for ever resisting the faith of the Church, and are now through simple men endeavouring to disturb that faith."
38. I ask you, my reader, what does a man, who writes these things before he comes, appear to you to be? An adversary, or an envoy? This is the man whom we may, indeed, call most pious, or most religious, and, to give the exact equivalent of the word, one devoted to the worship of God. This is the man of divine understanding, so influential, and of such dignity in gait and dress, that, like a spiritual Hippocrates, he is able by his presence to relieve the sickness of our souls, provided, however, we are willing to submit to his treatment. If such is his medicine, let him heal himself, since he is accustomed to heal others. To us, that divine understanding of his is folly for the sake of Christ. We willingly remain in the sickness of our simplicity, rather than, by using your eye-salve, learn an impious abuse of sight. Next come the words: "The excellent intentions of your Holiness compel our prayers to the Lord night and day; and, as though those intentions were already perfectly realised, we offer our prayers to Him in the holy places, that He may give you a perfect reward, and bestow on you the crown of life." You do right in giving thanks; for, if Isidore had not come you would not now have found in the whole of Palestine such a faithful associate. If he had not brought you the aid he had promised beforehand, you would find yourself surrounded by a crowd of rustics incapable of understanding your wisdom. This very apology of which we are now speaking was dictated in the presence and, to a great extent, with the assistance of Isidore, so that the same person both composed the letter and carried it to its destination.
39. Your letter goes on to relate that "though he had come hither and had had three separate interviews with us, and had applied to the matter the healing language no less of your divine wisdom than of his own understanding, he found that he could be of no use to any one, nor could any one be of use to him." The fact is that he who is said to have had "three separate interviews with us," so that in his coming he might maintain the mystic number, and who talked to us about the command issued by Bishop Theophilus, did not choose to deliver the letters sent to us by him. And when we said: If you are an envoy, produce your credentials; if you have no letters, how can you prove to us that you are an envoy? he replied that he had, indeed, letters to us but he had been adjured by the bishop of Jerusalem not to give them to us. You see here the true envoy consistent with his proper character; you see how impartial he shows himself to both sides, that he may make peace, and exclude the suspicion of favouring either party. At all events, he had come without a plaster, and had not the physician's instruments at his command, and therefore his medicine was of no avail. "Jerome and those associated with him," you continue, "both secretly, and in the presence of all, again and again and with the attestation of an oath, satisfied him that they never had any doubts of our orthodoxy, saying: We have now just the same feeling toward him, as regards matters of faith, that we had when we used to communicate with him." See what dogmatic agreement can do. Isidore, in order that he might make such a report as this, is taken into close fellowship, and is spoken of as a man of God, and a most devout priest, a man of influence, of holy and venerable gait, and of divine understanding, the Hippocrates of the Christians. I, a poor wretch, hiding away in solitude, suddenly cut off by this mighty pontiff, have lost the name of priest. This "Jerome," then, with his ragged herd and shabby following, did he dare to give any answer to Isidore and his thunderbolts? Of course not; and doubtless for no other motive than fear that the envoy would never yield, and might overwhelm them by his presence and [5118] gigantic stature. "Not once, nor thrice, but again and again [5119] they swore that they knew the individual in question to be orthodox, and that they had never suspected him of heresy." What undisguised and shameless lying! A witness borne by a man to himself! Such witness as is not believed even in the mouth of a Cato, for [5120] in the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established. Was there ever a word said, or a message sent to you, to the effect that, without being satisfied as to your orthodoxy, we would endure communion with you? When, through the instrumentality of the Count Archelaus, a most accomplished as well as a most Christian man, who tried to negotiate a peace between us, a place had been appointed where we were to meet, was not one of the first things postulated that the faith should form the basis of future agreement? He promised to come. Easter was approaching; a great multitude of monks had assembled; you were expected at the appointed place; what to do you did not know. All at once you sent word that some one or other was sick, you could not come that day. Is it a stage-player or a bishop who thus speaks? Suppose what you said was true, to suit the pleasure of one feeble woman who fears that she may have a headache, or may feel sick, or haste a pain in the stomach, while you are away, do you neglect the interests of the Church? Do you despise so many men, Christians and monks assembled together? We were unwilling to give occasion for breaking off the negotiation; we saw through the artifice of your procrastination, and sought to overcome the wrong you did us by patience. Archelaus wrote again, advising him that he was staying on for two days, in case he should be willing to come. But he was busy; his dear little woman had not ceased to vomit, he could not bestow a thought upon us until she should have escaped from her nausea. Well, after two months, at last the long-looked for Isidore arrived, and what he heard from us was not as you pretend, a testimony in your behalf, but the reason why we demanded satisfaction. For when he raised the point, "Why, if he were a heretic, did you communicate with him?" he was answered by us all that we communicated without any suspicion of his heresy; but that, after he had been summoned by the Most Reverend Epiphanius, both by word and by letter, and had disdained to answer, documents were addressed to the monks by Epiphanius himself, to the effect that, unless he gave satisfaction respecting the faith, no one should rashly communicate with him. The letters are in our hands; there can be no doubt about the matter. This, then, was the reply made by the whole body of the brethren: not, as you maintain, that you were not an heretic, because at a former time you were not said to be one. For upon that showing, a man must be said not to be sick, because previous to his sickness he was in good health.
40. To proceed with the letter. "But when the ordination of Paulinianus, and the others associated with him, was brought forward, they began to feel that they themselves were in the wrong. For the sake of charity and concord every concession was made to them, and the only point insisted on was that, though they had been ordained contrary to the rules, yet they should be subject to the authority of the Church of God, that they should not rend it, and set up an authority of their own. But they, not agreeing to this, began to raise questions concerning the faith; and thus they made it evident to all that if the presbyter Jerome and his friends were not accused, they had no charge to bring against us, but that they only betook themselves to doctrinal questions because, when charges of error and misconduct were brought against them, they were utterly unable to reply to us on matters of that sort, or to give any satisfactory explanation of their wrong-doing: not that they had any hope that we could be convicted of heresy, but they were striving to injure our reputation."
41. No one must blame the translator for this verbiage: the Greek is the same. Meanwhile I rejoice that whereas I thought I was beheaded I find my presbyterial head on my shoulders again. He says that we are utterly incapable of conviction, and he draws back from the encounter. If the cause of discord is not due to discussions about the faith, but springs from the ordination of Paulinianus, is it not the extreme of folly to give occasion to those who seek occasion by refusing to answer? Confess the faith; but do it so as to answer the question put to you, that it may be clear to all that the dispute is not one of faith, but of order. For so long as you are silent when questioned concerning the faith, your adversary has a right to say to you: "The matter is not one of order but of faith." If it is a question of order, you act foolishly in saying nothing when questioned concerning the faith. If it is one of faith, it is foolish of you to make a pretext of the question of order. Moreover, when you say your aim was that they might be subject to the Church, that they might not rend it, nor set up an authority of their own; who they are of whom you speak I do not well understand. If you are speaking of me and the presbyter Vincentius, you have been asleep long enough, if you only wake up now, after thirteen years, [5121] to say these things. For the reason why I forsook Antioch and he Constantinople, [5122] both famous cities, was, not that we might praise your popular eloquence, but that, in the country and in solitude, we might weep over the sins of our youth, and draw down upon us the mercy of Christ. But if Paulinianus is the subject of your remarks, he, as you see, is subject to his [5123] bishop, and lives at Cyprus: he sometimes comes to visit us, not as one of your clergy, but as another's, his, namely, by whom he was ordained. But if he wished even to stay here, and to live a quiet, solitary life sharing our exile, what does he owe you except the respect which we owe to all bishops? Suppose that he had been ordained by you; he would only tell you the same that I, a poor wretch of a man, told Bishop Paulinus of blessed memory. "Did I ask to be ordained by you?" I said. "If in bestowing the rank of presbyter you do not strip us of the monastic state, you can bestow or withhold ordination as you think best. But if your intention in giving the name presbyter was to take from me that for which I forsook the world, I must still claim to be what I always was; you have suffered no loss by ordaining me." [5124]
42. "That they might not rend the Church," he says, "and set up an authority of their own." Who rends the Church? Do we, who as a complete household at Bethlehem communicate in the Church? Or is it you, who either being orthodox refuse through pride to speak concerning the faith, or else being heterodox are the real render of the Church? Do we rend the Church, who, a few months ago, about the day of Pentecost, when the sun was darkened and all the world dreaded the immediate coming of the Judge, presented forty candidates of different ages and sexes to your presbyter for baptism? There were certainly five presbyters in the monastery who had the right to baptize; but they were unwilling to do anything to move you to anger, for fear you might make this a pretext for reticence concerning the faith. Is it not you, on the contrary, who rend the Church, you who commanded your presbyters at Bethlehem not to give baptism to our candidates at Easter, so that we sent them to [5125] Diospolis to the Confessor and Bishop Dionysius for baptism? Are we said to rend the Church, who, outside our cells, hold no position in the Church? Or do not you rather rend the Church, who issue an order to your clergy that if any one says Paulinianus was consecrated presbyter by Epiphanius, he is to be forbidden to enter the Church. Ever since that time to this day we can only look from without on the cave of the Saviour, and, while heretics enter, we stand afar off and sigh.
43. Are we schismatics? Is not he the schismatic who refuses a habitation to the living, a grave to the dead, and demands the exile of his brethren? Who was it that set at our throats, with special fury, that wild beast who constantly menaced the throats of the whole world? [5126] Who is it that permits the rain to beat upon the bones of the saints, and their harmless ashes, up to the present hour? These are the endearments with which the good shepherd invites us to reconciliation, and at the same time accuses us of setting up an authority of our own--us who are united in communion and charity with all the bishops, so long, at least, as they are orthodox. Do you yourself constitute the Church, and is whosoever offends you shut out from Christ? If we defend our own authority--prove that we have a bishop in your diocese. The reason that we have not had communion with you is the question of faith; answer our questions, and it will become one of order.
44. "They," you go on, "also take advantage of other letters which they say Epiphanius wrote to them. But he, too shall give account for all his doings before the judgment seat of Christ, where great and small shall be judged without respect of persons. Still, how can they rely on his letter which he wrote only because we took him to task on the matter of the unlawful ordination of Paulinianus and his associates; as in the opening of that very letter he intimates?" What, I ask, is the meaning of this blindness? how is it that he is immersed, as the saying goes, in Cimmerian darkness? He says that we make a pretext, and that we have no letters from Epiphanius against him, and he immediately adds, "How can they rely on his letter, which he only wrote because he was taken to task by us, in the matter of the unlawful ordination of Paulinianus and his associates; as in the opening of that very letter he intimates?" We have no such letter! And what letter then is that, which in its opening sentence speaks of Paulinianus? There is something in the body of the letter of which you are afraid to make mention. Well! He was taken to task, you say, by you because of the age of Paulinianus. But you yourself ordain a man presbyter, and send him out as an envoy and a colleague. You have the boldness falsely to call Paulinianus a boy, and then to send out your own boy presbyter. You likewise take Theoseca, a deacon of the church of Thiria, and make him presbyter, and put weapons into his hands against us, and make a misuse of his eloquence for our injury. You alone are at liberty to trample on the rights of the Church; whatever you do, is the standard of teaching; and you do not blush to challenge Epiphanius to stand with you before the judgment seat of Christ. The sequel of this passage is to the following effect: [5127] he throws it in the teeth of Epiphanius that he was the partner of his table and an inmate of his house, and declares that they never had any talk together concerning the views of Origen, and he supports what he says with the attestation of an oath, saying: "He never showed, as God is witness, that he had even the suspicion that our faith was not correct?" I am unwilling to answer and argue acrimoniously, lest I seem to be convicting a bishop of perjury. There are several letters of Epiphanius in our possession. One to John himself, others to the bishops of Palestine, and one of recent date to the pontiff of Rome; and in these he speaks of himself as impugning his views in the presence of many, and says that he was not thought worthy of a reply, "and the whole Monastery," he says, "is witness to what we in our insignificance assert." __________________________________________________________________
[4986] Rom. viii. 26.
[4987] Novatus the Carthaginian was the chief ally of Novatian, who, about the middle of the third century, founded the sect of the Cathari, or pure. The allusion is to the severity with which they treated the lapsed.
[4988] Maximilla and Priscilla, who forsook their husbands and followed him, professing to be inspired prophetesses. Circ. a.d. 150. Montanus, like Novatian, refused to re-admit the lapsed.
[4989] That is, John.
[4990] 2 Cor. iii. 18.
[4991] In Jerome's text, "limped in both its feet." It seemed better to give the accepted meaning.
[4992] 1 Kings xviii. 21.
[4993] Ps. xviii. 45.
[4994] Prov. x. 9.
[4995] That is, Epiphanius. See Jerome, Letter LI. c. 6. Epiphanius prays that God would free John and Rufinus and all their flock from all heresies.
[4996] The doctrine that the Son is of "one substance with the Father." More correctly of one essence, etc.
[4997] The meaning is that, where error is widespread, the Church authorities are forced to wink at speciously expressed error in the pastors.
[4998] 1 Pet. iii. 15.
[4999] John complained of the ordination of Paulinianus, Jerome's brother, to the priesthood by Epiphanius, for the monastery of Bethlehem.
[5000] Matt. vi. 23.
[5001] Origen's great speculative work "On First Principles."
[5002] Ps. cxix. 67.
[5003] Ps. cxvi. 7.
[5004] Ps. cxlii. 7.
[5005] Acts ii. 40.
[5006] Vettius Agorius Prætextatus, one of the most virtuous of the heathen. Jerome writes of him to Marcella (Letter XXIII. 2): "I wish you to know that the consul designate is now in Tartarus."
[5007] Gal. i. 8.
[5008] Ps. cxxxix. 21, 22.
[5009] Deut. xxxiii. 9.
[5010] Matt. x. 37.
[5011] Ps. viii. 3.
[5012] 1 Cor. xiii. 9.
[5013] Eunomius held that the Son "resembles the Father in nothing but his working," and similar doctrines.
[5014] Of Sebaste, in the Lesser Armenia. Epiphanius described him as an Arian. He asserted that Bishops and Presbyters were equal.
[5015] This probably relates to Rufinus, whose name was mentioned by Epiphanius in his letter to John.
[5016] Col. i. 26.
[5017] Rom. xi. 33.
[5018] Is. liii. 8.
[5019] Paulinianus.
[5020] Acts xxiii. 5; Ex. xxii. 28.
[5021] A celebrated orator of Athens, many of whose orations are extant. B. 458, d. 378 b.c.
[5022] This story is from the 4th Declamation of Seneca.
[5023] Literally "devours his wrongs."
[5024] Ps. xxxiii. 6.
[5025] Ps. civ. 4.
[5026] Jude 6.
[5027] Eph. i. 21.
[5028] Rom. vii. 24.
[5029] The names of the officers of the Roman Legion (some of them of doubtful meaning), viz., tribunes, primicerius, senator, ducenarius, centenarius, biarchus, circitor, eques, have been rendered approximately by these English equivalents.
[5030] That is, apparently, with a play upon the word, Men of Mud.
[5031] 1 Cor. ii. 14.
[5032] 1 Cor. i. 25.
[5033] John v. 17.
[5034] That is, Zechariah xii. 1.
[5035] Ps. xxxiii. 15.
[5036] Col. i. 18.
[5037] Jussione. Another reading, "Eâdem ratione et visione," might be rendered, "In the same condition and the same appearance."
[5038] 1 Cor. xv. 44.
[5039] Luke xx. 35, 36.
[5040] Matt. xxiv. 24.
[5041] 1 Cor. xv. 58.
[5042] That is, the reason of the seed.
[5043] 1 Cor. xv. 35, 37.
[5044] 1 Cor. xv. 42, 44.
[5045] Phil. iii. 21.
[5046] 1 Cor. xv. 53.
[5047] Ps. xlv. 13.
[5048] Cant. i. 4.
[5049] Col. i. 21, 22.
[5050] Col. ii. 11.
[5051] 1 Cor. xv. 44; Matt. xxii. 30; Luke xx. 35.
[5052] Luke xxiv. 39.
[5053] John xx. 27.
[5054] Gen. vi. 3.
[5055] Gal. i. 16.
[5056] Rom. viii. 9.
[5057] 1 Cor. xv. 53.
[5058] Matt. xvii. 2.
[5059] Ps. xvi. 9.
[5060] Acts ii. 31.
[5061] Is. xl. 5.
[5062] xxxvii. 1 sqq.
[5063] Job xix. 23 sqq.
[5064] Besides medulla and seminarium Jerome has onterione = inward part, or pith.
[5065] Luke i. 35.
[5066] Ecc. ix. 8.
[5067] Matt. xxii. 13.
[5068] Luke xii. 7.
[5069] John v. 25.
[5070] Sept. "The dew which comes from thee is healing to them."
[5071] Is. xxvi. 20.
[5072] Dan. xii. 2.
[5073] Is. lxvi. 24.
[5074] Rom. vi. 4.
[5075] Rom. viii. 11.
[5076] Acts vii. 55.
[5077] Ex. iv. 6.
[5078] xviii. 3, 4. Sept.
[5079] Luke x. 34.
[5080] Matt. xxvii. 52.
[5081] lxiii. 1 sq.
[5082] Gen. xlix. 11.
[5083] John xvi. 33.
[5084] Ps. xlv. (?).
[5085] Cant. viii. 5.
[5086] Cant. v. 10.
[5087] Apoc. xiv. 4.
[5088] John vi. 39.
[5089] Luke xv. 3 sq.
[5090] John xix. 6.
[5091] Luke xxiii. 28.
[5092] Acts i. 11.
[5093] Ib. 3.
[5094] 1 Cor. ii. 9.
[5095] John xxi. 9.
[5096] Mark v.
[5097] John xii.
[5098] Luke xxiv. 16.
[5099] John xx.
[5100] John xxi. 7.
[5101] Ib. 12.
[5102] Born at Cyrene about b.c. 213. He maintained that we can be sure of nothing, neither through the senses, nor through the understanding.
[5103] Acts xii.
[5104] One of the Argonauts.
[5105] Matt. xiv. 28.
[5106] Rom. vi. 4.
[5107] 1 Cor. xv. 50.
[5108] Ib.
[5109] Ib. 54.
[5110] Ib. 55.
[5111] 1 Sam. ii. 25.
[5112] Laudat faciem, ad personam principum trahit. Literally, He praises the face (i.e. the person of Theophilus) and draws him on to act the part of (only fit for) princes.
[5113] Canon 6 says that the old customs are to hold good, that all Egypt is to be subject to the authority of the bishop of Alexandria, just as the custom holds at Rome; and similarly that at Antioch, and in the other churches the authority of the churches should be preserved to them. Canon 7 says: "Since custom and ancient tradition has prevailed to cause honour to be given to the bishop of Ælia (Jerusalem), let him have the proper results of this honour; saving, however, the proper authority due to the metropolis" (that is, Cæsarea).
[5114] This relates to Paulinianus, who was ordained by Epiphanius, and was then living with him in Cyprus.
[5115] Theophilus, whose sympathies had suddenly changed, turned violently against Isidore, who had previously been his confidential friend, accused him of Origenism, and, on his taking refuge with Chrysostom at Constantinople, pursued both him and Chrysostom with unrelenting animosity.
[5116] Reading portantes errorem. Another reading is, "Through the error of the bearer."
[5117] John, to whom the letters were really written.
[5118] Isidore was closely associated with the three brothers known as the Long Monks from their great size, and seems to have shared the appellation with them.
[5119] i.e. Jerome and his friends. This was Isidore's report, incorporated probably into John's letter.
[5120] Numb. xxxv. 30; Deut. xvii. 6; 2 Cor. xiii. 1.
[5121] Dating probably from Jerome's coming to Palestine. See Prefatory Note.
[5122] Jerome was ordained at Antioch, Vincentius at Constantinople.
[5123] That is, Jerome argues, Epiphanius, who ordained him.
[5124] This perhaps means, "No virtue has gone out of you--you have conferred nothing upon me."
[5125] Lydda.
[5126] The allusion is believed to be to the Prefect Rufinus, who was at the head of the government under the young Arcadius, and whose intrigues with Alaric with a view to obtain the empire for himself led to his death in the end of 395.--Comp. Letter LXXXII. 10.
[5127] See Letter LI., which begins as John says, though Jerome denies it. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Against the Pelagians:
Dialogue Between Atticus, a Catholic, and Critobulus, a Heretic.
------------------------
The anti-Pelagian Dialogue is the last of Jerome's controversial works, having been written in the year 417, within three years of his death. It shows no lack of his old vigour, though perhaps something of the prolixity induced by old age. He looks at the subject more calmly than those of the previous treatises, mainly because it lay somewhat outside the track of his own thoughts. He was induced to interest himself in it by his increasing regard for Augustin, and by the coming of the young Spaniard, Orosius, in 414, from Augustin to sit at his feet. Pelagius also had come to Palestine, and, after an investigation of his tenets, at a small council at Jerusalem, in 415, presided over by Bishop John, and a second, at Diospolis in 416, had been admitted to communion. Jerome appears to have taken no part in these proceedings, and having been at peace with Bishop John for nearly twenty years, was no doubt unwilling to act against him. But he had come to look upon Pelagius as infected with the heretical "impiety," which he looked upon (i. 28) as far worse than moral evil; and connected him, as we see from his letter to Ctesiphon (CXXXIII.), with Origenism and Rufinus; and he brings his great knowledge of Scripture to bear upon the controversy. He quotes a work of Pelagius, though giving only the headings, and the numbers of the chapters, up to 100 (i. 26-32); and, though at times his conviction appears weak, and there are passages (i. 5, ii. 6-30, iii. 1) which give occasion to the observation that he really, if unconsciously, inclined to the views of Pelagius, and that he is a "Synergist," not, like Augustin, a thorough predestinarian, the Dialogue, as a whole, is clear and forms a substantial contribution to our knowledge. Although its tone is less violent than that of his ascetic treatises, it appears to have stirred up the strongest animosity against him. The adherents of Pelagius attacked and burned the monasteries of Bethlehem, and Jerome himself only escaped by taking refuge in a tower. His sufferings, and the interference of Pope Innocentius in his behalf, may be seen by referring to Letters CXXXV.-CXXXVII., with the introductory notes prefixed to them.
The following is a summary of the argument: Atticus, the Augustinian, at once (c. 1) introduces the question: Do you affirm that, as Pelagius affirms, men can live without sin? Yes, says the Pelagian Critobulus, but I do not add, as is imputed to us, "without the grace of God." Indeed, the fact that we have a free will is from grace. Yes, replies Atticus, but what is this grace? Is it only our original nature, or is it needed in every act. In every act, is the reply (2); yet one would hardly say that we cannot mend a pen without grace (3), for, if so, where is our free will? But, says Atticus (5), the Scriptures speak of our need of God's aid in everything. In that case, says Critobulus, the promised reward must be given not to us but to God, Who works in us. Reverting then to the first point stated, Atticus asks, does the possibility of sinlessness extend to single acts, or to the whole life? Certainly to the whole as well as the part, is the answer. But we wish, or will to be sinless; why then are we not actually sinless? Because (8) we do not exert our will to the full. But (9) no one has ever lived without sin. Still, says the Pelagian, God commands us to be perfect, and he does not command impossibilities. Job, Zacharias, and Elizabeth are represented as perfectly righteous. No, it is answered (12), faults are attributed to each of them. John says, "He that is born of God sinneth not" (13); yet, "If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves." The Apostles, though told to be perfect (14) were not perfect: and St. Paul says (14a), "I count not myself to have apprehended." Men are called just and perfect only in comparison of others (16), or because of general subjection to the will of God (18), or according to their special characteristics (19), as we may speak of a bishop as excellent in his office, though he may not fulfil the ideal of the pastoral epistles (22).
The discussion now turns to the words of Pelagius' book. "All are ruled by their own will" (27). No; for Christ says, "I came not to do My own will." "The wicked shall not be spared in the judgment." But we must distinguish between the impious or heretics who will be destroyed (28) and Christian sinners who will be forgiven. Some of his sayings contradict each other or are trifling (29, 30). "The kingdom of heaven is promised in the Old Testament." Yes, but more fully in the New. Returning to the first thesis, "That a man can be without sin if he wills it," the Pelagian says, If things, like desires which arise spontaneously and have no issue, are reckoned blamable, we charge the sin on our Maker; to which it is only answered that, though we cannot understand God's ways, we must not arraign His justice. In the rest of the book, Atticus alone speaks, going through the Old Testament, and showing that each of the saints falls into some sin, which, though done in ignorance or half-consciousness, yet brings condemnation with it.
Prologue.
------------------------
1. After writing the [5128] letter to Ctesiphon, in which I replied to the questions propounded, I received frequent expostulations from the brethren, who wanted to know why I any longer delayed the promised work in which I undertook to answer all the subtleties of the preachers of Impassibility. [5129] For every one knows what was the contention of the Stoics and Peripatetics, that is, the old Academy, some of them asserted that the pathe, which we may call emotions, such as sorrow, joy, hope, fear, can be thoroughly eradicated from the minds of men; others that their power can be broken, that they can be governed and restrained, as unmanageable horses are held in check by peculiar kinds of bits. Their views have been explained by Tully in the "Tusculan Disputations," and Origen in his "Stromata" endeavours to blend them with ecclesiastical truth. I pass over Manichæus, [5130] Priscillianus, [5131] Evagrius of Ibora, Jovinianus, and the heretics found throughout almost the whole of Syria, who, by a perversion of the import of their name, are commonly called [5132] Massalians, in Greek, Euchites, all of whom hold that it is possible for human virtue and human knowledge to attain perfection, and arrive, I will not say merely at a likeness to, but an equality with God; and who go the length of asserting that, when once they have reached the height of perfection, even sins of thought and ignorance are impossible for them. And although in my former letter addressed to Ctesiphon and aimed at their errors, so far as time permitted, I touched upon a few points in the book which I am now endeavouring to hammer out, I shall adhere to the method of Socrates. What can be said on both sides shall be stated; and the truth will thus be clear when both sides express their opinions. Origen is peculiar in maintaining on the one hand that it is impossible for human nature to pass through life without sin, and on the other, that it is possible for a man, when he turns to better things, to become so strong that he sins no more.
2. I shall add a few words in answer to those who say that I am writing this work because I am inflamed with envy. I have never spared heretics, and I have done my best to make the enemies of the Church my own. [5133] Helvidius wrote against the perpetual virginity of Saint Mary. Was it envy that led me to answer him, whom I had never seen in the flesh? [5134] Jovinianus, whose heresy is now being fanned into flame, and who disturbed the faith of Rome in my absence, was so devoid of gifts of utterance, and had such a pestilent style that he was a fitter object for pity than for envy. So far as I could, I answered him also. [5135] Rufinus did all in his power to circulate the blasphemies of Origen and the treatise "On First Principles" (Peri 'Archon), not in one city, but throughout the whole world. He even published the first book of [5136] Eusebius' "Apology for Origen" under the name of [5137] Pamphilus the martyr, and, as though Origen had not said enough, [5138] vomited forth a fresh volume on his behalf. Am I to be accused of envy because I answered him? and was his eloquence such a rushing torrent as to deter me through fear from writing or dictating anything in reply? [5139] Palladius, no better than a villainous slave, tried to impart energy to the same heresy, and to excite against me fresh prejudice on account of my translation of the Hebrew. Was I [5140] envious of such distinguished ability and nobility? Even now the [5141] mystery of iniquity worketh, and every one chatters about his views: yet I, it seems, am the only one who is filled with envy at the glory of all the rest; I am so poor a creature that I envy even those who do not deserve envy. And so, to prove to all that I do not hate the men but their errors, and that I do not wish to vilify any one, but rather lament the misfortune of men who are deceived by knowledge falsely so-called, I have made use of the names of Atticus and Critobulus in order to express our own views and those of our opponents. The truth is that all we who hold the Catholic faith, wish and long that, while the heresy is condemned, the men may be reformed. At all events, if they will continue in error, the blame does not attach to us who have written, but to them, since they have preferred a lie to the truth. And one short answer to our calumniators, whose curses fall upon their own heads, is this, that the Manichæan doctrine condemns the nature of man, destroys free will, and does away with the help of God. And again, that it is manifest madness for man to speak of himself as being what God alone is. Let us so walk along the royal road that we turn neither to the right hand nor to the left; and let us always believe that the eagerness of our wills is governed by the help of God. Should any one cry out that he is slandered and boast that he thinks with us; he will then show that he assents to the true faith, when he openly and sincerely condemns the opposite views. Otherwise his case will be that described by the prophet: [5142] "And yet for all this her treacherous sister Judah hath not returned unto me with her whole heart, but feignedly." It is a smaller sin to follow evil which you think is good, than not to venture to defend what you know for certain is good. If we cannot endure threats, injustice, poverty, how shall we overcome the flames of Babylon? Let us not lose by hollow peace what we have preserved by war. I should be sorry to allow my fears to teach me faithlessness, when Christ has put the true faith in the power of my choice. __________________________________________________________________
[5128] Letter CXXXIII.
[5129] 'Apatheia.
[5130] Priscillian was a Spaniard, who began to propagate his views, which were a mixture of various heresies, about the year 370. See Robertson, p. 295 sq., and Note on Jerome, Letter CXXXIII.
[5131] Evagrius Iberita. The name is taken either from a town named Ibera or Ibora in Pontus, or from the province of Iberia. Jerome, in the letter to which he refers, styles Evagrius Hyperborita, but this is thought to be an error for Hyborita. It has been suggested that Jerome was playing on the word Iberita. He was born in 345. He wrote, amongst many other works, a treatise Peri apatheias (On Impassibility), and no doubt Jerome refers to this a few lines above. He was a zealous champion of Origen. See also Jerome, Letter CXXXIII. and note.
[5132] The Massalians or Euchites derived their name from their habit of continual prayer. The words are etymological equivalents (Massalians, from tsl' to pray). The perversity lay in the misinterpretation of such texts as Luke xviii. 1, and 1 Thess. v. 17.
[5133] He was a Roman lawyer. His treatise was written about a.d. 383. See Jerome's treatise against him in this volume.
[5134] See introduction to Jerome's treatise against Jovinianus in this volume.
[5135] See Rufinus' works, especially the Prolegomena, and Jerome's controversy with him in vol. iii. of this series.
[5136] That is, Eusebius of Cæsarea (a.d. 267-338), who was called Pamphilus from his friendship with Pamphilus the martyr.
[5137] Suffered martyrdom a.d. 309. He erected a library at Cæsarea of 30,000 volumes. See Rufinus' Preface to his Apology in this series, vol. iii., with introductory note.
[5138] See Rufinus on the adulteration of the works of Origen, in this series, vol. iii. p. 421.
[5139] Palladius, bishop of Hellenopolis, the biographer and trusted friend of Chrysostom, was born about 367. He visited Bethlehem about 387 and formed a very unfavourable opinion of Jerome. He highly commended Rufinus. According to Epiphanius, as well as Jerome, he was tainted with Origenism. Tillemont, however, thinks that another Palladius may be referred to in these passages. His accounts of Jerome and Rufinus are given in his "Historia Lausiaca," c. 78 and 118.
[5140] Jerome was accused of envy or ill-will by Palladius. "Tanta fuit ejus invidia ut ab ea obrueretur virtus doctrinæ. Cum ergo multis diebus cum eo versatus esset sanctus Posidonius, dicit mihi in aurem, "Ingenua quidem Paula, quæ ejus curam gerit, præmorietur, liberata ab ejus invidia. Ut autem arbitror, propter hunc virum non habitabit vir sanctus in his locis, sed ejus pervadet invidia usque ad proprium fratrem."--Pallad. Hist. Laus., § 78, cf. § 82.
[5141] 2 Thess. ii. 7.
[5142] Jer. iii. 10. __________________________________________________________________
Book I.
------------------------
1. Atticus. I hear, Critobulus, that you have written that man can be without sin, if he chooses; and that the commandments of God are easy. Tell me, is it true?
Critobulus. It is true, Atticus; but our rivals do not take the words in the sense I attached to them.
A. Are they then so ambiguous as to give rise to a difference as to their meaning? I do not ask for an answer to two questions at once. You laid down two propositions; the one, that [5143] man can be without sin, if he chooses: the other, that God's commandments are easy. Although, therefore, they were uttered together, let them be discussed separately, so that, while our faith appears to be one, no strife may arise through our misunderstanding each other.
C. I said, Atticus, that man can be without sin, if he chooses; not, as some maliciously make us say, without the grace of God (the very thought is impiety), but simply that he can, if he chooses; the aid of the grace of God being presupposed.
A. Is God, then, the author of your evil works?
C. By no means. But if there is any good in me, it is brought to perfection through His impulse and assistance.
A. My question does not refer to natural constitution, but to action. For who doubts that God is the Creator of all things? I wish you would tell me this: the good you do, is it your's or God's?
C. It is mine and God's: I work and He assists.
A. How is it then that everybody thinks you do away with the grace of God, and maintain that all our actions proceed from our own will?
C. I am surprised, Atticus, at your asking me for the why and wherefore of other people's mistakes, and wanting to know what I did not write, when what I did write is perfectly clear. I said that man can be without sin, if he chooses. Did I add, without the grace of God?
A. No; but the fact that you added nothing implies your denial of the need of grace.
C. Nay, rather, the fact that I have not denied grace should be regarded as tantamount to an assertion of it. It is unjust to suppose we deny whatever we do not assert.
A. You admit then that man can be sinless, if he chooses, but with the grace of God.
C. I not only admit it, but freely proclaim it.
A. So then he who does away with the grace of God is in error.
C. Just so. Or rather, he ought to be thought impious, seeing that all things are governed by the pleasure of God, and that we owe our existence and the faculty of individual choice and desire to the goodness of God, the Creator. For that we have free will, and according to our own choice incline to good or evil, is part of His grace who made us what we are, in His own image and likeness.
2. A. No one doubts, Critobulus, that all things depend on the judgment of Him Who is Creator of all, and that whatever we have ought to be attributed to His goodness. But I should like to know respecting this faculty, which you attribute to the grace of God, whether you reckon it as part of the gift bestowed in our creation, or suppose it energetic in our separate actions, so that we avail ourselves of its assistance continually; or is it the case that, having been once for all created and endowed with free will, we do what we choose by our own choice or strength? For I know that very many of your party refer all things to the grace of God in such a sense that they understand the power of the will to be a gift not of a particular, but of a general character, that is to say, one which is bestowed not at each separate moment, but once for all at creation.
C. It is not as you affirm; but I maintain both positions, that it is by the grace of God we were created such as we are, and also that in our several actions we are supported by His aid.
A. We are agreed, then, that in good works, besides our own power of choice, we lean on the help of God; in evil works we are prompted by the devil.
C. Quite so; there is no difference of opinion on that point.
A. They are wrong, then, who strip us of the help of God in our separate actions. The Psalmist sings: [5144] "Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain who build it. Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain;" and there are similar passages. But these men endeavour by perverse, or rather ridiculous interpretations, to twist his words to a different meaning.
3. C. Am I bound to contradict others when you have my own answer?
A. Your answer to what effect? That they are right, or wrong?
C. What necessity compels me to set my opinion against other men's?
A. You are bound by the rules of discussion, and by respect for truth. Do you not know that every assertion either affirms, or denies, and that what is affirmed or denied ought to be reckoned among good or bad things? You must, therefore, admit, and no thanks to you, that the statement to which my question relates is either a good thing or a bad.
C. If in particular actions we must have the help of God, does it follow that we are unable to make a pen, [5145] or mend it when it is made? Can we not fashion the letters, be silent or speak, sit, stand, walk or run, eat or fast, weep or laugh, and so on, without God's assistance?
A. From my point of view it is clearly impossible.
C. How then have we free will, and how can we guard the grace of God towards us, if we cannot do even these things without God?
4. A. The bestowal of the grace of free will is not such as to do away with the support of God in particular actions.
C. The help of God is not made of no account; inasmuch as creatures are preserved through the grace of free will once for all given to them. For if without God, and except He assist me in every action, I can do nothing. He can neither with justice crown me for my good deeds, nor punish me for my evil ones, but in each case He will either receive His own or will condemn the assistants He gave.
A. Tell me, then, plainly, why you do away with the grace of God. For whatever you destroy in the parts you must of necessity deny in the whole.
C. I do not deny grace when I assert that I was so created by God, that by the grace of God it was put within the power of my choice either to do a thing or not to do it.
A. So God falls asleep over our good actions, when once the faculty of free will has been given; and we need not pray to Him to assist us in our separate actions, since it depends upon our own choice and will either to do a thing if we choose, or not to do it if we do not choose.
5. C. As in the case of other creatures, the conditions of elicit creation are observed; so, when once the power of free will was granted, everything was left to our own choice.
A. It follows, as I said, that I ought not to beg the assistance of God in the details of conduct, because I consider it was given once for all.
C. If He co-operates with me in everything the result is no longer mine, but His Who assists, or rather works in and with me; and all the more because I can do nothing without Him.
A. Have you not read, pray, [5146] "that it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy!" From this we understand that to will and to run is ours, but the carrying into effect our willing and running pertains to the mercy of God, and is so effected that on the one hand in willing and running free will is preserved; and on the other, in consummating our willing and running, everything is left to the power of God. Of course, I ought now to adduce the frequent testimony of Scripture to show that in the details of conduct the saints intreat the help of God, and in their several actions desire to have Him for their helper and protector. Read through the Psalter, and all the utterances of the saints, and you will find their actions never unaccompanied by prayer to God. And this is a clear proof that you either deny the grace which you banish from the parts of life; or if you concede its presence in the parts, a concession plainly much against your will, you must have come over to the views of us who preserve free will for man, but so limit it that we do not deny the assistance of God in each action.
6. C. That is a sophistical conclusion and a mere display of logical skill. No one can strip me of the power of free will; otherwise, if God were really my helper in what I do, the reward would not be due to me, but to Him who wrought in me.
A. Make the most of your free will; arm your tongue against God, and therein prove yourself free, if you will, to blaspheme. But to go a step farther, there is no doubt as to your sentiments, and the delusions of your profession have become as clear as day. Now, let us turn back to the starting-point of our discussion. You said just now that, granted God's assistance, man may be sinless if he chooses. Tell me, please, for how long? For ever, or only for a short time?
C. Your question is unnecessary. If I say for a short time, for ever will none the less be implied. For whatever you allow for a short time, you will admit may last for ever.
A. I do not quite understand your meaning.
C. Are you so senseless that you do not recognize plain facts?
7. A. I am not ashamed of my ignorance. And both sides ought to be well agreed on a definition of the subject of dispute.
C. I maintain this: he who can keep himself from sin one day, may do so another day: if he can on two, he may on three; if on three, on thirty: and so on for three hundred, or three thousand, or as long as ever he chooses to do so.
A. Say then at once that a man may be without sin for ever, if he chooses. Can we do anything we like?
C. Certainly not, for I cannot do all I should like; but all I say is this, that a man can be without sin, if he chooses.
A. Be so good as to tell me this: do you think I am a man or a beast?
C. If I had any doubt as to whether you were a man, or a beast, I should confess myself to be the latter.
A. If then, as you say, I am a man, how is it that when I wish and earnestly desire not to sin, I do transgress?
C. Because your choice is imperfect. If you really wished not to sin, you really would not.
A. Well then, you who accuse me of not having a real desire, are you free from sin because you have a real desire?
C. As though I were talking of myself whom I admit to be a sinner, and not of the few exceptional ones, if any, who have resolved not to sin.
8. A. Still, I who question, and you who answer, both consider ourselves sinners.
C. But we are capable of not being so, if we please.
A. I said I did not wish to sin, and no doubt your feeling is the same. How is it then that what we both wish we can neither do?
C. Because we do not wish perfectly.
A. Show me any of our ancestors who had a perfect will and the power in perfection.
C. That is not easy. And when I say that a man may be without sin if he chooses, I do not contend that there ever have been such; I only maintain the abstract possibility--if he chooses. For possibility of being is one thing, and is expressed in Greek by te dunamei (possibility); being is another, the equivalent for which is te energei& 139; (actuality). I can be a physician; but meanwhile I am not. I can be an artisan; but I have not yet learnt a trade. So, whatever I am able to be, though I am not that yet, I shall be if I choose.
9. A. Art is one thing, that which is [5147] above art is another. Medical skill, craftsmanship, and so on, are found in many persons; but to be always without sin is a characteristic of the Divine power only. Therefore, either give me an instance of those who were for ever without sin; or, if you cannot find one, confess your impotence, lay aside bombast, and do not mock the ears of fools with this being and possibility of being of yours. For who will grant that a man can do what no man was ever able to do? You have not learnt even the rudiments of logic. For if a man is able, he is no longer unable. Either grant that some one was able to do what you maintain was possible to be done; or if no one has had this power, you must, though against your will, be held to this position, that no one is able to effect what yet you profess to be possible. That was the point at issue between the powerful logicians, [5148] Diodorus and [5149] Chrysippus, in their discussion of possibility. Diodorus says that alone can possibly happen which is either true or will be true. And whatever will be, that, he says, must of necessity happen. But whatever will not be, that cannot possibly happen. Chrysippus, however, says that things which will not be might happen; for instance, this pearl might be broken, even though it never will. They, therefore, who say that a man can be without sin if he chooses, will not be able to prove the truth of the assertion, unless they show that it will come to pass. But whereas the whole future is uncertain, and especially such things as have never occurred, it is clear that they say something will be which will not be. And Ecclesiastes supports this decision: "All that shall be, has already been in former ages."
10. C. Pray answer this question: has God given possible or impossible commands?
A. I see your drift. But I must discuss it later on, that we may not, by confusing different questions, leave our audience in a fog. I admit that God has given possible commands, for otherwise He would Himself be the author of injustice, were He to demand the doing of what cannot possibly be done. Reserving this until later, finish your argument that a man can be without sin, if he chooses. You will either give instances of such ability, or, if no one has had the power, you will clearly confess that a man cannot avoid sin always.
C. Since you press me to give what I am not bound to give, consider what our Lord says, [5150] "That it is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven." And yet he said a thing might possibly happen, which never has happened. For no camel has ever gone through a needle's eye.
A. I am surprised at a prudent man submitting evidence which goes against himself. For the passage in question does not speak of a possibility, but one impossibility is compared with another. As a camel cannot go through a needle's eye, so neither will a rich man enter the kingdom of heaven. Or, if you should be able to show that a rich man does enter the kingdom of heaven, it follows, also, that a camel goes through a needle's eye. You must not instance Abraham and other rich men, about whom we read in the Old Testament, who, although they were rich, entered the kingdom of heaven; for, by spending their riches on good works, they ceased to be rich; nay, rather, inasmuch as they were rich, not for themselves, but for others, they ought to be called God's stewards rather than rich men. But we must seek evangelical perfection, according to which there is the command, [5151] "If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor, and come, follow Me."
11. C. You are caught unawares in your own snare.
A. How so?
C. You quote our Lord's utterance to the effect that a man can be perfect. For when He says, "If thou wilt be perfect, sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor, and come, follow Me," He shows that a man, if he chooses, and if he does what is commanded, can be perfect?
A. You have given me such a terrible blow that I am almost dazed. But yet the very words you quote, "If thou wilt be perfect," were spoken to one who could not, or rather would not, and, therefore, could not; show me now, as you promised, some one who would and could.
C. Why am I compelled to produce instances of perfection, when it is clear from what the Saviour said to one, and through one to all, "If thou wilt be perfect" that it is possible for men to be perfect?
A. That is a mere shuffle. You still stick fast in the mire. For, either, if a thing is possible, it has occurred at some time or other; or, if it never has happened, grant that it is impossible.
12. C. Why do I any longer delay? You must be vanquished by the authority or Scripture. To pass over other passages, you must be silenced by the two in which we read the praises of Job, and of Zacharias and Elizabeth. For, unless I am deceived, it is thus written in the book of Job: [5152] "There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was perfect and upright, a true worshipper of God, and one who kept himself from every evil thing." And again: [5153] "Who is he that reproveth one that is righteous and free from sin, and speaketh words without knowledge?" Also, in the Gospel according to Luke, we read: [5154] "There was in the days of Herod, king of Judæa, a certain priest named Zacharias, of the course of Abijah: and he had a wife of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. And they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless." If a true worshipper of God is also without spot and without offence, and if those who walked in all the ordinances of the Lord are righteous before God, I suppose they are free from sin, and lack nothing that pertains to righteousness.
A. You have cited passages which have been detached not only from the rest of Scripture, but from the books in which they occur. For even Job, after he was stricken with the plague, is convicted of having spoken many things against the ruling of God, and to have summoned Him to the bar: [5155] "Would that a man stood with God in the judgment as a son of man stands with his fellow." And again: [5156] "Oh that I had one to hear me! that the Almighty might hear my desire, and that the judge would himself write a book!" And again: [5157] "Though I be righteous, mine own mouth shall condemn me: though I be perfect, it shall prove me perverse. If I wash myself with snow-water, and make my hands never so clean, Thou hast dyed me again and again with filth. Mine own clothes have abhorred me." And of Zacharias it is written, that when the angel promised the birth of a son, he said: [5158] "Whereby shall I know this? for I am an old man, and my wife well stricken in years." For which answer he was at once condemned to silence: [5159] "Thou shalt be silent, and not able to speak, until the day that these things shall come to pass, because thou believest not my words, which shall be fulfilled in their season." From this it is clear that men are called righteous, and said to be without fault; but that, if negligence comes over them, they may fall; and that a man always occupies a middle place, so that he may slip from the height of virtue into vice, or may rise from vice to virtue; and that he is never safe, but must dread shipwreck even in fair weather; and, therefore, that a man cannot be without sin. Solomon says, [5160] "There is not a righteous man upon earth that doeth good and sinneth not"; and likewise in the book of Kings: [5161] "There is no man that sinneth not." So, also, the blessed David says: [5162] "Who can understand his errors? Cleanse Thou me from hidden faults, and keep back Thy servant from presumptuous sins." And again: [5163] "Enter not into judgment with Thy servant, for in Thy sight shall no man living be justified." Holy Scripture is full of passages to the same effect.
13. C. But what answer will you give to the famous declaration of John the Evangelist: [5164] "We know that whosoever is begotten of God sinneth not; but the begetting of God keepeth him, and the evil one toucheth him not. We know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in the evil one?"
A. I will requite like with like, and will show that, according to you, the little epistle of the Evangelist contradicts itself. For, if whosoever is begotten of God sinneth not because His seed abideth in him, and he cannot sin, because he is born of God, how is it that the writer says in the same place: [5165] "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us?" You cannot explain. You hesitate and are confused. Listen to the same Evangelist telling us that [5166] "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." We are then righteous when we confess that we are sinners, and our righteousness depends not upon our own merits, but on the mercy of God, as the Holy Scripture says, [5167] "The righteous man accuseth himself when he beginneth to speak," and elsewhere, [5168] "Tell thy sins that thou mayest be justified." [5169] "God hath shut up all under sin, that He may have mercy upon all." And the highest righteousness of man is this--whatever virtue he may be able to acquire, not to think it his own, but the gift of God. He then who is born of God does not sin, so long as the seed of God remains in him, and he cannot sin, because he is born of God. But seeing that, while the householder slept, an enemy sowed tares, and that when we know not, a sower by night scatters in the Lord's field darnel and wild oats among the good corn, this parable of the householder in the Gospel should excite our fears. He cleanses his floor, and gathers the wheat into his garner, but leaves the chaff to be scattered by the winds, or burned by the fire. And so we read in Jeremiah, [5170] "What is the chaff to the wheat? saith the Lord." The chaff, moreover, is separated from the wheat at the end of the world, a proof that, while we are in the mortal body, chaff is mixed with the wheat. But if you object, and ask why did the Apostle say "and he cannot sin, because he is born of God," I reply by asking you what becomes of the reward of his choice? For if a man does not sin because he cannot sin, free will is destroyed, and goodness cannot possibly be due to his efforts, but must be part of a nature unreceptive of evil.
14. C. The task I set you just now was an easy one by way of practice for something more difficult. What have you to say to my next argument? Clever as you are, all your skill will not avail to overthrow it. I shall first quote from the Old Testament, then from the New. Moses is the chief figure in the Old Testament, our Lord and Saviour in the New. Moses says to the people, [5171] "Be perfect in the sight of the Lord your God." And the Saviour bids the Apostles [5172] "Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect." Now it was either possible for the hearers to do what Moses and the Lord commanded, or, if it be impossible, the fault does not lie with them who cannot obey, but with Him who gave impossible commands.
A. This passage to the ignorant, and to those who are unaccustomed to meditate on Holy Scripture, and who neither know nor use it, does appear at first sight to favour your opinion. But when you look into it, the difficulty soon disappears. And when you compare passages of Scripture with others, that the Holy Spirit may not seem to contradict Himself with changing place and time, according to what is written, [5173] "Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy water spouts," the truth will show itself, that is, that Christ did give a possible command when He said: "Be ye perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect," and yet that the Apostles were not perfect.
C. I am not talking of what the Apostles did, but of what Christ commanded. And the fault does not lie with the giver of the command, but with the hearers of it, because we cannot admit the justice of him who commands without conceding the possibility of doing what is commanded.
A. Good! Don't tell me then that a man can be without sin if he chooses, but that a man can be what the Apostles were not.
C. Do you think me fool enough to dare say such a thing?
A. Although you do not say it in so many words, however reluctant you may be to admit the fact, it follows by natural sequence from your proposition. For if a man can be without sin, and it is clear the Apostles were not without sin, a man can be higher than the Apostles: to say nothing of patriarchs and prophets whose righteousness under the law was not perfect, as the Apostle says, [5174] "For all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God: being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: whom God set forth to be a propitiator."
14a. C. This way of arguing is intricate and brings the simplicity which becomes the Church into the tangled thickets of philosophy. What has Paul to do with Aristotle? or Peter with Plato? For as the latter was the prince of philosophers, so was the former chief of the Apostles: on him the Lord's Church was firmly founded, and neither rushing flood nor storm can shake it.
A. Now you are rhetorical, and while you taunt me with philosophy, you yourself cross over to the camp of the orators. But listen to what your same favourite orator says: [5175] "Let us have no more commonplaces: we get them at home."
C. There is no eloquence in this, no bombast like that of the orators, who might be defined as persons whose object is to persuade, and who frame their language accordingly. We are seeking unadulterated truth, and use unsophisticated language. Either the Lord did not give impossible commands, so that they are to blame who did not do what was possible; or, if what is commanded cannot be done, then not they who do not things impossible are convicted of unrighteousness, but He Who commanded things impossible, and that is an impious statement.
A. I see you are much more disturbed than is your wont; so I will not ply you with arguments. But let me briefly ask what you think of the well-known passage of the Apostle when he wrote to the Philippians: [5176] "Not that I have already obtained, or am already made perfect: but I press on, if so be that I may apprehend that for which also I was apprehended by Christ Jesus. Brethren, I count not myself to have yet apprehended: but one thing I do; forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching forward to the things which are before, I press on towards the goal unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Let us, therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded: and if in anything ye are otherwise minded, even this shall God reveal unto you," and so on; no doubt you know the rest, which, in my desire to be brief, I omit. He says that he had not yet apprehended, and was by no means perfect; but, like an archer, aimed his arrows at the mark set up (more expressively called [5177] skopos in Greek), lest the shaft, turning to one side or the other, might show the unskilfulness of the archer. He further declares that he always forgot the past, and ever stretched forward to the things in front, thus teaching that no heed should be paid to the past, but the future earnestly desired; so that what to-day he thought perfect, while he was stretching forward to better things and things in front, to-morrow proves to have been imperfect. And thus at every step, never standing still, but always running, he shows that to be imperfect which we men thought perfect, and teaches that our only perfection and true righteousness is that which is measured by the excellence of God. "I press on towards the goal," he says, "unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." Oh, blessed Apostle Paul, pardon me, a poor creature who confess my faults, if I venture to ask a question. You say that you had not yet obtained, nor yet apprehended, nor were yet perfect, and that you always forgot the things behind, and stretched forward to the things in front, if by any means you might have part in the resurrection of the dead, and win the prize of your high calling. How, then, is it that you immediately add, "As many therefore as are perfect are thus minded"? (or, let us be thus minded, for the copies vary). And what mind is it that we have, or are to have? that we are perfect? that we have apprehended that which we have not apprehended, received what we have not received, are perfect who are not yet perfect? What mind then have we, or rather what mind ought we to have who are not perfect? To confess that we are imperfect, and have not yet apprehended, nor yet obtained, this is true wisdom in man: know thyself to be imperfect; and, if I may so speak, the perfection of all who are righteous, so long as they are in the flesh, is imperfect. Hence we read in Proverbs: [5178] "To understand true righteousness." For if there were not also a false righteousness, the righteousness of God would never be called true. The Apostle continues: "and if ye are otherwise minded, God will also reveal that to you." This sounds strange to my ears. He who but just now said, "Not that I have already obtained, or am already perfect"; the chosen vessel, who was so confident of Christ's dwelling in him that he dared to say "Do ye seek a proof of Christ that speaketh in me? "and yet plainly confessed that he was not perfect; he now gives to the multitude what he denied to himself in particular, he unites himself with the rest and says, "As many of us as are perfect, let us be thus minded." But why he said this, he explains presently. Let us, he means, who wish to be perfect according to the poor measure of human frailty, think this, that we have not yet obtained, nor yet apprehended, nor are yet perfect, and inasmuch as we are not yet perfect, and, perhaps, think otherwise than true and perfect perfection requires, if we are minded otherwise than is dictated by the full knowledge of God, God will also reveal this to us, so that we may pray with David and say, [5179] "Open Thou mine eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of Thy law."
15. All this makes it clear that in Holy Scripture there are two sorts of perfection, two of righteousness, and two of fear. The first is that perfection, and incomparable truth, and perfect righteousness [5180] and fear, which is the beginning of wisdom, and which we must measure by the excellence of God; the second, which is within the range not only of men, but of every creature, and is not inconsistent with our frailty, as we read in the Psalms: [5181] "In Thy sight shall no man living be justified," is that righteousness which is said to be perfect, not in comparison with God, but as recognized by God. Job, and Zacharias, and Elizabeth, were called righteous, in respect of that righteousness which might some day turn to unrighteousness, and not in respect of that which is incapable of change, concerning which it is said, [5182] "I am God, and change not." And this is that which the Apostle elsewhere writes: [5183] "That which hath been made glorious hath not been made glorious in this respect, by reason of the glory that surpasseth"; because, that is, the righteousness of the law, in comparison of the grace of the Gospel, does not seem to be righteousness at all. [5184] "For if," he says, that which passeth away was with glory, much more that which remaineth is in glory. [5185] And again, "We know in part, and we prophesy in part; but when that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away." And, [5186] "For now we see in a mirror, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I have been known." And in the Psalms, [5187] "Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it." And again, [5188] "When I thought how I might know this, it was too painful for me; until I went into the sanctuary of God, and considered their latter end." And in the same place, [5189] "I was as a beast before thee: nevertheless I am continually with thee." And Jeremiah says, [5190] "Every man is become brutish and without knowledge." And to return to the Apostle Paul, [5191] "The foolishness of God is wiser than men." And much besides, which I omit for brevity's sake.
16. C. My dear Atticus, your speech is really a clever feat of memory. But the labour you have spent in mustering this host of authorities is to my advantage. For I do not any more than you compare man with God, but with other men, in comparison with whom he who takes the trouble can be perfect. And so, when we say that man, if he chooses, can be without sin, the standard is the measure of man, not the majesty of God, in comparison with Whom no creature can be perfect.
A. Critobulus, I am obliged to you for reminding me of the fact. For it is just my own view that no creature can be perfect in respect of true and finished righteousness. But that one differs from another, and that one man's righteousness is not the same as another's, no one doubts; nor again that one may be greater or less than another, and yet that, relatively to their own status and capacity, men may be called righteous who are not righteous when compared with others. For instance, the Apostle Paul, the chosen vessel who laboured more than all the Apostles, was, I suppose, righteous when he wrote to Timothy, [5192] "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith: henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give to me at that day: and not only to me, but also to all them that love His appearing." Timothy, his disciple and imitator, whom he taught the rules of action and the limits of virtue, was also righteous. Are we to think there was one and the same righteousness in them both, and that he had not more merit who laboured more than all? "In my Father's house are many mansions." I suppose there are also different degrees of merit. "One star differeth from another star in glory," and in the one body of the Church there are different members. The sun has its own splendour, the moon tempers the darkness of the night; and the five heavenly bodies which are called planets traverse the sky in different tracks and with different degrees of luminousness. There are countless other stars whose movements we trace in the firmament. Each has its own brightness, and though each in respect of its own is perfect, yet, in comparison with one of greater magnitude, it lacks perfection. In the body also with its different members, the eye has one function, the hand another, the foot another. Whence the Apostle says, [5193] "The eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of thee: or again the head to the feet, I have no need of you. Are all Apostles? are all prophets? are all teachers? are all workers of miracles? have all gifts of healing? do all speak with tongues? do all interpret? But desire earnestly the greater gifts. But all these worketh the one and the same Spirit, dividing to each one severally even as He will." And here mark carefully that he does not say, as each member desires, but as the Spirit Himself will. For the vessel cannot say to him that makes it, [5194] "Why dost thou make me thus or thus? Hath not the potter a right over the clay, from the same lump to make one part a vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?" And so in close sequence he added, "Desire earnestly the greater gifts," so that, by the exercise of faith and diligence, we may win something in addition to other gifts, and may be superior to those who, compared with us, are in the second or third class. In a great house there are different vessels, some of gold, some of silver, brass, iron, wood. And yet while in its kind a vessel of brass is perfect, in comparison with one of silver it is called imperfect, and again one of silver, compared with one of gold, is inferior. And thus, when compared with one another, all things are imperfect and perfect. In a field of good soil, and from one sowing, there springs a crop thirty-fold, sixty-fold, or a hundred-fold. The very numbers show that there is disparity in the parts of the produce, and yet in its own kind each is perfect. Elizabeth and Zacharias, whom you adduce and with whom you cover yourself as with an impenetrable shield, may teach us how far they are beneath the holiness of blessed Mary, the Lord's Mother, who, conscious that God was dwelling in her, proclaims without reserve, [5195] "Behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. For He that is mighty hath done to me great things; and holy is His name. And His mercy is unto generations and generations of them that fear Him: He hath showed strength with His arm." Where, observe, she says she is blessed not by her own merit and virtue, but by the mercy of God dwelling in her. And John himself, a greater than whom has not arisen among the sons of men, is better than his parents. For not only does our Lord compare him with men, but with angels also. And yet he, who was greater on earth than all other men, is said to be less than the least in the kingdom of heaven.
17. Need we be surprised that, when saints are compared, some are better, some worse, since the same holds good in the comparison of sins? To Jerusalem, pierced and wounded with many sins, it is said, [5196] "Sodom is justified by thee." It is not because Sodom, which has sunk for ever into ashes, is just in herself, that it is said by Ezekiel, [5197] "Sodom shall be restored to her former estate"; but that, in comparison with the more accursed Jerusalem, she appears just. For Jerusalem killed the Son of God; Sodom through fulness of bread and excessive luxury carried her lust beyond all bounds. The publican in the Gospel who smote upon his breast as though it were a magazine of the worst thoughts, and, conscious of his offences, dared not lift up his eyes, is justified rather than the proud Pharisee. And Thamar in the guise of a harlot deceived Judah, and in the estimation of this man himself who was deceived, was worthy of the words, [5198] "Thamar is more righteous than I." All this goes to prove that not only in comparison with Divine majesty are men far from perfection, but also when compared with angels, and other men who have climbed the heights of virtue. You may be superior to some one whom you have shown to be imperfect, and yet be outstripped by another; and consequently may not have true perfection, which, if it be perfect, is absolute.
18. C. How is it then, Atticus, that the Divine Word urges us to perfection?
A. I have already explained that in proportion to our strength each one, with all his power, must stretch forward, if by any means he may attain to, and apprehend the reward of his high calling. In short Almighty God, to whom, as the Apostle teaches, the Son must in accordance with the dispensation of the Incarnation be subjected, that [5199] "God may be all in all," clearly shows that all things are by no means subject to Himself. Hence the prophet anticipates his own final subjection, saying, [5200] "Shall not my soul be subject to God alone? for of Him cometh my salvation." And because in the body of the Church Christ is the head, and some of the members still resist, the body does not appear to be subject even to the head. For if one member suffer, all the members suffer with it, and the whole body is tortured by the pain in one member. My meaning may be more clearly expressed thus. So long as we have the treasure in earthen vessels, and are clothed with frail flesh, or rather with mortal and corruptible flesh, we think ourselves fortunate if, in single virtues and separate portions of virtue, we are subject to God. But when this mortal shall have put on immortality, and this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and death shall be swallowed up in the victory of Christ, then will God be all in all: and so there will not be merely wisdom in Solomon, sweetness in David, zeal in Elias and Phinees, faith in Abraham, perfect love in Peter, to whom it was said, [5201] "Simon, son of John, lovest thou me?" zeal for preaching in the chosen vessel, and two or three virtues each in others, but God will be wholly in all, and the company of the saints will rejoice in the whole band of virtues, and God will be all in all.
19. C. Do I understand you to say that no saint, so long as he is in this poor body, can have all virtues?
A. Just so, because now we prophesy in part, and know in part. It is impossible for all things to be in all men, for no son of man is immortal.
C. How is it, then, that we read that he who has one virtue appears to have all?
A. By partaking of them, not possessing them, for individuals must excel in particular virtues. But I confess I don't know where to find what you say you have read.
C. Are you not aware that the philosophers take that view?
A. The philosophers may, but the Apostles do not. I heed not what Aristotle, but what Paul, teaches.
C. Pray does not James the Apostle [5202] write that he who stumbles in one point is guilty of all?
A. The passage is its own interpreter. James did not say, as a starting-point for the discussion, he who prefers a rich man to a poor man in honour is guilty of adultery or murder. That is a delusion of the Stoics who maintain the equality of sins. But he proceeds thus: "He who said, Thou shalt not commit adultery, said also, Thou shalt not kill: but although thou dost not kill, yet, if thou commit adultery, thou art become a transgressor of the law." Light offences are compared with light ones, and heavy offences with heavy ones. A fault that deserves the rod must not be avenged with the sword; nor must a crime worthy of the sword, be checked with the rod.
C. Suppose it true that no saint has all the virtues: you will surely grant that within the range of his ability, if a man do what he can, he is perfect.
A. Do you not remember what I said before?
C. What was it?
A. That a man is perfect in respect of what he has done, imperfect in respect of what he could not do.
C. But as he is perfect in respect of what he has done, because he willed to do it, so in respect of that which constitutes him imperfect, because he has not done it, he might have been perfect, had he willed to do it.
A. Who does not wish to do what is perfect? Or who does not long to grow vigorously in all virtue? If you look for all virtues in each individual, you do away with the distinctions of things, and the difference of graces, and the variety of the work of the Creator, whose prophet cries aloud in the sacred song: [5203] "In wisdom hast thou made them all." Lucifer may be indignant because he has not the brightness of the moon. The moon may dispute over her eclipses and ceaseless toil, and ask why she must traverse every month the yearly orbit of the sun. The sun may complain and want to know what he has done that he travels more slowly than the moon. And we poor creatures may demand to know why it is that we were made men and not angels; although your teacher, [5204] the Ancient, the fountain from which these streams flow, asserts that all rational creatures were created equal and started fairly, like charioteers, either to succumb halfway, or to pass on rapidly and reach the wished-for goal. Elephants, with their huge bulk, and griffins, might discuss their ponderous frames and ask why they must go on four feet, while flies, midges, and other creatures like them have six feet under their tiny wings, and there are some creeping things which have such an abundance of feet that the keenest vision cannot follow their countless and simultaneous movements. Marcion and all the heretics who denied the Creator's works might speak thus. Your principle goes so far that while its adherents attack particular points, they are laying hands on God; they are asking why He only is God, why He envies the creatures, and why they are not all endowed with the same power and importance. You would not say so much (for you are not mad enough to openly fight against God), yet this is your meaning in other words, when you give man an attribute of God, and make him to be without sin like God Himself. Hence the Apostle, with his voice of thunder, says, concerning different graces: [5205] "There are diversities of gifts, but the same spirit; and differences of ministrations, but the same Lord; and there are diversities of workings, but the same God, Who worketh all things in all."
20. C. You push this one particular point too far in seeking to convince me that a man cannot have all excellences at the same time. As though God were guilty of envy, or unable to bestow upon His image and likeness a correspondence in all things to his Creator.
A. Is it I or you who go too far? You revive questions already settled, and do not understand that likeness is one thing, equality another; that the former is a painting, the latter, reality. A real horse courses over the plains; the painted one with his chariot does not leave the wall. The Arians do not allow to the Son of God what you give to every man. Some do not dare to confess the perfect humanity of Christ, lest they should be compelled to accept the belief that He had the sins of a man as though the Creator were unequal to the act of creating, and the title Son of Man were co-extensive with the title Son of God. So either set me something else to answer, or lay aside pride and give glory to God.
C. You forget a former answer of yours, and have been so busy forging your chain of argument, and careering through the wide fields of Scripture, like a horse that has slipped its bridle, that you have not said a single word about the main point. Your forgetfulness is a pretext for escaping the necessity of a reply. It was foolish in me to concede to you for the nonce what you asked, and to suppose that you would voluntarily give up what you had received, and would not need a reminder to make you pay what you owed.
A. If I mistake not, it was the question of possible commands of which I deferred the answer. Pray proceed as you think best.
21. C. The commands which God has given are either possible or impossible. If possible, it is in our power to do them, if we choose. If impossible, we cannot be held guilty for omitting duties which it is not given us to fulfill. Hence it results that, whether God has given possible or impossible commands, a man can be without sin if he chooses.
A. I beg your patient attention, for what we seek is not victory over an opponent, but the triumph of truth over falsehood. God has put within the power of mankind all arts, for we see that a vast number of men have mastered them. To pass over those which the Greeks call [5206] banausoi, as we may say, the manual arts, I will instance grammar, rhetoric, the three sorts of philosophy--physics, ethics, logic--geometry also, and astronomy, astrology, arithmetic, music, which are also parts of philosophy; medicine, too, in its threefold division--theory, investigation, practice; a knowledge of law in general and of particular enactments. Which of us, however clever he may be, will be able to understand them all, when the most eloquent of orators, discussing rhetoric and jurisprudence, said: "A few may excel in one, in both no one can." You see, then, that God has commanded what is possible, and yet, that no one can by nature attain to what is possible. Similarly he has given different rules and various virtues, all of which we cannot possess at the same time. Hence it happens that a virtue which in one person takes the chief place, or is found in perfection, in another is but partial; and yet, he is not to blame who has not all excellence, nor is he condemned for lacking that which he has not; but he is justified through what he does possess. The Apostle described the character of a bishop when he wrote to Timothy, [5207] "The bishop, therefore, must be without reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, modest, orderly, given to hospitality, apt to teach; no brawler, no striker; but gentle, not contentious, no lover of money; one that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all modesty." And again, "Not a novice, lest, being puffed up, he fall into the condemnation of the devil. Moreover, he must have good testimony from them that are without, lest he fall into reproach and the snare of the devil." Writing also to his disciple Titus, he briefly points out what sort of bishops he ought to ordain: [5208] "For this cause left I thee in Crete, that thou shouldest set in order the things that were wanting, and appoint elders in every city, as I gave thee charge; if any man is blameless, the husband of one wife, having children that believe, who are not accused of riot or unruly. For the bishop must be blameless (or free from accusation, for so much is conveyed by the original) as God's steward; not self-willed, not soon angry, no brawler, no striker, not greedy of filthy lucre; but given to hospitality, kind, modest, just, holy, temperate; holding to the faithful word which is according to the teaching, that he may be able both to exhort in the sound doctrine, and to convict the gainsayers." I will not now say anything of the various rules relating to different persons, but will confine myself to the commands connected with the bishop.
22. God certainly wishes bishops or priests to be such as the chosen vessel teaches they should be. As to the first qualification it is seldom or never that one is found without reproach; for who is it that has not some fault, like a mole or a wart on a lovely body? If the Apostle himself says of Peter that he did not tread a straight path in the truth of the Gospel, and was so far to blame that even Barnabas was led away into the same dissimulation, who will be indignant if that is denied to him which the chief of the Apostles had not? Then, supposing you find one, "the husband of one wife, sober-minded, orderly, given to hospitality," the next attribute--didaktikon , apt to teach, not merely as the Latin renders the word, apt to be taught--you will hardly find in company with the other virtues. A bishop or priest that is a brawler, or a striker, or a lover of money, the Apostle rejects, and in his stead would have one gentle, not contentious, free from avarice, one that rules well his own house, and what is very hard, one who has his children in subjection with all modesty, whether they be children of the flesh or children of the faith. "With all modesty," he says. It is not enough for him to have his own modesty unless it be enhanced by the modesty of his children, companions, and servants, as David says, [5209] "He that walketh in a perfect way, he shall minister unto me." Let us consider, also, the emphasis laid on modesty by the addition of the words "having his children in subjection with all modesty." Not only in deed but in word and gesture must he hold aloof from immodesty, lest perchance the experience of Eli be his. Eli certainly rebuked his sons, saying, [5210] "Nay, my sons, nay; it is not a good report which I hear of you." He chided them, and yet was punished, because he should not have chided, but cast them off. What will he do who rejoices at vice or lacks the courage to correct it? Who fears his own conscience, and therefore pretends to be ignorant of what is in everybody's mouth? The next point is that the bishop must be free from accusation, that he have a good report from them who are without, that no reproaches of opponents be levelled at him, and that they who dislike his doctrine may be pleased with his life. I suppose it would not be easy to find all this, and particularly one "able to resist the gain-sayers," to check and overcome erroneous opinions. He wishes no novice to be ordained bishop, and yet in our time we see the youthful novice sought after as though he represented the highest righteousness. If baptism immediately made a man righteous, and full of all righteousness, it was of course idle for the Apostle to repel a novice; but baptism annuls old sins, does not bestow new virtues; it looses from prison, and promises rewards to the released if he will work. Seldom or never, I say, is there a man who has all the virtues which a bishop should have. And yet if a bishop lacked one or two of the virtues in the list, it does not follow that he can no longer be called righteous, nor will he be condemned for his deficiencies, but will be crowned for what he has. For to have all and lack nothing is the virtue of Him [5211] "Who did no sin; neither was guile found in His mouth; Who, when He was reviled, reviled not again;" Who, confident in the consciousness of virtue, said, [5212] "Behold the prince of this world cometh, and findeth nothing in me;" [5213] "Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be on an equality with God, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God gave Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things on earth, and things under the earth." If, then, in the person of a single bishop you will either not find at all, or with difficulty, even a few of the things commanded, how will you deal with the mass of men in general who are bound to fulfil all the commandments?
23. Let us reason from things bodily to things spiritual. One man is swift-footed, but not strong-handed. That man's movements are slow, but he stands firm in battle. This man has a fine face, but a harsh voice: another is repulsive to look at, but sings sweetly and melodiously. There we see a man of great ability, but equally poor memory; here is another whose memory serves him, but whose wits are slow. In the very discussions with which when we were boys we amused ourselves, all the disputants are not on a level, either in introducing a subject, or in narrative, or in digressions, or wealth of illustration, and charm of peroration, but their various oratorical efforts exhibit different degrees of merit. Of churchmen I will say more. Many discourse well upon the Gospels, but in explaining an Apostle's meaning are unequal to themselves. Others, although most acute in the New Testament are dumb in the Psalms and the Old Testament. I quite agree with Virgil--Non omnia possumus omnes; and seldom or never is the rich man found who in the abundance of his wealth has everything in equal proportions. That God has given possible commands, I admit no less than you. But it is not for each one of us to make all these possible virtues our own, not because our nature is weak, for that is a slander upon God, but because our hearts and minds grow weary and cannot keep all virtues simultaneously and perpetually. And if you blame the Creator for having made you subject to weariness and failure, I shall reply, your censure would be still more severe if you thought proper to accuse Him of not having made you God. But you will say, if I have not the power, no sin attaches to me. You have sinned because you have not done what another could do. And again, he in comparison with whom you are inferior will be a sinner in respect of some other virtue, relatively to you or to another person; and thus it happens that whoever is thought to be first, is inferior to him who is his superior in some other particular.
24. C. If it is impossible for man to be without sin, what does the Apostle Jude mean by writing, [5214] "Now unto Him that is able to keep you without sin, and to set you before the presence of His glory without blemish"? This is clear proof that it is possible to keep a man without sin and without blemish.
A. You do not understand the passage. We are not told that a man can be without sin, which is your view, but that God, if He chooses, can keep a man free from sin, and of His mercy guard him so that he may be without blemish. And I say that all things are possible with God; but that everything which a man desires is not possible to him, and especially, an attribute which belongs to no created thing you ever read of.
C. I do not say that a man is without sin, which, perhaps, appears to you to be possible; but that he may be, if he chooses. For actuality is one thing, possibility another. In the actual we look for an instance; possibility implies that our power to act is real.
A. You are trifling, and forget the proverb, "Don't do what is done." You keep turning in the same mire, [5215] and only make more dirt. I shall, therefore, tell you, what is clear to all, that you are trying to establish a thing that is not, never was, and, perhaps, never will be. To employ your own words, and show the folly and inconsistency of your argument, I say that you are maintaining an impossible possibility. For your proposition, that a man can be without sin if he chooses, is either true or false. If it be true, show me who the man is; if it be false, whatever is false can never happen. But let us have no more of these notions. Hissed off the stage, and no longer daring to appear in public, they should stay on the book shelves, and not let themselves be heard.
25. Let us proceed to other matters. And here I must speak uninterruptedly, so far, at least, as is consistent with giving you an opportunity of refuting me, or asking any question you think fit.
C. I will listen patiently, though I cannot say gladly. The ability of your reasoning will strike me all the more, while I am amazed at its falsity.
A. Whether what I am going to say is true or false, you will be able to judge when you have heard it.
C. Follow your own method. I am resolved, if I am unable to answer, to hold my tongue rather than assent to a lie.
A. What difference does it make whether I defeat you speaking or silent, and, as it is in the [5216] story of Proteus, catch you asleep or awake?
C. When you have said what you like, you shall hear what you will certainly not like. For though truth may be put to hard shifts it cannot be subdued.
A. I want to sift your opinions a little, that your followers may know what an inspired genius you are. You say, "It is impossible for any but those who have the knowledge of the law to be without sin"; and you, consequently, shut out from righteousness a large number of Christians, and, preacher of sinlessness though you are, declare nearly all to be sinners. For how many Christians have that knowledge of the law which you can find but seldom, or hardly at all, in many doctors of the Church? But your liberality is so great that, in order to stand well with your Amazons, you have elsewhere written, "Even women ought to have a knowledge of the law," although the Apostle preaches that women ought to keep silence in the churches, and if they want to know anything consult their husbands at home. And you are not content with having given your cohort a knowledge of Scripture, but you must delight yourself with their songs and canticles, for you have a heading to the effect that "Women also should sing unto God." Who does not know that women should sing in the privacy of their own rooms, away from the company of men and the crowded congregation? But you allow what is not lawful, and the consequence is, that, with the support of their master, they make an open show of that which should be done with modesty, and with no eye to witness.
26. You go on to say, "The servant of God should utter from his lips no bitterness, but ever that which is sweet and pleasant"; and as though a servant of God were one thing, a doctor and priest of the Church another, forgetting what was previously laid down, you say in another heading, "A priest or doctor ought to watch the actions of all, and confidently rebuke sinners, lest he be responsible for them and their blood be required at his hands." And, not satisfied with saying it once, you repeat it, and inculcate that, "A priest or doctor should flatter no one, but boldly rebuke all, lest he destroy both himself and those who hear him." Is there so little harmony in one and the same work that you do not know what you have previously said? For if the servant of God ought to utter no bitterness from his mouth, but always that which is sweet and pleasant, it follows either that a priest and doctor will not be servants of God who ought to confidently rebuke sinners, and flatter no one, but boldly reprove all: or, if a priest and a doctor are not only servants of God, but have the chief place among His servants, it is idle to reserve smooth and pleasant speeches for the servants of God, for these are characteristic of heretics and of them who wish to deceive; as the Apostle says, [5217] "They that are such serve not our Lord Christ but their own belly, and by their smooth and fair speech they beguile the hearts of the innocent." Flattery is always insidious, crafty, and smooth. And the flatterer is well described by the philosophers as "a pleasant enemy." Truth is bitter, of gloomy visage and wrinkled brow, and distasteful to those who are rebuked. Hence the Apostle says, [5218] "Am I become your enemy, because I tell you the truth?" And the comic poet tells us that "Obsequiousness is the mother of friendship, truth of enmity." Wherefore we also eat the Passover with bitter herbs, and the chosen vessel teaches that the Passover should be kept with truth and sincerity. Let truth in our case be plain speaking, and bitterness will instantly follow.
27. In another place you maintain that "All are governed by their own free choice." What Christian can bear to hear this? For if not one, nor a few, nor many, but all of us are governed by our own free choice, what becomes of the help of God? And how do you explain the text, [5219] "A man's goings are ordered by the Lord"? And [5220] "A man's way is not in himself"; and [5221] "No one can receive anything, unless it be given him from above"; and elsewhere, [5222] "What hast thou which thou didst not receive? But if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory as if thou hadst not received it?" Our Lord and Saviour says: [5223] "I am come down from heaven not to do Mine own will, but the will of the Father who sent Me." And in another place, [5224] "Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless not My will, but Thine be done." And in the Lord's prayer, [5225] "Thy will be done as in heaven, so on earth." How is it that you are so rash as to do away with all God's help? Elsewhere, you make a vain attempt to append the words "not without the grace of God"; but in what sense you would have them understood is clear from this passage, for you do not admit His grace in separate actions, but connect it with our creation, the gift of the law, and the power of free will.
28. The argument of the next section is, "In the day of judgment, no mercy will be shown to the unjust and to sinners, but they must be consumed in eternal fire." Who can bear this, and suffer you to prohibit the mercy of God, and to sit in judgment on the sentence of the Judge before the day of judgment, so that, if He wished to show mercy to the unjust and the sinners, He must not, because you have given your veto? For you say it is written in the one hundred and fourth Psalm, [5226] "Let sinners cease to be in the earth, and the wicked be no more." And in Isaiah, [5227] "The wicked and sinners shall be burned up together, and they who forsake God shall be consumed." Do you not know that mercy is sometimes blended with the threatenings of God? He does not say that they must be burnt with eternal fires, but let them cease to be in the earth, and the wicked be no more. For it is one thing for them to desist from sin and wickedness, another for them to perish for ever and be burnt in eternal fire. And as for the passage which you quote from Isaiah, "Sinners and the wicked shall be burned up together," he does not add for ever. "And they who forsake God shall be consumed." This properly refers to heretics, who leave the straight path of the faith, and shall be consumed if they will not return to the Lord whom they have forsaken. And the same sentence is ready for you if you neglect to turn to better things. Again, is it not marvellous temerity to couple the wicked and sinners with the impious, for the distinction between them is great? Every impious person is wicked and a sinner; but we cannot conversely say every sinner and wicked person is also impious, for impiety properly belongs to those who have not the knowledge of God, or, if they have once had it, lose it by transgression. But the wounds of sin and wickedness, like faults in general, admit of healing. Hence, it is written, [5228] "Many are the scourges of the sinner"; it is not said that he is eternally destroyed. And through all the scourging and torture the faults of Israel are corrected, [5229] "For whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth." It is one thing to smite with the affection of a teacher and a parent; another to be madly cruel towards adversaries. Wherefore, we sing in the first Psalm, [5230] "The impious do not rise in the judgment," for they are already sentenced to destruction; "nor sinners in the counsel of the just." To lose the glory of the resurrection is a different thing from perishing for ever. "The hour cometh," he says, [5231] "In which all that are in the tombs shall hear His voice, and shall come forth: they that have done good unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done ill unto the resurrection of judgment." And so the Apostle, in the same sense, because in the same Spirit, says to the Romans, [5232] "As many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law; and as many as have sinned under law, shall be judged by law." The man without law is the unbeliever who will perish for ever. Under the law is the sinner who believes in God, and who will be judged by the law, and will not perish. If the wicked and sinners are to be burned with everlasting fire, are you not afraid of the sentence you pass on yourself, seeing that you admit you are wicked and a sinner, while still you argue that a man is not without sin, but that he may be. It follows that the only person who can be saved is an individual who never existed, does not exist, and perhaps never will, and that all our predecessors of whom we read must perish. Take your own case. You are puffed up with all the pride of Cato, and have [5233] Milo's giant shoulders; but is it not amazing temerity for you, who are a sinner, to take the name of a teacher? If you are righteous, and, with a false humility, say you are a sinner, we may be surprised, but we shall rejoice at having so unique a treasure, and at reckoning amongst our friends a personage unknown to patriarch, prophet, and Apostle. And if Origen does maintain that no rational creatures ought to be lost, and allows repentance to the devil, what is that to us, who say that the devil and his attendants, and all impious persons and transgressors, perish eternally, and that [5234] Christians, if they be overtaken by sin, must be saved after they have been punished?
29. [5235] Besides all this you add two chapters which contradict one another, and which, if true, would effectually close your mouth. "Except a man have learned, he cannot be acquainted with wisdom and understand the Scriptures." And again, "He that has not been taught, ought not to assume that he knows the law." You must, then, either produce the master from whom you learned, if you are lawfully to claim the knowledge of the law; or, if your master is a person who never learned from any one else, and taught you what he did nor know himself, it follows that you are not acting rightly in claiming a knowledge of Scripture, when you have not been taught, and in starting as a master before you have been a disciple. And yet, perhaps, with your customary humility, you make your boast that the Lord Himself, Who teaches all knowledge, was your master, and that, like Moses in the cloud and darkness, face to face, you hear the words of God, and so, with the [5236] halo round your head, take the lead of us. And even this is not enough, but all at once you turn Stoic, and thunder in our ears Zeno's proud maxims. "A Christian ought to be so patient that if any one wished to take his property he would let it go with joy." Is it not enough for us patiently to lose what we have, without returning thanks to him who ill-treats and plunders us, and sending after him all blessings? The Gospel teaches that to him who would go to law with us, and by strife and litigation take away our coat, we must give our cloak also. It does not enjoin the giving of thanks and joy at the loss of our property. What I say is this, not that there is any enormity in your view, but that everywhere you are prone to exaggeration, and indulge in ambitious flights. This is why you add that "The bravery of dress and ornament is an enemy of God." What enmity, I should like to know, is there towards God if my tunic is cleaner than usual, or if the bishop, priest, or deacon, or any other ecclesiastics, at the offering of the sacrifices walk in white? Beware, ye clergy; beware, ye monks; widows and virgins, you are in peril unless the people see you begrimed with dirt, and clad in rags. I say nothing of lay-men, who proclaim open war and enmity against God if they wear costly and elegant apparel.
30. Let us hear the rest. "We must love our enemies as we do our neighbours"; and immediately, falling into a deep slumber, you lay down this proposition: "We must never believe an enemy." Not a word is needed from me to show the contradiction here. You will say that both propositions are found in Scripture, but you do not observe the particular connection in which the passages occur. I am told to love my enemies and pray for my persecutors. Am I bidden to love them as though they were my neighbours, kindred, and friends, and to make no difference between a rival and a relative? If I love my enemies as my neighbours, what more affection can I show to my friends? If you had maintained this position, you ought to have taken care not to contradict yourself by saying that we must never believe an enemy. But even the law teaches us how an enemy should be loved. [5237] If an enemy's beast be fallen, we must raise it up. And the Apostle tells us, [5238] "If thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink. For by so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head," not by way of curse and condemnation, as most people think, but to chasten and bring him to repentance, so that, overcome by kindness, and melted by the warmth of love, he may no longer be an enemy.
31. Your next point is that "the kingdom of heaven is promised even in the Old Testament," and you adduce evidence from the Apocrypha, although it is clear that the kingdom of heaven was first preached under the Gospel by John the Baptist, and our Lord and Saviour, and the Apostles. Read the Gospels. John the Baptist cries in the desert, [5239] "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand"; and concerning the Saviour it is written, [5240] "From that time He began to preach and to say, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." And again, [5241] "Jesus went round about the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the kingdom of God." And He commanded His Apostles to [5242] "go and preach, saying, the kingdom of heaven is at hand." But you call us Manichæans because we prefer the Gospel to the law, and say that in the latter we have the shadow, in the former, the substance, and you do not see that your foolishness goes hand in hand with impudence. It is one thing to condemn the law, as Manichæus did; it is another to prefer the Gospel to the law, for this is in accordance with apostolic teaching. In the law the servants of the Lord speak, in the Gospel the Lord Himself; in the former are the promises, in the latter their fulfilment; there are the beginnings, here is perfection; in the law the foundations of works are laid; in the Gospel the edifice is crowned with the top-stone of faith and grace. I have mentioned this to show the character of the teaching given by our distinguished professor.
32. The hundredth heading runs thus: "A man can be without sin, and easily keep the commandments of God if he chooses," as to which enough has already been said. And although he professes to imitate, or rather complete the work of the blessed martyr Cyprian in the treatise which the latter wrote to [5243] Quirinus, he does not perceive that he has said just the opposite in the work under discussion. Cyprian, in the fifty-fourth heading of the third book, lays it down that no one is free from stain and without sin, and he immediately gives proofs, among them the passage in Job, [5244] "Who is cleansed from uncleanness? Not he who has lived but one day upon the earth." [5245] And in the fifty-first Psalm, "Behold I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me." And in the Epistle of John, [5246] "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." You, on the other hand, maintain that "A man can be without sin," and that you may give your words the semblance of truth, you immediately add, "And easily keep the commandments of God, if he chooses," and yet they have been seldom or never kept by any one. Now, if they were easy, they ought to have been kept by all. But if, to concede you a point, at rare intervals some one may be found able to keep them, it is clear that what is rare is difficult. And by way of supplementing this and displaying the greatness of your own virtues (we are to believe, forsooth, that you bring forth the sentiment out of the treasure of a good conscience), you have a heading to the effect that: "We ought not to commit even light offences." And for fear some one might think you had not explained in the work the meaning of light, you add that, "We must not even think an evil thought," forgetting the words, [5247] "Who understands his offences? Clear thou me from hidden faults, and keep back thy servant from presumptuous sins, O Lord." You should have known that the Church admits even failures through ignorance and sins of mere thought to be offences; so much so that she bids sacrifices be offered for errors, and the high priest who makes intercession for the whole people previously offers victims for himself. Now, if he were not himself righteous, he would never be commanded to offer for others. Nor, again, would he offer for himself if he were free from sins of ignorance. If I were to attempt to show that error and ignorance is sin, I must roam at large over the wide fields of Scripture.
33. C. Pray have you not read that [5248] "He who looks upon a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart?" It seems that not only are the look and the allurements to vice reckoned as sin, but whatever it be to which we give assent. For either we can avoid an evil thought, and consequently may be free from sin; or, if we cannot avoid it, that is not reckoned as sin which cannot be avoided.
A. Your argument is ingenious, but you do not see that it goes against Holy Scripture, which declares that even ignorance is not without sin. Hence it was that Job offered sacrifices for his sons, lest, perchance, they had unwittingly sinned in thought. And if, when one is cutting wood, the axe-head flies from the handle and kills a man, the owner is [5249] commanded to go to one of the cities of refuge and stay there until the high priest dies; that is to say, until he is redeemed by the Saviour's blood, either in the baptistery, or in penitence which is a copy of the grace of baptism, through the ineffable mercy of the Saviour, who [5250] would not have any one perish, nor delights in the death of sinners, but would rather that they should be converted and live.
C. It is surely strange justice to hold me guilty of a sin of error of which my conscience does not accuse itself. I am not aware that I have sinned, and am I to pay the penalty for an offence of which I am ignorant? What more can I do, if I sin voluntarily?
A. Do you expect me to explain the purposes and plans of God? The Book of Wisdom gives an answer to your foolish question: [5251] "Look not into things above thee, and search not things too mighty for thee." And elsewhere, [5252] "Make not thyself overwise, and argue not more than is fitting." And in the same place, "In wisdom and simplicity of heart seek God." You will perhaps deny the authority of this book; listen then to the Apostle blowing the Gospel trumpet: [5253] "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past tracing out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been His counsellor?" Your questions are such as he elsewhere describes: [5254] "But foolish and ignorant questioning avoid, knowing that they gender strifes." And in Ecclesiastes (a book concerning which there can be no doubt) we read, [5255] "I said, I will be wise, but it was far from me. That which is exceeding deep, who can find it out?" You ask me to tell you why the potter makes one vessel to honour, another to dishonour, and will not be satisfied with Paul, who replies on behalf of his Lord, [5256] "O man, who art thou that repliest against God?"
The remainder of this book is occupied by a series of quotations from the Old Testament, designed to show that it is not only the outer and conscious act which is reckoned sinful, but the opposition to the Divine will, which is often implicit and half-conscious. Occasionally, also, the speaker shows how the texts quoted enforce the argument which he has before used, that men may be spoken of as righteous in a general sense, yet by no means free from sins of thought or desire, if not of act.
The passages quoted are:
Gen. viii. 21. I will not curse the ground....for the mind of man is set on evil from his youth.
xvii. 17, xviii. 12. Abraham and Sarah laughing at the promise.
xxxvii. 35. Jacob's excessive grief.
Exod. xxi. 12, 13. The guilt of one who slays another unawares.
Lev. iv. 2, 27. Offerings for sins of ignorance.
v. 3. Offerings for ceremonial uncleanness.
ix. 1. Offerings for Aaron at his consecration.
xii. 6. Offerings for women after childbirth.
xiv. 1, 6, xvi. 6, xii. 7. Offerings for the leper.
xv. 31, xvi. 2, 5. Offerings for the people on the day of atonement.
xxii. 14. Eating the hallowed things ignorantly; compared with 1 Cor. xi. 27, 28, of careless participation in Sacrament.
Numbers vi. 1. Offerings for the Nazarite.
xiv. 7, vii. 28, 29. Offerings for imploring God's Mercy.
xxviii. 15, 22, xxix. 5, v. 11, 17. Offerings at the feast.
Numbers xxxv. 13. The cities of refuge provided for manslayers.
Deut. ix. 6, xviii. 13. Israel warned not to boast of righteousness.
xviii. 9-12, v. 14, 15. Perfection used only of avoiding idolatry.
xxii. 8. The housetop without a parapet makes a man guilty.
xxiii. 2. Defilement from unconscious personal acts.
Josh. vii. 12. The people made guilty by the sin of Achan.
xi. 19, 20. The racial guilt of the Canaanites.
1 Sam. xiv. 27. Jonathan made guilty by tasting the honey.
xvi. 6. The Lord sees the heart, not the outward appearance.
2 Sam. iv. 11. Ishbosheth spoken of as righteous.
vi. 7, 8. Uzzah smitten for carelessness.
2 Sam. xxiv. 10. David's numbering the people.
1 Kings viii. 46. Solomon's Prayer--There is none that sinneth not.
xiv. 5. The prophet detecting the motive of Jeroboam's wife.
2 Kings iv. 27. Elijah seeing the Shunamite's heart.
1 Chron. ii. 32. Sept. Half-prophets.
Habakkuk iii. 1. Vulgate. A prayer "for sins of ignorance" ("upon Shigionoth"), supposed to be in recognition of over-boldness in i. 2-4.
Ezek. xlvi. 20. The sacrifice of Ezekiel's restored temple.
Jer. x. 23. The way of man not in himself.
xvii. 9. The heart deceitful.
Prov. xiv. 12. A way that seemeth right to a man.
xix. 21. Many devices in a man's heart.
xx. 9. Who can say, I have a clean heart?
17. Who will boast that he is clean?
Eccl. vii. 16. The heart of a man is full of wickedness. __________________________________________________________________
[5143] See S. Aug. De Sp. et Lit., c. i.
[5144] Ps. cxxvii. 1.
[5145] Pumice terere.
[5146] Rom. ix. 16.
[5147] Reading quod super artes est.
[5148] That is, Diodorous, surnamed Cronus, who lived at Alexandria in the reign of Ptolemy Soter (b.c. 323-285). He was the teacher of Philo. For his discussions On the Possible, Zeller's "Socrates and the Socratic Schools," Reichel's translation, pp. 272, 273, and authorities there cited, may be consulted.
[5149] Died b.c. 207, aged 73. He was the first to base the Stoic doctrine on something like systematic reasoning.
[5150] S. Matt. xix. 24.
[5151] S. Matt. xix. 21.
[5152] Job i. 1.
[5153] This appears to be an inaccurate quotation made from memory.
[5154] S. Luke i. 5 sqq.
[5155] Job xvi. 21. Vulg. R.V. Margin--"That one might plead for a man with God as a son of man pleadeth for his neighbour."
[5156] Job xxxi. 35.
[5157] Job ix. 20, 30, 31.
[5158] S. Luke i. 18.
[5159] Ib. 20.
[5160] Eccles. vii. 21.
[5161] 2 Chron vi. 36.
[5162] Ps. xix. 12, 13.
[5163] Ps. cxliii. 2.
[5164] 1 John v. 18, 19.
[5165] 1 John i. 8.
[5166] 1 John i. 9.
[5167] Prov. xviii. 17, Vulg. nearly.
[5168] Is. xliii. 26, Sept.
[5169] Rom. xi. 32.
[5170] Jer. xxiii. 28.
[5171] Deut. xviii. 13.
[5172] S. Matt. v. 48.
[5173] Ps. xli. 7.
[5174] Rom. iii. 23, 24. So R.V. Margin--"To be propitiatory."
[5175] Cic. Lib. iv. Acad. Quæst.
[5176] Phil. iii. 12-16.
[5177] From scheptomai , to keep watch.
[5178] Prov. i. 3, Sept.
[5179] Ps. cxix. 18.
[5180] The reading is much disputed.
[5181] Ps. cxliii. 2.
[5182] Malach. iii. 6.
[5183] 2 Cor. iii. 10.
[5184] Ib. 11.
[5185] 1 Cor. xiii. 9, 10.
[5186] 1 Cor. xiii. 12.
[5187] cxxxix. 6.
[5188] Ps. lxxiii. 16, 17.
[5189] Ibid. 22, 23.
[5190] Jer. x. 14.
[5191] 1 Cor. i. 25.
[5192] 2 Tim. iv. 7, 8.
[5193] 1 Cor. xii. 21, 29, 11.
[5194] Rom. ix. 21.
[5195] S. Luke i. 48 sq.
[5196] Lam. iv. 6.
[5197] Ezek. xvi. 55.
[5198] Gen. xxxviii. 26.
[5199] 1 Cor. xv. 28.
[5200] Ps. lxii. 2.
[5201] S. John xxi. 15-17.
[5202] James ii. 10.
[5203] Ps. civ. 24.
[5204] According to some, Plato: more probably, Origen, the word archaios being an allusion to the title of his chief work, Peri 'Archon.
[5205] 1 Cor. xii. 4, 5.
[5206] That is, mean.
[5207] 1 Tim. iii. 2 sq.
[5208] Titus i. 5 sq.
[5209] Ps. ci. 6.
[5210] 1 Sam. ii. 24.
[5211] 1 Pet. ii. 22.
[5212] S. John xiv. 30.
[5213] Phil. ii. 6 sq.
[5214] Verse 24.
[5215] Literally, wash a brick (that has not been burnt). Hence (1) labour in vain, or (2) make bad worse. The latter appears to be the meaning here.
[5216] Virg. Georg., iv.
[5217] Rom. xvi. 18.
[5218] Gal. iv. 16.
[5219] Prov. xx. 24.
[5220] Jer. x. 23.
[5221] S. John xx. 11.
[5222] 1 Cor. iv. 7.
[5223] S. John vi. 38.
[5224] S. Luke xxii. 42.
[5225] S. Matt. vi. 10.
[5226] Ps. civ. 35.
[5227] Is. i. 28.
[5228] Ps. xxxii. 10.
[5229] Heb. xii. 6.
[5230] Verse 5. Sept.
[5231] S. John v. 28, 29.
[5232] Rom. ii. 12.
[5233] The reference is to the stature of Pelagius.
[5234] The sense of this passage is much disputed. St. Jerome was, possibly, speaking of persons who upon the whole are sincere and not merely covenanted Christians.
[5235] Jerome seems here to speak in his own person and to address Pelagius directly.
[5236] Cornuta fronte. Literally, "with horned brow." The allusion is to the rays of light which beamed from the face of Moses, the Hebrew word bearing both meanings, ray and horn. Hence the portraiture of him with horns.
[5237] Deut. xxii. 4.
[5238] Rom. xii. 20.
[5239] S. Matt. iii. 2.
[5240] iv. 17.
[5241] iv. 23.
[5242] x. 7.
[5243] A Christian of Carthage who, together with Cyprian, sent relief to the bishops and martyrs in the Mines of Sigus, in Numidia, and elsewhere (a.d. 257).
[5244] Job xiv. 4.
[5245] Ps. li. 5.
[5246] 1 John i. 8.
[5247] Ps. xix. 12, 13.
[5248] S. Matt. v. 28.
[5249] Numb. xxxv. 6.
[5250] Ezek. xviii. 23.
[5251] iii. 21.
[5252] Eccles. vii. 16.
[5253] Rom. xi. 33, 34.
[5254] 2 Tim. ii. 23.
[5255] Eccles. vii. 24, 25.
[5256] Rom. ix. 20. __________________________________________________________________
Book II.
This book can hardly be said to form part of a dialogue. It is rather an argument from Scripture to prove the point of the Augustinian arguer, Atticus. From the fourth chapter onwards it consists, like the last five chapters of Book I., of a chain of Scripture texts, taken from the New Testament and the Prophets, to show the universality of sin, and thus to refute the Pelagian assertion that a man can be without sin if he wills. We shall, therefore, give, as in the previous case, a list of the texts and the first words of them, only giving Jerome's words where he introduces some original remark of his own, or some noteworthy comment.
The Pelagian begins by reiterating the dilemma: If the commandments are given to be obeyed, then man can be without sin; if he is, by his creation, such that he must be a sinner, then God, not he, is the author of sin. To the argument that sacrifices are enjoined for sins of ignorance, he replies by appealing from the Old Testament to the New, which leads to a discussion (2, 3) on St. Paul's description of the conflict with sin, in Romans vii. Paul, it is argued, speaks not as a sinner, but as a man, and thus confesses the sinfulness of humanity. That men may be without ingrained vice is possible; that they can be without sin is not. This leads the Augustinian, Atticus, resuming his list of testimonies, to the fact that, though men are found who are righteous as avoiding wickedness (kakia), yet none is without sin (anamartetos ).
In Psalm xxxii. 5. One who speaks of himself as "holy," yet confesses his transgression.
Prov. xxiv. 16. Explains this, "The righteous falls, but sins again."
xviii. 17, LXX. and Vulgate. A righteous man accuses himself when he begins to speak.
Ps. lviii. 3. Sinners are estranged from the womb; that is, either, as St. Paul says (Rom. v. 14), they sin "after the similitude of Adam"; or, "when Christ, as the firstborn, opened the virgin's womb" (Exod. xiii. 2). The heretics refused to acknowledge the mystery, which was prefigured by the Eastern door of the Temple (Ezek. xliv. 2), which closed again when once the High Priest had gone through it. [5257]
Job iv. 17-21. Shall mortal man be just with God?
vii. 1. The life of man is temptation.
20, 21. If I have sinned, what can I do?
ix. 15, 16. If I were righteous, he would not hear me.
29-31. If I wash myself with snow water, etc.
x. 15. If I be righteous, etc.
xiv. 4, 5. Who will be free from uncleanliness? Not one.
Prov. xvi. 26, LXX. Man toileth in sorrow.
Job xl. 4. What shall I answer thee?
Prov. xx. 9. "Who will boast that he has a clean heart?" which shows at least that the commandments are not easy, as Pelagius says they are.
1 John v. 3. "His commandments are not grievous," and
Matt. xi. 30. "My yoke is easy," are true only in comparison with Judaism, and should be compared with
Acts xv. 10. A yoke ...which neither our fathers nor we are able to bear.
James iv. 11. "Thou judgest the law," that is, if you say that the condemnation of sins of ignorance is unreasonable. That we all sin in such ways is evident from
James i. 20. "The wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God." But anger is constantly condemned as in
Prov. xv. 1, LXX. "Wrath destroys even wise men."
Eph. iv. 26. Let not the sun go down upon your wrath.
Matt. v. 22. He who is angry...shall be in danger of council.
Eccles. xi. 19. "I am the most foolish of all men." This is said by Christ in the person of humanity. So
Ps. lxix. 5. "God, Thou knowest my foolishness." But
1 Cor. i. 25. The foolishness of God is wiser than men.
Ecclus. i. 18. "In much wisdom is much grief," shows the wise man's sense of imperfection. So
viii. 7. "I hated my life," and
14. "There be righteous men unto whom it happeneth according to the work of the wicked;" that is, God sees evil where we do not.
17. "However much a man may labor, yet he shall not find it;" and
ix. 2, 3. There is one event to all. The heart...is full of evil.
x. 1. "Dead flies cause the ointment to stink;" That is, almost everyone is defiled by heresy or other faults.
1 Pet. ii. 17, 18. Judgement must begin at the house of God.
6. There are four emotions which agitate mankind, two relating to the present, two to the future; two to good, and two to evil. There is sorrow, called in Greek lupe, and joy, in Greek chara or hedone, although many translate the latter word by voluptas, pleasure; the one of which is referred to evil, the other to good. And we go too far if we rejoice over such things as we ought not, as, for example, riches, power, distinctions, the bad fortune of enemies, or their death; or, on the other hand, if we are tortured with grief on account of present evils, adversity, exile, poverty, weakness, and the death of kindred, all of which is forbidden by the Apostle. And again, if we covet those things which we consider good, inheritance, distinctions, unvaried prosperity, bodily health, and the like, in the possession of which we rejoice and find enjoyment; or if we fear those things which we deem adverse. Now, according to the Stoics, Zeno that is to say and Chrysippus, it is possible for a perfect man to be free from these emotions; according to the Peripatetics, it is difficult and even impossible, an opinion which has the constant support of all Scripture. Hence Josephus, the historian of the Maccabees, said that the emotions can be subdued and governed, not extirpated, and Cicero's five books of "Tusculan Disputations" are full of these discussions. [5258] According to the Apostle, the weakness of the body and spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places fight against us. And the same writer [5259] tells us that the works of the flesh and the works of the spirit are manifest, and these are contrary the one to the other, so that we do not the things that we would. If we do not what we would, but what we would not, how can you say that a man can be without sin if he chooses? You see that neither an Apostle, nor any believer can perform what he wishes. [5260] "Love covereth a multitude of sins," not so much sins of the past as sins of the present, that we may not sin any more while the love of God abideth in us. Wherefore it is said concerning the woman that was a sinner, [5261] "Her sins which are many are forgiven her, for she loved much." And this shows us that the doing what we wish does not depend merely upon our own power, but upon the assistance which God in His mercy gives to our will.
7. The quotations from Scripture are now continued:
In 1 John i. 5, John i. 7, 8, Matt. v. 14, Christ and the Apostles are called the Light of the world. The world therefore is darkness.
1 Tim. vi. 16. God only hath immortality and is "only wise"; yet others, like the Prince of Tyre (Ezek. xxviii. 3), are wise derivatively. So we are pure, but only by grace. Thus
1 John i. 7. The blood of Christ cleanses us.
Job xxv. 5, 6. The stars are not pure in his sight.
Gal. ii. 16. "By the law no flesh shall be justified;" but
Rom. iii. 1, 24, 28, 30. Being justified freely through His grace, etc.
vi. 14. Not under the law, but under grace.
ix. 16. Not of him that willeth, but of God which showeth mercy.
ix. 30-32. The Gentiles...attained to the righteousness by faith.
x. 2. Christ is the end of the law to every one that believeth.
8. The Apostle confesses his need of this grace for his work.
1 Cor. i. 1-3. Grace to you from God.
7, 8. That ye come behind in no gift--that no flesh may glory in His sight.
1 Cor. iii. 6-10. Paul planted...but God gave the increase.
18, 19. If any man thinketh himself to be wise, let him become a fool.
iv. 4. I know nothing against myself, yet I am not hereby justified.
7. What have ye that ye did not receive?
19. I will come to you, if the Lord will.
9. The Apostle shows also his need of grace himself.
1 Cor. xv. 9, 10. By the grace of God I am what I am, etc.
2 Cor. iii. 4-6. Our sufficiency is of God.
Gal. ii. 16. We have believed, that we might, be justified by faith.
ii. 21. If righteousness come by the law, Christ is dead for nought.
iii. 10, 13. Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law.
24. The law our teacher to bring us to Christ.
v. 4. Ye are severed from Christ, ye that would be justified by the law.
10.
Phil. ii. 13. It is God that worketh in you.
2 Thess. iii. 3. The Lord is faithful, He shall establish you.
1 Tim. vi. 20, 21. O Timothy, guard that which is committed unto thee.
Tit. iii. 4-7. The kindness and mercy of God our Saviour saved us.
11. We now turn to the Gospels "and supplement the flickering flame of the Apostolic light with the brightness of the lamp of Christ."
Matt. v. 22. "Every man who is angry...shall be in danger of the council." Which of us is not here condemned?
23, 24. "First be reconciled to thy brother." Who is there that finds this command easy?
37. "Let your speech be Yea, yea, Nay, nay." Who has ever kept this commandment? The Psalmist says Ps. cxvi. 11. All men are liars.
12.
Matt. vi. 34. "Be not anxious for to-morrow." Do you fulfil this?
vii. 14. "Narrow is the gate which leadeth to life." How can you say that the commandments are easy?
Luke ix. 58. "The Son of Man hath not where to lay His head." This is interpreted by
Is. xxviii. 12. "Receive him that is weary, and this is my rest;" and
Is. lxvi. 1, 2. "On whom shall I rest but on him that is humble?" Christ finds few on whom to rest. How then can His commands be said to be easy?
Matt. ix. 12, 13. "I came not to call the righteous." "They that are whole need not the physician." Had the world not been full of sin, Christ would not have come. So
Ps. xii. 1. Help, Lord, for the godly man ceaseth.
xiv. 1, 3. They are corrupt...none doeth good.
Matt. x. 9. "Get you no gold...nor shoes." Who has fulfilled this? Not even the Apostles, for
Acts xii. 8. The angel bids Peter to bind on his sandals.
13.
Matt. x. 22-34. Describes the persecutions of Christ's followers, and gives the command to take up the cross. Are these easy?
xiv. 31. Even Peter's faith fails, and he begins to sink.
xv. 19, 20. Out of the heart came evil thoughts, etc.
xvi. 25. Whosoever will lose his life will find it.
xviii. 7. "Woe to the man through whom stumbling cometh." But
James iii. 2. In many things we all stumble or err.
Phil. ii. 21. All seek their own.
Matt. xix. 21. The young lawyer had kept all the law, yet failed.
xxiii. 26-28. The woes on the Pharisees fall in their measure upon all.
14.
Matt. xxvi. 39. "Not as I will, but as Thou wilt." Yet Critobulus says, by his own will he can do right.
Mark xiv. 37. "Could ye not watch with me one hour?" They could not.
vi. 5. He could do no mighty works because of their unbelief.
vii. 24. "He went into the borders of Tyre and Sidon." If Christ could not do as he wished, how can we?
ix. 5. Peter's request at the Transfiguration shows his ignorance.
xiii. 32. Even the Son knows not all things; how then can we?
xiv. 35. If it be possible. How can you say it is possible every hour to avoid sin?
15.
Mark xvi. 14. Even the Apostles showed unbelief and hardness of heart.
1 John v. 19. The world lieth in the evil one.
Luke i. 20. Even Zacharias disbelieved God's message.
Matt. xvii. 15. The disciples could not relieve the lunatic, because of unbelief.
Mark iv. 34. The disciple's dispute about precedence.
Luke ix. 54. James and John show a vindictive spirit.
xiv. 26, 27. The commands to forsake all and take up the cross are not easy.
xvi. 15. That which is exalted among men is abomination in the sight of God.
xvii. 1. It is impossible but that occasions of stumbling should come.
xvii. 6. The Apostles' faith was not even like a grain of mustard seed.
James iii. 2.
Matt. xvii. 19.
16.
Luke xviii. 1. We are always to pray. This shows our weakness.
27. Who, then, can be saved? It is possible, but to God only.
xxii. 24. The contest for precedence at the last supper.
31, 32. Peter's faith almost overcome by Satan.
Luke xxii. 43. Even Christ in his agony needs an angel to strengthen Him.
46. Pray that ye enter not into temptation.
17.
John v. 30. Even Christ says, "I cannot do anything by myself"; and
vii. 10. Was irresolute about going up to the Feast of Tabernacles.
19. None of you doeth the law.
viii. 3. None of the accusers of the woman taken in adultery were without sin. Christ wrote their names in the earth (Jerem. xvii. 13).
x. 8. All who came (not who were sent; Jerem. xiv. 15) before Christ were robbers.
xvii. 12. I kept them--they did not keep themselves.
Acts xv. 39. Paul and Barnabas quarrelled.
xvi. 6, 7. They were forbidden to preach where they chose.
18. Even the Apostles, with their full light, show their dependence on grace.
Acts xvii. 30. The times before Christ were times of ignorance.
1 Cor. iv. 19. I will come if the Lord will.
James ii. 10. To stumble in one point is to be guilty of all.
iii. 2. In many things we all stumble.
8. The tongue is a deadly poison.
19.
James iv. 1. Wars arise from our lust. David indeed said,
Ps. xxvi. 2. "Examine me and prove me," etc. This self-confidence led to his fall.
li. 1. Have mercy on me, O God.
lxxx. 5. "Thou feedest us with the bread of tears." Similarly
Ps. xxx. 6, 7. I said I shall never be moved...Thou didst hide Thy face.
xxxii. 5. I said I will confess my sin,
xxxvii. 5, 6. He shall make thy righteousness as the light.
39. The salvation of the righteous is of the Lord.
xxxviii. 7. There is no soundness in my flesh.
Rom. vii. 18. In my flesh dwelleth no good thing.
Ps. xxxviii. 8. Vulgate. My loins are filled with deceits.
xxxix. 5. He hath made our days as handbreadths.
lxix. 5. My sins are not hid from thee.
lxxvii. 2. My soul refused to be comforted.
10. This is the changing of the right hand of the Most High. [5262]
20.
Ps. lxxxix. 2. Mercy shall be built up forever.
xci. 6. From "the thing [5263] that walketh in darkness" who can be free? For
xi. 2. "The wicked bend their bow"--an image of the heretics.
xcii. 14. Those that are planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish.
ciii. 8, 10. The Lord is full of compassion.
2 Sam. viii. 13, 14. David receives the promises with the humble confession of his weakness. "Is this the law of man, O God?"
xvi. 10. He humbles himself under Abishai's violence and Shimei's curse.
xvii. 14. And is delivered only by God's confounding the counsel of Ahithophel.
1 Kings xiv. 8. It was God who gave Jeroboam the kingdom.
21.
1 Kings xv. 11. Asa, though a good man, was faulty.
xix. 4. Elijah fled from Jezebel.
Ps. cxviii. 6. The Lord is my keeper.
2 Chron. xvii. 3. Jehoshaphat prospers because the Lord is with him. Yet
xix. 2. He is rebuked for joining with Ahab.
2 Chron. xxii. 9. Ahaziah received burial among kings because descended from righteous Jehoshaphat.
2 Kings xviii. 3, 4, 7. Hezekiah did great things, but only through the Lord's help.
14. He gave the consecrated gold to the king of Assyria.
22. Even the best kings of Judah were imperfect.
2 Kings xx. 1, 5. Hezekiah wept when death was at hand, and recovered through special mercy.
13, 17. But he sinned in receiving the Babylonian envoys.
2 Chron. xxxii. 26. He fell by the lifting up of his heart.
xxxiv. 2. Josiah was a righteous man; yet
22, 23. He needed the aid of Huldah; and
xxxv. 22. He was slain through not heeding God's warning; and
23. The prophets also are weak and sinful.
Lam. iv. 20. Jeremiah [5264] lamented his fall.
Numb. xx. 10, 12. Moses is punished for his sin at Meribah. This is the meaning of Ps. cxli. 6. Vulgate. Their judges were swallowed up, joined to the Rock, etc.
Hosea ii. 19. God in mercy forgives Israel's unfaithfulness.
xi. 9. "I will not enter into the city." Only the Holy One is not joined to the mass of ungodliness.
Amos vi. 13. We turn righteousness into wormwood.
Jonah i. 14. The sailors confess that God is just in raising the storm.
Micah vii. 2. The godly man is perished from the earth, etc.
vi. 8. The command of justice, mercy, and a humble walk with God is only possible to humble faith, for
Ps. cxl. 6. "The wicked walk on every side," and
James iv. 6. God giveth grace to the humble.
24.
Habakkuk iii. 16. Let rottenness enter into my bones, if only I may rest, etc.
Zech. iii. 1. Joshua is represented as clothed in filthy garments, and is freed through God's mercy.
But Jovinian's heir says "I am quite free from sin, I have no filthy garments, I am governed by my own will, I am greater than an Apostle. The Apostle does what he would not, and what he would he does not; but I do what I will, and what I would not I do not: the kingdom of heaven has been prepared for me, or rather I have by my virtuous life prepared it for myself. Adam was subject to punishment, and so are others who think themselves guilty after the similitude of Adam's transgressions; I and my crew alone have nothing to fear. Other men shut up in their cells and who never see women, because, poor creatures! they do not listen to my words, are tormented with desire: crowds of women may surround me, I feel no stirring of concupiscence. For to me may be applied the [5265] words, Holy stones are rolled upon the ground,' and the reason why I am insensible to the attraction of sin is that in the power of free will I carry Christ's trophy about with me." But let us listen to God [5266] proclaiming by the mouth of Isaiah: "O my people, they which call thee happy cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths." Who is the greatest subverter of the people of God--he who, relying on the power of free choice, despises the help of the Creator, and is satisfied with following his own will, or he who dreads to be judged by the details of the Lord's commandments? To men of this sort, God [5267] says, "Woe unto you that are wise in your own eyes, and prudent in your own sight." Isaiah, if we follow the Hebrew, laments [5268] and says, "Woe is me because I have been silent, because I am a man of unclean lips: and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips, for mine eyes have seen the Lord of Hosts." He for his meritorious and virtuous life enjoyed the sight of God, and conscious of his sins confessed that he had unclean lips. Not that he had said anything repugnant to the will of God, but because, either from fear, or from a deep sense of shame, he had been [5269] silent, and had not reproved the errors of the people so freely as a prophet should. When do we sinners rebuke offenders, we who flatter wealth and accept the persons of sinners for the sake of filthy lucre? for we shall hardly say that we speak with perfect frankness to men of whose assistance we stand in need. Suppose that we do not such things as they, suppose we keep ourselves from every form of sin; to refrain from speaking the truth is certainly sin. In the Septuagint, however, we do not find the words "because I have been silent," but "because I was pricked," that is with the consciousness of sin; and thus the words of the [5270] prophet are fulfilled. "My life was turned into misery while I was pierced by the thorn." He was pricked by the thorn of sin: you are decked with the flowers of virtue. [5271] "The moon shall be ashamed, and the sun confounded, when the Lord shall punish the host of heaven on high." This is explained by another passage. [5272] "Even the stars are unclean in His sight," and again, [5273] "He chargeth His angels with folly." The moon is ashamed, the sun is confounded, and the sky covered with sackcloth, and shall we fearlessly and joyously, as though we were free from all sin, face the majesty of the Judge, when the mountains shall melt away, that is, all who are lifted up by pride, and all the host of the heavens, whether they be stars, or angelic powers, when the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll, and all their host shall fade away like leaves?
The argument is now carried on mostly by the quotation of passages from the prophets:
25.
Is. xxxiv. 5. "My sword hath drunk its fill in the heavens. It will come down in Edom." How much more is there wrath against sin on earth! Edom means blood, which cannot inherit the kingdom (1 Cor. xv. 50).
xlv. 9. Woe unto him who striveth with his Maker.
liii. 6. We have all gone astray like sheep.
Ezek. xvi. 14. Jerusalem is perfect in beauty; yet
Ezek. xvi. 60, 61. Her salvation is not of merit but of mercy.
Nahum i. 3. Though he cleanse, [5274] yet will he not make thee innocent.
1 Cor. xv. 9. I am not worthy--because I persecuted.
Ezek. xx. 43, 44. When pardoned, Jerusalem will still remember her sin.
Let us confess with shame that these are the utterances of men who have already won their reward; sinners upon earth, and still in our frail and mortal bodies let us adopt the language of the saints in heaven who have even been endowed with incorruption and immortality. [5275] "And ye say the way of the Lord is not equal, when your ways are not equal." It is Pharisaic pride to attribute to the injustice of the Creator sins which are due to our own will, and to slander His righteousness. The sons of Zadok, the priests of the spiritual temple, that is the Church, [5276] go not out to the people in their ministerial robes, lest by human intercourse they may lose their holiness and be defiled. And do you suppose that you, in the thick of the throng, and an ordinary individual, are pure?
26. Let us hastily run through the prophet Jeremiah:
Jerem. v. 1, 2. Is there any that doeth justly, etc.
vii. 21, 22. God rejects the sacrifices, because of the worshippers' evil lives.
xiii. 23. Can the Ethiopian change his skin?
27.
Jerem. xvii. 14. "Heal me, O Lord." Otherwise Jeremiah could only say, as in the text next quoted,
xx. 14, 17, 18. Cursed be the day wherein I was born, etc.
xxiii. 23. Am I a God at hand, etc. So conscious is he of God's power.
xxiv. 6, 7. God, not they themselves, will plant them, etc.
xxvi. 21-24. Jeremiah needed the help of Ahikam. How much more do we need that of God.
28.
Jerem. xxxi. 34. The promise of the new covenant.
xxxii. 30. The children of Israel have perpetually done evil.
xxxvii. 18, 19. Yet Jeremiah himself trembled before Zedekiah.
Jerem. xxx. 10, 11. Fear not, O Jacob, for I am with thee.
29.
Amos vi. 14. "We have taken us horns by our own strength." These are the boasts of heretics. But
Is. xvi. 6. His strength (Moab's) is by no means according to his arrogance. [5277]
Jerem. i. 7, 20. Men's sin will only be abolished because God is gracious to them. If you will abandon your assertions of natural ability, I will concede that your whole contention stands good, but only by the gift of God.
Lam. iii. 26-42. It is good that a man should quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord.
30.
Dan. iv. 17. The Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men.
Ps. cxiii. 7, 8. He raiseth up the poor out of the dust.
Is. xl. 17. He doeth what He will in heaven and in earth.
The words of 2 Maccabees v. 17, which say that Antiochus Epiphanes had power to overthrow the Temple, "because of the multitude of sins," are quoted in connection with the confessions of Daniel.
Dan. ix. 5. "We have sinned and dealt perversely," which is shown by
20. "While I was yet praying," etc., to be a personal, not only a national confession.
24. The prophecy of the seventy weeks shows that the prophet looked to God alone for the establishment of righteousness.
So then, until that end shall come, and this corruptible and mortal shall put on incorruption and immortality, we must be liable to sin; not, as you falsely say, owing to the fault of our nature and creation, but through the frailty and fickleness of human will, which varies from moment to moment; because God alone changeth not. You ask in what respects Abel, Enoch, Joshua the son of Nun, or Elisha, and the rest of the saints have sinned. There is no need to look for a knot in a bulrush; I freely confess I do not know; and I only wish that, when sins are manifest, I might still be silent. [5278] "I know nothing against myself," says St. Paul, "yet am I not hereby justified." [5279] "Man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart." Before Him no man is justified. And so Paul says confidently, [5280] "All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God"; and [5281] "God hath shut up all under sin that He may have mercy upon all"; and similarly in other passages which we have repeated again and again. __________________________________________________________________
[5257] There was an early and widespread belief, afterwards confirmed by a decree of the Council of Ephesus, that the birth of Christ was by miracle, not by a true and proper parturition.
[5258] Eph. vi. 12.
[5259] Gal. v. 19.
[5260] 1 Pet. iv. 8.
[5261] Luke vii. 47.
[5262] Vulgate, Rev. V. I will remember the years, etc. Marg.--The right hand of the Most High doth change.
[5263] LXX. A.V. Pestilence.
[5264] The words of the Lamentations refer to Zedekiah.
[5265] Zech. ix. 16, Sept. Correctly, they (God's people) shall be as the stones of a crown lifting themselves up (or glittering) upon His land.
[5266] Is. iii. 12.
[5267] v. 21.
[5268] vi. 5.
[5269] That is, according to Jerome's rendering of the Hebrew. R.V. has "I am undone." For the Sept. rendering see below.
[5270] Ps. xxxii. 4.
[5271] Is. xxiv. 21.
[5272] Job xxv. 5.
[5273] Job iv. 18.
[5274] Mundans: not in the Vulgate nor in A.V.
[5275] Ezek. xxxii. 17.
[5276] Ibid. xliv. 15, 16.
[5277] This is the sense of the Vulgate, but not the exact words.
[5278] 1 Cor. iv. 4.
[5279] 1 Sam. xvi. 7.
[5280] Rom. iii. 23.
[5281] Gal. iii. 22. __________________________________________________________________
Book III.
1. Critob. I am charmed with the exuberance of your eloquence, but at the same time I would remind you that, [5282] "In the multitude of words there wanteth not transgression." And how does it bear upon the question before us? You will surely admit that those who have received Christian baptism are without sin. And that being free from sin they are righteous. And that once they are righteous, they can, if they take care, preserve their righteousness, and so through life avoid all sin.
Attic. Do you not blush to follow the opinion of Jovinian, which has been exploded and condemned? For he relies upon just the same proofs and arguments as you do; nay, rather, you are all eagerness for his inventions, and desire to preach in the East what was formerly [5283] condemned at Rome, and not long ago in [5284] Africa. Read then the reply which was given to him, and you will there find the answer to yourself. For in the discussion of doctrines and disputed points, we must have regard not to persons but to things. And yet let me tell you that baptism condones past offences, and does not preserve righteousness in the time to come; the keeping of that is dependent on toil and industry, as well as earnestness, and above all on the mercy of God. It is ours to ask, to Him it belongs to bestow what we ask; ours to begin, His it is to finish; ours to offer what we can, His to fulfil what we cannot perform. [5285] "For except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it. Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain." Wherefore the Apostle [5286] bids us so run that we may attain. All indeed run, but one receiveth the crown. And in the [5287] Psalm it is written, "O Lord, thou hast crowned us with thy favour as with a shield." For our victory is won and the crown of our victory is gained by His protection and through His shield; and here we run that hereafter we may attain; there he shall receive the crown who in this world has proved the conqueror. And when we have been baptized we are told, [5288] "Behold thou art made whole; sin no more lest a worse thing happen unto thee." And again, [5289] "Know ye not that ye are a temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man profane the temple of God, him shall God destroy." And in another place, [5290] "The Lord is with you so long as ye are with Him: if ye forsake Him, He will also forsake you." Where is the man, do you suppose, in whom as in a shrine and sanctuary the purity of Christ is permanent, and in whose case the serenity of the temple is saddened by no cloud of sin? We cannot always have the same countenance, though the philosophers falsely boast that this was the experience of Socrates; how much less can our minds be always the same! As men have many expressions of countenance, so also do the feelings of their hearts vary. If it were possible for us to be always immersed in the waters of baptism, sins would fly over our heads and leave us untouched. The Holy Spirit would protect us. But the enemy assails us, and when conquered does not depart, but is ever lying in ambush, that he may secretly shoot the upright in heart.
2. In the Gospel according to the Hebrews, which is written in the Chaldee and Syrian language, but in Hebrew characters, and is used by the Nazarenes to this day (I mean the Gospel according to the Apostles, or, as is generally maintained, the Gospel according to Matthew, a copy of which is in the library at Cæsarea), we find, "Behold, the mother of our Lord and His brethren said to Him, John Baptist baptizes for the remission of sins; let us go and be baptized by him. But He said to them, what sin have I committed that I should go and be baptized by him? Unless, haply, the very words which I have said are only ignorance." And in the same volume, "If thy brother sin against thee in word, and make amends to thee, receive him seven times in a day." Simon, His disciple, said to Him, "Seven times in a day?" The Lord answered and said to him, "I say unto thee until seventy times seven." Even the prophets, after they were anointed with the Holy Spirit, were guilty of sinful words. Ignatius, an apostolic man and a martyr, boldly writes, [5291] "The Lord chose Apostles who were sinners above all men." It is of their speedy conversion that the Psalmist sings, [5292] "Their infirmities were multiplied; afterwards they made haste." If you do not allow the authority of this evidence, at least admit its antiquity, and see what has been the opinion of all good churchmen. Suppose a person who has been baptized to have been carried off by death either immediately, or on the very day of his baptism, and I will generously concede that he neither thought nor said anything whereby, through error and ignorance, he fell into sin. Does it follow that he will, therefore, be without sin, because he appears not to have overcome, but to have avoided sin? Is not the true reason rather that by the mercy of God he was released from the prison of sins and departed to the Lord? We also say this, that God can do what He wills; and that man of himself and by his own will cannot, as you maintain, be without sin. If he can, it is idle for you now to add the word grace, for, with such a power, he has no need of it. If, however, he cannot avoid sin without the grace of God, it is folly for you to attribute to him an ability which he does not possess. For whatever depends upon another's will, is not in the power of him whose ability you assert, but of him whose aid is clearly indispensable.
3. C. What do you mean by this perversity, or, rather, senseless contention? Will you not grant me even so much--that when a man leaves the waters of baptism he is free from sin?
A. Either I fail to express my meaning clearly, or you are slow of apprehension.
C. How so?
A. Remember both what you maintained and also what I say. You argued that a man can be free from sin if he chooses. I reply that it is an impossibility; not that we are to think that a man is not free from sin immediately after baptism, but that that time of sinlessness is by no means to be referred to human ability, but to the grace of God. Do not, therefore, claim the power for man, and I will admit the fact. For how can a man be able who is not able of himself? Or what is that sinlessness which is conditioned by the immediate death of the body? Should the man's life be prolonged, he will certainly be liable to sins and to ignorance.
C. Your logic stops my mouth. You do not speak with Christian simplicity, but entangle me in some fine distinctions between being and ability to be.
A. Is it I who play these tricks with words? The article came from your own workshop. For you say, not that a man is free from sin, but that he is able to be; I, on the other hand, will grant what you deny, that a man is free from sin by the grace of God, and yet will maintain that he is not able of himself.
C. It is useless to give commandments if we cannot keep them.
A. No one doubts that God commanded things possible. But because men do not what they might, therefore the whole world is subject to the judgment of God, and needs His mercy. On the other hand, if you can produce a man who has fulfilled the whole law, you will certainly be able to show that there is a man who does not need the mercy of God. For everything which can happen must either take place in the past, the present, or the future. As to your assertion that a man can be without sin if he chooses, show that it has happened in the past, or at all events that it does happen at the present day; the future will reveal itself. If, however, you can point to no one who either is, or has been, altogether free from sin, it remains for us to confine our discussion to the future. Meanwhile, you are vanquished and a captive as regards two out of three periods of time, the past and the present. If anyone hereafter shall be greater than patriarchs, prophets, apostles, inasmuch as he is without sin, then you may perhaps be able to convince future generations as to their time.
4. C. Talk as you like, argue as you please, you will never wrest from me free will, which God bestowed once for all, nor will you be able to deprive me of what God has given, the ability if I have the will.
A. By way of example let us take one proof: [5293] "I have found David, the Son of Jesse, a man after Mine own heart, who shall do all My will." There is no doubt that David was a holy man, and yet he who was chosen that he might do all God's will is blamed for certain actions. Of course it was possible for him who was chosen for the purpose to do all God's will. Nor is God to blame Who beforehand spoke of his doing all His will as commanded, but blame does attach to him who did not what was foretold. For God did not say that He had found a man who would unfailingly do His bidding and fulfil His will, but only one who would do all His will. And we, too, say that a man can avoid sinning, if he chooses, according to his local and temporal circumstances and physical weakness, so long as his mind is set upon righteousness and the string is well stretched upon the lyre. But if a man grow a little remiss it is with him as with the boatman pulling against the stream, who finds that, if he slackens but for a moment, the craft glides back and he is carried by the flowing waters whither he would not. Such is the state of man; if we are a little careless we learn our weakness, and find that our power is limited. Do you suppose that the Apostle Paul, when he wrote [5294] "the coat (or cloak) that I left at Troas with Carpus, bring when thou comest, and the books, especially the parchments," was thinking of heavenly mysteries, and not of those things which are required for daily life and to satisfy our bodily necessities? Find me a man who is never hungry, thirsty, or cold, who knows nothing of pain, or fever, or the torture of strangury, and I will grant you that a man can think of nothing but virtue. When the Apostle was [5295] struck by the servant, he delivered himself thus against the High Priest who commanded the blow to be given: "God shall strike thee, thou whited wall." We miss the patience of the Saviour Who was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and opened not His mouth, but mercifully said to the smiter, [5296] "If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil; but if well, why smitest thou Me?" We do not disparage the Apostle, but declare the glory of God Who suffered in the flesh and overcame the evil inflicted on the flesh and the weakness of the flesh--to say nothing of what the Apostle says elsewhere: [5297] "Alexander, the coppersmith, did me much evil; the Lord, the righteous Judge, will recompense him in that day."
5. C. I have been longing to say something, but have checked the words as they were bursting from my lips. You compel me to say it.
A. Who hinders you from saying what you think? Either what you are going to say is good--and you ought not to deprive us of what is good--or it is bad, and, therefore, it is not regard for us, but shame that keeps you silent.
C. I will say, I will say after all, what I think. Your whole argument tends to this: You accuse nature, and blame God for creating man such as he is.
A. Is this what you wished, and yet did not wish, to say? Pray speak out, so that all may have the benefit of your wisdom. Are you censuring God because he made man to be man? Let the angels also complain because they are angels. Let every creature discuss the question, Why it is as it was created? and not what the Creator could have made it. I must now amuse myself with the rhetorical exercises of childhood, and passing from the gnat and the ant to cherubim and seraphim, inquire why each was not created with a happier lot. And when I reach the exalted powers, I will argue the point: Why God alone is only God, and did not make all things gods? For, according to you, He will either be unable to do so, or will be guilty of envy. Censure Him, and demand why He allows the devil to be in this world, and carry off the crown when you have won the victory.
C. I am not so senseless as to complain of the existence of the devil, through whose malice death entered into the world; but what grieves me is this: that dignitaries of the Church, and those who usurp the title of master, destroy free will; and once that is destroyed, the way is open for the Manichæans.
A. Am I the destroyer of free will because, throughout the discussion, my single aim has been to maintain the omnipotence of God as well as free will?
C. How can you have free will, and yet say that man can do nothing without God's assistance?
A. If he is to be blamed who couples free will and God's help, it follows that we ought to praise him who does away with God's help.
C. I am not making God's help unnecessary, for to His grace we owe all our ability; but I and those who think with me keep both within their own bounds. To God's grace we assign the gift of the power of free choice; to our own will, the doing, or the not doing, of a thing; and thus rewards and punishments for doing or not doing can be maintained.
6. A. You seem to me to be lost in forgetfulness, and to be going over the lines of argument already traversed as though not a word had been previously said. For, by this long discussion, it has been established that the Lord, by the same grace wherewith He bestowed upon us free choice, assists and supports us in our individual actions.
C. Why, then, does He crown and praise what He has Himself wrought in us?
A. That is to say, our will which offered all it could, the toil which strove in action, and the humility which ever looked to the help of God.
C. So, then, if we have not done what He commanded, either God was willing to assist us, or He was not. If He was willing and did assist us, and yet we have not done what we wished, then He, and not we, has been overcome. But if He would not help, the man is not to be blamed who wished to do His will, but God, who was able to help, but would not.
A. Do you not see that your dilemma has landed you in a deep abyss of blasphemy? Whichever way you take it, God is either weak or malevolent, and He is not so much praised because He is the author of good and gives His help, as abused for not restraining evil. Blame Him, then, because He allows the existence of the devil, and has suffered, and still suffers, evil to be done in the world. This is what Marcion asks, and the whole pack of heretics who mutilate the Old Testament, and have mostly spun an argument something like this: Either God knew that man, placed in Paradise, would transgress His command, or He did not know. If He knew, man is not to blame, who could not avoid God's foreknowledge, but He Who created him such that he could not escape the knowledge of God. If He did not know, in stripping Him of foreknowledge you also take away His divinity. Upon the same showing God will be deserving of blame for choosing Saul, who was to prove one of the worst of kings. And the Saviour must be convicted either of ignorance, or of unrighteousness, inasmuch as He said in the Gospel, [5298] "Did I not choose you the twelve, and one of you is a devil?" Ask Him why He chose Judas, a traitor? Why He entrusted to him the bag when He knew that he was a thief? Shall I tell you the reason? God judges the present, not the future. He does not make use of His foreknowledge to condemn a man though He knows that he will hereafter displease Him; but such is His goodness and unspeakable mercy that He chooses a man who, He perceives, will meanwhile be good, and who, He knows, will turn out badly, thus giving him the opportunity of being converted and of repenting. This is the Apostle's meaning when he says, [5299] "Dost thou not know that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance? but after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up for thyself wrath in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, Who will render to every man according to his works." For Adam did not sin because God knew that he would do so; but God inasmuch as He is God, foreknew what Adam would do of his own free choice. You may as well accuse God of falsehood because He said by the mouth of Jonah: [5300] "Yet three days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown." But God will reply by the mouth of Jeremiah, [5301] "At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to break down, and to destroy it; if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them. And at what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it; if it do evil in my sight, that it obey not my voice, then I will repent of the good, wherewith I said I would benefit them." Jonah, on a certain occasion, was indignant because, at God's command, he had spoken falsely; but his sorrow was proved to be ill founded, since he would rather speak truth and have a countless multitude perish, than speak falsely and have them saved. His position was thus illustrated: [5302] "Thou grievest over the ivy (or gourd), for the which thou hast not laboured, neither madest it grow, which came up in a night, and perished in a night; and should not I have pity on Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than six score thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand?" If there was so vast a number of children and simple folk, whom you will never be able to prove sinners, what shall we say of those inhabitants of both sexes who were at different periods of life? According to Philo, and the wisest of philosophers, Plato (so the "Timæus" tells us), in passing from infancy to decrepit old age, we go through seven stages, which so gradually and so gently follow one another that we are quite insensible of the change.
C. The drift of your whole argument is this--what the Greeks call autexousion , and we free will, you admit in terms, but in effect destroy. For you make God the author of sin, in asserting that man can of himself do nothing, but that he must have the help of God to Whom is imputed all we do. But we say that, whether a man does good or evil, it is imputed to him on account of the faculty of free choice, inasmuch as he did what he chose, and not to Him Who once for all gave him free choice.
A. Your shuffling is to no purpose; you are caught in the snares of truth. For upon this showing, even if He does not Himself assist, according to you He will be the author of evil, because He might have prevented it and did not. It is an old maxim that if a man can deliver another from death and does not, he is a homicide.
C. I withdraw and yield the point; you have won; provided, however, that victory is the subverting of the truth by specious words, that is to say, not by truth, but by falsehood. For I might make answer to you in the Apostle's words, [5303] "Though I be rude in speech, yet not in knowledge." When you speak, your rhetorical tricks are too much for me, and I seem to agree with you; but when you stop speaking, it all goes out of my head, and I see quite clearly that your argument does not flow from the fountains of truth and Christian simplicity, but rests on the laboured subtleties of the philosophers.
A. Do you wish me, then, once more to resort to the evidence of Scripture? If so, what becomes of the boast of your disciples that no one can answer your arguments or solve the questions you raise?
C. I not only wish, but am eager that you should do so. Show me any place in Holy Scripture where we find that, the power of free choice being lost, a man does what of himself he either would not, or could not do.
8. A. We must use the words of Scripture not as you propose, but as truth and reason demand. Jacob says in his prayer, [5304] "If the Lord God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on, so that I come again to my father's house in peace, then shall the Lord be my God, and this stone, which I have set up for a token, shall be God's house; and of all that Thou shalt give me I will surely give the tenth unto Thee." He did not say, If thou preserve my free choice, and I gain by my toil food and raiment, and return to my father's house. He refers everything to the will of God, that he may be found worthy to receive that for which he prays. On Jacob's return from Mesopotamia [5305] an army of angels met him, who are called God's camp. He afterwards contended with an angel in the form of a man, and was strengthened by God; whereupon, instead of Jacob, the supplanter, he received the name, the most upright of God. For he would not have dared to return to his cruel brother unless he had been strengthened and secured by the Lord's help. In the sequel we read, [5306] "The sun rose upon him after he passed over Phanuel," which is, being interpreted, the face of God. Hence [5307] Moses also says, "I have seen the Lord face to face, and my life is preserved," not by any natural quality--but by the condescension of God, Who had mercy. So then the Sun of Righteousness rises upon us when God makes His face to shine upon us and gives us strength. Joseph in Egypt was shut up in prison, and we next hear that the keeper of the prison, believing in his fidelity, committed everything to his hand. And the reason is given: [5308] "Because the Lord was with him: and whatsoever he did, the Lord made it to prosper." Wherefore, also, dreams were suggested to Pharaoh's attendants, and Pharaoh had one which none could interpret, that so Joseph might be released, and his father and brethren fed, and Egypt saved in the time of famine. Moreover, God [5309] said to Israel, in a vision of the night, "I am the God of thy fathers; fear not to go down into Egypt; for I will make of thee there a great nation, and I will go down with thee into Egypt; and I will also surely bring thee up again, and Joseph shall put his hand upon thine eyes." Where in this passage do we find the power of free choice? Is not the whole circumstance that he ventured to go to his son, and entrust himself to a nation that knew not the Lord, due to the help of the God of his fathers? The people was released from Egypt with a strong hand and an outstretched arm; not the hand of Moses and Aaron, but of Him who set the people free by signs and wonders, and at last smote the firstborn of Egypt, so that they who at [5310] first were persistent in keeping the people, eagerly urged them to depart. Solomon [5311] says, "Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not upon thine own understanding: in all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths." Understand what He says--that we must not trust in our wisdom, but in the Lord alone, by Whom the steps of a man are directed. Lastly, we are bidden to show Him our ways, and make them known, for they are not made straight by our own labour, but by His assistance and mercy. And so it is written, [5312] "Make my way right before Thy face," so that what is right to Thee may seem also right to me. Solomon says the same-- [5313] "Commit thy works unto the Lord, and thy thoughts shall be established." Our thoughts are then established when we commit all we do to the Lord our helper, resting it, as it were, upon the firm and solid rock, and attribute everything to Him.
9. The Apostle Paul, rapidly recounting the benefits of God, ended with the words, [5314] "And who is sufficient for these things?" Wherefore, also, in another place he [5315] says, "Such confidence have we through Christ to Godward; not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is from God; Who also made us sufficient as ministers of a new covenant; not of the letter but of the spirit; for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life." Do we still dare to pride ourselves on free will, and to abuse the benefits of God to the dishonour of the giver? Whereas the same chosen vessel openly [5316] writes, "We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the exceeding greatness of the power may be of God, and not from ourselves." Therefore, also, in another place, checking the impudence of the heretics, he [5317] says, "He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord. For not he that commendeth himself is approved, but whom the Lord commendeth." And again, [5318] "In nothing was I behind the very chiefest Apostles, though I be nothing." Peter, disturbed by the greatness of the miracles he witnessed, said to the Lord, [5319] "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man." And the Lord said to His disciples, [5320] "I am the vine and ye are the branches: He that abideth in Me and I in him, the same beareth much fruit, for apart from Me ye can do nothing." Just as the vine branches and shoots immediately decay when they are severed from the parent stem, so all the strength of men fades and perishes, if it be bereft of the help of God. "No one," [5321] He says, "can come unto Me except the Father Who sent Me draw him." When He says, "No one can come unto Me," He shatters the pride of free will; because, even if a man will to go to Christ, except that be realized which follows--"unless My heavenly Father draw him"--desire is to no purpose, and effort is in vain. At the same time it is to be noted that he who is drawn does not run freely, but is led along either because he holds back and is sluggish, or because he is reluctant to go.
10. Now, how can a man who cannot by his own strength and labour come to Jesus, at the same time avoid all sins? and avoid them perpetually, and claim for himself a name which belongs to the might of God? For if He and I are both without sin, what difference is there between me and God? One more proof only I will adduce, that I may not weary you and my hearers. [5322] Sleep was removed from the eyes of Ahasuerus, whom the Seventy call Artaxerxes, that he might turn over the memoirs of his faithful ministers and come upon Mordecai, by whose evidence he was delivered from a conspiracy; and that thus Esther might be more acceptable, and the whole people of the Jews escape imminent death. There is no doubt that the mighty sovereign to whom belonged the whole East, from India to the North and to Ethiopia, after feasting sumptuously on delicacies gathered from every part of the world would have desired to sleep, and to take his rest, and to gratify his free choice of sleep, had not the Lord, the provider of all good things, hindered the course of nature, so that in defiance of nature the tyrant's cruelty might be overcome. If I were to attempt to produce all the instances in Holy Writ, I should be tedious. All that the saints say is a prayer to God; their whole prayer and supplication a strong wrestling for the pity of God, so that we, who by our own strength and zeal cannot be saved, may be preserved by His mercy. But when we are concerned with grace and mercy, free will is in part void; in part, I say, for so much as this depends upon it, that we wish and desire, and give assent to the course we choose. But it depends on God whether we have the power in His strength and with His help to perform what we desire, and to bring to effect our toil and effort.
11. C. I simply said that we find the help of God not in our several actions, but in the grace of creation and of the law, that free will might not be destroyed. But there are many of us who maintain that all we do is done with the help of God.
A. Whoever says that must leave your party. Either, then, say the same yourself and join our side, or, if you refuse, you will be just as much our enemy as those who do not hold our views.
C. I shall be on your side if you speak my sentiments, or rather you will be on mine if you do not contradict them. You admit health of body, and deny health of the soul, which is stronger than the body. For sin is to the soul what disease or a wound is to the body. If then you admit that a man may be healthy so far as he is flesh, why do you not say he may be healthy so far as he is spirit?
A. I will follow in the line you point out,
"and you to-day
Shall ne'er escape; where'r you call, I come."
C. I am ready to listen.
A. And I to speak to deaf ears. I will therefore reply to your argument. Made up of soul and body, we have the nature of both substances. As the body is said to be healthy if it is troubled with no weakness, so the soul is free from fault if it is unshaken and undisturbed. And yet, although the body may be healthy, sound, and active, with all the faculties in their full vigour, yet it suffers much from infirmities at more or less frequent intervals, and, however strong it may be, is sometimes distressed by various humours; so the soul, bearing the onset of thoughts and agitations, even though it escape shipwreck, does not sail without danger, and remembering its weakness, is always anxious about death, according as it is written, [5323] "What man is he that shall live and not see death?"--death, which threatens all mortal men, not through the decay of nature, but through the death of sin, according to the prophet's words, [5324] "The soul that sinneth, it shall die." Besides, we know that Enoch and Elias have not yet seen this death which is common to man and the brutes. Show me a body which is never sick, or which after sickness is ever safe and sound, and I will show you a soul which never sinned, and after acquiring virtues will never again sin. The thing is impossible, and all the more when we remember that vice borders on virtue, and that, if you deviate ever so little, you will either go astray or fall over a precipice. How small is the interval between obstinacy and perseverance, miserliness and frugality, liberality and extravagance, wisdom and craft, intrepidity and rashness, caution and timidity! some of which are classed as good, others as bad. And the same applies to bodies. If you take precautions against biliousness, the phlegm increases. If you dry up the humours too quickly, the blood becomes heated and vitiated with bile, and a sallow hue spreads over the countenance. Without question, however much we may exercise all the care of the physician, and regulate our diet, and be free from indigestion and whatever fosters disease, the causes of which are in some cases hidden from us and known to God alone, we shiver with cold, or burn with fever, or howl with colic, and implore the help of the true physician, our Saviour, and [5325] say with the Apostles, "Master, save us, we perish."
12. C. Granted that no one could avoid all sin in boyhood, youth, and early manhood; can you deny that very many righteous and holy men, after falling into vice, have heartily devoted themselves to the acquisition of virtue and through these have escaped sin?
A. This is what I told you at the beginning--that it rests with ourselves either to sin or not to sin, and to put the hand either to good or evil; and thus free will is preserved, but according to circumstances, time, and the state of human frailty; we maintain, however, that perpetual freedom from sin is reserved for God only, and for Him Who being the Word was made flesh without incurring the defects and the sins of the flesh. And, because I am able to avoid sin for a short time, you cannot logically infer that I am able to do so continually. Can I fast, watch, walk, sing, sit, sleep perpetually?
C. Why then in Holy Scripture are we stimulated to aim at perfect righteousness? For example: [5326] "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God," and [5327] "Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord." And God says to Abraham, [5328] "I am thy God, be thou pleasing in My sight, and be thou without spot, or blame, and I will make My covenant between Me and thee, and will multiply thee exceedingly." If that is impossible which Scripture testifies, it was useless to command it to be done.
A. You play upon Scripture until you wear a question threadbare, and remind me of the platform tricks of a conjurer who assumes a variety of characters, and is now Mars, next moment Venus; so that he who was at first all sternness and ferocity is dissolved into feminine softness. For the objection you now raise with an air of novelty--"Blessed are the pure in heart," "Blessed are the undefiled in the way," and "Be without spot," and so forth--is refuted when the Apostle replies, [5329] "We know in part, and we prophesy in part," and, "Now we see through a mirror darkly, but when that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away." And therefore we have but the shadow and likeness of the pure heart, which hereafter is destined to see God, and, free from spot or stain, to live with Abraham. However great the patriarch, prophet, or Apostle may be, it is [5330] said to them, in the words of our Lord and Saviour, "If ye being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father Which is in heaven give good things to them which ask Him?" Then again even Abraham, to whom it was said, [5331] "Be thou without spot and blame," in the consciousness of his frailty fell upon his face to the earth. And when God had spoken to Him, saying, "Thy wife Sarai shall no longer be called Sarai, but Sara shall her name be, and I will give thee a son by her, and I will bless him and he shall become a great nation, and kings of nations shall spring from him," the narrative at once proceeds to say, "Abraham fell upon his face, and laughed, and said in his heart, Shall a child be born unto him that is an hundred years old? and shall Sarah, that is ninety years old, bear?" And Abraham said unto God, "Oh, that Ishmael might live before thee!" And God said, "Nay, but Sarah thy wife shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name Isaac," and so on. He certainly had heard the words of God, "I am thy God, be thou pleasing in My sight, and without spot"; why then did he not believe what God promised, and why did he laugh in his heart, thinking that he escaped the notice of God, and not daring to laugh openly? Moreover he gives the reasons for his unbelief, and says, "How is it possible for a man that is an hundred years old to beget a son of a wife that is ninety years old?" "Oh, that Ishmael might live before thee," he says. "Ishmael whom thou once gavest me. I do not ask a hard thing, I am content with the blessing I have received." God convinced him by a mysterious reply. He said, "Yea." The meaning is, that shall come to pass which you think shall not be. Your wife Sara shall bear you a son, and before she conceives, before he is born, I will give the boy a name. For, from your error in secretly laughing, your son shall be called Isaac, that is laughter. But if you think that God is seen by those who are pure in heart in this world, why did Moses, who had previously said, "I have seen the Lord face to face, and my life is preserved," afterwards entreat that he might see him distinctly? And because he said that he had seen God, the Lord told him, [5332] "Thou canst not see My face. For man shall not see My face, and live." Wherefore also the Apostle [5333] calls Him the only invisible God, Who dwells in light unapproachable, and Whom no man hath seen, nor can see. And the Evangelist John in holy accents testifies, saying, [5334] "No man hath at any time seen God. The only begotten Son Who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him." He Who sees, also declares, not how great He is Who is seen, nor how much He knows Who declares; but as much as the capacity of mortals can receive.
13. And whereas you think he is blessed who is undefiled in the way, and walks in His law, you must interpret the former clause by the latter. From the many proofs I have adduced you have learnt that no one has been able to fulfil the law. And if the Apostle, in comparison with the grace of Christ, reckoned those things as filth which formerly, under the law, he counted gain, so that he might win Christ, how much more certain ought we to be that the reason why the grace of Christ and of the Gospel has been added is that, under the law, no one could be justified? Now if, under the law, no one is justified, how is he perfectly undefiled in the way who is still walking and hastening to reach the goal? Surely, he who is in the course, and who is advancing on the road, is inferior to him who has reached his journey's end. If, then, he is undefiled and perfect who is still walking in the way and advancing in the law, what more shall he have who has arrived at the end of life and of the law? Hence the Apostle, speaking of our Lord, says that, at the end of the world, when all virtues shall receive their consummation, He will present His holy Church to Himself without spot or wrinkle, and yet you think that Church perfect, while yet in the flesh, which is subject to death and decay. You deserve to be told, with the Corinthians, [5335] "Ye are already perfect, ye are already made rich: ye reign without us, and I would that ye did reign, that we might also reign with you"--since true and stainless perfection belongs to the inhabitants of heaven, and is reserved for that day when the bridegroom shall say to the bride, [5336] "Thou art all fair, my love; and there is no spot in thee." And in this sense we must understand the words: [5337] "That ye may be blameless and harmless, as children of God, without blemish"; for He did not say ye are, but may be. He is contemplating the future, not stating a case pertaining to the present; so that here is toil and effort, in that other world the rewards of labour and of virtue. Lastly, John writes: [5338] "Beloved, we are sons of God, and it is not yet made manifest what we shall be. We know that when He shall be manifested, we shall be like Him: for we shall see Him even as He is." Although, then, we are sons of God, yet likeness to God, and the true contemplation of God, is promised us then, when He shall appear in His majesty.
14. From this swelling pride springs the audacity in prayer which marks the directions in your letter to a [5339] certain widow as to how the saints ought to pray. "He," you say, [5340] "rightly lifts up his hands to God; he pours out supplications with a good conscience who can say, Thou knowest, Lord, how holy, how innocent, how pure from all deceit, wrong, and robbery are the hands which I spread out unto Thee; how righteous, how spotless, and free from all falsehood are the lips with which I pour forth my prayers unto Thee, that Thou mayest pity me.'" Is this the prayer of a Christian, or of a proud Pharisee like him who [5341] says in the Gospel, "God, I thank Thee that I am not as other men are, robbers, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican: I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess." Yet he merely thanks God because, by His mercy, he is not as other men: he execrates sin, and does not claim his righteousness as his own. But you say, "Now Thou knowest how holy, how innocent, how pure from all deceit, wrong, and robbery are the hands which I spread out before Thee." He says that he fasts twice in the week, that he may afflict his vicious and wanton flesh, and he gives tithes of all his substance. For [5342] "the ransom of a man's life is his riches." You join the devil in boasting, [5343] "I will ascend above the stars, I will place my throne in heaven, and I will be like the Most High." David says, [5344] "My loins are filled with illusions"; and [5345] "My wounds stink and are corrupt because of my foolishness"; and [5346] "Enter not into judgment with Thy servant"; and [5347] "In Thy sight no man living shall be justified." You boast that you are holy, innocent, and pure, and spread out clean hands unto God. And you are not satisfied with glorying in all your works, unless you say that you are pure from all sins of speech; and you tell us how righteous, how spotless, how free from all falsehood your lips are. The Psalmist sings, [5348] "Every man is a liar"; and this is supported by apostolical authority: "That God may be true," says St. Paul, [5349] "and every man a liar"; and yet you have lips righteous, spotless, and free from all falsehood. Isaiah laments, saying, [5350] "Woe is me! for I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips"; and afterwards one of the seraphim brings a hot coal, taken with the tongs, to purify the prophet's lips, for he was not, according to the tenor of your words, arrogant, but he confessed his own faults. Just as we read in the Psalms, [5351] "What shall be due unto thee, and what shall be done more unto thee in respect of a deceitful tongue? Sharp arrows of the mighty, with coals that make desolate." And after all this swelling with pride, and boastfulness in prayer, and confidence in your holiness, like one fool trying to persuade another, you finish with the words "These lips with which I pour out my supplication that Thou mayest have pity on me." If you are holy, if you are innocent, if you are cleansed from all defilement, if you have sinned neither in word nor deed--although James says, [5352] "He who offends not in word is a perfect man," and "No one can curb his tongue"--how is it that you sue for mercy? so that, forsooth, you bewail yourself, and pour out prayers because you are holy, pure, and innocent, a man of stainless lips, free from all falsehood, and endowed with a power like that of God. Christ prayed thus on the cross: [5353] "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me? Why art Thou so far from helping Me?" And, again, [5354] "Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit," and [5355] "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." And this is He, who, returning thanks for us, had said, [5356] "I confess to Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth."
15. Our Lord so instructed His Apostles that, daily at the sacrifice of His body, believers make bold to say, "Our Father, Which art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name"; they earnestly desire the name of God, which in itself is holy, to be hallowed in themselves; you say, "Thou knowest, Lord, how holy, how innocent, and how pure are my hands." Then they say: "Thy Kingdom come," anticipating the hope of the future kingdom, so that, when Christ reigns, sin may by no means reign in their mortal body, and to this they couple the words, "Thy will be done in earth as it is in Heaven"; so that human weakness may imitate the angels, and the will of our Lord may be fulfilled on earth; you say, "A man can, if he chooses, be free from all sin." The Apostles prayed for the daily bread, or the bread better than all food, which was to come, so that they might be worthy to receive the body of Christ; and you are led by your excess of holiness and well established righteousness to boldly claim the heavenly gifts. Next comes, "Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors." No sooner do they rise from the baptismal font, and by being born again and incorporated into our Lord and Saviour thus fulfil what is written of them, [5357] "Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven and whose sins are covered," than at the first communion of the body of Christ they say, "Forgive us our debts," though these debts had been forgiven them at their confession of Christ; but you in your arrogant pride boast of the cleanness of your holy hands and of the purity of your speech. However thorough the conversion of a man may be, and however perfect his possession of virtue after a time of sins and failings, can such persons be as free from fault as they who are just leaving the font of Christ? And yet these latter are commanded to say, "Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors"; not in the spirit of a false humility, but because they are afraid of human frailty and dread their own conscience. They say, "Lead us not into temptation"; you and Jovinian unite in saying that those who with a full faith have been baptized cannot be further tempted or sin. Lastly, they add, "But deliver us from the evil one." Why do they beg from the Lord what they have already by the power of free will? Oh, man, now thou hast been made clean in the laver, and of thee it is said, "Who is this that cometh up all white, leaning upon her beloved?" The bride, therefore, is washed, yet she cannot keep her purity, unless she be supported by the Lord. How is it that you long to be set free by the mercy of God, you who but a little while ago were released from your sins? The only explanation is the principle by which we maintain that, when we have done all, we must confess we are unprofitable.
16. So then your prayer outdoes the pride of the Pharisee, and you are condemned when compared with the Publican. He, standing afar off, did not dare to lift up his eyes unto Heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, [5358] "God be merciful unto me a sinner." And on this is based our Lord's declaration, "I say unto you this man went down to his house justified rather than the other. For every one that exalteth himself shall be abased, and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted." The Apostles are humbled that they may be exalted. Your disciples are lifted up that they may fall. In your flattery of the widow previously mentioned you are not ashamed to say that piety such as is found on earth, and truth which is everywhere a stranger, had made their home with her in preference to all others. You do not recollect the familiar words, [5359] "O my people, they which call thee blessed cause thee to err, and destroy the paths of thy feet"; and you expressly praise her and say, "Happy beyond all thought are you! how blessed! if righteousness, which is believed to be now nowhere but in Heaven, is found with you alone on earth." Is this teaching or slaying? Is it raising from earth, or casting down from heaven, to attribute that to a poor creature of a woman, which angels would not dare arrogate to themselves? If piety, truth, and righteousness are found on earth nowhere but in one woman, where shall we find your righteous followers, who, you boast, are sinless on earth? These two chapters on prayer and praise you and your disciples are wont to swear are none of yours, and yet your brilliant style is so clearly seen in them, and the elegance of your Ciceronian diction is so marked that, although you strut about with the slow pace of a tortoise, you have not the courage to acknowledge what you teach in private and expose for sale. Happy man! whose books no one writes out but your own disciples, so that whatever appears to be unacceptable, you may contend is not your own but some one else's work. And where is the man with ability enough to imitate the charm of your language?
17. C. I can put it off no longer; my patience is completely overcome by your iniquitous words. Tell me, pray, what sin have little infants committed. Neither the consciousness of wrong nor ignorance can be imputed to those who, according to the prophet Jonah, know not their right hand from their left. They cannot sin, and they can perish; their knees are too weak to walk, they utter inarticulate cries; we laugh at their attempts to speak; and, all the while, poor unfortunates! the torments of eternal misery are prepared for them.
A. Ah! now that your disciples have turned masters you begin to be fluent, not to say eloquent. Antony, [5360] an excellent orator, whose praises Tully loudly proclaims, says that he had seen many fluent men, but so far never an eloquent speaker; so don't amuse me with flowers of oratory which have not grown in your own garden, and with which the ears of inexperience and of boyhood are wont to be tickled, but plainly tell me what you think.
C. What I say is this--you must at least allow that they have no sin who cannot sin.
A. I will allow it, if they have been baptized into Christ; and if you will not then immediately bind me to agree with your opinion that a man can be without sin if he chooses; for they neither have the power nor the will; but they are free from all sin through the grace of God, which they received in their baptism.
C. You force me to make an invidious remark and ask, Why, what sin have they committed? that you may immediately have me stoned in some popular tumult. You have not the power to kill me, but you certainly have the will.
A. He slays a heretic who allows him to be a heretic. But when we rebuke him we give him life; you may die to your heresy, and live to the Catholic faith.
C. If you know us to be heretics, why do you not accuse us?
A. Because the [5361] Apostle teaches me to avoid a heretic after the first and second admonition, not to accuse him. The Apostle knew that such an one is perverse and self-condemned. Besides, it would be the height of folly to make my faith depend on another man's judgment. For supposing some one were to call you a Catholic, am I to immediately give assent? Whoever defends you, and says that you rightly hold your perverse opinions, does not succeed in rescuing you from infamy, but charges himself with perfidy. Your numerous supporters will never prove you to be a Catholic, but will show that you are a heretic. But I would have such opinions as these suppressed by ecclesiastical authority; otherwise we shall be in the case of those who show some dreadful picture to a crying child. May the fear of God grant us this--to despise all other fears. Therefore, either defend your opinions, or abandon what you are unable to defend. Whoever may be called in to defend you must be enrolled as a partisan, not as a patron.
18. C. Tell me, pray, and rid me of all doubts, why little children are baptized.
A. That their sins may be forgiven them in baptism.
C. What sin are they guilty of? How can any one be set free who is not bound?
A. You ask me! The Gospel trumpet will reply, the teacher of the Gentiles, the golden vessel shining throughout the world: [5362] "Death reigned from Adam even unto Moses: even over those who did not sin after the likeness of the transgression of Adam, who is a figure of Him that was to come." And if you object that some are spoken of who did not sin, you must understand that they did not sin in the same way as Adam did by transgressing God's command in Paradise. But all men are held liable either on account of their ancient forefather Adam, or on their own account. He that is an infant is released in baptism from the chain which bound his father. He who is old enough to have discernment is set free from the chain of his own or another's sin by the blood of Christ. You must not think me a heretic because I take this view, for the blessed martyr Cyprian, whose rival you boast of being in the classification of Scripture proofs, in the [5363] epistle addressed to Bishop Fidus on the Baptism of Infants speaks thus: "Moreover, if even the worst offenders, and those who previous to baptism sin much against God, once they believe have the gift of remission of sins, and no one is kept from baptism and from grace, how much more ought not an infant to be kept from baptism seeing that, being only just born, he has committed no sin? He has only, being born according to the flesh among Adam's sons, incurred the taint of ancient death by his first birth. And he is the more easily admitted to remission of sins because of the very fact that not his own sins but those of another are remitted to him. And so, dearest brother, it was our decision in council that no one ought to be kept by us from baptism and from the grace of God, Who is merciful to all, and kind, and good. And whereas this rule ought to be observed and kept with reference to all, bear in mind that it ought so much the more to be observed with regard to infants themselves and those just born, for they have the greater claims on our assistance in order to obtain Divine mercy, because their cries and tears from the very birth are one perpetual prayer."
19. That holy man and eloquent bishop Augustin not long ago wrote to [5364] Marcellinus (the same that was afterwards, though innocent, put to death by heretics on the pretext of his taking part in the tyranny of Heraclian [5365] ) two treatises on infant baptism, in opposition to your heresy which maintains that infants are baptized not for remission of sins, but for admission to the kingdom of heaven, according as it is written in the Gospel, [5366] "Except a man be born again of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven." He addressed a [5367] third, moreover, to the same Marcellinus, against those who say as do you, that a man can be free from sin, if he chooses, without the help of God. And, recently, a [5368] fourth to Hilary against this doctrine of yours, which is full of perversity. And he is said to have others on the anvil with special regard to you, which have not yet come to hand. Wherefore, I think I must abandon my task, for fear Horace's words may be thrown at me, [5369] "Don't carry firewood into a forest." For we must either say the same as he does, and that would be superfluous; or, if we wished to say something fresh, we should [5370] find our best points anticipated by that splendid genius. One thing I will say and so end my discourse, that you ought either to give us a new creed, so that, after baptizing children into the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, you may baptize them into the kingdom of heaven; or, if you have one baptism both for infants and for persons of mature age, it follows that infants also should be baptized for the remission of sins after the likeness of the transgression of Adam. But if you think the remission of another's sins implies injustice, and that he has no need of it who could not sin, cross over to Origen, your special favourite, who says that ancient offences [5371] committed long before in the heavens are loosed in baptism. You will then be not only led by his authority in other matters, but will be following his error in this also. __________________________________________________________________
[5282] Prov. x. 19.
[5283] By a Synod under Siricius in a.d. 390.
[5284] The allusion is to the African Synod, held a.d. 412, at which Celestius was condemned and excommunicated.
[5285] Ps. cxxvii. 1.
[5286] 1 Cor. ix. 24.
[5287] v. 12.
[5288] John v. 14.
[5289] 1 Cor. iii. 16, 17.
[5290] 2 Chron. xv. 2.
[5291] The words are those of S. Barnabas. Possibly in Jerome's copy the passage may have been attributed to Ignatius.
[5292] Ps. xvi. 4. Sept. and Vulgate.
[5293] Acts xiii. 32; Ps. lxxxviii. 21.
[5294] 2 Tim. iv. 13.
[5295] Acts xxiii. 2 sq.
[5296] S. John xviii. 23.
[5297] 2 Tim. iv. 14.
[5298] S. John vi. 70.
[5299] Rom. ii. 4, 5.
[5300] iii. 4.
[5301] Jerem. xviii. 7, 8.
[5302] Jonah iv. 10, 11.
[5303] 1 Cor. xi. 6.
[5304] Gen. xxviii. 20 sq.
[5305] Gen. xxxii. 2.
[5306] Gen. xxxii. 31. L. R.V. Penuel. Comp. Mt. xix. 4.
[5307] Ib. 30. The words are Jacob's, but they are attributed to Moses as author.
[5308] Gen. xxxix. 23.
[5309] Gen. xlvi. 3, 4.
[5310] Ex. xi. and xii.
[5311] Prov. iii. 5, 6.
[5312] Ps. v. 8.
[5313] Prov. xvi. 3.
[5314] 2 Cor. ii. 16.
[5315] 2 Cor. iii. 4-6.
[5316] 2 Cor. iv. 7.
[5317] 2 Cor. x. 17, 18.
[5318] 2 Cor. xii. 11.
[5319] S. Luke v. 8.
[5320] S. John xv. 5.
[5321] S. John vi. 44.
[5322] Esther vi. 1.
[5323] Ps. lxxxix. 48.
[5324] Ezek. xviii. 4.
[5325] S. Matt. viii. 25.
[5326] S. Matt. v. 8.
[5327] Ps. cxix. 1.
[5328] Gen. xvii. 1, 2.
[5329] 1 Cor. xiii. 9, 10.
[5330] S. Matt. vii. 11.
[5331] Gen. xvii. 1 sq.
[5332] Ex. xxxiii. 20.
[5333] 1 Tim. i. 17; vi. 16.
[5334] i. 18.
[5335] 1 Cor. iv. 8.
[5336] Cant. iv. 7.
[5337] Phil. ii. 15.
[5338] 1 John iii. 2.
[5339] See S. Aug. De Gest. Pelag. § 16. The widow was Juliana, mother to Demetrias (to whom Jerome addressed his Letter CXXX. "On the keeping of Virginity"). Pelagius' letter to Demetrias is found in Jerome's works (Ed. Vall.), vol. xi. col. 15.
[5340] The whole passage, as quoted by Augustin, runs as follows: "May piety find with thee a place which it has never found elsewhere. May truth, which no one now knows, be thy household friend; and the law of God, which is despised by almost all men, be honoured by thee alone." "How happy, how blessed art thou, if that justice which we are to believe exists only in heaven is found with thee alone upon earth." Then follow the words quoted above.
[5341] S. Luke xviii. 11.
[5342] Prov. xiii. 8.
[5343] Is. xiv. 13, 14. Spoken of the King of Babylon.
[5344] Ps. xxxviii. 7. Vulg.
[5345] Ibid. 5.
[5346] Ps. cxliii. 2.
[5347] Ibid. 4.
[5348] Ps. cxvi. 11.
[5349] Rom. iii. 4.
[5350] Is. vi. 5.
[5351] Ps. cxx. 3. Vulg.
[5352] James iii. 2.
[5353] Ps. xxii. 2; Sept. and Vulgate. S. Matt xxvii. 46, R.V., "and from the words of my roaring."
[5354] S. Luke xxiii. 46.
[5355] S. Luke xxiii. 34.
[5356] S. Matt. xi. 25.
[5357] Ps. xxi. 1.
[5358] S. Luke xviii. 13.
[5359] Is. iii. 12.
[5360] The grandfather of the Triumvir, born b.c. 142, died in the civil conflict excited by Marius, b.c. 87.
[5361] Tit. iii. 10.
[5362] Rom. v. 14.
[5363] Cyp. Ep. 64 (al. 59). S. Augustine preaching at Carthage on June 27, 413, quoted the same letter, which was a Synodical letter of a.d. 253. See Bright's Anti-Pelagian Treatises, Introduction, p. xxi.
[5364] Marcellinus was the lay imperial commissioner appointed to superintend the discussion between the Catholics and Donatists at the Council of Carthage, a.d. 411. In 413 Heraclian, governor of Africa, revolted against Honorius, the Emperor, and invaded Italy. The enterprise failed, and on his return to Africa the promoter of it was put to death. The Donatists, called by Jerome "heretics," are supposed to have accused Marcellinus of taking part in the rebellion. He was executed in 414.
[5365] "On the Deserts and Remission of Sins, and the Baptism of Infants," in three books, the earliest of S. Augustin's Anti-Pelagian treatises. It was composed in reply to a letter from his friend Marcellinus, who was harassed by Pelagianising disputants. See S. Aug. "De Gest. Pel." § 25.
[5366] S. John iii. 3.
[5367] The "De Spiritu et Littera." Marcellinus found a difficulty in Augustin's view of the question of sinlessness. See Bright's Anti-Pelagian Treatises, Introduction, p. xix.
[5368] Whether he who was made Bishop of Arles, in 429, is disputed. The treatise was the "De Natura et Gratia," written early in 415.
[5369] Sat. i. 10.
[5370] Or, better positions have been occupied.
[5371] Origen held the pre-existence of souls, endowed with free will, and supposed their condition in this world to be the result of their conduct in their previous state of probation. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Prefaces.
------------------------
The Prefaces to Jerome's works have in many cases a special value. This value is sometimes personal; they are the free expressions of his feelings to those whom he trusts. Sometimes it lies in the mention of particular events; sometimes in showing the special difficulties he encountered as a translator, or the state of mind of those for whom he wrote; sometimes in making us understand the extent and limits of his own knowledge, and the views on points such as the inspiration of Scripture which actuated him as a translator or commentator; sometimes, again, in the particular interpretations which he gives. These things gain a great importance from the fact that Jerome's influence and that of his Vulgate was preponderant in Western Europe for more than a thousand years.
We have had to make a selection, not only from want of space, but also because the Prefaces are of very unequal value, and sometimes are mere repetitions of previous statements. We have therefore given specimens of each class of Preface; we have given also all which bears on the better understanding of the life and views of Jerome; but where a Preface repeats what has been said before, or where it gives facts or interpretations which are well known or of no particular value, we have contented ourselves with a short statement of its contents.
The Prefaces fall under three heads: 1st. Those prefixed to Jerome's early works bearing on Church history or Scripture. 2d. The Prefaces to the Vulgate translation. 3d. Those prefixed to the Commentaries. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Prefaces to Jerome's Early Works.
Preface to the Chronicle of Eusebius.
The "Chronicle" is a book of universal history, giving the dates from the call of Abraham, and the Olympiads. For an account of it the reader is referred to the article of Dr. Salmon in the "Dictionary of Christian Antiquities." It was translated by Jerome in the years 381-82, at Constantinople, where he was staying for the Council. This Preface shows that Jerome was already becoming aware of the difficulties arising from the various versions of the Old Testament, and of the necessity of going back to the Hebrew.
Jerome to his friends [5372] Vincentius and Gallienus, Greeting:
1. It has long been the practice of learned men to exercise their minds by rendering into Latin the works of Greek writers, and, what is more difficult, to translate the poems of illustrious authors though trammelled by the farther requirements of verse. It was thus that our Tully literally translated whole books of Plato; and after publishing an edition of [5373] Aratus (who may now be considered a Roman) in hexameter verse, he amused himself with the economics of Xenophon. In this latter work the golden river of eloquence again and again meets with obstacles, around which its waters break and foam to such an extent that persons unacquainted with the original would not believe they were reading Cicero's words. And no wonder! It is hard to follow another man's lines and everywhere keep within bounds. It is an arduous task to preserve felicity and grace unimpaired in a translation. Some word has forcibly expressed a given thought; I have no word of my own to convey the meaning; and while I am seeking to satisfy the sense I may go a long way round and accomplish but a small distance of my journey. Then we must take into account the ins and outs of transposition, the variations in cases, the diversity of figures, and, lastly, the peculiar, and, so to speak, the native idiom of the language. A literal translation sounds absurd; if, on the other hand, I am obliged to change either the order or the words themselves, I shall appear to have forsaken the duty of a translator.
2. So, my dear Vincentius, and you, Gallienus, whom I love as my own soul, I beseech you, whatever may be the value of this hurried piece of work, to read it with the feelings of a friend rather than with those of a critic. And I ask this all the more earnestly because, as you know, I dictated with great rapidity to my amanuensis; and how difficult the task is, the sacred records testify; for the old flavour is not preserved in the Greek version by the Seventy. It was this that stimulated Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion; and the result of their labors was to impart a totally different character to one and the same work; one strove to give word for word, another the general meaning, while the third desired to avoid any great divergency from the ancients. A fifth, sixth, and seventh edition, though no one knows to what authors they are to be attributed, exhibit so pleasing a variety of their own that, in spite of their being anonymous, they have won an authoritative position. Hence, some go so far as to consider the sacred writings somewhat harsh and grating to the ear; which arises from the fact that the persons of whom I speak are not aware that the writings in question are a translation from the Hebrew, and therefore, looking at the surface not at the substance, they shudder at the squalid dress before they discover the fair body which the language clothes. In fact, what can be more musical than the Psalter? Like the writings of our own [5374] Flaccus and the Grecian Pindar it now trips along in iambics, now flows in sonorous alcaics, now swells into sapphics, now [5375] marches in half-foot metre. What can be more lovely than the strains of Deuteronomy and Isaiah? What more grave than Solomon's words? What more finished than Job? All these, as Josephus and Origen tell us, were composed in hexameters and pentameters, and so circulated amongst their own people. When we read these in Greek they have some meaning; when in Latin they are utterly incoherent. But if any one thinks that the grace of language does not suffer through translation, let him render Homer word for word into Latin. I will go farther and say that, if he will translate this author into the prose of his own language, the order of the words will seem ridiculous, and the most eloquent of poets almost dumb.
3. What is the drift of all this? I would not have you think it strange if here and there we stumble; if the language lag; if it bristle with consonants or present gaping chasms of vowels; or be cramped by condensation of the narrative. The most learned among men have toiled at the same task; and in addition to the difficulty which all experience, and which we have alleged to attend all translation, it must not be forgotten that a peculiar difficulty besets us, inasmuch as the history is manifold, is full of barbarous names, circumstances of which the Latins know nothing, dates which are tangled knots, critical marks blended alike with the events and the numbers, so that it is almost harder to discern the sequence of the words than to come to a knowledge of what is related.
[Here follows a long passage showing an arrangement according to which the dates are distinguished by certain colours as belonging to one or another of the kingdoms, the history of which is dealt with. This passage seems unintelligible in the absence of the coloured figures, and would be of no use unless the book with its original arrangement were being studied.]
I am well aware that there will be many who, with their customary fondness for universal detraction (from which the only escape is by writing nothing at all), will drive their fangs into this volume. They will cavil at the dates, change the order, impugn the accuracy of events, winnow the syllables, and, as is very frequently the case, will impute the negligence of copyists to the authors. I should be within my right if I were to rebut them by saying that they need not read unless they choose; but I would rather send them away in a calm state of mind, so that they may attribute to the Greek author the credit which is his due, and may recognize that any insertions for which we are responsible have been taken from other men of the highest repute. The truth is that I have partly discharged the office of a translator and partly that of a writer. I have with the utmost fidelity rendered the Greek portion, and at the same time have added certain things which appeared to me to have been allowed to slip, particularly in the Roman history, which Eusebius, the author of this book, as it seems to me, only glanced at; not so much because of ignorance, for he was a learned man, as because, writing in Greek, he thought them of slight importance to his countrymen. So again from Ninus and Abraham, right up to the captivity of Troy, the translation is from the Greek only. From Troy to the twentieth year of Constantine there is much, at one time separately added, at another intermingled, which I have gleaned with great diligence from Tranquillus and other famous historians. Moreover, the portion from the aforesaid year of Constantine to the sixth consulship of the Emperor Valens and the second of Valentinianus is entirely my own. Content to end here, I have reserved the remaining period, that of Gratianus and Theodosius, for a wider historical survey; not that I am afraid to discuss the living freely and truthfully, for the fear of God banishes the fear of man; but because while our country is still exposed to the fury of the barbarians everything is in confusion. __________________________________________________________________
[5372] Vincentius appears to have attached himself to Jerome at Constantinople and remained with him till the end of the century. (Jerome, Against John of Jerusalem, 41; Apol., iii. 22; Letter LXXXVIII.) Nothing is known of Gallienus.
[5373] Flourished b.c. 270.
[5374] That is, Horace.
[5375] Sublimia debent ingredi.--Quint, 9, 4 fin. __________________________________________________________________
Preface to the Translation of Origen's Two Homilies on the Song of Songs.
Written at Rome, a.d. 383.
Jerome to the most holy Pope Damasus:
Origen, whilst in his other books he has surpassed all others, has in the Song of Songs surpassed himself. He wrote ten volumes upon it, which amount to almost twenty thousand lines, and in these he discussed, first the version of the Seventy Translators, then those of Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion, and lastly, a fifth version which he states that he found on the coast of Atrium, with such magnificence and fulness, that he appears to me to have realized what is said in the poem: "The king brought me into his chamber." I have left that work on one side, since it would require almost boundless leisure and labour and money to translate so great a work into Latin, even if it could be worthily done; and I have translated these two short treatises, which he composed in the form of daily lectures for those who were still like babes and sucklings, and I have studied faithfulness rather than elegance. You can conceive how great a value the larger work possesses, when the smaller gives you such satisfaction. __________________________________________________________________
Preface to the Book on Hebrew Names.
The origin and scope of this book is described in the Preface itself. It was written in the year 388, two years after Jerome had settled at Bethlehem. He had, immediately on arriving in Palestine, three years previously, set to work to improve his knowledge of Hebrew, with a view to his translation of the Old Testament, which was begun in 391. This book, therefore, and the two which follow, may be taken as records of studies preparatory to the Vulgate.
Philo, the most erudite man among the Jews, is declared by Origen to have done what I am now doing; he set forth a book of Hebrew Names, classing them under their initial letters, and placing the etymology of each at the side. This work I originally proposed to translate into Latin. It is well known in the Greek world, and is to be found in all libraries. But I found that the copies were so discordant to one another, and the order so confused, that I judged it to be better to say nothing, rather than to write what would justly be condemned. A work of this kind, however, appeared likely to be of use; and my friends Lupulianus and Valerianus [5376] urged me to attempt it, because, as they thought, I had made some progress in the knowledge of Hebrew. I, therefore, went through all the books of Scripture in order, and in the restoration which I have now made of the ancient fabric, I think that I have produced a work which may be found valuable by Greeks as well as Latins.
I here in the Preface beg the reader to take notice that, if he finds anything omitted in this work, it is reserved for mention in another. I have at this moment on hand a book of Hebrew Questions, an undertaking of a new kind such as has never until now been heard of amongst either the Greeks or the Latins. I say this, not with a view of arrogantly puffing up my own work, but because I know how much labour I have spent on it, and wish to provoke those whose knowledge is deficient to read it. I recommend all those who wish to possess both that work and the present one, and also the book of Hebrew Places, which I am about to publish, to make no account of the Jews and all their ebullitions of vexation. Moreover, I have added the meaning of the words and names in the New Testament, so that the fabric might receive its last touch and might stand complete. I wished also in this to imitate Origen, whom all but the ignorant acknowledge as the greatest teacher of the Churches next to the Apostles; for in this work, which stands among the noblest monuments of his genius, he endeavoured as a Christian to supply what Philo, as a Jew, had omitted. __________________________________________________________________
[5376] Nothing is known of these men. It is very improbable that this Valerianus was the bishop of Apuleia, who must, however, have been known to Jerome. __________________________________________________________________
Preface to the Book on the Sites and Names of Hebrew Places.
For the scope and value of this book see Prolegomena. It was written a.d. 388.
Eusebius, who took his second name from the blessed Martyr Pamphilus, after he had written the ten books of his "Ecclesiastical History," the Chronicle of Dates, of which I published a Latin version, the book in which he set forth the names of the different nations and those given to them of old by the Jews and by those of the present day, the topography of the land of Judæa and the portions allotted to the tribes, together with a representation of Jerusalem itself and its temple, which he accompanied with a very short explanation, bestowed his labour at the end of his life upon this little work, of which the design is to gather for us out of the Holy Scriptures the names of almost all the cities, mountains, rivers, hamlets, and other places, whether they remain the same or have since been changed or in some degree corrupted. I have taken up the work of this admirable man, and have translated it, following the arrangement of the Greeks, and taking the words in the order of their initial letters, but leaving out those names which did not seem worthy of mention, and making a considerable number of alterations. I have explained my method once for all in the Preface to my translation of the Chronicle, where I said that I might be called at once a translator and the composer of a new work; but I repeat this especially because one who had hardly the first tincture of letters has ventured upon a translation of this very book into Latin, though his language is hardly to be called Latin. His lack of scholarship will be seen by the observant reader as soon as he compares it with my translation. I do not pretend to a style which soars to the skies; but I hope that I can rise above one which grovels on the earth. __________________________________________________________________
Preface to the Book of Hebrew Questions.
Written a.d. 388. For the scope and character of this work, see Prolegomena.
The object of the Preface to a book is to set forth the argument of the work which follows; but I am compelled to begin by answering what has been said against me. My case is somewhat like that of Terence, who turned the scenic prologues of his plays into a defence of himself. We have a [5377] Luscius Lanuvinus, like the one who worried him, and who brought charges against the poet as if he had been a plunderer of the treasury. The bard of Mantua suffered in the same way; he had translated a few verses of Homer very exactly, and they said that he was nothing but a plagiarist from the ancients. But he answered them that it was no small proof of strength to wrest the club of Hercules from his hands. Why, even Tully, who stands on the pinnacle of Roman eloquence, that king of orators and glory of the Latin tongue, has actions for embezzlement [5378] brought against him by the Greeks. I cannot, therefore, be surprised if a poor little fellow like me is exposed to the gruntings of vile swine who trample our pearls under their feet, when some of the most learned of men, men whose glory ought to have hushed the voice of ill will, have felt the flames of envy. It is true, this happened by a kind of justice to men whose eloquence had filled with its resonance the theatres and the senate, the public assembly and the rostra; hardihood always courts detraction, and (as Horace says):
"The [5379] highest peaks invoke
The lightning's stroke."
But I am in a corner, remote from the city and the forum, and the wranglings of crowded courts; yet, even so (as Quintilian says) ill-will has sought me out. Therefore, I beseech the reader,
"If [5380] one there be, if one,
Who, rapt by strong desire, these lines shall read,"
not to expect eloquence or oratorical grace in those Books of Hebrew Questions, which I propose to write on all the sacred books; but rather, that he should himself answer my detractors for me, and tell them that a work of a new kind can claim some indulgence. I am poor and of low estate; I neither possess riches nor do I think it right to accept them if they are offered me; and, similarly, let me tell them that it is impossible for them to have the riches of Christ, that is, the knowledge of the Scriptures, and the world's riches as well. It will be my simple aim, therefore, first, to point out the mistakes of those who suspect some fault in the Hebrew Scriptures, and, secondly, to correct the faults, which evidently teem in the Greek and Latin copies, by a reference to the original authority; and, further, to explain the etymology of things, names, and countries, when it is not apparent from the sound of the Latin words, by giving a paraphrase in the vulgar tongue. To enable the student more easily to take note of these emendations, I propose, in the first place, to set out the true [5381] reading itself, as I am now able to do, and then, by bringing the later readings into comparison with it, to [5382] indicate what has been omitted or added or altered. It is not my purpose, as snarling ill-will pretends, to convict the LXX. of error, nor do I look upon my own labour as a disparagement of theirs. The fact is that they, since their work was undertaken for King Ptolemy of Alexandria, did not choose to bring to light all the mysteries which the sacred writings contain, and especially those which give the promise of the advent of Christ, for fear that he who held the Jews in esteem because they were believed to worship one God, would come to think that they worshipped a second. But we find that the Evangelists, and even our Lord and Saviour, and the Apostle Paul, also, bring forward many citations as coming from the Old Testament which are not contained in our copies; and on these I shall dilate more fully in their proper places. But it is clear from this fact that those are the best mss. which most correspond with the authoritative words of the New Testament. Add to this that Josephus, who gives the story of the Seventy Translators, reports them as translating only the five books of Moses; and we also acknowledge that these are more in harmony with the Hebrew than the rest. And, further, those who afterward came into the field as translators--I mean Aquila and Symmachus and Theodotion--give a version very different from that which we use. [5383]
I have but one word more to say, and it may calm my detractors. Foreign goods are to be imported only to the regions where there is a demand for them. Country people are not obliged to buy balsam, pepper, and dates. As to Origen, I say nothing. His name (if I may compare small things with great) is even more than my own the object of ill-will, because, though following the common version in his Homilies, which were spoken to common people, yet, in his Tomes, [5384] that is, in his fuller discussion of Scripture, he yields to the Hebrew as the truth, and, though surrounded by his own forces, occasionally seeks the foreign tongue as his ally. I will only say this about him: that I should gladly have his knowledge of the Scriptures, even if accompanied with all the ill-will which clings to his name, and that I do not care a straw for these shades and spectral ghosts, whose nature is said to be to chatter in dark corners and be a terror to babies. __________________________________________________________________
[5377] Terence's rival, to whom he makes allusions in the Prologi to the Eunuchus, Heoutontimoroumenos and Phormio.
[5378] Repetundarum. Properly an action to compel one who has left office to restore public money which he had embezzled.
[5379] Hor. Odes II., x. 19, 20.
[5380] Virgil, Ec., vi. 10.
[5381] Ipsa testimonia. This is what he calls in other places Hebraica veritas. Jerome was right in the main in correcting the LXX, and other Greek versions by the Hebrew. He was not aware (as has been since made clear) that there are various readings in the Hebrew itself, and that these may sometimes be corrected by the LXX., which was made from older mss.
[5382] That is, by the obeli (), to show what has been left out, and the asterisk (*), to show what has been inserted.
[5383] That is, from the copies of the LXX. commonly used in the fourth century.
[5384] Larger Commentaries. __________________________________________________________________
Preface to the Commentary on Ecclesiastes.
Addressed to Paula and Eustochium, Bethlehem, a.d. 388.
I remember that, about five years ago, when I was still living at Rome, I read Ecclesiastes to the saintly Blesilla, [5385] so that I might provoke her to the contempt of this earthly scene, and to count as nothing all that she saw in the world; and that she asked me to throw my remarks upon all the more obscure passages into the form of a short commentary, so that, when I was absent, she might still understand what she read. She was withdrawn from us by her sudden death, while girding herself for our work; we were not counted worthy to have such an one as the partner of our life; and, therefore, Paula and Eustochium, I kept silence under the stroke of such a wound. But now, living as I do in the smaller community of Bethlehem, I pay what I owe to her memory and to you. I would only point out this, that I have followed no one's authority. I have translated direct from the Hebrew, adapting my words as much as possible to the form of the Septuagint, but only in those places in which they did not diverge far from the Hebrew. I have occasionally referred also to the versions of Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion, but so as not to alarm the zealous student by too many novelties, nor yet to let my commentary follow the side streams of opinion, turning aside, against my conscientious conviction, from the fountainhead of truth. __________________________________________________________________
[5385] Daughter of Paula. See Letter XXXIX. __________________________________________________________________
Prefaces to the Vulgate Version of the New Testament.
This version was made at Rome between the years 382 and 385. The only Preface remaining is that to the translation of the Gospels, but Jerome speaks of, and quotes from, his version of the other parts also. The work was undertaken at the request and under the sanction of Pope Damasus, who had consulted Jerome in a.d. 383 on certain points of Scriptural criticism, and apparently in the same year urged him to revise the current Latin version by help of the Greek original. It is to be observed that Jerome's aim was "to revise the old Latin, and not to make a new version. When Augustin expressed to him his gratitude for his translation of the Gospels,' he tacitly corrected him by substituting for this phrase the correction of the New Testament.' Yet, although he proposed to himself this limited object, the various forms of corruption which had been introduced were, as he describes, so numerous that the difference of the old and revised (Hieronymian) text is throughout clear and striking." See article by Westcott in "Dictionary of Bible," on the Vulgate, and Fremantle's article on Jerome in "Dictionary of Christian Biography." __________________________________________________________________
The Four Gospels.
Addressed to Pope [5386] Damasus, a.d. 383.
You urge me to revise the old Latin version, and, as it were, to sit in judgment on the copies of the Scriptures which are now scattered throughout the whole world; and, inasmuch as they differ from one another, you would have me decide which of them agree with the Greek original. The labour is one of love, but at the same time both perilous and presumptuous; for in judging others I must be content to be judged by all; and how can I dare to change the language of the world in its hoary old age, and carry it back to the early days of its infancy? Is there a man, learned or unlearned, who will not, when he takes the volume into his hands, and perceives that what he reads does not suit his settled tastes, break out immediately into violent language, and call me a forger and a profane person for having the audacity to add anything to the ancient books, or to make any changes or corrections therein? Now there are two consoling reflections which enable me to bear the odium--in the first place, the command is given by you who are the supreme bishop; and secondly, even on the showing of those who revile us, readings at variance with the early copies cannot be right. For if we are to pin our faith to the Latin texts, it is for our opponents to tell us which; for there are almost as many forms of texts as there are copies. If, on the other hand, we are to glean the truth from a comparison of many, why not go back to the original Greek and correct the mistakes introduced by inaccurate translators, and the blundering alterations of confident but ignorant critics, and, further, all that has been inserted or changed by copyists more asleep than awake? I am not discussing the Old Testament, which was turned into Greek by the Seventy elders, and [5387] has reached us by a descent of three steps. I do not ask what [5388] Aquila and [5389] Symmachus think, or why [5390] Theodotion takes a middle course between the ancients and the moderns. I am willing to let that be the true translation which had apostolic approval. I am now speaking of the New Testament. This was undoubtedly composed in Greek, with the exception of the work of Matthew the Apostle, who was the first to commit to writing the Gospel of Christ, and who published his work in Judæa in Hebrew characters. We must confess that as we have it in our language it is marked by discrepancies, and now that the stream is distributed into different channels we must go back to the fountainhead. I pass over those manuscripts which are associated with the names of [5391] Lucian and Hesychius, and the authority of which is perversely maintained by a handful of disputatious persons. It is obvious that these writers could not amend anything in the Old Testament after the labours of the Seventy; and it was useless to correct the New, for versions of Scripture which already exist in the languages of many nations show that their additions are false. I therefore promise in this short Preface the four Gospels only, which are to be taken in the following order, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, as they have been revised by a comparison of the Greek manuscripts. Only early ones have been used. But to avoid any great divergences from the Latin which we are accustomed to read, I have used my pen with some restraint, and while I have corrected only such passages as seemed to convey a different meaning, I have allowed the rest to remain as they are.
The Preface concludes with a description of lists of words made by Eusebius and translated by Jerome, designed to show what passages occur in two or more of the Gospels. __________________________________________________________________
[5386] Made pope 366, died 384. Jerome had been his secretary at the Council held at Rome in 382, and continued is literary services till the pope's death, in 385.
[5387] That is, after being translated from Hebrew into Greek, and from Greek into Latin.
[5388] Aquila belonged to the second century, but whether to the first half, or to the early part of the second half, cannot be determined. He was a Jewish proselyte, of Sinope in Pontus, and is supposed to have translated the books of the Old Testament into Greek in order to assist the Hellenistic Jews in their controversies with Christians. Jerome's estimate of him varied from time to time. In his commentary on Hos. ii., Is. xlix., and Letter XXVIII., etc., he treats him as worthy of credit. On the other hand, in the letter to Pammachius, De Opt. Gen. Interp. (LVII. 11), he describes him as contentiosus; but in Letter XXXVI. 12, he denies that he is such. In the preface to Job he speaks of Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion as "Judaising heretics, who by their deceitful translation have concealed many mysteries of salvation." The second edition of Aquila's version, which was extremely literal, was highly esteemed by the Jews, and was called by them the Hebrew verity. See Davidson's "Biblical Criticism," p. 215, etc.
[5389] Symmachus was the author of the third Greek version. He is said to have been a Samaritan by birth. The date of his version cannot be accurately fixed; but, apparently, it appeared after Theodotion's. "He does not adhere to the text so closely as to render it verbatim into Greek; but chooses to express the same in perspicuous and intelligible language."--Davidson.
[5390] Theodotion, the author of the second Greek version, was a native of Ephesus. His version is thought to have been made before 160. "The mode of translation adopted by him holds an intermediate place between the scrupulous literality of Aquila and the free interpretation of Symmachus," and his work was more highly valued by Christians than that of either Aquila or Symmachus. Daniel was read in his version in the churches (Pref. to Joshua).
[5391] Lucian in Syria and Hesychius in Egypt attempted their recensions about the middle of the third century, the time when Origen also began to labour in the same direction. Lucian's recension, also called the Constantinopolitan, and to which the Slavonian and Gothic versions belong, spread over Asia Minor and Thrace. See the Preface to the Chronicles. It was decreed by a council held under Pope Gelasius, a.d. 494, that "the Gospels which Lucian and Hesychius falsified are apocryphal." __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Prefaces to the Books of the Vulgate Version of the Old Testament.
This version was not undertaken with ecclesiastical sanction as was the case with the Gospels, but at the request of private friends, or from Jerome's "own sense of the imperious necessity of the work." It was wholly made at Bethlehem, and was begun about a.d. 391, and finished about a.d. 404. The approximate dates of the several books are given before each Preface in the following pages. __________________________________________________________________
Preface to Genesis.
This Preface was addressed to Desiderius, but which of the three correspondents of Jerome who bore this name is uncertain (See Article Desiderius in Smith and Wace's "Dictionary of Christian Biography"). We do not give it because it has been given at length as a specimen of the rest, in Jerome's "Apology," book ii., vol. iii. of this series, pp. 515-516. Jerome in it complains that he is accused of forging a new version. He justifies his undertaking by showing that in the versions then current many passages were left out (though they exist in our copies of the LXX.), such as "Out of Egypt" (Hos. xi. 1); "They shall look on him whom they pierced" (Zech. xii. 10), etc., which are quoted in the New Testament and are found in the Hebrew. He accounts for these omissions by the suggestion that the LXX. were afraid of offending Ptolemy Lagus for whom they worked, and who was a Platonist. He rejects the fable of the LXX. being shut up in separate cells and producing an identical version, and protests against the notion that they were inspired, and he urges his calumniators, by applying to those who knew Hebrew, to test the correctness of his version.
There is no Preface to the other books of the Pentateuch. From the allusion to the work on the Pentateuch as lately finished, in the Preface to Joshua, which was published in 404, it is presumed that the date of the translation of the Pentateuch is 403. __________________________________________________________________
Joshua, Judges, and Ruth.
The Preface to these books was written a.d. 404; Jerome speaks of the death of Paula, which took place in that year, and the work is addressed to Eustochium alone. The Preface is chiefly occupied with a defence of his translation. He tells those who carp at it that they are not bound to read it, and mentions that the Church had given no final sanction to the LXX., but read the book of Daniel in Theodotion's version. The books of Joshua, Judges, and Ruth, were probably the last of the Vulgate translation; the Preface declares Jerome's intention of devoting himself henceforward to the Commentaries on the Prophets, a work which took up the remainder of his life. __________________________________________________________________
The Books of Samuel and Kings.
This Preface was the first in order of publication. It was set forth as an exposition of the principles adopted by Jerome in all his translations from the Hebrew--the "Helmeted Preface," as he calls it in the beginning of the last paragraph, with which he was prepared to do battle against all who impugn his design and methods. It was addressed to Paula and Eustochium, and published about a.d. 391.
That the Hebrews have twenty-two letters is testified by the Syrian and Chaldæan languages which are nearly related to the Hebrew, for they have twenty-two elementary sounds which are pronounced the same way, but are differently written. The Samaritans also employ just the same number of letters in their copies of the Pentateuch of Moses, and differ only in the shape and outline of the letters. And it is certain that Esdras, the scribe and teacher of the law, after the capture of Jerusalem and the restoration of the temple by Zerubbabel, invented [5392] other letters which we now use, although up to that time the Samaritan and Hebrew characters were the same. In the [5393] book of Numbers, also, where we have the census of the Levites and priests, the mystic teaching of Scripture conducts us to the same result. And we find the four-lettered name of the Lord in certain Greek books written to this day in the ancient characters. The thirty-seventh Psalm, moreover, the one hundred and eleventh, the one hundred and twelfth, the one hundred and nineteenth, and the one hundred and forty-fifth, although they are written in different metres, have for their [5394] acrostic framework an alphabet of the same number of letters. The Lamentations of Jeremiah, and his Prayer, the Proverbs of Solomon also, towards the end, from the place where we read "Who will find a brave woman?" are instances of the same number of letters forming the division into sections. And, again, five are double letters, viz., Caph, Mem, Nun, Phe, Sade, for at the beginning and in the middle of words they are written one way, and at the end another way. Whence it happens that, by most people, five of the books are reckoned as double, viz., Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, Ezra, Jeremiah, with Kinoth, i.e., his Lamentations. As, then, there are twenty-two elementary characters by means of which we write in Hebrew all we say, and the compass of the human voice is contained within their limits, so we reckon twenty-two books, by which, as by the alphabet of the doctrine of God, a righteous man is instructed in tender infancy, and, as it were, while still at the breast.
The first of these books is called Bresith, to which we give the name Genesis. The second, Elle Smoth, which bears the name Exodus; the third, Vaiecra, that is Leviticus; the fourth, Vaiedabber, which we call Numbers; the fifth, Elle Addabarim, which is entitled Deuteronomy. These are the five books of Moses, which they properly call [5395] Thorath, that is law.
The second class is composed of the Prophets, and they begin with Jesus the son of Nave, who among them is called Joshua the son of Nun. Next in the series is Sophtim, that is the book of Judges; and in the same book they include Ruth, because the events narrated occurred in the days of the Judges. Then comes Samuel, which we call First and Second Kings. The fourth is Malachim, that is, Kings, which is contained in the third and fourth volumes of Kings. And it is far better to say Malachim, that is Kings, than Malachoth, that is Kingdoms. For the author does not describe the Kingdoms of many nations, but that of one people, the people of Israel, which is comprised in the twelve tribes. The fifth is Isaiah, the sixth, Jeremiah, the seventh, Ezekiel, the eighth is the book of the Twelve Prophets, which is called among the Jews [5396] Thare Asra.
To the third class belong the Hagiographa, of which the first book begins with Job, the second with David, whose writings they divide into five parts and comprise in one volume of Psalms; the third is Solomon, in three books, Proverbs, which they call Parables, that is Masaloth, Ecclesiastes, that is Coeleth, the Song of Songs, which they denote by the title Sir Assirim; the sixth is Daniel; the seventh, Dabre Aiamim, that is, Words of Days, which we may more expressively call a chronicle of the whole of the sacred history, the book that amongst us is called First and Second [5397] Chronicles; the eighth, Ezra, which itself is likewise divided amongst Greeks and Latins into [5398] two books; the ninth is Esther.
And so there are also twenty-two books of the Old Testament; that is, five of Moses, eight of the prophets, nine of the Hagiographa, though some include Ruth and Kinoth (Lamentations) amongst the Hagiographa, and think that these books ought to be reckoned separately; we should thus have twenty-four books of the old law. And these the Apocalypse of John represents by the twenty-four elders, who adore the Lamb, and with downcast looks offer their crowns, while in their presence stand the four living creatures with eyes before and behind, that is, looking to the past and the future, and with unwearied voice crying, Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty, who wast, and art, and art to come.
This preface to the Scriptures may serve as a "helmeted" introduction to all the books which we turn from Hebrew into Latin, so that we may be assured that what is not found in our list must be placed amongst the Apocryphal writings. Wisdom, therefore, which generally bears the name of Solomon, and the book of Jesus, the Son of Sirach, and Judith, and Tobias, and the Shepherd are not in the canon. The first book of Maccabees I have found to be Hebrew, the second is Greek, as can be proved from the very style. Seeing that all this is so, I beseech you, my reader, not to think that my labours are in any sense intended to disparage the old translators. For the service of the tabernacle of God each one offers what he can; some gold and silver and precious stones, others linen and blue and purple and scarlet; we shall do well if we offer skins and goats' hair. And yet the Apostle pronounces our more contemptible parts more necessary than others. Accordingly, the beauty of the tabernacle as a whole and in its several kinds (and the ornaments of the church present and future) was covered with skins and goats'-hair cloths, and the heat of the sun and the injurious rain were warded off by those things which are of less account. First read, then, my Samuel and Kings; mine, I say, mine. For whatever by diligent translation and by anxious emendation we have learnt and made our own, is ours. And when you understand that whereof you were before ignorant, either, if you are grateful, reckon me a translator, or, if ungrateful, a paraphraser, albeit I am not in the least conscious of having deviated from the Hebrew original. At all events, if you are incredulous, read the Greek and Latin manuscripts and compare them with these poor efforts of mine, and wherever you see they disagree, ask some Hebrew (though you ought rather to place confidence in me), and if he confirm our view, I suppose you will not think him a soothsayer and suppose that he and I have, in rendering the same passage, divined alike. But I ask you also, the [5399] handmaidens of Christ, who anoint the head of your reclining Lord with the most precious ointment of faith, who by no means seek the Saviour in the tomb, for whom Christ has long since ascended to the Father--I beg you to confront with the shields of your prayers the mad dogs who bark and rage against me, and go about the city, and think themselves learned if they disparage others. I, knowing my lowliness, will always remember what we are told. [5400] "I said, I will take heed to my ways that I offend not in my tongue. I have set a guard upon my mouth while the sinner standeth against me. I became dumb, and was humbled, and kept silence from good words." __________________________________________________________________
[5392] That is, the square character which was of Assyrian origin. As to how far the tradition is true, see Davidson's "Biblical Criticisms" (1854), p. 22, and the authorities there referred to.
[5393] iii. 39. All the males from a month old and upwards are said to have been twenty-two thousand.
[5394] These are the alphabetical Psalms which, being mainly didactic, were written acrostically to assist the memory. Others partially acrostic are ix., x., xxv., xxxiv., to make the alphabet complete in xxxvii. in verse 28 must be supposed to be represented by lrlm, and t in verse 39 by rtshych
[5395] More correctly Torah.
[5396] The laws or instructions of Ezra. By many of the Jews Ezra was regarded as the author of the Twelve Prophets.
[5397] Jerome has in the text the Greek equivalent paraleipomenon .
[5398] That is, Ezra and Nehemiah.
[5399] Paula and Eustochium.
[5400] Ps. xxxix. 2 sq. __________________________________________________________________
Chronicles.
This Preface is almost wholly a repetition of the arguments adduced in the Preface to Genesis. It is addressed to Chromatius, bishop of Aquileia, who took great interest in the work and provided funds for its continuance. The date is a.d. 395. __________________________________________________________________
Ezra and Nehemiah.
This Preface is addressed to Domnio (a Roman presbyter. See Letters L., and XLVII. 3, Paulinus, Ep. 3) and Rogatianus, of whom nothing is known. It was written a.d. 394. It is a repetition of his constant ground of self-defence, and contains a noble expression of his determination to carry the work through. "The serpent may hiss, and
"Victorious Sinon hurl his brand of fire,'
but never shall my mouth be closed. Cut off my tongue; it will still stammer out something. __________________________________________________________________
Esther.
To Paula and Eustochium, early in 404. Merely assures them that he is acting as a faithful translator, adding nothing of his own; whereas in the version then in common use (vulgata), "the book is drawn out into all kinds of perplexing entanglements of language." __________________________________________________________________
Job.
This was put into circulation about the same time as the sixteen prophets, that is, about the year 393. It was written in 392. It has no dedication, but is full of personal interest, and shows the deplorable state in which the text of many parts of Scripture was before his time, thus justifying his boast, "I have rescued Job from the dunghill."
I am compelled at every step in my treatment of the books of Holy Scripture to reply to the abuse of my opponents, who charge my translation with being a censure of the Seventy; as though Aquila among Greek authors, and Symmachus and Theodotion, had not rendered word for word, or paraphrased, or combined the two methods in a sort of translation which is neither the one nor the other; and as though Origen had not marked all the books of the Old Testament with obeli and asterisks, which he either introduced or adopted from Theodotion, and inserted in the old translation, thus showing that what he added was deficient in the older version. My detractors must therefore learn either to receive altogether what they have in part admitted, or they must erase my translation and at the same time their own asterisks. For they must allow that those translators who it is clear have left out numerous details, have erred in some points; especially in the book of Job, where, if you withdraw such passages as have been added and marked with asterisks, the greater part of the book will be cut away. This, at all events, will be so in Greek. On the other hand, previous to the publication of our recent translation with asterisks and obeli, about seven or eight hundred lines were missing in the Latin, so that the book, mutilated, torn, and disintegrated, exhibits its deformity to those who publicly read it. The present translation follows no ancient translator, but will be found to reproduce now the exact words, now the meaning, now both together of the original Hebrew, Arabic, and occasionally the Syriac. For an indirectness and a slipperiness attaches to the whole book, even in the Hebrew; and, as orators say in Greek, it [5401] is tricked out with figures of speech, and while it says one thing, it does another; just as if you close your hand to hold an eel or a little [5402] muræna, the more you squeeze it, the sooner it escapes. I remember that in order to understand this volume, I paid a not inconsiderable sum for the services of a teacher, a native of Lydda, who was amongst the Hebrews reckoned to be in the front rank; whether I profited at all by his teaching, I do not know; of this one thing I am sure, that I could translate only that which I previously understood. Well, then, from the beginning of the book to the words of Job, the Hebrew version is in prose. Further, from the words of Job where he says, [5403] "May the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said, a man-child is conceived," to the place where before the close of the book it is written [5404] "Therefore I blame myself and repent in dust and ashes," we have hexameter verses running in dactyl and spondee: and owing to the idiom of the language other feet are frequently introduced not containing the same number of syllables, but the same quantities. Sometimes, also, a sweet and musical rhythm is produced by the breaking up of the verses in accordance with the laws of metre, a fact better known to prosodists than to the ordinary reader. But from the aforesaid verse to the end of the book the small remaining section is a prose composition. And if it seem incredible to any one that the Hebrews really have metres, and that, whether we consider the Psalter or the Lamentations of Jeremiah, or almost all the songs of Scripture, they bear a resemblance to our Flaccus, and the Greek Pindar, and Alcæus, and Sappho, let him read Philo, Josephus, Origen, Eusebius of Cæsarea, and with the aid of their testimony he will find that I speak the truth. Wherefore, let my barking critics listen as I tell them that my motive in toiling at this book was not to censure the ancient translation, but that those passages in it which are obscure, or those which have been omitted, or at all events, through the fault of copyists have been corrupted, might have light thrown upon them by our translation; for we have some slight knowledge of Hebrew, and, as regards Latin, my life, almost from the cradle, has been spent in the company of grammarians, rhetoricians, and philosophers. But if, since the version of the Seventy was published, and even now, when the Gospel of Christ is beaming forth, the Jewish Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion, judaising heretics, have been welcomed amongst the Greeks--heretics, who, by their deceitful translation, have concealed many mysteries of salvation, and yet, in the Hexapla are found in the Churches and are expounded by churchmen; ought not I, a Christian, born of Christian parents, and who carry the standard of the cross on my brow, and am zealous to recover what is lost, to correct what is corrupt, and to disclose in pure and faithful language the mysteries of the Church, ought not I, let me ask, much more to escape the reprobation of fastidious or malicious readers? Let those who will keep the old books with their gold and silver letters on purple skins, or, to follow the ordinary phrase, in "uncial characters," loads of writing rather than manuscripts, if only they will leave for me and mine, our poor pages and copies which are less remarkable for beauty than for accuracy. I have toiled to translate both the Greek versions of the Seventy, and the Hebrew which is the basis of my own, into Latin. Let every one choose which he likes, and [5405] he will find out that what he objects to in me, is the result of sound learning, not of malice. __________________________________________________________________
[5401] eschematismenos .
[5402] A small fish well known to the ancients, but apparently not identified with any species known to us.
[5403] Job iii. 3.
[5404] xlii. 6.
[5405] Reading studiosum me magis quam malevolum probet. Substituting se for me, according to some manuscripts, we must translate "and thus show that he is actuated more by a love of learning than by malice." __________________________________________________________________
Psalms.
Dedicated to Sophronius about the year 392. Jerome had, while at Rome, made a translation of the Psalms from the LXX., which he had afterwards corrected by collation with the Hebrew text (see the Preface addressed to Paula and Eustochium, infra). His friend Sophronius, in quoting the Psalms to the Jews, was constantly met with the reply, "It does not so stand in the Hebrew." He, therefore, urged Jerome to translate them direct from the original. Jerome, in presenting the translation to his friend, records the intention which he had expressed of translating the new Latin version into Greek. This we know was done by Sophronius, not only for the Psalms, but also for the rest of the Vulgate, and was valued by the Greeks (Apol. ii. 24, vol. iii. of this series, p. 515). __________________________________________________________________
Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs.
Dedicated to Chromatius and Heliodorus, a.d. 393. The Preface is important as showing the help given to Jerome by his friends, the rapidity of his work, and his view of the Apocrypha. We give the two chief passages.
It is well that my letter should couple those who are coupled in the episcopate; and that I should not separate on paper those who are bound in one by the law of Christ. I would have written the commentaries on Hosea, Amos, Zechariah, and the Kings, which you ask of me, if I had not been prevented by illness. You give me comfort by the supplies you send me; you support my secretaries and copyists, so that the efforts of all my powers may be given to you. And then all at once comes a thick crowd of people with all sorts of demands, as if it was just that I should neglect your hunger and work for others, or as if, in the matter of giving and receiving, I had a debt to any one but you. And so, though I am broken by a long illness, yet, not to be altogether silent and dumb amongst you this year, I have dedicated to you three days' work, that is to say, the translation of the three books of Solomon.
After speaking of the books of the Wisdom of Solomon and Ecclesiasticus, which were sent at the same time, the Preface continues:
As, then, the Church reads Judith, Tobit, and the books of Maccabees, but does not admit them among the canonical Scriptures, so let it read these two volumes for the edification of the people, not to give authority to doctrines of the Church. If any one is better pleased with the edition of the Seventy, there it is, long since corrected by me. For it is not our aim in producing the new to destroy the old. And yet if our friend reads carefully, he will find that our version is the more intelligible, for it has not turned sour by being poured three times over into different vessels, but has been drawn straight from the press, and stored in a clean jar, and has thus preserved its own flavour. __________________________________________________________________
Isaiah.
Addressed to Paula and Eustochium, about a.d. 393. This Preface speaks of Isaiah as using the polished diction natural to a man of rank and refinement, as an Evangelist more than a prophet, and a poet rather than a prose writer. He then reiterates his defence of his translation, saying that now, "The Jews can no longer scoff at our Churches because of the falsity of our Scriptures." __________________________________________________________________
Jeremiah and Ezekiel.
Short Prefaces without dedication, but probably addressed to Paula and Eustochium, about a.d. 393. __________________________________________________________________
Daniel.
The Preface is interesting as showing the difficulties caused by the incorporation of apocryphal matter into this book, the fact that Theodotion's version, not the LXX., was read in the Churches, and that the book was reckoned by the Jews not among the prophets but among the Hagiographa. It was addressed to Paula and Eustochium about a.d. 392.
The Septuagint version of Daniel the prophet is not read by the Churches of our Lord and Saviour. They use Theodotion's version, but how this came to pass I cannot tell. Whether it be that the language is Chaldee, which differs in certain peculiarities from our speech, and the Seventy were unwilling to follow those deviations in a translation; or that the book was published in the name of the Seventy, by some one or other not familiar with Chaldee, or if there be some other reason, I know not; this one thing I can affirm--that it differs widely from the original, and is rightly rejected. For we must bear in mind that Daniel and Ezra, the former especially, were written in Hebrew letters, but in the Chaldee language, as was [5406] one section of Jeremiah; and, further, that Job has much affinity with Arabic. As for myself, when, in lily youth, after reading the flowery rhetoric of Quintilian and Tully, I entered on the vigorous study of this language, the expenditure of much time and energy barely enabled me to utter the puffing and hissing words; I seemed to be walking in a sort of underground chamber with a few scattered rays of light shining down upon me; and when at last I met with Daniel, such a sense of weariness came over me that, in a fit of despair, I could have counted all my former toil as useless. But there was a certain Hebrew who encouraged me, and was for ever quoting for my benefit the saying that "Persistent labour conquers all things"; and so, conscious that among Hebrews I was only a smatterer, I once more began to study Chaldee. And, to confess the truth, to this day I can read and understand Chaldee better than I can pronounce it. I say this to show you how hard it is to master the book of Daniel, which in Hebrew contains neither the history of Susanna, nor the hymn of the three youths, nor the fables of Bel and the Dragon; because, however, they are to be found everywhere, we have formed them into an appendix, prefixing to them an obelus, and thus making an end of them, so as not to seem to the uninformed to have cut off a large portion of the volume. I heard a certain Jewish teacher, when mocking at the history of Susanna, and saying that it was the fiction of some Greek or other, raise the same objection which Africanus brought against Origen--that these etymologies of [5407] schisai from [5408] schinos, and [5409] prisai from [5410] prinos, are to be traced to the Greek. To make the point clear to Latin readers: It is as if he were to say, playing upon the word ilex, illico pereas; or upon lentiscus, may the angel make a lentil of you, or may you perish nan lente, or may you lentus (that is pliant or compliant) be led to death, or anything else suiting the name of the tree. Then he would captiously maintain that the three youths in the furnace of raging fire had leisure enough to amuse themselves with making poetry, and to summon all the elements in turn to praise God. Or what was there miraculous, he would say, or what indication of divine inspiration, in the slaying of the dragon with a lump of pitch, or in frustrating the schemes of the priests of Bel? Such deeds were more the results of an able man's forethought than of a prophetic spirit. But when he came to [5411] Habakkuk and read that he was carried from Judæa into Chaldæa to bring a dish of food to Daniel, he asked where we found an instance in the whole of the Old Testament of any saint with an ordinary body flying through the air, and in a quarter of an hour traversing vast tracts of country. And when one of us who was rather too ready to speak adduced the instance of Ezekiel, and said that he was transported from Chaldæa into Judæa, he derided the man and proved from the book itself that Ezekiel, in spirit, saw himself carried over. And he argued that even our own Apostle, being an accomplished man and one who had been taught the law by Hebrews, had not dared to affirm that he was bodily rapt away, but had said: [5412] "Whether in the body, or out of the body, I know not; God knoweth." By these and similar arguments he used to refute the apocryphal fables in the Church's book. Leaving this for the reader to pronounce upon as he may think fit, I give warning that Daniel in Hebrew is not found among the prophets, but amongst the writers of the Hagiographa; for all Scripture is by them divided into three parts: the law, the Prophets, and the Hagiographa, which have respectively five, eight, and eleven books, a point which we cannot now discuss. But as to the objections which [5413] Porphyry raises against this prophet, or rather brings against the book, [5414] Methodius, Eusebius, and Apollinaris may be cited as witnesses, for they replied to his folly in many thousand lines of writing, whether with satisfaction to the curious reader I know not. Therefore, I beseech you, Paula and Eustochium, to pour out your supplications for me to the Lord, that so long as I am in this poor body, I may write something pleasing to you, useful to the Church, worthy of posterity. As for my contemporaries, I am indifferent to their opinions, for they pass from side to side as they are moved by love or hatred. __________________________________________________________________
[5406] x. 11.
[5407] To split. The word has no sort of etymological connection with schinos. Susanna 54, 55, 58, 59. When the first elder says the crime was committed under a mastich tree (schinos), Daniel answers, "God shall cut thee in two" (schisei).
[5408] The mastich tree.
[5409] To saw.
[5410] The holm-oak.
[5411] In the LXX. the story of Bel and the Dragon bears a special heading as "part of the prophecy of Habakkuk."--Westcott. The angel is said to have carried Habakkuk with a dish of food in his hand for Daniel from Judæa to Babylon.
[5412] 2 Cor. xii. 2.
[5413] The bitter enemy of the Christian faith. Born at Tyre 223. Died at Rome about 304.
[5414] Bishop of Patara in Lycia, and afterwards of Tyre. Suffered martyrdom 302 or 303. __________________________________________________________________
The Twelve Minor Prophets.
This Preface, dedicated to Paula and Eustochium in a.d. 392, contains nothing of importance, merely mentioning the dates of a few of the prophets. and the fact that the Twelve Prophets were counted by the Hebrews as forming a single book. __________________________________________________________________
Translations from the Septuagint and Chaldee.
There are three stages of Jerome's work of Scripture Translation. The first is during his stay at Rome, a.d. 382-385, when he translated only from the Greek--the New Testament from the Greek mss., and the Book of Psalms from the LXX. The second is the period immediately after his settlement at Bethlehem, when he translated still from the LXX., but marked with obeli and asterisks the passages in which that version differed from the Hebrew: the third from a.d. 390-404, in which he translated directly from the Hebrew. The work of the second period is that which is now before us. The whole of the Old Testament was translated from the LXX. (see his Apology, book ii. c. 24), but most of it was lost during his lifetime (see Letters CXXXIV. (end) and CXVI. 34 (in Augustin Letter, 62)). What remains is the Book of Job, the Psalms, Chronicles, the Books of Solomon, and Tobit and Judith. __________________________________________________________________
Chronicles.
This book was dedicated to [5415] Domnion and Rogatianus, about a.d. 388. Jerome points out the advantages he enjoyed, in living in Palestine, for obtaining correct information on matters illustrative of Scripture, especially the names of places. The mss. of the LXX. on such points were so corrupt that occasionally three names were run into one, and "you would think that you had before you, not a heap of Hebrew names, but those of some foreign and Sarmatian tribe." Jerome had sent for a Jew, highly esteemed among his brethren, from Tiberias, and, after "examining him from top to toe," had, by his aid, emended the text and made the translation. But he had not the critical knowledge to guard him against supposing that the Books of Chronicles are "the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah," referred to in the Books of Kings. __________________________________________________________________
[5415] See Preface to Ezra (Vulgate). __________________________________________________________________
Book of Job.
This translation was dedicated to Paula and Eustochium, about the year 388. He complains that even the revision he was now making was the subject of many cavils. Men prefer ancient faults to new truths, and would rather have handsome copies than correct ones; but he boasts that "the blessed Job, who, as far as the Latins are concerned, was till now lying amidst filth and swarming with the worms of error, is now whole and free from stain." __________________________________________________________________
The Psalms.
Jerome first undertook a revision of the Psalter with the help of the Septuagint about the year 383, when living at Rome. This revision, which obtained the name of the Roman Psalter "probably because it was made for the use of the Roman Church at the request of Damasus," was retained until the pontificate of Pius V. (a.d. 1566). Before long "the old error prevailed over the new correction," the faults of the old version crept in again through the negligence of copyists; and at the request of Paula and Eustochium, Jerome commenced a new and more thorough revision. The exact date is not known; the work was in all probability done at Bethlehem in the years 387 and 388. This edition, which soon became popular, was introduced by Gregory of Tours into the services of the Church of France, and thus obtained the name of the Gallican Psalter. In 1566 it superseded the Roman in all churches except those of the Vatican, Milan, and St. Mark's, Venice.
Long ago, when I was living at Rome, I revised the Psalter, and corrected it in a great measure, though but cursorily, in accordance with the Septuagint version. You now find it, Paula and Eustochium, again corrupted through the fault of copyists, and realise the fact that ancient error is more powerful than modern correction; and you therefore urge me, as it were, to cross-plough the land which has already been broken up, and, by means of the transverse furrows, to root out the thorns which are beginning to spring again; it is only right, you say, that rank and noxious growths should be cut down as often as they appear. And so I issue my customary admonition by way of preface both to you, for whom it happens that I am undertaking the labour, and to those persons who desire to have copies such as I describe. Pray see that what I have carefully revised be transcribed with similar painstaking care. Every reader can observe for himself where there is placed either a horizontal line or mark issuing from the centre, that is, either an obelus () or an asterisk (*). And wherever he sees the former, he is to understand that between this mark and the two stops (:) which I have introduced, the Septuagint translation contains superfluous matter. But where he sees the asterisk (*), an addition to the Hebrew books is indicated, which also goes as far as the two stops. __________________________________________________________________
Books of Solomon.
This is addressed to Paula and Eustochium. Jerome describes the numerous emendations he has had to make in what was then the received Latin text, but says he has not found the same necessity in dealing with Ecclesiasticus. He adds, "All I aim at is to give you a revised edition of the Canonical Scriptures, and to employ my Latin on what is certain rather than on what is doubtful." __________________________________________________________________
Tobit and Judith.
The Preface is to Chromatius and Heliodorus. It recognizes that the books are apocryphal. After his usual complaints of "the Pharisees" who impugned his translations, he says: "Inasmuch as the Chaldee is closely allied to the Hebrew, I procured the help of the most skilful speaker of both languages I could find, and gave to the subject one day's hasty labour, my method being to explain in Latin, with the aid of a secretary, whatever an interpreter expressed to me in Hebrew words." As to Judith, he notes that the Council of Nicæa had, contrary to the Hebrew tradition, included it in the Canon of Scripture, and this, with his friends' requests, had induced him to undertake the labour of emendation and translation. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
The Commentaries.
The extant commentaries by Jerome on the books of Holy Scripture may be arranged thus, chronological sequence being observed as far as possible:
A. New Testament:
The Epistles to Philemon, Galatians, Ephesians, Titus. a.d. 387.
Origen on St. Luke. a.d. 389.
St. Matthew. a.d. 398.
B. Old Testament:
Ecclesiastes. a.d. 388.
1. The Twelve Minor Prophets:
Nahum, Michah, Zephaniah, Haggai, Habakkuk. a.d. 392.
Jonah. Begun three years after the foregoing (Preface). Finished between a.d. 395 and a.d. 397.
Obadiah. a.d. 403.
Zechariah, Malachi, Hosea, Joel, Amos. Finished by a.d. 406.
2. The Four Greater Prophets:
Daniel. a.d. 407.
Isaiah. a.d. 408-410.
Ezekiel. a.d. 410-414.
Jeremiah. Commenced after the death of Eustochium in a.d. 418. The commentary on this book, which stops short at chapter xxxii., was therefore written in a.d. 419, the year which intervened between Eustochium's death and Jerome's own.
We have thought it best to give the Prefaces, as in those to the Vulgate, in the order of the books as they stand in our Bible, not in the order in which they were written. __________________________________________________________________
Matthew.
The Preface, addressed to Eusebius of Cremona, was written a.d. 398. Eusebius was at this time starting for Rome, and he was charged to give a copy of this Commentary to Principia, the friend of Marcella, for whom he had been unable through sickness to write on the Song of Songs as he had wished. Jerome begins by distinguishing the Canonical from the Apocryphal Gospels, quoting the words of St. Luke, that many had taken in hand to write the life of Christ. He gives his view of the origin of the Gospels as follows:
The first evangelist is Matthew, the publican, who was surnamed Levi. He published his Gospel in Judæa in the Hebrew language, chiefly for the sake of Jewish believers in Christ, who adhered in vain to the shadow of the law, although the substance of the Gospel had come. The second is Mark, the [5416] amanuensis of the Apostle Peter, and first bishop of the Church of Alexandria. He did not himself see our Lord and Saviour, but he related the matter of his Master's preaching with more regard to minute detail than to historical sequence. The third is Luke, the physician, by birth a native of Antioch, in Syria, whose praise is in the Gospel. He was himself a disciple of the Apostle Paul, and composed his book in Achaia and Boeotia. He thoroughly investigates certain particulars and, as he himself confesses in the preface, describes what he had heard rather than what he had seen. The last is John, the Apostle and Evangelist, whom Jesus loved most, who, reclining on the Lord's bosom, drank the purest streams of doctrine, and was the only one thought worthy of the words from the cross, "Behold! thy mother." When he was in Asia, at the time when the seeds of heresy were springing up (I refer to Cerinthus, Ebion, and the rest who say that Christ has not come in the flesh, whom he in his own epistle calls Antichrists, and whom the Apostle Paul frequently assails), he was urged by almost all the bishops of Asia then living, and by deputations from many Churches, to write more profoundly concerning the divinity of the Saviour, and to break through all obstacles so as to attain to the very Word of God (if I may so speak) with a boldness as successful as it appears audacious. Ecclesiastical history relates that, when he was urged by the brethren to write, he replied that he would do so if a general fast were proclaimed and all would offer up prayer to God; and when the fast was over, the narrative goes on to say, being filled with revelation, he burst into the heaven-sent Preface: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God: this was in the beginning with God."
Jerome then applies the four symbolical figures of Ezekiel to the Gospels: the Man is Matthew, the Lion, Mark, the Calf, Luke, "because he began with Zacharias the priest," and the Eagle, John. He then describes the works of his predecessors: Origen with his twenty-five volumes, Theophilus of Antioch, Hippolytus the martyr, Theodorus of Heraclea, Apollinaris of Laodicæa, Didymus of Alexandria, and of the Latins, Hilary, Victorinus, and Fortunatianus; from these last, he says, he had gained but little. He continues as follows:
But you urge me to finish the composition in a fortnight, when Easter is now rapidly approaching, and the spring breezes are blowing; you do not consider when the shorthand writers are to take notes, when the sheets are to be written, when corrected, how long it takes to make a really accurate copy; and this is the more surprising, since you know that for the last three months I have been so ill that I am now hardly beginning to walk; and I could not adequately perform so great a task in so short a time. Therefore, neglecting the authority of ancient writers, since I have no opportunity of reading or following them, I have confined myself to the brief exposition and translation of the narrative which you particularly requested; and I have sometimes thrown in a few of the flowers of the [5417] spiritual interpretation, while I reserve the perfect work for a future day. __________________________________________________________________
[5416] Interpres.
[5417] That is, the allegorical or mystical sense. __________________________________________________________________
Preface to Translation of Origen on St. Luke.
Addressed to Paula and Eustochium, a.d. 388.
A few days ago you told me that you had read some commentaries on Matthew and Luke, of which one was equally dull in perception and expression, the other frivolous in expression, sleepy in sense. Accordingly you requested me to translate, without regarding such rubbish, our Adamantius' thirty-nine "homilies" on Luke, just as they are found in the original Greek; I replied that it was an irksome task and a mental torment to write, as Cicero phrases it, with another man's heart [5418] not one's own; but yet I will undertake it, as your requests reach no higher than this. The demand which the sainted Blesilla once made, at Rome, that I should translate into our language his twenty-five volumes on Matthew, five on Luke, and thirty-two on John is beyond my powers, my leisure, and my energy. You see what weight your influence and wishes have with me. I have laid aside for a time my books on Hebrew Questions because you think my labour will not be in vain, and turn to the translation of these commentaries, which, good or bad, are his work and not mine. I do this all the more readily because I hear on the left of me the raven--that ominous bird--croaking and mocking in all extraordinary way at the colours of all the other birds, though he himself is nothing if not a bird of gloom. And so, before he change his note, I confess that in these treatises Origen is like a boy amusing himself with the dice-box; there is a wide difference between his mature efforts and the serious studies of his old age. If my proposal meet with your approbation, if I am still able to undertake the task, and if the Lord grant me opportunity to translate them into Latin after completing the work I have now deferred, you will then be able to see--aye, and all who speak Latin will learn through you--how much good they knew not, and how much they have now begun to know. Besides this, I have arranged to send you shortly the Commentaries of Hilary, that master of eloquence, and of the blessed martyr Victorinus, on the Gospel of Matthew. Their style is different, but the grace of the Spirit which wrought in them is one. These will give you some idea of the study which our Latins also have, in former days, bestowed upon the Holy Scriptures. __________________________________________________________________
[5418] Alieno stomacho. __________________________________________________________________
Galatians.
The Commentary is in three books, with full Prefaces.
Book I., Ch. i. 1-iii. 9.
Addressed to Paula and Eustochium, a.d. 387.
The Preface to this book begins with a striking description of the noble Roman lady Albina, which is as follows:
Only a few days have elapsed since, having finished my exposition of the Epistle of Paul to Philemon, I had passed to Galatians, turning my course backwards and passing over many intervening subjects. But all at once letters unexpectedly arrived from Rome with the news that the venerable Albina has been recalled to the presence of the Lord, and that the saintly Marcella, bereft of the company of her mother, demands more than ever such solace as you can give, my dear Paula and Eustochium. This for the present is impossible on account of the great distance to be traversed by sea and land, and I could, therefore, wish to apply to the wound so suddenly inflicted at least the healing virtue of Scripture. I know full well her zeal and faith; I know how brightly the fire burns in her bosom, how she rises superior to her sex, and soars so far above human nature itself, that she crosses the Red Sea of this world, sounding the loud timbrel of the inspired volumes. Certainly, when I was at Rome, she never saw me for ever so short a time without putting some question to me respecting the Scriptures, and she did not, like the Pythagoreans, accept the "Ipse dixit" of her teacher, nor did authority, unsupported by the verdict of reason, influence her; but she tested all things, and weighed the whole matter so sagaciously that I perceived I had not a disciple so much as a judge. And so, believing that my labours would be most acceptable to her who is at a distance, and profitable for you who are with me here, I will approach a work unattempted by any writers in our language before me, and which scarcely any of the Greeks themselves have handled in a manner worthy of the dignity of the subject.
Jerome then speaks of Victorinus, who had published a commentary on St. Paul, but "was busily engaged with secular literature and knew nothing of the Scriptures," and of the great Greek writers, Origen, [5419] Didymus, and [5420] Appolinaris, Eusebius of Emessa, and Theodorus of Heraclea, and says he has plucked flowers out of their gardens, so that the Commentary is more theirs than his. The expository part of the Preface is chiefly remarkable as giving the view of St. Paul's rebuke of St. Peter in Galatians ii., which occasioned the controversy between Jerome and Augustin. Jerome says:
Paul does not go straight to the point, but is like a man walking in secret passages: his object is to exhibit Peter as doing what was expedient for the people of the circumcision committed to him, since, if a too sudden revolt took place from their ancient mode of life, they might be offended and not believe in the Cross; he wished, moreover, to show, inasmuch as the evangelisation of the Gentiles had been entrusted to himself that he had justice on his side in defending as true that which another only pretended was a dispensation. That wretch Porphyry [5421] Bataneotes by no means understood this, and, therefore, in the first book of the work which he wrote against us, he raised the objection that Peter was rebuked by Paul for not walking uprightly as an evangelical teacher. His desire was to brand the former with error and the latter with impudence, and to bring against us as a body the charge of erroneous notions and false doctrine, on the ground that the leaders of the Churches are at variance among themselves.
In the Preface to Book II. Jerome describes the origin of the Galatians as a Gaulish tribe settled in Asia; but he takes them as slow of understanding, and says that the Gauls still preserve this character, just as the Roman Church preserves the character for which it was praised by St. Paul, for it still has crowds frequenting its churches and the tombs of its martyrs, and "nowhere else does the Amen resound so loudly, like spiritual thunder, and shake the temples of the idols"; and similarly the traits of the churches of Corinth and Thessalonica are still preserved; in the first, the looseness of behaviour and of doctrine, and the conceit of worldly knowledge; in the second, the love of the brethren side by side with the disorderly conduct of busybodies. And he speaks of the condition of Galatia in his own day as follows:
Any one who has seen by how many schisms Ancyra, the metropolis of Galatia, is rent and torn, and by how many differences and false doctrines the place is debauched, knows this as well as I do. I say nothing of [5422] Cataphrygians, [5423] Ophites, Borborites, and Manichæans; for these are familiar names of human woe. Who ever heard of Passaloryncitæ, and [5424] Ascodrobi, and [5425] Artotyritæ, and other portents--I can hardly call them names--in any part of the Roman Empire? The traces of the ancient foolishness remain to this day. One remark I must make, and so fulfil the promise with which I started. While the Galatians, in common with the whole East, speak Greek, their own language is almost identical with that of the [5426] Treviri; and if through contact with the Greek they have acquired a few corruptions, it is a matter of no moment. The Africans have to some extent changed the Phenician language, and Latin itself is daily undergoing changes through differences of place and time.
The Preface to Book III. opens with the following passage, describing, in contrast with his own simple exposition, the arts of the preachers of his day.
We are now busily occupied with our third book on Galatians, and, my friends, Paula and Eustochium, we are well aware of our weakness, and are conscious that our slender ability flows in but a small stream and makes little roar and rattle. For these are the qualities (to such a pass have we come) which are now expected even in the Churches; the simplicity and purity of apostolic language is neglected; we meet as if we were in the [5427] Athenæum, or the lecture rooms, to kindle the applause of the bystanders; what is now required is a discourse painted and tricked out with spurious rhetorical skill, and which, like a strumpet in the streets, does not aim at instructing the public, but at winning their favour; like a psaltery or a sweet-sounding lute, it must soothe the ears of the audience; and the passage of the prophet Ezekiel is suitable for our times, where the Lord says to him, "Thou art become unto them as the sound of a pleasant lute which is well made, for they hear thy words but do them not."
Jerome then speaks of the composition of his commentaries as follows:
How far I have profited by my unflagging study of Hebrew I leave to others to decide; what I have lost in my own language, I can tell. In addition to this, on account of the weakness of my eyes and bodily infirmity generally, I do not write with my own hand; and I cannot make up for my slowness of utterance by greater pains and diligence, as is said to have been the case with Virgil, of whom it is related that he treated his books as a bear treats her cubs, and licked them into shape. I must summon a secretary, and either say whatever comes uppermost; or, if I wish to think a little and hope to produce something superior, my helper silently reproves me, clenches his fist, wrinkles his brow, and plainly declares by his whole bearing that he has come for nothing.
He then points out how the Scriptures have dispossessed the great writers of the pre-Christian world.
How few there are who now read Aristotle. How many are there who know the books, or even the name of Plato? You may find here and there a few old men, who have nothing else to do, who study them in a corner. [5428] But the whole world speaks the language of our Christian peasants and fishermen, the whole world re-echoes their words. And so their simple words must be set forth with simplicity of style; for the word simple applies to their words, not their meaning. But if, in response to your prayers, I could, in expounding their epistles, have the same spirit which they had when they dictated them, you would then see in the Apostles as much majesty and breadth of true wisdom as there is arrogance and vanity in the learned men of the world. To make a brief confession of the secrets of my heart, I should not like any one who wished to understand the Apostle to find a difficulty in understanding my writings, and so be compelled to find some one to interpret the interpreter. __________________________________________________________________
[5419] Didymus, the blind teacher of Alexandria.
[5420] He became bishop of Laodicea about 362. About 376 his followers became a sect, and about the same time he set up bishops of his own at Antioch and elsewhere.
[5421] Probably from Batanea, the ancient Bashan, where Porphyry is said to have been born.
[5422] "The patriarch (of the Montanists) resided at Pepuza, a small town or village in Phrygia, to which the sectaries gave the mystical name of Jerusalem, as believing that it would be the seat of the Millennial Kingdom, which was the chief subject of their hopes. Hence they derived the names of Pepuzians and Cataphrygians."--Robertson, Ch. Hist., vol. i. p. 76.
[5423] The Ophites, who took their name from ophis, a serpent, supposed the serpent of Genesis iii. to have been either the Divine Wisdom or the Christ Himself, come to set men free from the ignorance in which the Demiurge wished to keep them. The sect began in the second century and lasted until the sixth.
[5424] The Ben. editor prefers the form Tascodrogi, and states that it is the Phrygian or Galatian equivalent for Passaloryncitæ. The sect is said to have been so called from their habit of putting the finger to the nose when praying.
[5425] Heretics who made offerings of bread and cheese (arto-turos. Arto-tyros).--Aug. de Hæres, No. 28.
[5426] The people who lived between the Moselle and the Forest of Ardennes in and about the modern Treves.
[5427] The Athenæum was the name specially given to a school founded by the Emperor Hadrian at Rome, about a.d. 133, for the promotion of literary and scientific studies. The word denoted in general any place consecrated to the goddess Athena.
[5428] Angulis. So. Cic. Rep. i. 2. __________________________________________________________________
Ephesians.
This Commentary was specially prized by Jerome as exhibiting his true views (Letter LXXXIV. 2), and they became in consequence one of the chief subjects of controversy between him and Rufinus, who traced in them, not unjustly, the influence of Origen. It was written immediately after that on the Epistle to the Galatians, in a.d. 387, and, like that, addressed to Paula and Eustochium. In the Preface to Book i. Jerome defends himself against various accusations. He declares that he has been, in the main, his own instructor, but yet that he has constantly consulted others as to Scriptural difficulties, and that he had, not long before, been to Alexandria to consult Didymus. "I questioned him about everything which was not clear to me in the whole range of Scripture." As to his indebtedness to Origen, he speaks as follows, certainly not blaming his doctrines: "I remark in the Prefaces, for your information, that Origen composed three volumes on this Epistle, and I have partly followed him. Apollinaris and Didymus also published some commentaries, and, though we have gleaned a few things from them, we have added or omitted such as we thought fit. The studious reader will, therefore, understand at the outset that this work is partly my own, and that I am in part indebted to others." The Preface to Books ii. and iii. is short. It speaks in praise of Marcella, who had invited him to his task, and declares that he in his monastery could not accomplish as much as that noble woman amidst the cares of her household. "I beseech you," he says, "to bear in mind that the language of this publication has not been long thought over or highly polished. In revealing the mysteries of Scripture I use almost the language of the street, and sometimes get through a thousand lines a day, in order that the explanation of the Apostle which I have begun may be completed with the aid of the prayers of Paul himself, whose Epistles I am endeavouring to explain." __________________________________________________________________
Philemon.
Written for Paula and Eustochium, a.d. 387. The Preface is a defence of the genuineness of the Epistle against those who thought its subject beneath the dignity of inspiration. "There are many degrees of inspiration," Jerome says, "though in Christ alone it is seen in its fulness." Many of the other Epistles touch upon small affairs of life, like the cloak left at Troas. To suppose that common life is separate from God is Manichæanism. Jerome mentions that Marcion, who altered many of the Epistles, did not touch that of Philemon; and brevity in a document which has in it so much of the beauty of the Gospel is a mark of its inspiration. __________________________________________________________________
Titus.
Addressed to Paula and Eustochium, a.d. 387. The Preface speaks of the rejection of the Epistle by Marcion and Basilides, its acceptance by Tatius, but without assigning reasons. It ought, Jerome says, to be of special interest to Paula and Eustochium, as being written from Nicopolis, near Actium, where their property lay. __________________________________________________________________
Isaiah.
The Commentary in eighteen books, each with its Preface. It was written in the years 404-410, and addressed to Eustochium alone, her mother Paula having died in 404.
The Preface to Book i. touches generally upon the character and contents of Isaiah, asserting that many of the prophecies are directly applicable to Christ, and that the nations who are dealt with have a spiritual meaning. Those to the following books mostly give a short statement of the contents of the chapters commented on, and entreat the prayers of Eustochium for the work. The Fifth Book (or chapters xiii. to xxiii.) had been published before by itself, at the instance of a bishop named Amabilis, but he says he must add the metaphorical and spiritual meaning of the Visions of the various nations, which is done in Books vi. and vii. The Preface to Book x. contains a bitter allusion to Rufinus, "the Scorpion, a dumb and poisonous brute, still grumbling over my former reply," and speaks of Pammachius as joining in the request for the continuation of the Commentaries.
The Preface to Book xi. intimates that his commentary upon Daniel, which expounded the statue with feet of iron and clay as the Roman Empire, and announced its fall, had been known at the court and resented by Stilicho, but that all danger from that source had been removed by the judgment of God, that is, through the death of Stilicho by the command of his son in-law Honorius. The Preface to Book xiii. records a severe illness which had stopped his work, though he was restored to health suddenly; and that to Book xiv. thanks Eustochium for her kind offices during this illness. The remaining Prefaces, though they have occasionally some interest in the history of the interpretation of Scripture, need not delay us. __________________________________________________________________
Jeremiah.
The Commentary on Jeremiah is in six books; but Jerome did not live to finish it. It was written between the years 317 and 319, but only extends to chapter xxxii. It was dedicated to Eusebius of Cremona. The Prefaces, which are full of vigour, contain many allusions to the events and controversies of the last years of Jerome's life. In the Preface to Book i., after speaking of the Book of Daniel and the apocryphal Letter of Jeremiah as not belonging to the prophet's writings, he continues:
I pay little heed to the ravings of disparaging critics who revile not only my words, but the very syllables of my words, and suppose they give evidence of some little knowledge if they discredit another man's work, as was exemplified in that [5429] ignorant traducer who lately broke out, and thought it worth his while to censure my commentaries on Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians. He does not understand the rules of commenting (for he is more asleep than awake and seems utterly dazed), and is not aware that in our books we give the opinions of many different writers, the authors' names being either expressed or understood, so that it is open to the reader to decide which he may prefer to adopt; although I must add that, in my Preface to the First Book of that work, I gave fair notice that my remarks would be partly my own, partly those of other commentators, and that thus the commentary would be the work conjointly of the ancient writers and of myself. [5430] Grunnius, his precursor, overlooked the same fact, and once upon a time did his best to cavil. I replied to him in two books, and there I cleared away the objections which he adduced in his own name, though the real traducer was some one else; to say nothing of my treatises against Jovinianus where, you may remember, I show that he (Jovinianus) laments that virginity is preferred to marriage, single marriage to digamy, digamy to polygamy. The stupid fool, [5431] labouring under his load of Scotch porridge, does not recollect that we said, in that very work, "I do not condemn the twice married, nor the thrice married, and, if it so be, the eight times married; I will go a step farther, and say that I welcome even a penitent whoremonger; for things equally lawful must be weighed in an even balance." Let him read the Apology [5432] for the same work which was directed against his [5433] master, and was received by Rome with acclamation many years ago. He will then observe that his revilings are but the echoes of other men's voices, and that his ignorance is so deep that even his abuse is not his own, but that he employs against us the ravings of foes long since dead and buried.
The Preface to Book ii. is short and contains nothing of special importance. In that to Book iii. Jerome declares that he will, like Ulysses with the Sirens, close his ears to the adversary. The devil, who once spoke through Jovinianus, "now barks through the hound of Albion (Pelagius), who is like a mountain of fat, and whose fury is more in his heels than in his teeth; for his offspring is among the Scots, in the neighbourhood of Britain; and, according to the fables of the poet, he must, like Cerberus, be smitten to death with a spiritual club, that, in company with his master Pluto, he may forever hold his peace."
In the Preface to Book iv. Jerome says he has been hindered in his work by the harassing of the Pelagian controversy. He regards Pelagius as reproducing the doctrines of impassibility and sinlessness taught by Pythagoras and Zeno, and revived by Origen, Rufinus, Evagrius Ponticus, and Jovinian. Their doctrines, he says, were promulgated chiefly in Sicily, Rhodes, and other islands; they were propagated secretly, and denied in public. They were full of malice, but were but dumb dogs, and were refuted in "certain writings," probably those of Augustin; but he declares his intention of writing against them, which he did in his anti-Pelagian Dialogue.
The Prefaces to Books v. and vi. contain nothing noteworthy. __________________________________________________________________
[5429] Pelagius.
[5430] That is, Rufinus. See Preface to Book xii. of Isaiah, where Rufinus is called Grunnius Corocotta Porcellus, and Preface to Book iv. of Jeremiah.
[5431] Scotorum pultibus prægravatus. The words have been translated "made fat with Scotch flummery" (Stillingfleet). Another rendering is, "having his belly filled and his head bedulled with Scotch porridge" (Wall on Infant Baptism, pt. i. c. 19, § 3). Some think the words refer to Celestius, Pelagius' supporter.
[5432] The letter to Pammachius (Jer. Letter XLVIII.) in defence of the book against Jovinianus.
[5433] Jovinian was condemned in a Synod at Rome about 390. Thirty years had thus passed since the events occurred to which Jerome refers. See Preface to the treatise against Jovinian. __________________________________________________________________
Ezekiel.
The Commentary on Ezekiel is in fourteen Books. It was dedicated to Eustochium, and was written between the years 410 and 414. The Prefaces gain a special interest from their descriptions of the sack of Rome by Alaric and the consequent immigration into Palestine. We give several passages.
In Preface to Book i.
Having completed the eighteen books of the exposition of Isaiah, I was very desirous, Eustochium, Christ's virgin, to go on to Ezekiel, in accordance with my frequent promises to you and your mother Paula, of saintly memory, and thus, as the saying is, put the finishing touches to the work on the prophets; but alas! intelligence was suddenly brought me of the death of Pammachius and [5434] Marcella, [5435] the siege of Rome, and the falling asleep of many of my brethren and sisters. I was so stupefied and dismayed that day and night I could think of nothing but the welfare of the community; it seemed as though I was sharing the captivity of the saints, and I could not open my lips until I knew something more definite; and all the while, full of anxiety, I was wavering between hope and despair, and was torturing myself with the misfortunes of other people. But when the bright light of all the world was put out, or, rather, when the Roman Empire was decapitated, and, to speak more correctly, the whole world perished in one city, [5436] "I became dumb and humbled myself, and kept silence from good words, but my grief broke out afresh, my heart glowed within me, and while I meditated the fire was kindled;" and I thought I ought not to disregard the saying, [5437] "An untimely story is like music in a time of grief." But seeing that you persist in making this request, and a wound, though deep, heals by degrees; and [5438] the scorpion lies beneath the ground with [5439] Enceladus and Porphyrion, and the many-headed Hydra has at length ceased to hiss at us; and since opportunity has been given me which I ought to use, not for replying to insidious heretics, but for devoting myself to the exposition of Scripture, I will resume my work upon the prophet Ezekiel.
Book ii. has, instead of a Preface, merely a line calling the attention of Eustochium to its opening words.
The Preface to Book iii. has a noteworthy passage on the sack of Rome and its results.
Who would believe that Rome, built up by the conquest of the whole world, had collapsed, that the mother of nations had become also their tomb; that the shores of the whole East, of Egypt, of Africa, which once belonged to the imperial city, were filled with the hosts of her men-servants and maid-servants, that we should every day be receiving in this holy Bethlehem men and women who once were noble and abounding in every kind of wealth but are now reduced to poverty? We cannot relieve these sufferers: all we can do is to sympathise with them, and unite our tears with theirs. The burden of this holy work was as much as we could carry; the sight of the wanderers, coming in crowds, caused us deep pain; and we therefore abandoned the exposition of Ezekiel, and almost all study, and were filled with a longing to turn the words of Scripture into action, and not to say holy things but to do them. Now, however, in response to your admonition, Eustochium, Christ's virgin, we resume the interrupted labour, and approach our third Book.
The Prefaces to Books iv., v., and vi. contain nothing remarkable. The following is the important part of the Preface to Book vii.
There is not a single hour, nor a single moment, in which we are not relieving crowds of brethren, and the quiet of the monastery has been changed into the bustle of a guest house. And so much is this the case that we must either close our doors, or abandon the study of the Scriptures on which we depend for keeping the doors open. And so, turning to profit, or rather stealing the hours of the nights, which, now that winter is approaching, begin to lengthen somewhat, I am endeavouring by the light of the lamp to dictate these comments, whatever they maybe worth, and am trying to mitigate with exposition the weariness of a mind which is a stranger to rest. I am not boasting, as some perhaps suspect, of the welcome given to the brethren, but I am simply confessing the causes of the delay. Who could boast when the flight of the people of the West, and the holy places, crowded as they are with penniless fugitives, naked and wounded, plainly reveal the ravages of the Barbarians? We cannot see what has occurred, without tears and moans. Who would have believed that mighty Rome, with its careless security of wealth, would be reduced to such extremities as to need shelter, food, and clothing? And yet, some are so hard-hearted and cruel that, instead of showing compassion, they break up the rags and bundles of the captives, and expect to find gold about those who are nothing than prisoners. In addition to this hindrance to my dictating, my eyes are growing dim with age and to some extent I share the suffering of the saintly Isaac: I am quite unable to go through the Hebrew books with such light as I have at night, for even in the full light of day they are hidden from my eyes owing to the smallness of the letters. In fact, it is only the voice of the brethren which enables me to master the commentaries of Greek writers.
The Prefaces to Books viii. to xiv. contain nothing of special interest. __________________________________________________________________
[5434] Under whose care Eustochium had been trained.
[5435] By the Goths under Alaric. The city was taken in a.d. 410.
[5436] Ps. xxxix. 3, 4.
[5437] Ecclus. xxii. 6.
[5438] Rufinus who died a.d. 410, in Sicily, on his way to the Holy Land from Aquileia and Rome, whence he had been driven by the troubles in Italy.
[5439] The giants who bore those names. See Hor. III. od. 4. __________________________________________________________________
Daniel.
The Commentary on Daniel was dedicated to Pammachius and Marcella in the year 407. It is in a single book, and is aimed at the criticisms of Porphyry, who, like most modern critics, took the predictions in the Book of Daniel as relating to the time of Antiochus Epiphanes and the Maccabees, and written near that date. The Preface is very similar to that prefixed to the Vulgate translation of Daniel. __________________________________________________________________
Prefaces to the Commentaries on the Minor Prophets.
For the order and date of writing of these Commentaries see the Preface to Amos, Book iii., and the note there.
Hosea.
This Commentary was dedicated to Pammachius, a.d. 406 (sixth consulate of Arcadius--Preface to Amos, Book iii. The Preface to Book i. is chiefly taken up with a discussion on Hosea's "wife of whoredoms." He takes the story as allegorical; it cannot be literal, for "God commands nothing but what is honourable, nor does he, by bidding men do disgraceful things, make that conduct honourable which is disgraceful." Jerome then describes, as in former Prefaces, the chief Greek commentators, of whom Apollinaris and Origen had written very shortly on Hosea, Pierius at great length, but to little purpose; and says that he had himself obtained from Didymus of Alexandria that he should complete the Commentary of Origen. He had himself often judged independently, though with little knowledge of Hebrew, but he had been in earnest, while most scholars were "more concerned for their bellies than their hearts, and thought themselves learned if in the doctors' waiting rooms they could disparage other men's works."
In the Preface to Book ii. Jerome complains of his detractors, and appeals from the present favour of high-placed men to the posthumous authority of sound ability.
In Book iii. he claims Pammachius as his defender, though he fears the judgment of his great learning.
Joel.
This Commentary also is addressed to Pammachius, a.d. 406. It is in one book. It gives the order of the Twelve Prophets adopted by the LXX. and the Hebrew respectively, the Hebrew order being that now in use. It also gives the etymological meaning of their names.
Amos.
In three books, addressed also to Pammachius, a.d. 406 (Preface to Amos, Book iii.). The Preface to Book i. merely gives a description of Tekoa, Amos' birthplace. That to Book ii. speaks of old age, with its advantages for self-control and its trials in various infirmities, such as phlegm, dim eyesight, loosened teeth, colic, and gout. That to Book iii. contains the passage several times referred to for the order of these Commentaries, which is as follows:
We have not discussed them in regular sequence from the first to the ninth, as they are read, but as we have been able, and in accordance with requests made to us. Nahum, Micah, Zephaniah, Haggai, [5440] I first addressed to Paula and Eustochium, her daughter, who are never weary; I next dedicated two books on Habakkuk to Chromatius, bishop of Aquileia; I then proceeded to explain, at your command, Pammachius, and after a long interval of silence, Obadiah and Jonah. [5441] In the [5442] present year, which bears in the calendar the name of the sixth consulate of Arcadius Augustus and Anitius Probus, I interpreted Malachi for Exsuperius, bishop of Toulouse, and Minervius and Alexander, monks of that city. Unable to refuse your request I immediately went back to the beginning of the volume, and expounded Hosea, Joel, and Amos. A severe sickness followed, and I showed my rashness in resuming the dictation of this work too hastily; and, whereas others hesitate to write and frequently correct their work, I entrusted mine to the fortune which attends those who employ a secretary, and hazarded my reputation for ability and orthodoxy; for, as I have often testified, I cannot endure the toil of writing with my own hand; and, in expounding the Holy Scriptures, what we want is not a polished style and oratorical flourishes, but learning and simple truth.
Obadiah.
Addressed to Pammachius a.d. 403. The Preface records how in early youth (some thirty years before), he had attempted an allegorical commentary of Obadiah, of which he was now ashamed, though it has lately been praised by a youth of similar years.
Jonah.
This was addressed to Chromatius, [5443] but belongs to the year 395. It is said in the Preface to be three years after the commentary on Micah, Nahum, etc. The Preface merely touches on the various places of Scripture in which Jonah is named.
Micah.
Addressed to Paula and Eustochium. a.d. 392. It is in two books. In the Preface to Book ii., Jerome vindicates himself against the charge of making mere compilations from Origen. He confesses, however, his great admiration for him. "What they consider a reproach," he says, "I regard as the highest praise, since I desire to imitate him who, I doubt not, is acceptable to all wise men, and to you."
Nahum.
Also to Paula and Eustochium, a.d. 392. The Preface contains little of importance. Jerome mentions that the village of Elkosh, Nahum's birthplace, was pointed out to him by a guide in Galilee.
Habakkuk.
Addressed to Chromatius, a.d. 392. The commentary is in two books. The Preface to Book i. is long, but merely describes the contents of the book. That to Book ii. mentions among his adversaries, "The Serpent, and Sardanapalus, whose character is worse than his name"--expressions which have been referred to Rufinus; but the enmity between Jerome and Rufinus had not broken out in 392.
Zephaniah.
Addressed to Paula and Eustochium, a.d. 392. In the Preface Jerome defends himself for writing for women, bringing many examples from Scripture and from classical writers to show the capacity of women.
Haggai.
Also to Paula and Eustochium, a.d. 392. The preface merely describes the occasion of the book, but says that Haggai's prophecy was contemporary with the reign of Tarquinius Superbus (b.c. 535-510).
Zechariah.
Addressed to Exsuperius, bishop of Toulouse, a.d. 406, in three books, and sent, "in the closing days of autumn, by the monk, Sisinnius, who had been sent with presents for the poor saints at Jerusalem, and was hastening to Egypt on a similar errand." The Prefaces to the three books mention these facts, but have nothing in them of note which has not been said before.
Malachi.
Addressed, a.d. 406, to Minervius and Alexander, presbyters of the diocese of Toulouse. The Jews, the Preface says, believe Malachi to be a name for Ezra. Origen and his followers believe that (according to his name) he was an angel. But we reject this view altogether, lest we be compelled to accept the doctrine of the fall of souls from heaven. __________________________________________________________________
[5440] These four and Habakkuk are mentioned in the De Vir. Ill. (a.d. 492), and were written about that date, Jonah three years after, but Obadiah probably not till 403. The rest are fixed to the Sixth Consulate of Arcadius, 406.
[5441] But see Preface to Jonah, which is addressed to Chromatius.
[5442] The year a.d. 406.
[5443] Chromatius is named in this Preface distinctly. But see Preface to Amos, Book iii., which says that the Commentaries to Obadiah and Jonah were written at the request of Pammachius. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Indexes __________________________________________________________________
Index of Scripture References
Genesis
[1]1 [2]1:1 [3]1:2 [4]1:2 [5]1:7 [6]1:10 [7]1:26 [8]1:26 [9]1:27 [10]1:28 [11]1:28 [12]1:28 [13]1:28 [14]1:28 [15]1:28 [16]1:28 [17]1:28 [18]1:28 [19]1:28 [20]1:28 [21]1:31 [22]2 [23]2 [24]2:7 [25]2:8 [26]2:10 [27]2:10 [28]2:10-11 [29]2:11 [30]2:11 [31]2:13 [32]2:16 [33]2:17 [34]2:21-22 [35]2:21-22 [36]2:23 [37]2:24 [38]2:24 [39]3 [40]3 [41]3:1 [42]3:1-6 [43]3:7 [44]3:14 [45]3:14 [46]3:14 [47]3:16 [48]3:16 [49]3:16 [50]3:18 [51]3:18 [52]3:18-19 [53]3:19 [54]3:19 [55]3:20 [56]3:21 [57]3:21 [58]3:23 [59]3:24 [60]3:24 [61]3:24 [62]3:25 [63]4:5 [64]4:7 [65]4:7 [66]4:15 [67]4:17 [68]4:19 [69]4:25 [70]4:26 [71]5 [72]5:3 [73]5:27 [74]6:3 [75]6:3 [76]6:3 [77]6:4 [78]6:5 [79]7 [80]7:2 [81]7:2 [82]7:2 [83]7:11 [84]7:13 [85]7:23 [86]8 [87]8:8 [88]8:11 [89]8:20 [90]8:21 [91]8:21 [92]8:21 [93]9:1 [94]9:1 [95]9:3 [96]9:3 [97]9:4-6 [98]9:7 [99]9:7 [100]9:20-21 [101]9:20-21 [102]10 [103]10:11 [104]11 [105]11:2 [106]11:4 [107]11:9 [108]11:10-26 [109]11:31 [110]12:1 [111]12:1 [112]12:1 [113]12:1 [114]12:1 [115]12:1-4 [116]12:4 [117]13:5-11 [118]13:8 [119]13:10 [120]13:11 [121]14:2 [122]14:13-16 [123]14:14 [124]14:18 [125]15:16 [126]15:16 [127]16:12 [128]17:1 [129]17:1-2 [130]17:17 [131]18:1 [132]18:1 [133]18:1-8 [134]18:11 [135]18:12 [136]18:23 [137]18:23-33 [138]19:15-26 [139]19:17 [140]19:18-21 [141]19:26 [142]19:30-38 [143]19:30-38 [144]19:30-38 [145]20 [146]20:11 [147]21:3 [148]21:6 [149]21:12 [150]21:31 [151]22 [152]22 [153]22:1 [154]23 [155]23:19 [156]24 [157]24:15-16 [158]24:42 [159]25:1 [160]25:22 [161]25:22-23 [162]25:23 [163]25:34 [164]26 [165]26:8 [166]26:12 [167]26:15 [168]26:18 [169]27 [170]27 [171]27:36 [172]27:41-46 [173]28:1-5 [174]28:11-13 [175]28:12 [176]28:12 [177]28:12 [178]28:12-13 [179]28:12-13 [180]28:20 [181]28:20-21 [182]29:10-11 [183]29:11 [184]29:15 [185]29:17-18 [186]29:20 [187]30:1 [188]30:1-2 [189]30:2 [190]30:14-16 [191]30:33 [192]31:36-37 [193]31:40 [194]31:41 [195]31:46-49 [196]32:2 [197]32:5 [198]32:7 [199]32:10 [200]32:10 [201]32:14 [202]32:24-25 [203]32:25 [204]32:28 [205]32:30 [206]32:30 [207]32:31 [208]32:31 [209]33 [210]33:18-20 [211]34 [212]34 [213]34:30 [214]35:4 [215]35:16 [216]35:16 [217]35:18-19 [218]35:20 [219]35:21 [220]37:23 [221]37:23 [222]37:25 [223]37:28 [224]37:35 [225]37:35 [226]37:36 [227]38 [228]38:9 [229]38:12-18 [230]38:26 [231]38:26 [232]38:27-30 [233]38:28-29 [234]39:12 [235]39:12 [236]39:12 [237]39:12 [238]39:12-13 [239]39:23 [240]41:42-44 [241]41:45 [242]41:50-52 [243]43:16 [244]46 [245]46:3-4 [246]46:26 [247]46:26 [248]48:10 [249]49:10 [250]49:10 [251]49:11 [252]49:17 [253]49:27 [254]49:27 [255]49:27 [256]49:31
Exodus
[257]1:1 [258]2:16-17 [259]3:3 [260]3:3 [261]3:5 [262]3:5 [263]3:5 [264]3:14 [265]3:14 [266]3:14 [267]4:6 [268]4:20 [269]4:24-26 [270]5:2 [271]7:13 [272]7:16 [273]11 [274]12 [275]12:8 [276]12:8 [277]12:11 [278]12:11 [279]12:21-23 [280]12:22 [281]12:23 [282]12:29 [283]12:29 [284]12:29-30 [285]12:38 [286]12:46 [287]13:2 [288]13:2 [289]13:18 [290]13:18 [291]14:19 [292]15:1 [293]15:20-21 [294]15:21 [295]15:23 [296]15:23-25 [297]15:23-27 [298]15:27 [299]16:3 [300]17:4 [301]17:8 [302]17:8-14 [303]17:11 [304]18:3 [305]19:15 [306]20:5 [307]20:5 [308]20:12 [309]20:12 [310]21:2 [311]21:10 [312]21:12-13 [313]22:28 [314]23:20 [315]23:26 [316]25:11 [317]25:22 [318]27:20 [319]28 [320]31:2-3 [321]32:4 [322]32:6 [323]32:10 [324]32:30 [325]32:30-35 [326]32:31-32 [327]32:32 [328]33:3 [329]33:20 [330]33:21-23 [331]34:29 [332]34:33 [333]34:35 [334]37 [335]38:8
Leviticus
[336]2:11 [337]2:11 [338]2:13 [339]4:2 [340]4:27 [341]5:3 [342]9:1 [343]9:7 [344]10:6 [345]10:9 [346]10:9 [347]10:9 [348]10:12 [349]12:2-3 [350]12:6 [351]12:7 [352]14:1 [353]14:6 [354]15:31 [355]16:2 [356]16:2 [357]16:5 [358]16:6 [359]16:29 [360]18:9 [361]19:2 [362]19:15 [363]21:3 [364]21:7 [365]21:10-12 [366]21:12 [367]21:13 [368]21:13-14 [369]21:14 [370]21:17 [371]21:17-23 [372]22:12-13 [373]22:13 [374]22:14 [375]23:27 [376]23:29 [377]23:40-42 [378]25:8 [379]25:13
Numbers
[380]3:39 [381]4:3 [382]4:3 [383]4:23 [384]4:30 [385]4:35 [386]4:39 [387]5:11 [388]5:17 [389]6:1 [390]7:5 [391]7:24 [392]7:28-29 [393]11:4 [394]11:4-6 [395]11:16 [396]11:16 [397]11:20 [398]11:20 [399]11:31 [400]11:31-4 [401]11:34 [402]12:1 [403]12:3 [404]12:14 [405]13:23-24 [406]14:7 [407]14:18 [408]16:26 [409]16:46-48 [410]18:15 [411]18:16 [412]18:20 [413]18:20-24 [414]18:24 [415]19:1-10 [416]20:10 [417]20:12 [418]20:13 [419]20:17 [420]20:17 [421]20:29 [422]20:29 [423]21:9 [424]23:21 [425]23:21 [426]24:15-19 [427]25:6-8 [428]25:7-8 [429]28:15 [430]28:22 [431]29:5 [432]33 [433]33:47-48 [434]34:15 [435]35:6 [436]35:13 [437]35:30
Deuteronomy
[438]5:14-15 [439]5:31 [440]7:13 [441]8:3 [442]8:12-14 [443]8:15 [444]8:15 [445]9:6 [446]11:10 [447]11:11 [448]11:14 [449]13:3 [450]13:5 [451]13:6-9 [452]15:12 [453]15:21 [454]16:5 [455]17:5 [456]17:6 [457]17:9-11 [458]17:12 [459]17:15 [460]18:2 [461]18:9-12 [462]18:13 [463]18:13 [464]20:6-7 [465]20:7 [466]21:10-13 [467]21:11-12 [468]21:17 [469]22:1 [470]22:4 [471]22:8 [472]22:10 [473]22:23-24 [474]22:23-27 [475]22:24-25 [476]23:2 [477]23:3 [478]24:1-4 [479]27:9 [480]27:9 [481]29:23 [482]32:7 [483]32:15 [484]33:9 [485]34:5-6 [486]34:6 [487]34:6 [488]34:6-8 [489]34:8 [490]34:8
Joshua
[491]2:18 [492]3 [493]3:17 [494]4:3 [495]4:20 [496]5:2 [497]5:3 [498]5:9 [499]5:15 [500]5:15 [501]6:20 [502]7 [503]7:12 [504]7:24-26 [505]8 [506]9 [507]9:27 [508]10:1 [509]10:3 [510]10:12-14 [511]10:13 [512]10:16 [513]10:26 [514]11:10 [515]11:19-20 [516]14:3 [517]14:15 [518]15:13-15 [519]15:14 [520]19:50 [521]22:27 [522]24:28 [523]24:29 [524]24:30 [525]24:30 [526]24:30 [527]24:33
Judges
[528]1:13-15 [529]2:9 [530]5:21 [531]6:2 [532]6:36-40 [533]6:37 [534]11:1 [535]11:30-31 [536]11:34-40 [537]15:17-19 [538]17:5 [539]19 [540]20 [541]20:47 [542]21:19-23
Ruth
[543]1 [544]1:14 [545]1:16
1 Samuel
[546]1:3 [547]1:15 [548]1:17 [549]1:27-28 [550]2 [551]2:12-17 [552]2:12-17 [553]2:18 [554]2:18 [555]2:21 [556]2:22 [557]2:22 [558]2:22 [559]2:22 [560]2:24 [561]2:25 [562]2:27-36 [563]2:30 [564]4 [565]4 [566]4:18 [567]4:19-22 [568]7:7 [569]8:1-4 [570]8:3 [571]9 [572]9:9 [573]12:3 [574]12:3-5 [575]14:24 [576]14:24 [577]14:27 [578]15:11 [579]15:11 [580]15:17 [581]15:35 [582]16:6 [583]16:7 [584]16:7 [585]16:7 [586]16:7 [587]16:11-13 [588]17:49 [589]17:50-51 [590]18:6-7 [591]21:1 [592]21:4 [593]21:4-5 [594]21:10 [595]22:16-18 [596]22:17-19 [597]25:38 [598]28:13 [599]30:1
2 Samuel
[600]4:11 [601]5:7 [602]5:9 [603]6:6-7 [604]6:6-7 [605]6:7-8 [606]8:13-14 [607]11 [608]11:4 [609]12:13 [610]12:13 [611]12:16 [612]13 [613]13:14 [614]16:10 [615]17:1-4 [616]17:14 [617]18:33 [618]21:1 [619]24 [620]24:10
1 Kings
[621]1:1-4 [622]1:4 [623]1:38 [624]2:10 [625]3:3 [626]3:16-28 [627]4:33 [628]7:14 [629]8:9 [630]8:46 [631]8:46 [632]11:1-4 [633]11:3 [634]11:14 [635]12:10 [636]13:24 [637]14:5 [638]14:8 [639]15:11 [640]16:34 [641]17 [642]17:4 [643]17:6 [644]17:8-16 [645]17:9-16 [646]18:3-4 [647]18:4 [648]18:21 [649]18:40 [650]19:4 [651]19:4-6 [652]19:8-11 [653]19:11-13 [654]19:21 [655]21:10 [656]21:13 [657]21:19 [658]21:19 [659]21:21 [660]21:23 [661]21:25 [662]21:27 [663]21:27-29 [664]21:27-29 [665]21:28-29 [666]21:29 [667]22:19
2 Kings
[668]1:8 [669]2:11 [670]2:11 [671]2:11 [672]2:11 [673]2:13 [674]2:13 [675]2:13 [676]2:19-22 [677]4:27 [678]4:38-39 [679]4:38-41 [680]6:1-2 [681]6:1-2 [682]6:5-6 [683]6:16 [684]6:17 [685]6:18-23 [686]10:15-16 [687]13:21 [688]18 [689]18:3-4 [690]18:7 [691]18:14 [692]19:28 [693]19:35 [694]20 [695]20:1 [696]20:5 [697]20:12-13 [698]20:13 [699]20:17 [700]20:18 [701]22:14 [702]23:29 [703]23:29 [704]23:29
1 Chronicles
[705]2:32 [706]2:55 [707]6:34-38 [708]11:5-6 [709]15:21 [710]21:15 [711]21:18 [712]22:8 [713]23:14 [714]28:3
2 Chronicles
[715]3:1 [716]6:36 [717]8:5 [718]15:2 [719]17:3 [720]19:2 [721]20:5-25 [722]20:26 [723]22:9 [724]32:26 [725]32:30 [726]33:12-13 [727]33:12-13 [728]34:2 [729]34:22-23 [730]35:20 [731]35:20-24 [732]35:22
Nehemiah
[733]4:16
Esther
[734]2:1-4 [735]6:1 [736]7:10 [737]9:20-32 [738]14:11 [739]14:16
Job
[740]1:1 [741]1:16 [742]1:20-21 [743]1:21 [744]1:21 [745]1:21 [746]1:21 [747]1:21 [748]2:3 [749]2:3 [750]2:4-5 [751]2:4-5 [752]2:4-5 [753]2:6 [754]3:3 [755]3:3 [756]4:17-21 [757]4:18 [758]4:18 [759]5:17 [760]7:1 [761]7:1 [762]7:1 [763]7:20-21 [764]9:9 [765]9:15-16 [766]9:20 [767]9:20 [768]9:29-31 [769]9:30 [770]9:30 [771]9:31 [772]10:15 [773]14:4 [774]14:4-5 [775]14:4-5 [776]14:4-5 [777]14:5 [778]16:21 [779]18:14-15 [780]19:23 [781]19:25-27 [782]25:5 [783]25:5 [784]25:5-6 [785]25:5-6 [786]31:35 [787]38:3 [788]38:32 [789]40:4 [790]40:8 [791]40:16 [792]40:16 [793]40:16 [794]40:16 [795]40:21 [796]41:13 [797]41:27 [798]41:34 [799]42:6 [800]42:6
Psalms
[801]1 [802]1:2 [803]1:2 [804]1:2 [805]1:2 [806]1:2 [807]1:2 [808]1:2 [809]1:5 [810]2:4 [811]2:8 [812]2:9 [813]4:4 [814]4:4 [815]4:4 [816]4:6 [817]5:8 [818]5:12 [819]6 [820]6:5 [821]6:5 [822]6:5 [823]6:6 [824]6:6 [825]6:6 [826]7:9 [827]8:3 [828]8:5 [829]9:6 [830]10 [831]10:8-9 [832]11:2 [833]12 [834]12:1 [835]12:1 [836]12:7 [837]14:1 [838]14:1 [839]14:3 [840]14:4 [841]15:2-3 [842]16:4 [843]16:5 [844]16:5 [845]16:5-6 [846]16:7 [847]16:9 [848]17:4 [849]18:15 [850]18:37 [851]18:45 [852]19:4 [853]19:6 [854]19:9 [855]19:12-13 [856]19:12-13 [857]19:12-14 [858]19:13 [859]19:13 [860]20:7 [861]21:1 [862]22:1 [863]22:2 [864]22:22 [865]22:29-30 [866]23:5 [867]24:1 [868]24:1 [869]24:1 [870]25:7 [871]25:15 [872]26:1-2 [873]26:2 [874]26:8 [875]26:8 [876]27:4 [877]27:13 [878]27:13 [879]29:3 [880]29:10 [881]30:5 [882]30:6-7 [883]30:7 [884]30:9 [885]30:11 [886]32:1 [887]32:1-2 [888]32:4 [889]32:4 [890]32:5 [891]32:5 [892]32:5-6 [893]32:9 [894]32:9 [895]32:10 [896]33:6 [897]33:15 [898]34:2 [899]34:8 [900]34:8 [901]34:8 [902]34:14 [903]35:13 [904]35:13 [905]36:6 [906]36:6 [907]36:7 [908]36:27 [909]37:5-6 [910]37:25 [911]37:28 [912]37:39 [913]37:39 [914]38:2 [915]38:5 [916]38:5 [917]38:7 [918]38:7 [919]38:8 [920]38:13 [921]38:13-14 [922]38:14 [923]39:1-2 [924]39:1-2 [925]39:2 [926]39:3-4 [927]39:4 [928]39:5 [929]39:6 [930]39:6 [931]39:12 [932]39:12 [933]40:2 [934]40:2 [935]41 [936]41:3 [937]41:7 [938]41:9 [939]42:1-2 [940]42:1-3 [941]42:3 [942]42:6 [943]42:11 [944]42:11 [945]44:8 [946]44:17-18 [947]44:21 [948]44:21 [949]44:22 [950]44:22 [951]44:23 [952]44:23 [953]45 [954]45 [955]45:1 [956]45:1 [957]45:3 [958]45:9 [959]45:9 [960]45:10 [961]45:10 [962]45:10 [963]45:10-11 [964]45:10-11 [965]45:13 [966]45:13 [967]45:13 [968]45:13 [969]45:13 [970]45:14 [971]45:14 [972]45:16-17 [973]46:4 [974]47:7 [975]48:2 [976]48:8 [977]48:8 [978]48:8 [979]49:7 [980]50:16-17 [981]50:18 [982]50:20 [983]50:20 [984]50:20 [985]50:20-21 [986]51:1 [987]51:1 [988]51:1 [989]51:2-4 [990]51:4 [991]51:4 [992]51:4 [993]51:5 [994]51:5 [995]51:5 [996]51:5 [997]51:7 [998]51:7 [999]51:12 [1000]51:12 [1001]51:13 [1002]51:17 [1003]53:4 [1004]53:5 [1005]55:6 [1006]55:6 [1007]55:6 [1008]55:6 [1009]55:6 [1010]55:7-8 [1011]55:13 [1012]55:21 [1013]56:4 [1014]57:4 [1015]57:4 [1016]57:6 [1017]57:7-8 [1018]58:3 [1019]58:4 [1020]62:1 [1021]62:2 [1022]63:1 [1023]63:1-2 [1024]63:1-2 [1025]63:1-3 [1026]63:8 [1027]63:8 [1028]68:13 [1029]68:14 [1030]68:27 [1031]68:30 [1032]69:4 [1033]69:5 [1034]69:5 [1035]69:5 [1036]69:10 [1037]69:11 [1038]69:12 [1039]71:7 [1040]72:1 [1041]72:15 [1042]72:20 [1043]73 [1044]73 [1045]73:2 [1046]73:2-3 [1047]73:3-9 [1048]73:11 [1049]73:11-12 [1050]73:12 [1051]73:13 [1052]73:13 [1053]73:13-14 [1054]73:15 [1055]73:15 [1056]73:15 [1057]73:16-17 [1058]73:16-17 [1059]73:17 [1060]73:20 [1061]73:22-23 [1062]73:22-23 [1063]73:25 [1064]73:26 [1065]73:26 [1066]73:26 [1067]73:28 [1068]74:13-14 [1069]74:19 [1070]75:5 [1071]76:1 [1072]76:1 [1073]76:2 [1074]76:2 [1075]76:2 [1076]77:2 [1077]77:4 [1078]77:4 [1079]77:10 [1080]78:12 [1081]78:25 [1082]78:57 [1083]79:1 [1084]79:1-3 [1085]79:11 [1086]80:5 [1087]82:1 [1088]82:6-7 [1089]83:8 [1090]83:9-10 [1091]84:1-2 [1092]84:6 [1093]84:6 [1094]84:7 [1095]84:10 [1096]85:4 [1097]85:10 [1098]85:11 [1099]85:11-12 [1100]87:1-2 [1101]87:1-2 [1102]87:5 [1103]88:21 [1104]89:2 [1105]89:48 [1106]90:10 [1107]90:10 [1108]91:5-7 [1109]91:6 [1110]91:10 [1111]92:14 [1112]92:15 [1113]94:20 [1114]95:4-5 [1115]95:6 [1116]96:6 [1117]97:8 [1118]97:8 [1119]99:6 [1120]101:6 [1121]101:8 [1122]102:5 [1123]102:7 [1124]102:9 [1125]102:9 [1126]102:9 [1127]102:9 [1128]103:2-4 [1129]103:8 [1130]103:10 [1131]104:4 [1132]104:18 [1133]104:18 [1134]104:20-21 [1135]104:24 [1136]104:26 [1137]104:29 [1138]104:35 [1139]105:37 [1140]106:32 [1141]109:24 [1142]109:24 [1143]110:3 [1144]111:10 [1145]112:9 [1146]113:7-8 [1147]115:4 [1148]116:7 [1149]116:7 [1150]116:7 [1151]116:9 [1152]116:11 [1153]116:11 [1154]116:11 [1155]116:12-13 [1156]116:14-15 [1157]116:15 [1158]116:15 [1159]118:6 [1160]118:6 [1161]118:6 [1162]118:6 [1163]118:8-9 [1164]118:25 [1165]119 [1166]119:1 [1167]119:1 [1168]119:11 [1169]119:11 [1170]119:18 [1171]119:18 [1172]119:18 [1173]119:18 [1174]119:20 [1175]119:54 [1176]119:62 [1177]119:67 [1178]119:67 [1179]119:67 [1180]119:83 [1181]119:103 [1182]119:104 [1183]119:105 [1184]119:105 [1185]119:123 [1186]119:136 [1187]119:137 [1188]119:140 [1189]119:176 [1190]120 [1191]120 [1192]120 [1193]120:3 [1194]120:5 [1195]120:5 [1196]120:5-6 [1197]120:5-6 [1198]121:1 [1199]121:4 [1200]121:4 [1201]121:6 [1202]123:2 [1203]124:7 [1204]126:5 [1205]126:5 [1206]126:5-6 [1207]127 [1208]127:1 [1209]127:1 [1210]127:2 [1211]127:3 [1212]127:4 [1213]127:5 [1214]128:2 [1215]128:3 [1216]128:3 [1217]128:3 [1218]128:6 [1219]131:1 [1220]131:2 [1221]132:1 [1222]132:1 [1223]132:2-5 [1224]132:6 [1225]132:7 [1226]132:7 [1227]132:11 [1228]132:14 [1229]132:17 [1230]133:1 [1231]134:1 [1232]137:1 [1233]137:3 [1234]137:4 [1235]137:9 [1236]137:9 [1237]139:6 [1238]139:11-12 [1239]139:12 [1240]139:13 [1241]139:21 [1242]139:21-22 [1243]139:21-22 [1244]140:6 [1245]141:3-4 [1246]141:4 [1247]141:4 [1248]141:4 [1249]141:5 [1250]141:6 [1251]142:4 [1252]142:7 [1253]142:7 [1254]142:7 [1255]143:2 [1256]143:2 [1257]143:2 [1258]143:2 [1259]143:4 [1260]146:4 [1261]146:7 [1262]146:7-8 [1263]161:4
Proverbs
[1264]1:1-6 [1265]1:3 [1266]1:7 [1267]3:5-6 [1268]3:9 [1269]3:21 [1270]4:5-9 [1271]4:23 [1272]4:23 [1273]4:23 [1274]4:23 [1275]5:3 [1276]5:15 [1277]5:22 [1278]6:8 [1279]6:20 [1280]6:26 [1281]6:27-28 [1282]6:27-28 [1283]7:2 [1284]7:3 [1285]7:27 [1286]9:18 [1287]10:1 [1288]10:9 [1289]10:9 [1290]10:19 [1291]13:4 [1292]13:4 [1293]13:8 [1294]13:8 [1295]13:8 [1296]14:1 [1297]14:12 [1298]14:12 [1299]14:12 [1300]14:28 [1301]14:29 [1302]15:1 [1303]16:3 [1304]16:5 [1305]16:9 [1306]16:26 [1307]16:26 [1308]18:3 [1309]18:12 [1310]18:17 [1311]18:17 [1312]19:21 [1313]19:25 [1314]20:1 [1315]20:9 [1316]20:9 [1317]20:9 [1318]20:9 [1319]20:9 [1320]20:17 [1321]20:24 [1322]21:9 [1323]21:19 [1324]24:16 [1325]24:16 [1326]24:16 [1327]24:21-22 [1328]24:21-22 [1329]25:23 [1330]25:24 [1331]27:15 [1332]28:13 [1333]30:15-16 [1334]31:10-11
Ecclesiastes
[1335]1:2 [1336]1:9 [1337]1:9-10 [1338]1:13 [1339]1:18 [1340]3:1-2 [1341]3:4 [1342]3:5 [1343]3:5 [1344]3:5 [1345]3:7 [1346]3:10 [1347]3:16-22 [1348]4:9-12 [1349]4:12 [1350]7:10 [1351]7:12 [1352]7:16 [1353]7:16 [1354]7:16 [1355]7:16 [1356]7:16 [1357]7:20 [1358]7:21 [1359]7:24-25 [1360]7:28-29 [1361]8:63 [1362]9:2 [1363]9:4 [1364]9:8 [1365]9:8 [1366]9:8 [1367]9:8 [1368]9:8 [1369]9:8 [1370]9:51 [1371]9:54 [1372]9:55 [1373]10:1 [1374]10:4 [1375]10:4 [1376]10:4 [1377]10:11 [1378]11:2 [1379]11:19 [1380]12:7 [1381]12:7 [1382]12:7 [1383]35
Song of Solomon
[1384]1:3-4 [1385]1:4 [1386]1:4 [1387]1:4 [1388]1:4 [1389]1:4 [1390]1:5 [1391]1:7 [1392]1:7 [1393]1:7 [1394]1:7 [1395]1:7 [1396]1:7 [1397]1:8 [1398]1:10-11 [1399]1:13 [1400]2:1 [1401]2:1 [1402]2:1 [1403]2:1 [1404]2:3 [1405]2:4 [1406]2:5 [1407]2:6 [1408]2:6 [1409]2:10-11 [1410]2:10-12 [1411]2:10-12 [1412]2:12 [1413]2:13 [1414]2:13-14 [1415]2:15 [1416]2:16 [1417]2:16 [1418]3:1 [1419]3:1 [1420]3:1 [1421]3:1 [1422]3:2 [1423]3:2-3 [1424]3:4 [1425]3:4 [1426]3:7-8 [1427]4:2 [1428]4:6 [1429]4:7 [1430]4:7 [1431]4:8 [1432]4:9 [1433]4:9 [1434]4:9-10 [1435]4:12 [1436]4:12 [1437]4:12 [1438]4:12-13 [1439]5:1 [1440]5:2 [1441]5:2 [1442]5:2 [1443]5:2 [1444]5:2 [1445]5:2 [1446]5:2 [1447]5:2 [1448]5:2-3 [1449]5:3 [1450]5:4 [1451]5:6 [1452]5:6 [1453]5:7 [1454]5:7 [1455]5:8 [1456]5:10 [1457]5:10 [1458]5:10 [1459]5:16 [1460]6:8 [1461]6:8-9 [1462]6:9 [1463]6:9 [1464]6:10 [1465]7:1 [1466]8:5 [1467]8:5 [1468]8:5 [1469]8:6 [1470]8:7 [1471]8:10
Isaiah
[1472]1:3 [1473]1:9 [1474]1:15 [1475]1:21 [1476]1:28 [1477]3:12 [1478]3:12 [1479]3:12 [1480]3:16 [1481]4:3 [1482]5:20 [1483]5:20 [1484]5:20 [1485]5:21 [1486]6 [1487]6:2 [1488]6:2 [1489]6:2-3 [1490]6:5 [1491]6:5 [1492]6:6 [1493]7:14 [1494]7:14 [1495]7:14 [1496]7:14 [1497]7:14 [1498]7:14-15 [1499]7:20 [1500]8:1 [1501]8:1 [1502]8:1 [1503]8:3 [1504]8:18 [1505]8:20 [1506]9:6 [1507]11:1 [1508]11:1 [1509]11:1 [1510]11:1 [1511]11:3 [1512]11:6-8 [1513]11:10 [1514]13:21-22 [1515]13:22 [1516]14:12 [1517]14:12 [1518]14:12 [1519]14:12-13 [1520]14:13 [1521]14:13-14 [1522]14:13-14 [1523]14:13-14 [1524]14:14 [1525]14:14 [1526]15:1 [1527]15:5 [1528]16:1 [1529]16:1 [1530]16:6 [1531]18:2 [1532]19:18 [1533]19:19 [1534]19:21 [1535]20:2 [1536]21:9 [1537]22:12-13 [1538]22:12-14 [1539]23:15-16 [1540]24:2 [1541]24:16 [1542]24:21 [1543]26:12 [1544]26:18 [1545]26:20 [1546]26:20 [1547]27:11 [1548]28:9-10 [1549]28:9-11 [1550]28:12 [1551]28:15 [1552]28:16 [1553]28:24 [1554]29:1 [1555]29:11 [1556]29:14 [1557]30:15 [1558]30:15 [1559]30:17 [1560]31:6 [1561]31:9 [1562]31:9 [1563]32:6 [1564]32:6 [1565]32:9 [1566]32:20 [1567]32:20 [1568]33:15 [1569]33:15 [1570]34:5 [1571]34:5 [1572]34:5 [1573]34:14-16 [1574]34:15 [1575]37:22 [1576]38 [1577]38:19 [1578]38:19 [1579]40:3 [1580]40:3 [1581]40:5 [1582]40:6 [1583]40:12 [1584]40:12 [1585]40:15 [1586]40:17 [1587]41:8 [1588]42:14 [1589]43:26 [1590]45:9 [1591]45:21-22 [1592]46:4 [1593]46:8-9 [1594]47:1-2 [1595]47:1-3 [1596]47:14 [1597]49 [1598]49:2 [1599]49:8 [1600]50:6 [1601]50:6 [1602]51:7-8 [1603]53:6 [1604]53:8 [1605]54:1 [1606]54:1 [1607]54:1 [1608]56:3 [1609]56:3 [1610]58:3-4 [1611]58:5 [1612]58:5 [1613]60:1 [1614]60:6 [1615]63:1 [1616]63:3 [1617]63:3 [1618]64:4 [1619]65:5 [1620]65:5 [1621]65:13-14 [1622]65:17 [1623]66:1-2 [1624]66:2 [1625]66:2 [1626]66:2 [1627]66:5 [1628]66:7-8 [1629]66:22 [1630]66:24
Jeremiah
[1631]1 [1632]1 [1633]1:5 [1634]1:5 [1635]1:5 [1636]1:7 [1637]1:10 [1638]1:11 [1639]1:13 [1640]1:18 [1641]1:20 [1642]2 [1643]2:13 [1644]2:13 [1645]2:18 [1646]2:18 [1647]2:21 [1648]2:22 [1649]2:22 [1650]2:25 [1651]2:27 [1652]2:32 [1653]3:1 [1654]3:3 [1655]3:3 [1656]3:3 [1657]3:3 [1658]3:6-7 [1659]3:10 [1660]3:20 [1661]3:22 [1662]5:1-2 [1663]5:8 [1664]5:8 [1665]5:8 [1666]5:8 [1667]6:14 [1668]6:16 [1669]7:4 [1670]7:4 [1671]7:16 [1672]7:21-22 [1673]8:4 [1674]8:4 [1675]8:22 [1676]9:1 [1677]9:1 [1678]9:21 [1679]9:21 [1680]9:21 [1681]9:24 [1682]10:11 [1683]10:14 [1684]10:23 [1685]10:23 [1686]10:23 [1687]10:23 [1688]11:14 [1689]12:1 [1690]12:13 [1691]12:13 [1692]13:4-5 [1693]13:6-7 [1694]13:23 [1695]13:23 [1696]13:23 [1697]13:23 [1698]13:23 [1699]13:26 [1700]14:11-12 [1701]14:15 [1702]15:10 [1703]15:17 [1704]16:2 [1705]16:2 [1706]17:9 [1707]17:11 [1708]17:13 [1709]17:14 [1710]17:16 [1711]18:3-4 [1712]18:7-8 [1713]18:7-12 [1714]20:14 [1715]20:14 [1716]20:17 [1717]20:18 [1718]22:10 [1719]23:23 [1720]23:28 [1721]23:28 [1722]24:1-3 [1723]24:3 [1724]24:6-7 [1725]26:21-24 [1726]27:6 [1727]28:13 [1728]29:14-20 [1729]29:20-23 [1730]29:22 [1731]30:10-11 [1732]31:22 [1733]31:31 [1734]31:33 [1735]31:33-34 [1736]31:34 [1737]32:30 [1738]35 [1739]35:6-7 [1740]35:11 [1741]35:18 [1742]35:19 [1743]36 [1744]36:23 [1745]37:18-19 [1746]38:7 [1747]39:11 [1748]40 [1749]50:23 [1750]51:6 [1751]51:6 [1752]51:6
Lamentations
[1753]1 [1754]2:18 [1755]2:18 [1756]3:24 [1757]3:26-42 [1758]3:27-28 [1759]3:27-28 [1760]3:30 [1761]3:31 [1762]4:4 [1763]4:6 [1764]4:20
Ezekiel
[1765]1:4 [1766]1:7 [1767]1:7 [1768]1:11 [1769]1:14 [1770]1:15-20 [1771]1:16 [1772]1:18 [1773]1:20 [1774]1:22 [1775]2:1 [1776]2:6 [1777]2:9-10 [1778]2:10 [1779]3:1 [1780]3:8-9 [1781]4:9-16 [1782]5:1-5 [1783]8:1 [1784]8:3 [1785]8:14 [1786]10:8-22 [1787]10:18-19 [1788]12:27-28 [1789]13:10-16 [1790]14:14 [1791]14:14 [1792]14:20 [1793]16:1-10 [1794]16:4-6 [1795]16:6 [1796]16:11 [1797]16:12 [1798]16:14 [1799]16:25 [1800]16:25 [1801]16:25 [1802]16:42 [1803]16:55 [1804]16:55 [1805]16:60-61 [1806]16:62-63 [1807]18:4 [1808]18:4 [1809]18:4 [1810]18:4 [1811]18:4 [1812]18:20 [1813]18:20 [1814]18:20 [1815]18:23 [1816]18:23 [1817]18:23 [1818]18:30-32 [1819]20:25 [1820]20:43-44 [1821]23:3 [1822]24:15-18 [1823]24:16-18 [1824]24:18 [1825]24:27 [1826]25:13 [1827]28:3 [1828]28:13 [1829]32:17 [1830]33:10-11 [1831]33:11 [1832]33:11 [1833]33:11 [1834]33:12 [1835]33:12 [1836]33:12 [1837]34:17 [1838]34:18 [1839]34:20 [1840]34:21 [1841]34:31 [1842]36:24-26 [1843]36:31-32 [1844]37:1 [1845]44:2 [1846]44:2-3 [1847]44:10 [1848]44:15-16 [1849]44:22 [1850]46:20 [1851]47:1 [1852]47:8
Daniel
[1853]1 [1854]1:3-4 [1855]1:8 [1856]1:16 [1857]2 [1858]2:34 [1859]2:45 [1860]2:45 [1861]2:45 [1862]3:25 [1863]3:25 [1864]4:13 [1865]4:13 [1866]4:16 [1867]4:17 [1868]4:25 [1869]4:27 [1870]4:27 [1871]4:32 [1872]4:33-37 [1873]5:1-3 [1874]6 [1875]6:10 [1876]7:7-8 [1877]9:5 [1878]9:20 [1879]9:23 [1880]9:23 [1881]9:23 [1882]9:24 [1883]12:2 [1884]12:3
Hosea
[1885]1:2 [1886]1:2-3 [1887]1:2-4 [1888]2 [1889]2:6 [1890]2:7 [1891]2:7-9 [1892]2:19 [1893]3:1 [1894]3:3 [1895]3:3 [1896]3:4 [1897]6:5 [1898]7:4 [1899]7:4 [1900]7:6 [1901]7:11 [1902]9:4 [1903]9:11 [1904]9:14 [1905]11:1 [1906]11:1 [1907]11:8-9 [1908]11:9 [1909]13:14 [1910]13:14-15 [1911]13:15 [1912]13:15
Joel
[1913]1:4 [1914]1:14 [1915]2:12-13 [1916]2:15 [1917]2:15 [1918]2:29 [1919]3:13 [1920]3:18
Amos
[1921]1:1 [1922]1:1 [1923]1:3 [1924]1:3 [1925]2:12 [1926]3:2 [1927]3:83 [1928]4:1 [1929]5:2 [1930]5:19 [1931]6:4-6 [1932]6:11 [1933]6:13 [1934]6:14 [1935]7:1 [1936]7:7 [1937]7:12-13 [1938]7:14 [1939]7:14 [1940]8:1 [1941]8:11 [1942]8:13
Obadiah
[1943]1:4
Jonah
[1944]1:3 [1945]1:12 [1946]1:14 [1947]2:1-2 [1948]2:2-7 [1949]3:4 [1950]3:5 [1951]3:5-10 [1952]3:10 [1953]4:10-11 [1954]4:11
Micah
[1955]1:1 [1956]1:14 [1957]4:8 [1958]5:1 [1959]5:2 [1960]5:2-3 [1961]6:8 [1962]7:2 [1963]7:19
Nahum
[1964]1:3 [1965]1:9 [1966]1:15 [1967]3:1
Habakkuk
[1968]1:2-4 [1969]1:8 [1970]1:9 [1971]1:10 [1972]1:16 [1973]1:16 [1974]2:1 [1975]3:1 [1976]3:3 [1977]3:3-4 [1978]3:4 [1979]3:8 [1980]3:14 [1981]3:16
Zephaniah
[1982]1:10 [1983]1:11
Haggai
[1984]1:1 [1985]1:6 [1986]2:6-7 [1987]2:11
Zechariah
[1988]3:1 [1989]3:1 [1990]3:3 [1991]3:9 [1992]3:9 [1993]4:2-3 [1994]6:1-3 [1995]8:5 [1996]9:9 [1997]9:9 [1998]9:10 [1999]9:16 [2000]9:16 [2001]9:16 [2002]9:17 [2003]11:12-13 [2004]11:12-13 [2005]11:15 [2006]12:1 [2007]12:10 [2008]12:10 [2009]13:7
Malachi
[2010]1:2-3 [2011]1:2-3 [2012]1:6 [2013]1:10-11 [2014]2:11-12 [2015]3:1 [2016]3:6 [2017]3:7 [2018]3:14-15 [2019]3:18 [2020]4:2 [2021]4:2 [2022]4:2 [2023]4:2
Matthew
[2024]1:5 [2025]1:6 [2026]1:17 [2027]1:18-25 [2028]1:20 [2029]1:20 [2030]1:20 [2031]1:22-23 [2032]1:24-25 [2033]2:5-6 [2034]2:6 [2035]2:6 [2036]2:13-15 [2037]2:23 [2038]3:2 [2039]3:2 [2040]3:2 [2041]3:3 [2042]3:4 [2043]3:4 [2044]3:4 [2045]3:4 [2046]3:7 [2047]3:9 [2048]3:10 [2049]3:10 [2050]3:10 [2051]3:11 [2052]3:12 [2053]3:13 [2054]3:13 [2055]3:16 [2056]3:16 [2057]3:17 [2058]4:1 [2059]4:1 [2060]4:1-4 [2061]4:2-3 [2062]4:3 [2063]4:4 [2064]4:17 [2065]4:18-20 [2066]4:18-22 [2067]4:18-22 [2068]4:18-22 [2069]4:19 [2070]4:19 [2071]4:23 [2072]5:6 [2073]5:7 [2074]5:8 [2075]5:8 [2076]5:8 [2077]5:9 [2078]5:10 [2079]5:13 [2080]5:13 [2081]5:13 [2082]5:13 [2083]5:14 [2084]5:14 [2085]5:14 [2086]5:14 [2087]5:15 [2088]5:19 [2089]5:19 [2090]5:21-22 [2091]5:22 [2092]5:22 [2093]5:22 [2094]5:22 [2095]5:23-24 [2096]5:23-24 [2097]5:23-24 [2098]5:25 [2099]5:25-26 [2100]5:26 [2101]5:27 [2102]5:28 [2103]5:28 [2104]5:28 [2105]5:28 [2106]5:32 [2107]5:34 [2108]5:35 [2109]5:37 [2110]5:38-39 [2111]5:39 [2112]5:39 [2113]5:40 [2114]5:42 [2115]5:44 [2116]5:44 [2117]5:48 [2118]6:2 [2119]6:2 [2120]6:3 [2121]6:5 [2122]6:6 [2123]6:10 [2124]6:12 [2125]6:12 [2126]6:13 [2127]6:16 [2128]6:16-18 [2129]6:17 [2130]6:19-20 [2131]6:20 [2132]6:20 [2133]6:21 [2134]6:23 [2135]6:23-24 [2136]6:23-24 [2137]6:24 [2138]6:24 [2139]6:24 [2140]6:24 [2141]6:25 [2142]6:25 [2143]6:25-26 [2144]6:26 [2145]6:27 [2146]6:28 [2147]6:32 [2148]6:33 [2149]6:33 [2150]6:33 [2151]6:34 [2152]6:34 [2153]6:34 [2154]6:34 [2155]6:34 [2156]7:1 [2157]7:3 [2158]7:3-5 [2159]7:3-5 [2160]7:5 [2161]7:6 [2162]7:6 [2163]7:7 [2164]7:8 [2165]7:11 [2166]7:13 [2167]7:14 [2168]7:14 [2169]7:15 [2170]7:15 [2171]7:22 [2172]7:24-27 [2173]8 [2174]8:10 [2175]8:10 [2176]8:11 [2177]8:12 [2178]8:20 [2179]8:20-22 [2180]8:21 [2181]8:22 [2182]8:22 [2183]8:22 [2184]8:25 [2185]8:25 [2186]8:25 [2187]8:26 [2188]9:1-7 [2189]9:9 [2190]9:9 [2191]9:9 [2192]9:12-13 [2193]9:12-13 [2194]9:13 [2195]9:17 [2196]9:20 [2197]9:21 [2198]9:22 [2199]9:24 [2200]9:27 [2201]9:29 [2202]10:7 [2203]10:8 [2204]10:9 [2205]10:9 [2206]10:9-10 [2207]10:10 [2208]10:10 [2209]10:10 [2210]10:14 [2211]10:16 [2212]10:22-34 [2213]10:23 [2214]10:23 [2215]10:24-25 [2216]10:25 [2217]10:34 [2218]10:37 [2219]10:37 [2220]10:37 [2221]10:40 [2222]10:40 [2223]11:7-14 [2224]11:8 [2225]11:10 [2226]11:11 [2227]11:11 [2228]11:12 [2229]11:12 [2230]11:12 [2231]11:13 [2232]11:13 [2233]11:14 [2234]11:18 [2235]11:25 [2236]11:29 [2237]11:29 [2238]11:29 [2239]11:30 [2240]12:1-9 [2241]12:20 [2242]12:24 [2243]12:25-26 [2244]12:30 [2245]12:30 [2246]12:32 [2247]12:32 [2248]12:35 [2249]12:36 [2250]12:36 [2251]12:36 [2252]12:36 [2253]12:39-40 [2254]12:41 [2255]12:46 [2256]12:49 [2257]12:50 [2258]12:50 [2259]13:3 [2260]13:7 [2261]13:7 [2262]13:8 [2263]13:8 [2264]13:8 [2265]13:8 [2266]13:8 [2267]13:10-17 [2268]13:11 [2269]13:22 [2270]13:22-23 [2271]13:24 [2272]13:25 [2273]13:31 [2274]13:31-32 [2275]13:33 [2276]13:44 [2277]13:45 [2278]13:45-46 [2279]13:45-46 [2280]13:46 [2281]13:46 [2282]13:46 [2283]13:54-55 [2284]13:55 [2285]13:58 [2286]14:13-21 [2287]14:15 [2288]14:15-21 [2289]14:25 [2290]14:25-33 [2291]14:28 [2292]14:28 [2293]14:29 [2294]14:31 [2295]14:31 [2296]14:31 [2297]14:32 [2298]15:19 [2299]15:19-20 [2300]15:22 [2301]15:24 [2302]15:26 [2303]15:27 [2304]15:28 [2305]15:32 [2306]15:32 [2307]15:32-38 [2308]16:17-18 [2309]16:18 [2310]16:18 [2311]16:18 [2312]16:18 [2313]16:18 [2314]16:23 [2315]16:23 [2316]16:24 [2317]16:25 [2318]16:26 [2319]17:1-9 [2320]17:2 [2321]17:15 [2322]17:19 [2323]17:20 [2324]17:20 [2325]17:21 [2326]18:3 [2327]18:6 [2328]18:7 [2329]18:8-9 [2330]18:8-9 [2331]18:10 [2332]18:11 [2333]18:15-17 [2334]18:18 [2335]18:21-22 [2336]19:4 [2337]19:5 [2338]19:5 [2339]19:6 [2340]19:9 [2341]19:9 [2342]19:10 [2343]19:10-12 [2344]19:11-12 [2345]19:12 [2346]19:12 [2347]19:12 [2348]19:12 [2349]19:12 [2350]19:12 [2351]19:16 [2352]19:21 [2353]19:21 [2354]19:21 [2355]19:21 [2356]19:21 [2357]19:21 [2358]19:21 [2359]19:21 [2360]19:21 [2361]19:21 [2362]19:21 [2363]19:21 [2364]19:21 [2365]19:23-24 [2366]19:24 [2367]19:24 [2368]19:26 [2369]19:27 [2370]19:28 [2371]19:28 [2372]19:29 [2373]19:29 [2374]19:29 [2375]19:30 [2376]20:15 [2377]20:15 [2378]20:15 [2379]20:16 [2380]20:16 [2381]20:23 [2382]20:26 [2383]20:27 [2384]20:28 [2385]20:30-34 [2386]21:1-3 [2387]21:1-7 [2388]21:1-9 [2389]21:2-5 [2390]21:9 [2391]21:12-13 [2392]21:12-13 [2393]21:33 [2394]22:11-13 [2395]22:13 [2396]22:13 [2397]22:14 [2398]22:14 [2399]22:29-30 [2400]22:30 [2401]22:30 [2402]22:30 [2403]22:30 [2404]22:32 [2405]23:5 [2406]23:6-7 [2407]23:10 [2408]23:23-24 [2409]23:26-28 [2410]23:27 [2411]23:27 [2412]23:37 [2413]23:37 [2414]23:37-38 [2415]23:38 [2416]23:38 [2417]24:12 [2418]24:12 [2419]24:13 [2420]24:17-18 [2421]24:17-18 [2422]24:17-18 [2423]24:19 [2424]24:19 [2425]24:19 [2426]24:19-20 [2427]24:24 [2428]24:28 [2429]24:46 [2430]25:1 [2431]25:1 [2432]25:1-10 [2433]25:1-12 [2434]25:3 [2435]25:4 [2436]25:4 [2437]25:10 [2438]25:13 [2439]25:15 [2440]25:31 [2441]25:33 [2442]25:34 [2443]25:34-40 [2444]25:35-36 [2445]25:40 [2446]25:41 [2447]25:41 [2448]25:41 [2449]26 [2450]26:6 [2451]26:8 [2452]26:15 [2453]26:15 [2454]26:26 [2455]26:29 [2456]26:29 [2457]26:31 [2458]26:33-35 [2459]26:39 [2460]26:40 [2461]26:40-41 [2462]26:41 [2463]26:41 [2464]26:48-49 [2465]26:49 [2466]26:52 [2467]26:74 [2468]27:6 [2469]27:9-10 [2470]27:28-29 [2471]27:29 [2472]27:46 [2473]27:50-51 [2474]27:51 [2475]27:51 [2476]27:51 [2477]27:51 [2478]27:52 [2479]27:52-53 [2480]27:53 [2481]27:55-56 [2482]27:64 [2483]27:66 [2484]28:1 [2485]28:1 [2486]28:2 [2487]28:9 [2488]28:9 [2489]28:9 [2490]28:9 [2491]28:19 [2492]28:19 [2493]28:20
Mark
[2494]1:1-3 [2495]1:4 [2496]1:5 [2497]1:6 [2498]1:30-31 [2499]2:25-26 [2500]3:17 [2501]3:21 [2502]3:27 [2503]4:34 [2504]5 [2505]5 [2506]5:39 [2507]5:39 [2508]5:41 [2509]5:43 [2510]5:43 [2511]6:1-3 [2512]6:3 [2513]6:5 [2514]6:8 [2515]7:11 [2516]7:24 [2517]8:34 [2518]9:5 [2519]9:29 [2520]9:44 [2521]10:21 [2522]10:27 [2523]10:28-30 [2524]10:29-30 [2525]10:30 [2526]10:50 [2527]12:41-44 [2528]12:43 [2529]12:43-44 [2530]13:17 [2531]13:32 [2532]14 [2533]14:4 [2534]14:8 [2535]14:35 [2536]14:37 [2537]14:51-52 [2538]15:40-41 [2539]15:47 [2540]16:1 [2541]16:1-2 [2542]16:14
Luke
[2543]1 [2544]1:5 [2545]1:15 [2546]1:17 [2547]1:18 [2548]1:18 [2549]1:20 [2550]1:20 [2551]1:20-22 [2552]1:20-22 [2553]1:26-31 [2554]1:28 [2555]1:29 [2556]1:34 [2557]1:35 [2558]1:39 [2559]1:41 [2560]1:41 [2561]1:41 [2562]1:41 [2563]1:43 [2564]1:48 [2565]1:79 [2566]2:4 [2567]2:7 [2568]2:7 [2569]2:7 [2570]2:8 [2571]2:10 [2572]2:14 [2573]2:14 [2574]2:14 [2575]2:15 [2576]2:22 [2577]2:27 [2578]2:29 [2579]2:33 [2580]2:34 [2581]2:36 [2582]2:36 [2583]2:36 [2584]2:36 [2585]2:36-37 [2586]2:36-37 [2587]2:36-37 [2588]2:36-37 [2589]2:36-38 [2590]2:41 [2591]2:43 [2592]2:43-46 [2593]2:46 [2594]2:48 [2595]2:51 [2596]2:51 [2597]2:51 [2598]2:51-52 [2599]2:52 [2600]3:11 [2601]4:24 [2602]5:8 [2603]5:31 [2604]5:31 [2605]6 [2606]6:12 [2607]6:15 [2608]6:20 [2609]6:21 [2610]6:42 [2611]6:44 [2612]7 [2613]7:11 [2614]7:11-15 [2615]7:11-15 [2616]7:18-19 [2617]7:27 [2618]7:27 [2619]7:28 [2620]7:28 [2621]7:37 [2622]7:38 [2623]7:40 [2624]7:47 [2625]7:47 [2626]7:47 [2627]7:47 [2628]7:47 [2629]7:47 [2630]7:48 [2631]8:8 [2632]8:10 [2633]8:21 [2634]8:21 [2635]8:24 [2636]8:24 [2637]8:55 [2638]9:23 [2639]9:23 [2640]9:23 [2641]9:24 [2642]9:26 [2643]9:31 [2644]9:48 [2645]9:53 [2646]9:54 [2647]9:58 [2648]9:59-60 [2649]9:59-62 [2650]9:61-62 [2651]9:62 [2652]9:62 [2653]9:62 [2654]9:62 [2655]9:62 [2656]9:62 [2657]10 [2658]10:5 [2659]10:18 [2660]10:18 [2661]10:18 [2662]10:19 [2663]10:30 [2664]10:30-34 [2665]10:30-35 [2666]10:30-35 [2667]10:34 [2668]10:41-42 [2669]11:5 [2670]11:5-8 [2671]11:5-8 [2672]11:7-8 [2673]11:8 [2674]11:15 [2675]11:34 [2676]11:41 [2677]12:3 [2678]12:7 [2679]12:15 [2680]12:20 [2681]12:20 [2682]12:20 [2683]12:35 [2684]12:35 [2685]12:47-48 [2686]12:48 [2687]12:49 [2688]13:4 [2689]13:11-13 [2690]13:29 [2691]13:32 [2692]14:9 [2693]14:10 [2694]14:10 [2695]14:11 [2696]14:26 [2697]14:26 [2698]14:26-27 [2699]14:26-27 [2700]14:27 [2701]14:28 [2702]14:28 [2703]14:33 [2704]14:33 [2705]14:35 [2706]15:3 [2707]15:3-5 [2708]15:4-5 [2709]15:4-5 [2710]15:5 [2711]15:5 [2712]15:5 [2713]15:7 [2714]15:7 [2715]15:8-10 [2716]15:10 [2717]15:10 [2718]15:10 [2719]15:11-24 [2720]15:11-32 [2721]15:19-31 [2722]15:20 [2723]15:20 [2724]15:20-23 [2725]16:8 [2726]16:9 [2727]16:9 [2728]16:9 [2729]16:9 [2730]16:9 [2731]16:9 [2732]16:9 [2733]16:9 [2734]16:9 [2735]16:9 [2736]16:12 [2737]16:12 [2738]16:13 [2739]16:13 [2740]16:15 [2741]16:16 [2742]16:19 [2743]16:19-24 [2744]16:19-24 [2745]16:19-25 [2746]16:22 [2747]16:23 [2748]16:25 [2749]16:25 [2750]16:29 [2751]17:1 [2752]17:5 [2753]17:6 [2754]17:10 [2755]17:10 [2756]17:21 [2757]17:21 [2758]17:21 [2759]17:27-29 [2760]17:37 [2761]18:1 [2762]18:1 [2763]18:1 [2764]18:1-5 [2765]18:2-5 [2766]18:5 [2767]18:8 [2768]18:8 [2769]18:9 [2770]18:10-14 [2771]18:11 [2772]18:13 [2773]18:13 [2774]18:14 [2775]18:22 [2776]18:27 [2777]18:27 [2778]18:28 [2779]18:29-30 [2780]18:29-30 [2781]18:30 [2782]18:35-38 [2783]19:2-9 [2784]19:4 [2785]19:5 [2786]19:10 [2787]19:23 [2788]19:41 [2789]19:41 [2790]19:41 [2791]20:35 [2792]20:35-36 [2793]20:38 [2794]21:1-4 [2795]21:1-4 [2796]21:19 [2797]21:31 [2798]21:33 [2799]21:34 [2800]22:24 [2801]22:26 [2802]22:31 [2803]22:31-32 [2804]22:42 [2805]22:43 [2806]22:46 [2807]22:47 [2808]22:54-62 [2809]22:62 [2810]23:28 [2811]23:31 [2812]23:34 [2813]23:34 [2814]23:38 [2815]23:42-43 [2816]23:43 [2817]23:43 [2818]23:43 [2819]23:46 [2820]24:5 [2821]24:10 [2822]24:13 [2823]24:16 [2824]24:28-31 [2825]24:32 [2826]24:32 [2827]24:32 [2828]24:39 [2829]24:39 [2830]24:39-40 [2831]24:42 [2832]24:42-43 [2833]24:50-51
John
[2834]1:1 [2835]1:1 [2836]1:1 [2837]1:5 [2838]1:5 [2839]1:7-8 [2840]1:12-13 [2841]1:14 [2842]1:18 [2843]1:29 [2844]1:29 [2845]1:29 [2846]1:36 [2847]1:41 [2848]1:42 [2849]1:45 [2850]1:45 [2851]1:47 [2852]2:1 [2853]2:1-2 [2854]2:1-11 [2855]2:11 [2856]2:12 [2857]2:14-16 [2858]3:2 [2859]3:3 [2860]3:5 [2861]3:8 [2862]3:23 [2863]3:30 [2864]3:31 [2865]4 [2866]4:5 [2867]4:6 [2868]4:7 [2869]4:13-14 [2870]4:14 [2871]4:14 [2872]4:16-18 [2873]4:18 [2874]4:24 [2875]4:32 [2876]4:35 [2877]5:2 [2878]5:14 [2879]5:17 [2880]5:17 [2881]5:17 [2882]5:19 [2883]5:25 [2884]5:28-29 [2885]5:30 [2886]5:35 [2887]5:44 [2888]6:5-13 [2889]6:15 [2890]6:38 [2891]6:39 [2892]6:44 [2893]6:51 [2894]6:56 [2895]6:57 [2896]6:60 [2897]6:66 [2898]6:70 [2899]7:3-4 [2900]7:5 [2901]7:10 [2902]7:19 [2903]7:24 [2904]7:37 [2905]8:3 [2906]8:12 [2907]8:23 [2908]8:44 [2909]8:44 [2910]8:48 [2911]8:48 [2912]8:48 [2913]8:49 [2914]8:56 [2915]8:56 [2916]9:2 [2917]9:2-3 [2918]9:3 [2919]9:21 [2920]10:8 [2921]10:11 [2922]10:18 [2923]11:11 [2924]11:11 [2925]11:35 [2926]11:35-36 [2927]11:35-36 [2928]11:38 [2929]11:38-44 [2930]11:39 [2931]11:39 [2932]11:43 [2933]11:43 [2934]11:43 [2935]11:43-44 [2936]11:44 [2937]11:44 [2938]12 [2939]12 [2940]12:2 [2941]12:2 [2942]12:2 [2943]12:2 [2944]12:10 [2945]12:24 [2946]12:32 [2947]12:41 [2948]13:5 [2949]13:10 [2950]13:10 [2951]13:15 [2952]13:20 [2953]13:23 [2954]13:25 [2955]13:26 [2956]13:38 [2957]14:2 [2958]14:2 [2959]14:2 [2960]14:2-3 [2961]14:3 [2962]14:6 [2963]14:6 [2964]14:23 [2965]14:27 [2966]14:27 [2967]14:27 [2968]14:28 [2969]14:28 [2970]14:30 [2971]14:30 [2972]14:31 [2973]15:5 [2974]15:18 [2975]15:19 [2976]15:19 [2977]15:19 [2978]15:26 [2979]16:12-13 [2980]16:33 [2981]17:12 [2982]17:20-21 [2983]17:20-23 [2984]17:21 [2985]17:23 [2986]18:15-16 [2987]18:15-27 [2988]18:23 [2989]18:28 [2990]19:6 [2991]19:6 [2992]19:6 [2993]19:15 [2994]19:23 [2995]19:23 [2996]19:23-24 [2997]19:23-24 [2998]19:25 [2999]19:25 [3000]19:26-27 [3001]19:26-27 [3002]19:26-27 [3003]19:34 [3004]19:34 [3005]19:37 [3006]19:38 [3007]19:38 [3008]19:41 [3009]20 [3010]20:1-8 [3011]20:1-18 [3012]20:4 [3013]20:6-7 [3014]20:11 [3015]20:12 [3016]20:17 [3017]20:17 [3018]20:17 [3019]20:17 [3020]20:19 [3021]20:19 [3022]20:19 [3023]20:19 [3024]20:20 [3025]20:22 [3026]20:22-23 [3027]20:26-28 [3028]20:27 [3029]20:27 [3030]20:27 [3031]21:4 [3032]21:7 [3033]21:7 [3034]21:9 [3035]21:12 [3036]21:13 [3037]21:15-17 [3038]21:15-17 [3039]21:15-17 [3040]21:16 [3041]21:18
Acts
[3042]1:1 [3043]1:1 [3044]1:3 [3045]1:7 [3046]1:9 [3047]1:9-12 [3048]1:11 [3049]1:12 [3050]1:13 [3051]1:14 [3052]1:15 [3053]1:24 [3054]2:14-18 [3055]2:16-21 [3056]2:31 [3057]2:38 [3058]2:40 [3059]2:40 [3060]3:6 [3061]3:6 [3062]3:6 [3063]3:21 [3064]4:34-35 [3065]4:34-35 [3066]4:37 [3067]5 [3068]5 [3069]5:1-10 [3070]5:1-10 [3071]5:1-10 [3072]5:4 [3073]5:29 [3074]5:37 [3075]6 [3076]6:1-2 [3077]6:2 [3078]6:5 [3079]6:5 [3080]6:15 [3081]7:15-16 [3082]7:29-30 [3083]7:45 [3084]7:55 [3085]7:56 [3086]7:59-60 [3087]8:2 [3088]8:2 [3089]8:3 [3090]8:10 [3091]8:20 [3092]8:26 [3093]8:26-30 [3094]8:27 [3095]8:27 [3096]8:27-38 [3097]8:27-39 [3098]8:30-31 [3099]8:36 [3100]9:3-18 [3101]9:8 [3102]9:15 [3103]9:15 [3104]9:15 [3105]9:15 [3106]9:15 [3107]9:15 [3108]9:15 [3109]9:15 [3110]9:15 [3111]9:17 [3112]9:17 [3113]9:17-18 [3114]9:32-34 [3115]9:36-41 [3116]9:39 [3117]10 [3118]10:1 [3119]10:1-2 [3120]10:3-16 [3121]10:4 [3122]10:10 [3123]10:15 [3124]10:26 [3125]10:34-35 [3126]11:28 [3127]12 [3128]12:8 [3129]13:8-11 [3130]13:32 [3131]13:46 [3132]13:46 [3133]14:11 [3134]15:10 [3135]15:28-29 [3136]15:39 [3137]16:6-7 [3138]16:16 [3139]16:25-38 [3140]17:22 [3141]17:28 [3142]17:28 [3143]17:30 [3144]19:1 [3145]19:1-7 [3146]19:2 [3147]20:16 [3148]20:28 [3149]20:28 [3150]20:35 [3151]21:5 [3152]21:8-9 [3153]21:9 [3154]21:9 [3155]21:9 [3156]21:9 [3157]21:10-11 [3158]21:13 [3159]21:13 [3160]23:2 [3161]23:5 [3162]24:17-18 [3163]26:2-3 [3164]26:24 [3165]27:23 [3166]27:37 [3167]28:7 [3168]28:30
Romans
[3169]1:7 [3170]1:8 [3171]1:8 [3172]1:8 [3173]1:8 [3174]1:8 [3175]1:25 [3176]1:26-27 [3177]2:4-5 [3178]2:4-5 [3179]2:12 [3180]2:24 [3181]2:28-29 [3182]3:1 [3183]3:2 [3184]3:4 [3185]3:4 [3186]3:12 [3187]3:20 [3188]3:23 [3189]3:23 [3190]3:23-24 [3191]3:24 [3192]3:28 [3193]3:30 [3194]4:11 [3195]5:3-5 [3196]5:3-5 [3197]5:3-5 [3198]5:7 [3199]5:14 [3200]5:14 [3201]5:14 [3202]5:14 [3203]5:14 [3204]5:14 [3205]5:20 [3206]5:20 [3207]5:20 [3208]5:20 [3209]6:3-4 [3210]6:4 [3211]6:4 [3212]6:4 [3213]6:11 [3214]6:14 [3215]6:21-22 [3216]7 [3217]7:1-3 [3218]7:2 [3219]7:2 [3220]7:2 [3221]7:2-3 [3222]7:4 [3223]7:6 [3224]7:6 [3225]7:8 [3226]7:14 [3227]7:14 [3228]7:14 [3229]7:14-20 [3230]7:18 [3231]7:18 [3232]7:18 [3233]7:19 [3234]7:19 [3235]7:19 [3236]7:19 [3237]7:22-25 [3238]7:23 [3239]7:23 [3240]7:23 [3241]7:23 [3242]7:24 [3243]7:24 [3244]7:24 [3245]7:24 [3246]7:24 [3247]7:24 [3248]7:24 [3249]7:24 [3250]7:25 [3251]8:1-2 [3252]8:3 [3253]8:5 [3254]8:8 [3255]8:8-9 [3256]8:9 [3257]8:11 [3258]8:11 [3259]8:11 [3260]8:14 [3261]8:17 [3262]8:18 [3263]8:18 [3264]8:18 [3265]8:18 [3266]8:19-21 [3267]8:20 [3268]8:20 [3269]8:21 [3270]8:26 [3271]8:28 [3272]8:35 [3273]8:35-36 [3274]8:38 [3275]8:39 [3276]9:3 [3277]9:3 [3278]9:3-4 [3279]9:3-4 [3280]9:11 [3281]9:13 [3282]9:14-29 [3283]9:16 [3284]9:16 [3285]9:16 [3286]9:16 [3287]9:16 [3288]9:16 [3289]9:16 [3290]9:20 [3291]9:20-21 [3292]9:21 [3293]9:22-23 [3294]9:30-32 [3295]9:33 [3296]10:2 [3297]10:2 [3298]10:2 [3299]10:2 [3300]10:2 [3301]10:10 [3302]11:6 [3303]11:20 [3304]11:25-26 [3305]11:32 [3306]11:32 [3307]11:32 [3308]11:32 [3309]11:32 [3310]11:33 [3311]11:33 [3312]11:33-34 [3313]11:33-34 [3314]12:1 [3315]12:1 [3316]12:1 [3317]12:1 [3318]12:1 [3319]12:1 [3320]12:1-3 [3321]12:3 [3322]12:9 [3323]12:11 [3324]12:11-12 [3325]12:13 [3326]12:15 [3327]12:15 [3328]12:17 [3329]12:17 [3330]12:18 [3331]12:20 [3332]12:21 [3333]12:21 [3334]13:11-12 [3335]13:12 [3336]13:14 [3337]13:14 [3338]14:2 [3339]14:2 [3340]14:2 [3341]14:3 [3342]14:4 [3343]14:4 [3344]14:4 [3345]14:4 [3346]14:4 [3347]14:5 [3348]14:5 [3349]14:5 [3350]14:5 [3351]14:5 [3352]14:6 [3353]14:10 [3354]14:14 [3355]14:20 [3356]14:21 [3357]14:21 [3358]14:21 [3359]14:21 [3360]14:21 [3361]15:19 [3362]15:24 [3363]16:18 [3364]16:20 [3365]16:20
1 Corinthians
[3366]1:1-3 [3367]1:7-8 [3368]1:19 [3369]1:19 [3370]1:21 [3371]1:24 [3372]1:24 [3373]1:25 [3374]1:25 [3375]1:25 [3376]1:25 [3377]1:25 [3378]1:26 [3379]1:27 [3380]1:30 [3381]1:31 [3382]1:31 [3383]2:6-7 [3384]2:8-9 [3385]2:9 [3386]2:9 [3387]2:9 [3388]2:9 [3389]2:9 [3390]2:13 [3391]2:14 [3392]3:1-3 [3393]3:2 [3394]3:2 [3395]3:3 [3396]3:6 [3397]3:6 [3398]3:6 [3399]3:6-10 [3400]3:10 [3401]3:10 [3402]3:10-12 [3403]3:14 [3404]3:16 [3405]3:16-17 [3406]3:17 [3407]3:17 [3408]3:17 [3409]3:18-19 [3410]4:1-2 [3411]4:4 [3412]4:4 [3413]4:5 [3414]4:7 [3415]4:7 [3416]4:7 [3417]4:8 [3418]4:9 [3419]4:10 [3420]4:12 [3421]4:12 [3422]4:12 [3423]4:19 [3424]4:19 [3425]4:21 [3426]4:21 [3427]5:1 [3428]5:1-2 [3429]5:4-5 [3430]5:5 [3431]5:5 [3432]5:8 [3433]5:11 [3434]6:11 [3435]6:12 [3436]6:12 [3437]6:12 [3438]6:12 [3439]6:12 [3440]6:13 [3441]6:13 [3442]6:13 [3443]6:13 [3444]6:13-18 [3445]6:15 [3446]6:16 [3447]6:16 [3448]6:17 [3449]6:17 [3450]6:17 [3451]6:18 [3452]6:18 [3453]6:18 [3454]6:19 [3455]6:19 [3456]6:19 [3457]6:20 [3458]7 [3459]7 [3460]7:1 [3461]7:1 [3462]7:1 [3463]7:1-2 [3464]7:3 [3465]7:3 [3466]7:4 [3467]7:4 [3468]7:5 [3469]7:5 [3470]7:5 [3471]7:5 [3472]7:5 [3473]7:6 [3474]7:7 [3475]7:7 [3476]7:7 [3477]7:7 [3478]7:7 [3479]7:7-8 [3480]7:8 [3481]7:8 [3482]7:8-9 [3483]7:8-9 [3484]7:8-9 [3485]7:8-10 [3486]7:9 [3487]7:9 [3488]7:9 [3489]7:9 [3490]7:10 [3491]7:11 [3492]7:13-14 [3493]7:14 [3494]7:14 [3495]7:15 [3496]7:18 [3497]7:18 [3498]7:18 [3499]7:19 [3500]7:20 [3501]7:21 [3502]7:21 [3503]7:21-22 [3504]7:23 [3505]7:24 [3506]7:25 [3507]7:25 [3508]7:25 [3509]7:25 [3510]7:25 [3511]7:25 [3512]7:25-26 [3513]7:26 [3514]7:26 [3515]7:27 [3516]7:27 [3517]7:28 [3518]7:29 [3519]7:29 [3520]7:29 [3521]7:29 [3522]7:29 [3523]7:29 [3524]7:29 [3525]7:29 [3526]7:30 [3527]7:32-33 [3528]7:32-34 [3529]7:34 [3530]7:34 [3531]7:34 [3532]7:34 [3533]7:35 [3534]7:35 [3535]7:35 [3536]7:35 [3537]7:37-38 [3538]7:39 [3539]7:39 [3540]7:39 [3541]7:39 [3542]7:39-40 [3543]7:39-40 [3544]7:40 [3545]7:40 [3546]8:10 [3547]8:13 [3548]9:4-5 [3549]9:5 [3550]9:5 [3551]9:5 [3552]9:5 [3553]9:5 [3554]9:9 [3555]9:11 [3556]9:11 [3557]9:13 [3558]9:13 [3559]9:13 [3560]9:13-14 [3561]9:14 [3562]9:14 [3563]9:19 [3564]9:24 [3565]9:24 [3566]9:26 [3567]9:27 [3568]9:27 [3569]9:27 [3570]9:27 [3571]9:27 [3572]9:27 [3573]9:27 [3574]10:4 [3575]10:4 [3576]10:10 [3577]10:11 [3578]10:11 [3579]10:11 [3580]10:12 [3581]10:12 [3582]10:13 [3583]10:13 [3584]10:21 [3585]10:21 [3586]10:29 [3587]10:31 [3588]10:31 [3589]11:5-6 [3590]11:6 [3591]11:7 [3592]11:14 [3593]11:16 [3594]11:27 [3595]11:27 [3596]11:27-28 [3597]11:28 [3598]11:28 [3599]11:28 [3600]12:4 [3601]12:4 [3602]12:4-5 [3603]12:11 [3604]12:12 [3605]12:12-27 [3606]12:21 [3607]12:22-24 [3608]12:28 [3609]12:28 [3610]12:29 [3611]13:4 [3612]13:4-7 [3613]13:5 [3614]13:7 [3615]13:7 [3616]13:7 [3617]13:8 [3618]13:8-10 [3619]13:9 [3620]13:9 [3621]13:9-10 [3622]13:9-10 [3623]13:12 [3624]13:12 [3625]13:13 [3626]13:18 [3627]14:1 [3628]14:5 [3629]14:15 [3630]14:15 [3631]14:16 [3632]14:18 [3633]14:19 [3634]14:30-33 [3635]15:8-9 [3636]15:9 [3637]15:9-10 [3638]15:9-10 [3639]15:10 [3640]15:22 [3641]15:23 [3642]15:25-26 [3643]15:25-28 [3644]15:28 [3645]15:31 [3646]15:31 [3647]15:33 [3648]15:33 [3649]15:33 [3650]15:33 [3651]15:33 [3652]15:35 [3653]15:37 [3654]15:39 [3655]15:40 [3656]15:41 [3657]15:41 [3658]15:42 [3659]15:44 [3660]15:44 [3661]15:44 [3662]15:44 [3663]15:44 [3664]15:47 [3665]15:50 [3666]15:50 [3667]15:50 [3668]15:51 [3669]15:53 [3670]15:53 [3671]15:53 [3672]15:53 [3673]15:53-54 [3674]15:54 [3675]15:54 [3676]15:55 [3677]15:58 [3678]15:85
2 Corinthians
[3679]1:5 [3680]1:7 [3681]1:12 [3682]2:4 [3683]2:7 [3684]2:7 [3685]2:7 [3686]2:7 [3687]2:7 [3688]2:10 [3689]2:10 [3690]2:10 [3691]2:10-11 [3692]2:11 [3693]2:15 [3694]2:16 [3695]2:16 [3696]3:2 [3697]3:2 [3698]3:4-6 [3699]3:4-6 [3700]3:6 [3701]3:6 [3702]3:6 [3703]3:7 [3704]3:7 [3705]3:10 [3706]3:11 [3707]3:14-15 [3708]3:18 [3709]3:18 [3710]3:18 [3711]4:7 [3712]4:7 [3713]4:7 [3714]4:7 [3715]4:7 [3716]4:16 [3717]4:16 [3718]4:16 [3719]4:17-18 [3720]4:18 [3721]5:1 [3722]5:4 [3723]5:6 [3724]5:6 [3725]5:10 [3726]5:17 [3727]5:17 [3728]6:8 [3729]6:8 [3730]6:9 [3731]6:10 [3732]6:10 [3733]6:14 [3734]6:14 [3735]6:14-15 [3736]6:14-15 [3737]6:14-15 [3738]6:14-15 [3739]6:14-15 [3740]6:14-16 [3741]6:16 [3742]8:12 [3743]8:13-14 [3744]8:14 [3745]8:14 [3746]8:14 [3747]8:18 [3748]9:6 [3749]10:3 [3750]10:4-6 [3751]10:8 [3752]10:12 [3753]10:14 [3754]10:14 [3755]10:17-18 [3756]11:2 [3757]11:2 [3758]11:2 [3759]11:2 [3760]11:3 [3761]11:6 [3762]11:14 [3763]11:14-15 [3764]11:23-27 [3765]11:27 [3766]11:27 [3767]12:2 [3768]12:2 [3769]12:4 [3770]12:4 [3771]12:7 [3772]12:7 [3773]12:7 [3774]12:8-10 [3775]12:9 [3776]12:10 [3777]12:10 [3778]12:10 [3779]12:10 [3780]12:11 [3781]12:14 [3782]12:14 [3783]12:21 [3784]13:1 [3785]13:3 [3786]13:3
Galatians
[3787]1:8 [3788]1:8 [3789]1:8 [3790]1:10 [3791]1:10 [3792]1:10 [3793]1:10 [3794]1:15 [3795]1:16 [3796]1:17-18 [3797]1:18-19 [3798]1:19 [3799]2 [3800]2 [3801]2:1-2 [3802]2:2 [3803]2:2 [3804]2:9 [3805]2:9-10 [3806]2:13 [3807]2:16 [3808]2:16 [3809]2:16 [3810]2:20 [3811]2:21 [3812]3:3-4 [3813]3:10 [3814]3:13 [3815]3:13 [3816]3:22 [3817]3:24 [3818]3:27 [3819]3:27 [3820]3:28 [3821]4:16 [3822]4:16 [3823]4:16 [3824]4:19 [3825]4:19 [3826]4:22-26 [3827]4:26 [3828]4:26 [3829]4:26 [3830]4:26 [3831]5:4 [3832]5:7 [3833]5:15 [3834]5:15 [3835]5:15 [3836]5:16-17 [3837]5:16-17 [3838]5:17 [3839]5:17 [3840]5:17 [3841]5:19 [3842]5:19 [3843]5:19-23 [3844]5:24 [3845]5:24-25 [3846]6:2 [3847]6:7 [3848]6:7-8 [3849]6:10 [3850]6:10 [3851]6:10 [3852]6:10 [3853]6:14 [3854]6:14 [3855]6:15
Ephesians
[3856]1:4 [3857]1:10 [3858]1:21 [3859]1:21 [3860]1:23 [3861]2:3-4 [3862]2:5 [3863]2:14 [3864]3:10 [3865]3:20 [3866]4:7 [3867]4:11 [3868]4:13 [3869]4:14 [3870]4:14 [3871]4:22 [3872]4:22 [3873]4:26 [3874]4:26 [3875]4:26 [3876]4:26 [3877]5:5 [3878]5:5 [3879]5:8 [3880]5:13 [3881]5:14 [3882]5:14 [3883]5:18 [3884]5:18 [3885]5:18 [3886]5:18 [3887]5:18 [3888]5:19 [3889]5:22 [3890]5:23-24 [3891]5:25 [3892]5:27 [3893]5:27 [3894]5:27 [3895]5:31 [3896]5:31-32 [3897]5:31-32 [3898]5:32 [3899]6:1 [3900]6:4 [3901]6:6 [3902]6:12 [3903]6:12 [3904]6:12 [3905]6:12 [3906]6:12 [3907]6:13-17 [3908]6:14-17 [3909]6:16 [3910]6:16 [3911]6:16 [3912]6:16 [3913]6:24
Philippians
[3914]1:1 [3915]1:21 [3916]1:23 [3917]1:23 [3918]1:23 [3919]1:23 [3920]1:23 [3921]1:23 [3922]2:6 [3923]2:6-8 [3924]2:7-8 [3925]2:13 [3926]2:13 [3927]2:14-15 [3928]2:15 [3929]2:18 [3930]2:21 [3931]2:27 [3932]2:44 [3933]3:8 [3934]3:12-13 [3935]3:12-16 [3936]3:13 [3937]3:13 [3938]3:13 [3939]3:13 [3940]3:14 [3941]3:19 [3942]3:19 [3943]3:19 [3944]3:19 [3945]3:19 [3946]3:20 [3947]3:20 [3948]3:20 [3949]3:20 [3950]3:20-21 [3951]3:21 [3952]4:7 [3953]4:8 [3954]4:18
Colossians
[3955]1:16 [3956]1:18 [3957]1:21-22 [3958]1:26 [3959]2:5 [3960]2:5 [3961]2:11 [3962]2:11 [3963]2:13-14 [3964]2:14-15 [3965]2:18 [3966]3:1 [3967]3:5 [3968]3:5 [3969]3:5-6 [3970]3:9-11 [3971]3:14 [3972]4:2 [3973]4:6 [3974]4:14
1 Thessalonians
[3975]2:9 [3976]2:9 [3977]2:18 [3978]3:4 [3979]4:4 [3980]4:7 [3981]4:9 [3982]4:13 [3983]4:13 [3984]4:13 [3985]4:13 [3986]4:13 [3987]4:15 [3988]4:16 [3989]4:17 [3990]4:17 [3991]4:17 [3992]5:15 [3993]5:17 [3994]5:17 [3995]5:17 [3996]5:17 [3997]5:17 [3998]5:21 [3999]5:21 [4000]5:21 [4001]5:23 [4002]5:23
2 Thessalonians
[4003]2:3 [4004]2:7 [4005]2:7 [4006]2:7-8 [4007]3:3 [4008]3:10 [4009]3:10 [4010]3:10
1 Timothy
[4011]1:15 [4012]1:17 [4013]1:19 [4014]1:19-20 [4015]2:4 [4016]2:8 [4017]2:10 [4018]2:12 [4019]2:13 [4020]2:14 [4021]2:15 [4022]2:15 [4023]2:15 [4024]3:1 [4025]3:1 [4026]3:1-7 [4027]3:1-7 [4028]3:2 [4029]3:2 [4030]3:2 [4031]3:2 [4032]3:2 [4033]3:2-3 [4034]3:3 [4035]3:4 [4036]3:4 [4037]3:4 [4038]3:6 [4039]3:8-10 [4040]3:11 [4041]3:12 [4042]3:13 [4043]4:3 [4044]4:3 [4045]4:3 [4046]4:3 [4047]4:4 [4048]4:4 [4049]4:4 [4050]4:4 [4051]4:5 [4052]4:12 [4053]4:12 [4054]4:14 [4055]4:14 [4056]5:2 [4057]5:2 [4058]5:3 [4059]5:3-5 [4060]5:5 [4061]5:5 [4062]5:6 [4063]5:6 [4064]5:6 [4065]5:6 [4066]5:6 [4067]5:9 [4068]5:9 [4069]5:9-10 [4070]5:9-10 [4071]5:11 [4072]5:11 [4073]5:11 [4074]5:11-12 [4075]5:11-12 [4076]5:11-12 [4077]5:11-12 [4078]5:13 [4079]5:14 [4080]5:14 [4081]5:14 [4082]5:14-15 [4083]5:14-15 [4084]5:14-15 [4085]5:14-15 [4086]5:15 [4087]5:15 [4088]5:15 [4089]5:15 [4090]5:16 [4091]5:17 [4092]5:18 [4093]5:19-20 [4094]5:19-20 [4095]5:22 [4096]5:23 [4097]5:23 [4098]5:23 [4099]5:23 [4100]5:23 [4101]5:24 [4102]5:24-25 [4103]6:7 [4104]6:8 [4105]6:8 [4106]6:8 [4107]6:8 [4108]6:8 [4109]6:8 [4110]6:8 [4111]6:8 [4112]6:9 [4113]6:9 [4114]6:10 [4115]6:10 [4116]6:15 [4117]6:16 [4118]6:16 [4119]6:17-19 [4120]6:20-21
2 Timothy
[4121]1:15 [4122]2:4 [4123]2:20 [4124]2:20 [4125]2:20 [4126]2:20 [4127]2:20 [4128]2:20-21 [4129]2:20-21 [4130]2:20-21 [4131]2:21 [4132]2:23 [4133]3:6-7 [4134]3:6-7 [4135]3:6-7 [4136]3:7 [4137]3:14 [4138]3:14-15 [4139]4:2 [4140]4:3 [4141]4:7-8 [4142]4:7-8 [4143]4:7-8 [4144]4:13 [4145]4:14
Titus
[4146]1:5 [4147]1:5-7 [4148]1:5-9 [4149]1:6 [4150]1:6 [4151]1:7 [4152]1:7 [4153]1:9 [4154]1:9 [4155]1:9-14 [4156]1:12 [4157]1:12 [4158]1:15 [4159]1:15 [4160]2:11-12 [4161]2:15 [4162]3:4-7 [4163]3:10 [4164]3:10-11
Philemon
[4165]1:10 [4166]1:12 [4167]1:12
Hebrews
[4168]1:3 [4169]2:1 [4170]2:1 [4171]4:13 [4172]5:10 [4173]6 [4174]6:4 [4175]6:9 [4176]7:3 [4177]9:3-5 [4178]9:7 [4179]11:8 [4180]11:17-19 [4181]11:32 [4182]11:32 [4183]12:6 [4184]12:6 [4185]12:6 [4186]12:6 [4187]12:6 [4188]12:6 [4189]12:14 [4190]12:14 [4191]12:18 [4192]13 [4193]13:4 [4194]13:4 [4195]13:4 [4196]13:4 [4197]13:4 [4198]13:4 [4199]13:4
James
[4200]1:12 [4201]1:16-18 [4202]1:19 [4203]1:20 [4204]1:20 [4205]1:22 [4206]2:10 [4207]2:10 [4208]2:10 [4209]2:10 [4210]2:10 [4211]2:11 [4212]2:17 [4213]2:23 [4214]2:23 [4215]2:25 [4216]2:26 [4217]3:2 [4218]3:2 [4219]3:2 [4220]3:2 [4221]3:2 [4222]3:2 [4223]3:2 [4224]3:5 [4225]3:6 [4226]3:7 [4227]3:8 [4228]3:8-9 [4229]4:1 [4230]4:6 [4231]4:6 [4232]4:11 [4233]4:13-16
1 Peter
[4234]1:2 [4235]1:3-5 [4236]1:13-16 [4237]1:16 [4238]1:18-19 [4239]1:22-23 [4240]1:24 [4241]2:8 [4242]2:9 [4243]2:9 [4244]2:9 [4245]2:17-18 [4246]2:21 [4247]2:22 [4248]2:22 [4249]2:22 [4250]2:22 [4251]2:23 [4252]2:23 [4253]3:2-3 [4254]3:3 [4255]3:7 [4256]3:7 [4257]3:7 [4258]3:7 [4259]3:7 [4260]3:15 [4261]3:15 [4262]3:20 [4263]3:20 [4264]3:20-21 [4265]3:20-21 [4266]4:1 [4267]4:8 [4268]4:10 [4269]4:10 [4270]5:1 [4271]5:1-2 [4272]5:4 [4273]5:5 [4274]5:5 [4275]5:6 [4276]5:8 [4277]5:8 [4278]5:8
2 Peter
[4279]1:4 [4280]1:4 [4281]2:4 [4282]2:7-8 [4283]2:9 [4284]2:9 [4285]2:17-18 [4286]3:3 [4287]3:9
1 John
[4288]1:5 [4289]1:7 [4290]1:8 [4291]1:8 [4292]1:8 [4293]1:9 [4294]2:1 [4295]2:1-2 [4296]2:4 [4297]2:6 [4298]2:6 [4299]2:6 [4300]2:15 [4301]2:15-17 [4302]2:19 [4303]2:27 [4304]3:2 [4305]3:2 [4306]3:2-3 [4307]3:8 [4308]3:9-10 [4309]3:15 [4310]4:3 [4311]4:7 [4312]4:13 [4313]4:15 [4314]4:18 [4315]4:18 [4316]4:18 [4317]5:3 [4318]5:16 [4319]5:18 [4320]5:18-19 [4321]5:19 [4322]5:19 [4323]5:19 [4324]5:21 [4325]14:6
2 John
[4326]1:1 [4327]1:1 [4328]1:10
3 John
[4329]1:1
Jude
[4330]1:5 [4331]1:5 [4332]1:6 [4333]1:6 [4334]1:7 [4335]1:9 [4336]1:23 [4337]1:24
Revelation
[4338]1:4 [4339]1:5 [4340]1:6 [4341]1:7 [4342]1:8 [4343]1:9-10 [4344]1:12 [4345]1:14 [4346]1:15 [4347]1:16 [4348]2:2 [4349]2:4 [4350]2:5 [4351]2:6 [4352]2:6 [4353]2:6 [4354]2:8 [4355]2:8 [4356]2:9 [4357]2:9 [4358]2:10 [4359]2:13 [4360]2:14 [4361]2:14 [4362]2:15 [4363]2:15 [4364]2:15 [4365]2:16 [4366]2:17 [4367]2:20 [4368]2:23 [4369]2:25-26 [4370]2:27 [4371]3:4 [4372]3:4 [4373]3:7 [4374]3:7 [4375]3:15-16 [4376]3:16 [4377]3:17 [4378]3:19 [4379]3:20 [4380]3:22 [4381]3:33 [4382]3:33 [4383]5:1 [4384]6:10 [4385]7:5 [4386]10:9-10 [4387]10:9-10 [4388]11:2 [4389]11:7-8 [4390]11:7-8 [4391]12:9 [4392]14:1 [4393]14:1 [4394]14:1-4 [4395]14:3 [4396]14:3 [4397]14:3-4 [4398]14:4 [4399]14:4 [4400]14:4 [4401]14:4 [4402]14:4 [4403]14:4 [4404]14:4 [4405]14:4 [4406]14:6 [4407]17 [4408]17:4-5 [4409]17:9 [4410]18 [4411]18:2 [4412]18:4 [4413]19:11-16 [4414]21:2 [4415]21:14 [4416]21:14 [4417]21:16-18 [4418]21:19-20 [4419]21:19-21 [4420]22:13 [4421]22:14 [4422]22:18-19
Judith
[4423]13 [4424]13 [4425]13
Wisdom of Solomon
[4426]1:11 [4427]1:11 [4428]2:23 [4429]2:24 [4430]3:21 [4431]4:9 [4432]4:9 [4433]4:9 [4434]4:11 [4435]4:11 [4436]4:11 [4437]4:11-14 [4438]4:13 [4439]4:13 [4440]4:14 [4441]4:14 [4442]4:14 [4443]5:4 [4444]6:6 [4445]6:7 [4446]7:1 [4447]8:7 [4448]8:7 [4449]9:15 [4450]10:1 [4451]10:1 [4452]10:7
Baruch
[4453]5:5 [4454]6
Susanna
[4455]1:54 [4456]1:55 [4457]1:58 [4458]1:59
Bel and the Dragon
[4459]1:33-36 [4460]1:33-39
2 Maccabees
[4461]5:17 [4462]7
2 Esdras
[4463]1:30
Sirach
[4464]1:18 [4465]2:1 [4466]2:1 [4467]3:30 [4468]3:30 [4469]3:30 [4470]4:25 [4471]7:36 [4472]8:7 [4473]8:14 [4474]8:17 [4475]9:2-3 [4476]10:1 [4477]10:9 [4478]10:30 [4479]11:25 [4480]13:1 [4481]13:2 [4482]22:6 [4483]22:6 [4484]25:9 [4485]27:5 [4486]27:25 [4487]46:1 __________________________________________________________________
Index of Greek Words and Phrases
* agapetos: [4488]1 * agonothetes: [4489]1 * adiaphora: [4490]1 * aei: [4491]1 * anamartetos: [4492]1 * anachorein: [4493]1 * apo tou ponerou: [4494]1 * aperispastos: [4495]1 * aponia: [4496]1 * arto-turos: [4497]1 * archaios: [4498]1 * ataraxia: [4499]1 * autarkes: [4500]1 * eis to sophronein: [4501]1 * ento poneeo: [4502]1 * episkopos: [4503]1 * eschematismenos: [4504]1 * erhista: [4505]1 * hedone: [4506]1 * ono lura: [4507]1 * onterione: [4508]1 * ho protoplastos: [4509]1 * omoiousios: [4510]1 * ophis: [4511]1 [4512]2 * homoousios: [4513]1 * hudrophobous: [4514]1 * hupostasis: [4515]1 [4516]2 * hupotuposeis: [4517]1 * 'olbios: [4518]1 * 'Adamantios: [4519]1 * 'Apatheia: [4520]1 * 'Arche: [4521]1 * 'Iesous Christos Theou Uos Soter: [4522]1 * 'agoranmoi: [4523]1 * 'epitome: [4524]1 * Edei hemas, agapete, me te oi& 208;sei ton kleron pheresthai: [4525]1 * onos luras ekouse kai salpingos hus: [4526]1 * Ono lura: [4527]1 * A'genealogetos: [4528]1 * Theoboule: [4529]1 * Therapeia: [4530]1 [4531]2 * IChThUS: [4532]1 * Meden agan: [4533]1 * Meden 'agan: [4534]1 * Oidema: [4535]1 * Peri apatheias: [4536]1 * Peri apoches empsuchion: [4537]1 * Peri 'Archon: [4538]1 [4539]2 [4540]3 [4541]4 * Peri Archon: [4542]1 * Pros to euschemon kai euprosedron to Kuri& 251; aperispastos': [4543]1 * aidesimotate Pappa: [4544]1 * autexousion: [4545]1 * anamartetos: [4546]1 * banausoi: [4547]1 * gumnastikos: [4548]1 * gune: [4549]1 * gunaikas: [4550]1 * demas: [4551]1 * deo: [4552]1 * diapsalma: [4553]1 * didaktikon: [4554]1 * dogmatikos: [4555]1 * episkopountes: [4556]1 * kai memeristai: [4557]1 * kosmion: [4558]1 * kairo: [4559]1 * kakia: [4560]1 [4561]2 [4562]3 * kakozelian: [4563]1 * kakosin: [4564]1 * katastreniasosi: [4565]1 * kleros: [4566]1 [4567]2 [4568]3 [4569]4 * koinos bios: [4570]1 * kurio: [4571]1 * logos: [4572]1 * lupe: [4573]1 * logismoi: [4574]1 * meden agan: [4575]1 * nephaleon: [4576]1 * nephalios: [4577]1 * nephalios: [4578]1 * nous: [4579]1 * oidema: [4580]1 * oi& 208;sis: [4581]1 * oiesis: [4582]1 * ouk erista: [4583]1 * ousia: [4584]1 [4585]2 [4586]3 [4587]4 * pathe: [4588]1 [4589]2 * piptein: [4590]1 * parakeklemene: [4591]1 * paraleipomenon: [4592]1 * pararruomai: [4593]1 * patria: [4594]1 * perates: [4595]1 * peri archon: [4596]1 * peri 'Archon: [4597]1 [4598]2 [4599]3 [4600]4 * peri 'Archon: [4601]1 * pelos: [4602]1 * poikile: [4603]1 * poikiles: [4604]1 * polu pleiona: [4605]1 * prinos: [4606]1 * prisai: [4607]1 * proarthra: [4608]1 * prosopon: [4609]1 * proegmena: [4610]1 * propatheiai: [4611]1 * ptoma: [4612]1 * rema: [4613]1 * sabbaton deuteroproton: [4614]1 * sun ton ouranon kai sun ten gen: [4615]1 * sunodos: [4616]1 * sophrona: [4617]1 * sema: [4618]1 * soma: [4619]1 * skopos: [4620]1 * stromateis: [4621]1 * stromateis: [4622]1 * scheptomai: [4623]1 * schinos: [4624]1 * schisai: [4625]1 * schinos: [4626]1 * sophrosune: [4627]1 * to prepon: [4628]1 * tomoi: [4629]1 * te energei& 139;: [4630]1 * te dunamei: [4631]1 * ton anabaOmon: [4632]1 * tou gar kai genos esmen: [4633]1 * chalkenteros: [4634]1 * chara: [4635]1 * cheima oporismos stilpnotes: [4636]1 * psuchai apo tou psuchesthai: [4637]1 __________________________________________________________________
Index of Hebrew Words and Phrases
* 'lh smvt: [4638]1 * hrs: [4639]1 * lrlm: [4640]1 * nll: [4641]1 * nlh: [4642]1 * nmy: [4643]1 * ntmy: [4644]1 * : [4645]1 * l ssygyt: [4646]1 * yr: [4647]1 * tsl': [4648]1 * qvl: [4649]1 * rtshych: [4650]1 * t: [4651]1 __________________________________________________________________
Index of Pages of the Print Edition
[4652]i [4653]iii [4654]v [4655]xi [4656]xii [4657]xiii [4658]xiv [4659]xv [4660]xvi [4661]xvii [4662]xviii [4663]xix [4664]xx [4665]xxi [4666]xxii [4667]xxiii [4668]xxiv [4669]xxv [4670]xxvi [4671]xxvii [4672]xxviii [4673]xxix [4674]xxx [4675]xxxi [4676]xxxii [4677]xxxiii [4678]xxxiv [4679]1 [4680]2 [4681]3 [4682]4 [4683]5 [4684]6 [4685]7 [4686]8 [4687]9 [4688]10 [4689]11 [4690]12 [4691]13 [4692]14 [4693]15 [4694]16 [4695]17 [4696]18 [4697]19 [4698]20 [4699]21 [4700]22 [4701]23 [4702]24 [4703]25 [4704]26 [4705]27 [4706]28 [4707]29 [4708]30 [4709]31 [4710]32 [4711]33 [4712]34 [4713]35 [4714]36 [4715]37 [4716]38 [4717]39 [4718]40 [4719]41 [4720]42 [4721]43 [4722]44 [4723]45 [4724]46 [4725]47 [4726]48 [4727]49 [4728]50 [4729]51 [4730]52 [4731]53 [4732]54 [4733]55 [4734]56 [4735]57 [4736]58 [4737]59 [4738]60 [4739]61 [4740]62 [4741]63 [4742]64 [4743]65 [4744]66 [4745]67 [4746]68 [4747]69 [4748]70 [4749]71 [4750]72 [4751]73 [4752]74 [4753]75 [4754]76 [4755]77 [4756]78 [4757]79 [4758]80 [4759]81 [4760]82 [4761]83 [4762]84 [4763]85 [4764]86 [4765]87 [4766]88 [4767]89 [4768]90 [4769]91 [4770]92 [4771]93 [4772]94 [4773]95 [4774]96 [4775]97 [4776]98 [4777]99 [4778]100 [4779]101 [4780]102 [4781]103 [4782]104 [4783]105 [4784]106 [4785]107 [4786]108 [4787]109 [4788]110 [4789]111 [4790]112 [4791]113 [4792]114 [4793]115 [4794]116 [4795]117 [4796]118 [4797]119 [4798]120 [4799]121 [4800]122 [4801]123 [4802]124 [4803]125 [4804]126 [4805]127 [4806]128 [4807]129 [4808]130 [4809]131 [4810]132 [4811]133 [4812]134 [4813]135 [4814]136 [4815]137 [4816]138 [4817]139 [4818]140 [4819]141 [4820]142 [4821]143 [4822]144 [4823]145 [4824]146 [4825]147 [4826]148 [4827]149 [4828]150 [4829]151 [4830]152 [4831]153 [4832]154 [4833]155 [4834]156 [4835]157 [4836]158 [4837]159 [4838]160 [4839]161 [4840]162 [4841]163 [4842]164 [4843]165 [4844]166 [4845]167 [4846]168 [4847]169 [4848]170 [4849]171 [4850]172 [4851]173 [4852]174 [4853]175 [4854]176 [4855]177 [4856]178 [4857]179 [4858]180 [4859]181 [4860]182 [4861]183 [4862]184 [4863]185 [4864]186 [4865]187 [4866]188 [4867]189 [4868]190 [4869]191 [4870]192 [4871]193 [4872]194 [4873]195 [4874]196 [4875]197 [4876]198 [4877]199 [4878]200 [4879]201 [4880]202 [4881]203 [4882]204 [4883]205 [4884]206 [4885]207 [4886]208 [4887]209 [4888]210 [4889]211 [4890]212 [4891]213 [4892]214 [4893]215 [4894]216 [4895]217 [4896]218 [4897]219 [4898]220 [4899]221 [4900]222 [4901]223 [4902]224 [4903]225 [4904]226 [4905]227 [4906]228 [4907]229 [4908]230 [4909]231 [4910]232 [4911]233 [4912]234 [4913]235 [4914]236 [4915]237 [4916]238 [4917]239 [4918]240 [4919]241 [4920]242 [4921]243 [4922]244 [4923]245 [4924]246 [4925]247 [4926]248 [4927]249 [4928]250 [4929]251 [4930]252 [4931]253 [4932]254 [4933]255 [4934]256 [4935]257 [4936]258 [4937]259 [4938]260 [4939]261 [4940]262 [4941]263 [4942]264 [4943]265 [4944]266 [4945]267 [4946]268 [4947]269 [4948]270 [4949]271 [4950]272 [4951]273 [4952]274 [4953]275 [4954]276 [4955]277 [4956]278 [4957]279 [4958]280 [4959]281 [4960]282 [4961]283 [4962]284 [4963]285 [4964]286 [4965]287 [4966]288 [4967]289 [4968]290 [4969]291 [4970]292 [4971]293 [4972]294 [4973]295 [4974]297 [4975]299 [4976]300 [4977]301 [4978]302 [4979]303 [4980]304 [4981]305 [4982]306 [4983]307 [4984]308 [4985]309 [4986]310 [4987]311 [4988]312 [4989]313 [4990]314 [4991]315 [4992]316 [4993]317 [4994]318 [4995]319 [4996]320 [4997]321 [4998]322 [4999]323 [5000]324 [5001]325 [5002]326 [5003]327 [5004]328 [5005]329 [5006]330 [5007]331 [5008]332 [5009]333 [5010]334 [5011]335 [5012]336 [5013]337 [5014]338 [5015]339 [5016]340 [5017]341 [5018]342 [5019]343 [5020]344 [5021]345 [5022]346 [5023]347 [5024]348 [5025]349 [5026]350 [5027]351 [5028]352 [5029]353 [5030]354 [5031]355 [5032]356 [5033]357 [5034]358 [5035]359 [5036]360 [5037]361 [5038]362 [5039]363 [5040]364 [5041]365 [5042]366 [5043]367 [5044]368 [5045]369 [5046]370 [5047]371 [5048]372 [5049]373 [5050]374 [5051]375 [5052]376 [5053]377 [5054]378 [5055]379 [5056]380 [5057]381 [5058]382 [5059]383 [5060]384 [5061]385 [5062]386 [5063]387 [5064]388 [5065]389 [5066]390 [5067]391 [5068]392 [5069]393 [5070]394 [5071]395 [5072]396 [5073]397 [5074]398 [5075]399 [5076]400 [5077]401 [5078]402 [5079]403 [5080]404 [5081]405 [5082]406 [5083]407 [5084]408 [5085]409 [5086]410 [5087]411 [5088]412 [5089]413 [5090]414 [5091]415 [5092]416 [5093]417 [5094]418 [5095]419 [5096]420 [5097]421 [5098]422 [5099]423 [5100]424 [5101]425 [5102]426 [5103]427 [5104]428 [5105]429 [5106]430 [5107]431 [5108]432 [5109]433 [5110]434 [5111]435 [5112]436 [5113]437 [5114]438 [5115]439 [5116]440 [5117]441 [5118]442 [5119]443 [5120]444 [5121]445 [5122]446 [5123]447 [5124]448 [5125]449 [5126]450 [5127]451 [5128]452 [5129]453 [5130]454 [5131]455 [5132]456 [5133]457 [5134]458 [5135]459 [5136]460 [5137]461 [5138]462 [5139]463 [5140]464 [5141]465 [5142]466 [5143]467 [5144]468 [5145]469 [5146]470 [5147]471 [5148]472 [5149]473 [5150]474 [5151]475 [5152]476 [5153]477 [5154]478 [5155]479 [5156]480 [5157]481 [5158]482 [5159]483 [5160]484 [5161]485 [5162]486 [5163]487 [5164]488 [5165]489 [5166]490 [5167]491 [5168]492 [5169]493 [5170]494 [5171]495 [5172]496 [5173]497 [5174]498 [5175]499 [5176]500 [5177]501 [5178]502 __________________________________________________________________
This document is from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library at Calvin College, http://www.ccel.org, generated on demand from ThML source.
References
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# Sulpitius Severus
__________________________________________________________________
Title: NPNF-211. Sulpitius Severus, Vincent of Lerins, John Cassian Creator(s): Schaff, Philip (1819-1893) (Editor) Print Basis: Edinburgh, T & T Clark Rights: Public Domain CCEL Subjects: All; Early Church; Proofed LC Call no: BR60 LC Subjects:
Christianity
Early Christian Literature. Fathers of the Church, etc. __________________________________________________________________
A SELECT LIBRARY
OF THE
NICENE AND
POST-NICENE FATHERS
OF
THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.
SECOND SERIES
TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH WITH PROLEGOMENA AND EXPLANATORY NOTES.
Edited by
PHILIP SCHAFF, D.D., LL.D.,
PROFESSOR OF CHURCH HISTORY IN THE UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, NEW YORK.
AND
HENRY WACE, D.D.,
PRINCIPAL OF KING'S COLLEGE, LONDON.
VOLUME XI
Sulpitius Severus, Vincent of Lerins, John Cassian
T&T CLARK
EDINBURGH __________________________________________________________________
WM. B. EERDMANS PUBLISHING COMPANY
GRAND RAPIDS, MICHIGAN __________________________________________________________________
The Works of Sulpitius Severus.
Translated,
with preface, and notes,
by
Rev. Alexander Roberts, D.D.,
Professor of Humanity, University of St. Andrews, Scotland. __________________________________________________________________
Life and Writings of Sulpitius Severus. __________________________________________________________________
Sulpitius (or Sulpicius) Severus was born in Aquitania about a.d. 363, and died, as is generally supposed, in a.d. 420. He was thus a contemporary of the two great Fathers of the Church, St. Jerome and St. Augustine. The former refers to him in his Commentary on the 36th chapter of Ezekiel as "our friend Severus." St. Augustine, again, having occasion to allude to him in his 205th letter, describes him as "a man excelling in learning and wisdom." Sulpitius belonged to an illustrious family. He was very carefully educated, and devoted himself in his early years to the practice of oratory. He acquired a high reputation at the bar; but, while yet in the prime of life, he resolved to leave it, and seek, in company with some pious friends, contentment and peace in a life of retirement and religious exercises. The immediate occasion of this resolution was the premature death of his wife, whom he had married at an early age, and to whom he was deeply attached. His abandonment of the pleasures and pursuits of the world took place about a.d. 392; and, notwithstanding all the entreaties and expostulations of his father, he continued, from that date to his death, to lead a life of the strictest seclusion. Becoming a Presbyter of the Church, he attached himself to St. Martin of Tours, for whom he ever afterwards cherished the profoundest admiration and affection, and whose extraordinary career he has traced with a loving pen in by far the most interesting of his works.
It is stated by some ancient writers that Sulpitius ultimately incurred the charge of heresy, having, to some extent, embraced Pelagian opinions. And there have not been wanting those in modern times who thought they could detect traces of such errors in his works. But it seems to us that there is no ground for any such conclusion. Sulpitius constantly presents himself to us as a most strenuous upholder of "catholic" or "orthodox" doctrines. It is evident that his whole heart was engaged in the love and maintenance of these doctrines: he counts as his "friends" those only who consistently adhered to them; and, while by no means in favor of bitterly prosecuting or severely punishing "heretics," he shrunk with abhorrence from all thought of communion with them. Perhaps the most striking impression we receive from a perusal of his writings is his sincerity. We may often feel that he is over-credulous in his acceptance of the miraculous; and we may lament his narrowness in clinging so tenaciously to mere ecclesiastical formulæ; but we are always impressed with the genuineness of his convictions, and with his fervent desire to bring what he believed to be truth under the attention of his readers.
The style of Sulpitius is, upon the whole, marked by a considerable degree of classical purity and clearness. He has been called "the Christian Sallust," and there are not a few obvious resemblances between the two writers. But some passages occur in Sulpitius which are almost, if not entirely, unintelligible. This is owing partly to the uncertainty of the text, and partly to the use of terms which had sprung up since classical times, and the exact import of which it is impossible to determine. In executing our version of this author (now for the first time, we believe, translated into English), we have had constantly before us the editions of Sigonius (1609), of Hornius (1664), of Vorstius (1709), and of Halm (1866). We have also consulted a very old French translation of the Historia Sacra, published at Rouen in 1580.
The order in which we have arranged the writings of Sulpitius is as follows:--
1. Life of St. Martin.
2. Letters (undoubted).
3. Dialogues.
4. Letters (doubtful).
5. Sacred History.
By far the most attractive of these works are those bearing on the life and achievements of St. Martin. Sulpitius delights to return again and again to this wonderful man, and cannot find language sufficiently strong in which to extol his merits. Hence, not only in the professed Life, but also in the Letters and Dialogues, we have him brought very fully before us. The reader will find near the beginning of the Vita as translated by us, a note bearing upon the solemn asseverations of Sulpitius as to the reality of the miracles which Martin performed.
Most of the Letters here given are deemed spurious by Halm, the latest editor of our author. He has, nevertheless, included the whole of them in his edition, and we have thought it desirable to follow his example in our translation.
The Sacred History of Sulpitius has for its object to present a compendious history of the world from the Creation down to the year a.d. 400. The first and longer portion of the work is simply an abridgment of the Scripture narrative. The latter part is more interesting and valuable, as it deals with events lying outside of Scripture, and respecting which we are glad to obtain information from all available sources. Unfortunately, however, Sulpitius is not always a trustworthy authority. His inaccuracies in the first part of his work are very numerous, and will be found pointed out in our version.
The following are some of the Estimates which have been formed of our author.
Paulinus, a contemporary of Sulpitius, and bishop of Nola, addressed to him about fifty letters, in the fifth of which he thus writes: "It certainly would not have been given to thee to draw up an account of Martin, unless by a pure heart thou hadst rendered thy mouth worthy of uttering his sacred praises. Thou art blessed, therefore, of the Lord, inasmuch as thou hast been able, in worthy style, and with proper feeling, to complete the history of so great a priest, and so illustrious a confessor. Blessed, too, is he, in accordance with his merits, who has obtained a historian worthy of his faith and of his life; and who has become consecrated to the Divine glory by his own virtues, and to human memory by thy narrative regarding him."
Gennadius (died a.d. 496), in his "Catalogue of illustrious men," says: "The Presbyter Severus, whose cognomen was Sulpitius, belonged to the province of Aquitania. He was a man distinguished both for his family and learning, and was remarkable for his love of poverty and humility. He was also a great friend of some holy men, such as Martin, bishop of Tours, and Paulinus, bishop of Nola; and his works are by no means to be neglected."
In modern times, J. J. Scaliger has said of Sulpitius, "He is the purest of all the ecclesiastical writers." And Vossius, referring to some remarks of Baronius on Sulpitius, says: "I differ from him (Baronius) in this, that, without sufficient care, he calls Gennadius the contemporary of Severus, since Gennadius flourished seventy years, more or less, after Severus. For he dedicated his book On Faith' (as he himself tells us) to Pope Gelasius, who became bishop of Rome in a.d. 492. But he greatly extols the holiness of Sulpitius; and in the Roman martyrology his memory (i.e. of Sulpitius) is celebrated on the 29th of January."
Archdeacon Farrar has recently remarked concerning Martin and Sulpitius, "Owing partly to the eloquent and facile style of his (Martin's) biographer, Sulpicius Severus, his name was known from Armenia to Egypt more widely than that of any other monk or bishop of his day."--Lives of the Fathers, i. 628. __________________________________________________________________
Sulpitius Severus
On the Life of St. Martin. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Preface to Desiderius.
Severus to his dearest brother Desiderius sendeth greeting. I had determined, my like-minded brother, to keep private, and confine within the walls of my own house, the little treatise which I had written concerning the life of St. Martin. I did so, as I am not gifted with much talent, and shrank from the criticisms of the world, lest (as I think will be the case) my somewhat unpolished style should displease my readers, and I should be deemed highly worthy of general reprehension for having too boldly laid hold of a subject which ought to have been reserved for truly eloquent writers. But I have not been able to refuse your request again and again presented. For what could there be which I would not grant in deference to your love, even at the expense of my own modesty? However, I have submitted the work to you on the sure understanding that you will reveal it to no other, having received your promise to that effect. Nevertheless, I have my fears that you will become the means of its publication to the world; and I well know that, once issued, it can never [1] be recalled. If this shall happen, and you come to know that it is read by some others, you will, I trust, kindly ask the readers to attend to the facts related, rather than the language in which they are set forth. You will beg them not to be offended if the style chances unpleasantly to affect their ears, because the kingdom of God consists not of eloquence, but faith. Let them also bear in mind that salvation was preached to the world, not by orators, but by fishermen, although God could certainly have adopted the other course, had it been advantageous. For my part, indeed, when I first applied my mind to writing what follows, because I thought it disgraceful that the excellences of so great a man should remain concealed, I resolved with myself not to feel ashamed on account of solecisms of language. This I did because I had never attained to any great knowledge of such things; or, if I had formerly some taste of studies of the kind, I had lost the whole of that, through having neglected these matters for so long a course of time. But, after all, that I may not have in future to adopt such an irksome mode of self-defense, the best way will be that the book should be published, if you think right, with the author's name suppressed. In order that this may be done, kindly erase the title which the book bears on its front, so that the page may be silent; and (what is quite enough) let the book proclaim its subject-matter, while it tells nothing of the author. __________________________________________________________________
[1] "Delere licebit Quod non edideris: nescit vox missa reverti." --Hor. Art Poet. 389-90. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter I.
Reasons for writing the Life of St. Martin.
Most men being vainly devoted to the pursuit of worldly glory, have, as they imagined, acquired a memorial of their own names from this source; viz. devoting their pens to the embellishment of the lives of famous men. This course, although it did not secure for them a lasting reputation, still has undoubtedly brought them some fulfilment of the hope they cherished. It has done so, both by preserving their own memory, though to no purpose, and because, through their having presented to the world the examples of great men, no small emulation has been excited in the bosoms of their readers. Yet, notwithstanding these things, their labors have in no degree borne upon the blessed and never-ending life to which we look forward. For what has a glory, destined to perish with the world, profited those men themselves who have written on mere secular matters? Or what benefit has posterity derived from reading of Hector as a warrior, or Socrates as an expounder of philosophy? There can be no profit in such things, since it is not only folly to imitate the persons referred to, but absolute madness not to assail them with the utmost severity. For, in truth, those persons who estimate human life only by present actions, have consigned their hopes to fables, and their souls to the tomb. In fact, they gave themselves up to be perpetuated simply in the memory of mortals, whereas it is the duty of man rather to seek after eternal life than an eternal memorial and that, not by writing, or fighting, or philosophizing, but by living a pious, holy, and religious life. This erroneous conduct of mankind, being enshrined in literature, has prevailed to such an extent that it has found many who have been emulous either of the vain philosophy or the foolish excellence which has been celebrated. For this reason, I think I will accomplish something well worth the necessary pains, if I write the life of a most holy man, which shall serve in future as an example to others; by which, indeed, the readers shall be roused to the pursuit of true knowledge, and heavenly warfare, and divine virtue. In so doing, we have regard also to our own advantage, so that we may look for, not a vain remembrance among men, but an eternal reward from God. For, although we ourselves have not lived in such a manner that we can serve for an example to others, nevertheless, we have made it our endeavor that he should not remain unknown who was a man worthy of imitation. I shall therefore set about writing the life of St. Martin, and shall narrate both what he did previous to his episcopate, and what he performed as a bishop. At the same time, I cannot hope to set forth all that he was or did. Those excellences of which he alone was conscious are completely unknown, because, as he did not seek for honor from men, he desired, as much as he could accomplish it, that his virtues should be concealed. And even of those which had become known to us, we have omitted a great number, because we have judged it enough if only the more striking and eminent should be recorded. At the same time, I had in the interests of readers to see to it that, no undue amount of instances being set before them should make them weary of the subject. But I implore those who are to read what follows to give full faith to the things narrated, and to believe that I have written nothing of which I had not certain knowledge and evidence. I should, in fact, have preferred to be silent rather than to narrate things which are false. [2] __________________________________________________________________
[2] This is a remarkable asseveration in view of the many miraculous accounts which follow. When we remember, on the one hand, how intimate Sulpitius was with St. Martin, and how strongly, as in this passage, he avouches the truth of all he narrates, it is extremely difficult to decide as to the real value of his narrative. It has been said (Smith's Dict. II. 967) that Sulpitius' Life of St. Martinus is "filled with the most puerile fables," and undoubtedly many of the stories recorded are of that character. But whether, considering the close relation in which the two men stood to each other, all the miraculous accounts are to be discredited, must be left to the judgment of the reader. The following valuable remarks may be quoted on this interesting question. "Some forty years ago," writes Dr. Cazenove, "an audience in Oxford was listening to a professor of modern history (Dr. Arnold of Rugby), who discussed this subject. After pointing out the difference between the Gospel miracles and those recorded by ecclesiastical historians, the lecturer proceeded as follows: Some appear to be unable to conceive of belief or unbelief, except as having some ulterior object: "We believe this because we love it: we disbelieve it because we wish it to be disproved." There is, however, in minds more healthfully constituted a belief and a disbelief, founded solely upon the evidence of the case, arising neither out of partiality, nor out of prejudice against the supposed conclusions, which may result from its truth or falsehood. And in such a spirit the historical student will consider the case of Bede's and other historians' miracles. He will, I think, as a general rule, disbelieve them, for the immense multitude which he finds recorded, and which, I suppose, no credulity could believe in, shows sufficiently that on this point there was a total want of judgment and a blindness of belief generally existing which make the testimony wholly insufficient; and, while the external evidence in favor of these alleged miracles is so unsatisfactory, there are, for the most part, strong internal evidence against them. But with regard to some miracles, he will see that there is no strong a priori improbability in their occurence, but rather the contrary; as, for instance, when the first missionaries of the Gospel in a barbarous country are said to have been assisted by a manifestation of the spirit of power; and, if the evidence appears to warrant his belief, he will readily and gladly yield it. And in doing so he will have the countenance of a great man (Burke) who in his fragment of English history has not hesitated to express the same sentiments. Nor will he be unwilling, but most thankful, to find sufficient grounds for believing that not only at the beginning of the Gospel, but in ages long afterwards, believing prayer has received extraordinary answers; that it has been heard even in more than it might have dared to ask for. Yet, again, if the gift of faith--the gift as distinguished from the grace--of the faith which removes mountains, has been given to any in later times in remarkable measure the mighty works which such faith may have wrought cannot be incredible in themselves to those who remember our Lord's promise, and if it appears from satisfactory evidence that they were wrought actually, we shall believe them,--and believe with joy. Only as it is in most cases impossible to admit the trustworthiness of the evidence, our minds must remain at the most in a state of suspense; and I do not know why it is necessary to come to any positive decision.'"--"The Fathers for English Readers": St. Hilary of Poitiers and St. Martin of Tours, p. 191. On this subject it has lately been said: "Most, if not all, of the so-called miracles which were supposed to surround Martin with a blaze of glow were either absolutely and on the face of them false; or were gross exaggerations of natural events; or were subjective impressions clothed in objective images; or were the distortions of credulous rumor; or at the best cannot claim in their favor a single particle of trustworthy evidence. They cannot be narrated as though they were actual events. Martin was an eminent bishop but half of the wonderful deeds attributed to him are unworthy and absurd."--Farrar's Lives of the Fathers, I. 644. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter II.
Military Service of St. Martin.
Martin, then, was born at Sabaria [3] in Pannonia, but was brought up at Ticinum, [4] which is situated in Italy. His parents were, according to the judgment of the world, of no mean rank, but were heathens. His father was at first simply a soldier, but afterwards a military tribune. He himself in his youth following military pursuits was enrolled in the imperial guard, first under king Constantine, and then under Julian Cæsar. This, however, was not done of his own free will, for, almost from his earliest years, the holy infancy of the illustrious boy aspired rather to the service of God. [5] For, when he was of the age of ten years, he betook himself, against the wish of his parents, to the Church, and begged that he might become a catechumen. Soon afterwards, becoming in a wonderful manner completely devoted to the service of God, when he was twelve years old, he desired to enter on the life of a hermit; and he would have followed up that desire with the necessary vows, had not his as yet too youthful age prevented. His mind, however, being always engaged on matters pertaining to the monasteries or the Church, already meditated in his boyish years what he afterwards, as a professed servant of Christ, fulfilled. But when an edict was issued by the ruling powers [6] in the state, that the sons of veterans should be enrolled for military service, and he, on the information furnished by his father, (who looked with an evil eye on his blessed actions) having been seized and put in chains, when he was fifteen years old, was compelled to take the military oath, then showed himself content with only one servant as his attendant. And even to him, changing places as it were, he often acted as though, while really master, he had been inferior; to such a degree that, for the most part, he drew off his [servant's] boots and cleaned them with his own hand; while they took their meals together, the real master, however, generally acting the part of servant. During nearly three years before his baptism, he was engaged in the profession of arms, but he kept completely free from those vices in which that class of men become too frequently involved. He showed exceeding kindness towards his fellow-soldiers, and held them in wonderful affection; while his patience and humility surpassed what seemed possible to human nature. There is no need to praise the self-denial which he displayed: it was so great that, even at that date, he was regarded not so much as being a soldier as a monk. By all these qualities he had so endeared himself to the whole body of his comrades, that they esteemed him while they marvelously loved him. Although not yet made a new creature [7] in Christ, he, by his good works, acted the part of a candidate for baptism. This he did, for instance, by aiding those who were in trouble, by furnishing assistance to the wretched, by supporting the needy, by clothing the naked, while he reserved nothing for himself from his military pay except what was necessary for his daily sustenance. Even then, far from being a senseless hearer of the Gospel, he so far complied with its precepts as to take no thought about the morrow. __________________________________________________________________
[3] Sarwar.
[4] Pavia.
[5] The text is here corrupt and uncertain, but the general meaning is plain to the above effect. Hahn has adopted "divinam servitutem," instead of the common "divina servitute."
[6] Sulpitius uses reges instead of the more common expression imperatores.
[7] Sulpitius manifestly refers to baptism in these words. However mistakenly, several others of the early Fathers held that regeneration does not take place before baptism, and that baptism is, in fact, absolutely necessary to regeneration. St. Ambrose has the following strong statement on the subject: "Credit catechumenus; sed nisi baptizetur, remissionem peccatorum non potest obtinere."--Libri de his, qui initiantur mysteriis, chap. 4. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter III.
Christ appears to St. Martin.
Accordingly, at a certain period, when he had nothing except his arms and his simple military dress, in the middle of winter, a winter which had shown itself more severe than ordinary, so that the extreme cold was proving fatal to many, he happened to meet at the gate of the city of Amiens [8] a poor man destitute of clothing. He was entreating those that passed by to have compassion upon him, but all passed the wretched man without notice, when Martin, that man full of God, recognized that a being to whom others showed no pity, was, in that respect, left to him. Yet, what should he do? He had nothing except the cloak in which he was clad, for he had already parted with the rest of his garments for similar purposes. Taking, therefore, his sword with which he was girt, he divided his cloak into two equal parts, and gave one part to the poor man, while he again clothed himself with the remainder. Upon this, some of the by-standers laughed, because he was now an unsightly object, and stood out as but partly dressed. Many, however, who were of sounder understanding, groaned deeply because they themselves had done nothing similar. They especially felt this, because, being possessed of more than Martin, they could have clothed the poor man without reducing themselves to nakedness. In the following night, when Martin had resigned himself to sleep, he had a vision of Christ arrayed in that part of his cloak with which he had clothed the poor man. He contemplated the Lord with the greatest attention, and was told to own as his the robe which he had given. Ere long, he heard Jesus saying with a clear voice to the multitude of angels standing round--"Martin, who is still but a catechumen, clothed [9] me with this robe." The Lord, truly mindful of his own words (who had said when on earth--"Inasmuch [10] as ye have done these things to one of the least of these, ye have done them unto me), declared that he himself had been clothed in that poor man; and to confirm the testimony he bore to so good a deed, he condescended to show him himself in that very dress which the poor man had received. After this vision the sainted man was not puffed up with human glory, but, acknowledging the goodness of God in what had been done, and being now of the age of twenty years, he hastened to receive baptism. He did not, however, all at once, retire from military service, yielding to the entreaties of his tribune, whom he admitted to be his familiar tent-companion. [11] For the tribune promised that, after the period of his office had expired, he too would retire from the world. Martin, kept back by the expectation of this event, continued, although but in name, to act the part of a soldier, for nearly two years after he had received baptism. __________________________________________________________________
[8] The place here called by Sulpitius "Ambianensium civitas" was also known as "Samarobriva," and is supposed to be the modern Amiens.
[9] St. Matt. xxv. 40.
[10] There is a peculiar use of quamdiu in the old Latin rendering of the passage here quoted. It is used as an equivalent for the Greek eph' hoson, no doubt with the meaning "inasmuch as."
[11] Comp. Tacitus, Agric. chap. 5, "electus, quem contubernio æstimaret." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IV.
Martin retires from Military Service.
In the meantime, as the barbarians were rushing within the two divisions of Gaul, Julian Cæsar, [12] bringing an army together at the city [13] of the Vaugiones, began to distribute a donative to the soldiers. As was the custom in such a case, they were called forward, one by one, until it came to the turn of Martin. Then, indeed, judging it a suitable opportunity for seeking his discharge--for he did not think it would be proper for him, if he were not to continue in the service, to receive a donative--he said to Cæsar, "Hitherto I have served you as a soldier: allow me now to become a soldier to God: let the man who is to serve thee receive thy donative: I am the soldier of Christ: it is not lawful for me to fight." Then truly the tyrant stormed on hearing such words, declaring that, from fear of the battle, which was to take place on the morrow, and not from any religious feeling, Martin withdrew from the service. But Martin, full of courage, yea all the more resolute from the danger that had been set before him, exclaims, "If this conduct of mine is ascribed to cowardice, and not to faith, I will take my stand unarmed before the line of battle tomorrow, and in the name of the Lord Jesus, protected by the sign of the cross, and not by shield or helmet, I will safely penetrate the ranks of the enemy." He is ordered, therefore, to be thrust back into prison, determined on proving his words true by exposing himself unarmed to the barbarians. But, on the following day, the enemy sent ambassadors to treat about peace and surrendered both themselves and all their possessions. In these circumstances who can doubt that this victory was due to the saintly man? It was granted him that he should not be sent unarmed to the fight. And although the good Lord could have preserved his own soldier, even amid the swords and darts of the enemy, yet that his blessed eyes might not be pained by witnessing the death of others, he removed all necessity for fighting. For Christ did not require to secure any other victory in behalf of his own soldier, than that, the enemy being subdued without bloodshed, no one should suffer death. __________________________________________________________________
[12] Commonly known as Julian the Apostate.
[13] This city was called Borbetomagus, and is represented by the modern Worms. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter V.
Martin converts a Robber to the Faith.
From that time quitting military service, Martin earnestly sought after the society of Hilarius, bishop of the city Pictava, [14] whose faith in the things of God was then regarded as of high renown, and in universal esteem. For some time Martin made his abode with him. Now, this same Hilarius, having instituted him in the office of the diaconate, endeavored still more closely to attach him to himself, and to bind him by leading him to take part in Divine service. But when he constantly refused, crying out that he was unworthy, Hilarius, as being a man of deep penetration, perceived that he could only be constrained in this way, if he should lay that sort of office upon him, in discharging which there should seem to be a kind of injury done him. He therefore appointed him to be an exorcist. Martin did not refuse this appointment, from the fear that he might seem to have looked down upon it as somewhat humble. Not long after this, he was warned in a dream that he should visit his native land, and more particularly his parents, who were still involved in heathenism, with a regard for their religious interests. He set forth in accordance with the expressed wish of the holy Hilarius, and, after being adjured by him with many prayers and tears, that he would in due time return. According to report Martin entered on that journey in a melancholy frame of mind, after calling the brethren to witness that many sufferings lay before him. The result fully justified this prediction. For, first of all, having followed some devious paths among the Alps, he fell into the hands of robbers. And when one of them lifted up his axe and poised it above Martin's head, another of them met with his right hand the blow as it fell; nevertheless, having had his hands bound behind his back, he was handed over to one of them to be guarded and stripped. The robber, having led him to a private place apart from the rest, began to enquire of him who he was. Upon this, Martin replied that he was a Christian. The robber next asked him whether he was afraid. Then indeed Martin most courageously replied that he never before had felt so safe, because he knew that the mercy of the Lord would be especially present with him in the midst of trials. He added that he grieved rather for the man in whose hands he was, because, by living a life of robbery, he was showing himself unworthy of the mercy of Christ. And then entering on a discourse concerning Evangelical truth, he preached the word of God to the robber. Why should I delay stating the result? The robber believed; and, after expressing his respect for Martin, he restored him to the way, entreating him to pray the Lord for him. That same robber was afterwards seen leading a religious life; so that, in fact, the narrative I have given above is based upon an account furnished by himself. __________________________________________________________________
[14] This city of the Pictones (or Pictavi) who are mentioned by Cæsar, Bell Gall. iii. 11. Their territory corresponded to the modern diocese of Poitiers. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VI.
The Devil throws himself in the Way of Martin.
Martin, then, having gone on from thence, after he had passed Milan, the devil met him in the way, having assumed the form of a man. The devil first asked him to what place he was going. Martin having answered him to the effect that he was minded to go whithersoever the Lord called him, the devil said to him, "Wherever you go, or whatever you attempt, the devil will resist you." Then Martin, replying to him in the prophetical word, said, "The Lord is my helper; I will not fear what man can do unto me." [15] Upon this, his enemy immediately vanished out of his sight; and thus, as he had intended in his heart and mind, he set free his mother from the errors of heathenism, though his father continued to cleave to its evils. However, he saved many by his example.
After this, when the Arian heresy had spread through the whole world, and was especially powerful in Illyria, and when he, almost single-handed, was fighting most strenuously against the treachery of the priests, and had been subjected to many punishments (for he was publicly scourged, and at last was compelled to leave the city), again betaking himself to Italy, and having found the Church in the two divisions of Gaul in a distracted condition through the departure also of the holy Hilarius, whom the violence of the heretics had driven into exile, he established a monastery for himself at Milan. There, too, Auxentius, the originator and leader of the Arians, bitterly persecuted him; and, after he had assailed him with many injuries, violently expelled him from the city. Thinking, therefore, that it was necessary to yield to circumstances, he withdrew to the island Gallinaria, [16] with a certain presbyter as his companion, a man of distinguished excellences. Here he subsisted for some time on the roots of plants; and, while doing so, he took for food hellebore, which is, as people say, a poisonous kind of grass. But when he perceived the strength of the poison increasing within him, and death now nearly at hand, he warded off the imminent danger by means of prayer, and immediately all his pains were put to flight. And not long after having discovered that, through penitence on the part of the king, permission to return had been granted to holy Hilarius, he made an effort to meet him at Rome, and, with this view, set out for that city. __________________________________________________________________
[15] Comp. Ps. cxviii. 6.
[16] An island near Albium Ingaunum--the modern Allenga, on the gulf of Genoa. The island was so named from abounding in fowls in a half tamed state. It still bears the name of Gallinaria. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VII.
Martin restores a Catechumen to Life.
As Hilarius had already gone away, so Martin followed in his footsteps; and having been most joyously welcomed by him, he established for himself a monastery not far from the town. At this time a certain catechumen joined him, being desirous of becoming instructed in the doctrines [17] and habits of the most holy man. But, after the lapse only of a few days, the catechumen, seized with a languor, began to suffer from a violent fever. It so happened that Martin had then left home, and having remained away three days, he found on his return that life had departed from the catechumen; and so suddenly had death occurred, that he had left this world without receiving baptism. The body being laid out in public was being honored by the last sad offices on the part of the mourning brethren, when Martin hurries up to them with tears and lamentations. But then laying hold, as it were, of the Holy Spirit, with the whole powers of his mind, he orders the others to quit the cell in which the body was lying; and bolting the door, he stretches himself at full length on the dead limbs of the departed brother. Having given himself for some time to earnest prayer, and perceiving by means of the Spirit of God that power was present, [18] he then rose up for a little, and gazing on the countenance of the deceased, he waited without misgiving for the result of his prayer and of the mercy of the Lord. And scarcely had the space of two hours elapsed, when he saw the dead man begin to move a little in all his members, and to tremble with his eyes opened for the practice of sight. Then indeed, turning to the Lord with a loud voice and giving thanks, he filled the cell with his ejaculations. Hearing the noise, those who had been standing at the door immediately rush inside. And truly a marvelous spectacle met them, for they beheld the man alive whom they had formerly left dead. Thus being restored to life, and having immediately obtained baptism, he lived for many years afterwards; and he was the first who offered himself to us both as a subject that had experienced the virtues [19] of Martin, and as a witness to their existence. The same man was wont to relate that, when he left the body, he was brought before the tribunal of the Judge, and being assigned to gloomy regions and vulgar crowds, he received a severe [20] sentence. Then, however, he added, it was suggested by two angels of the Judge that he was the man for whom Martin was praying; and that, on this account, he was ordered to be led back by the same angels, and given up to Martin, and restored to his former life. From this time forward, the name of the sainted man became illustrious, so that, as being reckoned holy by all, he was also deemed powerful and truly apostolical. __________________________________________________________________
[17] All this seems to be implied in the words "institui disciplinis."
[18] "adesse virtutem."
[19] Or "powers" according to the use of the Greek word dunamis in Luke viii. 46.
[20] Here again it is to be noted what fatal consequences were supposed to flow from dying without receiving baptism. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VIII.
Martin restores one that had been strangled.
Not long after these events, while Martin was passing by the estate of a certain man named Lupicinus, who was held in high esteem according to the judgment of the world, he was received with shouting and the lamentations of a wailing crowd. Having, in an anxious state of mind gone up to that multitude, and enquired what such weeping meant, he was told that one of the slaves of the family had put an end to his life by hanging. Hearing this, Martin entered the cell in which the body was lying, and, excluding all the multitude, he stretched himself upon the body, and spent some little time in prayer. Ere long, the deceased, with life beaming in his countenance, and with his drooping eyes fixed on Martin's face, is aroused; and with a gentle effort attempting to rise, he laid hold of the right hand of the saintly man, and by this means stood upon his feet. In this manner, while the whole multitude looked on, he walked along with Martin to the porch of the house. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IX.
High Esteem in which Martin was held.
Nearly about the same time, Martin was called upon to undertake the episcopate of the church at Tours; [21] but when he could not easily be drawn forth from his monastery, a certain Ruricius, one of the citizens, pretending that his wife was ill, and casting himself down at his knees, prevailed on him to go forth. Multitudes of the citizens having previously been posted by the road on which he traveled, he is thus under a kind of guard escorted to the city. An incredible number of people not only from that town, but also from the neighboring cities, had, in a wonderful manner, assembled to give their votes. [22] There was but one wish among all, there were the same prayers, and there was the same fixed opinion to the effect that Martin was most worthy of the episcopate, and that the church would be happy with such a priest. A few persons, however, and among these some of the bishops, who had been summoned to appoint a chief priest, were impiously offering resistance, asserting forsooth that Martin's person was contemptible, that he was unworthy of the episcopate, that he was a man despicable in countenance, that his clothing was mean, and his hair disgusting. This madness of theirs was ridiculed by the people of sounder judgment, inasmuch as such objectors only proclaimed the illustrious character of the man, while they sought to slander him. Nor truly was it allowed them to do anything else, than what the people, following the Divine will, desired [23] to be accomplished. Among the bishops, however, who had been present, a certain one of the name Defensor is said to have specially offered opposition; and on this account it was observed that he was at the time severely censured in the reading from the prophets. For when it so happened that the reader, whose duty it was to read in public that day, being blocked out by the people, failed to appear, the officials falling into confusion, while they waited for him who never came, one of those standing by, laying hold of the Psalter, seized upon the first verse which presented itself to him. Now, the Psalm ran thus: "Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise because of thine enemies, that thou mightest destroy the enemy and the avenger." [24] On these words being read, a shout was raised by the people, and the opposite party were confounded. It was believed that this Psalm had been chosen by Divine ordination, that Defensor [25] might hear a testimony to his own work, because the praise of the Lord was perfected out of the mouth of babes and sucklings in the case of Martin, while the enemy was at the same time both pointed out and destroyed. __________________________________________________________________
[21] The Turones occupied territory on both sides of the river Loire. Cæsar refers to them (Bell. Gall. ii. 35, &c.). Their chief town was named Cæsarodunum, the modern Tours.
[22] It is clear from this passage that the people at large were accustomed in ancient times to give their votes on the appointment of a bishop.
[23] We here adopt Halm's reading "cogitabat," in preference to the usual "cogebat."
[24] Ps. viii. 3.
[25] The word translated "avenger" in the English A.V. is "defensor" in the Vulgate, and thus the man referred to would have seemed to be expressly named. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter X.
Martin as Bishop of Tours.
And now having entered on the episcopal office, it is beyond my power fully to set forth how Martin distinguished himself in the discharge of its duties. For he remained with the utmost constancy, the same as he had been before. There was the same humility in his heart, and the same homeliness in his garments. Full alike of dignity and courtesy, he kept up the position of a bishop properly, yet in such a way as not to lay aside the objects and virtues of a monk. Accordingly he made use, for some time, of the cell connected with the church; but afterwards, when he felt it impossible to tolerate the disturbance caused by the numbers of those visiting it, he established a monastery for himself about two miles outside the city. This spot was so secret and retired that he enjoyed in it the solitude of a hermit. For, on one side, it was surrounded by a precipitous rock of a lofty mountain, while the river Loire had shut in the rest of the plain by a bay extending back for a little distance; and the place could be approached only by one, and that a very narrow passage. Here, then, he possessed a cell constructed of wood. Many also of the brethren had, in the same manner, fashioned retreats for themselves, but most of them had formed these out of the rock of the overhanging mountain, hollowed into caves. There were altogether eighty disciples, who were being disciplined after the example of the saintly master. No one there had anything which was called his own; all things were possessed in common. It was not allowed either to buy or to sell anything, as is the custom among most monks. No art was practiced there, except that of transcribers, and even this was assigned to the brethren of younger years, while the elders spent their time in prayer. Rarely did any one of them go beyond the cell, unless when they assembled at the place of prayer. They all took their food together, after the hour of fasting was past. No one used wine, except when illness compelled them to do so. Most of them were clothed in garments of camels' hair. [26] Any dress approaching to softness [27] was there deemed criminal, and this must be thought the more remarkable, because many among them were such as are deemed of noble rank. These, though far differently brought up, had forced themselves down to this degree of humility and patient endurance, and we have seen numbers of these afterwards made bishops. For what city or church would there be that would not desire to have its priests from among those in the monastery of Martin? __________________________________________________________________
[26] Cf. St. Matt. iii. 4.
[27] In St. Matt. xi. 8, there is a reference to those "that wear soft clothing,"--hoi ta malaka phorountes. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XI.
Martin demolishes an Altar consecrated to a Robber.
But let me proceed to a description of other excellences which Martin displayed as a bishop. There was, not far from the town, a place very close to the monastery, which a false human opinion had consecrated, on the supposition that some martyrs had been buried together there. For it was also believed that an altar had been placed there by former bishops. But Martin, not inclined to give a hasty belief to things uncertain, often asked from those who were his elders, whether among the presbyters or clerics, that the name of the martyr, or the time when he suffered, should be made known to him. He did so, he said, because he had great scruples on these points, inasmuch as no steady tradition respecting them had come down from antiquity. Having, therefore, for a time kept away from the place, by no means wishing to lessen the religious veneration with which it was regarded, because he was as yet uncertain, but, at the same time not lending his authority to the opinion of the multitude, lest a mere superstition should obtain a firmer footing, he one day went out to the place, taking a few brethren with him as companions. There standing above the very sepulchre, Martin prayed to the Lord that he would reveal, who the man in question was, and what was his character or desert. Next turning to the left-hand side, he sees standing very near a shade of a mean and cruel appearance. Martin commands him to tell his name and character. Upon this, he declares his name, and confesses his guilt. He says that he had been a robber, and that he was beheaded on account of his crimes; that he had been honored simply by an error of the multitude; that he had nothing in common with the martyrs, since glory was their portion, while punishment exacted its penalties from him. Those who stood by heard, in a wonderful way, the voice of the speaker, but they beheld no person. Then Martin made known what he had seen, and ordered the altar which had been there to be removed, and thus he delivered the people from the error of that superstition. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XII.
Martin causes the Bearers of a Dead Body to stop.
Now, it came to pass some time after the above, that while Martin was going a journey, he met the body of a certain heathen, which was being carried to the tomb with superstitious funeral rites. Perceiving from a distance the crowd that was approaching, and being ignorant as to what was going on, he stood still for a little while. For there was a distance of nearly half a mile between him and the crowd, so that it was difficult to discover what the spectacle he beheld really was. Nevertheless, because he saw it was a rustic gathering, and when the linen clothes spread over the body were blown about by the action of the wind, he believed that some profane rites of sacrifice were being performed. This thought occurred to him, because it was the custom of the Gallic rustics in their wretched folly to carry about through the fields the images of demons veiled with a white covering. Lifting up, therefore, the sign of the cross opposite to them, he commanded the crowd not to move from the place in which they were, and to set down the burden. Upon this, the miserable creatures might have been seen at first to become stiff like rocks. Next, as they endeavored, with every possible effort, to move forward, but were not able to take a step farther, they began to whirl themselves about in the most ridiculous fashion, until, not able any longer to sustain the weight, they set down the dead body. Thunderstruck, and gazing in bewilderment at each other as not knowing what had happened to them they remained sunk in silent thought. But when the saintly man discovered that they were simply a band of peasants celebrating funeral rites, and not sacrifices to the gods, again raising his hand, he gave them the power of going away, and of lifting up the body. Thus he both compelled them to stand when he pleased, and permitted them to depart when he thought good. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIII.
Martin escapes from a Falling Pine-tree.
Again, when in a certain village he had demolished a very ancient temple, and had set about cutting down a pine-tree, which stood close to the temple, the chief priest of that place, and a crowd of other heathens began to oppose him. And these people, though, under the influence of the Lord, they had been quiet while the temple was being overthrown, could not patiently allow the tree to be cut down. Martin carefully instructed them that there was nothing sacred in the trunk of a tree, and urged them rather to honor God whom he himself served. He added that there was a moral necessity why that tree should be cut down, because it had been dedicated to a demon. Then one of them who was bolder than the others says, "If you have any trust in thy God, whom you say you worship, we ourselves will cut down this tree, and be it your part to receive it when falling; for if, as you declare, your Lord is with you, you will escape all injury." Then Martin, courageously trusting in the Lord, promises that he would do what had been asked. Upon this, all that crowd of heathen agreed to the condition named; for they held the loss of their tree a small matter, if only they got the enemy of their religion buried beneath its fall. Accordingly, since that pine-tree was hanging over in one direction, so that there was no doubt to what side it would fall on being cut, Martin, having been bound, is, in accordance with the decision of these pagans, placed in that spot where, as no one doubted, the tree was about to fall. They began, therefore, to cut down their own tree, with great glee and joyfulness, while there was at some distance a great multitude of wondering spectators. And now the pine-tree began to totter, and to threaten its [28] own ruin by falling. The monks at a distance grew pale, and, terrified by the danger ever coming nearer, had lost all hope and confidence, expecting only the death of Martin. But he, trusting in the Lord, and waiting courageously, when now the falling pine had uttered its expiring crash, while it was now falling, while it was just rushing upon him, simply holding up his hand against it, he put in its way the sign of salvation. Then, indeed, after the manner of a spinning-top (one might have thought it driven [29] back), it swept round to the opposite side, to such a degree that it almost crushed the rustics, who had taken their places there in what was deemed a safe spot. Then truly, a shout being raised to heaven, the heathen were amazed by the miracle, while the monks wept for joy; and the name of Christ was in common extolled by all. The well-known result was that on that day salvation came to that region. For there was hardly one of that immense multitude of heathens who did not express a desire for the imposition of hands, and abandoning his impious errors, made a profession of faith in the Lord Jesus. Certainly, before the times of Martin, very few, nay, almost none, in those regions had received the name of Christ; but through his virtues and example that name has prevailed to such an extent, that now there is no place thereabouts which is not filled either with very crowded churches or monasteries. For wherever he destroyed heathen temples, there he used immediately to build either churches or monasteries. __________________________________________________________________
[28] Perhaps "suam" here stands for "ejus," as in other passages of our author. The meaning will then be, "and to threaten his (Martin's) destruction by falling."
[29] It seems better to preserve the parenthesis than to translate the words as they stand in Halm's text, "tum vero--velut turbinis modo retro actam putares--diversam in partem ruit." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIV.
Martin destroys Heathen Temples and Altars.
Nor did he show less eminence, much about the same time, in other transactions of a like kind. For, having in a certain village set fire to a very ancient and celebrated temple, the circle of flames was carried by the action of the wind upon a house which was very close to, yea, connected with, the temple. When Martin perceived this, he climbed by rapid ascent to the roof of the house, presenting himself in front of the advancing flames. Then indeed might the fire have been seen thrust back in a wonderful manner against the force of the wind, so that there appeared a sort of conflict of the two elements fighting together. Thus, by the influence of Martin, the fire only acted in the place where it was ordered to do so. But in a village which was named Leprosum, when he too wished to overthrow a temple which had acquired great wealth through the superstitious ideas entertained of its sanctity, a multitude of the heathen resisted him to such a degree that he was driven back not without bodily injury. He, therefore, withdrew to a place in the vicinity, and there for three days, clothed in sackcloth [30] and ashes fasting and praying the whole time, he besought the Lord, that, as he had not been able to overthrow that temple by human effort, Divine power might be exerted to destroy it. Then two angels, with spears and shields after the manner of heavenly warriors, suddenly presented themselves to him, saying that they were sent by the Lord to put to flight the rustic multitude, and to furnish protection to Martin, lest, while the temple was being destroyed, any one should offer resistance. They told him therefore to return, and complete the blessed work which he had begun. Accordingly Martin returned to the village; and while the crowds of heathen looked on in perfect quiet as he razed the pagan temple even to the foundations, he also reduced all the altars and images to dust. At this sight the rustics, when they perceived that they had been so astounded and terrified by an intervention of the Divine will, that they might not be found fighting against the bishop, almost all believed in the Lord Jesus. They then began to cry out openly and to confess that the God of Martin ought to be worshiped, and that the idols should be despised, which were not able to help them. __________________________________________________________________
[30] Literally "a covering made of Cilician goats' hair." It was called Cilicium, and was worn by soldiers and others. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XV.
Martin offers his Neck to an Assassin.
I shall also relate what took place in the village of the Ædui. When Martin was there overthrowing a temple, a multitude of rustic heathen rushed upon him in a frenzy of rage. And when one of them, bolder than the rest, made an attack upon him with a drawn sword, Martin, throwing back his cloak, offered his bare neck to the assassin. Nor did the heathen delay to strike, but in the very act of lifting up his right arm, he fell to the ground on his back, and being overwhelmed by the fear of God, he entreated for pardon. Not unlike this was that other event which happened to Martin, that when a certain man had resolved to wound him with a knife as he was destroying some idols, at the very moment of fetching the blow, the weapon was struck out of his hands and disappeared. Very frequently, too, when the pagans were addressing him to the effect that he would not overthrow their temples, he so soothed and conciliated the minds of the heathen by his holy discourse that, the light of truth having been revealed to them, they themselves overthrew their own temples. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVI.
Cures effected by St. Martin.
Moreover, the gift [31] of accomplishing cures was so largely possessed by Martin, that scarcely any sick person came to him for assistance without being at once restored to health. This will clearly appear from the following example. A certain girl at Treves [32] was so completely prostrated by a terrible paralysis that for a long time she had been quite unable to make use of her body for any purpose, and being, as it were, already dead, only the smallest breath of life seemed still to remain in her. Her afflicted relatives were standing by, expecting nothing but her death, when it was suddenly announced that Martin had come to that city. When the father of the girl found that such was the case, he ran to make a request in behalf of his all but lifeless child. It happened that Martin had already entered the church. There, while the people were looking on, and in the presence of many other bishops, the old man, uttering a cry of grief, embraced the saint's knees and said: "My daughter is dying of a miserable kind of infirmity; and, what is more dreadful than death itself, she is now alive only in the spirit, her flesh being already dead before the time. I beseech thee to go to her, and give her thy blessing; for I believe that through you she will be restored to health." Martin, troubled by such an address, was bewildered, and shrank back, saying that this was a matter not in his own hands; that the old man was mistaken in the judgment he had formed; and that he was not worthy to be the instrument through whom the Lord should make a display of his power. The father, in tears, persevered in still more earnestly pressing the case, and entreated Martin to visit the dying girl. At last, constrained by the bishops standing by to go as requested, he went down to the home of the girl. An immense crowd was waiting at the doors, to see what the servant of the Lord would do. And first, betaking himself to his familiar arms in affairs of that kind, he cast himself down on the ground and prayed. Then gazing earnestly upon the ailing girl, he requests that oil should be given him. After he had received and blessed this, he poured the powerful sacred liquid into the mouth of the girl, and immediately her voice returned to her. Then gradually, through contact with him, her limbs began, one by one, to recover life, till, at last, in the presence of the people, she arose with firm steps. __________________________________________________________________
[31] The Latin word gratia here corresponds to the Greek charisma. St. Paul says much respecting the various charismata in 1 Cor. xii., and speaks, among others, of charismata iamaton (v. 9).
[32] The name Treveri at first denoted the people (as often in Cæsar, Bell. Gall. i. 37, &c.), and was afterwards applied to their chief city, the modern Treves. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVII.
Martin casts out Several Devils.
At the same time the servant of one Tetradius, a man of proconsular rank, having been laid hold of by a demon, was tormented with the most miserable results. Martin, therefore, having been asked to lay his hands on him, ordered the servant to be brought to him; but the evil spirit could, in no way, be brought forth from the cell in which he was: he showed himself so fearful, with ferocious teeth, to those who attempted to draw near. Then Tetradius throws himself at the feet of the saintly man, imploring that he himself would go down to the house in which the possessed of the devil was kept. But Martin then declared that he could not visit the house of an unconverted heathen. For Tetradius, at that time, was still involved in the errors of heathenism. He, therefore, pledges his word that if the demon were driven out of the boy, he would become a Christian. Martin, then, laying his hand upon the boy, cast the evil spirit out of him. On seeing this, Tetradius believed in the Lord Jesus, and immediately became a catechumen, while, not long after, he was baptized; and he always regarded Martin with extraordinary affection, as having been the author of his salvation.
About the same time, having entered the dwelling of a certain householder in the same town, he stopped short at the very threshold, and said, that he perceived a horrible demon in the courtyard of the house. When Martin ordered it to depart, it laid hold of a certain member of the family, who was staying in the inner part of the house; and the poor wretch began at once to rage with his teeth, and to lacerate whomsoever he met. The house was thrown into disorder; the family was in confusion; and the people present took to flight. Martin threw himself in the way of the frenzied creature, and first of all commanded him to stand still. But when he continued to gnash with his teeth, and, with gaping mouth, was threatening to bite, Martin inserted his fingers into his mouth, and said, "If you possess any power, devour these." But then, as if red-hot iron had entered his jaws, drawing his teeth far away he took care not to touch the fingers of the saintly man; and when he was compelled by punishments and tortures, to flee out of the possessed body, while he had no power of escaping by the mouth, he was cast out by means of a defluxion of the belly, leaving disgusting traces behind him. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVIII.
Martin performs Various Miracles.
In the meanwhile, as a sudden report had troubled the city as to the movement and inroad of the barbarians, Martin orders a possessed person to be set before him, and commanded him to declare whether this message was true or not. Then he confessed that there were sixteen demons who had spread this report among the people, in order that by the fear thus excited, Martin might have to flee from the city, but that, in fact, nothing was less in the minds of the barbarians than to make any inroad. When the unclean spirit thus acknowledged these things in the midst of the church, the city was set free from the fear and tumult which had at the time been felt.
At Paris, again, when Martin was entering the gate of the city, with large crowds attending him, he gave a kiss to a leper, of miserable appearance, while all shuddered at seeing him do so; and Martin blessed him, with the result that he was instantly cleansed from all his misery. On the following day, the man appearing in the church with a healthy skin, gave thanks for the soundness of body which he had recovered. This fact, too, ought not to be passed over in silence, that threads from Martin's garment, or such as had been plucked from the sackcloth which he wore, wrought frequent miracles upon those who were sick. For, by either being tied round the fingers or placed about the neck, they very often drove away diseases from the afflicted. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIX.
A Letter of Martin effects a Cure, with Other Miracles.
Further, Arborius, an ex-prefect, and a man of a very holy and faithful character, while his daughter was in agony from the burning fever of a quartan ague, inserted in the bosom of the girl, at the very paroxysm of the heat, a letter of Martin which happened to have been brought to him, and immediately the fever was dispelled. This event had such an influence upon Arborius, that he at once consecrated the girl to God, and devoted her to perpetual virginity. Then, proceeding to Martin, he presented the girl to him, as an obvious living example of his power of working miracles, inasmuch as she had been cured by him though absent; and he would not suffer her to be consecrated by any other than Martin, through his placing upon her the dress characteristic of virginity.
Paulinus, too, a man who was afterwards to furnish a striking example of the age, having begun to suffer grievously in one of his eyes, and when a pretty thick skin [33] having grown over it had already covered up its pupil, Martin touched his eye with a painter's brush, and, all pain being removed, thus restored it to its former soundness. He himself also, when, by a certain accident, he had fallen out of an upper room, and tumbling down a broken, uneven stair, had received many wounds, as he lay in his cell at the point of death, and was tortured with grievous sufferings, saw in the night an angel appear to him, who washed his wounds, and applied healing ointment to the bruised members of his body. As the effect of this, he found himself on the morrow restored to soundness of health, so that he was not thought to have suffered any harm. But because it would be tedious to go through everything of this kind, let these examples suffice, as a few out of a multitude; and let it be enough that we do not in striking cases [of miraculous interposition] detract from the truth, while, having so many to choose from, we avoid exciting weariness in the reader. __________________________________________________________________
[33] "Nubes," lit. "a cloud." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XX.
How Martin acted towards the Emperor Maximus.
And here to insert some smaller matters among things so great (although such is the nature of our times in which all things have fallen into decay and corruption, it is almost a pre-eminent virtue for priestly firmness not to have yielded to royal flattery), when a number of bishops from various parts had assembled to the Emperor Maximus, a man of fierce character, and at that time elated with the victory he had won in the civil wars, and when the disgraceful flattery of all around the emperor was generally remarked, while the priestly dignity had, with degenerate submissiveness, taken a second place to the royal retinue, in Martin alone, apostolic authority continued to assert itself. For even if he had to make suit to the sovereign for some things, he commanded rather than entreated him; and although often invited, he kept away from his entertainments, saying that he could not take a place at the table of one who, out of two emperors, had deprived one of his kingdom, and the other of his life. At last, when Maximus maintained that he had not of his own accord assumed the sovereignty, but that he had simply defended by arms the necessary requirements [34] of the empire, regard to which had been imposed upon him by the soldiers, according to the Divine appointment, and that the favor of God did not seem wanting to him who, by an event seemingly so incredible, had secured the victory, adding to that the statement that none of his adversaries had been slain except in the open field of battle, at length, Martin, overcome either by his reasoning or his entreaties, came to the royal banquet. The king was wonderfully pleased because he had gained this point. Moreover, there were guests present who had been invited as if to a festival; men of the highest and most illustrious rank,--the prefect, who was also consul, named Evodius, one of the most righteous men that ever lived; two courtiers possessed of the greatest power, the brother and uncle of the king, while between these two, the presbyter of Martin had taken his place; but he himself occupied a seat which was set quite close to the king. About the middle of the banquet, according to custom, one of the servants presented a goblet to the king. He orders it rather to be given to the very holy bishop, expecting and hoping that he should then receive the cup from his right hand. But Martin, when he had drunk, handed the goblet to his own presbyter, as thinking no one worthier to drink next to himself, and holding that it would not be right for him to prefer either the king himself, or those who were next the king, to the presbyter. And the emperor, as well as all those who were then present, admired this conduct so much, that this very thing, by which they had been undervalued, gave them pleasure. The report then ran through the whole palace that Martin had done, at the king's dinner, what no bishop had dared to do at the banquets of the lowest judges. And Martin predicted to the same Maximus long before, that if he went into Italy to which he then desired to go, waging war, against the Emperor Valentinianus, it would come to pass that he should know he would [35] indeed be victorious in the first attack, but would perish a short time afterwards. And we have seen that this did in fact take place. For, on his first arrival Valentinianus had to betake himself to flight but recovering his strength about a year afterwards, Maximus was taken and slain by him within the walls of Aquileia. __________________________________________________________________
[34] "Regni necessitatem"--an awkward expression.
[35] There is considerable confusion in this sentence. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXI.
Martin has to do both with Angels and Devils.
It is also well known that angels were very often seen by him, so that they spoke in turns with him in set speech. As to the devil, Martin held him so visible and ever under the power of his eyes, that whether he kept himself in his proper form, or changed himself into different shapes of spiritual wickedness, he was perceived by Martin, under whatever guise he appeared. The devil knew well that he could not escape discovery, and therefore frequently heaped insults upon Martin, being unable to beguile him by trickery. On one occasion the devil, holding in his hand the bloody horn of an ox, rushed into Martin's cell with great noise, and holding out to him his bloody right hand, while at the same time he exulted in the crime he had committed, said: "Where, O Martin, is thy power? I have just slain one of your people." Then Martin assembled the brethren, and related to them what the devil had disclosed, while he ordered them carefully to search the several cells in order to discover who had been visited with this calamity. They report that no one of the monks was missing, but that one peasant, hired by them, had gone to the forest to bring home wood in his wagon. Upon hearing this, Martin instructs some of them to go and meet him. On their doing so, the man was found almost dead at no great distance from the monastery. Nevertheless, although just drawing his last breath, he made known to the brethren the cause of his wound and death. He said that, while he was drawing tighter the thongs which had got loose on the oxen yoked together, one of the oxen, throwing his head free, had wounded him with his horn in the groin. And not long after the man expired. You [36] see with what judgment of the Lord this power was given to the devil. This was a marvelous feature in Martin that not only on this occasion to which I have specially referred, but on many occasions of the same kind, in fact as often as such things occurred, he perceived them long beforehand, and [37] disclosed the things which had been revealed to him to the brethren. __________________________________________________________________
[36] Halm reads the imperative "videris," "consider."
[37] Halm reads "aut sibi nuntiata fratribus indicabat." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXII.
Martin preaches Repentance even to the Devil.
Now, the devil, while he tried to impose upon the holy man by a thousand injurious arts, often thrust himself upon him in a visible form, but in very various shapes. For sometimes he presented himself to his view changed into the person of Jupiter, often into that of Mercury and Minerva. Often, too, were heard words of reproach, in which the crowd of demons assailed Martin with scurrilous expressions. But knowing that all were false and groundless, he was not affected by the charges brought against him. Moreover, some of the brethren bore witness that they had heard a demon reproaching Martin in abusive terms, and asking why he had taken back, on their subsequent repentance, certain of the brethren who had, some time previously, lost their baptism by falling into various errors. The demon set forth the crimes of each of them; but they added that Martin, resisting the devil firmly, answered him, that by-past sins are cleansed away by the leading of a better life, and that through the mercy of God, those are to be absolved from their sins who have given up their evil ways. The devil saying in opposition to this that such guilty men as those referred to did not come within the pale of pardon, and that no mercy was extended by the Lord to those who had once fallen away, Martin is said to have cried out in words to the following effect: "If thou, thyself, wretched being, wouldst but desist from attacking mankind, and even, at this period, when the day of judgment is at hand, wouldst only repent of your deeds, I, with a true confidence in the Lord, would promise you the mercy of Christ." [38] O what a holy boldness with respect to the loving-kindness of the Lord, in which, although he could not assert authority, he nevertheless showed the feelings dwelling within him! And since our discourse has here sprung up concerning the devil and his devices, it does not seem away from the point, although the matter does not bear immediately upon Martin, to relate what took place; both because the virtues of Martin do, to some extent, appear in the transaction, and the incident, which was worthy of a miracle, will properly be put on record, with the view of furnishing a caution, should anything of a similar character subsequently occur. __________________________________________________________________
[38] This is a truly noteworthy passage. It anticipates a well-known sentiment of Burns, the national bard of Scotland. In his Address to the Deil, Burns has said that if the great enemy would only "tak a thocht an' men'," he might still have a chance of safety, and this idea seems very much in accordance with the opinion of St. Martin as expressed above. Hornius, however, is very indignant on account of it, and exclaims: "Intolerabilis hic Martini error. Nec Sulpicius excusatione sua demit, sed auget. Origenes primus ejus erroris author." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXIII.
A Case of Diabolic Deception.
There was a certain man, Clarus by name, a most noble youth, who afterwards became a presbyter, and who is now, through his happy departure from this world, numbered among the saints. He, leaving all others, betook himself to Martin, and in a short time became distinguished for the most exalted faith, and for all sorts of excellence. Now, it came to pass that, when he had erected an abode for himself not far from the monastery of the bishop, and many brethren were staying with him, a certain youth, Anatolius by name, having, under the profession of a monk, falsely assumed every appearance of humility and innocence, came to him, and lived for some time on the common store along with the rest. Then, as time went on, he began to affirm that angels were in the habit of talking with him. As no one gave any credit to his words, he urged a number of the brethren to believe by certain signs. At length he went to such a length as to declare that angels passed between him and God; and now he wished that he should be regarded as one of the prophets. Clarus, however, could by no means be induced to believe. He then began to threaten Clarus with the anger of God and present afflictions, because he did not believe one of the saints. At the last, he is related to have burst forth with the following declaration: "Behold, the Lord will this night give me a white robe out of heaven, clothed in which, I will dwell in the midst of you; and that will be to you a sign that I am the Power of God, inasmuch as I have been presented with the garment of God." Then truly the expectation of all was highly raised by this profession. Accordingly, about the middle of the night, it was seen, by the noise of people moving eagerly about, that the whole monastery in the place was excited. It might be seen, too, that the cell in which the young man referred to lived was glittering with numerous lights; and the whisperings of those moving about in it, as well as a kind of murmur of many voices, could be heard. Then, on silence being secured, the youth coming forth calls one of the brethren, Sabatius by name, to himself, and shows him the robe in which he had been clothed. He again, filled with amazement, gathers the rest together, and Clarus himself also runs up; and a light being obtained, they all carefully inspect the garment. Now, it was of the utmost softness, of marvelous brightness, and of glittering purple, and yet no one could discover what was its nature, or of what sort of fleece it had been formed. However, when it was more minutely examined by the eyes or fingers, it seemed nothing else than a garment. In the meantime, Clarus urges upon the brethren to be earnest in prayer, that the Lord would show them more clearly what it really was. Accordingly, the rest of the night was spent in singing hymns and psalms. But when day broke, Clarus wished to take the young man by the hand, and bring him to Martin, being well aware that he could not be deceived by any arts of the devil. Then, indeed, the miserable man began to resist and refuse, and affirmed that he had been forbidden to show himself to Martin. And when they compelled him to go against his will, the garment vanished from among the hands of those who were conducting him. Wherefore, who can doubt that this, too, was an illustration of the power of Martin, so that the devil could no longer dissemble or conceal his own deception, when it was to be submitted to the eyes of Martin? __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXIV.
Martin is tempted by the Wiles of the Devil.
It was found, again, that about the same time there was a young man in Spain, who, having by many signs obtained for himself authority among the people, was puffed up to such a pitch that he gave himself out as being Elias. And when multitudes had too readily believed this, he went on to say that he was actually Christ; and he succeeded so well even in this delusion that a certain bishop named Rufus worshiped him as being the Lord. For so doing, we have seen this bishop at a later date deprived of his office. Many of the brethren have also informed me that at the same time one arose in the East, who boasted that he was John. We may infer from this, since false prophets of such a kind have appeared, that the coming of Antichrist is at hand; for he is already practicing in these persons the mystery of iniquity. And truly I think this point should not be passed over, with what arts the devil about this very time tempted Martin. For, on a certain day, prayer [39] having been previously offered, and the fiend himself being surrounded by a purple light, in order that he might the more easily deceive people by the brilliance of the splendor assumed, clothed also in a royal robe, and with a crown of precious stones and gold encircling his head, his shoes too being inlaid with gold, while he presented a tranquil countenance, and a generally rejoicing aspect, so that no such thought as that he was the devil might be entertained--he stood by the side of Martin as he was praying in his cell. The saint being dazzled by his first appearance, both preserved a long and deep silence. This was first broken by the devil, who said: "Acknowledge, Martin, who it is that you behold. I am Christ; and being just about to descend to earth, I wished first to manifest myself to thee." When Martin kept silence on hearing these words, and gave no answer whatever, the devil dared to repeat his audacious declaration: "Martin, why do you hesitate to believe, when you see? I am Christ." Then Martin, the Spirit revealing the truth to him, that he might understand it was the devil, and not God, replied as follows: "The Lord Jesus did not predict that he would come clothed in purple, and with a glittering crown upon his head. I will not believe that Christ has come, unless he appears with that appearance and form in which he suffered, and openly displaying the marks of his wounds upon the cross." On hearing these words, the devil vanished like smoke, and filled the cell with such a disgusting smell, that he left unmistakable evidences of his real character. This event, as I have just related, took place in the way which I have stated, and my information regarding it was derived from the lips of Martin himself; therefore let no one regard it as fabulous. [40] __________________________________________________________________
[39] "Prece" for the usual reading "prae se."
[40] In spite of the combined testimony of Martin and Sulpitius here referred to, few will have any doubts as to the real character of the narrative. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXV.
Intercourse of Sulpitius with Martin.
For since I, having long heard accounts of his faith, life and virtues, burned with a desire of knowing him, I undertook what was to me a pleasant journey for the purpose of seeing him. At the same time, because already my mind was inflamed with the desire of writing his life, I obtained my information partly from himself, in so far as I could venture to question him, and partly from those who had lived with him, or well knew the facts of the case. And at this time it is scarcely credible with what humility and with what kindness he received me; while he cordially wished me joy, and rejoiced in the Lord that he had been held in such high estimation by me that I had undertaken a journey owing to my desire of seeing him. Unworthy me! (in fact, I hardly dare acknowledge it), that he should have deigned to admit me to fellowship with him! He went so far as in person to present me with water to wash my hands, and at eventide he himself washed my feet; nor had I sufficient courage to resist or oppose his doing so. In fact, I felt so overcome by the authority he unconsciously exerted, that I deemed it unlawful to do anything but acquiesce in his arrangements. His conversation with me was all directed to such points as the following: that the allurements of this world and secular burdens were to be abandoned in order that we might be free and unencumbered in following the Lord Jesus; and he pressed upon me as an admirable example in present circumstances the conduct of that distinguished man Paulinus, of whom I have made mention above. Martin declared of him that, by parting with his great possessions and following Christ, as he did, he showed himself almost the only one who in these times had fully obeyed the precepts of the Gospel. He insisted strongly that that was the man who should be made the object of our imitation, adding that the present age was fortunate in possessing such a model of faith and virtue. For Paulinus, being rich and having many possessions, by selling them all and giving them to the poor according to the expressed will of the Lord, had, he said, made possible by actual proof what appeared impossible of accomplishment. What power and dignity there were in Martin's words and conversation! How active he was, how practical, and how prompt and ready in solving questions connected with Scripture! And because I know that many are incredulous on this point,--for indeed I have met with persons who did not believe me when I related such things,--I call to witness Jesus, and our common hope as Christians, that I never heard from any other lips than those of Martin such exhibitions of knowledge and genius, or such specimens of good and pure speech. But yet, how insignificant is all such praise when compared with the virtues which he possessed! Still, it is remarkable that in a man who had no claim to be called learned, even this attribute [of high intelligence] was not wanting. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXVI.
Words cannot describe the Excellences of Martin.
But now my book must be brought to an end, and my discourse finished. This is not because all that was worthy of being said concerning Martin is now exhausted, but because I, just as sluggish poets grow less careful towards the end of their work, give over, being baffled by the immensity of the matter. For, although his outward deeds could in some sort of way be set forth in words, no language, I truly own, can ever be capable of describing his inner life and daily conduct, and his mind always bent upon the things of heaven. No one can adequately make known his perseverance and self-mastery in abstinence and fastings, or his power in watchings and prayers, along with the nights, as well as days, which were spent by him, while not a moment was separated from the service of God, either for indulging in ease, or engaging in business. But, in fact, he did not indulge either in food or sleep, except in so far as the necessities of nature required. I freely confess that, if, as the saying is, Homer himself were to ascend from the shades below, he could not do justice to this subject in words; to such an extent did all excellences surpass in Martin the possibility of being embodied in language. Never did a single hour or moment pass in which he was not either actually engaged in prayer; or, if it happened that he was occupied with something else, still he never let his mind loose from prayer. In truth, just as it is the custom of blacksmiths, in the midst of their work to beat their own anvil as a sort of relief to the laborer, so Martin even when he appeared to be doing something else, was still engaged in prayer. O truly blessed man in whom there was no guile--judging no man, condemning no man, returning evil for evil to no man! He displayed indeed such marvelous patience in the endurance of injuries, that even when he was chief [41] priest, he allowed himself to be wronged by the lowest clerics with impunity; nor did he either remove them from the office on account of such conduct, or, as far as in him lay, repel them from a place in his affection. __________________________________________________________________
[41] "Summus sacerdos": "that is," remarks Hornius, "bishop. They were also in those ages styled Popes (Papæ). This is clear from Cyprian, Jerome, and others of a much later age." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXVII.
Wonderful Piety of Martin.
No one ever saw him enraged, or excited, or lamenting, or laughing; he was always one and the same: displaying a kind of heavenly happiness in his countenance, he seemed to have passed the ordinary limits of human nature. Never was there any word on his lips but Christ, and never was there a feeling in his heart except piety, peace, and tender mercy. Frequently, too, he used to weep for the sins of those who showed themselves his revilers--those who, as he led his retired and tranquil life, slandered him with poisoned tongue and a viper's mouth. And truly we have had experience of some who were envious of his virtues and his life--who really hated in him what they did not see in themselves, and what they had not power to imitate. And--O wickedness worthy of deepest grief and groans!--some of his calumniators, although very few, some of his maligners, I say, were reported to be no others than bishops! Here, however, it is not necessary to name any one, although a good many of these people are still venting [42] their spleen against myself. I shall deem it sufficient that, if any one of them reads this account, and perceives that he is himself pointed at, he may have the grace to blush. But if, on the other hand, he shows anger, he will, by that very fact, own that he is among those spoken of, though all the time perhaps I have been thinking of some other person. I shall, however, by no means feel ashamed if any people of that sort include myself in their hatred along with such a man as Martin. I am quite persuaded of this, that the present little work will give pleasure to all truly good men. And I shall only say further that, if any one read this narrative in an unbelieving spirit, he himself will fall into sin. I am conscious to myself that I have been induced by belief in the facts, and by the love of Christ, to write these things; and that, in doing so, I have set forth what is well known, and recorded what is true; and, as I trust, that man will have a reward prepared by God, not who shall read these things, but who shall believe them. [43] __________________________________________________________________
[42] Lit. "are barking round about."
[43] It seems extremely difficult (to recur to the point once more), after reading this account of St. Martin by Sulpitius, to form any certain conclusion regarding it. The writer so frequently and solemnly assures us of his good faith, and there is such a verisimilitude about the style, that it appears impossible to accept the theory of willful deception on the part of the writer. And then, he was so intimately acquainted with the subject of his narrative, that he could hardly have accepted fictions for facts, or failed in his estimate of the friend he so much admired and loved. Altogether, this Life of St. Martin seems to bring before us one of the puzzles of history. The saint himself must evidently have been a very extraordinary man, to impress one of the talents and learning of Sulpitius so remarkably as he did; but it is extremely hard to say how far the miraculous narratives, which enter so largely into the account before us, were due to pure invention, or unconscious hallucination. Milner remarks (Church History, II. 193), "I should be ashamed, as well as think the labor ill spent, to recite the stories at length which Sulpitius gives us." See, on the other side, Cardinal Newman's Essays on Miracles, p. 127, 209, &c. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
The Letters of Sulpitius Severus. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Letter I. To Eusebius.
Against Some Envious Assailants of Martin.
Yesterday a number of monks having come to me, it happened that amid endless fables, and much tiresome discourse, mention was made of the little work which I published concerning the life of that saintly man Martin, and I was most happy to hear that it was being eagerly and carefully read by multitudes. In the meantime, however, I was told that a certain person, under the influence of an evil spirit, had asked why Martin, who was said to have raised the dead and to have rescued houses from the flames, had himself recently become subject to the power of fire, and thus been exposed to suffering of a dangerous character. Wretched man, whoever he is, that expressed himself thus! We recognize his perfidious talk in the words of the Jews of old, who reviled the Lord, when hanging upon the cross, in the following terms: "He saved others; himself he cannot save." [44] Truly it is clear that, whoever be the person referred to, if he had lived in those times, he would have been quite prepared to speak against the Lord in these terms, inasmuch as he blasphemes a saint of the Lord, after a like fashion. How then, I ask thee, whosoever thou art, how does the case stand? Was Martin really not possessed of power, and not a partaker of holiness, because he became exposed to danger from fire? O thou blessed man, and in all things like to the Apostles, even in the reproaches which are thus heaped upon thee! Assuredly those Gentiles are reported to have entertained the same sort of thought respecting Paul also, when the viper had bitten him, for they said, "This man must be a murderer, whom, although saved from the sea, the fates do not permit to live." [45] But he, shaking off the viper into the fire, suffered no harm. They, however, imagined that he would suddenly fall down, and speedily die; but when they saw that no harm befell him, changing their minds, they said that he was a God. But, O thou most miserable of men, you ought, even from that example to have yourself been convinced of your falsity; so that, if it had proved a stumbling-block to thee that Martin appeared touched by the flame of fire, you should, on the other hand, have ascribed his being merely touched to his merits and power, because, though surrounded by flames, he did not perish. For acknowledge, thou miserable man, acknowledge what you seem ignorant of, that almost all the saints have been more remarkable for [46] the dangers they encountered, than even for the virtues they displayed. I see, indeed, Peter strong in faith, walking over the waves of the sea, in opposition to the nature of things, and that he pressed the unstable waters with his footprints. But not on that account does the preacher of the Gentiles [47] seem to me a smaller man, whom the waves swallowed up; and, after three days [48] and three nights, the water restored him emerging from the deep. Nay, I am almost inclined to think that it was a greater thing to have lived in the deep, than to have walked along the depths of the sea. But, thou foolish man, you had not, as I suppose, read these things; or, having read them, had not understood them. For the blessed Evangelist would not have recorded in holy writ an incident of that kind--under divine guidance--(except that, from such cases, the human mind might be instructed as to the dangers connected with shipwrecks and serpents!) and, as the Apostle relates, who gloried in his nakedness, and hunger, and perils from robbers, all these things are indeed to be endured in common by holy men, but that it has always been the chief excellence of the righteous in enduring and conquering such things, while amid all their trials, being patient and ever unconquerable, they overcame them all the more courageously, the heavier was the burden which they had to bear. Hence this event which is ascribed to the infirmity of Martin is, in reality, full of dignity and glory, since indeed, being tried by a most dangerous calamity, he came forth a conqueror. But let no one wonder that the incident referred to was omitted by me in that treatise which I wrote concerning his life, since in that very work I openly acknowledged that I had not embraced all his acts; and that for the good reason that, if I had been minded to narrate them all, I must have presented an enormous volume to my readers. And indeed, his achievements were not of so limited a number that they could all be comprehended in a book. Nevertheless, I shall not leave this incident, about which a question has arisen, to remain in obscurity, but shall relate the whole affair as it occurred, lest I should appear perchance to have intentionally passed over that which might be put forward in calumniation of the saintly man.
Martin having, about the middle of winter, come to a certain parish, [49] according to the usual custom for the bishops to visit the churches in the diocese, the clerics had prepared an abode for him in the private [50] part of the church, and had kindled a large fire beneath the floor which was decayed and very thin. [51] They also erected for him a couch consisting of a large amount of straw. Then, when Martin betook himself to rest, he was annoyed with the softness of the too luxurious bed, inasmuch as he had been accustomed to lie on the bare ground with only a piece of sackcloth stretched over him. Accordingly, influenced by the injury which had, as it were, been done him, he threw aside the whole of the straw. Now, it so happened that part of the straw which he had thus removed fell upon the stove. He himself, in the meantime, rested, as was his wont, upon the bare ground, tired out by his long journey. About midnight, the fire bursting up through the stove which, as I have said, was far from sound, laid hold of the dry straw. Martin, being wakened out of sleep by this unexpected occurrence, and being prevented by the pressing danger, but chiefly, as he afterwards related, by the snares and urgency of the devil, was longer than he ought to have been in having recourse to the aid of prayer. For, desiring to get outside, he struggled long and laboriously with the bolt by which he had secured the door. Ere long he perceived that he was surrounded by a fearful conflagration; and the fire had even laid hold of the garment with which he was clothed. At length recovering his habitual conviction that his safety lay not in flight, but in the Lord, and seizing the shield of faith and prayer, committing himself entirely to the Lord, he lay down in the midst of the flames. Then truly, the fire having been removed by divine interposition, he continued to pray amid a circle of flames that did him no harm. But the monks, who were before the door, hearing the sound of the crackling and struggling fire, broke open the barred door; and, the fire being extinguished, they brought forth Martin from the midst of the flames, all the time supposing that he must ere then have been burnt to ashes by a fire of so long continuance. Now, as the Lord is my witness, he himself related to me, and not without groans, confessed that he was in this matter beguiled by the arts of the devil; in that, when roused from sleep, he did not take the wise course of repelling the danger by means of faith and prayer. He also added that the flames raged around him all the time that, with a distempered mind, he strove to throw open the door. But he declared that as soon as he again sought assistance from the cross, and tried the weapons of prayer, the central flames gave way, and that he then felt them shedding a dewy refreshment over him, after having just experienced how cruelly they burned him. Considering all which, let every one who reads this letter understand that Martin was indeed tried by that danger, but passed through it with true acceptance. [52] __________________________________________________________________
[44] St. Matt. xxvii. 42.
[45] Acts xxviii. 4.
[46] "magis insignes periculorum suorum": such is the construction of insignis with later writers.
[47] This refers to St. Paul, being an echo of the Apostle's own words in Rom. xi. 13--ego ethnon apostolos.
[48] The writer here supposes that St. Paul was sunk for three days and three nights in the sea--a mistaken inference from 2 Cor. xi. 25. The construction of the very long sentence which soon follows is very confused, and has not been rigidly followed in our translation.
[49] "ad dioecesim quandam": it seems certain that diocesis has here the meaning of "parish."
[50] "in secretario ecclesiæ": it is very difficult to say what is here meant by "secretarium." It appears from Dial. II. 1, that there might be two or more secretaria in one church.
[51] "pavimento": this word usually means "a floor," or "pavement," but some take it here to be the same as fornax. This, however, can hardly be the case; and the meaning probably is that the church was heated, as the baths were, by means of a hypocaustum, or flue running below the pavement.
[52] Halm here inserts "vere." __________________________________________________________________
Letter II. To the Deacon Aurelius.
Sulpitius has a Vision of St. Martin.
Sulpitius Severus to Aurelius the Deacon sendeth greeting,-- [53]
After you had departed from me in the morning, I was sitting alone in my cell; and there occurred to me, as often happens, that hope of the future which I cherish, along with a weariness of the present world, a terror of judgment, a fear of punishment, and, as a consequence, indeed as the source from which the whole train of thought had flowed, a remembrance of my sins, which had rendered me worn and miserable. Then, after I had placed on my couch my limbs fatigued with the anguish of my mind, sleep crept upon me, as frequently happens from melancholy; and such sleep, as it is always somewhat light and uncertain in the morning hours, so it pervaded my members only in a hovering and doubtful manner. Thus it happens, what does not occur in a different kind of slumber, that one can feel he is dreaming while almost awake. In these circumstances, I seemed suddenly to see St. Martin appear to me in the character of a bishop, clothed in a white robe, with a countenance as of fire, with eyes like stars, and with purple hair. [54] He thus appeared to me with that aspect and form of body which I had known, so that I find it almost difficult to say what I mean--he could not be steadfastly beheld, though he could be clearly recognized. Well, directing a gentle smile towards me, he held out in his right hand the small treatise which I had written concerning his life. I, for my part, embraced his sacred knees, and begged for his blessing according to custom. Upon this, I felt his hand placed on my head with the sweetest touch, while, amid the solemn words of benediction, he repeated again and again the name of the cross so familiar to his lips. Ere long, while my eyes were earnestly fixed upon him, and when I could not satisfy myself with gazing upon his countenance, he was suddenly taken away from me and raised on high. At last, having passed through the vast expanse of the air, while my straining eyes followed him ascending in a rapidly moving cloud, he could no longer be seen by me gazing after him. And not long after, I saw the holy presbyter Clarus, a disciple of Martin's who had lately died, ascend in the same way as I had seen his master. I, impudently desiring to follow, while I aim at and strive after such lofty steps, suddenly wake up; and, being roused from sleep, I had begun to rejoice over the vision, when a boy, a servant in the family, enters to me with a countenance sadder than is usual with one who gives utterance to his grief in words. "What," I enquire of him, "do you wish to tell me with so melancholy an aspect?" "Two monks," he replied, "have just been here from Tours, and they have brought word that Martin is dead." I confess that I was cut to the heart; and bursting into tears, I wept most abundantly. Nay, even now, as I write these things to you, brother, my tears are flowing, and I find no consolation for my all but unbearable sorrow. And I should wish you, when this news reaches you, to be a partaker in my grief, as you were a sharer with me in his love. Come then, I beg of you, to me without delay, that we may mourn in common him whom in common we love. And yet I am well aware that such a man ought not to be mourned over, to whom, after his victory and triumph over the world, there has now at last been given the crown of righteousness. Nevertheless, I cannot so command myself as to keep from grieving. I have, no doubt, sent on before me one who will plead my cause in heaven, but I have, at the same time, lost my great source of consolation in this present life; yet if grief would yield to the influence of reason, I certainly ought to rejoice. For he is now mingling among the Apostles and Prophets, and (with all respect for the saints on high be it said) he is second to no one in that assembly of the righteous as I firmly hope, believe, and trust, being joined especially to those who washed their robes in the blood of the [55] Lamb. He now follows the Lamb as his guide, free from all spot of defilement. For although the character [56] of our times could not ensure him the honor of martyrdom, yet he will not remain destitute of the glory of a martyr, because both by vow and virtues he was alike able and willing to be a martyr. But if he had been permitted, in the times of Nero and of Decius, [57] to take part in the struggle which then went on, I take to witness the God of heaven and earth that he would freely have submitted [58] to the rack of torture, and readily surrendered himself to the flames: yea, worthy of being compared to the illustrious Hebrew youths, amid the circling flames, and though in the very midst of the furnace, he would have sung a hymn of the Lord. But if perchance it had pleased the persecutor to inflict upon him the punishment which Isaiah endured, he would never have shown himself inferior to the prophet, nor would have shrunk from having his members torn in pieces by saws and swords. And if impious fury had preferred to drive the blessed man over precipitous rocks or steep mountains, I maintain that, clinging [59] to the testimony of truth he would willingly have fallen. But if, after the example of the teacher of the Gentiles, [60] as indeed often happened, he had been included among other victims who were condemned [61] to die by the sword, he would have been foremost to urge on the executioner to his work that he might obtain the crown [62] of blood. And, in truth, far from shrinking from a confession of the Lord, in the face of all those penalties and punishments, which frequently prove too much for human infirmity, he would have stood so immovable as to have smiled with joy and gladness over the sufferings and torments he endured, whatever might have been the tortures inflicted upon him. But although he did in fact suffer none of these things, yet he fully attained to the honor of martyrdom without shedding his blood. For what agonies of human sufferings did he not endure in behalf of the hope of eternal life, in hunger, in watchings, in nakedness, in fastings, in reproachings of the malignant, in persecutions of the wicked, in care for the weak, in anxiety for those in danger? For who ever suffered but Martin suffered along with him? Who was made to stumble and he burnt not? Who perished, and he did not mourn deeply? Besides those daily struggles which he carried on against the various conflicts with human and spiritual wickedness, while invariably, as he was assailed with divers temptations, there prevailed in his case fortitude in conquering, patience in waiting, and placidity in enduring. O man, truly indescribable in piety, mercy, love, which daily grows cold even in holy men through the coldness of the world, but which in his case increased onwards to the end, and endured from day to day! I, for my part, had the happiness of enjoying this grace in him even in an eminent degree, for he loved me in a special manner, though I was far from meriting such affection. And, on the remembrance, yet again my tears burst forth, while groans issue from the bottom of my heart. In what man shall I for the future find such repose for my spirit as I did in him? and in whose love shall I enjoy like consolation? Wretched being that I am, sunk in affliction, can I ever, if life be spared me, cease to lament that I have survived Martin? Shall there in future be to me any pleasure in life, or any day or hour free from tears; or can I ever, my dearest brother, make mention of him to you without lamentation? And yet, in conversing with you, can I ever talk of any other subject than him? But why do I stir you up to tears and lamentations? So I now desire you to be comforted, although I am unable to console myself. He will not be absent from us; believe me, he will never, never forsake us, but will be present with us as we discourse regarding him, and will be near to us as we pray; and the happiness which he has even to-day deigned to bestow, even that of seeing him in his glory, he will frequently in future afford; and he will protect us, as he did but a little while ago, with his unceasing benediction. Then again, according to the arrangement of the vision, he showed that heaven was open to those following him, and taught us to what we ought to follow him; he instructed us to what objects our hope should be directed, and to what attainment our mind should be turned. Yet, my brother, what is to be done? For, as I am myself well aware, I shall never be able to climb that difficult ascent, and penetrate into those blessed regions. To such a degree does a miserable burden press me down; and while I cannot, through the load of sin which overwhelms me, secure an ascent to heaven, the cruel pressure rather sinks me in my misery to the place of despair. [63] Nevertheless, hope remains, one last and solitary hope, that, what I cannot obtain of myself, I may, at any rate, be thought worthy of, through the prayers of Martin in my behalf. But why, brother, should I longer occupy your time with a letter which has turned out so garrulous, and thus delay you from coming to me? At the same time, my page being now filled, can admit no more. This, however, was my object in prolonging my discourse to a somewhat undue extent, that, since this letter conveys to you a message of sorrow, it might also furnish you with consolation, through my sort of friendly conversation with you. __________________________________________________________________
[53] This salutation is omitted by Halm.
[54] "crine purpureo": it is impossible to tell the exact color which is intended.
[55] Compare Rev. vii. 14.
[56] As being peaceful, the imperial power having now passed into the hands of Christians.
[57] Roman emperor, a.d. 249-251; his full name was C. Messius Quintus Trajanus Decius.
[58] "equileum ascendisset": lit. "would have mounted the wooden horse," an instrument of torture.
[59] Some read "perhibeo confisus testimonium veritati," and others "veritatis"; in either case, the construction is confused and irregular.
[60] St. Paul is referred to: tradition bears that he was beheaded.
[61] A late use of the verb deputare.
[62] i.e. martyrdom, "palmam sanguinis."
[63] "in tartara." __________________________________________________________________
Letter III. To Bassula, His Mother-In-Law.
How St. Martin passed from this Life to Life Eternal.
Sulpitius Severus to Bassula, his venerable parent, sendeth greeting.
If it were lawful that parents should be summoned to court by their children, clearly I might drag you with a righteous thong [64] before the tribunal of the prætor, on a charge of robbery and plunder. For why should I not complain of the injury which I have suffered at your hands? You have left me no little bit of writing at home, no book, not even a letter--to such a degree do you play the thief with all such things and publish them to the world. If I write anything in familiar style to a friend; if, as I amuse myself I dictate anything with the wish at the same time that it should be kept private, all such things seem to reach you almost before they have been written or spoken. Surely you have my secretaries [65] in your [66] debt, since through them any trifles I compose are made known to you. And yet I cannot be moved with anger against them if they really obey you, and have invaded my rights under the special influence of your generosity to them, and ever bear in mind that they belong to you rather than to me. Yes, thou alone art the culprit--thou alone art to blame--inasmuch as you both lay your snares for me, and cajole them with your trickery, so that without making any [67] selection, pieces written familiarly, or let out of hand without care, are sent to thee quite unelaborated and unpolished. For, to say nothing about other writings, I beg to ask how that letter could reach you so speedily, which I recently wrote to Aurelius the Deacon. For, as I was situated at Toulouse, [68] while you were dwelling at Treves, and were so far distant from your native land, owing to the anxiety felt on account of your son, what opportunity, I should like to know, did you avail yourself of, to get hold of that familiar [69] epistle? For I have received your letter in which you write that I ought in the same epistle in which I made mention of the death of our master, Martin, to have described the manner in which that saintly man left this world. As if, indeed, I had either given forth that epistle with the view of its being read by any other except him to whom it purported to be sent; or as if I were fated to undertake so great a work as that all things which should be known respecting Martin are to be made public through me particularly as the writer. Therefore, if you desire to learn anything concerning the end of the saintly bishop, you should direct your enquiries rather to those who were present when his death occurred. I for my part have resolved to write nothing to you lest you publish me [70] everywhere. Nevertheless if you pledge your word that you will read to no one what I send you, I shall satisfy your desire in a few words. Accordingly I shall communicate [71] to you the following particulars which are comprised within my own knowledge.
I have to state, then, that Martin was aware of the period of his own death long before it occurred, and told the brethren that his departure from the body was at hand. In the meantime, a reason sprang up which led him to visit the church at Condate. [72] For, as the clerics of that church were at variance among themselves, Martin, wishing to restore peace, although he well knew that the end of his own days was at hand, yet he did not shrink from undertaking the journey, with such an object in view. He did, in fact, think that this would be an excellent crown to set upon his virtues, if he should leave behind him peace restored to a church. Thus, then, having set out with that very numerous and holy crowd of disciples who usually accompanied him, he perceives in a river a number of water-fowl busy in capturing fishes, and notices that a voracious appetite was urging them on to frequent seizures of their prey. "This," exclaimed he, "is a picture of how the demons act: they lie in wait for the unwary and capture them before they know it: they devour their victims when taken, and they can never be satisfied with what they have devoured." Then Martin, with a miraculous [73] power in his words, commands the birds to leave the pool in which they were swimming, and to betake themselves to dry and desert regions; using with respect to those birds that very same authority with which he had been accustomed to put demons to flight. Accordingly, gathering themselves together, all those birds formed a single body, and leaving the river, they made for the mountains and woods, to no small wonder of many who perceived such power in Martin that he could even rule the birds. Having then delayed some time in that village or church to which he had gone, and peace having been restored among the clerics, when he was now meditating a return to his monastery, he began suddenly to fail in bodily strength, and, assembling the brethren, he told them that he was on the point of dissolution. Then indeed, sorrow and grief took possession of all, and there was but one voice of them lamenting, and saying: "Why, dear father, will you leave us? Or to whom can you commit us in our desolation? Fierce wolves will speedily attack thy flock, and who, when the shepherd has been smitten, will save us [74] from their bites? We know, indeed, that you desire to be with Christ; but thy reward above is safe, and will not be diminished by being delayed; rather have pity upon us, whom you are leaving desolate." Then Martin, affected by these lamentations, as he was always, in truth, full [75] of compassion, is said to have burst into tears; and, turning to the Lord, he replied to those weeping round him only in the following words, "O Lord, if I am still necessary to thy people, I do not shrink from toil: thy will be done." Thus hovering as he did between [76] desire and love, he almost doubted which he preferred; for he neither wished to leave us, nor to be longer separated from Christ. However, he placed no weight upon his own wishes, nor reserved anything to his own will, but committed himself wholly to the will and power of the Lord. Do you not think you hear him speaking in the following few words which I repeat? "Terrible, indeed, Lord, is the struggle of bodily warfare, and surely it is now enough that I have continued the fight till now; but, if thou dost command me still to persevere in the same toil for the defense [77] of thy flock, I do not refuse, nor do I plead against such an appointment my declining years. Wholly given to thee, I will fulfill whatever duties thou dost assign me, and I will serve under thy standard as long as thou shalt prescribe. Yea, although release is sweet to an old man after lengthened toil, yet my mind is a conqueror over my years, and I have no desire [78] to yield to old age. But if now thou art merciful to my many years, good, O Lord, is thy will to me; and thou thyself wilt guard over those for whose safety I fear." O man, whom no language can describe, unconquered by toil, and unconquerable even by death, who didst show no personal preference for either alternative, and who didst neither fear to die nor refuse to live! Accordingly, though he was for some days under the influence of a strong fever, he nevertheless did not abandon the work of God. Continuing in supplications and watchings through whole nights, he compelled his worn-out limbs to do service to his spirit as he lay on his glorious [79] couch upon sackcloth and ashes. And when his disciples begged of him that at least he should allow some common straw to be placed beneath him, he replied: "It is not fitting that a Christian should die except among ashes; and I have sinned if I leave you a different example." However, with his hands and eyes steadfastly directed towards heaven, he never released his unconquerable spirit from prayer. And on being asked by the presbyters who had then gathered round him, to relieve his body a little by a change of side, he exclaimed: "Allow me, dear brother, to fix my looks rather on heaven than on earth, so that my spirit which is just about to depart on its own journey may be directed towards the Lord." Having spoken these words, he saw the devil standing close at hand, and exclaimed: "Why do you stand here, thou bloody monster? Thou shalt find nothing in me, thou deadly one: Abraham's bosom is about to receive me."
As he uttered these words, his spirit fled; and those who were there present have testified to us that they saw his face as if it had been the face [80] of an angel. His limbs too appeared white as snow, so that people exclaimed, "Who would ever believe that man to be clothed in sackcloth, or who would imagine that he was enveloped with ashes?" For even then he presented such an appearance, as if he had been manifested in the glory of the future resurrection, and with the nature of a body which had been changed. But it is hardly credible what a multitude of human beings assembled at the performance of his funeral rites: the whole city poured forth to meet his body; all the inhabitants of the district and villages, along with many also from the neighboring cities, attended. O how great was the grief of all! how deep the lamentations in particular of the sorrowing monks! They are said to have assembled on that day almost to the number of two thousand,--a special glory of Martin,--through his example so numerous plants had sprung up for the service of the Lord. Undoubtedly the shepherd was then driving his own flocks before him--the pale crowds of that saintly multitude--bands arrayed in cloaks, either old men whose life-labor was finished, or young soldiers who had just taken the oath of allegiance to Christ. Then, too, there was the choir of virgins, abstaining out of modesty from weeping; and with what holy joy did they conceal the fact of their affliction! No doubt faith would prevent the shedding of tears, yet affection forced out groans. For there was as sacred an exultation over the glory to which he had attained, as there was a pious sorrow on account of his death. One would have been inclined to pardon those who wept, as well as to congratulate those who rejoiced, while each single person preferred that he himself should grieve, but that another should rejoice. Thus then this multitude, singing hymns of heaven, attended the body of the sainted man onwards to the place of sepulture. Let there be compared with this spectacle, I will not say the worldly [81] pomp of a funeral, but even of a triumph; and what can be reckoned similar to the obsequies of Martin? Let your worldly great men lead before their chariots captives with their hands bound behind their backs. Those accompanied the body of Martin who, under his guidance, had overcome the world. Let madness honor these earthly warriors with the united praises of nations. Martin is praised with the divine psalms, Martin is honored in heavenly hymns. Those worldly men, after their triumphs here are over, shall be thrust into cruel Tartarus, while Martin is joyfully received into the bosom of Abraham. Martin, poor and insignificant on earth, has a rich entrance granted him into heaven. From that blessed region, as I trust, he looks upon me, as my guardian, while I am writing these things, and upon you while you read them. [82] __________________________________________________________________
[64] Instead of "justo loro," Halm reads, "justo delore," i.e. "with just resentment."
[65] "notarios": shorthand writers, who wrote from dictation.
[66] Halm here reads "obarratos," with what sense I know not: the reading "obæratos," followed in the text seems to yield a very good meaning.
[67] The reading "sine dilectu ullo," adopted by Halm, seems preferable to the old reading, "sine delicto ullo."
[68] The identity of Tolosa, mentioned in the text with the modern Toulouse, is uncertain.
[69] Of course, this is all jocular, and shows the best relations as existing between Sulpitius and his mother-in-law.
[70] There is clearly some affectation in the horror which Sulpitius expresses in this and other passages at the thought of his writings being published. It is obvious that he derived gratification from the fact of their being widely read.
[71] "præstabo his participem": the construction is peculiar, but the meaning is obvious.
[72] There were several towns of this name in Gaul. The one probably here referred to was on the road from Augustodunum (Autun) to Paris. It corresponds to the modern Cosne, at the junction of the stream Nonain with the river Loire.
[73] "potenti virtute verborum": Halm reads simply "potenti verbo."
[74] A singular and obviously corrupt reading is "quis eos a morsibus nostris prohibebit?" Halm's reading has been followed in the text.
[75] Lit. "as he always flowed with bowels of mercy in the Lord."
[76] "spes" seems here to mean "longing of heart."
[77] "pro castris tuorum."
[78] Or "I am not one to yield," nescius cedere.
[79] "nobili illo strato suo"; nobilis in one sense, though so humble in another.
[80] There is a great variety of readings here; Halm has been followed in the text.
[81] Or, "the pomp of a worldly funeral."
[82] Halm inserts this last sentence in brackets. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Dialogues of Sulpitius Severus. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Dialogue I.
Concerning the Virtues of the Monks of the East. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter I.
When I and a Gallic friend had assembled in one place, this Gaul being a man very dear to me, both on account of his remembrance of Martin (for he had been one of his disciples), and on account of his own merits, my friend Postumianus joined us. He had just, on my account, returned from the East, to which, leaving his native country, he had gone three years before. Having embraced this most affectionate friend, and kissed both his knees and his feet, we were for a moment or two, as it were, astounded; and, shedding mutual tears of joy, we walked about a good deal. But by and by we sat down on our garments of sackcloth laid upon the ground. Then Postumianus, directing his looks towards me is the first to speak, and says,--
"When I was in the remote parts of Egypt, I felt a desire to go on as far as the sea. I there met with a merchant vessel, which was ready to set sail with the view of making for Narbonne. [83] The same night you seemed in a dream to stand beside me, and laying hold of me with your hand, to lead me away that I should go on board that ship. Ere long, when the dawn dispersed the darkness, and when I rose up in the place in which I had been resting, as I revolved my dream in my mind, I was suddenly seized with such a longing after you, that without delay I went on board the ship. Landing on the thirtieth day at Marseilles, I came on from that and arrived here on the tenth day--so prosperous a voyage was granted to my dutiful desire of seeing you. Do thou only, for whose sake I have sailed over so many seas, and have traversed such an extent of land, yield yourself over to me to be embraced and enjoyed apart from all others."
"I truly," said I, "while you were still staying in Egypt, was ever holding fellowship with you in my mind and thoughts, and affection for you had full possession of me as I meditated upon you day and night. Surely then, you cannot imagine that I will now fail for a single moment to gaze with delight upon you, as I hang upon your lips. I will listen to you, I will converse with you, while no one at all is admitted to our retirement, which this remote cell of mine furnishes to us. For, as I suppose, you will not take amiss the presence of this friend of ours, the Gaul, who, as you perceive, rejoices with his whole heart over this arrival of yours, even as I do myself."
"Quite right," said Postumianus, "that Gaul will certainly be retained in our company; who, although I am but little acquainted with him, yet for this very reason that he is greatly beloved by you, cannot fail also to be dear to me. This must especially be the case, since he is of the school of Martin; nor will I grudge, as you desire, to talk with you in connected discourse, since I came hither for this very purpose, that I should, even at the risk of being tedious, respond to the desire of my dear Sulpitius "--and in so speaking he affectionately took hold of me with both his hands. __________________________________________________________________
[83] Narbona, more commonly called Narbo Martius; the modern Narbonne. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter II.
"Truly" said I, "you have clearly proved how much a sincere love can accomplish, inasmuch as, for my sake, you have traveled over so many seas, and such an extent of land, journeying, so to speak, from the rising of the sun in the East to where he sets in the West. Come, then, because we are here in a retired spot by ourselves, and not being otherwise occupied, feel it our duty to attend to your discourse, come, I pray thee, relate to us the whole history of your wanderings. Tell us, if you please, how the faith of Christ is flourishing in the East; what peace the saints enjoy; what are the customs of the monks; and with what signs and miracles Christ is working in his servants. For assuredly, because in this region of ours and amid the circumstances in which we are placed, life itself has become a weariness to us, we shall gladly hear from you, if life is permitted to Christians even in the desert."
In reply to these words, Postumianus declares, "I shall do as I see you desire. But I beg you first to tell me, whether all those persons whom I left here as priests, continue the same as I knew them before taking my departure."
Then I exclaim, "Forbear, I beseech thee, to make any enquiry on such points, which you either, I think, know as well as I do, or if you are ignorant of them, it is better that you should hear nothing regarding them. I cannot, however, help saying, that not only are those, of whom you enquire, no better than they were when you knew them, but even that one man, who was formerly a great friend of mine, and in whose affection I was wont to find some consolation from the persecutions of the rest, has shown himself more unkind towards me than he ought to have been. However, I shall not say anything harsher regarding him, both because I once esteemed him as a friend, and loved him even when he was deemed my enemy. I shall only add that while I was silently meditating on these things in my thoughts, this source of grief deeply afflicted me, that I had almost lost the friendship of one who was both a wise and a religious man. But let us turn away from these topics which are full of sorrow, and let us rather listen to you, according to the promise which you gave some time ago."
"Let it be so," exclaimed Postumianus. And on his saying this, we all kept silence, while, moving his robe of sackcloth, on which he had sat down, a little nearer me, he thus began. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter III.
"Three years ago, Sulpitius, at which time, leaving this neighborhood, I bade thee farewell, after setting sail from Narbonne, on the fifth day we entered a port of Africa: so prosperous, by the will of God, had been the voyage. I had in my mind a great desire to go to Carthage, to visit those localities connected with the saints, and, above all, to worship at the tomb [84] of the martyr Cyprian. On the fifth day we returned to the harbor, and launched forth into the deep. Our destination was Alexandria; but as the south wind was against us, we were almost driven upon the Syrtis; [85] the cautious sailors, however, guarding against this, stopped the ship by casting anchor. The continent of Africa then lay before our eyes; and, landing on it in boats, when we perceived that the whole country round was destitute of human cultivation, I penetrated farther inland, for the purpose of more carefully exploring the locality. About three miles from the sea-coast, I beheld a small hut in the midst of the sand, the roof of which, to use the expression [86] of Sallust, was like the keel of a ship. It was close to [87] the earth, and was floored with good strong boards, not because any very heavy rains are there feared (for, in fact, such a thing as rain has there never even been heard of), but because, such is the strength of the winds in that district, that, if at any time only a little breath of air begins there to be felt, even when the weather is pretty mild, a greater wreckage takes place in those lands than on any sea. No plants are there, and no seeds ever spring up, since, in such shifting soil, the dry sand is swept along with every motion of the winds. But where some promontories, back from the sea, act as a check to the winds, the soil, being somewhat more firm, produces here and there some prickly grass, and that furnishes fair pasturage for sheep. The inhabitants live on milk, while those of them that are more skillful, or, so to speak, more wealthy, make use of barley bread. That is the only kind of grain which flourishes there, for barley, by the quickness of its growth in that sort of soil, generally escapes the destruction caused by the fierce winds. So rapid is its growth that we are told it is ripe on the thirtieth day after the sowing of the seed. But there is no reason why men should settle there, except that all are free from the payment of taxes. The sea-coast of the Cyrenians is indeed the most remote, bordering upon that desert which lies between Egypt and Africa, [88] and through which Cato formerly, when fleeing from Cæsar, led an army. [89] __________________________________________________________________
[84] "Ad sepulchrum Cypriani martyris adorare."
[85] This was probably the Syrtis Minor, a dangerous sandbank in the sea on the northern coast of Africa; it is now known as the Gulf of Cabes. The Syrtis Major lay farther to the east, and now bears the name of the Gulf of Sidra.
[86] "Ædificia Numidarum agrestium, quæ mapalia illi vocant, oblonga, incurvis lateribus tecta, quasi navium carinæ sunt."--Sall. Jug. XVIII. 8.
[87] The hut was perhaps built on piles rising slightly above the ground.
[88] The term Africa here used in its more restricted sense to denote the territory of Carthage.
[89] This took place in the spring of the year b.c. 47. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IV.
I therefore bent my steps toward the hut which I had beheld from a distance. There I find an old man, in a garment made of skins, turning a mill with his hand. He saluted and received us kindly. We explain to him that we had been forced to land on that coast, and were prevented by the continued raging of the sea [90] from being able at once to pursue our voyage; that, having made our way on shore, we had desired, as is in keeping with ordinary human nature, to become acquainted with the character of the locality, and the manners of the inhabitants. We added that we were Christians, and that the principal object of our enquiry was whether there were any Christians amid these solitudes. Then, indeed, he, weeping for joy, throws himself at our feet; and, kissing us over and over again, invites us to prayer, while, spreading on the ground the skins of sheep, he makes us sit down upon them. He then serves up a breakfast truly luxurious, [91] consisting of the half of a barley cake. Now, we were four, while he himself constituted the fifth. He also brought in a bundle of herbs, of which I forget the name, but they were like mint, were rich in leaves, and yielded a taste like honey. We were delighted with the exceedingly sweet taste of this plant, and our hunger was fully satisfied."
Upon this I smiled, and said to my friend the Gaul, "What, Gaul, do you think of this? Are you pleased with a bundle of herbs and half a barley cake as a breakfast for five men?"
Then he, being an exceedingly modest person, and blushing somewhat, while he takes my [92] joke in good part, says, "You act, Sulpitius, in a way like yourself, for you never miss any opportunity which is offered you of joking us on the subject of our fondness for eating. But it is unkind of you to try to force us Gauls to live after the fashion of angels; and yet, through my own liking for eating, I could believe that even the angels are in the habit of eating; for such is my appetite that I would be afraid even singly to attack that half barley cake. However, let that man of Cyrene be satisfied with it, to whom it is either a matter of necessity or nature always to feel hungry; or, again, let those be content with it from whom, I suppose, their tossing at sea had taken away all desire for food. We, on the other hand, are at a distance from the sea; and, as I have often testified to you, we are, in one word, Gauls. But instead of wasting time over such matters, let our friend here rather go on to complete his account of the Cyrenian." __________________________________________________________________
[90] "maris mollitie."
[91] "Prandium sane locupletissimum": of course there is a friendly irony in the words.
[92] "fatigationem," a late sense of the word. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter V.
"Assuredly," continues Postumianus, "I shall take care in future not to mention the abstinence of any one, in case the difficult example should quite offend our friends the Gauls. I had intended, however, to give an account also of the dinner of that man of Cyrene--for we were seven days with him--or some of the subsequent feasts; but these things had better be passed over, lest the Gaul should think that he was jeered at. However, on the following day, when some of the natives had come together to visit us, we discovered that that host of ours was a Presbyter--a fact which he had concealed from us with the greatest care. We then went with him to the church, which was about two miles distant, and was concealed from our view by an intervening mountain. We found that it was constructed of common and worthless trees, and was not much more imposing than the hut of our host, in which one could not stand without stooping. On enquiring into the customs of the men of the district, we found that they were not in the habit of either buying or selling anything. They knew not the meaning of either fraud or theft. As to gold and silver, which mankind generally deem the most desirable of all things, they neither possess them, nor do they desire to possess them. For when I offered that Presbyter ten gold coins, he refused them, declaring, with profound wisdom, that the church was not benefited but rather [93] injured by gold. We presented him, however, with some pieces of clothing. __________________________________________________________________
[93] "non instrui, sed potius destrui." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VI.
"After he had kindly accepted our gifts, on the sailors calling us back to the sea, we departed; and after a favorable passage, we arrived at Alexandria on the seventh day. There we found a disgraceful strife raging between the bishops and monks, the cause or occasion of which was that the priests were known when assembled together often to have passed decrees in crowded synods to the effect that no one should read or possess the books of Origen. He was, no doubt, regarded as a most able disputant on the sacred Scriptures. But the bishops maintained that there were certain things in his books of an unsound character; and his supporters, not being bold enough to defend these, rather took the line of declaring that they had been inserted by the heretics. They affirmed, therefore, that the other portions of his writings were not to be condemned on account of those things which justly fell under censure, since the faith of readers could easily make a distinction, so that they should not follow what had been forged, and yet should keep hold of those points which were handled in accordance with the Catholic faith. They remarked that there was nothing wonderful if, in modern and recent writings, heretical guile had been at work; since it had not feared in certain places to attack even Gospel truth. The bishops, struggling against these positions to the utmost extent of their power, insisted that what was quite correct in the writings of Origen should, along with the author himself, and even his whole works, be condemned, because those books were more than sufficient which the church had received. They also said that the reading was to be avoided of such works as would do more harm to the unwise than they would benefit the wise. For my part, on being led by curiosity to investigate some portions of these writings, I found very many things which pleased me, but some that were to be blamed. I think it is clear that the author himself really entertained these impious opinions, though his defenders maintain that the passages have been forged. I truly wonder that one and the same man could have been so different from himself as that, in the portion which is approved, he has no equal since the times of the Apostles, while in that which is justly condemned, no one can be shown to have erred more egregiously. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VII.
For while many things in his books which were extracted from them by the bishops were read to show that they were written in opposition to the Catholic faith, that passage especially excited bad feeling against him, in which we read in his published works that the Lord Jesus, as he had come in the flesh for the redemption of mankind, and suffering upon the cross for the salvation of man, had tasted death to procure eternal life for the human race, so he was, by the same course of suffering, even to render the devil a partaker of redemption. He maintained this on the ground that such a thing would be in harmony with his goodness and beneficence, inasmuch as he who had restored fallen and ruined man, would thus also set free an angel who had previously fallen. When these and other things of a like nature were brought forward by the bishops, a tumult arose owing to the zeal of the different parties; and when this could not be quelled by the authority of the priests, the governor of the city was called upon to regulate the discipline of the church by a perverse precedent; and through the terror which he inspired, the brethren were dispersed, while the monks took to flight in different directions; so that, on the decrees being published, they were not permitted to find lasting acceptance [94] in any place. This fact influenced me greatly, that Hieronymus, a man truly Catholic and most skillful in the holy law, was thought at first to have been a follower of Origen, yet now, above most others, went the length of condemning the whole of his writings. Assuredly, I am not inclined to judge rashly in regard to any one; but even the most learned men were said to hold different opinions in this controversy. However, whether that opinion of Origen was simply an error, as I think, or whether it was a heresy, as is generally supposed, it not only could not be suppressed by multitudes of censures on the part of the priests, but it never could have spread itself so far and wide, had it not gathered strength from their contentions. Accordingly, when I came to Alexandria, I found that city in a ferment from disturbances connected with the matter in question. The Bishop, indeed, of that place received me very kindly, and in a better spirit than I expected, and even endeavored to retain me with him. But I was not at all inclined to settle there, where a recent outbreak of ill-will had resulted in a destruction of the brethren. For, although perhaps it may seem that they ought to have obeyed the bishops, yet such a multitude of persons, all living in an open confession of Christ, ought not for that reason to have been persecuted, especially by bishops. __________________________________________________________________
[94] "in nulla consistere sede sinerentur." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VIII.
Accordingly, setting out from that place, I made for the town of Bethlehem, which is six miles distant from Jerusalem, but requires sixteen stoppages [95] on the part of one journeying from Alexandria. The presbyter Jerome [96] rules the church of this place; for it is a parish of the bishop who has possession of Jerusalem. Having already in my former journey become acquainted with Hieronymus, he had easily brought it about that I with good reason deemed no one more worthy of my regard and love. For, besides the merit due to him on account of his Faith, and the possession of many virtues, he is a man learned not only in Latin and Greek, but also Hebrew, to such a degree that no one dare venture to compare himself with him in all knowledge. I shall indeed be surprised if he is not well known to you also through means of the works which he has written, since he is, in fact, read the whole world over."
"Well," says the Gaul at this point, "he is, in truth, but too well known to us. For, some five years ago, I read a certain book of his, in which the whole tribe of our monks is most vehemently assaulted and reviled by him. For this reason, our Belgian friend is accustomed to be very angry, because he has said that we are in the habit of cramming ourselves even to repletion. But I, for my part, pardon the eminent man; and am of opinion that he had made the remark rather about Eastern than Western monks. For the love of eating is gluttony in the case of the Greeks, whereas among the Gauls it is owing to the nature they possess."
Then exclaimed I, "You defend your nation, my Gallic friend, by means of rhetoric; but I beg to ask whether that book condemns only this vice in the case of the monks?"
"No indeed," replies he; "the writer passed nothing over, which he did not blame, scourge, and expose: in particular, he inveighed against avarice and no less against arrogance. He discoursed much respecting pride, and not a little about superstition; and I will freely own that he seemed to me to draw a true picture of the vices of multitudes." __________________________________________________________________
[95] "mansionibus."
[96] Otherwise, "Hieronymus." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IX.
"But as to familiarities which take place between virgins and monks, or even clerics, how true and how courageous were his words! And, on account of these, he is said not to stand high in favor with certain people whom I am unwilling to name. For, as our Belgian friend is angry that we were accused of too great fondness for eating, so those people, again, are said to express their rage when they find it written in that little work,--The virgin despises her true unmarried brother, and seeks a stranger.'"
Upon this I exclaim, "You are going too far, my Gallic friend: take heed lest some one who perhaps owns to these things, hear what you are saying, and begin to hold you, along with Hieronymus, in no great affection. For, since you are a learned [97] man, not unreasonably will I admonish you in the verse of that comic poet who says,--Submission procures friends, while truth gives rise to hatred.' Let rather, Postumianus, your discourse to us about the East, so well begun, now be resumed."
"Well," says he, "as I had commenced to relate, I stayed with Hieronymus six months, who carried on an unceasing warfare against the wicked, and a perpetual struggle in opposition to the deadly hatred of ungodly men. The heretics hate him, because he never desists from attacking them; the clerics hate him, because he assails their life and crimes. But beyond doubt, all the good admire and love him; for those people are out of their senses, who suppose that he is a heretic. Let me tell the truth on this point, which is that the knowledge of the man is Catholic, and that his doctrine is sound. He is always occupied in reading, always at his books with his whole heart: he takes no rest day or night; he is perpetually either reading or writing something. In fact, had I not been resolved in mind, and had promised to God first to visit [98] the desert previously referred to, I should have grudged to depart even for the shortest time from so great a man. Handing over, then, and entrusting to him all my possessions and my whole family, which having followed me against my own inclination, kept me in a state of embarrassment, and thus being in a sort of way delivered from a heavy burden, and restored to freedom of action, I returned to Alexandria, and having visited the brethren there I set out from the place for upper Thebais, that is for the farthest off confines of Egypt. For a great multitude of monks were said to inhabit the widely extending solitudes of that wilderness. But here it would be tedious, were I to seek to narrate all the things which I witnessed: I shall only touch lightly on a few points. __________________________________________________________________
[97] "scholasticus."
[98] "propositam eremum." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter X.
"Not far from the desert, and close to the Nile, there are numerous monasteries. For the most part, the monks there dwell together in companies of a hundred; and their highest rule is to live under the orders of their Abbot, to do nothing by their own inclination, but to depend in all things on his will and authority. If it so happens that any of them form in their minds a lofty ideal of virtue, so as to wish to betake themselves to the desert to live a solitary life, they do not venture to act on this desire except with the permission of the Abbot. In fact, this is the first of virtues in their estimation,--to live in obedience to the will of another. To those who betake themselves to the desert, bread or some other kind of food is furnished by the command of that Abbot. Now, it so happened that, in those days during which I had come thither, the Abbot had sent bread to a certain person who had withdrawn to the desert, and had erected a tent for himself not more than six miles from the monastery. This bread was sent by the hands of two boys, the elder of whom was fifteen, and the younger twelve years of age. As these boys were returning home, an asp of remarkable size encountered them, but they were not the least afraid on meeting it; and moving up to their very feet, as if charmed by some melody, it laid down its dark-green neck before them. The younger of the boys laid hold of it with his hand, and, wrapping it in his dress, went on his way with it. Then, entering the monastery with the air of a conqueror, and meeting with the brethren, while all looked on, he opened out his dress, and set down the imprisoned beast, not without some appearance of boastfulness. But while the rest of the spectators extolled the faith and virtue of the children, the Abbot, with deeper insight, and to prevent them at such a tender age from being puffed up with pride, subjected both to punishment. This he did after blaming them much for having publicly revealed what the Lord had wrought through their instrumentality. He declared that that was not to be attributed to their faith, but to the Divine power; and added that they should rather learn to serve God in humility, and not to glory in signs and wonders; for that a sense of their own weakness was better than any vainglorious exhibition of power. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XI.
"When the monk whom I have mentioned heard of this,--when he learned both that the children had encountered danger through meeting the snake, and that moreover, having got the better of the serpent, they had received a sound beating,--he implored the Abbot that henceforth no bread or food of any kind should be sent to him. And now the eighth day had passed since that man of Christ had exposed himself to the danger of perishing from hunger; his limbs were growing dry with fasting, but his mind fixed upon heaven could not fail; his body was wearing away with abstinence, but his faith remained firm. In the meantime, the Abbot was admonished by the Spirit to visit that disciple. Under the influence of a pious solicitude, he was eager to learn by what means of preserving life that faithful man was supported, since he had declined any human aid in ministering to his necessities. Accordingly, he sets out in person to satisfy himself on the subject. When the recluse saw from a distance the old man coming to him, he ran to meet him: he thanks him for the visit, and conducts him to his cell. As they enter the cell together, they behold a basket of palm branches, full of hot bread, hanging fixed at the door-post. And first the smell of the hot bread is perceived; but on touching it, it appears as if just a little before it had been taken from the oven. At the same time, they do not recognize the bread as being of the shape common in Egypt. Both are filled with amazement, and acknowledge the gift as being from heaven. On the one side, the recluse declared that this event was due to the arrival of the Abbot; while, on the other side, the Abbot ascribed it rather to the faith and virtue of the recluse; but both broke the heaven-sent bread with exceeding joy. And when, on his return to the monastery, the old man reported to the brethren what had occurred, such enthusiasm seized the minds of all of them, that they vied with each other in their haste to betake themselves to the desert, and its sacred seclusion; while they declared themselves miserable in having made their abode only too long amid a multitude, where human fellowship had to be carried on and endured. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XII.
"In this monastery I saw two old men who were said to have already lived there for forty years, and in fact never to have departed from it. I do not think that I should pass by all mention of these men, since, indeed, I heard the following statement made regarding their virtues on the testimony of the Abbot himself, and all the brethren, that in the case of one of them, the sun never beheld him feasting, and in the case of the other, the sun never saw him angry."
Upon this, the Gaul looking at me exclaims: "Would that a friend of yours--I do not wish to mention his name--were now present; I should greatly like him to hear of that example, since we have had too much experience of his bitter anger in the persons of a great many people. Nevertheless, as I hear, he has lately forgiven his enemies; and, in these circumstances, were he to hear of the conduct of that man, he would be more and more strengthened in his forgiving course by the example thus set before him, and would feel that it is an admirable virtue not to fall under the influence of anger. I will not indeed deny that he had just reasons for his wrath; but where the battle is hard, the crown of victory is all the more glorious. For this reason, I think, if you will allow me to say so, that a certain man was justly to be praised, because when an ungrateful freedman abandoned him he rather pitied than inveighed against the fugitive. And, indeed, he was not even angry with the man by whom he seems to have been carried off." [99]
Upon this I remarked: "Unless Postumianus had given us that example of overcoming anger, I would have been very angry on account of the departure of the fugitive; but since it is not lawful to be angry, all remembrance of such things, as it annoys us, ought to be blotted from our minds. Let us rather, Postumianus, listen to what you have got to say."
"I will do," says he, "Sulpitius, what you request, as I see you are all so desirous of hearing me. But remember that I do not address my speech to you without hope of a larger recompense; I shall gladly perform what you require, provided that, when ere long my turn comes, you do not refuse what I ask."
"We indeed," said I, "have nothing by means of which we can return the obligation we shall lie under to you even without a larger return. [100] However, command us as to anything you have thought about, provided you satisfy our desires, as you have already begun to do, for your speech conveys to us true delight."
"I will stint nothing," said Postumianus, "of your desires; and inasmuch as you have recognized the virtue of one recluse, I shall go on to relate to you some few things about more such persons. __________________________________________________________________
[99] It appears impossible to give a certain rendering of these words--"a quo videtur abductus."
[100] "vel sine fænore." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIII.
"Well then, when I entered upon the nearest parts of the desert, about twelve miles from the Nile, having as my guide one of the brethren who was well acquainted with the localities, we arrived at the residence of a certain old monk who dwelt at the foot of a mountain. In that place there was a well, which is a very rare thing in these regions. The monk had one ox, the whole labor of which consisted in drawing water by moving a machine worked with a wheel. This was the only way of getting at the water, for the well was said to be a thousand or more feet deep. There was also a garden there full of a variety of vegetables. This, too, was contrary to what might have been expected in the desert where, all things being dry and burnt up by the fierce rays of the sun produce not even the slenderest root of any plant. But the labor which in common with his ox, the monk performed, as well as his own special industry, produced such a happy state of things to the holy man; for the frequent irrigation in which he engaged imparted such a fertility to the sand that we saw the vegetables in his garden flourishing and coming to maturity in a wonderful manner. On these, then, the ox lived as well as its master; and from the abundance thus supplied, the holy man provided us also with a dinner. There I saw what ye Gauls, perchance, may not believe--a pot boiling without fire [101] with the vegetables which were being got ready for our dinner: such is the power of the sun in that place that it is sufficient for any cooks, even for preparing the dainties of the Gauls. Then after dinner, when the evening was coming on, our host invites us to a palm-tree, the fruit of which he was accustomed to use, and which was at a distance of about two miles. For that is the only kind of tree found in the desert, and even these are rare, though they do occur. I am not sure whether this is owing to the wise foresight of former ages, or whether the soil naturally produces them. It may indeed be that God, knowing beforehand that the desert was one day to be inhabited by the saints, prepared these things for his servants. For those who settle within these solitudes live for the most part on the fruit of such trees, since no other kinds of plants thrive in these quarters. Well, when we came up to that tree to which the kindness of our host conducted us, we there met with a lion; and on seeing it, both my guide and myself began to tremble; but the holy man went up to it without delay, while we, though in great terror, followed him. As if commanded by God, the beast modestly withdrew and stood gazing at us, while our friend, the monk, plucked some fruit hanging within easy reach on the lower branches. And, on his holding out his hand filled with dates, the monster ran up to him and received them as readily as any domestic animal could have done; and having eaten them, it departed. We, beholding these things, and being still under the influence of fear, could not but perceive how great was the power of faith in his case, and how weak it was in ourselves. __________________________________________________________________
[101] Hornius strangely remarks on this, "Frequens id in Africa. Quin et ferrum nimio solis ardore mollescere scribunt qui interiorem Libyam perlustrarunt." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIV.
"We found another equally remarkable man living in a small hut, capable only of containing a single person. Concerning him we were told that a she-wolf was accustomed to stand near him at dinner; and that the beast could by no means be easily deceived so as to fail to be with him at the regular hour when he took refreshment. It was also said that the wolf waited at the door until he offered her the bread which remained over his own humble dinner; that she was accustomed to lick his hand, and then, her duty being, as it were, fulfilled, and her respects paid to him, she took her departure. But it so happened that that holy man, while he escorted a brother who had paid him a visit, on his way home, was a pretty long time away, and only returned under night. [102] In the meanwhile, the beast made its appearance at the usual dinner time. Having entered the vacant cell and perceived that its benefactor was absent, it began to search round the hut with some curiosity to discover, if possible, the inhabitant. Now it so happened that a basket of palm-twigs was hanging close at hand with five loaves of bread in it. Taking one of these, the beast devoured it, and then, having committed this evil deed, went its way. The recluse on his return found the basket in a state of disorder, and the number of loaves less than it should have been. He is aware of the loss of his household goods, and observes near the threshold some fragments of the loaf which had been stolen. Considering all this, he had little doubt as to the author of the theft. Accordingly, when on the following days the beast did not, in its usual way, make its appearance (undoubtedly hesitating from a consciousness of its audacious deed to come to him on whom it had inflicted injury), the recluse was deeply grieved at being deprived of the happiness he had enjoyed in its society. At last, being brought back through his prayers, it appeared to him as usual at dinner time, after the lapse of seven days. But to make clear to every one the shame it felt, through regret for what had been done, not daring to draw very near, and with its eyes, from profound self-abasement, cast upon the earth, it seemed, as was plain to the intelligence of every one, to beg in a sort of way, for pardon. The recluse, pitying its confusion, bade it come close to him, and then, with a kindly hand, stroked its head; while, by giving it two loaves instead of the usual one, he restored the guilty creature to its former position; and, laying aside its misery on thus having obtained forgiveness, it betook itself anew to its former habits. Behold, I beg of you, even in this case, the power of Christ, to whom all is wise that is irrational, and to whom all is mild that is by nature savage. A wolf discharges duty; a wolf acknowledges the crime of theft; a wolf is confounded with a sense of shame: when called for, it presents itself; it offers its head to be stroked; and it has a perception of the pardon granted to it, just as if it had a feeling of shame on account of its misconduct,--this is thy power, O Christ--these, O Christ, are thy marvelous works. For in truth, whatever things thy servants do in thy name are thy doings; and in this only we find cause for deepest grief that, while wild beasts acknowledge thy majesty, intelligent beings fail to do thee reverence. __________________________________________________________________
[102] "sub nocte": this may be used for the usual classical form "sub noctem," towards evening. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XV.
"But lest this should perchance seem incredible to any one, I shall mention still greater things. I call Christ [103] to witness that I invent nothing, nor will I relate things published by uncertain authors, but will set forth facts which have been vouched for to me by trustworthy men.
"Numbers of those persons live in the desert without any roofs over their heads, whom people call anchorites. [104] They subsist on the roots of plants; they settle nowhere in any fixed place, lest they should frequently have men visiting them; wherever night compels them they choose their abode. Well, two monks from Nitria directed their steps towards a certain man living in this style, and under these conditions. They did so, although they were from a very different quarter, because they had heard of his virtues, and because he had formerly been their dear and intimate friend, while a member of the same monastery. They sought after him long and much; and at length, in the seventh month, they found him staying in that far-distant wilderness which borders upon Memphis. He was said already to have dwelt in these solitudes for twelve years; but although he shunned intercourse with all men, yet he did not shrink from meeting these friends; on the contrary, he yielded himself to their affection for a period of three days. On the fourth day, when he had gone some distance escorting them in their return journey, they beheld a lioness of remarkable size coming towards them. The animal, although meeting with three persons, showed no uncertainty as to the one she made for, but threw herself down at the feet of the anchorite: and, lying there with a kind of weeping and lamentation, she manifested mingled feelings of sorrow and supplication. The sight affected all, and especially him who perceived that he was sought for: he therefore sets out, and the others follow him. For the beast stopping from time to time, and, from time to time looking back, clearly wished it to be understood that the anchorite should follow wherever she led. What need is there of many words? We arrived at the den of the animal, where she, the unfortunate mother, was nourishing five whelps already grown up, which, as they had come forth with closed eyes from the womb of their dam, so they had continued in persistent blindness. Bringing them out, one by one, from the hollow of the rock, she laid them down at the feet of the anchorite. Then at length the holy man perceived what the creature desired; and having called upon the name of God, he touched with his hand the closed eyes of the whelps; and immediately their blindness ceased, while light, so long denied them, streamed upon the open eyes of the animals. Thus, those brethren, having visited the anchorite whom they were desirous of seeing, returned with a very precious reward for their labor, inasmuch as, having been permitted to be eye-witnesses of such power, they had beheld the faith of the saint, and the glory of Christ, to which they will in future bear testimony. But I have still more marvels to tell: the lioness, after five days, returned to the man who had done her so great a kindness, and brought him, as a gift, the skin of an uncommon animal. Frequently clad in this, as if it were a cloak, that holy man did not disdain to receive that gift through the instrumentality of the best; while, all the time, he rather regarded Another as being the giver. __________________________________________________________________
[103] "Fides Christi adest": lit. "the faith of Christ is present."
[104] Also spelt "anchoret": it means "one who has retired from the world" (anachoreo). __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVI.
"There was also an illustrious name of another anchorite in those regions, a man who dwelt in that part of the desert which is about Syene. This man, when first he betook himself to the wilderness, intended to live on the roots of plants which the sand here and there produces, of a very sweet and delicious flavor; but being ignorant of the nature of the herbs, he often gathered those which were of a deadly character. And, indeed, it was not easy to discriminate between the kind of the roots by the mere taste, since all were equally sweet, but many of them, of a less known nature, contained within them a deadly poison. When, therefore, the poison within tormented him on eating these, and all his vitals were tortured with terrific pains, while frequent vomitings, attended by excruciating agonies, were shattering the very citadel of life, his stomach being completely exhausted, he was in utter terror of all that had to be eaten for sustaining existence. Having thus fasted for seven days, he was almost at the point of death when a wild animal called an Ibex came up to him. To this creature standing by him, he offered a bundle of plants which he had collected on the previous day, yet had not ventured to touch; but the beast, casting aside with its mouth those which were poisonous, picked out such as it knew to be harmless. In this way, that holy man, taught by its conduct what he ought to eat, and what to reject, both escaped the danger of dying of hunger and of being poisoned by the plants. But it would be tedious to relate all the facts which we have either had personal knowledge of, or have heard from others, respecting those who inhabit the desert. I spent a whole year, and nearly seven months more, of set purpose, within these solitudes, being, however, rather an admirer of the virtues of others, than myself making any attempt to manifest the extraordinary endurance which they displayed. For the greater part of the time I lived with the old man whom I have mentioned, who possessed the well and the ox. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVII.
"I visited two monasteries of St. Anthony, which are at the present day occupied by his disciples. I also went to that place in which the most blessed Paul, the first of the eremites, had his abode. I saw the Red Sea and the ridges of Mount Sinai, the top of which almost touches heaven, and cannot, by any human effort, be reached. An anchorite was said to live somewhere within its recesses: and I sought long and much to see him, but was unable to do so. He had for nearly fifty years been removed from all human fellowship, and used no clothes, but was covered with bristles growing on his own body, while, by Divine gift, he knew not of his own nakedness. As often as any pious men desired to visit him, making hastily for the pathless wilderness, he shunned all meeting with his kind. To one man only, about five years before my visit, he was said to have granted an interview; and I believe that man obtained the favor through the power of his faith. Amid much talk which the two had together, the recluse is said to have replied to the question why he shunned so assiduously all human beings, that the man who was frequently visited by mortals like himself, could not often be visited by angels. From this, not without reason, the report had spread, and was accepted by multitudes, that that holy man enjoyed angelic fellowship. Be this as it may, I, for my part, departed from Mount Sinai, and returned to the river Nile, the banks of which, on both sides, I beheld dotted over with numerous monasteries. I saw that, for the most part, as I have already said, the monks resided together in companies of a hundred; but it was well known that so many as two or three thousand sometimes had their abode in the same villages. Nor indeed would one have any reason to think that the virtue of the monks there dwelling together in great numbers, was less than that of those was known to be, who kept themselves apart from human fellowship. The chief and foremost virtue in these places, as I have already said, is obedience. In fact, any one applying for admission is not received by the Abbot of the monastery on any other condition than that he be first tried and proved; it being understood that he will never afterwards decline to submit to any injunction of the Abbot, however arduous and difficult, and though it may seem something unworthy to be endured. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVIII.
"I will relate two wonderful examples of almost incredible obedience, and two only, although many present themselves to my recollection; but if, in any case, a few instances do not suffice to rouse readers to an imitation of the like virtues, many would be of no advantage. Well then, when a certain man having laid aside all worldly business, and having entered a monastery of very [105] strict discipline, begged that he might be accepted as a member, the Abbot began to place many considerations before him,--that the toils of that order were severe; that his own requirements were heavy, and such as no one's endurance could easily comply with; that he should rather enquire after another monastery where life was carried on under easier conditions; and that he should not try to attempt that which he was unable to accomplish. But he was in no degree moved by these terrors; on the contrary, he all the more promised obedience, saying that if the Abbot should order him to walk into the fire, he would not refuse to enter it. The Master then, having accepted that profession of his, did not delay putting it to the test. It so happened that an iron vessel was close at hand, very hot, as it was being got ready by a powerful fire for cooking some loaves of bread: the flames were bursting forth from the oven broken open, and fire raged without restraint within the hollows of that furnace. The Master, at this stage of affairs, ordered the stranger to enter it, nor did he hesitate to obey the command. Without a moment's delay he entered into the midst of the flames, which, conquered at once by so bold a display of faith, subsided at his approach, as happened of old to the well-known Hebrew children. Nature was overcome, and the fire gave way; so that he, of whom it was thought that he would be burned to death, had reason to marvel at himself, besprinkled, as it were, with a cooling dew. But what wonder is it, O Christ, that that fire did not touch thy youthful soldier? The result was that, neither did the Abbot regret having issued such harsh commands, nor did the disciple repent having obeyed the orders received. He, indeed, on the very day on which he came, being tried in his weakness, was found perfect; deservedly happy, deservedly glorious, having been tested in obedience, he was glorified through suffering. __________________________________________________________________
[105] "monasterium magnæ dispositionis." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIX.
"In the same monastery, the fact which I am about to narrate was said to have occurred within recent memory. A certain man had come to the same Abbot in like manner with the former, in order to obtain admission. When the first law of obedience was placed before him, and he promised an unfailing patience for the endurance of all things however extreme, it so happened that the Abbot was holding in his hand a twig of storax already withered. This the Abbot fixed in the ground, and imposed this work upon the visitor, that he should continue to water the twig, until (what was against every natural result) that dry piece of wood should grow green in the sandy soil. Well, the stranger, being placed under the authority of unbending law, conveyed water every day on his own shoulders--water which had to be taken from the river Nile, at almost two miles' distance. And now, after a year had run its course, the labor of that workman had not yet ceased, but there could be no hope of the good success of his undertaking. However, the grace of obedience continued to be shown in his labor. The following year also mocked the vain labor of the (by this time) weakened brother. At length, as the third annual circle was gliding by, while the workman ceased not, night or day, his labor in watering, the twig began to show signs of life. I have myself seen a small tree sprung from that little rod, which, standing at the present day with green branches in the court of the monastery, as if for a witness of what has been stated, shows what a reward obedience received, and what a power faith can exert. But the day would fail me before I could fully enumerate the many different miracles which have become known to me in connection with the virtues of the saints. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XX.
"I will, however, still further give you an account of two extraordinary marvels. The one of these will be a notable warning against the inflation of wretched vanity, and the other will serve as no mean guard against the display of a spurious righteousness.
"A certain saint, then, endowed with almost incredible power in casting out demons from the bodies of those possessed by them, was, day by day, performing unheard-of miracles. For, not only when present, and not merely by his word, but while absent also, he, from time to time, cured possessed bodies, by some threads taken from his garment, or by letters which he sent. He, therefore, was to a wonderful degree visited by people who came to him from every part of the world. I say nothing about those of humbler rank; but prefects, courtiers, and judges of various ranks often lay at his doors. Most holy bishops also, laying aside their priestly dignity, and humbly imploring him to touch and bless them, believed with good reason that they were sanctified, and illumined with a divine gift, as often as they touched his hand and garment. He was reported to abstain always and utterly from every kind of drink, and for food (I will whisper this, Sulpitius, into your ear lest our friend the Gaul hear it), to subsist upon only six dried figs. But in the meantime, just as honor accrued to the holy man from his excellence, [106] so vanity began to steal upon him from the honor which was paid him. When first he perceived that this evil was growing upon him, he struggled long and earnestly to shake it off, but it could not be thoroughly got rid of by all his efforts, since he still had a secret consciousness of being under the influence of vanity. Everywhere did the demons acknowledge his name, while he was not able to exclude from his presence the number of people who flocked to him. The hidden poison was, in the meantime, working in his breast, and he, at whose beck demons were expelled from the bodies of others, was quite unable to cleanse himself from the hidden thoughts of vanity. Betaking himself, therefore, with fervent supplication to God, he is said to have prayed that, power being given to the devil over him for five months, he might become like to those whom he himself had cured. Why should I delay with many words? That most powerful man,--he, renowned for his miracles and virtues through all the East, he, to whose threshold multitudes had gathered, and at whose door the highest dignitaries of that age had prostrated themselves--laid hold of by a demon, was kept fast in chains. It was only after having suffered all those things which the possessed are wont to endure, that at length in the fifth month he was delivered, not only from the demon, but (what was to him more useful and desirable) from the vanity which had dwelt within him. __________________________________________________________________
[106] "virtute," perhaps power, as in many other places. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXI.
"But to me reflecting on these things, there occurs the thought of our own unhappiness and our own infirmity. For who is there of us, whom if one despicable creature of a man has humbly saluted, or one woman has praised with foolish and flattering words, is not at once elated with pride and puffed up with vanity? This will bring it about that even though one does not possess a consciousness of sanctity, yet, because through the flattery, or, it may be, the mistake of fools, he is said to be a holy man, he will, in fact, deem himself most holy! And then, if frequent gifts are sent to him, he will maintain that he is so honored by the munificence of God, inasmuch as all necessary things are bestowed upon him when sleeping and at rest. But further, if some signs of any kind of power fall to him even in a low degree, he will think himself no less than an angel. And even if he is not marked out from others either by acts or excellence, but is simply made a cleric, he instantly enlarges the fringes of his dress, delights in salutations, is puffed up by people visiting him, and himself gads about everywhere. Nay, the man who had been previously accustomed to travel on foot, or at most to ride on the back of an ass, must needs now ride proudly on frothing steeds; formerly content to dwell in a small and humble cell, he now builds a lofty fretted ceiling; he constructs many rooms; he cuts and carves doors; he paints wardrobes; he rejects the coarser kind of clothing, and demands soft garments; and he gives such orders as the following to dear widows and friendly virgins, that the one class weave for him an embroidered cloak, and the other a flowing robe. But let us leave all these things to be described more pungently by that blessed man Hieronymus; and let us return to the object more immediately in view."
"Well," says our Gallic friend upon this, "I know not indeed what you have left to be said by Hieronymus; you have within such brief compass comprehended all our practices, that I think these few words of yours, if they are taken in good part, and patiently considered, will greatly benefit those in question, so that they will not require in future to be kept in order by the books of Hieronymus. But do thou rather go on with what you had begun, and bring forward an example, as you said you would do, against spurious righteousness; for to tell you the truth, we are subject to no more destructive evil than this within the wide boundaries of Gaul."
"I will do so," replied Postumianus, "nor will I any longer keep you in a state of expectation. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXII.
"A certain young man from Asia, exceedingly wealthy, of distinguished family, and having a wife and little son, happening to have been a tribune in Egypt, and in frequent campaigns against the Blembi to have touched on some parts of the desert, and having also seen several tents of the saints, heard the word of salvation from the blessed John. And he did not then delay to show his contempt for an unprofitable military life with its vain honor. Bravely entering into the wilderness, he in a short time became distinguished as being perfect in every kind of virtue. Capable of lengthened fasting, conspicuous for humility, and steadfast in faith, he had easily obtained a reputation in the pursuit of virtue equal to that of the monks of old. But by and by, the thought (proceeding from the devil) entered his mind that it would be more proper for him to return to his native land and be the means of saving his only son and his family along with his wife; which surely would be more acceptable to God than if he, content with only rescuing himself from the world, should, not without impiety, neglect the salvation of his friends. Overcome by the plausible appearance of that kind of spurious righteousness, the recluse, after a period of nearly four years, forsook his cell and the end to which he had devoted his life. But on arriving at the nearest monastery, which was inhabited by many brethren, he made known to them, in reply to their questionings, the reason of his departure and the object he had in view. All of them, and especially the Abbot of that place, sought to keep him back; but the intention he had unfortunately formed could not be rooted out of his mind. Accordingly with an unhappy obstinacy he went forth, and, to the grief of all, departed from the brethren. But scarcely had he vanished from their sight, when he was taken possession of by a demon, and vomiting bloody froth from his mouth, he began to lacerate himself with his own teeth. Then, having been carried back to the same monastery on the shoulders of the brethren, when the unclean spirit could not be restrained within its walls, he was, from dire necessity, loaded with iron fetters, being bound both in hands and feet--a punishment not undeserved by a fugitive, inasmuch as chains now restrained him whom faith had not restrained. At length, after two years, having been set free from the unclean spirit by the prayers of the saints, he immediately returned to the desert from which he had departed. In this way he was both himself corrected and was rendered a warning to others, that the shadow of a spurious righteousness might neither delude any one, nor a shifting fickleness of character induce any one, with unprofitable inconstancy, to forsake the course on which he has once entered. And now let it suffice for you to learn these things respecting the various operations of the Lord which he has carried on in the persons of his servants; with the view either of stimulating others to a like kind of conduct, or of deterring them from particular actions. But since I have by this time fully satisfied your ears--have, in fact, been more lengthy than I ought to have been--do you now (upon this he addressed himself to me)--pay me the recompense you owe, by letting us hear you, after your usual fashion, discoursing about your friend Martin, for my longings after this have already for a long time been strongly excited." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXIII.
"What," replied I, "is there not enough about my friend Martin in that book of mine which you know that I published respecting his life and virtues?"
"I own it," said Postumianus, "and that book of yours is never far from my right hand. For if you recognize it, look here--(and so saying he displayed the book which was concealed in his dress)--here it is. This book," added he, "is my companion both by land and sea: it has been my friend and comforter in all my wanderings. But I will relate to you to what places that book has penetrated, and how there is almost no spot upon earth in which the subject of so happy a history is not possessed as a well-known narrative. Paulinus, a man who has the strongest regard for you, was the first to bring it to the city of Rome; and then, as it was greedily laid hold of by the whole city, I saw the booksellers rejoicing over it, inasmuch as nothing was a source of greater gain to them, for nothing commanded a readier sale, or fetched a higher price. This same book, having got a long way before me in the course of my traveling, was already generally read through all Carthage, when I came into Africa. Only that presbyter of Cyrene whom I mentioned did not possess it; but he wrote down its contents from my description. And why should I speak about Alexandria? for there it is almost better known to all than it is to yourself. It has passed through Egypt, Nitria, the Thebaid, and the whole of the regions of Memphis. I found it being read by a certain old man in the desert; and, after I told him that I was your intimate friend, this commission was given me both by him and many other brethren, that, if I should ever again visit this country, and find you well, I should constrain you to supply those particulars which you stated in your book you had passed over respecting the virtues of the sainted man. Come then, as I do not desire you to repeat to me those things which are already sufficiently known from what you have written, let those other points, at my request and that of many others, be fully set forth, which at the time of your writing you passed over, to prevent, as I believe, any feeling of weariness on the part of your readers." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXIV.
"Indeed, Postumianus," replied I, "while I was listening attentively, all this time, to you talking about the excellences of the saints, in my secret thoughts I had my mind turned to my friend Martin, observing on the best of grounds that all those things which different individuals had done separately, were easily and entirely accomplished by that one man alone. For, although you certainly related lofty deeds, I really heard nothing from your lips (may I say it, without offence to these holy men), in which Martin was inferior to any one of them. And while I hold that the excellence of no one of these is ever to be compared with the merits of that man, still this point ought to be attended to, that it is unfair he should be compared, on the same terms, with the recluses of the desert, or even with the anchorites. For they, at freedom from every hindrance, with heaven only and the angels as witnesses, were clearly instructed to perform admirable deeds; he, on the other hand, in the midst of crowds and intercourse with human beings--among quarrelsome clerics, and among furious bishops, while he was harassed with almost daily scandals on all sides, nevertheless stood absolutely firm with unconquerable virtue against all these things, and performed such wonders as not even those accomplished of whom we have heard that they are, or at one time were, in the wilderness. But even had they done things equal to his, what judge would be so unjust as not, on good grounds, to decide that he was the more powerful? For put the case that he was a soldier who fought on unfavorable ground, and yet turned out a conqueror, and compare them, in like manner, to soldiers, who however, contended on equal terms, or even on favorable terms, with the enemy. What then? Although the victory of all is one and the same, the glory of all certainly cannot be equal. And even though you have narrated marvelous things, still you have not stated that a dead man was recalled to life by any one. In this one particular undoubtedly, it must be owned that no one is to be compared with Martin. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXV.
"For, if it is worthy of admiration that the flames did not touch that Egyptian of whom you have spoken, Martin also not infrequently proved his power over fire. If you remind us that the savagery of wild beasts was conquered by, and yielded to, the anchorites, Martin, for his part, was accustomed to keep in check both the fury of wild beasts and the poison of serpents. But, if you bring forward for comparison him who cured those possessed of unclean spirits, by the authority of his word, or even through the instrumentality of threads from his dress, there are many proofs that Martin was not, even in this respect, inferior. Nay, should you have recourse to him, who, covered with his own hair instead of a garment, was thought to be visited by angels, with Martin angels were wont to hold daily discourse. Moreover, he bore so unconquerable a spirit against vanity and boastfulness, that no one more determinedly disdained these vices, and that, although he often, while absent, cured those who were filled with unclean spirits, and issued his commands not only to courtiers or prefects, but also to kings themselves. This was indeed a very small thing amid his other virtues, but I should wish you to believe that no one ever contended more earnestly than he did against not only vanity, but also the causes and the occasions of vanity. I shall also mention what is indeed a small point, but should not be passed over, because it is to the credit of a man who, being possessed of the highest power, manifested such a pious desire to show his regard for the blessed Martin. I remember, then, that Vincentius the prefect, an illustrious man, and one of the most eminent in all Gaul for every kind of virtue, when he had occasion to be in the vicinity of Tours, often begged of Martin that he would allow him to stay with him in the monastery. In making this request, he brought forward the example of Saint Ambrose, the bishop, who was generally spoken of at that time as being in the habit of entertaining both consuls and prefects. But Martin, with deeper judgment, refused so to act, lest by so doing some vanity and inflation of spirit might steal upon him. You, therefore, must acknowledge that there existed in Martin the virtues of all those men whom you have mentioned, but there were not found in all of them the virtues by which Martin was distinguished." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXVI.
"Why do you," here exclaimed Postumianus, "speak to me in such a manner? As if I did not hold the same opinion as yourself, and had not always been of the same mind. I, indeed, as long as I live, and retain my senses, will ever celebrate the monks of Egypt: I will praise the anchorites; I will admire the eremites; but I will place Martin in a position of his own: I do not venture to compare to him any one of the monks, far less any of the bishops. Egypt owns this: Syria and Æthiopia have discovered this: India has heard this; Parthia and Persia have known this; not even Armenia is ignorant of it; the remote Bosphorus is aware of it; and in a word, those are acquainted with it who visit the Fortunate Islands or the Arctic Ocean. All the more wretched on this account is this country of ours, which has not been found worthy to be acquainted with so great a man, although he was in its immediate vicinity. However, I will not include the people at large in this censure: only the clerics, only the priests know nothing of him; and not without reason were they, in their ill-will, disinclined to know him, inasmuch as, had they become acquainted with his virtues they must have recognized their own vices. I shudder to state what I have lately heard, that a miserable man (I know him not), has said that you have told many lies in that book of yours. This is not the voice of a man, but of the devil; and it is not Martin who is, in this way, injured, but faith is taken from the Gospels themselves. For, since the Lord himself testified of works of the kind which Martin accomplished, that they were to be performed by all the faithful, he who does not believe that Martin accomplished such deeds, simply does not believe that Christ uttered such words. But the miserable, the degenerate, the somnolent, are put to shame, that the things which they themselves cannot do, were done by him, and prefer rather to deny his virtues than to confess their own inertness. But let us, as we hasten on to other matters, let go all remembrance of such persons: and do you rather, as I have for a long time desired, proceed to narrate the still untold deeds of Martin."
"Well," said I, "I think that your request would more properly be directed to our friend the Gaul, since he is acquainted with more of Martin's doings than I am--for a disciple could not be ignorant of the deeds of his master--and who certainly owes a return of kindness, not only to Martin, but to both of us, inasmuch as I have already published my book, and you have, so far, related to us the doings of our brethren in the East. Let then, our friend the Gaul commence that detailed account which is due from him: because, as I have said, he both owes us a return in the way of speaking, and will, I believe, do this much for his friend Martin--that he shall, not unwillingly, give a narrative of his deeds." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXVII.
"Well," said the Gaul, "I, for my part, though I am unequal to so great a task, feel constrained by those examples of obedience which have been related above by Postumianus, not to refuse that duty which you impose upon me. But when I reflect that I, a man of Gaul, [107] am about to speak in the presence of natives of Aquitania, I fear lest my somewhat rude form of speech should offend your too delicate ears. However, you will listen to me as a foolish sort [108] of man, who says nothing in an affected or stilted fashion. For if you have conceded to me that I was a disciple of Martin, grant me this also that I be allowed, under the shelter of his example, to despise the vain trappings of speech and ornaments of words."
"Certainly," replied Postumianus, "speak either in Celtic, or in Gaulish, if you prefer it, provided only you speak of Martin. But for my part, I believe, that, even though you were dumb, words would not be wanting to you, in which you might speak of Martin with eloquent lips, just as the tongue of Zacharias was loosed at the naming of John. But as you are, in fact, an orator, [109] you craftily, like an orator, begin by begging us to excuse your unskillfulness, because you really excel in eloquence. But it is not fitting either that a monk should show such cunning, or that a Gaul should be so artful. But to work rather, and set forth what you have still got to say, for we have wasted too much time already in dealing with other matters; and the lengthening shadow of the declining sun warns us that no long portion of day remains till night be upon us. Then, after we had all kept silence for a little, the Gaul thus begins--"I think I must take care in the first place not to repeat those particulars about the virtues of Martin, which our friend Sulpitius there has related in his book. For this reason, I shall pass over his early achievements, when he was a soldier; nor will I touch on those things which he did as a layman and a monk. At the same time, I shall relate nothing which I simply heard from others, but only events of which I myself was an eye-witness." __________________________________________________________________
[107] The word Gaul here must be taken in its more limited sense as denoting only the country of the Celtæ. See the well-known first sentence of Cæsar's Gallic War.
[108] "Gurdonicus": a word said to have been derived from the name of a people in Spain noted for their stolidity.
[109] "Scholasticus." __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Dialogue II.
Concerning the Virtues of St. Martin. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter I.
"Well then, when first, having left the schools, I attached myself to the blessed man, a few days after doing so, we followed him on his way to the church. In the way, a poor man, half-naked in these winter-months, met him, and begged that some clothing might be given him. Then Martin, calling for the chief-deacon, gave orders that the shivering creature should be clothed without delay. After that, entering a private apartment, and sitting down by himself, as his custom was--for he secured for himself this retirement even in the church, liberty being granted to the clerics, since indeed the presbyters were seated in another apartment, either spending their time in mutual [110] courtesies, or occupied in listening to affairs of business. But Martin kept himself in his own seclusion up to the hour at which custom required that the sacred rites should be dispensed to the people. And I will not pass by this point that, when sitting in his retirement, he never used a chair; and, as to the church, no one ever saw him sitting there, as I recently saw a certain man (God is my witness), not without a feeling of shame at the spectacle, seated on a lofty throne, yea, in its elevation, a kind of royal tribunal; but Martin might be seen sitting on a rude little stool, such as those in use by the lowest of servants, which we Gallic country-people call tripets, [111] and which you men of learning, or those at least who are from Greece, call tripods. Well, that poor man who had been chanced upon, as the chief-deacon delayed to give him the garment, rushed into this private apartment of the blessed man, complaining that he had not been attended to by the cleric, and bitterly mourning over the cold he suffered. No delay took place: the holy man, while the other did not observe, secretly drew off his tunic which was below his outer [112] garment, and clothing the poor man with this, told him to go on his way. Then, a little after, the chief-deacon coming in informs him, according to custom, that the people were waiting in the church, and that it was incumbent on him to proceed to the performance of the sacred rites. Martin said to him in reply that it was necessary that the poor man--referring to himself--should be clothed, and that he could not possibly proceed to the church, unless the poor man received a garment. But the deacon, not understanding the true state of the case--that Martin, while outwardly clad with a cloak, was not seen by him to be naked underneath, at last begins to complain that the poor man does not make his appearance. Let the garment which has been got ready,' said Martin, be brought to me; there will not be wanting the poor man requiring to be clothed.' Then, at length, the cleric, constrained by necessity, and now in not the sweetest temper, hurriedly procures a rough [113] garment out of the nearest shop, short and shaggy, and costing only five pieces of silver, and lays it, in wrath at the feet of Martin. See,' cries he, there is the garment, but the poor man is not here.' Martin, nothing moved, bids him go to the door for a little, thus obtaining secrecy, while, in his nakedness, he clothes himself with the garment, striving with all his might to keep secret what he had done. But when do such things remain concealed in the case of the saints desiring that they should be so? Whether they will or not, all are brought to light. __________________________________________________________________
[110] "salutationibus vacantes": this is, in the original, a very confused and obscure sentence.
[111] Halm edits "tripeccias," which may have been the local patois for "tripetias" (ter-pes), corresponding to the Greek tripous, and meaning "a three legged stool."
[112] "Amphibalum": a late Latin word corresponding to the more classical toga.
[113] "bigerricam vestem." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter II.
"Martin, then, clothed in this garment, proceeds to offer the sacrifice [114] to God. And then on that very day--I am about to narrate something wonderful--when he was engaged in blessing the altar, as is usual, we beheld a globe of fire dart from his head, so that, as it rose on high, the flame produced a hair of extraordinary length. And, although we saw this take place on a very famous day in the midst of a great multitude of people, only one of the virgins, one of the presbyters, and only three of the monks, witnessed the sight: but why the others did not behold it is a matter not to be decided by our judgment.
"About the same time, when my uncle Evanthius, a highly Christian man, although occupied in the affairs of this world, had begun to be afflicted with a very serious illness, to the extreme danger of his life, he sent for Martin. And, without any delay, Martin hastened towards him; but, before the blessed man had completed the half of the distance between them, the sick man experienced the power of him that was coming; and, being immediately restored to health, he himself met us as we were approaching. With many entreaties, he detained Martin, who wished to return home on the following day; for, in the meantime, a serpent had struck with a deadly blow a boy belonging to my uncle's family; and Evanthius himself, on his own shoulders, carried him all but lifeless through the force of the poison, and laid him at the feet of the holy man, believing that nothing was impossible to him. By this time, the serpent had diffused its poison through all the members of the boy: one could see his skin swollen in all his veins, and his vitals strung up like a leather-bottle. Martin stretched forth his hand, felt all the limbs of the boy, and placed his finger close to the little wound, at which the animal had instilled the poison. Then in truth--I am going to tell things wonderful--we saw the whole poison, drawn from every part of the body, gather quickly together to Martin's finger; and next, we beheld the poison mixed with blood press through the small puncture of the wound, just as a long line of abundant milk is wont to flow forth from the teats of goats or sheep, when these are squeezed by the hand of shepherds. The boy rose up quite well. We were amazed by so striking a miracle; and we acknowledged--as, indeed, truth compelled us to do--that there was no one under heaven who could equal the deeds of Martin. __________________________________________________________________
[114] "oblaturus sacrificium." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter III.
"In the same way, some time afterwards, we made a journey with him while he visited the various parishes in his diocese. He had gone forward a little by himself, some necessity or other, I know not what, compelling us to keep behind. In the meantime, a state-conveyance, full of military men, was coming along the public highway. But when the animals near the side beheld Martin in his shaggy garment, with a long black cloak over it, being alarmed, they swerved a little in the opposite direction. Then, the reins getting entangled, they threw into confusion those extended lines in which, as you have often seen, those wretched creatures are held together; and as they were with difficulty rearranged, delay, of course, was caused to those people hastening forward. Enraged by this injury, the soldiers, with hasty leaps, made for the ground. And then they began to belabor Martin with whips and staves; and as he, in silence and with incredible patience, submitted his back to them smiting him, this roused the greater fury in these wretches, for they became all the more violent from the fact, that he, as if he did not feel the blows showered upon him, seemed to despise them. He fell almost lifeless to the earth; and we, ere long, found him covered with blood, and wounded in every part of his body. Lifting him up without delay, and placing him upon his own ass, while we execrated the place of that cruel bloodshed, we hastened, off as speedily as possible. In the meantime, the soldiers having returned to their conveyance, after their fury was satisfied, urge the beasts to proceed in the direction in which they had been going. But they all remained fixed to the spot, as stiff as if they had been brazen statues, and although their masters shouted at them, and the sound of their whips echoed on every side, still the animals never moved. These men next all fall to with lashes; in fact, while punishing the mules, they waste all the Gallic whips they had. The whole of the neighboring wood is laid hold of, and the beasts are beaten with enormous cudgels; but these cruel hands still effected nothing: the animals continued to stand in one and the same place like fixed effigies. The wretched men knew not what to do, and they could no longer conceal from themselves that, in some way or other, there was a higher power at work in the bosoms of these brutes, so that they were, in fact, restrained by the interposition of a deity. At length, therefore, returning to themselves, they began to enquire who he was whom but a little before they had scourged at the same place; and when, on pursuing the investigation, they ascertained from those on the way that it was Martin who had been so cruelly beaten by them, then, indeed, the cause of their misfortune appeared manifest to all; and they could no longer doubt that they were kept back on account of the injury done to that man. Accordingly, they all rush after us at full speed, and, conscious of what they had done and deserved, overwhelmed with shame, weeping, and having their heads and faces smeared with the dust with which they themselves had besprinkled their bodies, they cast themselves at Martin's feet, imploring his pardon, and begging that he would allow them to proceed. They added that they had been sufficiently punished by their conscience alone, and that they deeply felt that the earth might swallow them alive in that very spot, or that rather, they, losing all sense, might justly be stiffened into immovable rocks, just as they had seen their beasts of burden fixed to the places in which they stood; but they begged and entreated him to extend to them pardon for their crime, and to allow them to go on their way. The blessed man had been aware, before they came up to us, that they were in a state of detention, and had already informed us of the fact; however, he kindly granted them forgiveness; and, restoring their animals, permitted them to pursue their journey. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IV.
"I have often noticed this, Sulpitius, that Martin was accustomed to say to you, that such an abundance [115] of power was by no means granted him while he was a bishop, as he remembered to have possessed before he obtained that office. Now, if this be true, or rather since it is true, we may imagine how great those things were which, while still a monk, he accomplished, and which, without any witness, he effected apart by himself; since we have seen that, while a bishop, he performed so great wonders before the eyes of all. Many, no doubt, of his former achievements were known to the world, and could not be hid, but those are said to have been innumerable which, while he avoided boastfulness, he kept concealed and did not allow to come to the knowledge of mankind; for, inasmuch as he transcended the capabilities of mere man, in a consciousness of his own eminence, and trampling upon worldly glory, he was content simply to have heaven as a witness of his deeds. That this is true we can judge even from these things which are well known to us, and could not be hid; since e.g. before he became a bishop he restored two dead men to life, facts of which your book has treated pretty fully, but, while he was bishop, he raised up only one, a point which I am surprised you have not noticed. I myself am a witness to this latter occurrence; but, probably, you have no doubts about the matter being duly testified. At any rate, I will set before you the affair as it happened. For some reason, I know not what, we were on our way to the town of the Carnutes. [116] In the meantime, as we pass by a certain village most populous in inhabitants, an enormous crowd went forth to meet us, consisting entirely of heathen; for no one in that village was acquainted with a Christian. Nevertheless, owing to the report of the approach of so great a man, a multitude of those streaming to one point had filled all the widely spreading plains. Martin felt that some work was to be performed; and as the spirit within him was thus moving him, he was deeply excited. He at once began to preach to the heathen the word of God, so utterly different from that of man, often groaning that so great a crowd should be ignorant of the Lord the Saviour. In the meantime, while an incredible multitude had surrounded us, a certain woman, whose son had recently died, began to present, with outstretched hands, the lifeless body to the blessed man, saying, "We know that you are a friend of God: restore me my son, who is my only one." The rest of the multitude joined her, and added their entreaties to those of the mother. Martin perceiving, as he afterwards told us, that he could manifest power, in order to the salvation of those waiting for its display, received the body of the deceased into his own hands; and when, in the sight of all, he had fallen on his knees, and then arose, after his prayer was finished, he restored to its mother the child brought back to life. Then, truly, the whole multitude, raising a shout to heaven, acknowledged Christ as God, and finally began to rush in crowds to the knees of the blessed man, sincerely imploring that he would make them Christians. Nor did he delay to do so. As they were in the middle of the plain, he made them all catechumens, by placing his hand upon the whole of them; while, at the same time, turning to us, he said that, not without reason, were these made catechumens in that plain where the martyrs were wont to be consecrated." __________________________________________________________________
[115] "eam virtutum gratiam."
[116] The Carnutes dwelt on both sides of the Loire, and their chief town, here referred to, was Autricum, now Chartres. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter V.
"You have conquered, O Gaul," said Postumianus, "you have conquered, although certainly not me, who am, on the contrary, an upholder of Martin, and who have always known and believed all these things about that man; but you have conquered all the eremites and anchorites. For no one of them, like your friend, or rather our friend, Martin, ruled over deaths of all [117] kinds. And Sulpitius there justly compared him to the apostles and prophets, inasmuch as the power of his faith, and the works accomplished by his power, bear witness that he was, in all points, like them. But go on, I beg of you, although we can hear nothing more striking than we have heard--still, go on, O Gaul, to set forth what still remains of what you have to say concerning Martin. For the mind is eager to know even the least and commonest of his doings, since there is no doubt that the least of his actions surpass the greatest deeds of others."
"I will do so," replies the Gaul, "but I did not myself witness what I am about to relate, for it took place before I became an associate of Martin's; still, the fact is well known, having been spread through the world by the accounts given by faithful brethren, who were present on the occasion. Well, just about the time when he first became a bishop, a necessity arose for his visiting the imperial [118] court. Valentinian, the elder, then was at the head of affairs. When he came to know that Martin was asking for things which he did not incline to grant, he ordered him to be kept from entering the doors of the palace. Besides his own unkind and haughty temper, his wife Arriana had urged him to this course, and had wholly alienated him from the holy man, so that he should not show him the regard which was due to him. Martin, accordingly, when he had once and again endeavored to procure an interview with the haughty prince, had recourse to his well-known weapons--he clothes himself in sackcloth, scatters ashes upon his person, abstains from food and drink, and gives himself, night and day, to continuous prayer. On the seventh day, an angel appeared to him, and tells him to go with confidence to the palace, for that the royal doors, although closed against him, would open of their own accord, and that the haughty spirit of the emperor would be softened. Martin, therefore, being encouraged by the address of the angel who thus appeared to him, and trusting to his assistance, went to the palace. The doors stood open, and no one opposed his entrance; so that, going in, he came at last into the presence of the king, without any one seeking to hinder him. The king, however, seeing him at a distance as he approached, and gnashing his teeth that he had been admitted, did not, by any means, condescend to rise up as Martin advanced, until fire covered the royal seat, and until the flames seized on a part of the royal person. In this way the haughty monarch is driven from his throne, and, much against his will, rises up to receive Martin. He even gave many embraces to the man whom he had formerly determined to despise, and, coming to a better frame of mind, he confessed that he perceived the exercise of Divine power; without waiting even to listen to the requests of Martin, he granted all he desired before being asked. Afterwards the king often invited the holy man both to conferences and entertainments; and, in the end, when he was about to depart, offered him many presents, which, however, the blessed man, jealously maintaining his own poverty, totally refused, as he did on all similar occasions. __________________________________________________________________
[117] "mortibus."
[118] "adire comitatum": this is a common meaning of comitatus in writers of the period. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VI.
"And as we have, once for all, entered the palace, I shall string together events which there took place, although they happened at different times. And, indeed, it does not seem to me right that I should pass unmentioned the example of admiration for Martin which was shown by a faithful queen. Maximus then ruled the state, a man worthy of being extolled in [119] his whole life, if only he had been permitted to reject a crown thrust upon him by the soldiery in an illegal tumult, or had been able to keep out of civil war. But the fact is, that a great empire can neither be refused without danger, nor can be preserved without war. He frequently sent for Martin, received him into the palace, and treated him with honor; his whole speech with him was concerning things present, things to come, the glory of the faithful, and the immortality of the saints; while, in the meantime, the queen hung upon the lips of Martin, and not inferior to her mentioned in the Gospel, washed the feet of the holy man with tears and wiped them with the hairs of her head. Martin, though no woman had hitherto touched him, could not escape her assiduity, or rather her servile attentions. She did not think of the wealth of the kingdom, the dignity of the empire, the crown, or the purple; only stretched upon the ground, she could not be torn away from the feet of Martin. At last she begs of her husband (saying that both of them should constrain Martin to agree) that all other attendants should be removed from the holy man, and that she alone should wait upon him at meals. Nor could the blessed man refuse too obstinately. His modest entertainment is got up by the hands of the queen; she herself arranges his seat for him; places his table; furnishes him with water for his hands; and serves up the food which she had herself cooked. While he was eating, she, with her eyes fixed on the ground, stood motionless at a distance, after the fashion of servants, displaying in all points the modesty and humility of a ministering servant. She herself mixed for him his drink and presented it. When the meal was over, she collected the fragments and crumbs of the bread that had been used, preferring with true faithfulness these remains to imperial banquets. Blessed woman! worthy, by the display of so great piety, of being compared to her who came from the ends of the earth to hear Solomon, if we merely regard the plain letter of the history. But the faith of the two queens is to be compared (and let it be granted me to say this, setting aside the majesty of the secret [120] truth implied): the one obtained her desire to hear a wise man; the other was thought worthy not only to hear a wise man, but to wait upon him." __________________________________________________________________
[119] Halm's text is here followed. The older texts which read "vir omni vitæ merito prædicandus," seem hardly intelligible.
[120] "Quod mihi liceat separata mysterii majestate dixisse." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VII.
To these sayings Postumianus replies: "While listening to you, O Gaul, I have for a long time been admiring the faith of the queen; but to what does that statement of yours lead, that no woman was ever said to have stood more close to Martin? For let us consider that that queen not only stood near him, but even ministered unto him. I really fear lest those persons who freely mingle among women should to some extent defend themselves by that example."
Then said the Gaul: "Why do you not notice, as grammarians are wont to teach us, the place, the time, and the person? For only set before your eyes the picture of one kept in the palace of the emperor importuned by prayers, constrained by the faith of the queen, and bound by the necessities of the time, to do his utmost that he might set free those shut up in prison, might restore those who had been sent into exile, and might recover goods that had been taken away,--of how much importance do you think that these things should have appeared to a bishop, so as to lead him, in order to the accomplishment of them all, to abate not a little of the rigor of his general scheme of life? However, as you think that some will make a bad use of the example thus furnished them, I shall only say that those will be truly happy if they do not fall short of the excellence of the example in question. For let them consider that the facts of the case are these: once in his life only, and that when in his seventieth year, was Martin served and waited upon at his meals, not by a free sort of widow, nor by a wanton virgin, but by a queen, who lived under the authority of a husband, and who was supported in her conduct by the entreaties of her husband, that she might be allowed so to act. It is further to be observed that she did not recline with Martin at the entertainment, nor did she venture even to partake in the feast, but simply gave her services in waiting upon him. Learn, therefore, the proper course; let a matron serve thee, and not rule thee; and let her serve, but not recline along with thee; just as Martha, of whom we read, waited upon the Lord without being called to partake in the feast: nay, she who chose rather simply to hear the word was preferred to her that served. But in the case of Martin, the queen spoken of fulfilled both parts: she both served like Martha and listened like Mary. If any one, then, desires to make use of this example, let him keep to it in all particulars; let the cause be the same, the person the same, the service the same, and the entertainment the same,--and let the thing occur once only in one's whole life." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VIII.
"Admirably," exclaimed Postumianus, "does your speech bind those friends of ours from going beyond the example of Martin; but I own to you my belief that these remarks of yours will fall upon deaf ears. For if we were to follow the ways of Martin, we should never need to defend ourselves in the case of kissing, and we should be free from all the reproaches of sinister opinion. But as you are wont to say, when you are accused of being too fond of eating, We are Gauls,' so we, for our part, who dwell in this district, will never be reformed either by the example of Martin, or by your dissertations. But while we have been discussing these points at so great length, why do you, Sulpitius, preserve such an obstinate silence?"
"Well, for my part," replied I, "I not only keep silence, but for a long time past I have determined to be silent upon such points. For, because I rebuked a certain spruce gadding-about widow, who dressed expensively, and lived in a somewhat loose manner, and also a virgin, who was following somewhat indecently a certain young man who was dear to me,--although, to be sure, I had often heard her blaming others who acted in such a manner,--I raised up against me such a degree of hatred on the part of all the women and all the monks, that both bands entered upon sworn war against me. Wherefore, be quiet, I beg of you, lest even what we are saying should tend to increase their animosity towards me. Let us entirely blot out these people from our memory, and let us rather return to Martin. Do thou, friend Gaul, as you have begun, carry out the work you have taken in hand."
Then says he: "I have really related already so many things to you, that my speech ought to have satisfied your desires; but, because I am not at liberty to refuse compliance with your wishes, I shall continue to speak as long as the day lasts. For, in truth, when I glance at that straw, which is being prepared for our beds, there comes into my mind a recollection respecting the straw on which Martin had lain, that a miracle was wrought in connection with it. The affair took place as follows. Claudiomagus is a village on the confines of the Bituriges and the Turoni. The church there is celebrated for the piety of the saints, and is not less illustrious for the multitude of the holy virgins. Well, Martin, being in the habit of passing that way, had an apartment in the private part of the church. After he left, all the virgins used to rush into that retirement: they kiss [121] every place where the blessed man had either sat or stood, and distribute among themselves the very straw on which he had lain. One of them, a few days afterwards, took a part of the straw which she had collected for a blessing to herself, and hung it from the neck of a possessed person, whom a spirit of error was troubling. There was no delay; but sooner than one could speak the demon was cast out, and the person was cured. __________________________________________________________________
[121] "adlambunt": perhaps only "touch." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IX.
"About the same time, a cow which a demon harassed met Martin as he was returning from Treves. That cow, leaving its proper herd, was accustomed to attack human beings, and had already seriously gored many with its horns. Now, when she was coming near us, those who followed her from a distance began to warn us, with a loud voice, to beware of her. But after she had in great fury come pretty near to us, with rage in her eyes, Martin, lifting up his hand, ordered the animal to halt, and she immediately stood stock-still at his word. Upon this, Martin perceived a demon sitting upon her back, and reproving it, he exclaimed, Begone, thou deadly being; leave the innocent beast, and cease any longer to torment it.' The evil spirit obeyed and departed. And the heifer had sense enough to understand that she was set free; for, peace being restored to her, she fell at the feet of the holy man; and on Martin directing her, she made for her own herd, and, quieter than any sheep, she joined the rest of the band. This also was the time at which he had no sensation of being burnt, although placed in the midst of the flames; but I do not think it necessary for me to give an account of this, because Sulpitius there, though passing over it in his book, has nevertheless pretty fully narrated it in the epistle which he sent to Eusebius, who was then a presbyter, and is now a bishop. I believe, Postumianus, you have either read this letter, or, if it is still unknown to you, you may easily obtain it, when you please, from the bookcase. I shall simply narrate particulars which he has omitted.
"Well, on a certain occasion, when he was going round the various parishes, we came upon a band of huntsmen. The dogs were pursuing a hare, and the little animal was already much exhausted by the long run it had had. When it perceived no means of escape in the plains spreading far on every side, and was several times just on the point of being captured, it tried to delay the threatened death by frequent doublings. Now the blessed man pitied the danger of the creature with pious feelings, and commanded the dogs to give up following it, and to permit it to get safe away. Instantly, at the first command they heard, they stood quite still: one might have thought them bound, or rather arrested, so as to stand immovable in their own footprints. In this way, through her pursuers being stopped as if tied together, the hare got safe away. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter X.
"Moreover, it will be worth while to relate also some of his familiar sayings, since they were all salted with spiritual instruction. He happened to see a sheep [122] that had recently been sheared; and, See,' says he, she has fulfilled the precept of the Gospel: she had two coats, and one of them she has given to him who had none: thus, therefore, ye ought also to do.' Also, when he perceived a swineherd in a garment of skin, cold and, in fact, all but naked, he exclaimed: Look at Adam, cast out of Paradise, how he feeds his swine in a garment of skin; but let us, laying aside that old Adam, who still remains in that man, rather put on the new Adam.' Oxen had, in one part, eaten up the grass of the meadows; pigs also had dug up some portions of them with their snouts; while the remaining portion, which continued uninjured, flourished, as if painted with variously tinted flowers. That part,' said he, which has been eaten down by cattle, although it has not altogether lost the beauty of grass, yet retains no grandeur of flowers, conveys to us a representation of marriage; that part, again, which the pigs, unclean animals, had dug up, presents a loathsome picture of fornication; while the remaining portion, which had sustained no injury, sets forth the glory of virginity;--it flourishes with abundance of grass; the fruits of the field abound in it; and, decked with flowers to the very extreme of beauty, it shines as if adorned with glittering gems. Blessed is such beauty and worthy of God; for nothing is to be compared with virginity. Thus, then, those who set marriage side by side with fornication grievously err; and those who think that marriage is to be placed on an equal footing with virginity are utterly wretched and foolish. But this distinction must be maintained by wise people, that marriage belongs to those things which may be excused, while virginity points to glory, and fornication must incur punishment unless its guilt is purged away through atonement.' __________________________________________________________________
[122] Halm has here an unintelligible reading, probably a misprint--"quem recens tonsam forte conspexerat." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XI.
"A certain soldier had renounced the military [123] life in the Church, having professed himself a monk, and had erected a cell for himself at a distance in the desert, as if with the purpose of leading the life of an eremite. But in course of time the crafty adversary harassed his unspiritual [124] nature with various thoughts, to the effect that, changing his mind, he should express a desire that his wife, whom Martin had ordered to have a place in the nunnery [125] of the young women, should rather dwell along with him. The courageous eremite, therefore, visits Martin, and makes known to him what he had in his mind. But Martin denied very strongly that a woman could, in inconsistent fashion, be joined again to a man who was now a monk, and not a husband. At last, when the soldier was insisting on the point in question; asserting that no evil would follow from carrying out his purpose; that he simply desired to possess the solace of his wife's company; and that there was no fear of his again returning to his own pursuits; adding that he was a soldier of Christ, and that she also had taken the oath of allegiance in the same service; and that the bishop therefore should allow to serve as soldiers together people who were saints, and who, in virtue of their faith, totally ignored the question of sex,--then Martin (I am going to repeat his very words to you) exclaimed: Tell me if you have ever been in war, and if you have ever stood in the line of battle?' In answer he said, Frequently; I have often stood in line of battle, and been present in war.' On this Martin replies: Well, then, tell me, did you ever in a line which was prepared with arms for battle, or, having already advanced near, was fighting against a hostile army with drawn sword--did you ever see any woman standing there, or fighting?' Then at length the soldier became confused and blushed, while he gave thanks that he had not been permitted to follow his own evil counsel, and at the same time had not been put right by the use of any harsh language, but by a true and rational analogy, connected with the person of a soldier. Martin, for his part, turning to us (for a great crowd of brethren had surrounded him), said: Let not a woman enter the camp of men, but let the line of soldiers remain separate, and let the females, dwelling in their own tent, be remote from that of men. For this renders an army ridiculous, if a female crowd is mixed with the regiments of men. Let the soldier occupy the line, let the soldier fight in the plain, but let the woman keep herself within the protection of the walls. She, too, certainly has her own glory, if, when her husband is absent, she maintains her chastity; and the first excellence, as well as completed victory of that, is, that she should not be seen.' __________________________________________________________________
[123] "cingulum": lit. a girdle, or sword-belt, and then put for military service.
[124] "brutum pectus": the word seems to refer to the man as psuchikos, in opposition to pneumatikos.
[125] "monasterio." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XII.
"I believe, my dear Sulpitius, that you remember with what emphasis he extolled to us (when you too were present) that virgin who had so completely withdrawn herself from the eyes of all men, that she did not admit to her presence Martin himself, when he wished to visit her in the discharge of duty. For when he was passing by the little property, within which for several years she had chastely confined herself, having heard of her faith and excellence, he turned out of his way that, as a bishop, he might honor, with pious respect, a gift of such eminent merit. We who journeyed with him thought that that virgin would rejoice, inasmuch as she was to obtain such a testimony to her virtue, while a priest of so great reputation, departing from his usual rigor of conduct, paid her a visit. But she did not relax those bonds of a most severe method of life, which she had imposed upon herself, even by allowing herself to see Martin. And thus the blessed man, having received, through another woman, her praiseworthy apology, joyfully departed from the doors of her who had not permitted herself to be seen or saluted. O glorious virgin, who did not allow herself to be looked upon even by Martin! O blessed Martin, who did not regard that repulse as being any insult to himself, but, extolling with exultant heart her excellence, rejoiced in an example only too rare in that locality! Well, when approaching night had compelled us to stay at no great distance from her humble dwelling, that same virgin sent a present to the blessed man; and Martin did what he had never done before (for he accepted a present or gift from nobody), he refused none of those things which the estimable virgin had sent him, declaring that her blessing was by no means to be rejected by a priest, since she was indeed to be placed before many priests. Let, I beg, virgins listen to that example, so that they shall, if they desire to close their doors to the wicked, even shut them against the good; and that the ill-disposed may have no free access to them, they shall not fear even to exclude priests from their society. Let the whole world listen attentively to this: a virgin did not permit herself to be looked upon by Martin. And it was no common [126] priest whom she repulsed, but the girl refused to come under the eyes of a man whom it was the salvation of onlookers to behold. But what priest, besides Martin, would not have regarded this as doing an injury to him? What irritation and fury would he have conceived in his mind against that virgin? He would have deemed her a heretic; and would have resolved that she should be laid under an anathema. And how surely would such a man have preferred to that blessed soul those virgins who are always throwing themselves in the way of the priest, who get up sumptuous entertainments, and who recline at table with the rest! But whither is my speech carrying me? That somewhat too free manner of speaking must be checked, lest perchance it may give offense to some; for words of reproach will not profit the unfaithful, while the example quoted will be enough for the faithful. At the same time, I wish so to extol the virtue of this virgin, as nevertheless to think that no deduction is to be made from the excellence of those others, who often came from remote regions for the purpose of seeing Martin, since indeed, with the same object in view, even angels ofttimes visited the blessed man. __________________________________________________________________
[126] "quemcumque," in the sense of qualemcumque, which is, in fact, found in some of the mss. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIII.
"But in what I am now about to narrate, I possess you, Sulpitius" (here he looked at me) "as a fellow-witness. One day, I and Sulpitius there were watching before Martin's door, and had already sat in silence for several hours. We did so with deep reverence and awe, as if we were carrying out a watch prescribed to us before the tent of an angel; while, all the time, the door of his cell being closed, he did not know that we were there. Meanwhile, we heard the sound of people conversing, and by and by we were filled with a kind of awe and amazement, for we could not help perceiving that something divine was going on. After nearly two hours, Martin comes out to us; and then our friend Sulpitius (for no one was accustomed to speak to him more familiarly) began to entreat him to make known to us, piously enquiring on the subject, what meant that sort of Divine awe which we confessed we had both felt, and with whom he had been conversing in his cell. We added that, as we stood before the door, we had undoubtedly heard a feeble sound of people talking, but had scarcely understood it. Then he after a long delay (but there was really nothing which Sulpitius could not extort from him even against his will: I am about to relate things somewhat difficult of belief, but, as Christ is my witness, I lie not, unless any one is so impious as to think that Martin himself lied) said: I will tell you, but I beg you will not speak of it to any one else. Agnes, Thecla, and Mary were there with me.' He proceeded to describe to us the face and general aspect of each. And he acknowledged that, not merely on that day, but frequently, he received visits from them. Nor did he deny that Peter also and Paul, the Apostles, were pretty frequently seen by him. Moreover, he was in the habit of rebuking the demons by their special names, according as they severally came to him. He found Mercury a cause of special annoyance, while he said that Jupiter was stupid and doltish. I am aware that these things seemed incredible even to many who dwelt in the same monastery; and far less can I expect that all who simply hear of them will believe them. For unless Martin had lived such an inestimable life, and displayed such excellence, he would by no means be regarded among us as having been endowed with so great glory. And yet it is not at all wonderful that human infirmity doubted concerning the works of Martin, when we see that many at the present day do not even believe the Gospels. But we have ourselves had personal knowledge and experience, that angels often appeared and spoke familiarly with Martin. As bearing upon this, I am to narrate a matter, of small importance indeed, but still I will state it. A synod, composed of bishops, was held at Nemausus, and while he had refused to attend it, he was nevertheless desirous of knowing what was done at it. It so happened that our friend Sulpitius was then on board ship with him, but, as was his custom, he kept his place at a distance from the rest, in a retired part of the vessel. There an angel announced to him what had taken place in the synod. And when, afterwards, we carefully enquired into the time at which the council was held, we found, beyond all doubt, that that was the very day of the council, and that those things were there decreed by the bishops which the angel had announced to Martin. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIV.
"But when we questioned him concerning the end of the world, he said to us that Nero and Antichrist have first to come; that Nero will rule in the Western portion of the world, after having subdued ten kings; and that a persecution will be carried on by him, with the view of compelling men to worship the idols of the Gentiles. He also said that Antichrist, on the other hand, would first seize upon the empire of the East, having his seat and the capital of his kingdom at Jerusalem; while both the city and the temple would be restored by him. He added that his persecution would have for its object to compel men to deny Christ as God, while he maintained rather that he himself was Christ, and ordered all men to be circumcised, according to the law. He further said that Nero was to be destroyed by Antichrist, and that the whole world, and all nations, were to be reduced under the power of Antichrist, until that impious one should be overthrown by the coming of Christ. He told us, too, that there was no doubt but that Antichrist, having been conceived by an evil spirit, was already born, and had, by this time, reached the years of boyhood, while he would assume power as soon as he reached the proper age. Now, this is the eighth year since we heard these words from his lips: you may conjecture, then, how nearly about to happen are those things which are feared in the future."
As our friend the Gaul was emphatically speaking thus, and had not yet finished what he intended to relate, a boy of the family entered with the announcement that the presbyter Refrigerius was standing at the door. We began to doubt whether it would be better to hear the Gaul further, or to go and welcome that man whom we so greatly loved, and who had come to pay his respects to us, when our friend the Gaul remarked: "Even although this most holy priest had not arrived, this talk of ours would have had to be cut short, for the approach of night was itself urging us to finish the discourse which has been so far continued. But inasmuch as all things bearing upon the excellences of Martin have by no means yet been mentioned, let what you have heard suffice for to-day: to-morrow we shall proceed to what remains." This promise of our Gallic friend being equally acceptable to us all, we rose up. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Dialogue III.
The Virtues of Martin Continued. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter I.
"It is daylight, our Gallic friend, and you must get up. For, as you see, both Postumianus is urgent, and this presbyter, who was yesterday admitted to hear what was going on, expects that what you put off narrating with regard to our beloved Martin till to-day, you should now, in fulfillment of your promise, proceed to tell. He is not, indeed, ignorant of all the things which are to be related, but knowledge is sweet and pleasant even to one who goes over again things already known to him; since, indeed, it has been so arranged by nature that one rejoices with a better conscience in his knowledge of things which he is sure, through the testimony borne to them by many, are not in any degree uncertain. For this man, too, having been a follower of Martin from his early youth, has indeed been acquainted with all his doings; but he gladly hears over again things already known. And I will confess to thee, O Gaul, that the virtues of Martin have often been heard of by me, since, in fact, I have committed to writing many things regarding him; but through the admiration I feel for his deeds, those things are always new to me which, although I have already heard them, are, over and over again, repeated concerning him. Wherefore, we congratulate you that Refrigerius has been added to us as a hearer, all the [127] more earnestly that Postumianus is manifesting such eagerness, because he hastens, as it were, to convey a knowledge of these things to the East, and is now to hear the truth from you confirmed, so to speak, by witnesses."
As I was saying these words, and as the Gaul was now ready to resume his narrative, there rushes in upon us a crowd of monks, Evagrius the presbyter, Aper, Sabbatius, Agricola; and, a little after, there enters the presbyter Ætherius, with Calupio the deacon, and Amator the subdeacon; lastly, Aurelius the presbyter, a very dear friend of mine, who came from a longer distance, rushes up out of breath. "Why," I enquire, "do you so suddenly and unexpectedly run together to us from so many different quarters, and at so early an hour in the morning?" "We," they reply, "heard yesterday that your friend the Gaul spent the whole day in narrating the virtues of Martin, and, as night overtook him, put off the rest until to-day: wherefore, we have made haste to furnish him with a crowded audience, as he speaks about such interesting matters." In the meantime, we are informed that a multitude of lay people are standing at the door, not venturing to enter, but begging, nevertheless, that they might be admitted. Then Aper declares, "It is by no means proper that these people should be mixed up with us, for they have come to hear, rather from curiosity than piety." I was grieved for the sake of those who ought not, as he thought, to be admitted, but all that I could obtain, and with difficulty, was that they should admit Eucherius from among the lieutenants, [128] and Celsus, a man of consular rank, while the rest were kept back. We then place the Gaul in the middle seat; and he, after long keeping silence, in harmony with his well-known modesty, at length began as follows. __________________________________________________________________
[127] The original here is very obscure.
[128] "ex vicariis." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter II.
"You have assembled, my pious and eloquent friends, to hear me; but, as I presume, you have brought to the task religious rather than learned ears; for you are to listen to me simply as a witness to the faith, and not as speaking with the fluency of an orator. Now, I shall not repeat the things which were spoken yesterday: those who did not hear them can become acquainted with them by means of the written records. Postumianus expects something new, intending to make known what he hears to the East, that it may not, when Martin is brought into comparison, esteem itself above the West. And first, my mind inclines to set forth an incident respecting which Refrigerius has just whispered in my ear: the affair took place in the city of Carnutes. A certain father of a family ventured to bring to Martin his daughter of twelve years old, who had been dumb from her birth, begging that the blessed man would loose, by his pious merits, her tongue, which was thus tied. He, giving way to the bishops Valentinus and Victricius, who then happened to be by his side, declared that he was unequal to so great an undertaking, but that nothing was impossible to them, as if holier than himself. But they, adding their pious entreaties, with suppliant voices, to those of the father, begged Martin to accomplish what was hoped for. He made no further delay,--being admirable in both respects, in the display, first of all, of humility, and then in not putting off a pious duty,--but orders the crowd of people standing round to be removed; and while the bishops only, and the father of the girl, were present, he prostrates himself in prayer, after his usual fashion. He then blesses a little oil, while he utters the formula of exorcism; and holding the tongue of the girl with his fingers, he thus pours the consecrated liquid into her mouth. Nor did the result of the power thus exerted disappoint the holy man. He asks her the name of her father, and she instantly replied. The father cries out, embracing the knees of Martin, with a mixture of joy and tears; and while all around are amazed, he confesses that then for the first time he listened to the voice of his daughter. And that this may not appear incredible to any one, let Evagrius, who is here, furnish you with a testimony of its truth; for the thing took place in his very presence. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter III.
"The following is a small matter which I learned lately from the narration of Arpagius the presbyter, but I do not think it ought to be passed over. The wife of the courtier Avitianus had sent some oil to Martin, that he might bless it (such is the custom) so as to be ready when needful to meet different causes of disease. It was contained in a glass jar of a shape which, round throughout, gradually bulges [129] out towards the middle, with a long neck; but the hollow of the extended neck was not filled, because it is the custom to fill vessels of the kind in such a way that the top may be left free for the knobs which stop up the jar. The presbyter testified that he saw the oil increase under the blessing of Martin, so much that, the abundance of it overflowing the jar, it ran down from the top in every direction. He added that it bubbled up with the same [130] effect, while the vessel was being carried back to the mistress of the household; for the oil so steadily flowed over in the hands of the boy carrying it, that the abundance of the liquid, thus pouring down, covered all his garment. He said, moreover, that the lady received the vessel so full even to the brim, that (as the same presbyter tells [131] us at the present day) there was no room in that jar for inserting the stopper by which people are accustomed to close those vessels, the contents of which are to be preserved with special care. That, too, was a remarkable thing that happened to this man." Here he looked at me. "He had set down a glass vessel containing oil blessed by Martin in a pretty high window; and a boy of the family, not knowing that a jar was there, drew towards him the cloth covering it, with rather much violence. The vessel, in consequence, fell down on the marble pavement. Upon this, all were filled with dread lest the blessing of God, bestowed on the vessel by Martin, had been lost; but the jar was found as safe as ever, just as if it had fallen on the softest feathers. Now, this result should be ascribed, not so much to chance, as to the power of Martin, whose blessing could not possibly perish.
"There is this, too, which was effected by a certain person, whose name, because he is present, and has forbidden it to be mentioned, shall be suppressed: Saturninus too, who is now with us, was present on the occasion referred to. A dog was barking at us in a somewhat disagreeable manner. ' I command thee,' said the person in question, in the name of Martin, to be quiet.' The dog--his barking seemed to stick in his throat, and one might have thought that his tongue had been cut out--was silent. Thus it is really a small matter that Martin himself performed miracles: believe me that other people also have accomplished many things in his name. __________________________________________________________________
[129] The text of this sentence is very uncertain, and the meaning somewhat obscure.
[130] Here, again, the text is in confusion.
[131] Text and meaning both very obscure. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IV.
"You knew the too barbarous and, beyond measure, bloody ferocity of Avitianus, a former courtier. He enters the city of the Turones with a furious spirit, while rows of people, laden with chains, followed him with melancholy looks, orders various kinds of punishments to be got ready for slaying them; and to the grave amazement of the city, he arranges them for the sad work on the following day. When this became known to Martin, he set out all alone, a little before midnight, for the palace of that beast. But when, in the silence of the depths of the night, and as all were at rest, no entrance was possible through the bolted doors, he lays himself down before that cruel threshold. In the meantime, Avitianus, buried in deep sleep, is smitten by an assailing angel, who says to him, Does the servant of God lie at your threshold, and do you continue sleeping?' He, on listening to these words, rises, in much disturbance, from his bed; and calling his servants, he exclaims in terror, Martin is at the door: go immediately, and undo the bolts, that the servant of God may suffer no harm.' But they, in accordance with the tendency of all servants, having scarcely stepped beyond the first threshold, and laughing at their master as having been mocked by a dream, affirm that there was no one at the door. This they did as simply inferring from their own disposition, that no one could be keeping watch through the night, while far less did they believe that a priest was lying at the threshold of another man during the horror of that night. Well, they easily persuaded Avitianus of the truth of their story. He again sinks into sleep; but, being ere long struck with greater violence than before, he exclaimed that Martin was standing at the door, and that, therefore, no rest either of mind or body was allowed him. As the servants delayed, he himself went forward to the outer threshold; and there he found Martin, as he had thought he would. The wretched man, struck by the display of so great excellence, exclaimed, Why, sir, have you done this to me? There is no need for you to speak: I know what you wish: I see what you require: depart as quickly as possible, lest the anger of heaven consume me on account of the injury done you: I have already suffered sufficient punishment. Believe me, that I have firmly determined in my own mind how I should now proceed.' So then, after the departure of the holy man, he calls for his officials and orders all the prisoners to be set free, while presently he himself went his way. Thus Avitianus being put to flight, the city rejoiced, and felt at liberty. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter V.
"While these are certain facts, since Avitianus related them to many persons, they are further confirmed on this ground that Refrigerius the presbyter, whom you see here present, lately had them narrated to him, under an appeal to the Divine majesty, by Dagridus, a faithful man among the tribunes, who swore that the account was given him by Avitianus himself. But I do not wish you to wonder that I do to-day what I did not do yesterday; viz. that I subjoin to the mention of every individual wonder the names of witnesses, and mention persons to whom, if any one is inclined to disbelieve, he may have recourse, because they are still in the body. The unbelief of very many has compelled that; for they are said to hesitate about some things which were related yesterday. Let these people, then, accept as witnesses persons who are still alive and well, and let them give more credit to such, inasmuch as they doubt our good faith. But really, if they are so unbelieving, I give it as my opinion that they will not believe even the witnesses named. And yet I am surprised that any one, who has even the least sense of religion, can venture on such wickedness as to think that any one could tell lies concerning Martin. Be that far from every one who lives in obedience to God; for, indeed, Martin does not require to be defended by falsehoods. But, O Christ, we lay the truth of our whole discourse before thee, to the effect that we neither have said, nor will say, anything else than what either we ourselves have witnessed, or have learned from undoubted authorities, and, indeed, very frequently from Martin himself. But although we have adopted the form of a dialogue, in order that the style might be varied to prevent weariness, still we affirm that we are really setting forth [132] a true history in a dutiful spirit. The unbelief of some has compelled me, to my great regret, to insert in my narrative these remarks which are apart from the subject in hand. But let the discourse now return to our assembly; in which since I saw that I was listened to so eagerly, I found it necessary to acknowledge that Aper acted properly in keeping back the unbelieving, under the conviction he had that those only ought to be allowed to hear who were of a believing spirit. __________________________________________________________________
[132] "nos pie præstruere profitemur historiæ veritatem." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VI.
"I am enraged in heart, believe me, and, through vexation, I seem to lose my senses: do Christian men not believe in the miraculous powers of Martin, which the demons acknowledged?
"The monastery of the blessed man was at two miles' distance from the city; but if, as often as he was to come to the church, he only had set his foot outside the threshold of his cell, one could perceive the possessed roaring through the whole church, and the bands of guilty [133] ones trembling as if their judge were coming, so that the groanings of the demons announced the approach of the bishop to the clerics, who were not previously aware that he was coming. I saw a certain man snatched up into the air on the approach of Martin, and suspended there with his hands stretched upwards, so that he could in no way touch the ground with his feet. But if at any time Martin undertook the duty of exorcising the demons, he touched no one with his hands, and reproached no one in words, as a multitude of expressions is generally rolled forth by the clerics; but the possessed, being brought up to him, he ordered all others to depart, and the doors being bolted, clothed in sackcloth and sprinkled with ashes, he stretched himself on the ground in the midst of the church, and turned to prayer. Then truly might one behold the wretched beings tortured with various results--some hanging, as it were, from a cloud, with their feet turned upwards, and yet their garments did not fall down over their faces, lest the part of their body which was exposed should give rise to shame; while in another part of the church one could see them tortured without any question being addressed to them, and confessing their crimes. They revealed their names, too, of their own accord; one acknowledged that he was Jupiter, and another that he was Mercury. Finally, one could see all the servants of the devil suffering agony, along with their master, so that we could not help acknowledging that in Martin there was fulfilled that which is written that the saints shall judge angels.' __________________________________________________________________
[133] "agmina damnanda." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VII.
"There was a certain village in the country of the Senones which was every year annoyed with hail. The inhabitants, constrained by an extreme of suffering, sought help from Martin. A highly respectable embassy was sent to him by Auspicius, a man of the rank of prefect, whose fields the storm had been wont to smite more severely than it did those of others. But Martin, having there offered up prayer, so completely freed the whole district from the prevailing plague, that for twenty years, in which he afterwards remained in the body, no one in those places suffered from hail. And that this may not be thought to be accidental, but rather effected by Martin, the tempest, returning afresh, once more fell upon the district in the year in which he died. The world thus felt the departure of a believing man to such a degree, that, as it justly rejoiced in his life, so it also bewailed his death. But if any hearer, weak in faith, demands also witnesses to prove those things which we have said, I will bring forward, not one man, but many thousands, and will even summon the whole region of the Senones to bear witness to the power which was experienced. But not to speak of this, you, presbyter Refrigerius, remember, I believe, that we lately had a conversation, concerning the matter referred to, with Romulus, the son of that Auspicius I mentioned, an honored and religious man. He related the points in question to us, as if they had not been previously known; and as he was afraid of constant losses in future harvests, he did, as you yourself beheld, regret, with much lamentation, that Martin was not preserved up to this time. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VIII.
"But to return to Avitianus: while at every other place, and in all other cities, he displayed marks of horrible cruelty, at Tours alone he did no harm. Yes, that beast, which was nourished by human blood, and by the slaughter of unfortunate creatures, showed himself meek and peaceable in the presence of the blessed man. I remember that Martin one day came to him, and having entered his private apartment, he saw a demon of marvelous size sitting behind his back. Blowing upon him from a distance (if I may, as a matter of necessity, make use of a word which is hardly Latin [134] , Avitianus thought that he was blowing at him, and exclaimed, Why, thou holy man, dost thou treat me thus?' But then Martin said, It is not at you, but at him who, in all his terribleness, leans over your neck.' The devil gave way, and left his familiar seat; and it is well known that, ever after that day, Avitianus was milder, whether because he now understood that he had always been doing the will of the devil sitting by him, or because the unclean spirit, driven from his seat by Martin, was deprived of the power of attacking him; while the servant was ashamed of his master, and the master did not force on his servant.
"In a village of the Ambatienses, that is in an old stronghold, which is now largely inhabited by brethren, you know there is a great idol-temple built up with labor. The building had been constructed of the most polished stones and furnished with turrets; and, rising on high in the form of a cone, it preserved the superstition of the place by the majesty of the work. The blessed man had often enjoined its destruction on Marcellus, who was there settled as presbyter. Returning after the lapse of some time, he reproved the presbyter, because the edifice of the idol-temple was still standing. He pleaded in excuse that such an immense structure could with difficulty be thrown down by a band of soldiers, or by the strength of a large body of the public, and far less should Martin think it easy for that to be effected by means of weak clerics or helpless monks. Then Martin, having recourse to his well-known auxiliaries, spent the whole night in watching and prayer--with the result that, in the morning, a storm arose, and cast down even to its foundations the idol-temple. Now let this narrative rest on the testimony of Marcellus. __________________________________________________________________
[134] "exsufflans." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IX.
"I will make use of another not dissimilar marvel in a like kind of work, having the concurrence of Refrigerius in doing so. Martin was prepared to throw down a pillar of immense size, on the top of which an idol stood, but there was no means by which effect could be given to his design. Well, according to his usual practice, he betakes himself to prayer. It is undoubted that then a column, to a certain degree like the other, rushed down from heaven, and falling upon the idol, it crushed to powder the whole of the seemingly indestructible mass: this would have been a small matter, had he only in an invisible way made use of the powers of heaven, but these very powers were beheld by human eyes serving Martin in a visible manner.
"Again, the same Refrigerius is my witness that a woman, suffering from an issue of blood, when she had touched the garment of Martin, after the example of the woman mentioned in the Gospel, was cured in a moment of time.
"A serpent, cutting its way through a river, was swimming towards the bank on which we had taken our stand. In the name of the Lord,' said Martin, I command thee to return.' Instantly, at the word of the holy man, the venomous beast turned round, and while we looked on, swam across to the farther bank. As we all perceived that this had not happened without a miracle; he groaned deeply, and exclaimed, Serpents hear me, but men will not hear.' __________________________________________________________________
Chapter X.
"Being accustomed to eat fish at the time of Easter, he enquired a little before the hour for refreshment, whether it was in readiness. Then Cato, the deacon, to whom the outward management of the monastery belonged, and who was himself a skillful fisher, tells him that no capture had fallen to his lot the whole day, and that other fishers, who used to sell what they caught, had also been able to do nothing. Go,' said he, let down your line, and a capture will follow.' As Sulpitius there has already described, we had our dwelling close to the river. We all went, then, as these were holidays, to see our friend fishing, with the hopes of all on the stretch, that the efforts would not be in vain by which, under the advice of Martin himself, it was sought to obtain fish for his use. At the first throw the deacon drew out, in a very small net, an enormous pike, and ran joyfully back to the monastery, with the feeling undoubtedly to which some poet gave utterance (for we use a learned verse, inasmuch as we are conversing with learned people)--And brought his captive boar [135] to wondering Argos.'
"Truly that disciple of Christ, imitating the miracles performed by the Saviour, and which he, by way of example, set before the view of his saints, showed Christ also working in him, who, glorifying his own holy follower everywhere, conferred upon that one man the gifts of various graces. Arborius, of the imperial bodyguard, testifies that he saw the hand of Martin as he was offering sacrifice, clothed, as it seemed, with the noblest gems, while it glittered with a purple light; and that, when his right hand was moved, he heard the clash of the gems, as they struck together. __________________________________________________________________
[135] "captivum suem." Probably there is here an allusion to the capture of the Erymanthian boar by Hercules, with a punning reference to a secondary meaning of sus as a kind of fish. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XI.
"I will now come to an event which he always concealed, owing to the character of the times, but which he could not conceal from us. In the matter referred to, there is this of a miraculous nature, that an angel conversed, face to face, with him. The Emperor Maximus, while in other respects doubtless a good man, was led astray by the advices of some priests after Priscillian had been put to death. He, therefore, protected by his royal power Ithacius the bishop, who had been the accuser of Priscillian, and others of his confederates, whom it is not necessary to name. The emperor thus prevented every one from bringing it as a charge against Ithacius, that, by his instrumentality, a man of any sort had been condemned to death. Now Martin, constrained to go to the court by many serious causes of people involved in suffering, incurred the whole force of the storm which was there raging. The bishops who had assembled at Treves were retained in that city, and daily communicating with Ithacius, they had made common cause with him. When it was announced to them expecting no such information, that Martin was coming, completely losing courage, they began to mutter and tremble among themselves. And it so happened that already, under their influence, the emperor had determined to send some tribunes armed with absolute power into the two Spains, to search out heretics, and, when found, to deprive them of their life or goods. Now there was no doubt that that tempest would also make havoc of multitudes of the real saints, little distinction being made between the various classes of individuals. For in such circumstances, a judgment was formed simply by appearances, so that one was deemed a heretic rather on his turning pale from fear, or wearing a particular garment, than by the faith which he professed. And the bishops were well aware that such proceedings would by no means please Martin; but, conscious of evil as they were, this was a subject of deep anxiety to them, lest when he came, he should keep from communion with them; knowing well as they did, that others would not be wanting who, with his example to guide them, would follow the bold course adopted by so great a man. They therefore form a plan with the emperor, to this effect, that, officials of the court being sent on to meet him, Martin should be forbidden to come any nearer to that city, unless he should declare that he would maintain peace with the bishops who were living there. But he skillfully frustrated their object, by declaring that he would come among them with the peace of Christ. And at last, having entered during the night, he went to the church, simply for the purpose of prayer. On the following day he betakes himself to the palace. Besides many other petitions which he had to present, and which it would be tedious to describe, the following were the principal: entreaties in behalf of the courtier Narses, and the president Leucadius, both of whom had belonged to the party of Gratianus, and that, with more than ordinary zeal, upon which this is not the time to dilate, and who had thus incurred the anger of the conqueror; but his chief request was, that tribunes, with the power of life and death, should not be sent into the Spains. For Martin felt a pious solicitude not only to save from danger the true Christians in these regions, who were to be persecuted in connection with that expedition, but to protect even heretics themselves. But on the first and second day the wily emperor kept the holy man in suspense, whether that he might impress on him the importance of the affair, or because, being obnoxious to the bishops, he could not be reconciled to them, or because, as most people thought at the time, the emperor opposed his wishes from avarice, having cast a longing eye on the property of the persons in question. For we are told that he was really a man distinguished by many excellent actions, but that he was not successful in contending against avarice. This may, however, have been due to the necessities of the empire at the time, for the treasury of the state had been exhausted by former rulers; and he, being almost constantly in the expectation of civil wars, or in a state of preparation for them, may easily be excused for having, by all sorts of expedients, sought resources for the defense of the empire. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XII.
"In the meantime, those bishops with whom Martin would not hold communion went in terror to the king, complaining that they had been condemned beforehand; that it was all over with them as respected the status of every one of them, if the authority of Martin was now to uphold the pertinacity of Theognitus, who alone had as yet condemned them by a sentence publicly pronounced; that the man ought not to have been received within the walls; that he was now not merely the defender of heretics, but their vindicator; and that nothing had really been accomplished by the death of Priscillian, if Martin were to act the part of his avenger. Finally, prostrating themselves with weeping and lamentation, they implored the emperor [136] to put forth his power against this one man. And the emperor was not far from being compelled to assign to Martin, too, the doom of heretics. But after all, although he was disposed to look upon the bishops with too great favor, he was not ignorant that Martin excelled all other mortals in faith, sanctity, and excellence: he therefore tries another way of getting the better of the holy man. And first he sends for him privately, and addresses him in the kindest fashion, assuring him that the heretics were condemned in the regular course of public trials, rather than by the persecutions of the priests; and that there was no reason why he should think that communion with Ithacius and the rest of that party was a thing to be condemned. He added that Theognitus had created disunion, rather by personal hatred, than by the cause he supported; and that, in fact, he was the only person who, in the meantime, had separated himself from communion: while no innovation had been made by the rest. He remarked further that a synod, held a few days previously, had decreed that Ithacius was not chargeable with any fault. When Martin was but little impressed by these statements, the king then became inflamed with anger, and hurried out of his presence; while, without delay, executioners are appointed for those in whose behalf Martin had made supplication. __________________________________________________________________
[136] "potestatem regiam." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIII.
"When this became known to Martin, he rushed to the palace, though it was now night. He pledges himself that, if these people were spared, he would communicate; only let the tribunes, who had already been sent to the Spains for the destruction of the churches, be recalled. There is no delay: Maximus grants all his requests. On the following day, the ordination of Felix as bishop was being arranged, a man undoubtedly of great sanctity, and truly worthy of being made a priest in happier times. Martin took part in the communion of that day, judging it better to yield for the moment, than to disregard the safety of those over whose heads a sword was hanging. Nevertheless, although the bishops strove to the uttermost to get him to confirm the fact of his communicating by signing his name, he could not be induced to do so. On the following day, hurrying away from that place, as he was on the way returning, he was filled with mourning and lamentation that he had even for an hour been mixed up with the evil communion, and, not far from a village named Andethanna, where remote woods stretch [137] far and wide with profound solitude, he sat down while his companions went on a little before him. There he became involved in deep thought, alternately accusing and defending the cause of his grief and conduct. Suddenly, an angel stood by him and said, Justly, O Martin, do you feel compunction, but you could not otherwise get out of your difficulty. Renew your virtue, resume your courage, lest you not only now expose your fame, but your very salvation, to danger.' Therefore, from that time forward, he carefully guarded against being mixed up in communion with the party of Ithacius. But when it happened that he cured some of the possessed more slowly and with less grace than usual, he at once confessed to us with tears that he felt a diminution of his power on account of the evil of that communion in which he had taken part for a moment through necessity, and not with a cordial spirit. He lived sixteen years after this, but never again did he attend a synod, and kept carefully aloof from all assemblies of bishops. __________________________________________________________________
[137] The text here is very corrupt: we have followed a conjecture of Halm's. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIV.
"But clearly, as we experienced, he repaired, with manifold interest, his grace, which had been diminished for a time. I saw afterwards a possessed person brought to him at the gate [138] of the monastery; and that, before the man touched the threshold, he was cured.
"I lately heard one testifying that, when he was sailing on the Tuscan Sea, following that course which leads to Rome, whirlwinds having suddenly arisen, all on board were in extreme peril of their lives. In these circumstances, a certain Egyptian merchant, who was not yet a Christian, cried out, Save us, O God of Martin,' upon which the tempest was immediately stilled, and they held their desired course, while the pacified ocean continued in perfect tranquillity.
"Lycontius, a believing man belonging to the lieutenants, when a violent disease was afflicting his family, and sick bodies were lying all through his house in sad proof of unheard-of calamity, implored the help of Martin by a letter. At this time the blessed man declared that the thing asked was difficult to be obtained, for he knew in his spirit that that house was then being scourged by Divine appointment. Yet he did not give up an unbroken course of prayer and fasting for seven whole days and as many nights, so that he at last obtained that which he aimed at in his supplications. Speedily, Lycontius, having experienced the Divine kindness, flew to him, at once reporting the fact and giving thanks, that his house had been delivered from all danger. He also offered a hundred pounds of silver, which the blessed man neither rejected nor accepted; but before the amount of money touched the threshold of the monastery, he had, without hesitation, destined it for the redemption of captives. And when it was suggested to him by the brethren, that some portion of it should be reserved for the expenses of the monastery, since it was difficult for all of them to obtain necessary food, while many of them were sorely in need of clothing, he replied, Let the church both feed and clothe us, as long as we do not appear to have provided, in any way, for our own wants.'
"There occur to my mind at this point many miracles of that illustrious man, which it is more easy for us to admire than to narrate. You all doubtless recognize the truth of what I say: there are many doings of his which cannot be set forth in words. For instance, there is the following, which I rather think cannot be related by us just as it took place. A certain one of the brethren (you are not ignorant of his name, but his person must be concealed, lest we should cause shame to a godly man),--a certain one, I say, having found abundance of coals for his stove, drew a stool to himself, and was sitting, with outspread legs and exposed person, beside that fire, when Martin at once perceived that an improper thing was done under the sacred roof, and cried out with a loud voice, Who, by exposing his person, is dishonoring our habitation?' When our brother heard this, and felt from his own conscience, that it was he who was rebuked, he immediately ran to us almost in a fainting condition, and acknowledged his shame; which was done, however, only through the forth-putting of the power of Martin. __________________________________________________________________
[138] "Pseudothyrum": Halm prefers the form "pseudoforum," but the meaning is the same. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XV.
"Again, on a certain day, after he had sat down on that wooden seat of his (which you all know), placed in the small open court which surrounded his abode, he perceived two demons sitting on the lofty rock which overhangs the monastery. He then heard them, in eager and gladsome tones, utter the following invitation, Come hither, Brictio, come hither, Brictio.' I believe they perceived the miserable man approaching from a distance, being conscious how great frenzy of spirit they had excited within him. Nor is there any delay: Brictio rushes in in absolute fury; and there, full of madness, he vomits forth a thousand reproaches against Martin. For he had been reproved by him on the previous day, because he who had possessed nothing before he entered the clerical office, having, in fact, been brought up in the monastery by Martin himself, was now keeping horses and purchasing slaves. For at that time, he was accused by many of not only having bought boys belonging to barbarous nations, but girls also of a comely appearance. The miserable man, moved with bitter rage on account of these things, and, as I believe, chiefly instigated by the impulse received from those demons, made such an onset upon Martin as scarcely to refrain from laying hands upon him. The holy man, on his part, with a placid countenance and a tranquil mind, endeavored by gentle words to restrain the madness of the unhappy wretch. But the spirit of wickedness so prevailed within him, that not even his own mind, at best a very vain one, was under his control. With trembling lips, and a changing countenance, pale with rage, he rolled forth the words of sin, asserting that he was a holier man than Martin who had brought him up, inasmuch as from his earliest years he had grown up in the monastery amid the sacred institutions of the Church, while Martin had at first, as he could not deny, been tarnished with the life of a soldier, and had now entirely sunk into dotage by means of his baseless superstitions, and ridiculous fancies about visions. After he had uttered many things like these, and others of a still more bitter nature, which it is better not to mention, going out, at length, when his rage was satisfied he seemed to feel as if he had completely vindicated his conduct. But with rapid steps he rushed back by the way he had gone out, the demons having, I believe, been, in the meantime, driven from his heart by the prayers of Martin, and he was now brought back to repentance. Speedily, then, he returns, and throws himself at the feet of Martin, begging for pardon and confessing his error, while, at length restored to a better mind, he acknowledges that he had been under the influence of a demon. It was no difficult business for Martin to forgive the suppliant. And then the holy man explained both to him and to us all, how he had seen him driven on by demons, and declared that he was not moved by the reproaches which had been heaped upon him; for they had, in fact, rather injured the man who uttered them. And subsequently, when this same Brictio was often accused before him of many and great crimes, Martin could not be induced to remove him from the presbyterate, lest he should be suspected of revenging the injury done to himself, while he often repeated this saying: If Christ bore with Judas, why should not I bear with Brictio?'" __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVI.
Upon this, Postumianus exclaims, "Let that well-known man in our immediate neighborhood, listen to that example, who, when he is wise, takes no notice either of things present or future, but if he has been offended, falls into utter fury, having no control over himself. He then rages against the clerics, and makes bitter attacks upon the laity, while he stirs up the whole world for his own revenge. He will continue in this state of contention for three years without intermission, and refuse to be mollified either by time or reason. The condition of the man is to be lamented and pitied, even if this were the only incurable evil by which he is afflicted. But you ought, my Gallic friend, to have frequently recalled to his mind such examples of patience and tranquillity, that he might know both how to be angry and how to forgive. And if he happens to hear of this speech of mine which has been briefly interpolated into our discourse, and. directed against himself, let him know that I spoke, not more with the lips of an enemy than the mind of a friend; because I should wish, if the thing were possible, that he should be spoken of rather as being like the bishop Martin, than the tyrant Phalaris. But let us pass away from him, since the mention of him is far from pleasant, and let us return, O Gaul, to our friend Martin." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVII.
Then said I, since I perceived by the setting sun that evening was at hand: "The day is gone, Postumianus; we must rise up; and at the same time some refreshment is due to these so zealous listeners. And as to Martin, you ought not to expect that there is any limit to one talking about him: he extends too far to be comprised fully in any conversation. In the meantime, you will convey to the East the things you have now heard about that famous man; and as you retrace your steps to your former haunts, and pass along by various coasts, places, harbors, islands, and seas, see that you spread among the peoples the name and glory of Martin. Especially remember that you do not omit Campania; and although your route will take you far off the beaten track, still any expenditure from delay will not be to you of so much importance as to keep you from visiting in that quarter Paulinus, a man renowned and praised throughout the whole world. I beg you first to unroll to him the volume of discourse which we either completed yesterday, or have said to-day. You will relate all to him; you will repeat all to him; that in due time, by his means, Rome may learn the sacred merits of this man, just as he spread that first little book of ours not only through Italy, but even through the whole of Illyria. He, not jealous of the glories of Martin, and being a most pious admirer of his saintly excellences in Christ, will not refuse to compare our leading man with his own friend Felix. Next, if you happen to cross over to Africa, you will relate what you have heard to Carthage; and, although, as you yourself have said, it already knows the man, yet now pre-eminently it will learn more respecting him, that it may not admire its own martyr Cyprian alone, although consecrated by his sacred blood. And then, if carried down a little to the left, you enter the gulf of Achaia, let Corinth know, and let Athens know, that Plato in the academy was not wiser, and that Socrates in the prison was not braver, than Martin. You will say to them that Greece was indeed happy which was thought worthy to listen to an apostle pleading, but that Christ has by no means forsaken Gaul, since he has granted it to possess such a man as Martin. But when you have come as far as Egypt, although it is justly proud of the numbers and virtues of its own saints, yet let it not disdain to hear how Europe will not yield to it, or to all Asia, in having only Martin. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVIII.
"But when you have again set sail from that place with the view of making for Jerusalem, I enjoin upon you a duty connected with our grief, that, if you ever come to the shore of renowned Ptolemais, you enquire most carefully where Pomponius, that friend of ours, is buried, and that you do not refuse to visit his remains on that foreign soil. There shed many tears, as much from the working of your own feelings, as from our tender affection; and although it is but a worthless gift, scatter the ground there with purple flowers and sweet-smelling grass. And you will say to him, but not roughly, and not harshly,--with the address of one who sympathizes, and not with the tone of one who reproaches,--that if he had only been willing to listen to you at one time, or to me constantly, and if he had invited Martin rather than that man whom I am unwilling to name, he would never have been so cruelly separated from me, or covered by a heap of unknown dust, having suffered death in the midst of the sea with the lot of a ship-wrecked pirate, and with difficulty securing burial on a far-distant shore. Let those behold this as their own work, who, in seeking to revenge him, have wished to injure me, let them behold their own glory, and being avenged, let them henceforth cease to make any attacks upon me."
Having uttered these sad words in a very mournful voice, and while the tears of all the others were drawn forth by our laments, we at length departed, certainly with a profound admiration for Martin, but with no less sorrow from our own lamentations. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
The Doubtful Letters Of Sulpitius Severus. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Letter I.
A Letter of the Holy Presbyter Severus to His Sister Claudia Concerning the Last Judgment. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter I.
On reading your letters, my feelings were, in many ways, deeply moved, and I could not refrain from tears. For I both wept for joy because I could perceive from the very language of your letters, that you were living according to the precepts of the Lord God, and out of my exceeding desire after you, I could not help lamenting that, without any fault on my part, I was parted from you; and I would have felt this still more strongly had you not sent me a letter. Should I not, then, enjoy the company of such a sister? But I call your salvation to witness, that I have very often wished to come to you, but have up till now been prevented, through the opposition of him [139] who is accustomed to hinder us. For, in my eager desire, I was both urgent to satisfy my wishes by seeing you; and we seemed, if we should meet, likely to accomplish more effectually the work of the Lord, since by comforting one another we should live with the heavy load of this world trodden under our feet. But I do not now fix the day or time of visiting you, because, as often as I have done so, I have not been able to fulfil my purpose. I shall wait on the will of the Lord, and hope that, by my supplications and your prayers, he may bring it about that we reap some advantage from our perseverance. [140] __________________________________________________________________
[139] It is obvious that, in this whole passage, Sulpitius has in his mind the language of St. Paul, Rom. i. 9-12.
[140] Halm reads præsentia, instead of the old reading perseverantia`, but apparently without good grounds. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter II.
But because you have desired from me in all my letters which I had sent to you precepts to nourish your life and faith, it has come to pass that, through the frequency of my writings to you, I have now exhausted language of that kind; and I can really write nothing new to you, so as to avoid what I have written before. And in truth, through the goodness of God, you do not now need to be exhorted, inasmuch as, perfecting your faith at the very beginning of your saintly life, you display a devoted love in Christ. One thing, however, I do press upon you, that you do not go back on things you have already passed away from, that you do not long again for things you have already scorned, and that, having put your hand to the plow, you do not look back [141] again, retracing your steps; for, undoubtedly, by falling into this fault, your furrow will lose its straightness, and the cultivator will not receive his own proper reward. Moreover, he does not secure even a measure of the reward, if he has, in a measure, failed. For, as we must flee from sin to righteousness, so he who has entered on the practice of righteousness must beware lest he lay himself open to sin. For it is written that "his righteousness shall not profit the righteous on the day on which he has gone astray." [142] For this, then, we must take our stand, for this we must labor, that we, who have escaped from sins, do not lose the prepared rewards. For the enemy stands ready against us, that he may at once strike the man who has been stripped of the shield of faith. Our shield, therefore, is not to be cast aside, lest our side be exposed to attack; and our sword is not to be put away, lest the enemy then begin to give up all fear: moreover, we know that if he sees a man fully armed, he will retreat. Nor are we ignorant that it is a hard and difficult thing daily to fight against the flesh and the world. But if you reflect upon eternity, and if you consider the kingdom of heaven, which undoubtedly the Lord will condescend to bestow upon us although we are sinners, what suffering, I ask, is sufficiently great, by which we may merit such things? And besides, our struggle in this world is but for a short time; for although death do not speedily overtake us, old age will come. The years flow on, and time glides by; while, as I hope, the Lord Jesus will speedily call us to himself, as being dear to his heart. __________________________________________________________________
[141] Luke ix. 62.
[142] Ezek. xviii. 24. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter III.
O how happy shall be that departure of ours, when Christ shall receive us into his own abode after we have been purged [143] from the stains of sin through the experience [144] of a better life! Martyrs and prophets will meet with us, apostles will join themselves to us, angels will be glad, archangels will rejoice, and Satan, being conquered, will look pale, though still retaining his cruel countenance, inasmuch as he will lose all [145] advantage from our sins which he had secured for himself in us. He will see glory granted us through mercy, and merits honored by means of glory. We shall triumph over our conquered foe. Where shall now the wise men of the world appear? Where shall the covetous man, where shall the adulterer, where shall the irreligious, where shall the drunkard, where shall the evil-speaker be recognized? What shall these wretched beings say in their own defense? "We did not know thee, Lord; we did not see that thou wast in the world: thou didst not send the prophets: thou didst not give the law to the world: we did not see the patriarchs: we did not read the lives of the saints. Thy Christ never was upon the earth: Peter was silent: Paul refused to preach: no Evangelist taught. There were no martyrs whose example we should follow: no one predicted thy future judgment: no one commanded us to clothe the poor: no one enjoined us to restrain lust: no one persuaded us to fight against covetousness: we fell through ignorance, not knowing what we did." __________________________________________________________________
[143] Clericus here remarks that "these words clearly teach us that Severus knew of no other purgation than that by which we are cleansed in this life from sin by a change of character and which change if we steadily maintain, then, when life is ended, we are received into the abode of Christ, without any dread of the fire of purgatory."
[144] "conversatione."
[145] Having led us into sin that we might be condemned along with himself. The meaning, however, is obscure. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IV.
Against these, from among the company of the saints, righteous Noah shall first proclaim, "I, Lord, predicted that a deluge was about to come on account of the sins of men, and after the deluge I set an example to the good in my own person; since I did not perish with the wicked who perished, that they might know both what was the salvation of the innocent, and what the punishment of sinners." After him, faithful Abraham will say in opposition to them, "I, Lord, about the mid-time [146] of the age of the world, laid the foundation of the faith by which the human race should believe in thee; I was chosen as the father of the nations, that they might follow my example; I did not hesitate, Lord, to offer Isaac, while yet a youth, as a sacrifice to thee, that they might understand that there is nothing which ought not to be presented to the Lord, when they perceived that I did not spare even my only son: I left, Lord, my country, and my family, at thy command, that they also might have an example teaching them to leave the wickedness of the world and the age: I, Lord, was the first to recognize thee, though under a corporeal [147] form, nor did I hesitate to believe who it was that I beheld, although thou didst appear to me in a different form from thine own, that these might learn to judge, not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit." Him the blessed Moses will support in his pleadings, saying: "I Lord, delivered the law to all these, at thy command, that those whom a free [148] faith did not influence, the spoken law at least might restrain: I said, Thou shalt not [149] commit adultery,' in order that I might prevent the licentiousness of fornication: I said, Thou shalt love [150] thy neighbor,' that affection might abound; I said, Thou shalt worship the Lord alone,' [151] in order that these might not sacrifice to idols, or allow temples to exist; I commanded that false witness should not be spoken, that I might shut the lips of these people against all falsehood. I set forth the things which had been done and said from the beginning of the world, through the working within me of the spirit of thy power, that a knowledge of things past might convey to these people instruction about things to come. I predicted, O Lord Jesus, thy coming, that it might not be an unexpected thing to these people, when they were called to acknowledge him whom I had before announced as about to come." [152] __________________________________________________________________
[146] Abraham lived (in round numbers) about 2000 years b.c., and assuming the beginning of the world to have been about 4000 years b.c., he may thus be said to have lived about "the mid-time." The note of Clericus which refers the words to the end of the world seems quite mistaken.
[147] The reference is to Gen. xviii.
[148] A faith having no regard to either rewards or punishments.
[149] Ex. xx. 14.
[150] Lev. xix. 18.
[151] Deut. vi. 13.
[152] Ex. xx. 3, &c. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter V.
After him, there will stand up David worthy of his descendant the Lord, and declare: "I, Lord, proclaimed thee by every means; I set forth that only thy name was to be worshiped; I said, Blessed is the man [153] who fears the Lord'; I said too, The saints shall [154] be joyful in glory'; and I said, The desire of the wicked [155] shall perish,' that these people might acknowledge thee and cease to sin. I, when I had become possessed of royal power, clothed in sackcloth, with dust spread beneath me, and with the emblems of my greatness laid aside, lay down in my clothes, that an example might be given to these people of gentleness and humility. I spared my enemies who desired to slay me, that these people might approve of my mercifulness, as worthy of being imitated." After him, Isaiah, who was worthy of the Spirit of God, will not be silent; but will say: "I, Lord, whilst thou wast speaking through my mouth, gave this warning,--Woe to those [156] who join house to house,' that I might set a limit to covetousness. I bore witness that thine anger came upon the wicked, that at any rate fear of punishment, if not hope of reward, might keep back these people from their evil deeds." __________________________________________________________________
[153] Ps. cxi. 1.
[154] Ps. cxlix. 5.
[155] Ps. cxii. 10.
[156] Isa. v. 8. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VI.
After these, and several others who have discharged for us the duties of instruction, the Son of God himself will speak thus: "I, certainly, exalted on a lofty seat, holding heaven in my hand, and the earth in my fist, extended within and without, in the inside of all things which are produced, and on the outside of all [157] things that move, inconceivable, infinite in the power [158] of nature, invisible to sight, inaccessible to touch, in order that I might exist as the least of you (for the purpose of subduing the hardness of your heart and for softening your faithlessness by sound doctrines), condescended to be born in flesh, and, having laid aside the glory of God, I assumed the form of a servant, so that, sharing with you in bodily infirmity, I might in turn bring you to a participation in my glory, through obedience to the precept of salvation. I restored health to the sick and infirm, hearing to the deaf, sight to the blind, the power of speech to the dumb, and the use of their feet to the lame; that I might influence you, by heavenly signs, all the more easily to believe in me, and in those things which I had announced, I promised you the kingdom of heaven; I also, in order that you might have an example of escape from punishment, placed in Paradise the robber who acknowledged me almost at the moment of his death, that ye might follow even the faith of him who had been thought worthy of having his sins forgiven him. And that by my example in your behalf, ye yourselves also might be able to suffer; I suffered for you, that no man might hesitate to suffer for himself what God [159] had endured for man. I showed myself after my resurrection, in order that your faith might not be overthrown. I admonished the Jews in the person of Peter; I preached to the Gentiles in the person of Paul; and I do not regret doing so, for good results followed. The good have understood my work; the faithful have perfected it; the righteous have completed it; the merciful have consummated it: there have been a large number of martyrs, and a large number of saints. Those to whom I thus refer were undoubtedly in the same body and in the same world as you. Why, then, do I find no good work in you, ye descendants of vipers? Ye have shown no repentance for your wicked deeds, even at the very end of your earthly course. And what does it profit that ye honor me with your lips, when you deny me by your deeds and works? Where are now your riches, where your honors, where your powers, and where your pleasures? I pronounce no new sentence over you: you simply incur the judgment which I formerly predicted." __________________________________________________________________
[157] The divine omnipresence is here denoted.
[158] Or, according to another punctuation, "inconceivable in nature, infinite in power."
[159] Clericus thinks this expression unscriptural, and fitted to support heresy. But it may be justified by such a passage as Acts xx. 28, if theou can be accepted as the correct reading, which is now generally agreed upon. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VII.
Then will the Evangelist repeat this to the wretched beings, "Go ye [160] into outer darkness, where shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." O ye miserable men, whom these words do not now impress! They shall then see their own punishment, and the glory of others. Let them use this present world, provided they do not enjoy that eternity which is prepared for the saints. Let them abound in riches: let them rest on gold; provided that there they be found needy and destitute. Let them be wealthy in this world, provided they be poor in eternity, for it is written regarding them, "The rich were in [161] want, and suffered hunger." But the Scripture has added what follows respecting the good,--"but those who seek the Lord shall not want any good thing."
Therefore, my sister, although those people mock at us, and although they call us foolish and unhappy, let us all the more joyfully exult in such reproaches, by which glory is heaped up for us, and punishment for them. And do not let us laugh at their folly, but rather grieve over their unhappiness; because there is among them a large number of our own people, whom if we win over, our glory shall be increased. But however they may conduct themselves, let them be to us as Gentiles and publicans; but let us keep ourselves safe and sound. If they rejoice now over us lamenting, it will be our turn afterwards to rejoice over their suffering. Farewell, dearest sister, and tenderly beloved in Christ. __________________________________________________________________
[160] St. Matt. xxii. 13.
[161] Ps. xxxiv. 10: the above rendering entirely departs from the Hebrew text. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Letter II.
A Letter of Sulpitius Severus to His Sister Claudia Concerning Virginity. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter I.
How great blessedness, among heavenly gifts, belongs to holy virginity, besides the testimonies of the Scriptures, we learn also from the practice of the Church, by which we are taught that a peculiar merit belongs to those who have devoted themselves to it by special consecration. For while the whole multitude of those that believe receive equal gifts of grace, and all rejoice in the same blessings of the sacraments, those who are virgins possess something above the rest, since, out of the holy and unstained company of the Church, they are chosen by the Holy Spirit, and are presented by the bishop [162] at the altar of God, as if being more holy and pure sacrifices, on account of the merits of their voluntary dedication. This is truly a sacrifice worthy of God, inasmuch as it is the offering of so precious a being, and none will please him more than the sacrifice of his own image. For I think that the Apostle especially referred to a sacrifice of this kind, when he said, "Now, I beseech you, brethren, by the mercy of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable [163] to God." Virginity, therefore, possesses both that which others have, and that which others have not; while it obtains both common and special grace, and rejoices (so to speak) in its own peculiar privilege of consecration. For ecclesiastical authority permits us to style virgins also the brides of Christ; while, after the manner of brides, it veils those whom it consecrates to the Lord, openly exhibiting those as very especially about to possess spiritual marriage who have fled away from carnal fellowship. And those are worthily united, after a spiritual manner, to God, in accordance with the analogy of marriage, who, from love to him, have set at nought human alliances. In their case, that saying of the apostle finds its fullest possible fulfillment, "He who is joined to the Lord, [164] is one spirit." __________________________________________________________________
[162] "per summum sacerdotem."
[163] Rom. xii. 1.
[164] 1 Cor. vi. 17. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter II.
For it is a great and a divine thing, almost beyond a corporeal nature, to lay aside [165] luxury, and to extinguish, by strength of mind, the flame of concupiscence, kindled by the torch of youth; to put down by spiritual effort the force of natural delight; to live in opposition to the practice of the human race; to despise the comforts of wedlock; to disdain the sweet enjoyments derived from children; and to regard as nothing, in the hope of future blessedness, everything that is reckoned among the advantages of this present life. This is, as I have said, a great and admirable virtue, and is not undeservedly destined to a vast reward, in proportion to the greatness of its labor. The Scripture says, "I will give to the eunuchs, saith the Lord, a place in my house and within my walls, a place counted better than [166] sons and daughters; I will give them an eternal name, and it shall not [167] fail." The Lord again speaks concerning such eunuchs in the Gospel, saying, "For there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake." [168] Great, indeed, is the struggle connected with chastity, but greater is the reward; the restraint is temporal, but the reward will be eternal. For the blessed Apostle John also speaks concerning these, saying that "they follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth." [169] This, I think, is to be understood to the following effect, that there will be no place in the court of heaven closed against them, but that all the habitations of the divine mansions will be thrown open before them. __________________________________________________________________
[165] "sopire luxuriam," lit. to put to sleep.
[166] "a filiis et filiabus": a mistaken rendering of the Hebrew text.
[167] Isa. lvi. 5.
[168] Matt. xix. 12.
[169] Rev. xiv. 4. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter III.
But that the merit of virginity may shine forth more clearly, and that there may be a better understanding as to how worthy it is of God, let this be considered, that the Lord God, our Saviour, when, for the salvation of the human race, he condescended to assume mankind, chose no other than a virgin's womb, that he might show how virtue of this kind especially pleased him; and that he might point out the blessedness of chastity to both sexes, he had a virgin mother, while he himself was ever to remain in a like condition. He thus furnished in his own person to men, and in the person of his mother to women, an example of virginity, by which it might be proved, with respect to both sexes, that the blessed state of purity possessed the fullness of divinity, [170] for whatever dwelt in the Son was also wholly in the mother. But why should I take pains to make known the excellent and surpassing merit of chastity, and to set forth the glorious good of virginity, when I am not ignorant that many have discoursed on this subject, and have proved its blessedness by most conclusive reasons, and since it can never be a matter of doubt to any reflecting mind, that a thing has all the more merit, the more difficult it is of accomplishment? For if any one judges chastity to be of no moment or only of small consequence, it is certain that he is either ignorant of the matter, or is not willing to incur the trouble it implies. Hence it comes to pass that those always derogate from the importance of chastity, who either do not possess it, or who are unwillingly compelled to maintain it. __________________________________________________________________
[170] The text is here most uncertain; that adopted by Halm seems unintelligible. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IV.
Now, therefore, since we have set forth, although in few words, both the difficulty and the merit of purity, great care must be taken lest a matter which in itself implies great virtue, and is also destined to a vast reward, should fail to produce its proper fruits. For the more precious every sort of thing is, the more it is guarded with anxious solicitude. And since there are many things which fail to secure their proper excellence, unless they are assisted by the aid of other things, as is, for instance, the case with honey, which, unless it is preserved by the protection of wax, and by the cells of the honeycombs, and is indeed, to state the matter more truly, sustained by these, loses its deliciousness and cannot exist apart by itself; and again as it is with wine, which, unless it be kept in vessels of a pleasant odor, and with the pitch frequently renewed, loses the power of its natural sweetness; so great care must be taken lest perchance some things may be necessary also to virginity, without which it can by no means produce its proper fruits, and thus a matter of so great difficulty may be of no advantage (while all the time it is believed to be of advantage), because it is possessed without the other necessary adjuncts. For unless I am mistaken, chastity is preserved in its entirety, for the sake of the reward to be obtained in the kingdom of heaven, which it is perfectly certain no one can obtain who does [171] not deserve eternal life. But that eternal life cannot be merited except by the keeping of all the divine commandments, the Scripture testifies, saying, "If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments." [172] Therefore no one has that life, except the man who has kept all the precepts of the law, and he who has not such life cannot be a possessor of the kingdom of heaven, in which it is not the dead, but the living who shall reign. Therefore virginity, which hopes for the glory of the kingdom of heaven, will profit nothing by itself, unless it also possess that to which eternal life is promised, by means of which the reward of the kingdom of heaven is possessed. Above all things, therefore, the commandments which have been enjoined upon us must be kept by those who preserve chastity in its entireness, and who are hoping for its reward from the justice of God, lest otherwise the pains taken to maintain a glorious chastity and continence come to nothing. No one acquainted with the law does not know that virginity is above [173] the commandment or precept, as the Apostle says, "Now, as to virgins, I have no precept of the Lord, but I give my advice." [174] When, therefore, he simply gives advice about maintaining virginity, and lays down no precept, he acknowledges that it is above the commandment. Those, therefore, who preserve virginity, do more than the commandment requires. But it will then only profit you to have done more than was commanded, if you also do that which is commanded. For how can you boast that you have done more, if, in respect to some point, you do less? Desiring to fulfill the Divine counsel, see that, above all things, you keep the commandment: wishing to attain to the reward of virginity, see that you keep fast hold of what is necessary to merit life, that your chastity may be such as can receive a recompense. For as the observance of the commandments ensures life, so, on the other hand, does the violation give rise to death. And he who through disobedience has been doomed to death cannot hope for the crown pertaining to virginity; nor, when really handed over to punishment, can he expect the reward promised to chastity. __________________________________________________________________
[171] "quod sine æternæ vitæ merito neminem consequi posse satis certum est."
[172] Matt. xix. 17.
[173] "supra mandatum": Clericus remarks on this, "Non supra, sed præter, nam ea de re nihil præcepit Christus."
[174] 1 Cor. vii. 25. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter V.
Now, there are three kinds of virtue, by means of which the possession of the kingdom of heaven is secured. The first is chastity, the second, contempt of the world, and the third, righteousness, which, as when joined together, they very greatly benefit their possessors, so, when separated, they can hardly be of any advantage, since every one of them is required, not for its own sake only, but for the sake of another. First of all, then, chastity is demanded, that contempt of the world may more easily follow, because the world can be more easily despised by those who are not held fast in the bonds of matrimony. Contempt of the world, again, is required, in order that righteousness may be maintained, which those can with difficulty fully preserve who are involved in desires after worldly advantages, and in the pursuit of mundane pleasures. Whosoever, therefore, possesses the first kind of virtue, chastity, but does not, at the same time, have the second, which is contempt of the world, possesses the first almost to no purpose, since he does not have the second, for the sake of which the first was required. And if any one possesses the first and second, but is destitute of the third which is righteousness, he labors in vain, since the former two are principally required for the sake of the third. For what profits it to possess chastity in order to contempt of the world, and yet not to have that on account of which you have the other? Or why should you despise the things of the world, if you do not observe righteousness, for the sake of which it is fitting that you should possess chastity, as well as contempt for the world? For as the first kind of virtue is on account of the second, and the second on account of the third, so the first and the second are on account of the third; and if it does not exist, neither the first nor the second will prove of any advantage. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VI.
But you perhaps say here, "Teach me, then, what righteousness is, so that knowing it, I may be able more easily to fully practice it." Well, I shall briefly explain it to you, as I am able, and shall use the simplicity of common words, seeing that the subject of which we treat is such as ought by no means to be obscured by attempts at eloquent description, but should be opened up by the simplest forms of expression. For a matter which is necessary to all in common ought to be set forth in a common sort of speech. Righteousness, then, is nothing else than not to commit sin; and not to commit sin is just to keep the precepts of the law. Now, the observance of these precepts is maintained in a two-fold way--thus, that one do none of those things which are forbidden, and that he strive to fulfill the things which are commanded. This is the meaning of the following statement: "Depart from evil, and do [175] good." For I do not wish you to think that righteousness consists simply in not doing evil, since not to do good is also evil, and a transgression of the law takes place in both, since he who said, "Depart from evil" said also, "and do good." If you depart from evil, and do not do good, you are a transgressor of the law, which is fulfilled, not simply by abhorring all evil deeds, but also by the performance of good works. For, indeed, you have not merely received this commandment, that you should not deprive one who is clothed of his garments, but that you should cover with your own the man who has been deprived of his; nor that you should not take away bread of his own from one who has it, but that you should willingly impart of your bread to him who has none; nor that you should not simply not drive away a poor man from a shelter of his own, but that you should receive him when he has been driven out, and has no shelter, into your own. For the precept which has been given us is "to weep with them that [176] weep." But how can we weep with them, if we share in none of their necessities, and afford no help to them in those matters on account of which they lament? For God does not call for the fruitless moisture of our tears; but, because tears are an indication of grief, he wishes you to feel the distresses of another as if they were your own. And just as you would wish aid to be given you if you were in such tribulation, so should you help another in accordance with the statement, "Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so [177] to them." For to weep with one that weeps, and at the same time to refuse to help, when you can, him that weeps, is a proof of mockery, and not of piety. In short, our Saviour wept with Mary and Martha, the sisters of Lazarus, and proved the feeling of infinite compassion within him by the witness of his tears. But works, as the proofs of true affection soon followed, when Lazarus, for whose sake the tears were shed, was raised up and restored to his sisters. This was sincerely to weep with those who wept, when the occasion of the weeping was removed. But he did it, you will say, as having the power. Well, nothing is demanded of you which it is impossible for you to perform: he has fulfilled his entire duty who has done what he could. __________________________________________________________________
[175] Ps. xxxiv. 14.
[176] Rom. xii. 15.
[177] Matt. vii. 12. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VII.
But (as we had begun to remark) it is not sufficient for a Christian to keep himself from wickedness, unless he also has fulfilled the duties implied in good works, as is very distinctly proved by that statement in which the Lord threatened that those will be doomed to eternal fire, who, although they have done no evil, have not done all that is good, declaring, "Then will the king say to those who are on his right hand: depart from me, ye cursed, into eternal fire, which my Father has prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry, and ye gave me not to eat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me no [178] drink," with what follows. He did not say, "Depart from me, ye cursed, because ye have committed murder, or adultery, or theft"; for it is not because they had done evil, but because they had not done good, that they are condemned, and doomed to the punishments of the eternal Gehenna; nor because they had committed things which were forbidden, but because they had not been willing to do those things which had been commanded. And from this it is to be observed what hope those can have, who, in addition, do some of those things which are forbidden, when even such are doomed to eternal fire as have simply not done the things which are commanded. For I do not wish you to flatter yourself in this way,--if you have not done certain things, because you have done certain other things, since it is written, "Whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, has become guilty of all." [179] For Adam sinned once, and died; and do you think that you can live, when you are often doing that which killed another person, when he had only done it once? Or do you imagine that he committed a great crime, and was therefore justly condemned to a severer punishment? Let us consider, then, what it was he really did. He ate of the fruit of the tree, contrary to the commandment. What then? Did God punish man with death for the sake of the fruit of a tree? No: not on account of the fruit of the tree, but on account of the contempt of the commandment. The question, therefore, is not about the nature of the offense, but about the transgression of the commandment. And the same being who told Adam not to eat of the fruit of the tree, has commanded you not to speak evil, not to lie, not to detract, not to listen to a detractor, to swear not at all, not to covet, not to envy, not to be drunken, not to be greedy, not to render evil for evil to any one, to love your enemies, to bless them that curse you, to pray for them that malign and persecute you, to turn the other cheek to one smiting you, and not to go to law before a worldly tribunal, so that, if any one seeks to take away your goods, you should joyfully lose them, to flee from the charge of avarice, to beware of the sin of all pride and boastfulness, and live, humble and meek, after the example of Christ, avoiding fellowship with the wicked so completely that you will not even eat with fornicators, or covetous persons, or those that speak evil of others, or the envious, or detractors, or the drunken, or the rapacious. Now, if you despise him in any such matter, then, if he spared Adam, he will also spare you. Yea, he might have been spared with better reason than you, inasmuch as he was still ignorant and inexperienced, and was restrained by the example of no one who had previously sinned, and who had died on account of his sin. But after such examples as you possess, after the law, after the prophets, after the gospels, and after the apostles, if you still set your mind on transgressing, I see not in what way pardon can be extended to you. __________________________________________________________________
[178] Matt. xxv. 41.
[179] James ii. 10. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VIII.
Do you flatter yourself on account of the attribute of virginity? Remember Adam and Eve fell when they were virgins, and that the perfect purity of their bodies did not profit them when they sinned. The virgin who sins is to be compared to Eve, and not to Mary. We do not deny that, in the present life, there is the remedy of repentance, but we remind you rather to hope for reward, than to look for pardon. For it is disgraceful that those should ask for indulgence who are expecting the crown of virginity, and that those should commit anything unlawful who have even cut themselves off from things lawful; for it must be remembered that it is lawful to contract an alliance by marriage. And as those are to be praised who, from love to Christ, and for the glory of the kingdom of heaven, have despised the tie of wedlock, so those are to be condemned who, through the pleasure of incontinence, after they have vowed themselves to God, have recourse to the Apostolic remedy. Therefore, as we have said, those who decline marriage despise not things unlawful, but things lawful. And if that class of people swear, if they speak evil of others, if they are detractors, or if they patiently listen to detractors, if they return evil for evil, if they incur the charge of covetousness with respect to other people's property, or of avarice in regard to their own, if they cherish the poison of revenge or envy, if they either say or think anything unbefitting against the institutions of the law or the Apostles, if with a desire of pleasing in the flesh, they exhibit themselves dressed up and adorned, if they do any other unlawful things, as is only too common, what will it profit them to have spurned what is lawful, while they practice what is not lawful? If you wish it to be of advantage to you, that you have despised things lawful, take care that you do not any of those things which are not lawful. For, it is foolish to have dreaded that which is in its nature less, and not to dread that which is intrinsically more [or not to avoid those things [180] which are interdicted, while such things as are permitted meet with contempt]. For the Apostle says, "She that is unmarried careth for the things of the Lord, how she may please God, that she may be holy both in body and spirit; but she who is married careth for the things of this world, how she may please [181] her husband." He thus affirms that the married woman pleases her husband by thinking of worldly things, while the unmarried woman pleases God, inasmuch as she has no anxiety about the things of the world. Let him tell me, then, whom she desires to please, who has no husband, and yet cares for the things of the world? Shall not the married woman, in such a case, be preferred to her? Yes, since she by caring for the things of the world pleases at least her husband, but the other neither pleases her husband, since she does not have one, nor can she please God. [182] But it is not fitting that we should pass over in silence that which he said: "The unmarried woman careth for the things of the Lord, how she may please God, that she may be holy both in body and spirit" [she careth, he says, for the things of the Lord; she does not care for the things of the world, or of men, but for the things of God]. What, then, are the things of the Lord? Let the Apostle tell: "Whatsoever [183] things are holy, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise of doctrine": these are the things of the Lord, which holy and truly apostolic virgins meditate upon, and think of, day and night, without any interval of time. Of the Lord is the resurrection of the dead, of the Lord is immortality, of the Lord is incorruption, of the Lord is that splendor of the sun which is promised to the saints, as it is written in the Gospel, "Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father": [184] of the Lord are the many mansions of the righteous in the heavens, of the Lord is the fruit which is produced, whether thirty fold, or sixty fold, or an hundred fold. Those virgins who think on these things, and by what works they may be able to merit them, think of the things of the Lord. Of the Lord, too, is the law of the new and old testament, in which shine forth the holy utterances of his lips; and if any virgins meditate without intermission on these things, they think of the things of the Lord. In that case, there is fulfilled in them the saying of the prophet: "The eternal [185] foundations are upon a solid rock, and the commands of God are in the heart of the holy woman." __________________________________________________________________
[180] The genuineness of this clause is very doubtful, and the text is, at best, exceedingly corrupt.
[181] 1 Cor. vii. 34.
[182] The text is here very uncertain; we have followed that of Halm, but with hesitation.
[183] Phil. iv. 8, with the addition of epistemes.
[184] Matt. xiii. 43.
[185] Eccl. xxvi. 24. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IX.
There follows the clause "how she may please God,"--God, I say, not men,--"that she may be holy both in body and spirit." He does not say that she may be holy only in a member or in the body, but that she may be holy in body and spirit. For a member is only one part of the body, but the body is a union of all the members. When, therefore, he says that she may be holy in the body, he testifies that she ought to be sanctified in all her members, because the sanctification of the other members will not avail, if corruption be found remaining in one. Also, she will not be holy in body (which consists of all the members), who is defiled by the pollution of even one of them. But in order that what I say may be made more obvious and clear, suppose the case of a woman who is purified by the sanctification of all her other members, and sins only with her tongue, inasmuch as she either speaks evil [186] of people or bears false testimony, will all her other members secure the acquittal of one, or will all the rest be judged on account of the one? If, therefore, the sanctification of the other members will not avail, even when one only is at fault, how much more, if all are corrupted by the guilt of various sins, will the perfection of one be of no avail? __________________________________________________________________
[186] "Blasphemet." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter X.
Wherefore, I beseech you, O virgin, do not flatter yourself on the ground of your purity alone, and do not trust in the perfection of one member; but according to the Apostle, maintain the sanctity of your body throughout. Cleanse thy head from all defilement, because it is a disgrace that it, after the sanctifying oil has been applied to it, should be polluted with the juice or powder of either crocus, or any other pigment, or should be adorned with gold or gems or any other earthly ornament, because it already shines with the radiance of heavenly adornment. It is undoubtedly a grave insult to Divine grace to prefer to it any mundane and worldly ornament. And next, cleanse thy forehead, that it may blush at human, and not at Divine works, and may display that shame which gives rise not to sin, but to the favor of God, as the sacred Scripture declares, "There is a shame that causes sin, and there is a shame that brings with it the favor [187] of God." Cleanse, too, thy neck, that it may not carry thy [188] locks in a golden net and necklaces hung round it, but may rather bear about it those ornaments of which the Scripture says, "Let not [189] mercy and faith depart from thee," and hang them upon thy heart as upon thy neck. Cleanse thine eyes, whilst thou dost withdraw them from all concupiscence, and dost never turn them away from the sight of the poor, and dost keep them from all dyes, in that purity in which they were made by God. Cleanse thy tongue from falsehood, because "a mouth [190] which tells lies destroys the soul": cleanse it from detraction, from swearing, and from perjury. I beg you not to think it is an inverted order that I have said the tongue should be cleansed from swearing before perjury, for one will then the more easily escape perjury, if he swears not at all, so that there may be fulfilled in him that statement, "Keep [191] thy tongue from evil, and thy lips from speaking guile." And be mindful of the Apostle who says, "Bless, and [192] curse not." But often call to mind the following words, "See that no one render evil for evil to any man, or cursing for cursing, but on the contrary, do ye bless them, because to this ye have been called, that ye should possess a blessing [193] by inheritance"; and this other passage, "If any [194] one offend not in tongue, he is a perfect man." For it is shameful that those lips, by which you confess God, pray to him, bless him, and praise him, should be defiled by the pollution of any sin. I know not with what conscience any one can pray to God with that tongue with which he either speaks falsehood, or calumniates, or detracts. God listens to holy lips, and speedily answers those prayers which an unpolluted tongue pours forth. Cleanse also thine ears, so that they may not listen except to holy and true discourse, that they never admit into them obscene, or infamous, or worldly words, or tolerate any one detracting from another, on account of that which is written, "Hedge up [195] thine ears with thorns, and do not listen to a wicked tongue, that you may have your part with him, of whom it is said, that he was [196] righteous in hearing and seeing; i.e. he sinned neither with his eyes nor his ears. Cleanse, too, thy hands, "that they be not stretched out to receive, but shut against giving," and that they [197] be not prompt to strike, but ever ready for all the works of mercy and piety. In fine, cleanse thy feet, that they follow not the broad and ample way which leads to grand and costly worldly banquets, but that they tread rather the difficult and narrow path, which guides to heaven, for it is written, "Make a [198] straight path for your feet." Acknowledge that your members were formed for you by God the Maker, not for vices, but for virtues; and, when you have cleansed the whole of your limbs from every stain of sin, and they have become sanctified throughout your whole body, then understand that this purity will profit you, and look forward with all confidence to the prize of virginity. __________________________________________________________________
[187] Eccl. iv. 21.
[188] The text here is most uncertain; Halm's "ut non aurea reticula capillus portet" is "that thy hair may not carry golden nets."
[189] Prov. iii. 3.
[190] Wisd. i. 11.
[191] Ps. xxxiv. 13.
[192] Rom. xii. 14.
[193] 1 Thess. v. 15; 1 Pet. iii. 9.
[194] James iii. 2.
[195] Eccl. xxviii. 24.
[196] 2 Pet. ii. 8.
[197] Eccles. iv. 31.
[198] Prov. iv. 26. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XI.
I believe that I have now set forth, briefly indeed, but, at the same time, fully, what is implied in a woman's purity of body: it remains that we should learn what it is to be pure also in spirit; i.e. that what it is unlawful for one to do in act, it is also unlawful for one even to imagine in thought. For she is holy, alike in body and in spirit, who sins neither in mind nor heart, knowing that God is one who examines also the heart; and, therefore, she takes every pains to possess a mind as well as a body free from sin. Such a person is aware that it is written, "Keep thy [199] heart with all diligence"; and again, "God loveth [200] holy hearts, and all the undefiled are acceptable to him"; and elsewhere, "Blessed [201] are those of a pure heart; for they shall see God." I think that this last statement is made regarding those whom conscience accuses of the guilt of no sin; concerning whom I think that John also spoke in his Epistle when he said, "If our heart [202] condemn us not, then have we confidence towards God, and whatsoever we ask we shall receive from him." I do not wish you to think that you have escaped the accusation of sin, although act does not follow desire, since it is written, "Whosoever [203] looketh on a woman to lust after her, hath already committed adultery with her in his heart." And do not say, "I had the thought, indeed, but I did not carry it out in act"; for it is unlawful even to desire that which it is unlawful to do. Wherefore also blessed Peter issues a precept to this effect: "purify your [204] souls"; and if he had not been aware of such a thing as defilement of the soul, he would not have expressed a desire that it should be purified. But we should also very carefully consider that passage which says, "These [205] are they who did not defile themselves with women, for they remained virgins, and they follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth"; and should reflect whether, if these are joined to the Divine retinue, and traverse all the regions of the heavens, through the merit of chastity and purity alone, there may be also other means by which virginity being assisted may attain to the glory of so great blessedness. But whence shall we be able to know this? From the following passages (if I mistake not) in which it is written, "These were [206] purchased from among men as the first fruits to God and the Lamb, and in their mouth there was found no falsehood, for they are without spot before the throne of God." You see, then, that they are spoken of as closely following in the footsteps of the Lord, not in virtue of one member only, but those are said to do so, who, besides virginity, had passed a life freed from all the pollution of sin. Wherefore, let the virgin especially despise marriage on this account, that, while she is safer than others, she may the more easily accomplish what is also required from those who are married; viz. keep herself from all sin, and obey all the commandments of the law. For if she does not marry, and nevertheless indulges in those things from which even married women are enjoined to keep themselves free, what will it profit her not to have married? For although it is not allowed to any Christian to commit sin, and it befits all without exception who are purified through the sanctification of the spiritual bath, to lead an unstained life, that they may be thoroughly identified [207] with the Church, which is described as being "without [208] spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing," much more is it requisite that a virgin should reach this standard, whom neither the existence of a husband, nor of sons, nor of any other necessity, prevents from fully carrying out the demands of holy Scripture; nor shall she be able, if she fail, to defend herself by any sort of excuse. __________________________________________________________________
[199] Prov. iv. 23.
[200] Prov. xvii. 3; xi. 20.
[201] Matt. v. 8.
[202] 1 John iii. 21.
[203] Matt. v. 28.
[204] 1 Pet. i. 22.
[205] Rev. xiv. 4.
[206] Rev. xiv. 4 ff.
[207] "visceribus intimari."
[208] Eph. v. 27. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XII.
O Virgin, maintain thy purpose which is destined for a great reward. Eminent with the Lord is the virtue of virginity and purity, if it be not disfigured by other kinds of lapses into sins and wickedness. Realize your state, realize your position, realize your purpose. You are called the bride of Christ; see that you commit no act which is unworthy of him to whom you profess to be betrothed. He will quickly write a bill of divorcement, if he perceive in you even one act of unfaithfulness. Accordingly, whosoever receives those gifts which, as an earnest, are bestowed in the case of human betrothals, immediately begins earnestly and diligently to enquire of domestics, intimates, and friends, what is the character of the young man, what he especially loves, what he receives, in what style he lives, what habits he practices, what luxuries he indulges in, and in what pursuits he finds his chief pleasure and delight. And when she has learned these things, she so conducts herself, in all respects, that her service, her cheerfulness, her diligence, and her whole mode of life, may be in harmony with the character of her betrothed. And do thou, who hast Christ as thy bridegroom, enquire from the domestics and intimates of that bridegroom of thine what is his character; yes, do thou zealously and skillfully enquire in what things he specially delights, what sort of arrangement he loves in thy dress, and what kind of adornment he desires. Let his most intimate associate Peter tell thee, who does not allow personal adorning even to married women, as he has written in his epistle, "Let wives, [209] in like manner, be subject to their own husbands, so that, if any believe not the word, they may, without the word, be won over by the conduct of their wives, contemplating their chaste behavior in the fear of God; and let theirs not be an outward adornment of the hair, or the putting on of gold, or elegance in the apparel which is adopted, but let there be the hidden man of the heart in the stainlessness [210] of a peaceful and modest spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price." Let another apostle also tell thee, the blessed Paul, who, writing to Timothy, gives his approval to the same things in regard to the conduct of believing women: "Let wives [211] in like manner adorn themselves with the ornament of a habit of modesty and sobriety, not with curled hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array, but as becomes women that profess chastity, with good and upright behavior." __________________________________________________________________
[209] 1 Pet. iii. 1. ff.
[210] "incorruptibilitate."
[211] 1 Tim. ii. 9, 10; chastity is here unwarrantably read in place of godliness. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIII.
But perhaps you say, "Why did not the Apostles enjoin these things on virgins?" Because they did not think that necessary, lest such an exhortation, if given to them, might rather seem an insult than a means of edification. Nor, in fact, would they have believed that virgins could ever proceed to such an extreme of hardihood, as to claim for themselves carnal and worldly ornaments, not permitted even to married women. Undoubtedly, the virgin ought to adorn and array herself; for how can she be able to please her betrothed, if she does not come forth in a neat and ornamental form? Let her be adorned by all means, but let her ornaments be of an internal and spiritual kind, and not of a carnal nature; for God desires in her a beauty not of the body, but of the soul. Do thou, therefore, who desirest that thy soul should be loved and dwelt in by God, array it with all diligence, and adorn it with spiritual garments. Let nothing unbecoming, nothing repulsive, be seen in it. Let it shine with the gold of righteousness, and gleam with the gems of holiness, and glitter with the most precious pearl of purity; instead of fine linen and silk, let it be arrayed in the robe of mercifulness and piety, according to what is written, "Put ye [212] on, therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved bowels of mercy, kindness, humility," and so forth. And let the virgin not ask for the beauty due to ceruse, [213] or any other pigment, but let her have the brightness of innocence and simplicity, the rosy hue of modesty, and the purple glow of honorable shamefacedness. Let her be washed with the nitre of heavenly doctrine, and purified by all spiritual lavements. [214] Let no stain of malice or sin be left in her. And lest, at any time, she should give forth the evil odor of sin, let her be imbued, through and through, with the most pleasant ointment of wisdom and knowledge. __________________________________________________________________
[212] Col. iii. 12.
[213] "cerussæ": white lead, used by women to whiten their skins.
[214] "lomentis": a mixture of bean-meal and rice, used as a lotion to preserve the smoothness of the skin. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIV.
God seeks for adornment of this kind, and desires a soul arrayed in such a manner. Remember that you are called the daughter of God, according to what he says, "Hearken, [215] O daughter, and consider." But you yourself also, as often as you call God your Father, bear witness that you are the daughter of God. Wherefore, if you are the daughter of God, take care that you do none of those things which are unworthy of God, your Father; but do all things as being the daughter of God. Reflect how the daughters of nobles in this world conduct themselves, to what habits they are accustomed and by what exercises they train themselves. In some of them, there is so great modesty, so great dignity, so great self-restraint, that they excel the habits of other human beings in regard to human nobleness, and, lest they should attach any mark of disgrace on their honorable parents by their failure, they strive to acquire another [216] nature for themselves by the mode of their acting in the world. And do you, therefore, have regard to your origin, consider your descent, attend to the glory of your nobility. Acknowledge that you are not merely the daughter of man, but of God, and adorned with the nobility of a divine birth. So present yourself to the world that your heavenly birth be seen in you, and your divine nobleness shine clearly forth. Let there be in you a new dignity, an admirable virtue, a notable modesty, a marvelous patience, a gait becoming a virgin with a bearing of true shamefacedness, speech always modest, and such as is uttered only at the proper time, so that whosoever beholds you may admiringly exclaim: "What is this exhibition of new dignity among men? What is this striking modesty, what this well-balanced excellence, what this ripeness of wisdom? This is not the outcome of human training or of mere human discipline. Something heavenly sheds its fragrance on me in that earthly body. I really believe that God does reside in some human beings." And when he comes to know that you are a handmaid of Christ, he will be seized with the greater amazement, and will reflect how marvelous must be the Master, when his handmaid manifests such excellence. __________________________________________________________________
[215] Ps. xlv. 10.
[216] Only a guess can here be made at the meaning; the text is in utter confusion. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XV.
If you wish, then, to be with Christ, you must live according to the example of Christ, who was so far removed from all evil and wickedness, that he did not render a recompense even to his enemies, but rather even prayed for them. For I do not wish you to reckon those souls Christian, who (I do not say) hate either their brothers or sisters, but who do not, before God as a witness, love their neighbors with their whole heart and conscience, since it is a bounden duty for Christians, after the example of Christ himself, even to love their enemies. If you desire to possess fellowship with the saints, cleanse your heart from the thought of malice and sin. Let no one circumvent you; let no one delude you by beguiling speech. The court of heaven will admit none except the holy, and righteous, and simple, and innocent, and pure. Evil has no place in the presence of God. It is necessary that he who desires to reign with Christ should be free from all wickedness and guile. Nothing is so offensive, and nothing so detestable to God, as to hate any one, to wish to harm any one; while nothing is so acceptable to him as to love all men. The prophet knowing this bears witness to it when he teaches, "Ye who [217] love the Lord, hate evil." __________________________________________________________________
[217] Ps. xcvii. 10. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVI.
Take heed that ye love not human glory in any respect, lest your portion also be reckoned among those to whom it was said, "How [218] can ye believe, who seek glory, one from another?" and of whom it is said through the prophet, "Increase [219] evils to them; increase evils to the boastful of the earth"; and elsewhere, "Ye are confounded [220] from your boasting, from your reproaching in the sight of the Lord." For I do not wish you to have regard to those, who are virgins of the world, and not of Christ; who unmindful of their purpose and profession, rejoice in delicacies, are delighted with riches, and boast of their descent from a merely carnal nobility; who, if they assuredly believed themselves to be the daughters of God, would never, after their divine ancestry, admire mere human nobility, nor glory in any honored earthly father: if they felt that they had God as their Father, they would not love any nobility connected with the flesh. Why, thou foolish woman, dost thou flatter thyself about the nobleness of thy descent, and take delight in it? God, at the beginning, created two human beings, from whom the whole multitude of the human race has descended; and thus it is not the equity of nature, but the ambition of evil desire, which has given rise to worldly nobility. Unquestionably, we are all rendered equal by the grace of the divine [221] bath, and there can be no difference among those, whom the second birth has generated, by means of which alike the rich man and the poor man, the free man and the slave, the nobly born and the lowly born, is rendered a son of God. Thus mere earthly rank is overshadowed by the brilliance of heavenly glory, and henceforth is taken no account of, while those who formerly had been unequal in worldly honors are now equally arrayed in the glory of a heavenly and divine nobility. There is now among such no place for lowness of birth; nor is any one inferior to another whom the majesty of the divine birth adorns; except in the estimation of those who do not think that the things of heaven are to be preferred to those of earth. There can be no worldly boasting among them, if they reflect how vain a thing it is that they should, in smaller matters, prefer themselves to those whom they know to be equal to themselves in greater matters, and should regard, as placed below themselves on earth, those whom they believe to be equal to themselves in what relates to heaven. But do thou, who art a virgin of Christ, and not of the world, flee from all the glory of this present life, that thou mayest attain to the glory which is promised in the world to come. __________________________________________________________________
[218] John v. 44.
[219] Isa. xxvi. 15, after the LXX.
[220] Jer. xii. 13, after the LXX.
[221] "divini lavacri": referring to baptism. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVII.
Avoid words of contention and causes of animosity: flee also from all occasions of discord and strife. For if, according to the doctrine of the Apostle "the servant [222] of the Lord must not strive," how much more does this become the handmaid of the Lord, whose mind ought to be more gentle, as her sex is more bashful and retiring. Restrain thy tongue from evil speaking, and put the bridle of the law upon thy mouth; so that you shall speak, if you speak at all, only when it would be a sin to be silent. Beware lest you utter anything which might be justly found fault with. A word once spoken is like a stone which has been thrown: wherefore it should be long thought over before it is uttered. Blessed, assuredly, are the lips, which never utter what they would wish to recall. The talk of a chaste mind ought itself also to be chaste, such as may always rather edify than injure the hearers, according to that commandment of the Apostle when he says, "Let no [223] corrupt communications proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good for the edification of faith, that it may convey grace to them that hear." Precious to God is that tongue which knows not to form words except about divine things, and holy is that mouth from which heavenly utterances continually flow forth. Put down by the authority of Scripture calumniators of those who are absent, as being evil-minded persons, because the prophet mentions this also as among the virtues of a perfect man, if, in the presence of the righteous an evil-minded man, who brings forward things against his neighbor which cannot be proved, is brought down to nothing. For it is not lawful for you patiently to listen to evil-speaking against another, inasmuch as you would not wish that to be done by others when directed against yourself. Certainly, everything is unrighteous which goes against the Gospel of Christ, and that is the case, if you quietly permit anything to be done to another, which you would feel painful, if done by any one to yourself. Accustom your tongue always to speak about those who are good, and lend your ears rather to listen to the praises of good men than to the condemnation of such as are wicked. Take heed that all the good actions you perform are done for the sake of God, knowing that for every such deed you will only receive a reward, so far as you have done it out of regard to his fear and love. Study rather to be holy than to appear so, because it is of no avail to be reckoned what you are not; and the guilt of a twofold sin is contracted when you do not have what you are credited with having, and when you pretend to possess what you do not possess. __________________________________________________________________
[222] 2 Tim. ii. 24.
[223] Eph. iv. 29. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVIII.
Delight thyself rather in fastings than in feastings, mindful of that widow who did not depart from the temple, but served God with fastings and prayers day and night. Now, if she who was a widow, and a Jewish widow, proved herself such, what is it fitting that a virgin of Christ should now attain to? Love more than any other thing the feast of the divine word, and desire that you be filled with spiritual dainties, while you seek for such food as refreshes the soul, rather than for that which only pleases the body. Flee from all kinds of flesh and wine, as being the sources of heat and provocatives to lust. And only then, if need be, use a little wine, when the stomach's uneasiness, or great infirmity of body, requires you to do so. Subdue anger, restrain enmity, and whatever there may be which gives rise to remorse when it is done, avoid as an abomination giving rise [224] to immediate sin. It is fitting that that mind should be very tranquil and quiet, as well as free from all the tumults of anger, which desires to be the dwelling-place of God, as he testifies through the prophet, saying, "Upon [225] what other man shall I rest than upon him who is humble and quiet, and who trembleth at my words?" Believe that God is a witness of all thy deeds and thoughts, and take good heed lest you either do or think anything which is unworthy of the divine eyesight. When you desire to engage in prayer, show yourself in such a frame of mind as becomes one who is to speak with the Lord. __________________________________________________________________
[224] "velut proximi criminis abominationem declina": the text and construction are both very uncertain, so that we can only make a guess at the meaning.
[225] Isa. lxvi. 2. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIX.
When you repeat [226] a psalm, consider whose words you are repeating and delight yourself more with true contrition of soul, than with the pleasantness of a trilling voice. For God sets a higher value on the tears of one thus praising [227] him, than on the beauty of his voice; as the prophet says, "Serve [228] the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling." Now, where there are fear and trembling, there is no lifting up of the voice, but humility of mind with lamentation and tears. Display diligence in all thy doings; for it is written, "Cursed [229] is the man who carelessly performs the work of the Lord." Let grace grow in you with years; let righteousness increase with age; and let your faith appear the more perfect the older you become; for Jesus, who has left us an example how to live, increased not only in years as respected his body, but in wisdom and spiritual grace before God and men. Reckon all the time in which you do not perceive yourself growing better as positively lost. Maintain to the last that purpose of virginity which you have formed; for it is the part of virtue not merely to begin, but to finish, as the Lord says in the Gospel, "Whosoever [230] shall endure to the end, the same shall be saved." Beware, therefore, lest you furnish to any one an occasion even of evil desire, because thy God, betrothed to thee, is jealous; for an adulteress against Christ is more guilty than one against her husband. Be thou, therefore, a model of life to all; be an example; and excel in actual conduct those whom you precede in your consecration [231] to chastity. Show thyself in all respects a virgin; and let no stain of corruption be brought as a charge against thy person. And let one whose body is perfect in its purity be also irreproachable in conduct. Now, as we said in the beginning of this letter, that you have become a sacrifice pertaining to God, such a sacrifice as undoubtedly imparts its own sanctity also to others, that, as every one worthily receives from it, he himself also may be a partaker of sanctification, so then, let the other virgins also be sanctified through you, as by means of a divine offering. Show yourself to them so holy in all things, that, whosoever comes in contact with thy life, whether by hearing or seeing, may experience the power of sanctification, and may feel that such an amount of grace passes to him from your manner of acting, that, while he desires to imitate thee, he himself becomes worthy of being a sacrifice devoted to God. __________________________________________________________________
[226] "dicis": the reference seems to be to singing or chanting.
[227] "psallentis."
[228] Ps. ii. 11.
[229] Jer. xlviii. 10.
[230] Matt. x. 22.
[231] The text and meaning are here somewhat uncertain. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Letter III.
A Letter of Severus to Holy Paul the Bishop.
After I learned that all thy cooks had given [232] up thy kitchen (I believe because they felt indignant at having to fulfill the duty towards cheap dishes of pulse [233] ), I sent a little boy to you out of our own workshop. He is quite skillful enough to cook pale beans and to pickle homely beet-root, with vinegar and sauce, as well as to prepare cheap porridge for the jaws of the hungry monks. He knows nothing, however, of pepper or of laser, [234] but he is quite at home with cumin, and is especially clever in plying the noisy mortar with sweetly smelling plants. He has one fault, that he is no kindly foe to admit to any garden; for if let in, he will mow down with a sword all things within his reach, and he will never be satisfied with the slaughter simply of mallows. However, in furnishing himself with fuel he will not swindle you. He will burn whatever comes in his way; he will cut down and not hesitate to lay hands upon buildings, and to carry off old beams from the household. We present him, then, to you, with this character and these virtues; and we wish you to regard him not as a servant, but as a son, because you are not ashamed to be the father of very small creatures. I myself would have wished to serve you instead of him; but if good-will may be taken as in some measure standing for the deed do you only, in return, take care to remember me amid your breakfasts and delightful dinners because it is more proper to be your slave, than the master of others. Pray for me. [235] __________________________________________________________________
[232] "renuntiasse."
[233] "pulmentariis": this word generally means some sort of relish, but here it seems to denote a kind of pottage.
[234] Laser was the juice of a plant called laserpitium.
[235] Clericus remarks, "Jocosa hæc est epistola," but the fun is certainly of a very ponderous kind. We are, by no means, sure of the sense in some parts of the letter. __________________________________________________________________
Letter IV.
To the Same, on His Wisdom and Gentleness.
The faithful exponent of our holy religion so arranges all things that no place be found in future for transgressors: for what else do you, for instance, promise us by so great sanctity of character, than that, all errors being laid aside, we should lead a blessed life? In this matter, I see that the greatest praise befits thy virtues, because you have changed even an uninstructed mind by your exhortations, and drawn it over to an excellent condition. But it would not seem so wonderful, if you had simply strengthened educated minds by instilling wisdom into them; for intelligent men have a sort of relationship to devotion, but rustic natures are not easily won over to the side of severity. [236] Just as those who shape the forms of animals out of stone, undertake a business of a pretty difficult kind, when they strike very hard rocks with their chisels, while those who make their attempts on substances of a softer nature feel that their hands are aided by the ease of fashioning these materials, and it is deemed proper that the labor of the workman; when difficult, should be held in the highest honor, so, Sir, singular commendation ought so be given to you, because you have made unpolished and rustic minds, set free from the darkness of sin, both to think what is human, and to understand what is divine.
No less is Xenocrates, by far the most learned of the philosophers, held in estimation, who succeeded by severe exhortations in having luxury conquered. For when a certain Polemo, heavy with wine, staggered openly out of a nocturnal revel at the time when his hearers were flocking to the school of Xenocrates, he, too, entered the place, and impudently took his seat among the crowd of disciples, in that dress in which he had come forth from the banquet. A chaplet of flowers covered his head, and yet he did not feel ashamed that he would seem unlike all the others, because, in truth, indulgence in a long drinking-bout had upset his brains, which are the seat of reason. As the rest of those there present began to murmur grievously, because so unsuitable a hearer had found his way in among a multitude of men of letters, the master himself was not in the slightest degree disturbed, but, on the contrary, began to discourse on the science of morals, and the laws of moderation. And so powerful proved the influence of the teacher that the mind of that impudent intruder was persuaded to the love of modesty. First of all, then, Polemo, in utter confusion, took off the chaplet from his head, and professed himself a disciple. And in course of time he conformed himself so thoroughly to the duties implied in dignity, and surrendered himself so entirely to the exhibition of modesty, that a glorious amendment of character threw a cloak over the habits of his former life. Now we admire this very thing in your instructions, that, without the use of any threats, and without having recourse to terrors of any kind, you have turned infatuated minds to the worship of God; so that even a badly ordered intellect should believe it preferable [237] to live well and happily with all, rather than to hold unrighteous opinions with a few. __________________________________________________________________
[236] "crudelitati," which, as Clericus remarks, must here be equivalent to severitati.
[237] "rectissimum," where rectius might have been expected. __________________________________________________________________
Letter V.
To an Unknown Person, Entreating Him to Deal Gently with His Brother.
Although my lord and brother has already begged of your nobleness that you would see that Tutus should be most [238] safe, yet it has been allowed to me to commend the same person in a letter, in order that, by the petition being doubled, he may be held all the safer. For let it be granted that a youthful fault and error of a yet unsettled age has injured him, so as to inflict a stain on his early years; still one, who did not yet know what was due to right conduct, has gone wrong almost without contracting blame. For when he came to a right state of mind and to reflection, he understood on better thoughts that a theatrical life was to be condemned. However, he could not be completely cleared of his fault, unless he should wash its guilt away by the aid [239] of Deity, since, by the remedy obtained through the Catholic religion, changing his views, he has denied himself the enjoyment of a less honorable place, and has withdrawn himself from the eyes of the people.
Of the Master as Above. [240]
Since, therefore, both divine and state laws do not permit a faithful body and sanctified minds to exhibit disgraceful though pleasing spectacles, and to set forth vulgar means of enjoyment, especially since an injury seems in some degree to accrue to the chaste dedication of one's self, in case any one who has been renewed by holy baptism should fall back upon his old licentiousness, it behooves your Excellency to show favor to good intentions, so that he who, by the goodness of God, has entered on a pious duty, should not be forced to sink into the pitfall of the theatre. He does not, however, refuse compliance with the judgment of you all, if you enjoin other fitting actions on his part in behalf of the requirements of our common country. [241] __________________________________________________________________
[238] There is a play upon the words--"Tutum esse tutissimum."
[239] "divinitatis accessu": the context is almost unintelligible.
[240] This probably denotes that what follows is the substance of the Master's petition.
[241] Clericus, while accepting most of the letters with which we are now dealing, doubts, from the difference of style, whether this is an epistle of Sulpitius. It is certainly very different from his usual clearness and correctness. __________________________________________________________________
Letter VI.
To Salvius: a Complaint that the Country People Were Harassed, and Their Possessions Plundered.
Forensic excitement ought to be at full heat during the time of business in the law-courts; for it is fitting that the arms of industry, as it struggles daily, should display energetic movements. But when loud-toned eloquence has sounded a retreat, and has retired to peaceful groves and pleasant dwelling-places, it is right that one lay aside idle murmurs, and cease to utter ineffectual threats. For we know that palm-bearing steeds, when they have retired from the circus, rest with the utmost quietness in their stables. Neither constant fear nor doubtful palms of victory distress them, but at length, haltered to the peaceful cribs, they now no longer stand in awe of the master urging them on, enjoying sweet oblivion of the restless rivalry which had prevailed. In like manner, let it delight the boastful soldier after his term of service is completed, to hang up his trophies, and patiently to bear the burden of age.
But I do not quite understand why you should take a delight in terrifying miserable husbandmen; and I do not comprehend why you wish to harass my rustics with the fear of want of sustenance; [242] as if, indeed, I did not know how to console them, and to deliver them from fear, and to show them that there is not so great a reason to fear as you pretend. I confess that, while we were occupied in the plain, I was often frightened by the arms of your eloquence, but frequently I returned you corresponding blows, as far as I was able. I certainly learned along with you, by what right, and in what order, the husbandmen are demanded back, to whom a legal process is competent, and to whom the issue of a process is not competent. You say that the Volusians wished you brought back, and frequently, in your wrath, you repeat that you will withdraw the country people from my little keep; and you, the very man, as I hope and desire, bound to me by the ties of old relationship, now rashly threaten that, casting our agreement to the winds, you will lay hold upon my men. I ask of your illustrious knowledge, whether there is one law for advocates, and another for private persons, whether one thing is just at Rome, and quite another thing at Matarum.
In the meantime, I do not know that you were ever lord of the Volusian property, since Dionysius is said to have preserved the right of possession to it, and he never wanted heirs; who, while he lived, was accustomed to hurl the envenomed jibes of his low language upon a multitude of individuals. [243] There was, at that time, one Porphyrius, the son of Zibberinus, and yet he was not properly named the son of Zibberinus. He kept hidden, by military service, the question as to his birth, and, that he might dispel the cloud from his forehead, he took part in officious services and willing acts of submission. He was much with me both at home and in the forum, having often employed me as his defender with my father, and as his advocate before the judge. Sometimes I even kept back Dionysius, feeling that he ought not, for the sake of twenty acres to discharge vulgar abuse upon Porphyrius.
See, here is the reason why thy remarkable prudence threatened my agents, so that, though you are not the owner of the place, you everywhere make mention of my husbandmen. But if you give yourself out as the successor of Porphyrius, you must know that the narrow space of twenty acres cannot certainly be managed by one cultivator, or, if mindful of your proper dignity and determined to maintain it, you shrink from naming yourself the heir of Porphyrius, it is certain and obvious that he can commence proceedings, [244] to whom the right of doing so belongs, so as to go to law with those who have no property in that land. But if you diligently look into the matter, you will see that the endeavor to recover it most especially devolves on me. Wherefore, my much esteemed lord and brother, it behooves you to be at peace, and to return to friendship with me, while you condescend to come to a private conference. Cease, I pray you, to disturb inactive and easily frightened persons, and utter your boastful words at a distance. Believe me, however, that I am delighted with your high spirit, and by no means offended; for we are neither of a harsh disposition, nor destitute of learning. Let Maximinus at least render you gentle. [245] __________________________________________________________________
[242] "exhibitionis formidine"--a strange phrase.
[243] The text is uncertain, and the meaning very obscure.
[244] "posse proponere."
[245] We thoroughly agree with Clericus that this letter is, in style, more alien even than the preceding from the genuine epistles of Sulpitius. It is barbarous as regards composition, and in several places not intelligible. __________________________________________________________________
Letter VII.
To an Unknown Person, Begging the Favor of a Letter.
The faith and piety of souls, no doubt, remain, but this should be made known by the evidence of a letter, in order that an increase of affection may be gained by such mutual courtesy. For just as a fertile field cannot bring forth abundant fruits, if its cultivation has been neglected, and the good qualities of soil are lost through the indolence of one who rests, instead of working, so I think that the love and kindly feelings of the mind grow feeble, unless those who are absent are visited, as if present, by means of a letter. [246] __________________________________________________________________
[246] Most editions add "Deo gratias, Amen." __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
The Sacred History Of Sulpitius Severus. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Book I. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter I.
I address myself to give a condensed account of those things which are set forth in the sacred Scriptures from the beginning of the world and to tell of them, with distinction of dates and according to [247] their importance, down to period within our own remembrance. Many who were anxious to become acquainted with divine things by means of a compendious treatise, have eagerly entreated me to undertake this work. I, seeking to carry out their wish, have not spared my labor, and have thus succeeded in comprising in two short books things which elsewhere filled many volumes. At the same time, in studying brevity, I have omitted hardly any of the facts. Moreover, it seemed to me not out of place that, after I had run through the sacred history down to the crucifixion of Christ, and the doings of the Apostles, I should add an account of events which subsequently took place. I am, therefore, to tell of the destruction of Jerusalem, the persecutions of the Christian people, the times of peace which followed, and of all things again thrown into confusion by the intestine dangers of the churches. But I will not shrink from confessing that, wherever reason required, I have made use of profane historians to fix dates and preserve the series of events unbroken, and have taken out of these what was wanting to a complete knowledge of the facts, that I might both instruct the ignorant and carry conviction to the learned. Nevertheless, as to those things which I have condensed from the sacred books, I do not wish so to present myself as an author to my readers, that they, neglecting the source from which my materials have been derived, should be satisfied with what I have written. My aim is that one who is already familiar with the original should recognize here what he has read there; for all the mysteries of divine things cannot be brought out except from the fountain-head itself. I shall now enter upon my narrative. __________________________________________________________________
[247] "carptim": such seems to be the meaning of the word here, as Sigonius has noted. His words are "Carptim--profecto innuit se non singulas res eodem modo persecuturum, sed quæ memoratu digniores visæ fuerint, selecturum." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter II.
The world was created by God nearly six [248] thousand years ago, as we shall set forth in the course of this book; although those who have entered upon and published a calculation of the dates, but little agree among themselves. As, however, this disagreement is due either to the will of God or to the fault of antiquity, it ought not to be a matter of censure. After the formation of the world man was created, the male being named Adam, and the female Eve. Having been placed in Paradise, they ate of the tree from which they were interdicted, and therefore were cast forth as exiles into our earth. [249] To them were born Cain and Abel; but Cain, being an impious man, slew his brother. He had a son called Enoch, by whom a city was first built, [250] and was called after the name of its founder. From him Irad, and from him again Maüiahel was descended. He had a son called Mathusalam, and he, in turn, begat Lamech, by whom a young man is said to have been slain, without, however, the name of the slain man being mentioned--a fact which is thought by the wise to have presaged a future mystery. Adam, then, after the death of his younger son, begat another son called Seth, when he was now two hundred and thirty years old: he lived altogether eight hundred and thirty years. Seth begat Enos, Enos Cainan, Cainan Malaleel, Malaleel Jared, and Jared Enoch, who on account of his righteousness is said to have been translated by God. His son was called Mathusalam who begat Lamech; from whom Noah was descended, remarkable for his righteousness, and above all other mortals dear and acceptable to God. When by this time the human race had increased to a great multitude, certain angels, whose habitation was in heaven, were captivated by the appearance of some beautiful virgins, and cherished illicit desires after them, so much so, that falling beneath their own proper nature and origin, they left the higher regions of which they were inhabitants, and allied themselves in earthly marriages. These angels gradually spreading wicked habits, corrupted the human family, and from their alliance giants are said to have sprung, for the mixture with them of beings of a different nature, as a matter of course, gave birth to monsters. __________________________________________________________________
[248] Sulpitius follows the Greek version, which ascribes many more years to the fathers of mankind than does the original Hebrew.
[249] Many of the ancients (among whom our author is apparently to be reckoned) believed that Paradise was situated outside our world altogether.
[250] An obvious mistake. The first city was built, not by Enoch but by Cain. Gen. iv. 17. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter III.
God being offended by these things, and especially by the wickedness of mankind, which had gone beyond measure, had determined to destroy the whole human race. But he exempted Noah, a righteous man and of blameless life, from the destined doom. He being warned by God that a flood was coming upon the earth, built an ark of wood of immense size, and covered it with pitch so as to render it impervious to water. He was shut into it along with his wife, and his three sons and his three daughters-in-law. Pairs of birds also and of the different kinds of beasts were likewise received into it, while all the rest were cut off by a flood. Noah then, when he understood that the violence of the rain had ceased, and that the ark was quietly floating on the deep, thinking (as really was the case) that the waters were decreasing, sent forth first a raven for the purpose of enquiring into the matter, and on its not returning, having settled, as I conjecture, on the dead bodies, he then sent forth a dove. It, not finding a place of rest, returned to him and being again sent out, it brought back an olive leaf, in manifest proof that the tops of the trees were now to be seen. Then being sent forth a third time, it returned no more, from which it was understood that the waters had subsided; and Noah accordingly went out from the ark. This was done, as I reckon, two thousand two hundred [251] and forty-two years after the beginning of the world. __________________________________________________________________
[251] After the LXX, as usual. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IV.
Then Noah first of all erected an altar to God, and offered sacrifices from among the birds. [252] Immediately afterwards he was blessed by God along with his sons, and received a command that he should not eat blood, or shed the blood of any human being, because Cain, having no such precept, had stained the first age of the world. Accordingly, the sons of Noah were alone left in the then vacant world; for he had three, Shem, Ham, and Japhet. But Ham, because he had mocked his father when senseless with wine, incurred his father's curse. His son, Chas by name, begat the giant Nebroth, [253] by whom the city of Babylon is said to have been built. Many other towns are related to have been founded at that time, which I do not here intend to name one by one. But although the human race was now multiplied, and men occupied different places and islands, nevertheless all made use of one tongue, as long as the multitude, afterwards to be scattered through the whole world, kept itself in one body. These, after the manner of human nature, formed the design of obtaining a great name by constructing some great work before they should be separated from one another. They therefore attempted to build a tower which should reach up to heaven. But by the ordination of God, in order that the labors of those engaged in the work might be hindered, they began to speak in a kind of languages very different from their accustomed form of speech, while no one understood the others. This led to their being all the more readily dispersed, because, regarding each other as foreigners, they were easily induced to separate. And the world was so divided to the sons of Noah, that Shem occupied the East, Japhet the West, and Ham the intermediate parts. After this, till the time of Abraham, [254] their genealogy presented nothing very remarkable or worthy of record. __________________________________________________________________
[252] Not of birds only, but other animals also. Gen. viii. 20.
[253] This is the Nimrod of the A.V.; he is called Nebrod by the LXX. We have, for the most part, given the proper names as they appear in the edition of Halm.
[254] Such is the form of the name as given by Halm, though Abram would be expected. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter V.
Abraham, whose father was Thara, was born in the one thousand and seventeenth year after the deluge. His wife was called Sara, and his dwelling-place was at first in the country [255] of the Chaldæans. He then dwelt along with his father at Charræ. Being at this time spoken to by God, he left his country and his father, and taking with him Lot, the son of his brother, he came into the country of the Canaanites, and settled at a place named Sychem. Ere long, owing to the want of corn, he went into Egypt, and again returned. Lot, owing to the size of the household, parted from his uncle, that he might take advantage of more spacious territories in what was then a vacant region, and settled at Sodom. That town was infamous on account of its inhabitants, males forcing themselves upon males, and it is said on that account to have been hateful to God. At that period the kings of the neighboring peoples were in arms, though previously there had been no [256] war among mankind. But the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah and of the adjacent territories went forth to battle against those who were making war upon the regions round about, and being routed at the first onset, yielded the victory to the opposite side. Then Sodom was plundered and made a spoil of by the victorious enemy, while Lot was led into captivity. When Abraham heard of this, he speedily armed his servants, to the number of three hundred and eighteen, and, stripping of their spoils and arms the kings flushed with victory, he put them to flight. Then he was blessed by Melchisedech the priest, and gave him tithes of the spoil. He restored the remainder to those from whom it had been taken. __________________________________________________________________
[255] The LXX has chora, instead of Ur.
[256] A most improbable statement. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VI.
At the same time God spoke to Abraham, and promised that his seed was to be multiplied as the sand of the sea; and that his predicted seed would live in a land not his own, while his posterity would endure slavery in a hostile country for four hundred years, but would afterwards be restored to liberty. Then his name was changed, as well as that of his wife, by the addition of one letter; so that instead of Abram [257] he was called Abraham, and, instead of Sara, she was called Sarra. The mystery involved in this is by no means trifling, but it is not the part of this work to treat of it. At the same time, the law of circumcision was enjoined on Abraham, and he had by a maid-servant a son called Ishmael. Moreover, when he himself was a hundred years old, and his wife ninety, God promised that they should have a son Isaac, the Lord having come to him along with two angels. Then the angels being sent to Sodom, found Lot sitting in the gate of the city. He supposed them to be human beings, and welcomed them to share in his hospitality, and provided an entertainment for them in his house, but the wicked youth of the town demanded the new arrivals for impure purposes. Lot offered them his daughters in place of his guests, but they did not accept the offer, having a desire rather for things forbidden, and then Lot himself was laid hold of with vile designs. The angels, however, speedily rescued him from danger, by causing blindness to fall upon the eyes of these unchaste sinners. Then Lot, being informed by his guests that the town was to be destroyed, went away from it with his wife and daughters; but they were commanded not to look back upon it. His wife, however, not obeying this precept (in accordance with that evil tendency of human nature which renders it difficult to abstain from things forbidden), turned back her eyes, and is said to have been at once changed into a monument. As for Sodom, it was burned to ashes by fire from heaven. And the daughters of Lot, imagining that the whole human race had perished, sought a union with their father while he was intoxicated, and hence sprung the race of Moab and Ammon. __________________________________________________________________
[257] In the Greek of the LXX. the name appears as Abraam, so that, as our author says, there is only a change of one letter. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VII.
Almost at the same time, when Abraham was now a hundred years old, his son Isaac was born. Then Sara expelled the maid-servant by whom Abraham had had a son; and she is said to have dwelt in the desert along with her son, and defended by the help of God. Not long after this, God tried the faith of Abraham, and required that his son Isaac should be sacrificed to him by his father. Abraham did not hesitate to offer him, and had already laid the lad upon the altar, and was drawing the sword to slay him, when a voice came from heaven commanding him to spare the young man; and a ram was found at hand to be for a victim. When the sacrifice was offered, God spoke to Abraham, and promised him those things which he had already said he would bestow. But Sara died in her one hundred and twenty-seventh year, and her body was, through the care of her husband, buried in Hebron, a town of the Canaanites, for Abraham was staying in that place. Then Abraham, seeing that his son Isaac was now of youthful [258] age, for he was, in fact, in his fortieth year, enjoined his servant to seek a wife for him, but only from that tribe and territory from which he himself was known to be descended. He was instructed, however, on finding the girl, to bring her into the land of the Canaanites, and not to suppose that Isaac would return into the country of his father for the purpose of obtaining a wife. In order that the servant might carry out those instructions zealously, Abraham administered an oath to him, while his hand rested on the thigh of his master. The servant accordingly set out for Mesopotamia, and came to the town of Nachor, the brother of Abraham. He entered into the house of Bathuel, the Syrian, son of Nachor; and having seen Rebecca, a beautiful virgin, the daughter of Nachor, he asked for her, and brought her to his master. After this, Abraham took a wife named Kethurah, who is called in the Chronicles his concubine, and begat children by her. But he left his possessions to Isaac, the son of Sara, while, at the same time, he distributed gifts to those whom he had begotten by his concubines; and thus they were separated from Isaac. Abraham died after a life of a hundred and seventy-five years; and his body was laid in the tomb of Sara his wife. __________________________________________________________________
[258] "juvenilis ætatis": the meaning is that he ceased to be a mere adolescens, and had reached the flower of his age. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VIII.
Now, Rebecca, having long been barren, at length, through the unceasing prayers of her husband to the Lord, brought forth twins about twenty years after the time of her marriage. These are said to have often leaped [259] in the womb of their mother; and it was announced by the answer of the Lord on this subject, that two peoples were foretold in these children, and that the elder would, in rank, be inferior to the younger. Well, the first that was born, bristling over with hair, was called Esau, while Jacob was the name given to the younger. At that time, a grievous famine had taken place. Under the pressure of this necessity, Isaac went to Gerar, to King Abimelech, having been warned by the Lord not to go down into Egypt. There he is promised the possession of the whole land, and is blessed, and having been greatly increased in cattle and every kind of substance, he is, under the influence of envy, driven out by the inhabitants. Thus expelled from that region, he sojourned by the well, known as "the well [260] of the oath." By and by, being advanced in years, and his eyesight being gone, as he made ready to bless his son Esau, Jacob through the counsel of his mother, Rebecca, presented himself to be blessed in the place of his brother. Thus Jacob is set before his brother as the one to be honored by the princes and the peoples. Esau, enraged by these occurrences, plotted the death of his brother. Jacob, owing to the fear thus excited, and by the advice of his mother, fled into Mesopotamia, having been urged by his father to take a wife of the house of Laban, Rebecca's brother: so great was their care, while they dwelt in a strange country, that their children should marry within their own kindred. Thus Jacob, setting out for Mesopotamia, is said in sleep to have had a vision of the Lord; and on that account regarding the place of his dream as sacred, he took a stone from it; and he vowed that, if he returned in prosperity, the name [261] of the pillar should be the "house of the Lord," and that he would devote to God the tithes of all the possessions he had gained. Then he betook himself to Laban, his mother's brother, and was kindly received by him to share in his hospitality as the acknowledged son of his sister. __________________________________________________________________
[259] So in LXX.
[260] This is the meaning of the Hebrew word, Beersheba.
[261] "Titulum sibi domus Dei futurum": the rendering of the Hebrew original is here obviously faulty, and the words, as they stand, are scarcely intelligible. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IX.
Laban had two daughters, Leah and Rachel; but Leah had tender eyes, while Rachel is said to have been beautiful. Jacob, captivated by her beauty, burned with love for the virgin, and, asking her in marriage from the father, gave himself up to a servitude of seven years. But when the time was fulfilled, Leah was foisted upon him, and he was subjected to another servitude of seven years, after which Rachel was given him. But we are told that she was long barren, while Leah was fruitful. Of the sons whom Jacob had by Leah, the following are the names: Reuben, Symeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Zebulon, and a daughter Dinah; while there were born to him by the handmaid of Leah, Gad and Asher, and by the handmaid of Rachel, Dan and Naphtali. But Rachel, after she had despaired of offspring, bare Joseph. Then Jacob, being desirous of returning to his father, when Laban his father-in-law had given him a portion of the flock as a reward for his service, and Jacob the son-in-law, thinking him not to be acting justly in that matter, while he [also] suspected deceit on his part, privately departed about the thirtieth year after his arrival. Rachel, without the knowledge of her husband, stole the idols [262] of her father, and on account of this injury Laban followed his son-in-law, but not finding his idols, returned, after being reconciled, having straitly charged his son-in-law not to take other wives in addition to his daughters. Then Jacob, going on his way, is said to have had a vision of angels and of the army [263] of the Lord. But, as he directed his journey past the region of Edom, which his brother Esau inhabited, suspecting the temper of Esau, he first sent messengers and gifts to try him. Then he went to meet his brother, but Jacob took care not to trust him beyond what he could help. On the day before the brothers were to meet, God, taking a human form, is said to have wrestled with Jacob. And when he had prevailed with God, still he was not ignorant that his adversary was no mere mortal; and therefore begged to be blessed by him. Then his name was changed by God, so that from Jacob he was called Israel. But when he, in turn, inquired of God the name of God, he was told that that should not be asked after because it was wonderful. [264] Moreover, from that wrestling, the breadth [265] of Jacob's thigh shrank. __________________________________________________________________
[262] eidola is the Septuagint rendering of the Hebrew word Teraphim. Perhaps the original word should simply be transliterated into English as has been done in the Revised Version.
[263] The rendering of the LXX.
[264] "Admirabile."
[265] "Latitudo": Vorstius says this refers to the broad bone, or broad nerve of the thigh. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter X.
Israel, therefore, avoiding the house of his brother, sent forward his company to Salem, a town of the Shechemites, and there he pitched his tent on a spot which he had purchased. Emor, a Chorræan prince, was the ruler of that town. His son Sychem defiled Dinah, the daughter of Jacob by Leah. Symeon and Levi, the brothers of Dinah, discovering this, cut off by a stratagem all those of the male sex in the town, and thus terribly avenged the injury done to their sister. The town was plundered by the sons of Jacob, and all the spoil carried off. Jacob is said to have been much displeased with these proceedings. Soon after being instructed by God, he went to Bethel, and there erected an altar to God. Then he fixed his tent in a part of the territory belonging to the tower [266] Gader. Rachel died in childbirth: the boy she bore was called Benjamin. Israel died at the age of one hundred and eighty years. Now, Esau was mighty in wealth, and had taken to himself wives of the nation of the Canaanites. I do not think that, in a work so concise as the present, I am called upon to mention his descendants, and, if any one is curious on the subject, he may turn to the original. After the death of his father, Jacob stayed on in the place where Isaac had lived. His other sons occasionally left him along with the flocks, for the sake of pasturage, but Joseph and the little Benjamin remained at home. Joseph was much beloved by his father, and on that account was hated by his brethren. There was this further cause for their aversion, that by frequent dreams of his it seemed to be indicated that he would be greater than all of them. Accordingly, having been sent by his father to inspect the flocks and pay a visit to his brothers, there seemed to them a fitting opportunity for doing him harm. For, on seeing their brother, they took counsel to slay him. But Reuben, whose mind shuddered at the contemplation of such a crime, opposing their plan, Joseph was let down into a well. [267] Afterwards, by the persuasions of Judah, they were brought to milder measures, and sold him to merchants, who were on their way to Egypt. And by them he was delivered to Petifra, a governor of Pharaoh. __________________________________________________________________
[266] "In parte turris Gadir": this is a strange rendering of the Hebrew. The LXX has "beyond the tower Gader"; while the Revised English Version has "beyond the tower of Eder."
[267] "Lacum." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XI.
About this same time, Judah, the son of Jacob, took in marriage Sava, [268] a woman of Canaan. By her he had three sons,--Her, Onan, and Sela. Her was allied by concubinage [269] to Thamar. On his death, Onan took his brother's wife; and he is related to have been destroyed by God, because he spilled his seed upon the earth. Then Thamar, assuming the garb of a harlot, united with her brother-in-law, and bore him two sons. But when she brought them forth, there was this remarkable fact, that, when on one of the boys being born, the midwife had bound his hand with a scarlet thread to indicate which of them was born first, he, drawing back again into the womb of his mother, was born [270] the last boy of the two. The names of Fares and Zarah were given to the children. But Joseph, being kindly treated by the royal governor who had obtained him for a sum of money, and having been made manager of his house and family, had drawn the eyes of his master's wife upon himself through his remarkable beauty. And as she was madly laboring under that base passion, she made advances to him oftener than once, and when he would not yield to her desires, she disgraced him by the imputation of a false crime, and complained to her husband that he had made an attempt upon her virtue. Accordingly, Joseph was thrown into prison. There were in the same place of confinement two of the king's servants, who made known their dreams to Joseph, and he, interpreting these as bearing upon the future, declared that one of them would be put to death, and the other would be pardoned. And so it came to pass. Well, after the lapse of two years, the king also had a dream. And when this could not be explained by the wise men among the Egyptians, that servant of the king who was liberated from prison informs the king that Joseph was a wonderful interpreter of dreams. Accordingly, Joseph was brought out of prison, and interpreted to the king his dream, to this effect, that, for the next seven years, there would be the greatest fertility in the land; but in those that followed, famine. The king being alarmed by this terror, and seeing that there was a divine spirit in Joseph, set him over the department of food-supply, and made him equal with himself in the government. Then Joseph, while corn was abundant throughout all Egypt, gathered together an immense quantity, and, by increasing the number of granaries, took measures against the future famine. At that time, the hope and safety of Egypt were placed in him alone. About the same period, Aseneh bore him two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim. He himself, when he received the chief power from the king, was thirty years old; for he was sold by his brothers when he was seventeen years of age. __________________________________________________________________
[268] Called Shuah in A.V.
[269] Or perhaps, rather, marriage of a sort, as appears from what follows.
[270] A different reading gives, "was born on the following day." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XII.
In the mean time, affairs having been well settled in Egypt to meet the famine, a grievous want of corn began to distress the world. Jacob, constrained by this necessity, sent his sons into Egypt, keeping only Benjamin with himself at home. Joseph, then, being at the head of affairs, and having complete power over the corn-supplies, his brothers come to him, and pay the same honor to him as to a king. He, when he saw them, craftily concealed his recognition of them, and accused them of having come as enemies, subtly to spy out the land. But he was annoyed that he did not see among them his brother Benjamin. Matters, then, are brought to this point, that they promised he should be present, specially that he might be asked whether they had entered Egypt for the purpose of spying out the land. In order to secure the fulfillment of this promise, Symeon was retained as hostage, while to them corn was given freely. Accordingly, they returned, bringing Benjamin with them as had been arranged. Then Joseph made himself known to his brothers to the shame of these evil-deservers. Thus, he sent them home again, laden with corn, and presented with many gifts, forewarning them that there were still five years of famine to come, and advising them to come down with their father, their children, and their whole connections to Egypt. So Jacob went down to Egypt, to the great joy of the Egyptians and of the king himself, while he was tenderly welcomed by his son. That took place in the hundred and thirtieth year of the life of Jacob, and one thousand three hundred and sixty years [271] after the deluge. But from the time when Abraham settled in the land of the Canaanites, to that when Jacob entered Egypt, there are to be reckoned two hundred and fifteen years. After this, Jacob, in the seventeenth year of his residence in Egypt, suffering severely from illness, entreated Joseph to see his remains placed in the tomb. Then Joseph presented his sons to be blessed; [272] and when this had been done, but so that he set the younger before the elder as to the value of the blessing given, Jacob then blessed all his sons in order. He died at the age of one hundred and forty-seven years. His funeral was of a most imposing character, and Joseph laid his remains in the tomb of his fathers. He continued to treat his brothers with kindness, although, after the death of their father, they felt alarmed from a consciousness of the wrong they had done. Joseph himself died in his one hundred and tenth year. __________________________________________________________________
[271] The chronology of the LXX is, as usual, here followed.
[272] The original is, "quibus benedictis, cum tamen benedictionis merito majori minorem præposuisset, filios omnes benedictione lustravit." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIII.
It is almost incredible to relate how the Hebrews who had come down into Egypt so soon increased in numbers, and filled Egypt with their numerous descendants. But on the death of the king, who kindly cherished them on account of the services of Joseph, they were kept down by the government of the succeeding kings. For both the heavy labor of building cities was laid upon them, and because their abounding numbers were now feared, lest some day they should secure their independence by arms, they were compelled by a royal edict to drown their newly-born male children. And no permission was granted to evade this cruel order. Well, at that time, the daughter of Pharaoh found an infant in the river, and caused it to be brought up as her own son, giving the boy the name of Moses. This Moses, when he had come to manhood, saw a Hebrew being assaulted by an Egyptian; and, filled with sorrow at the sight, he delivered his brother from injury, and killed the Egyptian with a stone. Soon after, fearing punishment on account of what he had done, he fled into the land of Midian, and, taking up his abode with Jothor the priest of that district, he received his daughter Sepphora in marriage, who bore him two sons, Gersam and Eliezer. At this epoch lived Job, who had acquired both the knowledge of God and all righteousness simply from the law [273] of nature. He was exceedingly rich, and on that account all the more illustrious, because he was neither corrupted by that wealth while it remained entire, nor perverted by it when it was lost. For, when, through the agency of the devil, he was stripped of his goods, deprived of his children, and finally covered in his own person with terrible boils, he could not be broken down, so as, from impatience of his sufferings, in any way, to commit sin. At length he obtained the reward of the divine approval, and being restored to health, he got back doubled all that he had lost. __________________________________________________________________
[273] This somewhat remarkable statement is supported by the text of Halm, who reads, "lege naturæ." But other editions have "legem naturæ," and the meaning will then be "who had learned the law of nature, and the knowledge of God," &c. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIV.
But the Hebrews, oppressed by the multiplied evils of slavery, directed their complaints to heaven, and cherished the hope of assistance from God. Then, as Moses was feeding his sheep, suddenly a bush appeared to him burning, but, what was surprising, the flames did it no harm. Astonished at such an extraordinary sight, he drew nearer to the bush, and immediately God spoke to him in words to this effect, that he was the Lord of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and that he desired that their descendants, who were kept down under the tyranny of the Egyptians, should be delivered from their sufferings, and that he, therefore, should go to the king of Egypt, and present himself as a leader for restoring them to liberty. When he hesitated, God strengthened him with power, and imparted to him the gift of working miracles. Thus Moses, going into Egypt, after he had first performed miracles in the presence of his own people, and having associated his brother Aaron with him, went to the king, declaring that he had been sent by God, and that he now told him in the words of God to let the Hebrew people go. But the king, affirming that he did not know the Lord, refused to obey the command addressed to him. And when Moses, in proof that the orders he issued were from God, changed his rod into a serpent, [274] and soon after convened all the water into blood, while he filled the whole land with frogs, as the Chaldæans were doing similar things, the king declared that the wonders performed by Moses were simply due to the arts of magic, and not to the power of God, until the land was covered with stinging insects brought over it, when the Chaldæans confessed that this was done by the divine majesty. Then the king, constrained by his sufferings, called to him Moses and Aaron, and gave the people liberty to depart, provided that the calamity brought upon the kingdom were removed. But, after the suffering was put an end to, his mind, having no control over itself returned to its former state, and did not allow the Israelites to depart, as had been agreed upon. Finally, however, he was broken down and conquered by the ten plagues which were sent upon his person and his kingdom. __________________________________________________________________
[274] "Draconem." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XV.
But on the day [275] before the people went out of Egypt, being as yet unacquainted with dates, they were instructed by the command of God to acknowledge that month which was then passing by as the first of all months; and were told that the sacrifice of the day was to be solemnly and regularly offered in coming ages, so that, on the fourteenth day of the month, a lamb without blemish, one year old, should be slain as a victim, and that the door-posts should be sprinkled with its blood; that its flesh was wholly to be eaten, but not a bone of it was to be broken; that they should abstain from what was leavened for seven days, using only unleavened bread; and that they should hand down the observance to their posterity. Thus the people went forth rich, both by their own wealth, and still more by the spoils of Egypt. Their number had grown from those seventy-five [276] Hebrews, who had first gone down into Egypt, to six hundred thousand men. Now, there had elapsed from the time when Abraham first reached the land of the Canaanites a period of four hundred and thirty years, but from the deluge a period of five hundred and seventy-five [277] years. Well, as they went forth in haste, a pillar of cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by night, marched before them. But since, owing to the fact that the gulf of the Red Sea lay between, the way led by [278] the land of the Philistines, in order that an opportunity might not afterwards be offered to the Hebrews, shrinking from the desert, of returning into Egypt by a well-known road through a continuous land-journey, by the command of God they turned aside, and journeyed towards the Red Sea, where they stopped and pitched their camp. When it was announced to the king that the Hebrew people, through mistaking the road, had come to have the sea right before them, and that they had no means of escape since the deep would prevent them, vexed and furious that so many thousand men should escape from his kingdom and power, he hastily led forth his army. And already the arms, and standards, and the lines drawn up in the widespreading plains were visible, when, as the Hebrews were in a state of terror, and gazing up to heaven, Moses being so instructed by God, struck the sea with his rod, and divided it. Thus a road was opened to the people as on firm land, the waters giving way on both sides. Nor did the king of Egypt hesitate to follow the Israelites going forward, for he entered the sea where it had opened; and, as the waters speedily came together again, he, with all his host, was destroyed. __________________________________________________________________
[275] Such is Halm's reading; another is simply "before."
[276] The Hebrew text has "seventy," but our author, as usual, follows the LXX.
[277] Again after the LXX.
[278] The text here is uncertain and obscure. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVI.
Then Moses, exulting in the safety of his own people, and in the destruction of the enemy, by such a miracle, [279] sang a song of praise to God, and the whole multitude, both of males and females, took part in it. But, after they had entered the desert, and advanced a journey of three days, want of water distressed them; and, when it was found, it proved of no use on account of its bitterness. And then for the first time the stubbornness of the impatient people showed itself, and burst forth against Moses; when, as instructed by God, he cast some wood into the waters, and its power was such that it rendered the taste of the fluid sweet. Thence advancing, the multitude found at Elim twelve fountains of waters, with seventy palm-trees, and there they encamped. Again the people, complaining of famine, heaped reproaches upon Moses, and longed for the slavery of Egypt, accompanied as it was with abundance to please their appetite, when a flock of quails was divinely sent, and filled the camp. Besides, on the following day, those who had gone forth from the camp perceived that the ground was covered with a sort of pods, [280] the appearance of which was like a coriander-seed of snowy whiteness, as we often see the earth in the winter months covered with the hoar-frost that has been spread over it. Then the people were informed, through Moses, that this bread had been sent them by the gift of God; that every one should gather in vessels prepared for the purpose only so much of it as would be sufficient for each, according to their number, during one day; but that on the sixth day they should gather double, because it was not lawful to collect it on the Sabbath. The people, however, as they were never prone to obedience, did not, in accordance with human nature, restrain their desires, providing in their stores not merely for one, but also for the following day. But that which was thus laid up swarmed with worms, while its fetid odor was dreadful, yet that which was laid up on the sixth day with a view to the Sabbath remained quite untainted. The Hebrews made use of this food for forty years; its taste was very like that of honey; and its name is handed down as being manna. Moreover, as an abiding witness to the divine gift, Moses is related to have laid up a full gomer of it in a golden vessel. __________________________________________________________________
[279] "Virtute."
[280] This is a somewhat strange description of the manna. Hornius remarks upon it that there may be a reference to the dew in which the Hebrews believed the manna to have been enveloped, but that seems a far-fetched explanation. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVII.
The people going on from thence, and being again tried with want of water, hardly restrained themselves from destroying their leader. Then Moses, under divine orders, striking with his rod the rock at the place which is called Horeb, brought forth an abundant supply of water. But when they came to Raphidin, the Amalekites destroyed numbers of the people by their attacks. Moses, leading out his men to battle, placed Joshua at the head of the army; and, in company with Aaron and Hur, was himself simply to be a spectator of the fight, while, at the same time, for the purpose of praying to the Lord, he went up to the top of a mountain. But when the armies had met with doubtful issue, through the prayers of Moses, Joshua slew the enemy until nightfall. At the same time, Jothor, Moses' father-in-law, with his daughter Sepphora (who, having been married to Moses, had remained at home when her husband went into Egypt), and his children, having learned the things which were being done by Moses, came to him. By his advice Moses divided the people into various ranks; and, setting tribunes, centurions, and decurions [281] over them, thus furnished a mode of discipline and order to posterity. Jothor then returned to his own country, while the Israelites came on to Mount Sinai. There Moses was admonished by the Lord that the people should be sanctified, since they were to hearken to the words of God; and that was carefully seen to. But when God rested on the mountain, the air was shaken with the loud sounds of trumpets, and thick clouds rolled around with frequent flashes of lightning. But Moses and Aaron were on the top of the mountain beside the Lord, while the people stood around the bottom of the mountain. Thus a law was given, manifold and full of the words of God, and frequently repeated; but if any one is desirous of knowing particulars regarding it, he must consult the original, as we here only briefly touch upon it. "There shall not be," said God, "any strange gods among you, but ye shall worship me alone; thou shalt not make to time any idol; thou shalt not take the name of thy God in vain; thou shalt do no work upon the Sabbath; honor thy father and thy mother; thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not commit adultery; thou shalt not steal; thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor; thou shalt not covet anything belonging to thy neighbor." __________________________________________________________________
[281] These words denote what is expressed in the Greek, "rulers of thousands, of hundreds, and of tens." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVIII.
These things being said by God, while the trumpets uttered their voices, the lamps blazed, and smoke covered the mountain, the people trembled from terror; and begged of Moses that God should speak to him alone, and that he would report to the people what he thus heard. Now, the commandments of God to Moses were as follows: A Hebrew servant purchased with money shall serve six years, and after that he shall be free; but his ear shall be bored, should he willingly remain in slavery. Whosoever slays a man shall be put to death; he who does so unwittingly shall in due form be banished. Whosoever shall beat his father or his mother, and utter evil sayings against them, shall suffer death. If any one sell a Hebrew who has been stolen, he shall be put to death. If any one strike his own man-servant or maidservant, and he or she die of the blow, he shall be put on his trial for doing so. If any one cause a woman [282] to miscarry, he shall be put to death. If any one knock out the eye or the tooth of his servant, that servant shall receive his liberty in due form. If a bull kill a man, it shall be stoned; and if its master, knowing the vicious temper of the animal, did not take precautions in connection with it, he also shall be stoned, or shall redeem himself by a price as large as the accuser shall demand. If a bull kill a servant, money to the amount of thirty double-drachmas shall be paid to his master. If any one does not cover up a pit which has been dug, and an animal fall into that pit, he shall pay the price of the animal to its master. If a bull kill the bull of another man, the animal shall be sold, and the two masters shall share the price; they shall also divide the animal that has been killed. But if a master, knowing the vicious temper of the bull, did not take precautions in connection with it, he shall give up the bull. If any one steals a calf, he shall restore five; if he steals a sheep, the penalty shall be fourfold; and if the animals be found alive in the hands of him who drove them off, he shall restore double. It shall be lawful to kill a thief by night, but not one by day. If the cattle of any one has eaten up the corn of another, the master of the cattle shall restore what has been destroyed. If a deposit disappears, he, in whose hands it was deposited, shall swear that he has not been guilty of any deceit. A thief who is caught shall pay double. An animal given in trust, if devoured by a wild beast, shall not be made good. If any one defile a virgin not yet betrothed, he shall bestow a dowry on the girl, and thus take her to wife; but, if the father of the girl shall refuse to give her in marriage, then the ravisher shall give her a dowry. If any one shall join himself to a beast, he shall be put to death. Let him who sacrifices to idols perish. The widow and orphan are not to be oppressed; the poor debtor is not to be hardly treated, nor is usury to be demanded: the garment of the poor is not to be taken as a pledge. A ruler of the people is not to be evil spoken of. All the first-born are to be offered to God. Flesh taken from a wild beast is not to be eaten. Agreements to bear false witness, or for any evil purpose, are not to be made. Thou shalt not pass by any animal of thine enemy which has strayed, but shalt bring it back. If you find an animal of your enemy fallen down under a burden, it will be your duty to raise it up. Thou shalt not slay the innocent and the righteous. Thou shalt not justify the wicked for rewards. Gifts are not to be accepted. A stranger is to be kindly treated. Work is to be done on six days: rest is to be taken on the Sabbath. The crops of the seventh year are not to be reaped, but are to be left for the poor and needy. __________________________________________________________________
[282] Some words seem to have been lost here. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIX.
Moses reported these words of God to the people, and placed an altar of twelve stones at the foot of the mountain. Then he again ascended the mountain on which the Lord had taken his place, bringing with him Aaron, Nabad, and seventy of the elders. But these were not able to look upon the Lord; nevertheless, they saw the place [283] in which God stood, whose form is related to have been wonderful, and his splendor glorious. Now, Moses, having been called by God, entered the inner cloud which had gathered round about God, and is related to have remained there forty days and forty nights. During this time, he was taught in the words of God about building the tabernacle and the ark, and about the ritual of sacrifice-things which I, as they were obviously told at great length, have not thought proper to be inserted in such a concise work as the present. But as Moses stayed away a long time, since he spent forty days in the presence of the Lord, the people, despairing of his return, compelled Aaron to construct images. Then, out of metals which had been melted together, there came forth the head of a calf. The people, unmindful of God, having offered sacrifices to this, and given themselves up to eating and drinking, God, looking upon these things, would in his righteous indignation, have destroyed the wicked people, had he not been entreated by Moses' not to do so. But Moses, on his return, bringing down the two tables of stone which had been written by the hand of God, and seeing the people devoted to luxury and sacrilege, broke the tables, thinking the nation unworthy of having the law of the Lord delivered to them. He then called around himself the Levites, who had been assailed with many insults, and commanded them to smite the people with drawn swords. In this onset twenty-three thousand [284] men are said to have been slain. Then Moses set up the tabernacle outside the camp; and, as often as he entered it, the pillar of cloud was observed to stand before the door; and God spoke, face to face, with Moses. But when Moses entreated that he might see the Lord in his peculiar majesty, he was answered that the form of God could not be seen by mortal eyes; yet it was allowed to see his back parts; and the tables which Moses had formerly broken were constructed afresh. And Moses is reported, during this conference with God, to have stayed forty days with the Lord. Moreover, when he descended from the mountain, bringing with him the tables, his face shone with so great brightness, that the people were not able to look upon him. It was arranged, therefore, that when he was to make known to them the commands of God, he covered his face with a veil, and thus spoke to the people in the words of God. In this part of the history an account is given [285] of the tabernacle, and the building of its inner parts. Which having been finished, the cloud descended from above, and so overshadowed the tabernacle that it prevented Moses himself from entering. These are the principal matters contained in the two books of Genesis and Exodus. __________________________________________________________________
[283] The Hebrew text is here different.
[284] Curiously enough, our author here reads, "twenty-three thousand," in opposition alike to the Greek and Hebrew text, both of which have "three thousand."
[285] Halm here reads "referetur," but "refertur," another reading, seems preferable. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XX.
Then follows the book of Leviticus, in which the precepts bearing upon sacrifice are set forth; commandments also are added to the law formerly given; and almost the whole is full of instructions connected with the priests. If any one wishes to become acquainted with these, he will obtain fuller information from that source. For we, keeping within the limits of the work undertaken, touch upon the history only. The tribe of Levi, then, being set apart for the priesthood, the rest of the tribes were numbered, and were found to amount to six hundred and three thousand five hundred persons. [286] When, therefore, the people made use of the manna for food, as we have related above, even amid so many and so great kindnesses of God, showing themselves, as ever, ungrateful, they longed after the worthless viands to which they had been accustomed in Egypt. Then the Lord brought an enormous supply of quails into the camp; and as they were eagerly tearing these to pieces, as soon as their lips touched the flesh, they perished. There was indeed on that day a great destruction in the camp, so that twenty and three thousand men are said to have died. Thus the people were punished by the very food which they desired. Thence the company went forward, and came to Faran; and Moses was instructed by the Lord that the land was now near, the possession of which the Lord had promised them. Spies, accordingly, having been sent into it, they report that it was a land blessed with all abundance, but that the nations were powerful, and the towns fortified with immense walls. When this was made known to the people, fear seized the minds of all; and to such a pitch of wickedness did they come, that, despising the authority of Moses, they prepared to appoint for themselves a leader, under whose guidance they might return to Egypt. Then Joshua and Caleb, who had been of the number of the spies, rent their garments with tears, and implored the people not to believe the spies relating such terrors; for that they themselves had been with them, and had found nothing dreadful in that country; and that it behooved them to trust the promises of God, that these enemies would rather become their prey than prove their destruction. But that stiff-necked race, setting themselves against every good advice, rushed upon them to destroy them. And the Lord, angry on account of these things, exposed a part of the people to be slain by the enemy, while the spies were slain for having excited fear among the people. __________________________________________________________________
[286] The text here varies: we have followed Halm. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXI.
There followed the revolt of those, who, with Dathan and Abiron as leaders, endeavored to set themselves up against Moses and Aaron; but the earth, opening, swallowed them alive. And not long after, a revolt of the whole people arose against Moses and Aaron, so that they rushed into the tabernacle, which it was not lawful for any but the priests to enter. Then truly death mowed them down in heaps; and all would have perished in a moment, had not the Lord, appeased by the prayers of Moses, turned aside the disaster. Nevertheless, the number of those slain amounted to seven hundred and fourteen thousand. [287] And not long after, as had already often happened, a revolt of the people arose on account of the want of water. Then Moses, instructed by God to strike the rock with his rod, with a kind of trial new familiar to him, since he had already done that before, struck the rock once and again, and thus water flowed out of it. In regard, however, to this point, Moses is said to have been reproved by God, that, through want of faith, he did not bring out the water except by repeated blows; in fact, on account of this transgression, he did not enter the land promised to him, as I shall show farther on. Moses, then, moving away from that place, as he was preparing to lead his company along by the borders of Edom, sent ambassadors to the king to beg liberty to pass by; for he thought it right to abstain from war on account of the connection by blood; for that nation was descended from Esau. But the king despised the suppliants, and refused them liberty to pass by, being ready to contend in arms. Then Moses directed his march towards the mountain, Or, keeping clear of the forbidden road, that he might not furnish any cause of war between those related by blood, and on that route he destroyed the king of the nation of the Canaanites. He smote also Seon the king of the Amorites, and possessed himself of all their towns: he conquered, too, Basan and Balac. He pitched his camp beyond Jordan, not far from Jericho. Then a battle took place against the Midianites, and they were conquered and subdued. Moses died, after he had ruled the people forty years in the wilderness. But the Hebrews are said to have remained in the wilderness for so long a time, with this view, until all those who had not believed the words of God perished. For, except Joshua and Caleb, not one of those who were more than twenty years old on leaving Egypt passed over Jordan. That Moses himself only saw the promised land, and did not reach it, is ascribed to his sin, because, at that time when he was ordered to strike the rock, and bring forth water, he doubted, even after so many proofs of his miraculous power. He died in the one hundred and twentieth year of his age. Nothing is known concerning the place of his burial. __________________________________________________________________
[287] "septingenti et xiiii milia." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXII.
After the death of Moses, the chief power passed into the hands of Joshua the son of Nun, for Moses had appointed him his successor, being a man very like himself in the good qualities which he displayed. Now, at the commencement of his rule, he sent messengers through the camp to instruct the people to make ready supplies of corn, and announces that they should march on the third day. But the river Jordan, a very powerful stream, hindered their crossing, because they did not have a supply of vessels for the occasion, and the stream could not be crossed by fords, as it was then rushing on in full flood. He, therefore, orders the ark to be carried forward by the priests, and that they should take their stand against the current of the river. On this being done, Jordan is said to have been divided, and thus the army was led over on dry ground. There was in these places a town called Jericho, fortified with very strong walls, and not easy to be taken, either by storm or blockade. But Joshua, putting his trust in God, did not attack the city either by arms or force; he simply ordered the ark of God to be carried round the walls, while the priests walked before the ark, and sounded trumpets. But when the ark had been carried round seven times, the walls and the towers fell; and the city was plundered and burnt. Then Joshua is said to have addressed the Lord, and [288] to have called down a curse upon any one who should attempt to restore the town which had thus by divine help been demolished. Next, the army was led against Geth, and an ambuscade having been placed behind the city, Joshua, pretending fear, fled before the enemy. On seeing this, those who were in the town, opening the gates, began to press upon the enemy giving way. Thus, the men who were in ambush took the city, and all the inhabitants were slain, without one escaping: the king also was taken, and suffered capital punishment. __________________________________________________________________
[288] Some words have here been lost, but are conjecturally supplied in the text. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXIII.
When this became known to the kings of the neighboring nations, they made a warlike alliance to put down the Hebrews by arms. But the Gibeonites, a powerful nation with a wealthy city, spontaneously yielded to the Hebrews, promising to do what they were ordered, and were received under protection, while they were told to bring in wood and water. But their surrender had roused the resentment of the kings of the nearest cities. Accordingly, moving up their troops, they surround with a blockade their town, which was called Gabaoth. The townspeople, therefore, in their distress, send messengers to Joshua, that he would help them in their state of siege. Accordingly, he by a forced march came upon the enemy at unawares, and many thousands of them were completely destroyed. When day failed the victors, and it seemed that night would furnish protection to the vanquished, the Hebrew general, through the power of his faith, kept off the night, and the day continued, so that there was no means of escape for the enemy. Five kings who were taken suffered death. By the same attack, neighboring cities also were brought under the power of Joshua, and their kings were cut off. But as it was not my design, studious as I am of brevity, to follow out all these things in order, I only carefully observe this, that twenty-nine kingdoms were brought under the yoke of the Hebrews, and that their territory was distributed among eleven tribes, to man after man. For to the Levites, who had been set apart for the priesthood, no portion was given, in order that they might the more freely serve God. I desire not, in silence, to pass over the example thus set, but I would earnestly bring it forward as well worthy of being read by the ministers of the Church. For these seem to me not only unmindful of this precept, but even utterly ignorant of it--such a lust for possessing has, in this age, seized, like an incurable disease, upon their minds. They gape upon possessions; they cultivate estates; they repose upon gold; they buy and sell; they study gain by every possible means. And even, if any of them seem to have a better aim in life, neither possessing nor trading, still (what is much more disgraceful) remaining inactive, they look for gifts, and have corrupted the whole glory of life by their mercenary dispositions, while they present an appearance of sanctity, as if even that might be made a source of gain. But I have gone farther than I intended in expressing my loathing and disgust over the character of our times; and I hasten to return to the subject in hand. The vanquished territory, then, as I have already said, having been divided among the tribes, the Hebrews enjoyed profound peace; their neighbors, being terrified by war, did not venture to attempt hostilities against those distinguished by so many victories. At the same period died Joshua in the hundred and tenth year of his age. I do not express any definite opinion as to the length of time he ruled: the prevalent view, however, is, that he was at the head of the Hebrew affairs during twenty-seven years. If this were so, then three thousand eight hundred and eighty-four years had elapsed from the beginning of the world to his death. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXIV.
After the death of Joshua, the people acted without a leader. But a necessity of making war with the Canaanites having arisen, Judah was appointed as general in the war. Under his guidance, matters were successfully conducted: there was the greatest tranquillity both at home and abroad: the people ruled over the nations which had either been subdued or received under terms of surrender. Then, as almost always happens in a time of prosperity, becoming unmindful of morals and discipline, they began to contract marriages from among the conquered, and by and by to adopt foreign customs, yea, even in a sacrilegious manner to offer sacrifice to idols: so pernicious is all alliance with foreigners. God, foreseeing these things long before, had, by a wholesome precept enjoined upon the Hebrews to give over the conquered nations to utter destruction. But the people, through lust for power, preferred (to their own ruin) to rule over those who were conquered. Accordingly, when, forsaking God, they worshiped idols, they were deprived of the divine assistance, and, being vanquished and subdued by the king of Mesopotamia, they paid the penalty of eight years' captivity, until, with Gothoniel as their leader, they were restored to liberty, and enjoyed independence for fifty years. Then again, corrupted by the evil effect of a lengthened peace, they began to sacrifice to idols. And speedily did retribution fall upon them thus sinning. Conquered by Eglon, king of the Moabites, they served him eighteen years, until, by a divine impulse, Aod slew the enemies' king by a stratagem, and, gathering together a hasty army, restored them to liberty by force of arms. The same man ruled the Hebrews in peace for forty years. To him Semigar succeeded, and he, engaging in battle with the Philistines, [289] secured a decisive victory. But again, the king of the Canaanites, Jabin by name, subdued the Hebrews who were once more serving idols, and exercised over them a grievous tyranny for twenty years, until Deborah, a woman, restored them to their former condition. They had to such a degree lost confidence in their generals, that they were now protected by means of a woman. But it is worthy of notice, that this form of deliverance was arranged beforehand, as a type of the Church, by whose aid captivity to the devil is escaped. The Hebrews were forty years under this leader or judge. And being again delivered over to the Midianites for their sins, they were kept under hard rule; and, being afflicted by the evils of slavery, they implored the divine help. Thus always when in prosperity they were unmindful of the kindnesses of heaven, and prayed to idols; but in adversity they cried to God. Wherefore, as often as I reflect that those people who lay under so many obligations to the goodness of God, being chastised with so many disasters when they sinned, and experiencing both the mercy and the severity of God, yet were by no means rendered better, and that, though they always obtained pardon for their transgressions, yet they as constantly sinned again after being pardoned, it can appear nothing wonderful that Christ when he came was not received by them, since already, from the beginning, they were found so often rebelling against the Lord. It is, in fact, far more wonderful that the clemency of God never failed them when they sinned, if only they called upon his name. [290] __________________________________________________________________
[289] "Allophylos": lit. strangers.
[290] Many of the proper names occurring in this and other chapters are very different in form from those with which we are familiar in the O.T. But they have generally been given as they stand in the text of our author, and they can easily be identified by any readers who think it worth while to do so. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXV.
Accordingly, when the Midianites, as we have related above, ruled over them, they turned to the Lord, imploring his wonted tender mercy, and obtained it. There was then among the Hebrews one Gideon by name, a righteous man who was dear and acceptable to God. The angel stood by him as he was returning home from the harvest-field, and said unto him, "The Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of valor." But he in a humble voice complained that the Lord was not [291] with him, because captivity pressed sore upon his people, and he remembered with tears the miracles wrought by the Lord, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt. Then the angel said, "Go, in this spirit in which you have spoken, and deliver the people from captivity." But he declared that he could not, with his [292] feeble strength, since he was a man of very small importance, undertake such a heavy task. The angel, however, persisted in urging him not to doubt that those things could be done which the Lord said. So then, having offered sacrifice, and overthrown the altar which the Midianites had consecrated to the image of Baal, he went to his own people, and pitched his camp near the camp of the enemy. But the nation of the Amalekites had also joined themselves to the Midianites, while Gideon had not gathered more than an army of thirty-two thousand men. But before the battle began, God said to him that this was a larger number than he wished him to lead forth to the conflict; that, if he did make use of so many, the Hebrews would, in accordance with their usual wickedness ascribe the result of the fight, not to God, but to their own bravery; he should therefore furnish an opportunity of leaving to those who desired to do so. When this was made known to the people, twenty and two thousand left the camp. But of the ten thousand who had remained, Gideon, as instructed by God, did not retain more than three hundred: the rest he dismissed from the field. Thus, entering the camp of the enemy in the middle watch of the night, and having ordered all his men to sound their trumpets, he caused great terror to the enemy; and no one had courage to resist; but they made off in a disgraceful flight wherever they could. The Hebrews, however, meeting them in every direction, cut the fugitives to pieces. Gideon pursued the kings beyond Jordan, and having captured them, gave them over to death. In that battle, a hundred and twenty thousand of the enemy are said to have been slain, and fifteen thousand captured. Then, by universal consent, a proposal was made to Gideon that he should be king of the people. But he rejected this proposal, and preferred rather to live on equal terms with his fellow-citizens than to be their ruler. Having, therefore, escaped from their captivity, which had pressed upon the people for seven years, they now enjoyed peace for a period of forty years. __________________________________________________________________
[291] "Non esse in se."
[292] "Infractis viribus": Vorstius well remarks that "infractis" is here used with the sense of the simple "fractis." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXVI.
But on the death of Gideon, his son Abimelech, whose mother was a concubine, having slain his brothers with the concurrence of a multitude of wicked men, and especially by the help of the chief men among the Shechemites, took possession of the kingdom. And he, being harassed by civil strife, while he pressed hard upon his people by war, attempted to storm a certain tower, into which they, after losing the town, had betaken themselves by flight. But, as he approached the place without sufficient caution, he was slain by a stone which a woman threw, after holding the government for three years. To him succeeded Thola, who reigned two and twenty years. After him came Jair; and after he had held the chief place for a like period of twenty-two years, the people, forsaking God, gave themselves up to idols. On this account, the Israelites were subdued by the Philistines and Ammonites, and remained under their power for eighteen years. At the end of this period, they began to call upon God; but the divine answer to them was that they should rather invoke the aid of their images, for that he would no longer extend his mercy to those who had been so ungrateful. But they with tears confessed their fault, and implored forgiveness; while, throwing away their idols, and earnestly calling upon God, they obtained the divine compassion, though it had been at first refused. Accordingly, under Jephtha as general, they assembled in great numbers for the purpose of recovering their liberty by arms, having first sent ambassadors to King Ammon, begging that, content with his own territories, he should keep from warring against them. But he, far from declining battle, at once drew up his army. Then Jephtha, before the signal for battle was given, is said to have vowed that, if he obtained the victory, the person who first met him as he returned home, should be offered to God as a sacrifice. Accordingly, on the enemy being defeated, as Jephtha was returning home, his daughter met him, having joyfully gone forth with drums and dances to receive her father as a conqueror. Then Jephtha, being overwhelmed with sorrow, rent his clothes in his affliction, and made known to his daughter the stringent obligation of his vow. But she, with a courage not to be expected from a woman, did not refuse to die; she only begged that her life might be spared for two months, that she might before dying have the opportunity of seeing the friends of her own age. This being done, she willingly returned to her father, and fulfilled the vow to God. Jephtha held the chief power for six years. To him Esebon succeeded, and having ruled in tranquillity for seven years, then died. After him, Elon the Zebulonite ruled for ten years, and Abdon also for eight years; but, as their rule was peaceful, they performed nothing which history might record. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXVII.
The Israelites yet again turned to idols; and, being deprived of the divine protection, were subdued by the Philistines, and paid the penalty of their unfaithfulness by forty years of captivity. At that time, Samson is related to have been born. His mother, after being long barren, had a vision of an angel, and was told to abstain from wine, and strong drink, and everything unclean; for that she should bear a son who would be the restorer of liberty to the Israelites, and their avenger upon their enemies. He, with unshorn locks, is said to have been possessed of marvelous strength, so much so that he tore to pieces with his hands a lion which met him in the way. He had a wife from the Philistines, and when she, in the absence of her husband, had entered into marriage with another, he, through indignation on account of his wife being thus taken from him, wrought destruction to her nation. Trusting in God and his own strength, he openly brought disaster on those hitherto victors. For, catching three hundred foxes, he tied burning torches to their tails, and sent them into the fields of the enemy. It so happened that at the time the harvest was ripe, and thus the fire easily caught, while the vines and olive-trees were burnt to ashes. He was thus seen to have avenged the injury done him in taking away his wife, by a great loss inflicted on the Philistines. And they, enraged at this disaster, destroyed by fire the woman who had been the cause of so great a calamity, along with her house and her father. But Samson, thinking himself as yet but poorly avenged, ceased not to harass the heathen race with all sorts of evil devices. Then the Jews, being compelled to it, handed him over as a prisoner to the Philistines; but, when thus handed over, he burst his bonds and seizing the jaw-bone [293] of an ass, which chance offered him as a weapon, he slew a thousand of his enemies. And, as the heat of the day grew violent, and he began to suffer from thirst, he called upon God, and water flowed forth from [294] the bone which he held in his hand. __________________________________________________________________
[293] Simply "osse asini" in text.
[294] This is clearly the meaning, and Halm's punctuation, "invocato Deo ex osse, quod manu tenebat, aqua fluxit," is obviously wrong. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXVIII.
At that time Samson ruled over the Hebrews, the Philistines having been subdued by the prowess of a single individual. They, therefore, sought his life by stratagem, not daring to assail him openly, and with this view they bribe his wife (whom he had received after what has been stated took place) to betray to them wherein the strength of her husband lay. She attacked him with female blandishments; and, after he had deceived her, and staved off her purpose for a long time, she persuaded him to tell that his strength was situated in his hair. Presently she cut off his hair stealthily while he was asleep, and thus delivered him up to the Philistines; for although he had often before been given up to them, they had not been able to hold him fast. Then they, having put out his eyes, bound him with fetters, and cast him into prison. But, in course of time, his hair which had been cut off began to grow again, and his strength to return with it. And now Samson, conscious of his recovered strength, was only waiting for an opportunity of righteous revenge. The Philistines had a custom on their festival days of producing Samson as if to make a public spectacle of him, while they mocked their illustrious captive. Accordingly, on a certain day, when they were making a feast in honor of their idol, they ordered Samson to be exhibited. Now, the temple, in which all the people and all the princes of the Philistines feasted, rested on two pillars of remarkable size; and Samson, when brought out, was placed between these pillars. Then he, having first called upon the Lord, seized his opportunity, and threw down the pillars. The whole multitude was overwhelmed in the ruins of the building, and Samson himself died along with his enemies, not without having avenged himself upon them, after he had ruled the Hebrews twenty years. To him Simmichar succeeded, of whom Scripture relates nothing more than that simple fact. For I do not find that even the time when his rule came to an end is mentioned, and I see that the people was for some time without a leader. Accordingly, when civil war arose against the tribe of Benjamin, Judah was chosen as a temporary leader in the war. But most of those who have written about these times note that his rule was only for a single year. On this account, many pass him by altogether, and place Eli, the priest, immediately after Samson. We shall leave that point doubtful, as one not positively ascertained. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXIX.
About these times, civil war, as we have said, had broken out; and the following was the cause of the tumult. A certain Levite was on a journey along with his concubine, and, constrained by the approach of night, he took up his abode in the town of Gabaa, which was inhabited by men of Benjamin. A certain old man having kindly admitted him to hospitality, the young men of the town surrounded the guest, with the view of subjecting him to improper treatment. After being much chidden by the old man, and with difficulty dissuaded from their purpose, they at length received for their wanton sport the person of his concubine as a substitute for his own; and they thus spared the stranger, but abused her through the whole night, and only restored her on the following day. But she (whether from the injury their vile conduct had inflicted on her, or from shame, I do not venture to assert) died on again seeing [295] her husband. Then the Levite, in testimony of the horrible deed, divided her members into twelve parts, and distributed them among the twelve tribes that indignation at such conduct might the more readily be excited in them all. And when this became known to all of them, the other eleven tribes entered into a warlike confederacy against Benjamin. In this war, Judah, as we have said, was the general. But they had bad success in the first two battles. At length, however, in the third, the Benjamites were conquered, and cut off to a man; thus the crime of a few was punished by the destruction of a multitude. These things also are contained in the Book of Judges: the Books of Kings follow. But to me who am following the succession of the years, and the order of the dates, the history does not appear marked by strict chronological accuracy. For, since after Samson as judge, there came Semigar, and a little later the history certifies that the people lived without judges, Eli the priest is related in the Books of Kings to have also been a judge, [296] but the Scripture has not stated how many years there were between Eli and Samson. I see that there was some portion of time between these two, which is left in obscurity. But, from the day of the death of Joshua up to the time at which Samson died, there are reckoned four hundred and eighteen years, and from the beginning of the world, four thousand three hundred and three. Nevertheless, I am not ignorant that others differ from this reckoning of ours; but I am at the same time conscious that I have, not without some care, set forth the order of events in the successive years (a thing hitherto left in obscurity), until I have fallen upon these times, concerning which I confess that I have my doubts. Now I shall go on to what remains. __________________________________________________________________
[295] A clear mistake of memory in our author. The whole narrative is confused.
[296] The meaning here is doubtful. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXX.
The Hebrews, then, as I have narrated above, were living according to their own will, without any judge or general. Eli was priest; and in his days Samuel was born. His father's name was Elchana, and his mother's, Anna. She having long been barren, is said, when she asked a child from God, to have vowed that, if it were a boy, it should be dedicated to God. Accordingly, having brought forth a boy, she delivered him to Eli the priest. By and by, when he had grown up, God spoke to him. He denounced wrath against Eli the priest on account of the life of his sons, who had made the priesthood of their father a means of gain to themselves, and exacted gifts from those who came to sacrifice; and, although their father is related to have often reproved them, yet his reproofs were too gentle to serve the purpose of discipline. Well, the Philistines made an incursion into Judæa, and were met by the Israelites. But the Hebrews, being beaten, prepare to renew the contest: they carry the ark of the Lord with them into battle, and the sons of the priests go forth with it, because he himself, being burdened with years, and afflicted with blindness, could not discharge that duty. But, when the ark was brought within sight of the enemy, terrified as if by the majesty of God's presence, they were ready to take to flight. But again recovering courage, and changing their minds (not without a divine impulse), they rush into battle with their whole strength. The Hebrews were conquered; the ark was taken; the sons of the priest fell. Eli, when the news of the calamity was brought to him, being overwhelmed with grief, breathed his last, after he had held the priesthood for twenty [297] years. __________________________________________________________________
[297] The Hebrew text has forty years. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXI.
The Philistines, victorious in this prosperous battle, brought the ark of God, which had fallen into their hands, into the temple of Dagon in the town of Azotus. But the image, dedicated to a demon, fell down when the ark was brought in there; and, on their setting the idol up again in its place, in the following night it was torn in pieces. Then mice, springing up throughout all the country, caused by their venomous bites the death of many thousand persons. [298] The men of Azotus, constrained by this source of suffering, in order to escape the calamity, removed the ark to Gath. But the people there being afflicted with the same evils, conveyed the ark to Ascalon. The inhabitants, however, of that place, the chief men of the nation having been called together, formed the design of sending back the ark to the Hebrews. Thus, in accordance with the opinion of the chiefs, and augurs, and priests, it was placed upon a cart, and sent back with many gifts. This remarkable thing then happened, that when they had yoked heifers to the conveyance, and had retained their calves at home, these cattle took their course, without any guide, towards Judæa, and showed no desire of returning, from affection toward their young left behind. The rulers of the Philistines, who had followed the ark into the territory of the Hebrews, were so struck by the marvelousness of this occurrence that they performed a religious service. But the Jews, when they saw the ark brought back, vied with each other in joyously rushing forth from the town of Betsamis to meet it, and in hurrying, exulting, and returning thanks to God. Presently, the Levites, whose business it was, perform a sacrifice to God, and offer those heifers which had brought the ark. But the ark could not be kept in the town which I have named above, and thus severe illness fell by the appointment of God, upon the whole city. The ark was then transferred to the town of Cariathiarim, [299] and there it remained twenty years. __________________________________________________________________
[298] No reference to this occurs in the Hebrew text, but it is found in the Greek, and is also noticed by Josephus. See the LXX. 1 Sam. v. 6, and Josephus, Antiq. vi. 1.
[299] Called Kirjath-jearim in the English version. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXII.
At this time, Samuel the priest [300] ruled over the Hebrews; and there being a cessation of all war, the people lived in peace. But this tranquillity was disturbed by an invasion of the Philistines, and all ranks were in a state of terror from their consciousness of guilt. Samuel, having first offered sacrifice, and trusting in God, led his men out to battle, and the enemy being routed at the first onset, victory declared for the Hebrews. But when the fear of the enemy was thus removed, and affairs were now prosperous and peaceful, the people, changing their views for the worse, after the manner of the mob, who are always weary of what they have, and long for things of which they have had no experience, expressed a desire for the kingly name--a name greatly disliked by almost all free nations. Yes, with an example of madness certainly very remarkable, they now preferred to exchange liberty for slavery. They, therefore, come in great numbers to Samuel, in order that, as he himself was now an old man, he might make for them a king. But he endeavored in a useful address, quietly to deter the people from their insane desire; he set forth the tyranny and haughty rule of kings, while he extolled liberty, and denounced slavery; finally, he threatened them with the divine wrath, if they should show themselves men so corrupt in mind as that, when having God as their king, they should demand for themselves a king from among men. Having spoken these and other words of a like nature to no purpose, finding that the people persisted in the determination, he consulted God. And God, moved by the madness of that insane nation, replied that nothing was to be refused to them asking against their own interests. __________________________________________________________________
[300] Samuel was a Levite, but not a priest. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXIII.
Accordingly, Saul, having been first anointed by Samuel with the sacerdotal oil, was appointed king. He was of the tribe of Benjamin, and his father's name was Kish. He was modest in mind, and of a singularly handsome figure, so that the dignity of his person worthily corresponded to the royal dignity. But in the beginning of his reign, some portion of the people had revolted from him, refusing to acknowledge his authority, and had joined themselves to the Ammonites. Saul, however, energetically wreaked his vengeance on these people; the enemy were conquered, and pardon was granted to the Hebrews. Then Saul is said to have been anointed by Samuel a second time. Next, a bloody war arose by an invasion of the Philistines; and Saul had appointed Gilgal as the place where his army was to assemble. As they waited there seven days for Samuel, that he might offer sacrifice to God, the people gradually dropped away owing to his delay, and the king, with unlawful presumption, presented a burnt-offering, thus taking upon him the duty of a priest. For this he was severely rebuked by Samuel, and acknowledged his sin with a penitence that was too late. For, as a result of the king's sin, fear had pervaded the whole army. The camp of the enemy lying at no great distance showed them how actual the danger was, and no one had the courage to think of going forth to battle: most had be-taken themselves to the marshes. [301] For besides the want of courage on the part of those who felt that God was alienated from them on account of the king's sin, the army was in the greatest want of iron weapons; so much so that nobody, except Saul and Jonathan his son, is said to have possessed either sword or spear. For the Philistines, as conquerors in the former wars, had deprived the Hebrews of the use of arms, [302] and no one had had the power of forging any weapon of war, or even making any implement for rural purposes. In these circumstances, Jonathan, with an audacious design, and with his armor-bearer as his only companion, entered the camp of the enemy, and having slain about twenty of them, spread a terror throughout the whole army. And then, through the appointment of God, betaking themselves to flight, they neither carried out orders nor kept their ranks, but placed all the hope of safety in flight. Saul, perceiving this, hastily drew forth his men, and pursuing the fugitives, obtained a victory. The king is said on that day to have issued a proclamation that no one should help himself to food until the enemy were destroyed. But Jonathan, knowing nothing of this prohibition, found a honey-comb, and, dipping the point of his weapon in it, ate up the honey. When that became known to the king through the anger of God which followed, he ordered his son to be put to death. But by the help of the people, he was saved from destruction. At that time, Samuel, being instructed by God, went to the king, and told him in the words of God to make war on the nation of the Amalekites, who had of old hindered the Hebrews when they were coming out of Egypt; and the prohibition was added that they should not covet any of the spoils of the conquered. Accordingly, an army was led into the territory of the enemy, the king was taken, and the nation subdued. But Saul, unable to resist the magnitude of the spoil, and unmindful of the divine injunctions, ordered the booty to be saved and gathered together. __________________________________________________________________
[301] The text here is very uncertain; we have followed the reading of Halm, "lamas," but others have "lacrimas" or "latebras."
[302] "Armorum" is here supplied, but some prefer "cotis," according to 1 Sam. xiii. 20. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXIV.
God, displeased with what had been done, spoke to Samuel, saying that he repented that he had made Saul king. The priest reports what he had heard to the king. And ere long, being instructed by God, he anointed David with the royal oil, while he was as yet only a little boy [303] living under the care of his father, and acting as a shepherd, while he was accustomed often to play upon the harp. For this reason, he was taken afterwards by Saul, and reckoned among the servants of the king. And the Philistines and Hebrews being at this time hotly engaged in war, as the armies were stationed opposite to each other, a certain man of the Philistines named Goliath, a man of marvelous size and strength, passing along the ranks of his countrymen, cast insults, in the fiercest terms, upon the enemy, and challenged any one to engage in single combat with him. Then the king promised a great reward and his daughter in marriage to any one who should bring home the spoils of that boaster; but no one out of so great a multitude ventured to make the attempt. In these circumstances, though still a youth, [304] David offered himself for the contest, and rejecting the arms by which his yet tender age was weighed down, simply with a staff and five stones which he had taken, advanced to the battle. And by the first blow, having discharged one of the stones from a sling, he overthrew the Philistine; then he cut off the head of his conquered foe, carried off his spoils, and afterwards laid up his sword in the temple. In the meanwhile, all the Philistines, turning to flight, yielded the victory to the Hebrews. But the great favor shown to David as they were returning from the battle excited the envy of the king. Fearing, however, that if he put to death one so beloved by all, that might give rise to hatred against himself and prove disastrous, he resolved, under an appearance of doing him honor, to expose him to danger. First then he made him a captain, that he might be charged with the affairs of war; and next, although he had promised him his daughter, he broke his word, and gave her to another. Ere long, a younger daughter of the king, Melchol by name, fell violently in love with David. Accordingly, Saul sets before David as the condition of obtaining her in marriage the following proposal: that if he should bring in a hundred foreskins of the enemy, the royal maiden would be given him in marriage; for he hoped that the youth, venturing on so great dangers, would probably perish. But the result proved very different from what he imagined, for David, according to the proposal made to him, speedily brought in a hundred foreskins of the Philistines; and thus he obtained the daughter of the king in marriage. __________________________________________________________________
[303] This is a mistake: David was undoubtedly then a grown-up young man.
[304] "Puer": another mistake. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXV.
The hatred of the king towards him increased daily, under the influence of jealousy, for the wicked always persecute the good. He, therefore, commanded his servants and Jonathan his son, to prepare snares against his life. But Jonathan had even from the first had a great regard and affection for David; and therefore the king, being taken to task by his son, suppressed the cruel order he had given. But the wicked are not long good. For, when Saul was afflicted by a spirit of error, and David stood by him, soothing him with the harp under his trouble, Saul tried to pierce him with a spear, and would have done so, had not he rapidly evaded the deadly blow. From this time forth, the king no longer secretly but openly sought to compass his death; and David no longer trusted himself in his power. He fled, and first betook himself to Samuel, then to Abimelech, and finally fled to the king of Moab. By-and-by, under the instructions of the prophet Gad, he returned into the land of Judah, and there ran in danger of his life. At that time, Saul slew Abimelech the priest because he had received David; and when none of the king's servants ventured to lay hands upon the priest, Doeg, the Syrian, fulfilled the cruel duty. After that, David made for the desert. Thither Saul also followed him, but his efforts at his destruction were in vain, for God protected him. There was a cave in the desert, opening with a vast recess. David had thrown himself into the inner parts of this cave. Saul, not knowing that he was there, had gone into it for the purpose of taking [305] bodily refreshment, and there, overcome by sleep, he was resting. When David perceived this, although all urged him to avail himself of the opportunity, he abstained from slaying the king, and simply took away his mantle. Presently going out, he addressed the king from a safe position behind, recounting the services he had done him, how often he had exposed his life to peril for the sake of the kingdom, and how last of all, he had not, on the present occasion, sought to kill him when he was given over to him by God. Upon hearing these things, Saul confessed his fault, entreated pardon, shed tears, extolled the piety of David, and blamed his own wickedness, while he addressed David as king and son. He was so much changed from his former ferocious character, that no one could now have thought he would make any further attempt against his son-in-law. But David, who had thoroughly [306] tested and known his evil disposition, did not think it safe to put himself in the power of the king, and kept himself within the desert. Saul, almost mad with rage, because he was unable to capture his son-in-law, gave in marriage to one Faltim his daughter Melchol, who, as we have related above, had been married to David. David fled to the Philistines. __________________________________________________________________
[305] "Reficiendi corporis gratia": different from the Hebrew text.
[306] The text is uncertain, but the meaning is clear. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXVI.
At that time Samuel died. Saul, when the Philistines made war upon him, consulted God, and no answer was returned to him. Then, by means of a woman whose entrails a spirit of error [307] had filled, he called up and consulted Samuel. Saul was informed by him that on the following day he with his sons, being overcome by the Philistines, would fall in the battle. The Philistines, accordingly, having pitched their camp on the enemy's territory, drew up their army in battle array on the following day, David, however, being sent away from the camp, because they did not believe that he would be faithful to them against his own people. But the battle taking place, the Hebrews were routed and the sons of the king fell; Saul, having sunk down from his horse, that he might not be taken alive by the enemy, fell on his own sword. We do not find any certain statements as to the length of his reign, unless that he is said in the Acts of the Apostles to have reigned forty years. As to this, however, I am inclined to think that Paul, who made the statement in his preaching, then meant to include also the years of Samuel under the length of that king's reign. [308] Most of those, however, who have written about these times, remark that he reigned thirty years. I can, by no means, agree with this opinion, for at the time when the ark of God was transferred to the town of Cariathiarim, Saul had not yet begun to reign, and it is related that the ark was removed by David the king out of that town after it had been there twenty years. Therefore, since Saul reigned and died within that period, he must have held the government only for a very brief space of time. We find the same obscurity concerning the times of Samuel, who, having been born under the priesthood of Eli, is related, when very old, to have fulfilled the duties of a priest. By some, however, who have written about these times (for the sacred history has recorded almost nothing about his years), [309] but by most he is said to have ruled the people seventy years. I have, however, been unable to discover what authority there is for this assumption. Amid such variety of error, we have followed the account of the Chronicles, [310] because we think that it was taken (as said above) from the Acts of the Apostles, and we repeat that Samuel and Saul together held the government for forty years. __________________________________________________________________
[307] The witch of Endor seems here to be referred to as if she had practised ventriloquism, this being regarded as a form of demoniacal possession.
[308] See Alford on Acts xiii. 21.
[309] Halm here inserts the usual mark of a lacuna in the text: others omit the words "a plerisque autem."
[310] He here specially refers to the well-known Chronicles of Eusebius, which were translated into Latin, and supplemented by Saint Jerome. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXVII.
Saul having thus been cut off, David, when the news of his death was brought to him in the land of the Philistines, is related to have wept, and to have given a marvelous proof of his affection. He then betook himself to Hebron, a town of Judæa; and, being there again anointed with the royal oil, received the title of king. But Abenner, who had been master of the host of King Saul, despised David, and made Isbaal king, the son of King Saul. Various battles then took place between the generals of the kings. Abenner was generally routed; yet in his flight he cut off the brother of Joab, who had the command of the army on the side of David. Joab, on account of the sorrow he felt for this, afterwards, when Abenner had surrendered to King David, ordered him to be murdered, not without regret on the part of the king, whose honor he had thus tarnished. At the same time, almost all the older men of the Hebrews conferred on him by public consent the sovereignty of the whole nation; for during seven years he had reigned only in Hebron. Thus, he was anointed king for the third time, being about thirty years of age. He repulsed in successful battles the Philistines making inroads upon his kingdom. And at that time, he transferred to Zion the ark of God, which, as I have said above, was in the town of Cariathiarim. And when he had formed the intention of building a temple to God, the divine answer was given him to the effect, that that was reserved for his son. He then conquered the Philistines in war, subjugated the Moabites, and subdued Syria, imposing tribute upon it. He brought back with him an enormous amount of booty in gold and brass. Next, a war arose against the Ammonites on account of the injury which had been done by their king, Annon. And when the Syrians again rebelled, having formed a confederacy for war with the Ammonites, David intrusted the chief command of the war to Joab, the master of his host, and he himself remained in Jerusalem far from the scene of strife. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXVIII.
At this time, he knew in a guilty way Bersabe, a woman of remarkable beauty. She is said to have been the wife of a certain man called Uriah, who was then in the camp. David caused him to be slain by exposing him to the enemy at a dangerous place in the battle. In this way, he added to the number of his wives the woman who was now free from the bond of marriage, but who was already pregnant through adultery. Then David, after being severely reproved by Nathan the prophet, although he confessed his sin, did not escape the punishment of God. For he lost in a few days the son who was born from the clandestine connection, and many terrible things happened in respect to his house and family. At last his son Absalom lifted impious arms against his father, with the desire of driving him from the throne. Joab encountered him in the field of battle, and the king entreated him to spare the young man when conquered; but he, disregarding this command, avenged with the sword his parricidal attempts. That victory is said to have been a mournful one to the king: so great was his natural affection that he wished even his parricidal son to be forgiven. This war seemed hardly finished when another arose, under a certain general called Sabæa, who had stirred up all the wicked to arms. But the whole commotion was speedily checked by the death of the leader. David then engaged in several battles against the Philistines with favorable results; and all being subdued by war, both foreign and home disturbances having been brought to accord, he possessed in peace a most flourishing kingdom. Then a sudden desire seized him of numbering the people, in order to ascertain the strength of his empire; and accordingly they were numbered by Joab, the master of the host, and were found to amount to one million three hundred thousand [311] citizens. David soon regretted and repented of this proceeding, and implored pardon of God for having lifted up his thoughts to this, that he should reckon the power of his kingdom rather by the multitude of his subjects than by the divine favor. Accordingly, an angel was sent to him to reveal to him a threefold punishment, and to give him the power of choosing either one or another. Well, when a famine for three years was set before him, and flight before his enemies for three months, and a pestilence for three days, shunning both flight and famine, he made choice of pestilence, and, almost in a moment of time, seventy thousand men perished. Then David, beholding the angel by whose right hand the people were overthrown, implored pardon, and offered himself singly to punishment instead of all, saying that he deserved destruction inasmuch as it was he who had sinned. Thus, the punishment of the people was turned aside; and David built an altar to God on the spot where he had beheld the angel. After this, having become infirm through years and illness, he appointed Solomon, who had been born to him by Bersabe, the wife of Uriah, his successor in the kingdom. He, having been anointed with the royal oil by Sadoc the priest, received the title of king, while his father was still alive. David died, after he had reigned forty years. __________________________________________________________________
[311] As is often the case with respect to numbers, there are discrepancies in the various accounts given of this census. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXIX.
Solomon in the beginning of his reign surrounded the city with a wall. To him while asleep God appeared standing by him, and gave him the choice of whatever things he desired. But he asked that nothing more than wisdom should be granted him, deeming all other things of little value. Accordingly, when he arose from sleep, taking his stand before the sanctuary of God, he gave a proof of the wisdom which had been bestowed upon him by God. For two women who dwelt in one house, having given birth to male children at the same time, and one of these having died in the night three days afterwards, the mother of the dead child, while the other woman slept, insidiously substituted her child, and took away the living one. Then there arose an altercation between them, and the matter was at length brought before the king. As no witness was forthcoming, it was a difficult matter to give a judgment between both denying guilt. Then Solomon, in the exercise of his gift of divine wisdom, ordered the child to be slain and its body to be divided between the two doubtful claimants. Well, when one of them acquiesced in this judgment, but the other wished rather to give up the boy than that he should be cut in pieces, Solomon, concluding from the feeling displayed by this woman that she was the true mother, adjudged the child to her. The bystanders could not repress their admiration at this decision, since he had in such a way brought out the hidden truth by his sagacity. Accordingly, the kings of the neighboring nations, out of admiration for his ability and wisdom, courted his friendship and alliance, being prepared to carry out his commands. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XL.
Trusting in these resources, Solomon set about erecting a temple of immense size to God, funds for the purpose having been got together during three years, and laid the foundation of it about the fourth year of his reign. This was about the five hundred and eighty-eighth year after the departure of the Hebrews from Egypt, although in the third Book of Kings the years are reckoned at four hundred and forty. [312] This is by no means accurate; for it would have been more likely that, in the order of dates I have given above, I should perhaps reckon fewer years than more. But I do not doubt that the truth had been falsified by the carelessness of copyists, especially since so many ages intervened, rather than that the sacred [313] writer erred. In the same way, in the case of this little work of ours, we believe it will happen that, through the negligence of transcribers, those things which have been put together, not without care on our part, should be corrupted. Well, then, Solomon finished his work of building the temple in the twentieth year from its commencement. Then, having offered sacrifice in that place, as well as uttered a prayer, by which he blessed the people and the temple, God spoke to him, declaring that, if at any time they should sin and forsake God, their temple should be razed to the ground. We see that this has a long time ago been fulfilled, and in due time we shall set forth the connected order of events. In the meantime, Solomon abounded in wealth, and was, in fact, the richest of all the kings that ever lived. But, as always takes place in such circumstances, he sunk from wealth into luxury and vice, forming marriages (in spite of the prohibition of God) with foreign women, until he had seven hundred wives, and three hundred concubines. As a consequence, he set up idols for them, after the manner of their nations, to which they might offer sacrifice. God, turned away from him by such doings, reproved him sharply, and made known to him as a punishment, that the greater part of his kingdom would be taken from his son, and given to a servant. And that happened accordingly. __________________________________________________________________
[312] Here, again, there is much discrepancy in the accounts.
[313] "Propheta." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XLI.
For, on the death of Solomon in the fortieth year of his reign, Roboam his son having succeeded to the throne of his father in the sixteenth year of his age, a portion of the people, taking offense, revolted from him. For, having asked that the very heavy tribute which Solomon had imposed upon them might be lessened, he rejected the entreaties of these suppliants, and thus alienated from him the favor of the whole people. Accordingly, by universal consent, the government was bestowed on Jeroboam. He, sprung from a family of middle rank, had for some time been in the service of Solomon. But when the king found that the sovereignty of the Hebrews had been promised to him by a response of the prophet Achia, he had resolved privately to cut him off. Jeroboam, under the influence of this fear, fled into Egypt, and there married a wife of the royal family. But, when at length he heard of the death of Solomon, he returned to his native land, and, by the wish of the people, as we have said above, he assumed the government. Two tribes, however, Judah and Benjamin, had remained under the sway of Roboam; and from these he got ready an army of thirty thousand men. But when the two hosts advanced, the people were instructed by the words of God to abstain from fighting, for that Jeroboam had received the kingdom by divine appointment. Thus the army disdained the command of the king, and dispersed, while the power of Jeroboam was increased. But, since Roboam held Jerusalem, where the people had been accustomed to offer sacrifice to God in the temple built by Solomon, Jeroboam, fearing lest their religious feelings might alienate the people from him, resolved to fill their minds with superstition. Accordingly, he set up one golden calf at Bethel, and another at Dan, to which the people might offer sacrifice; and, passing by the tribe of Levi, he appointed priests from among the people. But censure followed this guilt so hateful to God. Frequent battles then took place between the kings, and so they retained their respective kingdoms on doubtful conditions. Roboam died at the close of the seventeenth year of his reign. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XLII.
In his room Abiud his son held the kingdom at Jerusalem for six years, although he is said in the Chronicles [314] to have reigned three years. Asab his son succeeded him, being the fifth from David, as he was his great-great-grandson. He was a pious worshiper of God; for, destroying the altars and the groves of the idols, he removed the traces of his father's faithlessness. He formed an alliance with the king of Syria, and by his help inflicted much loss on the kingdom of Jeroboam, which was then held by his son, and often, after conquering the enemy, carried off spoil as the result of victory. After forty-one years he died, afflicted with disease in his feet. To him sin of a three-fold kind is ascribed; first, that he trusted too much to his alliance with the king of Syria; secondly, that he cast into prison a prophet of God who rebuked him for this; and thirdly, that, when suffering from disease in his feet, he sought a remedy, not from God, but from the physicians. In the beginning of his reign died Jeroboam, king of the ten tribes, and left his throne to his son Nabath. He, from his wicked works, and, both by his own and his [315] father's doings, hateful to God, did not possess the kingdom more than two years, and his children, as being unworthy, were deprived [316] of the government. He had for his successor Baasa, the son of Achia, and he proved himself equally estranged from God. He died in the twenty-sixth year of his reign: and his power passed to Ela his son, but was not retained more than two years. For Zambri, leader of his cavalry, killed him at a banquet, and seized the kingdom,--a man equally odious to God and men. A portion of the people revolted from him, and the royal power was conferred on one Thamnis. But Zambri reigned before him seven years, and at the same time with him twelve years. And, on the death of Asab, Josaphat his son began to reign over part of the tribe of Judah, a man deservedly famous for his pious virtues. He lived at peace with Zambri; and he died, after a reign of twenty-five years. __________________________________________________________________
[314] The Chronicon of Eusebius is referred to.
[315] Many editors here read "maternis," instead of "paternis."
[316] It is remarkable, as Hornius has observed after Ligonius, that, while in the kingdom of Judah the sovereignty remained to the same family, in the kingdom of Ephraim the scepter was hardly ever transmitted to son or grandson. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XLIII.
In the time of his reign, Ahab, the son of Ambri, was king of the ten tribes, impious above all against God. For having taken in marriage Jezebel, the daughter of Basa, king of Sidon, he erected an altar and groves to the idol Bahal, and slew the prophets of God. At this time, Elijah the prophet by prayer shut up heaven, that it should not give any rain to the earth, and revealed that to the king, in order that he, in his impiety, might know himself to be the cause of the evil. The waters of heaven, therefore, being restrained, and since the whole country, burned up by the heat of the sun, did not furnish food either for man or beast, the prophet had even exposed himself to the side of perishing from hunger. At that time, when he betook himself to the desert, he depended for life on the ravens furnishing him with food, while a neighboring rivulet furnished him with water, until it was dried up. Then, being instructed by God, he went to the town of Saraptæ, and turned aside to lodge with a widow-woman. And when, in his hunger, he begged food from her, she complained that she had only a handful of meal and a little oil, on the consumption of which she expected death along with her children. [317] But when Elijah promised in the words of God that neither should the meal lessen in the barrel nor the oil in the vessel, the woman did not hesitate to believe the prophet demanding faith, and obtained [318] the fulfillment of what was promised, since by daily increase as much was added as was day by day taken away. At the same time, Elijah restored to life the dead son of the same widow. Then, by the command of God, he went to the king, and having reproved his impiety, he ordered all the people to be gathered together to himself. When these had hastily assembled, the priests of the idols and of the groves to the number of about four hundred and fifty, were also summoned. Then there arose a dispute between them, Elijah setting forth the honor of God, while they upheld their own superstitions. At length they agreed that a trial should be made to this effect, that if fire sent down from heaven should consume the slain victim of either of them, that religion should be accepted as the true one which performed the miracle. Accordingly, the priests, having slain a calf, began to call upon the idol Bahal; and, after wasting their invocations to no purpose, they tacitly acknowledged the helplessness of their God. Then Elijah mocked them and said, "Cry aloud more vehemently, lest perchance he sleeps, and that thus you may rouse him from the slumber in which he is sunk." The wretched men could do nothing but shudder and mutter to themselves, but still they waited to see what Elijah would do. Well, he slew a calf and laid it upon the altar, having first of all filled the sacred place with water; and then, calling upon the name of the Lord, fire fell from heaven in the sight of all, and consumed alike the water and the victim. Then truly the people, casting themselves upon the earth, confessed God and execrated the idols; while finally, by the command of Elijah, the impious priests were seized, and, being brought down to the brook, were there slain. The prophet followed the king as he returned from that place; but as Jezebel, the wife of the king, was devising means for taking his life, he retired to a more remote spot. There God addressed him, telling him that there were still seven thousand men who had not given themselves up to idols. That was to Elijah a marvelous statement, for he had supposed that he himself was the only one who had kept free from impiety. __________________________________________________________________
[317] "Cum filiis": after the Greek: the Hebrew text speaks of only one son.
[318] Such seems clearly to be the meaning of the somewhat strange phrase, "promissorum fidem consecuta est." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XLIV.
At that time, Ahab, king of Samaria, coveted the vineyard of Naboth, which was adjacent to his own. And as Naboth was unwilling to sell it to him, he was cut off by the wiles of Jezebel. Thus Ahab got possession of the vineyard, though he is said at the same time to have regretted the death of Naboth. Acknowledging his crime, he is related to have done [319] penance clothed in sackcloth; and in this way he turned aside threatening punishment. For the king of Syria with a great army, having formed a military confederacy with thirty-two kings, entered the territories of Samaria, and began to besiege the city with its king. The affairs of the besieged being then in a state of great distress, the Syrian king offers these conditions in the war,--if they should give up their gold and silver and women, he would spare their lives. But, with such iniquitous conditions offered, it seemed better to suffer the greatest extremities. And now when the safety of all was despaired of, a prophet sent by God went to the king, encouraged him to go forth to battle, and when he hesitated, strengthened his confidence in many ways. Accordingly making a sally, the enemy were routed, and an abundant store of booty was secured. But, after a year, the Syrian king returned with recruited strength into Samaria, burning to avenge the defeat he had received, but was again overthrown. In that battle one hundred and twenty thousand of the Syrians perished; the king was pardoned, and his kingdom and former position were granted him. Then Ahab was reproved by the prophet in the words of God, for having abused the divine kindness, and spared the enemy delivered up to him. The Syrian king, therefore, after three years, made war upon the Hebrews. Against him Ahab, under the advice of some false prophet, went forth to battle, having spurned the words of Michea the prophet and cast him into prison, because the prophet had warned him that the fight would prove disastrous to him. Thus, then, Ahab, being slain in that battle, left the kingdom to his son Ochozia. __________________________________________________________________
[319] "Egisse pænitentiam." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XLV.
He, being sick in body, and having sent some of his servants to consult an idol about his recovery, Elijah, as instructed by God, met them in the way, and, after rebuking them ordered them to inform the king that his death would follow from that disease. Then the king ordered him to be seized and brought into his presence, but those who were sent for this purpose were consumed by fire from heaven. The king died, as the prophet had predicted. To him there succeeded his brother Joram; and he held the government for the space of twelve years. But on the side of the two tribes, Josaphat the king having died, Joram his son possessed the kingdom for eighteen years. He had the daughter of Ahab to wife, and proved himself more like his father-in-law than his father. After him, Ochozias his son obtained the kingdom. During his reign, Elijah is related to have been taken up to heaven. At the same time, Elisha his disciple showed himself powerful by working many miracles, which are all too well known to need any description from my pen. By him the son of a widow was restored to life, a leper of Syria was cleansed, at a time of famine abundance of all things was brought into the city by the enemy having been put to flight, water was furnished for the use of three armies, and from a little oil the debt of a woman was paid by the oil being immensely multiplied, and sufficient means for a livelihood was provided for herself. In his times, as we have said, Ochozia was king of the two tribes, while Joram, as we have related above, ruled over the ten; and an alliance was formed between them. For war was carried on by them with combined forces both against the Syrians, and against Jeu, who had been anointed by the prophet as king of the ten tribes; and having gone forth to battle in company, they both perished in the same fight. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XLVI.
But Jeu possessed the kingdom of Joram. After the death of Ochozia in Judæa, when he had reigned one year, his mother, Gotholiah, seized the supreme power, having deprived her grandson (whose name was Joas) of the government, he being at the time but a little child. But the power thus snatched from him by his grandmother was, after eight years, restored to him through means of the priests and people, while his grandmother was driven into exile. He, at the beginning of his reign, was most devoted to the divine worship, and embellished the temple at great expense; afterwards, however, being corrupted by the flattery of the chief men, and unduly honored by them, he incurred wrath. For Azahel, king of Syria, made war upon him; and, as things went badly with him, he purchased peace with the gold of the temple. He did not, however, obtain it; but through resentment for what he had done he was slain by his own people in the fortieth year of his reign. He was succeeded by his son Amassia. But, on the side of the ten tribes, Jeu having died, Joachas his son began to reign, displeasing to God on account of his wicked works, in punishment of which his kingdom was ravaged by the Syrians, until, through the mercy of God, the enemy was driven back, and the inhabitants of the land began to occupy their former position. Joachas, having ended his days, left the kingdom to his son Joa. He raised civil war against Amassia, king of the two tribes; and, having obtained the victory, conveyed much spoil into his own kingdom. That is related to have occurred to Amassia as a punishment of his sin, for, having entered as a conqueror the territories of the Idumæans, he had adopted the idols of that nation. He is described as having reigned nine years, so far as I find it stated in the Books of Kings. But in the Chronicles [320] of Scripture, as well as in the Chronicles [321] of Eusebius, he is affirmed to have held the government twenty-nine years; and the mode of reckoning which may easily be perceived in these Books of Kings undoubtedly leads to that conclusion. For Jeroboam is said to have begun to reign as king of the ten tribes in the eighth year of the reign of Amassia, and to have held the government forty-one years, and to have at length died in the fourth year of the reign of Ozia, son of Amassia. By this mode of reckoning, the reign of Amassia is made to extend over twenty-eight years. Accordingly, we, following out this, inasmuch as it is our purpose to adhere in this work to the dates in their proper order, have accepted the authority of the Chronicles. [322] __________________________________________________________________
[320] "Paralipomenis."
[321] "Chronicis," i.e. of Eusebius.
[322] "Chronicorum," i.e. of Eusebius. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XLVII.
Ozias, then, the son of Amassia, succeeded to him. For, on the side of the ten tribes, Joas, reaching the end of his days, had given place to his son Jeroboa, and after him, again, his son Zacharias began to reign. Of these kings, and of all who ruled over Samaria on the side of the ten tribes, we have not thought it necessary to note the dates, because, aiming at brevity, we have omitted everything superfluous; and we have thought that the years should be carefully traced for a knowledge especially of the times of that portion [323] of the Jews, which being carried into captivity at a later period than the other, passed through a longer time as a kingdom. Ozias, then, having obtained the kingdom of Judah, gave his principal care to knowing the Lord, making great use of Zachariah the prophet (Isaiah, too, is said to have first prophesied under this king); and, on this account, he carried on war against his neighbors with deservedly prosperous results, while he also conquered the Arabians. And already he had shaken Egypt with the terror of his name; but, being elated by prosperity, he ventured on what was forbidden, and offered incense to God, a thing which it was the established custom for the priests alone to do. Being, then, rebuked by Azaria the priest, and compelled to leave the sacred place, he burst out into a rage, but was, when he finally withdrew, covered with leprosy. Under the influence of this disease he ended his days, after having reigned fifty-two years. Then the kingdom was given to Joathas his son; and he is related to have been very pious, and carried on the government with success: he subdued in war the nation of the Ammonites, and compelled them to pay tribute. He reigned sixteen years, and his son Achaz succeeded him. __________________________________________________________________
[323] There is a reference in these words to the two tribes, or kingdom of Judah. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XLVIII.
The remarkable faith of the Ninevites is related to have been manifested about these times. That town, founded of old by Assure, the son of Sem, was the capital of the kingdom of the Assyrians. It was then full of a multitude of inhabitants, sustaining one hundred and twenty thousand men, and abounding in wickedness, as is usually the case among a vast concourse of people. God, moved by their sinfulness, commanded the prophet Jonah to go from Judæa, and denounce destruction upon the city, as Sodom and Gomorrah had of old been consumed by fire from heaven. But the prophet declined that office of preaching, not out of contumacy, but from foresight, which enabled him to behold God reconciled through the repentance of the people; and he embarked on board a ship which was bound for Tharsus, in a very different direction. But, after they had gone forth into the deep, the sailors, constrained by the violence of the sea, inquired by means of the lot who was the cause of that suffering. And when the lot fell upon Jonah, he was cast into the sea, to be, as it were, a sacrifice for stilling the tempest, and he was seized and swallowed by a whale--a monster of the deep. Cast out three days afterwards on the shores of the [324] Ninevites, he preached as he had been commanded, namely that the city would be destroyed in three [325] days, as a punishment for the sins of the people. The voice of the prophet was listened to, not in a hypocritical fashion, as at Sodom of old; and immediately by the order, and after the example, of the king, the whole people, and even those infants newly born, are commanded to abstain from meat and drink: the very beasts of burden in the place, and animals of different kinds, being forced by hunger and thirst, presented an appearance of those who lamented along with the human inhabitants. In this way, the threatened evil was averted. To Jonah, complaining to God, that his words had not been fulfilled, it was answered that pardon could never be denied to the penitent. __________________________________________________________________
[324] Surely a blunder; for, as has been well asked, how could Jonah, who was swallowed by a whale in the Mediterranean, have been cast out by the fish on the shores of the Ninevites? The Hebrew text has simply "the dryland."
[325] After the Greek; the Hebrew has "forty days." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XLIX.
But in Samaria, Zacharia the king, who was very wicked, and whom we have spoken of above as occupying the throne, was slain by a certain Sella, who seized the kingdom. He, in turn, perished by the treachery of Mane, who simply repeated the conduct of his predecessor. Mane held the government which he had taken from Sella, and left it to his son Pache. But a certain person of the same name slew Pache, and seized the kingdom. Ere long being cut off by Osee, he lost the sovereignty by the same crime by which he had received it. This man, being ungodly beyond all the kings who had preceded him, brought punishment upon himself from God, and a perpetual captivity on his nation. For Salmanasar, king of the Assyrians, made war with him, and when conquered rendered him tributary. But when, with secret plans, he was preparing for rebellion, and had asked the king of the Ethiopians, who then had possession of Egypt for his assistance, Salmanasar, on discovering that, cast him into prison with fetters never taken off, while he destroyed the city, and carried off the whole people into his own kingdom, Assyrians being placed in the enemy's country to guard it. Hence that district was called Samaria, because in the language of the Assyrians guards are called Samaritæ. [326] Very many of their settlers accepted the divine rites of the Jewish religion, while others remained in the errors of heathenism. In this war, Tobias was carried into captivity. But on the side of the two tribes, Achaz, who was displeasing to God on account of his impiety, finding he had frequently the worst of it in wars with his neighbors, resolved to worship the gods of the heathen, undoubtedly because by their help his enemies had proved victorious in frequent battles. He ended his days with this crime [327] in his wicked mind, after a reign of sixteen years. __________________________________________________________________
[326] Vorstius remarks that this is a totally erroneous statement.
[327] "Piaculo": a very old meaning is here attached to the word. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter L.
To him succeeded Ezekias his son, a man very unlike his father in character. For, in the beginning of his reign, urging the people and the priests to the worship of God, he discoursed to them in many words, showing how often, after being chastened by the Lord, they had obtained mercy, and how the ten tribes, having been at last carried away into captivity, as had lately happened, were now paying the penalty of their impiety. He added that their duty was carefully to be on their guard lest they should deserve to suffer the same things. Thus, the minds of all being turned to religion, he appointed the Levites and all the priests to offer sacrifices according to the law, and arranged that the Passover, which had for a long time been neglected, should be celebrated. And when the holy day was at hand, he proclaimed the special day of assembly by messengers sent throughout all the land, so that, if any had remained in Samaria, after the removal of the ten tribes, they might gather together for the sacred observance. Thus, in a very full assemblage, the sacred day was spent with public rejoicing, and, after a long interval, the proper religious rites were restored by means of Ezekias. He then carried on military affairs with the same diligence with which he had attended to divine things, and defeated the Philistines in frequent battles; until Sennacherim, king of the Assyrians, made war against him, having entered his territories with a large army; and then, when the country had been laid waste without any opposition, he laid siege to the city. For Ezekias, being inferior in numbers, did not venture to come to an engagement with him, but kept himself safe within the walls. The king of Assyria, thundering at the gates, threatened destruction, and demanded surrender, exclaiming that in vain did Ezekias put his trust in God, for that he rather had taken up arms by the appointment of God; and that the conqueror of all nations, as well as the overthrower of Samaria could not be escaped, unless the king secured his own safety by a speedy surrender. In this state of affairs, Ezekias, trusting in God, consulted the prophet Isaiah, and from his answer he learned that there would be no danger from the enemy, and that the divine assistance would not fail him. And, in fact, not long after, Tarraca, king of Ethiopia, invaded the kingdom of the Assyrians. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter LI.
By this news Sennacherim was led to return in order to defend his own territories, and he gave up the war, at the same time murmuring and crying out that victory was snatched from him the victor. He also sent letters to Ezekias, declaring, with many insulting words, that he, after settling his own affairs, would speedily return for the destruction of Judæa. But Ezekias, in no wise disturbed by these threats, is said to have prayed to God that he would not allow the so great insolence of this man to pass unavenged. Accordingly, in the same night, an angel attacking the camp of the Assyrians, caused [328] the death of many thousand men. The king in terror fled to the town of Nineveh, and being there slain by his sons, met with an end worthy of himself. At the same time, Ezekias, sick in body, lay suffering from disease. And when Isaiah had announced to him in the words of the Lord that the end of his life was at hand, the king is related to have wept; and thus he got fifteen years added to his life. These coming to an end, he died in the twenty-ninth year of his reign, and left the kingdom to his son Manasse. He, degenerating much from his father, forsook God, and took to the practice of impious worship; and being, as a punishment for this, delivered into the power of the Assyrians, he was by his sufferings constrained to acknowledge his error, and exhorted the people that, forsaking their idols, they should worship God. He accomplished nothing worthy of special mention, but reigned for fifty-five years. Then Amos his son obtained the kingdom, but possessed it only two years. He was the heir of his father's impiety, and showed himself regardless of God: being entrapped by some stratagems of his friends, he perished. __________________________________________________________________
[328] Our author is here guilty of omission and consequent inaccuracy. Comp. Isa. chap. 37. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter LII.
The government then passed to his son Josia. He is related to have been very pious, and to have attended to divine things with the utmost care, profiting largely by the aid of the priest Helchia. Having read a book written with the words of God, and which had been found in the temple by the priest, in which it was stated that the Hebrew nation would be destroyed on account of their frequent acts of impiety and sacrilege, by his pious supplications to God, and constant tears, he averted the impending overthrow. When he learned through Olda the prophetess that this favor was granted him, he then with still greater care set himself to practice the worship of God, inasmuch as he was now under obligation to the divine goodness. Accordingly, he burned all the vessels which had by the superstitions of former kings been consecrated to idols. For to such a height had profane observances prevailed, that they used to pay divine honors to the sun and moon, and even erected shrines made of metal to these fancied deities. Josia reduced these to powder, and also slew the priests of the profane temples. He did not even spare the tombs of the impious; and it was observed that thus was fulfilled what had of old been predicted by the prophet. In the eighteenth year of his reign, the Passover was celebrated. And about three years afterwards, having gone forth to battle against Nechao, king of Egypt, who was making war upon the Assyrians, before the armies properly engaged, he was wounded by an arrow. And being carried back to the city, he died of that wound, after he had reigned twenty and one years. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter LIII.
Joachas, his son, having then obtained the kingdom, held it for three months, being doomed to captivity on account of his impiety. For Nechao, king of Egypt, bound him and led him away captive, and not long after, while still a prisoner, he ended his days. An annual tribute was demanded of the Jews, and a king was given them at the will of the victor. His name was Eliakim, but he afterwards changed it to Joachim. He was the brother of Joacha, and the son of Josia, but liker his brother than his father, displeasing God by his impiety. Accordingly, while he was in subjection to the king of Egypt, and in token thereof paid him tribute, Nabuchodonosor, the king of Babylon, seized the land of Judæa, and as victor held it by the right of war for three years. For the king of Egypt now giving way, and the boundaries of their empire being fixed between them, it had been agreed that the Jews should belong to Babylon. Thus after Joachim, having finished his reign of eleven years, had given place to his son of the same name, and he had excited against himself the wrath of the king of Babylon (God undoubtedly overruling everything, having resolved to give the nation of the Jews up to captivity and destruction), Nabuchodonosor entered Jerusalem with an army, and leveled the walls and the temple to the ground. He also carried off an immense amount of gold, with sacred ornaments either public or private, and all of mature age both of the male and female sex, those only being left behind whose weakness or age caused trouble to the conquerors. This useless crowd had the task assigned them of working and cultivating the fields in slavery, in order that the soil might not be neglected. Over them a king called Sedechias was appointed; but while the empty shadow of the name of king was allowed him, all real power was taken away. Joachim, for his part, possessed the sovereignty only for three months. He was carried away, along with the people, to Babylon, and was there thrown into prison; but being, after a period of thirty years released, while he was admitted by the king to his friendship, and made a partaker with him at his table and in his counsels, he died at last, not without some consolation in that his misfortunes had been removed. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter LIV.
Meanwhile Sedechias, the king of the useless multitude, although without power, being of an unfaithful disposition and neglectful of God, and not understanding that captivity had been brought upon them on account of the sins of the nation, becoming at length ripe for suffering the last evils he could endure, offended the mind of the king. Accordingly, after a period of nine years, Nabuchodonosor made war against him, and having forced him to flee within the walls, besieged him for three years. At this time, he consulted Jeremia the prophet, who had already often proclaimed that captivity impended over the city, to discover if perhaps there might still be some hope. But he, not ignorant of the anger of heaven, having frequently had the same question put to him, at length gave an answer, denouncing special punishment upon the king. Then Sedechias, roused to resentment, ordered the prophet to be thrust into prison. Ere long, however, he regretted this cruel act, but, as the chief men of the Jews (whose practice it had been even from the beginning to afflict the righteous) opposed him, he did not venture to release the innocent man. Under coercion from the same persons, the prophet was let down into a pit [329] of great depth, and which was disgusting from its filth and squalor, while a deadly stench issued from it. This was done that he might not simply die by a common death. But the king, impious though he was, yet showed himself somewhat more merciful than the priests, and ordered the prophet to be taken out of the pit, and restored to the safekeeping of the prison. In the meantime the force of the enemy and want began to press the besieged hard, and everything being consumed that could be eaten, famine took a firm hold of them. Thus, its defenders being worn out with want of food, the town was taken and burnt. The king, as the prophet had declared, had his eyes put out, and was carried away to Babylon, while Jeremia, through the mercy of the enemy, was taken out of his prison. When Nabuzardan, one of the royal princes, was leading him away captive with the rest, the choice was granted by him to the prophet, either to remain in his deserted and desolated native country, or to go along with him in the possession of the highest honors; and Jeremia preferred to abide in his native land. Nabuchodonosor, having carried away the people, appointed as governor over those left behind by the conquerors (either from the circumstances attending the war, or from an absolute weariness of accumulating spoil) Godolia, who belonged to the same nation. He gave him, however, no royal ensign, or even the name of governor, because there was really no honor in ruling over these few wretched persons. __________________________________________________________________
[329] "Lacum," as once before. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Book II. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter I.
The times of the captivity have been rendered illustrious by the predictions and deeds of the prophets, and especially by the remarkable persistency of Daniel in upholding the law, and by the deliverance of Susanna through the divine wisdom, as well as by the other things which it accomplished, and which we shall now relate in their order, Daniel was made a prisoner under King Joachim, and was brought to Babylon, while still a very little child. Afterwards, on account of the beauty of his countenance, he had a place given him among the king's servants, and along with him, Annanias, Misael, and Azarias. But, when the king had ordered them to be supplied with the finer kinds of food, and had imposed it as a duty on Asphane the eunuch to attend to that matter, Daniel, mindful of the traditions of his fathers which forbade him to partake of food from the table of a king of the Gentiles, begged of the eunuch to be allowed to use a diet of pulse only. Asphane objected that the leanness which would follow might reveal the fact that the king's commandment had been disobeyed; but Daniel, putting his trust in God, promised that he would have greater beauty of countenance from living on pulse than from the use of the king's dainties. And his words were made good, so that the faces of those who were cared for at the public expense were regarded as by no means comparable to those of Daniel and his friends. Accordingly, being promoted by the king to honor and favor, they were, in a short time, by their prudence and wise conduct, preferred to all those that stood nearest to the king. About the same time, Susanna, the wife of a certain man called Joachis, a woman of remarkable beauty, was desired by two elders, and, when she would not listen to their unchaste proposals, was assailed by a false accusation. These elders reported that a young man was found with her in a retired place, but escaped their hands by his youthful nimbleness, while they were enfeebled with age. Credit, accordingly, was given to these elders, and Susanna was condemned by the sentence of the people. And, as she was being led away to punishment according to the law, Daniel, who was then twelve years old, after having rebuked the Jews for delivering the innocent to death, demanded that she should be brought back to trial, and that her cause should be heard afresh. For the multitude of the Jews who were then present, thought that a boy of an age so little commanding respect, had not ventured to take such a bold step without a divine impulse, and, granting him the favor which was asked, returned anew to council. The trial, then, is entered upon once more; and Daniel was allowed to take his place among the elders. Upon this, he orders the two accusers to be separated from each other, and inquires of each of them in turn, under what kind of a tree he had discovered the adulteress. From the difference of answers which they gave, their falsehood was detected: Susanna was acquitted; and the elders, who had brought the innocent into danger, were condemned to death. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter II.
At that time, Nabuchodonosor had a dream marvelous for that insight [330] into the future which it implied. As he could not of himself bring out its interpretation, he sent for the Chaldæans who were supposed by magic arts and by the entrails of victims to know secret things, and to predict the future, in order to its interpretation. Presently becoming apprehensive lest, in the usual manner of men, they should extract from the dream not what was true, but what would be acceptable to the king, he suppresses the things he had seen, and demands of them that, if a real power of divination was in them, they should relate to him the dream itself; saying that he would then believe their interpretation, if they should first make proof of their skill by relating the dream. But they declined attempting so great a difficulty, and confessed that such a thing was not within the reach of human power. The king, enraged because, under a false profession of divination, they were mocking men with their errors, while they were compelled by the present case to acknowledge that they had no such knowledge as was pretended, made an exposure of them by means of a royal edict; and all the men professing that art were publicly put to death. When Daniel heard of that, he spoke to one of those nearest to the king, and promised to give an account of the dream, as well as supply its interpretation. The thing is reported to the king, and Daniel is sent for. The mystery had already been revealed to him by God; and so he relates the vision of the king, as well as interprets it. But this matter demands that we set forth the dream of the king and its interpretation, along with the fulfillment of his words by what followed. The king, then, had seen in his sleep an image with a head of gold, with a breast and arms of silver, with a belly and thighs of brass, with legs of iron, and which in its feet ended partly with iron, and partly with clay. But the iron and the clay when blended together could not adhere to each other. At last, a stone cut out without hands broke the image to pieces, and the whole, being reduced to dust, was carried away by the wind. __________________________________________________________________
[330] "mysterio futurorum mirabile." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter III.
Accordingly, as the prophet interpreted the matter, the image which was seen furnished a representation of the world. The golden head is the empire of the Chaldæans; for we have understood that it was the first and wealthiest. The breast and the arms of silver represent the second kingdom; for Cyrus, after the Chaldæans and the Medes were conquered, conferred the empire on the Persians. In the brazen belly it is said that the third sovereignty was indicated; and we see that this was fulfilled, for Alexander took the empire from the Persians, and won the sovereignty for the Macedonians. The iron legs point to a fourth power, and that is understood of the Roman empire, which is more powerful [331] than all the kingdoms which were before it. But the fact that the feet were partly of iron and partly clay, indicates that the Roman empire is to be divided, so as never to be united. This, too, has been fulfilled, for the Roman state is ruled not by one emperor but by several, and these are always quarreling among themselves, either in actual warfare or by factions. Finally, by the clay and the iron being mixed together, yet never in their substance thoroughly uniting, are shadowed forth those future mixtures of the human race which disagree among themselves, though apparently combined. For it is obvious that the Roman territory is occupied by foreign nations, or rebels, or that it has been given over to those who have surrendered themselves under an appearance [332] of peace. And it is also evident that barbarous nations, and especially Jews, have been commingled with our armies, cities, and provinces; and we thus behold them living among us, yet by no means agreeing to adopt our customs. And the prophets declare that these are the last times. But in the stone cut out without hands, which broke to pieces the gold, silver, brass, iron, and clay, there is a figure of Christ. For he, not born under human conditions (since he was born not of the will of man, but of the will of God), will reduce to nothing that world in which exist earthly kingdoms, and will establish another kingdom, incorruptible and everlasting, that is, the future world, which is prepared for the saints. The faith of some still hesitates about this point only, while they do not believe about things yet to come, though they are convinced of the things that are past. Daniel, then, was presented with many gifts by the king, was set over Babylon and the whole empire, and was held in the highest honor. By his influence, Annanias, Azarias, and Misael were also advanced to the highest dignity and power. About the same time, the remarkable prophecies of Ezekiel came out, the mystery of future things and of the resurrection [333] having been revealed to him. His book is one of great weight, and deserves to be read with care. __________________________________________________________________
[331] Such is clearly the meaning, but it is strangely expressed by the words "omnibus ante regnis validissimum."
[332] The text is here very uncertain and obscure.
[333] "resurrectionis," referring probably not to the rising again of the dead, but to the restoration of the Jews. See Ezek. chap. 37. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IV.
But in Judæa, over which, as we have related above, Godolia was set after the destruction of Jerusalem, the Jews taking it very ill that a ruler not of the royal race had been assigned them by the mere will of the conqueror, with a certain Ismael as their leader and instigator of the execrable conspiracy, cut off Godolia by means of treachery while he was at a banquet. Those, however, who had no part in the plot, wishing to take steps for avenging the deed, hastily take up arms against Ismael. But when he learned that destruction threatened him, leaving the army which he had collected, and with not more than eight companions he fled to the Ammonites. Fear, therefore, fell upon the whole people, lest the king of Babylon should avenge the guilt of a few by the destruction of all; for, in addition to Godolia, they had slain many of the Chaldæans along with him. They, therefore, form a plan of fleeing into Egypt, but they first go in a body to Jeremia, requesting of him divine counsel. He then exhorted them all in the words of God to remain in their native country, telling them that if they did so, they would be protected by the power of God, and that no danger would accrue from the Babylonians, but that, if they went into Egypt, they would all perish there by sword, and famine, and different kinds of death. The rabble, however, with the usual evil tendency they show, being unaccustomed to yield to useful advice and the divine power, did go into Egypt. The sacred Scriptures are silent as to their future fate; and I have not been able to discover anything regarding it. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter V.
At this period of time, Nabuchodonosor elated with prosperity, erected a golden statue to himself of enormous size, and ordered it to be worshiped as a sacred image. And when this was zealously gone about by all, inasmuch as their minds had been corrupted by the universal flattery which prevailed, Annanias, Azarias, and Misael kept aloof from the profane observance, being well aware that that honor was due to God alone. They were therefore, according to an edict of the king, regarded as criminals, and there was set before them, as the means of punishment, a fiery furnace, in order that, by present terror, they might be compelled to worship the statue. But they preferred to be swallowed up by the flames rather than to commit such a sin. Accordingly, they were bound, and cast into the midst of the fire. But the flames laid hold of the agents in this execrable work, as they were forcing, with all eagerness, the victims into the fire; while--wonderful to say, and indeed incredible to all but eye-witnesses--the fire did not touch the Hebrews at all. They were seen by the spectators walking in the midst of the furnace, and singing a song of praise to God, while there was also beheld along with them a fourth person having the appearance of an angel, and whom Nabuchodonosor, on obtaining a nearer view of him, acknowledged to be the [334] Son of God. Then the king having no doubt that the divine power was present in the event which had taken place, sent proclamations throughout his whole kingdom making known the miracle which had taken place, and confessing that honor was to be paid to God alone. Not long after, being instructed by a vision which presented itself to him, and presently also by a voice which reached him from heaven, he is said to have done penance by laying aside his kingly power, retiring from all intercourse with mankind, and to have sustained life by herbs alone. However, his empire was kept for him by the will of God, until the time was fulfilled, and at length duly acknowledging God, he was, after seven years, restored to his kingdom and former position. He is related, after having conquered Sedechia (whom he carried away captive to Babylon), as we have said above, to have reigned twenty-six years, although I do not find that recorded in the sacred history. But it has perhaps happened that, while I was engaged in searching out many points, I found this remark in the work of some anonymous author which had become interpolated in course of time, and in which the dates of the Babylonish kings were contained. I did not think it right to pass the remark unnoticed, since it does in fact harmonize with the Chronicles, and thus its account agrees with us, to the effect that, through the succession of the kings, whose dates the record contained, it completed seventy years up to the first year of king Cyrus, and such in fact is the number of years which is stated in the sacred history to have elapsed from the captivity up to the time of Cyrus. __________________________________________________________________
[334] Or, "confessed that he had seen a son of God." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VI.
After Nabuchodonosor, the kingdom fell to his son, whom I find called Euilmarodac in the Chronicles. He died in the twelfth year of his reign, and made room for his younger brother, who was called Balthasar. He, when in the fourteenth year he gave a public feast to his chief men and rulers, ordered the sacred vessels (which had been taken away by Nabuchodonosor from the temple at Jerusalem, yet had not been employed for any uses of the king, but were kept laid up in the treasury) to be brought forth. And when all persons, both of the male and female sex, with his wives and concubines, were using these amid the luxury and licentiousness of a royal banquet, suddenly the king observed fingers writing upon the wall, and the letters were perceived to be formed into words. [335] But no one could be found who was able to read the writing. The king, therefore, in perturbation called for the magi and the Chaldæans. When these simply muttered among themselves and answered nothing, the queen reminded the king that there was a certain Hebrew, Daniel by name, who had formerly revealed to Nabuchodonosor a dream containing a secret mystery, and had then, on account of his remarkable wisdom, been promoted to the highest honors. Accordingly, he, being sent for, read and interpreted the writing, to the effect that, on account of the sin of the king, who had profaned vessels sacred to God, destruction impended over him, and that his kingdom was given to the Medes and Persians. And this presently took place. For, on the same night, Balthasar perished, and Darius, a Mede by nation, took possession of his kingdom. He again, finding that Daniel was held in the highest reputation, placed him at the head of the whole empire, in this following the judgment of the kings who had preceded him. For Nabuchodonosor had also set him over the kingdom, and Balthasar had presented him with a purple robe and a golden chain, while he also constituted him the third ruler in the kingdom. __________________________________________________________________
[335] "in versum ductæ literæ": various emendations have been proposed, but the text may stand. The meaning appears to be that the letters were not thrown together at random, but so placed as to form words. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VII.
Those, therefore, who were possessed of power along with him, stimulated by envy, because a foreigner belonging to a captive nation had been placed on a footing of equality with them, constrain the king, who had been corrupted by flattery, to enact that divine honors should be paid to him for the next thirty days, and that it should not be lawful for any one to pray to a god except the king. Darius was easily persuaded to that, through the folly of all kings who claim for themselves divine honors. In these circumstances, Daniel being not unacquainted with what had happened, and not being ignorant that prayer ought to be addressed to God, and not to man, is accused of not having obeyed the king's commandment. And much against the will of Darius, to whom he had always been dear and acceptable, the rulers prevailed that he should be let down into a den. [336] But no harm came to him when thus exposed to the wild beasts. And on the king discovering this, he ordered his accusers to be given over to the lions. They, however, did not pass through a similar experience, for they were instantly devoured to satisfy the hunger of the savage beasts. Daniel, who had been famous before, was now esteemed still more famous; and the king, repealing his former edict, issued a new one to the effect that, all errors and superstitions being abandoned, the God of Daniel was to be worshiped. There exists also a record of visions of Daniel, in which he revealed the order of events in coming ages, embracing in them also the number of the years, within which he announced that Christ would descend to earth (as has taken place), and clearly set forth the future coming of Antichrist. If any one is eager to inquire into these points, he will find them more fully treated of in the book of Daniel: our design is simply to present a connected statement of events. Darius is related to have reigned eighteen years; after which date Astyages began to rule over the Medes. __________________________________________________________________
[336] "lacum": twice used before in the sense of pit. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VIII.
Him Cyrus, his grandson by his daughter, expelled from the kingdom, having used the arms of the Persians for the purpose; and hence the chief power was transferred to the Persians. The Babylonians also fell under his power and government. It happened at the beginning of his reign that, by the issue of public edicts, he gave permission to the Jews to return into their own country; and he also restored the sacred vessels which Nabuchodonosor had carried away from the temple at Jerusalem. Accordingly, a few then returned into Judæa; as to the others, we have not been able to discover whether the desire of returning, or the power of doing so, was wanting. There was at that time among the Babylonians a brazen image of Belus, a very ancient king, whom Virgil also has mentioned. [337] This having been deemed sacred by the superstition of the people, Cyrus also had been accustomed to worship, being deceived by the trickery of its priests. They affirmed that the image ate and drank, while they themselves secretly carried off the daily portion which was offered to the idol. Cyrus, then, being on intimate terms with Daniel, asked him why he did not worship the image, since it was a manifest symbol of the living God, as consuming those things which were offered to it. Daniel, laughing at the mistake of the man, replied that it could not possibly be the case, that that work of brass--mere insensate matter--could use either meat or drink. The king, therefore, ordered the priests to be called (they were about seventy in number); and, bringing terror to bear upon them, he reprovingly asked them who was in the way of consuming what was offered, since Daniel, a man distinguished for his wisdom, maintained that that could not be done by an insensate image. Then they, trusting in their ready-made trick, ordered the usual offering to be made, and the temple to be sealed up by the king, on the understanding that, unless on the following day the whole offering were found to have been consumed, they should suffer death, while, on the opposite being discovered, the same fate awaited Daniel. Accordingly, the temple was sealed up by the signet of the king; but Daniel had previously, without the knowledge of the priests, covered the floor of it with ashes, so that their footprints might betray the clandestine approaches of those who entered. The king, then, having entered the temple on the following day, perceived that those things had been taken away, which he had ordered to be served up to the idol. Then Daniel lays open the secret fraud by the betraying footprints, showing that the priests, with their wives and children, had entered the temple by a hole opened from below, and had devoured those things which were served up to the idol. Accordingly, all of them were put to death by the order of the king, while the temple and image were submitted to the power of Daniel, and were destroyed at his command. __________________________________________________________________
[337] The reference is to Æn. I. 729, but Sigonius and others have suspected the words as being a gloss. They are, however, probably genuine. Virgil's words are,-- "Hic regina gravem gemmis auroque poposcit Implevitque mero paternam, quam Belus et omnes A Belo soliti; tum facta silentia tectis." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IX.
In the meantime, those Jews, who, as we have said above, returned into their native land by the permission of Cyrus, attempted to restore their city and temple. But, being few and poor, they made but little progress, until, at last, after the lapse of about a hundred years, while Artaxerxes the king ruled over the Persians, they were absolutely deterred from building by those who had local authority. For, at that time, Syria and all Judæa was ruled under the empire of the Persians by magistrates and governors. Accordingly, these took counsel to write to king Artaxerxes, that it was not fitting that opportunity should be granted to the Jews of rebuilding their city, lest, in accordance with their stubborn character, and being accustomed to rule over other nations, they should, on recovering their strength, not submit to live under the sway of a foreign power. Thus, the plan of the rulers being approved of by the king, the building of the city was put a stop to, and delayed until the second year of Darius the king. But, who were kings of Persia throughout this period of time, we shall here insert, in order that the succession of the dates may be set forth in a regular and fixed order. Well, then, after Darius the Mede, who, as we have said above, reigned eighteen years, Cyrus held the supreme power for thirty-one years. While making war upon the Scythians, he fell in battle, in the second year after Tarquinius Superbus began to reign at Rome. To Cyrus succeeded his son Cambyses, and reigned eight years. He, after harassing with war Egypt and Ethiopia, and subduing these countries, returned as victor to Persia, but accidentally hurt himself, and died from that wound. After his death, two brothers, who were magi, and Medes by nation, held rule over the Persians for seven months. To slay these, seven of the most noble of the Persians formed a conspiracy, of whom the leader was Darius, the son of Hystaspes, who was a cousin of Cyrus, and by unanimous consent the kingdom was bestowed on him: he reigned thirty and six years. He, four years before his death, fought at Marathon, in a battle greatly celebrated both in Greek and Roman history. That took place about the two hundred and sixtieth year after the founding of Rome, while Macerinus and Augurinus were consuls, that is, eight hundred and eighty-eight years ago, provided the research I have made into the succession of Roman consuls does not deceive me; for I have made the entire reckoning down to the time of Stilico. [338] After Darius came Xerxes, and he is said to have reigned twenty-one years, although I have found that the length of his rule is, in most copies, [339] set down at twenty and five years. To him succeeded Artaxerxes, of whom we have made mention above. Since he ordered the building of the Jewish city and temple to be stopped, the work was suspended to the second year of king Darius. But that the succession of dates may be completed up to him, I have to state that Artaxerxes reigned forty-one years, Xerxes two months, and that, after him, Sucdianus ruled for seven months. __________________________________________________________________
[338] Stilico was consul during the lifetime of Sulpitius.
[339] "in plerisque exemplaribus": the mss. varying, as they so often do, with respect to numbers. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter X.
Next, Darius, under whom the temple was restored, obtained the kingdom, his name being at that time Ochus. He had three Hebrew of tried fidelity as his bodyguard, and of these had, from the proof of his prudence which he had given, attracted towards himself the admiration of the king. The choice, then, being given him of asking for anything which he had formed a desire for in his heart, groaning over the ruins of his country, he begged permission to restore the city, and obtained an order from the king to urge the lieutenants and rulers to hurry forward the building of the holy temple, and furnish the expense needful to that end. Accordingly, the temple was completed in four years; that is, in the sixth year after Darius began to reign, and that seemed, for the time, enough to the people of the Jews. For, as it was a work of great labor to restore the city, distrusting their own resources, they did not venture at the time to begin an undertaking of so great difficulty, but were content with having rebuilt the temple. At the same time, Esdras the scribe, who was skilled in the law, about twenty years after the temple had been completed (Darius being now dead who had possessed the sovereignty for nineteen years), by the permission of Artaxerxes the second (not he who had a place between the two Xerxes, but he who had succeeded to Darius Ochus), set out from Babylon with many following him, and they carried to Jerusalem the vessels of various workmanship, as well as the gifts which the king had sent for the temple of God. Along with them were but twelve Levites; for with difficulty that number of the tribe is related then to have been found. He, having found that the Jews united in marriage with the Gentiles, rebuked them severely on that account, and ordered them to renounce all connections of that kind, as well as to put away the children which had been the issue of such marriages; and all yielded obedience to his word. The people, then, being sanctified, performed the rites sanctioned by the ancient law. But I do not find that Esdras did anything with the view of restoring the city; because he thought, as I imagine, that a more urgent duty was to reform the people from the corrupt habits which they had contracted. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XI.
There was at that time at Babylon one Nehemiah, a servant of the king, a Jew by birth, and very much beloved by Artaxerxes on account of the services he had rendered. He, having inquired of his fellow-countrymen the Jews, what was the condition of their ancestral city; and having learned that his native land remained in the same fallen condition as before, is said to have been disturbed with all his heart, and to have prayed to God with groans and many tears. He also called to mind the sins of his nation, and urgently entreated the divine compassion. Accordingly, the king noticing that he, while waiting at table, seemed more sorrowful than usual, asked him to explain the reasons of his grief. Then he began to bewail the misfortunes of his nation, and the ruin of his ancestral city, which now, for almost two hundred and fifty years, being leveled with the ground, furnished a proof of the evils which had been endured, and a gazing-stock to their enemies. He therefore begged the king to grant him the liberty of going and restoring it. The king yielded to these dutiful entreaties, and immediately sent him away with a guard of cavalry, that he might the more safely accomplish his journey, giving him, at the same time, letters to the rulers requesting them to furnish him with all that was necessary. When he arrived at Jerusalem, he distributed the work connected with the city to the people, man by man; and all vied with each other in carrying out the orders which they received. And already the work of rebuilding [340] had been half accomplished, when the jealousy of the surrounding heathen burst out, and the neighboring cities conspired to interrupt the works, and to deter the Jews from building. But Nehemiah, having stationed guards against those making assaults upon the people, was in no degree alarmed, and carried out what he had begun. And thus, after the wall was completed, and the entrances of the gates finished, he measured out the city for the construction by families of houses within it. He reckoned, also, that the people were not adequate in numbers to the size of the city; for there were not more of them than fifty thousand of both sexes and of all ranks--to such an extent had their formerly enormous numbers been reduced by frequent wars, and by the multitude kept in captivity. For, of old, those two tribes, of whom the remaining people were all that survived, had, when the ten tribes were separated from them, been able to furnish three hundred and twenty thousand armed men. But being given up by God, on account of their sin, to death and captivity, they had sunk down to the miserably small number which they now presented. This company, however, as I have said, consisted only of the two tribes: the ten [341] which had previously been carried away being scattered among the Parthians, Medes, Indians, and Ethiopians never returned to their native country, and are to this day held under the sway of barbarous nations. But the completion of the restored city is related to have been effected in the thirty-second year of the reign of Artaxerxes. From that time to the crucifixion of Christ; that is, to the time when Fufius Geminus and Rubellius were consuls, there elapsed three hundred and ninety and eight years. But from the restoration of the temple to its destruction, which was completed by Titus under Vespasian, when Augustus was consul, there was a period of four hundred and eighty-three years. That was formerly predicted by Daniel, who announced that from the restoration of the temple to its overthrow there would elapse seventy and nine weeks. Now, from the date of the captivity of the Jews until the time of the restoration of the city, there were two hundred and sixty years. __________________________________________________________________
[340] "jamque ad medium machinae processerant."
[341] Our author here touches upon a most interesting question--the ultimate destiny of the ten tribes. He seems to imply that none of them returned to Palestine, but were wholly absorbed among the Gentile nations. That, however, cannot be correct, for it was still possible, in the time of Christ, to speak of some as connected with the tribe of Asher, one of the ten tribes. See Luke ii. 36. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XII.
At this period of time we think Esther and Judith lived, but I confess that I cannot easily perceive with what kings especially I should connect the actions of their lives. For, while Esther is said to have lived under King Artaxerxes, I find that there were two Persian kings of that name, and there is much hesitation in concluding to which of these her date is to be assigned. However, it has seemed preferable to me to connect the history of Esther with that Artaxerxes under whom Jerusalem was restored, because it is not likely that, if she had lived under the former Artaxerxes, whose times Esdras has given an account of, he would have made no mention of such an illustrious woman. This is all the more convincing since we know that the building of the temple was (as we have related above) prohibited by that Artaxerxes and Esther would not have allowed that had she then been united with him in marriage. But I will now repeat what things she accomplished. There was at that time a certain Vastis connected with the king in marriage, a woman of marvelous beauty. Being accustomed to extol her loveliness to all, he one day, when he was giving a public entertainment, ordered the queen to attend for the purpose of exhibiting her beauty. But she, more prudent than the foolish king, and being too modest to make a show of her person before the eyes of men, refused compliance with his orders. His savage mind was enraged by this insult, and he drove her forth, both from her condition of marriage with him and from the palace. Consequently, when a young woman was sought after to take her place as the wife of the king, Esther was found to excel all others in beauty. She being a Jewess of the tribe of Benjamin, and an orphan, without father or mother, had been brought up by her cousin-german, [342] Mardochæus. On being espoused to the king, she, by the instructions of him who had brought her up, concealed her nation and fatherland, and was also admonished by him not to become forgetful of her ancestral traditions, nor, though as a captive she had entered into marriage with a foreigner, to take part in the food of the heathen. Thus, then, being united to the king, she, in a short time, as was to be expected, easily captivated his whole mind by the power of her beauty, so that, equalizing her with himself in the emblem of sovereign power, he presented her with a purple robe. __________________________________________________________________
[342] "patruele patre": words which have much perplexed the editors. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIII.
At this time, Mardochæus was among those nearest to the king, having entirely under his charge the affairs of the household. He had made known to the king a plot which had been formed by two eunuchs, and, on that account, had become a greater favorite, while he was presented with the highest honors. There was at that period one Haman, a very confidential friend of the king, whom he had made equal to himself and, after the manner of sovereign rulers, had ordered to be worshiped. Mardochæus being the one man among all who refused to do that, had greatly kindled the wrath of the Persian against himself. Accordingly, Haman setting his mind to work the ruin of the Hebrew, went to the king, and affirmed that there was in his kingdom a race of men of wicked superstitions, and hateful alike to God and men. He said that, as they lived according to foreign laws, they deserved to be destroyed; and that it was a righteous thing to hand over the whole of this nation to death. At the same time, he promised the king immense wealth out of their possessions. The barbarous prince was easily persuaded, and an edict was issued for the slaughter of the Jews, while men were at once sent out to publish it through the whole kingdom from India even to Ethiopia. When Mardochæus heard of this, he rent his clothes, clothed himself in sackcloth, scattered ashes upon his head, and, going to the palace, he there made the whole place resound with his wailing and complaints, crying out that it was an unworthy thing that an innocent nation should perish, while there existed no ground for its destruction. Esther's attention was attracted by the voice of lamentation, and she learned how the case really stood. But she was then at a loss what step she should take (for, according to the custom of the Persians, the queen is not permitted access to the king, unless she has been sent for, and indeed is not admitted at any time the king may please, but only at a fixed period); and it happened at the time, that by this rule, Esther was held as separated from the presence of the king for the next thirty days. However, thinking that she ought to run some risk in behalf of her fellow-countrymen, even should sure destruction await her, she was prepared to encounter death in such a noble cause, and, after having called upon God, she entered the court of the king. But the barbarian, though at first amazed at this unusual occurrence, was gradually won over by female blandishments, and at length went so far as to accompany the queen to a banquet which she had prepared. Along with him also went Haman, the favorite of the king, but a deadly enemy of the nation of the Jews. Well, when after the feasting the banquet began to become jovial through the many cups which were drank, Esther cast herself down at the knees of the king, and implored him to stay the destruction which threatened her nation. Then the king promised to refuse nothing to her entreaties, if she had any further request to make. Esther at once seized the opportunity, and demanded the death of Haman as a satisfaction to her nation, which he had desired to see destroyed. But the king could not forget his friend, and hesitating a little, he withdrew for a short time for the purpose of considering the matter. He then returned, and when he saw Haman grasping the knees of the queen, excited with rage, and, crying out that violence was being applied to the queen, he ordered him to be put to death. It then came to the knowledge of the king that a cross [343] had been got ready by Haman on which Mardochæus was to suffer. Thus, Haman was fixed to that very cross, and all his goods were handed over to Mardochæus, while the Jews at large were set free. Artaxerxes reigned sixty and two years, and was succeeded by Ochus. __________________________________________________________________
[343] "poenam crucis": after the Greek. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIV.
To this series of events it will be right that I should append an account of the doings of Judith; for she is related to have lived after the captivity, but the sacred history has not revealed who was king of the Persians in her day. It, however, calls the king under whom her exploits were performed by the name of Nabuchodonosor, and that was certainly not the one who took Jerusalem. But I do not find that any one of that name reigned over the Persians after the captivity, unless it be that, on account of the [344] wrath and like endeavors which he manifested, any king acting so was styled Nabuchodonosor by the Jews. Most persons, however, think that it was Cambyses, the son of Cyrus, on this ground that he, as a conqueror, penetrated into Egypt and Ethiopia. But the sacred history is opposed to this opinion; for Judith is described as having lived in the twelfth year of the king in question. Now, Cambyses did not possess the supreme power for more than eight years. Wherefore, if it is allowable to make a conjecture on a point of history, I should be inclined to believe that her exploits were performed under king Ochus, who came after the second Artaxerxes. I found this conjecture on the fact that (as I have read in profane histories) he is related to have been by nature cruel and fond of war. For he both engaged in hostilities with his neighbors, and recovered by wars Egypt, which had revolted many years before. At that time, also, he is related to have ridiculed the sacred rites of the Egyptians and Apis, who was regarded by them as a god; a thing which Baguas, one of his eunuchs, an Egyptian by nation, and indignant at the king's conduct, afterwards avenged by the death of the king, considering that the king had insulted the race to which he belonged. Now, the inspired [345] history makes mention of this Baguas; for, when Holofernes by the order of the king led an army against the Jews, it has related that Baguas was among the host. Wherefore, not without reason may I bring it forward in proof of the opinion I have expressed that that king who was named Nabuchodonosor was really Ochus, since profane historians have related that Baguas lived in his reign. But this ought not to be felt at all remarkable by any one, that mere worldly writers have not touched on any of those points which are recorded in the sacred writings. The spirit of God thus took care that the history should be strictly confined within its own mysteries, unpolluted by any corrupt mouth, or that which mingled truth with fiction. That history being, in fact, separated from the affairs of the world, and of a kind to be expressed only in sacred words, clearly ought not to have been mixed up with other histories, as being on a footing of equality with them. For it would have been most unbecoming that this history should be commingled with others treating of other things, or pursuing different inquiries. But I will now proceed to what remains, and will narrate in as few words as I can the acts performed by Judith. __________________________________________________________________
[344] The text here is uncertain.
[345] "historia divina": the writer applies these words to the book of Judith. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XV.
The Jews, then, having returned, as we have narrated above, to their native land, and the condition of their affairs and of their city being not yet properly settled, the king of the Persians made war on the Medes, and engaged in a successful battle against their king, who was named Arphaxad. That monarch being slain, he added the nation to his empire. He did the same to other nations, having sent before him Holofernes whom he had appointed master of his host, with a hundred and twenty thousand foot-soldiers, and twelve thousand cavalry. He, after having ravaged in war, Cilicia and Arabia, took many cities by force, or compelled them through fear to surrender. And now the army, having moved on to Damascus, had struck the Jews with great terror. But as they were unable to resist, and as, at the same time, they could not bring their minds to acquiesce in the thought of surrender, since they had previously known from experience the miseries of slavery, they betook themselves in crowds to the temple. There, with a general groaning and commingled wailing, they implored the divine assistance; saying that they had been sufficiently punished by God for their sins and offenses; and begging him to spare the remnant of them who had recently been delivered from slavery. In the meantime, Holofernes had admitted the Moabites to surrender, and joined them to himself as allies in the war against the Jews. He inquired of their chief men what was the power on which the Hebrews relied in not bringing their minds to submit to the thought of submission. In reply, a certain man called Achior stated to him the facts, viz.: that the Jews being worshipers of God, and trained by their fathers to pious observances, had formerly passed through a period of slavery in Egypt, and that, brought out from that country by the divine aid, and having passed over on foot the sea which was dried up before them, they had at last conquered all the opposing nations, and recovered the territory inhabited by their ancestors. That subsequently, with various fluctuations in their affairs, they had either prospered or the reverse, that, when they did sink into adversity, they had again escaped from their sufferings, finding that God was, in turn, either angry against them, or reconciled towards them, according to their deserts, so that, when they sinned, they were chastised by the attacks of enemies or by being sent into captivity, but were always unconquerable when they enjoyed the divine favor. So then, if at the present time they are free from guilt, they cannot possibly be subdued; but if they are otherwise situated, they will easily be conquered. Upon this, Holofernes, flushed with many victories, and thinking that everything must give way before him, was roused to wrath, because victory on his part was regarded as principally depending on the sin of the Jews, and ordered Achior to be pushed forward into the camp of the Hebrews, that he might perish in company with those who he had affirmed could not be conquered. Now, the Jews had then made for the mountains; and those to whom the business had been assigned, proceeded to the foot of the mountains, and there left Achior in chains. When the Jews perceived that, they freed him from his bonds and conducted him up the hill. On their inquiring the reason of what had happened, he explained it to them, and, being received in peace, awaited the result. I may add that, after the victory, he was circumcised and became a Jew. Well, Holofernes, perceiving the difficulty of the localities, because he could not reach the heights, surrounded the mountains with soldiers, and took the greatest pains to cut off the Hebrews from all water supplies. On that account, they felt all the sooner the misery of a siege. Being therefore overcome through want of water, they went in a company to Ozias, their leader, all inclined to make a surrender. But he replied that they should wait a little, and look for the divine assistance, so that the time of surrender was fixed for the fifth day afterwards. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVI.
When this became known to Judith (a widow woman of great wealth, and remarkable for beauty, but still more distinguished for her virtue than her beauty), who was then in the camp, she thought that, in the distressed circumstances of her people, some bold effort ought to be made by her, even though it should lead to her own destruction. She therefore decks her head and beautifies her countenance, and then, attended by a single maidservant, she enters the camp of the enemy. She was immediately conducted to Holofernes, and tells him that the affairs of her countrymen were desperate, so that she had taken precautions for her life by flight. Then she begs of the general the right of a free egress from the camp during night, for the purpose of saying her prayers. That order was accordingly given to the sentinels and keepers of the gates. But when by the practice of three days she had established for herself the habit of going out and returning, and had also in this way inspired belief in her into the barbarians, the desire took possession of Holofernes of abusing the person of his captive; for, being of surpassing beauty, she had easily impressed the Persian. Accordingly, she was conducted to the tent of the general by Baguas, the eunuch; and, commencing a banquet, the barbarian stupefied himself with a great deal of wine. Then, when the servants withdrew, before he offered violence to the woman, he fell asleep. Judith, seizing the opportunity, cut off the head of the enemy and carried it away with her. Being regarded as simply going out of the camp according to her usual custom, she returned to her own people in safety. On the following day the Hebrews held forth for show the head of Holofernes from the heights; and, making a sally, marched upon the camp of the enemy. And then the barbarians assemble in crowds at the tent of their general, waiting for the signal of battle. When his mutilated body was discovered, they turned to flight under the influence of a disgraceful panic, and fled before the enemy. The Jews, for their part, pursued the fugitives, and after slaying many thousands, took possession of the camp and the booty within it. Judith was extolled with the loftiest praises, and is said to have lived one hundred and five years. If these things took place, as we believe, under king Ochus, in the twelfth year of his reign, then from the date of the restoration of Jerusalem up to that war there elapsed two and twenty years. Now Ochus reigned in all twenty-three years. And he was beyond all others cruel, and more than of a barbarous disposition. Baguas, the eunuch, took him off by poison on an occasion of his suffering from illness. After him, Arses his son held the government for three years, and Darius for four. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVII.
Against him Alexander of Macedon engaged in war. And on his being conquered, the sovereign power was taken from the Persians, after having lasted, from the time of its establishment by Cyrus, two hundred and fifty years. Alexander, the conqueror of almost all nations, is said to have visited the temple at Jerusalem, and to have conveyed gifts into it; and he proclaimed throughout the whole territory which he had reduced under his sway that it should be free to the Jews living in it to return to their own country. At the end of the twelfth year of his reign, and seven years after he had conquered Darius, he died at Babylon. His friends who, along with him, had carried on those very important wars, divided his empire among themselves. For some time they administered the charges they had undertaken without making use of the name of king, while a certain Arridæus Philippus, the brother of Alexander, reigned, to whom, being of a very weak character, the sovereignty was nominally and in appearance given, but the real power was in the hands of those who had divided among themselves the army and the provinces. And indeed this state of things did not long continue, but all preferred that they should be called by the name of kings. In Syria Seleucus was the first king after Alexander, Persia and Babylon being also subject to his sway. At that time the Jews paid an annual tribute of three hundred talents of silver to the king; but they were governed not by foreign magistrates but by their own priests. And they lived according to the fashions of their ancestors until very many of them again corrupted by a long peace, began to mingle all things with seditions, and to create disturbances, while they aimed at the high-priesthood under the influence of lust, avarice, and the desire of power. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVIII.
For, first of all, under king Seleucus, the son of Antiochus the great, a certain man called Simon accused to the king on false charges Onias the priest, a holy and uncorrupted man, and thus tried, but in vain, to overthrow him. Then, after an interval of time, Jason, the brother of Onias, went to Antiochus the king, who had succeeded his brother Seleucus, and promised him an increase of tribute, if the high-priesthood were transferred to him. And although it was an unusual, and indeed, until now, an unpermitted thing for a man to enjoy the high-priesthood year after year, still the eager mind of the king, diseased with avarice, was easily persuaded. Accordingly, Onias was driven from office, and the priesthood bestowed on Jason. He harassed his countrymen and his country in the most shameful manner. Then, as he had sent through a certain Menelaus (the brother of that Simon who has been mentioned) the money he had promised to the king, a way being once laid open to his ambition, Menelaus obtained the priesthood by the same arts which Jason had employed before. But not long after, as he had not furnished the promised amount of money, he was driven from his position, and Lysimachus substituted in his stead. Then there arose disgraceful conflicts between Jason and Menelaus, until Jason, as an exile, left the country. By examples like these, the morals of the people became corrupted to such an extent, that numbers of the natives begged permission from Antiochus to live after the fashion of the Gentiles. And when the king granted their request, all the most worthless vied with each other in their endeavors to construct temples, to sacrifice to idols, and to profane the law. In the meantime, Antiochus returned from Alexandria (for he had then made war upon the king of Egypt, which, however, he gave up by the orders of the senate and Roman people, when Paulus and Crassus were consuls), and went to Jerusalem. Finding the people at variance from the diverse superstitions they had adopted, he destroyed the law of God, and showed favor to those who followed impious courses, while he carried off all the ornaments of the temple, and wasted it with much destruction. That came to pass in the hundred and fiftieth year after the death of Alexander, Paulus and Crassus being, as we have said, consuls, about five years after Antiochus began to reign. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIX.
But that the order of the dates may be correctly preserved, and that it may appear more clearly who this Antiochus was, we shall enumerate both the names and times of the kings who came after Alexander in Syria. Well, then, king Alexander having died, as we have related above, his whole empire was portioned out by his friends, and was governed for some time by them under the name of the king. [346] Seleucus, after the lapse of nine years, was himself styled king in Syria, and reigned thirty-two years. After him came Antiochus, his son, with a reign of twenty-one years. Then came Antiochus, the son of Antiochus, who was surnamed Theus, and he reigned fifteen years. After him, his son Seleucus, surnamed Callinicus, reigned twenty-one years. Another Seleucus, the son of Callinicus, reigned three years. After his death Antiochus, the brother of Callinicus, held Asia and Syria for thirty-seven years. This is the Antiochus against whom Lucius Scipio Asiaticus made war; and he, being worsted in the war was stripped of a part of his empire. He had two sons, Seleucus and Antiochus, the latter of whom he had given as a hostage to the Romans. Thus, then, Antiochus the great having died, his younger son Seleucus obtained the kingdom, under whom, as we have said, Onias the priest had an accusation brought against him by Simon. Then Antiochus was set free by the Romans, and there was given in his place as hostage Demetrius, the son of Seleucus, who was at that time reigning. Seleucus dying in the twelfth year of his reign, his brother Antiochus, who had been a hostage at Rome, seized the kingdom. He, five years after the beginning of his reign, did, as we have shown above, lay waste Jerusalem. For, as he had to pay a heavy tribute to the Romans, he was almost of necessity compelled, in order to meet that enormous expense, to provide himself with money by rapine, and to neglect no opportunity of plundering. Then, after two years, the Jews being again visited by a similar disaster to that which they had suffered before, lest it should happen that, driven on by their numerous miseries, they should commence war, he placed a garrison in the citadel. Next, with the view of overturning the holy law, he published an edict, that all, forsaking the traditions of their ancestors, should live after the manner of the Gentiles. And there were not wanting those who readily obeyed this profane enactment. Then truly there was a horrible spectacle presented; through all the cities sacrifices were publicly offered in the streets, while the sacred volumes of the law and the prophets were consumed with fire. __________________________________________________________________
[346] They did not themselves, for a time, assume the name of king, but, as said above, professed to rule under the authority of king Arridæus, brother of Alexander. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XX.
At that time, Matthathias, the son of John, was high-priest. When he was being forced by the servants of the king to obey the edict, with marvelous courage he set at naught the profane enactments, and slew, in the presence of all, a Hebrew who was publicly performing profane acts. A leader having thus been found, rebellion at once took place. Matthathias left the town; and as many flocked to him, he got up the appearance of a regular army. The object of every man in that host was to defend himself by arms against a profane government, and rather even to fall in war than to take part in impious ceremonies. In the meantime, Antiochus was compelling those Jews who were found in the Greek cities in his dominions to offer sacrifice, and was visiting with unheard-of torments those who refused. At this time, there occurred that well-known and remarkable suffering of the seven brothers and their mother. All of the brothers, when they were being forced to violate the law of God, and the customs of their ancestors, preferred rather to die. At last, their mother, too, accompanied them both in their sufferings and death. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXI.
In the meantime, Matthathias dies, having appointed in his own place his son Judah, as general of the army which he had brought together. Under his leadership, several successful battles took place against the royal forces. For first of all, he destroyed, along with his whole army, Apollonius, the enemy's general, who had entered on the conflict with a large number of troops. When a certain man, named Seron, who was then the ruler of Syria, heard of this, he increased his forces, and attacked Judah with much spirit as being superior in numbers, but when a battle took place, he was routed and put to flight; and with the loss of nearly eight hundred men, he returned to Syria. On this becoming known to Antiochus, he was filled with rage and regret, inasmuch as it vexed him that his generals had been conquered, notwithstanding their large armies. He therefore gathers aid from his whole empire, and bestows a donative on the soldiers, almost to the exhaustion of his treasury. For he was then suffering in a very special manner from the want of money. The reason of this was, on the one side, that the Jews, who had been accustomed to pay him an annual tribute of more than three hundred talents of silver, were now in a state of rebellion against him; and on the other side, that many of the Greek cities and countries were unsettled by the evil of persecution. For Antiochus had not spared even the Gentiles, whom he had sought to persuade to abandon their long-established superstitions, and to draw over to one kind of religious observance. And no doubt, those of them who regarded nothing as sacred, easily were induced to give up their ancient forms of worship, but at the same time all were in a state of alarm and disaster. For these reasons, then, the taxes had ceased to be paid. Boiling with wrath on these grounds (for he who had of old been the richest of kings now deeply felt the poverty due to his own wickedness), he divided his forces with Lysias, and committed to him Syria and the war against the Jews, while he himself set out against the Persians, to collect the taxes among them. Lysias, then, selected Ptolemy, Gorgias, Doro, and Nicanor, as generals in the war; and to these he gave forty thousand infantry, and seven thousand cavalry. At the first onset these caused great alarm among the Jews. Then Judah, when all were in despair, exhorted his men to go with courageous hearts to battle--that, if they put their trust in God, everything would give way before them; for that often before then the victory had been won by a few fighting against many. A fast was proclaimed, and sacrifice was offered, after which they went down to battle. The result was that the forces of the enemy were scattered, and Judah, taking possession of their camp, found in it both much gold and Tyrian treasures. For merchants from Syria, having no doubt as to victory, had followed the king's army with the hope of purchasing prisoners, and now were themselves spoiled. When these things were reported to Lysias by messengers, he got together troops with still greater efforts, and in a year after again attacked the Jews with an enormous army; but being defeated, he retreated to Antioch. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXII.
Judah, on the defeat of the enemy, returned to Jerusalem, and bent his mind on the purification and restoration of the temple, which having been overthrown by Antiochus, and profaned by the Gentiles, presented a melancholy spectacle. But as the Syrians held the citadel, which being connected with the temple, but standing above it in position, was really impregnable, the lower parts proved inaccessible, as frequent sallies from above prevented persons from approaching them. But Judah placed against these assailants a very powerful body of his men. Thus the work of the sacred building was protected, and the temple was surrounded with a wall, while armed men were appointed to maintain a perpetual defence. And Lysias, having again returned into Judæa with increased forces, was once more defeated with a great loss both of his own army and of the auxiliaries, which being sent to him by various states had combined with him in the war. In the meantime, Antiochus, who, as we have said above, had marched into Persia, endeavored to plunder the town of Elymus, the wealthiest in the country, and a temple situated there which was filled with gold; but, as a multitude flocked together from all sides for the defense of the place, he was put to flight. Moreover, he received news of the want of success which had attended the efforts of Lysias. [347] Thus, from distress of mind, he fell into bodily disease. But as he was then tormented with internal sufferings, he remembered the miseries which he had inflicted on the people of God, and acknowledged that these evils had deservedly been sent upon him. Then, after a few days, he died, having reigned eleven years. He left the kingdom to his son Antiochus, to whom the name of Eupator was given. __________________________________________________________________
[347] Some add the words, "or of Lysimachus," but this appears to have been a gloss. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXIII.
At that time Judah besieged the Syrians who were posted in the citadel. They, being sore pressed with famine and want of all things, sent messengers to the king to implore assistance. Accordingly, Eupator came to their aid with a hundred thousand infantry and twenty thousand cavalry, while elephants marched in front of his line, causing immense terror to the onlookers. Then Judah, abandoning the siege, went to meet the king, and routed the Syrians in the first battle. The king begged for peace, which, because [348] he, with his treacherous disposition, made a bad use of, vengeance followed his treachery. For Demetrius, the son of Seleucus, who, we have said above, was handed over as a hostage to the Romans, when he heard that Antiochus had departed, begged that they would send him to take possession of the kingdom. And when this was refused to him, he secretly fled from Rome, came into Syria, and seized the supreme power, having slain the son of Antiochus, who had reigned one year and six months. It was during his reign that the Jews first begged the friendship of the Roman people, and alliance with them; and the embassy to this effect having been kindly received, they were, by a decree of the senate, styled allies and friends. In the meantime Demetrius was, by means of his generals, carrying on war against Judah. And first the army was led by a certain man named Bacchides, and by Alcimus, a Jew; Nicanor, being afterwards placed at the head of the war, fell in battle. Then Bacchides and Alcimus, recovering power, and having increased their forces, fought against Judah. The Syrians, turning out victorious in that battle, cruelly abused their victory. The Hebrews elect Jonathan, the brother of Judah, in his place. In the meantime, Alcimus, after he had fearfully desolated Jerusalem, dies; Bacchides, being thus deprived of his ally, returns to the king. Then, after an interval of two years, Bacchides again made war upon the Jews, and being beaten, he begged for peace. This was granted him certain conditions, to the effect that he should give up the deserters and prisoners, along with all that he had taken in war. __________________________________________________________________
[348] The text is here in utter confusion; we have followed that suggested by Vorstius. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXIV.
While these things are going on in Judæa, a certain young man educated at Rhodes, by name Alexander, gave himself out as being the son of Antiochus (which was false), and assisted by the power of Ptolemy, king of Alexandria, came into Syria with an army. He conquered Demetrius in war, and slew him after he had reigned twelve years. This Alexander before he made war against Demetrius, had formed an alliance with Jonathan, and had presented him with a purple robe and royal ensigns. For this reason Jonathan had assisted him with auxiliary forces; and on the defeat of Demetrius, had been the very first to meet him with congratulations. Nor did Alexander afterwards violate the faith which he had pledged. Accordingly, in the five years during which he held the chief power, the affairs of the Jews were peaceful. In these circumstances, Demetrius, the son of Demetrius, who, after the death of his father, had betaken himself to Crete, at the instigation of Lasthenes, general of the Cretans, tried by war to recover the kingdom of his, father, but finding his power unequal to the task, he implored Ptolemy Philometor, king of Egypt, the father-in-law of Alexander, but who was then on bad terms with his son-in-law, to give him assistance. But he, induced not so much by the entreaties of the suppliant as by the hope of seizing Syria, joined his forces with those of Demetrius, and gives him his daughter, who had been married to Alexander. Against these two Alexander fought a pitched battle. Ptolemy fell in the fight, but Alexander was defeated; and he was soon afterwards slain, after he had reigned five, or as I find it stated in many authors, nine years. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXV.
Demetrius, having thus obtained the kingdom, treated Jonathan with kindness, made a treaty with him, and restored the Jews to their own laws. In the meantime, Tryphon, who had belonged to the party of Alexander, was appointed [349] governor of Syria, to keep him in check by war. Jonathan, [350] on the other hand, descended to battle, formidable with an army of forty thousand men. Tryphon, when he saw himself unequal to the contest, pretended a desire for peace, and slew Ptolemais who had been received and invited into friendship with him. After Jonathan, the chief power was conferred on his brother Simon. He celebrated the funeral of his brother with great pomp, and built those well-known seven pyramids of most noble workmanship, in which he buried the remains both of his brothers and of his father. Then Demetrius renewed his treaty with the Jews; and in consideration of the loss caused to them by Tryphon (for after the death of Jonathan he had wasted by war their cities and territories), he remitted to them their annual tribute forever; for up to that time, they had paid tribute to the kings of Syria, except when they resisted by force of arms. That took place in the second year of king Demetrius; and we have noted that, because up to this year we have run through the times of the Asiatic kings, that the series of dates being given in order might be perfectly clear. But now we shall arrange the order of events through the times of those, who were either high-priests or kings among the Jews, up to the period of the birth of Christ. __________________________________________________________________
[349] Some words have here been lost, but the critics are not agreed as to what should be supplied.
[350] As Vorstius suggests, we have here taken Jonathan as a nominative, but the passage is very obscure. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXVI.
Well, then, after Jonathan, his brother Simon, as has been said above, ruled over the Hebrews with the power of high-priest. For that honor was then bestowed upon him both by his own countrymen and by the Roman people. He began to rule over his countrymen in the second year of king Demetrius, but eight years afterwards, being deceived by a plot of Ptolemy, he met his death. He was succeeded by his son John. And he, on the ground that he had fought with distinction against the Hyrcani, a very powerful nation, received the surname of Hyrcanus. He died, after having held the supreme power for twenty-six years. After him, Aristobulus being appointed high-priest, was the first of all living after the captivity to assume the name of king, and to have a crown placed upon his head. At the close of a year, he died. Then Alexander, his son, who was both king and high-priest, reigned twenty-seven years; but I have found nothing in his doings worthy of mention, except his cruelty. He having left two young sons named Aristobulus and Hyrcanus, Salina or Alexandra, his wife, held the sovereignty for three years. After his decease, frightful conflicts about the supreme power arose between the two brothers. And first of all, Hyrcanus held the government; but being by and by defeated by his brother Aristobulus, he fled to Pompey. That Roman general, having finished the war with Mithridates, and settled Armenia and Pontus, being, in fact, the conqueror of all the nations which he had visited, desired to march inwards, [351] and to add all the neighboring regions to the Roman empire. He therefore inquired into the causes of the war, and the means of obtaining [352] the mastery. Accordingly he readily received Hyrcanus, and, under his guidance, attacked the Jews; but when the city was taken and destroyed, he spared the temple. He sent Aristobulus in chains to Rome, and restored the right of the high-priesthood to Hyrcanus. Settling the tribute to be paid by the Jews, he placed over them as governor a certain Antipater of Askelon. Hyrcanus held the chief power for thirty-four years; but while he carried on war against the Parthians, he was taken prisoner. __________________________________________________________________
[351] "Introrsum," towards home; another reading is "ultrorsum," farther onwards.
[352] "vincendi": others read "incendii." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXVII.
Then Herod, a foreigner, the son of Antipater of Askelon, asked and received the sovereignty of Judæa from the senate and people of Rome. Under him, the Jews began for the first time to have a foreigner as king. For as now the advent of Christ was at hand, it was necessary, according to the predictions of the prophets, that they should be deprived of their own rulers, that they might not look for anything beyond Christ. Under this Herod, in the thirty-third year of his reign, Christ was born on the twenty-fifth of December in the consulship of Sabinus and Rufinus. But we do not venture to touch on these things which are contained in the Gospels, and subsequently in the Acts of the Apostles, lest the character of our condensed work should, in any measure, detract from the dignity of the events; and I shall proceed to what remains. Herod reigned four years after the birth of the Lord; for the whole period of his reign comprised thirty-seven years. After him, came Archelaus the tetrarch, for eight years, and Herod for twenty-four years. Under him, in the eighteenth year of his reign, the Lord was crucified, Fufius Geminus and Rubellius Geminus being consuls; from which date up to the consulship of Stilico, there have elapsed three hundred and seventy-two years. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXVIII.
Luke made known the doings of the apostles up to the time when Paul was brought to Rome under the emperor Nero. As to Nero, I shall not say that he was the worst of kings, but that he was worthily held the basest of all men, and even of wild beasts. It was he who first began a persecution; and I am not sure but he will be the last also to carry it on, if, indeed, we admit, as many are inclined to believe, that he will yet appear immediately before the coming of Antichrist. Our subject would induce me to set forth his vices at some length, if it were not inconsistent with the purpose of this work to enter upon so vast a topic. I content myself with the remark, that he showed himself in every way most abominable and cruel, and at length even went so far as to be the murderer of his own mother. After this, he also married a certain Pythagoras in the style of solemn alliances, the bridal veil being put upon the emperor, while the usual dowry, and the marriage couch, and wedding torches, and, in short, all the other observances were forthcoming--things which even in the case of women, are not looked upon without some feeling of modesty. But as to his other actions, I doubt whether the description of them would excite greater shame or sorrow. He first attempted to abolish the name of Christian, in accordance with the fact that vices are always inimical to virtues, and that all good men are ever regarded by the wicked as casting reproach upon them. For, at that time, our divine religion had obtained a wide prevalence in the city. Peter was there executing the office of bishop, and Paul, too, after he had been brought to Rome, on appealing to Cæsar from the unjust judgment of the governor. Multitudes then came together to hear Paul, and these, influenced by the truth which they were given to know, and by the miracles [353] of the apostles, which they then so frequently performed, turned to the worship of God. For then took place the well-known and celebrated encounter of Peter and Paul with Simon. [354] He, after he had flown up into the air by his magical arts, and supported by two demons (with the view of proving that he was a god), the demons being put to flight by the prayers of the apostles, fell to the earth in the sight of all the people, and was dashed to pieces. __________________________________________________________________
[353] "virtutibus."
[354] Generally spoken of as Simon Magus. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXIX.
In the meantime, the number of the Christians being now very large, it happened that Rome was destroyed by fire, while Nero was stationed at Antium. But the opinion of all cast the odium of causing the fire upon the emperor, and he was believed in this way to have sought for the glory of building a new city. And in fact, Nero could not by any means he tried escape from the charge that the fire had been caused by his orders. He therefore turned the accusation against the Christians, and the most cruel tortures were accordingly inflicted upon the innocent. Nay, even new kinds of death were invented, so that, being covered in the skins of wild beasts, they perished by being devoured by dogs, while many were crucified or slain by fire, and not a few were set apart for this purpose, that, when the day came to a close, they should be consumed to serve for light during the night. In this way, cruelty first began to be manifested against the Christians. Afterwards, too, their religion was prohibited by laws which were enacted; and by edicts openly set forth it was proclaimed unlawful to be a Christian. At that time Paul and Peter were condemned to death, the former being beheaded with a sword, while Peter suffered crucifixion. And while these things went on at Rome, the Jews, not able to endure the injuries they suffered under the rule of Festus Florus, began to rebel. Vespasian, being sent by Nero against them, with proconsular power, defeated them in numerous important battles, and compelled them to flee within the walls of Jerusalem. In the meanwhile Nero, now hateful even to himself from a consciousness of his crimes, disappears from among [355] men, leaving it uncertain whether or not he had laid violent hands upon himself: certainly his body was never found. It was accordingly believed that, even if he did put an end to himself with a sword, his wound was cured, and his life preserved, according to that which was written regarding him,--"And his mortal [356] wound was healed,"--to be sent forth again near the end of the world, in order that he may practice the mystery of iniquity. __________________________________________________________________
[355] "humanis rebus eximitur."
[356] Rev. xiii. 3. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXX.
So then, after the departure of Nero, Galba seized the government; and ere long, on Galba being slain, Otho secured it. Then Vitellius from Gaul, trusting to the armies which he commanded, entered the city, and having killed Otho, assumed the sovereignty. This afterwards passed to Vespasian, and although that was accomplished by evil means, yet it had the good effect of rescuing the state from the hands of the wicked. While Vespasian was besieging Jerusalem, he took possession of the imperial power; and as the fashion is, he was saluted as emperor by the army, with a diadem placed upon his head. He made his son Titus, Cæsar; and assigned him a portion of the forces, along with the task of continuing the siege of Jerusalem. Vespasian set out for Rome, and was received with the greatest favor by the senate and people; and Vitellius having killed himself, his hold of the sovereign power was fully confirmed. The Jews, meanwhile, being closely besieged, as no chance either of peace or surrender was allowed them, were at length perishing from famine, and the streets began everywhere to be filled with dead bodies, for the duty of burying them could no longer be performed. Moreover, they ventured on eating all things of the most abominable nature, and did not even abstain from human bodies, except those which putrefaction had already laid hold of and thus excluded from use as food. The Romans, accordingly, rushed in upon the exhausted defenders of the city. And it so happened that the whole multitude from the country, and from other towns of Judæa, had then assembled for the day of the Passover: doubtless, because it pleased God that the impious race should be given over to destruction at the very time of the year at which they had crucified the Lord. The Pharisees for a time maintained their ground most boldly in defense of the temple, and at length, with minds obstinately bent on death, they, of their own accord, committed themselves to the flames. The number of those who suffered death is related to have been eleven hundred thousand, and one hundred thousand were taken captive and sold. Titus is said, after calling a council, to have first deliberated whether he should destroy the temple, a structure of such extraordinary work. For it seemed good to some that a sacred edifice, distinguished above all human achievements, ought not to be destroyed, inasmuch as, if preserved, it would furnish an evidence of Roman moderation, but, if destroyed, would serve for a perpetual proof of Roman cruelty. But on the opposite side, others and Titus himself thought that the temple ought specially to be overthrown, in order that the religion of the Jews and of the Christians might more thoroughly be subverted; for that these religions, although contrary to each other, had nevertheless proceeded from the same authors; that the Christians had sprung up from among the Jews; and that, if the root were extirpated, the offshoot would speedily perish. Thus, according to the divine will, the minds of all being inflamed, the temple was destroyed, three hundred and thirty-one years ago. And this last overthrow of the temple, and final captivity of the Jews, by which, being exiles from their native land, they are beheld scattered through the whole world, furnish a daily demonstration to the world, that they have been punished on no other account than for the impious hands which they laid upon Christ. For though on other occasions they were often given over to captivity on account of their sins, yet they never paid the penalty of slavery beyond a period of seventy years. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXI.
Then, after an interval, Domitian, the son of Vespasian, persecuted the Christians. At this date, he banished John the Apostle and Evangelist to the island of Patmos. There he, secret mysteries having been revealed to him, wrote and published his book of the holy Revelation, which indeed is either foolishly or impiously not accepted by many. And with no great interval there then occurred the third persecution under Trajan. But he, when after torture and racking he found nothing in the Christians worthy of death or punishment, forbade any further cruelty to be put forth against them. Then under Adrian the Jews attempted to rebel, and endeavored to plunder both Syria and Palestine; but on an army being sent against them, they were subdued. At this time Adrian, thinking that he would destroy the Christian faith by inflicting an injury upon the place, set up the images of demons both in the temple and in the place where the Lord suffered. And because the Christians were thought principally to consist of Jews (for the church at Jerusalem did not then have a priest except of the circumcision), he ordered a cohort of soldiers to keep constant guard in order to prevent all Jews from approaching to Jerusalem. This, however, rather benefited [357] the Christian faith, because almost all then believed in Christ as God while continuing [358] in the observance of the law. Undoubtedly that was arranged by the over-ruling care of the Lord, in order that the slavery of the law might be taken away from the liberty of the faith and of the church. In this way, Mark from among the Gentiles was then, first of all, bishop at Jerusalem. A fourth persecution is reckoned as having taken place under Adrian, which, however, he afterwards forbade to be carried on, declaring it to be unjust that any one should be put on his trial without a charge being specified against him. __________________________________________________________________
[357] How so? Because, according to Drusius, the Christian Jews were thus first taught to cast off the yoke of the law, which they had observed up to this time.
[358] These were half-Jews and half-Christians, and were known at a later date under the name of Nazarites. They made use of what was called the Gospel according to the Hebrews. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXII.
After Adrian, the churches had peace under the rule of Antoninus Pius. Then the fifth persecution began under Aurelius, the son of Antoninus. And then, for the first time, martyrdoms were seen taking place in Gaul, for the religion of God had been accepted somewhat late beyond the Alps. Then the sixth persecution of the Christians took place under the emperor Severus. At this time Leonida, the father of Origen, poured forth his sacred blood in martyrdom. Then, during an interval of thirty-eight years, the Christians enjoyed peace, except that at the middle of that time Maximinus persecuted the clerics of some churches. Ere long, under Decius as emperor, the seventh bloody persecution broke out against the Christians. Next, Valerian proved himself the eighth enemy of the saints. After him, with an interval of about fifty years, there arose, under the emperors Diocletian and Maximian, a most bitter persecution which, for ten continuous years, wasted the people of God. At this period, almost the whole world was stained with the sacred blood of the martyrs. In fact, they vied with each other in rushing upon these glorious struggles, and martyrdom by glorious deaths was then much more keenly sought after than bishoprics are now attempted to be got by wicked ambition. Never more than at that time was the world exhausted by wars, nor did we ever achieve victory with a greater triumph than when we showed that we could not be conquered by the slaughters of ten long years. There survive also accounts of the sufferings of the martyrs at that time which were committed to writing; but I do not think it suitable to subjoin these lest I should exceed the limits prescribed to this work. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXIII.
Well, the end of the persecutions was reached eighty-eight years ago, at which date the emperors began to be Christians. For Constantine then obtained the sovereignty, and he was the first Christian of all the Roman rulers. At that time, it is true, Licinius, who was a rival of Constantine for the empire, had commanded his soldiers to sacrifice, and was expelling from the service those who refused to do so. But that is not reckoned among the persecutions; it was an affair of too little moment to be able to inflict any wound upon the churches. From that time, we have continued to enjoy tranquillity; nor do I believe that there will be any further persecutions, except that which Antichrist will carry on just before the end of the world. For it has been proclaimed in divine words, that the world was to be visited by ten afflictions; [359] and since nine of these have already been endured, the one which remains must be the last. During this period of time, it is marvelous how the Christian religion has prevailed. For Jerusalem which had presented a horrible mass of ruins was then adorned with most numerous and magnificent churches. And Helena, the mother of the emperor Constantine (who reigned along with her son as Augusta), having a strong desire to behold Jerusalem, cast down the idols and the temples which were found there; and in course of time, through the exercise of her royal powers, she erected churches [360] on the site of the Lord's passion, resurrection, and ascension. It is a remarkable fact that the spot on which the divine footprints had last been left when the Lord was carried up in a cloud to heaven, could not be joined by a pavement with the remaining part of the street. For the earth, unaccustomed to mere human contact, rejected all the appliances laid upon it, and often threw back the blocks of marble in the faces of those who were seeking to place them. Moreover, it is an enduring proof of the soil of that place having been trodden by God, that the footprints are still to be seen; and although the faith of those who daily flock to that place, leads them to vie with each other in seeking to carry away what had been trodden by the feet of the Lord, yet the sand of the place suffers no injury; and the earth still preserves the same appearance which it presented of old, as if it had been sealed by the footprints impressed upon it. __________________________________________________________________
[359] "decem plagis."
[360] "basilicas": edifices, which, in size and grandeur, had some resemblance to a royal palace. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXIV.
Through the kind efforts of the same queen, the cross of the Lord was then found. It could not, of course, be consecrated at the beginning, owing to the opposition of the Jews, and afterwards it had been covered over by the rubbish of the ruined city. And now, it would never have been revealed except to one seeking for it in such a believing spirit. Accordingly, Helena having first got information about the place of our Lord's passion, caused a band of soldiers to be brought [361] to it, while the whole multitude of the inhabitants of the locality vied with each other in seeking to gratify the desires of the queen, and ordered the earth to be dug up, and all the adjacent most extensive ruins to be cleared out. Ere long, as the reward of her faith and labor, three crosses (as of old they had been fixed for the Lord and the two robbers) were discovered. But upon this, the greater difficulty of distinguishing the gibbet on which the Lord had hung, disturbed the minds and thoughts of all, lest by a mistake, likely enough to be committed by mere mortals, they might perhaps consecrate as the cross of the Lord, that which belonged to one of the robbers. They form then the plan of placing one who had recently died in contact with the crosses. Nor is there any delay in carrying out this purpose; for just as if by the appointment of God, the funeral of a dead man was then being conducted with the usual ceremonies, and all rushing up took the body from the bier. It was applied in vain to the first two crosses, but when it touched that of Christ, wonderful to tell, while all stood trembling, the dead body was [362] shaken off, and stood up in the midst of those looking at it. The cross was thus discovered, and was consecrated with all due ceremony. [363] __________________________________________________________________
[361] "admota militari manu atque omnium provincialium multitudine in studia reginæ certantium."
[362] "funus excussum": a singular expression.
[363] "ambitu": apparently used here with the meaning which sometimes belongs to "ambitione." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXV.
Such were the things accomplished by Helena, while, under a Christian prince, the world had both attained to liberty, and possessed in him an exemplar of faith. But a far more dreadful danger than all that had preceded fell upon all the churches from that state of tranquillity. For then the Arian heresy burst forth, and disturbed the whole world by the error which it instilled. For by means of the two [364] Ariuses, who were the most active originators of this unfaithfulness, the emperor himself was led astray; and while he seemed to himself to fulfill a religious duty, he proceeded to a violent exercise of persecution. The bishops were driven into exile: cruelty was exerted against the clerics; and even the laity were punished, who had separated from the communion of the Arians. Now, the doctrines which the Arians proclaimed were of the following nature,--that God the Father had begotten his Son for the purpose of creating the world; and that, by his power, he had made [365] out of nothing into a new and second substance, a new and second God; and that there was a time when the Son had no existence. To meet this evil, a synod was convened from the whole world to meet at Nicæa. Three hundred and eighteen bishops were there assembled: the faith was fully set forth in writing; the Arian heresy was condemned; and the emperor confirmed the whole by an imperial decree. The Arians, then, not daring to make any further attempt against the orthodox faith, mixed themselves among the churches, as if they acquiesced in the conclusions which had been reached, and did not hold any different opinions. There remained, however, in their hearts, a deep-seated hatred against the Catholics, and they assailed, with suborned accusers and trumped-up charges, those with whom they could not contend in argument on matters of faith. __________________________________________________________________
[364] The one of these was Arius, the author of the heresy, and the other a presbyter of Alexandria bearing the same name.
[365] Both the text and meaning are here obscure. We have read, with Halm, "fecisse" for the usual "factum." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXVI.
Accordingly, they first attack and condemn in his absence Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, a holy man, who had been present as deacon at the Synod of Nicæa. For they added to the charges which false witnesses had heaped up against him, this one, that, with wicked intentions, he had received [366] Marcellus and Photinus, heretical priests who had been condemned by a sentence of the Synod. Now, it was not doubtful as to Photinus that he had been justly condemned. But in the case of Marcellus, it seemed that nothing had then been found worthy of condemnation, and [367] a belief in his innocence was above all strengthened by the animus of that party, inasmuch as no one doubted that those same judges were heretical by whom he had been condemned. But the Arians did not so much desire to get these persons out of the way as Athanasius himself. Accordingly, they constrain the emperor to go so far as this, that Athanasius should be sent as an exile into Gaul. But ere long, eighty bishops, assembling together in Egypt, declare that Athanasius had been unjustly condemned. The matter is referred to Constantine: he orders [368] bishops from the whole world to assemble at Sardes, and that the entire process by which Athanasius had been condemned, should be reconsidered by the council. In the meantime, Constantine dies, but the Synod, called together while he was yet emperor, acquits Athanasius. Marcellus, too, is restored to his bishopric, but the sentence on Photinus, bishop of Sirmion, was not rescinded; for even [369] in the judgment of our friends, he is regarded as a heretic. However, even this result chagrined Marcellus, because Photinus was known to have been his disciple in his youth. But this, too, tended to secure an acquittal for Athanasius, that Ursatius and Valens, leading men among the Arians, when they were openly separated from the communion of the Church after the Synod at Sardes, entering into the presence of Julius, bishop of Rome, asked pardon of him for having condemned the innocent, and publicly declared that he had been justly acquitted by the decree of the Council of Sardes. __________________________________________________________________
[366] Different periods and events are here mixed up by our author.
[367] The text is in utter confusion, and we can only make a probable guess at the meaning.
[368] It has been remarked that Sulpitius is in error in ascribing the summoning of this council to Constantine the Great, instead of his son Constantine II. The curious thing is that he should have made a mistake regarding an event so near his own time.
[369] "qui etiam nostrorum judicio hæreticus probatur." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXVII.
When, after an interval of some time had elapsed, Athanasius, finding that Marcellus was by no means sound in the faith, suspended him from communion. And he had this degree of modesty, that, being censured by the judgment of so great a man, he voluntarily gave way. But though at a former period innocent, yet confessedly afterwards becoming heretical, it may be allowed to conclude that he was really then guilty when judgment was pronounced regarding him. The Arians, then, finding an opportunity of that kind, conspire to subvert altogether the decrees of the Synod of Sardes. For a certain coloring of right seemed to be furnished them in this fact, that a favorable judgment had as unjustly been formed on the side of Athanasius, as Marcellus had been improperly acquitted, since now, even in the opinion of Athanasius himself, he was deemed a heretic. For Marcellus had stood forward as an upholder of the Sabellian heresy. [370] But Photinus had already brought forward a new heresy, differing indeed from Sabellius with respect to the union of the divine persons, but proclaiming that Christ had his beginning in Mary. The Arians, therefore, with cunning design, mix up what was harmless with what was blameworthy, and embrace, under the same judgment, the condemnation of Photinus, and Marcellus, and Athanasius. They undoubtedly did this with the view of leading the minds of the ignorant to conclude, that those had not judged incorrectly regarding Athanasius, who, it was admitted, had expressed a well-based opinion respecting Marcellus and Photinus. At that time, however, the Arians concealed their treachery; and not daring openly to proclaim their erroneous doctrines, they professed themselves Catholics. They thought that their first great object should be to get Athanasius turned out of the church, who had always presented a wall of opposition to their endeavors, and they hoped that, if he were removed, the rest would pass over to their evil [371] opinion. Now, that part of the bishops which followed the Arians accepted the condemnation of Athanasius with delight. Another part, constrained by fear and faction, yielded to the wish of the Arian party; and only a few, to whom the true faith was dearer than any other consideration, refused to accept their unjust judgment. Among these was Paulinus, the bishop of Treves. It is related that he, when a letter on the subject was placed before him, thus wrote, that he gave his consent to the condemnation of Photinus and Marcellus, but did not approve that of Athanasius. __________________________________________________________________
[370] As Epiphanius remarks, Sabellius taught that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost were all the same person, only under different appellations.
[371] "libidinem." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXVIII.
But then the Arians, seeing that stratagem did not succeed, determined to proceed by force. For it was easy for those to attempt and carry out anything who were supported by the favor of the monarch, whom they had thoroughly won over to themselves by wicked flatteries. Moreover, they were by the consent of all unconquerable; for almost all the bishops of the two Pannonias, and many of the Eastern bishops, and those throughout all Asia, had joined in their unfaithfulness. But the chief men in that evil company were Ursatius of Singidunum, Valens of Mursa, Theodorus of Heraclia, Stephanus of Antioch, Acatius of Cæsarea, Menofantus of Ephesus, Georgius of Laodicia, and Narcissus of Neronopolis. These had got possession of the palace to such an extent that the emperor did nothing without their concurrence. He was indeed at the beck of all of them, but was especially under the influence of Valens. For at that time, when a battle was fought at Mursa against Magnentius, Constantius had not the courage to go down to witness for himself the conflict, but took up his abode in a church of the martyrs which stood outside the town, Valens who was then the bishop of the place being with him to keep up his courage. But Valens had cunningly arranged, through means of his agents, that he should be the first to be made acquainted with the result of the battle. He did this either to gain the favor of the king, if he should be the first to convey to him good news, or with a view to saving his own life, since he would obtain time for flight, should the issue prove unfortunate. Accordingly, the few persons who were with the king being in a state of alarm, and the emperor himself being a prey to anxiety, Valens was the first to announce to them the flight of the enemy. When Constantius requested that the person who had brought the news should be introduced to his presence, Valens, to increase the reverence felt for himself, said that an angel was the messenger who had come to him. The emperor, who was easy of belief, was accustomed afterwards openly to declare that he had won the victory through the merits of Valens, and not by the valor of his army. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXIX.
From this first proof that the prince had been won over to their side, the Arians plucked up their courage, knowing that they could make use of the power of the king, when they could make little impression by their own authority. Accordingly, when our friends did not accept of the judgment which they had pronounced in regard to Athanasius, an edict was issued by the emperor to the effect that those who did not subscribe to the condemnation of Athanasius should be sent into banishment. But, at that time, councils of bishops were held by our friends at Arles and Bitteræ, towns situated in Gaul. They requested that before any were compelled to subscribe against Athanasius, they should rather enter on a discussion as to the true faith; and maintained that only then was a decision to be come to respecting the point in question, when they had agreed as to the person of the judges. [372] But Valens and his confederates not venturing on a discussion respecting the faith, first desired to secure by force the condemnation of Athanasius. Owing to this conflict of parties, Paulinus was driven into banishment. In the meantime, an assembly was held at Milan, where the emperor then was; but the same controversy was there continued without any relaxation of its bitterness. Then Eusebius, bishop of the Vercellenses, and Lucifer, bishop of Caralis [373] in Sardinia, were exiled. Dionysius, however, priest of Milan, subscribed to the condemnation of Athanasius, on the condition that there should be an investigation among the bishops as to the true faith. But Valens and Ursatius, with the rest of that party, through fear of the people, who maintained the Catholic faith with extraordinary enthusiasm, did not venture to set forth in public their monstrous [374] doctrines, but assembled within the palace. From that place, and under the name of the emperor, they issued a letter full [375] of all sorts of wickedness, with this purpose, no doubt, that, if the people gave it a favorable hearing, they should then bring forward, under public authority, the things which they desired; but if it should be received otherwise, that all the ill feeling might be directed against the king, while his mistake might be regarded as excusable, because being then only a catechumen, he might readily be supposed to have erred concerning the mysteries of the faith. Well, when the letter was read in the church, the people expressed their aversion to it. And Dionysius, because he did not concur with them, was banished from the city, while Auxentius was immediately chosen as bishop in his place. Liberius, too, bishop of the city of Rome, and Hilarius, bishop of Poictiers, were driven into exile. Rhodanius, also, bishop of Toulouse (who, being by nature of a softer disposition, had resisted the Arians, not so much from his own powers as from his fellowship with Hilarius) was involved in the same punishment. All these persons, however, were prepared to suspend Athanasius from communion, only in order that an inquiry might be instituted among the bishops as to the true faith. But it seemed best to the Arians to withdraw the most celebrated men from the controversy. Accordingly, those whom we have mentioned above were driven into exile, forty-five years ago, when Arbitio and Lollianus were consuls. Liberius, however, was, a little afterwards, restored to the city, in consequence of the disturbances at Rome. But it is well known that the persons exiled were celebrated by the admiration of the whole world, and that abundant supplies of money were collected to meet their wants, while they were visited by deputies of the Catholic people from almost all the provinces. __________________________________________________________________
[372] The text is here in utter confusion and uncertainty. Some for "ac tum" read "nec tum," and some, instead of "judicum" read "judicium." The meaning therefore can only be guessed at.
[373] The modern Cagliari.
[374] "Piacula profiteri."
[375] Instead of "refertam," some read "infectam." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XL.
In the meantime, the Arians, not secretly, as before, but openly and publicly proclaimed their monstrous heretical doctrines. Moreover, they interpreted after their own views the Synod of Nicæa, and by the addition of one letter to its finding, threw a sort of obscurity over the truth. For where the expression Homoousion had been written, which denotes "of one substance," they maintained that it was written Homoiousion, which simply means "of like substance." They thus granted a likeness, but took away unity; for likeness is very different from unity; just as, for illustration's sake, a picture of a human body might be like a man, and yet possess nothing of the reality of a man. But some of them went even farther, and maintained Anomoiousia, that is, an unlike substance. And to such a pitch did these controversies extend, that the wide world was involved in these monstrous errors. For Valens and Ursatius, with their supporters, whose names we have stated, infected Italy, Illyria, and the East with these opinions. Saturninus, bishop of Arles, a violent and factious man, harassed our country of Gaul in like manner. There was also a prevalent belief that Osius from Spain had gone over to the same unfaithful party, which appears all the more wonderful and incredible on this account, that he had been, almost during his whole life, the most determined upholder of our views, and the Synod of Nice was regarded as having been held at his instigation. If he did go over, the reason may have been that in his extreme old age (for he was then more than a centenarian, as St. Hilarius relates in his epistles) he had fallen into dotage. While the world was disturbed by these things, and the churches were languishing as if from a sort of disease, an anxiety, less exciting indeed, but no less serious, pressed upon the emperor, that although the Arians, whom he favored, appeared the stronger, yet there was still no agreement among the bishops concerning the faith. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XLI.
Accordingly, the emperor orders a Synod to assemble at Ariminum, a city of Italy, and instructs Taurus the prefect, not to let them separate, after they were once assembled, until they should agree as to one faith, at the same time promising him the consulship, if he carried the affair to a successful termination. Imperial [376] officers, therefore, being sent through Illyria, Italy, Africa, and the two Gauls, four hundred and rather more Western bishops were summoned or compelled to assemble at Ariminum; and for all of these the emperor had ordered provisions [377] and lodgings to be provided. But that appeared unseemly to the men of our part of the world, that is, to the Aquitanians, the Gauls, and Britons, so that refusing the public supplies, they preferred to live at their own expense. Three only of those from Britain, through want of means of their own, made use of the public bounty, after having refused contributions offered by the rest; for they thought it more dutiful to burden the public treasury than individuals. I have heard that Gavidius, our bishop, was accustomed to refer to this conduct in a censuring sort of way, but I would be inclined to judge far otherwise; and I hold it matter of admiration that the bishops had nothing of their own, while they did not accept assistance from others rather than from the public treasury, so that they burdened nobody. In both points, they thus furnished us with noble example. Nothing worthy of mention is recorded of the others; but I return to the subject in hand. After all the bishops had been collected together, as we have said, a separation of parties took place. Our friends [378] take possession of the church, while the Arians select, as a place for prayer, a temple which was then intentionally standing empty. But these did not amount to more than eighty persons: the rest belonged to our party. Well, after frequent meetings had been held, nothing was really accomplished, our friends continuing in the faith, and the others not abandoning their unfaithfulness. At length it was resolved to send ten deputies to the emperor, that he might learn what was the faith or opinion of the parties, and might know that there could be no peace with heretics. The Arians do the same thing, and send a like number of deputies, who should contend with our friends in the presence of the emperor. But on the part of our people, young men of but little learning and little prudence had been selected; while, on the side of the Arians, old men were sent, skillful and abounding in talent, thoroughly imbued, too, with their old unfaithful doctrines; and these easily got the upper hand with the prince. But our friends had been specially charged not to enter into any kind of communion with the Arians, and to reserve every point, in its entirety, for discussion in a Synod. __________________________________________________________________
[376] "magistris officialibus": Halm reads "magistri."
[377] "annonas et cellaria."
[378] Of course, the Catholics, or orthodox. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XLII.
In the meantime in the East, after the example of the West, the emperor ordered almost all the bishops to assemble at Seleucia, a town of Isauria. At that time, Hilarius, who was now spending the fourth year of his exile in Phrygia, is compelled to be present among the other bishops, the means of a public conveyance being furnished to him by the lieutenant [379] and governor. As, however, the emperor had given no special orders regarding him, the judges, simply following the general order by which they were commanded to gather all bishops to the council, sent him also among the rest who were willing to go. This was done, as I imagine, by the special ordination of God, in order that a man who was most deeply instructed in divine things, might be present when a discussion was to be carried on respecting the faith. He, on arriving at Seleucia, was received with great favor, and drew the minds and affections of all towards himself. His first inquiry was as to the real faith of the Gauls, because at that time the Arians had spread evil reports regarding us, and we were held suspected by the Easterns as having embraced the belief of Sabellius, to the effect that the unity of the one God was simply distinguished [380] by a threefold name. But after he had set forth his faith in harmony with those conclusions which had been reached by the fathers at Nicæa, he bore his testimony in favor of the Westerns. Thus the minds of all having been satisfied, he was admitted to communion, and being also received into alliance, was added to the council. They then proceeded to actual work, and the originators of the wicked heresy being discovered, were separated from the body of the Church. In that number were Georgius of Alexandria, Acacius, Eudoxius, Vranius, Leontius, Theodosius, Evagrius, Theodulus. But when the Synod was over, an embassy was appointed to go to the emperor and make him acquainted with what had been done. Those who had been condemned also went to the prince, relying upon the power of their confederates, and a common cause with the monarch. __________________________________________________________________
[379] "per vicarium ac præsidem": as Vorstius remarks, these were the two magistrates of Phrygia.
[380] "trionymam solitarii Dei unionem": Hornius here remarks that "Sabellius believed that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit were the same, and differed among themselves only in name." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XLIII.
In the meantime, the emperor compels those deputies of our party who had been sent from the council at Ariminum to join in communion with the heretics. At the same time, he hands them a confession of faith which had been drawn up by these wicked men, and which, being expressed in deceptive terms, seemed to exhibit the Catholic faith, while unfaithfulness secretly lay hid in it. For under an appearance of false reasoning, it abolished the use of the word Ousia as being ambiguous, and as having been too hastily adopted by the fathers, while it rested upon no Scriptural authority. The object of this was that the Son might not be believed to be of one substance with the Father. The same confession of faith acknowledged that the Son was like the Father. But deception was carefully prepared within the words, in order that he might be like, but not equal. Thus, the deputies being sent away, orders were given to the prefect that he should not dissolve the Synod, until all professed by their subscriptions their agreement to the declaration of faith which had been drawn up; and if any should hold back with excessive obstinacy, they should be driven into banishment, provided their number did not amount to fifteen. But when the deputies returned, they were refused communion, although they pleaded the force which had been brought to bear upon them by the king. For when it was discovered what had been decreed, greater disturbance arose in their affairs and purposes. Then by degrees numbers of our people, partly overcome through the weakness of their character, and partly influenced by the thought of a weary journeying into foreign lands, surrendered to the opposite party. These were now, on the return of the deputies, the stronger of the two bodies, and had taken possession of the church, our friends being driven out of it. And when the minds of our people once began to incline in that direction, they rushed in flocks over to the other side, until the number of our friends was diminished down to twenty. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XLIV.
But these, the fewer they became, showed themselves all the more powerful; as the most steadfast among them was to be reckoned our friend Foegadius, and Servatio, bishop of the Tungri. As these had not yielded to threats and terrors, Taurus assails them with entreaties, and beseeches them with tears to adopt milder counsels. He argued that the bishops were now in the seventh month since they had been shut up within one city--that no hope of returning home presented itself to them, worn out by the inclemency of winter and positive want; and what then would be the end? He urged them to follow the example of the majority, and to derive authority for so doing at least from the numbers who had preceded them. For Foegadius openly declared that he was prepared for banishment, and for every kind of punishment that might be assigned him, but would not accept that confession of faith which had been drawn up by the Arians. Thus several days passed in this sort of discussion. And when they made little progress towards a pacification, by degrees Foegadius began to yield, and at the last was overcome by a proposal which was made to him. For Valens and Ursatius affirmed that the present confession of faith was drawn up on the lines of Catholic doctrine, and having been brought forward by the Easterns at the instigation of the emperor, could not be rejected without impiety; and what possible end of strife could there be if a confession which satisfied the Easterns was rejected by those of the West? Finally, if there appeared anything less fully stated in the present confession than was desirable, they themselves should add what they thought ought to be added, and that they, for their part, would acquiesce in those things which might be added. This friendly profession was received with favorable minds by all. Nor did our people venture any longer to make opposition, desiring as they did in some way or other now to put an end to the business. Then confessions drawn up by Foegadius and Servatio began to be published; and in these first Arius and his whole unfaithful scheme was condemned, while the Son of God also was [381] pronounced equal to the Father, and without beginning, [that is] without any commencement [382] in time. Then Valens, as if assisting our friends, subjoined the statement (in which there lurked a secret guile) that the Son of God was not a creature like the other creatures; and the deceit involved in this declaration escaped the notice of the hearers. For in these words, in which the Son was denied to be like the other creatures, he was nevertheless pronounced a creature, only superior to the rest. Thus neither party could hold that it had wholly conquered or had wholly been conquered, since the confession itself was in favor of the Arians, but the declarations afterwards added were in favor of our friends. That one, however, must be excepted which Valens had subjoined, and which, not being at the time understood, was at length comprehended when it was too late. In this way, at any rate, the council was brought to an end, a council which had a good beginning but a disgraceful conclusion. __________________________________________________________________
[381] The text is very uncertain; we have followed that of Halm, but the common text inserts a "non," and reads thus: "but the Son of God is not pronounced equal to the Father, and without beginning," etc.
[382] "sine tempore." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XLV.
Thus, then, the Arians, with their affairs in a very flourishing condition, and everything turning out according to their wishes, go in a body to Constantinople where the emperor was. There they found the deputies from the Synod of Seleucia, and compel them by an exercise of the royal power to follow the example of the Westerns, and accept that heretical confession of faith. Numbers who refused were tortured with painful imprisonment and hunger, so that at length they yielded their conscience captive. But many who resisted more courageously, being deprived of their bishoprics, were driven into exile, and others substituted in their place. Thus, the best priests being either terrified by threats, or driven into exile, all gave way before the unfaithfulness of a few. Hilarius was there at the time, having followed the deputies from Seleucia; and as no certain orders had been given regarding him, he was waiting on the will of the emperor to see whether perchance he should be ordered to return into banishment. When he perceived the extreme danger into which the faith had been brought, inasmuch as the Westerns had been beguiled, and the Easterns were being overcome by means of wickedness, he, in three papers publicly presented, begged an audience of the king, in order that he might debate on points of faith in the presence of his adversaries. But the Arians opposed that to the utmost extent of their ability. Finally, Hilarius was ordered to return to Gaul, as being a sower [383] of discord, and a troubler of the East, while the sentence of exile against him remained uncanceled. But when he had wandered over almost the whole earth which was infected with the evil of unfaithfulness, his mind was full of doubt and deeply agitated with the mighty burden of cares which pressed upon it. Perceiving that it seemed good to many not to enter into communion with those who had acknowledged the Synod of Ariminum, he thought the best thing he could do was to bring back all to repentance and reformation. In frequent councils within Gaul, and while almost all the bishops publicly owned the error that had been committed, he condemns the proceedings at Ariminum, and frames anew the faith of the churches after its pristine form. Saturninus, however, bishop of Arles, who was, in truth, a very bad man, of an evil and corrupt character, resisted these sound measures. He was, in fact, a man who, besides the infamy of being a heretic, was convicted of many unspeakable crimes, and cast out of the Church. Thus, having lost its leader, the strength of the party opposed to Hilarius was broken. Paternus also of Petrocorii, [384] equally infatuated, and not shrinking from openly professing unfaithfulness, was expelled from the priesthood: pardon was extended to the others. This fact is admitted by all, that our regions of Gaul were set free from the guilt of heresy through the kind efforts of Hilarius alone. But Lucifer, who was then at Antioch held a very different opinion. For he condemned those who assembled at Ariminum to such an extent, that he even separated himself from the communion of those who had received them as friends, after they had made satisfaction or exhibited penitence. Whether this resolution of his was right or wrong, I will not take upon me to say. Paulinus and Rhodanius died in Phrygia; Hilarius died in his native country in the sixth year after his return. __________________________________________________________________
[383] "seminarium": lit. seed-plot.
[384] The modern Perigueux. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XLVI.
There follow the times of our own day, both difficult and dangerous. In these the churches have been defiled with no ordinary evil, and all things thrown into confusion. For then, for the first time, the infamous heresy of the Gnostics was detected in Spain--a deadly [385] superstition which concealed itself under mystic [386] rites. The birthplace of that mischief was the East, and specially Egypt, but from what beginnings it there sprang up and increased is not easy to explain. Marcus was the first to introduce it into Spain, having set out from Egypt, his birthplace being Memphis. His pupils were a certain Agape, a woman of no mean origin, and a rhetorician named Helpidius. By these again Priscillian was instructed, a man of noble birth, of great riches, bold, restless, eloquent, learned through much reading, very ready at debate and discussion--in fact, altogether a happy man, if he had not ruined an excellent intellect by wicked studies. Undoubtedly, there were to be seen in him many admirable qualities both of mind and body. He was able to spend much time in watchfulness, and to endure both hunger and thirst; he had little desire for amassing wealth, and he was most economical in the use of it. But at the same time he was a very vain man, and was much more puffed up than he ought to have been with the knowledge of mere earthly [387] things: moreover, it was believed that he had practised magical arts from his boyhood. He, after having himself adopted the pernicious system referred to, drew into its acceptance many persons of noble rank and multitudes of the common people by the arts of persuasion and flattery which he possessed. Besides this, women who were fond of novelties and of unstable faith, as well as of a prurient curiosity in all things, flocked to him in crowds. It increased this tendency that he exhibited, a kind of humility in his countenance and manner, and thus excited in all a greater honor and respect for himself. And now by degrees the wasting disorder of that heresy [388] had pervaded the most of Spain, and even some of the bishops came under its depraving influence. Among these, Instantius and Salvianus had taken up the cause of Priscillian, not only by expressing their concurrence in his views, but even by binding themselves to him with a kind of oath. This went on until Hyginus, bishop of Cordova, who dwelt in the vicinity, found out how matters stood, and reported the whole to Ydacius, priest of Emerita. But he, by harassing Instantius and his confederates without measure, and beyond what the occasion called for, applied, as it were, a torch to the growing conflagration, so that he rather exasperated than suppressed these evil men. __________________________________________________________________
[385] "superstitio exitiabilis": the very words which Tacitus employs, when speaking of Christianity itself (Annal. xv. 44).
[386] "arcanis occultata secretis": it is impossible to say what is the exact meaning of these words.
[387] "profanarum rerum."
[388] "perfidiæ istius." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XLVII.
So, then, after many controversies among them, which are not worthy of mention, a Synod was assembled at Saragossa, at which even the Aquitanian bishops were present. But the heretics did not venture to submit themselves to the judgment of the council; sentence, however, was passed against them in their absence, and Instantius and Salvianus, bishops, with Helpidius and Priscillian, laymen, were condemned. It was also added that if any one should admit the condemned persons to communion, he should understand that the same sentence would be pronounced against himself. And the duty was entrusted to Ithacius, bishop of Sossuba, of seeing that the decree of the bishops was brought to the knowledge of all, and that Hyginus especially should be excluded from communion, who, though he had been the first to commence open proceedings against the heretics, had afterwards fallen away shamefully and admitted them to communion. In the meantime, Instantius and Salvianus, having been condemned by the judgment of the priests, appoint as bishop in the town of Arles, Priscillian, a layman indeed, but the leader in all these troubles, and who had been condemned along with themselves in the Synod at Saragossa. This they did with the view of adding to their strength, doubtless imagining that, if they armed with sacerdotal authority a man of bold and subtle character, they would find themselves in a safer position. But then Ydacius and Ithacius pressed forward their measures more ardently, in the belief that the mischief might be suppressed at its beginning. With unwise counsels, however, they applied to secular judges, that by their decrees and prosecutions the heretics might be expelled from the cities. Accordingly, after many disgraceful squabbles, a rescript was, on the entreaty of Ydacius, obtained from Gratianus, who was then emperor, in virtue of which all heretics were enjoined not only to leave churches or cities, but to be driven forth beyond all the territory under [389] his jurisdiction. When this edict became known, the Gnostics, distrusting their own affairs, did not venture to oppose the judgment, but those of them who bore the name of bishops gave way of their own accord, while fear scattered the rest. __________________________________________________________________
[389] The text has merely "extra omnes terras." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XLVIII.
And then Instantius, Salvianus, and Priscillian set out for Rome, in order that before Damasus who was at that time the bishop of the city, they might clear themselves of the charges brought against them. Well, their journey led them through the heart of Aquitania, and being there received with great pomp by such as knew no better, they spread the seeds of their heresy. Above all, they perverted by their evil teachings the people of Elusa, who were then of a good and religious disposition. They were driven forth from Bordeaux by Delfinus, yet lingering for a little while in the territory of Euchrotia, [390] they infected some with their errors. They then pursued the journey on which they had entered, attended by a base and shameful company, among whom were their wives and even strange women. In the number of these was Euchrotia and her daughter Procula, of the latter of whom there was a common report that, when pregnant through adultery with Priscillian, she procured abortion by the use of certain plants. When they reached Rome with the wish of clearing themselves before Damasus, they were not even admitted to his presence. Returning to Milan, they found that Ambrose was equally opposed to them. Then they changed their plans, with the view that, as they had not got the better of the two bishops, who were at that time possessed of the highest authority, they might, by bribery and flattery, obtain what they desired from the emperor. Accordingly, having won over Macedonius, who was the master [391] of public services, they procured a rescript, by which, those decrees which had formerly been made being trampled under foot, they were ordered to be restored to their churches. Relying upon this, Instantius and Priscillian made their wayback to Spain (for Salvianus had died in the city); and they then, without any struggle, recovered the churches over which they had ruled. __________________________________________________________________
[390] Some read Euchrocia, and so afterwards.
[391] "magistro officiorum." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XLIX.
But the power, not the will, to resist, failed Ithacius; for the heretics had won over by bribes Voluentius, the proconsul, and thus consolidated their own power. Moreover, Ithacius was put on his trial, by these men as being a disturber of the churches, and he having been ordered as the result of a fierce prosecution, to be carried off [392] as a prisoner, fled in terror into Gaul, where he betook himself to Gregory the prefect. He, after he learned what had taken place, orders the authors of these tumults to be brought before himself, and makes a report on all that had occurred to the emperor, in order that he might close against the heretics every means of flattery or bribery. But that was done in vain; because, through the licentiousness and power of a few, all things were there to be purchased. Accordingly, the heretics by their artifices, having presented Macedonius with a large sum of money, secure that, by the imperial authority, the hearing of the trial was taken from the prefect, and transferred to the lieutenant in Spain. By that time, the Spaniards had ceased to have a proconsul as ruler, and officials were sent by the Master to bring back to Spain Ithacius who was then living at Treves. He, however, craftily escaped them, and being subsequently defended by the bishop Pritannius, he set them at defiance. Then, too, a faint [393] rumor had spread that Maximus had assumed imperial power in Britain, and would, in a short time, make an incursion into Gaul. Accordingly, Ithacius then resolved, although his affairs were in a ticklish state, to wait the arrival of the new emperor; and that, in the meantime, no step should on his part be taken. When therefore Maximus, as victor, entered the town of the Treveri, he poured forth entreaties full of ill-will and accusations against Priscillian and his confederates. The emperor influenced by these statements sent letters to the prefect of Gaul and to the lieutenant in Spain, ordering that all whom that disgraceful [394] heresy had affected should be brought to a Synod at Bordeaux. Accordingly, Instantius and Priscillian were escorted thither and, of these, Instantius was enjoined to plead his cause; and after he was found unable to clear himself, he was pronounced unworthy of the office of a bishop. But Priscillian, in order that he might avoid being heard by the bishops, appealed to the emperor. And that was permitted to be done through the want of resolution on the part of our friends, who ought either to have passed a sentence even against one who resisted it, or, if they were regarded as themselves suspicious persons, should have reserved the hearing for other bishops, and should not have transferred to the emperor a cause involving such manifest offences. __________________________________________________________________
[392] This appears to be the meaning, but the text is obscure.
[393] "clemens": some read "Clementen," and join it with "Maximum."
[394] "labes illa." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter L.
Thus, then, all whom the process embraced were brought before the king. The bishops Ydacius and Ithacius followed as accusers; and I would by no means blame their zeal in overthrowing heretics, if they had not contended for victory with greater keenness than was fitting. And my feeling indeed is, that the accusers were as distasteful to me as the accused. I certainly hold that Ithacius had no worth or holiness about him. For he was a bold, loquacious, impudent, and extravagant man; excessively devoted to the pleasures of sensuality. He proceeded even to such a pitch of folly as to charge all those men, however holy, who either took delight in reading, or made it their object to vie with each other in the practice of fasting, with being friends or disciples of Priscillian. The miserable wretch even ventured publicly to bring forward a disgraceful charge of heresy against Martin, who was at that time a bishop, and a man clearly worthy of being compared to the Apostles. For Martin, being then settled at Treves, did not cease to importune Ithacius, that he should give up his accusations, or to implore Maximus that he should not shed the blood of the unhappy persons in question. He maintained that it was quite sufficient punishment that, having been declared heretics by a sentence of the bishops, they should have been expelled from the churches; and that it was, besides, a foul and unheard-of indignity, that a secular ruler should be judge in an ecclesiastical cause. And, in fact, as long as Martin survived, the trial was put off; while, when he was about to leave this world, he, by his remarkable influence, obtained a promise from Maximus, that no cruel measure would be resolved on with respect to the guilty persons. But subsequently, the emperor being led astray by Magnus and Rufus, and turned from the milder course which Martin had counseled, entrusted the case to the prefect Evodius, a man of stern and severe character. He tried Priscillian in two assemblies, and convicted him of evil conduct. In fact, Priscillian did not deny that he had given himself up to lewd doctrines; had been accustomed to hold, by night, gatherings of vile women, and to pray in a state of nudity. Accordingly, Evodius pronounced him guilty, and sent him back to prison, until he had time to consult the emperor. The matter, then, in all its details, was reported to the palace, and the emperor decreed that Priscillian and his friends should be put to death. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter LI.
But Ithacius, seeing how much ill-will it would excite against him among the bishops, if he should stand forth as accuser also at the last trial on a capital charge (for it was requisite that the trial should be repeated), withdrew from the prosecution. His cunning, however, in thus acting was in vain, as the mischief was already accomplished. Well, a certain Patricius, an advocate connected with the treasury, was then appointed accuser by Maximus. Accordingly, under him as prosecutor, Priscillian was condemned to death, and along with him, Felicissimus and Armenius, who, when they were clerics, had lately adopted the cause of Priscillian, and revolted from the Catholics. Latronianus, too, and Euchrotia were beheaded. Instantius, who, as we have said above, had been condemned by the bishops, was transported to the island of Sylina [395] which lies beyond Britain. A process was then instituted against the others in trials which followed, and Asarivus, and Aurelius the deacon, were condemned to be beheaded, while Tiberianus was deprived of his goods, and banished to the island of Sylina. Tertullus, Potamius, and Joannes, as being persons of less consideration, and worthy of some merciful treatment, inasmuch as before the trial they had made a confession, both as to themselves and their confederates, were sentenced to a temporary banishment into Gaul. In this sort of way, men who were most unworthy of the light of day, were, in order that they might serve as a terrible example to others, either put to death or punished with exile. That conduct [396] which he had at first defended by his right of appeal to the tribunals, and by regard to the public good, Ithacius, harassed [397] with invectives, and at last overcome, threw the blame of upon those, by whose direction and counsels he had effected his object. Yet he was the only one of all of them who was thrust out of the episcopate. For Ydacius, although less guilty, had voluntarily resigned his bishopric: that was wisely and respectfully done, had he not afterward spoiled the credit of such a step by endeavoring to recover the position which had been lost. Well, after the death of Priscillian, not only was the heresy not suppressed, which, under him, as its author, had burst forth, but acquiring strength, it became more widely spread. For his followers who had previously honored him as a saint, subsequently began to reverence him as a martyr. The bodies of those who had been put to death were conveyed to Spain, and their funerals were celebrated with great pomp. Nay, it came to be thought the highest exercise of religion to swear by Priscillian. But between them and our friends, a perpetual war of quarreling has been kept up. And that conflict, after being sustained for fifteen years with horrible dissension, could not by any means be set at rest. And now all things were seen to be disturbed and confused by the discord, especially of the bishops, while everything was corrupted by them through their hatred, partiality, fear, faithlessness, envy, factiousness, lust, avarice, pride, sleepiness, and inactivity. In a word, a large number were striving with insane plans and obstinate inclinations against a few giving wise counsel: while, in the meantime, the people of God, and all the excellent of the earth were exposed to mockery and insult. __________________________________________________________________
[395] Halm prefers the form "Sylinancim" to "Sylinam." The reference is probably to the Scilly Isles.
[396] The meaning seems to be, that Ithacius being blamed for bringing accusations against his brethren, at first defended his conduct by an appeal to the laws and the public weal, both of which justified the prosecution of heretics; but being at last driven from this position, he turned round and cast the blame upon those for whom he had acted.
[397] Some read "solitus," instead of "sollicitus. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
The COMMONITORY
OF
Vincent of Lérins,
For the Antiquity and Universality of the Catholic Faith
Against the Profane Novelties of all Heresies:
Translated by
Rev. C. A. Heurtley, D.D.,
The Lady Margaret's Professor of Divinity in the University of Oxford, and Canon of Christ Church. __________________________________________________________________
Introduction. __________________________________________________________________
Very little is known of the author of the following Treatise. He writes under the assumed name of Peregrinus, but Gennadius of Marseilles, [398] who flourished a.d. 495, some sixty years after its date, ascribes it to Vincentius, an inmate of the famous monastery of Lérins, in the island of that name, [399] and his ascription has been universally accepted.
Vincentius was of Gallic nationality. In earlier life he had been engaged in secular pursuits, whether civil or military is not clear, though the term he uses, "secularis militia," might possibly imply the latter. He refers to the Council of Ephesus, held in the summer and early autumn of 431, as having been held some three years previously to the time at which he was writing "ante triennium ferme." [400] This gives the date of the Commonitory 434. Cyril, bishop of Alexandria, was still living. [401] Sixtus the Third had succeeded to the See of Rome; [402] his predecessor, Celestine, having died in 432. Gennadius says that Vincentius died, "Theodosio et Valentiniano regnantibus." [403] Theodosius died, leaving Valentinian still reigning, in July, 450. Vincentius' death, therefore, must have occurred in or before that year.
Baronius places his name in the Roman Martyrology, Tillemont doubts whether with sufficient reason. [404] He is commemorated on the 24th of May.
Vincentius has been charged with Semipelagianism. Whether he actually held the doctrine which was afterwards called by that name is not clear. Certainly the express enunciation of it is nowhere to be found in the Commonitory. But it is extremely probable that at least his sympathies were with those who held it. For not only does he omit the name of St. Augustine, who was especially obnoxious to them, when making honorable mention at any time of the champions of the faith, but he denounces his doctrine, though under a misrepresentation of it, as one of the forms of that novel error which he reprobates. [405] Indeed, whoever will compare what he says in § 70 of the heresy which he describes but forbears to name, with Prosper's account of the charges brought against Augustine by certain Semipelagian clergymen of Marseilles, [406] will have little doubt that Vincentius and they had the same teacher in view, and were of the same mind with regard to his teaching. Be this however as it may, when it is considered that the monks of Lérins, in common with the general body of the churchmen of Southern Gaul, were strenuous upholders of Semipelagianism, it will not be thought surprising that Vincentius should have been suspected of at least a leaning in that direction. Tillemont, who forbears to express himself decidedly, but evidently inclines to that view, says "L'opinion qui le condamne et l'abandonne aux Semipelagiens passe aujourd'hui pour la plus commune parmi les savans." [407]
It has been matter of question whether Vincentius is to be credited with the authorship of the "Objectiones Vincentianæ," a collection of Sixteen Inferences alleged to be deducible from St. Augustine's writings, which has come down to us in Prosper's Reply.
Its date coincides so nearly with that of the Commonitory as to preclude all doubt as to the identity of authorship on that score, [408] and it must be confessed that its animus and that of the 70th and 86th sections of the Commonitory are too much in keeping to make it difficult to believe that both are from the same pen.
Vincentius's object in the following treatise is to provide himself, as he states, with a general rule whereby to distinguish Catholic truth from heresy; and he commits what he has learnt, he adds, to writing, that he may have it by him for reference as a Commonitory, or Remembrancer, to refresh his memory.
This rule, in brief, is the authority of Holy Scripture. By that all questions must be tried in the first instance. And it would be abundantly sufficient, but that, unfortunately, men differ in the interpretation of Holy Scripture. The rule, therefore, must be supplemented by an appeal to that sense of Holy Scripture which is supported by universality, antiquity, and consent: by universality, when it is the faith of the whole Church; by antiquity, when it is that which has been held from the earliest times; by consent, when it has been the acknowledged belief of all, or of almost all, whose office and character gave authority to their determinations. This is the famous "Quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus," with which Vincentius's name is associated. [409] The body of the work is taken up with its illustration and application.
The work consisted originally of two books; but unfortunately the second was lost, or rather, as Gennadius says, was stolen, while the author was still alive; and there remains to us nothing but a recapitulation of its contents, which the author, unwilling to encounter the labour of rewriting the whole, has drawn up. [410]
In prosecution of his purpose Vincentius proceeds to show how his rule applies for the detection of error in the instances of some of the more notorious heretics and schismatics who up to his time had made havoc of the Church,--the Donatists and the Arians, for instance, and the maintainers of the iteration of Baptism; and how the great defenders of the Faith were guided in their maintenance of the truth by its observance. [411]
But the perplexing question occurs: Wherefore, in God's providence, were persons, eminent for their attainments and their piety, such as Photinus, Apollinaris, and Nestorius, permitted to fall into heresy? [412] To which the answer is, For the Church's trial. And Vincentius proceeds to show, in the case of each of these, how great a trial to the Church his fall was. This leads him to give an account of their erroneous teaching severally, [413] from which he turns aside for a while to expound the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity as opposed to the heresy of Photinus, and of the Incarnation as opposed to the heresies of Apollinaris and Nestorius, in an exposition remarkable for its clearness and precision. [414] It contains so much in common with the so-called Athanasian Creed, both as to the sentiments and the language, that some have inferred from it, that Vincentius was the author of that Formulary. [415]
Returning from this digression, Vincentius proceeds, after promising to deal with these subjects more fully on a future occasion, [416] to two other very signal instances of heretical defection caused by the disregard of antiquity and universality; those of Origen [417] and Tertullian, [418] of both of whom he draws a vivid picture, contrasting them, such as they were before their fall with what they became afterwards, and enlarging on the grievous injury to the Church generally, and the distressing trial to individuals in particular, consequent upon their defection.
But it will be asked, Is Christian doctrine to remain at a standstill? Is there to be no progress, as in other sciences? [419] Undoubtedly there is to be progress; but it must be real progress, analogous, for instance, to the growth of the human body from infancy to childhood, from childhood to mature age; or to the development of a plant from the seed to the full-grown vegetable or tree; it must be such as the elucidation of what was before obscure, the following out into detail of what was before expressed only in general terms, [420] not the addition of new doctrine, not the rejection of old.
One difficulty which is not unlikely to perplex a simple Christian is the readiness with which heretics appeal to Scripture, following therein the example of their arch-leader, who, in his temptation of our Lord, dared to make use of arms drawn from that armoury. [421] This leads to the question, How are we to ascertain the true sense of Scripture? And, in the answer to it, to a more detailed exposition of the general rule given at the outset.
Scripture, then, must be interpreted in accordance with the tradition of the Catholic Church, our guide being antiquity, universality, consent.
With regard to antiquity, that interpretation must be held to which has been handed down from the earliest times; with regard to universality, that which has always been held, if not by all, at least by the most part, in preference to that which has been held only by a few; with regard to consent, the determination of a General Council on any point will of course be of summary authority, and will hold the first place; next to this, the interpretation which has been held uniformly and persistently by all those Fathers, or by a majority of them, who have lived and died in the communion of the Catholic Church. Accordingly, whatsoever interpretation of Holy Scripture is opposed to an interpretation thus authenticated, even though supported by the authority of one or another individual teacher, however eminent, whether by his position, or his attainments, or his piety, or by all of these together, must be rejected as novel and unsound.
Here the first Commonitory ends; but it ends with a promise of a still further and more detailed inquiry, to be prosecuted in the Commonitory which is to follow, into the way in which the opinions of the ancient Fathers are to be collected, and the rule of faith determined in accordance with them.
Unfortunately that promise, however fulfilled according to the author's intention, has been frustrated to his readers. The second Commonitory, as was said above, was lost, or rather stolen, and all that remains to us is a brief and apparently partial recapitulation of its contents and of the contents of the preceding.
In this Vincentius repeats the rule for ascertaining the Catholic doctrine which he had laid down at the outset, enlarging especially upon the way in which the consent of the Fathers is to be arrived at, and illustrating what he says by the course pursued by the Council of Ephesus in the matter of Nestorius,--how the Fathers of the Council, instead of resting upon their own judgment, eminent as many of them were, collected together the opinions of the most illustrious of their predecessors, and following their consentient belief, determined the question before them. To this most noteworthy example he adds the authority of two bishops of Rome, Sixtus III., then occupying the Papal Chair, and Celestine, his immediate predecessor,--the gist of the whole being the confirmation of the rule which it had been his object to enforce throughout the Treatise--that profane novelties must be rejected, and that faith alone adhered to which the universal Church has held consentiently from the earliest times, Quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus. __________________________________________________________________
[398] De Scriptoribus Ecclesiasticis. Gennadius's work is to be found at the end of the second volume of Vallarsius's edition of St. Jerome's works.
[399] Now St. Honorat, so called from St. Honoratus, the founder of the monastery. The monastery seems at first to have consisted of an aggregation of separate cells, each of which, according to the usage of that time, would be called a "monasterium." "Tota ubique insula, exstructis cellulis, unum velut monasterium evasit."--Cardinal Noris, Histor. Pelag. p. 251. "Monasterium potest unius monachi habitaculum nominari."--Cassian. Collat. xvii. 18. Among its more prominent members, contemporary with Vincentius, were Honoratus and Hilary, afterwards successively bishops of Arles, and Faustus, afterwards bishop of Riez, all of them in sympathy with the neighbouring clergy of Marseilles, opposed to St. Augustine's later teaching, and holding what was afterwards called Semipelagian doctrine. The adjoining islet of St. Marguérite, one of the Lérins group, has acquired notoriety of late, from having been the place to which Marshal Bazaine, the betrayer of Metz, was banished in 1873.
[400] § 79.
[401] § 80.
[402] § 85.
[403] De Illustr. Eccles. Scrip. c. 84.
[404] xv. p. 146.
[405] Cardinal Noris does not hesitate to say of him, "Non modo Semipelagianum se prodit, sed disertis verbis Augustini discipulos tanquam hæreticos traducit."--Historia Pelagiana, p. 245. See below, Appendix II.
[406] See Prosper's letter to Augustine in Augustine's works, Ep. 225, Tom. ii. Ed. Paris, 1836, etc.
[407] T. xv. p. 146.
[408] The Objectiones Vincentianæ must have been published at some time between the publication of St. Augustine's Antipelagian Treatises and the death of Prosper. They are to be found in Prosper's Reply, contained in St. Augustine's works, Appendix, Tom. x. coll. 2535. et seq. Paris, 1836, etc.
[409] § 6.
[410] §§ 77-88.
[411] §§ 9 sqq.
[412] §§ 27 sqq.
[413] §§ 32 sqq.
[414] §§ 36 sqq.
[415] Antelmi, Nova de Symbolo Athanasiano Disquisitio. See the note on § 42, Appendix I.
[416] § 42.
[417] §§ 44-46.
[418] § 47.
[419] § 55.
[420] §§ 55-60. For instances in point, he might have referred to the enlargement and expansion of the earlier Creed, first in the Nicene, afterward in the Constantinopolitan Formulary. Thus, in the Definition of the Faith of the Council of Chalcedon, the Fathers are careful to explain that they are making no addition to the original deposit, but amply unfolding and rendering more intelligible what before had been less distinctly set forth: "Teaching in its fulness the doctrine which from the beginning hath remained unshaken, it decrees, in the first place that the Creed of the 318 (the original Nicene Creed) remain untouched; and on account of those who impugn the Holy Spirit, it ratifies and confirms the doctrine subsequently delivered, concerning the essence of the Holy Spirit, by the hundred and fifty holy Fathers, (the Constantinopolitan Creed), which they promulgated for universal acceptance, not as though they were supplying some omission of their predecessors, but testifying in express words in writing their own minds concerning the Holy Spirit."
[421] §§ 65 sqq. __________________________________________________________________
A Commonitory [422]
For the Antiquity and Universality of the Catholic Faith Against the Profane Novelties of All Heresies. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter I.
The Object of the Following Treatise.
[1.] I, Peregrinus, [423] who am the least of all the servants of God, remembering the admonition of Scripture, "Ask thy fathers and they will tell thee, thine elders and they will declare unto thee," [424] and again, "Bow down thine ear to the words of the wise," [425] and once more, "My son, forget not these instructions, but let thy heart keep my words:" [426] remembering these admonitions, I say, I, Peregrinus, am persuaded, that, the Lord helping me, it will be of no little use and certainly as regards my own feeble powers, it is most necessary, that I should put down in writing the things which I have truthfully received from the holy Fathers, since I shall then have ready at hand wherewith by constant reading to make amends for the weakness of my memory.
[2.] To this I am incited not only by regard to the fruit to be expected from my labour but also by the consideration of time and the opportuneness of place:
By the consideration of time,--for seeing that time seizes upon all things human, we also in turn ought to snatch from it something which may profit us to eternal life, especially since a certain awful expectation of the approach of the divine judgment importunately demands increased earnestness in religion, while the subtle craftiness of new heretics calls for no ordinary care and attention.
I am incited also by the opportuneness of place, in that, avoiding the concourse and crowds of cities, I am dwelling in the seclusion of a Monastery, situated in a remote grange, [427] where, I can follow without distraction the Psalmist's [428] admonition, "Be still, and know that I am God."
Moreover, it suits well with my purpose in adopting this life; for, whereas I was at one time involved in the manifold and deplorable tempests of secular warfare, I have now at length, under Christ's auspices, cast anchor in the harbour of religion, a harbour to all always most safe, in order that, having there been freed from the blasts of vanity and pride, and propitiating God by the sacrifice of Christian humility, I may be able to escape not only the shipwrecks of the present life, but also the flames of the world to come.
[3.] But now, in the Lord's name, I will set about the object I have in view; that is to say, to record with the fidelity of a narrator rather than the presumption of an author, the things which our forefathers have handed down to us and committed to our keeping, yet observing this rule in what I write, that I shall by no means touch upon everything that might be said, but only upon what is necessary; nor yet in an ornate and exact style, but in simple and ordinary language, [429] so that the most part may seem to be intimated, rather than set forth in detail. Let those cultivate elegance and exactness who are confident of their ability or are moved by a sense of duty. For me it will be enough to have provided a Commonitory (or Remembrancer) for myself, such as may aid my memory, or rather, provide against my forgetfulness: which same Commonitory however, I shall endeavor, the Lord helping me, to amend and make more complete by little and little, day by day, by recalling to mind what I have learnt. I mention this at the outset, that if by chance what I write should slip out of my possession and come into the hands of holy men, they may forbear to blame anything therein hastily, when they see that there is a promise that it will yet be amended and made more complete. __________________________________________________________________
[422] Commonitory. I have retained the original title in its anglicised form, already familiar to English ears in connection with the name of Vincentius. Its meaning as he uses it is indicated sufficiently, in § 3, "An aid to memory." Technically, it meant a Paper of Instructions given to a person charged with a commission, to assist his memory as to its details.
[423] Peregrinus. It does not appear why Vincentius writes under an assumed name. Vossius, with whom Cardinal Noris evidently agrees, supposes that his object was to avoid openly avowing himself the author of a work which covertly attacked St. Augustine. Vossius, Histor. Pelag. p. 246. Ego quidem ad Vossii sententiam plane accessissem, nisi tot delatæ a sapientissimis Scriptoribus Commonitorio laudes religionem mihi pene injecissent.--Noris, Histor. Pelag. p. 246.
[424] Deut. xxxii. 7.
[425] Prov. xxii. 17.
[426] Prov. iii. 1.
[427] Noris, from this word, "villula," a grange or country house, concludes that Vincentius, at the time of writing, though a monk, was not a monk of Lérins for there could be no "villula" there then, Honoratus having found the island desolate and without inhabitant, when he settled on it but a few years previously, "vacantem insulam ob nimictatem squaloris, et inaccessam venenatorum animalium metu." Histor. Pelag. p. 251. Why, however, may not the "villula" have been built subsequently to Honoratus's settlement and indeed, as a part of it? Whether Vincentius was an inmate of the monastery of Lérins at the time of writing the Commonitory or not, he was so eventually, and died there.
[428] Ps. xlvi. 10.
[429] "Il dit qu'il l'a voulu écrire d'un style facile et commun, sans le vouloir orner et polir; et je voudrois que les ouvrages qu'on a pris le plus de peine à polir dans ce siècle (le 4me) et dans le suivant, ressemblassent à celui-ci." Tillemont, T. xv. p. 144. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter II.
A General Rule for distinguishing the Truth of the Catholic Faith from the Falsehood of Heretical Pravity.
[4.] I have often then inquired earnestly and attentively of very many men eminent for sanctity and learning, how and by what sure and so to speak universal rule I may be able to distinguish the truth of Catholic faith from the falsehood of heretical pravity; and I have always, and in almost every instance, received an answer to this effect: That whether I or any one else should wish to detect the frauds and avoid the snares of heretics as they rise, and to continue sound and complete in the Catholic faith, we must, the Lord helping, fortify our own belief in two ways; first, by the authority of the Divine Law, and then, by the Tradition of the Catholic Church.
[5.] But here some one perhaps will ask, Since the canon of Scripture is complete, and sufficient of itself for everything, and more than sufficient, what need is there to join with it the authority of the Church's interpretation? For this reason,--because, owing to the depth of Holy Scripture, all do not accept it in one and the same sense, but one understands its words in one way, another in another; so that it seems to be capable of as many interpretations as there are interpreters. For Novatian expounds it one way, Sabellius another, Donatus another, Arius, Eunomius, Macedonius, another, Photinus, Apollinaris, Priscillian, another, Iovinian, Pelagius, Celestius, another, lastly, Nestorius another. Therefore, it is very necessary, on account of so great intricacies of such various error, that the rule for the right understanding of the prophets and apostles should be framed in accordance with the standard of Ecclesiastical and Catholic interpretation.
[6.] Moreover, in the Catholic Church itself, all possible care must be taken, that we hold that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, by all. For that is truly and in the strictest sense "Catholic," which, as the name itself and the reason of the thing declare, comprehends all universally. This rule we shall observe if we follow universality, antiquity, consent. We shall follow universality if we confess that one faith to be true, which the whole Church throughout the world confesses; antiquity, if we in no wise depart from those interpretations which it is manifest were notoriously held by our holy ancestors and fathers; consent, in like manner, if in antiquity itself we adhere to the consentient definitions and determinations of all, or at the least of almost all priests and doctors. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter III.
What is to be done if one or more dissent from the rest.
[7.] What then will a Catholic Christian do, if a small portion of the Church have cut itself off from the communion of the universal faith? What, surely, but prefer the soundness of the whole body to the unsoundness of a pestilent and corrupt member? What, if some novel contagion seek to infect not merely an insignificant portion of the Church, but the whole? Then it will be his care to cleave to antiquity, which at this day cannot possibly be seduced by any fraud of novelty.
[8.] But what, if in antiquity itself there be found error on the part of two or three men, or at any rate of a city or even of a province? Then it will be his care by all means, to prefer the decrees, if such there be, of an ancient General Council to the rashness and ignorance of a few. But what, if some error should spring up on which no such decree is found to bear? Then he must collate and consult and interrogate the opinions of the ancients, of those, namely, who, though living in divers times and places, yet continuing in the communion and faith of the one Catholic Church, stand forth acknowledged and approved authorities: and whatsoever he shall ascertain to have been held, written, taught, not by one or two of these only, but by all, equally, with one consent, openly, frequently, persistently, that he must understand that he himself also is to believe without any doubt or hesitation. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IV.
The evil resulting from the bringing in of Novel Doctrine shown in the instances of the Donatists and Arians.
[9.] But that we may make what we say more intelligible, we must illustrate it by individual examples, and enlarge upon it somewhat more fully, lest by aiming at too great brevity important matters be hurried over and lost sight of.
In the time of Donatus, [430] from whom his followers were called Donatists, when great numbers in Africa were rushing headlong into their own mad error, and unmindful of their name, their religion, their profession, were preferring the sacrilegious temerity of one man before the Church of Christ, then they alone throughout Africa were safe within the sacred precincts of the Catholic faith, who, detesting the profane schism, continued in communion with the universal Church, leaving to posterity an illustrious example, how, and how well in future the soundness of the whole body should be preferred before the madness of one, or at most of a few.
[10.] So also when the Arian poison had infected not an insignificant portion of the Church but almost the whole world, [431] so that a sort of blindness had fallen upon almost all the bishops [432] of the Latin tongue, circumvented partly by force, partly by fraud, and was preventing them from seeing what was most expedient to be done in the midst of so much confusion, then whoever was a true lover and worshipper of Christ, preferring the ancient belief to the novel misbelief, escaped the pestilent infection.
[11.] By the peril of which time was abundantly shown how great a calamity the introduction of a novel doctrine causes. For then truly not only interests of small account, but others of the very gravest importance, were subverted. For not only affinities, relationships, friendships, families, but moreover, cities, peoples, provinces, nations, at last the whole Roman Empire, were shaken to their foundation and ruined. For when this same profane Arian novelty, like a Bellona or a Fury, had first taken captive the Emperor, [433] and had then subjected all the principal persons of the palace to new laws, from that time it never ceased to involve everything in confusion, disturbing all things, public and private, sacred and profane, paying no regard to what was good and true, but, as though holding a position of authority, smiting whomsoever it pleased. Then wives were violated, widows ravished, virgins profaned, monasteries demolished, clergymen ejected, the inferior clergy scourged, priests driven into exile, jails, prisons, mines, filled with saints, of whom the greater part, forbidden to enter into cities, thrust forth from their homes to wander in deserts and caves, among rocks and the haunts of wild beasts, exposed to nakedness, hunger, thirst, were worn out and consumed. Of all of which was there any other cause than that, while human superstitions are being brought in to supplant heavenly doctrine, while well established antiquity is being subverted by wicked novelty, while the institutions of former ages are being set at naught, while the decrees of our fathers are being rescinded, while the determinations of our ancestors are being torn in pieces, the lust of profane and novel curiosity refuses to restrict itself within the most chaste limits of hallowed and uncorrupt antiquity? [434] __________________________________________________________________
[430] There were two persons of this name, both intimately connected with the schism,--the earlier one, bishop of Casa Nigra in Numidia, the other the successor of Majorinus, whom in the year 311 the party had elected to be bishop of Carthage in opposition to Cecilian, the Catholic bishop, the ground of the opposition being that the principal among Cecilian's consecrators lay under the charge of having delivered up the sacred books to the heathen magistrates in the Dioclesian persecution, and of having thereby rendered his ministerial acts invalid. It was from the last-mentioned probably that the sect was called. The Donatists affected great strictness of life, and ignoring the plain declarations of Scripture, and notably the prophetic representations contained in our Lord's parables of the Tares, the Draw-net, and others, they held that no church could be a true church which endured the presence of evil men in its society. Accordingly they broke off communion with the rest of the African Church and with all who held communion with it, which was in effect the rest of Christendom, denying the validity of their sacraments, rebaptizing those who came over to them from other Christian bodies, and reordaining their clergy. The sect became so powerful that for some time it formed the stronger party in the church of North Western Africa, its bishops exceeding four hundred in number; but partly checked through the exertions of Augustine in the first years of the fifth century, and of Pope Gregory the Great at the close of the sixth, and partly weakened by divisions among themselves, they dwindled away and become extinct.
[431] The rise of Arianism was nearly contemporaneous with that of Donatism. It originated with Arius, a presbyter of Alexandria, a man of a subtle wit and a fluent tongue. He began by calling in question the teaching of his bishop, when discoursing on a certain occasion on the subject of the Trinity. For himself he denied our blessed Lord's coeternity and consubstantiality with the Father, which was in effect to deny that He is God in any true sense, though he made no scruple of giving Him the name. His doctrine may be best inferred from the anathema directed against it, appended to the original Nicene Creed: "Those who say, that once the Son of God did not exist, and that before He was begotten He did not exist, or who affirm that He is of a different substance or essence (from that of the Father), or that His nature is mutable or alterable, those the Catholic and Apostolic Church anathematises." Arianism spread with great rapidity, and though condemned by the Council of Nicæa in 325, it gained fresh strength on the death of Constantine and the accession of Constantius, so that for many years thenceforward the history of the Church is occupied with nothing so much as with accounts of its struggle for supremacy. "Arians and Donatists began both about one time, which heresies, according to the different strength of their own sinews, wrought, as the hope of success led them, the one with the choicest wits, the other with the multitude, so far, that after long and troublesome experience, the perfectest view that men could take of both was hardly able to induce any certain determinate resolution, whether error may do more by the curious subtlety of sharp discourse, or else by the mere appearance of zeal and devout affection."--Hooker, Eccles. Pol. v. 62. § 8.
[432] The Catholic bishops, in number more than four hundred, who at Ariminum, in 359, after having subscribed the Creed of Nicæa, were induced, partly by fraud, partly by threats, to repudiate its crucial terms and sign an Arian Formulary. It was in reference to this that St. Jerome wrote, "Ingemuit orbis, et Arium se esse miratus est." "The world groaned and marvelled to find itself Arian." He continues, "The vessel of the apostles was in extreme danger. The storm raged, the waves beat upon the ship, all hope was gone. The Lord awakes, rebukes the tempest, the monster (Constantius) dies, tranquillity is restored. The bishops who had been thrust out from their sees return, through the clemency of the new emperor. Then did Egypt receive Athanasius in triumph, then did the Church of Gaul receive Hilary returning from battle, then did Italy put off her mourning garments at the return of Eusebius (of Vercellæ)."--Advers. Luciferianos, § 10.
[433] Constantius, the Emperor of the West.
[434] Though Vincentius' account of the Arian persecutions refers to those under Arian emperors, Constantius and Valens, the former especially, yet he could not but have had in mind the atrocious cruelties which were being perpetrated, at the time when he was writing, by the Arian Vandals in Africa. Possidius, in his life of St. Augustine, who lay on his death-bed in Hippo while the fierce Vandal host was encamped round the city (c. xxviii.), gives a detailed account of them belonging to a date some four years earlier, entirely of a piece with Vincentius' description in the text. Victor, bishop of Vite, himself a sufferer, has left a still ampler relation, De Persecutione Vandalorum. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter V.
The Example set us by the Martyrs, whom no force could hinder from defending the Faith of their Predecessors.
[12.] But it may be, we invent these charges out of hatred to novelty and zeal for antiquity. Whoever is disposed to listen to such an insinuation, let him at least believe the blessed Ambrose, who, deploring the acerbity of the time, says, in the second book of his work addressed to the Emperor Gratian: [435] "Enough now, O God Almighty! have we expiated with our own ruin, with our own blood, the slaughter of Confessors, the banishment of priests, and the wickedness of such extreme impiety. It is clear, beyond question, that they who have violated the faith cannot remain in safety."
And again in the third book of the same work, [436] "Let us observe the precepts of our predecessors, and not transgress with rude rashness the landmarks which we have inherited from them. That sealed Book of Prophecy no Elders, no Powers, no Angels, no Archangels, dared to open. To Christ alone was reserved the prerogative of explaining it. [437] Who of us may dare to unseal the Sacerdotal Book sealed by Confessors, and consecrated already by the martyrdom of numbers, which they who had been compelled by force to unseal afterwards resealed, condemning the fraud which had been practised upon them; while they who had not ventured to tamper with it proved themselves Confessors and martyrs? How can we deny the faith of those whose victory we proclaim?"
[13.] We proclaim it truly, O venerable Ambrose, we proclaim it, and applaud and admire. For who is there so demented, who, though not able to overtake, does not at least earnestly desire to follow those whom no force could deter from defending the faith of their ancestors, no threats, no blandishments, not life, not death, not the palace, not the Imperial Guards, not the Emperor, not the empire itself, not men, not demons?--whom, I say, as a recompense for their steadfastness in adhering to religious antiquity, the Lord counted worthy of so great a reward, that by their instrumentality He restored churches which had been destroyed, quickened with new life peoples who were spiritually dead, replaced on the heads of priests the crowns which had been torn from them, washed out those abominable, I will not say letters, but blotches (non literas, sed lituras) of novel impiety, with a fountain of believing tears, which God opened in the hearts of the bishops?--lastly, when almost the whole world was overwhelmed by a ruthless tempest of unlooked for heresy, recalled it from novel misbelief to the ancient faith, from the madness of novelty to the soundness of antiquity, from the blindness of novelty to pristine light?
[14.] But in this divine virtue, as we may call it, exhibited by these Confessors, we must note especially that the defence which they then undertook in appealing to the Ancient Church, was the defence, not of a part, but of the whole body. For it was not right that men of such eminence should uphold with so huge an effort the vague and conflicting notions of one or two men, or should exert themselves in the defence of some ill-advised combination of some petty province; but adhering to the decrees and definitions of the universal priesthood of Holy Church, the heirs of Apostolic and Catholic truth, they chose rather to deliver up themselves than to betray the faith of universality and antiquity. For which cause they were deemed worthy of so great glory as not only to be accounted Confessors, but rightly, and deservedly to be accounted foremost among Confessors. __________________________________________________________________
[435] St. Ambrose. De Fide, l. 2, c. 15, § 141. See also St. Jerome adv. Luciferianos, § 19.
[436] Ibid. l. 3, § 128. St. Ambrose speaks of the Gothic war as a judgment upon Valens, both for his Arianism and for his persecution of the Catholics. He had permitted the Goths to cross the Danube, and settle in Thrace and the adjoining parts, with the understanding that they should embrace Christianity in its Arian form. They had now turned against him, and Gratian was on the eve of setting out to carry aid to him. St. Ambrose's book, De Fide, was written to confirm Gratian in the Catholic faith, in view especially of the Arian influence to which he might be subjected in his intercourse with Valens. Valens was killed the following year, 378, at the battle of Adrianople.
[437] Rev. v. 1-5. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VI.
The example of Pope Stephen in resisting the Iteration of Baptism.
[15.] Great then is the example of these same blessed men, an example plainly divine, and worthy to be called to mind, and meditated upon continually by every true Catholic, who, like the seven-branched candlestick, shining with the sevenfold light of the Holy Spirit, showed to posterity how thenceforward the audaciousness of profane novelty, in all the several rantings of error, might be crushed by the authority of hallowed antiquity.
Nor is there anything new in this. For it has always been the case in the Church, that the more a man is under the influence of religion, so much the more prompt is he to oppose innovations. Examples there are without number: but to be brief, we will take one, and that, in preference to others, from the Apostolic See, [438] so that it may be clearer than day to every one with how great energy, with how great zeal, with how great earnestness, the blessed successors of the blessed apostles have constantly defended the integrity of the religion which they have once received.
[16.] Once on a time then, Agrippinus, [439] bishop of Carthage, of venerable memory, held the doctrine--and he was the first who held it--that Baptism ought to be repeated, contrary to the divine canon, contrary to the rule of the universal Church, contrary to the customs and institutions of our ancestors. This innovation drew after it such an amount of evil, that it not only gave an example of sacrilege to heretics of all sorts, but proved an occasion of error to certain Catholics even.
When then all men protested against the novelty, and the priesthood everywhere, each as his zeal prompted him, opposed it, Pope Stephen of blessed memory, Prelate of the Apostolic See, in conjunction indeed with his colleagues but yet himself the foremost, withstood it, thinking it right, I doubt not, that as he exceeded all others in the authority of his place, so he should also in the devotion of his faith. In fine, in an epistle sent at the time to Africa, he laid down this rule: "Let there be no innovation--nothing but what has been handed down." [440] For that holy and prudent man well knew that true piety admits no other rule than that whatsoever things have been faithfully received from our fathers the same are to be faithfully consigned to our children; and that it is our duty, not to lead religion whither we would, but rather to follow religion whither it leads; and that it is the part of Christian modesty and gravity not to hand down our own beliefs or observances to those who come after us, but to preserve and keep what we have received from those who went before us. What then was the issue of the whole matter? What but the usual and customary one? Antiquity was retained, novelty was rejected.
[17.] But it may be, the cause of innovation at that time lacked patronage. On the contrary, it had in its favor such powerful talent, such copious eloquence, such a number of partisans, so much resemblance to truth, such weighty support in Scripture (only interpreted in a novel and perverse sense), that it seems to me that that whole conspiracy could not possibly have been defeated, unless the sole cause of this extraordinary stir, the very novelty of what was so undertaken, so defended, so belauded, had proved wanting to it. In the end, what result, under God, had that same African Council or decree? [441] None whatever. The whole affair, as though a dream, a fable, a thing of no possible account, was annulled, cancelled, and trodden underfoot.
[18.] And O marvellous revolution! The authors of this same doctrine are judged Catholics, the followers heretics; the teachers are absolved, the disciples condemned; the writers of the books will be children of the Kingdom, the defenders of them will have their portion in Hell. For who is so demented as to doubt that that blessed light among all holy bishops and martyrs, Cyprian, together with the rest of his colleagues, will reign with Christ; or, who on the other hand so sacrilegious as to deny that the Donatists and those other pests, who boast the authority of that council for their iteration of baptism, will be consigned to eternal fire with the devil? [442] __________________________________________________________________
[438] "The Apostolic see" (Sedes Apostolica) here means Rome of course. But the title was not restricted to Rome. It was common to all sees which could claim an apostle as their Founder. Thus St. Augustine, suggesting a rule for determining what books are to be regarded as Canonical, says, "In Canonicis Scripturis Ecclesiarum Catholicarum quamplurium auctoritatem sequatur, inter quas sane illæ sint quæ Apostolicas Sedes habere et Epistolas accipere meruerunt." "Let him follow the authority of those Catholic Churches which have been counted worthy to have Apostolic Sees; i.e., to have been founded by Apostles, and to have been the recipients of Apostolic Epistles."--De Doctr. Christiana, II. § 13. But the title, even in St. Augustine's time, had even a wider meaning. "Anciently every bishop's see was dignified with the title of Sedes Apostolica, which in those days was no peculiar title of the bishop of Rome, but given to all bishops in general, as deriving their origin and counting their succession from the apostles."--Bingham, Antiq. II., c. 2, § 3.
[439] Agrippinus. See note 4, below.
[440] Stephen's letter has not come down to us, happily perhaps for his credit, judging by the terms in which Cyprian speaks of it in the letter in which he quotes the passage in the text.--Ad Pompeian, Ep. 74.
[441] The Council held under the presidency of Cyprian in 256. Its acts are contained in Cyprian's works, Ed. Fell. pp. 158, etc. An earlier council had been held in the same city in the beginning of the century under Agrippinus. Both had affirmed the necessity of rebaptizing heretics, or, as they would rather have said, of baptizing them. The controversy was set at rest by a decision of the council of Arles, in 314, which ordered, in its Eighth Canon, that if the baptism had been administered in the name of the Trinity, converts should be admitted simply by the imposition of hands that they might receive the Holy Ghost.
[442] See Hooker's reference to this passage.--Eccles. Poll. v. 62, § 9. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VII.
How Heretics, craftily cite obscure passages in ancient writers in support of their own novelties.
[19.] This condemnation, indeed, [443] seems to have been providentially promulgated as though with a special view to the fraud of those who, contriving to dress up a heresy under a name other than its own, get hold often of the works of some ancient writer, not very clearly expressed, which, owing to the very obscurity of their own doctrine, have the appearance of agreeing with it, so that they get the credit of being neither the first nor the only persons who have held it. This wickedness of theirs, in my judgment, is doubly hateful: first, because they are not afraid to invite others to drink of the poison of heresy; and secondly, because with profane breath, as though fanning smouldering embers into flame, they blow upon the memory of each holy man, and spread an evil report of what ought to be buried in silence by bringing it again under notice, thus treading in the footsteps of their father Ham, who not only forebore to cover the nakedness of the venerable Noah, but told it to the others that they might laugh at it, offending thereby so grievously against the duty of filial piety, that even his descendants were involved with him in the curse which he drew down, widely differing from those blessed brothers of his, who would neither pollute their own eyes by looking upon the nakedness of their revered father, nor would suffer others to do so, but went backwards, as the Scripture says, and covered him, that is, they neither approved nor betrayed the fault of the holy man, for which cause they were rewarded with a benediction on themselves and their posterity. [444]
[20.] But to return to the matter in hand: It behoves us then to have a great dread of the crime of perverting the faith and adulterating religion, a crime from which we are deterred not only by the Church's discipline, but also by the censure of apostolical authority. For every one knows how gravely, how severely, how vehemently, the blessed apostle Paul inveighs against certain, who, with marvellous levity, had "been so soon removed from him who had called them to the grace of Christ to another Gospel, which was not another;" [445] "who had heaped to themselves teachers after their own lusts, turning away their ears from the truth, and being turned aside unto fables;" [446] "having damnation because they had cast off their first faith;" [447] who had been deceived by those of whom the same apostle writes to the Roman Christians, "Now, I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offences, contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned, and avoid them. For they that are such serve not the Lord Christ, but their own belly, and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple," [448] "who enter into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with diverse lusts, ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth;" [449] "vain talkers and deceivers, who subvert whole houses, teaching things which they ought not, for filthy lucre's sake;" [450] "men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith;" [451] "proud knowing nothing, but doting about questions and strifes of words, destitute of the truth, supposing that godliness is gain," [452] "withal learning to be idle, wandering about from house to house, and not only idle, but tattlers also and busy-bodies, speaking things which they ought not," [453] "who having put away a good conscience have made shipwreck concerning the faith;" [454] "whose profane and vain babblings increase unto more ungodliness, and their word doth eat as doth a cancer." [455] Well, also, is it written of them: "But they shall proceed no further: for their folly shall be manifest unto all men, as theirs also was." [456] __________________________________________________________________
[443] The condemnation of St. Cyprian's practice of rebaptism.
[444] Gen. ix. 22.
[445] Gal. i. 6.
[446] 2 Tim. iv. 3, 4.
[447] 1 Tim. v. 12.
[448] Rom. xvi. 17, 18.
[449] 2 Tim. iii. 6.
[450] Tit. i. 10.
[451] 2 Tim. iii. 8.
[452] 1 Tim. vi. 4.
[453] 1 Tim. v. 13.
[454] 1 Tim. i. 19.
[455] 2 Tim. ii. 16, 17.
[456] 2 Tim. iii. 9. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VIII.
Exposition of St. Paul's Words, Gal. i. 8.
[21.] When therefore certain of this sort wandering about provinces and cities, and carrying with them their venal errors, had found their way to Galatia, and when the Galatians, on hearing them, nauseating the truth, and vomiting up the manna of Apostolic and Catholic doctrine, were delighted with the garbage of heretical novelty, the apostle putting in exercise the authority of his office, delivered his sentence with the utmost severity, "Though we," he says, "or an angel from heaven, preach any other Gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed." [457]
[22.] Why does he say "Though we"? why not rather "though I"? He means, "though Peter, though Andrew, though John, in a word, though the whole company of apostles, preach unto you other than we have preached unto you, let him be accursed." Tremendous severity! He spares neither himself nor his fellow apostles, so he may preserve unaltered the faith which was at first delivered. Nay, this is not all. He goes on "Even though an angel from heaven preach unto you any other Gospel than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed." It was not enough for the preservation of the faith once delivered to have referred to man; he must needs comprehend angels also. "Though we," he says, "or an angel from heaven." Not that the holy angels of heaven are now capable of sinning. But what he means is: Even if that were to happen which cannot happen,--if any one, be he who he may, attempt to alter the faith once for all delivered, let him be accursed.
[23.] But it may be, he spoke thus in the first instance inconsiderately, giving vent to human impetuosity rather than expressing himself under divine guidance. Far from it. He follows up what he had said, and urges it with intense reiterated earnestness, "As we said before, so say I now again, If any man preach any other Gospel to you than that ye have received, let him be accursed." He does not say, "If any man deliver to you another message than that you have received, let him be blessed, praised, welcomed,"--no; but "let him be accursed," [anathema] i.e., separated, segregated, excluded, lest the dire contagion of a single sheep contaminate the guiltless flock of Christ by his poisonous intermixture with them. __________________________________________________________________
[457] Gal. i. 8. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IX.
His warning to the Galatians a warning to all.
[24.] But, possibly, this warning was intended for the Galatians only. Be it so; then those other exhortations which follow in the same Epistle were intended for the Galatians only, such as, "If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit; let us not be desirous of vain glory, provoking one another, envying one another," etc.; [458] which alternative if it be absurd, and the injunctions were meant equally for all, then it follows, that as these injunctions which relate to morals, so those warnings which relate to faith are meant equally for all; and just as it is unlawful for all to provoke one another, or to envy one another, so, likewise, it is unlawful for all to receive any other Gospel than that which the Catholic Church preaches everywhere.
[25.] Or perhaps the anathema pronounced on any one who should preach another Gospel than that which had been preached was meant for those times, not for the present. Then, also, the exhortation, "Walk in the Spirit and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh," [459] was meant for those times, not for the present. But if it be both impious and pernicious to believe this, then it follows necessarily, that as these injunctions are to be observed by all ages, so those warnings also which forbid alteration of the faith are warnings intended for all ages. To preach any doctrine therefore to Catholic Christians other than what they have received never was lawful, never is lawful, never will be lawful: and to anathematize those who preach anything other than what has once been received, always was a duty, always is a duty, always will be a duty.
[26.] Which being the case, is there any one either so audacious as to preach any other doctrine than that which the Church preaches, or so inconstant as to receive any other doctrine than that which he has received from the Church? That elect vessel, that teacher of the Gentiles, that trumpet of the apostles, that preacher whose commission was to the whole earth, that man who was caught up to heaven, [460] cries and cries again in his Epistles to all, always, in all places, "If any man preach any new doctrine, let him be accursed." On the other hand, an ephemeral, moribund set of frogs, fleas, and flies, such as the Pelagians, call out in opposition, and that to Catholics, "Take our word, follow our lead, accept our exposition, condemn what you used to hold, hold what you used to condemn, cast aside the ancient faith, the institutes of your fathers, the trusts left for you by your ancestors and receive instead,--what? I tremble to utter it: for it is so full of arrogance and self-conceit, that it seems to me that not only to affirm it, but even to refute it, cannot be done without guilt in some sort. __________________________________________________________________
[458] Gal. v. 25.
[459] Gal. v. 16.
[460] 2 Cor. xii. 2. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter X.
Why Eminent Men are permitted by God to become Authors of Novelties in the Church.
[27.] But some one will ask, How is it then, that certain excellent persons, and of position in the Church, are often permitted by God to preach novel doctrines to Catholics? A proper question, certainly, and one which ought to be very carefully and fully dealt with, but answered at the same time, not in reliance upon one's own ability, but by the authority of the divine Law, and by appeal to the Church's determination.
Let us listen, then, to Holy Moses, and let him teach us why learned men, and such as because of their knowledge are even called Prophets by the apostle, are sometimes permitted to put forth novel doctrines, which the Old Testament is wont, by way of allegory, to call "strange gods," forasmuch as heretics pay the same sort of reverence to their notions that the Gentiles do to their gods.
[28.] Blessed Moses, then, writes thus in Deuteronomy: [461] "If there arise among you a prophet or a dreamer of dreams," that is, one holding office as a Doctor in the Church, who is believed by his disciples or auditors to teach by revelation: well,--what follows? "and giveth thee a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder come to pass whereof he spake,"--he is pointing to some eminent doctor, whose learning is such that his followers believe him not only to know things human, but, moreover, to foreknow things superhuman, such as, their disciples commonly boast, were Valentinus, Donatus, Photinus, Apollinaris, and the rest of that sort! What next? "And shall say to thee, Let us go after other gods, whom thou knowest not, and serve them." What are those other gods but strange errors which thou knowest not, that is, new and such as were never heard of before? "And let us serve them;" that is, "Let us believe them, follow them." What last? "Thou shalt not hearken to the words of that prophet or dreamer of dreams." And why, I pray thee, does not God forbid to be taught what God forbids to be heard? "For the Lord, your God, trieth you, to know whether you love Him with all your heart and with all your soul." The reason is clearer than day why Divine Providence sometimes permits certain doctors of the Churches to preach new doctrines--"That the Lord your God may try you;" he says. And assuredly it is a great trial when one whom thou believest to be a prophet, a disciple of prophets, a doctor and defender of the truth, whom thou hast folded to thy breast with the utmost veneration and love, when such a one of a sudden secretly and furtively brings in noxious errors, which thou canst neither quickly detect, being held by the prestige of former authority, nor lightly think it right to condemn, being prevented by affection for thine old master. __________________________________________________________________
[461] Deut. xiii. 1, etc. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XI.
Examples from Church History, confirming the words of Moses,--Nestorius, Photinus, Apollinaris.
[29.] Here, perhaps, some one will require us to illustrate the words of holy Moses by examples from Church History. The demand is a fair one, nor shall it wait long for satisfaction.
For to take first a very recent and very plain case: what sort of trial, think we, was that which the Church had experience of the other day, when that unhappy Nestorius, [462] all at once metamorphosed from a sheep into a wolf, began to make havoc of the flock of Christ, while as yet a large proportion of those whom he was devouring believed him to be a sheep, and consequently were the more exposed to his attacks? For who would readily suppose him to be in error, who was known to have been elected by the high choice of the Emperor, and to be held in the greatest esteem by the priesthood? who would readily suppose him to be in error, who, greatly beloved by the holy brethren, and in high favor with the populace, expounded the Scriptures in public daily, and confuted the pestilent errors both of Jews and Heathens? Who could choose but believe that his teaching was Orthodox, his preaching Orthodox, his belief Orthodox, who, that he might open the way to one heresy of his own, was zealously inveighing against the blasphemies of all heresies? But this was the very thing which Moses says: "The Lord your God doth try you that He may know whether you love Him or not."
[30.] Leaving Nestorius, in whom there was always more that men admired than they were profited by, more of show than of reality, whom natural ability, rather than divine grace, magnified, for a time in the opinion of the common people, let us pass on to speak of those who, being persons of great attainments and of much industry, proved no small trial to Catholics. Such, for instance, was Photinus, in Pannonia, [463] who, in the memory of our fathers, is said to have been a trial to the Church of Sirmium, where, when he had been raised to the priesthood with universal approbation, and had discharged the office for some time as a Catholic, all of a sudden, like that evil prophet or dreamer of dreams whom Moses refers to, he began to persuade the people whom God had intrusted, to his charge, to follow "strange gods," that is, strange errors, which before they knew not. But there was nothing unusual in this: the mischief of the matter was, that for the perpetration of so great wickedness he availed himself of no ordinary helps. For he was of great natural ability and of powerful eloquence, and had a wealth of learning, disputing and writing copiously and forcibly in both languages, as his books which remain, composed partly in Greek, partly in Latin, testify. But happily the sheep of Christ committed to him, vigilant and wary for the Catholic faith, quickly turned their eyes to the premonitory words of Moses, and, though admiring the eloquence of their prophet and pastor, were not blind to the trial. For from thenceforward they began to flee from him as a wolf, whom formerly they had followed as the ram of the flock.
[31.] Nor is it only in the instance of Photinus that we learn the danger of this trial to the Church, and are admonished withal of the need of double diligence in guarding the faith. Apollinaris [464] holds out a like warning. For he gave rise to great burning questions and sore perplexities among his disciples, the Church's authority drawing them one way, their Master's influence the opposite; so that, wavering and tossed hither and thither between the two, they were at a loss what course to take.
But perhaps he was a person of no weight of character. On the contrary, he was so eminent and so highly esteemed that his word would only too readily be taken on whatsoever subject. For what could exceed his acuteness, his adroitness, his learning? How many heresies did he, in many volumes, annihilate! How many errors, hostile to the faith, did he confute! A proof of which is that most noble and vast work, of not less than thirty books, in which, with a great mass of arguments, he repelled the insane calumnies of Porphyry. [465] It would take a long time to enumerate all his works, which assuredly would have placed him on a level with the very chief of the Church's builders, if that profane lust of heretical curiosity had not led him to devise I know not what novelty which as though through the contagion of a sort of leprosy both defiled all his labours, and caused his teachings to be pronounced the Church's trial instead of the Church's edification. __________________________________________________________________
[462] Nestorius was a native of Germanicia, a town in the patriarchate of Antioch, of which Church he became a Presbyter. On the See of Constantinople becoming vacant by the death of Sisinnius, the Emperor Theodosius sent for him and caused him to be consecrated Archbishop. He was at first extremely popular, and so eloquent that people said of him (what was much to be said of a successor of Chrysostom), that there had never before been such a bishop. He was condemned by the Council of Ephesus, in 431. The emperor, after ordering him to return to the monastery to which he formally belonged, eventually banished him to the great Oasis, whence he was harried from place to place till death put an end to his sufferings, in 440. Evagrius, I. 7.
[463] Photinus, bishop of Sirmium in Pannonia, was a native of Galatia, and a disciple of Marcellus of Ancyra. Bishop Pearson (on the Creed, Art. 11) has an elaborate note, in which he collects together many notices of him left by the ancients. These agree with Vincentius in representing him as a man of extraordinary ability and of consummate eloquence. His heresy consisted in the denial of our blessed Lord's divine nature, whom he regarded as man, and nothing more, psilos anthropos, and as having had no existence before his birth of the Virgin. He was condemned in several synods, the fifth of which, a Council of the Western bishops, held at Sirmium, in 350, deposed him. But in spite of the deposition, so great was his popularity, that he could not even yet be removed. The following year however he was by another council, held at the same place, again condemned, and sent into banishment. He died in Galatia in 377. See Cave, Hist. Lit., who refers with praise to a learned dissertation on Photinus by Larroque.
[464] Apollinaris the younger (a contemporary of Photinus), bishop of Laodicea in Syria, was one of the most distinguished men of the age in which he lived. Epiphanius (Hær. lxxvii. 2), referring to his fall into heresy, says that when it first began to be spoken of, people would hardly credit it, so great was the estimation in which he was held. His heresy, which consisted in the denial of the verity of our Lord's human nature, the Divine Word supplying the place of the rational soul, and in the assertion that his flesh was not derived from the Virgin, but was brought down from heaven, was condemned by the Council of Constantinople, in 381 (Canon I.). It was in reference to the latter form of it that the clause "of the Holy Ghost and the Virgin Mary" was inserted in the Nicene Creed.
[465] This work of which St. Jerome speaks in high terms (de Viris Illustr., c. 104), has not come down to us, nor indeed have his other writings, except in fragments. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XII.
A fuller account of the Errors of Photinus, Apollinaris and Nestorius.
[32.] Here, possibly, I may be asked for some account of the above mentioned heresies; those, namely, of Nestorius, Apollinaris, and Photinus. This, indeed, does not belong to the matter in hand: for our object is not to enlarge upon the errors of individuals, but to produce instances of a few, in whom the applicability of Moses' words may be evidently and clearly seen; that is to say, that if at any time some Master in the Church, himself also a prophet in interpreting the mysteries of the prophets, should attempt to introduce some novel doctrine into the Church of God, Divine Providence permits this to happen in order to try us. It will be useful, therefore, by way of digression, to give a brief account of the opinions of the above-named heretics, Photinus, Apollinaris, Nestorius.
[33.] The heresy of Photinus, then, is as follows: He says that God is singular and sole, and is to be regarded as the Jews regarded Him. He denies the completeness of the Trinity, and does not believe that there is any Person of God the Word, or any Person of the Holy Ghost. Christ he affirms to be a mere man, whose original was from Mary. Hence he insists with the utmost obstinacy that we are to render worship only to the Person of God the Father, and that we are to honour Christ as man only. This is the doctrine of Photinus.
[34.] Apollinaris, affecting to agree with the Church as to the unity of the Trinity, though not this even with entire soundness of belief, [466] as to the Incarnation of the Lord, blasphemes openly. For he says that the flesh of our Saviour was either altogether devoid of a human soul, or, at all events, was devoid of a rational soul. Moreover, he says that this same flesh of the Lord was not received from the flesh of the holy Virgin Mary, but came down from heaven into the Virgin; and, ever wavering and undecided, he preaches one while that it was co-eternal with God the Word, another that it was made of the divine nature of the Word. For, denying that there are two substances in Christ, one divine, the other human, one from the Father, the other from his mother, he holds that the very nature of the Word was divided, as though one part of it remained in God, the other was converted into flesh: so that whereas the truth says that of two substances there is one Christ, he affirms, contrary to the truth, that of the one divinity of Christ there are become two substances. This, then, is the doctrine of Apollinaris.
[35.] Nestorius, whose disease is of an opposite kind, while pretending that he holds two distinct substances in Christ, brings in of a sudden two Persons, and with unheard of wickedness would have two sons of God, two Christs,--one, God, the other, man, one, begotten of his Father, the other, born of his mother. For which reason he maintains that Saint Mary ought to be called, not Theotocos (the mother of God), but Christotocos (the mother of Christ), seeing that she gave birth not to the Christ who is God, but to the Christ who is man. But if any one supposes that in his writings he speaks of one Christ, and preaches one Person of Christ, let him not lightly credit it. For either this is a crafty device, that by means of good he may the more easily persuade evil, according to that of the apostle, "That which is good was made death to me," [467] --either, I say, he craftily affects in some places in his writings to believe one Christ and one Person of Christ, or else he says that after the Virgin had brought forth, the two Persons were united into one Christ, though at the time of her conception or parturition, and for some short time afterwards, there were two Christs; so that forsooth, though Christ was born at first an ordinary man and nothing more, and not as yet associated in unity of Person with the Word of God, yet afterwards the Person of the Word assuming descended upon Him; and though now the Person assumed remains in the glory of God, yet once there would seem to have been no difference between Him and all other men. __________________________________________________________________
[466] "Et hoc ipsum non plena fidei sanitate."--The Cambridge Ed., 1687, with Baluzius's notes appended, reads, "et hoc ipsum plena fidei sanctitate."
[467] Rom. vii. 13. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIII.
The Catholic Doctrine of the Trinity and the Incarnation explained.
[36.] In these ways then do these rabid dogs, Nestorius, Apollinaris, and Photinus, bark against the Catholic faith: Photinus, by denying the Trinity; Apollinaris, by teaching that the nature of the Word is mutable, and refusing to acknowledge that there are two substances in Christ, denying moreover either that Christ had a soul at all, or, at all events, that he had a rational soul, and asserting that the Word of God supplied the place of the rational soul; Nestorius, by affirming that there were always or at any rate that once there were two Christs. But the Catholic Church, holding the right faith both concerning God and concerning our Saviour, is guilty of blasphemy neither in the mystery of the Trinity, nor in that of the Incarnation of Christ. For she worships both one Godhead in the plenitude of the Trinity, and the equality of the Trinity in one and the same majesty, and she confesses one Christ Jesus, not two; the same both God and man, the one as truly as the other. [468] One Person indeed she believes in Him, but two substances; two substances but one Person: Two substances, because the Word of God is not mutable, so as to be convertible into flesh; one Person, lest by acknowledging two sons she should seem to worship not a Trinity, but a Quaternity.
[37.] But it will be well to unfold this same doctrine more distinctly and explicitly again and again.
In God there is one substance, but three Persons; in Christ two substances, but one Person. In the Trinity, another and another Person, not another and another substance (distinct Persons, not distinct substances); [469] in the Saviour another and another substance, not another and another Person, (distinct substances, not distinct Persons). How in the Trinity another and another Person (distinct Persons) not another and another substance (distinct substances)? [470] Because there is one Person of the Father, another of the Son, another of the Holy Ghost; [471] but yet there is not another and another nature (distinct natures) but one and the same nature. How in the Saviour another and another substance, not another and another Person (two distinct substances, not two distinct Persons)? Because there is one substance of the Godhead, another of the manhood. But yet the Godhead and the manhood are not another and another Person (two distinct Persons), but one and the same Christ, one and the same Son of God, and one and the same Person of one and the same Christ and Son of God, in like manner as in man the flesh is one thing and the soul another, but one and the same man, both soul and flesh. In Peter and Paul the soul is one thing, the flesh another; yet there are not two Peters,--one soul, the other flesh, or two Pauls, one soul, the other flesh,--but one and the same Peter, and one and the same Paul, consisting each of two diverse natures, soul and body. Thus, then, in one and the same Christ there are two substances, one divine, the other human; one of (ex) God the Father, the other of (ex) the Virgin Mother; one co-eternal with and co-equal with the Father, the other temporal and inferior to the Father; one consubstantial with his Father, the other, consubstantial with his Mother, but one and the same Christ in both substances. There is not, therefore, one Christ God, the other man, not one uncreated, the other created; not one impassible, the other passible; not one equal to the Father, the other inferior to the Father; not one of his Father (ex), the other of his Mother (ex), but one and the same Christ, God and man, the same uncreated and created, the same unchangeable and incapable of suffering, the same acquainted by experience with both change and suffering, the same equal to the Father and inferior to the Father, the same begotten of the Father before time, ("before the world"), the same born of his mother in time ("in the world"), [472] perfect God, perfect Man. In God supreme divinity, in man perfect humanity. Perfect humanity, I say, forasmuch as it hath both soul and flesh; the flesh, very flesh; our flesh, his mother's flesh; the soul, intellectual, endowed with mind and reason. There is then in Christ the Word, the soul, the flesh; but the whole is one Christ, one Son of God, and one our Saviour and Redeemer: One, not by I know not what corruptible confusion of Godhead and manhood, but by a certain entire and singular unity of Person. For the conjunction hath not converted and changed the one nature into the other, (which is the characteristic error of the Arians), but rather hath in such wise compacted both into one, that while there always remains in Christ the singularity of one and the self-same Person, there abides eternally withal the characteristic property of each nature; whence it follows, that neither doth God (i.e., the divine nature) ever begin to be body, nor doth the body ever cease to be body. The which may be illustrated in human nature: for not only in the present life, but in the future also, each individual man will consist of soul and body; nor will his body ever be converted into soul, or his soul into body; but while each individual man will live for ever, the distinction between the two substances will continue in each individual man for ever. So likewise in Christ each substance will for ever retain its own characteristic property, yet without prejudice to the unity of Person. __________________________________________________________________
[468] Unum Christum Jesum non duos, eundemque Deum pariter atque Hominem confitetur. Compare the Athanasian Creed, "Est ergo fides recta et credamus et confiteamur, quia Dominus Noster Jesus Christus. Dei Filius, Deus pariter et Homo est."
[469] In Trinitate alius atque alius, non aliud atque aliud. In Salvatore aliud atque aliud, non alius atque alius.
[470] Aliud atque aliud, non alius atque alius.
[471] Quia scilicet alia est Persona Patris, alia Filii, alia Spiritus Sancti sed tamen Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti non alia et alia sed una cadunque natura. So the Athanasian Creed, "Alia est enim Persona Patris, alia Filii, alia Spiritus Sancti, sed Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti una est Divinitas, etc." The coincidence between the whole of this context and the Athanasian Creed is very observable, though the agreement is not always exact to the very letter.
[472] Idem ex Patre ante sæcula genitus, Idem in sæculo ex matre generatus. Compare the Athanasian Creed, "Deus est ex substantia Patris ante sæcula genitus; Homo ex substantia Matris in sæculo natus." See Appendix I. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIV.
Jesus Christ Man in Truth, not in Semblance.
[38.] But when we use the word "Person," and say that God became man by means of a Person, there is reason to fear that our meaning may be taken to be, that God the Word assumed our nature merely in imitation, and performed the actions of man, being man not in reality, but only in semblance, just as in a theatre, one man within a brief space represents several persons, not one of whom himself is. For when one undertakes to sustain the part of another, he performs the offices, or does the acts, of the person whose part he sustains, but he is not himself that person. So, to take an illustration from secular life and one in high favour with the Manichees, when a tragedian represents a priest or a king, he is not really a priest or a king. For, as soon as the play is over, the person or character whom he represented ceases to be. God forbid that we should have anything to do with such nefarious and wicked mockery. Be it the infatuation of the Manichees, those preachers of hallucination, who say that the Son of God, God, was not a human person really and truly, but that He counterfeited the person of a man in feigned conversation and manner of life.
[39.] But the Catholic Faith teaches that the Word of God became man in such wise, that He took upon Him our nature, not feignedly and in semblance, but in reality and truth, and performed human actions, not as though He were imitating the actions of another, but as performing His own, and as being in reality the person whose part He sustained. Just as we ourselves also, when we speak, reason, live, subsist, do not imitate men, but are men. Peter and John, for instance, were men, not by imitation, but by being men in reality. Paul did not counterfeit an apostle, or feign himself to be Paul, but was an apostle, was Paul. So, also, that which God the Word did, in His condescension, in assuming and having flesh, in speaking, acting, and suffering, through the instrumentality of flesh, yet without any marring of His own divine nature, came in one word to this:--He did not imitate or feign Himself to be perfect man, but He shewed Himself to be very man in reality and truth. Therefore, as the soul united to the flesh, but yet not changed into flesh, does not imitate man, but is man, and man not feignedly but substantially, so also God the Word, without any conversion of Himself, in uniting Himself to man, became man, not by confusion, not by imitation, but by actually being and subsisting. Away then, once and for all, with the notion of His Person as of an assumed fictitious character, where always what is is one thing, what is counterfeited another, where the man who acts never is the man whose part he acts. God forbid that we should believe God the Word to have taken upon Himself the person of a man in this illusory way. Rather let us acknowledge that while His own unchangeable substance remained, and while He took upon Himself the nature of perfect man, Himself actually was flesh, Himself actually was man, Himself actually was personally man; not feignedly, but in truth, not in imitation, but in substance; not, finally, so as to cease to be when the performance was over, but so as to be, and continue to be substantially and permanently. [473] __________________________________________________________________
[473] The word "Person" is used in this and the preceding section in a way which might seem at variance with Catholic truth. Christ did not assume the Person of a man; but, being God, He united in his one divine Person, the Godhead and the Manhood. This Vincentius himself teaches most explicitly. But his object here is to show that our blessed Lord, while conversant among us as man, and being to all appearance man, did not personate man, but was man in deed and in truth. The misconception against which Vincentius seeks to guard arises from the ambiguity of the Latin Persona, an ambiguity which is not continued in our derived word Person. Persona signifies not only Person, in our sense of the word, but also an assumed character. Though however we have not this sense in Person, we have it in Personate. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XV.
The Union of the Divine with the Human Nature took place in the very Conception of the Virgin. The appellation "The Mother of God."
[40.] This unity of Person, then, in Christ was not effected after His birth of the Virgin, but was compacted and perfected in her very womb. For we must take most especial heed that we confess Christ not only one, but always one. For it were intolerable blasphemy, if while thou dost confess Him one now, thou shouldst maintain that once He was not one, but two; one forsooth since His baptism, but two at His birth. Which monstrous sacrilege we shall assuredly in no wise avoid unless we acknowledge the manhood united to the Godhead (but by unity of Person), not from the ascension, or the resurrection, or the baptism, but even in His mother, even in the womb, even in the Virgin's very conception. [474] In consequence of which unity of Person, both those attributes which are proper to God are ascribed to man, and those which are proper to the flesh to God, indifferently and promiscuously. [475] For hence it is written by divine guidance, on the one hand, that the Son of man came down from heaven; [476] and on the other, that the Lord of glory was crucified on earth. [477] Hence it is also that since the Lord's flesh was made, since the Lord's flesh was created, the very Word of God is said to have been made, the very omniscient Wisdom of God to have been created, just as prophetically His hands and His feet are described as having been pierced. [478] From this unity of Person it follows, by reason of a like mystery, that, since the flesh of the Word was born of an undefiled mother, God the Word Himself is most Catholicly believed, most impiously denied, to have been born of the Virgin; which being the case, God forbid that any one should seek to defraud Holy Mary of her prerogative of divine grace and her special glory. For by the singular gift of Him who is our Lord and God, and withal, her own son, she is to be confessed most truly and most blessedly--The mother of God "Theotocos," but not in the sense in which it is imagined by a certain impious heresy which maintains, that she is to be called the Mother of God for no other reason than because she gave birth to that man who afterwards became God, just as we speak of a woman as the mother of a priest, or the mother of a bishop, meaning that she was such, not by giving birth to one already a priest or a bishop, but by giving birth to one who afterwards became a priest or a bishop. Not thus, I say, was the holy Mary "Theotocos," the mother of God, but rather, as was said before, because in her sacred womb was wrought that most sacred mystery whereby, on account of the singular and unique unity of Person, as the Word in flesh is flesh, so Man in God is God. [479] __________________________________________________________________
[474] If the Son of God had taken to Himself a man now made and already perfected, it would of necessity follow that there are in Christ two persons, the one assuming and the other assumed; whereas, the Son of God did not assume a man's person unto His own, but a man's nature to His own person, and therefore took semen, the seed of Abraham, the very first original element of our nature, before it was come to have any personal human subsistence. The flesh, and the conjunction of the flesh with God, began both in one instant. His making and taking to Himself our flesh was but one act, so that in Christ there is no personal subsistence but one, and that from everlasting. By taking only the nature of man He still continueth one person, and changeth but the manner of His subsisting, which was before in the mere glory of the Son of God and is now in the habit of our flesh.--Hooker, Eccl. Pol. v. 52, § 3.
[475] "A kind of mutual commutation there is, whereby those concrete names, God and man, when we speak of Christ, do take interchangeably one another's room, so that for truth of speech, it skilleth not, whether we say that the Son of God hath created the world, and the Son of man by His death hath saved it, or else, that the Son of man did create, and the Son of God die to save the world. Howbeit, as oft as we attribute to God what the manhood of Christ claimeth, or to man what His Deity hath right unto, we understand by the name of God and the name of man neither the one nor the other nature, but the whole person of Christ, in whom both natures are."--Hooker, Eccl. Polity, v. 53, § 4. This is technically called "The Communication of Properties," Communicatio idiomatum.
[476] St. John iii. 13.
[477] 1 Cor. ii. 8.
[478] Ps. xxii. 16.
[479] Sicut Verbum in carne caro, ita Homo in Deo Deus est. Compare the Athanasian Creed, v. 33, in what is probably the true reading, "Unus autem, non conversione Divinitatis in carne, sed assumptione Humanitatis in Deo." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVI.
Recapitulation of what was said of the Catholic Faith and of divers Heresies, Chapters xi-xv.
[41.] But now that we may refresh our remembrance of what has been briefly said concerning either the afore-mentioned heresies or the Catholic Faith, let us go over it again more briefly and concisely, that being repeated it may be more thoroughly understood, and being pressed home more firmly held.
Accursed then be Photinus, who does not receive the Trinity complete, but asserts that Christ is mere man.
Accursed be Apollinaris, who affirms that the Godhead of Christ is marred by conversion, and defrauds Him of the property of perfect humanity.
Accursed be Nestorius, who denies that God was born of the Virgin, affirms two Christs, and rejecting the belief of the Trinity, brings in a Quaternity.
But blessed be the Catholic Church, which worships one God in the completeness of the Trinity, and at the same time adores the equality of the Trinity in the unity of the Godhead, so that neither the singularity of substance confounds the propriety of the Persons, not the distinction of the Persons in the Trinity separates the unity of the Godhead.
Blessed, I say, be the Church, which believes that in Christ there are two true and perfect substances but one Person, so that neither doth the distinction of natures divide the unity of Person, nor the unity of Person confound the distinction of substances.
Blessed, I say, be the Church, which understands God to have become Man, not by conversion of nature, but by reason of a Person, but of a Person not feigned and transient, but substantial and permanent.
Blessed, I say, be the Church, which declares this unity of Person to be so real and effectual, that because of it, in a marvellous and ineffable mystery, she ascribes divine attributes to man, and human to God; because of it, on the one hand, she does not deny that Man, as God, came down from heaven, on the other, she believes that God, as Man, was created, suffered, and was crucified on earth; because of it, finally, she confesses Man the Son of God, and God the Son of the Virgin.
Blessed, then, and venerable, blessed and most sacred, and altogether worthy to be compared with those celestial praises of the Angelic Host, be the confession which ascribes glory to the one Lord God with a threefold ascription of holiness. For this reason moreover she insists emphatically upon the oneness of the Person of Christ, that she may not go beyond the mystery of the Trinity (that is by making in effect a Quaternity.)
Thus much by way of digression. On another occasion, please God, we will deal with the subject and unfold it more fully. [480] Now let us return to the matter in hand. __________________________________________________________________
[480] Anrtelmi, who ascribed the Athanasian Creed to Vincentius, thought that document a fulfilment of the promise here made. Nova de Symbolo Athanasiano Disquisitio.--See Appendix I. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVII.
The Error of Origen a great Trial to the Church.
[42.] We said above that in the Church of God the teacher's error is the people's trial, a trial by so much the greater in proportion to the greater learning of the erring teacher. This we showed first by the authority of Scripture, and then by instances from Church History, of persons who having at one time had the reputation of being sound in the faith, eventually either fell away to some sect already in existence, or else founded a heresy of their own. An important fact truly, useful to be learnt, and necessary to be remembered, and to be illustrated and enforced again and again, by example upon example, in order that all true Catholics may understand that it behoves them with the Church to receive Teachers, not with Teachers to desert the faith of the Church.
[43.] My belief is, that among many instances of this sort of trial which might be produced, there is not one to be compared with that of Origen, [481] in whom there were many things so excellent, so unique, so admirable, that antecedently any one would readily deem that implicit faith was to be placed all his assertions. For if the conversation and manner of life carry authority, great was his industry, great his modesty, his patience, his endurance; if his descent or his erudition, what more noble than his birth of a house rendered illustrious by martyrdom? Afterwards, when in the cause of Christ he had been deprived not only of his father, but also of all his property, he attained so high a standard in the midst of the straits of holy poverty, that he suffered several times, it is said, as a Confessor. Nor were these the only circumstances connected with him, all of which afterwards proved an occasion of trial. He had a genius so powerful, so profound, so acute, so elegant, that there was hardly any one whom he did not very far surpass. The splendour of his learning, and of his erudition generally, was such that there were few points of divine philosophy, hardly any of human which he did not thoroughly master. When Greek had yielded to his industry, he made himself a proficient in Hebrew. What shall I say of his eloquence, the style of which was so charming, so soft, so sweet, that honey rather than words seemed to flow from his mouth! What subjects were there, however difficult, which he did not render clear and perspicuous by the force of his reasoning? What undertakings, however hard to accomplish, which he did not make to appear most easy? But perhaps his assertions rested simply on ingeniously woven argumentation? On the contrary, no teacher ever used more proofs drawn from Scripture. Then I suppose he wrote little? No man more, so that, if I mistake not, his writings not only cannot all be read through, they cannot all be found; [482] for that nothing might be wanting to his opportunities of obtaining knowledge, he had the additional advantage of a life greatly prolonged. [483] But perhaps he was not particularly happy in his disciples? Who ever more so? From his school came forth doctors, priests, confessors, martyrs, without number. [484] Then who can express how much he was admired by all, how great his renown, how wide his influence? Who was there whose religion was at all above the common standard that did not hasten to him from the ends of the earth? What Christian did not reverence him almost as a prophet; what philosopher as a master? How great was the veneration with which he was regarded, not only by private persons, but also by the Court, is declared by the histories which relate how he was sent for by the mother of the Emperor Alexander, [485] moved by the heavenly wisdom with the love of which she, as he, was inflamed. To this also his letters bear witness, which, with the authority which he assumed as a Christian Teacher, he wrote to the Emperor Philip, [486] the first Roman prince that was a Christian. As to his incredible learning, if any one is unwilling to receive the testimony of Christians at our hands, let him at least accept that of heathens at the hands of philosophers. For that impious Porphyry says that when he was little more than a boy, incited by his fame, he went to Alexandria, and there saw him, then an old man, but a man evidently of so great attainments, that he had reached the summit of universal knowledge.
[44.] Time would fail me to recount, even in a very small measure, the excellencies of this man, all of which, nevertheless, not only contributed to the glory of religion, but also increased the magnitude of the trial. For who in the world would lightly desert a man of so great genius, so great learning, so great influence, and would not rather adopt that saying, That he would rather be wrong with Origen, than be right with others. [487]
What shall I say more? The result was that very many were led astray from the integrity of the faith, not by any human excellencies of this so great man, this so great doctor, this so great prophet, but, as the event showed, by the too perilous trial which he proved to be. Hence it came to pass, that this Origen, such and so great as he was, wantonly abusing the grace of God, rashly following the bent of his own genius, and placing overmuch confidence in himself, making light account of the ancient simplicity of the Christian religion, presuming that he knew more than all the world besides, despising the traditions of the Church and the determinations of the ancients, and interpreting certain passages of Scripture in a novel way, deserved for himself the warning given to the Church of God, as applicable in his case as in that of others, "If there arise a prophet in the midst of thee,"... "thou shalt not hearken to the words of that prophet,"..."because the Lord your God doth make trial of you, whether you love Him or not." [488] Truly, thus of a sudden to seduce the Church which was devoted to him, and hung upon him through admiration of his genius, his learning, his eloquence, his manner of life and influence, while she had no fear, no suspicion for herself,--thus, I say, to seduce the Church, slowly and little by little, from the old religion to a new profaneness, was not only a trial, but a great trial. [489]
[45.] But some one will say, Origen's books have been corrupted. I do not deny it; nay, I grant it readily. For that such is the case has been handed down both orally and in writing, not only by Catholics, but by heretics as well. But the point is, that though himself be not, yet books published under his name are, a great trial, which, abounding in many hurtful blasphemies, are both read and delighted in, not as being some one else's, but as being believed to be his, so that, although there was no error in Origen's original meaning, yet Origen's authority appears to be an effectual cause in leading people to embrace error. __________________________________________________________________
[481] Origen was born of Christian parents, at Alexandria, about the year 186. His father, Leonidas, suffered martyrdom in the persecution under Severus, in 202; and the family estate having been confiscated, his mother, with six younger children, became dependent upon him for her support. At the age of eighteen he was appointed by the bishop Demetrius over the Catechetical School of Alexandria, the duties of which place he discharged with eminent ability and success. He remained a layman till the age of forty-three, when he was admitted to priest's orders at Cæsarea, greatly to the displeasure of Demetrius, by whose hand, according to the Church's rule, the office ought to have been conferred, and he was in consequence banished from Alexandria. Returning to Cæsarea, he taught there with great reputation, and had many eminent persons among his disciples. He suffered much in the Decian persecution in 250, when he was thrown into prison and subjected to severe tortures. His works, as Vincentius says, were very numerous, including among them the Hexapla, a revised edition of the Hebrew Scriptures and of the Septuagint version, together with three other versions, the Hebrew being set forth in both Hebrew and Greek characters. His writings were corrupted in many instances, so that, as Vincentius says, opinions were often imputed to him which he would not have acknowledged. He died in his sixty-ninth year at Tyre, and was buried there.
[482] "Quis nostrum," says St. Jerome, "potest tanta legere quanta ille conscripsit."--Hieron. ad Pam. et Occan.
[483] He died, as was said in the preceding note, in his sixty-ninth year.
[484] Among these were Gregory Thaumaturgus, Bishop of NeoCæsarea in Pontus, and Firmilian, Bishop of Cæsarea in Cappadocia.
[485] Mammea.
[486] These are St. Jerome's words, from whose book, De Viris illustribus c. 54, Vincentius's account of Origen is taken. The vexed question of Philip's claim to be ranked as a Christian is discussed by Tillemont.--Histoire des Empereurs, T. iii. pp. 494 sqq.
[487] Errare malo cum Platone quam cum istis vera sentire.--Cicero, Tuscul. Quæst. 1.
[488] Deuteronomy xiii. 1.
[489] "The great Origen died after his many labors in peace. His immediate pupils were saints and rulers in the Church. He has the praise of St. Athanasius, St. Basil, and St. Gregory Nazianzen, and furnishes materials to St. Ambrose and St. Hilary; yet, as time proceeded a definite heterodoxy was the growing result of his theology, and at length, three hundred years after his death, he was condemned, and, as has generally been considered, in an OEcumenical Council."--Newman on Development, p. 85, First Edition. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVIII.
Tertullian a great Trial to the Church.
[46.] The case is the same with Tertullian. [490] For as Origen holds by far the first place among the Greeks, so does Tertullian among the Latins. For who more learned than he, who more versed in knowledge whether divine or human? With marvellous capacity of mind he comprehended all philosophy, and had a knowledge of all schools of philosophers, and of the founders and upholders of schools, and was acquainted with all their rules and observances, and with their various histories and studies. Was not his genius of such unrivalled strength and vehemence that there was scarcely any obstacle which he proposed to himself to overcome, that he did not penetrate by acuteness, or crush by weight? As to his style, who can sufficiently set forth its praise? It was knit together with so much cogency of argument that it compelled assent, even where it failed to persuade. Every word almost was a sentence; every sentence a victory. This know the Marcions, the Apelleses, the Praxeases, the Hermogeneses, the Jews, the Heathens, the Gnostics, and the rest, whose blasphemies he overthrew by the force of his many and ponderous volumes, as with so many thunderbolts. Yet this man also, notwithstanding all that I have mentioned, this Tertullian, I say, too little tenacious of Catholic doctrine, that is, of the universal and ancient faith, more eloquent by far than faithful, [491] changed his belief, and justified what the blessed Confessor, Hilary, writes of him, namely, that "by his subsequent error he detracted from the authority of his approved writings." [492] He also was a great trial in the Church. But of Tertullian I am unwilling to say more. This only I will add, that, contrary to the injunction of Moses, by asserting the novel furies of Montanus [493] which arose in the Church, and those mad dreams of new doctrine dreamed by mad women, to be true prophecies, he deservedly made both himself and his writings obnoxious to the words, "If there arise a prophet in the midst of thee,"..."thou shalt not hearken to the words of that prophet. "For why? "Because the Lord your God doth make trial of you, whether you love Him or not." __________________________________________________________________
[490] Hardly anything is known of Tertullian, besides what may be gathered from his works, in addition to the following account given by St. Jerome (De Viris Illustribus), which I quote from Bishop Kaye's work on Tertullian and his writings: "Tertullian, a presbyter, the first Latin writer after Victor and Apollonius, was a native of the province of Africa and city of Carthage, the son of a proconsular centurion. He was a man of a sharp and vehement temper, flourished under Severus and Caracalla, and wrote numerous works which, as they are generally known, I think it unnecessary to particularize. I saw at Concordia, in Italy, an old man named Paulus who said that, when young, he had met at Rome with an aged amanuensis of the blessed Cyprian, who told him that Cyprian never passed a day without reading some portion of Tertullian's works, and used frequently to say, Give me my master,' meaning Tertullian. After remaining a presbyter of the Church till he had attained the middle of life, Tertullian was by the cruel and contumelious treatment of the Roman clergy driven to embrace the opinions of Montanus, which he has mentioned in several of his works, under the title of The New Prophecy.' He is reported to have lived to a very advanced age." He was born about the middle of the second century, and flourished, according to the dates indicated above, between the years 190 and 216.
[491] Fidelior, Baluz, Felicior, others.
[492] In Mat. v.
[493] Montanus, with his two prophetesses, professed that he was intrusted with a new dispensation,--a dispensation in advance of the Gospel, as the Gospel was in advance of the Law. His system was a protest against the laxity which had grown up in the Church, as has repeatedly been the case after revivals of religious fervor, verifying Tertullian's apophthegm, "Christiani fiunt, non nascuntur" (men become Christians, they are not born such). Its characteristics were extreme ascetism, rigorous fasting, the exaltation of celibacy, the absolute prohibition of second marriage, the expectation of our Lord's second advent as near at hand, the disparagement of the clergy in comparison with its own Paraclete-inspired teachers. It had its rise in Phrygia, and from thence spread throughout Asia Minor, thence it found its way to Southern Gaul, to Rome, to North Western Africa, in which last for a time it had many followers. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIX.
What we ought to learn from these Examples.
[47.] It behoves us, then, to give heed to these instances from Church History, so many and so great, and others of the same description, and to understand distinctly, in accordance with the rule laid down in Deuteronomy, that if at any time a Doctor in the Church have erred from the faith, Divine Providence permits it in order to make trial of us, whether or not we love God with all our heart and with all our mind. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XX.
The Notes of a true Catholic.
[48.] This being the case, he is the true and genuine Catholic who loves the truth of God, who loves the Church, who loves the Body of Christ, who esteems divine religion and the Catholic Faith above every thing, above the authority, above the regard, above the genius, above the eloquence, above the philosophy, of every man whatsoever; who sets light by all of these, and continuing steadfast and established in the faith, resolves that he will believe that, and that only, which he is sure the Catholic Church has held universally and from ancient time; but that whatsoever new and unheard-of doctrine he shall find to have been furtively introduced by some one or another, besides that of all, or contrary to that of all the saints, this, he will understand, does not pertain to religion, but is permitted as a trial, being instructed especially by the words of the blessed Apostle Paul, who writes thus in his first Epistle to the Corinthians, "There must needs be heresies, that they who are approved may be made manifest among you:" [494] as though he should say, This is the reason why the authors of Heresies are not forthwith rooted up by God, namely, that they who are approved may be made manifest; that is, that it may be apparent of each individual, how tenacious and faithful and steadfast he is in his love of the Catholic faith.
[49.] And in truth, as each novelty springs up incontinently is discerned the difference between the weight of the wheat and the lightness of the chaff. Then that which had no weight to keep it on the floor is without difficulty blown away. For some at once fly off entirely; others having been only shaken out, afraid of perishing, wounded, half alive, half dead, are ashamed to return. They have, in fact swallowed a quantity of poison--not enough to kill, yet more than can be got rid of; it neither causes death, nor suffers to live. O wretched condition! With what surging tempestuous cares are they tossed about! One while, the error being set in motion, they are hurried whithersoever the wind drives them; another, returning upon themselves like refluent waves, they are dashed back: one while, with rash presumption, they give their approval to what seems uncertain; another, with irrational fear, they are frightened out of their wits at what is certain, in doubt whither to go, whither to return, what to seek, what to shun, what to keep, what to throw away.
[50.] This affliction, indeed, of a hesitating and miserably vacillating mind is, if they are wise, a medicine intended for them by God's compassion. For therefore it is that outside the most secure harbour of the Catholic Faith, they are tossed about, beaten, and almost killed, by divers tempestuous cogitations, in order that they may take in the sails of self-conceit, which, they had with ill advice unfurled to the blasts of novelty, and may betake themselves again to, and remain stationary within, the most secure harbour of their placid and good mother, and may begin by vomiting up those bitter and turbid floods of error which they had swallowed, that thenceforward they may be able to drink the streams of fresh and living water. Let them unlearn well what they had learnt not well, and let them receive so much of the entire doctrine of the Church as they can understand: what they cannot understand let them believe. __________________________________________________________________
[494] 1 Cor. ii. 9. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXI.
Exposition of St. Paul's Words.--1 Tim. vi. 20.
[51.] Such being the case, when I think over these things, and revolve them in my mind again and again, I cannot sufficiently wonder at the madness of certain men, at the impiety of their blinded understanding, at their lust of error, such that, not content with the rule of faith delivered once for all, and received from the times of old, they are every day seeking one novelty after another, and are constantly longing to add, change, take away, in religion, as though the doctrine, "Let what has once for all been revealed suffice," were not a heavenly but an earthly rule,--a rule which could not be complied with except by continual emendation, nay, rather by continual fault-finding; whereas the divine Oracles cry aloud, "Remove not the landmarks, which thy fathers have set," [495] and "Go not to law with a Judge," [496] and "Whoso breaketh through a fence a serpent shall bite him," [497] and that saying of the Apostle wherewith, as with a spiritual sword, all the wicked novelties of all heresies often have been, and will always have to be, decapitated, "O Timothy, keep the deposit, shunning profane novelties of words and oppositions of the knowledge falsely so called, which some professing have erred concerning the faith." [498]
[52.] After words such as these, is there any one of so hardened a front, such anvil-like impudence, such adamantine pertinacity, as not to succumb to so huge a mass, not to be crushed by so ponderous a weight, not to be shaken in pieces by such heavy blows, not to be annihilated by such dreadful thunderbolts of divine eloquence? "Shun profane novelties," he says. He does not say shun "antiquity." But he plainly points to what ought to follow by the rule of contrary. For if novelty is to be shunned, antiquity is to be held fast; if novelty is profane, antiquity is sacred. He adds, "And oppositions of science falsely so called." "Falsely called" indeed, as applied to the doctrines of heretics, where ignorance is disguised under the name of knowledge, fog of sunshine, darkness of light. "Which some professing have erred concerning the faith." Professing what? What but some (I know not what) new and unheard-of doctrine. For thou mayest hear some of these same doctors say, "Come, O silly wretches, who go by the name of Catholics, come and learn the true faith, which no one but ourselves is acquainted with, which same has lain hid these many ages, but has recently been revealed and made manifest. But learn it by stealth and in secret, for you will be delighted with it. Moreover, when you have learnt it, teach it furtively, that the world may not hear, that the Church may not know. For there are but few to whom it is granted to receive the secret of so great a mystery." Are not these the words of that harlot who, in the proverbs of Solomon, calls to the passengers who go right on their ways, "Whoso is simple let him turn in hither." And as for them that are void of understanding, she exhorts them saying: "Drink stolen waters, for they are sweet, and eat bread in secret for it is pleasant." What next? "But he knoweth not that the sons of earth perish in her house." [499] Who are those "sons of earth"? Let the apostle explain: "Those who have erred concerning the faith." __________________________________________________________________
[495] Prov. xxii. 28.
[496] Ecclus. viii. 14.
[497] Eccles. x. 8.
[498] 1 Tim. vi. 20.
[499] Prov. ix. 16-18. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXII.
A more particular Exposition of 1 Tim. vi. 20.
[53.] But it is worth while to expound the whole of that passage of the apostle more fully, "O Timothy, keep the deposit, avoiding profane novelties of words."
"O!" The exclamation implies fore-knowledge as well as charity. For he mourned in anticipation over the errors which he foresaw. Who is the Timothy of to-day, but either generally the Universal Church, or in particular, the whole body of The Prelacy, whom it behoves either themselves to possess or to communicate to others a complete knowledge of religion? What is "Keep the deposit"? "Keep it," because of thieves, because of adversaries, lest, while men sleep, they sow tares over that good wheat which the Son of Man had sown in his field. "Keep the deposit." What is "The deposit"? That which has been intrusted to thee, not that which thou hast thyself devised: a matter not of wit, but of learning; not of private adoption, but of public tradition; a matter brought to thee, not put forth by thee, wherein thou art bound to be not an author but a keeper, not a teacher but a disciple, not a leader but a follower. "Keep the deposit." Preserve the talent of Catholic Faith inviolate, unadulterate. That which has been intrusted to thee, let it continue in thy possession, let it be handed on by thee. Thou hast received gold; give gold in turn. Do not substitute one thing for another. Do not for gold impudently substitute lead or brass. Give real gold, not counterfeit.
O Timothy! O Priest! O Expositor! O Doctor! if the divine gift hath qualified thee by wit, by skill, by learning, be thou a Bazaleel of the spiritual tabernacle, [500] engrave the precious gems of divine doctrine, fit them in accurately, adorn them skilfully, add splendor, grace, beauty. Let that which formerly was believed, though imperfectly apprehended, as expounded by thee be clearly understood. Let posterity welcome, understood through thy exposition, what antiquity venerated without understanding. Yet teach still the same truths which thou hast learnt, so that though thou speakest after a new fashion, what thou speakest may not be new. __________________________________________________________________
[500] Exod. xxxi. 1, etc. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXIII.
On Development in Religious Knowledge.
[54.] But some one will say, perhaps, Shall there, then, be no progress in Christ's Church? Certainly; all possible progress. For what being is there, so envious of men, so full of hatred to God, who would seek to forbid it? Yet on condition that it be real progress, not alteration of the faith. For progress requires that the subject be enlarged in itself, alteration, that it be transformed into something else. The intelligence, then, the knowledge, the wisdom, as well of individuals as of all, as well of one man as of the whole Church, ought, in the course of ages and centuries, to increase and make much and vigorous progress; but yet only in its own kind; that is to say, in the same doctrine, in the same sense, and in the same meaning.
[55.] The growth of religion in the soul must be analogous to the growth of the body, which, though in process of years it is developed and attains its full size, yet remains still the same. There is a wide difference between the flower of youth and the maturity of age; yet they who were once young are still the same now that they have become old, insomuch that though the stature and outward form of the individual are changed, yet his nature is one and the same, his person is one and the same. An infant's limbs are small, a young man's large, yet the infant and the young man are the same. Men when full grown have the same number of joints that they had when children; and if there be any to which maturer age has given birth these were already present in embryo, so that nothing new is produced in them when old which was not already latent in them when children. This, then, is undoubtedly the true and legitimate rule of progress, this the established and most beautiful order of growth, that mature age ever develops in the man those parts and forms which the wisdom of the Creator had already framed beforehand in the infant. Whereas, if the human form were changed into some shape belonging to another kind, or at any rate, if the number of its limbs were increased or diminished, the result would be that the whole body would become either a wreck or a monster, or, at the least, would be impaired and enfeebled.
[56.] In like manner, it behoves Christian doctrine to follow the same laws of progress, so as to be consolidated by years, enlarged by time, refined by age, and yet, withal, to continue uncorrupt and unadulterate, complete and perfect in all the measurement of its parts, and, so to speak, in all its proper members and senses, admitting no change, no waste of its distinctive property, no variation in its limits.
[57.] For example: Our forefathers in the old time sowed wheat in the Church's field. It would be most unmeet and iniquitous if we, their descendants, instead of the genuine truth of corn, should reap the counterfeit error of tares. This rather should be the result,--there should be no discrepancy between the first and the last. From doctrine which was sown as wheat, we should reap, in the increase, doctrine of the same kind--wheat also; so that when in process of time any of the original seed is developed, and now flourishes under cultivation, no change may ensue in the character of the plant. There may supervene shape, form, variation in outward appearance, but the nature of each kind must remain the same. God forbid that those rose-beds of Catholic interpretation should be converted into thorns and thistles. God forbid that in that spiritual paradise from plants of cinnamon and balsam, darnel and wolfsbane should of a sudden shoot forth.
Therefore, whatever has been sown by the fidelity of the Fathers in this husbandry of God's Church, the same ought to be cultivated and taken care of by the industry of their children, the same ought to flourish and ripen, the same ought to advance and go forward to perfection. For it is right that those ancient doctrines of heavenly philosophy should, as time goes on, be cared for, smoothed, polished; but not that they should be changed, not that they should be maimed, not that they should be mutilated. They may receive proof, illustration, definiteness; but they must retain withal their completeness, their integrity, their characteristic properties.
[58.] For if once this license of impious fraud be admitted, I dread to say in how great danger religion will be of being utterly destroyed and annihilated. For if any one part of Catholic truth be given up, another, and another, and another will thenceforward be given up as a matter of course, and the several individual portions having been rejected, what will follow in the end but the rejection of the whole? On the other hand, if what is new begins to be mingled with what is old, foreign with domestic, profane with sacred, the custom will of necessity creep on universally, till at last the Church will have nothing left untampered with, nothing unadulterated, nothing sound, nothing pure; but where formerly there was a sanctuary of chaste and undefiled truth, thenceforward there will be a brothel of impious and base errors. May God's mercy avert this wickedness from the minds of his servants; be it rather the frenzy of the ungodly.
[59.] But the Church of Christ, the careful and watchful guardian of the doctrines deposited in her charge, never changes anything in them, never diminishes, never adds, does not cut off what is necessary, does not add what is superfluous, does not lose her own, does not appropriate what is another's, but while dealing faithfully and judiciously with ancient doctrine, keeps this one object carefully in view,--if there be anything which antiquity has left shapeless and rudimentary, to fashion and polish it, if anything already reduced to shape and developed, to consolidate and strengthen it, if any already ratified and defined, to keep and guard it. Finally, what other object have Councils ever aimed at in their decrees, than to provide that what was before believed in simplicity should in future be believed intelligently, that what was before preached coldly should in future be preached earnestly, that what was before practised negligently should thenceforward be practised with double solicitude? This, I say, is what the Catholic Church, roused by the novelties of heretics, has accomplished by the decrees of her Councils,--this, and nothing else,--she has thenceforward consigned to posterity in writing what she had received from those of olden times only by tradition, comprising a great amount of matter in a few words, and often, for the better understanding, designating an old article of the faith by the characteristic of a new name. [501] __________________________________________________________________
[501] For instance, the proper Deity of our Blessed Lord by the word "Homousios," consubstantial, of one substance, essence, nature. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXIV.
Continuation of the Exposition of 1 Tim. vi. 20.
[60.] But let us return to the apostle. "O Timothy," he says, "Guard the deposit, shunning profane novelties of words." "Shun them as you would a viper, as you would a scorpion, as you would a basilisk, lest they smite you not only with their touch, but even with their eyes and breath." What is "to shun"? Not even to eat [502] with a person of this sort. What is "shun"? "If anyone," says St. John, "come to you and bring not this doctrine." What doctrine? What but the Catholic and universal doctrine, which has continued one and the same through the several successions of ages by the uncorrupt tradition of the truth and so will continue for ever--"Receive him not into your house, neither bid him Godspeed, for he that biddeth him Godspeed communicates with him in his evil deeds." [503]
[61.] "Profane novelties of words." What words are these? Such as have nothing sacred, nothing religious, words utterly remote from the inmost sanctuary of the Church which is the temple of God. "Profane novelties of words, that is, of doctrines, subjects, opinions, such as are contrary to antiquity and the faith of the olden time. Which if they be received, it follows necessarily that the faith of the blessed fathers is violated either in whole, or at all events in great part; it follows necessarily that all the faithful of all ages, all the saints, the chaste, the continent, the virgins, all the clergy, Deacons and Priests, so many thousands of Confessors, so vast an army of martyrs, such multitudes of cities and of peoples, so many islands, provinces, kings, tribes, kingdoms, nations, in a word, almost the whole earth, incorporated in Christ the Head, through the Catholic faith, have been ignorant for so long a tract of time, have been mistaken, have blasphemed, have not known what to believe, what to confess.
[62.] "Shun profane novelties of words," which to receive and follow was never the part of Catholics; of heretics always was. In sooth, what heresy ever burst forth save under a definite name, at a definite place, at a definite time? Who ever originated a heresy that did not first dissever himself from the consentient agreement of the universality and antiquity of the Catholic Church? That this is so is demonstrated in the clearest way by examples. For who ever before that profane Pelagius [504] attributed so much antecedent strength to Free-will, as to deny the necessity of God's grace to aid it towards good in every single act? Who ever before his monstrous disciple Coelestius denied that the whole human race is involved in the guilt of Adam's sin? Who ever before sacrilegious Arius dared to rend asunder the unity of the Trinity? Who before impious Sabellius was so audacious as to confound the Trinity of the Unity? Who before cruellest Novatian represented God as cruel in that He had rather the wicked should die than that he should be converted and live? Who before Simon Magus, who was smitten by the apostle's rebuke, and from whom that ancient sink of every thing vile has flowed by a secret continuous succession even to Priscillian of our own time,--who, I say, before this Simon Magus, dared to say that God, the Creator, is the author of evil, that is, of our wickednesses, impieties, flagitiousnesses, inasmuch as he asserts that He created with His own hands a human nature of such a description, that of its own motion, and by the impulse of its necessity-constrained will, it can do nothing else, can will nothing else, but sin, seeing that tossed to and fro, and set on fire by the furies of all sorts of vices, it is hurried away by unquenchable lust into the utmost extremes of baseness?
[63.] There are innumerable instances of this kind, which for brevity's sake, pass over; by all of which, however, it is manifestly and clearly shown, that it is an established law, in the case of almost all heresies, that they evermore delight in profane novelties, scorn the decisions of antiquity, and, through oppositions of science falsely so called, make shipwreck of the faith. On the other hand, it is the sure characteristic of Catholics to keep that which has been committed to their trust by the holy Fathers, to condemn profane novelties, and, in the apostle's words, once and again repeated, to anathematize every one who preaches any other doctrine than that which has been received. [505] __________________________________________________________________
[502] 1 Cor. v. 11.
[503] 2 John 10.
[504] Pelagius, a monk, a Briton by birth, resident in Rome, where by the strictness of his life he had acquired a high reputation for sanctity, was led, partly perhaps by opposition to St. Augustine's teaching on the subject of election and predestination, partly by indignation at the laxity of professing Christians, who pleaded, in excuse for their low standard, the weakness of human nature, to insist upon man's natural power, and to deny his need of divine grace. Pelagius was joined by another monk, Coelestius, a younger man, with whom about the year 410, the year in which Rome was taken by the Goths, he began to teach openly and in public what before he had held and taught in private. After the sack of Rome, the two friends passed over into Africa, and from thence Pelagius proceeded to Palestine, where he was in two separate synods acquitted of the charge of heresy which had been brought against him by Orosius, a Spanish monk, whom Augustine had sent for that purpose. But in 416, two African synods condemned his doctrine, and Zosimus bishop of Rome, whom he had appealed to, though he had set aside their decision, was eventually obliged to yield to the firmness with which they held their ground, and not only to condemn Pelagius, but to take stringent measures against his adherents. "In 418, another African synod of two hundred and fourteen bishops passed nine canons, which were afterwards generally accepted throughout the Church, and came to be regarded as the most important bulwark against Pelagianism." The heresy was formally condemned, in 431, by the General Council of Ephesus. Canons 2 and 4. The Pelagians denied the corruption of man's nature, and the necessity of divine grace. They held that infants new-born are in the same state in which Adam was before his fall; that Adam's sin injured no one but himself, and affected his posterity no other wise than by the evil example which it afforded; they held also that men may live without sin if they will and that some have so lived. Those who were afterwards called semi-Pelagians (they belonged chiefly to the churches of Southern Gaul) were orthodox except in one particular: In their anxiety to justify, as they thought, God's dealings with man, they held that the first step in the way of salvation must be from ourselves: we must ask that we may receive, seek that we may find, knock that it may be opened to us; thenceforward in every stage of the road, our strenuous efforts must be aided by divine grace. They did not understand, or did not grant, that to that same grace must be referred even the disposition to ask, to seek, to knock. See Prosper's letter to Augustine, August. Opera, Tom. x. The semi-Pelagian doctrine was condemned in the second Council of Orange (a.d. 529), the third and fifth canons of which are directed against it.
[505] Gal. ii. 9. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXV.
Heretics appeal to Scripture that they may more easily succeed in deceiving.
[64.] Here, possibly, some one may ask, Do heretics also appeal to Scripture? They do indeed, and with a vengeance; for you may see them scamper through every single book of Holy Scripture,--through the books of Moses, the books of Kings, the Psalms, the Epistles, the Gospels, the Prophets. Whether among their own people, or among strangers, in private or in public, in speaking or in writing, at convivial meetings, or in the streets, hardly ever do they bring forward anything of their own which they do not endeavour to shelter under words of Scripture. Read the works of Paul of Samosata, of Priscillian, of Eunomius, of Jovinian, and the rest of those pests, and you will see an infinite heap of instances, hardly a single page, which does not bristle with plausible quotations from the New Testament or the Old.
[65.] But the more secretly they conceal themselves under shelter of the Divine Law, so much the more are they to be feared and guarded against. For they know that the evil stench of their doctrine will hardly find acceptance with any one if it be exhaled pure and simple. They sprinkle it over, therefore, with the perfume of heavenly language, in order that one who would be ready to despise human error, may hesitate to condemn divine words. They do, in fact, what nurses do when they would prepare some bitter draught for children; they smear the edge of the cup all round with honey, that the unsuspecting child, having first tasted the sweet, may have no fear of the bitter. So too do these act, who disguise poisonous herbs and noxious juices under the names of medicines, so that no one almost, when he reads the label, suspects the poison.
[66.] It was for this reason that the Saviour cried, "Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves." [506] What is meant by "sheep's clothing"? What but the words which prophets and apostles with the guilelessness of sheep wove beforehand as fleeces, for that immaculate Lamb which taketh away the sin of the world? What are the ravening wolves? What but the savage and rabid glosses of heretics, who continually infest the Church's folds, and tear in pieces the flock of Christ wherever they are able? But that they may with more successful guile steal upon the unsuspecting sheep, retaining the ferocity of the wolf, they put off his appearance, and wrap themselves, so to say, in the language of the Divine Law, as in a fleece, so that one, having felt the softness of wool, may have no dread of the wolf's fangs. But what saith the Saviour? "By their fruits ye shall know them;" that is, when they have begun not only to quote those divine words, but also to expound them, not as yet only to make a boast of them as on their side, but also to interpret them, then will that bitterness, that acerbity, that rage, be understood; then will the ill-savour of that novel poison be perceived, then will those profane novelties be disclosed, then may you see first the hedge broken through, then the landmarks of the Fathers removed, then the Catholic faith assailed, then the doctrine of the Church torn in pieces.
[67.] Such were they whom the Apostle Paul rebukes in his Second Epistle to the Corinthians, when he says, "For of this sort are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into apostles of Christ." [507] The apostles brought forward instances from Holy Scripture; these men did the same. The apostles cited the authority of the Psalms; these men did so likewise. The apostles brought forward passages from the prophets; these men still did the same. But when they began to interpret in different senses the passages which both had agreed in appealing to, then were discerned the guileless from the crafty, the genuine from the counterfeit, the straight from the crooked, then, in one word, the true apostles from the false apostles. "And no wonder," he says, "for Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light. It is no marvel then if his servants are transformed as the servants of righteousness." Therefore, according to the authority of the Apostle Paul, as often as either false apostles or false teachers cite passages from the Divine Law, by means of which, misinterpreted, they seek to prop up their own errors, there is no doubt that they are following the cunning devices of their father, which assuredly he would never have devised, but that he knew that where he could fraudulently and by stealth introduce error, there is no easier way of effecting his impious purpose than by pretending the authority of Holy Scripture. __________________________________________________________________
[506] Matt. vii. 15.
[507] 2 Cor. xi. 12. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXVI.
Heretics, in quoting Scripture, follow the example of the Devil.
[68.] But some one will say, What proof have we that the Devil is wont to appeal to Holy Scripture? Let him read the Gospels wherein it is written, "Then the Devil took Him (the Lord the Saviour) and set Him upon a pinnacle of the Temple, and said unto Him: If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down, for it is written, He shall give His angels charge concerning thee, that they may keep thee in all thy ways: In their hands they shall bear thee up, lest perchance thou dash thy foot against a stone." [508] What sort of treatment must men, insignificant wretches that they are, look for at the hands of him who assailed even the Lord of Glory with quotations from Scripture? "If thou be the Son of God," saith he, "cast thyself down." Wherefore? "For," saith he, "it is written." It behoves us to pay special attention to this passage and bear it in mind, that, warned by so important an instance of Evangelical authority, we may be assured beyond doubt, when we find people alleging passages from the Apostles or Prophets against the Catholic Faith, that the Devil speaks through their mouths. For as then the Head spoke to the Head, so now also the members speak to the members, the members of the Devil to the members of Christ, misbelievers to believers, sacrilegious to religious, in one word, Heretics to Catholics.
[69.] But what do they say? "If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down;" that is, If thou wouldst be a son of God, and wouldst receive the inheritance of the Kingdom of Heaven, cast thyself down; that is, cast thyself down from the doctrine and tradition of that sublime Church, which is imagined to be nothing less than the very temple of God. And if one should ask one of the heretics who gives this advice, How do you prove? What ground have you, for saying, that I ought to cast away the universal and ancient faith of the Catholic Church? he has the answer ready, "For it is written;" and forthwith he produces a thousand testimonies, a thousand examples, a thousand authorities from the Law, from the Psalms, from the apostles, from the Prophets, by means of which, interpreted on a new and wrong principle, the unhappy soul may be precipitated from the height of Catholic truth to the lowest abyss of heresy. Then, with the accompanying promises, the heretics are wont marvellously to beguile the incautious. For they dare to teach and promise, that in their church, that is, in the conventicle of their communion, there is a certain great and special and altogether personal grace of God, so that whosoever pertain to their number, without any labour, without any effort, without any industry, even though they neither ask, nor seek, nor knock, have such a dispensation from God, that, borne up by angel hands, that is, preserved by the protection of angels, it is impossible they should ever dash their feet against a stone, that is, that they should ever be offended. [509] __________________________________________________________________
[508] Matt. iv. 5, etc.
[509] See Appendix II. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXVII.
What Rule is to be observed in the Interpretation of Scripture.
[70.] But it will be said, If the words, the sentiments, the promises of Scripture, are appealed to by the Devil and his disciples, of whom some are false apostles, some false prophets and false teachers, and all without exception heretics, what are Catholics and the sons of Mother Church to do? How are they to distinguish truth from falsehood in the sacred Scriptures? They must be very careful to pursue that course which, in the beginning of this Commonitory, we said that holy and learned men had commended to us, that is to say, they must interpret the sacred Canon according to the traditions of the Universal Church and in keeping with the rules of Catholic doctrine, in which Catholic and Universal Church, moreover, they must follow universality, antiquity, consent. And if at any time a part opposes itself to the whole, novelty to antiquity, the dissent of one or a few who are in error to the consent of all or at all events of the great majority of Catholics, then they must prefer the soundness of the whole to the corruption of a part; in which same whole they must prefer the religion of antiquity to the profaneness of novelty; and in antiquity itself in like manner, to the temerity of one or of a very few they must prefer, first of all, the general decrees, if such there be, of a Universal Council, or if there be no such, then, what is next best, they must follow the consentient belief of many and great masters. Which rule having been faithfully, soberly, and scrupulously observed, we shall with little difficulty detect the noxious errors of heretics as they arise. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXVIII.
In what Way, on collating the consentient opinions of the Ancient Masters, the Novelties of Heretics may be detected and condemned.
[71.] And here I perceive that, as a necessary sequel to the foregoing, I ought to show by examples in what way, by collating the consentient opinions of the ancient masters, the profane novelties of heretics may be detected and condemned. Yet in the investigation of this ancient consent of the holy Fathers we are to bestow our pains not on every minor question of the Divine Law, but only, at all events especially, where the Rule of Faith is concerned. Nor is this way of dealing with heresy to be resorted to always, or in every instance, but only in the case of those heresies which are new and recent, and that on their first arising, before they have had time to deprave the Rules of the Ancient Faith, and before they endeavour, while the poison spreads and diffuses itself, to corrupt the writings of the ancients. But heresies already widely diffused and of old standing are by no means to be thus dealt with, seeing that through lapse of time they have long had opportunity of corrupting the truth. And therefore, as to the more ancient schisms or heresies, we ought either to confute them, if need be, by the sole authority of the Scriptures, or at any rate, to shun them as having been already of old convicted and condemned by universal councils of the Catholic Priesthood.
[72.] Therefore, as soon as the corruption of each mischievous error begins to break forth, and to defend itself by filching certain passages of Scripture, and expounding them fraudulently and deceitfully, forthwith, the opinions of the ancients in the interpretation of the Canon are to be collected, whereby the novelty, and consequently the profaneness, whatever it may be, that arises, may both without any doubt be exposed, and without any tergiversation be condemned. But the opinions of those Fathers only are to be used for comparison, who living and teaching, holily, wisely, and with constancy, in the Catholic faith and communion, were counted worthy either to die in the faith of Christ, or to suffer death happily for Christ. Whom yet we are to believe on this condition, that that only is to be accounted indubitable, certain, established, which either all, or the more part, have supported and confirmed manifestly, frequently, persistently, in one and the same sense, forming, as it were, a consentient council of doctors, all receiving, holding, handing on the same doctrine. But whatsoever a teacher holds, other than all, or contrary to all, be he holy and learned, be he a bishop, be he a Confessor, be he a martyr, let that be regarded as a private fancy of his own, and be separated from the authority of common, public, general persuasion, lest, after the sacrilegious custom of heretics and schismatics, rejecting the ancient truth of the universal Creed, we follow, at the utmost peril of our eternal salvation, the newly devised error of one man.
[73.] Lest any one perchance should rashly think the holy and Catholic consent of these blessed fathers to be despised, the Apostle says, in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, "God hath placed some in the Church, first Apostles," [510] of whom himself was one; "secondly Prophets," such as Agabus, of whom we read in the Acts of the Apostles; [511] "then doctors," who are now called Homilists, Expositors, [512] whom the same apostle sometimes calls also "Prophets," because by them the mysteries of the Prophets are opened to the people. Whosoever, therefore, shall despise these, who had their appointment of God in His Church in their several times and places, when they are unanimous in Christ, in the interpretation of some one point of Catholic doctrine, despises not man, but God, from whose unity in the truth, lest any one should vary, the same Apostle earnestly protests, "I beseech you, brethren, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you, but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment." [513] But if any one dissent from their unanimous decision, let him listen to the words of the same apostle, "God is not the God of dissension but of peace;" [514] that is, not of him who departs from the unity of consent, but of those who remain steadfast in the peace of consent: "as," he continues, "I teach in all Churches of the saints," that is, of Catholics, which churches are therefore churches of the saints, because they continue steadfast in the communion of the faith.
[74.] And lest any one, disregarding every one else, should arrogantly claim to be listened to himself alone, himself alone to be believed, the Apostle goes on to say, "Did the word of God proceed from you, or did it come to you only?" And, lest this should be thought lightly spoken, he continues, "If any man seem to be a prophet or a spiritual person, let him acknowledge that the things which I write unto you are the Lord's commands." As to which, unless a man be a prophet or a spiritual person, that is, a master in spiritual matters, let him be as observant as possible of impartiality and unity, so as neither to prefer his own opinions to those of every one besides, nor to recede from the belief of the whole body. Which injunction, whoso ignores, shall be himself ignored; [515] that is, he who either does not learn what he does not know, or treats with contempt what he knows, shall be ignored, that is, shall be deemed unworthy to be ranked of God with those who are united to each other by faith, and equalled with each other by humility, than which I cannot imagine a more terrible evil. This it is however which, according to the Apostle's threatening, we see to have befallen Julian the Pelagian, [516] who either neglected to associate himself with the belief of his fellow Christians, or presumed to dissociate himself from it.
[75.] But it is now time to bring forward the exemplification which we promised, where and how the sentences of the holy Fathers have been collected together, so that in accordance with them, by the decree and authority of a council, the rule of the Church's faith may be settled. Which that it may be done the more conveniently, let this present Commonitory end here, so that the remainder which is to follow may be begun from a fresh beginning.
[The Second Book of the Commonitory is lost. Nothing of it remains but the conclusion: in other words, the recapitulation which follows.] __________________________________________________________________
[510] 1 Cor. xii. 27, 28.
[511] Acts xi. 28.
[512] "Tractatores." St. Augustine's Expository Lectures on St. John's Gospel are entitled "Tractatus."
[513] 1 Cor. i. 10.
[514] 1 Cor. xiv. 33.
[515] 1 Cor. xiv. 33.
[516] Julian, bishop of Eclanum, a small town in Apulia or Campania, was one of nineteen bishops, who, having espoused the cause of Pelagius, and having refused to subscribe a circular letter issued by Zosimus, now adopting the decisions of the African Council (see above note p. 147) were deposed and banished. St. Augustine at his death left a work against Julian unfinished, "Opus imperfectum contra Julianum," in which he had been engaged till the sickness of which he died put an end to his labours. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXIX.
Recapitulation.
[76.] This being the case, it is now time that we should recapitulate, at the close of this second Commonitory, what was said in that and in the preceding.
We said above, that it has always been the custom of Catholics, and still is, to prove the true faith in these two ways; first by the authority of the Divine Canon, and next by the tradition of the Catholic Church. Not that the Canon alone does not of itself suffice for every question, but seeing that the more part, interpreting the divine words according to their own persuasion, take up various erroneous opinions, it is therefore necessary that the interpretation of divine Scripture should be ruled according to the one standard of the Church's belief, especially in those articles on which the foundations of all Catholic doctrine rest.
[77.] We said likewise, that in the Church itself regard must be had to the consentient voice of universality equally with that of antiquity, lest we either be torn from the integrity of unity and carried away to schism, or be precipitated from the religion of antiquity into heretical novelties. We said, further, that in this same ecclesiastical antiquity two points are very carefully and earnestly to be held in view by those who would keep clear of heresy: first, they should ascertain whether any decision has been given in ancient times as to the matter in question by the whole priesthood of the Catholic Church, with the authority of a General Council: and, secondly, if some new question should arise on which no such decision has been given, they should then have recourse to the opinions of the holy Fathers, of those at least, who, each in his own time and place, remaining in the unity of communion and of the faith, were accepted as approved masters; and whatsoever these may be found to have held, with one mind and with one consent, this ought to be accounted the true and Catholic doctrine of the Church, without any doubt or scruple.
[78.] Which lest we should seem to allege presumptuously on our own warrant rather than on the authority of the Church, we appealed to the example of the holy council which some three years ago was held at Ephesus [517] in Asia, in the consulship of Bassus and Antiochus, where, when question was raised as to the authoritative determining of rules of faith, lest, perchance, any profane novelty should creep in, as did the perversion of the truth at Ariminum, [518] the whole body of priests there assembled, nearly two hundred in number, approved of this as the most Catholic, the most trustworthy, and the best course, viz., to bring forth into the midst the sentiments of the holy Fathers, some of whom it was well known had been martyrs, some Confessors, but all had been, and continued to the end to be, Catholic priests, in order that by their consentient determination the reverence due to ancient truth might be duly and solemnly confirmed, and the blasphemy of profane novelty condemned. Which having been done, that impious Nestorius was lawfully and deservedly adjudged to be opposed to Catholic antiquity, and contrariwise blessed Cyril to be in agreement with it. And that nothing might be wanting to the credibility of the matter, we recorded the names and the number (though we had forgotten the order) of the Fathers, according to whose consentient and unanimous judgment, both the sacred preliminaries of judicial procedure were expounded, and the rule of divine truth established. Whom, that we may strengthen our memory, it will be no superfluous labour to mention again here also. __________________________________________________________________
[517] The Council of Ephesus, summoned by the Emperor Theodosius to meet at Whitsuntide, 431 (June 7), held its first sitting on June 22, in the Church of St. Mary, where the blessed Virgin was believed to have been buried.
[518] See note above, p. 131, n. 3. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXX.
The Council of Ephesus.
[79.] These then are the men whose writings, whether as judges or as witnesses, were recited in the Council: St. Peter, bishop of Alexandria, a most excellent Doctor and most blessed martyr, Saint Athanasius, bishop of the same city, a most faithful Teacher, and most eminent Confessor, Saint Theophilus, also bishop of the same city, a man illustrious for his faith, his life, his knowledge, whose successor, the revered Cyril, now [519] adorns the Alexandrian Church. And lest perchance the doctrine ratified by the Council should be thought peculiar to one city and province, there were added also those lights of Cappadocia, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, bishop and Confessor, St. Basil of Cæsarea in Cappadocia, bishop and Confessor, and the other St. Gregory, St. Gregory of Nyssa, for his faith, his conversation, his integrity, and his wisdom, most worthy to be the brother of Basil. And lest Greece or the East should seem to stand alone, to prove that the Western and Latin world also have always held the same belief, there were read in the Council certain Epistles of St. Felix, martyr, and St. Julius, both bishops of Rome. And that not only the Head, but the other parts, of the world also might bear witness to the judgment of the council, there was added from the South the most blessed Cyprian, bishop of Carthage and martyr, and from the North St. Ambrose, bishop of Milan.
[80.] These all then, to the sacred number of the decalogue, [520] were produced at Ephesus as doctors, councillors, witnesses, judges. And that blessed council holding their doctrine, following their counsel, believing their witness, submitting to their judgment without haste, without foregone conclusion, without partiality, gave their determination concerning the Rules of Faith. A much greater number of the ancients might have been adduced; but it was needless, because neither was it fit that the time should be occupied by a multitude of witnesses, nor does any one suppose that those ten were really of a different mind from the rest of their colleagues. __________________________________________________________________
[519] This marks Vincentius's date within very narrow limits, viz. after the Council of Ephesus, and before Cyril's death. Cyril died in 444.
[520] Vincentius's copy of the acts of the Council appears to have contained extracts from no more than ten Fathers. But the Fathers from whose writings extracts were read were twelve in number; the two omitted by Vincentius being Atticus, bishop of Constantinople, and Amphilochius, bishop of Iconium. In Labbe's Concilia, where the whole are given, it is remarked that in one manuscript the two last mentioned occupy a different place from the others. Dean Milman (Latin Christianity, vol. 1, p. 164) speaks of the passages read, "as of very doubtful bearing on the question raised by Nestorius." It is true only two, those from Athanasius and Gregory Nazianzen, contain the crucial term "Theotocos" but all express the truth which "Theotocos" symbolises. That the word was not of recent introduction, Bishop Pearson (Creed, Art. 3) shows by quotations from other writers besides those produced at the Council, going back as far as to Origen. The Fathers cited may certainly be said to fulfil to some extent Vincentius's requirement of universality. They represent the teaching of Alexandria, Rome, Carthage, Milan, Constantinople, and Asia Minor; but his appeal would have been more to his purpose if antiquity had been more expressly represented. With the exception of Cyprian, all the passages cited were from writers of comparatively recent date at the time, though, as Vincentius truly remarks, others might have been produced. Petavius (De Incarn. l. xiv. c. 15), in defending the cultus of the blessed Virgin and of the saints generally, lays much stress on this omission of citations from earlier Fathers at the Council, as he does also on similar omissions in the case of the fourth, fifth, and sixth Councils, with what object is sufficiently obvious. Bishop Bull points out Petavius's disposition to disparage or misrepresent the teaching of the earlier Fathers, in another and still more important instance. (Defens. Fid. Nic.) Introd. § 8. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXI.
The Constancy of the Ephesine Fathers in driving away Novelty and maintaining Antiquity.
[81.] After the preceding we added also the sentence of blessed Cyril, which is contained in these same Ecclesiastical Proceedings. For when the Epistle of Capreolus, [521] bishop of Carthage, had been read, wherein he earnestly intreats that novelty may be driven away and antiquity maintained, Cyril made and carried the proposal, which it may not be out of place to insert here: For says he, at the close of the proceedings, "Let the Epistle of Capreolus also, the reverend and very religious bishop of Carthage, which has been read, be inserted in the acts. His mind is obvious, for he intreats that the doctrines of the ancient faith be confirmed, such as are novel, wantonly devised, and impiously promulgated, reprobated and condemned." All the bishops cried out, "These are the words of all; this we all say, this we all desire." What mean "the words of all," what mean "the desires of all," but that what has been handed down from antiquity should be retained, what has been newly devised, rejected with disdain?
[82.] Next we expressed our admiration of the humility and sanctity of that Council, such that, though the number of priests was so great, almost the more part of them metropolitans, so erudite, so learned, that almost all were capable of taking part in doctrinal discussions, whom the very circumstance of their being assembled for the purpose, might seem to embolden to make some determination on their own authority, yet they innovated nothing, presumed nothing, arrogated to themselves absolutely nothing, but used all possible care to hand down nothing to posterity but what they had themselves received from their Fathers. And not only did they dispose satisfactorily of the matter presently in hand, but they also set an example to those who should come after them, how they also should adhere to the determinations of sacred antiquity, and condemn the devices of profane novelty.
[83.] We inveighed also against the wicked presumption of Nestorius in boasting that he was the first and the only one who understood holy Scripture, and that all those teachers were ignorant, who before him had expounded the sacred oracles, forsooth, the whole body of priests, the whole body of Confessors and martyrs, of whom some had published commentaries upon the Law of God, others had agreed with them in their comments, or had acquiesced in them. In a word, he confidently asserted that the whole Church was even now in error, and always had been in error, in that, as it seemed to him, it had followed, and was following, ignorant and misguided teachers. __________________________________________________________________
[521] The letter of Capreolus is given in Labbe's Concilia, vol. 3, col. 529 sqq. The Emperor Theodosius had written to Augustine, requiring his presence at the Council which he had summoned to meet at Ephesus in the matter of Nestorius. But Augustine having died while the letter was on its way, it was brought to Capreolus, bishop of Carthage and Metropolitan. Capreolus would have summoned a meeting of the African bishops, that they might appoint a delegate to represent them at the Council; but the presence of the hostile Vandals, who were laying waste the country in all directions, made it impossible for the bishops to travel to any place of meeting. Capreolus therefore could do no more than send his deacon Besula to represent him and the African Church, bearing with him the letter referred to in the text. The letter, after having been read before the Council, both in the original Latin and in a Greek translation, was, on the motion of Cyril, inserted in the acts. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXII.
The zeal of Celestine and Sixtus, bishops of Rome, in opposing Novelty.
[84.] The foregoing would be enough and very much more than enough, to crush and annihilate every profane novelty. But yet that nothing might be wanting to such completeness of proof, we added, at the close, the twofold authority of the Apostolic See, first, that of holy Pope Sixtus, the venerable prelate who now adorns the Roman Church; and secondly that of his predecessor, Pope Celestine of blessed memory, which same we think it necessary to insert here also.
Holy Pope Sixtus [522] then says in an Epistle which he wrote on Nestorius's matter to the bishop of Antioch, "Therefore, because, as the Apostle says, the faith is one,--evidently the faith which has obtained hitherto,--let us believe the things that are to be said, and say the things that are to be held." What are the things that are to be believed and to be said? He goes on: "Let no license be allowed to novelty, because it is not fit that any addition should be made to antiquity. Let not the clear faith and belief of our forefathers be fouled by any muddy admixture." A truly apostolic sentiment! He enhances the belief of the Fathers by the epithet of clearness; profane novelties he calls muddy.
[85.] Holy Pope Celestine also expresses himself in like manner and to the same effect. For in the Epistle which he wrote to the priests of Gaul, charging them with connivance with error, in that by their silence they failed in their duty to the ancient faith, and allowed profane novelties to spring up, he says: "We are deservedly to blame if we encourage error by silence. Therefore rebuke these people. Restrain their liberty of preaching." But here some one may doubt who they are whose liberty to preach as they list he forbids,--the preachers of antiquity or the devisers of novelty. Let himself tell us; let himself resolve the reader's doubt. For he goes on: "If the case be so (that is, if the case be so as certain persons complain to me touching your cities and provinces, that by your hurtful dissimulation you cause them to consent to certain novelties), if the case be so, let novelty cease to assail antiquity." This, then, was the sentence of blessed Celestine, not that antiquity should cease to subvert novelty, but that novelty should cease to assail antiquity. [523] __________________________________________________________________
[522] Sixtus III. See the Epistle in Labbe's Concilia, T. iii. Col. 1262.
[523] Celestine's letter will be found in the appendix to Vol. x., Part II., of St. Augustine's Works, col. 2403, Paris 1838. See the remarks on Vincentius's mode of dealing with Celestine's letter, Appendix III. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXIII.
The Children of the Catholic Church ought to adhere to the Faith of their Fathers and die for it.
[86.] Whoever then gainsays these Apostolic and Catholic determinations, first of all necessarily insults the memory of holy Celestine, who decreed that novelty should cease to assail antiquity; and in the next place sets at naught the decision of holy Sixtus, whose sentence was, "Let no license be allowed to novelty, since it is not fit that any addition be made to antiquity;" moreover, he condemns the determination of blessed Cyril, who extolled with high praise the zeal of the venerable Capreolus, in that he would fain have the ancient doctrines of the faith confirmed, and novel inventions condemned; yet more, he tramples upon the Council of Ephesus, that is, on the decisions of the holy bishops of almost the whole East, who decreed, under divine guidance, that nothing ought to be believed by posterity save what the sacred antiquity of the holy Fathers, consentient in Christ, had held, who with one voice, and with loud acclaim, testified that these were the words of all, this was the wish of all, this was the sentence of all, that as almost all heretics before Nestorius, despising antiquity and upholding novelty, had been condemned, so Nestorius, the author of novelty and the assailant of antiquity, should be condemned also. Whose consentient determination, inspired by the gift of sacred and celestial grace, whoever disapproves must needs hold the profaneness of Nestorius to have been condemned unjustly; finally, he despises as vile and worthless the whole Church of Christ, and its doctors, apostles, and prophets, and especially the blessed Apostle Paul: he despises the Church, in that she hath never failed in loyalty to the duty of cherishing and preserving the faith once for all delivered to her; he despises St. Paul, who wrote, "O Timothy, guard the deposit intrusted to thee, shunning profane novelties of words;" [524] and again, "if any man preach unto you other than ye have received, let him be accursed." [525] But if neither apostolical injunctions nor ecclesiastical decrees may be violated, by which, in accordance with the sacred consent of universality and antiquity, all heretics always, and, last of all, Pelagius, Coelestius, and Nestorius have been rightly and deservedly condemned, then assuredly it is incumbent on all Catholics who are anxious to approve themselves genuine sons of Mother Church, to adhere henceforward to the holy faith of the holy Fathers, to be wedded to it, to die in it; but as to the profane novelties of profane men--to detest them, abhor them, oppose them, give them no quarter.
[87.] These matters, handled more at large in the two preceding Commonitories, I have now put together more briefly by way of recapitulation, in order that my memory, to aid which I composed them, may, on the one hand, be refreshed by frequent reference, and, on the other, may avoid being wearied by prolixity. __________________________________________________________________
[524] 1 Tim. vi. 20.
[525] Gal. i. 9. __________________________________________________________________
Appendix I.
Note on Section 41, Page 143.
There is so close an agreement, both in substance and often in the form of expression, between the preceding sections (36-42) and the so-called Athanasian Creed, that it led Antelmi (Nova de Symb. Athanas. Disquisitio,) to ascribe that document to Vincentius as its author, and to suppose that in it we have the fulfilment of the promise here referred to. If, however, the Creed was the work of Vincentius, it cannot well be the work promised at the close of § 41, for Vincentius's words point to a fuller and more explicit treatment of the subjects referred to, whereas in the Athanasian Creed, though the subjects are the same, the treatment of them is very much briefer and more concise.
Whoever was the author however, if it was not Vincentius, he must at least, as the subjoined extracts seem to prove, have been familiar with the Commonitory, as also with St. Augustine's writings, of which, as well as of the Commonitory, the Creed bears evident traces. I subjoin the following instances of agreement between the Commonitory and the Creed: Antelmi gives several others.
Commonitory:
Athanasian Creed:
Unum Christum Jesum, non duos, eumdemque Deum pariter atque Hominem confitetur. § 36.
Est ergo Fides recta, ut credamus et confiteamur, quia Dominus noster Jesus Christus, Dei Filius, Deus pariter et Homo est. v. 28.
Alia est Persona Patris, alia Filii, alia Spiritus Sancti. § 37.
Alia est Persona Patris, alia Filii, alia Spiritus Sancti. v. 5.
Unus idemque Christus, Deus et Homo, Idem Patri et æqualis et minor, Idem ex Patre ante sæcula genitus, Idem in sæculo ex Matre generatus, perfectus Deus, perfectus Homo. § 37.
Deus ex substantia Patris, ante sæcula genitus, Homo ex substantia Matris, in sæculo natus; perfectus Deus perfectus Homo. vv. 29, 30.
Unus, non corruptibili nescio qua Divinitatis et Humanitatis confusione, sed integra et singulari quadam unitate Personæ. § 37.
Unus omnino, non conversione sustantiæ, sed unitate Personæ. v. 34.
Sicut Verbum in carne caro, ita Homo in Deo Deus est. § 40.
Unus, non conversione Divinitatis in carne, sed Adsumptione Humanitatis in Deo. [526] v. 33. __________________________________________________________________
[526] This is probably the true reading. __________________________________________________________________
Appendix II.
Note on Section 69, Page 149.
That Vincentius had Augustine and his adherents in view in this description will hardly be doubted by any one who will compare it with the following extracts, the first from Prosper's letter to Augustine, [527] giving him an account of the complaints made against his doctrine by the Massilian clergy; the second from St. Augustine's treatise, "De dono Perseveranti " [528] written in consequence of it.
Commonitory, § 69.
"Si quis interroget quempiam hæreticorum sibi talia persuadentem, Unde probas, unde doces quod Ecclesiæ Catholicæ universalem et antiquam fidem dimittere debeam? Statum ille, Scriptum est enim,' et continuo mille testimonia, mille exempla, mille auctoritates parat de Lege, de Psalmis, de Apostolis, de Prophetis, quibus, novo et malo more interpretatis, ex arce Catholica in hæreseos barathrum infelix anima præcipitetur. Audent enim polliceri et docere, quod in Ecclesia sua, id est, in communionis suæ conventiculo, magna et specialis ac plane personalis quædam sit Dei gratia, adeo ut sine ullo labore, sine ullo studio, sine ulla industria, etiamsi nec petant, nec quærant, nec pulsent, quicunque illi ad numerum suum pertinent, tamen ita divinitus dispensentur, ut, angelicis evecti manibus, id est, angelica protectione servati, nunquam possint offendere ad lapidem pedem suum, id est, nunquam scandalizari."
Prosper to Augustine.
"The Massilian clergy complain," he says, "Romoveri omnem industriam, tollique virtutes, si Dei constitutio humanus præveniat voluntates." § 3.
Then referring to the teaching of the Massilians themselves, Prosper continues,
"Ad conditionem hanc velint uniuscujusque hominis pertinere, ut ad cognitionem Dei et ad obedientiam mandatorum Ejus possit suam dirigere voluntatem, et ad hanc gratiam qua in Christo renascimur pervenire, per naturalem scilicet facultatem, petendo, quærendo, pulsando."
Referring to the line of argument pursued by himself and others of Augustine's friends and the Massilian way of dealing with it, he says, "Et cum contra eos Scripta Beatitudinis tuæ validissimis et innumeris testimoniis Divinarum Scriptuarum instructa proferimus,...obstinationem suam vetustate defendunt." § 3.
St. Augustine replies to Prosper not in an ordinary letter, but in two short Treatises, which must have been written immediately afters its receipt, for he died in August 430, the first entitled "De Prædestinatione Sanctorum," the second "De Dono Perseverantiæ."
The following extract is from the latter:
"Attendant ergo quomodo falluntur qui putant Esse a nobis, non dari nobis, ut petamus, quæramus, pulsemus. Et hoc esse, dicunt, quod gratia præceditur merito nostro, ut sequatur illa cum accipimus petentes, et invenimus quærentes, aperiturque pulsantibus. Nec volunt intelligere etiam hoc divini muneris esse ut oremus, hoc est, petamus, quæramus, atque pulsamus."--De Dono Persev. c. 23, § 64.
Vincentius's language is in keeping with that of others of St. Augustine's opponents, as Cassian and Faustus, extracts from whom are given by Noris; only, as he observes, while Vincentius uses the term "heresy" of the doctrine impugned,--they are content to use the milder term "error."--Histor. Pelag. p. 246. __________________________________________________________________
[527] Inter Epistolas S. August. Ep. 225. Tom. ii. and again Tom. x. col. 1327.
[528] Opera ix. col. 1833. __________________________________________________________________
Appendix III.
Note on Section 85, Page 156.
Celestine's letter was addressed to certain Bishops of Southern Gaul, who are particularized by name.
It appears that Prosper and Hilary had made a journey to Rome, where they then were, for the purpose of complaining to Celestine of the connivance of certain bishops of Southern Gaul with the unsound teaching of their clergy. They complained too of the disrespectful manner in which these same clergy treated the memory of Augustine, then recently deceased.
Celestine writes to these bishops: blames their connivance with a fault, which, says he, by their silence they make their own, and then proceeds to charge them, as in the passage quoted in the text, "Rebuke these people: restrain their liberty of preaching. If the case be so, let novelty cease to assail antiquity, let restlessness cease to disturb the Church's peace." Then, after some further exhortation, he adds, "We cannot wonder at their thus assailing the living, when they do not shrink from seeking to asperse the memory of the departed. With Augustine, whom all men everywhere loved and honoured, we ever held communion. Let a stop be put to this spirit of disparagement, which unhappily is on the increase."
The manner in which Vincentius deals with this letter has been very commonly thought, and with reason, to indicate a Semipelagian leaning. [529] His "si ita est," "if the case be so," emphasized by being repeated again and again, quite in an excited manner, as we should say, shows an evident wish to shift the charge of novelty from those against whom it had been brought, and fix it upon the opposite party. "Who are the introducers of novelty? The Massilians, as Prosper represents them, or their calumniators? Not the Massilians: they notoriously appeal to antiquity,--not the Massilians, but Prosper and the rest of Augustine's followers."
The feeling with regard to Augustine, on the part of the Massilian clergy, as indicated in Celestine's letter, is quite in accordance with the animus of § 69 above. See the note on that place, and see Noris's remarks, pp. 246-248. __________________________________________________________________
[529] E.g. "Hunc locum Vincentius Lirinensis sic a vero sensu contra Prosperum et Hilarium detorquet, ut ipse haud injuria in erroris Semipelagiani suspicionem veniat." The Benedictine editor of St. Augustine's works on Celestine's letter, Tom. x. col. 2403. To the same purpose, among others, Card. Norris, Histor. Pelag., 246. Vossius, Histor. Pelag. Tillemont, T. xv. pp. 145, 862. Neander, Church History, iv. p. 388. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
The Works of John Cassian.
Translated,
with prolegomena, prefaces, and notes,
by
Rev. Edgar C. S. Gibson, M.A.,
Principal of the Theological College, Wells, Somerset. __________________________________________________________________
Prolegomena. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Chapter I.
The Life of Cassian.
"Cassianus natione Scytha" is the description given by Gennadius [530] of the writer whose works are now for the first time translated into English. In spite, however, of the precision of this statement, considerable doubt hangs over Cassian's nationality, and it is hard to believe that he was in reality a Scythian. Not only is his language and style free from all trace of barbarism, but as a boy he certainly received a liberal education; for in his Conferences he laments that the exertions of his tutor and his own attention to continual study had so weakened him that his mind was so filled with songs of the poets that even at the hour of prayer it was thinking of those trifling fables and stories of battles with which it had from earliest infancy been stored; "and," he adds, "when singing Psalms or asking forgiveness of sins, some wanton recollection of the poems intrudes itself or the image of heroes fighting presents itself before the eyes; and an imagination of such phantoms is always haunting me." [531] Further evidence of the character of his education is also supplied by the fact that in his work on the Incarnation against Nestorius he manifests an acquaintance not only with the works of earlier Christian Fathers, but also with those of such writers as Cicero and Persius. [532]
These considerations are sufficient to make us hesitate before accepting the statement of Gennadius in what would at first sight be its natural meaning; although from the fact of his connection with Marseilles, where so much of Cassian's life was spent, as well as the early date at which he wrote (a.d. 495), it is dangerous to reject his authority altogether. It is, however, possible that the term "Scytha" is not really intended to denote a Scythian, but to refer to the desert of Scete, or Scitis, [533] in Egypt, where Cassian passed many years of his life, and with which his fame was closely associated; and, therefore, without going to the length of rejecting the authority of Gennadius altogether, we are free to look for some other country as the birthplace of our author. But little light is thrown on this subject by the statements of other writers. Photius [534] (a.d. 800) calls him Romaios, which need mean no more than born within the Roman Empire; while Honorius of Autun (a.d. 1130) speaks of him as Afer. The last-mentioned writer is, however, of too late a date to be of any authority; and it is just possible that the term "Afer," like the "Scytha" of Gennadius, may be owing to his lengthy residence in Egypt. [535] In the writings of Cassian himself there is nothing to enable us to identify the country of his birth with certainty; but, in describing the situation of his ancestral home, he speaks of the delightful pleasantness of the neighbourhood, and the recesses of the woods, which would not only delight the heart of a monk but would also furnish him with a plentiful supply of food; [536] while in a later passage he says that in his own country it was impossible to find any one who had adopted the monastic life. [537] From these notices, compared with a passage in the Preface to the Institutes, where the diocese of Apta Julia in Gallia Narbonensis is spoken of as still without monasteries, some ground is given for the conjecture that Cassian was really a native of Gaul, whither he returned in mature age after his wanderings were ended, and where most of his friends of whom we have any knowledge were settled. On the whole, then, it appears to the present writer to be the most probable view that Cassian was of Western origin, and, perhaps, a native of Provence, although it must be freely acknowledged that it is impossible to speak with certainty on this subject. [538]
Once more: not only is there this doubt about his nationality, but questions have also been raised concerning his original name. Gennadius and Cassiodorus [539] speak of him simply as Cassianus. In his own writings he represents himself as addressed by the monks in Egypt more than once by the name of John. [540] Prosper of Aquitaine (his contemporary and antagonist) combines both names, and speaks of him as "Joannes cognomento Cassianus." [541] In the titles of the majority of the mss. of his own writing he is merely "Cassianus," though in one case the work is entitled "Beatissimi Joannis qui et Cassiani." [542] Are we, then, with the writer of the last-mentioned ms., to suppose that the names John and Cassian are alternatives; or, with Prosper, that John was his nomen and Cassianus his cognomen, or, more strictly, agnomen? The former view is, perhaps, the more probable, as he may well have taken the name of John at his baptism or at his admission to the monastic life. The theory which has sometimes been advocated--that he received it at his ordination by S. John Chrysostom--falls to the ground when we notice that he represents himself as called John during his residence in Egypt, several years before his ordination and intercourse with S. Chrysostom.
To pass now from the question of his name and nationality to the narrative of Cassian's life. Various considerations point to the date of his birth as about the year 360. Of his family we know nothing, except that in one passage of his writings he incidentally makes mention of a sister; [543] while the language which he uses of his parents would imply that they were well-to-do and pious. [544] As we have already seen, he received a liberal education as a boy, but while still young forsook the world, and was received, together with his friend Germanus, into a monastery at Bethlehem, [545] where he spent several years and became thoroughly familiar with the customs and traditions of the monasteries of Syria. Eager, however, to make further progress in the perfect life, the two friends finally determined to visit Egypt, [546] where, as it was the country in which the monastic life originated, the most famous monasteries existed, and the most illustrious Anchorites were to be found. Permission to undertake the journey was sought and obtained from their superiors, a pledge being required of a speedy return when the object of their visit was gained. [547] Sailing from some port of Syria, perhaps Joppa, the friends arrived at Thennesus, a town at the mouth of the Tanitic branch of the Nile, near Lake Menzaleh. Here they fell in with a celebrated Anchorite named Archebius, bishop of the neighbouring town of Panephysis, who had come to Thennesus on business connected with the election of a bishop. He, on hearing the object of their visit to Egypt, at once offered them an introduction to some celebrated Anchorites in his own neighbourhood. The offer was gladly accepted, and under his guidance they made their way through a dreary district of salt marshes, many of the villages being in ruins and deserted by their inhabitants owing to the floods which had inundated the country and turned the rising grounds into islands, "and thus afforded the desired solitudes to the holy Anchorites, among whom three old men--Chæremon, Nesteros, and Joseph--were famed as the Anchorites of the longest standing." [548] Archebius brought them first to Chæremon, who had already passed his hundredth year, and was so far bent with age and constant prayer that he could no longer walk upright, but crawled upon his hands and knees. The saint's hesitation at allowing himself to be thus interviewed by strangers was soon overcome, and he finally gratified their curiosity by delivering three discourses, on the subjects of Perfection, Chastity, and the Protection of God. [549] From the cell of Chæremon Cassian and his companion proceeded to that of Abbot Nesteros, who honoured them with two discourses, on Spiritual Knowledge, and Divine Gifts; [550] and from him they repaired to Joseph, who belonged to a noble family, and before his renunciation of the world had been "primarius" of his native city, Thmuis. He was naturally better educated than the others, and was able to converse with them in Greek instead of being obliged to have recourse to the help of an interpreter, as had been the case with Chæremon and Nesteros. [551] His first question referred to the relationship between Cassian and Germanus: were they brothers? And their reply--that the brotherhood was spiritual and not carnal--furnished the old man with a text for his first discourse, which was on Friendship, and which was followed up on the next day by one on the Obligation of Promises, [552] called forth by the perplexity in which the travellers found themselves owing to their promise to return to Bethlehem,--a promise which they were loth to break, and which yet they could not fulfil without losing a grand opportunity of making progress in the spiritual life. In their difficulty they consulted Joseph; and, fortified by his authority and advice, they determined to break the letter of their promise and make a longer stay in Egypt, where they accordingly remained for seven years in spite of their brethren at Bethlehem, whose displeasure at their conduct, Cassian tells us, was not removed by their frequent letters home. [553]
It was while Cassian and his fellow-traveller were still in the neighbourhood of Panephysis that these energetic precursors of the modern "interviewers" paid a visit to Abbot Pinufius, a priest who presided over a large monastery. This man was an old friend of theirs, whose acquaintance they had previously made at Bethlehem, whither (after an ineffectual attempt to conceal himself in a monastery in the island of Tabenna) he had fled in order to escape the responsibilities of his office. There he had been received as a novice, and had been assigned by the abbot as an inmate of Cassian's cell, until he was recognized by a visitor from Egypt and brought back in triumph to his own monastery. [554] To him, therefore, Cassian and Germanus made their way; and by him they were warmly welcomed; the old man repaying their former hospitality by giving them quarters in his own cell. While staying in this monastery they were so fortunate as to be present at the admission of a novice, and heard the charge which Pinufius made to the new-comer on the occasion; [555] and afterwards the abbot favoured them with a discourse "on the end of penitence and the marks of satisfaction." [556] After this, resisting his pressing invitation to remain with him in the monastery, they proceeded once more on their travels, and, crossing the river, came to Diolcos, a town hard by the Sebennytic mouth of the Nile. Here was a barren tract of land between the river and the sea, rendered unfit for cultivation by the saltness of the soil and the dryness of the sand. It was, therefore, eagerly seized upon by the monks, who congregated here in great numbers in spite of the absence of water; the river from which it had to be fetched being some three miles distant. [557] In this neighbourhood they made the acquaintance of Abbot Piamun, a most celebrated Anchorite, who explained to them with great care the characteristics of the three kinds of monks; viz., the Coenobites, the Anchorites, and the Sarabaites. [558] This discourse had the effect of exciting their desire more keenly than ever for the Anchorites' life in preference to that of the Coenobite,--a desire which was afterwards confirmed by what they saw and heard in the desert of Scete. They next visited a large monastery in the same neighbourhood, which was governed by the Abbot Paul, and which ordinarily accommodated two hundred monks, but was at that moment filled with a much larger number, who had come from the surrounding monasteries to celebrate the "depositio" of the late abbot. [559] Here they met a certain Abbot John, whose humility had led him to give up the life of an Anchorite for that of a Coenobite, in order that he might have the opportunity of practising the virtues of obedience and subjection, which seemed out of the reach of the solitary. He was accordingly well qualified to speak of the subject which he selected for his discourse; viz., the aims of the Anchorite and Coenobite life. [560] Another well-known abbot, whose acquaintance they now made, was Theonas, who, when quite a young man, had been married by his parents, and later on, on failing to obtain the consent of his wife to a separation, in order that they might devote themselves to the monastic life, had deserted her and fled away into a monastery, where after a time he had been promoted to the office of almoner. From him they heard a discourse on the relaxation of the fast during Eastertide and Pentecost, [561] and, later on, one concerning Nocturnal Illusions, [562] and another on Sinlessness. [563] By these various discourses the two friends were rendered more desirous than ever of adopting the Anchorite life, and less inclined than before to return to the subjection of the monastery at Bethlehem. A far better course seemed to them to return to their own home, probably (as we have seen) in Gaul, where they would be free to practice what austerities they pleased without let or hindrance. [564] In their perplexity they consulted Abbot Abraham, who threw cold water on their plan in a discourse on Mortification, [565] which was entirely successful in persuading them to relinquish their half-formed intention. They, therefore, remained in Egypt for some years longer; and it is to the time of their stay in the neighbourhood of Diolcos that their acquaintance with Abbot Archebius must be assigned. This man, so Cassian tells us, [566] having discovered their desire to make some stay in the place, offered them the use of his cell, pretending that he was about to go off on a journey. They gladly accepted his offer. He went away for a few days, collected materials, and then returned and proceeded to build a new cell for himself. Shortly afterwards some more brethren came. He at once gave up to them his newly built cell, and once more set to work to build another for himself.
It is difficult to determine whether a stay in the desert of Scete was comprised in the seven years which the two friends now spent in Egypt, or whether they visited it for the first time during their second tour, after their return from Bethlehem. On the one hand, the language used in Conference XVIII. cc. i. and xvi. would almost suggest that they made their way into this remote district during their first sojourn in Egypt; and, on the other hand, that employed in Conference I. c. i. might imply a distinct journey to Egypt for the sake of visiting this region: and in XVII. xxx. Cassian distinctly asserts that they did visit Scete after their return to Bethlehem in fulfilment of their promise. On the whole, it appears the more natural view to suppose that their first tour was not extended beyond the Delta, more distant expeditions being reserved for a future occasion. Adopting, then, this view, we follow the travellers, after a seven years' absence, back to the monastery at Bethlehem, where they managed to pacify the irate brethren, and, strange to say, obtained leave to return to Egypt a second time. [567] On this occasion they penetrated farther into the country than they had previously done. The region which they now visited was the desert of Scete, or Scitis; that is, the southern part of the famous Nitrian Valley, a name which is well known to all students from the rich treasure of Syrian mss. brought home from thence by the Hon. Robert Curzon and Archdeacon Tattam now more than forty years ago. The district lies "to the northwest of Cairo, three days' journey in the Libyan desert," [568] and gains its name of Nitria from the salt lakes which still furnish abundance of nitre, which has been worked for fully two thousand years. The valley has some claims to be considered the original home of monasticism. Some have thought that a colony of Therapeutæ was settled here in the earliest days; and hither S. Frontonius is said to have retired with seventy brethren, to lead the life of ascetics, about the middle of the second century. [569] Less doubtful is the fact that S. Ammon, a contemporary and friend of S. Antony, organized the monastic system here in the fourth century, and "filled the same place in lower Egypt as Antony in the Thebaid." [570] Towards the close of the fourth century the valley was crowded with cells and monasteries. Rufinus, who visited it about 372, mentions fifty monasteries; [571] and the same number is given by Sozomen, who says that "some were inhabited by monks who live together in society, others by monks who have adopted a solitary mode of existence." [572] About twenty years later Palladius passed a considerable time here, and reckons the total number of monks and ascetics at five thousand. [573] They were also visited by S. Jerome about the same time, and various details of the life of the monks are given by him in his Epistles. [574] Some few monks still linger on to the present day to keep up the traditions of nearly eighteen centuries. They were visited (among others) by the Hon. Robert Curzon in 1833; and an interesting account of them is given by him in his volume on "the monasteries of the Levant:" [575] but the latest and best account of them is that given by Mr. A. J. Butler, who succeeded in gaining permission to visit them in 1883, and has described his journey in his excellent work on "the ancient Coptic Churches of Egypt." [576] Four monasteries alone remain; known as Dair Abu Makâr, Dair Anba Bishôi, Dair es Sûrianî, and Dair al Baramûs; but the ruins of many others may still be traced in the desert tracts on the west side of the Natron lakes, and the valley of the waterless river which at some very remote period is supposed to have formed the bed of one of the branches of the Nile." [577] The monasteries are all built on the same general plan, so that, as Mr. Butler tells us, a description of one will more or less accurately describe the others. Dair Abu Makâr (the monastery of S. Macarius), the first which he visited, which lies strictly within the desert of Scete, is spoken of as "a veritable fortress, standing about one-hundred and fifty yards square, with blind, lofty walls rising sheer out of the sand." "Each monastery has also, either detached or not, a large keep, or tower, standing four-square, and approached only by a draw-bridge. The tower contains the library, store-rooms for the vestments and sacred vessels, cellars for oil and corn, and many strange holes and hiding-places of the monks in the last resort, if their citadel should be taken by the enemy. Within the monastery is enclosed one principal and one or two smaller court-yards, around which stand the cells of the monks, domestic buildings, such as the mill-room, the oven, the refectory, and the like, and the churches." [578] The outward aspect can have changed but little since the fourth century. The buildings are perhaps stronger and more adapted to resist hostile attacks, but the general plan is probably identical with that adopted in the earliest monasteries erected in this remote region. Such, then, was the district to which Cassian and Germanus now made their way. Here they first sought and obtained an interview with Abbot Moses, who had formerly dwelt in the Thebaid near S. Antony, and was now living at a spot in the desert of Scete known as Calamus, [579] and was famous not only for practical goodness but also for contemplative excellence. After much persuasion he yielded to their entreaties and discoursed to them "on the goal or aim of a monk," [580] and, on the following day, on Discretion. [581] They next visited Abbot Paphnutius, or "the Buffalo," as he was named, from his love of solitude. He was an aged priest who had lived for years the life of an Anchorite, only leaving his cell for the purpose of going to the church, which was five miles off, on Saturday and Sunday, and returning with a large bucket of water on his shoulders to last him for the week. From him they heard of the "three kinds of renunciation" necessary for a monk. [582] They also visited his disciple Daniel, who had been ordained priest through the instrumentality of Paphnutius, but was so humble that he would never perform priestly functions in the presence of his master. The subject of his discourse in answer to the inquiry of the two friends was "the lust of the flesh and the spirit." [583] The next ascetic interviewed was Serapion, who spoke of the "eight principal faults" to which a monk was exposed; viz., gluttony, fornication, covetousness, anger, dejection, "accidie," vain glory, and pride. [584] After this they proceeded on a journey of some eighty miles to Cellæ, a place that lay between the desert of Scete (properly so called) and the Nitrian Valley, in order to consult Abbot Theodore on a difficulty which the recent massacre of a number of monks in Palestine by the Saracens had brought forcibly before them; viz., why was it that men of such illustrious merits and so great virtues should be slain by robbers, and why should God permit so great a crime to be committed? The difficulty was solved by Abbot Theodore in a discourse on "the death of the saints;" [585] and thus the journey was not taken in vain. Two other celebrated monks were also visited by the friends, whose discourses are recorded by Cassian: viz., Abbot Serenus, who spoke of "Inconstancy of mind, and Spiritual wickedness," [586] as well as of the nature of evil spirits, in a Conference on "Principalities;" [587] and Abbot Isaac, who delivered two discourses on the subject of Prayer. [588] A few days after the first of these was delivered there arrived in the desert the "festal letters" of Theophilus, Bishop of Alexandria, in which he denounced the heresy of the Anthropomorphites. This caused a great commotion among the monks of Scete; and Abbot Paphnutius, who presided over the monastery where Cassian was staying, was the only one who would allow the letters to be publicly read in the congregation. Finally, however, owing to the conciliatory firmness of Paphnutius, the great body of the monks was won over to a sounder and less materialistic view of the nature of the Godhead than had hitherto been prevalent among them. [589]
These are all the details that can be gathered from Cassian's writings of his stay in Scete, further than which he does not appear to have penetrated, as, when he speaks of the Thebaid and the monasteries there, it is only from hearsay and not from personal knowledge, although his original intention had certainly been to visit this district among others. [590]
In considering the date of Cassian's visit to Egypt there are various indications to guide us. In Conference XVIII. c. xiv., S. Athanasius is spoken of by Abbot Piamun as "of blessed memory;" and the language used of the Emperor Valens in c. vii. is such as to imply that he was already dead. The former died in 373, and the latter in 378. Again, in Conference XXIV. c. xxvi. Abbot Abraham is made to speak of John of Lycopolis as so famous that he was consulted by the very lords of creation, who sought his advice, and entrusted to his prayers and merits the crown of their empire and the fortunes of war. These expressions evidently allude to John's announcement to Theodosius of his victory over Maxentius in 388, and his success against Eugenius in 395. [591] If they stood alone, we could scarcely rely on these indications of date with any great confidence because the Conferences were not written till many years later, and it is impossible to determine with certainty how far they really represent the discourses actually spoken by the Egyptian Fathers, or how far they are the ideal compositions of Cassian himself. But, as we have seen, it is certain that Cassian was actually in Egypt at the time of the Anthropomorphite controversy raised by the letters of Theophilus in 399; and, as the other notices of events previously mentioned coincide very fairly with this, we cannot be far wrong in placing the two visits to Egypt between 380 and 400. About the last-named date Cassian must have finally left the country; and we next hear of him in Constantinople, where he was ordained deacon by S. Chrysostom, [592] and, together with his friend Germanus, put in charge of the treasury, the only part of the Cathedral which escaped the flames in the terrible conflagration of 404. Thus Cassian was a witness of all the troublous scenes which attended the persecution of S. Chrysostom, whose side he warmly espoused in the controversy which rent the East asunder. And when the Saint was violently deposed and removed from Constantinople, the two friends--Germanus, who was by this time raised to the priesthood, and Cassian, who was still in deacon's orders--were chosen as the bearers of a letter to Pope Innocent I. from the clergy who adhered to Chrysostom, detailing the scandalous scenes that had taken place, and the trials to which they had been exposed. [593] Of the length of Cassian's stay in Rome we have no information, but it is likely that it was of some considerable duration; and it may have been at this time that he was ordained priest by Innocent. Possibly, also, it was now that he made the acquaintance of one who was then quite young, but was destined afterwards to become famous as Pope Leo the Great; for some years afterwards (a.d. 430) it was at the request of Leo, then Archdeacon of Rome, that Cassian wrote his work on the Incarnation against Nestorius. Leaving Rome, Cassian is next found in Gaul, [594] which (if we are right in the supposition that it was his birthplace) he must have quitted when scarcely more than a child. When he left it monasticism was a thing almost if not quite unknown there, but during his absence in the East a few monasteries had been founded in the district of the Loire by S. Martin and S. Hilary of Poictiers. Ligugé was founded shortly after 360, and Marmoutier rather later, after 371; and about the time of his return similar institutions were beginning to spring up in Provence. In 410 S. Honoratus founded the monastery which will ever be associated with his name, in the island of Lérins, and, in the eloquent words of the historian of the monks of the West, "opened the arms of his love to the sons of all countries who desired to love Christ. A multitude of disciples of all nations joined him. The West could no longer envy the East; and shortly that retreat, destined in the intentions of its founder to renew upon the coasts of Provence the austerities of the Thebaid, became a celebrated school of theology and Christian philosophy, a citadel inaccessible to the waves of barbarian invasion, an asylum for literature and science, which had fled from Italy invaded by the Goths;--in short, a nursery of bishops and saints, who were destined to spread over the whole of Gaul the knowledge of the gospel and the glory of Lérins." [595]
It must have been about the same time--a little earlier or a little later--that Cassian settled at Marseilles; and there, "in the midst of those great forests which had supplied the Phoenician navy, which in the time of Cæsar reached as far as the sea-coast, and the mysterious obscurity of which had so terrified the Roman soldiers that the conqueror, to embolden them, had himself taken an axe and struck down an old oak," [596] two monasteries were now established,--one for men, built it is said over the tomb of S. Victor, a martyr in the persecution of Diocletian, [597] and the other for women. Cassian's long residence in the East and his intimate knowledge of the monastic system in vogue in Egypt made him at once looked up to as an authority, and practically as the head of the movement which was so rapidly taking root in Provence; and, although his fame has been overshadowed by that of the greatest of Western monks, S. Benedict of Nursia, yet his is really the credit of being, not indeed the actual founder, but the first organizer and systematizer, of Western monachism: and it is hoped that the copious illustrations from the Benedictine rule given in the notes to the first four books of the Institutes will serve to show how much the founder of the greatest order in the West was really indebted to his less-known predecessor. "He brought to bear upon the organization of Gallic monasteries lessons learnt in the East. Although S. Martin and others were before him, yet his life must be regarded as a new departure for monasticism in the land. The religious communities of S. Martin and S. Victricius in the centre of France were doubtless rudimentary and half-developed in discipline when compared with that established by Cassian at Marseilles, and with the many others which speedily arose modelled upon his elaborate rules." [598] The high estimation in which his work was held throughout the Middle Ages is shown not only by the immense number of mss. of the Institutes and Conferences which still remain scattered throughout the libraries of Europe, but also by the recommendation of them by Cassiodorus, and by S. Benedict himself, who enjoins that the Conferences should be read daily by the monks of his order.
At Marseilles, then, Cassian settled; and here it was that he wrote his three great works,--the Institutes, the Conferences, and On the Incarnation against Nestorius; the two former being written for the express purpose of encouraging and developing the monastic life. Of these the Institutes was the earliest, being composed in "twelve books on the institutes of the monasteries and the remedies for the eight principal faults," [599] at the request of Castor, Bishop of Apta Julia, some forty miles due north of Marseilles, who was desirous of introducing the monastic life into his diocese, where it was still a thing unknown. [600] As Castor died in 426, [601] and the work is dedicated to him, it must have been written some time between the years 419 and 426. When it was first undertaken Cassian's design already was to follow it up by a second treatise containing the Conferences of the Fathers, to which he several times alludes in the Institutes as a forthcoming work, [602] and which, like the companion volume, was undertaken at Castor's instigation. But, before even the first part of it was ready for publication, the Bishop of Apta was dead; and thus, to Cassian's sorrow, he was unable to dedicate it to him, as he had hoped to do. He therefore dedicated Conferences I.-X. (the first portion of the work) to Leontius, Bishop (probably) of Fréjus, and Helladius, who is termed "frater" in the Preface to this work, though, as we see from the Preface to Conference XVIII., he was afterwards raised to the episcopate. [603]
This portion of Cassian's work must have been completed shortly after the death of Castor in 426. It was speedily followed by Part II., containing Conferences XI. to XVII. This is dedicated to Honoratus and Eucherius, who are styled "fratres." Eucherius did not become Bishop of Lyons till 434; but, as Honoratus was raised to the see of Arles in 426, the volume must have been published not later than that year, or he would have been termed "Episcopus," as he is in the Preface to Conference XVIII., instead of "frater."
The third and last part of the work, containing Conferences XVIII. to XXIV., is dedicated to Jovinian, Minervius, Leontius, and Theodore, who are collectively styled "fratres." Leontius must, therefore, be a different person from the bishop to whom Conferences I.-X. were dedicated; and nothing further is known of him, or of Minervius and Jovinian. Theodore was afterwards raised to the Episcopate, and succeeded Leontius in the see of Fréjus in 432. This third part of Cassian's work was ready before the death of Honoratus, Bishop of Arles, who is spoken of in the Preface as if still living; and, therefore, its publication cannot be later than 428, as Honoratus died in January, 429.
Thus the whole work was completed between the years 426 and 428; and now Cassian, who was growing old, was desirous of rest, feeling as if his life's work was nearly over. [604] But the repose which he sought was not to be granted to him, for the remaining years of his life were troubled by two controversies,--the Nestorian, and the Pelagian,--or, rather, its offshoot, the Semi-Pelagian. Into the history of the former of these there is no need to enter here in detail. It broke out at Constantinople, where Nestorius had become bishop in succession to Sisinnius, in 428. The immediate occasion which gave rise to the controversy was a sermon by Anastasius, the Bishop's chaplain, in which he inveighed against the title Theotocos, as given to the Blessed Virgin Mary. This at once created a great sensation, as Nestorius warmly supported his chaplain, and proceeded to develop the heresy connected with his name, in a course of sermons. News of the controversy was brought to Egypt, and Cyril of Alexandria at once entered into the fray. After some correspondence between the two bishops, both parties endeavoured to gain the adherence of the Church of Rome early in the year 430; and now it was that Cassian became mixed up with the dispute. Greek learning was evidently at a low ebb in the Roman Church at this time; [605] and it was, perhaps, partly owing to Cassian's familiar acquaintance with this language, as well as owing to his connexion with Constantinople, where the trouble had now arisen, that Celestine's Archdeacon Leo turned to him at this crisis for help. Anyhow, whatever was the reason, an earnest appeal from Rome reached him, begging him to write a refutation of the new heresy. After some hesitation he consented, and the result of his labours is seen in the seven books on the Incarnation against Nestorius. The work was evidently done in haste, and published in 430, before the Council of Ephesus (for Cassian speaks of Nestorius throughout as still Bishop of Constantinople), and, judging from the way in which Augustine is spoken of in VII. xxvii., before the death of that Father, which took place in August, 430. A great part of the work is occupied with Scripture proof of our Lord's Divinity and unity of Person; but, taken as a whole, the treatise is distinctly of less value than Cassian's earlier writings, and betrays the haste in which it was composed by the occasional use of inaccurate language on the subject of the Incarnation, and of terms and phrases which the mature judgment of the Church has rejected. But the writer's keen penetration is seen by the quickness with which he connects the new heresy with the teaching of Pelagius, the connecting link between the two being found in the errors of Leporius of Trêves, who, in propagating Pelagian views of man's sufficiency and strength, had applied them to the case of our Lord, not shrinking from the conclusion that He was a mere man who had used his free will so well as to have lived without sin, and had only been made Christ in virtue of His baptism, whereby the Divine and human were associated in such manner that virtually there were two Christs. [606] The connexion between Nestorianism and Pelagianism has often been noticed by later writers, but to Cassian belongs the credit of having been the first to point it out. Of the impression produced by his book we have no record. He appears to have taken no further part in the controversy, which, indeed, must have been to him an episode, coming in the midst of that other controversy with which his name is inseparably associated; viz., that on Semi-Pelagianism, on which something must now be said.
The controversy arose in the following way. During the struggle with Pelagianism between the years 410 and 420, Augustine's views on the absolute need of grace were gradually hardening into a theory that grace was irresistible and therefore indefectible. "Intent above all things on magnifying the Divine Sovereignty, he practically forgot the complexity of the problem in hand and failed to do justice to the human element in the mysterious process of man's salvation." [607] The view of an absolute predestination irrespective of foreseen character, and of the irresistible and indefectible character of grace, was put forward by him, in a letter to a Roman priest, Sixtus, in the year 418. [608] Some years afterwards this letter fell into the hands of the monks of Adrumetum, some of whom were puzzled by its teaching; and, in order to allay the disputes among them, the matter was referred to Augustine himself. Thinking that the monks had misunderstood his teaching, he not only explained the letter but also wrote a fresh treatise,--"De Gratia et Libero Arbitrio" (426); and, when that failed to satisfy the malcontents, he followed it up with his work "De Correptione et Gratia" (426), which, so far as the monks of Adrumetum were concerned, seems to have ended the controversy. Elsewhere, however, hesitation was felt in going the full length of Augustine's teaching; and, in the South of Gaul especially, many were seriously disturbed at the turn which the controversy had lately taken, and were prepared to reject Augustine's teaching, as not merely novel, but also practically dangerous. "They said, in effect," to quote Canon Bright's lucid summary of their position, "to treat predestination as irrespective of foreseen conduct, and to limit the Divine good-will to a fixed number of persons thus selected, who, as such, are assured of perseverance, is not only to depart from the older theology, and from the earlier teaching of the Bishop of Hippo himself, but to cut at the root of religious effort, and to encourage either negligence or despair. They insisted that whatever theories might be devised concerning this mystery, which was not a fit subject for popular discussion, the door of salvation should be regarded as open to all, because the Saviour died for all.' To explain away the Scriptural assurance was, they maintained, to falsify the Divine promise and to nullify human responsibility. They believed in the doctrine of the Fall; they acknowledged the necessity of real grace in order to man's restoration; they even admitted that this grace must be prevenient' to such acts of will as resulted in Christian good works: but some of them thought--and herein consisted the error called Semi-Pelagian--that nature, unaided, could take the first step towards its recovery, by desiring to be healed through faith in Christ. If it could not,--if the very beginning of all good were strictly a Divine act,--exhortations seemed to them to be idle, and censure unjust, in regard to those on whom no such act had been wrought, and who, therefore, until it should be wrought, were helpless, and so far guiltless, in the matter." [609] Of the party which took up this position Cassian was the recognized head. True, he did not directly enter into the controversy himself, nor is he the author of any polemical works upon the subject; but it is impossible to doubt that the thirteenth Conference, containing the teaching of Abbot Chæremon on the Protection of God, was intended to meet what he evidently regarded as a serious error; viz., the implicit denial by the Augustinians of the need of effort on man's part.
Augustine was informed of the teaching of the School of Marseilles, as it was called, by one Hilary (a layman, not to be confounded with his namesake, the Bishop of Arles), who wrote to him two letters, of which the former is lost. The latter is still existing, and contains a careful account of what was maintained at Marseilles. Towards the close of it Hilary says that, as he was pressed for time, he had prevailed upon a friend to write as well, and would attach his letter to his own. This friend was Prosper of Aquitaine, also a layman and an ardent Augustinian, whose epistle has been preserved as well as Hilary's. [610] From these letters, and from the works which Augustine wrote in reply, we learn that the "Massilians" had been first disturbed by some of Augustine's earlier writings, as the Epistle to Paulinus; and that their distrust of his teaching on the subjects of Grace, Predestination, and Freewill had been increased by the receipt of his work "De Correptione et Gratia," although in other matters they agreed with him entirely, and were great admirers of his. [611] Personally, they are spoken of with great respect as men of no common virtue, and of wide influence; and, though Cassian's name is never mentioned in the correspondence, yet it is easy to read between the lines and see that he is referred to. [612]
Augustine replied to his correspondents by writing what proved to be almost his latest works,--the treatises "De Prædestinatione Sanctorum" and "De dono Perseverantiæ." In these volumes Augustine, while freely acknowledging the great difference between his opponents and the Pelagians, yet maintained as strongly as ever his own position, and "did not abate an iota of the contention that election and rejection were arbitrary, and that salvation was not really within the reach of all Christians." [613] Thus the books naturally failed to satisfy the recalcitrant party, or to convince those who thought that the denial of the freedom of the will tended to destroy man's responsibility. Prosper, however, was delighted with the treatises, and proceeded to follow them up with a work of his own, a poem of a thousand lines, "De Ingratis," by which he designates the Pelagians and Semi-Pelagians, whose opinions he speaks of as spreading with alarming rapidity. The date of this publication was probably the early part of 430. It was certainly written before the death of Augustine, which took place on August 28 of the same year. The removal from this life of the great champion of Grace did not bring to an end the controversy to which his writings had given birth. The school of Marseilles continued to propagate its views with unabated vigour, in spite of the protests of Prosper and Hilary, who finally took the important step of appealing to Pope Celestine, from whom they succeeded in obtaining a letter addressed to the Gallican Bishops, Venerius of Marseilles, Leontius of Fréjus, Marinus, Auxonius, Arcadius, Filtanius, and the rest. [614] Celestine speaks strongly of their negligence in not having suppressed what he regarded as a public scandal, and says that "priests ought not to teach so as to invade the episcopal prerogative," an expression in which we may well see an allusion to Cassian, the leading presbyter, of the diocese of Marseilles, whose Bishop is named first in the opening salutation; and the letter concludes with some words of eulogium on Augustine "of holy memory." Never, perhaps, was Gallican independence shown in a more striking manner than in the sturdy way in which the Massilians clung to their views in spite of the authority of the Pope now brought to bear upon them. Prosper and Hilary on their return found the obnoxious teaching daily spreading, so that the former of them finally determined to put down, if possible, the upholders of the objectionable tenets by a direct criticism of Cassian's Conferences. This was the origin of Prosper's work "Contra Collatorem," against the author of the Conferences, a treatise of considerable power and force, although not scrupulously fair. [615] The respect in which Cassian was held is strikingly shown by the fact that his antagonist never once names him directly, but merely speaks of him as a man of priestly rank who surpassed all his companions in power of arguing. The work consists of an examination of the thirteenth Conference, that of Abbot Chæremon, on the Protection of God, from which Prosper extracts twelve propositions, the first of which he says is orthodox while all the others are erroneous. [616] He concludes by warning his antagonist of the danger of Pelagianism, and expresses a hope that his doctrine may be condemned by Pope Sixtus as it had been by Celestine and his predecessors. The last statement fixes the date of the book as not earlier than 432; for Celestine only died in April in that year.
Cassian was evidently still living when this attack upon him was made; but, so far as we know, he made no reply to it. Its publication is the last event in his life of which we have any knowledge. He probably died shortly afterwards, as the expression used by Gennadius in speaking of his work against Nestorius would seem to imply that it preceded his death by no long interval; for he says that with this he brought to a close his literary labours and his life in the reign of Theodosius and Valentinian. [617]
The controversy on Grace and Freewill lingered on for nearly a century longer, and was only finally disposed of by the wise moderation shown by Cæsarius of Arles and those who acted with him at the Council of Orange (Arausio), in the year 529. [618]
While it cannot be denied that the teaching of Cassian and his school in denying the necessity of initial and prevenient grace is erroneous and opens a door at which Pelagianism may easily creep in, yet it was an honest attempt to vindicate human responsibility; and it must be frankly admitted that the teaching of Augustine was one-sided and required to be balanced: nor would the question have ever been brought into prominence had it not been for the hard and rigorous way in which the doctrine of Predestination was taught, and the denial that the possibility of salvation lay within the reach of all men. While, then, it is granted that a verdict of guilty must be returned on the charge of Semi-Pelagianism in Cassian's case, we are surely justified in claiming that a recommendation to mercy be attached to it on the plea of extenuating circumstances. Since his death Cassian has ever occupied a somewhat ambiguous position in the mind of the Church. Never formally canonized, his name is not found in the Calendars of the West; nor is he honoured with the title of "Saint." He is, however, generally spoken of as "the blessed Cassian," holding in this respect the same position as Theodoret, of whom Dr. Newman says that, though he "has the responsibility of acts which have forfeited to him that oecumenical dignity," yet he is "not without honorary title in the Church's hagiology; for he has ever been known as the blessed Theodoret.'" [619] In the East Cassian's position is somewhat better. He is there regarded as a saint, and may possibly be intended by the Cassian who is commemorated on February 29. [620] It is only natural that this difference should be made, for the Eastern Church has always held a milder view of the effect of the Fall than that which has been current in the West since the days of Augustine; and, indeed, Cassian, in making his protest against the rising tide of Augustinianism, was in the main only handing on the teaching which he had received from his Eastern instructors. __________________________________________________________________
[530] Gennadius Catalogus, c. lxii.
[531] Conference XIV. xii.
[532] On the Incarnation, VI. ix., x.
[533] Skiathis, and Skiathike (v. l. Skithiake) chora are the forms of the name given by Ptolemy. The Greek Fathers speak of the district as Sketis, while in Latin writers the name appears as Scythia, or Scythis; and, though the printed texts of Cassian give the form as Scitium, heremus Scitii, and heremus Scitiotica, yet we learn from Petschenig that in the mss. of his works it is not seldom written as Scythium. It should be added that in the text of Gennadius the reading is not absolutely free from doubt, as there is some slight authority for reading "natus Serta."
[534] Bibliotheca, cod. cxcvii.
[535] Dr. Gregory Smith (Dictionary of Christian Biography, art. Cassian) thinks that Cassianus' possibly points to Casius, a small town in Syria; but, apart from the fact that the name was not uncommon in the West as well as in the East, the description of his home as being in a country where there were no monasteries is quite fatal to this idea.
[536] Conference XXIV. i.
[537] c. xviii.
[538] No difficulty need be felt on the score of his thorough knowledge of Greek, for this could easily be accounted for by his education at Bethlehem, and prolonged residence in the East.
[539] De Div. Lect. Pref., and c. xxix.
[540] Conference XIV. ix.; Institute V. xxxv.
[541] Chronicle.
[542] Parisinus. Nouv. acquis. Lat. 260, of the eighth or ninth century.
[543] Institutes XI. xviii.
[544] Conference XXIV. i.
[545] See the Institutes III. iv.; IV. xix.-xxi., xxxi. Conferences I. i.; XI. i. v.; XIX. i.; XX. i. The date is too early for this to have been S. Jerome's famous monastery, as that father only settled at Bethlehem towards the close of 386, by which time Cassian himself must have been already in Egypt; nor does he anywhere in his writings make any allusion to Jerome as his teacher, although he mentions him with great respect in his work on the Incarnation, Book VII. c. xxvi.
[546] Conference XI. i. A good account of Cassian's visits to Egypt is given in Fleury's Ecclesiastical History, Book XX., c. iii.-vii.
[547] Conference XVII. ii.
[548] Conference XI. i.-iii., and compare VII. xxvi. for another description of the same district.
[549] Conferences XI., XII., XIII.
[550] Conferences XIV., XV.
[551] Conference XVI. i.
[552] Conferences XVI., XVII.
[553] See Conference XVII. i.-v. and xxx.
[554] Conference XX. i., ii. The story is also told in the Institutes, IV. xxx.
[555] Institute V. xxxii.-xlii.
[556] Conference XX.
[557] Institute V. xxxvi.
[558] Conference XVIII. On the Sarabaites, see the note on c. vii.
[559] Conference XIX. i.
[560] Conference XIX. i.
[561] Conference XXI.
[562] Conference XXII.
[563] Conference XXIII.
[564] Conference XXIV. i.
[565] Conference XXIV.
[566] Institute V. xxxvi. sq.
[567] Conference XVII. xxx.
[568] Butler's Coptic Churches, Vol. I., p. 287.
[569] Rosweyd, Vitæ Patrum; and the Bollandist Acta Sanctorum, 14 April, Vol. II., 201-3.
[570] Dictionary of Christian Biography, art. Ammon; cf. Rufinus, Hist.: Monach, xxx.; and Palladius, Hist.: Lausiaca, viii.
[571] Hist., Monach, c. xxi.
[572] Sozomen, H.E. VI. xxxi.
[573] Hist., Laus., c. vii.
[574] Epp.: ad Eustochium, ad Rustic.
[575] Part. I., cc. vii., viii.
[576] The Ancient Coptic Churches of Egypt, by Alfred J. Butler. 2 vols. (Oxford, 1884).
[577] Curzon, p. 79.
[578] Butler, Vol. I., pp. 295, 6, 7.
[579] Conference II. ii.; III. v.
[580] Conference I.
[581] Conference II.
[582] Conference III.
[583] Conference IV.
[584] Conference V.
[585] Conference VI.
[586] Conference VII.
[587] Conference VIII.
[588] Conference IX. x.
[589] See Conference X. cc. i-iii.
[590] See Conference XI. i.
[591] Compare the Institutes, IV. xxiii.
[592] On the Incarnation, VII. xxxi.
[593] Palladius Dial. iii.; Sozomen, H. E. VIII. xxvi.
[594] It is highly precarious to infer from the language used in the Institutes, III. that Cassian visited Mesopotamia before settling in Gaul. His departure from Rome may perhaps have been occasioned by the Gothic invasion of Italy and Alaric's sieges of Rome, 408-410.
[595] Montalembert's Monks of the West, Vol. I. p. 464 (Eng. Translation). The names of Hilary of Arles, Vincent of Lérins, Salvian, Eucherius of Lyons, Lupus of Troyes, and Cæsarius of Arles, are alone sufficient to render the monastery of Lérins illustrious in the annals of the Church of Gaul.
[596] Montalembert, l. c.
[597] The Acts of S. Victor's martyrdom given by Ruinart, Acta Sincera, p. 225, have been attributed by Tillemont and others to Cassian, but without sufficient reason.
[598] The Church in Roman Gaul, by R. Travers Smith, p. 245.
[599] This is the title which Cassian himself gives to the work in his Preface to the Conferences.
[600] Institutes, Preface.
[601] Castor is commemorated on the twenty-first of September. See the Bollandist Acta Sanctorum, Sept. VI. 249.
[602] See the Institutes II. i., ix., xviii.; V. iv.
[603] With Papa Leonti et Sancte frater Helladi, in the Preface to Conference I., compare beatissimis Episcopis Helladio ac Leontio, in the Preface to Conference XVIII.
[604] See the Preface to the work On the Incarnation against Nestorius.
[605] See the Epistle of Celestine to Nestorius in Mansi IV. 1026, in which he apologizes for delay by saying that the letter and other documents sent by Nestorius had had to be translated into Latin.
[606] See On the Incarnation, Book I. c. ii. sq.
[607] The Anti-Pelagian Treatises of S. Augustine; with an Introduction by William Bright, D.D. (Oxford), 1889, p. 1.
[608] Epistle xciv.
[609] Anti-Pelagian Treatises, p. liv., lv.
[610] Epp. ccxxv., ccxxvi., in the correspondence of S. Augustine. Works, Vol. II. 820, in the Benedictine Edition.
[611] Cassian himself quotes Augustine as an authority for the Catholic doctrine of the Incarnation in his work against Nestorius, VII. xxvii. But it is remarkable that, whereas on all the other authorities quoted (Hilary, Ambrose, Jerome, Rufinus, Gregory, Nazianzen, Athanasius, and Chrysostom) a high encomium is passed, Augustine alone is alluded to with no words of praise, being simply spoken of as priest (sacerdos) of Hippo Regius. There is no authority for the reading "magnus sacerdos," found in the editions of Cuyck and Gazet, which misled Neander. Ch. Hist. Vol. IV. p. 376, E. T.
[612] The only person referred to by name is Hilary, who had just succeeded Honoratus as Bishop of Arles. This fixes the date of the correspondence as 429.
[613] Bright's Anti-Pelagian Treatises, l. c.
[614] The letter is given in full in Gazet's edition of Cassian, with certain doctrinal articles appended, which really belong to a later date. See Dr. Newman's note to the English translation of Fleury, Book XXVI. c. xi.
[615] The treatise is given in Gazet's edition of Cassian.
[616] The propositions extracted by Prosper are the following:-- (1) That the initiative not only of our actions but also of our good thoughts comes from God, who inspires us with a good will to begin with, and supplies us with the opportunity of carrying out what we rightly desire; for "every good gift and every perfect gift cometh down from above, from the Father of light," who both begins what is good, and continues it and completes it in us. c. iii. This proposition Prosper allows to be catholic and orthodox. (2) The Divine protection is inseparably present with us, and so great is the kindness of the Creator towards His creatures that His Providence not only accompanies it, but even constantly precedes it, as the prophet experienced and plainly confessed, saying, "My God will prevent me with His mercy." And when He sees in us some beginnings of a good will, He at once enlightens and strengthens it, and urges it on towards salvation, increasing that which He Himself implanted, or which He sees to have arisen from our own efforts. c. viii. (3) Only in all these there is a declaration of the grace of God and the freedom of the will, because even of his own motion a man can be led to the quest of virtue, but always stands in need of the help of the Lord. For neither does any one enjoy good health whenever he likes, nor is he of his own will and pleasure set free from disease and sickness. c. ix. (4) That it may be still clearer that, through the excellence of nature, which is granted by the goodness of the Creator, sometimes the first beginnings of a good will arise, which, however, cannot attain to the complete performance of what is good unless they are guided by the Lord, the apostle bears witness, and says, "For to will is present with me, but to perform what is good I find not." Ib. (5) And so these are somehow mixed up and indiscriminately confused, so that, among many persons, the question which depends upon the other is involved in great difficulty; i.e., does God have compassion upon us because we have shown the beginning of a good will, or does the beginning of a good will follow because God has had compassion upon us? For many, believing each of these alternatives, and asserting them more broadly than is right, are entangled in all kinds of opposite errors. For if we say that the beginning of free will is in our own power, what about Paul the persecutor, what about Matthew the publican, of whom the one was drawn to salvation while eager for bloodshed and the punishment of the innocent, the other while eager for violence and rapine? But, if we say that the beginning of our free will is always due to the inspiration of the grace of God, what about the faith of Zacchæus, or what are we to say of the goodness of the thief on the cross, who by their own desires brought violence to bear on the kingdom of heaven, and prevented the special leadings of their vocation? c. xi. (6) These two, then, viz., the grace of God and Free-will, seem opposed to each other, but really are in harmony; and we gather from natural piety that we ought to have both alike, lest if we withdraw one of them from men we should seem to have broken the rule of the Church's faith. Ib. (7) Adam, therefore, after the fall, conceived a knowledge of evil which he had not previously, but did not lose the knowledge of good which he already possessed. c. xii. (8) Wherefore we must take care not to refer all the merits of the saints to the Lord in such a way as to ascribe nothing but what is evil and perverse to human nature. Ib. (9) It cannot be doubted that there are by nature some seeds of goodness implanted by the kindness of the Creator, but unless they are quickened by the assistance of God they cannot attain an increase of perfection. Ib. (10) And for this, too, we read that in the case of Job, his well-tried athlete, when the Devil had challenged him to single combat, the Divine righteousness had made provision. For, if he had advanced against his foe not with his own strength, but solely with the protection of God's grace, and, supported only by Divine aid, without any virtue of patience on his own part, had borne that manifold weight of temptations and losses, contrived with all the cruelty of his foe, might not the Devil have repeated with some justice that slanderous speech which he had previously uttered, "Doth Job serve God for nought? Hast Thou not hedged him in, and all his substance round about? But take away thine hand," i.e., allow him to fight with me in his own strength, "and he will curse Thee to Thy face." But, as after the struggle the slanderous foe dared not give vent to any such murmur as this, he admitted that he was vanquished by his (i.e., Job's) strength, and not by that of God: although, too, we must not hold that the grace of God was altogether wanting to him, which gave to the tempter a power of tempting in proportion to that which he had of resisting. c. xiv. (11) The Lord marvelled at him (viz., the centurion), and praised him, and put him before all those of the people of Israel who had believed, saying, "Verily, I say unto you, I have not found so great faith in Israel." For there would have been no ground for praise or merit if Christ had only preferred in him what He Himself had given. Ib. (12) Hence it comes that in our prayers we proclaim God as not only our protector and Saviour, but actually as our helper and sponsor. For whereas He first calls us to Him, and while we are still ignorant and unwilling draws us towards salvation, He is our protector and Saviour; but whereas, when we are already striving, He is wont to bring us help, and to receive and defend those who fly to Him for refuge, He is deemed our sponsor and refuge. c. xvii. This last extract is in itself perfectly orthodox, and might be thought merely to express the distinction between "preventing" and "co-operating" grace; but the context makes it clear that Cassian means that in some cases grace "prevents," while in others the initial movement towards salvation comes from man, and grace is only needed to "co-operate."
[617] Gennadius, in Catal., c. lxii. Ad extremum rogatus a Leone Archidiacono, postea urbis Romæ Episcopo, scripsit adversus Nestorium "De Incarnatione Domini" libros septem, et in his scribendi apud Massiliam et vivendi finem fecit Theodosio et Valentiniano regnantibus. The local commemoration of Cassian is on July 23.
[618] On the history of Semi-Pelagianism see Bright's Anti-Pelagian Treatises of S. Augustine, Introd., pp. xlix.-lxviii., and the Christian Remembrancer, Vol. XXXI. pp. 155-162.
[619] Historical Sketches, Vol. III., p. 307.
[620] The identification is anything but certain, for though there is no difficulty in the term Romaios, as that is also applied to our author by Photius, yet the additional statement made in the Horologion, that he was originally stratiotikos ten taxin, suggests that a different person is alluded to, possibly the same as the Cassian commemorated in the Roman martyrology on August 13. A list of some twenty-five churches where Cassian is honoured as a saint is given in Guesnay's Cassianus Illustratus. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter II.
The History of Cassian's Writings, MSS., and Editions.
The literary history of Cassian's works is not without an interest of its own. We have already seen the estimation in which they were held in spite of their Semi-Pelagian doctrines. These were naturally accounted a blemish, and it is not surprising that those who most admired their excellences were anxious to avoid propagating their errors. Hence they were often "expurgated," and in many mss. the text has suffered considerably from the changes made by copyists in the interests of orthodoxy. As early as the fifth century we find two revised versions of portions of his works existing. His friend Eucherius, Bishop of Lyons, was the author of an epitome of the Institutes, which still exists; [621] and although this was compiled for convenience' sake because of the length of the original work, rather than from any suspicion of his teaching, the case is different with a recension made for use in Africa by Victor, Bishop of Martyrites. This is no longer extant, but Cassiodorus distinctly tells us that it was made in the interests of orthodoxy by means of expurgation as well as addition of what was wanting. [622] Yet another epitome of three of the Conferences (I., II., VII.) was made at some time before the tenth century. It was translated into Greek, and known to Photius, who speaks [623] of three works of Cassian as translated into Greek: viz., (1) an Epitome of the Institutes, Books I.-IV.; (2) Epitome of the Institutes, Books V.-XII.; and (3) one of the Conferences I., II., VII.
Thus in very early days the fashion was set of expurgating and emending the writings of Cassian; and Leuwis de Ryckel, better known as Dionysius Carthusianus, might have quoted several precedents for his method of dealing with the text. This famous divine,--the doctor exstaticus of the fifteenth century,--shocked as others had been before him at the Semi-Pelagianism of the Conferences, and yet sensible of their real value in spite of sundry blemishes, took in hand to correct them, and gave to the world a free paraphrase both of the Institutes and of the Conferences, in a somewhat simple style and one more easy to be understood than the original. The greatest alterations, as might be expected, are visible in the thirteenth Conference; as Dionysius, in his endeavour to make Cassian orthodox, omits all that savours of Semi-Pelagianism; and from c. viii. onward there are large omissions and various suggestive alterations in the text. [624]
Incidental mention has been already made of the esteem in which the Institutes and Conferences were held by S. Benedict and Cassiodorus. In the Rule of the former (c. xlii.) it is ordered that after supper the brethren should assemble together, and one of them should read the Conferences, or Lives of the Fathers, or any other book calculated to edify. And again, in the closing chapter of the same rule, the study of them is recommended to those who are desirous of perfection; for "what are the Conferences of the Fathers, the Institutes, and the lives of them; what, too, the Rule of our holy father, S. Basil, but examples of virtuous and obedient monks, and helps to the attainment of virtue?" Equally strong is the recommendation of Cassiodorus: "Sedulo legite, frequenter audite;" but at the same time he reminds his readers that Cassian was very properly censured by Prosper for his teaching on Freewill, and that, therefore, he is to be read with caution whenever he touches on this subject. With testimonies such as these to their value it is no wonder that copies were rapidly multiplied, so that scarcely a monastery was without a copy of some part of them; and existing mss. of the Institutes and Conferences are very numerous. But none of the oldest mss. contain the complete work. The institutes were often regarded as made up of two separate treatises,--(1) the Institutes of the Coenobia, containing Books I.-IV., and (2) On the Eight Principal Faults, comprising Books V.-XII. So, too, with the Conferences, and their three divisions: they are often found separately in different mss.
The mss. being so numerous, it was found impossible to collate them all for the latest edition of Cassian's works; viz., that edited by Petschenig for the Vienna Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum. The Editor therefore confined his attention to a limited number, of which the following is the list.
I. The Institutes.
1. Codex Casinensis Rescriptus, 295. A Palimpsest with the Epistles of S. Jerome written over Cassian's work. The date of this ms. is the seventh or eighth century, and it contains portions only of the Institutes, nothing remaining of Books I.-IV., or of VIII. and IX.
2. Codex Majoris Seminarii OEduensis (Autun), 24. Seventh century, containing portions of Books V.-XII.
3. Caroliruhensis, 87. Eighth century, containing all twelve books.
4. Sangallensis, 183. Ninth century.
5. Parisinus, 12292. Tenth century.
6. Laudunensis (Laon), 328 bis. Ninth century.
7. Caroliruhensis, 164. Ninth century.
II. Conferences I.-X.
1. Vaticanus, 5766. Eighth century.
2. Parisinus, Bibl. Nat., 13384. Ninth century.
3. Vercellensis (Chapter Library), 187, 44. Cent. 8-10.
4. Parisinus, Bibl. Nat. nouv. fonds, 2170. Ninth century. This (with a few lacunæ) contains all the Conferences, being the only one of Petschenig's mss. of which this can be said.
5. Vaticanus, Bibl. Palat., 560. Tenth century.
6. Sangallensis, 574. Cent. 9-10.
Of these mss. the last two contain many errors and interpolations, some of which are followed in the editions of Cassian published at Basle, 1485-1495.
III. Conferences XI.-XVII.
1. Sessorianus (Rome), 55. Cent. 7-8.
2. Petropolitanus, Bibl. Imp. O. 1, 4. Seventh or eighth century.
3. Sangallensis, 576. Ninth century.
4. Parisinus, Bibl. Nat. nouv. fonds., 2170 (as above).
5. Vindobonensis, 397. Tenth century. This Vienna ms. contains Prosper's work Contra Collatorem, the passages of Cassian being written in the margin.
IV. Conferences XVIII.-XXIV.
1. Monacensis, 4549. Cent. 8-9.
2. Monacensis, 6343. Ninth century.
3. Parisinus, Bibl. Nat. nouv. fonds., 2170 (as above).
4. Vaticanus, Bibl. Reginæ Sueciæ, 140. Cent. 9-10.
5. Caroliruhensis, 92. Ninth century.
6. Sangallensis, 575. Ninth century.
Passing now from the Institutes and Conferences to the work "On the Incarnation against Nestorius," we are no longer encumbered by the number of mss. There was not the same reason for the multiplication of copies of it as there was in the case of those writings which bore on the monastic life. It appears never to have obtained any special popularity, and, so far as is known, only seven mss. of it are still in existence. The following are those of which Petschenig made use for his edition:--
1. Codex Bibl. Armentarii Parisiensis (Bibl. de l'Arsenal), 483. Cent. 10-11.
2. British Museum addl., 16414. Cent. 11-12.
3. Parisinus, Bibl. Nat., 14860. Thirteenth century.
4. Bibl. Coloniensium Augustinianorum. This ms. is now lost, but was used by Cuyck for his edition of Cassian, and from this Petschenig is able to give selected readings.
The remaining mss. known to exist, but not used by Petschenig, are these:--
1. Matritensis, Bibl. Nat., Q. 106. Twelfth century.
2. Laurentianus (Laurentian Library at Florence), XXVI., 13. Fifteenth century.
3. Bibl. Leop. Medici Foesulanæ (also at Florence), 48. Fifteenth century.
4. Parisinus, 2143. Fourteenth century. [625]
It only remains to give some account of the various editions of the printed text.
It has generally been stated that the earliest edition of the Institutes was that printed at Venice in 1481, of which only a single copy is known to exist, viz., in the Laurentian Library at Florence; and that the first edition which included the Conferences was that published by Amerbach at Basle in 1485. This statement, however, appears to be erroneous, as there still exists in the British Museum a single copy of a very early black-letter edition of the Conferences. The title-page is gone, and there is no colophon; and, therefore, the date cannot be given with certainty, but the work is assigned by the authorities of the Museum to the year 1476, and is thought to have proceeded from the press of the Brothers of the Common life at Brussels. The first page of the work begins as follows: "Ut Valeas cor in opere isto citius invenire qd requiris hæc tibi concapitulatio breviter demostrabit quis unde in singulis collationibus disputaverit." Then follows a list of the twenty-four Conferences with their authors, and the page ends with these words: "Prologus cassiani sup. collationes patru ad leontiu et elladiu epos. In nomine Domini ihu cristi dei nostri feliciter."
This, then, in all probability was the first edition of the Latin text of the Conferences. But it is a curious fact that at a still earlier date a free German translation or paraphrase of them had already been published. This, like the work just mentioned, has been overlooked by all the editors of Cassian, but two copies of it still remain in the British Museum, beginning as follow: "Hic liber a quodam egregio sacrarum literarum professore magistro Johane Nide ordis pdicatorum fratre de latino in vulgarem Nuremberge translatus est." The colophon in one copy gives the date as 1472, and the place at which it was printed as Augsberg. The other copy has no date but is assigned by the authorities of the Museum to a still earlier year; viz., 1470.
The Basle edition of 1485 was reprinted at the press of Amerbach in 1497; and at Venice there was issued a second edition of the Institutes, to which the Conferences were added, in 1491. [626] Subsequent early editions are those of Lyons, in 1516 and 1525, and Bologna 1521. But not till 1534 were the seven books on the Incarnation against Nestorius published. They appear for the first time in the edition which was issued in this year from the press of Cratander at Basle.
Far superior to all these early editions, which were very faulty, was that published by Christopher Plantin at Antwerp in 1578, edited by H. Cuyck, Professor at Louvain and afterward Bishop of Ruremonde. It was undertaken at the suggestion of Cardinal Carafa, and its full title is the following: "D. Ioannis Cassiani Eremitæ Monasticarum Institutionum libri IIII. De Capitalibus vitiis libri VIII. Collationes SS. Patrum XXIIII. De Verbi Incarnatione libri VII. Nunc demum post varias editiones ad complurium ms. fidem a non pancis mendarum milibus incredibili labore expurgati: id quod ex subiectis ad calcem castigationibus facile cognosci poterit: additis etiam ad quædam loca censoriis notationibus, et obscurarum vocum ac sententiarun elucidatione, un a cum duobus Indicibus locupletissimis. Accesserunt quoque Regulæ SS. Patrum ex antiquissimo Affliginiensis monasterii ms. codice desumptæ. Opera et studio Henrici Cuyckii Sacræ Theologiæ Licentiati."
Cuyck's work was supplemented, also at Carafa's desire, by Petrus Ciacconius, a priest of Toledo, who died in 1581, before it was ready for the press. A new edition was, however, published at Rome in 1588 "ex Edibus Dominicæ Basæ," in which the notes and emendations of Ciacconius were embodied. Unfortunately this edition does not contain the books on the Incarnation. Its full title is as follows: "Ioannis Cassiani Eremitæ de institutis renuntiantium Libri XII. Collationes Sanctorum Patrum XXIIII. Adiectæ sunt quarundam obscurarum dictionum interpretationes ordine alphabeti dispositæ: et observationes in loca ambigua et minus tuta. Præterea Indices duo testimoniorum sacræ Scripturæ, quæ a Cassiano vel explicantur, vel aliter quam vulgata editio habet, citantur: ac postremo verum memorabilium Index copiosissimus. Accedit Regula S. Pachomii, quæ a S. Hieronymo in Latinum sermonem conversa est: Omnia multo quam antehac, auxilio vetustissimorum codicum, emendatiora, et ad suam integritatem restituta." This edition, as well as the previous one, contained a dissertation on a number of passages (some thirty in all) of doubtful orthodoxy, in order to put the reader on his guard against following Cassian in his errors.
In 1616 there was published at Douay in two volumes what has remained until the present day the standard edition of Cassian's works, prepared with loving care by a Benedictine monk of the Abbey of St. Vaast at Arras, named Gazet. This edition is enriched throughout with copious annotations, containing an immense amount of illustrative matter; and besides the text of Cassian's works it contains several other documents of importance for a right understanding of them. The full title is this: "Ioannis Cassiani presbyteri, quem alii eremitam, alii abbatem nuncupant, opera omnia. Novissime recognita, repurgata et notis amplissimis illustrata. Quibus accessere alia ejusdem argumenti opuscula, quorum elenchum sequens pagina exhibebit. Studio et opera D. Alardi Gazæi coenobitæ Vedastini ord. Benedicti."
Besides the Institutes, Conferences, and the work on the Incarnation against Nestorius, these volumes contained the following among other material:--
The Rule of St. Pachomius.
The Catholic doctrine substituted for the latter part of Conference XIII. by Dionysius Carthusianus.
Prosper "Contra Collatorem."
This edition has been frequently reprinted, [627] some of the later reprints containing still more illustrative material. It still remains indispensable to the student of Cassian's works by reason of the valuable commentary with which it is throughout enriched. But for the mere text it is now altogether superseded by the fine edition prepared by Petschenig for the Vienna Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, in two volumes.
Vol. I.--Ioannis Cassiani De Institutis Coenobiorum et de octo Principalium Vitiorum Remediis Libri XII. De Incarnatione Domini Contra Nestorium Libri VII. recensuit et commentario critico instruxit Michæl Petschenig. Accedunt Prolegomena et Indices (Vindobonæ, 1888).
Vol. II.--Ioannis Cassiani Conlationes XXIIII. (Vindobonæ, 1886). Petschenig's work is admirably done, and the text of this edition is vastly superior to that of all its predecessors. In the present translation it has been used throughout the Conferences. The volume containing the Institutes and the work on the Incarnation unfortunately appeared too late for the translation to be made from it. It has, however, been carefully compared with the text of Ciacconius, which Gazet merely repeats, [628] and attention is called to the chief variations in the notes.
Mention has already been made of the early German paraphrase or translation, dating from 1470 or 1472; and the popularity of the Cassian's works is evinced by the number of other early translations made into the various languages of Europe. Of these next in order of time is one in Flemish. In the copy of this in the British Museum the title is wanting, the book beginning as follows: "Hier beghint der ouder vader collacie. Hi hyetede Ioannes Cassianus die dese vieretwintich navolgende vad, collacien ghemaect hevet." The colophon is this: "Hier eyndet een seer goede en profitelike leeringhe. En is ghenoemt der ouder vaders collacien. Michiel hiller van Hoochstraten. Tantwerpen 1506. fol."
Very little later is the first of several French translations, with the following curious title: "Les Collacions des sains Peres anciens translateez de Grec en latin. Par Cassiodorus tres sainct docteur en theologie et translateez de latin en francoys par maistre ieha gosein aussy docteur en theologie de l'ordre des freres de la Montaigne du carme et imprimees nouvellement a paris." No date is given, but the work is assigned by the Museum authorities to the year 1510.
Later French translations are the following:--
Paris. Chez Charles Savreux. 8° les Conférences de Cassien traduites en françois par De Saligny. 1663. (This edition altogether omits the thirteenth Conference.)
Paris. Chez Charles Savreux. 8° les Institutions de Cassien traduites en françois par De Saligny. 1667.
Institutions de Cassien traduites par E. Cartier. Paris, Tours, 1872.
There are also two Italian translations, one as early as 1563 (Opera. Tradotta per B. Buffi. Venetia. 1563. 4°), and one of the present century,--Volgarizzamento delle collazioni dei SS. Padri del venerabile G. C. [By Bartolommeo da San Concordio?] Testo di lingua in edito [edited by T. Bini]. Lucca. 1854. 8°.
It is remarkable that England has till now stood almost alone in possessing no translation, Cassian's works having never yet appeared in an English press. It is hoped that the version now offered to the reader may do something to make the works of this interesting and most instructive writer more widely known than they appear to be at present. __________________________________________________________________
[621] Gennadius, Catal. lxiv. In the Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, art. Eucherius, this is said to be lost. But see Migne, Vol. L. p. 867 sq.; and cf. Petschenig's Introduction to Cassian, p. xcvi.
[622] Div. Lect. c. xxix. Cujus (Cassiani) dicta Victor Mattaritanus Episcopus Afer ita Domino juvante purgavit et quæ minus erant addidit ut ei rerum istarum palma merito conferatur: quem inter alios de Africa partibus cito nobis credimus esse dirigendum.
[623] Biblioth, Cod. 197.
[624] The "Doctrina Catholica Beati Dionysii Richelii Carthusiani precedenti Collationi ab ipso substituta," given in Gazet's edition, and hence in Migne's, as c. xix., is only the latter part of the paraphrase of this Conference, beginning in c. viii., with the words, "Adest igitur inseparabiliter nobis," etc. The paraphrase may be found in Vol. III. of the edition of the works of Dionysius, published at Cologne in 1540. Of this there is a copy in the British Museum which was formerly in the possession of Archbishop Cranmer, and which still contains his autograph.
[625] On all these mss. see Petschenig's introduction, Cassian, Vol. I. pp. xiv.-lxxviii.
[626] Of this edition there is a copy in the British Museum which formerly belonged to the Convent of S. Mark at Florence, and is enriched with marginal notes in the handwriting of Girolamo Savonarola.
[627] Gazet himself prepared a revised edition, which was brought out after his death, at Arras, in 1628.
[628] The edition used is that published at Leipsic in 1733. It cannot, however, be recommended, as it is full of misprints. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Preface. __________________________________________________________________
The history of the Old Testament tells us that the most wise Solomon received from heaven "wisdom and understanding exceeding much, and largeness of heart even as the sand that is on the seashore that cannot be counted;" [629] so that by the Lord's testimony we may say that no one either has arisen in time past equal to him or will arise after him: and afterward, when wishing to raise that magnificent temple to the Lord, we are told that he asked the help of a foreigner, the king of Tyre. And when there was sent to him one Hiram, the son of a widow woman, [630] it was by his means and ministration that he executed all the glorious things which he devised by the suggestion of the Divine wisdom either for the temple of the Lord or for the sacred vessels. If, then, that power that was higher than all the kingdoms of the earth, and that noble and illustrious scion of the race of Israel, and that divinely inspired wisdom which excelled the training and customs of all the Easterns and Egyptians, by no means disdained the advice of a poor man and a foreigner, rightly also do you, most blessed Pope [631] Castor, taught by these examples, deign to call in me, a worthless creature though I am, and in every respect as poor as possible, to a share in so great a work. When you are planning to build a true and reasonable temple for God, not with inanimate stones but with a congregation of saints, and no temporal or corruptible building, but one that is eternal and cannot be shaken; and desiring also to consecrate to the Lord most precious vessels not forged of dumb [632] metal, of gold or silver, which a Babylonish monarch may afterwards take and devote to the pleasures of his concubines and princes, [633] but fashioned of holy souls which shine with the uprightness of innocence, righteousness, and purity, and bear about Christ abiding in themselves as King;--since, then, you are anxious that the institutions of the East and especially of Egypt should be established in your province, which is at present without monasteries, [634] although you are yourself perfect in all virtues and knowledge and so filled with all spiritual riches that not only your talk but even your life alone is amply sufficient for an example to those who are seeking perfection,--yet you ask me, not knowing what to say, and feeble in speech and knowledge, to contribute something from the scanty supply of my thoughts toward the satisfaction of your desire; and you charge me to declare, although with inexpert pen, the customs of the monasteries which we have seen observed throughout Egypt and Palestine, as they were there delivered to us by the Fathers; not looking for graceful speech, in which you yourself are especially skilled, but wanting the simple life of holy men to be told in simple language to the brethren in your new monastery. But in proportion as a dutiful desire of granting your request urges me to obey, so do manifold difficulties and embarrassments deter me when wishing to comply. First, because my merits are not so proportioned to my age as for me to trust that I can worthily comprehend with my mind and heart matters so difficult, so obscure, and so sacred. Secondly, because that which we either tried to do or learnt or saw when from our earliest youth we lived among them and were urged on by their daily exhortations and examples,--this we can scarcely retain in its entirety when we have been for so many years withdrawn from intercourse with them and from following their mode of life; especially as the method of these things cannot possibly be taught or understood or kept in the memory by idle meditation and verbal teaching, for it depends entirely upon experience and practice. And, as these things cannot be taught save by one who has had experience of them, so they cannot even be learnt or understood except by one who has tried with equal care and pains to grasp them; while, unless they are often discussed and well worn in frequent conferences with spiritual men, they quickly fade away through carelessness of mind. Thirdly, because a discourse that is lacking in skill cannot properly expound those things which we can recall to mind, not as the things themselves deserve, but as our condition allows us. To this it must be added that on this very subject men who were noble in life and eminent for speech and knowledge have already put forth several little books, I mean Basil and Jerome, and some others, the former of whom, when the brethren asked about various rules and questions, replied in language that was not only eloquent but rich in testimonies from Holy Scripture; while the latter not only published works that were the offspring of his own genius, but also translated into Latin works that had been written in Greek. [635] And, after such abundant streams of eloquence, I might not unfairly be accused of presumption for trying to produce this feeble rill, were it not that the confidence of your holiness encouraged me, and the assurance that these trifles would be acceptable to you, whatever they were like, and that you would send them to the congregation of the brethren dwelling in your newly founded monastery. And if by chance I have said anything without sufficient care, may they kindly overlook it and endure it with a somewhat indulgent pardon, asking rather for trustworthiness of speech than for grace of style on my part. Wherefore, most blessed Pope, remarkable example of religion and humility, encouraged by your prayers, I will to the best of my ability approach the work which you enjoin; and those masters which were altogether left untouched by those who preceded us, since they endeavoured to describe what they had heard rather than what they had experienced, these things I will tell as to an inexperienced monastery, and to men who are indeed [636] athirst. Nor certainly shall I try to weave a tale of God's miracles and signs, although we have not only heard of many such among our elders, and those past belief, but have also seen them fulfilled under our very eyes; yet, leaving out all these things which minister to the reader nothing but astonishment and no instruction in the perfect life, I shall try, so far as I can, with the help of God, faithfully to explain only their institutions and the rules of their monasteries, and especially the origin and causes of the principal faults, of which they reckon eight, and the remedies for them according to their traditions,--since my purpose is to say a few words not about God's miracles, but about the way to improve our character, and the attainment of the perfect life, in accordance with that which we received from our elders. In this, too, I will try to satisfy your directions, so that, if I happen to find that anything has been either withdrawn or added in those countries not in accordance with the example of the elders established by ancient custom, but according to the fancy of any one who has founded a monastery, I will faithfully add it or omit it, in accordance with the rule which I have seen followed in the monasteries anciently founded throughout Egypt and Palestine, as I do not believe that a new establishment in the West, in the parts of Gaul could find anything more reasonable or more perfect than are those customs, in the observance of which the monasteries that have been founded by holy and spiritually minded fathers since the rise of apostolic preaching endure even to our own times. I shall, however, venture to exercise this discretion in my work,--that where I find anything in the rule of the Egyptians which, either because of the severity of the climate, or owing to some difficulty or diversity of habits, is impossible in these countries, or hard and difficult, I shall to some extent balance it by the customs of the monasteries which are found throughout Pontus and Mesopotamia; because, if due regard be paid to what things are possible, there is the same perfection in the observance although the power may be unequal. __________________________________________________________________
[629] 1 Kings iv. 29.
[630] Ib. vii. 13.
[631] Papa. The title was at an early period confined to bishops in the West, but was not limited to the Bishop of Rome till a later date.
[632] Petschenig's text reads muto. Another reading is multo.
[633] Cf. Dan. v. 2.
[634] Castor, at whose request this work was written, was Bishop of Apta Julia in Gallia Narbonensis.
[635] The reference is to Basil's horoi kata platos (the greater monastic rules), and horoi kata epitomen (the lesser rules), written in the form of answers to questions of the monks. Jerome translated the rule of Pachomius, besides writing the lives of the hermits Paul, Malchus, and Hilarion.
[636] in veritate. Another reading is veritatem. __________________________________________________________________
The Twelve Books of John Cassian
on the
Institutes of the Coenobia,
and the
Remedies for the Eight Principal Faults. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Book I.
Of the Dress of the Monks. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter I. [637]
Of the Monk's Girdle.
As we are going to speak of the customs and rules of the monasteries, how by God's grace can we better begin than with the actual dress of the monks, for we shall then be able to expound in due course their interior life when we have set their outward man before your eyes. A monk, then, as a soldier of Christ ever ready for battle, ought always to walk with his loins girded. For in this fashion, too, the authority of Holy Scripture shows that they walked who in the Old Testament started the original of this life,--I mean Elijah and Elisha; and, moreover, we know that the leaders and authors of the New Testament, viz., John, Peter, and Paul, and the others of the same rank, walked in the same manner. And of these the first-mentioned, who even in the Old Testament displayed the flowers of a virgin life and an example of chastity and continence, when he had been sent by the Lord to rebuke the messengers of Ahaziah, the wicked king of Israel, because when confined by sickness he had intended to consult Beelzebub, the god of Ekron, on the state of his health, and thereupon the said prophet had met them and said that he should not come down from the bed on which he lay,--this man was made known to the bed-ridden king by the description of the character of his clothing. For when the messengers returned to him and brought back the prophet's message, he asked what the man who had met them and spoken such words was like and how he was dressed. "An hairy man," they said, "and girt with a girdle of leather about his loins;" and by this dress the king at once saw that it was the man of God, and said: "It is Elijah the Tishbite:" [638] i.e., by the evidence of the girdle and the look of the hairy and unkempt body he recognized without the slightest doubt the man of God, because this was always attached to him as he dwelt among so many thousands of Israelites, as if it were impressed as some special sign of his own particular style. Of John also, who came as a sort of sacred boundary between the Old and New Testament, being both a beginning and an ending, we know by the testimony of the Evangelist that "the same John had his raiment of camel's hair and a girdle of skin about his loins." [639] When Peter also had been put in prison by Herod and was to be brought forth to be slain on the next day, when the angel stood by him he was charged: "Gird thyself and put on thy shoes." [640] And the angel of the Lord would certainly not have charged him to do this had he not seen that for the sake of his night's rest he had for a while freed his wearied limbs from the girdle usually tied round them. Paul also, going up to Jerusalem and soon to be put in chains by the Jews, was met at Cæsarea by the prophet Agabus, who took his girdle and bound his hands and feet to show by his bodily actions the injuries which he was to suffer, and said: "So shall the Jews in Jerusalem bind the man whose girdle this is, and deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles." [641] And surely the prophet would never have brought this forward, or have said "the man whose girdle this is," unless Paul had always been accustomed to fasten it round his loins. __________________________________________________________________
[637] Cf. Basil's Greater Monastic Rules, Q. xxii., from which a considerable portion of this chapter is taken.
[638] 2 Kings i. 1-8.
[639] S. Matt. iii. 4.
[640] Acts xii. 8.
[641] Acts xxi. 11. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter II.
Of the Monk's Robe.
Let the robe also of the monk be such as may merely cover the body and prevent the disgrace of nudity, and keep off harm from cold, not such as may foster the seeds of vanity and pride; for the same apostle tells us: "Having food and covering, with these let us be content." [642] "Covering," he says, not "raiment," as is wrongly found in some Latin copies: that is, what may merely cover the body, not what may please the fancy by the splendour of the attire; commonplace, so that it may not be thought remarkable for novelty of colour or fashion among other men of the same profession; and quite free from anxious carefulness, yet not discoloured by stains acquired through neglect. Lastly, let them be so far removed from this world's fashions as to remain altogether common property for the use of the servants of God. For whatever is claimed by one or a few among the servants of God and is not the common property of the whole body of the brethren alike is either superfluous or vain, and for that reason to be considered harmful, and affording an appearance of vanity rather than virtue. And, therefore, whatever models we see were not taught either by the saints of old who laid the foundations of the monastic life, or by the fathers of our own time who in their turn keep up at the present day their customs, these we also should reject as superfluous and useless: wherefore they utterly disapproved of a robe of sackcloth as being visible to all and conspicuous, and what from this very fact will not only confer no benefit on the soul but rather minister to vanity and pride, and as being inconvenient and unsuitable for the performance of necessary work for which a monk ought always to go ready and unimpeded. But even if we hear of some respectable persons who have been dressed in this garb, a rule for the monasteries is not, therefore, to be passed by us, nor should the ancient decrees of the holy fathers be upset because we do not think that a few men, presuming on the possession of other virtues, are to be blamed even in regard of those things which they have practised not in accordance with the Catholic rule. For the opinion of a few ought not to be preferred to or to interfere with the general rule for all. For we ought to give unhesitating allegiance and unquestioning obedience, not to those customs and rules which the will of a few have introduced, but to those which a long standing antiquity and numbers of the holy fathers have passed on by an unanimous decision to those that come after. Nor, indeed, ought this to influence us as a precedent for our daily life, that Joram, the wicked king of Israel, when surrounded by bands of his foes, rent his clothes, and is said to have had sackcloth inside them; [643] or that the Ninevites, in order to mitigate the sentence of God, which had been pronounced against them by the prophet, were clothed in rough sackcloth. [644] The former is shown to have been clothed with it secretly underneath, so that unless the upper garment had been rent it could not possibly have been known by any one, and the latter tolerated a covering of sackcloth at a time when, since all were mourning over the approaching destruction of the city and were clothed with the same garments, none could be accused of ostentation. For where there is no special difference and all are alike no harm is done. [645] __________________________________________________________________
[642] 1 Tim. vi. 8. The Greek is skepasmata, for which Jerome's version has "quibus tegamur." Sabbatier gives "victum et vestitum" as the rendering of the old Latin, but it is often quoted as "victus et tegumentum" by Augustine. "Alimenta et operimenta" must be Cassian's own rendering from the Greek. "Vestimenta," which he speaks of as being found in some Latin copies, is not given by Sabbatier at all, though Jerome quotes the text with "vestimentum" in Ep. ad Titum, III.
[643] 2 Kings vi. 30.
[644] Jonah iii. 8.
[645] Quia nisi insolens sit diversitas non offendit æqualitas (Petschenig). The text of Gazæus has inæqualitas. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter III.
Of the Hoods of the Egyptians.
There are some things besides in the dress of the Egyptians which concern not the care of the body so much as the regulation of the character, that the observance of simplicity and innocence may be preserved by the very character of the clothing. For they constantly use both by day and by night very small hoods coming down to the end of the neck and shoulders, which only cover the head, in order that they may constantly be moved to preserve the simplicity and innocence of little children by imitating their actual dress. [646] And these men have returned to childhood in Christ and sing at all hours with heart and soul: "Lord, my heart is not exalted nor are mine eyes lofty. Neither have I walked in great matters nor in wonderful things above me. If I was not humbly minded, but exalted my soul: as a child that is weaned is towards his mother." [647] __________________________________________________________________
[646] The hood, or cowl (cuculla), was anciently worn by children and peasants, and thus was said to symbolize humility. Compare the account of the Egyptian monks given by Sozomen, Hist. III. xiv.: "They wore a covering on their heads called a cowl to show that they ought to live with the same innocence and purity as infants who are nourished with milk and wear a covering of the same form."
[647] Ps. cxxx. (cxxxi.) 1, 2. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IV.
Of the Tunics of the Egyptians.
They wear also linen tunics [648] which scarcely reach to the elbows, and for the rest leave their hands bare, that the cutting off of the sleeves may suggest that they have cut off all the deeds and works of this world, and the garment of linen teach that they are dead to all earthly conversation, and that hereby they may hear the Apostle saying day by day to them: "Mortify your members which are upon the earth;" their very dress also declaring this: "For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God;" and again: "And I live, yet now not I but Christ liveth in me. To me indeed the world is crucified, and I to the world." [649] __________________________________________________________________
[648] Colobium (kolobion), a tunic with very short sleeves. Cf. Dorotheus (Migne, Patrol. Græca lxxxviii. 1631). To schema ho phoroumen kolobion esti, me hechon cheiridia, kai zone dermatine kai analabos kai koukoulion.
[649] Col. iii. 5, 3. Gal. ii. 20; vi. 14. Cf. Sozomen l. c.: "They wore their tunics without sleeves in order to teach that the hands ought not to be ready to do evil." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter V.
Of their Cords. [650]
They also wear double scarves [651] woven of woollen yarn which the Greeks call analaboi, but which we should name girdles [652] or strings, [653] or more properly cords. [654] These falling down over the top of the neck and divided on either side of the throat go round the folds (of the robe) at the armpits and gather them up on either side, so that they can draw up and tuck in close to the body the wide folds of the dress, and so with their arms girt they are made active and ready for all kinds of work, endeavouring with all their might to fulfil the Apostle's charge: "For these hands have ministered not only to me but to those also who are with me," "Neither have we eaten any man's bread for nought, but with labour and toil working night and day that we should not be burdensome to any of you." And: "If any will not work neither let him eat." [655] __________________________________________________________________
[650] Rebracchiatoria. The whole passage is somewhat obscure, and the various synonyms do not help us much in the elucidation of it. 'Analaboi is given in Petschenig's text, but anabolai has some ms. authority. 'Anaboleus is the word used by Sozomen, who also mentions this cord. "Their girdle also and cord, the former girding the loins, the latter going round the shoulders and arms, admonish them that they ought always to be ready for the service of God and their work."
[651] Resticulæ.
[652] Succinctoria.
[653] Redimicula.
[654] Rebracchiatoria.
[655] Acts xx. 34; 2 Thess. iii. 8, 10. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VI.
Of their Capes. [656]
Next they cover their necks and shoulders with a narrow cape, aiming at modesty of dress as well as cheapness and economy; and this is called in our language as well as theirs mafors; and so they avoid both the expense and the display of cloaks and great coats. __________________________________________________________________
[656] The mafors (maphorion or maphorion) is the monkish scapular, or working-dress. Cf. the Rule of S. Benedict, c. 55: "Scapulare propter opera." In form it was a large, coarse cape, or hood. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VII.
Of the Sheepskin and the Goatskin. [657]
The last article of their dress is the goat-skin, which is called melotes, or pera, [658] and a staff, which they carry in imitation of those who foreshadowed the lines of the monastic life in the Old Testament, of whom the Apostle says: "They wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being in want, distressed, afflicted; of whom the world was not worthy; wandering in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens, and in caves of the earth." [659] And this garment of goatskin signifies that having destroyed all wantonness of carnal passions they ought to continue in the utmost sobriety of virtue, and that nothing of the wantonness or heat of youth, or of their old lightmindedness, should remain in their bodies. __________________________________________________________________
[657] The melotes (melotes), a sheepskin garment hanging down on one side, was the usual dress of monks. S. Anthony bequeathed his, at his death, to S. Athanasius. Ath. Vita Anton, 91.
[658] Pera can hardly be used here in its ordinary sense of scrip or wallet pera. Gazæus suggests that it may be a transcriber's error for poenula, while Ducange would read, "quæ melotes appellatur, vel pera, et baculus." Mr. Sinker, in the Dictionary of Christian Antiquities (Vol. II. p. 1619), suggests that possibly the word may be Egyptian.
[659] Heb. xi. 37, 38. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VIII.
Of the Staff of the Egyptians.
For Elisha, himself one of them, teaches that the same men used to carry a staff; as he says to Gehazi, his servant, when sending him to raise the woman's son to life: "Take my staff and run and go and place it on the lad's face that he may live." [660] And the prophet would certainly not have given it to him to take unless he had been in the habit of constantly carrying it about in his hand. And the carrying of the staff spiritually teaches that they ought never to walk unarmed among so many barking dogs of faults and invisible beasts of spiritual wickedness (from which the blessed David, in his longing to be free, says: "Deliver not, O Lord, to the beasts the soul that trusteth in Thee"), [661] but when they attack them they ought to beat them off with the sign of the cross and drive them far away; and when they rage furiously against them they should annihilate them by the constant recollection of the Lord's passion and by following the example of His mortified life. __________________________________________________________________
[660] 2 Kings iv. 29.
[661] Ps. lxxiii. (lxxiv.) 19. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IX.
Of their Shoes.
But refusing shoes, as forbidden by the command of the gospel, if bodily weakness or the morning cold in winter or the scorching heat of midday compels them, they merely protect their feet with sandals, explaining that by the use of them and the Lord's permission it is implied that if, while we are still in this world we cannot be completely set free from care and anxiety about the flesh, nor can we be altogether released from it, we should at least provide for the wants of the body with as little fuss and as slight an entanglement as possible: and as for the feet of our soul which ought to be ready for our spiritual race and always prepared for preaching the peace of the gospel (with which feet we run after the odour of the ointments of Christ, and of which David says: "I ran in thirst," and Jeremiah: "But I am not troubled, following Thee"), [662] we ought not to suffer them to be entangled in the deadly cares of this world, filling our thoughts with those things which concern not the supply of the wants of nature, but unnecessary and harmful pleasures. And this we shall thus fulfil if, as the Apostle advises, we "make not provision for the flesh with its lusts." [663] But though lawfully enough they make use of these sandals, as permitted by the Lord's command, yet they never suffer them to remain on their feet when they approach to celebrate or to receive the holy mysteries, as they think that they ought to observe in the letter that which was said to Moses and to Joshua, the son of Nun: "Loose the latchet of thy shoe: for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground." [664] __________________________________________________________________
[662] Ps. lxi. (lxii.) 5; Jer. xvii. 16 (lxx.).
[663] Rom. xiii. 14.
[664] Exod. iii. 5; Josh. v. 16. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter X. [665]
Of the modification in the observances which may be permitted in accordance with the character of the climate or the custom of the district.
So much may be said, that we may not appear to have left out any article of the dress of the Egyptians. But we need only keep to those which the situation of the place and the customs of the district permit. For the severity of the winter does not allow us to be satisfied with slippers [666] or tunics or a single frock; and the covering of tiny hoods or the wearing of a sheepskin would afford a subject for derision instead of edifying the spectators. Wherefore we hold that we ought to introduce only those things which we have described above, and which are adapted to the humble character of our profession and the nature of the climate, that the chief thing about our dress may be not the novelty of the garb, which might give some offence to men of the world, but its honourable simplicity. __________________________________________________________________
[665] This and the following chapter are altogether omitted in the edition of Gazæus.
[666] Gallica. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XI.
Of the Spiritual Girdle and its Mystical Meaning. [667]
Clad, therefore, in these vestments, the soldier of Christ should know first of all that he is protected by the girdle tied round him, not only that he may be ready in mind for all the work and business of the monastery, but also that he may always go without being hindered by his dress. For he will be proved to be the more ardent in purity of heart for spiritual progress and the knowledge of Divine things in proportion as he is the more earnest in his zeal for obedience and work. Secondly, he should realize that in the actual wearing of the girdle there is no small mystery declaring what is demanded of him. For the girding of the loins and binding them round with a dead skin signifies that he bears about the mortification of those members in which are contained the seeds of lust and lasciviousness, always knowing that the command of the gospel, which says, "Let your loins be girt about," [668] is applied to him by the Apostle's interpretation; to wit, "Mortify your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, lust, evil concupiscence." [669] And so we find in Holy Scripture that only those were girt with the girdle in whom the seeds of carnal lust are found to be destroyed, and who sing with might and main this utterance of the blessed David: "For I am become like a bottle in the frost," [670] because when the sinful flesh is destroyed in the inmost parts they can distend by the power of the spirit the dead skin of the outward man. And therefore he significantly adds "in the frost," because they are never satisfied merely with the mortification of the heart, but also have the motions of the outward man and the incentives of nature itself frozen by the approach of the frost of continence from without, if only, as the Apostle says, they no longer allow any reign of sin in their mortal body, nor wear a flesh that resists the spirit. [671] __________________________________________________________________
[667] Sacramentum.
[668] S. Luke xii. 35.
[669] Col. iii. 5.
[670] Ps. cxviii. (cxix.) 83.
[671] Cf. Rom. vi. 12; Gal. v. 17. S. Benedict's rule about the dress of the monks is as follows: "Let the dress of the brethren be adapted to the character of the place or climate in which they live, as more clothing is required in cold than in hot countries. Hence we leave this to the abbot to determine. However, in temperate climates we are of the opinion that it will be enough for each monk to have a hood and a frock, a rough one for the winter, and in the summer a simple or old one; a scapular also for work; and the cover of the feet, shoes and socks. And the monks are not to complain of the colour or size of these articles, but to be satisfied with whatever can be found or got cheapest in the country where they live." Regula S. Bened. c. lv. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Book II.
Of the Canonical System of the Nocturnal Prayers and Psalms. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter I.
Of the Canonical System of the Nocturnal Prayers and Psalms.
Girt, therefore, with this twofold girdle of which we have spoken, [672] the soldier of Christ should next learn the system of the canonical prayers and Psalms which was long ago arranged by the holy fathers in the East. Of their character, however, and of the way in which we can pray, as the Apostle directs, "without ceasing," [673] we shall treat, as the Lord may enable us, in the proper place, when we begin to relate the Conferences of the Elders. __________________________________________________________________
[672] See Book I. c. xi.
[673] 1 Thess. v. 17. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter II.
Of the difference of the number of Psalms appointed to be sung in all the provinces.
For we have found that many in different countries, according to the fancy of their mind (having, indeed, as the Apostle says, "a zeal, for God but not according to knowledge" [674] ), have made for themselves different rules and arrangements in this matter. For some have appointed that each night twenty or thirty Psalms should be said, and that these should be prolonged by the music of antiphonal singing [675] , and by the addition of some modulations as well. Others have even tried to go beyond this number. Some use eighteen. And in this way we have found different rules appointed in different places, and the system and regulations that we have seen are almost as many in number as the monasteries and cells which we have visited. There are some, too, to whom it has seemed good that in the day offices of prayer, viz., Tierce, Sext, and Nones, [676] the number of Psalms and prayers should be made to correspond exactly to the number of the hours at which the services are offered up to the Lord. [677] Some have thought fit that six Psalms should be assigned to each service of the day. And so I think it best to set forth the most ancient system of the fathers which is still observed by the servants of God throughout the whole of Egypt, so that your new monastery in its untrained infancy in Christ [678] may be instructed in the most ancient institutions of the earliest fathers. __________________________________________________________________
[674] Rom. x. 2.
[675] Antiphona. In this passage the word appears to mean the actual Psalms sung antiphonally, rather than what is generally meant in later writings by the term. Cf. the Rule of Aurelian, "Dicite matutinarios, i.e., primo canticum in antiphona, deinde directaneum, judica me Deus...in antiphona dicite hymnum, splendor patudæ gloriæ." And see the use of the word later on by Cassian himself, c. vii.
[676] The third, sixth, and ninth hours were observed as hours of prayer from the earliest days. Cf. Tertullian De Oratione, c. 25; Clem. Alex. Stromata, VII., c. 7, § 40.
[677] I.e., that at Tierce there should be three Psalms, at Sext six, and at Nones nine.
[678] Castor had founded a monastery about the year 420. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter III.
Of the observance of one uniform rule throughout the whole of Egypt, and of the election of those who are set over the brethren.
And so throughout the whole of Egypt and the Thebaid, where monasteries are not founded at the fancy of every man who renounces the world, but through a succession of fathers and their traditions last even to the present day, or are founded so to last, in these we have noticed that a prescribed system of prayers is observed in their evening assemblies and nocturnal vigils. For no one is allowed to preside over the assembly of the brethren, or even over himself, before he has not only deprived himself of all his property but has also learnt the fact that he is not his own maker and has no authority over his own actions. For one who renounces the world, whatever property or riches he may possess, must seek the common dwelling of a Coenobium, that he may not flatter himself in any way with what he has forsaken or what he has brought into the monastery. He must also be obedient to all, so as to learn that he must, as the Lord says, [679] become again a little child, arrogating nothing to himself on the score of his age and the number of the years which he now counts as lost while they were spent to no purpose in the world and, as he is only a beginner, and because of the novelty of the apprenticeship, which he knows he is serving in Christ's service, he should not hesitate to submit himself even to his juniors. Further, he is obliged to habituate himself to work and toil, so as to prepare with his own hands, in accordance with the Apostle's command, [680] daily supply of food, either for his own use or for the wants of strangers; and that he may also forget the pride and luxury of his past life, and gain by grinding toil humility of heart. And so no one is chosen to be set over a congregation of brethren before that he who is to be placed in authority has learnt by obedience what he ought to enjoin on those who are to submit to him, and has discovered from the rules of the Elders what he ought to teach to his juniors. For they say that to rule or to be ruled well needs a wise man, and they call it the greatest gift and grace of the Holy Spirit, since no one can enjoin salutary precepts on those who submit to him but one who has previously been trained in all the rules of virtue; nor can any one obey an Elder but one who has been filled with the love of God and perfected in the virtue of humility. And so we see that there is a variety of rules and regulations in use throughout other districts, because we often have the audacity to preside over a monastery without even having learnt the system of the Elders, and appoint ourselves Abbots before we have, as we ought, professed ourselves disciples, and are readier to require the observance of our own inventions than to preserve the well-tried teaching of our predecessors. But, while we meant to explain the best system of prayers to be observed, we have in our eagerness for the institutions of the fathers anticipated by a hasty digression the account which we were keeping back for its proper place. And so let us now return to the subject before us. __________________________________________________________________
[679] Cf. S. Matt. xviii. 3.
[680] Cf. 1 Thess. iv. 11. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IV.
How throughout the whole of Egypt and the Thebaid the number of Psalms is fixed at twelve.
So, as we said, throughout the whole of Egypt and the Thebaid the number of Psalms is fixed at twelve both at Vespers and in the office of Nocturns, [681] in such a way that at the close two lessons follow, one from the Old and the other from the New Testament. [682] And this arrangement, fixed ever so long ago, has continued unbroken to the present day throughout so many ages, in all the monasteries of those districts, because it is said that it was no appointment of man's invention, but was brought down from heaven to the fathers by the ministry of an angel. __________________________________________________________________
[681] The rule of Cæsarius also prescribes twelve Psalms on every Sabbath, Lord's day, and festival (c. 25); so also, according to the Benedictine rule, there are twelve Psalms at mattins, besides the fixed ones, iii. and xcv. (see c. 9 and 10), as there are still in the Roman Breviary on ordinary week-days.
[682] The custom of having two lessons only appears to have been peculiar to Egypt. Most of the early Western rules give three, e.g., those of Cæsarius and Benedict, while in the Eastern daily offices there are no lections from Holy Scripture. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter V.
How the fact that the number of the Psalms was to be twelve was received from the teaching of an angel.
For in the early days of the faith when only a few, and those the best of men, were known by the name of monks, who, as they received that mode of life from the Evangelist Mark of blessed memory, the first to preside over the Church of Alexandria as Bishop, not only preserved those grand characteristics for which we read, in the Acts of the Apostles, that the Church and multitude of believers in primitive times was famous ("The multitude of believers had one heart and one soul. Nor did any of them say that any of the things which he possessed was his own: but they had all things common; for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them, and brought the price of the things which they sold, and laid it at the feet of the Apostles, and distribution was made to every man as he had need"), [683] but they added to these characteristics others still more sublime. For withdrawing into more secluded spots outside the cities they led a life marked by such rigorous abstinence that even to those of another creed the exalted character of their life was a standing marvel. For they gave themselves up to the reading of Holy Scripture and to prayers and to manual labour night and day with such fervour that they had no desire or thoughts of food--unless on the second or third day bodily hunger [684] reminded them, and they took their meat and drink not so much because they wished for it as because it was necessary for life; and even then they took it not before sunset, in order that they might connect the hours of daylight with the practice of spiritual meditations, and the care of the body with the night, and might perform other things much more exalted than these. And about these matters, one who has never heard anything from one who is at home in such things, may learn from ecclesiastical history. [685] At that time, therefore, when the perfection of the primitive Church remained unbroken, and was still preserved fresh in the memory by their followers and successors, and when the fervent faith of the few had not yet grown lukewarm by being dispersed among the many, the venerable fathers with watchful care made provision for those to come after them, and met together to discuss what plan should be adopted for the daily worship throughout the whole body of the brethren; that they might hand on to those who should succeed them a legacy of piety and peace that was free from all dispute and dissension, for they were afraid that in regard of the daily services some difference or dispute might arise among those who joined together in the same worship, and at some time or other it might send forth a poisonous root of error or jealousy or schism among those who came after. And when each man in proportion to his own fervour--and unmindful of the weakness of others--thought that that should be appointed which he judged was quite easy by considering his own faith and strength, taking too little account of what would be possible for the great mass of the brethren in general (wherein a very large proportion of weak ones is sure to be found); and when in different degrees they strove, each according to his own powers, to fix an enormous number of Psalms, and some were for fifty, others sixty, and some, not content with this number, thought that they actually ought to go beyond it,--there was such a holy difference of opinion in their pious discussion on the rule of their religion that the time for their Vesper office came before the sacred question was decided; and, as they were going to celebrate their daily rites and prayers, one rose up in the midst to chant the Psalms to the Lord. And while they were all sitting (as is still the custom in Egypt [686] ), with their minds intently fixed on the words of the chanter, when he had sung eleven Psalms, separated by prayers introduced between them, verse after verse being evenly enunciated, [687] he finished the twelfth with a response of Alleluia, [688] and then, by his sudden disappearance from the eyes of all, put an end at once to their discussion and their service. [689] __________________________________________________________________
[683] Acts iv. 32-34.
[684] Petschenig's text has inedia, others inediam.
[685] Cf. Eusebius, Book II. c. xv., xvi. Sozomen, Book I. c. xii., xiii.
[686] Cf. below, c. xii.
[687] Cumque...undecim Psalmos orationum interjectione distinctos contiguis versibus parili pronunciatione cantassat.
[688] So, according to the Benedictine rule, the Psalms at mattins are ended with Alleluia (c. ix.): "After these three lessons with their responds there shall follow the remaining six Psalms with the Alleluia." Cf. c. xi. and xv.
[689] This story is referred to in the Eighteenth Canon of the Second Council of Tours, a.d. 567. "The statutes of the Fathers have prescribed that twelve Psalms be said at the Twelfth (i.e. Vespers), with Alleluia, which, moreover, they learnt from the showing of an angel." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VI.
Of the Custom of having Twelve Prayers.
Whereupon the venerable assembly of the Fathers understood that by Divine Providence a general rule had been fixed for the congregations of the brethren through the angel's direction, and so decreed that this number should be preserved both in their evening and in their nocturnal services; and when they added to these two lessons, one from the Old and one from the New Testament, they added them simply as extras and of their own appointment, only for those who liked, and who were eager to gain by constant study a mind well stored with Holy Scripture. But on Saturday and Sunday they read them both from the New Testament; viz., one from the Epistles [690] or the Acts of the Apostles, and one from the Gospel. [691] And this also those do whose concern is the reading and the recollection of the Scriptures, from Easter to Whitsuntide. [692] __________________________________________________________________
[690] Apostolus, the regular name for the book of the Epistles.
[691] Cf. the note above on c. v.
[692] Totis Quinquagessimoe diebus; i.e., the whole period of fifty days between Easter and Whitsuntide (cf. c. xviii. and the Conferences XXI. viii., xi., xx.). This is the usual meaning of the term Pentecost in early writers, though it is also used more strictly for the actual festival of Whitsunday. Cf. the Twentieth Canon of the Council of Nicæa, and see Canon Bright's Notes on the Canons, p. 72, for other instances. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VII.
Of their Method of Praying.
These aforesaid prayers, then, they begin and finish in such a way that when the Psalm is ended they do not hurry at once to kneel down, as some of us do in this country, who, before the Psalm is fairly ended, make haste to prostrate themselves for prayer, in their hurry to finish the service [693] as quickly as possible. For though we have chosen to exceed the limit which was anciently fixed by our predecessors, supplying the number of the remaining Psalms, we are anxious to get to the end of the service, thinking of the refreshment of the wearied body rather than looking for profit and benefit from the prayer. Among them, therefore, it is not so, but before they bend their knees they pray for a few moments, and while they are standing up spend the greater part of the time in prayer. And so after this, for the briefest space of time, they prostrate themselves to the ground, as if but adoring the Divine Mercy, and as soon as possible rise up, and again standing erect with outspread hands--just as they had been standing to pray before--remain with thoughts intent upon their prayers. For when you lie prostrate for any length of time upon the ground you are more open to an attack, they say, not only of wandering thoughts but also slumber. And would that we too did not know the truth of this by experience and daily practice--we who when prostrating ourselves on the ground too often wish for this attitude to be prolonged for some time, not for the sake of our prayer so much as for the sake of resting. But when he who is to "collect" the prayer [694] rises from the ground they all start up at once, so that no one would venture to bend the knee before he bows down, nor to delay when he has risen from the ground, lest it should be thought that he has offered his own prayer independently instead of following the leader to the close. __________________________________________________________________
[693] Ad celeritatem missæ. The word "missa" is here used for the breaking up of the congregation after service, as it is again in Book III. c. vii., where Cassian says that one who came late for prayer had to wait, standing before the door, for the "missa" of the whole assembly. Cf. III. c. viii., "post vigiliarum missam," and the rule of S. Benedict (c. xvii.): "After the three Psalms are finished let one lesson be read, a verse, and Kyrie Eleison: et missæ fiant." A full account of the various meanings given to the word will be found in the Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, Vol. II. p. 1193 sq.
[694] Colligere orationem. The phrase corresponds to the Greek sunaptein, but Ducange gives but few instances of its use in Latin. It is found, however, in Canon xxx. of the Council of Agde. "Plebs collecta oratione ad vesperam ab Episcopo cum benedictione dimittatur." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VIII.
Of the Prayer which follows the Psalm.
That practice too which we have observed in this country--viz., that while one sings to the end of the Psalm, all standing up sing together with a loud voice, "Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost"--we have never heard anywhere throughout the East, but there, while all keep silence when the Psalm is finished, the prayer that follows is offered up by the singer. But with this hymn in honour of the Trinity only the whole Psalmody [695] is usually ended. [696] __________________________________________________________________
[695] Antiphona. The word must certainly be used here not in the later sense of "antiphon," but as descriptive of the whole of the Psalmody of the office. Cf. note on c. i.
[696] In the Eastern offices the Psalter is divided into twenty sections called kathismata, each of which is subdivided into three staseis, at the close of each of which the Gloria is said, and not, as in the West, after every Psalm. This Western custom which Cassian here notices seems to have originated in Gaul, and thence spread to other churches as, according to Walafrid Strabo, at Rome it was used but rarely after the Psalms in the ninth century. See Walafrid Strabo, c. xxv. ap. Hittorp. 688. The earliest certain indications of the use of the hymn itself are found in the fourth century. See S. Basil De Spiritu Sancto, c. xxix.; Theodoret, Eccl. Hist., II. xxiv., Sozomen, Eccl. Hist., III. xx. The Greek form is Dhoxa patri kai huhio kai hagio pneumati kai nun kai aei kai eis tous aionas ton aionon, amen. The additional words in use in the West, "sicut erat in principio," were first adopted in the sixth century, being ordered by the Council of Vaison, a.d. 529, "after the example of the apostolic see." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IX.
Of the characteristics of the prayer, the fuller treatment of which is reserved for the Conferences of the Elders.
And as the plan of these Institutes leads us to the system of the canonical prayers, the fuller treatment of which we will however reserve for the Conferences of the Elders (where we shall speak of them at greater length when we have begun to tell in their own words of the character of their prayers, and how continuous they are), still I think it well, as far as the place and my narrative permit, as the occasion offers itself, to glance briefly for the present at a few points, so that by picturing in the meanwhile the movements of the outer man, and by now laying the foundations, as it were, of the prayer, we may afterwards, when we come to speak of the inner man, with less labour build up the complete edifice of his prayers; providing, above all, for this, that if the end of life should overtake us and cut us off from finishing the narration which we are anxious (D.V.) fitly to compose, we may at least leave in this work the beginnings of so necessary a matter to you, to whom everything seems a delay, by reason of the fervour of your desire: so that, if a few more years of life are granted to us, we may at least mark out for you some outlines of their prayers, that those above all who live in monasteries may have some information about them; providing also, at the same time, that those who perhaps may meet only with this book, and be unable to procure the other, may find that they are supplied with some sort of information about the nature of their prayers; and as they are instructed about the dress and clothing of the outer man, so too they may not be ignorant what his behaviour ought to be in offering spiritual sacrifices. Since, though these books, which we are now arranging with the Lord's help to write, are mainly taken up with what belongs to the outer man and the customs of the Coenobia, yet those will rather be concerned with the training of the inner man and the perfection of the heart, and the life and doctrine of the Anchorites. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter X.
Of the silence and conciseness with which the Collects are offered up by the Egyptians.
When, then, they meet together to celebrate the aforementioned rites, which they term synaxes, [697] they are all so perfectly silent that, though so large a number of the brethren is assembled together, you would not think a single person was present except the one who stands up and chants the Psalm in the midst; and especially is this the case when the prayer is offered up, [698] for then there is no spitting, no clearing of the throat, or noise of coughing, no sleepy yawning with open mouths, and gaping, and no groans or sighs are uttered, likely to distract those standing near. No voice is heard save that of the priest concluding the prayer, except perhaps one that escapes the lips through aberration of mind and unconsciously takes the heart by surprise, inflamed as it is with an uncontrollable and irrepressible fervour of spirit, while that which the glowing mind is unable to keep to itself strives through a sort of unutterable groaning to make its escape from the inmost chambers of the breast. But if any one infected with coldness of mind prays out loud or emits any of those sounds we have mentioned, or is overcome by a fit of yawning, they declare that he is guilty of a double fault.
He is blameworthy, first, as regards his own prayer because he offers it to God in a careless way; and, secondly, because by his unmannerly noise he disturbs the thoughts of another who would otherwise perhaps have been able to pray with greater attention. And so their rule is that the prayer ought to be brought to an end with a speedy conclusion, lest while we are lingering over it some superfluity of spittle or phlegm should interfere with the close of our prayer. And, therefore, while it is still glowing the prayer is to be snatched as speedily as possible out of the jaws of the enemy, who, although he is indeed always hostile to us, is yet never more hostile than when he sees that we are anxious to offer up prayers to God against his attacks; and by exciting wandering thoughts and all sorts of rheums he endeavours to distract our minds from attending to our prayers, and by this means tries to make it grow cold, though begun with fervour. Wherefore they think it best for the prayers to be short and offered up very frequently: [699] on the one hand that by so often praying to the Lord we may be able to cleave to Him continually; on the other, that when the devil is lying in wait for us, we may by their terse brevity avoid the darts with which he endeavours to wound us especially when we are saying our prayers. __________________________________________________________________
[697] Synaxis (sunaxis) a general name for the course of the ecclesiastical offices.
[698] Consummatur.
[699] Cf. Augustine, Ep. cxxx., § 20 (Vol. II. 389): "Dicuntur fratres in Ægypto crebras quidem habere orationes, sed eas tamen brevissimas, et raptim quodammodo jaculatas, ne illa vigilantes erecta, quæ oranti plurimum necessaria est, per productiores moras evanescat atque hebetetur intentio;" and Hooker, Eccl. Polity, Book V. c. xxxiii.: "The brethren in Egypt (saith S. Augustine) are reported to have many prayers, but every of them very short, as if they were darts thrown out with a kind of sudden quickness, lest that vigilant and erect attention of mind which in prayer is very necessary should be wasted or dulled through continuance, if their prayers were few and long....Those prayers whereunto devout minds have added a piercing kind of brevity, as well in that respect which we have already mentioned, as also thereby the better to express that quick and speedy expedition wherewith ardent affections, the very wings of prayer, are delighted to present our suits in heaven, even sooner than our tongues can devise to utter them," etc. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XI.
Of the system according to which the Psalms are said among the Egyptians.
And, therefore, they do not even attempt to finish the Psalms, which they sing in the service, by an unbroken and continuous recitation. But they repeat them separately and bit by bit, divided into two or three sections, according to the number of verses, with prayers in between. [700] For they do not care about the quantity of verses, but about the intelligence of the mind; aiming with all their might at this: "I will sing with the spirit: I will sing also with the understanding." [701] And so they consider it better for ten verses to be sung with understanding and thought [702] than for a whole Psalm to be poured forth with a bewildered mind. And this is sometimes caused by the hurry of the speaker, when, thinking of the character and number of the remaining Psalms to be sung, he takes no pains to make the meaning clear to his hearers, but hastens on to get to the end of the service. Lastly, if any of the younger monks, either through fervour of spirit or because he has not yet been properly taught, goes beyond the proper limit of what is to be sung, the one who is singing the Psalm is stopped by the senior clapping his hands where he sits in his stall, and making them all rise for prayer. Thus they take every possible care that no weariness may creep in among them as they sit through the length of the Psalms, as thereby not only would the singer himself lose the fruits of understanding, but also loss would be incurred by those whom he made to feel the service a weariness by going on so long. They also observe this with the greatest care; viz., that no Psalm should be said with the response of Alleluia except those which are marked with the inscription of Alleluia in their title. [703] But the aforesaid number of twelve Psalms they divide in such a way that, if there are two brethren they each sing six; if there are three, then four; and if four, three each. A smaller number than this they never sing in the congregation, and accordingly, however large a congregation is assembled, not more than four brethren sing in the service. [704] __________________________________________________________________
[700] This plan of dividing some of the longer Psalms (as is still done with the 119th in the English Psalter) was adopted sometimes in the West also. Cf. the Rule of S. Benedict, c. xviii., and the Third Council of Narbonne (a.d. 589), Canon 2: "Ut in psallendis ordinibus per quemque Psalmum Gloria dicatur Omnipotenti Deo, per majores vero Psalmos, prout fuerint prolixius, pausationes fiant, et per quamque pausationem Gloria Trinitatis Domino decantetur." Further, the rule that prayers should be intermingled with Psalms which was perhaps introduced into the West by Cassian, was widely adopted both in Gaul and in Spain.
[701] 1 Cor. xiv. 15.
[702] Cum rationabili assignatione.
[703] Viz.: Ps. civ., cv., cvi., cx., cxi., cxii., cxiii., cxiv., cxv., cxvi., cxvii., cxviii., cxxxiv., cxxxv., cxlv., cxlvi., cxlvii., cxlviii., cxlix., cl., in the LXX. and the Latin.
[704] This arrangement by which the Psalm was sung by a single voice, while the rest of the congregation listened, is that which was afterwards known by the name of Tractus. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XII.
Of the reason why while one sings the Psalms the rest sit down during the service; and of the zeal with which they afterwards prolong their vigils in their cells till daybreak.
This canonical system of twelve Psalms, of which we have spoken, they render easier by such bodily rest that when, after their custom, they celebrate these services, they all, except the one who stands up in the midst to recite the Psalms, sit in very low stalls and follow the voice of the singer with the utmost attention of heart. For they are so worn out with fasting and working all day and night that, unless they were helped by some such indulgence, they could not possibly get through this number standing up. For they allow no time to pass idly without the performance of some work, because not only do they strive with all earnestness to do with their hands those things which can be done in daylight, but also with anxious minds they examine into those sorts of work which not even the darkness of night can put a stop to, as they hold that they will gain a far deeper insight into subjects of spiritual contemplation with purity of heart, the more earnestly that they devote themselves to work and labour. And therefore they consider that a moderate allowance of canonical prayers was divinely arranged in order that for those who are very ardent in faith room might be left in which their never-tiring flow of virtue might spend itself, and notwithstanding no loathing arise in their wearied and weak bodies from too large a quantity. And so, when the offices of the canonical prayers have been duly finished, every one returns to his own cell (which he inhabits alone, or is allowed to share with only one other whom partnership in work or training in discipleship and learning has joined with him, or perhaps similarity of character has made his companion), and again they offer with greater earnestness the same service of prayer, as their special private sacrifice, as it were; nor do any of them give themselves up any further to rest and sleep till when the brightness of day comes on the labours of the day succeed the labours and meditations of the night. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIII.
The reason why they are not allowed to go to sleep after the night service. [705]
And these labours they keep up for two reasons, besides this consideration,--that they believe that when they are diligently exerting themselves they are offering to God a sacrifice of the fruit of their hands. And, if we are aiming at perfection; we also ought to observe this with the same diligence. First, lest our envious adversary, jealous of our purity against which he is always plotting, and ceaselessly hostile to us, should by some illusion in a dream pollute the purity which has been gained by the Psalms and prayers of the night: for after that satisfaction which we have offered for our negligence and ignorance, and the absolution implored with profuse sighs in our confession, he anxiously tries, if he finds some time given to repose, to defile us; then above all endeavouring to overthrow and weaken our trust in God when he sees by the purity of our prayers that we are making most fervent efforts towards God: so that sometimes, when he has been unable to injure some the whole night long, he does his utmost to disgrace them in that short hour. Secondly, because, even if no such dreaded illusion of the devil arises, even a pure sleep in the interval produces laziness in the case of the monk who ought soon to wake up; and, bringing on a sluggish torpor in the mind, it dulls his vigour throughout the whole day, and deadens that keenness of perception and exhausts that energy [706] of heart which would be capable of keeping us all day long more watchful against all the snares of the enemy and more robust. Wherefore to the Canonical Vigils there are added these private watchings, and they submit to them with the greater care, both in order that the purity which has been gained by Psalms and prayers may not be lost, and also that a more intense carefulness to guard us diligently through the day may be secured beforehand by the meditation of the night. __________________________________________________________________
[705] Missæ. The use of this word for the offices of the Canonical Hours, though not common, is found also in the Thirtieth Canon of the Council of Agde, a.d. 506. "At the end of the morning and evening missoe, after the hymns, let the little chapters from the Psalms be said."
[706] Pinguetudo. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIV.
Of the way in which they devote themselves in their cells equally to manual labour and to prayer.
And therefore they supplement their prayer by the addition of labour, lest slumber might steal upon them as idlers. For as they scarcely enjoy any time of leisure, so there is no limit put to their spiritual meditations. For practising equally the virtues of the body and of the soul, they balance what is due to the outer by what is profitable to the inner man; [707] steadying the slippery motions of the heart and the shifting fluctuations of the thoughts by the weight of labour, like some strong and immoveable anchor, by which the changeableness and wanderings of the heart, fastened within the barriers of the cell, may be shut up in some perfectly secure harbour, and so, intent only on spiritual meditation and watchfulness over the thoughts, may not only forbid the watchful mind to give a hasty consent to any evil suggestions, but may also keep it safe from any unnecessary and idle thoughts: so that it is not easy to say which depends on the other--I mean, whether they practise their incessant manual labour for the sake of spiritual meditation, or whether it is for the sake of their continuous labours that they acquire such remarkable spiritual proficiency and light of knowledge. __________________________________________________________________
[707] Exterioris hominis stipendia cum emolumentis interioris exoequant. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XV.
Of the discreet rule by which every one must retire to his cell after the close of the prayers; and [708] of the rebuke to which any one who does otherwise is subject.
And so, when the Psalms are finished, and the daily assembly, as we said above, is broken up, none of them dares to loiter ever so little or to gossip with another: nor does he presume even to leave his cell throughout the whole day, or to forsake the work which he is wont to carry on in it, except when they happen to be called out for the performance of some necessary duty, which they fulfil by going out of doors so that there may not be any chattering at all among them. But every one does the work assigned to him in such a way that, by repeating by heart some Psalm or passage of Scripture, he gives no opportunity or time for dangerous schemes or evil designs, or even for idle talk, as both mouth and heart are incessantly taken up with spiritual meditations. For they are most particular in observing this rule, that none of them, and especially of the younger ones, may be caught stopping even for a moment or going anywhere together with another, or holding his hands in his. But, if they discover any who in defiance of the discipline of this rule have perpetrated any of these forbidden things, they pronounce them guilty of no slight fault, as contumacious and disobedient to the rules; nor are they free from suspicion of plotting and nefarious designs. And, unless they expiate their fault by public penance when all the brethren are gathered together, none of them is allowed to be present at the prayers of the brethren. __________________________________________________________________
[708] Post orationum missam. See note on c. vii. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVI.
How no one is allowed to pray with one who has been suspended from prayer.
Further, if one of them has been suspended from prayer for some fault which he has committed, no one has any liberty of praying with him before he performs his penance on the ground, [709] and reconciliation and pardon for his offence has been publicly granted to him by the Abbot before all the brethren. For by a plan of this kind they separate and cut themselves off from fellowship with him in prayer for this reason--because they believe that one who is suspended from prayer is, as the Apostle says, "delivered unto Satan:" [710] and if any one, moved by an ill-considered affection, dares to hold communion with him in prayer before he has been received by the elder, he makes himself partaker of his damnation, and delivers himself up of his own free will to Satan, to whom the other had been consigned for the correction of his guilt. And in this he falls into a more grievous offence because, by uniting with him in fellowship either in talk or in prayer, he gives him grounds for still greater arrogance, and only encourages and makes worse the obstinacy of the offender. For, by giving him a consolation that is only hurtful, he will make his heart still harder, and not let him humble himself for the fault for which he was excommunicated; and through this he will make him hold the Elder's rebuke as of no consequence, and harbour deceitful thoughts about satisfaction and absolution. __________________________________________________________________
[709] Cf. III. vii., and the description of this penance in IV. xvi.
[710] 1 Cor. v. 5; 1 Tim. i. 20. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVII.
How he who rouses them for prayer ought to call them at the usual time.
But he who has been entrusted with the office of summoning the religious assembly and with the care of the service should not presume to rouse the brethren for their daily vigils irregularly, as he pleases, or as he may wake up in the night, or as the accident of his own sleep or sleeplessness may incline him. But, although daily habit may constrain him to wake at the usual hour, yet by often and anxiously ascertaining by the course of the stars the right hour for service, he should summon them to the office of prayer, lest he be found careless in one of two ways: either if, overcome with sleep, he lets the proper hour of the night go by, or if, wanting to go to bed and impatient for his sleep, he anticipates it, and so may be thought to have secured is own repose instead of attending to the spiritual office and the rest of all the others. [711] __________________________________________________________________
[711] The rule of S. Benedict is similarly careful that the brethren may not oversleep themselves. See c. xi. and xlvii. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVIII.
How they do not kneel from the evening of Saturday till the evening of Sunday.
This, too, we ought to know,--that from the evening of Saturday which precedes the Sunday, [712] up to the following evening, among the Egyptians they never kneel, nor from Easter to Whitsuntide; [713] nor do they at these times observe a rule of fasting, [714] the reason for which shall be explained in its proper place in the Conferences of the Elders, [715] if the Lord permits. At present we only propose to run through the causes very briefly, lest our book exceed its due limits and prove tiresome or burdensome to the reader. __________________________________________________________________
[712] Quoe lucescit inm die dominicum. The phrase is borrowed by Cassian from the Latin of S. Matt. xxviii. 1.
[713] Totis Quinquagesimoe diebus. See above on c. vi.
[714] That this was the rule of the primitive Church is shown by Tertullian, De Corona Militis, c. iii. "We count fasting or kneeling in worship on the Lord's day to be unlawful. We rejoice in the same privilege, also, from Easter to Whitsunday." And even earlier, in a fragment of Irenæus, there is a mention of the fact that Christians abstained from kneeling on Sunday in token of the resurrection. For later testimonies see Ambrose, Ep. 119, ad Januarium. Epiphanius, on Heresies, Book III. (Vol. III. p. 583, ed. Dindorf). Jerome, Dial: Adv. Lucif. c. iv., and the Twentieth Canon of the Council of Nicæa, with Canon Bright's notes (Notes on the Canons of the First Four General Councils, p. 72).
[715] Cf. the Conferences XXI. xi. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Book III.
Of the Canonical System of the Daily Prayers and Psalms. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter I.
Of the services of the third, sixth, and ninth hours, which are observed in the regions of Syria.
The nocturnal system of prayers and Psalms as observed throughout Egypt has been, I think, by God's help, explained so far as our slender ability was able; and now we must speak of the services of Tierce, Sext, and None, according to the rule of the monasteries of Palestine and Mesopotamia, [716] as we said in the Preface, and must moderate by the customs of these the perfection and inimitable rigour of the discipline of the Egyptians. __________________________________________________________________
[716] According to S. Jerome, Hilarion was the first to introduce the monastic life into Palestine (Vita Hilar.). His work was carried on by his companion and pupil Hesycas and Epiphanius, afterwards Bishop of Salamis in Cyprus. In Asia Minor S. Basil was the greater organizer of monasticism, though, as he tells us, there were already many monks, not only in Egypt but also in Palestine, Coelosyria, and Mesopotamia (Ep. ccxxiii.). See also on the early monks of Palestine and the East, Sozomen, H. E., Book VI., cc. xxxii.-xxxv. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter II.
How among the Egyptians they apply themselves all day long to prayer and Psalm continually, with the addition of work, without distinction of hours.
For among them (viz., the Egyptians) these offices which we are taught to render to the Lord at separate hours and at intervals of time, with a reminder from the convener, are celebrated continuously throughout the whole day, with the addition of work, and that of their own free will. For manual labour is incessantly practised by them in their cells in such a way that meditation on the Psalms and the rest of the Scriptures is never entirely omitted. And as with it at every moment they mingle suffrages and prayers, they spend the whole day in those offices which we celebrate at fixed times. Wherefore, except Vespers and Nocturns, there are no public services among them in the day except on Saturday and Sunday, when they meet together at the third hour for the purpose of Holy Communion. [717] For that which is continuously offered is more than what is rendered at intervals of time; and more acceptable as a free gift than the duties which are performed by the compulsion of a rule: as David for this rejoices somewhat exultingly when he says, "Freely will I sacrifice unto Thee;" and, "Let the free will offerings of my mouth be pleasing to Thee, O Lord." [718] __________________________________________________________________
[717] The Saturday Communion (in addition to that of Wednesday and Friday, as well as Sunday) is also mentioned by S. Basil (Ep. xciii.), and cf. the Forty-ninth Canon of the Council of Laodicæa (circa 360 a.d.): "During Lent the bread shall not be offered except on Saturday and Sunday." In the West there is no trace of a special Saturday celebration of the Holy Communion. The third hour was the ordinary time for Holy Communion, as may be seen from the decree (falsely) ascribed to Pope Telesphorus (a.d. 127-138), in the Liber Pontificalis: "Ut nullus ante horam tertiam sacrificium offere præsumeret," and many other testimonies.
[718] Ps. liii. (liv.) 8; cxviii. (cxix.) 108. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter III.
How throughout all the East the services of Tierce, Sext, and None are ended with only three Psalms and prayers each; and the reason why these spiritual offices are assigned more particularly to those hours.
And so in the monasteries of Palestine and Mesopotamia and all the East the services of the above-mentioned hours are ended each day with three Psalms apiece, so that constant prayers may be offered to God at the appointed times, and yet, the spiritual duties being completed with due moderation, the necessary offices of work may not be in any way interfered with: for at these three seasons we know that Daniel the prophet also poured forth his prayers to God day by day in his chamber with the windows open. [719] Nor is it without good reasons that these times are more particularly assigned to religious offices, since at them what completed the promises and summed up our salvation was fulfilled. For we can show that at the third hour the Holy Spirit, who had been of old promised by the prophets, descended in the first instance on the Apostles assembled together for prayer. For when in their astonishment at the speaking with tongues, which proceeded from them through the outpouring of the Holy Ghost upon them, the unbelieving people of the Jews mocked and said that they were full of new wine, then Peter, standing up in the midst of them, said: "Men of Israel, and all ye who dwell at Jerusalem, let this be known unto you, and consider my words. For these men are not, as ye imagine, drunk, since it is the third hour of the day; but this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel: and it shall come to pass in the last days, saith the Lord, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions and your old men shall dream dreams. And indeed upon my servants and my handmaids in those days I will pour out of my Spirit, and they shall prophesy." [720] And all of this was fulfilled at the third hour, when the Holy Spirit, announced before by the prophets, came at that hour and abode upon the Apostles. But at the sixth hour the spotless Sacrifice, our Lord and Saviour, was offered up to the Father, and, ascending the cross for the salvation of the whole world, made atonement for the sins of mankind, and, despoiling principalities and powers, led them away openly; and all of us who were liable to death and bound by the debt of the handwriting that could not be paid, He freed, by taking it away out of the midst and affixing it to His cross for a trophy. [721] At the same hour, too, to Peter, in an ecstasy of mind, there was divinely revealed both the calling of the Gentiles by the letting down of the Gospel vessel from heaven, and also the cleansing of all the living creatures contained in it, when a voice came to him and said to him: "Rise, Peter; kill and eat;" [722] which vessel, let down from heaven by the four corners, is plainly seen to signify nothing else than the Gospel. For although, as it is divided by the fourfold narrative of the Evangelists, it seems to have "four corners" (or beginnings), yet the body of the Gospel is but one; embracing, as it does, the birth as well as the Godhead, and the miracles as well as the passion of one and the same Christ. Excellently, too, it says not "of linen" but "as if of linen." For linen signifies death. Since, then, our Lord's death and passion were not undergone by the law of human nature, but of His own free will, it says "as if of linen." For when dead according to the flesh He was not dead according to the spirit, because "His soul was not left in hell, neither did His flesh see corruption." [723] And again He says: "No man taketh My life from Me but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again." [724] And so in this vessel of the Gospels let down from heaven, that is written by the Holy Ghost, all the nations which were formerly outside the observance of the law and reckoned as unclean now flow together through belief in the faith that they may to their salvation be turned away from the worship of idols and be serviceable for health-giving food, and are brought to Peter and cleansed by the voice of the Lord. But at the ninth hour, penetrating to hades, He there by the brightness of His splendour extinguished the indescribable darkness of hell, and, bursting its brazen gates and breaking the iron bars brought away with Him to the skies the captive band of saints which was there shut up and detained in the darkness of inexorable hell, [725] and, by taking away the fiery sword, restored to paradise its original inhabitants by his pious confession. At the same hour, too, Cornelius, the centurion, continuing with his customary devotion in his prayers, is made aware through the converse of the angel with him that his prayers and alms are remembered before the Lord, and at the ninth hour the mystery [726] of the calling of the Gentiles is clearly shown to him, which had been revealed to Peter in his ecstasy of mind at the sixth hour. In another passage, too, in the Acts of the Apostles, we are told as follows about the same time: "But Peter and John went up into the temple at the hour of prayer, the ninth hour." [727] And by these notices it is clearly proved that these hours were not without good reason consecrated with religious services by holy and apostolic men, and ought to be observed in like manner by us, who, unless we are compelled, as it were, by some rule to discharge these pious offices at least at stated times, either through sloth or through forgetfulness, or being absorbed in business, spend the whole day without engaging in prayer. But concerning the evening sacrifices what is to be said, since even in the Old Testament these are ordered to be offered continually by the law of Moses? For that the morning whole-burnt offerings and evening sacrifices were offered every day continually in the temple, although with figurative offerings, we can show from that which is sung by David: "Let my prayer be set forth in Thy sight as the incense, and let the lifting up of my hands be an evening sacrifice," [728] in which place we can understand it in a still higher sense of that true evening sacrifice which was given by the Lord our Saviour in the evening to the Apostles at the Supper, when He instituted the holy mysteries of the Church, and of that evening sacrifice which He Himself, on the following day, in the end of the ages, offered up to the Father by the lifting up of His hands for the salvation of the whole world; which spreading forth of His hands on the Cross is quite correctly called a "lifting up." For when we were all lying in hades He raised us to heaven, according to the word of His own promise when He says: "When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men unto Me." [729] But concerning Mattins, that also teaches us which it is customary every day to sing at it: "O God, my God, to Thee do I watch at break of day;" and "I will meditate on Thee in the morning;" and "I prevented the dawning of the day and cried;" and again, "Mine eyes to Thee have prevented the morning, that I might meditate on Thy words." [730] At these hours too that householder in the Gospel hired labourers into his vineyard. For thus also is he described as having hired them in the early morning, which time denotes the Mattin office; then at the third hour; then at the sixth; after this, at the ninth; and last of all, at the eleventh, [731] by which the hour of the lamps [732] is denoted. [733] __________________________________________________________________
[719] Cf. Daniel vi. 10.
[720] Acts ii. 14-18.
[721] The whole passage is alluding to Col. ii. 14, 15, which runs as follows in the Vulgate: "Delens quad adversum nos erat chirograffum decretis, quod erat contrarium nobis, et ipse tulit de medio, affigens illud cruci, expolians principatus et potestates traduxit confidenter, palam triumphans illos in semet ipso."
[722] Acts x. 11 sq.
[723] Ps. xv. (xvi.) 10.
[724] S. John x. 18.
[725] The belief that by the descent into hell our Lord released some who were there detained was almost, if not quite, universal in the early ages, and is recognized by a large number of the Fathers. It is alluded to by so early a writer as Ignatius (Ad Magn. ix.), and appears in Irenæus (IV. c. xlii.) as a tradition of those who had seen the Apostles. See also Tertullian, De Anima, c. lv., and a host of later writers.
[726] Sacramentum. This word is used by Cassian, as by other Latin writers, as the regular equivalent of the Greek, musterion, and as such is applied to sacred truths equally with sacred rites. See Book V. xxxiv.: "Sacramenta scriptorum;" Conferences IX. xxxiv.: "Sacramentum resurrectionis Dominicæ." And again and again the word is used of the mystery of the Incarnation in the books against Nestorius.
[727] Acts iii. 1.
[728] Ps. cxl. (cxli.) 2.
[729] S. John xii. 32.
[730] Pss. lxii. (lxiii.) 2, 7; cxviii. (cxix.) 147, 8. In both East and West Ps. lxii. (lxiii.) has from very early times been used as a morning hymn. See the Apost. Constitutions II. lix., VIII. xxxvii. In the East it is still one of the fixed Psalms at Lauds, as it is also in the West, according to the Roman use. But in Cassian's time it had apparently been transferred from Lauds to Prime. See below, c. vi.
[731] S. Matt. xx. 1-6.
[732] Lucernaris hora; i e., the hour for Vespers, which is sometimes called lucernarium or lucernalis. S. Jerome in Ps. cxix. S. Augustine, Sermo i ad fratres in er.
[733] It will be noticed that in this chapter Cassian alludes to five offices: (1) A morning office; (2) the third hour; (3) the sixth; (4) the ninth; and (5) Vespers; and gives the grounds for their observance. Similar grounds are given by Cyprian, De Orat. Dominica sub fine: "For upon the disciples, at the third hour, the Holy Spirit descended, who fulfilled the grace of the Lord's promise. Moreover at the sixth hour, Peter, going up to the housetop, was instructed as well by the sign as by the word of God, admonishing him to receive all to the grace of salvation, whereas he was previously doubtful of the receiving of the Gentiles to baptism. And from the sixth hour to the ninth the Lord, being crucified, washed away our sins by His blood; and that He might redeem and quicken us, He then accomplished His victory by His passion. But for us, beloved brethren besides the hours of prayer observed of old, both the times and the sacraments have now increased in number. For we must also pray in the morning, that the Lord's resurrection may be celebrated by morning prayer....Also at the sun-setting and decline of day we must pray again. For since Christ is the true Sun and the true Day, as the worldly sun and day depart, when we pray and ask that light may return to us again, we pray for the advent of Christ, which shall give us the grace of everlasting light." Cf. also S. Basil, The Greater Monastic Rules, Q. xxxvii., where the same subject is discussed, and Apost. Const. Book VIII. c. xxxiv. In later times the Seven Canonical Hours were all connected with the events of our Lord's Passion, and supposed to commemorate His sufferings, as the following stanzas show:-- At Mattins bound, at Prime reviled, Condemned to death at Tierce, Nailed to the Cross at Sext, at Nones His blessed side they pierce. They take Him down at Vesper-tide, In grave at Compline lay; Who thenceforth bids His Church observe Her sevenfold hours alway. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IV.
How the Mattin office was not appointed by an ancient tradition but was started in our own day for a definite reason.
But you must know that this Mattins, which is now very generally observed in Western countries, was appointed as a canonical office in our own day, and also in our own monastery, where our Lord Jesus Christ was born of a Virgin and deigned to submit to growth in infancy as man, and where by His Grace He supported our own infancy, still tender in religion, and, as it were, fed with milk. [734] For up till that time we find that when this office of Mattins (which is generally celebrated after a short interval after the Psalms and prayers of Nocturns in the monasteries of Gaul) was finished, together with the daily vigils, the remaining hours were assigned by our Elders to bodily refreshment. But when some rather carelessly abused this indulgence and prolonged their time for sleep too long, as they were not obliged by the requirements of any service to leave their cells or rise from their beds till the third hour; and when, as well as losing their labour, they were drowsy from excess of sleep in the daytime, when they ought to have been applying themselves to some duties, (especially on those days when an unusually oppressive weariness was caused by their keeping watch from the evening till the approach of morning), a complaint was brought to the Elders by some of the brethren who were ardent in spirit and in no slight measure disturbed by this carelessness, and it was determined by them after long discussion and anxious consideration that up till sunrise, when they could without harm be ready to read or to undertake manual labour, time for rest should be given to their wearied bodies, and after this they should all be summoned to the observance of this service and should rise from their beds, and by reciting three Psalms and prayers (after the order anciently fixed for the observance of Tierce and Sext, to signify the confession of the Trinity) [735] should at the same time by an uniform arrangement put an end to their sleep and make a beginning to their work. And this form, although it may seem to have arisen out of an accident and to have been appointed within recent memory for the reason given above, yet it clearly makes up according to the letter that number which the blessed David indicates (although it can be taken spiritually): "Seven times a day do I praise Thee because of Thy righteous judgments." [736] For by the addition of this service we certainly hold these spiritual assemblies seven times a day, and are shown to sing praises to God seven times in it. [737] Lastly, though this same form, starting from the East, has most beneficially spread to these parts, yet still in some long-established monasteries in the East, which will not brook the slightest violation of the old rules of the Fathers, it seems never to have been introduced. [738] __________________________________________________________________
[734] The allusion is to the monastery at Bethlehem, where Cassian had himself been educated. See the introduction.
[735] Trinæ confessionis exemplo. The words appear to mean that the three Psalms used at these offices are significant of the Persons of the Holy Trinity. So somewhat similarly Cyprian (on the Lord's Prayer) speaks of the third, sixth, and ninth hours being observed as a sacrament of the Trinity.
[736] Ps. cxviii. (cxix.) 164.
[737] This second "Mattins" of which Cassian has been speaking is the service which the later Church called Prime, Cassian's first Mattins corresponding to Lauds, and his Nocturns, or "Vigiliæ," to Mattins. Thus the "seven hours" are made up as follows: (1) Nocturns or Mattins, (2) Lauds, (3) Prime, (4) Tierce, (5) Sext, (6 None, (7) Vespers. Compline, it will be noticed, had not yet been introduced. This appears for the first time in the Rule of S. Benedict (c. xvi.), a century later. By its introduction the "day hours" were made up to seven Nocturns belonging strictly to the night, and answering to the Psalmist's words, "At midnight will I rise to give thanks to Thee." Ps. cxix. 62.
[738] The introduction of Prime appears to have been very gradual even in the West, for, though an office for it is prescribed in S. Benedict (c. xix.), yet there is no mention of it in the Rule of Cæsarius of Arles for monks nor in that of Isidore of Seville, and it is omitted by Cassiodorus in his enumeration of the seven hours observed by the monks. After Benedict the next to mention it appears to be Aurelius, a successor of Cæsarius at Arles, and by degrees it made its way to universal adoption in the West. In the Greek Church the office for it is said continuously with Lauds (to orthron). __________________________________________________________________
Chapter V.
How they ought not to go back to bed again after the Mattin prayers.
But some in this province, not knowing the reason why this office was appointed and introduced, go back again to bed after their Mattin prayers are finished, and in spite of it fall into that very habit to check which our Elders instituted this service. For they are eager to finish it at that hour, that an opportunity maybe given, to those who are inclined to be indifferent and not careful enough, to go back to bed again, which most certainly ought not to be done (as we showed more fully in the previous book when describing the service of the Egyptians), [739] for fear lest the force of our natural passions should be aroused and stain that purity of ours which was gained by humble confession and prayers before the dawn, or some illusion of the enemy pollute us, or even the repose of a pure and natural sleep interfere with the fervour of our spirit and make us lazy and slothful throughout the whole day, as we are chilled by the sluggishness caused by sleep. And to avoid this the Egyptians, and especially as they are in the habit of rising at fixed times even before the cock-crow, when the canonical office [740] has been celebrated, afterwards prolong their vigils even to daylight, that the morning light when it comes on them may find them established in fervour of spirit, and keep them still more careful and fervent all through the day, as it has found them prepared for the conflict and strengthened against their daily struggle with the devil by the practice of nocturnal vigils and spiritual meditation. __________________________________________________________________
[739] Book II. c. xiii.
[740] Missa. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VI.
How no change was made by the Elders in the ancient system of Psalms when the Mattin office was instituted.
But this too we ought to know, viz., that no change was made in the ancient arrangement of Psalms by our Elders who decided that this Mattin service should be added; [741] but that office [742] was always celebrated in their nocturnal assemblies according to the same order as it had been before. For the hymns which in this country they used at the Mattin service at the close of the nocturnal vigils, which they are accustomed to finish after the cock-crowing and before dawn, these they still sing in like manner; viz., Ps. 148, beginning "O praise the Lord from heaven," and the rest which follow; but the 50th Psalm and the 62nd, and the 89th have, we know, been assigned to this new service. Lastly, throughout Italy at this day, when the Mattin hymns are ended, the 50th Psalm is sung in all the churches, which I have no doubt can only have been derived from this source. __________________________________________________________________
[741] I.e., Prime. Some confusion is likely to be caused by the fact that Cassian speaks of both "Lauds" and "Prime" by the same title of Mattins. Immediately below, where he speaks of the "Mattin service at the close of the nocturnal vigils" he is referring to Lauds, which always followed immediately (or after a very short interval) after Nocturns, or Mattins. At this service Pss. cxlviii.-cl. have always been sung, indeed, they form the characteristic feature which gives the service its name of "Lauds" (hoi ainoi). Of the other three Psalms, l. (li.), lxii. (lxiii.), and lxxxix. (xc.), which Cassian says had been transferred from Lauds to the newly instituted service of Prime, lxii. has been already spoken of as a morning hymn of the early Church (see the notes on c. iii.), and we learn from S. Basil that in his day Ps. l. (ho tes exomologeseos psalmos) was regularly sung after Mattins when the day began to break (Ep. ccvii. ad clericos Neo-Cæs.), and it is still a Lauds Psalm in both East and West. lxxxix. (xc.) is now one of the fixed Psalms at Prime in the East, but in the West it is, according to the Roman rule, sung at Lauds on Thursdays only. Thus it would appear that the transfer of these three Psalms from Lauds to Prime, of which Cassian speaks, never obtained widely, but that the older arrangement, whereby, at any rate, l. and lxii. were assigned to Lauds, has generally been adhered to both in the East and West. Cf. the Rule of S. Benedict, according to which Ps. l. is sung daily at Lauds, and lxii. as well on Sundays (c. xii., xiii.).
[742] Missa. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VII.
How one who does not come to the daily prayer before the end of the first Psalm is not allowed to enter the Oratory; but at Nocturnes a late arrival up to the end of the second Psalm can be overlooked.
But one who at Tierce, Sext, or None has not come to prayer before the Psalm is begun and finished does not venture further to enter the Oratory nor to join himself to those singing the Psalms; but, standing outside, he awaits the breaking-up of the congregation, [743] and while they are all coming out does penance lying on the ground, and obtains absolution for his carelessness and lateness, knowing that he can in no other way expiate the fault of his sloth, nor can ever be admitted to the service which will follow three hours later, unless he has been quick to make satisfaction at once for his present negligence by the help of true humility. But in the nocturnal assemblies a late arrival up to the second Psalm is allowed, provided that before the Psalm is finished and the brethren bow down in prayer he makes haste to take his place in the congregation and join them; but he will most certainly be subjected to the same blame and penance which we mentioned before if he has delayed ever so little beyond the hour permitted for a late arrival. [744] __________________________________________________________________
[743] Congregationis missam.
[744] The Rule of S. Benedict has similar provisions, allowing a late arrival at Mattins till the Gloria after the Venite (the second Psalm, as it is preceded by Ps. iii.), and at the other services till the Gloria after the first Psalm. "If any come later than this, he is not to take his usual place in the choir, but stand last of all, or take whatever place the Abbot may have appointed for those who are guilty of a similar neglect, so that he may be seen of all; and in this place he is to remain until he shall have made public satisfaction, at the end of the office. We deem it necessary," the Rule proceeds, "to place such offenders thus apart, that, being thus exposed to the view of all their brethren, they may be shamed into a sense of duty. Moreover, if such were allowed to remain outside the church, they might either sit down at their ease, or while away their time in chatting, or perhaps return to the dormitory and compose themselves to sleep and thus expose themselves to the temptations of the enemy." Rule of S. Benedict, c. xliii. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VIII.
Of the Vigil service which is celebrated on the evening preceding the Sabbath; of its length, and the manner in which it is observed.
In the winter time, however, when the nights are longer, the Vigils, [745] which are celebrated every week on the evening at the commencing the Sabbath, are arranged by the elders in the monasteries to last till the fourth cock-crowing, for this reason, viz., that after the watch through the whole night they may, by resting their bodies for the remaining time of nearly two hours, avoid flagging through drowsiness the whole day long, and be content with repose for this short time instead of resting the whole night. And it is proper for us, too, to observe this with the utmost care, that we may be content with the sleep which is allowed us after the office of Vigils up to daybreak,--i.e., till the Mattin Psalms, [746] --and afterwards spend the whole day in work and necessary duties, lest through weariness from the Vigils, and feebleness, we might be forced to take by day the sleep which we cut off from the night, and so be thought not to have cut short our bodily rest so much as to have changed our time for repose and nightly retirement. For our feeble flesh could not possibly be defrauded of the whole night's rest and yet keep its vigour unshaken throughout the following day without sleepiness of mind and heaviness of spirit, as it will be hindered rather than helped by this unless after Vigils are over it enjoys a short slumber. And, therefore, if, as we have suggested, at least an hour's sleep is snatched before daybreak, we shall save all the hours of Vigils which we have spent all through the night in prayer, granting to nature what is due to it, and having no necessity of taking back by day what we have cut off from the night. For a man will certainly have to give up everything to this flesh if he tries, not in a rational manner to withhold a part only, but to refuse the whole, and (to speak candidly) is anxious to cut off not what is superfluous but what is necessary. Wherefore Vigils have to be made up for with greater interest if they are prolonged with ill-considered and unreasonable length till daybreak. And so they divide them into an office in three parts, that by this variety the effort may be distributed and the exhaustion of the body relieved by some agreeable relaxation. For when standing they have sung three Psalms antiphonally, [747] after this, sitting on the ground or in very low stalls, one of them repeats three Psalms, while the rest respond, each Psalm being assigned to one of the brethren, who succeed each other in turn; and to these they add three lessons while still sitting quietly. And so, by lessening their bodily exertion, they manage to observe their Vigils with greater attention of mind. [748] __________________________________________________________________
[745] Vigiliæ is here used as the equivalent of Nocturns.
[746] I.e., the office of Lauds.
[747] Tria Antiphona. The word is here used (as above, II. c. ii.), not in the modern sense of antiphon, but to denote a Psalm or Psalms sung antiphonally.
[748] In this chapter Cassian describes two of the different methods of Psalmody employed in the ancient Church: (1) Antiphonal singing, where the congregation was divided into two parts, or choirs, which sang alternate verses; (2) the method according to which one voice alone sang the first part of the verse, and the rest of the congregation joined in at the close. Both methods are described in a well-known passage in an Epistle of S. Basil (Ep. ccvii. ad clericos Neocoes), where he tells us that in the morning service, at one time the people divide themselves into two parties and sing antiphonally to each other (antipsallousin allelois), while at another time they entrust to one person the duty of beginning the strain, and the rest respond (upechousi). This latter method seems to have been a very favourite one, the Psalms which were thus sung being called Responsoria. See Isidore, De Offic., i. 8; and compare the Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, Vol. II. p. 1745; and Bingham, Antiquities, Book XIV. c. i. A third method has been already described by Cassian in Book II. c. xi.; viz., that called Tractus, where the Psalm was executed by a single voice, while all the rest of the congregation listened. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IX.
The reason why a Vigil is appointed as the Sabbath day dawns, and why a dispensation from fasting is enjoyed on the Sabbath all through the East.
And throughout the whole of the East it has been settled, ever since the time of the preaching of the Apostles, when the Christian faith and religion was founded, that these Vigils should be celebrated as the Sabbath dawns, [749] for this reason,--because, when our Lord and Saviour had been crucified on the sixth day of the week, the disciples, overwhelmed by the freshness of His sufferings, remained watching throughout the whole night, giving no rest or sleep to their eyes. Wherefore, since that time, a service of Vigils has been appointed for this night, and is still observed in the same way up to the present day all through the East. And so, after the exertion of the Vigil, a dispensation from fasting, appointed in like manner for the Sabbath by apostolic men, [750] is not without reason enjoined in all the churches of the East, in accordance with that saying of Ecclesiastes, which, although it has another and a mystical sense, is not misapplied to this, by which we are charged to give to both days--that is, to the seventh and eighth equally--the same share of the service, as it says: "Give a portion to these seven and also to these eight." [751] For this dispensation from fasting must not be understood as a participation in the Jewish festival by those above all who are shown to be free from all Jewish superstition, but as contributing to that rest of the wearied body of which we have spoken; which, as it fasts continually for five days in the week all through the year, would easily be worn out and fail, unless it were revived by an interval of at least two days. __________________________________________________________________
[749] The observance of a vigil for the whole or greater part of the night was a regular part of the preparation for the greater festivals, and as such was usual in the East before the Sabbath (Saturday) and Lord's Day, as well as Pentecost and Easter. See Socrates, H. E. VI. viii., where there is an allusion to this.
[750] Saturday, as well as Sunday, was long regarded as a festival in the East, and, indeed, originally in most churches of the West as well. See the Apost. Const. II. lix. 1; VIII. xxxiii. 1. Apost. Canons lxvi.; Council of Laodicæa, Canons xvi., xlix., li.
[751] Eccl. xi. 2. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter X.
How it was brought about that they fast on the Sabbath in the city.
But some people in some countries of the West, and especially in the city, [752] not knowing the reason of this indulgence, think that a dispensation from fasting ought certainly not to be allowed on the Sabbath, because they say that on this day the Apostle Peter fasted before his encounter with Simon. [753] But from this it is quite clear that he did this not in accordance with a canonical rule, but rather through the needs of his impending struggle. Since there, too, for the same purpose, Peter seems to have imposed on his disciples not a general but a special fast, which he certainly would not have done if he had known that it was wont to be observed by canonical rule: just as he would surely have been ready to appoint it even on Sunday, if the occasion of his struggle had fallen upon it: but no canonical rule of fasting would have been made general from this, because it was no general observance that led to it, but a matter of necessity, which forced it to be observed on a single occasion. __________________________________________________________________
[752] Viz., Rome.
[753] The Saturday fast was observed at Rome in very early days, being noticed by Tertullian, who seems to suggest that it originated in the prolongation of the Friday fast (on Fasting, c. xiv). But it seems to have been almost peculiar to Rome, and at Milan, in the time of S. Ambrose, the Eastern custom prevailed. See the important letter of Augustine to Casulanus (Ep. xxxvi.), where the whole subject of the difference of usage on this matter is fully discussed. The reason here given by Cassian for the origin of the local Roman custom (viz., that S. Peter's traditional encounter with Simon Magus took place on Sunday, and was prepared for by the apostle with a Saturday fast) is also there alluded to by Augustine as being the opinion of very many, though he tells us candidly that most of the Romans thought it false. "Est quidem et hæc opinio plurimorum, quamvis eam perhibeant esse falsam plerique Romani, quod Apostolus Petrus cum Simone Mago die dominico certaturo, propter ipsum magnæ tentationis periculum, pridie cum ejusdem urbis ecclesia jejunaverit, et consecuto tam prospero gloriosoque successu, eundem morem tenuerit, eumque imitatæ sunt nonnullæ Occidentis ecclesiæ." Cf. also Augustine, Ep. ad Januarium, liv. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XI.
Of the points in which the service held on Sunday differs from what is customary on other days.
But we ought to know this, too, that on Sunday only one office [754] is celebrated before dinner, at which, out of regard for the actual service [755] and the Lord's communion, they use a more solemn and a longer service of Psalms and prayers and lessons, and so consider that Tierce and Sext are included in it. And hence it results that, owing to the addition of the lessons, there is no diminution of the amount of their devotions, and yet some difference is made, and an indulgence over other times seems to be granted to the brethren out of reverence for the Lord's resurrection; and this seems to lighten the observance all through the week, and, by reason of the difference which is interposed, it makes the day to be looked forward to more solemnly as a festival, and owing to the anticipation of it the fasts of the coming week are less felt. For any weariness is always borne with greater equanimity, and labour undertaken without aversion, if some variety is interposed or change of work succeeds. __________________________________________________________________
[754] Missa.
[755] Collecta. This word, from which our word "Collect" is possibly derived, is used for an assembly for worship in the Vulgate in Lev. xxiii. 36; Deut. xvi. 8; 2 Chron. vii. 9; Neh. viii. 18: and compare the phrase, "Ad Collectam," in the Sacramentary of Gregory for the Feast of the Purification. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XII.
Of the days on which, when supper is provided for the brethren, a Psalm is not said as they assemble for the meals as is usual at dinner.
Lastly, also, on those days,--i.e., on Saturday and Sunday,--and on holy days, on which it is usual for both dinner and supper to be provided for the brethren, a Psalm is not said in the evening, either when they come to supper or when they rise from it, as is usual at their ordinary dinner [756] and the canonical refreshment on fast days, which the customary Psalms usually precede and follow. But they simply make a plain prayer and come to supper, and again, when they rise from it, conclude with prayer alone; because this repast is something special among the monks: nor are they all obliged to come to it, but it is only for strangers who have come to see the brethren, and those whom bodily weakness or their own inclination invites to it. __________________________________________________________________
[756] In sollemnibus prandiis. The phrase must here refer to their dinner on ordinary days (cf. solemnitatem ciborum, "their usual food," Book IV. c. xxi.). Among the early monks it was the custom ordinarily to have but one meal a day on the fast days (viz., Wednesday and Friday); this was at the ninth hour; on other days, at the sixth (i.e., midday). Cf. the Conferences XXI. c. xxiii. On festivals (viz., Saturday, Sunday, and holy days), beside the midday meal a supper was allowed as well. And on these days, as we learn from the passage before us, the ordinary grace before and after meat was shortened by the omission of the customary Psalms at other times included in it. On the meals of the monks, cf. S. Jerome's Preface to the Rule of Pachomius and the Rule of S. Benedict, cc. xxxix.-xli., the former of which tells us that, except on Wednesday and Friday, dinner was at midday, and a table was also set for labourers, old men, and children, and (apparently) for all, in the height of summer. For the use of Psalms at grace, see Clement of Alexandria, Poedag. II. iv. 44; Stromateis VII. vii. 49. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Book IV.
Of the Institutes of the Renunciants. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter I.
Of the training of those who renounce this world, and of the way in which those are taught among the monks of Tabenna and the Egyptians who are received into the monasteries.
From the canonical system of Psalms and prayers which ought to be observed in the daily services throughout the monasteries, we pass, in the due course of our narrative, to the training of one who renounces this world; endeavouring first, as well as we can, to embrace, in a short account, the terms on which those who desire to turn to the Lord can be received in the monasteries; adding some things from the rule of the Egyptians, some from that of the monks of Tabenna, [757] whose monastery in the Thebaid is better filled as regards numbers, as it is stricter in the rigour of its system, than all others, for there are in it more than five thousand brethren under the rule of one Abbot; and the obedience with which the whole number of monks is at all times subject to one Elder is what no one among us would render to another even for a short time, or would demand from him. __________________________________________________________________
[757] Tabenna, or Tabennæ, was an island in the Nile, where was founded a flourishing monastery by Pachomius c. 330 a.d. Of Pachomius there is a notice in Sozomen H. E. Book III. c. xiv., and his Rule was translated into Latin, with a preface by S. Jerome who mentions his fame in Ep. cxxvii. There is a Life of Pachomius given by Rosweyde (Vitæ Patrum), which is said to be a translation of a work by a contemporary of his. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter II.
Of the way in which among them men remain in the monasteries even to extreme old age.
And I think that before anything else we ought to touch on their untiring perseverance and humility and subjection,--how it lasts for so long, and by what system it is formed, through which they remain in the monasteries till they are bent double with old age; for it is so great that we cannot recollect any one who joined our monasteries keeping it up unbroken even for a year: so that when we have seen the beginning of their renunciation of the world, we shall understand how it came about that, starting from such a commencement, they reached such a height of perfection. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter III.
Of the ordeal by which one who is to be received in the monastery is tested.
One, then, who seeks to be admitted to the discipline of the monastery is never received before he gives, by lying outside the doors for ten days or even longer, an evidence of his perseverance and desire, as well as of humility and patience. And when, prostrate at the feet of all the brethren that pass by, and of set purpose repelled and scorned by all of them, as if he was wanting to enter the monastery not for the sake of religion but because he was obliged; and when, too, covered with many insults and affronts, he has given a practical proof of his steadfastness, and has shown what he will be like in temptations by the way he has borne the disgrace; and when, with the ardour of his soul thus ascertained, he is admitted, then they enquire with the utmost care whether he is contaminated by a single coin from his former possessions clinging to him. For they know that he cannot stay for long under the discipline of the monastery, nor ever learn the virtue of humility and obedience, nor be content with the poverty and difficult life of the monastery, if he knows that ever so small a sum of money has been kept hid; but, as soon as ever a disturbance arises on some occasion or other, he will at once dart off from the monastery like a stone from a sling, impelled to this by trusting in that sum of money. [758] __________________________________________________________________
[758] Cf. the Rule of Pachomius, c. xxvi.: "If any or comes to the door of the monastery wanting to renounce the world and to join the number of the brethren, he shall not be allowed to enter, but the Abbot of the monastery must first be told, and he shall stay for a few days outside before the gate, and shall be taught the Lord's Prayer and as many Psalms as he can learn, and shall diligently give proof of himself that he has not done any thing wrong and fled in trouble for the time, and that he is not in any one's power, and that he can forsake his relations and disregard his property. And if they see that he is apt for everything, then he shall be taught the rest of the rules of the monastery,--what he ought to do, whom he is to obey," etc.; and, finally, he is to be admitted. See also the Rule of S. Benedict, c. lviii., which is to much the same effect, and S. Basil's Longer Monastic Rules, Q. x. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IV.
The reason why those who are received in the monastery are not allowed to bring anything in with them.
And for these reasons they do not agree to take from him money to be used even for the good of the monastery: First, in case he may be puffed up with arrogance, owing to this offering, and so not deign to put himself on a level with the poorer brethren; and next, lest he fail through this pride of his to stoop to the humility of Christ, and so, when he cannot hold out under the discipline of the monastery, leave it, and afterwards, when he has cooled down, want in a bad spirit to receive and get back--not without loss to the monastery--what he had contributed in the early days of his renunciation, when he was aglow with spiritual fervour. And that this rule should always be kept they have been frequently taught by many instances. For in some monasteries where they are not so careful some who have been received unreservedly have afterwards tried most sacrilegiously to demand a return of that which they had contributed and which had been spent on God's work. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter V.
The reason why those who give up the world, when they are received in the monasteries, must lay aside their own clothes and be clothed in others by the Abbot.
Wherefore each one on his admission is stripped of all his former possessions, so that he is not allowed any longer to keep even the clothes which he has on his back: but in the council of the brethren he is brought forward into the midst and stripped of his own clothes, and clad by the Abbot's hands in the dress of the monastery, so that by this he may know not only that he has been despoiled of all his old things, but also that he has laid aside all worldly pride, and come down to the want and poverty of Christ, and that he is now to be supported not by wealth sought for by the world's arts, nor by anything reserved from his former state of unbelief, but that he is to receive out of the holy and sacred funds of the monastery his rations for his service; and that, as he knows that he is thence to be clothed and fed and that he has nothing of his own, he may learn, nevertheless, not to be anxious about the morrow, according to the saying of the Gospel, and may not be ashamed to be on a level with the poor, that is with the body of the brethren, with whom Christ was not ashamed to be numbered, and to call himself their brother, but that rather he may glory that he has been made to share the lot of his own servants. [759] __________________________________________________________________
[759] So the Rule of Pachomius (c. xxvi.) orders that on the admission of a monk "they shall strip him of his secular dress, and put on him the garb of the monks;" and that of S. Benedict (c. lviii.), "He shall then be clothed in the religious habit, and his secular clothes deposited in the wardrobe, that if, at the instigation of the devil, he should ever leave the monastery, they may be given back to him, and the religious dress be taken from him." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VI.
The reason why the clothes of the renunciants with which they joined the monastery are preserved by the steward.
But those clothes, which he laid aside, are consigned to the care of the steward and kept until by different sorts of temptations and trials they can recognize the excellence of his progress and life and endurance. And if they see that he can continue therein as time goes on, and remain in that fervour with which he began, they give them away to the poor. But if they find that he has been guilty of any fault of murmuring, or of even the smallest piece of disobedience, then they strip off from him the dress of the monastery in which he had been clad, and reclothe him in his old garments which had been confiscated, and send him away. [760] For it is not right for him to go away with those which he had received, nor do they allow any one to be any longer dressed in them if they have seen him once grow cold in regard to the rule of their institution. Wherefore, also, the opportunity of going out openly is not given to any one, unless he escapes like a runaway slave by taking advantage of the thickest shades of night, or is judged unworthy of this order and profession and lays aside the dress of the monastery and is expelled with shame and disgrace before all the brethren. __________________________________________________________________
[760] See the quotation from the Rule of S. Benedict in the note on the last chapter. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VII.
The reason why those who are admitted to a monastery are not permitted to mix at once with the congregation of the brethren, but are first committed to the guest house.
When, then, any one has been received and proved by that persistence of which we have spoken, and, laying aside his own garments, has been clad in those of the monastery, he is not allowed to mix at once with the congregation of the brethren, but is given into the charge of an Elder, who lodges apart not far from the entrance of the monastery, and is entrusted with the care of strangers and guests, and bestows all his diligence in receiving them kindly. And when he has served there for a whole year without any complaint, and has given evidence of service towards strangers, [761] being thus initiated in the first rudiments of humility and patience, and by long practice in it acknowledged, when he is to be admitted from this into the congregation of the brethren he is handed over to another Elder, who is placed over ten of the juniors, who are entrusted to him by the Abbot, and whom he both teaches and governs in accordance with the arrangement which we read of in Exodus as made by Moses. [762] __________________________________________________________________
[761] In the same way the Rule of S. Benedict (c. lviii.) directs that the novice is to be placed in the guest house for a few days, while that of S. Isidore is more precise in ordering him to be placed there "for three months," and to wait on the guests there. Two months is the period fixed by other rules, but a few days was all that was ultimately required, and Cassian stands alone in mentioning a full year as the duration of this service, though Sozomen speaks of the monks of Tabenna as having to undergo a probation of three years. H. E., III. xiv.
[762] Cf. Exod. xviii. 25. The office of "Dean" (Decanus) which is here spoken of by Cassian, is also referred to by Augustine (De Mor. Eccl. xxxi.) and Jerome (Ep. xxii. ad Eustoch.), and recognized by the Rule of S. Benedict, c. xxi., where directions for his appointment are given. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VIII.
Of the practices in which the juniors are first exercised that they may become proficient in overcoming all their desires.
And his anxiety and the chief part of his instruction--through which the juniors brought to him may be able in due course to mount to the greatest heights of perfection--will be to teach him first to conquer his own wishes; and, anxiously and diligently practising him in this, he will of set purpose contrive to give him such orders as he knows to be contrary to his liking; for, taught by many examples, they say that a monk, and especially the younger ones, cannot bridle the desire of his concupiscence unless he has first learnt by obedience to mortify his wishes. And so they lay it down that the man who has not first learnt to overcome his desires cannot possibly stamp out anger or sulkiness, or the spirit of fornication; nor can he preserve true humility of heart, or lasting unity with the brethren, or a stable and continuous concord; nor remain for any length of time in the monastery. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IX.
The reason why the juniors are enjoined not to keep back any of their thoughts from the senior.
By these practices, then, they hasten to impress and instruct those whom they are training with the alphabet, as it were, and first syllables in the direction of perfection, as they can clearly see by these whether they are grounded in a false and imaginary or in a true humility. And, that they may easily arrive at this, they are next taught not to conceal by a false shame any itching thoughts in their hearts, but, as soon as ever such arise, to lay them bare to the senior, and, in forming a judgment about them, not to trust anything to their own discretion, but to take it on trust that that is good or bad which is considered and pronounced so by the examination of the senior. Thus it results that our cunning adversary cannot in any way circumvent a young and inexperienced monk, or get the better of his ignorance, or by any craft deceive one whom he sees to be protected not by his own discretion but by that of his senior, and who cannot be persuaded to hide from his senior those suggestions of his which like fiery darts he has shot into his heart; since the devil, subtle as he is, cannot ruin or destroy a junior unless he has enticed him either through pride or through shame to conceal his thoughts. For they lay it down as an universal and clear proof that a thought is from the devil if we are ashamed to disclose it to the senior. [763] __________________________________________________________________
[763] Compare the Conferences, Book II. c. x., where Cassian returns to the same subject. A similar rule that the brethren are to lay bare all the secrets of their hearts to their superior is given, by S. Basil in the Longer Monastic Rules, Q. xxvi., and in the Rule of S. Isaiah (cc. vi., xliii.), printed in Holsten's Codex Regularum, Vol. I. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter X.
How thorough is the obedience of the juniors even in those things which are matters of common necessity.
Next, the rule is kept with such strict obedience that, without the knowledge and permission of their superior, the juniors not only do not dare to leave their cell but on their own authority do not venture to satisfy their common and natural needs. And so they are quick to fulfil without any discussion all those things that are ordered by him, as if they were commanded by God from heaven; [764] so that sometimes, when impossibilities are commanded them, they undertake them with such faith and devotion as to strive with all their powers and without the slightest hesitation to fulfil them and carry them out; and out of reverence for their senior they do not even consider whether a command is an impossibility. [765] But of their obedience I omit at present to speak more particularly, for we propose to speak of it in the proper place a little later on, with instances of it, if through your prayers the Lord carry us safely through. We now proceed to the other regulations, passing over all account of those which cannot be imposed on or kept in the monasteries in this country, as we promised to do in our Preface; for instance, how they never use woollen garments, but only cotton, and these not double, changes of which each superior gives out to the ten monks under his care when he sees that those which they are wearing are dirty. __________________________________________________________________
[764] Cf. the Rule of S. Benedict, c. v., where it is said that "the first degree of humility is ready obedience. This is peculiar to those who...prefer nothing to Christ, and fulfil the injunctions of their superiors as promptly as if God Himself had given them the command," etc.
[765] The Rule of S. Benedict has a chapter to explain what is to be done if a brother is commanded to perform impossibilities (c. lxviii.). "If a brother is commanded to do anything that is difficult, or even impossible, let him receive the command with all meekness and obedience; meanwhile, should he see that he is utterly unequal to the task laid upon him, let him represent the matter to his superior calmly and respectfully, without pride, resistance, or contradiction. If the superior, after hearing what he has to say, still insists on the execution of the command, let the junior be persuaded that it is for his spiritual good, and accordingly trusting in God's assistance, let him for His love undertake the work." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XI.
The kind of food which is considered the greater delicacy by them.
I pass over, too, that difficult and sublime sort of self-control, through which it is considered the greatest luxury if the plant called cherlock, [766] prepared with salt and steeped in water, is set on the table for the repast of the brethren; and many other things like this, which in this country neither the climate nor the weakness of our constitution would permit. And I shall only follow up those matters which cannot be interfered with by any weakness of the flesh or local situation, if only no weakness of mind or coldness of spirit gets rid of them. __________________________________________________________________
[766] Labsanion. Cf. below, c. xxiii., where cherlock is mentioned again, together with other delicacies (!) of the Egyptians. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XII.
How they leave off every kind of work at the sound of some one knocking at the door, in their eagerness to answer at once.
And so, sitting in their cells and devoting their energies equally to work and to meditation, when they hear the sound of some one knocking at the door and striking on the cells of each, summoning them to prayer or some work, every one eagerly dashes out from his cell, so that one who is practising the writer's art, although he may have just begun to form a letter, does not venture to finish it, but runs out with the utmost speed, at the very moment when the sound of the knocking reaches his ears, without even waiting to finish the letter he has begun; but, leaving the lines of the letter incomplete, he aims not at abridging and saving his labour, but rather hastens with the utmost earnestness and zeal to attain the virtue of obedience, which they put not merely before manual labour and reading and silence and quietness in the cell, but even before all virtues, so that they consider that everything should be postponed to it, and are content to undergo any amount of inconvenience if only it may be seen that they have in no way neglected this virtue. [767] __________________________________________________________________
[767] Cf. the Rule of S. Benedict, c. v.: "Those who choose to tread the path that leads to life eternal immediately quit their private occupations at the call of obedience, and, renouncing their own will so far as to cast away unfinished out of their hands whatever they may be occupied with, hasten to execute the orders of their superiors," etc. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIII.
How wrong it is considered for any one to say that anything, however trifling, is his own.
Among their other practices I fancy that it is unnecessary even to mention this virtue, viz., that no one is allowed to possess a box or basket as his special property, nor any such thing which he could keep as his own and secure with his own seal, as we are well aware that they are in all respects stripped so bare that they have nothing whatever except their shirt, cloak, shoes, sheepskin, and rush mat; [768] for in other monasteries as well, where some indulgence and relaxation is granted, we see that this rule is still most strictly kept, so that no one ventures to say even in word that anything is his own: and it is a great offence if there drops from the mouth of a monk such an expression as "my book," "my tablets," "my pen," "my coat," or "my shoes;" and for this he would have to make satisfaction by a proper penance, if by accident some such expression escaped his lips through thoughtlessness or ignorance. __________________________________________________________________
[768] Psiathium. The rush mats which served as a seat by day and a bed by night for the monks. See Book V. xxxv., and the Conferences I. xxiii.; XV. i.; XVII. iii.; XVIII. xi. S. Jerome mentions it in his preface to the Rule of Pachomius as one of the very few articles contained in the cells of the monks of Tabenna. "They have nothing in their cells except a mat and what is described below: two lebitonaria,' a kind of garment without sleeves which the Egyptian monks use (the colobium, or shirt), one old one for sleeping or working, a linen garment and two hoods, a sheepskin, a linen girdle, shoes, and a staff." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIV.
How, even if a large sum of money is amassed by the labour of each, still no one may venture to exceed the moderate limit of what is appointed as adequate.
And although each one of them may bring in daily by his work and labour so great a return to the monastery that he could out of it not only satisfy his own moderate demands but could also abundantly supply the wants of many, yet he is no way puffed up, nor does he flatter himself on account of his toil and this large gain from his labour, but, except two biscuits, [769] which are sold there for scarcely threepence, no one thinks that he has a right to anything further. And among them there is nothing (and I am ashamed to say this, and heartily wish it was unknown in our own monasteries) which is claimed by any of them, I will not say in deed but even in thought, as his special property. And though he believes that the whole granary of the monastery forms his substance, and, as lord of all, devotes his whole care and energy to it all, yet nevertheless, in order to maintain that excellent state of want and poverty which he has secured and which he strives to preserve to the very last in unbroken perfection, he regards himself as a foreigner and an alien to them all, so that he conducts himself as a stranger and a sojourner in this world, and considers himself a pupil of the monastery and a servant instead of imagining that he is lord and master of anything. __________________________________________________________________
[769] Paxamatium, a biscuit. The word comes from the Greek paxamadion, and is said to be derived from the name of a baker, Paxamos (see Liddell and Scott, c. v.). These biscuits formed an important part of the diet of the Egyptian monks, as we see from the Conferences, where they are often mentioned; e.g., II. xi, xix., xxiv., xxvi.; XII. xv.; XIX. iv. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XV.
Of the excessive desire of possession among us.
To this what shall we wretched creatures say, who though living in Coenobia and established under the government and care of an Abbot yet carry about our own keys, and trampling under foot all feeling of shame and disgrace which should spring from our profession, are not ashamed actually to wear openly upon our fingers rings with which to seal what we have stored up; and in whose case not merely boxes and baskets, but not even chests and closets are sufficient for those things which we collect or which we reserved when we forsook the world; and who sometimes get so angry over trifles and mere nothings (to which however we lay claim as if they were our own) that if any one dares to lay a finger on any of them, we are so filled with rage against him that we cannot keep the wrath of our heart from being expressed on our lips and in bodily excitement. But, passing by our faults and treating with silence those things of which it is a shame even to speak, according to this saying: "My mouth shall not speak the deeds of men," [770] let us in accordance with the method of our narration which we have begun proceed to those virtues which are practised among them, and which we ought to aim at with all earnestness; and let us briefly and hastily set down the actual rules and systems that afterwards, coming to some of the deeds and acts of the elders which we propose carefully to preserve for recollection, we may support by the strongest testimonies what we have set forth in our treatise, and still further confirm everything that we have said by examples and instances from life. __________________________________________________________________
[770] Ps. xvi. (xvii.) 4. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVI.
On the rules for various rebukes.
If then any one by accident breaks an earthenware jar (which they call "baucalis"), he can only expiate his carelessness by public penance; and when all the brethren are assembled for service he must lie on the ground and ask for absolution until the service of the prayers is finished; and will obtain it when by the Abbot's command he is bidden to rise from the ground. The same satisfaction must be given by one who when summoned to some work or to the usual service comes rather late, or who when singing a Psalm hesitates ever so little. Similarly if he answers unnecessarily or roughly or impertinently, if he is careless in carrying out the services enjoined to him, if he makes a slight complaint, if preferring reading to work or obedience he is slow in performing his appointed duties, if when service is over he does not make haste to go back at once to his cell, if he stops for ever so short a time with some one else, if he goes anywhere else even for a moment, if he takes any one else by the hand, if he ventures to discuss anything however small with one who is not the joint-occupant of his cell, [771] if he prays with one who is suspended from prayer, if he sees any of his relations or friends in the world and talks with them without his senior, if he tries to receive a letter from any one or to write back without his Abbot's leave. [772] To such an extent does spiritual censure proceed and in such matters and faults like these. But as for other things which when indiscriminately committed among us are treated by us too as blameworthy, viz.: open wrangling, manifest contempt, arrogant contradictions, going out from the monastery freely and without check, familiarity with women, wrath, quarrelling, jealousies, disputes, claiming something as one's own property, the infection of covetousness, the desire and acquisition of unnecessary things which are not possessed by the rest of the brethren, taking food between meals and by stealth, and things like these--they are dealt with not by that spiritual censure of which we spoke, but by stripes; or are atoned for by expulsion. __________________________________________________________________
[771] From this passage we gather that in Egypt two monks were often the joint occupants of a single cell. Cf. II. xii. and Conference XX. i., ii.
[772] Many of these faults are noticed in the Rule of Pachomius as deserving censure, e.g., unpunctuality at or carelessness in service (c. viii. ix.), breaking anything (c. cxxv.), murmuring (lxxxvii.), taking the hand of another (xliv.). So also in the Rule of S. Benedict (cc. xliii.-xlvi.) similar directions are given, while in c. xliv. the nature of the penance is more fully described. He who in punishment of a grievous fault has been excluded from the Refectory and the Church, shall lie prostrate at the door of the latter at the end of each office, and shall there remain in silence with his forehead touching the ground, until the brethren retiring from church have all walked over him. This penance he shall continue to perform till it be announced to him that he has made due satisfaction. When commended by the Abbot to appear before him, he shall go and cast himself at his feet and then at the feet of all the brethren, begging of them to pray for him. He shall then be admitted to the choir, if the Abbot so order, and shall take there whatever place he may assign him: but let him not presume to intone a Psalm, read a lesson or perform any similar duty, without the special permission of the Abbot. He shall, moreover, prostrate himself in his place in choir at the end of every office, until the Abbot tells him to discontinue this penance. Those who for light faults are excluded merely from the common table, shall make satisfaction in the church according as the Abbot shall direct, and shall continue to do so until he gives them his blessing and tells them that they have made sufficient atonement. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVII.
Of those who introduced the plan that the holy Lessons should be read in the Coenobia while the brethren are eating, and of the strict silence which is kept among the Egyptians.
But we have been informed that the plan that, while the brethren are eating, the holy lessons should be read in the Coenobia did not originate in the Egyptian system but in the Cappadocian. And there is no doubt that they meant to establish it not so much for the sake of the spiritual exercise as for the sake of putting a stop to unnecessary and idle conversation, and especially discussions, which so often arise at meals; since they saw that these could not be prevented among them in any other way. [773] For among the Egyptians and especially those of Tabenna so strict a silence is observed by all that when so large a number of the brethren has sat down together to a meal, no one ventures to talk even in a low tone except the dean, who however if he sees that anything is wanted to be put on or taken off the table, signifies it by a sign rather than a word. And while they are eating, the rule of this silence is so strictly kept that with their hoods drawn down over their eyelids (to prevent their roving looks having the opportunity of wandering inquisitively) they can see nothing except the table, and the food that is put on it, and which they take from it; so that no one notices what another is eating. [774] __________________________________________________________________
[773] It is quite in keeping with what is here said by Cassian that in the Rule of Pachomius there is no mention of reading at meals, but only of the strict silence observed, so that anything wanted might not be asked for but only indicated by a sign (cc. xxxi., xxxiii.), while in the shorter Monastic Rules of S. Basil the custom of reading at meals is distinctly alluded to (Q. clxxx.). It is of course also ordered in most of the later monastic rules, e.g. that of Cesarius of Arles "ad Monachos" c. xlix., "ad Virgines" c. xvi.; that of S. Aurelian, c. xlix.; S. Isidore, c. x., and S. Benedict, c. xxxviii. The regulations in the last mentioned are as follows:--"A book should be read in the Refectory while the brethren are at meals. Let no one presume to read of his own accord; but let there be one appointed to perform that duty, who, commencing on Sunday, will read during the entire week...Profound silence shall be observed during meals, so that no voice save that of the reader may be heard. The brethren will so help each other to what is necessary as regards food and drink that no one may have occasion to ask for anything; should, however, anything be wanted, let it be asked for by sign rather than word. Let no one presume to make any observation either on what is being read or on any other subject, lest occasion be given to the enemy. The Prior, however, should he think fit, may say a few words to edify the brethren."
[774] So Pachomius (c. xxix.). While they are eating they shall sit in their right places and shall cover their heads. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVIII.
How it is against the rule for any one to take anything to eat or drink except at the common table.
In between their regular meals in common they are especially careful that no one should presume to gratify his palate with any food: [775] so that when they are walking casually through gardens or orchards, when the fruit hanging enticingly on the trees not only knocks against their breasts as they pass through, but is also lying on the ground and offering itself to be trampled under foot, and (as it is all ready to be gathered) would easily be able to entice those who see it to gratify their appetite, and by the chance offered to them and the quantity of the fruit, to excite even the most severe and abstemious to long for it; still they consider it wrong not merely to taste a single fruit, but even to touch one with the hand, except what is put on the table openly for the common meal of all, and supplied publicly by the steward's catering through the service of the brethren, for their enjoyment. __________________________________________________________________
[775] Similarly we find in the Rule of Pachomius that no one is allowed to keep any food in his cell besides what he receives from the steward (c. lxxix.): and the Benedictine Rule also says: "Let no one presume to take any food or drink out of the regular hours of meals" (c. xliii). Cf. also the Rule of Pachomius cc. lxxv. and lxxviii., S. Basil's longer Monastic Rules Q. xv., Apsato bromaton para kairon; epi pleiston tes hemeras apositos esto, the Rule of Aurelian (c. lii.), that of Isidore (c. xiii.), etc. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIX.
How throughout Palestine and Mesopotamia a daily service is undertaken by the brethren.
In order that we may not appear to omit any of the Institutes of the Coenobia I think that it should be briefly mentioned that in other countries as well there is a daily service undertaken by the brethren. For throughout the whole of Mesopotamia, Palestine, and Cappadocia and all the East the brethren succeed one another in turn every week for the performance of certain duties, so that the number serving is told off according to the whole number of monks in the Coenobium. And they hasten to fulfil these duties with a zeal and humility such as no slave bestows on his service even to a most harsh and powerful master; so that not satisfied only with these services which are rendered by canonical rule, they actually rise by night in their zeal and relieve those whose special duty this is; and secretly anticipating them try to finish those duties which these others would have to do. But each one who undertakes these weeks is on duty and has to serve until supper on Sunday, and when this is done, his duty for the whole week is finished, so that, when all the brethren come together to chant the Psalms (which according to custom they sing before going to bed) those whose turn is over wash the feet of all in turn, seeking faithfully from them the reward of this blessing for their work during the whole week, that the prayers offered up by all the brethren together may accompany them as they fulfil the command of Christ, the prayer, to wit, that intercedes for their ignorances and for their sins committed through human frailty, and may commend to God the complete service of their devotion like some rich offering. And so on Monday after the Mattin hymns they hand over to others who take their place the vessels and utensils with which they have ministered, which these receive and keep with the utmost care and anxiety, that none of them may be injured or destroyed, as they believe that even for the smallest vessels they must give an account, as sacred things, not only to a present steward, but to the Lord, if by chance any of them is injured through their carelessness. And what limit there is to this discipline, and what fidelity and care there is in keeping it up, you may see from one instance which I will give as an example. For while we are anxious to satisfy that fervour of yours through which you ask for a full account of everything, and want even what you know perfectly well to be repeated to you in this treatise, we are also afraid of exceeding the limits of brevity. [776] __________________________________________________________________
[776] The weekly officers here spoken of were termed "Hebdomadarii" (see the next chapter). According to most rules their duties included cooking, serving, and reading at meals. They are mentioned in S. Jerome's preface to the Rule of Pachomius (cf. also Ep. xxii. ad Eustochium), but it would appear from what Cassian says below in c. xxii. that in Egypt the office of cook was assigned to some one brother and not undertaken by all in turn. According to Cassian they entered upon office on Monday morning but the Benedictine (c. xxxv.) and other rules speak of them as beginning their duties on Sunday morning. The custom of washing the feet of the brethren, which Cassian here describes, is also mentioned by S. Benedict. l. c. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XX.
Of the three lentil beans which the Steward found.
During the week of a certain brother the steward passing by saw lying on the ground three lentil beans which had slipped out of the hand of the monk on duty for the week [777] as he was hastily preparing them for cooking, together with the water in which he was washing them; and immediately he consulted the Abbot on the subject; and by him the monk was adjudged a pilferer and careless about sacred property, and so was suspended from prayer. And the offence of his negligence was only pardoned when he had atoned for it by public penance. For they believe not only that they themselves are not their own, but also that everything that they possess is consecrated to the Lord. Wherefore if anything whatever has once been brought into the monastery they hold that it ought to be treated with the utmost reverence as an holy thing. And they attend to and arrange everything with great fidelity, even in the case of things which are considered unimportant or regarded as common and paltry, so that if they change their position and put them in a better place, or if they fill a bottle with water, or give anybody something to drink out of it, or if they remove a little dust from the oratory or from their cell they believe with implicit faith that they will receive a reward from the Lord. __________________________________________________________________
[777] Hebdomadarius. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXI.
Of the spontaneous service of some of the brethren.
We have been told of brethren in whose week there was such a scarcity of wood that they had not enough to prepare the usual food for the brethren; and when it had been ordered by the Abbot's authority that until more could be brought and fetched, they should content themselves with dried food, [778] though this was agreed to by all and no one could expect any cooked food; still these men as if they were cheated of the fruit and reward of their labour and service, if they did not prepare the food for their brethren according to custom in the order of their turn--imposed upon themselves such uncalled-for labour and care that in those dry and sterile regions where wood cannot possibly be procured unless it is cut from the fruit trees (for there are no wild shrubs found there as with us), they wander about through the wide deserts, and traversing the wilderness which stretches towards the Dead Sea, [779] collect in their lap and the folds of their dress the scanty stubble and brambles which the wind carries hither and thither, and so by their voluntary service prepare all their usual food for the brethren, so that they suffer nothing to be diminished of the ordinary supply; discharging these duties of theirs towards their brethren with such fidelity that though the scarcity of wood and the Abbot's order would be a fair excuse for them, yet still out of regard for their profit and reward they will not take advantage of this liberty. __________________________________________________________________
[778] Xerophagia (xerophagia), "dried food," distinguished from what is raw (omophagia) in the next chapter. Cf. for the word, Tertullian on Fasting c. i. and xvii.
[779] This shows that Cassian is here writing about the monks of Palestine, not those of Egypt, who (according to the next chapter) had a permanent cook. There is a further allusion to and description of this desert in the Conference VI. i. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXII.
The system of the Egyptians, which is appointed for the daily service of the brethren.
These things have been told in accordance with the system, as we remarked before, of the whole East, which also we say should be observed as a matter of course in our own country. But among the Egyptians whose chief care is for work there is not the mutual change of weekly service, for fear lest owing to the requirements of office they might all be hindered from keeping the rule of work. But one of the most approved brethren is given the care of the larder and kitchen, and he takes charge of that office for good and all as long as his strength and years permit. For he is exhausted by no great bodily labour, because no great care is expended among them in preparing food or in cooking, as they so largely make use of dried and uncooked food, [780] and among them the leaves of leeks cut each month, and cherlock, table salt, [781] olives, tiny little salt fish which they call sardines, [782] form the greatest delicacy. __________________________________________________________________
[780] The distinction between the xerophagia and omophagia is shown by the following passage from S. Jerome's Life of Hilarion describing his food: "From his twenty-first year to his twenty-seventh for three years....his food was dry bread and water (xerophagia). Further from his twenty-seventh to his thirtieth year he supported himself on wild herbs, and the raw roots of certain plants (omophagia)."
[781] Sal frictum, "rubbed salt," i.e., table salt as distinct from rough or block salt.
[782] Moenomenia (Petschenig) or Moenidia (Gazæus). The word comes from the Greek mainomena or mainidion, dimin. from maine, a small salted fish. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXIII.
The obedience of Abbot John by which he was exalted even to the grace of prophecy.
And since this book is about the training of one who renounces this world, whereby, making a beginning of true humility and perfect obedience, he may be enabled to ascend the heights of the other virtues as well, I think it well to set down just by way of specimen, as we promised, some of the deeds of the elders whereby they excelled in this virtue, selecting a few only out of many instances, that, if any are anxious to aim at still greater heights, they may not only receive from these an incitement towards the perfect life, but may also be furnished with a model of what they purpose. Wherefore, to make this book as short as possible we will produce and set down two or three out of the whole number of the Fathers; and first of all Abbot John who lived near Lycon [783] which is a town in the Thebaid; and who was exalted even to the grace of prophecy for his admirable obedience, and was so celebrated all the world over that he was by his merits rendered famous even among kings of this world. For though, as we said, he lived in the most remote parts of the Thebaid, still the Emperor Theodosius did not venture to declare war against the most powerful tyrants before he was encouraged by his utterances and replies: trusting in which as if they had been brought to him from heaven he gained victories over his foes in battles which seemed hopeless. [784] __________________________________________________________________
[783] Lycon or Lycopolis in the Thebaid is the modern El Syout on the west banks of the Nile, S. E. of Hermopolis ( = Minieh).
[784] This John of Lycopolis was one of the most celebrated hermits of the fourth century. Originally a carpenter, he retired at the age of twenty-five into the wilderness, and after the death of his instructor settled near Lycopolis. Here, as Cassian tells us, he received as reward for his obedience the gift of prophecy, and was consulted by crowds who came to him for this purpose and among others by the Emperor Theodosius, to whom he foretold (1) his victory over the usurper Maximus (a.d. 388), and (2) his success against Eugenius in a.d. 395. He is mentioned again by Cassian in the Conferences I. xxi., XXIV. xxvi., etc. A full account of him is given by Rufinus in his history of the monks c. i. and by Palladius in the Lausiac History 43-60; he is also mentioned by Augustine De Civitate Dei, Book V. c. xxvi, De Cura pro mortius gerenda, c. xvii., and Jerome Ep. cxxxiii. ad Ctesiphontem, as well as by Theodoret H. E. V. xxiv, and Sozomen H. E. VI. xxviii. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXIV.
Of the dry stick which, at the bidding of his senior, Abbot John kept on watering as if it would grow.
And so this blessed John from his youth up even to a full and ripe age of manhood was subject to his senior as long as he continued living in this world, and carried out his commands with such humility that his senior himself was utterly astounded at his obedience; and as he wanted to make sure whether this virtue came from genuine faith and profound simplicity of heart, or whether it was put on and as it were constrained and only shown in the presence of the bidder, he often laid upon him many superfluous and almost unnecessary or even impossible commands. From which I will select three to show to those who wish to know how perfect was his disposition and subjection. For the old man took from his woodstack a stick which had previously been cut and got ready to make the fire with, and which, as no opportunity for cooking had come, was lying not merely dry but even mouldy from the lapse of time. And when he had stuck it into the ground before his very eyes, he ordered him to fetch water and to water it twice a day that by this daily watering it might strike roots and be restored to life as a tree, as it was before, and spread out its branches and afford a pleasant sight to the eyes as well as a shade for those who sat under it in the heat of summer. And this order the lad received with his customary veneration, never considering its impossibility, and day by day carried it out so that he constantly carried water for nearly two miles and never ceased to water the stick; and for a whole year no bodily infirmity, no festival services, no necessary business (which might fairly have excused him from carrying out the command), and lastly no severity of winter could interfere and hinder him from obeying this order. And when the old man had watched this zeal of his on the sly without saying anything for several days and had seen that he kept this command of his with simple willingness of heart, as if it had come from heaven, without any change of countenance or consideration of its reasonableness--approving the unfeigned obedience of his humility and at the same time commiserating his tedious labour which in the zeal of his devotion he had continued for a whole year--he came to the dry stick, and "John," said he, "has this tree put forth roots or no?" And when the other said that he did not know, then the old man as if seeking the truth of the matter and trying whether it was yet depending on its roots, pulled up the stick before him with a slight disturbance of the earth, and throwing it away told him that for the future he might stop watering it. [785] __________________________________________________________________
[785] A somewhat similar story is told by Sulpitius Severus (Dialogi I. c. xiii.) of an Egyptian monk, only in that case the story terminates in a more satisfactory manner, as in the third year the stick took root and sprouted! __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXV.
Of the unique vase of oil thrown away by Abbot John at his senior's command.
Thus the youth, trained up by exercises of this sort, daily increased in this virtue of obedience, and shone forth more and more with the grace of humility; and when the sweet odour of his obedience spread throughout all the monasteries, some of the brethren, coming to the elder for the sake of testing him or rather of being edified by him, marvelled at his obedience of which they had heard; and so the older called him suddenly, and said, "Go up and take this cruse of oil" [786] (which was the only one in the desert and which furnished a very scanty supply of the rich liquid for their own use and for that of strangers) "and throw it down out of window." And he flew up stairs when summoned and threw it out of window and cast it down to the ground and broke it in pieces without any thought or consideration of the folly of the command, or their daily wants, and bodily infirmity, or of their poverty, and the trials and difficulties of the wretched desert in which, even if they had got the money for it, oil of that quality, once lost, could not be procured or replaced. __________________________________________________________________
[786] Lenticula; the word used for a cruse of oil in the Vulgate. 1 Sam. x. 1; 2 Kings ix. 1, 3. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXVI.
How Abbot John obeyed his senior by trying to roll a huge stone, which a large number of men were unable to move.
Again, when some others were anxious to be edified by the example of his obedience, the elder called him and said: "John, run and roll that stone hither as quickly as possible;" and he forthwith, applying now his neck, and now his whole body, tried with all his might and main to roll an enormous stone which a great crowd of men would not be able to move, so that not only were his clothes saturated with sweat from his limbs, but the stone itself was wetted by his neck; in this too never weighing the impossibility of the command and deed, out of reverence for the old man and the unfeigned simplicity of his service, as he believed implicitly that the old man could not command him to do anything vain or without reason. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXVII.
Of the humility and obedience of Abbot Patermucius, [787] which he did not hesitate to make perfect by throwing his little boy into the river at the command of his senior.
So far let it suffice for me to have told a few things out of many concerning Abbot John: now I will relate a memorable deed of Abbot Patermucius. For he, when anxious to renounce the world, remained lying before the doors of the monastery for a long time until by his dogged persistence he induced them--contrary to all the rules of the Coenobia--to receive him together with his little boy who was about eight years old. And when they were at last admitted they were at once not only committed to the care of different superiors, but also put to live in separate cells that the father might not be reminded by the constant sight of the little one that out of all his possessions and carnal treasures, which he had cast off and renounced, at least his son remained to him; and that as he was already taught that he was no longer a rich man, so he might also forget the fact that he was a father. And that it might be more thoroughly tested whether he would make affection and love [788] for his own flesh and blood of more account than obedience and Christian mortification (which all who renounce the world ought out of love to Christ to prefer), the child was on purpose neglected and dressed in rags instead of proper clothes; and so covered and disfigured with dirt that he would rather disgust than delight the eyes of his father whenever he saw him. And further, he was exposed to blows and slaps from different people, which the father often saw inflicted without the slightest reason on his innocent child under his very eyes, so that he never saw his cheeks without their being stained with the dirty marks of tears. And though the child was treated thus day after day before his eyes, yet still out of love for Christ and the virtue of obedience the father's heart stood firm and unmoved. For he no longer regarded him as his own son, as he had offered him equally with himself to Christ; nor was he concerned about his present injuries, but rather rejoiced because he saw that they were endured, not without profit; thinking little of his son's tears, but anxious about his own humility and perfection. And when the Superior of the Coenobium saw his steadfastness of mind and immovable inflexibility, in order thoroughly to prove the constancy of his purpose, one day when he had seen the child crying, he pretended that he was annoyed with him and told the father to throw him into the river. Then he, as if this had been commanded him by the Lord, at once snatched up the child as quickly as possible, and carried him in his arms to the river's bank to throw him in. And straightway in the fervour of his faith and obedience this would have been carried out in act, had not some of the brethren been purposely set to watch the banks of the river very carefully, and when the child was thrown in, had somehow snatched him from the bed of the stream, and prevented the command, which was really fulfilled by the obedience and devotion of the father, from being consummated in act and result. __________________________________________________________________
[787] Patermucius (Petschenig) or Mucius (Gazæus); probably a different person from the man of this name of whom we read in Rufinus, History of the Monks, c. ix., as there is no allusion there to the narrative which Cassian gives here, nor any hint that that Patermucius had a son.
[788] Affectionem....charitatem.--Petschenig. The text of Gazæus reads the ablative. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXVIII.
How it was revealed to the Abbot concerning Patermucius that he had done the deed of Abraham; and how when the same Abbot died, Patermucius succeeded to the charge of the monastery.
And this man's faith and devotion was so acceptable to God that it was immediately approved by a divine testimony. For it was forthwith revealed to the Superior that by this obedience of his he had copied the deed of the patriarch Abraham. And when shortly afterwards the same Abbot of the monastery departed out of this life to Christ, he preferred him to all the brethren, and left him as his successor and as Abbot to the monastery. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXIX.
Of the obedience of a brother who at the Abbot's bidding carried about in public ten baskets and sold them by retail.
We will also not be silent about a brother whom we knew, who belonged to a high family according to the rank of this world, for he was sprung from a father who was a count and extremely wealthy, and had been well brought up with a liberal education. This man, when he had left his parents and fled to the monastery, in order to prove the humility of his disposition and the ardour of his faith was at once ordered by his superior to load his shoulders with ten baskets (which there was no need to sell publicly), and to hawk them about through the streets for sale: this condition being attached, so that he might be kept longer at the work, viz.: that if any one should chance to want to buy them all together, he was not to allow it, but was to sell them to purchasers separately. And this he carried out with the utmost zeal, and trampling under foot all shame and confusion, out of love for Christ, and for His Name's sake, he put the baskets on his shoulders and sold them by retail at the price fixed and brought back the money to the monastery; not in the least upset by the novelty of so mean and unusual a duty, and paying no attention to the indignity of the thing and the splendour of his birth, and the disgrace of the sale, as he was aiming at gaining through the grace of obedience that humility of Christ which is the true nobility. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXX.
Of the humility of Abbot Pinufius, who left a very famous Coenobium over which he presided as Presbyter, and out of the love of subjection sought a distant monastery where he could be received as a novice.
The limits of the book compel us to draw to a close; but the virtue of obedience, which holds the first place among other good qualities, will not allow us altogether to pass over in silence the deeds of those who have excelled by it. Wherefore aptly combining these two together, I mean, consulting brevity as well as the wishes and profit of those who are in earnest, we will only add one example of humility, which, as it was shown by no novice but one already perfect and an Abbot, may not only instruct the younger, but also incite the elders to the perfect virtue of humility, as they read it. Thus we saw Abbot Pinufius [789] who when he was presbyter of a huge Coenobium which is in Egypt not far from the city of Panephysis, [790] was held in honour and respect by all men out of reverence either for his life or for his age or for his priesthood; and when he saw that for this reason he could not practise that humility which he longed for with all the ardour of his disposition, and had no opportunity of exercising the virtue of subjection which he desired, he fled secretly from the Coenobium and withdrew alone into the furthest parts of the Thebaid, and there laid aside the habit of the monks and assumed a secular dress, and thus sought the Coenobium of Tabenna, which he knew to be the strictest of all, and in which he fancied that he would not be known owing to the distance of the spot, or else that he could easily lie hid there in consequence of the size of the monastery and the number of brethren. There he remained for a long time at the entrance, and as a suppliant at the knees of the brethren sought with most earnest prayers to gain admission. And when he was at last with much scorn admitted as a feeble old man who had lived all his life in the world, and had asked in his old age to be allowed to enter a Coenobium when he could no longer gratify his passions,--as they said that he was seeking this not for the sake of religion but because he was compelled by hunger and want, they gave him the care and management of the garden, as he seemed an old man and not specially fitted for any particular work. And this he performed under another and a younger brother who kept him by him as intrusted to him, and he was so subordinate to him, and cultivated the desired virtue of humility so obediently that he daily performed with the utmost diligence not only everything that had to do with the care and management of the garden, but also all those duties which were looked on by the other as hard and degrading, and disagreeable. Rising also by night he did many things secretly, without any one looking on or knowing it, when darkness concealed him so that no one could discover the author of the deed. And when he had hidden himself there for three years and had been sought for high and low by the brethren all through Egypt, he was at last seen by one who had come from the parts of Egypt, but could scarcely be recognized owing to the meanness of his dress and the humble character of the duty he was performing. For he was stooping down and hoeing the ground for vegetables and bringing dung on his shoulders and laying it about their roots. And seeing this the brother for a long time hesitated about recognizing him, but at last he came nearer, and taking careful note not only of his looks but also of the tone of his voice, straightway fell at his feet: and at first all who saw it were struck with the greatest astonishment why he should do this to one who was looked upon by them as the lowest of all, as being a novice and one who had but lately forsaken the world: but afterwards they were struck with still greater wonder when he forthwith announced his name, which was one that had been well known amongst them also by repute. And all the brethren asking his pardon for their former ignorance because they had for so long classed him with the juniors and children, brought him back to his own Coenobium, against his will and in tears because by the envy of the devil he had been cheated out of a worthy mode of life and the humility which he was rejoicing in having discovered after his long search, and because he had not succeeded in ending his life in that state of subjection which he had secured. And so they guarded him with the utmost care lest he should slip away again in the same sort of way and escape from them also. __________________________________________________________________
[789] Cassian repeats this story in the Conferences XX. c. i., as an introduction to the Conference "On the End of Penitence and the Marks of Satisfaction," which he gives as the work of the said Abbot Pinufius.
[790] Panephysis is more fully described in the Conferences VII. xxvi.; XI. iii. It is mentioned by Ptolemy (IV. v. § 52), but not by any other ancient writers. It was situated in the Delta between the Champollion with the modern Menzaleh. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXI.
How when Abbot Pinufius was brought back to his monastery he stayed there for a little while and then fled again into the regions of Syrian Palestine.
And when he had stopped there for a little while, again he was seized with a longing and desire for humility, and, taking advantage of the silence of night, made his escape in such a way that this time he sought no neighbouring district, but regions which were unknown and strange and separated by a wide distance. For embarking in a ship he managed to travel to Palestine, believing that he would more securely lie hid if he betook himself to those places in which his name had never been heard. And when he had come thither, at once he sought out our own monastery [791] which was at no great distance from the cave [792] in which our Lord vouchsafed to be born of a virgin. And though he concealed himself here for some time, yet like "a city set on an hill" [793] (to use our Lord's expression) he could not long be hid. For presently some of the brethren who had come to the holy places from Egypt to pray there recognized him and recalled him with most fervent prayers to his own Coenobium. __________________________________________________________________
[791] On Cassian's connection with the monastery at Bethlehem, see the Introduction.
[792] On the Cave of the Nativity, see Justin Martyr Dialogue with Trypho, c. lxxviii. Origen against Celsus, I. c. li.
[793] S. Matt. v. 14. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXII.
The charge which the same Abbot Pinufius gave to a brother whom he admitted into his monastery in our presence.
This old man, then, we afterwards diligently sought out in Egypt because we had been intimate with him in our own monastery; and I propose to insert in this work of mine an exhortation which he gave in our presence to a brother whom he admitted into the monastery, because I think that it may be useful. You know, said he, that after lying for so many days at the entrance you are to-day to be admitted. And to begin with you ought to know the reason of the difficulty put in your way. For it may be of great service to you in this road on which you are desirous to enter, if you understand the method of it and approach the service of Christ accordingly, and as you ought. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXIII.
How it is that, just as a great reward is due to the monk who labours according to the regulations of the fathers, so likewise punishment must he inflicted on an idle one; and therefore no one should be admitted into a monastery too easily.
For as unbounded glory hereafter is promised to those who faithfully serve God and cleave to Him according to the rule of this system; so the severest penalties are in store for those who have carried it out carelessly and coldly, and have failed to show to Him fruits of holiness corresponding to what they professed or what they were believed by men to be. For "it is better," as Scripture says, "that a man should not vow rather than that he should vow and not pay;" and "Cursed is he that doeth the work of the Lord carelessly." [794] Therefore you were for a long while declined by us, not as if we did not desire with all our hearts to secure your salvation and the salvation of all, nor as if we did not care to go to meet even afar off those who are longing to be converted to Christ; but for fear lest if we received you rashly we might make ourselves guilty in the sight of God of levity, and make you incur a yet heavier punishment, if, when you had been too easily admitted by us without realizing the responsibility of this profession, you had afterwards turned out a deserter or lukewarm. Wherefore you ought in the first instance to learn the actual reason for the renunciation of the world, and when you have seen this, you can be taught more plainly what you ought to do, from the reason for it. __________________________________________________________________
[794] Eccl. v. 4 (LXX.); Jer. xlviii. 10 (LXX.). __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXIV.
Of the way in which our renunciation is nothing but mortification and the image of the Crucified.
Renunciation is nothing but the evidence of the cross and of mortification. And so you must know that to-day you are dead to this world and its deeds and desires, and that, as the Apostle says, you are crucified to this world and this world to you. [795] Consider therefore the demands of the cross under the sign [796] of which you ought henceforward to live in this life; because you no longer live but He lives in you who was crucified for you. [797] We must therefore pass our time in this life in that fashion and form in which He was crucified for us on the cross so that (as David says) piercing our flesh with the fear of the Lord, [798] we may have all our wishes and desires not subservient to our own lusts but fastened to His mortification. For so shall we fulfil the command of the Lord which says: "He that taketh not up his cross and followeth me is not worthy of me." [799] But perhaps you will say: How can a man carry his cross continually? or how can any one who is alive be crucified? Hear briefly how this is. __________________________________________________________________
[795] Cf. Gal. vi. 14.
[796] Sacramentum.
[797] Cf. Gal. ii. 20.
[798] Cf. Ps. cxviii. (cxix.) 120, where the Gallican Psalter has "Confige timore tuo carnes meas."
[799] S. Matt. x. 38. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXV.
How the fear of the Lord is our cross.
The fear of the Lord is our cross. As then one who is crucified no longer has the power of moving or turning his limbs in any direction as he pleases, so we also ought to affix our wishes and desires--not in accordance with what is pleasant and delightful to us now, but in accordance with the law of the Lord, where it constrains us. And as he who is fastened to the wood of the cross no longer considers things present, nor thinks about his likings, nor is perplexed by anxiety and care for the morrow, nor disturbed by any desire of possession, nor inflamed by any pride or strife or rivalry, grieves not at present injuries, remembers not past ones, and while he is still breathing in the body considers that he is dead to all earthly things, [800] sending the thoughts of his heart on before to that place whither he doubts not that he is shortly to come: so we also, when crucified by the fear of the Lord ought to be dead indeed to all these things, i.e. not only to carnal vices but also to all earthly things, [801] having the eye of our minds fixed there whither we hope at each moment that we are soon to pass. For in this way we can have all our desires and carnal affections mortified. __________________________________________________________________
[800] Elementa.
[801] Elementa. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXVI.
How our renunciation of the world is of no use if we are again entangled in those things which we have renounced.
Beware therefore lest at any time you take again any of those things which you renounced and forsook, and, contrary to the Lord's command, return from the field of evangelical work, and be found to have clothed yourself again in your coat which you had stripped off; [802] neither sink back to the low and earthly lusts and desires of this world, and in defiance of Christ's word come down from the rod of perfection and dare to take up again any of those things which you have renounced and forsaken. Beware that you remember nothing of your kinsfolk or of your former affections, and that you are not called back to the cares and anxieties of this world, and (as our Lord says) putting your hand to the plough and looking back be found unfit for the kingdom of heaven. [803] Beware lest at any time, when you have begun to dip into the knowledge of the Psalms and of this life, you be little by little puffed up and think of reviving that pride which now at your beginning you have trampled under foot in the ardour of faith and in fullest humility; and thus (as the Apostle says) building again those things which you had destroyed, you make yourself a backslider. [804] But rather take heed to continue even to the end in that state of nakedness of which you made profession in the sight of God and of his angels. In this humility too and patience, with which you persevered for ten days before the doors and entreated with many tears to be admitted into the monastery, you should not only continue but also increase and go forward. For it is too bad that when you ought to be carried on from the rudiments and beginnings, and go forward to perfection, you should begin to fall back from these to worse things. For not he who begins these things, but he who endures in them to the end, shall be saved. [805] __________________________________________________________________
[802] Cf. S. Matt. xxiv. 18.
[803] S. Luke ix. 62.
[804] Cf. Gal. ii. 18.
[805] Cf. S. Matt. xxiv. 13. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXVII.
How the devil always lies in wait for our end, and how we ought continually to watch his head. [806]
For the subtle serpent is ever "watching our heel," that is, is lying in wait for the close, and endeavouring to trip us up right to the end of our life. And therefore it will not be of any use to have made a good beginning and to have eagerly taken the first step towards renouncing the world with all fervour, if a corresponding end does not likewise set it off and conclude it, and if the humility and poverty of Christ, of which you have now made profession in His sight, are not preserved by you even to the close of your life, as they were first secured. And that you may succeed in doing this, do you ever "watch his head," i.e. the first rise of thoughts, by bringing them at once to your superior. For thus you will learn to "bruise" his dangerous beginnings, if you are not ashamed to disclose any of them to your superior. __________________________________________________________________
[806] All through this chapter Cassian is alluding to Gen. iii. 15: "I will put enmity between thee and the woman and between thy seed and her seed; it shalt bruise thy head and thou shalt bruise his heel:" the last clause of which is rendered by the LXX. autos sou teresei kephalen kai su tereseis autou pternan, where the Vulgate has "Ipsa conteret caput tuum et tu insidiaberis calcaneo ejus." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXVIII.
Of the renunciant's preparation against temptation, and of the few who are worthy of imitation.
Wherefore, as Scripture says, "when you go forth to serve the Lord stand in the fear of the Lord, and prepare your mind" [807] not for repose or carelessness or delights, but for temptations and troubles. For "through much tribulation we must enter into the kingdom of God." For "strait is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be which find it." [808] Consider therefore that you belong to the few and elect; and do not grow cold after the examples of the lukewarmness of many: but live as the few, that with the few you may be worthy of a place in the kingdom of God: for "many are called, but few chosen," and it is a "little flock to which it is the Father's good pleasure to give" [809] an inheritance. You should therefore realize that it is no light sin for one who has made profession of perfection to follow after what is imperfect. And to this state of perfection you may attain by the following steps and in the following way. __________________________________________________________________
[807] Ecclus. ii. 1.
[808] Acts xiv. 22; S. Matt. vii. 14.
[809] S. Matt. xx. 16; S. Luke xii. 32. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXIX.
Of the way in which we shall mount towards perfection, whereby we may afterwards ascend from the fear of God up to love.
"The beginning" of our salvation and the safeguard of it is, as I said, "the fear of the Lord." [810] For through this those who are trained in the way of perfection can gain a start in conversion as well as purification from vices and security in virtue. And when this has gained an entrance into a man's heart it produces contempt of all things, and begets a forgetfulness of kinsfolk and an horror of the world itself. But by the contempt for the loss of all possessions humility is gained. And humility is attested by these signs: First of all if a man has all his desires mortified; secondly, if he conceals none of his actions or even of his thoughts from his superior; thirdly, if he puts no trust in his own opinion, but all in the judgment of his superior, and listens eagerly and willingly to his directions; fourthly, if he maintains in everything obedience and gentleness and constant patience; fifthly, if he not only hurts nobody else, but also is not annoyed or vexed at wrongs done to himself; sixthly, if he does nothing and ventures on nothing to which he is not urged by the Common Rule or by the example of our elders; seventhly, if he is contented with the lowest possible position, and considers himself as a bad workman and unworthy in the case of everything enjoined to him; eighthly, if he does not only outwardly profess with his lips that he is inferior to all, but really believes it in the inmost thoughts of his heart; ninthly, if he governs his tongue, and is not over talkative; tenthly, if he is not easily moved or too ready to laugh. For by such signs and the like is true humility recognised. And when this has once been genuinely secured, then at once it leads you on by a still higher step to love which knows no fear; [811] and through this you begin, without any effort and as it were naturally, to keep up everything that you formerly observed not without fear of punishment; no longer now from regard of punishment or fear of it but from love of goodness itself, and delight in virtue. [812] __________________________________________________________________
[810] Prov. ix. 10.
[811] Cf. 1 John iv. 18.
[812] With this chapter there should be compared the Rule of S. Benedict c. vii., where a very similar description is given of twelve grades "on the mystic ladder [of humility] which Jacob saw," evidently suggested by the chapter before us. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XL.
That the monk should seek for examples of perfection not from many instances but from one or a very few.
And that you may the more easily arrive at this, the examples of the perfect life of one dwelling in the congregation, which you may imitate, should be sought from a very few or indeed from one or two only and not from too many. For apart from the fact that a life which is tested and refined and purified is only to be found in a few, there is this also to be gained, viz.: that a man is more thoroughly instructed and formed by the example of some one, towards the perfection which he sets before him, viz.: that of the Coenobite life. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XLI.
The appearance of what infirmities one who lives in a Coenobium ought to exhibit. [813]
And that you may be able to attain all this, and continually remain subject to this spiritual rule, you must observe these three things in the congregation: viz.: that as the Psalmist says: "I was like a deaf man and heard not and as one that is dumb who doth not open his mouth; and I became as a man that heareth not, and in whose mouth there are no reproofs," [814] so you also should walk as one that is deaf and dumb and blind, so that--putting aside the contemplation of him who has been rightly chosen by you as your model of perfection--you should be like a blind man and not see any of those things which you find to be unedifying, nor [815] be influenced by the authority or fashion of those who do these things, and give yourself up to what is worse and what you formerly condemned. If you hear any one disobedient or insubordinate or disparaging another or doing anything different from what was taught to you, you should not go wrong and be led astray by such an example to imitate him; but, "like a deaf man," as if you had never heard it, you should pass it all by. If insults are offered to you or to any one else, or wrongs done, be immovable, and as far as an answer in retaliation is concerned be silent "as one that is dumb," always singing in your heart this verse of the Psalmist: "I said I will take heed to my ways that I offend not with my tongue. I set a guard to my mouth when the sinner stood before me. I was dumb and was humbled and kept silence from good things." [816] But cultivate above everything this fourth thing which adorns and graces those three of which we have spoken above; viz.: make yourself, as the Apostle directs, [817] a fool in this world that you may become wise, exercising no discrimination and judgment of your own on any of those matters which are commanded to you, but always showing obedience with all simplicity and faith, judging that alone to be holy, useful, and wise which God's law or the decision of your superior declares to you to be such. For built up on such a system of instruction you may continue forever under this discipline, and not fall away from the monastery in consequence of any temptations or devices of the enemy. __________________________________________________________________
[813] Quarum debilitatum similitudinem suscipere debeat qui in coenobio commoratur.--Petschenig. The text of Gazæus gives as the title of this chapter: "In congregatione coenobitica constituti quid tolerare ac sustinere debeant."
[814] Ps. xxxvii. (xxxviii.) 14, 15.
[815] Nec (Petschenig). Gazæus reads ne.
[816] Ps. xxxviii. (xxxix.) 2, 3.
[817] Cf. 1 Cor. iii. 18. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XLII.
How a monk should not look for the blessing of patience in his own case as a result of the virtue of others, but rather as a consequence of his own longsuffering.
You should therefore not look for patience in your own case from the virtue of others, thinking that then only can you secure it when you are not irritated by any (for it is not in your own power to prevent this from happening); but rather you should look for it as the consequence of your own humility and long-suffering which does depend on your own will. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XLIII.
Recapitulation of the explanation how a monk can mount up towards perfection.
And in order that all these things which have been set forth in a somewhat lengthy discourse may be more easily stamped on your heart and may stick in your thoughts with all tenacity, I will make a summary of them so that you may be able to learn all the changes by heart by reason of their brevity and conciseness. Hear then in few words how you can mount up to the heights of perfection without an effort or difficulty. "The beginning" of our salvation and "of wisdom" is, according to Scripture, "the fear of the Lord." [818] From the fear of the Lord arises salutary compunction. From compunction of heart springs renunciation, i.e. nakedness and contempt of all possessions. From nakedness is begotten humility; from humility the mortification of desires. Through mortification of desires all faults are extirpated and decay. By driving out faults virtues shoot up and increase. By the budding of virtues purity of heart is gained. By purity of heart the perfection of apostolic love is acquired. __________________________________________________________________
[818] Ps. cxi. 10. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Book V.
Of the Spirit of Gluttony. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter I.
The transition from the Institutes of the monks to the struggle against the eight principal faults.
This fifth book of ours is now by the help of God to be produced. For after the four books which have been composed on the customs of the monasteries, we now propose, being strengthened by God through your prayers, to approach the struggle against the eight principal faults, i.e. first, Gluttony or the pleasures of the palate; secondly, Fornication; thirdly, Covetousness, which means Avarice, or, as it may more properly be called, the love of money, fourthly, Anger; fifthly, Dejection; sixthly, "Accidie," [819] which is heaviness or weariness of heart; seventhly, kenodoxia which means foolish or vain glory; eighthly, pride. And on entering upon this difficult task we need your prayers, O most blessed Pope Castor, more than ever; that we may be enabled in the first place worthily to investigate the nature of these in all points however trifling or hidden or obscure: and next to explain with sufficient clearness the causes of them and thirdly to bring forward fitly the cures and remedies for them. __________________________________________________________________
[819] Acedia. It is much to be regretted that the old English word "Accidie" has entirely dropped out of use. It is used by Chaucer and other early writers for the sin of spiritual sloth or sluggishness. See "The Persone's Tale," where it is thus described: "After the sinne of wrath, now wol I speke of the sinne of accidie or slouth: for envie blindeth the herte of a man, and ire troubleth a man, and accidie maketh him hevy, thoughtful, and wrawe. Envie and ire maken bitternesse in herte, which bitternesse is mother of accidie, and benimeth him the love of alle goodnesse; than is accidie the anguish of a troubled herte." The English word lingered on till the seventeenth century, as it is used by Bishop Hall (Serm.V. 140), in the form "Acedy," which is etymologically more correct as being nearer the Latin Acedia and the Greek 'Akedia, a word which occurs in the LXX. version of the Old Testament in Isaiah lxi. 3; Ps. cxviii. (cxix.) 28; Baruch iii. 1; Ecclus. xxix. 6 (cf. the use of the verb akediazo in Ps. lx. (lxi.) 2; ci. (cii.) 1; cxlii. (cxliii.) 4; Ecclus. xxii. 14). In ecclesiastical writers the term Acedia is a favourite one to denote primarily the mental prostration induced by fasting and other physical causes, and afterwards spiritual sloth and sluggishness in general. It forms the subject of the tenth book of the Institutes, and is treated of again by Cassian in the Conferences V. iii. sq., cf. also the "Summa" of S. Thomas, II. ii. q. xxxv., where there is a full discussion of its nature and character.--cf. Dr. Paget's essay "Concerning Accidie" in "The Spirit of Discipline." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter II.
How the occasions of these faults, being found in everybody, are ignored by everybody; and how we need the Lord's help to make them plain.
And of these passions as the occasions are recognized by everybody as soon as they are laid open by the teaching of the elders, so before they are revealed, although we are all overcome by them, and they exist in every one, yet nobody knows of them. But we trust that we shall be able in some measure to explain them, if by your prayers that word of the Lord, which was announced by Isaiah, may apply to us also--"I will go before thee, and bring low the mighty ones of the land, I will break the gates of brass, and cut asunder the iron bars, and I will open to thee concealed treasures and hidden secrets" [820] --so that the word of the Lord may go before us also, and first may bring low the mighty ones of our land, i.e. these same evil passions which we are desirous to overcome, and which claim for themselves dominion and a most horrible tyranny in our mortal body; and may make them yield to our investigation and explanation, and thus breaking the gates of our ignorance, and cutting asunder the bars of vices which shut us out from true knowledge, may lead to the hidden things of our secrets, and reveal to us who have been illuminated, according to the Apostle's word, "the hidden things of darkness, and may make manifest the counsels of the hearts," [821] that thus penetrating with pure eyes of the mind to the foul darkness of vices, we may be able to disclose them and drag them forth to light; and may succeed in explaining their occasions and natures to those who are either free from them, or are still tied and bound by them, and so passing as the prophet says, [822] through the fire of vices which terribly inflame our minds, we may be able forthwith to pass also through the water of virtues which extinguish them unharmed, and being bedewed (as it were) with spiritual remedies may be found worthy to be brought in purity of heart to the consolations of perfection. __________________________________________________________________
[820] Isa. xlv. 2, 3.
[821] 1 Cor. iv. 5.
[822] Ps. lxv. (lxvi.) 12. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter III.
How our first struggle must be against the spirit of gluttony, i.e. the pleasures of the palate.
And so the first conflict we must enter upon is that against gluttony, which we have explained as the pleasures of the palate: and in the first place as we are going to speak of the system of fasts, and the quality of food, we must again recur to the traditions and customs of the Egyptians, as everybody knows that they contain a more advanced discipline in the matter of self-control, and a perfect method of discrimination. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IV.
The testimony of Abbot Antony in which he teaches that each virtue ought to be sought for from him who professes it in a special degree.
For it is an ancient and excellent saying of the blessed Antony [823] that when a monk is endeavouring after the plan of the monastic life to reach the heights of a more advanced perfection, and, having learned the consideration of discretion, is able now to stand in his own judgment, and to arrive at the very summit of the anchorite's life, he ought by no means to seek for all kinds of virtues from one man however excellent. For one is adorned with flowers of knowledge, another is more strongly fortified with methods of discretion, another is established in the dignity of patience, another excels in the virtue of humility, another in that of continence, another is decked with the grace of simplicity. This one excels all others in magnanimity, that one in pity, another in vigils, another in silence, another in earnestness of work. And therefore the monk who desires to gather spiritual honey, ought like a most careful bee, to suck out virtue from those who specially possess it, and should diligently store it up in the vessel of his own breast: nor should he investigate what any one is lacking in, but only regard and gather whatever virtue he has. For if we want to gain all virtues from some one person, we shall with great difficulty or perhaps never at all find suitable examples for us to imitate. For though we do not as yet see that even Christ is made "all things in all," as the Apostle says; [824] still in this way we can find Him bit by bit in all. For it is said of Him, "Who was made of God to you wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption." [825] While then in one there is found wisdom, in another righteousness, in another sanctification, in another kindness, in another chastity, in another humility, in another patience, Christ is at the present time divided, member by member, among all of the saints. But when all come together into the unity of the faith and virtue, He is formed into the "perfect man," [826] completing the fulness of His body, in the joints and properties of all His members. Until then that time arrives when God will be "all in all," for the present God can in the way of which we have spoken be "in all," through particular virtues, although He is not yet "all in all" through the fulness of them. For although our religion has but one end and aim, yet there are different ways by which we approach God, as will be more fully shown in the Conferences of the Elders. [827] And so we must seek a model of discretion and continence more particularly from those from whom we see that those virtues flow forth more abundantly through the grace of the Holy Spirit; not that any one can alone acquire those things which are divided among many, but in order that in those good qualities of which we are capable we may advance towards the imitation of those who especially have acquired them. __________________________________________________________________
[823] S. Antony, the "founder of asceticism" and one of the most famous of the early monks, was born about 250 a.d. at Coma, on the borders of Egypt, and died about 355, at the great age of 105. He is frequently mentioned by Cassian in the Conferences.
[824] 1 Cor. xv. 28.
[825] 1 Cor. i. 30.
[826] Eph. iv. 13.
[827] See especially Conferences XVIII. and XIX. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter V.
That one and the same rule of fasting cannot be observed by everybody.
And so on the manner of fasting a uniform rule cannot easily be observed, because everybody has not the same strength; nor is it like the rest of the virtues, acquired by steadfastness of mind alone. And therefore, because it does not depend only on mental firmness, since it has to do with the possibilities of the body, we have received this explanation concerning it which has been handed down to us, viz.: that there is a difference of time, manner, and quality of the refreshment in proportion to the difference of condition of the body, the age, and sex: but that there is one and the same rule of restraint to everybody as regards continence of mind, and the virtue of the spirit. For it is impossible for every one to prolong his fast for a week, or to postpone taking refreshment during a two or three days' abstinence. By many people also who are worn out with sickness and especially with old age, a fast even up to sunset cannot be endured without suffering. The sickly food of moistened beans does not agree with everybody: nor does a sparing diet of fresh vegetables suit all, nor is a scanty meal of dry bread permitted to all alike. One man does not feel satisfied with two pounds, for another a meal of one pound, or six ounces, is too much; but there is one aim and object of continence in the case of all of these, viz.: that no one may be overburdened beyond the measure of his appetite, by gluttony. For it is not only the quality, but also the quantity of food taken which dulls the keenness of the mind, and when the soul as well as the flesh is surfeited, kindles the baneful and fiery incentive to vice. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VI.
That the mind is not intoxicated by wine alone.
The belly when filled with all kinds of food gives birth to seeds of wantonness, nor can the mind, when choked with the weight of food, keep the guidance and government of the thoughts. For not only is drunkenness with wine wont to intoxicate the mind, but excess of all kinds of food makes it weak and uncertain, and robs it of all its power of pure and clear contemplation. The cause of the overthrow and wantonness of Sodom was not drunkenness through wine, but fulness of bread. Hear the Lord rebuking Jerusalem through the prophet. "For how did thy sister Sodom sin, except in that she ate her bread in fulness and abundance?" [828] And because through fulness of bread they were inflamed with uncontrollable lust of the flesh, they were burnt up by the judgment of God with fire and brimstone from heaven. But if excess of bread alone drove them to such a headlong downfall into sin through the vice of satiety, what shall we think of those who with a vigorous body dare to partake of meat and wine with unbounded licence, taking not just what their bodily frailty demands, but what the eager desire of the mind suggests. __________________________________________________________________
[828] Ezek. xvi. 49. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VII.
How bodily weakness need not interfere with purity of heart.
Bodily weakness is no hindrance to purity of heart, if only so much food is taken as the bodily weakness requires, and not what pleasure asks for. It is easier to find men who altogether abstain from the more fattening kinds of foods than men who make a moderate use of what is allowed to our necessities; and men who deny themselves everything out of love of continence than men who taking food on the plea of weakness preserve the due measure of what is sufficient. [829] For bodily weakness has its glory of self-restraint, where though food is permitted to the failing body, a man deprives himself of his refreshment. although he needs it, and only indulges in just so much food as the strict judgment of temperance decides to be sufficient for the necessities of life, and not what the longing appetite asks for. The more delicate foods, as they conduce to bodily health, so they need not destroy the purity of chastity, if they are taken in moderation. For whatever strength [830] is gained by partaking of them is used up in the toil and waste of care. Wherefore as no state of life can be deprived of the virtue of abstinence, so to none is the crown of perfection denied. __________________________________________________________________
[829] Petschenig's text in this passage is as follows: "Facilius vidimus viros qui ab escis corpulentioribus omnimodis temperarent, quam moderate usos pro necessitate concessis, et qui totum sibi pro amore continentiæ denegarent, quam qui eas sub infirmitatis occasione sumentes mensuram sufficientiæ custodirent." Gazæus gives something quite different: "Facilius vidimus victos qui ab escis corpulentioribus omnimodis temperarent, quas moderate usus pro necessitate concedit, et qui totum sibi pro continentiæ amore denegarent; quam qui eas sub infirmitatis occasione sumentes mensuram sufficientiæ custodirent."
[830] Quidquid enim fortitudinis.--Petschenig. Gazæus has "Quid quid enim fortitudinis causa." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VIII.
How food should be taken with regard to the aim at perfect continence. [831]
And so it is a very true and most excellent saying of the Fathers that the right method of fasting and abstinence lies in the measure of moderation and bodily chastening; and that this is the aim of perfect virtue for all alike, viz.: that though we are still forced to desire it, yet we should exercise self-restraint in the matter of the food, which we are obliged to take owing to the necessity of supporting the body. For even if one is weak in body, he can attain to a perfect virtue and one equal to that of those who are thoroughly strong and healthy, if with firmness of mind he keeps a check upon the desires and lusts which are not due to weakness of the flesh. For the Apostle says: "And take not care for the flesh in its lusts." [832] He does not forbid care for it in every respect: but says that care is not to be taken in regard to its desires and lusts. He cuts away the luxurious fondness for the flesh: he does not exclude the control necessary for life: he does the former, lest through pampering the flesh we should be involved in dangerous entanglements of the desires; the latter lest the body should be injured by our fault and unable to fulfil its spiritual and necessary duties. __________________________________________________________________
[831] Quod pro perfectæ continentiæ fine esca sumenda sit.--Petschenig. Quomodo cibum appetere, ac sumere liceat is the title as given by Gazæus.
[832] Rom. xiii. 14. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IX.
Of the measure of the chastisement to be undertaken, and the remedy of fasting.
The perfection then of abstinence is not to be gathered from calculations of time alone, nor only from the quality of the food; but beyond everything from the judgment of conscience. For each one should impose such a sparing diet on himself as the battle of his bodily struggle may require. The canonical observance of fasts is indeed valuable and by all means to be kept. But unless this is followed by a temperate partaking of food, one will not be able to arrive at the goal of perfection. For the abstinence of prolonged fasts--where repletion of body follows--produces weariness for a time rather than purity and chastity. Perfection of mind indeed depends upon the abstinence of the belly. He has no lasting purity and chastity, who is not contented always to keep to a well-balanced and temperate diet. Fasting, although severe, yet if unnecessary relaxation follows, is rendered useless, and presently leads to the vice of gluttony. A reasonable supply of food partaken of daily with moderation, is better than a severe and long fast at intervals. Excessive fasting has been known not only to undermine the constancy of the mind, but also to weaken the power of prayers through sheer weariness of body. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter X.
That abstinence from food is not of itself sufficient for preservation of bodily and mental purity.
In order to preserve the mind and body in a perfect condition abstinence from food is not alone sufficient: unless the other virtues of the mind as well are joined to it. And so humility must first be learned by the virtue of obedience, and grinding toil [833] and bodily exhaustion. The possession of money must not only be avoided, but the desire for it must be utterly rooted out. For it is not enough not to possess it,--a thing which comes to many as a matter of necessity: but we ought, if by chance it is offered, not even to admit the wish to have it. The madness of anger should be controlled; the downcast look of dejection be overcome; vainglory should be despised, the disdainfulness of pride trampled under foot, and the shifting and wandering thoughts of the mind restrained by continual recollection of God. And the slippery wanderings of our heart should be brought back again to the contemplation of God as often as our crafty enemy, in his endeavour to lead away the mind a captive from this consideration, creeps into the innermost recesses of the heart. __________________________________________________________________
[833] Operis contritione (Petschenig): cordis contritione (Gazæus). __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XI.
That bodily lusts are not extinguished except by the entire rooting out of vice.
For it is an impossibility that the fiery motions of the body can be extinguished, before the incentives of the other chief vices are utterly rooted out: concerning which we will speak in their proper place, if God permits, separately, in different books. But now we have to deal with Gluttony, that is the desire of the palate, against which our first battle is. He then will never be able to check the motions of a burning lust, who cannot restrain the desires of the appetite. The chastity of the inner man is shown by the perfection of this virtue. For you will never feel sure that he can strive against the opposition of a stronger enemy, whom you have seen overcome by weaker ones in a higher conflict. For of all virtues the nature is but one and the same, although they appear to be divided into many different kinds and names: just as there is but one substance of gold, although it may seem to be distributed through many different kinds of jewelry according to the skill of the goldsmith. And so he is proved to possess no virtue perfectly, who is known to have broken down in some part of them. For how can we believe that that man has extinguished the burning heats of concupiscence (which are kindled not only by bodily incitement but by vice of the mind), who could not assuage the sharp stings of anger which break out from intemperance of heart alone? Or how can we think that he has repressed the wanton desires of the flesh and spirit, who has not been able to conquer the simple fault of pride? Or how can we believe that one has trampled under foot a wantonness which is ingrained in the flesh, who has not been able to disown the love of money, which is something external and outside our own substance? In what way will he triumph in the war of flesh and spirit, who has not been man enough to cure the disease of dejection? However great a city may be protected by the height of its walls and the strength of its closed gates, yet it is laid waste by the giving up of one postern however small. For what difference does it make whether a dangerous foe makes his way into the heart of the city over high walls, and through the wide spaces of the gate, or through secret and narrow passages? __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XII.
That in our spiritual contest we ought to draw an example from the carnal contests.
"One who strives in the games is not crowned unless he has contended lawfully." [834] One who wants to extinguish the natural desires of the flesh, should first hasten to overcome those vices whose seat is outside our nature. For if we desire to make trial of the force of the Apostle's saying, we ought first to learn what are the laws and what the discipline of the world's contest, so that finally by a comparison with these, we may be able to know what the blessed Apostle meant to teach to us who are striving in a spiritual contest by this illustration. For in these conflicts, which, as the same Apostle says, hold out "a corruptible crown" [835] to the victors, this rule is kept, that he who aims at preparing himself for the crown of glory, which is embellished with the privilege of exemption, and who is anxious to enter the highest struggle in the contest, should first in the Olympic and Pythian games give evidence of his abilities as a youth, and his strength in its first beginnings; since in these the younger men who want to practise this training are tested as to whether they deserve or ought to be admitted to it, by the judgment both of the president of the games and of the whole multitude. And when any one has been carefully tested, and has first been proved to be stained by no infamy of life, and then has been adjudged not ignoble through the yoke of slavery, and for this reason unworthy to be admitted to this training and to the company of those who practise it, and when thirdly he produces sufficient evidence of his ability and prowess and by striving with the younger men and his own compeers has shown both his skill and valour as a youth, and going forward from the contests of boys has been by the scrutiny of the president permitted to mix with full-grown men and those of approved experience, and has not only shown himself their equal in valour by constant striving with them, but has also many a time carried off the prize of victory among them, then at last he is allowed to approach the most illustrious conflict of the games, permission to contend in which is granted to none but victors and those who are decked with many crowns and prizes. If we understand this illustration from a carnal contest, we ought by a comparison with it to know what is the system and method of our spiritual conflict as well. __________________________________________________________________
[834] 2 Tim. ii. 5.
[835] 1 Cor. ix. 25. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIII.
That we cannot enter the battle of the inner man unless we have been set free from the vice of gluttony.
We also ought first to give evidence of our freedom from subjection to the flesh. For "of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he the slave." [836] And "every one that doeth sin is the slave of sin." [837] And when the scrutiny of the president of the contest finds that we are stained by no infamy of disgraceful lust, and when we are judged by him not to be slaves of the flesh, and ignoble and unworthy of the Olympic struggle against our vices, then we shall be able to enter the lists against our equals, that is the lusts of the flesh and the motions and disturbances of the soul. For it is impossible for a full belly to make trial of the combat of the inner man: nor is he worthy to be tried in harder battles, who can be overcome in a slight skirmish. __________________________________________________________________
[836] 2 Pet. ii. 19.
[837] John viii. 34. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIV.
How gluttonous desires can be overcome.
First then we must trample under foot gluttonous desires, and to this end the mind must be reduced not only by fasting, but also by vigils, by reading, and by frequent compunction of heart for those things in which perhaps it recollects that it has been deceived or overcome, sighing at one time with horror at sin, at another time inflamed with the desire of perfection and saintliness: until it is fully occupied and possessed by such cares and meditations, and recognizes the participation of food to be not so much a concession to pleasure, as a burden laid upon it; and considers it to be rather a necessity for the body than anything desirable for the soul. And, preserved by this zeal of mind and continual compunction, we shall beat down the wantonness of the flesh (which becomes more proud and haughty by being fomented with food) and its dangerous incitement, and so by the copiousness of our tears and the weeping of our heart we shall succeed in extinguishing the fiery furnace of our body, which is kindled by the Babylonish king [838] who continually furnishes us with opportunities for sin, and vices with which we burn more fiercely, instead of naphtha and pitch--until, through the grace of God, instilled like dew by His Spirit in our hearts, the heats of fleshly lusts can be altogether deadened. This then is our first contest, this is as it were our first trial in the Olympic games, to extinguish the desires of the palate and the belly by the longing for perfection. On which account we must not only trample down all unnecessary desire for food by the contemplation of the virtues, but also must take what is necessary for the support of nature, not without anxiety of heart, as if it were opposed to chastity. And so at length we may enter on the course of our life, so that there may be no time in which we feel that we are recalled from our spiritual studies, further than when we are obliged by the weakness of the body to descend for the needful care of it. And when we are subjected to this necessity--of attending to the wants of life rather than the desires, of the soul--we should hasten to withdraw as quickly as possible from it, as if it kept us back from really health-giving studies. For we cannot possibly scorn the gratification of food presented to us, unless the mind is fixed on the contemplation of divine things, and is the rather entranced with the love of virtue and the delight of things celestial. And so a man will despise all things present as transitory, when he has securely fixed his mental gaze on, those things which are immovable and eternal, and already contemplates in heart--though still in the flesh--the blessedness of his future life. __________________________________________________________________
[838] Cf. Dan. iii. 6; and see below Book VI. c. xvii. where Cassian once more speaks of the devil as the Babylonish king. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XV.
How a monk must always be eager to preserve his purity of heart.
It is like the case when one endeavours to strike some mighty prize of virtue on high, pointed out by some very small mark; with the keenest eyesight he points the aim of his dart, knowing that large rewards of glory and prizes depend on his hitting it; and he turns away his gaze from every other consideration, and must direct it thither, where he sees that the reward and prize is placed, because he would be sure to lose the prize of his skill and the reward of his prowess if the keenness of his gaze should be diverted ever so little. [839] __________________________________________________________________
[839] Compare a similar illustration in the Conferences I. v. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVI.
How, after the fashion of the Olympic games, a monk should not attempt spiritual conflicts unless he has won battles over the flesh.
And so when the desires of the belly and of the palate have been by these considerations overcome, and when we have been declared, as in the Olympic contests, neither slaves of the flesh nor infamous through the brand of sin, we shall be adjudged to be worthy of the contest in higher struggles as well, and, leaving behind lessons of this kind, may be believed capable of entering the lists against spiritual wickednesses, against which only victors and those who are allowed to contend in a spiritual conflict are deemed worthy to struggle. For this is so to speak a most solid foundation of all the conflicts, viz.: that in the first instance the impulses of carnal desires should be destroyed. For no one can lawfully strive unless his own flesh has been overcome. And one who does not strive lawfully certainly cannot take a share in the contest, nor win a crown of glory and the grace of victory. But if we have been overcome in this battle, having been proved as it were slaves of carnal lusts, and thus displaying the tokens neither of freedom nor of strength, we shall be straightway repulsed from the conflicts with spiritual hosts, as unworthy and as slaves, with every mark of confusion. For "every one that doeth sin is the servant of sin." [840] And this will be addressed to us by the blessed Apostle, together with those among whom fornication is named. "Temptation does not overtake you, except such as is human." [841] For if we do not seek for strength of mind [842] we shall not deserve to make trial of severer contest against wickedness on high, if we have been unable to subdue our weak flesh which resists the spirit. And some not understanding this testimony of the Apostle, have read the subjunctive instead of the indicative mood, i.e., "Let no temptation overcome you, except such as is human." [843] But it is clear that it is rather said by him with the meaning not of a wish but of a declaration or rebuke. __________________________________________________________________
[840] S. John viii. 34.
[841] 1 Cor. x. 13.
[842] Mentis robore non quoesito.--Petschenig. Gazæus omits the negative and reads conquisito.
[843] S. Jerome's version, which was certainly know to Cassian (cf. Conferences XXIII. viii.) has "Temptatio vos non apprehendat nisi humana." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVII.
That the foundation and basis of the spiritual combat must be laid in the struggle against gluttony.
Would you like to hear a true athlete of Christ striving according to the rules and laws of the conflict? "I," said he, "so run, not as uncertainly; I so fight, not as one that beateth the air: but I chastise my body and bring it into subjection, lest by any means when I have preached to others I myself should be a castaway." [844] You see how he made the chief part of the struggle depend upon himself, that is upon his flesh, as if on a most sure foundation, and placed the result of the battle simply in the chastisement of the flesh and the subjection of his body. "I then so run not as uncertainly." He does not run uncertainly, because, [845] looking to the heavenly Jerusalem, he has a mark set, towards which his heart is swiftly directed without swerving. He does not run uncertainly, because, "forgetting those things which are behind, he reaches forth to those that are before, pressing towards the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus," [846] whither he ever directs his mental gaze, and hastening towards it with all speed [847] of heart, proclaims with confidence, "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith." [848] And because he knows he has run unweariedly "after the odour of the ointment" [849] of Christ with ready devotion of heart, and has won the battle of the spiritual combat by the chastisement of the flesh, he boldly concludes and says, "Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give to me in that day." And that he might open up to us also a like hope of reward, if we desire to imitate him in the struggle of his course, he added: "But not to me only, but to all also who love His coming;" [850] declaring that we shall be sharers of his crown in the day of judgment, if we love the coming of Christ--not that one only which will be manifest to men even against their will; but also this one which daily comes to pass in holy souls--and if we gain the victory in the fight by chastising the body. And of this coming it is that the Lord speaks in the Gospel. "I," says He, "and my Father will come to him, and will make our abode with him." [851] And again: "Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if any man hear my voice and open the gate, I will come in to him and will sup with him, and he with me." [852] __________________________________________________________________
[844] 1 Cor. ix. 26, 27.
[845] Quia (Petschenig): Qui (Gazæus).
[846] Phil. iii. 13, 14.
[847] Properatione, others Præparatione.
[848] 2 Tim. iv. 7.
[849] Cant. i. 3.
[850] 2 Tim. iv. 8.
[851] John xiv. 23.
[852] Rev. iii. 20. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVIII.
Of the number of different conflicts and victories through which the blessed Apostle ascended to the crown of the highest combat.
But he does not mean that he has only finished the contest of a race when he says "I so run, not as uncertainly" (a phrase which has more particularly to do with the intention of the mind and fervour of his spirit, in which he followed Christ with all zeal, crying out with the Bride, "We will run after thee for the odour of thine ointments;" [853] and again, "My soul cleaveth unto thee:" [854] but he also testifies that he has conquered in another kind of contest, saying, "So fight I, not as one that beateth the air, but I chastise my body and bring it into subjection." And this properly has to do with the pains of abstinence, and bodily fasting and affliction of the flesh: as he means by this that he is a vigorous bruiser of his own flesh, and points out that not in vain has he planted his blows of continence against it; but that he has gained a battle triumph by mortifying his own body; for when it is chastised with the blows of continence and struck down with the boxing-gloves of fasting, he has secured for his victorious spirit the crown of immortality and the prize of incorruption. You see the orthodox method of the contest, and consider the issue of spiritual combats: how the athlete of Christ having gained a victory over the rebellious flesh, having cast it as it were under his feet, is carried forward as triumphing on high. And therefore "he does not run uncertainly," because he trusts that he will forthwith enter the holy city, the heavenly Jerusalem. He "so fights," that is with fasts and humiliation of the flesh, "not as one that beateth the air," that is, striking into space with blows of continence, through which he struck not the empty air, but those spirits who inhabit it, by the chastisement of his body. For one who says "not as one that beateth the air," shows that he strikes--not empty and void air, but certain beings in the air. And because he had overcome in this kind of contest, and marched on enriched with the rewards of many crowns, not undeservedly does he begin to enter the lists against still more powerful foes, and having triumphed over his former rivals, he boldly makes proclamation and says, "Now our striving is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against world-rulers of this darkness, against spiritual wickedness in heavenly places." [855] __________________________________________________________________
[853] Cant. i. 3.
[854] Ps. lxii. (lxiii.) 9.
[855] Eph. vi. 12. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIX.
That the athlete of Christ, so long as he is in the body, is never without a battle.
The athlete of Christ, as long as he is in the body, is never in want of a victory to be gained in contests: but in proportion as he grows by triumphant successes, so does a severer kind of struggle confront him. For when the flesh is subdued and conquered, what swarms of foes, what hosts of enemies are incited by his triumphs and rise up against the victorious soldier of Christ! for fear lest in the ease of peace the soldier of Christ might relax his efforts and begin to forget the glorious struggles of his contests, and be rendered slack through the idleness which is caused by immunity from danger, and be cheated of the reward of his prizes and the recompense of his triumphs. And so if we want to rise with ever-growing virtue to these stages of triumph we ought also in the same way to enter the lists of battle and begin by saying with the Apostle: "I so fight, not as one that beateth the air, but I chastise my body and bring it into subjection," [856] that when this conflict is ended we may once more be able to say with him: "we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against world-rulers of this darkness, against spiritual wickedness in heavenly places." [857] For otherwise we cannot possibly join battle with them nor deserve to make trial of spiritual combats if we are baffled in a carnal contest, and smitten down in a struggle with the belly: and deservedly will it be said of us by the Apostle in the language of blame: "Temptation does not overtake you, except what is common to man." [858] __________________________________________________________________
[856] 1 Cor. ix. 26, 27.
[857] Eph. vi. 12.
[858] 1 Cor. x. 13. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XX.
How a monk should not overstep the proper hours for taking food, if he wants to proceed to the struggle of interior conflicts.
A monk therefore who wants to proceed to the struggle of interior conflicts should lay down this as a precaution for himself to begin with: viz.: that he will not in any case allow himself to be overcome by any delicacies, or take anything to eat or drink before the fast [859] is over and the proper hour for refreshment has come, outside meal times; [860] nor, when the meal is over, will he allow himself to take a morsel however small; and likewise that he will observe the canonical time and measure of sleep. For that self-indulgence must be cut off in the same way that the sin of unchastity has to be rooted out. For if a man is unable to check the unnecessary desires of the appetite how will he be able to extinguish the fire of carnal lust? And if a man is not able to control passions, which are openly manifest and are but small, how will he be able with temperate discretion to fight against those which are secret, and excite him, when none are there to see? And therefore strength of mind is tested in separate impulses and in any sort of passion: and if it is overcome in the case of very small and manifest desires, how it will endure in those that are really great and powerful and hidden, each man's conscience must witness for himself. __________________________________________________________________
[859] Statio. This is properly the term for the weekly fasts on Wednesday and Friday, observed by the early Church in memory of our Lord's betrayal and crucifixion. See Tertullian on Prayer c. xix.; on Fasting c. i. x. In this place the word appears to be used by Cassian for the close of the fast; while elsewhere he uses it for fasting generally (not specially on Wednesday and Friday,) as in c. xxiv. of the present book, and in the Conferences, II. xxv.; XXI. xxi. The origin of the word is somewhat uncertain (a) because the fast was observed on stated days (stasis diebus); or (b), as S. Ambrose suggests, because "our fasts are our encampments which protect us from the devil's attacks: in short, they are called stationes, because standing (stantes) and staying in them we repel our plotting foe" (Serm. 25). See Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, vol. ii. p. 1928.
[860] Extra mensam. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXI.
Of the inward peace of a monk, and of spiritual abstinence.
For it is not an external enemy whom we have to dread. Our foe is shut up within ourselves: an internal warfare is daily waged by us: and if we are victorious in this, all external things will be made weak, and everything will be made peaceful and subdued for the soldier of Christ. We shall have no external enemy to fear, if what is within is overcome and subdued to the spirit. And let us not believe that that external fast from visible food alone can possibly be sufficient for perfection of heart and purity of body unless with it there has also been united a fast of the soul. For the soul also has its foods which are harmful, fattened on which, even without superfluity of meats, it is involved in a downfall of wantonness. Slander is its food, and indeed one that is very dear to it. A burst of anger also is its food, even if it be a very slight one; yet supplying it with miserable food for an hour, and destroying it as well with its deadly savour. Envy is a food of the mind, corrupting it with its poisonous juices and never ceasing to make it wretched and miserable at the prosperity and success of another. Kenodoxia, i.e., vainglory is its food, which gratifies it with a delicious meal for a time; but afterwards strips it clear and bare of all virtue, and dismisses it barren and void of all spiritual fruit, so that it makes it not only lose the rewards of huge labours, but also makes it incur heavier punishments. All lust and shifty wanderings of heart are a sort of food for the soul, nourishing it on harmful meats, but leaving it afterwards without share of the heavenly bread and of really solid food. If then, with all the powers we have, we abstain from these in a most holy fast, our observance of the bodily fast will be both useful and profitable. For labour of the flesh, when joined with contrition of the spirit, will produce a sacrifice that is most acceptable to God, and a worthy shrine of holiness in the pure and undefiled inmost chambers of the heart. But if, while fasting as far as the body is concerned, we are entangled in the most dangerous vices of the soul, our humiliation of the flesh will do us no good whatever, while the most precious part of us is defiled: since we go wrong through that substance by virtue of which we are made a shrine of the Holy Ghost. For it is not so much the corruptible flesh as the clean heart, which is made a shrine for God, and a temple of the Holy Ghost. We ought therefore, whenever the outward man fasts, to restrain the inner man as well from food which is bad for him: that inner man, namely, which the blessed Apostle above all urges us to present pure before God, that it may be found worthy to receive Christ as a guest within, saying "that in the inner man Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith." [861] __________________________________________________________________
[861] Eph. iii. 16, 17. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXII.
That we should for this reason practise bodily abstinence that we may by it attain to a spiritual fast.
And so we know that we ought therefore to bestow attention on bodily abstinence, that we may by this fasting attain to purity of heart. Otherwise our labours will be spent in vain, if we endure this without weariness, in contemplating the end, but are unable to reach the end for which we have endured such trials; and it would have been better to have abstained from the forbidden foods of the soul than to have fasted with the body from things indifferent and harmless, for in the case of these latter there is a simple and harmless reception of a creature of God, which in itself has nothing wrong about it: but in the case of the former there is at the very first a dangerous tendency to devour the brethren; of which it is said, "Do not love backbiting lest thou be rooted out." [862] And concerning anger and jealousy the blessed Job says: "For anger slayeth a fool, and envy killeth a child." [863] And at the same time it should be noticed that he who is angered is set down as a fool; and he who is jealous, as a child. For the former is not undeservedly considered a fool, since of his own accord he brings death upon himself, being goaded by the stings of anger; and the latter, while he is envious, proves that he is a child and a minor, for while he envies another he shows that the one at whose prosperity he is vexed, is greater than he. __________________________________________________________________
[862] Prov. xx. 13. (LXX.).
[863] Job v. 2. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXIII.
What should be the character of the monk's food.
We should then choose for our food, not only that which moderates the heat of burning lust, and avoids kindling it; but what is easily got ready, and what is recommended by its cheapness, and is suitable to the life of the brethren and their common use. For the nature of gluttony is threefold: first, there is that which forces us to anticipate the proper hour for a meal, next that which delights in stuffing the stomach, and gorging all kinds of food; thirdly, that which takes pleasure in more refined and delicate feasting. And so against it a monk should observe a threefold watch: first, he should wait till the proper time for breaking the fast; secondly, he should not give way to gorging; thirdly, he should be contented with any of the commoner sorts of food. For anything that is taken over and above what is customary and the common use of all, is branded by the ancient tradition of the fathers as defiled with the sin of vanity and glorying and ostentation. Nor of those whom we have seen to be deservedly eminent for learning and discretion, or whom the grace of Christ has singled out as shining lights for every one to imitate, have we known any who have abstained from eating bread which is accounted cheap and easily to be obtained among them; nor have we seen that any one who has rejected this rule and given up the use of bread and taken to a diet of beans or herbs or fruits, has been reckoned among the most esteemed, or even acquired the grace of knowledge and discretion. For not only do they lay it down that a monk ought not to ask for foods which are not customary for others, lest his mode of life should be exposed publicly to all and rendered vain and idle and so be destroyed by the disease of vanity; but they insist that the common chastening discipline of fasts ought not lightly to be disclosed to any one, but as far as possible concealed and kept secret. But when any of the brethren arrive they rule that we ought to show the virtues of kindness and charity instead of observing a severe abstinence and our strict daily rule: nor should we consider what our own wishes and profit or the ardour of our desires may require, but set before us and gladly fulfil whatever the refreshment of the guest, or his weakness may demand from us. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXIV.
How in Egypt we saw that the daily fast was broken without scruple on our arrival.
When we had come from the region of Syria and had sought the province of Egypt, in our desire to learn the rules of the Elders, we were astonished at the alacrity of heart with which we were there received so that no rule forbidding refreshment till the appointed hour of the fast was over was observed, such as we had been brought up to observe in the monasteries of Palestine; but except in the case of the regular days, Wednesdays and Fridays, wherever we went the daily fast [864] was broken: [865] and when we asked why the daily fast was thus ignored by them without scruple one of the elders replied: "The opportunity for fasting is always with me. But as I am going to conduct you on your way, I cannot always keep you with me. And a fast, although it is useful and advisable, is yet a free-will offering. But the exigencies of a command require the fulfilment of a work of charity. And so receiving Christ in you I ought to refresh Him but when I have sent you on your way I shall be able to balance the hospitality offered for His sake by a stricter fast on my own account. For the children of the bridegroom cannot fast while the bridegroom is with them:' [866] but when he has departed, then they will rightly fast." __________________________________________________________________
[864] Statio.
[865] The allusion is here to the sparing diet and voluntary fasts of the monks, among whom but one meal a day was usual (see the note on III. xiii.), and though this was ordinarily taken at midday, yet many of the more celebrated anchorites never broke their fast till the evening; e.g. S. Antony is said never to have eaten till sunset (Vita Anton.) and S. Jerome gives a similar account of Hilarion (Vita Hil. § 4), while other instances of voluntary fasts are given by Cassian in the following chapters, xxv.-xxvii. The "station" days, however, viz., Wednesday and Friday, being of ecclesiastical authority, were strictly observed as a matter of rule, but these other voluntary fasts at other times were to be freely broken through on account of the arrival of visitors. See the Conferences II. xxvi., XXI. xiv., XXIV. xxi., and cf. Rufinus, History of the Monks II. vii., Palladius, the Lausiac History, c. lii. So the Rule of S. Benedict (c. liii.) orders that on the arrival of visitors the Superior is to sit at table with them and break his fast, unless it be a special fast day which may not be broken; but the brethren are to observe the regular fasts.
[866] S. Matt. ix. 15. The Latin has sponsus in each clause. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXV.
Of the abstinence of one old man who took food six times so sparingly that he was still hungry.
When one of the elders was pressing me to eat a little more as I was taking refreshment, and I said that I could not, he replied: "I have already laid my table six times for different brethren who had arrived, and, pressing each of them, I partook of food with him, and am still hungry, and do you, who now partake of refreshment for the first time, say that you cannot eat any more?" __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXVI.
Of another old man, who never partook of food alone in his cell.
We have seen another who lived alone, who declared that he had never enjoyed food by himself alone, but that even if for five days running none of the brethren came to his cell he constantly put off taking food until on Saturday or Sunday he went to church for service and found some stranger whom he brought home at once to his cell, and together with him partook of refreshment for the body not so much by reason of his own needs, as for the sake of kindness and on his brother's account. And so as they know that the daily fast is broken without scruple on the arrival of brethren, when they leave, they compensate for the refreshment which has been enjoyed on their account by a greater abstinence, and sternly make up for the reception of even a very little food by a severer chastisement not only as regards bread, but also by lessening their usual amount of sleep. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXVII.
What the two Abbots Pæsius and John said of the fruits of their zeal.
When the aged John, who was superior of a large monastery and of a quantity of brethren, had come to visit the aged Pæsius, who was living in a vast desert, and had been asked of him as of a very old friend, what he had done in all the forty years in which he had been separated from him and had scarcely ever been disturbed in his solitude by the brethren: "Never," said he, "has the sun seen me eating," "nor me angry," said the other. [867] __________________________________________________________________
[867] There is a Pæsius mentioned by Palladius in the Lausiac History, but it is not clear whether he is the same man whom Cassian mentions. John is a different person from the one already mentioned in Book IV. xxiii. He is mentioned again below in xl., and the Nineteenth Conference is assigned to him. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXVIII.
The lesson and example which Abbot John when dying left to his disciples.
When the same old man, as one who was readily going to depart to his own, was lying at his last gasp, and the brethren were standing round, they implored and intreated that he would leave them, as a sort of legacy, some special charge by which they could attain to the height of perfection, the more easily from the brevity of the charge: he sighed and said, "I never did my own will, nor taught any one what I had not first done myself." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXIX.
Of Abbot Machetes, who never slept during the spiritual conferences, but always went to sleep during earthly tales.
We knew an old man, Machetes by name, who lived at a distance from the crowds of the brethren, and obtained by his daily prayers this grace from the Lord, that as often as a spiritual conference was held, whether by day or by night, he never was at all overcome by sleep: but if any one tried to introduce a word of detraction, or idle talk, he dropped off to sleep at once as if the poison of slander could not possibly penetrate to pollute his ears. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXX.
A saying of the same old man about not judging any one.
The same old man, when he was teaching us that no one ought to judge another, remarked that there were three points on which he had charged and rebuked the brethren, viz.: because some allowed their uvula to be cut off, or kept a cloak in their cell, or blessed oil and gave it to those dwelling in the world who asked for it: and he said that he had done all these things himself. For having contracted some malady of the uvula, I wasted away, said he, for so long, through its weakness, that at last I was driven by stress of the pain, and by the persuasion of all the elders, to allow it to be cut off. And I was forced too by reason of this illness, to keep a cloak. And I was also compelled to bless oil and give it to those who prayed for it--a thing which I execrated above everything, since that I thought that it proceeded from great presumption of heart--when suddenly many who were living in the world surrounded me, so that I could not possibly escape them in any other way, had they not extorted from me with no small violence, and entreaties that I would lay my hand on a vessel offered by them, and sign it with the sign of the cross: and so believing that they had secured blessed oil, at last they let me go. And by these things I plainly discovered that a monk was in the same case and entangled in the same faults for which he had ventured to judge others. Each one therefore ought only to judge himself, and to be on the watch, with care and circumspection in all things not to judge the life and conduct of others in accordance with the Apostle's charge, "But thou, why dost thou judge thy brother? to his own master he standeth or falleth." And this: "Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged." [868] For besides the reason of which we have spoken, it is for this cause also dangerous to judge concerning others because in those matters in which we are offended--as we do not know the need or the reason for which they are really acting either rightly in the sight of God, or at any rate in a pardonable manner--we are found to have judged them rashly and in this commit no light sin, by forming an opinion of our brethren different from what we ought. __________________________________________________________________
[868] Rom. xiv. 10, 4; S. Matt. vii. 1, 2. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXI.
The same old man's rebuke when he saw how the brethren went to sleep during the spiritual conferences, and woke up when some idle story was told.
The same old man made clear by this proof that it was the devil who encouraged idle tales, and showed himself always as the enemy of spiritual conferences. For when he was discoursing to some of the brethren on necessary matters and spiritual things, and saw that they were weighed down with a sound slumber, and could not drive away the weight of sleep from their eyes, he suddenly introduced an idle tale. And when he saw that at once they woke up, delighted with it, and pricked up their ears, he groaned and said, "Up till now we were speaking of celestial things and all your eyes were overpowered with a sound slumber; but as soon as an idle tale was introduced, we all woke up and shook off the drowsiness of sleep which had overcome us. And from this therefore consider who is the enemy of that spiritual conference, and who has shown himself the suggester of that useless and carnal talk. For it is most evidently shown that it is he who, rejoicing in evil, never ceases to encourage the latter and to oppose the former." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXII.
Of the letters which were burnt without being read.
Nor do I think it less needful to relate this act of a brother who was intent on purity of heart, and extremely anxious with regard to the contemplation of things divine. When after an interval of fifteen years a large number of letters had been brought to him from his father and mother and many friends in the province of Pontus, he received the huge packet of letters, and turning over the matter in his own mind for some time, "What thoughts," said he, "will the reading of these suggest to me, which will incite me either to senseless joy or to useless sadness! for how many days will they draw off the attention of my heart from the contemplation I have set before me, by the recollection of those who wrote them! How long will it take for the disturbance of mind thus created to be calmed, and what an effort will it cost for that former state of peacefulness to be restored, if the mind is once moved by the sympathy of the letters, and by recalling the words and looks of those whom it has left for so long begins once more in thought and spirit to revisit them, to dwell among them and to be with them. And it will be of no use to have forsaken them in the body, if one begins to look on them with the heart, and readmits and revives that memory which on renouncing this world every one gave up, as if he were dead." Turning this over in his mind, he determined not only not to read a single letter, but not even to open the packet, for fear lest, at the sight of the names of the writers, or on recalling their appearance, the purpose of his spirit might give way. And so he threw it into the fire to be burnt, all tied up just as he had received it, crying, "Away, O ye thoughts of my home, be ye burnt up, and try no further to recall me to those things from which I have fled." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXIII.
Of the solution of a question which Abbot Theodore obtained by prayer.
We knew also Abbot Theodore, [869] a man gifted with the utmost holiness and with perfect knowledge not only in practical life, but also in understanding the Scriptures, which he had not acquired so much by study and reading, or worldly education, as by purity of heart alone: since he could with difficulty understand and speak but a very few words of the Greek language. This man when he was seeking an explanation of some most difficult question, continued without ceasing for seven days and nights in prayer until he discovered by a revelation from the Lord the solution of the question propounded. __________________________________________________________________
[869] Nothing further is known for certain of this Theodore. He may be the author of the VIth of the Conferences; but must be carefully distinguished from his more celebrated namesake, the friend of Pachomius, and third Abbot of Tabenna, who died before Cassian's visit to Egypt. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXIV.
Of the saying of the same old man, through which he taught by what efforts a monk can acquire a knowledge of the Scriptures.
This man therefore, when some of the brethren were wondering at the splendid light of his knowledge and were asking of him some meanings of Scripture, said that a monk who wanted to acquire a knowledge of the Scriptures ought not to spend his labour on the works of commentators, but rather to keep all the efforts of his mind and intentions of his heart set on purifying himself from carnal vices: for when these are driven out, at once the eyes of the heart, as if the veil of the passions were removed, will begin as it were naturally to gaze on the mysteries [870] of Scripture: since they were not declared to us by the grace of the Holy Spirit in order that they should remain unknown and obscure; but they are rendered obscure by our fault, as the veil of our sins covers the eyes of the heart, and when these are restored to their natural state of health, the mere reading of Holy Scripture is by itself amply sufficient for beholding the true knowledge, nor do they need the aid of commentators, just as these eyes of flesh need no man's teaching how to see, provided that they are free from dimness or the darkness of blindness. For this reason there have arisen so great differences and mistakes among commentators because most of them, paying no sort of attention towards purifying the mind, rush into the work of interpreting the Scriptures, and in proportion to the density or impurity of their heart form opinions that are at variance with and contrary to each other's and to the faith, and so are unable to take in the light of truth. __________________________________________________________________
[870] Sacramenta. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXV.
A rebuke of the same old man, when he had come to my cell in the middle of the night.
The same Theodore came unexpectedly to my cell in the dead of night, with paternal inquisitiveness seeking what I--an unformed anchorite as I was--might be doing by myself; and when he had found me there already, as I had finished my vesper office, beginning to refresh my wearied body, and lying down on a mat, he sighed from the bottom of his heart, and calling me by name, said, "How many, O John, are at this hour communing with God, and embracing Him, and detaining Him with them, while you are deprived of so great light, enfeebled as you are with lazy sleep!"
And since the virtues of the fathers and the grace given to them have tempted us to turn aside to a story like this, I think it well to record in this volume a noteworthy deed of charity, which we experienced from the kindness of that most excellent man Archebius, that the purity of continence grafted on to a work of charity may more readily shine forth, being embellished with a pleasing variety. For the duty of fasting is then rendered acceptable to God, when it is made perfect by the fruits of charity. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXVI.
A description of the desert in Diolcos, where the anchorites live.
And so when we had come, while still beginners, from the monasteries of Palestine, to a city of Egypt called Diolcos, [871] and were contemplating a large number of monks bound by the discipline of the Coenobium, and trained in that excellent system of monasteries, which is also the earliest, we were also eager to see with all wisdom of heart another system as well which is still better, viz.: that of the anchorites, as we were incited thereto by the praises of it by everybody. For these men, having first lived for a very long time in Coenobia, and having diligently learnt all the rules of patience and discretion, and acquired the virtues of humility and renunciation, and having perfectly overcome all their faults, in order to engage in most fearful conflicts with devils, penetrate the deepest recesses of the desert. Finding then that men of this sort were living near the river Nile in a place which is surrounded on one side by the same river, on the other by the expanse of the sea, and forms an island, habitable by none but monks seeking such recesses, since the saltness of the soil and dryness of the sand make it unfit for any cultivation--to these men, I say, we eagerly hastened, and were beyond measure astonished at their labours which they endure in the contemplation of the virtues and their love of solitude. For they are hampered by such a scarcity even of water that the care and exactness with which they portion it out is such as no miser would bestow in preserving and hoarding the most precious kind of wine. For they carry it three miles or even further from the bed of the above-mentioned river, for all necessary purposes; and the distance, great as it is, with sandy mountains in between, is doubled by the very great difficulty of the task. __________________________________________________________________
[871] Diolcos is mentioned again in the Conferences XVIII. i. Sozomen (VI. xxix.) speaks of two celebrated monasteries near there presided over by Piamun and John. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXVII.
Of the cells which Abbot Archebius gave up to us with their furniture.
Having then seen this, as we were inflamed with the desire of imitating them, the aforesaid Archebius, the most famous among them for the grace of kindness, drew us into his cell, and having discovered our desire, pretended that he wanted to leave the place, and to offer his cell to us, as if he were going away, declaring that he would have done it, even if we had not come. And we, inflamed with the desire of remaining there, and putting unhesitating faith in the assertions of so great a man, willingly agreed to this, and took over his cell with all its furniture and belongings. And so having succeeded in his pious fraud, he left the place for a few days in which to procure the means for constructing a cell, and after this returned, and with the utmost labour built another cell for himself. And after some little time, when some other brethren came inflamed with the same desire to stay there, he deceived them by a similar charitable falsehood, and gave this one up with everything pertaining to it. But he, unweariedly persevering in his act of charity, built for himself a third cell to dwell in. [872] __________________________________________________________________
[872] Somewhat similar stories are told of others by Palladius (Lausiac History, cc. ii. 1, lxx.); and Rufinus, History of the Monks, I. xxiii. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXVIII.
The same Archebius paid a debt of his mother's by the labour of his own hands.
It seems to me worth while to hand down another charitable act of the same man, that the monks of our land may be taught by the example of one and the same man to maintain not only a rigorous continence, but also the most unfeigned affection of love. For he, sprung from no ignoble family, while yet a child, scorning the love of this world and of his kinsfolk, fled to the monastery which is nearly four miles distant from the aforementioned town, where he so passed all his life, that never once throughout the whole of fifty years did he enter or see the village from which he had come, nor even look upon the face of any woman, not even his own mother. In the mean while his father was overtaken by death, and left a debt of a hundred solidi. And though he himself was entirely free from all annoyances, since he had been disinherited of all his father's property, yet he found that his mother was excessively annoyed by the creditors. Then he through consideration of duty somewhat moderated that gospel severity through which formerly, while his parents were prosperous, he did not recognize that he possessed a father or mother on earth; and acknowledged that he had a mother, and hastened to relieve her in her distress, without relaxing anything of the austerity he had set himself. For remaining within the cloister of the monastery he asked that the task of his usual work might be trebled. And there for a whole year toiling night and day alike he paid to the creditors the due measure of the debt secured by his toil and labour, and relieved his mother from all annoyance and anxiety; ridding her of the burden of the debt in such a way as not to suffer aught of the severity he had set himself to be diminished on plea of duteous necessity. Thus did he preserve his wonted austerities, without ever denying to his mother's heart the work which duty demanded, as, though he had formerly disregarded her for the love of Christ, he now acknowledged her again out of consideration of duty. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXIX.
Of the device of a certain old man by which some work was found for Abbot Simeon when he had nothing to do.
When a brother who was very dear to us, Simeon by name, a man utterly ignorant of Greek, had come from the region of Italy, one of the elders, anxious to show to him, as he was a stranger, a work of charity, with some pretence of the benefit being mutual, asked him why he sat doing nothing in his cell, guessing from this that he would not be able to stay much longer in it both because of the roving thoughts which idleness produces and because of his want of the necessities of life; well knowing that no one can endure the assaults made in solitude, but one who is contented to procure food for himself by the labour of his hands. And when the other replied that he could not do or manage any of the things which were usually done by the brethren there, except write a good hand, if any one in Egypt wanted a Latin book for his use, then he at length seized the opportunity to secure the long wished for work of charity, under colour of its being a mutual benefit; and said, "From God this opportunity comes, for I was just looking for some one to write out for me the Epistles [873] in Latin; for I have a brother who is bound in the chains of military service, and is a good Latin scholar, to whom I want to send something from Scripture for him to read for his edification." And so when Simeon gratefully took this as an opportunity offered to him by God, the old man also gladly seized the pretext, under colour of which he could freely carry out his work of charity, and at once not only brought him as a matter of business everything he could want for a whole year, but also conveyed to him parchment and everything requisite for writing, and received afterwards the manuscript, which was not of the slightest use (since in those parts they were all utterly ignorant of this language), and did no good to anybody except that which resulted from this device and large outlay, as the one, without shame or confusion, procured his necessary food and sustenance by the reward of his work and labour, and the other carried out his kindness and bounty as it were by the compulsion of a debt: securing for himself a more abundant reward proportioned to the zeal with which he procured for his foreign brother not only his necessary food, but materials for writing, and an opportunity of work. __________________________________________________________________
[873] Apostolus. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XL.
Of the boys who when bringing to a sick man some figs, died in the desert from hunger, without having tasted them.
But since in the section in which we proposed to say something about the strictness of fasting and abstinence, kindly acts and deeds of charity seem to have been intermingled, again returning to our design we will insert in this little book a noteworthy deed of some who were boys in years though not in their feelings. For when, to their great surprise, some one had brought to Abbot John, the steward in the desert of Scete, some figs from Libya Mareotis, [874] as being a thing never before seen in those districts,--(John) who had the management of the church in the days of the blessed Presbyter Paphnutius, [875] by whom it had been intrusted to him, at once sent them by the hands of two lads to an old man who was laid up in ill health in the further parts of the desert, and who lived about eighteen miles from the church. And when they had received the fruit, and set off for the cell of the above-mentioned old man, they lost the right path altogether--a thing which there easily happens even to elders--as a thick fog suddenly came on. And when all day and night they had wandered about the trackless waste of the desert, and could not possibly find the sick man's cell, worn out at last both by weariness from their journey, and from hunger and thirst, they bent their knees and gave up their souls to God in the very act of prayer. And afterwards, when they had been for a long while sought for by the marks of their footsteps which in those sandy regions are impressed as if on snow, until a thin coating of sand blown about even by a slight breeze covers them up again, it was found that they had preserved the figs untouched, just as they had received them; choosing rather to give up their lives, than their fidelity to their charge, and to lose their life on earth than to violate the commands of their senior. __________________________________________________________________
[874] The Mareotic nome is the district round Lake Mareotis, a lake in the north of the delta bordering upon the Libyan desert (the modern Birket el Mariout), and running parallel to the Mediterranean, from which it is separated by a long and narrow ridge of sand.
[875] On Paphnutius see the note on the Conference III. i. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XLI.
The saying of Abbot Macarius of the behaviour of a monk as one who was to live for a long while, and as one who was daily at the point of death.
There is still one valuable charge of the blessed Macarius to be brought forward by us, so that a saying of so great a man may close this book of fasts and abstinence. He said then that a monk ought to bestow attention on his fasts, just as if he were going to remain in the flesh for a hundred years; and to curb the motions of the soul, and to forget injuries, and to loathe sadness, and despise sorrows and losses, as if he were daily at the point of death. For in the former case discretion is useful and proper as it causes a monk always to walk with well-balanced care, and does not suffer him by reason of a weakened body to fall from the heights over most dangerous precipices: in the other high-mindedness is most valuable as it will enable him not only to despise the seeming prosperity of this present world, but also not to be crushed by adversity and sorrow, and to despise them as small and paltry matters, since he has the gaze of his mind continually fixed there, whither daily at each moment he believes that he is soon to be summoned. [876] __________________________________________________________________
[876] Socrates (H.E. Book IV. c. xxiii.) gives an account of two monks of the name of Macarius, one of whom was from Upper Egypt, and the other from Alexandria. Compare also Rufinus History of the Monks, cc. xxviii., xxix. It is not certain to which of them Cassian's stories refer, here and in the Conferences V. xii. VII. xxvii., XXIV. xiii. The story told in Conference XV. iii, refers to the "Egyptian" Macarius (cf. Sozomen H. E. III. xiv., where the miracle is expressly assigned to him): that in XIV. iv. evidently belongs to the "Alexandrian" Macarius. The two are mentioned together in Conference XIX. ix., and by various other writers. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Book VI.
On the Spirit of Fornication.
We have thought best to omit altogether the translation of this book. __________________________________________________________________
Book VII.
Of the Spirit of Covetousness. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter I.
How our warfare with covetousness is a foreign one, and how this fault is not a natural one in man, as the other faults are.
Our third conflict is against covetousness which we can describe as the love of money; a foreign warfare, and one outside of our nature, and in the case of a monk originating only from the state of a corrupt and sluggish mind, and often from the beginning of his renunciation being unsatisfactory, and his love towards God being lukewarm at its foundation. For the rest of the incitements to sin planted in human nature seem to have their commencement as it were congenital with us, and somehow being deeply rooted in our flesh, and almost coeval with our birth, anticipate our powers of discerning good and evil, and although in very early days they attack a man, yet they are overcome with a long struggle. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter II.
How dangerous is the disease of covetousness.
But this disease coming upon us at a later period, and approaching the soul from without, as it can be the more easily guarded against and resisted, so, if it is disregarded and once allowed to gain an entrance into the heart, is the more dangerous to every one, and with the greater difficulty expelled. For it becomes "a root of all evils," [877] and gives rise to a multiplicity of incitements to sin. __________________________________________________________________
[877] 1 Tim. vi. 10. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter III.
What is the usefulness of those vices which are natural to us.
For example, do not we see those natural impulses of the flesh not only in boys in whom innocence still anticipates the discernment of good and evil, but even in little children and infants, who although they have not even the slightest approach to lust within them, yet show that the impulses of the flesh exist in them and are naturally excited? Do not we also see that the deadly pricks of anger already exist in full vigour likewise in little children? and before they have learnt the virtue of patience, we see that they are disturbed by wrongs, and feel affronts offered to them even by way of a joke; and sometimes, although strength is lacking to them, the desire to avenge themselves is not wanting, when anger excites them. Nor do I say this to lay the blame on their natural state, but to point out that of these impulses which proceed from us, some are implanted in us for a useful purpose, while some are introduced from without, through the fault of carelessness and the desire of an evil will. For these carnal impulses, of which we spoke above, were with a useful purpose implanted in our bodies by the providence of the Creator, viz.: for perpetuating the race, and raising up children for posterity: and not for committing adulteries and debaucheries, which the authority of the law also condemns. The pricks of anger too, do we not see that they have been most wisely given to us, that being enraged at our sins and mistakes, we may apply ourselves the rather to virtues and spiritual exercises, showing forth all love towards God, and patience towards our brethren? We know too how great is the use of sorrow, which is reckoned among the other vices, when it is turned to an opposite use. For on the one hand, when it is in accordance with the fear of God it is most needful, and on the other, when it is in accordance with the world, most pernicious; as the Apostle teaches us when he says that "the sorrow which is according to God worketh repentance that is steadfast unto salvation, but the sorrow of the world worketh death." [878] __________________________________________________________________
[878] 2 Cor. vii. 10. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IV.
That we can say that there exist in us some natural faults, without wronging the Creator.
If then we say that these impulses were implanted in us by the Creator, He will not on that account seem blameworthy, if we choose wrongly to abuse them, and to pervert them to harmful purposes, and are ready to be made sorry by means of the useless Cains of this world, and not by means of showing penitence and the correction of our faults: or at least if we are angry not with ourselves (which would be profitable) but with our brethren in defiance of God's command. For in the case of iron, which is given us for good and useful purposes, if any one should pervert it for murdering the innocent, one would not therefore blame the maker of the metal because man had used to injure others that which he had provided for good and useful purposes of living happily. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter V.
Of the faults which are contracted through our own fault, without natural impulses.
But we affirm that some faults grow up without any natural occasion giving birth to them, but simply from the free choice of a corrupt and evil will, as envy and this very sin of covetousness; which are caught (so to speak) from without, having no origination in us from natural instincts. But these, in proportion as they are easily guarded against and readily avoided, just so do they make wretched the mind that they have got hold of and seized, and hardly do they suffer it to get at the remedies which would cure it: either because these who are wounded by persons whom they might either have ignored, or avoided, or easily overcome, do not deserve to be healed by a speedy cure, or else because, having laid the foundations badly, they are unworthy to raise an edifice of virtue and reach the summit of perfection. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VI.
How difficult the evil of covetousness is to drive away when once it has been admitted.
Wherefore let not this evil seem of no account or unimportant to anybody: for as it can easily be avoided, so if it has once got hold of any one, it scarcely suffers him to get at the remedies for curing it. For it is a regular nest of sins, and a "root of all kinds of evil," and becomes a hopeless incitement to wickedness, as the Apostle says, "Covetousness," i.e. the love of money, "is a root of all kinds of evil." [879] __________________________________________________________________
[879] 1 Tim. vi. 10. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VII.
Of the source from which covetousness springs, and of the evils of which it is itself the mother.
When then this vice has got hold of the slack and lukewarm soul of some monk, it begins by tempting him in regard of a small sum of money, giving him excellent and almost reasonable excuses why he ought to retain some money for himself. For he complains that what is provided in the monastery is not sufficient, and can scarcely be endured by a sound and sturdy body. What is he to do if ill health comes on, and he has no special store of his own to support him in his weakness? He says that the allowance of the monastery is but meagre, and that there is the greatest carelessness about the sick: and if he has not something of his own so that he can look after the wants of his body, he will perish miserably. The dress which is allowed him is insufficient, unless he has provided something with which to procure another. Lastly, he says that he cannot possibly remain for long in the same place and monastery, and that unless he has secured the money for his journey, and the cost of his removal over the sea, he cannot move when he wants to, and, detained by the compulsion of want, will henceforth drag out a wretched and wearisome existence without making the slightest advance: that he cannot without indignity be supported by another's substance, as a pauper and one in want. And so when he has bamboozled himself with such thoughts as these, he racks his brains to think how he can acquire at least one penny. Then he anxiously searches for some special work which he can do without the Abbot knowing anything about it. And selling it secretly, and so securing the coveted coin, he torments himself worse and worse in thinking how he can double it: puzzled as to where to deposit it, or to whom to intrust it. Then he is oppressed with a still weightier care as to what to buy with it, or by what transaction he can double it. And when this has turned out as he wished, a still more greedy craving for gold springs up, and is more and more keenly excited, as his store of money grows larger and larger. For with the increase of wealth the mania of covetousness increases. Then next he has forebodings of a long life, and an enfeebled old age, and infirmities of all sorts, and long drawn out, which will be insupportable in old age, unless a large store of money has been laid by in youth. And so the wretched soul is agitated, and held fast, as it were, in a serpent's toils, while it endeavours to add to that heap which it has unlawfully secured, by still more unlawful care, and itself gives birth to plagues which inflame it more sorely, and being entirely absorbed in the quest of gain, pays attention to nothing but how to get money with which to fly [880] as quickly as possible from the discipline of the monastery, never keeping faith where there is a gleam of hope of money to be got. For this it shrinks not from the crime of lying, perjury, and theft, of breaking a promise, of giving way to injurious bursts of passion. If the man has dropped away at all from the hope of gain, he has no scruples about transgressing the bounds of humility, and through it all gold and the love of gain become to him his god, as the belly does to others. Wherefore the blessed Apostle, looking out on the deadly poison of this pest, not only says that it is a root of all kinds of evil, but also calls it the worship of idols, saying "And covetousness (which in Greek is called philarguria ) which is the worship of idols." [881] You see then to what a downfall this madness step by step leads, so that by the voice of the Apostle it is actually declared to be the worship of idols and false gods, because passing over the image and likeness of God (which one who serves God with devotion ought to preserve undefiled in himself), it chooses to love and care for images stamped on gold instead of God. __________________________________________________________________
[880] The same danger is strongly spoken of by S. Basil in the "Monastic Constitutions" c. xxxiv., a passage which should be compared with the one above.
[881] Col. iii. 5. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VIII.
How covetousness is a hindrance to all virtues.
With such strides then in a downward direction he goes from bad to worse, and at last cares not to retain I will not say the virtue but even the shadow of humility, charity, and obedience; and is displeased with everything, and murmurs and groans over every work; and now having cast off all reverence, like a bad-tempered horse, dashes off headlong and unbridled: and discontented with his daily food and usual clothing, announces that he will not put up with it any longer. He declares that God is not only there, and that his salvation is not confined to that place, where, if he does not take himself off pretty quickly from it, he deeply laments that he will soon die. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IX.
How a monk who has money cannot stay in the monastery.
And so having money to provide for his wanderings, with the assistance of which he has fitted himself as it were with wings, and now being quite ready for his move, he answers impertinently to all commands, and behaves himself like a stranger and a visitor, and whatever he sees needing improvement, he despises and treats with contempt. And though he has a supply of money secretly hidden, yet he complains that he has neither shoes nor clothes, and is indignant that they are given out to him so slowly. And if it happens that through the management of the superior some of these are given first to one who is known to have nothing whatever, he is still more inflamed with burning rage, and thinks that he is despised as a stranger; nor is he contented to turn his hand to any work, but finds fault with everything which the needs of the monastery require to be done. Then of set purpose he looks out for opportunities of being offended and angry, lest he might seem to have gone forth from the discipline of the monastery for a trivial reason. And not content to take his departure by himself alone, lest it should be thought that he has left as it were from his own fault, he never stops corrupting as many as he can by clandestine conferences. But if the severity of the weather interferes with his journey and travels, he remains all the time in suspense and anxiety of heart, and never stops sowing and exciting discontent; as he thinks that he will only find consolation for his departure and an excuse for his fickleness in the bad character and defects of the monastery. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter X.
Of the toils which a deserter from a monastery must undergo through covetousness, though he used formerly to murmur at the very slightest tasks.
And so he is driven about, and more and more inflamed with the love of his money, which when it is acquired, never allows a monk either to remain in a monastery or to live under the discipline of a rule. And when separating him like some wild beast from the rest of the herd, it has made him through want of companions an animal fit for prey, and caused him to be easily eaten up, as he is deprived of fellow lodgers, it forces him, who once thought it beneath him to perform the slight duties of the monastery, to labour without stopping night and day, through hope of gain; it suffers him to keep no services of prayer, no system of fasting, no rule of vigils; it does not allow him to fulfil the duties of seemly intercession, if only he can satisfy the madness of avarice, and supply his daily wants; inflaming the more the fire of covetousness, while believing that it will be extinguished by getting. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XI.
That under pretence of keeping the purse women have to besought to dwell with them.
Hence many are led on over an abrupt precipice, and by an irrevocable fall, to death, and not content to possess by themselves that money which they either never had before, or which by a bad beginning they kept back, they seek for women to dwell with them, to preserve what they have unjustifiably amassed or retained. And they implicate themselves in so many harmful and dangerous occupations, that they are cast down even to the depths of hell, while they refuse to acquiesce in that saying of the Apostle, that "having food and clothing they should be content" with that which the thrift of the monastery supplied, but "wishing to become rich they fall into temptation and the snare of the devil, and many unprofitable and hurtful desires, which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money," i.e. covetousness, "is a root of all kinds of evil, which some coveting have erred from the faith, and have entangled themselves in many sorrows." [882] __________________________________________________________________
[882] 1 Tim. vi. 8-10. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XII.
An instance of a lukewarm monk caught in the snares of covetousness.
I know of one, who thinks himself a monk, and what is worse flatters himself on his perfection, who had been received into a monastery, and when charged by his Abbot not to turn his thoughts back to those things which he had given up and renounced, but to free himself from covetousness, the root of all kinds of evil, and from earthly snares; and when told that if he wished to be cleansed from his former passions, by which he saw that he was from time to time grievously oppressed, he should cease from caring about those things which even formerly were not his own, entangled in the chains of which he certainly could not make progress towards purifying himself of his faults: with an angry expression he did not hesitate to answer, "If you have that with which you can support others, why do you forbid me to have it as well?" [883] __________________________________________________________________
[883] Cur prohibes (Petschenig). Gazæus omits Cur. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIII.
What the elders relate to the juniors in the matter of stripping off sins.
But let not this seem superfluous or objectionable to any one. For unless the different kinds of sins are first explained, and the origin and causes of diseases traced out, the proper healing remedies cannot be applied to the sick, nor can the preservation of perfect health be secured by the strong. For both these matters and many others besides these are generally put forward for the instruction of the younger brethren by the elders in their conferences, as they have had experience of numberless falls and the ruin of all sorts of people. And often recognizing in ourselves many of these things, when the elders explained and showed them, as men who were themselves disquieted [884] by the same passions, we were cured without any shame or confusion on our part, since without saying anything we learnt both the remedies and the causes of the sins which beset us, which we have passed over and said nothing about, not from fear of the brethren, but lest our book should chance to fall into the hands of some who have had no instruction in this way of life, and might disclose to inexperienced persons what ought to be known only to those who are toiling and striving to reach the heights of perfection. __________________________________________________________________
[884] Pulsarentur (Petschenig). The text of Gazæus has pulsaremur. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIV.
Instances to show that the disease of covetousness is threefold.
And so this disease and unhealthy state is threefold, and is condemned with equal abhorrence by all the fathers. One feature is this, of which we described the taint above, which by deceiving wretched folk persuades them to hoard though they never had anything of their own when they lived in the world. Another, which forces men afterwards to resume and once more desire those things which in the early days of their renunciation of the world they gave up. A third, which springing from a faulty and hurtful beginning and making a bad start, does not suffer those whom it has once infected with this lukewarmness of mind to strip themselves of all their worldly goods, through fear of poverty and want of faith; and those who keep back money and property which they certainly ought to have renounced and forsaken, it never allows to arrive at the perfection of the gospel. And we find in Holy Scripture instances of these three catastrophes which were visited with no light punishment. For when Gehazi wished to acquire what he had never had before, not only did he fail to obtain the gift of prophecy which it would have been his to receive from his master by hereditary succession, but on the contrary he was covered by the curse of the holy Elisha with a perpetual leprosy: while Judas, wanting to resume the possession of the wealth which he had formerly cast away when he followed Christ, not only fell into betraying the Lord, and lost his apostolic rank, but also was not allowed to close his life with the common lot of all but ended it by a violent death. But Ananias and Sapphira, keeping back a part of that which was formerly their own, were at the Apostle's word punished with death. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XV.
Of the difference between one who renounces the world badly and one who does not renounce it at all.
Of those then who say that they have renounced this world, and afterwards being overcome by want of faith are afraid of losing their worldly goods, a charge is given mystically in Deuteronomy. "If any man is afraid and of a fearful heart let him not go forth to war: let him go back and return home, lest he make the hearts of his brethren to fear as he himself is timid and frightened." [885] What can one want plainer than this testimony? Does not Scripture clearly prefer that they should not take on them even the earliest stages of this profession and its name, rather than by their persuasion and bad example turn others back from the perfection of the gospel, and weaken them by their faithless terror. And so they are bidden to withdraw from the battle and return to their homes, because a man cannot fight the Lord's battle with a double heart. For "a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways." [886] And thinking, according to that Parable in the Gospel, [887] that he who goes forth with ten thousand men against a king who comes with twenty thousand, cannot possibly fight, they should, while he is yet a great way off, ask for peace; that is, it is better for them not even to take the first step towards renunciation, rather than afterwards following it up coldly, to involve themselves in still greater dangers. For "it is better not to vow, than to vow and not pay." [888] But finely is the one described as coming with ten thousand and the other with twenty. For the number of sins which attack us is far larger than that of the virtues which fight for us. But "no man can serve God and Mammon." [889] And "no man putting his hand to the plough and looking back is fit for the kingdom of God." [890] __________________________________________________________________
[885] Deut. xx. 8.
[886] S. James i. 8.
[887] S. Luke xiv. 31, 32.
[888] Eccl. v. 4 (LXX.).
[889] S. Matt. vi. 24.
[890] S. Luke ix. 62. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVI.
Of the authority under which those shelter themselves who object to stripping themselves of their goods.
These then try to make out a case for their original avarice, by some authority from Holy Scripture, which they interpret with base ingenuity, in their desire to wrest and pervert to their own purposes a saying of the Apostle or rather of the Lord Himself: and, not adapting their own life or understanding to the meaning of the Scripture, but making the meaning of Scripture bend to the desires of their own lust, they try to make it to correspond to their own views, and say that it is written, "It is more blessed to give than to receive." [891] And by an entirely wrong interpretation of this they think that they can weaken the force of that saying of the Lord in which he says: "If thou wilt be perfect, go sell all that thou hast and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me." [892] And they think that under colour of this they need not deprive themselves of their riches: declaring indeed that they are more blessed if, supported by that which originally belonged to them, they give to others also out of their superabundance. And while they are shy of embracing with the Apostle that glorious state of abnegation for Christ's sake, they will not be content either with manual labour or the sparing diet of the monastery. And the only thing is that these must either know that they are deceiving themselves, and have not really renounced the world while they are clinging to their former riches; or, if they really and truly want to make trial of the monastic life, they must give up and forsake all these things and keep back nothing of that which they have renounced, and, with the Apostle, glory "in hunger and thirst, in cold and nakedness." [893] __________________________________________________________________
[891] Acts xx. 35.
[892] S. Matt. xix. 21.
[893] 2 Cor. ii. 27. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVII.
Of the renunciation of the apostles and the primitive church.
As if he (who, by his assertion that he was endowed with the privileges of a Roman citizen from his birth, testifies that he was no mean person according to this world's rank) might not likewise have been supported by the property which formerly belonged to him! And as if those men who were possessors of lands and houses in Jerusalem and sold everything and kept back nothing whatever for themselves, and brought the price of them and laid it at the feet of the apostles, might not have supplied their bodily necessities from their own property, had this been considered the best plan by the apostles, or had they themselves deemed it preferable! But they gave up all their property at once, and preferred to be supported by their own labour, and by the contributions of the Gentiles, of whose collection the holy Apostle speaks in writing to the Romans, and declaring his own office in this matter to them, and urging them on likewise to make this collection: "But now I go to Jerusalem to minister to the saints. For it has pleased them of Macedonia and Achaia to make a certain contribution for the poor saints who are at Jerusalem: it has pleased them indeed, and their debtors they are. For if the Gentiles are made partakers of their spiritual things, they ought also to minister to them in carnal things." [894] To the Corinthians also he shows the same anxiety about this, and urges them the more diligently to prepare before his arrival a collection, which he was intending to send for their needs. "But concerning the collection for the saints, as I appointed to the churches of Galatia, so also do ye. Let each one of you on the first day of the week put apart with himself, laying up what it shall well please him, that when I come the collections be not then to be made. But when I come whomsoever you shall approve by your letters, them I will send to carry your grace to Jerusalem." And that he may stimulate them to make a larger collection, he adds, "But if it be meet that I also go, they shall go with me:" [895] meaning if your offering is of such a character as to deserve to be taken there by my ministration. To the Galatians too, he testifies that when he was settling the division of the ministry of preaching with the apostles, he had arranged this with James, Peter, and John: that he should undertake the preaching to the Gentiles, but should never repudiate care and anxious thought for the poor who were at Jerusalem, who for Christ's sake gave up all their goods, and submitted to voluntary poverty. "And when they saw," said he, "the grace of God which was given to me, James and Cephas and John, who seemed to be pillars, gave to me and to Barnabas the right hand of fellowship, that we should preach to the Gentiles, but they to those of the circumcision: only they would that we should be mindful of the poor." A matter which he testifies that he attended to most carefully, saying, "which also I was anxious of myself to do." [896] Who then are the more blessed, those who but lately were gathered out of the number of the heathen, and being unable to climb to the heights of the perfection of the gospel, clung to their own property, in whose case it was considered a great thing by the Apostle if at least they were restrained from the worship of idols, and from fornication, and from things strangled, and from blood, [897] and had embraced the faith of Christ, with their goods and all: or those who live up to the demands of the gospel, and carry the Lord's cross daily, and want nothing out of their property to remain for their own use? And if the blessed Apostle himself, bound with chains and fetters, or hampered by the difficulties of travelling, and for these reasons not being able to provide with his hands, as he generally did, for the supply of his food, declares that he received that which supplied his wants from the brethren who came from Macedonia; "For that which was lacking to me," he says, "the brethren who came from Macedonia supplied:" [898] and to the Philippians he says: "For ye Philippians know also that in the beginning of the gospel, when I came from Macedonia, no church communicated with me in the matter of giving and receiving, except you only; because even in Thessalonica once and again you sent to supply my needs:" [899] (if this was so) then, according to the notion of these men, which they have formed in the coldness of their heart, will those men really be more blessed than the Apostle, because it is found that they have ministered to him of their substance? But this no one will venture to assert, however big a fool he may be. __________________________________________________________________
[894] Rom. xv. 25-27.
[895] 1 Cor. xvi. 1-4.
[896] Gal. ii. 9, 10.
[897] Acts xv. 20.
[898] 2 Cor. xi. 9.
[899] Phil. iv. 15, 16. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVIII.
That if we want to imitate the apostles we ought not to live according to our own prescriptions, but to follow their example.
Wherefore if we want to obey the gospel precept, and to show ourselves the followers of the Apostle and the whole primitive church, or of the fathers who in our own days succeeded to their virtues and perfection, we should not acquiesce in our own prescriptions, promising ourselves perfection from this wretched and lukewarm condition of ours: but following their footsteps, we should by no means aim at looking after our own interests, but should seek out the discipline and system of a monastery, that we may in very truth renounce this world; preserving nothing of those things which we have despised through the temptation of want of faith; and should look for our daily food, not from any store of money of our own, but from our own labours. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIX.
A saying of S. Basil, the Bishop, directed against Syncletius. [900]
There is current a saying of S. Basil, Bishop of Cæsarea, directed against a certain Syncletius, who was growing indifferent with the sort of lukewarmness of which we have spoken; who, though he professed to have renounced this world, had yet kept back for himself some of his property, not liking to be supported by the labour of his own hands, and to acquire true humility by stripping himself and by grinding toil, and the subjection of the monastery: "You have," said he, "spoilt Syncletius, and not made a monk." __________________________________________________________________
[900] Petschenig's text has Syncletium as a proper name. Gazæus, however, thinks that it should be Syncleticum; i.e. Sunkletikos or Senator: and in the saying of S. Basil at the close of the chapter actually reads (apparently without any ms. authority), Et Senatorem, inquit, perdidisti. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XX.
How contemptible it is to be overcome by covetousness.
And so if we want to strive lawfully in our spiritual combat, let us expel this dangerous enemy also from our hearts. For to overcome him does not so much show great virtue, as to be beaten by him is shameful and disgraceful. For when you are overpowered by a strong man, though there is grief in being overthrown, and distress at the loss of victory, yet some consolation may be derived by the vanquished from the strength of their opponent. But if the enemy is a poor creature, and the struggle a feeble one, besides the grief for defeat there is confusion of a more disgraceful character, and a shame which is worse than loss. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXI.
How covetousness can be conquered.
And in this case it will be the greatest victory and a lasting triumph, if, as is said, the conscience of the monk is not defiled by the possession of the smallest coin. For it is an impossibility for him who, overcome in the matter of a small possession, has once admitted into his heart a root of evil desire, not to be inflamed presently with the heat of a still greater desire. For the soldier of Christ will be victorious and in safety, and free from all the attacks of desire, so long as this most evil spirit does not implant in his heart a seed of this desire. Wherefore, though in the matter of all kinds of sins we ought ordinarily to watch the serpent's head, [901] yet in this above all we should be more keenly on our guard. For if it has been admitted it will grow by feeding on itself, and will kindle for itself a worse fire. And so we must not only guard against the possession of money, but also must expel from our souls the desire for it. For we should not so much avoid the results of covetousness, as cut off by the roots all disposition towards it. For it will do no good not to possess money, if there exists in us the desire for getting it. __________________________________________________________________
[901] Gen. iii. 15. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXII.
That one who actually has no money may still be deemed covetous.
For it is possible even for one who has no money to be by no means free from the malady of covetousness, and for the blessing of penury to do him no good, because he has not been able to root out the sin of cupidity: delighting in the advantages of poverty, not in the merit of the virtue, and satisfied with the burden of necessity, not without coldness of heart. For just as the word of the gospel declares of those who are not defiled in body, that they are adulterers in heart; [902] so it is possible that those who are in no way pressed down with the weight of money may be condemned with the covetous in disposition and intent. For it was the opportunity of possessing which was wanting in their case, and not the will for it: which latter is always crowned by God, rather than compulsion. And so we must use all diligence lest the fruits of our labours should be destroyed to no purpose. For it is a wretched thing to have endured the effects of poverty and want, but to have lost their fruits, through the fault of a shattered will. __________________________________________________________________
[902] S. Matt. v. 28. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXIII.
An example drawn from the case of Judas.
Would you like to know how dangerously and harmfully that incitement, unless it has been carefully eradicated, will shoot up for the destruction of its owner, and put forth all sorts of branches of different sins? Look at Judas, reckoned among the number of the apostles, and see how because he would not bruise the deadly head of this serpent it destroyed him with its poison, and how when he was caught in the snares of concupiscence, it drove him into sin and a headlong downfall, so that he was persuaded to sell the Redeemer of the world and the author of man's salvation for thirty pieces of silver. And he could never have been impelled to this heinous sin of the betrayal if he had not been contaminated by the sin of covetousness: nor would he have made himself wickedly guilty of betraying [903] the Lord, unless he had first accustomed himself to rob the bag intrusted to him. __________________________________________________________________
[903] Negationis (Petschenig). Another reading is necationis. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXIV.
That covetousness cannot be overcome except by stripping one's self of everything.
This is a sufficiently dreadful and clear instance of this tyranny, which, when once the mind is taken prisoner by it, allows it to keep to no rules of honesty, nor to be satisfied with any additions to its gains. For we must seek to put an end to this madness, not by riches, but by stripping ourselves of them. Lastly, when he (viz. Judas) had received the bag set apart for the distribution to the poor, and intrusted to his care for this purpose, that he might at least satisfy himself with plenty of money, and set a limit to his avarice, yet his plentiful supply only broke out into a still greedier incitement of desire, so that he was ready no longer secretly to rob the bag, but actually to sell the Lord Himself. For the madness of this avarice is not satisfied with any amount of riches. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXV.
Of the deaths of Ananias and Sapphira, and Judas, which they underwent through the impulse of covetousness.
Lastly, the chief of the apostles, taught by these instances, and knowing that one who has any avarice cannot bridle it, and that it cannot be put an end to by a large or small sum of money, but only by the virtue of renunciation of everything, punished with death Ananias and Sapphira, who were mentioned before, because they had kept back something out of their property, that that death which Judas had voluntarily met with for the sin of betraying the Lord, they might also undergo for their lying avarice. [904] How closely do the sin and punishment correspond in each case! In the one case treachery, in the other falsehood, was the result of covetousness. In the one case the truth is betrayed, in the other the sin of lying is committed. For though the issues of their deeds may appear different, yet they coincide in having one and the same aim. For the one, in order to escape poverty, desired to take back what he had forsaken; the others, for fear lest they might become poor, tried to keep back something out of their property, which they should have either offered to the Apostle in good faith, or have given entirely to the brethren. And so in each case there follows the judgment of death; because each sin sprang from the root of covetousness. And so if against those who did not covet other persons' goods, but tried to be sparing of their own, and had no desire to acquire, but only the wish to retain, there went forth so severe a sentence, what should we think of those who desire to amass wealth, without ever having had any of their own, and, making a show of poverty before men, are before God convicted of being rich, through the passion of avarice? __________________________________________________________________
[904] Cf. Acts v. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXVI.
That covetousness brings upon the soul a spiritual leprosy.
And such are seen to be lepers in spirit and heart, after the likeness of Gehazi, who, desiring the uncertain riches of this world, was covered with the taint of foul leprosy, through which he left us a clear example that every soul which is defiled with the stain of cupidity is covered with the spiritual leprosy of sin, and is counted as unclean before God with a perpetual curse. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXVII.
Scripture proofs by which one who is aiming at perfection is taught not to take back again what he has given up and renounced.
If then through the desire of perfection you have forsaken all things and followed Christ who says to thee, "Go sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come follow me," [905] why, having put your hand to the plough, do you look back, so that you will be declared by the voice of the same Lord not to be fit for the kingdom of heaven? [906] When secure on the top of the gospel roof, why do you descend to carry away something from the house, from those things, namely, which beforetime you despised? When you are out in the field and working at the virtues, why do you run back and try to clothe yourself again with what belongs to this world, which you stripped off when you renounced it? [907] But if you were hindered by poverty from having anything to give up, still less ought you to amass what you never had before. For by the grace of the Lord you were for this purpose made ready that you might hasten to him the more readily, being hampered by no snares of wealth. But let no one who is wanting in this be disappointed; for there is no one who has not something to give up. He has renounced all the possessions of this world, whoever has thoroughly eradicated the desire to possess them. __________________________________________________________________
[905] Matt. xix. 21.
[906] Cf. S. Luke ix. 62.
[907] Cf. S. Luke xvii. 31. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXVIII.
That the victory over covetousness can only be gained by stripping one's self bare of everything.
This then is the perfect victory over covetousness: not to allow a gleam from the very smallest scrap of it to remain in our heart, as we know that we shall have no further power of quenching it, if we cherish even the tiniest bit of a spark of it in us. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXIX.
How a monk can retain his poverty.
And we can only preserve this virtue unimpaired if we remain in a monastery, and as the Apostle says, having food and clothing, are therewith content. [908] __________________________________________________________________
[908] 1 Tim. vi. 8. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXX.
The remedies against the disease of covetousness.
Keeping then in mind the judgment of Ananias and Sapphira let us dread keeping back any of those things which we gave up and vowed utterly to forsake. Let us also fear the example of Gehazi, who for the sin of covetousness was chastised with the punishment of perpetual leprosy. From this let us beware of acquiring that wealth which we never formerly possessed. Moreover also dreading both the fault and the death of Judas, let us with all the power that we have avoid taking back any of that wealth which once we cast away from us. Above all, considering the state of our weak and shifty nature, let us beware lest the day of the Lord come upon us as a thief in the night, [909] and find our conscience defiled even by a single penny; for this would make void all the fruits of our renunciation of the world, and cause that which was said to the rich man in the gospel to be directed towards us also by the voice of the Lord: "Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be which thou hast prepared?" [910] And taking no thought for the morrow, let us never allow ourselves to be enticed away from the rule of the Coenobium. __________________________________________________________________
[909] 1 Thess. v. 4.
[910] S. Luke xii. 20. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXI.
That no one can get the better of covetousness unless he stays in the Coenobium: and how one can remain there.
But we shall certainly not be suffered to do this, nor even to remain under the rule of a system, unless the virtue of patience, which can only spring from humility as its source, is first securely fixed and established in us. For the one teaches us not to trouble any one else; the other, to endure with magnanimity wrongs offered to us. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Book VIII.
Of the Spirit of Anger. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter I.
How our fourth conflict is against the sin of anger, and how many evils this passion produces.
In our fourth combat the deadly poison of anger has to be utterly rooted out from the inmost comers of our soul. For as long as this remains in our hearts, and blinds with its hurtful darkness the eye of the soul, we can neither acquire right judgment and discretion, nor gain the insight which springs from an honest gaze, or ripeness of counsel, nor can we be partakers of life, or retentive of righteousness, or even have the capacity for spiritual and true light: "for," says one, "mine eye is disturbed by reason of anger." [911] Nor can we become partakers of wisdom, even though we are considered wise by universal consent, for "anger rests in the bosom of fools." [912] Nor can we even attain immortal life, although we are accounted prudent in the opinion of everybody, for "anger destroys even the prudent." [913] Nor shall we be able with clear judgment of heart to secure the controlling power of righteousness, even though we are reckoned perfect and holy in the estimation of all men, for "the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God." [914] Nor can we by any possibility acquire that esteem and honour which is so frequently seen even in worldlings, even though we are thought noble and honourable through the privileges of birth, because "an angry man is dishonoured." [915] Nor again can we secure any ripeness of counsel, even though we appear to be weighty, and endowed with the utmost knowledge; because "an angry man acts without counsel." [916] Nor can we be free from dangerous disturbances, nor be without sin, even though no sort of disturbances be brought upon us by others; because "a passionate man engenders quarrels, but an angry man digs up sins." [917] __________________________________________________________________
[911] Ps. xxx. (xxxi.) 10.
[912] Eccl. vii. 10 (LXX.).
[913] Prov. xv. 1 (LXX.).
[914] S. James i. 20.
[915] Prov. xi. 25 (LXX.).
[916] Prov. xiv. 17 (LXX.).
[917] Prov. xxix. 22 (LXX.). 'Aner thumodes egeirei neikos, aner de orgilos exoruxen hamartian. The old Latin as given by Sabatier has "Vir animosus parit zixas: vir autem iracundus effodit peccata." The verse is quoted by Gregory the Great in a passage which seems a reminiscence of Cassian's words with the reading effundit for effodit (Moral V. xxxi.). Jerome's rendering in the Vulgate is quite different: "Vir iracundus provocat zixas: et qui ad indignandum facilis est erit ad peccandum proclivior." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter II.
Of those who say that anger is not injurious, if we are angry with those who do wrong, since God Himself is said to be angry.
We have heard some people trying to excuse this most pernicious disease of the soul, in such a way as to endeavour to extenuate it by a rather shocking way of interpreting Scripture: as they say that it is not injurious if we are angry with the brethren who do wrong, since, say they, God Himself is said to rage and to be angry with those who either will not know Him, or, knowing Him, spurn Him, as here: "And the anger of the Lord was kindled against His people;" [918] or where the prophet prays and says, "O Lord, rebuke me not in thine anger, neither chasten me in thy displeasure;" [919] not understanding that, while they want to open to men an excuse for a most pestilent sin, they are ascribing to the Divine Infinity and Fountain of all purity a taint of human passion. __________________________________________________________________
[918] Ps. cv. (cvi.) 40.
[919] Ps. vi. 2. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter III.
Of those things which are spoken of God anthropomorphically.
For if when these things are said of God they are to be understood literally in a material gross signification, then also He sleeps, as it is said, "Arise, wherefore sleepest thou, O Lord?" [920] though it is elsewhere said of Him: "Behold he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep." [921] And He stands and sits, since He says, "Heaven is my seat, and earth the footstool for my feet:" [922] though He "measure out the heaven with his hand, and holdeth the earth in his fist." [923] And He is "drunken with wine" as it is said, "The Lord awoke like a sleeper, a mighty man, drunken with wine;" [924] He "who only hath immortality and dwelleth in the light which no man can approach unto:" [925] not to say anything of the "ignorance" and "forgetfulness," of which we often find mention in Holy Scripture: nor lastly of the outline of His limbs, which are spoken of as arranged and ordered like a man's; e.g., the hair, head, nostrils, eyes, face, hands, arms, fingers, belly, and feet: if we are willing to take all of which according to the bare literal sense, we must think of God as in fashion with the outline of limbs, and a bodily form; which indeed is shocking even to speak of, and must be far from our thoughts. __________________________________________________________________
[920] Ps. xliii. (xliv.) 23.
[921] Ps. cxx. (cxxi.) 4.
[922] Isa. lxvi. 1.
[923] Isa. xl. 12.
[924] Ps. lxxvii. (lxxviii.) 65.
[925] 1 Tim. vi. 16. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IV.
In what sense we should understand the passions and human arts which are ascribed to the unchanging and incorporeal God.
And so as without horrible profanity these things cannot be understood literally of Him who is declared by the authority of Holy Scripture to be invisible, ineffable, incomprehensible, inestimable, simple, and uncompounded, so neither can the passion of anger and wrath be attributed to that unchangeable nature without fearful blasphemy. For we ought to see that the limbs signify the divine powers and boundless operations of God, which can only be represented to us by the familiar expression of limbs: by the mouth we should understand that His utterances are meant, which are of His mercy continually poured into the secret senses of the soul, or which He spoke among our fathers and the prophets: by the eyes we can understand the boundless character of His sight with which He sees and looks through all things, and so nothing is hidden from Him of what is done or can be done by us, or even thought. By the expression "hands," we understand His providence and work, by which He is the creator and author of all things; the arms are the emblems of His might and government, with which He upholds, rules and controls all things. And not to speak of other things, what else does the hoary hair of His head signify but the eternity and perpetuity of Deity, through which He is without any beginning, and before all times, and excels all creatures? So then also when we read of the anger or fury of the Lord, we should take it not anthropopathos ; i.e., according to an unworthy meaning of human passion, [926] but in a sense worthy of God, who is free from all passion; so that by this we should understand that He is the judge and avenger of all the unjust things which are done in this world; and by reason of these terms and their meaning we should dread Him as the terrible rewarder of our deeds, and fear to do anything against His will. For human nature is wont to fear those whom it knows to be indignant, and is afraid of offending: as in the case of some most just judges, avenging wrath is usually feared by those who are tormented by some accusation of their conscience; not indeed that this passion exists in the minds of those who are going to judge with perfect equity, but that, while they so fear, the disposition of the judge towards them is that which is the precursor of a just and impartial execution of the law. And this, with whatever kindness and gentleness it may be conducted, is deemed by those who are justly to be punished to be the most savage wrath and vehement anger. It would be tedious and outside the scope of the present work were we to explain all the things which are spoken metaphorically of God in Holy Scripture, with human figures. Let it be enough for our present purpose, which is aimed against the sin of wrath, to have said this that no one may through ignorance draw down upon himself a cause of this evil and of eternal death, out of those Scriptures in which he should seek for saintliness and immortality as the remedies to bring life and salvation. __________________________________________________________________
[926] On the heresy of the Anthropomorphites see the notes on Conference X. c. ii. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter V.
How calm a monk ought to be.
And so a monk aiming at perfection, and desiring to strive lawfully in his spiritual combat, should be free from all sin of anger and wrath, and should listen to the charge which the "chosen vessel" gives him. "Let all anger," says he, "and wrath, and clamour, and evil speaking, be taken away from among you, with all malice." [927] When he says, "Let all anger be taken away from you," he excepts none whatever as necessary or useful for us. And if need be, he should at once treat an erring brother in such a way that, while he manages to apply a remedy to one afflicted with perhaps a slight fever, he may not by his wrath involve himself in a more dangerous malady of blindness. For he who wants to heal another's wound ought to be in good health and free from every affection of weakness himself, lest that saying of the gospel should be used to him, "Physician, first heal thyself;" [928] and lest, seeing a mote in his brother's eye, he see not the beam in his own eye, for how will he see to cast out the mote from his brother's eye, who has the beam of anger in his own eye? [929] __________________________________________________________________
[927] Eph. iv. 31.
[928] S. Luke iv. 23.
[929] Cf. S. Matt. vii. 3-5. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VI.
Of the righteous and unrighteous passion of wrath.
From almost every cause the emotion of wrath boils over, and blinds the eyes of the soul, and, bringing the deadly beam of a worse disease over the keenness of our sight, prevents us from seeing the sun of righteousness. It makes no difference whether gold plates, or lead, or what metal you please, are placed over our eyelids, the value of the metal makes no difference in our blindness. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VII.
Of the only case in which anger is useful to us.
We have, it must be admitted, a use for anger excellently implanted in us for which alone it is useful and profitable for us to admit it, viz., when we are indignant and rage against the lustful emotions of our heart, and are vexed that the things which we are ashamed to do or say before men have risen up in the lurking places of our heart, as we tremble at the presence of the angels, and of God Himself, who pervades all things everywhere, and fear with the utmost dread the eye of Him from whom the secrets of our hearts cannot possibly be hid. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VIII.
Instances from the life of the blessed David in which anger was rightly felt.
And at any rate (this is the case), when we are agitated against this very anger, because it has stolen on us against our brother, and when in wrath we expel its deadly incitements, nor suffer it to have a dangerous lurking place in the recesses of our heart. To be angry in this fashion even that prophet teaches us who had so completely expelled it from his own feelings that he would not retaliate even on his enemies and those delivered by God into his hands: when he says "Be ye angry and sin not." [930] For he, when he had longed for water from the well of Bethlehem, and had been given it by his mighty men, who had brought it through the midst of the hosts of the enemy, at once poured it out on the ground: and thus in his anger extinguished the delicious feeling of his desire, and poured it out to the Lord, without satisfying the longing that he had expressed, saying: "That be far from me that I should do this! Shall I drink the blood of those men who went forth on the danger of their souls?" [931] And when Shimei threw stones at King David and cursed him, in his hearing, before everybody, and Abishai, the son of Zeruiah, the captain of the host, wished to cut off his head and avenge the insult to the king, the blessed David moved with pious wrath against this dreadful suggestion of his, and keeping the due measure of humility and a strict patience, said with imperturbable gentleness, "What have I to do with you, ye sons of Zeruiah? Let him alone that he may curse. For the Lord hath commanded him to curse David. And who is he who shall dare to say, Why hast thou done this? Behold my son, who came forth from my loins, seeks my life, and how much more this son of Benjamin? Let him alone, that he may curse, according to the command of the Lord. It may be the Lord will look upon my affliction, and return to me good for this cursing to-day." [932] __________________________________________________________________
[930] Ps. iv. 5.
[931] 2 Sam. xxiii. 17.
[932] 2 Sam. xvi. 10-12. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IX.
Of the anger which should be directed against ourselves.
And some are commanded to "be angry" after a wholesome fashion, but with our own selves, and with evil thoughts that arise, and "not to sin," viz., by bringing them to a bad issue. Finally, the next verse explains this to be the meaning more clearly: "The things you say in your hearts, be sorry for them on your beds:" [933] i.e., whatever you think of in your hearts when sudden and nervous excitements rush in on you, correct and amend with wholesome sorrow, lying as it were on a bed of rest, and removing by the moderating influence of counsel all noise and disturbance of wrath. Lastly, the blessed Apostle, when he made use of the testimony of this verse, and said, "Be ye angry and sin not," added, "Let not the sun go down upon your wrath, neither give place to the devil." [934] If it is dangerous for the sun of righteousness to go down upon our wrath, and if when we are angry we straightway give place to the devil in our hearts, how is it that above he charges us to be angry, saying, "Be ye angry, and sin not"? Does he not evidently mean this: be ye angry with your faults and your tempers, lest, if you acquiesce in them, Christ, the sun of righteousness, may on account of your anger begin to go down on your darkened minds, and when He departs you may furnish a place for the devil in your hearts? __________________________________________________________________
[933] Ps. iv. 5.
[934] Eph. iv. 26. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter X.
Of the sun, of which it is said that it should not go down upon your wrath.
And of this sun God clearly makes mention by the prophet, when He says, "But to those that fear my name the sun of righteousness shall arise with healing in His wings." [935] And this again is said to "go down" at midday on sinners and false prophets, and those who are angry, when the prophet says, "Their sun is gone down at noon." [936] And at any rate "tropically" [937] the mind, that is the nous or reason, which is fairly called the sun because it looks over all the thoughts and discernings of the heart, should not be put out by the sin of anger: lest when it "goes down" the shadows of disturbance, together with the devil their author, fill all the feelings of our hearts, and, overwhelmed by the shadows of wrath, as in a murky night, we know not what we ought to do. In this sense it is that we have brought forward this passage of the Apostle, handed down to us by the teaching of the elders, because it was needful, even at the risk of a somewhat lengthy discourse, to show how they felt with regard to anger, for they do not permit it even for a moment to effect an entrance into our heart: observing with the utmost care that saying of the gospel: "Whosoever is angry with his brother is in danger of the judgment." [938] But if it be lawful to be angry up till sunset, the surfeit of our wrath and the vengeance of our anger will be able to give full play to passion and dangerous excitement before that sun inclines towards its setting. [939] __________________________________________________________________
[935] Mal. iv. 2.
[936] Amos viii. 9.
[937] On the different senses of Scripture see the note on Conference XIV. viii.
[938] S. Matt. v. 22.
[939] Petschenig's text is as follows: Ceterum si usque ad occasum solis licitur sit irasci, ante furoris satietas et ultrices iræ--commotionem poterunt noxiæ perturbationis explere, quam sol iste ad locum sui vergat occasus. That of Gazæus has "ante perturbationes noxiæ poterunt furoris satietatem et ultricis iræ commotionem explere, etc." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XI.
Of those to whose wrath even the going down of the sun sets no limit.
But what am I to say of those (and I cannot say it without shame on my own part) to whose implacability even the going down of the sun sets no bound: but prolonging it for several days, and nourishing rancorous feelings against those against whom they have been excited, they say in words that they are not angry, but in fact and deed they show that they are extremely disturbed? For they do not speak to them pleasantly, nor address them with ordinary civility, and they think that they are not doing wrong in this, because they do not seek to avenge themselves for their upset. But since they either do not dare, or at any rate are not able to show their anger openly, and give place to it, they drive in, to their own detriment, the poison of anger, and secretly cherish it in their hearts, and silently feed on it in themselves; without shaking off by an effort of mind their sulky disposition, but digesting it as the days go by, and somewhat mitigating it after a while. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XII.
How this is the end of temper and anger when a man carries it into act as far as he can.
But it looks as if even this was not the end of vengeance to every one, but some can only completely satisfy their wrath or sulkiness if they carry out the impulse of anger as far as they are able; and this we know to be the case with those who restrain their feelings, not from desire of calming them, but simply from want of opportunity of revenge. For they can do nothing more to those with whom they are angry, except speak to them without ordinary civility: or it looks as if anger was to be moderated only in action, and not to be altogether rooted out from its hiding place in our bosom: so that, overwhelmed by its shadows, we are unable not only to admit the light of wholesome counsel and of knowledge, but also to be a temple of the Holy Spirit, so long as the spirit of anger dwells in us. For wrath that is nursed in the heart, although it may not injure men who stand by, yet excludes the splendour of the radiance of the Holy Ghost, equally with wrath that is openly manifested. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIII.
That we should not retain our anger even for an instant.
Or how can we think that the Lord would have it retained even for an instant, since He does not permit us to offer the spiritual sacrifices of our prayers, if we are aware that another has any bitterness against us: saying, "If then thou bringest thy gift to the altar and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee, leave there thy gift at the altar and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift." [940] How then may we retain displeasure against our brother, I will not say for several days, but even till the going down of the sun, if we are not allowed to offer our prayers to God while he has anything against us? And yet we are commanded by the Apostle: "Pray without ceasing;" [941] and "in every place lifting up holy hands without wrath and disputing." [942] It remains then either that we never pray at all, retaining this poison in our hearts, and become guilty in regard of this apostolic or evangelic charge, in which we are bidden to pray everywhere and without ceasing; or else if, deceiving ourselves, we venture to pour forth our prayers, contrary to His command, we must know that we are offering to God no prayer, but an obstinate temper with a rebellious spirit. __________________________________________________________________
[940] S. Matt. v. 23, 24.
[941] 1 Thess. v. 17.
[942] 1 Tim. ii. 8. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIV.
Of reconciliation with our brother.
And because we often spurn the brethren who are injured and saddened, and despise them, and say that they were not hurt by any fault of ours, the Healer of souls, who knows all secrets, wishing utterly to eradicate all opportunities of anger from our hearts, not only commands us to forgive if we have been wronged, and to be reconciled with our brothers, and keep no recollection of wrong or injuries against them, but He also gives a similar charge, that in case we are aware that they have anything against us, whether justly or unjustly, we should leave our gift, that is, postpone our prayers, and hasten first to offer satisfaction to them; and so when our brother's cure is first effected, we may bring the offering of our prayers without blemish. For the common Lord of all does not care so much for our homage as to lose in one what He gains in another, through displeasure being allowed to reign in us. For in any one's loss He suffers some loss, who desires and looks for the salvation of all His servants in one and the same way. And therefore our prayer will lose its effect, if our brother has anything against us, just as much as if we were cherishing feelings of bitterness against him in a swelling and wrathful spirit. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XV.
How the Old Law would root out anger not only from the actions but from the thoughts.
But why should we spend any more time over evangelic and apostolic precepts, when even the old law, which is thought to be somewhat slack, guards against the same thing, when it says, "Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart;" and again, "Be not mindful of the injury of thy citizens;" [943] and again, "The ways of those who preserve the recollection of wrongs are towards death"? [944] You see there too that wickedness is restrained not only in action, but also in the secret thoughts, since it is commanded that hatred be utterly rooted out from the heart, and not merely retaliation for, but the very recollection of, a wrong done. __________________________________________________________________
[943] Lev. xix. 17, 18.
[944] Prov. xii. 28 (LXX.). __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVI.
How useless is the retirement of those who do not give up their bad manners.
Sometimes when we have been overcome by pride or impatience, and we want to improve our rough and bearish manners, we complain that we require solitude, as if we should find the virtue of patience there where nobody provokes us: and we apologize for our carelessness, and say that the reason of our disturbance does not spring from our own impatience, but from the fault of our brethren. And while we lay the blame of our fault on others, we shall never be able to reach the goal of patience and perfection. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVII.
That the peace of our heart does not depend on another's will, but lies in our own control.
The chief part then of our improvement and peace of mind must not be made to depend on another's will, which cannot possibly be subject to our authority, but it lies rather in our own control. And so the fact that we are not angry ought not to result from another's perfection, but from our own virtue, which is acquired, not by somebody else's patience, but by our own long-suffering. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVIII.
Of the zeal with which we should seek the desert, and of the things in which we make progress there.
Further, it is those who are perfect and purified from all faults who ought to seek the desert, and when they have thoroughly exterminated all their faults amid the assembly of the brethren, they should enter it not by way of cowardly flight, but for the purpose of divine contemplation, and with the desire of deeper insight into heavenly things, which can only be gained in solitude by those who are perfect. For whatever faults we bring with us uncured into the desert, we shall find to remain concealed in us and not to be got rid of. For just as when the character has been improved, solitude can lay open to it the purest contemplation, and reveal the knowledge of spiritual mysteries to its clear gaze, so it generally not only preserves but intensifies the faults of those who have undergone no correction. For a man appears to himself to be patient and humble, just as long as he comes across nobody in intercourse; but he will presently revert to his former nature, whenever the chance of any sort of passion occurs: I mean that those faults will at once appear on the surface which were lying hid, and, like unbridled horses diligently fed up during too long a time of idleness, dash forth from the barriers the more eagerly and fiercely, to the destruction of their charioteer. For when the opportunity for practising them among men is removed, our faults will more and more increase in us, unless we have first been purified from them. And the mere shadow of patience, which, when we mixed with our brethren, we seemed fancifully to possess, at least out of respect for them and publicity, we lose altogether through sloth and carelessness. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIX.
An illustration to help in forming an opinion on those who are only patient when they are not tried by any one.
But it is like all poisonous kinds of serpents or of wild beasts, which, while they remain in solitude and their own lairs, are still not harmless; [945] for they cannot really be said to be harmless, because they are not actually hurting anybody. For this results in their case, not from any feeling of goodness, but from the exigencies of solitude, and when they have secured an opportunity of hurting some one, at once they produce the poison stored up in them, and show the ferocity of their nature. And so in the case of men who are aiming at perfection, it is not enough not to be angry with men. For we recollect that when we were living in solitude a feeling of irritation would creep over us against our pen because it was too large or too small; against our penknife when it cut badly and with a blunt edge what we wanted cut; and against a flint if by chance when we were rather late and hurrying to the reading, a spark of fire flashed out, so that we could not remove and get rid of our perturbation of mind except by cursing the senseless matter, or at least the devil. Wherefore for a method of perfection it will not be of any use for there to be a dearth of men against whom our anger might be roused: since, if patience has not already been acquired, the feelings of passion which still dwell in our hearts can equally well spend themselves on dumb things and paltry objects, and not allow us to gain a continuous state of peacefulness, or to be free from our remaining faults: unless perhaps we think that some advantage and a sort of cure may be gained for our passion from the fact that inanimate and speechless things cannot possibly reply to our curses and rage, nor provoke our ungovernable temper to break out into a worse madness of passion. __________________________________________________________________
[945] Reading non innoxia (Petschenig). __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XX.
Of the way in which auger should be banished according to the gospel.
Wherefore if we wish to gain the substance of that divine reward of which it is said, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God," [946] we ought not only to banish it from our actions, but entirely to root it out from our inmost soul. For it will not be of any good to have checked anger in words, and not to have shown it in deeds, if God, from whom the secrets of the heart are not hid, sees that it remains in the secret recesses of our bosom. For the word of the gospel bids us destroy the roots of our faults rather than the fruits; for these, when the incitements are all removed, will certainly not put forth shoots any more; and so the mind will be able to continue in all patience and holiness, when this anger has been removed, not from the surface of acts and deeds, but from the very innermost thoughts. And, therefore to avoid the commission of murder, anger and hatred are cut off, without which the crime of murder cannot possibly be committed. For "whosoever is angry with his brother, is in danger of the judgment;" [947] and "whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer;" [948] viz., because in his heart he desires to kill him, whose blood we know that he has certainly not shed among men with his own hand or with a weapon; yet, owing to his burst of anger, he is declared to be a murderer by God, who renders to each man, not merely for the result of his actions, but for his purpose and desires and wishes, either a reward or a punishment; according to that which He Himself says through the prophet: "But I come that I may gather them together with all nations and tongues;" [949] and again: [950] "Their thoughts between themselves accusing or also defending one another, in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men." [951] __________________________________________________________________
[946] S. Matt. v. 8.
[947] Ib. ver. 22.
[948] 1 John iii. 15.
[949] Isaiah lxvi. 18.
[950] Et rursum (Petschenig): et Apostolus (Gazæus).
[951] Rom. ii. 15, 16. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXI.
Whether we ought to admit the addition of "without a cause," in that which is written in the Gospel, "whosoever is angry with his brother," etc.
But you should know that in this, which is found in many copies, "Whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause, is in danger of the judgment," [952] the words "without a cause" are superfluous, and were added by those who did not think that anger for just causes was to be banished: since certainly nobody, however unreasonably he is disturbed, would say that he was angry without a cause. Wherefore it appears to have been added by those who did not understand the drift of Scripture, which intended altogether to banish the incentive to anger, and to reserve no occasion whatever for indignation; lest while we were commanded to be angry with a cause, an opportunity for being angry without a cause might occur to us. For the end and aim of patience consists, not in being angry with a good reason, but in not being angry at all. Although I know that by some this very expression, "without a cause," is taken to mean that he is angry without a cause who when he is angered is not allowed to seek for vengeance. But it is better so to take it as we find it written in many modern copies and all the ancient ones. __________________________________________________________________
[952] S. Matt. v. 22. The word eike is said by Westcott and Host to be "Western and Syrian." It is wanting in ', B, Origen, and was not admitted by Jerome in the Vulgate. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXII.
The remedies by which we can root out anger from our hearts.
Wherefore the athlete of Christ who strives lawfully ought thoroughly to root out the feeling of wrath. And it will be a sure remedy for this disease, if in the first place we make up our mind that we ought never to be angry at all, whether for good or bad reasons: as we know that we shall at once lose the light of discernment, and the security of good counsel, and our very uprightness, and the temperate character of righteousness, if the main light of our heart has been darkened by its shadows: next, that the purity of our soul will presently be clouded, and that it cannot possibly be made a temple for the Holy Ghost while the spirit of anger resides in us; lastly, that we should consider that we ought never to pray, nor pour out our prayer to God, while we are angry. And above all, having before our eyes the uncertain condition of mankind, we should realize daily that we are soon to depart from the body, and that our continence and chastity, our renunciation of all our possessions, our contempt of wealth, our efforts in fastings and vigils will not help us at all, if solely on account of anger and hatred eternal punishments are awarded to us by the judge of the world. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Book IX.
Of the Spirit of Dejection. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter I.
How our fifth combat is against the spirit of dejection, and of the harm which it inflicts upon the soul.
In our fifth combat we have to resist the pangs of gnawing dejection: for if this, through separate attacks made at random, and by haphazard and casual changes, has secured an opportunity of gaining possession of our mind it keeps us back at all times from all insight in divine contemplation, and utterly ruins and depresses the mind that has fallen away from its complete state of purity. It does not allow it to say its prayers with its usual gladness of heart, nor permit it to rely on the comfort of reading the sacred writings, nor suffer it to be quiet and gentle with the brethren; it makes it impatient and rough in all the duties of work and devotion: and, as all wholesome counsel is lost, and steadfastness of heart destroyed, it makes the feelings almost mad and drunk, and crushes and overwhelms them with penal despair. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter II.
Of the care with which the malady of dejection must be healed.
Wherefore if we are anxious to exert ourselves lawfully in the struggle of our spiritual combat we ought with no less care to set about healing this malady also. For "as the moth injures the garment, and the worm the wood, so dejection the heart of man." [953] With sufficient clearness and appropriateness has the Divine Spirit expressed the force of this dangerous and most injurious fault. __________________________________________________________________
[953] Prov. xxv. 20 (LXX.). __________________________________________________________________
Chapter III.
To what the soul may be compared which is a prey to the attacks of dejection.
For the garment that is moth-eaten has no longer any commercial value or good use to which it can be put; and in the same way [954] the wood that is worm-eaten is no longer worth anything for ornamenting even an ordinary building, but is destined to be burnt in the fire. So therefore the soul also which is a prey to the attacks of gnawing dejection will be useless for that priestly garment which, according to the prophecy of the holy David, the ointment of the Holy Spirit coming down from heaven, first on Aaron's beard, then on his skirts, is wont to assume: as it is said, "It is like the ointment upon the head which ran down upon Aaron's beard, which ran down to the skirts of his clothing." [955] Nor can it have anything to do with the building or ornamentation of that spiritual temple of which Paul as a wise master builder laid the foundations, saying, "Ye are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwelleth in you:" [956] and what the beams of this are like the bride tells us in the Song of Songs: "Our rafters are of cypress: the beams of our houses are of cedar." [957] And therefore those sorts of wood are chosen for the temple of God which are fragrant and not liable to rot, and which are not subject to decay from age nor to be worm-eaten. __________________________________________________________________
[954] Totidem is used here by Cassian for itidem, as in III. ix.
[955] Ps. cxxxii. (cxxxiii.) 2.
[956] 1 Cor. iii. 16; vi. 16.
[957] Cant. i. 16 (LXX.). __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IV.
Whence and in what way dejection arises.
But sometimes it is found to result from the fault of previous anger, or to spring from the desire of some gain which has not been realized, when a man has found that he has failed in his hope of securing those things which he had planned. But sometimes without any apparent reason for our being driven to fall into this misfortune, we are by the instigation of our crafty enemy suddenly depressed with so great a gloom that we cannot receive with ordinary civility the visits of those who are near and dear to us; and whatever subject of conversation is started by them, we regard it as ill-timed and out of place; and we can give them no civil answer, as the gall of bitterness is in possession of every corner of our heart. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter V.
That disturbances are caused in us not by the faults of other people, but by our own.
Whence it is clearly proved that the pains of disturbances are not always caused in us by other people's faults, but rather by our own, as we have stored up in ourselves the causes of offence, and the seeds of faults, which, as soon as a shower of temptation waters our soul, at once burst forth into shoots and fruits. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VI.
That no one comes to grief by a sudden fall, but is destroyed by falling through a long course of carelessness. [958]
For no one is ever driven to sin by being provoked through another's fault, unless he has the fuel of evil stored up in his own heart. Nor should we imagine that a man has been deceived suddenly when he has looked on a woman and fallen into the abyss of shameful lust: but rather that, owing to the opportunity of looking on her, the symptoms of disease which were hidden and concealed in his inmost soul have been brought to the surface. __________________________________________________________________
[958] Incuriam (Petschenig): Injuriam (Gazæus). __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VII.
That we ought not to give up intercourse with our brethren in order to seek after perfection, but should rather constantly cultivate the virtue of patience.
And so God, the creator of all things, having regard above everything to the amendment of His own work, and because the roots and causes of our falls are found not in others, but in ourselves, commands that we should not give up intercourse with our brethren, nor avoid those who we think have been hurt by us, or by whom we have been offended, but bids us pacify them, knowing that perfection of heart is not secured by separating from men so much as by the virtue of patience. Which when it is securely held, as it can keep us at peace even with those who hate peace, so, if it has not been acquired, it makes us perpetually differ from those who are perfect and better than we are: for opportunities for disturbance, on account of which we are eager to get away from those with whom we are connected, will not be wanting so long as we are living among men; and therefore we shall not escape altogether, but only change the causes of dejection on account of which we separated from our former friends. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VIII.
That if we have improved our character it is possible for us to get on with everybody.
We must then do our best to endeavour to amend our faults and correct our manners. And if we succeed in correcting them we shall certainly be at peace, I will not say with men, but even with beasts and the brute creation, according to what is said in the book of the blessed Job: "For the beasts of the field will be at peace with thee;" [959] for we shall not fear offences coming from without, nor will any occasion of falling trouble us from outside, if the roots of such are not admitted and implanted within in our own selves: for "they have great peace who love thy law, O God; and they have no occasion of falling." [960] __________________________________________________________________
[959] Job v. 23.
[960] Ps. cxviii. (cxix.) 165. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IX.
Of another sort of dejection which produces despair of salvation.
There is, too, another still more objectionable sort of dejection, which produces in the guilty soul no amendment of life or correction of faults, but the most destructive despair: which did not make Cain repent after the murder of his brother, or Judas, after the betrayal, hasten to relieve himself by making amends, but drove him to hang himself in despair. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter X.
Of the only thing in which dejection is useful to us.
And so we must see that dejection is only useful to us in one case, when we yield to it either in penitence for sin, or through being inflamed with the desire of perfection, or the contemplation of future blessedness. And of this the blessed Apostle says: "The sorrow which is according to God worketh repentance steadfast unto salvation: but the sorrow of the world worketh death." [961] __________________________________________________________________
[961] 2 Cor. vii. 10. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XI.
How we can decide what is useful and the sorrow according to God, and what is devilish and deadly.
But that dejection and sorrow which "worketh repentance steadfast unto salvation" is obedient, civil, humble, kindly, gentle, and patient, as it springs from the love of God, and unweariedly extends itself from desire of perfection to every bodily grief and sorrow of spirit; and somehow or other rejoicing and feeding on hope of its own profit preserves all the gentleness of courtesy and forbearance, as it has in itself all the fruits of the Holy Spirit of which the same Apostle gives the list: "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, goodness, benignity, faith, mildness, modesty." [962] But the other kind is rough, impatient, hard, full of rancour and useless grief and penal despair, and breaks down the man on whom it has fastened, and hinders him from energy and wholesome sorrow, as it is unreasonable, and not only hampers the efficacy of his prayers, but actually destroys all those fruits of the Spirit of which we spoke, which that other sorrow knows how to produce. __________________________________________________________________
[962] Gal. v. 22, 23. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XII.
That except that wholesome sorrow, which springs up in three ways, all sorrow and dejection should be resisted as hurtful.
Wherefore except that sorrow which is endured either for the sake of saving penitence, or for the sake of aiming at perfection, or for the desire of the future, all sorrow and dejection must equally be resisted, as belonging to this world, and being that which "worketh death," and must be entirely expelled from our hearts like the spirit of fornication and covetousness and anger. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIII.
The means by which we can root out dejection from our hearts.
We should then be able to expel this most injurious passion from our hearts, so that by spiritual meditation we may keep our mind constantly occupied with hope of the future and contemplation of the promised blessedness. For in this way we shall be able to get the better of all those sorts of dejection, whether those which flow from previous anger or those which come to us from disappointment of gain, or from some loss, or those which spring from a wrong done to us, or those which arise from an unreasonable disturbance of mind, or those which bring on us a deadly despair, if, ever joyful with an insight into things eternal and future, and continuing immovable, we are not depressed by present accidents, or over-elated by prosperity, but look on each condition as uncertain and likely soon to pass away. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Book X.
Of the Spirit of Accidie. [963] __________________________________________________________________
Chapter I.
How our sixth combat is against the spirit of accidie, and what its character is.
Our sixth combat is with what the Greeks call akedia, which we may term weariness or distress of heart. This is akin to dejection, and is especially trying to solitaries, and a dangerous and frequent foe to dwellers in the desert; and especially disturbing to a monk about the sixth hour, like some fever which seizes him at stated times, bringing the burning heat of its attacks on the sick man at usual and regular hours. Lastly, there are some of the elders who declare that this is the "midday demon" spoken of in the ninetieth Psalm. [964] __________________________________________________________________
[964] Ps. xc. (xci.) 6, where the Latin "et dæmonio meridiano" follows the LXX. kai daimoniou mesembrinou, instead of "the destruction that wasteth at noonday." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter II.
A description of accidie, and the way in which it creeps over the heart of a monk, and the injury it inflicts on the soul.
And when this has taken possession of some unhappy soul, it produces dislike of the place, disgust with the cell, and disdain and contempt of the brethren who dwell with him or at a little distance, as if they were careless or unspiritual. It also makes the man lazy and sluggish about all manner of work which has to be done within the enclosure of his dormitory. It does not suffer him to stay in his cell, or to take any pains about reading, and he often groans because he can do no good while he stays there, and complains and sighs because he can bear no spiritual fruit so long as he is joined to that society; and he complains that he is cut off from spiritual gain, and is of no use in the place, as if he were one who, though he could govern others and be useful to a great number of people, yet was edifying none, nor profiting any one by his teaching and doctrine. He cries up distant monasteries and those which are a long way off, and describes such places as more profitable and better suited for salvation; and besides this he paints the intercourse with the brethren there as sweet and full of spiritual life. On the other hand, he says that everything about him is rough, and not only that there is nothing edifying among the brethren who are stopping there, but also that even food for the body cannot be procured without great difficulty. Lastly he fancies that he will never be well while he stays in that place, unless he leaves his cell (in which he is sure to die if he stops in it any longer) and takes himself off from thence as quickly as possible. Then the fifth or sixth hour brings him such bodily weariness and longing for food that he seems to himself worn out and wearied as if with a long journey, or some very heavy work, or as if he had put off taking food during a fast of two or three days. Then besides this he looks about anxiously this way and that, and sighs that none of the brethren come to see him, and often goes in and out of his cell, and frequently gazes up at the sun, as if it was too slow in setting, and so a kind of unreasonable confusion of mind takes possession of him like some foul darkness, [965] and makes him idle and useless for every spiritual work, so that he imagines that no cure for so terrible an attack can be found in anything except visiting some one of the brethren, or in the solace of sleep alone. Then the disease suggests that he ought to show courteous and friendly hospitalities to the brethren, and pay visits to the sick, whether near at hand or far off. He talks too about some dutiful and religious offices; that those kinsfolk ought to be inquired after, and that he ought to go and see them oftener; that it would be a real work of piety to go more frequently to visit that religious woman, devoted to the service of God, who is deprived of all support of kindred; and that it would be a most excellent thing to get what is needful for her who is neglected and despised by her own kinsfolk; and that he ought piously to devote his time to these things instead of staying uselessly and with no profit in his cell. __________________________________________________________________
[965] Velut tætra suppletur caligine (Petschenig); the text of Gazæus reads terra for tætra. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter III.
Of the different ways in which accidie overcomes a monk.
And so the wretched soul, embarrassed by such contrivances of the enemy, is disturbed, until, worn out by the spirit of accidie, as by some strong battering ram, it either learns to sink into slumber, or, driven out from the confinement of its cell, accustoms itself to seek for consolation under these attacks in visiting some brother, only to be afterwards weakened the more by this remedy which it seeks for the present. For more frequently and more severely will the enemy attack one who, when the battle is joined, will as he well knows immediately turn his back, and whom he sees to look for safety neither in victory nor in fighting but in flight: until little by little he is drawn away from his cell, and begins to forget the object of his profession, which is nothing but meditation and contemplation of that divine purity which excels all things, and which can only be gained by silence and continually remaining in the cell, and by meditation, and so the soldier of Christ becomes a runaway from His service, and a deserter, and "entangles himself in secular business," without at all pleasing Him to whom he engaged himself. [966] __________________________________________________________________
[966] 2 Tim. ii. 4. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IV.
How accidie hinders the mind from all contemplation of the virtues.
All the inconveniences of this disease are admirably expressed by David in a single verse, where he says, "My soul slept from weariness," [967] that is, from accidie. Quite rightly does he say, not that his body, but that his soul slept. For in truth the soul which is wounded by the shaft of this passion does sleep, as regards all contemplation of the virtues and insight of the spiritual senses. __________________________________________________________________
[967] Ps. cxviii. (cxix.) 28, where the LXX. has enustaxen he psuche mou apo akedias. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter V.
How the attack of accidie is twofold.
And so the true Christian athlete who desires to strive lawfully in the lists of perfection, should hasten to expel this disease also from the recesses of his soul; and should strive against this most evil spirit of accidie in both directions, so that he may neither fall stricken through by the shaft of slumber, nor be driven out from the monastic cloister, even though under some pious excuse or pretext, and depart as a runaway. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VI.
How injurious are the effects of accidie.
And whenever it begins in any degree to overcome any one, it either makes him stay in his cell idle and lazy, without making any spiritual progress, or it drives him out from thence and makes him restless and a wanderer, and indolent in the matter of all kinds of work, and it makes him continually go round, the cells of the brethren and the monasteries, with an eye to nothing but this; viz., where or with what excuse he can presently procure some refreshment. For the mind of an idler cannot think of anything but food and the belly, until the society of some man or woman, equally cold and indifferent, is secured, and it loses itself in their affairs and business, and is thus little by little ensnared by dangerous occupations, so that, just as if it were bound up in the coils of a serpent, it can never disentangle itself again and return to the perfection of its former profession. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VII.
Testimonies from the Apostle concerning the spirit of accidie.
The blessed Apostle, like a true and spiritual physician, either seeing this disease, which springs from the spirit of accidie, already creeping in, or foreseeing, through the revelation of the Holy Spirit, that it would arise among monks, is quick to anticipate it by the healing medicines of his directions. For in writing to the Thessalonians, and at first, like a skilful and excellent physician, applying to the infirmity of his patients the soothing and gentle remedy of his words, and beginning with charity, and praising them in that point, that [968] this deadly wound, having been treated with a milder remedy, might lose its angry festering and more easily bear severer treatment, he says: "But concerning brotherly charity ye have no need that I write to you: for you yourselves are taught of God to love one another. For this ye do toward all the brethren in the whole of Macedonia." [969] He first began with the soothing application of praise, and made their ears submissive and ready for the remedy of the healing words. Then he proceeds: "But we ask you, brethren, to abound more." Thus far he soothes them with kind and gentle words; for fear lest he should find them not yet prepared to receive their perfect cure. Why is it that you ask, O Apostle, that they may abound more in charity, of which you had said above, "But concerning brotherly charity we have no need to write to you"? And why is it necessary that you should say to them: "But we ask you to abound more," when they did not need to be written to at all on this matter? especially as you add the reason why they do not need it, saying, "For you yourselves have been taught of God to love one another." And you add a third thing still more important: that not only have they been taught of God, but also that they fulfil in deed that which they are taught. "For ye do this," he says, not to one or two, but "to all the brethren;" and not to your own citizens and friends only, but "in the whole of Macedonia." Tell us then, I pray, why it is that you so particularly begin with this. Again he proceeds, "But we ask you, brethren, to abound the more." And with difficulty at last he breaks out into that at which he was driving before: "and that ye take pains to be quiet." He gave the first aim. Then he adds a second, "and to do your own business;" and a third as well: "and work with your own hands, as we commanded you;" a fourth: "and to walk honestly towards those that are without;" a fifth: "and to covet no man's goods." Lo, we can see through that hesitation, which made him with these preludes put off uttering what his mind was full of: "And that ye take pains to be quiet;" i.e., that you stop in your cells, and be not disturbed by rumours, which generally spring from the wishes and gossip of idle persons, and so yourselves disturb others. And, "to do your own business," you should not want to require curiously of the world's actions, or, examining the lives of others, want to spend your strength, not on bettering yourselves and aiming at virtue, but on depreciating your brethren. "And work with your own hands, as we charged you;" to secure that which he had warned them above not to do; i.e., that they should not be restless and anxious about other people's affairs, nor walk dishonestly towards those without, nor covet another man's goods, he now adds and says, "and work with your own hands, as we charged you." For he has clearly shown that leisure the reason why those things were done which he blamed above. For no one can be restless or anxious about other people's affairs, but one who is not satisfied to apply himself to the work of his own hands. He adds also a fourth evil, which springs also from this leisure, i.e., that they should not walk dishonestly: when he says: "And that ye walk honestly towards those without." He cannot possibly walk honestly, even among those who are men of this world, who is not content to cling to the seclusion of his cell and the work of his own hands; but he is sure to be dishonest, while he seeks his needful food; and to take pains to flatter, to follow up news and gossip, to seek for opportunities for chattering and stories by means of which he may gain a footing and obtain an entrance into the houses of others. "And that you should not covet another man's goods." He is sure to look with envious eyes on another's gifts and boons, who does not care to secure sufficient for his daily food by the dutiful and peaceful labour of his hands. You see what conditions, and how serious and shameful ones, spring solely from the malady of leisure. Lastly, those very people, whom in his first Epistle he had treated with the gentle application of his words, in his second Epistle he endeavours to heal with severer and sterner remedies, as those who had not profited by more gentle treatment; and he no longer applies the treatment of gentle words, no mild and kindly expressions, as these, "But we ask you, brethren," but "We adjure you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye withdraw from every brother that walketh disorderly." [970] There he asks; here he adjures. There is the kindness of one who is persuading; here the sternness of one protesting and threatening. "We adjure you, brethren:" because, when we first asked you, you scorned to listen; now at least obey our threats. And this adjuration he renders terrible, not by his bare word, but by the imprecation of the name of our Lord Jesus Christ: for fear lest they might again scorn it, as merely man's word, and think that it was not of much importance. And forthwith, like a well-skilled physician with festering limbs, to which he could not apply the remedy of a mild treatment, he tries to cure by an incision with a spiritual knife, saying, "that ye withdraw yourselves from every brother that walketh disorderly, and not according to the tradition which ye received of us." And so he bids them withdraw from those who will not make time for work, and to cut them off like limbs tainted with the festering sores of leisure: lest the malady of idleness, like some deadly contagion, might infect even the healthy portion of their limbs, by the gradual advance of infection. And when he is going to speak of those who will not work with their own hands and eat their bread in quietness, from whom he urges them to withdraw, hear with what reproaches he brands them at starting. First he calls them "disorderly," and "not walking according to the tradition." In other words, he stigmatizes them as obstinate, since they will not walk according to his appointment; and "dishonest," i.e., not keeping to the right and proper times for going out, and visiting, and talking. For a disorderly person is sure to be subject to all those faults. "And not according to the tradition which they received from us." And in this he stamps them as in some sort rebellious, and despisers, who scorned to keep the tradition which they had received from him, and would not follow that which they not only remembered that the master had taught in word, but which they knew that he had performed in deed. "For you yourselves know how ye ought to be followers of us." He heaps up an immense pile of censure when he asserts that they did not observe that which was still in their memory, and which not only had they learned by verbal instruction, but also had received by the incitement of his example in working. __________________________________________________________________
[968] Quousque is used as equivalent to donec, again in Conf. XXIII. xii.
[969] 1 Thess. iv. 9, 10.
[970] 2 Thess. iii. 6. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VIII.
That he is sure to be restless who will not be content with the work of his own hands.
"Because we were not restless among you." When he wants to prove by the practice of work that he was not restless among them, he fully shows that those who will not work are always restless, owing to the fault of idleness. "Nor did we eat any man's bread for nought." By each expression the teacher of the Gentiles advances a step in the rebuke. [971] The preacher of the gospel says that he has not eaten any man's bread for nought, as he knows that the Lord commanded that "they who preach the gospel should live of the gospel:" [972] again, "The labourer is worthy of his meat." [973] And so if he who preached the gospel, performing a work so lofty and spiritual, did not venture in reliance on the Lord's command to eat his bread for nought, what shall we do to whom not merely is there no preaching of the word intrusted, but no cure of souls except our own committed? with what confidence shall we dare with idle hands to eat our bread for nought, when the "chosen vessel," constrained by his anxiety for the gospel and his work of preaching, did not venture to eat without labouring with his own hands? "But in labour," he says "and weariness, working night and day lest we should be burdensome to any of you." [974] Up to this point he amplifies and adds to his rebuke. For he did not simply say, "We did not eat bread for nought from any of you," and then stop short. For it might have been thought that he was supported by his own private means, and by money which he had saved, or by other people's, though not by their collections and gifts. "But in labour," he says, "and weariness, working night and day;" that is, being specially supported by our own labour. And this, he says, we did not of our own wish, and for our own pleasure, as rest and bodily exercise suggested, but as our necessities and the want of food compelled us to do, and that not without great bodily weariness. For not only throughout the whole day, but also by night, which seems to be granted for bodily rest, I was continually plying the work of my hands, through anxiety for food. __________________________________________________________________
[971] Increpationis (Petschenig). Interpretationis (Gazæus).
[972] 1 Cor. ix. 14.
[973] S. Matt. x. 10.
[974] 2 Thess. iii. 8. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IX.
That not the Apostle only, but those two who were with him laboured with their own hands.
And he testifies that it was not he alone who so lived among them, lest haply this method might not seem important or general if he depended only on his example. But he declares that all those who were appointed with him for the ministry of the gospel, i.e., Silvanus and Timothy, who wrote this with him, worked in the same fashion. For by saying, "lest we should be burdensome to any of you, he covers them with great shame. For if he who preached the gospel and commended it by signs and mighty works, did not dare to eat bread for nought, lest he should be burdensome to any, how can those men help thinking that they are burdensome who take it every day in idleness and at their leisure? __________________________________________________________________
Chapter X.
That for this reason the Apostle laboured with his own hands, that he might set us an example of work.
"Not as if we had not power; but that we might give ourselves a pattern to you to imitate us." He lays bare the reason why he imposed such labour on himself: "that we might," says he, "give a pattern to you to imitate us, that if by chance you become forgetful of the teaching of our words which so often passes through your ears, you may at least keep in your recollection the example of my manner of life given to you by ocular demonstration. There is here too no slight reproof of them, where he says that he has gone through this labour and weariness by night and day, for no other reason but to set an example, and that nevertheless they would not be instructed, for whose sakes he, although not obliged to do it, yet imposed on himself such toil. "And indeed," he says, "though we had the power, and opportunities were open to us of using all your goods and substance, and I knew that I had the permission [975] of our Lord to use them: yet I did not use this power, lest what was rightly and lawfully done on my part might set an example of dangerous idleness to others. And therefore when preaching the gospel, I preferred to be supported by my own hands and work, that I might open up the way of perfection to you who wish to walk in the path of virtue, and might set an example of good life by my work." __________________________________________________________________
[975] Permissum (Petschenig). Promissum (Gazæus). __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XI.
That he preached and taught men to work not only by his example, but also by his words.
But lest haply it might be thought that, while he worked in silence and tried to teach them by example, he had not instructed them by precepts and warnings, he proceeds to say: "For when we were with you, this we declared to you, that if a man will not work neither should he eat." Still greater does he make their idleness appear, for, though they knew that he, like a good master, worked with his hands for the sake of his teaching and in order to instruct them, yet they were ashamed to imitate him; and he emphasizes our diligence and care by saying that he did not only give them this for an example when present, but that he also proclaimed it continually in words; saying that if any one would not work, neither should he eat. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XII.
Of his saying: "If any will not work, neither shall he eat."
And now he no longer addresses to them the advice of a teacher or physician, but proceeds with the severity of a judicial sentence, and, resuming his apostolic authority, pronounces sentence on his despisers as if from the judgment seat: with that power, I mean, which, when writing with threats to the Corinthians, he declared was given him of the Lord, when he charged those taken in sin, that they should make haste and amend their lives before his coming: thus charging them, "I beseech you that I may not be bold when I am present, against some, with that power which is given to me over you." And again: "For if I also should boast somewhat of the power which the Lord has given me unto edification, and not for your destruction, I shall not be ashamed." [976] With that power, I say, he declares, "If a man will not work, neither let him eat." Not punishing them with a carnal sword, but with the power of the Holy Ghost forbidding them the goods of this life, that if by chance, thinking but little of the punishment of future death, they still should remain obstinate through love of ease, they may at last, forced by the requirements of nature and the fear of immediate death, be compelled to obey his salutary charge. __________________________________________________________________
[976] 2 Cor. x. 2, 8. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIII.
Of his saying: "We have heard that some among you walk disorderly."
Then after all this rigour of gospel severity, he now lays bare the reason why he put forward all these matters. "For we have heard that some among you walk disorderly, working not at all, but curiously meddling." He is nowhere satisfied to speak of those who will not give themselves up to work, as if they were victims of but a single malady. For in his first Epistle [977] he speaks of them as "disorderly," and not walking according to the traditions which they had received from him: and he also asserts that they were restless, and ate their bread for nought. Again he says here, "We have heard that there are some among you who walk disorderly." And at once he subjoins a second weakness, which is the root of this restlessness, and says, "working not at all;" a third malady as well he adds, which springs from this last like some shoot: "but curiously meddling." __________________________________________________________________
[977] A mistake on Cassian's part: the reference being to 2 Thess. iii. 6. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIV.
How manual labour [978] prevents many faults.
And so he loses no time in at once applying a suitable remedy to the incentive to so many faults, and laying aside that apostolic power of his which he had made use of a little before, he adopts once more the tender character of a good father, or of a kind physician, and, as if they were his children or his patients, applies by his healing counsel remedies to cure them, saying: "Now we charge them that are such, and beseech them by the Lord Jesus, that working with silence they would eat their own bread." The cause of all these ulcers, which spring from the root of idleness, he heals like some well-skilled physician by a single salutary charge to work; as he knows that all the other bad symptoms, which spring as it were from the same clump, will at once disappear when the cause of the chief malady has been removed. __________________________________________________________________
[978] The text of Gazæus has oratio, but the reading which Petschenig gives, operatio manuum, is clearly so. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XV.
How kindness should be shown even to the idle and careless.
Nevertheless, like a far-sighted and careful physician, he is not only anxious to heal the wounds of the sick, but gives suitable directions as well to the whole, that their health may be preserved continually, and says: "But be not ye weary in well doing:" ye who following us, i.e., our ways, copy the example given to you by imitating us in work, and do not follow their sloth and laziness: "Do not be weary in well doing;" i.e., do you likewise show kindness towards them if by chance they have failed to observe what we said. As then he was severe with those who were weak, for fear lest being enervated by laziness they might yield to restlessness and inquisitiveness, so he admonishes those who are in good health neither to restrain that kindness which the Lord's command bids us show to the good and evil, [979] even if some bad men will not turn to sound doctrine; nor to desist from doing good and encouraging them both by words of consolation and by rebuke as well as by ordinary kindness and civility. __________________________________________________________________
[979] S. Matt. v. 43-45. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVI.
How we ought to admonish those who go wrong, not out of hatred, but out of love.
But again in case some might be encouraged by this gentleness, and scorn to obey his commands, he proceeds with the severity of an apostle: "But if any man obey not our word by this Epistle, note that man and do not keep company with him that he may be ashamed." And in warning them of what they ought to observe out of regard for him and for the good of all, and of the care with which they should keep the apostolic commands, at once he joins to the warning the kindness of a most indulgent father; and teaches them as well, as if they were his children, what a brotherly disposition they should cultivate towards those mentioned above, out of love. "Yet do not esteem him as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother." With the severity of a judge he combines the affection of a father, and tempers with kindness and gentleness the sentence delivered with apostolic sternness. For he commands them to note that man who scorns to obey his commands, and not to keep company with him; and yet he does not bid them do this from a wrong feeling of dislike, but from brotherly affection and out of consideration for their amendment. "Do not keep company," he says, "with him that he may be ashamed;" so that, even if he is not made better by my mild charges, he may at last be brought to shame by being publicly separated from all of you, and so may some day begin to be restored to the way of salvation. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVII.
Different passages in which the Apostle declares that we ought to work, or in which it is shown that he himself worked.
In the Epistle to the Ephesians also he thus gives a charge on this subject of work, saying: "He that stole, let him now steal no more, but rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing that is good, that he may have something to give to him that suffereth need." [980] And in the Acts of the Apostles too we find that he not only taught this, but actually practised it himself. For when he had come to Corinth, he did not permit himself to lodge anywhere except with Aquila and Priscilla, because they were of the same trade which he himself was accustomed to practise. For we thus read: "After this, Paul departing from Athens came to Corinth; and finding a certain Jew named Aquila, born in Pontus, and Priscilla his wife, he came to them because they were of the same trade; and abode with them, and worked: for they were tent-makers by trade." [981] __________________________________________________________________
[980] Eph. iv. 28.
[981] Acts xviii. 1-3. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVIII.
That the Apostle wrought what he thought would be sufficient for him and for others who were with him.
Then going to Miletus, and from thence sending to Ephesus, and summoning to him the elders of the church of Ephesus, he charged them how they ought to rule the church of God in his absence, and said: "I have not coveted any man's silver and gold; you yourselves know how for such things as were needful for me and them that are with me these hands have ministered. I have showed you all things, how that so labouring you ought to support the weak, and to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said: It is more blessed to give than to receive." [982] He left us a weighty example in his manner of life, as he testifies that he not only wrought what would supply his own bodily wants alone, but also what would be sufficient for the needs of those who were with him: those, I mean, who, being taken up with necessary duties, had no chance of procuring food for themselves with their own hands. And as he tells the Thessalonians that he had worked to give them an example that they might imitate him, so here too he implies something of the same sort when he says: "I have showed you all things, how that so labouring you ought to support the weak," viz., whether in mind or body; i.e., that we should be diligent in supplying their needs, not from the store of our abundance, or money laid by, or from another's generosity and substance, but rather by securing the necessary sum by our own labour and toil. __________________________________________________________________
[982] Acts xx. 33-35. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIX.
How we should understand these words: "It is more blessed to give than to receive."
And he says that this is a command of the Lord: "For He Himself," namely the Lord Jesus, said he, "said it is more blessed to give than to receive." That is, the bounty of the giver is more blessed than the need of the receiver, where the gift is not supplied from money that has been kept back through unbelief or faithlessness, nor from the stored-up treasures of avarice, but is produced from the fruits of our own labour and honest toil. And so "it is more blessed to give than to receive," because while the giver shares the poverty of the receiver, yet still he is diligent in providing with pious care by his own toil, not merely enough for his own needs, but also what he can give to one in want; and so he is adorned with a double grace, since by giving away all his goods he secures the perfect abnegation of Christ, and yet by his labour and thought displays the generosity of the rich; thus honouring God by his honest labours, and plucking for him the fruits of his righteousness, while another, enervated by sloth and indolent laziness, proves himself by the saying of the Apostle unworthy of food, as in defiance of his command he takes it in idleness, not without the guilt of sin and of obstinacy. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XX.
Of a lazy brother who tried to persuade others to leave the monastery.
We know a brother, whose name we would give if it would do any good, who, although he was remaining in the monastery and compelled to deliver to the steward his fixed task daily, yet for fear lest he might be led on to some larger portion of work, or put to shame by the example of one labouring more zealously, when he had seen some brother admitted into the monastery, who in the ardour of his faith wanted to make up the sale of a larger piece of work, if he found that he could not by secret persuasion check him from carrying out his purpose, he would by bad advice and whisperings persuade him to depart thence. And in order to get rid of him more easily he would pretend that he also had already been for many reasons offended, and wanted to leave, if only he could find a companion and support for the journey. And when by secretly running down the monastery he had wheedled him into consenting, and arranged with him the time at which to leave the monastery, and the place to which he should go before, and where he should wait for him, he himself, pretending that he would follow, stopped where he was. And when the other out of shame for his flight did not dare to return again to the monastery from which he had run away, the miserable author of his flight stopped behind in the monastery. It will be enough to have given this single instance of this sort of men in order to put beginners on their guard, and to show clearly what evils idleness, as Scripture says, [983] can produce in the mind of a monk, and how "evil communications corrupt good manners." [984] __________________________________________________________________
[983] The reference is probably to Ecclus xxiii. 29, "Idleness hath taught much evil."
[984] 1 Cor. xv. 33. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXI.
Different passages from the writings of Solomon against accidie.
And Solomon, the wisest of men, clearly points to this fault of idleness in many passages, as he says: "He that followeth idleness shall be filled with poverty," [985] either visible or invisible, in which an idle person and one entangled with different faults is sure to be involved, and he will always be a stranger to the contemplation of God, and to spiritual riches, of which the blessed Apostle says: "For in all things ye were enriched in him, in all utterance and in all knowledge." [986] But concerning this poverty of the idler elsewhere he also writes thus: "Every sluggard shall be clothed in torn garments and rags." [987] For certainly he will not merit to be adorned with that garment of incorruption (of which the Apostle says, "Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ," [988] and again: "Being clothed in the breastplate of righteousness and charity," [989] concerning which the Lord Himself also speaks to Jerusalem by the prophet: "Arise, arise, O Jerusalem, put on the garments of thy glory)," [990] whoever, overpowered by lazy slumber or by accidie, prefers to be clothed, not by his labour and industry, but in the rags of idleness, which he tears off from the solid piece and body of the Scriptures, and fits on to his sloth no garment of glory and honour, but an ignominious cloak and excuse. For those, who are affected by this laziness, and do not like to support themselves by the labour of their own hands, as the Apostle continually did and charged us to do, are wont to make use of certain Scripture proofs by which they try to cloak their idleness, saying that it is written, "Labour not for the meat that perisheth, but for that which remains to life eternal;" [991] and "My meat is to do the will of my Father." [992] But these proofs are (as it were) rags, from the solid piece of the gospel, which are adopted for this purpose, viz., to cover the disgrace of our idleness and shame rather than to keep us warm, and adorn us with that costly and splendid garment of virtue which that wise woman in the Proverbs, who was clothed with strength and beauty, is said to have made either for herself or for her husband; of which presently it is said: "Strength and beauty are her clothing, and she rejoices in the latter days." [993] Of this evil of idleness Solomon thus makes mention again: "The ways of the idlers are strewn with thorns;" [994] i.e., with these and similar faults, which the Apostle above declared to spring from idleness. And again: "Every sluggard is always in want." [995] And of these the Apostle makes mention when he says, "And that you want nothing of any man's." [996] And finally: "For idleness has been the teacher of many evils:" [997] which the Apostle has clearly enumerated in the passage which he expounded above: "Working not at all, but curiously meddling." To this fault also he joins another: "And that ye study to be quiet;" and then, "that ye should do your own business and walk honestly towards them that are without, and that you want nothing of any man's." Those also whom he notes as disorderly and rebellious, from these he charges those who are earnest to separate themselves: "That ye withdraw yourselves," says he, "from every brother that walketh disorderly and not according to the tradition which they received from us." [998] __________________________________________________________________
[985] Prov. xxviii. 19.
[986] 1 Cor. i. 5.
[987] Prov. xxiii. 21. (LXX.).
[988] Rom. xiii. 14.
[989] 1 Thess. v. 8.
[990] Is. lii. 1.
[991] S. John vi. 27.
[992] S. John iv. 34.
[993] Prov. xxxi. 25. (LXX.).
[994] Prov. xv. 19 (LXX.).
[995] Prov. xiii. 4 (LXX.).
[996] 1 Thess. iv. 11.
[997] Ecclus. xxxiii. 29.
[998] 2 Thess. iii. 11, 6; 1 Thess. iv. 11. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXII.
How the brethren in Egypt work with their hands, not only to supply their own needs, but also to minister to those who are in prison.
And so taught by these examples the Fathers in Egypt never allow monks, and especially the younger ones, to be idle, [999] estimating the purpose of their hearts and their growth in patience and humility by their diligence in work; and they not only do not allow them to receive anything from another to supply their own wants, but further, they not merely refresh pilgrims and brethren who come to visit them by means of their labours, but actually collect an enormous store of provisions and food, and distribute it in the parts of Libya which suffer from famine and barrenness, and also in the cities, to those who are pining away in the squalor of prison; as they believe that by such an offering of the fruit of their hands they offer a reasonable and true sacrifice to the Lord. __________________________________________________________________
[999] The monks of Egypt were famous for their labours, and Cassian's language might be illustrated from many passages in the Fathers; e.g., Epiphanius, in his third book against heresies, compares the monks, and especially those in Egypt, to bees, because of their diligence. So S. Jerome, writing to Rusticus (Ep. cxxv.), says that no one is received in a monastery in Egypt unless he will work, and that this rule is made for the good of the soul rather than for the sake of providing food. Compare also Sozomen H. E. VI. xxviii., where it is said of Serapion and his followers in the neighbourhood of Arsinöe that "they lived on the produce of their labour and provided for the poor. During harvest-time they busied themselves in reaping: they set aside sufficient corn for their own use, and furnished grain gratuitously for the other monks." S. Basil also, in his Monastic Constitutions cc. iv. and v., speaks strongly of the value of labour and the Rule of S. Benedict (c. xlviii.) enjoins that "as idleness is the enemy of the soul, the brethren are to be employed alternately in manual labour and pious reading." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXIII.
That idleness is the reason why there are not monasteries for monks in the West.
Hence it is that in these countries we see no monasteries found with such numbers of brethren: for they are not supported by the resources of their own labour in such a way that they can remain in them continually; and if in some way or other, through the liberality of another, there should be a sufficient provision to supply them, yet love of ease and restlessness of heart does not suffer them to continue long in the place. Whence this saying has been handed down from the old fathers in Egypt: that a monk who works is attacked by but one devil; but an idler is tormented by countless spirits. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXIV.
Abbot Paul [1000] who every year burnt with fire all the works of his hands.
Lastly, Abbot Paul, one of the greatest of the Fathers, while he was living in a vast desert which is called the Porphyrian desert, [1001] and being relieved from anxiety by the date palms and a small garden, had plenty to support himself, and an ample supply of food, and could not find any other work to do, which would support him, because his dwelling was separated from towns and inhabited districts by seven days' journey, [1002] or even more, through the desert, and more would be asked for the carriage of the goods than the price of the work would be worth; he collected the leaves of the palms, and regularly exacted of himself his daily task, as if he was to be supported by it. And when his cave had been filled with a whole year's work, each year he would burn with fire that at which he had so diligently laboured: thus proving that without manual labour a monk cannot stop in a place nor rise to the heights of perfection: so that, though the need for food did not require this to be done, yet he performed it simply for the sake of purifying his heart, and strengthening his thoughts, and persisting in his cell, and gaining a victory over accidie and driving it away. __________________________________________________________________
[1000] This Paul is perhaps the same as the one mentioned in connection with Abbot Moses in Conference VII. xxvi. As he was a contemporary of Cassian he must be carefully distinguished from his more illustrious namesakes, the first hermit and the disciple of S. Antony.
[1001] Also called the desert of Calamus, Conference XXIV. iv., but its position has not been ascertained.
[1002] Mansio used here and again in Conference XXIV. iv. for the stage of a day's journey. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXV.
The words of Abbot Moses which he said to me about the cure of accidie.
When I was beginning my stay in the desert, and had said to Abbot Moses, the chief of all the saints, that I had been terribly troubled yesterday by an attack of accidie, and that I could only be freed from it by running at once to Abbot Paul, he said, "You have not freed yourself from it, but rather have given yourself up to it as its slave and subject. For the enemy will henceforth attack you more strongly as a deserter and runaway, since it has seen that you fled at once when overcome in the conflict: unless on a second occasion when you join battle with it you make up your mind not to dispel its attacks and heats for the moment by deserting your cell, or by the inactivity of sleep, but rather learn to triumph over it by endurance and conflict." Whence it is proved by experience that a fit of accidie should not be evaded by running away from it, but overcome by resisting it. [1003] __________________________________________________________________
[1003] This Abbot Moses is probably the one to whom the first two Conferences are attributed (cf. also Conference VII. xxvi.); and possibly the second of this name (Moses the Libyan) mentioned by Sozomen, H. E. VI. xxix. Cf. also Palladius, the Lausiac History. c. xxii. __________________________________________________________________
[963] See the note on Bk. V. c. i. __________________________________________________________________
Book XI.
Of the Spirit of Vainglory. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter I.
How our seventh combat is against the spirit of vainglory, and what its nature.
Our seventh combat is against the spirit of kenodoxia, which we may term vain or idle glory: a spirit that takes many shapes, and is changeable and subtle, so that it can with difficulty, I will not say be guarded against, but be seen through and discovered even by the keenest eyes. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter II.
How vainglory attacks a monk not only on his carnal, but also on his spiritual side.
For not only does this, like the rest of his faults, attack a monk on his carnal side, but on his spiritual side as well, insinuating itself by craft and guile into his mind: so that those who cannot be deceived by carnal vices are more grievously wounded through their spiritual proficiency; and it is so much the worse to fight against, as it is harder to guard against. For the attack of all other vices is more open and straightforward, and in the case of each of them, when he who stirs them up is met by a determined refusal, he will go away the weaker for it, and the adversary who has been beaten will on the next occasion attack his victim with less vigour. But this malady when it has attacked the mind by means of carnal pride, and has been repulsed by the shield of reply, again, like some wickedness that takes many shapes, changes its former guise and character, and under the appearance of the virtues tries to strike down and destroy its conqueror. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter III.
How many forms and shapes vainglory takes.
For our other faults and passions may be said to be simpler and of but one form: but this takes many forms and shapes, and changes about and assails the man who stands up against it from every quarter, and assaults its conqueror on all sides. For it tries to injure the soldier of Christ in his dress, in his manner, his walk, his voice, his work, his vigils, his fasts, his prayers, when he withdraws, when he reads, in his knowledge, his silence, his obedience, his humility, his patience; and like some most dangerous rock hidden by surging waves, it causes an unforeseen and miserable shipwreck to those who are sailing with a fair breeze, while they are not on the lookout for it or guarding against it. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IV.
How vainglory attacks a monk on the right had and on the left.
And so one who wishes to go along the King's highway by means of the "arms of righteousness which are on the right hand and on the left," ought by the teaching of the Apostle to pass through "honour and dishonour, evil report and good report," [1004] and with such care to direct his virtuous course amid the swelling waves of temptation, with discretion at the helm, and the Spirit of the Lord breathing on us, since we know that if we deviate ever so little to the right hand or to the left, we shall presently be dashed against most dangerous crags. And so we are warned by Solomon, the wisest of men: "Turn not aside to the right hand or to the left;" [1005] i.e., do not flatter yourself on your virtues and be puffed up by your spiritual achievements on the right hand; nor, swerving to the path of vices on the left hand, seek from them for yourself (to use the words of the Apostle) "glory in your shame." [1006] For where the devil cannot create vainglory in a man by means of his well-fitting and neat dress, he tries to introduce it by means of a dirty, cheap, and uncared-for style. If he cannot drag a man down by honour, he overthrows him by humility. If he cannot make him puffed up by the grace of knowledge and eloquence, he pulls him down by the weight of silence. If a man fasts openly, he is attacked by the pride of vanity. If he conceals it for the sake of despising the glory of it, he is assailed by the same sin of pride. In order that he may not be defiled by the stains of vainglory he avoids making long prayers in the sight of the brethren; and yet because he offers them secretly and has no one who is conscious of it, he does not escape the pride of vanity. __________________________________________________________________
[1004] 2 Cor. vi. 7, 8.
[1005] Prov. iv. 27 (LXX.).
[1006] Phil. iii. 19. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter V.
A comparison which shows the nature of vainglory.
Our elders admirably describe the nature of this malady as like that of an onion, and of those bulbs which when stripped of one covering you find to be sheathed in another; and as often as you strip them, you find them still protected. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VI.
That vainglory is not altogether got rid of by the advantages of solitude.
In solitude also it does not cease from pursuing him who has for the sake of glory fled from intercourse with all men. And the more thoroughly a man has shunned the whole world, so much the more keenly does it pursue him. It tries to lift up with pride one man because of his great endurance of work and labour, another because of his extreme readiness to obey, another because he outstrips other men in humility. One man is tempted through the extent of his knowledge, another through the extent of his reading, another through the length of his vigils. Nor does this malady endeavour to wound a man except through his virtues; introducing hindrances which lead to death by means of those very things through which the supplies of life are sought. For when men are anxious to walk in the path of holiness and perfection, the enemies do not lay their snares to deceive them anywhere except in the way along which they walk, in accordance with that saying of the blessed David: "In the way wherein I walked have they laid a snare for me;" [1007] that in this very way of virtue along which we are walking, when pressing on to "the prize of our high calling," [1008] we may be elated by our successes, and so sink down, and fall with the feet of our soul entangled and caught in the snares of vainglory. And so it results that those of us who could not be vanquished in the conflict with the foe are overcome by the very greatness of our triumph, or else (which is another kind of deception) that, overstraining the limits of that self-restraint which is possible to us, we fail of perseverance in our course on account of bodily weakness. __________________________________________________________________
[1007] Ps. cxli. (cxlii.) 4.
[1008] Phil. iii. 14. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VII.
How vainglory, when it has been overcome, rises again keener than ever for the fight.
All vices when overcome grow feeble, and when beaten are day by day rendered weaker, and both in regard to place and time grow less and subside, or at any rate, as they are unlike the opposite virtues, are more easily shunned and avoided: but this one when it is beaten rises again keener than ever for the struggle; and when we think that it is destroyed, it revives again, the stronger for its death. The other kinds of vices usually only attack those whom they have overcome in the conflict; but this one pursues its victors only the more keenly; and the more thoroughly it has been resisted, so much the more vigorously does it attack the man who is elated by his victory over it. And herein lies the crafty cunning of our adversary, namely, in the fact that, where he cannot overcome the soldier of Christ by the weapons of the foe, he lays him low by his own spear. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VIII.
How vainglory is not allayed either in the desert or through advancing years.
Other vices, as we said, are sometimes allayed by the advantages of position, and when the matter of the sin and the occasion and opportunity for it are removed, grow slack, and are diminished: but this one penetrates the deserts with the man who is flying from it, nor can it be shut out from any place, nor when outward material for it is removed does it fail. For it is simply encouraged by the achievements of the virtues of the man whom it attacks. For all other vices, as we said above, are sometimes diminished by the lapse of time, and disappear: to this one length of life, unless it is supported by skilful diligence and prudent discretion, is no hindrance, but actually supplies it with new fuel for vanity. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IX.
That vainglory is the more dangerous through being mixed up with virtues.
Lastly, other passions which are entirely different from the virtues which are their opposites, and which attack us openly and as it were in broad daylight, are more easily overcome and guarded against: but this being interwoven with our virtues and entangled in the battle, fighting as it were under cover of the darkness of night, deceives the more dangerously those who are off their guard and not on the lookout. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter X.
An instance showing how King Hezekiah was overthrown by the dart of vainglory.
For so we read that Hezekiah, King of Judah, a man of most perfect righteousness in all things, and one approved by the witness of Holy Scripture, after unnumbered commendations for his virtues, was overthrown by a single dart of vainglory. And he who by a single prayer of his was able to procure the death of a hundred and eighty-five thousand of the army of the Assyrians, whom the angel destroyed in one night, is overcome by boasting and vanity. Of whom--to pass over the long list of his virtues, which it would take a long time to unfold--I will say but this one thing. He was a man who, after the close of his life had been decreed and the day of his death determined by the Lord's sentence, prevailed by a single prayer to extend the limits set to his life by fifteen years, the sun returning by ten steps, on which it had already shone in its course towards its setting, and by its return dispersing those lines which the shadow that followed its course had already marked, and by this giving two days in one to the whole world, by a stupendous miracle contrary to the fixed laws of nature. [1009] Yet after signs so great and so incredible, after such immense proofs of his goodness, hear the Scripture tell how he was destroyed by his very successes. "In those days," we are told, "Hezekiah was sick unto death: and he prayed to the Lord, and He heard him and gave him a sign," that, namely of which we read in the fourth book of the kingdoms, which was given by Isaiah the prophet through the going back of the sun. "But," it says, "he did not render again according to the benefits which he had received, for his heart was lifted up; and wrath was kindled against him and against Judah and Jerusalem: and he humbled himself afterwards because his heart had been lifted up, both he and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and therefore the wrath of the Lord came not upon them in the days of Hezekiah." [1010] How dangerous, how terrible is the malady of vanity! So much goodness, so many virtues, faith and devotion, great enough to prevail to change nature itself and the laws of the whole world, perish by a single act of pride! So that all his good deeds would have been forgotten as if they had never been, and he would at once have been subject to the wrath of the Lord unless he had appeased Him by recovering his humility: so that he who, at the suggestion of pride, had fallen from so great a height of excellence, could only mount again to the height he had lost by the same steps of humility. Do you want to see another instance of a similar downfall? __________________________________________________________________
[1009] Cf. 2 Kings xx.
[1010] 2 Chron. xxxii. 24-26. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XI.
The instance of King Uzziah who was overcome by the taint of the same malady.
Of Uzziah, the ancestor of this king of whom we have been speaking, himself also praised in all things by the witness of the Scripture, after great commendation for his virtue, after countless triumphs which he achieved by the merit of his devotion and faith, learn how he was cast down by the pride of vainglory. "And," we are told, "the name of Uzziah went forth, for the Lord helped him and had strengthened him. But when he was made strong, his heart was lifted up to his destruction, and he neglected the Lord his God." [1011] You behold another instance of a most terrible downfall, and see how two men so upright and excellent were undone by their very triumphs and victories. Whence you see how dangerous the successes of prosperity generally are, so that those who could not be injured by adversity are ruined, unless they are careful, by prosperity; and those who in the conflict of battle have escaped the danger of death fall before their own trophies and triumphs. __________________________________________________________________
[1011] 2 Chron. xxvi. 15, 16. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XII.
Several testimonies against vainglory.
And so the Apostle warns us: "Be not desirous of vainglory." [1012] And the Lord, rebuking the Pharisees, says, "How can ye believe, who receive glory from one another, and seek not the glory which comes from God alone?" [1013] Of these too the blessed David speaks with a threat: "For God hath scattered the bones of them that please men." [1014] __________________________________________________________________
[1012] Gal. v. 26.
[1013] S. John v. 44.
[1014] Ps. lii. (liii.) 6. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIII.
Of the ways in which vainglory attacks a monk.
In the case also of beginners and of those who have as yet made but little progress either in powers of mind or in knowledge it usually puffs up their minds, either because of the quality of their voice because they can sing well, or because their bodies are emaciated, [1015] or because they are of a good figure, or because they have rich and noble kinsfolk, or because they have despised a military life and honours. Sometimes too it persuades a man that if he had remained in the world he would easily have obtained honours and riches, which perhaps could not possibly have been secured, and inflates him with a vain hope of uncertain things; and in the case of those things which he never possessed, puffs him up with pride and vanity, as if he were one who had despised them. __________________________________________________________________
[1015] viz., by fasting. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIV.
How it suggests that a man may seek to take holy orders.
But sometimes it creates a wish to take holy orders, and a desire for the priesthood or diaconate. And it represents that if a man has even against his will received this office, he will fulfil it with such sanctity and strictness that he will be able to set an example of saintliness even to other priests; and that he will win over many people, not only by his manner of life, but also by his teaching and preaching. It makes a man, even when alone and sitting in his cell, to go round in mind and imagination to the dwellings and monasteries of others, and to make many conversions under the inducements of imaginary exultation. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XV.
How vainglory intoxicates the mind.
And so the miserable soul is affected by such vanity--as if it were deluded by a profound slumber--that it is often led away by the pleasure of such thoughts, and filled with such imaginations, so that it cannot even look at things present, or the brethren, while it enjoys dwelling upon these things, of which with its wandering thoughts it has waking dreams, as if they were true. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVI.
Of him whom the superior came upon and found in his cell, deluded by idle vainglory.
I remember an elder, when I was staying in the desert of Scete, who went to the cell of a certain brother to pay him a visit, and when he had reached the door heard him muttering inside, and stood still for a little while, wanting to know what it was that he was reading from the Bible or repeating by heart (as is customary) while he was at work. And when this most excellent eavesdropper diligently applied his ear and listened with some curiosity, he found that the man was induced by an attack of this spirit to fancy that he was delivering a stirring sermon to the people. And when the elder, as he stood still, heard him finish his discourse and return again to his office, and give out the dismissal of the catechumens, as the deacon does, [1016] then at last he knocked at the door, and the man came out, and met the elder with the customary reverence, and brought him in and (for his knowledge of what had been his thoughts made him uneasy) asked him when he had arrived, for fear lest he might have taken some harm from standing too long at the door: and the old man joking pleasantly replied, "I only got here while you were giving out the dismissal of the catechumens." __________________________________________________________________
[1016] Celebrare velut diaconum catechumenis missam. Missa is here used for the dismissal of the catechumens, which it was the deacon's office to proclaim. The whole service was divided into two parts, (1) the mass of the catechumens, containing the Scripture lessons, sermon, and prayers for the catechumens; and (2) the mass of the faithful, or the Eucharist proper. At the end of the first part the deacon warned the catechumens to depart, in words varying slightly in different churches, but substantially the same in all, both east and west: e.g. in the Liturgy of S. Chrysostom the form is "Let all the catechumens depart: let not any of the catechumens--Let all the faithful--"; in that of S. Mark it is still briefer: "Look lest any of the catechumens." The Roman missal does not now contain this feature, but it was certainly originally found in it for it is alluded to by Gregory the Great (Dial. Book II. c. xxiii.), who gives the form as follows: "Si quis non communicat det locum." It was also customary in Spain and Gaul, as well as in Africa, being alluded to by Augustine in Sermon xlix.: "Ecce post sermonen fit missa catechumenis: manebunt fideles, venietur ad locum orationis." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVII.
How faults cannot be cured unless their roots and causes have been discovered.
I thought it well to insert these things in this little work of mine, that we might learn, not only by reason, but also by examples, about the force of temptations and the order of the sins which hurt an unfortunate soul, and so might be more careful in avoiding the snares and manifold deceits of the enemy. For these things are indiscriminately brought forward by the Egyptian fathers, that by telling them, as those who are still enduring them, they may disclose and lay bare the combats with all the vices, which they actually do suffer, and those which the younger ones are sure to suffer; so that, when they explain the illusions arising from all the passions, those who are but beginners and fervent in spirit may know the secret of their struggles, and seeing them as in a glass, may learn both the causes of the sins by which they are troubled, and the remedies for them, and instructed beforehand concerning the approach of future struggles, may be taught how they ought to guard against them, or to meet them and to fight with them. As clever physicians are accustomed not only to heal already existing diseases, but also by a wise skill to seek to obviate future ones, and to prevent them by their prescriptions and healing draughts, so these true physicians of the soul, by means of spiritual conferences, like some celestial antidote, destroy beforehand those maladies of the soul which would arise, and do not allow them to gain a footing in the minds of the juniors, as they unfold to them the causes of the passions which threaten them, and the remedies which will heal them. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVIII.
How a monk ought to avoid women and bishops.
Wherefore this is an old maxim of the Fathers that is still current,--though I cannot produce it without shame on my own part, since I could not avoid my own sister, nor escape the hands of the bishop,--viz., that a monk ought by all means to fly from women and bishops. For neither of them will allow him who has once been joined in close intercourse any longer to care for the quiet of his cell, or to continue with pure eyes in divine contemplation through his insight into holy things. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIX.
Remedies by which we can overcome vainglory.
And so the athlete of Christ who desires to strive lawfully in this true and spiritual combat, should strive by all means to overcome this changeable monster of many shapes, which, as it attacks us on every side like some manifold wickedness, we can escape by such a remedy as this; viz., thinking on that saying of David: "The Lord hath scattered the bones of those who please men." [1017] To begin with we should not allow ourselves to do anything at the suggestion of vanity, and for the sake of obtaining vainglory. Next, when we have begun a thing well, we should endeavour to maintain it with just the same care, for fear lest afterwards the malady of vainglory should creep in and make void all the fruits of our labours. And anything which is of very little use or value in the common life of the brethren, we should avoid as leading to boasting; and whatever would render us remarkable amongst the others, and for which credit would be gained among men, as if we were the only people who could do it, this should be shunned by us. For by these signs the deadly taint of vainglory will be shown to cling to us: which we shall most easily escape if we consider that we shall not merely lose the fruits of those labours of ours which we have performed at the suggestion of vainglory, but that we shall also be guilty of a great sin, and as impious persons undergo eternal punishments, inasmuch as we have wronged God by doing for the favour of men what we ought to have done for His sake, and are convicted by Him who knows all secrets of having preferred men to God, and the praise of the world to the praise of the Lord. __________________________________________________________________
[1017] Ps. lii. (liii.) 6. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Book XII.
Of the Spirit of Pride. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter I.
How our eighth combat is against the spirit of pride, and of its character.
Our eighth and last combat is against the spirit of pride, which evil, although it is the latest in our conflict with our faults and stands last on the list, yet in beginning and in the order of time is the first: an evil beast that is most savage and more dreadful than all the former ones, chiefly trying those who are perfect, and devouring with its dreadful bite those who have almost attained the consummation of virtue. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter II.
How there are two kinds of pride.
And of this pride there are two kinds: the one, that by which we said that the best of men and spiritually minded ones were troubled; the other, that which assaults even beginners and carnal persons. And though each kind of pride is excited with regard to both God and man by a dangerous elation, yet that first kind more particularly has to do with God; the second refers especially to men. Of the origin of this last and the remedies for it we will by God's help treat as far as possible in the latter part of this book. We now propose to say a few things about that former kind, by which, as I mentioned before, those who are perfect are especially tried. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter III.
How pride is equally destructive of all virtues.
There is then no other fault which is so destructive of all virtues, and robs and despoils a man of all righteousness and holiness, as this evil of pride, which like some pestilential disease attacks the whole man, and, not content to damage one part or one limb only, injures the entire body by its deadly influence, and endeavours to cast down by a most fatal fall, and destroy those who were already at the top of the tree of the virtues. For every other fault is satisfied within its own bounds and limits, and though it clouds other virtues as well, yet it is in the main directed against one only, and specially attacks and assaults that. And so (to make my meaning clearer) gluttony, i.e., the appetites of the belly and the pleasures of the palate, is destructive of strict temperance: lust stains purity, anger destroys patience: so that sometimes a man who is in bondage to some one sin is not altogether wanting in other virtues: but being simply deprived of that one virtue which in the struggle yields to the vice which is its rival and opposed to it, can to some extent preserve his other virtues: but this one when once it has taken possession of some unfortunate soul, like some most brutal tyrant, when the lofty citadel of the virtues has been taken, utterly destroys and lays waste the whole city; and levelling with the ground of vices the once high walls of saintliness, and confusing them together, it allows no shadow of freedom henceforth to survive in the soul subject to it. And in proportion as it was originally the richer, so now will the yoke of servitude be the severer, through which by its cruel ravages it will strip the soul it has subdued of all its powers of virtue. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IV.
How by reason of pride Lucifer was turned from an archangel into a devil.
And that we may understand the power of its awful tyranny we see that that angel who, for the greatness of his splendour and beauty was termed Lucifer, was cast out of heaven for no other sin but this, and, pierced with the dart of pride, was hurled down from his grand and exalted position as an angel into hell. If then pride of heart alone was enough to cast down from heaven to earth a power that was so great and adorned with the attributes of such might, the very greatness of his fall shows us with what care we who are surrounded by the weakness of the flesh ought to be on our guard. But we can learn how to avoid the most deadly poison of this evil if we trace out the origin and causes of his fall. For weakness can never be cured, nor the remedies for bad states of health be disclosed unless first their origin and causes are investigated by a wise scrutiny. For as he (viz., Lucifer) was endowed with divine splendour, and shone forth among the other higher powers by the bounty of his Maker, he believed that he had acquired the splendour of that wisdom and the beauty of those powers, with which he was graced by the gift of the Creator, by the might of his own nature, and not by the beneficence of His generosity. And on this account he was puffed up as if he stood in no need of divine assistance in order to continue in this state of purity, and esteemed himself to be like God, as if, like God, he had no need of any one, and trusting in the power of his own will, fancied that through it he could richly supply himself with everything which was necessary for the consummation of virtue or for the perpetuation of perfect bliss. This thought alone was the cause of his first fall. On account of which being forsaken by God, whom he fancied he no longer needed, he suddenly became unstable and tottering, and discovered the weakness of his own nature, and lost the blessedness which he had enjoyed by God's gift. And because he "loved the words of ruin," with which he had said, "I will ascend into heaven," and the "deceitful tongue," with which he had said of himself, "I will be like the Most High," [1018] and of Adam and Eve, "Ye shall be as gods," therefore "shall God destroy him forever and pluck him out and remove him from his dwelling place and his root out of the land of the living." Then "the just," when they see his ruin, "shall fear, and shall laugh at him and say" (what may also be most justly aimed at those who trust that they can obtain the highest good without the protection and assistance of God): "Behold the man that made not God his helper, but trusted in the abundance of his riches, and prevailed in his vanity." [1019] __________________________________________________________________
[1018] Is. xiv. 13, 14.
[1019] Ps. li. (lii.) 6-9. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter V.
That incentives to all sins spring from pride.
This is the reason of the first fall, and the starting point of the original malady, which again insinuating itself into the first man, [1020] through him who had already been destroyed by it, produced the weaknesses and materials of all faults. For while he believed that by the freedom of his will and by his own efforts he could obtain the glory of Deity, he actually lost that glory which he already possessed through the free gift of the Creator. __________________________________________________________________
[1020] Protoplastum cf. Wisdom vii. 1; x. 1 where Adam is called protoplastos. From these passages the term came to be commonly used as the designation of our first parents. So Clem. Alex. Strom. iii. 17: and in its Latin form it is found in the early translation of Irenæus. Hær. III. xxi. 20. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VI.
That the sin of pride is last in the actual order of the combat, but first in time and origin.
And so it is most clearly established by instances and testimonies from Scripture that the mischief of pride, although it comes later in the order of the combat, is yet earlier in origin, and is the beginning of all sins and faults: nor is it (like the other vices) simply fatal to the virtue opposite to it (in this case, humility), but it is also at the same time destructive of all virtues: nor does it only tempt ordinary folk and small people, but chiefly those who already stand on the heights of valour. [1021] For thus the prophet speaks of this spirit, "His meat is choice." [1022] And so the blessed David, although he guarded the recesses of his heart with the utmost care, so that he dared to say to Him from whom the secrets of his conscience were not hid, "Lord, my heart is not exalted, nor are my eyes lofty: neither have I walked in great matters, nor in wonderful things above me. If I was not humbly minded;" [1023] and again, "He that worketh pride shall not dwell in the midst of my house;" [1024] yet, as he knew how hard is that watchfulness even for those that are perfect, he did not so presume on his own efforts, but prayed to God and implored His help, that he might escape unwounded by the darts of this foe, saying, "Let not the foot of pride come to me," [1025] for he feared and dreaded falling into that which is said of the proud, viz., "God resisteth the proud;" [1026] and again: "Every one that exalteth his heart is unclean before the Lord." [1027] __________________________________________________________________
[1021] Cf. Milton's "last infirmity of noble minds." (Lycidas.)
[1022] Hab. i. 16 (LXX.).
[1023] Ps. cxxx. (cxxxi.) 1, 2.
[1024] Ps. c. (ci.) 1, 2.
[1025] Ps. xxxv. (xxxvi.) 1, 2.
[1026] S. James iv. 6.
[1027] Prov. xvi. 5 (LXX.). __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VII.
That the evil of pride is so great that it rightly has even God Himself as its adversary.
How great is the evil of pride, that it rightly has no angel, nor other virtues opposed to it, but God Himself as its adversary! Since it should be noted that it is never said of those who are entangled in other sins that they have God resisting them; I mean it is not said that God is opposed "to the gluttonous, fornicators, passionate, or covetous," but only "to the proud." For those sins react only on those who commit them, or seem to be committed against those who share in them, i.e., against other men; but this one has more properly to do with God, and therefore it is especially right that it should have Him opposed to it. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VIII.
How God has destroyed the pride of the devil by the virtue of humility, and various passages in proof of this.
And so God, the Creator and Healer of all, knowing that pride is the cause and fountain head of evils, has been careful to heal opposites with opposites, that those things which were ruined by pride might be restored by humility. For the one says, "I will ascend into heaven;" [1028] the other, "My soul was brought low even to the ground." [1029] The one says, "And I will be like the most High;" the other, "Though He was in the form of God, yet He emptied Himself and took the form of a servant, and humbled Himself and became obedient unto death." [1030] The one says, "I will exalt my throne above the stars of God;" the other, "Learn of me, for I am meek and lowly of heart." [1031] The one says, "I know not the Lord and will not let Israel go;" [1032] the other, "If I say that I know Him not, I shall be a liar like unto you: but I know Him, and keep His commandments." [1033] The one says, "My rivers are mine and I made them:" [1034] the other: "I can do nothing of myself, but my Father who abideth in me, He doeth the works." [1035] The one says, "All the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them are mine, and to whomsoever I will, I give them;" [1036] the other, "Though He were rich yet He became poor, that we through His poverty might be made rich." [1037] The one says, "As eggs are gathered together which are left, so have I gathered all the earth: and there was none that moved the wing or opened the mouth, or made the least noise;" [1038] the other, "I am become like a solitary pelican; I watched and became as a sparrow alone upon the roof." [1039] The one says, "I have dried up with the sole of my foot all the rivers shut up in banks;" [1040] the other, "Cannot I ask my Father, and He shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?" [1041] If we look at the reason of our original fall, and the foundations of our salvation, and consider by whom and in what way the latter were laid and the former originated, we may learn, either through the fall of the devil, or through the example of Christ, how to avoid so terrible a death from pride. __________________________________________________________________
[1028] Is. xiv. 13.
[1029] Ps. xliii. (xliv.) 25.
[1030] Phil. ii. 6-8.
[1031] S. Matt. xi. 29.
[1032] Exod. v. 2.
[1033] S. John viii. 55.
[1034] Ezek. xxix. 3. (LXX.)
[1035] S. John v. 30; xiv. 10.
[1036] S. Luke iv. 6.
[1037] 2 Cor. viii. 9.
[1038] Is. x. 14.
[1039] Ps. ci. (cii.) 7, 8.
[1040] Is. xxxvii. 25.
[1041] S. Matt. xxvi. 53. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IX.
How we too may overcome pride.
And so we can escape the snare of this most evil spirit, if in the case of every virtue in which we feel that we make progress, we say these words of the Apostle: "Not I, but the grace of God with me," and "by the grace of God I am what I am;" [1042] and "it is God that worketh in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure." [1043] As the author of our salvation Himself also says: "If a man abide in me and I in him, the same beareth much fruit; for without me ye can do nothing." [1044] And "Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it. Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain." And "Vain is it for you to rise up before light." [1045] For "it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that hath mercy." [1046] __________________________________________________________________
[1042] 1 Cor. xv. 10.
[1043] Phil. ii. 13.
[1044] S. John xv. 5.
[1045] Ps. cxxvi. (cxxvii.) 1, 2.
[1046] Rom. ix. 16. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter X.
How no one can obtain perfect virtue and the promised bliss by his own strength alone.
For the will and course of no one, however eager and anxious, [1047] is sufficiently ready for him, while still enclosed in the flesh which warreth against the spirit, to reach so great a prize of perfection, and the palm of uprightness and purity, unless he is protected by the divine compassion, so that he is privileged to attain to that which he greatly desires and to which he runs. For "every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights." [1048] "For what hast thou which thou didst not receive? But if thou hast received it, why dost thou glory as if thou hadst not received it?" [1049] __________________________________________________________________
[1047] Quamvis ferventis et cupientis (Petschenig): Quamvis volentis et currentis (Gazæus).
[1048] S. James i. 17.
[1049] 1 Cor. iv. 7. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XI.
The case of the thief and of David, and of our call in order to illustrate the grace of God.
For if we recall that thief who was by reason of a single confession admitted into paradise, [1050] we shall feel that he did not acquire such bliss by the merits of his life, but obtained it by the gift of a merciful God. Or if we bear in mind those two grievous and heinous sins of King David, blotted out by one word of penitence, [1051] we shall see that neither here were the merits of his works sufficient to obtain pardon for so great a sin, but that the grace of God superabounded, as, when the opportunity for true penitence was taken, He removed the whole weight of sins through the full confession of but one word. If we consider also the beginning of the call and salvation of mankind, in which, as the Apostle says, we are saved not of ourselves, nor of our works, but by the gift and grace of God, we can clearly see how the whole of perfection is "not of him that willeth nor of him that runneth, but of God that hath mercy," who makes us victorious over our faults, without any merits of works and life on our part to outweigh them, or any effort of our will availing to scale the difficult heights of perfection, or to subdue the flesh which we have to use: since no tortures of this body, and no contrition of heart, can be sufficient for the acquisition of that true chastity of the inner man so as to be able to gain that great virtue of purity (which is innate in the angels alone and indigenous as it were to heaven) merely by human efforts, i.e., without the aid of God: for the performance of everything good flows from His grace, who by multiplying His bounty has granted such lasting bliss, and vast glory to our feeble will and short and petty course of life. __________________________________________________________________
[1050] Cf. S. Luke xxiii. 40.
[1051] Cf. 2 Sam. xii. 13. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XII.
That no toil is worthy to be compared with the promised bliss.
For all the long years of this present life disappear when you have regard to the eternity of the future glory: and all our sorrows vanish away in the contemplation of that vast bliss, and like smoke melt away, and come to nothing, and like ashes are no more seen. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIII.
The teaching of the elders on the method of acquiring purity.
Wherefore it is now time to produce, in the very words in which they hand it down, the opinion of the Fathers; viz., of those who have not painted the way of perfection and its character in high-sounding words, but rather, possessing it in deed and truth, and in the virtue of their spirit, have passed it on by their own experience and sure example. And so they say that no one can be altogether cleansed from carnal sins, unless he has realized that all his labours and efforts are insufficient for so great and perfect an end; and unless, taught, not by the system handed down to him, but by his feelings and virtues and his own experience, he recognizes that it can only be gained by the mercy and assistance of God. For in order to acquire such splendid and lofty prizes of purity and perfection, however great may be the efforts of fastings and vigils and readings and solitude and retirement applied to it, they will not be sufficient to secure it by the merits of the actual efforts and toil. For a man's own efforts and human exertions will never make up for the lack of the divine gift, unless it is granted by divine compassion in answer to his prayer. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIV.
That the help of God is given to those who labour. [1052]
Nor do I say this to cast a slight on human efforts, or in the endeavour to discourage any one from his purpose of working and doing his best. But clearly and most earnestly do I lay down, not giving my own opinion, but that of the elders, that perfection cannot possibly be gained without these, but that by these only without the grace of God nobody can ever attain it. For when we say that human efforts cannot of themselves secure it without the aid of God, we thus insist that God's mercy and grace are bestowed only upon those who labour and exert themselves, and are granted (to use the Apostle's expression) to them that "will" and "run," according to that which is sung in the person of God in the eighty-eighth Psalm: "I have laid help upon one that is mighty, and have exalted one chosen out of my people." [1053] For we say, in accordance with our Saviour's words, that it is given to them that ask, and opened to them that knock and found by them that seek; [1054] but that the asking, the seeking, and the knocking on our part are insufficient unless the mercy of God gives what we ask, and opens that at which we knock, and enables us to find that which we seek. For He is at hand to bestow all these things, if only the opportunity is given to Him by our good will. For He desires and looks for our perfection and salvation far more than we do ourselves. And the blessed David knew so well that by his own efforts he could not secure the increase of his work and labour, that he entreated with renewed prayers that he might obtain the "direction" of his work from the Lord, saying, "Direct thou the work of our hands over us; yea, the work of our hands do thou direct;" [1055] and again: "Confirm, O God, what thou hast wrought in us." [1056] __________________________________________________________________
[1052] The language in this chapter is perilously near semi-Pelagianism, on which compare the Introduction p. 190, sq.
[1053] Ps. lxxxviii. (lxxxix.) 20.
[1054] S. Matt. vii. 7.
[1055] Ps. lxxxix. (xc.) 17.
[1056] Ps. lxvii. (lxiii.) 29. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XV.
From whom we can learn the way of perfection.
And so, if we wish in very deed and truth to attain to the crown of virtues, we ought to listen to those teachers and guides who, not dreaming with pompous declamations, but learning by act and experience, are able to teach us as well, and direct us likewise, and show us the road by which we may arrive at it by a most sure pathway; and who also testify that they have themselves reached it by faith rather than by any merits of their efforts. And further, the purity of heart that they have acquired has taught them this above all; viz., to recognize more and more that they are burdened with sin (for their compunction for their faults increases day by day in proportion as their purity of soul advances), and to sigh continually from the bottom of their heart because they see that they cannot possibly avoid the spots and blemishes of those faults which are ingrained in them through the countless triflings of the thoughts. And therefore they declared that they looked for the reward of the future life, not from the merits of their works, but from the mercy of the Lord, taking no credit to themselves for their great circumspection of heart in comparison with others, since they ascribed this not to their own exertions, but to divine grace; and without flattering themselves on account of the carelessness of those who are cold, and worse than they themselves are, they rather aimed at a lasting humility by fixing their gaze on those whom they knew to be really free from sin and already in the enjoyment of eternal bliss in the kingdom of heaven, and so by this consideration they avoided the downfall of pride, and at the same time always saw both what they were aiming at and what they had to grieve over: as they knew that they could not attain that purity of heart for which they yearned while weighed down by the burden of the flesh. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVI.
That we cannot even make the effort to obtain perfection without the mercy and inspiration of God.
We ought therefore, in accordance with their teaching and instruction, so to press towards it, and to be diligent in fastings, vigils, prayers, and contrition of heart and body, for fear lest all these things should be rendered useless by an attack of this malady. For we ought to believe not merely that we cannot secure this actual perfection by our own efforts and exertions, but also that we cannot perform those things which we practise for its sake, viz., our efforts and exertions and desires, without the assistance of the divine protection, and the grace of His inspiration, chastisement, and exhortation, which He ordinarily sheds abroad in our hearts either through the instrumentality of another, or in His own person coming to visit us. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVII.
Various passages which clearly show that we cannot do anything which belongs to our salvation without the aid of God.
Lastly, the Author of our salvation teaches us what we ought not merely to think, but also to acknowledge in everything that we do. "I can," He says, "of mine own self do nothing, but the Father which abideth in me, He doeth the works." [1057] He says, speaking in the human nature which He had taken, [1058] that He could do nothing of Himself; and shall we, who are dust and ashes, think that we have no need of God's help in what pertains to our salvation? And so let us learn in everything, as we feel our own weakness, and at the same time His help, to declare with the saints, "I was overturned that I might fall, but the Lord supported me. The Lord is my strength and my praise: and He is become my salvation." [1059] And "Unless the Lord had helped me, my soul had almost dwelt in hell. If I said, My foot is moved: Thy mercy, O Lord, assisted me. According to the multitude of my sorrows in my heart, Thy comforts have given joy to my soul." [1060] Seeing also that our heart is strengthened in the fear of the Lord, and in patience, let us say: "And the Lord became my protector; and He brought me forth into a large place." [1061] And knowing that knowledge is increased by progress in work, let us say: "For thou lightest my lamp, O Lord: O my God, enlighten my darkness, for by Thee I shall be delivered from temptation, and through my God I shall go over a wall." Then, feeling that we have ourselves sought for courage and endurance, and are being directed with greater ease and without labour in the path of the virtues, let us say, "It is God who girded me with strength, and made my way perfect; who made my feet like hart's feet, and setteth me up on high: who teacheth my hands to war." And having also secured discretion, strengthened with which we can dash down our enemies, let us cry aloud to God: "Thy discipline hath set me up [1062] unto the end, and Thy discipline the same shall teach me. Thou hast enlarged my steps under me, and my feet are not weakened." And because I am thus strengthened with Thy knowledge and power, I will boldly take up the words which follow, and will say, "I will pursue after my enemies and overtake them: and I will not turn again till they are consumed. I will break them, and they shall not be able to stand: they shall fall under my feet." [1063] Again, mindful of our own infirmity, and of the fact that while still burdened with the weak flesh we cannot without His assistance overcome such bitter foes as our sins are, let us say, "Through Thee we will scatter our enemies: [1064] and through Thy name we will despise them that rise up against us. For I will not trust in my bow: neither shall my sword save me. For Thou hast saved us from them that afflict us: and hast put them to shame that hate us." [1065] But further: "Thou hast guided me with strength unto the battle, and hast subdued under me them that rose up against me. And Thou hast made mine enemies turn their backs upon me, and hast destroyed them that hated me." [1066] And reflecting that with our own arms alone we cannot conquer, let us say, "Take hold of arms and shield: and rise up to help me. Bring out the sword and stop the way against them that persecute me: say to my soul, I am thy salvation." [1067] And Thou hast made my arms like a brazen bow. And Thou hast given me the protection of Thy salvation: and Thy right hand hath held me up." [1068] "For our fathers got not the possession of the land through their own sword; neither did their own arm save them: but Thy right hand and Thine arm and the light of Thy countenance because Thou wast pleased with them." [1069] Lastly, as with anxious mind we regard all His benefits with thankfulness, let us cry to Him with the inmost feelings of our heart, for all these things, because we have fought, and have obtained from Him the light of knowledge, and self-control and discretion, and because He has furnished us with His own arms, and strengthened us with a girdle of virtue, and because He has made our enemies turn their backs upon us, and has given us the power of scattering them like the dust before the wind: "I will love Thee, O Lord my Strength; the Lord is my stronghold, my refuge and my deliverer. My God is my helper, and in Him will I put my trust. My protector and the horn of my salvation, and my support. Praising I will call upon the name of the Lord; and I shall be saved from mine enemies." [1070] __________________________________________________________________
[1057] S. John xiv. 10; v. 30.
[1058] Ex persona hominis assumpti. See the note on Against Nestorius, I. v.
[1059] Ps. cxvii. (cxviii.) 13, 14.
[1060] Ps. xciii. (xciv.) 17-19.
[1061] Ps. xvii. (xviii.) 20 sq.
[1062] Erexit (Petschenig). Gazæus reads correxit, with the Vulgate.
[1063] Ps. xvii. (xviii.) 33 sq.
[1064] Gazæus adds cornu after the Vulgate.
[1065] Ps. xliii. (xliv.) 6-8.
[1066] Ps. xvii. (xviii.) 40, 41.
[1067] Ps. xxxiv. (xxxv.) 2-4.
[1068] Ps. xvii. (xviii.) 35.
[1069] Ps. xliii. (xliv.) 4, 5.
[1070] Ps. xvii. (xviii.) 2-4. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVIII.
How we are protected by the grace of God not only in our natural condition, but also by His daily Providence.
Not alone giving thanks to Him for that He has created us as reasonable beings, and endowed us with the power of free will, and blessed us with the grace of baptism, and granted to us the knowledge and aid of the law, but for these things as well, which are bestowed upon us by His daily providence; viz., that He delivers us from the craft of our enemies; that He works with us so that we can overcome the sins of the flesh, that, even without our knowing it, He shields us from dangers; that He protects us from falling into sin; that He helps us and enlightens us, so that we can understand and recognize the actual help which He gives us, (which some will have it is what is meant by the law); [1071] that, when we are through His influence secretly struck with compunction for our sins and negligences, He visits us with His regard and chastens us to our soul's health; that even against our will we are sometimes drawn by Him to salvation; lastly that this very free will of ours, which is more readily inclined to sin, is turned by Him to a better purpose, and by His prompting and suggestion, bent towards the way of virtue. __________________________________________________________________
[1071] The allusion is to the Pelagians. Cf. S. Jerome Contra Pelag. I. c. ix.; and in Jerem. c. xxv.; and S. Augustine De Gratia Christi contra Pelag. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIX.
How this faith concerning the grace of God was delivered to us by the ancient Fathers.
This then is that humility towards God, this is that genuine faith of the ancient fathers which still remains intact among their successors. And to this faith, the apostolic virtues, which they so often showed, bear an undoubted witness, not only among us but also among infidels and unbelievers: for keeping in simplicity of heart the simple faith of the fishermen they did not receive it in a worldly spirit through dialectical syllogisms or the eloquence of a Cicero, but learnt by the experience of a pure life, and stainless actions, and by correcting their faults, and (to speak more truly) by visible proofs, that the character of perfection is to be found in that faith without which neither piety towards God, nor purification from sin, nor amendment of life, nor perfection of virtue can be secured. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XX.
Of one who for his blasphemy was given over to a most unclean spirit.
I knew one of the number of the brethren, whom I heartily wish I had never known; since afterwards he allowed himself to be saddled with the responsibilities of my order: [1072] who confessed to a most admirable elder that he was attacked by a terrible sin of the flesh: for he was inflamed with an intolerable lust, with the unnatural desire of suffering rather than of committing a shameful act: then the other like a true spiritual physician, at once saw through the inward cause and origin of this evil. And, sighing deeply, said: "Never would the Lord have suffered you to be given over to so foul a spirit unless you had blasphemed against Him." And he, when this was discovered, at once fell at his feet on the ground, and, struck with the utmost astonishment, as if he saw the secrets of his heart laid bare by God, confessed that he had blasphemed with evil thoughts against the Son of God. Whence it is clear that one who is possessed by the spirit of pride, or who has been guilty of blasphemy against God,--as one who offers a wrong to Him from whom the gift of purity must be looked for--is deprived of his uprightness and perfection, and does not deserve the sanctifying grace of chastity. __________________________________________________________________
[1072] Viz., that of the priesthood. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXI.
The instance of Joash, King of Judah, showing what was the consequence of his pride.
Some such thing we read of in the book of Chronicles. For Joash the king of Judah at the age of seven was summoned by Jehoiada the priest to the kingdom and by the witness of Scripture is commended for all his actions as long as the aforesaid priest lived. But hear what Scripture relates of him after Jehoiada's death, and how he was puffed up with pride and given over to a most disgraceful state. "But after the death of Jehoiada the princes went in and worshipped the king: and he was soothed by their services and hearkened unto them. And they forsook the temple of the Lord, the God of their fathers, and served groves and idols, and great wrath came upon Judah and Jerusalem because of this sin." And after a little: "When a year was come about, the army of Syria came up against him: and they came to Judah and Jerusalem, and killed all the princes of the people, and they sent all the spoils to the king to Damascus. And whereas there came a very small number of the Syrians, the Lord delivered into their hands an infinite multitude, because they had forsaken the Lord the God of their fathers: and on Joash they executed shameful judgments. And departing they left him in great diseases." [1073] You see how the consequence of pride was that he was given over to shocking and filthy passions. For he who is puffed up with pride and has permitted himself to be worshipped as God, is (as the Apostle says) "given over to shameful passions and a reprobate mind to do those things which are not convenient." [1074] And because, as Scripture says, "every one who exalts his heart is unclean before God," [1075] he who is puffed up with swelling pride of heart is given over to most shameful confusion to be deluded by it, that when thus humbled he may know that he is unclean through impurity of the flesh and knowledge of impure desires,--a thing which he had refused to recognize in the pride of his heart; and also that the shameful infection of the flesh may disclose the hidden impurity of the heart, which he contracted through the sin of pride, and that through the patent pollution of his body he may be proved to be impure, who did not formerly see that he had become unclean through the pride of his spirit. __________________________________________________________________
[1073] 2 Chr. xxiv. 17, 18, 23-25.
[1074] Rom. i. 26, 28.
[1075] Prov. xvi. 5 (LXX). __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXII.
That every proud soul is subject to spiritual wickedness to be deceived by it.
And this clearly shows that every soul of which the swellings of pride have taken possession, is given over to the Syrians of the soul, [1076] i.e., to spiritual wickedness, and that it is entangled in the lusts of the flesh, that the soul being at last humbled by earthly faults, and carnally polluted, may recognize its uncleanness, though while it stood erect in the coldness of its heart, it could not understand that through pride of heart it was rendered unclean in the sight of God; and by this means being humbled, a man may get rid of his former coldness, and being cast down and confused with the shame of his fleshly lusts, may thenceforward hasten to betake himself the more eagerly towards fervour and warmth of spirit. __________________________________________________________________
[1076] Intellectuales. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXIII.
How perfection can only be attained through the virtue of humility.
And so it is clearly shown that none can attain the end of perfection and purity, except through true humility, which he displays in the first instance to the brethren, and shows also to God in his inmost heart, believing that without His protection and aid extended to him at every instant, he cannot possibly obtain the perfection which he desires and to which he hastens so eagerly. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXIV.
Who are attacked by spiritual and who by carnal pride.
Thus much let it suffice to have spoken, as far as, by God's help, our slender ability was able, concerning spiritual pride of which we have said that it attacks advanced Christians. And this kind of pride is not familiar to or experienced by most men, because the majority do not aim at attaining perfect purity of heart, so as to arrive at the stage of these conflicts; nor have they secured any purification from the preceding faults of which we have here explained both the character and the remedies in separate books. But it generally attacks those only who have conquered the former faults and have already almost arrived at the top of the tree in respect of the virtues. And because our most crafty enemy has not been able to destroy them through a carnal fall, he endeavours to cast them down and overthrow them by a spiritual catastrophe, trying by this to rob them of the prizes of their ancient rewards secured as they were with great labour. But as for us, who are still entangled in earthly passions, he never deigns to tempt us in this fashion, but overthrows us by a coarser and what I called a carnal pride. And therefore I think it well, as I promised, to say a few things about this kind of pride by which we and men of our stamp are usually affected, and the minds especially of younger men and beginners are endangered. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXV.
A description of carnal pride, and of the evils which it produces in the soul of a monk.
This carnal pride therefore, of which we spoke, when it has gained an entrance into the heart of a monk, which is but lukewarm, and has made a bad start in renouncing the world, does not suffer him to stoop from his former state of worldly haughtiness to the true humility of Christ, but first of all makes him disobedient and rough; then it does not let him be gentle and kindly; nor allows him to be on a level with and like his brethren: nor does it permit him to be stripped and deprived of his worldly goods, as God and our Saviour commands: and, though renunciation of the world is nothing but the mark of mortification and the cross, and cannot begin or rise from any other foundations, but these; viz., that a man should recognize that he is not merely spiritually dead to the deeds of this world, but also should realize daily that he must die in the body--it makes him on the contrary hope for a long life, and sets before him many lengthy infirmities, and covers him with shame and confusion. If when stripped of everything he has begun to be supported by the property of others and not his own, it persuades him that it is much better for food and clothing to be provided for him by his own rather than by another's means according to that text (which, as was before said, [1077] those who are rendered dense through such dulness and coldness of heart, cannot possibly understand), "It is more blessed to give than to receive." [1078] __________________________________________________________________
[1077] See Book X. c. xviii.
[1078] Acts xx. 35. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXVI.
That a man whose foundation is bad, sinks daily from bad to worse.
Those then who are possessed by such distrust of mind, and who through the devil's own want of faith fall away from that spark of faith, by which they seemed in the early days of their conversion to be enkindled, begin more anxiously to watch over the money which before they had begun to give away, and treasure it up with greater avarice, as men who cannot recover again what they have once wasted: or--what is still worse--take back what they had formerly cast away: or else (which is a third and most disgusting kind of sin), collect what they never before possessed, and thus are convicted of having gone no further in forsaking the world than merely to take the name and style of monk. With this beginning therefore, and on this bad and rotten foundation, it is a matter of course that the whole superstructure of faults must rise, nor can anything be built on such villainous foundations, except what will bring the wretched soul to the ground with a hopeless collapse. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXVII.
A description of the faults which spring from the evil of pride.
The mind then that is hardened by such feelings, and which begins with this miserable coldness is sure to go daily from bad to worse and to conclude its life with a more hideous end: and while it takes delight in its former desires, and is overcome, as the apostle says, by impious avarice (as he says of it "and covetousness, which is idolatry, or the worship of idols," and again "the love of money," says he, "is the root of all evils" [1079] ) can never admit into the heart the true and unfeigned humility of Christ, while the man boasts himself of his high birth, or is puffed up by his position in the world (which he has forsaken in body but not in mind) or is proud of his wealth which he retains to his own destruction; and because of this he is no longer content to endure the yoke of the monastery, or to be instructed by the teaching of any of the elders, and not only objects to observe any rule of subjection or obedience, but will not even listen to teaching about perfection; and such dislike of spiritual talk grows up in his heart that if such a conversation should happen to arise, he cannot keep his eyes fixed on one spot, but his gaze wanders blankly about here and there, and his eyes shift hither and thither, as the custom is. Instead of wholesome coughs, he spits from a dry throat: he coughs on purpose without any need, he drums with his fingers, and twiddles them and scribbles like a man writing: and all his limbs fidget so that while the spiritual conversation is proceeding, you would think that he was sitting on thorns, and those very sharp ones, or in the midst of a mass of worms: and if the conversation turns in all simplicity on something which is for the good of the hearers, he thinks that it is brought forward for his especial benefit. And all the time that the examination of the spiritual life is proceeding, he is taken up with his own suspicious thoughts, and is not on the watch for something to take home for his good, but is anxiously seeking the reason why anything is said, or is quietly turning over in his mind, how he can raise objections to it, so that he cannot at all take in any of those things which are so admirably brought forward, or be done any good to by them. And so the result is that the spiritual conference is not merely of no use to him, but is positively injurious, and becomes to him an occasion of greater sin. For while he is conscience stricken and fancies that everything is being aimed at him he hardens himself more stubbornly in the obstinacy of his heart, and is more keenly affected by the stings of his wrath: then afterwards his voice is loud, his talk harsh, his answers bitter and noisy, his gait lordly and capricious; his tongue too ready, he is forward in conversation and no friend to silence except when he is nursing in his heart some bitterness against a brother, and his silence denotes not compunction or humility, but pride and wrath: so that one can hardly say which is the more objectionable in him, that unrestrained and boisterous merriment, or this dreadful and deadly solemnity. [1080] For in the former we see inopportune chattering, light and frivolous laughter, unrestrained and undisciplined mirth. In the latter a silence that is full of wrath and deadly; and which simply arises from the desire to prolong as long as possible the rancorous feelings which are nourished in silence against some brother, and not from the wish to obtain from it the virtues of humility and patience. And as the man who is a victim to passion readily makes everybody else miserable and is ashamed to apologize to the brother whom he has wronged, so when the brother offers to do so to him, he rejects it with scorn. And not only is he not touched or softened by the advances of his brother; but is the rather made more angry because his brother anticipates him in humility. And that wholesome humiliation and apology, which generally puts an end to the devil's temptation, becomes to him an occasion of a worse outbreak. __________________________________________________________________
[1079] Col. iii. 5; 1 Tim. vi. 10.
[1080] Serietas (Petschenig): Taciturnitas (Gazæus). __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXVIII.
On the pride of a certain brother.
I have heard while I have been in this district a thing which I shudder and am ashamed to recall; viz., that one of the juniors--when he was reproved by his Abbot because he had shown signs of throwing off the humility, of which he had made trial for a short time at his renunciation of the world, and of being puffed up with diabolical pride--most impertinently answered, "Did I humiliate myself for a time on purpose to be always in subjection?" And at this wanton and wicked reply of his the elder was utterly aghast, and could say nothing, as if he had received this answer from old Lucifer himself and not from a man; so that he could not possibly utter a word against such impudence, but only let fall sighs and groans from his heart; turning over in silence in his mind that which is said of our Saviour: "Who being in the form of God humbled Himself and became obedient"--not, as the man said who was seized with a diabolical spirit of pride, "for a time," but "even to death." [1081] __________________________________________________________________
[1081] Phil. ii. 6, 8. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXIX.
The signs by which you can recognize the presence of carnal pride in a soul.
And to draw together briefly what has been said of this kind of pride, by collecting, as well as we can, some of its signs that we may somehow convey to those who are thirsting for instruction in perfection, an idea of its characteristics from the movements of the outward man: I think it well to unfold them in a few words that we may conveniently recognize the signs by which we can discern and detect it, that when the roots of this passion are laid bare and brought to the surface, and seen and traced out with ocular demonstration, they may be the more easily plucked up and avoided. For only then will this most pestilent evil be altogether escaped, and if we do not begin too late in the day, when it has already got the mastery over us, to be on our guard against its dangerous heat and noxious influence, but if, recognizing its symptoms (so to speak) beforehand, we take precautions against it with wise and careful forethought. For, as we said before, you can tell a man's inward condition from his outward gait. By these signs, then, that carnal pride, of which we spoke earlier, is shown. To begin with, in conversation the man's voice is loud: in his silence there is bitterness: in his mirth his laughter is noisy and excessive: when he is serious he is unreasonably gloomy: in his answers there is rancour: he is too free with his tongue, his words tumbling out at random without being weighed. He is utterly lacking in patience, and without charity: impudent in offering insults to others, faint-hearted in bearing them himself: troublesome in the matter of obedience except where his own wishes and likings correspond with his duty: unforgiving in receiving admonition: weak in giving up his own wishes: very stubborn about yielding to those of others: always trying to compass his own ends, and never ready to give them up for others: and thus the result is that though he is incapable of giving sound advice, yet in everything he prefers his own opinion to that of the elders. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXX.
How when a man has grown cold through pride he wants to be put to rule other people.
And when a man whom pride has mastered has fallen through these stages of descent, he shudders at the discipline of the coenobium, and--as if the companionship of the brethren hindered his perfection, and the sins of others impeded and interfered with his advance in patience and humility--he longs to take up is abode in a solitary cell; else is eager to build a monastery and gather together some others to teach and instruct, as if he would do good to many more people, and make himself from being a bad disciple a still worse master. For when through this pride of heart a man has fallen into this most dangerous and injurious coldness, he can neither be a real monk nor a man of the world, and what is worse, promises to himself to gain perfection by means of this wretched state and manner of life of his. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXI.
How we can overcome pride and attain perfection.
Wherefore if we wish the summit of our building to be perfect and to rise well-pleasing to God, we should endeavour to lay its foundations not in accordance with the desires of our own lust, but according to the rules of evangelical strictness: which can only be the fear of God and humility, proceeding from kindness and simplicity of heart. But humility cannot possibly be acquired without giving up everything: and as long as a man is a stranger to this, he cannot possibly attain the virtue of obedience, or the strength of patience, or the serenity of kindness, or the perfection of love; without which things our hearts cannot possibly be a habitation for the Holy Spirit: as the Lord says through the prophet: "Upon whom shall My spirit rest, but on him that is humble and quiet and hears My words," or according to those copies which express the Hebrew accurately: "To whom shall I have respect, but to him that is poor and little and of a contrite spirit and that trembleth at My words?" [1082] __________________________________________________________________
[1082] Is. lxvi. 2. It is noteworthy that Cassian after giving a rendering which differs but slightly from that of the old Latin, as given in Sabbatier's great work, adds the version of "those copies which express the Hebrew accurately," and thus shows his acquaintance with Jerome's new translation which he quotes. He does the same thing again in the Conferences, XXIII. viii.; and On the Incarnation Against Nestorius IV. iii.; V. ii., xv. Compare also Institutes VIII. xxi., and Conf. VIII. x.; where he also betrays a knowledge of the Vulgate. As a general rule, however, his translations are taken from the old Latin, or possibly in some cases are made by him from the LXX. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXII.
How pride which is so destructive of all virtues can itself be destroyed by true humility.
Wherefore the Christian athlete who strives lawfully in the spiritual combat and desires to be crowned by the Lord, should endeavour by every means to destroy this most fierce beast, which is destructive of all virtues, knowing that as long as this remains in his breast he not only will never be free from all kinds of evils, but even if he seems to have any good qualities, will lose them by its malign influence. For no structure (so to speak) of virtue can possibly be raised in our soul unless first the foundations of true humility are laid in our heart, which being securely laid may be able to bear the weight of perfection and love upon them in such a way that, as we have said, we may first show to our brethren true humility from the very bottom of our heart, in nothing acquiescing in making them sad or in injuring them: and this we cannot possibly manage unless true self-denial, which consists in stripping and depriving ourselves of all our possessions, is implanted in us by the love of Christ. Next the yoke of obedience and subjection must be taken up in simplicity of heart without any pretence, so that, except for the commands of the Abbot, no will of our own is alive in us. But this can only be ensured in the case of one who considers himself not only dead to this world, but also unwise and a fool; and performs without any discussion whatever is enjoined him by his seniors, believing it to be divine and enjoined from heaven. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXIII.
Remedies against the evil of pride.
And when men remain in this condition, there is no doubt that this quiet and secure state of humility will follow, so that considering ourselves inferior to every one else we shall bear everything offered to us, even if it is hurtful, and saddening, and damaging--with the utmost patience, as if it came from those who are our superiors. And these things we shall not only bear with the greatest ease, but we shall consider them trifling and mere nothings, if we constantly bear in mind the passion of our Lord and of all His Saints: considering that the injuries by which we are tried are so much less than theirs, as we are so far behind their merits and their lives: remembering also that we shall shortly depart out of this world, and soon by a speedy end to our life here become sharers of their lot. For considerations such as these are a sure end not only to pride but to all kinds of sins. Then, next after this we must keep a firm grasp of this same humility towards God: which we must so secure as not only to acknowledge that we cannot possibly perform anything connected with the attainment of perfect virtue without His assistance and grace, but also truly to believe that this very fact that we can understand this, is His own gift. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
The Conferences of John Cassian.
Part I.
Containing Conferences I-X. __________________________________________________________________
Preface. __________________________________________________________________
The obligation, which was promised to the blessed Pope Castor in the preface to those volumes which with God's help I composed in twelve books on the Institutes of the Coenobia, and the remedies for the eight principal faults, has now been, as far as my feeble ability permitted, satisfied. I should certainly like to see what was the opinion fairly arrived at on this work both by his judgment and yours, whether, on a matter so profound and so lofty, and one which has never yet been made the subject of a treatise, we have produced anything worthy of your notice, and of the eager desire of all the holy brethren. But now as the aforesaid Bishop has left us and departed to Christ, meanwhile these ten Conferences of the grandest of the fathers, viz., the Anchorites who dwelt in the desert of Scete, which he, fired with an incomparable desire for saintliness, had bidden me write for him in the same style (not considering in the greatness of his affection, what a burden he placed on shoulders too weak to bear it)--these Conferences I have thought good to dedicate to you in particular, O blessed Pope, [1083] Leontius, [1084] and holy brother Helladius. [1085] For one of you was united to him whom I have mentioned, by the ties of brotherhood, and the rank of the priesthood, and (what is more to the point) by fervour in sacred study, and so has an hereditary right to demand the debt due to his brother: while the other has ventured to follow the sublime customs of the Anchorites, not like some others, presumptuously on his own account, but seizing, at the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, on the right path of doctrine almost before he had been taught and choosing to learn not so much from his own ideas as from their traditions. Wherein just as I had anchored in the harbour of Silence, a wide sea opens out before me, so that I must venture to hand down for posterity some of the Institutes and teaching of these great men. For the bark of my slender abilities will be exposed to the dangers of a longer voyage on the deep, in proportion as the Anchorite's life is grander than that of the Coenobium, and the contemplation of God, to which those inestimable men ever devoted themselves, more sublime than ordinary practical life. It is yours therefore to assist our efforts by your pious prayers for fear lest so sacred a subject that is to be treated in an untried but faithful manner, should be imperilled by us, or lest our simplicity should lose itself in the depths of the subject matter. Let us therefore pass from what is visible to the eye and the external mode of life of the monks, of which we treated in the former books, to the life of the inner man, which is hidden from view; and from the system of the canonical prayers, let our discourse mount to that continuance in unceasing prayer, which the Apostle enjoins, that whoever has through reading our former work already spiritually gained the name of Jacob by ousting his carnal faults, may now by the reception of the Institutes which are not mine but the fathers', mount by a pure insight to the merits and (so to speak) the dignity of Israel, and in the same way be taught what it is that he should observe on these lofty heights of perfection. [1086] And so may your prayers gain from Him, Who has deemed us worthy both to see them and to learn from them and to dwell with them, that He will vouchsafe to grant us a perfect recollection of their teaching, and a ready tongue to tell it, that we may explain them as beautifully and as exactly as we received them from them and may succeed in setting before you the men themselves incorporated, as it were, in their own Institutes, and what is more to the point, speaking in the Latin tongue. Of this however we wish above all to advertise the reader of these conferences as well as of our earlier works, that if there chances to be anything herein which by reason of his condition and the character of his profession, or owing to custom and the common mode of life seems to him either impossible or very difficult, he should measure it not by the limits of his own powers but by the worth and perfection of the speakers, whose zeal and purpose he should first consider, as they were truly dead to this worldly life, and so hampered by no feelings for their kinsmen according to the flesh, and by no ties of worldly occupations. Next let him bear in mind the character of the country in which they dwelt, how they lived in a vast desert, and were cut off from intercourse with all their fellow-men, and thus were able to have their minds enlightened, and to contemplate, and utter those things which perhaps will seem impossibilities to the uninitiated and uninstructed, because of their way of life and the commonplace character of their habits. But if any one wants to give a true opinion on this matter, and is anxious to try whether such perfection can be attained, let him first endeavour to make their purpose his own, with the same zeal and the same mode of life, and then in the end he will find that those things which used to seem beyond the powers of men, are not only possible, but really delightful. But now let us proceed at once to their Conferences and Institutes. __________________________________________________________________
[1083] Papa. See note on the Preface to the Institutes.
[1084] The see of which Leontius was Bishop is uncertain, possibly Fréjus.
[1085] Helladius was afterwards raised to the Episcopate, but of what see is unknown. See the Preface to Conf. XVIII.
[1086] The allusion is rather forced and strained. But Cassian means to say that those who have got the better of their carnal sins by perusing his former work, are already fit to be named Jacob (the supplanter), who got the better of his brother: and he hopes that this new work of his will give them such a view of God and insight into His dealings that they may be worthy to have their name changed, as Jacob's was, to Israel, which he takes to mean the man seeing God. Cf. the note on Against Nestorius, VII. ix. (intelligibilis here = spiritualis, cf. intellectualis. Conf. XII. xi., and elsewhere). __________________________________________________________________
Cassian's Conferences. __________________________________________________________________
I. First Conference of Abbot Moses. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter I.
Of our stay in Scete, and that which we proposed to Abbot Moses.
When I was in the desert of Scete, where are the most excellent monastic fathers and where all perfection flourishes, in company with the holy father Germanus (who had since the earliest days and commencement of our spiritual service been my closest companion both in the Coenobium and in the desert, so that to show the harmony of our friendship and aims, everybody would say that a single heart and soul existed in our two bodies), I sought out Abbot Moses, [1087] who was eminent amid those splendid flowers, not only in practical but also in contemplative excellence, in my anxiety to be grounded by his instruction: and together we implored him to give us a discourse for our edification; not without tears, for we knew full well his determination never to consent to open the gate of perfection, except to those who desired it with all faithfulness, and sought it with all sorrow of heart; for fear lest if he showed it at random to those who cared nothing for it, or only desired it in a half-hearted way, by opening what is necessary, and what ought only to be discovered to those seeking perfection, to unworthy persons, and such as accepted it with scorn, he might appear to lay himself open either to the charge of bragging, or to the sin of betraying his trust; and at last being overcome by our prayers he thus began. __________________________________________________________________
[1087] On this Moses see the note on Institutes, Book X. xxv. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter II.
Of the question of Abbot Moses, who asked what was the goal and what the end of the monk.
All the arts and sciences, said he, have some goal or mark; and end or aim of their own, on which the diligent pursuer of each art has his eye, and so endures all sorts of toils and dangers and losses, cheerfully and with equanimity, e.g., the farmer, shunning neither at one time the scorching heat of the sun, nor at another the frost and cold, cleaves the earth unweariedly, and again and again subjects the clods of his field to his ploughshare, while he keeps before him his goal; viz., by diligent labour to break it up small like fine sand, and to clear it of all briers, and free it from all weeds, as he believes that in no other way can he gain his ultimate end, which is to secure a good harvest, and a large crop; on which he can either live himself free from care, or can increase his possessions. Again, when his barn is well stocked he is quite ready to empty it, and with incessant labour to commit the seed to the crumbling furrow, thinking nothing of the present lessening of his stores in view of the future harvest. Those men too who are engaged in mercantile pursuits, have no dread of the uncertainties and chances of the ocean, and fear no risks, while an eager hope urges them forward to their aim of gain. Moreover those who are inflamed with the ambition of military life, while they look forward to their aim of honours and power take no notice of danger and destruction in their wanderings, and are not crushed by present losses and wars, while they are eager to obtain the end of some honour held out to them. And our profession too has its own goal and end, for which we undergo all sorts of toils not merely without weariness but actually with delight; on account of which the want of food in fasting is no trial to us, the weariness of our vigils becomes a delight; reading and constant meditation on the Scriptures does not pall upon us; and further incessant toil, and self-denial, and the privation of all things, and the horrors also of this vast desert have no terrors for us. And doubtless for this it was that you yourselves despised the love of kinsfolk, and scorned your fatherland, and the delights of this world, and passed through so many countries, in order that you might come to us, plain and simple folk as we are, living in this wretched state in the desert. Wherefore, said he, answer and tell me what is the goal and end, which incite you to endure all these things so cheerfully. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter III.
Of our reply.
And when he insisted on eliciting an opinion from us on this question, we replied that we endured all this for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IV.
Of Abbot Moses' question on the aforesaid statement.
To which he replied: Good, you have spoken cleverly of the (ultimate) end. But what should be our (immediate) goal or mark, by constantly sticking close to which we can gain our end, you ought first to know. And when we frankly confessed our ignorance, he proceeded: The first thing, as I said, in all the arts and sciences is to have some goal, i.e., a mark for the mind, and constant mental purpose, for unless a man keeps this before him with all diligence and persistence, he will never succeed in arriving at the ultimate aim and the gain which he desires. For, as I said, the farmer who has for his aim to live free from care and with plenty, while his crops are springing has this as his immediate object and goal; viz., to keep his field clear from all brambles, and weeds, and does not fancy that he can otherwise ensure wealth and a peaceful end, unless he first secures by some plan of work and hope that which he is anxious to obtain. The business man too does not lay aside the desire of procuring wares, by means of which he may more profitably amass riches, because he would desire gain to no purpose, unless he chose the road which leads to it: and those men who are anxious to be decorated with the honours of this world, first make up their minds to what duties and conditions they must devote themselves, that in the regular course of hope they may succeed in gaining the honours they desire. And so the end of our way of life is indeed the kingdom of God. But what is the (immediate) goal you must earnestly ask, for if it is not in the same way discovered by us, we shall strive and wear ourselves out to no purpose, because a man who is travelling in a wrong direction, has all the trouble and gets none of the good of his journey. And when we stood gaping at this remark, the old man proceeded: The end of our profession indeed, as I said, is the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven: but the immediate aim or goal, is purity of heart, without which no one can gain that end: fixing our gaze then steadily on this goal, as if on a definite mark, let us direct our course as straight towards it as possible, and if our thoughts wander somewhat from this, let us revert to our gaze upon it, and check them accurately as by a sure standard, which will always bring back all our efforts to this one mark, and will show at once if our mind has wandered ever so little from the direction marked out for it. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter V.
A comparison with a man who is trying to hit a mark.
As those, whose business it is to use weapons of war, whenever they want to show their skill in their art before a king of this world, try to shoot their arrows or darts into certain small targets which have the prizes painted on them; for they know that they cannot in any other way than by the line of their aim secure the end and the prize they hope for, which they will only then enjoy when they have been able to hit the mark set before them; but if it happens to be withdrawn from their sight, however much in their want of skill their aim may vainly deviate from the straight path, yet they cannot perceive that they have strayed from the direction of the intended straight line because they have no distinct mark to prove the skilfulness of their aim, or to show up its badness: and therefore while they shoot their missiles idly into space, they cannot see how they have gone wrong or how utterly at fault they are, since no mark is their accuser, showing how far they have gone astray from the right direction; nor can an unsteady look help them to correct and restore the straight line enjoined on them. So then the end indeed which we have set before us is, as the Apostle says, eternal life, as he declares, "having indeed your fruit unto holiness, and the end eternal life;" [1088] but the immediate goal is purity of heart, which he not unfairly terms "sanctification," without which the afore-mentioned end cannot be gained; as if he had said in other words, having your immediate goal in purity of heart, but the end life eternal. Of which goal the same blessed Apostle teaches us, and significantly uses the very term, i.e., skopos, saying as follows, "Forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those that are before, I press toward the mark, for the prize of the high calling of the Lord:" [1089] which is more clearly put in Greek kata skopon dioko, i.e., "I press toward the mark," as if he said, "With this aim, with which I forget those things that are behind, i.e., the faults of earlier life, I strive to reach as the end the heavenly prize." Whatever then can help to guide us to this object; viz., purity of heart, we must follow with all our might, but whatever hinders us from it, we must shun as a dangerous and hurtful thing. For, for this we do and endure all things, for this we make light of our kinsfolk, our country, honours, riches, the delights of this world, and all kinds of pleasures, namely in order that we may retain a lasting purity of heart. And so when this object is set before us, we shall always direct our actions and thoughts straight towards the attainment of it; for if it be not constantly fixed before our eyes, it will not only make all our toils vain and useless, and force them to be endured to no purpose and without any reward, but it will also excite all kinds of thoughts opposed to one another. For the mind, which has no fixed point to which it may return, and on which it may chiefly fasten, is sure to rove about from hour to hour and minute to minute in all sorts of wandering thoughts, and from those things which come to it from outside, to be constantly changed into that state which first offers itself to it. __________________________________________________________________
[1088] Rom. vi. 22.
[1089] Phil. iii. 13, 14. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VI.
Of those who in renouncing the world, aim at perfection without love.
For hence it arises that in the case of some who have despised the greatest possessions of this world, and not only large sums of gold and silver, but also large properties, we have seen them afterwards disturbed and excited over a knife, or pencil, or pin, or pen. Whereas if they kept their gaze steadily fixed out of a pure heart they would certainly never allow such a thing to happen for trifles, while in order that they might not suffer it in the case of great and precious riches they chose rather to renounce them altogether. For often too some guard their books so jealously that they will not allow them to be even slightly moved or touched by any one else, and from this fact they meet with occasions of impatience and death, which give them warning of the need of acquiring the requisite patience and love; and when they have given up all their wealth for the love of Christ, yet as they preserve their former disposition in the matter of trifles, and are sometimes quickly upset about them, they become in all points barren and unfruitful, as those who are without the charity of which the Apostle speaks: and this the blessed Apostle foresaw in spirit, and "though," says he, "I give all my goods to feed the poor, and give my body to be burned, but have not charity, it profiteth me nothing." [1090] And from this it clearly follows that perfection is not arrived at simply by self-denial, and the giving up of all our goods, and the casting away of honours, unless there is that charity, the details of which the Apostle describes, which consists in purity of heart alone. For "not to be envious," "not to be puffed up, not to be angry, not to do any wrong, not to seek one's own, not to rejoice in iniquity, not to think evil" etc., what is all this except ever to offer to God a perfect and clean heart, and to keep it free from all disturbances? __________________________________________________________________
[1090] 1 Cor. xiii. 3. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VII.
How peace of mind should be sought.
Everything should be done and sought after by us for the sake of this. For this we must seek for solitude, for this we know that we ought to submit to fastings, vigils, toils, bodily nakedness, reading, and all other virtues that through them we may be enabled to prepare our heart and to keep it unharmed by all evil passions, and resting on these steps to mount to the perfection of charity, and with regard to these observances, if by accident we have been employed in some good and useful occupation and have been unable to carry out our customary discipline, we should not be overcome by vexation or anger, or passion, with the object of overcoming which, we were going to do that which we have omitted. For the gain from fasting will not balance the loss from anger, nor is the profit from reading so great as the harm which results from despising a brother. Those things which are of secondary importance, such as fastings, vigils, withdrawal from the world, meditation on Scripture, we ought to practise with a view to our main object, i.e., purity of heart, which is charity, and we ought not on their account to drive away this main virtue, for as long as it is still found in us intact and unharmed, we shall not be hurt if any of the things which are of secondary importance are necessarily omitted; since it will not be of the slightest use to have done everything, if this main reason of which we have spoken be removed, for the sake of which everything is to be done. For on this account one is anxious to secure and provide for one's self the implements for any branch of work, not simply to possess them to no purpose, nor as if one made the profit and advantage, which is looked for from them, to consist in the bare fact of possession but that by using them, one may effectually secure practical knowledge and the end of that particular art of which they are auxiliaries. Therefore fastings, vigils, meditation on the Scriptures, self-denial, and the abnegation of all possessions are not perfection, but aids to perfection: because the end of that science does not lie in these, but by means of these we arrive at the end. He then will practise these exercises to no purpose, who is contented with these as if they were the highest good, and has fixed the purpose of his heart simply on them, and does not extend his efforts towards reaching the end, on account of which these should be sought: for he possesses indeed the implements of his art, but is ignorant of the end, in which all that is valuable resides. Whatever then can disturb that purity and peace of mind--even though it may seem useful and valuable--should be shunned as really hurtful, for by this rule we shall succeed in escaping harm from mistakes and vagaries, and make straight for the desired end and reach it. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VIII.
Of the main effort towards the contemplation of things and an illustration from the case of Martha and Mary.
This then should be our main effort: and this steadfast purpose of heart we should constantly aspire after; viz., that the soul may ever cleave to God and to heavenly things. Whatever is alien to this, however great it may be, should be given the second place, or even treated as of no consequence, or perhaps as hurtful. We have an excellent illustration of this state of mind and condition in the gospel in the case of Martha and Mary: for when Martha was performing a service that was certainly a sacred one, since she was ministering to the Lord and His disciples, and Mary being intent only on spiritual instruction was clinging close to the feet of Jesus which she kissed and anointed with the ointment of a good confession, she is shown by the Lord to have chosen the better part, and one which should not be taken away from her: for when Martha was toiling with pious care, and was cumbered about her service, seeing that of herself alone she was insufficient for such service she asks for the help of her sister from the Lord, saying: "Carest Thou not that my sister has left me to serve alone: bid her therefore that she help me"--certainly it was to no unworthy work, but to a praiseworthy service that she summoned her: and yet what does she hear from the Lord? "Martha, Martha, thou art anxious and troubled about many things: but few things are needful, or only one. Mary hath chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her." [1091] You see then that the Lord makes the chief good consist in meditation; i.e., in divine contemplation: whence we see that all other virtues should be put in the second place, even though we admit that they are necessary, and useful, and excellent, because they are all performed for the sake of this one thing. For when the Lord says: "Thou art careful and troubled about many things, but few things are needful or only one," He makes the chief good consist not in practical work however praiseworthy and rich in fruits it may be, but in contemplation of Him, which indeed is simple and "but one"; declaring that "few things" are needful for perfect bliss, i.e., that contemplation which is first secured by reflecting on a few saints: from the contemplation of whom, he who has made some progress rises and attains by God's help to that which is termed "one thing," i.e., the consideration of God alone, so as to get beyond those actions and services of Saints, and feed on the beauty and knowledge of God alone. "Mary" therefore "chose the good part, which shall not be taken away from her." And this must be more carefully considered. For when He says that Mary chose the good part, although He says nothing of Martha, and certainly does not appear to blame her, yet in praising the one, He implies that the other is inferior. Again when He says "which shall not be taken away from her," He shows that from the other her portion can be taken away (for a bodily ministry cannot last forever with a man), but teaches that this one's desire can never have an end. __________________________________________________________________
[1091] S. Luke x. 40-42. The reading which Cassian here follows is found in 'BC,^2 but has not much Latin authority. It is however followed by Jerome Ep: ad Eustochium, xxii. 24, though the Vulgate has simply Porro unum est necessarium. For Mary as the type of the contemplative life, and Martha of the practical, compare S. Gregory the Great. Moralia VI. c. xxviii. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IX.
A question how it is that the practice of virtue cannot remain with a man.
To which we, being deeply moved, replied what then? will the effort of fasting, diligence in reading, works of mercy, justice, piety, and kindness, be taken away from us, and not continue with the doers of them, especially since the Lord Himself promises the reward of the kingdom of heaven to these works, when He says: "Come, ye blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the beginning of the world. For I was an hungred, and ye gave Me to eat; I was thirsty and ye gave Me to drink:" etc. [1092] How then shall these works be taken away, which admit the doers of them into the kingdom of heaven? __________________________________________________________________
[1092] S. Matt. xxv. 34, 35. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter X.
The answer that not the reward, but the doing of them will come to an end.
Moses. I did not say that the reward for a good work would be taken away, as the Lord Himself says: "Whosoever shall give to one of the least of these, a cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple, verily I say unto you, he shall not lose his reward:" [1093] but I maintain that the doing of a thing, which either bodily necessity, or the onslaught of the flesh, or the inequalities of this world, compel to be done, will be taken away. For diligence in reading, and self-denial in fasting, are usefully practised for purifying the heart and chastening the flesh in this life only, as long as "the flesh lusteth against the spirit," [1094] and sometimes we see that even in this life they are taken away from those men who are worn out with excessive toil, or bodily infirmity or old age, and cannot be practised by them. How much more then will they come to an end hereafter, when "this corruptible shall have put on incorruption," [1095] and the body which is now "a natural body" shall have risen "a spiritual body" [1096] and the flesh shall have begun to be such that it no longer lusts against the spirit? And of this the blessed Apostle also clearly speaks, when he says that "bodily exercise is profitable for a little: but godliness" (by which he certainly means love) "is profitable for all things, having the promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come." [1097] This clearly shows that what is said to be useful for a little, is not to be practised for all time, and cannot possibly by itself alone confer the highest state of perfection on the man who slaves at it. For the term "for a little" may mean either of the two things, i.e., it may refer to the shortness of the time, because bodily exercise cannot possibly last on with man both in this life and in the world to come: or it may refer to the smallness of the profit which results from exercising the flesh, because bodily austerities produce some sort of beginnings of progress, but not the actual perfection of love, which has the promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come: and therefore we deem that the practice of the aforesaid works is needful, because without them we cannot climb the heights of love. For what you call works of religion and mercy are needful in this life while these inequalities and differences of conditions still prevail; but even here we should not look for them to be performed, unless such a large proportion of poor, needy, and sick folk abounded, which is brought about by the wickedness of men; viz., of those who have grasped and kept for their own use (without however using them) those things which were granted to all by the Creator of all alike. As long then as this inequality lasts in this world, this sort of work will be needful and useful to the man that practises it, as it brings to a good purpose and pious will the reward of an eternal inheritance: but it will come to an end in the life to come, where equality will reign, when there will be no longer inequality, on account of which these things must be done, but all men will pass from these manifold practical works to the love of God, and contemplation of heavenly things in continual purity of heart: to which those men who are urgent in devoting themselves to knowledge and purifying the heart, have chosen to give themselves up with all their might and main, betaking themselves, while they are still in the flesh, to that duty, in which they are to continue, when they have laid aside corruption, and when they come to that promise of the Lord the Saviour, which says "Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God." [1098] __________________________________________________________________
[1093] S. Matt. x. 42.
[1094] Gal. v. 17.
[1095] 1 Cor. xv. 53.
[1096] 1 Cor. xv. 44.
[1097] 1 Tim. iv. 8.
[1098] S. Matt. v. 8. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XI.
On the abiding character of love.
And why do you wonder that those duties enumerated above will cease, when the holy Apostle tells us that even the higher gifts of the Holy Spirit will pass away: and points out that charity alone will abide without end, saying "whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease: whether there be knowledge, it will come to an end," but of this he says "Charity never faileth." For all gifts are given for a time as use and need require, but when the dispensation is ended they will without doubt presently pass away: but love will never be destroyed. For not only does it work usefully in us in this world; but also in that to come, when the burden of bodily needs is cast off, it will continue in far greater vigour and excellence, and will never be weakened by any defect, but by means of its perpetual incorruption will cling to God more intently and earnestly. [1099] __________________________________________________________________
[1099] 1 Cor. xiii. 8. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XII.
A question on perseverance in spiritual contemplation.
Germanus. Who then, while he is burdened with our frail flesh, can be always so intent on this contemplation, as never to think about the arrival of a brother, or visiting the sick, or manual labour, or at least about showing kindness to strangers and visitors? And lastly, who is not interrupted by providing for the body, and looking after it? Or how and in what way can the mind cling to the invisible and incomprehensible God, this we should like to learn. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIII.
The answer concerning the direction of the heart towards and concerning the kingdom of God and the kingdom of the devil.
Moses. To cling to God continually, and as you say inseparably to hold fast to meditation on Him, is impossible for a man while still in this weak flesh of ours. But we ought to be aware on what we should have the purpose of our mind fixed, and to what goal we should ever recall the gaze of our soul: and when the mind can secure this it may rejoice; and grieve and sigh when it is withdrawn from this, and as often as it discovers itself to have fallen away from gazing on Him, it should admit that it has lapsed from the highest good, considering that even a momentary departure from gazing on Christ is fornication. And when our gaze has wandered ever so little from Him, let us turn the eyes of the soul back to Him, and recall our mental gaze as in a perfectly straight direction. For everything depends on the inward frame of mind, and when the devil has been expelled from this, and sins no longer reign in it, it follows that the kingdom of God is founded in us, as the Evangelist says "The kingdom of God cometh not with observation, nor shall men say Lo here, or lo there: for verily I say unto you that the kingdom of God is within you." [1100] But nothing else can be "within you," but knowledge or ignorance of truth, and delight either in vice or in virtue, through which we prepare a kingdom for the devil or for Christ in our heart: and of this kingdom the Apostle describes the character, when he says "For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost." [1101] And so if the kingdom of God is within us, and the actual kingdom of God is righteousness and peace and joy, then the man who abides in these is most certainly in the kingdom of God, and on the contrary those who live in unrighteousness, and discord, and the sorrow that worketh death, have their place in the kingdom of the devil, and in hell and death. For by these tokens the kingdom of God and the kingdom of the devil are distinguished: and in truth if lifting up our mental gaze on high we would consider that state in which the heavenly powers live on high, who are truly in the kingdom of God, what should we imagine it to be except perpetual and lasting joy? For what is so specially peculiar and appropriate to true blessedness as constant calm and eternal joy? And that you may be quite sure that this, which we say, is really so, not on my own authority but on that of the Lord, hear how very clearly He describes the character and condition of that world: "Behold," says He, "I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former things shall not be remembered nor come into mind. But ye shall be glad and rejoice forever in that which I create." [1102] And again "joy and gladness shall be found therein: thanksgiving and the voice of praise, and there shall be month after month, and Sabbath after Sabbath." [1103] And again: "they shall obtain joy and gladness; and sorrow and sighing shall flee away." [1104] And if you want to know more definitely about that life and the city of the saints, hear what the voice of the Lord proclaims to the heavenly Jerusalem herself: "I will make," says He, "thine officers peace and thine overseers righteousness. Violence shall no more be heard in thy land, desolation nor destruction within thy borders. And salvation shall take possession of thy walls, and praise of thy gates. The sun shall be no more thy light by day, neither shall the brightness of the moon give light to thee: but the Lord shall be thine everlasting light, and thy God thy glory. Thy sun shall no more go down, neither shall thy moon withdraw itself: but the Lord shall be thine everlasting light, and the days of thy mourning shall be ended:" [1105] and therefore the holy Apostle does not say generally or without qualification that every joy is the kingdom of God, but markedly and emphatically that joy alone which is "in the Holy Ghost." [1106] For he was perfectly aware of another detestable joy, of which we hear "the world shall rejoice," [1107] and "woe unto you that laugh, for ye shall mourn." [1108] In fact the kingdom of heaven must be taken in a threefold sense, either that the heavens shall reign, i.e., the saints over other things subdued, according to this text, "Be thou over five cities, and thou over ten;" [1109] and this which is said to the disciples: "Ye shall sit upon twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel:" [1110] or that the heavens themselves shall begin to be reigned over by Christ, when "all things are subdued unto Him," and God begins to be "all in all:" [1111] or else that the saints shall reign in heaven with the Lord. __________________________________________________________________
[1100] S. Luke xvii. 20, 21.
[1101] Rom. xiv. 17.
[1102] Is. lxv. 17, 18.
[1103] Is. li. 3; lxvi. 23.
[1104] Is. xxxv. 10.
[1105] Is. lx. 17-20.
[1106] Cf. Rom. xiv. 17.
[1107] S. John xvi. 20.
[1108] S. Luke vi. 25.
[1109] S. Luke xix. 17, 19.
[1110] S. Matt. xix. 28.
[1111] 1 Cor. xv. 28. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIV.
Of the continuance of the soul.
Wherefore every one while still existing in this body should already be aware that he must be committed to that state and office, of which he made himself a sharer and an adherent while in this life, nor should he doubt that in that eternal world he will be partner of him, whose servant and minister he chose to make himself here: according to that saying of our Lord which says "If any man serve Me, let him follow Me, and where I am, there shall My servant also be." [1112] For as the kingdom of the devil is gained by consenting to sin, so the kingdom of God is attained by the practice of virtue in purity of heart and spiritual knowledge. But where the kingdom of God is, there most certainly eternal life is enjoyed, and where the kingdom of the devil is, there without doubt is death and the grave. And the man who is in this condition, cannot praise the Lord, according to the saying of the prophet which tells us: "The dead cannot praise Thee, O Lord; neither all they that go down into the grave (doubtless of sin). But we," says he, "who live (not forsooth to sin nor to this world but to God) will bless the Lord, from this time forth for evermore: for in death no man remembereth God: but in the grave (of sin) who will confess to the Lord?" [1113] i.e., no one will. For no man even though he were to call himself a Christian a thousand times over, or a monk, confesses God when he is sinning: no man who allows those things which the Lord hates, remembereth God, nor calls himself with any truth the servant of Him, whose commands he scorns with obstinate rashness: in which death the blessed Apostle declares that the widow is involved, who gives herself to pleasure, saying "a widow who giveth herself to pleasure is dead while she liveth." [1114] There are then many who while still living in this body are dead, and lying in the grave cannot praise God; and on the contrary there are many who though they are dead in the body yet bless God in the spirit, and praise Him, according to this: "O ye spirits and souls of the righteous, bless ye the Lord:" [1115] and "every spirit shall praise the Lord." [1116] And in the Apocalypse the souls of them that are slain are not only said to praise God but to address Him also. [1117] In the gospel too the Lord says with still greater clearness to the Sadducees: "Have ye not read that which was spoken by God, when He said to you: I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. He is not the God of the dead but of the living: for all do live unto Him." [1118] Of whom also the Apostle says: "wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for He hath prepared for them a city." [1119] For that they are not idle after the separation from this body, and are not incapable of feeling, the parable in the gospel shows, which tells us of the beggar Lazarus and Dives clothed in purple, one of whom obtained a position of bliss, i.e., Abraham's bosom, the other is consumed with the dreadful heat of eternal fire. [1120] But if you care too to understand the words spoken to the thief "To-day thou shalt be with Me in Paradise," [1121] what do they clearly show but that not only does their former intelligence continue with the souls, but also that in their changed condition they partake of some state which corresponds to their actions and deserts? For the Lord would certainly never have promised him this, if He had known that his soul after being separated from the flesh would either have been deprived of perception or have been resolved into nothing. For it was not his flesh but his soul which was to enter Paradise with Christ. At least we must avoid, and shun with the utmost horror, that wicked punctuation of the heretics, who, as they do not believe that Christ could be found in Paradise on the same day on which He descended into hell, thus punctuate "Verily, I say unto you to-day," and making a stop apply "thou shalt be with Me in Paradise," in such a way that they imagine that this promise was not fulfilled at once after he departed from this life, but that it will be fulfilled after the resurrection, [1122] as they do not understand what before the time of His resurrection He declared to the Jews, who fancied that He was hampered by human difficulties and weakness of the flesh as they were: "No man hath ascended into heaven, but He who came down from heaven, even the Son of man who is in heaven:" [1123] by which He clearly shows that the souls of the departed are not only not deprived of their reason, but that they are not even without such feelings as hope and sorrow, joy and fear, and that they already are beginning to taste beforehand something of what is reserved for them at the last judgment, and that they are not as some unbelievers hold resolved into nothing after their departure from this life: [1124] but that they live a more real life, and are still more earnest in waiting on the praises of God. And indeed to put aside for a little Scripture proofs, and to discuss, as far as our ability permits us, a little about the nature of the soul itself, is it not beyond the bounds of I will not say the folly, but the madness of all stupidity, even to have the slightest suspicion that the nobler part of man, in which as the blessed Apostle shows, the image and likeness of God consists, [1125] will, when the burden of the body with which it is oppressed in this world is laid aside, become insensible, when, as it contains in itself all the power of reason, it makes the dumb and senseless material flesh sensible, by participation with it: especially when it follows, and the order of reason itself demands that when the mind has put off the grossness of the flesh with which it is now weighed down, it will restore its intellectual powers better than ever, and receive them in a purer and finer condition than it lost them. But so far did the blessed Apostle recognize that what we say is true, that he actually wished to depart from this flesh; that by separation from it, he might be able to be joined more earnestly to the Lord; saying: "I desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ, which is far better, for while we are in the body we are absent from the Lord:" and therefore "we are bold and have our desire always to be absent from the body, and present with the Lord. Wherefore also we strive, whether absent or present, to be pleasing to Him;" [1126] and he declares indeed that the continuance of the soul which is in the flesh is distance from the Lord, and absence from Christ, and trusts with entire faith that its separation and departure from this flesh involves presence with Christ. And again still more clearly the same Apostle speaks of this state of the souls as one that is very full of life: "But ye are come to Mount Sion, and the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, and the church of the first born, who are written in heaven, and the spirits of just men made perfect." [1127] Of which spirits he speaks in another passage, "Furthermore we have had instructors of our flesh, and we reverenced them: shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live?" [1128] __________________________________________________________________
[1112] S. John xii. 26.
[1113] Ps. cxiii. 17, 18; vi. 6.
[1114] 1 Tim. v. 6.
[1115] Dan. iii. 86 (LXX).
[1116] Ps. cl. 6.
[1117] Cf. Rev. vi. 9, 10.
[1118] S. Matt. xxii. 31, 32.
[1119] Heb. xi. 16.
[1120] Cf. S. Luke xvi. 19 sq.
[1121] S. Luke xxiii. 43.
[1122] The punctuation which Cassian here mentions only to reject and which is rightly characterized by Alford as "worse than silly," is also mentioned by Theophylact. Com. in loc.
[1123] S. John iii. 13.
[1124] Augustine (De Hæres. c. lix.) speaks of "Seleuciani" or "Hermiani" as denying a visible Paradise, and a future resurrection; and again in c. lxxxiii. he speaks of some Arabian heretics, as teaching that the soul died and was dissolved (dissolvi) with the body and that it would at the end of the world be revived and rise again. These were the heretics of whom Eusebius speaks in his Eccl. History Book VI. c. xxxvii., where he tells us that they were successfully refuted by Origen. It is probably to this last error that Cassian is here making allusion.
[1125] Cf. 1 Cor. xi. 7; Col. iii. 10.
[1126] Phil. i. 23; 2 Cor. v. 6.
[1127] Heb. xii. 22, 23.
[1128] Ibid., ver. 9. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XV.
How we must meditate on God.
But the contemplation of God is gained in a variety of ways. For we not only discover God by admiring His incomprehensible essence, a thing which still lies hid in the hope of the promise, but we see Him through the greatness of His creation, and the consideration of His justice, and the aid of His daily providence: when with pure minds we contemplate what He has done with His saints in every generation, when with trembling heart we admire His power with which He governs, directs, and rules all things, or the vastness of His knowledge, and that eye of His from which no secrets of the heart can lie hid, when we consider the sand of the sea, and the number of the waves measured by Him and known to Him, when in our wonder we think that the drops of rain, the days and hours of the ages, and all things past and future are present to His knowledge; when we gaze in unbounded admiration on that ineffable mercy of His, which with unwearied patience endures countless sins which are every moment being committed under His very eyes, or the call with which from no antecedent merits of ours, but by the free grace of His pity He receives us; or again the numberless opportunities of salvation which He grants to those whom He is going to adopt--that He made us be born in such a way as that from our very cradles His grace and the knowledge of His law might be given to us, that He Himself, overcoming our enemy in us simply for the pleasure of His good will, rewards us with eternal bliss and everlasting rewards, when lastly He undertook the dispensation of His Incarnation for our salvation, and extended the marvels of His sacraments [1129] to all nations. But there are numberless other considerations of this sort, which arise in our minds according to the character of our life and the purity of our heart, by which God is either seen by pure eyes or embraced: which considerations certainly no one will preserve lastingly, if anything of carnal affections still survives in him, because "thou canst not," saith the Lord, "see My face: for no man shall see Me and live;" [1130] viz., to this world and to earthly affections. __________________________________________________________________
[1129] Mysteriorum.
[1130] Exod. xxxiii. 20. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVI.
A question on the changing character of the thoughts.
Germanus. How is it then, that even against our will, aye and without our knowledge idle thoughts steal upon us so subtilely and secretly that it is fearfully hard not merely to drive them away, but even to grasp and seize them? Can then a mind sometimes be found free from them, and never attacked by illusions of this kind? __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVII.
The answer what the mind can and what it cannot do with regard to the state of its thoughts.
Moses. It is impossible for the mind not to be approached by thoughts, but it is in the power of every earnest man either to admit them or to reject them. As then their rising up does not entirely depend on ourselves, so the rejection or admission of them lies in our own power. But because we said that it is impossible for the mind not to be approached by thoughts, you must not lay everything to the charge of the assault, or to those spirits who strive to instil them into us, else there would not remain any free will in man, nor would efforts for our improvement be in our power: but it is, I say, to a great extent in our power to improve the character of our thoughts and to let either holy and spiritual thoughts or earthly ones grow up in our hearts. For for this purpose frequent reading and continual meditation on the Scriptures is employed that from thence an opportunity for spiritual recollection may be given to us, therefore the frequent singing of Psalms is used, that thence constant feelings of compunction may be provided, and earnest vigils and fasts and prayers, that the mind may be brought low and not mind earthly things, but contemplate things celestial, for if these things are dropped and carelessness creeps on us, the mind being hardened with the foulness of sin is sure to incline in a carnal direction and fall away. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVIII.
Comparison of a soul and a millstone.
And this movement of the heart is not unsuitably illustrated by the comparison of a mill wheel, which the headlong rush of water whirls round, with revolving impetus, and which can never stop its work so long as it is driven round by the action of the water: but it is in the power of the man who directs it, to decide whether he will have wheat or barley or darnel ground by it. That certainly must be crushed by it which is put into it by the man who has charge of that business. So then the mind also through the trials of the present life is driven about by the torrents of temptations pouring in upon it from all sides, and cannot be free from the flow of thoughts: but the character of the thoughts which it should either throw off or admit for itself, it will provide by the efforts of its own earnestness and diligence: for if, as we said, we constantly recur to meditation on the Holy Scriptures and raise our memory towards the recollection of spiritual things and the desire of perfection and the hope of future bliss, spiritual thoughts are sure to rise from this, and cause the mind to dwell on those things on which we have been meditating. But if we are overcome by sloth or carelessness and spend our time in idle gossip, or are entangled in the cares of this world and unnecessary anxieties, the result will be that a sort of species of tares will spring up, and afford an injurious occupation for our hearts, and as our Lord and Saviour says, wherever the treasure of our works or purpose may be, there also our heart is sure to continue. [1131] __________________________________________________________________
[1131] Cf. S. Matt. vi. 21. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIX.
Of the three origins of our thoughts.
Above all we ought at least to know that there are three origins of our thoughts, i.e., from God, from the devil, and from ourselves. They come from God when He vouchsafes to visit us with the illumination of the Holy Ghost, lifting us up to a higher state of progress, and where we have made but little progress, or through acting slothfully have been overcome, He chastens us with most salutary compunction, or when He discloses to us heavenly mysteries, or turns our purpose and will to better actions, as in the case where the king Ahasuerus, being chastened by the Lord, was prompted to ask for the books of the annals, by which he was reminded of the good deeds of Mordecai, and promoted him to a position of the highest honour and at once recalled his most cruel sentence concerning the slaughter of the Jews. [1132] Or when the prophet says: "I will hearken what the Lord God will say in me." [1133] Another too tells us "And an angel spoke, and said in me," [1134] or when the Son of God promised that He would come with His Father, and make His abode in us, [1135] and "It is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you." [1136] And the chosen vessel: "Ye seek a proof of Christ that speaketh in me." [1137] But a whole range of thoughts springs from the devil, when he endeavours to destroy us either by the pleasures of sin or by secret attacks, in his crafty wiles deceitfully showing us evil as good, and transforming himself into an angel of light to us: [1138] as when the evangelist tells us: "And when supper was ended, when the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, to betray" [1139] the Lord: and again also "after the sop," he says, "Satan entered into him." [1140] Peter also says to Ananias: "Why hath Satan tempted thine heart, to lie to the Holy Ghost?" [1141] And that which we read in the gospel much earlier as predicted by Ecclesiastes: "If the spirit of the ruler rise up against thee, leave not thy place." [1142] That too which is said to God against Ahab in the third book of Kings, in the character of an unclean spirit: "I will go forth and will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets." [1143] But they arise from ourselves, when in the course of nature we recollect what we are doing or have done or have heard. Of which the blessed David speaks: "I thought upon the ancient days, and had in mind the years from of old, and I meditated, by night I exercised myself with my heart, and searched out my spirit." [1144] And again: "the Lord knoweth the thoughts of man, that they are vain:" [1145] and "the thoughts of the righteous are judgments." [1146] In the gospel too the Lord says to the Pharisees: "why do ye think evil in your hearts?" [1147] __________________________________________________________________
[1132] Cf. Esth. vi. 1 sq.
[1133] Ps. lxxxiv. (lxxxv.) 9.
[1134] Zech. i. 14.
[1135] Cf. S. John xiv. 23.
[1136] S. Matt. x. 20.
[1137] 2 Cor. xiii. 3.
[1138] Cf. 2 Cor. xi. 4.
[1139] S. John xiii. 2.
[1140] Ibid., ver. 27.
[1141] Acts v. 3.
[1142] Eccl. x. 4.
[1143] 1 Kings xxii. 22.
[1144] Ps. lxxvi. (lxxvii.) 6, 7. Scobebam(which Petschenig edits from the mss.) = scopebam, which is found in the Gallican Psalter as in the old Latin in this passage. It is merely a Latinized form of skopein.
[1145] Ps. xciii. (xciv.) 11.
[1146] Prov. xii. 5.
[1147] S. Matt. ix. 4. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XX.
About discerning the thoughts, with an illustration from a good money-changer.
We ought then carefully to notice this threefold order, and with a wise discretion to analyse the thoughts which arise in our hearts, tracking out their origin and cause and author in the first instance, that we may be able to consider how we ought to yield ourselves to them in accordance with the desert of those who suggest them so that we may, as the Lord's command bids us, become good money-changers, [1148] whose highest skill and whose training is to test what is perfectly pure gold and what is commonly termed tested, [1149] or what is not sufficiently purified in the fire; and also with unerring skill not to be taken in by a common brass denarius, if by being coloured with bright gold it is made like some coin of great value; and not only shrewdly to recognize coins stamped with the heads of usurpers, but with a still shrewder skill to detect those which have the image of the right king, but are not properly made, and lastly to be careful by the test of the balance to see that they are not under proper weight. All of which things the gospel saying, which uses this figure, shows us that we ought also to observe spiritually; first that whatever has found an entrance into our hearts, and whatever doctrine has been received by us, should be most carefully examined to see whether it has been purified by the divine and heavenly fire of the Holy Ghost, or whether it belongs to Jewish superstition, or whether it comes from the pride of a worldly philosophy and only externally makes a show of religion. And this we can do, if we carry out the Apostle's advice, "Believe not every spirit, but prove the spirits whether they are of God." [1150] But by this kind those men also are deceived, who after having been professed as monks are enticed by the grace of style, and certain doctrines of philosophers, which at the first blush, owing to some pious meanings not out of harmony with religion, deceive as with the glitter of gold their hearers, whom they have superficially attracted, but render them poor and miserable for ever, like men deceived by false money made of copper: either bringing them back to the bustle of this world, or enticing them into the errors of heretics, and bombastic conceits: a thing which we read of as happening to Achan in the book of Joshua the son of Nun, [1151] when he coveted a golden weight from the camp of the Philistines, and stole it, and was smitten with a curse and condemned to eternal death. In the second place we should be careful to see that no wrong interpretation fixed on to the pure gold of Scripture deceives us as to the value of the metal: by which means the devil in his craft tried to impose upon our Lord and Saviour as if He was a mere man, when by his malevolent interpretation he perverted what ought to be understood generally of all good men, and tried to fasten it specially on to Him, who had no need of the care of the angels: saying, "For He shall give His angels charge concerning Thee, to keep Thee in all Thy ways: and in their hands they shall bear Thee up, lest at any time Thou dash Thy foot against a stone," [1152] by a skilful assumption on his part giving a turn to the precious sayings of Scripture and twisting them into a dangerous sense, the very opposite of their true meaning, so as to offer to us the image and face of an usurper under cover of the gold colour which may deceive us. Or whether he tries to cheat us with counterfeits, for instance by urging that some work of piety should be taken up which as it does come from the true minds of the fathers, leads under the form of virtue to vice; and, deceiving us either by immoderate or impossible fasts, or by too long vigils, or inordinate prayers, or unsuitable reading, brings us to a bad end. Or, when he persuades us to give ourselves up to mixing in the affairs of others, and to pious visits, by which he may drive us away from the spiritual cloisters of the monastery, and the secrecy of its friendly peacefulness, and suggests that we take on our shoulders the anxieties and cares of religious women who are in want, that when a monk is inextricably entangled in snares of this sort he may distract him with most injurious occupations and cares. Or else when he incites a man to desire the holy office of the clergy under the pretext of edifying many people, and the love of spiritual gain, by which to draw us away from the humility and strictness of our life. All of which things, although they are opposed to our salvation and to our profession, yet when covered with a sort of veil of compassion and religion, easily deceive those who are lacking in skill and care. For they imitate the coins of the true king, because they seem at first full of piety, but are not stamped by those who have the right to coin, i.e., the approved Catholic fathers, nor do they proceed from the head public office for receiving them, but are made by stealth and by the fraud of the devil, and palmed off upon the unskilful and ignorant not without serious harm. And even although they seem to be useful and needful at first, yet if afterwards they begin to interfere with the soundness of our profession, and as it were to weaken in some sense the whole body of our purpose, it is well that they should be cut off and cast away from us like a member which may be necessary, but yet offends us and which seems to perform the office of the right hand or foot. For it is better, without one member of a command, i.e., its working or result, to continue safe and sound in other parts, and to enter as weak into the kingdom of heaven rather than with the whole mass of commands to fall into some error which by an evil custom separates us from our strict rule and the system purposed and entered upon, and leads to such loss, that it will never outweigh the harm that will follow, but will cause all our past fruits and the whole body of our work to be burnt in hell fire. [1153] Of which kind of illusions it is well said in the Proverbs: "There are ways which seem to be right to a man, but their latter end will come into the depths of hell," [1154] and again "An evil man is harmful when he attaches himself to a good man," [1155] i.e., the devil deceives when he is covered with an appearance of sanctity: "but he hates the sound of the watchman," [1156] i.e., the power of discretion which comes from the words and warnings of the fathers. __________________________________________________________________
[1148] Ut efficiamur secundum proeceptum Domini probabiles trapezitoe. The saying to which Cassian here alludes, ginesthe trapexitai dokimoi, is not found anywhere in the Gospels, but "is the most commonly quoted of all Apocryphal sayings, and seems to be genuine." Westcott, Introd. to the Gospels, p. 454. It is quoted among others by Origen in Joann. xix., and Jerome Ep. 152. See these and other reff. in Anger's Synopsis, p. 274; and cf. the note of Gazæus here.
[1149] Obrizum. The word occurs in the Vulgate five times for "pure gold." See 2 Chr. iii. 5; Job xxviii. 15; xxxi. 24; Isa. xiii. 12; Dan. x. 5; and is akin to the Greek obruzon. Cf. Pliny Nat. Hist. xxxiii. c. 3, and Jerome De Nom. Hebr. s. v. Ophaz.
[1150] 1 John iv. 1.
[1151] Cf. Josh. vii.
[1152] S. Matt. iv. 6; Ps. xc. 11, 12.
[1153] Cf. S. Matt. xviii. 8.
[1154] Prov. xvi. 25 (LXX.).
[1155] Prov. xi. 15 (LXX.).
[1156] Prov. xi. 15 (LXX.). __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXI.
Of the illusion of Abbot John.
In this manner we have heard that Abbot John who lived at Lycon, [1157] was recently deceived. For when his body was exhausted and failing as he had put off taking food during a fast of two days, on the third day while he was on his way to take some refreshment the devil came in the shape of a filthy Ethiopian, and falling at his feet, cried "Pardon me because I appointed this labour for you." And so that great man, who was so perfect in the matter of discretion, understood that under pretence of an abstinence practised unsuitably, he was deceived by the craft of the devil, and engaged in a fast of such a character as to affect his worn out body with a weariness that was unnecessary, indeed that was harmful to the spirit; as he was deceived by a counterfeit coin, and, while he paid respect to the image of the true king upon it, was not sufficiently alive to the question whether it was rightly cut and stamped. But the last duty of this "good money-changer," which, as we mentioned before, concerns the examination of the weight, will be fulfilled, if whenever our thoughts suggest that anything is to be done, we scrupulously think it over, and, laying it in the scales of our breast, weigh it with the most exact balance, whether it be full of good for all, or heavy with the fear of God: or entire and sound in meaning; or whether it be light with human display or some conceit of novelty, or whether the pride of foolish vain glory has not diminished or lessened the weight of its merit. And so straightway weighing them in the public balance, i.e., testing them by the acts and proofs of the Apostles and Prophets let us hold them as it were entire and perfect and of full weight, or else with all care and diligence reject them as imperfect and counterfeit, and of insufficient weight. __________________________________________________________________
[1157] On this John of Lycon or Lycopolis see the note on Inst. IV. xxiii. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXII.
Of the fourfold method of discrimination.
This power of discriminating will then be necessary for us in the fourfold manner of which we have spoken; viz., first that the material does not escape our notice whether it be of true or of painted gold: secondly, that those thoughts which falsely promise works of religion should be rejected by us as forged and counterfeit coins, as they are those which are not rightly stamped, and which bear an untrue image of the king; and that we may be able in the same way to detect those which in the case of the precious gold of Scripture, by means of a false and heretical meaning, show the image not of the true king but of an usurper; and that we refuse those whose weight and value the rust of vanity has depreciated and not allowed to pass in the scales of the fathers, as coins that are too light, and are false and weigh too little; so that we may not incur that which we are warned by the Lord's command to avoid with all our power, and lose the value and reward of all our labour. "Lay not up for yourselves treasures on the earth, where rust and moth corrupt and where thieves break through and steal." [1158] For whenever we do anything with a view to human glory we know that we are, as the Lord says, laying up for ourselves treasure on earth, and that consequently being as it were hidden in the ground and buried in the earth it must be destroyed by sundry demons or consumed by the biting rust of vain glory, or devoured by the moths of pride so as to contribute nothing to the use and profits of the man who has hidden it. We should then constantly search all the inner chambers of our hearts, and trace out the footsteps of whatever enters into them with the closest investigation lest haply some beast, if I may say so, relating to the understanding, either lion or dragon, passing through has furtively left the dangerous marks of his track, which will show to others the way of access into the secret recesses of the heart, owing to a carelessness about our thoughts. And so daily and hourly turning up the ground of our heart with the gospel plough, i.e., the constant recollection of the Lord's cross, we shall manage to stamp out or extirpate from our hearts the lairs of noxious beasts and the lurking places of poisonous serpents. __________________________________________________________________
[1158] S. Matt. vi. 19. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXIII.
Of the discourse of the teacher in regard to the merits of his hearers.
At this the old man seeing that we were astonished, and inflamed at the words of his discourse with an insatiable desire, stopped his speech for a little in consequence of our admiration and earnestness, and presently added: Since your zeal, my sons, has led to so long a discussion, and a sort of fire supplies keener zest to our conference in proportion to your earnestness, as from this very thing I can clearly see that you are truly thirsting after teaching about perfection, I want still to say something to you on the excellence of discrimination and grace which rules and holds the field among all virtues, and not merely to prove its value and usefulness by daily instances of it, but also from former deliberations and opinions of the fathers. For I remember that frequently when men were asking me with sighs and tears for a discourse of this kind, and I myself was anxious to give them some teaching I could not possibly manage it, and not merely my thoughts but even my very power of speech failed me so that I could not find how to send them away with even some slight consolation. And by these signs we clearly see that the grace of the Lord inspires the speakers with words according to the deserts and zeal of the hearers. And because the very short night which is before us does not allow me to finish the discourse, let us the rather give it up to bodily rest, in which the whole of it will have to be spent, if a reasonable portion is refused, and let us reserve the complete scheme of the discourse for unbroken consideration on a future day or night. For it is right for the best counsellors on discretion to show the diligence of their minds in the first place in this, and to prove whether they are or can be possessors of it by this evidence and patience, so that in treating of that virtue which is the mother of moderation they may by no means fall into the vice which is opposite to it; viz., that of undue length, by their actions and deeds destroying the force of the system and nature which they recommend in word. In regard then to this most excellent discretion, on which we still propose to inquire, so far as the Lord gives us power, it may in the first instance be a good thing, when we are disputing about its excellence and the moderation which we know exists in it as the first of virtues, not to allow ourselves to exceed the due limit of the discussion and of our time.
And so with this the blessed Moses put a stop to our talk, and urged us, eager though we were and hanging on his lips, to go off to bed for a little, advising us to lie down on the same mats on which we were sitting, and to put our bundles [1159] under our heads instead of pillows, as these being tied evenly to thicker leaves of papyrus collected in long and slender bundles, six feet apart, at one time provide the brethren when sitting at service with a very low seat instead of a footstool, at another time being put under their necks when they go to bed furnish a support for their heads, that is not too hard, but comfortable and just right. For which uses of the monks these things are considered especially fit and suitable not only because they are somewhat soft, and prepared at little cost of money and labour, as the papyrus grows everywhere along the banks of the Nile, but also because they are of a convenient stuff and light enough to be removed or fetched as need may require. And so at last at the bidding of the old man we settled ourselves down to sleep in deep stillness, both excited with delight at the conference we had held, and also buoyed up with hope of the promised discussion. __________________________________________________________________
[1159] Embrimium. The word is possibly of Egyptian origin. It occurs also in Cyril in Vita S. Euthymii Abbatt, n. 90, and in Apophthegm, Patrum num. 7, and is possibly the same word as "Ebymium," which occurs in the Rule of Pachomius, c. xiv. See Ducange, sub voce. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
II. Second Conference of Abbot Moses. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter I.
Abbot Moses' introduction on the grace of discretion.
And so when we had enjoyed our morning sleep, when to our delight the dawn of light again shone upon us, and we had begun to ask once more for his promised talk, the blessed Moses thus began: As I see you inflamed with such an eager desire, that I do not believe that that very short interval of quiet which I wanted to subtract from our spiritual conference and devote to bodily rest, has been of any use for the repose of your bodies, on me too a greater anxiety presses when I take note of your zeal. For I must give the greater care and devotion in paying my debt, in proportion as I see that you ask for it the more earnestly, according to that saying: "When thou sittest to eat with a ruler consider diligently what is put before thee, and put forth thine hand, knowing that thou oughtest to prepare such things." [1160] Wherefore as we are going to speak of the excellent quality of discretion and the virtue of it, on which subject our discourse of last night had entered at the termination of our discussion, we think it desirable first to establish its excellence by the opinions of the fathers, that when it has been shown what our predecessors thought and said about it, then we may bring forward some ancient and modern shipwrecks and mischances of various people, who were destroyed and hopelessly ruined because they paid but little attention to it, and then as well as we can we must treat of its advantages and uses: after a discussion of which we shall know better how we ought to seek after it and practise it, by the consideration of the importance of its value and grace. For it is no ordinary virtue nor one which can be freely gained by merely human efforts, unless they are aided by the Divine blessing, for we read that this is also reckoned among the noblest gifts of the Spirit by the Apostle: "To one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom, to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another the gift of healing by the same Spirit," and shortly after, "to another the discerning of spirits." Then after the complete catalogue of spiritual gifts he subjoins: "But all these worketh one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally as He will." [1161] You see then that the gift of discretion is no earthly thing and no slight matter, but the greatest prize of divine grace. And unless a monk has pursued it with all zeal, and secured a power of discerning with unerring judgment the spirits that rise up in him, he is sure to go wrong, as if in the darkness of night and dense blackness, and not merely to fall down dangerous pits and precipices, but also to make frequent mistakes in matters that are plain and straightforward. __________________________________________________________________
[1160] Prov. xxiii. 1, 2 (LXX.).
[1161] 1 Cor. xii. 8-11. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter II.
What discretion alone can give a monk; and a discourse of the blessed Antony on this subject.
And so I remember that while I was still a boy, in the region of Thebaid, where the blessed Antony lived, [1162] the elders came to him to inquire about perfection: and though the conference lasted from evening till morning, the greatest part of the night was taken up with this question. For it was discussed at great length what virtue or observance could preserve a monk always unharmed by the snares and deceits of the devil, and carry him forward on a sure and right path, and with firm step to the heights of perfection. And when each one gave his opinion according to the bent of his own mind, and some made it consist in zeal in fasting and vigils, because a soul that has been brought low by these, and so obtained purity of heart and body will be the more easily united to God, others in despising all things, as, if the mind were utterly deprived of them, it would come the more freely to God, as if henceforth there were no snares to entangle it: others thought that withdrawal from the world was the thing needful, i.e., solitude and the secrecy of the hermit's life; living in which a man may more readily commune with God, and cling more especially to Him; others laid down that the duties of charity, i.e., of kindness should be practised, because the Lord in the gospel promised more especially to give the kingdom to these; when He said "Come ye blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was an hungred and ye gave Me to eat, I was thirsty and ye gave Me to drink, etc.:" [1163] and when in this fashion they declared that by means of different virtues a more certain approach to God could be secured, and the greater part of the night had been spent in this discussion, then at last the blessed Antony spoke and said: All these things which you have mentioned are indeed needful, and helpful to those who are thirsting for God, and desirous to approach Him. But countless accidents and the experience of many people will not allow us to make the most important of gifts consist in them. For often when men are most strict in fasting or in vigils, and nobly withdraw into solitude, and aim at depriving themselves of all their goods so absolutely that they do not suffer even a day's allowance of food or a single penny to remain to them, and when they fulfil all the duties of kindness with the utmost devotion, yet still we have seen them suddenly deceived, so that they could not bring the work they had entered upon to a suitable close, but brought their exalted fervour and praiseworthy manner of life to a terrible end. Wherefore we shall be able clearly to recognize what it is which mainly leads to God, if we trace out with greater care the reason of their downfall and deception. For when the works of the above mentioned virtues were abounding in them, discretion alone was wanting, and allowed them not to continue even to the end. Nor can any other reason for their falling off be discovered except that as they were not sufficiently instructed by their elders they could not obtain judgment and discretion, which passing by excess on either side, teaches a monk always to walk along the royal road, and does not suffer him to be puffed up on the right hand of virtue, i.e., from excess of zeal to transgress the bounds of due moderation in foolish presumption, nor allows him to be enamoured of slackness and turn aside to the vices on the left hand, i.e., under pretext of controlling the body, to grow slack with the opposite spirit of luke-warmness. For this is discretion, which is termed in the gospel the "eye," "and light of the body," according to the Saviour's saying: "The light of thy body is thine eye: but if thine eye be single, thy whole body will be full of light, but if thine eye be evil, thy whole body will be full of darkness:" [1164] because as it discerns all the thoughts and actions of men, it sees and overlooks all things which should be done. But if in any man this is "evil," i.e., not fortified by sound judgment and knowledge, or deceived by some error and presumption, it will make our whole body "full of darkness," i.e., it will darken all our mental vision and our actions, as they will be involved in the darkness of vices and the gloom of disturbances. For, says He, "if the light which is in thee be darkness, how great will that darkness be!" [1165] For no one can doubt that when the judgment of our heart goes wrong, and is overwhelmed by the night of ignorance, our thoughts and deeds, which are the result of deliberation and discretion, must be involved in the darkness of still greater sins. __________________________________________________________________
[1162] Cf. the note on the Institutes, V. iv.
[1163] S. Matt. xxv. 35, 36.
[1164] S. Matt. vi. 22, 23.
[1165] S. Matt. vi. 22, 23. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter III.
Of the error of Saul and of Ahab, by which they were deceived through lack of discretion.
Lastly, the man who in the judgment of God was the first to be worthy of the kingdom of His people Israel, because he was lacking in this "eye" of discretion, was, as if his whole body were full of darkness, actually cast down from the kingdom while, being deceived by the darkness of this "light," and in error, he imagined that his own offerings were more acceptable to God than obedience to the command of Samuel, and met with an occasion of falling in that very matter in which he had hoped to propitiate the Divine Majesty. [1166] And ignorance, I say, of this discretion led Ahab the king of Israel after a triumph and splendid victory which had been granted to him by the favour of God to fancy that mercy on his part was better than the stern execution of the divine command, and, as it seemed to him, a cruel rule: and moved by this consideration, while he desired to temper a bloody victory with mercy, he was on account of his indiscriminating clemency rendered full of darkness in his whole body, and condemned irreversibly to death. [1167] __________________________________________________________________
[1166] Cf. 1 Sam. xv.
[1167] Cf. 1 Kings xx. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IV.
What is said of the value of discretion in Holy Scripture.
Such is discretion, which is not only the "light of the body," but also called the sun by the Apostle, as it said "Let not the sun go down upon your wrath." [1168] It is also called the guidance of our life: as it said "Those who have no guidance, fall like leaves." [1169] It is most truly named counsel, without which the authority of Scripture allows us to do nothing, so that we are not even permitted to take that spiritual "wine which maketh glad the heart of man" [1170] without its regulating control: as it is said "Do everything with counsel, drink thy wine with counsel," [1171] and again "like a city that has its walls destroyed and is not fenced in, so is a man who does anything without counsel." [1172] And how injurious the absence of this is to a monk, the illustration and figure in the passage quoted shows, by comparing it to a city that is destroyed and without walls. Herein lies wisdom, herein lies intelligence and understanding without which our inward house cannot be built, nor can spiritual riches be gathered together, as it is said: "A house is built with wisdom, and again it is set up with intelligence. With understanding the storehouses are filled with all precious riches and good things." [1173] This I say is "solid food," which can only be taken by those who are full grown and strong, as it is said: "But solid food is for full grown men, who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern good and evil." [1174] And it is shown to be useful and necessary for us, only in so far as it is in accordance with the word of God and its powers, as is said "For the word of God is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, and reaching even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart:" [1175] and by this it is clearly shown that no virtue can possibly be perfectly acquired or continue without the grace of discretion. And so by the judgment of the blessed Antony as well as of all others it has been laid down that it is discretion which leads a fearless monk by fixed stages to God, and preserves the virtues mentioned above continually intact, by means of which one may ascend with less weariness to the extreme summit of perfection, and without which even those who toil most willingly cannot reach the heights of perfection. For discretion is the mother of all virtues, as well as their guardian and regulator. __________________________________________________________________
[1168] Eph. iv. 26.
[1169] Prov. xi. 14 (LXX.).
[1170] Ps. ciii. (civ.) 15.
[1171] Prov. xxxi. 3 (LXX.).
[1172] Prov. xxv. 28 (LXX.).
[1173] Prov. xxiv. 3, 4 (LXX.).
[1174] Heb. v. 14.
[1175] Heb. iv. 12. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter V.
Of the death of the old man Heron.
And to support this judgment delivered of old by the blessed Antony and the other fathers by a modern instance, as we promised to do, remember what you lately saw happen before your very eyes, I mean, how the old man Heron, [1176] only a very few days ago was cast down by an illusion of the devil from the heights to the depths, a man whom we remember to have lived for fifty years in this desert and to have preserved a strict continence with especial severity, and who aimed at the secrecy of solitude with marvellous fervour beyond all those who dwell here. By what device then or by what method was he deluded by the deceiver after so many labours, and falling by a most grievous downfall struck with profound grief all those who live in this desert? Was it not because, having too little of the virtue of discretion he preferred to be guided by his own judgment rather than to obey the counsels and conference of the brethren and the regulations of the elders? Since he ever practised incessant abstinence and fasting with such severity, and persisted in the secrecy of solitude and a monastic cell so constantly that not even the observance of the Easter festival could ever persuade him to join in the feast with the brethren: when in accordance with the annual observance, all the brethren remained in the church and he alone would not join them for fear lest he might seem to relax in some degree from his purpose by taking only a little pulse. And deceived by this presumption he received with the utmost reverence an angel of Satan as an angel of light and with blind slavishness obeyed his commands and cast himself down a well, so deep that the eye could not pierce its depths, nothing doubting of the promise of the angel who had assured him that the merits of his virtues and labours were such that he could not possibly run any risk. And that he might prove the truth of this most certainly by experimenting on his own safety, in the dead of night he was deluded enough to cast himself into the above mentioned well, to prove indeed the great merit of his virtue if he should come out thence unhurt. And when by great efforts on the part of the brethren he had been got out already almost dead, on the third day afterward he expired, and what was still worse, persisted in his obstinate delusion so that not even the experience of his death could persuade him that he had been deceived by the craft of devils. Wherefore in spite of the merits of his great labours and the number of years which he had spent in the desert those who with compassion and the greatest kindness pitied his end, could hardly obtain from Abbot Paphnutius [1177] that he should not be reckoned among suicides, and be deemed unworthy of the memorial and oblation for those at rest. [1178] __________________________________________________________________
[1176] Gazæus thinks that this is a different person from the man of the same name mentioned by Palladius, Hist. Laus. c. xxxii.
[1177] On Paphnutius see the note on III. i.
[1178] Pausantium, i.e., those at rest. The word is used for the departed in a similar way in the 6th Canon of the Council of Aurelia (Orleans) a.d. 511. "Quando recitantur pausantium nomina." And the phrase "Pausat in pace" is occasionally found in sepulchral inscriptions. Inscr. Boldetti Cimeter. p. 399; Inscr. Maff. Gall. Antiq. p. 55. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VI.
Of the destruction of two brethren for lack of discretion.
What shall I say of those two brethren who lived beyond that desert of the Thebaid where once the blessed Antony dwelt, and, not being sufficiently influenced by careful discrimination, when they were going through the vast and extended waste determined not to take any food with them, except such as the Lord Himself might provide for them. And when as they wandered through the deserts and were already fainting from hunger they were spied at a distance by the Mazices [1179] (a race which is even more savage and ferocious than almost all wild tribes, for they are not driven to shed blood, as other tribes are, from desire of spoil but from simple ferocity of mind), and when these acting contrary to their natural ferocity, met them with bread, one of the two as discretion came to his aid, received it with delight and thankfulness as if it were offered to him by the Lord, thinking that the food had been divinely provided for him, and that it was God's doing that those who always delighted in bloodshed had offered the staff of life to men who were already fainting and dying; but the other refused the food because it was offered to him by men and died of starvation. And though this sprang in the first instance from a persuasion that was blame-worthy yet one of them by the help of discretion got the better of the idea which he had rashly and carelessly conceived, but the other persisting in his obstinate folly, and being utterly lacking in discretion, brought upon himself that death which the Lord would have averted, as he would not believe that it was owing to a Divine impulse that the fierce barbarians forgot their natural ferocity and offered them bread instead of a sword. __________________________________________________________________
[1179] Mazices: a people of Mauritania Cæsariensis, who joined in the revolt of Firmus, but submitted to Theodosius in 373. See Ammianus Marcellinus XXIX. v. § 17. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VII.
Of an illusion into which another fell for lack of discretion.
Why also should I speak of one (whose name we had rather not mention as he is still alive), who for a long while received a devil in the brightness of an angelic form, and was often deceived by countless revelations from him and believed that he was a messenger of righteousness: for when these were granted, every night he provided a light in his cell without the need of any lamp. At last he was ordered by the devil to offer up to God his own son who was living with him in the monastery, in order that his merits might by this sacrifice be made equal to those of the patriarch Abraham. And he was so far seduced by his persuasion that he would really have committed the murder unless his son had seen him getting ready the knife and sharpening it with unusual care, and looking for the chains with which he meant to tie him up for the sacrifice when he was going to offer him up; and had fled away in terror with a presentiment of the coming crime. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VIII.
Of the fall and deception of a monk of Mesopotamia.
It is a long business too to tell the story of the deception of that monk of Mesopotamia, who observed an abstinence that could be imitated by but few in that country, which he had practised for many years concealed in his cell, and at last was so deceived by revelations and dreams that came from the devil that after so many labours and good deeds, in which he had surpassed all those who dwelt in the same parts, he actually relapsed miserably into Judaism and circumcision of the flesh. For when the devil by accustoming him to visions through the wish to entice him to believe a falsehood in the end, had like a messenger of truth revealed to him for a long while what was perfectly true, at length he showed him Christian folk together with the leaders of our religion and creed; viz. Apostles and Martyrs, in darkness and filth, and foul and disfigured with all squalor, and on the other hand the Jewish people with Moses, the patriarchs and prophets, dancing with all joy and shining with dazzling light; and so persuaded him that if he wanted to share their reward and bliss, he must at once submit to circumcision. And so none of these would have been so miserably deceived, if they had endeavoured to obtain a power of discretion. Thus the mischances and trials of many show how dangerous it is to be without the grace of discretion. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IX.
A question about the acquirement of true discretion.
To this Germanus: It has been fully and completely shown both by recent instances and by the decisions of the ancients how discretion is in some sense the fountain head and the root of all virtues. We want then to learn how it ought to be gained, or how we can tell whether it is genuine and from God, or whether it is spurious and from the devil: so that (to use the figure of that gospel parable which you discussed on a former occasion, in which we are bidden to become good money changers [1180] ) we may be able to see the figure of the true king stamped on the coin and to detect what is not stamped on coin that is current, and that, as you said in yesterday's talk using an ordinary expression, we may reject it as counterfeit, under the teaching of that skill which you treated of with sufficient fulness and detail, and showed ought to belong to the man who is spiritually a good money changer of the gospel. For of what good will it be to have recognized the value of that virtue and grace if we do not know how to seek for it and to gain it? __________________________________________________________________
[1180] Cf. I. xx. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter X.
The answer how true discretion may be gained.
Then Moses: True discretion, said he, is only secured by true humility. And of this humility the first proof is given by reserving everything (not only what you do but also what you think), for the scrutiny of the elders, so as not to trust at all in your own judgment but to acquiesce in their decisions in all points, and to acknowledge what ought to be considered good or bad by their traditions. [1181] And this habit will not only teach a young man to walk in the right path through the true way of discretion, but will also keep him unhurt by all the crafts and deceits of the enemy. For a man cannot possibly be deceived, who lives not by his own judgment but according to the example of the elders, nor will our crafty foe be able to abuse the ignorance of one who is not accustomed from false modesty to conceal all the thoughts which rise in his heart, but either checks them or suffers them to remain, in accordance with the ripened judgment of the elders. For a wrong thought is enfeebled at the moment that it is discovered: and even before the sentence of discretion has been given, the foul serpent is by the power of confession dragged out, so to speak, from his dark under-ground cavern, and in some sense shown up and sent away in disgrace. For evil thoughts will hold sway in us just so long as they are hidden in the heart: and that you may gather still more effectually the power of this judgment I will tell you what Abbot Serapion did, [1182] and what he used often to tell to the younger brethren for their edification. __________________________________________________________________
[1181] Cf. what is said on this subject in the Institutes, Book IV. c. ix.
[1182] Probably the author of Conference V., where see the note on c. i. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XI.
The words of Abbot Serapion on the decline of thoughts that are exposed to others, and also on the danger of self-confidence.
While, said he, I was still a lad, and stopping with Abbot Theonas, [1183] this habit was forced upon me by the assaults of the enemy, that after I had supped with the old man at the ninth hour, I used every day secretly to hide a biscuit in my dress, which I would eat on the sly later on without his knowing it. And though I was constantly guilty of the theft with the consent of my will, and the want of restraint that springs from desire that has grown inveterate, yet when my unlawful desire was gratified I would come to myself and torment myself over the theft committed in a way that overbalanced the pleasure I had enjoyed in the eating. And when I was forced not without grief of heart to fulfil day after day this most heavy task required of me, so to speak, by Pharaoh's taskmasters, instead of bricks, and could not escape from this cruel tyranny, and yet was ashamed to disclose the secret theft to the old man, it chanced by the will of God that I was delivered from the yoke of this voluntary captivity, when certain brethren had sought the old man's cell with the object of being instructed by him. And when after supper the spiritual conference had begun to be held, and the old man in answer to the questions which they had propounded was speaking about the sin of gluttony and the dominion of secret thoughts, and showing their nature and the awful power which they have so long as they are kept secret, I was overcome by the power of the discourse and was conscience stricken and terrified, as I thought that these things were mentioned by him because the Lord had revealed to the old man my bosom secrets; and first I was moved to secret sighs, and then my heart's compunction increased and I openly burst into sobs and tears, and produced from the folds of my dress which shared my theft and received it, the biscuit which I had carried off in my bad habit to eat on the sly; and I laid it in the midst and lying on the ground an begging for forgiveness confessed how I used to eat one every day in secret, and with copious tears implored them to intreat the Lord to free me from this dreadful slavery. Then the old man: "Have faith, my child," said he, "Without any words of mine, your confession frees you from this slavery. For you have today triumphed over your victorious adversary, by laying him low by your confession in a manner which more than makes up for the way in which you were overthrown by him through your former silence, as when, never confuting him with your own answer or that of another, you had allowed him to lord it over you, according to that saying of Solomon's: Because sentence is not speedily pronounced against the evil, the heart of the children of men is full within them to do evil:' [1184] and therefore after this exposure of him that evil spirit will no longer be able to vex you, nor will that foul serpent henceforth make his lurking place in you, as he has been dragged out into light from the darkness by your life-giving confession." The old man had not finished speaking when lo! a burning lamp proceeding from the folds of my dress filled the cell with a sulphureous smell so that the pungency of the odour scarcely allowed us to stay there: and the old man resuming his admonition said Lo! the Lord has visibly confirmed to you the truth of my words, so that you can see with your eyes how he who was the author of His Passion has been driven out from your heart by your life-giving confession, and know that the enemy who has been exposed will certainly no longer find a home in you, as his expulsion is made manifest. And so, as the old man declared, said he, the sway of that diabolical tyranny over me has been destroyed by the power of this confession and stilled for ever so that the enemy has never even tried to force upon me any more the recollection of this desire, nor have I ever felt myself seized with the passion of that furtive longing. And this meaning we see is neatly expressed in a figure in Ecclesiastes. "If" says he "a serpent bite without hissing there is no sufficiency for the charmer," [1185] showing that the bite of a serpent in silence is dangerous, i.e., if a suggestion or thought springing from the devil is not by means of confession shown to some charmer, I mean some spiritually minded person who knows how to heal the wound at once by charms from the Scripture, and to extract the deadly poison of the serpent from the heart, it will be impossible to help the sufferer who is already in danger and must soon die. In this way therefore we shall easily arrive at the knowledge of true discretion, so as by following the steps of the Elders never to do anything novel nor to decide anything by or on our own responsibility, but to walk in all things as we are taught by their tradition and upright life. And the man who is strengthened by this system will not only arrive at the perfect method of discretion, but also will remain perfectly safe from all the wiles of the enemy: for by no other fault does the devil drag down a monk so precipitately and lead him away to death, as when he persuades him to despise the counsel of the Elders and to rely on his own opinion and judgment: for if all the arts and contrivances discovered by man's ingenuity and those which are only useful for the conveniences of this temporary life, though they can be felt with the hand and seen with the eye, can yet not be understood by anyone, without lessons from a teacher, how foolish it is to fancy that there is no need of an instructor in this one alone which is invisible and secret and can only be seen by the purest heart, a mistake in which brings about no mere temporary loss or one that can easily be repaired, but the destruction of the soul and everlasting death: for it is concerned with a daily and nightly conflict against no visible foes, but invisible and cruel ones, and a spiritual combat not against one or two only, but against countless hosts, failure in which is the more dangerous to all, in proportion as the foe is the fiercer and the attack the more secret. And therefore we should always follow the footsteps of the Elders with the utmost care, and bring to them everything which rises in our hearts, by removing the veil of shame. __________________________________________________________________
[1183] See the note on Conf. xxi. i.
[1184] Eccl. vii. 11 (LXX.).
[1185] Eccl. x. 11 (LXX.). __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XII.
A confession of the modesty which made us ashamed to reveal our thoughts to the elders.
Germanus: The ground of that hurtful modesty, through which we endeavour to hide bad thoughts, is especially owing to this reason; viz., that we have heard of a superior of the Elders in the region of Syria, as it was believed, who, when one of the brethren had laid bare his thoughts to him in a genuine confession, was afterwards extremely indignant and severely chid him for them. Whence it results that while we press them upon our selves and are ashamed to make them known to the Elders, we cannot obtain the remedies that would heal them. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIII.
The answer concerning the trampling down of shame, and the danger of one without contrition.
Moses: Just as all young men are not alike in fervour of spirit nor equally instructed in learning and good morals, so too we cannot find that all old men are equally perfect and excellent. For the true riches of old men are not to be measured by grey hairs but by their diligence in youth and the rewards of their past labours. "For," says one, "the things that thou hast not gathered in thy youth, how shalt thou find them in thy old age?" "For venerable old age is not that of long time, nor counted by the number of years: but the understanding of a man is grey hairs, and a spotless life is old age." [1186] And therefore we are not to follow in the steps or embrace the traditions and advice of every old man whose head is covered with grey hairs, and whose age is his sole claim to respect, but only of those whom we find to have distinguished themselves in youth in an approved and praiseworthy manner, and to have been trained up not on self-assurance but on the traditions of the Elders. For there are some, and unhappily they form the majority, who pass their old age in a lukewarmness which they contracted in youth, and in sloth, and so obtain authority not from the ripeness of their character but simply from the number of their years. Against whom that reproof of the Lord is specially aimed by the prophet: "Strangers have devoured his strength and he knew it not: yea, grey hairs also are spread about upon him, and he is ignorant of it." [1187] These men, I say, are not pointed out as examples to youth from the uprightness of their lives, nor from the strictness of their profession, which would be worthy of praise and imitation, but simply from the number of their years; and so the subtle enemy uses their grey hairs to deceive the younger men, by a wrongful appeal to their authority, and endeavours in his cunning craftiness to upset and deceive by their example those who might have been urged into the way of perfection by their advice or that of others; and drags them down by means of their teaching and practice either into a baneful indifference, or into deadly despair. And as I want to give you an instance of this, I will tell you a fact which may supply us with some wholesome teaching, without giving the name of the actor, lest we might be guilty of something of the same kind as the man who published abroad the sins of the brother which had been disclosed to him. When this one, who was not the laziest of young men, had gone to an old man, whom we know very well, for the sake of the profit and health of his soul, and had candidly confessed that he was troubled by carnal appetites and the spirit of fornication, fancying that he would receive from the old man's words consolation for his efforts, and a cure for the wounds inflicted on him, the old man attacked him with the bitterest reproaches, and called him a miserable and disgraceful creature, and unworthy of the name of monk, while he could be affected by a sin and lust of this character, and instead of helping him so injured him by his reproaches that he dismissed him from his cell in a state of hopeless despair and deadly despondency. And when he, oppressed with such a sorrow, was plunged in deep thought, no longer how to cure his passion, but how to gratify his lust, the Abbot Apollos, [1188] the most skilful of the Elders, met him, and seeing by his looks and gloominess his trouble and the violence of the assault which he was secretly revolving in his heart, asked him the reason of this upset; and when he could not possibly answer the old man's gentle inquiry, the latter perceived more and more clearly that it was not without reason that he wanted to hide in silence the cause of a gloom so deep that he could not conceal it by his looks, and so began to ask him still more earnestly the reasons for his hidden grief. And by this he was forced to confess that he was on his way to a village to take a wife, and leave the monastery and return to the world, since, as the old man had told him, he could not be a monk, if he was unable to control the desires of the flesh and to cure his passion. And then the old man smoothed him down with kindly consolation, and told him that he himself was daily tried by the same pricks of desire and lust, and that therefore he ought not to give way to despair, nor be surprised at the violence of the attack of which he would get the better not so much by zealous efforts, as by the mercy and grace of the Lord; and he begged him to put off his intention just for one day, and having implored him to return to his cell, went as fast as he could to the monastery of the above mentioned old man--and when he had drawn near to him he stretched forth his hands and prayed with tears, and said "O Lord, who alone art the righteous judge and unseen Physician of secret strength and human weakness, turn the assault from the young man upon the old one, that he may learn to condescend to the weakness of sufferers, and to sympathize even in old age with the frailties of youth." And when he had ended his prayer with tears, he sees a filthy Ethiopian standing over against his cell and aiming fiery darts at him, with which he was straightway wounded, and came out of his cell and ran about hither and thither like a lunatic or a drunken man, and going in and out could no longer restrain himself in it, but began to hurry off in the same direction in which the young man had gone. And when Abbot Apollos saw him like a madman driven wild by the furies, he knew that the fiery dart of the devil which he had seen, had been fixed in his heart, and had by its intolerable heat wrought in him this mental aberration and confusion of the understanding; and so he came up to him and asked "Whither are you hurrying, or what has made you forget the gravity of years and disturbed you in this childish way, and made you hurry about so rapidly"?
And when he owing to his guilty conscience and confused by this disgraceful excitement fancied that the lust of his heart was discovered, and, as the secrets of his heart were known to the old man, did not venture to return any answer to his inquiries, "Return," said he, "to your cell, and at last recognize the fact that till now you have been ignored or despised by the devil, and not counted in the number of those with whom he is daily roused to fight and struggle against their efforts and earnestness,--you who could not--I will not say ward off, but not even postpone for one day, a single dart of his aimed at you after so many years spent in this profession of yours. And with this the Lord has suffered you to be wounded that you may at least learn in your old age to sympathize with infirmities to which you are a stranger, and may know from your own case and experience how to condescend to the frailties of the young, though when you received a young man troubled by an attack from the devil, you did not encourage him with any consolation, but gave him up in dejection and destructive despair into the hands of the enemy, to be, as far as you were concerned, miserably destroyed by him. But the enemy would certainly never have attacked him with so fierce an onslaught, with which he has up till now scorned to attack you, unless in his jealousy at the progress he was to make, he had endeavoured to get the better of that virtue which he saw lay in his disposition, and to destroy it with his fiery darts, as he knew without the shadow of a doubt that he was the stronger, since he deemed it worth his while to attack him with such vehemence. And so learn from your own experience to sympathize with those in trouble, and never to terrify with destructive despair those who are in danger, nor harden them with severe speeches, but rather restore them with gentle and kindly consolations, and as the wise Solomon says, "Spare not to deliver those who are led forth to death, and to redeem those who are to be slain," [1189] and after the example of our Saviour, break not the bruised reed, nor quench the smoking flax, [1190] and ask of the Lord that grace, by means of which you yourself may faithfully learn both in deed and power to sing: "the Lord hath given me a learned tongue that I should know how to uphold by word him that is weary:" [1191] for no one could bear the devices of the enemy, or extinguish or repress those carnal fires which burn with a sort of natural flame, unless God's grace assisted our weakness, or protected and supported it. And therefore, as the reason for this salutary incident is over, by which the Lord meant to set that young man free from dangerous desires and to teach you something of the violence of their attack, and of the feeling of compassion, let us together implore Him in prayer, that He may be pleased to remove that scourge, which the Lord thought good to lay upon you for your good (for "He maketh sorry and cureth: he striketh and his hands heal. He humbleth and exalteth, he killeth and maketh alive: he bringeth down to the grave and bringeth up") [1192] , and may extinguish with the abundant dew of His Spirit the fiery darts of the devil, which at my desire He allowed to wound you. And although the Lord removed this temptation at a single prayer of the old man with the same speed with which He had suffered it to come upon him, yet He showed by a clear proof that a man's faults when laid bare were not merely not to be scolded, but that the grief of one in trouble ought not to be lightly despised. And therefore never let the clumsiness or shallowness of one old man or of a few deter you and keep you back from that life-giving way, of which we spoke earlier, or from the tradition of the Elders, if our crafty enemy makes a wrongful use of their grey hairs in order to deceive younger men: but without any cloak of shame everything should be disclosed to the Elders, and remedies for wounds be faithfully received from them together with examples of life and conversation: from which we shall find like help and the same sort of result, if we try to do nothing at all on our own responsibility and judgment. __________________________________________________________________
[1186] Ecclus. xxv. 5; Wisdom iv. 8, 9.
[1187] Hos. vii. 9.
[1188] Apollos or Apollonius was a most celebrated hermit of the fourth century, who finally became the head of a monastery of five hundred brethren in the Thebaid. Some account of him is given by Palladius (Hist. Laus. c. lii.) and Rufinus (Hist. Monach. c. vii.). Cf. also Sozomen III. xiv.; and VI. xx., whence we learn that his life was written by Timothy, Bishop of Alexandria. Cassian relates another story of him in XXIV. ix.
[1189] Prov. xxiv. 11.
[1190] Cf. S. Matt. xii. 20.
[1191] Is. l. 4.
[1192] Job v. 18; 1 Sam. ii. 6, 7. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIV.
Of the call of Samuel.
Lastly so far has this opinion been shown to be pleasing to God that we see that this system not without reason finds a place in holy Scripture, so that the Lord would not of Himself instruct by the method of a Divine colloquy the lad Samuel, when chosen for judgment, but suffered him to run once or twice to the old man, and willed that one whom He was calling to converse with Him should be taught even by one who had offended God, as he was an old man, and preferred that he whom He had deemed worthy to be called by Him should be trained by the Elder in order to test the humility of him who was called to a Divine office, and to set an example to the younger men by the manner of his subjection. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XV.
Of the call of the Apostle Paul.
And when Christ in His own Person called and addressed Paul, although He might have opened out to him at once the way of perfection, yet He chose rather to direct him to Ananias and commanded him to learn the way of truth from him, saying: "Arise and go into the city and there it shall be told thee what thou oughtest to do." [1193] So He sends him to an older man, and thinks good to have him instructed by his teaching rather than His own, lest what might have been rightly done in the case of Paul might set a bad example of self-sufficiency, if each one were to persuade himself that he also ought in like manner to be trained by the government and teaching of God alone rather than by the instruction of the Elders. And this self-sufficiency the apostle himself teaches, not only by his letters but by his acts and deeds, ought to be shunned with all possible care, as he says that he went up to Jerusalem solely for this reason; viz., to communicate in a private and informal conference with his co-apostles and those who were before him that Gospel which he preached to the Gentiles, the grace of the Holy Spirit accompanying him with powerful signs and wonders: as he says "And I communicated with them the Gospel which I preach among the Gentiles lest perhaps I had run or should run in vain." [1194] Who then is so self-sufficient and blind as to dare to trust in his own judgment and discretion when the chosen vessel confesses that he had need of conference with his fellow apostles. Whence we clearly see that the Lord does not Himself show the way of perfection to anyone who having the opportunity of learning depises the teaching and training of the Elders, paying no heed to that saying which ought most carefully to be observed: "Ask thy father and he will show it to thee: thine Elders and they will tell thee." [1195] __________________________________________________________________
[1193] Acts ix. 6.
[1194] Gal. ii. 2.
[1195] Deut. xxxii. 7. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVI.
How to seek for discretion.
We ought then with all our might to strive for the virtue of discretion by the power of humility, as it will keep us uninjured by either extreme, for there is an old saying akrotetes isotetes, i.e., extremes meet. For excess of fasting and gluttony come to the same thing, and an unlimited continuance of vigils is equally injurious to a monk as the torpor of a deep sleep: for when a man is weakened by excessive abstinence he is sure to return to that condition in which a man is kept through carelessness and negligence, so that we have often seen those who could not be deceived by gluttony, destroyed by excessive fasting and by reason of weakness liable to that passion which they had before overcome. Unreasonable vigils and nightly watchings have also been the ruin of some whom sleep could not get the better of: wherefore as the apostle says "with the arms of righteousness on the right hand and on the left," [1196] we pass on with due moderation, and walk between the two extremes, under the guidance of discretion, that we may not consent to be led away from the path of continence marked out for us, nor fall by undue carelessness into the pleasures of the palate and belly. __________________________________________________________________
[1196] 2 Cor. vi. 7. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVII.
On excessive fasts and vigils.
For I remember that I had so often resisted the desire for food, that having abstained from taking any for two or three days, my mind was not troubled even by the recollection of any eatables and also that sleep was by the assaults of the devil so far removed from my eyes, that for several days and nights I used to pray the Lord to grant a little sleep to my eyes; and then I felt that I was in greater peril from the want of food and sleep than from struggling against sloth and gluttony. And so as we ought to be careful not to fall into dangerous effeminacy through desire for bodily gratification, nor indulge ourselves with eating before the right time nor take too much, so also we ought to refresh ourselves with food and sleep at the proper time even if we dislike it. For the struggle in each case is caused by the devices of the enemy; and excessive abstinence is still more injurious to us than careless satiety: for from this latter the intervention of a healthy compunction will raise us to the right measure of strictness, and not from the former. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVIII.
A question on the right measure of abstinence and refreshment.
Germanus: What then is the measure of abstinence by keeping which with even balance we shall succeed in passing unharmed between the two extremes? __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIX.
Of the best plan for our daily food.
Moses: On this matter we are aware that there have been frequent discussions among our Elders. For in discussing the abstinence of some who supported their lives continually on nothing but beans or only on vegetables and fruits, they proposed to all of them to partake of bread alone, the right measure of which they fixed at two biscuits, so small that they assuredly scarcely weighed a pound. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XX.
An objection on the ease of that abstinence in which a man is sustained by two biscuits.
And this we gladly embraced, and answered that we should scarcely consider this limit as abstinence, as we could not possibly reach it entirely. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXI.
The answer concerning the value and measure of well-proved abstinence.
Moses: If you want to test the force of this rule, keep to this limit continually, never departing from it by taking any cooked food even on Sunday or Saturday, or on the occasions of the arrival of any of the brethren; for the flesh, refreshed by these exceptions, is able not only to support itself through the rest of the week on a smaller quantity, but can also postpone all refreshment without difficulty, as it is sustained by the addition of that food which it has taken beyond the limit; while the man who has always been satisfied with the full amount of the above-mentioned measure will never be able to do this, nor to put off breaking his fast till the morrow. For I remember that our Elders (and I recollect that we ourselves also often had the same experience) found it so hard and difficult to practise this abstinence, and observed the rule laid down with such pain and hunger that it was almost against their will and with tears and lamentation that they set this limit to their meals. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXII.
What is the usual limit both of abstinence and of partaking food.
But this is the usual limit of abstinence; viz., for everyone to allow himself food according to the requirements of his strength or bodily frame or age, in such quantity as is required for the support of the flesh, and not for the satisfactory feeling of repletion. For on both sides a man will suffer the greatest injury, if having no fixed rule at one time he pinches his stomach with meagre food and fasts, and at another stuffs it by over-eating himself; for as the mind which is enfeebled for lack of food loses vigour in praying, while it is worn out with excessive weakness of the flesh and forced to doze, so again when weighed down with over-eating it cannot pour forth to God pure and free prayers: nor will it succeed in preserving uninterruptedly the purity of its chastity, while even on those days on which it seems to chastise the flesh with severer abstinence, it feeds the fire of carnal desire with the fuel of the food that it has already taken. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXIII.
Quemadmodum abundantia umorum genitalium castigetur. [1197]
Nam quod semel per escarum abundantian concretus fuerit in medullis, necesse est egeri atque ab ipsa naturæ lege propelli, quæ exuberantiam cujuslibet umoris superflui velut noxiam sibi atque contrariam in semet ipsa residere non patitur ideoque rationabili semper et æquali est corpus nostrum parsimonia castigandum, ut si naturali hac necessitate commorantes in carne omnimodis carere non possumus, saltim rarius nos et non amplius quamtrina vice ista conluvione respersos totius anni cursus inveniat, quod tamen sine ullo pruritu quietus egerat sopor, non fallax imago index occultæ voluptatis eliciat.
Wherefore this is the moderate and even allowance and measure of abstinence, of which we spoke, which has the approval also of the judgment of the fathers; viz., that daily hunger should go hand in hand with our daily meals, preserving both body and soul in one and the same condition, and not allowing the mind either to faint through weariness from fasting, nor to be oppressed by over-eating, for it ends in such a sparing diet that sometimes a man neither notices nor remembers in the evening that he has broken his fast. __________________________________________________________________
[1197] It has been thought best to leave the first part of the following chapter untranslated. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXIV.
Of the difficulty of uniformity in eating; and of the gluttony of brother Benjamin.
And so far is this not done without difficulty, that those who know nothing of perfect discretion would rather prolong their fasts for two days, and reserve for tomorrow what they should have eaten today, so that when they come to partake of food they may enjoy as much as they can desire. And you know that lastly your fellow citizen Benjamin most obstinately stuck to this: as he would not every day partake of his two biscuits, nor, continually take his meagre fare with uniform self-discipline, but preferred always to continue his fasts for two days that when he came to eat he might fill his greedy stomach with a double portion, and by eating four biscuits enjoy a comfortable sense of repletion, and manage to fill his belly by means of a two days' fast. And you doubtless remember what sort of an end there was to the life of this man who obstinately and pertinaciously relied on his own judgment rather than on the traditions of the Elders, for he forsook the desert and returned back to the vain philosophy of this world and earthly vanities, and so confirmed the above mentioned opinion of the Elders by the example of his downfall, and by his destruction teaches a lesson that no one who trusts in his own opinion and judgment can possibly climb the heights of perfection, nor fail to be deceived by the dangerous wiles of the devil. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXV.
A question how is it possible always to observe one and the same measure.
Germanus: How then can we observe this measure without ever breaking it? for sometimes at the ninth hour when the Station fast [1198] is over, brethren come to see us and then we must either for their sakes add something to our fixed and customary portion, or certainly fail in that courtesy which we are told to show to everybody. __________________________________________________________________
[1198] On the Statio see the note on the Institutes V. xx. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXVI.
The answer how we should not exceed the proper measure of food.
Moses: Both duties must be observed in the same way and with equal care: for we ought most scrupulously to preserve the proper allowance of food for the sake of our abstinence, and in like manner out of charity to show courtesy and encouragement to any of the brethren who may arrive; because it is absolutely ridiculous when you offer food to a brother, nay, to Christ Himself, not to partake of it with him, but to make yourself a stranger to his repast. And so we shall keep clear of guilt on either hand if we observe this plan; viz., at the ninth hour to partake of one of the two biscuits which form our proper canonical allowance, and to keep back the other to the evening, in expectation of something like this, that if any of the brethren comes to see us we may partake of it with him, and so add nothing to our own customary allowance: and by this arrangement the arrival of our brother which ought to be a pleasure to us will cause us no inconvenience: since we shall show him the civilities which courtesy requires in such a way as to relax nothing of the strictness of our abstinence. But if no one should come, we may freely take this last biscuit as belonging to us according to our canonical rule, and by this frugality of ours as a single biscuit was taken at the ninth hour, our stomach will not be overloaded at eventide, a thing which is often the case with those who under the idea that they are observing a stricter abstinence put off all their repast till evening; for the fact that we have but recently taken food hinders our intellect from being bright and keen both in our evening and in our nocturnal prayers, and so at the ninth hour a convenient and suitable time has been allowed for food, in which a monk can refresh himself and so find that he is not only fresh and bright during his nocturnal vigils, but also perfectly ready for his evening prayers, as his food is already digested.
With such a banquet of two courses, as it were, the holy Moses feasted us, showing us not only the grace and power of discretion by his present learned speech, but also the method of renunciation and the end and aim of the monastic life by the discussion previously held; so as to make clearer than daylight what we had hitherto pursued simply with fervour of spirit and zeal for God but with closed eyes, and to make us feel how far we had up till then wandered from purity of heart and the straight line of our course, since the practice of all visible arts belonging to this life cannot possibly stand without an understanding of their aim, nor can it be taken in hand without a clear view of a definite end. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
III. Conference of Abbot Paphnutius.
On the Three Sorts of Renunciations. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter I.
Of the life and conduct of Abbot Paphnutius.
In that choir of saints who shine like brilliant stars in the night of this world, we have seen the holy Paphnutius, [1199] like some great luminary, shining with the brightness of knowledge. For he was a presbyter of our company, I mean of those whose abode was in the desert of Scete, where he lived to extreme old age, without ever moving from his cell, of which he had taken possession when still young, and which was five miles from the church, even to nearer districts; nor was he when worn out with years hindered by the distance from going to Church on Saturday or Sunday. But not wanting to return from thence empty handed he would lay on his shoulders a bucket of water to last him all the week, and carry it back to his cell, and even when he was past ninety would not suffer it to be fetched by the labour of younger men. He then from his earliest youth threw himself into the monastic discipline with such fervour that when he had spent only a short time in it, he was endowed with the virtue of submission, as well as the knowledge of all good qualities. For by the practice of humility and obedience he mortified all his desires, and by this stamped out all his faults and acquired every virtue which the monastic system and the teaching of the ancient fathers produces, and, inflamed with desire for still further advances, he was eager to penetrate into the recesses of the desert, so that, with no human companions to disturb him, he might be more readily united to the Lord, to whom he longed to be inseparably joined, even while he still lived in the society of the brethren. And there once more in his excessive fervour he outstripped the virtues of the Anchorites, and in his eager desire for continual divine meditation avoided the sight of them: and he plunged into solitary places yet wilder and more inaccessible, and hid himself for a long while in them, so that, as the Anchorites themselves only with great difficulty caught a glimpse of him every now and then, the belief was that he enjoyed and delighted in the daily society of angels, and because of this remarkable characteristic of his [1200] he was surnamed by them the Buffalo. __________________________________________________________________
[1199] Paphnutius. The name is not uncommon in the annals of the fourth century: (1) A Deacon who bore it suffered in the persecution of Diocletian; and (2) a Bishop of the same name, who had been a confessor, was mainly instrumental in preventing the rule of celibacy being forced on the clergy by the Council of Nicæa; (3) another was a prominent member of the Meletian schism; while (4) a fourth was present, as Bishop of Sais in Lower Egypt at the Council of Alexandria in 362; and (5) the life of a fifth is given by Palladius (Hist. Laus. lxii.-lxv.) and Rufinus (Hist. Monach. c. xvi.). The one whom Cassian here mentions, surnamed the Buffalo, is apparently a different person from the last mentioned. Further details of his history are given in the Institutes IV. c. xxx. xxxi., and in Conference X. ii., iii. Cassian tells the interesting story of his share in the Anthropomorphite controversy, and the beneficial influence which he then exercised.
[1200] i e., his solitariness. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter II.
Of the discourse of the same old man, and our reply to it.
As then we were anxious to learn from his teaching, we came in some agitation to his cell towards evening. And after a short silence he began to commend our undertaking, because we had left our homes, and had visited so many countries out of love for the Lord, and were endeavouring with all our might to endure want and the trials of the desert, and to imitate their severe life, which even those who had been born and bred in the same state of want and penury, could scarcely put up with; and we replied that we had come for his teaching and instruction in order that we might be to some extent initiated in the customs of so great a man, and in that perfection which we had known from many evidences to exist in him, not that we might be honoured by any commendations to which we had no right, or be puffed up with any elation of mind, (with which we were sometimes exercised in our own cells at the suggestion of our enemy) in consequence of any words of his. Wherefore we begged him rather to lay before us what would make us humble and contrite, and not what would flatter us and puff us up. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter III.
The statement of Abbot Paphnutius on the three kinds of vocations, and the three sorts of renunciations.
Then The Blessed Paphnutius: There are, said he, three kinds of vocations. And we know that there are three sorts of renunciations as well, which are necessary to a monk, whatever his vocation may be. And we ought diligently to examine first the reason for which we said that there were three kinds of vocations, that when we are sure that we are summoned to God's service in the first stage of our vocation, we may take care that our life is in harmony with the exalted height to which we are called, for it will be of no use to have made a good beginning if we do not show forth an end corresponding to it. But if we feel that only in the last resort have we been dragged away from a worldly life, then, as it appears that we rest on a less satisfactory beginning as regards religion, so must we proportionately make the more earnest endeavours to rouse ourselves with spiritual fervour to make a better end. It is well too on every ground for us to know secondly the manner of the threefold renunciations because we shall never be able to attain perfection, if we are ignorant of it or if we know it, but do not attempt to carry it out in act. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IV.
An explanation of the three callings.
To make clear therefore the main differences between these three kinds of calling, the first is from God, the second comes through man, the third is from compulsion. And a calling is from God whenever some inspiration has taken possession of our heart, and even while we are asleep stirs in us at desire for eternal life and salvation, and bids us follow God and cleave to His commandments with life-giving contrition: as we read in Holy Scripture that Abraham was called by the voice of the Lord from his native country, and all his dear relations, and his father's house; when the Lord said "Get thee out from thy country and from thy kinsfolk and from thy father's house." [1201] And in this way we have heard that the blessed Antony also was called, [1202] the occasion of whose conversion was received from God alone. For on entering a church he there heard in the Gospel the Lord saying: "Whoever hateth not father and mother and children and wife and lands, yea and his own soul also, cannot be my disciple;" and "if thou wilt be perfect, go sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven, and come, follow me:" [1203] And with heartfelt contrition he took this charge of the Lord as if specially aimed at him, and at once gave up everything and followed Christ, without any incitement thereto from the advice and teaching of men. The second kind of calling is that which we said took place through man; viz., when we are stirred up by the example of some of the saints, and their advice, and thus inflamed with the desire of salvation: and by this we never forget that by the grace of the Lord we ourselves were summoned, as we were aroused by the advice and good example of the above-mentioned saint, to give ourselves up to this aim and calling; and in this way also we find in Holy Scripture that it was through Moses that the children of Israel were delivered from the Egyptian bondage. But the third kind of calling is that which comes from compulsion, when we have been involved in the riches and pleasures of this life, and temptations suddenly come upon us and either threaten us with peril of death, or smite us with the loss and confiscation of our goods, or strike us down with the death of those dear to us, and thus at length even against our will we are driven to turn to God whom we scorned to follow in the days of our wealth. And of this compulsory call we often find instances in Scripture, when we read that on account of their sins the children of Israel were given up by the Lord to their enemies; and that on account of their tyranny and savage cruelty they turned again, and cried to the Lord. And it says: "The Lord sent them a Saviour, called Ehud, the son of Gera, the son of Jemini, who used the left hand as well as the right:" and again we are told, "they cried unto the Lord, who raised them up a Saviour and delivered them, to wit, Othniel, the son of Kenaz, Caleb's younger brother." [1204] And it is of such that the Psalm speaks: "When He slew them, then they sought Him: and they returned and came to Him early in the morning: and they remembered that God was their helper, and the most High God their redeemer." And again: "And they cried unto the Lord when they were troubled, and He delivered them out of their distress." [1205] __________________________________________________________________
[1201] Gen. xii. 1.
[1202] The story, to which allusion is here made, is given in the Vita Antonii of Athanasius. We are there told that six months after the death of his parents Antony, then a young man of eighteen, chanced to enter a church just as the gospel for the day was being read: and hearing the words, "If thou wilt be perfect," etc., he took them as addressed specially to himself, and at once proceeded to act upon them, selling all that he had except a small portion which he reserved for his sister's maintenance. Shortly after, he was struck by the words, "Take no thought for the morrow," which he heard in church, and acting upon this, made away with the little property which was left, committed his sister to the care of certain faithful virgins, and betook himself to the ascetic life.
[1203] S. Luke xiv. 12; S. Matt. xix. 21.
[1204] Judg. iii. 15, 9.
[1205] Ps. lxxvii. (lxxviii.) 34, 35; cvi. (cvii.) 19. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter V.
How the first of these calls is of no use to a sluggard, and the last is no hindrance to one who is in earnest.
Of these three calls then, although the two former may seem to rest on better principles, yet sometimes we find that even by the third grade, which seems the lowest and the coldest, men have been made perfect and most earnest in spirit, and have become like those who made an admirable beginning in approaching the Lord's service, and passed the rest of their lives also in most laudable fervour of spirit: and again we find that from the higher grade very many have grown cold, and often have come to a miserable end. And just as it was no hindrance to the former class that they seemed to be converted not of their own free will, but by force and compulsion, in as much as the loving kindness of the Lord secured for them the opportunity for repentance, so too to the latter it was of no avail that the early days of their conversion were so bright, because they were not careful to bring the remainder of their life to a suitable end. For in the case of Abbot Moses, [1206] who lived in a spot in the wilderness called Calamus, [1207] nothing was wanting to his merits and perfect bliss, in consequence of the fact that he was driven to flee to the monastery through fear of death, which was hanging over him because of a murder; for he made such use of his compulsory conversion that with ready zeal he turned it into a voluntary one and climbed the topmost heights of perfection. As also on the other hand; to very many, whose names I ought not to mention, it has been of no avail that they entered on the Lord's service with better beginning than this, as afterwards sloth and hardness of heart crept over them, and they fell into a dangerous state of torpor, and the bottomless pit of death, an instance of which we see clearly indicated in the call of the Apostles. For of what good was it to Judas that he had of his own free will embraced the highest grade of the Apostolate in the same way in which Peter and the rest of the Apostles had been summoned, as he allowed the splendid beginning of his call to terminate in a ruinous end of cupidity and covetousness, and as a cruel murderer even rushed into the betrayal of the Lord? Or what hindrance was it to Paul that he was suddenly blinded, and seemed to be drawn against his will into the way of salvation, as afterwards he followed the Lord with complete fervour of soul, and having begun by compulsion completed it by a free and voluntary devotion, and terminated with a magnificent end a life that was rendered glorious by such great deeds? Everything therefore depends upon the end; in which one who was consecrated by a noble conversion at the outset may through carelessness turn out a failure, and one who was compelled by necessity to adopt the monastic life may through fear of God and earnestness be made perfect. __________________________________________________________________
[1206] Moses. This Abbot is possibly a different person from the author of the first two Conferences, who had in his youth been a pupil of Antony; whereas the one here mentioned only took the monastic life out of fear of death on a charge of murder. He is mentioned again in Conferences VII. xxvi., XIX. xi., and some account of him is given in Sozomen H.E. VI. xxix.
[1207] Calamus, mentioned again in the Institutes X. xxiv. (where see note), and cf. Conf. VII. xxvi.; XXIV. iv. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VI.
An account of the three sorts of renunciations.
We must now speak of the renunciations, of which tradition and the authority of Holy Scripture show us three, and which every one of us ought with the utmost zeal to make complete. The first is that by which as far as the body is concerned we make light of all the wealth and goods of this world; the second, that by which we reject the fashions and vices and former affections of soul and flesh; the third, that by which we detach our soul from all present and visible things, and contemplate only things to come, and set our heart on what is invisible. And we read that the Lord charged Abraham to do all these three at once, when He said to him "Get thee out from thy country, and thy kinsfolk, and thy father's house." [1208] First He said "from thy country," i.e., from the goods of this world, and earthly riches: secondly, "from thy kinsfolk," i.e., from this former life and habits and sins, which cling to us from our very birth and are joined to us as it were by ties of affinity and kinship: thirdly, "from thy father's house," i.e., from all the recollection of this world, which the sight of the eyes can afford. For of the two fathers, i.e., of the one who is to be forsaken, and of the one who is to be sought, David thus speaks in the person of God: "Hearken, O daughter, and consider, and incline thine ear: forget also thine own people and thy father's house:" [1209] for the person who says "Hearken, O daughter," is certainly a Father; and yet he bears witness that the one, whose house and people he urges should be forgotten, is none the less father of his daughter. And this happens when being dead with Christ to the rudiments of this world, we no longer, as the Apostle says, regard "the things which are seen, but those which are not seen, for the things which are not seen are eternal," [1210] and going forth in heart from this temporal and visible home, turn our eyes and heart towards that in which we are to remain for ever. And this we shall succeed in doing when, while we walk in the flesh, we are no longer at war with the Lord according to the flesh, proclaiming in deed and actions the truth of that saying of the blessed Apostle "Our conversation is in heaven." [1211] To these three sorts of renunciations the three books of Solomon suitably correspond. For Proverbs answers to the first renunciation, as in it the desires for carnal things and earthly sins are repressed; to the second Ecclesiastes corresponds, as there everything which is done under the sun is declared to be vanity; to the third the Song of Songs, in which the soul soaring above all things visible, is actually joined to the word of God by the contemplation of heavenly things. __________________________________________________________________
[1208] Gen. xii. 1.
[1209] Ps. xliv. (xlv.) 11.
[1210] 2 Cor. iv. 18.
[1211] Phil. iii. 20. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VII.
How we can attain perfection in each of these sorts of renunciations.
Wherefore it will not be of much advantage to us that we have made our first renunciation with the utmost devotion and faith, if we do not complete the second with the same zeal and ardour. And so when we have succeeded in this, we shall be able to arrive at the third as well, in which we go forth from the house of our former parent, (who, as we know well, was our father from our very birth, after the old man, when we were "by nature children of wrath, as others also," [1212] ) and fix our whole mental gaze on things celestial. And of this father Scripture says to Jerusalem which had despised God the true Father, "Thy father was an Amorite, and thy mother a Hittite;" [1213] and in the gospel we read "Ye are of your father the devil and the lusts of your father ye love to do." [1214] And when we have left him, as we pass from things visible to things unseen we shall be able to say with the Apostle: "But we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle is dissolved we have a habitation from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens," [1215] and this also, which we quoted a little while ago: "But our conversation is in heaven, whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus, who will reform the body of our low estate made like to the body of His glory," [1216] and this of the blessed David: "For I am a sojourner upon the earth," and "a stranger as all my fathers were;" [1217] so that we may in accordance with the Lord's word be made like those of whom the Lord speaks to His Father in the gospel as follows: "They are not of the world, as I am not of the world," [1218] and again to the Apostles themselves: "If ye were of this world, the world would love its own: but because ye are not of this world, therefore the world hateth you." [1219] Of this third renunciation then we shall succeed in reaching the perfection, whenever our soul is sullied by no stain of carnal coarseness, but, all such having been carefully eliminated, it has been freed from every earthly quality and desire, and by constant meditation on things Divine, and spiritual contemplation has so far passed on to things unseen, that in its earnest seeking after things above and things spiritual it no longer feels that it is prisoned in this fragile flesh, and bodily form, but is caught up into such an ecstasy as not only to hear no words with the outward ear, or to busy itself with gazing on the forms of things present, but not even to see things close at hand, or large objects straight before the very eyes. And of this no one can understand the truth and force, except one who has made trial of what has been said, under the teaching of experience; viz., one, the eyes of whose soul the Lord has turned away from all things present, so that he no longer considers them as things that will soon pass away, but as things that are already done with, and sees them vanish into nothing, like misty smoke; and like Enoch, "walking with God," and "translated" from human life and fashions, not "be found" amid the vanities of this life. And that this actually happened corporeally in the case of Enoch the book of Genesis thus tells us. "And Enoch walked with God, and was not found, for God translated him." And the Apostle also says: "By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death," the death namely of which the Lord says in the gospel: "He that liveth and believeth in me shall not die eternally." [1220] Wherefore, if we are anxious to attain true perfection, we ought to look to it that as we have outwardly with the body made light of parents, home, the riches and pleasures of the world, we may also inwardly with the heart forsake all these things and never be drawn back by any desires to those things which we have forsaken, as those who were led up by Moses, though they did not literally go back, are yet said to have returned in heart to Egypt; viz., by forsaking God who had led them forth with such mighty signs, and by worshipping the idols of Egypt of which they had thought scorn, as Scripture says: "And in their hearts they turned back into Egypt, saying to Aaron: Make us gods to go before us," [1221] for we should fall into like condemnation with those who, while dwelling in the wilderness, after they had tasted manna from heaven, lusted after the filthy food of sins, and of mean baseness, and should seem together with them to murmur in the same way: "It was well with us in Egypt, when we sat over the flesh pots and ate the onions, and garlic, and cucumbers, and melons:" [1222] A form of speech, which, although it referred primarily to that people, we yet see fulfilled today in our own case and mode of life: for everyone who after renouncing this world turns back to his old desires, and reverts to his former likings asserts in heart and act the very same thing that they did, and says "It was well with me in Egypt," and I am afraid that the number of these will be as large as that of the multitudes of backsliders of whom we read under Moses, for though they were reckoned as six hundred and three thousand armed men who came out of Egypt, of this number not more than two entered the land of promise. Wherefore we should be careful to take examples of goodness from those who are few and far between, because according to that figure of which we have spoken in the gospel "Many are called but few" are said to be "chosen." [1223] A renunciation then in body alone, and a mere change of place from Egypt will not do us any good, if we do not succeed in achieving that renunciation in heart, which is far higher and more valuable. For of that mere bodily renunciation of which we have spoken the apostle declares as follows: "Though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and give my body to be burned, but have not charity, it profiteth me nothing." [1224] And the blessed Apostle would never have said this had it not been that he foresaw by the spirit that some who had given all their goods to feed the poor would not be able to attain to evangelical perfection and the lofty heights of charity, because while pride or impatience ruled over their hearts they were not careful to purify themselves from their former sins, and unrestrained habits, and on that account could never attain to that love of God which never faileth, and these, as they fall short in this second stage of renunciation, can still less reach that third stage which is most certainly far higher. But consider too in your minds with great care the fact that he did not simply say "If I bestow my goods." For it might perhaps be thought that he spoke of one who had not fulfilled the command of the gospel, but had kept back something for himself, as some half-hearted persons do. But he says "Though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor," i.e., even if my renunciation of those earthly riches be perfect. And to this renunciation he adds something still greater: "And though I give my body to be burned, but have not charity, I am nothing:" As if he had said in other words, though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor in accordance with that command in the gospel, where we are told "If thou wilt be perfect, go sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven," [1225] renouncing them so as to keep back nothing at all for myself, and though to this distribution (of my goods) I should by the burning of my flesh add martyrdom so as to give up my body for Christ, and yet be impatient, or passionate or envious or proud, or excited by wrongs done by others, or seek what is mine, or indulge in evil thoughts, or not be ready and patient in bearing all that can be inflicted on me, this renunciation and the burning of the outer man will profit me nothing, while the inner man is still involved in the former sins, because, while in the fervour of the early days of my conversion I made light of the mere worldly substance, which is said to be not good or evil in itself but indifferent, I took no care to cast out in like manner the injurious powers of a bad heart, or to attain to that love of the Lord which is patient, which is "kind, which envieth not, is not puffed up, is not soon angry, dealeth not perversely, seeketh not her own, thinketh no evil," which "beareth all things, endureth all things," [1226] and which lastly never suffers him who follows after it to fall by the deceitfulness of sin. __________________________________________________________________
[1212] Eph. ii. 3.
[1213] Ezek. xvi. 3.
[1214] S. John viii. 44.
[1215] 2 Cor. v. 1.
[1216] Phil. iii. 20, 21.
[1217] Ps. cxviii. (cxix.) 19; Ps. xxxviii. (xxxix.) 13.
[1218] S. John xvii. 16.
[1219] S. John xv. 19.
[1220] Gen. v. 24 (LXX.); Heb. xi. 5; S. John xi. 26.
[1221] Acts vii. 39, 40.
[1222] Numb. xi. 18; Exod. xvi. 3; Numb. xi. 5.
[1223] S. Matt. xxii. 14.
[1224] 1 Cor. xiii. 3.
[1225] S. Matt. xix. 21.
[1226] 1 Cor. xiii. 4-7. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VIII.
Of our very own possessions in which the beauty of the soul is seen or its foulness.
We ought then to take the utmost care that our inner man as well may cast off and make away with all those possessions of its sins, which it acquired in its former life: which as they continually cling to body and soul are our very own, and, unless we reject them and cut them off while we are still in the flesh, will not cease to accompany us after death. For as good qualities, or charity itself which is their source, may be gained in this world, and after the close of this life make the man who loves it lovely and glorious, so our faults transmit to that eternal remembrance a mind darkened and stained with foul colours. For the beauty or ugliness of the soul is the product of its virtues or its vices, the colour it takes from which either makes it so glorious, that it may well hear from the prophet "And the king shall have pleasure in thy beauty," [1227] or so black, and foul, and ugly, that it must surely acknowledge the stench of its shame, and say "My wounds stink and are corrupt because of my foolishness," [1228] and the Lord Himself says to it "Why is not the wound of the daughter of my people closed?" [1229] And therefore these are our very own possessions, which continually remain with the soul, which no king and no enemy can either give or take away from us. These are our very own possessions which not even death itself can part from the soul, but by renouncing which we can attain to perfection, and by clinging to which we shall suffer the punishment of eternal death. __________________________________________________________________
[1227] Ps. xliv. (xlv.) 12.
[1228] Ps. xxxvii. (xxxviii.) 6.
[1229] Jer. viii. 22. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IX.
Of three sorts of possessions.
Riches and possessions are taken in Holy Scripture in three different ways, i.e., as good, bad, and indifferent. Those are bad, of which it is said: "The rich have wanted and have suffered hunger," [1230] and "Woe unto you that are rich, for ye have received your consolation:" [1231] and to have cast off these riches is the height of perfection; and a distinction which belongs to those poor who are commended in the gospel by the Lord's saying: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven;" [1232] and in the Psalm: "This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him," [1233] and again: "The poor and needy shall praise thy name." [1234] Those riches are good, to acquire which is the work of great virtue and merit, and the righteous possessor of which is praised by David who says "The generation of the righteous shall be blessed: glory and riches are in his house, and his righteousness remaineth for ever:" [1235] and again "the ransom of a man's life are his riches." [1236] And of these riches it is said in the Apocalypse to him who has them not and to his shame is poor and naked: "I will begin," says he, "to vomit thee out of my mouth. Because thou sayest I am rich and wealthy and have need of nothing: and knowest not that thou art wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked, I counsel thee to buy of me gold fire-tried, that thou mayest be made rich, and mayest be clothed in white garments, and that the shame of thy nakedness may not appear." [1237] There are some also which are indifferent, i.e., which may be made either good or bad: for they are made either one or the other in accordance with the will and character of those who use them: of which the blessed, Apostle says "Charge the rich of this world not to be high-minded nor to trust in the uncertainty of riches, but in God (who giveth us abundantly all things to enjoy), to do good, to give easily, to communicate to others, to lay up in store for themselves a good foundation that they may lay hold on the true life." [1238] These are what the rich man in the gospel kept, and never distributed to the poor,--while the beggar Lazarus was lying at his gate and desiring to be fed with his crumbs; and so he was condemned to the unbearable flames and everlasting heat of hell-fire. [1239] __________________________________________________________________
[1230] Ps. xxxiii. (xxxiv.) 11.
[1231] S. Luke vi. 24.
[1232] S. Matt. v. 3.
[1233] Ps. xxxiii. (xxxiv.) 7.
[1234] Ps. lxxiii. (lxxiv.) 21.
[1235] Ps. cxi. (cxii.) 2, 3.
[1236] Prov. xiii. 8.
[1237] Rev. iii. 16-18.
[1238] 1 Tim. vi. 17-19.
[1239] Cf. S. Luke xiv. 19 sq. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter X.
That none can become perfect merely through the first grade of renunciation.
In leaving then these visible goods of the world we forsake not our own wealth, but that which is not ours, although we boast of it as either gained by our own exertions or inherited by us from our forefathers. For as I said nothing is our own, save this only which we possess with our heart, and which cleaves to our soul, and therefore cannot be taken away from us by any one. But Christ speaks in terms of censure of those visible riches, to those who clutch them as if they were their own, and refuse to share them with those in want. "If ye have not been faithful in what is another's, who will give to you what is your own?" [1240] Plainly then it is not only daily experience which teaches us that these riches are not our own, but this saying of our Lord also, by the very title which it gives them. But concerning visible [1241] and worthless riches Peter says to the Lord: "Lo, we have left all and followed thee. What shall we have therefore?" [1242] when it is clear that they had left nothing but their miserable broken nets. And unless this expression "all" is understood to refer to that renunciation of sins which is really great and important, we shall not find that the Apostles had left anything of any value, or that the Lord had any reason for bestowing on them the blessing of so great glory, that they were allowed to hear from Him that "in the regeneration, when the Son of Man shall sit on the throne of His glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel." [1243] If then those, who have completely renounced their earthly and visible goods, cannot for sufficient reason attain to Apostolic charity, nor climb with readiness and vigour to that third stage of renunciation which is still higher and belongs to but few, what should those think of themselves, who do not even make that first step (which is very easy) a thorough one, but keep together with their old want of faith, their former sordid riches, and fancy that they can boast of the mere name of monks? The first renunciation then of which we spoke is of what is not our own, and therefore is not enough of itself to confer perfection on the renunciant, unless he advances to the second, which is really and truly a renunciation of what belongs to us. And when we have made sure of this by the expulsion of all our faults, we shall mount to the heights of the third renunciation also, whereby we rise above not merely all those things which are done in this world or specially belong to men, but even that whole universe around us which is esteemed so glorious, and shall with heart and soul look down upon it as subject to vanity and destined soon to pass away; as we look, as the Apostle says, "not on those things which are seen, but on those which are not seen: for the things that are seen, are temporal, and the things which are not seen are eternal;" [1244] that so we may be found worthy to hear that highest utterance, which was spoken to Abraham: "and come into a land which I will show thee," [1245] which clearly shows that unless a man has made those three former renunciations with all earnestness of mind, he cannot attain to this fourth, which is granted as a reward and privilege to one whose renunciation is perfect, that he may be found worthy to enter the land of promise which no longer bears for him the thorns and thistles of sins; which after all the passions have been driven out is acquired by purity of heart even in the body, and which no good deeds or exertions of man's efforts (can gain), but which the Lord Himself promises to show, saying "And come into the land which I will show to thee:" which clearly proves that the beginning of our salvation results from the call of the Lord, Who says "Get thee out from thy country," and that the completion of perfection and purity is His gift in the same way, as He says "And come into the land which I will show thee," i.e., not one you yourself can know or discover by your own efforts, but one which I will show not only to one who is ignorant of it, but even to one who is not looking for it. And from this we clearly gather that as we hasten to the way of salvation through being stirred up by the inspiration of the Lord, so too it is under the guidance of His direction and illumination that we attain to the perfection of the highest bliss. __________________________________________________________________
[1240] S. Luke xvi. 12.
[1241] The mss. vary between visibilibus and invisibilibus.
[1242] S. Matt. xix. 27.
[1243] Ib. ver. 28.
[1244] 2 Cor. iv. 18.
[1245] Gen. xii. 1. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XI.
A question on the free will of man and the grace of God.
Germanus: Where then is there room for free will, and how is it ascribed to our efforts that we are worthy of praise, if God both begins and ends everything in us which concerns our salvation? __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XII.
The answer on the economy of Divine Grace, with free will still remaining in us.
Paphnutius: This would fairly influence us, if in every work and practice, the beginning and the end were everything, and there were no middle in between. And so as we know that God creates opportunities of salvation in various ways, it is in our power to make use of the opportunities granted to us by heaven more or less earnestly. For just as the offer came from God Who called him "get thee out of thy country," so the obedience was on the part of Abraham who went forth; and as the fact that the saying "Come into the land" was carried into action, was the work of him who obeyed, so the addition of the words "which I will show thee" came from the grace of God Who commanded or promised it. But it is well for us to be sure that although we practise every virtue with unceasing efforts, yet with all our exertions and zeal we can never arrive at perfection, nor is mere human diligence and toil of itself sufficient to deserve to reach the splendid reward of bliss, unless we have secured it by means of the co-operation of the Lord, and His directing our heart to what is right. And so we ought every moment to pray and say with David "Order my steps in thy paths that my footsteps slip not:" [1246] and "He hath set my feet upon a rock and ordered my goings:" [1247] that He Who is the unseen ruler of the human heart may vouchsafe to turn to the desire of virtue that will of ours, which is more readily inclined to vice either through want of knowledge of what is good, or through the delights of passion. And we read this in a verse in which the prophet sings very plainly: "Being pushed I was overturned that I might fall," where the weakness of our free will is shown. And "the Lord sustained me:" [1248] again this shows that the Lord's help is always joined to it, and by this, that we may not be altogether destroyed by our free will, when He sees that we have stumbled, He sustains and supports us, as it were by stretching out His hand. And again: "If I said my foot was moved;" viz., from the slippery character of the will, "Thy mercy, O Lord, helped me." [1249] Once more he joins on the help of God to his own weakness, as he confesses that it was not owing to his own efforts but to the mercy of God, that the foot of his faith was not moved. And again: "According to the multitude of the sorrows which I had in my heart," which sprang most certainly from my free will, "Thy comforts have refreshed my soul," [1250] i.e., by coming through Thy inspiration into my heart, and laying open the view of future blessings which Thou hast prepared for them who labour in Thy name, they not only removed all anxiety from my heart, but actually conferred upon it the greatest delight. And again: "Had it not been that the Lord helped me, my soul had almost dwelt in hell." [1251] He certainly shows that through the depravity of this free will he would have dwelt in hell, had he not been saved by the assistance and protection of the Lord. For "By the Lord," and not by free-will, "are a man's steps directed," and "although the righteous fall" at least by free will, "he shall not be cast away." And why? because "the Lord upholdeth him with His hand:" [1252] and this is to say with the utmost clearness: None of the righteous are sufficient of themselves to acquire righteousness, unless every moment when they stumble and fall the Divine mercy supports them with His hands, that they may not utterly collapse and perish, when they have been cast down through the weakness of free will. __________________________________________________________________
[1246] Ps. xvi. (xvii.) 5.
[1247] Ps. xxxix. (xl.) 3.
[1248] Ps. cxvii. (cxviii.) 13.
[1249] Ps. xciii. (xciv.) 18.
[1250] Ib. ver. 19.
[1251] Ib. ver. 17.
[1252] Ps. xxxvi. (xxxvii.) 23, 24. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIII.
That the ordering of our way comes from God.
And truly the saints have never said that it was by their own efforts that they secured the direction of the way in which they walked in their course towards advance and perfection of virtue, but rather they prayed for it from the Lord, saying "Direct me in Thy truth," and "direct my way in thy sight." [1253] But someone else declares that he discovered this very fact not only by faith, but also by experience, and as it were from the very nature of things: "I know, O Lord, that the way of man is not his: neither is it in a man to walk and to direct his steps." [1254] And the Lord Himself says to Israel: "I will direct him like a green fir-tree: from Me is thy fruit found." [1255] __________________________________________________________________
[1253] Ps. xxiv. (xxv.) 5; vi. 9.
[1254] Jer. x. 23.
[1255] Hos. xiv. 9. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIV.
That knowledge of the law is given by the guidance and illumination of the Lord.
The knowledge also of the law itself they daily endeavour to gain not by diligence in reading, but by the guidance and illumination of God as they say to Him: "Show me Thy ways, O Lord, and teach me Thy paths:" and "open Thou mine eyes: and I shall see the wondrous things of Thy law:" and "teach me to do Thy will, for Thou art my God;" and again: "Who teacheth man knowledge." [1256] __________________________________________________________________
[1256] Ps. xxiv. (xxv.) 4; cxviii. (cxix.) 18; cxlii. (cxliii.) 10; xciii. (xciv.) 10. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XV.
That the understanding, by means of which we can recognize God's commands, and the performance of a good will are both gifts from the Lord.
Further the blessed David asks of the Lord that he may gain that very understanding, by which he can recognize God's commands which, he well knew, were written in the book of the law, and he says "I am Thy servant: O give me understanding that I may learn Thy commandments." [1257] Certainly he was in possession of understanding, which had been granted to him by nature, and also had at his fingers' ends a knowledge of God's commands which were preserved in writing in the law: and still he prayed the Lord that he might learn this more thoroughly as he knew that what came to him by nature would never be sufficient for him, unless his understanding was enlightened by the Lord by a daily illumination from Him, to understand the law spiritually and to recognize His commands more clearly, as the "chosen vessel" also declares very plainly this which we are insisting on. "For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do according to good will." [1258] What could well be clearer than the assertion that both our good will and the completion of our work are fully wrought in us by the Lord? And again "For it is granted to you for Christ's sake, not only to believe in Him but also to suffer for Him." [1259] Here also he declares that the beginning of our conversion and faith, and the endurance of suffering is a gift to us from the Lord. And David too, as he knows this, similarly prays that the same thing may be granted to him by God's mercy. "Strengthen, O God, that which Thou hast wrought in us:" [1260] showing that it is not enough for the beginning of our salvation to be granted by the gift and grace of God, unless it has been continued and ended by the same pity and continual help from Him. For not free will but the Lord "looseth them that are bound." No strength of ours, but the Lord "raiseth them that are fallen:" no diligence in reading, but "the Lord enlightens the blind:" where the Greeks have kurios sophoi tuphlous, i.e., "the Lord maketh wise the blind:" no care on our part, but "the Lord careth for the stranger:" no courage of ours, but "the Lord assists (or supports) all those who are down." [1261] But this we say, not to slight our zeal and efforts and diligence, as if they were applied unnecessarily and foolishly, but that we may know that we cannot strive without the help of God, nor can our efforts be of any use in securing the great reward of purity, unless it has been granted to us by the assistance and mercy of the Lord: for "a horse is prepared for the day of battle: but help cometh from the Lord," [1262] "for no man can prevail by strength." [1263] We ought then always to sing with the blessed David: "My strength and my praise is" not my free will, but "the Lord, and He is become my salvation." [1264] And the teacher of the Gentiles was not ignorant of this when he declared that he was made capable of the ministry of the New Testament not by his own merits or efforts but by the mercy of God. "Not" says he, "that we are capable of thinking anything of ourselves as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God, which can be put in less good Latin but more forcibly, "our capability is of God," and then there follows: "Who also made us capable ministers of the New Testament." [1265] __________________________________________________________________
[1257] Ps. cxviii. (cxix.) 125.
[1258] Phil. ii. 13.
[1259] Phil. i. 29.
[1260] Ps. lxvii. (lxviii.) 29.
[1261] Ps. cxlv. (cxlvi.) 7, 8, 9; cxliv. (cxlv.) 16.
[1262] Prov. xxi. 31.
[1263] 1 Sam. ii. 9.
[1264] Ps. cxvii. (cxviii.) 14.
[1265] 2 Cor. iii. 5, 6. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVI.
That faith itself must be given us by the Lord.
But so thoroughly did the Apostles realize that everything which concerns salvation was given them by the Lord, that they even asked that faith itself should be granted from the Lord, saying: "Add to us faith" [1266] as they did not imagine that it could be gained by free will, but believed that it would be bestowed by the free gift of God. Lastly the Author of man's salvation teaches us how feeble and weak and insufficient our faith would be unless it were strengthened by the aid of the Lord, when He says to Peter "Simon, Simon, behold Satan hath desired to have you that he may sift you as wheat. But I have prayed to my Father that thy faith fail not." [1267] And another finding that this was happening in his own case, and seeing that his faith was being driven by the waves of unbelief on the rocks which would cause a fearful shipwreck, asks of the same Lord an aid to his faith, saying "Lord, help mine unbelief." [1268] So thoroughly then did those Apostles and men in the gospel realize that everything which is good is brought to perfection by the aid of the Lord, and not imagine that they could preserve their faith unharmed by their own strength or free will that they prayed that it might be helped or granted to them by the Lord. And if in Peter's case there was need of the Lord's help that it might not fail, who will be so presumptuous and blind as to fancy that he has no need of daily assistance from the Lord in order to preserve it? Especially as the Lord Himself has made this clear in the gospel, saying: "As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself except it abide in the vine, so no more can ye, except ye abide in me." [1269] And again: "for without me ye can do nothing." [1270] How foolish and wicked then it is to attribute any good action to our own diligence and not to God's grace and assistance, is clearly shown by the Lord's saying, which lays down that no one can show forth the fruits of the Spirit without His inspiration and co-operation. For "every good gift and every perfect boon is from above, coming down from the Father of lights." [1271] And Zechariah too says, "For whatever is good is His, and what is excellent is from Him." [1272] And so the blessed Apostle consistently says: "What hast thou which thou didst not receive? But if thou didst receive it, why boastest thou as if thou hadst not received it?" [1273] __________________________________________________________________
[1266] S. Luke xvii. 5.
[1267] S. Luke xxii. 31, 32.
[1268] S. Mark ix. 23.
[1269] S. John xv. 4.
[1270] Ib. ver. 5.
[1271] S. James i. 17.
[1272] Zech. ix. 17 (LXX.).
[1273] 1 Cor. iv. 7. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVII.
That temperateness and the endurance of temptations must be given to us by the Lord.
And that all the endurance, with which we can bear the temptations brought upon us, depends not so much on our own strength as on the mercy and guidance of God, the blessed Apostle thus declares: "No temptation hath come upon you but such as is common to man. But God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able, but will with the temptation make also a way of escape, that ye may be able to bear it." [1274] And that God fits and strengthens our souls for every good work, and worketh in us all those things which are pleasing to Him, the same Apostle teaches: "May the God of peace who brought out of darkness the great Shepherd of the sheep, Jesus Christ, in the blood of the everlasting Testament, fit you in all goodness, working in you what is well-pleasing in His sight." [1275] And that the same thing may happen to the Thessalonians he prays as follows, saying: "Now our Lord Jesus Christ Himself and God our Father who hath loved us and hath given us everlasting consolation and good hope in grace, exhort your hearts, and confirm you in every good word and work." [1276] __________________________________________________________________
[1274] 1 Cor. x. 13.
[1275] Heb. xiii. 20, 21.
[1276] 2 Thess. ii. 15, 16. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVIII.
That the continual fear of God must be bestowed on us by the Lord.
And lastly the prophet Jeremiah, speaking in the person of God, clearly testifies that even the fear of God, by which we can hold fast to Him, is shed upon us by the Lord: saying as follows: "And I will give them one heart, and one way, that they may fear Me all days: and that it may be well with them and with their children after them. And I will make an everlasting covenant with them and will not cease to do them good: and I will give My fear in their hearts that they may not revolt from Me." [1277] Ezekiel also says: "And I will give them one heart, and will put a new spirit in their bowels: and I will take away the stony heart out of their flesh and will give them a heart of flesh: that they may walk in My commandments, and keep My judgments and do them: and that they may be My people, and I may be their God." [1278] __________________________________________________________________
[1277] Jerem. xxxii. 39, 40.
[1278] Ezek. xi. 19, 20. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIX.
That the beginning of our good will and its completion comes from God.
And this plainly teaches us that the beginning of our good will is given to us by the inspiration of the Lord, when He draws us towards the way of salvation either by His own act, or by the exhortations of some man, or by compulsion; and that the consummation of our good deeds is granted by Him in the same way: but that it is in our own power to follow up the encouragement and assistance of God with more or less zeal, and that accordingly we are rightly visited either with reward or with punishment, because we have been either careless or careful to correspond to His design and providential arrangement made for us with such kindly regard. And this is clearly and plainly described in Deuteronomy. "When," says he, "the Lord thy God shall have brought thee into the land which thou art going to possess, and shall have destroyed many nations before thee, the Hittite, and the Gergeshite, and the Amorite, the Canaanite, and the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite, seven nations much more numerous than thou art and stronger than thou, and the Lord thy God shall have delivered them to thee, thou shalt utterly destroy them. Thou shalt make no league with them. Neither shalt thou make marriage with them." [1279] So then Scripture declares that it is the free gift of God that they are brought into the land of promise, that many nations are destroyed before them, that nations more numerous and mightier than the people of Israel are given up into their hands. But whether Israel utterly destroys them, or whether it preserves them alive and spares them, and whether or no it makes a league with them, and makes marriages with them or not, it declares lies in their own power. And by this testimony we can clearly see what we ought to ascribe to free will, and what to the design and daily assistance of the Lord, and that it belongs to divine grace to give us opportunities of salvation and prosperous undertakings and victory: but that it is ours to follow up the blessings which God gives us with earnestness or indifference. And this same fact we see is plainly taught in the healing of the blind men. For the fact that Jesus passed by them, was a free gift of Divine providence and condescension. But the fact that they cried out and said "Have mercy on us, Lord, thou son of David," [1280] was an act of their own faith and belief. That they received the sight of their eyes was a gift of Divine pity. But that after the reception of any blessing, the grace of God, and the use of free will both remain, the case of the ten lepers, who were all healed alike, shows us. For when one of them through goodness of will returned thanks, the Lord looking for the nine, and praising the one, showed that He was ever anxious to help even those who were unmindful of His kindness. For even this is a gift of His visitation; viz., that he receives and commends the grateful one, and looks for and censures those who are thankless. __________________________________________________________________
[1279] Deut. vii. 1-3.
[1280] S. Matt. xx. 31. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XX.
That nothing can be done in this world without God.
But it is right for us to hold with unswerving faith that nothing whatever is done in this world without God. For we must acknowledge that everything is done either by His will or by His permission, i.e., we must believe that whatever is good is carried out by the will of God and by His aid, and whatever is the reverse is done by His permission, when the Divine Protection is withdrawn from us for our sins and the hardness of our hearts, and suffers the devil and the shameful passions of the body to lord it over us. And the words of the Apostle most assuredly teach us this, when he says: "For this cause God delivered them up to shameful passions:" and again: "Because they did not like to have God in their knowledge, God delivered them up to a reprobate sense, to do those things which are not convenient." [1281] And the Lord Himself says by the prophet: "But My people did not hear My voice and Israel did not obey me: Wherefore I gave them up unto their own hearts' lusts. They shall walk after their own inventions." [1282] __________________________________________________________________
[1281] Rom. i. 26, 28.
[1282] Ps. lxxx. (lxxxi.) 12, 13. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXI.
An objection on the power of free will.
Germanus: This passage very clearly shows the freedom of the will, where it is said "If My people would have hearkened unto Me," and elsewhere "But My people would not hear My voice." [1283] For when He says "If they would have heard" He shows that the decision to yield or not to yield lay in their own power. How then is it true that our salvation does not depend upon ourselves, if God Himself has given us the power either to hearken or not to hearken? __________________________________________________________________
[1283] Ps. lxxx. (lxxxi.) 12, 13. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXII.
The answer; viz., that our free will always has need of the help of the Lord.
Paphnutius: You have shrewdly enough noticed how it is said "If they would have hearkened to Me:" but have not sufficiently considered either who it is who speaks to one who does or does not hearken; or what follows: "I should soon have put down their enemies, and laid My hand on those that trouble them." [1284] Let no one then try by a false interpretation to twist that which we brought forward to prove that nothing can be done without the Lord, nor take it in support of free will, in such a way as to try to take away from man the grace of God and His daily oversight, through this test: "But My people did not hear My voice," and again: "If My people would have hearkened unto Me, and if Israel would have walked in My ways, etc.:" but let him consider that just as the power of free will is evidenced by the disobedience of the people, so the daily oversight of God who declares and admonishes him is also shown. For where He says "If My people would have hearkened unto Me" He clearly implies that He had spoken to them before. And this the Lord was wont to do not only by means of the written law, but also by daily exhortations, as this which is given by Isaiah: "All day long have I stretched forth My hands to a disobedient and gain-saying people." [1285] Both points then can be supported from this passage, where it says: "If My people would have hearkened, and if Israel had walked in My ways, I should soon have put down their enemies, and laid My hand on those that trouble them." For just as free will is shown by the disobedience of the people, so the government of God and His assistance is made clear by the beginning and end of the verse, where He implies that He had spoken to them before, and that afterwards He would put down their enemies, if they would have hearkened unto Him. For we have no wish to do away with man's free will by what we have said, but only to establish the fact that the assistance and grace of God are necessary to it every day and hour. When he had instructed us with this discourse Abbot Paphnutius dismissed us from his cell before midnight in a state of contrition rather than of liveliness; insisting on this as the chief lesson in his discourse; viz., that when we fancied that by making perfect the first renunciation (which we were endeavouring to do with all our powers), we could climb the heights of perfection, we should make the discovery that we had not yet even begun to dream of the heights to which a monk can rise, since after we had learnt some few things about the second renunciation, we should find out that we had not before this even heard a word of the third stage, in which all perfection is comprised, and which in many ways far exceeds these lower ones. __________________________________________________________________
[1284] Ib. ver. 15.
[1285] Is. lxv. 2. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
IV. Conference of Abbot Daniel.
On the Lust of the Flesh and of the Spirit. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter I.
Of the life of Abbot Daniel.
Among the other heroes of Christian philosophy we also knew Abbot Daniel, who was not only the equal of those who dwelt in the desert of Scete in every sort of virtue, but was specially marked by the grace of humility. This man on account of his purity and gentleness, though in age the junior of most, was preferred to the office of the diaconate by the blessed Paphnutius, presbyter in the same desert: for the blessed Paphnutius was so delighted with his excellent qualities, that, as he knew that he was his equal in virtue and grace of life, he was anxious also to make him his equal in the order of the priesthood. And since he could not bear that he should remain any longer in an inferior office, and was also anxious to provide a worthy successor to himself in his lifetime, he promoted him to the dignity of the priesthood. [1286] He however relinquished nothing of his former customary humility, and when the other was present, never took upon himself anything from his advance to a higher order, but when Abbot Paphnutius was offering spiritual sacrifices, ever continued to act as a deacon in the office of his former ministry. However, the blessed Paphnutius though so great a saint as to possess the grace of foreknowledge in many matters, yet in this case was disappointed of his hope of the succession and the choice he had made, for he himself passed to God no long time after him whom he had prepared as his successor. __________________________________________________________________
[1286] Nothing further appears to be known of Daniel than what is here told us by Cassian. There has been some discussion as to the action of Paphnutius in having him raised to the priesthood, as Cassian here narrates. Was Paphnutius really a bishop, or is it a case of presbyterian orders, or do Cassian's expressions merely mean that Paphnutius procured his ordination first to the Diaconate and then to the Priesthood? Probably the latter, for (1) all the evidence goes to show that presbyters had not the power of ordination; and (2) there are many instances, in which it is said even of the laity that they "ordained" men to the ministry when all that can possibly be meant is that they "procured their ordination;" further (3) it will be noticed that it is not even said that Paphnutius ordained Daniel but merely that he "promoted" him to the priesthood; an expression which might equally well be used of nomination as of actual ordination. See the subject discussed in Bingham's Antiquities, Book II. c. iii. § 7, and C. Gore's "Church and the Ministry," p. 374. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter II.
An investigation of the origin of a sudden change of feeling from inexpressible joy to extreme dejection of mind.
So then we asked this blessed Daniel why it was that as we sat in the cells we were sometimes filled with the utmost gladness of heart, together with inexpressible delight and abundance of the holiest feelings, so that I will not say speech, but feeling could not follow it, and pure prayers were readily breathed, and the mind being filled with spiritual fruits, praying to God even in sleep could feel that its petitions rose lightly and powerfully to God: and again, why it was that for no reason we were suddenly filled with the utmost grief, and weighed down with unreasonable depression, so that we not only felt as if we ourselves were overcome with such feelings, but also our cell grew dreadful, reading palled upon us, aye and our very prayers were offered up unsteadily and vaguely, and almost as if we were intoxicated: so that while we were groaning and endeavouring to restore ourselves to our former disposition, our mind was unable to do this, and the more earnestly it sought to fix again its gaze upon God, so was it the more vehemently carried away to wandering thoughts by shifting aberrations and so utterly deprived of all spiritual fruits, as not to be capable of being roused from this deadly slumber even by the desire of the kingdom of heaven, or by the fear of hell held out to it. To this he replied. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter III.
His answer to the question raised.
A threefold account of this mental dryness of which you speak has been given by the Elders. For it comes either from carelessness on our part, or from the assaults of the devil, or from the permission and allowance of the Lord. From carelessness on our part, when through our own faults, coldness has come upon us, and we have behaved carelessly and hastily, and owing to slothful idleness have fed on bad thoughts, and so make the ground of our heart bring forth thorns and thistles; which spring up in it, and consequently make us sterile, and powerless as regards all spiritual fruit and meditation. From the assaults of the devil when, sometimes, while we are actually intent on good desires, our enemy with crafty subtilty makes his way into our heart, and without our knowledge and against our will we are drawn away from the best intentions. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IV.
How there is a twofold reason for the permission and allowance of God.
But for God's permission and allowance there is a twofold reason. First, that being for a short time forsaken by the Lord, and observing with all humility the weakness of our own heart, we may not be puffed up on account of the previous purity of heart. granted to us by His visitation; and that by proving that when we are forsaken by Him we cannot possibly recover our former state of purity and delight by any groanings and efforts of our own, we may also learn that our previous gladness of heart resulted not from our own earnestness but from His gift, and that for the present time it must be sought once more from His grace and enlightenment. But a second reason for this allowance, is to prove our perseverance, and steadfastness of mind, and real desires, and to show in us, with what purpose of heart, or earnestness in prayer we seek for the return of the Holy Spirit, when He leaves us, and also in order that when we discover with what efforts we must seek for that spiritual gladness--when once it is lost--and the joy of purity, we may learn to preserve it more carefully, when once it is secured, and to hold it with firmer grasp. For men are generally more careless about keeping whatever they think can be easily replaced. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter V.
How our efforts and exertions are of no use without God's help.
And by this it is clearly shown that God's grace and mercy always work in us what is good, and that when it forsakes us, the efforts of the worker are useless, and that however earnestly a man may strive, he cannot regain his former condition without His help, and that this saying is constantly fulfilled in our case: that it is "not of him that willeth or runneth but of God which hath mercy." [1287] And this grace on the other hand sometimes does not refuse to visit with that holy inspiration of which you spoke, and with an abundance of spiritual thoughts, even the careless and indifferent; but inspires the unworthy, arouses the slumberers, and enlightens those who are blinded by ignorance, and mercifully reproves us and chastens us, shedding itself abroad in our hearts, that thus we may be stirred by the compunction which He excites, and impelled to rise from the sleep of sloth. Lastly we are often filled by His sudden visitation with sweet odours, beyond the power of human composition--so that the soul is ravished with these delights, and caught up, as it were, into an ecstasy of spirit, and becomes oblivious of the fact that it is still in the flesh. __________________________________________________________________
[1287] Rom. ix. 16. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VI.
How it is sometimes to our advantage to be left by God.
But the blessed David recognizes that sometimes this departure of which we have spoken, and (as it were) desertion by God may be to some extent to our advantage, so that he was unwilling to pray, not that he might not be absolutely forsaken by God in anything (for he was aware that this would have been disadvantageous both to himself and to human nature in its course towards perfection) but he rather entreated that it might be in measure and degree, saying "Forsake me not utterly" [1288] as if to say in other words: I know that thou dost forsake thy saints to their advantage, in order to prove them, for in no other way could they be tempted by the devil, unless they were for a little forsaken by Thee. And therefore I ask not that Thou shouldest never forsake me, for it would not be well for me not to feel my weakness and say "It is good for me that Thou hast brought me low" [1289] nor to have no opportunity of fighting. And this I certainly should not have, if the Divine protection shielded me incessantly and unbrokenly. For the devil will not dare to attack me while supported by Thy defence, as he brings both against me and Thee this objection and complaint, which he ever slanderously brings against Thy champions, "Does Job serve God for nought? Hast not Thou made a fence for him and his house and all his substance round about?" [1290] But I rather entreat that Thou forsake me not utterly--what the Greeks call heos sphodra, i.e., too much. For, first, as it is advantageous to me for Thee to forsake me a little, that the steadfastness of my love may be tried, so it is dangerous if Thou suffer me to be forsaken excessively in proportion to my faults and what I deserve, since no power of man, if in temptation it is forsaken for too long a time by Thine aid, can endure by its own steadfastness, and not forthwith give in to the power of the enemy's side, unless Thou Thyself, as Thou knowest the strength of man, and moderatest his struggles, "Suffer us not to be tempted above that we are able, but makest with the temptation a way of escape that we may be able to bear it." [1291] And something of this sort we read in the book of Judges was mystically designed in the matter of the extermination of the spiritual nations which were opposed to Israel: "These are the nations, which the Lord left that by them He might instruct Israel, that they might learn to fight with their enemies," and again shortly after: "And the Lord left them that He might try Israel by them, whether they would hear the commandments of the Lord, which He had commanded their fathers by the hand of Moses, or not." [1292] And this conflict God reserved for Israel, not from envy of their peace, or from a wish to hurt them, but because He knew that it would be good for them that while they were always oppressed by the attacks of those nations they might not cease to feel themselves in need of the aid of the Lord, and for this reason might ever continue to meditate on Him and invoke His aid, and not grow careless through lazy ease, and lose the habit of resisting, and the practice of virtue. For again and again, men whom adversity could not overcome, have been cast down by freedom from care and by prosperity. __________________________________________________________________
[1288] Ps. cxviii. (cxix.) 8.
[1289] Ib. ver. 71.
[1290] Job i. 9, 10.
[1291] 1 Cor. x. 13.
[1292] Judg. iii. 1-4. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VII.
Of the value of the conflict which the Apostle makes to consist in the strife between the flesh and the spirit.
This conflict too we read in the Apostle has for our good been placed in our members: "For the flesh lusteth against the spirit: and the spirit against the flesh. But these two are opposed to each other so that ye should not do what ye would." [1293] You have here too a contest as it were implanted in our bodies, by the action and arrangement of the Lord. For when a thing exists in everybody universally and without the slightest exception, what else can you think about it except that it belongs to the substance of human nature, since the fall of the first man, as it were naturally: and when a thing is found to be congenital with everybody, and to grow with their growth, how can we help believing that it was implanted by the will of the Lord, not to injure them but to help them? But the reason of this conflict; viz., of flesh and spirit, he tells us is this: that ye should not do what ye would." And so, if we fulfil what God arranged that we should not fulfil, i.e., that we should not do what we liked, how can we help believing that it is bad for us? And this conflict implanted in us by the arrangement of the Creator is in a way useful to us, and calls and urges us on to a higher state: and if it ceased, most surely there would ensue on the other hand a peace that is fraught with danger. __________________________________________________________________
[1293] Gal. v. 17. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VIII.
A question, how it is that in the Apostle's chapter, after he has spoken of the lusts of the flesh and spirit opposing one another, he adds a third thing; viz., man's will.
Germanus: Although some glimmer of the sense now seems clear to us, yet as we cannot thoroughly grasp the Apostle's meaning, we want you to explain this more clearly to us. For the existence of three things seems to be indicated here: first, the struggle of the flesh against the spirit, secondly the desire of the spirit against the flesh, and thirdly our own free will, which seems to be placed between the two, and of which it is said: "Ye should not do what ye will." And on this subject though as I said we can gather some hints, from what you have explained of the meaning, yet--since this conference gives the opportunity--we are anxious to have it more fully explained to us. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IX.
The answer on the understanding of one who asks rightly.
Daniel: It belongs to the understanding to discern the distinctions and the drift of questions; and it is a main part of knowledge to understand how ignorant you are. Wherefore it is said that "if a fool asks questions, it will be accounted wisdom," [1294] because, although one who asks questions is ignorant of the answer to the question raised, yet as he wisely asks, and learns what he does not know, this very fact will be counted as wisdom in him, because he wisely discovers what he was ignorant of. According then to this division of yours, it seems that in this passage the Apostle mentions three things, the lust of the flesh against the spirit, and of the spirit against the flesh, the mutual struggle of which against each other appears to have this as its cause and reason; viz., "that," says he, "we should not do what we would." There remains then a fourth case, which you have overlooked; viz., that we should do what we would not. Now then, we must first discover the meaning of those two desires, i.e., of the flesh and spirit, and so next learn to discuss our free will, which is placed between the two, and then lastly in the same way we can see what cannot belong to our free will. __________________________________________________________________
[1294] Prov. xvii. 28. (LXX.). __________________________________________________________________
Chapter X.
That the word flesh is not used with one single meaning only.
We find that the word flesh is used in holy Scripture with many different meanings: for sometimes it stands for the whole man, i.e., for that which consists of body and soul, as here "And the Word was made flesh," [1295] and "All flesh shall see the salvation of our God." [1296] Sometimes it stands for sinful and carnal men, as here "My spirit shall not remain in those men, because they are flesh." [1297] Sometimes it is used for sins themselves, as here: "But ye are not in the flesh but in the spirit," [1298] and again "Flesh and blood shall not inherit the kingdom of God:" lastly there follows, "Neither shall corruption inherit incorruption." [1299] Sometimes it stands for consanguinity and relationship, as here: "Behold we are thy bone and thy flesh," [1300] and the Apostle says: "If by any means I may provoke to emulation them who are my flesh, and save some of them." [1301] We must therefore inquire in which of these four meanings we ought to take the word flesh in this place, for it is clear that it cannot possibly stand as in the passage where it is said "The Word was made flesh," and "All flesh shall see the salvation of God." Neither can it have the same meaning as where it is said "My Spirit shall not remain in those men because they are flesh," because the word flesh is not used here as it is there where it stands simply for a sinful man--when he says" The flesh lusteth against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh." [1302] Nor is he speaking of things material, but of realities which in one and the same man struggle either at the same time or separately, with the shifting and changing of time. __________________________________________________________________
[1295] S. John i. 14.
[1296] S. Luke iii. 6.
[1297] Gen. vi. 3.
[1298] Rom. viii. 9.
[1299] 1 Cor. xv. 50.
[1300] 2 Sam. v. 1.
[1301] Rom. xi. 14.
[1302] Gal. v. 17. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XI.
What the Apostle means by flesh in this passage, and what the lust of the flesh is.
Wherefore in this passage we ought to take "flesh" as meaning not man, i.e., his material substance, but the carnal will and evil desires, just as "spirit" does not mean anything material, but the good and spiritual desires of the soul: a meaning which the blessed Apostle has clearly given just before, where he begins: "But I say, walk in the spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the desires of the flesh; for the flesh lusteth against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh: but these are contrary the one to the other, that ye may not do what ye would." And since these two; viz., the desires of the flesh and of the spirit co-exist in one and the same man, there arises an internal warfare daily carried on within us, while the lust of the flesh which rushes blindly towards sin, revels in those delights which are connected with present ease. And on the other hand the desire of the spirit is opposed to these, and wishes to be entirely absorbed in spiritual efforts, so that it actually wants to be rid of even the necessary uses of the flesh, longing to be so constantly taken up with these things as to desire to have no share of anxiety about the weakness of the flesh. The flesh delights in wantonness and lust: the spirit does not even tolerate natural desires. The one wants to have plenty of sleep, and to be satiated with food: the other is nourished with vigils and fasting, so as to be unwilling even to admit of sleep and food for the needful purposes of life. The one longs to be enriched with plenty of everything, the other is satisfied even without the possession of a daily supply of scanty food. The one seeks to look sleek by means of baths, and to be surrounded every day by crowds of flatterers, the other delights in dirt and filth, and the solitude of the inaccessible desert, and dreads the approach of all mortal men. The one lives on the esteem and applause of men, the other glories in injuries offered to it, and in persecutions. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XII.
What is our free will, which stands in between the lust of the flesh and the spirit.
Between these two desires then the free will of the soul stands in an intermediate position somewhat worthy of blame, and neither delights in the excesses of sin, nor acquiesces in the sorrows of virtue. Seeking to restrain itself from carnal passions in such a way as not nevertheless to be willing to undergo the requisite suffering, and wanting to secure bodily chastity without chastising the flesh, and to acquire purity of heart without the exertion of vigils, and to abound in spiritual virtues together with carnal ease, and to attain the grace of patience without the irritation of contradiction, and to practise the humility of Christ without the loss of worldly honour, to aim at the simplicity of religion in conjunction with worldly ambition, to serve Christ not without the praise and favour of men, to profess the strictness which truth demands without giving the slightest offence to anybody: in a word, it is anxious to pursue future blessings in such a way as not to lose present ones. And this free will would never lead us to attain true perfection, but would plunge us into a most miserable condition of lukewarmness, and make us like those who are rebuked by the Lord's remonstrance in the Apocalypse: "I know thy works, that thou art neither hot nor cold. I would that thou wert hot or cold. But now thou art lukewarm, and I will forthwith spue thee out of my mouth;" [1303] were it not that these contentions which rise up on both sides disturb and destroy this condition of lukewarmness. For when we give in to this free will of ours and want to let ourselves go in the direction of this slackness, at once the desires of the flesh start up, and injure us with their sinful passions, and do not suffer us to continue in that state of purity in which we delight, and allure us to that cold and thorny path of pleasure which we have to dread. Again, if inflamed with fervour of spirit, we want to root out the works of the flesh, and without any regard to human weakness try to raise ourselves altogether to excessive efforts after virtue, the frailty of the flesh comes in, and recalls us and restrains us from that over excess of spirit which is bad for us: and so the result is that as these two desires are contradicting each other in a struggle of this kind, the soul's free will, which does not like either to give itself up entirely to carnal desires, nor to throw itself into the exertions which virtue calls for, is tempered as it were by a fair balance, while this struggle between the two hinders that more dangerous free will of the soul, and makes a sort of equitable balance in the scales of our body, which marks out the limits of flesh and spirit most accurately, and does not allow the mind inflamed with fervour of spirit to sway to the right hand, nor the flesh to incline through the pricks of sin, to the left. And while this struggle goes on day after day in us to our profit, we are driven most beneficially to come to that fourth stage which we do not like, so as to gain purity of heart not by ease and carelessness, but by constant efforts and contrition of spirit; to retain our chastity of the flesh by prolonged fastings, hunger, thirst, and watchfulness; to acquire purpose of heart by reading, vigils, constant prayer and the wretchedness of solitude; to preserve patience by the endurance of tribulation; to serve our Maker in the midst of blasphemies and abounding insults; to follow after truth if need be amid the hatred of the world and its enmity; and while, with such a struggle going on in our body, we are secured from slothful carelessness, and incited to that effort which is against the grain, and to the desire for virtue, our proper balance is admirably secured, and on one side the languid choice of our free will is tempered by fervour of spirit, and on the other the frigid coldness of the flesh is moderated by a gentle warmth, and while the desire of the spirit does not allow the mind to be dragged into unbridled licence, neither does the weakness of the flesh allow the spirit to be drawn on to unreasonable aspirations after holiness, lest in the one case incentives to all kinds of sins might arise, or in the other the earliest of all sins might lift its head and wound us with a yet more fatal dart of pride: but a due equilibrium will result from this struggle, and open to us a safe and secure path of virtue between the two, and teach the soldier of Christ ever to walk on the King's highway. And thus the result will be that when, in consequence of the lukewarmness arising from this sluggish will of which we have spoken, the mind has been more easily entangled in carnal desires, it is checked by the desire of the spirit, which by no means acquiesces in earthly sins; and again, if through over much feeling our spirit has been carried in unbounded fervour and towards ill-considered and impossible heights, it is recalled by the weakness of the flesh to sounder considerations and rising above the lukewarm condition of our free will with due proportion and even course proceeds along the way of perfection. Something of this sort we hear that the Lord ordained in the case of the building of that tower in the book of Genesis, where a confusion of tongues suddenly sprang up, and put a stop to the blasphemous and wicked attempts of men. For there would have remained there in opposition to God, aye and against the interest of those who had begun to assail His Divine Majesty, an agreement boding no good, unless by God's providence the difference of languages, raising disturbances among them, had forced them because of the variations of their words to go on to a better condition, and a happy and valuable discord had recalled to salvation those whom a ruinous union had driven to destruction, as when divisions arose they began to experience human weakness of which when puffed up by their wicked plots they had hitherto known nothing. __________________________________________________________________
[1303] Rev. iii. 15, 16. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIII.
Of the advantage of the delay which results from the struggle between flesh and spirit.
But from the differences which this conflict causes, there arises a delay that is so far advantageous to us, and from this struggle an adjournment that is for our good, so that while through the resistance of the material body we are hindered from carrying out those things which we have wickedly conceived with our minds, we are sometimes recalled to a better mind either by penitence springing up, or by some better thoughts which usually come to us when delay in carrying out things, and time for reflection intervene. Lastly, those who, as we know, are not prevented from carrying out the desires of their free will by any hindrances of the flesh, I mean devils and spiritual wickednesses, these, since they have fallen from a higher and angelical state, we see are in a worse plight than men, much in as much as (owing to the fact that opportunity is always present to gratify their desires) they are not delayed from irrevocably performing whatever evil they have imagined because as their mind is quick to conceive it, so their substance is ready and free to carry it out; and while a short and easy method is given them of doing what they wish, no salutary second thoughts come in to amend their wicked intention. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIV.
Of the incurable depravity of spiritual wickednesses.
For a spiritual substance and one that is not tied to any material flesh has no excuse for an evil thought which arises within, and also shuts out forgiveness for its sin, because it is not harassed as we are by incentives of the flesh without, to sin, but is simply inflamed by the fault of a perverse will. And therefore its sin is without forgiveness and its weakness without remedy. For as it falls through the allurements of no earthly matter, so it can find no pardon or place for repentance. And from this we can clearly gather that this struggle which arises in us of the flesh and spirit against each other is not merely harmless, but actually extremely useful to us. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XV.
Of the value of the lust of the flesh against the spirit in our case.
To begin with, because it is an immediate reproof of our sloth and carelessness, and like some energetic schoolmaster who never allows us to deviate from the line of strict discipline, and if our carelessness has ever so little exceeded the limits of due gravity which become it, it immediately excites us by the stimulus of desire, and chides us and recalls us to due moderation. Secondly, because, in the matter of chastity and perfect purity, when by God's grace we see that we have been for some time kept from carnal pollution, in order that we may not imagine that we can no longer be disturbed by the motions of the flesh and thereby be elated and puffed up in our secret hearts as if we no longer bore about the corruption of the flesh, it humbles and checks us, and reminds us by its pricks that we are but men. [1304] For as we ordinarily fall without much thought into other kinds of sins and those worse and more harmful, and are not so easily ashamed of committing them, so in this particular one the conscience is especially humbled, and by means of this illusion it is stung by the recollection of passions that have been neglected, as it sees clearly that it is rendered unclean by natural emotions, of which it knew nothing while it was still more unclean through spiritual sins; and so coming back at once to the cure of its former sluggishness, it is warned both that it ought not to trust in the attainments of purity in the past, which it sees to be lost by ever so small a falling away from the Lord, and also that it cannot attain the gift of this purity except by God's grace alone, since actual experience somehow or other teaches us that if we are anxious to reach abiding perfection of heart we must constantly endeavour to obtain the virtue of humility. __________________________________________________________________
[1304] Suo nos rursum quamvis quieto ac simplici visitans fluxu. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVI.
Of the excitements of the flesh, without the humiliation of which we should fall more grievously.
To the fact then that the pride which results from this purity would be more dangerous than all sins and wickednesses, and that we should on that account gain no reward for any height of perfect chastity, we may call as witnesses those powers of which we spoke before, which since it is believed that they experience no such fleshly lusts, were cast down from their high and heavenly estate in everlasting destruction simply from pride of heart. And so we should be altogether hopelessly lukewarm, since we should have no warning of carelessness on our part implanted either in our body or in our mind, nor should we ever strive to reach the glow of perfection, or even keep to strict frugality and abstinence, were it not that this excitement of the flesh springs up and humbles us and baffles us and makes us keen and anxious about purifying ourselves from spiritual sins. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVII.
Of the lukewarmness of eunuchs.
Lastly, on this account in those who are Eunuchs, we often detect the existence of this lukewarmness of mind, because, as they are so to speak free from the needs of the flesh, they fancy that they have no need either of the trouble of bodily abstinence, or of contrition of heart; and being rendered slack by this freedom from anxiety, they make no efforts either truly to seek or to acquire perfection of heart or even purity from spiritual faults. And this condition which is the result of their state in the flesh, becomes natural, which is altogether a worse state. For he who passes from the state of coldness to that of lukewarmness is branded by the Lord's words as still more hateful. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVIII.
The question what is the difference between the carnal and natural man.
Germanus: You have, it seems to us, very clearly shown the value of the struggle which is raised between the flesh and spirit, so that we can believe that it can in a sort of way be grasped by us; and therefore we want to have this also explained to us in the same way; viz., what is the difference between the carnal and the natural man, or how the natural man can be worse than the carnal. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIX.
The answer concerning the threefold condition of souls.
Daniel: There are, according to the statements of Scripture, three kinds of souls; the first is the carnal, the second the natural, and the third the spiritual: which we find are thus described by the Apostle. For of the carnal he says: "I gave you milk to drink, not meat: for you were not able as yet. But neither indeed are you now able; for you are yet carnal." And again: "For whereas there is among you envying and contention, are you not carnal?" [1305] Concerning the natural he also speaks as follows: "But the natural man perceiveth not the things that are of the spirit of God; for it is foolishness to him." But concerning the spiritual: "But the spiritual man judgeth all things: and he himself is judged by no man." [1306] And again "You who are spiritual instruct such ones in the spirit of meekness." [1307] And so, though at our renunciation we ceased to be carnal, i.e., we began to separate ourselves from intercourse with those in the world, and to have nothing to do with open pollution of the flesh, we must still be careful to strive with all our might to attain forthwith a spiritual condition, lest haply we flatter ourselves because we seem as far as the outer man is concerned to have renounced this world and got rid of the defilement of carnal fornication, as if by this we had reached the heights of perfection; and thence become careless and indifferent about purifying ourselves from other affections, and so being kept back between these two, become unable to reach the stage of spiritual advancement; either because we think that it is amply sufficient for our perfection if we seem to separate ourselves, as regards the outward man, from intercourse with this world and from its pleasure, or because we are free from corruption and carnal intercourse, and thus we find ourselves in that lukewarm condition which is considered the worst of all, and discover that we are spued out of the mouth of the Lord, in accordance with these words of His: "I would that thou wert hot or cold. But now thou art lukewarm and I will begin to spue thee out of My mouth." [1308] And not without good reason does the Lord declare that those whom he has previously received in the bowels of His love, and who have become shamefully lukewarm, shall be spued out and rejected from His bosom: in as much as, though they might have yielded Him some health-giving subsistence, they preferred to be torn away from His heart: thus becoming far worse than those who had never found their way into the Lord's mouth as food, just as we turn away with loathing from that which nausea compels us to bring up. For whatever is cold is warmed when received into the mouth and is received with satisfaction and good results. But whatever has been once rejected owing to its miserable luke-warmness, we cannot--I will not say touch with the lips--but even look on from a distance without the greatest disgust. Rightly then is he said to be worse, because the carnal man, i.e., the worldly man and the heathen, is more readily brought to saving conversion and to the heights of perfection than one who has been professed as a monk, but has not, as his rule directs, laid hold on the way of perfection, and so has once for all drawn back from that fire of spiritual fervour. For the former is at last broken down by the sins of the flesh, and acknowledges his uncleanness, and in his compunction hastens from carnal pollution to the fountain of true cleansing, and the heights of perfection, and in his horror at that cold state of infidelity in which he finds himself, he is kindled with the fire of the spirit and flies the more readily to perfection. For one who has, as we said, once started with a lukewarm beginning, and has begun to abuse the name of monk, and who has not laid hold on the way of this profession with the humility and fervour that he ought, when once he is infected by this miserable plague, and is as it were unstrung by it, can no longer of himself discern what is perfect nor learn from the admonitions of another. For he says in his heart that which the Lord tells us: "Because I am rich and wealthy and want nothing;" and so this which follows is at once applied to him: "But thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked:" [1309] and he is so far in a worse condition than a worldly man, because he has no idea that he is wretched or blind or naked or requires cleansing, or needs to be directed and taught by any one; and on this account he receives no sound advice as he does not realise that he is weighted with the name of monk, and is lowered in the judgment of all, whereas, though everybody believes him to be a saint and regards him as a servant of God, he must hereafter be subjected to a stricter judgment and punishment. Lastly, why should we any longer linger over those things which we have sufficiently discovered and proved by experience? We have often seen those who were cold and carnal, i.e., worldly men and heathen, attain spiritual warmth: but lukewarm and "natural" men never. And these too we read in the prophet are hated of the Lord, so that a charge is given to spiritual and learned men to desist from warning and teaching them, and not to sow the seed of the life-giving word in ground that is barren and unfruitful and choked by noxious thorns; but that they should scorn this, and rather cultivate fallow ground, i.e., that they should transfer all their care and teaching, and their zeal in the life-giving word to pagans and worldly men: as we thus read: "Thus saith the Lord to the men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem: break up your fallow ground, and sow not among thorns." [1310] __________________________________________________________________
[1305] 1 Cor. iii. 2, 3.
[1306] 1 Cor. ii. 14, 15.
[1307] Gal. vi. 1.
[1308] Rev. iii. 15, 16.
[1309] Rev. iii. 17.
[1310] Jerem. iv. 3. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XX.
Of those who renounce the world but ill.
In the last place I am ashamed to say how we find that a large number have made their renunciation in such a way that we find that they have altered nothing of their former sins and habits, but only their state of life and worldly garb. For they are eager in amassing wealth which they never had before, or else do not give up that which they had, or which is still sadder, they actually strive to augment it under this excuse; viz., that they assert that it is right that they should always support with it their relations or the brethren, or they hoard it under pretence of starting congregations which they imagine that they can preside over as Abbots. But if only they would sincerely seek after the way of perfection, they would rather endeavour with all their might and main to attain to this: viz., that they might strip themselves not only of their wealth but of all their former likings and occupations, and place themselves unreservedly and entirely under the guidance of the Elders so as to have no anxiety not merely about others, but even about themselves. But on the contrary we find that while they are eager to be set over their brethren, they are never subject to their Elders themselves, and, with pride for their starting point, while they are quite ready to teach others they take no trouble to learn themselves or to practise what they are to teach: and so it is sure to end in their becoming, as the Saviour said, "blind leaders of the blind" so that "both fall into the ditch." [1311] And this pride though there is only one kind of it, yet takes a twofold form. One form continually puts on the appearance of seriousness and gravity, the other breaks out with unbridled freedom into silly giggling and laughing. The former delights in not talking: the latter thinks it hard to be kept to the restraint of silence, and has no scruples about talking freely on matters that are unsuitable and foolish, while it is ashamed to be thought inferior to or less well informed than others. The one on account of pride seeks clerical office, the other looks down upon it, since it fancies that it is unsuitable or beneath its former dignity and life and the deserts of its birth. And which of these two should be accounted the worse each man must consider and decide for himself. At any rate the kind of disobedience is one and the same, if a man breaks the Elder's commands whether it be owing to zeal in work, or to love of ease: and it is as hurtful to upset the rules of the monastery for the sake of sleep, as it is for the sake of vigilance, and it is just the same to transgress the Abbot's orders in order to read, as it is to slight them in order to sleep: nor is there any difference in the incentive to pride if you neglect a brother, whether it is because of your fast or because of your breakfast: except that those faults which seem to show themselves under the guise of virtues and in the form of spirituality are worse and less likely to be cured than those which arise openly and from carnal pleasures. For these latter, like sicknesses which are perfectly plain and visible, are grappled with and cured, while the former, since they are covered under the cloak of virtue, remain uncured, and cause their victims to fall into a more dangerous and deadly state of ill health. __________________________________________________________________
[1311] Cf. S. Matt. xv. 14. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXI.
Of those who having made light of great things busy themselves about trifles.
For how can we show how absurd it is that we see that some men after their first enthusiasm of renunciation in which they forsook their estates and vast wealth and the service of the world, and betook themselves to the monasteries, are still earnestly devoted to those things which cannot altogether be cut off, and which we cannot do without in this state of life, even though they are small and trifling things; so that in their case the anxiety about these trifles is greater than their love of all their property. And it certainly will not profit them much that they have disregarded greater riches and property, if they have only transferred their affections (on account of which they were to make light of them) to small and trifling things. For the sin of covetousness and avarice of which they cannot be guilty in the matter of really valuable things, they retain with regard to commoner matters, and so show that they have not got rid of their former greed but only changed its object. For if they are too careful about their mats, baskets, blankets, books, and other trifles such as these, the same passion holds them captive as before. And they actually guard and defend their rights over them so jealously as to get angry with their brethren about them, and, what is worse, they are not ashamed to quarrel over them. And being still troubled by the bad effects of their former covetousness, they are not content to possess those things which the needs and requirements of the body compel a monk to have, according to the common number and measure, but here too they show the greediness of their heart, as they try to have those things which they are obliged to use, better got up than the others; or, exceeding all due bounds, keep as their special and peculiar property and guard from the touch of others that which ought to belong to all the brethren alike. As if the difference of metals, and not the passion of covetousness was what mattered; and as if it was wrong to be angry about big things, while one might innocently be about trifling matters: and as if we had not given up all our precious things just in order that we might learn more readily to think nothing about trifles! For what difference does it make whether one gives way to covetousness in the matter of large and splendid things, or in the matter of the merest trifles, except that we ought to think a man so far worse if he has made light of great things and then is a slave to little things? And so that sort of renunciation of the world does not attain perfection of heart, because though it ranks as poverty it still keeps the mind of wealth. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
V. Conference of Abbot Serapion.
On the Eight Principal Faults. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter I.
Our arrival at Abbot Serapion's cell, and inquiry on the different kinds of faults and the way to overcome them.
In that assembly of Ancients and Elders was a man named Serapion, [1312] especially endowed with the grace of discretion, whose Conference I think it is worth while to set down in writing. For when we entreated him to discourse of the way to overcome our faults, so that their origin and cause might be made clearer to us, he thus began. __________________________________________________________________
[1312] Serapion when young was a pupil of Theonas, and an anecdote of his youthful indulgence in good things in secret has been already told in II. c. xi. Another story of him is given in XVIII. xi. One of this name is mentioned by Palladius in the Lausiac History, c. lxxvi., and by Rufinus in the History of the Monks, c. xviii., where we are told that he lived at Arsinöe, and that he had ten thousand monks subject to his rule; a number which Sozomen also gives (H.E. VI. xxviii.). It is however, doubtful whether this Serapion of Arsinöe is the person whose Conference Cassian here gives. Gazet identifies, Tillemont distinguishes the two. Jerome, it should be noticed, speaks in Ep. cviii. (Epitaphium Paulæ) as if there was not only one of this name famous among the monks of Egypt at that time. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter II.
Abbot Serapion's enumeration of eight principal faults.
There are eight principal faults which attack mankind; viz., first gastrimargia, which means gluttony, secondly fornication, thirdly philargyria, i.e., avarice or the love of money, fourthly anger, fifthly dejection, sixthly acedia, i.e., listlessness or low spirits, seventhly cenodoxia, i.e., boasting or vain glory; and eighthly pride. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter III.
Of the two classes of faults and their fourfold manner of acting on us.
Of these faults then there are two classes. For they are either natural to us as gluttony, or arise outside of nature as covetousness. But their manner of acting on us is fourfold. For some cannot be consummated without an act on the part of the flesh, as gluttony and fornication, while some can be completed without any bodily act, as pride and vainglory. Some find the reasons for their being excited outside us, as covetousness and anger; others are aroused by internal feelings, as accidie [1313] and dejection. __________________________________________________________________
[1313] For this word see the note on the Institutes V. i. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IV.
A review of the passions of gluttony and fornication and their remedies.
And to make this clearer not only by a short discussion to the best of my ability, but by Scripture proof as well, gluttony and fornication, though they exist in us naturally (for sometimes they spring up without any incitement from the mind, and simply at the motion and allurement of the flesh) yet if they are to be consummated, must find an external object, and thus take effect only through bodily acts. For "every man is tempted of his own lust. Then lust when it has conceived beareth sin, and sin when it is consummated begets death." [1314] For the first Adam could not have fallen a victim to gluttony unless he had had material food at hand, and had used it wrongly, nor could the second Adam be tempted without the enticement of some object, when it was said to Him: "If Thou art the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread." [1315] And it is clear to everybody that fornication also is only completed by a bodily act, as God says of this spirit to the blessed Job: "And his force is in his loins, and his strength in the navel of his belly." [1316] And so these two faults in particular, which are carried into effect by the aid of the flesh, especially require bodily abstinence as well as spiritual care of the soul; since the determination of the mind is not in itself enough to resist their attacks (as is sometimes the case with anger or gloominess or the other passions, which an effort of the mind alone can overcome without any mortification of the flesh); but bodily chastisement must be used as well, and be carried out by means of fasting and vigils and acts of contrition; and to this must be added change of scene, because since these sins are the results of faults of both mind and body, so they can only be overcome by the united efforts of both. And although the blessed Apostle says generally that all faults are carnal, since he enumerates enmities and anger and heresies among other works of the flesh, [1317] yet in order to cure them and to discover their nature more exactly we make a twofold division of them: for we call some of them carnal, and some spiritual. And those we call carnal, which specially have to do with pampering the appetites of the flesh, and with which it is so charmed and satisfied, that sometimes it excites the mind when at rest and even drags it against its will to consent to its desire. Of which the blessed Apostle says: "In which also we all walked in time past in the desires of our flesh, fulfilling the will of the flesh and of our thoughts, and were by nature children of wrath even as the rest." [1318] But we call those spiritual which spring only from the impulse of the mind and not merely contribute no pleasure to the flesh, but actually bring on it a weakness that is harmful to it, and only feed a diseased mind with the food of a most miserable pleasure. And therefore these need a single medicine for the heart: but those which are carnal can only be cured, as we said, by a double remedy. Whence it is extremely useful for those who aspire to purity, to begin by withdrawing from themselves the material which feeds these carnal passions, through which opportunity for or recollection of these same desires can arise in a soul that is still affected by the evil. For a complicated disease needs a complicated remedy. For from the body the object and material which would allure it must be withdrawn, for fear lest the lust should endeavour to break out into act; and before the mind we should no less carefully place diligent meditation on Scripture and watchful anxiety and the withdrawal into solitude, lest it should give birth to desire even in thought. But as regards other faults intercourse with our fellows is no obstacle, or rather it is of the greatest possible use, to those who truly desire to get rid of them, because in mixing with others they more often meet with rebuke, and while they are more frequently provoked the existence of the faults is made evident, and so they are cured with speedy remedies. __________________________________________________________________
[1314] S. James i. 14, 15.
[1315] S. Matt. iv. 3.
[1316] Job xl. 16.
[1317] Cf. Gal. v. 19.
[1318] Eph. ii. 3. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter V.
How our Lord alone was tempted without sin.
And so our Lord Jesus Christ, though declared by the Apostle's word to have been tempted in all points like as we are, is yet said to have been "without sin," [1319] i.e., without the infection of this appetite, as He knew nothing of incitements of carnal lust, with which we are sure to be troubled even against our will and without our knowledge; [1320] for the archangel thus describes the manner of His conception: "The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee: therefore that which shall be born of thee shall be called holy, the Son of God." [1321] __________________________________________________________________
[1319] Heb. iv. 15.
[1320] The following from D. Mozley's profound work on the Augustinian Theory of Predestination may serve to illustrate the remarks in the text: "Scripture says that our Lord was in all points tempted like as we are. But the Church has not considered it consistent with piety to interpret this text to mean that our Lord had the same direct propension to sin that we have, or that which is called by divines concupiscence. Such direct appetite for what is sinful is the characteristic of our fallen and corrupt nature, and our Lord did not assume a corrupt, but a sound humanity. Indeed, concupiscence, even prior to and independent of its gratification has of itself the nature of sin; and therefore could not belong to a perfect Being. Our Lord had all the passions and affections that legitimately belong to man; which passions and affections, tending as they do in their own natures to become inordinate, constituted of themselves a state of trial; but the Church has regarded our Lord's trial as consisting in preserving ordinate affections from becoming inordinate, rather than in restraining desire proximate to sin from gratification" (p. 97).
[1321] S. Luke i. 35. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VI.
Of the manner of the temptation in which our Lord was attacked by the devil.
For it was right that He who was in possession of the perfect image and likeness of God should be Himself tempted through those passions, through which Adam also was tempted while he still retained the image of God unbroken, that is, through gluttony, vainglory, pride; and not through those in which he was by his own fault entangled and involved after the transgression of the commandment, when the image and likeness of God was marred. For it was gluttony through which he took the fruit of the forbidden tree, vainglory through which it was said "Your eyes shall be opened," and pride through which it was said "Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." [1322] With these three sins then we read that the Lord our Saviour was also tempted; with gluttony when the devil said to Him: "Command these stones that they be made bread:" with vainglory: "If Thou art the Son of God cast Thyself down:" with pride, when he showed him all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them and said: "All this will I give to Thee if Thou wilt fall down and worship me:" [1323] in order that He might by His example teach us how we ought to vanquish the tempter when we are attacked on the same lines of temptation as He was. And so both the former and the latter are spoken of as Adam; the one being the first for destruction and death, and the other the first for resurrection and life. Through the one the whole race of mankind is brought into condemnation, through the other the whole race of mankind is set free. The one was fashioned out of raw and unformed earth, the other was born of the Virgin Mary. In His case then though it was fitting that He should undergo temptation, yet it was not necessary that He should fail under it. Nor could He who had vanquished gluttony be tempted by fornication, which springs from superfluity and gluttony as its root, with which even the first Adam would not have been destroyed unless before its birth he had been deceived by the wiles of the devil and fallen a victim to passion. And therefore the Son of God is not said absolutely to have come "in the flesh of sin," but "in the likeness of the flesh of sin," because though His was true flesh and He ate and drank and slept, and truly received the prints of the nails, there was in Him no true sin inherited from the fall, but only what was something like it. For He had no experience of the fiery darts of carnal lust, which in our case arise even against our will, from the constitution of our natures, but He took upon Him something like this, by sharing in our nature. For as He truly fulfilled every function which belongs to us, and bore all human infirmities, He has consequently been considered to have been subject to this feeling also, that He might appear through these infirmities to bear in His own flesh the state even of this fault and sin. Lastly the devil only tempted Him to those sins, by which he had deceived the first Adam, inferring that He as man would similarly be deceived in other matters if he found that He was overcome by those temptations by which he had overthrown His predecessor. But as he was overthrown in the first encounter he was not able to bring upon Him the second infirmity which had shot up as from the root of the first fault. For he saw that He had not even admitted anything from which this infirmity might take its rise, and it was idle to hope for the fruit of sin from Him, as he saw that He in no sort of way received into Himself seeds or roots of it. Yet according to Luke, who places last that temptation in which he uses the words "If Thou art the Son of God, cast Thyself down," [1324] we can understand this of the feeling of pride, so that that earlier one, which Matthew places third, in which, as Luke the evangelist says, the devil showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time and promised them to Him, may be taken of the feeling of covetousness, because after His victory over gluttony, he did not venture to tempt Him to fornication, but passed on to covetousness, which he knew to be the root of all evils, [1325] and when again vanquished in this, he did not dare attack Him with any of those sins which follow, which, as he knew full well, spring from this as a root and source; and so he passed on to the last passion; viz., pride, by which he knew that those who are perfect and have overcome all other sins, can be affected, and owing to which he remembered that he himself in his character of Lucifer, and many others too, had fallen from their heavenly estate, without temptation from any of the preceding passions. In this order then which we have mentioned, which is the one given by the evangelist Luke, there is an exact agreement between the allurements and forms of the temptations by which that most crafty foe attacked both the first and the second Adam. For to the one he said "Your eyes shall be opened;" to the other "he showed all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them." In the one case he said "Ye shall be as gods;" in the other, "If Thou art the Son of God." [1326] __________________________________________________________________
[1322] Gen. iii. 5.
[1323] Imaginarium.
[1324] S. Luke iv. 9.
[1325] 1 Tim. vi. 10.
[1326] Cf. Gen. iii. 5 with S. Matt. iv. 6, 8. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VII.
How vainglory and pride can be consummated without any assistance from the body.
And to go on in the order which we proposed, with our account of the way in which the other passions act (our analysis of which was obliged to be interrupted by this account of gluttony and of the Lord's temptation) vainglory and pride can be consummated even without the slightest assistance from the body. For in what way do those passions need any action of the flesh, which bring ample destruction on the soul they take captive simply by its assent and wish to gain praise and glory from men? Or what act on the part of the body was there in that pride of old in the case of the above mentioned Lucifer; as he only conceived it in his heart and mind, as the prophet tells us: "Who saidst in thine heart: I will ascend into heaven, I will set my throne above the stars of God. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the most High." [1327] And just as he had no one to stir him up to this pride, so his thoughts alone were the authors of the sin when complete and of his eternal fall; especially as no exercise of the dominion at which he aimed followed. __________________________________________________________________
[1327] Is. xiv. 13, 14. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VIII.
Of covetousness, which is something outside our nature, and of the difference between it and those faults which are natural to us.
Covetousness and anger, although they are not of the same character (for the former is something outside our nature, while the latter seems to have as it were its seed plot within us) yet they spring up in the same way, as in most instances they find the reasons for their being stirred in something outside of us. For often men who are still rather weak complain that they have fallen into these sins through irritation and the instigation of others, and are plunged headlong into the passions of anger and covetousness by the provocation of other people. But that covetousness is something outside our nature, we can clearly see from this; viz., that it is proved not to have its first starting point inside us, nor does it originate in what contributes to keeping body and soul together, and to the existence of life. For it is plain that nothing belongs to the actual needs and necessities of our common life except our daily meat and drink: but everything else, with whatever zeal and care we preserve it, is shown to be something distinct from the wants of man by the needs of life itself. And so this temptation, as being something outside our nature, only attacks those monks who are but lukewarm and built on a bad foundation, whereas those which are natural to us do not cease from troubling even the best of monks and those who dwell in solitude. And so far is this shown to be true, that we find that there are some nations who are altogether free from this passion of covetousness, because they have never by use and custom received into themselves this fault and infirmity. And we believe that the old world before the flood was for long ages ignorant of the madness of this desire. And in the case of each one of us who makes his renunciation of the world a thorough one, we know that it is extirpated without any difficulty, if, that is, a man gives up all his property, and seeks the monastic discipline in such a way as not to allow himself to keep a single farthing. And we can find thousands of men to bear witness to this, who in a single moment have given up all their property, and have so thoroughly eradicated this passion as not to be in the slightest degree troubled by it afterwards, though all their life long they have to fight against gluttony, and cannot be safe from it without striving with the utmost watchfulness of heart and bodily abstinence. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IX.
How dejection and accidie generally arise without any external provocation, as in the case of other faults. [1328]
Dejection and accidie generally arise without any external provocation, like those others of which we have been speaking: for we are well aware that they often harass solitaries, and those who have settled themselves in the desert without any intercourse with other men, and this in the most distressing way. And the truth of this any one who has lived in the desert and made trial of the conflicts of the inner man, can easily prove by experience. __________________________________________________________________
[1328] Such is the heading which Gazet gives. Petschenig edits "De ira atque tristitia, quod inter accedentia vitia plerumque [non] inveniantur;" where "non" is his own insertion, and as he frankly tells us, the heading does not suit the chapter. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter X.
How six of these faults are related, and the two which differ from them are akin to one another.
Of these eight faults then, although they are different in their origin and in their way of affecting us, yet the six former; viz., gluttony, fornication, covetousness, anger, dejection, accidie, have a sort of connexion with each other, and are, so to speak, linked together in a chain, so that any excess of the one forms a starting point for the next. For from superfluity of gluttony fornication is sure to spring, and from fornication covetousness, from covetousness anger, from anger, dejection, and from dejection, accidie. And so we must fight against them in the same way, and with the same methods: and having overcome one, we ought always to enter the lists against the next. For a tall and spreading tree of a noxious kind will the more easily be made to wither if the roots on which it depends have first been laid bare or cut; and a pond of water which is dangerous will be dried up at once if the spring and flowing channel which produce it are carefully stopped up. Wherefore in order to overcome accidie, you must first get the better of dejection: in order to get rid of dejection, anger must first be expelled: in order to quell anger, covetousness must be trampled under foot: in order to root out covetousness, fornication must be checked: and in order to destroy fornication, you must chastise the sin of gluttony. But the two remaining faults; viz., vainglory and pride, are connected together in a somewhat similar way as the others of which we have spoken, so that the growth of the one makes a starting point for the other (for superfluity of vainglory produces an incentive to pride); but they are altogether different from the six former faults, and are not joined in the same category with them, since not only is there no opportunity given for them to spring up from these, but they are actually aroused in an entirely different way and manner. For when these others have been eradicated these latter flourish the more vigorously, and from the death of the others they shoot forth and grow up all the stronger: and therefore we are attacked by these two faults in quite a different way. For we fall into each one of those six faults at the moment when we have been overcome by the ones that went before them; but into these two we are in danger of falling when we have proved victorious, and above all after some splendid triumph. In the cases then of all faults just as they spring up from the growth of those that go before them, so are they eradicated by getting rid of the earlier ones. And in this way in order that pride may be driven out vainglory must be stifled, and so if we always overcome the earlier ones, the later ones will be checked; and through the extermination of those that lead the way, the rest of our passions will die down without difficulty. And though these eight faults of which we have spoken are connected and joined together in the way which we have shown, yet they may be more exactly divided into four groups and sub-divisions. For to gluttony fornication is linked by a special tie: to covetousness anger, to dejection accidie, and to vainglory pride is closely allied. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XI.
Of the origin and character of each of these faults.
And now, to speak about each kind of fault separately: of gluttony there are three sorts: (1) that which drives a monk to eat before the proper and stated times; (2) that which cares about filling the belly and gorging it with all kinds of food, and (3) that which is on the lookout for dainties and delicacies. And these three sorts give a monk no little trouble, unless he tries to free himself from all of them with the same care and scrupulousness. For just as one should never venture to break one's fast before the right time so we must utterly avoid all greediness in eating, and the choice and dainty preparation of our food: for from these three causes different but extremely dangerous conditions of the soul arise. For from the first there springs up dislike of the monastery, and thence there grows up disgust and intolerance of the life there, and this is sure to be soon followed by withdrawal and speedy departure from it. By the second there are kindled the fiery darts of luxury and lasciviousness. The third also weaves the entangling meshes of covetousness for the nets of its prisoners, and ever hinders monks from following the perfect self-abnegation of Christ. And when there are traces of this passion in us we can recognize them by this; viz., if we are kept to dine by one of the brethren we are not content to eat our food with the relish which he has prepared and offers to us, but take the unpardonable liberty of asking to have something else poured over it or added to it, a thing which we should never do for three reasons: (1) because the monastic mind ought always to be accustomed to practise endurance and abstinence, and like the Apostle, to learn to be content in whatever state he is. [1329] For one who is upset by taking an unsavoury morsel once and in a way, and who cannot even for a short time overcome the delicacy of his appetite will never succeed in curbing the secret and more important desires of the body; (2) because it sometimes happens that at the time our host is out of that particular thing which we ask for, and we make him feel ashamed of the wants and bareness of his table, by exposing his poverty which he would rather was only known to God; (3) because sometimes other people do not care about the relish which we ask for, and so it turns out that we are annoying most of them while intent on satisfying the desires of our own palate. And on this account we must by all means avoid such a liberty. Of fornication there are three sorts: (1) that which is accomplished by sexual intercourse; (2) that which takes place without touching a woman, for which we read that Onan the son of the patriarch Judah was smitten by the Lord; and which is termed by Scripture uncleanness: of which the Apostle says: "But I say to the unmarried and to widows, that it is good for them if they abide even as I. But if they do not contain let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn;" [1330] (3) that which is conceived in heart and mind, of which the Lord says in the gospel: "Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath already committed adultery with her in his heart." [1331] And these three kinds the blessed Apostle tells us must be stamped out in one and the same way. "Mortify," says he, "your members which are upon the earth, fornication, uncleanness, lust, etc." [1332] And again of two of them he says to the Ephesians: "Let fornication and uncleanness be not so much as named among you:" and once more: "But know this that no fornicator or unclean person, or covetous person who is an idolater hath inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God." [1333] And just as these three must be avoided by us with equal care, so they one and all shut us out and exclude us equally from the kingdom of Christ. Of covetousness there are three kinds: (1) That which hinders renunciants from allowing themselves of be stripped of their goods and property; (2) that which draws us to resume with excessive eagerness the possession of those things which we have given away and distributed to the poor; (3) that which leads a man to covet and procure what he never previously possessed. Of anger there are three kinds: one which rages within, which is called in Greek thumos; another which breaks out in word and deed and action, which they term orge: of which the Apostle speaks, saying "But now do ye lay aside all anger and indignation;" [1334] the third, which is not like those in boiling over and being done with in an hour, but which lasts for days and long periods, which is called menis. And all these three must be condemned by us with equal horror. Of dejection there are two kinds: one, that which springs up when anger has died down, or is the result of some loss we have incurred or of some purpose which has been hindered and interfered with; the other, that which comes from unreasonable anxiety of mind or from despair. Of accidie there are two kinds: one of which sends those affected by it to sleep; while the other makes them forsake their cell and flee away. Of vainglory, although it takes various forms and shapes, and is divided into different classes, yet there are two main kinds: (1) when we are puffed up about carnal things and things visible, and (2) when we are inflamed with the desire of vain praise for things spiritual and unseen. __________________________________________________________________
[1329] Cf. Phil. iv. 11.
[1330] 1 Cor. vii. 8, 9.
[1331] S. Matt. v. 28.
[1332] Col. iii. 5.
[1333] Eph. v. 3-5.
[1334] Col. iii. 8. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XII.
How vainglory may be useful to us.
But in one matter vainglory is found to be a useful thing for beginners. I mean by those who are still troubled by carnal sins, as for instance, if, when they are troubled by the spirit of fornication, they formed an idea of the dignity of the priesthood, or of reputation among all men, by which they may be thought saints and immaculate: and so with these considerations they repell the unclean suggestions of lust, as deeming them base and at least unworthy of their rank and reputation; and so by means of a smaller evil they overcome a greater one. For it is better for a man to be troubled by the sin of vainglory than for him to fall into the desire for fornication, from which he either cannot recover at all or only with great difficulty after he has fallen. And this thought is admirably expressed by one of the prophets speaking in the person of God, and saying: "For My name's sake I will remove My wrath afar off: and with My praise I will bridle thee lest thou shouldest perish," [1335] i.e., while you are enchained by the praises of vainglory, you cannot possibly rush on into the depths of hell, or plunge irrevocably into the commission of deadly sins. Nor need we wonder that this passion has the power of checking anyone from rushing into the sin of fornication, since it has been again and again proved by many examples that when once a man has been affected by its poison and plague, it makes him utterly indefatigable, so that he scarcely feels a fast of even two or three days. And we have often known some who are living in this desert, confessing that when their home was in the monasteries of Syria they could without difficulty go for five days without food, while now they are so overcome with hunger even by the third hour, that they can scarcely keep on their daily fast to the ninth hour. And on this subject there is a very neat answer of Abbot Macarius [1336] to one who asked him why he was troubled with hunger as early as the third hour in the desert, when in the monastery he had often scorned food for a whole week, without feeling hungry. "Because," said he, "here there is nobody to see your fast, and feed and support you with his praise of you: but there you grew fat on the notice of others and the food of vainglory." And of the way in which, as we said, the sin of fornication is prevented by an attack of vainglory, there is an excellent and significant figure in the book of Kings, where, when the children of Israel had been taken captive by Necho, King of Egypt, Nebuchadnezzar, King of Assyria, came up and brought them back from the borders of Egypt to their own country, not indeed meaning to restore them to their former liberty and their native land, but meaning to carry them off to his own land and to transport them to a still more distant country than the land of Egypt in which they had been prisoners. And this illustration exactly applies to the case before us. For though there is less harm in yielding to the sin of vainglory than to fornication, yet it is more difficult to escape from the dominion of vainglory. For somehow or other the prisoner who is carried off to a greater distance, will have more difficulty in returning to his native land and the freedom of his fathers, and the prophet's rebuke will be deservedly aimed at him: "Wherefore art thou grown old in a strange country? [1337] since a man is rightly said to have grown old in a strange country, if he has not broken up the ground of his faults. Of pride there are two kinds: (1) carnal, and (2) spiritual, which is the worse. For it especially attacks those who are seen to have made progress in some good qualities. __________________________________________________________________
[1335] Is. xlviii. 9.
[1336] Cf. note on the Institutes V. xli.
[1337] Baruch iii. 11. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIII.
Of the different ways in which all these faults assault us.
Although then these eight faults trouble all sorts of men, yet they do not attack them all in the same way. For in one man the spirit of fornication holds the chief place: wrath rides rough shod over another: over another vainglory claims dominion: in an other pride holds the field: and though it is clear that we are all attacked by all of them, yet the difficulties come to each of us in very different ways and manners. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIV.
Of the struggle into which we must enter against our faults, when they attack us.
Wherefore we must enter the lists against these faults in such a way that every one should discover his besetting sin, and direct his main attack against it, directing all his care and watchfulness of mind to guard against its assault, directing against it daily the weapons of fasting, and at all times hurling against it the constant darts of sighs and groanings from the heart, and employing against it the labours of vigils and the meditation of the heart, and further pouring forth to God constant tears and prayers and continually and expressly praying to be delivered from its attack. For it is impossible for a man to win a triumph over any kind of passion, unless he has first clearly understood that he cannot possibly gain the victory in the struggle with it by his own strength and efforts, although in order that he may be rendered pure he must night and day persist in the utmost care and watchfulness. And even when he feels that he has got rid of this fault, he should still search the inmost recesses of his heart with the same purpose, and single out the worst fault which he can see among those still there, and bring all the forces of the Spirit to bear against it in particular, and so by always overcoming the stronger passions, he will gain a quick and easy victory over the rest, because by a course of triumphs the soul is made more vigorous, and the fact that the next conflict is with weaker passion insures him a readier success in the struggle: as is generally the case with those who are wont to face all kinds of wild beasts in the presence of the kings of this world, out of consideration for the rewards--a kind of spectacle which is generally called "pancarpus." [1338] Such men, I say, direct their first assault against whatever beasts they see to be the strongest and fiercest, and when they have despatched these, then they can more easily lay low the remaining ones, which are not so terrible and powerful. So too, by always overcoming the stronger passions, as weaker ones take their place, a perfect victory will be secured for us without any risk. Nor need we imagine that if any one grapples with one fault in particular, and seems too careless about guarding against the attacks of others, he will be easily wounded by a sudden assault, for this cannot possibly happen. For where a man is anxious to cleanse his heart, and has steeled his heart's purpose against the attack of any one fault, it is impossible for him not to have a general dread of all other faults as well, and take similar care of them. For if a man renders himself unworthy of the prize of purity by contaminating himself with other faults, how can he possibly succeed in gaining the victory over that one passion from which he is longing to be freed? But when the main purpose of our heart has singled out one passion as the special object of its attack, we shall pray about it more earnestly, and with special anxiety and fervour shall entreat that we may be more especially on our guard against it and so succeed in gaining a speedy victory. For the giver of the law himself teaches us that we ought to follow this plan in our conflicts and not to trust in our own power; as he says: "Thou shalt not fear them because the Lord thy God is in the midst of thee, a God mighty and terrible: He will consume these nations in thy sight by little and little and by degrees. Thou wilt not be able to destroy them altogether: lest perhaps the beasts of the earth should increase upon thee. But the Lord thy God shall deliver them in thy sight; and shall slay them until they be utterly destroyed." [1339] __________________________________________________________________
[1338] Pancarpus (pankarpos). The word originally applied to an offering of all kinds of fruit. Cf. Tertullian ad Valent. xii. It is also used in the general sense "of all sorts" by Augustine, Adv. Secund. xxiii. Cassian here speaks as if it had become the popular name for the conflicts of the gladiators with all kinds of beasts, though there is apparently no other authority for this.
[1339] Deut. vii. 21-23. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XV.
How we can do nothing against our faults without the help of God, and how we should not be puffed up by victories over them.
And that we ought not to be puffed up by victories over them he likewise charges us; saying, "Lest after thou hast eaten and art filled, hast built goodly houses and dwelt in them, and shalt have herds of oxen and flocks of sheep, and plenty of gold and of silver, and of all things, thy heart be lifted up and thou remember not the Lord thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage; and was thy leader in the great and terrible wilderness." [1340] Solomon also says in Proverbs: "When thine enemy shall fall be not glad, and in his ruin be not lifted up, lest the Lord see and it displease Him, and He turn away His wrath from him," [1341] i.e., lest He see thy pride of heart, and cease from attacking him, and thou begin to be forsaken by Him and so once more to be troubled by that passion which by God's grace thou hadst previously overcome. For the prophet would not have prayed in these words, "Deliver not up to beasts, O Lord, the soul that confesseth to Thee," [1342] unless he had known that because of their pride of heart some were given over again to those faults which they had overcome, in order that they might be humbled. Wherefore it is well for us both to be certified by actual experience, and also to be instructed by countless passages of Scripture, that we cannot possibly overcome such mighty foes in our own strength, and unless supported by the aid of God alone; and that we ought always to refer the whole of our victory each day to God Himself, as the Lord Himself also gives us instruction by Moses on this very point: "Say not in thine heart when the Lord thy God shall have destroyed them in thy sight: For my righteousness hath the Lord brought me in to possess this land, whereas these nations are destroyed for their wickedness. For it is not for thy righteousness, and the uprightness of thine heart, that thou shalt go in to possess their lands: but because they have done wickedly they are destroyed at thy coming in." [1343] I ask what could be said clearer in opposition to that impious notion and impertinence of ours, in which we want to ascribe everything that we do to our own free will and our own exertions? "Say not," he tells us, "in thine heart, when the Lord thy God shall have destroyed them in thy sight: For my righteousness the Lord hath brought me in to possess this land." To those who have their eyes opened and their ears ready to hearken does not this plainly say: When your struggle with carnal faults has gone well for you, and you see that you are free from the filth of them, and from the fashions of this world, do not be puffed up by the success of the conflict and victory and ascribe it to your own power and wisdom, nor fancy that you have gained the victory over spiritual wickedness and carnal sins through your own exertions and energy, and free will? For there is no doubt that in all this you could not possibly have succeeded, unless you had been fortified and protected by the help of the Lord. __________________________________________________________________
[1340] Deut. viii. 12-15.
[1341] Prov. xxiv. 17, 18 (LXX.).
[1342] Ps. lxxiii. (lxxiv.) 19.
[1343] Deut. ix. 4, 5. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVI.
Of the meaning of the seven nations of whose lands Israel took possession, and the reason why they are sometimes spoken of as "seven," and sometimes as "many."
These are the seven nations whose lands the Lord promised to give to the children of Israel when they came out of Egypt. And everything which, as the Apostle says, happened to them "in a figure" [1344] we ought to take as written for our correction. For so we read: "When the Lord thy God shall have brought thee into the land, which thou art going in to possess, and shall have destroyed many nations before thee, the Hittite, and the Girgashites, and the Amorite, the Canaanite, and the Perizzite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite, seven nations much more numerous than thou art and much stronger than thou: and the Lord thy God shall have delivered them to thee, thou shalt utterly destroy them." [1345] And the reason that they are said to be much more numerous, is that faults are many more in number than virtues and so in the list of them the nations are reckoned as seven in number, but when the attack upon them is spoken of they are set down without their number being given, for thus we read "And shall have destroyed many nations before thee." For the race of carnal passions which springs from this sevenfold incentive and root of sin, is more numerous than that of Israel. For thence spring up murders, strifes, heresies, thefts, false witness, blasphemy, surfeiting, drunkenness, back-biting, buffoonery, filthy conversation, lies, perjury, foolish talking, scurrility, restlessness, greediness, bitterness, clamour, wrath, contempt, murmuring, temptation, despair, and many other faults, which it would take too long to describe. And if we are inclined to think these small matters, let us hear what the Apostle thought about them, and what was his opinion of them: "Neither murmur ye," says he, "as some of them murmured, and were destroyed of the destroyer:" and of temptation: "Neither let us tempt Christ as some of them tempted and perished by the serpents." [1346] Of backbiting: "Love not backbiting lest thou be rooted out." [1347] And of despair: "Who despairing have given themselves up to lasciviousness unto the working of all error, in uncleanness." [1348] And that clamour is condemned as well as anger and indignation and blasphemy, the words of the same Apostle teach us as clearly as possible when he thus charges us: "Let all bitterness, and anger, and indignation, and clamour, and blasphemy be put away from you with all malice," [1349] and many more things like these. And though these are far more numerous than the virtues are, yet if those eight principal sins, from which we know that these naturally proceed, are first overcome, all these at once sink down, and are destroyed together with them with a lasting destruction. For from gluttony proceed surfeiting and drunkenness. From fornication filthy conversation, scurrility, buffoonery and foolish talking. From covetousness, lying, deceit, theft, perjury, the desire of filthy lucre, false witness, violence, inhumanity, and greed. From anger, murders, clamour and indignation. From dejection, rancor, cowardice, bitterness, despair. From accidie, laziness, sleepiness, rudeness, restlessness, wandering about, instability both of mind and body, chattering, inquisitiveness. From vainglory, contention, heresies, boasting and confidence in novelties. From pride, contempt, envy, disobedience, blasphemy, murmuring, backbiting. And that all these plagues are stronger than we, we can tell very plainly from the way in which they attack us. For the delight in carnal passions wars more powerfully in our members than does the desire for virtue, which is only gained with the greatest contrition of heart and body. But if you will only gaze with the eyes of the spirit on those countless hosts of our foes, which the Apostle enumerates where he says: "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against spiritual wickedness in heavenly places," [1350] and this which we find of the righteous man in the nineteenth Psalm: "A thousand shall fall beside thee and ten thousand at thy right hand," [1351] then you will clearly see that they are far more numerous and more powerful than are we, carnal and earthly creatures as we are, while to them is given a substance which is spiritual and incorporeal. __________________________________________________________________
[1344] Cf. 1 Cor. x. 6.
[1345] Deut. vii. 1, 2.
[1346] 1 Cor. x. 9, 10.
[1347] Prov. xx. 13 (LXX.).
[1348] Eph. iv. 19.
[1349] Eph. iv. 31.
[1350] Ibid., iv. 12.
[1351] Ps. xc. (xci.) 7. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVII.
A question with regard to the comparison of seven nations with eight faults.
Germanus: How then is it that there are eight faults which assault us, when Moses reckons the nations opposed to the people of Israel as seven, and how is it well for us to take possession of the territory of our faults? __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVIII.
Serapion: Everybody is perfectly agreed that there are eight principal faults which affect a monk. And all of them are not included in the figure of the nations for this reason, because in Deuteronomy Moses, or rather the Lord through him, was speaking to those who had already gone forth from Egypt and been set free from one most powerful nation, I mean that of the Egyptians. And we find that this figure holds good also in our case, as when we have got clear of the snares of this world we are found to be free from gluttony, i.e., the sin of the belly and palate; and like them we have a conflict against these seven remaining nations, without taking account at all of the one which has been already overcome. And the land of this nation was not given to Israel for a possession, but the command of the Lord ordained that they should at once forsake it and go forth from it. And for this cause our fasts ought to be made moderate, that there may be no need for us through excessive abstinence, which results from weakness of the flesh and infirmity, to return again to the land of Egypt, i.e., to our former greed and carnal lust which we forsook when we made our renunciation of this world. And this has happened in a figure, in those who after having gone forth into the desert of virtue again hanker after the flesh pots over which they sat in Egypt. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIX.
The reason why one nation is to be forsaken, while seven are commanded to be destroyed.
But the reason why that nation in which the children of Israel were born, was bidden not to be utterly destroyed but only to have its land forsaken, while it was commanded that these seven nations were to be completely destroyed, is this: because however great may be the ardour of spirit, inspired by which we have entered on the desert of virtues, yet we cannot possibly free ourselves entirely from the neighbourhood of gluttony or from its service and, so to speak, from daily intercourse with it. For the liking for delicacies and dainties will live on as something natural and innate in us, even though we take pains to cut off all superfluous appetites and desires, which, as they cannot be altogether destroyed, ought to be shunned and avoided. For of these we read "Take no care for the flesh with its desires." [1352] While then we still retain the feeling for this care, which we are bidden not altogether to cut off, but to keep without its desires, it is clear that we do not destroy the Egyptian nation but separate ourselves in a sort of way from it, not thinking anything about luxuries and delicate feasts, but, as the Apostle says, being "content with our daily food and clothing." [1353] And this is commanded in a figure in the law, in this way: "Thou shalt not abhor the Egyptian, because thou wast a stranger in his land." [1354] For necessary food is not refused to the body without danger to it and sinfulness in the soul. But of those seven troublesome faults we must in every possible way root out the affections from the inmost recesses of our souls. For of them we read: "Let all bitterness and anger and indignation and clamour and blasphemy be put away from you with all malice:" and again: "But fornication and all uncleanness and covetousness let it not so much as be named among you, or obscenity or foolish talking or scurrility." [1355] We can then cut out the roots of these faults which are grafted into our nature from without while we cannot possibly cut off occasions of gluttony. For however far we have advanced, we cannot help being what we were born. And that this is so we can show not only from the lives of little people like ourselves but from the lives and customs of all who have attained perfection, who even when they have got rid of incentives to all other passions, and are retiring to the desert with perfect fervour of spirit and bodily abnegation, yet still cannot do without thought for their daily meal and the preparation of their food from year to year. __________________________________________________________________
[1352] Rom. xiii. 14.
[1353] Cf. 1 Tim. vi. 8.
[1354] Deut. xxiii. 7.
[1355] Eph. iv. 31; v. 3, 4. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XX.
Of the nature of gluttony, which may be illustrated by the simile of the eagle.
An admirable illustration of this passion, with which a monk, however spiritual and excellent, is sure to be hampered, is found in the simile of the eagle. For this bird when in its flight on high it has soared above the highest clouds, and has withdrawn itself from the eyes of all mortals and from the face of the whole earth, is yet compelled by the needs of the belly to drop down and descend to the earth and feed upon carrion and dead bodies. And this clearly shows that the spirit of gluttony cannot be altogether extirpated like all other faults, nor be entirely destroyed like them, but that we can only hold down and check by the power of the mind all incentives to it and all superfluous appetites. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXI.
Of the lasting character of gluttony as described to some philosophers.
For the nature of this fault was admirably expressed under cover of the following puzzle by one of the Elders in a discussion with some philosophers, who thought that they might chaff him like a country bumpkin because of his Christian simplicity. "My father," said he, "left me in the clutches of a great many creditors. All the others I have paid in full, and have freed myself from all their pressing claims; but one I cannot satisfy even by a daily payment." And when they could not see the meaning of the puzzle, and urgently begged him to explain it: "I was," said he, "in my natural condition, encompassed by a great many faults. But when God inspired me with the longing to be free, I renounced this world, and at the same time gave up all my property which I had inherited from my father, and so I satisfied them all like pressing creditors, and freed myself entirely from them. But I was never able altogether to get rid of the incentives to gluttony. For though I reduce the quantity of food which I take to the smallest possible amount, yet I cannot avoid the force of its daily solicitations, but must be perpetually dunned' by it, and be making as it were interminable payments by continually satisfying it, and pay never ending toll at its demand." Then they declared that this man, whom they had till now despised as a booby and a country bumpkin, had thoroughly grasped the first principles of philosophy, i.e., training in ethics, and they marvelled that he could by the light of nature have learnt that which no schooling in this world could have taught him, while they themselves with all their efforts and long course of training had not learnt this. This is enough on gluttony in particular. Now let us return to the discourse in which we had begun to consider the general relation of our faults to each other. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXII.
How it was that God foretold to Abraham that Israel would have to drive out ten nations.
When the Lord was speaking with Abraham about the future (a point which you did not ask about) we find that He did not enumerate seven nations, but ten, whose land He promised to give to his seed. [1356] And this number is plainly made up by adding idolatry, and blasphemy, to whose dominion, before the knowledge of God and the grace of Baptism, both the irreligious hosts of the Gentiles and blasphemous ones of the Jews were subject, while they dwelt in a spiritual Egypt. But when a man has made his renunciation and come forth from thence, and having by God's grace conquered gluttony, has come into the spiritual wilderness, then he is free from the attacks of these three, and will only have to wage war against those seven which Moses enumerates. __________________________________________________________________
[1356] Cf. Gen. xv. 18-21. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXIII.
How it is useful for us to take possession of their lands.
But the fact that we are bidden for our good to take possession of the countries of those most wicked nations, may be understood in this way. Each fault has its own especial corner in the heart, which it claims for itself in the recesses of the soul, and drives out Israel, i.e., the contemplation of holy and heavenly things, and never ceases to oppose them. For virtues cannot possibly live side by side with faults. "For what participation hath righteousness with unrighteousness? Or what fellowship hath light with darkness?" [1357] But as soon as these faults have been overcome by the people of Israel, i.e., by those virtues which war against them, then at once the place in our heart which the spirit of concupiscence and fornication had occupied, will be filled by chastity. That which wrath had held, will be claimed by patience. That which had been occupied by a sorrow that worketh death, will be taken by a godly sorrow and one full of joy. That which had been wasted by accidie, will at once be tilled by courage. That which pride had trodden down will be ennobled by humility: and so when each of these faults has been expelled, their places (that is the tendency towards them) will be filled by the opposite virtues which are aptly termed the children of Israel, that is, of the soul that seeth God: [1358] and when these have expelled all passions from the heart we may believe that they have recovered their own possessions rather than invaded those of others. __________________________________________________________________
[1357] 2 Cor. vi. 14.
[1358] Cf. the note on "Against Nestorius" VII. ix. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXIV.
How the lands from which the Canaanites were expelled, had been assigned to the seed of Shem.
For, as an ancient tradition tells us, [1359] these same lands of the Canaanites into which the children of Israel were brought, had been formerly allotted to the children of Shem at the division of the world, and afterward the descendants of Ham wickedly invading them with force and violence took possession of them. And in this the righteous judgment of God is shown, as He expelled from the land of others these who had wrongfully taken possession of them, and restored to those others the ancient property of their fathers which had been assigned to their ancestors at the division of the world. And we can perfectly well see that this figure holds good in our own case. For by nature God's will assigned the possession of our heart not to vices but to virtues, which, after the fall of Adam were driven out from their own country by the sins which grew up, i.e., by the Canaanites; and so when by God's grace they are by our efforts and labour restored again to it, we may hold that they have not occupied the territory of another, but rather have recovered their own country. __________________________________________________________________
[1359] The "ancient tradition" to which Cassian here alludes is given in the Clementine Recognitions I. xxix., xxx.; and in Epiphanius "Heresies," c. lxvi. § 83, sq., where it is given as an answer to the Manichæan objection against the cruelty and injustice of the extermination of the Canaanites by the Israelites. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXV.
Different passages of Scripture on the meaning of the eight faults.
And in reference to these eight faults we also have the following in the gospel: "But when the unclean spirit is gone out from a man, he walketh through dry places seeking rest and findeth none. Then he saith, I will return to my house from whence I came out: and coming he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished: then he goeth and taketh seven other spirits worse than himself, and they enter in and dwell there: and the last state of that man is made worse than the first." [1360] Lo, just as in the former passages we read of seven nations besides that of the Egyptians from which the children of Israel had gone forth, so here too seven unclean spirits are said to return beside that one which we first hear of as going forth from the man. And of this sevenfold incentive of sins Solomon gives the following account in Proverbs: "If thine enemy speak loud to thee, do not agree to him because there are seven mischiefs in his heart;" [1361] i.e., if the spirit of gluttony is overcome and begins to flatter you with having humiliated it, asking in a sort of way that you would relax something of the fervour with which you began, and yield to it something beyond what the due limits of abstinence, and measure of strict severity would allow, do not you be overcome by its submission, nor return in fancied security from its assaults, as you seem to have become for a time freed from carnal desires, to your previous state of carelessness or former liking for good things. For through this the spirit whom you have vanquished is saying "I will return to my house from whence I came out," and forthwith the seven spirits of sins which proceed from it will prove to you more injurious than that passion which in the first instance you overcame, and will presently drag you down to worse kinds of sins. __________________________________________________________________
[1360] S. Matt. xii. 43-45.
[1361] Prov. xxvi. 25. (lxx.). __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXVI.
How when we have got the better of the passion of gluttony we must take pains to gain all the other virtues.
Wherefore while we are practising fasting and abstinence, we must be careful when we have got the better of the passion of gluttony never to allow our mind to remain empty of the virtues of which we stand in need; but we should the more earnestly fill the inmost recesses of our heart with them for fear lest the spirit of concupiscence should return and find us empty and void of them, and should not be content to secure an entrance there for himself alone, but should bring in with him into our heart this sevenfold incentive of sins and make our last state worse than the first. For the soul which boasts that it has renounced this world with the eight faults that hold sway over it, will afterwards be fouler and more unclean and visited with severer punishments, than it was when formerly it was at home in the world, when it had taken upon itself neither the rules nor the name of monk. For these seven spirits are said to be worse than the first which went forth, for this reason; because the love of good things, i.e., gluttony would not be in itself harmful, were it not that it opened the door to other passions; viz, to fornication, covetousness, anger, dejection, and pride, which are clearly hurtful in themselves to the soul, and domineering over it. And therefore a man will never be able to gain perfect purity, if he hopes to secure it by means of abstinence alone, i.e., bodily fasting, unless he knows that he ought to practise it for this reason that when the flesh is brought low by means of fasting, he may with greater ease enter the lists against other faults, as the flesh has not been habituated to gluttony and surfeiting. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXVII.
That our battles are not fought with our faults in the same order as that in which they stand in the list.
But you must know that our battles are not all fought in the same order, because, as we mentioned that the attacks are not always made on us in the same way, each one of us ought also to begin the battle with due regard to the character of the attack which is especially made on him so that one man will have to fight his first battle against the fault which stands third on the list, another against that which is fourth or fifth. And in proportion as faults hold sway over us, and the character of their attack may demand, so we too ought to regulate the order of our conflict, in such a way that the happy result of a victory and triumph succeeding may insure our attainment of purity of heart and complete perfection.
Thus far did Abbot Serapion discourse to us of the nature of the eight principal faults, and so clearly did he expound the different sorts of passions which are latent within us--the origin and connexion of which, though we were daily tormented by them, we could never before thoroughly understand and perceive--that we seemed almost to see them spread out before our eyes as in a mirror. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
VI. Conference of Abbot Theodore. [1362]
On the Death of the Saints. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter I.
Description of the wilderness, and the question about the death of the saints.
In the district of Palestine near the village of Tekoa which had the honour of producing the prophet Amos, [1363] there is a vast desert which stretches far and wide as far as Arabia and the dead sea, into which the streams of Jordan enter and are lost, and where are the ashes of Sodom. In this district there lived for a long while monks of the most perfect life and holiness, who were suddenly destroyed by an incursion of Saracen robbers: [1364] whose bodies we knew were seized upon with the greatest veneration [1365] both by the Bishops of the neighbourhood and by the whole populace of Arabia, and deposited among the relics of the martyrs, so that swarms of people from two towns met, and made terrible war upon each other, and in their struggle actually came to blows for the possession of the holy spoil, while they strove among themselves with pious zeal as to which of them had the better claim to bury them and keep their relics--the one party boasting of their vicinity to the place of their abode, the other of the fact that they were near the place of their birth. But we were upset by this and being disturbed either on our own account or on account of some of the brethren who were in no small degree scandalized at it, inquired why men of such illustrious merits and of so great virtues should be thus slain by robbers, and why the Lord permitted such a crime to be committed against his servants, so as to give up into the hands of wicked men those who were the admiration of everybody: and so in our grief we came to the holy Theodore, a man who excelled in practical common sense. For he was living in Cellæ, [1366] a place that lies between Nitria and Scete, and is five miles distant from the monasteries of Nitria, and cut off by eighty intervening miles of desert from the wilderness of Scete where we were living. And when we had made our complaint to him about the death of the men mentioned above, and expressed our surprise at the great patience of God, because He suffered men of such worth to be killed in this way, so that those who ought to be able by the weight of their sanctity to deliver others from trials of this kind, could not save themselves from the hands of wicked men (and asked) why it was that God allowed so great a crime to be committed against his servants, then the blessed Theodore replied. __________________________________________________________________
[1363] Cf. Amos i. 1.
[1364] Saraceni (Sarakenoi) a name given by the classical geographers to a tribe of Arabia Felix, famous for its predatory propensities. Jerome speaks of the "mons et desertum Saracenorum quod vocatur Pharan" (Liber de situ et nominibus sub voce Choreb) and elsewhere describes their predatory habits (Liber Heb. Quæst in Genesim) "Saracenos vagos...qui universas gentes...incursant." By the seventh century the name had become a merely general term equivalent to Arab, and was accordingly adopted and applied indifferently to all the followers of Mohammed by the writers of the middle ages (cf. the Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, sub voce).
[1365] There is no mention of these martyrs in the so-called Martyrologium Hieronymianum, but they are commemorated on May 28, in the Roman Martyrology.
[1366] Cellæ, which was, according to the passage before us, between the deserts of Scete and Nitria, apparently derived its name from the cells of the monks who congregated there. This at least is the explanation of the name given by Sozomen (H.E. VI. xxxi.) who speaks of a region called kellia, throughout which numerous little dwellings (oikemata) are dispersed, whence it obtains its name. Sozomen also speaks (c. xxix.) of Macarius as priest of Cellæ, a fact which gives some ground for conjecturing that Cellæ may be identified with Dair Abu Makâr, one of the four monasteries still existing in the deserts of Nitria and Scete, probably founded by the saint whose name it bears (Macarius). See A. J. Butler's "Coptic Churches of Egypt," vol. i. c. vii. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter II.
Abbot Theodore's answer to the question proposed to him.
This question often exercises the minds of those who have not much faith or knowledge, and imagine that the prizes and rewards of the saints (which are not given in this world, but laid up for the future) are bestowed in the short space of this mortal life. But we whose hope in Christ is not only in this life, for fear lest, as the Apostle says, we should be "of all men most miserable" [1367] (because as we receive none of the promises in this world we should for our unbelief lose them also in that to come) ought not wrongly to follow their ideas, lest through ignorance of the true real explanation, we should hesitate and tremble and fail in temptation, if we find ourselves given up to such men; and should ascribe to God injustice or carelessness about the affairs of mankind--a thing which it is almost a sin to mention--because He does not protect in their temptations men who are living an upright and holy life, nor requite good men with good things and evil men with evil things in this world; and so we should deserve to fall under the condemnation of those whom the prophet Zephaniah rebukes, saying "who say in their hearts the Lord will not do good, nor will He do evil:" [1368] or at least be found among those of whom we are told that they blaspheme God with such complaints as this: "Every one that doeth evil is good in the sight of the Lord, and such please Him: for surely where is the God of judgment?" [1369] Adding further that blasphemy which is described in the same way in what follows: "He laboureth in vain that serveth God, and what profit is it that we have kept His ordinances, and walked sorrowful before the Lord? Wherefore now we call the proud happy, for they that work wickedness are enriched, and they have tempted God, and are preserved." [1370] Wherefore that we may avoid this ignorance which is the root and cause of this most deadly error, we ought in the first place to know what is really good, and what is bad, and so finally if we grasp the true scriptural meaning of these words, and not the false popular one, we shall escape being deceived by the errors of unbelievers. __________________________________________________________________
[1367] 1 Cor. xv. 19.
[1368] Zeph. i. 12.
[1369] Mal. ii. 17.
[1370] Mal. iii. 14, 15. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter III.
Of the three kinds of things there are in the world; viz., good, bad, and indifferent.
Altogether there are three kinds of things in the world; viz., good, bad, and indifferent. And so we ought to know what is properly good, and what is bad, and what is indifferent, that our faith may be supported by true knowledge and stand firm in all temptations. We must then believe that in things which are merely human there is no real good except virtue of soul alone, which leads us with unfeigned faith to things divine, and makes us constantly adhere to that unchanging good. And on the other hand we ought not to call anything bad, except sin alone, which separates us from the good God, and unites us to the evil devil. But those things are indifferent which can be appropriated to either side according to the fancy or wish of their owner, as for instance riches, power, honour, bodily strength, good health, beauty, life itself, and death, poverty, bodily infirmities, injuries, and other things of the same sort, which can contribute either to good or to evil as the character and fancy of their owner directs. For riches are often serviceable for our good, as the Apostle says, who charges "the rich of this world to be ready to give, to distribute to the needy, to lay up in store for themselves a good foundation against the time to come, that" by this means "they may lay hold on the true life." [1371] And according to the gospel they are a good thing for those who "make to themselves friends of the unrighteous mammon." [1372] And again, they can be drawn in the direction of what is bad when they are amassed only for the sake of hoarding them or for a life of luxury, and are not employed to meet the wants of the poor. And that power also and honour and bodily strength and good health are indifferent and available for either (good or bad) can easily be shown from the fact that many of the Old Testament saints enjoyed all these things and were in positions of great wealth and the highest honour, and blessed with bodily strength, and yet are known to have been most acceptable to God. And on the contrary those who have wrongfully abused these things and perverted them for their own purposes are not without good reason punished or destroyed, as the Book of Kings shows us has often happened. And that even life and death are in themselves indifferent the birth of S. John and of Judas proves. For in the case of the one his life was so profitable to himself that we are told that his birth brought joy to others also, as we read "And many shall rejoice at his birth;" [1373] but of the life of the other it is said: "It were good for that man if he had never been born." [1374] Further it is said of the death of John and of all saints "Right dear in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints:" [1375] but of that of Judas and men like him "The death of the wicked is very evil." [1376] And how useful bodily sickness sometimes may be the blessing on Lazarus, the beggar who was full of sores, shows us. For Scripture makes mention of no other good qualities or deserts of his, but it was for this fact alone; viz., that he endured want and bodily sickness with the utmost patience, that he was deemed worthy of the blessed lot of a place in Abraham's bosom. [1377] And with regard to want and persecution and injuries which everybody thinks to be bad, how useful and necessary they are is clearly proved by this fact; viz., that the saints not only never tried to avoid them, but actually either sought them with all their powers or bravely endured them, and thus became the friends of God, and obtained the reward of eternal life, as the blessed Apostle chants: "For which cause I delight myself in my infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong, for power is made perfect in infirmity." [1378] And therefore those who are exalted with the greatest riches and honours and powers of this world, should not be deemed to have secured their chief good out of them (for this is shown to consist only in virtue) but only something indifferent, because just as to good men who use them well and properly they will be found to be useful and convenient (for they afford them opportunities for good works and fruits which shall endure to eternal life), so to those who wrongfully abuse their wealth, they are useless and out of place, and furnish occasions of sin and death. __________________________________________________________________
[1371] 1 Tim. vi. 17-19.
[1372] S. Luke xvi. 9.
[1373] S. Luke i. 14.
[1374] S. Matt. xxvi. 24.
[1375] Ps. cxv. 6 (cxvi. 15).
[1376] Ps. xxxiii. (xxxiv.) 32.
[1377] Cf. S. Luke xvi. 20.
[1378] 2 Cor. xii. 9, 10. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IV.
How evil cannot be forced on any one by another against his will.
Preserving then these distinctions clear and fixed, and knowing that there is nothing good except virtue alone, and nothing bad except sin alone and separation from God, let us now carefully consider whether God ever allows evil to be forced on his saints either by Himself or by some one else. And you will certainly find that this never happens. For another can never possibly force the evil of sin upon anyone, who does not consent and who resists, but only on one who admits it into himself through sloth and the corrupt desire of his heart. Finally, when the devil having exhausted all his wicked devices had tried to force upon the blessed Job this evil of sin, and had not only stripped him of all his worldly goods, but also after that terrible and utterly unlooked for calamity of bereavement through the death of his seven children, had heaped upon him dreadful wounds and intolerable tortures from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot, he tried in vain to fasten on him the stain of sin, because he remained steadfast through it all, never brought himself to consent to blasphemy. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter V.
An objection, how God Himself can be said to create evil.
Germanus: We often read in holy Scripture that God has created evil or brought it upon men, as is this passage: "There is none beside Me. I am the Lord, and there is none else: I form the light and create darkness, I make peace, and create evil." [1379] And again: "Shall there be evil in a city which the Lord hath not done?" [1380] __________________________________________________________________
[1379] Is. xlv. 6, 7.
[1380] Amos iii. 6. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VI.
The answer to the question proposed.
Theodore: Sometimes holy Scripture is wont by an improper use of terms to use "evils" for "affliction;" not that these are properly and in their nature evils, but because they are imagined to be evils by those on whom they are brought for their good. For when divine judgment is reasoning with men it must speak with the language and feelings of men. For when a doctor for the sake of health with good reason either cuts or cauterizes those who are suffering from the inflammation of ulcers, it is considered an evil by those who have to bear it. Nor are the spur and the whip pleasant to a restive horse. Moreover all chastisement seems at the moment to be a bitter thing to those who are chastised, as the Apostle says: "Now all chastisement for the present indeed seemeth not to bring with it joy but sorrow; but afterwards it will yield to them that are exercised by it most peaceable fruits of righteousness," and "whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth: for what son is there whom the father doth not correct?" [1381] And so evils are sometimes wont to stand for afflictions, as where we read: "And God repented of the evil which He had said that He would do to them and He did it not." [1382] And again: "For Thou, Lord, are gracious and merciful, patient and very merciful and ready to repent of the evil," [1383] i.e., of the sufferings and losses which Thou art forced to bring upon us as the reward of our sins. And another prophet, knowing that these are profitable to some men, and certainly not through any jealousy of their safety, but with an eye to their good, prays thus: "Add evils to them, O Lord, add evils to the haughty ones of the earth;" [1384] and the Lord Himself says "Lo, I will bring evils upon them," [1385] i.e., sorrows, and losses, with which they shall for the present be chastened for their soul's health, and so shall be at length driven to return and hasten back to Me whom in their prosperity they scorned. And so that these are originally evil we cannot possibly assert: for to many they conduce to their good and offer the occasions of eternal bliss, and therefore (to return to the question raised) all those things, which are thought to be brought upon us as evils by our enemies or by any other people, should not be counted as evils, but as things indifferent. For in the end they will not be what he thinks, who brought them upon us in his rage and fury, but what he makes them who endures them. And so when death has been brought upon a saint, we ought not to think that an evil has happened to him but a thing indifferent; which is an evil to a wicked man, while to the good it is rest and freedom from evils. "For death is rest to a man whose way is hidden." [1386] And so a good man does not suffer any loss from it, because he suffers nothing strange, but by the crime of an enemy he only receives (and not without the reward of eternal life) that which would have happened to him in the course of nature, and pays the debt of man's death, which must be paid by an inevitable law, with the interest of a most fruitful passion, and the recompense of a great reward. __________________________________________________________________
[1381] Heb. xii. 6-11.
[1382] Jonah iii. 10 (LXX.).
[1383] Joel ii. 13 (LXX.).
[1384] Is. xxvi. 15 (LXX.).
[1385] Jer. xi. 11.
[1386] Job iii. 23 (LXX.). __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VII.
A question whether the man who causes the death of a good man is guilty, if the good man is the gainer by his death.
Germanus: Well then, if a good man does not only suffer no evil by being killed, but actually gains a reward from his suffering, how can we accuse the man who has done him no harm but good by killing him? __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VIII.
The answer to the foregoing question.
Theodore: We are talking about the actual qualities of things good and bad, and what we call indifferent; and not about the characters of the men who do these things. Nor ought any bad or wicked man to go unpunished because his evil deed was not able to do harm to a good man. For the endurance and goodness of a righteous man are of no profit to the man who is the cause of his death or suffering, but only to him who patiently endures what is inflicted on him. And so the one is justly punished for savage cruelty, because he meant to injure him, while the other nevertheless suffers no evil, because in the goodness of his heart he patiently endures his temptation and sufferings, and so causes all those things, which were inflicted upon him with evil intent, to turn out to his advantage, and to conduce to the bliss of eternal life. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IX.
The case of Job who was tempted by the devil and of the Lord who was betrayed by Judas: and how prosperity as well as adversity is advantageous to a good man.
For the patience of Job did not bring any gain to the devil, through making him a better man by his temptations, but only to Job himself who endured them bravely; nor was Judas granted freedom from eternal punishment, because his act of betrayal contributed to the salvation of mankind. For we must not regard the result of the deed, but the purpose of the doer. Wherefore we should always cling to this assertion; viz., that evil cannot be brought upon a man by another, unless a man has admitted it by his sloth or feebleness of heart: as the blessed Apostle confirms this opinion of ours in a verse of Scripture: "But we know that all things work together for good to them that love God." [1387] But by saying "All things work together for good," he includes everything alike, not only things fortunate, but also those which seem to be misfortunes: through which the Apostle tells us in another place that he himself has passed, when he says: "By the armour of righteousness on the right hand and on the left," i.e., "Through honour and dishonour, through evil report and good report, as deceivers and yet true, as sorrowful but always rejoicing, as needy and yet enriching many:" [1388] All those things then which are considered fortunate, and are called those "on the right hand," which the holy Apostle designates by the terms honour and good report; and those too which are counted misfortunes, which he clearly means by dishonour and evil report, and which he describes as "on the left hand," become to the perfect man "the armour of righteousness," if when they are brought upon him, he bears them bravely: because, as he fights with these, and uses those very weapons with which he seems to be attacked, and is protected by them as by bow and sword and stout shield against those who bring these things upon him, he secures the advantage of his patience and goodness, and obtains a grand triumph of steadfastness by means of those very weapons of his enemies which are hurled against him to kill him; and if only he is not elated by success or cast down by failure, but ever marches straightforward on the king's highway, and does not swerve from that state of tranquillity as it were to the right hand, when joy overcomes him, nor let himself be driven so to speak to the left hand, when misfortunes overwhelm him, and sorrow holds sway. For "Much peace have they that love Thy law, and to them there is no stumbling block." [1389] But of those who shift about according to the character and changes of the several chances which happen to them, we read: "But a fool will change like the moon." [1390] For just as it is said of men who are perfect and wise: "To them that love God all things work together for good," [1391] so of those who are weak and foolish it is declared that "everything is against a foolish man," [1392] for he gets no profit out of prosperity, nor does adversity make him any better. For it requires as much goodness to bear sorrows bravely, as to be moderate in prosperity: and it is quite certain that one who fails in one of these, will not bear up under the other. But a man can be more easily overcome by prosperity than by misfortunes: for these sometimes restrain men against their will and make them humble and through most salutary sorrow cause them to sin less, and make them better: while prosperity puffs up the mind with soothing but most pernicious flatteries and when men are secure in the prospect of their happiness dashes them to the ground with a still greater destruction. __________________________________________________________________
[1387] Rom. viii. 28.
[1388] 2 Cor. vi. 7-10.
[1389] Ps. cxviii. (cxix.) 165.
[1390] Ecclus. xxvii. 11.
[1391] Rom. viii. 28.
[1392] Prov. xiv. 7 (LXX.). __________________________________________________________________
Chapter X.
Of the excellence of the perfect man who is figuratively spoken of as ambidextrous.
Those are they then who are figuratively spoken of in holy Scripture as amphoterodexion , i.e., ambidextrous, as Ehud is described in the book of Judges "who used either hand as the right [1393] hand." And this power we also can spiritually acquire, if by making a right and proper use of those things which are fortunate, and which seem to be "on the right hand," as well as of those which are unfortunate and as we call it "on the left hand," we make them both belong to the right side, so that whatever turns up proves in our case, to use the words of the Apostle, "the armour of righteousness." For we see that the inner man consists of two parts, and if I may be allowed the expression, two hands, nor can any of the saints do without that which we call the left hand: but by means of it the perfection of virtue is shown, where a man by skilful use can turn both hands into right hands. And in order to make our meaning clearer, the saint has for his right hand his spiritual achievements, in which he is found when with fervent spirit he gets the better of his desires and passions, when he is free from all attacks of the devil, and without any effort or difficulty rejects and cuts off all carnal sins, when he is exalted above the earth and regards all things present and earthly as light smoke or vain shadows, and scorns them as what is about to vanish away, when with an overflowing heart he not only longs most intensely for the future but actually sees it the more clearly, when he is more effectually fed on spiritual contemplations, when he sees heavenly mysteries more brightly laid open to him, when he pours forth his prayers to God with greater purity and readiness, when he is so inflamed with fervent of spirit as to pass with the utmost readiness of soul to things invisible and eternal, so as scarcely to believe that he any longer remains in the flesh. He has also a left hand, when he is entangled in the toils of temptation, when he is inflamed with the heat of desire for carnal lusts, when he is set on fire by emotion towards rage and anger, when he is overcome by being puffed up with pride or vainglory, when he is oppressed by a sorrow that worketh death, when he is shaken to pieces by the contrivances and attacks of accidie, and when he has lost all spiritual warmth, and grows indifferent with a sort of lukewarmness and unreasonable grief so that not only is he forsaken by good and kindling thoughts, but actually Psalms, prayer, reading, and retirement in his cell all pall upon him, and all virtuous exercises seem by an intolerable and horrible loathing to have lost their savour. And when a monk is troubled in this way, then he knows that he is attacked "on the left hand." Anyone therefore who is not at all puffed up through the aid of vainglory by any of those things on the right hand which we have mentioned, and who struggles manfully against those on the left hand, and does not yield to despair and give in, but rather on the other hand seizes the armour of patience to practise himself in virtue--this man can use both hands as right hands, and in each action he proves triumphant and carries off the prize of victory from that condition on the left hand as well as that on the right. Such, we read, was the reward which the blessed Job obtained who was certainly crowned (for a victory) on the right hand, when he was the father of seven sons and walked as a rich and wealthy man, and yet offered daily sacrifices to the Lord for their purification, in his anxiety that they might prove acceptable and dear to God rather than to himself, when his gates stood open to every stranger, when he was "feet to lame and eyes to blind," [1394] when the shoulders of the suffering were kept warm by the wool of his sheep, when he was a father to orphans and a husband to widows, when he did not even in his heart rejoice at the fall of his enemy. And again it was the same man who with still greater virtue triumphed over adversity on the left hand, when deprived in one moment of his seven sons he was not as a father overcome with bitter grief but as a true servant of God rejoiced in the will of his Creator. When instead of being a wealthy man he became poor, naked instead of rich, pining away instead of strong, despised and contemptible instead of famous and honourable, and yet preserved his fortitude of mind unshaken, when, lastly, bereft of all his wealth and substance he took up his abode on the dunghill, and like some stern executioner of his own body scraped with a potsherd the matter that broke out, and plunging his fingers deep into his wounds dragged out on every side masses of worms from his limbs. And in all this he never fell into despair and blasphemy, nor murmured at all against his Creator. Moreover also so little was he overcome by such a weight of bitter temptations that the cloak which out of all his former property remained to cover his body, and which alone could be saved from destruction by the devil because he was clothed with it, he rent and cast off, and covered with it his nakedness which he voluntarily endured, which the terrible robber had brought upon him. The hair of his head too, which was the only thing left untouched out of all the remains of his former glory, he shaved and cast to his tormentor, and cutting off even that which his savage foe had left to him he exulted over him and mocked him with that celestial cry of his: "If we have received good at the hand of the Lord, should we not also receive evil? Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither. The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away; as it hath pleased the Lord, so is it done; blessed be the name of the Lord." [1395] I should also with good reason call Joseph ambidextrous, as in prosperity he was very dear to his father, affectionate to his brethren, acceptable to God; and in adversity was chaste, and faithful to the Lord, in prison most kind to the prisoners, forgetful of wrongs, generous to his enemies; and to his brethren who were envious of him and as far as lay in their powers, his murderers, he proved not only affectionate but actually munificent. These men then and those who are like them are rightly termed amphoterodexion , i.e., ambidextrous. For they can use either hand as the right hand, and passing through those things which the Apostle enumerates can fairly say: "Through the armour of righteousness on the right hand and on the left, through honour and dishonour, through evil report and good report, etc." And of this right and left hand Solomon speaks as follows in the Song of songs, in the person of the bride: "His left hand is under my head, and his right hand shall embrace me." [1396] And while this passage shows that both are useful, yet it puts one under the head, because misfortunes ought to be subject to the control of the heart, since they are only useful for this; viz., to train us for a time and discipline us for our salvation and make us perfect in the matter of patience. But the right hand she hopes will ever cling to her to cherish her and hold her fast in the blessed embrace of the Bridegroom, and unite her to him indissolubly. We shall then be ambidextrous, when neither abundance nor want affects us, and when the former does not entice us to the luxury of a dangerous carelessness, while the latter does not draw us to despair, and complaining; but when, giving thanks to God in either case alike, we gain one and the same advantage out of good and bad fortune. And such that truly ambidextrous man, the teacher of the Gentiles, testifies that he himself was, when he says: "For I have learnt in whatsoever state I am, to be content therewith. I know both how to be brought low and I know how to abound: everywhere and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things in Him which strengtheneth me." [1397] __________________________________________________________________
[1393] Judg. iii. 15, where the LXX. has amphoterodexion.
[1394] Job xxix. 15.
[1395] Job ii. 10; i. 21.
[1396] Cant. ii. 6.
[1397] Phil. iv. 11-13. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XI.
Of the two kinds of trials, which come upon us in a three-fold way.
Well then, though we say that trial is twofold, i.e., in prosperity and in adversity, yet you must know that all men are tried in three different ways. Often for their probation, sometimes for their improvement, and in some cases because their sins deserve it. For their probation indeed, as we read that the blessed Abraham and Job and many of the saints endured countless tribulations; or this which is said to the people in Deuteronomy by Moses: "And thou shalt remember all the way through which the Lord thy God hath brought thee for forty years through the desert, to afflict thee and to prove thee, and that the things that were in thy heart might be made known, whether thou wouldst keep His Commandments or no:" [1398] and this which we find in the Psalms: "I proved thee at the waters of strife." [1399] To Job also: "Thinkest thou that I have spoken for any other cause than that thou mightest be seen to be righteous?" [1400] But for improvement, when God chastens his righteous ones for some small and venial sins, or to raise them to a higher state of purity, and delivers them over to various trials, that He may purge away all their unclean thoughts, and, to use the prophet's word, the "dross," which he sees to have collected in their secret parts, and may thus transmit them like pure gold, to the judgment to come, as He allows nothing to remain in them for the fire of judgment to discover when hereafter it searches them with penal torments according to this saying: "Many are the tribulations of the righteous." [1401] And: "My son, neglect not the discipline of the Lord, neither be thou wearied whilst thou art rebuked by Him. For whom the Lord loveth He chastiseth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth. For what son is there whom the father doth not correct? But if ye are without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons." [1402] And in the Apocalypse: "Those whom I love, I reprove and chasten." [1403] To whom under the figure of Jerusalem the following words are spoken by Jeremiah, in the person of God: "For I will utterly consume all the nations among which I scattered thee: but I will not utterly consume thee: but I will chastise thee in judgment, that thou mayest not seem to thyself innocent." [1404] And for this life-giving cleansing David prays when he says: "Prove me, O Lord, and try me; turn my reins and my heart." [1405] Isaiah also, well knowing the value of this trial, says "O Lord, correct us but with judgment: not in Thine anger." [1406] And again: "I will give thanks to thee, O Lord, for thou wast angry with me: Thy wrath is turned away, and Thou hast comforted me." [1407] But as a punishment for sins, the blows of trial are inflicted, as where the Lord threatens that He will send plagues upon the people of Israel: "I will send the teeth of beasts upon them, with the fury of creatures that trail upon the ground:" [1408] and "In vain have I struck your children: they have not received correction." [1409] In the Psalms also: "Many are the scourges of the sinners:" [1410] and in the gospel: "Behold thou art made whole: now sin no more, lest a worse thing happen unto thee." [1411] We find, it is true, a fourth way also in which we know on the authority of Scripture that some sufferings are brought upon us simply for the manifestation of the glory of God and His works, according to these words of the gospel: "Neither did this man sin nor his parents, but that the works of God might be manifested in him:" [1412] and again: "This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God that the Son of God may be glorified by it." [1413] There are also other sorts of vengeance, with which some who have overpassed the bounds of wickedness are smitten in this life, as we read that Dathan and Abiram or Korah were punished, or above all, those of whom the Apostle speaks: "Wherefore God gave them up to vile passions and a reprobate mind:" [1414] and this must be counted worse than all other punishments. For of these the Psalmist says: "They are not in the labours of men; neither shall they be scourged like other men." [1415] For they are not worthy of being healed by the visitation of the Lord which gives life, and by plagues in this world, as "in despair they have given themselves over to lasciviousness, unto the working of all error unto uncleanness," [1416] and as by hardening their hearts, and by growing accustomed and used to sin they have got beyond cleansing in this brief life and punishment in the present world: men, who are thus reproved by the holy word of the prophet: "I destroyed some of you, as God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, and you were as a firebrand plucked out of the burning: yet you returned not to Me, saith the Lord," [1417] and Jeremiah: "I have killed and destroyed thy people, and yet they are not returned from their ways." [1418] And again: "Thou hast smitten them and they have not grieved: Thou hast bruised them and they refused to receive correction: they have made their faces harder than the rock, they have refused to return." [1419] And the prophet seeing that all the remedies of this life will have been applied in vain for their healing, and already as it were despairing of their life, declares: "The bellows have failed in the fire, the founder hath melted in vain: for their wicked deeds are not consumed. Call them reprobate silver, for the Lord hath rejected them." [1420] And the Lord thus laments that to no purpose has He applied this salutary cleansing by fire to those who are hardened in their sins, in the person of Jerusalem crusted all over with the rust of her sins, when He says: "set it empty upon burning coals, that it may be hot, and the brass thereof may be melted; and let the filth of it be melted in the midst thereof. Great pains have been taken, and the great rust thereof is not gone out, no not even by fire. Thy uncleanness is execrable: because I desired to cleanse thee, and thou art not cleansed from thy filthiness." [1421] Wherefore like a skilful physician, who has tried all saving cures, and sees there is no remedy left which can be applied to their disease, the Lord is in a manner overcome by their iniquities and is obliged to desist from that kindly chastisement of His, and so denounces them saying: "I will no longer be angry with thee, and thy jealousy has departed from thee." [1422] But of others, whose heart has not grown hard by continuance in sin, and who do not stand in need of that most severe and (if I may so call it) caustic remedy, but for whose salvation the instruction of the life-giving word is sufficient--of them it is said: "I will improve them by hearing of their suffering." [1423] We are well aware that there are other reasons also of the punishment and vengeance which is inflicted on those who have sinned grievously--not to expiate their crimes, nor wipe out the deserts of their sins, but that the living may be put in fear and amend their lives. And these we plainly see were inflicted on Jeroboam the son of Nebat, and Baasha the son of Ahiah, and Ahab and Jezebel, when the Divine reproof thus declares: "Behold, I will bring evil upon thee, and will cut down thy posterity, and will kill of Ahab every male, and him that is shut up and the last in Israel. And I will make thy house like the house of Jeroboam the son of Nebat and like the house of Baasha the son of Ahiah: for that which thou hast done to provoke Me to anger, and for making Israel to sin. The dogs also shall eat Jezebel in the field of Jezreel. If Ahab die in the city, the dogs shall eat him: but if he die in the field the birds of the air shall eat him," [1424] and this which is threatened as the greatest threat of all: "Thy dead body shall not be brought to the sepulchre of thy fathers." [1425] It was not that this short and momentary punishment would suffice to purge away the blasphemous inventions of him who first made the golden calves and led to the lasting sin of the people, and their wicked separation from the Lord,--or the countless and disgraceful profanities of those others, but it was that by their example the fear of those punishments which they dreaded might fall on others also, who, as they thought little of the future or even disbelieved in it altogether, would only be moved by consideration of things present; and that owing to this proof of His severity they might acknowledge that there is no lack of care for the affairs of men, and for their daily doings, in the majesty of God on high, and so through that which they greatly feared might the more clearly see in God the rewarder of all their deeds. We find, it is true, that even for lighter faults some men have received the same sentence of death in this world, as that with which those men were punished who, as we said before, were the authors of a blasphemous falling away: as happened in the case of the man who gathered sticks on the Sabbath, [1426] and in that of Ananias and Sapphira, who through the sin of unbelief kept back some portion of their goods: not that the guilt of their sins was equal, but because they were the first found out in a new kind of transgression, and so it was right that as they had given to others an example of sin, so also they should give them an example of punishment and of fear, that anyone, who should attempt to copy them, might know that (even if his punishment were postponed in this life) he would be punished in the same way that they were at the trial of the judgment hereafter. And, since in our desire to run through the different kinds of trials and punishments we seem to have wandered somewhat from our subject, on which we were saying that the perfect man will always remain steadfast in either kind of trial, now let us return to it once more. __________________________________________________________________
[1398] Deut. viii. 2.
[1399] Ps. lxxx. (lxxxi.) 7.
[1400] Job xl. 3 (LXX.).
[1401] Ps. xxxiii. (xxxiv.) 19.
[1402] Heb. xii. 5-8.
[1403] Rev. iii. 19.
[1404] Jer. xxx. 11.
[1405] Ps. xxv. (xxvi.) 2.
[1406] The passage is not from Isaiah, but from Jer. x. 24.
[1407] Is. xii. 1.
[1408] Deut. xxxii. 24.
[1409] Jer. ii. 30.
[1410] Ps. xxxi. (xxxii.) 10.
[1411] S. John v. 14.
[1412] S. John ix. 3.
[1413] S. John xi. 4.
[1414] Rom. i. 26, 28.
[1415] Ps. lxxii. (lxxiii.) 5.
[1416] Eph. iv. 19.
[1417] Amos iv. 11.
[1418] Jer. xv. 7.
[1419] Jer. v. 3.
[1420] Jer. vi. 29, 30.
[1421] Ezek. xxiv. 11-13.
[1422] Ezek. xvi. 42.
[1423] Hos. vii. 12 (LXX.).
[1424] 1 Kings xxi. 21-24.
[1425] 1 Kings xiii. 22.
[1426] Cf. Numb. xv. 32. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XII.
How the upright man ought to be like a stamp not of wax but of hard steel.
And so the mind of the upright man ought not to be like wax or any other soft material which always yields to the shape of what presses on it, and is stamped with its form and impress and keeps it until it takes another shape by having another seal stamped upon it; and so it results that it never retains its own form but is turned and twisted about to correspond to whatever is pressed upon it. But he should rather be like some stamp of hard steel, that the mind may always keep its proper form and shape inviolate, and may stamp and imprint on everything which occurs to it the marks of its own condition, while upon it itself nothing that happens can leave any mark. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIII.
A question whether the mind can constantly continue in one and the same condition.
Germanus: But can our mind constantly preserve its condition unaltered, and always continue in the same state? __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIV.
The answer to the point raised by the questioner.
Theodore: It is needful that one must either, as the Apostle says, "be renewed in the spirit of the mind," [1427] and daily advance by "pressing forward to those things which are before," [1428] or, if one neglects to do this, the sure result will be to go back, and become worse and worse. And therefore the mind cannot possibly remain in one and the same state. Just as when a man, by pulling hard, is trying to force a boat against the stream of a strong current he must either stem the rush of the torrent by the force of his arms, and so mount to what is higher up, or letting his hands slacken be whirled headlong down stream. Wherefore it will be a clear proof of our failure if we find that we have gained nothing more, nor should we doubt but that we have altogether gone back, whenever we find that we have not advanced upwards, because, as I said, the mind of man cannot possibly continue in the same condition, nor so long as he is in the flesh will any of the saints ever reach the height of all virtues, so that they continue unalterable. For something must either be added to them or taken away from them, and in no creature can there be such perfection, as not to be subject to the feeling of change; as we read in the book of Job: "What is man that he should be without spot, and he that is born of a woman that he should appear just? Behold among His saints none is unchangeable, and the heavens are not pure in His sight." [1429] For we confess that God only is unchangeable, who alone is thus addressed by the prayer of the holy prophet "But Thou art the same," [1430] and who says of Himself "I am God, and I change not," [1431] because He alone is by nature always good, always full and perfect, and one to whom nothing can ever be added, or from whom nothing can be taken away. And so we ought always with incessant care and anxiety to give ourselves up to the acquirement of virtue, and constantly to occupy ourselves with the practice of it, lest, if we cease to go forward, the result should immediately be a going back. For, as we said, the mind cannot continue in one and the same condition, I mean without receiving addition to or diminution of its good qualities. For to fail to gain new ones, is to lose them, because when the desire of making progress ceases, there the danger of going back is present. __________________________________________________________________
[1427] Eph. iv. 23.
[1428] Phil. iii. 13.
[1429] Job xv. 14, 15.
[1430] Ps. ci. (cii.) 27.
[1431] Mal. iii. 6. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XV.
How one loses by going away from one's cell.
And so we ought always to remain shut up in our cell. For whenever a man has strayed from it and returns fresh to it and begins again to live there he will be upset and disturbed. For if he has let it go he cannot without difficulty and pains recover that fixed purpose of mind, which he had gained when he remained in his cell; and as through this he has gone back, he will not think anything of the advance which he has missed, and which he would have secured if he had not allowed himself to leave his cell, but he will rather congratulate himself if he finds that he has regained that condition from which he fell away. For just as time once lost and gone cannot any more be recovered, so neither can those advantages which have been missed be restored: for whatever earnest purpose of the mind there may be afterwards, it will be the profit of the day then present, and the gain that belongs to the time that then is, and will not make up for the gain that has been once for all lost. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVI.
How even celestial powers above are capable of change.
But that even the powers above are, as we said, subject to change is shown by those who fell from their ranks through the fault of a corrupt will. Wherefore we ought not to think that the nature of those is unchangeable, who remain in the blessed condition in which they were created, simply because they were not in like manner led astray to choose the worse part. For it is one thing to have a nature incapable of change, and another thing for a man through the efforts of his virtue, and by guarding what is good through the grace of the unchangeable God, to be kept from change. For everything that is secured or preserved by care, can also be lost by carelessness. And so we read: "Call no man blessed before his death," [1432] because so long as a man is still engaged in the struggle, and if I may use the expression, still wrestling--even though he generally conquers and carries off many prizes of victory,--yet he can never be free from fear, and from the suspicion of an uncertain issue. And therefore God alone is called unchangeable and good, as His goodness is not the result of effort, but a natural possession, and so He cannot be anything but good. No virtue then can be acquired by man without the possibility of change, but in order that when it once exists it may be continually preserved, it must be watched over with the same care and diligence with which it was acquired. __________________________________________________________________
[1432] Ecclus. xi. 30. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVII.
That no one is dashed to the ground by a sudden fall.
But we must not imagine that anyone slips and comes to grief by a sudden fall, but that he falls by a hopeless collapse either from being deceived by beginning his training badly, or from the good qualities of his soul failing through a long course of carelessness of mind, and so his faults gaining ground upon him little by little. For "loss goeth before destruction, and an evil thought before a fall," [1433] just as no house ever falls to the ground by a sudden collapse, but only when there is some flaw of long standing in the foundation, or when by long continued neglect of its inmates, what was at first only a little drip finds its way through, and so the protecting walls are by degrees ruined, and in consequence of long standing neglect the gap becomes larger, and break away, and in time the drenching storm and rain pours in like a river: for "by slothfulness a building is cast down, and through the weakness of hands the house shall drop through." [1434] And that the same thing happens spiritually to the soul the same Solomon thus tells us in other words, when he says: "water dripping drives a man out of the house on a stormy day." [1435] Elegantly then does he compare carelessness of mind to a roof, and to tiles that have not been looked after, through which in the first instance only very slight drippings (so to speak) of the passions make their way to the soul: but if these are not heeded, as being but small and trifling, then the beams of virtues will decay and be carried away by a great tempest of sins, through which "on a stormy day," i.e., in the time of temptation, the devil's attack will assail us, and the soul will be driven forth from the abode of virtue, in which, as long as it preserved all watchful diligence, it had remained as in a house that belonged to it.
And so when we had heard this, we were so immensely delighted with our spiritual repast, that the mental pleasure with which we were filled by this conference outweighed the sorrow which we had experienced before from the death of the saints. For not only were we instructed in things about which we had been puzzled, but we also learnt from the raising of that question some things, which our understanding had been too small for us to ask about. __________________________________________________________________
[1433] Prov. xvi. 18 (LXX.).
[1434] Eccl. x. 18 (LXX.).
[1435] Prov. xxvii. 15 (LXX.). __________________________________________________________________
[1362] This Abbot Theodore is probably the same person as the one mentioned in the Institutes, Book V. cc. xxxiii.-xxxv.; but nothing further is known of him, and there is no reason for identifying him with any of the other monks of this name of the fourth century. __________________________________________________________________
VII. First Conference of Abbot Serenus.
On Inconstancy of Mind, and Spiritual Wickedness. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter I.
On the chastity of Abbot Serenus. [1436]
As we desire to introduce to earnest minds the Abbot Serenus, a man of the greatest holiness and continence, and one who answers like a mirror to his name, whom we admired above all others with peculiar veneration, we think that we only carry out our desire by the attempt to insert his conferences in our book. To this man beyond all other virtues, which shone forth not merely in his actions and manners, but by God's grace in his very look as well, there was granted by a special blessing the gift of continence, so that he never felt himself disturbed even by natural incitements even in sleep. And how it was that by the assistance of God's grace he attained such wondrous purity of the flesh, as it seems beyond the conditions of human nature, I think that I ought first of all to explain. __________________________________________________________________
[1436] Very little is known of Serenus but what is here told. Cf. the Vitæ Patrum, c. l. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter II.
The question of the aforesaid old man on the state of our thoughts.
This man then in his prayers by day and night, and in fasts and vigils unweariedly entreated for inward chastity of heart and soul, and seeing that he had obtained what he wished and prayed for, and that all the passions of carnal concupiscence in his heart were dead, was roused as it were by the sweetest taste of purity, and inflamed by his zeal for chastity towards a yet more ardent desire, and began to apply himself to stricter fasts and prayers that the mortification of this passion which by God's grace had been granted to his inner man, might be extended also so as to include external purity, to such an extent that he might no longer be affected by any simple and natural movement, such as is excited even in children and infants. And by the experience of the gift he had obtained, which he knew he had secured by no merit of his labours, but by the grace God, he was the more ardently stimulated to obtain this also in like manner, as he believed that God could much more easily tear up by the roots this incitement of the flesh, (which even by man's art and skill is sometimes destroyed by potions and remedies or by the use of the knife) since He had of His own free gift conferred that purity of spirit which is a still greater thing, and which cannot be acquired by human efforts and exertions. And when with unceasing supplications and tears he was applying himself unweariedly to the petition he had commenced, there came to him an angel in a vision by night, and seemed to open his belly, and to remove from his bowels a sort of fiery fleshly humour, and to cast it away, and restore everything to its place as before; and "lo" he said, "the incitements of your flesh are removed, and you may be sure that you have this day obtained that lasting purity of body for which you have faithfully asked." It will be enough thus briefly to have told this of the grace of God which was granted to this famous man in a special way. But I deem it unnecessary to say anything of those virtues which he possessed in common with other good men, for fear lest that particular narrative on this man's name might seem to deprive others of that which is specially mentioned of him. Him therefore, as we were inflamed with the greatest eagerness for conference with and instruction from him, we arranged to visit in Lent; and when he had very quietly inquired of us of the character of our thoughts and the state of our inner man, and what help we had got towards its purity from our long stay in the desert, we approached him with these complaints: __________________________________________________________________
Chapter III.
Our answer on the fickle character of our thoughts.
The time spent here, and the dwelling in solitude, and meditation, through which you think that we ought to have attained perfection of the inner man, has only done this for us; viz., teach us that which we are unable to be, without making us what we are trying to be. Nor do we feel that by this knowledge we have acquired any fixed steadfastness of the purity which we long for, or any strength and firmness; but only an increase of confusion and shame: for though our meditation in all our discipline aims at this in our daily studies, and endeavours from trembling beginnings to reach a sure and unwavering skill, and to begin to know something of what originally it knew but vaguely or was altogether ignorant of, and by advancing by sure steps (so to speak) towards the condition of that discipline, to habituate itself perfectly to it without any difficulty, I find on the contrary that while I am struggling in this desire for purity, I have only got far enough to know what I cannot be. And hence I feel that nothing but trouble results to me from all this contrition of heart, so that matter for tears is never wanting, and yet I do not cease to be what I ought not to be. And so what is the good of having learnt what is best, if it cannot be attained even when known? for when we have been feeling that the aim of our heart was directed towards what we purposed, insensibly the mind returns to its previous wandering thoughts and slips back with a more violent rush, and is taken up with daily distractions and incessantly drawn away by numberless things that take it captive, so that we almost despair of the improvement which we long for, and all these observances seem useless. Since the mind which every moment wanders off vaguely, when it is brought back to the fear of God or spiritual contemplation, before it is established in it, darts off and strays; and when we have been roused and have discovered that it has wandered from the purpose set before it, and want to recall it to the meditation from which it has strayed, and to bind it fast with the firmest purpose of heart, as if with chains, while we are making the attempt it slips away from the inmost recesses of the heart swifter than a snake. Wherefore we being inflamed by daily exercises of this kind, and yet not seeing that we gain from them any strength and stability in heart are overcome and in despair driven to this opinion; viz., to believe that it is from no fault of our own but from a fault of our nature that these wanderings of mind are found in mankind. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IV.
The discourse of the old man on the state of the soul and its excellence.
Serenus: It is dangerous to jump to a conclusion and lay down the law hastily on the nature of anything before you have properly discussed the subject and considered its true character. Nor should you, looking only at your own weakness, hazard a conjecture instead of pronouncing a judgment based on the character and value of the practice itself, and others' experience of it. For if anyone, who was ignorant of swimming but knew that the weight of his body could not be supported by water, wished from the proof which his inexperience afforded, to lay down that no one composed of solid flesh could possibly be supported on the liquid element, we ought not therefore to think his opinion a true one, which he seemed to bring forward in accordance with his own experience, since this can be shown to be not merely not impossible but actually extremely easily done by others, by the clearest proofs and ocular demonstration. And so the nous, i.e., the mind, is defined as aeikinetos kai polukinetos, i.e., ever shifting and very shifting: as it is thus described in the so called wisdom of Solomon in other words: kai geodes skenos brithei noun poluphrontida , i.e., "And the earthly tabernacle weigheth down the mind that museth on many things." [1437] This then in accordance with its nature can never remain idle, but unless provision is made where it may exercise its motions and have what will continually occupy it, it must by its own fickleness wander about and stray over all kinds of things until, accustomed by long practice and daily use--in which you say that you have toiled without result--it tries and learns what food for the memory it ought to prepare, toward which it may bring back its unwearied flight and acquire strength for remaining, and thus may succeed in driving away the hostile suggestion of the enemy by which it is distracted, and in persisting in that state and condition which it yearns for. We ought not then to ascribe this wandering inclination of our heart either to human nature or to God its Creator. For it is a true statement of Scripture, that "God made man upright; but they themselves found out many thoughts." [1438] The character of these then depends on us ourselves, for it says "a good thought comes near to those that know it, but a prudent man will find it." [1439] For where anything is subject to our prudence and industry so that it can be found out, there if it is not found out, we ought certainly to set it down to our own laziness or carelessness and not to the fault of our nature. And with this meaning the Psalmist also is in agreement, when he says: "Blessed is the man whose help is from Thee: in his heart he hath disposed his ascents." [1440] You see then that it lies in our power to dispose in our hearts either ascents, i.e., thoughts that belong to God, or descents; viz., those that sink down to carnal and earthly things. And if this was not in our power the Lord would not have rebuked the Pharisees, saying "Why do ye think evil in your hearts?" [1441] nor would He have given this charge by the prophet, saying: "Take away the evil of your thoughts from mine eyes;" and "How long shall wicked thoughts remain in you?" [1442] Nor would the character of them as of our works be taken into consideration in the day of judgment in our case as the Lord threatens by Isaiah: "Lo, I come to gather together their works and thoughts together with all nations and tongues;" [1443] nor would it be right that we should be condemned or defended by their evidence in that terrible and dreadful examination, as the blessed Apostle says: "Their thoughts between themselves accusing or also defending one another, in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men according to my gospel." [1444] __________________________________________________________________
[1437] Wisdom ix. 15.
[1438] Eccl. vii. 29 (LXX.).
[1439] Prov. xix. 7 (LXX.).
[1440] Ps. lxxxiii. (lxxxiv.) 6.
[1441] S. Matt. ix. 4.
[1442] Is. i. 16; Jer. iv. 14.
[1443] Is. lxvi. 18.
[1444] Rom. ii. 15, 16. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter V.
On the perfection of the soul, as drawn from the comparison of the Centurion in the gospel.
Of this perfect mind then there is an excellent figure drawn in the case of the centurion in the gospel; whose virtue and consistency, owing to which he was not led away by the rush of thoughts, but in accordance with his own judgment either admitted such as were good, or easily drove away those of the opposite character, are described in this tropical form: "For I also am a man under authority, having soldiers under me: and I say to this man, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it." [1445] If then we too strive manfully against disturbances and sins and can bring them under our own control and discretion, and fight and destroy the passions in our flesh, and bring under the sway of reason the swarm of our thoughts, and drive back from our breast the terrible hosts of the powers opposed to us by the life-giving standard of the Lord's cross, we shall in reward for such triumphs be promoted to the rank of that centurion spiritually understood, who, as we read in Exodus, was mystically pointed to by Moses: "Appoint for thee rulers of thousands, and of hundreds, and of fifties and of tens." [1446] And so we too when raised to the height of this dignity shall have the same right and power to command, so that we shall not be carried away by thoughts against our will, but shall be able to continue in and cling to those which spiritually delight us, commanding the evil suggestions to depart, and they will depart, while to good ones we shall say "Come," and they will come: and to our servant also, i.e., the body, we shall in like manner enjoin what belongs to chastity and continence, and it will serve us without any gainsaying, no longer arousing in us the hostile incitements of concupiscence, but showing all subservience to the spirit. And what is the character of the arms of this centurion, and for what use in battle they are, hear the blessed Apostle declaring: "The arms," he says "of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty to God." He tells us their character; viz., that they are not carnal or weak, but spiritual and mighty to God. Then he next suggests in what struggles they are to be used: "Unto the pulling down of fortifications, purging the thoughts, and every height that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every understanding unto the obedience of Christ, and having in readiness to avenge all disobedience, when your obedience shall be first fulfilled." [1447] And since though useful, it yet belongs to another time to run through these one by one, I only want you to see the different sorts of these arms and their characteristics, as we also ought always to walk with them girt upon us if we mean to fight the Lord's battles and to serve among the centurions of the gospel. "Take," he says "the shield of faith, wherewith ye may be able to quench all the fiery darts of the evil one." [1448] Faith then is that which intercepts the flaming darts of lust, and destroys them by the fear of future judgment, and belief in the heavenly kingdom. "And the breastplate," he says, "of charity." [1449] This indeed is that which going round the vital parts of the breast and protecting what is exposed to the deadly wounds of swelling thoughts, keeps off the blows opposed to it, and does not allow the darts of the devil to penetrate to our inner man. For it "endureth all things, suffereth all things, beareth all things." [1450] "And for an helmet the hope of salvation." [1451] The helmet is what protects the head. As then Christ is our head, we ought always in all temptations and persecutions to protect it with the hope of future good things to come, and especially to keep faith in Him whole and undefiled. For it is possible for one who has lost other parts of the body, weak as he may be, still to survive: but even a short time of living is extended to no one without a head. "And the sword of the Spirit which is the word of God." [1452] For it is "sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart:" [1453] as it divides and cuts off whatever carnal and earthly things it may find in us. And whosoever is protected by these arms will ever be defended from the weapons and ravages of his foes, and will not be led away bound in the chains of his spoilers, a captive and a prisoner, to the hostile land of vain thoughts, nor hear the words of the prophet: "Why art thou grown old in a strange country?" [1454] But he will stand like a triumphant conqueror in the land of thoughts which he has chosen. Would you understand too the strength and courage of this centurion, by which he bears these arms of which we spoke before as not carnal but mighty to God? Hear of the selection by which the King himself marks and approves brave men when he summons them to the spiritual combat. "Let," says He, "the weak say that I am strong;" and: "Let him who is the sufferer become a warrior." [1455] You see then that none but sufferers and weak people can fight the Lord's battles, weak indeed with that weakness, founded on which that centurion of ours in the gospel said with confidence: "For when I am weak, then am I strong," and again, "for strength is made perfect in weakness." [1456] Of which weakness one of the prophets says: "And he that is weak among them shall be as the house of David." [1457] For the patient sufferer shall fight these wars, with that patience of which it is said "patience is necessary for you that doing the will of God you may receive the reward." [1458] __________________________________________________________________
[1445] S. Matt. viii. 9.
[1446] Exod. viii. 21.
[1447] 1 Cor. x. 4-6.
[1448] Eph. vi. 16.
[1449] 1 Thess. v. 8.
[1450] 1 Cor. xiii. 7.
[1451] 1 Thess. v. 8.
[1452] Eph. vi. 17.
[1453] Heb. iv. 12.
[1454] Baruch iii. 11.
[1455] Joel ii. 10, 11 (LXX.).
[1456] 2 Cor. xii. 9, 10.
[1457] Zech. xii. 8.
[1458] Heb. x. 36. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VI.
Of perseverance as regards care of the thoughts.
But we shall find out by our own experience that we can and ought to cling to the Lord if we have our wills mortified and the desires of this world cut off, and we shall be taught by the authority of those who in converse with the Lord say in all confidence: "My soul hath stuck close to Thee;" and: "I have stuck unto Thy testimonies, O Lord;" and: "It is good for me to stick fast to God;" and: "He who cleaveth to the Lord, is one spirit." [1459] We ought not then to be wearied out by these wanderings of mind and relax from our fervour: for "he that tilleth his ground shall be filled with bread: but he that followeth idleness shall be filled with poverty." [1460] Nor should we be drawn away from being intent on this watchfulness through a dangerous despair, for "in every one who is anxious there is abundance, for he who is pleasant and free from grief will be in want;" and again: "a man in grief labours for himself, and forcibly brings about his own destruction." [1461] Moreover also: "the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence and the violent take it by force," [1462] for no virtue is acquired without effort, nor can anyone attain to that mental stability which he desires without great sorrow of heart, for "man is born to trouble," [1463] and in order that he may be able to attain to "the perfect man, the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ" [1464] he must ever be on the watch with still greater intentness, and toil with ceaseless carefulness. But to the fulness of this measure no one will ever attain, but one who has considered it beforehand and been trained to it now and has had some foretaste of it while still in this world, and being marked a most precious member of Christ, has possessed in the flesh an earnest of that "joint" [1465] by which he can be united to His body: desiring one thing alone, thirsting for but one thing, ever bringing not only his acts but even his thoughts to bear on one thing alone; viz., that he may even now keep as an earnest that which is said of the blessed life of the saints hereafter; viz., that "God may be" to him "all in all." [1466] __________________________________________________________________
[1459] Ps. xlii. (lxiii.) 9; cxviii. (cxix.) 31; lxxi. (lxxiii.) 28; 1 Cor. vi. 17.
[1460] Prov. xxviii. 19.
[1461] Prov. xiv. 23; xvi. 26 (LXX.).
[1462] S. Matt. xi. 12.
[1463] Job v. 7.
[1464] Eph. iv. 13.
[1465] Ibid.
[1466] 1 Cor. xv. 28. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VII.
A question on the roving tendency of the mind and the attacks of spiritual wickedness.
Germanus: Perhaps this tendency of the mind to rove might to some extent be checked were it not that so great a swam of enemies surrounded it, and ceaselessly urged it toward what it has no wish for, or rather whither the roving character of its own nature drives it. And since such numberless foes, and those so powerful and terrible, surround it, we should not fancy that it was possible for them to be withstood especially by this weak flesh of ours, were we not encouraged to this view by your words as if by oracles from heaven. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VIII.
The answer on the help of God and the power of free will.
Serenus: No one who has experienced the conflicts of the inner man, can doubt that our foes are continually lying in wait for us. But we mean that they oppose our progress in such a way that we can think of them as only inciting to evil things and not forcing. But no one could altogether avoid whatever sin they were inclined to imprint upon our hearts, if a strong impulse was present to force (evil) upon us, just as it is to suggest it. Wherefore as there is in them ample power of inciting, so in us there is a supply of power of rejection, and of liberty of acquiescing. But if we are afraid of their power and assaults, we may also claim the protection and assistance of God against them, of which we read: "For greater is He who is in us than he who is in this world:" [1467] and His aid fights on our side with much greater power than their hosts fight against us; for God is not only the suggester of what is good, but the maintainer and insister of it, so that sometimes He draws us towards salvation even against our will and without our knowing it. It follows then that no one can be deceived by the devil but one who has chosen to yield to him the consent of his own will: as Ecclesiastes clearly puts it in these words: "For since there is no gainsaying by those who do evil speedily, therefore the heart of the children of men is filled within them to do evil." [1468] It is therefore clear that each man goes wrong from this; viz., that when evil thoughts assault him he does not immediately meet them with refusal and contradiction, for it says: "resist him, and he will flee from you." [1469] __________________________________________________________________
[1467] 1 John iv. 4.
[1468] Eccl. viii. 11 (LXX.).
[1469] S. James iv. 7. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IX.
A question on the union of the soul with devils.
Germanus: What, I pray you, is that indiscriminate and common union of the soul with those evil spirits, by which it is possible for them to be (I will not say joined with but) united to it in such a way that they can imperceptibly talk with it, and find their way into it and suggest to it whatever they want, and incite it to whatever they like, and look into and see its thoughts and movements; and the result is so close a union between them and the soul that it is almost impossible without God's grace to distinguish between what results from their instigation, and what from our free will. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter X.
The answer how unclean spirits are united with human souls.
Serenus: It is no wonder that spirit can be imperceptibly joined with spirit, and exercise an unseen power of persuasion toward what is allowed to it. For there is between them (just as between men) some sort of similarity and kinship of substance, since the description which is given of the nature of the soul, applies equally well to their substance. But it is impossible for spirits to be implanted in spirits inwardly or united with them in such a way that one can hold the other; for this is the true prerogative of Deity alone, which is the only simple and incorporeal nature. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XI.
An objection whether unclean spirits can be present in or united with the souls of those whom they have filled.
Germanus: To this idea we think that what we see happen in the case of those possessed is sufficiently opposed, when they say and do what they know not under the influence of the spirits. How then are we to refuse to believe that their souls are not united to those spirits, when we see them made their instruments, and (forsaking their natural condition) yielding to their movements and moods, in such a way that they give expression no longer to their own words and actions and wishes, but to those of the demons? __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XII.
The answer how it is that unclean spirits can lord it over those possessed.
Serenus: What you speak of as taking place in the case of demoniacs is not opposed to our assertion; viz., that those possessed by unclean spirits say and do what they do not want to, and are forced to utter what they know not; for it is perfectly clear that they are not subject to the entrance of the spirits all in the same way: for some are affected by them in such a way as to have not the slightest conception of what they do and say, while others know and afterwards recollect it. But we must not imagine that this is done by the infusion of the spirit in such a way that it penetrates into the actual substance of the soul and, being as it were united to it and somehow clothed with it, utters words and sayings through the mouth of the sufferer. For we ought not to believe that this can possibly be done by them. For we can clearly see that this results from no loss of the soul but from weakness of the body, when the unclean spirit seizes on those members in which the vigour of the soul resides, and laying on them an enormous and intolerable weight overwhelms it with foulest darkness, and interferes with its intellectual powers: as we see sometimes happen also from the fault of wine and fever or excessive cold, and other indispositions affecting men from without; and it was this which the devil was forbidden to attempt to inflict on the blessed Job, though he had received power over his flesh, when the Lord commanded him saying: "Lo, I give him into thine hands: only preserve his soul," [1470] i.e., do not weaken the seat of his soul and make him mad, and overpower the understanding and wisdom of what remains, by smothering the ruling power in his heart with your weight. __________________________________________________________________
[1470] Job ii. 6 (LXX.). __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIII.
How spirit cannot be penetrated by spirit, and how God alone is incorporeal.
For even if spirit is mingled with this crass and solid matter; viz., flesh (as very easily happens), should we therefore believe that it can be united to the soul, which is in like manner spirit, in such a way as to make it also receptive in the same way of its own nature: a thing which is possible to the Trinity alone, which is so capable of pervading every intellectual nature, that it cannot only embrace and surround it but even insert itself into it and, incorporeal though it is, be infused into a body? For though we maintain that some spiritual natures exist, such as angels, archangels and the other powers, and indeed our own souls and the thin air, yet we ought certainly not to consider them incorporeal. For they have in their own fashion a body in which they exist, though it is much finer than our bodies are, in accordance with the Apostle's words when he says: "And there are bodies celestial, and bodies terrestrial:" and again: "It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body;" [1471] from which it is clearly gathered that there is nothing incorporeal but God alone, and therefore it is only by Him that all spiritual and intellectual substances can be pervaded, because He alone is whole and everywhere and in all things, in such a way as to behold and see the thoughts of men and their inner movements and all the recesses of the soul; since it was of Him alone that the blessed Apostle spoke when he said: "For the word of God is quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit and of the joints and marrow; and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart; and there is no creature invisible in His sight, but all things are naked and open to His eyes." [1472] And the blessed David says: "Who fashioneth their hearts one by one;" and again: "For He knoweth the secrets of the heart;" [1473] and Job too: "Thou who alone knowest the hearts of men." [1474] __________________________________________________________________
[1471] 1 Cor. xv. 40, 44.
[1472] Heb. iv. 12, 13.
[1473] Ps. xxxii. (xxxiii.) 15; xliii. (xliv.) 22.
[1474] 2 Chron. vi. 30. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIV.
An objection, as to how we ought to believe that devils see into the thoughts of men.
Germanus: In this way, which you describe, those spirits cannot possibly see into our thoughts. But we think it utterly absurd to hold such an opinion, when Scripture says: "If the spirit of him that hath power ascend upon thee;" [1475] and again: "When the devil had put it into the heart of Simon Iscariot to betray the Lord." [1476] How then can we believe that our thoughts are not open to them, when we feel that for the most part they spring up and are nursed by their suggestions and instigation? __________________________________________________________________
[1475] Eccl. x. 4.
[1476] S. John xiii. 2. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XV.
The answer what devils can and what they cannot do in regard to the thoughts of men.
Serenus: Nobody doubts that unclean spirits can influence the character of our thoughts, but this is by affecting them from without by sensible influences, i.e., either from our inclinations or from our words, and those likings to which they see that we are especially disposed. But they cannot possibly come near to those which have not yet come forth from the inmost recesses of the soul. And the thoughts too, which they suggest, whether they are actually or in a kind of way embraced, are discovered by them not from the nature of the soul itself, i.e., that inner inclination which lies concealed so to speak in the very marrow, but from motions and signs given by the outward man, as for example, when they suggest gluttony, if they have seen a monk raising his eyes anxiously to the window or to the sun, or inquiring eagerly what o'clock it is, they know that he has admitted the feeling of greediness. If when they suggest fornication they find him calmly submitting to the attack of lust, or see him perturbed in body, or at any rate not groaning as he ought under the wantonness of an impure suggestion, they know that the dart of lust is already fixed in his very soul. If they stir up incitements to grief, or anger, or rage, they can tell whether they have taken root in the heart by the movements of the body, and visible disturbances, when, for instance, they have noticed him either groaning silently, or panting with indignation or changing colour; and so they cunningly discover the fault to which he is given over. For they know that every one of us is enticed in a regular way by that one, to the incitement of which they see, by a sort of assenting motion of the body, that he has yielded his consent and agreement. And it is no wonder that this is discovered by those powers of the air, when we see that even clever men can often discover the state of the inner man from his mien and look and external bearing. How much more surely then can this be discovered by those who as being of a spiritual nature are certainly much more subtle and cleverer than men. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVI.
An illustration showing how we are taught that unclean spirits know the thoughts of men.
For just as some thieves are in the habit of examining the concealed treasures of the men in those houses which they mean to rob, and in the dark shades of night sprinkle with careful hands little grains of sand and discover the hidden treasures which they cannot see by the tinkling sound with which they answer to the fall of the sand, and so arrive at certain knowledge of each thing and metal, which betrays itself in a way by the voice elicited from it; so these too, in order to explore the treasures of our heart, scatter over us the sand of certain evil suggestions, and when they see some bodily affection arise corresponding to their character, they recognize as if by a sort of tinkling sound proceeding from the inmost recesses, what it is that is stored up in the secret chamber of the inner man. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVII.
On the fact that not every devil has the power of suggesting every passion to men.
But we ought to know this, that not all devils can implant all the passions in men, but that certain spirits brood over each sin, and that some gloat over uncleanness and filthy lusts, others over blasphemy, others are more particularly devoted to anger and wrath, others thrive on gloominess, others are pacified with vainglory and pride; and each one implants in the hearts of men that sin, in which he himself revels, and they cannot implant their special vices all at one time, but in turn, according as the opportunity of time or place, or a man, who is open to their suggestions, excites them. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVIII.
A question whether among the devils there is any order observed in the attack, or system in its changes.
Germanus: Must we then believe that wickedness is arranged and so to speak systematized among them in such a way that there is some order in the changes observed by them, and a regular plan of attack carried out, though it is clear that method and system can only exist among good and upright men, as Scripture says: "Thou shalt seek wisdom among the ungodly and shalt not find it; and: "our enemies are senseless;" and this: "There is neither wisdom, nor courage, nor counsel among the ungodly." [1477] __________________________________________________________________
[1477] Prov. xiv. 6; Deut. xxxii. 31; Prov. xxi. 30 (LXX.). __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIX.
The answer how far an agreement exists among devils about the attack and its changes.
Serenus: It is a true assertion that there is no lasting concord among bad men, and that perfect harmony cannot exist even in regard to those particular faults which have attractions for them all in common. For, as you have said, it can never be that system and discipline are preserved among undisciplined things. But in some matters, where community of interests, and necessity enforces it, or participation in some gain recommends it, they must arrange for some agreement for the time being. And we see very clearly that this is so in the case of this war of spiritual wickedness; so that not only do they observe times and changes among themselves, but actually are known specially to occupy some particular spots and to haunt them persistently: for since they must make their attacks through certain fixed temptations and well defined sins, and at particular times, we clearly infer from this that no one can at one and at the same time be deluded by the emptiness of vainglory and inflamed by the lust of fornication, nor at one and the same time be puffed up by the outrageous haughtiness of spiritual pride, and subject to the humiliation of carnal gluttony. Nor can anyone be overcome by silly giggling and laughter and at the same time be excited by the stings of anger, or at any rate filled with the pains of gnawing grief: but all the spirits must one by one advance to attack the soul, in such a way that when one has been vanquished and retreated, he must make way for another spirit to attack it still more vehemently, or if he has come forth victorious, he will none the less hand it over to be deceived by another. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XX.
Of the fact that opposite powers are not of the same boldness, and that the occasions of temptation are not under their control.
We ought also not to be ignorant of this, that they have not all the same fierceness and energy, nor indeed the same boldness and malice, and that with beginners and feeble folk only the weaker spirits join battle, and when these spiritual wickednesses are beaten, then gradually the assaults of stronger ones are made against the athlete of Christ. For in proportion to a man's strength and progress, is the difficulty of the struggle made greater: for none of the saints could possibly be equal to the endurance of the malice of so many and so great foes, or meet their attacks, or even bear their cruelty and savagery, were it not that the merciful judge of our contest, and president of the games, Christ Himself, equalized the strength of the combatants, and repelled and checked their excessive attacks, and made with the temptation a way of escape as well that we might be able to bear it. [1478] __________________________________________________________________
[1478] 1 Cor. x. 13. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXI.
Of the fact that devils struggle with men not without effort on their part.
But our belief is that they undertake this struggle not without effort on their part. For in their conflict they themselves have some sort of anxiety and depression, and especially when they are matched with stronger rivals, i.e., saints and perfect men. Otherwise no contest or struggle, but only a simple deception of men, and one free from anxiety on their part would be assigned to them. And how then would the Apostle's words stand, where he says: "We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against world-rulers of this darkness, against spiritual wickedness in heavenly places;" and this too: "So fight I, not as one that beateth the air;" and again: "I have fought a good fight"? [1479] For where it is spoken of as a fight, and conflict, and battle, there must be effort and exertion and anxiety on both sides, and equally there must either be in store for them chagrin and confusion for their failure, or delight consequent upon their victory. But where one fights with ease and security against another who struggles with great effort, and in order to overthrow his rival makes use of his will alone as his strength, there it ought not to be called a battle, struggle, or strife, but a sort of unfair and unreasonable assault and attack. But they certainly have to labour, and when they attack men, exert themselves in no lesser degree in order to secure from each one that victory which they want to obtain, and there is hurled back upon them the same confusion which was awaiting us had we been worsted by them; as it is said: "The head of their compassing me about, the labour of their own lips shall overwhelm them;" and: "His sorrow shall be turned on his own head;" and again: "Let the snare which he knoweth not come upon him, and let the net which he hath hidden catch him, and into that very snare let him fall;" [1480] viz., that which he contrived for the deception of men. They then themselves also come to grief, and as they damage us so are they also in like manner damaged by us, nor when they are worsted do they depart without confusion, and seeing these defeats of theirs and their struggles, one who had good eyes in his inner man, seeing also that they gloated over the downfall and mischances of individuals, and fearing lest his own case might furnish them with this kind of delight, prayed to the Lord saying: "Lighten mine eyes that I sleep not in death: lest mine enemy say, I have prevailed against him. They that trouble me will rejoice if I be moved;" and: "O My God, let them not rejoice over me; let them not say in their hearts, Aha, Aha, our very wish; neither let them say; we have devoured him;" and: "They gnashed their teeth upon me. Lord, how long wilt Thou look on this?" for: "he lieth in wait secretly as a lion in his den: he lieth in wait to ravish the poor;" and: "He seeketh from God his meat." [1481] And again when all their efforts are exhausted, and they have failed to secure our deception, they must "be confounded and blush" at the failure of their efforts, "who seek our souls to destroy them: and let them be covered with shame and confusion who imagine evil against us." [1482] Jeremiah also says: "Let them be confounded, and let not me be confounded: let them be afraid, and let not me be afraid: bring upon them the fury of Thy wrath, and with a double destruction destroy them." [1483] For no one can doubt that when they are vanquished by us they will be destroyed with a double destruction: first, because while men are seeking after holiness, they, though they possessed it, lost it, and became the cause of man's ruin; secondly, because being spiritual existences, they have been vanquished by carnal and earthly ones. Each one then of the saints when he looks on the destruction of his foes and his own triumphs, exclaims with delight: "I will follow after mine enemies and overtake them: and I will not turn until they are destroyed. I will break them and they shall not be able to stand: they shall fall under my feet," [1484] and in his prayers against them the same prophet says: "Judge thou, O Lord, them that wrong me: overthrow them that fight against me. Take hold of arms and shield: and rise up to help me. Bring out the sword and shut up the way against them that persecute me: say to my soul, I am thy salvation." [1485] And when by subduing and destroying all our passions we have vanquished these, we shall then be permitted to hear those words of blessing: "Thy hand shall be exalted over thine enemies, and all thine enemies shall perish." [1486] And so when we read or chant all these and such like passages found in holy writ, unless we take them as written against those spiritual wickednesses which lie in wait for us night and day, we shall not only fail to draw from them any edification to make us gentle and patient, but shall actually meet with some dreadful consequence and one that is quite contrary to evangelical perfection. For we shall not only not be taught to pray for or to love our enemies, but actually shall be stirred up to hate them with an implacable hatred, and to curse them and incessantly to pour forth prayers against them. And it is terribly wrong and blasphemous to think that these words were uttered in such a spirit by holy men and friends of God, on whom before the coming of Christ the law was not imposed for the very reason that they went beyond its commands, and chose rather to obey the precepts of the gospel and to aim at apostolical perfection, though they lived before the dispensation of the time. __________________________________________________________________
[1479] Eph. vi. 12; 1 Cor. ix. 26; 2 Tim. iv. 7.
[1480] Ps. cxxxix. (cxl.) 10; vii. 17; xxxiv. (xxxv.) 8.
[1481] Ps. xii. (xiii.) 4, 5; xxxiv. (xxxv.) 24, 28; 16, 17; ix. (x.) 9; ciii. (civ.) 21.
[1482] Ps. xxxix. (xl.) 15; xxxiv. (xxxv.) 26; xxxix. (xl.) 15.
[1483] Jer. xvii. 18.
[1484] Ps. xvii. (xviii.) 38, 39.
[1485] Ps. xxiv. (xxxv.) 1-3.
[1486] Micah v. 9. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXII.
On the fact that the power to hurt does not depend upon the will of the devils.
But that they have not the power of hurting any man is shown in a very clear way by the instance of the blessed Job, where the enemy did not venture to try him beyond what was allowed to him by the Divine permission; and it is evidenced by the confession of the same spirits contained in the records of the gospel, where they say: "If Thou cast us out, suffer us to go into the herd of swine." [1487] And far more must we hold that they cannot of their own free will enter into any one of men who are created in the image of God, if they have not power to enter into dumb and unclean animals without the permission of God. But no one--I will not say of the younger men, whom we see living most steadfastly in this desert, but even of those who are perfect--could live alone in the desert, surrounded by such swarms of foes of this kind, if they had unlimited power and freedom to hurt and tempt us: and still more clearly is this supported by the words of our Lord and Saviour, which in the lowliness of the manhood He had assumed, He uttered to Pilate, when He said: "Thou couldest have no power against Me at all, unless it were given thee from above." [1488] __________________________________________________________________
[1487] S. Matt. viii. 31.
[1488] S. John xix. 11. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXIII.
Of the diminished power of the devils.
But we have thoroughly discovered both by our own experience and by the testimony of the Elders that the devils have not now the same power as they had formerly during the early days of the anchorites, when yet there were only a few monks living in the desert. For such was their fierceness that it was with difficulty that a few very steadfast men, and those advanced in years were able to endure a life of solitude. Since in the actual monasteries where eight or ten men used to live, their violence attacked them so and their assaults were experienced so frequently, and so visibly, that they did not dare all to go to bed at once by night, but took turns and while some snatched a little sleep, others kept watch and devoted themselves to Psalms and prayer and reading. And when the wants of nature compelled them to sleep, they awoke the others, and committed to them in like manner the duty of keeping watch over those who were going to bed. Whence we cannot doubt that one of two things has brought about this result not only in the case of us who seem to be fairly strong from the experience which our age gives us, but also in the case of younger men as well. For either the malice of the devils has been beaten back by the power of the cross penetrating even to the desert, and by its grace which shines everywhere; or else our carelessness makes them relax something of their first onslaught, as they scorn to attack us with the same energy with which they formerly raged against those most admirable soldiers of Christ; and by this deceit and ceasing from open attacks they do us still more damage. For we see that some have fallen into so sluggish a condition that they have to be coaxed by too gentle exhortations for fear lest they should forsake their cells and fall into more dangerous troubles, and wander and stray about and be entangled in what I would call grosser sins; and it is thought that a great thing is got from them if they can even with some listlessness remain in the desert, and the Elders often say to them as a great relief: Stop in your cells, and eat and drink and sleep as much as you like, [1489] if only you will stay in them always. __________________________________________________________________
[1489] So centuries later it is told of a Jesuit father that when one wanted to relax the strictness of his fast, he replied, "Eat an ox, but be a Christian." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXIV.
Of the way in which the devils prepare for themselves an entrance into the bodies of those whom they are going to possess.
It is clear then that unclean spirits cannot make their way into those whose bodies they are going to seize upon, in any other way than by first taking possession of their minds and thoughts. And when they have robbed them of fear and the recollection of God and spiritual meditation, they boldly advance upon them, as if they were dispossessed of all protection and Divine safeguard, and could easily be bound, and then take up their dwelling in them as if in a possession given over to them. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXV.
On the fact that those men are more wretched who are possessed by sins than those who are possessed by devils.
Although it is a fact that those men are more grievously and severely troubled, who, while they seem to be very little affected by them in the body, are yet possessed in spirit in a far worse way, as they are entangled in their sins and lusts. For as the Apostle says: "Of whom a man is overcome, of him he is also the servant." Only that in this respect they are more dangerously ill, because though they are their slaves, yet they do not know that they are assaulted by them, and under their dominion. But we know that even saintly men have been given over in the flesh to Satan and to great afflictions for some very slight faults, since the Divine mercy will not suffer the very least spot or stain to be found in them on the day of judgment, and purges away in this world every spot of their filth, as the prophet, or rather God Himself says, in order that He may commit them to eternity as gold or silver refined and needing no penal purification. "And," says He, "I will clean purge away thy dross, and I will take away all thy sin; and after this thou shalt be called the city of the just, a faithful city." And again: "Like as silver and gold are tried in the furnace, so the Lord chooseth the hearts;" And again: "The fire tries gold and silver; but man is tried in the furnace of humiliation;" and this also: "For whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth." [1490] __________________________________________________________________
[1490] Is. i. 25, 26; Prov. xvii. 3 (LXX.); Ecclus. ii. 5; Heb. xii. 6. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXVI.
Of the death of the prophet who was led astray, and of the infirmity of the Abbot Paul, with which he was visited for the sake of his cleansing.
And we see clear instance of this in the case of that prophet and man of God in the third book of Kings, who was straightway destroyed by a lion for a single fault of disobedience, in which he was implicated not of set purpose nor by the fault of his own will but by the enticement of another, as the Scripture speaks thus of him: "It is the man of God, who was disobedient to the mouth of the Lord, and the Lord delivered him to the lion, and it tare him according to the word of the Lord, which He spake." [1491] In which case the punishment of the present offence and carelessness together with the reward of his righteousness, for which the Lord gave over his prophet in this world to the destroyer, are shown by the moderation and abstinence of the beast of prey, as that most savage creature did not dare even to taste the carcass that was given over to him. And of the same thing a very clear and plain proof has been given in our own days in the case of the Abbots Paul and Moses who lived in a spot in this desert called Calamus, [1492] for the former had formerly dwelt in the wilderness which is hard by the city of Panephysis, [1493] which we know had only recently been made a wilderness by an inundation of salt water; which whenever the north wind blew, was driven from the marshes and spreading over the adjacent fields covered the face of the whole district, so as to make the ancient villages, which on this very account had been deserted by all their inhabitants, look like islands. Here, then, the Abbot Paul had made such progress in purity of heart in the stillness and silence of the desert, that he did not suffer, I will not say a woman's face, but even the clothes of one of that sex to appear in his sight. For when as he was going to the cell of one of the Elders together with Abbot Archebius [1494] who lived in the same desert, by accident a woman met him, he was so disgusted at meeting her that he dropped the business of his friendly visit which he had taken in hand and dashed back again to his own monastery with greater speed than a man would flee from the face of a lion or terrible dragon; so that he was not moved even by the shouts and prayers of the aforesaid Abbot Archebius who called him back to go on with the journey they had undertaken to ask the old man what they had proposed to do. But though this was done in his eagerness for chastity and desire for purity, yet because it was done not according to knowledge, and because the observance of discipline, and the methods of proper strictness were overstrained, for he imagined that not merely familiarity with a woman (which is the real harm,) but even the very form of that sex was to be execrated, he was forthwith overtaken by such a punishment that his whole body was struck with paralysis, and none of his limbs were able to perform their proper functions, since not merely his hands and feet, but even the movements of the tongue, which enables us to frame our words, (were affected) and his very ears lost the sense of hearing, so that there was left in him nothing more of his manhood than an immovable and insensible figure. But he was reduced to such a condition that the utmost care of men was unable to minister to his infirmity, but only the tender service of women could attend to his wants: for when he was taken to a convent of holy virgins, food and drink, which he could not ask for even by signs, were brought to him by female attendants, and for the performance of all that nature required he was ministered to by the same service for nearly four years, i.e., to the end of his life. And though he was affected by such weakness of all his members that none of his limbs retained their keen power of motion and feeling, nevertheless such grace of goodness proceeded from him that when sick persons were anointed with the oil which had touched what should be called his corpse rather than his body, they were instantly healed of all diseases, so that as regards his own malady it was made clearly and plainly evident even to unbelievers that the infirmity of all his limbs was caused by the providence and love of the Lord, and that the grace of these healings was granted by the power of the Holy Ghost as a witness of his purity and a manifestation of his merits. __________________________________________________________________
[1491] 1 Kings xiii. 26.
[1492] Cf. on the Institutes X. xxiv.
[1493] Cf. on the Institutes IV. xxx.
[1494] On Archebius cf. the note on XI. ii. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXVII.
On the temptation of Abbot Moses.
But the second person whom we mentioned as living in this desert, although he was also a remarkable and striking man, yet, in order to punish a single word, to which in a dispute with Abbot Macarius, [1495] he had given utterance somewhat too sharply, as he was anticipated in some opinion, he was instantly delivered to so dreadful a demon that he filled his mouth with filth [1496] which he supplied, and the Lord showed by the quickness of his cure, and the author of his healing, that He had brought this scourge upon him to purify him, that there might not remain in him any stain from his momentary error: for as soon as Abbot Macarius committed himself to prayer, quicker than a word the evil spirit fled away from him and departed. __________________________________________________________________
[1495] On Macarius see the note on the Institutes V. xli.
[1496] Humanas egestiones. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXVIII.
How we ought not to despise those who are delivered up to unclean spirits.
From which it plainly results that we ought not to hate or despise those whom we see to be delivered up to various temptations or to those spirits of evil, because we ought firmly to hold these two points: first, that none of them can be tempted at all by them without God's permission, and secondly that all things which are brought upon us by God, whether they seem to us at the present time to be sad or joyful, are inflicted for our advantage as by a most kind father and most compassionate physician, and that therefore men are, as it were, given into the charge of schoolmasters, and humbled in order that when they depart out of this world they may be removed in a state of greater purity to the other life, or have a lighter punishment inflicted on them, as they have been, as the Apostle says, delivered over at the present time "to Satan for the destruction of the flesh that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus." [1497] __________________________________________________________________
[1497] 1 Cor. v. 5. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXIX.
An objection, asking why those who are tormented by unclean spirits are separated from the Lord's communion.
Germanus: And how is it that we see them not only scorned and shunned by everybody, but actually always kept away from the Lord's communion in our provinces, in accordance with these words of the gospel: "Give not that which is holy to the dogs, neither cast your pearls before swine;" [1498] while you tell us that somehow we ought to hold that the humiliation of this temptation is brought upon them with a view to their purification and profit? __________________________________________________________________
[1498] S. Matt. vii. 6. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXX.
The answer to the question raised.
Serenus: If we had this knowledge, or rather faith, of which I treated above; viz., to believe that all things were brought about by God, and ordered for the good of our souls, we should not only never despise them, but rather pray without ceasing for them as our own members, and sympathize with them with all our hearts and the fullest affection (for "when one member suffers, all the members suffer with it" [1499] ), as we know that we cannot possibly be perfected without them inasmuch as they are members of us, just as we read that our predecessors could not attain the fulness of promise without us, as the Apostle speaks of them as follows: "And these all being approved by the testimony of faith, received not the promise, God providing some better thing for us that they should not be perfected without us." [1500] But we never remember that holy communion was forbidden them; nay rather if it were possible, they thought that it ought to be given to them daily; nor indeed according to the words of the gospel which you incongruously apply in this sense "Give not that which is holy to dogs," [1501] ought we to believe that holy communion becomes food for the demon, and not a purification and safeguard of body and soul; for when it is received by a man it, so to speak, burns out and puts to flight the spirit which has its seat in his members or is trying to lurk in them. For in this way we have lately seen Abbot Andronicus and many others cured. For the enemy will more and more abuse the man who is possessed, if he sees him cut off from the heavenly medicine, and will tempt him more often and more fearfully, as he sees him removed the further from this spiritual remedy. [1502] __________________________________________________________________
[1499] 1 Cor. xii. 26.
[1500] Heb. xi. 39, 40.
[1501] S. Matt. vii. 6.
[1502] The question whether the Holy Communion should ever be given to those possessed is discussed by S. Thomas Aquinas, in the Summa III. Q. lxxx. Art. 9, and answered in the affirmative, the authorities quoted in its favour being this passage from Cassian, and the third Canon of the 1st Council of Orange (a.d. 441). __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXI.
On the fact that those men are more to be pitied to whom it is not given to be subjected to those temporal temptations.
But we ought to consider those men truly wretched and miserable in whose case, although they defile themselves with all kinds of sins and wickedness, yet not only is there no visible sign of the devil's possession shown in them, nor is any temptation proportionate to their actions, nor any scourge of punishment brought to bear upon them. For they are vouchsafed no swift and immediate remedy in this world, whose "hardness and impenitent heart," being too much for punishment in this life, "heapeth up for itself wrath and indignation in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God," "where their worm dieth not, and their fire is not quenched." [1503] Against whom the prophet as if perplexed at the affliction of the saints, when he sees them subject to various losses and temptations, and on the other hand sees sinners not only passing through the course of this world without any scourge of humiliation, but even rejoicing in great riches, and the utmost prosperity in everything, inflamed with uncontrollable indignation and fervour of spirit, exclaims: "But as for me, my feet had almost gone, my treadings had well nigh slipped. For I was grieved at the wicked, when I saw the peace of sinners. For there is no regard to their death, nor is there strength in their stripes. They are not in the labour of men, neither shall they be scourged like other men," [1504] since hereafter they shall be punished with the devils, to whom in this world it was not vouchsafed to be scourged in the lot and discipline of sons, together with men. Jeremiah also, when conversing with God on this prosperity of sinners, although he never professes to doubt about the justice of God, as he says "for Thou art just, O Lord, if I dispute with Thee," yet in his inquiry as to the reasons of this inequality, proceeds to say: "But yet I will speak what is just to Thee. Why doth the way of the wicked prosper? Why is it well with all them that transgress and do wickedly? Thou hast planted them and they have taken root: they prosper and bring forth fruit. Thou art near in their mouth and far from their reins." [1505] And when the Lord mourns for their destruction by the prophet, and anxiously directs doctors and physicians to heal them, and in a manner urges them on to a similar lamentation and says: "Babylon is suddenly fallen: she is destroyed. Howl for her: take balm for her pain, if so she may be healed;" then, in their despair, the angels, to whom is entrusted the care of man's salvation, make reply; or at any rate the prophet in the person of the Apostles and spiritual men and doctors who see the hardness of their soul, and their impenitent heart: "We have healed Babylon: but she is not cured. Let us forsake her, and let us go every man to his own land because her judgment hath reached even to the heavens, and is lifted up to the clouds." [1506] Of their desperate feebleness then Isaiah speaks in the Person of God to Jerusalem: From the sole of the foot unto the top of the head there is no soundness therein: wounds and bruises and swelling sores: they are not bound up nor dressed nor fermented with oil." [1507] __________________________________________________________________
[1503] Rom. ii. 5; Is. lxvi. 24.
[1504] Ps. lxxii. (lxxiii.) 2-5.
[1505] Jer. xii. 1, 2.
[1506] Jer. li. 8, 9.
[1507] Is. i. 6. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXII.
Of the different desires and wishes which exist in the powers of the air.
But it is clearly proved that there exist in unclean spirits as many desires as there are in men. For some of them, which are commonly called Plani, [1508] are shown to be so seductive and sportive that, when they have taken continual possession of certain places or roads, they delight themselves not indeed with tormenting the passers by whom they can deceive, but, contenting themselves merely with laughing at them and mocking them, try to tire them out rather than to injure them: while some spend the night merely by harmlessly taking possession of men, though others are such slaves to fury and ferocity that they are not simply content with hurting the bodies of those of whom they have taken possession, by tearing them in a dreadful manner, but actually are eager to rush upon those who are passing by at a distance, and to attack them with most savage slaughter: like those described in the gospel, for fear of whom no man dared to pass by that way. And there is no doubt that these and such as these in their insatiable fury delight in wars and bloodshed. Others we find affect the hearts of those whom they have seized with empty pride, (and these are commonly called Bacucei [1509] ) so that they stretch themselves up beyond their proper height and at one time puff themselves up with arrogance and pomposity, and at another time condescend in an ordinary and bland manner, to a state of calmness and affability: and as they fancy that they are great people and the wonder of everybody, at one time show by bowing their body that they are worshipping higher powers, while at another time they think that they are worshipped by others, and so go through all those movements which express true service either proudly or humbly. Others we find are not only keen for lies, but also inspire men with blasphemies. And of this we ourselves can testify as we have heard a demon openly confessing that he had proclaimed a wicked and impious doctrine by the mouths of Arius and Eunomius. And the same thing we read that one of them openly proclaimed in the fourth book of Kings: "I will go forth," he said, "and will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets." [1510] On which the Apostle, when reproving those who are deceived by them, adds as follows: "giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils speaking lies in hypocrisy." [1511] And that there are other kinds of devils which are deaf and dumb the gospels testify. And that some spirits incite to lust and wantonness the prophet maintains saying: "The spirit of fornication deceived them and they went astray from their God." [1512] In the same way the authority of Scripture teaches us that there are demons of the night and of the day and of the noonday: [1513] But it would take too long to search through the whole of Scripture and run through the different kinds of them, as they are termed by the prophets onocentaurs, satyrs, sirens, witches, howlers, ostriches, urchins; and asps and basilisks in the Psalms; and are called lions, dragons, scorpions in the gospel, and are named by the Apostle the prince of this world, rulers of this darkness, and spirits of wickedness. [1514] And all these names we ought not to take as given at random or hap-hazard, but as alluding to their fierceness and madness under the sign of those wild beasts which are more or less harmful and dangerous among us, and by comparing them to the poisonous wickedness or power which among other beasts or serpents, some pre-eminence in evil confers on them, they are called by their names, in such a way that to one is assigned the name of lion because of the fury of his rage and the madness of his anger, to another that of basilisk because of his deadly poison, which kills a person before it is perceived, and to another that of onocentaur or urchin or ostrich because of his sluggish malice. __________________________________________________________________
[1508] "Planoi," "Seducers," if the reading be correct: but some mss. have "Fauni."
[1509] The origin of this term is obscure.
[1510] 1 Kings xxii. 22.
[1511] 1 Tim. iv. 1, 2.
[1512] Hos. iv. 12.
[1513] Ps. xc. (xci.) 5, 6.
[1514] Cf. Is. xiii. 21, 22; xxxiv. 13, 15; Ps. xc. (xci.) 13; S. Luke x. 19; S. John xiv. 30; Eph. vi. 12. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXIII.
A question as to the origin of such differences in powers of evil in the sky.
Germanus: We certainly do not doubt that those orders which the Apostle enumerates refer to them: "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against spirits of wickedness in heavenly places:" [1515] but we want to know whence comes such a difference between them, or how such grades of wickedness exist? Were they created for this, to meet with these orders of evil, and in some way to serve this wickedness? __________________________________________________________________
[1515] Eph. vi. 12. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXIV.
The postponement of the answer to the question raised.
Serenus: Although your proposals would rob us of our whole night's rest, so that we should not notice the approach of the rising dawn, and should be tempted greedily to prolong our conference till sunrise, yet since the solving of the question raised, if we began to trace it out, would launch us on a wide and deep sea of questions, which the shortness of the time at our disposal would not permit us to traverse, I think it will be more convenient to reserve it for consideration another night, when by the raising of this question I shall receive from your very ready converse some spiritual joy and richer fruit, and we shall be able if the Holy Spirit grants us a prosperous breeze to penetrate more freely into the intricacies of the questions raised. Wherefore let us enjoy a little sleep, and so shake off the drowsiness that steals over our eyes, as the dawn approaches, and then we will go together to church, for the observance of Sunday bids us do this, and after service will come back, and as you wish, discuss with redoubled delight what the Lord may have given to us for our common improvement. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
VIII. The Second Conference of Abbot Serenus.
On Principalities. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter I.
Of the hospitality of Abbot Serenus.
When we had finished the duties of the day, and the congregation had been dismissed from Church we returned to the old man's cell, and enjoyed a most sumptuous repast. For instead of the sauce which with a few drops of oil spread over it was usually set on the table for his daily meal, he mixed a little decoction and poured over it a somewhat more liberal allowance of oil than usual; for each of them when he is going to partake of his daily repast, pours those drops of oil on, not that he may receive any enjoyment from the taste of it (for so limited is the supply that it is hardly enough I will not say to line the passage of his throat and jaws, but even to pass down it) but that using it, he may keep down the pride of his heart (which is certain to creep in stealthily and surely if his abstinence is any stricter) and the incitements to vainglory, for as his abstinence is practised with the greater secrecy, and is carried on without anyone to see it, so much the more subtly does it never cease to tempt the man who conceals it. Then he set before us table salt, and three olives each: after which he produced a basket containing parched vetches which they call trogalia, [1516] from which we each took five grains, two prunes and a fig apiece. For it is considered wrong for anyone to exceed that amount in that desert. And when we had finished this repast and had begun to ask him again for his promised solution of the question, "Let us hear," said the old man, "your question, the consideration of which we postponed till the present time." __________________________________________________________________
[1516] Cf. Horace, De Arte Poetica, l. 249. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter II.
Statements on the different kinds of spiritual wickednesses.
Then Germanus: We want to know what is the origin of the great variety of hostile powers opposed to men, and the difference between them, which the blessed Apostle sums up as follows: "We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against spiritual wickedness in heavenly places:" [1517] and again: "Neither angels nor principalities nor powers nor any other creature, can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." [1518] Whence then arises the enmity of all this malice jealous of us? Are we to believe that those powers were created by the Lord for this; viz., to fight against men in these grades and orders? __________________________________________________________________
[1517] Eph. vi. 12.
[1518] Rom. viii. 38, 39. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter III.
The answer on the many kinds of food provided in holy Scripture.
Serenus: The authority of holy Scripture says on those points on which it would inform us some things so plainly and clearly even to those who are utterly void of understanding, that not only are they not veiled in the obscurity of any hidden meaning, but do not even require the help of any explanation, but carry their meaning and sense on the surface of the words and letters: but some things are so concealed and involved in mysteries as to offer us an immense field for skill and care in the discussion and explanation of them. And it is clear that God has so ordered it for many reasons: first for fear lest the holy mysteries, if they were covered by no veil of spiritual meaning, should be exposed equally to the knowledge and understanding of everybody, i.e., the profane as well as the faithful and thus there might be no difference in the matter of goodness and prudence between the lazy and the earnest: next that among those who are indeed of the household of faith, while immense differences of intellectual power open out before them, there might be the opportunity of reproving the slothfulness of the idle, and of proving the keenness and diligence of the earnest. And so holy Scripture is fitly compared to a rich and fertile field, which, while bearing and producing much which is good for man's food without being cooked by fire, produces some things which are found to be unsuitable for man's use or even harmful unless they have lost all the roughness of their raw condition by being tempered and softened down by the heat of fire. But some are naturally fit for use in both states, so that even when uncooked they are not unpleasant from their raw condition, but still are rendered more palatable by being cooked and heated by fire. Many more things too are produced only fit for the food of irrational creatures, and cattle, and wild animals and birds, but utterly useless as food for men, which while still in their rough state without being in any way touched by fire, conduce to the health and life of cattle. And we can clearly see that the same system holds good in that most fruitful garden of the Scriptures of the Spirit, in which some things shine forth clear and bright in their literal sense, in such a way that while they have no need of any higher interpretation, they furnish abundant food and nourishment in the simple sound of the words, to the hearers: as in this passage: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is one Lord;" and: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength." [1519] But there are some which, unless they are weakened down by an allegorical interpretation, and softened by the trial of the fire of the spirit cannot become wholesome food for the inner man without injury and loss to him; and damage rather than profit will accrue to him from receiving them: as with this passage: "But let your loins be girded up and your lights burning;" and: "whosoever has no sword, let him sell his coat and buy himself a sword;" and: "whosoever taketh not up his cross and followeth after Me is not worthy of Me;" [1520] a passage which some most earnest monks, having "indeed a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge" [1521] understood literally, and so made themselves wooden crosses, and carried them about constantly on their shoulders, and so were the cause not of edification but of ridicule on the part of all who saw them. But some are capable of being taken suitable and properly in both ways, i.e., the historical and allegorical, so that either explanation furnishes a healing draught to the soul; as this passage: "If any one shall smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also;" and: "when they persecute you in one city, flee to another;" and: "if thou wilt be perfect, go, sell all that thou hast and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven, and come follow Me." [1522] It produces indeed "grass for the cattle" also, (and of this food all the fields of Scripture are full); viz., plain and simple narratives of history, by which simple folk, and those who are incapable of perfect and sound understanding (of whom it is said "Thou, Lord, wilt save both man and beast") [1523] may be made stronger and more vigorous for their hard work and the labour of actual life, in accordance with the state and measure of their capacity. __________________________________________________________________
[1519] Deut. vi. 4, 5.
[1520] S. Luke xii. 35; xxii. 36; S. Matt. x. 38.
[1521] Rom. x. 2.
[1522] S. Matt. v. 39; x. 23; xix. 21.
[1523] Ps. xxxv. (xxxvi.) 7. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IV.
Of the double sense in which Holy Scripture may be taken.
Wherefore on those passages which are brought forward with a clear explanation we also can constantly lay down the meaning and boldly state our own opinions. But those which the Holy Spirit, reserving for our meditation and exercise, has inserted in holy Scripture with veiled meaning, wishing some of them to be gathered from various proofs and conjectures, ought to be step by step and carefully brought together, so that their assertions and proofs may be arranged by the discretion of the man who is arguing or supporting them. For sometimes when a difference of opinion is expressed on one and the same subject, either view may be considered reasonable and be held without injury to the faith either firmly, or doubtfully, i.e., in such a way that neither is full belief nor absolute rejection accorded to it, and the second view need not interfere with the former, if neither of them is found to be opposed to the faith: as in this case: where Elias came in the person of John, [1524] and is again to be the precursor of the Lord's Advent: and in the matter of the "Abomination of desolation" which "stood in the holy place," by means of that idol of Jupiter which, as we read, was placed in the temple in Jerusalem, and which is again to stand in the Church through the coming of Antichrist, [1525] and all those things which follow in the gospel, which we take as having been fulfilled before the captivity of Jerusalem and still to be fulfilled at the end of this world. In which matters neither view is opposed to the other, nor does the first interpretation interfere with the second. __________________________________________________________________
[1524] Cf. S. Matt. xi. 14.
[1525] See Dan. ix. 27; 2 Macc. vi. 2; S. Matt. xxiv. 15 sq. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter V.
Of the fact that the question suggested ought to be included among those things to be held in a neutral or doubtful way.
And therefore since the question raised by us, does not seem to have been sufficiently or often ventilated among men, and is clear to most people, and from this fact what we bring forward may perhaps appear to some to be doubtful, we ought to regulate our own view (since it does not interfere with faith in the Trinity) so that it may be included among those things which are to be held doubtfully; although they rest not on mere opinions such as are usually given to guesses and conjectures, but on clear Scripture proof. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VI.
Of the fact that nothing is created evil by God.
God forbid that we should admit that God has created anything which is substantially evil, as Scripture says "everything that God had made was very good." [1526] For if they were created by God such as they are now, or made for this purpose; viz., to occupy these positions of malice, and ever to be ready for the deception and ruin of men, we should in opposition to the view of the above quoted Scripture slander God as the Creator and author of evil, as having Himself formed utterly evil wills and natures, creating them for this very purpose; viz., that they might ever persist in their wickedness and never pass over to the feeling of a good will. The following reason then of this diversity is what we received from the tradition of the fathers, being drawn from the fount of Holy Scripture. __________________________________________________________________
[1526] Gen. i. 31. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VII.
Of the origin of principalities or powers.
None of the faithful question the fact that before the formation of this visible creation God made spiritual and celestial powers, in order that owing to the very fact that they knew that they had been formed out of nothing by the goodness of the Creator for such glory and bliss, they might render to Him continual thanks and ceaselessly continue to praise Him. For neither should we imagine that God for the first time began to originate His creation and work with the formation of this world, as if in those countless ages beforehand He had taken no thought of Providence and the divine ordering of things, and as if we could believe that having none towards whom to show the blessings of His goodness, He had been solitary, and a stranger to all bountifulness; a thing which is too poor and unsuitable to fancy of that boundless and eternal and incomprehensible Majesty; as the Lord Himself says of these powers: "When the stars were made together, all my angels praised Me with a loud voice." [1527] Those then who were present at the creation of the stars, are most clearly proved to have been created before that "beginning" in which it is said that heaven and earth were made, inasmuch as they are said with loud voices and admiration to have praised the Creator because of all those visible creatures which, as they saw, proceeded forth from nothing. Before then that beginning in time which is spoken of by Moses, and which according to the historic and Jewish interpretation denotes the age of this world (without prejudice to our interpretation, according to which we explain that the "beginning," of all things is Christ, in whom the Father created all things, as it is said "All things were made by him, and without Him was not anything made,") [1528] before, I say, that beginning of Genesis in time there is no question that God had already created all those powers and heavenly virtues; which the Apostle enumerates in order and thus describes: "For in Christ were created all things both in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether they be angels or archangels, whether they be thrones or dominions, whether they be principalities or powers. All things were made by Him and in Him." [1529] __________________________________________________________________
[1527] Job xxxviii. 7 (LXX.).
[1528] S. John i. 3.
[1529] Col. i. 16. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VIII.
Of the fall of the devil and the angels.
And so we are clearly shown that out of that number of them some of the leaders fell, by the lamentations of Ezekiel and Isaiah, in which we know that the prince of Tyre or that Lucifer who rose in the morning is lamented with a doleful plaint: and of him the Lord speaks as follows to Ezekiel: "Son of man, take up a lamentation over the prince of Tyre, and say to him: Thus saith the Lord God: Thou wast the seal of resemblance, full of wisdom, perfect in beauty. Thou wast in the pleasures of the paradise of God: every precious stone was thy covering: the sardius, the topaz and the jasper, the chrysolyte and the onyx and the beryl, the sapphire and the carbuncle and the emerald: gold the work of thy beauty, and thy pipes were prepared in the day that thou wast created. Thou wast a cherub stretched out and protecting, and I set thee in the holy mountain of God, thou hast walked in the midst of the stones of fire. Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day of thy creation, until iniquity was found in thee. By the multitude of thy merchandise thy inner parts were filled with iniquity and thou hast sinned; and I cast thee out from the mountain of God, and destroyed thee, O covering cherub, out of the midst of the stones of fire. And thy heart was lifted up with thy beauty: thou hast lost thy wisdom in thy beauty, I have cast thee to the ground: I have set thee before the face of kings, that they might behold thee. Thou hast defiled thy sanctuaries by the multitude of thy iniquities and by the iniquity of thy traffic." [1530] Isaiah also says of another: "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, who didst rise in the morning? how art thou fallen to the ground, that didst wound the nations? and thou saidst in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God, I will sit in the mountain of the covenant, in the sides of the north. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds. I will be like the Most High." [1531] But Holy Scripture relates that these fell not alone from that summit of their station in bliss, as it tells us that the dragon dragged down together with himself the third part of the stars. [1532] One of the Apostles too says still more plainly: "But the angels who kept not their first estate, but left their own dwelling, He hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness to the judgment of the great day." [1533] This too which is said to us: "But ye shall die like men and fall like one of the princes," [1534] what does it imply but that many princes have fallen? And by these testimonies we can gather the reason for this diversity; viz., either that they still retain those differences of rank (which adverse powers are said to possess, after the manner of holy and heavenly virtues) from the station of their former rank in which they were severally created, or else that, though themselves cast down from heavenly places, yet, as a reward for that wickedness of theirs in which they have graduated in evil, they claim in perversity these grades and titles of rank among themselves, by way of copying those virtues which have stood firm there. __________________________________________________________________
[1530] Ezek. xxviii. 11-18.
[1531] Is. xiv. 12-14.
[1532] Cf. Rev. xii. 4.
[1533] Ep. of S. Jude, ver. 6.
[1534] Ps. lxxxi. (lxxx.) 7. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IX.
An objection stating that the fall of the devil took its origin from the deception of God.
Germanus: Up till now we used to believe that the reason and commencement of the ruin and fall of the devil, in which he was cast out from his heavenly estate, was more particularly envy, when in his spiteful subtlety he deceived Adam and Eve. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter X.
The answer about the beginning of the devil's fall.
Serenus: The passage in Genesis shows that that was not the beginning of his fall and ruin, as before their deception it takes the view that he had already been branded with the ignominy of the name of the serpent, where it says: "But the serpent was wiser" or as the Hebrew copies express it, "more subtle than all the beasts of the earth, which the Lord God had made." [1535] You see then that he had fallen away from his angelic holiness even before he deceived the first man, so that he not only deserved to be stamped with the ignominy of this title, but actually excelled all other beasts of the earth in the subterfuges of wickedness. For Holy Scripture would not have designated a good angel by such a term, nor would it say of those who were still continuing in that state of bliss: "But the serpent was wiser than all the beasts of the earth." For this title could not possibly be applied I say not to Gabriel or Michæl, but it would not even be suitable to any good man. And so the title of serpent and the comparison to beasts most clearly suggests not the dignity of an angel but the infamy of an apostate. Finally the occasion of the envy and seduction, which led him to deceive man, arose from the ground of his previous fall, in that he saw that man, who had but recently been formed out of the dust of the ground, was to be called to that glory, from which he remembered that he himself, while still one of the princes, had fallen. And so that first fall of his, which was due to pride, and which obtained for him the name of the serpent, was followed by a second owing to envy: and as this one found him still in the possession of something upright so that he could enjoy some interchange of conference and counsel with man, by the Lord's sentence he was very properly cast down to the lowest depth, that he might no longer walk as before erect, and looking up on high, but should cleave to the ground and creep along, and be brought low upon his belly and feed upon the earthly food and works of sins, and henceforward proclaim his secret hostility, and put between himself and man an enmity that is to our advantage, and a discord that is to our profit, so that while men are on their guard against him as a dangerous enemy, he can no longer injure them by a deceptive show of friendship. __________________________________________________________________
[1535] Gen. iii. 1. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XI.
The punishment of the deceiver and the deceived.
But we ought in this matter, in order that we may shun evil counsels, to learn a special lesson from the fact that though the author of the deception was visited with a fitting punishment and condemnation, yet still the one who was led astray did not go scot free from punishment, although it was somewhat lighter than that of him who was the author of the deception. And this we see was very plainly expressed. For Adam who was deceived, or rather (to use the Apostle's words) "was not deceived" but, acquiescing in the wishes of her who was deceived, seems to have come to yield a consent that was deadly, is only condemned to labour and the sweat of his brow, which is assigned to him not by means of a curse upon himself, but by means of a curse upon the ground, and its barrenness. But the woman, who persuaded him to this, is visited with an increase of anguish, and pains and sorrow, and also given over to the yoke of perpetual subjection. But the serpent who was the first to incite them to this offence, is punished by a lasting curse. Wherefore we should with the utmost care and circumspection be on our guard against evil counsels, for as they bring punishment upon their authors, so too they do not suffer those who are deceived by them to go free from guilt and punishment. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XII.
Of the crowd of the devils, and the disturbance which they always raise in our atmosphere.
But the atmosphere which extends between heaven and earth is ever filled with a thick crowd of spirits, which do not fly about in it quietly or idly, so that most fortunately the divine providence has withdrawn them from human sight. For through fear of their attacks, or horror at the forms, into which they transform and turn themselves at will, men would either be driven out of their wits by an insufferable dread, and faint away, from inability to look on such things with bodily eyes, or else would daily grow worse and worse, and be corrupted by their constant example and by imitating them, and thus there would arise a sort of dangerous familiarity and deadly intercourse between men and the unclean powers of the air, whereas those crimes which are now committed among men, are concealed either by walls and enclosures or by distance and space, or by some shame and confusion: but if they could always look on them with open face, they would be stimulated to a greater pitch of insanity, as there would not be a single moment in which they would see them desist from their wickedness, since no bodily weariness, or occupation in business or care for their daily food (as in our case) forces them sometimes even against their will to desist from the purposes they have begun to carry out. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIII.
Of the fact that opposing powers turn the attack, which they aim at men, even against each other.
For it is quite clear that they aim these attacks, with which they assault men, even against each other, for in like manner they do not cease to promote with unwearied strife the discords and struggles which they have undertaken for some peoples because of a sort of innate love of wickedness which they have: and this we read of as being very clearly set forth in the vision of Daniel the prophet, where the angel Gabriel speaks as follows: "Fear not, Daniel: for from the first day that thou didst set thy heart to understand, to afflict thyself in the sight of thy God, thy words have been heard: and I am come for thy words. But the prince of the kingdom of the Persians resisted me one and twenty days: and behold Michael one of the chief princes came to help me, and I remained there by the king of the Persians. But I am come to teach thee what things shall befall thy people in the latter days." [1536] And we can not possibly doubt that this prince of the kingdom of the Persians was a hostile power, which favoured the nation of the Persians an enemy of God's people; for in order to hinder the good which it saw would result from the solution of the question for which the prophet prayed the Lord, by the archangel, in its jealousy it opposed itself to prevent the saving comfort of the angel from reaching Daniel too speedily, and from strengthening the people of God, over which the archangel Gabriel was: and the latter said that even then, owing to the fierceness of his assaults, he would not have been able to come to him, had not Michael the archangel come to help him, and met the prince of the kingdom of the Persians, and joined battle with him, and intervened, and defended him from his attack, and so enabled him to come to instruct the prophet after twenty-one days. And a little later on it says: "And the angel said: Dost thou know wherefore I am come to thee? And now I will return to fight against the prince of the Persians. For when I went forth, there appeared the prince of the Greeks coming. But I will tell thee what is written down in the Scriptures of truth: and none is my helper in all these things but Michael your prince." [1537] And again: "At that time shall Michael rise up, the great prince, who standeth for the children of thy people." [1538] So then we read that in the same way another was called the prince of the Greeks, who since he was patron of that nation which was subject to him seems to have been opposed to the nation of the Persians as well as to the people of Israel. From which we clearly see that antagonistic powers raise against each other those quarrels of nations, and conflicts and dissensions, which they show among themselves at their instigation, and that they either exult at their victories or are cast down at their defeats, and thus cannot live in harmony among themselves, while each of them is always striving with restless jealousy on behalf of those whom he presides over, against the patron of some other nation. __________________________________________________________________
[1536] Dan. x. 12-14.
[1537] Dan. x. 20, 21.
[1538] Dan. xii. 1. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIV.
How it is that spiritual wickednesses obtained the names of powers or principalities.
We can then see clear reasons, in addition to those ideas which we expounded above, why they are called principalities or powers; viz., because they rule and preside over different nations, and at least hold sway over inferior spirits and demons, of which the gospels give us evidence by their own confession that there exist legions. For they could not be called lords unless they had some over whom to exercise the sway of lordship; nor could they be called powers or principalities, unless there were some over whom they could claim power: and this we find pointed out very clearly in the gospel by the Pharisees in their blasphemy: "He casteth out devils by Beelzebub the prince of the devils," [1539] for we find that they are also called "rulers of darkness," [1540] and that one of them is styled "the prince of this world." [1541] But the blessed Apostle declares that hereafter, when all things shall be subdued to Christ, these orders shall be destroyed, saying: "When He shall have delivered up the kingdom to God even the Father, when He shall have destroyed all principalities and powers and dominions." [1542] And this certainly can only take place if they are removed from the sway of those over whom we know that powers and dominions and principalities take charge in this world. __________________________________________________________________
[1539] S. Luke xi. 15.
[1540] Eph. vi. 12.
[1541] S. John xiv. 30.
[1542] 1 Cor. xv. 24. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XV.
Of the fact that it is not without reason that the names of angels and archangels are given to holy and heavenly powers.
For no one doubts that not without cause or reason are the same titles of rank assigned to the better sort, and that they are names of office and of worth or dignity, for it is plain that they are termed angels, i.e., messengers from their office of bearing messages, and the appropriateness of the name teaches that they are "archangels" because they preside over angels, "dominions" because they hold dominion over certain persons, and "principalities" because they have some to be princes over, and "thrones" because they are so near to God and so privy and close to Him that the Divine Majesty specially rests in them as in a Divine throne, and in a way reclines surely on them. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVI.
Of the subjection of the devils, which they show to their own princes, as seen in a brother's victim.
But that unclean spirits are ruled over by worse powers and are subject to them we not only find from those passages of Scripture, recorded in the gospels when the Pharisees maligned the Lord, and He answered "If I by Beelzebub the prince of the devils cast out devils," [1543] but we are also taught this by clear visions and many experiences of the saints, for when one of our brethren was making a journey in this desert, as day was now declining he found a cave and stopped there meaning to say his evening office in it, and there midnight passed while he was still singing the Psalms. And when after he had finished his office he sat down a little before refreshing his wearied body, on a sudden he began to see innumerable troops of demons gathering together on all sides, who came forward in an immense crowd, and a long line, some preceding and others following their prince; who at length arrived, being taller and more dreadful to look at than all the others; and, a throne having been placed, he sat down as on some lofty tribunal, and began to investigate by a searching examination the actions of each one of them; and those who said that they had not yet been able to circumvent their rivals, he commanded to be driven out of his sight with shame and ignominy as idle and slothful, rebuking them with angry wrath for the waste of so much time, and for their labour thrown away: but those who reported that they had deceived those assigned to them, he dismissed before all with the highest praise amidst the exultation and applause of all, as most brave warriors, and most renowned as an example to all the rest: and when in this number some most evil spirit had presented himself, in delight at having to relate some magnificent triumph, he mentioned the name of a very well known monk, and declared that after having incessantly attacked him for fifteen years, he had at last got the better of him, so as to destroy him that very same night by the sin of fornication, for that he had not only impelled him to commit adultery with some consecrated maid, but had actually persuaded him to keep her and marry her. And when there arose shouts of joy at this narrative, he was extolled with the highest praise by the prince of darkness, and departed crowned with great honours. And so when at break of day the whole swarm of demons had vanished from his eyes, the brother being doubtful about the assertion of the unclean spirit, and rather thinking that he had desired to entice him by an ancient customary deceit, and to brand an innocent brother with the crime of incest, being mindful of those words of the gospel; viz., that "he abode not in the truth because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own, for he is a liar, and its father," [1544] he made his way to Pelusium, where he knew that the man lived, whom the evil spirit declared to be destroyed: for the brother was very well known to him, and when he had asked him, he found that on the same night on which that foul demon had announced his downfall to his company and prince, he had left his former monastery, and sought the town, and had gone astray by a wretched fall with the girl mentioned. __________________________________________________________________
[1543] S. Luke xi. 19.
[1544] S. John viii. 44. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVII.
Of the fact that two angels always cling to every man.
For Holy Scripture bears witness that two angels, a good and a bad one, cling to each one of us. And of the good ones the Saviour says: "Do not despise one of these little ones; for I say unto you that their angels in heaven do always behold the face of thy Father which is in heaven:" [1545] and this also: "the angel of the Lord shall encamp round about them that fear Him, and deliver them." [1546] Moreover this also which is said in the Acts of the Apostles, of Peter, that "it is his angel." [1547] But of both sorts the book of the Shepherd teaches us very fully. [1548] But if we consider about him who attacked the blessed Job we shall clearly learn that it was he who always plotted against him but never could entice him to sin, and that therefore he asked for power from the Lord, as he was worsted not by his (Job's) virtue but by the Lord's protection which ever shielded him. Of Judas also it is said: "And let the devil stand at his right hand." [1549] __________________________________________________________________
[1545] S. Matt. xviii. 10.
[1546] Ps. xxxiii. (xxxiv.) 8.
[1547] Acts xii. 15.
[1548] The reference is to the Pastor or Shepherd of Hermas, a work of the second century. The passage to which Cassian alludes is found in Book II. Commandm. vi.; where it is said that "there are two angels with a man, one of righteousness and the other of iniquity," and suggestions are given how to recognize each of them and to distinguish the suggestions of the one from those of the other. The passage is also alluded to by Origen, De Principiis, Book III. c. ii. and Hom. xxxv. in (Lucam); and Cassian refers to it again in Conf. XIII. c. xii.
[1549] Ps. cviii. (cix.) 6. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVIII.
Of the degrees of wickedness which exist in hostile spirits, as shown in the case of two philosophers.
But of the difference that there is between demons we have learnt a great deal by means of those two philosophers who formerly by acts of magic had oftentimes great experience both of their laziness and of their courage and savage wickedness. For these looking down on the blessed Antony as a boor and rustic, and wanting, if they could not injure him any further, at least to drive him from his cell by illusions of magic and the devices of demons, despatched against him most foul spirits, for they were impelled to this attack upon him by the sting of jealousy because enormous crowds came daily to him as the servant of God. And when these most savage demons did not even venture to approach him as he was now signing his breast and forehead with the sign of the cross, and, now devoting himself to prayer and supplication, they returned without any result to those who had directed them; and these again sent against him others more desperate in wickedness, and when these too had spent their strength in vain, and returned without having accomplished anything, and others still more powerful were nevertheless told off against the victorious soldier of Christ, and could prevail nothing against him, all these great plots of theirs devised with all the arts of magic were only useful in proving the great value that there is in the profession of Christians, so that those fierce and powerful shadows, which they thought would veil the sun and moon if they were directed towards them, could not only not injure him, but not even draw him forth from his monastery for a single instant. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIX.
Of the fact that devils cannot prevail at all against men unless they have first secured possession of their minds.
And when in their astonishment at this they came straight to Abbot Antony and disclosed the extent of their attacks and the reason of them and their plots, they dissembled their jealousy and asked that they might forthwith be made Christians. But when he had asked of them the day when the assault was made, he declared that at that time he had been afflicted with the most bitter pangs of thought. And by this experience the blessed Antony proved and established the opinion which we expressed yesterday in our Conference, that demons cannot possibly find an entrance into the mind or body of anyone, nor have they the power of overwhelming the soul of anyone, unless they have first deprived it of all holy thoughts, and made it empty and free from spiritual meditation. But you must know that unclean spirits are obedient to men in two ways. For either they are by divine grace and power subject to the holiness of the faithful, or they are captivated by the sacrifices of sinners, and certain charms, and are flattered by them as their worshippers. And the Pharisees too were led astray by this notion and fancied that by this device even the Lord the Saviour gave commands to devils, and said "By Beelzebub the prince of the devils He casteth out devils," in accordance with that plan by which they knew that their own magicians and enchanters--by invoking his name and offering sacrifices, with which they know he is pleased and delighted--have as his servants power even over the devils who are subject to him. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XX.
A question about the fallen angels who are said in Genesis to have had intercourse with the daughters of men.
Germanus: Since a passage of Genesis was a little while ago by the providence of God brought forward in our midst, and happily reminded us that we can now conveniently ask about a point which we have always longed to learn, we want to know what view we ought to take about those fallen angels who are said to have had intercourse with the daughters of men, and whether such a thing can literally take place with a spiritual nature. And also with regard to this passage of the gospel which you quoted of the devil a little while back, "for he is a liar and his father," [1550] we should like in the same way to hear who is to be understood by "his father." __________________________________________________________________
[1550] S. John viii. 44. We find from Augustin (Tract. xxiv. in Johan.) that the Manichees interpreted this text as implying that the devil had a father, translating it "For he is a liar, and so is his father." Augustine himself explains it as Abbot Serenus does below in c. xxv.; viz., that the devil is not only a liar himself but the parent of lies. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXI.
The answer to the question raised.
Serenus: You have propounded two not unimportant questions, to which I will reply, to the best of my ability, in the order in which you have raised them. We cannot possibly believe that spiritual existences can have carnal intercourse with women. But if this could ever have literally happened how is it that it does not now also sometimes take place, and that we do not see some in the same way born of women by the agency of demons without intercourse with men? especially when it is clear that they delight in the pollution of lust, which they would certainly prefer to bring about through their own agency rather than through that of men, if they could possibly manage it, as Ecclesiastes declares: "What is it that hath been? The same that is. And what is it that hath been done? The same that is done. And there is nothing new that can be said under the sun, so that a man can say: Behold this is new; for it hath already been in the ages which were before us." [1551] But the question raised may be resolved in this way. After the death of righteous Abel, in order that the whole human race might not spring from a wicked fratricide, Seth was born in the place of his brother who was slain, to take the place of his brother not only as regards posterity, but also as regards justice and goodness. And his offspring, following the example of their father's goodness, always remained separate from intercourse with and the society of their kindred descended from the wicked Cain, as the difference of the genealogy very clearly tells us, where it says: "Adam begat Seth, Seth begat Enos, Enos begat Cainan, but Cainan begat Mahalaleel, but Mahalaleel begat Jared, Jared begat Enoch, Enoch begat Methuselah, Methuselah begat Lamech, Lamech begat Noah." [1552] And the genealogy of Cain is given separately as follows: "Cain begat Enoch, Enoch begat Cainan, Cainan begat Mahalaleel, Mahalaleel begat Methuselah, Methuselah begat Lamech, Lamech begat Jabal and Jubal." [1553] And so the line which sprang from the seed of righteous Seth always mixed with its own kith and kin, and continued for a long while in the holiness of its fathers and ancestors, untouched by the blasphemies and the wickedness of an evil offspring, which had implanted in it a seed of sin as it were transmitted by its ancestors. As long then as there continued that separation of the lines between them, the seed of Seth, as it sprang from an excellent root, was by reason of its sanctity termed "angels of God," or as some copies have it "sons of God;" [1554] and on the contrary the others by reason of their own and their fathers' wickedness and their earthly deeds were termed "children of men." Though then there was up to this time that holy and salutary separation between them, yet after this the sons of Seth who were the sons of God saw the daughters of those who were born of the line of Cain, and inflamed with the desire for their beauty took to themselves from them wives who taught their husbands the wickedness of their fathers, and at once led them astray from their innate holiness and the single-mindedness of their forefathers. To whom this saying applies with sufficient accuracy: "I have said: Ye are Gods, and ye are all the children of the Most High. But ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes;" [1555] who fell away from that true study of natural philosophy, handed down to them by their ancestors, which the first man who forthwith traced out the study of all nature, could clearly attain to, and transmit to his descendants on sure grounds, inasmuch as he had seen the infancy of this world, while still as it were tender and throbbing and unorganized; and as there was in him not only such fulness of wisdom, but also the grace of prophecy given by the Divine inspiration, so that while he was still an untaught inhabitant of this world he gave names to all living creatures, and not only knew about the fury and poison of all kinds of beasts and serpents, but also distinguished between the virtues of plants and trees and the natures of stones, and the changes of seasons of which he had as yet no experience, so that he could well say: "The Lord hath given me the true knowledge of the things that are, to know the disposition of the whole world, and the virtues of the elements, the beginning and the ending and the midst of times, the alterations of their courses and the changes of their seasons, the revolutions of the year and the disposition of the stars, the natures of living creatures and the rage of wild beasts, the force of winds, and the reasonings of men, the diversities of plants and the virtues of roots, and all such things as are hid and open I have learnt." [1556] This knowledge then of all nature the seed of Seth received through successive generations, handed down from the fathers, so long as it remained separate from the wicked line, and as it had received it in holiness, so it made use of it to promote the glory of God and the needs of everyday life. But when it had been mingled with the evil generation, it drew aside at the suggestion of devils to profane and harmful uses what it had innocently learnt, and audaciously taught by it the curious arts of wizards and enchantments and magical superstitions, teaching its posterity to forsake the holy worship of the Divinity and to honour and worship either the elements or fire or the demons of the air. How it was then that this knowledge of curious arts of which we have spoken, did not perish in the deluge, but became known to the ages that followed, should, I think, be briefly explained, as the occasion of this discussion suggests, although the answer to the question raised scarcely requires it. And so, as ancient traditions tell us, Ham the son of Noah, who had been taught these superstitions and wicked and profane arts, as he knew that he could not possibly bring any handbook on these subjects into the ark, into which he was to enter with his good father and holy brothers, inscribed these nefarious arts and profane devices on plates of various metals which could not be destroyed by the flood of waters, and on hard rocks, and when the flood was over he hunted for them with the same inquisitiveness with which he had concealed them, and so transmitted to his descendants a seed-bed of profanity and perpetual sin. In this way then that common notion, according to which men believe that angels delivered to men enchantments and diverse arts, is in truth fulfilled. From these sons of Seth then and daughters of Cain, as we have said, there were born still worse children who became mighty hunters, violent and most fierce men who were termed giants by reason of the size of their bodies and their cruelty and wickedness. For these first began to harass their neighbours and to practise pillaging among men, getting their living rather by rapine than by being contented with the sweat and labour of toil, and their wickedness increased to such a pitch that the world could only be purified by the flood and deluge. So then when the sons of Seth at the instigation of their lust had transgressed that command which had been for a long while kept by a natural instinct from the beginning of the world, it was needful that it should afterwards be restored by the letter of the law: "Thou shalt not give thy daughter to his son to wife, nor shalt thou take a wife of his daughters to thy son; for they shall seduce your hearts to depart from your God, and to follow their gods and serve them." [1557] __________________________________________________________________
[1551] Eccl. i. 9, 10.
[1552] Gen. v. 4-30.
[1553] Gen. iv. 17-21.
[1554] In Gen. vi. 2 the mss. of the LXX. fluctuate between angeloi tou theou and huioi tou theou. The interpretation of the passage which Cassian here rejects is adopted by Philo and Josephus, the book of Enoch, and several of the early fathers, including Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Lactantius and others. The explanation, which Cassian here gives, taking the "sons of God" of the Sethites, and the "daughters of men" of the line of Cain, is apparently first found in Julius Africanus (oi apo tou Seth dikaioi), and is adopted among others by Augustine, De Civitate Dei, Book XV. xxiii., where the passage is fully discussed.
[1555] Ps. lxxxi. (lxxxii.) 6, 7.
[1556] Wis. vii. 17-21.
[1557] Deut. viii. 3; Exod. xxxiv. 16: cf. 1 Kings xi. 2. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXII.
An objection, as to how an unlawful intermingling with the daughters of Cain could be charged against the line of Seth before the prohibition of the law.
Germanus: If that command had been given to them, then the sin of breaking it might fairly have been brought against them for their audacity in so marrying. But since the observance of that separation had not yet been established by any rule, how could that intermingling of races be counted wrong in them, as it had not been forbidden by any command? For a law does not ordinarily forbid crimes that are past, but those that are future. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXIII.
The answer, that by the law of nature men were from the beginning liable to judgment and punishment.
Serenus: God at man's creation implanted in him naturally complete knowledge of the law, and if this had been kept by man, as at the beginning, according to the Lord's purposes, there would not have been any need for another law to be given, which He afterwards proclaimed in writing: for it were superfluous for an external remedy to be offered, where an internal one was still implanted and vigorous. But since this had been, as we have said, utterly corrupted by freedom and the opportunity of sinning, the severe restrictions of the law of Moses were added as the executor and vindicator of this (earlier law) and to use the expressions of Scripture, as its helper, that through fear of immediate punishment men might be kept from altogether losing the good of natural knowledge, according to the word of the prophet who says "He gave the law to help them:" [1558] and it is also described by the Apostle as having been given as a schoolmaster [1559] to little children, as it instructs and guards them to prevent them from departing through sheer forgetfulness from the teaching in which they had been instructed by the light of nature: for that the complete knowledge of the law was implanted in man at his first creation, is clearly proved from this; viz., that we know that before the law, aye, and even before the flood, all holy men observed the commands of the law without having the letter to read. For how could Abel, without the command of the law, have known that he ought to offer to God a sacrifice of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof, [1560] unless he had been taught by the law which was naturally implanted in him? How could Noah have distinguished what animals were clean and what were unclean, [1561] when the commandment of the law had not yet made a distinction, unless he had been taught by a natural knowledge? Whence did Enoch learn how to "walk with God," [1562] having never acquired any light of the law from another? Where had Shem and Japheth read "Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy father," so that they went backwards and covered the shame of their father? [1563] How was Abraham taught to abstain from the spoils of the enemy which were offered to him, that he might not receive any recompense for his toil, or to pay to the priest Melchizedec the tithes which are ordered by the law of Moses? [1564] How was it too that the same Abraham and Lot also humbly offered to passers by and strangers offices of kindness and the washing of their feet, while yet the Evangelic command had not shone forth? [1565] Whence did Job obtain such earnestness of faith, such purity of chastity, such knowledge of humility, gentleness, pity and kindness, as we now see shown not even by those who know the gospels by heart? Which of the saints do we read of as not having observed some commandment of the law before the giving of the law? Which of them failed to keep this: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is one Lord?" [1566] Which of them did not fulfil this: "Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven image, nor the likeness of anything which is in heaven or in the earth or under the earth?" Which of them did not observe this: "Honour thy father and thy mother," or what follows in the Decalogue: "Thou shalt do no murder; Thou shalt not commit adultery; Thou shalt not steal; Thou shalt not bear false witness; Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife," [1567] and many other things besides, in which they anticipated the commands not only of the law but even of the gospel? __________________________________________________________________
[1558] Is. viii. 20 (LXX.).
[1559] Cf. Gal. iii. 24.
[1560] Gen. iv. 4.
[1561] Gen. vii. 2.
[1562] Gen. v. 22.
[1563] Gen. ix. 23; Lev. xviii. 7.
[1564] Gen. xiv. 20, 22.
[1565] Gen. xviii., xix.; cf. S. John xiii. 34.
[1566] Deut. vi. 4.
[1567] Exod. xx. 4-17. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXIV.
Of the fact that they were justly punished, who sinned before the flood.
And so then we see that from the beginning God created everything perfect, nor would there have been need for anything to have been added to His original arrangement--as if it were shortsighted and imperfect--if everything had continued in that state and condition in which it had been created by Him. And therefore in the case of those who sinned before the law and even before the flood we see that God visited them with a righteous judgment, because they deserved to be punished without any excuse, for having transgressed the law of nature; nor should we fall into the blasphemous slanders of those who are ignorant of this reason, and so depreciate the God of the Old Testament, and run down our faith, and say with a sneer: Why then did it please your God to will to promulgate the law after so many thousand years, while He suffered such long ages to pass without any law? But if He afterwards discovered something better, then it appears that at the beginning of the world His wisdom was inferior and poorer, and that afterwards as if taught by experience He began to provide for something better, and to amend and improve His original arrangements. A thing which certainly cannot happen to the infinite foreknowledge of God, nor can these assertions be made about Him by the mad folly of heretics without grievous blasphemy, as Ecclesiastes says: "I have learnt that all the words which God hath made from the beginning shall continue forever: nothing can be added to them, and nothing can be taken away from them," [1568] and therefore "the law is not made for the righteous, but for the unrighteous, and insubordinate, for the ungodly and sinners, for the wicked and profane." [1569] For as they had the sound and complete system of natural laws implanted in them they had no need of this external law in addition, and one committed to writing, and what was given as an aid to that natural law. From which we infer by the clearest of reasonings that that law committed to writing need not have been given at the beginning (for it was unnecessary for this to be done while the natural law still remained, and was not utterly violated) nor could evangelical perfection have been granted before the law had been kept. For they could not have listened to this saying: "If a man strikes thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also," [1570] who were not content to avenge wrongs done to them with the even justice of the lex talionis, but repaid a very slight touch with deadly kicks and wounds with weapons, and for a single truth sought to take the life of those who had struck them. Nor could it be said to them, "love your enemies," [1571] among whom it was considered a great thing and most important if they loved their friends, but avoided their enemies and dissented from them only in hatred without being eager to oppress and kill them. __________________________________________________________________
[1568] Eccl. iii. 14. (LXX.).
[1569] 1 Tim. i. 9.
[1570] S. Matt. v. 39.
[1571] Ib. ver. 44. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXV.
How this that is said of the devil in the gospel is to be understood; viz., that "he is a liar, and his father."
But as for this which disturbed you about the devil, that "he is a liar and his father," [1572] as if it seemed that he and his father were pronounced by the Lord to be liars, it is sufficiently ridiculous to imagine this even cursorily. For as we said a little while ago spirit does not beget spirit just as soul cannot procreate soul, though we do not doubt that the compacting of flesh is formed from man's seed, as the Apostle clearly distinguishes in the case of both substances; viz., flesh and spirit, what should be ascribed to whom as its author, and says: "Moreover we have had fathers of our flesh for instructors, and we reverenced them: shall we not much more be in subjection to the Father of spirits and live?" [1573] What could show more clearly than this distinction, that he laid down that men were the fathers of our flesh, but always taught that God alone was the Father of souls. Although even in the actual compacting of this body a ministerial office alone must be attributed to men, but the chief part of its formation to God the Creator of all, as David says: "Thy hands have made me and fashioned me:" [1574] And the blessed Job: "Hast thou not milked me as milk, and curdled me as cheese? Thou hast put me together with bones and sinews;" [1575] and the Lord to Jeremiah: "Before I formed thee in the womb, I knew thee." [1576] But Ecclesiastes very clearly and accurately gathers the nature of either substance, and its beginning, by an examination of the rise and commencement, from which each originated, and by a consideration of the end to which each is tending, and decides also of the division of this body and soul, and discourses as follows: "Before the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns unto God who gave it." [1577] But what could be said with greater plainness than that he declares that the matter of the flesh which he styled dust, because it springs from the seed of man, and seems to be sown by his ministration, must, as it was taken from the earth, again return to the earth, while he points out that the spirit which is not begotten by intercourse between the sexes, but belongs to God alone in a special way, returns to its creator? And this also is clearly implied in that breathing by God, through which Adam in the first instance received his life. And so from these passages we clearly infer that no one can be called the Father of spirits but God alone, who makes them out of nothing whenever He pleases, while men can only be termed the fathers of our flesh. So then the devil also in as much as he was created a spirit or an angel and good, had no one as his Father but God his Maker. But when he had become puffed up by pride and had said in his heart: "I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the Most High," [1578] he became a liar, and "abode not in the truth;" [1579] but brought forth a lie from his own storehouse of wickedness and so became not only a liar, but also the father of the actual lie, by which when he promised Divinity to man and said "Ye shall be as gods," [1580] he abode not in the truth, but from the beginning became a murderer, both by bringing Adam into a state of mortality, and by slaying Abel by the hand of his brother at his suggestion. But already the approach of dawn is bringing to a close our discussion, which has occupied nearly two whole nights, and our brief and simple words have drawn our bark of this Conference from the deep sea of questions to a safe harbour of silence, in which deep indeed, as the breath of the Divine Spirit drives us further in, so is there ever opened out a wider and boundless space reaching beyond the sight of our eye, and, as Solomon says, "It will become much further from us than it was, and a great depth; who shall find it out?" [1581] Wherefore let us pray the Lord that both His fear and His love, which cannot fail, may continue steadfast in us, and make us wise in all things, and ever shield us unharmed, from the darts of the devil. For with these guards it is impossible for anyone to fall into the snares of death. But there is this difference between the perfect and imperfect, that in the case of the former love is steadfast, and so to speak riper and lasts more abidingly and so makes them persevere in holiness more steadfastly and more easily, while in the case of the latter its position is weaker and it more easily grows cold, and so quickly and more frequently allows them to be entangled in the snares of sin. And when we heard this, the words of this Conference so fired us that when we went away from the old man's cell we longed with a keener ardour of soul than when we first came, for the fulfilment of his teaching. __________________________________________________________________
[1572] S. John viii. 44.
[1573] Heb. xii. 9.
[1574] Ps. cxviii. (cxix.) 73.
[1575] Job x. 10, 11.
[1576] Jer. i. 5.
[1577] Eccl. xii. 7.
[1578] Is. xiv. 14.
[1579] S. John viii. 44.
[1580] Gen. iii. 5.
[1581] Eccl. vii. 25. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
IX. The First Conference of Abbot Isaac.
On Prayer. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter I.
Introduction to the Conference.
What was promised in the second book of the Institutes [1582] on continual and unceasing perseverance in prayer, shall be by the Lord's help fulfilled by the Conferences of this Elder, whom we will now bring forward; viz., Abbot Isaac: [1583] and when these have been propounded I think that I shall have satisfied the commands of Pope Castor of blessed memory, and your wishes, O blessed Pope Leontius and holy brother Helladius, and the length of the book in its earlier part may be excused, though, in spite of our endeavour not only to compress what had to be told into a brief discourse, but also to pass over very many points in silence, it has been extended to a greater length than we intended. For having commenced with a full discourse on various regulations which we have thought it well to curtail for the sake of brevity, at the close the blessed Isaac spoke these words. __________________________________________________________________
[1582] See the Institutes Book II. c. ix.
[1583] Isaac was, as we gathered from c. xxxi., a disciple of St. Antony, and is mentioned by Palladius Dial. de vita Chrysost. There are also a few stories of him in the Apophegmata Patrum (Migne, Vol. lxv. p. 223); and see the Dictionary of Christian Biography, Vol. iii. p. 294. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter II.
The words of Abbot Isaac on the nature of prayer.
The aim of every monk and the perfection of his heart tends to continual and unbroken perseverance in prayer, and, as far as it is allowed to human frailty, strives to acquire an immovable tranquillity of mind and a perpetual purity, for the sake of which we seek unweariedly and constantly to practise all bodily labours as well as contrition of spirit. And there is between these two a sort of reciprocal and inseparable union. For just as the crown of the building of all virtues is the perfection of prayer, so unless everything has been united and compacted by this as its crown, it cannot possibly continue strong and stable. For lasting and continual calmness in prayer, of which we are speaking, cannot be secured or consummated without them, so neither can those virtues which lay its foundations be fully gained without persistence in it. And so we shall not be able either to treat properly of the effect of prayer, or in a rapid discourse to penetrate to its main end, which is acquired by labouring at all virtues, unless first all those things which for its sake must be either rejected or secured, are singly enumerated and discussed, and, as the Parable in the gospel teaches, [1584] whatever concerns the building of that spiritual and most lofty tower, is reckoned up and carefully considered beforehand. But yet these things when prepared will be of no use nor allow the lofty height of perfection to be properly placed upon them unless a clearance of all faults be first undertaken, and the decayed and dead rubbish of the passions be dug up, and the strong foundations of simplicity and humility be laid on the solid and (so to speak) living soil of our breast, or rather on that rock of the gospel, [1585] and by being built in this way this tower of spiritual virtues will rise, and be able to stand unmoved, and be raised to the utmost heights of heaven in full assurance of its stability. For if it rests on such foundations, then though heavy storms of passions break over it, though mighty torrents of persecutions beat against it like a battering ram, though a furious tempest of spiritual foes dash against it and attack it, yet not only will no ruin overtake it, but the onslaught will not injure it even in the slightest degree. __________________________________________________________________
[1584] Cf. S. Luke xiv. 28.
[1585] Cf. S. Luke vi. 48. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter III.
How pure and sincere prayer can be gained.
And therefore in order that prayer may be offered up with that earnestness and purity with which it ought to be, we must by all means observe these rules. First all anxiety about carnal things must be entirely got rid of; next we must leave no room for not merely the care but even the recollection of any business affairs, and in like manner also must lay aside all backbitings, vain and incessant chattering, and buffoonery; anger above all and disturbing moroseness must be entirely destroyed, and the deadly taint of carnal lust and covetousness be torn up by the roots. And so when these and such like faults which are also visible to the eyes of men, are entirely removed and cut off, and when such a purification and cleansing, as we spoke of, has first taken place, which is brought about by pure simplicity and innocence, then first there must be laid the secure foundations of a deep humility, which may be able to support a tower that shall reach the sky; and next the spiritual structure of the virtues must be built up upon them, and the soul kept free from all conversation and from roving thoughts that thus it may by little and little begin to rise to the contemplation of God and to spiritual insight. For whatever our mind has been thinking of before the hour of prayer, is sure to occur to us while we are praying through the activity of the memory. Wherefore what we want to find ourselves like while we are praying, that we ought to prepare ourselves to be before the time for prayer. For the mind in prayer is formed by its previous condition, and when we are applying ourselves to prayer the images of the same actions and words and thoughts will dance before our eyes, and make us either angry, as in our previous condition, or gloomy, or recall our former lust and business, or make us shake with foolish laughter (which I am ashamed to speak of) at some silly joke, or smile at some action, or fly back to our previous conversation. And therefore if we do not want anything to haunt us while we are praying, we should be careful before our prayer, to exclude it from the shrine of our heart, that we may thus fulfill the Apostle's injunction: "Pray without ceasing;" and: "In every place lifting up holy hands without wrath or disputing." [1586] For otherwise we shall not be able to carry out that charge unless our mind, purified from all stains of sin, and given over to virtue as to its natural good, feed on the continual contemplation of Almighty God. __________________________________________________________________
[1586] 1 Thess. v. 17; 1 Tim. ii. 8. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IV.
Of the lightness of the soul which may be compared to a wing or feather.
For the nature of the soul is not inaptly compared to a very fine feather or very light wing, which, if it has not been damaged or affected by being spoilt by any moisture falling on it from without, is borne aloft almost naturally to the heights of heaven by the lightness of its nature, and the aid of the slightest breath: but if it is weighted by any moisture falling upon it and penetrating into it, it will not only not be carried away by its natural lightness into any aerial flights but will actually be borne down to the depths of earth by the weight of the moisture it has received. So also our soul, if it is not weighted with faults that touch it, and the cares of this world, or damaged by the moisture of injurious lusts, will be raised as it were by the natural blessing of its own purity and borne aloft to the heights by the light breath of spiritual meditation; and leaving things low and earthly will be transported to those that are heavenly and invisible. Wherefore we are well warned by the Lord's command: "Take heed that your hearts be not weighed down by surfeiting and drunkenness and the cares of this world." [1587] And therefore if we want our prayers to reach not only the sky, but what is beyond the sky, let us be careful to reduce our soul, purged from all earthly faults and purified from every stain, to its natural lightness, that so our prayer may rise to God unchecked by the weight of any sin. __________________________________________________________________
[1587] S. Luke xxi. 34. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter V.
Of the ways in which our soul is weighed down.
But we should notice the ways in which the Lord points out that the soul is weighed down: for He did not mention adultery, or fornication, or murder, or blasphemy, or rapine, which everybody knows to be deadly and damnable, but surfeiting and drunkenness, and the cares or anxieties of this world: which men of this world are so far from avoiding or considering damnable that actually some who (I am ashamed to say) call themselves monks entangle themselves in these very occupations as if they were harmless or useful. And though these three things, when literally given way to weigh down the soul, and separate it from God, and bear it down to things earthly, yet it is very easy to avoid them, especially for us who are separated by so great a distance from all converse with this world, and who do not on any occasion have anything to do with those visible cares and drunkenness and surfeiting. But there is another surfeiting which is no less dangerous, and a spiritual drunkenness which it is harder to avoid, and a care and anxiety of this world, which often ensnares us even after the perfect renunciation of all our goods, and abstinence from wine and all feastings and even when we are living in solitude--and of such the prophet says: "Awake, ye that are drunk but not with wine;" [1588] and another: "Be astonished and wonder and stagger: be drunk and not with wine: be moved, but not with drunkenness." [1589] And of this drunkenness the wine must consequently be what the prophet calls "the fury of dragons": and from what root the wine comes you may hear: "From the vineyard of Sodom," he says, "is their vine, and their branches from Gomorrha." Would you also know about the fruit of that vine and the seed of that branch? "Their grape is a grape of gall, theirs is a cluster of bitterness" [1590] for unless we are altogether cleansed from all faults and abstaining from the surfeit of all passions, our heart will without drunkenness from wine and excess of any feasting be weighed down by a drunkenness and surfeiting that is still more dangerous. For that worldly cares can sometimes fall on us who mix with no actions of this world, is clearly shown according to the rule of the Elders, who have laid down that anything which goes beyond the necessities of daily food, and the unavoidable needs of the flesh, belongs to worldly cares and anxieties, as for example if, when a job bringing in a penny would satisfy the needs of our body, we try to extend it by a longer toil and work in order to get twopence or threepence; and when a covering of two tunics would be enough for our use both by night and day, we manage to become the owners of three or four, or when a hut containing one or two cells would be sufficient, in the pride of worldly ambition and greatness we build four or five cells, and these splendidly decorated, and larger than our needs required, thus showing the passion of worldly lusts whenever we can. __________________________________________________________________
[1588] Joel i. 5.
[1589] Is. xxix. 9.
[1590] Deut. xxxii. 32, 33. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VI.
Of the vision which a certain Elder saw concerning the restless work of a brother.
And that this is not done without the prompting of devils we are taught by the surest proofs, for when one very highly esteemed Elder was passing by the cell of a certain brother who was suffering from this mental disease of which we have spoken, as he was restlessly toiling in his daily occupations in building and repairing what was unnecessary, he watched him from a distance breaking a very hard stone with a heavy hammer, and saw a certain Ethiopian standing over him and together with him striking the blows of the hammer with joined and clasped hands, and urging him on with fiery incitements to diligence in the work: and so he stood still for a long while in astonishment at the force of the fierce demon and the deceitfulness of such an illusion. For when the brother was worn out and tired and wanted to rest and put an end to his toil, he was stimulated by the spirit's prompting and urged on to resume his hammer again and not to cease from devoting himself to the work which he had begun, so that being unweariedly supported by his incitements he did not feel the harm that so great labour was doing him. At last then the old man, disgusted at such a horrid mystification by a demon, turned aside to the brother's cell and saluted him, and asked "what work is it, brother, that you are doing?" and he replied: "We are working at this awfully hard stone, and we can hardly break it at all." Whereupon the Elder replied: "You were right in saying we can,' for you were not alone, when you were striking it, but there was another with you whom you did not see, who was standing over you not so much to help you as urge you on with all his force." And thus the fact that the disease of worldly vanity has not got hold of our hearts, will be proved by no mere abstinence from those affairs which even if we want to engage in, we cannot carry out, nor by the despising of those matters which if we pursued them would make us remarkable in the front rank among spiritual persons as well as among worldly men, but only when we reject with inflexible firmness of mind whatever ministers to our power and seems to be veiled in a show of right. And in reality these things which seem trivial and of no consequence, and which we see to be permitted indifferently by those who belong to our calling, none the less by their character affect the soul than those more important things, which according to their condition usually intoxicate the senses of worldly people and which do not allow [1591] a monk to lay aside earthly impurities and aspire to God, on whom his attention should ever be fixed; for in his case even a slight separation from that highest good must be regarded as present death and most dangerous destruction. And when the soul has been established in such a peaceful condition, and has been freed from the meshes of all carnal desires, and the purpose of the heart has been steadily fixed on that which is the only highest good, he will then fulfil this Apostolic precept: "Pray without ceasing;" and: "in every place lifting up holy hands without wrath and disputing:" [1592] for when by this purity (if we can say so) the thoughts of the soul are engrossed, and are re-fashioned out of their earthly condition to bear a spiritual and angelic likeness, whatever it receives, whatever it takes in hand, whatever it does, the prayer will be perfectly pure and sincere. __________________________________________________________________
[1591] Sinentes, though the reading of almost all mss. must be an error either of the author or of a copyist for sinentia.
[1592] 1 Thess. v. 17; 1 Tim. ii. 8. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VII.
A question how it is that it is harder work to preserve than to originate good thoughts.
Germanus: If only we could keep as a lasting possession those spiritual thoughts in the same way and with the same ease with which we generally conceive their germs! for when they have been conceived in our hearts either through the recollection of the Scriptures or by the memory of some spiritual actions, or by gazing upon heavenly mysteries, they vanish all too soon and disappear by a sort of unnoticed flight. And when our soul has discovered some other occasions for spiritual emotions, different ones again crowd in upon us, and those which we had grasped are scattered, and lightly fly away so that the mind retaining no persistency, and keeping of its own power no firm hand over holy thoughts, must be thought, even when it does seem to retain them for a while, to have conceived them at random and not of set purpose. For how can we think that their rise should be ascribed to our own will, if they do not last and remain with us? But that we may not owing to the consideration of this question wander any further from the plan of the discourse we had commenced, or delay any longer the explanation promised of the nature of prayer, we will keep this for its own time, and ask to be informed at once of the character of prayer, especially as the blessed Apostle exhorts us at no time to cease from it, saying "Pray without ceasing." And so we want to be taught first of its character, i.e., how prayer ought always to be offered up, and then how we can secure this, whatever it is, and practise it without ceasing. For that it cannot be done by any light purpose of heart both daily experience and the explanation of four holiness show us, as you have laid it down that the aim of a monk, and the height of all perfection consist in the consummation of prayer. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VIII.
Of the different characters of prayer.
Isaac: I imagine that all kinds of prayers cannot be grasped without great purity of heart and soul and the illumination of the Holy Spirit. For there are as many of them as there can be conditions and characters produced in one soul or rather in all souls. And so although we know that owing to our dulness of heart we cannot see all kinds of prayers, yet we will try to relate them in some order, as far as our slender experience enables us to succeed. For according to the degree of the purity to which each soul attains, and the character of the state in which it is sunk owing to what happens to it, or is by its own efforts renewing itself, its very prayers will each moment be altered: and therefore it is quite clear that no one can always offer up uniform prayers. For every one prays in one way when he is brisk, in another when he is oppressed with a weight of sadness or despair, in another when he is invigorated by spiritual achievements, in another when cast down by the burden of attacks, in another when he is asking pardon for his sins, in another when he asks to obtain grace or some virtue or else prays for the destruction of some sin, in another when he is pricked to the heart by the thought of hell and the fear of future judgment, in another when he is aglow with the hope and desire of good things to come, in another when he is taken up with affairs and dangers, in another when he is in peace and security, in another when he is enlightened by the revelation of heavenly mysteries, and in another when he is depressed by a sense of barrenness in virtues and dryness in feeling. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IX.
Of the fourfold nature of prayer.
And therefore, when we have laid this down with regard to the character of prayer, although not so fully as the importance of the subject requires, but as fully as the exigencies of time permit, and at any rate as our slender abilities admit, and our dulness of heart enables us,--a still greater difficulty now awaits us; viz., to expound one by one the different kinds of prayer, which the Apostle divides in a fourfold manner, when he says as follows: "I exhort therefore first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, thanksgivings be made." [1593] And we cannot possibly doubt that this division was not idly made by the Apostle. And to begin with we must investigate what is meant by supplication, by prayer, by intercession, and by thanksgiving. Next we must inquire whether these four kinds are to be taken in hand by him who prays all at once, i.e., are they all to be joined together in every prayer,--or whether they are to be offered up in turns and one by one, as, for instance, ought at one time supplications, at another prayers, at another intercessions, and at another thanksgivings to be offered, or should one man present to God supplications, another prayers, another intercessions, another thanksgivings, in accordance with that measure of age, to which each soul is advancing by earnestness of purpose? __________________________________________________________________
[1593] 1 Tim. ii. 1. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter X.
Of the order of the different kinds laid down with regard to the character of prayer.
And so to begin with we must consider the actual force of the names and words, and discuss what is the difference between prayer and supplication and intercession; then in like manner we must investigate whether they are to be offered separately or all together; and in the third place must examine whether the particular order which is thus arranged by the Apostle's authority has anything further to teach the hearer, or whether the distinction simply is to be taken, and it should be considered that they were arranged by him indifferently in such a way: a thing which seems to me utterly absurd. For one must not believe that the Holy Spirit uttered anything casually or without reason through the Apostle. And so we will, as the Lord grants us, consider them in the same order in which we began. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XI.
Of Supplications.
"I exhort therefore first of all that supplications be made." Supplication is an imploring or petition concerning sins, in which one who is sorry for his present or past deeds asks for pardon. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XII.
Of Prayer.
Prayers are those by which we offer or vow something to God, what the Greeks call euke, i.e., a vow. For where we read in Greek ias eukas mou to kurio apodoso, in Latin we read: "I will pay my vows unto the Lord;" [1594] where according to the exact force of the words it may be thus represented: "I will pay my prayers unto the Lord." And this which we find in Ecclesiastes: "If thou vowest a vow unto the Lord do not delay to pay it," is written in Greek likewise: ean euxe euchen to kurio, i.e., "If thou prayest a prayer unto the Lord, do not delay to pay it," [1595] which will be fulfilled in this way by each one of us. We pray, when we renounce this world and promise that being dead to all worldly actions and the life of this world we will serve the Lord with full purpose of heart. We pray when we promise that despising secular honours and scorning earthly riches we will cleave to the Lord in all sorrow of heart and humility of spirit. We pray when we promise that we will ever maintain the most perfect purity of body and steadfast patience, or when we vow that we will utterly root out of our heart the roots of anger or of sorrow that worketh death. And if, enervated by sloth and returning to our former sins we fail to do this we shall be guilty as regards our prayers and vows, and these words will apply to us: "It is better not to vow, than to vow and not to pay," which can be rendered in accordance with the Greek: "It is better for thee not to pray than to pray and not to pay." [1596] __________________________________________________________________
[1594] Ps. cxv. 4 (cxvi. 14).
[1595] Eccl. v. 3.
[1596] Ibid. ver. 4. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIII.
Of Intercession.
In the third place stand intercessions, which we are wont to offer up for others also, while we are filled with fervour of spirit, making request either for those dear to us or for the peace of the whole world, and to use the Apostle's own phrase, we pray "for all men, for kings and all that are in authority." [1597] __________________________________________________________________
[1597] 1 Tim. ii. 1, 2. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIV.
Of Thanksgiving.
Then in the fourth place there stand thanksgivings which the mind in ineffable transports offers up to God, either when it recalls God's past benefits or when it contemplates His present ones, or when it looks forward to those great ones in the future which God has prepared for them that love Him. And with this purpose too sometimes we are wont to pour forth richer prayers, while, as we gaze with pure eyes on those rewards of the saints which are laid up in store hereafter, our spirit is stimulated to offer up unspeakable thanks to God with boundless joy. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XV.
Whether these four kinds of prayers are necessary for everyone to offer all at once or separately and in turns.
And of these four kinds, although sometimes occasions arise for richer and fuller prayers (for from the class of supplications which arises from sorrow for sin, and from the kind of prayer which flows from confidence in our offerings and the performance of our vows in accordance with a pure conscience, and from the intercession which proceeds from fervour of love, and from the thanksgiving which is born of the consideration of God's blessings and His greatness and goodness, we know that oftentimes there proceed most fervent and ardent prayers so that it is clear that all these kinds of prayer of which we have spoken are found to be useful and needful for all men, so that in one and the same man his changing feelings will give utterance to pure and fervent petitions now of supplications, now of prayers, now of intercessions) yet the first seems to belong more especially to beginners, who are still troubled by the stings and recollection of their sins; the second to those who have already attained some loftiness of mind in their spiritual progress and the quest of virtue; the third to those who fulfil the completion of their vows by their works, and are so stimulated to intercede for others also through the consideration of their weakness, and the earnestness of their love; the fourth to those who have already torn from their hearts the guilty thorns of conscience, and thus being now free from care can contemplate with a pure mind the beneficence of God and His compassions, which He has either granted in the past, or is giving in the present, or preparing for the future, and thus are borne onward with fervent hearts to that ardent prayer which cannot be embraced or expressed by the mouth of men. Sometimes however the mind which is advancing to that perfect state of purity and which is already beginning to be established in it, will take in all these at one and the same time, and like some incomprehensible and all-devouring flame, dart through them all and offer up to God inexpressible prayers of the purest force, which the Spirit Itself, intervening with groanings that cannot be uttered, while we ourselves understand not, pours forth to God, grasping at that hour and ineffably pouring forth in its supplications things so great that they cannot be uttered with the mouth nor even at any other time be recollected by the mind. And thence it comes that in whatever degree any one stands, he is found sometimes to offer up pure and devout prayers; as even in that first and lowly station which has to do with the recollection of future judgment, he who still remains under the punishment of terror and the fear of judgment is so smitten with sorrow for the time being that he is filled with no less keenness of spirit from the richness of his supplications than he who through the purity of his heart gazes on and considers the blessings of God and is overcome with ineffable joy and delight. For, as the Lord Himself says, he begins to love the more, who knows that he has been forgiven the more. [1598] __________________________________________________________________
[1598] Cf. S. Luke vii. 47. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVI.
Of the kinds of prayer to which we ought to direct ourselves.
Yet we ought by advancing in life and attaining to virtue to aim rather at those kinds of prayer which are poured forth either from the contemplation of the good things to come or from fervour of love, or which at least, to speak more humbly and in accordance with the measure of beginners, arise for the acquirement of some virtue or the extinction of some fault. For otherwise we shall not possibly attain to those sublimer kinds of supplication of which we spoke, unless our mind has been little by little and by degrees raised through the regular course of those intercessions. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVII.
How the four kinds of supplication were originated by the Lord.
These four kinds of supplication the Lord Himself by His own example vouchsafed to originate for us, so that in this too He might fulfil that which was said of Him: "which Jesus began both to do and to teach." [1599] For He made use of the class of supplication when He said: "Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me;" or this which is chanted in His Person in the Psalm: "My God, My God, look upon Me, why hast Thou forsaken me," [1600] and others like it. It is prayer where He says: "I have magnified Thee upon the earth, I have finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do," and this: "And for their sakes I sanctify Myself that they also may be sanctified in the truth." [1601] It is intercession when He says: "Father, those Whom Thou hast given me, I will that they also may be with Me that they may see My glory which Thou hast given Me;" or at any rate when He says: "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do." [1602] It is thanksgiving when He says: "I confess to Thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Thy sight:" or at least when He says: "Father, I thank Thee that Thou hast heard Me. But I knew that Thou hearest Me always." [1603] But though our Lord made a distinction between these four kinds of prayers as to be offered separately and one by one according to the scheme which we know of, yet that they can all be embraced in a perfect prayer at one and the same time He showed by His own example in that prayer which at the close of S. John's gospel we read that He offered up with such fulness. From the words of which (as it is too long to repeat it all) the careful inquirer can discover by the order of the passage that this is so. And the Apostle also in his Epistle to the Philippians has expressed the same meaning, by putting these four kinds of prayers in a slightly different order, and has shown that they ought sometimes to be offered together in the fervour of a single prayer, saying as follows: "But in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God." [1604] And by this he wanted us especially to understand that in prayer and supplication thanksgiving ought to be mingled with our requests. __________________________________________________________________
[1599] Acts i. 1.
[1600] S. Matt. xxvi. 39; Ps. xxi. (xxii.) 2.
[1601] S. John xvii. 4, 19.
[1602] Ib. 24; S. Luke xxiii. 34.
[1603] S. Matt. xi. 25, 26; S. John xi. 41, 42.
[1604] Phil. iv. 6. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVIII.
Of the Lord's Prayer.
And so there follows after these different kinds of supplication a still more sublime and exalted condition which is brought about by the contemplation of God alone and by fervent love, by which the mind, transporting and flinging itself into love for Him, addresses God most familiarly as its own Father with a piety of its own. And that we ought earnestly to seek after this condition the formula of the Lord's prayer teaches us, saying "Our Father." When then we confess with our own mouths that the God and Lord of the universe is our Father, we profess forthwith that we have been called from our condition as slaves to the adoption of sons, adding next "Which art in heaven," that, by shunning with the utmost horror all lingering in this present life, which we pass upon this earth as a pilgrimage, and what separates us by a great distance from our Father, we may the rather hasten with all eagerness to that country where we confess that our Father dwells, and may not allow anything of this kind, which would make us unworthy of this our profession and the dignity of an adoption of this kind, and so deprive us as a disgrace to our Father's inheritance, and make us incur the wrath of His justice and severity. To which state and condition of sonship when we have advanced, we shall forthwith be inflamed with the piety which belongs to good sons, so that we shall bend all our energies to the advance not of our own profit, but of our Father's glory, saying to Him: "Hallowed be Thy name," testifying that our desire and our joy is His glory, becoming imitators of Him who said: "He who speaketh of himself, seeketh his own glory. But He who seeks the glory of Him who sent Him, the same is true and there is no unrighteousness in Him." [1605] Finally the chosen vessel being filled with this feeling wished that he could be anathema from Christ [1606] if only the people belonging to Him might be increased and multiplied, and the salvation of the whole nation of Israel accrue to the glory of His Father; for with all assurance could he wish to die for Christ as he knew that no one perished for life. And again he says: "We rejoice when we are weak but ye are strong." [1607] And what wonder if the chosen vessel wished to be anathema from Christ for the sake of Christ's glory and the conversion of His own brethren and the privilege of the nation, when the prophet Micah wished that he might be a liar and a stranger to the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, if only the people of the Jews might escape those plagues and the going forth into captivity which he had announced in his prophecy, saying: "Would that I were not a man that hath the Spirit, and that I rather spoke a lie;" [1608] --to pass over that wish of the Lawgiver, who did not refuse to die together with his brethren who were doomed to death, saying: "I beseech Thee, O Lord; this people hath sinned a heinous sin; either forgive them this trespass, or if Thou do not, blot me out of Thy book which Thou hast written." [1609] But where it is said "Hallowed be Thy name," it may also be very fairly taken in this way: "The hallowing of God is our perfection." And so when we say to Him "Hallowed be Thy name" we say in other words, make us, O Father, such that we maybe able both to understand and take in what the hallowing of Thee is, or at any rate that Thou mayest be seen to be hallowed in our spiritual converse. And this is effectually fulfilled in our case when "men see our good works, and glorify our Father Which is in heaven." [1610] __________________________________________________________________
[1605] S. John vii. 18.
[1606] Cf. Rom. ix. 3.
[1607] 2 Cor. xiii. 9.
[1608] Micah ii. 11.
[1609] Exod. xxxii. 31, 32.
[1610] S. Matt. v. 16. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIX.
Of the clause "Thy kingdom come."
The second petition of the pure heart desires that the kingdom of its Father may come at once; viz., either that whereby Christ reigns day by day in the saints (which comes to pass when the devil's rule is cast out of our hearts by the destruction of foul sins, and God begins to hold sway over us by the sweet odour of virtues, and, fornication being overcome, charity reigns in our hearts together with tranquillity, when rage is conquered; and humility, when pride is trampled under foot) or else that which is promised in due time to all who are perfect, and to all the sons of God, when it will be said to them by Christ: "Come ye blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world;" [1611] (as the heart) with fixed and steadfast gaze, so to speak, yearns and longs for it and says to Him "Thy kingdom come." For it knows by the witness of its own conscience that when He shall appear, it will presently share His lot. For no guilty person would dare either to say or to wish for this, for no one would want to face the tribunal of the Judge, who knew that at His coming he would forthwith receive not the prize or reward of his merits but only punishment. __________________________________________________________________
[1611] S. Matt. xxv. 34. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XX.
Of the clause "Thy will be done."
The third petition is that of sons: "Thy will be done as in heaven so on earth." There can now be no grander prayer than to wish that earthly things may be made equal with things heavenly: for what else is it to say "Thy will be done as in heaven so on earth," than to ask that men may be like angels and that as God's will is ever fulfilled by them in heaven, so also all those who are on earth may do not their own but His will? This too no one could say from the heart but only one who believed that God disposes for our good all things which are seen, whether fortunate or unfortunate, and that He is more careful and provident for our good and salvation than we ourselves are for ourselves. Or at any rate it may be taken in this way: The will of God is the salvation of all men, according to these words of the blessed Paul: "Who willeth all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth." [1612] Of which will also the prophet Isaiah says in the Person of God the Father: "And all Thy will shall be done." [1613] When we say then "Thy will be done as in heaven so on earth," we pray in other words for this; viz., that as those who are in heaven, so also may all those who dwell on earth be saved, O Father, by the knowledge of Thee. __________________________________________________________________
[1612] 1 Tim. ii. 4.
[1613] Is. xlvi. 10. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXI.
Of our supersubstantial or daily bread.
Next: "Give us this day our bread which is epiousion," i.e., "supersubstantial," which another Evangelist calls "daily." [1614] The former indicates the quality of its nobility and substance, in virtue of which it is above all substances and the loftiness of its grandeur and holiness exceeds all creatures, while the latter intimates the purpose of its use and value. For where it says "daily" it shows that without it we cannot live a spiritual life for a single day. Where it says "today" it shows that it must be received daily and that yesterday's supply of it is not enough, but at it must be given to us today also in like manner. And our daily need of it suggests to us that we ought at all times to offer up this prayer, because there is no day on which we have no need to strengthen the heart of our inner man, by eating and receiving it, although the expression used, "today" may be taken to apply to his present life, i.e., while we are living in this world supply us with this bread. For we know that it will be given to those who deserve it by Thee hereafter, but we ask that Thou wouldest grant it to us today, because unless it has been vouchsafed to a man to receive it in this life he will never be partaker of it in that. __________________________________________________________________
[1614] Here Cassian is relying entirely on Jerome's revised text of the Latin, which has supersubstantialis in S. Matt. vi. 11, as the rendering of epiousios but translates the same word by quotidianum in the parallel passage in S. Luke xi. 3. It is curious that Cassian should have been thus misled, with his knowledge of Greek, as well as his acquaintance with the old Latin version which has quotidianum in both gospels. Cf. Bishop Lightfoot "On a Fresh Revision of the New Testament," p. 219. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXII.
Of the clause: "Forgive us our debts, etc."
"And forgive us our debts as we also forgive our debtors." O unspeakable mercy of God, which has not only given us a form of prayer and taught us a system of life acceptable to Him, and by the requirements of the form given, in which He charged us always to pray, has torn up the roots of both anger and sorrow, but also gives to those who pray an opportunity and reveals to them a way by which they may move a merciful and kindly judgment of God to be pronounced over them and which somehow gives us a power by which we can moderate the sentence of our Judge, drawing Him to forgive our offences by the example of our forgiveness: when we say to Him: "Forgive us as we also forgive." And so without anxiety and in confidence from this prayer a man may ask for pardon of his own offences, if he has been forgiving towards his own debtors, and not towards those of his Lord. For some of us, which is very bad, are inclined to show ourselves calm and most merciful in regard to those things which are done to God's detriment, however great the crimes may be, but to be found most hard and inexorable exactors of debts to ourselves even in the case of the most trifling wrongs. Whoever then does not from his heart forgive his brother who has offended him, by this prayer calls down upon himself not forgiveness but condemnation, and by his own profession asks that he himself may be judged more severely, saying: Forgive me as I also have forgiven. And if he is repaid according to his own request, what else will follow but that he will be punished after his own example with implacable wrath and a sentence that cannot be remitted? And so if we want to be judged mercifully, we ought also to be merciful towards those who have sinned against us. For only so much will be remitted to us, as we have remitted to those who have injured us however spitefully. And some dreading this, when this prayer is chanted by all the people in church, silently omit this clause, for fear lest they may seem by their own utterance to bind themselves rather than to excuse themselves, as they do not understand that it is in vain that they try to offer these quibbles to the Judge of all men, who has willed to show us beforehand how He will judge His suppliants. For as He does not wish to be found harsh and inexorable towards them, He has marked out the manner of His judgment, that just as we desire to be judged by Him, so we should also judge our brethren, if they have wronged us in anything, for "he shall have judgment without mercy who hath shown no mercy." [1615] __________________________________________________________________
[1615] S. James ii. 13. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXIII.
Of the clause: "Lead us not into temptation."
Next there follows: "And lead us not into temptation," on which there arises no unimportant question, for if we pray that we may not be suffered to be tempted, how then will our power of endurance be proved, according to this text: "Every one who is not tempted is not proved;" [1616] and again: "Blessed is the man that endureth temptation?" [1617] The clause then, "Lead us not into temptation," does not mean this; viz., do not permit us ever to be tempted, but do not permit us when we fall into temptation to be overcome. For Job was tempted, but was not led into temptation. For he did not ascribe folly to God nor blasphemy, nor with impious mouth did he yield to that wish of the tempter toward which he was drawn. Abraham was tempted, Joseph was tempted, but neither of them was led into temptation for neither of them yielded his consent to the tempter. Next there follows: "But deliver us from evil," i.e., do not suffer us to be tempted by the devil above that we are able, but "make with the temptation a way also of escape that we may be able to bear it." [1618] __________________________________________________________________
[1616] Ecclus. xxxiv. 11.
[1617] S. James i. 12.
[1618] 1 Cor. x. 13. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXIV.
How we ought not to ask for other things, except only those which are contained in the limits of the Lord's Prayer.
You see then what is the method and form of prayer proposed to us by the Judge Himself, who is to be prayed to by it, a form in which there is contained no petition for riches, no thought of honours, no request for power and might, no mention of bodily health and of temporal life. For He who is the Author of Eternity would have men ask of Him nothing uncertain, nothing paltry, and nothing temporal. And so a man will offer the greatest insult to His Majesty and Bounty, if he leaves on one side these eternal petitions and chooses rather to ask of Him something transitory and uncertain; and will also incur the indignation rather than the propitiation of the Judge by the pettiness of his prayer. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXV.
Of the character of the sublimer prayer.
This prayer then though it seems to contain all the fulness of perfection, as being what was originated and appointed by the Lord's own authority, yet lifts those to whom it belongs to that still higher condition of which we spoke above, and carries them on by a loftier stage to that ardent prayer which is known and tried by but very few, and which to speak more truly is ineffable; which transcends all human thoughts, and is distinguished, I will not say by any sound of the voice, but by no movement of the tongue, or utterance of words, but which the mind enlightened by the infusion of that heavenly light describes in no human and confined language, but pours forth richly as from copious fountain in an accumulation of thoughts, and ineffably utters to God, expressing in the shortest possible space of time such great things that the mind when it returns to its usual condition cannot easily utter or relate. And this condition our Lord also similarly prefigured by the form of those supplications which, when he retired alone in the mountain He is said to have poured forth in silence, and when being in an agony of prayer He shed forth even drops of blood, as an example of a purpose which it is hard to imitate. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXVI.
Of the different causes of conviction.
But who is able, with whatever experience he may be endowed, to give a sufficient account of the varieties and reasons and grounds of conviction, by which the mind is inflamed and set on fire and incited to pure and most fervent prayers? And of these we will now by way of specimen set forth a few, as far as we can by God's enlightenment recollect them. For sometimes a verse of any one of the Psalms gives us an occasion of ardent prayer while we are singing. Sometimes the harmonious modulation of a brother's voice stirs up the minds of dullards to intense supplication. We know also that the enunciation and the reverence of the chanter adds greatly to the fervour of those who stand by. Moreover the exhortation of a perfect man, and a spiritual conference has often raised the affections of those present to the richest prayer. We know too that by the death of a brother or some one dear to us, we are no less carried away to full conviction. The recollection also of our coldness and carelessness has sometimes aroused in us a healthful fervour of spirit. And in this way no one can doubt that numberless opportunities are not wanting, by which through God's grace the coldness and sleepiness of our minds can be shaken off. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXVII.
Of the different sorts of conviction.
But how and in what way those very convictions are produced from the inmost recesses of the soul it is no less difficult to trace out. For often through some inexpressible delight and keenness of spirit the fruit of a most salutary conviction arises so that it actually breaks forth into shouts owing to the greatness of its incontrollable joy; and the delight of the heart and greatness of exultation makes itself heard even in the cell of a neighbour. But sometimes the mind hides itself in complete silence within the secrets of a profound quiet, so that the amazement of a sudden illumination chokes all sounds of words and the overawed spirit either keeps all its feelings to itself or loses [1619] them and pours forth its desires to God with groanings that cannot be uttered. But sometimes it is filled with such overwhelming conviction and grief that it cannot express it except by floods of tears. __________________________________________________________________
[1619] Petschenig's text reads "amittat." v. l. emittat. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXVIII.
A question about the fact that a plentiful supply of tears is not in our own power.
Germanus: My own poor self indeed is not altogether ignorant of this feeling of conviction. For often when tears arise at the recollection of my faults, I have been by the Lord's visitation so refreshed by this ineffable joy which you describe that the greatness of the joy has assured me that I ought not to despair of their forgiveness. Than which state of mind I think there is nothing more sublime if only it could be recalled at our own will. For sometimes when I am desirous to stir myself up with all my power to the same conviction and tears, and place before my eyes all my faults and sins, I am unable to bring back that copiousness of tears, and so my eyes are dry and hard like some hardest flint, so that not a single tear trickles from them. And so in proportion as I congratulate myself on that copiousness of tears, just so do I mourn that I cannot bring it back again whenever I wish. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXIX.
The answer on the varieties of conviction which spring from tears.
Isaac: Not every kind of shedding of tears is produced by one feeling or one virtue. For in one way does that weeping originate which is caused by the pricks of our sins smiting our heart, of which we read: "I have laboured in my groanings, every night I will wash my bed; I will water my couch with my tears." [1620] And again: "Let tears run down like a torrent day and night: give thyself no rest, and let not the apple of thine eye cease." [1621] In another, that which arises from the contemplation of eternal good things and the desire of that future glory, owing to which even richer well-springs of tears burst forth from uncontrollable delights and boundless exultation, while our soul is athirst for the mighty Living God, saying, "When shall I come and appear before the presence of God? My tears have been my meat day and night," [1622] declaring with daily crying and lamentation: "Woe is me that my sojourning is prolonged;" and: "Too long hath my soul been a sojourner." [1623] In another way do the tears flow forth, which without any conscience of deadly sin, yet still proceed from the fear of hell and the recollection of that terrible judgment, with the terror of which the prophet was smitten and prayed to God, saying: "Enter not into judgment with Thy servant, for in Thy sight shall no man living be justified." [1624] There is too another kind of tears, which are caused not by knowledge of one's self but by the hardness and sins of others; whereby Samuel is described as having wept for Saul, and both the Lord in the gospel and Jeremiah in former days for the city of Jerusalem, the latter thus saying: "Oh, that my head were water and mine eyes a fountain of tears! And I will weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people." [1625] Or also such as were those tears of which we hear in the hundred and first Psalm: "For I have eaten ashes for my bread, and mingled my cup with weeping." [1626] And these were certainty not caused by the same feeling as those which arise in the sixth Psalm from the person of the penitent, but were due to the anxieties of this life and its distresses and losses, by which the righteous who are living in this world are oppressed. And this is clearly shown not only by the words of the Psalm itself, but also by its title, which runs as follows in the character of that poor person of whom it is said in the gospel that "blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven:" [1627] "A prayer of the poor when he was in distress and poured forth his prayer to God." [1628] __________________________________________________________________
[1620] Ps. vi. 7.
[1621] Lam. ii. 18.
[1622] Ps. xii. (xliii.) 3, 4.
[1623] Ps. cix. (cxix.) 5, 6.
[1624] Ps. cxlii. (cxliii.) 2.
[1625] Jer. ix. 1.
[1626] Ps. ci. (cii.) 10.
[1627] S. Matt. v. 3.
[1628] Ps. ci. (cii.) 1. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXX.
How tears ought not to be squeezed out, when they do not flow spontaneously.
From these tears those are vastly different which are squeezed out from dry eyes while the heart is hard: and although we cannot believe that these are altogether fruitless (for the attempt to shed them is made with a good intention, especially by those who have not yet been able to attain to perfect knowledge or to be thoroughly cleansed from the stains of past or present sins), yet certainly the flow of tears ought not to be thus forced out by those who have already advanced to the love of virtue, nor should the weeping of the outward man be with great labour attempted, as even if it is produced it will never attain the rich copiousness of spontaneous tears. For it will rather cast down the soul of the suppliant by his endeavours, and humiliate him, and plunge him in human affairs and draw him away from the celestial heights, wherein the awed mind of one who prays should be steadfastly fixed, and will force it to relax its hold on its prayers and grow sick from barren and forced tears. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXI.
The opinion of Abbot Antony on the condition of prayer.
And that you may see the character of true prayer I will give you not my own opinion but that of the blessed Antony: whom we have known sometimes to have been so persistent in prayer that often as he was praying in a transport of mind, when the sunrise began to appear, we have heard him in the fervour of his spirit declaiming: Why do you hinder me, O sun, who art arising for this very purpose; viz., to withdraw me from the brightness of this true light? And his also is this heavenly and more than human utterance on the end of prayer: That is not, said he, a perfect prayer, wherein a monk understands himself and the words which he prays. And if we too, as far as our slender ability allows, may venture to add anything to this splendid utterance, we will bring forward the marks of prayer which are heard from the Lord, as far as we have tried them. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXII.
Of the proof of prayer being heard.
When, while we are praying, no hesitation intervenes and breaks down the confidence of our petition by a sort of despair, but we feel that by pouring forth our prayer we have obtained what we are asking for, we have no doubt that our prayers have effectually reached God. For so far will one be heard and obtain an answer, as he believes that he is regarded by God, and that God can grant it. For this saying of our Lord cannot be retracted: "Whatsoever ye ask when ye pray, believe that you shall receive, and they shall come to you." [1629] __________________________________________________________________
[1629] S. Mark xi. 24. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXIII.
An objection that the confidence of being thus heard as described belongs only to saints.
Germanus: We certainly believe that this confidence of being heard flows from purity of conscience, but for us, whose heart is still smitten by the pricks of sins, how can we have it, as we have no merits to plead for us, whereby we might confidently presume that our prayers would be heard? __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXIV.
Answer on the different reasons for prayer being heard.
Isaac: That there are different reasons for prayer being heard in accordance with the varied and changing condition of souls the words of the gospels and of the prophets teach us. For you have the fruits of an answer pointed out by our Lord's words in the case of the agreement of two persons; as it is said: "If two of you shall agree upon earth touching anything for which they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven." [1630] You have another in the fulness of faith, which is compared to a grain of mustard-seed. "For," He says, "if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain: Be thou removed, and it shall be removed; and nothing shall be impossible to you." [1631] You have it in continuance in prayer, which the Lord's words call, by reason of unwearied perseverance in petitioning, importunity: "For, verily, I say unto you that if not because of his friendship, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him as much as he needs." [1632] You have it in the fruits of almsgiving: "Shut up alms in the heart of the poor and it shall pray for thee in the time of tribulation." [1633] You have it in the purifying of life and in works of mercy, as it is said: "Loose the bands of wickedness, undo the bundles that oppress;" and after a few words in which the barrenness of an unfruitful fast is rebuked, "then," he says, "thou shalt call and the Lord shall hear thee; thou shalt cry, and He shall say, Here am I." [1634] Sometimes also excess of trouble causes it to be heard, as it is said: "When I was in trouble I called unto the Lord, and He heard me;" [1635] and again: "Afflict not the stranger for if he crieth unto Me, I will hear him, for I am merciful." [1636] You see then in how many ways the gift of an answer may be obtained, so that no one need be crushed by the despair of his conscience for securing those things which are salutary and eternal. For if in contemplating our wretchedness I admit that we are utterly destitute of all those virtues which we mentioned above, and that we have neither that laudable agreement of two persons, nor that faith which is compared to a grain of mustard seed, nor those works of piety which the prophet describes, surely we cannot be without that importunity which He supplies to all who desire it, owing to which alone the Lord promises that He will give whatever He has been prayed to give. And therefore we ought without unbelieving hesitation to persevere, and not to have the least doubt that by continuing in them we shall obtain all those things which we have asked according to the mind of God. For the Lord, in His desire to grant what is heavenly and eternal, urges us to constrain Him as it were by our importunity, as He not only does not despise or reject the importunate, but actually welcomes and praises them, and most graciously promises to grant whatever they have perseveringly hoped for; saying, "Ask and ye shall receive: seek and ye shall find: knock and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh receiveth, and he that seeketh findeth, and to him that knocketh it shall be opened;" [1637] and again: "All things whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer believing ye shall receive, and nothing shall be impossible to you." [1638] And therefore even if all the grounds for being heard which we have mentioned are altogether wanting, at any rate the earnestness of importunity may animate us, as this is placed in the power of any one who wills without the difficulties of any merits or labours. But let not any suppliant doubt that he certainly will not be heard, so long as he doubts whether he is heard. But that this also shall be sought from the Lord unweariedly, we are taught by the example of the blessed Daniel, as, though he was heard from the first day on which he began to pray, he only obtained the result of his petition after one and twenty days. [1639] Wherefore we also ought not to grow slack in the earnestness of the prayers we have begun, if we fancy that the answer comes but slowly, for fear lest perhaps the gift of the answer be in God's providence delayed, or the angel, who was to bring the Divine blessing to us, may when he comes forth from the Presence of the Almighty be hindered by the resistance of the devil, as it is certain that he cannot transmit and bring to us the desired boon, if he finds that we slack off from the earnestness of the petition made. And this would certainly have happened to the above mentioned prophet unless he had with incomparable steadfastness prolonged and persevered in his prayers until the twenty-first day. Let us then not be at all cast down by despair from the confidence of this faith of ours, even when we fancy that we are far from having obtained what we prayed for, and let us not have any doubts about the Lord's promise where He says: "All things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer believing, ye shall receive." [1640] For it is well for us to consider this saying of the blessed Evangelist John, by which the ambiguity of this question is clearly solved: "This is," he says, "the confidence which we have in Him, that whatsoever we ask according to His will, He heareth us." [1641] He bids us then have a full and undoubting confidence of the answer only in those things which are not for our own advantage or for temporal comforts, but are in conformity to the Lord's will. And we are also taught to put this into our prayers by the Lord's Prayer, where we say "Thy will be done,"--Thine not ours. For if we also remember these words of the Apostle that "we know not what to pray for as we ought" [1642] we shall see that we sometimes ask for things opposed to our salvation and that we are most providentially refused our requests by Him who sees what is good for us with greater right and truth than we can. And it is clear that this also happened to the teacher of the Gentiles when he prayed that the messenger of Satan who had been for his good allowed by the Lord's will to buffet him, might be removed, saying: "For which I besought the Lord thrice that he might depart from me. And He said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee, for strength is made perfect in weakness." [1643] And this feeling even our Lord expressed when He prayed in the character [1644] of man which He had taken, that He might give us a form of prayer as other things also by His example; saying thus: "Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will but as Thou wilt," [1645] though certainly His will was not discordant with His Father's will, "For He had come to save what was lost and to give His life a ransom for many;" [1646] as He Himself says: "No man taketh my life from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down and I have power to take it again." [1647] In which character there is in the thirty-ninth Psalm the following sung by the blessed David, of the Unity of will which He ever maintained with the Father: "To do Thy will: O My God, I am willing." [1648] For even if we read of the Father: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son," [1649] we find none the less of the Son: "Who gave Himself for our sins." [1650] And as it is said of the One: "Who spared not His own Son, but gave Him for all of us," [1651] so it is written of the other: "He was offered because He Himself willed it." [1652] And it is shown that the will of the Father and of the Son is in all things one, so that even in the actual mystery of the Lord's resurrection we are taught that there was no discord of operation. For just as the blessed Apostle declares that the Father brought about the resurrection of His body, saying: "And God the Father, who raised Him from the dead," [1653] so also the Son testifies that He Himself will raise again the Temple of His body, saying: "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up again." [1654] And therefore we being instructed by all these examples of our Lord which have been enumerated ought to end our supplications also with the same prayer, and always to subjoin this clause to all our petitions: "Nevertheless not as I will, but as Thou wilt." [1655] But it is clear enough that one who does not [1656] pray with attention of mind cannot observe that threefold reverence [1657] which is usually practised in the assemblies of the brethren at the close of service. __________________________________________________________________
[1630] S. Matt. xviii. 19.
[1631] S. Matt. xvii. 19.
[1632] S. Luke xi. 8.
[1633] Ecclus. xxix. 15.
[1634] Is. lviii. 6, 9.
[1635] Ps. cxix. (cxx.) 1.
[1636] Exod. xxii. 21, 27.
[1637] S. Luke xi. 9, 10.
[1638] S. Matt. xxi. 22; xvii. 20.
[1639] Cf. Dan. x. 2 sq.
[1640] S. Matt. xxi. 22.
[1641] 1 John v. 16.
[1642] Rom. viii. 26.
[1643] 2 Cor. xii. 8, 9.
[1644] Ex persona hominis assumpti. The language is scarcely accurate, but it must be remembered that the Conferences were written before the rise of the Nestorian heresy had shown the need for exactness of expression on the subject of the Incarnation. Compare the note on "Against Nestorius," Book III. c. iii.
[1645] S. Matt. xxvi. 39.
[1646] S. Matt. xviii. 11; xx. 28.
[1647] S. John x. 18.
[1648] Ps. xxxix. (xl.) 9.
[1649] 1 John iii. 16.
[1650] Gal. i. 4.
[1651] Rom. viii. 32.
[1652] Is. liii. 7. (Lat.)
[1653] Gal. i. 1.
[1654] S. John ii. 19.
[1655] S. Matt. xxvi. 39.
[1656] "Non" though wanting in most mss. must be read in the text.
[1657] Reading "curvationis" with Petschenig: the text of Gazæus has "orationis." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXV.
Of prayer to be offered within the chamber and with the door shut.
Before all things however we ought most carefully to observe the Evangelic precept, which tells us to enter into our chamber and shut the door and pray to our Father, which may be fulfilled by us as follows: We pray within our chamber, when removing our hearts inwardly from the din of all thoughts and anxieties, we disclose our prayers in secret and in closest intercourse to the Lord. We pray with closed doors when with closed lips and complete silence we pray to the searcher not of words but of hearts. We pray in secret when from the heart and fervent mind we disclose our petitions to God alone, so that no hostile powers are even able to discover the character of our petition. Wherefore we should pray in complete silence, not only to avoid distracting the brethren standing near by our whispers or louder utterances, and disturbing the thoughts of those who are praying, but also that the purport of our petition may be concealed from our enemies who are especially on the watch against us while we are praying. For so we shall fulfil this injunction: "Keep the doors of thy mouth from her who sleepeth in thy bosom." [1658] __________________________________________________________________
[1658] Micah vii. 5. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXVI.
Of the value of short and silent prayer.
Wherefore we ought to pray often but briefly, lest if we are long about it our crafty foe may succeed in implanting something in our heart. For that is the true sacrifice, as "the sacrifice of God is a broken spirit." This is the salutary offering, these are pure drink offerings, that is the "sacrifice of righteousness," the "sacrifice of praise," these are true and fat victims, "holocausts full of marrow," which are offered by contrite and humble hearts, and which those who practise this control and fervour of spirit, of which we have spoken, with effectual power can sing: "Let my prayer be set forth in Thy sight as the incense: let the lifting up of my hands be an evening sacrifice." [1659] But the approach of the right hour and of night warns us that we ought with fitting devotion to do this very thing, of which, as our slender ability allowed, we seem to have propounded a great deal, and to have prolonged our conference considerably, though we believe that we have discoursed very little when the magnificence and difficulty of the subject are taken into account.
With these words of the holy Isaac we were dazzled rather than satisfied, and after evening service had been held, rested our limbs for a short time, and intending at the first dawn again to return under promise of a fuller discussion departed, rejoicing over the acquisition of these precepts as well as over the assurance of his promises. Since we felt that though the excellence of prayer had been shown to us, still we had not yet understood from his discourse its nature, and the power by which continuance in it might be gained and kept. __________________________________________________________________
[1659] Ps. l. (li.) 19, 21; xlix. (l.) 23; lxv. (lxvi.) 15; cxl. (cxli.) 2. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
X. The Second Conference of Abbot Isaac.
On Prayer. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter I.
Introduction.
Among the sublime customs of the anchorites which by God's help have been set forth although in plain and unadorned style, the course of our narration compels us to insert and find a place for something, which may seem so to speak to cause a blemish on a fair body: although I have no doubt that by it no small instruction on the image of Almighty God of which we read in Genesis will be conferred on some of the simpler sort, especially when the grounds are considered of a doctrine so important that men cannot be ignorant of it without terrible blasphemy and serious harm to the Catholic faith. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter II.
Of the custom which is kept up in the Province of Egypt for signifying the time of Easter.
In the country of Egypt this custom is by ancient tradition observed that--when Epiphany is past, which the priests of that province regard as the time, both of our Lord's baptism and also of His birth in the flesh, and so celebrate the commemoration of either mystery not separately as in the Western provinces but on the single festival of this day, [1660] --letters are sent from the Bishop of Alexandria through all the Churches of Egypt, by which the beginning of Lent, and the day of Easter are pointed out not only in all the cities but also in all the monasteries. [1661] In accordance then with this custom, a very few days after the previous conference had been held with Abbot Isaac, there arrived the festal letters of Theophilus [1662] the Bishop of the aforesaid city, in which together with the announcement of Easter he considered as well the foolish heresy of the Anthropomorphites [1663] at great length, and abundantly refuted it. And this was received by almost all the body of monks residing in the whole province of Egypt with such bitterness owing to their simplicity and error, that the greater part of the Elders decreed that on the contrary the aforesaid Bishop ought to be abhorred by the whole body of the brethren as tainted with heresy of the worst kind, because he seemed to impugn the teaching of holy Scripture by the denial that Almighty God was formed in the fashion of a human figure, though Scripture teaches with perfect clearness that Adam was created in His image. Lastly this letter was rejected also by those who were living in the desert of Scete and who excelled all who were in the monasteries of Egypt, in perfection and in knowledge, so that except Abbot Paphnutius the presbyter of our congregation, not one of the other presbyters, who presided over the other three churches in the same desert, would suffer it to be even read or repeated at all in their meetings. __________________________________________________________________
[1660] The observance of Epiphany can be traced back in the Christian Church to the second century, and, as Cassian tells us here, in the East (in which its observance apparently originated) it was in the first instance a double festival commemorating both the Nativity and the Baptism of our Lord. From the East its observance passed over to the West, where however the Nativity was already observed as a separate festival, and hence the special reference of Epiphany was somewhat altered, and the manifestation to the Magi was coupled with that at the Baptism: hence the plural Epiphaniorum dies. Meanwhile, as the West adopted the observance of this festival from the East, so the East followed the West in observing a separate feast of the Nativity. Cassian's words show us that when he wrote the two festivals were both observed separately in the West, though apparently not yet (to the best of his belief) in the East, but the language of a homily by S. Chrysostom (Vol. ii. p. 354 Ed. Montfaucon) delivered in a.d. 386 shows that the separation of the two festivals had already begun at Antioch, and all the evidence goes to show that "the Western plan was being gradually adopted in the period which we may roughly define as the last quarter of the 4th and the first quarter of the 5th century." Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, Vol. i. p. 361. See further Origines du Culte Chrétien, par L'Abbé Duchesne, p. 247 sq.
[1661] The "Festal letters" (heotastikai epistolai, Euseb. VII. xx., xxi.) were delivered by the Bishop of Alexandria as Homilies, and then put into the form of an Epistle and sent round to all the churches of Egypt; and, according to some late writers, to the Bishops of all the principal sees, in accordance with a decision of the Council of Nicæa, in order to inform them of the right day on which Easter should be celebrated. Cassian here speaks of them as sent immediately after Epiphany, and this was certainly the time at which the announcement of the date of Easter was made in the West shortly after his day (so the Council of Orleans, Canon i., a.d. 541); that of Braga a.d. 572, Canon ix., and that of Auxerre a.d. 572, Canon ii.), but there is ample evidence in the Festal letters both of S. Athanasius and of S. Cyril that at Alexandria the homilies were preached on the previous Easter, and it is difficult to resist the inference that Cassian's memory is here at fault as to the exact time at which the incident related really occurred, and that he is transferring to Egypt the custom with which he was familiar in the West, assigning to the festival of Epiphany what really must have taken place at Easter.
[1662] Theophilus succeeded Timothy as Bishop of Alexandria in the summer of 385. The festal letters of which Cassian here speaks were issued by him in the year 399.
[1663] The Anthropomorphite heresy, into which the monks of Egypt had fallen, "supposed that God possesses eyes, a face, and hands and other members of a bodily organization." It arose from taking too literally those passages of the Old Testament in which God is spoken of in human terms, out of condescension to man's limited powers of grasping the Divine nature and appears historically to have been a recoil from the allegorism of Origen and others of the Alexandrian school. The Festal letter of Theophilus in which he condemned these views, and maintained the incorporeal nature of God is no longer extant, but is alluded to also by Sozomen, H. E. VIII. xi., where an account is given of the Origenistic controversy of which it was the occasion, and out of which Theophilus came so badly. On the heresy see also Epiphanius, Hær. lxx.; Augustine. Hær. l. and lxxvi.; and Theodoret, H. E. IV. x. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter III.
Of Abbot Sarapion and the heresy of the Anthropomorphites into which he fell in the error of simplicity.
Among those then who were caught by this mistaken notion was one named Sarapion, a man of long-standing strictness of life, and one who was altogether perfect in actual discipline, whose ignorance with regard to the view of the doctrine first mentioned was so far a stumbling block to all who held the true faith, as he himself outstripped almost all the monks both in the merits of his life and in the length of time (he had been there). And when this man could not be brought back to the way of the right faith by many exhortations of the holy presbyter Paphnutius, because this view seemed to him a novelty, and one that was not ever known to or handed down by his predecessors, it chanced that a certain deacon, a man of very great learning, named Photinus, arrived from the region of Cappadocia with the desire of visiting the brethren living in the same desert: whom the blessed Paphnutius received with the warmest welcome, and in order to confirm the faith which had been stated in the letters of the aforesaid Bishop, placed him in the midst and asked him before all the brethren how the Catholic Churches throughout the East interpreted the passage in Genesis where it says "Let us make man after our image and likeness." [1664] And when he explained that the image and likeness of God was taken by all the leaders of the churches not according to the base sound of the letters, but spiritually, and supported this very fully and by many passages of Scripture, and showed that nothing of this sort could happen to that infinite and incomprehensible and invisible glory, so that it could be comprised in a human form and likeness, since its nature is incorporeal and uncompounded and simple, and what can neither be apprehended by the eyes nor conceived by the mind, at length the old man was shaken by the numerous and very weighty assertions of this most learned man, and was drawn to the faith of the Catholic tradition. And when both Abbot Paphnutius and all of us were filled with intense delight at his adhesion, for this reason; viz., that the Lord had not permitted a man of such age and crowned with such virtues, and one who erred only from ignorance and rustic simplicity, to wander from the path of the right faith up to the very last, and when we arose to give thanks, and were all together offering up our prayers to the Lord, the old man was so bewildered in mind during his prayer because he felt that the Anthropomorphic image of the Godhead which he used to set before himself in prayer, was banished from his heart, that on a sudden he burst into a flood of bitter tears and continual sobs, and cast himself down on the ground and exclaimed with strong groanings: "Alas! wretched man that I am! they have taken away my God from me, and I have now none to lay hold of; and whom to worship and address I know not." By which scene we were terribly disturbed, and moreover with the effect of the former Conference still remaining in our hearts, we returned to Abbot Isaac, whom when we saw close at hand, we addressed with these words. __________________________________________________________________
[1664] Gen. i. 26. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IV.
Of our return to Abbot Isaac and question concerning the error into which the aforesaid old man had fallen.
Although even besides the fresh matter which has lately arisen, our delight in the former conference which was held on the character of prayer would summon us to postpone everything else and return to your holiness, yet this grievous error of Abbot Sarapion, conceived, as we fancy, by the craft of most vile demons, adds somewhat to this desire of ours. For it is no small despair by which we are cast down when we consider that through the fault of this ignorance he has not only utterly lost all those labours which he has performed in so praiseworthy a manner for fifty years in this desert, but has also incurred the risk of eternal death. And so we want first to know why and wherefore so grievous an error has crept into him. And next we should like to be taught how we can arrive at that condition in prayer, of which you discoursed some time back not only fully but splendidly. For that admirable Conference has had this effect upon us, that it has only dazzled our minds and has not shown us how to perform or secure it. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter V.
The answer on the heresy described above.
Isaac: We need not be surprised that a really simple man who had never received any instruction on the substance and nature of the Godhead could still be entangled and deceived by an error of simplicity and the habit of a longstanding mistake, and (to speak more truly) continue in the original error which is brought about, not as you suppose by a new illusion of the demons, but by the ignorance of the ancient heathen world, while in accordance with the custom of that erroneous notion, by which they used to worship devils formed in the figure of men, they even now think that the incomprehensible and ineffable glory of the true Deity should be worshipped under the limitations of some figure, as they believe that they can grasp and hold nothing if they have not some image set before them, which they can continually address while they are at their devotions, and which they can carry about in their mind and have always fixed before their eyes. And against this mistake of theirs this text may be used: "And they changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of the image of corruptible man." [1665] Jeremiah also says: "My people have changed their glory for an idol. [1666] Which error although by this its origin, of which we have spoken, it is engrained in the notions of some, yet none the less is it contracted in the hearts also of those who have never been stained with the superstition of the heathen world, under the colour of this passage where it is said "Let us make man after our image and our likeness," [1667] ignorance and simplicity being its authors, so that actually there has arisen owing to this hateful interpretation a heresy called that of the Anthropomorphites, which maintains with obstinate perverseness that the infinite and simple substance of the Godhead is fashioned in our lineaments and human configuration. Which however any one who has been taught the Catholic doctrine will abhor as heathenish blasphemy, and so will arrive at that perfectly pure condition in prayer which will not only not connect with its prayers any figure of the Godhead or bodily lineaments (which it is a sin even to speak of), but will not even allow in itself even the memory of a name, or the appearance of an action, or an outline of any character. __________________________________________________________________
[1665] Rom. i. 23.
[1666] Jer. ii. 11.
[1667] Gen. i. 26. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VI.
Of the reasons why Jesus Christ appears to each one of us either in His humility or in His glorified condition.
For according to the measure of its purity, as I said in the former Conference, each mind is both raised and moulded in its prayers if it forsakes the consideration of earthly and material things so far as the condition of its purity may carry it forward, and enable it with the inner eyes of the soul to see Jesus either still in His humility and in the flesh, or glorified and coming in the glory of His Majesty: for those cannot see Jesus coming in His Kingdom who are still kept back in a sort of state of Jewish weakness, and cannot say with the Apostle: "And if we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now we know Him so no more;" [1668] but only those can look with purest eyes on His Godhead, who rise with Him from low and earthly works and thoughts and go apart in the lofty mountain of solitude which is free from the disturbance of all earthly thoughts and troubles, and secure from the interference of all sins, and being exalted by pure faith and the heights of virtue reveals the glory of His Face and the image of His splendour to those who are able to look on Him with pure eyes of the soul. But Jesus is seen as well by those who live in towns and villages and hamlets, i.e., who are occupied in practical affairs and works, but not with the same brightness with which He appeared to those who can go up with Him into the aforesaid mount of virtues, i.e., Peter, James, and John. For so in solitude He appeared to Moses and spoke with Elias. And as our Lord wished to establish this and to leave us examples of perfect purity, although He Himself, the very fount of inviolable sanctity, had no need of external help and the assistance of solitude in order to secure it (for the fulness of purity could not be soiled by any stain from crowds, nor could He be contaminated by intercourse with men, who cleanses and sanctifies all things that are polluted) yet still He retired into the mountain alone to pray, thus teaching us by the example of His retirement that if we too wish to approach God with a pure and spotless affection of heart, we should also retire from all the disturbance and confusion of crowds, so that while still living in the body we may manage in some degree to adapt ourselves to some likeness of that bliss which is promised hereafter to the saints, and that "God may be" to us "all in all." [1669] __________________________________________________________________
[1668] 2 Cor. v. 16.
[1669] 1 Cor. xv. 28. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VII.
What constitutes our end and perfect bliss.
For then will be perfectly fulfilled in our case that prayer of our Saviour in which He prayed for His disciples to the Father saying "that the love wherewith Thou lovedst Me may be in them and they in us;" and again: "that they all may be one as Thou, Father, in Me and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us," [1670] when that perfect love of God, wherewith "He first loved us" [1671] has passed into the feelings of our heart as well, by the fulfilment of this prayer of the Lord which we believe cannot possibly be ineffectual. And this will come to pass when God shall be all our love, and every desire and wish and effort, every thought of ours, and all our life and words and breath, and that unity which already exists between the Father and the Son, and the Son and the Father, has been shed abroad in our hearts and minds, so that as He loves us with a pure and unfeigned and indissoluble love, so we also may be joined to Him by a lasting and inseparable affection, since we are so united to Him that whatever we breathe or think, or speak is God, since, as I say, we attain to that end of which we spoke before, which the same Lord in His prayer hopes may be fulfilled in us: "that they all may be one as we are one, I in them and Thou in Me, that they also may be made perfect in one;" and again: "Father, those whom Thou hast given Me, I will that where I am, they may also be with Me." [1672] This then ought to be the destination of the solitary, this should be all his aim that it may be vouchsafed to him to possess even in the body an image of future bliss, and that he may begin in this world to have a foretaste of a sort of earnest of that celestial life and glory. This, I say, is the end of all perfection, that the mind purged from all carnal desires may daily be lifted towards spiritual things, until the whole life and all the thoughts of the heart become one continuous prayer. __________________________________________________________________
[1670] S. John xvii. 26, 21.
[1671] 1 John iv. 16.
[1672] S. John xvii. 22-24. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VIII.
A question on the training in perfection by which we can arrive at perpetual recollection of God.
Germanus: The extent of our bewilderment at our wondering awe at the former Conference, because of which we came back again, increases still more. For in proportion as by the incitements of this teaching we are fired with the desire of perfect bliss, so do we fall back into greater despair, as we know not how to seek or obtain training for such lofty heights. Wherefore we entreat that you will patiently allow us (for it must perhaps be set forth and unfolded with a good deal of talk) to explain what while sitting in the cell we had begun to revolve in a lengthy meditation, although we know that your holiness is not at all troubled by the infirmities of the weak, which even for this reason should be openly set forth, that what is out of place in them may receive correction. Our notion then is that the perfection of any art or system of training must begin with some simple rudiments, and grow accustomed first to somewhat easy and tender beginnings, so that being nourished and trained little by little by a sort of reasonable milk, it may grow up and so by degrees and step by step mount up from the lowest depths to the heights: and when by these means it has entered on the plainer principles and so to speak passed the gates of the entrance of the profession, it will consequently arrive without difficulty at the inmost shrine and lofty heights of perfection. For how could any boy manage to pronounce the simplest union of syllables unless he had first carefully learnt the letters of the alphabet? Or how can any one learn to read quickly, who is still unfit to connect together short and simple sentences? But by what means will one who is ill instructed in the science of grammar attain eloquence in rhetoric or the knowledge of philosophy? Wherefore for this highest learning also, by which we are taught even to cleave to God, I have no doubt that there are some foundations of the system, which must first be firmly laid and afterwards the towering heights of perfection may be placed and raised upon them. And we have a slight idea that these are its first principles; viz., that we should first learn by what meditations God may be grasped and contemplated, and next that we should manage to keep a very firm hold of this topic whatever it is which we do not doubt is the height of all perfection. And therefore we want you to show us some material for this recollection, by which we may conceive and ever keep the idea of God in the mind, so that by always keeping it before our eyes, when we find that we have dropped away from Him, we may at once be able to recover ourselves and return thither and may succeed in laying hold of it again without any delay from wandering around the subject and searching for it. For it happens that when we have wandered away from our spiritual speculations and have come back to ourselves as if waking from a deadly sleep, and, being thoroughly roused, look for the subject matter, by which we may be able to revive that spiritual recollection which has been destroyed, we are hindered by the delay of the actual search before we find it, and are once more drawn aside from our endeavour, and before the spiritual insight is brought about, the purpose of heart which had been conceived, has disappeared. And this trouble is certain to happen to us for this reason because we do not keep something special firmly set before our eyes like some principle to which the wandering thoughts may be recalled after many digressions and varied excursions; and, if I may use the expression, after long storms enter a quiet haven. And so it comes to pass that as the mind is constantly hindered by this want of knowledge and difficulty, and is always tossed about vaguely, and as if intoxicated, among various matters, and cannot even retain firm hold for any length of time of anything spiritual which has occurred to it by chance rather than of set purpose: while, as it is always receiving one thing after another, it does not notice either their beginning and origin or even their end. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IX.
The answer on the efficacy of understanding, which is gained by experience.
Isaac: Your minute and subtle inquiry affords an indication of purity being very nearly reached. For no one would be able even to make inquiries on these matters, I will not say to look within and discriminate,--except one who had been urged to sound the depths of such questions by careful and effectual diligence of mind, and watchful anxiety, and one whom the constant aim after a well controlled life had taught by practical experience to attempt the entrance to this purity and to knock at its doors. And therefore as I see you, I will not say, standing before the doors of that true prayer of which we have been speaking, but touching its inner chambers and inward parts as it were with the hands of experience, and already laying hold of some parts of it, I do not think that I shall find any difficulty in introducing you now within what I may call its hall, for you to roam about its recesses, as the Lord may direct; nor do I think that you will be hindered from investigating what is to be shown you by any obstacles or difficulties. For he is next door to understanding who carefully recognizes what he ought to ask about, nor is he far from knowledge, who begins to understand how ignorant he is. And therefore I am not afraid of the charge of betraying secrets, and of levity, if I divulge what when speaking in my former discourse on the perfection of prayer I had kept back from discussing, as I think that its force was to be explained to us who are occupied with this subject and interest even without the aid of my words, by the grace of God. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter X.
Of the method of continual prayer.
Wherefore in accordance with that system, which you admirably compared to teaching children (who can only take in the first lessons on the alphabet and recognize the shapes of the letters, and trace out their characters with a steady hand if they have, by means of some copies and shapes carefully impressed on wax, got accustomed to express their figures, by constantly looking at them and imitating them daily), we must give you also the form of this spiritual contemplation, on which you may always fix your gaze with the utmost steadiness, and both learn to consider it to your profit in unbroken continuance, and also manage by the practice of it and by meditation to climb to a still loftier insight. This formula then shall be proposed to you of this system, which you want, and of prayer, which every monk in his progress towards continual recollection of God, is accustomed to ponder, ceaselessly revolving it in his heart, having got rid of all kinds of other thoughts; for he cannot possibly keep his hold over it unless he has freed himself from all bodily cares and anxieties. And as this was delivered to us by a few of those who were left of the oldest fathers, so it is only divulged by us to a very few and to those who are really keen. And so for keeping up continual recollection of God this pious formula is to be ever set before you. "O God, make speed to save me: O Lord, make haste to help me," [1673] for this verse has not unreasonably been picked out from the whole of Scripture for this purpose. For it embraces all the feelings which can be implanted in human nature, and can be fitly and satisfactorily adapted to every condition, and all assaults. Since it contains an invocation of God against every danger, it contains humble and pious confession, it contains the watchfulness of anxiety and continual fear, it contains the thought of one's own weakness, confidence in the answer, and the assurance of a present and ever ready help. For one who is constantly calling on his protector, is certain that He is always at hand. It contains the glow of love and charity, it contains a view of the plots, and a dread of the enemies, from which one, who sees himself day and night hemmed in by them, confesses that he cannot be set free without the aid of his defender. This verse is an impregnable wall for all who are labouring under the attacks of demons, as well as impenetrable coat of mail and a strong shield. It does not suffer those who are in a state of moroseness and anxiety of mind, or depressed by sadness or all kinds of thoughts to despair of saving remedies, as it shows that He, who is invoked, is ever looking on at our struggles and is not far from His suppliants. It warns us whose lot is spiritual success and delight of heart that we ought not to be at all elated or puffed up by our happy condition, which it assures us cannot last without God as our protector, while it implores Him not only always but even speedily to help us. This verse, I say, will be found helpful and useful to every one of us in whatever condition we may be. For one who always and in all matters wants to be helped, shows that he needs the assistance of God not only in sorrowful or hard matters but also equally in prosperous and happy ones, that he may be delivered from the one and also made to continue in the other, as he knows that in both of them human weakness is unable to endure without His assistance. I am affected by the passion of gluttony. I ask for food of which the desert knows nothing, and in the squalid desert there are wafted to me odours of royal dainties and I find that even against my will I am drawn to long for them. I must at once say: "O God, make speed to save me: O Lord, make haste to help me." I am incited to anticipate the hour fixed for supper, or I am trying with great sorrow of heart to keep to the limits of the right and regular meagre fare. I must cry out with groans: "O God, make speed to save me: O Lord, make haste to help me." Weakness of the stomach hinders me when wanting severer fasts, on account of the assaults of the flesh, or dryness of the belly and constipation frightens me. In order that effect may be given to my wishes, or else that the fire of carnal lust may be quenched without the remedy of a stricter fast, I must pray: "O God, make speed to save me: O Lord, make haste to help me." When I come to supper, at the bidding of the proper hour I loathe taking food and am prevented from eating anything to satisfy the requirements of nature: I must cry with a sigh: "O God, make speed to save me: O Lord, make haste to help me." When I want for the sake of steadfastness of heart to apply myself to reading a headache interferes and stops me, and at the third hour sleep glues my head to the sacred page, and I am forced either to overstep or to anticipate the time assigned to rest; and finally an overpowering desire to sleep forces me to cut short the canonical rule for service in the Psalms: in the same way I must cry out: "O God, make speed to save me: O Lord, make haste to help me." Sleep is withdrawn from my eyes, and for many nights I find myself wearied out with sleeplessness caused by the devil, and all repose and rest by night is kept away from my eyelids; I must sigh and pray: "O God, make speed to save me: O Lord, make haste to help me." While I am still in the midst of a struggle with sin suddenly an irritation of the flesh affects me and tries by a pleasant sensation to draw me to consent while in my sleep. In order that a raging fire from without may not burn up the fragrant blossoms of chastity, I must cry out: "O God, make speed to save me: O Lord, make haste to help me." I feel that the incentive to lust is removed, and that the heat of passion has died away in my members: In order that this good condition acquired, or rather that this grace of God may continue still longer or forever with me, I must earnestly say: "O God, make speed to save me: O Lord, make haste to help me." I am disturbed by the pangs of anger, covetousness, gloominess, and driven to disturb the peaceful state in which I was, and which was dear to me: In order that I may not be carried away by raging passion into the bitterness of gall, I must cry out with deep groans: "O God, make speed to save me: O Lord, make haste to help me." I am tried by being puffed up by accidie, vainglory, and pride, and my mind with subtle thoughts flatters itself somewhat on account of the coldness and carelessness of others: In order that this dangerous suggestion of the enemy may not get the mastery over me, I must pray with all contrition of heart: "O God, make speed to save me: O Lord, make haste to help me." I have gained the grace of humility and simplicity, and by continually mortifying my spirit have got rid of the swellings of pride: In order that the "foot of pride" may not again "come against me," and "the hand of the sinner disturb me," [1674] and that I may not be more seriously damaged by elation at my success, I must cry with all my might, "O God, make speed to save me: O Lord, make haste to help me." I am on fire with innumerable and various wanderings of soul and shiftiness of heart, and cannot collect my scattered thoughts, nor can I even pour forth my prayer without interruption and images of vain figures, and the recollection of conversations and actions, and I feel myself tied down by such dryness and barrenness that I feel I cannot give birth to any offspring in the shape of spiritual ideas: In order that it may be vouchsafed to me to be set free from this wretched state of mind, from which I cannot extricate myself by any number of sighs and groans, I must full surely cry out: "O God, make speed to save me: O Lord, make haste to help me." Again, I feel that by the visitation of the Holy Spirit I have gained purpose of soul, steadfastness of thought, keenness of heart, together with an ineffable joy and transport of mind, and in the exuberance of spiritual feelings I have perceived by a sudden illumination from the Lord an abounding revelation of most holy ideas which were formerly altogether hidden from me: In order that it may be vouchsafed to me to linger for a longer time in them I must often and anxiously exclaim: "O God, make speed to save me: O Lord, make haste to help me." Encompassed by nightly horrors of devils I am agitated, and am disturbed by the appearances of unclean spirits, my very hope of life and salvation is withdrawn by the horror of fear. Flying to the safe refuge of this verse, I will cry out with all my might: "O God, make speed to save me: O Lord, make haste to help me." Again, when I have been restored by the Lord's consolation, and, cheered by His coming, feel myself encompassed as if by countless thousands of angels, so that all of a sudden I can venture to seek the conflict and provoke a battle with those whom a while ago I dreaded worse than death, and whose touch or even approach I felt with a shudder both of mind and body: In order that the vigour of this courage may, by God's grace, continue in me still longer, I must cry out with all my powers: "O God, make speed to save me: O Lord, make haste to help me." We must then ceaselessly and continuously pour forth the prayer of this verse, in adversity that we may be delivered, in prosperity that we may be preserved and not puffed up. Let the thought of this verse, I tell you, be conned over in your breast without ceasing. Whatever work you are doing, or office you are holding, or journey you are going, do not cease to chant this. When you are going to bed, or eating, and in the last necessities of nature, think on this. This thought in your heart maybe to you a saving formula, and not only keep you unharmed by all attacks of devils, but also purify you from all faults and earthly stains, and lead you to that invisible and celestial contemplation, and carry you on to that ineffable glow of prayer, of which so few have any experience. Let sleep come upon you still considering this verse, till having been moulded by the constant use of it, you grow accustomed to repeat it even in your sleep. When you wake let it be the first thing to come into your mind, let it anticipate all your waking thoughts, let it when you rise from your bed send you down on your knees, and thence send you forth to all your work and business, and let it follow you about all day long. This you should think about, according to the Lawgiver's charge, "at home and walking forth on a journey," [1675] sleeping and waking. This you should write on the threshold and door of your mouth, this you should place on the walls of your house and in the recesses of your heart so that when you fall on your knees in prayer this may be your chant as you kneel, and when you rise up from it to go forth to all the necessary business of life it may be your constant prayer as you stand. __________________________________________________________________
[1673] Ps. lxix. (lxx.) 2. It is not impropable that this chapter suggested to S. Benedict the use of these words as the opening versicle of the hour services, a position which it has ever since occupied in the West. See the rule of S. Benedict, cc. ix., xvii., and xviii.
[1674] Ps. xxxv. (xxxvi.) 12.
[1675] Deut. vi. 7. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XI.
Of the perfection of prayer to which we can rise by the system described.
This, this is the formula which the mind should unceasingly cling to until, strengthened by the constant use of it and by continual meditation, it casts off and rejects the rich and full material of all manner of thoughts and restricts itself to the poverty of this one verse, and so arrives with ready ease at that beatitude of the gospel, which holds the first place among the other beatitudes: for He says "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." [1676] And so one who becomes grandly poor by a poverty of this sort will fulfil this saying of the prophet: "The poor and needy shall praise the name of the Lord." [1677] And indeed what greater or holier poverty can there be than that of one who knowing that he has no defence and no strength of his own, asks for daily help from another's bounty, and as he is aware that every single moment his life and substance depend on Divine assistance, professes himself not without reason the Lord's bedesman, and cries to Him daily in prayer: "But I am poor and needy: the Lord helpeth me." [1678] And so by the illumination of God Himself he mounts to that manifold knowledge of Him and begins henceforward to be nourished on sublimer and still more sacred mysteries, in accordance with these words of the prophet: "The high hills are a refuge for the stags, the rocks for the hedgehogs," [1679] which is very fairly applied in the sense we have given, because whosoever continues in simplicity and innocence is not injurious or offensive to any one, but being content with his own simple condition endeavours simply to defend himself from being spoiled by his foes, and becomes a sort of spiritual hedgehog and is protected by the continual shield of that rock of the gospel, i.e., being sheltered by the recollection of the Lord's passion and by ceaseless meditation on the verse given above he escapes the snares of his opposing enemies. And of these spiritual hedgehogs we read in Proverbs as follows: "And the hedgehogs are a feeble folk, who have made their homes in the rocks." [1680] And indeed what is feebler than a Christian, what is weaker than a monk, who is not only not permitted any vengeance for wrongs done to him but is actually not allowed to suffer even a slight and silent feeling of irritation to spring up within? But whoever advances from this condition and not only secures the simplicity of innocence, but is also shielded by the virtue of discretion, becomes an exterminator of deadly serpents, and has Satan crushed beneath his feet, and by his quickness of mind answers to the figure of the reasonable stag, this man will feed on the mountains of the prophets and Apostles, i.e., on their highest and loftiest mysteries. And thriving on this pasture continually, he will take in to himself all the thoughts of the Psalms and will begin to sing them in such a way that he will utter them with the deepest emotion of heart not as if they were the compositions of the Psalmist, but rather as if they were his own utterances and his very own prayer; and will certainly take them as aimed at himself, and will recognize that their words were not only fulfilled formerly by or in the person of the prophet, but that they are fulfilled and carried out daily in his own case. For then the Holy Scriptures lie open to us with greater clearness and as it were their very veins and marrow are exposed, when our experience not only perceives but actually anticipates their meaning, and the sense of the words is revealed to us not by an exposition of them but by practical proof. For if we have experience of the very state of mind in which each Psalm was sung and written, we become like their authors and anticipate the meaning rather than follow it, i.e., gathering the force of the words before we really know them, we remember what has happened to us, and what is happening in daily assaults when the thoughts of them come over us, and while we sing them we call to mind all that our carelessness has brought upon us, or our earnestness has secured, or Divine Providence has granted or the promptings of the foe have deprived us of, or slippery and subtle forgetfulness has carried off, or human weakness has brought about, or thoughtless ignorance has cheated us of. For all these feelings we find expressed in the Psalms so that by seeing whatever happens as in a very clear mirror we understand it better, and so instructed by our feelings as our teachers we lay hold of it as something not merely heard but actually seen, and, as if it were not committed to memory, but implanted in the very nature of things, we are affected from the very bottom of the heart, so that we get at its meaning not by reading the text but by experience anticipating it. And so our mind will reach that incorruptible prayer to which in our former treatise, as the Lord vouchsafed to grant, the scheme of our Conference mounted, and this is not merely not engaged in gazing on any image, but is actually distinguished by the use of no words or utterances; but with the purpose of the mind all on fire, is produced through ecstasy of heart by some unaccountable keenness of spirit, and the mind being thus affected without the aid of the senses or any visible material pours it forth to God with groanings and sighs that cannot be uttered. __________________________________________________________________
[1676] S. Matt. v. 3.
[1677] Ps. lxxiii. (lxxiv.) 21.
[1678] Ps. xxxix. (xl.) 17 (LXX.).
[1679] Ps. ciii. (civ.) 18.
[1680] Prov. xxx. 26 (LXX.). __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XII.
A question as to how spiritual thoughts can be retained without losing them.
Germanus: We think that you have described to us not only the system of this spiritual discipline for which we asked, but perfection itself; and this with great clearness and openness. For what can be more perfect and sublime than for the recollection of God to be embraced in so brief a meditation, and for it, dwelling on a single verse, to escape from all the limitations of things visible, and to comprise in one short word the thoughts of all our prayers. And therefore we beg you to explain to us one thing which still remains; viz., how we can keep firm hold of this verse which you have given us as a formula, in such a way that, as we have been by God's grace set free from the trifles of worldly thoughts, so we may also keep a steady grasp on all spiritual ones. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIII.
On the lightness of thoughts.
For when the mind has taken in the meaning of a passage in any Psalm, this insensibly slips away from it, and ignorantly and thoughtlessly it passes on to a text of some other Scripture. And when it has begun to consider this with itself, while it is still not thoroughly explored, the recollection of some other passage springs up, and shuts out the consideration of the former subject. From this too it is transferred to some other, by the entrance of some fresh consideration, and the soul always turns about from Psalm to Psalm and jumps from a passage in the Gospels to read one in the Epistles, and from this passes on to the prophetic writings, and thence is carried to some spiritual history, and so it wanders about vaguely and uncertainly through the whole body of the Scriptures, unable, as it may choose, either to reject or keep hold of anything, or to finish anything by fully considering and examining it, and so becomes only a toucher or taster of spiritual meanings, not an author and possessor of them. And so the mind, as it is always light and wandering, is distracted even in time of service by all sorts of things, as if it were intoxicated, and does not perform any office properly. For instance, while it is praying, it is recalling some Psalm or passage of Scripture. While it is chanting, it is thinking about something else besides what the text of the Psalm itself contains. When it repeats a passage of Scripture, it is thinking about something that has to be done, or remembering something that has been done. And in this way it takes in and rejects nothing in a disciplined and proper way, and seems to be driven about by random incursions, without the power either of retaining what it likes or lingering over it. It is then well for us before everything else to know how we can properly perform these spiritual offices, and keep firm hold of this particular verse which you have given us as a formula, so that the rise and fall of our feelings may not be in a state of fluctuation from their own lightness, but may lie under our own control. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIV.
The answer how we can gain stability of heart or of thoughts.
Isaac: Although, in our former discussion on the character of prayer, enough was, as I think, said on this subject, yet as you want it repeated to you again, I will give you a brief instruction on steadfastness of heart. There are three things which make a shifting heart steadfast, watchings, meditation, and prayer, diligence in which and constant attention will produce steadfast firmness of mind. But this cannot be secured in any other way unless all cares and anxieties of this present life have been first got rid of by indefatigable persistence in work dedicated not to covetousness but to the sacred uses of the monastery, that we may thus be able to fulfil the Apostle's command: "Pray without ceasing." [1681] For he prays too little, who is accustomed only to pray at the times when he bends his knees. But he never prays, who even while on his bended knees is distracted by all kinds of wanderings of heart. And therefore what we would be found when at our prayers, that we ought to be before the time of prayer. For at the time of its prayers the mind cannot help being affected by its previous condition, and while it is praying, will be either transported to things heavenly, or dragged down to earthly things by those thoughts in which it had been lingering before prayer.
Thus far did Abbot Isaac carry on his Second Conference on the character of Prayer to us astonished hearers; whose instruction on the consideration of that verse quoted above (which he gave as a sort of outline for beginners to hold) we greatly admired, and wished to follow very closely, as we fancied that it would be a short and easy method; but we have found it even harder to observe than that system of ours by which we used formerly to wander here and there in varied meditations through the whole body of the Scriptures without being tied by any chains of perseverance. It is then certain that no one is kept away from perfection of heart by not being able to read, nor is rustic simplicity any hindrance to the possession of purity of heart and mind, which lies close at hand for all, if only they will by constant meditation on this verse keep the thoughts of the mind safe and sound towards God. __________________________________________________________________
[1681] 1 Thess. v. 17. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
The Conferences of John Cassian.
Part II.
Containing Conferences XI-XVII. __________________________________________________________________
Preface. __________________________________________________________________
Although many of the saints who are taught by your example can scarcely emulate the greatness of your perfection, with which you shine like great luminaries with marvellous brightness in this world, yet still you, O holy brothers Honoratus and Eucherius, [1682] are so stirred by the great glory of those splendid men from whom we received the first principles of monasticism, that one of you, presiding as he does over a large monastery of the brethren, is hoping that his congregation, which learns a lesson from the daily sight of your saintly life, may be instructed in the precepts of those fathers, while the other has been anxious to make his way to Egypt to be edified by the sight of these in the flesh, that he might leave this province that is frozen as it were with the cold of Gaul, and like some pure turtle dove fly to those lands on which the sun of righteousness looks and to which it approaches nearest, and which abound with the ripe fruits of virtues. As a matter of course the greatness of my love wrings this from me; viz., that considering the desire of the one and the labour of the other, I should not decline the danger and peril of writing, if only to the one there may be added authority among his children, and from the other may be removed the necessity for so risky a journey. Further since neither the Institutes of the Coenobia which we wrote to the best of our ability in twelve books for Bishop Castor of blessed memory, nor the ten Conferences of the fathers living in the desert of Scete, which we composed somehow or other at the bidding of Saints Helladius and Leontius the Bishops, [1683] were able to satisfy your faith and zeal, now in order that the reason for our journey may be also known, I have thought that seven Conferences of the three fathers whom we first saw living in another desert, might be written in the same style and dedicated to you, in which whatever has been in our previous works perhaps obscurely explained or even omitted on the subject of perfection, may be supplied. But if even this is not enough to satisfy the holy thirst of your desires, seven other Conferences, which are to be sent to the holy brethren living in the islands of the Stoechades, [1684] will, I fancy, satisfy your wants and your ardour. __________________________________________________________________
[1682] On Honoratus and Eucherius, see the Introduction, p. 189.
[1683] Cf. the Preface to Conference I.
[1684] A group of islands off the coast of France opposite Marseilles; mentioned by Pliny, H. N. III. V., now known as Les Isles d'Hieres. __________________________________________________________________
The Second Part of the Conferences
of John Cassian. __________________________________________________________________
XI. The First Conference of Abbot Chæremon.
On Perfection. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter I.
Description of the town of Thennesus.
When we were living in a monastery in Syria after our first infancy in the faith, and when after we had grown somewhat we had begun to long for some greater grace of perfection, we determined straightway to seek Egypt and penetrating even to the remotest desert of the Thebaid, [1685] to visit very many of the saints, whose glory and fame had spread abroad everywhere, with the wish if not to emulate them at any rate to know them. And so we came by a very lengthy voyage to a town of Egypt named Thennesus, [1686] whose inhabitants are so surrounded either by the sea or by salt lakes that they devote themselves to business alone and get their wealth and substance by naval commerce as the land fails them, so that indeed when they want to build houses, there is no soil sufficient for this, unless it is brought by boat from a distance. __________________________________________________________________
[1685] It is very doubtful whether Cassian ever carried out the intention, of which he here speaks, of visiting the Thebaid. So far as we can trace the course of his wanderings, he does not seem to have penetrated farther into Egypt than the desert of Scete.
[1686] Thennesus, a town at the Tanitic mouth of the Nile near Lake Menzaleh. For the description of the neighbouring country compare Conference VII. c. xxvi. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter II.
Of Bishop Archebius.
And when we arrived there, God gratified our wishes, and had brought about the arrival of that most blessed and excellent man Bishop Archebius, [1687] who had been carried off from the assembly of anchorites and given as Bishop to the town of Panephysis, [1688] and who kept all his life long to his purpose of solitude with such strictness that he relaxed nothing of the character of his former humility, nor flattered himself on the honour that had been added to him (for he vowed that he had not been summoned to that office as fit for it, but complained that he had been expelled from the monastic system as unworthy of it because though he had spent thirty-seven years in it he had never been able to arrive at the purity so high a profession demands); he then when he had received us kindly and most graciously in the aforesaid Thennesus whither the business of electing a Bishop there had brought him, as soon as he heard of our wish and desire to inquire of the holy fathers even in still more remote parts of Egypt: "Come," said he, "see in the meanwhile the old men who live not far from our monastery, the length of whose service is shown by their bent bodies, as their holiness shines forth in their appearance, so that even the mere sight of them will give a great lesson to those who see them: and from them you can learn not so much by their words as by the actual example of their holy life, what I grieve that I have lost, and having lost cannot give to you. But I think that my poverty will be somewhat lessened by this zeal of mine, if when you are seeking that pearl of the Gospel which I have not, I at least provide where you can conveniently procure it." __________________________________________________________________
[1687] Archebius has already been mentioned in Conference VII. xxvi; and in the Institutes V. xxxvii., xxxviii., two stories are told illustrative of his kindness and goodness of disposition; but he is not known to us from any other source except Cassian's writings.
[1688] For the situation of Panephysis, see the note on the Institutes, Book IV. c. xxx. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter III.
Description of the desert where Chæremon, Nesteros, and Joseph lived.
And so he took his staff and scrip, as is there the custom for all monks starting on a journey, and himself led us as guide of our road to his own city, i.e., Panephysis, the lands of which and indeed the greater part of the neighbouring region (formerly an extremely rich one since from it, as report says, everything was supplied for the royal table), had been covered by the sea which was disturbed by a sudden earthquake and overflowed its banks, and so (almost all the villages being in ruins) covered what were formerly rich lands with salt marshes, so that you might think that what is spiritually sung in the psalm was a literal prophecy of that region. "He hath turned rivers into a wilderness; and the springs of waters into a thirsty land: a fruitful land into saltness for the wickedness of them that dwell therein." [1689] In these districts then many towns perched in this way on the higher hills were deserted by their inhabitants and turned by the inundation into islands, and these afforded the desired solitude to the holy anchorites, among whom three old men; viz., Chæremon, Nesteros and Joseph, stood out as anchorites of the longest standing. __________________________________________________________________
[1689] Ps. cvi. (cvii.) 33 sq. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IV.
Of Abbot Chæremon and his excuse about the teaching which we asked for.
And so the blessed Archebius thought it best to take us first to Chæremon, [1690] because he was nearer to his monastery, and because he was more advanced than the other two in age: for he had passed the hundredth year of his life, vigorous only in spirit, but with his back bowed with age and constant prayer, so that, as if he were once more in his childhood he crawled with his hands hanging down and resting on the ground. Gazing then at one and the same time on this man's wonderful face and on his walk (for though all his limbs had already failed and were dead yet he had lost none of the severity of his previous strictness) when we humbly asked for the word and doctrine, and declared that longing for spiritual instruction was the only reason for our coming, he sighed deeply and said: What doctrine can I teach you, I in whom the feebleness of age has relaxed my former strictness, as it has also destroyed my confidence in speaking? For how could I presume to teach what I do not do, or instruct another in what I know I now practise but feebly and coldly? Wherefore I do not allow any of the younger men to live with me now that I am of such an advanced age, lest the other's strictness should be relaxed owing to my example. For the authority of a teacher will never be strong unless he fixes it in the heart of his hearer by the actual performance of his duty. __________________________________________________________________
[1690] Chæremon is perhaps the same person of whom a short account is given in the Lausiac History of Palladius, c. xcii. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter V.
Of our answer to his excuse.
At this we were overwhelmed with no slight confusion and replied as follows: Although both the difficulty of the place and the solitary life itself, which even a robust youth could scarcely put up with, ought to be sufficient to teach us everything (and indeed without your saying anything they do teach and impress us a very great deal) yet still we ask you to lay aside your silence for a little and in a more worthy manner implant in us those principles by which we may be able to embrace, not so much by imitating it as by admiring it, that goodness which we see in you. For even if our coldness is known to you, and does not deserve to obtain what we are asking for, yet at least the trouble of so long a journey ought to be repaid by it, as we made haste to come here after our first beginning in the monastery of Bethlehem, owing to a longing for your instruction, and a yearning for our own good. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VI.
Abbot Chæremon's statement that faults can be overcome in three ways.
Then the blessed Chæremon: There are, said he, three things which enable men to control their faults; viz., either the fear of hell or of laws even now imposed; or the hope and desire of the kingdom of heaven; or a liking for goodness itself and the love of virtue. For then we read that the fear of evil loathes contamination: "The fear of the Lord hateth evil." [1691] Hope also shuts out the assaults of all faults: for "all who hope in Him shall not fail." [1692] Love also fears no destruction from sins, for "love never faileth;" [1693] and again: "love covers a multitude of sins." [1694] And therefore the blessed Apostle confines the whole sum of salvation in the attainment of those three virtues, saying "Now abideth faith, hope, love, these three." [1695] For faith is what makes us shun the stains of sin from fear of future judgment and punishment; hope is what withdraws our mind from present things, and despises all bodily pleasures from its expectation of heavenly rewards; love is what inflames us with keenness of heart for the love of Christ and the fruit of spiritual goodness, and makes us hate with a perfect hatred whatever is opposed to these. And these three things although they all seem to aim at one and the same end (for they incite us to abstain from things unlawful) yet they differ from each other greatly in the degrees of their excellence. For the two former belong properly to those men who in their aim at goodness have not yet acquired the love of virtue, and the third belongs specially to God and to those who have received into themselves the image and likeness of God. For He alone does the things that are good, with no fear and no thanks or reward to stir Him up, but simply from the love of goodness. For, as Solomon says, "The Lord hath made all things for Himself." [1696] For under cover of His own goodness He bestows all the fulness of good things on the worthy and the unworthy because He cannot be wearied by wrongs, nor be moved by passions at the sins of men, as He ever remains perfect goodness and unchangeable in His nature. __________________________________________________________________
[1691] Prov. viii. 13.
[1692] Ps. xxxiii. (xxxiv.) 23.
[1693] 1 Cor. xiii. 8.
[1694] 1 Pet. iv. 8.
[1695] 1 Cor. xiii. 13.
[1696] Prov. xvi. 4. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VII.
By what steps we can ascend to the heights of love and what permanence there is in it.
If then any one is aiming at perfection, from that first stage of fear which we rightly termed servile (of which it is said: "When ye have done all things say: we are unprofitable servants," [1697] ) he should by advancing a step mount to the higher path of hope--which is compared not to a slave but to a hireling, because it looks for the payment of its recompense, and as if it were free from care concerning absolution of its sins and fear of punishment, and conscious of its own good works, though it seems to look for the promised reward, yet it cannot attain to that love of a son who, trusting in his father's kindness and liberality, has no doubt that all that the father has is his, to which also that prodigal who together with his father's substance had lost the very name of son, did not venture to aspire, when he said: "I am no more worthy to be called thy son;" for after those husks which the swine ate, satisfaction from which was denied to him, i.e., the disgusting food of sin, as he "came to himself," and was overcome by a salutary fear, he already began to loathe the uncleanness of the swine, and to dread the punishment of gnawing hunger, and as if he had already been made a servant, desires the condition of a hireling and thinks about the remuneration, and says: "How many hired servants of my father have abundance of bread, and I perish here with hunger. I will then return to my father and will say unto him, Father I have sinned against heaven and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants.'" [1698] But those words of humble penitence his father who ran to meet him received with greater affection than that with which they were spoken, and was not content to allow him lesser things, but passing through the two stages without delay restored him to his former dignity of sonship. We also ought forthwith to hasten on that by means of the indissoluble grace of love we may mount to that third stage of sonship, which believes that all that the father has is its own, and so we may be counted worthy to receive the image and likeness of our heavenly Father, and be able to say after the likeness of the true son: "All that the Father hath is mine." [1699] Which also the blessed Apostle declares of us, saying: "All things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours." [1700] And to this likeness the commands of our Saviour also summon us: "Be ye," says He, "perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect." [1701] For in these persons sometimes the love of goodness is found to be interrupted, when the vigour of the soul is relaxed by some coldness or joy or delight, and so loses either the fear of hell for the time, or the desire of future blessings. And there is indeed in these a stage leading to some advance, which affects us so that when from fear of punishment or from hope of reward we begin to avoid sin we are enabled to pass on to the stage of love, for "fear," says one, "is not in love, but perfect love casteth out fear: for fear hath torment, but he who fears is not perfect in love. We therefore love because God first loved us." [1702] We can then only ascend to that true perfection when, as He first loved us for the grace of nothing but our salvation, we also have loved Him for the sake of nothing but His own love alone. Wherefore we must do our best to mount with perfect ardour of mind from this fear to hope, from hope to the love of God, and the love of the virtues themselves, that as we steadily pass on to the love of goodness itself, we may, as far as it is possible for human nature, keep firm hold of what is good. __________________________________________________________________
[1697] S. Luke xvii. 10.
[1698] S. Luke xv. 17-19.
[1699] S. John xvi. 15.
[1700] 1 Cor. iii. 22.
[1701] S. Matt. v. 48.
[1702] 1 John iv. 18, 19. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VIII.
How greatly those excel who depart from sin through the feeling of love.
For there is a great difference between one who puts out the fire of sin within him by fear of hell or hope of future reward, and one who from the feeling of divine love has a horror of sin itself and of uncleanness, and keeps hold of the virtue of purity simply from the love and longing for purity, and looks for no reward from a promise for the future, but, delighted with the knowledge of good things present, does everything not from regard to punishment but from delight in virtue. For this condition can neither abuse an opportunity to sin when all human witnesses are absent, nor be corrupted by the secret allurements of thoughts, while, keeping in its very marrow the love of virtue itself, it not only does not admit into the heart anything that is opposed to it, but actually hates it with the utmost horror. For it is one thing for a man in his delight at some present good to hate the stains of sins and of the flesh, and another thing to check unlawful desires by contemplating the future reward; and it is one thing to fear present loss and another to dread future punishment. Lastly it is a much greater thing to be unwilling to forsake good for good's own sake, than it is to withhold consent from evil for fear of evil. For in the former case the good is voluntary, but in the latter it is constrained and as it were violently forced out of a reluctant party either by fear of punishment or by greed of reward. For one who abstains from the allurements of sin owing to fear, will whenever the obstacle of fear is removed, once more return to what he loves and thus will not continually acquire any stability in good, nor will he ever rest free from attacks because he will not secure the sure and lasting peace of chastity. For where there is the disturbance of warfare there cannot help being the danger of wounds. For one who is in the midst of the conflict, even though he is a warrior and by fighting bravely inflicts frequent and deadly wounds on his foes, must still sometimes be pierced by the point of the enemy's sword. But one who has defeated the attack of sins and is now in the enjoyment of the security of peace, and has passed on to the love of virtue itself, will keep this condition of good continually, as he is entirely wrapped up in it, because he believes that nothing can be worse than the loss of his inmost chastity. For he deems nothing dearer or more precious than present purity, to whom a dangerous departure from virtue or a poisonous stain of sin is a grievous punishment. To such an one, I say, neither will regard for the presence of another add anything to his goodness nor will solitude take anything away from it: but as always and everywhere he bears about with him his conscience as a judge not only of his actions but also of his thoughts, he will especially try to please it, as he knows that it cannot be cheated nor deceived, and that he cannot escape it. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IX.
That love not only makes sons out of servants, but also bestows the image and likeness of God.
And if to anyone relying on the help of God and not on his own efforts, it has been vouchsafed to acquire this state, from the condition of a servant, wherein is fear, and from a mercenary greed of hope, whereby there is sought not so much the good of the donor as the recompense of reward, he will begin to pass on to the adoption of sons, where there is no longer fear, nor greed, but that love which never faileth continually endures. Of which fear and love the Lord in chiding some shows what is befitting for each one: "A son knoweth his own father, and a servant feareth his lord: And if I be a Father, where is My honour: and if I be a Lord, where is my fear?" [1703] For one who is a servant must needs fear because "if knowing his lord's will he has done things worthy of stripes, he shall be beaten with many stripes." [1704] Whoever then by this love has attained the image and likeness of God, will now delight in goodness for the pleasure of goodness itself, and having somehow a like feeling of patience and gentleness will henceforth be angered by no faults of sinners, but in his compassion and sympathy will rather ask for pardon for their infirmities, and, remembering that for so long he himself was tried by the stings of similar passions till by the Lord's mercy he was saved, will feel that, as he was saved from carnal attacks not by the teaching of his own exertions but by God's protection, not anger but pity ought to be shown to those who go astray; and with full peace of mind will he sing to God the following verse: "Thou hast broken my chains. I will offer to Thee the sacrifice of praise;" and: "except the Lord had helped me, my soul had almost dwelt in hell." [1705] And while he continues in this humility of mind he will be able even to fulfil this Evangelic command of perfection: "Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that persecute you and slander you." [1706] And so it will be vouchsafed to us to attain that reward which is subjoined, whereby we shall not only bear the image and likeness of God, but shall even be called sons: "that ye may be," says He "sons of your Father which is in heaven, Who maketh His sun to rise on the good and evil, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust:" [1707] and this feeling the blessed John knew that he had attained when he said: "that we may have confidence in the day of judgment, because as He is so are we also in this world." [1708] For in what can a weak and fragile human nature be like Him, except in always showing a calm love in its heart towards the good and evil, the just and the unjust, in imitation of God, and by doing good for the love of goodness itself, arriving at that true adoption of the sons of God, of which also the blessed Apostle speaks as follows: "Every one that is born of God doeth not sin, for His seed is in him, and he cannot sin, because he is born of God;" and again: "We know that every one who is born of God sinneth not, but his birth of God preserves him, and the wicked one toucheth him not?" [1709] And this must be understood not of all kinds of sins, but only of mortal sins: and if any one will not extricate and cleanse himself from these, for him the aforesaid Apostle tells us in another place that we ought not even to pray, saying: "If a man knows his brother to be sinning a sin not unto death, let him ask, and He will give him life for them that sin not unto death. There is a sin unto death: I do not say that he should ask for it." [1710] But of those which he says are not unto death, from which even those who serve Christ faithfully cannot, with whatever care they keep themselves, be free, of these he says: "If we say that we have no sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us;" and again: "If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us." [1711] For it is an impossibility for any one of the saints not to fall into those trivial faults which are committed by word, and thought, and ignorance, and forgetfulness, and necessity, and will, and surprise: which though quite different from that sin which is said to be unto death, still cannot be free from fault and blame. __________________________________________________________________
[1703] Mal. i. 6.
[1704] S. Luke xii. 47.
[1705] Ps. cxv. 7, 8 (cxvi. 16, 17); xciii. (xciv.) 17.
[1706] S. Matt. v. 44.
[1707] Ib. 45.
[1708] 1 John iv. 17.
[1709] 1 John iii. 9; v. 18.
[1710] Ib. ver. 16.
[1711] 1 John i. 8, 10. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter X.
How it is the perfection of love to pray for one's enemies and by what signs we may recognize a mind that is not yet purified.
When then any one has acquired this love of goodness of which we have been speaking, and the imitation of God, then he will be endowed with the Lord's heart of compassion, and will pray also for his persecutors, saying in like manner: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." [1712] But it is a clear sign of a soul that is not yet thoroughly purged from the dregs of sin, not to sorrow with a feeling of pity at the offences of others, but to keep to the rigid censure of the judge: for how will he be able to obtain perfection of heart, who is without that by which, as the Apostle has pointed out, the full requirements of the law can be fulfilled, saying: "Bear one another's burdens and so fulfil the law of Christ," [1713] and who has not that virtue of love, which "is not grieved, is not puffed up, thinketh no evil," which "endureth all things, beareth all things." [1714] For "a righteous man pitieth the life of his beasts: but the heart of the ungodly is without pity." [1715] And so a monk is quite certain to fall into the same sins which he condemns in another with merciless and inhuman severity, for "a stern king will fall into misfortunes," and "one who stops his ears so as not to hear the weak, shall himself cry, and there shall be none to hear him." [1716] __________________________________________________________________
[1712] S. Luke xxiii. 34.
[1713] Gal. vi. 2.
[1714] 1 Cor. xiii. 4-7.
[1715] Prov. xii. 10 (LXX.).
[1716] Prov. xiii. 17; xxi. 13. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XI.
A question why he has called the feeling of fear and hope imperfect.
Germanus: You have indeed spoken powerfully and grandly of the perfect love of God. But still this fact disturbs us; viz., that while you were exalting it with such praise, you said that the fear of God and the hope of eternal reward were imperfect, though the prophet seems to have thought quite differently about them, where he said: "Fear the Lord, all ye His saints, for they that fear Him lack nothing." [1717] And again in the matter of observing God's righteous acts he admits that he has done them from consideration of the reward, saying: "I have inclined my heart to do thy righteous acts forever, for the reward." [1718] And the Apostle says: "By faith Moses when he was grown up, denied himself to be the son of Pharaoh's daughter; choosing rather to be afflicted with the people of God than to have the pleasure of sin for a season, esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasure of the Egyptians; for he looked unto the reward." [1719] How then can we think that they are imperfect, if the blessed David boasted that he did the righteous acts of God in hope of a recompense, and the giver of the Law is said to have looked for a future reward and so to have despised the adoption to royal dignity, and to have preferred the most terrible affliction to the treasures of the Egyptians? __________________________________________________________________
[1717] Ps. xxxiii. (xxxiv.) 10.
[1718] Ps. cxviii. (cxix.) 112.
[1719] Heb. xi. 24-26. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XII.
The answer on the different kinds of perfection.
Chæremon: In accordance with the condition and measure of every mind Holy Scripture summons our free wills to different grades of perfection. For no uniform crown of perfection can be offered to all men, because all have not the same virtue, or purpose, or fervour, and so the Divine Word has in some way appointed different ranks and different measures of perfection itself. And that this is so the variety of beatitudes in the gospel clearly shows. For though they are called blessed, whose is the kingdom of heaven, and blessed are they who shall possess the earth, and blessed are they who shall receive their consolation, and blessed are they who shall be filled, yet we believe that there is a great difference between the habitations of the kingdom of heaven, and the possession of the earth, whatever it be, and also between the reception of consolation and the fulness and satisfaction of righteousness; and that there is a great distinction between those who shall obtain mercy, and those who shall be deemed worthy to enjoy the most glorious vision of God. "For there is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars: for star differeth from star in glory, so also is the resurrection of the dead." [1720] While therefore in accordance with this rule holy Scripture praises those who fear God, and says "Blessed are all they that fear the Lord," [1721] and promises them for this a full measure of bliss, yet it says again: "There is no fear in love, but perfect love casteth out fear: for fear hath torment. But he that feareth is not yet perfect in love." [1722] And again, though it is a grand thing to serve God, and it is said: "Serve the Lord in fear;" and: "It is a great thing for thee to be called My servant;" and: "Blessed is that servant whom his Lord, when He cometh, shall find so doing," [1723] yet it is said to the Apostles: "I no longer call you servants, for the servant knoweth not what his Lord doeth: but I call you friends, for all things whatsoever I have heard from my Father, I have made known unto you." [1724] And once more: "Ye are My friends, if ye do whatever I command you." [1725] You see then that there are different stages of perfection, and that we are called by the Lord from high things to still higher in such a way that he who has become blessed and perfect in the fear of God; going as it is written "from strength to strength," [1726] and from one perfection to another, i.e., mounting with keenness of soul from fear to hope, is summoned in the end to that still more blessed stage, which, is love, and he who has been "a faithful and wise servant" [1727] will pass to the companionship of friendship and to the adoption of sons. So then our saying also must be understood according to this meaning: not that we say that the consideration of that enduring punishment or of that blessed recompense which is promised to the saints is of no value, but because, though they are useful and introduce those who pursue them to the first beginning of blessedness, yet again love, wherein is already fuller confidence, and a lasting joy, will remove them from servile fear and mercenary hope to the love of God, and carry them on to the adoption of sons, and somehow make them from being perfect still more perfect. For the Saviour says that in His Father's house are "many mansions," [1728] and although all the stars seem to be in the sky, yet there is a mighty difference between the brightness of the sun and of the moon, and between that of the morning star and the rest of the stars. And therefore the blessed Apostle prefers it not only above fear and hope but also above all gifts which are counted great and wonderful, and shows the way of love still more excellent than all. For when after finishing his list of spiritual gifts of virtues he wanted to describe its members, he began as follows: "And yet I show unto you a still more excellent way. Though I speak with the tongues of men and angels, and though I have the gift of prophecy and know all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith so that I can remove mountains, and though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profiteth me nothing." You see then that nothing more precious, nothing more perfect, nothing more sublime, and, if I may say so, nothing more enduring can be found than love. For "whether there be prophecies, they shall fail, whether there be tongues, they shall cease, whether there be knowledge, it shall be destroyed," but "love never faileth," [1729] and without it not only those most excellent kinds of gifts, but even the glory of martyrdom itself will fail. __________________________________________________________________
[1720] 1 Cor. xv. 41, 42.
[1721] Ps. cxxvii. (cxxviii.) 1.
[1722] 1 John iv. 18.
[1723] Ps. ii. 11; Is. xlix. 6; S. Matt. xxiv. 46.
[1724] S. John xv. 14, 15.
[1725] S. John xv. 13.
[1726] Ps. lxxxiii. (lxxxiv.) 8.
[1727] S. Matt. xxiv. 45.
[1728] S. John xiv. 2.
[1729] 1 Cor. xii. 31; xiii. 1-8. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIII.
Of the fear which is the outcome of the greatest love.
Whoever then has been established in this perfect love is sure to mount by a higher stage to that still more sublime fear belonging to love, which is the outcome of no dread of punishment or greed of reward, but of the greatest love; whereby a son fears with earnest affection a most indulgent father, or a brother fears his brother, a friend his friend, or a wife her husband, while there is no dread of his blows or reproaches, but only of a slight injury to his love, and while in every word as well as act there is ever care taken by anxious affection lest the warmth of his love should cool in the very slightest degree towards the object of it. And one of the prophets has finely described the grandeur of this fear, saying: "Wisdom and knowledge are the riches of salvation: the fear of the Lord is his treasure." [1730] He could not describe with greater clearness the worth and value of that fear than by saying that the riches of our salvation, which consist in true wisdom and knowledge of God, can only be preserved by the fear of the Lord. To this fear then not sinners but saints are invited by the prophetic word where the Psalmist says: "O fear the Lord, all ye His Saints: for they that fear Him lack nothing." [1731] For where a man fears the Lord with this fear it is certain that nothing is lacking to his perfection. For it was clearly of that other penal fear that the Apostle John said that "He who feareth is not made perfect in love, for fear hath punishment." [1732] There is then a great difference between this fear, to which nothing is lacking, which is the treasure of wisdom and knowledge, and that imperfect fear which is called "the beginning of wisdom," [1733] and which has in it punishment and so is expelled from the hearts of those who are perfect by the incoming of the fulness of love. For "there is no fear in love, but perfect love casteth out fear." [1734] And in truth if the beginning of wisdom consists in fear, what will its perfection be except in the love of Christ which, as it contains in it the fear which belongs to perfect love, is called not the beginning but the treasure of wisdom and knowledge? And therefore there is a twofold stage of fear. The one for beginners, i.e., for those who are still subject to the yoke and to servile terror; of which we read: "And the servant shall fear his Lord;" [1735] and in the gospel: "I no longer call you servants, for the servant knoweth not what his Lord doeth;" and therefore "the servant," He tells us, "abideth not in the house for ever, but the Son abideth for ever." [1736] For He is instructing us to pass on from that penal fear to the fullest freedom of love, and the confidence of the friends and sons of God. Finally the blessed Apostle, who had by the power of the Lord's love already passed through the servile stage of fear, scorns lower things and declares that he has been enriched with good things by the Lord, "for God hath not given us" he says "a spirit of fear but of power and of love and of a sound mind." [1737] Those also who are inflamed with a perfect love of their heavenly Father, and whom the Divine adoption has already made sons instead of servants, he addresses in these words: "For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, but ye received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father." [1738] It is of this fear too, that the prophet spoke when he would describe that sevenfold spirit, which according to the mystery of the Incarnation, full surely descended on the God man: [1739] "And there shall rest upon Him the Spirit of the Lord: the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of might, the Spirit of knowledge and of true godliness," and in the last place he adds as something special these words: "And the Spirit of the fear of the Lord shall fill Him." [1740] ^ Where we must in the first place notice carefully that he does not say "and there shall rest upon Him the Spirit of fear," as he said in the earlier cases, but he says "there shall fill Him the Spirit of the fear of the Lord." For such is the greatness of its richness that when once it has seized on a man by its power, it takes possession not of a portion but of his whole mind. And not without good reason. For as it is closely joined to that love which "never faileth," it not only fills the man, but takes a lasting and inseparable and continual possession of him in whom it has begun, and is not lessened by any allurements of temporal joy or delights, as is sometimes the case with that fear which is cast out. This then is the fear belonging to perfection, with which we are told that the God-man, [1741] who came not only to redeem mankind, but also to give us a pattern of perfection and example of goodness, was filled. For the true Son of God "who did no sin neither was guile found in His mouth," [1742] could not feel that servile fear of punishment. __________________________________________________________________
[1730] Is. xxxiii. 6.
[1731] Ps. xxxiii. (xxxiv.) 10.
[1732] 1 John iv. 18.
[1733] Ps. cx. (cxi.) 10.
[1734] 1 John iv. 18.
[1735] Mal. i. 6 (LXX.).
[1736] S. John xv. 15; viii. 35.
[1737] 2 Tim. i. 7.
[1738] Rom. viii. 15.
[1739] Homo Dominicus. See the note on Against Nestorius, V. v.
[1740] Is. xi. 2, 3.
[1741] Homo Dominicus.
[1742] 1 Pet. ii. 22. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIV.
A question about complete chastity.
Germanus: Now that you have finished your discourse on perfect chastity, we want also to ask somewhat more freely about the end of chastity. For we do not doubt that those lofty heights of love, by which, as you have hitherto explained, we mount to the image and likeness of God, cannot possibly exist without perfect purity. But we should like to know whether a lasting grant of it can be secured so that no incitement to lust may ever disturb the serenity of our heart, and that thus we may be enabled to pass the time of our sojourneying in the flesh free from this carnal passion, so as never to be inflamed by the fire of excitement. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XV.
The postponement of the explanation which is asked for.
Chæremon: It is indeed a sign of the utmost blessedness and of singular goodness both continually to learn and to teach that love by which we cling to the Lord, so that meditation on Him may, as the Psalmist says, occupy all the days and nights of our life, [1743] and may support our soul, which insatiably hungers and thirsts after righteousness, by continually chewing the cud of this heavenly food. But we must also, in accordance with the kindly forethought of our Saviour, make some provision for the food of the body, that we faint not by the way, [1744] for "the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." [1745] And this we must now secure by taking a little food, so that after supper, the mind may be rendered more attentive for the careful tracing out of what you want. __________________________________________________________________
[1743] Cf. Ps. i. 2.
[1744] Cf. S. Matt. xv. 32.
[1745] S. Matt. xxvi. 41. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
XII. The Second Conference of Abbot Chæremon.
On Chastity.
Not translated. __________________________________________________________________
XIII. The Third Conference of Abbot Chæremon.
On the Protection of God. [1746] __________________________________________________________________
Chapter I.
Introduction.
When after a short sleep we returned for morning service and were waiting for the old man, Abbot Germanus was troubled by great scruples because in the previous discussion, the force of which had inspired us with the utmost longing for this chastity which was till now unknown to us, the blessed old man had by the addition of a single sentence broken down the claims of man's exertions, adding that man even though he strive with all his might for a good result, yet cannot become master of what is good unless he has acquired it simply by the gift of Divine bounty and not by the efforts of his own toil. While then we were puzzling over this question the blessed Chæremon arrived at the cell, and as he saw that we were whispering together about something, he cut the service of prayers and Psalms shorter than usual, and asked us what was the matter. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter II.
A question why the merit of good deeds may not be ascribed to the exertions of the man who does them.
Then Germanus: As we are almost shut out, so to speak, by the greatness of that splendid virtue, which was described in last night's discussion, from believing in the possibility of it, so, if you will pardon my saying so, it seems to us absurd for the reward of our efforts, i.e., perfect chastity, which is gained by the earnestness of one's own toil, not to be ascribed chiefly to the exertions of the man who makes the effort. For it is foolish, if, when for example, we see a husbandman taking the utmost pains over the cultivation of the ground, we do not ascribe the fruits to his exertions. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter III.
The answer that without God's help not only perfect chastity but all good of every kind cannot be performed.
Chæremon: By this very instance which you bring forward we can still more clearly prove that the exertions of the worker can do nothing without God's aid. For neither can the husbandman, when he has spent the utmost pains in cultivating the ground, forthwith ascribe the produce of the crops and the rich fruits to his own exertions, as he finds that these are often in vain unless opportune rains and a quiet and calm winter aids them, so that we have often seen fruits already ripe and set and thoroughly matured snatched as it were from the hands of those who were grasping them; and their continuous and earnest efforts were of no use to the workers because they were not under the guidance of the Lord's assistance. As then the Divine goodness does not grant these rich crops to idle husbandmen who do not till their fields by frequent ploughing, so also toil all night long is of no use to the workers unless the mercy of the Lord prospers it. But herein human pride should never try to put itself on a level with the grace of God or to intermingle itself with it, so as to fancy that its own efforts were the cause of Divine bounty, or to boast that a very plentiful crop of fruits was an answer to the merits of its own exertions. For a man should consider and with a most careful scrutiny weigh the fact that he could not by his own strength apply those very efforts which he has earnestly used in his desire for wealth, unless the Lord's protection and pity had given him strength for the performance of all agricultural labours; and that his own will and strength would have been powerless unless Divine compassion had supplied the means for the completion of them, as they sometimes fail either from too much or from too little rain. For when vigour has been granted by the Lord to the oxen, and bodily health and the power to do all the work, and prosperity in undertakings, still a man must pray lest there come to him, as Scripture says, "a heaven of brass and an earth of iron," and "the cankerworm eat what the locust hath left, and the palmerworm eat what the cankerworm hath left, and the mildew destroys what the palmerworm hath left." [1747] Nor is it only in this that the efforts of the husbandman in his work need God's help, unless it also averts unlooked for accidents by which, even when the field is rich with the expected fruitful crops, not only is the man deprived of what he has vainly hoped and looked for, but actually loses the abundant fruits which he has already gathered and stored up in the threshing floor or in the barn. From which we clearly infer that the initiative not only of our actions but also of good thoughts comes from God, who inspires us with a good will to begin with, and supplies us with the opportunity of carrying out what we rightly desire: for "every good gift and every perfect gift cometh down from above, from the Father of lights," [1748] who both begins what is good, and continues it and completes it in us, as the Apostle says: "But He who giveth seed to the sower will both provide bread to eat and will multiply your seed and make the fruits of your righteousness to increase." [1749] But it is for us, humbly to follow day by day the grace of God which is drawing us, or else if we resist with "a stiff neck," and (to use the words of Scripture) "uncircumcised ears," [1750] we shall deserve to hear the words of Jeremiah: "Shall he that falleth, not rise again? and he that is turned away, shall he not turn again? Why then is this people in Jerusalem turned away with a stubborn revolting? They have stiffened their necks and refused to return." [1751] __________________________________________________________________
[1747] Deut. xxviii. 23; Joel i. 4.
[1748] S. James i. 17.
[1749] 2 Cor. ix. 10.
[1750] Acts vii. 51.
[1751] Jer. viii. 4, 5. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IV.
An objection, asking how the Gentiles can be said to have chastity without the grace of God.
Germanus: To this explanation, the excellence of which we cannot hastily disprove, it seems a difficulty that it tends to destroy free will. For as we see that many of the heathen to whom the assistance of Divine grace has certainly not been vouchsafed, are eminent not only in the virtues of frugality and patience, but (which is more remarkable) in that of chastity, how can we think that the freedom of their will is taken captive and that these virtues are granted to them by God's gift, especially as in following after the wisdom of this world, and in their utter ignorance not only of God's grace but even of the existence of the true God, as we have known Him by the course of our reading and the teaching of others--they are said to have gained the most perfect purity of chastity by their own efforts and exertions. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter V.
The answer on the imaginary chastity of the philosophers.
Chæremon: I am pleased that, though you are fired with the greatest longing to know the truth, yet you bring forward some foolish points, as by your raising these objections the value of the Catholic faith may seem better established, and if I may use the expression, more thoroughly explored. For what wise man would make such contradictory statements as yesterday to maintain that the heavenly purity of chastity could not possibly even by God's grace be bestowed on any mortals, and now to hold that it was obtained even by the heathen by their own strength? But as you have certainly, as I said, made these objections from the desire of getting at the truth, consider what we hold on these points. First we certainly must not think that the philosophers attained such chastity of soul, as is required of us, on whom it is enjoined that not fornication only, but uncleanness be not so much as named among us. But they had a sort of merike, i.e., some particle of chastity; viz. continence of the flesh, by which they could restrain their lust from carnal intercourse: but this internal purity of mind and continual purity of body they could not attain, I will not say, in act, but even in thought. Finally Socrates, the most famous of them all, as they themselves esteem him, was not ashamed to profess this of himself. For when one who judged a man's character by his looks (psusiognomoin) looked at him, and said ommata paid erastou, i.e., "the eyes of a corrupter of boys," and his scholars rushed at him, and brought him to their master and wanted to avenge the insult, it is said that he checked their indignation with these words: pausaothe, etairoi ; eimi gar, epeko de, i.e., Stop, my friends, for I am, but I restrain myself. It is then quite clearly shown not only by our assertions but actually by their own admissions that it was only the performance of indecent acts, i.e., the disgrace of intercourse, that was by force of necessity checked by them, and that the desire and delight in this passion was not shut out from their hearts. But with what horror must one bring forward this saying of Diogenes? For a thing which the philosophers of this world were not ashamed to bring forward as something remarkable, cannot be spoken or heard by us without shame: for to one to be punished for the crime of adultery they relate that he said to dorean poloumenon thanato me agoraze, i.e., you should not buy with your death what is sold for nothing. [1752] It is clear then that they did not recognize the virtue of the true chastity which we seek for, and so it is quite certain that our circumcision which is in the spirit cannot be acquired save only by the gift of God, and that it belongs only to those who serve God with full contrition of their spirit. __________________________________________________________________
[1752] The source of these stories of Socrates and Diogenes has not been traced. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VI.
That without the grace of God we cannot make any diligent efforts.
And therefore though in many things, indeed in everything, it can be shown that men always have need of God's help, and that human weakness cannot accomplish anything that has to do with salvation by itself alone, i.e., without the aid of God, yet in nothing is this more clearly shown than in the acquisition and preservation of chastity. For as the discussion on the difficulty of its perfection is put off for so long, let us meanwhile discourse briefly on the instruments of it. Who, I ask, could, however fervent he might be in spirit, relying on his own strength with no praise from men endure the squalor of the desert, and I will not say the daily lack but the supply of dry bread? Who without the Lord's consolation, could put up with the continual thirst for water, or deprive his human eyes of that sweet and delicious morning sleep, and regularly compress his whole time of rest and repose into the limits of four hours? Who would be sufficient without God's grace to give continual attendance to reading and constant earnestness in work, receiving no advantage of present gain? And all these matters, as we cannot desire them continuously without divine inspiration, so in no respect whatever can we perform them without His help. And that we may ensure that these things are not only proved to us by the teaching of experience, but also made still clearer by sure proof and arguments, does not some weakness intervene in the case of many things which we wish usefully to perform, and though the full keenness of our desire and the perfection of our will be not wanting, yet interfere with the wish we have conceived, so that there is no carrying out of our purpose, unless the power to perform it has been granted by the mercy of the Lord, so that, although there are countless swarms of people who are anxious to stick faithfully to the pursuit of virtue, you can scarcely find any who are able to carry it out and endure it, to say nothing of the fact that, even when no weakness at all hinders us, the opportunity for doing everything that we wish does not lie in our own power. For it is not in our power to secure the silence of solitude and severe fasts and undisturbed study even when we could use such opportunities, but by a chapter of accidents we are often very much against our will kept away from the salutary ordinances so that we have to pray to the Lord for opportunities of place or time in which to practise them. And it is clear that the ability for these is not sufficient for us unless there be also granted to us by the Lord an opportunity of doing what we are capable of (as the Apostle also says: "For we wanted to come to you once and again, but Satan hindered us" [1753] ), so that sometimes we find for our advantage we are called away from these spiritual exercises in order that while without our own consent the regularity of our routine is broken and we yield something to weakness of the flesh, we may even against our will be brought to a salutary patience. Of which providential arrangement of God the blessed Apostle says something similar: "For which I besought the Lord thrice that it might depart from me. And He said to me: My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness:" and again: "For we know not what to pray for as we ought." [1754] __________________________________________________________________
[1753] 1 Thess. ii. 18.
[1754] 2 Cor. xii. 8, 9; Rom. viii. 26. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VII.
Of the main purpose of God and His daily Providence.
For the purpose of God whereby He made man not to perish but to live for ever, stands immovable. And when His goodness sees in us even the very smallest spark of good will shining forth, which He Himself has struck as it were out of the hard flints of our hearts, He fans and fosters it and nurses it with His breath, as He "willeth all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth," for as He says, "it is not the will of your Father which is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish," and again it says: "Neither will God have a soul to perish, but recalleth," meaning that he that is cast off should not altogether perish. [1755] For He is true, and lieth not when He lays down with an oath: "As I live, saith the Lord God, for I will not the death of a sinner, but that he should turn from his way and live." [1756] For if He willeth not that one of His little ones should perish, how can we imagine without grievous blasphemy that He does not generally will all men, but only some instead of all to be saved? Those then who perish, perish against His will, as He testifies against each one of them day by day: "Turn from your evil ways, and why will ye die, O house of Israel?" [1757] And again: "How often would I have gathered thy children together as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not;" and: "Wherefore is this people in Jerusalem turned away with a stubborn revolting? They have hardened their faces and refused to return." [1758] The grace of Christ then is at hand every day, which, while it "willeth all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth," calleth all without any exception, saying: "Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you." [1759] But if He calls not all generally but only some, it follows that not all are heavy laden either with original or actual sin, and that this saying is not a true one: "For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God;" nor can we believe that "death passed on all men." [1760] And so far do all who perish, perish against the will of God, that God cannot be said to have made death, as Scripture itself testifies: "For God made not death, neither rejoiceth in the destruction of the living." [1761] And hence it comes that for the most part when instead of good things we ask for the opposite, our prayer is either heard but tardily or not at all; and again the Lord vouchsafes to bring upon us even against our will, like some most beneficent physician, for our good what we think is opposed to it, and sometimes He delays and hinders our injurious purposes and deadly attempts from having their horrible effects, and, while we are rushing headlong towards death, draws us back to salvation, and rescues us without our knowing it from the jaws of hell. __________________________________________________________________
[1755] 1 Tim. ii. 4; S. Matt. xviii. 14; 2 Sam. xiv. 14.
[1756] Ezek. xxxiii. 11.
[1757] Ib.
[1758] S. Matt. xxiii. 37; Jer. viii. 5.
[1759] S. Matt. xi. 28.
[1760] Rom. iii. 23; v. 12.
[1761] Wisdom i. 13. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VIII.
Of the grace of God and the freedom of the will.
And this care of His and providence with regard to us the Divine word has finely described by the prophet Hosea under the figure of Jerusalem as an harlot, and inclining with disgraceful eagerness to the worship of idols, where when she says: "I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread, and my water, and my wool, and my flax, and my oil, and my drink;" the Divine consideration replies having regard to her salvation and not to her wishes: "Behold I will hedge up thy way with thorns, and I will stop it up with a wall, and she shall not find her paths. And she shall follow after her lovers, and shall not overtake them: and she shall seek them, and shall not find them, and shall say: I will return to my first husband, because it was better with me then than now." [1762] And again our obstinacy, and scorn, with which we in our rebellious spirit disdain Him when He urges us to a salutary return, is described in the following comparison: He says: "And I said thou shalt call Me Father, and shalt not cease to walk after Me. But as a woman that despiseth her lover, so hath the house of Israel despised Me, saith the Lord." [1763] Aptly then, as He has compared Jerusalem to an adulteress forsaking her husband, He compares His own love and persevering goodness to a man who is dying of love for a woman. For the goodness and love of God, which He ever shows to mankind,--since it is overcome by no injuries so as to cease from caring for our salvation, or be driven from His first intention, as if vanquished by our iniquities,--could not be more fitly described by any comparison than the case of a man inflamed with most ardent love for a woman, who is consumed by a more burning passion for her, the more he sees that he is slighted and despised by her. The Divine protection then is inseparably present with us, and so great is the kindness of the Creator towards His creatures, that His Providence not only accompanies it, but actually constantly precedes it, as the prophet experienced and plainly confessed, saying: "My God will prevent me with His mercy." [1764] And when He sees in us some beginnings of a good will, He at once enlightens it and strengthens it and urges it on towards salvation, increasing that which He Himself implanted or which He sees to have arisen from our own efforts. For He says "Before they cry, I will hear them: While they are still speaking I will hear them;" and again: "As soon as He hears the voice of thy crying, He will answer thee." [1765] And in His goodness, not only does He inspire us with holy desires, but actually creates occasions for life and opportunities for good results, and shows to those in error the direction of the way of salvation. __________________________________________________________________
[1762] Hosea ii. 5-7.
[1763] Jer. iii. 19, 20.
[1764] Ps. lviii. (lix.) 11.
[1765] Is. lxv. 24; xxx. 19. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IX.
Of the power of our good will, and the grace of God.
Whence human reason cannot easily decide how the Lord gives to those that ask, is found by those that seek, and opens to those that knock, and on the other hand is found by those that sought Him not, appears openly among those who asked not for Him, and all the day long stretches forth His hands to an unbelieving and gainsaying people, calls those who resist and stand afar off, draws men against their will to salvation, takes away from those who want to sin the faculty of carrying out their desire, in His goodness stands in the way of those who are rushing into wickedness. But who can easily see how it is that the completion of our salvation is assigned to our own will, of which it is said: "If ye be willing, and hearken unto Me, ye shall eat the good things of the land," [1766] and how it is "not of him that willeth or runneth, but of God that hath mercy?" [1767] What too is this, that God "will render to every man according to his works;" [1768] and "it is God who worketh in you both to will and to do, of His good pleasure;" [1769] and "this is not of yourselves but it is the gift of God: not of works, that no man may boast?" [1770] What is this too which is said: "Draw near to the Lord, and He will draw near to you," [1771] and what He says elsewhere: "No man cometh unto Me except the Father who sent Me draw Him?" [1772] What is it that we find: "Make straight paths for your feet and direct your ways," [1773] and what is it that we say in our prayers: "Direct my way in Thy sight," and "establish my goings in Thy paths, that my footsteps be not moved?" [1774] What is it again that we are admonished: "Make you a new heart and a new spirit," [1775] and what is this which is promised to us: "I will give them one heart and will put a new spirit within them:" and "I will take away the stony heart from their flesh and will give them an heart of flesh that they may walk in Thy statutes and keep My judgments?" [1776] What is it that the Lord commands, where He says: "Wash thine heart of iniquity, O Jerusalem, that thou mayest be saved," [1777] and what is it that the prophet asks for from the Lord, when he says "Create in me a clean heart, O God," and again: "Thou shalt wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow?" [1778] What is it that is said to us: "Enlighten yourselves with the light of knowledge;" [1779] and this which is said of God: "Who teacheth man knowledge;" [1780] and: "the Lord enlightens the blind," [1781] or at any rate this, which we say in our prayers with the prophet: "Lighten mine eyes that I sleep not in death," [1782] unless in all these there is a declaration of the grace of God and the freedom of our will, because even of his own motion a man can be led to the quest of virtue, but always stands in need of the help of the Lord? For neither does anyone enjoy good health whenever he will, nor is he at his own will and pleasure set free from disease and sickness. But what good is it to have desired the blessing of health, unless God, who grants us the enjoyments of life itself, grant also vigorous and sound health? But that it may be still clearer that through the excellence of nature which is granted by the goodness of the Creator, sometimes first beginnings of a good will arise, which however cannot attain to the complete performance of what is good unless it is guided by the Lord, the Apostle bears witness and says: "For to will is present with me, but to perform what is good I find not." [1783] __________________________________________________________________
[1766] Is. i. 19.
[1767] Rom. ix. 16.
[1768] Rom. ii. 6.
[1769] Phil. ii. 13.
[1770] Eph. ii. 8, 9.
[1771] S. James iv. 8.
[1772] S. John vi. 44.
[1773] Prov. iv. 26 (LXX.).
[1774] Ps. v. 9; xvi. (xvii.) 5.
[1775] Ezek. xviii. 31.
[1776] Ezek. i. 19, 20.
[1777] Jer. iv. 14.
[1778] Ps. l. (li.) 12, 9.
[1779] Hos. x. 12 (LXX.).
[1780] Ps. xciii. (xciv.) 10.
[1781] Ps. cxlv. (cxlvi.) 8.
[1782] Ps. xii. (xiii.) 4.
[1783] Rom. vii. 18. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter X.
On the weakness of free will.
For Holy Scripture supports the freedom of the will where it says: "Keep thy heart with all diligence," [1784] but the Apostle indicates its weakness by saying "The Lord keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus." [1785] David asserts the power of free will, where he says "I have inclined my heart to do Thy righteous acts," [1786] but the same man in like manner teaches us its weakness, by praying and saying, "Incline my heart unto Thy testimonies and not to covetousness:" [1787] Solomon also: "The Lord incline our hearts unto Himself that we may walk in all His ways and keep His commandments, and ordinances and judgments." [1788] The Psalmist denotes the power of our will, where he says: "Keep thy tongue from evil, and thy lips that they speak no guile," [1789] our prayer testifies to its weakness, when we say: "O Lord, set a watch before my mouth, and keep the door of my lips." [1790] The importance of our will is maintained by the Lord, when we find "Break the chains of thy neck, O captive daughter of Zion:" [1791] of its weakness the prophet sings, when he says: "The Lord looseth them that are bound:" and "Thou hast broken my chains: To Thee will I offer the sacrifice of praise." [1792] We hear in the gospel the Lord summoning us to come speedily to Him by our free will: "Come unto Me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you," [1793] but the same Lord testifies to its weakness, by saying: "No man can come unto Me except the Father which sent Me draw him." [1794] The Apostle indicates our free will by saying: "So run that ye may obtain:" [1795] but to its weakness John Baptist bears witness where he says: "No man can receive anything of himself, except it be given him from above." [1796] We are commanded to keep our souls with all care, when the Prophet says: "Keep your souls," [1797] but by the same spirit another Prophet proclaims: "Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain." [1798] The Apostle writing to the Philippians, to show that their will is free, says "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling," but to point out its weakness, he adds: "For it is God that worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure." [1799] __________________________________________________________________
[1784] Prov. iv. 23.
[1785] Phil. iv. 7.
[1786] Ps. cxviii. (cxix.) 112.
[1787] Ib. ver. 36.
[1788] 1 Kings viii. 58.
[1789] Ps. xxxiii. (xxxiv.) 14.
[1790] Ps. cxl. (cxli.) 3.
[1791] Is. lii. 2.
[1792] Ps. cxlv (cxlvi.) 7; cxv. (cxvi.) 16, 17.
[1793] S. Matt. xi. 28.
[1794] S. John vi. 44.
[1795] 1 Cor. ix. 24.
[1796] S. John iii. 27.
[1797] Jer. xvii. 21.
[1798] Ps. cxxvi. (cxxvii.) 1.
[1799] Phil. ii. 12, 13. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XI.
Whether the grace of God precedes or follows our good will.
And so these are somehow mixed up and indiscriminately confused, so that among many persons, which depends on the other is involved in great questionings, i.e., does God have compassion upon us because we have shown the beginning of a good will, or does the beginning of a good will follow because God has had compassion upon us? For many believing each of these and asserting them more widely than is right are entangled in all kinds of opposite errors. For if we say that the beginning of free will is in our own power, what about Paul the persecutor, what about Matthew the publican, of whom the one was drawn to salvation while eager for bloodshed and the punishment of the innocent, the other for violence and rapine? But if we say that the beginning of our free will is always due to the inspiration of the grace of God, what about the faith of Zaccheus, or what are we to say of the goodness of the thief on the cross, who by their own desires brought violence to bear on the kingdom of heaven and so prevented the special leadings of their vocation? But if we attribute the performance of virtuous acts, and the execution of God's commands to our own will, how do we pray: "Strengthen, O God, what Thou hast wrought in us;" and "The work of our hands stablish Thou upon us?" [1800] We know that Balaam was brought to curse Israel, but we see that when he wished to curse he was not permitted to. Abimelech is preserved from touching Rebecca and so sinning against God. Joseph is sold by the envy of his brethren, in order to bring about the descent of the children of Israel into Egypt, and that while they were contemplating the death of their brother provision might be made for them against the famine to come: as Joseph shows when he makes himself known to his brethren and says: "Fear not, neither let it be grievous unto you that ye sold me into these parts: for for your salvation God sent me before you;" and below: "For God sent me before that ye might be preserved upon the earth and might have food whereby to live. Not by your design was I sent but by the will of God, who has made me a father to Pharaoh and lord of all his house, and chief over all the land of Egypt." And when his brethren were alarmed after the death of his father, he removed their suspicions and terror by saying: "Fear not: Can ye resist the will of God? You imagined evil against me but God turned it into good, that He might exalt me, as ye see at the present time, that He might save much people." [1801] And that this was brought about providentially the blessed David likewise declared saying in the hundred and fourth Psalm: "And He called for a dearth upon the land: and brake all the staff of bread. He sent a man before them: Joseph was sold for a slave." [1802] These two then; viz., the grace of God and free will seem opposed to each other, but really are in harmony, and we gather from the system of goodness that we ought to have both alike, lest if we withdraw one of them from man, we may seem to have broken the rule of the Church's faith: for when God sees us inclined to will what is good, He meets, guides, and strengthens us: for "At the voice of thy cry, as soon as He shall hear, He will answer thee;" and: "Call upon Me," He says, "in the day of tribulation and I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify Me." [1803] And again, if He finds that we are unwilling or have grown cold, He stirs our hearts with salutary exhortations, by which a good will is either renewed or formed in us. __________________________________________________________________
[1800] Ps. lxvii. (lxviii.) 29; lxxxix. (xc.) 17.
[1801] Gen. xlv. 5-8; l. 19, 20.
[1802] Ps. civ. (cv.) 16, 17.
[1803] Is. xxx. 19; Ps. xlix. (l.) 15. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XII.
That a good will should not always be attributed to grace, nor always to man himself.
For we should not hold that God made man such that he can never will or be capable of what is good: or else He has not granted him a free will, if He has suffered him only to will or be capable of evil, but neither to will or be capable of what is good of himself. And, in this case how will that first statement of the Lord made about men after the fall stand: "Behold, Adam is become as one of us, knowing good and evil?" [1804] For we cannot think that before, he was such as to be altogether ignorant of good. Otherwise we should have to admit that he was formed like some irrational and insensate beast: which is sufficiently absurd and altogether alien from the Catholic faith. Moreover as the wisest Solomon says: "God made man upright," i.e., always to enjoy the knowledge of good only, "But they have sought out many imaginations," [1805] for they came, as has been said, to know good and evil. Adam therefore after the fall conceived a knowledge of evil which he had not previously, but did not lose the knowledge of good which he had before. Finally the Apostle's words very clearly show that mankind did not lose after the fall of Adam the knowledge of good: as he says: "For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things of the law, these, though they have not the law, are a law to themselves, as they show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness to these, and their thoughts within them either accusing or else excusing them, in the day in which God shall judge the secrets of men." [1806] And with the same meaning the Lord rebukes by the prophet the unnatural but freely chosen blindness of the Jews, which they by their obstinacy brought upon themselves, saying: "Hear ye deaf, and ye blind, behold that you may see. Who is deaf but My servant? and blind, but he to whom I have sent My messengers?" [1807] And that no one might ascribe this blindness of theirs to nature instead of to their own will, elsewhere He says: "Bring forth the people that are blind and have eyes: that are deaf and have ears;" and again: "having eyes, but ye see not; and ears, but ye hear not." [1808] The Lord also says in the gospel: "Because seeing they see not, and hearing they hear not neither do they understand." [1809] And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah which says: "Hearing ye shall hear and shall not understand: and seeing ye shall see and shall not see. For the heart of this people is waxed fat, and their ears are dull of hearing: and they have closed their eyes, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart, and be turned and I should heal them." [1810] Finally in order to denote that the possibility of good was in them, in chiding the Pharisees, He says: "But why of your own selves do ye not judge what is right?" [1811] And this he certainly would not have said to them, unless He knew that by their natural judgment they could discern what was fair. Wherefore we must take care not to refer all the merits of the saints to the Lord in such a way as to ascribe nothing but what is evil and perverse to human nature: in doing which we are confuted by the evidence of the most wise Solomon, or rather of the Lord Himself, Whose words these are; for when the building of the Temple was finished and he was praying, he spoke as follows: "And David my father would have built a house to the name of the Lord God of Israel: and the Lord said to David my father: Whereas thou hast thought in thine heart to build a house to My name, thou hast well done in having this same thing in thy mind. Nevertheless thou shalt not build a house to My name." [1812] This thought then and this purpose of king David, are we to call it good and from God or bad and from man? For if that thought was good and from God, why did He by whom it was inspired refuse that it should be carried into effect? But if it is bad and from man, why is it praised by the Lord? It remains then that we must take it as good and from man. And in the same way we can take our own thoughts today. For it was not given only to David to think what is good of himself, nor is it denied to us naturally to think or imagine anything that is good. It cannot then be doubted that there are by nature some seeds of goodness in every soul implanted by the kindness of the Creator: but unless these are quickened by the assistance of God, they will not be able to attain to an increase of perfection, for, as the blessed Apostle says: "Neither is he that planteth anything nor he that watereth, but God that giveth the increase." [1813] But that freedom of the will is to some degree in a man's own power is very clearly taught in the book termed the Pastor, [1814] where two angels are said to be attached to each one of us, i.e., a good and a bad one, while it lies at a man's own option to choose which to follow. And therefore the will always remains free in man, and can either neglect or delight in the grace of God. For the Apostle would not have commanded saying: "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling," had he not known that it could be advanced or neglected by us. But that men might not fancy that they had no need of Divine aid for the work of Salvation, he subjoins: "For it is God that worketh in you both to will and to do, of His good pleasure." [1815] And therefore he warns Timothy and says: "Neglect not the grace of God which is in thee;" and again: "For which cause I exhort thee to stir up the grace of God which is in thee." [1816] Hence also in writing to the Corinthians he exhorts and warns them not through their unfruitful works to show themselves unworthy of the grace of God, saying: "And we helping, exhort you that ye receive not the grace of God in vain:" [1817] for the reception of saving grace was of no profit to Simon doubtless because he had received it in vain; for he would not obey the command of the blessed Peter who said: "Repent of thine iniquity, and pray God if haply the thoughts of thine heart may be forgiven thee; for I perceive that thou art in the gall of bitterness and the bonds of iniquity." [1818] It prevents therefore the will of man, for it is said: "My God will prevent me with His mercy;" [1819] and again when God waits and for our good delays, that He may put our desires to the test, our will precedes, for it is said: "And in the morning my prayer shall prevent Thee;" and again: "I prevented the dawning of the day and cried;" and: "Mine eyes have prevented the morning." [1820] For He calls and invites us, when He says: "All the day long I stretched forth My hands to a disobedient and gainsaying people;" [1821] and He is invited by us when we say to Him: "All the day long I have stretched forth My hands unto Thee." [1822] He waits for us, when it is said by the prophet: "Wherefore the Lord waiteth to have compassion upon us;" [1823] and He is waited for by us, when we say: "I waited patiently for the Lord, and He inclined unto me;" and: "I have waited for thy salvation, O Lord." [1824] He strengthens us when He says: "And I have chastised them, and strengthened their arms; and they have imagined evil against me;" [1825] and He exhorts us to strengthen ourselves when He says: "Strengthen ye the weak hands, and make strong the feeble knees." [1826] Jesus cries: "If any man thirst let him come unto Me and drink;" [1827] the prophet also cries to Him: "I have laboured with crying, my jaws are become hoarse: mine eyes have failed, whilst I hope in my God." [1828] The Lord seeks us, when He says: "I sought and there was no man. I called, and there was none to answer;" [1829] and He Himself is sought by the bride who mourns with tears: "I sought on my bed by night Him whom my soul loved: I sought Him and found Him not; I called Him, and He gave me no answer." [1830] __________________________________________________________________
[1804] Gen. iii. 22.
[1805] Eccl. vii. 29 (LXX.).
[1806] Rom. ii. 14-16.
[1807] Is. xlii. 18, 19.
[1808] Is. xliii. 8; Jer. v. 21.
[1809] S. Matt. xiii. 13.
[1810] Is. vi. 9, 10.
[1811] S. Luke xii. 57.
[1812] 1 Kings viii. 17-19.
[1813] 1 Cor. iii. 7.
[1814] Cf. Conf. VIII. c. xvii.
[1815] Phil. ii. 12, 13.
[1816] 1 Tim. iv. 14; 2 Tim. i. 6.
[1817] 2 Cor. vi. 1.
[1818] Acts viii. 22, 23.
[1819] Ps. lviii. (lix.) 11.
[1820] Ps. lxxxvii. (lxxxviii.) 14; cxviii. (cxix.) 147, 148.
[1821] Rom. x. 21.
[1822] Ps. lxxxvii. (lxxxviii.) 10.
[1823] Is. xxx. 18.
[1824] Ps. xxxix. (xl.) 2; cxviii. (cxix.) 166.
[1825] Hosea vii. 15.
[1826] Is. xxxv. 3.
[1827] S. John vii. 37.
[1828] Ps. lxviii. (lxix.) 4.
[1829] Cant. v. 6.
[1830] Cant. iii. 1. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIII.
How human efforts cannot be set against the grace of God.
And so the grace of God always co-operates with our will for its advantage, and in all things assists, protects, and defends it, in such a way as sometimes even to require and look for some efforts of good will from it that it may not appear to confer its gifts on one who is asleep or relaxed in sluggish ease, as it seeks opportunities to show that as the torpor of man's sluggishness is shaken off its bounty is not unreasonable, when it bestows it on account of some desire and efforts to gain it. And none the less does God's grace continue to be free grace while in return for some small and trivial efforts it bestows with priceless bounty such glory of immortality, and such gifts of eternal bliss. For because the faith of the thief on the cross came as the first thing, no one would say that therefore the blessed abode of Paradise was not promised to him as a free gift, nor could we hold that it was the penitence of King David's single word which he uttered: "I have sinned against the Lord," and not rather the mercy of God which removed those two grievous sins of his, so that it was vouchsafed to him to hear from the prophet Nathan: "The Lord also hath put away thine iniquity: thou shalt not die." [1831] The fact then that he added murder to adultery, was certainly due to free will: but that he was reproved by the prophet, this was the grace of Divine Compassion. Again it was his own doing that he was humbled and acknowledged his guilt; but that in a very short interval of time he was granted pardon for such sins, this was the gift of the merciful Lord. And what shall we say of this brief confession and of the incomparable infinity of Divine reward, when it is easy to see what the blessed Apostle, as he fixes his gaze on the greatness of future remuneration, announced on those countless persecutions of his? "for," says he, "our light affliction which is but for a moment worketh in us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory," [1832] of which elsewhere he constantly affirms, saying that "the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the future glory which shall be revealed in us." [1833] However much then human weakness may strive, it cannot come up to the future reward, nor by its efforts so take off from Divine grace that it should not always remain a free gift. And therefore the aforesaid teacher of the Gentiles, though he bears his witness that he had obtained the grade of the Apostolate by the grace of God, saying: "By the grace of God I am what I am," yet also declares that he himself had corresponded to Divine Grace, where he says: "And His Grace in me was not in vain; but I laboured more abundantly than they all: and yet not I, but the Grace of God with me." [1834] For when he says: "I laboured," he shows the effort of his own will; when he says: "yet not I, but the grace of God," he points out the value of Divine protection; when he says: "with me," he affirms that it cooperates with him when he was not idle or careless, but working and making an effort. __________________________________________________________________
[1831] 2 Sam. xii. 13.
[1832] 2 Cor. iv. 17.
[1833] Rom. viii. 18.
[1834] 1 Cor. xv. 10. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIV.
How God makes trial of the strength of man's will by means of his temptations.
And this too we read that the Divine righteousness provided for in the case of Job His well tried athlete, when the devil had challenged him to single combat. For if he had advanced against his foe, not with his own strength, but solely with the protection of God's grace; and, supported only by Divine aid without any virtue of patience on his own part, had borne that manifold weight of temptations and losses, contrived with all the cruelty of his foe, how would the devil have repeated with some justice that slanderous speech which he had previously uttered: "Doth Job serve God for nought? Hast Thou not hedged him in, and all his substance round about? but take away thine hand," i.e., allow him to fight with me in his own strength, "and he will curse Thee to Thy face." [1835] But as after the struggle the slanderous foe dare not give vent to any such murmur as this, he admired that he was vanquished by his strength and not by that of God; although too we must not hold that the grace of God was altogether wanting to him, which gave to the tempter a power of tempting in proportion to that which it knew that he had of resisting, without protecting him from his attacks in such a way as to leave no room for human virtue, but only providing for this; viz., that the most fierce foe should not drive him out of his mind and overwhelm him when weakened, with unequal thoughts and in an unfair contest. But that the Lord is sometimes wont to tempt our faith that it may be made stronger and more glorious, we are taught by the example of the centurion in the gospel, in whose case though the Lord knew that He would cure his servant by the power of His word, yet He chose to offer His bodily presence, saying: "I will come and heal him:" but when the centurion overcame this offer of His by the ardour of still more fervent faith, and said: "Lord, I am not worthy that Thou shouldest come under my roof: but speak the word only and my servant shall be healed," the Lord marvelled at him and praised him, and put him before all those of the people of Israel who had believed, saying: "Verily, I say unto you, I have not found so great faith in Israel." [1836] For there would have been no ground for praise or merit, if Christ had only preferred in him what He Himself had given. And this searching trial of faith we read that the Divine righteousness brought about also in the case of the grandest of the patriarchs; where it is said: "And it came to pass after these things that God did tempt Abraham." [1837] For the Divine righteousness wished to try not that faith with which the Lord had inspired him, but that which when called and enlightened by the Lord he could show forth by his own free will. Wherefore the firmness of his faith was not without reason proved, and when the grace of God, which had for a while left him to prove him, came to his aid, it was said: "Lay not thine hand on the lad, and do nothing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest the Lord, and for my sake hast not spared thy beloved son." [1838] And that this kind of temptation can befall us, for the sake of proving us, is sufficiently clearly foretold by the giver of the Law in Deuteronomy: "If there rise in the midst of you a prophet or one that saith he hath seen a dream, and foretell a sign and wonder; and that come to pass which he spoke, and he say to thee: Let us go and serve strange gods which ye know not, thou shalt not hear the words of that prophet or dreamer; for the Lord your God surely trieth thee, whether thou lovest Him with all thine heart, and keepest His Commandments, or no." [1839] What then follows? When God has permitted that prophet or dreamer to arise, must we hold that He will protect those whose faith He is purposing to try, in such a way as to leave no place for their own free will, where they can fight with the tempter with their own strength? And why is it necessary for them even to be tried if He knows them to be so weak and feeble as not to be able by their own power to resist the tempter? But certainly the Divine righteousness would not have permitted them to be tempted, unless it knew that there was within them an equal power of resistance, by which they could by an equitable judgment be found in either result either guilty or worthy of praise. To the same effect also is this which the Apostle says: "Therefore let him that thinketh he standeth, take heed lest he fall. There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man. But God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able, but will with the temptation make also a way of escape that ye may be able to bear it." [1840] For when he says "Let him that standeth take heed lest he fall" he sets free will on its guard, as he certainly knew that, after grace had been received, it could either stand by its exertions or fall through carelessness. But when he adds: "there hath no temptation taken you but what is common to man" he chides their weakness and the frailty of their heart that is not yet strengthened, as they could not yet resist the attacks of the hosts of spiritual wickedness, against which he knew that he and those who were perfect daily fought; of which also he says to the Ephesians: "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against spiritual wickedness in heavenly places." [1841] But when he subjoins: "But God is faithful who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able," he certainly is not hoping that the Lord will not suffer them to be tempted, but that they may not be tempted above what they are able to bear. For the one shows the power of man's will, the other denotes the grace of the Lord who moderates the violence of temptations. In all these phrases then there is proof that Divine grace ever stirs up the will of man, not so as to protect and defend it in all things in such a way as to cause it not to fight by its own efforts against its spiritual adversaries, the victor over whom may set it down to God's grace, and the vanquished to his own weakness, and thus learn that his hope is always not in his own courage but in the Divine assistance, and that he must ever fly to his Protector. And to prove this not by our own conjecture but by still clearer passages of Holy Scripture let us consider what we read in Joshuah the son of Nun: "The Lord," it says, "left these nations and would not destroy them, that by them He might try Israel, whether they would keep the commandments of the Lord their God, and that they might learn to fight with their enemies." [1842] And if we may illustrate the incomparable mercy of our Creator from something earthly, not as being equal in kindness, but as an illustration of mercy: if a tender and anxious nurse carries an infant in her bosom for a long time in order sometime to teach it to walk, and first allows it to crawl, then supports it that by the aid of her right hand it may lean on its alternate steps, presently leaves it for a little and if she sees it tottering at all, catches hold of it, and grabs at it when falling, when down picks it up, and either shields it from a fall, or allows it to fall lightly, and sets it up again after a tumble, but when she has brought it up to boyhood or the strength of youth or early manhood, lays upon it some burdens or labours by which it may be not overwhelmed but exercised, and allows it to vie with those of its own age; how much more does the heavenly Father of all know whom to carry in the bosom of His grace, whom to train to virtue in His sight by the exercise of free will, and yet He helps him in his efforts, hears him when he calls, leaves him not when he seeks Him, and sometimes snatches him from peril even without his knowing it. __________________________________________________________________
[1835] Job i. 9-11.
[1836] S. Matt. viii. 7-10.
[1837] Gen. xxii. 1.
[1838] Ib. ver. 12.
[1839] Deut. xiii. 1-3.
[1840] 1 Cor. x. 12, 13.
[1841] Eph. vi. 12.
[1842] Judg. iii. 1, 2; ii. 22. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XV.
Of the manifold grace of men's calls.
And by this it is clearly shown that God's "judgments are inscrutable and His ways past finding out," [1843] by which He draws mankind to salvation. And this too we can prove by the instances of calls in the gospels. For He chose Andrew and Peter and the rest of the apostles by the free compassion of His grace when they were thinking nothing of their healing and salvation. Zacchæus, when in his faithfulness he was struggling to see the Lord, and making up for his littleness of stature by the height of the sycamore tree, He not only received, but actually honoured by the blessing of His dwelling with him. Paul even against his will and resisting He drew to Him. Another He charged to cleave to Him so closely that when he asked for the shortest possible delay in order to bury his father He did not grant it. To Cornelius when constantly attending to prayers and alms the way of salvation was shown by way of recompense, and by the visitation of an angel he was bidden to summon Peter, and learn from him the words of salvation, whereby he might be saved with all his. And so the manifold wisdom of God grants with manifold and inscrutable kindness salvation to men; and imparts to each one according to his capacity the grace of His bounty, so that He wills to grant His healing not according to the uniform power of His Majesty but according to the measure of the faith in which He finds each one, or as He Himself has imparted it to each one. For when one believed that for the cure of his leprosy the will of Christ alone was sufficient He healed him by the simple consent of His will, saying: "I will, be thou clean." [1844] When another prayed that He would come and raise his dead daughter by laying His hands on her, He entered his house as he had hoped, and granted what was asked of Him. When another believed that what was essential for his salvation depended on His command, and answered: "Speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed," [1845] He restored to their former strength the limbs that were relaxed, by the power of a word, saying: "Go thy way, and as thou hast believed so be it unto thee." [1846] To others hoping for restoration from the touch of His hem, He granted rich gifts of healing. To some, when asked, He bestowed remedies for their diseases. To others He afforded the means of healing unasked: others He urged on to hope, saying: "Willest thou to be made whole?" [1847] to others when they were without hope He brought help spontaneously. The desires of some He searched out before satisfying their wants, saying: "What will ye that I should do for you?" [1848] To another who knew not the way to obtain what he desired, He showed it in His kindness, saying: "If thou believest thou shalt see the glory of God." [1849] Among some so richly did He pour forth the mighty works of His cures that of them the Evangelist says: "And He healed all their sick." [1850] But among others the unfathomable depth of Christ's beneficence was so stopped up, that it was said: "And Jesus could do there no mighty works because of their unbelief." [1851] And so the bounty of God is actually shaped according to the capacity of man's faith, so that to one it is said: "According to thy faith be it unto thee:" [1852] and to another: "Go thy way, and as thou hast believed so be it unto thee;" [1853] to another "Be it unto thee according as thou wilt," [1854] and again to another: "Thy faith hath made thee whole." [1855] __________________________________________________________________
[1843] Rom. xi. 33.
[1844] S. Matt. viii. 3.
[1845] Ib. ver. 8.
[1846] Ib. ver. 13.
[1847] S. John v. 6.
[1848] S. Matt. xx. 32.
[1849] S. John xi. 40.
[1850] S. Matt. xiv. 14.
[1851] S. Mark vi. 5, 6.
[1852] S. Matt. ix. 29.
[1853] S. Matt. viii. 13.
[1854] S. Matt. xv. 28.
[1855] S. Luke xviii. 42. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVI.
Of the grace of God; to the effect that it transcends the narrow limits of human faith.
But let no one imagine that we have brought forward these instances to try to make out that the chief share in our salvation rests with our faith, according to the profane notion of some who attribute everything to free will and lay down that the grace of God is dispensed in accordance with the desert of each man: but we plainly assert our unconditional opinion that the grace of God is superabounding, and sometimes overflows the narrow limits of man's lack of faith. And this, as we remember, happened in the case of the ruler in the gospel, who, as he believed that it was an easier thing for his son to be cured when sick than to be raised when dead, implored the Lord to come at once, saying: "Lord, come down ere my child die;" and though Christ reproved his lack of faith with these words: "Except ye see signs and wonders ye will not believe," yet He did not manifest the grace of His Divinity in proportion to the weakness of his faith, nor did He expell the deadly disease of the fever by His bodily presence, as the man believed he would, but by the word of His power, saying: "Go thy way, thy son liveth." [1856] And we read also that the Lord poured forth this superabundance of grace in the case of the cure of the paralytic, when, though he only asked for the healing of the weakness by which his body was enervated, He first brought health to the soul by saying: "Son, be of good cheer, thy sins be forgiven thee." After which, when the scribes did not believe that He could forgive men's sins, in order to confound their incredulity, He set free by the power of His word the man's limb, and put an end to his disease of paralysis, by saying: "Why think ye evil in your hearts? Whether is easier to say, thy sins be forgiven thee, or to say, arise and walk? But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, then saith He to the sick of the palsy: Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house." [1857] And in the same way in the case of the man who had been lying for thirty-eight years near the edge of the pool, and hoping for a cure from the moving of the water, He showed the princely character of His bounty unasked. For when in His wish to arouse him for the saving remedy, He had said to him: "willest thou to be made whole," and when the man complained of his lack of human assistance and said: "I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is troubled," the Lord in His pity granted pardon to his unbelief and ignorance, and restored him to his former health, not in the way which he expected, but in the way which He Himself willed, saying: "Arise, take up thy bed and go unto thine house." [1858] And what wonder if these acts are told of the Lord's power, when Divine grace has actually wrought similar works by means of His servants! For when Peter and John were entering the temple, when the man who was lame from his mother's womb and had no idea how to walk, asked an alms, they gave him not the miserable coppers which the sick man asked for, but the power to walk, and when he was only expecting the smallest of gifts to console him, enriched him with the prize of unlooked for health, as Peter said: "Silver and gold have I none: but such as I have, give I unto thee. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk." [1859] __________________________________________________________________
[1856] S. John iv. 48-50.
[1857] S. Matt. ix. 2-6.
[1858] S. John v. 6-8.
[1859] Acts iii. 6. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVII.
Of the inscrutable providence of God.
By those instances then which we have brought forward from the gospel records we can very clearly perceive that God brings salvation to mankind in diverse and innumerable methods and inscrutable ways, and that He stirs up the course of some, who are already wanting it, and thirsting for it, to greater zeal, while He forces some even against their will, and resisting. And that at one time He gives his assistance for the fulfilment of those things which he sees that we desire for our good, while at another time He puts into us the very beginnings of holy desire, and grants both the commencement of a good work and perseverance in it. Hence it comes that in our prayers we proclaim God as not only our Protector and Saviour, but actually as our Helper and Sponsor. For whereas He first calls us to Him, and while we are still ignorant and unwilling, draws us towards salvation, He is our Protector and Saviour, but whereas when we are already striving, He is wont to bring us help, and to receive and defend those who fly to Him for refuge, He is termed our Sponsor and Refuge. Finally the blessed Apostle when revolving in his mind this manifold bounty of God's providence, as he sees that he has fallen into some vast and boundless ocean of God's goodness, exclaims: "O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How inscrutable are the judgments of God and His ways past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord?" [1860] Whoever then imagines that he can by human reason fathom the depths of that inconceivable abyss, will be trying to explain away the astonishment at that knowledge, at which that great and mighty teacher of the gentiles was awed. For if a man thinks that he can either conceive in his mind or discuss exhaustively the dispensation of God whereby He works salvation in men, he certainly impugns the truth of the Apostle's words and asserts with profane audacity that His judgments can be scrutinized, and His ways searched out. This providence and love of God therefore, which the Lord in His unwearied goodness vouchsafes to show us, He compares to the tenderest heart of a kind mother, as He wishes to express it by a figure of human affection, and finds in His creatures no such feeling of love, to which he could better compare it. And He uses this example, because nothing dearer can be found in human nature, saying: "Can a mother forget her child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb?" But not content with this comparison He at once goes beyond it, and subjoins these words: "And though she may forget, yet will not I forget thee." [1861] __________________________________________________________________
[1860] Rom. xi. 33, 34.
[1861] Is. xlix. 15. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVIII.
The decision of the fathers that free will is not equal to save a man.
And from this it is clearly gathered by those who, led not by chattering words but by experience, measure the magnitude of grace, and the paltry limits of man's will, that "the race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong, nor food to the wise, nor riches to the prudent, nor grace to the learned," but that "all these worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally as He will." [1862] And therefore it is proved by no doubtful faith but by experience which can (so to speak) be laid hold of, that God the Father of all things worketh indifferently all things in all, as the Apostle says, like some most kind father and most benign physician; and that now He puts into us the very beginnings of salvation, and gives to each the zeal of his free will; and now grants the carrying out of the work, and the perfecting of goodness; and now saves men, even against their will and without their knowledge, from ruin that is close at hand, and a headlong fall; and now affords them occasions and opportunities of salvation, and wards off headlong and violent attacks from purposes that would bring death; and assists some who are already willing and running, while He draws others who are unwilling and resisting, and forces them to a good will. But that, when we do not always resist or remain persistently unwilling, everything is granted to us by God, and that the main share in our salvation is to be ascribed not to the merit of our own works but to heavenly grace, we are thus taught by the words of the Lord Himself: "And you shall remember your ways and all your wicked doings with which you have been defiled; and you shall be displeased with yourselves in your own sight for all your wicked deeds which you have committed. And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I shall have done well by you for My own name's sake, not according to your evil ways, nor according to your wicked deeds, O house of Israel." [1863] And therefore it is laid down by all the Catholic fathers who have taught perfection of heart not by empty disputes of words, but in deed and act, that the first stage in the Divine gift is for each man to be inflamed with the desire of everything that is good, but in such a way that the choice of free will is open to either side: and that the second stage in Divine grace is for the aforesaid practices of virtue to be able to be performed, but in such a way that the possibilities of the will are not destroyed: the third stage also belongs to the gifts of God, so that it may be held by the persistence of the goodness already acquired, and in such a way that the liberty may not be surrendered and experience bondage. For the God of all must be held to work in all, so as to incite, protect, and strengthen, but not to take away the freedom of the will which He Himself has once given. If however any more subtle inference of man's argumentation and reasoning seems opposed to this interpretation, it should be avoided rather than brought forward to the destruction of the faith (for we gain not faith from understanding, but understanding from faith, as it is written: "Except ye believe, ye will not understand" [1864] ) for how God works all things in us and yet everything can be ascribed to free will, cannot be fully grasped by the mind and reason of man.
Strengthened by this food the blessed Chæremon prevented us from feeling the toil of so difficult a journey. __________________________________________________________________
[1862] Eccl. ix. 11 (LXX.); 1 Cor. xii. 11.
[1863] Ezek. xx. 43, 44.
[1864] Is. vii. 9. __________________________________________________________________
[1746] On the Semi-Pelagianism of this Conference and the erroneous passages from it extracted by Prosper, see the Introduction, p. 190, sq. __________________________________________________________________
XIV. The First Conference of Abbot Nesteros.
On Spiritual Knowledge. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter I.
The words of Abbot Nesteros on the knowledge of the religious.
The order of our promise and course demands that there should follow the instruction of Abbot Nesteros, [1865] a man of excellence in all points and of the greatest knowledge: who when he had seen that we had committed some parts of Holy Scripture to memory and desired to understand them, addressed us in these words. There are indeed many different kinds of knowledge in this world, since there is as great a variety of them as there is of the arts and sciences. But, while all are either utterly useless or only useful for the good of this present life, there is yet none which has not its own system and method for learning it, by which it can be grasped by those who seek it. If then those arts are guided by certain special rules for their publication, how much more does the system and expression of our religion, which tends to the contemplation of the secrets of invisible mysteries, and seeks no present gain but the reward of an eternal recompense, depend on a fixed order and scheme. And the knowledge of this is twofold: first, praktike, i.e., practical, which is brought about by an improvement of morals and purification from faults: secondly, theoretike, which consists in the contemplation of things Divine and the knowledge of most sacred thoughts. __________________________________________________________________
[1865] Nesteros. In the Vitæ Patrum there are some stories of one or two of this name (for it is not quite clear whether they are distinct persons or one and the same to whom the stories refer). One was known as ho megas, and was a friend of St. Antony, and is supposed by some to be the same whose Conferences Cassian here relates, but nothing certain is known of him. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter II.
On grasping the knowledge of spiritual things.
Whoever then would arrive at this theoretical knowledge must first pursue practical knowledge with all his might and main. For this practical knowledge can be acquired without theoretical, but theoretical cannot possibly be gained without practical. For there are certain stages, so distinct, and arranged in such a way that man's humility may be able to mount on high; and if these follow each other in turn in the order of which we have spoken, man can attain to a height to which he could not fly, if the first step were wanting. In vain then does one strive for the vision of God, who does not shun the stains of sins: "For the spirit of God hates deception, and dwells not in a body subject to sins." [1866] __________________________________________________________________
[1866] Wisdom i. 4, 5. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter III.
How practical perfection depends on a double system.
But this practical perfection depends on a double system; for its first method is to know the nature of all faults and the manner of their cure. Its second, to discover the order of the virtues, and form our mind by their perfection so that it may be obedient to them, not as if it were forced and subject to some fierce sway, but as if it delighted in its natural good, and throve upon it, and mounted by that steep and narrow way with real pleasure. For in what way will one, who has neither succeeded in understanding the nature of his own faults, nor tried to eradicate them, be able to gain an understanding of virtues, which is the second stage of practical training, or the mysteries of spiritual and heavenly things, which exist in the higher stage of theoretical knowledge? For it will necessarily be maintained that he cannot advance to more lofty heights who has not surmounted the lower ones, and much less will he be able to grasp those things that are without, who has not succeeded in understanding what is within his comprehension. But you should know that we must make an effort with a twofold purpose in our exertion; both for the expulsion of vice, and for the attainment of virtue. And this we do not gather from our own conjecture, but are taught by the words of Him who alone knows the strength and method of His work: "Behold," He says: "I have set thee this day over the nations and over kingdoms, to root up, and to pull down, and to waste, and to destroy, and to build and to plant." [1867] He points out that for getting rid of noxious things four things are requisite; viz., to root up, to pull down, to waste, and to destroy: but for the performance of what is good, and the acquisition of what pertains to righteousness only to build and to plant. Whence it is perfectly evident that it is a harder thing to tear up and eradicate the inveterate passions of body and soul than to introduce and plant spiritual virtues. __________________________________________________________________
[1867] Jer. i. 10. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IV.
How practical life is distributed among many different professions and interests.
This practical life then, which as has been said rests on a double system, is distributed among many different professions and interests. For some make it their whole purpose to aim at the secrecy of an anchorite and purity of heart, as we know that in the past Elijah and Elisha, and in our own day the blessed Antony and others who followed with the same object, were joined most closely to God by the silence of solitude. Some have given all their efforts and interests towards the system of the brethren and the watchful care of the Coenobium; as we remember that recently Abbot John, who presided over a big monastery in the neighbourhood of the city Thmuis, [1868] and some other men of like merits were eminent with the signs of Apostles. Some are pleased with the kindly service of the guest house and reception, by which in the past the patriarch Abraham and Lot pleased the Lord, and recently the blessed Macarius, [1869] a man of singular courtesy and patience who presided over the guest house at Alexandria in such a way as to be considered inferior to none of those who aimed at the retirement of the desert. Some choose the care of the sick, others devote themselves to intercession, which is offered up for the oppressed and afflicted, or give themselves up to teaching, or give alms to the poor, and flourish among men of excellence and renown, by reason of their love and goodness. __________________________________________________________________
[1868] It is doubtful whether this is the same John mentioned in the Institutes V. xxviii. and to whom the xixth Conference is assigned. Thmuis is the coptic Thmoui, a little to the south of the Mendesian branch of the Nile. See Rawlinson's note to Herod. ii. c. 166 and cf. Ptolemy IV. v. § 51.
[1869] On the two Macarii see the note on the Institutes V. xli. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter V.
On perseverance in the line that has been chosen.
Wherefore it is good and profitable for each one to endeavour with all his might and main to attain perfection in the work that has been begun, according to the line which he has chosen as the grace which he has received; and while he praises and admires the virtues of others, not to swerve from his own line which he has once for all chosen, as he knows that, as the Apostle says, the body of the Church indeed is one, but the members many, and that it has "gifts differing according to the grace which is given us, whether prophecy, according to the proportion of the faith, whether ministry, in ministering, or he that teacheth, in doctrine, or he that exhorteth in exhortation, he that giveth, in simplicity, he that ruleth, with carefulness, he that showeth mercy, with cheerfulness." [1870] For no members can claim the offices of other members, because the eyes cannot perform the duties of the hands, nor the nostrils of the ears. And so not all are Apostles, not all prophets, not all doctors, not all have the gifts of healing, not all speak with tongues, not all interpret. [1871] __________________________________________________________________
[1870] Rom. xii. 4-8.
[1871] Cf. 1 Cor. xii. 28. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VI.
How the weak are easily moved.
For those who are not yet settled in the line which they have taken up are often, when they hear some praised for different interests and virtues, so excited by the praise of them that they try forthwith to imitate their method: and in this human weakness is sure to expend its efforts to no purpose. For it is an impossibility for one and the same man to excel at once in all those good deeds which I enumerated above. And if anyone is anxious equally to affect them all, he is quite sure to come to this; viz., that while he pursues them all, he will not thoroughly succeed in any one, and will lose more than he will gain from this changing and shifting about. For in many ways men advance towards God, and so each man should complete that one which he has once fixed upon, never changing the course of his purpose, so that he may be perfect in whatever line of life his may be. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VII.
An instance of chastity which teaches us that all men should not be emulous of all things.
For apart from that loss, which we have said that a monk incurs who wants in light-mindedness to pass from one pursuit to another, there is a risk of death that is hence incurred, because at times things which are rightly done by some are wrongly taken by others as an example, and things which turned out well for some, are found to be injurious to others. For, to give an instance, it is as if one wished to imitate the good deed of that man, which Abbot John is wont to bring forward, not for the sake of imitating him but simply out of admiration for him; for one came to the aforesaid old man in a secular dress and when he had brought him some of the first fruits of his crops, he found some one there possessed by a most fierce devil. And this one though he scorned the adjurations and commands of Abbot John, and vowed that he would never at his bidding leave the body which he had occupied, yet was terrified at the coming of this other, and departed with a most humble utterance of his name. And the old man marvelled not a little at his so evident grace and was the more astonished at him because he saw that he had on a secular dress; and so began carefully to ask of him the manner of his life and pursuit. And when he said that he was living in the world and bound by the ties of marriage, the blessed John, considering in his mind the greatness of his virtue and grace, searched out still more carefully what his manner of life might be. He declared that he was a countryman, and that he sought his food by the daily toil of his hands, and was not conscious of anything good about him except that he never went forth to his work in the fields in the morning nor came home in the evening without having returned thanks in Church for the food of his daily life, to God Who gave it; and that he had never used any of his crops without having first offered to God their first fruits and tithes; and that he had never driven his oxen over the bounds of another's harvest without having first muzzled them that his neighbour might not sustain the slightest loss through his carelessness. And when these things did not seem to Abbot John sufficient to procure such grace as that with which he saw that he was endowed, and he inquired of him and investigated what it was which could be connected with the merits of such grace, he was induced by respect for such anxious inquiries to confess that, when he wanted to be professed as a monk, he had been compelled by force and his parents' command, twelve years before to take a wife, who, without any body to that day being aware of it, was kept by him as a virgin in the place of a sister. And when the old man heard this, he was so overcome with admiration that he announced publicly in his presence that it was not without good reason that the devil who had scorned him himself, could not endure the presence of this man, whose virtue he himself, not only in the ardour of youth, but even now, would not dare to aim at without risk of his chastity. And though Abbot John would tell this story with the utmost admiration, yet he never advised any monk to try this plan as he knew that many things which are rightly done by some involved others who imitate them in great danger, and that that cannot be tried by all, which the Lord bestowed upon a few by a special gift. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VIII.
Of spiritual knowledge.
But to return to the explanation of the knowledge from which our discourse took its rise. Thus, as we said above, practical knowledge is distributed among many subjects and interests, but theoretical is divided into two parts, i.e., the historical interpretation and the spiritual sense. Whence also Solomon when he had summed up the manifold grace of the Church, added: "for all who are with her are clothed with double garments." [1872] But of spiritual knowledge there are three kinds, tropological, allegorical, anagogical, [1873] of which we read as follows in Proverbs: "But do you describe these things to yourself in three ways according to the largeness of your heart." [1874] And so the history embraces the knowledge of things past and visible, as it is repeated in this way by the Apostle: "For it is written that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondwoman, the other by a free: but he who was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh, but he who was of the free was by promise." But to the allegory belongs what follows, for what actually happened is said to have prefigured the form of some mystery: "For these," says he, "are the two covenants, the one from Mount Sinai, which gendereth into bondage, which is Agar. For Sinai is a mountain in Arabia, which is compared to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children." But the anagogical sense rises from spiritual mysteries even to still more sublime and sacred secrets of heaven, and is subjoined by the Apostle in these words: "But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us. For it is written, Rejoice, thou barren that bearest not, break forth and cry, thou that travailest not, for many are the children of the desolate more than of her that hath an husband." [1875] The tropological sense is the moral explanation which has to do with improvement of life and practical teaching, as if we were to understand by these two covenants practical and theoretical instruction, or at any rate as if we were to want to take Jerusalem or Sion as the soul of man, according to this: "Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem: praise thy God, O Sion." [1876] And so these four previously mentioned figures coalesce, if we desire, in one subject, so that one and the same Jerusalem can be taken in four senses: historically as the city of the Jews; allegorically as Church of Christ, anagogically as the heavenly city of God "which is the mother of us all," tropologically, as the soul of man, which is frequently subject to praise or blame from the Lord under this title. Of these four kinds of interpretation the blessed Apostle speaks as follows: "But now, brethren, if I come to you speaking with tongues what shall I profit you unless I speak to you either by revelation or by knowledge or by prophecy or by doctrine?" [1877] For "revelation" belongs to allegory whereby what is concealed under the historical narrative is revealed in its spiritual sense and interpretation, as for instance if we tried to expound how "all our fathers were under the cloud and were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea," and how they "all ate the same spiritual meat and drank the same spiritual drink from the rock that followed them. But the rock was Christ." [1878] And this explanation where there is a comparison of the figure of the body and blood of Christ which we receive daily, contains the allegorical sense. But the knowledge, which is in the same way mentioned by the Apostle, is tropological, as by it we can by a careful study see of all things that have to do with practical discernment whether they are useful and good, as in this case, when we are told to judge of our own selves "whether it is fitting for a woman to pray to God with her head uncovered." [1879] And this system, as has been said, contains the moral meaning. So "prophecy" which the Apostle puts in the third place, alludes to the anagogical sense by which the words are applied to things future and invisible, as here: "But we would not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning those that sleep: that ye be not sorry as others also who have no hope. For if we believe that Christ died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him. For this we say to you by the word of God, that we which are alive at the coming of the Lord shall not prevent those that sleep in Christ, for the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trump of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first." [1880] In which kind of exhortation the figure of anagoge is brought forward. But "doctrine" unfolds the simple course of historical exposition, under which is contained no more secret sense, but what is declared by the very words: as in this passage: "For I delivered unto you first of all what I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again on the third day, and that he was seen of Cephas;" [1881] and: "God sent His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law;" [1882] or this: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord the God is one Lord." [1883] __________________________________________________________________
[1872] Prov. xxxi. 21 (LXX.).
[1873] The meaning of the four senses of Scripture here spoken of; viz., the historical, tropological, allegorical, and anagogical, is well summed up in these lines: Litera, gesta docet; quid credas, allegoria; Moralis, quid agas; quo tendas anagogia. Or, as the lines are sometimes given: Litera scripta docet; quod credas, allegoria; Quod speres, anagoge: quid agas, tropologia. Both Origen and Jerome had spoken of the threefold sense of scripture, referring to the LXX. rendering of Proverbs xxii. 20 (which Cassian quotes below): but in general the Latin Fathers, and the Schoolmen after them, separated the third of Origen's senses; viz., the spiritual, into two, the allegorical and the anagogical: and so the "fourfold" sense became the established method of interpretation in the West.
[1874] Prov. xxii. 20 (LXX.).
[1875] Gal. iv. 22-27.
[1876] Ps. cxlvii. 12.
[1877] 1 Cor. xiv. 6.
[1878] 1 Cor. x. 1-4.
[1879] 1 Cor. xi. 13.
[1880] 1 Thess. iv. 12-15.
[1881] 1 Cor. xv. 3-5.
[1882] Gal. iv. 4, 5.
[1883] Deut. vi. 4. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IX.
How from practical knowledge we must proceed to spiritual.
Wherefore if you are anxious to attain to the light of spiritual knowledge, not wrongly for an idle boast but for the sake of being made better men, you are first inflamed with the longing for that blessedness, of which we read: "blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God," [1884] that you may also attain to that of which the angel said to Daniel: "But they that are learned shall shine as the splendor of the firmament: and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever;" and in another prophet: "Enlighten yourselves with the light of knowledge while there is time." [1885] And so keeping up that diligence in reading, which I see that you have, endeavour with all eagerness to gain in the first place a thorough grasp of practical, i.e., ethical knowledge. For without this that theoretical purity of which we have spoken cannot be obtained, which those only, who are perfected not by the words of others who teach them, but by the excellence of their own actions, can after much expenditure of effort and toil attain as a reward for it. For as they gain their knowledge not from meditation on the law but from the fruit of their labour, they sing with the Psalmist: "From Thy commandments I have understanding;" and having overcome all their passions, they say with confidence: "I will sing, and I will understand in the undefiled way." [1886] For he who is striving in an undefiled way in the course of a pure heart, as he sings the Psalm, understands the words which are chanted. And therefore if you would prepare in your heart a holy tabernacle of spiritual knowledge, purge yourselves from the stain of all sins, and rid yourselves of the cares of this world. For it is an impossibility for the soul which is taken up even to a small extent with worldly troubles, to gain the gift of knowledge or to become an author of spiritual interpretation, and diligent in reading holy things. Be careful therefore in the first place, and especially you, John, as your more youthful age requires you the rather to be careful about what I am going to say--that you may enjoin absolute silence on your lips, in order that your zeal for reading and the efforts of your purpose may not be destroyed by vain pride. For this is the first practical step towards learning, to receive the regulations and opinions of all the Elders with an earnest heart, and with lips that are dumb; and diligently to lay them up in your heart, and endeavour rather to perform than to teach them. For from teaching, the dangerous arrogance of vainglory, but from performing, the fruit of spiritual knowledge will flourish. And so you should never venture to say anything in the conference of the Elders unless some ignorance that might be injurious, or a matter which it is important to know leads you to ask a question; as some who are puffed up with vainglory, pretend that they ask, in order really to show off the knowledge which they perfectly possess. For it is an impossibility for one, who takes to the pursuit of reading with the purpose of gaining the praise of men, to be rewarded with the gift of true knowledge. For one who is bound by the chain of this passion, is sure to be also in bondage to other faults, and especially to that of pride: and so if he is baffled by his encounter with practical and ethical knowledge, he will certainly not attain that spiritual knowledge which springs from it. Be then in all things "swift to hear, but slow to speak," [1887] lest there come upon you that which is noted by Solomon: "If thou seest a man who is quick to speak, know that there is more hope of a fool than of him;" [1888] and do not presume to teach any one in words what you have not already performed in deed. For our Lord taught us by His own example that we ought to keep to this order, as of Him it is said: "what Jesus began to do and to teach." [1889] Take care then that you do not rush into teaching before doing, and so be reckoned among the number of those of whom the Lord speaks in the gospel to the disciples: "What they say unto you, that observe and do, but not after their words: for they say and do not. But they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers." [1890] For if he who shall "break one of these commands, and shall teach men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven," [1891] it follows that one who has dared to despise many and greater commands and to teach men so, shall certainly be considered not least in the kingdom of heaven, but greatest in the punishment of hell. And therefore you must be careful not to be led on to teach by the example of those who have attained some skill in discussion and readiness in speech and because they can discourse on what they please elegantly and fully, are imagined to possess spiritual knowledge, by those who do not know how to distinguish its real force and character. For it is one thing to have a ready tongue and elegant language, and quite another to penetrate into the very heart and marrow of heavenly utterances and to gaze with pure eye of the soul on profound and hidden mysteries; for this can be gained by no learning of man's, nor condition of this world, only by purity of soul, by means of the illumination of the Holy Ghost. __________________________________________________________________
[1884] S. Matt. v. 8.
[1885] Dan. xii. 3; Hos. x. 12.
[1886] Ps. cxviii. (cxix.) 104; c. (ci.) 1, 2.
[1887] S. James i. 19.
[1888] Prov. xxix. 20 (lxx.).
[1889] Acts i. 1.
[1890] S. Matt. xxiii. 3, 4.
[1891] S. Matt. v. 19. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter X.
How to embrace the system of true knowledge.
You must then, if you want to get at the true knowledge of the Scriptures, endeavour first to secure steadfast humility of heart, to carry you on by the perfection of love not to the knowledge which puffeth up, but to that which enlightens. For it is an impossibility for an impure mind to gain the gift of spiritual knowledge. And therefore with every possible care avoid this, lest through your zeal for reading there arise in you not the light of knowledge nor the lasting glory which is promised through the light that comes from learning but only the instruments of your destruction from vain arrogance. Next you must by all means strive to get rid of all anxiety and worldly thoughts, and give yourself over assiduously or rather continuously, to sacred reading, until continual meditation fills your heart, and fashions you so to speak after its own likeness, making of it, in a way, an ark of the testimony, [1892] which has within it two tables of stone, i.e., the constant assurance of the two testaments; [1893] and a golden pot, i.e., a pure and undefiled memory which preserves by a constant tenacity the manna stored up in it, i.e., the enduring and heavenly sweetness of the spiritual sense and the bread of angels; moreover also the rod of Aaron, i.e., the saving standard of Jesus Christ our true High Priest, that ever buds with the freshness of immortal memory. For this is the rod which after it had been cut from the root of Jesse, died and flourished again with a more vigorous life. But all these are guarded by two Cherubim, i.e., the fulness of historical and spiritual knowledge. For the Cherubim mean a multitude of knowledge: and these continually protect the mercy seat of God, i.e., the peace of your heart, and overshadow it from all the assaults of spiritual wickedness. And so your soul will be carried forward not only to the ark of the Divine Covenant, but also to the priestly kingdom, and owing to its unbroken love of purity being as it were engrossed in spiritual studies, will fulfil the command given to the priests, enjoined as follows by the giver of the Law: "And he shall not go forth from the sanctuary, lest he pollute the Sanctuary of God," [1894] i.e., his heart, in which the Lord promised that he would ever dwell, saying: "I will dwell in them and will walk among them." [1895] Wherefore the whole series of the Holy Scriptures should be diligently committed to memory and ceaselessly repeated. For this continual meditation will bring us a twofold fruit: first, that while the attention of the mind is taken up in reading and preparing the lessons it cannot possibly be taken captive in any snares of bad thoughts: next that those things which were conned over and frequently repeated and which while we were trying to commit them to memory we could not understand as the mind was at that time taken up, we can afterward see more clearly, when we are free from the distraction of all acts and visions, and especially when we reflect on them in silence in our meditation by night. So that when we are at rest, and as it were plunged in the stupor of sleep, there is revealed to us the understanding of the most secret meanings, of which in our waking hours we had not the remotest conception. __________________________________________________________________
[1892] Cf. Heb. ix. 4, 5.
[1893] Instrumentum is a favourite word with Tertullian, who uses it more than once of the two Testaments, e.g., Apol. xix.; and, Against Marcion iv. where he speaks of the "Two Instruments, or, as it is usual to speak of the Two Testaments."
[1894] Lev. xxi. 12.
[1895] 2 Cor. v. 16. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XI.
Of the manifold meaning of the Holy Scriptures.
But as the renewal of our soul grows by means of this study, Scripture also will begin to put on a new face, and the beauty of the holier meanings will somehow grow with our growth. For their form is adapted to the capacity of man's understanding, and will appear earthly to carnal people, and divine to spiritual ones, so that those to whom it formerly appeared to be involved in thick clouds, cannot apprehend its subtleties nor endure its light. But to make this which we are aiming at somewhat clearer by an instance, it will be enough to produce a single passage of the law, by which we can prove that all the heavenly commands as well are applied to men in accordance with the measure of our state. For it is written in the law: "Thou shalt not commit adultery." [1896] This is rightly observed according to the simple meaning of the letter, by a man who is still in bondage to foul passions. But by one who has already forsaken these dirty acts and impure affections, it must be observed in the spirit, so that he may forsake not only the worship of idols but also all heathen superstitions and the observance of auguries and omens and all signs and days and times, or at any rate that he be not entangled in the conjectures of words and names which destroy the simplicity of our faith. For by fornication of this kind we read that Jerusalem was defiled, as she committed adultery "on every high hill and under every green tree," [1897] whom also the Lord rebuked by the prophet, saying: "Let now the astrologers stand and save thee, they that gazed at the stars and counted the months, that from them they might tell the things that shall come to thee," [1898] of which fornication elsewhere also the Lord says in rebuking them: "The spirit of fornication deceived them, and they went a whoring from their God." [1899] But one who has forsaken both these kinds of fornication, will have a third kind to avoid, which is contained in the superstitions of the law and of Judaism; of which the Apostle says: "Ye observe days and months and times and years;" and again: Touch not, taste not, handle not." [1900] And there is no doubt that this is said of the superstitions of the law, into which one who has fallen has certainly gone a whoring from Christ, and is not worthy to hear this from the Apostle: "For I have espoused you to one husband, to exhibit you as a chaste virgin to Christ." [1901] But this that follows will be directed to him by the words of the same Apostle: "But I am afraid lest as the serpent by his cunning deceived Eve, so your minds should be corrupted and fall from the simplicity which is in Christ Jesus." [1902] But if one has escaped the uncleanness even of this fornication there will still be a fourth, which is committed by adulterous intercourse with heretical teaching. Of which too the blessed Apostle speaks: "I know that after my departure grievous wolves shall enter in among you, not sparing the flock, and of yourselves also shall arise men speaking perverse things so as to lead astray the disciples after them." [1903] But if a man has succeeded in avoiding even this, let him beware lest he fall by a more subtle sin into the guilt of fornication. I mean that which consists in wandering thoughts, because every thought which is not only shameful but even idle, and departing in however small a degree from God is regarded by the perfect man as the foulest fornication. __________________________________________________________________
[1896] Exod. xx. 14.
[1897] Jer. iii. 6.
[1898] Is. xlvii. 13.
[1899] Hos. iv. 12.
[1900] Gal. iv. 10; Col. ii. 21.
[1901] 2 Cor. xi. 2.
[1902] Ib. ver. 3.
[1903] Acts xx. 29, 30. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XII.
A question how we can attain to forgetfulness of the cares of this world.
Upon this I was at first moved by a secret emotion, and then groaned deeply and said, All these things which you have set forth so fully have affected me with still greater despair than that which I had previously endured: as besides those general captivities of the soul whereby I doubt not that weak people are smitten from without, a special hindrance to salvation is added by that knowledge of literature which I seem already to have in some slight measure attained, in which the efforts of my tutor, or my attention to continual reading have so weakened me that now my mind is filled with those songs of the poets so that even at the hour of prayer it is thinking about those trifling fables, and the stories of battles with which from its earliest infancy it was stored by its childish lessons: and when singing Psalms or asking forgiveness of sins either some wanton recollection of the poems intrudes itself or the images of heroes fighting presents itself before the eyes, and an imagination of such phantoms is always tricking me and does not suffer my soul to aspire to an insight into things above, so that this cannot be got rid of by my daily lamentations. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIII.
Of the method by which we can remove the dross from our memory.
Nesteros: From this very fact, from which there springs up for you the utmost despair of your purification, a speedy and effectual remedy may arise if only you will transfer to the reading of and meditation upon the writings of the Spirit, the same diligence and earnestness which you say that you showed in those secular studies of yours. For your mind is sure to be taken up with those poems until it is gaining with the same zeal and assiduity other matters for it to reflect upon, and is in labour with spiritual and divine things instead of unprofitable earthly ones. But when these are thoroughly and entirely conceived and it has been nourished upon them, then by degrees the former thoughts can be expelled and utterly got rid of. For the mind of man cannot be emptied of all thoughts, and so as long as it is not taken up with spiritual interests, is sure to be occupied with what it learnt long since. For as long as it has nothing to recur to and exercise itself upon unweariedly, it is sure to fall back upon what it learnt in childhood, and ever to think about what it took in by long use and meditation. In order then that this spiritual knowledge may be strengthened in you with a lasting steadfastness, and that you may not enjoy it only for a time like those who just touch it not by their own exertions but at the recital of another, and if I may use the expression, perceive its scent in the air; but that it may be laid up in your heart, and deeply noted in it, and thoroughly seen and handled, it is well for you to use the utmost care in securing that, even if perhaps you hear things that you know very well produced in the Conference, you do not regard them in a scornful and disdainful way because you already know them, but that you lay them to your heart with the same eagerness, with which the words of salvation which we are longing for ought to be constantly poured into our ears or should ever proceed from our lips. For although the narration of holy things be often repeated, yet in a mind that feels a thirst for true knowledge the satiety will never create disgust, but as it receives it every day as if it were something new and what it wanted however often it may have taken it in, it will so much the more eagerly either hear or speak, and from the repetition of these things will gain confirmation of the knowledge it already possesses, rather than weariness of any sort from the frequent Conference. For it is a sure sign of a mind that is cold and proud, if it receives with disdain and carelessness the medicine of the words of salvation, although it be offered with the zeal of excessive persistence. For "a soul that is full jeers at honeycomb: but to a soul that is in want even little things appear sweet." [1904] And so if these things have been carefully taken in and stored up in the recesses of the soul and stamped with the seal of silence, afterwards like some sweet scented wine that maketh glad the heart of man, they will, when mellowed by the antiquity of the thoughts and by long-standing patience, be brought forth from the jar of your heart with great fragrance, and like some perennial fountain will flow abundantly from the veins of experience and irrigating channels of virtue and will pour forth copious streams as if from some deep well in your heart. For that will happen in your case, which is spoken in Proverbs to one who has achieved this in his work: "Drink waters from your own cisterns and from the fount of your own wells. Let waters from your own fountain flow in abundance for you, but let your waters pass through into your streets." [1905] And according to the prophet Isaiah: "Thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a fountain of water whose waters shall not fail. And the places that have been desolate for ages shall be built in thee; thou shalt raise up the foundations of generation and generation; and thou shalt be called the repairer of the fences, turning the paths into rest." [1906] And that blessedness shall come upon thee which the same prophet promises: "And the Lord will not cause thy teacher to flee away from thee any more, and thine eyes shall see thy teacher. And thine ears shall hear the word of one admonishing thee behind thy back: This is the way, walk ye in it, and go not aside either to the right hand or to the left." [1907] And so it will come to pass that not only every purpose and thought of your heart, but also all the wanderings and rovings of your imagination will become to you a holy and unceasing pondering of the Divine law. __________________________________________________________________
[1904] Prov. xxvii. 7.
[1905] Prov. v. 15, 16.
[1906] Is. lviii. 11, 12.
[1907] Is. xxx. 20, 21. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIV.
How an unclean soul can neither give nor receive spiritual knowledge.
But it is, as we have already said, impossible for a novice either to understand or to teach this. For if one is incapable of receiving it how can he be fit to pass it on to another? But if he has had the audacity to teach anything on these matters, most certainly his words will be idle and useless and only reach the ears of his hearers, without being able to touch their hearts, uttered as they were in sheer idleness and unfruitful vanity, for they do not proceed from the treasure of a good conscience, but from the empty impertinence of boastfulness. For it is impossible for an impure soul (however earnestly it may devote itself to reading) to obtain spiritual knowledge. For no one pours any rich ointment or fine honey or any precious liquid into a dirty and stinking vessel. For a jar that has once been filled with foul odours spoils the sweetest myrrh more readily than it receives any sweetness or grace from it, for what is pure is corrupted much more quickly than what is corrupt is purified. And so the vessel of our bosom unless it has first been purified from all the foul stains of sin will not be worthy to receive that blessed ointment of which it is said by the prophet: "Like the ointment upon the head, which ran down upon the beard of Aaron, which ran down upon the edge of his garment," [1908] nor will it keep undefiled that spiritual knowledge and the words of Scripture which are "sweeter than honey and the honeycomb." [1909] "For what share hath righteousness with iniquity? or what agreement hath light with darkness? or what concord has Christ with Belial?" [1910] __________________________________________________________________
[1908] Ps. cxxxii. (cxxxiii.) 2.
[1909] Ps. xviii. (xix.) 11.
[1910] 2 Cor. vi. 14, 15. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XV.
An objection owing to the fact that many impure persons have knowledge while saints have not.
Germanus: This assertion does not seem to us founded on truth, or based on solid reasoning. For if it is clear that all who either never receive the faith of Christ at all or who corrupt it by the wicked sin of heresy, are of unclean hearts, how is it that many Jews and heretics, and Catholics also who are entangled in various sins, have acquired perfect knowledge of the Scriptures and boast of the greatness of their spiritual learning, and on the other hand countless swarms of saintly men, whose heart has been purified from all stain of sin, are content with the piety of simple faith and know nothing of the mysteries of a deeper knowledge? How then will that opinion stand, which attributes spiritual knowledge solely to purity of heart? __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVI.
The answer to the effect that bad men cannot possess true knowledge.
Nesteros: One who does not carefully weigh every word of the opinions uttered cannot rightly discover the value of the assertion. For we said to begin with that men of this sort only possess skill in disputation and ornaments of speech; but cannot penetrate to the very heart of Scripture and the mysteries of its spiritual meanings. For true knowledge is only acquired by true worshippers of God; and certainly this people does not possess it to whom it is said: "Hear, O, foolish people, thou who hast no heart: ye who having eyes see not, and having ears, hear not." And again: "Because thou hast rejected knowledge, I also will reject thee from acting as My priest." [1911] For as it is said that in Christ "all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hid," [1912] how can we hold that he who has scorned to find Christ, or, when He is found blasphemes Him with impious lips, or at least defiles the Catholic faith by his impure deeds, has acquired spiritual knowledge? "For the Spirit of God will avoid deception, and dwelleth not in a body that is subject to sin." [1913] There is then no way of arriving at spiritual knowledge but this which one of the prophets has finely described: "Sow to yourselves for righteousness: reap the hope of life. Enlighten yourselves with the light of knowledge." [1914] First then we must sow for righteousness, i.e., by works of righteousness we must extend practical perfection; next we must reap the hope of life, i.e., by the expulsion of carnal sins must gather the fruits of spiritual virtues: and so we shall succeed in enlightening ourselves with the light of knowledge. And the Psalmist also sees that this system ought to be followed, when he says: "Blessed are they that are undefiled in the way: who walk in the law of the Lord. Blessed are they that seek His testimonies." [1915] For he does not say in the first place: "Blessed are they that seek His testimonies, and afterwards add: Blessed are they that are undefiled in the way;" but he begins by saying: "Blessed are they that are undefiled in the way;" and by this clearly shows that no one can properly come to seek God's testimonies unless he first walks undefiled in the way of Christ by his practical life. Those therefore whom you mentioned do not possess that knowledge which the impure cannot attain, but pseudonumon , i.e., what is falsely so called, of which the blessed Apostle speaks: "O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thee, avoiding profane novelties of words, and oppositions of the knowledge that is falsely so called;" [1916] which is in the Greek tas antitheseis tes pseudonumou gnoseos. Of those then who seem to acquire some show of knowledge or of those who while they devote themselves diligently to reading the sacred volume and to committing the Scriptures to memory, yet forsake not carnal sins, it is well said in Proverbs: "Like as a golden ring in a swine's snout so is the beauty of an evil-disposed woman." [1917] For what does it profit a man to gain the ornaments of heavenly eloquence and the most precious beauty of the Scriptures if by clinging to filthy deeds and thoughts he destroys it by burying it in the foulest ground, or defiles it by the dirty wallowing of his own lusts? For the result will be that which is an ornament to those who rightly use it, is not only unable to adorn them, but actually becomes dirty by the increased filth and mud. For "from the mouth of a sinner praise is not comely;" [1918] as to him it is said by the prophet: "Wherefore dost thou declare My righteous acts, and takest My covenant in thy lips?" [1919] of souls like this, who never possess in any lasting fashion the fear of the Lord of which it is said: "the fear of the Lord is instruction and wisdom," [1920] and yet try to get at the meaning of Scripture by continual meditation on them, it is appropriately asked in Proverbs: "What use are riches to a fool? For a senseless man cannot possess wisdom." [1921] But so far is this true and spiritual knowledge removed from that worldly erudition, which is defiled by the stains of carnal sins, that we know that it has sometimes flourished most grandly in some who were without eloquence and almost illiterate. And this is very clearly shown by the case of the Apostles and many holy men, who did not spread themselves out with an empty show of leaves, but were bowed down by the weight of the true fruits of spiritual knowledge: of whom it is written in the Acts of the Apostles: "But when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were ignorant and unlearned men, they were astonished." [1922] And therefore if you are anxious to attain to that never-failing fragrance, you must first strive with all your might to obtain from the Lord the purity of chastity. For no one, in whom the love of carnal passions and especially of fornication still holds sway, can acquire spiritual knowledge. For "in a good heart wisdom will rest;" and: "He that feareth the Lord shall find knowledge with righteousness." [1923] But that we must attain to spiritual knowledge in the order of which we have already spoken, we are taught also by the blessed Apostle. For when he wanted not merely to draw up a list of all his own virtues, but rather to describe their order, that he might explain which follows what, and which gives birth to what, after some others he proceeds as follows: "In watchings, in fastings, in chastity, in knowledge, in long suffering, in gentleness, in the Holy Ghost, in love unfeigned." [1924] And by this enumeration of virtues he evidently meant to teach us that we must come from watchings and fastings to chastity, from chastity to knowledge, from knowledge to long suffering, from long suffering to gentleness, from gentleness to the Holy Ghost, from the Holy Ghost to the rewards of love unfeigned. When then by this system and in this order you too have come to spiritual knowledge, you will certainly have, as we said, not barren or idle learning but what is vigorous and fruitful; and the seed of the word of salvation which has been committed by you to the hearts of your hearers, will be watered by the plentiful showers of the Holy Ghost that will follow; and, according to this that the prophet promised, "the rain will be given to your seed, wherever you shall sow in the land, and the bread of the corn of the land shall be most plentiful and fat." [1925] __________________________________________________________________
[1911] Jer. v. 21; Hos. iv. 6.
[1912] Col. ii. 3.
[1913] Wisd. i. 4, 5.
[1914] Hos. x. 12.
[1915] Ps. cxviii. (cxix.) 1, 2.
[1916] 1 Tim. vi. 20.
[1917] Prov. xi. 22.
[1918] Ecclus. xv. 9.
[1919] Ps. xlix. (l.) 16.
[1920] Prov. xv. 33.
[1921] Prov. xvii. 16.
[1922] Acts iv. 13.
[1923] Prov. xiv. 33; Ecclus. xxxii. 20.
[1924] 2 Cor. vi. 5, 6.
[1925] Is. xxx. 23. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVII.
To whom the method of perfection should be laid open.
Take care too, when your riper age leads you to teach, lest you be led astray by the love of vainglory, and teach at random to the most impure persons these things which you have learnt not so much by reading as by the effects of experience, and so incur what Solomon, that wisest of men, denounced: "Attach not a wicked man to the pastures of the just, and be not led astray by the fulness of the belly," for "delicacies are not good for a fool, nor is there room for wisdom where sense is wanting: for folly is the more led on, because a stubborn servant is not improved by words, for even though he understands, he will not obey." And "Do not say anything in the ears of an imprudent man, lest haply he mock at thy wise speeches." [1926] And "give not that which is holy to dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest haply they trample them under foot and turn again and rend you." [1927] It is right then to hide the mysteries of spiritual meanings from men of this sort, that you may effectually sing: "Thy words have I hid within my heart: that I should not sin against Thee." [1928] But you will perhaps say: And to whom are the mysteries of Holy Scripture to be dispensed? Solomon, the wisest of men, shall teach you: "Give, says he, strong drink to those who are in sorrow, and give wine to drink, to those who are in pain, that they may forget their poverty, and remember their pain no more," [1929] i.e., to those who in consequence of the punishment of their past actions are oppressed with grief and sorrow, supply richly the joys of spiritual knowledge like "wine that maketh glad the heart of man," [1930] and restore them with the strong drink of the word of salvation, lest haply they be plunged in continual sorrow and a despair that brings death, and so those who are of this sort be "swallowed up in overmuch sorrow." [1931] But of those who remain in coldness and carelessness, and are smitten by no sorrow of heart we read as follows: "For one who is kindly and without sorrow, shall be in want." [1932] With all possible care therefore avoid being puffed up with the love of vainglory, and so failing to become a partaker with him whom the prophet praises, "who hath not given his money upon usury." [1933] For every one who, from love of the praise of men dispenses the words of God, of which it is said "the words of the Lord are pure words, as silver tried by the fire, purged from the earth, refined seven times," [1934] puts out his money upon usury, and will deserve for this not merely no reward, but rather punishment. For this reason he chose to use up his Lord's money that he might be the garner from a temporal profit, and not that the Lord, as it is written, might "when He comes, receive His own with usury." [1935] __________________________________________________________________
[1926] Prov. xxiv. 15; xix. 10; xviii. 2; xxix. 19; xxiii. 9 (LXX.).
[1927] S. Matt. vii. 6.
[1928] Ps. cxviii. (cxix.) 11.
[1929] Prov. xxxi. 6, 7.
[1930] Ps. ciii. (civ.) 15.
[1931] 2 Cor. ii. 7.
[1932] Prov. xiv. 23.
[1933] Ps. xiv. (xv.) 5.
[1934] Ps. xi. (xii.) 7.
[1935] S. Matt. xxv. 27. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVIII.
Of the reasons for which spiritual learning is unfruitful.
But it is certain that for two reasons the teaching of spiritual things is ineffectual. For either the teacher is commending what he has no experience of, and is trying with empty-sounding words to instruct his hearer, or else the hearer is a bad man and full of faults and cannot receive in his hard heart the holy and saving doctrine of the spiritual man; and of these it is said by the prophet: "For the heart of this people is blinded, and their ears are dull of hearing and their eyes have they closed: lest at any time they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart and be converted and I should heal them." [1936] __________________________________________________________________
[1936] Is. vi. 10. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIX.
How often even those who are not worthy can receive the grace of the saving word.
But sometimes in the lavish generosity of God in His Providence, "Who willeth all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth," [1937] it is granted that one who has not shown himself by an irreproachable life to be worthy of the preaching of the gospel attains the grace of spiritual teaching for the good of many. But by what means the gifts of healing are granted by the Lord for the expulsion of devils it follows that we must in a similar discussion explain, which as we are going to rise for supper we will keep for the evening, because that is always more effectually grasped by the heart which is taken in by degrees and without excessive bodily efforts. __________________________________________________________________
[1937] 1 Tim. ii. 4. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
XV. The Second Conference of Abbot Nesteros.
On Divine Gifts. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter I.
Discourse of Abbot Nesteros on the threefold system of gifts.
After evening service we sat down together on the mats as usual ready for the promised narration: and when we had kept silence for some little time out of reverence for the Elder, he anticipated the silence of our respect by such words as these. The previous order of our discourse had brought us to the exposition of the system of spiritual gifts, which we have learnt from the tradition of the Elders is a threefold one. The first indeed is for the sake of healing, when the grace of signs accompanies certain elect and righteous men on account of the merits of their holiness, as it is clear that the apostles and many of the saints wrought signs and wonders in accordance with the authority of the Lord Who says: "Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out devils: freely ye have received, freely give." [1938] The second when for the edification of the church or on account of the faith of those who bring their sick, or of those who are to be cured, the virtue of health proceeds even from sinners and men unworthy of it. Of whom the Saviour says in the gospel: "Many shall say to Me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Thy name, and in Thy name cast out devils, and in Thy name done many mighty works? And then I will confess to them, I never knew you: Depart from Me, ye workers of iniquity." [1939] And on the other hand, if the faith of those who bring them or of the sick is wanting, it prevents those on whom the gifts of healing are conferred from exercising their powers of healing. On which subject Luke the Evangelist says: "And Jesus could not there do any mighty work because of their unbelief." [1940] Whence also the Lord Himself says: "Many lepers were in Israel in the days of Elisha the prophet, and none of them was cleansed but Naaman the Syrian." [1941] The third method of healing is copied by the deceit and contrivance of devils, that, when a man who is enslaved to evident sins is out of admiration for his miracles regarded as a saint and a servant of God, men may be persuaded to copy his sins and thus an opening being made for cavilling, the sanctity of religion may be brought into disgrace, or else that he, who believes that he possesses the gift of healing, may be puffed up by pride of heart and so fall more grievously. Hence it is that invoking the names of those, who, as they know, have no merits of holiness or any spiritual fruits, they pretend that by their merits they are disturbed and made to flee from the bodies they have possessed. Of which it says in Deuteronomy: "If there rise up in the midst of thee a prophet, or one who says that he has seen a dream, and declare a sign and a wonder, and that which he hath spoken cometh to pass, and he say to thee: Let us go and follow after other gods whom thou knowest not, and let us serve them: thou shalt not hear the words of that prophet or of that dreamer, for the Lord thy God is tempting thee that it may appear whether thou lovest Him or not, with all thy heart and with all thy soul." [1942] And in the gospel it says: "There shall arise false Christs and false prophets, and shall give great signs and wonders, so that, if it were possible, even the elect should be led astray." [1943] __________________________________________________________________
[1938] S. Matt. x. 8.
[1939] S. Matt. vii. 22, 23.
[1940] S. Mark vi. 5, 6.
[1941] S. Luke iv. 27.
[1942] Deut. xiii. 1-3.
[1943] S. Matt. xxiv. 24. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter II.
Wherein one ought to admire the saints.
Wherefore we never ought to admire those who affect these things, for these powers, but rather to look whether they are perfect in driving out all sins, and amending their ways, for this is granted to each man not for the faith of some other, or for a variety of reasons, but for his own earnestness, by the action of God's grace. For this is practical knowledge which is termed by another name by the Apostle; viz., love, and is by the authority of the Apostle preferred to all tongues of men and of angels, and to full assurance of faith which can even remove mountains, and to all knowledge, and prophecy, and to the distribution of all one's goods, and finally to the glory of martyrdom itself. For when he had enumerated all kinds of gifts and had said: "To one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom, to another the word of knowledge, to another faith, to another the gift of healing, to another the working of miracles, etc.:" [1944] when he was going to speak about love notice how in a few words he put it before all gifts: "And yet," he says, "I show unto you a still more excellent way." [1945] By which it is clearly shown that the height of perfection and blessedness does not consist in the performance of those wonderful works but in the purity of love. And this not without good reason. For all those things are to pass away and be destroyed, but love is to abide for ever. And so we have never found that those works and signs were affected by our fathers: nay, rather when they did possess them by the grace of the Holy Spirit they would never use them, unless perhaps extreme and unavoidable necessity drove them to do so. __________________________________________________________________
[1944] 1 Cor. xii. 8-10.
[1945] 1 Cor. xii. 31. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter III.
Of a dead man raised to life by Abbot Macarius.
As also we remember that a dead man was raised to life by Abbot Macarius who was the first to find a home in the desert of Scete. [1946] For when a certain heretic who followed the error of Eunomius was trying by dialectic subtlety to destroy the simplicity of the Catholic faith, and had already deceived a large number of men, the blessed Macarius was asked by some Catholics, who were terribly disturbed by the horror of such an upset, to set free the simple folk of all Egypt from the peril of infidelity, and came for this purpose. And when the heretic had approached him with his dialectic art, and wanted to drag him away in his ignorance to the thorns of Aristotle, the blessed Macarius put a stop to his chatter with apostolic brevity, saying: "the kingdom of God is not in word but in power." [1947] Let us go therefore to the tombs, and let us invoke the name of the Lord over the first dead man we find, and let us, as it is written, "show our faith by our works," [1948] that by His testimony the manifest proofs of a right faith may be shown, and we may prove the clear truth not by an empty discussion of words but by the power of miracles and that judgment which cannot be deceived. And when he heard this the heretic was overwhelmed with shame before the people who were present, and pretended for the moment that he consented to the terms proposed, and promised that he would come on the morrow, but the next day when they were all in expectation who had come together with greater eagerness to the appointed place, owing to their desire for the spectacle, he was terrified by the consciousness of his want of faith, and fled away, and at once escaped out of all Egypt. And when the blessed Macarius had waited together with the people till the ninth hour, and saw that he had owing to his guilty conscience avoided him, he took the people, who had been perverted by him and went to the tombs determined upon. Now in Egypt the overflow of the river Nile has introduced this custom that, since the whole breadth of that country is covered for no small part of the year by the regular flood of waters like a great sea so that there is no means of getting about except by a passage in boats, the bodies of the dead are embalmed and stored away in cells an good height up. For the soil of that land being damp from the continual moisture prevents them from burying them. For if it receives any bodies buried in it, it is forced by the excessive inundations to cast them forth on its surface. When then the blessed Macarius had taken up his position by a most ancient corpse, he said "O man, if that heretic and son of perdition had come hither with me, and, while he was standing by, I had exclaimed and invoked the name of Christ my God, say in the presence of these who were almost perverted by his fraud, whether you would have arisen." Then he arose and replied with words of assent. And then Abbot Macarius asked him what he had formerly been when he enjoyed life here, or in what age of men he had lived, or if he had then known the name of Christ, and he replied that he had lived under kings of most ancient date, and declared that in those days he had never heard the name of Christ. To whom once more Abbot Macarius: "Sleep," said he, "in peace with the others in your own order, to be roused again by Christ in the end." All this power then and grace of his which was in him would perhaps have always been hidden, unless the needs of the whole province which was endangered, and his entire devotion to Christ, and unfeigned love, had forced him to perform this miracle. And certainly it was not the ostentation of glory but the love of Christ and the good of all the people that wrung from him the performance of it. As the passage in the book of Kings shows us that the blessed Elijah also did, who asked that fire might descend from heaven on the sacrifices laid on the pyre, for this reason that he might set free the faith of the whole people which was endangered by the tricks of the false prophets. __________________________________________________________________
[1946] This was the "Egyptian," not the "Alexandrian" Macarius. See the note on the Institutes, V. xli. The story is also given by Rufinus, History of the Monks, c. xxviii.; as well as Sozomen, H.E. III. xiv., and by both of these writers is expressly ascribed to the Egyptian Macarius.
[1947] 1 Cor. iv. 20.
[1948] Cf. S. James ii. 14. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IV.
Of the miracle which Abbot Abraham wrought on the breasts of a woman.
Why also need I mention the acts of Abbot Abraham, [1949] who was surnamed haplous, i.e., the simple, from the simplicity of his life and his innocence. This man when he had gone from the desert to Egypt for the harvest in the season of Quinquagesima [1950] was pestered with tears and prayers by a woman who brought her little child, already pining away and half dead from lack of milk; he gave her a cup of water to drink signed with the sign of the cross; and when she had drunk it at once most marvellously her breasts that had been till then utterly dry flowed with a copious abundance of milk. __________________________________________________________________
[1949] Possibly the same person as the author of Conference xxiv., but nothing further appears to be known of him.
[1950] i.e. the fifty days from Easter to Whitsuntide; cf. the note on the Institutes, II. xviii. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter V.
Of the cure of a lame man which the same saint wrought.
Or when the same man as he went to a village was surrounded by mocking crowds, who sneered at him and showed him a man who was for many years deprived of the power of walking from a contracted knee, and crawled from a weakness of long standing, they tempted him and said, "Show us, father Abraham, if you are the servant of God, and restore this man to his former health, that we may believe that the name of Christ, whom you worship, is not vain." Then he at once invoked the name of Christ, and stooped down and laid hold of the man's withered foot and pulled it. And immediately at his touch the dried and bent knee was straightened, and he got back the use of his legs, which he had forgotten how to use in his long years of weakness, and went away rejoicing. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VI.
How the merits of each man should not be judged by his miracles.
And so these men gave no credit to themselves for their power of working such wonders, because they confessed that they were done not by their own merits but by the compassion of the Lord and with the words of the Apostle they refused the human honour offered out of admiration for their miracles: "Men and brethren, why marvel ye at this, or why look ye on us as though by our own power or holiness we had caused this man to walk." [1951] Nor did they think that any one should be renowned for the gifts and marvels of God, but rather for the fruits of his own good deeds, which are brought about by the efforts of his mind and the power of his works. For often, as was said above, men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the truth, both cast out devils and perform the greatest miracles in the name of the Lord. Of whom when the Apostles complained and said: "Master, we saw one casting out devils in Thy name, and we forbade him because he followeth not with us," though for the present Christ replied to them "Forbid him not, for he that is not against you is for you," [1952] still when they say at the end: "Lord, Lord, have we not in Thy name prophesied, and in Thy name cast out devils, and in Thy name done many mighty works?" He testifies that then He will answer: "I never knew you: depart from me, ye workers of iniquity." [1953] And therefore He actually warns those, to whom He Himself has given this glory of miracles and mighty works because of their holiness, that they be not puffed up by them, saying: "Rejoice not because the devils are subject to you, but rejoice rather because your names are written in heaven." [1954] __________________________________________________________________
[1951] Acts iii. 12.
[1952] S. Luke ix. 49, 50.
[1953] S. Matt. vii. 22, 23.
[1954] S. Luke x. 20. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VII.
How the excellence of gifts consists not in miracles but in humility.
Finally the Author Himself of all miracles and mighty works, when He called His disciples to learn His teaching, clearly showed what those true and specially chosen followers ought chiefly to learn from Him, saying: "Come and learn of Me," not chiefly to cast out devils by the power of heaven, not to cleanse the lepers, not to give sight to the blind, not to raise the dead: for even though I do these things by some of My servants, yet man's estate cannot insert itself into the praises of God, nor can a minister and servant gather hereby any portion for himself there where is the glory of Deity alone. But do ye, says He, learn this of Me, "for I am meek and lowly of heart." [1955] For this it is which it is possible for all men generally to learn and practise, but the working of miracles and signs is not always necessary, nor good for all, nor granted to all. Humility therefore is the mistress of all virtues, it is the surest foundation of the heavenly building, it is the special and splendid gift of the Saviour. For he can perform all the miracles which Christ wrought, without danger of being puffed up, who follows the gentle Lord not in the grandeur of His miracles, but in the virtues of patience and humility. But he who aims at commanding unclean spirits, or bestowing gifts of healing, or showing some wonderful miracle to the people, even though when he is showing off he invokes the name of Christ, yet he is far from Christ, because in his pride of heart he does not follow his humble Teacher. For when He was returning to the Father, He prepared, so to speak, His will and left this to His disciples: "A new commandment," said He, "give I unto you that ye love one another; as I have loved you, so do ye also love one another:" and at once He subjoined: "By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye have love to one another." [1956] He says not: "if ye do signs and miracles in the same way," but "if ye have love to one another;" and this it is certain that none but the meek and humble can keep. Wherefore our predecessors never reckoned those as good monks or free from the fault of vainglory, who professed themselves exorcists among men, and proclaimed with boastful ostentation among admiring crowds the grace which they had either obtained or which they claimed. But in vain, for "he who trusteth in lies feedeth the winds: and the same runneth after birds that fly away." [1957] For without doubt that will happen to them which we find in Proverbs: "As the winds and clouds and rain are very clear so are these who boast of a fictitious gift." [1958] And so if any one does any of these things in our presence, he ought to meet with commendation from us not from admiration of his miracles, but from the beauty of his life, nor should we ask whether the devils are subject to him, but whether he possesses those features of love which the Apostle describes. __________________________________________________________________
[1955] S. Matt. xi. 28, 29.
[1956] S. John xiii. 34, 35.
[1957] Prov. x. 4.
[1958] Prov. xxv. 14. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VIII.
How it is more wonderful to have cast out one's faults from one's self than devils from another.
And in truth it is a greater miracle to root out from one's own flesh the incentives to wantonness than to cast out unclean spirits from the bodies of others, and it is a grander sign to restrain the fierce passions of anger by the virtue of patience than to command the powers of the air, and it is a greater thing to have shut out the devouring pangs of gloominess from one's own heart than to have expelled the sickness of another and the fever of his body. Finally it is in many ways a grander virtue and a more splendid achievement to cure the weaknesses' of one's own soul than those of the body of another. For just as the soul is higher than the flesh, so is its salvation of more importance, and as its nature is more precious and excellent, so is its destruction more grievous and dangerous. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IX.
How uprightness of life is of more importance than the working of miracles.
And of those cures it was said to the blessed Apostles: "Rejoice not that the devils are subject to you." [1959] For this was wrought not by their own power, but by the might of the name invoked. And therefore they are warned not to presume to claim for themselves any blessedness or glory on this account as it was done simply by the power and might of God, but only on account of the inward purity of their life and heart, for which it was vouchsafed to them to have their names written in heaven. __________________________________________________________________
[1959] S. Luke x. 20. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter X.
A revelation on the trial of perfect chastity.
And to prove this that we have said both by the testimony of the ancients and divine oracles, we had better bring forward in his own words and experience what the blessed Paphnutius [1960] felt on the subject of admiration of miracles and the grace of purity, or rather what he learnt from the revelation of an angel. For this man had been famous for many years for his signal strictness so that he fancied that he was completely free from the snares of carnal concupiscence because he felt himself superior to all the attacks of the demons with whom he had fought openly and for a long while; and when some holy men had come to him, he was preparing for them a porridge of lentiles which they call Athera, [1961] and his hand, as it happened, was burnt in the oven, by a flame that darted up. And when this happened he was much mortified and began silently to consider with himself, and ask why was not the fire at peace with me, when my more serious contests with demons have ceased? or how will that unquenchable fire which searches out the deserts of all pass me by in that dread day of judgment, and fail to detain me, if this trivial temporal fire from without has not spared me? And as he was troubled by thoughts of this kind and vexation a sudden sleep overcame him and an angel of the Lord came to him and said: "Paphnutius, why are you vexed because that earthly fire is not yet at peace with you, while there still remains in your members some disturbance of carnal motions that is not completely removed? For as long as the roots of this flourish within you, they will not suffer that material fire to be at peace with you. And certainly you could not feel it harmless unless you found by such proofs as these that all these internal motions within you were destroyed. Go, take a naked and most beautiful virgin, and if while you hold her you find that the peace of your heart remains steadfast, and that carnal heat is still and quiet within you, then the touch of this visible flame also shall pass over you gently and without harming you as it did over the three children in Babylon." And so the Elder was impressed by this revelation and did not try the dangers of the experiment divinely shown to him, but asked his own conscience and examined the purity of his heart; and, guessing that the weight of purity was not yet sufficient to outweigh the force of this trial, it is no wonder, said he, if when the battles with unclean spirits come upon me, I still feel the flames of the fire, which I used to think of less importance than the savage attacks of demons, still raging against me. Since it is a greater virtue and a grander grace to extinguish the inward lust of the flesh than by the sign of the Lord [1962] and the power of the might of the Most High to subdue the wicked demons which rush upon one from without, or to drive them by invoking the Divine name from the bodies which they have possessed. So far Abbot Nesteros, finishing the account of the true working of the gifts of grace accompanied us to the cell of the Elder Joseph which was nearly six miles distant from his, as we were eager for instruction in his doctrine. __________________________________________________________________
[1960] Cf. the note on the Conferences III. i.
[1961] Athera. This is noticed by Pliny (Hist. Nat. xxii. 25, 57, § 121) as the Egyptian name for a decoction made from grain.
[1962] i.e. the sign of the cross. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
XVI. The First Conference of Abbot Joseph.
On Friendship. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter I.
What Abbot Joseph asked us in the first instance.
The blessed Joseph, [1963] whose instructions and precepts are now to be set forth, and who was one of the three whom we mentioned in the first Conference, [1964] belonged to a most illustrious family, and was the chief man of his city in Egypt, which was named Thmuis, [1965] and so was carefully trained in the eloquence of Greece as well as Egypt, so that he could talk admirably with us or with those who were utterly ignorant of Egyptian, not as the others did through an interpreter, but in his own person. And when he found that we were anxious for instruction from him, he first inquired whether we were own brothers, and when he heard that we were united in a tie of spiritual and not carnal brotherhood, and that from the first commencement of our renunciation of the world we had always been joined together in an unbroken bond as well in our travels, which we had both undertaken for the sake of spiritual service, as also in the pursuits of the monastery, he began his discourse as follows. __________________________________________________________________
[1963] Nothing further appears to be known of this Joseph than what Cassian here states.
[1964] viz., the first of the Second Part of the Conferences, i.e., Conference XI.
[1965] See on Conference XIV. c. iv. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter II.
Discourse of the same elder on the untrustworthy sort of friendship.
There are many kinds of friendship and companionship which unite men in very different ways in the bonds of love. For some a previous recommendation makes to enter upon an intercourse first of acquaintance and afterwards even of friendship. In the case of others some bargain or an agreement to give and take something has joined them in the bonds of love. Others a similarity and union of business or science or art or study has united in the chain of friendship, by which even fierce souls become kindly disposed to each other, so that those, who in forests and mountains delight in robbery and revel in human bloodshed, embrace and cherish the partners of their crimes. But there is another kind of love, where the union is from the instincts of nature and the laws of consanguinity, whereby those of the same tribe, wives and parents, and brothers and children are naturally preferred to others, a thing which we find is the case not only with mankind but with all birds and beasts. For at the prompting of a natural instinct they protect and defend their offspring and their young ones so that often they are not afraid to expose themselves to danger and death for their sakes. Indeed those kinds of beasts and serpents and birds, which are cut off and separated from all others by their intolerable ferocity or deadly poison, as basilisks, unicorns and vultures, though by their very look they are said to be dangerous to every one, yet among themselves they remain peaceful and harmless owing to community of origin and fellow-feeling. But we see that all these kinds of love of which we have spoken, as they are common both to the good and bad, and to beasts and serpents, certainly cannot last for ever. For often separation of place interrupts and breaks them off, as well as forgetfulness from lapse of time, and the transaction of affairs and business and words. For as they are generally due to different kinds of connexions either of gain, or desires, or kinship, or business, so when any occasion for separation intervenes they are broken off. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter III.
How friendship is indissoluble.
Among all these then there is one kind of love which is indissoluble, where the union is owing not to the favour of a recommendation, or some great kindness or gifts, or the reason of some bargain, or the necessities of nature, but simply to similarity of virtue. This, I say, is what is broken by no chances, what no interval of time or space can sever or destroy, and what even death itself cannot part. This is true and unbroken love which grows by means of the double perfection and goodness of friends, and which, when once its bonds have been entered, no difference of liking and no disturbing opposition of wishes can sever. But we have known many set on this purpose, who though they had been joined together in companionship out of their burning love for Christ, yet could not maintain it continually and unbrokenly, because although they relied on a good beginning for their friendship, yet they did not with one and the same zeal maintain the purpose on which they had entered, and so there was between them a sort of love only for a while, for it was not maintained by the goodness of both alike, but by the patience of the one party, and so although it is held to by the one with unwearied heroism, yet it is sure to be broken by the pettiness of the other. For the infirmities of those who are somewhat cold in seeking the healthy condition of perfection, however patiently they may be borne by the strong, are yet not put up with by those who are weaker themselves. For they have implanted within them causes of disturbance which do not allow them to be at ease, just as those, who are affected by bodily weakness, generally impute the delicacy of their stomach and weak health to the carelessness of their cooks and servants, and however carefully their attendants may serve them, yet nevertheless they ascribe the grounds of their upset to those who are in good health, as they do not see that they are really due to the failure of their own health. Wherefore this, as we said, is the sure and indissoluble union of friendship, where the tie consists only in likeness in goodness. For "the Lord maketh men to be of one mind in an house." [1966] And therefore love can only continue undisturbed in those in whom there is but one purpose and mind to will and to refuse the same things. And if you also wish to keep this unbroken, you must be careful that having first got rid of your faults, you mortify your own desires, and with united zeal and purpose diligently fulfil that in which the prophet specially delights: "Behold how good and joyful a thing it is for brethren to dwell together in unity." [1967] Which should be taken of unity of spirit rather than of place. For it is of no use for those who differ in character and purpose to be united in one dwelling, nor is it an hindrance for those who are grounded on equal goodness to be separated by distance of place. For with God the union of character, not of place, joins brethren together in a common dwelling, nor can unruffled peace ever be maintained where difference of will appears. __________________________________________________________________
[1966] Ps. lxvii. (lxviii.) 7.
[1967] Ps. cxxxii. (cxxxiii.) 1. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IV.
A question whether anything that is really useful should be performed even against a brother's wish.
Germanus: What then? If when one party wants to do something which he sees is useful and profitable according to the mind of God, the other does not give his consent, ought it to be performed even against the wish of the brother, or should it be thrown on one side as he wants? __________________________________________________________________
Chapter V.
The answer, how a lasting friendship can only exist among those who are perfect.
Joseph: For this reason we said that the full and perfect grace of friendship can only last among those who are perfect and of equal goodness, whose likemindedness and common purpose allows them either never, or at any rate hardly ever, to disagree, or to differ in those matters which concern their progress in the spiritual life. But if they begin to get hot with eager disputes, it is clear that they have never been at one in accordance with the rule which we gave above. But because no one can start from perfection except one who has begun from the very foundation, and your inquiring is not with regard to its greatness, but as to how you can attain to it, I think it well to explain to you, in a few words, the rule for it and the sort of path along which your steps should be directed, that you may be able more easily to secure the blessing of patience and peace. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VI.
By what means union can be preserved unbroken.
The first foundation then, of true friendship consists in contempt for worldly substance and scorn for all things that we possess. For it is utterly wrong and unjustifiable if, after the vanity of the world and all that is in it has been renounced, whatever miserable furniture remains is more regarded than what is most valuable; viz., the love of a brother. The second is for each man so to prune his own wishes that he may not imagine himself to be a wise and experienced person, and so prefer his own opinions to those of his neighbour. The third is for him to recognize that everything, even what he deems useful and necessary, must come after the blessing of love and peace. The fourth for him to realize that he should never be angry for any reason good or bad. The fifth for him to try to cure any wrath which a brother may have conceived against him however unreasonably, in the same way that he would cure his own, knowing that the vexation of another is equally bad for him, as if he himself were stirred against another, unless he removes it, to the best of his ability, from his brother's mind. The last is what is undoubtedly generally decisive in regard to all faults; viz., that he should realize daily that he is to pass away from this world; as the realization of this not only permits no vexation to linger in the heart, but also represses all the motions of lusts and sins of all kinds. Whoever then has got hold of this, can neither suffer nor be the cause of bitter wrath and discord. But when this fails, as soon as he who is jealous of love has little by little infused the poison of vexation in the hearts of friends, it is certain that owing to frequent quarrels love will gradually grow cool, and at sometime or other he will part the hearts of the lovers, that have been for a long while exasperated. For if one is walking along the course previously marked out, how can he ever differ from his friend, for if he claims nothing for himself, he entirely cuts off the first cause of quarrel (which generally springs from trivial things and most unimportant matters), as he observes to the best of his power what we read in the Acts of the Apostles on the unity of believers: "But the multitude of believers was of one heart and soul; neither did any of them say that any of the things which he possessed was his own, but they had all things common." [1968] Then how can any seeds of discussion arise from him who serves not his own but his brother's will, and becomes a follower of his Lord and Master, who speaking in the character [1969] of man which He had taken, said: "I am not come to do Mine own will, but the will of Him that sent Me?" [1970] But how can he arouse any incitement to contention, who has determined to trust not so much to his own judgment as to his brother's decision, on his own intelligence and meaning, in accordance with his will either approving or disapproving his discoveries, and fulfilling in the humility of a pious heart these words from the Gospel: "Nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou wilt." [1971] Or in what way will he admit anything which grieves the brother, who thinks that nothing is more precious than the blessing of peace, and never forgets these words of the Lord: "By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, that ye love one another;" [1972] for by this, as by a special mark, Christ willed that the flock of His sheep should be known in this world, and be separated from all others by this stamp, so to speak? But on what grounds will he endure either to admit the rancour of vexation in himself or for it to remain in another, if his firm decision is that there cannot be any good ground for anger, as it is dangerous and wrong, and that when his broker is angry with him he cannot pray, in just the same way as when he himself is angry with his brother, as he ever keeps in an humble heart these words of our Lord and Saviour: "If thou bring thy gift to the altar and there remember that thy brother hath aught against thee, leave there thy gift at the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift." [1973] For it will be of no use for you to declare that you are not angry, and to believe that you are fulfilling the command which says: "Let not the sun go down upon thy wrath;" and: "Whosoever is angry with his brother, shall be in danger of the judgment," [1974] if you are with obstinate heart disregarding the vexation of another which you could smooth down by kindness on your part. For in the same way you will be punished for violating the Lord's command. For He who said that you should not be angry with another, said also that you should not disregard the vexations of another, for it makes no difference in the sight of God, "Who willeth all men to be saved," [1975] whether you destroy yourself or someone else. Since the death of any one is equally a loss to God, and at the same time it is equally a gain to him to whom all destruction is delightful, whether it is acquired by your death or by the death of your brother. Lastly, how can he retain even the least vexation with his brother, who realizes daily that he is presently to depart from this world? __________________________________________________________________
[1968] Acts iv. 32.
[1969] Ex persona. See note on VIII. xxxv.
[1970] S. John vi. 38.
[1971] S. Matt. xxvi. 39.
[1972] S. John xiii. 35.
[1973] S. Matt. v. 23, 24.
[1974] Eph. iv. 26; S. Matt. v. 22.
[1975] 1 Tim. ii. 4. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VII.
How nothing should be put before love, or after anger.
As then nothing should be put before love, so on the other hand nothing should be put below rage and anger. For all things, however useful and necessary they seem, should yet be disregarded that disturbing anger may be avoided, and all things even which we think are unfortunate should be undertaken and endured that the calm of love and peace may be preserved unimpaired, because we should reckon nothing more damaging than anger and vexation, and nothing more advantageous than love. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VIII.
On what grounds a dispute can arise among spiritual persons.
For as our enemy separates brethren who are still weak and carnal by a sudden burst of rage on account of some trifling and earthly matter, so he sows the seeds of discord even between spiritual persons, on the ground of some difference of thoughts, from which certainly those contentions and strifes about words, which the Apostle condemns, for the most part arise: whereby consequently our spiteful and malignant enemy sows discord between brethren who were of one mind. For these words of wise Solomon are true: "Contention breeds hatred: but friendship will be a defence to all who do not strive." [1976] __________________________________________________________________
[1976] Prov. x. 12. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IX.
How to get rid even of spiritual grounds of discord.
Wherefore for the preservation of lasting and unbroken love, it is of no use to have removed the first ground of discord, which generally arises from frail and earthly things, or to have disregarded all carnal things, and to have permitted to our brethren an unrestricted share in everything which our needs require, unless too we cut off in like manner the second, which generally arises under the guise of spiritual feelings; and unless we gain in everything humble thoughts and harmonious wills. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter X.
On the best tests of truth.
For I remember, that when my youthful age suggested to me to cling to a partner, thoughts of this sort often mingled with our moral training and the Holy Scriptures, so that we fancied that nothing could be truer or more reasonable: but when we came together and began to produce our ideas, in the general discussion which was held, some things were first noted by the others as false and dangerous, and then presently were condemned and pronounced by common consent to be injurious; though before they had seemed to shine as if with a light infused by the devil, so that they would easily have caused discord, had not the charge of the Elders, observed like some divine oracle, restrained us from all strife, that charge; namely, whereby it was ordered by them almost with the force of a law, that neither of us should trust to his own judgments more than his brother's, if he wanted never to be deceived by the craft of the devil. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XI.
How it is impossible for one who trusts to his own judgment to escape being deceived by the devil's illusions.
For often it has been proved that what the Apostle says really takes place. "For Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light," [1977] so that he deceitfully sheds abroad a confusing and foul obscuration of the thoughts instead of the true light of knowledge. And unless these thoughts are received in a humble and gentle heart, and kept for the consideration of some more experienced brother or approved Elder, and when thoroughly sifted by their judgment, either rejected or admitted by us, we shall be sure to venerate in our thoughts an angel of darkness instead of an angel of light, and be smitten with a grievous destruction: an injury which it is impossible for any one to avoid who trusts in his own judgment, unless he becomes a lover and follower of true humility and with all contrition of heart fulfils what the Apostle chiefly prays for: "If then there be any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any bowels of compassion, fulfil ye my joy, that you be of one mind, having the same love, being of one accord, doing nothing by contention, neither by vainglory; but in humility each esteeming others better than themselves;" and this: "in honour preferring one another," [1978] that each may think more of the knowledge and holiness of his partner, and hold that the better part of true discretion is to be found in the judgment of another rather than in his own. __________________________________________________________________
[1977] 2 Cor. xi. 14.
[1978] Phil. ii. 1-3; Rom. xii. 10. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XII.
Why inferiors should not be despised in Conference.
For it often happens either by an illusion of the devil or by the occurrence of a human mistake (by which every man in this life is liable to be deceived) that sometimes one who is keener in intellect and more learned, gets some wrong notion in his head, while he who is duller in wits and of less worth, conceives the matter better and more truly. And therefore no one, however learned he may be, should persuade himself in his empty vanity that he cannot require conference with another. For even if no deception of the devil blinds his judgment, yet he cannot avoid the noxious snares of pride and conceit. For who can arrogate this to himself without great danger, when the chosen vessel in whom, as he maintained, Christ Himself spoke, declares that he went up to Jerusalem simply and solely for this reason, that he might in a secret discussion confer with his fellow-Apostles on the gospel which he preached to the gentiles by the revelation and co-operation of the Lord? By which fact we are shown that we ought not only by these precepts to preserve unanimity and harmony, but that we need not fear any crafts of the devil opposing us, or snares of his illusions. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIII.
How love does not only belong to God but is God.
Finally so highly is the virtue of love extolled that the blessed Apostle John declares that it not only belongs to God but that it is God, saying: "God is love: he therefore that abideth in love, abideth in God, and God in him." [1979] For so far do we see that it is divine, that we find that what the Apostle says is plainly a living truth in us: "For the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost Who dwelleth in us." [1980] For it is the same thing as if he said that God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost Who dwelleth in us: who also, when we know not what we should pray for, "makes intercession for us with groanings that cannot be uttered: But He that searcheth the hearts knoweth what the Spirit desireth, for He asketh for the saints according to God." [1981] __________________________________________________________________
[1979] 1 John iv. 16.
[1980] Rom. v. 5.
[1981] Rom. viii. 26, 27. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIV.
On the different grades of love.
It is possible then for all to show that love which is called agape, of which the blessed Apostle says: "While therefore we have time, let us do good unto all men, but specially to them that are of the household of faith." [1982] And this should be shown to all men in general to such an extent that we are actually commanded by our Lord to yield it to our enemies, for He says: "Love your enemies." [1983] But diathesis, i.e., affection is shown to but a few and those who are united to us by kindred dispositions or by a tie of goodness; though indeed affection seems to have many degrees of difference. For in one way we love our parents, in another our wives, in another our brothers, in another our children, and there is a wide difference in regard to the claims of these feelings of affection, nor is the love of parents towards their children always equal. As is shown by the case of the patriarch Jacob, who, though he was the father of twelve sons and loved them all with a father's love, yet loved Joseph with deeper affection, as Scripture clearly shows: "But his brethren envied him, because his father loved him;" [1984] evidently not that that good man his father failed in greatly loving the rest of his children, but that in his affection he clung to this one, because he was a type of the Lord, more tenderly and indulgently. This also, we read, was very clearly shown in the case of John the Evangelist, where these words are used of him: "that disciple whom Jesus loved," [1985] though certainly He embraced all the other eleven, whom He had chosen in the same way, with His special love, as this He shows also by the witness of the gospel, where He says: "As I have loved you, so do ye also love one another;" of whom elsewhere also it is said: "Loving His own who were in the world, He loved them even to the end." [1986] But this love of one in particular did not indicate any coldness in love for the rest of the disciples, but only a fuller and more abundant love towards the one, which his prerogative of virginity and the purity of his flesh bestowed upon him. And therefore it is marked by exceptional treatment, as being something more sublime, because no hateful comparison with others, but a richer grace of superabundant love singled it out. Something of this sort too we have in the character of the bride in the Song of Songs, where she says: "Set in order love in me." [1987] For this is true love set in order, which, while it hates no one, yet loves some still more by reason of their deserving it, and which, while it loves all in general, singles out for itself some from those, whom it may embrace with a special affection, and again among those, who are the special and chief objects of its love, singles out some who are preferred to others in affection. __________________________________________________________________
[1982] Gal. vi. 10.
[1983] S. Matt. v. 44.
[1984] Gen. xxxvii. 4.
[1985] S. John xiii. 23.
[1986] Ib. ver. 34, 1.
[1987] Cant. ii. 4. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XV.
Of those who only increase their own or their brother's grievances by hiding them.
On the other hand we know (and O! would that we did not know) some of the brethren who are so hard and obstinate, that when they know that their own feelings are aroused against their brother, or that their brother's are against them, in order to conceal their vexation of mind, which is caused by indignation at the grievance of one or the other, go apart from those whom they ought to smooth down by humbly making up to them and talking with them; and begin to sing some verses of the Psalms. And these while they fancy that they are softening the bitter thoughts which have arisen in their heart, increase by their insolent conduct what they could have got rid of at once if they had been willing to show more care and humility, for a well-timed expression of regret would cure their own feelings and soften their brother's heart. For by that plan they nourish and cherish the sin of meanness or rather of pride, instead of stamping out all inducement to quarrelling, and they forget the charge of the Lord which says: "Whosoever is angry with his brother, is in danger of the judgment;" and: "if thou remember that thy brother hath aught against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way, first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift." [1988] __________________________________________________________________
[1988] S. Matt. v. 22-24. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVI.
How it is that, if our brother has any grudge against us, the gifts of our prayers are rejected by the Lord.
So far therefore is our Lord anxious that we should not disregard the vexation of another that He does not accept our offerings if our brother has anything against us, i.e., He does not allow prayers to be offered by us to Him until by speedy amends we remove from his (our brother's) mind the vexation which he whether rightly or wrongly feels. For He does not say: "if thy brother hath a true ground for complaint against thee leave thy gift at the altar, and go thy way, first be reconciled to him;" but He says: "if thou remember that thy brother hath aught against thee," i.e., if there be anything however trivial or small, owing to which your brother's anger is roused against you, and this comes back to your recollection by a sudden remembrance, you must know that you ought not to offer the spiritual gift of your prayers until by kindly amends you have removed from your brother's heart the vexation arising from whatever cause. If then the words of the Gospel bid us make satisfaction to those who are angry for past and utterly trivial grounds of quarrel, and those which have arisen from the slightest causes, what will become of us wretches who with obstinate hypocrisy disregard more recent grounds of offence, and those of the utmost importance, and due to our own faults; and being puffed up with the devil's own pride, as we are ashamed to humble ourselves, deny that we are the cause of our brother's vexation and in a spirit of rebellion disdaining to be subject to the Lord's commands, contend that they never ought to be observed and never can be fulfilled? And so it comes to pass that as we make up our minds that He has commanded things which are impossible and unsuitable, we become, to use the Apostle's expression, "not doers but judges of the law." [1989] __________________________________________________________________
[1989] S. James iv. 11. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVII.
Of those who hold that patience should be shown to worldly people rather than to the brethren.
This too should be bitterly lamented; namely, that some of the brethren, when angered by some reproachful words, if they are besieged by the prayers of some one else who wants to smooth them down, when they hear that vexation ought not to be admitted or retained against a brother, according to what is written: "Whoever is angry with his brother is in danger of the judgment;" and: "Let not the sun go down upon your wrath," [1990] instantly assert that if a heathen or one living in the world had said or done this, it rightly ought to be endured. But who could stand a brother who was accessory to so great a fault, or gave utterance to so insolent a reproach with his lips! As if patience were to be shown only to unbelievers and blasphemers, and not to all in general, or as if anger should be reckoned as bad when it is against a heathen, but good when it is against a brother; whereas certainly the obstinate rage of an angry soul brings about the same injury to one's self whoever may be the subject against whom it is aroused. But how terribly obstinate, aye and senseless is it for them, owing to the stupidity of their dull mind, not to be able to discern the meaning of these words, for it is not said: "Every one who is angry with a stranger shall be in danger of the judgment," which might perhaps according to their interpretation except those who are partners of our faith and life, but the word of the Gospel most significantly expresses it by saying: "Every one who is angry with his brother, shall be in danger of the judgment." And so though we ought according to the rule of truth to regard every man as a brother, yet in this passage one of the faithful and a partaker of our mode of life is denoted by the title of brother rather than a heathen. __________________________________________________________________
[1990] Eph. iv. 26. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVIII.
Of those who pretend to patience but excite their brethren to anger by their silence.
But what sort of a thing is this, that sometimes we fancy that we are patient because when provoked we scorn to answer, but by sullen silence or scornful motions and gestures so mock at our angry brothers that by our silent looks we provoke them to anger more than angry reproaches would have excited them, meanwhile thinking that we are in no way guilty before God, because we have let nothing fall from our lips which could brand us or condemn us in the judgment of men. As if in the sight of God mere words, and not mainly the will was called in fault, and as if only the actual deed of sin, and not also the wish and purpose, was reckoned as wrong; or as if it would be asked in the judgment only what each one had done and not what he also purposed to do. For it is not only the character of the anger roused, but also the purpose of the man who provokes it which is bad, and therefore the true scrutiny of our judge will ask, not how the quarrel was stirred up but by whose fault it arose: for the purpose of the sin, and not the way in which the fault is committed must be taken into account. For what does it matter whether a man kills a brother with a sword by himself, or drives him to death by some fraud, when it is clear that he is killed by his wiles and crime? As if it were enough not to have pushed a blind man down with one's own hand, though he is equally guilty who scorned to save him, when it was in his power, when fallen and on the point of tumbling into the ditch: or as if he alone were guilty who had caught a man with the hand, and not also the one who had prepared and set the trap for him, or who would not set him free when he might have done so. So then it is of no good to hold one's tongue, if we impose silence upon ourselves for this reason that by our silence we may do what would have been done by an outcry on our part, simulating certain gestures by which he whom we ought to have cured, may be made still more angry, while we are commended for all this, to his loss and damage: as if a man were not for this very reason the more guilty, because he tried to get glory for himself out of his brother's fall. For such a silence will be equally bad for both because while it increases the vexation in the heart of another, so it prevents it from being removed from one's own: and against such persons the prophet's curse is with good reason directed: "Woe to him that giveth drink to his friend, and presenteth his gall, and maketh him drunk, that he may behold his nakedness. He is filled with shame instead of glory." [1991] And this too which is said of such people by another: "For every brother will utterly supplant, and every friend will walk deceitfully. And a man shall mock his brother, and they will not speak the truth, for they have bent their tongue like a bow for lies and not for truth." [1992] But often a feigned patience excites to anger more keenly than words, and a spiteful silence exceeds the most awful insults in words, and the wounds of enemies are more easily borne than the deceitful blandishment of mockers, of which it is well said by the prophet: "Their words are smoother than oil, and yet they are darts:" and elsewhere "the words of the crafty are soft: but they smite within the belly:" to which this also may be finely applied: "With the mouth he speaks peace to his friend, but secretly he layeth snares for him;" with which however the deceiver is rather deceived, for "if a man prepares a net before his friend, it surrounds his own feet;" and: "if a man digs a pit for his neighbour, he shall fall into it himself." [1993] Lastly when a great multitude had come with swords and staves to take the Lord, none of the murderers of the author of our life stood forth as more cruel than he who advanced before them all with a counterfeit respect and salutation and offered a kiss of feigned love; to whom the Lord said: "Judas, betrayest thou the Son of man with a kiss?" [1994] i.e., the bitterness of thy persecution and hatred has taken as a cloke this which expresses the sweetness of true love. More openly too and more energetically does He emphasize the force of this grief by the prophet, saying: "For if mine enemy had cursed me, I would have borne it: and if he who hated me had spoken great things against me, I would have hid myself from him. But it was thou, a man of one mind, my guide, and my familiar friend: who didst take sweet meats together with me: in the house of God we walked with consent." [1995] __________________________________________________________________
[1991] Hab. ii. 15, 16.
[1992] Jer. ix. 4, 5.
[1993] Ps. liv. (lv.) 22; Prov. xxvi. 22; Jer. ix. 8; Prov. xxix. 5; xxvi. 27.
[1994] S. Luke xxii. 48.
[1995] Ps. liv. (lv.) 13-15. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIX.
Of those who fast out of rage.
There is too another evil sort of vexation which would not be worth mentioning were it not that we know it is allowed by some of the brethren who, when they have been vexed or enraged actually abstain persistently from food, so that (a thing which we cannot mention without shame) those who when they are calm declare that they cannot possibly put off their refreshment to the sixth or at most the ninth hour, when they are filled with vexation and rage do not feel fasts even for two days, and support themselves, when exhausted by such abstinence, by a surfeit of anger. Wherein they are plainly guilty of the sin of sacrilege, as out of the devil's own rage they endure fasts which ought specially to be offered to God alone out of desire for humiliation of heart and purification from sin: which is much the same as if they were to offer prayers and sacrifices not to God but to devils, and so be worthy of hearing this rebuke of Moses: "They sacrificed to devils and not to God; to gods whom they knew not." [1996] __________________________________________________________________
[1996] Deut. xxxii. 17. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XX.
Of the feigned patience of some who offer the other cheek to be smitten.
We are not ignorant also of another kind of insanity, which we find in some of the brethren under colour of a counterfeit patience, as in this case it is not enough to have stirred up quarrels unless they incite them with irritating words so as to get themselves smitten, and when they have been touched by the slightest blow, at once they offer another part of their body to be smitten, as if in this way they could fulfil to perfection that command which says: "If a man smite thee on the right cheek, offer him the other also;" [1997] while they totally ignore the meaning and purpose of the passage. For they fancy that they are practising evangelical patience through the sin of anger, for the utter eradication of which not only was the exchange of retaliation and the irritation of strife forbidden, but the command was actually given us to mitigate the wrath of the striker by the endurance of a double wrong. __________________________________________________________________
[1997] S. Matt. v. 39. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXI.
A question how if we obey the commands of Christ we can fail of evangelical perfection.
Germanus: How can we blame one who satisfies the command of the Gospel and not only does not retaliate, but is actually prepared to have a double wrong offered to him? __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXII.
The answer that Christ looks not only at the action but also at the will.
Joseph: As was said a little before, we must look not only at the thing which is done, but also at the character of the mind and the purpose of the doer. And therefore if you weigh with a careful scrutiny of heart what is done by each man and consider with what mind it is done or from what feeling it proceeds, you will see that the virtue of patience and gentleness cannot possibly be fulfilled in the opposite spirit, i.e., that of impatience and rage. Since our Lord and Saviour, when giving us a thorough lesson on the virtue of patience and gentleness (i.e., teaching us not only to profess it with our lips, but to store it up in the inmost recesses of the soul) gave us this summary of evangelical perfection, saying: "If any one smites thee on thy right cheek, offer him the other also" [1998] (doubtless the "right" cheek is mentioned, as another "right" cheek cannot be found except in the face of the inner man, so to speak), as by this He desires entirely to remove all incitement to anger from the deepest recesses of the soul, i.e., that if your external right cheek has received a blow from the striker, the inner man also humbly consenting may offer its right cheek to be smitten, sympathizing with the suffering of the outward man, and in a way submitting and subjecting its own body to wrong from the striker, that the inner man may not even silently be disturbed in itself at the blows of the outward man. You see then that they are very far from evangelical perfection, which teaches that patience must be maintained, not in words but in inward tranquillity of heart, and which bids us preserve it whatever evil happens, that we may not only keep ourselves always from disturbing anger, but also by submitting to their injuries compel those, who are disturbed by their own fault, to become calm, when they have had their fill of blows; and so overcome their rage by our gentleness. And so also we shall fulfil these words of the Apostle: "Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good." [1999] And it is quite clear that this cannot be fulfilled by those who utter words of gentleness and humility in such a spirit and rage that they not only fail to lessen the fire of wrath which has been kindled, but rather make it blaze up the more fiercely both in their own feelings and in those of their enraged brother. But these, even if they could in some way keep calm and quiet themselves, would yet not bear any fruits of righteousness, while they claim the glory of patience on their part by their neighbour's loss, and are thus altogether removed from that Apostolic love which "Seeketh not her own," [2000] but the things of others. For it does not so desire riches in such a way as to make profit for itself out of one's neighbour's loss, nor does it wish to gain anything if it involves the spoiling of another. __________________________________________________________________
[1998] Ibid.
[1999] Rom. xii. 21.
[2000] 1 Cor. xiii. 5. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXIII.
How he is the strong and vigorous man, who yields to the will of another.
But you must certainly know that in general he plays a stronger part who subjects his own will to his brother's, than he who is found to be the more pertinacious in defending and clinging to his own decisions. For the former by bearing and putting up with his neighbour gains the character of being strong and vigorous, while the latter gains that of being weak and sickly, who must be pampered and petted so that sometimes for the sake of his peace and quiet it is a good thing to relax something even in necessary matters. And indeed in this he need not fancy that he has lost anything of his own perfection, though by yielding he has given up something of his intended strictness, but on the contrary he may be sure that he has gained much more by his virtue of long-suffering and patience. For this is the Apostle's command: "Ye who are strong should bear the infirmities of the weak;" and: "Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ." [2001] For a weak man will never support a weak man, nor can one who is suffering in the same way, bear or cure one in feeble health, but one who is himself not subject to infirmity brings remedies to one in weak health. For it is rightly said to him: "Physician, heal thyself." [2002] __________________________________________________________________
[2001] Rom. xv. 1; Gal. vi. 2.
[2002] S. Luke iv. 23. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXIV.
How the weak are harmful and cannot bear wrongs.
We must note too the fact that the nature of the weak is always such that they are quick and ready to offer reproaches and sow the seeds of quarrels, while they themselves cannot bear to be touched by the shadow of the very slightest wrong, and while they are riding roughshod over us and flinging about wanton charges, they are not able to bear even the slightest and most trivial ones themselves. And so according to the aforesaid opinion of the Elders love cannot last firm and unbroken except among men of the same purpose and goodness. For at some time or other it is sure to be broken, however carefully it may be guarded by one of them. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXV.
A question how he can be strong who does not always support the weak.
Germanus: How then can the patience of a perfect man be worthy of praise if it cannot always bear the weak? __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXVI.
The answer that the weak does not always allow himself to be borne.
Joseph: I did not say that the virtue and endurance of one who is strong and robust would be overcome, but that the miserable condition of the weak, encouraged by the tolerance of the perfect, and daily growing worse, is sure to give rise to reasons on account of which he himself ought no longer to be borne; or else with a shrewd suspicion that the patience of his neighbour shows up and sets off his own impatience at some time or other he chooses to make off rather than always to be borne by the magnanimity of the other. This then we think should be above all else observed by those who want to keep the affection of their companions unimpaired; viz., that first of all when provoked by any wrongs, a monk should keep not only his lips but even the depth of his breast unmoved: but if he finds that they are even slightly disturbed, let him keep himself in by entire silence, and diligently observe what the Psalmist speaks of: "I was troubled and spake nothing;" and: "I said I will take heed to thy ways that I offend not with my tongue. I have set a guard to my mouth, when the sinner stood against me. I was dumb and was humbled, and kept silence from good things;" [2003] and he should not pay any heed to his present state, nor give vent to what his violent rage suggests and his exasperated mind expresses at the moment, but should dwell on the grace of past love or look forward in his mind to the renewal and restoration of peace, and contemplate it even in the very hour of rage, as if it were sure presently to return. And while he is reserving himself for the delight of harmony soon to come, he will not feel the bitterness of the present quarrel and will easily make such answers that, when love is restored, he will not be able to accuse himself as guilty or be blamed by the other; and thus he will fulfil these words of the prophet: "In wrath remember mercy." [2004] __________________________________________________________________
[2003] Ps. lxxvi. (lxxvii.) 5; xxxviii. (xxxix.) 2, 3.
[2004] Hab. iii. 2. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXVII.
How anger should be repressed.
We ought then to restrain every movement of anger and moderate it under the direction of discretion, that we may not by blind rage be hurried into that which is condemned by Solomon: "The wicked man expends all his anger, but the wise man dispenses it bit by bit," [2005] i.e., a fool is inflamed by the passion of his anger to avenge himself; but a wise man, by the ripeness of his counsel and moderation little by little diminishes it, and gets rid of it. Something of the same kind too is this which is said by the Apostle: "Not avenging yourselves, dearly beloved: but give place to wrath," [2006] i.e., do not under the compulsion of wrath proceed to vengeance, but give place to wrath, i.e., do not let your hearts be confined in the straits of impatience and cowardice so that, when a fierce storm of passion rises, you cannot endure it; but be ye enlarged in your hearts, receiving the adverse waves of anger in the wide gulf of that love which "suffereth all things, beareth all things;" [2007] and so your mind will be enlarged with wide long-suffering and patience, and will have within it safe recesses of counsel, in which the foul smoke of anger will be received and be diffused and forthwith vanish away; or else the passage may be taken in this way: we give place to wrath, as often as we yield with humble and tranquil mind to the passion of another, and bow to the impatience of the passionate, as if we admitted that we deserved any kind of wrong. But those who twist the meaning of the perfection of which the Apostle speaks so as to make out that those give place to anger, who go away from a man in a rage, seem to me not to cut off but rather to foment the incitement to quarrelling, for unless a neighbour's wrath is overcome at once by amends being humbly made, a man provokes rather than avoids it by his flight. And there is something like this that Solomon says: "Be not hasty in thy spirit to be wroth, for anger reposes in the bosom of fools;" and: "Be not quick to rush into a quarrel, lest thou repent thereof at the last." [2008] For he does not blame a hasty exhibition of quarrelling and anger in such a way as to praise a tardy one. In the same way too must this be taken: "A fool declares his anger in the very same hour, but a prudent man hides his shame." [2009] For he does not lay it down that a shameful outburst of anger ought to be hidden by wise men in such a way that while he blames a speedy outburst of anger he fails to forbid a tardy one, as certainly, if owing to human weakness it does burst forth, he means that it should be hidden for this reason, that while for the moment it is wisely covered up, it may be destroyed forever. For the nature of anger is such that when it is given room it languishes and perishes, but if openly exhibited, it burns more and more. The hearts then should be enlarged and opened wide, lest they be confined in the narrow straits of cowardice, and be filled with the swelling surge of wrath, and so we become unable to receive what the prophet calls the "exceeding broad" commandment of God in our narrow heart, or to say with the prophet: "I have run the way of thy commandments for thou hast enlarged my heart." [2010] For that long-suffering is wisdom we are taught by very clear passages of Scripture: for "a man who is long-suffering is great in prudence; but a coward is very foolish." [2011] And therefore Scripture says of him who to his credit asked the gift of wisdom from the Lord: "God gave Solomon wisdom and prudence exceeding much, and largeness of heart as the sand of the sea for multitude." [2012] __________________________________________________________________
[2005] Prov. xxix. 11.
[2006] Rom. xii. 19.
[2007] 1 Cor. xiii. 7.
[2008] Eccl. vii. 9; Prov. xxv. 8.
[2009] Prov. xii. 16.
[2010] Ps. cxviii. (cxix.) 32.
[2011] Prov. xiv. 29.
[2012] 1 Kings iv. 29. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXVIII.
How friendships entered upon by conspiracy cannot be lasting ones.
This too has been often proved by many experiments; viz., that those who entered the bonds of friendship from a beginning of conspiracy, cannot possibly preserve their harmony unbroken; either because they tried to keep it not out of their desire for perfection nor because of the sway of Apostolic love, but out of earthly love, and because of their wants and the bonds of their agreement; or else because that most crafty foe of ours hurries them on the more speedily to break the chains of their friendship in order that he may make them breakers of their oath. This opinion then of the most prudent men is most certainly established; viz., that true harmony and undivided union can only exist among those whose life is pure, and who are men of the same goodness and purpose.
Thus much the blessed Joseph discoursed in his spiritual talk on friendship, and fired us with a more ardent desire to preserve the love of our fellowship as a lasting one. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
XVII. The Second Conference of Abbot Joseph.
On Making Promises. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter I.
Of the vigils which we endured.
When then the previous Conference was ended, and the intervening silence of night as well, as we had been conducted by the holy Abbot Joseph to a separate cell for the sake of quiet, but had passed the whole night without sleep (since owing to his words a fire was raging in our hearts), we came forth from the cell and retired about a hundred yards from it and sat down in a secluded spot. And so as an opportunity was given by the shades of night for secret and familiar converse together, as we sat there Abbot Germanus groaned heavily. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter II.
Of the anxiety of Abbot Germanus at the recollection of our promise.
What are we doing? said he. For we see that we are involved in a great difficulty and are in an evil plight, as reason itself and the life of the saints is effectually teaching us what is the best thing for our progress in the spiritual life, and yet our promise given to the Elders does not allow us to choose what is helpful. For we might, by the examples of such great men, be formed for a more perfect life and aim, were it not that the terms of our promise compelled us to return at once to the monastery. But if we return thither, we shall never get another chance of coming here again. But if we stay here and choose to carry out our wishes, what becomes of the faith of the oath which we are aware that we gave to our Elders promising a speedy return; that we might be allowed to make a hasty round of the monasteries and saints of this province? And when in this state of tumult we could not make up our minds what we ought to decide on the state of our salvation we simply testified by our groans the hard fate of our condition, upbraiding the audacity of our impudence, and yet hating the shame which was natural to us, weighed down by which we could not in any other way resist the prayers of those who kept us back against our profit and purpose, except by the promise of a speedy return, as we wept indeed that we laboured under the fault of that shame, of which it is said "There is a shame that bringeth sin." [2013] __________________________________________________________________
[2013] Prov. xxvi. 11. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter III.
My ideas on this subject.
Then I replied: The counsel or rather the authority of the Elder to whom we ought to refer our anxieties would make a short way out of our difficulties, and whatever is decided by his verdict, may, like a divine and heavenly reply, put an end to all our troubles. And we need not have any doubt of what is given to us by the Lord through the lips of this Elder, both for the sake of his merits and for our own faith. For by His gift believers have often obtained saving counsel from unworthy people, and unbelievers from saints, as the Lord grants this either on account of the merit of those who answer, or on account of the faith of those who ask advice. And so the holy Abbot Germanus caught eagerly at these words as if I had uttered them not of myself but at the prompting of the Lord, and when we had waited a little for the coming of the Elder and the approaching hour of the nocturnal service, after we had welcomed him with the usual greeting and finished reciting the right number of Psalms and prayers, we sat down again as usual on the same mats on which we had settled ourselves to sleep. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IV.
Abbot Joseph's question and our answer on the origin of our anxiety.
Then the venerable Joseph saw that we were in rather low spirits, and, guessing that this was not the case without reason, addressed us in these words of the patriarch Joseph: "Why are your faces sad today?" [2014] to whom we answered: We are not like those bond slaves of Pharaoh who have seen a dream and there is none to interpret it, but I admit that we have passed a sleepless night and there is no one to lighten the weight of our troubles unless the Lord may remove them by your wisdom. Then he, who recalled the excellence of the patriarch both by his merits and name, said: Does not the cure of man's perplexities come from the Lord? Let them be brought forward: for the Divine Compassion is able to give a remedy for them by means of our advice according to your faith. __________________________________________________________________
[2014] Gen. xl. 7. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter V.
The explanation of Abbot Germanus why we wanted to stay in Egypt, and were drawn back to Syria.
To this Germanus: We used to think, said he, that we should go back to our monastery abundantly filled not only with spiritual joy but also with what is profitable by the sight of your holiness, and that after our return we should follow, though with but a feeble rivalry, what we had learnt from your teaching. For this our love for our Elders led us to promise them, while we fancied that we could in some degree follow in that monastery your sublime life and doctrine. Wherefore as we thought that by this means all joy would be bestowed upon us, so on the other hand we are overwhelmed with intolerable grief, as we find that we cannot possibly obtain in this way what we know to be good for us. On both sides then we are now hemmed in. For if we want to keep our promise which we made in the presence of all the brethren in the cave where our Lord Himself shone forth from His chamber in the Virgin's womb, [2015] and which He Himself witnessed, we shall incur the greatest loss in our spiritual life. But if we ignore our promise and stay in this district, and choose to consider that oath of ours as of less importance than our perfection, we are afraid of the awful dangers of falsehood and perjury. But not even by this plan can we lighten our burdens; viz., by fulfilling the terms of our oath by a very hasty return, and then coming back again as quickly as possible to these parts. For although even a small delay is dangerous and hurtful for those who are aiming at goodness and advance in spiritual things, yet still we would keep our faith and promise, though by an unwilling return, were it not that we felt sure that we should be so tightly bound down both by the authority and also by the love of the Elders, that we should henceforth have no opportunity at all to come back again to this place. __________________________________________________________________
[2015] Compare on the Institutes IV. c. xxxi. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VI.
Abbot Joseph's question whether we got more good in Egypt than in Syria.
To this the blessed Joseph, after a short silence: Are you sure, said he, that you can get more profit in spiritual matters in this country? __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VII.
The answer on the difference of customs in the two countries.
Germanus: Although we ought to be most grateful for the teaching of those men who taught us from our youth up to attempt great things, and, by giving us a taste of their excellence, implanted in our hearts a splendid thirst for perfection, yet if any reliance is to be placed on our judgment, we cannot draw any comparison between these customs and those which we learnt there, so as to hold our tongues about the inimitable purity of your life, which we believe is granted to you not only owing to the concentration of your mind and aim, but also owing to the aid and assistance of the place itself. Wherefore we do not doubt that for the following of your grand perfection this instruction which is given to us is not enough by itself, unless we have also the help of the life, and a long course of instruction somewhat dissolves the coldness of our heart by daily training. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VIII.
How those who are perfect ought not to make any promises absolutely, and whether decisions can be reversed without sin.
Joseph: It is good indeed and right and altogether in accordance with our profession, for us effectually to perform what we decided to do in the case of any promise. Wherefore a monk ought not to make any promise hastily, lest he may be forced to do what he incautiously promised, or if he is kept back by consideration of a sounder view, appear as a breaker of his promise. But because at the present moment our purpose is to treat not so much of a state of health as of the cure of sickness we must with salutary counsel consider not what you ought to have done in the first instance, but how you can escape from the rocks of this perilous shipwreck. When then no chains impede us and no conditions restrict us, in the case of a comparison of good things, if a choice is proposed, that which is most advantageous should be preferred: but when some detriment and loss stands in the way, in a comparison of things to our hurt, that should be sought which exposes us to the smallest loss. Further, as your assertion shows, when your heedless promise has brought you to this state that in either case some serious loss and inconvenience must result to you, the will in choosing should incline to that side which involves a loss that is more tolerable, or can be more easily made up for by the remedy of making amends. If then you think that you will get more good for your spirit by staying here than what accrued to you from your life in that monastery, and that the terms of your promise cannot be fulfilled without the loss of great good, it is better for you to undergo the loss from a falsehood and an unfulfilled promise (as it is done once for all, and need not any longer be repeated or be the cause of other sins) than for you to incur that loss, through which you say that your state of life would become colder, and which would affect you with a daily and unceasing injury. For a careless promise is changed in such a way that it may be pardoned or indeed praised, if it is turned into a better path, nor need we take it as a failure in consistency, but as a correction of rashness, whenever a promise that was faulty is corrected. And all this may be proved by most certain witness from Scripture, that for many the fulfilment of their promise has led to death, and on the other hand that for many it has been good and profitable to have refused it. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IX.
How it is often better to break one's engagements than to fulfil them.
And both these points are very clearly shown by the cases of S. Peter the Apostle and Herod. For the former, because he departed from his expressed determination which he had as it were confirmed with an oath saying "Thou shalt never wash my feet," [2016] gained an immortal partnership with Christ, whereas he would certainly have been cut off from the grace of this blessedness, if he had clung obstinately to his word. But the latter, by clinging to the pledge of his ill-considered oath, became the bloody murderer of the Lord's forerunner, and through the vain fear of perjury plunged himself into condemnation and the punishment of everlasting death. In everything then we must consider the end, and must according to it direct our course and aim, and if when some wiser counsel supervenes, we see it diverging to the worse part, it is better to discard the unsuitable arrangement, and to come to a better mind rather than to cling obstinately to our engagements and so become involved in worse sins. __________________________________________________________________
[2016] S. John xiii. 8. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter X.
Our question about our fear of the oath which we gave in the monastery in Syria.
Germanus: In so far as it concerns our desire, which we undertook to carry out for the sake of spiritual profit, we were hoping to be edified by continual intercourse with you. For if we were to return to our monastery it is certain that we should not only fail of so sublime a purpose, but that we should also suffer grievous loss from the mediocrity of the manner of life there. But that command of the gospel frightens us terribly: "Let your speech be yea, yea, nay, nay: but whatsoever is more than these, is from the evil one." [2017] For we hold that we cannot compensate for transgressing so important a command by any righteousness, nor can that finally turn out well which has once been started with a bad beginning. __________________________________________________________________
[2017] S. Matt. v. 37. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XI.
The answer that we must take into account the purpose of the doer rather than the execution of the business.
Joseph: In every case, as we said, we must look not at the progress of the work but at the intention of the worker, nor must we inquire to begin with what a man has done, but with what purpose, so that we may find that some have been condemned for those deeds from which good has afterwards arisen, and on the other hand that some have arrived by means of acts in themselves reprehensible at the height of righteousness. And in the case of the former the good result of their actions was of no avail to them as they took the matter in and with an evil purpose, and wanted to bring about--not the good which actually resulted, but something of the opposite character; nor was the bad beginning injurious to the latter, as he put up with the necessity of a blameworthy start; not out of disregard for God, or with the purpose of doing wrong, but with an eye to a needful and holy end. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XII.
How a fortunate issue will be of no avail to evil doers, while bad deeds will not injure good men.
And that we may make these statements clear by instances from Holy Scripture, what could be brought about that was more salutary and more to the good of the whole world, than the saving remedy of the Lord's Passion? And yet it was not only of no advantage, but was actually to the disadvantage of the traitor by whose means it is shown to have been brought about, so that it is absolutely said of him: "It were good for that man if he had never been born." [2018] For the fruits of his labour will not be repaid to him according to the actual result, but according to what he wanted to do, and believed that he would accomplish. And again, what could there be more culpable than craft and deceit shown even to a stranger, not to mention one's brother and father? And yet the patriarch Jacob not only met with no condemnation or blame for such things but was actually dowered with the everlasting heritage of the blessing. And not without reason, for the last mentioned desired the blessing destined for the first-born not out of a greedy desire for present gain but because of his faith in everlasting sanctification; while the former (Judas) delivered the Redeemer of all to death, not for the sake of man's salvation, but from the sin of covetousness. And therefore in each case the fruits of their action are reckoned according to the intention of the mind and purpose of the will, according to which the object of the one was not to work fraud, nor was that of the other to work salvation. For justly is there repayment to each man as the recompense of reward, for what he conceived in the first instance in his mind, and not for what resulted from it either well or badly, against the wish of the worker. And so the most just Judge regarded him who ventured on such a falsehood as excusable and indeed worthy of praise, because without it he could not secure the blessing of the first-born; and that should not be reckoned as a sin, which arose from desire of the blessing. Otherwise the aforesaid patriarch would have been not only unfair to his brother, but also a cheat of his father and a blasphemer, if there had been any other way by which he could secure the gift of that blessing, and he had preferred to follow this which would damage and injure his brother. You see then that with God the inquiry is not into the carrying out of the act, but into the purpose of the mind. With this preparation then for a return to the question proposed (for which all this has been premised) I want you first to tell me for what reason you bound yourselves in the fetters of that promise. __________________________________________________________________
[2018] S. Matt. xxvi. 24. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIII.
Our answer as to the reason which demanded an oath from us.
Germanus: The first reason, as we said, was that we were afraid of vexing our Elders and resisting their orders; the second was that we very foolishly believed that, if we had learnt from you anything perfect or splendid to hear or look at, when we returned to the monastery, we should be able to perform it. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIV.
The discourse of the Elder showing how the plan of action may be changed without fault provided that one keeps to the carrying out of a good intention.
Joseph: As we premised, the intent of the mind brings a man either reward or condemnation, according to this passage: "Their thoughts between themselves accusing or also defending one another, in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men;" and this too: "But I am coming to gather together their works and thoughts together with all nations and tongues." [2019] Wherefore it was, as I see, from a desire for perfection that you bound yourselves with the chain of these oaths, as you then thought that by this plan it could be gained, while now that a riper judgment has supervened, you see that you cannot by this means scale its heights. And so any departure from that arrangement, which may seem to have happened, will be no hindrance, if only no change in that first purpose follows. For a change of instrument does not imply a desertion of the work, nor does the choice of a shorter and more direct road argue laziness on the path of the traveller. And so in this matter an improvement in a short-sighted arrangement is not to be reckoned a breach of a spiritual promise. For whatever is done out of the love of God and desire for goodness, which has "promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come," [2020] even though it may appear to commence with a hard and adverse beginning, is most worthy, not only of no blame, but actually of praise. And therefore the breaking of a careless promise will be no hindrance, if in every case the end, i.e., the proposed aim at goodness, be maintained. For we do all for this reason, that we may be able to show to God a clean heart, and if the attainment of this is considered to be easier in this country the alteration of the agreement extracted from you will be no hindrance to you, if only the perfection of that purity for the sake of which your promise was originally made, be the sooner secured according to the Lord's will. __________________________________________________________________
[2019] Rom. ii. 15, 16; Is. lxvi. 18.
[2020] 1 Tim. iv. 8. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XV.
A question whether it can be without sin that our knowledge affords to weak brethren an opportunity for lying.
Germanus: As far as the force of the words which have been reasonably and carefully considered, is concerned, our scruple about our promise would have easily been removed from us were it not that we were terribly alarmed lest by this example an opportunity for lying might be offered to certain weaker brethren, if they knew that the faith of an agreement could be in any way lawfully broken, whereas this very thing is forbidden in such vigorous and threatening terms by the prophet when he says: "Thou shalt destroy all those who utter a lie;" and: "the mouth that speaketh a lie, shall slay the soul." [2021] __________________________________________________________________
[2021] Ps. v. 7; Wisd. i. 11. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVI.
The answer that Scripture truth is not to be altered on account of an offence given to the weak.
Joseph: Occasions and opportunities for destroying themselves cannot possibly be wanting to those who are on the road to ruin, or rather who are anxious to destroy themselves; nor are those passages of Scripture to be rejected and altogether torn out of the volume, by which the perversity of heretics is encouraged, or the unbelief of the Jews increased, or the pride of heathen wisdom offended; but surely they are to be piously believed, and firmly held, and preached according to the rule of truth. And therefore we should not, because of another's unbelief, reject the oikonomias, i.e., the "economy" of the prophets and saints which Scripture relates, lest while we are thinking that we ought to condescend to their infirmities, we stain ourselves with the sin not only of lying but of sacrilege. But, as we said, we ought to admit these according to the letter, and explain how they were rightly done. But for those who are wrongly disposed, the opening for lies will not be blocked up by this means, if we are trying either altogether to deny or to explain away by allegorical interpretations the truth of those things which we are going to bring forward or have already brought forward. For how will the authority of these passages injure them if their corrupt will is alone sufficient to lead them to sin? __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVII.
How the saints have profitably employed a lie like hellebore.
And so we ought to regard a lie and to employ it as if its nature were that of hellebore; which is useful if taken when some deadly disease is threatening, but if taken without being required by some great danger is the cause of immediate death. For so also we read that holy men and those most approved by God employed lying, so as not only to incur no guilt of sin from it, but even to attain the greatest goodness; and if deceit could confer glory on them, what on the other hand would the truth have brought them but condemnation? Just as Rahab, of whom Scripture gives a record not only of no good deed but actually of unchastity, yet simply for the lie, by means of which she preferred to hide the spies instead of betraying them, had it vouchsafed to her to be joined with the people of God in everlasting blessing. But if she had preferred to speak the truth and to regard the safety of the citizens, there is no doubt that she and all her house would not have escaped the coming destruction, nor would it have been vouchsafed to her to be inserted in the progenitors of our Lord's nativity, [2022] and reckoned in the list of the patriarchs, and through her descendants that followed, to become the mother of the Saviour of all. Again Dalila, who to provide for the safety of her fellow citizens betrayed the truth she had discovered, obtained in exchange eternal destruction, and has left to all men nothing but the memory of her sin. When then any grave danger hangs on confession of the truth, then we must take to lying as a refuge, yet in such a way as to be for our salvation troubled by the guilt of a humbled conscience. But where there is no call of the utmost necessity present, there a lie should be most carefully avoided as if it were something deadly: just as we said of a cup of hellebore which is indeed useful if it is only taken in the last resort when a deadly and inevitable disease is threatening, while if it is taken when the body is in a state of sound and rude health, its deadly properties at once go to find out the vital parts. And this was clearly shown of Rahab of Jericho, and the patriarch Jacob; the former of whom could only escape death by means of this remedy, while the latter could not secure the blessing of the first-born without it. For God is not only the Judge and inspector of our words and actions, but He also looks into their purpose and aim. And if He sees that anything has been done or promised by some one for the sake of eternal salvation and shows insight into Divine contemplation, even though it may appear to men to be hard and unfair, yet He looks at the inner goodness of the heart and regards the desire of the will rather than the actual words spoken, because He must take into account the aim of the work and the disposition of the doer, whereby, as was said above, one man may be justified by means of a lie, while another may be guilty of a sin of everlasting death by telling the truth. To which end the patriarch Jacob also had regard when he was not afraid to imitate the hairy appearance of his brother's body by wrapping himself up in skins, and to his credit acquiesced in his mother's instigation of a lie for this object. For he saw that in this way there would be bestowed on him greater gains of blessing and righteousness than by keeping to the path of simplicity: for he did not doubt that the stain of this lie would at once be washed away by the flood of the paternal blessing, and would speedily be dissolved like a little cloud by the breath of the Holy Spirit; and that richer rewards of merit would be bestowed on him by means of this dissimulation which he put on than by means of the truth, which was natural to him. __________________________________________________________________
[2022] Cf. S. Matt. i. 5. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVIII.
An objection that only those men employed lies with impunity, who lived under the law.
Germanus: It is no wonder that these schemes were properly employed in the Old Testament, and that some holy men laudably or at any rate venially told lies, as we see that many worse things were permitted to them owing to the rude character of the times. For why should we wonder that when the blessed David was fleeing from Saul, in answer to the inquiry of Abimelech the priest who said: "Why art thou alone, and is no man with thee?" he replied as follows: "The king hath commanded me a business, and said, Let no man know the thing for which thou art sent by me, for I have appointed my servants to such and such a place;" and again: "Hast thou here at hand a spear or a sword, for I brought not my own sword nor my own weapon with me, for the king's business required haste;" or this, when he was brought to Achish king of Gath, and feigned himself mad and frantic, "and changed his countenance before them, and slipped down between their hands; and stumbled against the doors of the gate and his spittle ran down on his beard;" [2023] when they were even allowed to enjoy crowds of wives and concubines, and no sin was on this account imputed to them, and when moreover they often shed the blood of their enemies with their own hand, and this was thought not only worthy of no blame, but actually praiseworthy? And all these things we see by the light of the gospel are utterly forbidden, so that not one of them can be done without great sin and guilt. And in the same way we hold that no lie can be employed by any one, I will not say rightly, but not even venially, however it may be covered with the colour of piety, as the Lord says: "Let your speech be yea, yea, nay, nay: but whatsoever is more than these is of the evil one;" and the Apostle also agrees with this: "And lie not one to another." [2024] __________________________________________________________________
[2023] 1 Sam. xxi. 1, 2, 8, 13.
[2024] S. Matt. v. 37; Col. iii. 9. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIX.
The answer, that leave to lie, which was not even granted under the old Covenant, has rightly been taken by many.
Joseph: All liberty in the matter of wives and many concubines, as the end of time is approaching and the multiplying of the human race completed, ought rightly to be cut off by evangelical perfection, as being no longer necessary. For up to the coming of Christ it was well that the blessing of the original sentence should be in full vigour, whereby it was said: "Increase and multiply, and fill the earth." [2025] And therefore it was quite right that from the root of human fecundity which happily flourished in the synagogue, in accordance with that dispensation of the times, the buds of angelical virginity should spring, and the fragrant flowers of continence be produced in the Church. But that lying was even then condemned the text of the whole Old Testament clearly shows, as it says: "Thou shalt destroy all them that speak lies;" and again: "The bread of lying is sweet to a man, but afterwards his mouth is filled with gravel;" and the Giver of the law himself says: "Thou shalt avoid a lie." [2026] But we said that it was then properly employed as a last resort when some need or plan of salvation was linked on to it, on account of which it ought not to be condemned. As is the case, which you mentioned, of king David when in his flight from the unjust persecution of Saul, to Abimelech the priest he used lying words, not with the object of getting any gain nor with the desire to injure anybody, but simply to save himself from that most iniquitous persecution; inasmuch as he would not stain his hands with the blood of the hostile king, so often delivered up to him by God; as he said: "The Lord be merciful to me that I may do no such thing to my master the Lord's anointed, as to lay my hand upon him, because he is the Lord's anointed." [2027] And therefore these plans which we hear that holy men under the old covenant adopted either from the will of God, or for the prefiguring of spiritual mysteries or for the salvation of some people, we too cannot refuse altogether, when necessity constrains us, as we see that even apostles did not avoid them, where the consideration of something profitable required them: which in the meanwhile we will for a time postpone, while we first discuss those instances which we propose still to bring forward from the Old Testament, and afterwards we shall more suitably introduce them so as more readily to prove that good and holy men, both in the Old and in the New Testament, were entirely at one with each other in these contrivances. For what shall we say of that pious fraud of Hushai to Absalom for the salvation of king David, which though uttered with all appearance of good-will by the deceiver and cheat, and opposed to the good of him who asked advice, is yet commended by the authority of Holy Scripture, which says: "But by the will of the Lord the profitable counsel of Ahithophel was defeated that the Lord might bring evil upon Absalom?" [2028] Nor could that be blamed which was done for the right side with a right purpose and pious intent, and was planned for the salvation and victory of one whose piety was pleasing to God, by a holy dissimulation. What too shall we say of the deed of that woman, who received the men who had been sent to king David by the aforesaid Hushai, and hid them in a well, and spread a cloth over its mouth, and pretended that she was drying pearl-barley, and said "They passed on after tasting a little water"; [2029] and by this invention saved them from the hands of their pursuers? Wherefore answer me, I pray you, and say what you would have done, if any similar situation had arisen for you, living now under the gospel; would you prefer to hide them with a similar falsehood, saying in the same way: "They passed on after tasting a little water," and thus fulfil the command: "Deliver those who are being led to death, and spare not to redeem those who are being killed;" [2030] or by speaking the truth, would you have given up those in hiding to the men who would kill them? And what then becomes of the Apostle's words: "Let no man seek his own but the things of another:" and: "Love seeketh not her own, but the things of others;" and of himself he says: "I seek not mine own good but the good of many that they may be saved?" [2031] For if we seek our own, and want obstinately to keep what is good for ourselves, we must even in urgent cases of this sort speak the truth, and so become guilty of the death of another: but if we prefer what is for another's advantage to our own good, and satisfy the demands of the Apostle, we shall certainly have to put up with the necessity of lying. And therefore we shall not be able to keep a perfect heart of love, or to seek, as Apostolic perfection requires, the things of others, unless we relax a little in those things which concern the strictness and perfection of our own lives, and choose to condescend with ready affection to what is useful to others, and so with the Apostle become weak to the weak, that we may be able to gain the weak. __________________________________________________________________
[2025] Gen. i. 28.
[2026] Ps. v. 7; Prov. xx. 17; Exod. xxiii. 7.
[2027] 1 Sam. xxiv. 7.
[2028] 2 Sam. xvii. 14.
[2029] Ib. ver. 20.
[2030] Prov. xxiv. 11.
[2031] 1 Cor. x. 24; xiii. 5; 1 Cor. x. 33. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XX.
How even Apostles thought that a lie was often useful and the truth injurious.
Instructed by which examples, the blessed Apostle James also, and all the chief princes of the primitive Church urged the Apostle Paul in consequence of the weakness of feeble persons to condescend to a fictitious arrangement and insisted on his purifying himself according to the requirements of the law, and shaving his head and paying his vows, as they thought that the present harm which would come from this hypocrisy was of no account, but had regard rather to the gain which would result from his still continued preaching. For the gain to the Apostle Paul from his strictness would not have counterbalanced the loss to all nations from his speedy death. And this would certainly have been then incurred by the whole Church unless this good and salutary hypocrisy had preserved him for the preaching of the Gospel. For then we may rightly and pardonably acquiesce in the wrong of a lie, when, as we said, a greater harm depends on telling the truth, and when the good which results to us from speaking the truth cannot counterbalance the harm which will be caused by it. And elsewhere the blessed Apostle testifies in other words that he himself always observed this disposition; for when he says: "To the Jews I became as a Jew that I might gain the Jews; to those who were under the law as being under the law, though not myself under the law, that I might gain those who were under the law; to those who were without law, I became as without law, though I was not without the law of God but under the law of Christ, that I might gain those who were without law; to the weak I became weak, that I might gain the weak: I became all things to all men, that I might save all;" [2032] what does he show but that according to the weakness and the capacity of those who were being instructed he always lowered himself and relaxed something of the vigour of perfection, and did not cling to what his own strict life might seem to demand, but rather preferred that which the good of the weak might require? And that we may trace these matters out more carefully and recount one by one the glories of the good deeds of the Apostles, some one may ask how the blessed Apostle can be proved to have suited himself to all men in all things. When did he to the Jews become as a Jew? Certainly in the case where, while he still kept in his inmost heart the opinion which he had maintained to the Galatians saying: "Behold, I, Paul, say unto you that if ye be circumcised Christ shall profit you nothing," [2033] yet by circumcising Timothy he adopted a shadow as it were of Jewish superstition. And again, where did he become to those under the law, as under the law? There certainly where James and all the Elders of the Church, fearing lest he might be attacked by the multitude of Jewish believers, or rather of Judaizing Christians, who had received the faith of Christ in such a way as still to be bound by the rites of legal ceremonies, came to his rescue in his difficulty with this counsel and advice, and said: "Thou seest, brother, how many thousands there are among the Jews, who have believed, and they are all zealots for the law. But they have heard of thee that thou teachest those Jews who are among the Gentiles to depart from Moses, saying that they ought not to circumcise their children;" and below: "Do therefore this that we say unto thee: we have four men who have a vow on them. These take and sanctify thyself with them and bestow on them, that they may shave their heads; and all will know that the things which they have heard of thee are false, but that thou thyself also walkest keeping the law." [2034] And so for the good of those who were under the law, he trode under foot for a while the strict view which he had expressed: "For I through the law am dead unto the law that I may live unto God;" [2035] and was driven to shave his head, and be purified according to the law and pay his vows after the Mosaic rites in the Temple. Do you ask also where for the good of those who were utterly ignorant of the law of God, he himself became as if without law? Read the introduction to his sermon at Athens where heathen wickedness was flourishing: "As I passed by," he says, "I saw your idols and an altar on which was written: To the unknown God;" and when he had thus started from their superstition, as if he himself also had been without law, under the cloke of that profane inscription he introduced the faith of Christ, saying: "What therefore ye ignorantly worship, that declare I unto you." And after a little, as if he had known nothing whatever of the Divine law, he chose to bring forward a verse of a heathen poet rather than a saying of Moses or Christ, saying: "As some also of your own poets have said: for we are also His offspring." And when he had thus approached them with their own authorities, which they could not reject, thus confirming the truth by things false, he added and said: "Since then we are the offspring of God we ought not to think that the Godhead is like to gold or silver or stone sculptured by the art and device of man." [2036] But to the weak he became weak, when, by way of permission, not of command, he allowed those who could not contain themselves to return together again, [2037] or when he fed the Corinthians with milk and not with meat, and says that he was with them in weakness and fear and much trembling. [2038] But he became all things to all men that he might save all, when he says: "He that eateth let him not despise him that eateth not, and let not him that eateth not judge him that eateth:" and: "He that giveth his virgin in marriage doeth well, and he that giveth her not in marriage doeth better;" and elsewhere: "Who," says he, "is weak, and I am not weak? Who is offended, and I burn not?" and in this way he fulfilled what he had commanded the Corinthians to do when he said: "Be ye without offence to Jews and Greeks and the Church of Christ, as I also please all men in all things, not seeking mine own profit but that of the many, that they may be saved." [2039] For it had certainly been profitable not to circumcise Timothy, not to shave his head, not to undergo Jewish purification, not to practice going barefoot, [2040] not to pay legal vows; but he did all these things because he did not seek his own profit but that of the many. And although this was done with the full consideration of God, yet it was not free from dissimulation. For one who through the law of Christ was dead to the law that he might live to God, and who had made and treated that righteousness of the law in which he had lived blameless, as dung, that he might gain Christ, could not with true fervour of heart offer what belonged to the law; nor is it right to believe that he who had said: "For if I again rebuild what I have destroyed, I make myself a transgressor," [2041] would himself fall into what he had condemned. And to such an extent is account taken, not so much of the actual thing which is done as of the disposition of the doer, that on the other hand truth is sometimes found to have injured some, and a lie to have done them good. For when Saul was grumbling to his servants about David's flight, and saying: "Will the son of Jesse give you all fields and vineyards, and make you all tribunes and centurions: that all of you have conspired against me, and there is no one to inform me," did Doeg the Edomite say anything but the truth, when he told him: "I saw the son of Jesse in Nob, with Abimelech the son of Ahitub the priest, who consulted the Lord for him, and gave him victuals, and gave him also the sword of Goliath the Philistine?" [2042] For which true story he deserved to be rooted up out of the land of the living, and it is said of him by the prophet: "Wherefore God shall destroy thee forever, and pluck thee up and tear thee out of thy tabernacle, and thy root from the land of the living:" [2043] He then for showing the truth is forever plucked and rooted up out of that land in which the harlot Rahab with her family is planted for her lie: just as also we remember that Samson most injuriously betrayed to his wicked wife the truth which he had hidden for a long time by a lie, and therefore the truth so inconsiderately disclosed was the cause of his own deception, because he had neglected to keep the command of the prophet: "Keep the doors of thy mouth from her that sleepeth in thy bosom." [2044] __________________________________________________________________
[2032] 1 Cor. ix. 20-22.
[2033] Gal. v. 2.
[2034] Acts xxi. 20-24.
[2035] Gal. ii. 19.
[2036] Acts xvii. 23, 29.
[2037] Cf. 1 Cor. vii. 5.
[2038] Cf. 1 Cor. iii. 2; ii. 3.
[2039] Rom. xiv. 3; 1 Cor. viii. 38; 2 Cor. xi. 29; 1 Cor. x. 32, 33.
[2040] Nudipedalia non exercere. The expression is also used by Jerome of S. Paul's purification in Jerusalem (in Gal. Book II. c. iv.), though there is nothing in the account in the Acts about his going barefoot. Compare also Jerome against Jovinian, Book I. c. viii., and for the word, in connexion with the rites of the Christian Church, see Tertullian Apologeticum, c. xl.
[2041] Gal. ii. 18.
[2042] 1 Sam. xxii. 7-10.
[2043] Ps. li. (lii.) 7.
[2044] Micah ii. 7. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXI.
Whether secret abstinence ought to be made known, without telling a lie about it, to those who ask, and whether what has once been declined may be taken in hand.
And to bring forward some instances from our unavoidable and almost daily wants which with all our care we can never so guard against as not to be driven to incur them whether with or against our will: what, I ask you, is to be done when, while we are proposing to put off our supper, a brother comes and asks us if we have had it: is our fast to be concealed, and the good act of abstinence hidden, or is it to be proclaimed by telling the truth? If we conceal it, to satisfy the Lord's command which says: "Thou shalt not appear unto men to fast but unto thy Father Who is in secret;" and again: "Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth," [2045] we must at once tell a lie. If we make manifest the good act of abstinence, the word of the gospel rightly discourages us: "Verily I say unto you, they have their reward." [2046] But what if any one has refused with determination a cup offered to him by some brother, denying altogether that he will take what the other, rejoicing at his arrival, begs and intreats him to receive? Is it right that he should force himself to yield to his brother who goes on his knees and bows himself to the ground, and who thinks that he can only show his loving heart by this service, or should he obstinately cling to his own word and intention? __________________________________________________________________
[2045] S. Matt. vi. 18, 3.
[2046] Ib. ver. 2. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXII.
An objection, that abstinence ought to be concealed, but that things that have been declined should not be received.
Germanus: In the former instance we think there can be no doubt that it is better for our abstinence to be hidden than for it to be displayed to the inquirers, and in cases of this sort we also admit that a lie is unavoidable. But in the second there is no need for us to tell a lie, first because we can refuse what is offered by the service of a brother in such a way as to bind ourselves in no bond of determination, and next because when we once refuse we can keep our opinion unchanged. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXIII.
The answer that obstinacy in this decision is unreasonable.
Joseph: There is no doubt that these are the decisions of those monasteries in which the infancy of your renunciation was, as you tell us, trained, as their leaders are accustomed to prefer their own will to their brother's supper, and most obstinately stick to what they have once intended. But our Elders, to whose faith the signs of Apostolical powers have borne witness, and who have treated everything with judgment and discretion of spirit rather than with stiff obstinacy of mind, have laid down that those men who give in to the infirmities of others, receive much richer fruits than those who persist in their determinations, and have declared that it is a better deed to conceal abstinence, as was said, by this needful and humble lie, rather than to display it with a proud show of truth. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXIV.
How Abbot Piamun chose to hide his abstinence.
Finally Abbot Piamun [2047] after twenty-five years did not hesitate to receive some grapes and wine offered to him by a certain brother, and at once preferred, against his rule, to taste what was brought him rather than to display his abstinence which was a secret from everybody. For if we would also bear in mind what we remember that our Elders always did, who used to conceal the marvels of their own good deeds, and their own acts, which they were obliged to bring forward in Conference for the instruction of the juniors, under cover of other persons, what else can we consider them but an open lie? And O that we too had anything worthy which we could bring forward for stirring up the faith of the juniors! Certainly we should have no scruples in following their fictions of that kind. For it is better under the colour of a figure like that to tell a lie than for the sake of maintaining that unreasonable truthfulness either hide in ill-advised silence what might be edifying to the hearers, or run into the display of an objectionable vanity by telling them truthfully in our own character. And the teacher of the Gentiles clearly teaches us the same lesson by his teaching, as he chose to bring forward the great revelations made to him, under the character of some one else, saying: "I know a man in Christ, whether in the body or out of the body I cannot tell, God knoweth, caught up even unto the third heaven: and I know such a man, that he was caught up into paradise and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for man to utter." [2048] __________________________________________________________________
[2047] On Piamun see the note on XVIII. i.
[2048] 2 Cor. xii. 2-4. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXV.
The evidence of Scripture on changes of determination.
It is impossible for us briefly to run through everything. For who could count up almost all the patriarchs and numberless saints, some of whom for the preservation of life, others out of desire for a blessing, others out of pity, others to conceal some secret, others out of zeal for God, others in searching for the truth, became, so to speak, patrons of lying? And as all cannot be enumerated, so all ought not to be altogether passed over. For piety forced the blessed Joseph to raise a false charge against his brethren even with an oath by the life of the king, saying: "Ye are spies: to see the nakedness of the land are ye come;" and below: "send," says he, "one of you, and bring your brothers hither: but ye shall be kept here until your words are made manifest whether ye speak the truth or no: but if not, by the life of Pharaoh, ye are spies." [2049] For if he had not out of pity alarmed them by this lie, he would not have been able to see again his father and his brother, nor to preserve them in their great danger of starvation, nor to free the conscience of his brethren from the guilt of selling him. The act then of striking his brethren with fear by means of a lie was not so reprehensible as was it a holy and laudable act to urge his enemies and seekers to a salutary penitence by means of a feigned danger. Finally when they were weighed down by the odium of the very serious accusation, they were conscience-stricken not at the charge falsely raised against them, but at the thought of their earlier crime, and said to one another: "We suffer this rightly because we sinned against our brother, in that we saw the anguish of his soul when he asked us and we did not hearken to him: wherefore all this trouble hath come upon us." [2050] And this confession, we think, expiated by most salutary humility their terrible sin not only against their brother, against whom they had sinned with wicked cruelty, but also against God. What about Solomon, who in his first judgment manifested the gift of wisdom, which he had received of God, only by making use of falsehood? For in order to get at the truth which was hidden by the woman's lie, even he used the help of a lie most cunningly invented, saying: "Bring me a sword and divide the living child into two parts, and give the one half to the one and the other half to the other." And when this pretended cruelty stirred the heart of the true mother, but was received with approval by her who was not the true mother, then at last by this most sagacious discovery of the truth he pronounced the judgment which every one has felt to have been inspired by God, saying: "Give her the living child and slay it not: she is the mother of it." [2051] Further we are more fully taught by other passages of Scripture as well that we neither can nor should carry out everything which we determine either with peace or disturbance of mind, as we often hear that holy men and angels and even Almighty God Himself have changed what they had decided upon. For the blessed David determined and confirmed it by an oath, saying: "May God do so and add more to the foes of David if I leave of all that belong unto Nabal until the morning a single male." And presently when Abigail his wife interceded and intreated for him, he gave up his threats, lightened the sentence, and preferred to be regarded as a breaker of his word rather than to keep his pledged oath by cruelly executing it, saying: "As the Lord liveth, if thou hadst not quickly come to meet me there had not been left to Nabal by the morning light a single male." [2052] And as we do not hold that his readiness to take a rash oath (which resulted from his anger and disturbance of mind) ought to be copied by us, so we do think that the pardon and revision of his determination is to be followed. The "chosen vessel," in writing to the Corinthians, promises unconditionally to return, saying: "But I will come to you when I pass through Macedonia: for I will pass through Macedonia. But I will stay or even pass the winter with you that you may conduct me whithersoever I shall go. For I do not want only to see you in passing: for I hope to stay with you for some time." [2053] And this fact he remembers in the Second Epistle, thus: "And in this confidence I was minded first to come unto you, that ye might receive a second favour, and by you to pass into Macedonia and again to come to you from Macedonia and by you be conducted to Judæa." But a better plan suggested itself and he plainly admits that he is not going to fulfil what he had promised. "When then," says he, "I purposed this, did I use light-mindedness? or the things that I think, do I think after the flesh, that there should be with me yea, yea, and nay, nay?" Lastly, he declares even with the affirmation of an oath, why it was that he preferred to put on one side his pledged word rather than by his presence to bring a burden and grief to his disciples: "But I call God to witness against my soul that it was to spare you that I came not as far as Corinth. For I determined this with myself that I would not come unto you in sorrow." [2054] Though when the angels had refused to enter the house of Lot at Sodom, saying to him: "We will not enter but will remain in the street," they were presently forced by his prayers to change their determination, as Scripture subjoins: "And Lot constrained them, and they turned in to him." [2055] And certainly if they knew that they would turn in to him, they refused his request with a sham excuse: but if their excuse was a real one, then they are clearly shown to have changed their mind. And certainly we hold that the Holy Spirit inserted this in the sacred volume for no other reason but to teach us by their examples that we ought not to cling obstinately to our own determinations, but to subject them to our will, and so to keep our judgment free from all the chains of law that it may be ready to follow the call of good counsel in any direction, and may not delay or refuse to pass without any delay to whatever a sound discretion may find to be the better choice. And to rise to still higher instances, when king Hezekiah was lying on his bed and afflicted with grievous sickness the prophet Isaiah addressed him in the person of God, and said: "Thus saith the Lord: set thine house in order for thou shalt die and not live. And Hezekiah," it says, "turned his face to the wall and prayed to the Lord and said: I beseech thee, O Lord, remember how I have walked before Thee in truth and with a perfect heart, and how I have done what was right in Thy sight. And Hezekiah wept sore." After which it was again said to him: "Go, return, and speak to Hezekiah king of Judah, saying: Thus saith the Lord God of David thy father: I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears: and behold, I will add to thy days fifteen years: and I will deliver thee out of the hand of the king of the Assyrians, and I will defend this city for thy sake and for my servant David's sake." [2056] What can be clearer than this proof that out of consideration for mercy and goodness the Lord would rather break His word and instead of the pre-arranged limit of death extend the life of him who prayed, for fifteen years, rather than be found inexorable because of His unchangeable decree? In the same way too the Divine sentence says to the men of Nineveh: "Yet three days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown;" [2057] and presently this stern and abrupt sentence is softened by their penitence and fasting, and is turned to the side of mercy with goodness that is easy to be intreated. But if any one maintains that the Lord had threatened the destruction of their city (while He foreknew that they would be converted) for this reason, that He might incite them to a salutary penitence, it follows that those who are set over their brethren may, if need arises, without any blame for telling lies, threaten those who need improvement with severer treatment than they are really going to inflict. But if one says that God revoked that severe sentence in consideration of their penitence, according to what he says by Ezekiel: "If I say to the wicked, Thou shalt surely die: and he becomes penitent for his sin, and doeth judgment and justice, he shall surely live, he shall not die;" [2058] we are similarly taught that we ought not obstinately to stick to our determination, but that we should with gentle pity soften down the threats which necessity called forth. And that we may not fancy that the Lord granted this specially to the Ninevites, He continually affirms by Jeremiah that He will do the same in general towards all, and promises that without delay He will change His sentence in accordance with our deserts; saying: "I will suddenly speak against a nation and against a kingdom to root out and to pull down and to destroy it. If that nation repent of the evil, which I have spoken against it, I also will repent of the evil which I thought to do to them. And I will suddenly speak of a nation and a kingdom, to build up and to plant it. If it shall do evil in My sight, that it obey not My voice: I will repent of the good that I thought to do to it." To Ezekiel also: "Leave out not a word, if so be they will hearken and be converted every one from his evil way: that I may repent Me of the evil that I thought to do to them for the wickedness of their doings." [2059] And by these passages it is declared that we ought not obstinately to stick to our decisions, but to modify them with reason and judgment, and that better courses should always be adopted and preferred, and that we should turn without any delay to that course which is considered the more profitable. For this above all that invaluable sentence teaches us, because though each man's end is known beforehand to Him before his birth, yet somehow He so orders all things by a plan and method for all, and with regard to man's disposition, that He decides on everything not by the mere exercise of His power, nor according to the ineffable knowledge which His Prescience possesses, but according to the present actions of men, and rejects or draws to Himself each one, and daily either grants or withholds His grace. And that this is so the election of Saul also shows us, of whose miserable end the foreknowledge of God certainly could not be ignorant, and yet He chose him out of so many thousands of Israel and anointed him king, rewarding the then existing merits of his life, and not considering the sin of his coming fall, so that after he became reprobate, God complains almost in human terms and, with man's feelings, as if He repented of his choice, saying: "It repenteth Me that I have appointed Saul king: for he hath forsaken Me, and hath not performed My words;" and again: "But Samuel was grieved for Saul because the Lord repented that He had made Saul king over Israel." [2060] Finally this that He afterwards executed, that the Lord also declares by the prophet Ezekiel that He will by His daily judgment do with all men, saying: "Yea, if I shall say to the righteous that he shall surely live, and he trusting in his righteousness commit iniquity: all his righteousness shall be forgotten, and in his iniquity which he hath committed, in the same he shall die. And if I shall say to the wicked: Thou shalt surely die; and if he repent of his sin and do judgment and righteousness, and if that wicked man restore the pledge and render what he hath robbed, and walk in the commandments of life, and do no righteous thing, he shall surely live, he shall not die. None of his sins which he hath committed shall be imputed unto him." [2061] Finally, when the Lord would for their speedy fall turn away His merciful countenance from the people, whom He had chosen out of all nations, the giver of the law interposes on their behalf and cries out: "I beseech Thee, O Lord, this people have sinned a great sin; they have made for themselves gods of gold; and now if Thou forgivest their sin, forgive it; but if not, blot me out of Thy book which Thou hast written. To whom the Lord answered: If any man hath sinned before Me, I will blot him out of My book." [2062] David also, when complaining in prophetic spirit of Judas and the Lord's persecutors, says: "Let them be blotted out of the book of the living;" and because they did not deserve to come to saving penitence because of the guilt of their great sin, he subjoins: "And let them not be written among the righteous." [2063] Finally in the case of Judas himself the meaning of the prophetic curse was clearly fulfilled, for when his deadly sin was completed, he killed himself by hanging, that he might not after his name was blotted out be converted and repent and deserve to be once more written among the righteous in heaven. We must therefore not doubt that at the time when he was chosen by Christ and obtained a place in the Apostolate, the name of Judas was written in the book of the living, and that he heard as well as the rest the words: "Rejoice not because the devils are subject unto you, but rejoice because your names are written in heaven." [2064] But because he was corrupted by the plague of covetousness and had his name struck out from that heavenly list, it is suitably said of him and of men like him by the prophet: "O Lord, let all those that forsake Thee be confounded. Let them that depart from Thee be written in the earth, because they have forsaken the Lord, the vein of living waters." And elsewhere: "They shall not be in the counsel of My people, nor shall they be written in the writing of the house of Israel, neither shall they enter into the land of Israel." [2065] __________________________________________________________________
[2049] Gen. xlii. 9, 16.
[2050] Ib. ver. 21.
[2051] 1 Kings iii. 24-27.
[2052] 1 Sam. xxv. 22, 34.
[2053] 1 Cor. xvi. 5, 7.
[2054] 2 Cor. i. 15-17, 23; ii. 1.
[2055] Gen. xix. 2, 3.
[2056] 2 Kings xx. 1-6.
[2057] Jonah iii. 4 (LXX.).
[2058] Ezek. xxxiii. 14, 15.
[2059] Jer. xviii. 7, 10; xxvi. 2, 3.
[2060] 1 Sam. xv. 11, 35.
[2061] Ezek. xxxiii. 13-16.
[2062] Exod. xxxii. 31-33.
[2063] Ps. lxviii. (lxix.) 29.
[2064] S. Luke x. 20.
[2065] Jer. xvii. 13; Ezek. xiii. 9. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXVI.
How saintly men cannot be hard and obstinate.
Nor must we emit the value of that command because even if we have bound ourselves by some oath under the influence of anger or some other passion, (a thing which ought never to be done by a monk) still the case for each side should be weighed by a thorough judgment of the mind, and the course on which we have determined should be compared to that which we are urged to adopt, and we should without hesitation adopt that which on the occurrence of sounder considerations is decided to be the best. For it is better to put our promise on one side than to undergo the loss of something good and more desirable. Finally we never remember that venerable and approved fathers were hard and unyielding in decisions of this sort, but as wax under the influence of heat, so they were modified by reason, and when sounder counsels prevailed, did not hesitate to give in to the better side. But those whom we have seen obstinately clinging to their determinations we have always set down as unreasonable and wanting in judgment. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXVII.
A question whether the saying: "I have sworn and am purposed" is opposed to the view given above.
Germanus: So far as this consideration is concerned which has been clearly and fully treated of, a monk ought never to determine anything for fear lest he turn out a breaker of his word or else obstinate. And what then can we make of this saying of the Psalmist: "I have sworn and am purposed to keep Thy righteous judgments?" [2066] What is "to swear and purpose" except to keep one's determinations fixedly? __________________________________________________________________
[2066] Ps. cxviii. (cxix.) 106. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXVIII.
The answer telling in what cases the determination is to be kept fixedly, and in what cases it may be broken if need be.
Joseph: We do not lay this down with regard to those fundamental commands, without which our salvation cannot in any way exist, but with regard to those which we can either relax or hold fast to without endangering our state, as for instance, an unbroken and strict fast, or total abstinence from wine or oil, or entire prohibition to leave one's cell, or incessant attention to reading and meditation, all of which can be practised at pleasure, without damage to our profession and purpose, and, if need be, can be given up without blame. But we must most resolutely make up our minds to observe those fundamental commands, and not even, if need arise, to avoid death in their cause, with regard to which we must immovably assert: "I have sworn and am purposed." And this should be done for the preservation of love, for which all things else should be disregarded lest the beauty and perfection of its calm should suffer a stain. In the same way we must swear for the purity of our chastity, and we ought to do the same for faith, and sobriety and justice, to all of which we must cling with unchangeable persistence, and to forsake which even for a little is worthy of blame. But in the case of those bodily exercises, which are said to be profitable for a little, [2067] we must, as we said, decide in such a way that, if there occurs any more decided opportunity for a good act, which would lead us to relax them, we need not be bound by any rule about them, but may give them up and freely adopt what is more useful. For in the case of those bodily exercises, if they are dropped for a time, there is no danger: but to have given up these others even for a moment is deadly. __________________________________________________________________
[2067] Cf. 1 Tim. iv. 8. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXIX.
How we ought to do those things which are to be kept secret.
You must also provide with the same care that if by chance some word has slipped out of your mouth which you want to be a secret, no injunction to secrecy may trouble the hearer. For it will be more likely to be unheeded if it is let pass carelessly and simply, because the brother, whoever he is, will not be tormented with such a temptation to divulge it, as he will take it as something trivial dropped in casual conversation, and as what is for this very reason of less account, because it was not committed to the hearer's mind with a strict injunction to silence. For even if you bind his faith by exacting an oath from him, you need not doubt that it will very soon be divulged; for a fiercer assault of the devil's power will be made upon him, both to annoy and betray you, and to make him break his oath as quickly as possible. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXX.
That no determination should be made on those things which concern the needs of the common life.
And therefore a monk ought not hastily to make any promise on those things which merely concern bodily exercise, for fear lest he may stir up the enemy still more to attack what he is keeping as it were under the observance of the law, and so he may be more readily compelled to break it. Since every one who lives under the grace of liberty, and sets himself a law, thereby binds himself in a dangerous slavery, so that if by chance necessity constrains him to do what he might have ventured on lawfully, and indeed laudably and with thanksgiving, he is forced to act as a transgressor, and to fall into sin: "for where there is no law there is no transgression." [2068]
By this instruction and the teaching of the blessed Joseph we were confirmed as by a Divine oracle and made up our minds to stop in Egypt. But though henceforward we were but a little anxious about our promise, yet when seven years were over we were very glad to fulfil it. For we hastened to our monastery, at a time when we were confident of obtaining permission to return to the desert, and first paid our respects properly to our Elders; next we revived the former love in their minds as out of the ardour of their love they had not been at all softened by our very frequent letters to satisfy them, and in the last place, we entirely removed the sting of our broken promise and returned to the recesses of the desert of Scete, as they themselves forwarded us with joy.
This learning and doctrine of the illustrious fathers, our ignorance, O holy brother, has to the best of its ability made plain to you. And if perhaps our clumsy style has confused it instead of setting it in order, I trust that the blame which our clumsiness deserves will not interfere with the praise due to these grand men. Since it seemed to us a safer course in the sight of our Judge to state even in unadorned style this splendid doctrine rather than to hold our tongues about it, since if he considers the grandeur of the thoughts, the fact that the awkwardness of our style annoys him, need not be prejudicial to the profit of the reader, and for our part we are more anxious about its usefulness than its being praised. This at least I charge all those into whose hand this little book may fall; viz., that they must know that whatever in it pleases them belongs to the fathers, and whatever they dislike is all our own. [2069] __________________________________________________________________
[2068] Rom. iv. 15.
[2069] In this last chapter Cassian certainly makes his own the sentiments of Abbot Joseph on the permissibility of lying; and is therefore not unreasonably attacked for the teaching of this Conference by Prosper. "Contra Collatorem," c. ix. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
The Conferences of John Cassian.
Part III.
Containing Conferences XVIII.-XXIV. __________________________________________________________________
Preface. __________________________________________________________________
When by the help of the grace of Christ I had published ten Conferences of the Fathers, which were composed at the urgent request of the most blessed Helladius and Leontius, I dedicated seven others to Honoratus, a Bishop blessed in name as well as merits, and also to that holy servant of Christ, Eucherius. The same number also I have thought good to dedicate now to you, O holy brothers, Jovinianus, Minervius, Leontius, and Theodore. [2070] Since the last named of you founded that holy and splendid monastic rule in the province of Gaul, with the strictness of ancient virtue, while the rest of you by your instructions have stirred up monks not only before all to seek the common life of the Coenobia, but even to thirst eagerly for the sublime life of the anchorite. For those Conferences of the best of the fathers are arranged with such care, and so carefully considered in all respects, that they are suited to both modes of life whereby you have made not only the countries of the West, but even the isles to flourish with great crowds of brethren; i.e., I mean that not only those who still remain in congregations with praiseworthy subjection to rule, but those also who retire to no great distance from your monasteries, and try to carry out the rule of anchorites, may be more fully instructed, according as the nature of the place and the character of their condition may require. And to this your previous efforts and labours have especially contributed this, that, as they are already prepared and practiced in these exercises, they can more readily receive the precepts and institutes of the Elders, and receiving into their cells the authors of the Conferences together with the actual volumes of the Conferences and talking with them after a fashion by daily questions and answers, they may not be left to their own resources to find that way which is difficult and almost unknown in this country, but full of danger even there where well-worn paths and numberless instances of those who have gone before are not wanting, but may rather learn to follow the rule of the anchorite's life taught by their examples, whom ancient tradition and industry and long experience have thoroughly instructed. __________________________________________________________________
[2070] See the introduction p. 189. __________________________________________________________________
The Third Part of the Conferences
of John Cassian. __________________________________________________________________
XVIII. Conference of Abbot Piamun.
On the Three Sorts of Monks. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter I.
How we came to Diolcos and were received by Abbot Piamun. [2071]
After visiting and conversing with those three Elders, whose Conferences we have at the instance of our brother Eucherius tried to describe, as we were still more ardently desirous to seek out the further parts of Egypt, in which a larger and more perfect company of saints dwelt, we came--urged not so much by the necessities of our journey as by the desire of visiting the saints who were dwelling there--to a village named Diolcos, [2072] lying on one of the seven mouths of the river Nile. For when we heard of very many and very celebrated monasteries founded by the ancient fathers, like most eager merchants, at once we undertook the journey on an uncertain quest, urged on by the hope of greater gain. And when we wandered about there for some long time and fixed our curious eyes on those mountains of virtue conspicuous for their lofty height, the gaze of those around first singled out Abbot Piamun, the senior of all the anchorites living there and their presbyter, as if he were some tall lighthouse. For he was set on the top of a high mountain like that city in the gospel, [2073] and at once shed his light on our faces, whose virtues and miracles, which were wrought by him under our very eyes, Divine Grace thus bearing witness to his excellence, if we are not to exceed the plan and limits of this volume, we feel we must pass over in silence. For we promised to commit to memory what we could recollect, not of the miracles of God, but of the institutes and pursuits of the saints, so as to supply our readers merely with necessary instruction for the perfect life, and not with matter for idle and useless admiration without any correction of their faults. And so when Abbot Piamun had received us with welcome, and had refreshed us with becoming kindness, as he understood that we were not of the same country, he first asked us anxiously whence or why we had visited Egypt, and when he discovered that we had come thither from a monastery in Syria out of desire for perfection he began as follows:-- __________________________________________________________________
[2071] Piamun, who has been already spoken of in XVII. xxiv., is also mentioned by Rufinus (History of the Monks, c. xxxii.), Palladius (the Lausiac History, clxxii.), and Sozomen (H. E. VI. xxix.), all of whom tell, with slight variations, the same story, how that one day while he was officiating at the altar, he saw an angel writing down the names of some of the brethren, and passing by the names of others, all of whom Piamun on subsequent inquiry found to have been guilty of some grievous sin.
[2072] On Diolcos see on the Institutes V. xxxvi.
[2073] Cf. S. Matt. v. 14. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter II.
The words of Abbot Piamun, how monks who were novices ought to be taught by the example of their elders.
Whatever man, my children, is desirous to attain skill in any art, unless he gives himself up with the utmost pains and carefulness to the study of that system which he is anxious to learn, and observes the rules and orders of the best masters of that work or science, is indulging in a vain hope to reach by idle wishes any similarity to those whose pains and diligence he avoids copying. For we know that some have come from your country to these parts, only to go round the monasteries for the sake of getting to know the brethren, not meaning to adopt the rules and regulations, for the sake of which they travelled hither, nor to retire to the cells and aim at carrying out in action what they had learnt by sight or by teaching. And these people retained their character and pursuits to which they had grown accustomed, and, as is thrown in their teeth by some, are held to have changed their country not for the sake of their profit, but owing to the need of escaping want. For in the obstinacy of their stubborn mind, they not only could learn nothing, but actually would not stay any longer in these parts. For if they changed neither their method of fasting, nor their scheme of Psalms, nor even the fashion of their garments, what else could we think that they were after in this country, except only the supply of their victuals. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter III.
How the juniors ought not to discuss the orders of the seniors.
Wherefore if, as we believe, the cause of God has drawn you to try to copy our knowledge, you must utterly ignore all the rules by which your early beginnings were trained, and must with all humility follow whatever you see our Elders do or teach. And do not be troubled or drawn away and diverted from imitating it, even if for the moment the cause or reason of any deed or action is not clear to you, because if men have good and simple ideas on all things and are anxious faithfully to copy whatever they see taught or done by their Elders, instead of discussing it, then the knowledge of all things will follow through experience of the work. But he will never enter into the reason of the truth, who begins to learn by discussion, because as the enemy sees that he trusts to his own judgment rather than to that of the fathers' he easily urges him on so far till those things which are especially useful and helpful seem to him unnecessary or injurious, and the crafty foe so plays upon his presumption, that by obstinately clinging to his own opinion he persuades himself that only that is holy, which he himself in his pig-headed error thinks to be good and right. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IV.
Of the three sorts of monks which there are in Egypt.
Wherefore you should first hear how or whence the system and beginning of our order took its rise. For only then can a man at all effectually be trained in any art he may wish, and be urged on to practise it diligently, when he has learnt the glory of its authors and founders. There are three kinds of monks in Egypt, of which two are admirable, the third is a poor sort of thing and by all means to be avoided. The first is that of the Coenobites, who live together in a congregation and are governed by the direction of a single Elder: and of this kind there is the largest number of monks dwelling throughout the whole of Egypt. The second is that of the anchorites, who were first trained in the Coenobium and then being made perfect in practical life chose the recesses of the desert: and in this order we also hope to gain a place. The third is the reprehensible one of the Sarabaites. [2074] And of these we will discourse more fully one by one in order. Of these three orders then you ought, as we said, first to know about the founders. For at once from this there may arise either a hatred for the order which is to be avoided, or a longing for that which is to be followed, because each way is sure to carry the man who follows it, to that end which its author and discoverer has reached. __________________________________________________________________
[2074] See the note on c. vii. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter V.
Of the founders who originated the order of Coenobites.
And so the system of Coenobites took its rise in the days of the preaching of the Apostles. For such was all that multitude of believers in Jerusalem, which is thus described in the Acts of the Apostles: "But the multitude of believers was of one heart and one soul, neither said any of them that any of the things which he possessed was his own, but they had all things common. They sold their possessions and property and divided them to all, as any man had need." And again: "For neither was there any among them that lacked; for as many as possessed fields or houses, sold them and brought the price of the things that they sold and laid them before the feet of the Apostles: and distribution was made to every man as he had need." [2075] The whole Church, I say, was then such as now are those few who can be found with difficulty in Coenobia. But when at the death of the Apostles the multitude of believers began to wax cold, and especially that multitude which had come to the faith of Christ from diverse foreign nations, from whom the Apostles out of consideration for the infancy of their faith and their ingrained heathen habits, required nothing more than that they should "abstain from things sacrificed to idols and from fornication, and from things strangled, and from blood," [2076] and so that liberty which was conceded to the Gentiles because of the weakness of their newly-born faith, had by degrees begun to mar the perfection of that Church which existed at Jerusalem, and the fervour of that early faith cooled down owing to the daily increasing number both of natives and foreigners, and not only those who had accepted the faith of Christ, but even those who were the leaders of the Church relaxed somewhat of that strictness. For some fancying that what they saw permitted to the Gentiles because of their weakness, was also allowable for themselves, thought that they would suffer no loss if they followed the faith and confession of Christ keeping their property and possessions. But those who still maintained the fervour of the apostles, mindful of that former perfection left their cities and intercourse with those who thought that carelessness and a laxer life was permissible to themselves and the Church of God, and began to live in rural and more sequestered spots, and there, in private and on their own account, to practise those things which they had learnt to have been ordered by the apostles throughout the whole body of the Church in general: and so that whole system of which we have spoken grew up from those disciples who had separated themselves from the evil that was spreading. And these, as by degrees time went on, were separated from the great mass of believers and because they abstained from marriage and cut themselves off from intercourse with their kinsmen and the life of this world, were termed monks or solitaries from the strictness of their lonely and solitary life. Whence it followed that from their common life they were called Coenobites and their cells and lodgings Coenobia. That then alone was the earliest kind of monks, which is first not only in time but also in grace, and which continued unbroken for a very long period up to the time of Abbot Paul and Antony; and even to this day we see its traces remaining in strict coenobia. __________________________________________________________________
[2075] Acts iv. 32; ii. 45; iv. 34, 35.
[2076] Acts xv. 29. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VI.
Of the system of the Anchorites and its beginning.
Out of this number of the perfect, and, if I may use the expression, this most fruitful root of saints, were produced afterwards the flowers and fruits of the anchorites as well. And of this order we have heard that the originators were those whom we mentioned just now; viz., Saint Paul [2077] and Antony, men who frequented the recesses of the desert, not as some from faintheartedness, and the evil of impatience, but from a desire for loftier heights of perfection and divine contemplation, although the former of them is said to have found his way to the desert by reason of necessity, while during the time of persecution he was avoiding the plots of his neighbours. So then there sprang from that system of which we have spoken another sort of perfection, whose followers are rightly termed anchorites; i.e., withdrawers, because, being by no means satisfied with that victory whereby they had trodden under foot the hidden snares of the devil, while still living among men, they were eager to fight with the devils in open conflict, and a straightforward battle, and so feared not to penetrate the vast recesses of the desert, imitating, to wit, John the Baptist, who passed all his life in the desert, and Elijah and Elisha and those of whom the Apostle speaks as follows: "They wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being in want, distressed, afflicted, of whom the world was not worthy, wandering in deserts, in mountains and in dens and in caves of the earth." Of whom too the Lord speaks figuratively to Job: "But who hath sent out the wild ass free, and who hath loosed his bands? To whom I have given the wilderness for an house, and a barren land for his dwelling. He scorneth the multitude of the city and heareth not the cry of the driver; he looketh round about the mountains of his pasture, and seeketh for every green thing." In the Psalms also: "Let now the redeemed of the Lord say, those whom He hath redeemed from the hand of the enemy;" and after a little: "They wandered in a wilderness in a place without water: they found not the way of a city of habitation. They were hungry and thirsty: their soul fainted in them. And they cried unto the Lord in their trouble and He delivered them out of their distress;" whom Jeremiah too describes as follows: "Blessed is the man that hath borne the yoke from his youth. He shall sit solitary and hold his peace because he hath taken it up upon himself," and there sing in heart and deed these words of the Psalmist: "I am become like a pelican in the wilderness. I watched and am become like a sparrow alone upon the house-top." [2078] __________________________________________________________________
[2077] Paul was from very early days celebrated as the first of the anchorites. Indeed S. Jerome, who wrote his life (Works, Vol. ii. p. 13 ed. Migne) calls him "auctor vitæ monasticæ" (Ep. xxii. ad Eustochium). He is said to have fled to the Thebaid from the terrors of the Decian persecution, and to have died there in extreme old age. Antony has already been several times mentioned by Cassian. See the Institutes V. iv.: Conference II. ii.; III. iv., etc.
[2078] Heb. xi. 37, 38; Job xxxix. 5-8; Ps. cvi. (cvii.) 2, 4-6; Lam. iii. 27, 28; Ps. ci (cii.) 7, 8. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VII.
Of the origin of the Sarabaites and their mode of life.
And while the Christian religion was rejoicing in these two orders of monks though this system had begun by degrees to deteriorate, there arose afterwards that disgusting and unfaithful kind of monks; or rather, that baleful plant revived and sprang up again which when it first shot up in the persons of Ananias and Sapphira in the early Church was cut off by the severity of the Apostle Peter--a kind which among monks has been for a long while considered detestable and execrable, and which was adopted by no one any more, so long as there remained stamped on the memory of the faithful the dread of that very severe sentence, in which the blessed Apostle not merely refused to allow the aforesaid originators of the novel crime to be cured by penitence or any amends, but actually destroyed that most dangerous germ by their speedy death. When then that precedent, which was punished with Apostolical severity in the case of Ananias and Sapphira had by degrees faded from the minds of some, owing to long carelessness and forgetfulness from lapse of time, there arose the race of Sarabaites, who owing to the fact that they have broken away from the congregations of the Coenobites and each look after their own affairs, are rightly named in the Egyptian language Sarabaites, [2079] and these spring from the number of those, whom we have mentioned, who wanted to imitate rather than truly to aim at Evangelical perfection, urged thereto by rivalry or by the praises of those who preferred the complete poverty of Christ to all manner of riches. These then while in their feeble mind they make a pretence of the greatest goodness and are forced by necessity to join this order, while they are anxious to be reckoned by the name of monks without emulating their pursuits, in no sort of way practise discipline, or are subject to the will of the Elders, or, taught by their traditions, learn to govern their own wills or take up and properly learn any rule of sound discretion; but making their renunciation only as a public profession, i.e., before the face of men, either continue in their homes devoted to the same occupations as before, though dignified by this title, or building cells for themselves and calling them monasteries remain in them perfectly free and their own masters, never submitting to the precepts of the gospel, which forbid them to be busied with any anxiety for the day's food, or troubles about domestic matters: commands which those alone fulfil with no unbelieving doubt, who have freed themselves from all the goods of this world and subjected themselves to the superiors of the Coenobia so that they cannot admit that they are at all their own masters. But those who, as we said, shirk the severity of the monastery, and live two or three together in their cells, not satisfied to be under the charge and rule of an Abbot, but arranging chiefly for this; viz., that they may get rid of the yoke of the Elders and have liberty to carry out their wishes and go and wander where they will, and do what they like, these men are more taken up both day and night in daily business than those who live in the Coenobia, but not with the same faith and purpose. For these Sarabaites do it not to submit the fruits of their labours to the will of the steward, but to procure money to lay by. And see what a difference there is between them. For the others think nothing of the morrow, and offer to God the most acceptable fruits of their toil: while these extend their faithless anxiety not only to the morrow, but even to the space of many years, and so fancy that God is either false or impotent as He either could not or would not grant them the promised supply of food and clothing. The one seek this in all their prayers; viz., that they may gain aktemosunen, i.e., the deprivation of all things, and lasting poverty: the other that they may secure a rich quantity of all sorts of supplies. The one eagerly strive to go beyond the fixed rule of daily work that whatever is not wanted for the sacred purposes of the monastery, may be distributed at the will of the Abbot either among the prisons, or in the guest-chamber or in the infirmary or to the poor; the others that whatever the day's gorge leaves over, may be useful for extravagant wants or else laid by through the sin of covetousness. Lastly, if we grant that what has been collected by them with no good design, may be disposed of in better ways than we have men tioned, yet not even thus do they rise to the merits of goodness and perfection. For the others bring in such returns to the monastery, and daily report to them, and continue in such humility and subjection that they are deprived of their rights over what they gain by their own efforts, just as they are of their rights over themselves, as they constantly renew the fervour of their original act of renunciation, while they daily deprive themselves of the fruits of their labours: but these are puffed up by the fact that they are bestowing something on the poor, and daily fall headlong into sin. The one party are by patience and the strictness whereby they continue devoutly in the order which they have once embraced, so as never to fulfil their own will, crucified daily to this world and made living martyrs; the others are cast down into hell by the lukewarmness of their purpose. These two sorts of monks then vie with each other in almost equal numbers in this province; but in other provinces, which the need of the Catholic faith compelled me to visit, we have found that this third class of Sarabaites flourishes and is almost the only one, since in the time of Lucius who was a Bishop of Arian misbelief [2080] in the reign of Valens, while we carried alms [2081] to our brethren; viz., those from Egypt and the Thebaid, who had been consigned to the mines of Pontus and Armenia [2082] for their steadfastness in the Catholic faith, though we found the system of Coenobia in some cities few and far between, yet we never made out that even the name of anchorites was heard among them. __________________________________________________________________
[2079] Sarabaites, this third sort of monks whom Cassian here paints in such dark colours, are spoken of by S. Jerome (Ep. xxii. ad Eustochium) under the name of Remoboth. The origin of both names is obscure, but Jerome and Cassian are quite at one in their scorn for these pretended monks. S. Benedict begins his monastic rule by describing the four kinds of monks, coenobites, anchorites, sarabaites, and a fourth class to which he gives the name of "gyrovagi," i e., wandering monks; these must be those of whom Cassian speaks below in c. viii. without giving them any definite name. See further Bingham, Antiquities VII. ii., and the Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, Art. Sarabaites.
[2080] Lucius took the lead of the Arian party at Alexandria after the murder of George of Cappadocia in 361, and was put forward by his party as the candidate for the see which they regarded as vacant. In 373, after the death of Athanasius, he was forced upon the reluctant Church of Alexandria by the Arian Emperor Valens, and according to Gregory Nazianzen a fresh persecution of the orthodox party at once began; and to this it is that Piamun alludes in the text.
[2081] Diaconia. The word is used again by Cassian for almsgiving in Conf. XXI. i., viii., ix., and cf. Gregory the Great, Ep. xxii., and compare eis diakonian in Acts xi. 29.
[2082] To work in the mines was a punishment to which the Confessors were frequently subjected in the time of persecution: Cf. the prayer in the Liturgy of S. Mark that God would have mercy on those in prison or in the mines, etc. Hammond's Liturgies, p. 181. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VIII.
Of a fourth sort of monks.
There is however another and a fourth kind, which we have lately seen springing up among those who flatter themselves with the appearance and form of anchorites, and who in their early days seem in a brief fervour to seek the perfection of the Coenobium, but presently cool off, and, as they dislike to put an end to their former habits and faults, and are not satisfied to bear the yoke of humility and patience any longer, and scorn to be in subjection to the rule of the Elders, look out for separate cells and want to remain by themselves alone, that as they are provoked by nobody they may be regarded by men as patient, gentle, and humble: and, this arrangement, or rather this lukewarmness never suffers those, of whom it has once got hold, to approach to perfection. For in this way their faults are not merely not rooted up, but actually grow worse, while they are excited by no one, like some deadly and internal poison which the more it is concealed, so much the more deeply does it creep in and cause an incurable disease to the sick person. For out of respect for each man's own cell no one ventures to reprove the faults of a solitary, which he would rather have ignored than cured. Moreover virtues are created not by hiding faults but by driving them out. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IX.
A question as to what is the difference between a Coenobium and a monastery.
Germanus: Is there any distinction between a Coenobium and a monastery, or is the same thing meant by either name? __________________________________________________________________
Chapter X.
The answer.
Piamun: Although many people indifferently speak of monasteries instead of Coenobia, yet there is this difference, that monastery is the title of the dwelling, and means nothing more than the place, i.e., the habitation of monks, while Coenobium describes the character of the life and its system: and monastery may mean the dwelling of a single monk, while a Coenobium cannot be spoken of except where dwells a united community of a large number of men living together. They are however termed monasteries in which groups of Sarabaites live. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XI.
Of true humility, and how Abbot Serapion exposed the mock humility of a certain man.
Wherefore as I see that you have learnt the first principles of this life from the best sort of monks, i.e., that starting from the excellent school of the coenobium you are aiming at the lofty heights of the anchorite's rule, you should with genuine feeling of heart pursue the virtue of humility and patience, which I doubt not that you learnt there; and not feign it, as some do, by mock humility in words, or by an artificial and unnecessary readiness for some duties of the body. And this sham humility Abbot Serapion [2083] once laughed to scorn most capitally. For when one had come to him making a great display of his lowliness by his dress and words, and the old man urged him, after his custom, to "collect the prayer" [2084] he would not consent to his request, but debasing himself declared that he was involved in such crimes that he did not deserve even to breathe the air which is common to all, and refusing even the use of the mat preferred to sit down on the bare ground. But when he had shown still less inclination for the washing of the feet, then Abbot Serapion, when supper was finished, and the customary Conference gave him an opportunity, began kindly and gently to urge him not to roam with shifty lightmindedness over the whole world, idly and vaguely, especially as he was young and strong, but to keep to his cell in accordance with the rule of the Elders and to elect to be supported by his own efforts rather than by the bounty of others; which even the Apostle Paul would not allow, and though when he was labouring in the cause of the gospel this provision might lightly have been made for him, yet he preferred to work night and day, to provide daily food for himself and for those who were ministering to him and could not do the work with their own hands. Whereupon the other was filled with such vexation and disgust that he could not hide by his looks the annoyance which he felt in his heart. To whom the Elder: Thus far, my son, you have loaded yourself with the weight of all kinds of crimes, not fearing lest by the confession of such awful sins you bring a reproach upon your reputation; how is it then, I pray, that now, at our simple admonition, which involved no reproof, but simply showed a feeling for your edification and love, I see that you are moved with such disgust that you cannot hide it by your looks, or conceal it by an appearance of calmness? Perhaps while you were humiliating yourself, you were hoping to hear from our lips this saying: "The righteous man is the accuser of himself in the opening of his discourse?" [2085] Further, true humility of heart must be preserved, which comes not from an affected humbling of body and in word, but from an inward humbling of the soul: and this will only then shine forth with clear evidences of patience when a man does not boast about sins, which nobody will believe, but, when another insolently accuses him of them, thinks nothing of it, and when with gentle equanimity of spirit he puts up with wrongs offered to him. __________________________________________________________________
[2083] On Serapion see the note on Conf. V. i.
[2084] Orationem Colligere. See the notes on the Institutes III. vii.
[2085] Prov. xviii. 17. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XII.
A question how true patience can be gained.
Germanus: We should like to know how that calmness can be secured and maintained, that, as when silence is enjoined on us we shut the door of our mouth, and lay an embargo on speech, so also we may be able to preserve gentleness of heart, which sometimes even when the tongue is restrained loses its state of calmness within: and for this reason we think that the blessing of gentleness can only be preserved by one in a remote cell and solitary dwelling. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIII.
The answer.
Piamun: True patience and tranquillity is neither gained nor retained without profound humility of heart: and if it has sprung from this source, there will be no need either of the good offices of the cell or of the refuge of the desert. For it will seek no external support from anything, if it has the internal support of the virtue of humility, its mother and its guardian. But if we are disturbed when attacked by anyone it is clear that the foundations of humility have not been securely laid in us, and therefore at the outbreak even of a small storm, our whole edifice is shaken and ruinously disturbed. For patience would not be worthy of praise and admiration if it only preserved its purposed tranquillity when attacked by no darts of enemies, but it is grand and glorious because when the storms of temptation beat upon it, it remains unmoved. For wherein it is believed that a man is annoyed and hurt by adversity, therein is he strengthened the more; and he is therein the more exercised, wherein he is thought to be annoyed. For everybody knows that patience gets its name from the passions and endurance, and so it is clear that no one can be called patient but one who bears without annoyance all the indignities offered to him, and so it is not without reason that he is praised by Solomon: "Better is the patient man than the strong, and he who restrains his anger than he who takes a city;" and again: "For a long-suffering man is mighty in prudence, but a faint-hearted man is very foolish." [2086] When then anyone is overcome by a wrong, and blazes up in a fire of anger, we should not hold that the bitterness of the insult offered to him is the cause of his sin, but rather the manifestation of secret weakness, in accordance with the parable of our Lord and Saviour which He spoke about the two houses, [2087] one of which was founded upon a rock, and the other upon the sand, on both of which He says that the tempest of rain and waters and storm beat equally: but that one which was founded on the solid rock felt no harm at all from the violence of the shock, while that which was built on the shifting and moving sand at once collapsed. And it certainly appears that it fell, not because it was struck by the rush of the storms and torrents, but because it was imprudently built upon the sand. For a saint does not differ from a sinner in this, that he is not himself tempted in the same way, but because he is not worsted even by a great assault, while the other is overcome even by a slight temptation. For the fortitude of any good man would not, as we said, be worthy of praise, if his victory was gained without his being tempted, as most certainly there is no room for victory where there is no struggle and conflict: for "Blessed is the man that endureth temptation, for when he has been proved he shall receive the crown of life which God hath promised to them that love Him." [2088] According to the Apostle Paul also "Strength is made perfect" not in ease and delights but "in weakness." "For behold," says He, "I have made thee this day a fortified city, and a pillar of iron, and a wall of brass, over all the land, to the kings of Judah, and to the princes thereof, and to the priests thereof, and to all the people of the land. And they shall fight against thee, and shall not prevail: for I am with thee, saith the Lord, to deliver thee." [2089] __________________________________________________________________
[2086] Prov. xvi. 32; xiv. 29.
[2087] Cf. S. Matt. vii. 24, 59.
[2088] S. James i. 12.
[2089] 2 Cor. xii. 9; Jer. i. 18, 19. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIV.
Of the example of patience given by a certain religious woman.
Of this patience then I want to give you at least two examples: one of a certain religious woman, who aimed at the virtue of patience so eagerly that she not only did not avoid the assaults of temptation, but actually made for herself occasions of trouble that she might not cease to be tried more often. For this woman as she was living at Alexandria and was born of no mean ancestors, and was serving the Lord religiously in the house which had been left to her by her parents, came to Athanasius the Bishop, of blessed memory, and entreated him to give her some other widow to support, who was being provided for at the expense of the Church. And, to give her petition in her own words: "Give me," she said, "one of the sisters to look after." When then the Bishop had commended the woman's purpose because he saw that she was very ready for a work of a mercy, he ordered a widow to be chosen out of the whole number, who was preferred to all the rest for the goodness of her character, and her grave and well-regulated life, for fear lest her wish to be liberal might be overcome by the fault of the recipient of her bounty, and she who sought gain out of the poor might be disgusted at her bad character and so suffer an injury to her faith. And when the woman was brought home, she ministered to her with all kinds of service, and found out her excellent modesty and gentleness, and saw that every minute she was honoured by thanks from her for her kind offices, and so after a few days she came back to the aforesaid Bishop, and said: I asked you to bid that a woman be given to me for me to support and to serve with obedient complaisance. And when he, not yet understanding the woman's object and desire, thought that her petition had been neglected by the deceitfulness of the superior, and inquired not without some anger in his mind, what was the reason of the delay, at once he discovered that a widow who was better than all the rest had been assigned to her, and so he secretly gave orders that the one who was the worst of all should be given to her, the one, I mean, who surpassed in anger and quarrelling and wine-bibbing and talkativeness all who were under the power of these faults. And when she was only too easily found and given to her, she began to keep her at home, and to minister to her with the same care as to the former widow, or even more attentively, and this was all the thanks which she got from her for her services; viz., to be constantly tried by unworthy wrongs and continually annoyed by her by reproaches and upbraiding, as she complained of her, and chid her with spiteful and disparaging remarks, because she had asked for her from the Bishop not for her refreshment but rather for her torment and annoyance, and had taken her away from rest to labour instead of from labour to rest. When then her continual reproaches broke out so far that the wanton woman did not restrain herself from laying hands on her, the other only redoubled her services in still humbler offices, and learnt to overcome the vixen not by resisting her, but by subjecting herself still more humbly, so that, when provoked by all kinds of indignities, she might smooth down the madness of the shrew by gentleness and kindness. And when she had been thoroughly strengthened by these exercises, and had attained the perfect virtue of the patience she had longed for, she came to the aforesaid Bishop to thank him for his decision and choice as well as for the blessing of her exercise, because he had at last as she wished provided her with a most worthy mistress for her patience, strengthened daily by whose constant annoyance as by some oil for wrestling, she had arrived at complete patience of mind; and, at last, said she, you have given me one to support, for the former one rather honoured and refreshed me by her services. This may be sufficient to have told about the female sex, that by this tale we may not only be edified, but even confounded, as we cannot maintain our patience unless we are like wild beasts removed in caves and cells. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XV.
Of the example of patience given by Abbot Paphnutius.
Now let us give the other instance of Abbot Paphnutius, who always remained so zealously in the recesses of that renowned and far-famed desert of Scete, in which he is now Presbyter, so that the rest of the anchorites gave him the name of Bubalis, [2090] because he always delighted in dwelling in the desert as if with a sort of innate liking. And so as even in boyhood he was so good and full of grace that even the renowned and great men of that time admired his gravity and steadfast constancy, and although he was younger in age, yet put him on a level with the Elders out of regard for his virtues, and thought fit to admit him to their order, the same envy, which formerly excited the minds of his brethren against the patriarch Joseph, inflamed one out of the number of his brethren with a burning and consuming jealousy. And this man wanting to mar his beauty by some blemish or spot, hit on this kind of devilry, so as to seize an opportunity when Paphnutius had left his cell to go to Church on Sunday: and secretly entering his cell he slyly hid his own book among the boughs which he used to weave of palm branches, and, secure of his well-planned trick, himself went off as if with a pure and clean conscience to Church. And when the whole service was ended as usual, in the presence of all the brethren he brought his complaint to S. Isidore [2091] who was Presbyter of this desert before this same Paphnutius, and declared that his book had been stolen from his cell. And when his complaint had so disturbed the minds of all the brethren, and more especially of the Presbyter, so that they knew not what first to suspect or think, as all were overcome with the utmost astonishment at so new and unheard of a crime, such as no one remembered ever to have been committed in that desert before that time, and which has never happened since, he who had brought forward the matter as the accuser urged that they should all be kept in Church and certain selected men be sent to search the cells of the brethren one by one. And when this had been entrusted to three of the Elders by the Presbyter, they turned over the bed-chambers of them all, and at last found the book hidden in the cell of Paphnutius among the boughs of the palms which they call seira, just as the plotter had hidden it. And when the inquisitors at once brought it back to the Church and produced it before all, Paphnutius, although he was perfectly clear in the sincerity of his conscience, yet like one who acknowledged the guilt of thieving, gave himself up entirely to make amends and humbly asked for a plan of repentance, as he was so careful of his shame and modesty (and feared) lest if he tried to remove the stain of the theft by words, he might further be branded as a liar, as no one would believe anything but what had been found out. And when he had immediately left the Church not cast down in mind but rather trusting to the judgment of God, he continually shed tears at his prayers, and fasted thrice as often as before, and prostrated himself in the sight of men with all humility of mind. But when he had thus submitted himself with all contrition of flesh and spirit for almost a fortnight, so that he came early on the morning of Saturday and Sunday not to receive the Holy Communion [2092] but to prostrate himself on the threshold of the Church and humbly ask for pardon, He, Who is the witness of all secret things and knows them, suffered him to be no longer tried by Himself or defamed by others. For what the author of the crime, the wicked thief of his own property, the cunning defamer of another's credit, had done with no man there as a witness, that He made known by means of the devil who was himself the instigator of the sin. For possessed by a most fierce demon, he made known all the craft of his secret plot, and the same man who had conceived the accusation and the cheat betrayed it. But he was so long and grievously vexed by that unclean spirit that he could not even be restored by the prayers of the saints living there, who by means of divine gifts can command the devils, nor could the special grace of the Presbyter Isidore himself cast out from him his cruel tormentor, though by the Lord's bounty such power was given him that no one who was possessed was ever brought to his doors without being at once healed; for Christ was reserving this glory for the young Paphnutius, that the man should be cleansed only by the prayers of him against whom he had plotted, and that the jealous enemy should receive pardon for his offence and an end of his present punishment, only by proclaiming his name, from whose credit he had thought that he could detract. He then in his early youth already gave these signs of his future character, and even in his boyish years sketched the lines of that perfection which was to grow up in mature age. If then we want to attain to his height of virtue, we must lay the same foundation to begin with. __________________________________________________________________
[2090] i.e., the Buffalo. On Paphnutius see the note on Conf. III.
[2091] Gazet thinks that this Isidore is the same person as the one mentioned in the Lausiac History c. i.; and Sozomen VI. xxviii., but doubts whether he is identical with the person of the same name mentioned in Rufinus: History of the Monks c. xvii., Sozomen VIII. xii., and Socrates VI. ix.
[2092] On the Saturday and Sunday celebration of the Holy Communion in Egypt compare the Institutes III. ii. In Gaul it was apparently received daily: Institutes VI. viii. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVI.
On the perfection of patience.
A twofold reason however led me to relate this fact, first that we may weigh this steadfastness and constancy of the man, and as we are attacked by less serious wiles of the enemy, may the better secure a greater feeling of calmness and patience, secondly that we may with resolute decision hold that we cannot be safe from the storms of temptation and assaults of the devil if we make all the protection for our patience and all our confidence consist not in the strength of our inner man but in the doors of our cell or the recesses of the desert, and companionship of the saints, or the safeguard of anything else outside us. For unless our mind is strengthened by the power of His protection Who says in the gospel "the kingdom of God is within you," [2093] in vain do we fancy that we can defeat the plots of our airy foe by the aid of men who are living with us, or that we can avoid them by distance of place, or exclude them by the protection of walls. For though none of these things was wanting to Saint Paphnutius yet the tempter did not fail to find a way of access against him to attack him; nor did the encircling walls, or the solitude of the desert or the merits of all those saints in the congregation repulse that most foul spirit. But because the holy servant of God had fixed the hope of his heart not on those external things but on Him Who is the judge of all secrets, he could not be moved even by the machinations of such an assault as that. On the other hand did not the man whom envy had hurried into so grievous a sin enjoy the benefit of solitude and the protection of a retired dwelling, and intercourse with the blessed Abbot and Presbyter Isidore and other saints? And yet because the storm raised by the devil found him upon the sand, it not only drove in his house but actually overturned it. We need not then seek for our peace in externals, nor fancy that another person's patience can be of any use to the faults of our impatience. For just as "the kingdom of God is within you," so "a man's foes are they of his own household." [2094] For no one is more my enemy than my own heart which is truly the one of my household closest to me. And therefore if we are careful, we cannot possibly be injured by intestine enemies. For where those of our own household are not opposed to us, there also the kingdom of God is secured in peace of heart. For if you diligently investigate the matter, I cannot be injured by any man however spiteful, if I do not fight against myself with warlike heart. But if I am injured, the fault is not owing to the other's attack, but to my own impatience. For as strong and solid food is good for a man in good health, so it is bad for a sick one. But it cannot hurt the man who takes it, unless the weakness of its recipient gives it its power to hurt. If then any similar temptation ever arises among brethren, we need never be shaken out of the even tenor of our ways and give an opening to the blasphemous snarls of men living in the world, nor wonder that some bad and detestable men have secretly found their way into the number of the saints, because so long as we are trodden down and trampled in the threshing floor of this world, the chaff which is destined for eternal fire is quite sure to be mingled with the choicest of the wheat. Finally if we bear in mind that Satan was chosen among the angels, and Judas among the apostles, and Nicholas the author of a detestable heresy among the deacons, it will be no wonder that the basest of men are found among the ranks of the saints. For although some maintain that this Nicholas was not the same man who was chosen for the work of the ministry by the Apostles, [2095] nevertheless they cannot deny that he was of the number of the disciples, all of whom were clearly of such a character and so perfect as those few whom we can now with difficulty discover in the Coenobia. Let us then bring forward not the fall of the above-mentioned brother, who fell in the desert with so grievous a collapse, nor that horrible stain which he afterwards wiped out by the copious tears of his penitence, but the example of the blessed Paphnutius; and let us not be destroyed by the ruin of the former, whose ingrained sin of envy was increased and made worse by his affected piety, but let us imitate with all our might the humility of the latter, which in his case was no sudden production of the quiet of the desert, but had been gained among men, and was consummated and perfected by solitude. However you should know that the evil of envy is harder to be cured than other faults, for I should almost say that a man whom it has once tainted with the mischief of its poison is without a remedy. For it is the plague of which it is figuratively said by the prophet: "Behold I will send among you serpents, basilisks, against which there is no charm: and they shall bite you." [2096] Rightly then are the stings of envy compared by the prophet to the deadly poison of basilisks, as by it the first author of all poisons and their chief perished and died. For he slew himself before him of whom he was envious, and destroyed himself before that he poured forth the poison of death against man: for "by the envy of the devil death entered into the world: they therefore who are on his side follow him." [2097] For just as he who was the first to be corrupted by the plague of that evil, admitted no remedy of penitence, nor any healing plaster, so those also who have given themselves up to be smitten by the same pricks, exclude all the aid of the sacred charmer, because as they are tormented not by the faults but by the prosperity of those of whom they are jealous, they are ashamed to display the real truth and look out for some external unnecessary and trifling causes of offence: and of these, because they are altogether false, vain is the hope of cure, while the deadly poison which they will not produce is lurking in their veins. Of which the wisest of men has fitly said: "If a serpent bite without hissing, there is no supply for the charmer." [2098] For those are silent bites, to which alone the medicine of the wise is no succour. For that evil is so far incurable that it is made worse by attentions, it is increased by services, is irritated by presents, because as the same Solomon says: "envy endures nothing." [2099] For just in proportion as another has made progress in humble submission or in the virtue of patience or in the merit of munificence, so is a man excited by worse pricks of envy, because he desires nothing less than the ruin or death of the man whom he envies. Lastly no submission on the part of their harmless brother could soften the envy of the eleven patriarchs, so that Scripture relates of them: "But his brothers envied him because his father loved him, and they could not speak peaceably unto him" [2100] until their jealousy, which would not listen to any entreaties on the part of their obedient and submissive brother, desired his death, and would scarcely be satisfied with the sin of selling a brother. It is plain then that envy is worse than all faults, and harder to get rid of, as it is inflamed by those remedies by which the others are destroyed. For, for example, a man who is grieved by a loss that has been caused to him, is healed by a liberal compensation: one who is sore owing to a wrong done to him, is appeased by humble satisfaction being made. What can you do with one who is the more offended by the very fact that he sees you humbler and kinder, who is not aroused to anger by any greed which can be appeased by a bribe; or by any injurious attack or love of vengeance, which is overcome by obsequious services; but is only irritated by another's success and happiness? But who is there who in order to satisfy one who envies him, would wish to fall from his good fortune, or to lose his prosperity or to be involved in some calamity? Wherefore we must constantly implore the divine aid, to which nothing is impossible, in order that the serpent may not by a single bite of this evil destroy whatever is flourishing in us, and animated as it were by the life and quickening power of the Holy Ghost. For the other poisons of serpents, i.e., carnal sins and faults, in which human frailty is easily entangled and from which it is as easily purified, show some traces of their wounds in the flesh, whereby although the earthly body is most dangerously inflamed, yet if any charmer well skilled in divine incantations applies a cure and antidote or the remedy of words of salvation, the poisonous evil does not reach to the everlasting death of the soul. But the poison of envy as if emitted by the basilisk, destroys the very life of religion and faith, even before the wound is perceived in the body. For he does not raise himself up against men, but, in his blasphemy, against God, who carps at nothing in his brother except his felicity, and so blames no fault of man, but simply the judgment of God. This then is that "root of bitterness springing up" [2101] which raises itself to heaven and tends to reproaching the very Author Who bestows good things on man. Nor shall anyone be disturbed because God threatens to send "serpents, basilisks," [2102] to bite those by whose crimes He is offended. For although it is certain that God cannot be the author of envy, yet it is fair and worthy of the divine judgment that, while good gifts are bestowed on the humble and refused to the proud and reprobate, those who, as the Apostle says, deserve to be given over "to a reprobate mind," [2103] should be smitten and consumed by envy sent as it were by Him, according to this passage: "They have provoked me to jealousy by them that are no gods: and I will provoke them to jealousy by them that are no nation." [2104]
By this discourse the blessed Piamun excited still more keenly our desire in which we had begun to be promoted from the infant school of the Coenobium to the second standard of the anchorites' life. For it was under his instruction that we made our first start in solitary living, the knowledge of which we afterwards followed up more thoroughly in Scete. __________________________________________________________________
[2093] S. Luke xvii. 21.
[2094] S. Matt. x. 36.
[2095] As Cassian here implies, considerable doubt exists whether the Nicholas from whom the sect of the Nicolaitans (Rev. ii. 15) derive their name was the same person as Nicholas the last of the seven "deacons" mentioned in Acts vi. 5. According to Irenæus (Hær. I. xxvi.) the Nicolaitans themselves claimed him as their founder, and the claim is allowed by Hippolytus (Philos. vii. § 36), Epiphanius (Hær. I. ii. § 25), and other writers of the fourth century. Clement of Alexandria however disputes the claim (Strom. III. iv. and cf. Euseb. H. E. III. xxix.), as does Theodoret (Hær. Tab. iii. 1).
[2096] Jer. viii. 17.
[2097] Wisd. ii. 24, 25.
[2098] Eccl. x. 2.
[2099] Prov. xxvii. 4.
[2100] Gen. xxxvii. 4.
[2101] Heb. xii. 15.
[2102] Jer. viii. 17.
[2103] Rom. i. 28.
[2104] Deut. xxxii. 21. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
XIX. Conference of Abbot John.
On the Aim of the Coenobite and Hermit. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter I.
Of the Coenobium of Abbot Paul and the patience of a certain brother.
After only a few days we made our way once more with great alacrity, drawn by the desire for further instruction, to the Coenobium of Abbot Paul, where though a greater number than two hundred of the brethren dwell there, yet, in honour of the festival which was then being held, an enormous collection of monks from other Coenobia had come there as well: for the anniversary of the death [2105] of a former Abbot who had presided over the same monastery was being solemnly kept. And we have mentioned this assembly for this reason that we may briefly treat of the patience of a certain brother, which was remarkable for immovable gentleness on his part in the presence of all this congregation. For though the object of this work has regard to another person; viz., that we may produce the utterances of Abbot John [2106] who left the desert and submitted himself to that Coenobium with the utmost goodness and humility, yet we think it not at all absurd to relate without any unnecessary verbiage, what we think is most instructive to those who are eager for goodness. And so when the whole body of the monks was seated in separate parties of twelve, in the large open court, when one of the brethren had been rather slow in fetching and bringing in a dish, the aforesaid Abbot Paul, who was busily hurrying about among the troops of brethren who were serving, saw it and struck him such a blow before them all on his open palm that the sound of the hand which was struck actually reached the ears of those whose backs were turned and who were sitting some way off. But the youth of remarkable patience received it with such calmness of mind that not only did he let no word fall from his mouth or give the slightest sign of murmuring by the silent movements of his lips, but actually did not change colour in the slightest degree or (lose) the modest and peaceful look about his mouth. And this fact struck with astonishment not merely us, who had lately come from a monastery of Syria and had not learnt the blessing of this patience by such clear examples, but all those as well who were not without experience of such earnestness, so that by it a great lesson was taught even to those who were well advanced, because even if this paternal correction had not disturbed his patience, neither did the presence of so great a number bring the slightest sign of colour to his cheeks. __________________________________________________________________
[2105] Depositio. A word frequently used for the day of the death (or burial) in Calendars or Martyrologies.
[2106] On this Abbot John compare the note on the Institutes V. xxviii. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter II.
Of Abbot John's humility and our question.
In this Coenobium then we found a very old man named John, whose words and humility we think ought certainly not to be passed over in silence as in them he excelled all the saints, as we know that he was especially vigorous in this perfection, which though it is the mother of all virtues and the surest foundation of the whole spiritual superstructure, yet is altogether a stranger to our system. Wherefore it is no wonder that we cannot attain to the height of those men, as we cannot stand the training of the Coenobium I will not say up to old age, but are scarcely content to endure the yoke of subjection for a couple of years, and at once escape to enjoy a dangerous liberty, while even for that short time we seem to be subject to the rule of the Elder not according to any strict rule, but as our free will directs. When then we had seen this old man in Abbot Paul's Coenobium, we were struck, first by his age and the grace with which the man was endowed, and with looks fixed on the ground began to entreat him to vouchsafe to explain to us why he had forsaken the freedom of the desert and that exalted profession, in which his fame and celebrity had raised him above others who had adopted the same life, and why he had chosen to enter under the yoke of the Coenobium. He said that as he was unequal to the system of the anchorites and unworthy of the heights of such perfection, he had gone back to the infant school, that he might learn to carry out the lessons taught there, according as the life demanded. And when our entreaties were not satisfied and we refused to take this humble answer, at last he began as follows. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter III.
Abbot John's answer why he had left the desert.
The system of the anchorites, which you are surprised at my leaving, I not only neither reject nor refuse, but rather embrace and regard with the utmost veneration: in which system, and after I had passed thirty years living in a Coenobium, I rejoice that I have also spent twenty more, so that I can never be accused of sloth among those who tried it in a half-hearted way. But because its purity, of which I had had some slight experience, was sometimes soiled by the presence of anxiety about carnal matters, it seemed better to return to the Coenobium to secure a readier attainment of an easier aim undertaken, and less danger from venturing on the higher life of the humble solitary. [2107] For it is better to seem earnest with smaller promises than careless in larger ones. And therefore if possibly I bring forward anything somewhat arrogantly and indeed somewhat too freely, I beg that you will not think it due to the sin of boasting but rather to my desire for your edification; and that, as I think that, when you ask so earnestly, nothing of the truth should be kept back from you, you will set it down to love rather than to boasting. For I think that some instruction may be given to you if I lay aside my humility, and simply lay bare the whole truth about my aim. For I trust that I shall not incur any reproach of vainglory from you because of the freedom of my words, nor any charge of falsehood from my conscience because of any suppression of the truth. __________________________________________________________________
[2107] The true reading, as given by Petschenig, appears to be the following: Et minus de præsumptæ sublimioris professionis humilitate periculum. It is probably on account of its difficulty that humilitate has been altered into difficultate, as in the text of Gazet (the two humilitate difficultate are found together in some mss.). But the fact appears to be that humilitas is here used for the life of an anchorite, as in Conference XXIV. ix., where Abbot Abraham uses the expression districtionem hujus humilitatis. The word is also used in a similar sense in Conf. I. xx. and XI. ii. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IV.
Of the excellence which the aforesaid old man showed in the system of the anchorites.
If then anyone else delights in the recesses of the desert and would forget all human intercourse and say with Jeremiah: "I have not desired the day of man: Thou knowest," [2108] I confess that by the blessing of God's grace, I also secured or at any rate tried to secure this. And so by the kind gift of the Lord I remember that I was often caught up into such an ecstasy as to forget that I was clothed with the burden of a weak body, and my soul on a sudden forgot all external notions and entirely cut itself off from all material objects, so that neither my eyes nor ears performed their proper functions. And my soul was so filled with divine meditations and spiritual contemplations that often in the evening I did not know whether I had taken any food and on the next day was very doubtful whether I had broken my fast yesterday. For which reason, a supply of food for seven days, i.e., seven sets of biscuits were set apart in a sort of hand-basket, [2109] and laid by on Saturday, that there might be no doubt when supper had been omitted; and by this plan another mistake also from forgetfulness was obviated, for when the number of cakes was finished it showed that the course of the week was over, and that the services of the same day had come round, and that the festival and holy day and services of the congregation could not escape the notice of the solitary. But even if that ecstasy of mind of which we have spoken should happen to interfere with this arrangement, yet still the method of the days' work would show the number of the days and check the mistake. And to pass over in silence the other advantages of the desert (for it is not our business to treat of their number and quantity, but rather of the aim of solitude and the Coenobium) I will the rather briefly explain the reasons why I preferred to leave it, which you also wanted to know, and will in a concise discourse glance at all those fruits of solitude which I mentioned, and show to what greater advantages on the other side they ought to be held inferior. __________________________________________________________________
[2108] Jer. xvii. 16.
[2109] In prochirio id est admanuensi sporta. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter V.
Of the advantages of the desert.
So long then as owing to the fewness of those who were then living in the desert, a greater freedom was afforded to us in a wider expanse of the wilderness, so long as in the seclusion of larger retreats we were caught up to those celestial ecstasies, and were not overwhelmed by a great quantity of brethren to visit us, and thus owing to the necessity of showing hospitality overburdened in our thoughts by the distractions of great cares, I frequented with insatiable desire and all my heart the peaceful retreats of the desert and that life which can only be compared to the bliss of the angels. But when, as I said, a larger number of the brethren began to seek a dwelling in that desert, and by cramping the freedom of the vast wilderness, not only caused that fire of divine contemplation to grow cold, but also entangled the mind in many ways in the chains of carnal matters, I determined to carry out my purpose in this system rather than to grow cold in that sublime mode of life, by providing for carnal wants; so that, if that liberty and those spiritual ecstasies are denied me, yet as all care for the morrow is avoided, I may console myself by fulfilling the precept of the gospel, and what I lose in sublimity of contemplation, may be made up to me by submission and obedience. For it is a wretched thing for a man to profess to learn any art or pursuit, and never to arrive at perfection in it. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VI.
Of the conveniences of the Coenobium.
Wherefore I will briefly explain what advantages I now enjoy in this manner of life. You must consider my words and judge whether those advantages of the desert outweigh these comforts, and by this you will also be able to prove whether I chose to be cramped within the narrow limits of the Coenobium from dislike or from desire of that purity of the solitary life. In this life then there is no providing for the day's work, no distractions of buying and selling, no unavoidable care for the year's food, no anxiety about bodily things, by which one has to get ready what is necessary not only for one's own wants but also for those of any number of visitors, finally no conceit from the praise of men, which is worse than all these things and sometimes in the sight of God does away with the good of even great efforts in the desert. But, to pass over those waves of spiritual pride and the deadly peril of vainglory in the life of the anchorite, let us return to this general burden which affects everybody, i.e., the ordinary anxiety in providing food, which has so far exceeded I say not the measure of that ancient strictness which altogether did without oil, but is beginning not to be content even with the relaxation of our own time according to which the requirements of all the supply of food for a year were satisfied by the preparation of a single pint of oil and a modius of lentils prepared for the use of visitors; but now the needful supply of food is scarcely met by two or three times that amount. And to such an extent has the force of this dangerous relaxation grown among some that, when they mix vinegar and sauce, they do not add that single drop of oil, which our predecessors who followed the rules of the desert with greater powers of abstinence, were accustomed to pour in simply for the sake of avoiding vainglory, [2110] but they break an Egyptian cheese for luxury and pour over it more oil than is required, and so take, under a single pleasant relish, two sorts of food which differ in their special flavour, each of which ought singly to be a pleasant refreshment at different times for a monk. To such a pitch however has this hulike ktesis, i.e., acquisition of material things grown, that actually under pretence of hospitality and welcoming guests anchorites have begun to keep a blanket in their cells--a thing which I cannot mention without shame--to omit those things by which the mind that is awed by and intent on spiritual meditation is more especially hampered; viz., the concourse of brethren, the duties of receiving the coming and speeding the parting guest, visits to each other and the endless worry of various confabulations and occupations, the expectation of which owing to the continuous character of these customary interruptions keeps the mind on the stretch even during the time when these bothers seem to cease. And so the result is that the freedom of the anchorite's life is so hindered by these ties that it can never rise to that ineffable keenness of heart, and thus loses the fruits of its hermit life. And if this is now denied to me while I am living in the congregation and among others, at least there is no lack of peace of mind and tranquillity of heart that is freed from all business. And unless this is ready at hand for those also who live in the desert, they will indeed have to undergo the labours of the anchorite's life, but will lose its fruits which can only be gained in peaceful stability of mind. Finally even if there is any diminution of my purity of heart while I am living in the Coenobium, I shall be satisfied by keeping in exchange that one precept of the Gospel, which certainly cannot be less esteemed than all those fruits of the desert; I mean that I should take no thought for the morrow, and submitting myself completely to the Abbot seem in some degree to emulate
Him of whom it is said: "He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death; and so be able humbly to make use of His words: "For I came not to do mine own will, but the will of the Father which sent me." [2111] __________________________________________________________________
[2110] Cf. Conference VIII.
[2111] Phil. ii. 8; S. John vi. 38. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VII.
A question on the fruits of the Coenobium and the desert.
Germanus: Since it is evident that you have not, like so many, just touched the mere outskirts of each mode of life, but have ascended to the very heights, we should like to know what is the end of the Coenobite's life and what the end of the hermit's. For no one can doubt that no man can discourse with greater fulness or fidelity on these subjects than one who, taught by long use and experience, has followed them both, and so can by veracious teaching show us their value and aim. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VIII.
The answer to the question proposed.
John: I should absolutely maintain that one and the same man could not attain perfection in both lives unless I was hindered by the example of some few. And since it is no small matter to find a man who is perfect in either of them, it is clear how much harder and I had almost said impossible it is for a man to be thoroughly efficient in both. And if this has ever happened, it cannot come under any general rule. For a general rule must be based not on exceptional instances, i.e., on the experience of a very few, but on what is within the power of the many or rather of all. But what is attained to here and there by but one or two, and is beyond the capacity of ordinary goodness, must be kept out of general rules as something permitted outside the condition and nature of human weakness, and should be brought forward as a miracle rather than as an example. Wherefore I will, as my slender ability allows, briefly intimate what you want to know. The aim indeed of the Coenobite is to mortify and crucify all his desires and, according to that salutary command of evangelic perfection, to take no thought for the morrow. And it is perfectly clear that this perfection cannot be attained by any except a Coenobite, such a man as the prophet Isaiah describes and blesses and praises as follows: "If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy own will in my holy day, and glorify Him, while thou dost not thine own ways, and thine own will is not found to speak a word: then shalt thou be delighted in the Lord, and I will lift thee up above the high places of the earth, and will feed thee with the inheritance of Jacob thy father. For the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it." [2112] But the perfection for a hermit is to have his mind freed from all earthly things, and to unite it, as far as human frailty allows, with Christ: and such a man the prophet Jeremiah describes when he says: "Blessed is the man who hath borne the yoke from his youth. He shall sit solitary and hold his peace, because he hath taken it upon himself;" the Psalmist also: "I am become like a pelican in the desert. I watched and became as a sparrow alone upon the housetop." [2113] To this aim then, which we have described as that of either life, unless each of them attains, in vain does the one adopt the system of the Coenobium, and the other of the hermitage: for neither of them will get the good of his method of life. __________________________________________________________________
[2112] Is. lviii. 13, 14.
[2113] Lam. iii. 27, 28; Ps. ci. (cii.) 7, 8. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IX.
Of true and complete perfection.
But this is merike, i.e., no thorough and altogether complete perfection, but only a partial one. Perfection then is very rare and granted by God's gift to but a very few. For he is truly and not partially perfect who with equal imperturbability can put up with the squalor of the wilderness in the desert, as well as the infirmities of the brethren in the Coenobium. And so it is hard to find one who is perfect in both lives, because the anchorite cannot thoroughly acquire aktemosune , i.e., a disregard for and stripping oneself of material things, nor the Coenobite purity in contemplation, although we know that Abbot Moses and Paphnutius and the two Macarii [2114] were masters of both in perfection. And so they were perfect in either life, and while they withdrew further than all the dwellers in the desert and delighted themselves unceasingly in the retirement of the wilderness, and as far as in them lay never sought intercourse with other men, yet they put up with the presence and the infirmities of those who came to them so that when a large number of the brethren came to them for the sake of seeing them and profiting by it, they endured this almost continuous trouble of receiving them with imperturbable patience, and men fancied that all the days of their life they had neither learnt nor practised anything but how to show common civility to those who came, so that it was a puzzle to all to say in which life their zeal was mainly shown, i.e., whether their greatness adapted itself more remarkably to the purity of the hermitage or to the common life. __________________________________________________________________
[2114] Moses, Paphnutius, and the two Macarii have all been mentioned frequently before. On Moses (to whom the first two Conferences are assigned) see the note on the Institutes X. xxv.; on Paphnutius see on Conference III. i.; and on the two Macarii, the Institutes V. xli. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter X.
Of those who while still imperfect retire into the desert.
But some are sometimes so tantalized by the silence of the desert lasting all through the day that they altogether dread intercourse with men, and, when they have even for a little while broken through their habit of retirement owing to the accident of a visit from some of the brethren, boil over with marked vexation of mind, and show clear signs of annoyance. And this especially happens in the case of those who have betaken themselves to the solitary life without a well-matured purpose and without being thoroughly trained in the Coenobium, as these men are always imperfect and easily upset, and incline to one side or the other, as the gales of trouble may drive them. For as they boil over impatiently at intercourse or conversation with the brethren, so while they are living in solitude they cannot stand the vastness of that silence which they themselves have courted, inasmuch as they themselves do not even know the reason why solitude ought to be wanted and sought for, but imagine that the value and the main part of this life consist in this; viz., in avoiding intercourse with the brethren and simply shunning and loathing the sight of a man. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XI.
A question how to cure those who have hastily left the congregation of the Coenobium.
Germanus: By what treatment can any help be given to us or to others who are thus weak and only up to this; who had received but little instruction in the system of the Coenobium when we began to aspire to dwell in solitude before we had got rid of our faults; or by what means shall we be able to acquire the constancy of an imperturbable mind, and immovable steadfastness of patience; we who all too soon gave up the common life in the Coenobium, and forsook the schools and training ground for these exercises, in which our principles ought first to have been thoroughly schooled and perfected? How then can we now while we are living alone gain perfection in long-suffering and patience; or how can conscience, that searcher out of inward motives, discover whether these virtues exist in us or are wanting, so that because we are severed from intercourse with men, and not irritated by any of their provocations, we may not be deceived by false notions, and fancy that we have gained that imperturbable peace of mind? __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XII.
The answer telling how a solitary can discover his faults.
John: To those who are really seeking relief, healing remedies from the true Physician of souls will certainly not be wanting; and to those above all will they be given who do not disregard their ill-condition (either because they despair of it, or because they do not care about it), nor hide the danger they are in from their wound, nor in their wanton heart reject the remedy of penitence, but with an humble and yet careful heart flee to the heavenly Physician for the diseases they have contracted from ignorance or error or necessity. And so we ought to know that if we retire to solitude or secret places, without our faults being first cured, their operation is but repressed, while the power of feeling them is not extinguished. For the root of all sins not having been eradicated is still lying hid in us, or rather creeping up, and that it is still alive we can tell by these signs. For instance, if, when we are living in solitude we receive the approach of some brethren, or any very slight tarrying on their part, with any anxiety or fretfulness of mind, we should recognize that an incentive to the most hasty impatience is still existing in us. But if when we are hoping for the coming of a brother, and from some cause he perhaps delays a little, our mental indignation either silently blames his slowness, and annoyance at this inconvenient waiting disturbs our mind, the examination of our conscience will show that the sin of anger and vexation is plainly still remaining in us. Again, if when a brother asks for our book to read, or for some other article to use, his request annoys us, or a refusal on our part disgusts him, there can be no doubt that we are still entangled in the meshes of avarice or covetousness. But if a sudden thought or a passage of Holy Scripture brings up the recollection of a woman and we feel that we are at all attracted towards her, we should know that the fire of fornication is not yet extinguished in us. But if on a comparison of our own strictness with the laxity of another even the slightest conceit tries our mind, it is clear that we are affected with the dreadful plague of pride. When then we detect these signs of faults in our heart, we should clearly recognize that it is only the opportunity and not the passion of sin of which we are deprived. And certainly these passions, if at any time we were to mingle in the ordinary life of men, would at once start up from their lurking places in our thoughts and prove that they did not then for the first time come into existence when they broke out, but that they were then at last made public, because they had been long lying hid. And so even a solitary can detect by sure signs that the roots of each fault are still implanted in him, if he tries not to show his purity to men, but to maintain it inviolate in His sight, from whom no secrets of the heart can be hid. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIII.
A question how a man can be cured who has entered on solitude without having his faults eradicated.
Germanus: We very clearly and plainly see the proofs by which the signs of infirmities are inferred, and the method of discerning diseases, i.e., how the faults which are concealed in us can be detected: for our every day experience and the daily motions of our thoughts show us all these as they have been stated. It remains then that as the proofs and causes of our maladies have been exposed to us in a most clear way so their remedies and cures may also be shown. For no one can doubt that one who has first discovered the grounds and beginnings of ailments, with the approving witness of the conscience of those affected, can best discourse on their remedies. And so though the teaching of your holiness has laid bare the secrets of our wounds whereby we venture to have some hope of a remedy, because so clear a diagnosis of the disease gives promise of the hope of a cure, yet because, as you say, the first elements of salvation are acquired in the Coenobium, and men cannot be in a sound condition in solitude, unless they have first been healed by the medicine of the Coenobium, we have fallen again into a dangerous state of despair lest as we left the Coenobium in an imperfect condition we may not now that we are in the desert succeed in becoming perfect. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIV.
The answer on their remedies.
John: For those who are anxious for the cure of their ailments a saving remedy is sure not to be wanting, and therefore remedies should be sought by the same means that the signs of each fault are discovered. For as we have said that the faults of men's ordinary life are not wanting to solitaries, so we do not deny that all zeal for virtue, and all the means of healing are at the disposal of all those who are cut off from men's ordinary life. When then anyone discovers by those signs which we described above, that he is attacked by outbreaks of impatience or anger, he should always practise himself in the opposite and contrary things, and by setting before himself all sorts of injuries and wrongs, as if offered to him by somebody else, accustom his mind to submit with perfect humility to everything that wickedness can bring upon him; and by often representing to himself all kinds of rough and intolerable things, continually consider with all sorrow of heart with what gentleness he ought to meet them. And, by thus looking at the sufferings of all the saints, or indeed at those of the Lord Himself, he will admit that the various reproaches as well as punishments are less than he deserves, and prepare himself to endure all kinds of griefs. And when occasionally he has been recalled by some invitation to the assembly of the brethren--a thing which cannot but happen every now and then even to the strictest inmates of the desert,--if he finds that his mind is silently disturbed even for trifles, he should like some stern censor of his secret emotions charge himself with all those various hard wrongs, to the perfect endurance of which he was training himself by his daily meditations, and blaming and chiding himself as follows, say My good man, are you the fellow who while training yourself in the practising ground of solitude, ventured most determinedly to think that you would get the better of all bad qualities, and who just now, when you were representing to yourself not only all sorts of bitter reproaches, but also intolerable punishments, fancied that you were pretty strong and able to stand against all storms? How is it that that unconquered patience of yours is upset by the first trial even of a light word? How is it that even a gentle breeze has shaken that house of yours which you fancied was built so strongly on the solid rock? Where is that which you announced when during a time of peace you were in your foolish confidence longing for war? "I am ready, and am not troubled;" and this which you used often to say with the prophet: "Prove me, O Lord, and try me: search out my reins and my heart;" and: "prove me, O Lord, and know my heart: question me and know my paths; and see if there be any way of wickedness in me." [2115] How has a tiny ghost of an enemy frightened your grand preparations for war? With such reproaches and remorse a man should condemn himself and not allow the sudden temptation which has upset him to go unpunished, but by chastising his flesh with a severer penalty of fasting and vigils; and, by punishing his sin of lightness of mind by continual pains of self-restraint, he should while living in solitude consume in this fire of practice what he ought to have thoroughly driven out in the life of the Coenobium. This at any rate we must firmly and resolutely hold to in order to secure a lasting and unbroken patience; viz., that for us, to whom by the Divine law not merely vengeance for, but even the recollection of injuries is forbidden, it is not permissible to be roused to anger because of some loss or annoyance. For what greater injury can happen to the soul than for it, owing to some sudden blindness from rage, to lose the brightness of the true and eternal light and to fail of the sight of Him "Who is meek and lowly of heart?" [2116] What I ask could be more dangerous or awkward than for a man to lose his power of judging of goodness, and his standard and rule of true discernment, and for one in his sober senses to do what even a drunken man, and a fool would not be pardoned for doing? One then who carefully considers these and other injuries of the same kind, will readily endure and disregard not only all kinds of losses, but also whatever wrongs and punishments can be inflicted by the cruellest of men, as he will hold that there is nothing more damaging than anger, nor more valuable than peace of mind and unbroken purity of heart, for the sake of which we should think nothing of the advantages not merely of carnal matters but also of those things which appear to be spiritual, if they cannot be gained or done without some disturbance of this tranquillity. __________________________________________________________________
[2115] Ps. cxviii. (cxix.) 60; xxv. (xxvi.) 2; cxxxviii. (cxxxix.) 23, 24.
[2116] S. Matt. xi. 29. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XV.
A question whether chastity ought to be ascertained just as the other feelings.
Germanus: As the cure for other ailments, viz., anger, vexation, and impatience, has been shown to consist in opposing to them their contraries, so also we should like to learn what sort of treatment we ought to use against the spirit of fornication: I mean, whether the fire of lust can be quenched by the representation, as in those other cases, of greater inducements and things to excite it: because not merely to increase the incentives to lust within us, but even to touch them with a passing look of the mind, we believe to be utterly fatal to chastity. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVI.
The answer giving the proofs by which it can be recognized.
John: Your shrewd question has anticipated the subject, which even if you had said nothing must have arisen from our discourse, and therefore I do not doubt that it will be effectually grasped by your minds, since indeed your sharp wits have outstripped our instruction. For the puzzle of any question is easily removed, when the inquiry anticipates the answer, and is the first to travel along the road which it is to follow. And so to the treatment of those faults of which we have spoken above, intercourse with other men is not merely no hindrance, but a considerable help, for the more often that the outbursts of their impatience are exposed, the more thorough is the sorrow and compunction which they bring on those who have failed, and the speedier is the recovery of health which they confer on those who struggle against them. Wherefore even when we are living in solitude, though the incentive to irritation and matter for it cannot arise from men, yet we ought of set purpose to meditate on incitements to it, that as we are fighting against it with a continual struggle in our thoughts a speedier cure for it may be found for us. But against the spirit of fornication the system is different, and the method an altered one. For as we must deprive the body of opportunities of lust, and contact with flesh, so we must deprive the mind of the recollection of it. For it is sufficiently dangerous for bosoms that are still weak and infirm even to tolerate the slightest recollection of this passion, in such a way that sometimes at the remembrance of holy women, or in reading a story in Holy Scripture a stimulus of dangerous excitement is aroused. For which reason our Elders used deliberately to omit passages of this kind when any of the juniors were present. However for those who are perfect and established in the feelings of chastity there can be no lack of proofs by which they may examine themselves, and establish their perfect uprightness of heart by the uncorrupted judgment of their own conscience. There will then be for the man who is thoroughly established a similar test even in regard to this passion, so that one who is sure that he has altogether exterminated the roots of this evil may for the sake of ascertaining his chastity, call up some picture as with a lascivious mind. But it is by no means proper for such a test to be attempted by those who are still weak (for to them it will be dangerous rather than useful), ut conjunctionem femineam et palpationem quodammodo teneram atque mollissimam corde pertractent. Cum ergo perfecta quis virtute fundatus ad illecebram blandissimorum tactuum, quos cogitando confinxerit, nullum mentis assensum, nullam commotionem carnis in se deprehenderit exagitatam, he will have a very sure proof of his purity, so that training himself to this steadfast purity he will not only possess the blessing of chastity and freedom from defilement in his heart, but even if he is obliged to touch the body of a woman, he will be horrified at it.
With this Abbot John brought his Conference to an end, as he saw that it was just time for the refreshment of the ninth hour. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
XX. Conference of Abbot Pinufius.
On the End of Penitence and the Marks of Satisfaction. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter I.
Of the humility of Abbot Pinufius, and of his hiding-place.
Now that I am going to relate the precepts of that excellent and remarkable man, Abbot Pinufius, on the end of penitence, I fancy that I can dispose of a very large part of my material, if out of consideration lest I weary my reader, I here pass over in silence the praise of his humility, which I touched on in a brief discourse in the fourth book of the Institutes, [2117] which was entitled "Of the rules to be observed by renunciants," especially as many who have no knowledge of that work, may happen to read this, and then all the authority of the utterances will be weakened if there is no account of the virtues of the speaker. For this man when he was presiding as Abbot and Presbyter over a large Coenobium not far from Panephysis, a city, as was there said, of Egypt, and when all that province had praised him to the skies for his virtues and miracles, so that he already seemed to himself to have received the reward of his labours in the remuneration of the praise of men, as he was afraid lest the emptiness of popular favour, which he especially disliked, might interfere with the fruits of an eternal reward, he secretly fled from his monastery and made his way to the furthest recesses of the monks of Tabennæ, [2118] where he chose not the solitude of the desert, not that freedom from care of which the life of one alone affords, which even those who are imperfect and who cannot endure the effort which obedience requires in the Coenobium, sometimes seek after with proud presumption, but he chose to submit himself to a most famous monastery. Where, however, that he might not be betrayed by any signs of his dress, he clothed himself in a secular garb, and lay before the doors with tears, as is the custom there, for many days, and clinging to the knees of all after being daily repulsed by those who to test his purpose said that now in extreme old age he was seeking this holy life not in sincerity, but driven by the lack of food, at last he obtained admission, and there he was told off to help a young brother who had been given the charge of a garden, and when he not only fulfilled with such marvellous and holy humility everything which his chief ordered him or which the care of the work entrusted to him demanded, but also performed in stealthy labour by night certain necessary offices which were avoided by the rest out of disgust for them, so that when morning dawned, all the congregation was delighted at such useful works but knew not their author; and when he had passed nearly three years there rejoicing in the labours, which he had desired, but to which he was so unfairly subjected, it happened that a certain brother known to him came there from the same parts of Egypt from which he himself had come. And this man for a time hesitated because the meanness of his clothes and of his office prevented him from readily recognizing him at once, but after looking very closely at him, fell at his feet, and first astonished all the brethren, and afterwards, when he betrayed his name, which the fame of his special sanctity had made known to them also, he smote them with sorrow and compunction because they had told off a man of his virtues and a priest to such mean offices. But he, shedding copious tears, and charging the accident of his betrayal to the serious envy of the devil, was brought in honourable custody by his brethren surrounding him to the monastery; and after that he had stayed there for a short time, he was once more troubled by the respect shown to his dignity and rank, and stealthily embarked on board ship and sailed to the Palestinian province of Syria, where he was received as a beginner and a novice in the house of that monastery in which we were living, and was charged by the Abbot to stop in our cell. But not even there could his virtues and merits long remain secret. For he was discovered and betrayed in the same way, and brought back to his own monastery with the utmost honour and respect. __________________________________________________________________
[2117] Cf. Institutes IV. c. xxx., xxxi. Nothing further is known of Pinufius than what we gather from these passages of Cassian.
[2118] On Tabennæ or Tabenna see the note on the Institutes IV. i. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter II.
Of our coming to him.
When then after no long time a desire for holy instruction had urged us also to visit Egypt, we sought him out with the utmost eagerness and devotion and were welcomed by him with such kindness and courtesy that he actually honoured us, as former sharers of the same cell with him, with a lodging in his own cell which he had built in the furthest corner of his garden. And there when in the presence of all the brethren at service he had delivered to one of the brethren who was submitting to the rule of the monastery sufficiently difficult and elevated precepts, which as we said, I summarized as briefly as I could in the fourth book of the Institutes, the heights of a true renunciation seemed to us so unattainable and so marvellous that we did not think that such humble folks as we could ever scale them. And therefore, cast down in despair, and not concealing in our looks the inner bitterness of our thoughts, we came back to the blessed old man with a tolerably anxious heart: and when he at once asked the reason why we were so sad, Abbot Germanus groaned deeply and replied as follows. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter III.
A question on the end of penitence and the marks of satisfaction.
As your grand and splendid exposition of a doctrine new to us has opened out to us a more difficult road to the most glorious renunciation, and has removed the scales from our eyes, and shown to us its summit raised in the heavens, so are we proportionately cast down with a greater weight of despair. Since, when we measure its vastness against our puny strength, and compare the excessively humble character of our ignorance with the boundless height of virtue shown to us, we feel that we are so small that we not only cannot attain to it, but that we are sure to fall short in what we have. For as we are weighed down by the burden of excessive despair, we fall away somehow from the lowest depths to still lower ones. Accordingly there is one and only one support which can provide a cure for our wounds; viz., for us to learn something of the end of penitence and especially on the marks of satisfaction, that we may feel sure of the forgiveness of past sins, and so be spurred on to scale the heights of the perfection described above. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IV.
The answer on the humility shown by our request.
Pinufius: I am indeed delighted at the very plentiful fruits of your humility, which indeed I saw with no indifferent concern, when I was formerly received in the habitation of that cell of yours, and I am very glad that you welcome with such respect the charge given by us, the least of all Christians, and the words that I have taken the liberty of saying so that if I am not mistaken you carry them out as soon as ever they are spoken by us; and though, as I remember, the importance of the words scarcely deserves the efforts you bestow on them, yet you so conceal the merits of your virtue, as if no breath ever reached you of those things which you are daily practising. But because this fact is worthy of the highest praise; viz., that you declare that those institutes of the saints are still unknown to you as if you were still beginners we will, as briefly as possible, summarize what you so eagerly ask of us. For we must even beyond our powers and ability, obey the commands of such old friends as you. And so on the value and appeasing power of penitence many have published a great deal, not only in words but also in writing, showing how useful it is, how strong, and full of grace, so that when God is offended by our past sins, and on the point of inflicting a most just punishment for such offences, it somehow, if it is not wrong to say so, stops Him, and, if I may so say, stays the right hand of the Avenger even against His will. But I have no doubt that all this is well known to you, either from your natural wisdom, or from your unwearied study of Holy Scripture, so that from this the first shoots, so to speak, of your conversion sprang up. Finally, you are anxious not about the character of penitence but about its end, and the marks of satisfaction, and so by a very shrewd question ask what has been left out by others. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter V.
Of the method of penitence and the proof of pardon.
Wherefore in order to satisfy as briefly and shortly as possible, your desire and question, the full and perfect description of penitence is, never again to yield to those sins for which we do penance, or for which our conscience is pricked. But the proof of satisfaction and pardon is for us to have expelled the love of them from our hearts. For each one may be sure that he is not yet free from his former sins as long as any image of those sins which he has committed or of others like them dances before his eyes, and I will not say a delight in--but the recollection of--them haunts his inmost soul while he is devoting himself to satisfaction for them and to tears. And so one who is on the watch to make satisfaction may then feel sure that he is free from his sins and that he has obtained pardon for past faults, when he never feels that his heart is stirred by the allurements and imaginations of these same sins. Wherefore the truest test of penitence and witness of pardon is found in our own conscience, which even before the day of judgment and of knowledge, while we are still in the flesh, discloses our acquittal from guilt, and reveals the end of satisfaction and the grace of forgiveness. And that what has been said may be more significantly expressed, then only should we believe that the stains of past sins are forgiven us, when the desires for present delights as well as the passions have been expelled from our heart. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VI.
A question whether our sins ought to be remembered out of contrition of heart.
Germanus: And whence can there be aroused in us this holy and salutary contrition from humiliation, which is described as follows in the person of the penitent: "I have acknowledged my sin, and mine unrighteousness have I not hid. I said: I will acknowledge against myself mine unrighteousness to the Lord," so that we may be able effectually to say also what follows: "And Thou forgavest the iniquity of my heart;" [2119] or how, when we kneel in prayer shall we be able to stir ourselves up to tears of confession, by which we may be able to obtain pardon for our offences, according to these words: "Every night will I wash my bed: I will water my couch with tears;" [2120] if we expel from our hearts all recollection of our faults, though on the contrary we are bidden carefully to preserve the remembrance of them, as the Lord says: "And thine iniquities I will not remember: but do thou recollect them?" [2121] Wherefore not only when I am at work, but also when I am at prayer I try of set purpose to recall to my mind the recollection of my sins, that I may be more effectually inclined to true humility and contrition of heart, and venture to say with the prophet: "Look upon my humility and my labour: and forgive me all my sins." [2122] __________________________________________________________________
[2119] Ps. xxxi. (xxxii.) 5, 6.
[2120] Ps. vi. 7.
[2121] Is. xliii. 25, 26.
[2122] Ps. xxiv. (xxiv.) 18. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VII.
The answer showing how far we ought to preserve the recollection of previous actions.
Pinufius: Your question, as has been already said above, was not raised with regard to the character of penitence, but with regard to its end, and the marks of satisfaction: to which, as I think, a fair and pertinent reply has been given. But what you have said as to the remembrance of sins is sufficiently useful and needful to men who are still doing penance, that they may with constant smiting of the breast say: "For I acknowledge my wickedness: and my sin is ever before me;" and this too: "And I will think for my sin." [2123] While then we do penance, and are still grieved by the recollection of faulty actions, the shower of tears which is caused by the confession of our faults is sure to quench the fire of our conscience. But when, while a man is still in this state of humility of heart and contrition of spirit and continuing to labour and to weep, the remembrance of these things fades away, and the thorns of conscience are by God's grace extracted from his inmost heart, then it is clear that he has attained to the end of satisfaction and the reward of pardon, and that he is purged from the stain of the sins he has committed. To which state of forgetfulness we can only attain by the obliteration of our former sins and likings, and by perfect and complete purity of heart. And this most certainly will not be attained by any of those who from sloth or carelessness have failed to purge out their faults, but only by one who by constantly continuing to groan and sigh sorrowfully has removed every spot of his former stains, and by the goodness of his heart and his labour has proclaimed to the Lord: "I have acknowledged my sin, and mine unrighteousness have I not hid;" and: "My tears have been my meat day and night;" so that in the end it may be vouchsafed to him to hear these words: "Let thy voice cease from weeping, and thine eyes from tears: for there is a reward for thy labour, saith the Lord;" [2124] and these words also may be uttered of him by the voice of the Lord: "I have blotted out as a cloud thine iniquities, and as a mist thy sins:" and again: "I even I am He that blotteth out thine iniquities for mine own sake, and thine offences I will no longer remember;" [2125] and so, when he is freed from the "cords of his sins," by which "everyone is bound," [2126] he will with all thanksgiving sing to the Lord: "Thou hast broken my chains: I will offer to thee the sacrifice of praise." [2127] __________________________________________________________________
[2123] Ps. l. (li.) 5; xxxvii. (xxxviii.) 19.
[2124] Ps. xxxi. (xxxii.) 5; xli. (xlii.) 4; Jer. xxxi. 16.
[2125] Is. xliv. 22; xliii. 25.
[2126] Prov. v. 22.
[2127] Ps. cxv. 16, 17. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VIII.
Of the various fruits of penitence.
For after that grace of baptism which is common to all, and that most precious gift of martyrdom which is gained by being washed in blood, there are many fruits of penitence by which we can succeed in expiating our sins. For eternal salvation is not only promised to the bare fact of penitence, of which the blessed Apostle Peter says: "Repent and be converted that your sins may be forgiven;" and John the Baptist and the Lord Himself: "Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand:" [2128] but also by the affection of love is the weight of our sins overwhelmed: for "charity covers a multitude of sins." [2129] In the same way also by the fruits of almsgiving a remedy is provided for our wounds, because "As water extinguishes fire, so does almsgiving extinguish sin." [2130] So also by the shedding of tears is gained the washing away of offences, for "Every night I will wash my bed: I will water my couch with tears." Finally to show that they are not shed in vain, he adds: "Depart from me all ye that work iniquity, for the Lord hath heard the voice of my weeping:" [2131] Moreover by means of confession of sins, their absolution is granted: for "I said: I will confess against myself my sin to the Lord: and Thou forgavest the iniquity of my heart;" and again: "Declare thine iniquities first, that thou mayest be justified." [2132] By afflicting the heart and body also is forgiveness of sins committed in like manner obtained, for he says: "Look on my humility and my labour, and forgive me all my sins;" and more especially by amendment of life: "Take away," he says, "the evil of your thoughts from mine eyes. Cease to do evil, learn to do well. Seek judgment, relieve the oppressed: judge the orphan, defend the widow. And come, reason with Me, saith the Lord: and though your sins were as scarlet, yet shall they be as white as snow, though they were red as crimson, they shall be as white as wool." [2133] Sometimes too the pardon of our sins is obtained by the intercession of the saints, for "if a man knows his brother to sin a sin not unto death, he asks, and He will give to him his life, for him that sinneth not unto death;" and again: "Is any sick among you? Let him send for the Elders of the Church and they shall pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord will raise him up, and if he be in sins, they shall be forgiven him." [2134] Sometimes too by the virtue of compassion and faith the stains of sin are removed, according to this passage: "By compassion and faith sins are purged away." [2135] And often by the conversion and salvation of those who are saved by our warnings and preaching: "For he who converts a sinner from the error of his way, shall save his soul from death, and cover a multitude of sins." [2136] Moreover by pardon and forgiveness on our part we obtain pardon of our sins: "For if ye forgive men their offences, your heavenly Father will also forgive you your sins." [2137] You see then what great means of obtaining mercy the compassion of our Saviour has laid open to us, so that no one when longing for salvation need be crushed by despair, as he sees himself called to life by so many remedies. For if you plead that owing to weakness of the flesh you cannot get rid of your sins by fasting, and you cannot say: "My knees are weak from fasting, and my flesh is changed for oil; for I have eaten ashes for my bread, and mingled my drink with weeping," [2138] then atone for them by profuse almsgiving. If you have nothing that you can give to the needy (although the claims of want and poverty exclude none from this office, since the two mites of the widow are ranked higher than the splendid gifts of the rich, and the Lord promises that He will give a reward for a cup of cold water), at least you can purge them away by amendment of life. But if you cannot secure perfection in goodness by the eradication of all your faults, you can show a pious anxiety for the good and salvation of another. But if you complain that you are not equal to this service, you can cover your sins by the affection of love. And if in this also some sluggishness of mind makes you weak, at least you should submissively with a feeling of humility entreat for remedies for your wounds by the prayers and intercession of the saints. Finally who is there who cannot humbly say: "I have acknowledged my sin: and mine unrighteousness have I not hid;" so that by this confession he may be able also to add this: "And Thou forgavest the iniquity of my heart." [2139] But if shame holds you back, and you blush to reveal them before men, you should not cease to confess them with constant supplication to Him from Whom they cannot be hid, and to say to Him: "I acknowledge mine iniquity, and my sin is ever before me. Against Thee only have I sinned, and have done evil before Thee;" [2140] as He is wont to heal them without any publication which brings shame, and to forgive sins without any reproaching. And further besides that ready and sure aid the Divine condescension has afforded us another also that is still easier, and has entrusted the possession of the remedy to our own will, so that we can infer from our own feelings the forgiveness of our offences, when we say to Him: "Forgive us our debts as we also forgive our debtors." [2141] Whoever then desires to obtain forgiveness of his sins, should study to fit himself for it by these means. Let not the stubbornness of an obdurate heart turn away any from the saving remedy and the fount of so much goodness, because even if we have done all these things, they will not be able to expiate our offences, unless they are blotted out by the goodness and mercy of the Lord, who when He sees the service of pious efforts offered by us with a humble heart, supports our small and puny efforts with the utmost bounty, and says: "I even I am He that blotteth out thine iniquities for Mine own sake, and I will remember thy sins no more." [2142] Whoever then is aiming at this condition, which we have mentioned, will seek the grace of satisfaction by daily fasting and mortification of heart and body, for, as it is written, "Without shedding of blood there is no remission;" [2143] and this not without good reason. For "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God." [2144] And therefore one who would withhold "the sword of the spirit which is the word of God" [2145] from this shedding of blood certainly comes under the lash of that curse of Jeremiah's; for "Cursed," says he "is he who withholds his sword from blood." [2146] For this is the sword which for our good sheds that bad blood whereby the material of our sins lives; and cuts off and pares away everything carnal and earthly which it finds to have grown up in the members of our soul; and makes men die to sin and live to God, and flourish with spiritual virtues. And so he will begin to weep no more at the recollection of former sins, but at the hope of what is to come, and, thinking less of past evils than of good things to come, will shed tears not from sorrow at his sins, but from delight in that eternal joy, and "forgetting those things which are behind," i.e., carnal sins, will press on "to those before," [2147] i.e., to spiritual gifts and virtues. __________________________________________________________________
[2128] Acts iii. 19; S. Matt. iii. 2.
[2129] 1 Pet. iv. 8.
[2130] Ecclus. iii. 33.
[2131] Ps. vi. 7, 9.
[2132] Ps. xxxi. (xxxii.) 5; Is. xliii. 26.
[2133] Ps. xxiv. (xxv.) 18; Is. i. 16-18.
[2134] 1 John v. 16; S. James v. 14, 15.
[2135] Prov. xv. 27.
[2136] S. James v. 20.
[2137] S. Matt. vi. 14.
[2138] Ps. cviii. (cix.) 24; ci. (cii.) 10.
[2139] Ps. xxxi. (xxxii.) 5.
[2140] Ps. l. (li.) 5, 6.
[2141] S. Matt. vi. 12.
[2142] Is. xliii. 25.
[2143] Heb. ix. 22.
[2144] 1 Cor. xv. 50.
[2145] Eph. vi. 17.
[2146] Jer. xlviii. 10.
[2147] Phil. iii. 13. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IX.
How valuable to the perfect is the forgetfulness of sin.
But with regard to this that you said a little way back; viz., that you of set purpose go over the recollections of past sins, this ought certainly not to be done, nay, if it forcibly surprises you, it must be at once expelled. For it greatly hinders the soul from the contemplation of purity, and especially in the case of one who is living in solitude, as it entangles him in the stains of this world and swamps him in foul sins. For while you are recalling those things which you did through ignorance or wantonness in accordance with the prince of this world, though I grant you that while you are engaged in these thoughts no delight in them steals in, yet at least the mere taint of the ancient filthiness is sure to corrupt your soul with its foul stink, and to shut out the spiritual fragrance of goodness, i.e., the odour of a sweet savour. When then the recollection of past sins comes over your mind, you must recoil from it just as an honest and upright man runs away if he is sought out in public by an immodest and wanton woman either by words or by embraces. And certainly unless he at once withdraws himself from contact with her, and if he allows himself to linger the very least in impure talk, even if he refuses his consent to the shameful pleasures, yet he cannot avoid the brand of infamy and scorn in the judgment of all the passers by. So then we also, if by noxious recollections we are led to thoughts of this kind, ought at once to desist from dwelling upon them and to fulfil what we are commanded by Solomon: "But go forth," says he, "do not linger in her place, nor fix thine eye on her;" [2148] lest if the angels see us taken up with unclean and foul thoughts, they may not be able to say to us in passing by: "The blessing of the Lord be upon you." [2149] For it is impossible for the soul to continue in good thoughts, when the main part of the heart is taken up with foul and earthly considerations. For this saying of Solomon's is true: "When thine eyes look on a strange woman, then shall thy mouth speak wickedly, and thou shalt lie as it were in the midst of the sea, and as a pilot in a great storm. But thou shalt say: They have beaten me, but I felt no pain; and they mocked me, but I felt not." [2150] So then we should forsake not only all foul but even all earthly thoughts and ever raise the desires of our soul to heavenly things, in accordance with this saying of our Saviour: "For where I am," He says, "there also shall My servant be." [2151] For it often happens that when anyone out of pity is in thought going over his own falls or those of other faulty persons, he is affected by the delight and assent to this most subtle attack, and that which was undertaken and started with a show of goodness ends with a filthy and damaging termination, for "there are ways which appear to men to be right, but the ends thereof will come to the depths of hell." [2152] __________________________________________________________________
[2148] Prov. ix. 18.
[2149] Ps. cxxviii. (cxxix.) 8.
[2150] Prov. xxiii. 33-35.
[2151] S. John xii. 26.
[2152] Prov. xvi. 25. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter X.
How the recollection of our sins should be avoided.
Wherefore we must endeavour to rouse ourselves to this praiseworthy contrition, by aiming at virtue and by the desire for the kingdom of heaven rather than by dangerous recollections of sins, for a man is sure to be suffocated by the pestilential smells of the sewer as long as he chooses to stand over it or to stir its filth. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XI.
Of the marks of satisfaction, and the removal of past sins.
But we know, as we have often said, that then only have we made satisfaction for past sins, when the very motions and feelings, through which we were guilty of what we have to sorrow for, have been eradicated from our hearts. But no one should fancy that he can secure this, unless he has first with all the fervour of his spirit cut off the opportunities and occasions, owing to which he fell into those sins; as for instance, if through dangerous familiarity with a woman he has fallen into fornication or adultery, he must take the utmost pains to avoid even looking on one; or if he has been overcome by too much wine and over-eating, he should chastise with the utmost severity his craving for immoderate food. And again if he has been led astray by the desire for and love of money, and has fallen into perjury or theft or murder or blasphemy, he should cut off the occasion for avarice, which has allured and deceived him. If he is driven by the passion of pride into the sin of anger, he should with all the virtue of humility, remove the incentive to arrogance. And so, in order that each single sin may be destroyed, the occasion and opportunity by which or for which it was committed should be first got rid of. For by this curative treatment we can certainly attain to forgetfulness of the sins we have committed. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XII.
Wherein we must do penance for a time only; and wherein it can have no end.
But that description of the forgetfulness spoken of only has to do with capital offences, which are also condemned by the mosaic law, the inclination to which is destroyed and put an end to by a good life, and so also the penance for them has an end. But for those small offences in which, as it is written, "the righteous falls seven times and will rise again" [2153] penitence will never cease. For either through ignorance, or forgetfulness, or thought, or word, or surprise, or necessity, or weakness of the flesh, or defilement in a dream, we often fall every day either against our will or voluntarily; offences for which David also prays the Lord, and asks for purification and pardon, and says: "Who can understand sins? from my secret ones cleanse me; and from those of others spare Thy servant;" [2154] and the Apostle: "For the good which I would I do not, and the evil which I would not, that I do." For which also the same man exclaims with a sigh "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" [2155] For we slip into these so easily as it were by a law of nature, that however carefully and guardedly we are on the lookout against them, we cannot altogether avoid them. Since it was of these that one of the disciples, whom Jesus loved, declared and laid down absolutely saying: "If we say that we have no sin we deceive ourselves, and His word is not in us." [2156] Further for a man who is anxious to reach the heights of perfection it will not greatly help him to have arrived at the end of penitence, i.e., to restrain himself from unlawful acts, unless he has always urged himself forward in unwearied course to those virtues whereby we come to the signs of satisfaction. For it will not be enough for a man to have kept himself clear from those foul stains of sins which the Lord hates, unless he has also secured by purity of heart and perfect Apostolical love that sweet fragrance of virtue in which the Lord delights. Thus far Abbot Pinufius discoursed on the marks of satisfaction and the end of penitence. And although he pressed us with anxious love to decide to stay in his Coenobium, yet when he could not retain us, as we were incited by the fame of the desert of Scete, he sent us on our way. __________________________________________________________________
[2153] Prov. xxiv. 16.
[2154] Ps. xviii. (xix.) 12-13.
[2155] Rom. vii. 19, 24.
[2156] 1 John i. 8, 10. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
XXI. The First Conference of Abbot Theonas.
On the Relaxation During the Fifty Days. [2157] __________________________________________________________________
Chapter I.
How Theonas came to Abbot John.
Before we begin to set forth the words of this Conference held with that excellent man Abbot Theonas, [2158] I think it well to describe in a brief discourse the origin of his conversion because from this the reader will be able to see more clearly both the excellence and the grace of the man. He then while still very young was by the desire and command of his parents joined in the tie of marriage, for as with pious anxiety they were careful about his chastity, and were afraid of a critical fall at a dangerous age, they thought that the passions of youth might be anticipated by the remedy of a lawful marriage. When then he had lived for five years with a wife, he came to Abbot John, who was then for his marvellous sanctity chosen to preside over the administration of the alms. [2159] For it is not anyone who likes who is of his own wish or ambition promoted to this office, but only he whom the congregation of all the Elders considers from the advantage of his age and the witness of his faith and virtues to be more excellent than, and superior to, all others. To this blessed John then the aforesaid young man had come in the eagerness of his pious devotion, bringing gifts of piety among other owners who were eager to offer tithes and first-fruits of their substance to the old man I mentioned, [2160] and when the old man saw them pouring in upon him with many gifts, and was anxious to make some recompense in return for their offerings, he began, as the Apostle says, to sow spiritual things to them whose carnal gifts he was reaping. [2161] And finally thus began his word of exhortation. __________________________________________________________________
[2158] Nothing further is known of this Theonas than what Cassian here tells us: he is clearly a different person from the one mentioned by Rufinus, Hist. Mon. c. vi. Cf. Palladius, Lausiac History, c. l.
[2159] Diaconia. Cf. the note on XVIII. vii.
[2160] This is noteworthy as being the earliest instance on record of the payment of tithes to a monastery. The language of the Conference, it will be noted, shows that they were not regarded as legally due or in any way compulsory, but as a free-will offering on the part of the faithful. Cf. Bingham, Antiquities, Book VII. ciii. § 19; and the Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, Vol. ii. p. 1964.
[2161] Cf. 1 Cor. ix. 11. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter II.
The exhortation of Abbot John to Theonas and the others who had come together with him.
I am indeed delighted, my children, with the duteous liberality of your gifts; and your devout offering, the disposal of which is entrusted to me, I gratefully accept, because you are offering your firstfruits and tithes for the good and use of the needy, as a sacrifice to the Lord, of a sweet smelling savour, in the belief that by the offering of them, the abundance of your fruits and all your substance, from which you have taken away these for the Lord, will be richly blessed, and that you yourselves will according to the faith of His command be endowed even in this world with manifold richness in all good things: "Honour the Lord from thy righteous labours, and offer to Him of the fruits of thy righteousness; that thy garners may be full of abundance of wheat, and thy vats may overflow with wine." [2162] And as you are faithfully carrying out this service, you may know that you have fulfilled the righteousness of the old law, under which those who then lived if they transgressed it inevitably incurred guilt, while if they fulfilled it they could not attain to a pitch of perfection. __________________________________________________________________
[2162] Prov. iii. 9, 10. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter III.
Of the offering of tithes and firstfruits.
For indeed by the Lord's command tithes were consecrated to the service of the Levites, but oblations and firstfruits for the priests. [2163] But this was the law of the firstfruits; viz., that the fiftieth part of fruits or animals should be given for the service of the temple and the priests: and this proportion some who were faithlessly indifferent diminished, while those who were very religious increased it, so that the one gave only the sixtieth part, and the other gave the fortieth part of their fruits. For the righteous, for whom the law is not enacted, are thus shown to be not under the law, as they try not only to fulfil but even to exceed the righteousness of the law, and their devotion is greater than the legal requirement, as it goes beyond the observance of precepts and adds to what is due of its own free will. __________________________________________________________________
[2163] Cf. Numb. xviii. 26; v. 9, 10. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IV.
How Abraham, David, and other saints went beyond the requirement of the law.
For so we read that Abraham went beyond the requirement of the law which was afterwards to be given, when after his victory over the four kings, he would not touch any of the spoils of Sodom, which were fairly due to him as the conqueror, and which indeed the king himself, whose spoils he had rescued, offered him; and with an oath by the Divine name he exclaimed: "I lift up my hand to the Lord Most High, who made heaven and earth, that I will not take from a thread to a shoe's latchet of all that is thine." [2164] So we know that David went beyond the requirement of the law, as, though Moses commanded that vengeance should be taken on enemies, [2165] he not only did not do this, but actually embraced his persecutors with love, and piously entreated the Lord for them, and wept bitterly and avenged them when they were slain. So we are sure that Elijah and Jeremiah were not under the law, as though they might without blame have taken advantage of lawful matrimony, yet they preferred to remain virgins. So we read that Elisha and others of the same mode of life went beyond the commands of Moses, as of them the Apostle speaks as follows: "They went about in sheepskins and in goatskins, they were oppressed, afflicted, in want, of whom the world was not worthy, they wandered about in deserts and in mountains, and in caves and in dens of the earth." [2166] What shall I say of the sons of Jonadab the son of Rechab, of whom we are told that, when at the Lord's bidding the prophet Jeremiah offered them wine, they replied: "We drink no wine: for Jonadab the son of Rechab, our father, commanded us, saying: Ye shall drink no wine, ye and your sons forever: and ye shall build no house, nor sow any seed, nor plant vineyards nor possess them: but ye shall dwell in tents all your days"? Wherefore also they were permitted to hear from the same prophet these words: "Thus saith the Lord God of hosts, the God of Israel: there shall not fail a man from the stock of Jonadab the son of Rechab to stand in My sight all the days;" [2167] as all of them were not satisfied with merely offering tithes of their possessions, but actually refused property, and offered the rather to God themselves and their souls, for which no redemption can be made by man, as the Lord testifies in the gospel: "For what shall a man give in exchange for his own soul?" [2168] __________________________________________________________________
[2164] Gen. xiv. 22, 23.
[2165] Cf. Exod. xxi. 24.
[2166] Heb. xi. 37, 38.
[2167] Jer. xxxv. 6, 7, 19.
[2168] S. Matt. xvi. 25. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter V.
How those who live under the grace of the Gospel ought to go beyond the requirement of the law.
Wherefore we ought to know that we from whom the requirements of the law are no longer exacted, but in whose ears the word of the gospel daily sounds: "If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell all that thou hast and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven, and come follow Me," [2169] when we offer to God tithes of our substance, are still in a way ground down beneath the burden of the law, and not able to rise to those heights of the gospel, those who conform to which are recompensed not only by blessings in this present life, but also by future rewards. For the law promises to those who obey it no rewards of the kingdom of heaven, but only solaces in this life, saying: "The man that doeth these things shall live in them." [2170] But the Lord says to His disciples: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven;" and: "Everyone that leaveth house or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or field for My name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit eternal life." [2171] And this with good reason. For it is not so praiseworthy for us to abstain from forbidden as from lawful things, and not to use these last out of reverence for Him, Who has permitted us to use them because of our weakness. And so if even those who, faithfully offering tithes of their fruits, are obedient to the more ancient precepts of the Lord, cannot yet climb the heights of the gospel, you can see very clearly how far short of it those fall who do not even do this. For how can those men be partakers of the grace of the gospel who disregard the fulfilment even of the lighter commands of the law, to the easy character of which the weighty words of the giver of the law bear testimony, as a curse is actually invoked on those who do not fulfil them; for it says: "Cursed is everyone that does not continue in all things that are written in the book of the law to do them." [2172] But here on account of the superiority and excellence of the commandments it is said: "He that can receive it, let him receive it." [2173] There the forcible compulsion of the lawgiver shows the easy character of the precepts; for he says: "I call heaven and earth to record against you this day, that if ye do not keep the commandments of the Lord your God ye shall perish from off the face of the earth." [2174] Here the grandeur of sublime commands is shown by the very fact that He does not order, but exhorts, saying: "if thou wilt be perfect go" and do this or that. There Moses lays a burden that cannot be refused on those who are unwilling: here Paul meets with counsels those who are willing and eager for perfection. For that was not to be enjoined as a general charge, nor to be required, if I may so say, as a regular rule from all, which could not be secured by all, owing to its wonderful and lofty nature; but by counsels all are rather stimulated to grace, that those who are great may deservedly be crowned by the perfection of their virtues, while those who are small, and not able to come up to "the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ," [2175] although they seem to be lost to sight and hidden as it were by the brightness of larger stars, may yet be free from the darkness of the curses which are in the law, and not adjudged to suffer present evils or visited with eternal punishment. Christ therefore does not constrain anyone, by the compulsion of a command, to those lofty heights of goodness, but stimulates them by the power of free will, and urges them on by wise counsels and the desire of perfection. For where there is a command, there is duty, and consequently punishment. But those who keep those things to which they are driven by the severity of the law established escape the punishment with which they were threatened, instead of obtaining rewards and a recompense. __________________________________________________________________
[2169] S. Matt. xix. 21.
[2170] Lev. xviii. 5.
[2171] S. Matt. v. 3; xix. 29.
[2172] Deut. xxvii. 26.
[2173] S. Matt. xix. 12.
[2174] Deut. iv. 26.
[2175] Eph. iv. 13. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VI.
How the grace of the gospel supports the weak so that they can obtain pardon, as it secures to the perfect the kingdom of God.
And as the word of the gospel raises those that are strong to sublime and lofty heights, so it suffers not the weak to be dragged down to the depths, for it secures to the perfect the fulness of blessing, and brings to those who are overcome through weakness pardon. For the law placed those who fulfilled its commands in a sort of middle state between what they deserved in either case, severing them from the condemnation due to transgressors, as it also kept them away from the glory of the perfect. But how wretched and miserable this is, you can see from comparing the state of this present life, in which it is considered a very poor thing for a man to sweat and labour only to avoid being regarded as guilty among good men, not also to be esteemed rich and honourable and renowned. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VII.
How it lies in our own power to choose whether to remain under the grace of the gospel or under the terror of the law.
Wherefore it lies today in our own power whether we choose to live under the grace of the gospel or under the terrors of the law: for each man must incline to one side or the other in accordance with the character of his actions, for either the grace of Christ welcomes those who go beyond the law, or else the law keeps its hold over the weaker ones as those who are its debtors and within its clutches. For one who is guilty as regards the precepts of the law will never be able to attain to the perfection of the gospel, even though he idly boasts that he is a Christian and freed by the Lord's grace: for we must not only regard as still under the law the man who refuses to fulfil what the law enjoins, but the man as well who is satisfied with the mere observance of what the law commands, and who never brings forth fruits worthy of his vocation and the grace of Christ, where it is not said: "Thou shalt offer to the Lord thy God thy tithes and firstfruits;" but: "Go and sell all that thou hast and give to the poor, and come follow Me;" [2176] where, owing to the grandeur of perfection, to the request of the disciple there is not granted even the very short space of an hour in which to bury his father, [2177] as the offices of human charity are outweighed by the virtue of Divine love. __________________________________________________________________
[2176] Exod. xxii. 29; S. Matt. xix. 21.
[2177] Cf. S. Matt. viii. 21, sq. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VIII.
How Theonas exhorted his wife that she too should make her renunciation.
And when he had heard this the blessed Theonas was fired with an uncontrollable desire for the perfection of the gospel, and, committed, as it were, the seed of the word, which he had received in a fruitful heart, to the deep and broken furrows of his bosom, as he was greatly humiliated and conscience-stricken because the old man had said not only that he had failed to attain to the perfection of the gospel, but also that he had scarcely fulfilled the commands of the law; since though he was accustomed every year to pay the tithes of his fruits as alms, yet he mourned that he had never even heard of the law of the firstfruits; and even if he had in the same way fulfilled this, he humbly confessed that still he would in the old man's view have been very far from the perfection of the gospel. And so he returned home sad and filled with that sorrow which worketh repentance unto salvation, [2178] and of his own will and determination turns all his wife's care and anxiety of mind towards salvation; and began to stir her up to the same eager desire with which he himself had been inflamed, with the same sort of exhortations, and with tears day and night to urge her that together they might serve God in sanctity and chastity, telling her that their conversion to a better life ought not to be deferred because a vain hope in their youth would be no argument against the inevitableness of a sudden death, which carries off boys and youths and young persons equally with old men. __________________________________________________________________
[2178] Cf. 2 Cor. vii. 10. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IX.
How he fled to a monastery when his wife would not consent.
And when his wife was hard and would not consent to him as he constantly persisted with entreaties of this kind, but said that as she was in the flower of her age she could not altogether do without the solace of her husband, and further that supposing she was deserted by him and fell into sin, the guilt would rather be his who had broken the bonds of wedlock: to this he, when he had for a long while urged the condition of human nature (which being so weak and uncertain, it would be dangerous for it to be any longer mixed up with carnal desires and works), added the assertion that it was not right for anyone to cut himself off from that virtue to which he had learnt that he ought by all means to cleave, and that it was more dangerous to disregard goodness when discovered, than to fail to love it before it was discovered; further that he was already involved in the guilt of a fall if when he had discovered such grand and heavenly blessings he had preferred earthly and mean ones. Further that the grandeur of perfection was open to every age and either sex, and that all the members of the Church were urged to scale the heights of heavenly goodness when the Apostle said: "So run that ye may obtain;" [2179] nor should those who were ready and eager for it hang back because of the delays of the slow and dawdlers, as it is better for the sluggards to be urged on by those running before than for those who are doing their best to be hampered by the slothful. Further that he had determined and made up his mind to renounce the world and to die to the world that he might live to God, and that if he could not attain this happiness; viz., to pass with his wife into union with Christ, he would rather be saved even with the loss of one member, and enter into the kingdom of heaven as one maimed rather than be condemned with his body whole. But he also added and spoke as follows: If Moses suffered wives to be divorced for the hardness of their hearts, why should not Christ allow this for the desire of chastity, especially when the same Lord among those other affections; viz., for fathers and mothers and children (all due regard to which not only the law but He Himself also charged to be shown, yet for His name's sake and for the desire of perfection He decreed that they should not simply be disregarded but actually hated)--to these, I say, He joined also the mention of wives, saying: "And everyone that hath left house, or brethren or sisters or father or mother or wife or children for My name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold and shall inherit eternal life." [2180] So far then is He from allowing anything to be set against that perfection which He is proclaiming, that He actually enjoins that the ties to father and mother should be broken and disregarded out of love for Him, though according to the Apostle it is the first commandment with promise; viz., "Honour thy father and thy mother, which is the first commandment with promise, that it may be well with thee and that thy days may be long upon earth." [2181] And as the word of the gospel condemns those who break the chains of matrimony where there has been no sin of adultery, so it clearly promises a reward of an hundredfold to those who have cast off a carnal yoke out of love for Christ and the desire for chastity. Wherefore if it can be brought about that you may listen to reason and be turned together with me to this most desirable choice; viz., that we should together serve the Lord and escape the pains of hell, I will not refuse the affection of marriage, nay I will embrace it with a still greater love. For I acknowledge and honour my helpmeet assigned to me by the word of the Lord, and I do not refuse to be joined to her in an unbroken tie of love in Christ, nor do I separate from me what the Lord joined to me by the law of the original condition, [2182] if only you yourself will be what your Maker meant you to be. But if you will not be a helpmeet, but prefer to make yourself a deceiver and an assistance not to me but to the adversary, and fancy that the sacrament of matrimony was granted to you for this reason that you may deprive yourself of this salvation which is offered to you, and also hold me back from following the Saviour as a disciple, then I will resolutely lay hold on the words which were uttered by the lips of Abbot John, or rather of Christ Himself, so that no carnal affection may be able to tear me away from spiritual blessings, for He says: "He that hateth not father and mother and children and brothers and sisters and wife and lands, yea and his own soul also, cannot be My disciple." [2183] When then by these and such like words the woman's purpose was not moved and she persisted in the same obstinate hardness, If, said the blessed Theonas, I cannot drag you away from death, neither shall you separate me from Christ: but it is safer for me to be divorced from a human person than from God. And so by the aid of God's grace he at once set about the execution of his purpose and suffered not the ardour of his desire to grow cool through any delay. For at once he stripped himself of all his worldly goods, and fled to a monastery, where in a very short time he was so famous for the splendour of his sanctity and humility that when John of blessed memory departed this life to the Lord, and the holy Elias, a man who was no less great than his predecessor, had likewise died, Theonas was chosen by the judgment of all as the third to succeed them in the administration of the almsgiving. __________________________________________________________________
[2179] 1 Cor. ix. 24.
[2180] S. Matt. xix. 29.
[2181] Eph. vi. 2, 3.
[2182] Cf. Gen. ii. 18.
[2183] S. Luke xiv. 26. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter X.
An explanation that we may not appear to recommend separation from wives.
But let no one imagine that we have invented this for the sake of encouraging divorce, as we not only in no way condemn marriage, but also, following the words of the Apostle, say: "Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled," [2184] but it was in order faithfully to show the reader the origin of the conversion by which this great man was dedicated to God. And I ask the reader kindly, to allow that, whether he likes this or no, in either case I am free from blame, and to give the praise or blame for this act to its real author. But as for me, as I have not put forward an opinion of my own on this matter, but have given a simple narration of the history of the facts, it is fair that as I claim no praise from those who approve of what was done, so I should not be attacked by the hatred of those who disapprove of it. Let every man therefore, as we said, have his own opinion on the matter. But I advise him to restrain his censure in considering it, lest he come to fancy that he is more just and holy than the Divine judgment, whereby the signs even of Apostolic virtue were conferred upon him (viz., Theonas), not to mention the opinion of such great fathers by whom it is clear that his action was not only not blamed, but even so far praised that in the election to the office of almoner they preferred him to splendid and most excellent men. And I fancy that the judgment of so many spiritual men, uttered with God as its author, was not wrong, as it was, as was said above, confirmed by such wonderful signs. __________________________________________________________________
[2184] Heb. xiii. 4. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XI.
An inquiry why in Egypt they do not fast during all the fifty days (of Easter) nor bend their knees in prayer.
But it is now time to follow out the plan of the promised discourse. So then when Abbot Theonas had come to visit us in our cell during Eastertide [2185] after Evensong was over we sat for a little while on the ground and began diligently to consider why they were so very careful that no one should during the whole fifty days either bend his knees in prayer [2186] or venture to fast till the ninth hour, and we made our inquiry the more earnestly because we had never seen this custom so carefully observed in the monasteries of Syria. __________________________________________________________________
[2185] Quinquagesima.
[2186] The 20th Canon of the Council of Nicæa (a.d. 325) alludes to diversities of custom with regard to posture for prayer on Sundays and from Easter to Pentecost, and ordered that for the future prayer should be made standing at these times. Cassian's language in the text would seem to show that in his day the Canon in question, though kept in Egypt, was not strictly observed in Palestine but that the ancient diversity of customs still to some extent prevailed. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XII.
The answer on the nature of things good, bad, and indifferent.
To this Abbot Theonas thus began his reply. It is indeed right for us, even when we cannot see the reason, to yield to the authority of the fathers and to a custom of our predecessors that has been continued through so many years down to our own time, and to observe it, as handed down from antiquity, with constant care and reverence. But since you want to know the reasons and grounds for this, receive in few words what we have heard as handed down by our Elders on this subject. But before we bring forward the authority of Holy Scripture, we will, if you please, say a little about the nature and character of the fast, that afterwards the authority of Holy Scripture may support our words. The Divine Wisdom has pointed out in Ecclesiastes that for everything, i.e., for all things happy or those which are considered unfortunate and unhappy, there is a right time: saying: "For all things there is a time, and a time for everything under the heaven. A time to bring forth and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to pull down what is planted; a time to kill and a time to heal; a time to destroy and a time to build; a time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones and a time to gather stones; a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to get and a time to lose; a time to keep and a time to send away; a time to scatter and a time to collect; a time to be silent and a time to speak; a time to love and a time to hate; a time for war and a time for peace;" and below: "For there is a time," it says, "for everything and for every deed." [2187] None therefore of these things does it lay down as always good, but only when any of them are fittingly done and at the right time, so that these very things which at one time, when done at the right moment, turn out well, if they are ventured on at a wrong or unsuitable time, are found to be useless or harmful; only excepting those things which are in their own nature good or bad, and which cannot ever be made the opposite, as, e.g., justice, prudence, fortitude, temperance and the rest of the virtues, or on the other hand, those faults, the description of which cannot possibly be altered or fall under the other head. But those things which can sometimes turn out with either result, so that, in accordance with the character of those who use them, they are found to be either good or bad, these we consider to be not absolutely in their own natures useful or injurious, but only so in accordance with the mind of the doer, and the suitableness of the time. __________________________________________________________________
[2187] Eccl. iii. 1-8, 17. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIII.
What kind of good fasting is.
Wherefore we must now inquire what we ought to hold about the state of fasting, whether we meant that it was good in the same sort of way as justice, prudence, fortitude and temperance, which cannot possibly be made anything else, or whether it is something indifferent which sometimes is useful when done, and may be sometimes omitted without condemnation; and which sometimes it is wrong to do, and sometimes laudable to omit. For if we hold fasting to be included in that list of virtues, so that abstinence from food is placed among those things which are good in themselves, then certainly the partaking of food will be bad and wrong. For whatever is the opposite of that which is in its own nature good, must certainly be held to be in its own nature bad. But this the authority of Holy Scripture does not allow to us to lay down. For if we fast with such thoughts and intentions, so as to think that we fall into sin by taking food, we shall not only gain no advantage by our abstinence but shall actually contract grievous guilt and fall into the sin of impiety, as the Apostle says: "Abstaining from meats which God has created to be received with thanksgiving by the faithful and those who know the truth. For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused if it is partaken of with thanksgiving." For "if a man thinks that a thing is common, to him it is common." [2188] And therefore we never read that anyone is condemned simply for taking food, but only when something was joined with it or followed afterwards, for which he deserved condemnation. __________________________________________________________________
[2188] 1 Tim. iv. 3, 4; Rom. xiv. 14. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIV.
How fasting is not good in its own nature.
And so that it is a thing indifferent is very clearly shown from this also; viz., because as it brings justification when observed, so it does not bring condemnation when it is broken in upon; unless perhaps the transgression of a command rather than the partaking of food brings punishment. But in the case of a thing that is good in its own nature, no time should be without it, in such a way as that a man may do without it, for if it ceases, the man who is careless about it is sure to fall into mischief. Nor again is any time given for what is bad in its own nature, because what is hurtful cannot help hurting, if it is indulged in, nor can it ever be made of a praiseworthy character. And further it is clear that these things, for which we see conditions and times appointed, and which sanctify, when observed without corrupting us when they are neglected, are things indifferent, as, e.g., marriage, agriculture, riches, retirement into the desert, vigils, reading and meditation on Holy Scripture and fasting itself, from which our discussion took its rise. All of which things the Divine precepts and the authority of Holy Scripture decreed should not be so incessantly aimed at, or so constantly observed, as for it to be wrong for them to be for a time intermitted. For anything that is absolutely commanded brings death if it be not fulfilled: but whatever things we are urged to rather than commanded, when done are useful, when left undone bring no punishment. And therefore in the case of all or some of these things our predecessors commanded us either to do them with consideration, or to observe them carefully with regard to the reason, place, manner, and time, because if any of them are done suitably, it is fit and convenient, but if incongruously, then it becomes foolish and hurtful. And if at the coming of a brother in whose person he ought to refresh Christ with courtesy and to embrace him with a most kindly welcome, a man should choose to observe a strict fast, would he not rather be guilty of incivility than gain the praise or reward of devoutness? or if when the failure or weakness of the flesh requires the strength to be restored by the partaking of food, a man will not consent to relax the rigour of his abstinence, is he not to be regarded as a cruel murderer of his own body rather than as one who is careful for his salvation? So too when a festival season permits a suitable indulgence in food and a necessarily liberal repast, if a man will resolutely cling to the strict observance of a fast he must be considered as not religious so much as boorish and unreasonable. But to those men also will these things be found bad, who are on the lookout for the praises of men by their fasts, and by a foolish show of paleness gain credit for sanctity, of whom the word of the Gospel tells us that they have received their reward in this life, and whose fast the Lord execrates by the prophet. In whose person he first objected to himself and said: "Wherefore have we fasted and Thou hast not regarded: wherefore have we humbled our souls, and Thou hast not known it?" and then at once he answered and explained the reasons why they did not deserve to be heard: "Behold," he says, "in the days of your fast your own will is found and you exact of all your debtors. Behold you fast for debates and strife, and strike with the fist wickedly. Do not fast as ye have done unto this day, to make your cry to be heard on high. Is this such a fast as I have chosen, for a man to afflict his soul for a day? Is it this, to wind his head about like a circle, and to spread sackcloth and ashes? Will ye call this a fast and a day acceptable to the Lord?" Then he proceeds to teach how the abstinence of one who fasts may become acceptable, and clearly lays down that fasting cannot be good of itself alone, but only when it has the following reasons which are added: "Is not this," he says, "the fast that I have chosen? Loose the bands of wickedness, undo the bundles that oppress, let them that are broken go free, and break asunder every burden. Deal thy bread to the hungry, and bring the needy and the harbourless into thine house: and when thou shalt see one naked cover him, and despise not thine own flesh. Then shalt thy light break forth as the morning and thy health shall speedily arise, and thy righteousness shall go before thy face and the glory of the Lord shall gather thee up. Then shalt thou call, and the Lord shall hear: thou shalt cry, and He shall say, Here am I." [2189] You see then that fasting is certainly not considered by the Lord as a thing that is good in its own nature, because it becomes good and well-pleasing to God not by itself but by other works, and again from the surrounding circumstances it may be regarded as not merely vain but actually hateful, as the Lord says: "When they fast I will not hear their prayers." [2190] __________________________________________________________________
[2189] Isa. lviii. 3-9.
[2190] Jer. xiv. 12. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XV.
How a thing that is good in its own nature ought not to be done for the sake of some lesser good.
For we ought not to practise pity, patience and love, and the precepts of the virtues mentioned above, wherein there is what is good in its own nature, for the sake of fasting, but rather fasting for the sake of them. For our endeavour must be that those virtues which are really good may be gained by fasting, not that the practice of those virtues may lead to fasting as its end. For this then the affliction of the flesh is useful, for this the remedy of abstinence must be employed; viz., that by it we may succeed in attaining to love, wherein there is what is good without change, and continually with no exception of time. For medicines, and the goldsmith's art, and the systems of other arts which there are in this world are not employed for the sake of the instruments which belong to the particular work; but rather the implements are prepared for the practice of the art. And as they are useful for those who understand them, so they are useless to those who are ignorant of the system of the art in question; and as they are a great help to those who rely on their aid for doing their work, so they cannot be of the smallest use to those who do not know for what purpose they were made, and are contented simply with the possession of them; because they make all their value consist in the mere having of them, and not in the performance of work. That then is in its own nature the best thing, for the sake of which things indifferent are done, but the very chiefest good is done not for the sake of anything else but because of its own intrinsic goodness. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVI.
How what is good in its own nature can be distinguished from other things that are good.
And this may be distinguished from those other things which we have termed indifferent, in these ways: if a thing is good in itself and not by reason of something else: if it is useful for its own sake, and not for the sake of something else: if it is unchangeably and at all times good, and always keeps its character and can never become anything different: if its removal or cessation cannot fail to produce the greatest harm: if that which is its opposite is in the same way evil in its own nature, and can never be turned into anything good. And these descriptions by which the nature of things that are good in themselves can be distinguished, cannot possibly be applied to fasting, for it is not good of itself, nor useful for its own sake because it is wisely used for the acquisition of purity of heart and body, that the pricks of the flesh being dulled the soul may be pacified and reconciled to its Creator, nor is it unchangeably and at all times good, because often we are not injured by its intermission, and indeed sometimes if it is unreasonably practised it becomes injurious. Nor is that which seems its opposite evil in its own nature, i.e., the partaking of food, which is naturally agreeable, which cannot be regarded as evil, unless intemperance and luxury or some other faults are the result; "For not that which entereth into the mouth, defileth a man, but that which cometh out of the mouth, that defileth a man." [2191] And so a man disparages what is good in its own nature, and does not treat it properly or without sin, if he does it not for its own sake but for the sake of something else, for everything else should be done for the sake of it, but it should be sought for its own sake alone. __________________________________________________________________
[2191] S. Matt. xv. 11. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVII.
Of the reason for fasting and its value.
So then let us constantly remember this description of the character of fasting, and always aim at it with all the powers of the soul, in such a way as to recognize that then only is it suitable for us if in it we preserve regard for time, its character and degree, and this not so as to set the end of our hope upon it, but so that by it we may succeed in attaining to purity of heart and Apostolical love. Therefore from this it is clear that fasting, for which not only are there special seasons appointed at which it should be practised or relaxed, but conditions and rules also laid down, is not good in its own nature, but something indifferent. But those things which are either enjoined as good by the authority of a precept, or are forbidden as bad, are never subject to any exceptions of time in such a way that sometimes we should do what is forbidden or omit what is commanded. For there is no limit set to justice, patience, soberness, modesty, love, nor on the other hand is a licence ever granted for injustice, impatience, wrath, immodesty, envy, and pride. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVIII.
How fasting is not always suitable.
Wherefore as we have premised this on the conditions of fasting, it seems well to subjoin the authority of Holy Scripture, by which it will be more clearly proved that fasting neither can nor should be always observed. In the Gospel when the Pharisees were fasting together with the disciples of John the Baptist, as the Apostles, as friends and companions of the heavenly Bridegroom, were not yet keeping the observance of a fast, the disciples of John (who thought that they acquired perfect righteousness by their fasts, as they were followers of that grand preacher of repentance who afforded a pattern to all the people by his own example, as he not only refused the different kinds of food which are supplied for man's use, but actually altogether did without eating the bread which is common to all) complained to the Lord and said: "Why do we and the Pharisees fast oft but thy disciples fast not?" to whom the Lord in His reply plainly showed that fasting is not suitable or necessary at all times, when any festival season or opportunity for love intervenes and permits an indulgence in food, saying: "Can the children of the bridegroom mourn while the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them; and then shall they fast;" [2192] words which although they were spoken before the resurrection of His Body, yet specially point to the season of Eastertide, in which after His resurrection for forty days He ate with His disciples, and their joy in His daily Presence did not allow them to fast. __________________________________________________________________
[2192] S. Matt. ix. 14, 15. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIX.
A question why we break the fast all through Eastertide.
Germanus: Why then do we relax the rigour of our abstinence in our meals all through the fifty days, whereas Christ only remained with His disciples for forty days after His resurrection? __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XX.
The answer.
Your pertinent question deserves to be told the perfect true reason. After the Ascension of our Saviour which took place on the fortieth day after His Resurrection, the apostles returned from the Mount of Olives, on which He had suffered them to see Him when He was returning to the Father, as the book of the Acts of the Apostles also testifies, and entered Jerusalem and are said to have waited ten days for the coming of the Holy Ghost, and when these were fulfilled on the fiftieth day they received Him with joy. And thus in this way the number of this festival was clearly made up, which as we read was figuratively foreshadowed also in the Old Testament, where when seven weeks were fulfilled the bread of the firstfruits was ordered to be offered by the priests to the Lord: [2193] and this was indeed shown to be offered to the Lord by the preaching of the Apostles which they are said on that day to have addressed to the people; the true bread of the firstfruits, which when produced from the instruction of a new doctrine, consecrated the firstfruits of the Jews as a Christian people to the Lord, five thousand men being filled with the gifts of the food. And therefore these ten days are to be kept with equal solemnity and joy as the previous forty. And the tradition about this festival, transmitted to us by Apostolic men, should be kept with the same uniformity. For therefore on those days they do not bow their knees in prayer, because the bending of the knees is a sign of penitence and mourning. Wherefore also during these days we observe in all things the same solemnities as on Sunday, on which day our predecessors taught that men ought not to fast nor to bow the knee, out of reverence for the Lord's Resurrection. __________________________________________________________________
[2193] Cf. Deut. xvi. 9. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXI.
A question whether the relaxation of the fast is not prejudicial to the chastity of the body.
Germanus: Can the flesh, attracted by the unwonted luxuries of so long a festival fail to produce something thorny from the incentives to sin although they have been cut down? or can the soul weighed down by the consumption of unaccustomed feasts fail to mitigate the rigour of its rule over its servant the body, especially when in our case our mature age can excite our subject members to a speedy revolt, if we venture to take our usual food in larger quantities, or unaccustomed food more freely than usual? __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXII.
The answer on the way to keep control over abstinence.
Theonas: If we weigh everything that we do, by a reasonable judgment of the mind, and on the purity of our heart always consult not the opinions of other people but our own conscience, that interval for refreshment is sure not to interfere with our proper strictness, if only, as was said, our pure mind impartially considers the right limits of indulgence and abstinence, and fairly checks excess in either, and with real discrimination discerns whether the weight of the delicacies is a burden upon our spirits, or whether too much austerity in abstaining weighs down the other side, i.e., that of the body, and either depresses or raises that side which it sees to be raised or weighed down. For our Lord would have nothing done to His honour and glory without being tempered by judgment, for "the honour of a king loveth judgment," [2194] and therefore Solomon, the wisest of men, urges us not to let our judgment incline to either side, saying: "Honour God with thy righteous labours and offer to Him of the fruits of thy righteousness." [2195] For we have residing in our conscience an uncorrupt and true judge who sometimes, when all are wrong, is the only person not deceived as to the state of our purity. And so with all care and pains we should preserve a constant purpose in our circumspect heart for fear lest if the judgment of our discretion goes wrong, we may be fired with the desire for an ill-considered abstinence, or allured by the wish for an excessive relaxation, and so weigh the substance of our strength in the tongue of an unfair balance; but we should place in one of the scales our purity of soul, and in the other our bodily strength, and weigh them both in the true judgment of conscience, so that we may not perversely incline the scale of fairness to either side, either to undue strictness or to excessive relaxation, from the preponderating desire for one or the other, and so have this said to us by reason of excessive strictness or relaxation: "If thou offerest rightly, but dost not divide rightly, hast thou not sinned?" [2196] For those offerings of fasts, which we thoughtlessly extort by violently tearing our bowels, and fancy that we rightly offer to the Lord, these He execrates who "loves mercy and judgment" saying: "I the Lord love judgment, but I hate robbery in a burnt offering." [2197] Those also who take the main part of their offerings, i.e., their offices and actions, to benefit the flesh for their own use, but leave the remains of them and a tiny portion for the Lord, these the Divine Word thus condemns as fraudulent workmen: "Cursed is he that doeth the work of the Lord fraudulently." [2198] It is not then without reason that the Lord reproves him who thus deceives himself by unfair considerations, saying: "But vain are the children of men: the children of men are liars upon the balances that they may deceive." [2199] And therefore the blessed Apostle warns us to keep hold of the reins of discretion and not to be attracted by excess and swerve to either side, saying: "Your reasonable service." [2200] And the giver of the law similarly forbids the same thing, saying: "Let the balance be just and the weights equal, the bushel just and the sextarius equal," [2201] and Solomon also gives a like opinion on this matter: "Great and small weights and double measures are both unclean before the Lord, and one who uses them shall be hindered in his contrivances." [2202] Further not only in the way in which we have said, but also in this must we strive not to have unfair weights in our hearts, nor double measures in the storehouse of our conscience, i.e., not to overwhelm those, to whom we are to preach the word of the Lord, with precepts that are too strict and heavier than we ourselves can bear, while we take for granted that for ourselves those things which have to do with the rule of strictness are to be softened by a freer allowance of relaxation. For when we do this, what is it but to weigh and measure the goods and fruits of the Lord's commands in a double weight and measure? For if we dispense them in one way to ourselves and in another to our brethren, we are rightly blamed by the Lord because we have unfair balances and double measures, in accordance with the saying of Solomon which tells us that "A double weight is an abomination to the Lord, and a deceitful balance is not good in His sight." [2203] In this way also we plainly incur the guilt of using a deceitful weight and a double measure, if out of the desire for the praise of men, we make a show before the brethren of greater strictness than what we practice in private in our own cells, trying to appear more abstinent and holier in the sight of men than in the sight of God, an evil which we should not only avoid but actually loathe. But meanwhile as we have wandered some way from the question before us, let us return to the point from which we started. __________________________________________________________________
[2194] Ps. xcviii. (xcix.) 4.
[2195] Prov. iii. 9.
[2196] Gen. iv. 7 (xxx.)
[2197] Ps. xxxii. (xxxiii.) 5; Is. lxi. 8.
[2198] Jer. xlviii. 10.
[2199] Ps. lxi. (lxii.) 10.
[2200] Rom. xii. 1.
[2201] Lev. xix. 36.
[2202] Prov. xx. 10, 11.
[2203] Ib. 23. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXIII.
Of the time and measure of refreshment.
So then we should keep the observance of the days mentioned in such a way that the relaxation allowed may be useful rather than harmful to the good of body and soul, because the joy of any festival cannot blunt the pricks of the flesh, nor can that fierce enemy of ours be pacified by regard for days. In order then that the observance of the customs appointed for festival seasons may be kept and that the most salutary rule of abstinence be not at all exceeded it is enough for us to allow the permitted relaxation to go so far, as for us out of regard for the festival season to take the food, which ought to be taken at the ninth hour, a little earlier; viz., at the sixth hour, but with this condition, that the regular allowance and character of the food be not altered, for fear lest the purity of body and uprightness of soul which has been gained by the abstinence of Lent be lost by the relaxation of Eastertide, and it profit us nothing to have acquired by our fast what a careless satiety causes us presently to lose, especially as the well-known cunning of our enemy assaults the stronghold of our purity then chiefly when he sees that our guard over it is somewhat relaxed at the celebration of some festival. Wherefore we must most vigilantly look out that the vigour of our soul be never enervated by seductive flatteries, and we lose not the purity of our chastity, gained, as was said, by the continuous efforts of Lent, by the repose and carelessness of Eastertide. And therefore no addition at all should be made to the quality or the quantity of the food, but even on the highest festivals we should similarly abstain from those foods, by abstinence from which we preserve our uprightness on common days, that the joy of the festival may not excite in us a most deadly conflict of carnal desires, and so be turned to grief, and put an end to that most excellent festival of the heart, which exults in the joy of purity; and after a brief show of carnal joy we begin to mourn our lost purity of heart with a lasting sorrow of repentance. Moreover we should strive that this warning of the prophetic exhortation may not be uttered against us to no purpose: "Celebrate, O Judah, thy festivals, and pay thy vows." [2204] For if the occurrence of festival days does not interfere with the continuity of our abstinence, we shall continually enjoy spiritual festivals and so, when we cease from servile work, "there shall be month after month and Sabbath after Sabbath." [2205] __________________________________________________________________
[2204] Nah. i. 15
[2205] Isa. lxvi. 23. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXIV.
A question on the different ways of keeping Lent.
Germanus: What is the reason why Lent is kept for six weeks, while in some countries a possibly more earnest care for religion seems to have added a seventh week as well, though neither number when you subtract Sunday and Saturday, gives the total of forty days? For only six and thirty days are included in these weeks. [2206] __________________________________________________________________
[2206] On the different uses in regard to the Lenten fast Socrates (H. E. V. xxii.) writes as follows: "Those at Rome fast three successive weeks before Easter, excepting Saturdays and Sundays. The Illyrians, Achaians, and Alexandrians observe a fast of six weeks, which they call the forty days' fast. Others commencing their fast from the seventh week before Easter, and fasting for fifteen days by intervals, yet call that time the forty days' fast." There are difficulties in the way of accepting the statement about the custom at Rome (see below), but the great variety of customs is fully confirmed by Sozomen (H. E. VII. xix.): "In some churches the time before Easter, which is called Quadragesima, and is devoted by the people to fasting, is made to consist of six weeks: and this is the case in Illyria, and the western regions, in Libya, throughout Egypt, and in Palestine: whereas it is made to comprise seven weeks at Constantinople, and in the neighbouring provinces as far as Phoenicia. In some churches the people fast three alternate weeks during the space of six or seven weeks; whereas in others they fast continuously during the three weeks immediately preceding the festival." The statement here made with regard to the West is true except as regards Milan, where Saturday was kept (as in the East) as a festival: while for the Constantinopolitan practice Chrysostom (Hom. xi. in Gen. § 2) confirms what Sozomen says: while Cassian's language in the text bears witness to the fact that both Egypt and Palestine agreed with the Roman practice. In either case, whether the fast began seven or six weeks before Easter, the number of days observed in the fast was the same; Saturdays (with the exception of Easter Eve which was always regarded as a fast) being excluded in the former case, while they were all included in the latter. Cf. below, c. xxvi. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXV.
The answer to the effect that the fast of Lent has reference to the tithe of the year.
Theonas: Although the pious simplicity of some folks would put aside a question on this subject, yet because you are more scrupulous in your examination of those things which another would consider unworthy to be asked about, and want to know the whole truth of this observance of ours and the secret of it, you shall have a very clear reason for this also, that you may still more plainly be convinced that our predecessors taught nothing unreasonable. By the law of Moses the command propounded to all the people generally was this: "Thou shalt offer to the Lord thy God thy tithes and firstfruits." [2207] And so, while we are commanded to offer tithes of our substance and all our fruits, it is much more needful for us to offer tithes of our life and ordinary employments and actions, which certainly is clearly arranged for in the calculation of Lent. For the tithe of the number of all the days included in the revolving circle of the year is thirty-six days and a half. But in seven weeks, if Sundays and Saturdays are subtracted, there remain thirty-five days assigned for fasting. But by the addition of Easter Eve when the Saturday's fast is prolonged to the cock-crowing at the dawn of Easter Day, not only is the number of thirty-six days made up, but in regard to the tithe of the five days which seemed to be over, if the bit of the night which was added be taken into account nothing will be wanting to the whole sum. __________________________________________________________________
[2207] Exod. xxii. 29. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXVI.
How we ought also to offer our firstfruits to the Lord.
But what shall I say of the firstfruits which surely are given daily by all who serve Christ faithfully? For when men waking from sleep and arising with renewed activity after their rest, before they take in any impulse or thought in their heart, or admit any recollection or consideration of business consecrate their first and earliest thoughts as divine offerings, what are they doing indeed but rendering the firstfruits of their produce through the High Priest Jesus Christ for the enjoyment of this life and a figure of the daily resurrection? And also when roused from sleep in the same way they offer to God a sacrifice of joy and invoke Him with the first motion of their tongue and celebrate His name and praise, and throwing open, the first thing, the door of their lips to sing hymns to Him they offer to God the offices of their mouth; and to Him also in the same way their bring the earliest offerings of their hands and steps, when they rise from bed and stand in prayer and before they use the services of their limbs for their own purposes, take to themselves nothing of their services, but for His glory advance their steps, and set them in His praise and so render the first fruits of all their movements by stretching forth the hands, bending the knees, and prostrating the whole body. For in no other way can we fulfil that of which we sing in the Psalm: "I prevented the dawning of the day and cried;" and: "Mine eyes to Thee have prevented the morning that I might meditate on Thy words;" and: "In the morning shall my prayer prevent Thee;" [2208] unless after our rest in sleep when, as we said above, we are restored as from darkness and death to this light, we have the courage not to begin by taking any of all the services both of mind and body for our own uses. For there is no other morning which the prophet "prevented," or which in the same way we ought to prevent, except either ourselves, i.e., our occupations and feelings and earthly cares, without which we cannot exist--or the most subtle suggestions of the adversary, which he tries to suggest to us, while still resting and overcome with sleep, by the phantoms of vain dreams, with which, when we presently awake, he will fill our minds and occupy us, that he may be the first to seize and carry off the spoils of our firstfruits. Wherefore we must take the utmost care (if we want to fulfil in act the meaning of the above quoted verse) that an anxious watchfulness takes regard of our first and earliest morning thoughts, that they may not be defiled beforehand being hastily taken possession of by our jealous adversary, and thus he may make our firstfruits to be rejected by the Lord as worthless and common. And if he is not prevented by us with watchful circumspection of mind, he will not lay aside his habit of miserably anticipating us nor cease day after day to prevent us by his wiles. And therefore if we want to offer firstfruits that are acceptable and well pleasing to God of the fruits of our mind, we ought to spend no ordinary care to keep all the senses of our body, especially during the hours of the morning, as a sacred holocaust to the Lord pure and undefiled in all things. And this kind of devotion many even of those who live in the world observe with the utmost care, as they rise before it is light or very early, and do not at all mix in the ordinary and necessary business of this world before hastening to church and striving to consecrate in the sight of God the firstfruits of all their actions and doings. __________________________________________________________________
[2208] Ps. cxviii. (cxix.) 147, 148; lxxxvii. (lxxxviii.) 14. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXVII.
Why Lent is kept by very many with a different number of days.
Further, as for what you say; viz., that in some countries Lent is kept in different ways, i.e., for six or seven weeks, it is but one system and the same manner of the fast that is preserved by the different observance of the weeks. For those who think one ought to fast also on the Saturday, have determined on the observance of six weeks. They therefore fast for six days out of the seven, and this being six times repeated makes up the six and thirty days. It is therefore, as we said, but one system and the same manner of the fast, although there seems to be a difference in the number of the weeks. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXVIII.
Why it is called Quadragesima, when the fast is only kept for thirty-six days.
But further, as man's carelessness dropped out of sight the reason of this, this season when, as was said, the tithes of the year are offered by fasts for thirty-six days and a half, was called Quadragesima, [2209] a name which perhaps they thought ought to be given to it for this reason; viz., that it is said that Moses and Elijah and our Lord Jesus Christ Himself fasted for forty days. To the mystery of which number are not unsuitably applied those forty years in which Israel dwelt in the wilderness, and in like manner the forty stations which they are said to have passed through with a mystic meaning. Or perhaps the tithe was properly given the name of Quadragesima from the use of the custom-house. For so that state tax is commonly called, from which the same proportion of the increment is assigned for the king's use, as the legal tribute of Quadragesima, which is required of us by the King of all the ages for the use of our life. At any rate, although this has nothing to do with the question raised, yet I think that I ought not to omit the fact that very often our elders used to testify that especially on these days the whole body of monks was attacked according to the ancient custom of the people opposed to them, and was more vehemently urged to forsake their homes, for this reason, because in accordance with this figure, whereby the Egyptians formerly oppressed the children of Israel with grievous afflictions, so now also the spiritual Egyptians try to bow down the true Israel, i.e., the monastic folk, with hard and vile tasks, lest by means of that peace which is dear to God, we should forsake the land of Egypt, and for our good cross to the desert of virtues, so that Pharaoh rages against us and says: "They are idle and therefore they cry saying: Let us go and sacrifice to the Lord our God. Let them be oppressed with labours, and be harassed in their works, and they shall not be harassed by vain words." [2210] For certainly their folly imagines that the holy sacrifice of the Lord, which is only offered in the desert of a pure heart, is the height of folly, for "religion is an abomination to a sinner." [2211] __________________________________________________________________
[2209] Cassian here gives three suggestions why the fast of thirty-six days' duration was called Quadragesima. (1) As roughly corresponding to the forty days fast of Moses, Elijah, and the Lord Himself, (2) because "forty" is the number associated with a time of probation in Scripture, and (3) because of the analogy of a legal tribute of "Quadragesima" paid to the Sovereign. It is certainly a curious and difficult question why the name Quadragesima should have been so universally applied to the fast, when there is no evidence of its having been kept for forty days till sometime after the date of Gregory the Great, when Ash Wednesday and the three following days were prefixed to the six weeks expressly for the purpose of making the number forty. The name however, had as we see from Socrates, Sozomen, Cassian himself, and many other writers, existed long before this; and on the whole it appears probable that it originated in none of the reasons given above by Cassian but that in the first instance it was connected "with the period during which our Lord yielded to the power of death, which was estimated at forty hours; viz., from noon on Friday till 4 A.M. on Sunday." See Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, Vol. ii. p. 973; and cf. Irenæus Ep. ad Victor. in Euseb. V. xxiv.; and Tertullian De Orat. c. 18; and De Jejuniis c. ii. and xiii.
[2210] Exod. v. 8, 9.
[2211] Ecclus. l. 24. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXIX.
How those who are perfect go beyond the fixed rule of Lent.
By this law of Lent then the man who is upright and perfect is not restrained nor is he content with merely submitting to that paltry rule which the heads of the church have established for those who all the year round are involved in pleasure or business, that they may be bound by this legal requirement and forced at any rate during these days to find time for the Lord, and dedicate to Him the tithe of the days of their life, all of which they would have consumed as their profits. But the righteous, for whom the law is not appointed, and who devote to spiritual duties not a small part; viz., the tenth, but the whole time of their life, because they are free from the burden of tithes according to law, for this reason, if any worthy and pious occasion happening to them constrains them, are ready to relax their station fast [2212] without any hesitation. For in their case it is no paltry tithe that is diminished, as they offer all that they have to the Lord equally with themselves. And this certainly a man could not do without being guilty of a grievous wrong, who, offering nothing of his own free will to God, is forced to pay his tithes by the stern compulsion of the law which takes no excuse. Wherefore it is clearly established that the servant of the law cannot be perfect, who only shuns those things which are forbidden and does those things which are commanded, but that those are really perfect who do not take advantage even of those things which the law allows. And in this way, though it is said of the Mosaic law that "the law brought nothing to perfection," [2213] we read that some of the saints in the Old Testament were perfect because they went beyond the commands of the law and lived under the perfection of the Gospel: "Knowing that the law is not appointed for the righteous but for the unrighteous and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the wicked and defiled, etc." [2214] __________________________________________________________________
[2212] Statio. Cf. note on the Institutes V. xxiv.
[2213] Heb. vii. 19.
[2214] 1 Tim. i. 9, 10. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXX.
Of the origin and beginning of Lent.
Howbeit you should know that as long as the primitive church retained its perfection unbroken, this observance of Lent did not exist. For they were not bound by the requirements of this order, or by any legal enactments, nor confined in the very narrow limits of the fast, as the fast embraced equally the whole year round. But when the multitude of believers began day by day to decline from that apostolic fervour, and to look after their own wealth, and not to portion it out for the good of all the faithful in accordance with the arrangement of the apostles, but having an eye to their own private expenses, tried not only to keep it but actually to increase it, not content with following the example of Ananias and Sapphira, then it seemed good to all the priests that men who were hampered by worldly cares, and almost ignorant, if I may say so, of abstinence and contrition, should be recalled to the pious duty by a fast canonically enjoined, and be constrained by the necessity of paying the legal tithes, as this certainly would be good for the weak brethren and could not do any harm to the perfect who were living under the grace of the gospel and by their voluntary devotion going beyond the law, so as to succeed in attaining to the blessedness which the Apostle speaks of: "For sin shall not have dominion over you; for ye are not under the law but under grace." [2215] For of a truth sin cannot exercise dominion over one who lives faithfully under the liberty of grace. __________________________________________________________________
[2215] Rom. vi. 14. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXI.
A question, how we ought to understand the Apostle's words: "Sin shall not have dominion over you."
Germanus: Because this saying of the Apostle, which promises freedom from care not only to monks but to all Christians in general, cannot lead us wrong, it seems to us somewhat obscure. For whereas he maintains that all those who believe the gospel are at liberty and free from the yoke and dominion of sin, how is it that the dominion of sin holds vigorous sway over almost all the baptized, in accordance with the Lord's words, where He says: "Every one that doeth sin is the servant of sin"? [2216] __________________________________________________________________
[2216] S. John viii. 34. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXII.
The answer on the difference between grace and the commands of the law.
Theonas: Your inquiry once more raises before us a question of no small extent. The explanation of which though I know that it cannot be taught to or understood by the inexperienced, yet as far as I can, I will try to set forth in words and briefly to explain, if only your minds will follow up and act upon what we say. For whatever is known not by teaching but by experience, just as it cannot be taught by one without experience, so neither can it be grasped or taken in by the mind of one who has not laid the foundation by a similar study and training. And therefore I think it necessary for us first to inquire somewhat carefully what is the purpose or meaning of the law, and what is the system and perfection of grace, that from this we may succeed in understanding the dominion of sin and how to drive it out. And so the law chiefly commands men to seek the bonds of wedlock, saying: "Blessed is he that hath seed in Sion and an household in Jerusalem;" [2217] and: "Cursed is the barren that hath not borne." [2218] On the other hand grace invites us to the purity of perpetual chastity, and the undefiled state of blessed virginity, saying: "Blessed are the barren, and the breasts which have not given suck;" and: "he that hateth not father and mother and wife cannot be my disciple;" and this of the Apostle: "It remaineth that they that have wives be as though they had them not." [2219] The law says: "Thou shalt not delay to offer thy tithes and firstfruits;" grace says: "If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell all that thou hast and give to the poor:" [2220] The law forbids not retaliation for wrongs and vengeance for injuries, saying "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." Grace would have our patience proved by the injuries and blows offered to us being redoubled, and bids us be ready to endure twice as much damage; saying: "If a man strike thee on one cheek, offer him the other also; and to him who will contend with thee at the law and take away thy coat, give him thy cloak also." [2221] The one decrees that we should hate our enemies, the other that we should love them so that it holds that even for them we ought always to pray to God. __________________________________________________________________
[2217] Isa. xxxi. 9 (lxx.).
[2218] Cf. Job xxiv. 21.
[2219] S. Luke xxiii. 29; xiv. 26; 1 Cor. vii. 29.
[2220] Exod. xxii. 29; S. Matt. xix. 21.
[2221] Exod. xxi. 24; S. Matt. v. 39, 40. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXIII.
Of the fact that the precepts of the gospel are milder than those of the law.
Whoever therefore climbs this height of evangelical perfection, is at once raised by the merits of such virtue above every law, and disregarding as trivial all that is commanded by Moses, recognizes that he is only subject to the grace of the Saviour, by whose aid he knows that he attained to that most exalted condition. Therefore sin has no dominion over him, "because the love of God, which is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given to us," [2222] shuts out all care for everything else, and can neither desire what is forbidden, or disregard what is commanded, as its whole aim and all its desire is ever fixed on divine love, and to such an extent is it not caught by the delights of worthless things, that it actually does not take advantage of those things which are permitted. But under the law, where lawful marriages are observed, although the rovings of wantonness are restrained, and bound down to one woman alone, yet the pricks of carnal lust cannot help being vigorous; and it is hard for the fire, for which fuel is expressly supplied, to be thus shut in within prearranged limits, so as not to spread further and burn up anything it touches. As even if this objection occurs to it that it is not allowed to be kindled beyond these limits, yet even while it is kept in check, it is on fire because the will itself is in fault, and its habit of carnal intercourse hurries it into too speedy excesses of adultery. But those whom the grace of the Saviour has fired with the holy love of chastity, so consume all the thorns of carnal desires in the fire of the Lord's love, that no dying embers of sin interfere with the coldness of their purity. The servants of the law then from the use of lawful things fall away to unlawful; the partakers of grace while they disregard lawful things know nothing of unlawful ones. But as sin is alive in one who loves marriage, so is it also in one who is satisfied with merely paying his tithes and firstfruits. For, while he is dawdling or careless, he is sure to sin in regard to either their quality or quantity, or the daily distribution of them. For as he is commanded unweariedly to minister to those in want of what is his, although he may dispense it with the fullest faith and devotion, yet it is hard for him not to fall often into the snares of sin. But over those who have not set at naught the counsel of the Lord, but who, disposing of all their property to the poor, take up their cross and follow the bestower of grace, sin can have no dominion. For no faithless anxiety for getting food will annoy him who piously distributes and disperses his wealth already consecrated to Christ and no longer regarded as his own; nor will any grudging hesitation take away from the cheerfulness of his almsgiving, because without any thought of his own needs or fear of his own food running short he is distributing what has once for all been completely offered to God, and is no longer regarded as his own, as he is sure that when he has succeeded in stripping himself as he desires, he will be fed by God much more than the birds of the air. On the other hand he who retains his goods of this world, or, bound by the rules of the old law, distributes the tithe of his produce, and his firstfruits, or a portion of his income, although he may to a considerable degree quench the fire of his sins by this dew of almsgiving, yet, however generously he gives away his wealth, it is impossible for him altogether to rid himself of the dominion of sin, unless perhaps by the grace of the Saviour, together with his substance he gets rid of all love of possessing. In the same way he cannot fail to be subject to the bloody sway of sin, whoever chooses to pull out, as the law commands, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, or to hate his enemy, for while he desires by retaliation in exchange to avenge an injury done to himself, and while he cherishes bitter hatred against an enemy, he is sure always to be inflamed with the passion of anger and rage. But whoever lives under the light of the grace of the gospel, and overcomes evil by not resisting it, but by bearing it, and does not hesitate of his own free will to give to one who smites his right cheek, the other also, and to one who wants to raise a lawsuit against him for his coat, gives his cloak also, and who loves his enemies, and prays for those who slander him, this man has broken the yoke of sin and burst its chains. For he is not living under the law, which does not destroy the seeds of sin (whence not without reason the Apostle says of it: "There is a setting aside of the former commandment because of the weakness and unprofitableness thereof: for the law brought nothing to perfection;" and the Lord says by the prophet: "And I gave them commands that were not good, and ordinances, whereby they could not live" [2223] , but under grace which does not merely lop off the boughs of wickedness, but actually tears up the very roots of an evil will. __________________________________________________________________
[2222] Rom. v. 5.
[2223] Heb. vii. 18, 19; Ezek. xx. 25. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXIV.
How a man can be shown to be under grace.
Whoever then strives to reach the perfection of evangelical teaching, this man living under grace is not oppressed by the dominion of sin, for to be under grace is to do those things which grace commands. But whoever will not submit himself to the complete requirements of evangelical perfection, must not remain ignorant that, although he seems to be baptized and to be a monk, yet he is not under grace, but is still shackled by the chains of the law, and weighed down by the burden of sin. For it is the aim of Him, who by the grace of adoption accepts all those by whom He has been received, not to destroy but to build upon, not to abolish but to fulfil the Mosaic requirements. But some knowing nothing about this, and disregarding the splendid counsels and exhortations of Christ, are so emancipated by the carelessness of a freedom too hastily assumed, that they not only fail to carry out the commands of Christ as if they were too hard, but actually scorn as antiquated, the commands given to them as beginners and children by the law of Moses, saying in this dangerous freedom of theirs that which the Apostle execrates: "We have sinned, because we are not under the law but under grace." [2224] He then who is neither under grace, because he has never climbed the heights of the Lord's teaching, nor under the law, because he has not accepted even those small commands of the law, this man, ground down beneath a twofold rule of sin, fancies that he has received the grace of Christ, simply and solely for this, that by this dangerous liberty of his he may make himself none of His, and falls into that state, which the Apostle Peter warns us to avoid, saying: "Act as free, and not having your liberty as a cloak of wickedness." The blessed Apostle Paul also says: "For ye, brethren, were called to liberty," i.e., that ye might be free from the dominion of sin, "only use not your liberty for an occasion of the flesh," [2225] i.e., believe that the doing away with the commands of the law is a licence to sin. But this liberty, the Apostle Paul teaches us is nowhere but where the Lord is dwelling, for he says: "The Lord is the Spirit, but where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty." [2226] Wherefore I know not whether I could express and explain the meaning of the blessed Apostle, as those know how, who have experience; one thing I do know, that it is very clearly revealed even without anyone's explanation to all those who have perfectly acquired praktike, i.e., practical training. For they will need no effort to understand in discussion what they have already learnt by practice. __________________________________________________________________
[2224] Rom. vi. 15.
[2225] 1 Pet. ii. 16; Gal. v. 13.
[2226] 2 Cor. iii. 17. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXV.
A question, why sometimes when we are fasting more strictly than usual, we are troubled by carnal desires more keenly than usual.
Germanus: You have very clearly explained a most difficult question, and one which, as we think, is unknown to many. Wherefore we pray you to add this also for our good, and carefully to expound why sometimes when we are fasting more strictly than usual, and are exhausted and worn out, severer bodily struggles are excited. For often on waking from sleep, when we have discovered that we have been defiled [2227] we are so dejected in heart that we do not even venture faithfully to rise even for prayer. __________________________________________________________________
[2227] Cum deprehenderimus nos sordidi liquoris contagius pertulisse. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXVI.
The answer, telling that this question should be reserved for a future Conference.
Theonas: Your zeal indeed, whereby you desire to reach the way of perfection, not for a moment only but fully and perfectly, urges us to continue this discussion unweariedly. For you are anxiously inquiring not about external chastity or outward circumcision, but about that which is secret, as you know that complete perfection does not consist in this visible continence of the flesh which can be attained either by constraint, or by hypocrisy even by unbelievers, but in that voluntary and invisible purity of heart, which the blessed Apostle describes as follows: "For he is not a Jew which is so outwardly, nor is that circumcision which is outward in the flesh, but he is a Jew which is one inwardly, and the circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit not in the letter, whose praise is not of men but of God," [2228] who alone searches the secrets of the heart. But because it is not possible for your wish to be fully satisfied (as the short space of the night that is left is not enough for the investigation of this most difficult question,) I think it well to postpone it for a while. For these matters, as they should be propounded by us quietly and with an heart entirely free from all bustling thoughts, so should they be received into your minds; for just as the inquiry ought to be undertaken for the sake of our common purity, so they cannot be learnt or acquired by one who is without the gift of uprightness. For we do not ask what arguments of empty words, but what the inward faith of the conscience and the greater force of truth can persuade. And therefore with regard to the knowledge and teaching of this purification nothing can be brought forward except by one who has had experience of it, nor can anything be committed except to one who is a most eager and very earnest lover of the truth itself, who does not hope to attain it by asking questions with mere vain words, but by striving with all his might and main, with no wish for useless chattering but with the desire to purify himself internally. __________________________________________________________________
[2228] Rom. ii. 28, 29. __________________________________________________________________
[2157] On Quinquagesima see the note on the Institutes II. vi. __________________________________________________________________
XXII. The Second Conference of Abbot Theonas.
On Nocturnal Illusions.
This Conference is omitted. __________________________________________________________________
XXIII. The Third Conference of Abbot Theonas.
On Sinlessness. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter I.
Discourse of Abbot Theonas on the Apostle's words: "For I do not the good which I would."
At the return of light therefore, as the old man was forced by our intense urgency to investigate the depths of the Apostle's subject, he spoke as follows: As for the passages by which you try to prove that the Apostle Paul spoke not in his own person but in that of sinners: "For I do not the good that I would, but the evil which I hate, that I do;" or this: "But if I do that which I would not, it is no longer I that do it but sin that dwelleth in me;" or what follows: "For I delight in the law of God after the inner man, but I see another law in my members opposing the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members;" [2229] these passages on the contrary plainly show that they cannot possibly fit the person of sinners, but that what is said can only apply to those that are perfect, and that it only suits the chastity of those who follow the good example of the Apostles. Else how could these words apply to the person of sinners: "For I do not the good which I would, but the evil which I hate that I do"? or even this: "But if I do what I would not it is no longer I that do it but sin that dwelleth in me"? For what sinner defiles himself unwillingly by adulteries and fornication? Who against his will prepares plots against his neighbour? Who is driven by unavoidable necessity to oppress a man by false witness or cheat him by theft, or covet the goods of another or shed his blood? Nay rather, as Scripture says, "Mankind is diligently inclined to wickedness from his youth." [2230] For to such an extent are all inflamed by the love of sin and desire to carry out what they like, that they actually look out with watchful care for an opportunity of committing wickedness and are afraid of being too slow to enjoy their lusts, and glory in their shame and the mass of their crimes, as the Apostle says in censure, [2231] and seek credit for themselves out of their own confusion, of whom also the prophet Jeremiah maintains that they commit their flagitious crimes not only not unwillingly nor with ease of heart and body, but with laborious efforts to such an extent that they come to toil to carry them out, so that they are prevented even by the hindrance of arduous difficulty from their deadly quest of sin; as he says: "They have laboured to do wickedly." [2232] Who also will say that this applies to sinners: "And so with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin," as it is plain that they serve God neither with the mind nor the flesh? Or how can those who sin with the body serve God with the mind, when the flesh receives the incitement to sin from the heart, and the Creator of either nature Himself declares that the fount and spring of sin flows from the latter, saying: "From the heart proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, etc." [2233] Wherefore it is clearly shown that this cannot in any way be taken of the person of sinners, who not only do not hate, but actually love what is evil and are so far from serving God with either the mind or the flesh that they sin with the mind before they do with the flesh, and before they carry out the pleasures of the body are overcome by sin in their mind and thoughts. __________________________________________________________________
[2229] Rom. vii. 18, sq.
[2230] Gen. viii. 21.
[2231] Cf. Phil. iii. 19.
[2232] Jer. ix. 5.
[2233] S. Matt. xv. 19. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter II.
How the Apostle completed many good actions.
It remains therefore for us to measure its meaning and drift from the inmost feelings of the speaker, and to discuss what the blessed Apostle called good, and what he pronounced by comparison evil, not by the bare meaning of the words, but with the same insight which he showed, and to investigate his meaning with due regard to the worth and goodness of the speaker. For then we shall be able to understand the words, which were uttered by God's inspiration, in accordance with his purpose and wish, when we weigh the position and character of those by whom they were spoken, and are ourselves clothed with the same feelings (not in words but by experience), in accordance with the character of which most certainly all the thoughts are conceived and opinions uttered. Wherefore let us carefully consider what was in the main that good which the Apostle could not do when he would. For we know that there are many good things which we cannot deny that the blessed Apostle and all men as good as he either have by nature, or acquire by grace. For chastity is good, continence is praiseworthy, prudence is to be admired, kindness is liberal, sobriety is careful, temperance is modest, pity is kind, justice is holy: all of which we cannot doubt existed fully and in perfection in the Apostle Paul and his companions, so that they taught religion by the lesson of their virtues rather than their words. What if they were always consumed with the constant care of all the churches and watchful anxiety? How great a good is this pity, what perfection it is to burn for them that are offended, to be weak with the weak! [2234] If then the Apostle abounded with such good things, we cannot recognize what that good was, in the perfection of which the Apostle was lacking, unless we have advanced to that state of mind in which he was speaking. And so all those virtues which we say that he possessed, though they are like most splendid and precious gems, yet when they are compared with that most beautiful and unique pearl which the merchant in the gospel sought and wanted to acquire by selling all that he possessed, so does their value seem poor and trifling, so that if they are without hesitation got rid of, the possession of one good thing alone will enrich the man who sells countless good things. __________________________________________________________________
[2234] Cf. 2 Cor. xi. 29. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter III.
What is really the good which the Apostle testifies that he could not perform.
What then is that one thing which is so incomparably above those great and innumerable good things, that, while they are all scorned and rejected, it alone should be acquired? Doubtless it is that truly good part, the grand and lasting character of which is thus described by the Lord, when Mary disregarded the duties of hospitality and courtesy and chose it: "Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: but there is but need of but few things or even of one only. Mary hath chosen the good part which shall not be taken away from her." [2235] Contemplation then, i.e., meditation on God, is the one thing, the value of which all the merits of our righteous acts, all our aims at virtue, come short of. And all those things which we said existed in the Apostle Paul, were not only good and useful, but even great and splendid. But as, for example, the metal of alloy which is considered of some use and worth, becomes worthless when silver is taken into account, and again the value of silver disappears in comparison with gold, and gold itself is disregarded when compared with precious stones, and yet a quantity of precious stones however splendid are outdone by the brightness of a single pearl, so all those merits of holiness, although they are not merely good and useful for the present life, but also secure the gift of eternity, yet if they are compared with the merit of Divine contemplation, will be considered trifling and so to speak, fit to be sold. And to support this illustration by the authority of Scripture, does not Scripture declare of all things in general which were created by God, and say: "And behold everything that God had made was very good;" and again: "And things that God hath made are all good in their season"? [2236] These things then which in the present time are termed not simply and solely good, but emphatically "very good" (for they are really convenient for us while living in this world, either for purposes of life, or for remedies for the body, or by reason of some unknown usefulness, or else they are indeed "very good," because they enable us "to see the invisible things of God from the creatures of the world, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead," [2237] from this great and orderly arrangement of the fabric of the world; and to contemplate them from the existence of everything in it), yet none of these things will keep the name of good if they are regarded in the light of that world to come, where no variation of good things, and no loss of true blessedness need be feared. The bliss of which world is thus described: "The light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold as the light of seven days." [2238] These things then which are great and wondrous to be gazed on, and marvellous, will at once appear as vanity if they are compared with the future promises from faith; as David says: "They all shall wax old as a garment, and as a vesture shalt Thou change them, and they shall be changed. But Thou art the same, and Thy years shall not fail." [2239] Because then there is nothing of itself enduring, nothing unchangeable, nothing good but Deity alone, while every creature, to obtain the blessing of eternity and immutability, aims at this not by its own nature but by participation of its Creator, and His grace, they cannot maintain their character for goodness when compared with their Creator. __________________________________________________________________
[2235] S. Luke x. 41, 42. Cf. the note on I. viii.
[2236] Gen. i. 31; Ecclus. xxxix. 16.
[2237] Rom. i. 20.
[2238] Isa. xxx. 26.
[2239] Ps. ci. (cii.) 27, 28. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IV.
How man's goodness and righteousness are not good if compared with the goodness and righteousness of God.
But if we want also to establish the force of this opinion by still clearer proofs, is it not the case that while we read of many things as called good in the gospel, as a good tree, and good treasure, and a good man, and a good servant, for He says: "A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit;" and: "a good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things;" and: "Well done, good and faithful servant;" [2240] and certainly there can be no doubt that none of these are good in themselves, yet if we take into consideration the goodness of God, none of them will be called good, as the Lord says: "None is good save God alone"? [2241] In whose sight even the apostles themselves, who in the excellence of their calling in many ways went beyond the goodness of mankind, are said to be evil, as the Lord thus speaks to them: "If ye then being evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask Him." [2242] Finally as our goodness turns to badness in the eyes of the Highest so also our righteousness when set against the Divine righteousness is considered like a menstruous cloth, as Isaiah the prophet says: "All your righteousness is like a menstruous cloth." [2243] And to produce something still plainer, even the vital precepts of the law itself, which are said to have been "given by angels by the hand of a mediator," and of which the same Apostle says: "So the law indeed is holy and the commandment is holy and just and good," [2244] when they are compared with the perfection of the gospel are pronounced anything but good by the Divine oracle: for He says: "And I gave them precepts that were not good, and ordinances whereby they should not live in them." [2245] The Apostle also affirms that the glory of the law is so dimmed by the light of the New Testament that he declares that in comparison with the splendour of the gospel it is not to be considered glorious, saying: "For even that which was glorious was not glorified by reason of the glory that excelleth." [2246] And Scripture keeps up this comparison on the other side also, i.e., in weighing the merits of sinners, so that in comparison with the wicked it justifies those who have sinned less, saying: "Sodom is justified above thee;" and again: "For what hath thy sister Sodom sinned?" and: "The rebellious Israel hath justified her soul in comparison of the treacherous Judah." [2247] So then the merits of all the virtues, which I enumerated above, though in themselves they are good and precious, yet become dim in comparison of the brightness of contemplation. For they greatly hinder and retard the saints who are taken up with earthly aims even at good works, from the contemplation of that sublime good. __________________________________________________________________
[2240] S. Matt. vii. 18; xii. 35; xxv. 21.
[2241] S. Luke xviii. 19.
[2242] S. Matt. vii. 11.
[2243] Isa. lxiv. 6.
[2244] Gal. iii. 19; Rom. vii. 12.
[2245] Ezek. xx. 25.
[2246] 2 Cor. iii. 10.
[2247] Ezek. xvi. 52, 49; Jer. iii. 11. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter V.
How no one can be continually intent upon that highest good.
For who, when "delivering the poor from the hand of them that are too strong for him, and the needy and the poor from them that strip him," who when "breaking the jaws of the wicked and snatching their prey from between their teeth," [2248] can with a calm mind regard the glory of the Divine Majesty during the actual work of intervention? Who when ministering support to the poor, or when receiving with benevolent kindness the crowds that come to him, can at the very moment when he is with anxious mind perplexed for the wants of his brethren, contemplate the vastness of the bliss on high, and while he is shaken by the troubles and cares of the present life look forward to the state of the world to come with an heart raised above the stains of earth? Whence the blessed David when laying down that this alone is good for man, longs to cling constantly to God, and says: "It is good for me to cling to God, and to put my hope in the Lord." [2249] And Ecclesiastes also declares that this cannot be done without fault by any of the saints, and says: "For there is not a righteous man upon earth, that doeth good and sinneth not." [2250] For who, even if he be the chief of all righteous and holy men, can we ever think could, while bound in the chains of this life, so acquire this chief good, as never to cease from divine contemplation, or be thought to be drawn away by earthly thoughts even for a short time from Him Who alone is good? Who ever takes no care for food, none for clothing or other carnal things, or when anxious about receiving the brethren, or change of place, or building his cell, has never desired the aid of man's assistance, nor when harassed by scarcity and want has incurred this sentence of reproof from the Lord: "Be not anxious for your life what ye shall eat, nor for your body what ye shall put on"? [2251] Further we confidently assert that even the Apostle Paul himself who surpassed in the number of his sufferings the toils of all the saints, could not possibly fulfil this, as he himself testifies to the disciples in the Acts of the Apostles: "Ye yourselves know that these hands have ministered to my needs, and to the needs of those who were with me," or when in writing in the Thessalonians he testifies that he "worked in labour and weariness night and day." [2252] And although for this there were great rewards for his merits prepared, yet his mind, however holy and sublime it might be, could not help being sometimes drawn away from that heavenly contemplation by its attention to earthly labours. Further, when he saw himself enriched with such practical fruits, and on the other hand considered in his heart the good of meditation, and weighed as it were in one scale the profit of all these labours and in the other the delights of divine contemplation, when for a long time he had corrected the balance in his breast, while the vast rewards for his labours delighted him on one side, and on the other the desire for unity with and the inseparable companionship of Christ inclined him to depart this life, at last in his perplexity he cries out and says: "What I shall choose I know not. For I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart and to be with Christ, for it were much better: but to abide in the flesh is more necessary for your sakes." [2253] Though then in many ways he preferred this excellent good to all the fruits of his preaching, yet he submits himself in consideration of love, without which none can gain the Lord; and for their sakes, whom hitherto he had soothed with milk as nourishment from the breasts of the gospel, does not refuse to be parted from Christ, which is bad for himself though useful for others. For he is driven to choose this the rather by that excessive goodness of his whereby for the salvation of his brethren he is ready, were it possible, to incur even the last evil of an Anathema. "For I could wish," he says, "that I myself were Anathema from Christ for my brethren's sake, who are my kinsmen according to the flesh, who are Israelites," [2254] i.e., I could wish to be subject not only to temporal, but even to perpetual punishment, if only all men, were it possible, might enjoy the fellowship of Christ: for I am sure that the salvation of all would be better for Christ and for me than my own. That then the Apostle might perfectly gain this chief good, i.e., to enjoy the vision of God and to be joined continually to Christ, he was ready to be parted from this body, which as it is feeble and hindered by the many requirements of its frailties cannot help separating from union with Christ: for it is impossible for the mind, that is harassed by such frequent cares, and hampered by such various and tiresome troubles, always to enjoy the Divine vision. For what aim of the saints can be so persistent, what purpose can be so high that that crafty plotter does not sometimes destroy it? Who has frequented the recesses of the desert and shunned intercourse with all men in such a way that he never trips by unnecessary thoughts, and by looking on things or being occupied in earthly actions falls away from that contemplation of God, which truly alone is good? Who ever could preserve such fervour of spirit as not sometimes to pass by roving thoughts from his attention to prayer, and fall away suddenly from heavenly to earthly things? Which of us (to pass over other times of wandering) even at the very moment when he raises his soul in prayer to God on high, does not fall into a sort of stupor, and even against his will offend by that very thing from which he hoped for pardon of his sins? Who, I ask, is so alert and vigilant as never, while he is singing a Psalm to God, to allow his mind to wander from the meaning of Scripture? Who is so intimate with and closely joined to God, as to congratulate himself on having carried out for a single day that rule of the Apostle's, whereby he bids us pray without ceasing? [2255] And though all these things may seem to some, who are involved in grosser sins, to be trivial and altogether foreign to sin, yet to those who know the value of perfection a quantity even of very small matters becomes most serious. __________________________________________________________________
[2248] Ps. xxxiv. (xxxv.) 10; Job xxix. 17.
[2249] Ps. lxxii. (lxxiii.) 28.
[2250] Eccl. vii. 21.
[2251] S. Matt. vi. 23.
[2252] Acts xx. 34; 2 Thess. iii. 8.
[2253] Phil. i. 22-24.
[2254] Rom. ix. 3, 4.
[2255] Cf. 1 Thess. v. 17. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VI.
How those who think that they are without sin are like purblind people.
As if we were to suppose that two men, one of whom was clear sighted with perfect vision, and the other, one whose eyesight was obscured by dimness of vision, had together entered some great house that was filled with a quantity of bundles, instruments, and vessels, would not he, whose dullness of vision prevented his seeing everything, assert that there was nothing there but chests, beds, benches, tables, and whatever met the fingers of one who felt them rather than the eyes of one who saw them, while on the other hand would not the other, who searched out what was hidden with clear and bright eyes, declare that there were there many most minute articles, and what could scarcely be counted; which if they were ever gathered up into a single pile, would by their number equal or perhaps exceed the size of those few things which the other had felt. So then even saints, and, if we may so say, men who see, whose aim is the utmost perfection, cleverly detect in themselves even those things which the gaze of our mind being as it were darkened cannot see, and condemn them very severely, to such an extent that those who have not, as it seems to our carelessness, dimmed the whiteness of their body, which is as it were like snow, with even the slightest spot of sin, seem to themselves to be covered with many stains, if, I will not say any evil or vain thoughts creep into the doors of their mind, but even the recollection of a Psalm which has to be said takes off the attention of the kneeler at the time for prayer. For if, say they, when we ask some great man, I will not say for our life and salvation, but for some advantage and profit, we fasten all our attention of mind and body upon him, and hang with trembling expectation on his nod, with no slight dread lest haply some foolish or unsuitable word may turn aside the pity of our hearer, and then too, when we are standing in the forum or in the courts of earthly judges, with our opponent standing over against us, if in the midst of the prosecution and trial any coughing, or spitting, or laughing, or yawning, or sleep overtakes us, with what malice will our ever watchful opponent stir up the severity of the judge to our damage: how much more, when we entreat Him who knows all secrets, should we, by reason of our imminent danger of everlasting death, plead with earnest and anxious prayer for the kindness of the judge, especially as on the other side there stands one who is both our crafty seducer and our accuser! And not without reason will he be bound by no light sin, but by a grievous fault of wickedness, who, when he pours forth his prayer to God, departs at once from His sight as if from the eyes of one who neither sees nor hears, and follows the vanity of wicked thoughts. But they who cover the eyes of their heart with a thick veil of their sins, and as the Saviour says, "Seeing see not and hearing hear not nor understand," [2256] hardly regard in the inmost recesses of their breast even those faults which are great and deadly, and cannot with clear eyes look at any deceitful thoughts, nor even those vague and secret desires which strike the mind with slight and subtle suggestions, nor the captivities of their soul, but always wandering among impure thoughts they know not how to be sorry when they are distracted from that meditation which is so special, nor can they grieve that they have lost anything as while they lay open their mind to the entrance of any thought as they please, they have nothing set before them to hold to as the main thing or to desire in every way. __________________________________________________________________
[2256] S. Matt. xiii. 13. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VII.
How those who maintain that a man can be without sin are charged with a twofold error.
The reason however which drives us into this error is that, as we are utterly ignorant of the virtue of being without sin, [2257] we fancy that we cannot contract any guilt from those idle and random vagaries of our thoughts, but being rendered stupid by dullness and as it were smitten with blindness we can see nothing in ourselves but capital offences, and think that we have only to keep clear of those things which are condemned also by the severity of secular laws, and if we find that even for a short time we are free from these we at once imagine that there is no sin at all in us. Accordingly we are distinguished from the number of those who see, because we do not see the many small stains, which are crowded together in us, and are not smitten with saving contrition, if the malady of vexation overtakes our thoughts, nor are we sorry that we are struck by the suggestions of vainglory, nor do we weep over our prayers offered up so tardily and coldly, nor consider it a fault if while we are singing or praying, something else besides the actual prayer or Psalm fills our thoughts, nor are we horrified because we do not blush to conceive many things which we are ashamed to speak or do before men, in our heart, which, as we know, lies open to the Divine gaze; nor do we purge away the pollution of filthy dreams with copious ablutions of our tears, nor grieve that in the pious act of almsgiving when we are assisting the needs of the brethren, or ministering support to the poor, the brightness of our cheerfulness is clouded over by a stingy delay, nor do we think that we are affected by any loss when we forget God and think about things that are temporal and corrupt, so that these words of Solomon fairly apply to us: "They smite me but I have not grieved, and they have mocked me, but I knew it not." [2258] __________________________________________________________________
[2257] Anamarteti id est impeccantæ.
[2258] Prov. xxiii. 35. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VIII.
How it is given to but few to understand what sin is.
Those on the other hand who make the sum of all their joy and delight and bliss consist in the contemplation of divine and spiritual things alone, if they are unwillingly withdrawn from them even for a short time by thoughts that force themselves upon them, punish this as if it were a kind of sacrilege in them, and avenge it by immediate chastisement, and in their grief that they have preferred some worthless creature (to which their mental gaze was turned aside) to their Creator, charge themselves with the guilt (I had almost said) of impiety, and although they turn the eyes of their heart with the utmost speed to behold the brightness of the Divine Glory, yet they cannot tolerate even for a very short time the darkness of carnal thoughts, and execrate whatever keeps back their soul's gaze from the true light. Finally when the blessed Apostle John would instill this feeling into everybody he says: "Little children, love not the world, neither the things which are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of God is not in him: for everything that is in the world is the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, which is not of the Father but of the world. And the world perisheth and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever." [2259] The saints therefore scorn all those things on which the world exists, but it is impossible for them never to be carried away to them by a brief aberration of thoughts, and even now no man, except our Lord and Saviour, can keep his naturally wandering mind always fixed on the contemplation of God so as never to be carried away from it through the love of something in this world; as Scripture says: "Even the stars are not clean in His sight," and again: "If He puts no trust in His saints, and findeth iniquity in His angels," or as the more correct translation has it: "Behold among His saints none is unchangeable, and the heavens are not pure in His sight." [2260] __________________________________________________________________
[2259] 1 John ii. 15-17.
[2260] Job xxv. 5; xv. 15. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IX.
Of the care with which a monk should preserve the recollection of God.
I should say then that the saints who keep a firm hold of the recollection of God and are borne along, as it were, with their steps suspended on a line stretched out on high, may be rightly compared to rope dancers, commonly called funambuli, who risk all their safety and life on the path of that very narrow rope, with no doubt that they will immediately meet with a most dreadful death if their foot swerves or trips in the very slightest degree, or goes over the line of the course in which alone is safety. And while with marvellous skill they ply their airy steps through space, if they keep not their steps to that all too narrow path with careful and anxious regulation, the earth which is the natural base and the most solid and safest foundation for all, becomes to them an immediate and clear danger, not because its nature is changed, but because they fall headlong upon it by the weight of their bodies. So also that unwearied goodness of God and His unchanging nature [2261] hurts no one indeed, but we ourselves by falling from on high and tending to the depths are the authors of our own death, or rather the very fall becomes death to the faller. For it says: "Woe to them for they have departed from Me: they shall be wasted because they have transgressed against Me;" and again: "Woe to them when I shall depart from them." For "thine own wickedness shall reprove thee, and thy apostasy shall rebuke thee. Know thou and see that it is an evil and a bitter thing for thee to have left the Lord thy God;" for "every man is bound by the cords of his sins." [2262] To whom this rebuke is aptly directed by the Lord: "Behold," He says, "all you that kindle a fire, encompassed with flames, walk ye in the light of your fire and in the flames which you have kindled;" and again: "He that kindleth iniquity, shall perish by it." [2263] __________________________________________________________________
[2261] Substantia.
[2262] Hos. vii. 13; ix. 12; Jer. ii. 19; Prov. v. 22.
[2263] Isa. l. 11; Prov. xix. 9. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter X.
How those who are on the way to perfection are truly humble, and feel that they always stand in need of God's grace.
When then holy men feel that they are oppressed by the weight of earthly thoughts and fall away from their loftiness of mind, and that they are led away against their will or rather without knowing it, into the law of sin and death, and (to pass over other matters) are kept back by those actions which I described above, which are good and right though earthly, from the vision of God; they have something to groan over constantly to the Lord; they have something for which indeed to humble themselves, and in their contrition to profess themselves not in words only but in heart, sinners; and for this, while they continually ask of the Lord's grace pardon for everything that day by day they commit when overcome by the weakness of the flesh, they should shed without ceasing true tears of penitence; as they see that being involved even to the very end of their life in the very same troubles, with continual sorrow for which they are tried, they cannot even offer their prayers without harassing thoughts. So then as they know by experience that through the hindrance of the burden of the flesh they cannot by human strength reach the desired end, nor be united according to their heart's desire with that chief and highest good, but that they are led away from the vision of it captive to worldly things, they betake themselves to the grace of God, "Who justifieth the ungodly," [2264] and cry out with the Apostle: O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? Thanks be to God through our Lord Jesus Christ." [2265] For they feel that they cannot perform the good that they would, but are ever falling into the evil which they would not, and which they hate, i.e., wandering thoughts and care for carnal things. __________________________________________________________________
[2264] Rom. iv. 5.
[2265] Rom. vii. 24, 25. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XI.
Explanation of the phrase: "For I delight in the law of God after the inner man," etc.
And they "delight" indeed "in the law of God after the inner man," which soars above all visible things and ever strives to be united to God alone, but they "see another law in their members," i.e., implanted in their natural human condition, which "resisting the law of their mind," [2266] brings their thoughts into captivity to the forcible law of sin, compelling them to forsake that chief good and submit to earthly notions, which though they may appear necessary and useful when they are taken up in the interests of some religious want, yet when they are set against that good which fascinates the gaze of all the saints, are seen by them to be bad and such as should be avoided, because by them in some way or other and for a short time they are drawn away from the joy of that perfect bliss. For the law of sin is really what the fall of its first father brought on mankind by that fault of his, against which there was uttered this sentence by the most just Judge: "Cursed is the ground in thy works; thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee, and in the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread." [2267] This, I say, is the law, implanted in the members of all mortals, which resists the law of our mind and keeps it back from the vision of God, and which, as the earth is cursed in our works after the knowledge of good and evil, begins to produce the thorns and thistles of thoughts, by the sharp pricks of which the natural seeds of virtues are choked, so that without the sweat of our brow we cannot eat our bread which "cometh down from heaven," and which "strengtheneth man's heart." [2268] The whole human race in general therefore is without exception subject to this law. For there is no one, however saintly, who does not take the bread mentioned above with the sweat of his brow and anxious efforts of his heart. But many rich men, as we see, are fed on that common bread without any sweat of their brow. __________________________________________________________________
[2266] Ib. vii. 22, 23.
[2267] Gen. iii. 17, 19.
[2268] S. John vi. 33; Ps. ciii. (civ.) 15. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XII.
Of this also: "But we know that the law is spiritual," etc.
And this law the Apostle also calls spiritual saying: "But we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin." [2269] For this law is spiritual which bids us eat in the sweat of our brow that "true bread which cometh down from heaven" [2270] but that sale under sin makes us carnal. What, I ask, or whose is that sin? Doubtless Adam's, by whose fall and, if I may so say, ruinous transaction and fraudulent bargain we were sold. For when he was led astray by the persuasion of the serpent he brought all his descendants under the yoke of perpetual bondage, as they were alienated by taking the forbidden food. For this custom is generally observed between the buyer and seller, that one who wants to make himself over to the power of another, receives from his buyer a price for the loss of his liberty, and his consignment to perpetual slavery. And we can very plainly see that this took place between Adam and the serpent. For by eating of the forbidden tree he received from the serpent the price of his liberty, and gave up his natural freedom and chose to give himself up to perpetual slavery to him from whom he had obtained the deadly price of the forbidden fruit; and thenceforth he was bound by this condition and not without reason subjected all the offspring of his posterity to perpetual service to him whose slave he had become. For what can any marriage in slavery produce but slaves? What then? Did that cunning and crafty buyer take away the rights of ownership from the true and lawful lord? Not so. For neither did he overcome all God's property by the craft of a single act of deception so that the true lord lost his rights of ownership, who though the buyer himself was a rebel and a renegade, yet oppressed him with the yoke of slavery; but because the Creator had endowed all reasonable creatures with free will, he would not restore to their natural liberty against their will those who contrary to right had sold themselves by the sin of greedy lust. Since anything that is contrary to goodness and fairness is abhorrent to Him who is the Author of justice and piety. For it would have been wrong for Him to have recalled the blessing of freedom granted, unfair for Him to have by His power oppressed man who was free, and by taking him captive, not to have allowed him to exercise the prerogative of the freedom he had received, as He was reserving his salvation for future ages, that in due season the fulness of the appointed time might be fulfilled. For it was right that his offspring should remain under the ancient conditions for so long a time, until by the price of His own blood the grace of the Lord redeemed them from their original chains and set them free in the primeval state of liberty, though He was able even then to save them, but would not, because equity forbade Him to break the terms of His own decree. Would you know the reason for your being sold? Hear thy Redeemer Himself proclaiming openly by Isaiah the prophet: "What is this bill of the divorce of your mother with which I have put her away? Or who is My creditor to whom I sold you? Behold you are sold for your iniquities and for your wicked deeds have I put your mother away." Would you also plainly see why when you were consigned to the yoke of slavery He would not redeem you by the might of His own power? Hear what He added to the former passage, and how He charges the same servants of sin with the reason for their voluntary sale. "Is My hand shortened and become little that I cannot redeem, or is there no strength in Me to deliver?" [2271] But what it is which is always standing in the way of His most powerful pity the same prophet shows when he says: "Behold the hand of the Lord is not shortened that it cannot save, neither is His ear heavy that it cannot hear: But your iniquities have divided between you and your God and your sins have hid His face from you that He should not hear." [2272] __________________________________________________________________
[2269] Rom. vii. 14.
[2270] S. John vi. 33.
[2271] Isa. l. 1, 2.
[2272] Isa. lix. 1, 2. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIII.
Of this also: "But I know that in me, that is in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing."
Because then the original curse of God has made us carnal and condemned us to thorns and thistles, and our father has sold us by that unhappy bargain so that we cannot do the good that we would, while we are torn away from the recollection of God Most High and forced to think on what belongs to human weakness, while burning with the love of purity, we are often even against our will troubled by natural desires, which we would rather know nothing about; we know that in our flesh there dwelleth no good thing [2273] viz., the perpetual and lasting peace of this meditation of which we have spoken; but there is brought about in our case that miserable and wretched divorce, that when with the mind we want to serve the law of God, since we never want to remove our gaze from the Divine brightness, yet surrounded as we are by carnal darkness we are forced by a kind of law of sin to tear ourselves away from the good which we know, as we fall away from that lofty height of mind to earthly cares and thoughts, to which the law of sin, i.e., the sentence of God, which the first delinquent received, has not without reason condemned us. And hence it is that the blessed Apostle, though he openly admits that he and all saints are bound by the constraint of this sin, yet boldly asserts that none of them will be condemned for this, saying: "There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus: for the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath set me free from the law of sin and death," [2274] i.e., the grace of Christ day by day frees all his saints from this law of sin and death, under which they are constantly reluctantly obliged to come, whenever they pray to the Lord for the forgiveness of their trespasses. You see then that it was in the person not of sinners but of those who are really saints and perfect, that the blessed Apostle gave utterance to this saying: "For I do not the good that I would, but the evil which I hate, that I do;" and: "I see another law in my members resisting the law of my mind and bringing me captive to the law of sin which is in my members." [2275] __________________________________________________________________
[2273] Cf. Rom. vii. 18.
[2274] Rom. viii. 1, 2.
[2275] Rom. vii. 19. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIV.
An objection, that the saying: "For I do not the good that I would," etc., applies to the persons neither of unbelievers nor of saints.
Germanus: We say that this does not apply to the persons either of those who are involved in capital offences, or of an Apostle and those who have advanced to his measure, but we think that it ought properly to be taken of those who after receiving the grace of God and the knowledge of the truth, are anxious to keep themselves from carnal sins but, as ancient custom like a natural law rules most forcibly in their members, they are carried away to the ingrained lust of their passions. For the custom and frequency of sinning becomes like a natural law, which, implanted in the man's weak members, leads the feelings of the soul that is not yet instructed in all the pursuits of virtue, but is still, if I may say so, of an uninstructed and tender chastity, captive to sin and subjecting them by an ancient law to death, brings them under the yoke of sin that rules over them, not suffering them to obtain the good of purity which they love, but rather forcing them to do the evil which they hate. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XV.
The answer to the objection raised.
Theonas: Your notion does not come to much; as you yourselves have actually now begun to maintain that this cannot possibly stand in the person of those who are out and out sinners, but that it properly applies to those who are trying to keep themselves clear from carnal sins. And since you have already separated these from the number of sinners, it follows that you must shortly admit them into the ranks of the faithful and holy. For what kinds of sin do you say that those can commit, from which, if they are involved in them after the grace of baptism, they can be freed by the daily grace of Christ? or of what body of death are we to think that the Apostle said: "Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord"? [2276] Is it not clear, as truth compels you yourselves also to admit, that it is spoken not of those members of capital crimes, by which the wages of eternal death are gained; viz., murder, fornication, adultery, drunkenness, thefts and robberies, but of that body before mentioned, which the daily grace of Christ assists? For whoever after baptism and the knowledge of God falls into that death, must know that he will either have to be cleansed, not by the daily grace of Christ, i.e., an easy forgiveness, which our Lord when at any moment He is prayed to, is wont to grant to our errors, but by a lifelong affliction of penitence and penal sorrow, or else will be hereafter consigned to the punishment of eternal fire for them, as the same Apostle thus declares: "Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor defilers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous persons, nor drunkards, nor railers, nor extortioners shall possess the kingdom of God." [2277] Or what is that law warring in our members which resists the law of our mind, and when it has led us resisting but captives to the law of sin and death, and has made us serve it with the flesh, nevertheless suffers us to serve the law of God with the mind? For I do not suppose that this law of sin denotes crimes or can be taken of the offences mentioned above, of which if a man is guilty he does not serve the law of God with the mind, from which law he must first have departed in heart before he is guilty of any of them with the flesh. For what is it to serve the law of sin, but to do what is commanded by sin? What sort of sin then is it to which so great holiness and perfection feels that it is captive, and yet doubts not that it will be freed from it by the grace of Christ, saying: "O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord"? What law, I ask, will you maintain to be implanted in our members, which, withdrawing us from the law of God and bringing us into captivity to the law of sin, could make us wretched rather than guilty so that we should not be consigned to eternal punishment, but still as it were sigh for the unbroken joys of bliss, and, seeking for a helper who shall restore us to it, exclaim with the Apostle: "O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" For what is it to be led captive to the law of sin but to continue to perform and commit sin? Or what other chief good can be given which the saints cannot fulfil, except that in comparison with which, as we said above, everything else is not good? Indeed we know that many things in this world are good, and chiefly, modesty, continence, sobriety, humility, justice, mercy, temperance, piety: but all of these things fail to come up to that chief good, and can be done I say not by apostles, but even by ordinary folk; and, those by whom they are not done, are either chastised with eternal punishment, or are set free by great exertions, as was said above, of penitence, and not by the daily grace of Christ. It remains then for us to admit that this saying of the Apostle is rightly applied only to the persons of saints, who day after day falling under this law, which we described, of sin not of crimes, are secure of their salvation and not precipitated into wicked deeds, but, as has often been said, are drawn away from the contemplation of God to the misery of bodily thoughts, and are often deprived of the blessing of that true bliss. For if they felt that by this law of their members they were bound daily to crimes, they would complain of the loss not of happiness but of innocence, and the Apostle Paul would not say: "O wretched man that I am," but "Impure," or "Wicked man that I am," and he would wish to be rid not of the body of this death, i.e., this mortal state, but of the crimes and misdeeds of this flesh. But because by reason of his state of human frailty he felt that he was captive, i.e., led away to carnal cares and anxieties which the law of sin and death causes, he groans over this law of sin under which against his will he had fallen, and at once has recourse to Christ and is saved by the present redemption of His grace. Whatever of anxiety therefore that law of sin, which naturally produces the thorns and thistles of mortal thoughts and cares, has caused to spring up in the ground of the Apostle's breast, that the law of grace at once plucks up. "For the law," says he, "of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath set me free from the law of sin and death." [2278] __________________________________________________________________
[2276] Rom. vii. 24, 25.
[2277] 1 Cor. vi. 9, 10.
[2278] Rom. viii. 2. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVI.
What is the body of sin.
This then is that body of death from which we cannot escape, pent in which those who are perfect, who have tasted "how gracious the Lord is," [2279] daily feel with the prophet "how bad for himself and bitter it is for a man to depart from the Lord his God." [2280] This is the body of death which restrains us from the heavenly vision and drags us back to earthly things, which causes men while singing Psalms and kneeling in prayer to have their thoughts filled with human figures, or conversations, or business, or unnecessary actions. This is the body of death, owing to which those, who would emulate the sanctity of angels, and who long to cling continually to God, yet are unable to arrive at the perfection of this good, because the body of death stands in their way, but they do the evil that they would not, i.e., they are dragged down in their minds even to the things which have nothing to do with their advance and perfection in virtue. Finally that the blessed Apostle might clearly denote that he said this of saintly and perfect men, and those like himself, he in a way points with his finger to himself and at once proceeds: "And so I myself," i.e., I who say this, lay bare the secrets of my own not another's conscience. This mode of speech at any rate the Apostle is familiarly accustomed to use, whenever he wants to point specially to himself, as here: "I, Paul, myself beseech you by the mildness and modesty of Christ;" and again: "except that I myself was not burdensome to you;" and once more: "But be it so: I myself did not burden you;" and elsewhere: "I, Paul, myself say unto you: if ye be circumcised Christ shall profit you nothing;" and to the Romans: "For I could wish that I myself were Anathema from Christ for my brethren." [2281] But it cannot unreasonably be taken in this way, that "And so I myself" is expressly said with emphasis, i.e., I whom you know to be an Apostle of Christ, whom you venerate with the utmost respect, whom you believe to be of the highest character and perfect, and one in whom Christ speaks, though with the mind I serve the law of God, yet with the flesh I confess that I serve the law of sin, i.e., by the occupations of my human condition am sometimes dragged down from heavenly to earthly things and the height of my mind is brought down to the level of care for humble matters. And by this law of sin I find that at every moment I am so taken captive that although I persist in my immovable longing around the law of God, yet in no way can I escape the power of this captivity, unless I always fly to the grace of the Saviour. __________________________________________________________________
[2279] Ps. xxxiii. (xxxiv.) 9.
[2280] Jer. ii. 19.
[2281] 2 Cor. x. 1; xii. 13, 16; Gal. v. 2; Rom. ix. 3. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVII.
How all the saints have confessed with truth that they were unclean and sinful.
And therefore with daily sighs all the saints grieve over this weakness of their nature and while they search into their shifting thoughts and the secrets and inmost recesses of their conscience, cry out in entreaty: "Enter not into judgment with Thy servant, for in Thy sight shall no man living be justified;" and this: "Who will boast that he hath a chaste heart? or who will have confidence that he is pure from sin?" and again: "There is not a righteous man upon earth that doeth good and sinneth not;" and this also: "Who knoweth his faults?" [2282] And so they have recognized that man's righteousness is weak and imperfect and always needs God's mercy, so that one of those whose iniquities and sins God purged away with the live coal of His word sent from the altar, after that marvellous vision of God, after his view of the Seraphim on high and the revelation of heavenly mysteries, said: "Woe is me! for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips." [2283] And I fancy that perhaps even then he would not have felt the uncleanness of his lips, unless it had been given him to recognize the true and complete purity of perfection by the vision of God, at the sight of Whom he suddenly became aware of his own uncleanness, of which he had previously been ignorant. For when he says: "Woe is me! for I am a man of unclean lips," he shows that his confession that follows refers to his own lips, and not to the uncleanness of the people: "and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips." But even when in his prayer he confesses the uncleanness of all sinners, he embraces in his general supplication not only the mass of the wicked but also of the good, saying: "Behold Thou art angry, and we have sinned: in them we have been always, and we shall be saved. We are all become as one unclean, and all our righteousnesses as filthy rags." [2284] What, I ask, could be clearer than this saying, in which the prophet includes not one only but all our righteousnesses and, looking round on all things that are considered unclean and disgusting, because he could find nothing in the life of men fouler or more unclean, chose to compare them to filthy rags. In vain then is the sharpness of a nagging objection raised against this perfectly clear truth, as a little while back you said: "If no one is without sin, then no one is holy; and if no one is holy, then no one will be saved." [2285] For the puzzle of this question can be solved by the prophet's testimony. "Behold," he says, "Thou art angry and we have sinned," i.e., when Thou didst reject our pride of heart or our carelessness, and deprive us of Thine aid, at once the abyss of our sins swallowed us up, as if one should say to the bright substance of the sun: Behold thou hast set, and at once murky darkness covered us. And yet though he here says that the saints have sinned, and have not only sinned but also have always remained in their sins, he does not altogether despair of salvation but adds: "In them we have been always, and we shall be saved." This saying: "Behold Thou art angry and we have sinned," I will compare to that one of the Apostle's: "O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" Again this that the prophet subjoins: "In them we have been always, and we shall be saved," corresponds to the following words of the Apostle: "Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord." In the same way also this passage of the same prophet: "Woe is me! for I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips," seems to agree with the words quoted above: "O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" And what follows in the prophet. "And behold there flew to me one of the Seraphim, having in his hand a coal (or stone) which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar. And he touched my mouth and said: Lo, with this I have touched thy lips, and thine iniquity is taken away and thy sin is purged," [2286] is just what seems to have fallen from the mouth of Paul, who says: "Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord." You see then how all the saints with truth confess not so much in the person of the people as in their own that they are sinners, and yet by no means despair of their salvation, but look for full justification (which they do not hope that they cannot obtain by virtue of the state of human frailty) from the grace and mercy of the Lord. __________________________________________________________________
[2282] Ps. cxlii. (cxliii.) 2; Prov. xx. 9; Eccl. vii. 21; Ps. xviii. (xix.) 13.
[2283] Isa. vi. 5.
[2284] Isa. lxiv. 5, 6.
[2285] Cf. XXII. viii.
[2286] Isa. vi. 6, 7. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVIII.
That even good and holy men are not without sin.
But that no one however holy is in this life free from trespasses and sin, we are told also by the teaching of the Saviour, who gave His disciples the form of the perfect prayer and among those other sublime and sacred commands, which as they were only given to the saints and perfect cannot apply to the wicked and unbelievers, He bade this to be inserted: "And forgive us our debts as we also forgive our debtors." [2287] If then this is offered as a true prayer and by saints, as we ought without the shadow of a doubt to believe, who can be found so obstinate and impudent, so puffed up with the pride of the devil's own rage, as to maintain that he is without sin, and not only to think himself greater than apostles, but also to charge the Saviour Himself with ignorance or folly, as if He either did not know that some men could be free from debts, or was idly teaching those whom He knew to stand in no need of the remedy of that prayer? But since all the saints who altogether keep the commands of their King, say every day "Forgive us our debts," if they speak the truth there is indeed no one free from sin, but if they speak falsely, it is equally true that they are not free from the sin of falsehood. Wherefore also that most wise Ecclesiastes reviewing in his mind all the actions and purposes of men declares without any exception: "that there is not a righteous man upon earth, that doeth good and sinneth not," [2288] i.e., no one ever could or ever will be found on this earth so holy, so diligent, so earnest as to be able continually to cling to that true and unique good, and not day after day to feel that he is drawn aside from it and fails. But still though he maintains that he cannot be free from wrong doing, yet none the less we must not deny that he is righteous. __________________________________________________________________
[2287] S. Matt. vi. 12.
[2288] Eccl. vii. 21. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIX.
How even in the hour of prayer it is almost impossible to avoid sin.
Whoever then ascribes sinlessness to human nature must fight against no idle words but the witness and proof of his conscience which is on our side, and then only should maintain that he is without sin, when he finds that he is not torn away from this highest good: nay rather, whoever considering his own conscience, to say no more, finds that he has celebrated even one single service without the distraction of a single word or deed or thought, may say that he is without sin. Further because we admit that the discursive lightness of the human mind cannot get rid of these idle and empty things, we thus consequently confess with truth that we are not without sin. For with whatever care a man tries to keep his heart, he can never, owing to the resistance of the nature of the flesh, keep it according to the desire of his spirit. For however far the human mind may have advanced and progressed towards a finer purity of contemplation, so much the more will it see itself to be unclean, as it were in the mirror of its purity, because while the soul raises itself for a loftier vision and as it looks forth yearns for greater things than it performs, it is sure always to despise as inferior and worthless the things in which it is mixed up. Since a keener sight notices more; and a blameless life produces greater sorrow when found fault with; and amendment of life, and earnest striving after goodness multiplies groans and sighs. For no one can rest content with that stage to which he has advanced, and however much a man may be purified in mind, so much the more does he see himself to be foul, and find grounds for humiliation rather than for pride, and, however swiftly he may climb to greater heights, so much more does he see above him whither he is tending. Finally that chosen Apostle "whom Jesus loved," [2289] who lay on His bosom, uttered this saying as if from the heart of the Lord: "If we say that we have no sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us." [2290] And so if when we say that we have no sin, we have not the truth, that is Christ, in us, what good do we do except to prove ourselves by this very profession, criminals and wicked among sinners? __________________________________________________________________
[2289] S. John xiii. 23.
[2290] 1 John i. 8. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XX.
From whom we can learn the destruction of sin and perfection of goodness.
Lastly if you would like to investigate more thoroughly whether it is possible for human nature to attain sinlessness, from whom can we more clearly learn this than from those who "have crucified the flesh with its faults and lusts," and to whom "the world is really crucified"? [2291] Who though they have not only utterly eradicated all faults from their hearts, but also are trying to shut out even the thought and recollection of sin, yet still day after day faithfully maintain that they cannot even for a single hour be free from spot of sin. __________________________________________________________________
[2291] Gal. v. 24; vi. 14. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXI.
That although we acknowledge that we cannot be without sin, yet still we ought not to suspend ourselves from the Lord's Communion.
Yet we ought not to suspend ourselves from the Lord's Communion because we confess ourselves sinners, but should more and more eagerly hasten to it for the healing of our soul, and purifying of our spirit, and seek the rather a remedy for our wounds with humility of mind and faith, as considering ourselves unworthy to receive so great grace. Otherwise we cannot worthily receive the Communion even once a year, as some do, who live in monasteries and so regard the dignity and holiness and value of the heavenly sacraments, as to think that none but saints and spotless persons should venture to receive them, and not rather that they would make us saints and pure by taking them. And these thereby fall into greater presumption and arrogance than what they seem to themselves to avoid, because at the time when they do receive them, they consider that they are worthy to receive them. But it is much better to receive them every Sunday for the healing of our infirmities, with that humility of heart, whereby we believe and confess that we can never touch those holy mysteries worthily, than to be puffed up by a foolish persuasion of heart, and believe that at the year's end we are worthy to receive them. Wherefore that we may be able to grasp this and hold it fruitfully, let us the more earnestly implore the Lord's mercy to help us to perform this, which is learnt not like other human arts, by some previous verbal explanation, but rather by experience and action leading the way; and which also unless it is often considered and hammered out in the Conferences of spiritual persons, and anxiously sifted by daily experience and trial of it, will either become obsolete through carelessness or perish by idle forgetfulness. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
XXIV. Conference of Abbot Abraham.
On Mortification. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter I.
How we laid bare the secrets of our thoughts to Abbot Abraham.
This twenty-fourth Conference of Abbot Abraham [2292] is by the favour of Christ produced, which concludes the traditions and decisions of all the Elders; and when by the aid of your prayers it has been finished, as the number mystically corresponds to that of the four and twenty Elders who are said in the holy Apocalypse [2293] to offer their crowns to the Lamb, we think that we shall have paid the debt of all our promises. And henceforth if these four and twenty Elders of ours have been crowned with any glory for the sake of their teaching, they shall with bowed heads offer it to the Lamb who was slain for the salvation of the world: for He it was Who vouchsafed for the honour of His name to grant to them such exalted feelings and to us whatever words were needful to set forth such profound thoughts. And the merits of His gift must be referred to the Author of all good, to whom the more is owed, as the more is paid. Therefore with anxious confession we laid before this Abraham the impulse of our thoughts, whereby we were urged by daily perplexities of our mind to return to our country and revisit our kinsfolk. For from this the greatest reason for our desire sprang, because we remembered that our kinsfolk were endowed with such piety and goodness that we felt sure that they would never interfere with our purpose, and we constantly reflected, that we should gain more good out of their earnestness, and should be hampered by no cares about bodily matters, and no trouble in providing food, as they would gladly minister abundantly to the supply of all our wants, and besides this we were feeding our souls on the hope of empty joys, as we thought that we should gain the greatest good from the conversion [2294] of many, who were to be turned to the way of salvation by our example and instructions. Then besides this the very spot, where was the ancestral possession of our forefathers, and the delightful pleasantness of the neighbourhood was painted before our eyes, how pleasantly and suitably it stretched away to the desert, so that the recesses of the woods would not only delight the heart of a monk, but would also furnish him with a plentiful supply of food. [2295] And when we explained all this to the aforesaid old man, in a straightforward way, according to the faith of our conscience, and showed by our copious tears that we could no longer resist the violence of the impulse, unless the grace of God came to our rescue by the healing which he could give, he waited for a long time in silence and at last sighed deeply and said: __________________________________________________________________
[2292] Cf. the note on XV. iv.
[2293] Rev. iv. 4.
[2294] Petschenig's text reads conversione, others conversatione.
[2295] On the bearing of this passage on the question of Cassian's nationality see the Introd., p. 183. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter II.
How the old man exposed our errors.
The feebleness of your ideas shows that you have not yet renounced worldly desires nor mortified your former lusts. For as the wandering character of your desires testifies to the sloth of your heart, this pilgrimage and absence from your kinsfolk, which you ought rather to endure with your heart, you do endure only with the flesh. For all these things would have been buried and altogether driven out of your hearts, if you had got hold of the right method of renunciation, and the main reason for the solitude in which we dwell. And so I see that you are labouring under that infirmity of sluggishness, which is thus described in Proverbs: "Every sluggard is always desiring something;" and again: "Desires kill the slothful." [2296] For in our case too these supplies of worldly conveniences, which you have described, would not be wanting, if we believed that they were appropriate to our calling, or thought that we could get out of those delights and pleasures as much profit as that which is gained from this squalor of the country and bodily affliction. Nor are we so deprived of the solace of our kinsfolk, that those who delight to support us with their substance should fail us, were it not that this saying of the Saviour meets us and excludes everything that contributes to the support of this flesh, as He says: "He who doth not leave (or hate) father and mother and children and brethren cannot be My disciple." [2297] But if we were altogether deprived of the protection of our parents, the services of the princes of this world would not be wanting, as they would most thankfully rejoice to minister to our necessities with prompt liberality. And supported by their bounty, we should be free from the care of preparing food, were it not that this curse of the prophet terribly frightened us. For "Cursed," he says, "is the man that putteth his hope in man;" and: "Put not your trust in princes." [2298] We should also at any rate place our cells on the banks of the river Nile and have water at our very doors, so as not to be obliged to carry it on our necks for four miles, were it not that the blessed Apostle rendered us indefatigable in enduring this labour, and cheered us by his words, saying: "Every one shall receive his own reward according to his labour." [2299] Nor are we ignorant that there are even in our country some pleasant recesses, where plenty of fruits, and pleasant gardens, and fertile ground would furnish the food we need with the slightest bodily efforts on our part, were it not that we were afraid lest that reproach might apply to us, which is directed against the rich man in the gospel: "Because thou hast received thy consolation in this life." [2300] But as we despise all these things and scorn them together with all the pleasures of this world, we delight only in this squalor, and prefer to all luxuries this dreadful and vast desert, and cannot compare any riches of a fertile soil to these barren sands, as we pursue no temporal gains of this body, but the eternal rewards of the spirit. For it is but little for a monk to have once made his renunciation, i.e., in the early days of his conversion to have disregarded the present world, unless he continues to renounce it daily. For to the very end of this life we must with the prophet say this: "And I have not desired the day of man, Thou knowest." [2301] Wherefore also the Lord says in the gospel: "If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me." [2302] __________________________________________________________________
[2296] Prov. xiii. 4; xxi. 25.
[2297] S. Luke xiv. 26.
[2298] Jer. xvii. 5; Ps. cxlv. (cxlvi.) 2.
[2299] 1 Cor. iii. 8.
[2300] S. Luke xvi. 25.
[2301] Jer. xvii. 16.
[2302] S. Luke ix. 23. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter III.
Of the character of the districts which anchorites ought to seek.
And therefore by him who is exercising anxious care over the purity of his inner man, those districts should be sought, which do not by their fruitfulness and fertility invite his mind to the trouble of cultivating them, nor drive him forth from his fixed and immovable position in his cell, and force him to go forth to some work in the open air, and so, his thoughts being as it were poured forth openly, scatter to the winds all his concentration of mind and all the keenness of his vision of his aim. And this cannot be guarded against or seen by anyone at all however careful and watchful, except one who continually keeps his body and soul shut up and enclosed in walls, that, like a splendid fisherman, looking out for food for himself by the apostolic art, he may eagerly and without moving catch the swarms of thoughts swimming in the calm depths of his heart, and surveying with curious eye the depths as from a high rock, may sagaciously and cunningly decide what he ought to lure to himself by his saving hook, and what he can neglect and reject as bad and nasty fishes. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IV.
What sorts of work should be chosen by solitaries.
Everyone therefore who constantly perseveres in this watchfulness will effectually fulfil what is very plainly expressed by the prophet Habakkuk: "I will stand upon my watch, and ascend upon the rock, and will look out to see what He shall say to me, and what I may answer to Him that reproveth me." [2303] And how difficult and tiresome this is, is very clearly shown by the experience of those who live in the desert of Calamus or Porphyrion. [2304] For though they are separated from all the cities and dwellings of men by a longer stretch of desert than the wilderness of Scete (since by penetrating seven or eight days' journey into the recesses of the vast wilderness, they scarcely arrive at their hiding places and cells) yet because there they are devoted to agriculture and not in the least confined to the cloister, whenever they come to these squalid districts in which we are living, or to Scete, they are annoyed by such harassing thoughts and such anxiety of mind that, as if they were beginners and men who had never given the slightest attention to the exercises of solitude, they cannot endure the life of the cells and the peace and quietness of them, and are at once driven forth and obliged to leave them, as if they were inexperienced and novices. For they have not learnt to still the motions of the inner man, and to quell the tempests of their thoughts by anxious care and persevering efforts, as, toiling day after day in work in the open air, they are moving about all day long in empty space, not only in the flesh but also in heart; and pour forth their thoughts openly as the body moves hither and thither. And therefore they do not notice the folly of their mind in longing for many things, nor can they put a check upon its vague discursiveness; and as they cannot bear sorrow of spirit they think that the fact of a continuance of silence is unendurable, and those who are never tired by hard work in the country, are beaten by silence and worn out by the length of their rest. __________________________________________________________________
[2303] Hab. ii. 1. (LXX.).
[2304] Cf. Institutes X. xxiv. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter V.
That anxiety of heart is made worse rather than better by restlessness of body.
Nor is it wonderful if one who lives in a cell, having his thoughts collected together as it were in a narrow cloister, is oppressed by a multitude of anxieties, which break out with the man himself from the confinement of the dwelling, and at once dash here and there like wild horses. But while they are now roaming at large from their stalls, for the moment some short and sad solace is enjoyed: but when, after the body has returned to its own cell, the whole troop of thoughts retires again to its proper home, the habit of chronic licence gives rise to worse pangs. Those then who are unable and ignorant how to struggle against the promptings of their own fancies, when they are harassed in their cell, by accidie attacking their bosom more violently than usual, if they relax their strict rule and allow themselves the liberty of going out oftener, will arouse a worse plague against themselves by means of this which they fancy is a remedy: just as men fancy that they can check the violence of an inward fever by a draught of the coldest water, though it is a fact that by it its fire is inflamed rather than quenched, as a far worse attack follows after the momentary alleviation. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VI.
A comparison showing how a monk ought to keep guard over his thoughts.
Wherefore a monk's whole attention should thus be fixed on one point, and the rise and circle of all his thoughts be vigorously restricted to it; viz., to the recollection of God, as when a man, who is anxious to raise on high a vault of a round arch, must constantly draw a line round from its exact centre, and in accordance with the sure standard it gives discover by the laws of building all the evenness and roundness required. But if anyone tries to finish it without ascertaining its centre--though with the utmost confidence in his art and ability, it is impossible for him to keep the circumference even, without any error, or to find out simply by looking at it how much he has taken off by his mistake from the beauty of real roundness, unless he always has recourse to that test of truth and by its decision corrects the inner and outer edge of his work, and so finishes the large and lofty pile to the exact point. [2305] So also our mind, unless by working round the love of the Lord alone as an immovably fixed centre, through all the circumstances of our works and contrivances, it either fits or rejects the character of all our thoughts by the excellent compasses, if I may so say, of love, will never by excellent skill build up the structure of that spiritual edifice of which Paul is the architect, nor possess that beautiful house, which the blessed David desired in his heart to show to the Lord and said: "I have loved the beauty of Thine house and the place of the dwelling of Thy glory;" [2306] but will without foresight raise in his heart a house that is not beautiful, and that is unworthy of the Holy Ghost, one that will presently fall, and so will receive no glory from the reception of the blessed Inhabitant, but will be miserably destroyed by the fall of his building. __________________________________________________________________
[2305] Unius puncti lege.
[2306] Ps. xxv. (xxvi.) 8. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VII.
A question why the neighbourhood of our kinsfolk is considered to interfere with us, whereas it does not interfere in the case of those living in Egypt.
Germanus: It is a very useful and needful rule that is given for the kind of works that can be done within the cells. For we have often proved the value of this not only by the example of your holiness, based on the imitation of the virtues of the apostles, but also by our own experience. But it is not sufficiently clear why we ought so thoroughly to avoid the neighbourhood of our kinsfolk, which you did not reject altogether. For if we see you, blamelessly walking in all the way of perfection, and not only dwelling in your own country but some of you having not even retired far from their own village, why should that which does not hurt you be considered bad for us? __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VIII.
The answer that all things are not suitable for all men.
Abraham: Sometimes we see bad precedents taken from good things. For if a man ventures to do the same thing as another, but not with the same mind and purpose, or not with equal goodness, he will immediately fall into the snares of deception and death through the very things from which others gain the fruit of eternal life: As that strong armed lad matched with the warlike giant in the combat would certainly have found, if he had been clad in the heavy armour of Saul fit only for men; and that by which one of stronger age would have laid low countless hosts of foes, would only have brought certain danger to the stripling, had he not with prudent discretion chosen the sort of weapons suitable to his youth, and armed himself against his foul foe not with breastplate and shield, with which he saw that others were equipped, but with those weapons with which he was able to fight. Wherefore it is right for each one of us first to consider carefully the measure of his powers and in accordance with its limits, to choose what system he pleases, because though all are good, yet all things cannot be fit for all men. For we do not assert that because the anchorite's life is good, it is therefore suited for everybody: for by many it is felt to be not only useless, but even injurious. Nor because we are right in taking up the system of the Coenobium and the pious and praiseworthy care of the brethren, do we therefore consider that it ought to be followed by everybody. So also the fruits of the care of strangers are very plentiful, but this cannot be taken up by everybody without loss of patience. Further, the systems of your country and of this must first be weighed against each other; and then the powers of men gathered from the constant occurrence of their virtues or vices must be severally weighed in the opposite scales. For it may happen that what is difficult or impossible for a man of one nation in the case of others is somehow turned by ingrained habit into nature: just as some nations, separated by a wide difference of region, can bear tremendous force of cold or heat of the sun without any covering of the body, which certainly others who have no experience of that inclement sky, could not possibly endure, however strong they may be. So also do you who with the utmost efforts of mind and body are trying in this district to get the better of the nature of your country in many respects, diligently consider whether in those regions which, as report says, are frozen, and bound by the cold of excessive unbelief, you could endure this nakedness, if I may so term it. For to us the fact that our holy life is of long standing has almost naturally imparted this fortitude in our purpose, and if we see that you are our equals in virtue and constancy, you in like manner need not shun the neighbourhood of your kinsfolk and brethren. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IX.
That those need not fear the neighbourhood of their kinsfolk, who can emulate the mortification of Abbot Apollos.
But that you may be able fairly to measure the amount of your strength by a certain test of strictness I will point out to you what was done by a certain old man; viz., Abbot Apollos [2307] that if your secret scrutiny of your heart decides that you are not behind this man in purpose and goodness, you may venture on remaining in your country and living near your kinsfolk without detriment to your purpose or injury to your mode of life, and be sure that neither the feeling of nearness nor your love for the district can interfere with the strictness of this humble lot, [2308] which not only your own will but the needs also of your pilgrimage enforce upon you in this country. When then his own brother had come to this old man, whom we have mentioned, in the dead of night, begging him to come out for a little while from his monastery, to help him to rescue an ox, which as he sadly complained had stuck in the mire of a swamp a little way off, because he could not possibly rescue it alone, Abbot Apollos stolidly replied to his entreaties: "Why did you not ask our younger brother who was nearer to you as you passed by than I?" and when the other, thinking that he had forgotten the death of his brother who had been long ago buried, and that he was almost weak in his mind from excessive abstinence and continual solitude, replied: "How could I summon one who died fifteen years ago?" Abbot Apollos said: "Don't you know that I too have been dead to this world for twenty years, and that I can't from my tomb in this cell give you any assistance in what belongs to the affairs of this present life? And Christ is so far from allowing me ever so little to relax my purpose of mortification on which I have entered, for extricating your ox, that He did not even permit the very shortest intermission of it for my father's funeral, which would have been undertaken much more readily properly and piously." And so do ye now search out the secrets of your breast and carefully consider whether you also can continually preserve such strictness of mind with regard to your kinsfolk, and when you find that you are like him in this mortification of soul, then at last you may know that in the same way the neighbourhood of your kinsfolk and brothers will not hurt you, when, I mean, you hold that though they are very close to you, you are dead to them, in such a way that you suffer neither them to be benefited by your assistance, nor yourselves to be relaxed by duties towards them. __________________________________________________________________
[2307] Cf. the note on II. xiii.
[2308] Cf. the note on XIX. iii. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter X.
A question whether it is bad for a monk to have his wants supplied by his kinsfolk.
Germanus: On this subject you have certainly left no room for any further uncertainty. For we are sure that we cannot possibly keep up our present wretched garb, or our daily going barefoot in their neighbourhood, and that there we should not even procure with the same labour what is necessary for our sustenance, as here we are actually obliged to fetch our water on our necks for three miles. For shame on our part as well as on theirs would not in the least allow us to do this before them. However how will it hurt our plan of life if we are altogether set free from anxiety on the score of preparing our food, by being supplied by them with all things, and so give ourselves up simply to reading and prayer, that by the removal of that labour with which we are now distracted we may devote ourselves more earnestly to spiritual interests alone? __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XI.
The answer stating what Saint Antony laid down on this matter.
Abraham: I will not give you my own opinion against this, but that of the blessed Antony, whereby he confounded the laziness of a certain brother (overcome by this luke-warmness which you describe) in such a way as also to cut the knot of your subject. For when one came as I said to the aforesaid old man, and said that the Anchorite system was not at all to be admired, declaring that it required greater virtue for a man to practise what belongs to perfection living among men rather than in the desert, the blessed Antony asked where he lived himself, and when he said that he lived close to his relations, and boasted that by their provision he was set free from all care and anxiety of daily work, and gave himself up ceaselessly and solely to reading and prayer without any distraction of spirit, once more the blessed Antony said: "Tell me, my good friend, whether you grieve with their griefs and misfortunes, and in the same way rejoice in their good fortune?" He confessed that he shared in them both. To whom the old man: "You should know," said he, "that in the world to come also you will be judged in the lot of those with whom in this life you have been affected by sharing in their gain or loss, or joy or sorrow." And not satisfied with this statement the blessed Antony entered on a still wider field of discussion, saying: "This mode of life and this most lukewarm condition not only strike you with that damage of which I spoke (though you do not feel it now, when somehow you say in accordance with that saying in Proverbs: They strike me but I am not grieved: and they mocked me but I knew it not;' or this that is said in the Prophet: And strangers have devoured his strength, but he himself knew it not' [2309] ), because day after day they ceaselessly drag down your mind to earthly things, and change it in accordance with the variations of chance; but also because they defraud you of the fruits of your hands and the due reward of your own exertions, as they do not suffer you to be supported by what these supply, or to procure your daily food for yourself with your own hands, according to the rule of the blessed Apostle, as he when giving his last charge to the heads of the Church of Ephesus, asserts that though he was occupied with the sacred duties of preaching the gospel yet he provided not only for himself, but also for those who were prevented by necessary duties with regard to his ministry, saying: Ye yourselves know that these hands have ministered to my necessities and to the necessities of those who were with me.' But to show that he did this as a pattern to be useful to us he says elsewhere: We were not idle among you; neither did we eat any man's bread for nothing, but in labour and in toil we worked night and day lest we should be chargeable to any of you. Not as if we had not power; but that we might give ourselves a pattern unto you, to imitate us." [2310] __________________________________________________________________
[2309] Prov. xxiii. 35 (LXX.); Hos. vii. 9.
[2310] Acts xx. 34; 2 Thess. iii. 7, 9. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XII.
Of the value of work and the harm of idleness.
And so though we also might have the protection of our kinsfolk, yet we have preferred his abstinence to all riches, and have chosen to procure our daily bodily sustenance by our own exertions rather than rely on the sure provision made by our relations, having less inclination for idle meditation on holy Scripture of which you have spoken, and that fruitless attendance to reading than to this laborious poverty. And certainly we should most gladly pursue the former, if the authority of the apostles had taught us by their examples that it was better for us, or the rules of the Elders had laid it down for our good. But you must know that you are affected by this no less than by that harm of which I spoke above, because though your body may be sound and lusty, yet you are supported by another's contributions, a thing which properly belongs only to the feeble. For certainly the whole human race, except only that class of monks, who live in accordance with the Apostle's command by the daily labours of their own hands, looks for the charity of another's compassion. Wherefore it is clear that not only those who boast that they themselves are supported either by the wealth of their relations or the labours of their servants or the produce of their farms, but also the kings of this world are supported by charity. This at any rate is embraced in the definition of our predecessors, who have laid down that anything that is taken for the requirements of daily food which has not been procured and prepared by the labour of our own hands, ought to be referred to charity, as the Apostle teaches, who altogether forbids the help of another's bounty to the idle and says: "If a man does not work, neither let him eat." [2311] These words the blessed Antony used against some one, and instructed us also by the example of his teaching, to shun the pernicious allurements of our relations and of all who provide the needful charity for our food as well as the delights of a pleasant home, and to prefer to all the wealth of this world sandy wastes horrid with the barrenness of nature, and districts overwhelmed by living incrustations, and for that reason subject to no control or dominion of man, so that we should not only avoid the society of men for the sake of a pathless waste, but also that the character of a fruitful soil may never entice us to the distractions of cultivating it, whereby the mind would be recalled from the chief service of the heart, and rendered useless for spiritual aims. __________________________________________________________________
[2311] 2 Thess. iii. 10. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIII.
A story of a barber's payments, introduced for the sake of recognizing the devil's illusions.
For as you hope that you can save others also, and are eager to return to your country with the hope of greater gain, hear also on this subject a story of Abbot Macarius, very neatly and prettily invented, which he also gave to a man in a tumult of similar desires, to cure him by a most appropriate story. "There was," said he, "in a certain city a very clever barber, who used to shave everybody for three pence and by getting this poor and wretched sum for his work, out of this same amount used to procure what was required for his daily food, and after having taken all care of his body, used every day to put a hundred pence into his pocket. But while he was diligently amassing this gain, he heard that in a city a long way off each man paid the barber a shilling as his pay. And when he found this out, how long,' said he, shall I be satisfied with this beggary, so as to get with my labour a pay of three pence, when by going thither I might amass riches by a large gain of shillings?' And so at once taking with him the implements of his art, and using up in the expense all that he had got together and saved during a long time, he made his way with great difficulty to that most lucrative city. And there on the day of his arrival, he received from everyone the pay for his labour in accordance with what he had heard, and at eventide seeing that he had gained a large number of shillings he went in delight to the butcher's to buy the food he wanted for his supper. And when he began to purchase it for a large sum of shillings he spent on a tiny bit of meat all the shillings that he had gained, and did not take home a surplus of even a single penny. And when he saw that his gains were thus used up every day so that he not only failed to put by anything but could scarcely get what he required for his daily food, he thought over the matter with himself and said: I will go back to my city, and once more, seek those very moderate profits, from which, when all my bodily wants were satisfied, a daily surplus gave a growing sum to support my old age; which, though it seemed small and trifling, yet by being constantly increased was amounting to no slight sum. In fact that gain of coppers was more profitable to me than is this nominal one of shillings from which not only is there nothing over to be laid by, but the necessities of my daily food are scarcely met.'" And therefore it is better for us with unbroken continuance to aim at this very slender profit in the desert, from which no secular cares, no worldly distractions, no pride of vainglory and vanity can detract, and which the pressure of no daily wants can lessen (for "a small thing that the righteous hath is better than great riches of the ungodly" [2312] ) rather than to pursue those larger profits which even if they are procured by the most valuable conversion of many, are yet absorbed by the claims of secular life and the daily leakage of distractions. For, as Solomon says, "Better is a single handful with rest than both hands full with labour and vexation of mind." [2313] And in these allusions and inconveniences all that are at all weak are sure to be entangled, as while they are even doubtful of their own salvation, and themselves stand in need of the teaching and instruction of others, they are incited by the devil's tricks to convert and guide others, and as, even if they succeed in gaining any advantage from the conversion of some, they waste by their impatience and rude manners whatever they have gained. For that will happen to them which is described by the prophet Haggai: "And he that gathereth riches, putteth them into a bag with holes." [2314] For indeed a man puts his gains into a bag with holes, if he loses by want of self control and daily distractions of mind whatever he appears to gain by the conversion of others. And so it results that while they fancy that they can make larger profits by the instruction of others, they are actually deprived of their own improvement. For "There are who make themselves out rich though possessing nothing, and there are who humble themselves amid great riches;" and: "Better is a man who serves himself in a humble station than one who gains honour for himself and wanteth bread." [2315] __________________________________________________________________
[2312] Ps. xxxvi. (xxxvii.) 16.
[2313] Eccl. iv. 6.
[2314] Hag. i. 6.
[2315] Prov. xiii. 7; xii. 9. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIV.
A question how such wrong notions can creep into us.
Germanus: Very aptly has your discussion shown the error of these illusions by this illustration: but we should like in the same way to be taught its origin and how to cure it, and we are equally anxious to learn how this deception has taken hold of us. For everybody must see that no one at all can apply remedies to ill health except one who has already diagnosed the actual origin of the disease. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XV.
The answer on the threefold movement of the soul.
Abraham: Of all faults there is one source and origin, but different names are assigned to the passions and corruptions in accordance with the character of that part, or member, if I may so call it, which has been injuriously affected in the soul: As is sometimes also shown by the case of bodily diseases, in which though the cause is one and the same, yet there is a division into different kinds of maladies in accordance with the nature of the member affected. For when the violence of a noxious moisture has seized on the body's citadel, i.e., the head, it brings about a feeling of headache, but when it affects the ears or eyes, it passes into the malady of earache or ophthalmia: when it spreads to the joints and the extremities of the hands it is called the gout in the joints or hands; but when it descends to the extremities of the feet, its name is changed and it is termed podagra: and the noxious moisture which is originally one and the same is described by as many names as there are separate members which it affects. In the same way to pass from visible to invisible things, we should hold that the tendency to each fault exists in the parts and, if I may use the expression, members of our soul. And, as some very wise men have laid down that its powers are threefold, either what is logikon, i.e., reasonable, or thumikon, i.e., irascible, or epi thumetikon, i.e., subject to desire, is sure to be troubled by some assault. When then the force of noxious passion takes possession of anyone by reason of these feelings, the name of the fault is given to it in accordance with the part affected. For if the plague of sin has infested its rational parts, it will produce the sins of vainglory, conceit, envy, pride, presumption, strife, heresy. If it has wounded the irascible feelings, it will give birth to rage, impatience, sulkiness, accidie, pusillanimity and cruelty. If it has affected that part which is subject to desire, it will be the parent of gluttony, fornication, covetousness, avarice, and noxious and earthly desires. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVI.
That the rational part of our soul is corrupt.
And therefore if you want to discover the source and origin of this fault, you must recognize that the rational part of your mind and soul is corrupt, that part namely from which the faults of presumption and vainglory for the most part spring. Further this first member, so to speak, of your soul must be healed by the judgment of a right discretion and the virtue of humility, as when it is injured, while you fancy that you can not only still scale the heights of perfection but actually teach others, and hold that you are capable and sufficient to instruct others, through the pride of vainglory you are carried away by these vain rovings, which your confession discloses. And these you will then be able to get rid of without difficulty, if you are established as I said in the humility of true discretion and learn with sorrow of heart how hard and difficult a thing it is for each of us to save his soul, and admit with the inmost feelings of your heart that you are not only far removed from that pride of teaching, but that you are actually still in need of the help of a teacher. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVII.
How the weaker part of the soul is the first to yield to the devil's temptations.
You should then apply to this member or part of the soul which we have described as particularly wounded, the remedy of true humility: for as, so far as appears, it is weaker than the other powers of the soul in you, it is sure to be the first to yield to the assaults of the devil. As when some injuries come upon us, which are caused either by toil laid upon us or by a bad atmosphere, it is generally the case in the bodies of men that those which are the weaker are the first to give in and yield to those chances, and when the disease has more particularly laid hold of them, it affects the sound parts of the body also with the same mischief, so also, when the pestilent blast of sin breathes over us the soul of each one of us is sure to be tempted above all by that passion, in the case of which its feebler and weaker portion does not make so stubborn a resistance to the powerful attacks of the foe, and to run the risk of being taken captive by those, in the case of which a careless watch opens an easier way to betrayal. For so Balsam [2316] gathered that God's people could be by a sure method deceived, when he advised, that in that quarter, wherein he knew that the children of Israel were weak, the dangerous snares should be set for them, as he had no doubt that when a supply of women was offered to them, they would at once fall and be destroyed by fornication, because he was aware that the parts of their souls which were subject to desire were corrupted. So then the spiritual wickednesses tempt with crafty malice each one of us, by particularly laying insidious snares for those affections of the soul, in which they have seen that it is weak, as for instance, if they see that the reasonable parts of our soul are affected, they try to deceive us in the same way that the Scripture tells us that king Ahab was deceived by those Syrians, who said: "We know that the kings of Israel are merciful: And so let us put sackcloth upon our loins, and ropes round our heads, and go out to the king of Israel, and say to him: Thy servant Benhadad saith: I pray thee, let my soul live." And thereby he was affected by no true goodness, but by the empty praise of his clemency, and said: "If he still liveth, he is my brother;" and after this fashion they can deceive us also by the error of that reasonable part, and make us incur the displeasure of God owing to that from which we were hoping that we might gain a reward and receive the recompense of goodness, and to us too the same rebuke may be addressed: "Because thou hast let go from thy hand a man who was worthy of death, thy life shall be for his life, and thy people for his people" [2317] Or when the unclean spirit says: "I will go forth, and will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets," [2318] he certainly spread the nets of deception by means of the reasonable feeling which he knew to be exposed to his deadly wiles. And this also the same spirit expected in the case of our Lord, when he tempted Him in these three affections of the soul, wherein he knew that all mankind had been taken captive, but gained nothing by his crafty wiles. For he approached that portion of his mind which was subject to desire, when he said: "Command that these stones be made bread;" the part subject to wrath, when he tried to incite Him to seek the power of the present life and the kingdoms of this world; the reasonable part when he said: "If Thou art the Son of God cast Thyself down from hence." [2319] And in these his deception availed nothing for this reason because he found that there was nothing damaged in Him, in accordance with the supposition which he had formed from a false idea. Wherefore no part of His soul yielded when tempted by the wiles of the foe, "For lo," He saith, "the prince of this world cometh and shall find nothing in Me." [2320] __________________________________________________________________
[2316] Cf. Numb. xxiv.
[2317] 1 Kings xx. 31, 32, 42.
[2318] 1 Kings xxii. 22.
[2319] S. Matt. iv. 3, 6.
[2320] S. John xiv. 30. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVIII.
A question whether we should be drawn back to our country by a proper desire for greater silence.
Germanus: Among other kinds of illusions and mistakes on our part, which by the vain promise of spiritual advantages have fired us with a longing for our country (as your holiness has discovered by the keen insight of your mind), this stands out as the principal reason, that sometimes we are beset by our brethren and cannot possibly continue in unbroken solitude and continual silence, as we should like. And by this the course and measure of our daily abstinence, which we always want to maintain undisturbed for the chastening of our body, is sure to be interfered with on the arrival of some of the brethren. And this we certainly feel would never happen in our own country, where it is impossible to find anyone, or scarcely anyone who adopts this manner of life. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIX.
The answer on the devil's illusion, because he promises us the peace of a vaster solitude.
Abraham: Never to be resorted to by men at all is a sign of an unreasonable and ill-considered strictness, or rather of the greatest coldness. For if a man walks in this way, on which he has entered, with too slow steps, and lives according to the former man, it is right that none--I say not of the saints--but of any men should visit him. But you, if you are inflamed with true and perfect love of our Lord, and follow God, who indeed is love, with entire fervour of spirit, are sure to be resorted to by men, to whatever inaccessible spot you may flee, and, in proportion as the ardour of divine love brings you nearer to God, so will a larger concourse of saintly brethren flock to you. For, as the Lord says, "A city set on an hill cannot be hid," [2321] because "them that love Me," saith the Lord, "will I honour, and they that despise Me shall be contemned." [2322] But you ought to know that this is the subtlest device of the devil, this is his best concealed pitfall, into which he precipitates some wretched and heedless persons, so that, while he is promising them greater things, he takes away the requisite advantages of their daily profit, by persuading them that more remote and raster deserts should be sought, and by portraying them in their heart as if they were sown with marvellous delights. And further some unknown and non-existent spots, he feigns to be well-known and suitable and already given over to our power and able to be secured without any difficulty. The men also of that country he feigns to be docile and followers of the way of salvation, that, while he is promising richer fruits for the soul there, he may craftily destroy our present profits. For when owing to this vain hope each one separates himself from living together with the Elders and has been deprived of all those things that he idly imagined in his heart, he rises as it were from a most profound slumber, and when awake will find nothing of those things of which he had dreamed. And so as he is hampered by larger requirements for this life and inextricable snares, the devil will not even allow him to aspire to those things which he had once promised himself, and as he is liable no longer to those rare and spiritual visits of the brethren which he had formerly avoided, but to daily interruptions from worldly folk, he will never suffer him to return even to the moderate quiet and system of the anchorite's life. __________________________________________________________________
[2321] Cf. S. Matt. v. 14.
[2322] 1 Sam. ii. 30. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XX.
How useful is relaxation on the arrival of brethren.
That most refreshing interlude also of relaxation and courtesy, which sometimes is wont to intervene because of the arrival of brethren, although it may seem to us tiresome and what we ought to avoid, yet how useful it is and good for our bodies as well as our souls you must patiently hear in few words. It often happens I say not to novices and weak persons but even to those of the greatest experience and perfection, that unless the strain and tension of their mind is lessened by the relaxation of some changes, they fall either into coldness of spirit; or at any rate into a most dangerous state of bodily health. And therefore when there occur even frequent visits from the brethren they should not only be patiently put up with, but even gratefully welcomed by those who are wise and perfect; first because they stimulate us always to desire with greater eagerness the retirement of the desert (for somehow while they are thought to impede our progress, they really maintain it unwearied and unbroken, and if it was never hindered by any obstacles, it would not endure to the end with unswerving perseverance), next because they give us the opportunity of refreshing the body, together with the advantages of kindness, and at the same time with a most delightful relaxation of the body confer on us greater advantage than those which we should have gained by the weariness which results from abstinence. On which matter I will briefly give a most apt illustration handed down in an old story. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXI.
How the Evangelist John is said to have shown the value of relaxation.
It is said that the blessed John, while he was gently stroking a partridge with his hands suddenly saw a philosopher approaching him in the garb of a hunter, who was astonished that a man of so great fame and reputation should demean himself to such paltry and trivial amusements, and said: "Can you be that John, whose great and famous reputation attracted me also with the greatest desire for your acquaintance? Why then do you occupy yourself with such poor amusements?" To whom the blessed John: "What is it," said he, "that you are carrying in your hand?" The other replied: "a bow." "And why," said he, "do you not always carry it everywhere bent?" To whom the other replied: "It would not do, for the force of its stiffness would be relaxed by its being continually bent, and it would be lessened and destroyed, and when the time came for it to send stouter arrows after some beast, its stiffness would be lost by the excessive and continuous strain. and it would be impossible for the more powerful bolts to be shot." "And, my lad," said the blessed John, "do not let this slight and short relaxation of my mind disturb you, as unless it sometimes relieved and relaxed the rigour of its purpose by some recreation, the spirit would lose its spring owing to the unbroken strain, and would be unable when need required, implicitly to follow what was right." [2323] __________________________________________________________________
[2323] The story is quoted by S. Francis de Sales, The Devout Life, and by Dean Goulbourn, Personal Religion, Part III. c. x. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXII.
A question how we ought to understand what the gospel says "My yoke is easy and My burden is light."
Germanus: As you have given us a remedy for all delusions, and by God's grace all the wiles of the devil by which we were harassed, have been exposed by your teaching, we beg that you will also explain to us this that is said in the gospel: "My yoke is easy, and My burden is light." [2324] For it seems tolerably opposed to that saying of the prophet where it is said: "For the sake of the words of Thy lips I kept hard ways;" while even the Apostle says: "All who will live godly in Christ suffer persecutions." [2325] But whatever is hard and fraught with persecutions cannot be easy and light. __________________________________________________________________
[2324] S. Matt. xi. 30.
[2325] Ps. xvi. (xvii.) 4; 2 Tim. iii. 12. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXIII.
The answer with the explanation of the saying.
Abraham: We can prove by the easy teaching of our own experience that our Lord and Saviour's saying is perfectly true, if we approach the way of perfection properly and in accordance with Christ's will, and mortifying all our desires, and cutting off injurious likings, not only allow nothing to remain with us of this world's goods (whereby our adversary would find at his pleasure opportunities of destroying and damaging us) but actually recognize that we are not our own masters, and truly make our own the Apostle's words: "I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." [2326] For what can be burdensome, or hard to one who has embraced with his whole heart the yoke of Christ, who is established in true humility and ever fixes his eye on the Lord's sufferings and rejoices in all the wrongs that are offered to him, saying: "For which cause I please myself in my infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ: for when I am weak, then am I strong"? [2327] By what loss of any common thing, I ask, will he be injured, who boasts of perfect renunciation, and voluntarily rejects for Christ's sake all the pomp of this world, and considers all and every of its desires as dung, so that he may gain Christ, and by continual meditation on this command of the gospel, scorns and gets rid of agitation at every loss: "For what shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, but lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" [2328] For the loss of what will he be vexed, who recognizes that everything that can be taken away from others is not their own, and proclaims with unconquered valour: "We brought nothing into this world: it is certain that we cannot carry anything out"? [2329] By the needs of what want will his courage be overcome, who knows how to do without "scrip for the way, money for the purse," [2330] and, like the Apostle, glories "in many fasts, in hunger and thirst, in cold and nakedness"? [2331] What effort, or what hard command of an Elder can disturb the peace of his bosom, who has no will of his own, and not only patiently but even gratefully accepts what is commanded him, and after the example of our Saviour, seeks to do not his own will, but the Father's, as He says Himself to His Father: "Nevertheless not as I will, but as Thou wilt"? [2332] By what wrongs also, by what persecution will he be frightened, nay, what punishment can fail to be delightful to him, who always rejoices together with apostles in stripes, and longs to be counted worthy to suffer shame for the name of Christ? __________________________________________________________________
[2326] Gal. ii. 20.
[2327] 2 Cor. xii. 10.
[2328] S. Matt. xvi. 26.
[2329] 1 Tim. vi. 7.
[2330] S. Matt. x. 9, 10.
[2331] 2 Cor. xi. 27.
[2332] S. Matt. xxvi. 39. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXIV.
Why the Lord's yoke is felt grievous and His burden heavy.
But the fact that to us on the contrary the yoke of Christ seems neither light nor easy, must be rightly ascribed to our perverseness, as we are cast down by unbelief and want of faith, and fight with foolish obstinacy against His command, or rather advice, who says: "If thou wilt be perfect, go sell (or get rid of) all that thou hast, and come follow Me," [2333] for we keep the substance of our worldly goods. And as the devil holds our soul fast in the toils of these, what remains but that, when he wants to sever us from spiritual delights, he should vex us by diminishing these and depriving us of them, contriving by his crafty wiles that when the sweetness of His yoke and lightness of His burden have become grievous to us through the evil of a corrupt desire, and when we are caught in the chains of that very property and substance, which we kept for our comfort and solace, he may always torment us with the scourges of worldly cares, extorting from us ourselves that wherewith we are tortured? For "Each one is bound by the cords of his own sins," and hears from the prophet: "Behold all you that kindle a fire, encompassed with flames, walk in the light of your fire, and in the flames which you have kindled." Since, as Solomon is witness, "Each man shall thereby be punished, whereby he has sinned." [2334] For the very pleasures which we enjoy become a torment to us, and the delights and enjoyments of this flesh, turn like executioners upon their originator, because one who is supported by his former wealth and property is sure not to admit perfect humility of heart, not entire mortification of dangerous pleasures. But where all these implements of goodness give their aid, there all the trials of this present life, and whatever losses the enemy can contrive, are endured not only with the utmost patience, but with real pleasure, and again when they are wanting so dangerous a pride springs up that we are actually wounded by the deadly strokes of impatience at the slightest reproach, and it may be said to us by the prophet Jeremiah: "And now what hast thou to do in the way of Egypt, to drink the troubled water? And what hast thou to do with the way of the Assyrians, to drink the water of the river? Thy own wickedness shall reprove thee, and thy apostasy shall rebuke thee. Know thou and see that it is an evil and a bitter thing for thee to have left the Lord thy God, and that My fear is not with thee, saith the Lord." [2335] How then is it that the wondrous sweetness of the Lord's yoke is felt to be bitter, but because the bitterness of our dislike injures it? How is it that the exceeding lightness of the Divine burden becomes heavy, but because in our obstinate presumption we despise Him by whom it was borne, especially as Scripture itself plainly testifies to this very thing saying: "For if they would walk in right paths, they would certainly have found the paths of righteousness smooth"? [2336] It is plain, I say, that it is we, who make rough with the nasty and hard stones of our desires the right and smooth paths of the Lord; who most foolishly forsake the royal road made stony with the flints of apostles and prophets, and trodden down by the footsteps of all the saints and of the Lord Himself, and seek trackless and thorny places, and, blinded by the allurements of present delights, tear our way with torn legs and our wedding garment rent, through dark paths, overrun with the briars of sins, so as not only to be pierced by the sharp thorns of the brambles but actually laid low by the bites of deadly serpents and scorpions lurking there. For "there are thorns and thistles in wrong ways, but he that feareth the Lord shall keep himself from them." [2337] Of such also the Lord says elsewhere by the prophet: "My people have forgotten, sacrificing in vain, and stumbling in their ways, in ancient paths, to walk in them in a way not trodden." [2338] For according to Solomon's saying: "The ways of those who do not work are strewn with thorns, but the ways of the lusty are trodden down." [2339] And thus wandering from the king's highway, they can never arrive at that metropolis, whither our course should ever be directed without swerving. And this also Ecclesiastes has pretty significantly expressed saying: "The labour of fools wearies those who know not how to go to the city;" viz., that "heavenly Jerusalem, which is the mother of us all." [2340] But whoever truly gives up this world and takes upon him Christ's yoke and learns of Him, and is trained in the daily practice of suffering wrong, for He is "meek and lowly of heart," [2341] will ever remain undisturbed by all temptations, and "all things will work together for good to him." [2342] For as the prophet Obadiah says the words of God are "good to him that walketh uprightly;" and again: "For the ways of the Lord are right, and the just shall walk in them; but the transgressors shall fall in them." [2343] __________________________________________________________________
[2333] S. Matt. xix. 21.
[2334] Prov. v. 22; Isa. l. 11; Wisd. xi. 17.
[2335] Jer. ii. 18, 19.
[2336] Prov. ii. 20.
[2337] Prov. xxii. 5.
[2338] Jer. xviii. 15.
[2339] Prov. xv. 19.
[2340] Eccl. x. 15 (LXX.); Gal. iv. 26.
[2341] S. Matt. xi. 29.
[2342] Rom. viii. 28.
[2343] Micah ii. 7; Hos. xiv. 10. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXV.
Of the good which an attack of temptation brings about.
And so by the struggle with temptation the kindly grace of the Saviour bestows on us larger rewards of praise than if it had taken away from us all need of conflict. For it is a mark of a loftier and grander virtue to remain ever unmoved when hemmed in by persecutions and trials, and to stand faithfully and courageously at the ramparts of God, and in the attacks of men, girt as it were with the arms of unconquered virtue, to triumph gloriously over impatience and somehow to gain strength out of weakness, for "strength is made perfect in weakness." "For behold I have made thee." saith the Lord, "a pillar of iron and a wall of brass, over all the land, to the kings of Judah, and the princes and the priests thereof, and all the people of the land. And they shall fight against thee and shall not prevail: for I am with thee to deliver thee, saith the Lord." [2344] Therefore according to the plain teaching of the Lord the king's highway is easy and smooth, though it may be felt as hard and rough: for those who piously and faithfully serve Him, when they have taken upon them the yoke of the Lord, and have learnt of Him, that He is meek and lowly of heart, at once somehow or other lay aside the burden of earthly passions, and find no labour but rest for their souls, by the gift of the Lord, as He Himself testifies by Jeremiah the prophet, saying: "Stand ye on the ways and see, and ask for the old paths, which is the good way, and walk ye in it: and you shall find refreshment for your souls." For to them at once "the crooked shall become straight and the rough ways plain;" and they shall "taste and see that the Lord is gracious," [2345] and when they hear Christ proclaiming in the gospel: "Come unto Me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you," they will lay aside the burden of their sins, and realize what follows: "For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light." [2346] The way of the Lord then has refreshment if it is kept to according to His law. But it is we who by troublesome distractions bring sorrows and troubles upon ourselves, while we try even with the utmost exertion and difficulty to follow the crooked and perverse ways of this world. But when in this way we have made the Lord's yoke heavy and hard to us, we at once complain in a blasphemous spirit of the hardness and roughness of the yoke itself or of Christ who lays it upon us, in accordance with this passage: "The folly of man corrupteth his ways, but he blames God in his heart;" [2347] and as Haggai the prophet says, when we say that "the way of the Lord is not right" the reply is aptly made to us by the Lord: "Is not My way right? Are not your ways rather crooked?" [2348] And indeed if you will compare the sweet scented flower of virginity, and tender purity of chastity to the foul and fetid sloughs of lust, the calm and security of monks to the dangers and losses in which the men of this world are involved, the peace of our poverty to the gnawing vexations and anxious cares of riches, in which they are night and day consumed not without the utmost peril to life, then you will prove that the yoke of Christ is most easy and His burden most light. __________________________________________________________________
[2344] Jer. i. 18, 19.
[2345] Jer. vi. 16; Isa. xl. 4; Ps. xxxiii. (xxxiv.) 9.
[2346] S. Matt. xi. 28-30.
[2347] Prov. xix. 3 (LXX.).
[2348] Ezek. xviii. 25 (LXX.). __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXVI.
How the promise of an hundredfold in this life is made to those whose renunciation is perfect.
Further also that recompense of reward, wherein the Lord promises an hundredfold in this life to those whose renunciation is perfect, and says: "And everyone that hath left house or brethren or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands for My name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold in the present time and shall inherit eternal life," [2349] is rightly and truly taken in the same sense without any disturbance of faith. For many taking occasion by this saying, insist with crass intelligence that these things will be given carnally in the millennium, though they must certainly admit that age, which they say will be after the resurrection cannot possibly be understood as present. It is then more credible and much clearer that one, who at the persuasion of Christ has made light of any worldly affections or goods, receives from the brethren and partners of his life, who are joined to him by a spiritual tie, even in this life a love which is an hundred times better: since it is certain that among parents and children and brothers, wives and relations, where either the tie is merely formed by intercourse, or the bond of union by the claims of relationship, the love is tolerably short lived and easily broken. Finally even good and duteous children when they have grown up, are sometimes shut out by their parents from their homes and property, and sometimes for a really good reason the tie of matrimony is severed, and a quarrelsome division destroys the property of brothers. Monks alone maintain a lasting union in intimacy, and possess all things in common, as they hold that everything that belongs to their brethren is their own, and that everything which is their own is their brethren's. If then the grace of our love is compared to those affections where the bond of union is a carnal love, certainly it is an hundred times sweeter and finer. There will indeed also be gained from conjugal continence a pleasure that is an hundred times greater than that which arises from the union of the sexes. And instead of that joy, which a man experiences from the possession of a single field of house, he will enjoy a delight in riches a hundred times greater, if he passes over to the adoption of sons of God, and possesses as his own all things which belong to the eternal Father, and asserts in heart and soul after the fashion of that true Son: "All things that the Father hath are mine;" [2350] and if no longer tried by that criminal anxiety in distractions and cares, but free from care and glad at heart he succeeds everywhere to his own, hearing daily the announcement made to him by the Apostle: "For all things are yours, whether the world, or things present, or things to come;" and by Solomon: "The faithful man has a whole world of riches." [2351] You have then that recompense of an hundredfold brought out by the greatness of the value, and the difference of the character that cannot be estimated. For if for a fixed weight of brass or iron or some still commoner metal, one had given in exchange the same weight only in gold, he would appear to have given much more than an hundredfold. And so when for the scorn of delights and earthly affections there is made a recompense of spiritual joy and the gladness of a most precious love, even if the actual amount be the same, yet it is an hundred times better and grander. And to make this plainer by frequent repetition: I used formerly to have a wife in the lustful passion of desire: I now have one in honourable sanctification and the true love of Christ. The woman is but one, but the value of the love has increased an hundredfold. But if instead of distrusting anger and wrath you have regard to constant gentleness and patience, instead of the stress of anxiety and trouble, peace and freedom from care, instead of the fruitless and criminal vexation of this world the salutary fruits of sorrow, instead of the vanity of temporal joy the richness of spiritual delights, you will see in the change of these feelings a recompense of an hundredfold. And if we compare with the short-lived and fleeting pleasure of each sin the benefits of the opposite virtues the increased delights will prove that these are an hundred times better. For in counting on your fingers you transfer the number of an hundred from the left hand to the right and though you seem to keep the same arrangement of the fingers yet there is a great increase in the amount of the quantity. [2352] For the result will be that we who seemed to bear the form of the goats on the left hand, will be removed and gain the reward of the sheep on the right hand. Now let us pass on to consider the nature of those things which Christ gives back to us in this world for our scorn of worldly advantages, more particularly according to the Gospel of Mark who says: "There is no man who hath left house or brethren or sisters or mother or children or lands for My sake and the gospel's sake, who shall not receive an hundred times as much now in this time: houses and brethren and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the world to come life eternal." [2353] For he who for the sake of Christ's name disregards the love of a single father or mother or child, and gives himself over to the purest love of all who serve Christ, will receive an hundred times the amount of brethren and kinsfolk; since instead of but one he will begin to have so many fathers and brethren bound to him by a still more fervent and admirable affection. He also will be enriched with an increased possession of lands, who has given up a single house for the love of Christ, and possesses countless homes in monasteries as his own, to whatever part of the world he may retire, as to his own house. For how can he fail to receive an hundredfold, and, if it is not wrong to add somewhat to our Lord's words, more than an hundredfold, who gives up the faithless and compulsory service of ten or twenty slaves and relies on the spontaneous attendance of so many noble and free born men? And that this is so you could prove by your own experience, as since you have each left but one father and mother and home, you have gained without any effort or care, in any part of the world to which you have come, countless fathers and mothers and brethren, as well as houses and lands and most faithful servants, who receive you as their masters, and welcome, and respect, and take care of you with the utmost attention. But, I say that deservedly and confidently will the saints enjoy this service, if they have first submitted themselves and everything they have by a voluntary offering for the service of the brethren. For, as the Lord says, they will freely receive back that which they themselves have bestowed on others. But if a man has not first offered this with true humility to his companions, how can he calmly endure to have it offered to him by others, when he knows that he is burdened rather than helped by their services, because he prefers to receive attention from the brethren rather than to give it to them?
But all these things he will receive not with careless slackness and a lazy delight, but, in accordance with the Lord's word, "with persecutions," i.e., with the pressure of this world, and terrible distress from his passions, because, as the wise man testifies: "He who is easy going and without trouble shall come to want." [2354] For not the slothful, or the careless, or the delicate, or the tender take the kingdom of heaven by force, but the violent. Who then are the violent? Surely they are those who show a splendid violence not to others, but to their own soul, who by a laudable force deprive it of all delights in things present, and are declared by the Lord's mouth to be splendid plunderers, and by rapine of this kind, violently seize upon the kingdom of heaven. For, as the Lord says, "The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence and the violent take it by force." [2355] Those are certainly worthy of praise as violent, who do violence to their own destruction, for, "A man," as it is written, "that is in sorrow laboureth for himself and does violence to his own destruction." [2356] For our destruction is delight in this present life, and to speak more definitely, the performance of our own likes and desires, as, if a man withdraws these from his soul and mortifies them, he straightway does glorious and valuable violence to his own destruction, provided that he refuses to it the pleasantest of its wishes which the Divine word often rebukes by the prophet, saying: "For in the days of your fast your own will is found;" and again: "If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, to do thy will on My holy day, and glorify him, while thou dost not thy own ways, and thy own will is not found, to speak a word." And the great blessedness that is promised to him is at once added by the prophet. "Then," he says, "shalt thou be delighted in the Lord, and I will lift thee up above the high places of the earth, and will feed thee with the inheritance of Jacob thy father. For the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it." [2357] And therefore our Lord and Saviour, to give us an example of giving up our own wills, says: "I came not to do My own will, but the will of Him that sent Me;" and again: "Not as I will, but as Thou wilt." [2358] And this good quality those men in particular show who live in the Coenobia and are governed by the rule of the Elders, who do nothing of their own choice, but their will depends upon the will of the Abbot. Finally to bring this discussion to a close, I ask you, do not those who faithfully serve Christ, most clearly receive grace an hundredfold in this, while for His name's sake they are honoured by the greatest princes, and though they do not look for the praise of men, yet become venerated in the trials of persecution whose humble condition would perhaps have been looked down upon even by common folk, either because of their obscure birth, or because of their condition as slaves, if they had continued in their life in the world? But because of the service of Christ no one will venture to raise a calumny against their state of nobility, or to fling in their teeth the obscurity of their origin. Nay rather, through the very opprobrium of a humble condition by which others are shamed and confounded, the servants of Christ are more splendidly ennobled, as we can clearly show by the case of Abbot John who lives in the desert which borders on the town of Lycus. For he sprang from obscure parents, but owing to the name of Christ has become so well known to almost all mankind that the very lords of creation, who hold the reins of this world and of empire, and are a terror to all powers and kings, venerate him as their lord, and from distant countries seek his advice, and entrust to his prayers and merits the crown of their empire, and the state of safety, and the fortunes of war. [2359]
In such terms the blessed Abraham discoursed on the origin of and remedy for our illusion, and exposed to our eyes the crafty thoughts which the devil had originated and suggested, and kindled in us the desire of true mortification, wherewith we hope that many also may be inflamed, even though all these things have been written in a somewhat simple style. For though the dying embers of our words cover up the glowing thoughts of the greatest fathers, yet we hope that in the case of very many who try to remove the embers of our words and to fan into a flame the hidden thoughts, their coldness will be turned into heat. But, O holy brethren, I have not indeed been so puffed up by the spirit of presumption as to give forth to you this fire (which the Lord came to send upon the earth, and which He eagerly longs to kindle [2360] ) in order that by the application of this warmth I might set on fire your purpose which is already at a white heat, but in order that your authority with your children might be greater, if in addition the precepts of the greatest and most ancient fathers support what you are teaching not by the dead sound of words but by your living example. It only remains that I who have been till now tossed about by a most dangerous tempest, should be wafted to the safe harbour of silence by the spiritual gales of your prayers. __________________________________________________________________
[2349] S. Matt. xix. 29.
[2350] S. John xvi. 15.
[2351] 1 Cor. iii. 22; Prov. xvii. 6 (LXX.).
[2352] The practice alludes to the counting on the fingers, in which all the tens up to ninety were reckoned on the fingers of the left hand, but with the number of a hundred the reckoning began with the same arrangement of the fingers on the right hand. S. Jerome had a similar allusion to the practice in his work against Jovian I. i. and compare also Juvenal Satire. X. l. 247, 248.
[2353] S. Mark x. 29, 30.
[2354] Prov. xiv. 23 (LXX.).
[2355] S. Matt. xi. 12.
[2356] Prov. xiv. 26 (LXX.).
[2357] Isa. lviii. 3, 13, 14.
[2358] S. John vi. 38; S. Matt. xxvi. 39.
[2359] Cf. the note on the Institutes IV. xxiii.
[2360] Cf. S. Luke xii. 49. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
The Seven Books Of John Cassian On The Incarnation Of The Lord, Against Nestorius.
THE SEVEN BOOKS OF JOHN CASSIAN
ON THE
INCARNATION OF THE LORD, AGAINST NESTORIUS. __________________________________________________________________
Preface. __________________________________________________________________
When I had now finished the books of Spiritual Conferences, the merit of which consists in the thoughts expressed rather than in the language used (since my rude utterances were unequal to the deep thoughts of the saints), I had contemplated and almost determined on taking refuge in silence (as I was ashamed of having exposed my ignorance) that I might as far as possible make up for my audacity in speaking by modestly holding my tongue for the future. But you have overcome my determination and purpose by your commendable earnestness and most urgent affection, my dear Leo, my esteemed and highly regarded friend, ornament that you are of the Roman Church and sacred ministry, [2361] as you drag me forth from the obscurity of the silence on which I had determined, into a public court which I may well dread, and oblige me to undertake new labours while I am still blushing for my past ones. And though I was unequal to lesser tasks, you compel me to match myself with greater ones. For even in those trifling works, in which of our small ability we offered some small offering to the Lord, I would never have attempted to do or apply myself to anything unless I had been led to it by Episcopal command. And so through you there has been an increase of importance both of our subject and of our language. For whereas before we spoke, when bidden, of the business of the Lord, you now require us to speak of the actual Incarnation and glory of the Lord Himself. And so we who were formerly brought as it were into the holy place of the temple by priestly hands, now penetrate under your guidance and protection, so to speak, into the holy of holies. Great is the honour but most perilous the undertaking, [2362] because the prize of the holy sanctuary and the divine reward can only be secured by a victory over our foe. And so you require and charge us to raise our feeble hands against a fresh heresy and a new enemy of the faith, [2363] and that we should take our stand, so to speak, against the awful open-mouthed gapings of the deadly serpent, that at my summons the power of prophecy and the divine force of the gospel word may destroy the dragon now rising up with sinuous course against the Churches of God. I obey your intreaty: I yield to your command: for I had rather trust in my own matters to you than to myself, especially as the love of Jesus Christ my Lord commands me this as well as you, for He Himself gives me this charge in your person. For in this matter you are more concerned than I am, as your judgment stands in peril rather than my duty. For in my case, whether I prove equal to what you have commanded me or no, the very fact of my obedience and humility will be in some degree an excuse for me; if indeed I might not urge that there is more value in my obedience, if there is less that I can do. For we easily comply with any one's orders, out of our abundance: but his is a great and wonderful work, whose desires exceed his powers. Yours then is this work and business, and yours it is to be ashamed of it. Pray and intreat that your choice may not be discredited by my clumsiness; and that, supposing we do not answer the expectations which you have formed of us, you may not seem to have been wrong in commanding out of an ill-considered determination, while I was right in yielding, owing to the claims of obedience. __________________________________________________________________
[2361] Mi Leo, veneranda ac suscipienda caritas mea, Romanæ ecclesiæ ac divini ministerii decus (Petschenig). Gennadius (De Vir. Illust. c. lxi.) tells us of Cassian, that "finally at the request of Leo, then archdeacon of Rome and afterwards Bishop, he wrote seven books against Nestorius on the Incarnation of the Lord, and thus brought to a close his literary labours at Marseilles, as well as his life, in the reign of Theodosius and Valentinian. The date of the work must have been a.d. 430, shortly before the Council of Ephesus.
[2362] Professio (Petschenig): Progressio (Gazæus).
[2363] Nestorius had been consecrated Bishop of Constantinople in a.d. 428, and very shortly afterwards joined Anastasius in the denial that God could be born of a woman, and developed the heresy associated with his name. __________________________________________________________________
The SEVEN BOOKS OF JOHN CASSIAN
On The Incarnation Of The Lord, Against Nestorius.
ON THE
INCARNATION OF THE LORD, AGAINST NESTORIUS. __________________________________________________________________
Book I. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter I.
The heresy compared to the hydra of the poets. [2364]
The tales of poets tell us that of old the hydra when its heads were cut off gained by its injuries, and sprang up more abundantly: so that owing to a miracle of a strange and unheard-of kind, its loss proved a kind of gain to the monster which was thus increased by death, while that extraordinary fecundity doubled everything which the knife of the executioner cut off, until the man who was eagerly seeking its destruction, toiling and sweating, and finding his efforts so often baffled by useless labours, added to the courage of battle the arts of craft, and by the application of fire, as they tell us, cut off with a fiery sword the manifold offspring of that monstrous body; and so when the inward parts were thus burnt, by cauterizing the rebellious throbbings of that ghastly fecundity, at length those prodigious births were brought to an end. Thus also heresies in the churches bear some likeness to that hydra which the poets' imagination invented; for they too hiss against us with deadly tongues; and they too cast forth their deadly poison, and spring up again when their heads are cut off. But because the medicine should not be wanting when the disease revives, and because the remedy should be the more speedy as the sickness is the more dangerous, our Lord God is able to bring to pass that that may be a truth in the church's warfare, which Gentile fictions imagined of the death of the hydra, and that the fiery sword of the Holy Spirit may cauterize the inward parts of that most dangerous birth, in the new heresy to be put down, so that at last its monstrous fecundity may cease to answer to its dying throbs. __________________________________________________________________
[2364] Petschenig's text gives no titles to the chapters in this work. They are added here from the text of Gazæus. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter II.
Description of the different heretical monsters which spring from one another.
For these shoots of an unnatural seed are no new thing in the churches. The harvest of the Lord's field has always had to put up with burrs and briars, and in it the shoots of choking tares have constantly sprung up. For hence have arisen the Ebionites, Sabellians, Arians, as well as Eunomians and Macedonians, and Photinians and Apollinarians, and all the other tares of the churches, and thistles which destroy the fruits of good faith. And of these the earliest was Ebion, [2365] who while over-anxious about asserting our Lord's humanity [2366] robbed it of its union with Divinity. But after him the schism of Sabellius burst forth out of reaction against the above mentioned heresy, and as he declared that there was no distinction between the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, he impiously confounded, as far as was possible, the Persons, and failed to distinguish the holy and ineffable Trinity. Next after him whom we have mentioned there followed the blasphemy of Arian perversity, which, in order to avoid the appearance of confounding the Sacred Persons, declared that there were different and dissimilar substances in the Trinity. But after him in time though like him in wickedness came Eunomius, who, though allowing that the Persons of the Holy Trinity were divine and like [2367] each other, yet insisted that they were separate from each other; and so while admitting their likeness denied their equality. Macedonius also blaspheming against the Holy Ghost with unpardonable wickedness, while allowing that the Father and the Son were of one substance, termed the Holy Ghost a creature, and so sinned against the entire Divinity, because no injury can be offered to anything in the Trinity without affecting the entire Trinity. But Photinus, though allowing that Jesus who was born of the Virgin was God, yet erred in his notion that His Godhead began with the beginning of His manhood; [2368] while Apollinaris through inaccurately conceiving the union of God and man wrongly believed that He was without a human soul. For it is as bad an error to add to our Lord Jesus Christ what does not belong to Him as to rob Him of that which is His. For where He is spoken of otherwise than as He is--even though it seems to add to His glory--yet it is an offence. And so one after another out of reaction against heresies they give rise to heresies, and all teach things different from each other, but equally opposed to the faith. And just lately also, i.e., in our own days, we saw a most poisonous heresy spring up from the greatest city of the Belgæ, [2369] and though there was no doubt about its error, yet there was a doubt about its name, because it arose with a fresh head from the old stock of the Ebionites, and so it is still a question whether it ought to be called old or new. For it was new as far as its upholders were concerned; but old in the character of its errors. Indeed it blasphemously taught that our Lord Jesus Christ was born as a mere man, and maintained that the fact that He afterwards obtained the glory and power of the Godhead resulted from His human worth and not from His Divine nature; and by this it taught that He had not always His Divinity by the right of His very own Divine nature which belonged to Him, but that He obtained it afterwards as a reward for His labours and sufferings. Whereas then it blasphemously taught that our Lord and Saviour was not God at His birth, but was subsequently taken into the Godhead, it was indeed bordering on this heresy which has now sprung up, and is as it were its first cousin and akin to it, and, harmonizing both with Ebionism and these new ones, came in point of time between them, and was linked with them both in point of wickedness. And although there are some others like those which we have mentioned yet it would take too long to describe them all. Nor have we now undertaken to enumerate those that are dead and gone, but to refute those which are novel. __________________________________________________________________
[2365] The earliest writer to allude to an "Ebion" as the supposed founder of the Ebionites is Tertullian (Præscriptio c. xxxiii.). He is followed in this by Epiphanius (I. xxx.); Rufinus (In Symb. Apost. c. xxxix.), and others; but the existence of such a person is more than doubtful, and the name is now generally believed to have been derived from the Hebrew "Ebhion"=poor.
[2366] Incarnatio.
[2367] Cassian's statement here is scarcely accurate, as Eunomius is best known from his bold assertion that the Son was unlike (anomoion) to the Father.
[2368] Photinus, the pupil of Marcellus of Ancyra, appears to have taught a form of Sabellianism, teaching that Christ Himself, the Son of God, had not existed from all eternity but only from the time when He became the Son of God and Christ; viz., at the Incarnation.
[2369] Et maxima Belgarum urbe (Petschenig). Gazæus edits: Et maxime Beligarum urbe. The city must be Trêves and the allusion is to the heresy of Leporius, which was an outcome of Pelagianism. Leporius was apparently a native of Trêves who propagated Pelagian views in Gaul, ascribing his virtues to his own free will and his own strength; and going to far greater lengths than his master in that he connected this doctrine of human sufficiency with heretical views on the Incarnation; thus combining Pelagianism with what was practically Nestorianism, teaching that Jesus was a mere man who had used His free will so well as to have lived without sin, and had only been made Christ in virtue of His Baptism, whereby the Divine and Human were associated so as virtually to make two Christs. He taught further that the only object of His coming into the world was to exhibit to mankind an example of virtue; and that if they chose to profit by it they also might be without sin. For these errors he was rebuked by Cassian and others in Gaul and on his refusal to abandon them was formally censured by Proculus Bishop of Marseilles and Cylinnius (Bishop of Fréjus?). He then left Gaul and came to Africa, where he was convinced by Augustine of the erroneous character of his teaching, and under his influence signed a recantation, which was perhaps drawn up by Augustine himself, and from which Cassian quotes below (c. v.). This recantation was read in the Church of Carthage, and subscribed by four bishops as witnesses (including Augustine). It was then sent to the Gallican Bishops accompanied by a letter from the four attesting bishops (Epp. August. no. ccxxix.) commending the treatment which Leporius had previously received, but recommending him once more to their favour as having retracted his errors. See further Fleury H. E. Book XXIV. c. xlix. and Dictionary of Christian Biography, Art. Leporius. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter III.
He describes the pestilent error of the Pelagian.
At any rate we think that this fact ought not to be omitted, which was special and peculiar to that heresy mentioned above which sprang from the error of Pelagius; viz., that in saying that Jesus Christ had lived as a mere man without any stain of sin, they actually went so far as to declare that men could also be without sin if they liked. For they imagined that it followed that if Jesus Christ being a mere man was without sin, all men also could without the help of God be whatever He as a mere man without participating in the Godhead, could be. And so they made out that there was no difference between any man and our Lord Jesus Christ, as any man could by effort and striving obtain just the same as Christ had obtained by His earnestness and efforts. Whence it resulted that they broke out into a more grievous and unnatural madness, and said that our Lord Jesus Christ had come into this world not to bring redemption to mankind but to give an example of good works, to wit, that men, by following His teaching, and by walking along the same path of virtue, might arrive at the same reward of virtue: thus destroying, as far as they could, all the good of His sacred advent and all the grace of Divine redemption, as they declared that men could by their own lives obtain just that which God had wrought by dying for man's salvation. They added as well that our Lord and Saviour became the Christ after His Baptism, and God after His Resurrection, tracing the former to the mystery of His anointing, the latter to the merits of His Passion. Whence this new author [2370] of a heresy that is not new, who declares that our Lord and Saviour was born a mere man, observes that he says exactly the same thing which the Pelagians said before him, and allows that it follows from his error that as he asserts that our Lord Jesus Christ lived as a mere man entirely without sin, so he must maintain in his blasphemy that all men can of themselves be without sin, nor would he admit that our Lord's redemption was a thing needful for His example, since men can (as they say) reach the heavenly kingdom by their own exertions. Nor is there any doubt about this, as the thing itself shows us. For hence it comes that he encourages the complaints of the Pelagians by his intervention, and introduces their case into his writings, because he cleverly or (to speak more truly) cunningly patronizes them and by his wicked liking for them recommends their mischievous teaching which is akin to his own, for he is well aware that he is of the same opinion and of the same spirit, and therefore is distressed that a heresy akin to his own has been cast out of the church, as he knows that it is entirely allied to his own in wickedness. __________________________________________________________________
[2370] Nestorius. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IV.
Leporius together with some others recants his Pelagianism.
But still as those who were the outcome of this stock of pestilent thorns have already by the Divine help and goodness been healed, we should also now pray to our Lord God that as in some points that older heresy and this new one are akin to each other, He would grant a like happy ending to those which had a like bad beginning. For Leporius, then a monk, now a presbyter, who followed the teaching or rather the evil deeds of Pelagius, as we said above, and was among the earliest and greatest champions of the aforesaid heresy in Gaul, was admonished by us and corrected by God, and so nobly condemned his former erroneous persuasion that his amendment was almost as much a matter for congratulation as is the unimpaired faith of many. For it is the best thing never to fall into error: the second best thing to make a good repudiation of it. He then coming to himself confessed his mistake with grief but without shame not only in Africa, where he was then and is now, [2371] but also gave to all the cities of Gaul penitent letters containing his confession and grief; in order that his return to the faith might be made known where his deviation from it had been first published, and that those who had formerly been witnesses of his error might also afterwards be witnesses of his amendment. __________________________________________________________________
[2371] The after history of Leporius appears to have been this. Having come under Augustine's influence, he was persuaded by him to give up all his property, and renounce the temporal care of a monastery which he had previously founded in a garden at Hippo; where also he had begun to build a xenodochium or house of refuge for strangers, partly at his own expense, and partly out of the alms of the faithful. He also at Augustine's suggestion, built a church in memory of the "eight martyrs" (see Aug. Serm. 356). This complete renunciation of the world must have taken place about 425; and in the following year we find that he was present at the election of Eraclius to succeed Augustine (Aug. Ep. 213); but subsequent to this nothing is known of his history except that he was still living when Cassian wrote. It is right to mention that doubts have been raised by Tillemont whether the presbyter of Hippo is identical with the quondam heretic, but on scarcely sufficient grounds. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter V.
By the case of Leporius he establishes the fact that an open sin ought to be expiated by an open confession; and also teaches from his words what is the right view to be held on the Incarnation.
And from his confession or rather lamentation we have thought it well to quote some part, for two reasons: that their recantation might be a testimony to us, and an example to those who are weak, and that they might not be ashamed to follow in their amendment, the men whom they were not ashamed to follow in their error; and that they might be cured by a like remedy as they suffered from a like disease. He then acknowledging the perverseness of his views, and seeing the light of faith, wrote to the Gallican Bishops, and thus began: [2372] "I scarcely know, O my most venerable lords and blessed priests, what first to accuse myself of, and what first to excuse myself for. Clumsiness and pride and foolish ignorance together with wrong notions, zeal combined with indiscretion, and (to speak truly) a weak faith which was gradually failing, all these were admitted by me and flourished to such an extent that I am ashamed of having yielded to such and so many sins, while at the same time I am profoundly thankful for having been able to cast them out of my soul." And after a little he adds: "If then, not understanding this power of God, and wise in our conceits and opinions, from fear lest God should seem to act a part that was beneath Him, we suppose that a man was born in conjunction with God, in such a way that we ascribe to God alone what belongs to God separately, and attribute to man alone what belongs to man separately, we clearly add a fourth Person to the Trinity and out of the one God the Son begin to make not one but two Christs; from which may our Lord and God Jesus Christ Himself preserve us. Therefore we confess that our Lord and God Jesus Christ the only Son of God, who for His own sake [2373] was begotten of the Father before all worlds, when in time He was for our sakes [2374] made man of the Holy Ghost and the ever-virgin Mary, was God at His birth; and while we confess the two substances of the flesh and the Word, [2375] we always acknowledge with pious belief and faith one and the same Person to be indivisibly God and man; and we say that from the time when He took upon Him flesh all that belonged to God was given to man, as all that belonged to man was joined to God. [2376] And in this sense the Word was made flesh:' [2377] not that He began by any conversion or change to be what He was not, but that by the Divine economy' the Word of the Father never left the Father, [2378] and yet vouchsafed to become truly man, and the Only Begotten was incarnate through that hidden mystery which He alone understands (for it is ours to believe: His to understand). And thus God the Word' Himself receiving everything that belongs to man, is made man, and the manhood [2379] which is assumed, receiving everything that belongs to God cannot but be God; but whereas He is said to be incarnate and unmixed, we must not hold that there is any diminution of His substance: for God knows how to communicate Himself without suffering any corruption, and yet truly to communicate Himself. He knows how to receive into Himself without Himself being increased thereby, just as He knows how to impart Himself in such a way as Himself to suffer no loss. We should not then in our feeble minds make guesses, in accordance with visible proofs and experiments, from the case of creatures which are equal, and which mutually enter into each other, nor think that God and man are mixed together, and that out of such a fusion of flesh and the Word (i.e., the Godhead and manhood) some sort of body is produced. God forbid that we should imagine that the two natures being in a way moulded together should become one substance. For a mixture of this sort is destructive of both parts. For God, who contains and is not Himself contained, who enters into things and is not Himself entered into, who fills things and is not Himself filled, who is everywhere at once in His completeness and is diffused everywhere, communicates Himself graciously to human nature by the infusion of His power." And after a little: "Therefore the God-man, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is truly born for us of the Holy Ghost and the ever-virgin Mary. And so in the two natures the Word and Flesh become one, so that while each substance continues naturally perfect in itself, what is Divine imparteth without suffering any loss, to the humanity, and what is human participates in the Divine; nor is there one person God, and another person man, but the same person is God who is also man: and again the man who is also God is called and indeed is Jesus Christ the only Son of God; and so we must always take care and believe so as not to deny that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, Very God (whom we confess as existing ever with the Father and equal to the Father before all worlds) became from the moment when He took flesh the God-man. Nor may we imagine that gradually as time went on He became God, and that He was in one condition before the resurrection and in another after it, but that He was always of the same fulness and power." And again a little later on: "But because the Word of God [2380] vouchsafed to come down upon manhood by assuming manhood, and manhood was taken up into the Word by being assumed by God, God the Word in His completeness became complete man. For it was not God the Father who was made man, nor the Holy Ghost, but the Only Begotten of the Father; and so we must hold that there is one Person of the Flesh and the Word: so as faithfully and without any doubt to believe that one and the same Son of God, who can never be divided, existing in two natures [2381] (who was also spoken of as a "giant" [2382] ) in the days of His Flesh truly took upon Him all that belongs to man, and ever truly had as His own what belongs to God: since even though [2383] He was crucified in weakness, yet He liveth by the power of God." __________________________________________________________________
[2372] The recantation of Leporius may be found in the Bibliotheca Maxima Patrum. vol. vii. p. 14; Labbe, Concilia, ii. p. 1678; and Migne Patrol. Lat. xxxi. p. 1221.
[2373] Sibi...nobis.
[2374] Sibi...nobis.
[2375] Caro and Verbum when used in this way stand for the Humanity and the Divinity of Christ.
[2376] The meaning of course is not that the manhood was endowed with the properties of Deity, or conversely the Deity with the properties of Humanity, but simply that two whole and perfect natures were joined together in the one Person.
[2377] S. John i. 14.
[2378] This phrase gives some countenance to the idea that the recantation was actually drawn up by Augustine, as the thought which it contains is a favorite one with him, as excluding any notion that Christ ever for one moment ceased to be God. See Serm. 184. "Intelligerent...Eum...in homine ad nos venisse et a Patre non recessisse." 186 "manens quod erat." Similar language is used by S. Leo, Serm. 18. c. 5. In Natio. 2. c. 2. and S. Thomas Aquinas in the well-known Sacramental hymn "Verbum supernum prodiens, Nec Patris linquens dexteram." Cf. Bright's S. Leo on the Incarnation, p. 220.
[2379] Homo is here used as frequently by Augustine and other early writers for "Manhood," and not an "individual man." In this way it was freely used till the Nestorian Controversy, after which it went out of favour as capable of a Nestorian interpretation, and gave place to "humanitas" or "humana natura," when the manhood of Christ was spoken of. See the Church Quarterly Review vol. xviii. p. 10; and Bright's S. Leo on the Incarnation, p. 165.
[2380] Verbum Dei (Petschenig) Verbum Deus (Gazæus).
[2381] Substantiæ.
[2382] The allusion is to Ps. xviii. (xix.) 5, where the Latin (Gallican Psalter) has "Exultavit, ut gigas, ad currendam viam." The mystical interpretation which takes the words as referring to Christ is not uncommon. So in a hymn "De Adventu Domini" (Mone. Vol. i. p. 43) we have the verse, "Procedit a thalamo suo Pudoris aula regia Geminæ gigas substantiæ, Alacris ut currat viam," and in another "De natali Domini" (p. 58) "Ut gigas egreditur ad currendam viam."
[2383] Etsi (Petschenig) Et sic (Gazæus). __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VI.
The united doctrine of the Catholics is to be received as the orthodox faith.
This confession of his therefore, which was the faith of all Catholics was approved of by all the Bishops of Africa, [2384] whence he wrote, and by all those of Gaul, to whom he wrote. Nor has there ever been anyone who quarrelled with this faith, without being guilty of unbelief: for to deny what is right and proved is to confess what is wrong. The agreement of all ought then to be in itself already sufficient to confute heresy: for the authority of all shows undoubted truth, and a perfect reason results where no one disputes it: so that if a man endeavours to hold opinions contrary to these, we should in the first instance rather condemn his perverseness than listen to his assertions, for one who impugns the judgment of all announces beforehand his own condemnation, and a man who disturbs what has been determined by all, is not even given a hearing. For when the truth has once for all been established by all men, whatever arises contrary to it is by this very fact to be recognized at once as falsehood, because it differs from the truth. And thus it is agreed that this alone is sufficient to condemn a man; viz., that he differs from the judgment of truth. But still as an explanation of a system does no harm to the system, and truth always shines brighter when thoroughly ventilated, and as it is better that those who are wrong should be set right by discussion rather than condemned by severe censures, we should cure, as far as we can with the Divine assistance, this old heresy appearing in the persons of new heretics, that when through God's mercy they have recovered their health, their cure may bear testimony to our holy faith instead of their condemnation proving an instance of just severity. Only may the Truth indeed be present at our discussion and discourse concerning it, and assist our human weakness with that goodness with which God vouchsafed to come to men, as for this purpose above all He willed to be born on earth and among men; viz., that there might be no more room for falsehood. __________________________________________________________________
[2384] The attesting Bishops who subscribed his recantation as witnesses were Aurelius of Carthage; Augustine of Hippo Regius; Florentius of the other Hippo; and Secundinus of Megarmita. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Book II. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter I.
How the errors of later heretics have been condemned and refuted in the persons of their authors and originators.
As we began by setting down in the first book some things by which we showed that our new heretic is but an offshoot from ancient stocks of heresy, the due condemnation of the earlier heretics ought to be enough to secure a sentence of due condemnation for him. For as he has the same roots and grows up out of the same fallow [2385] he has already been amply condemned in the persons of his predecessors, especially as those who went wrong immediately before these men very properly condemned the very thing which these men are now asserting, [2386] so that the examples of their own party ought to be amply sufficient for them in both directions; viz., that of those who were restored and that of those who were condemned. For if they are capable of amendment they have their remedy set forth in the correction of their own party. If they are incapable of it they receive their sentence in the condemnation of their own folk. But that we may not be thought to have prejudged the case against them instead of fairly judging it, we will produce their actual pestilent assertions, or rather I should say their blasphemous folly: taking "above all the shield of faith, and the sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God," [2387] that when the head of the old serpent rises once more, the same sword of the Divine Word which formerly severed it in the case of those ancient dragons may even now cut it off in the persons of these new serpents. For since the error of these is the same as that of those former ones, the decapitation of those ought to be counted as the decapitation of these; and as the serpents revive and emit pestilent blasts against the Lord's church, and cause some to fail through their hissing, we must on account of these new diseases add a fresh remedy to those older cures, so that even if what has already been done prove insufficient to heal [2388] the malady, what we are now doing may be adequate to restore those who are suffering from it. __________________________________________________________________
[2385] Scrobibus (Petschenig): The text of Gazæus has enoribus.
[2386] The allusion is to the recantation of Leporius and his companions. They were the immediate predecessors of Nestorius, and Cassian means to say that their recantation of their error ought to have been an example for Nestorius to follow.
[2387] Eph. vi. 16-17.
[2388] Curationem (Petschenig): Damnationem (Gazæus). __________________________________________________________________
Chapter II.
Proof that the Virgin Mother of God was not only Christotocos but also Theotocos, and that Christ is truly God.
And so you say, O heretic, whoever you may be, who deny that God was born of the Virgin, that Mary the Mother of our Lord Jesus Christ ought not to be called Theotocos, i.e., Mother of God, but Christotocos, i.e., only the Mother of Christ, not of God. [2389] For no one, you say, brings forth what is anterior in time. And of this utterly foolish argument whereby you think that the birth of God can be understood by carnal minds, and fancy that the mystery of His Majesty can be accounted for by human reasoning, we will, if God permits, say something later on. [2390] In the meanwhile we will now prove by Divine testimonies that Christ is God, and that Mary is the Mother of God. Hear then how the angel of God speaks to the Shepherds of the birth of God. "There is born," he says, "to you this day in the city of David a Saviour who is Christ the Lord." [2391] In order that you may not take Christ for a mere man, he adds the name of Lord and Saviour, on purpose that you may have no doubt that He whom you acknowledge as Saviour is God, and that (as the office of saving belongs only to Divine power) you may not question that He is of Divine power, in whom you have learnt that the power to save resides. But perhaps this is not enough to convince your unbelief, as the angel of the Lord termed Him Lord and Saviour rather than God or the Son of God, as you certainly most wickedly deny Him to be God, whom you acknowledge to be Saviour. Hear then what the archangel Gabriel announces to the Virgin Mary. "The Holy Ghost," he says, "shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God." [2392] Do you see how, when he is going to point out the nativity of God, he first speaks of a work of Divinity. For "the Holy Ghost," he says, "shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee." Admirably did the angel speak, and explain the majesty of the Divine work by the Divine character of his words. For the Holy Ghost sanctified the Virgin's womb, and breathed into it by the power of His Divinity, and thus imparted and communicated Himself to human nature; and made His own what was before foreign to Him, taking it to Himself by His own power and majesty. [2393] And lest the weakness of human nature should not be able to bear the entrance of Divinity the power of the Most High strengthened the ever to be honoured Virgin, so that it supported her bodily weakness by embracing it with overshadowing protection, and human weakness was not insufficient for the consummation of the ineffable mystery of the holy conception, since it was supported by the Divine overshadowing. "Therefore," he says, "the Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee." If only a mere man was to be born of a pure virgin why should there be such careful mention of the Divine Advent? Why such intervention of Divinity itself? Certainly if only a man was to be born from man, and flesh from flesh, a command alone might have done it, or the Divine will. For if the will of God alone, and His command sufficed to fashion the heavens, form the earth, create the sea, thrones, and seats, and angels, and archangels, and principalities, and powers, and in a word to create all the armies of heaven, and those countless thousands of thousands of the Divine hosts ("For He spake and they were made, He commanded and they were created" [2394] ), why was it that that was insufficient for the creation of (according to you) a single man, which was sufficient for the production of all things divine, and that the power and majesty of God did not entrust that with the birth of a single infant, which had availed to fashion all things earthly and heavenly? But certainly the reason why all those works were performed by the command of God, but the nativity was only accomplished by His coming was because God could not be conceived by man unless He allowed it, nor be born unless He Himself entered in; and therefore the archangel pointed out that the sacred majesty would come upon the Virgin, I mean that as so great an event could not be brought about by human appointment, he announced that there would be present at the conception the glory of Him who was to be born. [2395] And so the Word, the Son, descended: the majesty of the Holy Ghost was present: the power of the Father was overshadowing; that in the mystery of the holy conception the whole Trinity might cooperate. "Therefore," he says, "also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God." Admirably does he add "Therefore," in order to show that this would therefore follow because that had gone before; and that because God had come upon her at the conception therefore God would be present at the birth. And when the maiden understood not, he gave a reason for this great thing, saying: "Because the Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and because the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee, therefore also that holy thing which shall be born shall be called the Son of God;" that is to say: That thou mayest not be ignorant of the provision for so great a work, and the mystery of this great secret, the majesty of God shall therefore come upon thee completely; because the Son of God shall be born of thee. What further doubt can there be about this? or what is there further to be said? He said that God would come upon her; that the Son of God would be born. Ask now, if you like, how the Son of God can help being God, or how she who brought forth God can fail to be Theotocos, i.e., the Mother of God? This alone ought to be enough for you; aye this ought to be amply sufficient for you. __________________________________________________________________
[2389] The Nestorian controversy was originated by a sermon of Anastasius, a follower of Theodore of Mopsuestia, whom Nestorius brought with him to Constantinople as his chaplain on his appointment as Archbishop, a.d. 428. This man, preaching in the presence of the archbishop, said: "Let no one call Mary Theotocos; for Mary was but a woman, and it is impossible that God should be born of a woman." In the controversy which was immediately excited by these words Nestorius at once took the part of his chaplain and preached a course of sermons in maintenance of his views; refusing to the Blessed Virgin the title of Theotocos, while admitting that she might be termed Christotocos. See Socrates H. E. Book VII.. c. xxxii., Evagrius H. E. Book I. c. ii., and Vincentius Lirinensis Book I. c. xvii. The sermons are still partially existing in the writings of Marius Mercator: and in the second of them the title Christotokos is admitted. Cf. Hefele's Councils Book IX. c. i. (Vol. iii. Eng. Transl. p. 12 sq.).
[2390] The subject is dealt with in Book IV. c. ii.; VII. c. ii. sq.
[2391] S. Luke ii. 11.
[2392] S. Luke i. 35.
[2393] On the conception by the Holy Ghost compare Pearson on the Creed. Article III. c. ii.
[2394] Ps. xxxii. (xxxiii.) 9.
[2395] Petschenig's text is as follows: Videlicet ut, quia agi tanta res per humanum officium non valebat, ipsius ad futuram diceret majestatem in conceptu, qui erat futurus in partu; while Gazæus reads deceret for diceret. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter III.
Follows up the same argument with passages from the Old Testament.
But as there is an abundant supply of witnesses to the holy nativity; viz., all that has been on this account written, to hear witness to it, let us examine in some slight degree an announcement about God even in the Old Testament, that you may know that the fact that the birth of God was to be from a virgin was not only then announced when it actually came to pass, but had been foretold from the very beginning of the world, that, as the event to be brought about was ineffable, incredulity of the fact when actually present might be removed by its having been previously announced while still future. And so the prophet Isaiah says: "Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which is interpreted God with us." [2396] What room is there here for doubt, you incredulous person? [2397] The prophet said that a virgin should conceive: a virgin has conceived: that a Son should be born: a Son has been born: that He should be called God: He is called God. For He is called by that name as being of that nature. Therefore when the Spirit of God said that He should be called God, He proved that He is without the Spirit of God who makes himself a stranger to all fellowship with the Divine title. "Behold then," he says, "a virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Emmanuel, which is interpreted God with us." But here is a point on which it is possible that your shuffling incredulity may fasten; viz., by saying that this which the prophet declared He should be called referred not to the glory of His Divinity, but to the name by which He should be addressed. But what are we to do because Christ is never spoken of by this name in the gospels, though the Spirit of God cannot be said to have spoken falsely through the prophet? How is it then? Surely that we should understand that that prophecy then foretold the name of His Divine nature and not of His humanity. For since in His manhood united to the Godhead [2398] He received another name in the gospel, it is certainly clear that this name belonged to His humanity, that to His Divinity. But let us proceed further and summon other true witnesses to establish the truth: For where we are speaking about the Godhead, the Divinity cannot be better established than by His own witnesses. So then the same prophet says elsewhere: "For unto us a Son is born: unto us a child is given; and the government shall be upon His shoulder; and His name shall be called the angel of great counsel, God the mighty, the Father of the world to come, the Prince of peace." [2399] Just as above the prophet had expressly said that He should be called Emmanuel, so here he says that He should be called "the angel of great counsel, and God the mighty, and the Father of the world to come and the prince of peace" (although we certainly never read that He was called by these names in the gospel): of course that we may understand that these are not terms belonging to His human, but to His Divine nature; and that the name used in the gospel belonged to the manhood which He took upon Him, [2400] and this one to His innate power. And because God was to be born in human form, these names were so distributed in the sacred economy, that to the manhood a human name was given and to the Divinity a Divine one. Therefore he says: "He shall be called the angel of great counsel, God the mighty, the Father of the world to come, the prince of peace." Not, O heretic, whoever you may be, not that here the prophet, full as he was of the Holy Spirit, followed your example and compared Him who was born to a molten image and a figure fashioned without sense. [2401] For "a Son," he says, "is born to us, a Child is given to us; and the government shall be upon his shoulder; and His name shall be called the angel of great counsel, God the mighty." And that you may not imagine Him whom He announced as God [2402] to be other than Him who was born in the flesh, he adds a term referring to His birth, saying: "A child is born to us: a son is given to us." Do you see how many titles the prophet used to make clear the reality of His birth in the body? for he called Him both Son and child on purpose that the manner of the child which was born might be more clearly shown by a name referring to His infancy; and the Holy Spirit foreseeing without doubt this perversity of blasphemous heretics, showed to the whole world that it was God who was born, by the very terms and words used; that even if a heretic was determined to utter blasphemy, he might not find any loophole for his blasphemy. Therefore he says: "A Son is born to us; a child is given to us; and the government shall be upon His shoulder; and His name shall be called the angel of great counsel, God the mighty, the Father of the world to come, the prince of peace." He teaches that this child which was born is both prince of peace and Father of the world to come and God the mighty. What room is there then for shuffling? This child which is born cannot be severed from God who is born in Him, for he called Him, whom he spoke of as born, Father of the world to come; Him whom he called a child, he foretold as God the mighty. What is it, O heretic? Whither will you betake yourself? Every place is hedged and shut in: there is no possibility of getting out of it. There is nothing for it but that you should at length be obliged to confess the mistake which you would not understand. But not content with these passages which are indeed enough let us inquire what the Holy Ghost said through another prophet. "Shall a man," says he, "pierce his God, for you are piercing me?" [2403] In order that the subject of the prophecy might be still clearer the prophet foretells what he proclaimed of the Lord's passion as if from the mouth of Him of whom he was speaking. "Shall a man pierce his God, for you are piercing me?" Does not our Lord God, I ask, seem to have said this when He was led to the Cross? Why indeed do you not acknowledge Me as your Redeemer? Why are ye ignorant of God clothed in flesh for you? Are you preparing death for your Saviour? Are yon leading forth to death the Author of life? I am your God whom ye are lifting up: your God whom ye are crucifying. What mistake, I ask, is here or what madness is it? "Shall a man pierce his God, for you are piercing me?" Do you see how exactly the words describe what was actually done? Could you ask for anything more express or clearer? Do you see how sacred testimonies follow our Incarnate Lord Jesus Christ from the very cradle to the Cross which He bore, as here you can see that He whom elsewhere you read of as God when born in the flesh was God when pierced on the cross? And so there, where His birth was treated of, He is spoken of by the prophet as God: and here where His crucifixion is concerned, He is most clearly named God; that the taking upon Him of manhood might not in any point prejudice dignity of His Divinity, nor the humiliation of His body and the shame of the passion affect the glory of His majesty; for His condescension to so lowly a birth and His generous goodness in enduring his passion ought to increase our love and devotion to Him; since it is certainly a great and monstrous sin if, the more He lavishes love upon us, the less He is honoured by us. __________________________________________________________________
[2396] Isa. vii. 14.
[2397] Incredule (Petschenig). Incredulæ (Gazæus).
[2398] Here is an instance of language which the mature judgment of the Church has rejected, as experience showed how it was capable of being pressed into the service of heresy. Homo unitus Deo, in Cassian's mouth evidently means the manhood joined to the Godhead, but the words might easily be taken as implying that a man was united to God, i.e., that there were in the Incarnation two persons, one assuming and the other assumed, which was the essence of Nestorianism. Compare above, the note on Homo to Book I. c. v.
[2399] Isa. ix. 6 where in the LXX. B reads hoti paidion hegennethe hemin, huios kai edothe hemin, hou he arche egenethe epi tou omou autou, kai kaleitai to onoma autou Megales Boules angelos azo gar k.t.l. To this, however, ' and A add after angelos, thaumastos sumboulos; Theos (our Theos A) ischuros exousiastes archon eirenes pater tou mellontos haionos and hence in the main comes the old Latin version, which Cassian here follows. Jerome's version has Parvulus enim natus est nobis et filius datus est nobis; et factus est principatus super humerum ejus: et vocabitur nomen ejus admirabilis consiliarius Deus fortis pater futuri sæculi princeps pacis. The Hebrew has nothing directly corresponding to the "angel of great counsel," which seems to be intended as a paraphrase of "Wonderful Counsellor" (cf. Judg. xiii. 18), while "Father of the world to come" is an interpretation of the Hebrew "Father of eternity."
[2400] Suscepti hominis. Cf. the line in the Te Deum, which originally ran "Tu ad liberandum mundum suscepisti hominem: non horruisti virginis uterum."
[2401] See the language of Nestorius himself quoted below in Book VII. c. vi. and cf. V. iii.
[2402] The text of Gazæus omits Deus.
[2403] Malachi iii. 8. Jerome's rendering is almost identical "Si affiget homo Deum, quia vos configitis me," where the Douay version strangely departs from the literal sense of the word and renders vaguely "afflict." It is clear however that it was intended to be understood literally, as it is here taken by Cassian as a direct prophecy of the Crucifixion. The LXX. has pterniei. The Hebrew word, which is only found again in Prov. xxii. 23, appears to mean "defraud." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IV.
He produces testimonies to the same doctrine from the Apostle Paul.
But passing over these things which cannot possibly be unfolded because there would be no limit to the telling of them, as the blessings which he gives are without stint, it is time for us to consult the Apostle Paul, the stoutest and clearest witness to Him, for he can tell us everything about God in the most trustworthy way because God always spoke from his breast. He then, the chosen teacher of the nations, who was sent to destroy the errors of Gentile superstition, bears his witness in the following way to the grace and coming of our Lord God: "The grace," he says, "of God and our Saviour appeared unto all men, instructing us that denying ungodliness and worldly desires we should live soberly and justly and godly in this world, looking for the blessed hope and coming of the glory of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ." [2404] He says that "there appeared the grace of God our Saviour." Admirably does he use a word suited to show the arrival of a new grace and birth; for by saying "there appeared," he indicated the approach of a new grace and birth, for thenceforward the gift of a new grace began to appear, from the moment when God appeared as born in the world. Thus by using the right word, and one exactly suitable, he shows the light of this new grace almost as if he pointed to it with his finger. For that is most properly said to appear, which is shown by sudden light manifesting it. Just as we read in the gospel that the star appeared to the wise men in the East: [2405] and in Exodus: "There appeared," he says, "to Moses an angel in a flame of fire in the bush:" [2406] for in all these and in the case of other visions in the Holy Scripture, Scripture determined that this word in particular should be used, that it might speak of that as "appearing," which shone forth with unwonted light. So then the Apostle also, well knowing the coming of the heavenly grace, which appeared at the approach of the holy nativity, indicated it by using a term applied to a bright appearance; expressly in order to say that it appeared, as it shone with the splendour of a new light. "There appeared" then "the grace of God our Saviour." Surely you cannot raise any quibble about the ambiguity of the names in this place, so as to say that "Christ" is one and "God" another, or to divide "the Saviour" from the glory of His name, and separate "the Lord" from the Divinity? Lo, here the vessel [2407] of God speaks from God, and testifies by the clearest statement that the grace of God appeared from Mary. And in order that you may not deny that God appeared from Mary, he at once adds the name of Saviour, on purpose that you may believe that He who is born of Mary is God, whom you cannot deny to have been born a Saviour, in accordance with this passage: "For to you is born to-day a Saviour." [2408] O excellent teacher of the Gentiles truly given by God to them, for he knew that this wild heretical folly would arise, which would turn to controversial uses the names of God, and would not hesitate to slander God from His own titles; and so just in order that the heretic might not separate the title of Saviour from the Divinity he put first the name of God, that the name of God standing first might claim as His all the names which followed, and that no one might imagine that in what followed Christ was spoken of as a mere man, as by the very first word used he had taught that He was God. "Looking," says the same Apostle, "for the blessed hope and coming of the glory of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ." Certainly that teacher of divine wisdom saw that plain and simple teaching would not in itself be sufficient to meet the crafty wiles of the devil's cunning, unless he fortified the holy preaching of the faith with a protection of extreme care. And so although he had used the name of God the Saviour up above, he here adds "Jesus Christ," in case you might think that the mere name of Saviour was not enough to indicate to you our Lord Jesus Christ, and might fail to understand that the God, whom you acknowledge as God the Saviour, is the same Jesus Christ. What then does he say? He says: "Looking for the blessed hope and coming of the glory of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ." Nothing is here wanting as regards the titles of our Lord and you see here God, and the Saviour, and Jesus, and Christ. But when you see all these, you see that they all belong to God. For you have heard of Him as God, but as Saviour as well. You have heard of Him as God, but as Jesus as well. You have heard of Him as God, but as Christ as well. That which the Divinity has joined and united together cannot be separated by this diversity of titles; for whichever you may seek for of them, all, you will find it there. The Saviour is God, Jesus is God, Christ is God. In all of this which you hear, though the titles used are many, yet they belong to one Person in power. For whereas the Saviour is God, and Jesus is God, and Christ is God, it is easy to see that all these, though different appellations, are united as regards the Majesty. And when you hear quite plainly that one and the same Person is called God in each case, you can surely clearly see that in all these cases there is but one God spoken of. And so you cannot any longer seek to make out a distinction of power from the different names given to the Lord, or to make a difference of Person owing to variety of titles. You cannot say: Christ was born of Mary, but God was not; for an Apostle declares that God was. You cannot say that Jesus was born of Mary, but God was not; for an Apostle testifies that God was. You cannot say: the Saviour was born, but God was not; for an Apostle supports the fact that God was. There is no way of escape for you. Whichever of the titles of the Lord you may take, He is God, of whom you speak. You have nothing to say: nothing to assert: nothing to invent in your wicked falsehood. You can in impious unbelief refuse to believe: you have nothing to deny in the matter of your blasphemy. __________________________________________________________________
[2404] Titus ii. 11-13.
[2405] S. Matt. ii. 2, 7.
[2406] Exod. iii. 2.
[2407] Vas Dei (Petschenig): Gazæus has Vis Dei.
[2408] S. Luke ii. 11. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter V.
From the gifts of Divine grace which we receive through Christ he infers that He is truly God.
Although we began to speak some time back on this Divine grace of our Lord and Saviour, I want to say somewhat more on the same subject from the Holy Scriptures. We read in the Acts of the Apostles that the Apostle James [2409] thus refuted those who thought that when they received the gospel they ought still to bear the yoke of the old Law: "Why," said he, "do ye tempt God, to put a yoke upon the necks of the disciples which neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear. But by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ we believe to be saved in like manner as they also." [2410] The Apostle certainly speaks of the gift of this grace as given by Jesus Christ. Answer me now, if you please: do you think that this grace which is given for the salvation of all men, is given by man or by God? If you say, By man, Paul, God's own vessel, will cry out against you, saying: "There appeared the grace of God our Saviour." [2411] He teaches that this grace is the result of a Divine gift, and not of human weakness. And even if the sacred testimony was not sufficient, the truth of the matter itself would bear its witness, because fragile earthly things cannot possibly furnish a thing of lasting and immortal value; nor can anyone give to another that in which he himself is lacking, nor supply a sufficiency of that, from the want of which he admits that he himself is suffering. You cannot then help admitting that the grace comes from God. It is God then who has given it. But it has been given by our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore the Lord Jesus Christ is God. But if He be, as He certainly is, God: then she who bore God is Theotocos, i.e., the mother of God. Unless perhaps you want to take refuge in so utterly absurd and blasphemous a contradiction as to deny that she from whom God was born is the mother of God, while you cannot deny that He who was born is God. But, however, let us see what the gospel of God thinks about this same grace of our Lord: "Grace and truth," it says, "came by Jesus Christ." [2412] If Christ is a mere man, how did these come by Christ? Whence was there in Him Divine power if, as you say, there was in Him only the nature of man? Whence comes heavenly largesse, if His is earthly poverty? For no one can give what he has not already. As then Christ gave Divine grace, He already had that which He gave. Nor can anyone endure a diversity of things that are so utterly different from each other, as at one and the same time to suffer the wants of a poor man, and also to show the munificence of a bounteous one. And so the Apostle Paul, knowing that all the treasures of heavenly riches are found in Christ, rightly writes to the Churches: "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you." [2413] For though he had already often enough taught that God is the same as Christ, and that all the glory of Deity resides in Him, and that all the fulness of the Godhead dwelleth in Him bodily, yet here he is certainly right in praying for the grace of Christ alone, without adding the word God: for while he had often taught that the grace of God is the same as the grace of Christ, he now most perfectly prays only for the grace of Christ, for he knows that in the grace of Christ is contained the whole grace of God. Therefore he says: "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you." If Jesus Christ was a mere man, then in his wish that the grace of Christ might be given to the Churches he was wishing that the grace of a man might be given; and by saying: "The grace of Christ be with you" he meant: the grace of a man be with you, the grace of flesh be with you, the grace of bodily weakness, the grace of human frailty! Or why did he ever even mention the word grace, if his wish was for the grace of a man? For there was no reason for wishing, if that was not in existence which was wished for; nor ought he to have prayed that there might be bestowed on them the grace of one who, according to you, did not possess the reality of that grace for which he was wishing. And so you see that it is utterly absurd and ridiculous--or rather not a thing to laugh at but to cry over, for what is a matter for laughter to some frivolous persons becomes a matter for crying to pious and faithful souls, for they shed tears of charity for the folly of your unbelief, and weep pious tears at the folly of another's impiety. Let us then recover ourselves for a while and take our breath, for this idea is not only without wisdom but also without the Spirit, as it is certainly wanting in spiritual wisdom and has nothing to do with the Spirit of salvation. __________________________________________________________________
[2409] Jacobum. So Petschenig, after his authority. It is however an error on Cassian's part, as the words quoted were spoken not by S. James but by S. Peter. (The text of Gazæus reads apparently with no authority Petrum.)
[2410] Acts xv. 10, 11.
[2411] Titus ii. 11.
[2412] S. John i. 17.
[2413] 1 Cor. xvi. 23. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VI.
That the power of bestowing Divine grace did not come to Christ in the course of time, but was innate in Him from His very birth.
But perhaps you will say that this grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, of which the Apostle writes, was not born with Him, but was afterwards infused into Him by the descent of Divinity upon Him, since you say that the man Jesus Christ our Lord (whom you call a mere man) was not born with God, but afterwards was assumed by God: [2414] and that through this grace was given to the man at the same time that Divinity was given to Him. Nor do we say anything else than that Divine grace descended with the Divinity, for the Divine grace of God is in a way a bestowal of actual Divinity and a gift of a liberal supply of graces. Perhaps then it may be thought that the difference between us is one of time rather than of what is essential, since the Divinity which we say was born with Jesus Christ you say was afterwards infused into Him. But the fact is that if you deny that Divinity was born with the Lord you cannot afterwards make a confession according to the faith; for it is an impossibility for one and the same thing to be partly impious and also to turn out partly pious, and for the same thing partly to belong to faith and partly to misbelief. To begin with then I ask you this: Do you say that our Lord Jesus Christ, who was born of the Virgin Mary is only the Son of man, or that He is the Son of God as well? For we, I mean all who hold the Catholic faith, all of us, I say, believe and are sure and know and confess that He is both, i.e., that He is Son of man because born of a woman and Son of God because conceived of Divinity. Do you then admit that He is both, i.e., Son of God and Son of man, or do you say that He is Son of man only? If Son of man only then there cry out against you apostles and prophets, aye and the Holy Ghost Himself, by whom the conception was brought about. That most shameless mouth of yours is stopped by all the witnesses of the Divine decrees: it is stopped by sacred writings and holy witnesses: aye and it is stopped by the very gospel of God as if by a Divine hand. And that mighty Gabriel who in the case of Zacharias restrained the voice of unbelief by the power of his word, much more strongly condemned in your case the voice of blasphemy and sin, by his own lips, saying to the Virgin Mary, the mother of God: "The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God." [2415] Do you see how Jesus Christ is first proclaimed to be the Son of God that according to the flesh He might become the Son of man? For when the Virgin Mary was to bring forth the Lord she conceived owing to the descent of the Holy Spirit upon her and the cooperation of the power of the Most High. And from this you can see that the origin of our Lord and Saviour must come from thence, whence His conception came; and since He was born owing to the descent of the fulness of Divinity in Its completeness upon the Virgin, He could not be the Son of man unless He had first been the Son of God; and so the angel when sent to announce His nativity and sacred birth, when he had already spoken of the mystery of His conception added a word expressive of His birth, saying: "Therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God" [i.e., He shall be called the Son of Him from whom He was begotten]. [2416] Jesus Christ is therefore the Son of God, because He was begotten of God and conceived of God. But if He is the Son of God, then most certainly He is God: but if He is God, then He is not lacking in the grace of God. Nor indeed was He ever lacking in that of which He is Himself the maker. For grace and truth were made by Jesus Christ. __________________________________________________________________
[2414] Nestorius maintained that "that which was formed in the womb of Mary was not God Himself...but because God dwells in him whom He has assumed, therefore also He who is assumed is called God because of Him who assumes Him. And it is not God who has suffered, but God was united with the crucified flesh." (Fragm. in Marius Mercator p. 789 sq. (ed. Migne).) Thus he made out that in Christ were two Persons, one assuming and the other assumed.
[2415] S. Luke i. 35.
[2416] There is some doubt whether the words enclosed in brackets form part of the genuine text. Petschenig brackets them, as wanting in some mss. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VII.
How in Christ the Divinity, Majesty, Might and Power have existed in perfection from eternity, and will continue.
Therefore all grace, power, might, Divinity, aye, and the fulness of actual Divinity and glory have ever existed together with Him and in Him, whether in heaven or in earth or in the womb or at His birth. Nothing that is proper to God was ever wanting to God. For the Godhead was ever present with God, no where and at no time severed from Him. For everywhere God is present in His completeness and in His perfection. He suffers no division or change or diminution; for nothing can be either added to God or taken away from Him, for He is subject to no diminution of Divinity, as to no increase of It. He was the same Person then on earth who was also in heaven: the same Person in His low estate who was also in the highest: the same Person in the littleness of manhood as in the glory of the Godhead. And so the Apostle was right in speaking of the grace of Christ when He meant the grace of God. For Christ was everything that God is. At the very time of His conception as man there came all the power of God, all the fulness of the Godhead; for thence came all the perfection of the Godhead, whence was His origin. Nor was that Human nature of His [2417] ever without the Deity as it received from Deity the very fact of its existence. And so, to begin with, whether you like it or no, you cannot deny this; viz., that the Lord Jesus Christ is the Son of God, especially as the archangel declares in the gospels: "That holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God." But when this is established then remember that whatever you read of Christ you read of the Son of God: whatever you read of the Lord or Jesus belongs to the Son of God. And so when you recognize a title of Divinity in all these terms which you hear uttered, as you see that in each case you ought to understand that the Son of God is meant, prove to me, if you like, how you can separate the Godhead from the Son of God. __________________________________________________________________
[2417] Homo ille. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Book III. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter I.
That Christ, who is God and man in the unity of Person, sprang from Israel and the Virgin Mary according to the flesh.
That divine teacher of the Churches when in writing to the Romans he was reproving or rather lamenting the unbelief of the Jews, i.e., of his own brethren, made use of these words: "I wished myself," said he, "to be accursed from Christ, for my brethren, who are my kinsmen according to the flesh, who are Israelites, to whom belongeth the adoption as of children, and the glory, and the testaments, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises: whose are the fathers, of whom is Christ according to the flesh, who is over all things, God blessed for ever." [2418] O, the love of that most faithful Apostle, and most kindly kinsman! who in his infinite charity wished to die--as a kinsman for his relations, and as a master for his disciples. And what then was the reason why he wished to die? Only one; viz., that they might live. But in what did their life consist? Simply in this, as he himself says, that they might recognize a Divine Christ born according to the flesh, of their own flesh. And therefore the Apostle grieved the more, because those who ought to have loved Him the more as sprung from their own stock, failed to understand that He was born of Israel. "Of whom," said he, "is Christ according to the flesh, who is over all things, God blessed for ever." Clearly he lays down that from them according to the flesh, was born that Christ who is over all, God blessed for ever. You certainly cannot deny that Christ was born from them according to the flesh. But the same Person, who was born from them, is God. How can you get round this? How can you shuffle out of it? The Apostle says that Christ who was born of Israel according to the flesh, is God. Teach us, if you can, at what time He did not exist. "Of whom," he says, "is Christ according to the flesh, who is over all, God." You see that because the Apostle has united and joined together these, "God" cannot possibly be separated from "Christ." For just as the Apostle declares that Christ is of them, so he asserts that God is in Christ. You must either deny both of these statements, or you must accept both. Christ is said to be born of them according to the flesh: but the same Person is declared by the Apostle to be "God in Christ." Whence also he says elsewhere: "For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself." [2419] It is absolutely impossible to separate one from the other. Either deny that Christ sprang from them, or admit that there was born of the virgin God in Christ, "who is," as he says, "over all, God blessed for ever." __________________________________________________________________
[2418] Rom. ix. 3-5.
[2419] 2 Cor. v. 19. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter II.
The title of God is given in one sense to Christ, and in another to men.
The name of God would for the faithful be amply sufficient to denote the glory of His Divinity, but by adding "over all, God blessed," he excludes a blasphemous and perverse interpretation of it, for fear that some evil-disposed person to depreciate His absolute Divinity might quote the fact that the word God is sometimes applied by grace in the Divine economy temporarily to men, and thus apply it to God by unworthy comparisons, as where God says to Moses: "I have given thee as a God to Pharaoh," [2420] or in this passage: "I said ye are Gods," [2421] where it clearly has the force of a title given by condescension. For as it says "I said," it is not a name showing power, so much as a title given by the speaker. But that passage also, where it says: "I have given thee as a God to Pharaoh," shows the power of the giver rather than the Divinity of him who receives the title. For when it says: "I have given," it thereby certainly indicates the power of God, who gave, and not the Divine nature, in the person of the recipient. But when it is said of our God and Lord Jesus Christ, "who is over all, God blessed for ever," the fact is at once proved by the words, and the meaning of the words shown by the name given: because in the case of the Son of God the name of God does not denote an adoption by favour, but what is truly and really His nature. __________________________________________________________________
[2420] Exod. vii. 1.
[2421] Ps. lxxxi. (lxxxii.) 6. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter III.
He explains the apostle's saying: "If from henceforth we know no man according to the flesh," etc.
And so the same Apostle says: "From henceforth we know no man according to the flesh, and if we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him so no longer." [2422] Admirably consistent are all the writings of the sacred word with each other, and in every portion of them: even where they do not correspond in the form of the words, yet they agree in the drift and substance. As where he says: "And if we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him so no longer." For the witness of the passage before us confirms that quoted above, in which he said: "Of whom is Christ according to the flesh, who is over all, God blessed for ever." For there he writes: "Of whom is Christ according to the flesh;" and here: "if we have known Christ according to the flesh." There: "who is over all, God blessed for ever;" and here: "yet now we no longer know Christ according to the flesh." The look of the words is different, but their force and drift is the same. For it is the same Person whom he there declares to be God over all born according to the flesh, whom he here asserts that he no longer knows according to the flesh. And plainly for this reason; viz., because Him whom he had known as born in the flesh, he acknowledges as God for ever; and therefore says that he knows him not after the flesh, because He is over all, God blessed for ever; and the phrase there: "who is over all God," answers to this: "we no longer know Christ according to the flesh;" and this phrase: "we no longer know Christ according to the flesh" implies this: "who is God blessed for ever." [2423] The declaration of Apostolic teaching then somehow rises, as it were to greater heights, and though it is self-consistent throughout, yet it supports the mystery of the perfect faith, with a still more express statement, and says: "And though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him so no longer," i.e., as formerly we knew Him as man as well as God, yet now only as God. For when the frailty of flesh comes to an end, we no longer know anything in Him except the power of Divinity, for all that is in Him is the power of Divine Majesty, where the weakness of human infirmity has ceased to exist. In this passage then he has thoroughly expounded the whole mystery of the Incarnation, and of His perfect Divinity. For where he says: "And if we have known Christ according to the flesh," he speaks of the mystery of God born in flesh. But by adding "yet now we know Him so no longer," he manifests His power when weakness is laid aside. And thus that knowledge of the flesh has to do with His humanity, and that ignorance, with the glory of His Divinity. For to say "we have known Christ according to the flesh:" means "as long as that which was known, existed. Now we no longer know it, after it has ceased to exist. For the nature of flesh has been transformed into a spiritual substance: and that which formerly belonged to the manhood, has all become God's. And therefore we no longer know Christ according to the flesh, because when bodily infirmity has been absorbed by Divine Majesty, [2424] nothing remains in that Sacred Body, from which weakness of the flesh can be known in it. And thus whatever had formerly belonged to a twofold substance, has become attached to a single Power. Since there is no sort of doubt that Christ, who was crucified through human weakness lives entirely through the glory of His Divinity. __________________________________________________________________
[2422] 2 Cor. v. 16.
[2423] Petschenig's text reads as follows: Ac per hoc et illud ibi; Qui est super omnia Deus, hoc dicit: non novimus, jam Christum secundum carnem et hic: non novimus jam Christum secundum carnem, hoc ait: Qui est Deus benedictus in sæcula. That of Gazæus has: Ac per hoc et illud ibi qui est super omnia Deus: et hoc dicit, non novimus jam Christum secundum carnem: Quia est Deus benedictus in sæcula.
[2424] The language used in the text by Cassian is scarcely defensible. The whole tenour of the treatise shows clearly enough that his meaning is orthodox enough, and that he fully recognizes that the Human nature of Christ is still existing (see especially c. vi.): but the language used comes perilously near to Eutychianism, and might be taken to imply that the human nature had been absorbed in the Divine. Again in Book V. c. vii. he speaks of the Son of man "united to the Son of God" (cf. also c. viii.), language which taken by itself might seem to sanction Nestorianism, the very heresy against which Cassian himself is writing. These instances of inaccurate language, which a later writer would have carefully avoided, serve to show one great service which heresies did to the Church in making Churchmen write logikoteron. Cf. Dorner, Doctrine of the Person of Christ, Vol. i. p. 458 (E. T.). __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IV.
From the Epistle to the Galatians he brings forward a passage to show that the weakness of the flesh in Christ was absorbed by His Divinity.
The Apostle indeed declares this in the whole body of his writings, and admirably says in writing to the Galatians: "Paul an Apostle not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father." [2425] You see how thoroughly consistent he is with himself in the former and the present passage. For there he says: "Now we no longer know Christ according to the flesh." Here he says: "Not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ." It is clear that his doctrine is the same here as in the former passage. For where he says that he is not sent by man, he implies: "We have not known Christ according to the flesh:" and so I am "not sent by man" but "by Christ;" [2426] for if I am sent by Christ, I am not sent by man but by God. For there is no longer room for the name of man, in Him whom Divinity claims entirely for itself. And so when he had said that he was sent "not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ," he rightly added: "And God the Father," thus showing that he was sent by God the Father and God the Son; in whom owing to the mystery of the sacred and ineffable generation there are two Persons (He who begets, and He who is begotten), but there is but one single Power of God who is the sender. And so in saying that he was sent by God the Father and God the Son, he shows that the Persons are two in number, but he also teaches that their Power is One in sending. __________________________________________________________________
[2425] Gal. i. 1.
[2426] Christum (Petschenig): Jesum (Gazæus). __________________________________________________________________
Chapter V.
As it is blasphemy to pare away the Divinity of Christ, so also is it blasphemous to deny that He is true man.
But he says "by Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who raised Him from the dead." That renowned and admirable teacher, knowing that our Lord Jesus Christ must be preached as true man, as well as true God, always declares the glory of the Divine in Him, in such a way as not to lose hold of the confession of the Incarnation: plainly excluding the phantasm of Marcion, by a real Incarnation, and the poverty of the Ebionite, by Divinity: lest through one or other of these wicked blasphemies it might be believed that our Lord Jesus Christ was either altogether man without God, or God without man. Excellently then did the Apostle, when declaring that He was sent by God the Son as well as by God the Father, add at once a confession of the Lord's Incarnation, by saying: "Who raised Him from the dead:" clearly teaching that it was a real body of the Incarnate God, which was raised from the dead: in accordance with this: "And though we have known Christ according to the flesh," excellently adding: "Yet now we know Him so no longer." For he says that he knows this in Him according to the flesh; viz., that He was raised from the dead; but that he knows Him no longer according to the flesh inasmuch as when the weakness of the flesh is at an end, he knows that He exists in the Power of God only. Surely he is a faithful and satisfactory witness of our Lord's Divinity which had to be proclaimed, who at his first call was smitten from heaven itself, and did not merely believe in his heart the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ, who was raised from the dead, but actually established its truth by the evidence of his bodily eyes. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VI.
He shows from the appearance of Christ vouchsafed to the Apostle when persecuting the Church, the existence of both natures in Him.
Wherefore also, when arguing before King Agrippa and others of the world's judges, he speaks as follows: "When I was going to Damascus with authority and permission of the chief priests, at midday, O king, I saw in the way a light from heaven above the brightness of the sun, shining round about me and all those that were with me. And when we were all fallen down to the ground, I heard a voice saying unto me in the Hebrew tongue, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me? It is hard for thee to kick against the goad. And I said, Who art Thou, Lord? And the Lord said to me: I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom thou persecutest." [2427] You see how truly the Apostle said that he no longer knew according to the flesh one whom he had seen in such splendour and majesty. For when as he lay prostrate he saw the splendour of that divine light which he was unable to endure, there followed this voice: "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?" And when he asked who it might be, the Lord answers and clearly points out His Personality: "I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom thou persecutest." Now then, you heretic, I ask you, I summon you. Do you believe what the Apostle says of himself, or do you not believe it? Or if you think that unimportant, do you believe what the Lord says of Himself or do you not believe it? If you do believe it, there is an end of the matter: for you cannot help believing what we believe. For we, like the Apostle, even if we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet know Him so no longer. We do not heap insults on Christ. We do not separate the flesh from the Divinity; and all that is in Christ we believe is in God. If then you believe the same that we believe you must acknowledge the same mysteries of the faith. But if you differ from us, if you refuse to believe the Churches, the Apostle, aye and God's own testimony about Himself, show us in this vision which the Apostle saw, how much is flesh, and how much God. For I cannot here separate one from the other. I see the ineffable light, I see the inexpressible splendour, I see the radiance that human weakness cannot endure, and beyond what mortal eyes can bear, the glory of God shining with inconceivable light. [2428] What room is there here for division and separation? In the voice we hear Jesus, in the majesty we see God. How can we help believing that in one and the same (Personal) substance God and Jesus exist. But I should like to have a few more words with you on this subject. Tell me, I pray you, if there appeared to you in your present persecution of the Catholic faith that same vision which then appeared to the Apostle in his ignorance, if when you were not expecting it and were off your guard, that radiance shone round about you, and the glory of that boundless light smote you in your terror and confusion, and you lay prostrate in darkness of body and soul; which the unlimited and indescribable terror of your heart increased, [2429] --tell me, I intreat you; When the dread of immediate death was pressing on you, and the terror of the glory that threatened you from above, weighed you down, and you heard as well in your bewilderment of mind those words which your sin so well deserves: "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?" and to your inquiry who it was the answer was given from heaven: "I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom thou persecutest," what would you say? "I do not know, I do not yet fully believe. I want to think over it with myself a little longer, who I think that Thou art, who speakest from heaven, who overwhelmest me with the brightness of Thy Divinity: whose voice I hear and whose splendour I cannot bear. I must consider of this matter, whether I ought to believe Thee or not: whether Thou art Christ or God. If Thou art God alone whether it is in Christ. If Thou art Christ alone, whether it is in God. I want this distinction to be carefully observed, and thoroughly considered what we should believe that Thou art, and what we should judge Thee to be. For I don't want any of my offices to be wasted. As if I were to regard Thee as a man, and yet pay to Thee some Divine honours." If then you were lying on the ground, as the Apostle Paul was then lying, and overwhelmed with the brightness of the Divine light, were at your last gasp, perhaps you would say this, and prate with all this silly chattering. But what shall we make of the fact that another course commended itself to the Apostle; and when he had fallen down, trembling and half dead, he did not think that he ought any longer to conceal his belief, or to deliberate; it was enough for him that he was taught by inexpressible arguments to know that He whom he had ignorantly fancied to be a man, was God. He did not conceal his belief, he made no delay. He did not any longer protract his erroneous ideas by deliberating and disbelieving, but as soon as he heard from heaven the name of Jesus his Lord, he replied in a voice, subdued like that of a servant, tremulous like that of one scourged, and full of fervour like that of one converted, "What shall I do, Lord?" And so at once for his ready and earnest faith, it was granted to him that he should never be without His presence whom he had faithfully believed: and that He, to whom he had passed in heart, should Himself pass into his heart: as the Apostle himself says of himself: "Do you seek a proof of Christ that speaketh in me?" [2430] __________________________________________________________________
[2427] Acts xxvi. 12-15.
[2428] Inæstimabili majestatem Dei luce fulgentem (Petschenig): Gazæus edits Inæstimabilem majestatem, Dei luce fulgentem.
[2429] Quas tibi immensus et ineffabilis pavor mentis augeret (Petschenig): Gazæus has Quas tibi immensas et ineffabiles angustias pavor mentis augeret?
[2430] 2 Cor. xiii. 3. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VII.
He shows once more by other passages of the Apostle that Christ is God.
I want you to tell me, you heretic, whether in this passage He who, as the Apostle tells us, speaks in him, is man or God. If He is man, how can another's body speak in his heart? If God, then Christ is not a man but God; for since Christ spoke in the Apostle, and only God could speak in him, therefore a Divine Christ spoke in him. And so you see that there is nothing to be said here, that no division or separation can be made between Christ and God: because complete Divinity was in Christ, and Christ was completely in God. No division or severing of the two can here be admitted. There is only one simple, pious, and sound confession to be made; viz., to adore, love, and worship Christ as God. But do you want to understand more fully and thoroughly that there is no separation to be made between God and Christ, and that we must hold that God is altogether one with Christ? Hear what the Apostle says to the Corinthians: "For we must all be manifested before the judgment seat of Christ, that every one may receive the proper things of the body, according as he hath done, whether it be good or evil." [2431] But in another passage, in writing to the Romans he says: "We shall all stand before the judgment seat of God: for it is written: As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God." [2432] You see then that the judgment seat of God is the same as that of Christ; understand then without any doubt that Christ is God; and when you see that the substance of God and Christ is altogether inseparable, admit also that the Person cannot be severed. Unless forsooth because the Apostle in one Epistle said that we should be manifested before the judgment seat of Christ, and in another before that of God, you invent two judgment seats, and fancy that some will be judged by Christ and others by God. But this is foolish and wild, and madder than a madman's utterances. Acknowledge then the Lord of all, the God of the universe, acknowledge the judgment seat of God in the judgment seat of Christ. Love life, love your salvation, love Him by whom you were created. Fear Him by whom you are to be judged. For whether you will or no, you have to be manifested before the judgment seat of Christ, and laying aside wicked blasphemy and the childish talk of unbelieving words, though you think that the judgment seat of God is different from that of Christ, you will come before the judgment seat of Christ, and will find by evidence that there is no gainsaying, that the judgment seat of God is indeed the same as that of Christ, and that in Christ the Son of God, there is all the glory of God the Son, and the power of God the Father. "For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment to the Son, that all men may honour the Son as they honour the Father." [2433] For whoever denies the Father denies the Son also. "Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father: he that confesseth the Son, hath the Father also." [2434] And so you should learn that the glory of the Father and the Son is inseparable, and their majesty is inseparable also and that the Son cannot be honoured without the Father, nor the Father without the Son. But no man can honour God and the Son of God except in Christ the only-begotten Son of God. For it is impossible for a man to have the Spirit of God who is to be honoured except in the Spirit of Christ, as the Apostle says: "But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. But if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His." [2435] And again: "Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ Jesus who died, yea rather who rose again." [2436] You see then now, even against your will, that there is absolutely no difference between the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ, or between the judgment of God and the judgment of Christ. Choose then which you will--for one of the two must happen--either acknowledge in faith that Christ is God, or admit that God is in Christ at your condemnation. __________________________________________________________________
[2431] 2 Cor. v. 10.
[2432] Rom. xiv. 10, 11.
[2433] S. John v. 22, 23.
[2434] 1 John ii. 23.
[2435] Rom. viii. 9.
[2436] Ibid. ver. 33, 34. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VIII.
When confessing the Divinity of Christ we ought not to pass over in silence the confession of the cross.
But let us see what else follows. In writing to the church of Corinth, he whom we spoke of above, the instructor of all the churches viz. Paul, speaks thus: "The Jews," says he, "seek signs, and the Greeks ask for wisdom. But we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling-block, to the Gentiles foolishness: but to them that are saved, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God." [2437] O most powerful teacher of the faith, who even in this passage, when teaching the Church thought it not enough to speak of Christ as God without adding that He was crucified on purpose that for the sake of the open and solid teaching of the faith he might proclaim Him, whom he called the crucified, to be the wisdom of God. He then employed no subtilty or circumlocution, nor did he when he preached the gospel of the Lord blush at the mention of the cross of Christ. And though it was a stumbling-block to the Jews, and foolishness to the Gentiles to hear of God as born, God in bodily form, God suffering, God crucified, yet he did not weaken the force of his pious utterance because of the wickedness of the offence of the Jews: nor did he lessen the vigour of his faith because of the unbelief and the foolishness of others: but openly, persistently, and boldly proclaimed that He, whom a mother [2438] had borne, whom men had slain, the spear had pierced, the cross had stretched--was "the power and wisdom of God, to the Jews a stumbling-block, and to the Gentiles foolishness." But still that which was to some a stumbling-block and foolishness, was to others the power and wisdom of God. For as the persons differed, so was there a difference of their thoughts: and what a man who was void of sound understanding, and incapable of true good, foolishly denied in unbelief, that a wise faith could feel in its inmost soul to be holy and life giving. __________________________________________________________________
[2437] 1 Cor. i. 22-24.
[2438] Mater (Petschenig): Caro (Gazæus). __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IX.
How the Apostle's preaching was rejected by Jews and Gentiles because it confessed that the crucified Christ was God.
Tell me then, you heretic, you enemy of all men, but of yourself above all--to whom the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ is an offence as with the Jews, and foolishness as with the Gentiles, you who reject the mysteries of true salvation, with the stumbling of the former, and are foolish with the stubbornness of the others, why was the preaching of the Apostle Paul foolishness to the pagans, and a stumbling-block to the Jews? Surely it would never have offended men, if he had taught that Christ was, as you maintain He is, a mere man? For who would think that His birth, passion, cross, and death were incredible or a difficulty? Or what would there have been novel or strange about the preaching of Paul, if he had said that a merely human Christ suffered that which human nature daily endures among men everywhere? But it was surely this that the foolishness of the Gentiles could not receive, and the unbelief of the Jews rejected; viz., that the Apostle declared that Christ whom they, like you, fancied to be a mere man, was God. This it certainly was which the thoughts of these wicked men rejected, which the ears of the faithless could not endure; viz., that the birth of God should be proclaimed in the man Jesus Christ, that the passion of God should be asserted, and the cross of God proclaimed. This it was which was a difficulty: this was what was incredible; for that was incredible to the hearing of men, which had never been heard of as happening to the Divine nature. And so you are quite secure, with such an announcement and teaching as yours, that your preaching will never be either foolishness to the Gentiles or a stumbling-block to the Jews. You will never be crucified with Peter by Jews and Gentiles, nor stoned with James, nor beheaded with Paul. For there is nothing in your preaching to offend them. You maintain that a mere man was born, a mere man suffered. You need not be afraid of their troubling you with persecution, for you are helping them by your preaching. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter X.
How the apostle maintains that Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.
But let us see something more on the subject. Christ then, according to the Apostle, is the power of God and the wisdom of God. What have you to say to this? How can you get out of it? There is no place for you to escape and fly to. Christ is the wisdom of God and the power of God. He, I say, whom the Jews attacked, the Gentiles mocked, whom you yourself together with them are persecuting,--He, I say, who is foolishness to the heathen, and a stumbling-block to the Jews, and both to you, He, I say, is the power of God and the wisdom of God. What is there that you can do? Shut your ears, forsooth, so as not to hear? This the Jews did also when the Apostle was preaching. Do what you will, Christ is in heaven, and in God, and with Him, and in Him in the heavens above in whom also He was here below: you can no longer persecute Him with the Jews. But you do the one thing that you can. You persecute Him in the faith, you persecute Him in the church, you persecute Him with the arms of a wicked belief, you persecute Him with the sword of false doctrine. Perhaps you do rather more than the Jews of old did. You now persecute Christ, after ever those who did persecute Him, have believed. But perhaps you think that the sin is less because you can no longer lay hands on Him. No less grievous, I tell you, no less grievous to Him is that persecution, in which sinful men persecute Him in the persons of His followers. But the mention of the Lord's cross offends you. It always offended the Jews as well. You shudder at hearing that God suffered: the Gentiles in their error mocked at this also. I ask you then, in what point do you differ from them, since you both agree in this frowardness? But for my part I not only do not water down this preaching of the holy cross, this preaching of the Lord's passion, but as far as my wishes and powers go I emphasise it. For I will declare that He who was crucified is not only the power and wisdom of God, than which there is nothing greater, but actually Lord of absolute Divinity and glory. And this the rather, because this assertion of mine is the doctrine of God, as the Apostle says: "We speak wisdom among them that are perfect: but the wisdom not of this world, nor of the rulers of this world who are brought to nought: but we speak the hidden wisdom of God in a mystery, which God ordained before the world, unto our glory: which none of the princes of this world knew: for if they had known it, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory. But as it is written: that eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, what God hath prepared for them that love Him." [2439] You see what great matters the Apostle's discourse comprises in how small a compass. He says that he speaks wisdom, but a wisdom which only those that are perfect can know, and which the prudent of this world cannot know. For he says that this is the wisdom of God, which is hidden in a Divine mystery, and predestined before all worlds for the glory of the saints: and that therefore it is only known to those who savour of God; while the princes of this world are utterly ignorant of it. But he adds the reason, to establish both points that he had mentioned, saying: "For if they had known it, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory. But it is written, that eye hath not seen, nor ear hath heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, what God hath prepared for them that love Him." You see then how the wisdom of God, hidden in a mystery, and predestined before all worlds, was unknown to those who crucified the Lord of glory, and known by those who received it. And well does he say that the wisdom of God was hidden in a mystery, for never yet could the eye of any man see, or the ear hear, or the heart imagine this; viz., that the Lord of glory should be born of a virgin and come in the flesh, and suffer all kinds of punishment, and shameful passion. But with regard to these gifts of God, as there is no one who--since they were hidden in a mystery--could ever of himself understand them, so blessed is he who has grasped them when they are revealed. Thus all who have failed to grasp them must be reckoned among the princes of this world, and those who have grasped them among God's wise ones. He then does not grasp it who denies God born in the flesh; therefore you also do not grasp it, as you deny this. But do what you will, deny as impiously as you like, we the rather believe the Apostle. But why should I say the Apostle? the rather do we believe God. For through the Apostle we believe Him, whom we know to have spoken by the Apostle. The Divine word says that the Lord of glory was crucified by the princes of the world. You deny it. They also who crucified Him denied that it was God whom they were crucifying. They then who confess Him have their portion with the Apostle who confessed Him. You are sure to have your lot with His persecutors. What is there then that can be replied to this? The Apostle says that the Lord of glory was crucified. Alter this if you can. Separate now, if you please, Jesus from God. At least you cannot deny that Christ was crucified by the Jews. But it was the Lord of glory who was crucified. Therefore you must either deny that Christ was nailed to the cross, or you must admit that God was nailed to it. __________________________________________________________________
[2439] 1 Cor. i. 6-9. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XI.
He supports the same doctrine by proofs from the gospel.
But perhaps it is a difficulty to you that all this time I am chiefly using the witness of the Apostle Paul alone. He is good enough for me, whom God chose, nor do I blush to call as the witness to my faith, the man whom God willed to be the teacher of the whole world. But to yield to your wishes, as perhaps you fancy that I have no other proofs to use, hear the perfect mystery of man's salvation and eternal bliss, which Martha proclaims in the gospel. For what does she say? "Of a truth, Lord, I have believed that Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God, who art come into this world." [2440] Learn the true faith from a woman. Learn the confession of eternal hope. Yet you have a splendid consolation: you need not blush to be taught the mystery of salvation by her, whose testimony God did not refuse to accept. __________________________________________________________________
[2440] S. John xi. 27. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XII.
He proves from the renowned confession of the blessed Peter that Christ is God.
But if you prefer the authority of a greater person (although you ought not to slight the authority of any one of either sex, on whom the confession of the mystery confers weight--for whatever may be a person's condition, or however humble his position, yet the value of his faith is not thereby diminished) let us interrogate no beginner or untaught schoolboy, nor a woman whose faith might perhaps appear to be but rudimentary; but that greatest of disciples among disciples, and of teachers among teachers, who presided and ruled over the Roman Church, and held the chief place [2441] in the priesthood as he did in the faith. Tell us then, tell us, we pray, O Peter, thou chief of Apostles, tell us how the Churches ought to believe in God. For it is right that you should teach us, as you were taught by the Lord, and that you should open to us the gate, of which you received the key. Shut out all those who try to overthrow the heavenly house: and those who are endeavouring to enter by secret holes and unlawful approaches: as it is clear that none can enter the gate of the kingdom save one to whom the key bestowed on the Churches is revealed by you. Tell us then how we ought to believe in Jesus Christ and to confess our common Lord. You will surely reply without hesitation: "Why do you consult me as to the way in which the Lord should be confessed, when you have before you my own confession of Him? Read the gospel, and you will not want me myself, when you have got my confession. Nay, you have got me myself when you have my confession; for though I have no weight apart from my confession, yet the actual confession adds weight to my person." Tell us then, O Evangelist, tell us the confession: tell us the faith of the chief Apostle: did he confess that Jesus was only a man, or God? did he say that there was nothing but flesh in Him, or did he proclaim Him the Son of God? When then the Lord Jesus Christ asked whom the disciples believed and confessed Him to be, Peter, the first of the Apostles, replied--one in the name of all--for the answer of one was to the same effect as the faith of them all. But it was fitting that he should first give the answer, that the order of the answer might correspond to the degree of honour: and that he might outstrip them in confession, as he outstripped them in age. What then does he say? "Thou art," he says, "the Christ the Son of the living God." [2442] I am obliged, you heretic, to make use of a plain and simple question to confute you. Tell me, I pray, who was He, to whom Peter gave that answer? You cannot deny that it was the Christ. I ask then, what do you call Christ? man or God? Man certainly without any doubt: for hence springs the whole of your heresy, because you deny that Christ is the Son of God. And so too you say that Mary is Christotocos, but not Theotocos, because she was the mother of Christ, not of God. Therefore you maintain, that Christ is only a man, and not God, and so that He is the Son of man not of God. What then does Peter reply to this? "Thou art," he says, "the Christ, the Son of the living God." That Christ whom you declare to be only the Son of man, he testifies to be the Son of God. Whom would you like us to believe? you or Peter? I imagine that you are not so shameless as to venture to prefer your own opinion to that of the first of the Apostles. And yet what is there that you would not venture on? or how can you help scorning the Apostle, if you can deny God? "Thou art then," he says, "the Christ, the Son of the living God." Is there anything puzzling or obscure in this? It is nothing but a plain and open confession: he proclaims Christ to be the Son of God. Perhaps you will deny that the words were spoken: but the Evangelist testifies that they were. Or do you say that the Apostle told a lie? But it is an awful lie to accuse an Apostle of lying. Or perhaps you will maintain that the words were spoken of some other Christ? But this is a novel kind of monstrous fabrication. What then is left for you? One thing indeed; viz., that since what is written is read, and what is read is true, you should finally be driven by force and compulsion (as you cannot assert its falsehood) to desist from impugning its truth. __________________________________________________________________
[2441] Principatus.
[2442] S. Matt. xvi. 16. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIII.
The confession of the blessed Peter receives a testimony to its truth from Christ Himself.
But still, as I have made use of the testimony of the chief Apostle, in which he openly confessed the Lord Jesus Christ as God, let us see how He whom he confessed approved of his confession; for of far more value than the Apostle's words is the fact that God Himself commended his utterance. When then the Apostle said: "Thou art the Christ the Son of the living God," what was the answer of our Lord and Saviour? "Blessed art thou," said He, "Simon Barjonah, for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee but the Spirit of My Father which is in heaven." If you do not like to use the testimony of the Apostle use that of God. For by commending what was said God added His own authority to the Apostle's utterance, so that although the utterance came from the lips of the Apostle, yet God who approved of it made it His own. "Blessed art thou," said He, "Simon Barjonah, for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but the Spirit of My Father which is in heaven." Thus in the words of the Apostle you have the testimony of the Holy Spirit and of the Son who was present and of God the Father. What more can you want, or what comes up to this? The Son commended: the Father was present: the Holy Ghost revealed. The utterance of the Apostle thus gives the testimony of the entire Godhead: for this utterance must necessarily have the authority of Him from whose prompting it proceeds. "Blessed then art thou," said He, "Simon Barjonah, for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but the Spirit of My Father which is in heaven." If then flesh and blood did not reveal this to Peter or inspire him, you must at last see who inspires you. If the Spirit of God taught him who confessed that Christ was God, you see how you are taught by the spirit of the devil if you can deny it. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIV.
How the confession of the blessed Peter is the faith of the whole Church.
But what are the other words which follow that saying of the Lord's, with which He commends Peter? "And I," said He, "say unto thee, that thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build My Church." Do you see how the saying of Peter is the faith of the Church? He then must of course be outside the Church, who does not hold the faith of the Church. "And to thee," saith the Lord, "I will give the keys of the kingdom of heaven." This faith deserved heaven: this faith received the keys of the heavenly kingdom. See what awaits you. You cannot enter the gate to which this key belongs, if you have denied the faith of this key. "And the gate," He adds, "of hell shall not prevail against thee." The gates of hell are the belief or rather the misbelief of heretics. For widely as hell is separated from heaven, so widely is he who denies from him who confessed that Christ is God. "Whatsoever," He proceeds, "thou shalt bind on earth, shalt be bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth, shalt be loosed also in heaven." The perfect faith of the Apostle somehow is given the power of Deity, that what it should bind or loose on earth, might be bound or loosed in heaven. For you then, who come against the Apostle's faith, as you see that already you are bound on earth, it only remains that you should know that you are bound also in heaven. But it would take too long to go into details which are so numerous as to make a long and wearisome story, even if they are related with brevity and conciseness. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XV.
St. Thomas also confessed the same faith as Peter after the Lord's resurrection.
But I want still to add one more testimony from an Apostle for you: that you may see how what followed after the passion corresponded with what went before it. When then the Lord appeared in the midst of His disciples when the doors were shut, and wished to make clear to the Apostles the reality of His body, when the Apostle Thomas felt His flesh and handled His side and examined His wounds--what was it that he declared, when he was convinced of the reality of the body shown to him? "My Lord," he said, "and my God." [2443] Did he say what you say, that it was a man and not God? Christ and not Divinity? He surely touched the body of his Lord and answered that He was God. Did he make any separation between man and God? or did he call that flesh Theotocos, to use your expression, i.e., that which received Divinity? or did he, after the fashion of your blasphemy, declare that He whom he touched was to be honoured not for His own sake, but for the sake of Him whom He had received into Himself? But perhaps God's Apostle knew nothing of that subtle separation of yours, and had no experience of the fine distinctions of your judgment, as he was a rude countryman, ignorant of the dialectic art, and of the method of philosophic disputation; for whom the Lord's teaching was amply sufficient, and as he was one who knew nothing whatever except what he learnt from the instruction of the Lord! And so his words contain heavenly doctrine; his faith is a Divine lesson. He had never learnt to separate, as you do, the Lord from His body: and had no idea how to rend God asunder from Himself. He was holy, straightforward, upright: filled with practical innocence, unalloyed faith, and pure knowledge: having a simple understanding joined with prudence, a wisdom entirely free from all evil, together with perfect simplicity: ignorant of any corruption, and free from all heretical perversity, and as one who had experienced in himself the force of the Divine lesson, he held fast everything which he had learnt. And so he--countryman and ignorant fellow as you fancy him--shuts you up with a brief answer, and destroys your position with a few words of his. What then did the Apostle Thomas touch when he drew near to handle his God? Certainly it was Christ without any doubt. But what did he exclaim? "My Lord," he said, "and my God." Now, if you can, separate Christ from God, and change this saying, if you are able to. Make use of all dialectic art--all the prudence of this world, and that foolish wisdom which consists in wordy subtlety. Turn yourself about in every direction, and draw in your horns. Do whatever you can with ingenuity and art. Say what you like, and do what you like; you cannot possibly get out of this without confessing that what the Apostle touched was God. And indeed, if the thing can possibly be done, perhaps you will want to alter the statement of the gospel story, so that we may not read that the Apostle Thomas touched the body of the Lord, or that he called Christ Lord and God. But it is absolutely impossible to alter what is written in the gospel of God. For "heaven and earth shall pass away, but the words" of God "shall not pass away." [2444] For lo, even now he who then bore his witness, the Apostle Thomas, proclaims to you: "Jesus whom I touched is God. It is God whose limbs I handled. I did not feel what was incorporeal, not handle what was intangible: I touched not a Spirit with my hand, so that it might be believed that I said of it alone It is God.' For a spirit,' as my Lord Himself said, hath not flesh and bones.' [2445] I touched the body of my Lord. I handled flesh and bones. I put my fingers into the prints of the wounds: and I declared of Christ my Lord, whom I had handled: My Lord and my God.' For I know not how to make a separation between Christ and God, and I cannot insert blasphemous distinctions between Jesus and God, or rend my Lord asunder from Himself. Away from me, whoever is of a different opinion, and whoever says anything different. I know not that Christ is other than God. This faith I held together with my fellow apostles: this I delivered to the Churches: this I preached to the Gentiles: this I proclaim to thee also, Christ is God, Christ is God. A sound mind imagines nothing else: a sound faith says nothing else. The Deity cannot be parted from Itself. And since whatever is Christ is God, there can be found in God none other but God." __________________________________________________________________
[2443] S. John xx. 28.
[2444] S. Matt. xxiv. 35.
[2445] S. Luke xxiv. 39. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVI.
He brings forward the witness of God the Father to the Divinity of the Son.
What do you say now, you heretic? Are these evidences of the faith, aye and of all your unbelief, enough for you: or would you like some more to be added to them? but what can be added after Prophets and Apostles? unless perhaps--as the Jews once demanded--you too might ask for a sign to be given you from heaven? But if you ask this, we must give you the same answer which was formerly given to them: "An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign. And no sign shall be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonah." [2446] And indeed this sign would be enough for you as for the Jews who crucified Him, that you might be taught to believe in the Lord God by this alone, through which even those who had persecuted Him, came to believe. But as we have mentioned a sign from heaven, I will show you a sign from heaven: and one of such a character that even the devils have never gainsaid it: while, constrained by the demands of truth, though they saw Jesus in bodily form, they yet cried out that He was God, as indeed He was. What then does the Evangelist say of the Lord Jesus Christ? "When He was baptized," he says, "straightway He went up out of the water. And lo, the heavens were opened to Him, and He saw the Spirit descending like a dove, and coming upon Him. And behold, a voice from heaven, saying: This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." [2447] What do you say to this, you heretic? Do you dislike the words spoken, or the Person of the Speaker? The meaning of the utterance at any rate needs no explanation: nor does the worth of the Speaker need the commendation of words. It is God the Father who spoke. What He said is clear enough. Surely you cannot make so shameless and blasphemous an assertion as to say that God the Father is not to be believed concerning the only begotten Son of God? "This," He then says, "is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." But perhaps you will try to maintain that this is madness, and that this was said of the Word and not of Christ. Tell me then who was it who was baptized? The Word or Christ? Flesh or Spirit? You cannot possibly deny that it was Christ. That man then, born of man and of God, conceived by the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Virgin, and by the overshadowing of the Power of the Most High, and thus the Son of man and of God, He it was, as you cannot deny, who was baptized. If then it was He who was baptized, it was He also who was named, for certainly the Person who was baptized was the one named. "This," said He, "is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." Could anything be said with greater significance or clearness? Christ was baptized. Christ went up out of the water. When Christ was baptized the heavens were opened. For Christ's sake the dove descended upon Christ, the Holy Spirit was present in a bodily form. The Father addressed Christ. If you venture to deny that this was spoken of Christ, the only thing is for you to maintain that Christ was not baptized, that the Spirit did not descend, and that the Father did not speak. But the truth itself is urgent and weighs you down so that even if you will not confess it, yet you cannot deny it. For what says the Evangelist? "When He was baptized, straightway He went up out of the water." Who was baptized? Most certainly Christ. "And behold," he says, "the heavens were opened to Him." To where, forsooth, save to Him who was baptized? Most certainly to Christ. "And He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming upon Him." Who saw? Christ indeed. Upon whom did It descend? Most certainly upon Christ. "And a voice came from heaven. saying"--of whom? Of Christ indeed: for what follows? "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." In order that it might be made clear on whose account all this happened, there followed the voice, saying: "This is My beloved Son," as if to say: This is He on whose account all this took place. For this is My Son: on His account the heavens were opened: on His account My Spirit came: on His account My voice was heard. For this is My Son. In saying then "This is My Son" whom did He so designate? Certainly Him whom the dove touched. And whom did the dove touch? Christ indeed. Therefore Christ is the Son of God. My promise is fulfilled, I fancy. Do you see then now, O heretic, a sign given you from heaven; and not one only, but many and special ones? For there is one in the opening of heaven, another in the descent of the Spirit, a third in the voice of the Father. All of which most clearly show that Christ is God, for the laying open of the heavens indicates that He is God, and the descent of the Holy Spirit upon Him supports His Divinity, and the address of the Father confirms it. For heaven would not have been opened except in honour of its Lord: nor would the Holy Ghost have descended in a bodily form except upon the Son of God: nor would the Father have declared Him to be the Son, had he not been truly such; especially with such tokens of a Divine birth, as not merely to confirm the truth of the right faith, but also to exclude the wickedness of guilty and erroneous belief. For when the Father had expressly and pointedly said with the inexpressible majesty of a Divine utterance, "This is My Son," He added also what follows--I mean, "My beloved, in whom I am well pleased." As He had already declared Him by the prophet to be God the Mighty and God the Great, so when He says here, "My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased," He adds further to the name of His own Son the title also of His beloved Son, in whom He is well pleased: that the addition of the titles might denote the special properties of the Divine nature; and that that might specially redound to the glory of the Son of God, which had never happened to any man. And so just as in the case of our Lord Jesus Christ these special and unique things happened; viz., that the heavens were opened, that in the sight of all God the Father touched Him in a sort of way, through the coming and presence of the dove, and pointed almost with His finger to Him saying, "This is My Son;" so this too is special and unique in His case; viz., that He is specially beloved, and is specially named as well-pleasing to the Father, in order that these special accompaniments might mark the special import of His nature, and that the special character of His names might support the special position of the only begotten Son, which the honour of the signs previously given had already confirmed. But here comes the end of this book. For this saying of God the Father can neither be added to, nor equalled by any words of men. For us God the Father Himself is a sufficiently satisfactory witness concerning our Lord Jesus Christ, when He says "This is My Son." If you think that it is possible for these utterances of God the Father to be gainsaid, then you are forced to contradict Him, who by the clearest possible announcement caused Him to be acknowledged as His Son by the whole world. __________________________________________________________________
[2446] S. Matt. xvi. 4.
[2447] S. Matt. iii. 16, 17. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Book IV. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter I.
That Christ was before the Incarnation God from everlasting.
As we have finished three books with the most certain and the most valuable witnesses, whose truth is substantiated not only by human but also by Divine evidences, they would abundantly suffice to prove our case by Divine authority, especially as the Divine authority of the case itself would be enough for this. But still as the whole mass of the sacred Scriptures is full of these evidences, and where there are so many witnesses, there are so many opinions to be urged--nay where Holy Scripture itself gives its witness so to speak with one Divine mouth--we have thought it well to add some others still, not from any need of confirmation, but because of the supply of material at our disposal; so that anything which might be unnecessary for purposes of defence, might be useful by way of ornamentation. Therefore since in the earlier books we proved the Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ while He was in the flesh by the evidence not only of prophets and apostles, but of evangelists and angels as well, let us now show that He who was born in the flesh was God even before His Incarnation; that you may understand by the harmony and concord of the evidences from the sacred Scriptures, that you ought to believe that at His birth in the body He was both God and man, who before His birth was only God, and that He who after He had been brought forth by the Virgin in the body was God, was before His birth from the Virgin, God the Word. Learn then first of all from the Apostle the teacher of the whole world, that He who is without beginning, God, the Son of God, became the Son of man at the end of the world, i.e., in the fulness of the times. For he says: "But when the fulness of the times was come, God sent His Son, made of a woman, made under the law." [2448] Tell me then, before the Lord Jesus Christ was born of His mother Mary, had God a Son or had He not? You cannot deny that He had, for never yet was there either a son without a father, or a father without a son: because as a son is so called with reference to a father, so is a father so named with reference to a son. __________________________________________________________________
[2448] Gal. iv. 4. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter II.
He infers from what he has said that the Virgin Mary gave birth to a Son who had pre-existed and was greater than she herself was.
You see then that when the Apostle says that God sent His Son, it was His own Son to use the actual words of the Apostle, "His own Son" that God sent. For, since He sent His own Son, it was not some one else's Son that He sent, nor could He send Him at all if He who was sent had no existence. He sent then, he says, "His own Son, made of a woman." Therefore because He sent Him, He sent one who existed: and because He sent His own, it certainly was not another's but His own whom He sent. What then becomes of that argument of yours drawn from this world's subtleties? No one ever yet gave birth to one who had already existed before. For had not the Lord a pre-existence before Mary? Was not the Son of God existent before the daughter of man? In a word did not God Himself exist before man--since certainly there is no man who is not from God. You see then that I do not merely say that Mary gave birth to one who had existed before her, not only, I say, one who had existed before her, but one who was the author of her being, and that in giving birth to her Creator, she became the mother of Him who gave her being: because it was as simple for God to bring about birth for Himself as for man and as easy for Him to arrange that He Himself should be born of mankind, as that a man should be born. For the power of God is not limited in regard to His own Person, as if what was allowable to Him in the case of all others, was not allowable in His own case, and as if He who in the Divine nature could do all things as God, was yet unable in His own Person to become God in man. Setting aside then and rejecting your foolish and feeble and dull arguments from earthly things, we ought merely to put credence in straightforward evidence and the naked truth, and to adapt our faith to those witnesses of God alone, whom God sent, and in whose person He Himself, so to speak, preached. For it is right to believe Him in a matter concerning knowledge of Himself, as everything that we know of Him comes from Him Himself, for God could not possibly be known of men, unless He Himself gave us the knowledge of Himself. And so it is right that we should believe everything of Him that we know, from whom comes everything that we know, for if we do not believe Him from whom our knowledge comes, the result will be that we shall know nothing at all, since we refuse to believe Him, through whom our knowledge comes. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter III.
He proves from the Epistle to the Romans the eternal Divinity of Christ.
And so as it is clear from the above testimony that God sent His own Son, and that He who was ever the Son of God became the Son of man, let us see whether the same Apostle gives any other testimony of the same sort elsewhere, that the truth which is already clear enough in itself, may be rendered still more clear by the light of a twofold testimony. So then the same Apostle says: "God sent His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh." [2449] You see that the Apostle certainly did not use these words by chance or at random, as he repeated what he had already said once--for indeed there could not be found in him chance or want of consideration as the fulness of Divine counsel and speech had taken up its abode in him. What then does he say? "God sent His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh." He says the same thing again and repeats it, saying, "God sent His own Son." Oh renowned and excellent teacher! for knowing that in this is contained the whole mystery [2450] of the Catholic faith, in order that it might be believed that the Lord was born in the flesh and that the Son of God was sent into this world, again and again he makes the same proclamation saying, "God sent His own Son." Nor need we wonder that he who was specially sent to preach the coming of God, made this announcement, since even before the law, the giver of the law himself proclaimed it, saying: "I beseech Thee, O Lord, provide another whom Thou mayest send," or as it stands still more clearly in the Hebrew text: "I beseech Thee, O Lord, send whom Thou wilt send." [2451] It is clear that the holy prophet, feeling in himself a yearning for the whole human race, prayed as it were with the voices of all mankind to God the Father that He would send as speedily as possible Him who was to be sent by the Father for the redemption and salvation of all men, when he said, "I beseech Thee, O Lord, send whom Thou wilt send." "God," he therefore says, "sent His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh." Full well, when he says that He was sent in the flesh, does he exclude for Him sin of the flesh: for he says "God sent His own Son in the likeness of the flesh of sin," in order that we may know that though the flesh was truly taken, yet there was no true sin, and that, as far as the body is concerned, we should understand that there was reality; as far as sin is concerned, only the likeness of sin. For though all flesh is sinful, yet He had flesh without sin, and had in Himself the likeness of sinful flesh, while He was in the flesh but He was free from what was truly sin, because He was without sin: and therefore he says: "God sent His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh." __________________________________________________________________
[2449] Rom. viii. 3.
[2450] Sacramentum.
[2451] Exod. iv. 13. Where the LXX. has Deomai, kurie, procheirisai dunamenon allon hon aposteleis, which was followed by the old Latin. Jerome however rendered the passage correctly from the Hebrew: "obsecro, Domine, mitte quem misurus es." Cf. the note on the Institutes, XII. xxxi. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IV.
He brings forward other testimonies to the same view.
If you would know how admirably the Apostle preached this, hear how this utterance was put into his mouth; as if from the mouth of God Himself, as the Lord says: "For God sent not His Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him." [2452] For lo, as you see, the Lord Himself affirms that He was sent by God the Father to save mankind. But if you think that it ought to be shown still more clearly, what Son God sent to save men,--though God's own and only begotten can only be one, and when God is said to have sent His Son, He is certainly shown to have sent His only begotten Son,--yet hear the prophet David pointing out with the utmost clearness Him who was sent for the salvation of Men. "He sent," said he, "His Word and healed them." [2453] Can you twist this so as to refer it to the flesh as if you could say that a mere man was sent by God to heal mankind? You certainly cannot, for the prophet David and all the holy Scriptures would cry out against you, saying, "He sent His Word and healed them." You see then, that the Word was sent to heal men, for though healing was given through Christ, yet the Word of God was in Christ, and healed all things through Christ: and so since Christ and the Word were united in the mystery of the Incarnation, Christ and the Word of God became one Son of God in either substance. And when the Apostle John was anxious to state this clearly, he said "God sent His Son to be the Saviour of the world." [2454] Do you see how he joined together God and man in an union that cannot be severed? For Christ who was born of Mary is without the slightest doubt called Saviour, as it is said, "For to you is born this day a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord." [2455] But here he calls the very Word of God, which was sent, a Saviour, saying: "God sent his Son to be the Saviour of the world." __________________________________________________________________
[2452] S. John iii. 17.
[2453] Ps. cvi. (cvii.) 20.
[2454] 1 John iv. 14.
[2455] S. Luke ii. 11. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter V.
How in virtue of the hypostatic union of the two natures in Christ the Word is rightly termed the Saviour, or incarnate man, and the Son of God.
And so it is clear that through the mystery of the Word of God joined to man, the Word, which was sent to save men, can be termed Saviour, and the Saviour, who was born in the flesh, can through union with the Word be called the Son of God; and so through the indifferent use of either title, since God is joined to man, whatever is God and man, can be termed altogether God. [2456] And so the same Apostle well adds the words: "Whoever believeth that Jesus is the Son of God, God abideth in him, and the love of God is perfected in him." [2457] He tells us that he believes, and declares that he is filled with divine love, who believes that Jesus is the Son of God. But he testifies that the Word of God is the Son of God, and thus means us fully to understand that the only begotten Word of God, and Jesus Christ the Son of God are one and the same Person. But do you want to be told more fully that,--though Christ according to the flesh was truly born as man of man,--yet in virtue of the ineffable unity of the mystery, by which man was joined to God, there is no separation between Christ and the Word? Hear the gospel of the Lord, or rather hear the Lord Himself saying of Himself: [2458] "This," says He, "is life eternal, that they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent." [2459] You heard above that the Word of God was sent to heal mankind: here you are told that He who was sent is Jesus Christ. Separate this, if you can,--though you see that so great is the unity of Christ and the Word, that it was not merely that Christ was united with the Word, but that in virtue of the actual unity [of Person] Christ may even be said to be the Word. __________________________________________________________________
[2456] Cf. Hooker Eccl: Polity., Book V. c. liii. § 4. "A kind of mutual commutation there is whereby those concrete names, God and man, when we speak of Christ, do take interchangeably one another's room, so that for truth of speech it skilleth not whether we say that the Son of God hath created the world, and the Son of man by His death hath saved it, or else that the Son of man did create, and the Son of God die to save the world. Howbeit as oft as we attribute to God what the manhood of Christ claimeth, or to man what His Deity hath right unto, we understand by the name of God and the name of man neither the one nor the other nature, but the whole person of Christ, in whom both natures are." The technical phrase by which this interchange of names is described is the Communicatio idiomatum, and in Greek antidosis. Cf. Pearson on the Creed, Art. IV. c. i.
[2457] 1 John iv. 12.
[2458] De se dicentem (Petschenig): Gazæus reads descendentem.
[2459] S. John xvii. 3. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VI.
That there is in Christ but one Hypostasis (i.e., Personal self).
But perhaps you think it a trifle to make this clear: not because it fails in clearness, but because the obscurity of unbelief always causes obscurity even in what is clear. Hear then how the Apostle sums up in a few words this whole mystery of the Lord's unity [of Person]. "Our one Lord Jesus Christ," he says, "by whom are all things." [2460] O good Jesus, what weight there is in Thy words! For Thine they are, when spoken of Thee by Thine own. See how much is embraced in the few words of this saying of the Apostle's. "One Lord," says he, "Jesus Christ, by whom are all things." Did he make use of any circumlocution in order to proclaim the truth of this great mystery? [2461] or did he make a long story of that which he wanted us to grasp? "Our one Lord," he says, "Jesus Christ, by whom are all things." In a plain and short phrase he taught the secret of this great mystery, through this confidence by which he realized that in what refers to God his statements had no need of lengthened arguments, and that the Divinity added faith to his utterances. For the demonstration of facts is enough to confirm what is said, whenever the proof rests on the authority of the speaker. There is then, he says, "one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things." Notice how you read the same thing of the Word of the Father, which you read of Christ. For the gospel tells us that "All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made." [2462] The Apostle says, "By Christ are all things:" the gospel says, "By the Word are all things." Do these sacred utterances contradict each other? Most certainly not. But by Christ, by whom the Apostle said that all things were created, and by the Word, by whom the Evangelist relates that all things were made, we are meant to understand one and the same Person. Hear, I tell you, what the Word of God, Himself God, has said of Himself. "No man," he saith, "hath ascended into heaven, save He who came down from heaven, even the Son of man, who is in heaven." [2463] And again He says: "If ye shall see the Son of man ascending where He was before." [2464] He said that the Son of man was in heaven: He asserted that the Son of man had come down from heaven. What does it mean? Why are you muttering? Deny it, if you can. But do you ask the reason of what is said? However I do not give it you. God has said this. God has spoken this to me: His Word is the best reason. I get rid of arguments and discussions. The Person of the Speaker alone is enough to make me believe. I may not debate about the trustworthiness of what is said, nor discuss it. Why should I question whether what God has said is true, since I ought not to doubt that what God says is true. "No man," He says, "hath ascended into heaven, save He who came down from heaven, even the Son of man, who is in heaven." Certainly the Word of the Father was ever in heaven: and how did He assert that the Son of man was ever in heaven? You are then to understand that He showed that He who was ever the Son of God was also the Son of man: when He asserted that He, who had but recently appeared as the Son of man, was ever in heaven. To this points still more that other passage in which He testifies that the same Son of man; viz., the Word of God who, as He said, came down from heaven, even at the time when He was speaking on earth, was in heaven. For "no man," He said, "hath ascended into heaven, save He who came down from heaven, even the Son of man who is in heaven." Who, I pray you, is this who is speaking? Assuredly it is Christ. But where was He at the moment when He spoke? Assuredly on earth. And how can He assert that He came down from heaven when He was born, and that He was in heaven when He was speaking, or say that He is the same Son of man, when certainly no one but God can come down from heaven, and when He speaks on earth, and certainly cannot be in heaven except through the Infinite nature of God? Consider then this at last, and note that the Son of man is the same Person as the Word of God: for He is the Son of man since He is truly born of man, and the Word of God, since He who speaks on earth abideth ever in heaven. And so when He truly terms Himself the Son of man, it refers to His human birth, while the fact that He never departs from heaven, refers to the Infinite character of His Divine nature. And so the Apostle's teaching is admirably in accordance with those sacred words: ("for He that descended," says He, "is the same that ascended also above all heavens, that He might fill all things," [2465] ) when He says that He that descended is the same that ascended. But none can descend from heaven except the Word of God: who certainly "being in the form of God, emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross." [2466] Thus the Word of God descended from heaven: but the Son of man ascended. But He says that the same Person ascended and descended. Thus you see that the Son of man is the same Person as the Word of God. __________________________________________________________________
[2460] 1 Cor. viii. 6.
[2461] Tanti mysterii sacramentum.
[2462] S. John i. 3.
[2463] S. John iii. 13.
[2464] S. John vi. 63.
[2465] Eph. iv. 10.
[2466] Phil. ii. 6-8. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VII.
He returns to the former subject, in order to show against the Nestorians that those things are said of the man, which belong to the Divine nature as it were of a Person of Divine nature, and conversely that those things are said of God, which belong to the human nature as it were of a Person of human nature, because there is in Christ but one and a single Personal self.
And so following the guidance of the sacred word we may now say fearlessly and unhesitatingly that the Son of man came down from heaven, and that the Lord of Glory was crucified: because in virtue of the mystery of the Incarnation, the Son of God became Son of man, and the Lord of Glory was crucified in (the nature of) the Son of man. [2467] What more is there need of? It would take too long to go into details: for time would fail me, were I to try to examine and explain everything which could be brought to bear on this subject. For one who wished to do this would have to study and read the whole Bible. For what is there which does not bear on this, when all Scripture was written with reference to this? We must then say--as far as can be said--some things briefly and cursorily, and enumerate rather than explain them, and sacrifice some to save the rest, as for this reason it would certainly be well hurriedly to run through some points, lest one should be obliged [2468] to pass over almost everything in silence. The Saviour then in the gospel says that "the Son of man is come to save what was lost." [2469] And the Apostle says: "This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation; that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief." [2470] But the Evangelist John also says: "He came unto his own, and His own received Him not." [2471] You see then that Scripture says in one place that the Son of man, in another Jesus Christ, in another the Word of God came into the world. And so we must hold that the difference is one of title not of fact, and that under the appearance of different names there is but one Power [or Person]. For though at one time we are told that the Son of man, and at another that the Son of God came into the world, but one Person is meant under both names. __________________________________________________________________
[2467] See Hooker as above (V. liii. 4) "When the Apostle saith of the Jews that they crucified the Lord of Glory, and when the Son of man being on earth affirmeth that the Son of man was in heaven at the same instant, there is in these two speeches that mutual circulation before mentioned. In the one, there is attributed to God or the Lord of Glory death, whereof Divine nature is not capable; in the other ubiquity unto man which human nature admitteth not. Therefore by the Lord of Glory we must needs understand the whole person of Christ, who being Lord of Glory, was indeed crucified, but not in that nature for which he is termed the Lord of Glory. In like manner by the Son of man the whole person of Christ must necessarily be meant, who being man upon earth, filled heaven with his glorious presence, but not according to that nature for which the title of man is given Him."
[2468] Ne necesse sit (Petschenig).
[2469] S. Luke xix. 10.
[2470] 1 Tim. i. 15.
[2471] S. John i. 11. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VIII.
How this interchange of titles does not interfere with His Divine power.
For certainly when the evangelist says that He came into the world by whom the world itself was made, and that He was made the Son of man, who is as God the creator of the world, it makes no difference what particular title is used, as God in all cases is meant. For His condescension and will do not interfere with His Divinity, since they the rather prove His Divinity, because whatever He willed came to pass. Therefore also because He willed it, He came into the world; and because He willed it, He was born a man; and because He willed it, He was termed the Son of man. For just as there are so many words, so are they powers belonging to God. The variety of names in Him does not take anything away from the efficacy of His power. Whatever may be the names given Him, in all cases it is one and the same Person. Though there may be some variety in the appearance of His titles, yet there is but a single Divine Person (Majestas) meant by all the names. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IX.
He corroborates this statement by the authority of the old prophets.
But since up to this point we have made use more particularly of the witness, comparatively new, of evangelists and apostles, now let us bring forward the testimony of the old prophets, intermingling at times new things with old, that everybody may see that the holy Scriptures proclaim as it were with one mouth that Christ was to come in the flesh, with a body of His own complete. And so that far-famed and renowned prophet as richly endowed with God's gifts as with his testimony, to whom alone it was given to be sanctified before His birth, [2472] Jeremiah, says, "This is our Lord, and there shall no other be accounted of in comparison with Him. He found out all the way of knowledge and gave it to Jacob His servant and Israel His beloved. Afterwards He was seen upon earth and conversed with men." [2473] "This is," then, he says, "our God." You see how the prophet points to God as it were with his hand, and indicates Him as it were with his finger. "This is," he says, "our God." Tell me then, who was it that the prophet showed by these signs and tokens to be God? Surely it was not the Father? For what need was there that He should be pointed out, whom all believed that they knew? For even then the Jews were not ignorant of God, for they were living under God's law. But he was clearly aiming at this, that they might come to know the Son of God as God. And so excellently did the Prophet say that He who had found out all knowledge, i.e., had given the law, was to be seen upon earth, i.e., was to come in the flesh, in order that, as the Jews did not doubt that He who had given the law was God, they might recognize that He who was to come in the flesh was God, especially since they heard that He, in whom they believed as God the giver of the law, was to be seen among men by taking upon Him manhood, as He Himself promises His own advent by the prophet: "For I myself that spoke, behold I am here." [2474] "There shall then," says the Scriptures, "be no other accounted of in comparison of Him." Beautifully does the prophet here foresee false teaching, and so exclude the interpretations of heretical perverseness. "There shall no other be accounted of in comparison of Him." For He is alone begotten to be God of God: at whose bidding the completion of the universe followed: whose will is the beginning of things: whose empire is the fabric of the world: who spake all things, and they came to pass: commanded all things, and they were created. He then alone it is who spake to the patriarchs, dwelt in the prophets, was conceived by the Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, appeared in the world, lived among men, fastened to the wood of the cross the handwriting of our offences, triumphed in Himself, [2475] slew by His death the powers that were at enmity and hostile to us; and gave to all men belief in the resurrection, and by the glory of His body put an end to the corruption of man's flesh. You see then that all these belong to the Lord Jesus Christ alone: and therefore no other shall be accounted of in comparison with Him, for He alone is God begotten of God in this glory and unique blessedness. This then is what the prophet's teaching was aiming at; viz., that He might be known by all men to be the only begotten Son of God the Father, and that when they heard that no other was accounted of as God in comparison with the Son, they might confess that there was but one God in the Persons of the Father and the Son. "After this," he said, "He was seen upon earth and conversed with men." You see how plainly this points to the advent and nativity of the Lord. For surely the Father--of whom we read that He can only be seen in the Son--was not seen upon earth, nor born in the flesh, nor conversed with men? Most certainly not. You see then that all this is spoken of the Son of God. For since the prophet said that God should be seen upon earth, and no other but the Son was seen upon earth, it is clear that the prophet said this only of Him, of whom facts afterwards proved that it was spoken. For when He said that God should be seen, He could not say this truly, except of Him who was indeed afterwards seen. But enough of this. Now let us turn to another point. "The labour of Egypt," says the prophet Isaiah, "and the merchandise of Ethiopia and of the Sabæans, men of stature, shall come over to thee and shall be thy servants. They shall walk after thee, bound with manacles, and they shall worship thee, and they shall make supplication to thee: for in thee is God, and there is no God beside thee. For thou art our God and we knew thee not, O God of Israel the Saviour." [2476] How wonderfully consistent the Holy Scriptures always are! For the first mentioned prophet said, "This is our God," and this one says, "Thou art our God." In the one there is the teaching of Divinity, in the other the confession of men. The one exhibits the character of the Master teaching, the other that of the people confessing. For consider now the prophet Jeremiah daily teaching, as he does, in the church, and saying of the Lord Jesus Christ, "This is our God," what else could the whole Church reply, as it does, than what the other prophet said to the Lord Jesus, "Thou art our God." So that full well could the mention of their past ignorance be joined to their present acknowledgment, in the words of the people: "Thou art our God, and we knew thee not." For well can these who, in times past being taken up with the superstitions of devils did not know God, yet when now converted to the faith say, "Thou art our God, and we knew thee not." __________________________________________________________________
[2472] Cf. Jer. i. 5.
[2473] The passage comes not from Jeremiah, but from Baruch (iii. 36-38). It is also quoted as from Jeremiah by Augustine (c. Faustin. xii. c. 43): and in the LXX. version the book of Baruch is placed among the works of Jeremiah, e.g., In both the Vatican and Alexandrine mss. they stand in the following order: (1) Jeremiah, (2) Baruch, (3) Lamentations, (4) the Epistle of Jeremy (Baruch c. vi. in A.V.). The passage which Cassian here quotes is constantly appealed to by both Greek and Latin Fathers, as a prophecy of the Incarnation. See e.g. S. Augustine (l.c.) S. Chrysost. "Ecloga" Hom. xxxiv. Rufinus in. Symb. § 5.
[2474] Isa. lii. 6.
[2475] Cf. Col. ii. 14, 15.
[2476] Isa. xiv. 14, 15. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter X.
He proves Christ's Divinity from the blasphemy of Judaizing Jews as well as from the confession of converts to the faith of Christ.
But if you would like to have this proved to you rather from representatives of the Jews, consider the Jewish people when after their unhappy ignorance and wicked persecution they were converted, and acknowledged God here and there, and see whether they could not rightly say, "Thou art our God, and we knew Thee not." But I will add something else, to prove it to you not only from those Jews who confess Him, but also from those who deny Him. For ask those Jews who still continue in their state of unbelief whether they know or believe in God. They will certainly confess that they both know and believe in Him. But on the other hand ask them whether they believe in the Son of God. They will at once deny and begin to blaspheme against Him. You see then that the Prophet said this of Him of whom the Jews have always been ignorant, and whom now they know not; and not of Him whom they imagine that they believe in and confess. And so full well can those, who after having been in ignorance come out of Judaism to the faith, say, "Thou art our God, and we knew Thee not." For rightly do those, who after having been ignorant come to believe, say that they knew not Him in whom up to this time they have not believed, and whom they strive not to know. For it is clear that those who after their previous ignorance come to confess Him, say that formerly they knew Him not, whom up to this time they have ignorantly denied. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XI.
He returns to the prophecy of Isaiah.
"The labour," says he, "of Egypt, and the merchandize of Ethiopia, and the Sabæans, men of stature shall come over to thee." No one can doubt that in these names of different nations is signified the coming of the nations who were to believe. But you cannot deny that the nations have come over to Christ, for since the name of Christianity has arisen, they have come over to the Lord Jesus Christ not only in faith but actually in name. For since they are called what they really are, that which was the work of faith becomes the token by which they are named. "They shall," he says, "come over to thee and shall be thine: they shall walk after thee bound with manacles." As there are chains of coercion, so too there are chains of love, as the Lord says: "I drew them with chains of love." [2477] For indeed great are these chains, and chains of ineffable love, for those who are bound with them rejoice in their fetters. Do you want to know whether this is true? Hear how the Apostle Paul exults and rejoices in his chains, when he says: "I therefore a prisoner in the Lord beseech you." [2478] And again: "I beseech thee, whereas thou art such an one as Paul the aged, and now a prisoner also of Jesus Christ." [2479] You see how he rejoiced in the dignity of his chains, by the example of which he actually stirred up others. But there can be no doubt that where there is single-minded love of the Lord, there is also single-minded delight in chains worn for the Lord's sake: as it is written: "But the multitude of the believers was of one heart and one soul." [2480] "And they shall worship thee," he says, "and shall make supplication to thee: for in thee is God, and there is no God beside thee." The Apostle clearly explains the prophet's words, when he says that "God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself." [2481] "In Thee then," he says, "is God and there is no God beside thee." When the prophet says "In Thee is God," most admirably does he point not merely to Him who was visible, but to Him who was in what was visible, distinguishing the indweller from Him in whom He dwelt, by pointing out the two natures, not by denying the unity (of Person). __________________________________________________________________
[2477] Hosea xi. 4.
[2478] Eph. iv. 1.
[2479] Philemon, ver. 9.
[2480] Acts iv. 32.
[2481] 2 Cor. v. 19. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XII.
How the title of Saviour is given to Christ in one sense, and to men in another.
"Thou," he says, "art our God, and we knew Thee not, O God of Israel the Saviour." Although holy Scripture has already shown by many and clear tokens, who is here spoken of, yet it has most plainly pointed to the name of Christ by using the name of Saviour: for surely the Saviour is the same as Christ, as the angel says: "For to you is born this day a Saviour who is Christ the Lord." [2482] For everybody knows that in Hebrew "Jesus" means "Saviour," as the angel announced to the holy Virgin Mary, saying: "And thou shalt call His name Jesus, for He it is that shall save His people from their sins." [2483] And that you may not say that He is termed Saviour in the same sense as the title is given to others ("And the Lord raised up to them a Saviour, Othniel the Son of Kenaz," [2484] and again, "the Lord raised up to them a Saviour, Ehud the son of Gera" [2485] ), he added: "for He it is that shall save His people from their sins." But it does not lie in the power of a man to redeem his people from the captivity of sin,--a thing which is only possible for Him of whom it is said, "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world." [2486] For the others saved a people not their own but God's, and not from their sins, but from their enemies. __________________________________________________________________
[2482] S. Luke ii. 11.
[2483] S. Matt. i. 21.
[2484] Judges iii. 9.
[2485] Ib. ver. 15.
[2486] S. John i. 29. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIII.
He explains who are those in whose person the Prophet Isaiah says: "Thou art our God, and we knew Thee not."
"Thou art then," he says, "our God, and we knew Thee not, O God of Israel the Saviour." Who do you imagine chiefly say this; and in whose mouths are such words specially suitable, Jews or Gentiles? If you say Jews: certainly the Jews did not know Christ, as it is said, "But Israel hath not known Me, My people have not considered;" [2487] and, "The world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not. He came unto His own, and His own received Him not." [2488] But if you say Gentiles, it is clear that the Gentile world was given over to idols, and knew not Christ, though it knew not the Father any more; but still if it has now come to know Him, it is only through Christ. You see then that whether the believing people belong to the Jews or the Gentiles, in either case they can truly say for themselves: "Thou art our God; and we knew Thee not, O God of Israel the Saviour." For the Gentiles who formerly worshipped idols knew not God; and the Jews who denied the Lord, knew not the Son of God. And thus both truly say of Christ: "Thou art our God and we knew Thee not." For those who did not believe in God were as ignorant of Him as those who denied the Son of God. If therefore Christ is to be believed in, as the truth declares, as the Deity asserts, as indeed Christ Himself declares, who is both, why are you miserably trying in your madness to interpose between God and Christ? Why do you seek to divide His body from the Son of God, and try to separate God from Himself? You are severing what is one, and dividing what is joined together. Believe the Word of God concerning God: for you cannot possibly make a better confession of God's Divinity than by confessing with your voice that which God teaches about Himself. For you must know that, as the Prophet says, "the Lord Himself is God, who found out all the way of knowledge; who was seen upon earth and conversed with men." [2489] He brought the light of faith into the world. He showed the light of salvation. "For God is the Lord, and hath given us light." [2490] Then believe Him, and love Him, and confess Him. For since, as it is written, "Every knee shall bow to Him, of things in heaven, and things on earth, and things under the earth, and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord in the glory of God the Father," [2491] whether you will or no, you cannot deny that Jesus Christ is Lord in the glory of God the Father. For this is the crowning virtue of a perfect confession, to acknowledge that Jesus Christ is ever Lord and God in the glory of God the Father. __________________________________________________________________
[2487] Isa. i. 3.
[2488] S. John i. 11.
[2489] Baruch iii. 37, 38.
[2490] Ps. cxvii. (cxviii.) 27.
[2491] Phil. ii. 10, 11. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Book V. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter I.
He vehemently inveighs against the error of the Pelagians, who declared that Christ was a mere man.
We said in the first book that that heresy which copies and follows the lead of Pelagianism, strives and contends in every way to make it believed that the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, when born of the Virgin was only a mere man; and that having afterwards taken the path of virtue He merited by His holy and pious life to be counted worthy for this holiness of His life that the Divine Majesty should unite Itself to Him: and thus by cutting off altogether from Him the honour of His sacred origin, it only left to Him the selection on account of His merits. [2492] And their aim and endeavour was this; viz., that, by bringing Him down to the level of common men, and making Him one of the common herd, they might assert that all men could by their good life and deeds secure whatever He had secured by His good life. [2493] A most dangerous and deadly assertion indeed, which takes away what truly belongs to God, and holds out false promises to men; and which should be condemned for abominable lies on both sides, since it attacks God with wicked blasphemy, and gives to men the hope of a false assurance. A most perverse and wicked assertion as it gives to men what does not belong to them, and takes away from God what is His. And so of this dangerous and deadly evil this new heresy which has recently sprung up, [2494] is in a way stirring and reviving the embers, and raising a fresh flame from its ancient ashes by asserting that our Lord Jesus Christ was born a mere man. And so why is there any need for us to ask whether its consequences are dangerous, as in its fountain head it is utterly wrong. It is unnecessary to examine what it is like in its issues, as in its commencement it leaves us no reason for examination. For what object is there in inquiring whether like the earlier heresy, it holds out the same promises to man, if (which is the most awful sin) it takes away the same things from God? So that it would be almost wrong, when we see what it begins like, to ask what there is to follow; as if some possible way might appear in the sequel, in which a man who denies God, could prove that he was not irreligious. The new heresy then, as we have already many times declared, says that the Lord Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin Mary, only a mere man: and so that Mary should be called Christotocos not Theotocos, because she was the mother of Christ, not of God. And further to this blasphemous statement it adds arguments that are as wicked as they are foolish, saying, "No one ever gave birth to one who was before her." As if the birth of the only begotten of God, predicted by prophets, announced since the beginning of the world, could be dealt with or measured by human reasons. Or did the Virgin Mary, O you heretic, whoever you are, who slander her for her childbearing--bring about and consummate that which came to pass, by her own strength, so that in a matter and event of so great importance, human weakness can be brought as an objection? And so if there was anything in this great event which was the work of man, look for human arguments. But if everything, which was done, was due to the power of God, why should you consider what is impossible with men, when you see that it is the work of Divine power? But of this more anon. Now let us follow up the subject we began to treat of some little way back; that everybody may know that you are trying to fan the flame in the ashes of Pelagianism, and to revive the embers by breathing out fresh blasphemy. __________________________________________________________________
[2492] See above Book 1. cc. ii. iii.
[2493] See below Book VI. c. xiv. For the twofold error of Pelagianism cf. a striking article on "Theodore of Mopsuestia and Modern Thought" in the Church Quarterly Review, vol. i. See esp. p 135; where, speaking of Pelagianism, the writer says: "As the hypostatic union was denied lest it should derogate from the ethical completeness of Christ, so the efficacious working of grace must be explained away lest it should derogate from the moral dignity of Christians. The divine and human elements must be kept as jealously apart in the moral life of the members as in the person of the Head of the Church. In the ultimate analysis it must be proved that the initial movement in every good action came from the human will itself, though when this was allowed, the grace of God might receive, by an exact process of assessment, its due share of credit for the result."
[2494] Viz., Nestorianism. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter II.
That the doctrine of Nestorius is closely connected with the error of the Pelagians.
You say then that Christ was born a mere man. But certainly this was asserted by that wicked heresy of Pelagius, as we clearly showed in the first book; viz., that Christ was born a mere man. You add besides, that Jesus Christ the Lord of all should be termed a form that received God (Theodochos), i.e., not God, but the receiver of God, so that your view is that He is to be honoured not for His own sake because He is God, but because He receives God into Himself. But clearly this also was asserted by that heresy of which I spoke before; viz., that Christ was not to be worshipped for His own sake because He was God, but because owing to His good and pious actions He won this; viz., to have God dwelling in Him. You see then that you are belching out the poison of Pelagianism, and hissing with the very spirit of Pelagianism. Whence it comes that you seem rather to have been already judged, than to have now to undergo judgment, for since your error is one and the same, you must be believed to fall under the same condemnation: not to mention for the present that you compare the Lord to a statue of the Emperor, and break out into such wicked and blasphemous impieties that you seem in this madness of yours to surpass even Pelagius himself, who surpassed almost every one else in impiety. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter III.
How this participation in Divinity which the Pelagians and Nestorians attribute to Christ, is common to all holy men.
You say then that Christ should be termed a form which received God (Theodochos), i.e., that He should be revered not for His own sake because He is God, but because He received God within Him. And so in this way you make out that there is no difference between Him and all other holy men: for all holy men have certainly had God within them. For we know well that God was in the patriarchs, and that He spoke in the prophets. In a word we believe that, I do not say apostles and martyrs, but, all the saints and servants of God have within them the Spirit of God, according to this: "Ye are the temple of the living God: as God said, For I will dwell in them." [2495] And again: "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?" [2496] And thus we are all receivers of God (Theodochoi); and in this way you say that all the saints are only like Christ, and equal to God. But away with such a wicked and abominable heresy as that the Creator should be compared to His creatures, the Lord to His servants, the God of things earthly and heavenly, to earthly frailty: and out of His very kindnesses this wrong be done to Him; viz., that He who honours man by dwelling in him should therefore be said to be only the same as man. __________________________________________________________________
[2495] 2 Cor. vi. 16.
[2496] 1 Cor. iii. 16. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IV.
What the difference is between Christ and the saints.
Moreover there is between Him and all the saints the same difference that there is between a dwelling and one who dwells in it, for certainly it is the doing of the dweller not the dwelling, if it is inhabited, for on him it depends both to build the house and to occupy it. I mean, that he can choose, if he will, to make it a dwelling, and when he has made it, to live in it. "Or do you seek a proof," says the Apostle, "of Christ speaking in me?" [2497] And elsewhere, "Know ye not that Jesus Christ is in you except ye be reprobate?" [2498] And again: "in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith." [2499] Do you not see what a difference there is between the Apostle's doctrine and your blasphemies? You say that God dwells in Christ as in a man. He testifies that Christ Himself dwells in men: which certainly, as you admit, flesh and blood cannot do; so that He is shown to be God, from the very fact from which you deny Him to be God. For since you cannot deny that He who dwells in man is God, it follows that we must believe that He, whom we know to dwell in men, is most decidedly God. All, then, whether patriarchs, or prophets, or apostles, or martyrs, or saints, had every one of them God within him, and were all made sons of God and were all receivers of God (Theodochoi), but in a very different and distinct way. For all who believe in God are sons of God by adoption: but the only begotten alone is Son by nature: who was begotten of His Father, not of any material substance, for all things, and the substance of all things exist through the only begotten Son of God--and not out of nothing, because He is from the Father: not like a birth, for there is nothing in God that is void or mutable, but in an ineffable and incomprehensible manner God the Father, wherein He Himself was regenerate, begat his only begotten Son; and so from the Most High, Ingenerate, and Eternal Father proceeds the Most High, Only Begotten, and Eternal Son. Who must be considered the same Person in the flesh as He is in the Spirit: and must be held to be the same Person in the body as He is in glory, for when He was about to be born in the flesh, [2500] He made no division or separation within Himself, as if some portion of Him was born while another portion was not born: or as if some portion of Divinity afterwards came upon Him, which had not been in Him at His birth from the Virgin. For according to the Apostle, "all the fulness of the Godhead dwelleth in Christ bodily." [2501] Not that It dwells in Him at times, and at times dwells not; nor that It was there at a later date, and not an earlier one: otherwise we are entangled in that impious heresy of Pelagius, so as to say that from a fixed moment God dwelt in Christ, and that He then came upon Him; when He had won by His life and conversation this; viz., that the power of the Godhead should dwell in Him. These things then belong to men, to men, I say, not to God,--that as far as human weakness can, they should humble themselves to God, be subject to God, make themselves dwellings for God, and by their faith and piety win this, to have God as their guest and indweller. For in proportion as anyone is fit for God's gift, so does the Divine grace reward him: in proportion as a man seems worthy of him: in proportion as a man seems worthy of God, so does he enjoy God's presence, according to the Lord's promise: "if any man love Me, he will keep My word; and I and My Father will come to him and make Our abode with him." [2502] But very different is the case as regards Christ; in whom all the fulness of the Godhead dwelleth bodily: for He has within Him the fulness of the Godhead so that He gives to all of His fulness, and He--as the fulness of the Godhead dwells in Him--Himself dwells in each of the saints in proportion as He deems them worthy of His Presence, and gives of His fulness to all, yet in such a way that He Himself continues in all that fulness,--who even when He was on earth in the flesh, yet was present in the hearts of all the saints, and filled the heaven, the earth, the sea, aye and the whole universe with His infinite power and majesty; and yet was so complete in Himself that the whole world could not contain Him. For however great and inexpressible whatever is made may be, yet there are no things so boundless and infinite as to be able to contain the Creator Himself. __________________________________________________________________
[2497] 2 Cor. xiii. 3.
[2498] Ib. ver. 5.
[2499] Eph. iii. 16, 17.
[2500] Idem credendus in corpore qui creditur in majestate, quia nasciturus in carne non divisionem, etc., (Petschenig): Gazæus reads Idem credendus in majestate quia nasciturus in carne. Non divisionem, etc.
[2501] Col. ii. 9.
[2502] S. John xiv. 23. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter V.
That before His birth in time Christ was always called God by the prophets.
He it is then of whom the Prophet says: "For in Thee is God, and there is no God beside Thee. For Thou art our God and we knew Thee not, O God of Israel the Saviour." [2503] Who "afterwards appeared on earth and conversed with men." [2504] Of whom and in whose Person the Prophet David also speaks: "From my mother's womb Thou art my God:" [2505] showing clearly that He who was Lord and man [2506] was never separate from God: in whom even in the Virgin's womb the fulness of the Godhead dwelt. As elsewhere the same Prophet says: "Truth has sprung from the earth and righteousness hath looked down from heaven," [2507] that we may know that when the Son of God looked down from heaven (i.e., came and descended), righteousness was born of the flesh of the Virgin, no phantasm of a body, but the Truth: for He is the Truth, according to His own witness of Truth: "I am the Truth and the life." [2508] And so as we have proved in the earlier books that this Truth; viz., the Lord Jesus Christ, was God when born of the Virgin, let us now do as we determined to do in the book before this, and show that He who was to be born of the Virgin, was always declared to be God beforehand. And so the prophet Isaiah says, "Cease ye from the man whose breath is in his nostrils, for it is He in whom he is reputed to be;" or as it is more exactly and clearly in the Hebrew: "for he is reputed high." [2509] But by saying "cease ye," a term which deprecates violence, he admirably denotes the disturbance of persecution. "Cease ye," he says, "from the man whose breath is in his nostrils, for he is reputed high." Does he not in one and the same sentence speak of the taking upon Him of the manhood, and the truth of His Godhead? "Cease ye," he says, "from the man whose breath is in his nostrils, for he is reputed high." Does he not, I ask you, seem plainly to address the Lord's persecutors, and to say, "Cease ye from the man" whom ye are persecuting, for this man is God: and though He appears in the lowliness of human flesh, yet He still continues in the high estate of Divine glory? But by saying "Cease ye from the man whose breath is in his nostrils," he admirably showed His manhood, by the clearest tokens of a human body, and this fearlessly and confidently, as one who would as urgently assert the truth of His humanity as that of His Godhead, for this is the true and Catholic faith, to believe that the Lord Jesus Christ possessed the substance of a true body just as He possessed a true and perfect Divinity. Unless possibly you think that anything can be made out of the fact that he uses the word "High" instead of "God"; whereas it is the habit of holy Scripture to put "High" for "God," as where the prophet says: "the Most High uttered His voice and the earth was moved," [2510] and "Thou alone art Most High over all the earth." [2511] Isaiah too, who says this: "The High and lofty one who inhabiteth eternity": [2512] where we are clearly to understand that as he there puts Most High without adding the name of God, so here too he speaks of God by the name of Most High. So then, since the Divine word spoken by the prophet clearly announced beforehand that the Lord Jesus Christ would be both God and man, let us now see whether the New Testament corresponds to and harmonizes with the testimony of the Old. __________________________________________________________________
[2503] Isa. xlv. 14, 15.
[2504] Baruch iii. 37.
[2505] Ps. xxi. (xxii.) 11.
[2506] Dominicus Homo, literally "the Lordly man." The same title is used again by Cassian in Book VI. cc. xxi., xxii. and in the Conferences XI. xiii. It is however an instance of a title which the mature judgment of the Church has rejected as savouring of an heretical interpretation. We learn from Gregory Nazianzen (Orat. 51) that the Greek equivalent of the title ho kuriakos anthropos, was a favourite term with the Apollinarians, as it might be taken to favour their view that the Divinity supplied the place of a human soul in Christ. It is however freely used by Epiphanius in his Anchoratus, and is also found in the exposition of faith assigned to Athanasius (Migne. Pat. Græc. xxv. p. 197). And Augustine himself actually uses the title Dominicus Homo in his treatise on the Sermon on the Mount, Book II. c. vi., though he afterwards retracted the term, see "Retract," Book I. c. xx. "Non video utrum recte dicatur Homo Dominicus, qui est mediator Dei et hominum, homo Christus Jesus, cum sit utique Dominus: Dominicus antem homo quis in ejus sancta familia non potest dici? Et hoc quidem ut dicerem, apud quosdam legi tractores catholicos divinorum eloquiorum. Sed ubicunque hoc dici, dixisse me nollem. Postea quippe vidi non esse dicendum, quamvis nonnulla possit ratione defendi." The question is discussed by S. Thomas, whether the title is rightly applied to Christ and decided by him in the negative. Summa III. Q. vi. art. 3.
[2507] Ps. lxxxiv. (lxxxv.) 12.
[2508] S. John xiv. 6.
[2509] Isa. ii. 22. Cf. the note on the Institutes xii. xxxi.
[2510] Ps. xlv. (xlvi.) 7.
[2511] Ps. lxxxii. (lxxxiii.) 19.
[2512] Isa. lvii. 15. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VI.
He illustrates the same doctrine by passages from the New Testament.
"That," says the Apostle John, "which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the word of the life: for the life was manifested: and we have seen, and do bear witness, and declare unto you the life eternal which was with the Father, and hath appeared unto us." [2513] You see how the old testimonies are confirmed by fresh ones, and the support of the new preaching is given to the ancient prophecy. Isaiah said: "Cease ye from the man whose breath is in his nostrils for he is reputed high." But John says: "That which was from the beginning, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled." The former said that as man He would be persecuted by the Jews: the latter declared that as man He was handled by men's hands. The one predicted that He whom he announced as man, would be God Most High: the other asserts that He whom he showed to have been handled by men, was ever God in the beginning. It is then as clear as possible that they both showed the Lord Jesus Christ to be both God and man; and that the same Person was afterwards man who had always been God, and thus He was God and man, because God Himself became man. That then, he says, "which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled of the word of life; and the life was manifested, and we have seen, and do bear witness, and declare unto you the life eternal which was with the Father, and hath appeared unto us." You see the number of proofs and ways, very different and numerous, in which that Apostle so well beloved and so devoted to God, indicates the mystery of the Divine Incarnation. In the first instance he testifies that He, who ever was in the beginning, was seen in the flesh. Lest in case it might not seem sufficient for unbelievers that he had spoken of Him as seen and heard, he supports it by saying that He was handled, i.e., touched and felt by his own hands and by those of others. Admirably indeed by showing how He took flesh, does he shut out the view of the Marcionites and the error of the Manichees, so that no one may think that a phantom appeared to men, since an apostle has declared that a true body was handled by him. Then he adds "the word of life: and the life was manifested;" and that he saw it, announced it, and proclaimed it: thus at the same time carrying out the duties of the faith and striking the unbelievers with terror, that while he declares that he proclaims Him, he may bring home the danger in which he stands, to the man who will not listen. "We declare to you," he says, "the life eternal which was with the Father, and hath appeared to us." He teaches that that which was ever with the Father appeared to men: and that which was ever in the beginning, was seen of men: and that which was the Word of life without beginning, was handled by men's hands. You see the number and variety, the particularity and the clearness of the ways in which he unfolds the mystery of the flesh joined to God, in such a way that no one could speak at all of either without acknowledging both. As the Apostle himself clearly says elsewhere: "For Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever." [2514] This is what he said in the passage given above: "That which was from the beginning, our hands have handled." Not that a spirit can in its own nature be handled: but that the Word made flesh was in a sense handled in the manhood with which it was joined. And so Jesus is "the same yesterday and to-day": i.e., the same Person before the commencement of the world, as in the flesh; the same in the past as in the present, the same also for ever, for He is the same through all the ages, as before all the ages. And all this is the Lord Jesus Christ. __________________________________________________________________
[2513] 1 John i. 1, 2.
[2514] Heb. xiii. 8. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VII.
He shows again from the union in Christ of two natures in one Person that what belongs to the Divine nature may rightly be ascribed to man, and what belongs to the human nature to God.
And how was it the same Person before the origin of the world, who was but recently born? Because it was the same Person, who was recently born in human nature, who was God before the rise of all things. And so the name of Christ includes everything that the name of God does; for so close is the union between Christ and God that no one, when he uses the name of Christ can help speaking of God under the name of Christ, nor, when he speaks of God, can he help speaking of Christ under the name of God. And as through the glory of His holy nativity the mystery of each substance is joined together in Him, whatever was in existence--I mean both human and Divine--all is regarded as God. And hence the Apostle Paul seeing with unveiled eyes of faith the whole mystery of the ineffable glory in Christ, spoke as follows, in inviting the peoples who were ignorant of God's goodness to give thanksgiving to God: "Giving thanks to the Father, who hath made us worthy to be partakers of the lot of the saints in light, who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the remission of sins; who is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of every creature: for in Him were all things created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominations, or powers: all things were created by Him and in Him. And He is before all, and by Him all things consist. And He is the head of the body the Church, who is the beginning, the first-born from the dead; that in all things He may hold the primacy. Because it pleased the Father that in Him should all fulness dwell; and through Him to reconcile all things unto Himself, making peace through the blood of His cross, both as to the things on earth, and the things that are in heaven." [2515] Surely this does not need the aid of any further explanation, as it is so fully and clearly expressed that in itself it contains not merely the substance of the faith, but a clear exposition of it. For he bids us give thanks to the Father: and adds a weighty reason for thus giving thanks; viz., because He hath made us worthy to be partakers with the saints, and hath delivered us from the power of darkness, hath translated us unto the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption and remission of sins: who is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of every creature; for in Him and through Him were all things created; of which He is both the Creator and the ruler: and what follows after this? "He is" he says, "the head of the body the Church: who is the beginning, the first-born from the dead." Scripture speaks of the resurrection as a birth: because as birth is the beginning of life, so resurrection gives birth unto life. Whence also the resurrection is actually spoken of as regeneration, according to the words of the Lord: "Verily I say unto you, that ye which have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit on the throne of His glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel." [2516] Therefore he calls Him the first-born from the dead, whom he had previously declared to be the invisible Son and image of God. But who is the image of the invisible God, except the only-begotten, the Word of God? And how can we say that He rose from the dead, who is termed the image and word of the invisible God? And what is it that follows afterwards? "That in all things He may hold the primacy: for it pleased the Father that in Him should all fulness dwell, and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, making peace through the blood of His cross, both as to things on earth and the things that are in heaven." Surely the Creator of all things has no need of the primacy in all things? Nor He who made them, of the primacy of those things which were made by Him? And how can we say of the Word, that it pleased God that all fulness should dwell in Him who was the first-born from the dead, when He was Himself the only-begotten Son of God and the Word of God, before the origin of all things, and had within Him the invisible Father, and so first had within Him all fulness, that He might Himself be the fulness of all things? And what next? "Bringing all things to peace through the blood of His cross, both things on earth, and the things which are in heaven." Certainly he has made it as clear as possible of whom he was speaking, when he called Him the first-born from the dead. For are all things reconciled and brought into peace through the blood of the Word or Spirit? Most certainly not. For no sort of passion can happen to nature that is impassible, nor can the blood of any but a man be shed, nor any but a man die: and yet the same Person who is spoken of in the following verses as dead, was above called the image of the invisible God. How then can this be? Because the apostles took every possible precaution that it might not be thought that there was any division in Christ, or that the Son of God being joined to a Son of man, might come by wild interpretations to be made into two Persons, and thus He who is in Himself but one might by wrongful and wicked notions of ours, be made into a double Person in one nature. And so most excellently and admirably does the apostle's preaching pass from the only begotten Son of God to the Son of man united to the Son of God, that the exposition of the doctrine might follow the actual course of the things that happened. And so he continues with an unbroken connexion, and makes as it were a sort of bridge, that without any gap or separation you might find at the end of time Him whom we read of as in the beginning of the world; and that you might not by admitting some division and erroneous separation imagine that the Son of God was one person in the flesh and another in the Spirit; when the teaching of the apostle had so linked together God and man through the mystery of His birth in the body, so as to show that it was the same Person reconciling to Himself all things on the Cross, who had been proclaimed the image of the invisible God before the foundation of the world. __________________________________________________________________
[2515] Col. i. 12-20.
[2516] S. Matt. xix. 28. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VIII.
He confirms the judgment of the Apostle by the authority of the Lord.
And though this is the saying of an Apostle, yet it is the very doctrine of the Lord. For the same Person says this to Christians by His Apostle, who had Himself said something very like it to Jews in the gospel, when He said: "But now ye seek to kill me, a man, who have spoken the truth to you, which I heard of God: for I am not come of Myself, but He sent me." [2517] He clearly shows that He is both God and man: man, in that He says that He is a man: God, in that He affirms that He was sent. For He must have been with Him from whom He came: and He came from Him, from whom He said that He was sent. Whence it comes that when the Jews said to Him, "Thou art not yet fifty years old and hast Thou seen Abraham?" He replied in words that exactly suit His eternity and glory, saying, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham came into being, I am." [2518] I ask then, whose saying do you think this is? Certainly it is Christ's without any doubt. And how could He who had been but recently born, say that He was before Abraham? Simply owing to the Word of God, with which He was entirely united, so that all might understand the closeness of the union of Christ and God: since whatever God said in Christ, that in its fulness the unity of the Divinity claimed for Himself. But conscious of His own eternity, He rightly then when in the body, replied to the Jews, with the very words which He had formerly spoken to Moses in the Spirit. For here He says, "Before Abraham came into being, I am." But to Moses He says, "I am that I am." [2519] He certainly announced the eternity of His Divine nature with marvellous grandeur of language, for nothing can be spoken so worthily of God, as that He should be said ever to be. For "to be" admits of no beginning in the past or end in the future. And so this is very clearly spoken of the nature of the eternal God, as it exactly describes His eternity. And this the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, when He was speaking of Abraham, showed by the difference of terms used, saying, "Before Abraham came into being I am." Of Abraham he said, "Before he came into being:" Of Himself, "I am," for it belongs to things temporal to come into being: to be belongs to eternity. And so "to come into being" He assigns to human transitoriness: but "to be" to His own nature. And all this was found in Christ who, by virtue of the mystery of the manhood and Divinity joined together in Him who ever "was," could say that He already "was." __________________________________________________________________
[2517] S. John viii. 40, 42.
[2518] Ibid. ver. 58.
[2519] Exod. iii. 14. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IX.
Since those marvellous works which from the days of Moses were shown to the children of Israel are attributed to Christ, it follows that He must have existed long before His birth in time.
And when the Apostle wanted to make this clear and patent to everybody he spoke as follows, saying that, "Jesus having saved the people out of the land of Egypt afterward destroyed them that believed not." [2520] But elsewhere too we read: "Neither let us tempt Christ, as some of them tempted, and were destroyed by serpents." [2521] Peter also the chief of the apostles says: "And now why tempt ye God to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear. But we believe that we shall be saved by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ even as they were." [2522] We know most certainly that the people of God were delivered from Egypt, and led dryshod through mighty tracts of water, and preserved in the vast desert wastes, by none but God alone; as it is written: "The Lord alone did lead them, and there was no strange God among them." [2523] And how can an Apostle declare in so many and such clear passages that the people of the Jews were delivered from Egypt by Jesus, and that Christ was at that time tempted by the Jews in the wilderness, saying, "Neither let us tempt Christ, as some of them tempted, and were destroyed of the serpents?" And further the blessed Apostle Peter says of all the saints who lived under the law of the Old Covenant that they were saved by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Get out then, and wriggle out of this if you can--whoever you are--you who rage with vapid mouth and a spirit of blasphemy, and think that there is no difference at all between Adam and Christ; and you who deny that He was God before His birth of the Virgin, show clearly how you can prove that He was not God before His body came into existence. For lo, an Apostle says that the people were saved out of the land of Egypt by Jesus: and that Christ was tempted by unbelievers in the wilderness: and that our fathers, i.e., the patriarchs and prophets, were saved by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Deny it if you can. I shall not be surprised if you manage to deny what we all read, as you have already denied what we all believe. Know then that even then it was Christ in God who led the people out of Egypt, and it was Christ in God who was tempted by the people who tempted, and it was Christ in God who saved all the righteous men by His lavish grace: for through the oneness of the mystery (of the Incarnation) the terms God and Christ so pass into each other, that whatever God did, that we may say that Christ did; and whatever afterwards Christ bore, we may say that God bore. And so when the prophet said, "There shall no new God be in thee, neither shalt thou worship any other God," [2524] he announced it with the same meaning and in the same spirit as that with which the Apostle said that Christ was the leader of the people of Israel out of Egypt; to show that He who was born of the Virgin as man, was even through the unity of the mystery still in God. Otherwise, unless we believe this, we must either believe with the heretics that Christ is not God, or against the teaching of the prophet hold that He is a new God. But may it be far from the Catholic people of God, to seem either to differ from the prophet or to agree with heretics: or perchance the people who should be blessed may be involved in a curse, and be charged with putting their hope in man. For whoever declares that the Lord Jesus Christ was at His birth a mere man, is doubly liable to the curse, whether he believes in Him or not. For if he believes, "Cursed is he who puts his hope in man." [2525] But if he does not believe, nonetheless is he still cursed, because though not believing in man, he still has altogether denied God. __________________________________________________________________
[2520] S. Jude ver. 5.
[2521] 1 Cor. x. 9.
[2522] Acts xv. 10, 11.
[2523] Deut. xxxii. 12.
[2524] Ps. lxxx. (lxxxi.) 10.
[2525] Jer. xvii. 5. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter X.
He explains what it means to confess, and what it means to dissolve Jesus.
For this it is which John, the man so dear to God, foresaw from the Lord's own revelation to him and so spoke of Him, who was speaking in him. "Every spirit," he says, "which confesseth Jesus come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit that dissolveth Jesus is not of God: and this is the spirit of Antichrist, of whom you have heard already, and he is now already in the world." [2526] O the marvellous and singular goodness of God, who like a most careful and skilful physician, foretold beforehand the diseases that should come upon His Church, and when He showed the mischief beforehand, gave in showing it, a remedy for it: that all men when they saw the evil approaching, might at once flee as far as possible from that which they already knew to be imminent. And so Saint John says, "Every spirit that dissolveth Jesus is not of God; and this is the spirit of Antichrist." Do you recognize him, O you heretic? Do you recognize that it is plainly and markedly spoken of you? For no one thus dissolves Jesus but he who does not confess that He is God. For since in this consists all the faith and all the worship of the Church; viz., to confess that Jesus is very God; who can more dissolve His glory and worship than one who denies the existence in Him of all that we all worship? Take then, I beseech you, take care lest any one may even term you Antichrist. Do you think that I am reviling and cursing? What I am saying is not my own idea: for lo, the Evangelist says, "Every one that dissolveth Jesus is not of God; and this is Antichrist." If you do not dissolve Jesus, and deny God, no one may call you Antichrist. But if you deny it why do you accuse any one for calling you Antichrist? While you are denying it, I declare you have said it of yourself. Would you like to know whether this is true? Tell me, when Jesus was born of a Virgin, what do you make Him to be--man or God? If God only, you certainly dissolve Jesus, as you deny that in Him manhood was joined to Divinity. But if you say He was man, none the less do you dissolve Him, as you blasphemously say that a mere man (as you will have it) was born. Unless perhaps you think that you do not dissolve Jesus, you who deny Him to be God, you who would certainly dissolve Him even if you did not deny [2527] that man was born together with God. But possibly you would like this to be made clearer by examples. You shall have them in both directions. The Manichees are outside the Church, who declare that Jesus was God alone: and the Ebionites, who say that he was a mere man. For both of them deny and dissolve Jesus: the one by saying that He is only man, the other by saying that He is only God. For though their opinions were the opposite of each other, yet the blasphemy of these diverse opinions is much the same, except that if any distinction can be drawn between the magnitude of the evils, your blasphemy which asserts that He is a mere man is worse than that which says that He is only God: for though both are wrong, yet it is more insulting to take away from the Lord what is Divine than what is human. This then alone is the Catholic and the true faith; viz., to believe that as the Lord Jesus Christ is God so also is He man; and that as He is man so also is He God. "Every one who dissolves Jesus is not of God." But to dissolve Him is to try to rend asunder what is united in Jesus; and to sever what is but one and indivisible. But what is it in Jesus that is united and but one? Certainly the manhood and the Godhead. He then dissolves Jesus who severs these and rends them asunder. Otherwise, if he does not rend them asunder and sever them, he does not dissolve Jesus: But if he rends them asunder he certainly dissolves Him. [2528] __________________________________________________________________
[2526] S. John iv. 2, 3. It will be noticed that Cassian quotes this passage with the reading "Qui solvit Jesum," where the Greek has ho me homologei ton 'Iesoun. Luei is found in no Greek ms., uncial or cursive, and the only Greek authority for it is that of Socrates who says it was the reading in "the old copies." "Qui solvit" was probably an early gloss, current in very early days in the West, being found in Tertullian (adv. Marc. v. 16; De Jejun. i.) and in all Latin mss. whether of the Vetus or Vulgate (with a single exception), and finally becoming universal in the Fathers of the Western Church. Cf. Westcott on the Epp. of S. John, p. 156, sq.
[2527] Non negares (Petschenig). Gazæus has denegares.
[2528] The last sentences are placed in brackets by Petschenig. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XI.
The mystery of the Lord's Incarnation clearly implies the Divinity of Christ.
And so to every man who breaks out into this mad blasphemy, the Lord Jesus in the gospel Himself repeats what He said to the Pharisees, and declares: "What God hath joined together, let not man put asunder." [2529] For although where it was originally spoken by God it seems to be in answer to another matter, yet the deep wisdom of God which was speaking not more of carnal than of spiritual things, would have this to be taken of that subject indeed, but even more of this: for when the Jews of that day believed with you that Jesus was only a man without Divinity, and the Lord was asked a question about the union in marriage, in His teaching He not only referred to it, but to this also: though consulted about matters of less importance His answer applied to greater and deeper matters, when he said, "What God hath joined together, let not man put asunder," i.e., Do not sever what God hath joined together in My Person. Let not human wickedness sever that which the Divine Glory hath united in Me. But if you want to be told more fully that this is so, hear the Apostle talking about these very subjects of which the Saviour was then teaching, for he, as a teacher sent from God that his weak-minded hearers might be able to take in his teaching, expounded those very subjects which God had proclaimed in a mystery. For when he was discussing the subject of carnal union, on which the Saviour had been asked a question in the gospel, he repeated those very passages from the old Law on which He had dwelt, on purpose that they might see that as he was using the same authorities he was expounding the same subject: besides which, that nothing may seem to be wanting to his case, he adds the mention of carnal union, and puts in the names of husband and wife whom he exhorts to love one another: "Husbands, love your wives even as Christ also loved the Church." And again: "So also ought men to love their wives even as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it, as Christ also doth the Church, for we are members of His body." [2530] You see how by adding to the mention of man and wife the mention of Christ and the Church, he leads all from taking it carnally to understand it in a spiritual sense. For when he had said all this, he added those passages which the Lord had applied in the Gospel, saying: "For this cause shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they twain shall be one flesh." And after this with special emphasis he adds: "This is a great mystery." He certainly altogether cuts off and gets rid of any carnal interpretation, by saying that it is a Divine mystery. And what did he add after this? "But I am speaking of Christ and the Church." That is to say: "But that is a great mystery. But I am speaking of Christ and the Church," i.e., since perhaps at the present time all cannot grasp that, they may at least grasp this, which is not at variance with it, nor different from it, because both refer to Christ. But because they cannot grasp those more profound truths let them at least take in these easier ones that by making a commencement by grasping what lies on the surface, they may come to the deeper truths, and that the acquisition of a somewhat simple matter may open the way in time to what is more profound. __________________________________________________________________
[2529] S. Matt. xix. 6.
[2530] Eph. v. 25-30. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XII.
He explains more fully what the mystery is which is signified under the name of the man and wife.
What then is that great mystery which is signified under the name of the man and his wife? Let us ask the Apostle himself, who elsewhere to teach the same thing uses words of the same force, saying: "And evidently great is the mystery of godliness, which was manifested in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached to the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up in glory." [2531] What then is that great mystery which was manifested in the flesh? Clearly it was God born of the flesh, God seen in bodily form: who was openly received up in glory just as He was openly manifested in the flesh. This then is the great mystery, of which he says: "For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and they two shall be one flesh." Who then were the two in one flesh? God and the soul, for in the one flesh of man which is joined to God are present God and the soul, as the Lord Himself says: "No man can take My life (anima) away from Me. But I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again." [2532] You see then in this, three; viz., God, the flesh, and the soul. He is God who speaks: the flesh in which He speaks: the soul of which He speaks. Is He therefore that man of whom the prophet says: "A brother cannot redeem, nor shall a man redeem"? [2533] Who, as it was said, "ascended up where He was before," [2534] and of whom we read: "No man hath ascended into heaven, but He who came down from heaven, even the Son of man who is in heaven." [2535] For this cause, I say, He has left his father and mother, i.e., God from whom He was begotten and that "Jerusalem which is the mother of us all," [2536] and has cleaved to human flesh, as to his wife. And therefore he expressly says in the case of the father "a man shall leave his father," but in the case of the mother he does not say "his," but simply says "mother:" because she was not so much his mother, as the mother of all believers, i.e., of all of us. And He was joined to his wife, for just as man and wife make but one body, so the glory of Divinity and the flesh of man are united and the two, viz., God and the soul, become one flesh. For just as that flesh had God as an indweller in it, so also had it the soul within it dwelling with God. This then is that great mystery, to search out which our admiration for the Apostle summons us, and God's own exhortation bids us: and it is one not foreign to Christ and His Church, as he says, "But I am speaking of Christ and the Church." Because the flesh of the Church is the flesh of Christ, and in the flesh of Christ there is present God and the soul: and so the same person is present in Christ as in the Church, because the mystery which we believe in the flesh of Christ, is contained also by faith in the Church. __________________________________________________________________
[2531] 1 Tim. iii. 16. Quod manifestum in carne. The true reading is pretty certainly hos, see Westcott and Hort, Greek Testament, vol. ii., p. 132. The neuter ho is found in D. and in many Latin Fathers, as well as the Vulgate.
[2532] S. John x. 18.
[2533] Ps. xlviii. (xlix.) 8.
[2534] Cf. S. John vi. 62.
[2535] S. John iii. 13.
[2536] Gal. iv. 26. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIII.
Of the longing with which the old patriarchs desired to see the revelation of that mystery.
This mystery then, which was manifested in the flesh and appeared in the world, and was preached to the Gentiles, many of the saints of old longed to see in the flesh, as they foresaw it in the spirit. For "Verily," saith the Lord, "I say unto you that many prophets and righteous men have desired to see the things which ye see, and have not seen them; and to hear the things which ye hear and have not heard them." [2537] And so the prophet Isaiah says: "O that Thou, Lord, would rend the heavens and come down," [2538] and David too: "O Lord, bow the heavens and come down." [2539] Moses also says: "Show me Thyself that I may see Thee plainly." [2540] No one ever approached nearer to God speaking out of the clouds, and to the very presence of His glory than Moses who received the law. And if no one ever saw more closely into God than he did, why did he ask for a still clearer vision, saying, "Show me Thyself that I may see Thee plainly"? Simply because he prayed that this might happen which the apostle tells us in almost the same words actually did happen; viz., that the Lord might be openly manifested in the flesh, might openly appear to the world, openly be received up in glory; and that at last the saints might with their very bodily eyes see all those things which with spiritual sight they had foreseen. __________________________________________________________________
[2537] S. Matt. xiii. 17.
[2538] Isa. lxiv. 1.
[2539] Ps. xcliii. (cxliv.) 5.
[2540] Exod. xxxiii. 13. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIV.
He refutes the wicked and blasphemous notion of the heretics who said that God dwelt and spoke in Christ as in an instrument or a statue.
Otherwise, as the heretics say, God would be in the Lord Jesus Christ as in a statue or in an instrument, i.e., He would dwell as it were in a man and speak as it were through a man, and it would not be He who dwelt and spoke as God of Himself and in His own body: and certainly He had already thus dwelt in the saints and spoken in the persons of the saints. In those men too, of whom I spoke above, who had prayed for His advent, He had thus dwelt and spoken. And what need was there for all these to ask for what they already possessed, if they were seeking for what they had previously received? Or why should they long to see with their eyes what they were keeping in their hearts, especially as it is better for a man to have the same thing within himself than to see it outside? Or if God was to dwell in Christ in the same way as in all the saints, why should all the saints long to see Christ rather than themselves? And if they were only to see the same thing in Jesus Christ, which they themselves possessed, why should they not much rather prefer to have this in themselves than to see it in another? But you are wrong, you wretched madman, "not understanding," as the Apostle says, "what you say and whereof you affirm": [2541] for all the prophets and all the saints received from God some portion of the Divine Spirit as they were able to bear it. But in Christ "all the fulness of the Godhead" dwelt and "dwells bodily." And therefore they all fall far short of His fulness, from whose fulness they receive something: for the fact that they are filled is the gift of Christ: because they would all certainly be empty, were He not the fulness of all. __________________________________________________________________
[2541] 1 Tim. i. 7. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XV.
What the prayers of the saints for the coming of Messiah contained; and what was the nature of that longing of theirs.
This then all the saints wished for: for this they prayed. This they longed to see with their eyes in proportion as they were wise in heart and mind. And so the prophet Isaiah says: "O that Thou wouldst rend the heavens and come down." [2542] But Habakkuk too declaring the same thing which the other was wishing for, says: "When the years draw nigh, Thou wilt show Thyself: at the coming of the times Thou wilt be manifested: God will come from Teman," or "God will come from the south." [2543] David also: "God will clearly come:" and again: "Thou that sittest above the Cherubim, show Thyself." [2544] Some declared His advent which He presented to the world: others prayed for it. Some in different forms but all with equal longing: understanding up to a certain point how great a thing they were praying for, that God dwelling in God, and continuing in the form and bosom of God, might "empty Himself," [2545] and take the form of a servant and submit Himself to endure all the bitterness and insults of the passion, and undergo punishment for His goodness, and what is hardest, and the most disgraceful thing of all, meet with death at the hands of those very persons for whom He would die. All the saints then understanding this up to a certain point--up to a certain point, I say, for how vast it is none can understand--with concordant voice and (so to speak) by mutual consent all prayed for the advent of God: for indeed they knew that the hope of all men lay therein, and that the salvation of all was bound up in this, because no one could loose the prisoners except one who was Himself free from chains: no one could release sinners, save one Himself without sin: for no one can in any case set free anyone, unless he is himself free in that particular, in which another is freed by him. And so when death had passed on all, all were wanting in life, that, dying in Adam, they might live in Christ. For though there were many saints, many elect and even friends of God, yet none could ever of themselves be saved, had they not been saved by the advent of the Lord and His redemption. __________________________________________________________________
[2542] Isa. lxiv. 1.
[2543] Hab. iii. 2, 3, where the Old Latin has "Theman," and the Vulgate "Austro."
[2544] Ps. xlix. (l.) 3; lxxix. (lxxx.) 2.
[2545] Phil. ii. 7. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Book VI. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter I.
From the miracle of the feeding of the multitude from five barley loaves and two fishes he shows the majesty of Divine Power.
We read in the gospel that when five loaves were at the Lord's bidding brought to Him an immense number of God's people were fed with them. But how this was done it is impossible to explain, or to understand or to imagine. So great and so incomprehensible is the might of Divine Power, that though we are perfectly assured of the fact, yet we are unable to understand the manner of the fact. For first one would have to comprehend how so small a number of loaves could be sufficient, I will not say for them to eat and be filled, but even to be divided and set before them, when there were many more thousands of men than there were loaves; and almost more companies than there could be fragments of the whole number of loaves. The plentiful supply then was the creation of the word of the Lord. The work grew in the doing of it. And though what was visible was but little; yet what was given to them became more than could be reckoned. There is then no room for conjecture, for human speculation, or imagination. The only thing in such a case is that like faithful and wise men we should acknowledge that, however great and incomprehensible are the things which are done by God, even if they are altogether beyond our comprehension, we must recognize that nothing is impossible with God. But of these unspeakable acts of Divine Power, we will, as the subject demands it, speaks more fully later on, because it exactly corresponds to the ineffable miracles of His Holy Nativity. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter II.
The author adapts the mystery of the number seven (made up of the five loaves and two fishes) to his own work.
Meanwhile as we have alluded to the five loaves, I think it will not be out of place to make a comparison of the five books which we have already composed. For as they are equal in number, so they are not dissimilar in character. For as the loaves were of barley, so these books may (as far as my ability is concerned) be fairly termed "of barley," although they are enriched with passages from Holy Scripture, and contain life-giving treasures in contemptible surroundings. And even in this point they are not unlike those loaves, for though they were poor things to look at, yet they proved to be rich in blessing: and so these books, though, as far as my powers are concerned, they are worthless, yet they are valuable from the sacred matter which is mingled with them: and though they appear outwardly worthless like barley owing to my words, yet within they have the savour of the bread of life owing to the testimonies from the Lord Himself. It remains that, after His example, they may, by the gift of Divine grace, furnish life-giving food from countless seeds. And as those loaves supplied bodily strength to those who ate them, so may these give spiritual vigour to those who read them. But as then the Lord, from whom this gift comes as did that, by means of that food provided that they might be filled and so should not faint by the way, so now is He able to bring it about that by means of this men may be filled and not err (from the faith). But still because there, where a countless host of God's people was fed with a mighty gift, though there was very little for them to eat, we read that to those five loaves there were added two fishes, it is fitting that we too, who are anxious to give to all God's people who are following, the nourishment of a spiritual repast, should add to those five books corresponding to the five loaves, two more books corresponding to the two fishes: praying and beseeching Thee, O Lord, that Thou wilt look on our efforts and prayers, and grant a prosperous issue to our pious undertaking. And since we, out of our love and obedience, desire to make the number of our books correspond to the number of loaves and fishes, do Thou grant the virtue of Thy Benediction upon them; and, as Thou dost bless [2546] this little work of ours with a gospel number, so mayest Thou fill up the number with the fruit of the gospel, and grant that this may be for holy and saving food to all the people of Thy Church, of every age and sex. And if there are some who are affected by the deadly breath of that poisonous serpent, and in an unhealthy state of soul and spirit have caught a pestilential disease in their feeble dispositions, give to them all the vigour of health, and entire soundness of faith, that by granting to them all, by means of these writings of ours, the saving care of Thy gift--just as that food in the gospel was completely sanctified by Thee, so that by eating it those hungry souls were strengthened,--so mayest Thou bid languid souls to be healed by these. __________________________________________________________________
[2546] Muneraris, (Petschenig): Gazæus reads numeraris. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter III.
He refutes his opponent by the testimony of the Council of Antioch.
Therefore since we have, as I fancy, already in all the former books with the weight of sacred testimonies, given a complete answer to the heretic who denies God, now let us come to the faith of the Creed of Antioch and its value. For as he [2547] was himself baptized and regenerated in this, he ought to be confuted by his own profession, and (so to speak) to be crushed beneath the weight of his own arms, for this is the method, that as he is already convicted by the evidence of holy Scripture, so now he may be convicted by evidence out of his own mouth. Nor will there be any need to bring anything else to bear against him when he has clearly and plainly convicted himself. The text then and the faith of the Creed of Antioch is this. [2548] "I believe in one and the only true God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son, and the first-born of every creature, begotten of Him before all worlds, and not made: Very God of Very God, Being of one substance with the Father: By whom both the worlds were framed, and all things were made. Who for us came, and was born of the Virgin Mary, and was crucified under Pontius Pilate and was buried: and the third day He rose again according to the Scripture: and ascended into heaven, and shall come again to judge the quick and the dead," etc. [2549] In the Creed which gives the faith of all the Churches, I should like to know which you would rather follow, the authority of men or of God? Though I would not press hardly or unkindly upon you, but give the opportunity of choosing whichever alternative you please, that accepting one, I may deny the other: for I will grant you and yield to you either of them. And what do I grant, I ask? I will force you to one or other even against your will. For you ought, if you like, to understand of your own free will that one or other of these is in the Creed: if you don't like it, you must be forced against your will to see it. For, as you know, a Creed (Symbolum) gets its name from being a "collection." [2550] For what is called in Greek sumbolos is termed in Latin "Collatio." But it is therefore a collection (collatio) because when the faith of the whole Catholic law was collected together by the apostles of the Lord, all those matters which are spread over the whole body of the sacred writings with immense fulness of detail, were collected together in sum in the matchless brevity of the Creed, according to the Apostle's words: "Completing His word, and cutting it short in righteousness: because a short word shall the Lord make upon the earth." [2551] This then is the "short word" which the Lord made, collecting together in few words the faith of both of His Testaments, and including in a few brief clauses the drift of all the Scriptures, building up His own out of His own, and giving the force of the whole law in a most compendious and brief formula. Providing in this, like a most tender father, for the carelessness and ignorance of some of his children, that no mind however simple and ignorant might have any trouble over what could so easily be retained in the memory. __________________________________________________________________
[2547] Nestorius, who had belonged to the monastery of St. Euprepius near the gate of Antioch before his elevation to the see of Constantinople.
[2548] This creed is plainly given by Cassian as the baptismal formula of the Church of Antioch; and with almost verbally a fragment of the Creed preserved in a Contestatio comparing Nestorius to Paul of Samosata (a.d. 429, or 430) which is said by Leontius to have been the work of Eusebius afterward Bishop of Dorylæum. The form is especially interesting as showing that the Creed of Antioch, in common with several other Eastern Creeds, underwent revision, probably about the middle of the fourth century, from the desire to enrich the local creed with Nicene phraseology. The insertions which are obviously due to the Creed of Nicæa are: non factum, Deum verum ex Deo vero, homoousion patri, or as they would run in the original ou poiethenta, Theon alethinon ek Theou alithinou, homoousion to Patri, and it has been suggested that they were probably introduced at the Synod held at Antioch under Meletius in 363. Similar forms of local creeds thus enlarged by the adoption of Nicene phraseology are (1) that of Jerusalem as given by Cyril in his Catechetical Lectures, (2) the Creed of Cappadocia, (3) that of Mesopotamia, and (4) the "Creed of Charisius" preserved in the Acts of the Council of Ephesus (Mansi IV. 1348). On all of these see Dr. Hort's "Two Dissertations," p. 110 sq. Another interesting feature in the Creed as given by Cassian is that it was in the singular "Credo," I believe; whereas the Eastern Creeds are almost all in the plural pisteuomen. That however which is found in the Apostolical Constitutions (VII. xli.) has the singular pisteuo kai baptizomai, and therefore it is possible that Cassian may have preserved the original form here. It is however more probable that the singular Credo is due to a reminiscence of the form current in the Western church, which has influenced the translation. See further Hahn's Bibliothek des Symbole p. 64 sq.
[2549] Cassian nowhere quotes the last section of the Creed of Antioch, as it did not concern the question at issue. A few clauses of it may however be recovered from S. Chrysostom's Homilies (In 1 Cor. Hom. xl. § 2); viz., kai eis hamartion aphesin kai eis nekron anastasin kai eis zoen aionion.
[2550] Symbolus, or more commonly and correctly Symbolum (= sumbolon) is the general name for the creed in the ancient church, met with from the days of Cyprian (who uses it more than once, e.g., Ep. lxix.) onwards. In the account which Cassian gives in the text of the origin of the name he is certainly copying Rufinus (whose exposition of the Apostles' Creed is directly quoted by him below in Book VII. c. xxvii.). The passage which Cassian evidently has in his mind is the following: "Moreover for many and excellent reasons they determined that it should be called Symbolum. For Symbolum' in Greek may mean both Indicium (a token) and collatio (a collection), that is, that which several bring together into one; for the apostles effected this in these sentences by bringing together into one what each thought good....Therefore being about to depart to preach, the apostles appointed that token of their unanimity and faith." (Ruf. De Symb. § 2). Cf. also § 1. "In these words there is truly discovered the prophecy which says: Completing His work and cutting it short in righteousness, because a short work will the Lord make upon the earth.'" This explanation, however, of the origin of the term labours under the fatal mistake of confusing two distinct Greek words, sumbole, a "collection," and sumbolon, a "watchword:" and the true explanation of the word is probably that which Rufinus gives as an alternative, which gives it the meaning of "watchword." It was the watchword of the Christian soldier, carefully and jealously guarded by him, as that by which he could himself be distinguished from heretics, and that for which he could challenge others of whose orthodoxy he might be in doubt.
[2551] Rom. ix. 28. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IV.
How the Creed has authority Divine as well as human.
You see then that the Creed has the authority of God: for "a short word will the Lord make upon the earth." But perhaps you want the authority of men: nor is that wanting, for God made it by means of men. For as He fashioned the whole body of the sacred Scriptures by means of the patriarchs and more particularly his own prophets, so He formed the Creed by means of His apostles and priests. And whatever He enlarged on in these (in Scripture) with copious and abundant material, He here embraced in a most complete and compendious form by means of His own servants. There is nothing wanting then in the Creed; because as it was formed from the Scriptures of God by the apostles of God, it has in it all the authority it can possibly have, whether of men or of God: Although too that which was made by men, must be accounted God's work, for we should not look on it so much as their work, by whose instrumentality it was made, but rather as His, who was the actual maker. "I believe," then, says the Creed, "in one true and only God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible; and in one Lord Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son and the first-born of every creature; Begotten of Him before all worlds, and not made; Very God of Very God, being of one substance with the Father; by whom both the worlds were framed and all things were made; who for us came, and was born of the Virgin Mary; and was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and was buried. And the third day He rose again according to the Scriptures; and ascended into heaven: and shall come again to judge the quick and the dead," etc. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter V.
He proceeds against his opponent with the choicest arguments, and shows that we ought to hold fast to the religion which we have received from our fathers.
If you were an assertor of the Arian or Sabellian heresy, and did not use your own creed, I would still confute you by the authority of the holy Scriptures; I would confute you by the words of the law itself; I would refute you by the truth of the Creed which has been approved throughout the whole world. I would say that, even if you were void of sense and understanding, yet still you ought at least to follow universal consent: and not to make more of the perverse view of a few wicked men than of the faith of all the Churches: which as it was established by Christ, and handed down by the apostles ought to be regarded as nothing but the voice of the authority of God, which is certainly in possession of the voice and mind of God. And what then if I were to deal with you in this way? What would you say? What would you answer? Would it not, I adjure you, be this: viz., that you had not been trained up and taught in this way: that something different had been delivered to you by your parents, and masters, and teachers. That you did not hear this in the meeting place of your father's teaching, nor in the Church of your Baptism: finally that the text and words of the Creed delivered and taught to you contained something different. That in it you were baptized and regenerated. You would say that you would hold fast this which you had received, and that you would live in that Creed in which you learnt that you were regenerated. When you said this, would you not, I pray, fancy that you were using a very strong shield even against the truth? And indeed it would be no unreasonable defence, even in a bad business, and one which would give no bad excuse for error, if it did not unite obstinacy with error. For if you held this, which you had received from your childhood, we should try to amend and correct your present error, rather than be severe in punishing your past fault: Whereas now, as you were born in a Catholic city, instructed in the Catholic faith, and regenerated with Catholic Baptism, how can I deal with you as with an Arian or Sabellian? Would that you were one! I should grieve less had you been brought up in what was wrong, instead of having fallen away from what was right: had you never received the faith, instead of having lost it: had you been an old heretic instead of a fresh apostate, for you would have brought less scandal and harm on the whole Church; finally it would have been a less bitter sorrow, and less injurious example had you been able to try the Church as a layman rather than a priest. Therefore, as I said above, if you had been a follower and assertor of Sabellianism or Arianism or any heresy you please, you might shelter yourself under the example of your parents, the teaching of your instructors, the company of those about you, the faith of your creed. I ask, O you heretic, nothing unfair, and nothing hard. As you have been brought up in the Catholic faith, do that which you would do for a wrong belief. Hold fast to the teaching of your parents. Hold fast the faith of the Church: hold fast the truth of the Creed: hold fast the salvation of baptism. What sort of a wonder--what sort of a monster are you? You will not do for yourself what others have done for their errors. But we have launched out far enough: and out of love for a city that is connected with us, [2552] have yielded to our grief as to a strong wind, and while we were anxious to make way, have overshot the mark of our proper course. __________________________________________________________________
[2552] Viz., Constantinople, where Nestorius was Bishop and where Cassian himself had been ordained deacon by S. Chrysostom, as he tells us below in Book VII. c. xxxi., where he returns to the subject of his love for the city of his ordination, and interest in it. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VI.
Once more he challenges him to the profession of the Creed of Antioch.
The Creed then, O you heretic, of which we gave the text above, though it is that of all the churches (for the faith of all is but one) is yet specially that of the city and Church of Antioch, i.e., of that Church in which you were brought up, instructed, and regenerated. The faith of this Creed brought you to the fountain of life, to saving regeneration, to the grace of the Eucharist, to the Communion of the Lord: And what more! Alas for the grievous and mournful complaint! Even to the ministerial office, the height of the presbyterate, the dignity of the priesthood. Do you, you wretched madman, think that this is a light or trivial matter? Do you not see what you have done? Into what a depth you have plunged yourself? In losing the faith of the Creed, you have lost everything that you were. For the mysteries of the priesthood and of your salvation rested on the truth of the Creed. Can you possibly deny that? I say that you have denied your very self. But perhaps you think that you cannot deny yourself. Let us look at the text of the Creed; that if you say what you used to do, you may not be refuted, but if you say things widely different and contrary, you may not look to be confuted by me, as you have condemned yourself already. For if you now maintain something else than what is in the Creed and what you formerly maintained yourself, how can you help ascribing your punishment to nobody but yourself, when you see that the opinion of everybody else about you is the same as your own? "I believe," the Creed says, "in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible; and in the Lord Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son, the first-born of every creature; Begotten of Him before all worlds, and not made." It is well that you should first reply to this: Do you confess this of Jesus Christ the Son of God, or do you deny it? If you confess it, everything is right enough. But if not, how do you now deny what you yourself formerly confessed? Choose then which you will: Of two things one must follow; viz., that that same confession of yours, if it still holds good, should alone set you free, or if you deny it, be the first to condemn you. For you said in the Creed: "I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ His only begotten Son, and the first-born of every creature." If the Lord Jesus Christ is the only begotten, and the first-born of every creature, then by our own confession He is certainly God. For no other is the only begotten and first-born of every creature but the only begotten Son of God: as He is the first-born of the creatures, so He is also God the Creator of all. And how can you say that He was a mere man at His birth from the Virgin, whom you confessed to be God before the world. Next the Creed says: "Begotten of the Father before all worlds, and not made." This Creed was uttered by you. You said by your Creed, that Jesus Christ was begotten before the worlds of God the Father, and not made. Does the Creed say anything about those phantasms, of which you now rave? Did you yourself say anything about them? Where is the statue? Where that instrument of yours, I pray? For God forbid that this should be another's and not yours. Where is it that you assert that the Lord Jesus Christ is like a statue, and so you think that He ought to be worshipped not because He is God, but because He is the image of God; and out of the Lord of glory you make an instrument, and blasphemously say that He ought to be adored not for His own sake, but for the sake of Him who (as it were) breathes in Him and sounds through Him? You said in the Creed that the Lord Jesus Christ was begotten of the Father before all worlds, and not made: and this certainly belongs to none but the only begotten Son of God: that His birth should not be a creation, and that He could be said simply to be begotten, not made: for it is contrary to the nature of things and to His honour that the Creator of all should be believed to be a creature: and that He, the author of all things that have a commencement, should Himself have a beginning, as all things began from Him. And so we say that He was begotten not made: for His generation was unique and no ordinary creation. And since He is God, begotten of God, the Godhead of Him who is begotten must have everything complete which the majesty of Him who begat has. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VII.
He continues the same line of argument drawn from the Creed of Antioch.
But there follows in the Creed: "Very God of Very God; Being of one substance with the Father; by whom both the worlds were framed, and all things were made." And when you said all this, remember that you said it all of the Lord Jesus Christ. For you find stated in the Creed: that you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, and the first-born of every creature: and after this and other clauses: "Very God of Very God, Being of one substance with the Father; by whom also the worlds were framed." How then can the same Person be God and not God; God and a statue; God and an instrument? These do not harmonize, you heretic, in any one Person, nor do they fit together, so that you can, when you like, call Him God; and when you like, consider the same Person a creation. You said in the Creed, "Very God." Now you say: "a mere man." How can these things fit together and harmonize so that one and the same Person may be the greatest Power, and utter weakness: the Highest glory, and mere mortality? These things do not meet together in one and the same Lord. So that severing Him for worship and for degradation, on one side, you may do Him honour as you like, and on the other, you may injure Him as you like. You said in the Creed when you received the Sacrament of true Salvation: "the Lord Jesus Christ, Very God of Very God, Being of one substance with the Father, Creator of the worlds, Maker of all things." Where are you alas! Where is your former self? Where is that faith of yours? Where that confession? How have you fallen back and become a monstrosity and a prodigy? What folly, what madness was your ruin? You turned the God of all power and might into inanimate material and a lifeless creation: Your faith has certainly grown in time, in age, and in the priesthood. You are worse as an old man than formerly as a child: worse now as a veteran than as a tyro: worse as a Bishop than you were as a novice: nor were you ever a learner after you had begun to be a teacher. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VIII.
How it can be said that Christ came and was born of a Virgin.
But let us look at the remainder which follows. As then the Creed says: "The Lord Jesus Christ, Very God of Very God, Being of one substance with the Father; By whom both the worlds were framed, and all things were made," it immediately subjoins in closest connexion the following, and says: "Who for us came and was born of the Virgin Mary." He then, who is Very God, who is of one substance with the Father, who is the Maker of all things, He, I repeat, came into the world and was born of the Virgin Mary; as the Apostle Paul says: "But when the fulness of the times was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law." [2553] You see how the mysteries of the Creed correspond with the Holy Scriptures. The Apostle declares that the Son of God was "sent from the Father:" The Creed affirms that He "came." For it certainly follows that our faith should confess that He has "come," whom the Apostle had taught us to be sent. Then the Apostle says: "Made of a woman:" The Creed, "born of Mary." And so you see that there speaks through the Creed the Scripture itself, from which the Creed acknowledges that it is itself derived. But when the Apostle says, "made of a woman," he rightly enough uses "made" for "born," after the manner of Holy Scripture in which "made" stands for "born:" as in this passage: "Instead of thy fathers there are made to thee sons:" [2554] or this: "Before Abraham was made, I am;" [2555] where we certainly see clearly that He meant "Before he was born, I am:" alluding to the fact of his birth under the term "was made," because whatever does not need to be made has the very reality of creation. "Who," it then says, "for us came and was born of the Virgin Mary." If a mere man was born of Mary, how can it be said that He "came"? For no one "comes" but He who has it in Him to be able to come. But in the case of one who had not yet received His existence, how could He have it in Him to come. You see then how by the word "coming" it is shown that He who came was already in existence: for He only had the power to come, to whom there could be the opportunity of coming, from the fact that He was already existing. But a mere man was certainly not in existence before he was conceived, and so had not in himself the power to come. It is clear then that it was God who came: to whom it belongs in each case both to be, and to come. For certainly He came because He was, and He ever was, because He could ever come. __________________________________________________________________
[2553] Gal. iv. 4.
[2554] Ps. xliv. (xlv.) 17.
[2555] S. John viii. 58. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IX.
Again he convicts his opponent of deadly heresy by his own confession.
But why are we arguing about words, when the facts are clear enough? and seeking for a determination of the matter from the terms of the Creed, when the Creed itself deals with the question. Let us repeat the confession of the Creed, and of you yourself (for yours it is as well as the Creed's, for you made it yours by confessing it), that you may see that you have departed not only from the Creed but from yourself. "I believe" then, says the Creed, "In one only true God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible: And in the Lord Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son, and the first-born of every creature: Begotten of Him before all worlds and not made; Very God of Very God; Being of one substance with the Father; By whom both the worlds were framed, and all things were made. Who for us came, and was born of the Virgin Mary." "For us" then the Creed says, our Lord Jesus Christ "came and was born of the Virgin Mary, and was crucified under Pontius Pilate; and was buried, and rose again according to the Scriptures." The Churches are not ashamed to confess this: the Apostles were not ashamed to preach it. You yourself, you, I say, whose every utterance is now blasphemy, you who now deny everything, you did not deny all these truths: that God was born; that God suffered, that God rose again. And what next? Whither have you fallen? What have you become? To what are you reduced? What do you say? What are you vomiting forth? What, as one says, even mad Orestes himself would swear to be the words of a madman. [2556] For what is it that you say? "Who then is the Son of God who was born of the Christotocos? As for instance if we were to say I believe in God the Word, the only Son of God, begotten of His Father, Being of one substance with the Father, who came down and was buried, would not our ears be shocked at the sound? God dead?" And again: "Can it possibly be, you say, that He who was begotten before all worlds, should be born a second time, and be God?" If all these things cannot possibly be, how is it that the Creed of the Churches says that they did happen? How is it that you yourself said that they did? For let us compare what you now say with what you formerly said. Once you said: "I believe in God the Father Almighty; and in Jesus Christ His Son, Very God of Very God; Being of one substance with the Father; who for us came and was born of the Virgin Mary; and was crucified under Pontius Pilate; and was buried." But now what is it that you say? "If we should say: I believe in God the Word, the only Son of God, Begotten of His Father; Being of one substance with the Father, who came down and was buried, would not our ears be shocked at the sound?" The bitterness indeed and blasphemy of your words might drive us to a furious and ferocious attack in answer; but we must somewhat curb the reins of our pious sorrow. __________________________________________________________________
[2556] Persius Sat. iii. l. 116..."quod ipse non sani esse hominis non sanus juret Orestes." __________________________________________________________________
Chapter X.
He inveighs against him because though he has forsaken the Catholic religion, he nevertheless presumes to teach in the Church, to sacrifice, and to give decisions.
I appeal then to you, to you yourself, I say. Tell me, I pray, if any Jew or pagan denied the Creed of the Catholic faith, should you think that we ought to listen to him? Most certainly not. What if a heretic or an apostate does the same? Still less should we listen to him, for it is worse for a man to forsake the truth which he has known, than to deny it without ever having known it. We see then two men in you: a Catholic and an apostate: first a Catholic, afterwards an apostate. Determine for yourself which you think we ought to follow: for you cannot press the claims of the one in yourself without condemning the other. Do you say then that it is your former self which is to be condemned: and that you condemn the Catholic Creed, and the confession and faith of all men? And what then? O shameful deed! O wretched grief! What are you doing in the Catholic Church, you preventer of Catholics? Why is it that you, who have denied the faith of the people, are still polluting the meetings of the people: And above all venture to stand at the altar, to mount the pulpit, and show your impudent and treacherous face to God's people--to occupy the Bishop's throne, to exercise the priesthood, to set yourself up as a teacher? To teach the Christians what? Not to believe in Christ: to deny that He in whose Divine temple they are, is God. [2557] And after all this, O folly! O madness! you fancy that you are a teacher and a Bishop, while (O wretched blindness) you are denying His Divinity, His Divinity (I repeat it) whose priest you claim to be. But we are carried away by our grief. What then says the Creed? or what did you yourself say in the Creed? Surely "the Lord Jesus Christ, Very God of Very God; Being of one substance with the Father; By whom the worlds were created and all things made:" and that this same Person "for us came and was born of the Virgin Mary." Since then you said that God was born of Mary, how can you deny that Mary was the mother of God? Since you said that God came, how can you deny that He is God who has come? You said in the Creed: "I believe in Jesus Christ the Son of God: I believe in Very God of Very God, of one substance with the Father: who for us came and was born of the Virgin Mary; and was crucified under Pontius Pilate; and was buried." But now you say: "If we should say, I believe in God the Word, the only Son of God, Begotten of the Father, of one substance with the Father; who came and was buried, would not our ears be shocked at the sound?" Do you see then how you are utterly destroying and stamping out the whole faith of the Catholic Creed and the Catholic mystery? "O Sin, O monstrosity, to be driven away," as one says, [2558] "to the utmost parts of the earth:" for this is more truly said of you, that you may forsooth go into that solitude where you will not be able to find anyone to ruin. You think then that the faith of our salvation, and the mystery of the Church's hope is a shock to your ears and hearing. And how was it that formerly when you were hastening to be baptized, you heard these mysteries with unharmed ears? How was it that when the teachers of the church were instructing you your ears were not damaged? You certainly at that time did your duty without any double shock to your mouth and ears; when you repeated what you heard from others, and as the speaker yourself heard yourself speaking. Where then were these injuries to your ears? Where these shocks to your hearing? Why did you not contradict and cry out against it? But indeed you are at your will and fancy, when you please, a disciple; and when you please, the Church's enemy: when you please a Catholic, and when you please an apostate. A worthy leader indeed, to draw Churches after you, to whatever side you attach yourself; to make your will the law of our life, and to change mankind as you yourself change, that, as you will not be what all others are, they may be what you want! [2559] A splendid authority indeed, that because you are not now what you used to be, the world must cease to be what it formerly was! __________________________________________________________________
[2557] Petschenig's text is as follows: Ut quid doceas Christianos? Christum non credere, cum ipsum in cujus Dei templo sint Deum negare. Gazæus edits: Ut quid doces Christianos, Christum non credens? Cum ipsum, in cujus Dei templo sunt, Deum neges.
[2558] Cicero in Verr. Act. II. Book l. xv. 40.
[2559] Ut, quia tu esse nolis quod omnes sint, omnes sint, quod tu velis (Petschenig). Gazæus has: Et quia tu esse nolis quod omnes sunt, quod tu velis: a text which he confesses must be corrupt. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XI.
He removes the silent objection of heretics who want to recant the profession of their faith made in childhood.
But perhaps you say that you were a baby when you were regenerated, and so were not then able to think or to contradict. It is true: that your infancy did prevent you from contradicting, when if you had been a man you would have died for contradicting. For what if when in that most faithful and devout Church of Christ the priest delivered the Creed [2560] to the Catechumen and the attesting people, you had tried to hold your tongue at any point, or to contradict? Perhaps you would have been heard, and not sent forth at once like some new kind of monster or prodigy as a plague to be expelled. Not because that most earnest and religious people of God has any wish to be stained with the blood of even the worst of men: but because especially in great cities the people inflamed with the love of God cannot restrain the ardour of their faith when they see anyone rise up against their God. But be it so. As a baby, if it be so, you could not contradict and deny the Creed. Why did you hold your tongue when you were older and stronger. At any rate you grew up, and became a man, and were placed in the ministry of the Church. Through all these years, through all the steps of office and dignity, did you never understand the faith which you taught so long before? At any rate you knew that you were His deacon and priest. If the rule of salvation was a difficulty to you, why did you undertake the honour of that, of which you disliked the faith? But indeed you were a far sighted and simply devout man, who wished so to balance yourself between the two, as to maintain both your wicked blasphemy, and the honour of Catholicity! __________________________________________________________________
[2560] The reference is the ceremony known as the Traditio Symboli, which is thus described by Professor Lumby: "The practice of the early church in the admission of converts to baptism seems to have been of this nature. For some period previous to their baptism (the usual seasons for which were Easter and Pentecost) the candidates for admission thereto were trained in the doctrines of the faith by the presbyters. A few days before they were to be baptized (the number of days varying at different periods) the Creed was delivered to them accompanied with a sermon. The ceremony was known as Traditio Symboli, the delivery of the Creed. At the time of Baptism each candidate was interrogated upon the articles of the Creed which he had received, and was to return an answer in the words which had been given to him. This was known as Redditio Symboli, the repetition of the Creed, and Baptism was the only occasion on which the Creed was introduced into any public service of the Church." History of the Creeds, pp. 11, 12. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XII.
Christ crucified is an offence and foolishness to those who declare that He was a mere man.
The shock then to your hearing and ears is that God was born, and God suffered. And where is that saying of yours, O Apostle Paul: "But we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews indeed a stumbling block, but to the Gentiles foolishness: but to them that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the Power of God and the Wisdom of God." [2561] What is the Wisdom and Power of God? Certainly it is God. But he preaches Christ who was crucified, as the Power and Wisdom of God. If then Christ is without any doubt the Wisdom of God, He is therefore without any doubt God. "We," then, he says, "preach Christ crucified, to the Jews indeed a stumbling block, but to the Gentiles foolishness." And so the Lord's cross, which was foolishness to the Gentiles and a stumbling block to the Jews is both together to you. Nor indeed is there any greater foolishness than not to believe, or any greater stumbling block than to refuse to listen. Their ears were wounded then by the preaching and the passion of God, just as yours are wounded now. They thought as you think that this shocked their ears. And hence it was that when the Apostle was preaching Christ as God, at the name of our God and Lord Jesus Christ, they stopped the ears in their head, as you stop the ears of your understanding. The sin of both of you in this matter might seem to be equal, were it not that your fault is the greater, because they denied Him, in whom the passion still showed the manhood, [2562] while you deny Him, whom the resurrection has already proved to be God. And so they were persecuting Him on the earth, whom you are persecuting even in heaven. And not only so, but this is more cruel and wicked, because they denied Him in ignorance, you deny Him after having received the faith: they not knowing the Lord, you when you have confessed Him as God: they under cover of zeal for the law, you under the cloke of your Bishopric: they denied Him to whom they thought that they were strangers, you deny Him whose priest you are. O unworthy act, and one never heard of before! You persecute and attack the very One, whose office you are still holding. __________________________________________________________________
[2561] 1 Cor. i. 23, 24.
[2562] Homo. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIII.
He replies to the objection in which they say that the child born [2563] ought to be of one substance with the mother.
But indeed in your deceit and blasphemy you use a grand argument for denying and attacking the Lord God, when you say that "the child born ought to be of one substance with the mother." [2564] I do not entirely admit it, and maintain that in the matter of the birth of God it would not be observed; for the birth was not so much the work of her who bore Him as of her Son, and He was born as He willed, whose doing it was that He was born. Next, if you say that the child born ought to be of one substance with the parent, I affirm that the Lord Jesus Christ was of one substance with His Father, and also with His mother. For in accordance with the difference of the Persons He showed a likeness to each parent. For according to His Divinity He was of one substance with the Father: but according to the flesh He was of one substance with His mother. Not that it was one Person who was of one substance with the Father, and another who was of one substance with His mother, but because the same Lord Jesus Christ, both born as man, and also being God, had in Him the properties of each parent, and in that He was man He showed a likeness to His human mother, and in that He was God He possessed the very nature of God the Father. __________________________________________________________________
[2563] Nativitas.
[2564] Homoousios parienti debet esse nativitas. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIV.
He compares this erroneous view with the teaching of the Pelagians.
Otherwise if Christ who was born of Mary is not the same Person as He who is of God, you certainly make two Christs; after the manner of that abominable error of Pelagius, which in asserting that a mere man was born of the Virgin, said that He was the teacher rather than the redeemer of mankind; for He did not bring to men redemption of life but only an example of how to live, i.e., that by following Him men should do the same sort of things and so come to a similar state. Your blasphemy then has but one source, and the root of the errors is one and the same. They maintain that a mere man was born of Mary: you maintain the same. They sever the Son of man from the Son of God: you do the same. They say that the Saviour was made the Christ by His baptism: you say that in baptism He became the Temple of God. They do not deny that He became God after His Passion: you deny Him even after His ascension. In one point only therefore your perverseness goes beyond theirs, for they seem to blaspheme the Lord on earth, and you even in heaven. We do not deny that you have beaten and outstripped those whom you are copying. They at last cease to deny God; you never do. Although theirs must not altogether be deemed a true confession, as they only allow the glory of Divinity to the Saviour after His Passion, and while they deny that He was God before this, only confess it afterwards: for, as it seems to me, one who denies some part in regard to God, denies Him altogether: and one who does not confess that He ever existed, denies Him forever. Just as you also, even if you were to admit that now in the heavens the Lord Jesus Christ, who was born of the Virgin Mary, is God, would not truly confess Him unless you admitted that He was always God. But indeed you do not want in any point to change or vary your opinion. For you assert that He whom you speak of as born a mere man, is still at the present time not God. O novel and marvellous blasphemy, though with the heretics you assert Him to be man, you do not with the heretics confess Him to be God! __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XV.
He shows that those who patronize this false teaching acknowledge two Christs.
But still, I had begun to say, that as you certainly make out two Christs this very matter must be illustrated and made clear. Tell me, I pray you, you who sever Christ from the Son of God, how can you confess in the Creed that Christ was begotten of God? For you say: "I believe in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ His Son." Here then you have Jesus Christ the Son of God: but you say that it was not the same Son of God who was born of Mary. Therefore there is one Christ of God, and another of Mary. In your view then there are two Christs. For, though in the Creed you do not deny Christ, you say that the Christ of Mary is another than the one whom you confess in the Creed. But perhaps you say that Christ was not begotten of God: how then do you say in the Creed: "I believe in Jesus Christ the Son of God?" You must then either deny the Creed or confess that Christ is the Son of God. But if you confess in the Creed that Christ is the Son of God, you must also confess that the same Christ, the Son of God, is of Mary. Or if you make out another Christ of Mary, you certainly make the blasphemous assertion that there are two Christs. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVI.
He shows further that this teaching is destructive of the confession of the Trinity.
But still even if your obstinacy and dishonesty are not restrained by this faith of the Creed, are you not, I ask you, overwhelmed by an appeal to reason and the light of truth? Tell me, I ask, whoever you are, O you heretic--At least there is a Trinity, in which we believe, and which we confess: Father and Son and Holy Ghost. Of the Glory of the Father and the Spirit there is no question. You are slandering the Son, because you say that it was not the same Person who was born of Mary, as He who was begotten of God the Father. Tell me then: if you do not deny that the only Son of God was begotten of God, whom do you make out that He is who was born of Mary? You say "a mere man," according to that which He Himself said: "That which is born of the flesh, is flesh." [2565] But He cannot be called a mere man who was begotten not after the law of human creation alone. "For that which is conceived in her," said the angel, "is of the Holy Ghost." [2566] And this even you dare not deny, though you deny almost all the mysteries of salvation. Since then He was born of the Holy Ghost, and cannot be termed a mere man, as He was conceived by the inspiration of God, if it is not He who, as the Apostle says, "emptied Himself by taking the form of a servant," and "the word was made flesh," and "humbled Himself by becoming obedient unto death," and "who for our sakes, though He was rich, became poor," [2567] tell me, then, who He is, who was born of the Holy Ghost, and was conceived by the overshadowing of God? You say that He is certainly a different Person. Then there are two Persons; viz., the one, who was begotten of God the Father in heaven; and the other who was conceived of Mary, by the inspiration of God. And thus there is a fourth Person whom you introduce, and whom (though in words you term Him a mere man) you assert actually not to have been a mere man, since you allow (not however as you ought) that He is to be honoured, worshipped, and adored. Since then the Son of God who was begotten of the Father is certainly to be worshipped, and He who was conceived of Mary by the Holy Ghost is to be worshipped, you make two Persons to be honoured and venerated, whom you so far sever from each other, as to venerate each with an honour special and peculiar to Him. And thus you see that by denying and by severing from Himself the Son of God, you destroy, as far as you can, the whole mystery of the divinity. For while you are endeavouring to introduce a fourth Person into the Trinity, [2568] you see that you have utterly denied the whole Trinity. __________________________________________________________________
[2565] S. John iii. 6.
[2566] S. Matt. i. 20.
[2567] Phil. ii. 7, 8; S. John i. 14; 2 Cor. viii. 9.
[2568] Cf. Augustine, Tr. 78 in Joan. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVII.
Those who are under an error in one point of the Catholic religion, lose the whole faith, and all the value of the faith.
And since this is so, in denying that Jesus Christ the Son of God is one, you have denied everything. For the scheme of the mysteries of the Church and the Catholic faith is such that one who denies one portion of the Sacred Mystery cannot confess the other. For all parts of it are so bound up and united together that one cannot stand without the other and if a man denies one point out of the whole number, it is of no use for him to believe all the others. And so if you deny that the Lord Jesus Christ is God, the result is that in denying the Son of God you deny the Father also. For as St. John says: "He who hath not the Son hath not the Father; but he who hath the Son hath the Father also." [2569] By denying then Him who was begotten you deny also Him who begat. By denying also that the Son of God was born in the flesh, you are led also to deny that He was born in the Spirit, for it is the same Person who was born in the flesh who was first born in the Spirit. If you do not believe that He was born in the flesh, the result is that you do not believe that He suffered. If you do not believe in His Passion what remains for you but to deny His resurrection? For faith in one raised springs out of faith in one dead. Nor can the reference to the resurrection keep its place, unless belief in His death has first preceded it. By denying then his Passion and Death, you deny also his resurrection from hell. [2570] It follows certainly that you deny His ascension also, for there cannot be the ascension without the resurrection. And if we do not believe that He rose again, we cannot either believe that He ascended: as the Apostle says, "For He that descended is the same also that ascended." [2571] Thus, so far as you are concerned, the Lord Jesus Christ did not rise from hell, nor ascend into heaven, nor sit at the right hand of God the Father, nor will He come at that day of judgment which we look for, nor will He judge the quick and the dead. __________________________________________________________________
[2569] 1 John ii. 23.
[2570] ab inferis.
[2571] Eph. iv. 10. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVIII.
He directs his discourse upon his antagonist with whom he is disputing, and begs him to return to his senses. The sacrament of reconciliation is necessary for the lapsed for their salvation.
And so, you wretched, insane, obstinate creature, you see that you have utterly upset the whole faith of the Creed, and all that is valuable in our hope and the mysteries. And yet you still dare to remain in the Church: and imagine that you are a priest, though you have denied everything by which you came to be a priest. Return then to the right way, and recover your former mind, return to your senses if you ever had any. Come to your self, if there ever was in you a self to which you can come back. Acknowledge the sacraments of your salvation, by which you were initiated and regenerated. They are of no less use to you now than they were then; for they can now regenerate you by penance, as they then gave you birth through the Font. Hold fast the full scheme of the Creed. Hold the entire truth of the faith. Believe in God the Father: believe in God the Son: in one who begat and one who was begotten, the Lord of all, Jesus Christ; Being of one substance with the Father; Begotten in His divinity; born in the flesh: of twofold birth, yet of but one glory; who Himself creator of all things, was begotten of the Father, and was afterwards born of the Virgin. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIX.
That the birth of Christ in time diminished nothing of the glory and power of His Deity.
For the fact that He came of the flesh and in the flesh, has reference to His birth, and involves no diminution in Him: and He was simply born, not changed for the worse. [2572] For though, still remaining in the form of God, He took upon Him the form of a servant, yet the weakness of His human constitution had no effect on His nature as God: but while the power of His Deity remained whole and unimpaired, all that took place in His human flesh was an advancement of His manhood and no diminution of His glory. For when God was born in human flesh, He was not born in human flesh in such a way as not to remain Divine in Himself, but so that, while the Godhead remained as before, God might become man. And so Martha while she saw with her bodily eyes the man, confessed Him by spiritual sight to be God, saying, "Yea, Lord, I have believed that Thou art the Christ the Son of the living God, who art come into the world." [2573] So Peter, owing to the Holy Spirit's revelation, while externally he beheld the Son of man, yet proclaimed Him to be the Son of God, saying, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." [2574] So Thomas when he touched the flesh, believed that he had touched God saying, "My Lord and my God." [2575] For they all confessed but one Christ, so as not to make Him two. Do you therefore believe Him; and so believe that Jesus Christ the Lord of all, both only Begotten and first-born, is both Creator of all things and Preserver of men and that the same Person is first the framer of the whole world, and afterwards redeemer of mankind? Who still remaining with the Father and in the Father, Being of one substance with the Father, did (as the Apostle says), "Take the form of a servant, and humble Himself even unto death, the death of the Cross:" [2576] and (as the Creed says) "was born of the Virgin Mary, crucified under Pontius Pilate, and was buried. And the third day He rose again according to the Scriptures; and ascended into heaven; and shall come again to judge both the quick and the dead." This is our faith; this is our salvation: to believe that our God and Lord Jesus Christ is one and the same before all things and after all things. For, as it is written, "Jesus Christ is yesterday and today and the same for ever." [2577] For "yesterday" signifies all time past, wherein, before the beginning, He was begotten of the Father. "Today" covers the time of this world, in which He was again born of the Virgin, suffered, and rose again. But by the expression the same "for ever" is denoted the whole boundless eternity to come. __________________________________________________________________
[2572] Demutatus.
[2573] S. John xi. 27.
[2574] S. Matt. xvi. 16.
[2575] S. John xx. 28.
[2576] Phil. ii. 7, 8.
[2577] Heb. xiii. 8. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XX.
He shows from what has been said that we do not mean that God was mortal or of flesh before the worlds, although Christ, who is God from eternity and was made man in time, is but one Person.
But perhaps you will say: If I admit that the same Person was in the end of time born of a Virgin, who was begotten before all things of God the Father, I shall imply that before the beginning of the world God was in the flesh, as I say that He was afterwards man, who was always God: and so I shall say that that man who was afterwards born, had always existed. I do not want you to be confused by this blind ignorance, and these obscure misconceptions, so as to fancy that I am maintaining that the manhood [2578] which was born of Mary had existed before the beginning of things, or asserting that God was always in a bodily form before the commencement of the world. I do not say, I repeat it, I do not say that the manhood was in God before it was born: but that God was afterwards born in the manhood. For that flesh which was born of the flesh of the Virgin had not always existed: but God who always was, came in the flesh of man of the flesh of the Virgin. For "the Word was made flesh," and did not manifest flesh together with Himself: but in the glory of Divinity joined Himself to human flesh. For tell me when or where the Word was made flesh, or where He emptied Himself by taking the form of a servant: or where He became poor, though He was rich? Where but in the holy womb of the Virgin, where at His Incarnation, the Word of God is said to have been made flesh, at His birth He truly took the form of a servant; and when He is in human nature nailed to the Cross, He became poor, and was made poor in His sufferings in the flesh, though He was rich in His Divine glory? Otherwise if, as you say, at some later period the Deity entered into Him as into one of the Prophets and saints, then "the Word was made flesh" in those men also in whom He vouchsafed to dwell: then in each one of them He emptied Himself and took upon Him the form of a servant. And thus there is nothing new or unique in Christ. Neither His conception, nor His birth nor His death had anything special or miraculous about it. __________________________________________________________________
[2578] Hominem. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXI.
The authority of Holy Scripture teaches that Christ existed from all eternity.
And yet to return to what we said before, though all these things are so, as we have stated: how do we read that Jesus Christ (whom you assert to be a mere man) was ever existing even before His birth of a Virgin, and how is He proclaimed by prophets and apostles as God even before the worlds? As Paul says: "One Lord Jesus, through whom are all things." [2579] And elsewhere he says: "For in Christ were created all things in heaven and on earth, both visible and invisible." [2580] The Creed too, which is framed both by human and Divine authority, says: "I believe in God the Father, and in the Lord Jesus Christ, His Son." And after other clauses: "Very God of Very God; by whom both the worlds were framed and all things were made." And further: "Who for us came and was born of the Virgin Mary, and was crucified, and was buried." __________________________________________________________________
[2579] 1 Cor. viii. 6.
[2580] Col. i. 16. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXII.
The hypostatic union enables us to ascribe to God what belongs to the flesh in Christ.
How then is Christ (whom you term a mere man) proclaimed in Holy Scripture to be God without beginning, if by our own confession the Lord's manhood [2581] did not exist before His birth and conception of a Virgin? And how can we read of so close a union of man and God, as to make it appear that man was ever co-eternal with God, and that afterwards God suffered with man: whereas we cannot believe that man can be without beginning or that God can suffer? It is this which we established in our previous writings; viz., that God being joined to manhood, [2582] i.e., to His own body, does not allow any separation to be made in men's thoughts between man and God. Nor will He permit anyone to hold that there is one Person of the Son of man, and another Person of the Son of God. But in all the holy Scriptures He joins together and as it were incorporates in the Godhead, the Lord's manhood, [2583] so that no one can sever man from God in time, nor God from man at His Passion. For if you regard Him in time, you will find that the Son of man is ever with the Son of God. If you take note of His Passion, you will find that the Son of God is ever with the Son of man, and that Christ the Son of man and the Son of God is so one and indivisible, that, in the language of holy Scripture, the man cannot be severed in time from God, nor God from man at His Passion. Hence comes this: "No man hath ascended into heaven, but He who came down from heaven, even the Son of man who is in heaven." [2584] Where the Son of God while He was speaking on earth testified that the Son of man was in heaven: and testified that the same Son of man, who, He said, would ascend into heaven, had previously come down from heaven. And this: "What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where He was before," [2585] where He gives the name of Him who was born of man, but affirms that He ever was up on high. And the Apostle also, when considering what happened in time, says that all things were made by Christ. For he says, "There is one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things." [2586] But when speaking of His Passion, he shows that the Lord of glory was crucified. "For if," he says, "they had known, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory." [2587] And so too the Creed speaking of the only and first-begotten Lord Jesus Christ, "Very God of Very God, Being of one substance with the Father, and the Maker of all things," affirms that He was born of the Virgin and crucified and afterwards buried. Thus joining in one body (as it were) the Son of God and of man, and uniting God and man, so that there can be no severance either in time or at the Passion, since the Lord Jesus Christ is shown to be one and the same Person, both as God through all eternity, and as man through the endurance of His Passion; and though we cannot say that man is without beginning or that God is passible, yet in the one Person of the Lord Jesus Christ we can speak of man as eternal, and of God as dead. You see then that Christ means the whole Person, and that the name represents both natures, for both man and God are born, and so it takes in the whole Person so that when this name is used we see that no part is left out. There was not then before the birth of a Virgin the same eternity belonging in the past to the manhood as to the Divinity, but because Divinity was united to manhood in the womb of the Virgin, it follows that when we use the name of Christ one cannot be spoken of without the other. __________________________________________________________________
[2581] Dominicus homo, see above on V. v.
[2582] Homini.
[2583] Dominicus homo.
[2584] S. John iii. 13.
[2585] S. John vi. 63.
[2586] 1 Cor. viii. 6.
[2587] 1 Cor. ii. 8. See the note on IV. vii. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXIII.
That the figure Synecdoche, in which the part stands for the whole, is very familiar to the Holy Scripture.
Whatever then you say of the Lord Jesus Christ, you say of the whole person, and in mentioning the Son of God you mention the Son of man, and in mentioning the Son of man you mention the Son of God: by the grammatical trope synecdoche in which you understand the whole from the parts, and a part is put for the whole: and the holy Scriptures certainly show this, as in them the Lord often uses this trope, and teaches in this way about others and would have us understand about Himself in the same way. For sometimes days, and things, and men, and times are denoted in holy Scripture in no other fashion. As in this case where God declares that Israel shall serve the Egyptians for four hundred years, and says to Abraham: "Know thou that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land not theirs, and they shall bring them under bondage and afflict them four hundred years." [2588] Whereas if you take into account the whole time after that God spoke, they are more than four hundred: but if you only reckon the time in which they were in slavery, they are less. And in giving this period indeed, unless you understand it in this way, we must think that the Word of God lied (and away with such a thought from Christian minds!). But since from the time of the Divine utterance, the whole period of their lives amounted to more than four hundred years, and their bondage endured for not nearly four hundred, you must understand that the part is to be taken for the whole, or the whole for the part. There is also a similar way of representing days and nights, where, when in the case of either division of time one day is meant, either period is shown by a portion of a single period. And indeed in this way the difficulty about the time of our Lord's Passion is cleared up: for whereas the Lord prophesied that after the model of the prophet Jonah, the Son of man would be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth, [2589] and whereas after the sixth day of the week on which He was crucified, He was only in hell [2590] for one day and two nights, how can we show the truth of the Divine words? Surely by the trope of Synecdoche, i.e., because to the day on which He was crucified the previous night belongs, and to the night on which He rose again, the coming day; and so when there is added the night which preceded the day belonging to it, and the day which followed the night belonging to it, we see that there is nothing lacking to the whole period of time, which is made up of its portions. The holy Scriptures abound in such instances of ways of speaking: but it would take too long to relate them all. For so when the Psalm says, "What is a man that Thou art mindful of Him," [2591] from the part we understand the whole, as while only one man is mentioned the whole human race is meant. So also where Ahab sinned we are told that the people sinned. Where--though all are mentioned, a part is to be understood from the whole. John also the Lord's forerunner says: "After me cometh a man who is preferred before me for He was before me." [2592] How then does He mean that He would come after Him, whom He shows to be before Him? For if this is understood of a man who was afterwards born, how was he before him? But if it is taken of the Word how is it, "a man cometh after me?" Except that in the one Lord Jesus Christ is shown both the posteriority of the manhood and the precedence of the Godhead. And so the result is that one and the same Lord was before him and came after him: for according to the flesh He was posterior in time to John; and according to His Deity was before all men. And so he, when he named that man, denoted both the manhood and the Word, for as the Lord Jesus Christ the Son of God was complete in both manhood and Divinity [2593] in mentioning one of these natures in Him he denoted the whole person. And what need is there of anything further? I think that the day would fail me if I were to try to collect or to tell everything that could be said on this subject. And what we have already said is enough, at any rate on this part of the subject, both for the exposition of the Creed, and for the requirements of our case, and for the limits of our book. __________________________________________________________________
[2588] Gen. xv. 13.
[2589] S. Matt. xii. 40.
[2590] Apud inferos.
[2591] Ps. viii. 5.
[2592] S. John i. 15.
[2593] Verbi. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Book VII. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter I.
As he is going to reply to the slanders of his opponents he implores the aid of Divine grace to teach a prayer to be used by those who undertake to dispute with heretics.
As it happens to those who having escaped the perils of the sea, are in terror of the sands that stretch before the harbour, or the rocks that line the shore, so it is in my case that,--as I have kept to the last some of the slanders of the heretics,--although I have reached the limit of the work which I set myself, yet I am beginning to dread the close, which I had longed to reach. But, as the Prophet says, "The Lord is my helper; I will not fear what man can do to me," [2594] so we will not fear the pitfalls which crafty heretics have dug in front of us, nor the paths thickly strewn with horrid thorns. For as they make our road difficult but do not close it, there is before us the trouble of clearing them away, rather than the fear of not being able to do so. For when, as we are walking feebly along the right road, they come in our way, and frighten the walkers rather than hurt them, our work and business has more to do in clearing them away, than to fear from the difficulty of this: And so, laying our hands upon that monstrous head of the deadly serpent, and longing to lay hold of all the limbs that are entangled in the huge folds and coils of his body, again and again do we pray to Thee, O Lord Jesus, to whom we have ever prayed, that Thou wouldst give us words by opening our mouth "to the pulling down of strongholds, destroying counsels, and every height that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every understanding unto Thine obedience:" [2595] for he is indeed free, who has begun to be led captive by Thee. Do Thou then be present to this work of thine, and to those of Thine who are striving for Thee above the measure of their strength. Grant us to bruise the gaping mouths of this new serpent, and its neck that swells with deadly poison, O Thou who makest the feet of believers to tread unharmed on serpents and scorpions, and to go upon the adder and basilisk, to tread under foot the lion and the dragon. [2596] And grant that through the fearless boldness of steadfast innocence, the sucking child may play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child thrust his hand into the den of the basilisk. [2597] Grant then to us also that we may thrust our hands unharmed into the den of this monstrous and most wicked basilisk; and if it has in any holes, i.e., in the human heart, a lurking or resting place, or has laid its eggs there, or left a trace of its slimy course, do Thou remove from them all the foul and deadly pollution of this most noxious serpent. Take away the uncleanness their blasphemy has brought on them, and purify with the fan of Thy sacred cleansing [2598] the souls that are plunged in stinking mud, so that the "dens of thieves" may become "houses of prayer:" [2599] and that in those which are now, as is written, the dwellings where hedgehogs and monsters, [2600] and satyrs, and all kinds of strange creatures dwell, there the gifts of Thy Holy Spirit, namely the beauty of faith and holiness may shine forth. And as once Thou didst destroy idolatry and cast out images, and make shrines of virtue out of the temples of devils, and let into the dens of serpents and scorpions the rays of shining light, and make out of the dens of error and shame the homes of beauty and splendour, so do Thou pour upon all whose eyes the darkness of heretical obstinacy has blinded, the light of Thy compassion and truth, that they may at length with clear and unveiled sight behold the great and life-giving mystery of Thine Incarnation, and so come to know Thee to have been born as Very man of that sacred womb of a pure Virgin, and yet to acknowledge that Thou wast always Very God. __________________________________________________________________
[2594] Ps. cxvii. (cxviii.) 6.
[2595] 2 Cor. x. 4, 5.
[2596] Cf. S. Luke x. 19; Ps. xc. (xci.) 13.
[2597] Isa. xi. 8.
[2598] Cf. Mal. iii. 2, 3.
[2599] S. Matt. xxi. 13.
[2600] Onocentauri: the allusion is to Is. xxxiv. 14, 15. Cf. Jerome in Esaiam, Bk. X. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter II.
He meets the objection taken from these words: No one gave birth to one who had existed before her.
And before I begin to speak of those things of which I have given no foretaste in the earlier books, I think it right to try to carry out what I have already promised, that when I have thoroughly redeemed my pledge, I may begin to speak more freely of what has not been touched upon, after having satisfied my promise. So then that new serpent, in order to destroy the faith of the holy nativity, hisses out against the Church of God and says: "No one ever gives birth to one older than herself." To begin with then I think that you know neither what you say nor where you get it from. For if you knew or understood where you got it from, you would never regard the nativity of the only begotten of God in the light of human fancies, nor would you try to settle by merely human propositions, about Him who was born without His conception originating from man: nor would you bring human impossibilities as objections against Divine Omnipotence if you knew that with God nothing was impossible. No one then, you say, gives birth to one older than herself. Tell me then, I pray, of what cases are you speaking, for the nature of what creatures do you think that you can lay down rules? Do you suppose that you can fix laws for men or beasts or birds or cattle? Those (and others of the same kind) are the things of which such assertions can be made. For none of them is able to produce one older than itself; for what has already been produced cannot return to it again so as to be born again by a new creation. And so no one can bear one older than herself, as no one can beget one older than himself: for the opportunity of bearing only results where there is the possibility of begetting. Do you then imagine that in reference to the nativity of Almighty God regard must be had to the same considerations as in the birth of earthly creatures? And do you bring the nature of man's conditions as a difficulty in the case of Him who is Himself the author of nature? You see then that, as I said above, you know not whence or of whom you are talking, as you are comparing creatures to the Creator; and in order to calculate the power of God are drawing an instance from those things which would never have existed at all, but that the very fact of their existence comes from God. God then came as He would, when He would, and of her whom He would. Neither time nor person, nor the manner of men, nor the custom of creatures was any difficulty with Him; for the law of the creatures could not stand in the way of Him who is Himself the Creator of them all. And whatever He would have possible was ready to His hand, for the power of willing it was His. Do you want to know how far the omnipotence of God extends, and how great it is? I believe that the Lord could do that even in the case of His creatures which you do not believe that He could do in His own case. For all living creatures which now bear things younger than themselves could, if only God gave the word, bear things much older than themselves. For even food and drink, if it were God's will, could be turned into the foetus and offspring: and even water, which has been flowing from the beginning of things, and which all living creatures use, could, if God gave the word, be made a body in the womb, and have birth given to it. For who can set a limit to divine works, or circumscribe Divine Providence? or who (to use the words of Scripture) can say to Him "What doest thou?" [2601] If you deny that God can do all things, then deny, that, when God was born, one older than Mary could be born of her. But if there is nothing impossible with God, why do you bring as an objection against His coming an impossibility, when you know that for Him nothing is impossible in anything? __________________________________________________________________
[2601] Isa. xlv. 9; Rom. ix. 20. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter III.
He replies to the cavil that the one who is born must be of one substance with the one who bears.
The second blasphemous slander or slanderous blasphemy of your heresy is when you say that the one who is born must be of one substance with the one who bears. It is not very different from the previous one, for it differs from it in terms rather than in fact and reality. For when we are treating of the birth of God, you maintain that one of greater power could not be born of Mary just as above you maintain than one older could not be begotten. And so you may take it that the same answer may be given to this as to what you said before: or you may conceive that the answer given to this assertion, which you are now making, applies to that also. You say then that the one who is born must be of one substance with the one who bears. If this refers to earthly creatures, it is most certainly the case. But if it refers to the birth of God, why in the case of His birth do you regard precedents from nature? for appointments are subject to Him who appointed them, and not the appointer to His appointments. But would you like to know more fully how these slanders of yours are not only wicked but foolish, and the idle talk of one who does not in the least see the omnipotence of God? Tell me, I pray, you who think that like things can only be produced from like things, whence was the origin of that unaccountable host of quails in the wilderness of old time to feed the children of Israel, for nowhere do we read that they had been previously born of mother birds, but that they were brought up and came suddenly. Again whence came that heavenly food which for forty years fell on the camp of the Hebrews? Did manna produce manna? But these refer to ancient miracles. And what of more recent ones? With a few loaves and small fishes the Lord Jesus Christ fed countless hosts of the people that followed Him, and not once only. The reason that they were satisfied lay not in the food: for a secret and unseen cause satisfied the hungry folk, especially as there was much more left when they were filled than there had been set before them when they were hungry. And how was all this brought about that when those who ate were satisfied, the food itself was multiplied by an extraordinary increase? We read that in Galilee wine was produced from water. Tell me how what was of one nature produced something of an altogether different substance from its own quality? Especially when (which exactly applies to the birth of the Lord) it was the production of a nobler substance from what was inferior to it? Tell me then how from mere water there could be produced rich and splendid wine? How was it that one thing was drawn out, another poured in? Was the cistern a well of such a nature as to change the water drawn from it into the best wine? Or did the character of the vessels or the diligence of the servants effect this? Most certainly neither of these. And how is it that the manner of the fact is not understood by the thoughts of the heart, though the truth of the fact is firmly held by the conscience? In the gospel clay was placed on the eyes of a blind man and when it was washed off [2602] eyes were produced. Had water the power of giving birth to eyes, or clay of creating light? Certainly not, especially as water could be of no use to a blind man, and clay would actually hinder the sight of those who could see. And how was it that a thing that itself in its own nature was injurious, became the means of restoring health; and that what was ordinarily hurtful to sound people, was then made the instrument of healing? You say that the power of God brought it about, and the remedy of God caused it, and that all these things of which we have been speaking were simply brought about by Divine Omnipotence; which is able to fashion new things from unwonted material, and to make serviceable things out of their opposites, and to change what belongs to the realm of things impossible and impracticable into possibilities and actual performances. __________________________________________________________________
[2602] Abluto eo (Petschenig): Ab luto eo (Gazæus). __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IV.
How God has shown His Omnipotence in His birth in time as well as in everything else.
Confess then the same truth in respect of the actual nativity of the Lord, as in respect of everything else. Believe that God was born when He would, for you do not deny that He could do what He would; unless possibly you think that that power which belonged to Him for all other things was deficient as regards Himself, and that His Omnipotence though proceeding from Him and penetrating all things, was insufficient to bring about His own nativity. In the case of the Lord's nativity you bring this as an objection against me: No one gives birth to one who is anterior in time: and in regard of the birth which Almighty God underwent you say that the one who is born ought to be of one substance with the one who bears; as if you had to do with human laws as in the case of any ordinary man, to whom you might bring the impossibility as an objection, as you include him in the weakness of earthly things. You say that for all men there are common conditions of birth, and but one law of generation; and that a thing could not possibly happen to one man only out of the whole of humanity, which God has forbidden to happen to all. You do not understand of whom you are speaking; nor do you see of whom you are talking; for He is the Author of all conditions, and the very Law of all natures, through whom exists whatever man can do, and whatever man cannot do: for He certainly has laid down the limits of both; viz., how far his powers should extend, and the bounds beyond which his weakness should not advance. How wildly then do you bring human impossibilities as an objection in the case of Him, who possesses all powers and possibilities. If you estimate the Person of the Lord by earthly weaknesses, and measure God's Omnipotence by human rules, you will most certainly fail to find anything which seems appropriate to God as concerns the sufferings of His Body. For if it can seem to you unreasonable that Mary could give birth to God who was anterior to her, how will it seem reasonable that God was crucified by men? And yet the same God who was crucified Himself predicted: "Shall a man afflict God, for you afflict Me?" [2603] If then we cannot think that the Lord was born of a Virgin because He who was born was anterior to her who bore Him, how can we believe that God had blood? And yet it was said to the Ephesian elders: "Feed the Church of God which He has purchased with His own Blood." [2604] Finally how can we think that the Author of life was Himself deprived of life: And yet Peter says: "Ye have killed the Author of life." [2605] No one who is set on earth can be in heaven: and how does the Lord Himself say: "The Son of man who is in heaven"? [2606] If then you think that God was not born of a Virgin because the one who is born must be of one substance with the one who bears, how will you believe that different things can be produced from different natures? Thus according to you the wind did not suddenly bring the quails, nor did the manna fall, nor was water turned into wine nor were many thousands of men fed with a few loaves, nor did the blind man receive his sight after the clay had been put on him. But if all these things seem incredible and contrary to nature, unless we believe that they were wrought by God, why should you deny in the matter of His nativity, what you admit in the matter of His works? Or was He unable to contribute to His own nativity and advent what He did not refuse for the succour and profit of men? __________________________________________________________________
[2603] Mal. iii. 8.
[2604] Acts xx. 28.
[2605] Acts iii. 15.
[2606] S. John iii. 13. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter V.
He shows by proofs drawn from nature itself, that the law which his opponents lay down; viz., that the one born ought to be of one substance with the one who bears, fails to hold good in many cases.
It would be tedious and almost childish to speak further on this subject. But still in order to refute that folly and madness of yours, in which you maintain that the one born ought to be of one substance with the one who bears, i.e., that nothing can produce something of a different nature to itself, I will bring forward some instances of earthly things, to convince you that many creatures are produced from things of a different nature. Not that it is possible or right to make any comparison in such a case as this: but that you may not doubt the possibility of that happening in the case of the holy Nativity, which as you see takes place in these frail earthly things. Bees, tiniest of creatures though they are, are yet so clever and cunning that we read that they can be produced and spring from things of an entirely different nature. For as they are creatures of marvellous intelligence, and well endowed not merely with sense but with foresight, they are produced from the gathered flowers of plants. What greater instance do you think can be produced and quoted? Living creatures are produced from inanimate: sensate from insensate. [2607] What artificer, what architect was there? Who formed their bodies? Who breathed in their souls? Who gave them articulate sounds by which to converse with each other? Who fashioned and arranged these harmonies of their feet, the cunning of their mouths, the neatness of their wings? Their powers, wrath, foresight, movements, calmness, harmony, differences, wars, peace, arrangements, contrivances, business, government, all those things indeed which they have in common with men--from whose teaching, or whose gift did they receive them? from whose implanting or instruction? Did they gain this through generation? or learn it in their mother's womb or from her flesh? They never were in the womb, and had no experience of generation. It was only that flowers which they culled were brought into the hive and from this by a marvellous contrivance bees issued forth. [2608] Then the womb of the mother imparted nothing to the offspring: nor are bees produced from bees. They are but their artificers, not their authors. From the blossoms of plants living creatures proceed. What is there akin in plants and animals? I fancy then that you see who is the contriver of those things. Go now and inquire whether the Lord could bring about that in the case of His own nativity, which you see that He procured in the case of these tiniest of creatures. Perhaps it is needless after this to add anything further. But still let us add in support of the argument what may not be necessary to prove the point. We see how the air is suddenly darkened, and the earth filled with locusts. Show me their seed--their birth--their mothers. For, as you see, they proceed thence, whence they have their birth. Assert in all these cases that the one who is born must be of one substance with the one who bears. And in these assertions you will be shown to be as silly, as you are wild in your denial of the Nativity of the Lord. And what next? Do even you think that we must go on any further? But still we will add something else. There is no doubt that basilisks are produced from the eggs of the birds which in Egypt they call the Ibis. What is there of kindred or relationship between a bird and a serpent? Why is the thing born not of one substance with that which bears it? And yet those who bear are not the authors of all these things, nor do those who are born understand them: but they result from secret causes, and from some inexplicable and manifold law of nature which produces them. And you are bringing as objections to His Nativity your petty assertions from earthly notions, while you cannot explain the origin of those things, which are produced by His bidding and command, whose will does everything, whose sway causes everything: whom nothing can oppose or resist; and whose will is sufficient for everything which can possibly be done. __________________________________________________________________
[2607] Ex inanimis ex insensibilibus sensibilia nascuntur (Petschenig). The text of Gazæus has ex atomis animalia nascuntur.
[2608] Cf. Virgil's Georgics IV. Rufinus, on the Apostle's Creed (c. xi.) gives the same illustration of the Incarnation, and cf. with the passage in the text S. Basil Hom. in Hexaem, IX. ii. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VI.
He refutes another argument of Nestorius, in which he tried to make out that Christ was like Adam in every point.
But since we cannot (as we should much prefer) ignore them, it is now time to expose the rest of your more subtle and insidious blasphemies that at least they may not deceive ignorant folk. In one of your pestilent treatises you have maintained and said that "Since man is the image of the Divine nature, and the devil dragged this down and shattered it, God grieved over His image, as an Emperor over his statue, and repairs the shattered image: and formed without generation a nature from the Virgin, like that of Adam who was born without generation; and raises up man's nature by means of man: for as by man came death, so also by man came the resurrection of the dead." They tell us that some poisoners have a custom of mixing honey with the poison in the cups which they prepare; that the injurious ingredient may be concealed by the sweet: and while a man is charmed with the sweetness of the honey, he may be destroyed by the deadly poison. So then, when you say that man is the image of the Divine nature, and that the devil dragged this down and shattered it, and that God grieved over His image as an Emperor over his statue, you smear (so to speak) the lips of the cup with something sweet like honey, that men may drain the cup offered to them, and not perceive its deadliness, while they taste what is alluring. You put forward God's name, in order to speak falsehoods in the name of religion. You set holy things in the front, in order to persuade men of what is untrue: and by means of your confession of God you contrive to deny Him whom you are confessing. For who is there who does not see whither you are going? What you are contriving? You say indeed that God grieved over His image as an Emperor over his statue, and repaired the shattered image, and formed without generation a nature from the Virgin, like that of Adam who was born without generation, and raises up man's nature by man, for as by man came death, so also by man came the resurrection of the dead. So then with all your earnestness, with all your professions, you crafty plotter, you have managed by your smooth assertions, by naming God in the forefront, to come down to a (mere) man in the conclusion: and in the end you degrade Him to the condition of a mere man, from whom under colour of humility you have already taken away the glory of God. You say then that the Divine goodness has restored the image of God which the devil shattered and destroyed, for you say that He restores the shattered image. Now with what craft you say that He restores the shattered image in order to persuade us that there was nothing more in Him, in whom the image is restored, than there was in the actual image, of which the restoration was brought about. And thus you make out that the Lord is only the same as Adam was: that the restorer of the image is nothing more than the actual destructible image. Finally in what follows you show what you are aiming and driving at, when you say that He formed without generation a nature from the Virgin like that of Adam, who was born without generation, and raises up man's nature by man. You maintain that the Lord Jesus Christ was in all respects like Adam: that the one was without generation, and the other without generation: the one a mere man, and the other a mere man. And thus you see that you have carefully guarded and provided against our thinking of the Lord Jesus Christ as in any way greater or better than Adam: since you have compared them together by the same standard, so that you would think that you detracted something from Adam's perfection, if you added anything more to Christ. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VII.
Heretics usually cover their doctrines with a cloak of holy Scripture.
"For as," you say, "by man came death, so by man came also the resurrection of the dead." Do you actually try to prove your wrong and impious notion by the witness of the Apostle? And do you bring the "chosen vessel" into disgrace by mixing him up with your wicked ideas? I mean, that, as you cannot understand the author of your Salvation, therefore the Apostle must be made out to have denied God. And yet, if you wanted to make use of Apostolic witnesses, why did you rest contented with one, and pass over all the others in silence? and why did you not at once add this: "Paul, an Apostle not of men neither by man, but by Jesus Christ:" [2609] or this: "We speak wisdom among the perfect:" and presently: "Whom none," says he, "of the princes of this world knew; for had they known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory." [2610] Or this: "For in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily." [2611] And: "One Lord Jesus Christ through whom are all things." [2612] Or do you partly agree, and partly disagree with the Apostle, and only receive him so far as in consequence of the Incarnation [2613] he names Christ man, and repudiate him where he speaks of Him as God? For Paul does not deny that Jesus is man, but still he confesses that man is God: and declares that to mankind the resurrection came by man in such a way that he shows that in that man God arose. For see whether he declares that He who rose was God, as he bears his witness that He who was crucified was the Lord of glory. __________________________________________________________________
[2609] Gal. i. 1.
[2610] 1 Cor. ii. 6, 8.
[2611] Col. ii. 9.
[2612] 1 Cor. viii. 6.
[2613] Dispensatio. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VIII.
The heretics attribute to Christ only the shadow of Divinity, and so assert that he is to be worshipped together with God but not as God.
But still in order to avoid thinking of the Lord Jesus as one of the whole mass of people, you have given to Him some glory, by attributing to Him honour as a saint, but not Deity as true man and true God. For what do you say? "God brought about the Lord's Incarnation. Let us honour the form of the Theodochos [2614] together with God, as one form of Godhead, as a figure that cannot be severed from the Divine link, as an image of the unseen God." Above you said that Adam was the image of God, here you call Christ the image: the one you speak of as a statue, and the other also as a statue. But I suppose we ought for God's honour to be grateful to you, because you grant that the form of the Theodochos should be worshipped together with God: in which you wrong Him rather than honour Him. For in this you do not attribute to the Lord Jesus Christ the glory of Deity, but you deny it. By a subtle and wicked art you say that He is to be worshipped together with God in order that you may not have to confess that He is God, and by the very statement in which you seem deceitfully to join Him with God, you really sever Him from God. For when you blasphemously say that He is certainly not to be adored as God, but to be worshipped together with God, you thus grant to Him an union of nearness to Divinity, in order to get rid of the truth of His Divinity. Oh, you most wicked and crafty enemy of God, you want to perpetrate the crime of denying God under pretext of confessing Him. You say: Let us worship Him as a figure that cannot be severed from the Divine will, as an image of the unseen God. It is I suppose, then, owing to His kind acts that our Lord Jesus Christ has obtained among us honour as Creator and Redeemer. If then we were redeemed by Him from eternal destruction, in calling our Redeemer a figure we are endeavouring indeed to respond to His kindness and goodness, by a worthy service and a worthy allegiance, if we try to get rid of that glory which He did not refuse to bring low for our sakes. __________________________________________________________________
[2614] Cf. V. ii. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IX.
How those are wrong who say that the birth of Christ was a secret, since it was clearly shown even to the patriarch Jacob.
But I suppose you excuse the degradation offered to the Lord by means of a subordinate honour, by the words "as the image of the secret God." By the fact that you term Him an image you compare Him to man's estate. In speaking of Him as the image of the secret God, you detract from the honour plainly due to Him. For "God," says David, "shall plainly come; our God, and shall not keep silence." [2615] And He surely came and did not keep silence, who before that He in His own person uttered anything after His birth, made known His advent by both earthly and heavenly witnesses alike, while the star points Him out, the magi adore Him, and angels declare Him. What more do you want? His voice was yet silent on earth, and His glory was already crying aloud in heaven. Do you say then that God was and is secret in Him? But this was not the announcement of the Prophets, of the Patriarchs, aye and of the whole Law. For they did not say that He would be secret, whose coming they all foretold. You err in your wretched blindness, seeking grounds for blasphemy and not finding them. You say that He was secret even after His advent. I maintain that He was not secret even before His advent. For did the mystery of God to be born of a Virgin escape the knowledge of that celebrated Patriarch on whom the vision of God present with him conferred a title, whereby from the name of Supplanter he rose to the name of Israel? Who, when from the struggle with the man who wrestled with him he understood the mystery of the Incarnation yet to come, said, "I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved." [2616] What, I pray you, had he seen, for him to believe that he had seen God? Did God manifest Himself to him in the midst of thunder and lightning? or when the heavens were opened, did the dazzling face of the Deity show itself to him? Most certainly not: but rather on the contrary he saw a man and acknowledged a God. O truly worthy of the name he received, as with the eyes of the soul rather than of the body he earned the honour of a title given by God! He saw a human form wrestling with him, and declared that he saw God. He certainly knew that human form was indeed God: for in that form in which God then appeared, in the selfsame form He was in very truth afterwards to come. Although why should we be surprised that so great a patriarch unhesitatingly believed what God Himself so plainly showed in His own Person to him, when he said, "I have seen God face to face and my life is preserved." How did God show to him so much of the presence of Deity, that he could say that the face of God was shown to him? For it seems that only a man had appeared to him, whom he had actually beaten in the struggle. But God was certainly bringing this about by precursory signs, that there might not be any one to disbelieve that God was born of man, when already long before the Patriarch had seen God in human form. __________________________________________________________________
[2615] Ps. xlix. (l.) 3.
[2616] Gen. xxxii. 30. The name Israel was in the 4th and 5th centuries commonly explained to mean the "man seeing God" as if it came from 'ys, r'h and 'l. S. Jerome (Quæst. in Genesim c. xxxii. ver. 27, 28) rejects this interpretation as forced and prefers "a Prince with God." Hence the rendering in the A.V. "For as a prince hast thou power with God and with men and hast prevailed." This however is now generally rejected, and the right interpretation of the name appears to be "He who striveth with God." Cf. R.V. "For thou hast striven with God and men, and hast prevailed." Cf. the Conferences, Pref. and V. xxiii. XII. xi. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter X.
He collects more witnesses of the same fact.
But why am I lingering so long over one instance, as if many were wanting? For even then how could the fact that God was to come in the flesh escape the knowledge of men, when the Prophet said openly as if to all mankind of Him: "Behold your God;" and elsewhere: "Behold our God." And this: "God the mighty, the Father of the world to come, the Prince of Peace;" and: "of His kingdom there shall be no end." [2617] But also when He had already come, could the fact of His having come escape the knowledge of those who openly confessed that He had come? Was Peter ignorant of the coming of God, when he said, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God?" [2618] Did not Martha know what she was saying or whom she believed in, when she said, "Yea, Lord, I have believed that Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God, who art come into this world?" [2619] And all those men, who sought from Him the cure of their sicknesses, or the restoration of their limbs, or the life of their dead, did they ask these things from man's weakness, or from God's omnipotence? __________________________________________________________________
[2617] Isa. xl. 9; xxv. 9; ix. 6, 7.
[2618] S. Matt. xvi. 16.
[2619] S. John xi. 27. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XI.
How the devil was forced by many reasons to the view that Christ was God.
Finally as for the devil himself, when he was tempting Him with every show of allurements, and every art of his wickedness, what was it that in his ignorance he suspected, or wanted to find out by tempting Him? Or what so greatly moved him, that he sought God under the humble form of man? Had he learned that by previous proofs? Or had he known of anyone who came as God in man's body? Most certainly not. But it was by the mighty evidence of signs, by mighty results of actions, by the words of the Truth Himself that he was driven to suspect and examine into this matter: inasmuch as he had already once heard from John: "Behold the Lamb of God, behold Him who taketh away the sin of the world." [2620] And again from the same person: "I have need to be baptized of Thee, and comest Thou to me?" [2621] The dove also which came down from heaven and stopped over the Lord's head had made itself a clear and open proof of a God who declared Himself. The voice too which was sent from God not in riddles or figures had moved him, when it said: "Thou art My beloved Son, in Thee I am well pleased." [2622] And though he saw a man outwardly in Jesus, yet he was searching for the Son of God, when he said: "If Thou art the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread." [2623] Did the contemplation of the man drive away the devil's suspicions of His Divinity, so that owing to the fact that he saw a man, he did not believe that He could be God? Most certainly not. But what does he say? "If Thou art the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread." Certainly he had no doubt about the possibility of that, the existence of which he was examining into. His anxiety was about its truth. There was no security as to its impossibility. __________________________________________________________________
[2620] S. John i. 29.
[2621] S. Matt. iii. 14.
[2622] S. Matt. iii. 17.
[2623] S. Luke iv. 3. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XII.
He compares this notion and reasonable suspicion of the devil with the obstinate and inflexible idea of his opponents, and shows that this last is worse and more blasphemous than the former.
But he certainly knew that the Lord Jesus Christ was born of Mary: he knew that He was wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger: that His childhood was that of a poor person at the commencement of His human life; and His infancy without the proper accessories of cradles: further he did not doubt that He had true flesh, and was born a true man. And why did this seem to him not enough for him to be secure in? Why did he believe that He could not be God, whom he knew to be very man? Learn then, you wretched madman, learn, you lunatic, you cruel sinner, learn, I pray, even from the devil, to lessen your blasphemy. He said: "If Thou art the Son of God." You say: "Thou art not the Son of God." You deny what he asked about. No one was ever yet found but you, to outdo the devil in blasphemy. That which he confessed to be possible in the case of the Lord, you do not believe to have been possible. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIII.
How the devil always retained this notion of Christ's Divinity (because of His secret working which he experienced) even up to His Cross and Death.
But perhaps he afterwards ceased and rested, and when his temptations were vanquished laid aside his suspicion because he found no result? Nay, it rather remained always in him, and even up to the very cross of the Lord the suspicion lasted in him and was increased by peculiar terrors. What need is there of anything further? Not even then did he cease to think of Him as the Son of God, after that he knew that such licence was granted to His persecutors against Him. But the crafty foe saw even in the midst of His bodily sufferings the signs of Divinity, and though he would have much preferred Him to be a (mere) man, was yet forced to suspect that He was God: for though he would have preferred to believe what he wanted, yet he was driven by surest proofs to that which he feared. And no wonder: for although he beheld Him spitted on, and scourged, and disgraced, and led to the Cross, yet he saw Divine powers abounding even in the midst of the indignities and wrongs; when the veil of the temple is rent, when the sun hides itself, the day is darkened, and all things feel the effects of the Passion: all things even, which know not God, acknowledge the work of Deity. And therefore the devil seeing this, and trembling, tried in every way to arrive at the knowledge of His Godhead, even at the very death of the manhood, saying in the person of those who crucified Him: "If He be the Son of God, let Him come down now from the Cross, and we will believe Him." [2624] He certainty perceived that by His bodily Passion our Lord God was working out the redemption of man's salvation, and also that by it he was being destroyed and subdued, while we were being redeemed and saved. And so the enemy of mankind wanted by every means and every wile to defeat that which he knew was being done for the redemption of all men. "If," he says, "He be the Son of God, let Him come down now from the Cross and we will believe Him:" on purpose that the Lord might be moved by the reproach of the words, and destroy the mystery, while He avenged the wrong. You see then that the Lord even when hanging on the Cross was termed the Son of God. You see that they suspect the fact to which they refer. And so do you learn, as I said above, even from His persecutors, even from the devil, to believe on the Son of God. Who ever came up to the unbelief of the devil? Who went beyond it? He suspected that He was the Son of God even when He endured death. You deny it even when He has risen. He suspected that He was God, from whom He hid Himself. You, to whom He has proved it, deny it. __________________________________________________________________
[2624] S. Matt. xxvii. 42. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIV.
He shows how heretics pervert holy Scripture, by replying to the argument drawn from the Apostle's words, "Without father, without mother," etc.: Heb. vii.
You then make use of the holy Scriptures against God, and try to bring His own witnesses against Him. But how? Truly so as to become a false accuser not only of God, but of the evidences themselves. Nor indeed is it wonderful that, as you cannot do what you want, you only do what you can: as you cannot turn the sacred witnesses against God, you do what you can, and pervert them. For you say: Then Paul tells a lie, when he says of Christ: "Without mother, without genealogy." [2625] I ask you, of whom do you think that Paul said this? Of the Son and Word of God, or of the Christ, whom you separate from the Son of God, and blasphemously assert to be a mere man? If of the Christ, whom you maintain to be a mere man, how could a man be born without a mother and without a genealogy on the mother's side? But if of the Word of God and Son of God--what can we make of it, when the same Apostle, your own witness, as you impiously imagine, testifies in the same place and by the same witness, that He whom you assert to be without mother, was also without father; saying, "Without father, without mother, without genealogy"? It follows then that if you use the Apostle's witness, since you assert that the Son of God was "without mother," you must also be guilty of the blasphemy that He was "without father." You see then in what a downfall of impiety you have landed yourself, in your eagerness for your perversity and wickedness, so that, while you say that the Son of God had not a mother, you must also deny Him a Father--a thing which no one yet since the world began, except perhaps a madman, ever did. And this, whether with greater wickedness or folly, I hardly know; for what is more foolish and silly than to give the name of Son and to try to keep back the name of Father? But you say I don't keep it back, I don't deny it. And what madness then drove you to quote that passage, where, while you say that He had no mother, you must seem also to deny to Him a Father? For as in the same passage He is said to be without mother and also without father, it follows that if it can be understood that there He is without mother, in the same way in which we understand that He is without mother, we must also believe that He is without father. But that hasty craze for denying God did not see this; and when it quoted mutilated, what was written entire, it failed to see that the shameless and palpable lie could be refuted by laying open the contents of the sacred volume. O foolish blasphemy, and madness! which, while it failed to see what it ought to follow, had not the wit to see even what could be read: as if, because it could get rid of its own intelligence, it could get rid of the power of reading from everybody else, or as if everybody would lose their eyes in their heads for reading, because it had lost the eyes of the mind. Hear then, you heretic, the passage you have garbled: hear in full and completely, what you quoted mutilated and hacked about. The Apostle wants to make clear to every one the twofold birth of God--and in order to show how the Lord was born in the Godhead and in flesh, he says, "Without father, without mother:" for the one belongs to the birth of Divinity, the other to that of the flesh. For as He was begotten in His Divine nature "without mother," so He is in the body "without father:" and so though He is neither without father nor without mother, we must believe in Him "without father and without mother." For if you regard Him as He is begotten of the Father, He is without mother: if, as born of His mother, He is without father. And so in each of these births He has one: in both together He is without each: for the birth of Divinity had no need of mother, and for the birth of His body, He was Himself sufficient, without a father. Therefore says the Apostle "Without mother, without genealogy." __________________________________________________________________
[2625] Heb. vii. 3. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XV.
How Christ could be said by the Apostle to be without genealogy.
How does he say that the Lord was "without genealogy," when the Gospel of the Evangelist Matthew begins with the Saviour's genealogy, saying: "The book of the generations of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham"? [2626] Therefore according to the Evangelist He has a genealogy, and according to the Apostle, He has not: for according to the Evangelist, He has it on the mother's side, according to the Apostle He has not, as He springs from the Father. And so the Apostle well says: "Without father, without mother, without genealogy:" and where he lays down that He was begotten without mother, there also he records that He was without genealogy. And thus as regards both the nativities of the Lord, the writings of the Evangelist and of the Apostle agree together. For according to the Evangelist He has a genealogy "without father," when born in the flesh: and according to the Apostle, the Lord has not, when begotten in His Divine nature "without mother;" as Isaiah says: "But who shall declare His generation?" [2627] __________________________________________________________________
[2626] S. Matt. i. 1.
[2627] Isa. liii. 8. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVI.
He shows that like the devil when tempting Christ, the heretics garble and pervert holy Scripture.
Why then, you heretic, did you not in this way quote the whole and entire passage which you had read? So you see that the Apostle laid down that the Lord was "without mother" in the same way in which he laid down that He was born "without father:" that we might know that He is "without mother" in the same way in which we understand Him to be "without father." And as it is impossible to believe Him to be altogether "without father," so we cannot understand that He is altogether "without mother." Why then, you heretic, did you not in this way quote what you had read in the Apostle, entire and unmutilated? But you insert part, and omit part; and garble the words of truth in order that you may be able to build up your false notions by your wicked act. I see who was your master. We must believe that you had his instruction, whose example you are following. For so the devil in the gospel when tempting the Lord said: "If Thou art the Son of God, cast Thyself down. For it is written that He shall give His angels charge concerning Thee to keep Thee in all Thy ways." [2628] And when he had said this, he left out the context and what belongs to it; viz., "Thou shalt walk upon the asp and the basilisk: and thou shalt trample under foot the lion and the dragon." [2629] Surely he cunningly quoted the previous verse and left out the latter: for he quoted the one to deceive Him: he held his tongue about the latter to avoid condemning himself. For he knew that he himself was signified by the asp and basilisk, the lion and dragon in the Prophet's words. So then you also bring forward a part and omit a part; and quote the one to deceive; and omit the other for fear lest if you were to quote the whole, you might condemn your own deception. But it is now time to pass on to further matters, for by dwelling too long on particular points, as we are led to do by the desire of giving a full answer, we exceed the limits even of a longish book. __________________________________________________________________
[2628] S. Luke iv. 9, 10.
[2629] Ps. xc. (xci.) 13. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVII.
That the glory and honour of Christ is not to be ascribed to the Holy Ghost in such a way as to deny that it proceeds from Christ Himself, as if all that excellency, which was in Him, was another's and proceeded from another source.
You say then in another discussion, nay rather in another blasphemy of yours, "and He separated [2630] the Spirit from the Divine nature Who created His humanity. For Scripture says that that which was born of Mary is of the Holy Ghost. [2631] Who also filled with righteousness (justitia) that which was created: for it says He appeared in the flesh, was justified in the Spirit.' [2632] Again: Who made Him also to be feared by the devils: For I,' He says, by the Spirit of God cast out devils.' [2633] Who also made His flesh a temple. For I saw His spirit descending like a dove and abiding upon Him.' [2634] Again: Who granted to Him His ascension into Heaven. For it says, "Giving a commandment to the apostles whom He had chosen, by the Holy Ghost He was taken up." [2635] Finally that it was He who granted such glory to Christ." The whole of your blasphemy then consists in this: that Christ had nothing of Himself: nor did He, a mere man, as you say, receive anything from the Word, i.e., the Son of God; but everything in Him was the gift of the Spirit. If then we can show that all that which you refer to the Spirit, is His own, what remains but that we prove that He whom you therefore would have taken to be a man, because as you say everything which He has is another's, is therefore God, because everything which He has is His own? And indeed we will prove this not only by discussion and argument, but by the voice of Divinity Itself: for nothing testifies of God better than things divine. And because nothing knows itself better than the very glory of God, we believe nothing on the subject of God with greater right than those writings in which God Himself is His own witness. First then, as to this that you say that the Holy Spirit created His humanity; we might take it simply, if we could acknowledge that you had not brought it forward in the interests of unbelief. For neither do we deny that the flesh of the Lord was conceived by the Holy Ghost: but we assert that the body was conceived by the co-operation of the Holy Ghost in such a way that we can say that His Humanity [2636] was created for Himself by the Son of God, as the Holy Spirit Itself says in holy Scripture, testifying that "Wisdom hath builded for Itself a house." [2637] You see then that that which was conceived by the Holy Ghost was built and perfected by the Son of God: not that the work of the Son of God is one thing, and the work of the Holy Ghost another: but that through the unity of the Godhead and glory the operation of the Spirit is the building of the Son of God; and the building of the Son of God is the co-operation of the Holy Ghost. And so we read not only that the Holy Ghost came upon the Virgin, but also that the power of the Most High overshadowed the Virgin; that since Wisdom Itself is the fulness of the Godhead, no one might doubt that when Wisdom built Itself a house all the fulness of the Godhead was present. But the wretched hardness of your blasphemy, while it tries to sever Christ from the Son of God, fails to see that it is entirely severing the nature of the Godhead from Itself. Unless perhaps you believe that the house is therefore built for Him by the Holy Ghost because He Himself was insufficient and incapable of building for Himself an house. But it is as absurd as it is wild, to believe that He, whom we believe to have created the whole universe of things heavenly and earthly by His will, was unable to build for Himself a body: especially as the power of the Holy Ghost is His power, and the Divinity and Glory of the Trinity are so united and inseparable, that we cannot think of anything at all in One Person of the Trinity, which can be separated from the fulness of the Godhead. Therefore when this is laid down and grasped; viz., that according to the faith of holy Scripture, when the Holy Ghost came upon (the Virgin) and the power of the Most High overshadowed her, Wisdom builded Itself an house; the rest of the slanders of your blasphemy come to nothing. For neither is it doubtful that He made all things by Himself and in Himself, in whose name and faith, the faith even of believers can do anything. For neither did He need the aid of another, as neither have they needed it, who have trusted in His power. And so as for your assertions that He was justified by the Spirit, and that the Spirit made Him to be feared by the devils, and that His flesh became the temple of the Holy Ghost, and that He was taken up by the Spirit into heaven, they are all blasphemous and wild: not because we are to believe that in all these things which He Himself did, the unity and cooperation of the Spirit was wanting--since the Godhead is never wanting to Itself, and the power of the Trinity was ever present in the Saviour's works--but because you will have it that the Holy Ghost gave assistance to the Lord Jesus Christ as if He had been feeble and powerless; and that He granted those things to Him, which He was unable to procure for Himself. Learn then from sacred witnesses to believe God, and not to mingle falsehood with truth: for the subject does not admit it, and common sense abhors the idea of mingling the notions of the spirit of the devil with the witnesses that are Divine. __________________________________________________________________
[2630] Separavit (Petschenig).
[2631] S. Matt. i. 20.
[2632] 1 Tim. iii. 16.
[2633] S. Luke xi. 20.
[2634] S. John i. 32.
[2635] Acts i. 2.
[2636] Hominem suum.
[2637] Prov. ix. 1. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVIII.
How we are to understand the Apostle's words: "He appeared in the flesh, was justified in the Spirit," etc.
For to begin with this assertion of yours that the Spirit filled with righteousness (justitia) what was created, and your attempts to prove this by the evidence of the Apostle, where he says that "He appeared in the flesh, was justified in the Spirit," you make each statement in an unsound sense and wild spirit. For you make this assertion; viz., that you will have it that He was filled with righteousness by the Spirit, in order to show how He was void of righteousness, as you assert that the being filled with it was given to Him. And as for your use of the evidence of the Apostle on this matter, you garble the arrangement and meaning of the sacred passage. For the Apostle's statement is not as you have quoted it, mutilated and spoilt. For what says the Apostle? "And evidently great is the mystery of Godliness, which was manifested in the flesh, was justified in the Spirit." [2638] You see then that the Apostle declared that the mystery or sacrament of Godliness was justified. For he was not so forgetful of his own words and teaching as to say that He was void of righteousness, whom he had always proclaimed as righteousness, saying: "Who was made unto us righteousness and sanctification and redemption." [2639] Elsewhere also he says: "But ye were washed, but ye were justified, but ye were sanctified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." [2640] How far then from Him was it to need being filled with righteousness, as He Himself filled all things with righteousness, and for His glory to be without righteousness, whose very name justifies all things. You see then how foolish and wild are your blasphemies, since you are trying to take away from our Lord what is ever shed forth by Him upon all believers in such a way that still in its continuous supply it is never diminished. __________________________________________________________________
[2638] 1 Tim. iii. 16.
[2639] 1 Cor. i. 30.
[2640] 1 Cor. vi. 11. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIX.
That it was not only the Spirit, but Christ Himself also who made Him to be feared.
You say too that the Spirit made Him to be feared by the devils. To reject and refute which, even though the horrible character of the utterance is enough, we will still add some instances. Tell me, I pray, you who say that the fact that the devils feared Him was not His own doing but another's, and who will have it that this was not His own power but a gift, how was it that even His name had that power, of which He Himself was, according to you, void? How was it that in His name devils were cast out, sick persons were cured, dead men were raised? For the Apostle Peter says to that lame man who was sitting at the beautiful gate of the Temple: "In the name of Jesus Christ arise and walk." [2641] And again in the city of Joppa to the man who had been lying on his bed paralysed for eight years he says, "Æneas, may the Lord Jesus Christ heal thee: arise and make thy bed for thyself." [2642] Paul too says to the pythonical spirit: "I charge thee in the name of Jesus Christ come out of her," and the devil came out of her. [2643] But understand from this how utterly alien this weakness was from our Lord: for I do not call even those weak, whom He by His name made strong, since we never heard of any devil or infirmity able to resist any of the apostles since the Lord's resurrection. How then did the Spirit make Him to be feared, who made others to be feared? Or was He in Himself weak, whose faith even through the instrumentality of others reigned over all things? Finally those men who received power from God, never used that power as if it were their own: but referred the power to Him from whom they received it: for the power itself could never have any force except through the name of Him who gave it. And so both the apostles and all the servants of God never did any thing in their own name, but in the name and invocation of Christ: for the power itself derived its force from the same source as its origin, and could not be given through the instrumentality of the ministers, unless it had come from the Author. You then--who say that the Lord was the same as one of His servants (for as the apostles had nothing but what they received from their Lord, so you make out that the Lord Himself had nothing but what He received from the Spirit; and thus you make out that everything that He had, He had not as Lord, but had received it as a servant), do you tell me then, how it was that He used this power as His own and not as something which He had received? For what do we read of Him? He says to the paralytic: "Arise, take up thy bed, and go to thine house." [2644] And again to a father who pleads on behalf of his child, He says: "Go thy way: thy son liveth." [2645] And where an only son of his mother was being carried forth for burial, "Young man," He says, "I say unto thee Arise." [2646] Did He then like those who received power from God, ask that power might be given to Him for performing these things by the invocation of the Divine Name? Why did He not Himself work by the name of the Spirit, just as the apostles wrought by His Name? Finally, what does the gospel itself state about Him? It says: "He was teaching them as one that had authority, and not like the Scribes and Pharisees." [2647] Or do you make out that He was so proud and haughty as to put to the credit of His own might the power which (according to you) He had received from God? But what do we make of the fact that the power never submitted to His servants, except through the name of its author, and could have no efficacy if the actor claimed any of it as his own? __________________________________________________________________
[2641] Acts iii. 6.
[2642] Acts ix. 34.
[2643] Acts xvi. 18.
[2644] S. Matt. ix. 6.
[2645] S. John iv. 50.
[2646] S. Luke vii. 14.
[2647] S. Matt. vii. 29. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XX.
He tries by stronger and weightier arguments to destroy that notion.
But why are we so long dealing with your wild blasphemy, with arguments that are plain indeed but still slight? Let us hear God Himself speaking to His disciples: "Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out devils." [2648] And again: "In My name," He says, "ye shall cast out devils." [2649] Had He any need of Another's name for the exercise of His power, who made His own name to be a power? But what is still added? "Behold," He says, "I have given you power to tread upon serpents and scorpions and upon all the power of the enemy." [2650] He Himself says that He was gentle, as indeed He was, and humble in heart. And how was it that as regards the greatest possible power, He commanded others to work in His own name, if He Himself worked in Another's name? Or did He give to others, as if it were His own, what He Himself, according to you, did not possess, unless He received it from Another? But tell me, which of the saints receiving power from God, so worked? Or would not Peter have been thought a lunatic, or John a madman, or Paul out of his mind, if they had said to any sick folk: "In our name arise;" or to the lame: "In our name walk;" or to the dead: "In our name live;" or this to some: "We give you power to tread upon serpents and scorpions and upon all the power of the enemy"? You see then from this your madness: for just as these words are mad if they spring from man's assurance, so are you utterly mad if you do not see that they come from Divine power. For you must admit one of two alternatives; either that man could possess and give Divine power, or at any rate if no man can do this, that He who could do it, was God. For no one can grant of His liberality Divine power, except Him who possesses it by nature. __________________________________________________________________
[2648] S. Matt. x. 8.
[2649] S. Mark xvi. 17.
[2650] S. Luke x. 19. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXI.
That it must be ascribed equally to Christ and the Holy Ghost that His flesh and Humanity became the temple of God.
But there follows in your blasphemy that His flesh was made a temple of the Holy Ghost, for this reason, that John has said: "For I saw the Spirit descending from heaven and abiding upon Him." [2651] For you try to support even this wild statement of yours by Scriptural authority: wherefore let us see whether this sacred authority has said that which you say. "For I saw," it says, "the Spirit descending like a dove, and abiding upon Him." Discern here, if you can, which is the more powerful, which greater, which more to be honoured? He who descended, or He to whom the descent was made? He who brought down the honour, or He to whom the honour was brought? Where do you find in this passage that the Spirit made His flesh a temple? or wherein does it lessen the honour of God, if God Himself descended to show God to mankind? For certainly we ought not to think that He is less whose high estate was pointed out, than He who pointed out His high estate. But away with the thought of believing or making any separation in the Godhead: for one and the same Godhead and equal power shut out altogether the wicked notion of inequality. And so in this matter, where there is the Person of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, and where it is the Son of God to whom the descent is made, the Spirit who descends, the Father who gives His witness, no one had more honour, and no one received any slight, but it all redounds equally to the fulness of the Godhead, for each Person of the Trinity contains within Himself the glory of the whole Trinity. And so nothing further needs to be said, except only to show the rise and origin of your blasphemy. For thorns and thistles springing up from the roots produce shoots of their own nature, and from their character show their origin. So then you also, a thorny offshoot of the Pelagian heresy, show in germ just the same that your father is said to have had in the root. For he [2652] (as Leporius his follower said) declared that our Lord was made the Christ by His baptism: you say that at His baptism He was made the temple of God by the Spirit. The words are not altogether identical: but the wrong-headedness is altogether the same. __________________________________________________________________
[2651] S. John i. 32.
[2652] Ille enim; viz., Pelagius. This appears to be the true reading, though one ms. followed by Gazæus has Leporius ille enim; a reading which would involve the supposition that there were two persons of the name of Leporius, master and scholar. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXII.
That the raising up of Christ into heaven is not to be ascribed to the Spirit alone.
But you add this also to those impieties of yours mentioned above; viz., that the Spirit granted to the Lord His ascension into heaven: showing by this blasphemous notion of yours that you believe that the Lord Jesus Christ was so weak and powerless that had not the Spirit raised Him up to heaven, you fancy that He would still at this day have been on earth. But to prove this assertion you bring forward a passage of Scripture: for you say "Giving commands to the apostles whom He had chosen, by the Holy Ghost He was raised up." [2653] What am I to call you? What am I to think of you who by corrupting the sacred writings contrive that their evidences should not have the force of evidences? A new kind of audacity, which strives by its impious arguments to manage that truth may seem to confirm falsehood. For the Acts of the Apostles does not say what you make out. For what says the Scripture? "What Jesus began to do and to teach until the day in which giving charge to the apostles whom He had chosen by the Holy Ghost, He was taken up." Which is an instance of Hyperbaton, and must be understood in this way: what Jesus began to do and to teach until the day in which he was taken up, giving charge to the apostles whom He had chosen by the Holy Ghost; so that we ought not perhaps to have to give you any further answer in this matter than that of the passage itself, for the entire passage ought to be sufficient for the full truth, if the mutilation of it was available for your falsehood. But still, you, who think that our Lord Jesus Christ could not have ascended into heaven, unless He had been raised up by the Spirit; tell me how is it that He Himself says "No one hath ascended into heaven but He who came down from heaven, even the Son of man who is in heaven"? [2654] Confess then how foolish and absurd your notion is that He could not ascend into heaven, who is said, although He had descended into earth, never to have been absent from heaven: and say whether to leave the regions below and ascend into heaven was possible for Him to whom it was easy when still on earth, ever to continue in heaven. But what is that which He Himself says: "I ascend unto my Father." [2655] Did He imply that in this ascension there would be the intervention of Another's help, who by the very fact that He said He would ascend, shows the efficacy of His own power? David also says of the Ascension of the Lord: "God ascended with a merry noise, the Lord with the sound of the trumpet:" [2656] He clearly explained the glory of Him who ascends by the power of the ascension. __________________________________________________________________
[2653] Acts i. 2.
[2654] S. John iii. 13.
[2655] S. John xx. 17.
[2656] Ps. xlvi. (xlvii.) 6. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXIII.
He continues the same argument to show that Christ had no need of another's glory as He had a glory of His own.
But to end let us see the addition with which you sum up your preceding blasphemies. Your words are, "Who gave such [2657] glory to Christ?" You name glory in order to degrade Him. For by the assertion that the Lord was endowed with glory, in saying that He received it you blasphemously imply that He stood in need of it. For your perverse notion suggests that the generosity of the giver shows the need of the receiver. O miserable impiety of yours! and where is that which Divinity itself once foretold of the Lord Jesus Christ ascending into heaven? Saying: "Lift up your heads, and the King of glory shall come in." [2658] And when He (after the fashion of Divine utterances) had made answer to Himself as if in the character of an inquirer: "Who is the King of glory?" at once He adds: "The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle:" showing under the figure of a battle fought, the victory of the Lord in His triumph. Then when, to complete the exposition of it, He had repeated the words of the utterance quoted above, He showed by the following conclusion the majesty of the Lord as He entered heaven, saying "The Lord of hosts, He is the King of glory." On purpose that the fact of His taking a body might not interfere with the glory of His mighty Divinity, He taught that the same Person was Lord of hosts and King of heavenly glory, whom He had previously proclaimed Victor in the battle below. Go now [2659] and say that the glory was given to the Lord, when both prophecy has said that He was the King of glory, and He Himself also has testified of Himself as follows: "When the Son of man shall come in His glory." [2660] Refute it, if you can, and contradict this; viz., that whereas He testifies that He has glory of His own, you say that He has received Another's. Although we maintain that He has His own glory, in such a way that we do not deny that His very property of glory is common to Him with the Father and the Holy Ghost. For whatever God possesses belongs to the Godhead: and the kingdom of glory belongs to the Son of God in such a way that it is not kept back from belonging to the entire Godhead. __________________________________________________________________
[2657] Tantam Petschenig. Tamen Gazæus.
[2658] Ps. xxiii. (xxiv.) 7.
[2659] I nunc Petschenig. The text is however doubtful. One ms. reading is In hunc, and another jam nunc.
[2660] S. Matt. xxv. 31. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXIV.
He supports this doctrine by the authority of the blessed Hilary.
But it is quite time to finish the book, aye and the whole work, if I may however add the sayings of a few saintly men and illustrious priests, to support by the faith of the present day what we have already proved by the authority of holy Scripture. Hilary, a man endowed with all virtues and graces, and famous for his life as well as for his eloquence, who also, as a teacher of the churches and a priest, advanced not only by his own merits but also by the progress of others, and remained so steadfast during the storms of persecution that through the fortitude of his unconquered faith he attained the dignity of being a Confessor, [2661] --he testifies in the First book on the faith that the Lord Jesus Christ, Very God of Very God, was both begotten before the world, and afterwards born as man. Again in the Second book: "One only Begotten God grew in the womb of the holy Virgin into the form of a human body; He who contains all things, and in whose power all things are, is brought forth according to the law of human birth." Again in the same book: "An angel is witness that He who is born is God with us." Again in the Tenth book: "We have taught the mystery of God born as man by the birth from the Virgin." Again in the same book: "For when God was born as man, He was not born on purpose not to remain God." [2662] Again in the same writer's preface to his exposition of the gospel according to Matthew: [2663] "For to begin with it was needful for us that for our sakes the only Begotten God should be known to be born as man." Again in what follows: "that besides being God, He should be born as man, which He was not yet." Again in the same place: "Then this third matter was fitting: that as God was born as man in the world" etc.: Here are a few passages out of any number. But still you see even from these which we have quoted, how clearly and plainly he asserts that God was born of Mary. And where then is this saying of yours: "The creature could not bring forth the Creator: and that which is born of the flesh, is flesh." It would take too long to quote passages bearing on this point from each separate writer. I must try to enumerate them rather than to explain them: for they will sufficiently explain themselves. __________________________________________________________________
[2661] S. Hilary of Poictiers (ob. a.d. 368). The reference is of course to his banishment to Phrygia by the Emperor Constantius in 356, because of his resolute defense of the Nicene faith against Arianism.
[2662] De Trinitate II. xxv., xxvii.; X. vii.
[2663] This preface to Hilary's work on S. Matthew is now lost, though the commentary itself still exists. See Opera S. Hilarii Pictav: (Verona, 1730). Vol. i. 658. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXV.
He shows that Ambrose agrees with S. Hilary.
Ambrose, that illustrious priest of God, who never leaving the Lord's hand, ever shone like a jewel upon the finger of God, thus speaks in his book to the Virgins: "My brother is white and ruddy. [2664] White because He is the glory of the Father: ruddy because He was born of the Virgin. But remember that in Him the tokens of Divinity are of longer standing than the mysteries of the body. For He did not begin to exist from the Virgin, but He who was already in existence, came into the Virgin." [2665] Again on Christmas Day: "See the miracle of the mother of the Lord: A Virgin conceived, a Virgin brought forth. She was a Virgin when she conceived, a Virgin when with child, a Virgin after the birth. As is said in Ezekiel: "And the gate was shut and not opened, because the Lord passed through it." [2666] A splendid Virginity, and wondrous fruitfulness! The Lord of the world is born: and there are no cries from her who brought Him forth. The womb is left empty, and a true child is born, and yet the Virginity is not destroyed. It was right that when God was born the power of chastity should become greater, and that her purity should not be violated by the going forth of Him who had come to heal what was corrupt." [2667] Again in his exposition of the gospel according to Luke he says that "one was especially chosen, to bring forth God, who was espoused to an husband." [2668] He certainly declares that God was born of the Virgin. He calls Mary the mother of God. And where is that awful and execrable utterance of yours asking how can she be the mother of one of a different nature from her own. But if she is called mother by them, it is the human nature which was born not the Godhead. So, that illustrious teacher of the faith says both that she who bare Him was human, and that He who was born is God: and yet that this is no reason for unbelief, but only a miracle of faith. __________________________________________________________________
[2664] Cf. Cant. v. 10 (LXX.).
[2665] S. Ambrose. De Virg. Lib. i. xlvi.
[2666] Ezek. xliv. 2.
[2667] These words are not found in any extant writings of S. Ambrose, but something very like them occurs in S. Augustine's Sixth Sermon in Natali Domini.
[2668] In Lucam II. i. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXVI.
He adds to the foregoing the testimony of S. Jerome.
Jerome, the Teacher of the Catholics, whose writings shine like divine lamps throughout the whole world, says in his book to Eustochium: "The Son of God for our salvation was made the Son of man. He waits ten months in the womb to be born: and He, in whose hand the world is held, is contained in a narrow manger." [2669] Again in his commentary on Isaiah: "For the Lord of hosts, who is the King of glory, Himself descended into the Virgin's womb, and entered in and went forth from the East Gate which is ever shut." [2670] Of whom Gabriel says to the Virgin: "The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee. Wherefore that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God." And in Proverbs: "Wisdom hath builded herself an house." [2671] Compare this if you please with your doctrine or rather your blasphemy, in which you assert that God is the Creator of the months, and was not an offspring of months. For lo, Jerome, a man of the greatest knowledge and also of the most pure and approved doctrine testifies almost in the very words in which you deny that the Son of God was an offspring of months, that He was an offspring of months. For he says that He waits ten months in the womb to be born. But perhaps the authority of this man seems a mere nothing to you. You may take it that every one says the same and in the same words, for whoever does not deny that the Son of God is the offspring of the Virgin, admits that He is the offspring of months. __________________________________________________________________
[2669] Ep. xxii. Ad Eustochium.
[2670] Cf. Ezek. xliv. 2.
[2671] Book III. c. vii. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXVII.
To the foregoing he adds Rufinus and the blessed Augustine.
Rufinus also, a Christian philosopher, with no mean place among Ecclesiastical Doctors testifies as follows of the Lord's Nativity in his Exposition of the Creed. "For the Son of God," he says, "is born of a Virgin, not chiefly allied to the flesh alone, but generated in the soul which is the medium between the flesh and God." [2672] Does he witness obscurely that God was born of man? Augustine the priest [2673] of Hippo Regiensis says: "That men might be born of God, God was first born of them: for Christ is God. And Christ when born of men only required a mother on earth, because He always had a Father in heaven, being born of God through whom we are made, and also born of a woman, through whom we might be re-created." [2674] Again, in this place: "And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. Why then need you wonder that men are born of God? Notice how God Himself was born of men." Again in his Epistle to Volusianus: "But Moses himself and the rest of the prophets most truly prophesied of Christ the Lord, and gave Him great glory: they declared that He would come not as one like themselves, nor merely greater in the same sort of power of working miracles, but clearly as the Lord God of all, and as made man for men. Who therefore Himself also willed to do such things as they did to prevent the absurdity of His not doing Himself those things which He did through them. But still it was right also for Him to do something special; viz., to be born of a Virgin, to rise from the dead, to ascend into heaven. And if anyone thinks that this is too little for God, I know not what more he can look for. [2675] __________________________________________________________________
[2672] Rufinus in Symb. c. xiii.
[2673] There is no authority for the reading of Cuyck and Gazæus "Magnus Sacerdos." On the coldness with which Augustine is here spoken of see the Introduction, p. 191. Note.
[2674] August. Tract. II. in Johan. xv.
[2675] Ep. cxxxvii. c. 4. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXVIII.
As he is going to produce the testimony of Greek or Eastern Bishops, he brings forward in the first place S. Gregory Nazianzen.
But perhaps because those whom we have enumerated came from different parts of the world, their authority may seem to you less valuable. An absurd thing, indeed, because faith is not interfered with by place, and we have to consider what a man is, not where: especially since religion unites all together, and those who are in the one faith may be also known to be in the one body. But still we will bring forward for you some, whom you cannot despise, even from the East. Gregory, that most grand light of knowledge and doctrine, who though he has been for some time dead, yet still lives in authority and faith, and though he has been for some time removed in the body from the Churches, yet has not forsaken them in word and authority. "When then," he says, "God had come forth from the Virgin, in that human nature which He had taken, as He existed in one out of two which are the opposite of each other; viz., flesh and spirit, the one is taken into God, the other exalts into the grace of Deity. [2676] O new and unheard of intermingling! O marvellous and exquisite union! He who was, came to be, and the Creator is created: and He who is infinite is embraced by the soul which is the medium between God and the flesh: and He who makes all rich, is made poor." Again he says of the Epiphany: "But what happens? What is done concerning us and for us? There is brought about some new and unheard of change of natures and God is made man." Again in this passage: [2677] "The Son of God began to be also the Son of man, not being changed from what He was, for He is unchangeable, but taking to Himself what He was not: for He is pitiful so that He, who could not be embraced, can now be embraced." You see how grandly and nobly he asserts the majesty of His Godhead so that He may bring in the condescension of the Incarnation: for that admirable teacher of the faith knew well that of all the blessings which God granted to us at His coming into the world this was the chief, without diminishing in any way His glory. For whatever God gave to man, ought to increase the love of Him in us, and not to lessen the honour which we give to Him. __________________________________________________________________
[2676] Aliud in Deum adsumiter, aliud in Deitatis gratiam præstat. So Petschenig edits. The text of Gazæus has aliud Deitatis gratia præstat.
[2677] Greg. Nazianz. Oratio xxxviii. The Greek of the passage which Cassian translates is as follows: proelthon de Theos meta tes proslepseos hen ek duo ton enantion, sarkos kai pneumatos; hon to men etheose to de etheothe, o tes kaines mixeos, o tes paradoxou kraseos, ho on ginetai kai ho aktistos ktizetai kai ho achoretos choreitai dia meses psuches noeras mesiteuouses theoteti kai sarkos pachuteti, kai ho ploutizon ptocheuei. Oratio xxxix. Ti ginetai kai ti to mega; peri hemas musterion ; kainotomountai phuseis kai Theos anthropos ginetai...kai ho huios tou Theou dechetai kai huios anthropou genesthai te kai klethenai, ouch ho en metabalon, atreptonu gar, all o ouk en proslabon, philanthropos gar, hina chorethhe ho achoretos. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXIX.
In the next place he puts the authority of S. Athanasius.
Athanasius also, priest of the city of Alexandria, a splendid instance of constancy and virtue, whom the storm of heretical persecution tested without crushing him: whose life was always like a clear glass, and who had almost obtained the reward of martyrdom before attaining the dignity of confessorship: Let us see what was his view of the Lord Jesus Christ and the mother of the Lord. "This then," he says, "is the mind and stamp of Holy Scripture, as we have often said; viz., that in one and the same Saviour two things have to be understood: (1) that He was ever God, and is Son, Word, and Light, and Wisdom of the Father, and (2) that afterwards for our sakes He took flesh of the Virgin Mary the Theotocos, and was made man." [2678] Again after some other matter: "Many then were saints and clean from sin: Jeremiah also was sanctified from the womb, and John, while still in the womb leapt for joy at the voice of Mary the Theotocos." [2679] He certainly says that God, the Son of God, who (to declare the faith of all in his words) is "the Word, and Light and Wisdom of the Father," took flesh for our sakes; and therefore he calls the Virgin Mary Theotocos, because she was the Mother of God. __________________________________________________________________
[2678] See the orations against the Arians IV. The Greek is as follows: Skopos toinun houtos kai charakter tes graphes, hos pollakis eipomen, diplen einai ten peri tou soteros apangelian en aute, hoti te aei Theos en kai estin ho ueos, logos on kai apaugasma kai sophia tou patros, kai hoti husteron di' hemas sarka labon ek parthenou tes theotokou Marias anthropos gegonen.
[2679] Ibid. polloi goun hagioi gegonasi kai katharoi pases hamartias; Ieremias de kai ek koilias hegiasthe kai 'Ioannes eti kuophoroumenos eskirtesen en agalliasei epi te phone tes Theotokou Marias. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXX.
He adds also S. John Chrysostom.
As for John the glory of the Episcopate of Constantinople, whose holy life obtained the reward of martyrdom without any show of Gentile persecution, hear what he thought and taught on the Incarnation of the Son of God: "And Him," he says, "whom if He had come in unveiled Deity neither the heaven nor the earth nor the sea nor any other creature could have contained, the pure womb of a Virgin bore." [2680] This man's faith and doctrine then, even if you ignore that of others, you ought to follow and hold, as out of love and affection for him the pious people chose you as their Bishop. For when it took you for its priest from the Church of Antioch, from which it had formerly chosen him, it believed that it would receive in you all that it had lost in him. [2681] Did not, I ask you, all these almost with prophetic spirit say all these things in order to confound your blasphemies. For you declare that our Lord and Saviour Christ is not God: they declare that Christ the Lord is Very God. You blasphemously assert that Mary is Christotocos not Theotocos: they do not deny that she is Christotocos, while they acknowledge her as Theotocos. Not merely the substance but the words also are opposed to your blasphemies: that we may clearly see that an impregnable bulwark was formerly prepared by God against your blasphemies, to break on the wall of truth ready prepared, the force of the heretical attack which was at some time or other to come. And you, O you most wicked and shameless contaminator of an illustrious city, you disastrous and deadly plague of a Catholic and holy people, do you dare to stand and teach in the Church of God, and with your wild and blasphemous words slander the priests of an ever unbroken faith and Catholic confession, and say that the people of the city of Constantinople are in error through the fault of their earlier teachers? Are you then the corrector of former Bishops, the accuser of ancient priests, are you better than Gregory, more approved than Nectarius, greater than John, [2682] and all the other Bishops of Eastern cities who, though not of the same renown as those whom I have enumerated, were yet of the same faith? which, as far as the matter in hand is concerned, is enough: for when it is a question of the faith, all are as good as the best in so far as they agree with the best. __________________________________________________________________
[2680] The passage has not been identified with any now extant in the writings of S. Chrysostom.
[2681] S. Chrysostom had been taken from Antioch for the Bishopric of Constantinople: and after the death of Sisinnius in 426, as there was so much rivalry and party spirit displayed at Constantinople, the Emperor determined that none of that Church should fill the vacant see, but sent for Nestorius from Antioch, where he had already gained a great reputation for eloquence (cf. Socrates H. E. VII. xxix.). It is to the fact that both S. Chrysostom and Nestorius came from the same city that Cassian alludes in the text.
[2682] The reference is to Gregory Nazianzen, Bishop of Constantinople from 379 to 381 when he retired in the interests of peace; to Nectarius who was chosen to succeed him, and occupied the post from 381 to 397; and to his successor, S. John Chrysostom 397 to 404. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXI.
He bemoans the unhappy lot of Constantinople, owing to the misfortune which has overtaken it from that heretic; and at the same time he urges the citizens to stand fast in the ancient Catholic and ancestral faith.
Wherefore I also, humble and insignificant as I am in name as in desert, and although I cannot claim a place as Teacher among those illustrious Bishops of Constantinople, yet venture to claim the zeal and enthusiasm of a disciple. For I was admitted into the sacred ministry by the Bishop John, of blessed memory, and offered to God, and even though I am absent in body yet I am still there in heart: and though by actual presence I no longer mix with that most dear and honourable people of God, yet I am still joined to them in spirit. And hence it comes that condoling and sympathizing with them, I broke out just now into the utterance of our common grief and sorrow, and in my weakness cried out (which was all that I could do) by means of the dolorous lamentation of my works, as if for my own limbs and members: for if as the Apostle says, when the smaller part of the body is grieved, the greater part grieves and sympathizes with it, [2683] how much more should the smaller part sympathize when the greater part is grieved? It is indeed utterly inhuman for the smaller parts not to feel the sufferings of the greater in one and the same body, if the greater feel those of the smaller. Wherefore I pray and beseech you, you who live within the circuit of Constantinople, and who are my fellow-citizens through the love of my country, and my brothers through the unity of the faith; separate yourselves from that ravening wolf who (as it is written) devours the people of God, as if they were bread. [2684] Touch not, taste not anything of his, for all those things lead to death. Come out from the midst of him and be ye separate and touch not the unclean thing. Remember your ancient teachers, and your priests; Gregory whose fame was spread through the world, Nectarius renowned for holiness, John a marvel of faith and purity. John, I say; that John who like John the Evangelist was indeed a disciple of Jesus and an Apostle; and so to speak ever reclined on the breast and heart of the Lord. Remember him, I say. Follow him. Think of his purity, his faith, his doctrine, and holiness. Remember him ever as your teacher and nurse, in whose bosom and embraces you as it were grew up. Who was the teacher in common both of you and of me: whose disciples and pupils we are. Read his writings. Hold fast his instruction. Embrace his faith and merits. For though to attain this is a hard and magnificent thing: yet even to follow is beautiful and sublime. For in the highest matters, not merely the attainment, but even the attempt to copy is worthy of praise. For scarcely anyone entirely misses all parts in that to which he is trying to climb and reach. He then should ever be in your minds and almost in your sight: he should live in your hearts and in your thoughts. He would himself commend to you this that I have written, for it was he who taught me what I have written: and so do not think of this as mine, so much as his: for the stream comes from the spring, and whatever you think belongs to the disciple, ought all to be referred to the honour of the master. But, beyond and above all I pray with all my heart and voice, to Thee, O God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, that Thou wouldest fill with the gift of Thy love whatever we have written by Thy bounteous grace. And because, as the Lord our God Thine Only Begotten Son Himself taught us, Thou hast so loved this world as to send Thine Only Begotten Son to save the world, grant to Thy people whom Thou hast redeemed that in the Incarnation of Thine Only Begotten Son they may perceive both Thy gift and His love: and that all may understand the truth that for us Thine Only Begotten, our Lord God, was born and suffered and rose again, and may so love it that the condescension of His glory may increase our love: and let not His Humility lead to a diminution of His honour in the hearts of all men, but let it ever produce an increase of love: and may we all rightly and wisely comprehend the blessings of His Sacred Compassion, so as to see that we owe the more to God, in proportion as for our sakes God humbled Himself yet lower. __________________________________________________________________
[2683] Cf. 1 Cor. xii. 26.
[2684] Ps. xiii. (xiv.) 4; Col. ii. 21, 23; 2 Cor. vi. 17. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Indexes __________________________________________________________________
Index of Scripture References
Genesis
[1]1:26 [2]1:26 [3]1:28 [4]1:31 [5]1:31 [6]2:18 [7]3:1 [8]3:5 [9]3:5 [10]3:5 [11]3:15 [12]3:15 [13]3:17 [14]3:19 [15]3:22 [16]4:4 [17]4:7 [18]4:17 [19]4:17-21 [20]5:4-30 [21]5:22 [22]5:24 [23]6:2 [24]6:3 [25]7:2 [26]8:20 [27]8:21 [28]9:22 [29]9:23 [30]12:1 [31]12:1 [32]12:1 [33]14:20 [34]14:22 [35]14:22-23 [36]15:13 [37]15:18-21 [38]18 [39]18 [40]19 [41]19:2-3 [42]22:1 [43]22:12 [44]32:30 [45]37:4 [46]37:4 [47]40:7 [48]42:9 [49]42:16 [50]42:21 [51]45:5-8 [52]50:19-20
Exodus
[53]3:2 [54]3:5 [55]3:14 [56]4:13 [57]5:2 [58]5:8-9 [59]7:1 [60]8:21 [61]16:3 [62]18:25 [63]20:3 [64]20:4-17 [65]20:14 [66]20:14 [67]21:24 [68]21:24 [69]22:21 [70]22:27 [71]22:29 [72]22:29 [73]22:29 [74]23:7 [75]31:1 [76]32:31-32 [77]32:31-33 [78]33:13 [79]33:20 [80]34:16
Leviticus
[81]18:5 [82]18:7 [83]19:17-18 [84]19:18 [85]19:36 [86]21:12 [87]23:36
Numbers
[88]5:9-10 [89]11:5 [90]11:18 [91]15:32 [92]18:26 [93]24
Deuteronomy
[94]4:26 [95]6:4 [96]6:4 [97]6:4-5 [98]6:7 [99]6:13 [100]7:1-2 [101]7:1-3 [102]7:21-23 [103]8:2 [104]8:3 [105]8:12-15 [106]9:4-5 [107]13:1 [108]13:1 [109]13:1-3 [110]13:1-3 [111]16:8 [112]16:9 [113]20:8 [114]23:7 [115]27:26 [116]28:23 [117]32:7 [118]32:7 [119]32:12 [120]32:17 [121]32:21 [122]32:24 [123]32:31 [124]32:32-33
Joshua
[125]5:16 [126]7
Judges
[127]2:22 [128]3:1-2 [129]3:1-4 [130]3:9 [131]3:9 [132]3:15 [133]3:15 [134]3:15 [135]13:18
1 Samuel
[136]2:6-7 [137]2:9 [138]2:30 [139]5:6 [140]10:1 [141]13:20 [142]15 [143]15:11 [144]15:35 [145]21:1-2 [146]21:8 [147]21:13 [148]22:7-10 [149]24:7 [150]25:22 [151]25:34
2 Samuel
[152]5:1 [153]12:13 [154]12:13 [155]14:14 [156]16:10-12 [157]17:14 [158]17:20 [159]23:17
1 Kings
[160]3:24-27 [161]4:29 [162]4:29 [163]7:13 [164]8:17-19 [165]8:58 [166]11:2 [167]13:22 [168]13:26 [169]20 [170]20:31-32 [171]20:42 [172]21:21-24 [173]22:22 [174]22:22 [175]22:22
2 Kings
[176]1:1-8 [177]4:29 [178]6:30 [179]9:1 [180]9:3 [181]20 [182]20:1-6
2 Chronicles
[183]3:5 [184]6:30 [185]7:9 [186]24:17-18 [187]24:23-25 [188]26:15-16 [189]32:24-26
Nehemiah
[190]8:18
Esther
[191]6:1
Job
[192]1:9-10 [193]1:9-11 [194]1:21 [195]2:6 [196]2:10 [197]3:23 [198]5:2 [199]5:7 [200]5:18 [201]5:23 [202]10:10-11 [203]15:14-15 [204]15:15 [205]24:21 [206]25:5 [207]28:15 [208]29:15 [209]29:17 [210]31:24 [211]38:7 [212]39:5-8 [213]40:3 [214]40:16
Psalms
[215]1:2 [216]2:11 [217]2:11 [218]3 [219]4:5 [220]4:5 [221]5:7 [222]5:7 [223]5:9 [224]6:2 [225]6:6 [226]6:7 [227]6:7 [228]6:7 [229]6:9 [230]6:9 [231]7:17 [232]8:3 [233]8:5 [234]10:9 [235]12:7 [236]13:4 [237]13:4-5 [238]14:4 [239]15:5 [240]16:10 [241]17:4 [242]17:4 [243]17:5 [244]17:5 [245]18:2-4 [246]18:20 [247]18:33 [248]18:35 [249]18:38-39 [250]18:40-41 [251]19:5 [252]19:11 [253]19:12-13 [254]19:13 [255]22:2 [256]22:11 [257]22:16 [258]24:7 [259]24:18 [260]25:4 [261]25:5 [262]25:18 [263]26:2 [264]26:2 [265]26:8 [266]31:10 [267]32:5 [268]32:5 [269]32:5 [270]32:5-6 [271]32:10 [272]33:5 [273]33:9 [274]33:15 [275]34:7 [276]34:8 [277]34:9 [278]34:9 [279]34:10 [280]34:10 [281]34:10 [282]34:11 [283]34:13 [284]34:14 [285]34:14 [286]34:19 [287]34:23 [288]34:32 [289]35:1-3 [290]35:2-4 [291]35:8 [292]35:10 [293]35:16 [294]35:17 [295]35:24 [296]35:26 [297]35:28 [298]36:1-2 [299]36:7 [300]36:12 [301]37:16 [302]37:23-24 [303]38:6 [304]38:14-15 [305]38:19 [306]39:2-3 [307]39:2-3 [308]39:13 [309]40:2 [310]40:3 [311]40:9 [312]40:15 [313]40:15 [314]40:17 [315]42:4 [316]43:3-4 [317]44:4-5 [318]44:6-8 [319]44:22 [320]44:23 [321]44:25 [322]45:10 [323]45:11 [324]45:12 [325]45:17 [326]46:7 [327]46:10 [328]47:6 [329]49:8 [330]50:3 [331]50:3 [332]50:15 [333]50:16 [334]50:23 [335]51 [336]51 [337]51 [338]51 [339]51:5 [340]51:5-6 [341]51:9 [342]51:12 [343]51:19 [344]51:21 [345]52:6-9 [346]52:7 [347]53:6 [348]53:6 [349]54:8 [350]55:13-15 [351]55:22 [352]59:11 [353]59:11 [354]61:2 [355]62:5 [356]62:10 [357]63 [358]63 [359]63 [360]63 [361]63 [362]63:2 [363]63:7 [364]63:9 [365]63:9 [366]63:29 [367]66:12 [368]66:15 [369]68:7 [370]68:29 [371]68:29 [372]69:4 [373]69:29 [374]70:2 [375]73:2-5 [376]73:5 [377]73:28 [378]73:28 [379]74:19 [380]74:19 [381]74:21 [382]74:21 [383]77:5 [384]77:6-7 [385]78:34-35 [386]78:65 [387]80:2 [388]80:7 [389]81:7 [390]81:10 [391]81:12-13 [392]81:12-13 [393]81:15 [394]82:6 [395]82:6-7 [396]83:19 [397]84:6 [398]84:8 [399]85:9 [400]85:12 [401]88:10 [402]88:14 [403]88:14 [404]89:20 [405]90 [406]90 [407]90:11-12 [408]90:17 [409]90:17 [410]91:5-6 [411]91:6 [412]91:7 [413]91:13 [414]91:13 [415]91:13 [416]94:10 [417]94:10 [418]94:11 [419]94:17 [420]94:17 [421]94:17-19 [422]94:18 [423]94:19 [424]97:10 [425]99:4 [426]101:1-2 [427]101:1-2 [428]102:1 [429]102:1 [430]102:7-8 [431]102:7-8 [432]102:7-8 [433]102:10 [434]102:10 [435]102:27 [436]102:27-28 [437]104:15 [438]104:15 [439]104:15 [440]104:18 [441]104:21 [442]105:16-17 [443]106:40 [444]107:2 [445]107:4-6 [446]107:19 [447]107:20 [448]107:33 [449]109:6 [450]109:24 [451]111:1 [452]111:10 [453]111:10 [454]112:2-3 [455]112:10 [456]113:17-18 [457]115:16-17 [458]116:14 [459]116:15 [460]116:16-17 [461]116:16-17 [462]118:6 [463]118:6 [464]118:13 [465]118:13-14 [466]118:14 [467]118:27 [468]119:1-2 [469]119:5-6 [470]119:8 [471]119:8 [472]119:11 [473]119:18 [474]119:19 [475]119:28 [476]119:28 [477]119:31 [478]119:32 [479]119:36 [480]119:60 [481]119:62 [482]119:71 [483]119:73 [484]119:83 [485]119:104 [486]119:106 [487]119:108 [488]119:112 [489]119:112 [490]119:120 [491]119:125 [492]119:147 [493]119:147-148 [494]119:147-148 [495]119:164 [496]119:165 [497]119:165 [498]119:166 [499]120:1 [500]121:4 [501]127:1 [502]127:1-2 [503]128:1 [504]129:8 [505]131:1-2 [506]131:1-2 [507]133:1 [508]133:2 [509]133:2 [510]139:23-24 [511]140:10 [512]141:2 [513]141:2 [514]141:3 [515]142:4 [516]143:2 [517]143:2 [518]143:4 [519]143:10 [520]144:5 [521]144:16 [522]146:2 [523]146:7 [524]146:7-9 [525]146:8 [526]147:12 [527]148 [528]148 [529]149:5 [530]150:6
Proverbs
[531]2:20 [532]3:1 [533]3:3 [534]3:9 [535]3:9-10 [536]4:23 [537]4:23 [538]4:26 [539]4:26 [540]4:27 [541]5:15-16 [542]5:22 [543]5:22 [544]5:22 [545]8:13 [546]9:1 [547]9:10 [548]9:16-18 [549]9:18 [550]10:4 [551]10:12 [552]11:14 [553]11:15 [554]11:15 [555]11:20 [556]11:22 [557]11:25 [558]12:5 [559]12:9 [560]12:10 [561]12:16 [562]12:28 [563]13:4 [564]13:4 [565]13:7 [566]13:8 [567]13:17 [568]14:6 [569]14:7 [570]14:17 [571]14:23 [572]14:23 [573]14:23 [574]14:26 [575]14:29 [576]14:29 [577]14:33 [578]15:1 [579]15:19 [580]15:19 [581]15:27 [582]15:33 [583]16:4 [584]16:5 [585]16:5 [586]16:18 [587]16:25 [588]16:25 [589]16:26 [590]16:32 [591]17:3 [592]17:3 [593]17:6 [594]17:16 [595]17:28 [596]18:2 [597]18:17 [598]19:3 [599]19:7 [600]19:9 [601]19:10 [602]20:9 [603]20:10-11 [604]20:13 [605]20:13 [606]20:17 [607]20:23 [608]21:13 [609]21:25 [610]21:30 [611]21:31 [612]22:5 [613]22:17 [614]22:20 [615]22:20 [616]22:23 [617]22:28 [618]23:1-2 [619]23:9 [620]23:21 [621]23:33-35 [622]23:35 [623]23:35 [624]24:3-4 [625]24:11 [626]24:11 [627]24:15 [628]24:16 [629]24:17-18 [630]25:8 [631]25:14 [632]25:20 [633]25:28 [634]26:11 [635]26:22 [636]26:25 [637]26:27 [638]27:4 [639]27:7 [640]27:15 [641]28:19 [642]28:19 [643]29:5 [644]29:11 [645]29:19 [646]29:20 [647]29:22 [648]30:26 [649]31:3 [650]31:6-7 [651]31:21 [652]31:25
Ecclesiastes
[653]1:9-10 [654]3:1-8 [655]3:14 [656]3:17 [657]4:6 [658]4:21 [659]4:31 [660]5:3 [661]5:4 [662]5:4 [663]5:4 [664]7:9 [665]7:10 [666]7:11 [667]7:21 [668]7:21 [669]7:21 [670]7:25 [671]7:29 [672]7:29 [673]8:11 [674]9:11 [675]10:2 [676]10:4 [677]10:4 [678]10:8 [679]10:11 [680]10:15 [681]10:18 [682]11:2 [683]12:7 [684]26:24 [685]28:24
Song of Solomon
[686]1:3 [687]1:3 [688]1:16 [689]2:4 [690]2:6 [691]3:1 [692]5:6 [693]5:10
Isaiah
[694]1:3 [695]1:6 [696]1:16 [697]1:16-18 [698]1:19 [699]1:25-26 [700]2:22 [701]5:8 [702]6:5 [703]6:6-7 [704]6:9-10 [705]6:10 [706]7:9 [707]7:14 [708]8:20 [709]9:6 [710]9:6-7 [711]10:14 [712]11:2-3 [713]11:8 [714]12:1 [715]13:12 [716]13:21-22 [717]14:12-14 [718]14:13 [719]14:13-14 [720]14:13-14 [721]14:14 [722]14:14-15 [723]25:9 [724]26:15 [725]26:15 [726]29:9 [727]30:18 [728]30:19 [729]30:19 [730]30:20-21 [731]30:23 [732]30:26 [733]31:9 [734]33:6 [735]34:13 [736]34:14-15 [737]34:15 [738]35:3 [739]35:10 [740]37 [741]37:25 [742]40:4 [743]40:9 [744]40:12 [745]42:18-19 [746]43:8 [747]43:25 [748]43:25 [749]43:25-26 [750]43:26 [751]44:22 [752]45:2-3 [753]45:6-7 [754]45:9 [755]45:14-15 [756]46:10 [757]47:13 [758]48:9 [759]49:6 [760]49:15 [761]50:1-2 [762]50:4 [763]50:11 [764]50:11 [765]51:3 [766]52:1 [767]52:2 [768]52:6 [769]53:7 [770]53:8 [771]56:5 [772]57:15 [773]58:3 [774]58:3-9 [775]58:6 [776]58:9 [777]58:11-12 [778]58:13 [779]58:13-14 [780]58:14 [781]59:1-2 [782]60:17-20 [783]61:3 [784]61:8 [785]64:1 [786]64:1 [787]64:5-6 [788]64:6 [789]65:2 [790]65:17-18 [791]65:24 [792]66:1 [793]66:2 [794]66:2 [795]66:18 [796]66:18 [797]66:18 [798]66:23 [799]66:23 [800]66:24
Jeremiah
[801]1:5 [802]1:5 [803]1:10 [804]1:18-19 [805]1:18-19 [806]2:11 [807]2:18-19 [808]2:19 [809]2:19 [810]2:30 [811]3:6 [812]3:11 [813]3:19-20 [814]4:3 [815]4:14 [816]4:14 [817]5:3 [818]5:21 [819]5:21 [820]6:16 [821]6:29-30 [822]8:4-5 [823]8:5 [824]8:17 [825]8:17 [826]8:22 [827]9:1 [828]9:4-5 [829]9:5 [830]9:8 [831]10:23 [832]10:24 [833]11:11 [834]12:1-2 [835]12:13 [836]14:12 [837]15:7 [838]17:5 [839]17:5 [840]17:13 [841]17:16 [842]17:16 [843]17:16 [844]17:18 [845]17:21 [846]18:7 [847]18:10 [848]18:15 [849]26:2-3 [850]30:11 [851]31:16 [852]32:39-40 [853]35:6-7 [854]35:19 [855]48:10 [856]48:10 [857]48:10 [858]48:10 [859]51:8-9 [860]100
Lamentations
[861]2:18 [862]3:27-28 [863]3:27-28
Ezekiel
[864]1:19-20 [865]11:19-20 [866]13:9 [867]16:3 [868]16:42 [869]16:49 [870]16:49 [871]16:52 [872]18:24 [873]18:25 [874]18:31 [875]20:25 [876]20:25 [877]20:43-44 [878]24:11-13 [879]28:11-18 [880]29:3 [881]33:11 [882]33:11 [883]33:13-16 [884]33:14-15 [885]37 [886]44:2 [887]44:2
Daniel
[888]3:6 [889]3:86 [890]5:2 [891]6:10 [892]9:27 [893]10:2 [894]10:5 [895]10:12-14 [896]10:20-21 [897]12:1 [898]12:3
Hosea
[899]2:5-7 [900]4:6 [901]4:12 [902]4:12 [903]7:9 [904]7:9 [905]7:12 [906]7:13 [907]7:15 [908]9:12 [909]10:12 [910]10:12 [911]10:12 [912]11:4 [913]14:9 [914]14:10
Joel
[915]1:4 [916]1:5 [917]2:10-11 [918]2:13
Amos
[919]1:1 [920]3:6 [921]4:11 [922]8:9
Jonah
[923]3:4 [924]3:8 [925]3:10
Micah
[926]2:7 [927]2:7 [928]2:11 [929]5:9 [930]7:5
Nahum
[931]1:15
Habakkuk
[932]1:16 [933]2:1 [934]2:15-16 [935]3:2 [936]3:2-3
Zephaniah
[937]1:12
Haggai
[938]1:6
Zechariah
[939]1:14 [940]9:17 [941]12:8
Malachi
[942]1:6 [943]1:6 [944]2:17 [945]3:2-3 [946]3:6 [947]3:8 [948]3:8 [949]3:14-15 [950]4:2
Matthew
[951]1:1 [952]1:5 [953]1:20 [954]1:20 [955]1:21 [956]2:2 [957]2:7 [958]3:2 [959]3:4 [960]3:4 [961]3:14 [962]3:16-17 [963]3:17 [964]4:3 [965]4:3 [966]4:5 [967]4:6 [968]4:6 [969]4:6 [970]4:8 [971]5 [972]5:3 [973]5:3 [974]5:3 [975]5:3 [976]5:8 [977]5:8 [978]5:8 [979]5:8 [980]5:14 [981]5:14 [982]5:14 [983]5:16 [984]5:19 [985]5:22 [986]5:22 [987]5:22 [988]5:22 [989]5:22-24 [990]5:23-24 [991]5:23-24 [992]5:28 [993]5:28 [994]5:28 [995]5:37 [996]5:37 [997]5:39 [998]5:39 [999]5:39 [1000]5:39 [1001]5:39-40 [1002]5:43-45 [1003]5:44 [1004]5:44 [1005]5:44 [1006]5:45 [1007]5:48 [1008]6:2 [1009]6:3 [1010]6:11 [1011]6:12 [1012]6:12 [1013]6:14 [1014]6:18 [1015]6:19 [1016]6:21 [1017]6:22-23 [1018]6:22-23 [1019]6:23 [1020]6:24 [1021]7:1-2 [1022]7:3-5 [1023]7:6 [1024]7:6 [1025]7:6 [1026]7:7 [1027]7:11 [1028]7:12 [1029]7:14 [1030]7:15 [1031]7:18 [1032]7:22-23 [1033]7:22-23 [1034]7:24 [1035]7:29 [1036]7:59 [1037]8:3 [1038]8:7-10 [1039]8:8 [1040]8:9 [1041]8:13 [1042]8:13 [1043]8:21 [1044]8:31 [1045]9:2-6 [1046]9:4 [1047]9:4 [1048]9:6 [1049]9:14-15 [1050]9:15 [1051]9:29 [1052]10:8 [1053]10:8 [1054]10:9-10 [1055]10:10 [1056]10:20 [1057]10:22 [1058]10:23 [1059]10:36 [1060]10:38 [1061]10:38 [1062]10:42 [1063]11:8 [1064]11:12 [1065]11:12 [1066]11:14 [1067]11:25 [1068]11:28 [1069]11:28 [1070]11:28-29 [1071]11:28-30 [1072]11:29 [1073]11:29 [1074]11:29 [1075]11:30 [1076]12:20 [1077]12:35 [1078]12:40 [1079]12:43-45 [1080]13:13 [1081]13:13 [1082]13:17 [1083]13:43 [1084]14:14 [1085]15:11 [1086]15:14 [1087]15:19 [1088]15:28 [1089]15:32 [1090]16:4 [1091]16:16 [1092]16:16 [1093]16:16 [1094]16:25 [1095]16:26 [1096]17:19 [1097]17:20 [1098]18:3 [1099]18:8 [1100]18:10 [1101]18:11 [1102]18:14 [1103]18:19 [1104]19:6 [1105]19:12 [1106]19:12 [1107]19:17 [1108]19:21 [1109]19:21 [1110]19:21 [1111]19:21 [1112]19:21 [1113]19:21 [1114]19:21 [1115]19:21 [1116]19:21 [1117]19:27 [1118]19:28 [1119]19:28 [1120]19:28 [1121]19:29 [1122]19:29 [1123]19:29 [1124]20:1-6 [1125]20:16 [1126]20:28 [1127]20:31 [1128]20:32 [1129]21:13 [1130]21:22 [1131]21:22 [1132]22:13 [1133]22:14 [1134]22:31-32 [1135]23:3-4 [1136]23:37 [1137]24:13 [1138]24:15 [1139]24:18 [1140]24:24 [1141]24:35 [1142]24:45 [1143]24:46 [1144]25:21 [1145]25:27 [1146]25:31 [1147]25:34 [1148]25:34-35 [1149]25:35-36 [1150]25:40 [1151]25:41 [1152]26 [1153]26:24 [1154]26:24 [1155]26:39 [1156]26:39 [1157]26:39 [1158]26:39 [1159]26:39 [1160]26:39 [1161]26:41 [1162]26:53 [1163]27:42 [1164]27:42 [1165]28:1
Mark
[1166]6:5-6 [1167]6:5-6 [1168]9:23 [1169]10:29-30 [1170]11:24 [1171]16:17
Luke
[1172]1:14 [1173]1:35 [1174]1:35 [1175]1:35 [1176]2:11 [1177]2:11 [1178]2:11 [1179]2:11 [1180]2:36 [1181]3:6 [1182]4:3 [1183]4:6 [1184]4:9 [1185]4:9-10 [1186]4:23 [1187]4:23 [1188]4:27 [1189]6:24 [1190]6:25 [1191]6:48 [1192]7:14 [1193]7:47 [1194]8:46 [1195]9:23 [1196]9:49-50 [1197]9:62 [1198]9:62 [1199]9:62 [1200]9:62 [1201]10:19 [1202]10:19 [1203]10:19 [1204]10:20 [1205]10:20 [1206]10:20 [1207]10:40-42 [1208]10:41-42 [1209]11:3 [1210]11:8 [1211]11:9-10 [1212]11:15 [1213]11:19 [1214]11:20 [1215]12:20 [1216]12:32 [1217]12:35 [1218]12:35 [1219]12:47 [1220]12:49 [1221]12:57 [1222]14:12 [1223]14:19 [1224]14:26 [1225]14:26 [1226]14:26 [1227]14:28 [1228]14:31-32 [1229]15:17-19 [1230]16:9 [1231]16:12 [1232]16:19 [1233]16:20 [1234]16:25 [1235]17:5 [1236]17:10 [1237]17:20-21 [1238]17:21 [1239]17:31 [1240]18:19 [1241]18:42 [1242]19:10 [1243]19:17 [1244]19:19 [1245]21:34 [1246]22:31-32 [1247]22:36 [1248]22:48 [1249]23:29 [1250]23:34 [1251]23:34 [1252]23:40 [1253]23:43 [1254]24:39
John
[1255]1:3 [1256]1:3 [1257]1:11 [1258]1:11 [1259]1:14 [1260]1:14 [1261]1:14 [1262]1:15 [1263]1:17 [1264]1:29 [1265]1:29 [1266]1:32 [1267]1:32 [1268]2:19 [1269]3:6 [1270]3:13 [1271]3:13 [1272]3:13 [1273]3:13 [1274]3:13 [1275]3:13 [1276]3:13 [1277]3:17 [1278]3:27 [1279]4:2-3 [1280]4:34 [1281]4:48-50 [1282]4:50 [1283]5:6 [1284]5:6-8 [1285]5:14 [1286]5:22-23 [1287]5:30 [1288]5:30 [1289]5:44 [1290]5:44 [1291]6:27 [1292]6:33 [1293]6:33 [1294]6:38 [1295]6:38 [1296]6:38 [1297]6:44 [1298]6:44 [1299]6:62 [1300]6:63 [1301]6:63 [1302]7:18 [1303]7:37 [1304]8:34 [1305]8:34 [1306]8:34 [1307]8:35 [1308]8:40 [1309]8:42 [1310]8:44 [1311]8:44 [1312]8:44 [1313]8:44 [1314]8:44 [1315]8:55 [1316]8:58 [1317]8:58 [1318]9:3 [1319]10:18 [1320]10:18 [1321]10:18 [1322]11:4 [1323]11:26 [1324]11:27 [1325]11:27 [1326]11:27 [1327]11:40 [1328]11:41-42 [1329]12:26 [1330]12:26 [1331]12:32 [1332]13:1 [1333]13:2 [1334]13:2 [1335]13:8 [1336]13:23 [1337]13:23 [1338]13:27 [1339]13:34 [1340]13:34 [1341]13:34-35 [1342]13:35 [1343]14:2 [1344]14:6 [1345]14:10 [1346]14:10 [1347]14:23 [1348]14:23 [1349]14:23 [1350]14:30 [1351]14:30 [1352]14:30 [1353]15:4 [1354]15:5 [1355]15:5 [1356]15:13 [1357]15:14-15 [1358]15:15 [1359]15:19 [1360]16:15 [1361]16:15 [1362]16:20 [1363]17:3 [1364]17:4 [1365]17:16 [1366]17:19 [1367]17:21 [1368]17:22-24 [1369]17:24 [1370]17:26 [1371]19:11 [1372]20:17 [1373]20:28 [1374]20:28
Acts
[1375]1:1 [1376]1:1 [1377]1:2 [1378]1:2 [1379]2:14-18 [1380]2:45 [1381]3:1 [1382]3:6 [1383]3:6 [1384]3:12 [1385]3:15 [1386]3:19 [1387]4:13 [1388]4:32 [1389]4:32 [1390]4:32 [1391]4:32-34 [1392]4:34-35 [1393]5 [1394]5:3 [1395]6:5 [1396]7:39-40 [1397]7:51 [1398]8:22-23 [1399]9:6 [1400]9:34 [1401]10:11 [1402]11:28 [1403]11:29 [1404]12:8 [1405]12:15 [1406]13:21 [1407]14:22 [1408]15:10-11 [1409]15:10-11 [1410]15:20 [1411]15:29 [1412]16:18 [1413]17:23 [1414]17:29 [1415]18:1-3 [1416]20:28 [1417]20:28 [1418]20:29-30 [1419]20:33-35 [1420]20:34 [1421]20:34 [1422]20:34 [1423]20:35 [1424]20:35 [1425]21:11 [1426]21:20-24 [1427]26:12-15 [1428]28:4
Romans
[1429]1:9-12 [1430]1:20 [1431]1:23 [1432]1:26 [1433]1:26 [1434]1:26 [1435]1:28 [1436]1:28 [1437]1:28 [1438]1:28 [1439]2:5 [1440]2:6 [1441]2:14-16 [1442]2:15-16 [1443]2:15-16 [1444]2:15-16 [1445]2:28-29 [1446]3:23 [1447]4:5 [1448]4:15 [1449]5:5 [1450]5:5 [1451]5:12 [1452]6:12 [1453]6:14 [1454]6:15 [1455]6:22 [1456]7:12 [1457]7:13 [1458]7:14 [1459]7:18 [1460]7:18 [1461]7:18 [1462]7:19 [1463]7:19 [1464]7:22-23 [1465]7:24 [1466]7:24-25 [1467]7:24-25 [1468]8:1-2 [1469]8:2 [1470]8:3 [1471]8:9 [1472]8:9 [1473]8:15 [1474]8:18 [1475]8:26 [1476]8:26 [1477]8:26-27 [1478]8:28 [1479]8:28 [1480]8:28 [1481]8:32 [1482]8:33-34 [1483]8:38-39 [1484]9:3 [1485]9:3 [1486]9:3-4 [1487]9:3-5 [1488]9:16 [1489]9:16 [1490]9:16 [1491]9:20 [1492]9:28 [1493]10:2 [1494]10:2 [1495]10:21 [1496]11:13 [1497]11:14 [1498]11:33 [1499]11:33-34 [1500]12:1 [1501]12:1 [1502]12:4-8 [1503]12:10 [1504]12:14 [1505]12:15 [1506]12:19 [1507]12:21 [1508]13:14 [1509]13:14 [1510]13:14 [1511]13:14 [1512]14:3 [1513]14:4 [1514]14:10 [1515]14:10-11 [1516]14:14 [1517]14:17 [1518]14:17 [1519]15:1 [1520]15:25-27 [1521]16:17-18
1 Corinthians
[1522]1:5 [1523]1:6-9 [1524]1:10 [1525]1:22-24 [1526]1:23-24 [1527]1:30 [1528]1:30 [1529]2:3 [1530]2:6 [1531]2:8 [1532]2:8 [1533]2:8 [1534]2:9 [1535]2:14-15 [1536]3:2 [1537]3:2-3 [1538]3:7 [1539]3:8 [1540]3:16 [1541]3:16 [1542]3:18 [1543]3:22 [1544]3:22 [1545]4:5 [1546]4:7 [1547]4:7 [1548]4:20 [1549]5:5 [1550]5:5 [1551]5:11 [1552]6:9-10 [1553]6:11 [1554]6:16 [1555]6:17 [1556]6:17 [1557]7:5 [1558]7:8-9 [1559]7:25 [1560]7:29 [1561]7:34 [1562]8:6 [1563]8:6 [1564]8:6 [1565]8:6 [1566]8:38 [1567]9:11 [1568]9:14 [1569]9:20-22 [1570]9:24 [1571]9:24 [1572]9:25 [1573]9:26 [1574]9:26-27 [1575]9:26-27 [1576]10:1-4 [1577]10:4-6 [1578]10:6 [1579]10:9 [1580]10:9-10 [1581]10:12-13 [1582]10:13 [1583]10:13 [1584]10:13 [1585]10:13 [1586]10:13 [1587]10:13 [1588]10:24 [1589]10:32-33 [1590]10:33 [1591]11:7 [1592]11:13 [1593]12:8-10 [1594]12:8-11 [1595]12:9 [1596]12:11 [1597]12:26 [1598]12:26 [1599]12:27-28 [1600]12:28 [1601]12:31 [1602]12:31 [1603]13:1-8 [1604]13:3 [1605]13:3 [1606]13:4-7 [1607]13:4-7 [1608]13:5 [1609]13:5 [1610]13:7 [1611]13:7 [1612]13:8 [1613]13:8 [1614]13:13 [1615]14:6 [1616]14:15 [1617]14:33 [1618]14:33 [1619]15:3-5 [1620]15:10 [1621]15:10 [1622]15:19 [1623]15:24 [1624]15:28 [1625]15:28 [1626]15:28 [1627]15:28 [1628]15:33 [1629]15:40 [1630]15:41-42 [1631]15:44 [1632]15:44 [1633]15:50 [1634]15:50 [1635]15:53 [1636]16:1-4 [1637]16:5 [1638]16:7 [1639]16:23
2 Corinthians
[1640]1:15-17 [1641]1:23 [1642]2:1 [1643]2:7 [1644]2:27 [1645]3:5-6 [1646]3:10 [1647]3:17 [1648]4:17 [1649]4:18 [1650]4:18 [1651]5:1 [1652]5:6 [1653]5:10 [1654]5:16 [1655]5:16 [1656]5:16 [1657]5:19 [1658]5:19 [1659]6:1 [1660]6:5-6 [1661]6:7 [1662]6:7-8 [1663]6:7-10 [1664]6:14 [1665]6:14-15 [1666]6:16 [1667]6:17 [1668]7:10 [1669]7:10 [1670]7:10 [1671]8:9 [1672]8:9 [1673]9:10 [1674]10:1 [1675]10:2 [1676]10:4-5 [1677]10:8 [1678]11:2 [1679]11:3 [1680]11:4 [1681]11:9 [1682]11:12 [1683]11:14 [1684]11:25 [1685]11:27 [1686]11:29 [1687]11:29 [1688]12:2 [1689]12:2-4 [1690]12:8-9 [1691]12:8-9 [1692]12:9 [1693]12:9-10 [1694]12:9-10 [1695]12:10 [1696]12:13 [1697]12:16 [1698]13:3 [1699]13:3 [1700]13:3 [1701]13:5 [1702]13:9
Galatians
[1703]1:1 [1704]1:1 [1705]1:1 [1706]1:4 [1707]1:6 [1708]1:8 [1709]1:8 [1710]1:9 [1711]2:2 [1712]2:9 [1713]2:9-10 [1714]2:18 [1715]2:18 [1716]2:19 [1717]2:20 [1718]2:20 [1719]2:20 [1720]3:19 [1721]3:24 [1722]4:4 [1723]4:4 [1724]4:4-5 [1725]4:10 [1726]4:22-27 [1727]4:26 [1728]4:26 [1729]5:2 [1730]5:2 [1731]5:13 [1732]5:16 [1733]5:17 [1734]5:17 [1735]5:17 [1736]5:17 [1737]5:19 [1738]5:22-23 [1739]5:24 [1740]5:25 [1741]5:26 [1742]6:1 [1743]6:2 [1744]6:2 [1745]6:10 [1746]6:14 [1747]6:14 [1748]6:14
Ephesians
[1749]2:3 [1750]2:3 [1751]2:8-9 [1752]3:16-17 [1753]3:16-17 [1754]4:1 [1755]4:10 [1756]4:10 [1757]4:12 [1758]4:13 [1759]4:13 [1760]4:13 [1761]4:13 [1762]4:19 [1763]4:19 [1764]4:23 [1765]4:26 [1766]4:26 [1767]4:26 [1768]4:26 [1769]4:28 [1770]4:29 [1771]4:31 [1772]4:31 [1773]4:31 [1774]5:3-4 [1775]5:3-5 [1776]5:25-30 [1777]5:27 [1778]6:2-3 [1779]6:12 [1780]6:12 [1781]6:12 [1782]6:12 [1783]6:12 [1784]6:12 [1785]6:12 [1786]6:12 [1787]6:16 [1788]6:16-17 [1789]6:17 [1790]6:17
Philippians
[1791]1:22-24 [1792]1:23 [1793]1:29 [1794]2:1-3 [1795]2:6 [1796]2:6-8 [1797]2:6-8 [1798]2:7 [1799]2:7-8 [1800]2:7-8 [1801]2:8 [1802]2:8 [1803]2:10-11 [1804]2:12-13 [1805]2:12-13 [1806]2:13 [1807]2:13 [1808]2:13 [1809]3:13 [1810]3:13 [1811]3:13-14 [1812]3:13-14 [1813]3:14 [1814]3:19 [1815]3:19 [1816]3:20 [1817]3:20-21 [1818]4:6 [1819]4:7 [1820]4:8 [1821]4:11 [1822]4:11-13 [1823]4:15-16
Colossians
[1824]1:12-20 [1825]1:16 [1826]1:16 [1827]2:3 [1828]2:9 [1829]2:9 [1830]2:14-15 [1831]2:14-15 [1832]2:21 [1833]2:21 [1834]2:23 [1835]3:3 [1836]3:5 [1837]3:5 [1838]3:5 [1839]3:5 [1840]3:5 [1841]3:8 [1842]3:9 [1843]3:10 [1844]3:12 [1845]1262
1 Thessalonians
[1846]2:18 [1847]4:9-10 [1848]4:11 [1849]4:11 [1850]4:11 [1851]4:12-15 [1852]5:4 [1853]5:8 [1854]5:8 [1855]5:8 [1856]5:15 [1857]5:17 [1858]5:17 [1859]5:17 [1860]5:17 [1861]5:17 [1862]5:17
2 Thessalonians
[1863]2:15-16 [1864]3:6 [1865]3:6 [1866]3:6 [1867]3:7 [1868]3:8 [1869]3:8 [1870]3:8 [1871]3:9 [1872]3:10 [1873]3:10 [1874]3:11
1 Timothy
[1875]1:7 [1876]1:9 [1877]1:9-10 [1878]1:15 [1879]1:19 [1880]1:20 [1881]2:1 [1882]2:1-2 [1883]2:4 [1884]2:4 [1885]2:4 [1886]2:4 [1887]2:8 [1888]2:8 [1889]2:8 [1890]2:9-10 [1891]3:16 [1892]3:16 [1893]3:16 [1894]4:1-2 [1895]4:3-4 [1896]4:8 [1897]4:8 [1898]4:8 [1899]4:14 [1900]5:6 [1901]5:12 [1902]5:13 [1903]6:4 [1904]6:7 [1905]6:8 [1906]6:8 [1907]6:8 [1908]6:8-10 [1909]6:10 [1910]6:10 [1911]6:10 [1912]6:10 [1913]6:16 [1914]6:17-19 [1915]6:17-19 [1916]6:20 [1917]6:20 [1918]6:20 [1919]6:20 [1920]6:20 [1921]6:20
2 Timothy
[1922]1:6 [1923]1:7 [1924]2:4 [1925]2:5 [1926]2:16-17 [1927]2:24 [1928]3:6 [1929]3:8 [1930]3:9 [1931]3:12 [1932]4:3-4 [1933]4:7 [1934]4:7 [1935]4:8
Titus
[1936]1:10 [1937]2:11 [1938]2:11-13
Philemon
[1939]1:9
Hebrews
[1940]4:12 [1941]4:12 [1942]4:12-13 [1943]4:15 [1944]5:14 [1945]7 [1946]7:3 [1947]7:18-19 [1948]7:19 [1949]9:4-5 [1950]9:22 [1951]10:36 [1952]11:5 [1953]11:16 [1954]11:24-26 [1955]11:37-38 [1956]11:37-38 [1957]11:37-38 [1958]11:39-40 [1959]12:5-8 [1960]12:6 [1961]12:6-11 [1962]12:9 [1963]12:9 [1964]12:15 [1965]12:22-23 [1966]13:4 [1967]13:8 [1968]13:8 [1969]13:20-21
James
[1970]1:8 [1971]1:12 [1972]1:12 [1973]1:14-15 [1974]1:17 [1975]1:17 [1976]1:17 [1977]1:19 [1978]1:20 [1979]2:10 [1980]2:13 [1981]2:14 [1982]3:2 [1983]4:6 [1984]4:7 [1985]4:8 [1986]4:11 [1987]5:14 [1988]5:20
1 Peter
[1989]1:22 [1990]2:16 [1991]2:22 [1992]3:1 [1993]3:9 [1994]4:8 [1995]4:8
2 Peter
[1996]2:8 [1997]2:19
1 John
[1998]1:1-2 [1999]1:8 [2000]1:8 [2001]1:8 [2002]1:10 [2003]1:10 [2004]2:15-17 [2005]2:23 [2006]2:23 [2007]3:9 [2008]3:15 [2009]3:16 [2010]3:21 [2011]4:1 [2012]4:4 [2013]4:12 [2014]4:14 [2015]4:16 [2016]4:16 [2017]4:17 [2018]4:18 [2019]4:18 [2020]4:18 [2021]4:18 [2022]4:18-19 [2023]5:16 [2024]5:16 [2025]5:16 [2026]5:18
2 John
[2027]1:10
Jude
[2028]1:5 [2029]1:6
Revelation
[2030]2:15 [2031]3:15-16 [2032]3:15-16 [2033]3:16-18 [2034]3:17 [2035]3:19 [2036]3:20 [2037]4:4 [2038]5:1-5 [2039]6:9-10 [2040]7:14 [2041]12:4 [2042]13:3 [2043]14:4 [2044]14:4 [2045]14:4
Wisdom of Solomon
[2046]1:4-5 [2047]1:4-5 [2048]1:11 [2049]1:11 [2050]1:13 [2051]2:24-25 [2052]4:8-9 [2053]7:1 [2054]7:17-21 [2055]9:15 [2056]10:1 [2057]11:17
Baruch
[2058]3:1 [2059]3:11 [2060]3:11 [2061]3:36-38 [2062]3:37 [2063]3:37-38 [2064]100
2 Maccabees
[2065]6:2
Sirach
[2066]2:1 [2067]2:5 [2068]3:33 [2069]8:14 [2070]11:30 [2071]15:9 [2072]22:14 [2073]23:29 [2074]25:5 [2075]27:11 [2076]29:6 [2077]29:15 [2078]32:20 [2079]33:29 [2080]34:11 [2081]39:16 [2082]50:24 __________________________________________________________________
Index of Greek Words and Phrases
* agape: [2083]1 * aeikinetos kai polukinetos: [2084]1 * akedia: [2085]1 * akediazo: [2086]1 * akrotetes isotetes: [2087]1 * aktemosune: [2088]1 * aktemosunen,: [2089]1 * amphoterodexion: [2090]1 [2091]2 [2092]3 * analaboi: [2093]1 * anomoion: [2094]1 * anabolai: [2095]1 * anachoreo: [2096]1 * anthropopathos: [2097]1 * antidosis: [2098]1 * antipsallousin allelois: [2099]1 * angeloi tou theou: [2100]1 * angelos, thaumastos sumboulos; Theos: [2101]1 * ean euxe euchen to kurio,: [2102]1 * ego ethnon apostolos: [2103]1 * enustaxen he psuche mou apo akedias: [2104]1 * epi thumetikon: [2105]1 * epiousion: [2106]1 * epiousios: [2107]1 * epistemes: [2108]1 * eph' hoson: [2109]1 * heotastikai epistolai: [2110]1 * heos sphodra: [2111]1 * ias eukas mou to kurio apodoso: [2112]1 * ischuros exousiastes archon eirenes pater tou mellontos haionos: [2113]1 * orge: [2114]1 * ho kuriakos anthropos: [2115]1 * ho megas: [2116]1 * ho me homologei ton 'Iesoun: [2117]1 * ho tes exomologeseos psalmos: [2118]1 * obruzon: [2119]1 * ommata paid erastou: [2120]1 * ho: [2121]1 * hos: [2122]1 * hoti paidion hegennethe hemin, huios kai edothe hemin, hou he arche egenethe epi tou omou autou, kai kaleitai to onoma autou Megales Boules angelos azo gar k.t.l: [2123]1 * upechousi: [2124]1 * hulike ktesis: [2125]1 * 'Akedia: [2126]1 * 'Analaboi: [2127]1 * 'Aner thumodes egeirei neikos, aner de orgilos exoruxen hamartian: [2128]1 * 'Anaboleus: [2129]1 * Apsato bromaton para kairon; epi pleiston tes hemeras apositos esto: [2130]1 * Romaios: [2131]1 * Dhoxa patri kai huhio kai hagio pneumati kai nun kai aei kai eis tous aionas ton aionon, amen: [2132]1 * Deomai, kurie, procheirisai dunamenon allon hon aposteleis: [2133]1 * Theos: [2134]1 * Theodochoi: [2135]1 [2136]2 * Theodochos: [2137]1 * Theodochos): [2138]1 * Luei: [2139]1 * Paxamos: [2140]1 * Sarakenoi: [2141]1 * Skopos toinun houtos kai charakter tes graphes, hos pollakis eipomen, diplen einai ten peri tou soteros apangelian en aute, hoti te aei Theos en kai estin ho ueos, logos on kai apaugasma kai sophia tou patros, kai hoti husteron di' hemas sarka labon ek parthenou tes theotokou Marias anthropos gegonen: [2142]1 * Sunkletikos: [2143]1 * Ti ginetai kai ti to mega; peri hemas musterion ; kainotomountai phuseis kai Theos anthropos ginetai...kai ho huios tou Theou dechetai kai huios anthropou genesthai te kai klethenai, ouch ho en metabalon, atreptonu gar, all o ouk en proslabon, philanthropos gar, hina chorethhe ho achoretos: [2144]1 * To schema ho phoroumen kolobion esti, me hechon cheiridia, kai zone dermatine kai analabos kai koukoulion: [2145]1 * Christotokos: [2146]1 * autos sou teresei kephalen kai su tereseis autou pternan: [2147]1 * ginesthe trapexitai dokimoi: [2148]1 * dunamis: [2149]1 * diathesis: [2150]1 * eis diakonian: [2151]1 * eidola: [2152]1 * euke: [2153]1 * theou: [2154]1 * theoretike: [2155]1 * thumos: [2156]1 * thumikon: [2157]1 * kurios sophoi tuphlous: [2158]1 * kai geodes skenos brithei noun poluphrontida: [2159]1 * kai daimoniou mesembrinou: [2160]1 * kai eis hamartion aphesin kai eis nekron anastasin kai eis zoen aionion: [2161]1 * kathismata: [2162]1 * kata skopon dioko: [2163]1 * kellia: [2164]1 * kenodoxia: [2165]1 [2166]2 * kolobion: [2167]1 * logikon: [2168]1 * logikoteron: [2169]1 * menis: [2170]1 * maine: [2171]1 * mainidion: [2172]1 * mainomena: [2173]1 * maphorion: [2174]1 * maphorion: [2175]1 * merike: [2176]1 [2177]2 * melotes: [2178]1 * musterion: [2179]1 * nous: [2180]1 [2181]2 * xerophagia: [2182]1 * oi apo tou Seth dikaioi: [2183]1 * oikemata: [2184]1 * oikonomias: [2185]1 * hoi ainoi: [2186]1 * hoi ta malaka phorountes: [2187]1 * ou poiethenta, Theon alethinon ek Theou alithinou, homoousion to Patri: [2188]1 * pankarpos: [2189]1 * pera: [2190]1 * pausaothe, etairoi ; eimi gar, epeko de: [2191]1 * paxamadion: [2192]1 * pisteuomen: [2193]1 * pisteuo kai baptizomai: [2194]1 * plous: [2195]1 * pneumatikos: [2196]1 * polloi goun hagioi gegonasi kai katharoi pases hamartias; Ieremias de kai ek koilias hegiasthe kai 'Ioannes eti kuophoroumenos eskirtesen en agalliasei epi te phone tes Theotokou Marias: [2197]1 * praktike: [2198]1 * praktike: [2199]1 * proelthon de Theos meta tes proslepseos hen ek duo ton enantion, sarkos kai pneumatos; hon to men etheose to de etheothe, o tes kaines mixeos, o tes paradoxou kraseos, ho on ginetai kai ho aktistos ktizetai kai ho achoretos choreitai dia meses psuches noeras mesiteuouses theoteti kai sarkos pachuteti, kai ho ploutizon ptocheuei: [2200]1 * protoplastos: [2201]1 * pterniei: [2202]1 * sumbolon: [2203]1 * sumbolon,: [2204]1 * sumbolos: [2205]1 * sunaxis: [2206]1 * seira: [2207]1 * skepasmata: [2208]1 * skopos: [2209]1 * skopein: [2210]1 * staseis: [2211]1 * sumbole,: [2212]1 * sunaptein: [2213]1 * tas antitheseis tes pseudonumou gnoseos: [2214]1 * to orthron: [2215]1 * to dorean poloumenon thanato me agoraze: [2216]1 * tripous: [2217]1 * huioi tou theou: [2218]1 * philarguria: [2219]1 * charisma: [2220]1 * chora: [2221]1 * charismata: [2222]1 * charismata iamaton: [2223]1 * pseudonumon: [2224]1 * psilos anthropos: [2225]1 * psusiognomoin: [2226]1 * psuchikos: [2227]1 __________________________________________________________________
Index of Hebrew Words and Phrases
* ': [2228]1 [2229]2 * 'l: [2230]1 * 'ys: [2231]1 * r'h: [2232]1 __________________________________________________________________
Index of French Words and Phrases
* Fréjus: [2233]1 * Histoire des Empereurs: [2234]1 * Il dit qu'il l'a voulu écrire d'un style facile et commun, sans le vouloir orner et polir; et je voudrois que les ouvrages qu'on a pris le plus de peine à polir dans ce siècle (le 4me) et dans le suivant, ressemblassent à celui-ci: [2235]1 * Lérins: [2236]1 [2237]2 [2238]3 * L'opinion qui le condamne et l'abandonne aux Semipelagiens passe aujourd'hui pour la plus commune parmi les savans.: [2239]1 * Les Isles d'Hieres: [2240]1 * St. Marguérite: [2241]1 * Trêves: [2242]1 [2243]2 __________________________________________________________________
Index of Pages of the Print Edition
[2244]i [2245]iii [2246]iv [2247]v [2248]1 [2249]2 [2250]3 [2251]4 [2252]5 [2253]6 [2254]7 [2255]8 [2256]9 [2257]10 [2258]11 [2259]12 [2260]13 [2261]14 [2262]15 [2263]16 [2264]17 [2265]18 [2266]19 [2267]20 [2268]21 [2269]22 [2270]23 [2271]24 [2272]25 [2273]26 [2274]27 [2275]28 [2276]29 [2277]30 [2278]31 [2279]32 [2280]33 [2281]34 [2282]35 [2283]36 [2284]37 [2285]38 [2286]39 [2287]40 [2288]41 [2289]42 [2290]43 [2291]44 [2292]45 [2293]46 [2294]47 [2295]48 [2296]49 [2297]50 [2298]51 [2299]52 [2300]53 [2301]54 [2302]55 [2303]56 [2304]57 [2305]58 [2306]59 [2307]60 [2308]61 [2309]62 [2310]63 [2311]64 [2312]65 [2313]66 [2314]67 [2315]68 [2316]69 [2317]70 [2318]71 [2319]72 [2320]73 [2321]74 [2322]75 [2323]76 [2324]77 [2325]78 [2326]79 [2327]80 [2328]81 [2329]82 [2330]83 [2331]84 [2332]85 [2333]86 [2334]87 [2335]88 [2336]89 [2337]90 [2338]91 [2339]92 [2340]93 [2341]94 [2342]95 [2343]96 [2344]97 [2345]98 [2346]99 [2347]100 [2348]101 [2349]102 [2350]103 [2351]104 [2352]105 [2353]106 [2354]107 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This document is from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library at Calvin College, http://www.ccel.org, generated on demand from ThML source.
References
1. file:///ccel/s/schaff/npnf211/cache/npnf211.html3?scrBook=Gen&scrCh=1&scrV=26#iv.iv.xi.iii-p3.1 2. file:///ccel/s/schaff/npnf211/cache/npnf211.html3?scrBook=Gen&scrCh=1&scrV=26#iv.iv.xi.v-p5.1 3. file:///ccel/s/schaff/npnf211/cache/npnf211.html3?scrBook=Gen&scrCh=1&scrV=28#iv.v.viii.xix-p3.1 4. file:///ccel/s/schaff/npnf211/cache/npnf211.html3?scrBook=Gen&scrCh=1&scrV=31#iv.iv.ix.vi-p3.1 5. file:///ccel/s/schaff/npnf211/cache/npnf211.html3?scrBook=Gen&scrCh=1&scrV=31#iv.vi.vii.iii-p4.1 6. file:///ccel/s/schaff/npnf211/cache/npnf211.html3?scrBook=Gen&scrCh=2&scrV=18#iv.vi.v.ix-p6.1 7. file:///ccel/s/schaff/npnf211/cache/npnf211.html3?scrBook=Gen&scrCh=3&scrV=1#iv.iv.ix.x-p3.1 8. file:///ccel/s/schaff/npnf211/cache/npnf211.html3?scrBook=Gen&scrCh=3&scrV=5#iv.iv.vi.vi-p3.1 9. file:///ccel/s/schaff/npnf211/cache/npnf211.html3?scrBook=Gen&scrCh=3&scrV=5#iv.iv.vi.vi-p7.1 10. file:///ccel/s/schaff/npnf211/cache/npnf211.html3?scrBook=Gen&scrCh=3&scrV=5#iv.iv.ix.xxv-p11.1 11. file:///ccel/s/schaff/npnf211/cache/npnf211.html3?scrBook=Gen&scrCh=3&scrV=15#iv.iii.iv.xxxvii-p2.1 12. file:///ccel/s/schaff/npnf211/cache/npnf211.html3?scrBook=Gen&scrCh=3&scrV=15#iv.iii.vii.xxi-p3.1 13. file:///ccel/s/schaff/npnf211/cache/npnf211.html3?scrBook=Gen&scrCh=3&scrV=17#iv.vi.vii.xi-p4.1 14. file:///ccel/s/schaff/npnf211/cache/npnf211.html3?scrBook=Gen&scrCh=3&scrV=19#iv.vi.vii.xi-p4.1 15. file:///ccel/s/schaff/npnf211/cache/npnf211.html3?scrBook=Gen&scrCh=3&scrV=22#iv.v.iv.xii-p3.1 16. file:///ccel/s/schaff/npnf211/cache/npnf211.html3?scrBook=Gen&scrCh=4&scrV=4#iv.iv.ix.xxiii-p5.1 17. file:///ccel/s/schaff/npnf211/cache/npnf211.html3?scrBook=Gen&scrCh=4&scrV=7#iv.vi.v.xxii-p5.1 18. file:///ccel/s/schaff/npnf211/cache/npnf211.html3?scrBook=Gen&scrCh=4&scrV=17#ii.vi.i.ii-p4.1 19. file:///ccel/s/schaff/npnf211/cache/npnf211.html3?scrBook=Gen&scrCh=4&scrV=17#iv.iv.ix.xxi-p5.1 20. file:///ccel/s/schaff/npnf211/cache/npnf211.html3?scrBook=Gen&scrCh=5&scrV=4#iv.iv.ix.xxi-p4.1 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# Leo and Gregory
__________________________________________________________________
Title: NPNF-212. Leo the Great, Gregory the Great Creator(s): Schaff, Philip (1819-1893) (Editor) Rights: Public Domain CCEL Subjects: All; Early Church; Proofed LC Call no: BR60 LC Subjects:
Christianity
Early Christian Literature. Fathers of the Church, etc. __________________________________________________________________
A SELECT LIBRARY
OF THE
NICENE AND
POST-NICENE FATHERS
OF
THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.
SECOND SERIES
VOLUME XII
Leo the Great, Gregory the Great
T&T CLARK
EDINBURGH
__________________________________________________
WM. B. EERDMANS PUBLISHING COMPANY
GRAND RAPIDS, MICHIGAN __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
The Letters And Sermons Of Leo The Great Bishop Of Rome,
THE
LETTERS AND SERMONS
OF
LEO THE GREAT
BISHOP OF ROME,
Translated, with Introduction, Notes, and Indices,
by the
Rev. Charles Lett Feltoe, M.A., Late Fellow Of Clare College, Cambridge.
REV. CHARLES LETT FELTOE, M.A.,
LATE FELLOW OF CLARE COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. __________________________________________________________________
Prefatory Note.
------------------------
Except for such valuable help--chiefly however in the way of comment and explanation--as Canon Bright's volume (S. Leo on the Incarnation) has supplied, both the selection and the translation of the Letters and Sermons of Leo Magnus are practically original. It is even more difficult to feel satisfied oneself, than to satisfy others either with a selection from a great man's works or with a translation of them. The powers of Leo as a preacher both of doctrine and of practice are very remarkable, and in my anxiety to keep within the limits imposed by the publishers, I have erred in presenting too few rather than too many of the Sermons to the English reader. Only those that are generally held genuine are represented, though several of the doubtful ones are fine sermons, and those translated are in most cases no better than those omitted. Even when the same thought is repeated again and again (as is often the case), it is almost always clothed in such different language, and surrounded with so many other thoughts of value, that every sermon has an almost equal claim to be selected.
With regard to the Letters, the series connected with the Eutychian controversy--the chief occupation of Leo's episcopate--is given nearly complete, whereas only specimens of his mode of dealing with other matters have been selected for presentation. With one or two exceptions, however, I feel more confident about the Letters than about the Sermons that the omitted are less important than the included. I wish I could make even a similar boast about the merits of the translation.
The text rendered is for the most part that of the Ballerinii as given by Migne (Patrologie, Vol. LIV.), though a more critical edition is much to be desired.
Charles Lett Feltoe.
Fornham All Saints',
Eastertide, 1894. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Introduction.
------------------------
Life.
The details of Leo's early life are extremely scanty and uncertain. It is probable that he was born between 390 and 400 a.d. There is a tradition that his father was a Tuscan named Quintian, and that Volaterræ [1] , a town in the north of Etruria, was his birthplace. Of his youth we know nothing: his writings contain no allusions to that or to any other part of his personal history. One may reasonably infer from the essentially Roman character of his literary style, from the absence of quotations out of pagan literature, and from his self-confessed ignorance of Greek, that his education was, though thorough after its kind, limited to Christian and Latin culture. A reference to the pages of any secular history of the Roman empire will give the reader an idea of the scenes amidst which, and no doubt by the aid of which, Leo the boy was formed and moulded into Leo Magnus, the first great Latin-speaking pope and bishop of Rome, the first great Italian theologian, "the final defender of the truth of our Lord's Person against both its assailants [2] " (i.e. Nestorius and Eutyches), whom it pleased God in His providence to raise up in the Western (and not as oftenest hitherto in the Eastern) portion of His Church. Politically, intellectually, and theologically the period in which this great character grew up, lived and worked, was one of transition: the Roman Empire, learning and thought, paganism were each alike at the last gasp, and neither in Church nor State was there any other at all of Leo's calibre. This consideration will account for the wonderful influence, partly for good and partly for bad, which his master-mind and will was permitted to exercise on the after-ages of Christendom.
During his early manhood the Pelagian controversy was raging, and it is thought that the acolyte named Leo, whom Augustine mentions in his letters on this subject as employed by pope Zosimus to carry communications between Rome and the African church, is the future pope. Under Celestine, who was pope from 422 to 432, he was archdeacon of Rome, and he seems already to have made a name for himself: for Cassian, the Gallican writer whom he had urged to write a work on the Incarnation, in yielding to his suggestion, calls him "the ornament of the Roman church and of the Divine ministry," and S. Cyril (in 431, the date of the Council of Ephesus) appeals to Leo (as Leo has himself recorded in Letter CXIX., chap. 4) to procure the pope's support in stopping the ambitious designs of Juvenal, bishop of Jerusalem. Under the next pope, Sixtus (432-440), we hear of him in Prosper's Chronicon (under the year 439) again in connexion with Pelagianism [3] : he seems to have stirred up the vigilance of the pope against the crafty designs of one Julius of Eclanum, who, having been deprived of his bishopric for holding that heresy, was attempting to be restored without full proof of orthodoxy.
Next year (440) was a momentous one in the life of Leo, and in the history of the papacy. Leo was away on one of those political missions, which bear out our estimate of him as perhaps the most conspicuous and popular figure of his times [4] . The powerful general Aetius Placidia, the queen-regent's chief adviser and aide-de-camp, was quarrelling (a not unusual occurrence at this stage of the empire) with Albinus, a rival general in Gaul. Leo was sent to bring about a reconciliation, and apparently with success. In his absence Sixtus died, and it is not surprising that without any hesitation clergy and people should have elected Leo into his place. A deputation was sent after him to hasten his return, and after an interval of forty days he arrived. The whole church received him with acclamation, and on Sept. 29 he was ordained both priest and 47th bishop of Rome. His brief sermon on the occasion is the earliest in the collection, and will be found translated on p. 115 of our selection. His earliest extant letter belongs likewise to the first year of his episcopate, which we have also included in our selection: it is addressed to the bishop of Aquileia in reproof of his and his fellow-bishops' remissness in dealing with Pelagianism in that province. Thus early did he give proof of his conception of his office, as investing him with an authority which extended over the whole of Christendom as the successor of S. Peter. Still clearer proofs were soon forthcoming. Not to speak of a letter in a similarly dictatorial strain to the bishops of the home provinces of Campania, Picenum, and Etruria, which belongs to the year 443, we find him in 444 interfering, though more guardedly, with the province of Illyricum, which was then debatable ground between the East and West; in 445 dictating church regulations to S. Cyril's new successor at Alexandria, Dioscorus, his future adversary; and in 446 and 447 asserting his authority on various pretexts, now in Africa, now in Spain, now in Sicily; while in 444 also occurred his famous and not very creditable encounter with Hilary, bishop of Arles in Gaul. The incidents in this quarrel are briefly these: Hilary in a provincial synod had deposed a bishop, Celidonius, for technical irregularities in accordance with the Gallican canons. Celidonius appealed to Rome. Thereupon Hilary set out in the depth of winter on foot to Rome, but, after an ineffectual statement of his case and some rough treatment from Leo, returned to Gaul. Leo gave orders that Celidonius was to be restored, and Hilary deprived of all his metropolitical rights in the province of Vienne. How far the sentence was carried out is not clear. In a later letter he desires that the bishop of Vienne should be regarded as metropolitan, and yet he seems to recognize Hilary's successor, Ravennius, as still metropolitan in Letter XL., while in 450 the bishops of the one district addressed a formal petition for the restoration of Arles to its old rank, and the bishops of the other a counter-petition in favour of Vienne; whereupon Leo effected a temporary modus vivendi by dividing the jurisdiction between the two sees.
Returning to the year 444, besides consulting S. Cyril and Paschasinus, bishop of Lilybæum, on the right day for keeping Easter that year (a moot point which recurred in other years) we find Leo still taking active measures against heresy, this time that of the Manichæans [5] . The followers of this sect had since 439 greatly increased at Rome, owing to the number of refugees who came over from Carthage after its capture by Genseric and his Vandal hosts (see Sermon XVI. 5). They were an universally abhorred body, and deservedly so, if all we read about them be really true. In 444, therefore, it was determined, if possible, to stamp them out. By Leo's order a strict search was instituted throughout the city, and the large number of those who were discovered, were brought up for trial before a combined bench of civil and ecclesiastical judges. The most heinous crimes were revealed. Those who refused to recant were banished for life and suffered various other penalties by the emperor Valentinian's decree, while Leo used all his influence to obtain similar treatment for them in other parts of Christendom. Three years later the spread of Priscillianism, a heresy which in some points was akin to Manichæism among other heresies, and a long account of which will be found in Letter XV., was the occasion to which we have referred as giving a pretext for his interference in the affairs of the Spanish church.
We now reach the famous Eutychian controversy, on which Leo's chief claim to our thanks and praise rests: for to his action in it the Church owes the final and complete definition of the cardinal doctrine of the Incarnation. The heresy of Eutyches, as was the case with so many other heresies, sprang from the reaction against a counter heresy. Most of the controversies which have again and again imperilled the cause of Christianity, have been due to human frailty, which has been unable to keep the proportion of the Faith. Over-statement on the one side leads to over-statement on the other, and thus the golden mean is lost sight of. Eutyches, an archimandrite (or head of a monastery) at Constantinople, had distinguished himself for zeal during the years 428 to 431 in combating the heresy of Nestorius, who had denied the perfect union of the Godhead and the Manhood in the one Person, Christ Jesus. He had objected to the Virgin being called Theotokos (God-bearing), and said that Christotokos (Christ-bearing) would be more correct. This position, as involving two persons as well as two natures in our Lord, was condemned by the 3rd General Council, which met at Ephesus in 431, S. Cyril being its chief opponent. But Eutyches in his eagerness to proclaim the Unity of the Person of Christ fell into the opposite extreme, and asserted that though the two natures of Christ were originally distinct, yet after the union they became but one nature, the human being changed into the Divine. Eutyches appears to have been a highly virtuous person, but possessed of a dull, narrow mind, unfit for the subtleties of theological discussion, and therefore unable to grasp the conception of two Natures in one Person: and nothing worse than stupidity and obstinacy is brought against him by his stern but clear-headed opponent Leo.
The person, however, who first brought the poor recluse's heretical statements prominently into notice was much more reckless and intemperate in his language. This was Eusebius, bishop of Dorylæum, who took the opportunity of a local synod held in Constantinople under the presidency of the gentle Flavian, in November, 448, for other business, to petition against his former friend and ally as a blasphemer and a madman. The synod, after expostulating with the accuser for his violence, at last reluctantly consented to summon Eutyches to an account. The summons was at least twice repeated and disobeyed under the pretext first that he might not leave the monastery, then that he was ill. At last Eutyches yielded, and appeared accompanied by a crowd of monks and soldiers and by Florentius, a patrician for whom the weak Emperor (Theodosius II.) had been influenced by the eunuch Chrysaphius, Eutyches' godson, to demand a seat at the council. After a long conversation, in which Eutyches tried to evade a definite statement, he was at last forced to confess that our Lord was of two natures before the union, but that after the union there was but one nature (see Letter XXVIII. (Tome), chap. vi.). As he persisted in maintaining this position, he was condemned and thrust out of the priesthood and Church-communion. During the reading of the condemnation and the breaking up of the conclave, Eutyches is alleged to have told Florentius that he appealed to the bishops of Rome, Alexandria, and Jerusalem. Flavian, as president of the council, thought it his duty to acquaint the bishops of Rome and other Sees of the first rank with what had taken place. For some unknown reason his letter to Leo was delayed, and the appeal of Eutyches and a letter from the Emperor was the first information that he received. As might be expected from Leo's conception of his office, he was much incensed at this apparent neglect, and wrote to the Emperor explaining his ignorance of the facts, and to Flavian, complaining of being kept in ignorance, and prima facie of Eutyches' treatment. Meanwhile the delayed epistle arrived from Flavian, and the account given was enough to satisfy Leo, who thereupon (May, 449) replied briefly expressing his approval and promising a fuller treatment of the question. This promise was fulfilled next month in the shape of the world-famous "Tome," which forms Letter XXVIII. in the Leonine collection. The proper significance of this document is well expressed by Mr. Gore [6] : it is, he says, "still more remarkable for its contents than for the circumstances which produced it," though "in itself it is a sign of the times: for here we have a Latin bishop, ignorant of Greek, defining the faith for Greek-speaking bishops, in view of certain false opinions of Oriental origin." Without reviewing in detail the further correspondence that Leo carried on with the various civil and ecclesiastical authorities at Constantinople (among them being the influential and orthodox Pulcheria the Emperor's sister), we pass on to the events connected with the second council of Ephesus. Through the influence of Chrysaphius, as we have already seen, the Emperor was all along on the side of Eutyches, and it was apparently at his instigation and in spite of Leo's guarded dissuasion that the council was now convened and met in August, 449. The bishop of Rome excused himself from personal attendance on the score of pressing business at home, and sent three legates with instructions to represent his views, viz. Julius, bishop of Puteoli, Renatus, a presbyter, and Hilary, a deacon, together with Dulcitius, a notary [7] . They started about the middle of June, and the Synod opened on the 8th of August, in the church of the B.V.M. By the Emperor's order Dioscorus, patriarch of Alexandria, was president, Leo's chief representative sat next him, and Flavian was placed only 5th, the bishop of Antioch and Jerusalem being set above him: 130 bishops in all were admitted, those who had condemned Eutyches being excluded. Owing partly to the presence of the soldiery and a number of turbulent monks under the Syrian archimandrite Barsubas, the proceedings soon became riotous and disorderly. The "Tome" was not read at all, though that was the purpose of its composition. Eutyches was admitted to make his defence, which was received as completely satisfactory. The acts of the Synod of Constantinople on being read excited great indignation. Amid tremendous uproar Eutyches was formally restored to communion and his former position, and the president pronounced deposition upon Flavian and Eusebius. Flavian appealed, and Hilary [8] , after uttering a monosyllabic protest, "contradicitur," managed to make good his escape and carry the lamentable tidings to his anxiously-expectant chief at Rome. The other bishops all more or less reluctantly subscribed the restoration of Eutyches and the deposition of Flavian and Eusebius. The end of Flavian is variously recorded, but the most accurate version appears to be that amid many blows and rough usage he was cast into prison, then driven into exile, and that within a few days he died of the bodily and mental injuries he had received at Epypa, a village in Lydia. These calamitous proceedings Leo afterwards stigmatized as Latrocinium (brigandage), and the council is generally known as the Robber council of Ephesus.
At the time when the disastrous news arrived at Rome, Leo was presiding over a council which he had convened; in violent indignation he immediately dispatched letters right and left in his own and his colleagues' name. There is a letter to Flavian, of whose death of course he was not yet aware; there are others to the archimandrites and the whole church of Constantinople, to Julian, bishop of Cos, and to Anastasius, bishop of Thessalonica. He used all his influence to prevail on the Emperor to summon a fresh council, this time in Italy, writing to him himself, and getting Pulcheria on the spot, and Valentinian, his mother Placidia and his wife Eudoxia, by letters from Rome, to assist his cause. As yet, however, the very stars in their courses seemed to fight against him, and the outlook grew yet darker. In the spring of 450 Dioscorus' predominance in the East had become so great that ten bishops were found to join with him in actually excommunicating the bishop of Rome. At the Court, though Pulcheria remained true to the Faith, Chrysaphius still seems to have swayed the Emperor, and to have obtained from him the edict which was issued confirming the acts of the Ephesine council. The fact, too, that Flavian's successor, Anatolius, had in the past been associated with Dioscorus caused him not unnatural anxiety, and this feeling turned to one of actual offence on receiving a letter from Anatolius, in which he simply announces his consecration without asking his consent. Thereupon Leo demanded of the Emperor that Anatolius should make some public proof and profession of his orthodoxy on the lines of the Tome and other catholic statements, and in the month of July sent legates to support this demand.
At this moment the horizon suddenly brightened. Before the arrival of the legates, Theodosius was killed by a fall from his horse, and to the triumph of the orthodox cause, his sister, Pulcheria (the first Roman Empress), succeeded him. The whole aspect of things was soon changed. Chrysaphius was almost at once executed, and shortly afterwards Pulcheria married and shared the Eastern empire with Marcian, who was for bravery, wisdom and orthodoxy an altogether suitable partner of her throne.
Leo's petition for a new Synod was now granted, but the place of meeting was to be in the East, not in the West, as more convenient for the Emperor. In the interval S. Flavian's body was brought by reverent hands to Constantinople and buried in the church of the Apostles, and a still more hopeful sign of the times--Anatolius and many other bishops signed the Tome. Hitherto Leo had asked that both councils (that which had condemned and that which had acquitted Eutyches of heresy) should be treated as null and void, and that the matter should be discussed de novo. Now, however, he shows a significant change of front: the Faith, he maintains, is decided: nothing needs now to be done but to reject the heretics and to use proper caution in re-admitting the penitents: there is no occasion for a general council. And consequently he sends bishop Lucentius and Basil a presbyter as legates to assist Anatolius in this matter of rejection and re-admission. But, as the Emperor adhered to his determination, Leo was obliged to give way, and though still declining to attend in person, sent bishop Paschasinus of Sicily and Boniface a presbyter with written instructions to act with the former two as his representatives; Julian of Cos, who from his knowledge of Greek and Eastern affairs was a most useful addition, was also asked to be of the number. Nicæa in Bithynia had been fixed upon as the rendezvous, and there on Sept. 1, 451, 520 bishops assembled [9] . The Emperor, however, was too busy and too anxious over his military operations against Attila and the Huns to meet them there, and therefore invites them to Chalcedon, which being on the Bosporus was much nearer to Constantinople. There accordingly on Oct. 8, in the church of S. Euphemia the Martyr, the council was at last opened. The Emperor himself was still absent, but he was well represented by a goodly number of state officials. In accordance with Leo's request, Paschasinus, with his brother legates, presided: next sat Anatolius, Dioscorus, Maximus of Antioch and Juvenal of Jerusalem, with a copy of the Gospels in the midst. Leo's representatives began by trying to have Dioscorus ejected: they only succeeded in getting him deposed from his seat of honour and placed in the middle of the room together with Eusebius of Dorylæum, his accuser, and Theodoret of Cyrus, the eminent theologian, who was suspected of Nestorianizing language. The remainder of the first day was spent in reading the acts of the Ephesine council, which in the midst of much uproar were provisionally condemned.
At the second session (Oct. 10), the Tome was read by the Imperial secretary, Veronician, and enthusiastically received: "Peter has spoken by Leo," they said. But objections being raised by the bishops of Palestine and Illyria that the twofold Nature was over-stated, its final acceptance was postponed for a few days, that a committee which was nominated might reason with the dissentients.
At the third Session (Oct. 13), Dioscorus, who refused to appear, was accused by Eusebius and by general consent condemned, being deprived of his rank and office as bishop, and the Emperor having confirmed the sentence, he was banished to Gangra in Paphlagonia, and there three years later (in 454) died. His successor at Alexandria was the orthodox Proterius, who was however never recognized by a large portion of the Egyptian Church: even in the Synod of Chalcedon many of the Egyptian bishops refused to sign the "Tome" at the fourth session, on the plea that the custom of their church forbade them to act without the consent of the archbishop, who was not yet appointed, and the still surviving "Jacobite" schism originated with the deposition of Dioscorus.
The fourth session was held on the 17th, and the misgivings of the Palestinian and Illyrian bishops having been quieted in the interval, the Tome was adopted.
In the fifth session (Oct. 24), a difficulty arose over a definition of the Faith which had been composed, but did not satisfy the Roman legates with regard to Eutychianism. However a committee, which was appointed, took it in hand again, and the result of their labours was accepted as fully guarding against the errors both of Nestorius and Eutyches. The remaining sessions were occupied with less important matters, and with drawing up the canons of the Council, of which one--the 28th--was designed to settle the precedence of the patriarch of Constantinople ("New Rome" as it was called), and to give him a place second to the bishop of old Rome. Against this audacious innovation the Roman legates in vain protested; the bitter pill, enwrapped in much sugar, was conveyed to Leo in the synodal letter, and produced the most lamentable results.
The last meeting of the Council on Nov. 1 was graced by the attendance in full state of Marcian and Pulcheria. The Emperor delivered an address, and at its conclusion he and the Empress were vociferously applauded, Marcian being styled the "second Constantine."
To return to Leo, we have letters from Marcian, Anatolius, and Julian, all trying to carry off the difficulty of the 28th Canon under the triumph of the Roman views in other respects. But Leo refused to be conciliated. The canon, he maintains, is in direct violation of the decrees of Nicæa (in which statement he makes an unpardonable [10] confusion between the Nicene canons and those of Sardica, which were often appended to them). With Anatolius he was especially displeased, considering that his doubtful precedents ought to have made him extremely careful not to offend. He therefore ceased all communication with him, eagerly seizing at pretexts of complaint against him, and appointing Julian his apocrisiarius or resident representative and correspondent. All this time Marcian continued pleading and Leo inflexible, until Anatolius at last yielded, and the matter for the time is satisfactorily settled, though it must not be imagined that the disputed canon was ever annulled.
Eutychianism still lingered on and caused disturbances in various parts of the East, especially among the monks. In Palestine, Juvenal, the bishop of Jerusalem, was deposed, and the Empress Eudocia, Theodosius II.'s widow, who was living in retirement in that city, was suspected of favouring the rioters. Leo therefore wrote letters to her and to others, in which he restates the doctrine of the Incarnation, endeavouring to clear up any misconceptions which the inaccuracy of the Greek version of the Tome may possibly have caused. Eventually he was able to congratulate the Emperor on the restoration of peace and order in that quarter of their empire.
Similar riots were reported in Cappadocia, where the monks were led by one of their number named George, in Constantinople itself, where the ringleaders were Carosus and Dorotheus, and in Egypt.
But before we narrate the final victory of the orthodox cause throughout Christendom against the Eutychians, there are two events in the political world, belonging one to the year 452 and the other to 455, to which reference must be made, as showing the remarkable prestige which Leo's character had gained for him among all classes of society. When he was made pope we found him absent in Gaul mediating between rival generals. We now find him employed on still harder missions. Leo himself makes none but the slightest indirect allusion to either of these later incidents, but this silence is only characteristic of the man, in whom there is no trace of vain-boasting, and who consistently sank the personality of himself as well as of others in the principles and causes which absorbed him. There seems no reason, however, to doubt the substantial truth of what Prosper and others have related. In 452 Attila and the Huns, notwithstanding the defeat they had sustained from Aetius at Chalons, continued their devastating inroad into Italy. The whole city of Rome was paralysed with terror, and at last sent Leo with the Consular Avienus and the Prefect Tregetius to intercede with them. The meeting took place on lake Benacus, and Leo's arguments, aided, it is thought, by rumours of threatened invasion at home, persuaded Attila to retire beyond the Danube, on condition of receiving Honoria with a rich dowry as his wife. This was the last time that Attila troubled the Romans: for he died the next year.
Less than three years after this successful encounter with the barbarian, in 455 Leo's powerful services were again brought into requisition by the State. That year the licentious Valentinian was murdered at the instigation of an enraged husband, Maximus, who subsequently compelled the widow, Eudoxia, to marry him. Eudoxia, however, discovering the part Maximus had taken in Valentinian's death, invited the Vandals under Genseric to invade Italy. Maximus himself was put to death before the invaders reached Rome: but, when they did arrive, the panic-stricken citizens again threw themselves into the hands of Leo, who at the head of the clergy went forth to meet the foe outside the city. Once more his intercessions in some measure prevailed, but not sufficiently to prevent the city being pillaged fourteen days.
We now return to more purely religious matters. In 457 Marcian died (his wife having pre-deceased him four years), and was succeeded by a Thracian, named Leo [11] . Fresh outbreaks immediately took place both at Constantinople and at Alexandria: at the former place they were soon stopped, but at Alexandria they were more serious and prolonged. The disaffected monks set up one of their number, Timothy Ælurus (or the Cat) in opposition to Proterius, who was soon after foully murdered in the baptistery, to which he had fled. This flagrant outrage at once aroused the bishop of Rome to fresh energy in every direction: by his promptitude the new Emperor was stirred to action, among the other means employed being a re-statement of the Faith in a long epistle with a catena of patristic authority, sometimes called "the Second Tome." Ælurus was deposed and banished, and another Timothy, surnamed Solophaciolus, of well-approved orthodoxy, elected into his place. This satisfactory consummation was effected in 460, while a no less orthodox successor, named Gennadius, had been found two years before, when Anatolius died, for the See of Constantinople. Thus Leo's joy was full at last, as his latest letters testify. Late in the year 461 he died, after a rule of twenty-one years, during which he had won at least one great victory for the Faith, and had given the See of Rome a prestige, which may be said to have lasted even to the present day.
His body was buried in the church of S. Peter's, since which time it has been thrice moved to different positions, once towards the end of the 7th century by Pope Sergius, again in 1607, after the re-building of the church in its present form, and lastly in 1715. As "saint" and "confessor" from the earliest times, as "doctor of the church" since 1754, he is commemorated in the East on Feb. 18, in the West on April 11.
"It will not be wholly out of place," says Mr. Gore [12] , "to mention that tradition looks back to Leo as the benefactor of many of the Roman churches: he is said to have restored their silver ornaments after the ravages of the Vandals, and to have repaired the basilicas of S. Peter and S. Paul, placing a mosaic in the latter, which represented the adoration of the four and twenty elders: we are told also that he built a church of S. Cornelius, established some monks at S. Peter's, instituted guardians for the tombs of the Apostles, and erected a fountain before S. Paul's, where the people might wash before entering the church."
The only writings of Leo which are usually accepted as authentic are his numerous Sermons and Letters. Certain anti-Pelagian treatises and a long tract upon Humility in the form of a letter to Demetrias, a virgin, have been ascribed to him; but the most important work of all the doubtful ones is a "Sacramentary," which is one of the earliest extant of the Roman church, and is sometimes held to be Leo's composition or compilation. Many of the collects and prayers which it contains bear a remarkable resemblance to his teaching, and may well have come from his pen: there is indeed good reason for the opinion that the Collect proper, which is a distinct feature of the Western Church, owes its origin to Leo.
As a theologian Leo is thoroughly Western in type, being not speculative but dogmatic: no one was better suited in God's Providence to give the final completeness to the Church's Doctrine of the Incarnation than this clear-sighted, unimaginative, and persistent bishop of Rome. His theological position on the cardinal doctrines of the Faith is identical with that of the Athanasian symbol, to the language of which his own language often bears a close resemblance. With his theory of the Pope as universal Ruler of the Church in virtue of his being the successor of S. Peter, the vast majority of English-speaking people will have but little sympathy: and yet it can but be admired from an objective standpoint as a bold, grand, and almost original [13] conception. And there are no doubt many smaller points of detail in his writings connected more with discipline than with doctrine, which will now be reckoned if not as actually objectionable, at least as arising from forgotten needs or belonging to a byegone system: among these may be instanced his objection to slaves as clergy and to the celebration of the Eucharist more than once in one day except on festivals, where the church is too small to hold all the worshippers at once: his advocacy of the innovation of private instead of public confession for ordinary penitents, and on the other hand his insisting on the old rule that baptism should be administered only twice a year (at Easter and at Whitsuntide): and again the somewhat undue prominence that he gives to fasting and almsgiving as being on a level with prayer for Lenten or Ember exercises, and to the intercessions of the saints--particularly of the patron saints of Rome, SS. Peter, Paul, and Lawrence. And yet at the same time there is very much more to be thankful for as instructive than to object to as obsolete or dangerous. For on the negative side we have no trace after all of the later direct invocation of the saints, nor of the modern cultus of the B.V.M. and of relics, while among the many positive good points in his teaching must be reckoned his most proper theory of a bishop as not only the channel of divine grace in virtue of ordination (sacerdos) but also the overseer of the flock (episcopus), in virtue of the people's choice and approval, which is essential to his office; his strong condemnation of the practice of usury in laity as well as clergy; his high appreciation of corporate even more than individual action among the faithful; the thoroughly practical view he always puts before us of the Christian life; and above all the "singularly Christian" character of all his sermons, in which Christ is the Alpha and Omega of all his thoughts and of all his exhortations. These are some of the benefits which Leo has conferred upon the Church, and which have rightfully earned for him the title "Great." __________________________________________________________________
[1] The objection that Prosper and Leo himself both speak of Rome as his patria does not seem of sufficient weight to overthrow a tradition, which it is somewhat hard to account for the existence of. To a native of central Italy under the Empire, who had spent all his public life in Rome, the Eternal city was equally patria, whether it was his actual birthplace or not. At the same time there is no evidence that Volaterræ any more than Rome or any other Italian city can claim the honour with certainty.
[2] Wilberforce on Doctrine On The Holy Eucharist, p. 246, quoted by Bright.
[3] The chief error of Pelagius (=Morgan), who is commonly thought to have been of British origin, was, as is well-known, the denial of original or birth-sin: see Article ix.
[4] This is seen still more clearly when we remember how completely he held the Western, if not always the Eastern, Emperors in his power, and made them support and carry out his wishes.
[5] The essential point in the Manichæan heresy (which took its rise in the far East) was the existence of two independent and conflicting principles: good, whose kingdom was light and the spiritual world, and evil, whose kingdom was over the elements of matter.
[6] Leo the Great, p. 53 (S.P.C.K.): this writer should also be consulted (pp. 53 to 70), on the merits and importance of the Eutychian controversy generally.
[7] Of these Renatus is said to have died at Delos on the way, and Hilary is the future pope of that name. Julius of Puteoli must be carefully distinguished from Julian of Cos, who was also a confidant of Leo's.
[8] What happened to Julius and Dulcitius is not known, though Leo does not express any disapproval of their action.
[9] 110 others voted by proxy in absence through their metropolitans (Gore).
[10] Unpardonable in any case from one in his position, but especially so, if he was really connected with the church of Rome, as we have suggested, under Zosimus, in whose time the confusion, already existing then, was completely cleared up: see Gore's Life, pp. 113 and 114. The Canon itself professed only to confirm one already passed in 381.
[11] Styled "Magnus," like his great namesake, though with infinitely less good reason.
[12] Life, p. 165.
[13] Milman attributes the real initiation of the Papal theory to the imperious Innocent I., who held the See of Rome at the beginning of the fifth century (402-417). __________________________________________________________________
Manuscripts.
I. At the Vatican. (a) Of the Sermons. (1) Codd. 3835 and 6 are two volumes in Roman Character of a Lectionary of about the 8th century; the second volume contains the "Tome" (which in the 8th and 9th centuries used to be read in the Church offices before Christmas): (2) 3828, a parchment (10th century), also a lectionary: (3) 1195, a parchment folio (11th century), a lectionary containing inter alia some of Leo's homilies: (4) 1267, 8 and 9 of the same character (11th century): (5) 1270 contains the Sermon de Festo Petri cathedræ, (now xiv. in Migne's Appendix), from which Cacciari restored Quesnel's imperfect edition of it to its present state: (6) 1271 and 2 are also lectionaries: (7) 4222 in Lombardic characters (9th century), a lectionary: (8) 5451 in Roman characters (12th century), a lectionary: (9) 6450 parchment (12th century): a lectionary containing the sermon de Festo Petri cathedræ in the form found and printed by Quesnel; (10) 6451 similar: it contains sermons de Quadragesima and others: (11) 6454 similar.
(b) Of the Letters: these are mostly rather later (i.e. about 12th or 13th century): but (1) 1322 is of an older date, and contains besides the epistles, all the acts of the Council of Chalcedon: (2) 5759 is earlier than the 9th century; it used to belong to the monastery of S. Columban at Bobbio, and contains 31 letters: (3) 5845 is very ancient, and according to Cacciari, Lombardic: it contains 24 letters.
(g) Letters and Sermons together: of these there are nine collections in the Vatican, of which 548 and 9 contain the sermon de Absalom which is condemned by Cacciari. The Regio-Vaticanus codex 139 is a fine collection of Leo's works (12th century).
II. At other places: (1) The codex Urbinas 65 is thought to be a copy of the Regio-Vaticanus 139 made in the 14th century.
(2) Codex Grimanicus [14] is a ms. on which Quesnel lays great stress: Quesnel assigns it to the ninth century; it contains 107 letters, of which 28 had never been printed before Quesnel.
(3) The Thuanei; (a) 129 contains 123 letters: (b) 780 contains the Tome: (g) 729 contains the spurious de vocatione gentium and some epistles.
(4) The Corbeienses are old.
(5) The Taurinensis 29 D. iv. is a fine 13th-century ms. containing 52 letters.
(6) The Florentinus codex belongs to the 13th century also.
(7) Ratisbonensis 113 DD. AA., in the monastery of S. Emeramus, contains 72 letters: it is said to date from about 750 a.d.
(8) The two Bergonenses are of 12th century, and contain 12 sermons.
(9) Two Chigiani also of 12th century contain 4 sermons.
(10) The Padilironenses contain 9 sermons and the Tome.
(11) There are three Patavini, of which two contain the Tome.
(12) Vallicellani: these are a number of 11th or 12th-century codices.
There are also the Veneti, the Vercellenses, the Veronenses, &c.
N.B. The foregoing account is taken from Schönemann's Notitia Historico-Literaria (1794), and the translator has no means of knowing whether it is still correct (1890). __________________________________________________________________
[14] Grimanus, from whom this Codex is named, was Cardinal of S. Mark, &c., in the 16th century. __________________________________________________________________
Editions.
1. The earliest important edition is P. Quesnel's (prêtre de l'oratoire), Paris, 1675, Lyons, 1700, of which Migne's Dict. de Bibliogr. catholique says, on reproche aux éditions du P. Quesnel un grand nombre de falsifications, par lesquelles le P. Quesnel se proposait notamment d'affaiblir l'autorité pontificale [15] ....L'edition que l'on doit aujourd'hui préférer, est (naturally enough!) celle qui a été publiée par M. l'abbé Migne sous le titre d'
2. OEuvres très complètes de Saint Leon le Grand publièes d'après l'édition des frères Ballerinii et celle de Paschase Quesnel enrichées de préfaces, d'avertissements et de commentaires, suivies des exercices de Cacciari sur toutes les oeuvres du saint docteur. Paris 1846.
3. P. Cacciari (a carmelite) brought out editions at Rome, 1751 and 1753-5, the latter with dissertations.
4. The edition of the brothers P. and H. Ballerinii (Jesuists), Venice, 1753-7, was a recension of Quesnel's second edition with copious dissertations and notes.
5. H. Hurter, S. J., has published selections of Sermons and Letters in vols. xiv., xxv. and xxvi. of his SS. PP. opuscula selecta, 1871-4. __________________________________________________________________
[15] That is to say, it upheld the Gallican opinions; and so it was condemned and put on the Index in 1682. But being too valuable a work to be altogether suppressed, Benedict XIV. enjoined the issue of (4), which rebutted and rectified Quesnel's false deductions in its notes and excursuses. __________________________________________________________________
Translations.
1. Bright's Leo on the Incarnation, London, 1862 (2nd edn. enlarged, 1886, in which the Tome is translated), consists of xviii. sermons translated and the Tome in Latin, with many valuable notes.
2. Reithmayr's Bibliothek (1869) contains a German translation.
3. Dr. Neale's History of the Alexandrian Patriarchate embodies a translation of the Tome.
4. Dr. Heurtley published a version of the Tome in 1886. __________________________________________________________________
Authorities and Materials.
The chief ancient and medieval authorities for the life and times of Leo the Great are such works as Prosper's, and Idatius' Chronicles, Iornandes de rebus Geticis, Anastasius Bibliothecarius Historia de vitis Romanorum Pontificum (9th cent.), the Historia Miscella (10th cent.), &c.
Among lives may be mentioned the following:--(1) La vie et religion de deux bons papes Léon premier et Gregoire premier par Pierre Du Moulin (the younger: a protestant theologian), Sedan, 1650. 12mo. (2) Quesnel's valuable Dissertatio de vita et rebus gestis S. Leonis Magni, originally included in his edition of Leo and re-printed by Migne in Vol. ii. of his edition with the Ballerinii's annotations and critical remarks, Paris, 1675, Lyons, 1700. (3) Histoire du Pontificat de Saint Léon le Grand par Monsr. L. Maimbourg La Haye, 1687. (4) The Bollandists' Life by Canisius (Acta Sanctorum), April, vol. ii. pp. 14-22. (5) Alphonsi Ciaconii Vitæ Pontificum (Tom. 1, pp. 303-314), Rome, 1677, 4to. (6) Le Nain de Tillemont, Memoires pour servir à l'histoire Ecclesiastique (vol. xv. pp. 414-832, 885-934), Paris, 1711. (7) Breve Descrizione della vita di S. Leone Primo di Gabrielle Bertazzolo: Mantova, 1727. (8) Memoire istoriche di Sa. Leone Papa da Teofilo Pacifico: Brescia, 1791, 8vo. (9) Du Pin, L. E., History of Ecc. writers (Eng Edn. vol. 1, pp. 464-480), Dublin, 1722. (10) C. Oudinus, de Scriptoribus Ecclesiæ (vol. 1, pp. 1271-5), Leipzig, 1722. (11) Wilhelm Amadeus Arendt (Roman Catholic), Leo der Grosse und seine Zeit, Mainz, 1835, 8vo. (12) Eduard Perthel, Papst Leo's I. Leben und Lehren, Jena, 1843, 8vo. (a counterblast to No. 11, and no less exaggerated and prejudiced in statement). (13) A. de Saint-Chron, Histoire du pontificat de Saint Léon le Grand, Paris, 1846. (14) F. Böhringer, die Kirche Xti und ihre Zeugen (vol. 1 part 4, pp. 170-309), Zürich, 1845. (15) Charles Gore's Life of Leo the Great (S.P.C.K.); also his article in Smith's Dict. of Christian Biogr. (16) The article in Herzog's Real-Encyklopädie of which a condensed English edition was edited by Dr. Philip Schaff at New York in 1883. Other more general accounts of his times will be found in (1) l'abbé Fleury, Histoire du Xtianisme (vol. ii. pp. 384-480), Paris, 1836. (2) Bright's History of the Church from 313-451 (chaps. xiv., xv.), Oxford and London, 1860. (3) Milman's Latin Christianity (Book ii. chap. 4), London, 1864. (4) R. J. Rohrbacher's Histoire Universelle de l'Eglise catholique (15th edn., vol. 4, pp. 461-575), Paris, 1868. A short account of Leo's writings is given in Alzog's Grundriss der Patrologie, § 78, pp.368-375: a most exhaustive one in Ceillier's Histoire générale des Auteurs sacrés (new edition) (vol. x., pp. 169-276), 1858-1869. Bähr's Geschichte der Römischer Literatur-Supplement Band II. Abtheilung (pp. 354-362), im Abendland, vol. 1, p. 448, may also be consulted; and Ebert's Allgemeine Geschichte der Literatur des Mittelalters. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Letters.
------------------------
Letter I.
To the Bishop of Aquileia.
I. Through the negligence of the authorities the Pelagian heresy has been spreading in his province.
From the account of our holy brother and fellow-bishop Septimus which is contained in the subjoined letter [16] , we have understood that certain priests and deacons and clergy of various orders [17] in your province who have been drawn in by the Pelagian or Cælestian heresy, have attained to catholic communion without any recantation of their peculiar error being required of them; and that, whilst the shepherds set to watch were fast asleep, wolves clothed in sheep-skins but without laying aside their bestial minds have entered into the Lord's sheep-fold: and that they make a practice of what is not allowed even to non-offenders by the injunctions of our canons and decrees [18] : to wit that they should leave the churches in which they received or regained their office and carry their uncertainty in all directions, loving to continue wandering and never to remain on the foundations of the Apostles. For without being sifted by any test or bound by any previous confession of faith, they make a great point of their right to the privilege of going to one house after another under cover of their being in communion with the Church, and corrupting the hearts of many through men's ignorance [19] of their false name. And yet I am sure they could not do this, if the rulers of the churches had exercised their rightful diligence in the matter of receiving such, and had not allowed any of them to wander from place to place.
II. He orders a provincial synod to be convened to receive the recantation of the heretics in express terms.
Accordingly, lest this should be attempted any further, and lest this pernicious habit, which owes its introduction to certain persons' negligence, should result in the overthrow of many souls, by this our authoritative injunction we charge you, brother, to give diligence that a synod of the clergy [20] of your province be convened, and all, whether priests or deacons or clerics of any rank who have been re-admitted from their alliance with the Pelagians and the Cælestians into catholic communion with such precipitation that they were not first constrained to recant their error, be now at least forced to a true correction, which can advantage themselves and hurt no one, since their deceitfulness has in part been disclosed. Let them by their public confession condemn the authors of this presumptuous [21] error and renounce all that the universal Church has repudiated in their doctrine: and let them announce by full and open statements, signed by their own hand, that they embrace and entirely approve of all the synodal decrees which the authority of the Apostolic See has ratified to the rooting out of this heresy. Let nothing obscure, nothing ambiguous be found in their words. For we know that their cunning is such that they reckon that the meaning of any particular clause of their execrable doctrine can be defended if they only keep it distinct from the main body of their damnable views [22] .
III. The Pelagian view of God's grace is unscriptural.
And when they pretend to disapprove of and give up all their definitions to facilitate evasion through their complete art of deception, unless their meaning is detected, they make exception of the dogma that the grace of God is given according to the merits of the recipient. And yet surely, unless it is given freely, it is not a gift [23] , but a price and compensation for merits: for the blessed Apostle says, "by grace ye have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves but it is the gift of God; not of works lest any should perchance be exalted. For we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus in good works, which God prepared that we should walk in them [24] ." Thus every bestowal of good works is of God's preparing: because a man is justified by grace rather than by his own excellence: for grace is to every one the source of righteousness, the source of good and the fountain of merit. But these heretics say it is anticipated by men's natural goodness for this reason, that that nature which (in their view) is before grace conspicuous for good desires of its own, may not seem marred by any stain of original sin, and that what the Truth says may be falsified: "For the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost [25] ."
IV. Prompt measures are essential.
You must take heed, therefore, beloved, and with great diligence make provision that offences which have long been removed be not set up again through such men and that no seed of the same evil spring up in your province from a doctrine which has once been uprooted: for not only will it take root and grow, but also will taint the future generations of the Church with its poisonous exhalations. Those who wish to appear corrected must purge themselves of all suspicion: and by obeying us, prove themselves ours. And if any of them decline to satisfy our wholesome injunctions, be he cleric or layman, he must be driven from the society of the Church lest he deal treacherously by others' safety as well as forfeit his own soul.
V. The canons must be enforced against clerics who wander from one church to another.
We admonish you also to restore to full working that part of the discipline of the Church whereby the holy Fathers and we have often in former times decreed that neither in the grade of the priesthood nor in the order of the diaconate nor in the lower ranks of the clergy, is any one at liberty to migrate from church to church: to the end that each one may persevere where he was ordained without being enticed by ambition, or led astray by greed, or corrupted by men's evil beliefs: and thus that if any one, seeking his own interests, not those of Jesus Christ [26] , neglect to return to his own people [27] and church, he may be reckoned out of the pale both in respect of promotion and of the bond of communion. But do not doubt, beloved, that we must be somewhat sorely moved if, as we think not, our decrees for the maintenance of the canons and the integrity of the faith be neglected: because the short-comings of the lower orders [28] are to be laid at the door of none so much as of those slothful and remiss rulers who often foster much pestilence by shrinking from the application of a stringent remedy. __________________________________________________________________
[16] It is to be supposed that the letter of Septimus, bp. of Altinum, was sent with this letter. See Lett. XVIII. n. 3.
[17] Viz. members of the minor order as they are now called, subdeacons, exorcists, &c.
[18] It has been the rule at least since the council of Nicæa (325) that the clergy should stay in the church (or "diocese" as we should call it) of their ordination, cf. Canons of Nicæa xxi. de his qui Ecclesias deserunt et ad alias transeunt, and xxii. de non suscipiendis alterius Ecclesiæ clericis. And we often find Leo insisting on the observance of the rule.
[19] Inscientiam: the general reading being scientiam, the sense of which is not clear.
[20] Sacerdotum: I am in doubt as to what this term here includes, but think it probable that all ranks of the clergy were to be summoned. The words sacerdos and antistes in early ecclesiastical Latin very often mean the bishop (episcopus) specifically rather than the presbyter (sacerdos secundi ordinis), because it was the bishop who offered the "sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving" (i.e. the Eucharist), and the presbyter only in his default; but the term sacerdos does certainly often include the presbyters and also the deacons (sacerdotes tertii ordinis) when in connexion with the priests and bishops, and it seems likely that the whole body of the clergy of the province would be summoned to the synod: see Bright's note 110: also Bingham, Antiq., Bk. II., chap. xix., §§ 14, 15.
[21] Superbi (proud): the epithet is well chosen and not a random one: for pride and presumption are at the root of the Pelagian views as birth-sin and baptismal grace: perfectionism is little in accordance with Christian humility.
[22] For the same sentiment cf. Prosper, de ingratis, v. 188.
[23] The reader need hardly be reminded that in the New Testament "grace" (Lat. gratia, Gk. charis) signifies "a free gift."
[24] Eph. ii. 8-10.
[25] S. Luke ix. 10. Between this and the next chapter some of the mss. and the earlier editions insert a passage from Augustine's Enchiridion, which thus formed chapter iv.
[26] A reminiscence of Phil. ii. 21.
[27] Plebem: this being the regular term for the "Laity" in early Christian Latin.
[28] Sc. of the clergy. __________________________________________________________________
Letter II.
To Septimus, Bishop of Altinum.
(Caution must be observed in receiving Pelagians back, and clergy must stay in the church of their ordination.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter III.
From Paschasinus, Bishop of Lilybæum.
(About the keeping of Easter in 444; recommending the Alexandrine calculation.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter IV.
To the Bishops appointed in Campania, Picenum, Etruria, and all the Provinces.
Leo, bishop of the city of Rome, to all the bishops appointed in Campania, Picenum, Etruria, and all the provinces, greeting in the Lord.
I. Introduction.
As the peaceful settlement of the churches causes us satisfaction, so are we saddened with no slight sorrow whenever we learn that anything has been taken for granted or done contrary to the ordinances of the canons and the discipline of the Church: and if we do not repress such things with the vigilance we ought, we cannot excuse ourselves to Him who intended us to be watchmen [29] , for permitting the pure body of the Church, which we ought to keep clean from every stain, to be defiled by contact with wicked schemers, since the framework of the members loses its harmony by such dissimulation.
II. Slaves and serfs (coloni) are not to be ordained.
Men are admitted commonly to the Sacred Order who are not qualified by any dignity of birth or character: even some who have failed to obtain their liberty from their masters are raised to the rank of the priesthood [30] , as if sorry slaves were fit for that honour; and it is believed that a man can be approved of God who has not yet been able to approve himself to his master. And so the cause for complaint is twofold in this matter, because both the sacred ministry is polluted by such poor partners in it, and the rights of masters are infringed so far as unlawful possession is rashly taken of them [31] . From these men, therefore, beloved brethren, let all the priests of your province keep aloof; and not only from them, but from others also, we wish you to keep, who are under the bond of origin or other condition of service [32] : unless perchance the request or consent be intimated of those who claim some authority over them. For he who is to be enrolled on the divine service ought to be exempt from others, that he be not drawn away from the Lord's camp in which his name is entered, by any other bonds of duty.
III. A man who has married twice or a widow is not eligible as a priest.
Again, when each man's respectability of birth and conduct has been established, what sort of person should be associated with the ministry of the Sacred Altar we have learnt both from the teaching of the Apostle and the Divine precepts and the regulations of the canons, from which we find very many of the brethren have turned aside and quite gone out of the way. For it is well known that the husbands of widows have attained to the priesthood: certain, too, who have had several wives, and have led a life given up to all licentiousness, have had all facilities put in their way, and been admitted to the Sacred Order, contrary to that utterance of the blessed Apostle, in which he proclaims and says to such, "the husband of one wife [33] ," and contrary to that precept of the ancient law which says by way of caution: "Let the priest take a virgin to wife, not a widow, not a divorced woman [34] ." All such persons, therefore, who have been admitted we order to be put out of their offices in the church and from the title of priest by the authority of the Apostolic See: for they will have no claim [35] to that for which they were not eligible, on account of the obstacle in question: and we specially claim for ourselves the duty of settling this, that if any of these irregularities have been committed, they may be corrected and may not be allowed to occur again, and that no excuse may arise from ignorance: although it has never been allowed a priest to be ignorant of what has been laid down by the rules of the canons. These writings, therefore, we have addressed to your provinces by the hand of Innocent, Legitimus and Segetius, our brothers and fellow-bishops: that the evil shoots which are known to have sprung up may be torn out by the roots, and no tares may spoil the Lord's harvest. For thus all that is genuine will bear much fruit, if that which has been wont to kill the growing crop be carefully cleared away.
IV. Usurious practices forbidden for clergy and for laity [36] .
This point, too, we have thought must not be passed over, that certain possessed with the love of base gain lay out their money at interest, and wish to enrich themselves as usurers. For we are grieved that this is practised not only by those who belong to the clergy, but also by laymen who desire to be called Christians. And we decree that those who have been convicted be punished sharply, that all occasion of sinning be removed.
V. A cleric may not make money in another's name any more than in his own.
The following warning, also, we have thought fit to give, that no cleric should attempt to make money in another's name any more than in his own: for it is unbecoming to shield one's crime under another man's gains [37] . Nay, we ought to look at and aim at only that usury whereby what we bestow in mercy here we may recover from the Lord, who will restore a thousand fold what will last for ever.
VI. Any bishop who refuses consent to these rules must be deposed.
This admonition of ours, therefore, proclaims that if any of our brethren endeavour to contravene these rules and dare to do what is forbidden by them, he may know that he is liable to deposition from his office, and that he will not be a sharer in our communion who refuses to be a sharer of our discipline. But lest there be anything which may possibly be thought to be omitted by us, we bid you, beloved, to keep all the decretal rules of Innocent of blessed memory [38] , and also of all our predecessors, which have been promulgated about the orders of the Church and the discipline of the canons, and to keep them in such wise that if any have transgressed them he may know at once that all indulgence is denied him.
Dated 10th of October, in the consulship of the illustrious Maximus (a second time) and Paterius (a.d. 443). __________________________________________________________________
[29] Cf. Ezek. iii. 17.
[30] Sacerdotii, see note 5 on Letter I.
[31] Though no doubt S. Leo's language is here harsh and offensive to modern ears, it is not, I think, substantially out of agreement with S. Paul's own teaching (cf. Philemon 1; 1 Cor. vii. 21; Ephes. vi. 5; Col. iii. 22; Tit. ii. 9), and certainly not with the spirit of the age. The 73rd Apost. Canon forbids any slave to be ordained without his master's consent, and without previously obtaining his freedom. However, in the times of S. Jerome, S. Basil and S. Greg. Nazianzen, we find cases of slaves being ordained. However much we in the latter half of the nineteenth century regret to hear a great father of the Church speak in this way we must not forget that in the first half of this self-same century the very same opinion would have been held on the subject in many parts of the civilized world.
[32] Qui originali (al. origini) aut alicui condicioni obligati sunt. The class of people alluded to were the coloni (serfs): such of them as were so by birth were called originarii: and there were other classes of them also (alicui condicioni obligati). The essential difference between all coloni and the ordinary servi was that the latter's service was personal, the former were servi terræ, adscripti glæbæ. Thus there is a strong resemblance between them and the villeins (villani) of medieval and modern Europe. For the order concerning them here given, cf. 2nd Council of Orleans (538), which ordains "ut nullus servilibus colonariisque condicionibus obligatus iuxta statuta sedis Apostolicæ ad honores ecclesiasticos admittatur nisi prius aut testamento aut per tabulas legitime constiterit absolutum.
[33] 1 Tim. iii. 2, unius uxoris virum with the Vulgate, cf. Letter xii. 3.
[34] Lev. xxi. 13, 14, cf. a letter of Innocent I. to Victricius, bishop of Rothomagus (Rouen) chap. v., ut mulierem (viduam) clericus non ducat uxorem: quia scriptum est: sacerdos virginem uxorem accipiat non eiectam," and for the former quotation, cf. ibid. chap vii. ne is qui secundam duxerit uxorem, clericus fiat: quia scriptum est unius virum. The 18th Apostolic Canon gives a similar order. All these rules would seem to refer to marriage before, not after, ordination. The latter was against the spirit of the early Church.
[35] The older editions here add pro arbitrio (by dispensation), which Quesnel considers a gloss added later when dispensation was sometimes granted to digamous clerks.
[36] The practice of usury and trading generally is often forbidden in the Canons, &c., for the clergy, but its prohibition for the laity is much more unusual: cf., however, Canon V. of the Council of Carthage (419), quod (sc. fenus accipere) in laicis, reprehenditur id multo magis debet et in clericis prædamnari. Scripture certainly is against the clergy participating in lucrative employments, though it was not easy always to prevent them: it had become, for instance, a common practice in S. Cyprian's day in the North African Church (cf. de laps. 6). But the secular laws certainly countenanced it in the laity (as Aug. Ep. 154 acknowledges). Leo the Emperor is said by Grotius to have been the first who "existimans omne fenus Christiano interdictum, lege id ipsum communi sanxit" (Quesnel).
[37] Crimen suum commodis alienis impendere. I am not sure that this can mean what I say.
[38] This was S. Innocent I., who was Pope from 402 to 417. One of his decretal letters was quoted from in note 1 to chap. iii. of this Letter. __________________________________________________________________
Letter V.
To the Metropolitan Bishops of Illyricum.
(Appointing Anastasius of Thessalonica his Vicar in the province, and expressing his wishes about its government, for which see Letter VI.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter VI.
To Anastasius, Bishop of Thessalonica.
Leo to his beloved brother Anastasius.
I. He is pleased to have been consulted by the bishops [39] of Illyricum on important questions.
The brotherly love of our colleagues makes us read with grateful mind the letters of all priests [40] ; for in them we embrace one another in the spirit as if we were face to face, and by the intercourse of such epistles we are associated in mutual converse [41] . But in this present letter the affection displayed seems to us greater than usual: for it informs us of the state of the churches [42] , and urges us to a vigilant exercise of care by a consideration of our office, so that being placed, as it were, on a watch-tower, according to the will of the Lord, we should both lend our approval to things when they run in accordance with our wishes, and correct, by applying the remedies of compulsion, what we observe gone wrong through any aggression: hoping that abundant fruit will be the result of our sowing the seed, if we do not allow those things to increase which have begun to spring up to the spoiling of the harvest.
II. Following the examples of his predecessors he nominates Anastasius Metropolitan of Illyricum.
Now therefore, dear brother, that your request has been made known to us through our son Nicolaus the priest, that you, too, like your predecessors, might receive from us in our turn authority over Illyricum for the observance of the rules, we give our consent and earnestly exhort that no concealment and no negligence may be allowed in the management of the churches situated throughout Illyricum, which we commit to you in our stead, following the precedent of Siricius of blessed remembrance, who then, for the first time, acting on a fixed method, entrusted them to your last predecessor but one [43] , Anysius of holy memory, who had at the time well deserved of the Apostolic See, and was approved by after events: that he might render assistance to the churches situated in that province whom he wished kept up to discipline. Noble precedents must be followed with eagerness that we may show ourselves in all things like those whose privileges we wish to enjoy. We wish you to imitate your last predecessor [44] but one as well as of your immediate predecessor who is known equally with the former to have both deserved and employed this privilege: so that we may rejoice in the progress of the churches which we commit to you in our stead. For as the conduct of matters progresses creditably when committed to one who acts well and carries out skilfully the duties of the priestly position, so it is found to be only a burden to him who, when power is entrusted to him, uses not the moderation that is due.
III. Ordinees must be carefully selected with especial reference to the Canons of the church.
And so, dear brother, hold with vigilance the helm entrusted to you, and direct your mind's gaze around on all which you see put in your charge, guarding what will conduce to your reward and resisting those who strive to upset the discipline of the canons. The sanction of God's law must be respected, and the decrees of the canons should be more especially kept. Throughout the provinces committed to thee let such priests be consecrated to the Lord as are commended only by their deserving life and position among the clergy. Permit no licence to personal favour, nor to canvassing, nor to purchased votes. Let the cases of those who are to be ordained be investigated carefully and let them be trained in the discipline of the Church through a considerable period of their life. But if all the requirements of the holy Fathers are found in them, and if they have observed all that we read the blessed Apostle Paul to have enjoined on such, viz., that he be the husband of one wife, and that she was a virgin when he married her, as the authority of God's law requires, [then ordain them [45] ]. And this we are extremely anxious should be observed, so as to do away with all place for excuses, lest any one should believe himself able to attain to the priesthood who has taken a wife before he obtained the grace of Christ, and on her decease joined himself to another after baptism. Seeing that the former wife cannot be ignored, nor the previous marriage put out of the reckoning, and that he is as much the father of the children whom he begot by that wife before baptism as he is of those whom he is known to have begotten by the second after baptism. For as sins and things which are known to be unlawful are washed away in the font of baptism, so what are allowed or lawful are not done away.
IV. The Metropolitans must not ordain hastily nor without consulting their Primate.
Let one be ordained a priest [46] throughout these churches inconsiderately; for by this means ripe judgments will be formed about those to be elected, if your scrutiny, brother, is dreaded. But let any bishop who, contrary to our command, is ordained by his metropolitan without your knowledge, know that he has no assured position with us, and that those who have taken on themselves so to do must render an account of their presumption [47] . But as to each metropolitan is committed such power that he has the right of ordaining in his province, so we wish those metropolitans to be ordained, but not without ripe and well-considered judgment. For although it is seemly that all who are consecrated priests should be approved and well-pleasing to God, yet we wish those to have peculiar excellence whom we know are going to preside over the fellow-priests who are assigned to them. And we admonish you, beloved, to see to this the more diligently and carefully, that you may be proved to keep that precept of the Apostles which runs, "lay hands suddenly on no man [48] ."
V. Points which cannot be settled at the provincial synod are to be referred to Rome.
Any of the brethren who has been summoned to a synod should attend and not deny himself to the holy congregation: for there especially he should know that what will conduce to the good discipline of the Church must be settled. For all faults will be better avoided if more frequent conferences take place between the priests of the Lord, and intimate association is the greatest help alike to improvement and to brotherly love. There, if any questions arise, under the Lord's guidance they will be able to be determined, so that no bad feeling remains, and only a firmer love exists among the brethren. But if any more important question spring up, such as cannot be settled there under your presidency, brother, send your report and consult us, so that we may write back under the revelation of the Lord, of whose mercy it is that we can do ought, because He has breathed favourably upon us [49] : that by our decision we may vindicate our right of cognizance in accordance with old-established tradition and the respect that is due to the Apostolic See: for as we wish you to exercise your authority in our stead, so we reserve to ourselves points which cannot be decided on the spot and persons who have made appeal to us.
VI. Priests and deacons may not be ordained on weekdays any more than bishops.
You shall take order that this letter reach the knowledge of all the brethren, so that no one hereafter find an opportunity to excuse himself through ignorance in observing these things which we command. We have directed our letter of admonition [50] to the metropolitans themselves also of the several provinces, that they may know that they must obey the Apostolic injunctions, and that they obey us in beginning to obey you, brother, our delegate according to what we have written. We hear, indeed, and we cannot pass it over in silence, that only bishops are ordained by certain brethren on Sundays only; but presbyters and deacons, whose consecration should be equally solemn [51] , receive the dignity of the priestly office indiscriminately on any day, which is a reprehensible practice contrary to the canons and tradition of the Fathers [52] , since the custom ought by all means to be kept by those who have received it with respect to all the sacred orders: so that after a proper lapse of time he who is to be ordained a priest or deacon [53] may be advanced through all the ranks of the clerical office, and thus a man may have time to learn that of which he himself also is one day to be a teacher. Dated the 12th of January, in the consulship of Theodosius (18th time) and Albinus (444). __________________________________________________________________
[39] The letter to the college of bishops was written the same day, and forms No. 5 in the Leonine series (in Migne).
[40] Sacerdotum here obviously = episcoporum, see Letter I. note 5.
[41] quibus sermone epistolis mutuo commeantibus sociamur: notice the interlaced order of the words in the sentence which is not, I think, without design as quaintly expressing his meaning.
[42] Sc. in your province.
[43] Siricius was Bishop of Rome 384-398. Damasus, 366-384, is said by Innocent I. to have been the first to do this but not like Siricius, "acting on a fixed method," certa quadam ratione.
[44] Prædecessoris tui. Anysius is said to have lived on into the time of Innocent. Anastasius' immediate predecessor, selected by Innocent (decessoris tui in the next line), was named Rufus.
[45] These words are not found in the mss. apparently, but are necessary to the sense. For the requirement cf. Letter IV. chapter iii.
[46] Here the word is antistes and no doubt it signifies "bishop," as the next sentence clearly shows.
[47] The organization of the province then included (1) the bishops under (2) metropolitans of district under (3) one supreme primate of the province, who was in his turn responsible to the Bishop of Rome.
[48] 1 Tim. v. 22.
[49] The word is aspiraverit (the notion of which is to favour), not inspiraverit (to inspire), as we might have expected.
[50] Viz., Letter V.
[51] Circa quos par consecratio fieri debet. I take this as a valuable statement in the mouth of Leo, who so seldom refers specifically to the lower orders of the ministry.
[52] There seems to be no canon on the point before Leo's time: but he alludes to the tradition again in Letter IX. chap. 1 and CXI. chap. 2 (q.v.).
[53] Qui sacerdos (? secundi ordinis here) vel levita (= diaconus) ordinandus est. __________________________________________________________________
Letter VII.
To the Bishops throughout Italy.
Leo to all the bishops set over the provinces of Italy greeting.
I. Many Manichæans have been discovered in Rome.
We call you to a share in our anxiety, that with the diligence of shepherds you may take more careful heed to your flocks entrusted to you that no craft of the devil's be permitted: lest that plague, which by the revealing mercy of the Lord is driven off from our flocks through our care, should spread among your churches before you are forewarned, and are still ignorant of what is happening, and should find means of stealthily burrowing into your midst, and thus what we are checking in the City should take hidden root among you and grow up. Our search has discovered in the City a great many followers and teachers of the Manichæan impiety, our watchfulness has proclaimed them, and our authority and censure has checked them: those whom we could reform we have corrected and driven to condemn Manichæus with his preachings and teachings by public confession in church, and by the subscription of their own hand, and thus we have lifted those who have acknowledged their fault from the pit of their iniquity by granting them room for repentance [54] . A good many, however, who had so deeply involved themselves that no remedy could assist them, have been subjected to the laws in accordance with the constitutions of our Christian princes, and lest they should pollute the holy flock by their contagion, have been banished into perpetual exile by public judges. And all the profane and disgraceful things which are found as well in their writings as in their secret traditions, we have disclosed and clearly proved to the eyes of the Christian laity [55] that the people might know what to shrink from or avoid: so that he that was called their bishop was himself tried by us, and betrayed the criminal views which he held in his mystic religion, as the record of our proceedings can show you. For this, too, we have sent you for instruction: and after reading them you will be in a position to understand all the discoveries we have made.
II. The bishops of Italy must not allow those Manichæans who have quitted the city to escape or lie concealed.
And because we know that a good many of those who are involved here in too close an accusation for them to clear themselves have escaped, we have sent this letter to you, beloved, by our acolyth: that your holiness, dear brothers, may be informed of this, and see fit to act with diligence and caution, lest the men of the Manichæan error be able to find opportunity of hurting your people and of teaching their impious doctrines. For we cannot otherwise rule those entrusted to us unless we pursue with the zeal of faith in the Lord those who are destroyers and destroyed: and with what severity we can bring to bear, cut them off from intercourse with sound minds, lest this pestilence spread much wider. Wherefore I exhort you, beloved, I beseech and warn you to use such watchful diligence as you ought and can employ in tracking them out, lest they find opportunity of concealment anywhere. For as he will have a due recompense of reward from God, who carries out what conduces to the health of the people committed to him; so before the Lord's judgment-seat no one will be able to excuse himself from a charge of carelessness who has not been willing to guard his people against the propagators of an impious misbelief. Dated 30 January, in the consulship of the illustrious Theodosius Augustus (18th time) and Albinus (444). __________________________________________________________________
[54] Poenitentiam concedendo, i.e. we have not finally excommunicated them, but, dealing leniently, we have given them opportunity of reinstating themselves in the peace of the Church, by going through a due course of penance (satisfactio). It is important to explain this clearly to those who in the present day, are ignorant of the strict discipline of the early Church. And are liable to forget that penance was then a valuable means to repentance.
[55] Plebei. __________________________________________________________________
Letter VIII.
The Ordinance of Valentinian III. concerning the Manichæans.
(The Manichæans are to be turned out of the army and the City, and to lose all their rights as citizens.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter IX.
To Dioscorus, Bishop of Alexandria.
Leo, the bishop, to Dioscorus, bishop of Alexandria, greeting.
I. The churches of Rome and Alexandria should be at one in everything.
How much of the divine love we feel for you, beloved, you will be able to estimate from this, that we are anxious to establish your beginnings on a surer basis, lest anything should seem lacking to the perfection of your love, since your meritorious acts of spiritual grace, as we have proved, are already in your favour. Fatherly and brotherly conference, therefore, ought to be most grateful to you, holy brother, and received by you in the same spirit as you know it is offered by us. For you and we ought to be at one in thought and act, so that as we read [56] , in us also there may be proved to be one heart and one mind. For since the most blessed Peter received the headship of the Apostles from the Lord, and the church of Rome still abides by His institutions, it is wicked to believe that His holy disciple Mark, who was the first to govern the church of Alexandria [57] , formed his decrees on a different line of tradition: seeing that without doubt both disciple and master drew but one Spirit from the same fount of grace, and the ordained could not hand on aught else than what he had received from his ordainer. We do not therefore allow it that we should differ in anything, since we confess ourselves to be of one body and faith, nor that the institutions of the teacher should seem different to those of the taught.
II. Fixed days should be observed for ordaining priests and deacons.
That therefore which we know to have been very carefully observed by our fathers, we wish kept by you also, viz. that the ordination of priests or deacons should not be performed at random on any day: but after Saturday, the commencement of that night which precedes the dawn of the first day of the week should be chosen on which the sacred benediction should be bestowed on those who are to be consecrated, ordainer and ordained alike fasting. This observance will not be violated, if actually on the morning of the Lord's day it be celebrated without breaking the Saturday fast: for the beginning of the preceding night forms part of that period, and undoubtedly belongs to the day of resurrection as is clearly laid down with regard to the feast of Easter [58] . For besides the weight of custom which we know rests upon the Apostles' teaching, Holy Writ also makes this clear, because when the Apostles sent Paul and Barnabas at the bidding of the Holy Ghost to preach the gospel to the nations, they laid hands on them fasting and praying: that we may know with what devoutness both giver and receiver must be on their guard lest so blessed a sacrament should seem to be carelessly performed. And therefore you will piously and laudably follow Apostolic precedents if you yourself also maintain this form of ordaining priests throughout the churches over which the Lord has called you to preside: viz. that those who are to be consecrated should never receive the blessing except on the day of the Lord's resurrection, which is commonly held to begin on the evening of Saturday, and which has been so often hallowed in the mysterious dispensations of God that all the more notable institutions of the Lord were accomplished on that high day. On it the world took its beginning. On it through the resurrection of Christ death received its destruction, and life its commencement. On it the apostles take from the Lord's hands the trumpet of the gospel which is to be preached to all nations, and receive the sacrament of regeneration [59] which they are to bear to the whole world. On it, as blessed John the Evangelist bears witness when all the disciples were gathered together in one place, and when, the doors being shut, the Lord entered to them, He breathed on them and said: "Receive the Holy Ghost: whose sins ye have remitted they are remitted to them: and whose ye have retained, they shall be retained [60] ." On it lastly the Holy Spirit that had been promised to the Apostles by the Lord came: and so we know it to have been suggested and handed down by a kind of heavenly rule, that on that day we ought to celebrate the mysteries of the blessing of priests on which all these gracious gifts were conferred.
III. The repetition of the Holy Eucharist on the great festivals is not undesirable.
Again, that our usage may coincide at all points, we wish this thing also to be observed, viz. that when any of the greater festivals has brought together a larger congregation than usual, and too great a crowd of the faithful has assembled for one church [61] to hold them all at once, there should be no hesitation about repeating the oblation of the sacrifice: lest, if those only are admitted to this service who come first, those who flock in afterwards, should seem to be rejected: for it is fully in accordance with piety and reason, that as often as a fresh congregation has filled the church where service is going on, the sacrifice should be offered as a matter of course. Whereas a certain portion of the people must be deprived of their worship, if the custom of only one celebration [62] be kept, and only those who come early in the day can offer the sacrifice [63] . We admonish you, therefore, beloved, earnestly and affectionately that your carefulness also should not neglect what has become a part of our own usage on the pattern of our fathers' tradition, so that in all things we may agree together in our beliefs and in our performances. Consequently, we have given this letter to our son Possidonius, a presbyter, on his return, that he may bear it to you, brother; he has so often taken part in our ceremonials and ordinations, and has been sent to us so many times that he knows quite well what Apostolic authority we possess in all things. Dated 21 June (? 445). __________________________________________________________________
[56] Sc. in Acts iv. 32.
[57] S. Mark, the evangelist and disciple of S. Peter, is the radional founder of the church of Alexandria.
[58] That is to say, the weekly resurrection festival (Sunday) begins with the vespers of the preceding evening: this is notably the case in the yearly festival of Easter, at least in Western use.
[59] Sacramentum regenerationis: the reference in the first part of the sentence seems to be S. Mark xvi. 15, and here in the latter part to S. Matt. xxviii. 19, and both these records seem to refer to the same manifestation. S. Matthew says it was to "the eleven disciples" in Galilee, in "the mountain where Jesus had appointed them," that He gave the command, if indeed vv. 16-20 of the xxviiith chapter form one continuous narrative. The author of S. Mark xvi. 9-20 says it was to the eleven "as they sat at meat." Is it possible that Leo took anakeimenois to mean as they were partaking of the Holy Eucharist? if not, what countenance is there for his assertion of its being on the first day of the week?
[60] S. John xx. 22, 23.
[61] Basilica, q.v. in Smith's Dict. of Christian Antiquities.
[62] Missæ.
[63] It can hardly escape notice that the people here are distinctly said "to offer the sacrifice" in the person of their representative and mouthpiece, the priest. And this is the language and intention of all Liturgies (ancient and modern) of the Church. __________________________________________________________________
Letter X.
To the Bishops of the Province of Vienne. In the matter of Hilary, Bishop of Arles [64] .
To the beloved brothers, the whole body of bishops of the province of Vienne, Leo, bishop of Rome.
I. The solidarity of the Church built upon the rock of S. Peter must be everywhere maintained.
Our Lord Jesus Christ, Saviour of mankind, instituted the observance of the Divine religion which He wished by the grace of God to shed its brightness upon all nations and all peoples in such a way that the Truth, which before was confined to the announcements of the Law and the Prophets, might through the Apostles' trumpet blast go out for the salvation of all men [65] , as it is written: "Their sound has gone out into every land, and their words into the ends of the world [66] ." But this mysterious function [67] the Lord wished to be indeed the concern of all the apostles, but in such a way that He has placed the principal charge on the blessed Peter, chief of all the Apostles [68] : and from him as from the Head wishes His gifts to flow to all the body: so that any one who dares to secede from Peter's solid rock may understand that he has no part or lot in the divine mystery. For He wished him who had been received into partnership in His undivided unity to be named what He Himself was, when He said: "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church [69] :" that the building of the eternal temple by the wondrous gift of God's grace might rest on Peter's solid rock: strengthening His Church so surely that neither could human rashness assail it nor the gates of hell prevail against it. But this most holy firmness of the rock, reared, as we have said, by the building hand of God, a man must wish to destroy in over-weaning wickedness when he tries to break down its power, by favouring his own desires, and not following what he received from men of old: for he believes himself subject to no law, and held in check by no rules of God's ordinances and breaks away, in his eagerness for novelty, from your use and ours, by adopting illegal practices, and letting what he ought to keep fall into abeyance.
II. Hilary is disturbing the peace of the Church by his insubordination.
But with the approval, as we believe, of God, and retaining towards you the fulness of our love which the Apostolic See always, as you remember, expends upon you, holy brethren we are striving to correct these things by mature counsel, and to share with you the task of setting your churches in order, not by innovations but by restoration of the old; that we may persevere in the accustomed state which our fathers handed down to us, and please our God through the ministry of a good work by removing the scandals of disturbances. And so we would have you recollect, brethren, as we do, that the Apostolic See, such is the reverence in which it is held, has times out of number been referred to and consulted by the priests of your province as well as others, and in the various matters of appeal, as the old usage demanded, it has reversed or confirmed decisions: and in this way "the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace [70] " has been kept, and by the interchange of letters, our honourable proceedings have promoted a lasting affection: for "seeking not our own but the things of Christ [71] ," we have been careful not to do despite to the dignity which God has given both to the churches and their priests. But this path which with our fathers has been always so well kept to and wisely maintained, Hilary has quitted, and is likely to disturb the position and agreement of the priests by his novel arrogance: desiring to subject you to his power in such a way as not to suffer himself to be subject to the blessed Apostle Peter, claiming for himself the ordinations of all the churches throughout the provinces of Gaul, and transferring to himself the dignity which is due to metropolitan priests; he diminishes even the reverence that is paid to the blessed Peter himself with his proud words: for not only was the power of loosing and binding given to Peter before the others, but also to Peter more especially was entrusted the care of feeding the sheep [72] . Yet any one who holds that the headship must be denied to Peter, cannot really diminish his dignity: but is puffed up with the breath of his pride, and plunges himself into the lowest depth.
III. Celidonius has been restored to his bishopric, the charges against him having been found false.
Accordingly the written record of our proceedings shows what action we have taken in the matter of Celidonius [73] , the bishop, and what Hilary said in the presence and hearing of the aforesaid bishop. For when Hilary had no reasonable answer to give in the council of the holy priests, "the secrets of his heart [74] " gave vent to utterances such as no layman could make and no priest listen to. We were grieved, I acknowledge, brothers, and endeavoured to appease the tumult of his mind by patient treatment. For we did not wish to exasperate those wounds which he was inflicting on his soul by his insolent retorts, and strove rather to pacify him whom we had taken up as a brother, although it was he who was entangling himself by his replies, than to cause him pain by our remarks. Celidonius, the bishop, was therefore acquitted, for he had proved himself wrongfully deposed from the priesthood, by the clear replies of his witnesses made in his own presence: so that Hilary, who remained with us, had no opposition to offer. The judgment, therefore, was rescinded, which was brought forward and read to the effect that, as the husband of a widow [75] , he could not hold the priesthood. Now this rule we, maintaining the legal constitutions [76] , have wished scrupulously adhered to, not only in respect of priests but also of clergy of the lower ranks: that those who have contracted such a marriage, or those who are proved not to be the husbands of only one wife contrary to the apostle's discipline, should not be suffered to enter the sacred service [77] . But though we decree that those, whom their own acts condemn, must either not be admitted at all, or, if they have, must be removed, so those who are falsely so accused we are bound to clear after examination held, and not allow to lose their office. For the sentence pronounced would have remained against him, if the truth of the charge had been proved. And so Celidonius, our fellow-bishop, was restored to his church and to that dignity which he ought not to have lost, as the course of our proceedings, and the sentence which was pronounced by us after holding the inquiry testifies.
IV. Hilary's treatment of Projectus does not redound to his credit.
When this business was so concluded, the complaint of our brother and fellow-bishop, Projectus [78] , next came before us: who addressed us in a tearful and piteous letter, about the ordaining of a bishop over his head. A letter was also brought to us from his own fellow-citizens, corroborated by a great many individual signatures, and full of the most unpleasant complaints against Hilary: to the effect that Projectus, their bishop, was not allowed to be ill, but his priesthood had been transferred to another without their knowledge, and the heir brought into possession by Hilary, the intruder as if to fill up a vacancy, though the possessor was still alive [79] . We should like to hear what you, brothers, think on the point: although we ought not to entertain any doubt about your feelings, when you picture to yourselves a brother lying on a sick-bed and tortured, not so much by his bodily weakness as by pains of another kind. What hope in life is left a man who is visited with despair about his priesthood whilst another is set up in his place? Hilary gives a clear proof of his gentle heart when he believed that the tardiness of a brother's death is but a hindrance to his own ambitious designs. For, as far as in him lay, he quenched the light for him; he robbed him of life by setting up another in his room, and thus causing him such pain as to hinder his recovery. And supposing that his brother's passage from this world was brief, but after the common course of men, what does Hilary seek for himself in another's province, and why does he claim that which none of his predecessors before Patroclus possessed? whereas that very position which seemed to have been temporarily granted to Patroclus by the Apostolic See was afterwards withdrawn by a wiser decision [80] . At least the wishes of the citizens should have been waited for, and the testimony of the people [81] : the opinion of those held in honour should have been asked, and the choice of the clergy--things which those who know the rules of the fathers are wont to observe in the ordination of priests: that the rule of the Apostle's authority might in all things be kept, which enjoins that one who is to be the priest of a church should be fortified, not only by the attestation of the faithful but also by the testimony of "those who are without [82] ," and that no occasion for offence be left, when, in peace and in God-pleasing harmony with the full approval of all, one who will be a teacher of peace is ordained.
V. Hilary's action was very reprehensible throughout, and we have restored Projectus.
But Hilary came upon them unawares and departed no less suddenly, accomplishing many journeys with great speed, as we have ascertained, and traversing distant provinces with such haste that he seems to have coveted a reputation for the swiftness of a courier rather than for the sobriety of a priest [83] . For these are the words of the citizens in the letter that has been addressed to us:--"He departed before we knew he had come." This is not to return but to flee, not to exercise a shepherd's wholesome care, but to employ the violence of a thief and a robber, as saith the Lord: "he that entereth not by the door into the sheep-fold [84] , but climbeth up some other way, is a thief and a robber." Hilary, therefore, was anxious not so much to consecrate a bishop as to kill him who was sick, and to mislead the man whom he set over his head by wrongful ordination. We, however, have done what, as God is our Judge, we believe you will approve: after holding counsel with all the brethren we have decreed that the wrongfully ordained man should be deposed and the Bishop Projectus abide in his priesthood: with the further provision that when any of our brethren in whatsoever province shall decease, he who has been agreed upon to be metropolitan of that province shall claim for himself the ordination of his successor.
These two matters, as we see, have been settled, though there are many other points in them which seem to have violated the principles of the Church, and ought to be visited with just censure and judgment. But we cannot linger on them any further, for we are called off to other matters on which we must carefully confer with you, holy brethren.
VI. Hilary's practice of using armed violence must be suppressed.
A band of soldiers, as we have learnt, follows the priest through the provinces and helps him who relies upon their armed support in turbulently invading churches, which have lost their own priests. Before this court [85] are dragged for ordination men who are quite unknown to the cities over which they are to be set. For as one who is well known and approved is sought out in peace, so must one who is unknown, when brought forward, be established by violence. I beg and entreat and beseech you in God's name prevent such things, brethren, and remove all occasion for discord from your provinces. At all events we acquit ourselves before God in beseeching you not to allow this to proceed further. In peace and quietness should they be asked for who are to be priests. The consent of the clergy, the testimony of those held in honour, the approval of the orders and the laity should be required [86] . He who is to govern all, should be chosen by all [87] . As we said before, each metropolitan should keep in his own hands the ordinations that occur in his own province, acting in concert with those who precede the rest in seniority of priesthood, a privilege restored to him through us. No man should claim for himself another's rights. Each should keep within his own limits and boundaries, and should understand that he cannot pass on to another a privilege that belongs to himself. But if any one neglecting the Apostle's prohibitions and paying too much heed to personal favour, wishes to give up his precedence, thinking he can pass his rights on to another, not he to whom he has yielded, but he who ranks before the rest of the priests within the province in episcopal seniority, should claim to himself the power of ordaining. The ordination should be performed not at random but on the proper day: and it should be known that any one who has not been ordained on the evening of Saturday, which precedes the dawn of the first day of the week [88] , or actually on the Lord's day cannot be sure of his status. For our forefathers judged the day of the Lord's resurrection [89] as alone worthy of the honour of being the occasion on which those who are to be made priests are given to God.
VII. Hilary is deposed not only from his usurped jurisdiction, but also from what of right belongs to him, and is restricted to his own single bishopric.
Let each province be content with its own councils, and let not Hilary dare to summon synodal meetings besides, and by his interference disturb the judgments of the Lord's priests. And let him know that he is not only deposed from another's rights, but also deprived of his power over the province of Vienne which he had wrongfully assumed. For it is but fair, brethren, that the ordinances of antiquity should be restored, seeing that he who claimed for himself the ordinations of a province for which he was not responsible, has been shown in a similar way in the present case also to have acted so that, as he has on more than one occasion brought on himself sentence of condemnation by his rash and insolent words, he may now be kept by our command in accordance with the clemency of the Apostolic See [90] to the priesthood of his own city alone. He is not to be present then at any ordination: he is not to ordain because, conscious of his deserts, when he was required to answer for his action, he trusted to make good his escape by disgraceful flight, and has put himself out of Apostolic communion, of which he did not deserve to be a partaker [91] : and we believe this was by God's providence, who brought him to our court, though we did not expect him, and caused him to retire by stealth in the midst of holding the inquiry, that he should not be a partner in our communion [92] .
VIII. Excommunication should be inflicted only on those who are guilty of some great crime, and even then not hastily.
No Christian should lightly be denied communion [93] , nor should that be done at the will of an angry priest which the judge's mind ought to a certain extent unwillingly and regretfully to carry out for the punishment of a great crime. For we have ascertained that some have been cut off from the grace of communion for trivial deeds and words, and that the soul for which Christ's blood was shed has been exposed to the devil's attacks and wounded, disarmed, so to say, and stript of all defence by the infliction of so savage a punishment as to fall an easy prey to him. Of course if ever a case has arisen of such a kind as in due proportion to the nature of the crime committed to deprive a man of communion, he only who is involved in the accusation must be subjected to punishment: and he who is not shown to be a partner in its commission ought not to share in the penalty. But what wonder that one who is wont to exult over the condemnation of priests, should show himself in the same light towards laymen.
IX. Leontius is appointed in Hilary's room.
Wherefore, because our desire seems very different to this (for we are anxious that the settled state of all the Churches and the harmony of the priests should be maintained,) exhorting you to unity in the bond of love, we both entreat, and consistently with our affection admonish you, in the interests of your peace and dignity, to keep what has been decreed by us at the inspiration of God and the most blessed Apostle Peter, after sifting and testing all the matters at issue, being assured that what we are known to have decided in this way is not so much to our own advantage as to yours. For we are not keeping in our own hands the ordinations of your provinces, as perhaps Hilary, with his usual untruthfulness, may suggest in order to mislead your minds, holy brethren: but in our anxiety we are claiming for you that no further innovations should be allowed, and that for the future no opportunity should be given for the usurper to infringe your privileges. For we acknowledge that it can only redound to our credit, if the diligence of the Apostolic See be kept unimpaired among you, and if in our maintenance of Apostolic discipline we do not allow what belongs to your position to fall to the ground through unscrupulous aggressions. And since seniority is always to be respected, we wish Leontius [94] , our brother and fellow-bishop, a priest well approved among you, to be promoted to this dignity, if it please you that without his consent no further council be summoned by you, holy brethren, and that he may be honoured by you all as his age and good fame demands, the metropolitans being secured in their own dignity and rights. For it is but fair, and no injury seems to accrue to any of the brethren, if those who come first in seniority of the priesthood should, as their age deserves, have deference paid to them by the rest of the priests in their own provinces. God keep you safe, beloved brethren. __________________________________________________________________
[64] Cf. Introduction p. vi.
[65] Per Apostolicam tubam in salutem universitatis (Gk. tes oikoumenes) exiret, cf. Letter IX. Chap. ii. apostoli a Domino prædicandi omnibus gentibus evangelii tubam sumunt.
[66] Ps. xix. 4.
[67] Huius muneris sacramentum, his mind is running forward to his favourite sacramentum, that of Peter as the rock-man of the Church.
[68] Cf. Letter XXVIII. chap. v. a principali petra (B. Petrus), soliditatem et virtutis traxit et nominis, etc.: also Cyprian de unit. eccl. chapt. iv.
[69] S. Matt. xvi. 18.
[70] Eph. iv. 3.
[71] Phil. ii. 21.
[72] Cui cum præ (Quesnel conj. pro) cæteris solvendi et ligandi tradita sit potestas, pascendarum tamen ovium cura specialius mandata est. Cf. S. John xxi. 15-17.
[73] Celidonius was probably either bishop of Vienne or of Vesontis (Besançon): see Perthel, p. 25.
[74] Quesnel well refers this phrase to 1 Cor. xiv. 25.
[75] Cf. Letter IV. chap. iii.
[76] Servantes legalia constituta, these are taken to be not so much the canons of the Church as the provisions of the Mosaic Law, e.g. Lev. xxi. 14; Ezek. xliv. 22.
[77] Militiam (lit. military service).
[78] Projectus was perhaps a bishop of the province of Gallia Narbonensis I.: Perthel, p. 27.
[79] Quod Projecto episcopo suo ægrotare liberum non fuisset, eiusque sacerdotium in alium præter suam notitiam esse translatum, et tamquam in vacuam possessionem ab Hilario pervasore hæredem viventis inductum. The construction is changed from quod....fuisset, to the ordinary accus. and infin.
[80] Patroclus had been Bishop of Arles circ. 416, and the then Bishop of Rome, Zosimus, had granted him metropolitan rights over the provinces of S.E. Gaul, which did not gain the acceptance of the other chief bishops in the district, and Boniface I. (Ep. 12), in 422, seems to have withdrawn the rights granted by Zosimus (Schaff, I, p. 297).
[81] Civium: populorum. The former are apparently called lower down fidelium, and the latter, qui foris sunt.
[82] 1 Tim. iii. 7.
[83] Gloriam de scurrili velocitate potius quam de sacerdotali moderatione captasse.
[84] In cortem ovium: the low Latin word (cors) is in the Vulgate changed to ovile.
[85] Ante hoc officium.
[86] Cf. Cypr. Ep. lv. cap. vii., factus est Cornelius episcopus de Dei et Christi eius iudicio, de clericorum pæne omnium testimonio, de plebis, quæ tunc adfuit, suffragio et sacerdotum antiquorum et bonorum virorum collegio.
[87] Quesnel appositely quotes Pliny (Paneg. Traiani) imperaturus omnibus eligi debet ex omnibus.
[88] Quod lucescit in prima sabbati; the phrase is repeated from Letter IX., chap. ii., to which refer to the whole passage.
[89] Viz., Sunday.
[90] Pro apostolicæ sedis pietate, or "as loyalty to the Apostolic See demands."
[91] This does not mean that Hilary is excommunicated, but that he is to have no share in episcopal privileges as a successor of the apostles.
[92] These words of course refer to Hilary's journey on foot to Rome, and his subsequent escape from something very much like prison: see Introduction, p. vi.: for his degradation, cf. Letter XII., chap. ix., where a similar punishment is enacted.
[93] Here, no doubt, excommunication pure and simple is meant. Cf. note 4, supr.
[94] Leontius seems to have had little but his age to recommend him for this promotion: the name of his bishopric is unknown, and the weakness of the appointment may, I think, be gathered from Leo's insisting so strongly on the principle of seniority both here and in chap vi. above. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XI.
An Ordinance of Valentinianus III.
(Confirming Leo's sentence upon Hilary.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter XII.
Leo, bishop of the city of Rome, to all the bishops of Mauritania Cæsariensis in Africa, greeting the Lord.
I. The disorderly appointments of bishops which have been made in the province are reprehensible.
Inasmuch as the frequent accounts of those who visited us made mention of certain unlawful practices among you with regard to the ordination of priests, the demands of religion required that we should strive to arrive at the exact state of the case in accordance with that solicitude which by the Divine command we bestow on the whole Church: and so we delegated the charge of this to our brother and fellow-priest, Potentius, who was setting out from us: and who, according to what we wrote and addressed to you by him, was to make inquiry as to the facts about the bishops whose election was said to be faulty, and to report everything faithfully to us. Wherefore, because the same Potentius has most fully disclosed all to our knowledge, and has by his truthful account made clear to us, under what and what manner of governors some of Christ's congregations are placed in certain parts of the province of (Mauritania) Cæsariensis, we have found it necessary to open out the grief wherewith our hearts are vexed for the dangers of the Lord's flocks, by sending this letter also to you beloved: for we are surprised that either the over-bearing conduct of intriguers or the rioting of the people had so much weight with you in a time of disorder, that the chief pastorate and governance of the Church was handed over to the unworthiest persons, and such as were farthest removed from the priestly standard. This is not to consult but harm the peoples' interests: and not to enforce discipline but to increase differences. For the integrity of the rulers is the safeguard of those who are under them: and where there is complete obedience, there the form of doctrine is sound. But an appointment which has either been made by sedition or seized by intrigue, even though it offend not in morals or in practice, is nevertheless pernicious from the mere example of its beginning: and it is hard for things to be carried to a good issue which were started with a bad beginning.
II. In no case ought bishops to be ordained hastily.
But if in every grade of the Church great forethought and knowledge has to be employed, lest there be any thing disorderly or out of place [95] in the house of the Lord: how much more carefully must we strive to prevent mistakes in the election of him who is set over all the grades? For the peace and order of the Lord's whole household will be shaken, if what is required in the body be not found in the head. Where is that precept of the blessed Apostle Paul uttered through the Spirit of God, whereby in the person of Timothy the whole number of Christ's priests are instructed, and to each one of us is said: "Lay hands hastily on no one, and do not share in other men's sins [96] ?" What is to lay on hands hastily but to confer the priestly dignity on unproved men before the proper age [97] , before there has been time to test them, before they have deserved it by their obedience, before they have been tried by discipline? And what is to share in other men's sins but for the ordainer to become such as is he who ought not to have been ordained by him? For just as a man stores up for himself the fruit of his good work, if he maintains a right judgment in choosing a priest: so one who receives an unworthy priest into the number of his colleagues, inflicts grievous loss upon himself. We must not then pass over in the case of any one that which is laid down in the general ordinances: nor is that advancement to be reckoned lawful which has been made contrary to the precepts of God's law.
III. The Apostolic precept about the marriage of the clergy based upon the marriage of Christ with the Church of which it is a figure.
For as the Apostle says that among other rules for election he shall be ordained bishop who is known to have been or to be "the husband of one wife," this command was always held so sacred that the same condition was understood as necessary to be observed even in the wife [98] of the priest-elect: lest she should happen to have been married to another man before she entered into wedlock with him, even though he himself had had no other wife. Who then would dare to allow this injury to be perpetrated upon so great a sacrament [99] , seeing that this great and venerable mystery is not without the support of the statutes of God's law as well, whereby it is clearly laid down that a priest is to marry a virgin, and that she who is to be the wife of a priest [100] is not to know another husband? For even then in the priests was prefigured the Spiritual marriage of Christ and His Church: so that since "the man is the head of the woman [101] ," the spouse of the Word may learn to know no other man but Christ, who did rightly choose her only, loves her only, and takes none but her into His alliance. If then even in the Old Testament this kind of marriage among priests is adhered to, how much more ought we who are placed under the grace of the Gospel to conform to the Apostle's precepts: so that though a man be found endowed with good character, and furnished with holy works, he may nevertheless in no wise ascend either to the grade of deacon, or the dignity of the presbytery, or to the highest rank of the bishopric, if it has been spread abroad either that he himself is not the husband of one wife, or that his wife is not the wife of one husband.
IV. Premature promotions are to be avoided.
But when the Apostle warns and says: "and let these also first be proved, and so let them minister [102] ," what else do we think must be understood but that in these promotions we should consider not only the chastity of their marriages, but also the deserts of their labours, lest the pastoral office be entrusted to men who are either fresh from baptism, or suddenly diverted from worldly pursuits? for through all the ranks of the Christian army in the matter of promotions it ought to be considered whether a man can manage a greater charge. Rightly did the venerable opinions of the blessed Fathers in speaking of the election of priests reckon those men fit for the administration of sacred things who had been slowly advanced through the various grades of office, and had given such good proof of themselves therein that in each one of them the character of their practices bore witness to their lives [103] . For if it is improper to attain to the world's dignities without the help of time and without the merit of having toiled, and if the seeking of office is branded unless it be supported by proofs of uprightness, how diligently and how carefully ought the dispensing of divine duties and heavenly dignities to be carried out, lest in aught the apostolic and canonical decrees be violated, and the ruling of the Lord's Church be committed to men who being ignorant of the lawful constitutions and devoid of all humility wish not to rise from the lowest grade, but to begin with the highest: for it is extremely unfair and preposterous that the inexpert should be preferred to the expert, the young to the old, the raw recruits to those who have seen much service. In a great house, indeed, as the Apostle explains [104] , there must needs be divers vessels, some of gold and of silver, and some of wood and of earth: but their purpose varies with the quality of their material, and the use of the precious and of the cheap kinds is not the same. For everything will be in disorder if the earthen ware be preferred to the golden, or the wooden to the silver. And as the wooden or earthen vessels are a figure of those men who are hitherto conspicuous for no virtues; so in the golden or silver vessels they no doubt are represented who, having passed through the fire of long experience, and through the furnace of protracted toil have deserved to be tried gold and pure silver. And if such men get no reward for their devotion, all the discipline of the Church is loosened, all order is disturbed, while men who have undergone no service obtain undeserved preferment by the wrongful choice of the electing body.
V. He distinguishes between laymen who have been raised to the bishoprics and digamous clerks, forgiving the former and not the latter.
Since then either the eager wishes of the people or the intrigues of the ambitious have had so much weight among you that we understand not only laymen, but even husbands of second wives or widows have been promoted to the pastoral office, are there not the clearest reasons for requiring that the churches in which such things have been done should be cleansed by a severer judgment than usual, and that not only the rulers themselves, but also those who ordained them should receive condign punishment? But there stand on our one hand the gentleness of mercy, on our other the strictness of justice. And because "all the paths of the Lord are loving-kindness and truth [105] ," we are forced according to our loyalty to the Apostolic See so to moderate our opinion as to weigh men's misdeeds in the balance (for of course they are not all of one measure), and to reckon some as to a certain extent [106] pardonable, but others as altogether to be repressed. For they who have either entered into second marriages or joined themselves in wedlock with widows are not allowed to hold the priesthood, either by the apostolic or legal authority: and much more is this the case with him who, as it was reported to us, is the husband of two wives at once, or him who being divorced by his wife is said to have married another, that is, supposing these charges are in your judgment proved. But the rest, whose preferment only so far incurs blame that they have been chosen to the episcopal function from among the laity, and are not culpable in the matter of their wives, we allow to retain the priesthood upon which they have entered, without prejudice to the statutes of the Apostolic See, and without breaking the rules of the blessed Fathers, whose wholesome ordinance it is that no layman, whatever amount of support he may receive, shall ascend to the first, second, or third rank in the Church until he reach that position by the legitimate steps [107] . For what we now suffer to be to a certain extent [108] venial, cannot hereafter pass unpunished, if any one perpetrates what we altogether forbid: because the forgiveness of a sin does not grant a licence to do wrong, nor will it be right to repeat an offence with impunity which has partly [109] been condoned.
VI. Donatus, a converted Novatian, and Maximus, an ex-Donatist, are retained in their episcopal office.
Donatus of Salacia, who, as we learn, has been converted from the Novatians [110] with his people, we wish to preside over the Lord's flock, on condition that he remembers he must send a certificate of his faith to us, in which he not only condemns the error of the Novatian dogma, but also unreservedly confesses the catholic truth. Maximus, also, although he was culpably ordained when a layman, yet if he is now no longer a Donatist, and has abjured the spirit of schismatic depravity, we do not depose from his episcopal dignity, which he has obtained irregularly, on condition that he declare himself a catholic by drawing up a certificate for us.
VII. The case of Aggarus and Tyberianus (ordained with tumult) is referred to the bishops.
But concerning Aggarus and Tyberianus, whose case is different from the others who were ordained from among the laity, in this that their ordination is reported to have been accompanied by fierce riots and savage disturbances, we have entrusted the whole matter to your judgment, that relying upon your investigation of the case, we may know what to decide about them.
VIII. Maidens who have suffered violence are not to compare themselves with others.
Those handmaids of God who have lost their chastity by the violence of barbarians, will be more praiseworthy in their humility and shame-fastness, if they do not venture to compare themselves to undefiled virgins. For although every sin springs from the desire, and the will may have remained unconquered and unpolluted by the fall of the flesh, still this will be less to their detriment, if they grieve over losing even in the body what they did not lose in spirit.
IX. These injunctions to be carried out without contentiousness.
And so now that you see yourselves, beloved, fully instructed through David, our brother and fellow-bishop, who is approved to us both by his personal character and his priestly worth, on [nearly] [111] all the points which our brother Potentius' account contained, it remains, brothers, that you receive our healthful exhortations harmoniously, and that doing nothing in rivalry, but acting unanimously with entire devotion and zeal, you obey the constitution of God and His Apostles, and in nothing suffer the well-considered decrees of the canons to be violated. For what we from the consideration of certain reasons have now relaxed must henceforward be guarded by the ancient rules, lest, what we have on this occasion with merciful lenity conceded, we may hereafter have to visit with condign punishment [112] , acting with special and direct vigour against those who in ordaining bishops have neglected the statutes of the holy fathers, and have consecrated men whom they ought to have rejected. Wherefore if any bishops have consecrated such an one priest as ought not to be, even though in some measure they have escaped any loss of their personal dignity, yet they shall have no further right of ordination, nor shall ever be present at that sacrament which, neglecting the judgment of God, they have improperly conferred.
X. The appointment of bishops over too small places is inexpedient and must be discontinued.
That of course which pertains to the priestly dignity we wish to be observed in common with all the statutes of the canons, viz., that bishops be not consecrated in any place nor in any hamlet [113] , nor where they have not been consecrated before; for where the flocks are small and the congregations small, the care of the presbyters may suffice, whereas the episcopal authority ought to preside only over larger flocks and more crowded cities, lest contrary to the divinely-inspired decrees of the holy Fathers the priestly office be assigned over villages and rural estates [114] or obscure and thinly-populated townships, and the position of honour, to which only the more important charges should be given, be held cheap from the very number of these that hold it. And this bishop Restitutus has reported to have been done in his own diocese, and he has with good reason requested that when the bishops of those places where they ought not to have been ordained die in the natural course, the places themselves should revert to the jurisdiction of the same prelate to whom they formerly belonged and were attached. It is indeed useless for the priestly dignity to be diminished by the superfluous multiplications of the office through the inconsiderate complaisance of the ordainer.
XI. Virgins violated against their will are to be treated as somewhat different to the others, but not to be denied Communion.
Now concerning those who, having made a holy vow of virginity [as we said above, chap. viii.], have suffered the violence of barbarians, and have lost their spotless purity not in spirit but in body, we consider such mode ration ought to be observed that they should be neither degraded to the rank of widows [115] nor yet reckoned in the number of holy and undefiled virgins: yet, if they persevere in the virgin life, and in heart and mind guard the reality of chastity, participation in the sacraments is not to be denied them, because it is unfair that they should be accused or branded for what their wishes did not surrender, but was stolen by the violence of foes.
XII. The care of Lupicinus is in part dealt with and in part referred to them.
The case also of bishop Lupicinus [116] we order to be heard there, but at his urgent and frequent entreaties we have restored him to communion for this reason, that, as he had appealed to our judgment, we saw that while the matter was pending he had been undeservedly suspended from communion. Moreover there is this also in addition, that it was clearly rash to ordain one over his head who ought not to have been ordained until Lupicinus, having been placed before you or convicted, or having at least confessed, had opportunity to submit to a just sentence, so that, according to the requirements of ecclesiastical discipline, he who was consecrated might receive his vacant place.
XIII. All disputes to be dealt with on the spot first and then referred to the Apostolic See.
But whenever other cases arise which concern the state of the Church and the harmony of priests, we wish them to be first sifted by yourselves in the fear of the Lord, and a full account of all matters settled or needing settlement sent to us, that those things which have been properly and reasonably decided, according to the usage of the Church, may receive our corroborative sanction also. Dated 10th August. __________________________________________________________________
[95] Nihil sit inordinatum nihilque præposterum: the two words are well chosen (as usual), and bearing a distinct meaning: the former expressing "disorder" in the sense of want of the divine commission, the latter "disorder" in the sense of choosing the younger over the old, the inferior over the superior, &c.; the same two epithets occur in Lett. XIX., chap. i.
[96] 1 Tim. v. 22.
[97] Ante ætatem maturitatis. The Council of Carthage (a.d. 397), c. 4, fixed the downward limit for deacons at 25, and for priests at 30: and we may presume that that was the general rule in Leo's time, for we find the same ages ordained afterwards in the Novellæ of Justinian (535-565) and elsewhere.
[98] Cf. Letter IV., chap ii., and elsewhere.
[99] No one will by this time be surprised to find Leo calling Sacred Orders either a sacramentum, as here, or mysterium, as in the next sentence: the two terms are indeed in his usage almost equivalents.
[100] Lev. xxi. 13.
[101] Eph. v. 23.
[102] 1 Tim. iii. 10.
[103] The shorter edition of this letter, which is extent, gives this sentence in a very different form: the qualifications are much more exactly defined, e.g., bishops are to have spent their lives in orders a puerilibus exordiis usque ad provectiores annos. I think Quesnel is right in considering this a later version and alteration the better to inculcate the usage of the Church. For although no doubt people were often mere boys [Readers (lectores) for instance: see Bright's note 46] when they entered minor orders, yet the fact that one was an adult layman before taking orders could not ipso facto have precluded a man from becoming bishop, however desirable the rule and general principle might be: in fact Cyprian at least is evidence to the contrary.
[104] Sc. 2 Tim. ii. 20.
[105] Ps. xxv. 10.
[106] Utcumque.
[107] Per legitama augmenta, cf. n. 7 above. This passage makes it clear what is there required is not the puerilia exordia of the shorter edition of this letter, but the multum tempus of this longer edition.
[108] Utcumque again.
[109] Aliqua ratione.
[110] In the case of these two noted African schisms it is hardly necessary to do more than refer the reader to Smith's or any other standard dictionary.
[111] Fere here added probably to account for the long tail of extraneous or repeated matter tacked on to the letter.
[112] Here the shorter edition of the letter breaks off, and there are certainly difficulties in considering that the long coda or repetitions and fresh matter here attached formed part of the original draft of the letter. Is it possible that two letters (the one later than the other) have been welded into one?
[113] Castellis. Cf. Liv. xxi. chaps. 33, 34, where the word is used of the Alpine villages. In the Vulgate it represents the Gk. kome (e.g. S. Mark vi. 6; S. Luke v. 17.)
[114] Possessionibus.
[115] Cyprian (de hab. Virg.) speaks of women who have lost their virginity by their own fault as viduæ antequam nuptæ, and S. Jerome, using the same expression (Lett. to Eustochius on the preservation of Virginity), implies that they very often dressed like widows (plerasque viduas antequam nuptas infelicem conscientiam mentita tantum veste protegere): this will account for Leo's here providing that these unhappy women are not deiici in viduarum gradum. Ball.
[116] The case of Lupicinus seems somewhat similar to that of Projectus in Lett. X., chap. iv, and was similarly referred to local experts. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XIII.
To the Metropolitan Bishops in the Provinces of Illyricum.
Leo congratulates them on accepting the authority of Anastasius over them (given in Lett. IV.). __________________________________________________________________
Letter XIV.
To Anastasius, Bishop of Thessalonica.
Leo, bishop of the City of Rome, to Anastasius, bishop of Thessalonica.
I. Prefatory.
If with true reasoning you perceived all that has been committed to you, brother, by the blessed apostle Peter's authority, and what has also been entrusted to you by our favour, and would weigh it fairly, we should be able greatly to rejoice at your zealous discharge of the responsibility imposed on you [117] .
II. Anastasius is taxed with exceeding the limits of his vicariate, especially in his violent and unworthy treatment of Atticus.
Seeing that, as my predecessors acted towards yours, so too I, following their example, have delegated my authority to you [118] , beloved: so that you, imitating our gentleness, might assist us in the care which we owe primarily to all the churches by Divine institution, and might to a certain extent make up for our personal presence in visiting those provinces which are far off from us: for it would be easy for you by regular and well-timed inspection to tell what and in what cases you could either, by your own influence, settle or reserve for our judgment. For as it was free for you to suspend the more important matters and the harder issues while you awaited our opinion, there was no reason nor necessity for you to go out of your way to decide what was beyond your powers. For you have numerous written warnings of ours in which we have often instructed you to be temperate in all your actions: that with loving exhortations you might provoke the churches of Christ committed to you to healthy obedience. Because, although as a rule there exist among careless or slothful brethren things which demand a strong hand in rectifying them; yet the correction ought to be so applied as ever to keep love inviolate. Wherefore also it is that the blessed Apostle Paul, in instructing Timothy upon the ruling of the Church, says: "an elder rebuke not, but intreat him as a father: the young men as brethren: old women as mothers: young women as sisters in all purity [119] ." And if this moderation is due by the Apostle's precept to all and any of the lower members, how much more is it to be paid without offence to our brethren and fellow-bishops? in order that although things sometimes happen which have to be reprimanded in the persons of priests, yet kindness may have more effect on those who are to be corrected than severity: exhortation than perturbation: love than power. But they who "seek their own, not the things which are Jesus Christ's [120] ," easily depart from this law, and finding pleasure rather in domineering over their subjects than in consulting their interests, are swoln with the pride of their position, and thus what was provided to secure harmony ministers to mischief. That we are obliged to speak thus causes us no small grief. For I feel myself in a certain measure drawn into blame, on discovering you to have so immoderately departed from the rules handed down to you. If you were careless of your own reputation, you ought at least to have spared my good name: lest what only your own mind prompted should seem done with our approval. Do but read, brother, our pages with care, and peruse all the letters sent by holders of the Apostolic See to your predecessors, and you will find injunctions either from me or from my predecessors on that in which we learn you have presumed.
For there has come to us our brother Atticus, the metropolitan [121] bishop of Old Epirus, with the bishops of his province, and with tearful pleading has complained of the undeserved contumely he has suffered, in the presence of your own deacons who, by giving no contradiction to these woeful complaints, showed that what was impressed upon us did not want for truth. We read also in your letter, which those same deacons of yours brought, that brother Atticus had come to Thessalonica, and that he had also sealed his agreement in a written profession, so that we could not but understand concerning him that it was of his own will and free devotion that he had come, and that he had composed the statement of his promise of obedience, although in the very mention of this statement a sign of injury was betrayed. For it was not necessary that he should be bound in writing, who was already proving his obedience by the very dutifulness of his voluntary coming. Wherefore these words in your letter bore witness to the bewailings of the aforesaid, and through his outspoken account that which had been passed over in silence is laid bare, namely that the Præfecture of Illyricum had been approached, and the most exalted functionary among the potentates of the world [122] had been set in motion to expose an innocent prelate: so that a company was sent to carry out the aweful deed who were to enlist all the public servants in giving effect to their orders, and from the church's holy sanctuary charged with no crime, or at best a false one, was dragged a priest, to whom no truce was granted in consideration of his grievous ill-health or the cruel winter weather: but he was forced to take a journey full of hardships and dangers through the pathless snows. And this was a task of such toil and peril that some of those who accompanied the bishop are said to have succumbed [123] .
I am quite dumb-founded, beloved brother, yea and I am also sore grieved that you brought yourself to be so savagely and violently moved against one about whom you had laid no further information than that when summoned to appear he put off and excused himself on the grounds of illness; especially when, even if he deserved any such treatment, you should have waited till I had replied to your consulting letter. But, as I perceive, you thought too well of my habits, and most truly foresaw how fair-minded [124] an answer I was likely to make to preserve harmony among priests: and therefore you made haste to carry out your movements without concealment, lest when you had received the letter of our forbearance dictating another course, you should have no licence to do that which is done. Or perhaps some crime had reached your ears, and metropolitan [125] bishop that you are, the weight of some new charge pressed you hard? But that this is not consistent with the fact, you yourself make certain by laying nothing against him. Yet even if he had committed some grave and intolerable misdemeanour, you should have waited for our opinion: so as to arrive at no decision by yourself until you knew our pleasure. For we made you our deputy, beloved, on the understanding that you were engaged to share our responsibility, not to take plenary powers on yourself. Wherefore as what you bestow a pious care on delights us much, so your wrongful acts grieve us sorely. And after experience in many cases we must show greater foresight, and use more diligent precaution: to the end that through the spirit of love and peace all matter of offence may be removed from the Lord's churches, which we have commended to you: the pre-eminence of your bishopric being retained in the provinces, but all your usurping excesses being shorn off.
III. The rights of the metropolitans under the vicariate of Anastasius are to be observed.
Therefore according to the canons of the holy Fathers, which are framed by the spirit of God and hollowed by the whole world's reverence, we decree that the metropolitan bishops of each province over which your care, brother, extends by our delegacy, shall keep untouched the rights of their position which have been handed down to them from olden times: but on condition that they do not depart from the existing regulations by any carelessness or arrogance.
IV. The negative qualifications of a bishop determined.
In cities whose governors [126] have died let this form be observed in filling up their place: he, who is to be ordained, even though his good life be not attested, shall be not a layman, not a neophyte, nor yet the husband of a second wife, or one who, though he has or has had but one, married a widow. For the choosing of priests is of such surpassing importance that things which in other members of the Church are not blame-worthy, are yet held unlawful in them.
V. Continence is required even in sub-deacons.
For although they who are not within the ranks of the clergy are free to take pleasure in the companionship of wedlock and the procreation of children, yet for the exhibiting of the purity of complete continence, even sub-deacons are not allowed carnal marriage: that "both those that have, may be as though they had not [127] ," and those who have not, may remain single. But if in this order, which is the fourth from the Head [128] , this is worthy to be observed, how much more is it to be kept in the first, or second, or third, lest any one be reckoned fit for either the deacon's duties or the presbyter's honourable position, or the bishop's pre-eminence, who is discovered not yet to have bridled his uxorious desires.
VI. The election of a bishop must proceed by the wishes of the clergy and people.
When therefore the choice of the chief priest is taken in hand, let him be preferred before all whom the unanimous consent of clergy and people demands, but if the votes chance to be divided between two persons, the judgment of the metropolitan should prefer him who is supported by the preponderance of votes and merits: only let no one be ordained against the express wishes of the place: lest a city should either despise or hate a bishop whom they did not choose, and lamentably fall away from religion because they have not been allowed to have whom they wished.
VII. Metropolitans are to refer to their Vicar: the mode of electing metropolitans is laid down.
However the metropolitan bishop should refer to you, brother, about the person to be consecrated bishop, and about the consent of the clergy and people: and he should acquaint you with the wishes of the province: that the due celebration of the ordination may be strengthened by your authority also. But to right selections it will be your duty to cause no delay or hindrance, lest the Lord's flocks should remain too long with their shepherd's care.
Moreover when a metropolitan is defunct and another has to be elected in to his place, the bishops of the province must meet together in the metropolitical city: that after the wishes of all the clerics and all the citizens have been sifted, the best man may be chosen from the presbyters of that same church or from the deacons, and you are to be informed of his name by the priests of the province, who will carry out the wishes of his supporters on ascertaining that you agree with their choice [129] . For whilst we desire proper elections to be hampered by no delays, we yet allow nothing to be done presumptuously without your knowledge.
VIII. Bishops are to hold provincial councils twice a year.
Concerning councils of bishops we give no other instructions than those laid down for the Church's health by the holy Fathers [130] : to wit that two meetings should be held a year, in which judgment should be passed upon all the complaints which are wont to arise between the various ranks of the Church. But if perchance among the rulers themselves a cause arise (which God forbid) concerning one of the greater sins, such as cannot be decided by a provincial trial, the metropolitan shall take care to inform you, brother, concerning the nature of the whole matter, and if, after both parties have come before you, the thing be not set at rest even by your judgment, whatever it be, let it be transferred to our jurisdiction.
IX. Translation from one see to another is to be prohibited.
If any bishop, despising the insignificance of his city, shall intrigue for the government of a more populous place, and transfer himself by whatever means to a larger flock, he shall first be driven from the chair he has usurped, and also shall be deprived of his own: so shall he preside neither over those whom in his greed he coveted, nor over those whom in his arrogance he spurned. Therefore let each be content with his own bounds, and not seek to be raised above the limits of his present post.
X. Bishops are not to entice or receive the clergy of another diocese.
A cleric from another diocese let no (bishop) accept or invite against the wishes of his own bishop: but only when giver and receiver agree together thereupon by friendly compact. For a man is guilty of a serious injury who ventures either to entice or withhold from a brother's church that which is of great use or high value. And so, if such a thing happen within the province, the metropolitan shall force the deserting cleric to return to his church: but if he has withdrawn himself still further off, he shall be recalled by your authoritative command: so that no occasion be left for either desire of gain or intrigue.
XI. When the Vicar shall require a meeting of bishops, two from each province will be sufficient.
In summoning bishops to your presence, we wish you to show great forbearance: lest under a show of much diligence you seem to exult in your brethren's injuries. Wherefore if any greater case arise for which it is reasonable and necessary to convene a meeting of brethren, it may suffice, brother, that two bishops should attend from each province, whom the metropolitans shall think proper to be sent, on the understanding that those who answer the summons be not detained longer than fifteen days from the time fixed.
XII. In case of difference of opinion between the Vicar and the bishops, the bishop of Rome must be consulted. The subordination of authorities in the Church expounded.
But if in that which you believed necessary to be discussed and settled with the brethren, their opinion differs from your own wishes, let all be referred to us, with the minutes of your proceedings attested, that all ambiguities may be removed, and what is pleasing to God decided. For to this end we direct all our desires and pains, that what conduces to our harmonious unity and to the protection of discipline may be marred by no dissension and neglected by no slothfulness. Therefore, dearly beloved brother, you and those our brethren who are offended at your extravagant conduct (though the matter of complaint is not the same with all), we exhort and warn not to disturb by any wrangling what has been rightfully ordained and wisely settled. Let none "seek what is his own, but what is another's," as the Apostle says: "Let each one of you please his neighbour for his good unto edifying [131] ." For the cementing of our unity cannot be firm unless we be bound by the bond of love into an inseparable solidity: because "as in one body we have many members, but all the members have not the same office; so we being many are one body in Christ, and all of us members one of another [132] ." The connexion of the whole body makes all alike healthy, all alike beautiful: and this connexion requires the unanimity indeed of the whole body, but it especially demands harmony among the priests. And though they have a common dignity, yet they have not uniform rank; inasmuch as even among the blessed Apostles, notwithstanding the similarity of their honourable estate, there was a certain distinction of power, and while the election of them all was equal, yet it was given to one [133] to take the lead of the rest. From which model has arisen a distinction between bishops also, and by an important ordinance it has been provided [134] that every one should not claim everything for himself: but that there should be in each province one whose opinion should have the priority among the brethren: and again that certain whose appointment is in the greater cities should undertake a fuller responsibility, through whom the care of the universal Church should converge towards Peter's one seat, and nothing anywhere should be separated from its Head. Let not him then who knows he has been set over certain others take it ill that some one has been set over him, but let him himself render the obedience which he demands of them: and as he does not wish to bear a heavy load of baggage, so let him not dare to place on another's shoulders a weight that is insupportable. For we are disciples of the humble and gentle Master who says: "Learn of Me, for I am gentle and humble of heart, and ye shall find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden light [135] ." And how shall we experience this, unless this too comes to our remembrance which the same Lord says: "He that is greater among you, shall be your servant. But he that exalteth himself, shall be humbled: and he that humbleth himself, shall be exalted [136] ." __________________________________________________________________
[117] De iniunctæ tibi sollicitudinis devotione (an obscure expression).
[118] See Letter IV., where it will be remembered the appointment of Anastasius, as Vicar of Illyricum, was made.
[119] 1 Tim. v. 1, 2.
[120] Phil. ii. 21.
[121] Some for metropolitanus here read Nicopolitanus, Bishop of Nicopolis, the metropolitan see of old Epirus. Quesnel.
[122] The language is, I think, intentionally exaggerated and high-flown: parturiunt montes nascetur ridiculus mus.
[123] Anastasius seems to have arraigned Atticus before the civil court of the Prefect of Illyricum: he sent his apparitors, who violently dragged him out of the church, and brought him in midwinter across country to be tried.
[124] The word is civilia, in which Brissonius thinks he sees an allusion either to the opposition between civil law and prætor's law (to which Anastasius had appealed), or else to the technical meaning of the word in jurisprudence as equivalent to Legitimate' or fair'. The latter is more likely.
[125] Quesnel here accepts Nicopolitanum instead of metropolitanum (see n. 7 above), but with little reason.
[126] Rectores.
[127] 1 Cor. vii. 29. A reference to this passage will show that S. Paul does not limit himself to the clergy in what he says: for an interesting note on the text (written, of course, from the Roman standpoint), the reader is referred to Hurter's edition in loc., who adduces some valuable illustrations from Epiphanius, Jerome, &c.
[128] Quartus a Capite, i.e. from Jesus Christ, the Head of the Church, or perhaps from the Bishop of Rome, His soi-disant representative on earth (cf. chap. xii, below).
[129] This method of electing the metropolitan will at once strike the reader: the electors apparently are (1) the bishops of the province (who are not eligible for the office); (2) the clergy of the diocese (who alone are eligible); and (3) the laity of the diocese. Only if one remembers how limited each diocese was in extent, can one realise the working of the method.
[130] The Council of Nicæa (325) fixed two councils a year, one ante quadragesimam Paschæ (i.e. before Eastertide), the other circa tempus autumni.
[131] Phil. ii. 4, and Rom. xv. 2.
[132] 1 Cor. xii. 12, &c.: the quotation is loose, cf. Rom. xii. 5.
[133] Viz., S. Peter.
[134] Magna ordinatione provisum est.
[135] S. Matt. xi. 29, 30.
[136] Ibid. xxiii. 11, 12. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XV.
To Turribius, Bishop of Asturia [137] , upon the errors of the Priscillianists.
Leo, bishop, to Turribius, bishop, greeting.
I. Introductory.
Your laudable zeal for the truth of the catholic Faith, and the painstaking devotion you expend in the exercise of your pastoral office upon the Lord's flock is proved by your letter, brother, which your deacon has handed to us, in which you have taken care to bring to our knowledge the nature of the disease which has burst forth in your district from the remnants of an ancient plague. For the language of your letter, and your detailed statement, and the text of your pamphlet [138] , explains clearly that the filthy puddle of the Priscillianists again teems with life amongst you [139] . For there is no dirt which has not flowed into this dogma from the notions of all sorts of heretics: since they have scraped together the motley dregs from the mire of earthly opinions and made for themselves a mixture [140] which they alone may swallow whole, though others have tasted little portions of it.
In fact, if all the heresies which have arisen before the time of Priscillian were to be studied carefully, hardly any mistake will be discovered with which this impiety has not been infected: for not satisfied with accepting the falsehoods of those who have departed from the Gospel under the name of Christ, it has plunged itself also in the shades of heathendom, so as to rest their religious faith and their moral conduct upon the power of demons and the influences of the stars through the blasphemous secrets of the magic arts and the empty lies of astrologers. But if this may be believed and taught, no reward will be due for virtues, no punishment for faults, and all the injunctions not only of human laws but also of the Divine constitutions will be broken down: because there will be no criterion of good or bad actions possible, if a fatal necessity drives the impulses of the mind to either side, and all that men do is through the agency not of men but of stars. To this madness belongs that monstrous division of the whole human body among the twelve signs of the zodiac, so that each part is ruled by a different power: and the creature, whom God made in His own image, is as much under the domination of the stars as his limbs are connected one with the other. Rightly then our fathers, in whose times this abominable heresy sprung up, promptly pursued it throughout the world, that the blasphemous error might everywhere be driven from the Church: for even the leaders of the world so abhorred this profane folly that they laid low its originator, with most of his disciples, by the sword of the public laws. For they saw that all desire for honourable conduct was removed, all marriage-ties undone, and the Divine and the human law simultaneously undermined, if it were allowed for men of this kind to live anywhere under such a creed. And this rigourous treatment was for long a help to the Church's law of gentleness which, although it relies upon the priestly judgment, and shuns blood-stained vengeance, yet is assisted by the stern decrees of Christian princes at times when men, who dread bodily punishment, have recourse to merely spiritual correction. But since many provinces have been taken up with the invasions of the enemy [141] , the carrying out of the laws also has been suspended by these stormy wars. And since intercourse came to be difficult among God's priests and meetings rare, secret treachery was free to act through the general disorder, and was roused to the upsetting of many minds by those very ills which ought to have counteracted it. But which of the peoples and how many of them are free from the contagion of this plague in a district where, as you point out, dear brother, the minds even of certain priests have sickened of this deadly disease: and they who were believed the necessary quellers of falsehood and champions of the Truth are the very ones through whom the Gospel of God is enthralled to the teaching of Priscillian: so that the fidelity of the holy volumes being distorted to profane meanings, under the names of prophets and apostles, is proclaimed not that which the Holy Spirit has taught, but what the devil's servant has inserted. Therefore as you, beloved, with all the faithful diligence in your power, have dealt under 16 heads with these already condemned opinions [142] , we also subject them once more to a strict examination; lest any of these blasphemies should be thought either bearable or doubtful.
II. (1) The Priscillianists' denial of the Trinity refuted.
And so under the first head is shown what unholy views they hold about the Divine Trinity: they affirm that the person of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost is one and the same, as if the same God were named now Father, now Son, and now Holy Ghost: and as if He who begot were not one, He who was begotten, another, and He who proceeded from both, yet another; but an undivided unity must be understood, spoken of under three names, indeed, but not consisting of three persons. This species of blasphemy they borrowed from Sabellius, whose followers were rightly called Patripassians also: because if the Son is identical with the Father, the Son's cross is the Father's passion (patris-passio): and the Father took on Himself all that the Son took in the form of a slave, and in obedience to the Father. Which without doubt is contrary to the catholic faith, which acknowledges the Trinity of the Godhead to be of one essence (homoousion) in such a way that it believes the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost indivisible without confusion, eternal without time, equal without difference: because it is not the same person but the same essence which fills the Unity in Trinity.
III. (2) Their fancy about virtues proceeding from God refuted.
Under the second head is displayed their foolish and empty fancy about the issue of certain virtues from God which he began to possess, and which were posterior to God Himself in His own essence. In this again they support the Arians' mistake, who say that the Father is prior to the Son, because there was a time when He was without the Son: and became the Father then when He begot the Son. But as the catholic Church abhors them, so also does it abhor these who think that what is of the same essence was ever wanting to God. For it is as wicked to speak of Him as progressing as it is to call Him changeable. For increase implies change as much as does decrease.
IV. (3) Their account of the epithet "Only Begotten" refuted.
Again the third head is concerned with these same folk's impious assertion that the Son of God is called "only-begotten" for this reason that He alone was born of a virgin. To be sure they would not have dared to say this, had they not drunk the poison of Paul of Samosata and Photinus: who said that our Lord Jesus Christ did not exist till He was born of the virgin Mary. But if they wish something else to be understood by their tenet, and do not date Christ's beginning from His mother's womb, they must necessarily assert that there is not one Son of God, but others also were begotten of the most High Father, of whom this one is born of a woman, and therefore called only-begotten, because no other of God's sons underwent this condition of being born. Therefore, whithersoever they betake themselves, they fall into an abyss of great impiety, if they either maintain that Christ the Lord took His beginning from His mother, or do not believe Him to be the only-begotten of God the Father: since He who was God was born of a mother, and no one was born of the Father except the Word.
V. (4) Their fasting on the Nativity and Sunday disapproved of.
The fourth head deals with the fact that the Birth-day of Christ, which the catholic Church thinks highly of as the occasion of His taking on Him true man, because "the Word became flesh and dwelt in us [143] ," is not truly honoured by these men, though they make a show of honouring it, for they fast on that day, as they do also on the Lord's day, which is the day of Christ's resurrection. No doubt they do this, because they do not believe that Christ the Lord was born in true man's nature, but maintain that by a sort of illusion there was an appearance of what was not a reality, following the views of Cerdo and Marcion, and being in complete agreement with their kinsfolk, the Manichæans. For as our examination has disclosed and brought home to them, they [144] drag out in mournful fasting the Lord's day which for us is hallowed by the resurrection of our Saviour: devoting this abstinence, as the explanation goes, to the worship of the sun: so that they are throughout out of harmony with the unity of our faith, and the day which by us is spent in gladness is past in self-affliction by them. Whence it is fitting that these enemies of Christ's cross and resurrection should accept an opinion (like this) which tallies with the doctrine they have selected.
VI. (5) Their view that the soul is part of the Divine being refuted.
The fifth head refers to their assertion that man's soul is part of the Divine being [145] , and that the nature of our human state does not differ from its Creator's nature. This impious view has its source in the opinions of certain philosophers, and the Manichæans and the catholic Faith condemns it: knowing that nothing that is made is so sublime and so supreme as that its nature should be itself God. For that which is part of Himself is Himself, and none other than the Son and Holy Spirit. And besides this one consubstantial, eternal, and unchangeable Godhead of the most high Trinity there is nothing in all creation which, in its origin, is not created out of nothing. Besides anything that surpasses its fellow-creatures is not ipso facto God, nor, if a thing is great and wonderful, is it identical with Him "who alone doeth great wonders [146] ." No man is truth, wisdom, justice; but many are partakers of truth, wisdom, and justice. But God alone is exempt from any participating: and anything which is in any degree worthily predicated of Him is not an attribute, but His very essence. For in the Unchangeable there is nothing added, there is nothing lost: because "to be [147] " is ever His peculiar property, and that is eternity. Whence abiding in Himself He renews all things [148] , and receives nothing which He did not Himself give. Accordingly they are over-proud and stone-blind who, when they say the soul is part of the Divine Being, do not understand that they merely assert that God is changeable, and Himself suffers anything that may be inflicted upon His nature.
VII. (6) Their view that the devil was never good, and is therefore not God's creation, refuted.
The sixth notice points out that they say the devil never was good, and that his nature is not God's handiwork, but he came forth out of chaos and darkness: because I suppose he has no instigator, but is himself the source and substance of all evil: whereas the true Faith, which is the catholic, acknowledges that the substance of all creatures spiritual or corporeal is good, and that evil has no positive existence [149] ; because God, who is the Maker of the Universe, made nothing that was not good. Whence the devil also would be good, if he had remained as he was made. But because he made a bad use of his natural excellence, and "stood not in the truth [150] ," he did not pass into the opposite substance, but revolted from the highest good to which he owed adherence: just as they themselves who make such assertions run headlong from truth into falsehood, and accuse nature of their own spontaneous delinquencies, and are condemned for their voluntary perversity: though of course this evil is in them, but is itself not a substance but a penalty inflicted on substance.
VIII. (7) Their rejection of marriage condemned.
In the seventh place follows their condemnation of marriages and their horror of begetting children: in which, as in almost all points, they agree with the Manichæans' impiety. But it is for this reason, as their own practices prove, that they detest the marriage tie, because there is no liberty for lewdness where the chastity of wedlock and of offspring is preserved.
IX. (8) Their disbelief in the resurrection of the body has been already condemned by the Church.
Their eighth point is that the formation [151] of men's bodies is the device of the devil, and that the seed of conception is shaped by the aid of demons in the wombs of women: and that for this reason the resurrection of the flesh is not to be believed because the stuff of which the body is made is not consistent with the dignity of the soul. This falsehood is without doubt the devil's work, and such monstrous opinions are the devices of demons who do not mould men in women's bellies, but concoct such errors in heretics' hearts. This unclean poison which flows especially from the fount of the Manichæan wickedness has been already [152] arraigned and condemned by the catholic Faith.
X. (9) Their notion that "the children of promise" are conceived by the Holy Ghost is utterly unscriptural and uncatholic.
The ninth notice declares that they say the sons of promise are born indeed of women but conceived by the Holy Spirit: lest that offspring which is born of carnal seed should seem to share in God's estate. This is repugnant and contrary to the catholic Faith which acknowledges every man to be formed by the Maker of the Universe in the substance of his body and soul, and to receive the breath of life within his mother's womb: though that taint of sin and liability to die remains which passed from the first parent into his descendants; until the sacrament of Regeneration comes to succour him, whereby through the Holy Spirit we are re-born the sons of promise, not in the fleshly womb, but in the power of baptism. Whence David also, who certainly was a son of promise, says to God: "Thy hands have made me and fashioned me [153] ." And to Jeremiah says the Lord, "Before I formed thee in the womb I knew thee, and in thy mother's belly I sanctified thee [154] ."
XI. (10) Their theory that souls have a previous existence before entering man refuted.
Under the tenth head they are reported as asserting that the souls which are placed in men's bodies have previously been without body and have sinned in their heavenly habitation, and for this reason having fallen from their high estate to a lower one alight upon ruling spirits [155] of divers qualities, and after passing through a succession of powers of the air and stars, some fiercer, some milder, are enclosed in bodies of different sorts and conditions, so that whatever variety and inequality is meted out to us in this life, seems the result of previous causes. This blasphemous fable they have woven for themselves out of many persons' errors [156] : but all of them the catholic Faith cuts off from union with its body, persistently and truthfully proclaiming that men's souls did not exist until they were breathed into their bodies, and that they were not there implanted by any other than God, who is the creator both of the souls and of the bodies. And because through the transgression of the first man the whole stock of the human race was tainted, no one can be set free from the state of the old Adam save through Christ's sacrament of baptism, in which there are no distinctions between the re-born, as says the Apostle: "For as many of you as were baptized in Christ did put on Christ: there is neither Jew nor Greek: there is neither bond nor free: there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus [157] ." What then have the course of the stars to do with it, or the devices of destiny? what the changing state of mundane things and their restless diversity? Behold how the grace of God makes all these unequals equal, who, whatever their labours in this life, if they abide faithful, cannot be wretched, for they can say with the Apostle in every trial: "who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long, we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.' (Ps. xliv. 22.) But in all these things we overcome through Him that loved us [158] ." And therefore the Church, which is the body of Christ, has no fear about the inequalities of the world, because she has no desire for temporal goods: nor does she dread being overwhelmed by the empty threats of destiny, for she knows she is strengthened by patience in tribulations.
XII. (11) Their astrological notions condemned.
Their eleventh blasphemy is that in which they suppose that both the souls and bodies of men are under the influence of fatal stars: this folly compels them to become entangled in all the errors of the heathen, and to strive to attract stars that are as they think favourable to them, and to soften those that are against them. But for those who follow such pursuits there is no place in the catholic Church; a man who gives himself up to such convictions separates himself from the body of Christ altogether.
XIII. (12) Their belief that certain powers rule the soul and the stars the body, is unscriptural and preposterous.
The twelfth of these points is this, that they map out the parts of the soul under certain powers, and the limbs of the body under others: and they suggest the characters of the inner powers that rule the soul by giving them the names of the patriarchs, and on the contrary they attribute the signs of the stars to those under which they put the body. And in all these things they entangle themselves in an inextricable maze, not listening to the Apostle when he says, "See that no one deceive you through philosophy and vain deceit after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ; for in Him dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, and in Him ye are made full, who is the head of every principality and power [159] ." And again: "let no man beguile you by a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels, treading on things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by the senses of his flesh, not holding fast the Head from whom all the body, being supplied and knit together through the joints and bands, increaseth with the increase of God [160] ." What then is the use of admitting into the heart what the law has not taught, prophecy has not sung, the truth of the Gospel has not proclaimed, the Apostles' teaching has not handed down? But these things are suited to the minds of those of whom the Apostle speaks, "For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but having itching ears, will heap to themselves teachers after their own lusts: and will turn away indeed their hearing from the truth, and turn aside unto fables [161] ." And so we can have nothing in common with men who dare to teach or believe such things, and strive by any means in their power to persuade men that the substance of flesh is foreign to the hope of resurrection, and so break down the whole mystery of Christ's incarnation: because it was wrong for Christ to take upon Him complete manhood if it was wrong for Him to emancipate complete manhood.
XIV. (13) Their fanciful division of the Scriptures rejected.
In the thirteenth place comes their assertion that the whole body of the canonical Scriptures is to be accepted, under the names of the patriarchs [162] : because those twelve virtues which work the reformation of the inner man are pointed out in their names, and without this knowledge no soul can effect its reformation, and return to that substance from which it came forth. But this wicked delusion the Christian wisdom holds in disdain, for it knows that the nature of the true Godhead is inviolable and immutable: but the soul, whether living in the body or separated from the body, is subject to many passions: whereas, of course, if it were part of the divine essence, no adversity could happen to it. And therefore there is no comparison between them: One is the Creator, the other is the creature. For He is always the same, and suffers no change: but the soul is changeable, even if not changed, because its power of not changing is a gift, and not a property.
XV. (14) Their idea that the Scriptures countenance their subjecting of the body to the starry influences denied.
Under the fourteenth heading their sentiments upon the state of the body are stated, viz., that it is, on account of its earthly properties, held under the power of stars and constellations, and that many things are found in the holy books which have reference to the outer man with this object, that in the Scriptures themselves a certain opposition may be seen at work between the divine and the earthly nature: and that which the powers that rule the soul claim for themselves may be distinguished from that which the fashioners of the body claim. These stories are invented that the soul may be maintained to be part of the divine substance, and the flesh believed to belong to the bad nature: since the world itself, with its elements, they hold to be not the work of the good God, but the outcome of an evil author: and that they might disguise these sacrilegious lies under a fair cloak, they have polluted almost all the divine utterances with the colouring of their unholy notions.
XVI. (15) Their falsified copies of the Scriptures, and their apocryphal books prohibited.
And on this subject your remarks under the fifteenth head make a complaint, and express a well-deserved abhorrence of their devilish presumption, for we too have ascertained this from the accounts of trustworthy witnesses, and have found many of their copies most corrupt, though they are entitled canonical. For how could they deceive the simple-minded unless they sweetened their poisoned cups with a little honey, lest what was meant to be deadly should be detected by its over-nastiness? Therefore care must be taken, and the priestly diligence exercised to the uttermost, to prevent falsified copies that are out of harmony with the pure Truth being used in reading. And the apocryphal scriptures, which, under the names of Apostles [163] , form a nursery-ground for many falsehoods, are not only to be proscribed, but also taken away altogether and burnt to ashes in the fire. For although there are certain things in them which seem to have a show of piety, yet they are never free from poison, and through the allurements of their stories they have the secret effect of first beguiling men with miraculous narratives, and then catching them in the noose of some error. Wherefore if any bishop has either not forbidden the possession of apocryphal writings in men's houses, or under the name of being canonical has suffered those copies to be read in church which are vitiated with the spurious alterations of Priscillian, let him know that he is to be accounted heretic, since he who does not reclaim others from error shows that he himself has gone astray.
XVII. (16) About the writings of Dictinius [164] .
Under the last head a just complaint was made that the treatises of Dictinius which he wrote in agreement with Priscillian's tenets were read by many with veneration: for if they think any respect is due to Dictinius' memory, they ought to admire his restoration rather than his fall. Accordingly it is not Dictinius but Priscillian that they read: and they approve of what he wrote in error, not what he preferred after recantation. But let no one venture to do this with impunity, nor let any one be reckoned among catholics who makes use of writings that have been condemned not by the catholic Church alone but by the author himself as well. Let not those who have gone astray be allowed to make a fictitious show, and under the veil of the Christian name shirk the provisions of the imperial decrees. For they attach themselves to the catholic Church with all this difference of opinion in their heart, with the object of both making such converts as they can, and escaping the rigour of the law by passing themselves off as ours. This is done by Priscillianists and Manichæans alike; for there is such a close bond of union between the two that they are distinct only in name, but in their blasphemies are found at one: because although the Manichæans reject the Old Testament which the others pretend to accept, yet the purpose of both tends to the same end, seeing that the one side corrupts while receiving what the other assails and rejects.
But in their abominable mysteries, which the more unclean they are, are so much the more carefully concealed, their crime is but one, their filthy-mindedness one, and their foul conduct similar. And although we blush to speak so plainly, yet we have tracked it out with the most painful searches, and exposed it by the confession of Manichæans who have been arrested, and thus brought it to the public knowledge: lest by any means it might seem matter of doubt, although it has been disclosed by the mouth of the men themselves, who had performed the crime, in our court, which was attended not only by a large gathering of priests, but also by men of repute and dignity, and a certain number of the senate and the people, even as the missive which we have addressed to you, beloved, shows to have been done. And there has been found out and widely published about the immoral practices of the Priscillianists just what was also found out about the foul wickedness of the Manichæans. For they who are throughout on a level of depravity in their ideas, cannot be unlike in their religious matters.
So having run through all that the detailed refutation contains, with which the contents of the memorial of their views does not disagree, we have, I think, satisfactorily shown what our opinion on the matters which you, brother, have referred to us, and how unbearable it is if such blasphemous errors find acceptance in the hearts even of some priests, or to put it more mildly, are not actively opposed by them. With what conscience can they maintain the honourable position which has been given them, who do not labour for the souls entrusted to them? Beasts rush in, and they do not close the fold. Robbers lay wait, and they set no watch. Diseases multiply, and they seek out no remedies. But when in addition they refuse assent to those who act more warily, and shrink from anathematizing by their written confession blasphemies which the whole world has already condemned, what do they wish men to understand except that they are not of the number of the brethren, but on the enemy's side?
XVIII. The body of Christ really rested in the tomb, and really rose again.
Furthermore in the matter which you placed last in your confidential letter, I am surprised that any intelligent Christian should be in difficulty as to whether when Christ descended to the realms below, his flesh rested in the tomb: for as it truly died and was buried, so it was truly raised the third day. For this the Lord Himself also had announced, saying to the Jews, "destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up [165] ." Where the evangelist adds this comment: "but this He spake of the temple of His body." The truth of which the prophet David also had predicted, speaking in the person of the Lord and Saviour, and saying: "Moreover my flesh also shall rest in hope; because Thou wilt not leave my soul in Hades, nor give Thy Holy One to see corruption. [166] " From these words surely it is clear that the Lord's flesh being buried, both truly rested and did not undergo corruption: because it was quickly revived by the return of the soul, and rose again. Not to believe this is blasphemous enough, and is undoubtedly of a piece with the doctrine of Manichæus and Priscillian, who with their blasphemous conceptions pretend to confess Christ, but only in such a way as to destroy the reality of His incarnation, and death, and resurrection.
Therefore let a council of bishops be held among you, and let the priests of neighbouring provinces meet at a place suitable to all: that, on the lines of our reply to your request for advice, a full inquiry may be made as to whether here are any of the bishops who are tainted with the contagion of this heresy: for they must without doubt be cut off from communion, if they refuse to condemn this most unrighteous sect with all its wrongful conceptions. For it can nohow be permitted that one who has undertaken the duty of preaching the Faith should dare to maintain opinions contrary to Christ's gospel and the creed of the universal Church. What kind of disciples will there be in a place where such masters teach? What will the people's religion, or the salvation of the laity be, where against the interests of human society the holiness of chastity is uprooted, the marriage-bond overthrown, the propagation of children forbidden, the nature of the flesh condemned, and, in opposition to the true worship of the true God, the Trinity of the Godhead is denied, the individuality of the persons confounded, man's soul declared to be the Divine essence, and enclosed in flesh at the Devil's will, the Son of God proclaimed only-begotten in right of being born of a Virgin, not begotten of the Father, and at the same time maintained to be neither true offspring of God, nor true child of the virgin: so that after a false passion and an unreal death, even the resurrection of the flesh reassumed out of the tomb should be considered fictitious? But it is vain for them to adopt the name of catholic, as they do not oppose these blasphemies: they must believe them, if they can listen so patiently to such words. And so we have sent a letter to our brethren and fellow-bishops of the provinces of Tarraco, Carthago, Lusitania and Gallicia, enjoining a meeting of the general synod. It will be yours, beloved, to take order that our authoritative instructions be conveyed to the bishops of the aforesaid provinces. But should anything, which God forbid, hinder the coming together of a general council of Gallicia [167] , at least let the priests come together, the assembling of whom our brothers Idacius and Ceponius shall look to, assisted by your own strenuous efforts to hasten the applying of remedies to these serious wounds by a provincial synod also. Dated July 21, in the consulship of the illustrious Calipius and Ardaburis (447). __________________________________________________________________
[137] This Turribius was a man of learning and zeal, Bishop of Astoria (Astorga) in Spain (province of Gallicia): canonized by the Roman Church and commemorated on April 16 (Hurter). The date of the letter is given as 21 Jul., 447.
[138] Hurter distinguishes these three documents thus: (1) epistola, the private letter of Turribius to Leo; (2) commonitorium, the detailed statement (under 16 heads) of the Priscillianist errors; and (3) libellus, Turribius' refutation of each head. This heresy was of Spanish origin, having been broached by Priscillian about 380. Their views will be seen in the sequel.
[139] Priscillianistarum foetidissimam apud vos recaluisse sentinam.
[140] Multiplicem sibi foeculentiam miscuerunt.
[141] He alludes to the invasion of Spain by the German tribes (Perthel, p. 38).
[142] See above n. 6. Quesnel draws attention to the fact that Leo's refutation of the Priscillianist heresy, which here follows, was adopted (almost) word for word by the first council of Bracara (Braga, in Portugal), held in 563, as a sufficient exposition of their own position.
[143] S. John i. 14.
[144] Viz. the Manichæans.
[145] This Pantheistic view was not, of course, a new one, nor pseudo-Christian in its origin, as Leo himself shows. Cf. Virg., Georg. IV. 219-227, and Æn. vi. 724-727. The philosophi quidam to which he makes reference are the Pythagoreans, and following them with modifications the Platonists and the Stoics.
[146] Ps. cxxxvi. 4.
[147] The reader need hardly be reminded of the recorded revelation of the great "I am" (Jehovah) to Moses (Ex. iii.).
[148] Cf. Rev. xxi. 5.
[149] i.e., that evil is not anything positive, but only the negation or absence of good which is positive, just as black is not itself a colour, but only the absence of colour, whereas white is the presence (in due proportion) of all the colours of the spectrum.
[150] S. John viii. 24.
[151] Plasmationem, a vile hybrid, being the Greek plasma, with a Latin ending (-atio); for which apparently the Low Latin of the Vulgate is responsible. Cf. Ps. cxix. 73, "et plasmaverunt me" (quoted below, chap. x.).
[152] Olim Perhaps Leo refers to his own action mentioned in Lett. vii. 1.
[153] Ps. cxix. 73.
[154] Jer. i. 5.
[155] In diversæ qualitatis principes incidisse, cf. Rom. viii. 38; Eph. iii. 10; Col. ii. 10, &c.
[156] The Pythagorean doctrine of metempsuosis (transmigration of souls) which was in a modified form accepted by Plato (Phædr. et alibi), would seem to have been the original source of this view of the soul's origin. It would naturally be palatable doctrine to the Gnostics and other philosophizing sects. In Lett. XXXV., chap. iii., it is attributed to Origen. For a modem exposition the reader cannot do better than refer to Wordsworth's ode on the intimations of Immortality in childhood.
[157] Gal. iii. 27, 28.
[158] Rom. viii. 35-37.
[159] Col. ii. 8-10.
[160] Ibid. 18, 19.
[161] 2 Tim. iv. 3, 4.
[162] Leo's commentary on this obscure fancy of the Priscillianist is disappointing, as it is merely a repetition or continuation of his remarks on the 12th head. They seem to have divided the scriptures in some mystic fashion into portions corresponding to the qualitates interiorum præsulum in patriarcharum nominibus (statutæ) of chap. xiii., and to have insisted on knowledge of the Scriptures as necessary to the proper action of those "ruling principles" on the soul. Cf. S. Aug. Letter CCXXXVII., chap. iii. (Hurter).
[163] Viz., such writings as the Actus of Thomas, Andrew and John, and the Memoria apostolorum, qui totam destruit legem veteris Testamenti, according to Turribius's letter to Idacius and Ceponius, chap. v., subjoined to this letter in the Leonine series.
[164] Dictinius was a bishop who had turned Priscillianist, and afterwards, at the synod of Toledo (400), had returned to the fold of the Church (Perthel, p. 41)
[165] S. John ii. 19.
[166] Ps. xvi. 10.
[167] The whole district over which Turribius was Vicar is here called Gallicia, though, as just above, we find it included the provinces of Tarraco, Carthago, and Lusitania, as well as Gallicia. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XVI.
To the Bishops of Sicily.
Leo the bishop to all the bishops throughout Sicily greeting in the Lord.
I. Introductory.
By God's precepts and the Apostle's admonitions we are incited to keep a careful watch over the state of all the churches: and, if anywhere ought is found that needs rebuke, to recall men with speedy care either from the stupidity of ignorance or from forwardness and presumption. For inasmuch as we are warned by the Lord's own command whereby the blessed Apostle Peter had the thrice repeated mystical injunction pressed upon him, that he who loves Christ should feed Christ's sheep, we are compelled by reverence for that see which, by the abundance of the Divine Grace, we hold, to shun the danger of sloth as much as possible: lest the confession of the chief Apostle whereby he testified that he loved God be not found in us: because if he (through us) carelessly feed the flock so often commended to him he is proved not to love the chief Shepherd.
II. Baptism is to be administered at Easter-tide and not on the Epiphany.
Accordingly when it reached my ears on reliable testimony (and I already felt a brother's affectionate anxiety about your acts, beloved) that in what is one of the chief sacraments of the Church you depart from the practice of the Apostles' constitution [168] by administering the sacrament of baptism to greater numbers on the feast of the Epiphany than at Easter-tide, I was surprised that you or your predecessors could have introduced so unreasonable an innovation as to confound the mysteries of the two festivals and believe there was no difference between the day on which Christ was worshipped by the wise men and that on which He rose again from the dead. You could never have fallen into this fault, if you had taken the whole of your observances from the source whence you derive your consecration to the episcopate; and if the see of the blessed Apostle Peter, which is the mother of your priestly dignity, were the recognized teacher of church-method. We could indeed have endured your departure from its rules with less equanimity, if you had received any previous rebuke by way of warning from us. But now as we do not despair of correcting you, we must show gentleness. And although an excuse which affects ignorance is scarce tolerable in priests, yet we prefer to moderate our needful rebuke and to instruct you plainly in the true method of the Church.
III. One must distinguish one festival from another in respect of dignity and occasion.
The restoration of mankind has indeed ever remained immutably fore-ordained in God's eternal counsel: but the series of events which had to be accomplished in time through Jesus Christ our Lord was begun at the Incarnation of the Word. Hence there is one time when at the angel's announcement the blessed Virgin Mary believed she was to be with child through the Holy Ghost and conceived: another, when without loss of her virgin purity the Boy was born and shown to the shepherds by the exulting joy of the heavenly attendants: another, when the Babe was circumcised: another, when the victim required by the Law is offered for him: another, when the three wise men attracted by the brightness of the new star [169] arrive at Bethlehem from the East and worship the Infant with the mystic offering of Gifts.
And again the days are not the same on which by the divinely appointed passage into Egypt He was withdrawn from wicked Herod, and on which He was recalled from Egypt into Galilee on His pursuer's death. Among these varieties of circumstance must be included His growth of body: the Lord increases, as the evangelist bears witness, with the progress of age and grace: at the time of the Passover He comes to the temple at Jerusalem with His parents, and when He was absent from the returning company, He is found sitting with the elders and disputing among the wondering masters and rendering an account of His remaining behind: "why is it," He says, "that ye sought Me? did ye not know that I must be in that which is My Father's [170] ," signifying that He was the Son of Him whose temple He was in. Once more when in later years He was to be declared more openly and sought out the baptism of His forerunner John, was there any doubt of His being God remaining when after the baptism of the Lord Jesus the Holy Spirit in form of a dove descended and rested upon Him, and the Father's voice was heard from the skies, "Thou art My beloved Son: in Thee I am well pleased [171] ?" All these things we have alluded to with as much brevity as possible for this reason, that you may know, beloved, that though all the days of Christ's life were hallowed by many mighty works of His [172] , and though in all His actions mysterious sacraments [173] shone forth, yet at one time intimations of events were given by signs, and at one time fulfilment realized: and that all the Saviour's works that are recorded are not suitable to the time of baptism. For if we were to commemorate with indiscriminate honour these things also which we know to have been done by the Lord after His baptism by the blessed John, His whole lifetime would have to be observed in a continuous succession of festivals, because all His acts were full of miracles. But because the Spirit of wisdom and knowledge so instructed the Apostles and teachers of the whole Church as to allow nothing disordered or confused to exist in our Christian observances, we must discern the relative importance of the various solemnities and observe a reasonable distinction in all the institutions of our fathers and rulers: for we cannot otherwise "be one flock and one shepherd [174] ," except as the Apostle teaches us, "that we all speak the same thing: and that we be perfected in the same mind and in the same judgment [175] ."
IV. The reason explained why Easter and Whitsuntide are the proper seasons for baptism.
Although, therefore, both these things which are connected with Christ's humiliation and those which are connected with His exaltation meet in one and the same Person, and all that is in Him of Divine power and human weakness conduces to the accomplishment of our restoration: yet it is appropriate that the power of baptism should change the old into the new creature on the death-day of the Crucified and the Resurrection-day of the Dead: that Christ's death and His resurrection may operate in the re-born [176] , as the blessed Apostle says: "Are ye ignorant that all we who were baptized in Christ Jesus, were baptized in His death? We were buried with Him through baptism into death; that as Christ rose from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with the likeness of His death, we shall be also (with the likeness) of His resurrection [177] ," and the rest which the Teacher of the Gentiles discusses further in recommending the sacrament of baptism: that it might be seen from the spirit of this doctrine that that is the day, and that the time chosen for regenerating the sons of men and adopting them among the sons of God, on which by a mystical symbolism and form [178] , what is done in the limbs coincides with what was done in the Head Himself, for in the baptismal office death ensues through the slaying of sin, and threefold immersion imitates the lying in the tomb three days, and the raising out of the water is like Him that rose again from the tomb [179] . The very nature, therefore of the act teaches us that that is the recognized day for the general reception of the grace [180] , on which the power of the gift and the character of the action originated. And this is strongly corroborated by the consideration that the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, after He rose from the dead, handed on both the form and power of baptizing to His disciples, in whose person all the chiefs of the churches received their instructions with these words, "Go ye and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost [181] ." On which of course He might have instructed them even before His passion, had He not especially wished it to be understood that the grace of regeneration began with His resurrection. It must be added, indeed, that the solemn season of Pentecost, hallowed by the coming of the Holy Ghost is also allowed, being as it were, the sequel and completion of the Paschal feast. And while other festivals are held on other days of the week, this festival (of Pentecost) always occurs on that day, which is marked by the Lord's resurrection: holding out, so to say, the hand of assisting grace and inviting those, who have been cut off from the Easter feast by disabling sickness or length of journey or difficulties of sailing, to gain the purpose that they long for through the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the Only-begotten of God Himself wished no difference to be felt between Himself and the Holy Spirit in the Faith of believers and in the efficacy of His works: because there is no diversity in their nature, as He says, "I will ask the Father and He shall give you another Comforter that He may be with you for ever, even the Spirit of Truth [182] ;" and again: "But the Comforter which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in My name, He shall teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I said unto you [183] ;" and again: "When He, the Spirit of Truth, is come, He shall guide you into all the Truth [184] ." And thus, since Christ is the Truth, and the Holy Spirit the Spirit of Truth, and the name of "Comforter" appropriate to both, the two festivals are not dissimilar, where the sacrament is the same [185] .
V. S. Peter's example as an authority for Whitsuntide baptisms.
And that we do not contend for this on our own conviction but retain it on Apostolic authority, we prove by a sufficiently apt example, following the blessed Apostle Peter, who, on the very day on which the promised coming of the Holy Ghost filled up the number of those that believed, dedicated to God in the baptismal font three thousand of the people who had been converted by his preaching. The Holy Scripture, which contains the Acts of Apostles [186] , teaches this in its faithful narrative, saying, "Now when they heard this they were pricked in the heart, and said unto Peter and to the rest of the Apostles, what shall we do, brethren? But Peter said unto them, Repent ye and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ, unto the remission of your sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. For to you is the promise, and to your children and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call unto Him. With many other words also he testified and exhorted them saying, Save yourselves from this crooked generation. They then that received his word were baptized, and there were added in that day about three thousand [187] ."
VI. In cases of urgency other times are allowable for baptism.
Wherefore, as it is quite clear that these two seasons of which we have been speaking are the rightful ones for baptizing the chosen in Church, we admonish you, beloved, not to add other days to this observance. Because, although there are other festivals also to which much reverence is due in God's honour, yet we must rationally guard this principal and greatest sacrament as a deep mystery and not part of the ordinary routine [188] : not, however, prohibiting the licence to succour those who are in danger by administering baptism to them at any time. For whilst we put off the vows of those who are not pressed by ill health and live in peaceful security to those two closely connected and cognate festivals, we do not at any time refuse this which is the only safeguard of true salvation to any one in peril of death, in the crisis of a siege, in the distress of persecution, in the terror of shipwreck.
VII. Our Lord's baptism by John very different to the baptism of believers.
But if any one thinks the feast of the Epiphany, which in proper degree is certainly to be held in due honour, claims the privilege of baptism because, according to some the Lord came to St. John's baptism on the same day, let him know that the grace of that baptism and the reason of it were quite different, and is not on an equal footing with the power by which they are re-born of the Holy Ghost, of whom it is said, "which were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God [189] ." For the Lord who needed no remission of sin and sought not the remedy of being born again, desired to be baptized just as He desired to be circumcised, and to have a victim offered for His purification: that He, who had been "made of a woman [190] ," as the Apostle says, might become also "under the law" which He had come, "not to destroy but to fulfil [191] ," and by fulfilling to end, as the blessed Apostle proclaims, saying: "but Christ is the end of the law unto righteousness to every one that believeth [192] ." But the sacrament of baptism He founded in His own person [193] , because "in all things having the pre-eminence [194] ," He taught that He Himself was the Beginning. And He ratified the power of re-birth on that occasion, when from His side flowed out the blood of ransom and the water of baptism [195] . As, therefore, the Old Testament was the witness to the new, and "the law was given by Moses: but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ [196] ;" as the divers sacrifices prefigured the one Victim, and the slaughter of many lambs was ended by the offering up of Him, of whom it is said, "Behold the Lamb of God; behold Him that taketh away the sin of the world [197] ;" so too John, not Christ, but Christ's forerunner, not the bridegroom, but the friend of the bridegroom, was so faithful in seeking, "not His own, but the things which are Jesus Christ's [198] ," as to profess himself unworthy to undo the shoes of His feet: seeing that He Himself indeed baptized "in water unto repentance," but He who with twofold power should both restore life and destroy sins, was about to "baptize in the Holy Ghost and fire [199] ." As then, beloved brethren, all these distinct proofs come before you, whereby to the removal of all doubt you recognize that in baptizing the elect who, according to the Apostolic rule have to be purged by exorcisms, sanctified by fastings and instructed by frequent sermons, two seasons only are to be observed, viz. Easter and Whitsuntide: we charge you, brother, to make no further departure from the Apostolic institutions. Because hereafter no one who thinks the Apostolic rules can be set at defiance will go unpunished.
VIII. The Sicilian bishops are to send three of their number to each of the half-yearly meetings of bishops at Rome.
Wherefore we require this first and foremost for the keeping of perfect harmony, that, according to the wholesome rule of the holy Fathers that there should be two meetings of bishops every year [200] , three of you should appear without fail each time, on the 29th of September, to join in the council of the brethren: for thus, by the aid of God's grace, we shall the easier guard against the rise of offences and errors in Christ's Church: and this council must always meet and deliberate in the presence of the blessed Apostle Peter, that all his constitutions and canonical decrees may remain inviolate with all the Lord's priests.
These matters, upon which we thought it necessary to instruct you by the inspiration of the Lord, we wish brought to your knowledge by our brothers and fellow-bishops, Bacillus and Paschasinus. May we learn by their report that the institutions of the Apostolic See are reverently observed by you. Dated 21 Oct., in the consulship of the illustrious Alipius and Ardaburis (447). __________________________________________________________________
[168] From this letter it might be gathered that it was a universal practice of the early Church based on the precepts of the apostles, to restrict Baptism to the feasts of Easter and Whitsuntide, and exclude Epiphany. Whereas as a matter of fact the restriction was almost exclusively Roman; all the Eastern Churches and a good many of the Western recognizing the Epiphany as a suitable occasion for the rite. Leo is too fond of claiming Apostolic authority for his dictates, and none such exists here, as far as we know.
[169] It will be noticed that Leo's order of events, though probably correct, is not that of the modern Kalendar, which places the Epiphany (Jan. 6) soon after the Circumcision (Jan. 1), and not after the Purification (Feb. 2): unless it was some little time after, Herod's cruelty was unnecessarily great in including children of two years old in his massacre (S. Matt. ii. 16).
[170] S. Luke ii. 49, in his quæ Patris mei sunt (Vulgate): this version leaves the expression en tois tou Patros mou in its original ambiguity, but Leo's commentary immediately following gives his decision in favour of "in My Father's house."
[171] S. Matt. iii. 17.
[172] Innumeris consecratos fuisse virtutibus, where virtutes, as often, corresponds to the Gk. dunameis.
[173] Sacramentorum mysteria coruscasse: it is instructive to find the two words here conjoined, Leo so often using them apparently as equivalents. No one, moreover, after reading this sentence, can doubt what in early times Western Christians meant by sacramentum , see Letter XII. chap. 3, &c.
[174] S. John x. 17.
[175] 1 Cor. i. 10.
[176] Renascentibus (pres. part.) here, not renatis (past).
[177] Rom. vi. 3-5. Notice the support here given to the marginal alternative of the R.V., "united with," instead of "united in" ( Lat. complantati similitudini, &c.).
[178] Per similitudinem et formam mysterii.
[179] This was a favourite interpretation of the symbolism with the fathers. Cf. Serm. LXX., chap. 4, and Bright's n. 97 thereon.
[180] Celebrandæ generaliter gratiæ, where generaliterhas much the same sense as the Eng. "generally" has in the definition of a sacrament in the Eng. Ch. Catechism as "generally necessary to salvation."
[181] S. Matt. xxviii. 19.
[182] S. John xiv. 16.
[183] Ibid. 26.
[184] Ibid. xvi. 13.
[185] It need hardly be pointed out that these words, "where the sacrament is the same," refer to the sacramentum (in its Leonine sense), that has just been explained, viz,, that Christus est veritas et spiritus sanctus est spiritus veritatus.
[186] Leo does not often quote from the Acts, and here he expressly includes it in the Canon, and alludes to its authenticity (fideli historia docet).
[187] Acts ii. 37-41.
[188] Principalis et maximi sacramenti custodienda nobis est mystica et rationalis exceptio (another reading being exemplatio (symbolism), which Quesnel prefers, thinking that the words have reference to the appropriateness of this symbolic rite of Baptism being performed at Easter-tide).
[189] S. John i. 13.
[190] Gal. iv. 4.
[191] S. Matt. v. 17.
[192] Rom. x. 4.
[193] Baptismi sui in se condidit sacramentum: the baptism of Christ has very generally been associated with the Epiphany: the record of it, for instance, in S. Luke iii. 15-23, is the 2nd morning lesson for the Festival in the English Church. It is, however, not clear who the "some" were whom Leo mentions above as putting Christ's baptism on the same day as the Epiphany; perhaps he means the Eastern Church.
[194] Col. i. 18.
[195] Cf. Lett. XXVIII. (The Tome), chap. vi., where the same explanation of the sacred incident in the Lord's passion is given.
[196] S. John i. 17. Cf. Rev. xix. 20, "for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophesy."
[197] S. John i. 29.
[198] Phil. ii. 21.
[199] S. Matt. iii. 11; S. Luke iii. 16.
[200] Cf. Lett. XIV., chap. 8, where the same rule is laid down. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XVII [201] .
To All the Bishops of Sicily.
(Forbidding the sale of church property except for the advantage of the church).
Leo, the pope [202] , to all the bishops of Sicily.
The occasion of specific complaints claims our attention as having "the care of all the churches," that we should make a perpetual decree precluding all bishops from adopting as a practice what in two churches of your province has been unscrupulously suggested and wrongfully carried out. Upon the clergy of the church in Tauromenium deploring the destitution they were in from the bishop having squandered all its estates by selling, giving away, and otherwise disposing of them, the clergy of Panormus, who have lately had a new bishop, raised a similar complaint about the misgovernment of the former bishop in the holy synod, at which we were presiding. Although, therefore, we have already given instructions as to what is for the advantage of both Churches, yet lest this vicious example of abominable plundering should hereafter be taken as a precedent, we wish to make this our formal command binding on you, beloved, for ever. We decree, therefore, that no bishop without exception shall dare to give away, or to exchange, or to sell any of the property of his church: unless he foresees an advantage likely to accrue from so doing, and after consultation with the whole of the clergy, and with their consent he decides upon what will undoubtedly profit that church. For presbyters, or deacons, or clerics of any rank who have connived at the churches losses, must know that they will be deprived of both rank and communion: because it is absolutely fair, beloved brethren, that not only the bishop, but also the whole of the clergy should advance the interests of their church and keep the gifts unimpaired of those who have contributed their own substance to the churches for the salvation of their souls. Dated 20 Oct., in the consulship of the illustrious Calepius (447). __________________________________________________________________
[201] This letter is suspected by Quesnel as being, if not spurious, at least the production of some later Leo than our own: but he would seem to have hardly sufficient ground for his conjecture and the document is interesting as showing the existence of Church endowments at the time, and alas! of their mismanagement. Two centuries before indeed we have Cyprian in Africa uttering a somewhat similar complaint: e.g. de laps. vi., de unit. eccl. xxvi., Lett. XV. 3. It does not appear, however, there that the clergy actually misappropriated Church funds, only that they were greedy and intent on worldly gain.
[202] Papa. This title, which in later times came throughout the West to denote exclusively the Bishop of Rome, was originally in the West no less than it is still in the East, the common appellation of all priests and spiritual fathers of the Church. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XVIII.
To Januarius, Bishop of Aquileia [203] .
Leo, bishop of the city of Rome, to Januarius, bishop of Aquileia.
Those who renounce heresy and schism and return to the Church must make their recantation very clear: those who are clerics may retain their rank but not be promoted.
On reading your letter, brother, we recognized the vigour of your faith, which we already were aware of, and congratulate you on the watchful care you bestow as pastor, on the keeping of Christ's flock: lest the wolves, that enter in under guise of sheep, should tear the simple ones to pieces in their bestial fierce ness, and not only themselves run riot without restraint, but also spoil those which are sound. And lest the vipery deceit should effect this, we have thought it meet to warn you, beloved, reminding you that it is at the peril of his soul, for any one of them who has fallen away from us into a sect of heretics and schismatics [204] , and stained himself to whatever extent with the pollution of heretical communion, to be received into catholic communion on coming to his senses without making legitimate and express satisfaction. For it is most wholesome and full of all the benefits of spiritual healing that presbyters or deacons, or sub-deacons or clerics of any rank, who wish to appear reformed, and entreat to return once more to the catholic Faith which they had long ago lost, should first confess without ambiguity that their errors and the authors of the errors themselves are condemned by them, that their base opinions may be utterly destroyed, and no hope survive of their recurrence, and that no member may be harmed by contact with them, every point having been met with its proper recantation. With regard to them we also order the observance of this regulation of the canons [205] , that they consider it a great indulgence, if they be allowed to remain undisturbed in their present rank without any hope of further advancement: but only on consideration of their not being defiled with second baptism [206] . No slight penalty does he incur from the Lord, who judges any such person fit to be advanced to Holy Orders. If advancement is granted to those who are without blame, only after full examination, how much more ought it to be refused to those who are under suspicion. Accordingly, beloved brother, in whose devotion we rejoice, bestow your care on our directions, and take order for the circumspect and speedy carrying out of these laudable suggestions and wholesome injunctions, which affect the welfare of the whole Church. But do not doubt, beloved, that, if what we decree for the observance of the canons, and the integrity of the Faith be neglected (which we do not anticipate), we shall be strongly moved: because the faults of the lower orders are to be referred to none more than to slothful and careless governors, who often foster much disease by refusing to apply the needful remedy. Dated 30 Dec., in the consulship of the illustrious Calepius and Ardaburis (447). __________________________________________________________________
[203] The Ballerinii's conjecture is at least very plausible, that this Januarius was the successor of that Bishop of Aquileia to whom Letter I. was written 5 years previously upon the same subject of the Pelagian error. The text of this letter is almost word for word identical with Letter II., written to Septimus, Bishop of Altinum, on the same occasion as Lett. I.
[204] Schismaticorum, considering how easily heresy leads to schism and schism to heresy, there is no need with Quesnel to consider that Novatians or Donatists are being here attacked. The Ballerinii say with justice:--generalis regula hic indicatur omnibus tum hæreticis tum schismaticis ad ecclesiam redeuntibus communis.
[205] What canon is here alluded to is uncertain: the Ballerinii think perhaps the 8th Nicene canon, extending its application from the Cathari or Novatians to all heresies and schism.
[206] Si tamen iterata tinctione non fuerint maculati. Cf. Can. Afric., 27, neque permittendum ut rebaptizati ad clericatus gradum promoveantur. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XIX.
To Dorus, Bishop of Beneventum.
Leo, bishop, to Dorus his well-beloved brother.
I. He rebukes Dorus for allowing a junior presbyter to be promoted over the heads of the seniors, and the first and second in seniority for acquiescing.
We grieve that the judgment, which we hoped to entertain of you, has been frustrated by our ascertaining that you have done things which by their blame-worthy novelty infringe the whole system of Church discipline: although you know full well with what care we wish the provisions of the canons to be kept through all the churches of the Lord, and the priests of all the peoples to consider it their especial duty to prevent the violation of the rules of the holy constitutions by any extravagances. We are surprised, therefore, that you who ought to have been a strict observer of the injunctions of the Apostolic See have acted so carelessly, or rather so contumaciously, as to show yourself not a guardian, but a breaker of the laws handed on to you. For from the report of your presbyter, Paul, which is subjoined, we have learnt that the order of the presbyterate has been thrown into confusion with you by strange intrigues and vile collusion; in such a way that one man has been hastily and prematurely promoted, and others passed over whose advancement was recommended by their age, and who were charged with no fault. But if the eagerness of an intriguer or the ignorant zeal of his supporters demanded that which custom never allowed, viz., that a beginner should be preferred to veterans, and a mere boy to men of years, it was your duty by diligence and teaching to check the improper desires of the petitioners with all reasonable authority: lest he whom you advanced hastily to the priestly rank should enter on his office to the detriment of those with whom he associated and become demoralized by the growth within him, not of the virtue of humility, but of the vice of conceit [207] . For you were not unaware that the Lord had said that "he that humbleth himself shall be exalted: but he that exalteth himself shall be humbled [208] ," and also had said, "but ye seek from little to increase, and from the greater to be less [209] ." For both actions are out of order and out of place [210] : and all the fruit of men's labours is lost, all the measure of their deserts is rendered void, if the gaining of dignity is proportioned to the amount of flattery used: so that the eagerness to be eminent belittles not only the aspirer himself, but also him that connives at him. But if, as is asserted, the first and second presbyter were so agreeable to Epicarpius being put over their heads as to demand his being honoured to their own disgrace, that which they wished ought not to have been granted them when they were voluntarily degrading themselves: because it would have been worthier of you to oppose than to yield to such a pitiable wish. But their base and cowardly submission could not be to the prejudice of others whose consciences were good, and who had not done despite to God's grace; so that, whatever the transaction was whereby they gave up their precedence to another, they could not lower the dignity of those that came next to them, nor because they had placed the last above themselves, could he take precedence of the rest.
II. The presbyters, who gave way, to be degraded with the usurper to the bottom: the rest to keep their places.
The aforesaid presbyters, therefore, who have declared themselves unworthy of their proper rank, though they even deserved to be deprived of their priesthood; yet, that we may show the gentleness of the Apostolic See in sparing them, are to be put last of all the presbyters of the Church: and that they may bear their own sentence, they shall be below him also whom they preferred to themselves by their own judgment: all the other presbyters remaining in the order which the time of his ordination assigns to each. And let none except the two aforesaid suffer any loss of dignity, but let this disgrace attach to those only who chose to put themselves below a junior who had only lately been ordained: that they may feel that that sentence of the gospels applies to themselves when it is said: "with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, the same shall be measured unto you [211] ." But let Paul the presbyter retain his place from which with praiseworthy firmness he did not budge: and let no further encroachments be made to any one's harm: so that you, beloved, who not undeservedly get the discredit of the whole matter, may with all speed take measures to cure it at least by putting these our injunctions into effect; lest, if a second time a just complaint be lodged with us, we be forced into stronger displeasure: for we would rather restore discipline by correcting what is done wrong, than increase the punishment. Know that we have entrusted the carrying out of our commands to our brother and fellow-bishop Julius, that all things may straightway be established, as we have ordained. Dated 8th March, in the consulship of the illustrious Postumianus (448). __________________________________________________________________
[207] Ne quem sacerdotali propere provehebas honore, ad iniuriam eorum quibis sociabatur, inciperet minorque se fieret: the text is no doubt corrupt, though the general sense is clear: the emendation minorque se for miror quis is made almost certain by the quotations that follow, especially the second.
[208] S. Luke xiv. 11 and xviii. 14.
[209] Vos autem quæritis de pusillo crescere et de maiore minores esse. This remarkable addition to S. Matt. xx. 28 is found in Cod. D, in some Syriac and many Latin copies: read Westcott's note in Appendix C. 3 to Introduction to Study, &c.
[210] Inordinatum præposterum. Cf. Lett. XII., chap. 2, n. 8.
[211] S. Matt. vii. 2; S. Mark iv. 24; S. Luke vi. 36. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XX.
To Eutyches, an Abbot of Constantinople.
Leo, the bishop, to his dearly-beloved son, Eutyches, presbyter.
He thanks him for his information about the revival of Nestorianism and commends his zeal.
You have brought to our knowledge, beloved, by your letter that through the activity of some [212] the heresy of Nestorius has been again reviving. We reply that your solicitude in this matter has pleased us, since the remarks we have received are an indication of your mind. Wherefore do not doubt that the Lord, the Founder of the catholic Faith, will befriend you in all things. And when we have been able to ascertain more fully by whose wickedness this happens, we must make provision with the help of God for the complete uprooting of this poisonous growth which has long ago been condemned. God keep thee safe, my beloved son. Dated 1st June, in the consulship of the illustrious Postumianus and Zeno (448). __________________________________________________________________
[212] Quesnel is of opinion that Eutyches' letter had accused Domnus, Bishop of Antioch, and Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrus (cf. Lett. CXX., chapters iv. and v.), of Nestorianizing, and that he thus had gained the approbation of Leo before his own unsoundness had been made known. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XXI.
From Eutyches to Leo [213] .
I. He states his account of the proceedings at the Synod.
God the Word is before all else my witness, being confident of my hope and faith in Christ the Lord and God of all, and discerning the proof of my holding the truth in these matters: but I call on your holiness, too, to bear witness to my heart and to the reasonableness of my opinions and words. But the wicked devil has exercised his evil influence upon my zeal and determination, whereby his power ought to have been destroyed. Whereupon he has exerted all his proper power and aroused Eusebius, bishop of the town of Dorylæum, against me, who presented an allegation [214] to the holy bishop of the church in Constantinople, Flavian, and to certain others whom he found in the same city assembled on various matters of their own: in this he called me heretic, not raising any true accusation but contriving destruction for me and disturbance for the churches of God.
Their holinesses summoned me to reply to his accusation: but though I was delayed by a serious illness besides my advanced age, I came to clear myself, knowing well that a faction had been formed against my safety. And, indeed, together with a writ of appeal [215] to which my signature was appended, I offered them a statement showing my confession upon the holy Faith. But when the holy Flavian did not receive the document, nor order it to be read, yet heard me in reply utter word for word that Faith which was put forth at Nicæa by the holy Synod, and confirmed at Ephesus, I was required to acknowledge two natures, and to anathematize those who denied this. But I, fearing the decision of the synod, and not wishing either to take away or to add one word contrary to the Faith put forth by the holy Synod of Nicæa, knowing, too, that our holy and blessed fathers and bishops Julius, Felix, Athanasius, and Gregorius [216] rejected the phrase "two natures," and not daring to discuss the nature of God the Word, who came into flesh in the last days entering the womb of the holy virgin Mary unchangeably as he willed and knew, becoming man in reality, not in fancy, nor yet venturing to anathematize our aforesaid Fathers, I asked them to let your holiness know these things, that you might judge what seemed right to you, undertaking by all means to follow your ruling.
II. His explanations were allowed no hearing.
But without listening to any thing which I said, they broke up the Synod and published the sentence of my degradation, which they were getting ready against me before the inquiry. So much slander were they factiously making up against me that even my safety would have been endangered had not the help of God at the intercession of your holiness quickly snatched me from the assault of military force. Then they began to force the heads of other monasteries [217] to subscribe to my degradation (a thing which was never done either towards those who have professed themselves heretics, nor even against Nestorius himself), insomuch that when to reassure the people I tried to set forth [218] statements of my faith, not only did they, who were plotting the aforesaid faction against me, prevent them being heard, but also seized them that straightway I might be held a heretic before all.
III. He appeals to Leo for protection.
I take refuge, therefore, with you the defender of religion and abhorrer of such factions, bringing in even still nothing strange against the faith as it was originally handed down to us, but anathematizing Apollinaris, Valentinus, Manes, and Nestorius, and those who say that the flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Saviour, descended from heaven and not from the Holy Ghost and from the holy Virgin, along with all heresies down to Simon Magus. Yet nevertheless I stand in jeopardy of my life as a heretic. I beseech you not to be prejudiced against me by their insidious designs about me, but to pronounce the sentence which shall seem to you right upon the Faith, and in future not to allow any slander to be uttered against me by this faction, nor let one be expelled and banished from the number of the orthodox who has spent his seventy years of life in continence and all chastity, so that at the very end of life he should suffer shipwreck. I have subjoined to this my letter both documents, that which was presented by my accuser at the Synod, and that which was brought by me but not received, as well as the statement of my faith and those things which have been decreed upon the two natures by our holy Fathers [219] .
Eutyches' Confession of Faith.
I call upon you before God, who gives life to all things, and Christ Jesus, who witnessed that good confession under Pontius Pilate, that you do nothing by favour. For I have held the same as my forefathers and from my boyhood have been illuminated by the same Faith as that which was laid down by the holy Synod of 318 most blessed bishops who were gathered at Nicæa from the whole world, and which was confirmed and ratified afresh for sole acceptance by the holy Synod assembled at Ephesus: and I have never thought otherwise than as the right and only true orthodox Faith has enjoined. And I agree to everything that was laid down about the same Faith by the same holy Synod: of which Synod the leader and chief was Cyril of blessed memory bishop of the Alexandrians, the partner and sharer in the preaching and in the Faith of those saints and elect of God, Gregory the greater, and the other Gregory [220] , Basil, Athanasius, Atticus and Proclus. Him and all of them I have held orthodox and faithful, and have honoured as saints, and have esteemed my masters. But I utter an anathema on Nestorius, Apollinaris, and all heretics down to Simon, and those who say that the flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ came down from heaven. For He who is the Word of God came down from heaven without flesh and was made flesh in the holy Virgin's womb unchangeably and unalterably as He Himself knew and willed. And He who was always perfect God before the ages, was also made perfect man in the end of the days for us and for our salvation. This my full profession may your holiness consider.
I, Eutyches, presbyter and archimandrite, have subscribed to this statement with my own hand. __________________________________________________________________
[213] Contrary to my general plan, I have thought it wiser, in the matter of the Eutychian controversy, to include other than Leo's own writings, that the reader may fulfil the precept audi alteram partem in what was the most important doctrinal discussion of Leo's term of office. This Letter (XXI.) bears the stamp of genuineness upon it, though the Gk. original is not found. It is from a collection of documents bearing on Nestorianism published ex ms. Casinensi, first by Christianus Lupus (?), and afterwards by Stephanus Baluzius (1630-1718).
[214] See Introduction, p. vii.
[215] Libelli sc. (appellationis ad Leonem): this is referred to by Flavian (Lett. XXVI., chap. iii.) and denied.
[216] Of these four worthies, Athanasius is too well known to need further notice. Gregorius is either Greg. Nazianzen, Bishop of Constantinople (circ. 380) or Greg. of Nyssa, both great champions of the Church against Arianism (not, as the Ball., Greg. Thaumaturgus, Bishop of Neo-Cæsarea, 244-70): Julius was a Bishop of Rome (337-52): an excerpt from one of his letters is printed by the Ball. at the end of this letter as the passage on which Eutyches based his error, though they suspect it (not unnaturally) as being an Apollinarian imposition: Felix is probably no other than the Arian Bishop of Rome, Felix II. (355-8) whose appointment is characterized by Athanasius as effected "by antichristian wickedness," but who is yet a canonized saint and martyr of the Roman Church (see Schaff's Hist., vol. ii. p. 371; iii. 635, 6).
[217] Abbots' signatures are found attached to the condemnation of Eutyches by the synod of Constantinople.
[218] Cf. Letter XXVI., chap. ii., propositiones iniuriarum publice ponens et maledictionibus plenas (Gr. prothemeta hubreos kai loioorias anamesta) which is Flavian's account of the matter.
[219] Of these four documents (1) Eusebius' libellus is preserved in Act I Chalcedon; (2) is not forthcoming; (3) is appended below; and (4) a fragment of the testimony of Julius, which is given, does not seem important enough to be added in this edition, especially as its genuineness is denied.
[220] Here we have the two Gregorys mentioned: cf. n. 7. above. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XXII [221] .
The first from Flavian, Bp. of Constantinople to Pope Leo.
To the most holy and God-loving father and fellow-bishop, Leo, Flavian greeting in theLord.
I. The designs of the devil have led Eutyches astray.
There is nothing which can stay the devil's wickedness, that "restless evil, full of deadly poison [222] ." Above and below it "goes about," seeking "whom it may" strike, dismay, and "devour [223] ." Whence to watch, to be sober unto prayer, to draw near to God, to eschew foolish questionings, to follow the fathers and not to go beyond the eternal bounds, this we have learnt from Holy Writ. And so I give up the excess of grief and abundant tears over the capture of one of the clergy who are under me, and whom I could not save nor snatch from the wolf, although I was ready to lay down my life for him. How was he caught, how did he leap away, hating the voice of the caller and turning aside also from the memory of the Fathers and thoroughly detesting their paths. And thus I proceed with my account.
II. The seductions of heretics capture the unwary.
There are some "in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves [224] :" whom we know by their fruit. These men seem indeed at first to be of us, but they are not of us: "for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us [225] ." But when they have spewed out their impiety, throwing out the guile that is in them, and seizing the weaker ones, and those who have their senses unpractised in the divine utterances, they carry them along with themselves to destruction, wresting and doing despite to the Fathers' doctrines, just as they do the Holy Scriptures also to their own destruction: whom we must be forewarned of and take heed lest some should be misled by their wickedness and shaken in their firmness. "For they have sharpened their tongues like serpents: adder's poison is under their lips [226] ," as the prophet has cried out about them.
III. Eutyches' heresy stated.
Such a one, therefore, has now shown himself amongst us, Eutyches, for many years a presbyter and archimandrite [227] , pretending to hold the same belief as ours, and to have the right Faith in him: indeed he resists the blasphemy of Nestorius, and feigns a controversy with him, but the exposition of the Faith composed by the 318 holy fathers, and the letter that Cyril of holy memory wrote to Nestorius, and one by the same author on the same subject to the Easterns, these writings, to which all have given their assent, he has tried to upset, and revive the old evil dogmas of the blasphemous Valentinus and Apollinaris. He has not feared the warning of the True King: "Whoso shall cause one of the least of these little ones to stumble, it was better that a millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be sunk in the depth of the sea. [228] " But casting away all shame, and shaking off the cloak which covered his error [229] , he openly in our holy synod persisted in saying that our Lord Jesus Christ ought not to be understood by us as having two natures after His incarnation in one substance and in one person: nor yet that the Lord's flesh was of the same substance with us, as if assumed from us and united to God the Word hypostatically: but he said that the Virgin who bare him was indeed of the same substance with us according to the flesh, but the Lord Himself did not assume from her flesh of the same substance with us: but the Lord's body was not a man's body, although that which issued from the Virgin was a human body, resisting all the expositions of the holy Fathers.
IV. He has sent Leo the minutes of their proceedings that he may see all the details.
But not to make my letter too long by detailing everything, we have sent your holiness the proceedings which some time since we took in the matter: therein we deprived him as convicted on these charges, of his priesthood, of the management of his monastery and of our communion: in order that your holiness also knowing the facts of his case may make his wickedness manifest to all the God-loving bishops who are under your reverence; lest perchance if they do not know the views which he holds, and of which he has been openly convicted, they may be found to be in correspondence with him as a fellow-believer by letter or by other means. I and those who are with me give much greeting to you and to all the brotherhood in Christ. The Lord keep you in safety and prayer for us, O most God-Loving Father. [230] __________________________________________________________________
[221] There are two Latin versions of the original Gk. of this letter, an older and a later: the later, as being more accurate, is here translated, though Canon Bright would seem to be right (n. 139) in saying that we must think of Leo as writing the Tome (Lett. XXVIII.) with the older Latin version of Flavian's letter before him.
[222] S. Jam. iii. 8.
[223] 1 Pet. v. 8.
[224] S. Matt. vii. 15.
[225] 1 John ii. 19.
[226] Ps. cxl. 3.
[227] Viz., head of a monastery (Gk. mandra) or abbot.
[228] S. Matt. xviii. 6, but it will be noticed that the quotation is confused with xxv. 40, minimis being substituted for qui in me credunt.
[229] Pudorem (instead of the impudenter of the mss.) omnem abiciens et pellem quæ eum circumdabat excutiens, the Gk. version of this somewhat obscure passage running aido pasan apobalon kai hen periekeito tes planes doran apotinaxamenos.
[230] This was the letter "which was somewhat unaccountably delayed in its transit to Rome" (Bright), which reached Leo after XXIII. was written, and to which Leo refers in the Tome, chap. i., litteris, quas miramur fuisse tam seras. Bright's note 139 should be read throughout as a clear exposition of the preliminary steps in the controversy. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XXIII.
To Flavian, Bishop of Constantinople.
To his well-beloved brother Flavian the bishop, Leo the bishop.
I. He complains that Flavian has not sent him a full account of Eutyches' case.
Seeing that our most Christian and merciful Emperor, in his holy and praiseworthy faith and anxiety for the peace of the Catholic Church, has sent us a letter [231] upon the matters which have roused the din of disturbance among you, we wonder, brother, that you have been able to keep silence to us upon the scandal that has been caused, and that you did not rather take measures for our being at once informed by your own report, that we might not have any doubt about the truth of the case. For we have received a document from the presbyter Eutyches [232] , who complains that on the accusation of bishop Eusebius he has been wrongfully deprived of communion, notwithstanding that he says he attended your summons and did not refuse his presence: and moreover asserts that he presented a deed of appeal in the very court, which was however not accepted: whereupon he was forced to put forth letters of defence [233] in the city of Constantinople. Pending which matter we do not yet know with what justice he has been separated from the communion of the Church. But having regard to the importance of the matter, we wish to know the reason of your action and to have the whole thing brought to our knowledge: for we, who desire the judgments of the Lord's priests to be deliberate, cannot without information decide one way or another, until we have all the proceedings accurately before us.
II. And now demands it.
And therefore, brother, signify to us in a full account by the hand of the most fit and competent person, what innovation has arisen against the ancient faith, which needed to be corrected by so severe a sentence. For both the moderation of the Church and the devout faith of our most godly prince insist upon our showing much anxiety for the peace of Christendom: that dissensions may be cleared away and the Catholic Faith kept unimpaired, and that those whose faith has been proved may be fortified by our authority, when those who maintain what is wrong have been recalled from their error. And no difficulty can arise on this side, since the said presbyter has professed himself by his own statement, ready to be corrected if anything be found in him worthy of rebuke. For it beseems us in such matters to take every precaution that charity be kept and the Truth defended without the din of strife. And therefore because you see, beloved, that we are anxious about so great a matter, hasten to inform us of everything in as full and clear a manner as possible (for this ought to have been done before), lest in the cross-statements of both sides we be misled by some uncertainty, and the dissension, which ought to be stifled in its infancy, be fostered: for our heart is impressed by God's inspiration with the need of saving from violation by anyone's misinterpretation those constitutions of the venerable fathers which have received Divine ratification and belong to the groundwork of the Faith. God keep thee safe, dear brother. Dated 18 February (449), in the consulship of the illustrious Asturius and Protogenes. __________________________________________________________________
[231] This letter from Theodosius II. came soon after Eutyches, letter (XXI), and "apparently gave Leo the impression, that Eutyches had been badly treated." Bright.
[232] See Letter XXI., above.
[233] Contestatorios libellos. See Lett. XXI., chap. ii. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XXIV.
To Theodosius Augustus II.
Leo the bishop, to Theodosius Augustus.
I. He praises the Emperor's piety and mentions Eutyches' appeal.
How much protection the Lord has vouchsafed His Church through your clemency and faith, is shown again by this letter which you have sent me: so that we rejoice at there being not only a kingly, but also a priestly mind within you. Seeing that, besides your imperial and public cares, you have a most devout anxiety for the Christian religion, lest schisms or heresies or other offences should grow up among God's people. For your realm is then in its best state when men serve the eternal and unchangeable Trinity by the confession of one Godhead [234] . What the disturbance was which occurred in the Church of Constantinople, and which could have so moved my brother and fellow-bishop Flavian, that he deprived Eutyches, the presbyter, of communion, I have not yet been able to understand clearly. For although the aforesaid presbyter sent in writing a complaint concerning his trouble to the Apostolic See, yet he only briefly touched on some points, asserting that he kept the constitutions of the Nicene synod and had been vainly blamed for difference of faith.
II. He finds fault with Flavian's silence.
But the statement of bishop Eusebius, his accuser, copies of which the said presbyter has sent us, contained nothing clear about his objections, and though he charged a presbyter with heresy, he did not say expressly what opinion he disapproved of in him: although the bishop himself also professed that he adhered to the decrees of the Nicene synod: for which reason we had no means of learning anything more fully. And because the method of our Faith and the laudable anxiety shown by your piety requires the merits of the case to be known, there must now be no place allowed for deception, but we must be informed of the points on which he considers him unsound, that the right judgment may be passed after full information. I have sent a letter to the aforesaid bishop, from which he may gather that I am displeased at his still keeping silence upon what has been done in so grave a matter, when he ought to have been forward in disclosing all to us at the outset: and we believe that even after the reminder he will acquaint us with the whole, in order that, when what now seems obscure, has been brought into the light, judgment may be passed agreeably to the teaching of the Gospels and the Apostles. Dated the 18th of February [235] , in the consulship of the illustrious Asturius and Protogenes (449). __________________________________________________________________
[234] Is it fanciful to trace an analogy between these words and the language of the Collect for Trinity Sunday (out of the Sacramentary of Gregory), "grace by the confession of a true faith to acknowledge the glory of the Eternal Trinity, and in the power of the Divine Majesty to worship the Unity?"
[235] Quesnel reads the 1st of March as the date. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XXV.
From Peter Chrysologus, Bishop of Ravenna, to Eutyches, the Presbyter.
[In answer to a letter from Eutyches, he urges him to accept the decisions of the Church on the Faith in fear and without too close inquiry, and to abide by the ruling of the bishop of Rome.] __________________________________________________________________
Letter XXVI [236] .
A Second One from Flavian to Leo.
To the most holy and blessed father and fellow-minister Leo, Flavian greeting in the Lord.
I. Eutyches' heresy restated.
Nothing, as you know, most beloved of God, is more precious to priests than piety and the right dividing of the word of truth. For all our hope and safety, and the recompense of promised good depend thereon. For this reason we must take all pains about the true Faith, and those things which have been set forth and decreed by the holy Fathers, that always, and in all circumstances, they may be kept and guarded whole and uninjured. And so it was necessary on the present occasion for us, who see the orthodox Faith suffering harm, and the heresy of Apollinaris and Valentinus being revived by the wicked monk Eutyches, not to overlook it, but publicly to disclose it for the people's safety. For this man: this Eutyches, keeping his diseased and sickly opinion hid within him, has dared to attack our gentleness, and unblushingly and shamelessly to instil his own blasphemy into many minds: saying that before the Incarnation indeed, our Saviour Jesus Christ had two natures, Godhead and manhood: but that after the union they became one nature; not knowing [237] what he says, or on what he is speaking so decidedly. For even the union of the two natures that came together in Christ did not, as your piety knows, confuse their properties in the process: but the properties of the two natures remain entire even in the union. And he added another blasphemy also, saying that the Lord's body which sprang from Mary was not of our substance, nor of human matter: but, though he calls it human, he refuses to say it was consubstantial with us or with her who bare him, according to the flesh [238] .
II. The means Eutyches has taken to circumvent the Synod.
And this notwithstanding that the acts of Ephesus [239] , in the letter written by the holy and ecumenical synod to the wicked and deposed Nestorius, contain these express words: "the natures which came together to form true unity are indeed different: and yet from them both there is but one Christ and Son. Not as if the difference between the two natures was done away with through the union, but rather that these same natures, His Godhead and His Manhood perfected for us one Lord Jesus Christ, through an ineffable and incomprehensible meeting which resulted in unity." And this does not escape your holiness, who have no doubt read the record of what was done at Ephesus. Yet this same Eutyches attaching no weight to these words, thinks he is not liable to the penalties fixed by that holy and ecumenical synod. For this reason, finding that many of the simpler-minded folk were injured in their faith by his contention, upon his being accused by the devout Bishop Eusebius, and upon his attending at the holy council, and with his own mouth declaring what he thought to the members of the synod, we have deposed him for his estrangement from the true Faith, as your holiness will learn from the resolutions passed about him: which we have sent with this our letter. Moreover, it is fair in my opinion that you should be told this also that this same Eutyches, after suffering just and canonical deposition, instead of making amends for his earlier by his later conduct [240] , and appeasing God by careful penitence and many tears, and by a true repentance, comforting our heart which was greatly saddened at his fall: not only did not do so, but even made every effort to throw the most holy church of this place into confusion: setting up in public placards full of insults and maledictions, and beyond this addressing his entreaties to our most religious and Christ-loving Emperor, and these too over-flowing with arrogance and sauciness, whereby he tried to override the divine canons in everything.
III. He acknowledges the receipt of Leo's letter.
But after all this had occurred, your holiness' letter was conveyed to us by the most honourable count Pansophius: and from it we learnt that the same Eutyches had sent you a letter full of falsehood and cunning, saying that at the time of trial he had presented letters of appeal to us, and to the holy synod of bishops who were then present, and had appealed to your holiness: this he certainly never did, but in this matter, too, he has been guilty of deceit, like the father of lies, thinking to gain your ear. Therefore, most holy father, being stirred by all that he has ventured, and by what has been done, and is being done against us and the most holy Church, use your accustomed promptitude as becomes the priesthood, and in defending the commonweal and peace of the holy churches, consent by your own letter [241] to endorse the resolution that has been canonically passed against him, and to confirm the faith of our most religious and Christ-loving Emperor. For the matter only requires your weight and support, which through your wisdom will at once bring about general peace and quietness. For thus both the heresy which has arisen, and the disorder it has excited, will easily be appeased by God's assistance through a letter from you: and the rumoured synod will also be prevented, and so the most holy churches throughout the world need not be disturbed. I and all that are with me salute all the brethren that are with you. May you be granted to us safe in the Lord, and still praying for us, O most God-Loving and Holy Father. __________________________________________________________________
[236] In reading the Tome (Lett. XXVIII.) the reader is warned to remember that he must take no account of this letter, which did not reach Leo until later, and which is acknowledged in Lett. XXXVI. dated a week after the Tome. Bright (n. 139). There are two versions of this letter also, the ancient one and a modern one by Joannes Cotelerius, which latter, as being a more exact reproduction of the Gk. original, we have taken as the basis of our English translation.
[237] Ignarus: it will be remembered that in the Tome (chap. i.) this is the chief fault which Leo also has to find with Eutyches, calling him multum imprudens et nimis imperitis, &c.
[238] So in Lett. XXII., chap. iii., Domini corpus non esse quidem corpus hominis, humanum autem corpus esse quod ex Virgine est.
[239] The date of this Council is 431 b.c.
[240] Saltem secundis curare priora (Gk. kan tois deuterois iasasthai ta protera).
[241] Cf. Lett. XXVII., n. 7, where the difference between Flavian's request here and in Lett. XXII., chap iv., is pointed out. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XXVII.
To Flavian, Bishop of Constantinople.
Leo to Flavian, bishop of Constantinople.
An acknowledgment of Flavian's first letter and a promise of a fuller reply.
On the first opportunity we could find, which was the coming of our honourable son Rodanus, we acknowledge, beloved, the arrival of your packet [242] , which was to give us information about the case which has been stirred up to our grief among you by misguided error. Since this man, who has long seemed to be religiously disposed, has expressed himself in the Faith otherwise than is right, though he never ought to have departed from the catholic tradition, but to have persevered in the same belief as is held by all. But on this matter we are replying more fully [243] by him who brought your letter to us, beloved: that we may give you all necessary instructions, beloved, on the whole matter. For we do not allow either him to persist in his perverse conviction; or you, beloved, who with such faithful zeal are resisting his wrong and foolish error to be long disturbed by the adversary's opposition. Our aforesaid son, by whom we are sending this letter, we desire you to receive with the affection he deserves, and to reply when he returns to us. Dated 21st May in the consulship of Asturius and Protogenes (449). __________________________________________________________________
[242] Epistolas. This refers to Lett. XXII., and includes the gesta (or minutes of the synod's proceedings) which accompanied it.
[243] This is the Tome (Letter XXVIII.): it will be noticed that Flavian (in Lett. XXII.) had not asked for any instructions, but only that Leo should inform the bishops under his jurisdiction of Eutyches' deposition (chap. iv.). Flavian's second letter (XXVI.), however, does mention vestras sacras litteras, which he hopes will avoid the necessity of a council (chap. iii.). Leo himself seems to be conscious of this: for in Letter XXXIII., chap. 2, he twice pointedly puts in the word "seems," as if Flavian had not expressed himself quite clearly: "the points which he seems to have referred to us," and "this error which seems to have arisen." __________________________________________________________________
Letter XXVIII.
To Flavian commonly called "the Tome."
I. Eutyches has been driven into his error by presumption and ignorance [244] .
Having read your letter, beloved, at the late arrival of which we are surprised [245] , and having perused the detailed account of the bishops' acts [246] , we have at last found out what the scandal was which had arisen among you against the purity of the Faith: and what before seemed concealed has now been unlocked and laid open to our view: from which it is shown that Eutyches, who used to seem worthy of all respect in virtue of his priestly office, is very unwary and exceedingly ignorant, so that it is even of him that the prophet has said: "he refused to understand so as to do well: he thought upon iniquity in his bed [247] ." But what more iniquitous than to hold blasphemous opinions [248] , and not to give way to those who are wiser and more learned than ourself. Now into this unwisdom fall they who, finding themselves hindered from knowing the truth by some obscurity, have recourse not to the prophets' utterances, not to the Apostles' letters, nor to the injunctions of the Gospel but to their own selves: and thus they stand out as masters of error because they were never disciples of truth. For what learning has he acquired about the pages of the New and Old Testament, who has not even grasped the rudiments of the Creed? And that which, throughout the world, is professed by the mouth of every one who is to be born again [249] , is not yet taken in by the heart of this old man.
II. Concerning the twofold nativity and nature of Christ.
Not knowing, therefore, what he was bound to think concerning the incarnation of the Word of God, and not wishing to gain the light of knowledge by researches through the length and breadth of the Holy Scriptures, he might at least have listened attentively to that general and uniform confession, whereby the whole body of the faithful confess that they believe in God the Father Almighty, and in Jesus Christ, His only Son [250] , our Lord, who was born of the Holy Spirit and [251] the Virgin Mary. By which three statements the devices of almost all heretics are overthrown. For not only is God believed to be both Almighty and the Father, but the Son is shown to be co-eternal with Him, differing in nothing from the Father because He is God from God [252] , Almighty from Almighty, and being born from the Eternal one is co-eternal with Him; not later in point of time, not lower in power, not unlike in glory, not divided in essence: but at the same time the only begotten of the eternal Father was born eternal of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary. And this nativity which took place in time took nothing from, and added nothing to that divine and eternal birth, but expended itself wholly on the restoration of man who had been deceived [253] : in order that he might both vanquish death and overthrow by his strength [254] , the Devil who possessed the power of death. For we should not now be able to overcome the author of sin and death unless He took our nature on Him and made it His own, whom neither sin could pollute nor death retain. Doubtless then, He was conceived of the Holy Spirit within the womb of His Virgin Mother, who brought Him forth without the loss of her virginity, even as she conceived Him without its loss.
But if he could not draw a rightful understanding (of the matter) from this pure source of the Christian belief, because he had darkened the brightness of the clear truth by a veil of blindness peculiar to himself, he might have submitted himself to the teaching of the Gospels. And when Matthew speaks of "the Book of the Generation of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham [255] ," he might have also sought out the instruction afforded by the statements of the Apostles. And reading in the Epistle to the Romans, "Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called an Apostle, separated unto the Gospel of God, which He had promised before by His prophets in the Holy Scripture concerning His son, who was made unto Him [256] of the seed of David after the flesh [257] ," he might have bestowed a loyal carefulness upon the pages of the prophets. And finding the promise of God who says to Abraham, "In thy seed shall all nations be blest [258] ," to avoid all doubt as to the reference of this seed, he might have followed the Apostle when He says, "To Abraham were the promises made and to his seed. He saith not and to seeds, as if in many, but as it in one, and to thy seed which is Christ [259] ." Isaiah's prophecy also he might have grasped by a closer attention to what he says, "Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a Son and they shall call His name Immanuel," which is interpreted "God with us [260] ." And the same prophet's words he might have read faithfully. "A child is born to us, a Son is given to us, whose power is upon His shoulder, and they shall call His name the Angel of the Great Counsel, Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Prince of Peace, the Father of the age to come [261] ." And then he would not speak so erroneously as to say that the Word became flesh in such a way that Christ, born of the Virgin's womb, had the form of man, but had not the reality of His mother's body [262] . Or is it possible that he thought our Lord Jesus Christ was not of our nature for this reason, that the angel, who was sent to the blessed Mary ever Virgin, says, "The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee: and therefore that Holy Thing also that shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God [263] ," on the supposition that as the conception of the Virgin was a Divine act, the flesh of the conceived did not partake of the conceiver's nature? But that birth so uniquely wondrous and so wondrously unique, is not to be understood in such wise that the properties of His kind were removed through the novelty of His creation. For though the Holy Spirit imparted fertility to the Virgin, yet a real body was received from her body; and, "Wisdom building her a house [264] ," "the Word became flesh and dwelt in us [265] ," that is, in that flesh which he took from man and which he quickened with the breath of a higher life [266] .
III. The Faith and counsel of God in regard to the incarnation of the Word are set forth.
Without detriment therefore to the properties of either nature and substance which then came together in one person [267] , majesty took on humility, strength weakness, eternity mortality: and for the paying off of the debt belonging to our condition inviolable nature was united with possible nature, so that, as suited the needs of our case [268] , one and the same Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, could both die with the one and not die with the other. [269] Thus in the whole and perfect nature of true man was true God born, complete in what was His own, complete in what was ours. And by "ours" we mean what the Creator formed in us from the beginning and what He undertook to repair. For what the Deceiver brought in and man deceived committed, had no trace in the Saviour. Nor, because He partook of man's weaknesses, did He therefore share our faults. He took the form of a slave [270] without stain of sin, increasing the human and not diminishing the divine: because that emptying of Himself whereby the Invisible made Himself visible and, Creator and Lord of all things though He be, wished to be a mortal, was the bending down [271] of pity, not the failing of power. Accordingly He who while remaining in the form of God made man, was also made man in the form of a slave. For both natures retain their own proper character without loss: and as the form of God did not do away with the form of a slave, so the form of a slave did not impair the form of God. For inasmuch as the Devil used to boast that man had been cheated by his guile into losing the divine gifts, and bereft of the boon of immortality had undergone sentence of death, and that he had found some solace in his troubles from having a partner in delinquency [272] , and that God also at the demand of the principle of justice had changed His own purpose towards man whom He had created in such honour: there was need for the issue of a secret counsel, that the unchangeable God whose will cannot be robbed of its own kindness, might carry out the first design of His Fatherly care [273] towards us by a more hidden mystery [274] ; and that man who had been driven into his fault by the treacherous cunning of the devil might not perish contrary to the purpose of God [275] .
IV. The properties of the twofold nativity and nature of Christ are weighed one against another.
There enters then these lower parts of the world the Son of God, descending from His heavenly home and yet not quitting His Father's glory, begotten in a new order by a new nativity. In a new order, because being invisible in His own nature, He became visible in ours, and He whom nothing could contain was content to be contained [276] : abiding before all time He began to be in time: the Lord of all things, He obscured His immeasurable majesty and took on Him the form of a servant: being God that cannot suffer, He did not disdain to be man that can, and, immortal as He is, to subject Himself to the laws of death. The Lord assumed His mother's nature without her faultiness: nor in the Lord Jesus Christ, born of the Virgin's womb, does the wonderfulness of His birth make His nature unlike ours. For He who is true God is also true man: and in this union there is no lie [277] , since the humility of manhood and the loftiness of the Godhead both meet there. For as God is not changed by the showing of pity, so man is not swallowed up by the dignity. For each form does what is proper to it with the co-operation of the other [278] ; that is the Word performing what appertains to the Word, and the flesh carrying out what appertains to the flesh. One of them sparkles with miracles, the other succumbs to injuries. And as the Word does not cease to be on an equality with His Father's glory, so the flesh does not forego the nature of our race. For it must again and again be repeated that one and the same is truly Son of God and truly son of man. God in that "in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God [279] ;" man in that "the Word became flesh and dwelt in us [280] ." God in that "all things were made by Him [281] , and without Him was nothing made:" man in that "He was made of a woman, made under law [282] ." The nativity of the flesh was the manifestation of human nature: the childbearing of a virgin is the proof of Divine power. The infancy of a babe is shown in the humbleness of its cradle [283] : the greatness of the Most High is proclaimed by the angels' voices [284] . He whom Herod treacherously endeavours to destroy is like ourselves in our earliest stage [285] : but He whom the Magi delight to worship on their knees is the Lord of all. So too when He came to the baptism of John, His forerunner, lest He should not be known through the veil of flesh which covered His Divinity, the Father's voice thundering from the sky, said, "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased [286] ." And thus Him whom the devil's craftiness attacks as man, the ministries of angels serve as God. To be hungry and thirsty, to be weary, and to sleep, is clearly human: but to satisfy 5,000 men with five loaves, and to bestow on the woman of Samaria living water, droughts of which can secure the drinker from thirsting any more, to walk upon the surface of the sea with feet that do not sink, and to quell the risings of the waves by rebuking the winds, is, without any doubt, Divine. Just as therefore, to pass over many other instances, it is not part of the same nature to be moved to tears of pity for a dead friend, and when the stone that closed the four-days' grave was removed, to raise that same friend to life with a voice of command: or, to hang on the cross, and turning day to night, to make all the elements tremble: or, to be pierced with nails, and yet open the gates of paradise to the robber's faith: so it is not part of the same nature to say, "I and the Father are one," and to say, "the Father is greater than I [287] ." For although in the Lord Jesus Christ God and man is one person, yet the source of the degradation, which is shared by both, is one, and the source of the glory, which is shared by both, is another. For His manhood, which is less than the Father, comes from our side: His Godhead, which is equal to the Father, comes from the Father.
V. Christ's flesh is proved real from Scripture.
Therefore in consequence of this unity of person which is to be understood in both natures [288] , we read of the Son of Man also descending from heaven, when the Son of God took flesh from the Virgin who bore Him. And again the Son of God is said to have been crucified and buried, although it was not actually in His Divinity whereby the Only-begotten is co-eternal and con-substantial with the Father, but in His weak human nature that He suffered these things. And so it is that in the Creed also we all confess that the Only-begotten Son of God was crucified and buried, according to that saying of the Apostle: "for if they had known, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory [289] ." But when our Lord and Saviour Himself would instruct His disciples' faith by His questionings, He said, "Whom do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?" And when they had put on record the various opinions of other people, He said, "But ye, whom do ye say that I am?" Me, that is, who am the Son of Man, and whom ye see in the form of a slave, and in true flesh, whom do ye say that I am? Whereupon blessed Peter, whose divinely inspired confession was destined to profit all nations, said, "Thou art Christ, the Son of the living God [290] ." And not undeservedly was he pronounced blessed by the Lord, drawing from the chief corner-stone [291] the solidity of power which his name also expresses, he, who, through the revelation of the Father, confessed Him to be at once Christ and Son of God: because the receiving of the one of these without the other was of no avail to salvation, and it was equally perilous to have believed the Lord Jesus Christ to be either only God without man, or only man without God. But after the Lord's resurrection (which, of course, was of His true body, because He was raised the same as He had died and been buried), what else was effected by the forty days' delay than the cleansing of our faith's purity from all darkness? For to that end He talked with His disciples, and dwelt and ate with them, He allowed Himself to be handled with diligent and curious touch by those who were affected by doubt, He entered when the doors were shut upon the Apostles, and by His breathing upon them gave them the Holy Spirit [292] , and bestowing on them the light of understanding, opened the secrets of the Holy Scriptures [293] . So again He showed the wound in His side, the marks of the nails, and all the signs of His quite recent suffering, saying, "See My hands and feet, that it is I. Handle Me and see that a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see Me have [294] ;" in order that the properties of His Divine and human nature might be acknowledged to remain still inseparable: and that we might know the Word not to be different from the flesh, in such a sense as also to confess that the one Son of God is both the Word and flesh [295] . Of this mystery of the faith [296] your opponent Eutyches must be reckoned to have but little sense if he has recognized our nature in the Only-begotten of God neither through the humiliation of His having to die, nor through the glory of His rising again. Nor has he any fear of the blessed apostle and evangelist John's declaration when he says, "every spirit which confesses Jesus Christ to have come in the flesh, is of God: and every spirit which destroys Jesus is not of God, and this is Antichrist [297] ." But what is "to destroy Jesus," except to take away the human nature from Him, and to render void the mystery, by which alone we were saved, by the most barefaced fictions. The truth is that being in darkness about the nature of Christ's body, he must also be befooled by the same blindness in the matter of His sufferings. For if he does not think the cross of the Lord fictitious, and does not doubt that the punishment He underwent to save the world is likewise true, let him acknowledge the flesh of Him whose death he already believes: and let him not disbelieve Him man with a body like ours, since he acknowledges Him to have been able to suffer: seeing that the denial of His true flesh is also the denial of His bodily suffering. If therefore he receives the Christian faith, and does not turn away his ears from the preaching of the Gospel: let him see what was the nature that hung pierced with nails on the wooden cross, and, when the side of the Crucified was opened by the soldier's spear, let him understand whence it was that blood and water flowed, that the Church of God might be watered from the font and from the cup [298] . Let him hear also the blessed Apostle Peter, proclaiming that the sanctification of the Spirit takes place through the sprinkling of Christ's blood [299] . And let him not read cursorily the same Apostle's words when he says, "Knowing that not with corruptible things, such as silver and gold, have ye been redeemed from your vain manner of life which is part of your fathers' tradition, but with the precious blood of Jesus Christ as of a lamb without spot and blemish [300] ." Let him not resist too the witness of the blessed Apostle John, who says: "and the blood of Jesus the Son of God cleanseth us from all sin [301] ." And again: "this is the victory which overcometh the world, our faith." And "who is He that overcometh the world save He that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God. This is He that came by water and blood, Jesus Christ: not by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit that testifieth, because the Spirit is the truth [302] , because there are three that bear witness, the Spirit, the water and the blood, and the three are one [303] ." The Spirit, that is, of sanctification, and the blood of redemption, and the water of baptism: because the three are one, and remain undivided, and none of them is separated from this connection; because the catholic Church lives and progresses by this faith, so that in Christ Jesus neither the manhood without the true Godhead nor the Godhead without the true manhood is believed in.
VI. The wrong and mischievous confession of Eutyches. The terms on which he may be restored to Communion. The sending of deputies to the east.
But when during your cross-examination Eutyches replied and said, "I confess that our Lord had two natures before the union but after the union I confess but one [304] ," I am surprised that so absurd and mistaken a statement of his should not have been criticised and rebuked by his judges, and that an utterance which reaches the height of stupidity and blasphemy should be allowed to pass as if nothing offensive had been heard: for the impiety of saying that the Son of God was of two natures before His incarnation is only equalled by the iniquity of asserting that there was but one nature in Him after "the Word became flesh." And to the end that Eutyches may not think this a right or defensible opinion because it was not contradicted by any expression of yourselves, we warn you beloved brother, to take anxious care that if ever through the inspiration of God's mercy the case is brought to a satisfactory conclusion, his ignorant mind be purged from this pernicious idea as well as others. He was, indeed, just beginning to beat a retreat from his erroneous conviction, as the order of proceedings shows [305] , in so far as when hemmed in by your remonstrances he agreed to say what he had not said before and to acquiesce in that belief to which before he had been opposed. However, when he refused to give his consent to the anathematizing of his blasphemous dogma, you understood, brother [306] , that he abode by his treachery and deserved to receive a verdict of condemnation. And yet, if he grieves over it faithfully and to good purpose, and, late though it be, acknowledges how rightly the bishops' authority has been set in motion; or if with his own mouth and hand in your presence he recants his wrong opinions, no mercy that is shown to him when penitent can be found fault with [307] : because our Lord, that true and "good shepherd" who laid down His life for His sheep [308] and who came to save not lose men's souls [309] , wishes us to imitate His kindness [310] ; in order that while justice constrains us when we sin, mercy may prevent our rejection when we have returned. For then at last is the true Faith most profitably defended when a false belief is condemned even by the supporters of it.
Now for the loyal and faithful execution of the whole matter, we have appointed to represent us our brothers Julius [311] Bishop and Renatus [312] priest [of the Title of S. Clement], as well as my son Hilary [313] , deacon. And with them we have associated Dulcitius our notary, whose faith is well approved: being sure that the Divine help will be given us, so that he who had erred may be saved when the wrongness of his view has been condemned. God keep you safe, beloved brother.
The 13 June, 449, in the consulship of the most illustrious Asturius and Protogenes. __________________________________________________________________
[244] The original word (imperitia) implies that a recluse like Eutyches (an archimandrite of a convent) ought never to have entered into a nice controversy like the present: he has not enough savoir faire, and his knowledge is not quite up to date, is a little old-fashioned.
[245] The exact reason of the delay is not altogether certain: we know Flavian had written much earlier than the date of arrival warranted: it is No. XXII. in the series.
[246] Viz., the proceedings of the sunodos endemousa summoned by Flavian at Constantinople.
[247] Ps. xxxvi. 4.
[248] Impia sapere, to think disloyal things against God: cf. the recta sapere, "to have a right judgment" of the Collect for Whitsunday.
[249] Knowledge of and belief in the principles of the Faith as contained in the Creed (symbolum) have of course always been required before Baptism from very early times. Leo here calls catechumens regenerandi, just as those who are being baptized are spoken of as renascentes (e.g. Lett. XVII. 8), those who have been baptized as renati (passim), and the rite itself as sacramentum regenerationis (e.g. Lett. IX. 2).
[250] The Latin unicus is not so exact as the Greek original monogenes: elsewhere, however, unigenitus is used.
[251] N.B. et (and) not ex (out of).
[252] The language of the Nicene Creed.
[253] I.e. by the Devil: the allusion is to Adam's fall in Paradise.
[254] Sua virtute: in patristic Latin virtus is, as is well known, usually the translation of the Greek dunamis and has a much wider meaning than moral excellence, our virtue.
[255] S. Matt. i. 1.
[256] ei. So the Vulgate.
[257] Rom. i. 1-3.
[258] Gen. xii. 3.
[259] Gal. iii. 16.
[260] Is. vii. 14. and S. Matt. i. 23.
[261] Is. ix. 6. "The angel of the great counsel" (magni consilii angelus) is a translation of the LXX. (which in the rest of the verse either represents a very different original text, or contents itself with a loose paraphrase), and is again repeated in the "Counsellor" (Consiliarius), two words farther on (which is also the Vulgate reading).
[262] This was the third dogma of Apollinaris (more fully stated in Lett. CXXIV. 2 and CLXV. 2) that our Lord's acts and sufferings as man belonged entirely to His Divine nature, and were not really human at all.
[263] S. Luke i. 35.
[264] Prov. ix. 1.
[265] In nobis, which he seems from the immediately following words to interpret as meaning "in our flesh," and not "amongst us," as the R.V. and others.
[266] Quam spiritu vitæ rationalis (logikou) animavit.
[267] A famous passage quoted by Hooker, Eccl. Pol. v. 53, 2, and Liddon Bampt. Lect., p. 267. Compare Serm. lxii. 1, quod...in unam personam concurrat proprietas utriusque substantiæ (Bright), also xxii. 2, xxiii. 2.
[268] Quod nostris remediis congruebat, where remedia must mean the disease which needs remedies (a sort of passive use).
[269] This passage from "Thus in the whole" to "not the failing of power" is repeated again in Sermon xxiii. 2, almost word for word.
[270] The reference, of course, is to Phil. ii. 6: no passage is a greater favourite with the Fathers than this.
[271] Compare S. Aug. ad Catech. § 6, humilitas Christi quid est? manum Deus homini iacenti porrexit: nos cecidimus, ille descendit: nos iacebamus, ille se inclinavit. Prendamus et surgamus ut non in poenam cadamus.
[272] De prævaricatoris consortio: prævaricator originally is a legal term, signifying "a shuffler" in a suit, an advocate who plays into the hands of the other side.
[273] Pietas, as in the collect for xvi. S. aft. Trin., where the English, "pity" represents the Latin "pietas" philologically as well as in meaning. Cf. n. 2 in chap. vi.
[274] Sacramento, (musterio): what the "mystery" was is finely set forth by Canon Bright's hymn, No. 172, H. A. and M. (new edition).
[275] The whole of the end of this chapter from "For inasmuch as," and the beginning of the next down to "laws of death," is repeated word for word in Sermon XXII., chaps. i. and ii.
[276] Incomprehensibilis voluit comprehendi. Canon Bright's references are most apposite: "compare Serm. lxviii., idem est qui impiorum manibus comprehenditur et qui nullo fine concluditur: and Serm. xxxvii. 1, genetricis gremio continetur qui nullo fine concluditor. This antithesis' has been grandly expressed in Milman's, Martyr of Antioch.' "And Thou wast laid within the tomb... Whom heaven could not contain, Nor the immeasurable plain Of vast infinity enclose or circle round.'"
[277] I.e. , there is no fancy, no pretending: each nature is in equal reality present, the human as well as the Divine, thus opposing all Docetic and Monophysite heresies.
[278] This passage (which is repeated in Serm. liv., chap. 2, down to "injuries"), was objected to by the Illyrian and Palestinian bishops as savouring of the heresy of Nestorius who "divided the substance:" but it is obvious that the same words might have an orthodox meaning in the mouth of one who was orthodox and to the unorthodox would bear an unorthodox construction.
[279] S. John i. l.
[280] Ibid. 14.
[281] Ibid. 3, the Latin is per ipsum (Gk. di' autou) (through Him).
[282] Gal. iv. 4.
[283] Viz., that it was laid "in a manger:" the Gk. version has sparganon, "swaddling clothes," to represent cunarum and this meaning is adopted by Bright [and Heurtley], S. Luke ii. 7.
[284] Ibid. 13.
[285] Similis est rudimentis hominum.
[286] S. Matt. iii. 17.
[287] S. John xiv. 28; x. 30: the reconciliation of this class of apparently contradictory statements is often undertaken by Leo [e.g. Sermon xxiii. 2 and lxxvii. 5; Ep. xxviii. 4 and lix. 3], and by other fathers (e.g. by Augustine de Fide et Symbolo, 18).
[288] This is what theologians call communicatio idiomatum, or in Gk. antidosis, the interchange of the properties of the two natures in Christ. The passage from the beginning of the chapter to "the Lord of glory" is somewhat freely adapted from S. Aug., c. Serm. Arian., cap. 8.
[289] 1 Cor. ii. 8.
[290] S. Matt. xvi. 13-16.
[291] A principali petra. The Gk. version giving apo tes prototupou petras: others translate it "from the original (or archetypal) rock," but it seems better to link the passage more closely with Eph. ii. 20; 1 Pet. ii. 6, &c., although the Greek rendering is against this: see Serm. iv. chap. 2, where Leo is expounding the same favourite text. Bright's note 64 is most useful in explaining the Leonine exposition. "Three elements," he says, combine in the idea; (1) Christ Himself; (2) the faith in Christ; and (3) Peter considered as the chief of the Apostles and under Christ, the head of the Church." Hence petra is applied to each of these at different times.
[292] S. John xx. 22.
[293] S. Luke xxiv. 27.
[294] Ibid. 39.
[295] i.e. not to fall into the Charybdis of Nestorianism in avoiding the Scylla of Eutychianism.
[296] Fidei sacramento.
[297] John iv. 2, 3: the Lat. for "destroys" (or "dissolves," Bright) is solvit (so also in Lett. CXLIV. 3), which appears to be an exclusively Western reading: for Socrates, "the only Greek authority for luei" (the Gk. equivalent), according to Dr. Westcott, quotes no Gk. mss. as giving it, though he unhesitatingly makes use of that reading. The Gk. version here however, gives diairein, which simply begs the question (in Leo's favour) as to the original meaning of the phrase solvere Jesum, though on the face of it that is not at all necessarily obvious.
[298] Et lavacro rigaretur et poculo: that is by the two great "generally necessary" sacraments of which he takes the water and the blood "from His riven side which flowed" to be a symbol.
[299] This refers to 1 Pet. i. 2 (q.v.).
[300] 1 Pet. i. 18.
[301] 1 John i. 7.
[302] Some of the mss. here give Christus for Spiritus (the reading adopted also by the Vulgate): in this case you must translate that Christ is the Truth instead of because of the Spirit, &c.: but see Westcott's note in loc.
[303] 1 John v. 4-8. The absence of the verse on the "Heavenly witnesses" (distinctly a western insertion) is to be noticed. On Leo's interpretation of this mysterious passage Canon Bright's note 168 should be consulted.
[304] This was the only compromise of his views which Eutyches could be brought to make at the synod of Constantinople. Though it was rejected, and did not hinder his condemnation, it was never met with a direct, categorical refutation.
[305] Gestorum ordo, as before, in chap. 1. A report of the proceedings had accompanied Flavian's letter.
[306] Fraternitas vestra: or, as the Gk. version apparently took it, "you and the rest of the brethren" (he humon adelphotes).
[307] It will be remembered that he had been degraded from the priesthood and deprived of his monastery, as well as excommunicated: he might be reinstated in all these privileges, the mercifulness of Leo hints, if he recant his errors.
[308] S. John x. 11 and 15.
[309] S. Luke ix. 50.
[310] Pietatis, a beautiful word, expressing now the Father's pitying protection, now the children's loyal affection, and here the Elder Brother's love for the younger and weaker. Cf. n. I. on chap. iii.
[311] Bishop of Puteoli.
[312] Died at Delos on the way. The words "of the title of S. Clement" are of doubtful authenticity, and not found in the Gk. version. The parish churches of Rome seem to have been called tituli at their first founding about the beginning of the 4th cent. a.d. Cf. our Eng. term "title," and refer to Bingham, Bk. viii. § 1.
[313] Afterwards Leo's successor in the see of Rome, 461-8. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XXIX.
To Theodosius Augustus.
To Cæsar Theodosius, the most religious and devout Augustus Leo pope of the CatholicChurch of the city of Rome [314] .
He notifies the appointment of his representatives at the Council of Ephesus.
How much God's providence vouchsafes to consult for the interests of men is shown by your merciful care which, incited by God's Spirit, is unwilling that there should be any disturbance or difference: since the Faith, which is absolutely one, cannot be different from itself in any thing. Hence although Eutyches, as the minutes of the bishops' proceeds reveals, has been detected in an ignorant and unwise error, and ought to have withdrawn from his conviction which is rightly condemned, yet since your piety which loves the Catholic Truth with great jealousy for God's honour, has determined on a synodal judgment at Ephesus, that that Truth on which he is blind may be brought home to the ignorant old man; I have sent my brothers Julius the Bishop, Renatus the presbyter, and my son Hilary the deacon to act as my representatives as the matter requires, and they shall bring with them such a spirit of justice and kindness that while the whole misguided error is condemned (for there can be no doubt as to what is the integrity of the Christian Faith), yet if he who has gone astray repents and entreats for pardon, he may receive the succour of priestly indulgence: seeing that in his appeal [315] which he sent us, he reserved to himself the right of earning our forgiveness by promising to correct whatever our opinion disapproved of in his opinion. But what the catholic Church universally believes and teaches on the mystery of the Lord's Incarnation is contained more fully in the letter which I have sent to my brother and fellow-bishop Flavian. Dated 13th June in the consulship of the illustrious Asturius and Protogenes (449). __________________________________________________________________
[314] This is the title retained by Quesnel and the Ballerinii, though many mss. exhibit the simpler gloriosissimo et clementissimo Theodosio Augusto Leo episcopus, which is favoured by the Gk. version to endoxotato kai philanthropotato k.t.l. Quesnel takes occasion to warn us to distinguish between this use of the title papa and that adopted later when it was equivalent to oecumenicus et universalis episcopus.
[315] Viz., Lett. XXI., chaps. i. and iii. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XXX.
To Pulcheria Augusta.
Much shorter than, but to nearly the same effect as, xxxi., which was written on the same day as this. As xxx. has a Greek translation accompanying it and is duly dated, whereas xxxi. has neither, the Ballerinii would seem to be correct in thinking that xxx. was despatched but did not reach Pulcheria (cf. Lett. xlv. i.) and that xxxi. was for some reason never used. Of the two we have printed xxxi. by preference, as being the fuller discussion of the subject. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XXXI.
To Pulcheria Augusta [316] .
Leo to Pulcheria Augusta.
I. He reminds Pulcheria of her former services to the Church, and suggests her interference in the Eutychian controversy.
How much protection the Lord has extended to His Church through your clemency, we have often tested by many signs. And whatever stand the strenuousness of the priesthood has made in our times against the assailers of the catholic Truth, has redounded chiefly to your glory: seeing that, as you have learnt from the teaching of the Holy Spirit, you submit your authority in all things to Him, by whose favour and under whose protection you reign. Wherefore, because I have ascertained from my brother and fellow-bishop Flavian's report, that a certain dispute has been raised through the agency of Eutyches in the church of Constantinople against the integrity of the Christian faith (and the text of the synod's minutes has shown me the exact nature of the whole matter), it is worthy of your great name that the error which in my opinion proceeds rather from ignorance than ingenuity, should be dispelled before, with the pertinacity of wrong-headedness, it gains any strength from the support of the unwise. Because even ignorance sometimes falls into serious mistakes, and very frequently the simple-minded rush through unwariness into the devil's pit: and it is thus, I believe, that the spirit of falsehood has crept over Eutyches: so that, whilst he imagines himself to appreciate the majesty of the Son of God more devoutly, by denying in Him the real presence of our nature, he came to the conclusion that the whole of that Word which "became flesh" was of one and the same essence. And greatly as Nestorius fell away from the Truth, in asserting that Christ was only born man of His mother, this man also departs no less far from the catholic path, who does not believe that our substance was brought forth from the same Virgin: wishing it of course to be understood as belonging to His Godhead only; so that that which took the form of a slave, and was like us and of the same form [317] , was a kind of image, not the reality of our nature.
II. Man's salvation required the union of the two natures in Christ.
But it is of no avail to say that our Lord, the Son of the blessed Virgin Mary, was true and perfect man, if He is not believed to be Man of that stock which is attributed to Him in the Gospel. For Matthew says, "The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham [318] :" and follows the order of His human origin, so as to bring the lines of His ancestry down to Joseph to whom the Lord's mother was espoused. Whereas Luke going backwards step by step traces His succession to the first of the human race himself, to show that the first Adam and the last Adam were of the same nature. No doubt the Almighty Son of God could have appeared for the purpose of teaching, and justifying men in exactly the same way that He appeared both to patriarchs and prophets in the semblance of flesh [319] ; for instance, when He engaged in a struggle, and entered into conversation (with Jacob), or when He refused not hospitable entertainment, and even partook of the food set before Him. But these appearances were indications of that Man whose reality it was announced by mystic predictions would be assumed from the stock of preceding patriarchs. And the fulfilment of the mystery of our atonement, which was ordained from all eternity, was not assisted by any figures because the Holy Spirit had not yet come upon the Virgin, and the power of the Most High had not over-shadowed her: so that "Wisdom building herself a house [320] " within her undefiled body, "the Word became flesh;" and the form of God and the form of a slave coming together into one person, the Creator of times was born in time; and He Himself through whom all things were made, was brought forth in the midst of all things. For if the New Man had not been made in the likeness of sinful flesh, and taken on Him our old nature, and being consubstantial with the Father, had deigned to be consubstantial with His mother also, and being alone free from sin, had united our nature to Him the whole human race would be held in bondage beneath the Devil's yoke [321] , and we should not be able to make use of the Conqueror's victory, if it had been won outside our nature.
III. From the union of the two natures flows the grace of baptism. He makes a direct appeal to Pulcheria for her help.
But from Christ's marvellous sharing of the two natures, the mystery of regeneration shone upon us that through the self-same spirit, through whom Christ was conceived and born, we too, who were born through the desire of the flesh, might be born again from a spiritual source: and consequently, the Evangelist speaks of believers as those "who were born not of bloods, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God [322] ." And of this unutterable grace no one is a partaker, nor can be reckoned among the adopted sons of God, who excludes from his faith that which is the chief means of our salvation. Wherefore, I am much vexed and saddened that this man, who seemed before so laudably disposed towards humility, dares to make these empty and stupid attacks on the one Faith of ourselves and of our fathers. When he saw that his ignorant notion offended the ears of catholics, he ought to have withdrawn from his opinion, and not to have so disturbed the Church's rulers, as to deserve a sentence of condemnation: which, of course, no one will be able to remit, if he is determined to abide by his notion. For the moderation of the Apostolic See uses its leniency in such a way as to deal severely with the contumacious, while desiring to offer pardon to those who accept correction. Seeing then that I possess great confidence in your lofty faith and piety, I entreat your illustrious clemency, that, as the preaching of the catholic Faith has always been aided by your holy zeal, so now, also, you will maintain its free action. Perchance the Lord allowed it to be thus assailed for this reason that we might discover what sort of persons lurked within the Church. And clearly, we must not neglect to look after such, lest we be afflicted with their actual loss.
IV. His personal presence at the council must be excused. The question at issue is a very grave one.
But the most august and Christian Emperor, being anxious that the disturbances may be set at rest with all speed, has appointed too short and early a date for the council of bishops, which he wishes held at Ephesus, in fixing the first of August for the meeting: for from the fifth of May, on which we received His Majesty's letter, most of the time remaining has to be spent in making complete arrangements for the journey of such priests as are competent to represent me. For as to the necessity of my attending the council also, which his piety suggested, even if there were any precedent for the request, it could by no means be managed now: for the very uncertain state of things at present would not permit my absence from the people of this great city: and the minds of the riotously-disposed might be driven to desperate deeds, if they were to think that I took occasion of ecclesiastical business to desert my country [323] and the Apostolic See. As then you recognize that it concerns the public weal that with your merciful indulgence I should not deny myself to the affectionate prayers of my people, consider that in these my brethren, whom I have sent in my stead, I also am present with the rest who appear: to them I have clearly and fully explained what is to be maintained in view of the satisfactory exposition of the case which has been given me by the detailed report, and by the defendant's own statement to me. For the question is not about some small portion of our Faith on which no very distinct declaration has been made: but the foolish opposition that is raised ventures to impugn that which our Lord desired no one of either sex in the Church to be ignorant of. For the short but complete confession of the catholic creed which contains the twelve sentences of the twelve apostles [324] is so well furnished with the heavenly panoply, that all the opinions of heretics can receive their death-blow from that one weapon. And if Eutyches had been content to receive that creed in its entirety with a pure and simple heart, he would at no point go astray from the decrees of the most sacred council of Nicæa, and he would understand that the holy Fathers laid this down, to the end that no mental or rhetorical ingenuity should lift itself up against the Apostolic Faith which is absolutely one. Deign then, with your accustomed piety to do your best endeavour, that this blasphemous and foolish attack upon the one and only sacrament of man's salvation may be driven from all men's minds. And if the man himself, who has fallen into this temptation, recover his senses, so as to condemn his own error by a written recantation, let him not be denied communion with his order [325] . Your clemency is to know that I have written in the same strain to the holy bishop Flavian also: that loving-kindness be not lost sight of, if the error be dispelled. Dated 13 June in the consulship of the illustrious Asturius and Protogenes (449). __________________________________________________________________
[316] This was the Emperor Theodosius the younger's sister, a woman of noted zeal in the cause of the Church: for many years she had practically ruled the empire owing to her brother's youthfulness. When the intrigues of Chrysaphius had brought about a quarrel between brother and sister, she retired for a time from public life. But becoming the virgin wife of Marcian, she, through him, helped to effect the victory of the Catholic cause at the Council of Chalcedon (451).
[317] Quod nostri similis fuit atque conformis.
[318] S. Matt. i. 1.
[319] Gen. xxxii. 24 and xviii 1. It will be noticed that Leo unhesitatingly pronounces these and similar appearances to be manifestations of the Second Person in the Trinity.
[320] Prov. ix. 1. Cf. Letter XXVIII. (The Tome), chap. ii., towards the end.
[321] Sub iugo diaboli generaliter teneretur humana captivitas: for the word generaliter, cf. Letter XVI., chap. iv., no. 3.
[322] S. John i. 13.
[323] Patriam. I can see very little ground for pressing this quite general expression to mean that he was a native of Rome, or even a native of Italy. The most that can be said is that it does not forbid the supposition.
[324] Let the reader beware of accepting the plausible account here suggested of the formation of the Apostles' Creed, and still more so of accepting the popular derivation of the word symbolum (sumbolon) as the twelve Apostles' twelve "contributions" (one each) to the Church's rule of faith.
[325] Communio sui ordinis. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XXXII.
To the Archimandrites of Constantinople [326] .
To his well-beloved sons Faustus, Martinus, and the rest of the archimandrites, Leo the bishop.
He acknowledges their zeal and refers them to the Tome.
As on behalf of the faith which Eutyches has tried to disturb, I was sending legates de latere [327] to assist the defence of the Truth, I thought it fitting that I should address a letter to you also, beloved: whom I know for certain to be so zealous in the cause of religion that you can by no means listen calmly to such blasphemous and profane utterances: for the Apostle's command lingers in your hearts, in which it is said, "If any man hath preached unto you any gospel other than that which he received, let him be anathema [328] ." And we also decide that the opinion of the said Eutyches is to be rejected, which, as we have learnt from perusing the proceedings, has been deservedly condemned: so that, if its foolish maintainer will abide by his perverseness, he may have fellowship with those whose error he has followed. For one who says that Christ had not a human, that is our, nature, is deservedly put out of Christ's Church. But, if he be corrected through the pity of God's Spirit and acknowledge his wicked error, so as to condemn unreservedly what catholics reject, we wish him not to be denied mercy, that the Lord's Church may suffer no loss: for the repentant can always be readmitted, it is only error that must be shut out. Upon the mystery of great godliness [329] , whereby through the Incarnation of the Word of God comes our justification and redemption, what is our opinion, drawn from the tradition of the fathers, is now sufficiently explained according to my judgment in the letter which I have sent to our brother Flavian the bishop [330] : so that through the declaration of your chief you may know what, according to the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, we desire to be fixed in the hearts of all the faithful. Dated 13th June, in the consulship of the illustrious Asturius and Protogenes (449). __________________________________________________________________
[326] It will be remembered that 23 abbots signed the condemnation of Eutyches: cf. Lett. XXI. chap. 2.
[327] De latere meo. This is interesting as an early instance of the use of this expression for the legates of the pope (now so familiar): even though Quesnel is incorrect in saying for certain that Leo is the first Bishop of Rome who employed them. He himself quotes Concil. Sardic., canon 7, where the fathers ask the Roman bishop to send some one e latere suo (a.d. 347).
[328] Gal. i. 9.
[329] I cannot doubt he has 1 Tim. iii. 27, mega esti to tes eusebeias musterion (here sacramentum as usual) in his mind, though the Gk. translator apparently did not see it, his version being utterly inaccurate (peri de tes hagiotetos tes megales pisteos).
[330] Viz., Letter XXVIII. (The Tome). __________________________________________________________________
Letter XXXIII.
To the Synod of Ephesus [331] .
Leo, bishop, to the holy Synod which is assembled at Ephesus.
I. He commends the Emperor's appeal to the chair of Peter.
The devout faith of our most clement prince, knowing that it especially concerns his glory to prevent any seed of error from springing up within the catholic Church, has paid such deference to the Divine institutions as to apply to the authority of the Apostolic See for a proper settlement: as if he wished it to be declared by the most blessed Peter himself what was praised in his confession, when the Lord said, "whom do men say that I, the Son of man, am [332] ?" and the disciples mentioned various people's opinion: but, when He asked what they themselves believed, the chief of the apostles, embracing the fulness of the Faith in one short sentence, said, "Thou art the Christ, the son of the living God [333] :" that is, Thou who truly art Son of man art also truly Son of the living God: Thou, I say, true in Godhead, true in flesh and one altogether [334] , the properties of the two natures being kept intact. And if Eutyches had believed this intelligently and thoroughly, he would never have retreated from the path of this Faith. For Peter received this answer from the Lord for his confession. "Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona; for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father which is in heaven. And I say unto thee, that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church: and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it [335] ." But he who both rejects the blessed Peter's confession, and gainsays Christ's Gospel, is far removed from union with this building; for he shows himself never to have had any zeal for understanding the Truth, and to have only the empty appearance of high esteem, who did not adorn the hoary hairs of old age with any ripe judgment of the heart.
II. The heresy of Eutyches is to be condemned, though his full repentance may lead to his restitution.
But because the healing even of such men must not be neglected, and the most Christian Emperor has piously and devoutly desired a council of bishops to be held, that all error may be destroyed by a fuller judgment, I have sent our brothers Julius the bishop, Renatus the presbyter, and my son Hilary the deacon, and with them Dulcitius the notary, whose faith we have proved, to be present in my stead at your holy assembly, brethren, and settle in common with you what is in accordance with the Lord's will. To wit, that the pestilential error may be first condemned, and then the restitution of him, who has so unwisely erred, discussed, but only if embracing the true doctrine he fully and openly with his own voice and signature condemns those heretical opinions in which his ignorance has been ensnared: for this he has promised in the appeal which he sent to us, pledging himself to follow our judgment in all things [336] . On receiving our brother and fellow-bishop Flavian's letter, we have replied to him at some length on the points which he seems to have referred to us [337] : that when this error which seems to have arisen, has been destroyed, there may be one Faith and one and the same confession throughout the whole world to the praise and glory of God, and that "in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things on earth, and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father [338] ." Dated 13th June in the consulship of the illustrious Asturius and Protogenes (449). __________________________________________________________________
[331] This letter has a note prefixed to it in some Gk. and Latin mss. to the effect that it was produced but suppressed, and not allowed to be read through Dioscorus, Bishop of Alexandria.
[332] S. Matt. xvi. 13 and 16.
[333] S. Matt. xvi. 13 and 16.
[334] Utrumque (Gk. hekateron) unus.
[335] S. Matt. xvi. 17, 18.
[336] Cf. Lett. XXI., chaps. i. and ii.
[337] See Lett. XXVII., n. 7.
[338] Phil. ii. 10. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XXXIV.
To Julian, Bishop of Cos.
Leo, the bishop, to Julian, the bishop, his well-beloved brother.
I. Eutyches is now clearly seen to have deviated from the Faith.
Your letter, beloved, which has just reached me, shows with what spiritual love of the Catholic Faith you are inspired: and it makes me very glad that devout hearts all agree in the same opinion, so that according to the teaching of the Holy Ghost there may be fulfilled in us what the Apostle says: "Now I beseech you, brethren, through the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same things, and there be no divisions among you: but that ye be perfect in the same mind and in the same judgment [339] ." But Eutyches has put himself quite outside this unity, if he perseveres in his perversity, and still does not understand the bonds with which the devil has bound him, and thinks any one is to be reckoned among the Lord's priests, who is a party to his ignorance and madness. For some time we were uncertain in what he was displeasing to catholics: and when we received no letter from our brother Flavian, and Eutyches himself complained in his letter [340] that the Nestorian heresy was being revived, we could not fully learn the source or the motive of so crafty an accusation. But as soon as the minutes of the bishops' proceedings reached us, all those things which were hidden beneath the veil of his deceitful complaints were revealed in their abomination.
II. He announces the appointment of legates a latere.
And because our most clement Emperor in the loving-kindness and godliness of his mind wished a more careful judgment to be passed about the position of one who hitherto has seemed to be in high esteem, and for this purpose has thought fit to convene a council of bishops, by the hands of our brothers Julius the bishop, and Renatus the presbyter, and also my son Hilary, the deacon whom I have sent ex latere [341] in my stead, I have addressed a letter suited to the needs of the case to our brother Flavian, from which you also, beloved, and the whole Church may know about the ancient and unique Faith, which this unlearned opponent has assailed, what we hold as handed down from God and what we preach without alteration. Yet, because we must not forget the duty of mercy, we have considered it consonant with our moderation as priests, that, if the condemned presbyter corrects himself unreservedly, the sentence by which he is bound should be remitted: if, however, he chooses to lie in the mire of his foolishness, let the decree remain, and let him have his lot with those whose error he has followed. Dated 13th June in the consulship of the illustrious Asturius and Protogenes (449) [342] . __________________________________________________________________
[339] 1 Cor. i. 10.
[340] See Lett. XX., above.
[341] See Lett. XXXII., n. 9, above.
[342] This letter (XXXIV.) is written on the same day and subject and to the same person as the next letter (XXXV.): the differences between them being (l) the greater length and fuller treatment of the second; and (2) that the one is entrusted to Leo's legates, the other to Julius' own messenger, Basil the deacon; and (3) that the shorter has no Gk. version as the longer has. I think the Ballerinii are undoubtedly right in facing the difficulty boldly, the evidence of the mss. being invariable, except that XXXIV. is only found in a few collections: and I would suggest that XXXIV. is a formal, official communication, and XXXV. a private, confidential one. This will account for the difference of messengers, and the identity of date, subject and person addressed, and is justifiable as a piece of necessary diplomatic secrecy. In XXX. and XXXI. we have another instance of two letters to the same person on the same day, one of these (XXXI.) being also without a Gk. version, this time the longer one: but here we have adopted the Ballerinii's suggestion that only the first was sent. It should further be noticed that out of the very large batch of letters that are dated the 13th of June, which includes the Tome (8 in all. XXVIII.-XXXV.), it may well have been convergent to delay one and send it by another hand. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XXXV.
To Julian, Bishop of Cos [343] .
Leo, bishop of the city of Rome to his well-beloved brother, Julian the bishop.
I. Eutyches' heresy involves many other heresies.
Although by the hands of our brothers, whom we have despatched from the city on behalf of the Faith, we hare sent a most full refutation of Eutyches' excessive heresy to our brother Flavian, yet because we have received, through our son Basil, your letter, beloved, which has given us much pleasure from the fervour of its catholic spirit, we have added this page also which agrees with the other document, that you may offer a united and strenuous resistance to those who seek to corrupt the gospel of Christ, since the wisdom and the teaching of the Holy Spirit is one and the same in you as in us: and whosoever does not receive it, is not a member of Christ's body and cannot glory in that Head in which he denies the presence of his own nature. What advantage is it to that most unwise old man under the name of the Nestorian heresy to mangle the belief of those, whose most devout faith he cannot tear to pieces: when in declaring the only-begotten Son of God to have been so born of the blessed Virgin's womb that He wore the appearance of a human body without the reality of human flesh being united to the Word, he departs as far from the right path as did Nestorius in separating the Godhead of the Word from the substance of His assumed Manhood [344] ? From which prodigious falsehood who does not see what monstrous opinions spring? for he who denies the true Manhood of Jesus Christ, must needs be filled with many blasphemies, being claimed by Apollinaris as his own, seized upon by Valentinus, or held fast by Manichæus: none of whom believed that there was true human flesh in Christ. But, surely, if that is not accepted, not only is it denied that He, who was in the form of God, but yet abode in the form of a slave, was born Man according to the flesh and reasonable soul: but also that He was crucified, dead, and buried, and that on the third day He rose again, and that, sitting at the right hand of the Father, he will come to judge the quick and the dead [345] in that body in which He Himself was judged: because these pledges [346] of our redemption are rendered void if Christ is not believed to have the true and whole nature of true Manhood.
II. The two natures are to be found in Christ.
Or because the signs of His Godhead were undoubted, shall the proof of his having a human body be assumed false, and thus the indications of both natures be accepted to prove Him Creator, but not be accepted for the salvation of the creature [347] ? No, for the flesh did not lessen what belongs to His Godhead, nor the Godhead destroy what belongs to His flesh. For He is at once both eternal from His Father and temporal from His mother, inviolable in His strength, passible in our weakness: in the Triune Godhead, of one and the same substance with the Father and the Holy Spirit, but in taking Manhood on Himself, not of one substance but of one and the same person [so that He was at once rich in poverty, almighty in submission, impassible in punishment, immortal in death [348] ]. For the Word was not in any part of It turned either into flesh or into soul, seeing that the absolute and unchangeable nature of the Godhead is ever entire in its Essence, receiving no loss nor increase, and so beatifying the nature that It had assumed that that nature remained for ever glorified in the person of the Glorifier. [But why should it seem unsuitable or impossible that the Word and flesh and soul should be one Jesus Christ, and that the Son of God and the Son of Man should be one, if flesh and soul which are of different natures make one person even without the Incarnation of the Word: since it is much easier for the power of the Godhead to produce this union of Himself and man than for the weakness of manhood by itself to effect it in its own substance.] Therefore neither was the Word changed into flesh nor flesh into the Word: but both remains in one and one is in both, not divided by the diversity and not confounded by intermixture: He is not one by His Father and another by His mother, but the same, in one way by His Father before every beginning, and in another by His mother at the end of the ages: so that He was "mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus [349] ," in whom dwelt "the fulness of the Godhead bodily [350] :" because it was the assumed (nature) not the Assuming (nature) which was raised, because God "exalted Him and gave Him the Name which is above every name: that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and things on earth and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ the Lord is in the glory of God the Father [351] ."
III. The soul of Christ and the body of Christ were real in the full human sense, though the circumstances of His birth were unique.
[But as to that which Eutyches dared to say in the court of bishops "that before the Incarnation there were two natures in Christ, but after the Incarnation one [352] ," he ought to have been pressed by the frequent and anxious questions of the judges to render an account of his acknowledgment, lest it should be passed over as something trivial, though it was seen to have issued from the same fount as his other poisonous opinions. For I think that in saying this he was convinced that the soul, which the Saviour assumed, had had its abode in the heavens before He was born of the Virgin Mary, and that the Word joined it to Himself in the womb. But this is intolerable to catholic minds and ears: because the Lord who came down from heaven brought with Him nothing that belonged to our state: for He did not receive either a soul which had existed before nor a flesh which was not of his mother's body. Undoubtedly our nature was not assumed in such a way that it was created first and then assumed, but it was created by the very assumption. And hence that which was deservedly condemned in Origen must be punished in Eutyches also, unless he prefers to give up his opinion, viz. the assertion that souls have had not only a life but also different actions before they were inserted in men's bodies [353] ]. For although the Lord's nativity according to the flesh has certain characteristics wherein it transcends the ordinary beginnings of man's being, both because He alone was conceived and born without concupiscence of a pure Virgin, and because He was so brought forth of His mother's womb that her fecundity bare Him without loss of virginity: yet His flesh was not of another nature to ours: nor was the soul breathed into Him from another source to that of all other men, and it excelled others not in difference of kind but in superiority of power. For He had no opposition in His flesh [nor did the strife of desires give rise to a conflict of wishes [354] ]. His bodily senses were active without the law of sin, and the reality of His emotions being under the control of His Godhead and His mind, was neither assaulted by temptations nor yielded to injurious influences. But true Man was united to God and was not brought down from heaven as regards a pre-existing soul, nor created out of nothing as regards the flesh: it wore the same person in the Godhead of the Word and possessed a nature in common with us in its body and soul. For He would not be "the mediator between God and man," unless God and man had co-existed in both natures forming one true Person. The magnitude of the subject urges us to a lengthy discussion: but with one of your learning there is no need for such copious dissertations, especially as we have already sent a sufficient letter to our brother Flavian by our delegates for the confirmation of the minds, not only of priests but also of the laity. The mercy of God will, we believe, provide that without the loss of one soul the sound may be defended against the devil's wiles, and the wounded healed. Dated 13th June in the consulship of the illustrious Asturius and Protogenes (449). __________________________________________________________________
[343] See Lett. XXXIV., chap. ii. n. 5.
[344] The Gk. version here adds and "from the very conception of the Virgin," but this is probably only a repetition of the words "of the Virgin's womb," just above.
[345] It can escape no one that he is here, and frequently throughout this letter, quoting from the Creed.
[346] Sacramenta.
[347] i.e. shall the signs of His being God, which are undoubted, and the signs that He had a body of some sort be allowed to prove Him one with the Creator of the world, but not go so far as to show that that body which He had was a fully human one?
[348] So that--in death, bracketed by the editors as not being translated in the Gk. version, and perhaps here we have a gloss to explain the somewhat obscure words that precede it: but throughout this letter large portions are so bracketed, in each case the Gk. version omitting them.
[349] 1 Tim. ii. 5.
[350] Col. ii. 9.
[351] Phil. ii. 9-11.
[352] Cf. the Tome, Lett. XXVIII., chap. vi., n. 5.
[353] Cf. Lett. XV., chap. xi., n. 6.
[354] Here again the second clause (in brackets) seems a gloss on the first, see n. 2, above: what is meant will be seen by comparing S. Paul's famous disquisition (Rom. vii.). __________________________________________________________________
Letter XXXVI.
To Flavian, Bishop of Constantinople.
(He acknowledges the receipt of Flavian's second letter (xxvi.) and protests against the necessity for a general council, though at the same time he acquiesces in it. Dated 21 June, a week after the Tome). __________________________________________________________________
Letter XXXVII [355] .
To Theodosius Augustus.
Leo to Theodosius Augustus.
Unity of Faith is essential but the point at issue hardly required a general council, it is so clear.
On receiving your clemency's letter, I perceived that the universal Church has much cause for joy, that you will have the Christian Faith, whereby the Divine Trinity is honoured and worshipped, to be different or out of harmony with itself in nothing. For what more effectual support can be given to human affairs in calling upon God's mercy than when one thanksgiving, and the sacrifice of one confession is offered to His majesty by all. Wherein the devotions of the priests and all the faithful will reach at last their completeness, if in what was done for our redemption by God the Word, the only Son of God, nothing else be believed than what He Himself ordered to be preached and believed. Wherefore although every consideration prevents my attendance on the day which your piety has fixed for the councils of bishops [356] : for there are no precedents for such a thing, and the needs of the times do not allow me to leave the city, especially as the point of Faith at issue is so clear, that it would have been more reasonable to abstain from proclaiming a synod: yet as far as the Lord vouchsafes to help me, I have bestowed my zeal upon obeying your clemency's commands, by appointing my brethren who are competent to act as the case requires in removing offences, and who can represent me: because no question has arisen on which there can or ought to be any doubt. Dated 21st of June, in the consulship of the illustrious Asturius and Protogenes, (449). __________________________________________________________________
[355] This letter is on the same subject as Lett. XXIX. above, but as the wording of it contains some interesting matter, it is here given in full. There is no Gk. version extant, and how there came to be two letters within a week of one another on the same topic is not clear.
[356] Cf. Lett. XXIX. above, and especially XXXI., chap. iv., where the reasons are given rather more fully. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XXXVIII [357] .
To Flavian, Bishop of Constantinople.
Leo to Flavian, bishop of Constantinople.
He acknowledges the receipt of a letter and advises mercy if Eutyches will recant.
When our brethren had already started whom we despatched to you in the cause of the Faith, we received your letter, beloved, by our son Basil the deacon, in which you rightly said very little on the subject of our common anxiety, both because the accounts which had already arrived had given us full information on every thing, and because for purposes of private inquiry it was easy to converse with the aforesaid Basil, by whom now through the grace of God, in whom we trust, we exhort you, beloved, in reply, using the Apostle's words, and saying: "Be ye in nothing affrighted by the adversaries; which is for them a cause of perdition, but to you of salvation [358] ." For what is so calamitous as to wish to destroy all hope of man's salvation by denying the reality of Christ's Incarnation, and to contradict the Apostle who says distinctly: "great is the mystery of Godliness which was manifest in the flesh [359] ?" What so glorious as to fight for the Faith of the gospel against the enemies of Christ's nativity and cross? About whose most pure light and unconquered power we have already disclosed what was in our heart, in the letter which has been sent to you beloved [360] : lest anything might seem doubtful between us on those things which we have learnt, and teach in accordance with the catholic doctrine. But seeing that the testimonies to the Truth are so clear and strong that a man must be reckoned thoroughly blind and stubborn, who does not at once shake himself free from the mists of falsehood in the bright light of reason; we desire you to use the remedy of long-suffering in curing the madness of ignorance that through your fatherly admonitions they who though old in years are infants in mind, may learn to obey their elders. And if they give up the vain conceits of their ignorance and come to their senses, and if they condemn all their errors and receive the one true Faith, do not deny them the mercifulness of a bishop's kind heart: although your judgment must remain, if their impiety which you have deservedly condemned persists in its depravity. Dated 23 July in the consulship of the illustrious Asturius and Protogenes (449). __________________________________________________________________
[357] If we are right in thinking that Lett. XXXVI. is Leo's acknowledgment of Flavian's second letter (XXVI.), this (which again has no Gk. version) must be an acknowledgment of yet a third, not extant, sent by the hand of one Basil, the deacon who is probably the same as Julian's messenger (XXXV., chap. i ).
[358] Phil. i. 28.
[359] 1 Tim. iii. 16: the reading here is quod manifestum est in carne, in agreement with the general Western usage.
[360] Sc. the Tome (XXVIII.). __________________________________________________________________
Letter XXXIX.
To Flavian, Bishop of Constantinople.
Leo, the bishop, to Flavian, the bishop.
He rebukes Flavian for not answering his repeated letters.
Our anxiety is increased by your silence, for it is long now since we received a letter from you, beloved: while we who bear a chief share in your cares [361] , through our anxiety for the defence of the Faith, have several times [362] , as occasion served, sent letters to you: that we might aid you with the comfort of our exhortations not to yield to the assaults of your adversaries in defence of the Faith, but to feel that we were the sharers in your labour. Some time since we believe our messengers have reached you, brother, through whom you find yourself fully instructed by our writings and injunctions, and we have ourselves sent back Basil to you as you desired [363] . Now, lest you should think we had omitted any opportunity of communicating with you, we have sent this note by our son Eupsychius, a man whom we hold in great honour and affection, asking you to reply to our letter with all speed, and inform us at once about your own actions and those of our representatives, and about the completion of the whole matter: so that we may allay the anxiety which we now feel in defence of the Faith, by happier tidings. Dated 11th August in the consulship of the illustrious Asturius and Protogenes (449). __________________________________________________________________
[361] Curarum tuarum principes.
[362] Frequenter, four times in all ( Letters XXVII., XXVIII., XXXVI. and XXXVIII.).
[363] This must be in the third lost letter to which we have assumed Lett. XXXVIII. to be an answer. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XL.
To the Bishops of the Province of Arles in Gaul.
To his well-beloved brethren Constantinus Audentius, Rusticus, Auspicius, Nicetas, Nectarius, Florus, Asclepius, Justus, Augustalis, Ynantius, and Chrysaphius [364] , Leo the pope.
He approves of their having unanimously elected Ravennius, Bishop of Arles.
We have just and reasonable reason for rejoicing, when we learn that the Lord's priests have done what is agreeable both to the rules of the Father's canons and to the Apostles' institutions. For the whole body of the Church must needs increase with a healthy growth, if the governing members excel in the strength of their authority, and in peaceful management. Accordingly, we ratify with our sanction your good deed, brethren, in unanimously, on the death of Hilary [365] of holy memory, consecrating our brother Ravennius, a man well approved by us, in the city of Arles, in accordance with the wishes of the clergy, the leading citizens, and the laity. Because a peace-making and harmonious election, where neither personal merits nor the good will of the congregation are wanting, is we believe the expression not only of man's choice, but of God's inspiration. So dearly beloved brethren, let the said priest use God's gift, and understand what self-devotion is expected of him, that by diligently and prudently carrying out the office entrusted to him, he may prove himself equal to your testimony, and fully worthy of our favour. God keep you safe, beloved brethren. Dated 22 August in the consulship of Asturius and Protogenes (449). __________________________________________________________________
[364] These twelve bishops do not include the Bishop of Vienne, according to Perthel (p. 29), following apparently Quesnel, whose wish-fathered thought, though possibly right, has little evidence to go upon. Cf. Letters LXV. and LXVI. below.
[365] It will be noticed that Leo speaks of Hilary not only with respect, but as if he acquiesced in his sentence (passed against Hilary in Lett. X. above) not having been carried out. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XLI.
To Ravennius, Bishop of Arles.
(He congratulates him on his appointment, exhorts him to firm but gentle government, and advises him frequently to consult the Apostolic See. Undated, but no doubt sent about the same time as XL.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter XLII.
To Ravennius, Bishop of Arles.
Leo the Pope to his well-beloved brother Ravennius.
He asks him to deal with the imposture of a certain Petronianus.
We wish you to be circumspect and careful lest any blameworthy presumption should put forth undue claims: for, when it once finds an entrance by crafty stealth, it spreads itself into greater rashness in the name of the dignity it has assumed. We have learnt, on the trustworthy evidence of your clergy, that a certain wandering and vagabond Petronianus has boasted himself throughout the provinces of Gaul as our deacon, and under cover of this office is going about the various churches of that country. We desire you, beloved brother, so to check his abominable effrontery, as to disclose his imposture, by warning the bishops of the whole district, and to expel him from communion with all the Churches, lest he continue his claim. The Lord keep you safe, dearly beloved brother. Dated 26th, August, in the consulship of the illustrious Asturius and Protogenes (449). __________________________________________________________________
Letter XLIII [366] .
To Theodosius Augustus.
To the most glorious and serene Emperor Theodosius, Leo the bishop.
I. He complains of the conduct of Dioscorus at the Council of Ephesus.
Already and from the beginning, in the synods which have been held, we have received such freedom of speech from the most holy Peter, chief of the Apostles, as to have the power both to maintain the Truth in the cause of peace, and to allow no one to disturb it in its firm position, but at once to repel the mischief. Since then the council of bishops which you ordered to be held in the city of Ephesus on account of Flavian, does mischief to the Faith itself and inflicts wounds on all the churches---- [367] ; and this has been brought to our knowledge not by some untrustworthy messenger, but by the most reverend bishops [368] themselves who were sent by us and by the most trusty Hilarus our deacon, who have narrated to us what took place. And the occurrences are to be put down to the fault of those who met, not having, as is customary, with a pure conscience and right judgment made a definite statement about the faith and those who erred therefrom. For we have learnt that all did not come together in the conference who ought, some being ejected and others received: who were ensnared into an ungodly act of subscription by the designs of the aforesaid priest [369] . For the declaration effected by him is of such a nature as to injure all the churches. For when those who were sent by us saw how exceedingly impious and hostile to the Faith it was, they notified it to us.
II. He asks him to restore the ancient catholic doctrine.
Wherefore, most peace-loving prince, vouchsafe for the Faith's sake to avert this danger from your Godly conscience, and let not man's presumption use violence upon Christ's Gospel. In my sincere desire, which is shared by the bishops that are with me, that you, most Christian and revered prince, should before all things please God, to whom the prayers of the whole Church are poured with one accord for your empire, I give you counsel, for fear lest, if we keep silence on so great a matter, we incur punishment before the tribunal of Christ. I entreat you therefore before the undivided Trinity of the one Godhead, which is injured by these evil doings, and which is the guardian of your kingdom, and before Christ's holy angels that all things remain intact as they were before the judgment, and that they await the weightier decision of the Synod at which the whole number of the bishops in the whole world is gathered together: and do not allow yourselves to bear the weight of others' misdoing. We are constrained to say this plainly by the fear of a constraining necessity [370] . But keep before your eyes the blessed Peter's glory, and the crowns which all the Apostles have in common with him, and the joys of the martyrs who had no other incentive to suffering but the confession of the true Godhead and the perfect continuance in Christ [371] .
III. And asks for another Synod to be summoned.
And now that this confession is being godlessly impugned by some few men, all the churches of our parts and all the priests implore your clemency with tears in accordance with the request which Flavian makes in his appeal, to command the assembling together of a special Synod in Italy, in order that all opposition may be expelled or pacified, and that there may be no deviation from or ambiguity in the Faith: and to it should also come the bishops of all the Eastern provinces, that, if any have wandered out of the way of Truth, they may be recalled to their allegiance by wholesome remedies, and they who are under a more grievous charge may either be reduced to submission by counsel or cut off from the one Church. So that we are bound to preserve both what the Nicene canon enjoins and what the definitions of the bishops of the whole world enjoin according to the custom of the catholic Church, and also (to maintain) the freedom of our fathers' Faith, on which your tranquillity rests. For we pray that when those who harm the Church are driven out, and your provinces enjoy the possession of justice, and vengeance has been executed on these heretics your royal power also may be defended by Christ's right hand. __________________________________________________________________
[366] No satisfactory conclusion can be reached about this letter as it has come down to us, the Ballerinii not thinking that the Latin version extant is the original on which the Gk. version is based. On the whole I have thought it safer to make my translation chiefly from the Gk., though I am not at all sure that there is sufficient ground for the Ballerinii's suspicion of the Latin.
[367] A lacuna is here visible in the sense though not in the mss.
[368] The Gk. and the Lat. both read plural here episkopon (episcopis) which the Ballerinii alter to the singular. As far as we know, Julius was the only bishop in the party, but the greater includes the less.
[369] Viz., Dioscorus, who must have been mentioned in the lacuna above, if anywhere.
[370] The old Lat. version has here something very different quia quod necesse est nos dicere, veremur ne cuius religio dissipatur, indignatio provocetur (for we are bound to say we fear lest He whose religion is being undermined, should have His wrath aroused).
[371] he en Christo teleia diamone: here again the Latin Version diverges, reading veræ humanitatis (sc. confessio) in Christo. So too the next sentence begins with cui sacramento, instead of the Gk. es tinos homologias, and elsewhere. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XLIV.
To Theodosius Augustus.
Leo, the bishop, and the holy Synod which is assembled at Rome to Theodosius Augustus.
I. He exposes the unscrupulous nature of the proceedings at Ephesus.
From your clemency's letter, which in your love of the catholic Faith you sent sometime ago to the see of the blessed Apostle Peter, we drew such confidence in your defence of truth and peace that we thought nothing harmful could happen in so plain and well-ordered a matter; especially when those who were sent to the episcopal council, which you ordered to be held at Ephesus, were so fully instructed that, if the bishop of Alexandria had allowed the letters, which they brought either to the holy synod or to Flavian the bishop, to be read in the ears of the bishops, by the declaration of the most pure Faith, which being Divinely inspired we both have received and hold, all noise of disputings would have been so completely hushed that neither ignorance could any longer disport itself, nor jealousy find occasion to do mischief. But because private interests are consulted under cover of religion, the disloyalty of a few has wrought that which must wound the whole Church. For not from some untrustworthy messenger, but from a most faithful narrator of the things which have been done, Hilary, our deacon, who, lest he should be compelled by force to subscribe to their proceedings, with great difficulty made his escape, we have learnt that a great many priests came together at the synod, whose numbers would doubtless have assisted the debate and decision, if he who claimed for himself the chief place had consented to maintain priestly moderation, in order that, according to custom, when all had freely expressed their opinion, after quiet and fair deliberation, that might be ordained which was both agreeable to the Faith and helpful to those in error. But we have been told that all who had come were not present at the actual decision: for we have learnt that some were rejected while others were admitted, who at the aforesaid priest's requisition surrendered themselves to an unrighteous subscription, knowing they would suffer harm unless they obeyed his commands, and that such a resolution was brought forward by him that in attacking one man he might wreak his fury of the whole Church. Which our delegates from the Apostolic See saw to be so blasphemous and opposed to the catholic Faith that no pressure could force them to assent; for in the same synod they stoutly protested, as they ought, that the Apostolic See would never receive what was being passed: since the whole mystery of the Christian Faith is absolutely destroyed (which Heaven forfend in your Grace's reign), unless this abominable wickedness, which exceeds all former blasphemies, be abolished.
II. And entreats the Emperor to help in reversing their decision.
But because the devil with wicked subtlety deceives the unwary, and so mocks the imprudence of some by a show of piety as to persuade them to things harmful instead of profitable, we pray your Grace, renounce all complicity in this endangering of religion and Faith, and afford in the treatment of Divine things that which is granted in worldly matters by the equity of your laws, that human presumption may not do violence to Christ's Gospel. Behold, I, O most Christian and honoured Emperor, with my fellow-priests [372] fulfilling towards your revered clemency the offices of sincere love, and desiring you in all things to please God, to whom prayers are offered for you by the Church, lest before the Lord Christ's tribunal we be judged guilty for our silence,--we beseech you in the presence of the Undivided Trinity of the One Godhead, Whom such an act wrongs (for He is Himself the Guardian and the Author of your empire), and in the presence of Christ's holy angels, order everything to be in the position in which they were before the decision until a larger number of priests be assembled from the whole world. Suffer not yourself to be weighted with another's sin because (and we must say it) we are afraid lest He, Whose religion is being destroyed, be provoked to wrath. Keep before your eyes, and with all your mental vision gaze reverently upon the blessed Peter's glory, and the crowns which all the Apostles have in common with him and the palms of all the martyrs, who had no other reason for suffering than the confession of the true Godhead and the true Manhood in Christ.
III. He asks for a Council in Italy.
And because this mystery is now being impiously opposed by a few ignorant persons, all the churches of our parts, and all the priests entreat your clemency, with groans and tears seeing that our delegates faithfully protested, and bishop Flavian gave them an appeal in writing, to order a general synod to be held in Italy, which shall either dismiss or appease all disputes in such a way that there be nothing any longer either doubtful in the Faith or divided in love, and to it, of course, the bishops of the Eastern provinces must come, and if any of them were overcome by threats and injury, and deviated from the path of truth, they may be fully restored by health-giving measures, and they themselves, whose case is harder, if they acquiesce in wiser counsels, may not fall from the unity of the Church. And how necessary this request is after the lodging of an appeal is witnessed by the canonical decrees passed at Nicæa by the bishops of the whole world, which are added below [373] . Show favour to the catholics after your own and your parents' custom. Give us such liberty to defend the catholic Faith as no violence, no fear of the world, while your revered clemency is safe, shall be able to take away. For it is the cause not only of the Church but of your Kingdom and prosperity that we plead, that you may enjoy the peaceful sway of your provinces. Defend the Church in unshaken peace against the heretics, that your empire also may be defended by Christ's right hand. Dated the 13th of October, in the consulship of the illustrious Asturius and Protogenes (449). __________________________________________________________________
[372] Cum consacerdotibus meis. The Gk. version here reads the singular (meta tou sulleitourgou mou). This, if intentional and not a slip, is, I suppose, Flavian, of whose death Leo was not yet apprized.
[373] Both Quesnel and the Ball. agree that the Canon here quoted by Leo really belongs not to the Nicene collection, but to that of Sardica (about 344), in which it stands as no. 4. (Exactly the same mistake is made in Letter LVI., where Galla Placidia Augusta quotes Canon 5 of Sardica to Theodosius as secundum definitiones Nicoeni concilii). Cf. Gore's Leo, pp. 113, 114. The wording of this fourth Canon is as follows: "Gaudentius, the bishop said, If it please you to add to this admirable declaration which you have passed, I propose that whensoever one bishop has been deposed by the judgment of other bishops, and appeals for his case to be heard in Civitas Novorum, the other bishop cannot by any means be considered confirmed in the same See after the appeal of the one who appears to be deposed, until he receive the decision of the judges there." In applying this to the present case, Leo no doubt proposed to substitute Urbs Roma for Civitas Novorum , though this was hardly the same thing. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XLV.
To Pulcheria Augusta.
Leo, the bishop, and the holy Synod which is assembled in the City of Rome to Pulcheria Augusta.
I. He sends a copy of the former letter which failed to reach her.
If the letters respecting the Faith which were despatched to your Grace by the hands of our clergy had reached you, it is certain you would have been able, the Lord helping you, to provide a remedy for these things which have been done against the Faith. For when have you failed either the priests or the religion or the Faith of Christ? But when those who were sent were so completely hindered from reaching your clemency that only one of them, namely Hilary our deacon, with difficulty fled and returned, we thought it necessary to rewrite our letter: and that our prayers may deserve to receive more weight, we have subjoined a copy of the very document which did not reach your clemency, entreating you even more earnestly than before to take under protection that religion in which you excel which will win you the greater glory in proportion to the heinousness of the crimes against which your royal faith requires you to proceed, lest the integrity of the Christian Faith be violated by any plot of man's devising. For the things which were believed to require setting at rest and healing by the meeting of a Synod at Ephesus, have not only resulted in still greater disturbances of peace but, which is the more to be regretted, even in the overthrow of the very Faith whereby we are Christians.
II. He also sends a copy of his letter to the Emperor and explains its contents.
And they indeed, who were sent, and one of whom, escaping the violence of the bishop of Alexandria who claims everything for himself, faithfully reported to us what took place in the Synod, opposed, as it became them, what I will call the frenzy not the judgment of one man, protesting that those things which were being carried through by violence and fear could not reverse the mysteries of the Church and the Creed itself composed by the Apostles, and that no injuries could sever them from that Faith which they had brought fully set forth and expounded from the See of the blessed Apostle Peter to the holy synod. And since this statement was not allowed to be read out at the bishop's request, in order forsooth that by the rejection of that Faith which has crowned patriarchs, prophets, apostles and martyrs, the birth according to the flesh of Jesus Christ our Lord and the confession of His true Death and Resurrection (we shudder to say it) might be overthrown, we have written [374] on this matter according to our ability, to our most glorious and (what is far greater) our Christian Prince, and at the same time have subjoined a copy of the letter to you to the end that he may not allow the Faith, in which he was re-born and reigns through God's grace, to be corrupted by any innovation, since Bishop Flavian continues in communion with us all, and that which has been done without regard to justice and contrary to all the teaching of the canons can, under no consideration, be held valid. And because the Synod of Ephesus has not removed but increased the scandal of disagreement (I have asked him) to appoint a place and time for holding a council within Italy, all quarrels and prejudices on both sides being suspended, that everything which has engendered offence may be the more diligently reconsidered and without wounding the Faith, without injuring religion those priests may return into the peace of Christ, who through irresolution were forced to subscribe, and only their errors be removed.
III. He asks her to assist his petition with the Emperor.
And that we may be worthy to obtain this, let your well-tried faith and protection, which has always helped the Church in her labours, deign to advance our petition with our most clement Prince, under a special commission so to act from the blessed Apostle Peter; so that before this civil and destructive war gains strength within the Church, he may grant opportunity of restoring unity by God's aid, knowing that the strength of his empire will be increased by every extension of catholic freedom that his kindly will affects.
Dated 13th of October in the consulship of the illustrious Asturius and Protogenes (449). __________________________________________________________________
[374] This is, of course, Letter XLIV. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XLVI.
From Hilary, then Deacon (afterwards Bishop of Rome) to Pulcheria Augusta.
(Describing his ill-treatment, as Leo's delegate, by Dioscorus.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter XLVII.
To Anastasius, Bishop of Thessalonica.
(Congratulating him on being present at the synod of Ephesus.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter XLVIII.
To Julian, Bishop of Cos.
(Consoling him after the riots at Ephesus and exhorting him to stand firm.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter XLIX.
To Flavian, Bishop of Constantinople.
(Whose death he is unaware of, promising him all the support in his power.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter L.
To the people of Constantinople, by the hand of Epiphanius and Dionysius, Notary of the Church of Rome.
(Exhorting them to stand firm and consoling them for Flavian's deposition.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter LI.
To Faustus and other Presbyters and Archimandrites in Constantinople.
(With the same purport as the last.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter LII.
From Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrus, to Leo. (See vol. iii. of this Series, p. 293.)
To Leo, bishop of Rome.
I. If Paul appealed to Peter how much more must ordinary folk have recourse to his successor.
If Paul, the herald of the Truth, the trumpet of the Holy Ghost, had recourse to the great Peter, in order to obtain a decision from him for those at Antioch who were disputing about living by the Law, much more do we small and humble folk run to the Apostolic See to get healing from you for the sores of the churches. For it is fitting that you should in all things have the pre-eminence, seeing that your See possesses many peculiar privileges. For other cities get a name for size or beauty or population, and some that are devoid of these advantages are compensated by certain spiritual gifts: but your city has the fullest abundance of good things from the Giver of all good. For she is of all cities the greatest and most famous, the mistress of the world and teeming with population. And besides this she has created an empire which is still predominant and has imposed her own name upon her subjects. But her chief decoration is her Faith, to which the Divine Apostle is a sure witness when he exclaims "your faith is proclaimed in all the world [375] ;" and if immediately after receiving the seeds of the saving Gospel she bore such a weight of wondrous fruit, what words are sufficient to express the piety which is now found in her? She has, too, the tombs of our common fathers and teachers of the Truth, Peter and Paul [376] , to illumine the souls of the faithful. And this blessed and divine pair arose indeed in the East, and shed its rays in all directions, but voluntarily underwent the sunset of life in the West, from whence now it illumines the whole world. These have rendered your See so glorious: this is the chief of all your goods. And their See is still blest by the light of their God's presence, seeing that therein He has placed your Holiness to shed abroad the rays of the one true Faith.
II. He commends Leo's zeal against the Manichees, and latterly against Eutychianism, as evidenced especially in the Tome.
Of which thing indeed, though there are many other proofs to be found, your zeal against the ill-famed Manichæans is proof enough, that zeal which your holiness has of late years displayed [377] , thereby revealing the intensity of your devotion to God in things Divine. Proof enough, too, of your Apostolic character is what you have now written. For we have met with what your holiness has written about the Incarnation of our God and Saviour, and have admired the careful diligence of the work [378] . For it has proved both points equally well, viz., the Eternal Godhead of the Only-begotten of the Eternal Father, and at the same time His manhood of the seed of Abraham and David, and His assumption of a nature in all things like ours, except in this one thing, that He remained free from all sin: for sin is engendered not of nature, but of free will [379] . This also was contained in your letter, that the only-begotten Son of God is One and His Godhead impassible, irreversible, unchangeable even as the Father who begat Him and the All-holy Spirit. And since the Divine nature could not suffer, He took the nature that could suffer to this end, that by the suffering of His own Flesh He might give exemption from suffering to those that believed on Him. These points, and all that is akin thereto, the letter contained. And we, admiring your spiritual wisdom, extolled the grace of the Holy Ghost which spoke through you, and ask and pray, and beg and beseech your holiness to come to the rescue of the churches of God that are now tempest tossed.
III. He complains of Dioscorus' ill-treatment of himself.
For when we expected a stilling of the waves through those who were sent to Ephesus from your holiness, we have fallen into yet worse storm. For the most righteous [380] prelate of Alexandria was not satisfied with the illegal and most unrighteous deposition of the Lord's most holy and God-loving bishop of Constantinople, Flavian, nor was his wrath appeased by the slaughter of the other bishops likewise. But me, too, he murdered with his pen in my absence, without calling me to judgment, without passing judgment on me in person, without questioning me on what I hold about the Incarnation of our God and Saviour. But even murderers, tomb-breakers, and ravishers of other men's beds, those who sit in judgment do not condemn until they either themselves corroborate the accusations by their confessions, or are clearly convicted by others. But us, when five and thirty days' journey distant, he, though brought up on Divine laws, has condemned at his will. And not now only has he done this, but also last year, after that two persons infected with the Apollinarian disorder had come hither and laid false information against us, he rose up in church and anathematized us, and that when I had written to him and expressed what I hold in a letter.
IV. This ill-treatment has come after 20 years' good work in his diocese of Cyrus.
I bemoan the distress of the Church and yearn after its peace. For having ruled through your prayers the church committed to me by the God of the universe for 20 years, neither in the time of the blessed Theodotus, president of the East, nor in the time of those who have succeeded him in the See of Antioch, have I received the slightest blame, but, the Divine Grace working with me, have freed more than 1,000 souls from the disease of Marcion, and have won over many others from the company of Arius and Eunomius to the Master, Christ. And 800 churches have I had to shepherd: for that is the number of parishes in Cyrus, in which not a single tare through your prayers has lingered. But our flock has been freed from every heretical error. He that sees all things knows how I have been stoned by the ill-famed heretics that have been sent against me, and what struggles I have had in many cities of the East against Greeks, Jews, and every heretical error. And after all these toils and troubles, I have been condemned without a hearing.
V. He appeals to the Apostolic See with confidence.
I however await the verdict of your Apostolic See, and beg and pray your Holiness to succour me when I appeal to your upright and just tribunal, and bid me come to you and show that my teaching follows in the track of the Apostles. For there are writings of mine some 20 years ago, some 18, some 15, and some 12, some again against the Arians and Eunomians, some against the Jews and Greeks some against the Magi in Persia, some also about the universal Providence, others about the nature of God and about the Divine Incarnation. I have interpreted, through the Divine grace, both the Apostolic writings and the prophetic utterances, and it is easy therefrom to gather whether I have kept unswervingly the standard of the Faith, or have turned aside from its straight path. And I beg you not to spurn my petition, nor to overlook the insults heaped on my poor white hairs.
VI. Ought he to acquiesce in his deposition?
First of all, I beg you to tell me, whether I ought to acquiesce in this unrighteous deposition or not. For I await your verdict and, if you bid me abide by my condemnation, I will abide by it, and will trouble no one hereafter, but await the unerring verdict of our God and Saviour. I indeed, the Master God is my witness, care nought for honour and glory, but only for the stumbling-block that is put in men's way: because many of the simpler folk, and especially those who have been rescued by us from divers heresies, will give credence to those who have condemned us, and perchance reckon us heretics, not being able to discern the exact truth of the dogma, and because, after my long episcopate, I have acquired neither house, nor land, nor obol, nor tomb, only a voluntary poverty, having straightway distributed even what came to me from my fathers after their death, as all know who live in the East.
VII. Being prevented himself, he has sent delegates to plead his cause.
And before all things I entreat you, holy and God-loved brother, render assistance to my prayers. These things I have brought to your Holiness' knowledge, by the most religious and God-beloved presbyters, Hypatius and Abramius the chorepiscopi [381] , and Alypius, superintendent [382] of the monks in our district: seeing that I was hindered from coming to you myself by the Emperor's restraining letter, and likewise the others. And I entreat your holiness both to look on them with fatherly regard, and to lend them your ears in sincere kindness, and also to deem my slandered and falsely attacked position worthy of your protection, and above all to defend with all your might the Faith that is now plotted against, and to keep the heritage of the fathers intact for the churches, so shall your holiness receive from the Bountiful Master a full reward. (Date about the end of 449.) __________________________________________________________________
[375] Rom. i. 8.
[376] It is sufficient here to quote Eusebius (Hist. Eccl. ii. 25) as one of the earliest (before 340) maintainers of this tradition. In this passage he again quotes Gaius of Rome (3rd cent.) and Dionysius of Corinth (2nd cent.) as corroborative authorities. Eusebius's own words are these: "Paul is recorded to have been beheaded in Rome itself, and Peter likewise to have been impaled. And this statement is supported by their names, which remain to this day inscribed in the cemeteries there."
[377] Viz., in 444: cf. Letter VII. supra, together with the Emperor's decree (Lett. VIII.).
[378] This is, of course, the Tome (Lett. XXVIII.).
[379] Here nature' must mean man's original nature before the Fall,' when it was still in the image of Him who so created it, to which nature Christ's manhood was a triumphant return. Otherwise it's hard to see how Theodoret escapes the pitfall of Pelagianism.
[380] The epithet is shown by the context to be bitterly sarcastic.
[381] Chorepiscopi (country bishops) were a kind of suffragan bishop to assist the town bishops in the remoter parts of their diocese. They continued in use from the end of the 3rd till the 9th century, when they were abolished.
[382] Exarchus. __________________________________________________________________
Letter LIII.
A fragment of a letter from Anatolius, Bishop of Constantinople, to Leo (about his consecration). __________________________________________________________________
Letter LIV.
To Theodosius Augustus (asking for a synod in Italy).> __________________________________________________________________
Letters LV. to LVIII.
A series of Letters.
(1) From Valentinian the Emperor to Theodosius Augustus.
(2) From Galla Placidia Augusta to Theodosius Augustus.
(3) From Licinia Eudoxia Augusta to Theodosius Augustus.
(4) From Galla Placidia Augusta to Pulcheria Augusta, all graphically describing how Leo had appealed to them in public to press his suit with Theodosius. Of these, LVI. is subjoined as perhaps the most interesting specimen.
Letter LVI.
(From Galla Placidia Augusta to Theodosius).
To the Lord Theodosius, Conqueror and Emperor, her ever august son, Galla Placidia, most pious and prosperous, perpetual Augusta and mother.
When on our very arrival in the ancient city, we were engaged in paying our devotion to the most blessed Apostle Peter, at the martyr's very altar, the most reverend Bishop Leo waiting behind awhile after the service uttered laments over the catholic Faith to us, and taking to witness the chief of the Apostles himself likewise, whom we had just approached, and surrounded by a number of bishops whom he had brought together from numerous cities in Italy by the authority and dignity of his position, adding also tears to his words, called upon us to join our moans to his own. For no slight harm has arisen from those occurrences, whereby the standard of the catholic Faith so long guarded since the days of our most Divine father Constantine, who was the first in the palace to stand out as a Christian, has been recently disturbed by the assumption of one man, who in the synod held at Ephesus is alleged to have rather stirred up hatred and contention, intimidating by the presence of soldiers, Flavianus, the bishop of Constantinople, because he had sent an appeal to the Apostolic See, and to all the bishops of these parts by the hands of those who had been deputed to attend the Synod by the most reverend Bishop of Rome, who have been always wont so to attend, most sacred Lord and Son and adored King, in accordance with the provisions of the Nicene Synod [383] . For this cause we pray your clemency to oppose such disturbances with the Truth, and to order the Faith of the catholic religion to be preserved without spot, in order that according to the standard and decision of the Apostolic See, which we likewise revere as pre-eminent, Flavianus may remain altogether uninjured in his priestly office, and the matter be referred to the Synod of the Apostolic See, wherein assuredly he first adorned the primacy, who was deemed worthy to receive the keys of heaven: for it becomes us in all things to maintain the respect due to this great city, which is the mistress of all the earth; and this too we must most carefully provide that what in former times our house guarded seem not in our day to be infringed, and that by the present example schisms be not advanced either between the bishops or the most holy churches. __________________________________________________________________
[383] See no. 9a to Lett. XLIV., 3, where it is shown that this is a mistake, willful or otherwise, on Leo's part. __________________________________________________________________
Letter LIX.
To the Clergy and People of the City of Constantinople.
Leo the bishop to the clergy, dignitaries, and people, residing at Constantinople.
I. He congratulates them on their outspoken resistance to error.
Though we are greatly grieved at the things reported to have been done recently in the council of priests at Ephesus, because, as is consistently rumoured, and also demonstrated by results, neither due moderation nor the strictness of the Faith was there observed, yet we rejoice in your devoted piety and in the acclamations of the holy people [384] , instances of which have been brought to our notice, we have approved of the right feeling of you all; because there lives and abides in good sons due affection for their excellent Father, and because you suffer the fulness of catholic teaching to be in no part corrupted. For undoubtedly, as the Holy Spirit has unfolded to you, they are leagued with the Manichæans' error, who deny that the only-begotten Son of God took our nature's true Manhood, and maintain that all His bodily actions were the actions of a false apparition. And lest you should in aught give your assent to this blasphemy, we have now sent you, beloved, by my son Epiphanius and Dionysius, notary of the Roman Church, letters of exhortation wherein we have of our own accord rendered you the assistance which you sought, that you may not doubt of our bestowing all a father's care on you, and labouring in every way, by the help of God's mercy, to destroy all the stumbling-blocks which ignorant and foolish men have raised. And let no one venture to parade his priestly dignity who can be convicted of holding such detestably blasphemous opinions. For if ignorance seems hardly tolerable in laymen, how much less excusable or pardonable is it in those who govern; especially when they dare even to defend their mendacious and perverse views, and persuade the unsteadfast to agree with them either by intimidation or by cajoling.
II. They are to be rejected who deny the truth of Christ's flesh, a truth repeated by every recipient at the Holy Eucharist.
Let such men be rejected by the holy members of Christ's Body, and let not catholic liberty suffer the yoke of the unfaithful to be laid upon it. For they are to be reckoned outside the Divine grace, and outside the mystery of man's salvation, who, denying the nature of our flesh in Christ, gainsay the Gospel and oppose the Creed. Nor do they perceive that their blindness leads them into such an abyss that they have no sure footing in the reality either of the Lord's Passion or His Resurrection: because both are discredited in the Saviour, if our fleshly nature is not believed in Him. In what density of ignorance, in what utter sloth must they hitherto have lain, not to have learnt from hearing, nor understood from reading, that which in God's Church is so constantly in men's mouths, that even the tongues of infants do not keep silence upon the truth of Christ's Body and Blood at the rite of Holy Communion [385] ? For in that mystic distribution of spiritual nourishment, that which is given and taken is of such a kind that receiving the virtue of the celestial food we pass into the flesh of Him, Who became our flesh [386] . Hence to confirm you, beloved, in your laudably faithful resistance to the foes of Truth, I shall fully and opportunely use the language and sentiments of the Apostle, and say: "Therefore I also hearing of your faith, which is in the Lord Jesus, and love towards all saints, do not cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your hearts being enlightened that you may know what is the hope of His calling, and what the riches of the glory of His inheritance among the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of His power in us, who believed according to the working of His mighty power which he has wrought in Christ, raising Him from the dead, and setting Him at His right hand in heavenly places above every principality, and power, and strength, and dominion, and every name which is named not only in this age, but also in that which is to come: and hath put all things under His feet, and given Him to be the head over all the Church which is His body, and the fulness of Him Who filleth all in all [387] ."
III. Perfect God and perfect Man were united in Christ.
In this passage let the adversaries of the Truth say when or according to what nature did the Almighty Father exalt His Son above all things, or to what substance did He subject all things. For the Godhead of the Word is equal in all things, and consubstantial with the Father, and the power of the Begetter and the Begotten is one and the same always and eternally. Certainly, the Creator of all natures, since "through Him all things were made, and without Him was nothing made [388] ," is above all things which He created, nor were the things which He made ever not subject to their Creator, Whose eternal property it is, to be from none other than the Father, and in no way different to the Father. If greater power, grander dignity, more exalted loftiness was granted Him, then was He that was so increased less than He that promoted Him, and possessed not the full riches of His nature from Whose fulness He received. But one who thinks thus is hurried off into the society of Arius, whose heresy is much assisted by this blasphemy which denies the existence of human nature in the Word of God, so that, in rejecting the combination of humility with majesty in God, it either asserts a false phantom-body in Christ, or says that all His bodily actions and passions belonged to the Godhead rather than to the flesh. But everything he ventures to uphold is absolutely foolish: because neither our religious belief nor the scope of the mystery admits either of the Godhead suffering anything or of the Truth belying Itself in anything. The impassible Son of God, therefore, whose perpetually it is with the Father and with the Holy Spirit to be what He is in the one essence of the Unchangeable Trinity, when the fullness of time had come which had been fore-ordained by an eternal purpose, and promised by the prophetic significance of words and deeds, became man not by conversion of His substance but by assumption of our nature, and "came to seek and to save that which was lost [389] ." But He came not by local approach nor by bodily motion, as if to be present where He had been absent, or to depart where He had come: but He came to be manifested to onlookers by that which was visible and common to others, receiving, that is to say, human flesh and soul in the Virgin mother's womb, so that, abiding in the form of God, He united to Himself the form of a slave, and the likeness of sinful flesh, whereby He did not lessen the Divine by the human, but increased the human by the Divine.
IV. The Sacrament of Baptism typifies and realizes this union to each individual believer.
For such was the state of all mortals resulting from our first ancestors that, after the transmission of original sin to their descendants, no one would have escaped the punishment of condemnation, had not the Word become flesh and dwelt in us, that is to say, in that nature which belonged to our blood and race. And accordingly, the Apostle says: "As by one man's sin (judgment passed) upon all to condemnation, so also by one man's righteousness (it) passed upon all to justification of life. For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one man's obedience shall many be made righteous [390] ;" and again, "For because by man (came) death, by man also (came) the resurrection of the dead. And as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive [391] ." All they to wit who though they be born in Adam, yet are found reborn in Christ, having a sure testimony both to their justification by grace, and to Christ's sharing in their nature [392] ; for he who does not believe that God's only-begotten Son did assume our nature in the womb of the Virgin-daughter of David, is without share in the Mystery of the Christian religion, and, as he neither recognizes the Bridegroom nor knows the Bride, can have no place at the wedding-banquet. For the flesh of Christ is the veil of the Word, wherewith every one is clothed who confesses Him unreservedly. But he that is ashamed of it and rejects it as unworthy, shall have no adornment from Him, and though he present himself at the Royal feast, and unseasonably join in the sacred banquet, yet the intruder will not be able to escape the King's discernment, but, as the Lord Himself asserted, will be taken, and with hands and feet bound, be cast into outer darkness; where will be weeping and gnashing of teeth [393] . Hence whosoever confesses not the human body in Christ, must know that he is unworthy of the mystery of the Incarnation, and has no share in that sacred union of which the Apostle speaks, saying, "For we are His members, of His flesh and of His bones. For this cause a man shall leave father and mother and shall cleave to his wife, and there shall be two in one flesh [394] ." And explaining what was meant by this, he added, "This mystery is great, but I speak in respect of Christ and the Church." Therefore, from the very commencement of the human race, Christ is announced to all men as coming in the flesh. In which, as was said, "there shall be two in one flesh," there are undoubtedly two, God and man, Christ and the Church, which issued from the Bridegroom's flesh, when it received the mystery of redemption and regeneration, water and blood flowing from the side of the Crucified. For the very condition of a new creature which at baptism puts off not the covering of true flesh but the taint of the old condemnation, is this, that a man is made the body of Christ, because Christ also is the body of a man [395] .
V. The true doctrine of the Incarnation restated and commended to their keeping.
Wherefore we call Christ not God only, as the Manichæan heretics, nor Man only, as the Photinian [396] heretics, nor man in such a way that anything should be wanting in Him which certainly belongs to human nature, whether soul or reasonable mind or flesh which was not derived from woman, but made from the Word turned and changed into flesh; which three false and empty propositions have been variously advanced by the three sections of the Apollinarian heretics [397] . Nor do we say that the blessed Virgin Mary conceived a Man without Godhead, Who was created by the Holy Ghost and afterwards assumed by the Word, which we deservedly and properly condemned Nestorius for preaching: but we call Christ the Son of God, true God, born of God the Father without any beginning in time, and likewise true Man, born of a human Mother, at the ordained fulness of time, and we say that His Manhood, whereby the Father is the greater, does not in anything lessen that nature whereby He is equal with the Father. But these two natures form one Christ, Who has said most truly both according to His Godhead: "I and the Father are one [398] ," and according to His manhood "the Father is greater than I [399] ." This true and indestructible Faith, dearly-beloved, which alone makes us true Christians, and which, as we hear with approval, you are defending with loyal zeal and praiseworthy affection, hold fast and maintain boldly. And since, besides God's aid, you must win the favour of catholic Princes also, humbly and wisely make request that the most clement Emperor be pleased to grant our petition, wherein we have asked for a plenary synod to be convened; that by the aid of God's mercy the sound may be increased in courage, and the sick, if they consent to be treated, have the remedy applied. (Dated October 15, in the consulship of the illustrious Asturius and Protogenes, 449.) __________________________________________________________________
[384] Sanctæ plebis acclamationibus. It seems that the people had openly expressed their disapproval of the maltreatment to which Flavian had been subjected.
[385] Two things are here to be noticed: (1) that the allusion appears to be to the formula of reception then in use at the Eucharist, the priest saying Corpus Christi, and the recipient answering Amen. Cf. Serm. xci. 3, sic sacræ mensæ communicare debetis ut nihil prorsus de veritate corporis Christi et sanguinis ambigatis. Hoc enim ore sumitar quod fide creditur: et frustra ab illis Amen respondetur a quibus contra id quod accipitur disputatur; (2) that infant communion is implied as regular: this we know to have been the case in much earlier days. Cf. Apost. Const. viii. 13, Cyprian de Lapsis, ix. and xxv. &c., also Bingham's Antiq. xv. chap. iv. § 7.
[386] Cf. Sermon LXIII. 7, where much the same language is used.
[387] Ephes. i. 15-23.
[388] S. John i. 3.
[389] S. Luke xix. 10.
[390] Rom. v. 18, 19.
[391] 1 Cor. xv. 21, 22.
[392] Habentes fidei testimonium et de justificatione gratiæ et ae communione naturæ.
[393] The reference is to S. Matt. xxii. 11-13.
[394] Eph. v. 30, 31, 32.
[395] Ipsa est enim novæ condiiio creaturæ quæ in baptismate non indumento veræ carnis sed contagio damnatæ vetustatis exuitur ut efficiatur homo corpus Christi, quia et Christus corpus est hominis. The most crabbed of the several crabbed passages in this letter. The mystical transmutation of the believer's body into the body of Christ is here referred to the sacrament of Baptism, while earlier in the letter (chap. ii.) it is described as one of the effects of Holy Communion.
[396] The followers of Photinus, Bishop of Sirmium (circ. 410 a.d.): for an account of his heretical opinions see Schaff's History of the Christian Church, in loc. Cf. Letter XV. 4.
[397] Apollinaristarum tres partes; see Sermon xxviii. chap. 4 (end) with Bright's n. 32 on Apollinarianism generally.
[398] S. John x. 30; xiv. 28.
[399] S. John x. 30; xiv. 28. __________________________________________________________________
Letter LX.
To Pulcheria Augusta.
(He hopes for her intercession to procure the condemnation of Eutyches.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter LXI.
To Martinus and Faustus, Presbyters.
(Reminding them of a former letter he has written to them, viz. Lett. LI.) __________________________________________________________________
(Letters LXII., LXIII., LXIV., are the Emperor Theodosius' answers (a) to Valentinian, (b) to Galla Placidia, and (c) to Licinia Eudoxia (assuring them of his orthodoxy and care for the Faith.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter LXV.
From the Bishops of the Province of Arles.
(Asking Leo to confirm the privileges of that city, which they allege date from the mission of Trophimus, by S. Peter, and more recently ratified by the Emperor Constantine.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter LXVI.
Leo's Reply to Letter LXV.
Leo, the pope, to the dearly-beloved brethren Constantinus, Armentarius, Audientius, Severianus, Valerianus, Ursus, Stephanus, Nectarius, Constantius, Maximus, Asclepius, Theodorus, Justus Ingenuus, Augustalis, Superventor, Ynantius, Fonteius, and Palladius.
I. The Bishop of Vienne has anticipated their appeal. He proposes to arbitrate with impartiality.
When we read your letter, beloved, which was brought to us by our sons Petronius the presbyter and Regulus the deacon, we recognized how affectionate is the regard in which you hold our brother and fellow-bishop, Ravennius: for your request is that what his predecessor [400] deservedly lost for his excessive presumption may be restored to him. But your petition, brothers, was forestalled by the bishop of Vienne, who sent a letter and legates with the complaint that the bishop of Arles had unlawfully claimed the ordination of the bishop of Vasa. Accordingly, as we had to show such respect both for the canons of the fathers and for your good opinion of us, that in the matter of the churches' privileges we should allow no infringement or deprivation, it were incumbent on us to preserve the peace within the province of Vienne by employing such righteous moderation as should disregard neither ancient usage nor your desires.
II. The bishop of Vienne is to retain jurisdiction over four neighbouring cities: the rest to belong to Arles.
For after considering the arguments advanced by the clergy present on either side, we find that the cities of Vienne and Arles within your province have always been so famous, that in certain matters of ecclesiastical privilege, now one, now the other, has alternately taken precedence, though the national tradition is that formerly they had community of rights. And hence we suffer not the city of Vienne to be altogether without honour, so far as concerns ecclesiastical jurisdiction, especially as it already possesses the authority of our decree for the enjoyment of its privilege: to wit the power which, when taken away from Hilary, we thought proper to confer on the bishop of Vienne. And that he seem not suddenly and unduly lowered, he shall hold rule over the four neighbouring towns, that is, Valentia, Tarantasia, Genava and Gratianopolis, with Vienne herself for the fifth, to the bishop of which shall belong the care of all the said churches. But the other churches of the same province shall be placed under the authority and management of the bishop of Arles, who from his temperate moderation we believe will be so anxious for love and peace as by no means to consider himself deprived of that which he sees conceded to his brother. Dated 5th of May, in the consulship of Valentinianus Augustus (7th time), and the most famous Avienus (450.) __________________________________________________________________
[400] This, it will be remembered, was Hillary: see Letter X. above. __________________________________________________________________
Letter LXVII [401] .
To Ravennius, Bishop of Arles.
To his dearly-beloved brother Ravennius, Leo the pope.
We have kept our sons Petronius the presbyter, and Regulus the deacon, long in the City, both because they deserved this from their favour in our eyes, and because the needs of the Faith, which is now being assailed by the error of some, demanded it. For we wished them to be present when we discussed the matter, and to ascertain everything which we desire through you, beloved, should reach the knowledge of all our brethren and fellow-bishops, specially deputing this to you, dear brother, that through your watchful diligence our letter, which we have issued to the East in defence of the Faith, or else [402] that of Cyril of blessed memory, which agrees throughout with our views, may become known to all the brethren; in order that being furnished with arguments they may fortify themselves with spiritual strength against those who think fit to insult the Lord's Incarnation with their misbeliefs. You have a favourable opportunity, beloved brother, of recommending the commencement of your episcopacy to all the churches and to our God, if you will carry out these things in the way we have charged and enjoined you. But the matters which were not to be committed to paper, in reliance on God's aid, you shall carry out effectually, as we have said, and laudably, when you have learnt about them from the mouths of our aforesaid sons. God keep you safe, dearest brother. Dated 5th of May, in the consulship of the most glorious Valentinianus (for the 7th time) and of the famous Avienus (450). __________________________________________________________________
[401] This letter, together with Letters XL., LXV. and LXVI., are found only in the Collection of Arles (numbered XV. by the Ballerinii).
[402] Vel can hardly equal et as the Ball. would wish. So that here Leo recommends either his own Tome or Cyril's second letter to Nestorius. Cf. Letter LXIX., chap. i. below; also Letter LXX. __________________________________________________________________
Letter LXVIII.
From Three Gallic Bishops to St. Leo.
Ceretius, Salonius and Veranus to the holy Lord, most blessed father, and pope most worthy of the Apostolic See, Leo.
I. They congratulate and thank Leo for the Tome.
Having perused your Excellency's letter, which you composed for instruction in the Faith, and sent to the bishop of Constantinople, we thought it our duty, being enriched with so great a wealth of doctrine, to pay our debt of thanks by at least inditing you a letter. For we appreciate your fatherly solicitude on our behalf, and confess that we are the more indebted to your preventing care because we now have the benefit of the remedy before experiencing the evils. For knowing that those remedies are well-nigh too late which are applied after the infliction of the wounds, you admonish us with the voice of loving forethought to arm ourselves with those Apostolic means of defence. We acknowledge frankly, most blessed pope [403] , with what singular loving-kindness you have imparted to us the innermost thoughts of your breast, by the efficacy of which you secure the safety of others: and while you extract the old Serpent's infused poison from the hearts of others, standing as it were on the watch-tower of Love, with Apostolic care and watchfulness you cry aloud, lest the enemy come on us unawares and off our guard, lest careless security expose us to attack, O holy Lord, most blessed father and pope, most worthy of the Apostolic See. Moreover we, who specially belong to you [404] , are filled with a great and unspeakable delight, because this special statement of your teaching is so highly regarded wherever the Churches meet together, that the unanimous opinion is expressed that the primacy of the Apostolic See is rightfully there assigned, from whence the oracles of the Apostolic Spirit still receive their interpretations.
II. They ask him to correct or add to their copy of the Tome.
Therefore, if you deem it worth while, we entreat your holiness to run through and correct any mistake of the copyist in this work, so valuable both now and in the future, which we have had committed to parchment [405] , in our desire to preserve it, or if you have devised anything further in your zeal, which will profit all who read, give orders in your loving care that it be added to this copy, so that not only many holy bishops our brethren throughout the provinces of Gaul, but also many of your sons among the laity, who greatly desire to see this letter for the revelation of the Truth, may be permitted, when it is sent back to us, corrected by your holy hand, to transcribe, read and keep it. If you think fit, we are anxious that our messengers should return soon, in order that we may the speedier have an account of your good health over which to rejoice: for your well-being is our joy and health.
May Christ the Lord long keep your eminence mindful of our humility, O holy Lord, most blessed father and pope most worthy of the Apostolic See.
I, Ceretius, your adopted (son?), salute your apostleship, commending me to your prayers.
I, Salonius, your adorer, salute your apostleship, entreating the aid of your prayers.
I, Veranus, the worshipper of your apostleship, salute your blessedness, and beseech you to pray for me. __________________________________________________________________
[403] Cf. Lett. XVII. n. 2^a.
[404] Peculiares tui. So in each one's autograph subscription at the end of the letter Ceretius calls himself susceptus vester, Salonius venerator vester, and Veranus cultor vestri apostolatus.
[405] Foliis. __________________________________________________________________
Letter LXIX.
(To Theodosius Augustus.)
Leo, the bishop, to Theodosius ever Augustus.
I. He suspends his opinion on the appointment of Anatolius till he has made open confession of the catholic Faith.
In all your piously expressed letters amid the anxieties, which we suffer for the Faith, you have afforded us hope of security by supporting the Council of Nicæa so loyally as not to allow the priests of the Lord to budge from it, as you have often written us already. But lest I should seem to have done anything prejudicial to the catholic defence, I thought nothing rash on either side ought meanwhile to be written back on the ordination of him who has begun to preside over the church of Constantinople, and this not through want of loving interest, but waiting for the catholic Truth to be made clear. And I beg your clemency to bear this with equanimity that when he has proved himself such as we desire towards the catholic Faith, we may the more fully and safely rejoice over his sincerity. But that no evil suspicion may assail him about our disposition towards him, I remove all occasion of difficulty, and demand nothing which may seem either hard or controvertible but make an invitation which no catholic would decline. For they are well known and renowned throughout the world, who before our time have shone in preaching the catholic Truth whether in the Greek or the Latin tongue, to whose learning and teaching some even of our own day have recourse, and from whose writings a uniform and manifold statement of doctrine is produced: which, as it has pulled down the heresy of Nestorius, so has it cut off this error too which is now sprouting out again. Let him then read again what is the belief on the Lord's Incarnation which the holy fathers guarded and has always been similarly preached, and when he has perceived that the letter of Cyril of holy memory, bishop of Alexandria, agrees with the view of those who preceded him [wherein he wished to correct and cure Nestorius, refuting his wrong statements and setting out more clearly the Faith as defined at Nicæa, and which was sent by him and placed in the library of the Apostolic See [406] ], let him further reconsider the proceedings of the Ephesian Synod [407] wherein the testimonies of catholic priests on the Lord's Incarnation are inserted and maintained by Cyril of holy memory. Let him not scorn also to read my letter [408] over, which he will find to agree throughout with the pious belief of the fathers. And when he has realized that that is required and desired from him which shall serve the same good end, let him give his hearty assent to the judgment of the catholics, so that in the presence of all the clergy and the whole people he may without any reservation declare his sincere acknowledgment of the common Faith, to be communicated to the Apostolic See and all the Lord's priests and churches, and thus the world being at peace through the one Faith, we may all be able to say what the angels sang at the Saviour's birth of the Virgin Mary, "Glory in the highest to God and on earth peace to men of good will [409] ."
II. He promises to accept Anatolius on making this confession, and asks for a council in Italy to finally define the Faith.
But because both we and our blessed fathers, whose teaching we revere and follow, are in concord on the one Faith, as the bishops of all the provinces attest, let your clemency's most devout faith see to it that such a document as is due may reach us as soon as may be from the bishop of Constantinople, as from an approved and catholic priest, that is, openly and distinctly affirming that he will separate from his communion any one who believes or maintains any other view about the Incarnation of the Word of God than my statement and that of all catholics lays down, that we may fairly be able to bestow on him brotherly love in Christ. And that swifter and fuller effect, God aiding us, may be given through your clemency's faith to our wholesome desires, I have sent to your piety my brethren and fellow-bishops Abundius and Asterius, together with Basilius and Senator presbyters, whose devotion is well proved to me, through whom, when they have displayed the instructions which we have sent, you may be able properly to apprehend what is the standard of our faith, so that, if the bishop of Constantinople gives his hearty assent to the same confession, we may securely, as is due, rejoice over the peace of the Church and no ambiguity may seem to lurk behind which may trouble us with perhaps ungrounded suspicions. But if any dissent from the purity of our Faith and from the authority of the Fathers, the Synod which has met at Rome for that purpose joins with me in asking your clemency to permit a universal council within the limits of Italy; so that, if all those come together in one place who have fallen either through ignorance or through fear, measures may be taken to correct and cure them, and no one any longer may be allowed to quote the Synod of Nicæa in a way which shall prove him opposed to its Faith; since it will be of advantage both to the whole Church and to your rule, if one God, one Faith and one mystery of man's Salvation, be held by the one confession of the whole world.
Dated 17th July in the consulship of the illustrious Valentinianus for the seventh time) and Avienus (450). __________________________________________________________________
[406] Wherein--see, probably a gloss by way of identifying the letter: it is the second letter to Nestorius. See Letter LXVII above.
[407] Viz., the third Ecumenical Council held at Ephesus 431, in which Nestorius was condemned.
[408] Viz., XXVIII (The Tome).
[409] S. Luke ii. 14. __________________________________________________________________
Letter LXX.
To Pulcheria Augusta.
(In which he again says he is waiting for Anatolius' acceptance of Cyril's and his own statement of the Faith, and looks forward to a Synod in Italy.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter LXXI.
To the Archimandrites of Constantinople.
(Complaining of Anatolius' silence.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter LXXII.
To Faustus, One of the Archimandrites at Constantinople.
(Commending his faith and exhorting him to steadfastness.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter LXXIII.
From Valentinian and Marcian.
(Announcing their election as Emperors [410] (a.d. 450), and asking his prayers that (per celebrandam synodum, te auctore), peace may be restored to the Church.) __________________________________________________________________
[410] Valentinian III. had been nominally Emperor of the West since 425, but his mother's (Galla Placidia) death this year compelled him to rule as well as have the name of ruler: almost simultaneously in the East the death of Theodisius II. brought to the front his sister Pulcheria and her soldier husband Marcian. __________________________________________________________________
Letter LXXIV.
To Martinus, Another of the Archimandrites at Constantinople.
(Commending his steadfastness in the Faith.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter LXXV.
To Faustus and Martinus Together.
(Condemning the Latrocinium and maintaining that Eutyches equally with Nestorius promotes the cause of Antichrist.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter LXXVI.
From Marcianus Augustus to Leo.
(Proposing that he should either attend a Synod at Constantinople or help in arranging some other more convenient place of meeting.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter LXXVII.
From Pulcheria Augusta to Leo.
(In which she expresses her assurance that Anatolius is orthodox, and begs him to assist her husband in arranging for the Synod, and announces that Flavian's body has been buried in the Basilica of the Apostles at Constantinople and the exiled bishops restored.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter LXXVIII.
Leo's Answer to Marcianus.
(Briefly thanking him.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter LXXIX.
To Pulcheria Augusta.
Leo, bishop of the city of Rome to Pulcheria Augusta.
I. He rejoices at Pulcheria's zeal both against Nestorius and Eutyches.
That which we have always anticipated concerning your Grace's holy purposes, we have now proved fully true, viz. that, however varied may be the attacks of wicked men upon the Christian Faith, yet when you are present and prepared by the Lord for its defence, it cannot be disturbed. For God will not forsake either the mystery of His mercy or the deserts of your labours, whereby you long ago repelled the crafty foe of our holy religion from the very vitals of the Church: when the impiety of Nestorius failed to maintain his heresy because it did not escape you the handmaid and pupil of the Truth, how much poison was instilled into simple folk by the coloured falsehoods of that glib fellow. And the sequel to that mighty struggle was that through your vigilance the things which the devil contrived by means of Eutyches, did not escape detection, and they who had chosen to themselves one side in the twofold heresy, were overthrown by the one and undivided power of the catholic Faith. This then is your second victory over the destruction of Eutyches' error: and, if he had had any soundness of mind, that error having been once and long ago routed and put to confusion in the person of his instigators, he would easily have been able to avoid the attempt to rekindle into life the smouldering ashes, and thus only share the lot of those, whose example he had followed, most glorious Augusta. We desire, therefore, to leap for joy and to pay due vows for your clemency's prosperity to God, who has already bestowed on you a double palm and crown through all the parts of the world, in which the Lord's Gospel is proclaimed.
II. He thanks her for her aid to the catholic cause, and explains his wishes about the restoration of the lapsed bishops.
Your clemency must know, therefore, that the whole church of Rome is highly grateful for all your faithful deeds, whether that you have with pious zeal helped our representatives throughout and brought back the catholic priests, who had been expelled from their churches by an unjust sentence, or that you have procured the restoration with due honour of the remains of that innocent and holy priest, Flavian, of holy memory, to the church, which he ruled so well. In all which things assuredly your glory is increased manifold, so long as you venerate the saints according to their deserts, and are anxious that the thorns and weeds should be removed from the Lord's field. But we learn as well from the account of our deputies as from that of my brother and fellow-bishop, Anatolius, whom you graciously recommend to me, that certain bishops crave reconciliation for those who seem to have given their consent to matters of heresy, and desire catholic communion for them: to whose request we grant effect on condition that the boon of peace should not be vouchsafed them till, our deputies acting in concert with the aforesaid bishop, they are corrected, and with their own hand condemn their evil doings; because our Christian religion requires both that true justice should constrain the obstinate, and love not reject the penitent.
III. He commends certain bishops and churches to her care.
And because we know how much pious care your Grace deigns to bestow on catholic priests, we have ordered that you should be informed that my brother and fellow-bishop, Eusebius, is living with us, and sharing our communion, whose church we commend to you; for he that is improperly asserted to have been elected in his place, is said to be ravaging it. And this too we ask of your Grace, which we doubt not you will do of your own free will, to extend the favour which is due as well to my brother and fellow-bishop, Julian, as to the clergy of Constantinople, who clung to the holy Flavian with faithful loyalty. On all things we have instructed your Grace by our deputies as to what ought to be done or arranged. Dated April 13, in the consulship of the illustrious Adelfius (451). __________________________________________________________________
Letter LXXX.
(To Anatolius, Bishop of Constantinople.)
Leo, the bishop, to Anatolius, the bishop.
I. He rejoices at Anatolius having proved himself orthodox.
We rejoice in the Lord and glory in the gift of His Grace, Who has shown you a follower of Gospel-teaching as we have found from your letter, beloved, and our brothers' account whom we sent to Constantinople: for now through the approved faith of the priest, we are justifying in presuming that the whole church committed to him will have no wrinkle nor spot of error, as says the Apostle, "for I have espoused you to one husband to present you a pure virgin to Christ [411] ." For that virgin is the Church, the spouse of one husband Christ, who suffers herself to be corrupted by no error, so that through the whole world we have one entire and pure communion in which we now welcome you as a fellow, beloved, and give our approval to the order of proceedings which we have received, ratified, as was proper, with the necessary signatures. In order, therefore, that your spirit in turn, beloved, might be strengthened by words of ours, we sent back after the Easter festival with our letters, our sons, Casterius, the Presbyter, and Patricius and Asclepias, the Deacons, who brought your writings to us, informing you, as we said above, that we rejoice at the peace of the church of Constantinople, on which we have ever spent such care that we wish it to be polluted by no heretical deceit.
II. The penitents among the backsliding bishops are to be received back into full communion upon some plan to be settled by Anatolius and Leo's delegates.
But concerning the brethren whom we learn from your letters, and from our delegates' account, to be desirous of communion with us, on the ground of their sorrow that they did not remain constant against violence and intimidation, but gave their assent to another's crime when terror had so bewildered them, that with hasty acquiescence they ministered to the condemnation of the catholic and guiltless bishop (Flavian), and to the acceptance of the detestable heresy (of Eutyches), we approve of that which was determined upon in the presence and with the co-operation of our delegates, viz., that they should be content meanwhile with the communion of their own churches, but we wish our delegates whom we have sent to consult with you, and come to some arrangement whereby those who condemn their ill-doings with full assurances of penitence, and choose rather to accuse than to defend themselves, may be gladdened by being at peace and in communion with us; on condition that what has been received against the catholic Faith is first condemned with complete anathema. For otherwise in the Church of God, which is Christ's Body, there are neither valid priesthoods nor true sacrifices, unless in the reality of our nature the true High Priest makes atonement for us, and the true Blood of the spotless Lamb makes us clean. For although He be set on the Father's right hand, yet in the same flesh which He took from the Virgin, he carries on the mystery of propitiation, as says the Apostle, "Christ Jesus Who died, yea, Who also rose, Who is on the right hand of God, Who also maketh intercession for us [412] ." For our kindness cannot be blamed in any case where we receive those who give assurance of penitence, and at whose deception we were grieved. The boon of communion with us, therefore, must neither harshly be withheld nor rashly granted, because as it is fully consistent with our religion to treat the oppressed with a Christlike charity, so it is fair to lay the full blame upon the authors of the disturbance.
III. The Names of Dioscorus, Juvenal, and Eustathius are not to be read aloud at the holy altar.
Concerning the reading out of the names of Dioscorus, Juvenal, and Eustathius [413] at the holy altar, it beseems you, beloved, to observe that which our friends who were there present said ought to be done, and which is consistent with the honourable memory of S. Flavian, and will not turn the minds of the laity away from you. For it is very wrong and unbecoming that those who have harassed innocent catholics with their attacks, should be mingled indiscriminately with the names of the saints, seeing that by not forsaking their condemned heresy, they condemn themselves by their perversity: such men should either be chastised for their unfaithfulness; or strive hard after forgiveness.
IV. One or two instructions about individuals.
But our brother and fellow-bishop, Julian, and the clergy who adhered to Flavian of holy memory, rendering him faithful service, we wish to adhere to you also beloved, that they may know him who we are sure lives by the merits of his faith with our God to be present with them in you. We wish you to know this too, beloved, that our brother and fellow-bishop Eusebius [414] , who for the Faith's sake endured many dangers and toils, is at present staying with us and continuing in our communion; whose church we would that your care should protect, that nothing may be destroyed in his absence, and no one may venture to injure him in anything until he come to you bearing a letter from us. And that our or rather all Christian people's affection for you may be stirred up in greater measure, we wish this that we have written to you, beloved, to come to all men's knowledge, that they who serve our God may give thanks for the consummation of the peace of the Apostolic See with you. But on other matters and persons you will be more fully instructed, beloved, by the letter you will have received through our delegates. Dated 13 April, in the consulship of the illustrious Adelfius (451). __________________________________________________________________
[411] 2 Cor. xi. 2.
[412] Rom. viii. 34.
[413] Juvenal (Bishop of Jerusalem), and Eustathius (Bishop of Berytus), had been two of the principal abettors of Dioscorus in the Latrocinium. The "reading out of their names at the altar" alludes to the practice in the early Church of keeping registers (called "diptychs") of the members (alive and dead) of the Church, from which one or two of the more prominent names (clerical and lay) were read out at the celebration of the Holy mysteries: cf. the modern "Bidding" prayer, &c.
[414] This is the Bishop of Dorylæum in Phrygia, Eutyches former friend, but more recently his relentless accuser of heresy. __________________________________________________________________
Letter LXXXI.
To Bishop Julian.
(Warning him to be circumspect in receiving the lapsed.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter LXXXII.
To Marcian Augustus.
I. After congratulating the Emperor on his noble conduct, he deprecates random inquiries into the tenets of the Faith.
Although I have replied [415] already to your Grace by the hand of the Constantinopolitan clergy, yet on receiving your clemency's mercy through the illustrious prefect of the city, my son Tatian, I found still greater cause for congratulation, because I have learnt your strong eagerness for the Church's peace. And this holy desire as in fairness it deserves, secures for your empire the same happy condition as you seek for religion. For when the Spirit of God establishes harmony among Christian princes, a twofold confidence is produced throughout the world, because the progress of love and faith makes the power of their arms in both directions unconquerable, so that God being propitiated by one confession, the falseness of heretics and the enmity of barbarians are simultaneously overthrown, most glorious Emperor. The hope, therefore, of heavenly aid being increased through the Emperor's friendship, I venture with the greater confidence to appeal to your Grace on behalf of the mystery of man's salvation, not to allow any one in vain and presumptuous craftiness to inquire what must be held, as if it were uncertain. And although we may not in a single word dissent from the teaching of the Gospels and Apostles, nor entertain any opinion on the Divine Scriptures different to what the blessed Apostles and our Fathers learnt and taught, now in these latter days unlearned and blasphemous inquiries are set on foot, which of old the Holy Spirit crushed by the disciples of the Truth, so soon as the devil aroused them in hearts which were suited to his purpose.
II. The points to be settled are only which of the lapsed shall be restored, and on what terms.
But it is most inopportune that through the foolishness of a few we should be brought once more into hazardous opinions, and to the warfare of carnal disputes, as if the wrangle was to be revived, and we had to settle whether Eutyches held blasphemous views, and whether Dioscorus gave wrong judgment, who in condemning Flavian of holy memory struck his own death-blow, and involved the simpler folk in the same destruction. And now that many, as we have ascertained, have betaken themselves to the means of amendment, and entreat forgiveness for their weak hastiness, we have to determine not the character of the Faith, but whose prayers we shall receive, and on what terms. And hence that most religious anxiety which you deign to feel for the proclamation of a Synod, shall have fully and timely put before it all that I judge pertinent to the needs of the case, by means of the deputies who will with all speed, if God permit, reach your Grace. Dated the 23rd of April in the consulship of the illustrious Adelfius (451). __________________________________________________________________
[415] i.e. Lett. LXXVIII. of the series. __________________________________________________________________
Letter LXXXIII.
To the Same Marcian.
(Congratulating him on his benefits to the Church, and deprecating a Synod as inopportune.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter LXXXIV.
To Pulcheria Augusta.
(Announcing the despatch of his legates to deal with the lapsed, and asking that Eutyches should be superseded in his monastery by a catholic, and dismissed from Constantinople.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter LXXXV.
To Anatolius, Bishop of Constantinople.
Leo, the bishop, to the bishop Anatolius.
I. Anatolius with Leo's delegates is to settle the question of the receiving back of those who had temporarily gone astray after Eutyches.
Although I hope, beloved, you are devoted to every good work, yet that your activity may be rendered the more effective, it was needful and fitting to despatch my brothers Lucentius the bishop and Basil the presbyter, as we [416] promised, to ally themselves with you, beloved, that nothing may be done either indecisively or lazily in matters, which concern the welfare of the universal Church; for as long as you are on the spot, to whom we have entrusted the carrying out of our will, all things can be conducted with such moderation that the claims of neither kindness nor justice may be neglected, but without the accepting of persons, the Divine judgment may be considered in everything. But that this may be properly observed and guarded, the integrity of the catholic Faith must first of all be preserved, and, because in all cases "narrow" and steep "is the way that leadeth unto life [417] ," there must be no deviation from its track, either to the right hand or to the left. And because the evangelical and Apostolic Faith has to combat all errors, on the one side casting down Nestorius, on the other crushing Eutyches and his accomplices, remember the need of observing this rule, that all those who in that synod [418] , which cannot, and does not deserve to have the name of Synod, and in which Dioscorus displayed his bad feeling, and Juvenal [419] his ignorance, grieve as we learn from your account, beloved, that they were conquered by fear, and being overcome with terror, were able to be forced to assent to that iniquitous judgment, and who now desire to obtain catholic communion, are to receive the peace of the brethren after due assurance of repentance, on condition that in no doubtful terms they anathematize, execrate and condemn Eutyches and his dogma and his adherents.
II. The case of the more serious offenders must be reserved for the present.
But concerning those who have sinned more gravely in this matter, and claimed for themselves a higher place in the same unhappy synod, in order to irritate the simple minds of their lowlier brethren by their pernicious arrogance, if they return to their right mind, and ceasing to defend their action, turn themselves to the condemnation of their particular error, if these men give such assurance of penitence as shall seem indisputable, let their case be reserved for the maturer deliberations of the Apostolic See, that when all things have been sifted and weighed, the right conclusion may be arrived at about their real actions. And in the Church over which the Lord has willed you to rule, let none such as we have already written [420] have their names read at the altar until the course of events shows what ought to be determined concerning them.
III. Anatolius is requested to co-operate loyally with Leo's delegates.
But concerning the address [421] presented to us by your clergy, beloved, there is no need to put my sentiments into a letter: it is sufficient to entrust all to my delegates, whose words shall carefully instruct you on every point. And so, dearest brother, do you endeavour with these brethren whom we have chosen as suitable agents in so great a matter faithfully and effectually to carry out what is agreeable to the Church of God: especially as the very nature of the case, and the promise of Divine aid incite you, and our most gracious princes show such holy faith, such religious devotion, that we find in them not only the general sympathy of Christians, but even that of the priesthood. Who assuredly in accordance with that piety, whereby they boast themselves to be servants of God, will receive all your suggestions for the benefit of the catholic Faith in a worthy spirit, so that by their aid also the peace of Christendom can be restored and wicked error destroyed. And if on any points more advice is needed, let word be quickly sent to us, that after investigating the nature of the case, we may carefully prescribe the rightful measures. Dated 9th of June in the consulship of the illustrious Adelfius (451). __________________________________________________________________
[416] Viz., in Letter LXXX., chap, iv.: see also chap. iii.
[417] S. Matt. vii. 14.
[418] Sc. the so-called Latrocinium.
[419] See n. 8 to Letter LXXX., chap. iii.
[420] Viz., in Letter LXXX., chap. iii., where see note.
[421] Commonitorium. Nothing further seems known of this. __________________________________________________________________
Letter LXXXVI.
To Julian, Bishop of Cos.
(Begging him for friendship's and the Church's sake to assist his legates in quelling the remnants of heresy.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter LXXXVII.
To Anatolius, Bishop of Constantinople.
(Commending to him two presbyters, Basil and John, who being accused of heresy had come to Rome, and quite convinced Leo of their orthodoxy.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter LXXXVIII.
To Paschasinus, Bishop of Lilybæum.
Leo, the bishop, to Paschasinus, bishop of Lilybæum.
I. He sends a copy of the Tome and still further explains the heterodoxy of Eutyches.
Although I doubt not all the sources of scandal are fully known to you, brother, which have arisen in the churches of the East about the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, yet, lest anything might have chanced to escape your care, I have despatched for your attentive perusal and study our letter [422] , which deals with this matter in the fullest way, which we sent to Flavian of holy memory, and which the universal Church has accepted; in order that, understanding how completely this whole blasphemous error has with God's aid been destroyed, you yourself also in your love towards God may show the same spirit, and know that they are utterly to be abhorred, who, following the blasphemy and madness of Eutyches, have dared to say there are not two natures, i.e. perfect Godhead and perfect manhood, in our Lord, the only-begotten Son of God, who took upon Himself to restore mankind; and think they can deceive our wariness by saying they believe the one nature of the Word to be Incarnate, whereas the Word of God in the Godhead of the Father, and of Himself, and of the Holy Spirit has indeed one nature; but when He took on Him the reality of our flesh, our nature also was united to His unchangeable substance: for even Incarnation could not be spoken of, unless the Word took on Him the flesh. And this taking on of flesh forms so complete a union, that not only in the blessed Virgin's child-bearing, but also in her conception, no division must be imagined between the Godhead and the life-endowed flesh [423] , since in the unity of person the Godhead and the manhood came together both in the conception and in the childbearing of the Virgin.
II. Eutyches might have been warned by the fate of former heretics.
A like blasphemy, therefore, is to be abhorred in Eutyches, as was once condemned and overthrown by the Fathers in former heretics: and their example ought to have benefited this foolish fellow, in putting him on his guard against that which he could not grasp by his own sense, lest he should render void the peerless mystery of our salvation by denying the reality of human flesh in our Lord Jesus Christ. For, if there is not in Him true and perfect human nature, there is no taking of us upon Him, and the whole of our belief and teaching according to his heresy is emptiness and lying. But because the Truth does not lie and the Godhead is not passible, there abides in God the Word both substances in one Person, and the Church confesses her Saviour in such a way as to acknowledge Him both impassible in Godhead and passible in flesh, as says the Apostle, "although He was crucified through (our) weakness, yet He lives by the power of God [424] ."
III. He sends quotations from the Fathers, and announces that the churches of the East have accepted the Tome.
And in order that you may be the fuller instructed in all things, beloved, I have sent you certain quotations from our holy Fathers, that you may clearly gather what they felt and what they preached to the churches about the mystery of the Lord's Incarnation, which quotations our deputies produced at Constantinople also together with our epistle. And you must understand that the whole church of Constantinople, with all the monasteries and many bishops, have given their assent to it, and by their subscription have anathematized Nestorius and Eutyches with their dogmas. You must also understand that I have recently received the bishop of Constantinople's letter, which states that the bishop of Antioch has sent instructions to all the bishops throughout his provinces, and gained their assent to my epistle, and their condemnation of Nestorius and Eutyches in like manner.
IV. He asks him to settle the discrepancy between the Alexandrine and the Roman calculation of Easter for 455, by consulting the proper authority.
This also we think necessary to enjoin upon your care that you should diligently inquire in those quarters where you are sure of information concerning that point in the reckoning of Easter, which we have found in the table [425] of Theophilus, and which greatly exercises us, and that you should discuss with those who are learned in such calculations, as to the date, when the day of the Lord's resurrection should be held four years hence. For, whereas the next Easter is to be held by God's goodness on March 23rd, the year after on April 12th, the year after that on April 4th, Theophilus of holy memory has fixed April 24th to be observed in 455, which we find to be quite contrary to the rule of the Church; but in our Easter cycles [426] as you know very well, Easter that year is set down to be kept on April 17th. And therefore, that all our doubts may be removed, we beg you carefully to discuss this point with the best authorities, that for the future we may avoid this kind of mistake. Dated June 24th in the consulship of the illustrious Adelfius (451). __________________________________________________________________
[422] Sc. Letter XXVIII. (Tome).
[423] Caro animata.
[424] 2 Cor. xiii. 4.
[425] His Laterculum Pashale is meant, in which he calculated Easter for 100 years from 375. A similar dispute had ocurred in 444, in which we have S. Cyril's and Paschasinus' Letters (II and III. of series) to Leo, but not Leo's answers.
[426] The Latin Easter cycles were calculated for 84 years. __________________________________________________________________
Letter LXXXIX.
To Marcian Augustus.
(Appointing Paschasinus the bishop and Boniface a presbyter, and Julian the bishop, his representatives at the Synod, as the Emperor is determined it should be held at once.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter XC.
To Marcian Augustus.
(Assenting perforce to the meeting of the Synod, but begging him to see that the Faith be not discussed as doubtful.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter XCI.
To Anatolius, Bishop of Constantinople.
(Telling him that he has appointed Paschasinus, Boniface, and Julian, bishop of Cos, to represent him at the Synod.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter XCII.
To Julian, Bishop of Cos.
(Asking him to act as one of his representatives at the Synod.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter XCIII.
To the Synod of Chalcedon.
Leo, the bishop of the city of Rome, to the holy Synod, assembled at Nicæa [427] .
I. He excuses his absence from the Synod, and introduces his representatives.
I had indeed prayed, dearly beloved, on behalf of my dear colleagues that all the Lord's priests would persist in united devotion to the catholic Faith, and that no one would be misled by favour or fear of secular powers into departure from the way of Truth; but because many things often occur to produce penitence and God's mercy transcends the faults of delinquents, and vengeance is postponed in order that reformation may have place, we must make much of our most merciful prince's piously intentioned Council, in which he has desired your holy brotherhood to assemble for the purpose of destroying the snares of the devil and restoring the peace of the Church, so far respecting the rights and dignity of the most blessed Apostle Peter as to invite us too by letter to vouchsafe our presence at your venerable Synod. That indeed is not permitted either by the needs of the times or by any precedent. Yet in these brethren, that is Paschasinus and Lucentius, bishops, Boniface and Basil, presbyters, who have been deputed by the Apostolic See, let your brotherhood reckon that I am presiding [428] at the Synod; for my presence is not withdrawn from you, who am now represented by my vicars, and have this long time been really with you in the proclaiming of the catholic Faith: so that you who cannot help knowing what we believe in accordance with ancient tradition, cannot doubt what we desire.
II. He entreats them to re-State the Faith as laid down in the Tome.
Wherefore, brethren most dear, let all attempts at impugning the Divinely-inspired Faith be entirely put down, and the vain unbelief of heretics be laid to rest: and let not that be defended which may not be believed: since in accordance with the authoritative statements of the Gospel, in accordance with the utterances of the prophets, and the teaching of the Apostles, with the greatest fulness and clearness in the letter which we sent to bishop Flavian of happy memory, it has been laid down what is the loyal and pure confession upon the mystery of our Lord Jesus Christ's Incarnation.
III. The ejected bishops must be restored, and the Nestorian canons retain their force.
But because we know full well that through evil jealousies the state of many churches has been disturbed, and a large number of bishops have been driven from their Sees for not receiving the heresy and conveyed into exile, while others have been put into their places though yet alive, to these wounds first of all must the healing of justice be applied, nor must any one be deprived of his own possession that some one else may enjoy it: for if, as we desire, all forsake their error, no one need lose his present rank, and those who have laboured for the Faith ought to have their rights restored with every privilege. Let the decrees specially directed against Nestorius of the former Synod of Ephesus, at which bishop Cyril of holy memory presided, still retain their force, lest the heresy then condemned flatter itself in aught because Eutyches is visited with condign execration. For the purity of the Faith and doctrine which we proclaim in the same spirit as our holy Fathers, equally condemns and impugns the Nestorian and the Eutychian misbelief with its supporters. Farewell in the Lord, brethren most dear. Dated 26th [429] of June, in the consulship of the illustrious Adelfius (451). __________________________________________________________________
[427] In accordance with instructions, the bishops, to the number of 529, first met at Nicæa, in Bithynia, the scene of the famous First General Council: but the Emperor Marcian was afraid to go so far from Constantinople, and so they were summoned to Chalcedon, which was much nearer, on the eastern shore of the Bosporus. There the Council opened on Oct. 8, 451.
[428] The right of presiding, which he here virtually claims for his delegates, seems actually to have been accorded to them by the council.
[429] The Ball. think the date should be the 27th. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XCIV.
To Marcian Augustus.
(Commending his legates to him and praying for the full success of the Synod, if it adhere to the Faith once delivered to the saints.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter XCV.
To Pulcheria Augusta by the Hand of Theoctistus the Magistrian [430] .
Leo, the bishop to Pulcheria Augusta.
I. He informs the Empress that he has loyally recognized the Council ordered by her, and sent representatives with letters to it.
Your clemency's religious care which you unceasingly bestow on the catholic Faith, I recognize in everything, and give God thanks at seeing you take such interest in the universal Church, that I can confidently suggest what I think agreeable to justice and kindness, and so what thus far your pious zeal through the mercy of Christ has irreproachably accomplished, may the more speedily be brought to an issue which we shall be thankful for, O most noble Augusta. Your clemency's command, therefore, that a Synod should be held at Nicæa [431] , and your gently expressed refusal of my request that it should be held in Italy, so that all the bishops in our parts might be summoned and assemble, if the state of affairs had permitted them, I have received in a spirit so far removed from scorn as to nominate two of my fellow-bishops and fellow-presbyters respectively to represent me, sending also to the venerable synod an appropriate missive from which the brotherhood therein assembled might learn the standard necessary to be maintained in their decision, lest any rashness should do detriment either to the rules of the Faith, or to the provisions of the canons, or to the remedies required by the spirit of loving kindness.
II. In the settlement of this matter that moderation must be observed which was entirely absent at Ephesus.
For, as I have very often stated in letters from the beginning of this matter, I have desired that such moderation should be observed in the midst of discordant views and carnal jealousies that, whilst nothing should be allowed to be wrested from or added to the purity of the Faith, yet the remedy of pardon should be granted to those who return to unity and peace. Because the works of the devil are then more effectually destroyed when men's hearts are recalled to the love of God and their neighbours. But how contrary to my warnings and entreaties were their actions then, it is a long story to explain, nor is the need to put down in the pages of a letter all that was allowed to be perpetrated in that meeting, not of judges but of robbers, at Ephesus; where the chief men of the synod spared neither those brethren who opposed them nor those who assented to them, seeing that for the breaking down of the catholic Faith and the strengthening of execrable heresy, they stripped some of their rightful rank and tainted others with complicity in guilt; and surely their cruelty was worse to those whom by persuasion they divorced from innocence, than to those whom by persecution they made blessed confessors.
III. Those who recant their error must be treated with forbearance.
And yet because such men have harmed themselves most by their wrong-doing, and because the greater the wounds, the more careful must be the application of the remedy, I have never in any letter maintained that pardon must be withheld even from them if they came to their right mind. And although we unchangeably abhor their heresy, which is the greatest enemy of Christian religion, yet the men themselves, if they without any doubt amend their ways and clear themselves by full assurances of repentance, we do not judge to be outcasts from the unspeakable mercy of God: but rather we lament with those that lament, "we weep with those that weep [432] ," and obey the requirements of justice in deposing without neglecting the remedies of loving-kindness: and this, as your piety knows, is not a mere word-promise, but is also borne out by our actions, inasmuch as nearly all who had been either misled or forced into assenting to the presiding bishops, by rescinding what they had decreed and by condemning what they had written, have obtained complete acquittal from guilt and the boon of Apostolic peace.
IV. Even the authors of the mischief may find room for forgiveness by repentance.
If, therefore, your clemency deigns to reflect upon my motives, it will be satisfied that I have acted throughout with the design of bringing about the abolition of the heresy without the loss of one soul; and that in the case of the authors of these cruel disturbances I have modified my practice somewhat in order that their slow minds might be aroused by some feelings of compunction to ask for lenient treatment. For although since their decision, which is no less blasphemous than unjust, they cannot be held in such honour by the catholic brotherhood as they once were, yet they still retain their sees and their rank as bishops, with the prospect either of receiving the peace of the whole Church, after true and necessary signs of repentance or, if (which God forbid) they persist in their heresy, of reaping the reward of their misbelief. Dated 20th of July, in the consulship of the illustrious Adelfius (451). __________________________________________________________________
[430] The Magistriani were what would now be called King's Messengers: another name for them was agentes in rebus. and they were under the direction of the Imperial Magister Officiorum.
[431] See n. 4 on Letter XCIII. i.
[432] Rom. xii. 15. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XCVI.
To Ravennius, Bishop of Arles.
(Requesting him to keep Easter on March 23 in 452.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter XCVII.
From Eusebius, Bishop of Milan, to Leo.
(Informing him that the Tome has been approved by the Synod of Milan, and containing the subscriptions of the bishops there assembled.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter XCVIII.
From the Synod of Chalcedon to Leo.
The great and holy and universal Synod, which by the grace of God and the sanction of our most pious and Christ-loving Emperors has been gathered together in the metropolis of Chalcedon in the province of Bithynia, to the most holy and blessed archbishop of Rome, Leo.
I. They congratulate Leo on taking the foremost part in maintaining the Faith.
"Our mouth was filled with joy and our tongue with exultation [433] ." This prophecy grace has fitly appropriated to us for whom the security of religion is ensured. For what is a greater incentive to cheerfulness than the Faith? what better inducement to exultation than the Divine knowledge which the Saviour Himself gave us from above for salvation, saying, "go ye and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things that I have enjoined you [434] ." And this golden chain leading down from the Author of the command to us, you yourself have stedfastly preserved, being set as the mouthpiece unto all of the blessed Peter, and imparting the blessedness of his Faith unto all. Whence we too, wisely taking you as our guide in all that is good, have shown to the sons of the Church their inheritance of Truth, not giving our instruction each singly and in secret, but making known our confession of the Faith in conceit, with one consent and agreement. And we were all delighted, revelling, as at an imperial banquet, in the spiritual food, which Christ supplied to us through your letter: and we seemed to see the Heavenly Bridegroom actually present with us. For if "where two or three are gathered together in His name," He has said that "there He is in the midst of them [435] ," must He not have been much more particularly present with 520 priests, who preferred the spread of knowledge concerning Him to their country and their ease? Of whom you were chief, as the head to the members, showing your goodwill [436] in the person of those who represented you; whilst our religious Emperors presided to the furtherance of due order, inviting us to restore the doctrinal fabric of the Church, even as Zerubbabel invited Joshua to rebuild Jerusalem [437] .
II. They detail Dioscorus' wicked acts.
And the adversary would have been like a wild beast outside the fold, roaring to himself and unable to seize any one, had not the late bishop of Alexandria thrown himself for a prey to him, who, though he had done many terrible things before, eclipsed the former by the latter deeds; for contrary to all the injunctions of the canons, he deposed that blessed shepherd of the saints at Constantinople, Flavian, who displayed such Apostolic faith, and the most pious bishop Eusebius, and acquitted by his terror-won votes Eutyches, who had been condemned for heresy, and restored to him the dignity which your holiness had taken away from him as unworthy of it, and like the strangest of wild beasts, falling upon the vine which he found in the finest condition, he uprooted it and brought in that which had been cast away as unfruitful, and those who acted like true shepherds he cut off, and set over the flocks those who had shown themselves wolves: and besides all this he stretched forth his fury even against him who had been charged with the custody of the vine by the Saviour, we mean of course your holiness, and purposed excommunication against one who had at heart the unifying of the Church. And instead of showing penitence for this, instead of begging mercy with tears, he exulted as if over virtuous actions, rejecting your holiness' letter and resisting all the dogmas of the Truth.
III. We have deposed Eutyches, treating him as mercifully as we could.
And we ought to have left him in the position where he had placed himself: but, since we profess the teaching of the Saviour "who wishes all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the Truth [438] ," as a fact we took pains to carry out this merciful policy towards him, and called him in brotherly fashion to judgment, not as if trying to cut him off but affording him room for defence and healing; and we prayed that he might be victorious over the many charges they had brought against him, in order that we might conclude our meeting in peace and happiness and Satan might gain no advantage over us. But he, being absolutely convicted by his own conscience [439] , by shirking the trial gave countenance to the accusations and rejected the three lawful summonses he received. In consequence of which, we ratified with such moderation as we could the vote which he had passed against himself by his blunders, stripping the wolf of his shepherd's skin, which he had long been convicted of wearing for a pretence. Thereupon our troubles ceased and straightway a time of welcome happiness set in: and having pulled up one tare, we filled the whole world to our delight with pure grain: and having received, as it were, full power to root up and to plant, we limited the up-rooting to one and carefully plant a crop of good fruit. For it was God who worked, and the triumphant Euphemia who crowned the meeting as for a bridal [440] , and who, taking our definition of the Faith as her own confession, presented it to her Bridegroom by our most religious Emperor and Christ-loving Empress, appeasing all the tumult of opponents and establishing our confession of the Truth as acceptable to Him, and with hand and tongue setting her seal [441] to the votes of us all in proclamation thereof. These are the things we have done, with you present in the spirit and known to approve of us as brethren, and all but visible to us through the wisdom of your representatives.
IV. They announce their decision that Constantinople should take precedence next to Rome, and ask Leo's consent to it.
And we further inform you that we have decided on other things also for the good management and stability of church matters, being persuaded that your holiness will accept and ratify them, when you are told. The long prevailing custom, which the holy Church of God at Constantinople had of ordaining metropolitans for the provinces of Asia, Pontus and Thrace, we have now ratified by the votes of the Synod, not so much by way of conferring a privilege on the See of Constantinople as to provide for the good government of those cities, because of the frequent disorders that arise on the death of their bishops, both clergy and laity being then without a leader and disturbing church order. And this has not escaped your holiness, particularly in the case of Ephesus, which has often caused you annoyance [442] . We have ratified also the canon of the 150 holy Fathers who met at Constantinople in the time of the great Theodosius of holy memory, which ordains that after your most holy and Apostolic See, the See of Constantinople shall take precedence, being placed second: for we are persuaded that with your usual care for others you have often extended that Apostolic prestige which belongs to you, to the church in Constantinople also, by virtue of your great disinterestedness in sharing all your own good things with your spiritual kinsfolk. Accordingly vouchsafe most holy and blessed father to accept as your own wish, and as conducing to good government the things which we have resolved on for the removal of all confusion and the confirmation of church order. For your holiness' delegates, the most pious bishops Paschasinus and Lucentius, and with them the right Godly presbyter Boniface, attempted vehemently to resist these decisions, from a strong desire that this good work also should start from your foresight, in order that the establishment of good order as well as of the Faith should be put to your account. For we duly regarding our most devout and Christ loving Emperors, who delight therein, and the illustrious senate and, so to say, the whole imperial city, considered it opportune to use the meeting of this ecumenical Synod for the ratification of your honour, and confidently corroborated this decision as if it were initiated by you with your customary fostering zeal, knowing that every success of the children rebounds to the parent's glory. Accordingly, we entreat you, honour our decision by your assent, and as we have yielded to the head our agreement on things honourable, so may the head also fulfil for the children what is fitting. For thus will our pious Emperors be treated with due regard, who have ratified your holiness' judgment as law, and the See of Constantinople will receive its recompense for having always displayed such loyalty on matters of religion towards you, and for having so zealously linked itself to you in full agreement. But that you may know that we have done nothing for favour or in hatred, but as being guided by the Divine Will, we have made known to you the whole scope of our proceedings to strengthen our position and to ratify and establish what we have done [443] . __________________________________________________________________
[433] Ps. cxxvi. 2.
[434] S. Matt. xxviii. 19, 20.
[435] Ibid. xviii. 20.
[436] eunoian: others read euboulian (good advice).
[437] The reference is to Ezra iii. 2.
[438] 1 Tim. ii. 4.
[439] en heauto akraton tou suneidotos echon ton elenchon. There seems, however, some grounds, but no actual necessity for the reading engraphon = written (instead of akraton) adopted by the Ball.
[440] he ton sullogon to numphoni (lit. bride-chamber) stephanousa kallinikos Euphemia; this obscure passage is to a certain extent elucidated by Letter CI., chap. iii. (q.v.). The martyr, Euphemia, seems to have been a sort of patron saint of Chalcedon.
[441] episphragisasa; others epipsephisasa, which seems meaningless here.
[442] The reference (acc. to Ball.) is to the dispute about the bishopric between Bassian and Stephen, in which Leo interfered, though the letter is not extant.
[443] One of the Latin versions adds the names and titles of the subscribing bishops here. For the subject matter of Chap. iv., see Introduction, p. viii. __________________________________________________________________
Letter XCIX.
From Ravennus and Other Gallic Bishops.
(Announcing that the Tome has been accepted in Gaul also as a definitive statement of the Faith, with the bishops' subscriptions.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter C.
From the Emperor Marcian.
(Dealing much more briefly with the same subjects as Letter XCVIII. above.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter CI.
From Anatolius, Bishop of Constantinople, to Leo.
(Dealing with much the same subjects as Letter XCVIII. from Anatolius' own standpoint: Chap. iii. is translated in extenso as illustrating XCVIII., chap. iii.)
III. He describes the circumstances under which the doctrine of the Incarnation had been formulated by the Synod.
But since after passing judgment upon him we had to come to an agreement with prayers and tears upon a definition of the right Faith; for that was the chief reason for the Emperor's summoning the holy Synod, at which your holiness was present in the spirit with us, and wrought with us by the God-fearing men who were sent from you; we, having the protection of the most holy and beautiful martyr Euphemia, have all given ourselves to this important matter with all deliberateness. And as the occasion demanded that all the assembled holy bishops should publish a unanimous decision for clearness and for an explicit statement of the Faith in our Lord Jesus Christ the Lord God who is found and revealed even to those who seek Him not, yes, even to those who ask not for Him [444] , in spite of some attempts to resist at first, nevertheless showed us His Truth, and ordained that it should be written down and proclaimed by all unanimously and without gainsaying, which thus confirmed the souls of the strong, and invited into the way of Truth all who were swerving therefrom. And, indeed, after unanimously setting our names to this document, we who have assembled in this ecumenical Synod in the name of the Faith of the same most holy and triumphant martyr, Euphemia, and of our most religious and Christ-loving Emperor Marcian, and our most religious and in all things most faithful daughter the Empress Pulcheria Augusta, with prayer and joy and happiness, having laid on the holy altar the definition written in accordance with your holy epistle for the confirmation of our Fathers' Faith, presented it to their pious care; for thus they had asked to receive it, and, having received it, they glorified with us their Master Christ, who had driven away all the mist of heresy and had graciously made clear the word of Truth. And in this way was simultaneously established the peace of the Church and the agreement of the priests concerning the pure Faith by the Saviour's mercy. __________________________________________________________________
[444] Cf. Is. lxv. 1. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CII.
To the Gallic Bishops.
(Thanking them for their letter (viz. XCIX.) to him, and announcing the result of the Synod of Chalcedon.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter CIII.
To the Gallic Bishops.
(Written later: enclosing a copy of the sentence against Eutyches and Dioscorus.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter CIV.
Leo, the Bishop, to Marcian Augustus.
(To Marcian Augustus, about the presumption of Anatolius, by the hand of Lucian the bishop and Basil the deacon.)
I. He congratulates the Emperor on his share in the triumph of the catholic Faith.
By the great bounty of God's mercy the joys of the whole catholic Church were multiplied when through your clemency's holy and glorious zeal the most pestilential error was abolished among us; so that our labours the more speedily reached their desired end, because your God-serving Majesty had so faithfully and powerfully assisted them. For although the liberty of the Gospel had to be defended against certain dissentients in the power of the Holy Ghost, and through the instrumentality of the Apostolic See, yet God's grace has shown itself more manifestly (than we could have hoped) by vouchsafing to the world that in the victory of the Truth only the authors of the violation of the Faith should perish [445] and the Church restored to her soundness. Accordingly the war which the enemy of our peace had stirred up, was so happily ended, the Lord's right hand fighting for us, that when Christ triumphed all His priests shared in the one victory, and when the light of Truth shone forth, only the shades of error, with its champions, were dispelled. For as in believing the Lord's own resurrection, with a view to strengthen the beginnings of Faith, confidence was much increased by the fact that certain Apostles doubted of the bodily reality of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by examining the prints of the nails and the wound of the spear with sight and touch removed the doubts of all by doubting; so now, too, while the misbelief of some is refuted, the hearts of all hesitaters are strengthened, and that which caused blindness to some few avails for the enlightenment of the whole body. In which work your clemency duly and rightly rejoices, having faithfully and properly provided that the devil's snares should do no hurt to the Eastern churches, but that to propitiate God everywhere more acceptable holocausts should be offered; seeing that through the mediator between God and man, the Man Christ Jesus, one and the self-same creed is held by people, priests, and princes, O most glorious son and most clement Augustus.
II. Considering all the circumstances Anatolius might have been expected to show more modesty.
But now that these things, about which so great a concourse of priests assembled, have been brought to a good and desirable conclusion, I am surprised and grieved that the peace of the universal Church which had been divinely restored is again being disturbed by a spirit of self-seeking. For although my brother Anatolius seems necessarily to have consulted his own interest in forsaking the error of those who ordained him, and with salutary change of mind accepting the catholic Faith, yet he ought to have taken care not to mar by any depravity of desire that which he is known to have obtained through your means [446] . For we, having regard to your faith and intervention, though his antecedents were suspicious on account of those who consecrated him [447] , wished to be kind rather than just towards him, that by the use of healing measures we might assuage all disturbances which through the operations of the devil had been excited; and this ought to have made him modest rather than the opposite. For even if he had been lawfully and regularly ordained for conspicuous merit, and by the wisest selection yet without respect to the canons of the Fathers, the ordinances of the Holy Ghost, and the precedents of antiquity, no votes could have availed in his favour. I speak before a Christian and a truly religious, truly orthodox prince (when I say that) Anatolius the bishop detracts greatly from his proper merits in desiring undue aggrandizement.
III. The city of Constantinople, royal though it be, can never be raised to Apostolic rank.
Let the city of Constantinople have, as we desire, its high rank, and under the protection of God's right hand, long enjoy your clemency's rule. Yet things secular stand on a different basis from things divine: and there can be no sure building save on that rock which the Lord has laid for a foundation. He that covets what is not his due, loses what is his own. Let it be enough for Anatolius that by the aid of your piety and by my favour and approval he has obtained the bishopric of so great a city. Let him not disdain a city which is royal, though he cannot make it an Apostolic See [448] ; and let him on no account hope that he can rise by doing injury to others. For the privileges of the churches determined by the canons of the holy Fathers, and fixed by the decrees of the Nicene Synod, cannot be overthrown by any unscrupulous act, nor disturbed by any innovation. And in the faithful execution of this task by the aid of Christ I am bound to display an unflinching devotion; for it is a charge entrusted to me, and it tends to my condemnation if the rules sanctioned by the Fathers and drawn up under the guidance of God's Spirit at the Synod of Nicæa for the government of the whole Church are violated with my connivance (which God forbid), and if the wishes of a single brother have more weight with me than the common good of the Lord's whole house.
IV. He asks the Emperor to express his disapproval of Anatolius' self-seeking spirit.
And therefore knowing that your glorious clemency is anxious for the peace of the Church and extends its protection and approval to those measures which conduce to pacific unity, I pray and beseech you with earnest entreaty to refuse all sanction and protection to these unscrupulous attempts against Christian unity and peace, and put a salutary check upon my brother Anatolius' desires, which will only injure himself, if he persists: that he may not desire things which are opposed to your glory and the needs of the times, and wish to be greater than his predecessors, and that it may be free for him to be as pre-eminent as he can in virtues, in which he will be partaker only if he prefer to be adorned with love rather than puffed up with ambition. The conception of this unwarrantable wish he ought indeed never to have received within the secret of his heart, but when my brothers and fellow-bishops who were there to represent me withstood him, he might at least have desisted from his unlawful self-seeking at their wholesome opposition. For both your gracious Majesty and his own letter affirm that the legates of the Apostolic See opposed him as they ought with the most justifiable resistance, so that his presumption was the less excusable in that not even when rebuked did it restrain itself.
V. And to try to bring him to a right mind.
And hence, because it becomes your glorious faith that, as heresy was overthrown, God acting through you, so now all self-seeking should be defeated, do that which beseems both your Christian and your kingly goodness, so that the said bishop may obey the Fathers, further the cause of peace, and not think he had any right to ordain a bishop [449] for the Church of Antioch, as he presumed to do without any precedent and contrary to the provisions of the canons: an act which from a longing to re-establish the Faith and in the interests of peace we have determined not to cancel. Let him abstain therefore from doing despite to the rules of the Church and shun unlawful excesses, lest in attempting things unfavourable to peace he cut himself off from the universal Church. I had much liefer love him for acting blamelessly than find him persist in this presumptuous frame of mind which may separate him from us all. My brother and fellow-bishop, Lucian, who with my son, Basil the deacon, brought your clemency's letter to me, has fulfilled the duties he undertook as legate with all devotion: for he must not be reckoned to have failed in his mission, the course of events having rather failed him. Dated the 22nd of May in the consulship of the illustrious Herculanus (452). __________________________________________________________________
[445] Perish spiritually he means, as the sequel shows, for at least one great and good man on the catholic side, Flavian perished corporeally.
[446] Viz., the See of Constantinople.
[447] Dioscorus in particular.
[448] The chief Apostolicæ sedes were Rome and Antioch, according to tradition founded by S. Peter, and Alexandria founded by his disciple S. Mark, and the See of Constantinople could not exercise jurisdiction over them.
[449] One Maximus by name. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CV.
(To Pulcheria Augusta about the self-seeking of Anatolius.)
Leo the bishop to Pulcheria Augusta.
I. He congratulates the Empress on the triumph of the Faith, but regrets the introduction of a new controversy into the Church.
We rejoice ineffably with your Grace that the catholic Faith has been defended against heretics and peace restored to the whole Church through your clemency's holy and God-pleasing zeal: giving thanks to the Merciful and Almighty God that He has suffered none save those who loved darkness rather than light to be defrauded of the gospel-truth: so that by the removal of the mists of error the purest light might arise in the hearts of all, and that darkness-loving foe might not triumph over certain weak souls, whom not only those who stood unhurt but also those whom he had made to totter have overcome, and that by the abolition of error the true Faith might reign throughout the world, and "every tongue might confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father [450] ." But when the whole world had been confirmed in the unity of the Gospel, and the hearts of all priests had been guided into the same belief, it had been better that besides those matters for which the holy Synod was assembled, and which were brought to a satisfactory agreement through your Grace's zeal, nothing should be introduced to counteract so great an advantage, and that a council of bishops should not be made an occasion for the inopportune advancing of an illegitimate desire.
II. The Nicene canons are unalterable and binding universally.
For my brother and fellow-bishop Anatolius not sufficiently considering your Grace's kindness and the favour of my assent, whereby he gained the priesthood of the church of Constantinople, instead of rejoicing at what he has gained, has been inflamed with undue desires beyond the measure of his rank, believing that his intemperate self-seeking could be advanced by the assertion that certain persons had signified their assent thereto by an extorted signature: notwithstanding that my brethren and fellow-bishops, who represented me, faithfully and laudably expressed their dissent from these attempts which are doomed to speedy failure. For no one may venture upon anything in opposition to the enactments of the Fathers' canons which many long years ago in the city of Nicæa were founded upon the decrees of the Spirit, so that any one who wishes to pass any different decree injures himself rather than impairs them. And if all pontiffs will but keep them inviolate as they should, there will be perfect peace and complete harmony through all the churches: there will be no disagreements about rank, no disputes about ordinations, no controversies about privileges, no strifes about taking that which is another's; but by the fair law of love a reasonable order will be kept both in conduct and in office, and he will be truly great who is found free from all self-seeking, as the Lord says, "Whosoever will become greater among you, let him be your minister, and whosoever will be first among you shall be your slave; even as the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto but to minister [451] ." And yet these precepts were at the time given to men who wished to rise from a mean estate and to pass from the lowest to the highest things; but what more does the ruler of the church of Constantinople covet than he has gained? or what will satisfy him, if the magnificence and renown of so great a city is not enough? It is too arrogant and intemperate thus to step beyond all proper bounds and trampling on ancient custom to wish to seize another's right: to increase one man's dignity at the expense of so many metropolitans' primacy, and to carry a new war of confusion into peaceful provinces which were long ago set at rest by the enactments of the holy Nicene Synod: to break through the venerable Fathers' decrees by alleging the consent of certain bishops, which even the course of so many years has not rendered effective. For it is boasted that this has been winked at for almost 60 years now, and the said bishop thinks that he is assisted thereby; but it is vain for him to look for assistance from that which, even if a man dared to wish for it, yet he could never obtain.
III. Only by imitating his predecessor will he regain Leo's confidence: the assent of the bishops is declared null and void.
Let him realize what a man he has succeeded, and expelling all the spirit of pride let him imitate Flavian's faith, Flavian's modesty, Flavian's humility, which has raised him right to a confessor's glory. If he will shine with his virtues, he will merit all praise, and in all quarters he will win an abundance of love not by seeking human advancement but by deserving Divine favour. And by this careful course I promise he will bind my heart also to him, and the love of the Apostolic See, which we have ever bestowed on the church of Constantinople, shall never be violated by any change. Because if sometimes rulers fall into errors through want of moderation, yet the churches of Christ do not lose their purity. But the bishops' assents, which are opposed to the regulations of the holy canons composed at Nicæa in conjunction with your faithful Grace, we do not recognize, and by the blessed Apostle Peter's authority we absolutely dis-annul in comprehensive terms, in all ecclesiastical cases obeying those laws which the Holy Ghost set forth by the 318 bishops for the pacific observance of all priests in such sort that even if a much greater number were to pass a different decree to theirs, whatever was opposed to their constitution would have to be held in no respect.
IV. He requests the Empress to give his letter her favourable consideration.
And so I request your Grace to receive in a worthy spirit this lengthy letter, in which I had to explain my views, at the hands of my brother and fellow-bishop Lucianus, who, as far as in him lies, has faithfully executed the anxious duties of his undertaking as my delegate, and of my son Basil, the deacon. And because it is your habit to labour for the peace and unity of the Church, for his soul's health keep my brother Anatolius the bishop, to whom I have extended my love by your advice, within those limits which shall be profitable to him, that as your clemency's glory is magnified already for the restoration of the Faith, so it may be published abroad for the restraint of self-seeking. Dated the 22nd of May, in the consulship of the illustrious Herculanus (452). __________________________________________________________________
[450] Phil. i. 11.
[451] S. Matt. xx. 26-28. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CVI.
To Anatolius, Bishop of Constantinople, in rebuke of his self-seeking.
Leo, the bishop, to Anatolius, the bishop.
I. He commends Anatolius for his orthodoxy, but condemns him for his presumption.
Now that the light of Gospel Truth has been manifested, as we wished, through God's grace, and the night of most pestilential error has been dispelled from the universal Church, we are unspeakably glad in the Lord, because the difficult charge entrusted to us has been brought to the desired conclusion, even as the text of your letter announces, so that, according to the Apostle's teaching, "we all speak the same thing, and that there be no schisms among us: but that we be perfect in the same mind and in the same knowledge [452] ." In devotion to which work we commend you, beloved, for taking part: for thus you benefited those who needed correction by your activity, and purged yourself from all complicity with the transgressors. For when your predecessor Flavian, of happy memory, was deposed for his defence of catholic Truth, not unjustly it was believed that your ordainers seemed to have consecrated one like themselves, contrary to the provision of the holy canons. But God's mercy was present in this, directing and confirming you, that you might make good use of bad beginnings, and show that you were promoted not by men's judgment, but by God's loving-kindness: and this may be accepted as true, on condition that you lose not the grace of this Divine gift by another cause of offence. For the catholic, and especially the Lord's priest, must not only be entangled in no error, but also be corrupted by no covetousness; for, as says the Holy Scripture, "Go not after thy lusts, and decline from thy desire. [453] " Many enticements of this world, many vanities must be resisted, that the perfection of true self-discipline may be attained the first blemish of which is pride, the beginning of transgression and the origin of sin. For the mind greedy of power knows not either how to abstain from things forbidden nor to enjoy things permitted, so long as transgressions go unpunished and run into undisciplined and wicked excesses, and wrong doings are multiplied, which were only endured in our zeal for the restoration of the Faith and love of harmony [454] .
II. Nothing can cancel or modify the Nicene canons.
And so after the not irreproachable beginning of your ordination, after the consecration of the bishop of Antioch, which you claimed for yourself contrary to the regulations of the canons, I grieve, beloved, that you have fallen into this too, that you should try to break down the most sacred constitutions of the Nicene canons [455] : as if this opportunity had expressly offered itself to you for the See of Alexandria to lose its privilege of second place, and the church of Antioch to forego its right to being third in dignity, in order that when these places had been subjected to your jurisdiction, all metropolitan bishops might be deprived of their proper honour. By which unheard of and never before attempted excesses you went so far beyond yourself as to drag into an occasion of self-seeking, and force connivance from that holy Synod which the zeal of our most Christian prince had convened, solely to extinguish heresy and to confirm the catholic Faith: as if the unlawful wishes of a multitude could not be rejected, and that state of things which was truly ordained by the Holy Spirit in the canon of Nicæa could in any part be overruled by any one. Let no synodal councils flatter themselves upon the size of their assemblies, and let not any number of priests, however much larger, dare either to compare or to prefer themselves to those 318 bishops, seeing that the Synod of Nicæa is hallowed by God with such privilege, that whether by fewer or by more ecclesiastical judgments are supported, whatever is opposed to their authority is utterly destitute of all authority.
III. The Synod of Chalcedon, which met for one purpose, ought never to have been used for another.
Accordingly these things which are found to be contrary to those most holy canons are exceedingly unprincipled and misguided. This haughty arrogance tends to the disturbance of the whole Church, which has purposed so to misuse a synodal council, as by wicked arguments to over-persuade, or by intimidation to compel, the brethren to agree with it, when they had been summoned simply on a matter of Faith, and had come to a decision on the subject which was to engage their care. For it was on this ground that our brothers sent by the Apostolic see, who presided in our stead at the synod with commendable firmness, withstood their illegal attempts, openly protesting against the introduction of any reprehensible innovation contrary to the enactments of the Council of Nicæa. And there can be no doubt about their opposition, seeing that you yourself in your epistle complain of their wish to contravene your attempts. And therein indeed you greatly commend them to me by thus writing, whereas you accuse yourself in refusing to obey them concerning your unlawful designs, vainly seeking what cannot be granted, and craving what is bad for your soul's health, and can never win our consent. For may I never be guilty of assisting so wrong a desire, which ought rather to be subverted by my aid, and that of all who think not high things, but agree with the lowly.
IV. The Nicene Canons are for universal application and not to be wrested to private interpretations.
These holy and venerable fathers who in the city of Nicæa, after condemning the blasphemous Arius with his impiety, laid down a code of canons for the Church to last till the end of the world, survive not only with us but with the whole of mankind in their constitutions; and, if anywhere men venture upon what is contrary to their decrees, it is ipso facto null and void; so that what is universally laid down for our perpetual advantage can never be modified by any change, nor can the things which were destined for the common good be perverted to private interests; and thus so long as the limits remain, which the Fathers fixed, no one may invade another's right but each must exercise himself within the proper and lawful bounds, to the extent of his power, in the breadth of love; of which the bishop of Constantinople may reap the fruits richly enough, if he rather relies on the virtue of humility than is puffed up with the spirit of self-seeking.
V. The sanction alleged to have been accorded 60 years ago to the supremacy of Constantinople over Alexandria and Antioch is worthless.
"Be not highminded," brother, "but fear [456] ," and cease to disquiet with unwarrantable demands the pious ears of Christian princes, who I am sure will be better pleased by your modesty than by your pride. For your purpose is in no way whatever supported by the written assent of certain bishops given, as you allege, 60 years ago [457] , and never brought to the knowledge of the Apostolic See by your predecessors; and this transaction, which from its outset was doomed to fall through and has now long done so, you now wish to bolster up by means that are too late and useless, viz., by extracting from the brethren an appearance of consent which their modesty from very weariness yielded to their own injury. Remember what the Lord threatens him with, who shall have caused one of the little ones to stumble, and get wisdom to understand what a judgment of God he will have to endure who has not feared to give occasion of stumbling to so many churches and so many priests. For I confess I am so fast bound by love of the whole brotherhood that I will not agree with any one in demands which are against his own interests, and thus you may clearly perceive that my opposition to you, beloved, proceeds from the kindly intention to restrain you from disturbing the universal Church by sounder counsel. The rights of provincial primates may not be overthrown nor metropolitan bishops be defrauded of privileges based on antiquity. The See of Alexandria may not lose any of that dignity which it merited through S. Mark, the evangelist and disciple of the blessed Peter, nor may the splendour of so great a church be obscured by another's clouds, Dioscorus having fallen through his persistence in impiety. The church of Antioch too, in which first at the preaching of the blessed Apostle Peter the Christian name arose [458] , must continue in the position assigned it by the Fathers, and being set in the third place must never be lowered therefrom. For the See is on a different footing to the holders of it; and each individual's chief honour is his own integrity. And since that does not lose its proper worth in any place, how much more glorious must it be when placed in the magnificence of the city of Constantinople, where many priests may find both a defence of the Fathers' canons and an example of uprightness in observing you?
VI. Christian love demands self-denial not self-seeking.
In thus writing to you, brother, I exhort and admonish you in the Lord, laying aside all ambitious desires to cherish rather a spirit of love and to adorn yourself to your profit with the virtues of love, according to the Apostle's teaching. For love "is patient and kind, and envies not, acts not iniquitously, is not puffed up, is not ambitious, seeks not its own [459] ." Hence if love seeks not its own, how greatly does he sin who covets another's? From which I desire you to keep yourself altogether, and to remember that sentence which says, "Hold what thou hast, that no other take thy crown [460] ." For if you seek what is not permitted, you will deprive yourself by your own action and judgment of the peace of the universal Church. Our brother and fellow-bishop Lucian and our son Basil the deacon, attended to your injunctions with all the zeal they possessed, but justice refused to give effect to their pleadings. Dated the 22nd of May in the consulship of the illustrious Herculanus (452). __________________________________________________________________
[452] 1 Cor. i. 10.
[453] Ecclesiasticus xviii. 30. The application of the description "Holy Scripture" to an Apocryphal book will not escape notice.
[454] Cf. Letter CIV., chap. v.
[455] The wording of Canon 6 is as follows: mos antiquus perduret, in Ægypto vel Libya et Pentapoli, ut Alexandrinus episcopus horum omnium habeat potestatem, quoniam quidem et episcopo Romano parilis mos est. Similiter autem et apud Antiochiam ceterasque provincias (eparchias) honor suus unicuique servetur ecclesiæ: where, it will be noticed, no mention is made of Constantinople at all, so that its position is not explicitly defined either way.
[456] Rom. xi. 20.
[457] Cf. Letter CV., chap. ii. (end).
[458] Acts xi. 26.
[459] 1 Cor. xiii. 4.
[460] Revel. iii. 11. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CVII.
To Julian, Bishop of Cos.
(Expostulating with him for putting personal considerations before the good of the Church in the matter of the precedence of the See of Constantinople.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter CVIII.
To Theodore, Bishop of Forum Julii.
Leo, the bishop, to Theodore, bishop of Forum Julii.
I. Theodorus should not have approached him except through his metropolitan.
Your first proceeding, when anxious, should have been to have consulted your metropolitan on the point which seemed to need inquiry, and if he too was unable to help you, beloved, you should both have asked to be instructed (by us); for in matters, which concern all the Lord's priests as a whole, no inquiry ought to be made without the primates. But in order that the consulter's doubts may in any case be set at rest, I will not keep back the Church's rules about the state of penitents.
II. The grace of penitence is for those who fall after baptism.
The manifold mercy of God so assists men when they fall, that not only by the grace of baptism but also by the remedy of penitence is the hope of eternal life revived, in order that they who have violated the gifts of the second birth, condemning themselves by their own judgment, may attain to remission of their crimes, the provisions of the Divine Goodness having so ordained that God's indulgence cannot be obtained without the supplications of priests. For the Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, has transmitted this power to those that are set over the Church that they should both grant a course of penitence [461] to those who confess, and, when they are cleansed by wholesome correction admit them through the door of reconciliation to communion in the sacraments. In which work assuredly the Saviour Himself unceasingly takes part and is never absent from those things, the carrying out of which He has committed to His ministers, saying: "Lo, I am with you all the days even to the completion of the age [462] :" so that whatever is accomplished through our service in due order and with satisfactory results we doubt not to have been vouchsafed through the Holy Spirit.
III. Penitence is sure only in this life.
But if any one of those for whom we entreat God be hindered by some obstacle and lose the benefit of immediate absolution, and before he attain to the remedies appointed, end his days in the course of nature, he will not be able when stripped of the flesh to gain that which when yet in the body he did not receive. And there will be no need for us to weigh the merits and acts of those who have thus died, seeing that the Lord our God, whose judgments cannot be found out, has reserved for His own decision that which our priestly ministry could not complete: for He wishes His power to be so feared that this fear may benefit all, and every one may dread that which happens to the lukewarm or careless. For it is most expedient and essential that the guilt of sins should be loosed by priestly supplication before the last day of life.
IV. And yet penitence and reconciliation must not be refused to men in extremis.
But to those who in time of need and in urgent danger implore the aid first of penitence, then of reconciliation, must neither means of amendment nor reconciliation be forbidden: because we cannot place limits to God's mercy nor fix times for Him with whom true conversion suffers no delay of forgiveness, as says God's Spirit by the prophet, "when thou hast turned and lamented, then shalt thou be saved [463] ;" and elsewhere, "Declare thou thy iniquities beforehand, that thou may'st be justified [464] ;" and again, "For with the Lord there is mercy, and with Him is plenteous redemption [465] ." And so in dispensing God's gifts we must not be hard, nor neglect the tears and groans of self-accusers, seeing that we believe the very feeling of penitence springs from the inspiration of God, as says the Apostle, "lest perchance God will give them repentance that they may recover themselves from the snares of the devil, by whom they are held captive at his will [466] ."
V. Hazardous as deathbed repentance is, the grace of absolution must not be refused even when it can be asked for only by signs.
Hence it behoves each individual Christian to listen to the judgment of his own conscience, lest he put off the turning to God from day to day and fix the time of his amendment at the end of his life; for it is most perilous for human frailty and ignorance to confine itself to such conditions as to be reduced to the uncertainty of a few hours, and instead of winning indulgence by fuller amendment, to choose the narrow limits of that time when space is scarcely found even for the penitent's confession or the priest's absolution. But, as I have said, even such men's needs must be so assisted that the free action of penitence and the grace of communion be not denied them, if they demand it even when their voice is gone, by the signs of a still clear intellect. And if they be so overcome by the stress of their malady that they cannot signify in the priest's presence what just before they were asking for, the testimony of believers standing by must prevail for them, that they may obtain the benefit of penitence and reconciliation simultaneously, so long as the regulations of the Fathers' canons be observed in reference to those persons who have sinned against God by forsaking the Faith.
VI. He is to bring this letter to the notice of the metropolitan.
These answers, brother, which I have given to your questions in order that nothing different be done under the excuse of ignorance, you shall bring to the notice of your metropolitan; that if there chance to be any of the brethren who before now have thought there was any doubt about these points, they may be instructed by him concerning what I have written to you. Dated June 11th in the consulship of the illustrious Herculanus (452). __________________________________________________________________
[461] Actionem (others not so well sanctionem) poeitentioe.
[462] S. Matt. xxviii. 20.
[463] Is. xxx. 15 (LXX.).
[464] Is. xliii. 26 (LXX).
[465] Ps. cxxx. 7.
[466] 2 Tim. ii. 25, 26. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CIX.
To Julian, Bishop of Cos.
Leo, the pope, to Julian, the bishop.
I. He laments over the recent rioting in Palestine.
The information which you give, brother, about the riotous doings of the false monks [467] is serious and to no slight degree lamentable; for they are due to the war which the wicked Eutyches by the madness of deceivers is waging against the preaching of the Gospel and the Apostles, though it will end in his own destruction and that of his followers: but this is delayed by the long-suffering of God, in order that it may appear how greatly the enemies of the cross of Christ are enslaved to the devil; because heretical depravity, breaking through its ancient veil of pretence can no longer restrain itself within the limits of its hypocrisy, and has poured forth all its long-concealed poison, raging against the disciples of the Truth not only with pen but also with deeds of violence [468] , in order to wrest consent from unlearned simplicity or from panic-stricken faith. But the sons of light ought not to be so afraid of the sons of darkness, as being sane to acquiesce in the ideas of madmen or to think that any respect should be shown to men of this kind; for, if they would rather perish than recover their senses, provision must be made lest their escape from punishment should do wider harm, and long toleration of them should lead to the destruction of many.
II. The ringleaders must be removed to a distance.
I am not unaware what love and favour is due to our sons, those holy and true monks, who forsake not the moderation of their profession, and carry into practice what they promised by their vows. But these insolent disturbers, who boast of their insults and injuries to priests [469] , are to be held not the slaves of Christ, but the soldiers of Antichrist, and must be chiefly humiliated in the person of their leaders, who incite the ignorant mob to uphold their insubordination. And hence, seeing that our most merciful Prince loves the catholic Faith with all the devotion of a religious heart, and is greatly offended at the effrontery of these rebel heretics, as is everywhere reported, we must appeal to his clemency that the instigators of these seditions be removed from their mad congregations; and not only Eutyches and Dioscorus but also any who have been forward in aiding their wrongheaded madness, be placed where they can hold no intercourse with their partners in blasphemy: for the simpleness of some may chance to be healed by this method, and men will be more easily recalled to soundness of mind, if they be set free from the incitements of pestilential teachers.
III. He sends a letter of S. Athanasius to show that the present heresy is only a revival of former exploded heresies.
But lest the instruction necessary for the confirmation of faithful spirits or the refutation of heretics should be wanting or not expressed, I have sent the letter of bishop Athanasius of holy memory addressed to bishop Epictetus [470] , whose testimony Cyril of holy memory made use of at the Synod of Ephesus against Nestorius, because it has so clearly and carefully set forth the Incarnation of the Word, as to overthrow both Nestorius and Eutyches by anticipation in the heresies of those times. Let the followers of Eutyches and Dioscorus dare to accuse such an authority as this of ignorance or of heresy, who assert that our preaching goes astray from the teaching and the knowledge of the Fathers. But it ought to avail for the confirmation of the minds of all the Lord's priests, who, having been already detected and condemned of heresy in respect of the authorities they followed, now begin more openly to set forth their blasphemous dogma, lest, if their meaning were hid beneath the cloke of silence it might still be doubtful whether the triple error of Apollinaris [471] , and the mad notion of the Manichees was really revived in them. And as they no longer seek to hide themselves but rise boldly against the churches of Christ, must we not take care to destroy all the strength of their attempts, observing, as I have said, such discrimination as to separate the incorrigible from the more docile spirits: for "evil conversations corrupt good manners [472] ," and "the wise man will be sharper than the pestilent person who is chastised [473] ;" in order that in whatever way the society of the wicked is broken up, some vessels may be snatched from the devil's hand? For we ought not to be so offended at scurrilous and empty words as to have no care for their correction.
IV. He expresses a hope that Juvenal's timely acknowledgment of error will be imitated by the rest.
But bishop Juvenal, whose injuries are to be lamented, joined himself too rashly to those blasphemous heretics, and by embracing Eutyches and Dioscorus, drove many ignorant folk headlong by his example, albeit he afterwards corrected himself by wiser counsels. These men, however, who drank in more greedily the wicked poison, have become the enemies of him, whose disciples they had been before, so that the very food he had supplied them was turned to his own ruin: and yet it is to be hoped they will imitate him in amending his ways, if only the holy associations of the neighbourhood in which they dwell will help them to recover their senses. But the character of him [474] who has usurped the place of a bishop still living cannot be doubted from the character of his actions, nor is it to be disputed that he who is loved by the assailants of the Faith must be a misbeliever. Meanwhile, brother, do not hesitate to continue with anxious care to keep me acquainted with the course of events by more frequent letters. Dated November 25th in the consulship of Herculanus (452). __________________________________________________________________
[467] These were the monks of Palestine who immediately on Theodosius' return from the Synod stirred up great riots first in Jerusalem and then throughout Palestine.
[468] Letters of the Emperor Marcion (quoted by Ball.) speak (1) of a letter written by Theodosius quas solus poterat fingere diabolus; and (2) of cruelties, tortures, and insults committed particularly in mulieres honestas et nobiles, whereby the rioters had not hesitated to force many to acquiesce in their wicked teaching.
[469] They had slain Severian, Bishop of Scythopolis, and would also have slain Juvenal, Bishop of Jerusalem, if he had not taken refuge in flight (Ball.).
[470] A portion of this letter is among the quotations added at the end of Letter CLXV. See also Vol. IV. p. 570.
[471] What this triple error was will be found in Lett. LIX., chap. v. (q.v.): cf. also Lett. CXXIV. and CLXVII.
[472] 1 Cor. xv. 33.
[473] Prov. xxi. 11, LXX
[474] Sc. Theodosius __________________________________________________________________
Letter CX.
From Marcian Augustus.
(Expressing surprise that Leo has not by now confirmed the acts of the Synod, and asking for a speedy confirmation.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXI.
To Marcian Augustus.
(About Anatolius' mistake in deposing Actions from the office of archdeacon and putting in Andrew instead.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXII.
To Pulcheria Augusta.
(On the same subject more briefly.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXIII.
To Julian, Bishop of Cos.
Leo, bishop of Rome, to Julian, bishop of Cos.
I. After thanks for Julian's sympathy he complains of the deposition of Aetius from the archdeaconry.
I acknowledge in your letter, beloved, the feelings of brotherly love, in that you sympathize with us in true grief at the many grievous evils we have borne. But we pray that these things which the Lord has either allowed or wished us to suffer, may avail to the correction of those who live through them [475] , and that adversities may cease through the cessation of offences. Both which results will follow through the mercy of God, if only He remove the scourge and turn the hearts of His people to Himself. But as you, brother, are saddened by the hostilities which have raged around us, so I am made anxious because, as your letter indicates, the treacherous attacks of heretics are not set at rest in the church of Constantinople, and men seek occasion to persecute those who have been the defenders of the catholic Faith. For so long as Aetius is removed from his office of archdeacon under pretence of promotion [476] and Andrew is taken into his place, who had been cast off for associating with heretics; so long as respect is shown to the accusers of Flavian of holy memory, and the partners or disciples of that most pious confessor are put down, it is only too clearly shown what pleases the bishop of the church itself. Towards whom I put off taking action till I hear the merits of the case and await his own dealing with me in the letter our son Aetius tells me he will send, giving opportunity for voluntary correction, whereby I desire my vexation to be appeased. Nevertheless, I have written to our most clement Prince and the most pious Augusta about these things which concern the peace of the Church; and I do not doubt they will in the devoutness of their faith take heed lest a heresy already condemned should succeed in springing up again to the detriment of their own glorious work.
II. He asks Julian to act for him as Anatolius is deficient in vigour.
See then, beloved brother, that you bestow the necessary thought on the cares of the Apostolic See, which by her rights as your mother commends to you, who were nourished at her breast, the defence of the catholic Truth against Nestorians and Eutychians, in order that, supported by the Divine help, you may not cease to watch the interests of the city of Constantinople, lest at any time the storms of error arise within her. And because the faith of our glorious Princes is so great that you may confidently suggest what is necessary to them, use their piety for the benefit of the universal Church. But if ever you consult me, beloved, on things which you think doubtful, my reply shall not fail to supply instruction, so that, apart from cases which ought to be decided by the inquiries of the bishops of each particular church, you may act as my legate and undertake the special charge of preventing the Nestorian or Eutychian heresy reviving in any quarter; because the bishop of Constantinople does not possess catholic vigour, and is not very jealous either for the mystery of man's salvation or for his own reputation: whereas if he had any spiritual activity, he ought to have considered by whom he was ordained, and whom he succeeded in such a way as to follow the blessed Flavian rather than the instruments of his promotion. And, therefore, when our most religious Princes deign in accordance with my entreaties to reprimand our brother Anatolius on those matters, which deservedly come under blame, join your diligence to theirs, beloved, that all causes of offences may be removed by the application of the fullest correction and he cease from injuring our son Aetius. For with a catholic-minded bishop even though there was something which seemed calculated to annoy in his archdeacon, it ought to have been passed over from regard for the Faith, rather than that the most worthless heretic should take the place of a catholic. And so when I have learnt the rest of the story, I shall then more clearly gather what ought to be done. For, meanwhile, I have thought better to restrain my vexation and to exercise patience that there might be room for forgiveness.
III. He asks for further information about the rioting in Palestine and in Egypt.
But with regard to the monks of Palestine, who are said this long time to be in a state of mutiny, I know not by what spirit they are at present moved. Nor has any one yet explained to me what reasons they seem to bring forward for their discontent: whether for instance, they wish to serve the Eutychian heresy by such madness, or whether they are irreconcilably vexed that their bishop could have been misled into that blasphemy, whereby, in spite of the very associations of the holy spots, from which issued instruction for the whole world, he has alienated himself from the Truth of the Lord's Incarnation, and in their opinion that cannot be venial in him which in others had to be wiped out by absolution. And therefore I desire to be more fully informed about these things that proper means may be taken for their correction; because it is one thing to arm oneself wickedly against the Faith, and another thing to be immoderately disturbed on behalf of it. You must know, too, that the documents which Aetius the presbyter told me before had been dispatched, and the epitome of the Faith which you say you have sent, have not yet arrived. Hence, if an opportunity offers itself of a more expeditious messenger, I shall be glad for any information that may seem expedient to be sent me as soon as possible. I am anxious to know about the monks of Egypt [477] , whether they have regained their peacefulness and their faith, and about the church of Alexandria, what trustworthy tidings reaches you: I wish you to know what I wrote to its bishop or his ordainers, or the clergy, and have therefore sent you a copy of the letter. You will learn also what I have said to our most clement Prince and our most religious Empress from the copies sent.
IV. He asks for a Latin translation of the acts of Chalcedon.
I wish to know whether my letter [478] has been delivered to you, brother, which I sent you by Basil the deacon, upon the Faith of the Lord's Incarnation, while Flavian of holy memory was still alive; for I fancy you have never made any comment on its contents. We have no very clear information about the acts of the Synod, which were drawn up at the time of the council at Chalcedon, on account of the difference of language [479] . And therefore I specially enjoin upon you, brother, that you have the whole collected into one volume, accurately translated of course into Latin, that we may not be in doubt on any portion of the proceedings, and that there may be no manner of uncertainty after you have taken pains to bring it fully within my understanding. Dated March 11th, in the consulship of the illustrious Opilio (453). __________________________________________________________________
[475] Servatorum. I am not sure whether this is the right sense; others read multorum.
[476] In Lett. CXI., chap. ii., he is said to have been coemeterio deputatis, and, according to Quesnel, when the cemeteries (or catacombs) had no longer to be used as refuges for the persecuted Christians, the custom had grown up of putting priests in charge to perpetuate the memory of the martyrs therein buried; in process of time, when love grew cold, this was looked upon as a sort of exile, and an onerous duty in consequence.
[477] There had been riots among the monks of Egypt about the appointment of Proterius as bishop, instead of Dioscorus, deposed.
[478] This is Letter XXXV. (q.v.).
[479] It is, of course, well known that Leo knew no Greek whatever. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXIV.
To the Bishops Assembled in Synod at Chalcedon.
(In answer to their Letter (XCVIII.), approving of their acts in the general so long as nothing is contrary to the canons of Nicæa.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXV.
To Marcian Augustus.
(Congratulating him upon the restoration of peace to the Church, and the suppression of the riotous monks; giving his consent also, as a liege subject of the Emperor's, to the acts of Chalcedon, and asking him to make this known to the Synod.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXVI.
To Pulcheria Augusta.
(Commending her pious zeal and informing her of his assent to the acts of Chalcedon.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXVII.
To Julian, Bishop of Cos.
Leo to Julian the bishop.
I. He wishes his assent to the acts of Chalcedon to be widely known.
How watchfully and how devotedly you guard the catholic Faith, brother, the tenor of your letter shows, and my anxiety is greatly relieved by the information it contains; supplemented as it is by the most religious piety of our religious Emperor, which is clearly shown to be prepared by the Lord for the confirmation of the whole Church; so that, whilst Christian princes act for the Faith with holy zeal, the priests of the Lord may confidently pray for their realm.
What therefore our most clement Emperor deemed needful I have willingly complied with, by sending letters to all the brethren who were present at the Synod of Chalcedon, in which to show that I approved of what was resolved upon by our holy brethren about the Rule of Faith; on their account to wit, who in order to cloke their own treachery, pretend to consider invalid or doubtful such conciliar ordinances as are not ratified by my assent: albeit, after the return of the brethren whom I had sent in my stead, I dispatched a letter to the bishop of Constantinople; so that, if he had been minded to publish it, abundant proof might have been furnished thereby how gladly I approved of what the synod had passed concerning the Faith. But, because it contained such an answer as would have run counter to his self-seeking, he preferred my acceptance of the brethren's resolutions to remain unknown, lest at the same time my reply should become known on the absolute authority of the Nicene canons. Wherefore take heed, beloved, that you warn our most gracious prince by frequent reminders that he add his words to ours and order the letter of the Apostolic See to be sent round to the priests of each single province, that hereafter no enemy of the Truth may venture to excuse himself under cover of my silence.
II. He expresses his thanks for the zeal shown by the Emperor and the Empress.
And as to the edict of the most Christian Emperor, in which he has shown what the ignorant folly of certain monks deserved and as to the reply of the most gracious Augusta, in which she rebuked the heads of the monasteries, I wish my great rejoicing to be known, being assured that this fervour of faith is bestowed upon them by Divine inspiration, in order that all men may acknowledge their superiority to rest not only on their royal state but also on their priestly holiness: whom both now and formerly I have asked to treat you with full confidence, being assured of their good will, and that they will not refuse to give ear to necessary suggestions.
III. He wishes to know the effect of his letter to the Empress Eudocia.
And, because the most clement Emperor has been pleased to charge me secretly by our son Paulus with the task of admonishing our daughter the most clement Augusta Eudocia [480] , I have done what he wished, in order that from my letter she may learn how profitable it will be to her if she espouses the cause of the catholic Faith, and have managed that she should further be admonished by a letter from that most clement prince her son; nothing doubting that she herself, too, will set to work with pious zeal to bring the leaders of sedition to a knowledge of the consequences of their action, and, if they understand not the utterances of those who teach them, to make them at least afraid of the powers of those who will punish them. And so what effect this care of ours produces, I wish to know at once by a letter from you, beloved, and whether their ignorant contumacy has at length subsided: as to which if they think there is any doubt about our teaching, let them at least not reject the writings of such holy priests as Athanasius, Theophilus and Cyril of Alexandria, with whom our statement of the Faith so completely harmonizes that any one who professes consent to them disagrees in nothing with us.
IV. Aetius must be content at present with the Emperor's favour.
With our son Aetius [481] the presbyter we sympathize in his sorrow; and, as one has been put into his place who had previously been judged worthy of censure, there is no doubt that this change tends to the injury of catholics. But these things must be borne patiently meanwhile, lest we should be thought to exceed the measure of our usual moderation, and for the present Aetius must be content with the encouragement of our most clement prince's favour, to whom I have but lately so commended him by letter that I doubt not his good repute has been increased in their most religious minds.
V. Anatolius shows no contrition in his subsequent acts.
This too we would have you know, that bishop Anatolius after our prohibition so persisted in his rash presumption as to call upon the bishops of Illyricum to subscribe their names: this news was brought us by the bishop who was sent by the bishop of Thessalonica [482] to announce his consecration. We have declined to write to Anatolius about this, although you might have expected us to do so, because we perceived he did not wish to be reformed. I have made two versions of my letter to the Synod, one with a copy of my letter to Anatolius subjoined, one without it; leaving it to your judgment to deliver the one which you think ought to be given to our most clement prince and to keep the other. Dated 21st March, in the consulship of the illustrious Opilio (453). __________________________________________________________________
[480] This is Eudocia, the widow of Theodosius II., and the Prince, her son, mentioned below, is Valentinianus III., who had married her daughter Eudoxia. The letter of Leo here mentioned is probably not Letter CXXIII. below. For a graphic sketch of the elder lady see Gore's Life of Leo, pp. 131, 2.
[481] Cf. Letter CXIII. above.
[482] This is Euxitheus, the successor of Anastasius: Letter CL. is addressed to him. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXVIII.
To the Same Julian, Bishop of Cos.
(In which, after speaking of his own efforts for the Faith, he objects to monks being permitted to preach, especially if heretically inclined, and asks Julian to stir up the Emperor's zeal for the Faith.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXIX.
To Maximus, Bishop of Antioch, by the hand of Marian the Presbyter, and Olympius the Deacon.
Leo to Maximus of Antioch.
I. The Faith is the mean between the two extremes of Eutyches and Nestorius.
How much, beloved, you have at heart the most sacred unity of our common Faith and the tranquil harmony of the Church's peace, the substance of your letter shows, which was brought me by our sons, Marian the presbyter and Olympius the deacon, and which was the more welcome to us because thereby we can join as it were in conversation, and thus the grace of God becomes more and more known and greater joy is felt through the whole world over the revelation of catholic Truth. And yet we are sore grieved at some who still (so your messengers indicate) love their darkness; and though the brightness of day has arisen everywhere, even still delight in the obscurity of their blindness, and abandoning the Faith, remain Christians in only the empty name, without knowledge to discern one error from another, and to distinguish the blasphemy of Nestorius from the impiety of Eutyches. For no delusion of theirs can appear excusable, because they contradict themselves in their perverseness. For, though Eutyches' disciples abhor Nestorius, and the followers of Nestorius anathematize Eutyches, yet in the judgment of catholics both sides are condemned and both heresies alike are cut away from the body of the Church: because neither falsehood can be in unison with us. Nor does it matter in which direction of blasphemy they disagree with the truth of the Lord's Incarnation, since their erroneous opinions hold neither with the authority of the Gospel nor with the significance of the mystery [483] .
II. Maximus is to keep the churches of the East free from these two opposite heresies.
And therefore, beloved brother, you must with all your heart consider over which church the Lord has set you to preside, and remember that system of doctrine of which the chief of all the Apostles, the blessed Peter, laid the foundation, not only by his uniform preaching throughout the world, but especially by his teaching in the cities of Antioch and Rome: so that you may understand that he demands of him who is set over the home of his own renown those institutions which he handed down, as he received them from the Truth Itself, which he confessed. And in the churches of the East, and especially in those which the canons of the most holy Fathers at Nicæa [484] assigned to the See of Antioch, you must not by any means allow unscrupulous heretics to make assaults on the Gospel, and the dogmas of either Nestorius or Eutyches to be maintained by any one. Since, as I have said, the rock (petra) of the catholic Faith, from which the blessed Apostle Peter took his name at the Lord's hands, rejects every trace of either heresy; for it openly and clearly anathematizes Nestorius for separating the nature of the Word and of the flesh in the blessed Virgin's conception, for dividing the one Christ into two, and for wishing to distinguish between the person of the Godhead and the person of the Manhood: because He is altogether one and the same who in His eternal Deity was born of the Father without time, and in His true flesh was born of His mother in time; and similarly it eschews Eutyches for ignoring the reality of the human flesh in the Lord Jesus Christ, and asserting the transformation of the Word Himself into flesh, so that His birth, nurture, growth, suffering, death and burial, and resurrection on the third day, all belonged to His Deity only, which put on not the reality but the semblance of the form of a slave.
III. Antioch as the third See in Christendom is to retain her privileges.
And so it behoves you to use the utmost vigilance, lest these depraved heretics dare to assert themselves; for you must resist them with all the authority of priests, and frequently inform us by your reports what is being done for the progress of the churches. For it is right that you should share this responsibility with the Apostolic See, and realize that the privileges of the third See in Christendom [485] give you every confidence in action, privileges which no intrigues shall in any way impair: because my respect for the Nicene canons is such that I never have allowed nor ever will the institutions of the holy Fathers to be violated by any innovation. For different sometimes as are the deserts of individual prelates, yet the rights of their Sees are permanent: and although rivalry may perchance cause some disturbance about them, yet it cannot impair their dignity. Wherefore, brother, if ever you consider any action ought to be taken to uphold the privileges of the church of Antioch, be sure to explain it in a letter of your own, that we may be able to reply to your application completely and appropriately.
IV. Anatolius' attempts to subvert the decisions of Nicæa are futile.
But at the present time let it be enough to make a general proclamation on all points, that if in any synod any one makes any attempt upon or seems to take occasion of wresting an advantage against the provisions of the Nicene canons, he can inflict no discredit upon their inviolable decrees: and it will be easier for the compacts of any conspiracy to be broken through than for the regulations of the aforesaid canons to be in any particular invalidated. For intrigue loses no opportunity of stealing an advantage, and whenever the course of things brings about a general assembly of priests, it is difficult for the greediness of the unscrupulous not to try to gain some unfair point: just as in the Synod of Ephesus which overthrew the blasphemous Nestorius with his dogma, bishop Juvenal believed that he was capable of holding the presidency of the province of Palestine, and ventured to rally the insubordinate by a lying letter [486] . At which Cyril of blessed memory, bishop of Alexandria, being properly dismayed, pointed out in his letter to me [487] to what audacity the other's cupidity had led him: and with anxious entreaty begged me hard that no assent should be given his unlawful attempts. For be it known to you that we found the original document of Cyril's letter which was sought for in our book-case, and of which you sent us copies. On this, however, my judgment lays especial stress that, although a majority of priests through the wiliness of some came to a decision which is found opposed to those constitutions of the 318 fathers, it must be considered void on principles of justice: since the peace of the whole Church cannot otherwise be preserved, except due respect be invariably shown to the canons.
V. If Leo's legates in any way exceeded their instructions, they did so ineffectually.
Of course, if anything is alleged to have been done by those brethren whom I sent in my stead to the holy Synod, beyond that which was germane to the Faith, it shall be of no weight at all: because they were sent by the Apostolic See only for the purpose of extirpating heresy and upholding the catholic Faith. For whatever is laid before bishops for inquiry beyond the particular subjects which come before synodal councils may admit of a certain amount of free discussion, if the holy Fathers have laid down nothing thereon at Nicæa. For anything that is not in agreement with their rules and constitutions can never obtain the assent of the Apostolic See. But how great must be the diligence with which this rule is kept, you will gather from the copies of the letter which we sent to the bishop of Constantinople, restraining his cupidity; and you shall take order that it reach the knowledge of all our brethren and fellow-priests.
VI. No one but priests are allowed to preach.
This too it behoves you, beloved, to guard against, that no one except those who are the Lord's priests dare to claim the right of teaching or preaching, be he monk or layman [488] , who boasts himself of some knowledge. Because although it is desirable that all the Church's sons should understand the things which are right and sound, yet it is permitted to none outside the priestly rank to assume the office of preacher, since in the Church of God all things ought to be orderly, that in Christ's one body the more excellent members should fulfil their own duties, and the lower not resist the higher. Dated the 11th of June, in the consulship of the illustrious Opilio (453). __________________________________________________________________
[483] Ratio sacramenti.
[484] These were apparently twenty in number, but include no very important towns except Seleucia the seaport of Antioch.
[485] Privilegia tertiæ sedis. Leo here still assigns to Antioch the third place in order of precedence, Rome and Alexandria being first and second respectively; but since 381, as we have seen, e.g. in Lett. XCVIII., chap. iv., it had been lowered to the 4th place by the insertion of Constantinople between Rome and Alexandria: see Schaff's Hist., Vol. II. § 56, pp. 277 and following, and Gore's Leo, pp. 119 and foll.
[486] It is a curious fact in the history of Church government that the bishopric of Jerusalem for the first centuries never had the first place in Palestine: this was assigned to the metropolitan of Cæsarea, although on great occasions the Bishop of Jerusalem sat next to the patriarch of Antioch: cf. Schaff's Hist., Vol. II. 56, p. 283, and the vii^th. Nicene canon: mos antiquus obtineat ut Aeliæ, id est Ierosolymæ, episcopus honoretur salva metropolis propria dignitate.
[487] The Ballerinii point out that the 1st Council of Ephesus was held in 431, at which Cyril presided for Celestinus I. of Rome and that Leo was not bishop till 441; this letter was probably addressed to him when archdeacon of Rome, in which case the authority which he had already gained is remarkably illustrated.
[488] See Lett. CXX., chap. vi., note 7. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXX.
To Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrus, on Perseverance in the Faith.
Leo, the bishop, to his beloved brother Theodoret, the bishop.
I. He congratulates Theodoret on their joint victory, and expresses his approval of an honest inquiry which leads to good results.
On the return of our brothers and fellow-priests, whom the See of the blessed Peter sent to the holy council, we ascertained, beloved, the victory you and we together had won by assistance from on high over the blasphemy of Nestorius, as well as over the madness of Eutyches. Wherefore we make our boast in the Lord, singing with the prophet: "our help is in the name of the Lord, who hath made heaven and earth [489] :" who has suffered us to sustain no harm in the person of our brethren, but has corroborated by the irrevocable assent of the whole brotherhood what He had already laid down through our ministry: to show that, what had been first formulated by the foremost See of Christendom, and then received by the judgment of the whole Christian world, had truly proceeded from Himself: that in this, too, the members may be at one with the Head. And herein our cause for rejoicing grows greater when we see that the more fiercely the foe assailed Christ's servants, the more did he afflict himself. For lest the assent of other Sees to that which the Lord of all has appointed to take precedence of the rest might seem mere complaisance, or lest any other evil suspicion might creep in, some were found to dispute our decisions before they were finally accepted [490] . And while some, instigated by the author of the disagreement, rush forward into a warfare of contradictions, a greater good results through his fall under the guiding hand of the Author of all goodness. For the gifts of God's grace are sweeter to us when they are gained with mighty efforts: and uninterrupted peace is wont to seem a lesser good than one that is restored by labours. Moreover, the Truth itself shines more brightly, and is more bravely maintained when what the Faith had already taught is afterwards confirmed by further inquiry. And still further, the good name of the priestly office gains much in lustre where the authority of the highest is preserved without it being thought that the liberty of the lower ranks has been at all infringed. And the result of a discussion contributes to the greater glory of God when the debaters exert themselves with confidence in overcoming the gainsayers: that what of itself is shown wrong may not seem to be passed over in prejudicial silence.
II. Christ's victory has won back many to the Faith.
Exult therefore, beloved brother, yes, exult triumphantly in the only-begotten Son of God. Through us He has conquered for Himself the reality of Whose flesh was denied. Through us and for us He has conquered, in whose cause we have conquered. This happy day ranks next to the Lord's Advent for the world. The robber is laid low, and there is restored to our age the mystery of the Divine Incarnation which the enemy of mankind was obscuring with his chicaneries, because the facts would not let him actually destroy it. Nay, the immortal mystery had perished from the hearts of unbelievers, because so great salvation is of no avail to unbelievers, as the Very Truth said to His disciples: "he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be condemned [491] ." The rays of the Sun of Righteousness which were obscured throughout the East by the clouds of Nestorius and Eutyches, have shone out brightly from the West, where it has reached its zenith in the Apostles and teachers of the Church. And yet not even in the East is it to be believed that it was ever eclipsed where noble confessors [492] have been found among your ranks: so that, when the old enemy was trying afresh, through the impenitent heart of a modern Pharaoh [493] , to blot out the seed of faithful Abraham and the sons of promise, he grew weary, through God's mercy, and could harm no one save himself. And in regard to him the Almighty has worked this wonder also, in that He has not overwhelmed with the founder of the tyranny those who were associated with him in the slaughter of the people of Israel, but has gathered them into His own people; and as the Source of all mercy knew to be worthy of Himself and possible for Himself alone, He has made them conquerors with us who were conquered by us. For whilst the spirit of falsehood is the only true enemy of the human race, it is undoubted that all whom the Truth has won over to His side share in His triumph over that enemy. Assuredly it now is clear how divinely authorized are these words of our Redeemer, which are so applicable to the enemies of the Faith that one may not doubt they were said of them: "You," He says, "are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father it is your will to fulfil. He was a murderer from the beginning and stood not in the truth, because the truth is not in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar and the father thereof [494] ."
III. Dioscorus, who in his madness has attacked even the bishop of Rome, has shown himself the instrument of Satan.
It is not to be wondered, then, that they who have accepted a delusion as to our nature in the true God agree with their father on these points also, maintaining that what was seen, heard, and in fact, by the witness of the gospel, touched and handled in the only Son of God, belonged not to that to which it was proved to belong [495] , but to an essence co-eternal and consubstantial with the Father: as if the nature of the Godhead could have been pierced on the Cross, as if the Unchangeable could grow from infancy to manhood, or the eternal Wisdom could progress in wisdom, or God, who is a Spirit, could thereafter be filled with the Spirit. In this, too, their sheer madness betrayed its origin, because, as far as it could, it attempted to injure everybody. For he, who afflicted you with his persecutions, led others wrong by driving them to consent to his wickedness. Yea, even us too, although he had wounded us in each one of the brethren (for they are our members), even us he did not exempt from special vexation in attempting to inflict an injury upon his Head with strange and unheard of and incredible effrontery [496] . But would that he had recovered his senses even after all these enormities, and had not saddened us by his death and eternal damnation. There was no measure of wickedness that he did not reach: it was not enough for him that, sparing neither living nor dead, and forswearing truth and allying himself with falsehood, he imbrued his hands, that had been already long polluted, in the blood of a guiltless, catholic priest [497] . And since it is written: "he that hateth his brother is a murderer [498] :" he has actually carried out what he was said already to have done in hate, as if he had never heard of this nor of that which the Lord says, "learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls: for My yoke is easy and My burden is light [499] ." A worthy preacher of the devil's errors has been found in this Egyptian plunderer, who, like the cruellest tyrant the Church has had, forced his villainous blasphemies on the reverend brethren through the violence of riotous mobs and the blood-stained hands of soldiers. And when our Redeemer's voice assures us that the author of murder and of lying is one and the same, He has carried out both equally: as if these things were written not to be avoided but to be perpetrated: and thus does he apply to the completion of his destruction the salutary warnings of the Son of God, and turns a deaf ear to what the same Lord has said, "I speak that which I have seen with My Father; and ye do that which ye have seen with your father [500] ."
IV. Those who undertake to speak authoritatively on doctrine, must preserve the balance between the extremes.
Accordingly while he strove to cut short Flavian of blessed memory's life in the present world, he has deprived himself of the light of true life. While he tried to drive you out of your churches, he has cut off himself from fellowship with Christians. While he drags and drives many into agreement with error, he has stabbed his own soul with many a wound, a solitary convicted offender beyond all, and through all and for all, for he was the cause of all men's being accused. But, although, brother, you who are nurtured on solid food, have little need of such reminders, yet that we may fulfil what belongs to our position according to that utterance of the Apostle who says, "Besides these things that are without, that which presseth on me daily, anxiety for all the churches. Who is weakened and I am not weak? Who is made to stumble and I burn not [501] ?" we believe this admonition ought to be given especially on the present occasion, that whenever by the ministration of the Divine grace we either overwhelm or cleanse those who are without, in the pool of doctrine, we go not away in aught from those rules of Faith which the Godhead of the Holy Ghost brought forward at the Council of Chalcedon, and weigh our words with every caution so as to avoid the two extremes of new false doctrine [502] : not any longer (God forbid it) as if debating what is doubtful, but with full authority laying down conclusions already arrived at; for in the letter which we issued from the Apostolic See, and which has been ratified by the assent of the entire holy Synod, we know that so many divinely authorised witnesses are brought together, that no one can entertain any further doubt, except one who prefers to enwrap himself in the clouds of error, and the proceedings of the Synod whether those in which we read the formulating of the definition of Faith, or those in which the aforesaid letter of the Apostolic See was zealously supported by you, brother, and especially the address of the whole Council to our most religious Princes, are corroborated by the testimonies of so many fathers in the past that they must persuade any one, however unwise and stubborn his heart, so long as he be not already joined with the devil in damnation for his wickedness.
V. Theodoret's orthodoxy has been happily and thoroughly vindicated.
Wherefore this, too, it is our duty to provide against the Church's enemies, that, as far as in us lies, we leave them no occasion for slandering us, nor yet, in acting against the Nestorians or Eutychians, ever seem to have retreated before the other side, but that we shun and condemn both the enemies of Christ in equal measure, so that whenever the interests of the hearers in any way require it, we may with all promptitude and clearness strike down them and their doctrines with the anathema that they deserve, lest if we seem to do this doubtfully or tardily, we be thought to act against our will [503] . And although the facts themselves are sufficient to remind your wisdom of this, yet now actual experience has brought the lesson home. But blessed be our God, whose invincible Truth has shown you free from all taint of heresy in the judgment of the Apostolic See [504] . To whom you will repay due thanks for all these labours, if you keep yourself such a defender of the universal Church as we have proved and do still prove you. For that God has dispelled all calumnious fallacies, we attribute to the blessed Peter's wondrous care of us all, for after sanctioning the judgment of his See in defining the Faith, he allowed no sinister imputation to rest on any of you, who have laboured with us for the catholic Faith: because the Holy Spirit adjudged that no one could fail to come out conqueror of those whose Faith had now conquered.
VI. He asks Theodoret for his continued cooperation, and refers him to a letter which he has written to the bishop of Antioch.
It remains that we exhort you to continue your co-operation with the Apostolic See, because we have learnt that some remnants of the Eutychian and Nestorian error still linger amongst you. For the victory which Christ our Lord has vouchsafed to His Church, although it increases our confidence, does not yet entirely destroy our anxiety, nor is it granted us to sleep but to work on more calmly. Hence it is we wish to be assisted in this too by your watchful care, that you hasten to inform the Apostolic See by your periodic reports what progress the Lord's teaching makes in those regions; to the end that we may assist the priests of that district in whatever way experience suggests.
On those matters which were mooted in the often-quoted council, in unlawful opposition to the venerable canons of Nicæa, we have written to our brother and fellow-bishop, the occupant of the See of Antioch [505] , adding that too which you had given us verbal information about by your delegates with reference to the unscrupulousness of certain monks, and laying down strict injunctions that no one, be he monk [506] or layman, that boasts himself of some knowledge, should presume to preach except the Lord's priests. That letter, however, we wish to reach all men's knowledge for the benefit of the universal Church through our aforesaid brother and fellow-bishop Maximus; and for that reason we have not thought fit to add a copy of it to this; because we have no doubt of the due carrying out of our injunctions to our aforesaid brother and fellow-bishop. (In another hand.) God keep thee safe, beloved brother. Dated 11 June in the consulship of the illustrious Opilio (453). __________________________________________________________________
[489] Ps. cxxiii. 8.
[490] These were, of course, the bishops of Illyricum and Palestine, who raised objections at various points in the reading of Leo's Tome at Chalcedon. They were allowed five days to reconsider the matter, and ultimately yielded their consent. See Introduction, p. x., and Bright's notes to the Tome, who gives their objections and answers in detail, esp. nn. 148, 156, 160, and 173.
[491] S. Mark xvi. 16.
[492] He is thinking especially of the martyred Flavian.
[493] Dioscorus of Alexandria is meant.
[494] S. John viii. 44.
[495] Viz., to human nature.
[496] A reference to Letter XCVIII. (from the Synod of Chalcedon to Leo), chap. ii. shows that Dioscorus had threatened Leo with excommunication; excommunicationem meditatus est contra te qui corpus ecclesiæ unire festinas.
[497] This was of course Flavian. Quesnel quotes Liberatus the deacon (chap. x. of the Breviary) as asserting that no sooner was Dioscorus made bishop of Alexandria than oppressit Cyrilli heredes et per calumnias multas ab eis abstulit pecunias. His accusers at Chalcedon charge him with being an Origenist, an Arian, a murderer, an incendiary, and an evil liver generally.
[498] 1 John iii. 15.
[499] S. Matt. xi. 29, 30.
[500] S. John viii. 38.
[501] 2 Cor. xi. 28, 29.
[502] Inter utrumque hostem novellæ perfidiæ, sc. Nestorianism and Eutychianism.
[503] The Ballerinii remind us that all these allusions to keeping the balance of Truth in this and the last chapter, and here to acting promptissme et evidentissime were intended for Theodoret's especial benefit, who from his former defence of Nestorius and attacks on Cyril had been suspected of the Nestorian taint, but had expressly cleared himself at the Council of Chalcedon. This explains the res ipsæ and the experimenta of the next sentence, and the solemn adjuration of the sentence next but one.
[504] See the Acts of Chalcedon I, ingrediatur et reverendissimus episcopus Theodoretus ut sit particeps synodi, quia et restituit ei episcopatum sanctissimus archiepiscopus Leo, and 8, where the judges ask for a verdict, "sicut et sanctissimus Leo archiepiscopus iudicavit," to which the whole council replied Post Deum Leo iudicavit.
[505] This is Letter CXIX. to Maximus, bishop of Antioch (q.v.).
[506] It must be remembered that monachus esse in those days meant complete withdrawal from all active life in the world, the preaching orders being a much later institution. The Ballerinii suggest that it may have been a certain abbot Barsumas, who with his followers is said (Act. Chalc. 4) totam Syriam commovisse. See also Lett. CXIX., chap. vi. __________________________________________________________________
Letters CXXI. and CXXII.
The former to Marcian Augustus, and the other to Julian the Bishop.
Asking him for further inquiries and information about the proper date for Easter in 455; cf. Letter LXXXVIII. chap. 4, above. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXXIII.
To Eudocia Augusta [507] , about the Monks of Palestine [508] .
Leo, the bishop, to Eudocia Augusta.
I. A request that she should use her influence with the monks of Palestine in reducing them to order.
I do not doubt that your piety is aware how great is my devotion to the catholic Faith, and with what care I am bound, God helping me, to guard against the Gospel of truth being withstood at any time by ignorant or disloyal men. And, therefore, after expressing to you my dutiful greetings which your clemency is ever bound to receive at my hands, I entreat the Lord to gladden me with the news of your safety, and to bring aid evermore and more by your means to the maintenance of that article of the Faith over which the minds of certain monks within the province of Palestine have been much disturbed; so that to the best of your pious zeal all confidence in such heretical perversity may be destroyed. For what but sheer destruction was to be feared by men who were not moved either by the principles of God's mysteries [509] , or by the authority of the Scriptures, or by the evidence of the sacred places themselves [510] . May it advantage then the Churches, as by God's favour it does advantage them, and may it advantage the human race itself which the Word of God adopted at the Incarnation, that you have conceived the wish to take up your abode in that country [511] where the proofs of His wondrous acts and the signs of His sufferings speak to you of our Lord Jesus Christ as not only true God but also true Man.
II. They are to be told that the catholic Faith rejects both the Eutychian and the Nestorian extremes. He wishes to be informed how far she succeeds.
If then the aforesaid revere and love the name of "catholic," and wish to be numbered among the members of the Lord's body, let them reject the crooked errors which in their rashness they have committed, and let them show penitence [512] for their wicked blasphemies and deeds of bloodshed [513] . For the salvation of their souls let them yield to the synodal decrees which have been confirmed in the city of Chalcedon. And because nothing but true faith and quiet humility attains to the understanding of the mystery of man's salvation, let them believe what they read in the Gospel, what they confess in the Creed, and not mix themselves up with unsound doctrines. For as the catholic Faith condemns Nestorius, who dared to maintain two persons in our one Lord Jesus Christ, so does it also condemn Eutyches and Dioscorus [514] who deny that the true human flesh was assumed in the Virgin Mother's womb by the only-begotten Word of God.
If your exhortations have any success in convincing these persons, which will win for you eternal glory, I beseech your clemency to inform me of it by letter; that I may have the joy of knowing that you have reaped the fruit of your good work, and that they through the Lord's mercy have not perished. Dated the 15th of June, in the consulship of the illustrious Opilio (453). __________________________________________________________________
[507] See Letter CXVII., chap. iii., n. 8.
[508] See Letter CIX. above.
[509] Ratio sacramentorum, it cannot be too often repeated that to Leo and other early Fathers, all nature, and all its phenomena, and all God's dealings with mankind are sacramenta, and capable of a sacramental (i.e. higher, inner) interpretation: the particular sacramentum he is thinking of here is the incarnation, which he speaks of just below, as often elsewhere, as the sacramentum salutis humanæ (the sacrament or mystery whereby man is saved).
[510] Viz., the places in Palestine where these monks themselves lived, which trustworthy history or tradition connects with the various incidents in our Lord's life.
[511] Eudocia had just made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
[512] Agant poenitentiam: this is the regular and very expressive translation in the Latin Versions and among the Fathers of the Greek metanoein.
[513] They had seized Jerusalem, and deposed Juvenal, the Bishop, setting up a partisan of their own in his stead.
[514] Leo not unfrequently joins these two together as equally responsible (e.g. Lett. CIX. 3). __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXXIV.
To the Monks of Palestine.
Leo, the bishop, to the whole body of monks settled throughout Palestine.
I. They have possibly been misled by a wrong translation of his letter on the Incarnation to Flavian.
The anxious care, which I owe to the whole Church and to all its sons, has ascertained from many sources that some offence has been given to your minds, beloved, through my interpreters [515] , who being either ignorant, as it appears, or malicious, have made you take some of my statements in a different sense to what I meant, not being capable of turning the Latin into Greek with proper accuracy, although in the explanation of subtle and difficult matters, one who undertakes to discuss them can scarcely satisfy himself even in his own tongue. And yet this has so far been of advantage to me, that by your disapproving of what the catholic Faith rejects, we know you are greater friends to the true than to the false: and that you quite properly refuse to believe what I myself also abhor, in accordance with ancient doctrine [516] . For although my letter addressed to bishop Flavian, of holy memory, is of itself sufficiently explicit, and stands in no need either of correction or explanation, yet other of my writings harmonize with that letter, and in them my position will be found similarly set forth. For necessity was laid upon me to argue against the heretics who have thrown many of Christ's peoples into confusion, both before our most merciful princes and the holy synodal Council, and the church of Constantinople, and thus I have laid down what we ought to think and feel on the Incarnation of the Word according to the teaching of the Gospel and Apostles, and in nothing have I departed from the creed of the holy Fathers: because the Faith is one, true, unique, catholic, and to it nothing can be added, nothing taken away: though Nestorius first, and now Eutyches, have endeavoured to assail it from an opposite standpoint, but with similar disloyalty, and have tried to impose on the Church of God two contradictory heresies, which has led to their both being deservedly condemned by the disciples of the Truth; because the false view which they both held in different ways was exceedingly mad and sacrilegious.
II. Eutyches, who confounds the persons, is as much to be rejected as Nestorius, who separates them [517] .
Nestorius, therefore, must be anathematized for believing the Blessed Virgin Mary to be mother of His manhood only, whereby he made the person of His flesh one thing, and that of His Godhead another, and did not recognize the one Christ in the Word of God and in the flesh, but spoke of the Son of God as separate and distinct from the son of man: although, without losing that unchangeable essence which belongs to Him together with the Father and the Holy Spirit from all eternity and without respect of time, the "Word became flesh" within the Virgin's womb in such wise that by that one conception and one parturition she was at the same time, in virtue of the union of the two substances, both handmaid and mother of the Lord. This Elizabeth also knew, as Luke the evangelist declares, when she said: "Whence is this to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me [518] ?" But Eutyches also must be stricken with the same anathema, who, becoming entangled in the treacherous errors of the old heretics, has chosen the third dogma of Apollinaris [519] : so that he denies the reality of his human flesh and soul, and maintains the whole of our Lord Jesus Christ to be of one nature, as if the Godhead of the Word had turned itself into flesh and soul: and as if to be conceived and born, to be nursed and grow, to be crucified and die, to be buried and rise again, and to ascend into heaven and to sit on the Father's right hand, from whence He shall come to judge the living and the dead--as if all those things belonged to that essence only which admits of none of them without the reality of the flesh: seeing that the nature of the Only-begotten is the nature of the Father, the nature of the Holy Spirit, and that the undivided unity and consubstantial equality of the eternal Trinity is at once impassible and unchangeable. But if [520] this heretic withdraws from the perverse views of Apollinaris, lest he be proved to hold that the Godhead is passible [521] and mortal: and yet dares to pronounce the nature of the Incarnate Word that is of the Word made Flesh one, he undoubtedly crosses over into the mad view of Manichæus [522] and Marcion [523] , and believes that the man Jesus Christ, the mediator between God and men, did all things in an unreal way, and had not a human body, but that a phantom-like apparition presented itself to the beholders' eyes.
III. The acknowledgment of our nature in Christ is necessary to orthodoxy.
As these iniquitous lies were once rejected by the catholic Faith, and such men's blasphemies condemned by the unanimous votes of the blessed Fathers throughout the world, whoever these are that are so blinded and strange to the light of truth as to deny the presence of human, that is our, nature in the Word of God from the time of the Incarnation, they must show on what ground they claim the name of Christian, and in what way they harmonize with the true Gospel, if the child-bearing of the blessed Virgin produced either the flesh without the Godhead or the Godhead without the flesh. For as it cannot be denied that "the Word became flesh and dwelt in us [524] ," so it cannot be denied that "God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself [525] ." But what reconciliation can there be, whereby God might be propitiated for the human race, unless the mediator between God and man took up the cause of all? And in what way could He properly fulfil His mediation, unless He who in the form of God was equal to the Father, were a sharer of our nature also in the form of a slave: so that the one new Man might effect a renewal of the old: and the bond of death fastened on us by one man's wrong-doing [526] might be loosened by the death of the one Man who alone owed nothing to death. For the pouring out of the blood of the righteous on behalf of the unrighteous was so powerful in its effect [527] , so rich a ransom that, if the whole body of us prisoners only believed in their Redeemer, not one would be held in the tyrant's bonds: since as the Apostle says, "where sin abounded, grace also did much more abound [528] ." And since we, who were born under the imputation [529] of sin, have received the power of a new birth unto righteousness, the gift of liberty has become stronger than the debt of slavery.
IV. They only benefit by the blood of Christ who truly share in His death and resurrection.
What hope then do they, who deny the reality of the human person in our Saviour's body, leave for themselves in the efficacy of this mystery? Let them say by what sacrifice they have been reconciled, by what blood-shedding brought back. Who is He "who gave Himself for us an offering and a victim to God for a sweet smell [530] :" or what sacrifice was ever more hallowed than that which the true High priest placed upon the altar of the cross by the immolation of His own flesh? For although in the sight of the Lord the death of many of His saints has been precious [531] , yet no innocent's death was the propitiation of the world. The righteous have received, not given, crowns: and from the endurance of the faithful have arisen examples of patience, not the gift of justification. For their deaths affected themselves alone, and no one has paid off another's debt by his own death [532] : one alone among the sons of men, our Lord Jesus Christ, stands out as One in whom all are crucified, all dead, all buried, all raised again. Of them He Himself said "when I am lifted from the earth, I will draw all (things) unto Me [533] ." True faith also, that justifies the transgressors and makes them just, is drawn to Him who shared their human natures and wins salvation in Him, in whom alone man finds himself not guilty; and thus is free to glory in the power of Him who in the humiliation of our flesh engaged in conflict with the haughty foe, and shared His victory with those in whose body He had triumphed.
V. The actions of Christ's two natures must be kept distinct.
Although therefore in our one Lord Jesus Christ, the true Son of God and man, the person of the Word and of the flesh is one, and both beings have their actions in common [534] : yet we must understand the character of the acts themselves, and by the contemplation of sincere faith distinguish those to which the humility of His weakness is brought from those to which His sublime power is inclined: what it is that the flesh without the Word or the Word without the flesh does not do. For instance, without the power of the Word the Virgin would not have conceived nor brought forth: and without the reality of the flesh His infancy would not have laid wrapt in swaddling clothes. Without the power of the Word the Magi would not have adored the Child that a new star had pointed out to them: and without the reality of the flesh that Child would not have been ordered to be carried away into Egypt and withdrawn from Herod's persecution. Without the power of the Word the Father's voice uttered from the sky would not have said, "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased [535] :" and without the reality of the flesh John would not have been able to point to Him and say: "Behold the Lamb of God, behold Him that beareth away the sins of the world [536] ." Without the power of the Word there would have been no restoring of the sick to health, no raising of the dead to life: and without the reality of the flesh He would not have hungered and needed food, nor grown weary and needed rest. Lastly, without the power of the Word, the Lord would not have professed Himself equal to the Father, and without the reality of the flesh He would not also have said that the Father was greater than He: for the catholic Faith upholds and defends both positions, believing the only Son of God to be both Man and the Word according to the distinctive properties of His divine and human substance.
VI. There is no confusion of the two natures in Christ [537] .
Although therefore from that beginning whereby in the Virgin's womb "the Word became flesh," no sort of division ever arose between the Divine and the human substance, and through all the growth and changes of His body, the actions were of one Person the whole time, yet we do not by any mixing of them up confound those very acts which were done inseparably: and from the character of the acts we perceive what belonged to either form. For neither do His Divine acts affect [538] His human, nor His human acts His Divine, since both concur in this way and to this very end that in their operation His twofold qualities be not absorbed the one by the other, nor His individuality doubled. Therefore let those Christian phantom-mongers [539] tell us, what nature of the Saviour's it was that was fastened to the wood of the Cross, that lay in the tomb, and that on the third day rose in the flesh when the stone was rolled away from the grave: or what kind of body Jesus presented to His disciples' eyes entering when the doors were shut upon them: seeing that to drive away the beholders' disbelief, He required them to inspect with their eyes and to handle with their hands the still open prints of the nails and the flesh wound of His pierced side. But if in spite of the truth being so clear, their persistence in heresy will not abandon their position in the darkness, let them show whence they promise themselves the hope of eternal life, which no one can attain to, save through the mediator between God and man, the man Jesus Christ. For "there is not another name given to men under heaven, in which they must be saved [540] ." Neither is there any ransoming of men from captivity, save in His blood, "who gave Himself a ransom for all [541] :" who, as the blessed apostle proclaims, "when He was in the form of God, thought it not robbery that He was equal with God; but emptied Himself, receiving the form of a slave, being made in the likeness of men, and being found in fashion as a man He humbled Himself, being made obedient even unto death, the death of the cross. For which reason God also exalted Him, and gave Him a name which is above every name: that in the name of Jesus every knee may bow of things in heaven, of things on the earth, and of things under the earth, and that every tongue may confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father [542] ."
VII. It was as being "in form of a slave," not as Son of God that he was exalted.
[543] Although therefore the Lord Jesus Christ is one, and the true Godhead and true Manhood in Him forms absolutely one and the same person, and the entirety of this union cannot be separated by any division, yet the exaltation wherewith "God exalted Him," and "gave Him a name which excels every name," we understand to belong to that form which needed to be enriched by this increase of glory [544] . Of course "in the form of God" the Son was equal to the Father, and between the Father and the Only-begotten there was no distinction in point of essence, no diversity in point of majesty: nor through the mystery [545] of the Incarnation had the Word been deprived of anything which should be restored Him by the Father's gift. But "the form of a slave" by which the impassible Godhead fulfilled a pledge of mighty loving-kindness [546] , is human weakness which was lifted up into the glory of the divine power, the Godhead and the manhood being right from the Virgin's conception so completely united that without the manhood the divine acts, and without the Godhead the human acts were not performed. For which reason as the Lord of majesty is said to have been crucified, so He who from eternity is equal with God is said to have been exalted. Nor does it matter by which substance Christ is spoken of, since the unity of His person inseparably remaining He is at once both wholly Son of man according to the flesh and wholly Son of God according to His Godhead, which is one with the Father. Whatever therefore Christ received in time, He received in virtue of His manhood, on which are conferred whatsoever it had not. For according to the power of the Word, "all things that the Father hath" the Son also hath indiscriminately, and what "in the form of a slave" He received from the Father, He also Himself gave in the form of the Father. He is in Himself at once both rich and poor; rich, because "in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God was the Word. This was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him was made nothing:" and poor because "the Word became flesh and dwelt in us [547] ." But what is that emptying of Himself, or that poverty except the receiving of the form of a slave by which the majesty of the Word was veiled, and the scheme for man's redemption carried out? For as the original chains of our captivity could not be loosed, unless a man of our race and of our nature appeared who was not under the prejudice of the old debt, and who with his untainted blood might blot out the bond of death [548] , as it had from the beginning been divinely fore-ordained, so it came to pass in the fulness of the appointed time that the promise which had been proclaimed in many ways might reach its long expected fulfilment, and that thus, what had been frequently announced by one testimony after another, might have all doubtfulness removed.
VIII. A protest against their faithlessness and inconsistency in this matter.
And so, as all these heresies have been destroyed, which through the holy devotion of the presiding Fathers have been cut off from the body of the catholic unity, and which deserved to be exiles from Christ, because they have made the Incarnation of the Word, which is the one salvation of those who believe aright, a stone of offence and a stumbling-block to themselves, I am surprised that you, beloved, have any difficulty in discerning the light of the Truth. And since it has been made clear by numerous explanations that the Christian Faith was right in condemning both Nestorius and Eutyches with Dioscorus, and that a man cannot be called a Christian who gives his assent to the blasphemous opinion of either the one or the other, I am grieved that you are, as I hear, doing despite to the teaching of the Gospel and the Apostles by stirring up the various bodies of citizens with seditions, by disturbing the churches, and by inflicting not only insults, but even death, upon priests and bishops, so that you lose sight of your resolves and profession [549] through your fury and cruelty. Where is your rule of meekness and quietness? where is the long-suffering of patience? where the tranquillity of peace? where the firm foundation of love and courage of endurance? what evil persuasion has carried you off, what persecution has separated you from the gospel of Christ? or what strange craftiness of the Deceiver has shown itself that, forgetting the prophets and apostles, forgetting the health-giving creed and confession which you pronounced before many witnesses when you received the sacrament of baptism you should give yourselves up to the Devil's deceits? what effect would "the Claws [550] " and other cruel tortures have had on you if the empty comments of heretics have had so much weight in taking the purity of your faith by storm? you think you are acting for the Faith and yet you go against the Faith. You arm yourselves in the name of the Church and yet fight against the Church. Is this what you have learnt from prophets, evangelists, and apostles? to deny the true flesh of Christ, to subject the very essence of the Word to suffering and death, to make our nature different from His who repaired it, and to reckon all that the cross uplifted, that the spear pierced, that the stone on the tomb received and gave back, to be only the work of Divine power, and not also of human humility? It is in reference to this humility that the Apostle says, "For I do not blush for the Gospel [551] ," inasmuch as he knew what a slur was cast upon Christians by their enemies. And, therefore, the Lord also made proclamation, saying: "he that shall confess Me before men him will I also confess before My Father [552] ." For these will not be worthy of the Son and the Father's acknowledgment in whom the flesh of Christ awakens no respect: and they will prove themselves to have gained no virtue from the sign of the cross [553] who blush to avow with their lips what they have consented to bear upon their brows.
IX. An exhortation to accept the catholic view of the Incarnation.
Give up, my sons, give up these suggestions of the devil. God's Truth nothing can impair, but the Truth does not save us except in our flesh. For, as the prophet says, "truth is sprung out of the earth [554] ," and the Virgin Mary conceived the Word in such wise that she ministered flesh of her substance to be united to Him without the addition of a second person, and without the disappearance of her nature: seeing that He who was in the form of God took the form of a slave in such wise that Christ is one and the same in both forms: God bending Himself to the weak things of man, and man rising up to the high things of the Godhead, as the Apostle says, "whose are the fathers, and from whom, according to the flesh is Christ, who is above all things God blessed for ever. Amen [555] ." __________________________________________________________________
[515] It will be remembered that Leo himself knew not a word of the language, which will account for his uncertainty, consequent helplessness, and uneasiness in this and other cases where a knowledge of the language would have served him in excellent stead.
[516] I.e. so much good at all events has come from your objection that we know you are strongly opposed to Eutyches, at present my own special abhorrence.
[517] The whole of chap. ii. will be found repeated in Ep. clxv. chap. ii.
[518] Luke i. 43.
[519] Cf. Ep. xxii. chap. 3 "conatus-antiqua impii Valentini" (the adherent of Apollinaris and head of one of the sections of the Apollinarians after his death) "et Apollinaris mala dogmata renovare." The third dogma of Apollinaris was that "Christ's manhood was formed out of a divine substance." Bright, 147.
[520] Eutyches had expressly tried to guard himself against this imputation: Ep. xxi. chap. 3, "anathematizans Apollinarium Valentinum, Manem et Nestorium, &c." See Bright's valuable notes 32, 33, 34, and esp. 35, where he shows that "it was polemical rhetoric to say that he was reviving Apollinarian or Valentinian theories."
[521] It must be clearly understood that this ugly word is here and elsewhere employed to translate passibilis (pathetos) for no reason, except the necessity of the case: pati and paschein are both of far wider and broader signification than "suffer" or its synonyms: they are simply the passive of facere and poiein (prassein), and there is no proper equivalent in ordinary English parlance. This tendency of terms to become more and more narrow and of particular application is constantly meeting and baffling one in translating the Latin and Greek languages.
[522] Leo elsewhere also makes this hardly justifiable inference that Eutychianism is a new form of Docetism as this view was called; chap. vi. below, and Serm. lxv. c. 4 "isti phantasmatici Christiani," also xxviii. 4, and lxiv. 1, 2. That the Manichæans naturally held Docetic views on the Incarnation is obvious when we remember that their fundamental misconception was that matter is identical with evil.
[523] Marcion was the founder of one of the most formidable Gnostic sects towards the close of the second century: Tertullian wrote a famous treatise (still extant) against him. Like other Gnostics, his views involved him in Docetism.
[524] S. John i. 14.
[525] 2 Cor. v. 19.
[526] Prævaricatio: this is a legal term which is often used of sin (esp. in connexion with Adam's transgression). Its original technical meaning is the action of an advocate who plays into the enemy's hand. In theology the devil (diabolos) is man's adversary, and man himself is befooled into collusion with him by breaking God's Law.
[527] Potens ad privilegium: privilegium is another legal term signifying technically a bill framed to meet an individual case generally in a detrimental way, such bills being against the spirit of the Roman law: here Leo uses it in a sense more nearly approaching our English idea of "privilege."
[528] Rom. v. 20.
[529] Sub peccati præiudicio: yet a third legal term: præiudicium in Roman law was a semi-formal and anticipatory verdict by the judge before the case came on for final decision in court; in chapter vi. we have the verb præiudicare.
[530] Eph. v. 2.
[531] Cf. Ps. cxv. 5.
[532] The idea of vicarious death was not unfamiliar to the Greeks and Romans: e.g. Alkestis dying for her husband Admetos, and the fairly numerous examples of "devotion" of Roman Generals on the battlefield.
[533] S. John xii. 32, omnia: with the Vulgate.
[534] It is scarcely necessary to point out that the old story of the communicatio idiomatum' is here again discussed: cf. the Tome, chapters iv. and v.
[535] S. Matt. iii. 17, and Bright's note 5.
[536] S. John i. 29: the repetition of the Ecce (behold) is in accordance with the old Latin versions: cf. Westcott in loc.
[537] Considerable portions of this chapter are found repeated word for word in Sermon LXIV. chap. i. and iv.
[538] Lat. præiudicant, see note 3 to chap. iii., above.
[539] Isti phantasmatici Christiani, cf. note 5, above.
[540] Acts iv. 12.
[541] 1 Tim. ii. 6.
[542] Phil. ii. 6-11.
[543] The whole of this chapter is repeated with slight variations in his letter (CLXV.) to Leo the Emperor (chaps. 8 and 10).
[544] Quæ ditanda erat tantæ glorificationis augmento acc. to Leo's use of the gerundive, see Tome, chap. i quod...omnium regenerandorum voce depromitur.
[545] Here the word is actually mysterium, not, as usual, sacramentum.
[546] Sacramentum magnæ pietatis, 1 Tim. iii. 16: cf. Bright's note 8.
[547] S. John i. 1-3, 14.
[548] The reference is to Col. ii. 14.
[549] Viz. as monks as well as baptized members of the church.
[550] The Ungulæ (Claws) were among the numerous instruments with which Christians were tortured: cf. Tert. Apol. xii. 57, ungulis deraditis latera christianorum; Cypr. de lapsis chap. xiii. (cum) ungula effoderet, caro me in colluctatione deseruit.
[551] Rom. i. 16.
[552] S. Matt. x. 32.
[553] Viz. in Baptism.
[554] Ps . lxxxv. 12.
[555] Rom. ix. 5. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXXV.
To Julian, the Bishop, by Count Rodanus.
(Asking him to write quickly, and not keep him in suspense.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXXVI.
To Marcian Augustus.
(Congratulating him on the restoration of peace in Palestine.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXXVII.
To Julian, Bishop of Cos.
(About (1) affairs in Palestine, (2) a letter from Proterius, (3) the date of Easter, (4) his reply to the Synod of Chalcedon, (5) the deposition of Aetius.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXXVIII.
To Marcian Augustus.
(Professing readiness to be reconciled to Anatolius if he will abide by the canons and not infringe the prerogatives of others.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXXIX.
To Proterius, Bishop of Alexandria.
Leo to Proterius, bishop of Alexandria.
I. He commends his persistent loyalty to the Faith.
Your letter, beloved, which our brother and fellow-bishop Nestorius duly brought us, has caused me great joy. For it was seemly that such an epistle should be sent by the head of the church of Alexandria to the Apostolic See, as showed that the Egyptians had from the first learnt from the teaching of the most blessed Apostle Peter through his blessed disciple Mark [556] , that which it is agreed the Romans have believed, that beside the Lord Jesus Christ "there is no other name given to men under heaven, in which they must be saved [557] ." But because "all men have not faith [558] " and the crafty Tempter never delights so much in wounding the hearts of men as when he can poison their unwary minds with errors that are opposed to Gospel Truth, we must strive by the mighty teaching of the Holy Ghost to prevent Christian knowledge from being perverted by the devil's falsehoods. And against this danger it behoves the rulers of the churches especially to guard and to avert from the minds of simple folk lies which are coloured by a certain show of truth [559] . "For narrow and steep is the way which leads to life [560] ." And they seek to entrap men not so much by watching their actions as by nice distinctions of meaning, corrupting the force of sentences by some very slight addition or alteration, whereby sometimes a statement, which made for salvation, by a subtle change is turned to destruction. But since the Apostle says, "there must be heresies, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you [561] ," it tends to the progress of the whole Church, that, whenever wickedness reveals itself in setting forth wrong opinions, the things which are harmful be not concealed, and that what will inevitably end in ruin may not injure the innocence of others. Wherefore they must put down their blind wanderings and downfalls to themselves, who with rash obstinacy prefer to glory in their shame than to accept the offered remedy. You do right, brother, to be displeased at their stubbornness, and we commend you for holding fast that teaching which has come down to us from the blessed Apostles and the holy Fathers.
II. Let him fortify the faithful by the public reading aloud of quotations from the Fathers bearing on the question and of the Tome.
For there is no new preaching in the letter which I wrote in reply to Flavian of holy memory, when he consulted me about the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ; for in nothing did I depart from that rule of Faith which was outspokenly maintained by your ancestors and ours. And if Dioscorus had been willing to follow and imitate them, he would have abided in the Body of Christ, having in the works of Athanasius [562] of blessed memory the materials for instruction, and in the discourses of Theophilus [563] and Cyril [564] of holy remembrance the means rather of praise-worthily opposing the already condemned dogma than of choosing to consort with Eutyches in his blasphemy. This therefore, beloved brother, I advise in my anxiety for our common Faith that, because the enemies of Christ's cross lie in watch for all our words and syllables, we give them not the slightest occasion for falsely asserting that we agree with the Nestorian doctrine. And you must so diligently exhort the laity and clergy and all the brotherhood to advance in the Faith as to show that you teach nothing new but instil into all men's breasts those things, which the Fathers of revered memory have with harmony of statement taught, and with which in all things our epistle agrees. And this must be shown not only by your words but also by the actually reading aloud of previous statements, that God's people may know that what the Fathers received from their predecessors and handed on to their descendants, is still instilled into them in the present day. And to this end, when the statements of the aforesaid priests have first been read, then lastly let my writings also be recited, that the ears of the faithful may attest that we preach nothing else than what we received from our forefathers. And because their understandings are but little practised in discerning these things, let them at least learn from the letters of the Fathers, how ancient this evil is, which is now condemned by us in Nestorius as well as in Eutyches, who have both been ashamed to preach the gospel of Christ according to the Lord's own teaching.
III. The ancient precedents are to be maintained throughout.
Accordingly, both in the rule of Faith and in the observance of discipline, let the standard of antiquity be maintained throughout, and do thou, beloved, display the firmness of a prudent ruler, that the church of Alexandria may get the benefit of my earnest resistance to the unprincipled ambition of certain people in maintaining its ancient privileges, and of my determination that all metropolitans should retain their dignity undiminished, as you will ascertain from the tenor of my letters, which I have addressed, whether to the holy Synod or to the most Christian Emperor, or to the Bishop of Constantinople; for you will perceive that I have made it my special care to allow no deviation from the rule of Faith in the Lord's churches, nor any diminution of their privileges through any individual's unscrupulousness. And as this is so, hold fast, brother, to the custom of your predecessors, and keep due authority over your comprovincial bishops, who by ancient constitution are subject to the See of Alexandria; so that they resist not ecclesiastical usage, and refuse not to meet together under your presidency, either at fixed times or when any reasonable cause demands it: and that if anything has to be discussed in a general meeting which will be to the benefit of the Church, when the brethren have thus met together, they may unanimously come to some resolution thereupon. For there is nothing which ought to recall them from this obedience, seeing that both for faith and conduct we have such good knowledge of you, brother, that we will not allow you to lose any of your predecessor's authority, nor to be slighted with impunity. Dated March 10th, in the consulship of the illustrious Aetius and Studius (454). __________________________________________________________________
[556] S. Mark was the reputed founder of the church of Alexandria. Cf. Letter IX. chap. 1.
[557] Acts iv. 12.
[558] 2 Thess. iii. 2.
[559] See chap. ii. and more particularly Lett. CXXX. chap. 3 from which it is evident that the Eutychians had sought to foist upon certain passages in the Tome a Nestorian interpretation.
[560] S. Matt. vii. 14.
[561] 1 Cor. xi. 19.
[562] Who as he himself says in the next letter, eidem ecclesiæ præfuerunt (CXXX. ii.).
[563] Who as he himself says in the next letter, eidem ecclesiæ præfuerunt (CXXX. ii.).
[564] Who as he himself says in the next letter, eidem ecclesiæ præfuerunt (CXXX. ii.). __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXXX.
To Marcian Augustus.
(Praising the orthodoxy of Proterius, advocating the public recital by him of passages bearing on the present controversy from the writings of Athanasius and others, and also of the Tome itself in a new Greek translation.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXXXI.
To Julian, Bishop of Cos.
(Telling him he has received Proterius' letter, and asking for (1) a new Greek translation of the Tome; (2) a report on the Easter difficulty of the next year (455)). __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXXXII.
From Anatolius, Bishop of Constantinople, to Leo.
(In which he complains of the intermission in their correspondence, maintains his allegiance to Rome, announces the restitution of Aetius, deprecates the charge of personal ambition, and remits the proceedings of Chalcedon for his approval.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXXXIII.
From Proterius, Bishop of Alexandria, to Leo.
(Upon the Easter difficulty of 455.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXXXIV.
To Marcian Augustus.
(Suggesting that Eutyches should be banished to a still remoter place, where he cannot do so much harm by his false teaching.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXXXV.
To Anatolius.
(In Answer to CXXXII.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXXXVI.
To Marcian Augustus.
(Simultaneously with CXXXV., on the subject of his reconciliation with Anatolius.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXXXVII.
To the same, and on the same day.
(On the subject of Easter, acknowledging the trouble Proterius has taken,--to which is joined a request that the accounts of the oeconomi [565] should be audited by priests, not lay persons.) __________________________________________________________________
[565] OEconomi(stewards) were officers appointed to manage the revenues of each diocese under the bishops' direction, when the bishops and their archdeacons had enough to do otherwise: cf. Bingham, Antiq., Bk. III. chap. xii. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXXXVIII.
To the Bishops of Gaul and Spain.
(On Easter.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXXXIX.
To Juvenal, Bishop of Jerusalem.
Leo, bishop of the city of Rome, to Juvenal, bishop of Jerusalem.
I. He rejoices over Juvenal's return to orthodoxy, though chiding him for having gone astray.
When I received your letter, beloved, which our sons Andrew the presbyter and Peter the deacon brought me, I rejoiced indeed that you had been allowed to return to the seat of your bishopric; but when all the reasons came to my remembrance, which brought you into such excessive troubles, I grieved to think you had been yourself the source of your adversities by failing in persistency of opposition to the heretics: for men can but think you were not bold enough to refute those with whom when in error you professed yourself satisfied. For the condemnation of Flavian of blessed memory, and the acceptance of the most unholy Eutyches, what was it but the denial of our Lord Jesus Christ according to the flesh? which He Himself of His great mercy caused to be overthrown, when by the authority of the holy Council of Chalcedon He brought to nought that accursed judgment of the Synod of Ephesus without debarring any of the attainted from being healed by correction. And therefore, because in the time of long-suffering, you have chosen return to wisdom rather than persistency in folly, I rejoice that you have so sought the heavenly remedies as at last to have become a defender of the Faith which is assailed by heretics. For, though no priest ought to be ignorant of that which he preaches [566] , yet any Christian living at Jerusalem is more inexcusable than all the ignorant, seeing that he is taught to understand the power of the Gospel, not only by the written word but by the witness of the places themselves, and what elsewhere may not be disbelieved, cannot there remain unseen. Why is the understanding in difficulty, where the eyes are its instructors? And why are things read or heard doubtful, where all the mysteries of man's salvation obtrude themselves upon the sight and touch? As if to each individual doubter the Lord still used His human voice and said, why are "ye disturbed and why do thoughts arise into your hearts? see My hands and My feet that it is I myself. Handle Me and see because (or that) a spirit hath not bones and flesh, as ye see Me have [567] ."
II. Let him be strengthened in his faith by the holy associations of the place where he lives.
Make use, therefore, beloved brother, of these incontrovertible proofs of the catholic Faith and support the preaching of the Evangelists by the testimony of the holy places in which you live. In your country is Bethlehem, in which the Light of Salvation sprang from the womb of the Virgin of the house of David [568] , whom wrapped in swaddling clothes the manger of the crowded inn received. In your country was the Saviour's infancy announced by angels, adored by magi, sought by Herod through the death of many infants. In your country was it that His boyhood grew, His youth ripened, and His true man's nature reached to perfect manhood by the increase of the body, not without food for hunger, not without sleep for rest, not without tears of pity, not without fear and dread: for He is one and the same Person, who in the form of God wrought great miracles of power, and in the form of a slave underwent the cruelty of the passion. This the very cross unceasingly says to you: this the stone of the sepulchre cries out, under which the Lord in human condition lay, and from which by Divine power He rose. And when you approach the mount of Olivet, to venerate the place of the Ascension, does not the angel's voice ring in your ears, which says to those who were dumb-founded at the Lord's uplifting, "ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing into heaven? this Jesus, Who was taken up from you into heaven, shall so come, as ye saw Him going into heaven [569] ."
III. The facts of the Gospel attest the Incarnation.
The true birth of Christ, therefore, is confirmed by the true cross; since He is Himself born in our flesh, Who is crucified in our flesh, which, as no sin entered into it, could not have been mortal, unless it had been that of our race. But in order that He might restore life to all, He undertook the cause of all and rendered void the force of the old bond, by paying it for all, because He alone of us all did not owe it: that, as by one man's guilt all had become sinners, so by one man's innocence all might become innocent, righteousness being bestowed upon men by Him Who had undertaken man's nature. For in no way is He outside our true bodily nature, of Whom the Evangelist in beginning his story says, "the book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham [570] ," with which the blessed Apostle Paul's teaching agrees, when he says "whose are the fathers and of whom is Christ according to the flesh, Who is above all God blessed for ever [571] ," and so to Timothy "remember," he says, "that Jesus Christ has risen from the dead, of the seed of David [572] ."
IV. Those who are still in error must be thoroughly instructed in the historic Faith.
But how many are the authorities, both in the New and Old Testaments, by which this truth is declared, as befits the antiquity of your See, you clearly understand, seeing that the belief of the Fathers and my letter written to Flavian, of holy memory, of which you yourself made mention, confirmed, as they have been, by the universal synod, are sufficient for you. And therefore it behoves you, beloved, to take heed that no one raise a murmur against the unspeakable mystery of our Redemption and Hope. But if there are any who are still in the darkness of ignorance or the discord of perversity, let them be instructed by the authority of those whose doctrine in God's Church was apostolical and clear, that they may recognize that on the Incarnation of God's Word we believe what they did, and may not by their obstinacy place themselves outside the Body of Christ, in which we died and rose with Him: because neither loyalty to the Faith nor the plan of the mystery admits that either the Godhead should be possible in its own essence, or the reality be falsified in His taking on Him of our flesh. Dated 4th September, in the consulship of the illustrious Aetius and Studius (454). __________________________________________________________________
[566] Quod prædicat, some mss. quid prædicat (what to preach): some also add quoniam qui ignorat, ignorabitur (from 1 Cor. xiv. 38).
[567] S. Luke xxiv. 38, 39.
[568] Salutifer Davidicæ Virginis partus illuxit.
[569] Acts i. 11.
[570] S. Matt. i. 1.
[571] Rom. ix. 5.
[572] 2 Tim. ii. 8. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXL.
To Julian, Bishop of Cos.
(Now that Dioscorus is dead, the peace of the Church will be more easily restored.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXLI.
To the Same.
(On several minor points of detail.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXLII.
To Marcian Augustus.
(Inter alia thanking him for the trouble he has taken about the Easter of 455.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXLIII.
To Anatolius, Bishop of Constantinople.
(Briefly asking him to extirpate all remains of heresy.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXLIV.
To Julian, Bishop of Cos.
(Speaking of rumours which have reached him of disturbances at Alexandria, and begging of him to be on the alert.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXLV.
To Leo Augustus [573] .
(Asking him to help the church of Alexandria in appointing a good bishop in place of the murdered Proterius [574] .) __________________________________________________________________
[573] Marcian died in 457, and was succeeded by Leo of Thrace.
[574] On Marcian's death there had been a rising, in which Proterius had been brutally murdered, and a monk named Timothy Ælurus set up in his stead. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXLVI.
To Anatolius, Bishop of Constantinople.
(Begging him to take precautions lest the change of Emperor should be made the occasion for fresh outbreaks of heresy.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXLVII.
To Julian, Bishop of Cos, and Aetius, the Presbyter.
(Charging him to uphold the acts of Chalcedon, and to help in choosing a good successor to Proterius.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXLVIII.
To Leo Augustus.
(Thanking him for assurances made that he would guard the interests of the Church.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter CXLIX.
To Basil, Bishop of Antioch.
(Asking him to give no countenance to the demand for a new Synod.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter CL.
To Euxitheus, Bishop of Thessalonica (and Others).
(To the same effect.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter CLI.
To Anatolius, Bishop of Constantinople.
(He is to keep the church of Constantinople free from all heresy.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter CLII.
To Julian, Bishop of Cos.
(Charging him to see that the preceding letters reach their destination.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter CLIII.
To Aetius, Presbyter of Constantinople.
(Asking him to assist in the distribution of these letters.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter CLIV.
To the Egyptian Bishops.
(See Letter CLVIII.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter CLV.
To Anatolius, Bishop of Constantinople.
(In which he incites him to watchfulness, and complains that certain of the clergy in Constantinople are in collusion with the adversary.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter CLVI.
To Leo Augustus.
Leo, the bishop, to Leo Augustus.
I. There is no need to open the question of doctrine again now.
Your clemency's letter, which was full of vigorous faith and of the light of truth, I have respectfully received, which I wish I could obey, even in the matter of my personal attendance, which your Majesty thinks necessary; for then I should gain the greater advantage from the sight of your splendour. But I believe you will approve of my view when reason has shown it preferable. For since with holy and spiritual zeal you consistently maintain the Church's peace, and nothing is more conducive to the defence of the Faith than to adhere to those things which have been incontrovertibly defined under the unceasing guidance of the Holy Spirit, we shall seem [575] to be doing our best to upset the decrees, and at the bidding of a heretic's petition to overthrow the authorities which the universal Church has adopted, and thus to remove all limits from the conflicts of Churches, and giving full rein to rebellion, to extend rather than appease contentions. And hence because after the disgraceful scenes at the synod of Ephesus, whereat through the wickedness of Dioscorus the catholic Faith was rejected, and Eutyches' heresy accepted, nothing more useful could be devised for the preservation of the Christian Faith than that the holy Synod of Chalcedon should rescind his wicked acts, and that such care should be bestowed thereat on heavenly doctrine, that nothing should linger in any one's mind in disagreement with the utterances of either the Prophets or the Apostles, such moderation of course being observed that only the persistent rebels should be cast off from the unity of the Church, and no one who was penitent should be denied pardon, what more in accordance with men's expectations or with religion will your Majesty be able to decree, than that no one henceforth be permitted to attack what has been determined by decrees which are Divine rather than human, lest they be truly worthy but to lose God's gift, who have dared to doubt concerning His Truth?
II. The proposal to reconsider the question proceeds from Antichrist or the Devil himself.
Since, therefore, the universal Church has become a rock (petra) through the building up of that original Rock [576] , and the first of the Apostles, the most blessed Peter, heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock (petra) I will build My Church [577] ," who is there who dare assail such impregnable strength, unless he be either antichrist or the devil, who, abiding unconverted in his wickedness, is anxious to sow lies by the vessels of wrath which are suited to his treachery, whilst under the false name of diligence he pretends to be in search of the Truth. And his unrestrained madness and blind wickedness has deservedly brought contempt and disrepute on himself, so that while he rages against the holy church of Alexandria with diabolical purpose, men may learn the character of those who desire to reconsider the Synod of Chalcedon. For it cannot possibly have been that an opinion was there expressed contrary to the holy Synod of Nicæa, as the heretics falsely maintain, who pretend that they hold the faith of the Nicene Council, in which our holy and venerable fathers, being assembled against Arius, affirmed not that the Lord's Flesh, but that the Son's Godhead was homoousion with the Father, whereas in the Council of Chalcedon against the blasphemy of Eutyches, it was defined that the Lord Jesus Christ took the reality of our body from the substance of the Virgin-mother.
III. All the bishops of Christendom agree with him in this.
Therefore in addressing our most Christian Emperor, who is worthy to be classed among the champions of Christ, I use the freedom of the catholic Faith and fearlessly exhort you to throw in your lot with Apostles and Prophets; firmly to despise and reject those who have deprived themselves of their Christian name, and not to let blasphemous parricides, who, it is agreed, wish to annul the Faith, discuss that Faith under treacherous pretexts. For since the Lord has enriched your clemency with such insight into His mystery, you ought unhesitatingly to consider that the kingly power has been conferred on you not for the governance of the world alone but more especially for the guardianship of the Church: that by quelling wicked attempts you may both defend that which has been rightly decreed, and restore true peace where there has been disturbance, that is to say by deposing usurpers [578] of the rights of others and reinstating the ancient Faith in the See of Alexandria, that by your reforms God's wrath may be appeased, and so He take not vengeance for their doings on a people hitherto religious, but forgive them. Set before the eyes of your heart, venerable Emperor, the fact that all the Lord's priests which are in all the world, are beseeching you on behalf of that Faith, wherein is Redemption for the whole world. In which those maintainers of the Apostolic Faith more particularly appeal to you who have presided over the Church of Alexandria, entreating your Majesty not to allow heretics who have rightfully been condemned for their perversity, to continue in their usurpation [579] ; for, whether you look at the wickedness of their error or consider the deed which their madness has perpetrated, not only are they unable to be admitted to the dignity of the priesthood, but they even deserve to be cut off from the name of Christian. For--and I entreat your Majesty's forgiveness for saying so--they to some extent dim your own splendour, most glorious Emperor, when such treacherous parricides dare to ask for that which even the guiltless could not lawfully obtain.
IV. The difference between the two petitions which have been presented to the Emperor.
Petitions have been presented to your Majesty [580] , copies of which you subjoined to your letter. But in that which comes in deprecation from the catholics, a list of signatures is contained: and because their case had good reason in it, the names of individuals, and even their dignified rank is confidently disclosed. But in that, which heretical intrusion has not feared to offer to our orthodox Emperor under the vague sanction of a motley body, all particular names are withheld for this reason, lest not only the paucity of members but also their worth might be discovered. For they think it expedient to conceal their number, though their quality is indicated, and not improperly they are afraid to proclaim their position, seeing that they deserve to be condemned. In the one document therefore is contained the petition of catholics, in the other the fictions of heretics are set forth. Here the overthrow of the Lord's priests, of the whole Christian people, and of the monasteries is bemoaned: there is displayed the continuance of gigantic wrongs, so that what ought never to have been heard of [581] is allowed to be widely extended.
V. It is a great opportunity for the Emperor to show his faith.
Is it not clear which side you ought to support and which to oppose, if the Church of Alexandria, which has always been the "house of prayer," is not now to be "a den of robbers [582] ?" For surely it is manifest that through the cruellest and maddest savagery all the light of the heavenly mysteries is extinguished. The offering of the sacrifice is cut off, the hallowing of the chrism has failed [583] , and from the murderous hands of wicked men all the mysteries have withdrawn themselves. Nor can there be any manner of doubt what decree ought to be passed on these then, who after unutterable acts of sacrilege, after shedding the blood of a most highly reputed priest, and scattering the ashes of his burnt body to be the sport of the winds of heaven, dare to demand for themselves the rights of a usurped dignity and to arraign before councils the inviolable Faith of the Apostolic teaching. Great, therefore, is the opportunity for you to add to your diadem from the Lord's hand the crown of faith also, and to triumph over the Church's foes: for, if it be matter of praise to you to vanquish the armies of opposing nations, how great will be the glory of freeing from its mad tyrant the church of Alexandria, the affliction of which is an injury to all Christians?
VI. He promises more detailed statements on the Faith subsequently, and begs him to correct certain things in which Anatolius is remiss.
But in order that my correspondence may have the effect on your Majesty of a mouth to mouth colloquy, I have seen that whatever suggestions I would make about our common Faith, must be conveyed in subsequent communications [584] . And lest the pages of this epistle reach too great a length, I have comprised in another letter what is agreeable to the maintenance of the catholic Faith, in order that, though the published statements of the Apostolic See were sufficient, yet these additional statements might also break down the snares of the heretics. For your Majesty's priestly and Apostolic mind ought to be still further kindled to righteous vengeance by this pestilential evil, which mars the purity of the church of Constantinople, in which are found certain clerics, who agree with the interpretations of the heretics and within the very heart of the Church assist them by their support [585] . In removing whom if my brother Anatolius is found remiss through too good-natured leniency, vouchsafe to show your faith by administering this remedy also to the Church, that such men be driven not only from the ranks of the clergy, but also from dwelling in the city. I commend to you your Majesty's loyal subjects, bishop Julian and presbyter Aetius, with a request that you will deign to listen quietly to their suggestions in defence of the catholic Faith, because they are in good truth men who may be found helpful to your faith in all things. Dated the 1st of Dec. in the consulship of the illustrious Constantine and Rufus (457). __________________________________________________________________
[575] i.e. by carrying out your plan. The appeal to the Emperor's orthodoxy must be regarded as diplomatic rather than accurate: for Leo was the nominee of Arianism, if not himself an Arian.
[576] Per illius principalis petræ ædificationem: here petra is apparently Christ Himself, cf. Letter XXVIII. chap. 5, and Bright's n. 64.
[577] S. Matt. xvi. 18.
[578] Sc. Timothy Ælurus.
[579] Pervasione, others read persuasione (false opinion).
[580] These had come, one from either side, as the sequel shows: that of the catholics was signed by fourteen bishops, four presbyters, and two deacons (Ball.).
[581] Audiri: others auderi (to have been ventured on).
[582] S. Luke xix. 46.
[583] Cf. Serm. LXVI. chap. 2, nobiscum est signaculum circumcisionis, sanctificatio chrismatum, consecratio sacerdotum: see Bright's n. 90, from which we learn that "this chrism was that which, from the second century, had been administered in connection with Confirmation." This rite, which had at first been part of the Baptism itself, was now apparently performed at a shorter or longer interval after Baptism according to the convenience of the Bishop: cf. Serm. LXXVII. 1.
[584] Viz. Letters CLXII., CLXIV., and esp. CLXV. (which last is in a large measure a rescription of Letter CXXIV. q.v.).
[585] Two of these are mentioned by name subsequently, e.g. in Lett. CLVII. (to Anatolius), chap. 4, viz. Atticus a presbyter and Andrew, in which chapter he blames Anatolius severely for his double-dealing (cogor vehementius de tua dissimulatione causari, etc.). __________________________________________________________________
Letter CLVII.
To Anatolius, Bishop of Constantinople.
(Urging him to active measures in certain specified matters.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter CLVIII [586] .
To the Catholic Bishops of Egypt Sojourning in Constantinople.
Leo to the catholic Egyptian bishops sojourning in Constantinople.
He encourages them in their sufferings for the Faith, and in their entreaties for redress to the Emperor.
I have before now been so saddened by tidings of the crimes committed in Alexandria, and my spirit has been so wounded by the atrocity of the deed itself, that I know not what tears to show and what lamentation to utter over it, and am fain to use the prophet's language, "who will give waters to my head and a fountain of tears to my eyes [587] ?" Yet anticipating your complaint, beloved, I have entreated our most clement and Christian Emperor for a remedy of these great evils, and by our sons and assistants Gerontius and Olympius have at a different time demanded that he should make haste to purge of a heresy already condemned the church of that city, in which so many Catholic teachers have flourished, and not allow murderous spirits whom no reverence for place or time [588] could deter from shedding their ruler's blood, to gain anything from his clemency, more particularly when they desire to reconsider the council of Chalcedon to the overthrow of the Faith. Accordingly the same reason, beloved, which drove you from your own Sees, ought to console you for your sufferings; for it is certain that afflicted souls, that suffer adversity for His name, are in no wise deprived of the Lord's protection. Bear it therefore bravely, and mindful of that country which is yours, rejoice over your present sojourn in a strange land. Abstain from grieving over your exile and indulge not in sorrow for your present weariness, ye who know that the Apostle glories even in his many perils on behalf of the Lord's Faith. You have One who knows your conflicts and has prepared the rewards of recompense. Let no one shrink from this labour, whose guerdon is to reign and [589] live for ever. Let the feet of all who fight be fixed in the halls of Jerusalem; for in the hope of that retribution they will have no cause to fear the camp nor the onsets of the enemy. Victory is never hard nor triumph difficult over the remnants of an abject foe who has been routed by the whole world alike, especially over those whose ringleaders you see already prostrate. With unceasing prayers, therefore (even as I also have not failed to do), entreat the favour of the most Christian Emperor, who in God's mercy is ready to hear: that in accordance with the letter I have sent [590] , he may strengthen the cause of the common Faith with that devotion of mind, which we are well assured he possesses, and in his piety may remove all the harmful charges which the madness of heretics has invented, and arrange for your return, beloved, and so may cause each several province and all the churches with their priests to rejoice in the unshaken peace of Christ. Dated the 1st of Dec. in the consulship of Constantine and Rufus (457). __________________________________________________________________
[586] One of three Letters, the other two being CLIV. and CLX., first printed by Quesnel on the authority apparently of a single ms. (Codex Grimanicus), and addressed to the bishops (and clergy) who had fled out of Egypt to Constantinople in consequence of the recent disturbances. Letter CLX. mentions fifteen of them by name but is not otherwise so interesting as CLVIII., the one selected for translation.
[587] Jer. ix. 1 (Vulg.).
[588] Proterius had been slain in the baptistery die Cænæ Domini (? Thursday in Holy Week).
[589] The ms. reads vel here, but I think the Ball. are right in maintaining that Leo does at times use vel for et.
[590] Viz. Lett. CLVI q.v. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CLIX.
To Nicætas, Bishop of Aquileia.
(Leo, the bishop, to Nicætas, bishop of Aquileia, greeting.)
I. Prefatory.
My son Adeodatus, deacon of our See, on returning to us has delivered your request, beloved, to receive from us the authority of the Apostolic See upon matters which seem indeed to be hard to decide, but which we must make provision for with a view to the necessities of the times that the wounds which have been inflicted by the attacks of the enemy may be healed chiefly by the agency of religion.
II. About the women who married again when their husbands were taken prisoners.
As then you say that through the disasters of war and through the grievous inroads of the enemy families have in certain cases been so broken up that the husbands have been carried off into captivity and their wives remain forsaken, and these latter thinking their own husbands either dead or never likely to be freed from their masters, have contracted another marriage under stress of loneliness, and as, now that the state of things has im proved through the Lord's help, some of those who were thought to have perished have returned, you seem, dear brother, naturally to be in doubt what ought to be settled by us about women thus joined to other husbands. But because we know it is written that "a woman is joined to a man by God [591] ," and again, we are aware of the precept that "what God hath joined, man may not put asunder [592] ," we are bound to hold that the compact of the lawful marriage must be renewed, and after the removal of the evils inflicted by the enemy, what each lawfully had must be restored to him; and we must take every pains that each should recover what is his own.
III. Whether he is blameable who has taken the prisoner's wife?
But notwithstanding let him not be held blameable and treated as the invader of another's right, who took the place of the husband, who was thought no longer alive. For thus many things which belonged to those led into captivity happened to pass into the possession of others, and yet it is altogether fair that on their return their property should be restored. And if this is duly observed in the case of slaves or of lands, or even of houses and personal goods, how much more ought it to be done in the restoration of wives, that what has been disturbed by the necessities of war may be restored by the remedy of peace?
IV. The wife must be restored to her first husband.
And, therefore, if husbands who have returned after a long captivity still feel such affection for their wives as to desire them to return to partnership [593] , that, which necessity brought about, must be passed over and judged blameless and the demands of fidelity satisfied.
V. Women must be excommunicated who refuse to return.
And if any women are so possessed by love of their later husbands as to prefer to remain with them than to return to their lawful partners, they are deservedly to be branded: so that they be even deprived of the Church's communion; for in a pardonable matter they have chosen to taint themselves with crime, showing that they have sought their own pleasure in their incontinence, when a rightful restitution could have obtained their forgiveness. Let them return then to their former state and make voluntary reparation, nor let that which a condition of necessity extorted from them be by any means turned into disgrace through evil desires; because, as those women who refuse to return to their husbands are to be held unholy, so they who return to an affection entered on with God's sanction are deservedly to be praised.
VI. About captives, who were compelled to eat of sacrificial food.
Concerning those Christians who are asserted to have been polluted with sacrificial food, while among those by whom they were taken prisoners, we have thought it right to make this reply to your enquiry, dear brother, that they be purged by a satisfactory penitence which is to be measured not so much by the duration of the process as by the intensity of the feeling. And whether their compliance was wrung from them by terror or hunger, there need be no hesitation at acquitting them, since the food was taken from fear or want, not from superstitious reverence.
VII. About those who in fear or by mistake were re-baptized.
But as to those about whom you thought, beloved, we ought likewise to be consulted who were either forced by fear or led by mistake to repeat their baptism, and now understand that they acted contrary to the ordinances of the catholic Faith, such moderation must be observed towards them that they be received into full communion with us, but not without the healing of penitence and the imposition of the bishop's hands, the length of the penance (with due regard to moderation) being left to your judgment, as you shall perceive the minds of the penitents to be disposed: in which you must not forget to consider old age, illness, and other risks. For if a man be in so dangerous a case that his life is despaired of, while he is still under penance, he should receive the gracious aid of communion by the priest's tender care.
VIII. About baptism by heretics.
For they who have received baptism from heretics, not having been previously baptized, are to be confirmed by imposition of hands with only the invocation of the Holy Ghost, because they have received the bare form of baptism without the power of sanctification [594] . And this regulation, as you know, we require to be kept in all the churches, that the font once entered may not be defiled by repetition, as the Lord says, "One Lord, one faith, one baptism." And that washing may not be polluted by repetition, but, as we have said, only the sanctification of the Holy Ghost invoked, that what no one can receive from heretics may be obtained from catholic priests. This letter of ours, which we have sent in reply to the inquiries of the brotherhood you shall bring to the knowledge of all your brethren and fellow-bishops of the province, that our authority, now that it is given, may avail for the general observance. Dated 21st March, in the consulship of Majorian Augustus (458). __________________________________________________________________
[591] Prov. xix. 14. (LXX.).
[592] Matt. xix. 6.
[593] There is little doubt, I think, that the return of the wife was at the husband's option in Leo's opinion, and could not be forced upon him.
[594] Leo repeats this injunction in Letter CLXVI. chap. 2. and Lett. CLXVII., inquiry 18. Quesnel identifies this ceremony with the right of Confirmation, but the Ballerinii are probably right in thinking this a mistake, and in identifying it with the manuum impositio in poenitentiam mentioned by Cyprian and other fathers. See Lett. CLXVI. chap. 2, n. 5b. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CLX.
(See Letter CLVIII.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter CLXI.
To the Presbyters, Deacons and Clergy of the Church of Constantinople.
(Exhorting them to remain stedfast in the Faith as fixed at Chalcedon, and to have no dealings with Atticus and Andrew unless they recant.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter CLXII.
To Leo Augustus.
By the hand of Philoxenus agens in rebus [595] . Leo the Bishop to Leo Augustus.
I. The decrees of Chalcedon and Nicæa are identical and final.
With much joy my mind exults in the Lord, and great is my cause for thankfulness, now that I perceive your clemency's most excellent faith to be in all things enlarged by the gifts of heavenly grace, and I experience by increased diligence the devotion of a priestly mind in you. For in your Majesty's communications it is beyond doubt revealed what the Holy Spirit is working through you for the good of the whole Church, and how greatly it is to be desired by the prayers of all the faithful that your empire may be everywhere extended with glory, seeing that besides your care for things temporal you so perseveringly exercise a religious foresight in the service of what is divine and eternal: to wit that the catholic Faith, which alone gives life to and alone hallows mankind, may abide in the one confession, and the dissensions which spring from the variety of earthly opinions may be driven away, most glorious Emperor, from that solid Rock, on which the city of God is built. And these gifts of God will at last be granted us from Him, if we be not found ungrateful for what has been vouchsafed, and as though what we have gained were naught, we seek not rather the very opposite. For to seek what has been discovered, to reconsider what has been completed, and to demolish what has been defined, what else is it but to return no thanks for things gained and to indulge the unholy longings of deadly lust on the food of the forbidden tree? And hence by deigning to show a more careful regard for the peace of the universal Church, you manifestly recognize what is the design of the heretics' mighty intrigues that a more careful discussion should take place between the disciples of Eutyches and Dioscorus and the emissary of the Apostolic See, as if nothing had already been defined, and that what with the glad approval of the catholic priests of the whole world was determined at the holy Synod of Chalcedon should be rendered invalid to the detriment also of the most sacred Council of Nicæa. For what in our own days at Chalcedon was determined concerning our Lord Jesus Christ's Incarnation, was also so defined at Nicæa by that mystic number of Fathers [596] , lest the confession of catholics should believe that God's Only-begotten Son was in aught unequal to the Father, or that when He was made Son of man He had not the true nature of our flesh and soul.
II. The wicked designs of heretics must be stedfastly resisted.
Therefore we must abhor and persistently avoid what heretical deceit is striving to obtain, nor must what has been well and fully defined be brought again under discussion, lest we ourselves should seem at the will of condemned men to have doubts concerning things which it is clear agree throughout with the authority of Prophets, Evangelists, and Apostles. And hence, if there are any who disagree with these heaven-inspired decisions, let them be left to their own opinions and depart from the unity of the Church with that perverse sect which they have chosen. For it can in no wise be that men who dare to speak against divine mysteries are associated in any communion with us. Let them pride themselves on the emptiness of their talk and boast of the cleverness of their arguments against the Faith: we are pleased to obey the Apostle's precepts, where he says, "See that no one deceive you with philosophy and vain seductions of men [597] ." For according to the same Apostle, "if I build up those things which I destroyed, I prove myself a transgressor [598] ," and subject myself to those conditions of punishment which not only the authority of Prince Marcian of blessed memory, but I myself also by my consent have accepted. Because as you have justly and truthfully maintained perfection admits of no increase nor fulness of addition. And hence, since I know you, venerable Prince, imbued as you are with the purest light of truth, waver in no part of the Faith, but with just and perfect judgment distinguish right from wrong, and separate what is to be embraced from what is to be rejected, I beseech you not to think that my humility is to be blamed for want of confidence, since my cautiousness is not only in the interests of the universal Church but also for the furtherance of your own glory, that under your reign the unscrupulousness of heretics may not seem to be advanced and the security of catholics disturbed.
III. He promises to send envoys not to discuss with the Eutychians, but to explain the Faith to the Emperor.
Although, therefore, I am very confident of the piety of your heart in all things, and perceive that through the Spirit of God dwelling in you, you are sufficiently instructed, nor can any error delude your faith, yet I will endeavour to follow your bidding so far as to send certain of my brothers to represent my person before you, and to set forth what the Apostolic rule of Faith is, although, as I have said, it is well known to you, in all things making it clear and certain that they are not in any way to be reckoned among catholics, who do not accept the definitions of the venerable Synod of Nicæa or the ordinances of the holy Council of Chalcedon, inasmuch as it is evident the holy decrees of both proceed from the Evangelical and Apostolical source, and whatever is not of Christ's watering is like a snake-poisoned draught [599] . Your Majesty should understand beforehand, most venerable Emperor, that those whom I undertake to send will come from the Apostolic See, not to fight with the enemies of the Faith nor to strive against any, because of matters already settled as it has pleased God both at Nicæa and at Chalcedon we dare not enter upon any discussion, as if what so great an authority has fixed by the Holy Spirit were doubtful or weak.
IV. The heretics must be forced to give up their usurpations and left to the judgment of God.
But we do not refuse the assistance of our ministry for the instruction of our little ones, who after being fed with milk desire to be satisfied with more solid food: and as we do not scorn the simple folk, so we will have no dealings with rebel heretics, remembering the Lord's command, who says, "Give not that which is holy to the dogs, nor cast your pearls before swine [600] ." Surely it is altogether unworthy and unjust to admit to freedom of discussion men whom the Holy Spirit describes in the words of the prophet, "the sons of the stranger have lied unto me [601] ." For even though they resist not the Gospel, yet they have shown themselves to be of those of whom it is written "they profess that they know God but by their deeds they deny Him [602] ," while the blood of just Abel [603] still cries against wicked Cain [604] , who being rebuked by the Lord did not set quietly about his repentance but burst forth into murder. Whose punishment we wish to be reserved for the Lord's judgment in such a way that, unprincipled plunderer and blood-thirsty murderer as he is, he may be thrown back upon himself and relinquish what is ours. We pray you also not to suffer the lamentable captivity of the holy church of Alexandria to be any further prolonged, which by the help of your faith and Justice ought to be restored to its liberty, that through all the cities of Egypt the dignity of the Fathers and their priestly rights may be restored. Dated 21st of March in the consulship of Leo and Majorian Augusti (458). __________________________________________________________________
[595] Cf. Lett. XCV. n. 6.
[596] The number was 318: cf. Lett. CVI. 2, where the exact number is quoted and the explanation perhaps is given of Leo's epithet "mystic" here applied to it.
[597] Col. ii. 8.
[598] Gal. ii. 18.
[599] Poculi esse viperei.
[600] S. Matt. vii. 6.
[601] Ps. xviii. 44 (Vulg.).
[602] Tit. i. 16.
[603] Sc. in the persons of Proterius and Timothy Ælurus.
[604] Sc. in the persons of Proterius and Timothy Ælurus. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CLXIII.
To Anatolius, Bishop of Constantinople. By Patritius the Deacon the Deacon.
(Glorying over the harshness of his former letter, to which Anatolius had objected, but persisting that he is not satisfied with the explanation Atticus had furnished of his orthodoxy.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter CLXIV. [605]
To Leo Augustus.
Leo, the bishop, to Leo Augustus.
I. He sends envoys but deprecates any fresh discussion of the Faith.
Rejoicing that it has been proved to me by many clear proofs with what earnestness you consult the interests of the universal Church, I have not delayed to obey your Majesty's commands on the first opportunity, by despatching Domitian and Geminian my brothers and fellow-bishops, who in furtherance of my earnest prayers, shall entreat you for the peaceful acceptance of the gospel-teaching and obtain the liberty of the Faith in which through the instruction of the Holy Spirit you yourself are so conspicuously eminent, now that the enemies of Christ are driven far away, who even if they had wished to conceal their madness, could not lie hid, because the holy simplicity of the Lord's flock is very different from the pretences of beasts who hide themselves in sheeps' clothing, nor can they creep in by hypocrisy now that their exceeding madness has revealed them. Recognize, therefore, august and venerable Emperor, how that you are called by Divine providence to the guardianship of the whole world, and understand what aid you owe to your Mother, the Church, who makes especial boast of you. Disputes that are ended must not be allowed to rise with renewed vigour against the triumphs of the Almighty's right hand, especially when this can in no wise be allowed to heretics, whose attempts have long ago been condemned and the labours of the faithful have a just claim to this result, that all the fulness of the Church shall remain secure in the completeness of her unity, and that nothing whatever of what has been well laid down shall be reconsidered, because, after constitutions have been legitimately framed under Divine guidance, to wish still to wrangle is the sign not of a peace-making but of a rebellious spirit, as says the Apostle, "for to strive with words is profitable for nothing, but for the subverting of them that hear [606] ."
II. In matters of Faith human rhetoric is out of place.
For if it be always free for human fancies to assert themselves in dispute, there never will be wanting men who will dare to oppose the Truth, and to put their trust in the glib utterances of this world's wisdom, whereas the Christian Faith and wisdom knows from the teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ Himself how strictly it ought to shun this most harmful vanity. For when Christ was about to summon all nations to the illumination of the Faith, He chose those who were to devote themselves to the preaching of the Gospel not from among philosophers or orators, but took humble fishermen as the instruments by which He would reveal Himself, lest the heavenly teaching, which was of itself full of mighty power, should seem to need the aid of words. And hence the Apostle protests and says, "For Christ sent me not to baptize but to preach the Gospel, not in wisdom of words lest the cross of Christ should be made void; for the word of the cross is to them indeed that perish foolishness, but to those which are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and the prudence of the prudent will I reject. Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the inquirer of this age? has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world [607] ?" For rhetorical arguments and clever debates of man's device make their chief boast in this, that in doubtful matters which are obscured by the variety of opinions they can induce their hearers to accept that view which each has chosen for his own genius and eloquence to bring forward; and thus it happens that what is maintained with the greatest eloquence is reckoned the truest. But Christ's Gospel needs not this art; for in it the true teaching stands revealed by its own light: nor is there any seeking for that which shall please the ear, when to know Who is the Teacher is sufficient for true faith.
III. Eutyches' dogma is condemned by the testimony of Scripture and cannot further be entertained.
But nothing severs those who are deceived by their own inventions, from the light of the Gospel so much as their not thinking that the Lord's Incarnation appertains in a true sense to man's, that is, our, nature: as if it were unworthy of God's glory that the majesty of the impassible Word should have taken the reality of human flesh, whereas men's salvation could not otherwise have been restored had not He Who is in the form of God deigned also to take the form of a slave. And hence since the holy Synod of Chalcedon, which was attended by all the provinces of the Roman world and obtained universal acceptance for its decisions, and is in complete harmony therein with the most sacred council of Nicæa, has cut off all the wicked followers of the Eutychian dogma from the body of the catholic communion, how shall any of the lapsed regain the peace of the church, without purging himself by a full course of penitence? For what licence can be granted them for discussing, when they have deserved to be condemned by a just and holy judgment, so that they might most truly fall under that sentence of the blessed Apostle, wherewith at the very outset of the infant Church he overthrew the enemies of Christ's cross, saying: "every spirit which confesses Jesus Christ to have come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit which dissolves Jesus is not of God, but this is antichrist [608] ." And this pre-existent teaching of the Holy Ghost we must faithfully and stedfastly make use of, lest, by admitting the discussions of such men the authority of the divinely inspired decrees be diminished, when in all parts of your kingdom and in all borders of the earth that Faith which was confirmed at Chalcedon is being established on the surest basis of peace, nor is any one worthy of the name of Christian who cuts himself off from communion with us. Of whom the Apostle says, "a man that is heretical after a first and a second admonition, avoid, knowing that such a one is perverse and condemned by his own judgment [609] ."
IV. If the Divine mercy is to be exercised, the heretics must cease entirely from the error of their ways.
What therefore the unholy parricide has perpetrated by seizing on the holy Church and cruelly murdering its very ruler, cannot be expiated by man's forgiveness, unless He Who alone can rightly punish such things, and alone can of His unspeakable mercy remit them, be propitiated. But though we are not anxious for vengeance, we cannot in any way be allied with the devil's servants. Yet if we learn they are quitting the ranks of heresy, repenting them of their error and turning from the weapons of discord to the lamentations of sorrow, we also can intercede for them, lest they perish for ever, thus following the example of the Lord's loving-kindness, who, when nailed to the wood of the cross prayed for His persecutors, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do [610] ." And that Christian love may do this profitably for its enemies, wicked heretics must cease to harass God's ever religious and ever devout Church; they must not dare to disturb the souls of the simple by their falsehoods, to the end that, where in all former times the purest faith has flourished, the teaching of the Gospel and of the Apostles may now also have free course; because we also imitating, so far as we can, the Divine mercy desire no one to be punished by justice, but all to be released by mercy.
V. Let him restore the refugee clergy and laity and utterly reject those who persist in heresy.
I entreat your clemency, listen to the suggestions of my brethren already mentioned, whom, as I some time ago have said in a former letter [611] , I have sent not to wrangle with the condemned, but merely to intercede with you for the stability of the catholic Faith. And in accordance with your faith in and regard for the Divine Majesty this especially you should grant, that completely setting aside the contentions of heretics you should deign to bestow a merciful attention on those who have fallen upon such evil days, and, after restoring the liberty of the church of Alexandria to its pristine state, should set up there a bishop who, upholding the decrees of the Synod of Chalcedon and agreeing with the ordinances of the Gospel, shall be able to restore peace among that greatly disturbed people. Those bishops and clergy also whom the unholy parricide has driven out of their churches, should be recalled at your Majesty's command, all others also, whom a like maliciousness has banished from their dwellings, being restored to their former estate, to the end that we may have due cause fully and perfectly to rejoice in the grace of God and your faith without any further noise of strife. For if any one is so forgetful of the Christian hope and his own salvation as to venture by any dispute to assail the Evangelical and Apostolical decrees of the holy Synod of Chalcedon, thus overthrowing the most sacred Council of Nicæa also, him with all heretics who have held blasphemous and abominable views on the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ we condemn by a like anathema and equal curse, so that, without refusing the remedy of repentance to those who make full and legitimate atonement, the sentence of the Synod, which is based on truth, may rest upon those who still resist. Dated 17th of August, in the consulship of Leo and Majorian Augusti (458). __________________________________________________________________
[605] Portions of this letter are found quoted by various ancient Fathers, e.g. by Popes Vigilius and Pelagius II. in the sixth cent; by Facundus, bishop of Hermiæ, in the same century, and almost one half of the whole by Prudentius, bishop of Troyes (ninth cent.) in his famous treatise on Predestination against John Scotus Erigena. Quesnel, however, appears to have been the first to print it as a whole ex codice Grimanico; after which the Ball. also discovered it in the Ratisbon ms.
[606] Loosely quoted from 2 Tim. ii. 14.
[607] 1 Cor. i. 17-20.
[608] 1 John iv. 2, 3. For the reading solvit (dissolves), cf. Lett. XXVIII. (Tome), chap. 5 and note.
[609] Tit. iii. 10, 11.
[610] S. Luke xxiii. 34.
[611] Viz. Lett. CLXII. chap. iii. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CLXV.
To Leo Augustus.
[This letter, which is sometimes called the Second Tome, contains the detailed statement of the catholic doctrine of the Incarnation, which Leo had promised the Emperor in Letter CLVI. It consists of 9 chapters, but, as chaps. iii. to viii. and parts of ii. and ix. are almost identical in language with Letter CXXIV., already given in full, I have not thought it necessary to reproduce the letter here. At the end a long series of quotations from Hilary, Ambrose and other Fathers bearing upon the doctrine are also added, but these also are dispensed with in accordance with our general practice, as we are now presenting Leo and no one else to the reader.] __________________________________________________________________
Letter CLXVI.
To Neo, Bishop of Ravenna.
Leo, the bishop, to Neo, bishop of Ravenna, greeting.
I. Those, who being taken captives in infancy cannot remember or bring witnesses of their baptism, must not be denied this sacrament.
We have indeed frequently, God's Spirit instructing us, steadied the brethren's hearts, when they were tottering on the slippery places of doubtful questions, by formulating an answer either out of the teaching of the Holy Scriptures or from the rules of the Fathers: but lately in Synod a new and hitherto unheard-of subject of debate has arisen. For at the instance of certain brethren we have discovered that some of the prisoners of war, on their free return to their own homes, such to wit as went into captivity at an age when they could have no sure knowledge of anything, crave the healing waters of baptism, but in the ignorance of infancy cannot remember whether they have received the mystery and rites of baptism, and that therefore in this uncertainty of defective recollection their souls are brought into jeopardy, so long as under a show of caution they are denied a grace, which is withheld, because it is thought to have been bestowed. And so, since certain brethren in a not unjustifiable fear have hesitated to perform the rites of the Lord's mystery, at a synodal meeting, as we have said, we have received a formal request for advice on this matter, and in carefully discussing it, we have desired to weigh each members opinion, and to handle it in so cautious a manner as to arrive with certainty at the truth by making use of the knowledge of many. Consequently the same things, which have come into our mind by the Divine inspiration, have received the assent and confirmation of a large number of the brethren. And so we are bound before all things to take heed lest, while we hold fast to a certain show of caution, we incur a loss of souls who are to be regenerated. For who is so given over to suspicions as to decide that to be true which without any evidence he suspects by mere guesswork? And so wherever the man himself who is anxious for the new birth does not recollect his baptism, and no one can bear witness about him being unaware of his consecration to God, there is no possibility for sin to creep in, seeing that, so far as their knowledge goes, neither the bestower or receiver of the consecration is guilty. We know indeed that an unpardonable offence is committed, whenever in accordance with the institutions of heretics which the holy Fathers have condemned, any one is forced twice to enter the font, which is but once available for those who are to be reborn, in opposition to the Apostle's teaching [612] , which speaks to us of One Godhead in Trinity, one confession in Faith, one sacrament in Baptism. But in this nothing similar is to be apprehended, since, what is not known to have been done at all, cannot come under the charge of repetition. And so, whenever such a case occurs, first sift it by careful investigation, and spend a considerable time, unless his last end is near, in inquiring whether there be absolutely no one who by his testimony can assist the other's ignorance. And when it is established that the man who requires the sacrament of baptism is prevented by a mere baseless suspicion, let him come boldly to obtain the grace, of which he is conscious of no trace in himself. Nor need we fear thus to open the door of salvation which has not been shown to have been entered before.
II. Baptism by heretics must not be invalidated by second baptism.
But if it is established that a man has been baptized by heretics, on him the mystery of regeneration must in no wise be repeated, but only that conferred which was wanting before, so that he may obtain the power of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of the Bishop's hands [613] . This decision, beloved brother, we wish to be brought to the knowledge of you all generally, to the end that God's mercy may not be refused to those who desire to be saved through undue timidity. Dated the 24th of Oct., in the consulship of Majorian Augustus (458). __________________________________________________________________
[612] Viz. Eph. iv. 5. It will be remembered that the practice of rebaptism was very definitely condemned in the times of S. Cyprian (3rd cent.), who himself went wrong in advocating it in the case of heretics.
[613] See n. 2 to Lett. CLIX. chap. 8. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CLXVII [614] .
To Rusticus, Bishop of Gallia Narbonensis, with the replies to his Questions on various points.
Leo, the bishop, to Rusticus, bishop of Gallia Narbonensis.
I. He exhorts him to act with moderation towards two bishops who have offended him.
Your letter, brother, which Hermes your archdeacon [615] brought, I have gladly received; the number of different matters it contains makes it indeed lengthy, but not so tedious to me on a patient perusal that any point should be passed over, amid the cares that press upon me from all sides. And hence having grasped the gist of your allegation and reviewed what took place at the inquiry of the bishops and leading men [616] , we gather that Sabinian and Leo, presbyters, lacked confidence in your [617] action, and that they have no longer any just cause for complaint, seeing that of their own accord they withdrew from the discussion that had been begun. What form or what measure of justice you ought to mete out to them I leave to your own discretion advising you, however, with the exhortation of love that to the healing of the sick you ought to apply spiritual medicine, and that remembering the Scripture which says "be not over just [618] ," you should act with mildness towards these who in zeal for chastity seem to have exceeded the limits of vengeance, lest the devil, who deceived the adulterers, should triumph over the avengers of the adultery.
II. He expostulates with him for wishing to give up his office, which would imply distrust of God's promises.
But I am surprised, beloved, that you are so disturbed by opposition in consequence of offences, from whatever cause arising, as to say you would rather be relieved of the labours of your bishopric, and live in quietness and ease than continue in the office committed to you. But since the Lord says, "blessed is he who shall persevere unto the end [619] ," whence shall come this blessed perseverance, except from the strength of patience? For as the Apostle proclaims, "All who would live godly in Christ shall suffer persecution [620] ." And it is not only to be reckoned persecution, when sword or fire or other active means are used against the Christian religion; for the direst persecution is often inflicted by nonconformity of practice and persistent disobedience and the barbs of ill-natured tongues: and since all the members of the Church are always liable to these attacks, and no portion of the faithful are free from temptation, so that a life neither of ease nor of labour is devoid of danger, who shall guide the ship amidst the waves of the sea, if the helmsman quit his post? Who shall guard the sheep from the treachery of wolves, if the shepherd himself be not on the watch? Who, in fine, shall resist the thieves and robbers, if love of quietude draw away the watchman that is set to keep the outlook from the strictness of his watch? One must abide, therefore, in the office committed to him and in the task undertaken. Justice must be stedfastly upheld and mercy lovingly extended. Not men, but their sins must be hated [621] . The proud must be rebuked, the weak must be borne with; and those sins which require severer chastisement must be dealt with in the spirit not of vindictiveness but of desire to heal. And if a fiercer storm of tribulation fall upon us, let us not be terror-stricken as if we had to overcome the disaster in our own strength, since both our Counsel and our Strength is Christ, and through Him we can do all things, without Him nothing, Who, to confirm the preachers of the Gospel and the ministers of the mysteries, says, "Lo, I am with you all the days even to the consummation of the age [622] ." And again He says, "these things I have spoken unto you that in me ye may have peace. In this world ye shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer, because I have overcome the world [623] ." The promises, which are as plain as they can be, we ought not to let any causes of offence to weaken, lest we should seem ungrateful to God for making us His chosen vessels, since His assistance is powerful as His promises are true.
III. Many of the questions raised could be more easily settled in a personal interview than on paper.
On those points of inquiry, beloved, which your archdeacon has brought me separately written out, it would be easier to arrive at conclusions on each point face to face, if you could grant us the advantage of your presence. For since some questions seem to exceed the limits of ordinary diligence, I perceive that they are better suited to conversation than to writing: for as there are certain things which can in no wise be controverted, so there are many things which require to be modified either by considerations of age or by the necessities of the case; always provided that we remember in things which are doubtful or obscure, that must be followed which is found to be neither contrary to the commands of the Gospel nor opposed to the decrees of the holy Fathers.
Question I. Concerning a presbyter or deacon who falsely claims to be a bishop, and those whom they have ordained.
Reply. No consideration permits men to be reckoned among bishops who have not been elected by the clergy, demanded by the laity, and consecrated by the bishops of the province with the assent of the metropolitan [624] . And hence, since the question often arises concerning advancement unduly obtained, who need doubt that that can in no wise be which is not shown to have been conferred on them. And if any clerics have been ordained by such false bishops in those churches which have bishops of their own, and their ordination took place with the consent and approval of the proper bishops, it may be held valid on condition that they continue in the same churches. Otherwise it must be held void, not being connected with any place nor resting on any authority.
Question II. Concerning a presbyter or deacon, who on his crime being known asks for public penance, whether it is to be granted him by laying on of hands?
Reply. It is contrary to the custom of the Church that they who have been dedicated to the dignity of the presbyterate or the rank of the diaconate, should receive the remedy of penitence by laying on of hands for any crime; which doubtless descends from the Apostles' tradition, according to what is written, "If a priest shall have sinned, who shall pray for him [625] ?" And hence such men when they have lapsed in order to obtain God's mercy must seek private retirement, where their atonement may be profitable as well as adequate.
Question III. Concerning those who minister at the altar and have wives, whether they may lawfully cohabit with them?
Reply. The law of continence is the same for the ministers [626] of the altar as for bishops and priests, who when they were laymen or readers, could lawfully marry and have offspring. But when they reached to the said ranks, what was before lawful ceased to be so. And hence, in order that their wedlock may become spiritual instead of carnal, it behoves them not to put away their wives but to "have them as though they had them not [627] ," whereby both the affection of their wives may be retained and the marriage functions cease.
Question IV. Concerning a presbyter or deacon who has given his unmarried daughter in marriage to a man who already had a woman joined to him, by whom he had also had children.
Reply. Not every woman that is joined to a man is his wife, even as every son is not his father's heir. But the marriage bond is legitimate between the freeborn and between equals: this was laid down by the Lord long before the Roman law had its beginning. And so a wife is different from a concubine, even as a bondwoman from a freewoman. For which reason also the Apostle in order to show the difference of these persons quotes from Genesis, where it is said to Abraham, "Cast out the bondwoman and her son: for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with my son Isaac [628] ." And hence, since the marriage tie was from the beginning so constituted as apart from the joining of the sexes to symbolize the mystic union of Christ and His Church, it is undoubted that that woman has no part in matrimony, in whose case it is shown that the mystery of marriage has not taken place. Accordingly a clergyman of any rank who has given his daughter in marriage to a man that has a concubine, must not be considered to have given her to a married man, unless perchance the other woman should appear to have become free, to have been legitimately dowered and to have been honoured by public nuptials.
Question V. Concerning young women who have married men that have concubines.
Reply. Those who are joined to husbands by their fathers' will are free from blame, if the women whom their husbands had were not in wedlock.
Question VI. Concerning those who leave the women by whom they have children and take wives.
Reply. Seeing that the wife is different from the concubine, to turn a bondwoman from one's couch and take a wife whose free birth is assured, is not bigamy but an honourable proceeding.
Question VII. Concerning those who in sickness accept terms of penitence, and when they have recovered, refuse to keep them.
Reply. Such men's neglect is to be blamed but not finally to be abandoned, in order that they may be incited by frequent exhortations to carry out faithfully what under stress of need they asked for. For no one is to be despaired of so long as he remain in this body, because sometimes what the diffidence of age puts off is accomplished by maturer counsels.
Question VIII. Concerning those who on their deathbed promise repentance and die before receiving communion.
Reply. Their cause is reserved for the judgment of God, in Whose hand it was that their death was put off until the very time of communion. But we cannot be in communion with those, when dead, with whom when alive we were not in communion.
Question IX. Concerning those who under pressure of great pain ask for penance to be granted them, and when the presbyter has come to give what they seek, if the pain has abated somewhat, make excuses and refuse to accept what is offered.
Reply. This tergiversation cannot proceed from contempt of the remedy but from fear of falling into worse sin. Hence the penance which is put off, when it is more earnestly sought must not be denied in order that the wounded soul may in whatever way attain to the healing of absolution.
Question X. Concerning those who have professed repentance, if they begin to go to law in the forum.
Reply. To demand just debts is indeed one thing and to think nothing of one's own property from the perfection of love is another. But one who craves pardon for unlawful doings ought to abstain even from many things that are lawful, as says the Apostle, "all things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient [629] ." Hence, if the penitent has a matter which perchance he ought not to neglect, it is better for him to have recourse to the judgment of the Church than of the forum.
Question XI. Concerning those who during or after penance transact business.
Reply. The nature of their gains either excuses or condemns the trafficker, because there is an honourable and a base kind of profit. Notwithstanding it is more expedient for the penitent to suffer loss than to be involved in the risks of trafficking, because it is hard for sin not to come into transactions between buyer and seller.
Question XII. Concerning those who return to military service after doing penance.
Reply. It is altogether contrary to the rules of the Church to return to military service in the world after doing penance, as the Apostle says, "No soldier in God's service entangles himself in the affairs of the world [630] ." Hence he is not free from the snares of the devil who wishes to entangle himself in the military service of the world.
Question XIII. Concerning those who after penance take wives or join themselves to concubines.
Reply. If a young man under fear of death or the dangers of captivity has done penance, and afterwards fearing to fall into youthful incontinence has chosen to marry a wife lest he should be guilty of fornication, he seems to have committed a pardonable act, so long as he has known no woman whatever save his wife. Yet herein we lay down no rule, but express an opinion as to what is less objectionable. For according to a true view of the matter nothing better suits him who has done penance than continued chastity both of mind and body.
Question XIV. Concerning monks who take to military service or to marriage.
Reply. The monk's vow being undertaken of his own will or wish cannot be given up without sin. For that which a man has vowed to God, he ought also to pay. Hence he who abandons his profession of a single life and betakes himself to military service or to marriage, must make atonement and clear himself publicly, because although such service may be innocent and the married state honourable, it is transgression to have forsaken the higher choice.
Question XV. Concerning young women who have worn the religious habit for some time but have not been dedicated, if they afterwards marry.
Reply. Young women, who without being forced by their parents' command but of their own free-will have taken the vow and habit of virginity, if afterwards they choose wedlock, act wrongly, even though they have not received dedication: of which they would doubtless not have been defrauded, if they had abided by their vow.
Question XVI. Concerning those who have been left as infants by christian parents, if no proof of their baptism can be found whether they ought to be baptized?
Reply. If no proof exist among their kinsfolk and relations, nor among the clergy or neighbours whereby those, about whom the question is raised, may be proved to have been baptized, steps must be taken for their regeneration: lest they evidently perish; for in their case reason does not allow that what is not shown to have been done should seem to be repeated.
Question XVII. Concerning those who have been captured by the enemy and are not aware whether they have been baptized but know they were several times taken to church by their parents, whether they can or ought to be baptized when they come back to Roman territory [631] ?
Reply. Those who can remember that they used to go to church with their parents can remember whether they received what used to be given to their parents [632] . But if this also has escaped their memory, it seems that that must be bestowed on them which is not known to have been bestowed because there can be no presumptuous rashness where the most loyal carefulness has been exercised.
Question XVIII. Concerning those who have come from Africa or Mauretania and know not in what sect they were baptized, what ought to be done in their case [633] ?
Reply. These persons are not doubtful of their baptism, but profess ignorance as to the faith of those who baptized them: and hence since they have received the form of baptism in some way or other, they are not to be baptized but are to be united to the catholics by imposition of hands, after the invocation of the Holy Spirit's power, which they could not receive from heretics.
Question XIX. Concerning those who after being baptized in infancy were captured by the Gentiles, and lived with them after the manner of the Gentiles, when they come back to Roman territory as still young men, if they seek Communion, what shall be done?
Reply. If they have only lived with Gentiles and eaten sacrificial food, they can be purged by fasting and laying on of hands, in order that for the future abstaining from things offered to idols, they may be partakers of Christ's mysteries. But if they have either worshipped idols or been polluted with manslaughter or fornication, they must not be admitted to communion, except by public penance. __________________________________________________________________
[614] The date of this important letter has been variously conjectured, Quesnel assigning it to the years 442-4, Sirmond and Baluze to 452, and the Ball. preferring 458 or 9.
[615] In an inscription quoted from Gruter and Baluze by Quesnel, Hermes is mentioned as diacunus to Rusticus episcopus. He was afterwards made bp. of Biterra, but being unfairly expelled by that city, he succeeded Rusticus in Narbonensis.
[616] Honorati.
[617] Tuæ, others suæ (the bishops).
[618] Eccl. vii. 17 (A.V. overwicked).
[619] S. Matt. xxiv. 13.
[620] 2 Tim. iii. 12.
[621] The thought of this fine passage is more fully worked out in Sermon XLVIII., chaps. 2 and 3. Cf. esp. the remark, bellum vitiis potius quam hominibus indicunt, "nulli malum pro malo reddentes" sed correctionem peccantium semper optantes.
[622] S. Matt. xxviii. 20.
[623] S. John xvi. 33.
[624] The same requisites of ordination of bishops are laid down in Lett. X. chap. 6.
[625] 1 Sam. ii. 25.
[626] The order of sub-deacons (acc. to Quesnel) is here particularly meant: cf. Lett. XIV. chap. 4. The readers (lectores) mentioned below were of course one of the Minor Orders of clergy: cf. Bingham, Antiq. Bk. V. chap. iii.
[627] 1 Cor. vii. 29. This was also provided by the Apostolic canons (quoted by Quesnel), episcopus aut presbyter uxorem propriam nequaquam sub obteniu religionis abiciat.
[628] Gal. iv. 30, from Gen. xxi. 10.
[629] 1 Cor. vi. 12.
[630] 2 Tim. ii. 4.
[631] On these points, cf. Letter CLXVI., to Neo, bp. of Ravenna.
[632] Viz. the sacred elements of the Eucharist.
[633] On these points, cf. Letter CLXVI., to Neo, bp. of Ravenna. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CLXVIII.
To all the Bishops of Campania, Samnium and Picenum.
(Rebuking them first for performing baptisms without due preparation or sufficient cause on ordinary saints'-days (Easter and Whitsuntide being the only recognized times), and secondly for requiring from penitents that a list of their offences should be read out publicly, a practice which is in many ways objectionable.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter CLXIX.
To Leo Augustus.
Leo, the bishop, to Leo Augustus.
I. He heartily thanks the Emperor for what he has done, and asks him to complete the work in any way he can.
If we should seek to reward your Majesty's glorious resolution in defence of the Faith with all the praise that the greatness of the issue demands, we should be found unequal to the task of giving thanks and celebrating the joy of the universal Church with our feeble tongue. But His worthier recompense awaits your acts and deserts, in whose cause you have shown so excellent a zeal, and are now triumphing gloriously over the attainment of the wished-for end. Your clemency must know therefore that all the churches of God join in praising you and rejoicing that the unholy parricide has been cast off from the neck of the Alexandrine church, and that God's people, on whom the abominable robber has been so great a burden, restored to the ancient liberty of the Faith, can now be recalled into the way of salvation by the preaching of faithful priests, when it sees the whole hotbed of pestilence done away with in the person of the originator himself. Now therefore, because you have accomplished this by firm resolution and stedfast will, complete your tale of work for the Faith by passing such decrees as shall be well-pleasing to God in favour of this city's catholic ruler [634] , who is tainted by no trace of the heresy now so often condemned: lest, perchance, the wound apparently healed but still lurking beneath the scar should grow, and the Christian laity, which by your public action has been freed from the perversity of heretics, should again fall a prey to deadly poison.
II. Good works as well as integrity of faith is required in a priest.
But you see, venerable Emperor, and clearly understand, that in the person, whose excommunication is contemplated, it is not only the integrity of his faith that must be considered; for even if that could be purged by any punishments and confessions, and completely restored by any conditions, yet the wicked and bloody deeds that have been committed can never be done away by the protestations of plausible words: because in God's pontiff, and particularly in the priest of so great a church, the sound of the tongue and the utterance of the lips is not enough, and nothing is of avail, if God makes proclamation with His voice and the mind is convicted of blasphemy. For of such the Holy Ghost speaks by the Apostle, "having an appearance of godliness, but denying the power thereof," and again elsewhere, "they profess that they know God, but in deeds they deny Him [635] ." And hence, since in every member of the Church both the integrity of the true Faith and abundance of good works is looked for, how much more ought both these things to predominate in the chief pontiff, because the one without the other cannot be in union with the Body of Christ.
III. Timothy's request for indulgence on the score of orthodoxy must not be allowed.
Nor need we now state all that makes Timothy accursed, since what has been done through him and on his account, has abundantly and conspicuously come to the knowledge of the whole world, and whatever has been perpetrated by an unruly mob against justice, all rests on his head, whose wishes were served by its mad hands. And hence, even if in his profession of faith he neglects nothing, and deceives us in nothing, it best consorts with your glory absolutely to exclude him from this design of his [636] , because in the bishop of so great a city the universal Church ought to rejoice with holy exultation, so that the true peace of the Lord may be glorified not only by the preaching of the Faith, but also by the example of men's conduct. Dated 17th of June, in the consulship of Magnus and Apollonius (460). (By the hand of Philoxenus agens in rebus [637] .) __________________________________________________________________
[634] This is another Timothy surnamed Solophaciolus, supposed to be the same as that Timotheos presbyter et oeconomus Ecclesiæ, mentioned among the Egyptian refugees who petitioned the Emperor against Ælurus.
[635] 2 Tim. iii. 5, and Tit. i. 16.
[636] Apparently to be allowed to reside in Constantinople (or perhaps at this stage to remain in Alexandria).
[637] See Lett. CLXII. n. 2a. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CLXX.
To Gennadius, Bishop of Constantinople [638] .
(Complaining of Timothy Ælurus having been allowed to come to Constantinople, and saying that there is no hope of his restitution.) __________________________________________________________________
[638] He had succeeded to the see on the death of Anatolius in 458. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CLXXI.
To Timothy, Bishop of Alexandria.
Leo, the bishop, to Timothy, catholic bishop of the church of Alexandria.
I. He congratulates him on his election, and bids him win back wanderers to the fold.
It is clearly apparent from the brightness of the sentiment quoted by the Apostle, that "all things work together for good to them that love God [639] ," and by the dispensation of God's pity, where adversities are received, there also prosperity is given. This the experience of the Alexandrine church shows, in which the moderation and long suffering of the humble has laid up for themselves great store in return for their patience: because "the Lord is nigh them that are of a contrite heart, and shall save those that are humble in spirit [640] ," our noble Prince's faith being glorified in all things, through whom "the right-hand of the Lord hath done great acts [641] ," in preventing the abomination of antichrist any longer occupying the throne of the blessed Fathers; whose blasphemy has hurt no one more than himself, because although he has induced some to be partners of his guilt, yet he has inexpiably stained himself with blood. And hence concerning that which under the direction of Faith your election, brother, by the clergy, and the laity, and all the faithful, has brought about, I assure you that the whole of the Lord's Church rejoices with me, and it is my strong desire that the Divine pity will in its loving-kindness confirm this joy with manifold signs of grace, your own devotion ministering thereto in all things, so that you may sedulously win over, through the Church's prayers, those also who have hitherto resisted the Truth, to reconciliation with God, and, as a zealous ruler, bring them into union with the mystic body of the catholic Faith, whose entirety admits of no division, imitating that true and gentle Shepherd, who laid down His life for His sheep, and, when one sheep wandered, drove it not back with the lash, but carried it back to the fold on His own shoulders.
II. Let him be watchful against heresy and send frequent reports to Rome.
Take heed, then, dearly beloved brother, lest any trace of either Nestorius' or Eutyches' error be found in God's people: because "no one can lay any foundation except that which is laid, which is Christ Jesus [642] ;" who would not have reconciled the whole world to God the Father, had He not by the regeneration of Faith adopted us all in the reality of our flesh [643] . Whenever, therefore, opportunities arise which you can use for writing, brother, even as you necessarily and in accordance with custom have done in sending a report of your ordination to us by our sons, Daniel the presbyter and Timothy the deacon, so continue to act at all times and send us, who will be anxious for them, as frequent accounts as possible of the progress of peace, in order that by regular intercourse we may feel that "the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts through the Holy Ghost, which is given unto us [644] ." Dated the 18th of August, in the consulship of Magnus and Apollonius (460). __________________________________________________________________
[639] Rom. viii. 28.
[640] Ps. xxxiv. 18, and cxviii. 16.
[641] Ps. xxxiv. 18, and cxviii. 16.
[642] 1 Cor. iii. 11.
[643] Per fidei regenerationem omnes in nostræ carnis veritate susciperet. The doctrine of the Atonement in the light of the Incarnation is here expressed in a rather unusual way, and I have therefore translated the expression as literally as possible.
[644] Rom. v. 5. __________________________________________________________________
Letter CLXXII.
To the Presbyters and Deacons of the Church of Alexandria.
(Inviting them to aid in confirming the peace of the Church, and in winning those who had given way to heresy.) __________________________________________________________________
Letter CLXXIII.
To Certain Egyptian Bishops.
(Congratulating them on the election of Timothy, and begging them to assist in maintaining unity and bringing back wanderers to the fold.) __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Sermons.
------------------------
Sermon I.
Preached on his Birthday [645] , or day of Ordination.
Having been elected in absence [646] he returns thanks for the kindness and earnestly demands the prayers of his church.
"Let my mouth speak the praise of the Lord [647] ," and my breath and spirit, my flesh and tongue bless His holy Name. For it is a sign, not of a modest, but an ungrateful mind, to keep silence on the kindnesses of God: and it is very meet to begin our duty as consecrated pontiff with the sacrifices of the Lord's praise [648] . Because "in our humility" the Lord "has been mindful of us [649] " and has blessed us: because "He alone has done great wonders for me [650] ," so that your holy affection for me reckoned me present, though my long journey had forced me to be absent. Therefore I give and always shall give thanks to our God for all the things with which He has recompensed me. Your favourable opinion also I acknowledge publicly, paying you the thanks I owe, and thus showing that I understand how much respect, love and fidelity your affectionate zeal could expend on me who long with a shepherd's anxiety for the safety of your souls, who have passed so conscientious a judgment on me, with absolutely no deserts of mine to guide you. I entreat you, therefore, by the mercies of the Lord, aid with your prayers him whom you have sought out by your solicitations that both the Spirit of grace may abide in me and that your judgment may not change. May He who inspired you with such unanimity of purpose, vouchsafe to us all in common the blessing of peace: so that all the days of my life being ready for the service of Almighty God, and for my duties towards you, I may with confidence entreat the Lord: "Holy Father, keep in Thy name those whom Thou hast given me [651] :" and while you ever go on unto salvation, may "my soul magnify the Lord [652] ," and in the retribution of the judgment to come may the account of my priesthood so be rendered to the just Judge [653] that through your good deeds you may be my joy and my crown, who by your good will have given an earnest testimony to me in this present life. __________________________________________________________________
[645] Natalis seems to have been applied to the day or anniversary of a Bishop's consecration as well as to the festivals of Martyrs in the Calendar. Cf. Serm. IV. chap. 4, illi ergo hunc servitutis nostræ natalitium diem ascribamus. One reason for the shortness of this sermon, which used to be joined with Sermon II. (a few necessary alterations in the text of the latter being made) is, I think, rightly given by the Ballerinii: "perhaps" they say, "the unusual length of the ceremonies that day did not allow of a longer sermon."
[646] Viz. on his mission of reconciling Ætius and Albinus the Roman generals in Gaul: see Introduction.
[647] Ps. cxliv. 21.
[648] Especially of course in the Holy Eucharist.
[649] Ps. cxxxv. 23, 24.
[650] Ps. cxxxv. 23, 24.
[651] 1 John xvii. 11.
[652] S. Luke i. 46.
[653] The words of S. Paul to the Thessalonians (1 Thess. ii. 19) are clearly in his mind. __________________________________________________________________
Sermon II.
On his Birthday, II.: Delivered on the Anniversary [654] of his Consecration.
I. The Lord raises up the weak and gives him grace according to his need.
The Divine condescension has made this an honourable day for me, for it has shown by raising [655] my humbleness to the highest rank, that He despised not any of His own. And hence, although one must be diffident of merit, yet it is one's bounden duty to rejoice over the gift, since He who is the Imposer of the burden [656] is Himself [657] the Aider in its execution: and lest the weak recipient should fall beneath the greatness of the grace, He who conferred the dignity will also give the power. As the day therefore returns in due course on which the Lord purposed that I should begin my episcopal office, there is true cause for me to rejoice to the glory of God, Who that I might love Him much, has forgiven me much, and that I might make His Grace wonderful, has conferred His gifts upon me in whom He found no recommendations of merit. And by this His work what does the Lord suggest and commend to our hearts but that no one should presume upon his own righteousness nor distrust God's mercy which shines out more pre-eminently then, when the sinner is made holy and the downcast lifted up. For the measure of heavenly gifts does not rest upon the quality of our deeds, nor in this world, in which "all life is temptation [658] ," is each one rewarded according to his deserving, for if the Lord were to take count of a man's iniquities, no one could stand before His judgment.
II. The mighty assemblage of prelates testifies to men's loyal acceptance of Peter in Peter's unworthy successor.
Therefore, dearly-beloved, "magnify the Lord with me and let us exalt His name together [659] ," that the whole reason of to-day's concourse may be referred to the praise of Him Who brought it to pass. For so far as my own feelings are concerned, I confess that I rejoice most over the devotion of you all; and when I look upon this splendid assemblage of my venerable brother-priests [660] I feel that, where so many saints are gathered, the very angels are amongst us. Nor do I doubt that we are to-day visited by a more abundant outpouring of the Divine Presence, when so many fair tabernacles of God, so many excellent members of the Body of Christ are in one place and shine with one light. Nor yet I feel sure, is the fostering condescension and true love of the most blessed Apostle Peter absent from this congregation: he has not deserted your devotion, in whose honour you are met together. And so he too rejoices over your good feeling and welcomes your respect for the Lord's own institution as shown towards the partners of His honour, commending the well ordered love of the whole Church, which ever finds Peter in Peter's See, and from affection for so great a shepherd grows not lukewarm even over so inferior a successor as myself. In order therefore, dearly beloved, that this loyalty which you unanimously display towards my humbleness may obtain the fruit of its zeal, on bended knee entreat the merciful goodness of our God that in our days He will drive out those who assail us, strengthen faith, increase love, increase peace and deign to render me His poor slave, whom to show the riches of His grace He has willed to stand at the helm of the Church, sufficient for so great a work and useful in building you up, and to this end to lengthen our time for service that the years He may grant us may be used to His glory through Christ our Lord. Amen. __________________________________________________________________
[654] This sermon, which in the older editions used to be joined in one with the first, was separated by the Ballerinii and assigned to the (1st?) anniversary of his pontifical consecration. Quesnel, who did not go so far as to separate the two parts, saw that there were certain expressions in the first portion which did not suit the common title given to the whole in anniversario die assumptionis eius, proposed to alter it to in octava consecrationis eius (on the octave, &c.). I have adhered to the Ball.'s division, though I am not entirely convinced by their arguments.
[655] Provexit unwillingly altered by the Ball. from provehit, against all the mss., to suit their view.
[656] Oneris, others honoris (advancement).
[657] Ipse est, others (including Quesnel) ipse mihi fiet (future).
[658] Job. vii. 1 (LXX.).
[659] Ps. xxxiv. 3.
[660] The Ball. quote from several more or less contemporary authorities to prove that this concourse is more likely to have been on the anniversary than on the day of consecration itself and they say that such a celebration of the octave as Quesnel suggests is unknown to all antiquity. __________________________________________________________________
Sermon III.
On His Birthday, III: Delivered on the Anniversary of his Elevation to the Pontificate.
I. The honour of being raised to the episcopate must be referred solely to the Divine Head of the Church.
As often as God's mercy deigns to bring round the day of His gifts to us, there is, dearly-beloved, just and reasonable cause for rejoicing, if only our appointment to the office be referred to the praise of Him who gave it. For though this recognition of God may well be found in all His priests, yet I take it to be peculiarly binding on me, who, regarding my own utter insignificance and the greatness of the office undertaken, ought myself also to utter that exclamation of the Prophet, "Lord, I heard Thy speech and was afraid: I considered Thy works and was dismayed [661] ." For what is so unwonted and so dismaying as labour to the frail, exaltation to the humble, dignity to the undeserving? And yet we do not despair nor lose heart, because we put our trust not in ourselves but in Him who works in us. And hence also we have sung with harmonious voice the psalm of David, dearly beloved, not in our own praise, but to the glory of Christ the Lord. For it is He of whom it is prophetically written, "Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedeck [662] ," that is, not after the order of Aaron, whose priesthood descending along his own line of offspring was a temporal ministry, and ceased with the law of the Old Testament, but after the order of Melchizedeck, in whom was prefigured the eternal High Priest. And no reference is made to his parentage because in him it is understood that He was portrayed, whose generation cannot be declared. And finally, now that the mystery of this Divine priesthood has descended to human agency, it runs not by the line of birth, nor is that which flesh and blood created, chosen, but without regard to the privilege of paternity and succession by inheritance, those men are received by the Church as its rulers whom the Holy Ghost prepares: so that in the people of God's adoption, the whole body of which is priestly and royal, it is not the prerogative of earthly origin which obtains the unction [663] , but the condescension of Divine grace which creates the bishop.
II. From Christ and through S. Peter the priesthood is handed on in perpetuity.
Although, therefore, dearly beloved, we be found both weak and slothful in fulfilling the duties of our office, because, whatever devoted and vigorous action we desire to do, we are hindered by the frailty of our very condition; yet having the unceasing propitiation of the Almighty and perpetual Priest, who being like us and yet equal with the Father, brought down His Godhead even to things human, and raised His Manhood even to things Divine, we worthily and piously rejoice over His dispensation, whereby, though He has delegated the care of His sheep to many shepherds, yet He has not Himself abandoned the guardianship of His beloved flock. And from His overruling and eternal protection we have received the support of the Apostles' aid also, which assuredly does not cease from its operation: and the strength of the foundation, on which the whole superstructure of the Church is reared, is not weakened [664] by the weight of the temple that rests upon it. For the solidity of that faith which was praised in the chief of the Apostles is perpetual: and as that remains which Peter believed in Christ, so that remains which Christ instituted in Peter. For when, as has been read in the Gospel lesson [665] , the Lord had asked the disciples whom they believed Him to be amid the various opinions that were held, and the blessed Peter had replied, saying, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God," the Lord says, "Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona, because flesh and flood hath not revealed it to thee, but My Father, which is in heaven. And I say to thee, that thou art Peter, and upon this rock will I build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth, shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth, shall be loosed also in heaven [666] ."
III. S. Peter's work is still carried out by his successors.
The dispensation of Truth therefore abides, and the blessed Peter persevering in the strength of the Rock, which he has received, has not abandoned the helm of the Church, which he undertook. For he was ordained before the rest in such a way that from his being called the Rock, from his being pronounced the Foundation, from his being constituted the Doorkeeper of the kingdom of heaven, from his being set as the Umpire to bind and to loose, whose judgments shall retain their validity in heaven, from all these mystical titles we might know the nature of his association with Christ. And still to-day he more fully and effectually performs what is entrusted to him, and carries out every part of his duty and charge in Him and with Him, through Whom he has been glorified. And so if anything is rightly done and rightly decreed by us, if anything is won from the mercy of God by our daily supplications, it is of his work and merits whose power lives and whose authority prevails in his See. For this, dearly-beloved, was gained by that confession, which, inspired in the Apostle's heart by God the Father, transcended all the uncertainty of human opinions, and was endued with the firmness of a rock, which no assaults could shake. For throughout the Church Peter daily says, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God," and every tongue which confesses the Lord, accepts the instruction his voice conveys. This Faith conquers the devil, and breaks the bonds of his prisoners. It uproots us from this earth and plants us in heaven, and the gates of Hades cannot prevail against it. For with such solidity is it endued by God that the depravity of heretics cannot mar it nor the unbelief of the heathen overcome it.
IV. This festival then is in S. Peter's honour, and the progress of his flock redounds to his glory.
And so, dearly beloved, with reasonable obedience we celebrate to-day's festival by such methods, that in my humble person he may be recognized and honoured, in whom abides the care of all the shepherds, together with the charge of the sheep commended to him, and whose dignity is not abated even in so unworthy an heir. And hence the presence of my venerable brothers and fellow-priests, so much desired and valued by me, will be the more sacred and precious, if they will transfer the chief honour of this service in which they have deigned to take part to him whom they know to be not only the patron of this see, but also the primate of all bishops. When therefore we utter our exhortations in your ears, holy brethren, believe that he is speaking whose representative we are: because it is his warning that we give, nothing else but his teaching that we preach, beseeching you to "gird up the loins of your mind [667] ," and lead a chaste and sober life in the fear of God, and not to let your mind forget his supremacy and consent to the lusts of the flesh. Short and fleeting are the joys of this world's pleasures which endeavour to turn aside from the path of life those who are called to eternity. The faithful and religious spirit, therefore, must desire the things which are heavenly, and being eager for the Divine promises, lift itself to the love of the incorruptible Good and the hope of the true Light. But be sure, dearly-beloved, that your labour, whereby you resist vices and fight against carnal desires, is pleasing and precious in God's sight, and in God's mercy will profit not only yourselves but me also, because the zealous pastor makes his boast of the progress of the Lord's flock. "For ye are my crown and joy [668] ," as the Apostle says; if your faith, which from the beginning of the Gospel has been preached in all the world has continued in love and holiness. For though the whole Church, which is in all the world, ought to abound in all virtues, yet you especially, above all people, it becomes to excel in deeds of piety, because founded as you are on the very citadel of the Apostolic Rock, not only has our Lord Jesus Christ redeemed you in common with all men, but the blessed Apostle Peter has instructed you far beyond all men. Through the same Christ our Lord. __________________________________________________________________
[661] Hab. iii. 2 (LXX.).
[662] Ps. cx. 4.
[663] Quesnel is no doubt correct in taking this literally as alluding to the anointing of bishops at consecration: cf. Serm. IV. chap. 1. Sancti Spiritus unctio consecrat sacerdotes, and lower down he speaks of the effusum benedictionis unguentum: so also in Serm. LIX. chap. 7, sacratior est unctio sacerdotum.
[664] We read lassescit with Hurter, instead of the unintelligible lacessitof the mss.
[665] By the evangelica lectio is meant the Gospel for the day, just as, for instance, in Sermon XXXIII. chap. 1, &c.
[666] S. Matt. xvi. 16-19.
[667] 1 Pet. i. 13.
[668] 1 Thess. ii. 20. __________________________________________________________________
Sermon IX.
Upon the Collections [669] , IV.
I. The devil's wickedness in leading men astray is now counteracted by the work of redemption in restoring them to the truth.
God's mercy and justice, dearly-beloved, has in loving-kindness disclosed to us through our Lord Jesus Christ's teaching, the manner of His retributions, as they have been ordained from the foundation of the world, that accepting the significance of facts we might take what we believe will happen, to have, as it were, already come to pass. For our Redeemer and Saviour knew what great errors the devil's deceit had dispersed throughout the world and by how many superstitions he had subjected the chief part of mankind to himself. But that the creature formed in God's image might not any longer through ignorance of the Truth be driven on to the precipice of perpetual death, He inserted in the Gospel-pages the nature of His judgment that it might recover every man from the snares of the crafty foe; for now all would know what rewards the good might hope for and what punishments the evil must fear. For the instigator and author of sin in order first to fall through pride and then to injure us through envy, because "he stood not in the Truth [670] " put all his strength in lying and produced every kind of deceit from this poisoned source of his cunning, that he might cut off man's devout hopes from that happiness which he had lost by his own uplifting, and drag them into partnership with his condemnation, to whose reconciliation he himself could not attain. Whoever therefore among men has wronged God by his wickednesses, has been led astray by his guile, and depraved by his villainy. For he easily drives into all evil doings those whom he has deceived in the matter of religion. But knowing that God is denied not only by words but also by deeds, many whom he could not rob of their faith, he has robbed of their love, and by choking the ground of their heart with the weeds of avarice, has spoiled them of the fruit of good works, when he could not spoil them of the confession of their lips.
II. God's just judgment against sin is denounced that we may avoid it by deeds of mercy and love.
On account therefore, dearly-beloved, of these crafty designs of our ancient foe, the unspeakable goodness of Christ has wished us to know, what was to be decreed about all mankind in the day of retribution, that, while in this life healing remedies are legitimately offered, while restoration is not denied to the contrite, and those who have been long barren can at length be fruitful, the verdict on which justice has determined may be fore-stalled and the picture of God's coming to judge the world never depart from the mind's eye. For the Lord will come in His glorious Majesty, as He Himself has foretold, and there will be with Him an innumerable host of angel-legions radiant in their splendour. Before the throne of His power will all the nations of the world be gathered; and all the men that in all ages and on all the face of the earth have been born, shall stand in the Judge's sight. Then shall be separated the just from the unjust, the guiltless from the guilty; and when the sons of piety, their works of mercy reviewed, have received the Kingdom prepared for them, the unjust shall be upbraided for their utter barrenness, and those on the left having naught in common with those on the right, shall by the condemnation of the Almighty Judge be cast into the fire prepared for the torture of the devil and his angels, with him to share the punishment, whose will they choose to do. Who then would not tremble at this doom of eternal torment? Who would not dread evils which are never to be ended? But since this severity is only denounced in order that we may seek for mercy, we too in this present life must show such open-handed mercy that after perilous neglect returning to works of piety it may be possible for us to be set free from this doom. For this is the purpose of the Judge's might and of the Saviour's graciousness, that the unrighteous may forsake his ways and the sinner give up his wicked habits. Let those who wish Christ to spare them, have mercy on the poor; let them give freely to feed the wretched, who desire to attain to the society of the blessed. Let no man consider his fellow vile, nor despise in any one that nature which the Creator of the world made His own. For who that labours can deny that Christ claims that labour as done unto Himself? Your fellow-slave is helped thereby, but it is the Lord who will repay. The feeding of the needy is the purchase money of the heavenly kingdom and the free dispenser of things temporal is made the heir of things eternal. But how has such small expenditure deserved to be valued so highly except because our works are weighed in the balance of love, and when a man loves what God loves, he is deservedly raised into His kingdom, whose attribute of love has in part become his?
III. We minister to Christ Himself in the person of his poor.
To this pious duty of good works, therefore dearly beloved, the day of Apostolic institution [671] invites us, on which the first collection of our holy offerings has been prudently and profitably ordained by the Fathers; in order that, because at this season formerly the Gentiles used superstitiously to serve demons, we might celebrate the most holy offering of our alms in protest against the unholy victims of the wicked. And because this has been most profitable to the growth of the Church, it has been resolved to make it perpetual. We exhort you, therefore, holy brethren throughout the churches of your several regions [672] on Wednesday next [673] to contribute of your goods, according to your means and willingness, to purposes of charity, that ye may be able to win that blessedness in which he shall rejoice without end, who "considereth the needy and poor [674] ." And if we are to "consider" him, dearly beloved, we must use loving care and watchfulness, in order that we may find him whom modesty conceals and shamefastness keeps back. For there are those who blush openly to ask for what they want and prefer to suffer privation without speaking rather than to be put to shame by a public appeal. These are they whom we ought to "consider" and relieve from their hidden straits in order that they may the more rejoice from the very fact that their modesty as well as poverty has been consulted. And rightly in the needy and poor do we recognize the person of Jesus Christ our Lord Himself, "Who though He was rich," as says the blessed Apostle, "became poor, that He might enrich us by His poverty [675] ." And that His presence might never seem to be wanting to us, He so effected the mystic union of His humility and His glory that while we adore Him as King and Lord in the Majesty of the Father, we might also feed Him in His poor, for which we shall be set free in an evil day from perpetual damnation, and for our considerate care of the poor shall be joined with the whole company of heaven.
IV. To complete their acceptance by God, they must not neglect to lay all information against the Manichees who are in the city.
But in order that your devotion, dearly beloved, may in all things be pleasing to God, we exhort you also to show due zeal in informing your presbyters of Manichees where ever they be hidden [676] . For it is naught but piety to disclose the hiding-places of the wicked, and in them to overthrow the devil whom they serve. For against them, dearly beloved, it becomes indeed the whole world and the whole Church everywhere to put on the armour of Faith: but your devotion ought to be foremost in this work, who in your progenitors learnt the Gospel of the Cross of Christ from the very mouth of the most blessed Apostles Peter and Paul. Men must not be allowed to lie hid who do not believe that the law given through Moses, in which God is shown to be the Creator of the Universe, ought to be received: who speak against the Prophets and the Holy Ghost, dare in their damnable profanity to reject the Psalms of David which are sung through the universal Church with all reverence, deny the birth of the Lord Christ, according to the flesh, say that His Passion and Resurrection was fictitious, not true, and deprive the baptism of regeneration of all its power as a means of grace. Nothing with them is holy, nothing entire, nothing true. They are to be shunned, lest they harm any one: they are to be given up, lest they should settle in any part of our city. Yours, dearly beloved, will be the gain before the Lord's judgment-seat of what we bid, of what we ask. For it is but right that the triumph of this deed also should be joined to the oblation of our alms, the Lord Jesus Christ in all things aiding us, Who lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen. __________________________________________________________________
[669] The Ballerinii in an excellent note have shown that the series of six Sermons de Collectis were delivered in connexion with the annual Collections then in vogue at Rome for the sick and poor of the seven city regions. These collections seem to have been continued for several consecutive days (cf. Serm. VI. primus collectarum dies, and Serm. X. chap. 4), and probably began on the 6th of July (the octave of SS. Peter and Paul), the day on which in pagan times the Ludi Apollinares had also begun: this date being designedly chosen, as Leo himself says (Serm. VIII.), ad destruendas antiqui hostis insidias in die quo impii sub idolorum suorum nomine diabolo serviebant: cf. what he says also in the first and third chapter of this Sermon (IX.).
[670] S. John viii. 44.
[671] Dies apostolicæ institutionis: this was, as note 6 explains, the octave of SS. Peter and Paul, but how far Leo actually attributes its institution to the Apostles themselves, is a little doubtful. In the next clause here he speaks of the Collection as a patribus ordinata (so too in Serm. VII. dies saluberime a sanctis patribus institutus, and Serm. XI. chap. 2: cf. Serm. X. chap. 1, auctoritatem patrum); whereas in Sermon VIII. the day is said to be apostolicis traditionibus institutis, and in Serm. XI. chap. 1, apostolicis didicimus institutis, and strongest of all the opening words of Serm. X. chap. 1, apostolicæ traditionis instituta servantes ut diem quem illi ab impiorum consuetudine purgatum misericordiæ operibus consecrarunt celebremus. Patres however often includes apostoli, e.g. Serm. LXXIII. chap. 1, gratias agamus....sanctorum patrum necessariæ tarditati, where patrum = apostoli aliique discipuli. The fact is, as Bright points out upon a similar matter (the origin of Lent), Leo "would be prone to make that claim for any institute of his own church (see Bingham xxi. 1, 8.)" (n. 103.). On Serm. LXXIX. 1 the Ball. appropriately quote a dictum of S. Augustine's that what the universal Church had always held is correctly credited with the authority of the Apostles.
[672] Regionum, viz. the seven regions into which Rome was then divided: see n. 6, above.
[673] The Ball. wish to alter this to Thursday (against mss.) to suit their calculations, by which as the detection of Manichæism at Rome, mentioned in chap. iv., occurred after the 6th of July, 443, this sermon must have been delivered in 444.
[674] Ps. xli. 1.
[675] 2 Cor. viii. 9.
[676] Cf. Lett. VII. and VIII. __________________________________________________________________
Sermon X.
On the Collections, V.
I. Our goods are given us not as our own possessions but for use in God's service.
Observing the institutions of the Apostles' tradition, dearly beloved, we exhort you, as watchful shepherds, to celebrate with the devotion of religious practice that day which they [677] purged from wicked superstitions and consecrated to deeds of mercy, thus showing that the authority of the Fathers still lives among us, and that we obediently abide by their teaching. Inasmuch as the sacred usefulness of such a practice affects not only time past but also our own age, so that what aided them in the destruction of vanities, might contribute with us to the increase of virtues. And what so suitable to faith, what so much in harmony with godliness as to assist the poverty of the needy, to undertake the care of the weak, to succour the needs of the brethren, and to remember one's own condition in the toils of others [678] . In which work He only who knows what He has given to each, discerns aright how much a man can and how much he cannot do. For not only are spiritual riches and heavenly gifts received from God, but earthly and material possessions also proceed from His bounty, that He may be justified in requiring an account of those things which He has not so much put in our possession as committed to our stewardship. God's gifts, therefore, we must use properly and wisely, lest the material for good work should become an occasion of sin. For wealth, after its kind and regarded as a means, is good and is of the greatest advantage to human society, when it is in the hands of the benevolent and open-handed, and when the luxurious man does not squander nor the miser hoard it; for whether ill-stored or unwisely spent it is equally lost.
II. The liberal use of riches is worse than vain, if it be for selfish ends alone.
And, however praiseworthy it be to flee from intemperance, and to avoid the waste of base pleasures, and though many in their magnificence disdain to conceal their wealth, and in the abundance of their goods think scorn of mean and sordid parsimony, yet such men's liberality is not happy, nor their thriftiness to be commended, if their riches are of benefit to themselves alone; if no poor folks are helped by their goods, no sick persons nourished; if out of the abundance of their great possessions the captive gets not ransom, nor the stranger comfort, nor the exile relief. Rich men of this kind are needier than all the needy. For they lose those returns which they might have for ever, and while they gloat over the brief and not always free enjoyment of what they possess, they are not fed upon the bread of justice nor the sweets of mercy: outwardly splendid, they have no light within: of things temporal they have abundance, but utter lack of things eternal: for they inflict starvation on their own souls, and bring them to shame and nakedness by spending upon heavenly treasures none of these things which they put into their earthly storehouses.
III. The duty of mercy outweighs all other virtues.
But, perhaps there are some rich people, who, although they are not wont to help the Church's poor by bounteous gifts, yet keep other commands of God, and among their many meritorious acts of faith and uprightness think they will be pardoned for the lack of this one virtue. But this is so important that, though the rest exist without it, they can be of no avail. For although a man be full of faith, and chaste, and sober, and adorned with other still greater decorations, yet if he is not merciful, he cannot deserve mercy: for the Lord says, "blessed are the merciful, for God shall have mercy upon them [679] ." And when the Son of Man comes in His Majesty and is seated on His glorious throne, and all nations being gathered together, division is made between the good and the bad, for what shall they be praised who stand upon the fight except for works of benevolence and deeds of love which Jesus Christ shall reckon as done to Himself? For He who has made man's nature His own, has separated Himself in nothing from man's humility. And what objection shall be made to those on the left except for their neglect of love, their inhuman harshness, their refusal of mercy to the poor? as if those on the right had no other virtues those on the left no other faults. But at the great and final day of judgment large-hearted liberality and ungodly meanness will be counted of such importance as to outweigh all other virtues and all other shortcomings, so that for the one men shall gain entrance into the Kingdom, for the other they shall be sent into eternal fire.
IV. And its efficacy, as Scripture proves, is incalculable.
Let no one therefore, dearly beloved, flatter himself on any merits of a good life, if works of charity be wanting in him, and let him not trust in the purity of his body, if he be not cleansed by the purification of almsgiving. For "almsgiving wipes out sin [680] ," kills death, and extinguishes the punishment of perpetual fire. But he who has not been fruitful therein, shall have no indulgence from the great Recompenser, as Solomon says, "He that closeth his ears lest he should hear the weak, shall himself call upon the Lord, and there shall be none to hear him [681] ." And hence Tobias also, while instructing his son in the precepts of godliness, says, "Give alms of thy substance, and turn not thy face from any poor man: so shall it come to pass that the face of God shall not be turned from thee [682] ." This virtue makes all virtues profitable; for by its presence it gives life to that very faith, by which "the just lives [683] ," and which is said to be "dead without works [684] :" because as the reason for works consists in faith, so the strength of faith consists in works. "While we have time therefore," as the Apostle says, "let us do that which is good to all men, and especially to them that are of the household of faith [685] ." "But let us not be weary in doing good; for in His own time we shall reap [686] ." And so the present life is the time for sowing, and the day of retribution is the time of harvest, when every one shall reap the fruit of his seed according to the amount of his sowing. And no one shall be disappointed in the produce of that harvesting, because it is the heart's intentions rather than the sums expended that will be reckoned up. And little sums from little means shall produce as much as great sums from great means. And therefore, dearly beloved, let us carry out this Apostolic institution. And as the first collection will be next Sunday, let all prepare themselves to give willingly, that every one according to his ability may join in this most sacred offering. Your very alms and those who shall be aided by your gifts shall intercede for you, that you may be always ready for every good work in Christ Jesus our Lord, Who lives and reigns for ages without end. Amen. __________________________________________________________________
[677] See Serm. IX. n. 6, and chap. iii. n. 8.
[678] i.e. apparently to do as you would be done by.
[679] S. Matt. v. 7.
[680] Ecclus. iii. 30. The purifying power of almsgiving is a favourite thought with Leo: cf. for instance Serm. XII. chap. 4, and XVIII. chap. 3, where he says, castigatio corporis et instantia orationis tunc veram obtinent puritatem cum eleemosynarum sanctificatione nituntur. In several places he compares its cleansing effect to the waters of baptism: e.g. Serm. XX. chap. 3, in eleemosynis virtus quædam est instituta baptismatis, qui sicut aqua extinguit ignem, si eleemosyna peccatum--ut nemo diffidat regenerationis sibi nitorem etiam post multa peccata restitui, qui eleemosynarum studuerit purificatione mundari: and again in Serm. VII. he says, unusquisque--in usus atque alimoniam pauperum de vestris facultatibus conferatis scientes præter illud regenerationis lavacrum, in quo universorum ablutæ sunt maculæ peccatorum, hoc remedium infirmitati humanæ divinitus esse donatum ut si quod culparum in hac terrena habitatione contrahitur, eleemosynis deleatur.
[681] Prov. xxi. 13.
[682] Tob. iv. 7 (one of the offertory sentences it will be remembered in the English Prayer-book).
[683] Habb. ii. 4.
[684] James ii. 26.
[685] Gal. ii. 10 and 9.
[686] Gal. ii. 10 and 9. __________________________________________________________________
Sermon XII.
On the Fast of The Tenth Month, I. [687]
I. Restoration to the Divine image in which we were made is only possible by our imitation of God's will.
If, dearly beloved, we comprehend faithfully and wisely the beginning of our creation, we shall find that man was made in God's image, to the end that he might imitate his Creator, and that our race attains its highest natural dignity, by the form of the Divine goodness being reflected in us, as in a mirror. And assuredly to this form the Saviour's grace is daily restoring us, so long as that which, in the first Adam fell, is raised up again in the second. And the cause of our restoration is naught else but the mercy of God, Whom we should not have loved, unless He had first loved us, and dispelled the darkness of our ignorance by the light of His truth. And the Lord foretelling this by the holy Isaiah says, "I will bring the blind into a way that they knew not, and will make them walk in paths which they were ignorant of. I will turn darkness into light for them, and the crooked into the straight. These words will I do for them, and not forsake them [688] ." And again he says, "I was found by them that sought Me not, and openly appeared to them that asked not for Me [689] ." And the Apostle John teaches us how this has been fulfilled, when he says, "We know that the Son of God is come, and has given us an understanding, that we may know Him that is true, and may be in Him that is true, even His Son [690] ," and again, "let us therefore love God, because He first loved us [691] ." Thus it is that God, by loving us, restores us to His image, and, in order that He may find in us the form of His goodness, He gives us that whereby we ourselves too may do the work that He does, kindling that is the lamps of our minds, and inflaming us with the fire of His love, that we may love not only Himself, but also whatever He loves. For if between men that is the lasting friendship which is based upon similarity of character notwithstanding that such identity of wills is often directed to wicked ends, how ought we to yearn and strive to differ in nothing from what is pleasing to God. Of which the prophet speaks, "for wrath is in His indignation, and life in His pleasure [692] ," because we shall not otherwise attain the dignity of the Divine Majesty, unless we imitate His will.
II. We must love both God and our neighbour, and "our neighbour" must be interpreted in its widest sense.
And so, when the Lord says, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, from all thy heart and from all thy mind: and thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself [693] ," let the faithful soul put on the unfading love of its Author and Ruler, and subject itself also entirely to His will in Whose works and judgments true justice and tender-hearted compassion never fail. For although a man be wearied out with labours and many misfortunes, there is good reason for him to endure all in the knowledge that adversity will either prove him good or make him better. But this godly love cannot be perfect unless a man love his neighbour also. Under which name must be included not only those who are connected with us by friendship or neighbourhood, but absolutely all men, with whom we have a common nature, whether they be foes or allies, slaves or free. For the One Maker fashioned us, the One Creator breathed life into us; we all enjoy the same sky and air, the same days and nights, and, though some be good, others bad, some righteous, others unrighteous, yet God is bountiful to all, kind to all, as Paul and Barnabas said to the Lycaonians concerning God's Providence, "who in generations gone by suffered all the nations to walk in their own ways. And yet He left Himself not without witness, doing them good, giving rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, and filling our hearts with food and gladness [694] ." But the wide extent of Christian grace has given us yet greater reasons for loving our neighbour, which, reaching to all parts of the whole world, looks down on [695] no one, and teaches that no one is to be neglected. And full rightly does He command us to love our enemies, and to pray to Him for our persecutors, who, daily grafting shoots of the wild olive from among all nations upon the holy branches of His own olive, makes men reconciled instead of enemies, adopted sons instead of strangers, just instead of ungodly, "that every knee may bow of things in heaven, of things on earth, and of things under the earth, and every tongue confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father [696] ."
III. We must be thankful, and show our thankfulness for what we have received, whether much or little.
Accordingly, as God wishes us to be good, because He is good, none of His judgments ought to displease us. For not to give Him thanks in all things, what else is it but to blame Him in some degree. Man's folly too often dares to murmur against his Creator, not only in time of want, but also in time of plenty, so that, when something is not supplied, he complains, and when certain things are in abundance he is ungrateful. The lord of rich harvests thought scorn of his well-filled garners, and groaned over his abundant grape-gathering: he did not give thanks for the size of the crop, but complained of its poorness [697] . And if the ground has been less prolific than its wont in the seed it has reared, and the vines and the olives have failed in their supply of fruit, the year is accused, the elements blamed, neither the air nor the sky is spared, whereas nothing better befits and reassures the faithful and godly disciples of Truth than the persistent and unwearied lifting of praise to God, as says the Apostle, "Rejoice alway, pray without ceasing: in all things give thanks. For this is the will of God in Christ Jesus in all things for you [698] ." But how shall we be partakers of this devotion, unless vicissitudes of fortune train our minds in constancy, so that the love directed towards God may not be puffed up in prosperity nor faint in adversity. Let that which pleases God, please us too. Let us rejoice in whatever measure of gifts He gives. Let him who has used great possessions well, use small ones also well. Plenty and scarcity may be equally for our good, and even in spiritual progress we shall not be cast down at the smallness of the results, if our minds become not dry and barren. Let that spring from the soil of our heart, which the earth gave not. To him that fails not in good will, means to give are ever supplied. Therefore, dearly beloved, in all works of godliness let us use what each year gives us, and let not seasons of difficulty hinder our Christian benevolence. The Lord knows how to replenish the widow's vessels, which her pious deed of hospitality has emptied: He knows how to turn water into wine: He knows how to satisfy 5,000 hungry persons with a few loaves. And He who is fed in His poor, can multiply when He takes what He increased when He gave.
IV. Prayer, fasting and almsgiving are the three comprehensive duties of a Christian.
But there are three things which most belong to religious actions, namely prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, in the exercising of which while every time is accepted, yet that ought to be more zealously observed, which we have received as hallowed by tradition from the apostles: even as this tenth month brings round again to us the opportunity when according to the ancient practice we may give more diligent heed to those three things of which I have spoken. For by prayer we seek to propitiate God, by fasting we extinguish the lusts of the flesh, by alms we redeem our sins: and at the same time God's image is throughout renewed in us, if we are always ready to praise Him, unfailingly intent on our purification and unceasingly active in cherishing our neighbour. This threefold round of duty, dearly beloved, brings all other virtues into action: it attains to God's image and likeness and unites us inseparably with the Holy Spirit. Because in prayer faith remains stedfast, in fastings life remains innocent, in almsgiving the mind remains kind. On Wednesday and Friday therefore let us fast: and on Saturday let us keep vigil with the most blessed Apostle Peter, who will deign to aid our supplications and fast and alms with his own prayers through our Lord Jesus Christ, who with the Father and the Holy Ghost lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen. __________________________________________________________________
[687] That is the December or, as we should now call it, the Advent Embertide. Cf. Serm. XIX. chap. 2, where the four seasons, as arranged in Leo's day, are clearly set forth.
[688] Is. xlii. 16, and lxv. 1.
[689] Is. xlii. 16, and lxv. 1.
[690] 1 John v. 20, and iv. 19 ( the latter loosely).
[691] 1 John v. 20, and iv. 19 ( the latter loosely).
[692] Ps. xxx. 5 (LXX.).
[693] S. Matt. xxii. 37, 39.
[694] Acts xiv. 16, 17. For gladness (lætitia) others read righteousness (iustitia).
[695] Despectat: others desperat (despairs of).
[696] Phil. ii. 10, 11.
[697] Viz. in S. Luke xii. 16-20.
[698] 1 Thess. v. 16. __________________________________________________________________
Sermon XVI.
On the Fast of the Tenth Month.
I. The prosperous must show forth their thankfulness to God, by liberality to the poor and needy.
The transcendent power of God's grace, dearly beloved, is indeed daily effecting in Christian hearts the transference of our every desire from earthly to heavenly things. But this present life also is passed through the Creator's aid and sustained by His providence, because He who promises things eternal is also the Supplier of things temporal. As therefore we ought to give God thanks for the hope of future happiness towards which we run by faith, because He raises us up to a perception of the happiness in store for us, so for those things also which we receive in the course of every year, God should be honoured and praised, who having from the beginning given fertility to the earth and laid down laws of bearing fruit for every germ and seed, will never forsake his own decrees but will as Creator ever continue His kind administration of the things that He has made. Whatever therefore the cornfields, the vineyards and the olive groves have borne for man's purposes, all this God in His bounteous goodness has produced: for under the varying condition of the elements He has mercifully aided the uncertain toils of the husbandmen so that wind, and rain, cold and heat, day and night might serve our needs. For men's methods would not have sufficed to give effect to their works, had not God given the increase to their wonted plantings and waterings. And hence it is but godly and just that we too should help others with that which the Heavenly Father has mercifully bestowed on us. For there are full many, who have no fields, no vineyards, no olive-groves, whose wants we must provide out of the store which God has given, that they too with us may bless God for the richness of the earth and rejoice at its possessors having received things which they have shared also with the poor and the stranger. That garner is blessed and most worthy that all fruits should increase manifold in it, from which the hunger of the needy and the weak is satisfied from which the wants of the stranger are relieved, from which the desire of the sick is gratified. For these men God has in His justice permitted to be afflicted with divers troubles, that He might both crown the wretched for their patience and the merciful for their loving-kindness.
II. Almsgiving and fasting are the most essential aids to prayer.
And while all seasons are opportune for this duty, beloved, yet this present season is specially suitable and appropriate, at which our holy fathers, being Divinely inspired, sanctioned the Fast of the tenth month, that when all the ingathering of the crops was complete, we might dedicate to God our reasonable service of abstinence, and each might remember so to use his abundance as to be more abstinent in himself and more open-handed towards the poor. For forgiveness of sins is most efficaciously prayed for with almsgiving and fasting, and supplications that are winged by such aids mount swiftly to God's ears: since as it is written, "the merciful man doeth good to his own soul [699] ," and nothing is so much a man's own as that which he spends on his neighbour. For that part of his material possessions with which he ministers to the needy, is transformed into eternal riches, and such wealth is begotten of this bountifulness as can never be diminished or in any way destroyed, for "blessed are the merciful, for God shall have mercy on them [700] ," and He Himself shall be their chief Reward, who is the Model of His own command.
III. Christians' pious activity has so enraged Satan that he has multiplied heresies to wreak them harm.
But at all these acts of godliness, dearly-beloved, which commend us more and more to God, there is no doubt that our enemy, who is so eager and so skilled in harming us, is aroused with keener stings of hatred, that under a false profession of the Christian name he may corrupt those whom he is not allowed to attack with open and bloody persecutions, and for this work he has heretics in his service whom he has led astray from the catholic Faith, subjected to himself, and forced under divers errors to serve in his camp. And as for the deception of primitive man he used the services of a serpent, so to mislead the minds of the upright he has armed these men's tongues with the poison of his falsehoods. But these treacherous designs, dearly beloved, with a shepherd's care, and so far as the Lord vouchsafes His aid, we will defeat. And taking heed lest any of the holy flock should perish, we admonish you with fatherly warnings to keep aloof from the "lying lips" and the "deceitful tongue" from which the prophet asks that his soul should be delivered [701] ; because "their words," as says the blessed Apostle, "do creep as doth a gangrene [702] ." They creep in humbly, they arrest softly, they bind gently, they slay secretly. For they "come," as the Saviour foretold, "in sheeps' clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves [703] ;" because they could not deceive the true and simple sheep, unless they covered their bestial rage with the name of Christ. But in them all he is at work who, though he is really the enemy of enlightenment, "transforms himself into an angel of light [704] ." His is the craft which inspires Basilides; his the ingenuity which worked in Marcion; he is the leader under whom Sabellius acted; he the author of Photinus' headlong fall, his the authority and his the spirit which Arius and Eunomius served: in fine under his command and authority the whole herd of such wild beasts has separated from the unity of the Church and severed connexion with the Truth.
IV. Of all heresies Manicheism is the worst and foullest.
But while he retains this ever-varying supremacy over all the heresies, yet he has built his citadel upon the madness of the Manichees, and found in them the most spacious court in which to strut and boast himself: for there he possesses not one form of misbelief only, but a general compound of all errors and ungodlinesses. For all that is idolatrous in the heathen, all that is blind in carnal Jews, all that is unlawful in the secrets of the magic art, all finally that is profane and blasphemous in all the heresies is gathered together with all manner of filth in these men as if in a cesspool [705] . And hence it is too long a matter to describe all their ungodlinesses: for the number of the charges against them exceeds my supply of words. It will be sufficient to indicate a few instances, that you may, from what you hear, conjecture what from modesty we omit. In the matter of their rites, however, which are as indecent morally as they are religiously, we cannot keep silence about that which the Lord has been pleased to reveal to our inquiries, lest any one should think we have trusted in this thing to vague rumours and uncertain opinions. And so with bishops and presbyters sitting beside me, and Christian nobles assembled in the same place, we ordered their elect men and women to be brought before us. And when they had made many disclosures concerning their perverse tenets and their mode of conducting festivals, they revealed this story of utter depravity also, which I blush to describe but which has been so carefully investigated that no grounds for doubt are left for the incredulous or for cavillers. For there were present all the persons by which the unutterable crime had been perpetrated, to wit a girl at most ten years old, and two women who had nursed her and prepared her for this outrage. There was also present the stripling who had outraged her, and the bishop, who had arranged their horrible crime. All these made one and the same confession, and a tale of such foul orgies [706] was disclosed as our ears could scarcely bear. And lest by plainer speaking we offend chaste ears, the account of the proceedings shall suffice, in which it is most fully shown that in that sect no modesty, no sense of honour, no chastity whatever is found: for their law is falsehood, their religion the devil, their sacrifice immorality.
V. Every one should abjure such men, and give all the information they possess about them to the authorities.
And so, dearly beloved, renounce all friendship with these men who are utterly abominable and pestilential, and whom disturbances in other districts have brought in great numbers to the city [707] : and you women especially refrain from acquaintance and intercourse with such men, lest while your ears are charmed unawares by their fabulous stories, you fall into the devil's noose, who, knowing that he seduced the first man by the woman's mouth, and drove all men from the bliss of paradise through feminine credulity, still lies in watch for your sex with more confident craft that he may rob both of their faith and of their modesty those whom he has been able to ensnare by the servants of his falseness. This, too, dearly beloved, I entreat and admonish you loyally to inform us [708] , if any of you know where they dwell, where they teach, whose houses they frequent, and in whose company they take rest: because it is of little avail to any one that through the Holy Ghost's protection he is not caught by them himself, if he takes no action when he knows that others are being caught. Against common enemies for the common safety all alike should exercise the same vigilance lest from one member's wound other members also be injured, and they that think such men should not be given up, in Christ's judgment be found guilty for their silence even though they are not contaminated by their approval.
VI. Zeal in rooting out heresy will make other pious duties more acceptable.
Display then a holy zeal of religious vigilance, and let all the faithful rise in one body against these savage enemies of their souls. For the merciful God has delivered a certain portion of our noxious foes into our hands in order that by revelation of the danger the utmost caution might be aroused. Let not what has been done suffice, but let us persevere in searching them out: and by God's aid the result will be not only the continuance in safety of those who still stand, but also the recovery from error of many who have been deceived by the devil's seduction. And the prayers, and alms, and fasts that you offer to the merciful God shall be the holier for this very devotion, when this deed of faith also is added to all your other godly duties. On Wednesday and Friday, therefore, let us fast, and on Saturday let us keep vigil in the presence of the most blessed Apostle Peter; who, as we experience and know, watches unceasingly like a shepherd over the sheep entrusted to him by the Lord, and who will prevail in his entreaties that the Church of God, which was founded by his preaching, may be free from all error, through Christ our Lord. Amen. __________________________________________________________________
[699] Prov. xi. 17.
[700] S. Matt. v. 7.
[701] Ps. cxx. 2.
[702] 2 Tim. ii. 17.
[703] S. Matt. vii. 15.
[704] 2 Cor. xi. 14.
[705] Strong as this language undoubtedly is, it is perhaps almost justifiable, if the story which he proceeds to indicate is not only true but characteristic of the sect.
[706] Exsecramentum, cf. Serm. LXXV. chap 7, ad illa non sacra sed exsecramenta perveniunt, quæ propter communem verecundiam non sunt nostro sermone promenda.
[707] The Ball. quote Aug. (Conf. v. chap. 10) to show that Rome had long ago been infested with Manichees. They identify the disturbances Leo here speaks of with Genseric's invasion of Africa and occupation of Carthage in 438.
[708] For a like injunction, cf. Serm. X., chap. 4, where the presbyters are to be told. __________________________________________________________________
Sermon XVII.
On the Fast of the Tenth Month, VI.
I. The duty of fasting is based on both the Old and New Testaments, and is closely connected with the duties of prayer and almsgiving.
The teaching of the Law, dearly beloved, imparts great authority to the precepts of the Gospel, seeing that certain things are transferred from the old ordinances to the new, and by the very devotions of the Church it is shown that the Lord Jesus Christ "came not to destroy but to fulfil the Law [709] ." For since the cessation of the signs by which our Saviour's coming was announced, and the abolition of the types in the presence of the Very Truth, those things which our religion instituted, whether for the regulation of customs or for the simple worship of God, continue with us in the same form in which they were at the beginning, and what was in harmony with both Testaments has been modified by no change. Among these is also the solemn fast of the tenth month, which is now to be kept by us according to yearly custom, because it is altogether just and godly to give thanks to the Divine bounty for the crops which the earth has produced for the use of men under the guiding hand of supreme Providence. And to show that we do this with ready mind, we must exercise not only the self-restraint of fasting, but also diligence in almsgiving, that from the ground of our heart also may spring the germ of righteousness and the fruit of love, and that we may deserve God's mercy by showing mercy to His poor. For the supplication, which is supported by works of piety, is most efficacious in prevailing with God, since he who turns not his heart away from the poor soon turns himself to hear the Lord, as the Lord says: "be ye merciful as your Father also is merciful....release and ye shall be released [710] ." What is kinder than this justice? what more merciful than this retribution, where the judge's sentence rests in the power of him that is to be judged? "Give," he says, "and it shall be given to you [711] ." How soon do the misgivings of distrust and the puttings off of avarice fall to the ground, when humanity [712] may fearlessly spend what the Truth pledges Himself to repay.
II. He that lends to the Lord makes a better bargain than he that lends to man.
Be stedfast, Christian giver: give what you may receive, sow what you may reap, scatter what you may gather. Fear not to spend, sigh not over the doubtfulness of the gain. Your substance grows when it is wisely dispensed. Set your heart on the profits due to mercy, and traffic in eternal gains. Your Recompenser wishes you to be munificent, and He who gives that you may have, commands you to spend, saying, "Give, and it shall be given to you." You must thankfully embrace the conditions of this promise. For although you have nothing that you did not receive, yet you cannot fail to have what you give. He therefore that loves money, and wishes to multiply his wealth by immoderate profits, should rather practise this holy usury and grow rich by such money-lending, in order not to catch men hampered with difficulties, and by treacherous assistance entangle them in debts which they can never pay, but to be His creditor and His money-lender, who says, "Give, and it shall be given to you," and "with what measure ye measure, it shall be measured again to you [713] ." But he is unfaithful and unfair even to himself, who does not wish to have for ever what he esteems desirable. Let him amass what he may, let him hoard and store what he may, he will leave this world empty and needy, as David the prophet says, "for when he dieth he shall take nothing away, nor shall his glory descend with him [714] ." Whereas if he were considerate of his own soul, he would trust his good to Him, who is both the proper Surety [715] for the poor and the generous Repayer of loans. But unrighteous and shameless avarice, which promises to do some kind act but eludes it, trusts not God, whose promises never fail, and trusts man, who makes such hasty bargains; and while he reckons the present more certain than the future, often deservedly finds that his greed for unjust gain is the cause of by no means unjust loss.
III. Money-lending at high interest is in all respects iniquitous.
And hence, whatever result follow, the money-lender's trade is always bad, for it is sin either to lessen or increase the sum, in that if he lose what he lent he is wretched, and if he takes more than he lent he is more wretched still. The iniquity of money-lending must absolutely be abjured, and the gain which lacks all humanity must be shunned. A man's possessions are indeed multiplied by these unrighteous and sorry means, but the mind's wealth decays because usury of money is the death of the soul [716] . For what God thinks of such men the most holy Prophet David makes clear, for when he asks, "Lord, who shall dwell in thy tabernacle, or who shall rest upon thy holy hill [717] ?" he receives the Divine utterance in reply, from which he learns that that man attains to eternal rest who among other rules of holy living "hath not given his money upon usury [718] :" and thus he who gets deceitful gain from lending his money on usury is shown to be both an alien from God's tabernacle and an exile from His holy hill, and in seeking to enrich himself by other's losses, he deserves to be punished with eternal neediness.
IV. Let us avoid avarice, and share God's benefits with others.
And so, dearly beloved, do ye who with the whole heart have put your trust in the Lord's promises, flee from this unclean leprosy of avarice, and use God's gift piously and wisely. And since you rejoice in His bounty, take heed that you have those who may share in your joys. For many lack what you have in plenty, and some men's needs afford you opportunity for imitating the Divine goodness, so that through you the Divine benefits may be transferred to others also, and that by being wise stewards of your temporal goods, you may acquire eternal riches. On Wednesday and Friday next, therefore, let us fast, and on Saturday keep vigil with the most blessed Apostle Peter, by whose prayers we may in all things obtain the Divine protection through Christ our Lord. Amen. __________________________________________________________________
[709] S. Matt. v. 17.
[710] S. Luke vi. 36, 37, 38.
[711] S. Luke vi. 36, 37, 38.
[712] Humanitas: one ms. reads humilitas (man's humility), but humanitas occurs again in chap. iii. lucrum quod omni caret humanitate.
[713] S. Luke vi. 38.
[714] Ps. xlix. 17.
[715] Fide iussor one of Leo's legal terms.
[716] Foenus pecuniæ funus est animæ, the epigrammatic play on words will not escape notice.
[717] Ps. xv. 1 and 5.
[718] Ps. xv. 1 and 5. __________________________________________________________________
Sermon XIX.
On the Fast of the Ten Month, VIII.
I. Self-restraint leads to higher enjoyments.
When the Saviour would instruct His disciples about the Advent of God's Kingdom and the end of the world's times, and teach His whole Church, in the person of the Apostles, He said, "Take heed lest haply your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness, and care of this life [719] ." And assuredly, dearly beloved, we acknowledge that this precept applies more especially to us, to whom undoubtedly the day denounced is near, even though hidden. For the advent of which it behoves every man to prepare himself, lest it find him given over to gluttony, or entangled in cares of this life. For by daily experience, beloved, it is proved that the mind's edge is blunted by over-indulgence of the flesh, and the heart's vigour is dulled by excess of food, so that the delights of eating are even opposed to the health of the body, unless reasonable moderation withstand the temptation and the consideration of future discomfort keep from the pleasure. For although the flesh desires nothing without the soul, and receives its sensations from the same source as it receives its motions also, yet it is the function of the same soul to deny certain things to the body which is subject to it, and by its inner judgment to restrain the outer parts from things unseasonable, in order that it may be the oftener free from bodily lusts, and have leisure for Divine wisdom in the palace of the mind, where, away from all the noise of earthly cares, it may in silence enjoy holy meditations and eternal delights. And, although this is difficult to maintain in this life, yet the attempt can frequently be renewed, in order that we may the oftener and longer be occupied with spiritual rather than fleshly cares; and by our spending ever greater portions of our time on higher cares, even our temporal actions may end in gaining the incorruptible riches.
II. The teaching of the four yearly fasts is that spiritual self-restraint is as necessary as corporeal.
This profitable observance, dearly beloved, is especially laid down for the fasts of the Church, which, in accordance with the Holy Spirit's teaching, are so distributed over the whole year that the law of abstinence may be kept before us at all times. Accordingly we keep the spring fast in Lent, the summer fast at Whitsuntide, the autumn fast in the seventh month, and the winter fast in this which is the tenth month, knowing that there is nothing unconnected with the Divine commands, and that all the elements serve the Word of God to our instruction, so that from the very hinges on which the world turns, as if by four gospels we learn unceasingly what to preach and what to do. For, when the prophet says, "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth His handiwork: day unto day uttereth speech, and night showeth knowledge [720] ," what is there by which the Truth does not speak to us? By day and by night His voices are heard, and the beauty of the things made by the workmanship of the One God ceases not to instil the teachings of Reason into our hearts' ears, so that "the invisible things of God may be perceived and seen through the things which are made," and men may serve the Creator of all, not His creatures [721] . Since therefore all vices are destroyed by self-restraint, and whatever avarice thirsts for, pride strives for, luxury lusts after, is overcome by the solid force of this virtue, who can fail to understand the aid which is given us by fastings? for therein we are bidden to restrain ourselves, not only in food, but also in all carnal desires. Otherwise it is lost labour to endure hunger and yet not put away wrong wishes; to afflict oneself by curtailing food, and yet not to flee from sinful thoughts. That is a carnal, not a spiritual fast, where the body only is stinted, and those things persisted in, which are more harmful than all delights. What profit is it to the soul to act outwardly as mistress and inwardly to be a captive and a slave, to issue orders to the limbs and to lose the right to her own liberty? That soul for the most part (and deservedly) meets with rebellion in her servant, which does not pay to God the service that is due. When the body therefore fasts from food, let the mind fast from vices, and pass judgment upon all earthly cares and desires according to the law of its King
III. Thus fasting in mind as well as body, and giving alms freely, we shall win God's highest favour.
Let us remember that we owe love first to God, secondly to our neighbour, and that all our affections must be so regulated as not to draw us away from the worship of God, or the benefiting our fellow slave. But how shall we worship God unless that which is pleasing to Him is also pleasing to us? For, if our will is His will, our weakness will receive strength from Him, from Whom the very will came; "for it is God," as the Apostle says, "who worketh in us both to will and to do for (His) good pleasure [722] ." And so a man will not be puffed up with pride, nor crushed with despair, if he uses the gifts which God gave to His glory, and withholds his inclinations from those things, which he knows will harm him. For in abstaining from malicious envy, from luxurious and dissolute living, from the perturbations of anger, from the lust after vengeance, he will be made pure and holy by true fasting, and will be fed upon the pleasures of incorruptible delights, and so he will know how, by the spiritual use of his earthly riches, to transform them into heavenly treasures, not by hoarding up for himself what he has received, but by gaining a hundred-fold on what he gives. And hence we warn you, beloved, in fatherly affection, to make this winter fast fruitful to yourselves by bounteous alms, rejoicing that by you the Lord feeds and clothes His poor, to whom assuredly He could have given the possessions which He has bestowed on you, had He not in His unspeakable mercy wished to justify them for their patient labour, and you for your works of love. Let us therefore fast on Wednesday and Friday, and on Saturday keep vigil with the most blessed Apostle Peter, and he will deign to assist with his own prayers our supplications and fastings and alms which our Lord Jesus Christ presents, Who with the Father and the Holy Ghost lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen. __________________________________________________________________
[719] S. Luke xxi. 34.
[720] Ps. xix. 1, 2.
[721] Cf. Rom. i. 20 and 25.
[722] Phil. ii. 13. __________________________________________________________________
Sermon XXI.
On the Feast of the Nativity, I.
I. All share in the joy of Christmas.
Our Saviour, dearly-beloved, was born today: let us be glad. For there is no proper place for sadness, when we keep the birthday of the Life, which destroys the fear of mortality and brings to us the joy of promised eternity. No one is kept from sharing in this happiness. There is for all one common measure of joy, because as our Lord the destroyer of sin and death finds none free from charge, so is He come to free us all. Let the saint exult in that he draws near to victory. Let the sinner be glad in that he is invited to pardon. Let the gentile take courage in that he is called to life. For the Son of God in the fulness of time which the inscrutable depth of the Divine counsel has determined, has taken on him the nature of man, thereby to reconcile it to its Author: in order that the inventor of death, the devil, might be conquered through that (nature) which he had conquered. And in this conflict undertaken for us, the fight was fought on great and wondrous principles of fairness; for the Almighty Lord enters the lists with His savage foe not in His own majesty but in our humility, opposing him with the same form and the same nature, which shares indeed our mortality, though it is free from all sin. Truly foreign to this nativity is that which we read of all others, "no one is clean from stain, not even the infant who has lived but one day upon earth [723] ." Nothing therefore of the lust of the flesh has passed into that peerless nativity, nothing of the law of sin has entered. A royal Virgin of the stem of David is chosen, to be impregnated with the sacred seed and to conceive the Divinely-human offspring in mind first and then in body. And lest in ignorance of the heavenly counsel she should tremble at so strange a result [724] , she learns from converse with the angel that what is to be wrought in her is of the Holy Ghost. Nor does she believe it loss of honour that she is soon to be the Mother of God [725] . For why should she be in despair over the novelty of such conception, to whom the power of the most High has promised to effect it. Her implicit faith is confirmed also by the attestation of a precursory miracle, and Elizabeth receives unexpected fertility: in order that there might be no doubt that He who had given conception to the barren, would give it even to a virgin.
II. The mystery of the Incarnation is a fitting theme for joy both to angels and to men.
Therefore the Word of God, Himself God, the Son of God who "in the beginning was with God," through whom "all things were made" and "without" whom "was nothing made [726] ," with the purpose of delivering man from eternal death, became man: so bending Himself to take on Him our humility without decrease in His own majesty, that remaining what He was and assuming what He was not, He might unite the true form of a slave to that form in which He is equal to God the Father, and join both natures together by such a compact that the lower should not be swallowed up in its exaltation nor the higher impaired by its new associate. [727] Without detriment therefore to the properties of either substance which then came together in one person, majesty took on humility, strength weakness, eternity mortality: and for the paying off of the debt, belonging to our condition, inviolable nature was united with passible nature, and true God and true man were combined to form one Lord, so that, as suited the needs of our case, one and the same Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, could both die with the one and rise again with the other [728] .
Rightly therefore did the birth of our Salvation impart no corruption to the Virgin's purity, because the bearing of the Truth was the keeping of honour. Such then beloved was the nativity which became the Power of God and the Wisdom of God even Christ, whereby He might be one with us in manhood and surpass us in Godhead. For unless He were true God, He would not bring us a remedy, unless He were true Man, He would not give us an example. Therefore the exulting angel's song when the Lord was born is this, "Glory to God in the Highest," and their message, "peace on earth to men of good will [729] ." For they see that the heavenly Jerusalem is being built up out of all the nations of the world: and over that indescribable work of the Divine love how ought the humbleness of men to rejoice, when the joy of the lofty angels is so great?
III. Christians then must live worthily of Christ their Head.
Let us then, dearly beloved, give thanks to God the Father, through His Son, in the Holy Spirit [730] , Who "for His great mercy, wherewith He has loved us," has had pity on us: and "when we were dead in sins, has quickened us together in Christ [731] ," that we might be in Him a new creation and a new production. Let us put off then the old man with his deeds: and having obtained a share in the birth of Christ let us renounce the works of the flesh. Christian, acknowledge thy dignity, and becoming a partner in the Divine nature, refuse to return to the old baseness by degenerate conduct. Remember the Head and the Body of which thou art a member. Recollect that thou wert rescued from the power of darkness and brought out into God's light and kingdom. By the mystery of Baptism thou wert made the temple of the Holy Ghost: do not put such a denizen to flight from thee by base acts, and subject thyself once more to the devil's thraldom: because thy purchase money is the blood of Christ, because He shall judge thee in truth Who ransomed thee in mercy, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit reigns for ever and ever. Amen. __________________________________________________________________
[723] Job xix. 4.
[724] Effectus: the older editions read affatus (sc. the utterances of the angel).
[725] Dei genetrix (theotokos): in opposing Eutyches, Leo is careful not to fall into Nestorianism. Bright's note 3 should be read on this passage, and esp. his quotation from Bp. Pearson (note 2 on Art. 3) absit ut quisquam S. Mariam Divinæ gratiæ privilegiis et speciali gloria fraudare conetur.
[726] S. John i. 1-3.
[727] "Without-other" repeated in almost the same words in Letter XXVIII. chap. 3.
[728] "Without-other" repeated in almost the same words in Letter XXVIII. chap. 3.
[729] S. Luke ii. 14.
[730] Bingham observes (b. xiv. c. 2, s. 1), that Leo here uses, though in a catholic sense, that form of doxology which had become associated with Arianism. He could well afford to do as S. Athanasius had done, who ascribes glory to the Father "through the Son" at the conclusion of four treatises. Bright.
[731] Eph. ii. 4, 5. __________________________________________________________________
Sermon XXII.
On the Feast of the Nativity, II.
I. The mystery of the Incarnation demands our joy.
Let us be glad in the Lord, dearly-beloved, and rejoice with spiritual joy that there has dawned for us the day of ever-new redemption, of ancient preparation [732] , of eternal bliss. For as the year rolls round, there recurs for us the commemoration [733] of our salvation, which promised from the beginning, accomplished in the fulness of time will endure for ever; on which we are bound with hearts up-lifted [734] to adore the divine mystery: so that what is the effect of God's great gift may be celebrated by the Church's great rejoicings. For God the almighty and merciful, Whose nature as goodness, Whose will is power, Whose work is mercy: as soon as the devil's malignity killed us by the poison of his hatred, foretold at the very beginning of the world the remedy His piety had prepared for the restoration of us mortals: proclaiming to the serpent that the seed of the woman should come to crush the lifting of his baneful head by its power, signifying no doubt that Christ would come in the flesh, God and man, Who born of a Virgin should by His uncorrupt birth condemn the despoiler of the human stock. [735] Thus in the whole and perfect nature of true man was true God born, complete in what was His own, complete in what was ours. And "ours" we call what the Creator formed in us from the beginning and what He undertook to repair. For what the deceiver brought in and the deceived admitted had no trace in the Saviour. Nor because He partook of man's weaknesses, did He therefore share our faults. He took the form of a slave without stain of sin, increasing the human and not diminishing the Divine: because that "emptying of Himself" whereby the Invisible made Himself visible and Creator and Lord of all things as He was, wished to be mortal, was the condescension of Pity not the failing of Power [736] .
II. The new character of the birth of Christ explained.
Therefore, when the time came, dearly beloved, which had been fore-ordained for men's redemption [737] , there enters these lower parts of the world, the Son of God, descending from His heavenly throne and yet not quitting His Father's glory, begotten in a new order, by a new nativity. In a new order, because being invisible in His own nature He became visible in ours, and He whom nothing could contain, was content to be contained: abiding before all time He began to be in time: the Lord of all things, He obscured His immeasurable majesty and took on Him the form of a servant: being God, that cannot suffer, He did not disdain to be man that can, and immortal as He is, to subject Himself to the laws of death [738] . And by a new nativity He was begotten, conceived by a Virgin, born of a Virgin, without paternal desire, without injury to the mother's chastity: because such a birth as knew no taint of human flesh, became One who was to be the Saviour of men, while it possessed in itself the nature of human substance. For when God was born in the flesh, God Himself was the Father, as the archangel witnessed to the Blessed Virgin Mary: "because the Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the most High shall overshadow thee: and therefore, that which shall be born of thee shall be called holy, the Son of God [739] ." The origin is different but the nature like: not by intercourse with man but by the power of God was it brought about: for a Virgin conceived, a Virgin bare, and a Virgin she remained. Consider here not the condition of her that bare but the will of Him that was born; for He was born Man as He willed and was able. If you inquire into the truth of His nature, you must acknowledge the matter to be human: if you search for the mode of His birth, you must confess the power to be of God. For the Lord Jesus Christ came to do away with not to endure our pollutions: not to succumb to our faults but to heal them [740] . He came that He might cure every weakness of our corruptness and all the sores of our defiled souls: for which reason it behoved Him to be born by a new order, who brought to men's bodies the new gift of unsullied purity. For the uncorrupt nature of Him that was born had to guard the primal virginity of the Mother, and the infused power of the Divine Spirit had to preserve in spotlessness and holiness that sanctuary which He had chosen for Himself: that Spirit (I say) who had determined to raise the fallen, to restore the broken, and by overcoming the allurements of the flesh to bestow on us in abundant measure the power of chastity: in order that the virginity which in others cannot be retained in child-bearing, might be attained by them at their second birth.
III. Justice required that Satan should be vanquished by God made man.
And, dearly beloved, this very fact that Christ chose to be born of a Virgin does it not appear to be part of the deepest design? I mean, that the devil should not be aware that Salvation had been born for the human race, and through the obscurity of that spiritual conception, when he saw Him no different to others, should believe Him born in no different way to others. For when he observed that His nature was like that of all others, he thought that He had the same origin as all had: and did not understand that He was free from the bonds of transgression because he did not find Him a stranger to the weakness of mortality. For though the true [741] mercy of God had infinitely many schemes to hand for the restoration of mankind, it chose that particular design which put in force for destroying the devil's work, not the efficacy of might but the dictates of justice. For the pride of the ancient foe not undeservedly made good its despotic rights over all men, and with no unwarrantable supremacy tyrannized over those who had been of their own accord lured away from God's commands to be the slaves of his will. And so there would be no justice in his losing the immemorial slavery of the human race, were he not conquered by that which he had subjugated. And to this end, without male seed Christ was conceived of a Virgin, who was fecundated not by human intercourse but by the Holy Spirit. And whereas in all mothers conception does not take place without stain of sin, this one received purification from the Source of her conception. For no taint of sin penetrated, where no intercourse occurred. Her unsullied virginity knew no lust when it ministered the substance. The Lord took from His mother our nature, not our fault [742] . The slave's form is created without the slave's estate, because the New Man is so commingled with the old, as both to assume the reality of our race and to remove its ancient flaw.
IV. The Incarnation deceived the Devil and caused him to break the bond under which he held men.
When, therefore, the merciful and almighty Saviour so arranged the commencement of His human course as to hide the power of His Godhead which was inseparable from His manhood under the veil of our weakness, the crafty foe was taken off his guard and he thought that the nativity of the Child, Who was born for the salvation of mankind, was as much subject to himself as all others are at their birth. For he saw Him crying and weeping, he saw Him wrapped in swaddling clothes, subjected to circumcision, offering the sacrifice which the law required. And then he perceived in Him the usual growth of boyhood, and could have had no doubt of His reaching man's estate by natural steps. Meanwhile, he inflicted insults, multiplied injuries, made use of curses, affronts, blasphemies, abuse, in a word, poured upon Him all the force of his fury and exhausted all the varieties of trial: and knowing how he had poisoned man's nature, had no conception that He had no share in the first transgression Whose mortality he had ascertained by so many proofs. The unscrupulous thief and greedy robber persisted in assaulting Him Who had nothing of His own, and in carrying out the general sentence on original sin, went beyond the bond on which he rested [743] , and required the punishment of iniquity from Him in Whom he found no fault. And thus the malevolent terms of the deadly compact are annulled, and through the injustice of an overcharge the whole debt is cancelled. The strong one is bound by his own chains, and every device of the evil one recoils on his own head. When the prince of the world is bound, all that he held in captivity is released [744] . Our nature cleansed from its old contagion regains its honourable estate, death is destroyed by death, nativity is restored by nativity: since at one and the same time redemption does away with slavery, regeneration changes our origin, and faith justifies the sinner.
V. The Christian is exhorted to share in the blessings of the Incarnation.
Whoever then thou art that devoutly and faithfully boastest of the Christian name, estimate this atonement at its right worth. For to thee who wast a castaway, banished from the realms of paradise, dying of thy weary exile, reduced to dust and ashes, without further hope of living, by the Incarnation of the Word was given the power to return from afar to thy Maker, to recognize thy parentage, to become free after slavery, to be promoted from being an outcast to sonship: so that, thou who wast born of corruptible flesh, mayest be reborn by the Spirit of God, and obtain through grace what thou hadst not by nature, and, if thou acknowledge thyself the son of God by the spirit of adoption, dare to call God Father. Freed from the accusings of a bad conscience, aspire to the kingdom of heaven, do God's will supported by the Divine help, imitate the angels upon earth, feed on the strength of immortal sustenance, fight fearlessly on the side of piety against hostile temptations, and if thou keep thy allegiance [745] in the heavenly warfare, doubt not that thou wilt be crowned for thy victory in the triumphant camp of the Eternal King, when the resurrection that is prepared for the faithful has raised thee to participate in the heavenly Kingdom.
VI. The festival has nothing to do with sun-worship, as some maintain.
Having therefore so confident a hope, dearly beloved, abide firm in the Faith in which you are built: lest that same tempter whose tyranny over you Christ has already destroyed, win you back again with any of his wiles, and mar even the joys of the present festival by his deceitful art, misleading simpler souls with the pestilential notion of some to whom this our solemn feast day seems to derive its honour, not so much from the nativity of Christ as, according to them, from the rising of the new sun [746] . Such men's hearts are wrapped in total darkness, and have no growing perception of the true Light: for they are still drawn away by the foolish errors of heathendom, and because they cannot lift the eyes of their mind above that which their carnal sight beholds, they pay divine honour to the luminaries that minister to the world. Let not Christian souls entertain any such wicked superstition and portentous lie. Beyond all measure are things temporal removed from the Eternal, things corporeal from the Incorporeal, things governed from the Governor. For though they possess a wondrous beauty, yet they have no Godhead to be worshipped. That power then, that wisdom, that majesty is to be adored which created the universe out of nothing, and framed by His almighty methods the substance of the earth and sky into what forms and dimensions He willed. Sun, moon, and stars may be most useful to us, most fair to look upon; but only if we render thanks to their Maker for them and worship God who made them, not the creation which does Him service. Then praise God, dearly beloved, in all His works and judgments. Cherish an undoubting belief in the Virgin's pure conception. Honour the sacred and Divine mystery of man's restoration with holy and sincere service. Embrace Christ born in our flesh, that you may deserve to see Him also as the God of glory reigning in His majesty, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit remains in the unity of the Godhead for ever and ever. Amen. __________________________________________________________________
[732] Præparationis (viz. the day to which prophecies and types were leading up): another reading is reparationis (restoration), which is less apposite.
[733] Sacramentum.
[734] Erectis sursum cordibus, the phrase reminds us of the Eucharistic V. sursum corda R. habemus ad Dominum.
[735] From "Thus" to the end of the chapter is repeated in Lett. XXVIII. (Tome), chap. 3.
[736] From "Thus" to the end of the chapter is repeated in Lett. XXVIII. (Tome), chap. 3.
[737] From "there enters" to "death" is repeated in Lett. XXVIII. (Tome), chap 4.
[738] From "there enters" to "death" is repeated in Lett. XXVIII. (Tome), chap 4.
[739] S. Luke i. 35.
[740] For the impeccability of Christ involved in this statement, cf. Serm. LXIV. chap. 2, and Lett. XXVIII. (Tome) chap. 3, and especially Bright's note 15 (to Sermon XXIII. chap. 2).
[741] Verax, literally truth speaking, and so genuine, sincere, &c.
[742] This sentence is found also in Lett. XXVIII. (Tome), chap. 3; but here instead of de matre Domini, natura there is a variant reading, de matre, hominis natura.
[743] Dum vitiatæ originis præiudicium generale persequitur, chirographum quo nitebatur excedit. Cf. Col. ii. 14, and Lett. CXXIV. 7.
[744] Captivitatis vasa rapiuntur: the passage in the writer's mind is S. Luke xi. 21, 22, q.v.
[745] Si cælestis militiæ sacramenta servaveris: here we have a return to the earlier classical meaning of sacramentum.
[746] Such an idea is no doubt to be referred to the Manichæans. __________________________________________________________________
Sermon XXIII.
On the Feast of the Nativity, III.
I. The truths of the Incarnation never suffer from being repeated.
The things which are connected with the mystery [747] of to-day's solemn feast are well known to you, dearly-beloved, and have frequently been heard: but as yonder visible light affords pleasure to eyes that are unimpaired, so to sound hearts does the Saviour's nativity give eternal joy; and we must not keep silent about it, though we cannot treat of it as we ought. For we believe that what Isaiah says, "who shall declare his generation [748] ?" applies not only to that mystery, whereby the Son of God is co-eternal with the Father, but also to this birth whereby "the Word became flesh." And so God, the Son of God, equal and of the same nature from the Father and with the Father, Creator and Lord of the Universe, Who is completely present everywhere, and completely exceeds all things, in the due course of time, which runs by His own disposal, chose for Himself this day on which to be born of the blessed virgin Mary for the salvation of the world, without loss of the mother's honour. For her virginity was violated neither at the conception nor at the birth: "that it might be fulfilled," as the Evangelist says, "which was spoken by the Lord through Isaiah the prophet, saying, behold the virgin shall conceive in the womb, and shall bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which is interpreted, God with us [749] ." For this wondrous child-bearing of the holy Virgin produced in her offspring one person which was truly human and truly Divine [750] , because neither substance so retained their properties that there could be any division of persons in them; nor was the creature taken into partnership with its Creator in such a way that the One was the in-dweller, and the other the dwelling; but so that the one nature was blended [751] with the other. And although the nature which is taken is one, and that which takes is another, yet these two diverse natures come together into such close union that it is one and the same Son who says both that, as true Man, "He is less than the Father," and that, as true God, "He is equal with the Father."
II. The Arians could not comprehend the union of God and man.
This union, dearly beloved, whereby the Creator is joined to the creature, Arian blindness could not see with the eyes of intelligence, but, not believing that the Only-begotten of God was of the same glory and substance with the Father, spoke of the Son's Godhead as inferior, drawing its arguments from those words which are to be referred to the "form of a slave," in respect of which, in order to show that it belongs to no other or different person in Himself, the same Son of God with the same form, says, "The Father is greater than I [752] ," just as He says with the same form, "I and my Father are one [753] ." For in "the form of a slave," which He took at the end of the ages for our restoration, He is inferior to the Father: but in the form of God, in which He was before the ages, He is equal to the Father. In His human humiliation He was "made of a woman, made under the Law [754] :" in His Divine majesty He abides the Word of God, "through whom all things were made [755] ." [756] Accordingly, He Who in the form of God made man, in the form of a slave was made man. For both natures retain their own proper character without loss: and as the form of God did not do away with the form of a slave, so the form of a slave did not impair the form of God [757] . And so the mystery of power united to weakness, in respect of the same human nature, allows the Son to be called inferior to the Father: but the Godhead, which is One in the Trinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, excludes all notion of inequality. For the eternity of the Trinity has nothing temporal, nothing dissimilar in nature: Its will is one, Its substance identical, Its power equal, and yet there are not three Gods, but one God [758] ; because it is a true and inseparable unity, where there can be no diversity [759] . Thus in the whole and perfect nature of true man was true God born, complete in what was His own, complete in what was ours. And by "ours" we mean what the Creator formed in us from the beginning, and what He undertook to repair. For what the deceiver brought in, and man deceived committed, had no trace in the Saviour; nor because He partook of man's weaknesses, did He therefore share our faults. He took the form of a slave without stain of sin, increasing the human and not diminishing the divine: for that "emptying of Himself," whereby the Invisible made Himself visible, was the bending down of pity, not the failing of power.
III. The Incarnation was necessary to the taking away of sin.
In order therefore that we might be called to eternal bliss from our original bond and from earthly errors, He came down Himself to us to Whom we could not ascend, because, although there was in many the love of truth, yet the variety of our shifting opinions was deceived by the craft of misleading demons, and man's ignorance was dragged into diverse and conflicting notions by a falsely-called science. But to remove this mockery, whereby men's minds were taken captive to serve the arrogant devil, the teaching of the Law was not sufficient, nor could our nature be restored merely by the Prophets' exhortations; but the reality of redemption had to be added to moral injunctions, and our fundamentally corrupt origin had to be re-born afresh. A Victim had to be offered for our atonement Who should be both a partner of our race and free from our contamination, so that this design of God whereby it pleased Him to take away the sin of the world in the Nativity and Passion of Jesus Christ, might reach to all generations [760] : and that we should not be disturbed but rather strengthened by these mysteries, which vary with the character of the times, since the Faith, whereby we live, has at no time suffered variation.
IV. The blessings of the Incarnation stretch backwards as well as reach forward.
Accordingly let those men cease their complaints who with disloyal murmurs speak against the dispensations of God, and babble about the lateness of the Lord's Nativity as if that, which was fulfilled in the last age of the world, had no bearing upon the times that are past. For the Incarnation of the Word did but contribute to the doing of that which was done [761] : and the mystery of man's salvation was never in the remotest age at a standstill. What the apostles foretold, that the prophets announced: nor was that fulfilled too late which has always been believed. But the Wisdom and Goodness of God made us more receptive of His call by thus delaying the work which brought salvation: so that what through so many ages had been foretold by many signs, many utterances, and many mysteries, might not be doubtful in these days of the Gospel: and that the Saviour's nativity, which was to exceed all wonders and all the measure of human knowledge, might engender in us a Faith so much the firmer, as the foretelling of it had been ancient and oft-repeated. And so it was no new counsel, no tardy pity whereby God took thought for men: but from the constitution of the world He ordained one and the same Cause of Salvation for all. For the grace of God, by which the whole body of the saints is ever justified, was augmented, not begun, when Christ was born: and this mystery of God's great love, wherewith the whole world is now filled, was so effectively presignified that those who believed that promise obtained no less than they, who were the actual recipients.
V. The coming of Christ in our flesh corresponds with our becoming members of His body.
Wherefore since the loving-kindness is manifest, dearly beloved, wherewith all the riches of Divine goodness are showered on us, whose call to eternal life has been assisted not only by the profitable examples of those who went before, but also by the visible and bodily appearing of the Truth Itself, we are bound to keep the day of the Lord's Nativity with no slothful nor carnal joy. And we shall each keep it worthily and thoroughly, if we remember of what Body we are members, and to what a Head we are joined, lest any one as an ill-fitting joint cohere not with the rest of the sacred building. Consider, dearly beloved and by the illumination of the Holy Spirit thoughtfully bear in mind Who it was that received us into Himself, and that we have received in us: since, as the Lord Jesus became our flesh by being born, so we also became His body by being re-born. Therefore are we both members of Christ, and the temple of the Holy Ghost: and for this reason the blessed Apostle says, "Glorify and carry God in your body [762] :" for while suggesting to us the standard of His own gentleness and humility, He fills us with that power whereby He redeemed us, as the Lord Himself promises: "come unto Me all ye who labour and are heavy-laden, and I will refresh you. Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly of heart, and ye shall find rest to your souls. [763] " Let us then take the yoke, that is not heavy nor irksome, of the Truth that rules us, and let us imitate His humility, to Whose glory we wish to be conformed: He Himself helping us and leading us to His promises, Who, according to His great mercy, is powerful to blot out our sins, and to perfect His gifts in us, Jesus Christ our Lord, Who lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen. __________________________________________________________________
[747] Sacramentum (as usual). I would venture to urge that Bright is hardly justified in interpreting this as "sacred observance" here, unless I have misunderstood his note 8. Surely Leo means, the facts and details and consequences arising from the mystery of the Incarnation are well known to you. This agrees better with the context and is in accordance with his common use of the word.
[748] Isaiah liii. 8.
[749] S. Matt. i. 22, 23.
[750] Vere humanum vereque aivinam unam edidit prole personam.
[751] Misceretur: Quesnel truly remarks that the fathers "securius locuti sunt nondum litigantibus Eutychianis post cuius hæresis ortum cautim--locutus est Leo." That no "fusion" of the natures is really implied Bright (note 11) clearly shows.
[752] S. John xiv. 28.
[753] Ib. x. 30.
[754] Gal. iv. 4.
[755] S. John. i. 3.
[756] From "accordingly" to "form of God" occurs again in Lett. XXVIII. (Tome) chap. 3.
[757] From "accordingly" to "form of God" occurs again in Lett. XXVIII. (Tome) chap. 3.
[758] Several times in this chapter and elsewhere in Leo the language reminds us forcibly of the Quicunque "which," says Bright (note 14), "whatever be its date, was clearly compiled by some one accustomed to the theological terminology of the Latin church of the fifth century."
[759] From here to end of chapter occurs again in Lett. XXVIII. (Tome) chap. 3.
[760] From what he goes on to say in the next chapter, is clear that Leo meant that both past and future generations of mankind shared in the benefits of the Incarnation: cf. Bright's note 16.
[761] Hoc contulit faciendum quod factum, i.e. the Incarnation was but a part (though an essential part) in the Divine scheme of redemption, and, as he goes on to show, could not have occurred sooner than it did occur: for it would have marred the sequence of the whole design: cf. Bright's note 17: also S. John viii. 56.
[762] 1 Cor. vi. 20. Glorificate et portate deum in corpore vestro, quoted again in this form in Sermon LIII. 3. Observe (1) that , "et portate" is doubtless a very old Western' gloss" Bright, note 18), and (2) that the words "and in your spirit which are God's" (A.V.) find no place in the Latin Versions, and are now omitted in R.V.
[763] S. Matt. xi. 28. __________________________________________________________________
Sermon XXIV.
On the Feast of the Nativity, IV.
I. The Incarnation fulfils all its types and promises.
The Divine goodness, dearly beloved, has indeed always taken thought for mankind in divers manners, and in many portions, and of His mercy has imparted many gifts of His providence to the ages of old; but in these last times has exceeded all the abundance of His usual kindness, when in Christ the very Mercy has descended to sinners, the very Truth to those that are astray, the very Life to those that are dead: so that Word, which is co-eternal and co-equal with the Father, might take our humble nature into union with His Godhead, and, being born God of God, might also be born Man of man. This was indeed promised from the foundation of the world, and had always been prophesied by many intimations of facts and words [764] : but how small a portion of mankind would these types and fore-shadowed mysteries have saved, had not the coming of Christ fulfilled those long and secret promises: and had not that which then benefited but a few believers in the prospect, now benefited myriads of the faithful in its accomplishment. Now no longer then are we led to believe by signs and types, but being confirmed by the gospel story we worship that which we believe to have been done; the prophetic lore [765] assisting our knowledge, so that we have no manner of doubt about that which we know to have been predicted by such sure oracles. For hence it is that the Lord says to Abraham: "In thy seed shall all nations be blessed [766] :" hence David, in the spirit of prophecy, sings, saying: "The Lord swore truth to David, and He shall not frustrate it: of the fruit of thy loins will I set upon thy seat [767] ;" hence the Lord again says through Isaiah: "behold a virgin shall conceive in her womb, and shall bear a Son, and His Name shall be called Emmanuel, which is interpreted, God with us [768] ," and again, "a rod shall come forth from the root of Jesse, and a flower shall arise from his root [769] ." In which rod, no doubt the blessed Virgin Mary is predicted, who sprung from the stock of Jesse and David and fecundated by the Holy Ghost, brought forth a new flower of human flesh, becoming a virgin-mother.
II. The Incarnation was the only effective remedy to the fall.
Let the righteous then rejoice in the Lord, and let the hearts of believers turn to God's praise, and the sons of men confess His wondrous acts; since in this work of God especially our humble estate realizes how highly its Maker values it: in that, after His great gift to mankind in making us after His image, He contributed far more largely to our restoration when the Lord Himself took on Him "the form of a slave." For though all that the Creator expends upon His creature is part of one and the same Fatherly love, yet it is less wonderful than man should advance to divine things than that God should descend to humanity. But unless the Almighty God did deign to do this, no kind of righteousness, no form of wisdom could rescue any one from the devil's bondage and from the depths of eternal death. For the condemnation that passes with sin from one upon all would remain, and our nature, corroded by its deadly wound, would discover no remedy, because it could not alter its state in its own strength. For the first man received the substance of flesh from the earth, and was quickened with a rational spirit by the in-breathing of his Creator [770] , so that living after the image and likeness of his Maker, he might preserve the form of God's goodness and righteousness as in a bright mirror. And, if he had perseveringly maintained this high dignity of his nature by observing the Law that was given him, his uncorrupt mind would have raised the character even of his earthly body to heavenly glory. But because in unhappy rashness he trusted the envious deceiver, and agreeing to his presumptuous counsels, preferred to forestall rather than to win the increase of honour that was in store for him, not only did that one man, but in him all that came after him also hear the verdict: "earth thou art, and unto earth shalt thou go [771] ;" "as in the earthy," therefore, "such are they also that are earthy [772] ," and no one is immortal, because no one is heavenly.
III. We all become partakers in the Birth of Christ, by the re-birth of baptism.
And so to undo this chain of sin and death, the Almighty Son of God, that fills all things and contains all things, altogether equal to the Father and co-eternal in one essence from Him and with Him, took on Him man's nature, and the Creator and Lord of all things deigned to be a mortal: choosing for His mother one whom He had made, one who, without loss of her maiden honour, supplied so much of bodily substance, that without the pollution of human seed the New Man might be possessed of purity and truth. In Christ, therefore, born of the Virgin's womb, the nature does not differ from ours, because His nativity is wonderful. For He Who is true God, is also true man: and there is no lie in either nature. "The Word became flesh" by exaltation of the flesh, not by failure of the Godhead: which so tempered its power and goodness as to exalt our nature by taking it, and not to lose His own by imparting it. In this nativity of Christ, according to the prophecy of David, "truth sprang out of the earth, and righteousness looked down from heaven [773] ." In this nativity also, Isaiah's saying is fulfilled, "let the earth produce and bring forth salvation, and let righteousness spring up together [774] ." For the earth of human flesh, which in the first transgressor, was cursed, in this Offspring of the Blessed Virgin only produced a seed that was blessed and free from the fault of its stock. And each one is a partaker of this spiritual origin in regeneration; and to every one when he is re-born, the water of baptism is like the Virgin's womb; for the same Holy Spirit fills the font, Who filled the Virgin, that the sin, which that sacred conception overthrew, may be taken away by this mystical washing.
IV. The Manichæans, by rejecting the Incarnation, have fallen into terrible iniquities.
In this mystery, dear beloved, the mad error of the Manichæans has no part, nor have they any partnership in the regeneration of Christ, who say that He was corporeally born of the Virgin Mary: so that, as they do not believe in His real nativity, they do not accept His real passion either; and, not acknowledging Him really buried, they reject His genuine resurrection. For, having entered on the perilous path of their abominable dogma, where all is dark and slippery, they rush into the abyss of death over the precipice of falsehood, and find no sure ground on which to rest; because, besides all their other diabolical enormities, on the very chief feast of Christ's worship, as their latest confession has made manifest [775] , they revel in bodily as well as mental pollution, losing their own modesty as well as the purity of their Faith; so that they are found to be as filthy in their rites as they are blasphemers in their doctrines.
V. Other heresies contain some portion of truth, but the Manichæans contain none whatever.
Other heresies, dearly beloved, although they are all rightly to be condemned in their variety, yet have each in some part of them that which is true. Arius, in laying down that the Son of God is less than the Father and a creature, and in thinking that the Holy Spirit was like all else made by the same (Father), has lost himself in great blasphemy; but he has not denied the eternal and unchangeable Godhead in the essence of the Father, though he could not see it in the Unity of the Trinity. Macedonius was devoid of the light of the Truth when he did not receive the Godhead of the Holy Spirit, but he did acknowledge one power and the same nature in the Father and the Son. Sabellius was plunged into inextricable error by holding the unity of substance to be inseparable in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, but granted to a singleness of nature what he should have attributed to an equality of nature [776] , and because he could not understand a true Trinity, he believed in one and the same person under a threefold appellation. Photinus, misled by his mental blindness, acknowledged in Christ true man of our substance, but did not believe Him born God of God before all ages, and so losing the entirety of the Faith, believed the Son of God to have taken on Him the true nature of human flesh in such a way as to assert that there was no soul in it, because the Godhead Itself took its place [777] . Thus, if all the errors which the catholic Faith has anathematized are recanted, something is found in one after another which can be separated from its damnable setting. But in the detestable dogma of the Manicheans there is absolutely nothing which can be adjudged tolerable in any degree.
VI. Christians must cling to the one Faith and not be led astray.
But you, dearly beloved, whom I address in no less earnest terms than those of the blessed Apostle Peter, "a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession [778] ," built upon the impregnable rock, Christ, and joined to the Lord our Saviour by His true assumption of our flesh, remain firm in that Faith, which you have professed before many witnesses, and in which you were reborn through water and the Holy Ghost, and received the anointing of salvation, and the seal of eternal life [779] . But "if any one preach to you any thing beside that which you have learnt, let him be anathema [780] :" refuse to put wicked fables before the clearest truth, and what you may happen to read or hear contrary to the rule of the catholic and Apostolic creed, judge it altogether deadly and diabolical. Be not carried away by their deceitful keepings of sham and pretended fasts which tend not to the cleansing, but to the destroying of men's souls. They put on indeed a cloke of piety and chastity, but under this deceit they conceal the filthiness of their acts, and from the recesses of their ungodly heart hurl shafts to wound the simple; that, as the prophet says, "they may shoot in darkness at the upright in heart [781] ." A mighty bulwark is a sound faith, a true faith, to which nothing has to be added or taken away: because unless it is one, it is no faith, as the Apostle says, "one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in us all [782] ." Cling to this unity, dearly beloved, with minds unshaken, and in it "follow after" all "holiness [783] ," in it carry out the Lord's commands, because "without faith it is impossible to please God [784] ," and without it nothing is holy, nothing is pure, nothing alive: "for the just lives by faith [785] ," and he who by the devil's deception loses it, is dead though living, because as righteousness is gained by faith, so too by a true faith is eternal life gained, as says our Lord and Saviour. And this is life eternal, that they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent [786] . May He make you to advance and persevere to the end, Who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit, for ever and ever. Amen. __________________________________________________________________
[764] Cf. Serm. XXIII., chap. 4.
[765] Instrumentis (lit. materials, stock-in-trade).
[766] Gen. xxii. 18.
[767] Ps. xxxi. 14.
[768] Is. vii. 14.
[769] Is. xi. 1; in the interpretation that follows there is apparently play on the rod (virga) and the virgin (virgo).
[770] Cf. 1 Cor. xv. 45, and Gen. ii. 7.
[771] Gen. iii. 19.
[772] 1 Cor. xv. 48.
[773] Ps. lxxxiv. 12.
[774] Is. xlv. 8.
[775] See Introd. p. vi., and for details of their iniquity, Serm. XVI. chaps. 4 and 5: the words proxima confessione fix the date of this sermon probably in 444 or 445.
[776] Quod æqualitati tribuere deberet, singularitati dedit, cf. Lett. XV. chap. 2, where the Priscillianists' notion (of a singularis unitas in tribus vocabulis sed non in tribus accipienda personis), is said to be taken from Sabellianism.
[777] Cf. Ruff. de Symb. chap. 39, and Schaff, Ch. Hist., in loco, where the relation of Photinus to Marcellus is explained.
[778] 1 Pet. ii. 9.
[779] Chrisma (charisma, gift. Quesnel), salutis et signaculum vitæ æternæ, the anointing and the sign of the cross are, as is well known, two of the oldest baptismal ceremonies; see Bingham, Antiq, Bk. xi. chap. 9.
[780] Gal. i. 9.
[781] Ps. xi. 2.
[782] Eph. iv. 5, 6.
[783] Heb. xii. 14.
[784] Ib. xi. 6.
[785] Habbakuk ii. 4.
[786] S. John xvii. 3. __________________________________________________________________
Sermon XXVI.
On the Feast of the Nativity, VI.
I. Christmas morning is the most appropriate time for thoughts on the Nativity.
On all days and at all times, dearly beloved, does the birth of our Lord and Saviour from the Virgin-mother occur to the thoughts of the faithful, who meditate on divine things, that the mind may be aroused to the acknowledgment of its Maker, and whether it be occupied in the groans of supplication, or in the shouting of praise, or in the offering of sacrifice, may employ its spiritual insight on nothing more frequently and more trustingly than on the fact that God the Son of God, begotten of the co-eternal Father, was also born by a human birth. But this Nativity which is to be adored in heaven and on earth is suggested to us by no day more than this when, with the early light still shedding its rays on nature [787] , there is borne in upon our senses the brightness of this wondrous mystery. For the angel Gabriel's converse with the astonished Mary and her conception by the Holy Ghost as wondrously promised as believed, seem to recur not only to the memory but to the very eyes. For to-day the Maker of the world was born of a Virgin's womb, and He, who made all natures, became Son of her, whom He created. To-day the Word of God appeared clothed in flesh, and That which had never been visible to human eyes began to be tangible to our hands as well. Today the shepherds learnt from angels' voices that the Saviour was born in the substance of our flesh and soul; and to-day the form of the Gospel message was pre-arranged by the leaders of the Lord's flocks [788] , so that we too may say with the army of the heavenly host: "Glory in the highest to God, and on earth peace to men of good will."
II. Christians are essentially participators in the nativity of Christ.
Although, therefore, that infancy, which the majesty of God's Son did not disdain, reached mature manhood by the growth of years and, when the triumph of His passion and resurrection was completed, all the actions of humility which were undertaken for us ceased, yet to-day's festival renews for us the holy childhood of Jesus born of the Virgin Mary: and in adoring the birth of our Saviour, we find we are celebrating the commencement of our own life. For the birth of Christ is the source of life for Christian folk, and the birthday of the Head is the birthday of the body. Although every individual that is called has his own order, and all the sons of the Church are separated from one another by intervals of time, yet as the entire body of the faithful being born in the font of baptism is crucified with Christ in His passion, raised again in His resurrection, and placed at the Father's right hand in His ascension, so with Him are they born in this nativity. For any believer in whatever part of the world that is re-born in Christ, quits the old paths of his original nature [789] and passes into a new man by being re-born; and no longer is he reckoned of his earthly father's stock but among the seed of the Saviour, Who became the Son of man in order that we might have the power to be the sons of God. For unless He came down to us in this humiliation, no one would reach His presence by any merits of his own. Let not earthly wisdom shroud in darkness the hearts of the called on this point, and let not the frailty of earthly thoughts raise itself against the loftiness of God's grace, for it will soon return to the lowest dust. At the end of the ages is fulfilled that which was ordained from all eternity: and in the presence of realities, when signs and types have ceased, the Law and prophecy have become Truth: and so Abraham is found the father of all nations, and the promised blessing is given to the world in his seed: nor are they only Israelites whom blood and flesh [790] begot, but the whole body of the adopted enter into possession of the heritage prepared for the sons of Faith. Be not disturbed by the cavils of silly questionings, and let not the effects of the Divine word be dissipated by human calculation; we with Abraham believe in God and "waver not through unbelief [791] " but "know most assuredly that what the Lord promised, He is able to perform."
III. Peace with God is His best gift to man.
The Saviour then, dearly beloved, is born not of fleshly seed but of the Holy Spirit, in such wise that the condemnation of the first transgression did not touch Him. And hence the very greatness of the boon conferred demands of us reverence worthy of its splendour. For, as the blessed Apostle teaches, "we have received not the spirit of this world but the Spirit which is of God, that we may know the things which are given us by God [792] :" and that Spirit can in no other way be rightly worshipped, except by offering Him that which we received from Him. But in the treasures of the Lord's bounty what can we find so suitable to the honour of the present feast as the peace, which at the Lord's nativity was first proclaimed by the angel-choir? For that it is which brings forth the sons of God, the nurse of love and the mother of unity: the rest of the blessed and our eternal home; whose proper work and special office it is to join to God those whom it removes from the world. Whence the Apostle incites us to this good end, in saying, "being justified therefore by faith let us have peace towards God [793] ." In which brief sentence are summed up nearly all the commandments; for where true peace is, there can be no lack of virtue. But what is it, dearly beloved, to have peace towards God, except to wish what He bids, and not to wish what He forbids? For if human friendships seek out equality of soul and similarity of desires, and difference of habits can never attain to full harmony, how will he be partaker of divine peace, who is pleased with what displeases God and desires to get delight from what he knows to be offensive to God? That is not the spirit of the sons of God; such wisdom is not acceptable to the noble family of the adopted. That chosen and royal race must live up to the dignity of its regeneration, must love what the Father loves, and in nought disagree with its Maker, lest the Lord should again say: "I have begotten and raised up sons, but they have scorned Me: the ox knoweth his owner and the ass his master's crib: but Israel hath not known Me and My people hath not acknowledged Me [794] ."
IV. We must be worthy of our calling as sons and friends of God.
The mystery of this boon is great, dearly beloved, and this gift exceeds all gifts that God should call man son, and man should name God Father: for by these terms we perceive and learn the love which reached so great a height. For if in natural progeny and earthly families those who are born of noble parents are lowered by the faults of evil intercourse, and unworthy offspring are put to shame by the very brilliance of their ancestry; to what end will they come who through love of the world do not fear to be outcast from the family of Christ? But if it gains the praise of men that the father's glory should shine again in their descendants, how much more glorious is it for those who are born of God to regain the brightness of their Maker's likeness and display in themselves Him Who begat them, as saith the Lord: "Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven [795] ?" We know indeed, as the Apostle John says that "the whole world lieth in the evil one [796] ," and that by the stratagems of the Devil and his angels numberless attempts are made either to frighten man in his struggle upwards by adversity or to spoil him by prosperity, but "greater is He that is in us, than he that is against us [797] ," and they who have peace with God and are always saying to the Father with their whole hearts "thy will be done [798] " can be overcome in no battles, can be hurt by no assaults. For accusing ourselves in our confessions and refusing the spirit's consent to our fleshly lusts, we stir up against us the enmity of him who is the author of sin, but secure a peace with God that nothing can destroy, by accepting His gracious service, in order that we may not only surrender ourselves in obedience to our King but also be united to Him by our free-will. For if we are like-minded, if we wish what He wishes, and disapprove what He disapproves, He will finish all our wars for us, He Who gave the will, will also give the power: so that we may be fellow-workers in His works, and with the exultation of Faith may utter that prophetic song: "the Lord is my light and my salvation: whom shall I fear? the Lord is the defender of my life: of whom shall I be afraid [799] ?"
V. The birth of Christ is the birth of peace to the Church.
They then who "are born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man but of God [800] ," must offer to the Father the unanimity of peace-loving sons, and all the members of adoption must meet in the First-begotten of the new creation, Who came to do not His own Will but His that sent Him; inasmuch as the Father in His gracious favour has adopted as His heirs not those that are discordant nor those that are unlike Him, but those that are in feeling and affection one. They that are re-modelled after one pattern must have a spirit like the model. The birthday of the Lord is the birthday of peace: for thus says the Apostle, "He is our peace, who made both one [801] ;" since whether we be Jew or Gentile, "through Him we have access in one Spirit to the Father [802] ." And it was this in particular that He taught His disciples before the day of His passion which He had of His own free-will fore-ordained, saying, "My peace I give unto you, My peace I leave for you [803] ;" and lest under the general term the character of His peace should escape notice, He added, "not as the world give I unto you [804] ." The world, He says, has its friendships, and brings many that are apart into loving harmony. There are also minds which are equal in vices., and similarity of desires produces equality of affection. And if any are perchance to be found who are not pleased with what is mean and dishonourable, and who exclude from the terms of their connexion unlawful compacts, yet even such if they be either Jews, heretics or heathens [805] , belong not to God's friendship but to this world's peace. But the peace of the spiritual and of catholics coming down from above and leading upwards refuses to hold communion with the lovers of the world, resists all obstacles and flies from pernicious pleasures to true joys, as the Lord says: "Where thy treasure is, there will thy heart be also [806] :" that is, if what you love is below you will descend to the lowest depth: if what you love is above, you will reach the topmost height: thither may the Spirit of peace lead and bring us, whose wishes and feeling are at one, and who are of one mind in faith and hope and in charity: since "as many as are led by the Spirit of God these are sons of God [807] " Who reigneth with the Son and Holy Spirit for ever and ever. Amen. __________________________________________________________________
[787] Nova etiam in elementis luce radiante, the phrase seems to point to an early service as the time of delivering this sermon (possibly the missa in gallicantu).
[788] Apud Dominicorum præsules gregum hodie evangelizandi forma præcondita est. This clause has been taken to be an allusion to the reciting of the angelic hymn Gloria in Excelsis, at the Holy Eucharist, but as Bright (note 20, all of which should be read) says, "the words do not necessarily mean more than that the original Angelic hymn (S. Luke ii. 14) was recited in the Christmas Day Service."
[789] Interciso originalis tramite vetustatis.
[790] Sanguis et caro: it is noticeable that the same order is observed in Heb. ii. 14.
[791] Rom. iv. 20, 21.
[792] 1 Cor. ii. 12.
[793] Rom. v. 1.
[794] Is. i. 2, 3.
[795] S. Matt. v. 16.
[796] 1 John v. 19.
[797] Cf. 1 John iv. 4, and 2 Kings vi. 16.
[798] S. Matt. vi. 10.
[799] Ps. xxvii. 1.
[800] S. John i. 13.
[801] Eph. ii. 14, 18.
[802] Eph. ii. 14, 18.
[803] S. John xiv. 27.
[804] Ib.
[805] Pagani (lit. villagers or rustics): the later meaning arose from the fact that idolatry and superstition tend to linger longer in out-of-the-way rural districts, than in the more civilized towns: cf. "heath" and "heathen." See Bright's note 24, and the references quoted by him. Hooker, v. 80. 2 ; Trench, "on Study of Words," p. 69, &c.
[806] S. Matt. vi. 21.
[807] Rom. viii. 14. __________________________________________________________________
Sermon XXVII.
On the Feast of the Nativity, VII.
I. It is equally dangerous to deny the Godhead or the Manhood in Christ.
He is a true and devout worshipper, dearly-beloved, of to-day's festival who thinks nothing that is either false about the Lord's Incarnation or unworthy about His Godhead. For it is an equally dangerous evil to deny in Him the reality of our nature and the equality with the Father in glory. When, therefore, we attempt to understand the mystery of Christ's nativity, wherein He was born of the Virgin-mother, let all the clouds of earthly reasonings be driven far away and the smoke of worldly wisdom be purged from the eyes of illuminated faith: for the authority on which we trust is divine, the teaching which we follow is divine. Inasmuch as whether it be the testimony of the Law, or the oracles of the prophets, or the trumpet of the gospel to which we apply our inward ear, that is true which the blessed John full of the Holy Spirit uttered with his voice of thunder [808] : "in the beginning was the Word: and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him was nothing made [809] ." And similarly is it true what the same preacher added: "the Word became flesh and dwelt in us: and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father [810] ." Therefore in both natures it is the same Son of God taking what is ours and not losing what is His own; renewing man in His manhood, but enduring unchangeable in Himself. For the Godhead which is His in common with the Father underwent no loss of omnipotence, nor did the "form of a slave" do despite to the "form of God," because the supreme and eternal Essence, which lowered Itself for the salvation of mankind, transferred us into Its glory, but did not cease to be what It was. And hence when the Only-begotten of God confesses Himself less than the Father [811] , and yet calls Himself equal with Him [812] , He demonstrates the reality of both forms in Himself: so that the inequality proves the human nature, and the equality the Divine.
II. The Incarnation has changed all the possibilities of man's existence.
The bodily Nativity therefore of the Son of God took nothing from and added nothing to His Majesty because His unchangeable substance could be neither diminished nor increased. For that "the Word became flesh" does not signify that the nature of God was changed into flesh, but that the Word took the flesh into the unity of His Person: and therein undoubtedly the whole man was received, with which within the Virgin's womb fecundated by the Holy Spirit, whose virginity was destined never to be lost [813] , the Son of God was so inseparably united that He who was born without time of the Father's essence was Himself in time born of the Virgin's womb. For we could not otherwise be released from the chains of eternal death but by Him becoming humble in our nature, Who remained Almighty in His own. And so our Lord Jesus Christ, being at birth true man though He never ceased to be true God, made in Himself the beginning of a new creation, and in the "form" of His birth started the spiritual life of mankind afresh, that to abolish the taint of our birth according to the flesh there might be a possibility of regeneration without our sinful seed for those of whom it is said, "Who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God [814] ." What mind can grasp this mystery, what tongue can express this gracious act? Sinfulness returns to guiltlessness and the old nature becomes new; strangers receive adoption and outsiders enter upon an inheritance. The ungodly begin to be righteous, the miserly benevolent, the incontinent chaste, the earthly heavenly. And whence comes this change, save by the right hand of the Most High? For the Son of God came to "destroy the works of the devil [815] ," and has so united Himself with us and us with Him that the descent of God to man's estate became the exaltation of man to God's.
III. The Devil knows exactly what temptations to offer to each several person.
But in this mercifulness of God, dearly beloved, the greatness of which towards us we cannot explain, Christians must be extremely careful lest they be caught again in the devil's wiles and once more entangled in the errors which they have renounced. For the old enemy does not cease to "transform himself into an angel of light [816] ," and spread everywhere the snares of his deceptions, and make every effort to corrupt the faith of believers. He knows whom to ply with the zest of greed, whom to assail with the allurements of the belly, before whom to set the attractions of self-indulgence, in whom to instil the poison of jealousy: he knows whom to overwhelm with grief, whom to cheat with joy, whom to surprise with fear, whom to bewilder with wonderment: there is no one whose habits he does not sift, whose cares he does not winnow, whose affections he does not pry into: and wherever he sees a man most absorbed in occupation, there he seeks opportunity to injure him. Moreover he has many whom he has bound still more tightly because they are suited for his designs, that he may use their abilities and tongues to deceive others. Through them are guaranteed the healing of sicknesses, the prognosticating of future events, the appeasing of demons and the driving away of apparitions [817] . They also are to be added [818] who falsely allege that the entire condition of human life depends on the influences of the stars, and that that which is really either the divine will or ours rests with the unchangeable fates. And yet, in order to do still greater harm, they promise that they can be changed if supplication is made to those constellations which are adverse. And thus their ungodly fabrications destroy themselves; for if their predictions are not reliable, the fates are not to be feared: if they are, the stars are not to be venerated.
IV. The foolish practice of some who turn to the sun and bow to it is reprehensible.
From such a system of teaching proceeds also the ungodly practice of certain foolish folk who worship the sun as it rises at the beginning of daylight from elevated positions: even some Christians think it is so proper to do this that, before entering the blessed Apostle Peter's basilica, which is dedicated to the One Living and true God, when they have mounted the steps which lead to the raised platform [819] , they turn round and bow themselves towards the rising sun and with bent neck do homage to its brilliant orb. We are full of grief and vexation that this should happen, which is partly due to the fault of ignorance and partly to the spirit of heathenism: because although some of them do perhaps worship the Creator of that fair light rather than the Light itself, which is His creature, yet we must abstain even from the appearance of this observance: for if one who has abandoned the worship of gods, finds it in our own worship, will he not hark back again to this fragment of his old superstition, as if it were allowable, when he sees it to be common both to Christians and to infidels?
V. The sun and moon were created for use, not for worship.
This objectionable practice must be given up therefore by the faithful, and the honour due to God alone must not be mixed up with those men's rites who serve their fellow-creatures. For the divine Scripture says: "Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve [820] ." And the blessed Job, "a man without complaint," as the Lord says, "and one that eschews every evil [821] ," said, "Have I seen the sun when it shone or the moon walking brightly, and my heart hath rejoiced in secret, and I have kissed my hand: what is my great iniquity and denial against the most High God [822] ?" But what is the sun or what is the moon but elements of visible creation and material light: one of which is of greater brightness and the other of lesser light? For as it is now day time and now night time, so the Creator has constituted divers kinds of luminaries, although even before they were made there had been days without the sun and nights without the moon [823] . But these were fashioned to serve in making man, that he who is an animal endowed with reason might be sure of the distinction of the months, the recurrence of the year, and the variety of the seasons, since through the unequal length of the various periods, and the clear indications given by the changes in its risings, the sun closes the year and the moon renews the months. For on the fourth day, as we read, God said: "Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven, and let them shine upon the earth, and let them divide between day and night, and let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, and let them be in the firmament of heaven that they may shine upon earth."
VI. Let us awake to the proper use of all our parts and facilities.
Awake, O man, and recognize the dignity of thy nature. Recollect thou wast made in the image of God, which although it was corrupted in Adam, was yet re-fashioned in Christ. Use visible creatures as they should be used, as thou usest earth, sea, sky, air, springs, and rivers: and whatever in them is fair and wondrous, ascribe to the praise and glory of the Maker. Be not subject to that light wherein birds and serpents, beasts and cattle, flies and worms delight. Confine the material light to your bodily senses, and with all your mental powers embrace that "true light which lighteth every man that cometh into this world [824] ," and of which the prophet says, "Come unto Him and be enlightened, and your faces shall not blush [825] ." For if we "are a temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwelleth in [826] " us, what every one of the faithful has in his own heart is more than what he wonders at in heaven. And so, dearly beloved, we do not bid or advise you to despise God's works or to think there is anything opposed to your Faith in what the good God has made good, but to use every kind of creature and the whole furniture of this world reasonably and moderately: for as the Apostle says, "the things which are seen are temporal: but the things which are not seen are eternal [827] ." Hence because we are born for the present and reborn for the future, let us not give ourselves up to temporal goods, but to eternal: and in order that we may behold our hope nearer, let us think on what the Divine Grace has bestowed on our nature on the very occasion when we celebrate the mystery of the Lord's birthday. Let us hear the Apostle, saying: "for ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. But when Christ, who is your life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory [828] :" who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Ghost for ever and ever. Amen. __________________________________________________________________
[808] Intonuit, no doubt a reference to the name of Boanerges (sons of thunder) which he shared with his brother James (S. Mark iii. 17).
[809] S. John i. 1-3, 14.
[810] S. John i. 1-3, 14.
[811] S. John xiv. 28, and x. 30.
[812] S. John xiv. 28, and x. 30.
[813] Et nunquam virginitate caritura, cf. Letter XXVIII. (Tome) chap. 2, beatam Mariam semper virginem: these two passages seem to me much stronger than others quoted by Bright, n. 9, to prove Leo's belief in the perpetual virginity of the blessed Mary.
[814] S. John i. 13.
[815] 1 John iii. 8.
[816] 2 Cor. xi. 14.
[817] Umbrarum.
[818] CL Lett. XV. chaps. 12-14, where such opinions are put down to the Spanish Priscillianists, though doubtless Leo is thinking here rather of the Manichæans, from whom they derived so many of their false views.
[819] Suggestum areæ superioris: the older reading was aræ: some of the mss. again read arcæ which is no doubt midway between the two. A learned dissertation on this passage by Ciampini quoted by Quesnel (Migne's Patrol. i. pp. 529-534), established the true reading: he says also that this was the staircase up which the faithful climbed on bended knee in approaching the Vatican basilica. S. Leo has alluded to this curious practice already in Serm. XXII. chap. 6, supra. It is perhaps hardly necessary to add that this superstition has little, if any, connexion with the Christian habit of turning to the East, which is probably rather to the Altar as the centre of worship; for at all events in Western Christendom churches do not by any means universally orientate' (i.e. lie due east and west).
[820] S. Matt. iv. 10.
[821] Job i. 8.
[822] Ib. xxxi. 26-28.
[823] He is of course following the Mosaic order of creation, where the creation of the day and night is ascribed to the first day and that of the Sun and Moon to the fourth day (Gen. i. 5, 1-19).
[824] S. John i. 9.
[825] Ps. xxxiv. 5.
[826] 1 Cor. iii. 16.
[827] 2 Cor. iv. 18.
[828] Col. iii. 3, 4. __________________________________________________________________
Sermon XXVIII.
On the Festival of the Nativity, VIII.
I. The Incarnation an unceasing source of joy.
Though all the divine utterances exhort us, dearly beloved, to "rejoice in the Lord always [829] ," yet to-day we are no doubt incited to a full spiritual joy, when the mystery of the Lord's nativity is shining brightly upon us [830] , so that we may have recourse to that unutterable condescension of the Divine Mercy, whereby the Creator of men deigned to become man, and be found ourselves in His nature whom we worship in ours. For God the Son of God, the only-begotten of the eternal and not-begotten Father, remaining eternal "in the form of God," and unchangeably and without time [831] possessing the property of being no way different to the Father He received "the form of a slave" without loss of His own majesty, that He might advance us to His state and not lower Himself to ours. Hence both natures abiding in possession of their own properties such unity is the result of the union that whatever of Godhead is there is inseparable from the manhood: and whatever of manhood, is indivisible from the Godhead.
II. The Virgin's conception explained.
In celebrating therefore the birthday of our Lord and Saviour, dearly beloved, let us entertain pure thoughts of the blessed Virgin's child-bearing, so as to believe that at no moment of time was the power of the Word wanting to the flesh and soul which she conceived, and that the temple of Christ's body did not previously receive its form and soul that its Inhabitant might come and take possession but through Himself and in Himself was the beginning given to the New Man, so that in the one Son of God and Man there might be Godhead without a mother, and Manhood without a Father. For her virginity fecundated by the Holy Spirit at one and the same time brought forth without trace of corruption both the offspring and the Maker of her race. Hence also the same Lord, as the Evangelist relates, asked of the Jews whose son they had learnt Christ to be on the authority of the Scriptures, and when they replied that the tradition was He would come of David's seed, "How," saith He, "doth David in the Spirit call Him Lord, saying, the Lord said to my Lord: sit thou on My right hand till I place thy enemies as the footstool of thy feet [832] ?" And the Jews could not solve the question put, because they did not understand that in the one Christ both the stock of David and the Divine nature were there prophesied.
III. In redeeming man, justice as well as mercy had to be considered.
But the majesty of the Son of God in which He is equal with the Father in its garb of a slave's humility feared no diminution, required no augmentation: and the very effect of His mercy which He expended on the restitution of man, He was able to bring about solely by the power of His Godhead; so as to rescue the creature that was made in the image of God from the yoke of his cruel oppressor. But because the devil had not shown himself so violent in his attack on the first man as to bring him over to his side without the consent of His free will, man's voluntary sin and hostile desires had to be destroyed in such wise that the standard of justice should not stand in the way of the gift of Grace. And therefore in the general ruin of the entire human race there was but one remedy in the secret of the Divine plan which could succour the fallen, and that was that one of the sons of Adam should be born free and innocent of original transgression, to prevail for the rest both by His example and His merits. Still further, because this was not permitted by natural generation, and because there could be no offspring from our faulty stock without seed, of which the Scripture saith, "Who can make a clean thing conceived of an unclean seed? is it not Thou who art alone [833] ?" David's Lord was made David's Son, and from the fruit of the promised branch [834] sprang One without fault, the twofold nature joining together into one Person, that by one and the same conception and birth might spring our Lord Jesus Christ, in Whom was present both true Godhead for the performance of mighty works and true Manhood for the endurance of sufferings.
IV. All heresies proceed from failure to believe the twofold nature of Christ.
The catholic Faith then, dearly beloved, may scorn the errors of the heretics that bark against it, who, deceived by the vanity of worldly wisdom, have forsaken the Gospel of Truth, and being unable to understand the Incarnation of the Word, have constructed for themselves out of the source of enlightenment occasion of blindness. For after investigating almost all false believers' opinions, even those which presume to deny the Holy Spirit, we come to the conclusion that hardly any one has gone astray, unless he has refused to believe the reality of the two natures in Christ under the confession of one Person. For some have ascribed to the Lord only manhood [835] , others only Deity [836] . Some have said that, though there was in Him true Godhead, His flesh was unreal [837] . Others have acknowledged that He took true flesh but say that He had not the nature of God the Father; and by assigning to His Godhead what belonged to His human substance, have made for themselves a greater and a lesser God, although there can be in true Godhead no grades: seeing that whatever is less than God, is not God [838] . Others recognizing that there is no difference between Father and Son, because they could not understand unity of Godhead except in unity of Person, have maintained that the Father is the same as the Son [839] : so that to be born and nursed, to suffer and die, to be buried and rise again, belonged to the same Father who sustained throughout the Person of both Man and the Word. Certain have thought that our Lord Jesus Christ had a body not of our substance but assumed from higher and subtler elements [840] : whereas certain others have considered that in the flesh of Christ there was no human soul, but that the Godhead of the Word Itself fulfilled the part of soul [841] . But their unwise assertion passes into this form that, though they acknowledge the existence of a soul in the Lord, yet they say it was devoid of mind, because the Godhead of Itself was sufficient for all purposes of reason to the Man as well as to the God in Christ. Lastly the same people have dared to assert that a certain portion of the Word was turned into Flesh, so that in the manifold varieties of this one dogma, not only the nature of the flesh and of the soul but also the essence of the Word Itself is dissolved.
V. Nestorianism and Eutychianism are particularly to be avoided at the present time.
There are many other astounding falsehoods also which we must not weary your ears, beloved, with enumerating. But after all these various impieties, which are closely connected by the relationship that exists between one form of blasphemy and another, we call your devout attention to the avoiding of these two errors in particular: one of which, with Nestorius for its author, some time ago attempted to gain ground, but ineffectually; the other, which is equally damnable, has more recently sprung up with Eutyches as its propounder. The former dared to maintain that the blessed Virgin Mary was the mother of Christ's manhood only, so that in her conception and childbearing no union might be believed to have taken place of the Word and the Flesh: because the Son of God did not Himself become Son of Man, but of His mere condescension linked Himself with created man. This can in no wise be tolerated by catholic ears, which are so imbued with the gospel of Truth that they know of a surety there is no hope of salvation for mankind unless He were Himself the Son of the Virgin who was His mother's Creator. On the other hand this blasphemous propounder of more recent profanity has confessed the union of the two Natures in Christ, but has maintained that the effect of this very union is that of the two one remained while the substance of the other no longer existed, which of course could not have been brought to an end except by either destruction or separation [842] . But this is so opposed to sound faith that it cannot be entertained without loss of one's Christian name. For if the Incarnation of the Word is the uniting of the Divine and human natures, but by the very fact of their coming together that which was twofold became single, it was only the Godhead that was born of the Virgin's womb, and went through the deceptive appearance of receiving nourishment and bodily growth: and to pass over all the changes of the human state, it was only the Godhead that was crucified, dead, and buried: so that according to those who thus think, there is no reason to hope for the resurrection, and Christ is not "the first-begotten from the dead [843] ;" because He was not One who ought to have been raised again, if He had not been One who could be slain.
VI. The Deity and the Manhood were present in Christ from the very first.
Keep far from your hearts, dearly beloved, the poisonous lies of the devil's inspirations, and knowing that the eternal Godhead of the Son underwent no growth while with the Father, be wise and consider that to the same nature to which it was said in Adam, "Thou art earth, and unto earth shalt thou go [844] ," it is said in Christ, "sit Thou on My right hand [845] ." According to that Nature, whereby Christ is equal to the Father, the Only-begotten was never inferior to the sublimity of the Father; nor was the glory which He had with the Father a temporal possession; for He is on the very right hand of the Father, of which it is said in Exodus, "Thy right hand, O Lord, is glorified in power [846] ;" and in Isaiah, "Lord, who hath believed our report? and the arm of the Lord, to whom is it revealed [847] ?" The man, therefore, assumed into the Son of God, was in such wise received into the unity of Christ's Person from His very commencement in the body, that without the Godhead He was not conceived, without the Godhead He was not brought forth, without the Godhead He was not nursed. It was the same Person in the wondrous acts, and in the endurance of insults; through His human weakness crucified, dead and buried: through His Divine power, being raised the third day, He ascended to the heavens, sat down at the right hand of the Father, and in His nature as man received from the Father that which in His nature as God He Himself also gave [848] .
VII. The fulness of the Godhead is imparted to the Body (the Church) through the Head, (Christ).
Meditate, dearly beloved on these things with devout hearts, and be always mindful of the apostle's injunction, who admonishes all men, saying, "See lest any one deceive you through philosophy and vain deceit according to the tradition of men, and not according to Christ; for in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, and ye have been filled in Him [849] ." He said not "spiritually" but "bodily," that we may understand the substance of flesh to be real, where there is the dwelling in the body of the fulness of the Godhead: wherewith, of course, the whole Church is also filled, which, clinging to the Head, is the body of Christ; who liveth and reigneth with the Father and the Holy Ghost, God for ever and ever. Amen. __________________________________________________________________
[829] Phil. iv. 4.
[830] Nativitatis Dominicæ sacramento nobis clarius coruscante: cf. XXVI. chap. 1, note 1. I have no doubt that sacramentum here is almost equivalent to "the festival with its sacred observances" (cf. Bright's n. 8), but I have preferred to translate it as uniformly as possible by the same word "mystery." Cf. Sermon XXXI. chap. 1.
[831] In contradiction of the Arian's position en pote hote ouk en: cf. Lett. XXVIII. (Tome), chap. 2, de æterno natus est coæternus: non posterior tempore.
[832] S. Matt. xxii. 43, 44, quoted from Psalm cx. 1.
[833] Job xiv. 4.
[834] Germinis preferred to the older reading generis by the Ballerinii as agreeing better with Is. xl. 1 and Jer. xxiii. 5.
[835] These were called Psilanthropists' (upholders of the mere manhood): of whom Cerinthus (the opponent of S. John) was the earliest propounder.
[836] These are heretics like Sabellius the founder of the Patripassian impiety.
[837] These are Docetists,' to whom Leo in Sermon LXV., chap. 4, compares the Eutychians isti phantasmatici Christiani. Simon Magus was the earliest exponent of this view.
[838] These are Arians who, as Bright (n. 29) points out, in wishing to pacify the catholics by exalting the character of Christ without acknowledging His equality with the Father, fell into the error of setting up two Gods (an Uncreate and a Created).
[839] This is the heresy alluded to in note 3 above.
[840] Ab elementis superioribus et subtilioribus sumptum, cf. Serm. XXX. chap. 2, de sublimioris generis prodiisse materia. This is the modification of "Docetism" adopted by the Gnostic Valentinus (see Bright's note 31).
[841] This is the view of Apollinaris.
[842] It is doubtful whether Eutyches did ever actually say this, but it was the logical inference from his position: as Gore (p 57), says "Eutyches never formulated a heresy: he was no philosopher; but he refused to say that the human nature remained in Christ after the Incarnation. He shrank from calling Christ of one substance' with us men: in some sort of way he left us to suppose that the human nature was absorbed into and lost in the Divinity."
[843] Col. i. 18.
[844] Gen. iii. 19.
[845] Ps. cix. 1.
[846] Exod. xvi. 6.
[847] Is. liii. 1.
[848] Cf. Lett. XXVIII. (Tome), chap. 6.
[849] Col. ii. 8-10. __________________________________________________________________
Sermon XXXI.
On the Feast of the Epiphany, I.
I. The Epiphany a necessary sequel to the Nativity.
After celebrating but lately the day on which immaculate virginity brought forth the Saviour of mankind, the venerable feast of the Epiphany, dearly beloved, gives us continuance of joy, that the force of our exultation and the fervour of our faith may not grow cool, in the midst of neighbouring and kindred mysteries [850] . For it concerns all men's salvation, that the infancy of the Mediator between God and men was already manifested to the whole world, while He was still detained in the tiny town. For although He had chosen the Israelitish nation, and one family out of that nation, from whom to assume the nature of all mankind, yet He was unwilling that the early days of His birth should be concealed within the narrow limits of His mother's home: but desired to be soon recognized by all, seeing that He deigned to be born for all. To three [851] wise men, therefore, appeared a star of new splendour in the region of the East, which, being brighter and fairer than the other stars, might easily attract the eyes and minds of those that looked on it, so that at once that might be observed not to be meaningless, which had so unusual an appearance. He therefore who gave the sign, gave to the beholders understanding of it, and caused inquiry to be made about that, of which He had thus caused understanding, and after inquiry made, offered Himself to be found.
II. Herod's evil designs were fruitless. The wise men's gifts were consciously symbolical.
These three men follow the leading of the light above, and with stedfast gaze obeying the indications of the guiding splendour, are led to the recognition of the Truth by the brilliance of Grace, for they supposed that a king's birth was notified in a human sense [852] , and that it must be sought in a royal city. Yet He who had taken a slave's form, and had come not to judge, but to be judged, chose Bethlehem for His nativity, Jerusalem for His passion. But Herod, hearing that a prince of the Jews was born, suspected a successor, and was in great terror: and to compass the death of the Author of Salvation, pledged himself to a false homage. How happy had he been, if he had imitated the wise men's faith, and turned to a pious use what he designed for deceit. What blind wickedness of foolish jealousy, to think thou canst overthrow the Divine plan by thy frenzy. The Lord of the world, who offers an eternal Kingdom, seeks not a temporal. Why dost thou attempt to change the unchangeable order of things ordained, and to forestall others in their crime? The death of Christ belongs not to thy time. The Gospel must be first set on foot, the Kingdom of God first preached, healings first given to the sick, wondrous acts first performed. Why dost thou wish thyself to have the blame of what will belong to another's work, and why without being able to effect thy wicked design, dost thou bring on thyself alone the charge of wishing the evil? Thou gainest nothing and carriest out nothing by this intriguing. He that was born voluntarily shall die of His own free will. The Wise men, therefore, fulfil their desire, and come to the child, the Lord Jesus Christ, the same star going before them. They adore the Word in flesh, the Wisdom in infancy, the Power in weakness, the Lord of majesty in the reality of man: and by their gifts make open acknowledgment of what they believe in their hearts, that they may show forth the mystery of their faith and understanding [853] . The incense they offer to God, the myrrh to Man, the gold to the King, consciously paying honour to the Divine and human Nature in union: because while each substance had its own properties, there was no difference in the power [854] of either.
III. The massacre of the innocents is in harmony with the Virgin's conception, which again teaches us purity of life.
And when the wise men had returned to their own land, and Jesus had been carried into Egypt at the Divine suggestion, Herod's madness blazes out into fruitless schemes. He orders all the little ones in Bethlehem to be slain, and since he knows not which infant to fear, extends a general sentence against the age he suspects. But that which the wicked king removes from the world, Christ admits to heaven: and on those for whom He had not yet spent His redeeming blood, He already bestows the dignity of martyrdom. Lift your faithful hearts then, dearly-beloved, to the gracious blaze of eternal light, and in adoration of the mysteries dispensed for man's salvation [855] give your diligent heed to the things which have been wrought on your behalf. Love the purity of a chaste life, because Christ is the Son of a virgin. "Abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul [856] ," as the blessed Apostle, present in his words as we read, exhorts us, "In malice be ye children [857] ," because the Lord of glory conformed Himself to the infancy of mortals. Follow after humility which the Son of God deigned to teach His disciples. Put on the power of patience, in which ye may be able to gain [858] your souls; seeing that He who is the Redemption of all, is also the Strength of all. "Set your minds on the things which are above, not on the things which are on the earth [859] ." Walk firmly along the path of truth and life: let not earthly things hinder you for whom are prepared heavenly things through our Lord Jesus Christ, who with the Father and the Holy Ghost liveth and reigneth for ever and ever. Amen. __________________________________________________________________
[850] Inter cognatarum solemnitatum vicina sacramenta, cf. Serm. XXVIII. chap. 1, note 2.
[851] The number "three" has no further scriptural support than the possible inference from their threefold offerings. It will be noticed that S. Leo knows nothing of their being kings, though that tradition is apparently as old as Tertullian (adv. Marc. iii. 13), see Bright's n. 38.
[852] Humano sensu significatum sibi regis ortum, "by their natural thoughts" in Bright's translation: but I doubt whether the words could bear that meaning, and whether they suit the context: cf. Serm. XXXIV. chap. 2.
[853] Sacramentum fidei suæ intelligentiæque: here sacramentum seems to come nearer to the older and more general use of the word among the Fathers, viz. symbol or sign.
[854] "He means, Christ had a king's power, both as God and as Man," Bright, n. 42.
[855] Impensa humanæ saluti sacramenta.
[856] 1 Peter ii. 11.
[857] 1 Cor. xiv. 20.
[858] Acquirere, S. Luke xxi. 19. It is not clear from this whether in Leo's time the reading was future, "ye shall win" (R.V.), or imperative, "possess ye" (A.V.). The Vulgate now reads possidebitis.
[859] Col. iii. 2. __________________________________________________________________
Sermon XXXIII.
On the Feast of the Epiphany, III.
I. When we were yet sinners, Christ came to save.
Although I know, dearly-beloved, that you are fully aware of the purpose of to-day's festival, and that the words of the Gospel [860] have according to use unfolded it to you, yet that nothing may be omitted on our part, I shall venture to say on the subject what the Lord has put in my mouth: so that in our common joy the devotion of our hearts may be so much the more sincere as the reason of our keeping the feast is better understood. The providential Mercy of God, having determined to succour the perishing world in these latter times, fore-ordained the salvation of all nations in the Person of Christ; in order that, because all nations had long been turned aside from the worship of the true God by wicked error, and even God's peculiar people Israel had well-nigh entirely fallen away from the enactments of the Law, now that all were shut up under sin [861] , He might have mercy upon all.
For as justice was everywhere failing and the whole world was given over to vanity and wickedness, if the Divine Power had not deferred its judgment, the whole of mankind would have received the sentence of damnation. But wrath was changed to forgiveness, and, that the greatness of the Grace to be displayed might be the more conspicuous, it pleased God, to apply the mystery of remission to the abolishing of men's sins at a time when no one could boast of his own merits.
II. The wise men from the East are typical fulfilments of God's promise to Abraham.
Now the manifestation of this unspeakable mercy, dearly-beloved, came to pass when Herod held the royal power in Judea, where the legitimate succession of Kings having failed and the power of the High-priests having been overthrown, an alien-born had gained the sovereignty: that the rising of the true King might be attested by the voice of prophecy, which had said: "a prince shall not fail from Juda, nor a leader from his loins, until He come for whom it is reserved [862] , and He shall be the expectation of the nations." Concerning which an innumerable succession was once promised to the most blessed patriarch Abraham to be begotten not by fleshly seed but by fertile faith; and therefore it was compared to the stars in multitude that as father of all the nations he might hope not for an earthly but for a heavenly progeny. And therefore, for the creating of the promised posterity, the heirs designated under the figure of the stars are awakened by the rising of a new star, that the ministrations of the heaven might do service in that wherein the witness of the heaven had been adduced. A star more brilliant than the other stars arouses wise men that dwell in the far East, and from the brightness of the wondrous light these men, not unskilled in observing such things, appreciate the importance of the sign: this doubtless being brought about in their hearts by Divine inspiration, in order that the mystery of so great a sight might not be hid from them, and, what was an unusual appearance to their eyes, might not be obscure to their minds. In a word they scrupulously set about their duty and provide themselves with such gifts that in worshipping the One they may at the same time show their belief in His threefold function: with gold they honour the Person of a King, with myrrh that of Man, with incense that of God [863] .
III. The chosen race is no longer the Jews, but believers of every nation.
And so they enter the chief city of the Kingdom of Judæa, and in the royal city ask that He should be shown them Whom they had learnt was begotten to be King. Herod is perturbed: he fears for his safety, he trembles for his power, he asks of the priests and teachers of the Law what the Scripture has predicted about the birth of Christ, he ascertains what had been prophesied: truth enlightens the wise men, unbelief blinds the experts: carnal Israel understands not what it reads, sees not what it points out; refers to the pages, whose utterances it does not believe. Where is thy boasting, O Jew? where thy noble birth drawn from the stem of Abraham? is not thy circumcision become uncircumcision [864] ? Behold thou, the greater servest the less [865] , and by the reading of that covenant [866] which thou keepest in the letter only, thou becomest the slave of strangers born, who enter into the lot of thy heritage. Let the fulness of the nations enter into the family of the patriarchs, yea let it enter, and let the sons of promise receive in Abraham's seed the blessing which his sons, according to the flesh, renounce their claim to. In the three Magi [867] let all people worship the Author of the universe: and let God be known not in Judæa alone, but in all the world, so that everywhere "His name" may be "great in Israel [868] ." For while the dignity of the chosen race is proved to be degenerate by unbelief in its descendants, it is made common to all alike by our belief.
IV. The massacre of the Innocents through the consequent flight of Christ, brings the truth into Egypt.
Now when the wise men had worshipped the Lord and finished all their devotions, according to the warning of a dream, they return not by the same route by which they had come. For it behoved them now that they believed in Christ not to walk in the paths of their old line of life, but having entered on a new way to keep away from the errors they had left: and it was also to baffle Herod's design, who, under the cloke of homage, was planning a wicked plot against the Infant Jesus. Hence when his crafty hopes were overthrown, the king's wrath rose to a greater fury. For reckoning up the time which the wise men had indicated, he poured out his cruel rage on all the men-children of Bethlehem, and in a general massacre of the whole of that city [869] slew the infants, who thus passed to their eternal glory, thinking that, if every single babe was slain there, Christ too would be slain. But He Who was postponing the shedding of His blood for the world's redemption till another time, was carried and brought into Egypt by his parents' aid, and thus sought the ancient cradle of the Hebrew race, and in the power of a greater providence dispensing the princely office of the true Joseph, in that He, the Bread of Life and the Food of reason that came down from heaven, removed that worse than all famines under which the Egyptians' minds were labouring, the lack of truth [870] , nor without that sojourn would the symbolism of that One Victim have been complete; for there first by the slaying of the lamb was fore-shadowed the health-bringing sign of the Cross and the Lord's Passover.
V. We must keep this festival as thankful sons of light.
Taught then, dearly-beloved, by these mysteries of Divine grace, let us with reasonable joy celebrate the day of our first-fruits and the commencement of the nations' calling: "giving thanks to" the merciful God "who made us worthy," as the Apostle says, "to be partakers of the lot of the saints in light: who delivered us from the power of darkness and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love [871] :" since as Isaiah prophesied, "the people of the nations that sat in darkness, have seen a great light, and they that dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined [872] ." Of whom he also said to the Lord, "nations which knew not thee, shall call on thee: and peoples which were ignorant of thee, shall run together unto thee [873] ." This day "Abraham saw and was glad [874] ," when he understood that the sons of his faith would be blessed in his seed that is in Christ, and foresaw that by believing he should be the father of all nations, "giving glory to God and being fully assured that What He had promised, He was able also to perform [875] ." This day David sang of in the psalms saying: "all nations that thou hast made shall come and worship before Thee, O Lord: and they shall glorify Thy name [876] ;" and again: "The Lord hath made known His salvation: His righteousness hath He openly showed in the sight of the nations [877] ." This in good truth we know to have taken place ever since the three wise men aroused in their far-off land were led by a star to recognize and worship the King of heaven and earth, [which to those who gaze aright ceases not daily to appear. And if it could make Christ known when concealed in infancy, how much more able was it to reveal Him when reigning in majesty] [878] . And surely their worship of Him exhorts us to imitation; that, as far as we can, we should serve our gracious God who invites us all to Christ. For whosoever lives religiously and chastely in the Church and "sets his mind on the things which are above, not on the things that are upon the earth [879] ," is in some measure like the heavenly light: and whilst he himself keeps the brightness of a holy life, he points out to many the way to the Lord like a star. In which regard, dearly-beloved, ye ought all to help one another in turn, that in the kingdom of God, which is reached by right faith and good works, ye may shine as the sons of light: through our Lord Jesus Christ, Who with God the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen. __________________________________________________________________
[860] Secundum consuetudinem evangelicus sermo reseraverit. The Roman Gospel for the day was apparently then, as now with us, S. Matt. ii. 1-12: but the manifestation of Christ to the wise men was not universally so prominent a feature of the Festival as other manifestations of Him, e.g. His birth (Jan. 6 having been in the East the original Christmas Day), His baptism, &c.
[861] Gal. iii. 22, cf. Rom. xi. 32.
[862] Gen. xlix. 10, donec veniat cui repositum est (ho apokeitai), cf. Ezek. xxi. 27: the reading of A. and R. VV. is "until Shiloh come;" the LXX. read heos han elthe ta apokeimena auto, and the Vulgate, donec veniat qui mittendus erat. Origen paraphrases thus: "He should come for Whom the things were reserved, that is, the Christ of God, the Prince of the Divine promises. He alone could be called the expectation of the nations, for men of all nations believed in God through Him, according to the words of Isaiah, In His name shall the Gentiles trust.'" Hom. in Genesin xvii. § 6.
[863] Cf. Serm. XXXI. chap. 2, above.
[864] Rom. ii. 25.
[865] Gen. xxv. 23.
[866] Or "will" (testamenti, diathekes).
[867] Cf. Sermon XXXI. chaps. i. and ii.
[868] Ps. lxxvi. 1.
[869] Cæde generali universæ civitatis illius; as the context shows, this phrase is rhetorically exaggerated.
[870] Cf. Sermon XXXII. chap. 1, Tunc autem Ægypto Salvator illatus est, ut gens antiquis erroribus dedita, iam ad vicinam salutem per occultam gratiam vocaretur; et quæ nondum eje cerat ab animo superstitionem, iam reciperet veritatem.
[871] Col. i. 12, 13.
[872] Is. ix. 2.
[873] Ib. lv. 5.
[874] S. John viii. 56.
[875] Rom. iv. 21.
[876] Ps. lxxxvi. 9.
[877] Ps. xcviii. 2.
[878] Both Quesnel and the Ballerinii condemn this passage inclosed in brackets as spurious. The former thinks it has crept into the text ex annotatione marginali alicuius astrologiæ plus æquo dediti. It is wanting in all the mss. melioris notæ.
[879] Col. iii. 2. __________________________________________________________________
Sermon XXXIV.
On the Feast of the Epiphany, IV.
I. The yearly observance of the Epiphany is profitable to Christians.
It is the right and reasonable duty of true piety, dearly-beloved, on the days which bear witness to the works of Divine mercy, to rejoice with the whole heart and to celebrate with all honour the things which have been wrought for our salvation: for the very law of recurring seasons calls us to such devout observance, and has now brought before us the feast of the Epiphany, consecrated by the Lord's appearance soon after the day on which the Son of God co-eternal with the Father was born of a Virgin. And herein the providence of God has established a great safeguard to our faith, so that, whilst the worship of the Saviour's earliest infancy is repeated year by year, the production of true man's nature in Him might be proved by the original verifications themselves. For this it is that justifies the ungodly, this it is that makes sinners saints, to wit the belief in the true Godhead and the true Manhood of the one Jesus Christ, our Lord: the Godhead, whereby being before all ages "in the form of God" He is equal with the Father: the Manhood whereby in the last days He is united to Man in the "form of a slave." For the confirmation therefore of this Faith which was to be fore-armed against all errors, it was a wondrous loving provision of the Divine plan that a nation which dwelt in the far-off country of the East and was cunning in the art of reading the stars, should receive the sign of the infant's birth who was to reign over all Israel. For the unwonted splendour of a bright new star appeared to the wise men and filled their mind with such wonder, as they gazed upon its brilliance, that they could not think they ought to neglect what was announced to them with such distinctness. And, as the event showed, the grace of God was the disposing cause of this wondrous thing: who when the whole of Bethlehem itself was still unaware of Christ's birth, brought it to the knowledge of the nations who would believe, and declared that which human words could not yet explain, through the preaching of the heavens.
II. Both Herod and the wise men originally had an earthly conception of the kingdom signified; but the latter learnt the truth, the former did not.
But although it was the office of the Divine condescension to make the Saviour's Nativity recognizable to the nations, yet for the understanding of the wondrous sign the wise men could have had intimation even from the ancient prophecies of Balaam, knowing that it was predicted of old and by constant repetition spread abroad: "A star shall rise out of Jacob, and a man shall rise out of Israel, and shall rule the nations [880] ." And so the three men aroused by God through the shining of a strange star, follow the guidance of its twinkling light, thinking they will find the babe designated at Jerusalem in the royal city. But finding themselves mistaken in this opinion, through the scribes and teachers of the Jews they learnt what the Holy Scripture had foretold of the birth of Christ; so that confirmed by a twofold witness, they sought with still more eager faith Him whom both the brightness of the star and the sure word of prophecy revealed. And when the Divine oracle was proclaimed through the chief priests' answers and the Spirit's voice declared, which says: "And thou, Bethlehem, the land of Judah, art not least among the princes of Judah; for out of thee shall come a leader to rule My people Israel [881] ," how easy and how natural it was that the leading men among the Hebrews should believe what they taught! But it appears that they held material notions with Herod, and reckoned Christ's kingdom as on the same level as the powers of this world: so that they hoped for a temporal leader while he dreaded an earthly rival. The fear that racks thee, Herod, is wasted; in vain dost thou try to vent thy rage on the infant thou suspectest. Thy realm cannot hold Christ; the Lord of the world is not satisfied with the narrow limits of thy sway. He, whom thou dost not wish to reign in Judæa, reigns everywhere: and thou wouldst rule more happily thyself, if thou wert to submit to His command. Why dost thou not do with sincerity what in treacherous falseness thou dost promise? Come with the wise men, and in suppliant adoration worship the true King. But thou, from too great fondness for Jewish blindness, wilt not imitate the nations' faith, and directest thy stubborn heart to cruel wiles, though thou art doomed neither to stay Him whom thou fearest nor to harm them whom thou slayest.
III. The perseverance of the Magi has led to the most important results.
Led then, dearly beloved, into Bethlehem by obeying the guidance of the star, the wise men "rejoiced with very great joy," as the evangelist has told us: "and entering the house, found the child with Mary, His mother; and falling down they worshipped Him; and opening their treasures they presented to Him gifts, gold, frankincense and myrrh [882] ." What wondrous faith of perfect knowledge, which was taught them not by earthly wisdom, but by the instruction of the Holy Spirit! Whence came it that these men, who had quitted their country without having seen Jesus, and had not noticed anything in His looks to enforce such systematic adoration, observed this method in offering their gifts? unless it were that besides the appearance of the star, which attracted their bodily eyes, the more refulgent rays of truth taught their hearts that before they started on their toilsome road, they must understand that He was signified to Whom was owed in gold royal honour, in incense Divine adoration, in myrrh the acknowledgment of mortality. Such a belief and understanding no doubt, as far as the enlightenment of their faith went, might have been sufficient in themselves and have prevented their using their bodily eyes in inquiring into that which they had beheld with their mind's fullest gaze. But their sagacious diligence, persevering till they found the child, did good service for future peoples and for the men of our own time: so that, as it profited us all that the apostle Thomas, after the Lord's resurrection, handled the traces of the wounds in His flesh, so it was of advantage to us that His infancy should be attested by the visit of the wise men. And so the wise men saw and adored the Child of the tribe of Judah, "of the seed of David according to the flesh [883] ," "made from a woman, made under the law [884] ," which He had come "not to destroy but to fulfil [885] ." They saw and adored the Child, small in size, powerless to help others [886] , incapable of speech, and in nought different to the generality of human children. Because, as the testimonies were trustworthy which asserted in Him the majesty of invisible Godhead, so it ought to be impossible to doubt that "the Word became flesh," and the eternal essence of the Son of God took man's true nature: lest either the inexpressible marvels of his acts which were to follow or the infliction of sufferings which He had to bear should overthrow the mystery of our Faith by their inconsistency: seeing that no one at all can be justified save those who believe the Lord Jesus to be both true God and true Man.
IV. The Manichæan heresy corrupts the Scriptures in order to disprove the truth.
This peerless Faith, dearly-beloved, this Truth proclaimed throughout all ages, is opposed by the devilish blasphemies of the Manichæans: who to murder the souls of the deceived have woven a deadly tissue of wicked doctrine out of impious and forged lies, and over the ruins of their mad opinions men have fallen headlong to such depths as to imagine a Christ with a fictitious body, who presented nothing solid, nothing real to the eyes and touch of men [887] , but displayed an empty shape of fancy-flesh. For they wish it to be thought unworthy of belief that God the Son of God placed Himself within a woman's body and subjected His majesty to such a degradation as to be joined to our fleshly nature and be born in the true body of human substance although this is entirely the outcome of His power, not of His ill-treatment, and it is His glorious condescension, not His being polluted that should be believed in. For if yonder visible light is not marred by any of the uncleannesses with which it is encompassed, and the brightness of the sun's rays, which is doubtless a material creature, is not contaminated by any of the dirty or muddy places to which it penetrates, is there anything whatever its quality which could pollute the essence of that eternal and immaterial Light? seeing that by allying Himself to that creature which He had made after His own image He furnished it with purification and received no stain, and healed the wounds of its weakness without suffering loss of power. And because this great and unspeakable mystery of divine Godliness was announced by all the testimonies of the Holy Scriptures, those opponents of the Truth of which we speak have rejected the law that was given through Moses and the divinely inspired utterances [888] of the prophets, and have tampered with the very pages of the gospels and apostles, by removing or inserting certain things: forging for themselves under the Apostles' names and under the words of the Saviour Himself many volumes of falsehood, whereby to fortify their lying errors and instil deadly poison into the minds of those to be deceived. For they saw that everything contradicted and made against them and that not only by the New but also by the Old Testament their blasphemous and treacherous folly was confuted. And yet persisting in their mad lies they cease not to disturb the Church of God with their deceits, persuading those miserable creatures whom they can ensnare to deny that man's nature was truly taken by the Lord Jesus Christ; to deny that He was truly crucified for the world's salvation: to deny that from His side wounded by the spear flowed the blood of Redemption and the water of baptism [889] : to deny that He was buried and raised again the third day: to deny that in sight of the disciples He was lifted above all the heights of the skies to take His seat on the right hand of the Father; and in order that when all the truth of the Apostles' Creed was destroyed, there may be nothing to frighten the wicked or inspire the saints with hope, to deny that the living and the dead must be judged by Christ; so that those whom they have robbed of the power of these great mysteries may learn to worship Christ in the sun and moon, and under the name of the Holy Spirit to adore Manichæus himself, the inventor of all these blasphemies.
V. Avoid all dealings with the heretics, but intercede with God for them.
To confirm your hearts therefore, dearly-beloved, in the Faith and Truth, let to-day's festival help you all, and let the catholic confession be fortified by the testimony of the manifestation of the Saviour's infancy, while we anathematize the blasphemy of those who deny the flesh of our nature in Christ: about which the blessed Apostle John has forewarned us in no doubtful utterance, saying, "every spirit which confesses Christ Jesus to have come in the flesh is of God: and every spirit which destroys Jesus is not of God, and this is Antichrist [890] ." Consequently let no Christian have aught in common with men of this kind, let him have no alliance or intercourse with such. Let it advantage the whole Church that many of them in the mercy of God have been discovered, and that their own confession has disclosed how sacrilegious their lives were. Let no one be deceived by their discriminations between food and food, by their soiled raiment, by their pale faces. Fasts are not holy which proceed not on the principle of abstinence but with deceitful design. Let this be the end of their harming the unwary, and deluding the ignorant; henceforth no one's fall shall be excusable: no longer must he be held simple but extremely worthless and perverse who hereafter shall be found entangled in detestable error. A practice countenanced by the Church and Divinely instituted, not only do we not forbid, we even incite you to, that you should supplicate the Lord even for such: since we also with tears and mourning feel pity for the ruins of cheated souls, carrying out the Apostles' example of loving-kindness [891] , so as to be weak with those that are weak and to "weep with those that weep [892] ." For we hope that God's mercy can be won by the many tears and due amendment of the fallen: because so long as life remains in the body no man's restoration must be despaired of, but the reform of all desired with the Lord's help, "who raiseth up them that are crushed, looseth them that are chained, giveth light to the blind [893] :" to whom is honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen. __________________________________________________________________
[880] Numb. xxiv. 17: cf. Serm. XXXI. chap 2, above.
[881] Micah v. 2.
[882] S. Matt. ii. 10, 11.
[883] Rom. i. 3.
[884] Gal. iv.
[885] S. Matt. v. 17.
[886] Alienæ opis indignum.
[887] Whatever may be the correct reading here, actionibus with the better mss. or tactibus, the conjecture of Quesnel from the reading of some mss. actibus, the meaning must be such as is given in the translation.
[888] Oracula representing the logia of the New Testament (viz. Acts vii. 38, Rom. iii. 2, &c.).
[889] Cf. Ep. xxviii. (Tome) 5, aperto per militis lanceam latere crucifixi intelligat unde sanguis et aqua fluxerit ut ecclesia Dei et lavacro rigaretur et poculo, and almost immediately afterwards, where he interprets the spirit, water and blood of 1 John v. 8, as spiritus sanctificationis et sanguis redemptionis et aqua baptismatis.
[890] 1 John iv. 2, 3: see Letter XXVIII. (Tome) 5, n. 7, on the various reading.
[891] Exsequentes apostolicæ pietatis exemplum.
[892] 2 Cor. xi. 29; Rom. xii. 15.
[893] Ps. cxlvi. 7, 8. __________________________________________________________________
Sermon XXXVI.
On the Feast of the Epiphany, VI.
I. The story of the magi not only a byegone fact in history, but of everyday application to ourselves.
The day, dearly-beloved, on which Christ the Saviour of the world first appeared to the nations must be venerated by us with holy worship: and to-day those joys must be entertained in our hearts which existed in the breasts of the three magi, when, aroused by the sign and leading of a new star, which they believed to have been promised, they fell down in presence of the King of heaven and earth. For that day has not so passed away that the mighty work, which was then revealed, has passed away with it, and that nothing but the report of the thing has come down to us for faith to receive and memory to celebrate; seeing that, by the oft-repeated gift of God, our times daily enjoy the fruit of what the first age possessed. And therefore, although the narrative which is read to us from the Gospel [894] properly records those days on which the three men, who had neither been taught by the prophets' predictions nor instructed by the testimony of the law, came to acknowledge God from the furthest parts of the East, yet we behold this same thing more clearly and abundantly carried on now in the enlightenment of all those who are called, since the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled when he says, "the Lord has laid bare His holy arm in the sight of all the nations, and all the nations upon earth have seen the salvation which is from the Lord our God;" and again, "and those to whom it has not been announced about Him shall see, and they who have not heard, shall understand [895] ." Hence when we see men devoted to worldly wisdom and far from belief in Jesus Christ brought out of the depth of their error and called to an acknowledgment of the true Light, it is undoubtedly the brightness of the Divine grace that is at work: and whatever of new light illumines the darkness of their hearts, comes from the rays of the same star: so that it should both move with wonder, and going before lead to the adoration of God the minds which it visited with its splendour. But if with careful thought we wish to see how their threefold kind of gift is also offered by all who come to Christ with the foot of faith, is not the same offering repeated in the hearts of true believers? For he that acknowledges Christ the King of the universe brings gold from the treasure of his heart: he that believes the Only-begotten of God to have united man's true nature to Himself, offers myrrh; and he that confesses Him in no wise inferior to the Father's majesty, worships Him in a manner with incense.
II. Satan still carries on the wiles of Herod, and, as it were, personates him in his opposition to Christ.
These comparisons, dearly-beloved, being thoughtfully considered, we find Herod's character also not to be wanting, of which the devil himself is now an unwearied imitator, just as he was then a secret instigator. For he is tortured at the calling of all the nations, and racked at the daily destruction of his power, grieving at his being everywhere deserted, and the true King adored in all places. He prepares devices, he hatches plots, he bursts out into murders, and that he may make use of the remnants of those whom he still deceives, is consumed with envy in the persons of the Jews, lies treacherously in wait in the persons of heretics, blazes out into cruelty in the persons of the heathen. For he sees that the power of the eternal King is invincible Whose death has extinguished the power of death itself; and therefore he has armed himself with all his skill of injury against those who serve the true King; hardening some by the pride that knowledge of the law engenders, debasing others by the lies of false belief, and inciting others to the madness of persecution. Yet the madness of this "Herod" is vanquished, and brought to nought by Him who has crowned even infants with the glory of martyrdom, and has endued His faithful ones with so unconquerable a love that in the Apostle's words they dare to say, "who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or want, or persecution, or hunger, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword? as it is written, For thy sake are we killed all the day long, we are counted as sheep for the slaughter. But in all these things we overcome on account of Him who loved us [896] ."
III. The cessation of active persecution does not do away with the need of continued vigilance: Satan has only changed his tactics.
Such courage as this, dearly-beloved, we do not believe to have been needful only at those times in which the kings of the world and all the powers of the age were raging against God's people in an outburst of wickedness, thinking it to redound to their greatest glory if they removed the Christian name from the earth, but not knowing that God's Church grows through the frenzy of their cruelty, since in the tortures and deaths of the martyrs, those whose number was reckoned to be diminished were augmented through the force of example [897] . In fine, so much strength has our Faith gained by the attacks of persecutors that royal princedoms have no greater ornament than that the lords of the world are members of Christ; and their boast is not so much that they were born in the purple as that they have been re-born in baptism. But because the stress of former blasts has lulled, and with a cessation of fightings a measure of tranquillity has long seemed to smile upon us, those divergences are carefully to be guarded against which arise from the very reign of peace. For the adversary having been proved ineffective in open persecutions now exercises a hidden skill in doing cruel hurt, in order to overthrow by the stumbling-block of pleasure those whom he could not strike with the blow of affliction. And so seeing the faith of princes opposed to him and the indivisible Trinity of the one Godhead as devoutly worshipped in palaces as in churches, he grieves at the shedding of Christian blood being forbidden, and attacks the mode of life of those whose death he cannot compass. The terror of confiscations he changes into the fire of avarice, and corrupts with covetousness those whose spirit he could not break by losses. For the malicious haughtiness which long use has ingrained into his very nature has not laid aside its hatred, but changed its character in order to subjugate the minds of the faithful by blandishments. He inflames those with covetous desires whom he cannot distress with tortures: he sows strifes, kindles passions, sets tongues a-wagging, and, lest more cautious hearts should draw back from his lawless wiles, facilitates opportunities for accomplishing crimes: because this is the only fruit of all his devices that he who is not worshipped with the sacrifice of cattle and goats, and the burning of incense, should be paid the homage of divers wicked deeds [898] .
IV. Timely repentance gains God's merciful consideration.
Our state of peace [899] , therefore, dearly-beloved, has its dangers, and it is vain for those who do not withstand vicious desires to feel secure of the liberty which is the privilege of their Faith. Men's hearts are shown by the character of their works, and the fashion of their minds is betrayed by the nature of their actions. For there are some, as the Apostle says, "who profess that they know God, but deny Him by their deeds [900] ." For the charge of denial is truly incurred when the good which is heard in the sound of the voice is not present in the conscience. Indeed, the frailty of man's nature easily glides into faults: and because no sin is without its attractiveness, deceptive pleasure is quickly acquiesced in. But we should run for spiritual succour from the desires of the flesh: and the mind that has knowledge of its God should turn away from the evil suggestion of the enemy. Avail thyself of the long-suffering of God, and persist not in cherishing thy sin, because its punishment is put off. The sinner must not feel secure of his impunity, because if he loses the time for repentance he will find no place for mercy, as the prophet says, "in death no one remembers thee; and in the realms below who will confess to thee [901] ?" But let him who experiences the difficulty of self-amendment and restoration betake himself to the mercy of a befriending God, and ask that the chains of evil habit may be broken off by Him "who lifts up those that fall and raises all the crushed [902] ." The prayer of one that confesses will not be in vain since the merciful God "will grant the desire of those that fear Him [903] ," and will give what is asked, as He gave the Source from Which to ask. Through our Lend Jesus Christ, Who liveth and reigneth with the Father and the Holy Ghost for ever and ever. Amen. __________________________________________________________________
[894] Narratio evangelicæ lectionis. This, according to Bright's n. 46 (q.v.) "refers to the reading of passages of Scripture by the Lector as a part of the church service."
[895] Is. lii. 10, 15.
[896] Rom. viii. 35.
[897] Cf. Tertullian's famous boast in his Apologeticus (chap. l., § 176), semen est Christianorum sanguis, and Leo's own words again, Serm. LXXXII. 6, non minuitur persecutionibus ecclesia sed augetur.
[898] The warning of this chapter is insisted on not only by Leo himself often elsewhere (see references in Bright's note 51), but, among others doubtless, by Cyprian in more than one passage, esp. in De Lapsis, where he accuses even the clergy of worldliness in the strongest terms.
[899] Cf. Cypr. de lapsis v. traditam nobis divinitus disciplinam pax longa corruperat.
[900] Titus i. 16.
[901] Ps. vi. 6.
[902] Ib. cxlv. 14, 19.
[903] Ib. cxlv. 14, 19. __________________________________________________________________
Sermon XXXIX.
On Lent, I.
I. The benefits of abstinence shown by the example of the Hebrews.
In former days, when the people of the Hebrews and all the tribes of Israel were oppressed for their scandalous sins by the grievous tyranny of the Philistines, in order that they might be able to overcome their enemies, as the sacred story declares, they restored their powers of mind and body by the injunction of a fast. For they understood that they had deserved that hard and wretched subjection for their neglect of God's commands, and evil ways, and that it was in vain for them to strive with arms unless they had first withstood their sin. Therefore abstaining from food and drink, they applied the discipline of strict correction to themselves, and in order to conquer their foes, first conquered the allurements of the palate in themselves. And thus it came about that their fierce enemies and cruel taskmasters yielded to them when fasting, whom they had held in subjection when full. And so we too, dearly beloved, who are set in the midst of many oppositions and conflicts, may be cured by a little carefulness, if only we will use the same means. For our case is almost the same as theirs, seeing that, as they were attacked by foes in the flesh so are we chiefly by spiritual enemies. And if we can conquer them by God's grace enabling us to correct our ways, the strength of our bodily enemies also will give way before us, and by our self-amendment we shall weaken those who were rendered formidable to us, not by their own merits but by our shortcomings.
II. Use Lent to vanquish the enemy, and be thus preparing for Eastertide.
Accordingly, dearly-beloved, that we may be able to overcome all our enemies, let us seek Divine aid by the observance of the heavenly bidding, knowing that we cannot otherwise prevail against our adversaries, unless we prevail against our own selves. For we have many encounters with our own selves: the flesh desires one thing against the spirit, and the spirit another thing against the flesh [904] . And in this disagreement, if the desires of the body be stronger, the mind will disgracefully lose its proper dignity, and it will be most disastrous for that to serve which ought to have ruled. But if the mind, being subject to its Ruler, and delighting in gifts from above, shall have trampled under foot the allurements of earthly pleasure, and shall not have allowed sin to reign in its mortal body [905] , reason will maintain a well-ordered supremacy, and its strongholds no strategy of spiritual wickednesses will cast down: because man has then only true peace and true freedom when the flesh is ruled by the judgment of the mind, and the mind is directed by the will of God. And although this state of preparedness, dearly-beloved, should always be maintained that our ever-watchful foes may be overcome by unceasing diligence, yet now it must be the more anxiously sought for and the more zealously cultivated when the designs of our subtle foes themselves are conducted with keener craft than ever. For knowing that the most hallowed days of Lent are now at hand, in the keeping of which all past slothfulnesses are chastised, all negligences alerted for, they direct all the force of their spite on this one thing, that they who intend to celebrate the Lord's holy Passover may be found unclean in some matter, and that cause of offence may arise where propitiation ought to have been obtained.
III. Fights are necessary to prove our Faith.
As we approach then, dearly-beloved, the beginning of Lent, which is a time for the more careful serving of the Lord, because we are, as it were, entering on a kind of contest in good works, let us prepare our souls for fighting with temptations, and understand that the more zealous we are for our salvation, the more determined must be the assaults of our opponents. But "stronger is He that is in us than He that is against us [906] ," and through Him are we powerful in whose strength we rely: because it was for this that the Lord allowed Himself to be tempted by the tempter, that we might be taught by His example as well as fortified by His aid. For He conquered the adversary, as ye have heard [907] , by quotations from the law, not by actual strength, that by this very thing He might do greater honour to man, and inflict a greater punishment on the adversary by conquering the enemy of the human race not now as God but as Man. He fought then, therefore, that we too might fight thereafter: He conquered that we too might likewise conquer. For there are no works of power, dearly-beloved, without the trials of temptations, there is no faith without proof, no contest without a foe, no victory without conflict. This life of ours is in the midst of snares, in the midst of battles; if we do not wish to be deceived, we must watch: if we want to overcome, we must fight. And therefore the most wise Solomon says, "My son in approaching the service of God prepare thy soul for temptation [908] ." For He being a man full of the wisdom of God, and knowing that the pursuit of religion involves laborious struggles, foreseeing too the danger of the fight, forewarned the intending combatant; lest haply, if the tempter came upon him in his ignorance, he might find him unready and wound him unawares.
IV. The Christian's armour is both for defence and for attack.
So, dearly-beloved, let us who instructed in Divine learning come wittingly to the present contest and strife, hear the Apostle when he says, "for our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of this dark world, against spiritual wickedness in heavenly things [909] ," and let us not forget that these our enemies feel it is against them all is done that we strive to do for our salvation, and that by the very fact of our seeking after some good thing we are challenging our foes. For this is an old-standing quarrel between us and them fostered by the devil's ill-will, so that they are tortured by our being justified, because they have fallen from those good things to which we, God helping us, are advancing. If, therefore, we are raised, they are prostrated: if we are strengthened, they are weakened. Our cures are their blows, because they are wounded by our wounds' cure. "Stand, therefore," dearly-beloved, as the Apostle says, "having the loins of your mind girt in truth, and your feet shod in the preparation of the gospel of peace, in all things taking the shield of faith in which ye may be able to extinguish all the fiery darts of the evil one, and put on the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God [910] ." See, dearly-beloved, with what mighty weapons, with what impregnable defences we are armed by our Leader, who is famous for His many triumphs, the unconquered Master of the Christian warfare. He has girt our loins with the belt of chastity, He has shod our feet with the bonds of peace: because the unbelted soldier is quickly vanquished by the suggester of immodesty, and he that is unshod is easily bitten by the serpent. He has given the shield of faith for the protection of our whole body; on our head has He set the helmet of salvation; our right hand has He furnished with a sword, that is with the word of Truth: that the spiritual warrior may not only be safe from wounds, but also may have strength to wound his assailant.
V. Abstinence not only from food but from other evil desires, especially from wrath, is required in Lent.
Relying, therefore, dearly-beloved, on these arms, let us enter actively and fearlessly on the contest set before us: so that in this fasting struggle we may not rest satisfied with only this end, that we should think abstinence from food alone desirable. For it is not enough that the substance of our flesh should be reduced, if the strength of the soul be not also developed. When the outer man is somewhat subdued, let the inner man be somewhat refreshed; and when bodily excess is denied to our flesh, let our mind be invigorated by spiritual delights. Let every Christian scrutinise himself, and search severely into his inmost heart: let him see that no discord cling there, no wrong desire be harboured. Let chasteness drive incontinence far away; let the light of truth dispel the shades of deception; let the swellings of pride subside; let wrath yield to reason; let the darts of ill-treatment be shattered, and the chidings of the tongue be bridled; let thoughts of revenge fall through, and injuries be given over to oblivion. In fine, let "every plant which the heavenly Father hath not planted be removed by the roots [911] ." For then only are the seeds of virtue well nourished in us, when every foreign germ is uprooted from the field of wheat. If any one, therefore, has been fired by the desire for vengeance against another, so that he has given him up to prison or bound him with chains, let him make haste to forgive not only the innocent, but also one who seems worthy of punishment, that he may with confidence make use of the clause in the Lord's prayer and say, "Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors [912] ." Which petition the Lord marks with peculiar emphasis, as if the efficacy of the whole rested on this condition, by saying, "For if ye forgive men their sins, your Father which is in heaven also will forgive you: but if ye forgive not men, neither will your Father forgive you your sins [913] ."
VI. The right use of Lent will lead to a happy participation in Easter.
Accordingly, dearly-beloved, being mindful of our weakness, because we easily fall into all kinds of faults, let us by no means neglect this special remedy and most effectual healing of our wounds. Let us remit, that we may have remission: let us grant the pardon which we crave: let us not be eager to be revenged when we pray to be forgiven. Let us not pass over the groans of the poor with deaf ear, but with prompt kindness bestow our mercy on the needy, that we may deserve to find mercy in the judgment. And he that, aided by God's grace, shall strain every nerve after this perfection, will keep this holy fast faithfully; free from the leaven of the old wickedness, in the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth [914] , he will reach the blessed Passover, and by newness of life will worthily rejoice in the mystery of man's reformation through Christ our Lord Who with the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen. __________________________________________________________________
[904] Cf. Gal. v. 17: and below, Rom. vi. 12.
[905] Cf. Gal. v. 17: and below, Rom. vi. 12.
[906] 1 John iv. 4.
[907] Ut audistis, viz. in the Gospel for Quadragesima, or the First Sunday in Lent then apparently as now S. Matt. iv. 1-11: cf. Serm. XL. 3.
[908] Ecclus. ii. 1.
[909] Eph. vi. 12.
[910] Eph. vi. 14-17.
[911] S. Matt. xv. 13.
[912] S. Matt. vi. 12, 14, 15.
[913] S. Matt. vi. 12, 14, 15.
[914] Cf. 1 Cor. v. 8. __________________________________________________________________
Sermon XL.
On Lent, II.
I. Progress and improvement always possible.
Although, dearly-beloved, as the Easter festival approaches, the very recurrence of the season points out to us the Lenten fast, yet our words also must add their exhortations which, the Lord helping us, may be not useless to the active nor irksome to the devout. For since the idea of these days demands the increase of all our religious performances, there is no one, I am sure, that does not feel glad at being incited to good works. For though our nature which, so long as we are mortal, will be changeable, is advancing to the highest pursuits of virtue, yet always has the possibility of falling back, so has it always the possibility of advancing. And this is the true justness of the perfect that they should never assume themselves to be perfect, lest flagging in the purpose of their yet unfinished journey, they should fall into the danger of failure, through giving up the desire for progress.
And, therefore, because none of us, dearly beloved, is so perfect and holy as not to be able to be more perfect and more holy, let us all together, without difference of rank, without distinction of desert, with pious eagerness pursue our race from what we have attained to what we yet aspire to, and make some needful additions to our regular devotions. For he that is not more attentive than usual to religion in these days, is shown at other times to be not attentive enough.
II. Satan seeks to supply his numerous losses by fresh gains.
Hence the reading of the Apostle's proclamation has sounded opportunely in our ears, saying, "Behold now is the accepted time, behold now is the day of salvation [915] ." For what is more accepted than this time, what more suitable to salvation than these days, in which war is proclaimed against vices and progress is made in all virtues? Thou hadst indeed always to keep watch, O Christian soul, against the enemy of thy salvation, lest any spot should be exposed to the tempter's snares: but now greater wariness and keener prudence must be employed by thee when that same foe of thine rages with fiercer hatred. For now in all the world the power of his ancient sway is taken from him, and the countless vessels of captivity are rescued from his grasp. The people of all nations and of all tongues are breaking away from their cruel plunderer, and now no race of men is found that does not struggle against the tyrant's laws, while through all the borders of the earth many thousands of thousands are being prepared to be reborn in Christ [916] : and as the birth of a new creature draws near, spiritual wickedness is being driven out by those who were possessed by it. The blasphemous fury of the despoiled foe frets, therefore, and seeks new gains because it has lost its ancient right. Unwearied and ever wakeful, he snatches at any sheep he finds straying carelessly from the sacred folds, intent on leading them over the steeps of treasure and down the slopes of luxury into the abodes of death. And so he inflames their wrath, feeds their hatreds, whets their desires, mocks at their continence, arouses their gluttony.
III. The twofold nature of Christ shown at the Temptation.
For whom would he not dare to try, who did not keep from his treacherous attempts even on our Lord Jesus Christ? For, as the story of the Gospel has disclosed [917] , when our Saviour, Who was true God, that He might show Himself true Man also, and banish all wicked and erroneous opinions, after the fast of 40 days and nights, had experienced the hunger of human weakness, the devil, rejoicing at having found in Him a sign of possible and mortal nature, in order to test the power which he feared, said, "If Thou art the Son of God, command that these stones become bread [918] ." Doubtless the Almighty could do this, and it was easy that at the Creator's command a creature of any kind should change into the form that it was commanded: just as when He willed it, in the marriage feast, He changed the water into wine: but here it better agreed with His purposes of salvation that His haughty foe's cunning should be vanquished by the Lord, not in the power of His Godhead, but by the mystery of His humiliation. At length, when the devil had been put to flight and the tempter baffled in all his arts, angels came to the Lord and ministered to Him, that He being true Man and true God, His Manhood might be unsullied by those crafty questions, and His Godhead displayed by those holy ministrations. And so let the sons and disciples of the devil be confounded, who, being filled with the poison of vipers, deceive the simple, denying in Christ the presence of both true natures, whilst they rob either His Godhead of Manhood, or His Manhood of Godhead, although both falsehoods are destroyed by a twofold and simultaneous proof: for by His bodily hunger His perfect Manhood was shown, and by the attendant angels His perfect Godhead.
IV. The Fast should not end with abstinence from food, but lead to good deeds.
Therefore, dearly-beloved, seeing that, as we are taught by our Redeemer's precept, "man lives not in bread alone, but in every word of God [919] ," and it is right that Christian people, whatever the amount of their abstinence, should rather desire to satisfy themselves with the "Word of God" than with bodily food, let us with ready devotion and eager faith enter upon the celebration of the solemn fast, not with barren abstinence from food, which is often imposed on us by weakliness of body, or the disease of avarice, but in bountiful benevolence: that in truth we may be of those of whom the very Truth speaks, "blessed are they which hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled [920] ." Let works of piety, therefore, be our delight, and let us be filled with those kinds of food which feed us for eternity. Let us rejoice in the replenishment of the poor, whom our bounty has satisfied. Let us delight in the clothing of those whose nakedness we have covered with needful raiment. Let our humaneness be felt by the sick in their illnesses, by the weakly in their infirmities, by the exiles in their hardships, by the orphans in their destitution, and by solitary widows in their sadness: in the helping of whom there is no one that cannot carry out some amount of benevolence. For no one's income is small, whose heart is big: and the measure of one's mercy and goodness does not depend on the size of one's means. Wealth of goodwill is never rightly lacking, even in a slender purse. Doubtless the expenditure of the rich is greater, and that of the poor smaller, but there is no difference in the fruit of their works, where the purpose of the workers is the same.
V. And still further it should lead to personal amendment and domestic harmony.
But, beloved, in this opportunity for the virtues' exercise there are also other notable crowns, to be won by no dispersing abroad of granaries, by no disbursement of money, if wantonness is repelled, if drunkenness is abandoned, and the lusts of the flesh tamed by the laws of chastity: if hatreds pass into affection, if enmities be turned into peace, if meekness extinguishes wrath, if gentleness forgives wrongs, if in fine the conduct of master and of slaves is so well ordered that the rule of the one is milder, and the discipline of the other is more complete. It is by such observances then, dearly-beloved, that God's mercy will be gained, the charge of sin wiped out, and the adorable Easter festival devoutly kept. And this the pious Emperors of the Roman world have long guarded with holy observance; for in honour of the Lord's Passion and Resurrection they bend their lofty power, and relaxing the severity of their decrees set free many of their prisoners: so that on the days when the world is saved by the Divine mercy, their clemency, which is modelled on the Heavenly goodness, may be zealously followed by us. Let Christian peoples then imitate their princes, and be incited to forbearance in their homes by these royal examples. For it is not right that private laws should be severer than public. Let faults be forgiven, let bonds be loosed, offences wiped out, designs of vengeance fall through, that the holy festival through the Divine and human grace may find all happy, all innocent: through our Lord Jesus Christ Who with the Father and the Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth God for endless ages of ages. Amen. __________________________________________________________________
[915] 2 Cor. vi. 2 from the Epistle for the First Sunday in Lent: cf. Serm. XXXVI. I, n. 7.
[916] Viz. by baptism at the Easter festival.
[917] Ut evangelica patefecit historia, cf. Serm. XXXIX. 3, n. 8.
[918] S. Matt. iv. 3.
[919] Ib. iv. 4, quoted from Deut. viii. 3.
[920] S. Matt. v. 6. __________________________________________________________________
Sermon XLII.
On Lent, IV.
I. The Lenten fast an opportunity for restoring our purity.
In proposing to preach this most holy and important fast to you, dearly beloved, how shall I begin more fitly than by quoting the words of the Apostle, in whom Christ Himself was speaking, and by reminding you of what we have read [921] : "behold, now is the acceptable time, behold now is the day of salvation." For though there are no seasons which are not full of Divine blessings, and though access is ever open to us to God's mercy through His grace, yet now all men's minds should be moved with greater zeal to spiritual progress, and animated by larger confidence, when the return of the day, on which we were redeemed, invites us to all the duties of godliness: that we may keep the super-excellent mystery of the Lord's passion with bodies and hearts purified. These great mysteries do indeed require from us such unflagging devotion and unwearied reverence that we should remain in God's sight always the same, as we ought to be found on the Easter feast itself. But because few have this constancy, and, because so long as the stricter observance is relaxed in consideration of the frailty of the flesh, and so long as one's interests extend over all the various actions of this life, even pious hearts must get some soils from the dust of the world, the Divine Providence has with great beneficence taken care that the discipline of the forty days should heal us and restore the purity of our minds, during which the faults of other times might be redeemed by pious acts and removed by chaste fasting.
II. Lent must be used for removing all our defilements, and of good works there must be no stint.
As we are therefore, dearly-beloved, about to enter on those mystic days which are dedicated to the benefits of fasting, let us take care to obey the Apostle's precepts, cleansing "ourselves from every defilement of flesh and spirit [922] :" that by controlling the struggles that go on between our two natures, the spirit which, if it is under the guidance of God, should be the governor of the body, may uphold the dignity of its rule: so that we may give no offence to any, nor be subject to the chidings of reprovers. For we shall be rightly attacked with rebukes, and through our fault ungodly tongues will arm themselves to do harm to religion, if the conduct of those that fast is at variance with the standard of perfect purity. For our fast does not consist chiefly of mere abstinence from food, nor are dainties withdrawn from our bodily appetites with profit, unless the mind is recalled from wrong-doing and the tongue restrained from slandering. This is a time of gentleness and long-suffering, of peace and tranquillity: when all the pollutions of vice are to be eradicated and continuance of virtue is to be attained by us. Now let godly minds boldly accustom themselves to forgive faults, to pass over insults, and to forget wrongs. Now let the faithful spirit train himself with the armour of righteousness on the right hand and on the left, that through honour and dishonour, through ill repute and good repute, the conscience may be undisturbed in unwavering uprightness, not puffed up by praise and not wearied out by revilings. The self-restraint of the religious should not be gloomy, but sincere; no murmurs of complaint should be heard from those who are never without the consolation of holy joys. The decrease of worldly means should not be feared in the practice of works of mercy. Christian poverty is always rich, because what it has is more than what it has not. Nor does the poor man fear to labour in this world, to whom it is given to possess all things in the Lord of all things. Therefore those who do the things which are good must have no manner of fear lest the power of doing should fail them; since in the gospel the widow's devotion is extolled in the case of her two mites, and voluntary bounty gets its reward for a cup of cold water [923] . For the measure of our charitableness is fixed by the sincerity of our feelings, and he that shows mercy on others will never want for mercy himself. The holy widow of Sarepta discovered this, who offered the blessed Elias in the time of famine one day's food, which was all she had, and putting the prophet's hunger before her own needs, ungrudgingly gave up a handful of corn and a little oil [924] . But she did not lose what she gave in all faith, and in the vessels emptied by her godly bounty a source of new plenty arose, that the fulness of her substance might not be diminished by the holy purpose to which she had put it, because she had never dreaded being brought to want.
III. As with the Saviour, so with us, the devil tries to make our very piety its own snare.
But, dearly-beloved, doubt not that the devil, who is the opponent of all virtues, is jealous of these good desires, to which we are confident you are prompted of your own selves, and that to this end he is arming the force of his malice in order to make your very piety its own snare, and endeavouring to overcome by boastfulness those whom he could not defeat by distrustfulness. For the vice of pride is a near neighbour to good deeds, and arrogance ever lies in wait hard by virtue: because it is hard for him that lives praise-worthily not to be caught by man's praise unless, as it is written, "he that glorieth, glorieth in the Lord [925] ." Whose intentions would that most naughty enemy not dare to attack? whose fasting would he not seek to break down? seeing that, as has been shown in the reading of the Gospel [926] , he did not restrain his wiles even against the Saviour of the world Himself. For being exceedingly afraid of His fast, which lasted 40 days and nights, he wished most cunningly to discover whether this power of abstinence was given Him or His very own: for he need not fear the defeat of all his treacherous designs, if Christ were throughout subject to the same conditions as He is in body [927] . And so he first craftily examined whether He were Himself the Creator of all things, such that He could change the natures of material things as He pleased: secondly, whether under the form of human flesh the Godhead lay concealed, to Whom it was easy to make the air His chariot, and convey His earthly limbs through space. But when the Lord preferred to resist him by the uprightness of His true Manhood, than to display the power of His Godhead, to this he turns the craftiness of his third design, that he might tempt by the lust of empire Him in Whom the signs of Divine power had failed, and entice Him to the worship of himself by promising the kingdoms of the world. But the devil's cleverness was rendered foolish by God's wisdom, so that the proud foe was bound by that which he had formerly bound, and did not fear to assail Him Whom it behoved to be slain for the world.
IV. The perverse turn even their fasting into sin.
This adversary's wiles then let us beware of, not only in the enticements of the palate, but also in our purpose of abstinence. For he who knew how to bring death upon mankind by means of food, knows also how to harm us through our very fasting, and using the Manichæans as his tools, as he once drove men to take what was forbidden, so in the opposite direction he prompts them to avoid what is allowed. It is indeed a helpful observance, which accustoms one to scanty diet, and checks the appetite for dainties: but woe to the dogmatizing of those whose very fasting is turned to sin. For they condemn the creature's nature to the Creator's injury, and maintain that they are defiled by eating those things of which they contend the devil, not God, is the author: although absolutely nothing that exists is evil, nor is anything in nature included in the actually bad. For the good Creator made all things good and the Maker of the universe is one, "Who made the heaven and the earth, the sea and all that is in them [928] ." Of which whatever is granted to man for food and drink, is holy and clean after its kind. But if it is taken with immoderate greed, it is the excess that disgraces the eaters and drinkers, not the nature of the food or drink that defiles them. "For all things," as the Apostle says, "are clean to the clean. But to the defiled and unbelieving nothing is clean, but their mind and conscience is defiled [929] ."
V. Be reasonable and seasonable in your fasting.
But ye, dearly-beloved, the holy offspring of the catholic Mother, who have been taught in the school of Truth by God's Spirit, moderate your liberty with due reasonableness, knowing that it is good to abstain even from things lawful, and at seasons of greater strictness to distinguish one food from another with a view to giving up the use of some kinds, not to condemning their nature. And so be not infected with the error of those who are corrupted merely by their own ordinances, "serving the creature rather than the Creator [930] ," and offering a foolish abstinence to the service of the lights of heaven: seeing that they have chosen to fast on the first and second days of the week in honour of the sun and moon, proving themselves in this one instance of their perverseness twice disloyal to God, twice blasphemous, by setting up their fast not only in worship of the stars but also in contempt of the Lord's Resurrection. For they reject the mystery of man's salvation and refuse to believe that Christ our Lord in the true flesh of our nature was truly born, truly suffered, was truly buried and was truly raised. And in consequence, condemn the day of our rejoicing by the gloom of their fasting. And since to conceal their infidelity they dare to be present at our meetings, at the Communion of the Mysteries [931] they bring themselves sometimes, in order to ensure their concealment, to receive Christ's Body with unworthy lips, though they altogether refuse to drink the Blood of our Redemption. And this we make known to you, holy brethren, that men of this sort may be detected by you by these signs, and that they whose impious pretences have been discovered may be driven from the society of the saints by priestly authority. For of such the blessed Apostle Paul in his foresight warns God's Church, saying: "but we beseech you, brethren, that ye observe those who make discussions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye learnt and turn away from them. For such persons serve not Christ the Lord but their own belly, and by sweet words and fair speeches beguile the hearts of the innocent [932] ."
VI. Make your fasting a reality by amendment in your lives.
Being therefore, dearly-beloved, fully instructed by these admonitions of ours, which we have often repeated in your ears in protest against abominable error, enter upon the holy days of Lent with Godly devoutness, and prepare yourselves to win God's mercy by your own works of mercy. Quench your anger, wipe out enmities, cherish unity, and vie with one another in the offices of true humility. Rule your slaves and those who are put under you with fairness, let none of them be tortured by imprisonment or chains. Forego vengeance, forgive offences: exchange severity for gentleness, indignation for meekness, discord for peace. Let all men find us self-restrained, peaceable, kind: that our fastings may be acceptable to God. For in a word to Him we offer the sacrifice of true abstinence and true Godliness, when we keep ourselves from all evil: the Almighty God helping us through all, to Whom with the Son and Holy Spirit belongs one Godhead and one Majesty, for ever and ever. Amen. __________________________________________________________________
[921] Cf. Serm. XL. chap. ii. n. 5.
[922] 2 Cor. vii. 1.
[923] The reffs. are obviously to S. Luke xxi. 2-4, and S. Matt. x. 42 (q.v.).
[924] Cf. 1 Kings xvii. 11 and foll.
[925] 1 Cor. x. 17.
[926] Cf. Serm. XXXVI. chap. i., note 7.
[927] Si Christus eius esset conditionis cuius est corporis, an obscurely expressed but intrinsically clear statement.
[928] Ps. cxlvi. 6.
[929] Titus i. 15.
[930] Rom. ix. 26.
[931] In sacramentorum communione.
[932] Rom. xvi. 17, 18. __________________________________________________________________
Sermon XLVI.
On Lent, VIII.
I. Lent must be kept not only by avoiding bodily impurity but also by avoiding errors of thought and faith.
We know indeed, dearly-beloved, your devotion to be so warm that in the fasting, which is the forerunner of the Lord's Easter, many of you will have forestalled our exhortations. But because the right practice of abstinence is needful not only to the mortification of the flesh but also to the purification of the mind, we desire your observance to be so complete that, as you cut down the pleasures that belong to the lusts of the flesh, so you should banish the errors that proceed from the imaginations of the heart. For he whose heart is polluted with no misbelief prepares himself with true and reasonable purification for the Paschal Feast, in which all the mysteries of our religion meet together. For, as the Apostle says, that "all that is not of faith is sin [933] ," the fasting of those will be unprofitable and vain, whom the father of lying deceives with his delusions, and who are not fed by Christ's true flesh. As then we must with the whole heart obey the Divine commands and sound doctrine, so we must use all foresight in abstaining from wicked imaginations. For the mind then only keeps holy and spiritual fast when it rejects the food of error and the poison of falsehood, which our crafty and wily foe plies us with more treacherously now, when by the very return of the venerable Festival, the whole church generally is admonished to understand the mysteries of its salvation. For he is the true confessor and worshipper of Christ's resurrection, who is not confused about His passion, nor deceived about His bodily nativity. For some are so ashamed of the Gospel of the Cross of Christ, as to impudently nullify the punishment which He underwent for the world's redemption, and have denied the very nature of true flesh in the Lord, not understanding how the impassible and unchangeable Deity of God's Word could have so far condescended for man's salvation, as by His power not to lose His own properties, and in His mercy to take on Him ours. And so in Christ, there is a twofold form but one person, and the Son of God, who is at the same time Son of Man, is one Lord, accepting the condition of a slave by the design of loving-kindness, not by the law of necessity, because by His power He became humble, by His power passible, by His power mortal; that for the destruction of the tyranny of sin and death, the weak nature in Him might be capable of punishment, and the strong nature not lose aught of its glory.
II. All the actions of Christ reveal the presence of the twofold nature.
And so, dearly-beloved, when in reading or hearing the Gospel you find certain things in our Lord Jesus Christ subjected to injuries and certain things illumined by miracles, in such a way that in the same Person now the Humanity appears, and now the Divinity shines out, do not put down any of these things to a delusion, as if in Christ there is either Manhood alone or Godhead alone, but believe both faithfully, worship both right humbly; so that in the union of the Word and the Flesh there may be no separation, and the bodily proofs may not seem delusive, because the divine signs were evident in Jesus. The attestations to both natures in Him are true and abundant, and by the depth of the Divine purpose all concur to this end, that the inviolable Word not being separated from the passible flesh, the Godhead may be understood as in all things partaker with the flesh and flesh with the Godhead. And, therefore, must the Christian mind that would eschew lies and be the disciple of truth, use the Gospel-story confidently, and, as if still in company with the Apostles themselves, distinguish what is visibly done by the Lord, now by the spiritual understanding and now by the bodily organs of sight. Assign to the man that He is born a boy of a woman: assign to God that His mother's virginity is not harmed, either by conception or by bearing. Recognize "the form of a slave" enwrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger, but acknowledge that it was the Lord's form that was announced by angels, "proclaimed by the elements [934] ," adored by the wise men. Understand it of His humanity that he did not avoid the marriage feast: confess it Divine that he turned water into wine. Let your own feelings explain to you why He shed tears over a dead friend: let His Divine power be realized, when that same friend, after mouldering in the grave four days, is brought to life and raised only by the command of His voice. To make clay with spittle and earth was a work of the body: but to anoint therewith and enlighten the eyes of the blind is an undoubted mark of that power which had reserved for the revelation of its glory that which it had not allowed to the early part of His natural life. It is truly human to relieve bodily fatigue with rest in sleep: but it is truly Divine to quell the violence of raging storms by a rebuking command. To set food before the hungry denotes human kindness and a philanthropic spirit: but with five loaves and two fishes to satisfy 5,000 men, besides women and children, who would dare deny that to be the work of Deity? a Deity which, by the co-operation of the functions of true flesh, showed not only itself in Manhood, but also Manhood in itself; for the old, original wounds in man's nature could not be healed, except by the Word of God taking to Himself flesh from the Virgin's womb, whereby in one and the same Person flesh and the Word co-existed.
III. Hold fast to the statements of the Creed.
This belief in the Lord's Incarnation, dearly-beloved, through which the whole Church is Christ's body [935] , hold firm with heart unshaken and abstain from all the lies of heretics, and remember that your works of mercy will only then profit you, and your strict continence only then bear fruit, when your minds are unsoiled by any defilement from wrong opinions. Cast away the arguments of this world's wisdom, for God hates them, and none can arrive by them at the knowledge of the Truth, and keep fixed in your mind that which you say in the Creed. Believe [936] the Son of God to be co-eternal with the Father by Whom all things were made and without Whom nothing was made, born also according to the flesh at the end of the times. Believe Him to have been in the body crucified, dead, raised up, and lifted above the heights of heavenly powers, set on the Father's right hand, about to come in the same flesh in which He ascended, to judge the living and the dead. For this is what the Apostle proclaims to all the faithful, saying: "if ye be risen with Christ seek the things which are above, where Christ is sitting on the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things that are above, not on the things that are upon the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. For when Christ, our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory [937] ."
IV. Use Lent for general improvement in the whole round of Christian duties.
Relying, therefore, dearly-beloved, on so great a promise, be heavenly not only in hope, but also in conduct. And though our minds must at all times be set on holiness of mind and body, yet now during these 40 days of fasting bestir yourselves [938] to yet more active works of piety, not only in the distribution of alms, which are very effectual in attesting reform, but also in forgiving offences, and in being merciful to those accused of wrongdoing, that the condition which God has laid down between Himself and us may not be against us when we pray. For when we say, in accordance with the Lord's teaching, "Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors [939] ," we ought with the whole heart to carry out what we say. For then only will what we ask in the next clause come to pass, that we be not led into temptation and freed from all evils [940] : through our Lord Jesus Christ, Who with the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen. __________________________________________________________________
[933] Rom. xiv. 23.
[934] Declaratam ab elementis, viz. by the star in the east.
[935] Per quam tota Ecclesia corpus est Christi. This is a great saying, by which the centrality of the doctrine of the Incarnation is fearlessly asserted.
[936] Notice that both here and in the next sentence the construction is credite Filium--credite Hunc not credite in Filium--in Hunc, the exact language of the creed being the latter (I believe in, &c.).
[937] Col. iii. 1-4.
[938] Lit. "polish yourselves up" (expolite vos).
[939] S. Matt. vi. 12.
[940] A malis omnibus liberemus. The free turn given to this passage is interesting: apo tou ponerou (Vulg. a malo) being now considered personal "from the evil one" (R.V.). __________________________________________________________________
Sermon XLIX.
On Lent, XI.
I. The Lenten fast is incumbent on all alike.
On all days and seasons, indeed, dearly-beloved, some marks of the Divine goodness are set, and no part of the year is destitute of sacred mysteries, in order that, so long as proofs of our salvation meet us on all sides, we may the more eagerly accept the never-ceasing calls of God's mercy. But all that is bestowed on the restoration of human souls in the divers works and gifts of grace is put before us more clearly and abundantly now, when no isolated portions of the Faith are to be celebrated, but the whole together. For as the Easter festival approaches, the greatest and most binding of fasts is kept, and its observance is imposed on all the faithful without exception; because no one is so holy that he ought not to be holier, nor so devout that he might not be devouter. For who, that is set in the uncertainty of this life, can be found either exempt from temptation, or free from fault? Who is there who would not wish for additions to his virtue, or removal of his vice? seeing that adversity does us harm, and prosperity spoils us, and it is equally dangerous not to have what we want at all, and to have it in the fullest measure. There is a trap in the fulness of riches, a trap in the straits of poverty. The one lifts us up in pride, the other incites us to complaint. Health tries us, sickness tries us, so long as the one fosters carelessness and the other sadness. There is a snare in security, a snare in fear; and it matters not whether the mind which is given over to earthly thoughts, is taken up with pleasures or with cares; for it is equally unhealthy to languish under empty delights, or to labour under racking anxiety.
II. The broad road is crowded, the narrow way of salvation nearly empty.
And thus is perfectly fulfilled that assurance of the Truth, by which we learn that "narrow and steep is the way that leads to life [941] ;" and whilst the breadth of the way that leads to death is crowded with a large company, the steps are few of those that tread the path of safety. And wherefore is the left road more thronged than the right, save that the multitude is prone to worldly joys and carnal goods? And although that which it desires is short-lived and uncertain, yet men endure toil more willingly for the lust of pleasure than for love of virtue. Thus while those who crave things visible are unnumbered, those who prefer the eternal to the temporal are hardly to be found. And, therefore, seeing that the blessed Apostle Paul says, "the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal [942] ," the path of virtue lies hid and in concealment, to a certain extent, since "by hope we were saved [943] ," and true faith loves that above all things, which it attains to without any intervention of the flesh. A great work and toil it is then to keep our wayward heart from all sin, and, with the numberless allurements of pleasure to ensnare it on all sides, not to let the vigour of the mind give way to any attack. Who "toucheth pitch, and is not defiled thereby [944] ?" who is not weakened by the flesh? who is not begrimed by the dust? who, lastly, is of such purity as not to be polluted by those things without which one cannot live? For the Divine teaching commands by the Apostle's mouth that "they who have wives" should "be as though they had none: and those that weep as though they wept not; and those that rejoice as though they rejoiced not; and those that buy as though they possessed not; and those that use this world as though they used it not; for the fashion of this world passeth away [945] ." Blessed, therefore, is the mind that passes the time of its pilgrimage in chaste sobriety, and loiters not in the things through which it has to walk, so that, as a stranger rather than the possessor of its earthly abode, it may not be wanting in human affections, and yet rest on the Divine promises.
III. Satan is incited to fresh efforts at this season of the year.
And, dearly-beloved, no season requires and bestows this fortitude more than the present, when by the observance of a special strictness a habit is acquired which must be persevered in. For it is well known to you that this is the time when throughout the world the devil waxes furious, and the Christian army has to combat him, and any that have grown lukewarm and slothful, or that are absorbed in worldly cares, must now be furnished with spiritual armour and their ardour kindled for the fray by the heavenly trumpet, inasmuch as he, through whose envy death came into the world [946] , is now consumed with the strongest jealousy and now tortured with the greatest vexation. For he sees [947] whole tribes of the human race brought in afresh to the adoption of God's sons and the offspring of the New Birth multiplied through the virgin fertility of the Church. He sees himself robbed of all his tyrannic power, and driven from the hearts of those he once possessed, while from either sex thousands of the old, the young, the middle-aged are snatched away from him, and no one is debarred by sin either of his own or original, where justification is not paid for deserts, but simply given as a free gift. He sees, too, those that have lapsed, and have been deceived by his treacherous snares, washed in the tears of penitence and, by the Apostle's key unlocking the gates of mercy, admitted to the benefit of reconciliation [948] . He feels, moreover, that the day of the Lord's Passion is at hand, and that he is crushed by the power of that cross which in Christ, Who was free from all debt of sin, was the world's ransom and not the penalty of sin.
IV. Self-examination by the standard of God's commands the right occupation in Lent.
And so, that the malice of the fretting foe may effect nothing by its rage, a keener devotion must be awaked to the performance of the Divine commands, in order that we may enter on the season, when all the mysteries of the Divine mercy meet together, with preparedness both of mind and body, invoking the guidance and help of God, that we may be strong to fulfil all things through Him, without Whom we can do nothing. For the injunction is laid on us, in order that we may seek the aid of Him Who lays it. Nor must any one excuse himself by reason of his weakness, since He Who has granted the will, also gives the power, as the blessed Apostle James says, "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, Who giveth to all liberally and upbraideth not, and it shall be given him [949] ." Which of the faithful does not know what virtues he ought to cultivate, and what vices to fight against? Who is so partial or so unskilled a judge of his own conscience as not to know what ought to be removed, and what ought to be developed? Surely no one is so devoid of reason as not to understand the character of his mode of life, or not to know the secrets of his heart. Let him not then please himself in everything, nor judge himself according to the delights of the flesh, but place his every habit in the scale of the Divine commands, where, some things being ordered to be done and others forbidden, he can examine himself in a true balance by weighing the actions of his life according to this standard. For the designing mercy of God [950] has set up the brightest mirror in His commandments, wherein a man may see his mind's face and realize its conformity or dissimilarity to God's image: with the specific purpose that, at least, during the days of our Redemption and Restoration, we may throw off awhile our carnal cares and restless occupations, and betake ourselves from earthly matters to heavenly.
V. Forgiveness of our own sins requires that we should forgive others.
But because, as it is written, "in many things we all stumble [951] ," let the feeling of mercy be first aroused and the faults of others against us be forgotten; that we may not violate by any love of revenge that most holy compact, to which we bind ourselves in the Lord's prayer, and when we say "forgive us our debts as we also forgive our debtors," let us not be hard in forgiving, because we must be possessed either with the desire for revenge, or with the leniency of gentleness, and for man, who is ever exposed to the dangers of temptations, it is more to be desired that his own faults should not need punishment [952] than that he should get the faults of others punished. And what is more suitable to the Christian faith than that not only in the Church, but also in all men's homes, there should be forgiveness of sins? Let threats be laid aside; let bonds be loosed, for he who will not loose them will bind himself with them much more disastrously. For whatsoever one man resolves upon against another, he decrees against himself by his own terms. Whereas "blessed are the merciful, for God shall have mercy on them [953] :" and He is just and kind in His judgments, allowing some to be in the power of others to this end, that under fair government may be preserved both the profitableness of discipline and the kindliness of clemency, and that no one should dare to refuse that pardon to another's shortcomings, which he wishes to receive for his own.
VI. Reconciliation between enemies and alms-giving are also Lenten duties.
Furthermore, as the Lord says, that "the peacemakers are blessed, because they shall be called sons of God [954] ," let all discords and enmities be laid aside, and let no one think to have a share in the Paschal feast that has neglected to restore brotherly peace. For with the Father on high, he that is not in charity with the brethren, will not be reckoned in the number of His sons. Furthermore, in the distribution of alms and care of the poor, let our Christian fast-times be fat and abound; and let each bestow on the weak and destitute those dainties which he denies himself. Let pains be taken that all may bless God with one mouth, and let him that gives some portion of substance understand that he is a minister of the Divine mercy; for God has placed the cause of the poor in the hand of the liberal man; that the sins which are washed away either by the waters of baptism, or the tears of repentance, may be also blotted out by alms-giving; for the Scripture says, "As water extinguisheth fire, so alms extinguisheth sin [955] ." Through our Lord Jesus Christ, &c. __________________________________________________________________
[941] S. Matt. vii. 14.
[942] 2 Cor. iv. 18.
[943] Rom. viii. 24.
[944] Ecclus. xiii. 1.
[945] 1 Cor. vii. 29-31. In the last clause but one, the Lat. runs, qui utuntur hoc mundo tanquam non utantur (as also the Vulg. and the margin of R.V., "(as not) using to the full," though the text reads, "as not abusing it").
[946] Wisdom ii. 24.
[947] The allusion is of course to the large number of persons baptized every year at Easter.
[948] Portas misericordiæ Apostolica clave reserante ad remedia reconciliationis admitti: no doubt confession and priestly absolution is meant with a reference to S. Matt. xvi. 19.
[949] S. James i. 5.
[950] Artifex misericordia Dei.
[951] S. James iii. 2.
[952] Ut suas culpas habeat impunitas (some through a misunderstanding of the argument read punitas here) quam ut plectat alienas.
[953] S. Matt. v. 7, quoted in the same form in Serm. XCV. chap. 7, q.v.
[954] S. Matt. v. 9.
[955] Ecclus. iii. 30. __________________________________________________________________
Sermon LI.
A Homily delivered on the Saturday before the Second Sunday in Lent--on the Transfiguration, S. Matt. xvii. 1-13
I. Peter's confession shown to lead up to the Transfiguration.
The Gospel lesson, dearly-beloved, which has reached the inner hearing of our minds through our bodily ears, calls us to the understanding of a great mystery, to which we shall by the help of God's grace the better attain, if we turn our attention to what is narrated just before.
The Saviour of mankind, Jesus Christ, in founding that faith, which recalls the wicked to righteousness and the dead to life, used to instruct His disciples by admonitory teaching and by miraculous acts to the end that He, the Christ, might be believed to be at once the Only-begotten of God and the Son of Man. For the one without the other was of no avail to salvation, and it was equally dangerous to have believed the Lord Jesus Christ to be either only God without manhood, or only man without Godhead [956] , since both had equally to be confessed, because just as true manhood existed in His Godhead, so true Godhead existed in His Manhood. To strengthen, therefore, their most wholesome knowledge of this belief, the Lord had asked His disciples, among the various opinions of others, what they themselves believed, or thought about Him: whereat the Apostle Peter, by the revelation of the most High Father passing beyond things corporeal and surmounting things human by the eyes of his mind, saw Him to be Son of the living God, and acknowledged the glory of the Godhead, because he looked not at the substance of His flesh and blood alone; and with this lofty faith Christ was so well pleased that he received the fulness of blessing, and was endued with the holy firmness of the inviolable Rock on which the Church should be built and conquer the gates of hell and the laws of death, so that, in loosing or binding the petitions of any whatsoever, only that should be ratified in heaven which had been settled by the judgment of Peter.
II. The same continued.
But this exalted and highly-praised understanding, dearly-beloved, had also to be instructed on the mystery of Christ's lower substance, lest the Apostle's faith, being raised to the glory of confessing the Deity in Christ, should deem the reception of our weakness unworthy of the impassible God, and incongruous, and should believe the human nature to be so glorified in Him as to be incapable of suffering punishment, or being dissolved in death. And, therefore, when the Lord said that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and scribes and chief of the priests, and the third day rise again, the blessed Peter who, being illumined with light from above, was burning with the heat of his confession, rejected their mocking insults and the disgrace of the most cruel death, with, as he thought, a loyal and outspoken contempt, but was checked by a kindly rebuke from Jesus and animated with the desire to share His suffering. For the Saviour's exhortation that followed, instilled and taught this, that they who wished to follow Him should deny themselves, and count the loss of temporal things as light in the hope of things eternal; because he alone could save his soul that did not fear to lose it for Christ. In order, therefore, that the Apostles might entertain this happy, constant courage with their whole heart, and have no tremblings about the harshness of taking up the cross, and that they might not be ashamed of the punishment of Christ, nor think what He endured disgraceful for themselves (for the bitterness of suffering was to be displayed without despite to His glorious power), Jesus took Peter and James and his brother John, and ascending a very high [957] mountain with them apart, showed them the brightness of His glory; because, although they had recognised the majesty of God in Him, yet the power of His body, wherein His Deity was contained, they did not know. And, therefore, rightly and significantly, had He promised that certain of the disciples standing by should not taste death till they saw "the Son of Man coming in His Kingdom [958] ," that is, in the kingly brilliance which, as specially belonging to the nature of His assumed Manhood, He wished to be conspicuous to these three men. For the unspeakable and unapproachable vision of the Godhead Itself which is reserved till eternal life for the pure in heart, they could in no wise look upon and see while still surrounded with mortal flesh. The Lord displays His glory, therefore, before chosen witnesses, and invests that bodily shape which He shared with others with such splendour, that His face was like the sun's brightness and His garments equalled the whiteness of snow.
III. The object and the meaning of the Transfiguration.
And in this Transfiguration the foremost object was to remove the offence of the cross from the disciple's heart, and to prevent their faith being disturbed by the humiliation of His voluntary Passion by revealing to them the excellence of His hidden dignity. But with no less foresight, the foundation was laid of the Holy Church's hope, that the whole body of Christ might realize the character of the change which it would have to receive, and that the members might promise themselves a share in that honour which had already shone forth in their Head. About which the Lord had Himself said, when He spoke of the majesty of His coming, "Then shall the righteous shine as the sun in their Father's Kingdom [959] ," whilst the blessed Apostle Paul bears witness to the self-same thing, and says: "for I reckon that the sufferings of this time are not worthy to be compared with the future glory which shall be revealed in us [960] :" and again, "for ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. For when Christ our life shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory [961] ." But to confirm the Apostles and assist them to all knowledge, still further instruction was conveyed by that miracle.
IV. The significance of the appearance of Moses and Elias.
For Moses and Elias, that is the Law and the Prophets, appeared talking with the Lord; that in the presence of those five men might most truly be fulfilled what was said: "In two or three witnesses stands every word [962] ." What more stable, what more steadfast than this word, in the proclamation of which the trumpet of the Old and of the New Testament joins, and the documentary evidence of the ancient witnesses [963] combine with the teaching of the Gospel? For the pages of both covenants [964] corroborate each other, and He Whom under the veil of mysteries the types that went before had promised, is displayed clearly and conspicuously by the splendour of the present glory. Because, as says the blessed John, "the law was given through Moses: but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ [965] ," in Whom is fulfilled both the promise of prophetic figures and the purpose of the legal ordinances: for He both teaches the truth of prophecy by His presence, and renders the commands possible through grace.
V. S. Peter's suggestion contrary to the Divine order.
The Apostle Peter, therefore, being excited by the revelation of these mysteries, despising things mundane and scorning things earthly, was seized with a sort of frenzied craving for the things eternal, and being filled with rapture at the whole vision, desired to make his abode with Jesus in the place where he had been blessed with the manifestation of His glory. Whence also he says, "Lord, it is good for us to be here: if thou wilt let us make three tabernacles [966] , one for Thee, one for Moses, and one for Elias." But to this proposal the Lord made no answer, signifying that what he wanted was not indeed wicked, but contrary to the Divine order: since the world could not be saved, except by Christ's death, and by the Lord's example the faithful were called upon to believe that, although there ought not to be any doubt about the promises of happiness, yet we should understand that amidst the trials of this life we must ask for the power of endurance rather than the glory, because the joyousness of reigning cannot precede the times of suffering.
VI. The import of the Father's voice from the cloud.
And so while He was yet speaking, behold a bright cloud overshadowed them, and behold a voice out of the cloud, saying, "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye Him." The Father was indeed present in the Son, and in the Lord's brightness, which He had tempered to the disciples' sight, the Father's Essence was not separated from the Only-begotten: but, in order to emphasize the two-fold personality, as the effulgence of the Son's body displayed the Son to their sight, so the Father's voice from out the cloud announced the Father to their hearing. And when this voice was heard, "the disciples fell upon their faces, and were sore afraid," trembling at the majesty, not only of the Father, but also of the Son: for they now had a deeper insight into the undivided Deity of Both: and in their fear they did not separate the One from the Other, because they doubted not in their faith [967] . That was a wide and manifold testimony, therefore, and contained a fuller meaning than struck the ear. For when the Father said, "This is My beloved Son, in Whom, &c.," was it not clearly meant, "This is My Son," Whose it is to be eternally from Me and with Me? because the Begetter is not anterior to the Begotten, nor the Begotten posterior to the Begetter. "This is My Son," Who is separated from Me, neither by Godhead, nor by power, nor by eternity. "This is My Son," not adopted, but true-born, not created from another source, but begotten of Me: nor yet made like Me from another nature, but born equal to Me of My nature. "This is My Son," "through Whom all things were made, and without Whom was nothing made [968] " because all things that I do He doth in like manner: and whatever I perform, He performs with Me inseparably and without difference: for the Son is in the Father and the Father in the Son [969] , and Our Unity is never divided: and though I am One Who begot, and He the Other Whom I begot, yet is it wrong for you to think anything of Him which is not possible of Me. "This is My Son," Who sought not by grasping, and seized not in greediness [970] , that equality with Me which He has, but remaining in the form of My glory, that He might carry out Our common plan for the restoration of mankind, He lowered the unchangeable Godhead even to the form of a slave.
VII. Who it is we have to hear.
"Hear ye Him," therefore, unhesitatingly, in Whom I am throughout well pleased, and by Whose preaching I am manifested, by Whose humiliation I am glorified; because He is "the Truth and the Life [971] ," He is My "Power and Wisdom [972] ." "Hear ye Him," Whom the mysteries of the Law have foretold, Whom the mouths of prophets have sung. "Hear ye Him," Who redeems the world by His blood, Who binds the devil, and carries off his chattels, Who destroys the bond of sin, and the compact of the transgression. Hear ye Him, Who opens the way to heaven, and by the punishment of the cross prepares for you the steps of ascent to the Kingdom? Why tremble ye at being redeemed? why fear ye to be healed of your wounds? Let that happen which Christ wills and I will. Cast away all fleshly fear, and arm yourselves with faithful constancy; for it is unworthy that ye should fear in the Saviour's Passion what by His good gift ye shall not have to fear even at your own end.
VIII. The Father's words have a universal application to the whole Church.
These things, dearly-beloved, were said not for their profit only, who heard them with their own ears, but in these three Apostles the whole Church has learnt all that their eyes saw and their ears heard. Let all men's faith then be established, according to the preaching of the most holy Gospel, and let no one be ashamed of Christ's cross, through which the world was redeemed. And let not any one fear to suffer for righteousness' sake, or doubt of the fulfilment of the promises, for this reason, that through toil we pass to rest and through death to life; since all the weakness of our humility was assumed by Him, in Whom, if we abide in the acknowledgment and love of Him, we conquer as He conquered, and receive what he promised, because, whether to the performance of His commands or to the endurance of adversities, the Father's fore-announcing voice should always be sounding in our ears, saying, "This is My beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased; hear ye Him:" Who liveth and reigneth, with the Father and the Holy Ghost, for ever and ever. Amen. __________________________________________________________________
[956] The same words are used in Lett. XXVIII. (Tome), chap. 5.
[957] Præcelso (Vulg. excelso): possibly the form of the adjective supports Codex Bezæ (D) in adding lian after hupselon.
[958] S. Matt. xvi. 28. Leo's application of the prophesy is almost too fanciful to be the true one, though he stands by no means alone among commentaters (ancient and modern) in so applying it.
[959] S. Matt. xiii. 43.
[960] Rom. viii. 18.
[961] Col. iii. 3.
[962] Deut. xix. 15.
[963] Antiquarum protestationum instrumenta.
[964] Utriusque foederis paginæ (instead of the more usual Testamenti).
[965] S. John i. 17.
[966] Sc. booths or tents.
[967] Quia in fide non fuit hæsitatio, non fuit in timore discretio.
[968] S. John i. 3: and below, cf. x. 38: and again Phil. ii. 6.
[969] S. John i. 3: and below, cf. x. 38: and again Phil. ii. 6.
[970] S. John i. 3: and below, cf. x. 38: and again Phil. ii. 6.
[971] S. John xiv. 6; 1 Cor. i. 24.
[972] S. John xiv. 6; 1 Cor. i. 24. __________________________________________________________________
Sermon LIV.
On the Passion, III.; delivered on the Sunday before Easter.
I. The two-fold nature of Christ set forth.
Among all the works of God's mercy, dearly-beloved, which from the beginning have been bestowed upon men's salvation, none is more wondrous, and none more sublime, than that Christ was crucified for the world. For to this mystery all the mysteries of the ages preceding led up, and every variation which the will of God ordained in sacrifices, in prophetic signs, and in the observances of the Law, foretold that this was fixed, and promised its fulfilment: so that now types and figures are at an end, and we find our profit in believing that accomplished which before we found our profit in looking forward to. In all things, therefore, dearly-beloved, which pertain to the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Catholic Faith maintains and demands that we acknowledge the two Natures to have met in our Redeemer, and while their properties remained, such a union of both Natures to have been effected that, from the time when, as the cause of mankind required, in the blessed Virgin's womb, "the Word became flesh," we may not think of Him as God without that which is man, nor as man without that which is God. Each Nature does indeed express its real existence by actions that distinguish it, but neither separates itself from connexion with the other. Nothing is wanting there on either side; in the majesty the humility is complete, in the humility the majesty is complete: and the unity does not introduce confusion, nor does the distinctiveness destroy the unity. The one is passible, the other inviolable; and yet the degradation belongs to the same Person, as does the glory. He is present at once in weakness and in power; at once capable of death and the vanquisher of it. Therefore, God took on Him whole Manhood, and so blended the two Natures together by means of His mercy and power, that each Nature was present in the other, and neither passed out of its own properties into the other.
II. The two natures acted conjointly, and the human sufferings were not compulsory, but in accordance with the Divine will.
But because the design of that mystery which was ordained for our restoration before the eternal ages, was not to be carried out without human weakness and without Divine power [973] , both "form" does that which is proper to it in common with the other, the Word, that is, performing that which is the Word's and the flesh that which is of the flesh. One of them gleams bright with miracles, the other succumbs to injuries. The one departs not from equality with the Father's glory, the other leaves not the nature of our race. But nevertheless even His very endurance of sufferings does not so far expose Him to a participation in our humility as to separate Him from the power of the Godhead. All the mockery and insults, all the persecution and pain which the madness of the wicked inflicted on the Lord, was not endured of necessity, but undertaken of free-will: "for the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which had perished [974] :" and He used the wickedness of His persecutors for the redemption of all men in such a way that in the mystery of His Death and Resurrection even His murderers could have been saved, if they had believed.
III. Judas' infamy has never been exceeded.
And hence, Judas, thou art proved more criminal and unhappier than all; for when repentance should have called thee back to the Lord, despair dragged thee to the halter. Thou shouldest have awaited the completion of thy crime, and have put off thy ghastly death by hanging, until Christ's Blood was shed for all sinners. And among the many miracles and gifts of the Lord's which might have aroused thy conscience, those holy mysteries, at least, might have rescued thee from thy headlong fall, which at the Paschal supper thou hadst received, being even then detected in thy treachery by the sign of Divine knowledge. Why dost thou distrust the goodness of Him, Who did not repel thee from the communion of His body and blood, Who did not deny thee the kiss of peace when thou camest with crowds and a band of armed men to seize Him. But O man that nothing could convert, O "spirit going and not returning [975] ," thou didst follow thy heart's rage, and, the devil standing at thy right hand, didst turn the wickedness, which thou hadst prepared against the life of all the saints, to thine own destruction, so that, because thy crime had exceeded all measure of punishment, thy wickedness might make thee thine own judge, thy punishment allow thee to be thine own hangman.
IV. Christ voluntarily bartered His glory for our weakness.
When, therefore, "God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself [976] ," and the Creator Himself was wearing the creature which was to be restored to the image of its Creator; and after the Divinely-miraculous works had been performed, the performance of which the spirit of prophecy had once predicted, "then shall the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf shall hear; then shall the lame man leap as a hart, and the tongue of the dumb shall be plain [977] ;" Jesus knowing that the time was now come for the fulfilment of His glorious Passion, said, "My soul is sorrowful even unto death [978] ;" and again, "Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me [979] ." And these words, expressing a certain fear, show His desire to heal the affection of our weakness by sharing them, and to check our fear of enduring pain by undergoing it. In our Nature, therefore, the Lord trembled with our fear, that He might fully clothe our weakness and our frailty with the completeness of His own strength. For He had come into this world a rich and merciful Merchant from the skies, and by a wondrous exchange had entered into a bargain of salvation with us, receiving ours and giving His, honour for insults, salvation for pain, life for death: and He Whom more than 12,000 of the angel-hosts might have served [980] for the annihilation of His persecutors, preferred to entertain our fears, rather than employ His own power.
V. S. Peter was the first to benefit by his Master's humiliation.
And how much this humiliation conferred upon all the faithful, the most blessed Apostle Peter was the first to prove, who, after the fierce blast of threatening cruelty had dismayed him, quickly changed, and was restored to vigour, finding remedy from the great Pattern, so that the suddenly-shaken member returned to the firmness of the Head. For the bond-servant could not be "greater than the Lord, nor the disciple greater than the master [981] ," and he could not have vanquished the trembling of human frailty had not the Vanquisher of Death first feared. The Lord, therefore, "looked back upon Peter [982] ," and amid the calumnies of priests, the falsehoods of witnesses, the injuries of those that scourged and spat upon Him, met His dismayed disciple with those eyes wherewith He had foreseen his dismay: and the gaze of the Truth entered into him, on whose heart correction must be wrought, as if the Lord's voice were making itself heard there, and saying, Whither goest thou, Peter? why retirest thou upon thyself? turn thou to Me, put thy trust in Me, follow Me: this is the time of My Passion, the hour of thy suffering is not yet come. Why dost thou fear what thou, too, shalt overcome? Let not the weakness, in which I share, confound thee. I was fearful for thee; do thou be confident of Me.
VI. The mad counsel of the Jews was turned to their own destruction.
"And when morning was come all the chief priests and elders of the people took counsel against Jesus to put him to death [983] ." This morning, O ye Jews, was for you not the rising, but the setting of the sun, nor did the wonted daylight visit your eyes, but a night of blackest darkness brooded on your naughty hearts. This morning overthrew for you the temple and its altars, did away with the Law and the Prophets, destroyed the Kingdom and the priesthood, turned all your feasts into eternal mourning. For ye resolved on a mad and bloody counsel, ye "fat bulls," ye "many oxen," ye "roaring" wild beasts, ye rabid "dogs [984] ," to give up to death the Author of life and the Lord of glory; and, as if the enormity of your fury could be palliated by employing the verdict of him, who ruled your province, you lead Jesus bound to Pilate's judgment, that the terror-stricken judge being overcome by your persistent shouts, you might choose a man that was a murderer for pardon, and demand the crucifixion of the Saviour of the world. After this condemnation of Christ, brought about more by the cowardice than the power of Pilate, who with washed hands but polluted mouth sent Jesus to the cross with the very lips that had pronounced Him innocent, the licence of the people, obedient to the looks of the priests, heaped many insults on the Lord, and the frenzied mob wreaked its rage on Him, Who meekly and voluntarily endured it all. But because, dearly-beloved, the whole story is too long to go through to-day, let us put off the rest till Wednesday, when the reading of the Lord's Passion will be repeated [985] . For the Lord will grant to your prayers, that of His own free gift we may fulfil our promise: through our Lord Jesus Christ, Who liveth and reigneth for ever and ever. Amen. __________________________________________________________________
[973] This passage from "both form" down to "race" is repeated almost word for word in Lett. XXVIII. (The Tome), chap. 4.
[974] S. Luke xix. 10.
[975] Ps. lxxviii. 39.
[976] 2 Cor. v. 19.
[977] Is. xxxv. 5, 6.
[978] S. Matt. xxvi. 38, 39.
[979] S. Matt. xxvi. 38, 39.
[980] Cf. S. Matt. xxvi. 53. The whole of this wonderfully powerful passage.
[981] Cf. S. Matt. x. 24 and below, S. Luke xxii. 61.
[982] Cf. S. Matt. x. 24 and below, S. Luke xxii. 61.
[983] S. Matt. xxvii. 1.
[984] Cf. Ps. xxii. 12, 13, 16.
[985] Leo seems here to speak as if the story of the Passion from the Gospels in his time was read only on the Sunday and Wednesday in Holy Week: various uses prevailed, for which cf. Bingham's Antiq. Bk. xiv. chap. iii. § 3. __________________________________________________________________
Sermon LV.
On the Lord's Passion IV., delivered on Wednesday in Holy Week.
I. The difference between the penitence and blasphemy of the two robbers is a type of the human race.
That which we owe to your expectations, dearly-beloved, must be paid through the Lord's bountiful answer to your prayers that He Who has made you eager in the demanding would make us fit for the performing.
In speaking but lately of the Lord's Passion we reached the point in the Gospel story, where Pilate is said to have yielded to the Jews' wicked shouts that Jesus should be crucified. And so when all things had been accomplished, which the Godhead veiled in frail flesh [986] permitted, Jesus Christ the Son of God was fixed to the cross which He had also been carrying, two robbers being similarly crucified, one on His right hand, and the other on the left: so that even in the incidents of the cross might be displayed that difference which in His judgment must be made in the case of all men; for the believing robber's faith was a type of those who are to be saved, and the blasphemer's wickedness prefigured those who are to be damned. Christ's Passion, therefore, contains the mystery of our salvation, and of the instrument which the iniquity of the Jews prepared for His punishment, the Redeemer's power has made for us the stepping-stone to glory [987] : and that Passion the Lord Jesus so underwent for the salvation of all men that, while hanging there nailed to the wood, He entreated the Father's mercy for His murderers, and said, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do [988] ."
II. The chief priests showed utter ignorance of Scripture in their taunts.
But the chief priests, for whom the Saviour sought forgiveness, rendered the torture of the cross yet worse by the barbs of railery; and at Him, on Whom they could vent no more fury with their hands, they hurled the weapons of their tongues, saying, "He saved others; Himself he cannot save. If He is the King of Israel, let Him now come down from the cross, and we believe Him [989] ." From what spring of error, from what pool of hatred, O ye Jews, do ye drink such poisonous blasphemies? What master informed you, what teaching convinced you that you ought to believe Him to be King of Israel and Son of God, who should either not allow Himself to be crucified, or should shake Himself free from the binding nails. The mysteries of the Law, the sacred observances of the Passover, the mouths of the Prophets never told you this: whereas you did find truly and oft-times written that which applies to your abominable wicked-doing and to the Lord's voluntary suffering. For He Himself says by Isaiah, "I gave My back to the scourges, My cheeks to the palms of the hand, I turned not My face from the shame of spitting [990] ." He Himself says by David, "They gave Me gall for My food, and in My thirst they supplied Me with vinegar [991] ," and again, "Many dogs came about Me, the council of evil-doers beset Me. They pierced My hands and My feet, they counted all My bones. But they themselves watched and gazed on Me, they parted My raiment among them, and for My robe they cast lots [992] ." And lest the course of your own evil doings should seem to have been foretold, and no power in the Crucified predicted, ye read not, indeed, that the Lord descended from the cross, but ye did read, "The Lord reigned on the tree [993] ."
III. The triumph of the Cross is immediate and effective.
The Cross of Christ, therefore, symbolizes [994] the true altar of prophecy, on which the oblation of man's nature should be celebrated by means of a salvation-bringing Victim. There the blood of the spotless Lamb blotted out the consequences of the ancient trespass: there the whole tyranny of the devil's hatred was crushed, and humiliation triumphed gloriously over the lifting up of pride: for so swift was the effect of Faith that of the robbers crucified with Christ, the one who believed in Christ as the Son of God entered paradise justified. Who can unfold the mystery of so great a boon? who can state the power of so wondrous a change? In a moment of time the guilt of long evil-doing is done away; clinging to the cross, amid the cruel tortures of his struggling soul, he passes over to Christ; and to him, on whom his own wickedness had brought punishment, Christ's grace now gives a crown.
IV. When the last act in the tragedy was over how must the Jews have felt?
And then, having now tasted the vinegar, the produce of that vineyard which had degenerated in spite of its Divine Planter, and had turned to the sourness of a foreign vine [995] , the Lord says, "it is finished;" that is, the Scriptures are fulfilled: there is no more for Me to abide from the fury of the raging people: I have endured all that I foretold I should suffer. The mysteries of weakness are completed, let the proofs of power be produced. And so He bowed the head and yielded up His Spirit and gave that Body, Which should be raised again on the third day, the rest of peaceful slumber. And when the Author of Life was undergoing this mysterious phase, and at so great a condescension of God's Majesty, the foundations of the whole world were shaken, when all creation condemned their wicked crime by its upheaval, and the very elements of the world delivered a plain verdict against the criminals, what thoughts, what heart-searchings had ye, O Jews, when the judgment of the universe went against you, and your wickedness could not be recalled, the crime having been done? what confusion covered you? what torment seized your hearts?
V. Chastity and charity are the two things most needful in preparing for Easter Communion.
Seeing therefore, dearly-beloved, that God's Mercy is so great, that He has deigned to justify by faith many even from among such a nation, and had adopted into the company of the patriarchs and into the number of the chosen people us who were once perishing in the deep darkness of our old ignorance, let us mount to the summit of our hopes not sluggishly nor in sloth; but prudently and faithfully reflecting from what captivity and from how miserable a bondage, with what ransom we were purchased, by how strong an arm led out, let us glorify God in our body: that we may show Him dwelling in us, even by the uprightness of our manner of life. And because no virtues are worthier or more excellent than merciful loving-kindness and unblemished chastity, let us more especially equip ourselves with these weapons, so that, raised from the earth, as it were on the two wings of active charity and shining purity, we may win a place in heaven. And whosoever, aided by God's grace, is filled with this desire and glories not in himself, but in the Lord, over his progress, pays due honour to the Easter mystery. His threshold the angel of destruction does not cross, for it is marked with the Lamb's blood and the sign of the cross [996] . He fears not the plagues of Egypt, and leaves his foes overwhelmed by the same waters by which he himself was saved. And so, dearly-beloved, with minds and bodies purified let us embrace the wondrous mystery of our salvation, and, cleansed from all "the leaven of our old wickedness, let us keep [997] " the Lord's Passover with due observance: so that, the Holy Spirit guiding us, we may be "separated" by no temptations "from the love of Christ [998] ," Who bringing peace by His blood to all things, has returned to the loftiness of the Father's glory, and yet not forsaken the lowliness of those who serve Him to Whom is the honour and the glory for ever and ever. Amen. __________________________________________________________________
[986] Divinitas carnis velamine temperata. It is not easy to render the exact force of this phrase in English without a danger of being misunderstood.
[987] Gradum nobis fecit ad gloriam. Quesnel's reading gaudium, though well supported by the mss., is, I think with the Ball., unsatisfactory, cf. Serm. LI. chap. 7, per crucis supplicium gradus vobis ascensionis parat ad regnum.
[988] S. Luke xxiii. 34.
[989] S. Matt. xxvii. 42.
[990] Is. l. 6.
[991] Ps. lxix. 21; xxii. 16, 17.
[992] Ps. lxix. 21; xxii. 16, 17.
[993] Ps. xcvi. 10. "An ancient gloss, but without authority from existing mss. or ancient versions, viz., apo tou xulou, was received by S. Justin Martyr and others as a genuine portion of the text." Speakers Commentary in loco. Compare also the old Latin hymn ("The Royal Banners," H.A.M. 96, verse 3).
[994] Sacramentum habet.
[995] The reference is perhaps to Is. v. 1-5.
[996] Cf. Exod. xii. 23; and below, 1 Cor. v. 8, and Rom. viii. 35.
[997] Cf. Exod. xii. 23; and below, 1 Cor. v. 8, and Rom. viii. 35.
[998] Cf. Exod. xii. 23; and below, 1 Cor. v. 8, and Rom. viii. 35. __________________________________________________________________
Sermon LVIII.
(On the Passion, VII.)
I. The reason of Christ suffering at the Paschal Feast.
I know indeed, dearly-beloved, that the Easter festival partakes of so sublime a mystery as to surpass not only the slender perceptions of my humility, but even the powers of great intellects. But I must not consider the greatness of the Divine work in such a way as to distrust or to feel ashamed of the service which I owe; for we may not hold our peace upon the mystery of man's salvation, even if it cannot be explained. But, your prayers aiding us, we believe God's Grace will be granted, to sprinkle the barrenness of our heart with the dew of His inspiration: that by the pastor's mouth things may be proclaimed which are useful to the ears of his holy flock. For when the Lord, the Giver of all good things, says: "open thy mouth, and I will fill it [999] ," we dare likewise to reply in the prophet's words: "Lord, Thou shalt open my lips, and my mouth shall shew forth Thy praise [1000] ." Therefore beginning, dearly-beloved, to handle once more the Gospel-story of the Lord's Passion, we understand it was part of the Divine plan that the profane chiefs of the Jews and the unholy priests, who had often sought occasion of venting their rage on Christ, should receive the power of exercising their fury at no other time than the Paschal festival. For the things which had long been promised under mysterious figures had to be fulfilled in all clearness; for instance, the True Sheep had to supersede the sheep which was its antitype, and the One Sacrifice to bring to an end the multitude of different sacrifices. For all those things which had been divinely ordained through Moses about the sacrifice of the lamb had prophesied of Christ and truly announced the slaying of Christ. In order, therefore, that the shadows should yield to the substance and types cease in the presence of the Reality, the ancient observance is removed by a new Sacrament, victim passes into Victim, blood is wiped away by Blood, and the law-ordained Feast is fulfilled by being changed.
II. The leading Jews broke their own Law, as well as failed to apprehend the new dispensation in destroying Christ.
And hence, when the chief priests gathered the scribes and elders of the people together to their council, and the minds of all the priests were occupied with the purpose of doing wrong to Jesus, the teachers of the law put themselves without the law, and by their own voluntary failure in duty abolished their ancestral ceremonies. For when the Paschal feast began, those who ought to have adorned the temple, cleansed the vessels, provided the victims, and employed a holier zeal in the purifications that the law enjoined, seized with the fury of traitorous hate, give themselves up to one work, and with uniform cruelty conspire for one crime, though they were doomed to gain nothing by the punishment of innocence and the condemnation of righteousness, except the failure to apprehend the new mysteries and the violation of the old. The chiefs, therefore, in providing against a tumult arising on a holy day [1001] , showed zeal not for the festival, but for a heinous crime; and their anxiety served not the cause of religion, but their own incrimination. For these careful pontiffs and anxious priests feared the occurrence of seditious riots on the principal feast-day, not lest the people should do wrong, but lest Christ should escape.
III. Jesus instituting the Blessed Sacrament showed mercy to the traitor Judas to the last.
But Jesus, sure of His purpose and undaunted in carrying out His Father's will, fulfilled the New Testament and founded a new Passover. For while the disciples were lying down with Him at the mystic Supper, and when discussion was proceeding in the hall of Caiaphas how Christ might be put to death, He, ordaining the Sacrament of His Body and Blood, was teaching them what kind of Victim must be offered up to God, and not even from this mystery was the betrayer kept away, in order to show that he was exasperated by no personal wrong, but had determined beforehand of his own free-will upon his treachery. For he was his own source of ruin and cause of perfidy, following the guidance of the devil and refusing to have Christ as director. And so when the Lord said, "Verily I say to you that one of you is about to betray Me," He showed that His betrayer's conscience was well known to Him, not confounding the traitor by harsh or open rebukes, but meeting him with mild and silent warnings that he who had never been sent astray by rejection, might the easier be set right by repentance. Why, unhappy Judas, dose thou not make use of so great long-suffering? Behold, the Lord spares thy wicked attempts; Christ betrays thee to none save thyself. Neither thy name nor thy person is discovered, but only the secrets of thy heart are touched by the word of truth and mercy. The honour of the apostolic rank is not denied thee, nor yet a share in the Sacraments. Return to thy right mind; lay aside thy madness and be wise. Mercy invites thee, Salvation knocks at the door, Life recalls thee to life. Lo, thy stainless and guiltless fellow-disciples shudder at the hint of thy crime, and all tremble for themselves till the author of the treachery is declared. For they are saddened not by the accusations of conscience, but by the uncertainty of man's changeableness; fearing lest what each knew against himself be less true than what the Truth Himself foresaw. But thou abusest the Lord's patience in this panic of the saints, and believest that thy bold front hides thee. Thou addest impudence to guilt, and art not frightened by so clear a test. And when the others refrain from the food in which the Lord had set His judgment, thou dost not withdraw thy hand from the dish, because thy mind is not turned aside from the crime.
IV. Various incidents of the Passion further explained and the reality of Christ's sufferings asserted.
And thus it followed, dearly-beloved, that as John the Evangelist has narrated, when the Lord offered the bread which He had dipped to His betrayer, more clearly to point him out, the devil entirely seized Judas, and now, by his veritable act of wickedness, took possession of one whom he had already bound down by his evil designs. For only in body was he lying there with those at meat: in mind he was arming the hatred of the priests, the falseness of the witnesses, and the fury of the ignorant mob. At last the Lord, seeing on what a gross crime Judas was bent says, "What thou doest, do quickly [1002] ." This is the voice not of command but of permission, and not of fear but of readiness: He, that has power over all times, shows that He puts no hindrance in the way of the traitor, and carries out the Father's will for the redemption of the world in such a way as neither to promote nor to fear the crime which His persecutors were preparing. When Judas, therefore, at the devil's persuasion, departed from Christ, and cut himself off from the unity of the Apostolic body, the Lord, without being disturbed by any fear, but anxious only for the salvation of those He came to redeem, spent all the time that was free from His persecutors' attack on mystic conversation and holy teaching, as is declared in St. John's gospel: raising His eyes to heaven and beseeching the Father for the whole Church that all whom the Father had and would give the Son might become one and remain undivided to the Redeemer's glory, and adding lastly that prayer in which He says, "Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me [1003] ." Wherein it is not to be thought that the Lord Jesus wished to escape the Passion and the Death, the sacraments of which He had already committed to His disciples' keeping, seeing that He Himself forbids Peter, when he was burning with devoted faith and love, to use the sword, saying, "The cup which the Father hath given Me, shall I not drink it [1004] ?" and seeing that that is certain which the Lord also says, according to John's Gospel, "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that everyone who believes in Him may not perish, but have eternal life [1005] ;" as also what the Apostle Paul says, "Christ loved us and gave Himself for us, a victim to God for a sweet-smelling savour [1006] ." For the saving of all through the Cross of Christ was the common will and the common plan of the Father and the Son; nor could that by any means be disturbed which before eternal ages had been mercifully determined and unchangeably fore-ordained. Therefore in assuming true and entire manhood He took the true sensations of the body and the true feelings of the mind. And it does not follow because everything in Him was full of sacraments, full of miracles, that therefore He either shed false tears or took food from pretended hunger or feigned slumber. It was in our humility that He was despised, with our grief that He was saddened, with our pain that He was racked on the cross. For His compassion underwent the sufferings of our mortality with the purpose of healing them, and His power encountered them with the purpose of conquering them. And this Isaiah has most plainly prophesied, saying, "He carries our sins and is pained for us, and we thought Him to be in pain and in stripes and in vexation. But He was wounded for our sins, and was stricken for our offences, and with His bruises we are healed [1007] ."
V. The resignation of Christ is an undying lesson to the Church.
And so, dearly beloved, when the Son of God says, "Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me [1008] ," He uses the outcry of our nature, and pleads the cause of human frailty and trembling: that our patience may be strengthened and our fears driven away in the things which we have to bear. At length, ceasing even to ask this now that He had in a measure palliated our weak fears, though it is not expedient for us to retain them, He passes into another mood, and says, "Nevertheless, not as I will but as Thou;" and again, "If this cup can not pass from Me, except I drink it, Thy will be done [1009] ." These words of the Head are the salvation of the whole Body: these words have instructed all the faithful, kindled the zeal of all the confessors, crowned all the martyrs. For who could overcome the world's hatred, the blasts of temptations, the terrors of persecutors, had not Christ, in the name of all and for all, said, to the Father, "Thy will be done?" Then let the words be learnt by all the Church's sons who have been purchased at so great a price, so freely justified: and when the shock of some violent temptation has fallen on them, let them use the aid of this potent prayer, that they may conquer their fear and trembling, and learn to suffer patiently. From this point, dearly-beloved, our sermon must pass to the consideration of the details of the Lord's Passion, and lest we should burden you with prolixity, we will divide our common task, and put off the rest [1010] till the fourth day of the week. God's grace will be vouchsafed to you if you pray Him to give me the power of carrying out my duty: through our Lord Jesus Christ, &c. __________________________________________________________________
[999] Ps. lxxxi. 10.
[1000] Ps. li. 15.
[1001] Cf. S. Matt. xxvi. 5.
[1002] S. John xiii. 27.
[1003] S. Matt. xxvi. 39.
[1004] S. John xviii. 11.
[1005] Ib. iii. 16.
[1006] Eph. v. 2.
[1007] Is. liii. 45. Leo's version is a very literal translation of the LXX., which varies a good deal from the Vulgate and the A.V.; he omits however, the clause, "the chastisement of our peace," &c., which is common to all three.
[1008] S. Matt. xxvi. 39 and 42.
[1009] S. Matt. xxvi. 39 and 42.
[1010] This is Sermon LIX. which follows in extenso. See Serm. LIV., chap. vi. n. 2. __________________________________________________________________
Sermon LIX.
(On the Passion, VIII.: on Wednesday in Holy Week.)
I. Christ's arrest fulfils His own eternal purpose.
Having discoursed, dearly beloved, in our last sermon, on the events which preceded the Lord's arrest, it now remains, by the help of God's grace, to discuss, as we promised, the details of the Passion itself. When the Lord had made it clear by the words of His sacred prayer that the Divine and the Human Nature was most truly and fully present in Him, showing that the unwillingness to suffer proceeded from the one, and from the other the determination to suffer by the expulsion of all frail fears and the strengthening of His lofty power, then did He return to His eternal purpose, and "in the form of a" sinless "slave" encounter the devil who was savagely attacking Him by the hands of the Jews: that He in Whom alone was all men's nature without fault, might undertake the cause of all. The sins of darkness, therefore, assailed the true Light, and, for all their torches and lanterns [1011] , could not escape the night of their own unbelief, because they did not recognize the Fount of Light. They arrest Him, and He is ready to be seized; they lead Him away, and He is willing to be led; for though, if He had willed to resist, their wicked hands could have done Him no harm, yet thereby the world's redemption would have been impeded, and He, who was to die for all men's salvation, would have saved none at all.
II. How great was Pilate's crime in allowing himself to be led astray by the Jews.
Accordingly, permitting the infliction on Himself of all that the people's fury inflamed by the priests dared do, He is brought to Annas, father-in-law to Caiaphas, and thence Annas passes Him on to Caiaphas: and after the calumniators' mad accusations, after the lying falsehoods of suborned witnesses, He is transferred to Pilate's hearing by the delegation of the two high-priests, who in neglecting the Divine law, and exclaiming that they had "no king but Cæsar," as if they were devoted to the Roman laws, and had left the whole judgment in the hands of the governor, really sought for an accomplisher of their cruelty rather than an umpire of the case. For they gave up Jesus, bound in hard bonds, bruised by many buffets and blows, spat upon, already condemned by their shouts: so that amidst so many signs of their own verdict Pilate might not dare to acquit One Whom all desired to perish. In fact, the very inquiry shows both that he found in the Accused no fault and that in his judgment he did not adhere to his purpose: for as judge he condemns One Whom he pronounces guiltless, invoking on the unrighteous people the blood of the Righteous Man with Whom he felt by his own conviction, and knew from his wife's dream [1012] , he must have nothing to do. That stained soul is not cleansed by the washing of hands, there is no expiation in water-besprinkled fingers for the crime abetted by that wicked mind. Pilate's fault is indeed, less than the Jews' crime; for it was they that terrified him with Cæsar's name, chode him with hateful words, and drove him to perpetrate his wickedness. But he also did not escape incrimination for playing into the hands of those that made the uproar, for abandoning his own judgment, and for acquiescing in the charges of others.
III. Yet the Jews' guilt was infinitely greater.
In bowing, therefore, dearly-beloved, to the madness of the implacable people, in permitting Jesus to be dishonoured by much mocking, and harassed with excessive insults, and in displaying Him to the eyes of His persecutors lacerated with scourges, crowned with thorns, and clothed in a robe of scorn, Pilate doubtless thought to appease the enemies' minds, so that when they had glutted their cruel hate, they might cease further to persecute One Whom they beheld subjected to such a variety of afflictions. But their wrath was still in full blaze, and they cried out to him to release Barabbas and thus, Jesus bear the penalty of the cross, and thus, when with consenting murmur the crowd said "His blood be on us and on our sons [1013] ," those wicked folk gained, to their own damnation what they had persistently demanded, "whose teeth," as the prophet bore witness, "were arms and arrows, and their tongue a sharp sword [1014] ." For in vain did they keep their own hands from crucifying the Lord of glory when they had hurled at Him the tongue's deadly darts and the poisoned weapons of words. On you, on you, false Jews and unholy leaders of the people, falls the full weight of that crime: and although the enormity of the guilt involves the governor and the soldiers also, yet you are the primary and chief offenders. And in Christ's condemnation, whatsoever wrong was done either by Pilate's judgment or by the cohorts carrying out of his commands, makes you only the more deserving of the hatred of mankind, because the impulse of your fury would not let even those be free from guilt who were displeased at your unrighteous acts.
IV. Christ bearing His own cross is an eternal lesson to the Church.
And so the Lord was handed over to their savage wishes, and in mockery of His kingly state, ordered to be the bearer of His own instrument of death, that what Isaiah the prophet foresaw might be fulfilled, saying, "Behold a Child is born, and a Son is given to us whose government is upon His shoulders [1015] ." When, therefore, the Lord carried the wood of the cross which should turn for Him into the sceptre of power, it was indeed in the eyes of the wicked a mighty mockery, but to the faithful a mighty mystery was set forth, seeing that He, the glorious vanquisher of the Devil, and the strong defeater of the powers that were against Him, was carrying in noble sort the trophy of His triumph, and on the shoulders of His unconquered patience bore into all realms the adorable sign of salvation: as if even then to confirm all His followers by this mere symbol of His work, and say, "He that taketh not his cross and followeth Me, is not worthy of Me [1016] ."
V. The transference of the cross from the Lord to Simon of Cyrene signifies the participation of the Gentiles in His sufferings.
But as the multitudes went with Jesus to the place of punishment, a certain Simon of Cyrene was found on whom to lay the wood of the cross instead of the Lord; that even by this act might be pre-signified the Gentiles' faith, to whom the cross of Christ was to be not shame but glory. It was not accidental, therefore, but symbolical and mystical, that while the Jews were raging against Christ, a foreigner was found to share His sufferings, as the Apostle says, "if we suffer with Him, we shall also reign with Him [1017] "; so that no Hebrew nor Israelite, but a stranger, was substituted for the Saviour in His most holy degradation. For by this transference the propitiation of the spotless Lamb and the fulfilment of all mysteries passed from the circumcision to the uncircumcision, from the sons according to the flesh to the sons according to the spirit: since as the Apostle says, "Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us [1018] ," Who offering Himself to the Father a new and true sacrifice of reconciliation, was crucified not in the temple, whose worship was now at an end, and not within the confines of the city which for its sin was doomed to be destroyed, but outside, "without the camp [1019] ," that, on the cessation of the old symbolic victims, a new Victim might be placed on a new altar, and the cross of Christ might be the altar not of the temple but of the world.
VI. We are to see not only the cross but the meaning of it.
Accordingly, dearly-beloved, Christ being lifted up upon the cross, let the eyes of your mind not dwell only on that sight which those wicked sinners saw, to whom it was said by the mouth of Moses, "And thy life shall be hanging before thine eyes, and thou shalt fear day and night, and shalt not be assured of thy life [1020] ." For in the crucified Lord they could think of nothing but their wicked deed, having not the fear, by which true faith is justified, but that by which an evil conscience is racked. But let our understandings, illumined by the Spirit of Truth, foster with pure and free heart the glory of the cross which irradiates heaven and earth, and see with the inner sight what the Lord meant when He spoke of His coming Passion: "The hour is come that the Son of man may be glorified [1021] :" and below He says, "Now is My spirit troubled. And what shall I say? Father, save Me from this hour, but for this cause came I unto this hour. Father, glorify Thy Son." And when the Father's voice came from heaven, saying, "I have both glorified it and will glorify it again," Jesus in reply said to those that stood by, "This voice came not for Me but for you. Now is the world's judgment, now shall the prince of this world be cast out. And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all things unto Me [1022] ."
VII. The power of the cross is universally attractive.
O wondrous power of the Cross! O ineffable glory of the Passion, in which is contained the Lord's tribunal, the world's judgment, and the power of the Crucified! For thou didst draw all things unto Thee, Lord and when Thou hadst stretched out Thy hands all the day, long to an unbelieving people that gainsaid Thee [1023] , the whole world at last was brought to confess Thy majesty. Thou didst draw all things unto Thee, Lord, when all the elements combined to pronounce judgment in execration of the Jews' crime, when the lights of heaven were darkened, and the day turned into night, and the earth also was shaken with unwonted shocks, and all creation refused to serve those wicked men. Thou didst draw all things unto Thee, Lord, for the veil of the temple was rent, and the Holy of Holies existed no more for those unworthy high-priests: so that type was turned into Truth, prophecy into Revelation, law into Gospel. Thou didst draw all things unto Thee, Lord, so that what before was done in the one temple of the Jews in dark signs, was now to be celebrated everywhere by the piety of all the nations in full and open rite. For now there is a nobler rank of Levites, there are elders of greater dignity and priests of holier anointing: because Thy cross is the fount of all blessings, the source of all graces, and through it the believers receive strength for weakness, glory for shame, life for death. Now, too, the variety of fleshly sacrifices has ceased, and the one offering of Thy Body and Blood fulfils all those different victims: for Thou art the true "Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world [1024] ," and in Thyself so accomplishest all mysteries, that as there is but one sacrifice instead of many victims, so there is but one kingdom instead of many nations.
VIII. We must live not for ourselves but for Christ, who died for us.
Let us, then, dearly-beloved, confess what the blessed teacher of the nations, the Apostle Paul, confessed, saying, "Faithful is the saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners [1025] ." For God's mercy towards us is the more wonderful that Christ died not for the righteous nor for the holy, but for the unrighteous and wicked; and though the nature of the Godhead could not sustain the sting of death, yet at His birth He took from us that which He might offer for us. For of old He threatened our death with the power of His death, saying by the mouth of Hosea the prophet, "O death, I will be thy death, and I will be thy destruction, O hell [1026] ." For by dying He underwent the laws of hell, but by rising again He broke them, and so destroyed the continuity of death as to make it temporal instead of eternal. "For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive [1027] ." And so, dearly-beloved, let that come to pass of which S. Paul speaks, "that they that live, should henceforth not live to themselves but to Him who died for all and rose again [1028] ." And because the old things have passed away and all things are become new, let none remain in his old carnal life, but let us all be renewed by daily progress and growth in piety. For however much a man be justified, yet so long as he remains in this life, he can always be more approved and better. And he that is not advancing is going back, and he that is gaining nothing is losing something. Let us run, then, with the steps of faith, by the works of mercy, in the love of righteousness, that keeping the day of our redemption spiritually, "not in the old leaven of malice and wickedness, but in the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth [1029] ," we may deserve to be partakers of Christ's resurrection, Who with the Father and the Holy Ghost liveth and reigneth for ever and ever. Amen. __________________________________________________________________
[1011] The allusion doubtless is to the "lanterns and torches" mentioned by S. John xviii. 3.
[1012] Cf. S. Matt. xxvii. 19 and 25.
[1013] Cf. S. Matt. xxvii. 19 and 25.
[1014] Ps. vii. 4.
[1015] Is. ix. 6. The interpretation is fanciful, but not without some support from the parallel phrase in Is. xxii. 22.
[1016] S. Matt. x. 38.
[1017] 2 Tim. ii. 12.
[1018] 1 Cor. v. 7.
[1019] Heb. xiii. 12.
[1020] Deut. xxviii. 66.
[1021] S. John xii. 23; Ibid. 27, 28, 30-32. The reading omni (all things) will not escape notice in v. 32.
[1022] S. John xii. 23; Ibid. 27, 28, 30-32. The reading omni (all things) will not escape notice in v. 32.
[1023] Cf. Is. lxv. 2.
[1024] S. John i. 29.
[1025] 1 Tim. i. 15.
[1026] Hos. xiii. 14.
[1027] 1 Cor. xv. 22.
[1028] 2 Cor. v. 15.
[1029] 1 Cor. v. 8. __________________________________________________________________
Sermon LXII.
(On the Passion, XI.)
I. The mystery of the Passion passes man's comprehension.
The Feast of the Lord's Passion [1030] that we have longed for and that the whole world may well desire, has come, and suffers us not to keep silence in the tumult of our spiritual joys: because though it is difficult to speak often on the same thing worthily and appropriately, yet the priest is not free to withhold from the people's ears instruction by sermon on this great mystery of God's mercy, inasmuch as the subject itself, being unspeakable, gives him ease of utterance, and what is said cannot altogether fail where what is said can never be enough. Let human frailty, then, succumb to God's glory, and ever acknowledge itself unequal to the unfolding of His works of mercy. Let us toil in thought, fail in insight, falter in utterance: it is good that even our right thoughts about the Lord's Majesty should be insufficient. For, remembering what the prophet says, "Seek ye the Lord and be strengthened: seek His face always [1031] ," no one must assume that he has found all he seeks, lest he fail of coming near, if he cease his endeavours. And amidst all the works of God which weary out man's wondering contemplation, what so delights and so baffles our mind's gaze as the Saviour's Passion? Ponder as we may upon His omnipotence, which is of one and equal substance with the Father, the humility in God is more stupendous than the power, and it is harder to grasp the complete emptying of the Divine Majesty than the infinite uplifting of the "slave's form" in Him. But we are much aided in our understanding of it by the remembrance that though the Creator and the creature, the Inviolable God and the passible flesh, are absolutely different, yet the properties of both substances meet together in Christ's one Person in such a way that alike in His acts of weakness and of power the degradation belongs to the same Person as the glory.
II. The Creed takes up S. Peter's confession as the fundamental doctrine of the Church.
In that rule of Faith, dearly-beloved, which we have received in the very beginning of the Creed, on the authority of apostolic teaching, we acknowledge our Lord Jesus Christ, whom we call the only Son of God the Father Almighty, to be also born of the Virgin Mary by the Holy Ghost. Nor do we reject His Majesty when we express our belief in His crucifixion, death, and resurrection on the third day. For all that is God's and all that is Man's are simultaneously fulfilled by His Manhood and His Godhead, so that in virtue of the union of the Passible with the Impassible, His power cannot be affected by His weakness, nor His weakness overcome by His power. And rightly was the blessed Apostle Peter praised for confessing this union, who when the Lord was inquiring what the disciples knew of Him, quickly anticipated the rest and said, "Thou art Christ, the Son of the living God [1032] ." And this assuredly he saw, not by the revelation of flesh or blood, which might have hindered his inner sight, but by the very Spirit of the Father working in his believing heart, that in preparation for ruling the whole Church he might first learn what he would have to teach, and for the solidification of the Faith, which he was destined to preach, might receive the assurance, "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it [1033] ." The strength, therefore, of the Christian Faith, which, built upon an impregnable rock, fears not the gates of death, acknowledges the one Lord Jesus Christ to be both true God and true Man, believing Him likewise to be the Virgin's Son, Who is His Mother's Creator: born also at the end of the ages, though He is the Creator of time: Lord of all power, and yet one of mortal stock: ignorant of sin, and yet sacrificed for sinners after the likeness of sinful flesh.
III. The Devil's devices were turned against himself.
And in order that He might set the human race free from the bonds of deadly transgression, He hid the power of His majesty from the raging devil, and opposed him with our frail and humble nature. For if the cruel and proud foe could have known the counsel of God's mercy, he would have aimed at soothing the Jews' minds into gentleness rather than at firing them with unrighteous hatred, lest he should lose the thraldom of all his captives in assailing the liberty of One Who owed him nought. Thus he was foiled by his malice: he inflicted a punishment on the Son of God, which was turned to the healing of all the sons of men. He shed righteous Blood, which became the ransom and the drink for the world's atonement. The Lord undertook that which He chose according to the purpose of His own will. He permitted madmen to lay their wicked hands upon Him: hands which, in ministering to their own doom, were of service to the Redeemer's work. And yet so great was His loving compassion for even His murderers, that He prayed to the Father on the cross, and begged not for His own vengeance but for their forgiveness, saying, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do [1034] ." And such was the power of that prayer, that the hearts of many of those who had said, "His blood be on us and on our sons [1035] ," were turned to penitence by the Apostle Peter's preaching, and on one day there were baptized about 3,000 Jews: and they all were "of one heart and of one soul [1036] ," being ready now to die for Him, Whose crucifixion they had demanded.
IV. Why Judas could not obtain forgiveness through Christ.
To this forgiveness the traitor Judas could not attain: for he, the son of perdition, at whose right the devil stood [1037] , gave himself up to despair before Christ accomplished the mystery of universal redemption. For in that the Lord died for sinners, perchance even he might have found salvation if he had not hastened to hang himself. But that evil heart, which was now given up to thievish frauds, and now busied with treacherous designs, had never entertained aught of the proofs of the Saviour's mercy. Those wicked ears had heard the Lord's words, when He said, "I came not to call the righteous but sinners [1038] ," and "The Son of man came to seek and to save that which was lost [1039] ," but they conveyed not to his understanding the clemency of Christ, which not only healed bodily infirmities, but also cured the wounds of sick souls, saying to the paralytic man, "Son, be of good cheer, thy sins are forgiven thee [1040] ;" saying also to the adulteress that was brought to Him, "neither will I condemn thee; go and sin no more [1041] ," to show in all His works that He had come as the Saviour, not the Judge of the world. But the wicked traitor refused to understand this, and took measures against himself, not in the self-condemnation of repentance, but in the madness of perdition, and thus he who had sold the Author of life to His murderers, even in dying increased the amount of sin which condemned him.
V. The cruelty of Christ's crucifixion is lost in its wondrous power.
Accordingly that which false witnesses, cruel leaders of the people, wicked priests did against the Lord Jesus Christ, through the agency of a coward governor and an ignorant band of soldiers, has been at once the abhorrence and the rejoicing of all ages. For though the Lord's cross was part of the cruel purpose of the Jews, yet is it of wondrous power through Him they crucified. The people's fury was directed against One, and the mercy of Christ is for all mankind. That which their cruelty inflicts He voluntarily undergoes, in order that the work of His eternal will may be carried out through their unhindered crime. And hence the whole order of events which is most fully narrated in the Gospels must be received by the faithful in such a way that by implicit belief in the occurrences which happened at the time of the Lord's Passion, we should understand that not only was the remission of sins accomplished by Christ, but also the standard of justice satisfied. But that this may be more thoroughly discussed by the Lord's help, let us reserve this portion of the subject till the fourth day of the week. [1042] God's grace, we hope, will be vouchsafed at your entreaties to help us to fulfil our promise: through Jesus Christ our Lord, &c. Amen. __________________________________________________________________
[1030] Festivitas dominicæ passionis is at first sight a strange phrase, but in reality most suggestive.
[1031] Ps. cv. 4.
[1032] S. Matt. xvi. 16, 18.
[1033] S. Matt. xvi. 16, 18.
[1034] S. Luke xxiii. 34.
[1035] S. Matt. xxvii. 25.
[1036] Acts iv. 32.
[1037] Cf. Ps. cix. 6.
[1038] S. Matt. ix. 13.
[1039] S. Luke xix. 10.
[1040] S. Matt. ix. 3.
[1041] S. John viii. 11; this famous section therefore is recognized by S. Leo: see Bright's note 69.
[1042] See Serm. LIV. chap. vi. n. 2. __________________________________________________________________
Sermon LXIII.
(On the Passion, XII.: preached on Wednesday.)
I. God chose to save man by strength made perfect in weakness.
The glory, dearly-beloved, of the Lord's Passion, on which we promised to speak again to-day, is chiefly wonderful for its mystery of humility, which has both ransomed and instructed us all, that He, Who paid the price, might also impart His righteousness to us. For the Omnipotence of the Son of God, whereby He is by the same Essence equal to the Father, might have rescued mankind from the dominion of the devil by the mere exercise of Its will, had it not better suited the Divine working to conquer the opposition of the foe's wickedness by that which had been conquered, and to restore our nature's liberty by that very nature by which bondage had come upon the whole race. But, when the evangelist says, "The Word became flesh and dwelt in us [1043] ," and the Apostle, "God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself [1044] ," it was shown that the Only-begotten of the Most High Father entered on such a union with human humility, that, when He took the substance of our flesh and soul, He remained one and the same Son of God by exalting our properties, not His own: because it was the weakness, not the power that had to be reinforced, so that upon the union of the creature with the Creator there should be nothing wanting of the Divine to the assumed, nor of the human to the Assuming.
II. God's plan was always partially understood, and is now of universal application.
This plan of God's mercy and justice, though in the ages past it was in a measure enshrouded in darkness, was yet not so completely hidden that the saints, who have most merited praise from the beginning till the coming of the Lord, were precluded from understanding it: seeing that the salvation, which was to come through Christ, was promised both by the words of prophecy and by the significance of events, and this salvation not only they attained who foretold it, but all they also who believed their predictions. For the one Faith justifies the saints of all ages, and to the self-same hope of the faithful pertains all that by Jesus Christ, the Mediator between God and man, we acknowledge done, or our fathers reverently accepted as to be done. And between Jew and Gentile there is no distinction, since, as the Apostle says, "Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but the keeping of God's commands [1045] ," and if they be kept in entirety of faith, they make Christians the true sons of Abraham, that is perfect, for the same Apostle says, "For whosoever of you were baptized in Christ Jesus, have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek: there is neither slave nor free: there is neither male nor female. For ye are all one in Christ. But if ye are Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, heirs according to promise [1046] ."
III. The union of the Divine Head with Its members inseparable.
There is no doubt therefore, dearly-beloved, that man's nature has been received by the Son of God into such a union that not only in that Man Who is the first-begotten of all creatures, but also in all His saints there is one and the self-same Christ, and as the Head cannot be separated from the members, so the members cannot be separated from the Head. For although it is not in this life, but in eternity that God is to be "all in all [1047] ," yet even now He is the inseparable Inhabitant of His temple, which is the Church, according as He Himself promised, saying, "Lo! I am with you all the days till the end of the age [1048] ." And agreeably therewith the Apostle says, "He is the head of the body, the Church, which is the beginning, the first-begotten from the dead, that in all things He may have the pre-eminence, because in Him it was pleasing that all fulness (of the Godhead) should dwell, and that through Him all things should be reconciled in Himself [1049] ."
IV. Christ's passion provided a saving mystery and an example for us to follow.
And what is suggested to our hearts by these and many other references, save that we should in all things be renewed in His image Who, remaining "in the form of God [1050] ," deigned to "take the form" of sinful flesh? For all our weaknesses, which come from sin, He took on Him without sharing in sin, so that He felt the sensation of hunger and thirst and sleep and fatigue, and grief and weeping, and suffered the fiercest pangs up to the extremity of death, because no one could be loosed from the snares of death, unless He in Whom alone all men's nature was guileless allowed Himself to be slain by the hands of wicked men. And hence our Saviour the Son of God provided for all that believe in Him both a mystery and an example [1051] , that they might apprehend the one by being born again, and follow the other by imitation. For the blessed Apostle Peter teaches this, saying, "Christ suffered for us, leaving you an example that ye should follow His steps. Who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth. Who when He was reviled, reviled not: when He suffered, threatened not, but gave Himself up to His unjust judge. Who Himself bare our sins in His body on the tree, that being dead to sins, we may live to righteousness [1052] ."
V. Christ not destroyed, but fulfilled and elevated the Law.
As therefore there is no believer, dearly-beloved, to whom the gifts of grace are denied, so there is no one who is not a debtor in the matter of Christian discipline; because, although the severity of the mystic Law is done away, yet the benefits of its voluntary observance have increased, as the evangelist John says, "Because the Law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ [1053] ." For all things that, according to the Law, went before, whether in the circumcision of the flesh, or in the multitude of victims, or in the keeping of the Sabbath, testified of Christ, and foretold the grace of Christ. And He is "the end of the Law [1054] ," not by annulling, but by fulfilling its meanings. For although He is at once the Author of the old and of the new, yet He changed the symbolic rites connected with the promises, because He accomplished the promises and put an end to the announcement by the coming of the Announced. But in the matter of moral precepts, no decrees of the earlier Testament are rejected, but many of them are amplified by the Gospel teaching: so that the things which give salvation are more perfect and clearer than those which promise a Saviour.
VI. The present effect of Christ's passion is daily realized by Christians, especially in Holy Baptism.
All therefore that the Son of God did and taught for the world's reconciliation, we not only know as a matter of past history, but appreciate in the power of its present effect. It is He Who, born of the Virgin Mother by the Holy Ghost, fertilizes His unpolluted Church with the same blessed Spirit, that by the birth of Baptism an innumerable multitude of sons may be born to God, of Whom it is said, "who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God [1055] ." It is He, in Whom the seed of Abraham is blessed by the adoption of the whole world [1056] , and the patriarch becomes the father of nations by the birth, through faith not flesh, of the sons of promise. It is He Who, without excluding any nation, makes one flock of holy sheep from every nation under heaven, and daily fulfils what He promised, saying, "Other sheep also I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they shall hear My voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd [1057] ." For though to the blessed Peter first and foremost He says, "Feed My sheep [1058] ;" yet the one Lord directs the charge of all the shepherds, and feeds those that come to the rock with such glad and well-watered pastures, that countless sheep are nourished by the richness of His love, and hesitate not to perish for the Shepherd's sake, even as the good Shepherd Himself was content to lay down His life for His sheep. It is He whose sufferings are shared not only by the martyrs' glorious courage, but also in the very act of regeneration by the faith of all the new-born. For the renunciation of the devil and belief in God [1059] , the passing from the old state into newness of life, the casting off of the earthly image, and the putting on of the heavenly form--all this is a sort of dying and rising again, whereby he that is received by Christ and receives Christ is not the same after as he was before he came to the font, for the body of the regenerate becomes the flesh of the Crucified [1060] .
VII. The good works of Christians are only part of Christ's good works.
This change, dearly-beloved, is the handiwork of the Most High [1061] , Who "worketh all things in all," so that by the good manner of life observed in each one of the faithful, we know Him to be the Author of all just works, and give thanks to God's mercy, Who so adorns the whole body of the Church with countless gracious gifts, that through the many rays of the one Light the same brightness is everywhere diffused, and that which is well done by any Christian whatsoever cannot but be part of the glory of Christ. This is that true Light which justifies and enlightens every man. This it is that rescues from the power of darkness and transfers us into the Kingdom of the Son of God. This it is that by newness of life exalts the desires of the mind and quenches the lusts of the flesh. This it is whereby the Lord's Passover is duly kept "With the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth" by the casting away of "the old leaven of wickedness [1062] " and the inebriating and feeding of the new creature with the very Lord. For naught else is brought about by the partaking of the Body and Blood of Christ than that we pass into that which we then take [1063] , and both in spirit and in body carry everywhere Him, in and with Whom we were dead, buried, and rose again, as the Apostle says, "For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. For when Christ, your life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory [1064] ." Who with the Father, &c. __________________________________________________________________
[1043] S. John i. 14.
[1044] 2 Cor. v. 19.
[1045] 1 Cor. vii. 19.
[1046] Gal. iii. 27-29.
[1047] 1 Cor. xv. 28.
[1048] S. Matt. xxviii. 20.
[1049] Col. i. 18-20: the word Divinitatis (of the Godhead) is omitted by some of the mss. here.
[1050] Cf. Phil. ii. 6, 7.
[1051] Sacramentum (with its saving efficacy) et exemplum (with its spur to exertion), see Bright's n. 74.
[1052] 1 Pet. ii. 21-24: notice the reading of the Vulgate indicanti se iniuste for the correct to krinonti dikaios (namely God).
[1053] S. John i. 17.
[1054] Rom. x. 4.
[1055] S. John i. 13.
[1056] Cf. Gen. xxii. 18.
[1057] S. John x. 16.
[1058] Ib. xxi. 17.
[1059] The renouncing of the Devil and all his works and the professing of faith in God have always preceded the rite of Baptism: see Bright's notes 78 and 142.
[1060] Corpus regenerati fiat caro crucifixi an almost unduly strong assertion of the union between Christ, the Head and the members of His body, the Church effected by Holy Baptism: see Hooker, Eccl. Pol. v. 60. 2, quoted by Bright, n. 79.
[1061] Cf. Ps. lxxvii. 10 (LXX.) and 1 Cor. xvii. 6.
[1062] 1 Cor. v. 8.
[1063] ut in id, quod sumimus, transeamus. He uses the same strong expression in Letter LIX. 2, ut accipientes virtutem coelestis cibi, in carnem ipsius qui caro nostra factus est, transeamus.
[1064] Col. iii. 3, 4. __________________________________________________________________
Sermon LXVII.
(On the Passion, XVI.: delivered on the Sunday.)
I. The contemplation of the prophecies of Christ's suffering are a great source of pious delight.
The minds of the faithful, beloved, ought indeed always to be occupied with wonder at God's works and their reasoning faculties devoted particularly to those reflexions by which they may gain increase of faith. For so long as the pious heart's attention is directed either to the benefits which all enjoy, or to special gifts of His grace, it keeps aloof from many vanities and retires from bodily cares into a spiritual seclusion. But this must be the more eagerly and thoroughly done at the season of the Lord Passion, that what is then read in the sacred lections may surely be received with the ears of understanding, and that the themes which are great in word may be seen to be yet greater from the mysterious realities which underlie them. For the first reason for our lifting up our hearts [1065] is that the voices of the prophets have sung of the things which the truth of the Gospel has also narrated, not as destined to happen, but as having happened, and that what man's ears had not yet learnt was to be accomplished, was already being proclaimed as fulfilled by the (Holy [1066] ) Spirit. For King David, whose seed according to the flesh is Christ, completed his lifetime more than 1,100 [1067] years before the day of the Lord's Crucifixion, and endured none of those punishments which he relates as inflicted upon himself. But because by his mouth One spoke Who was to take suffering flesh of his stock, the story of the cross is rightly anticipated in the person of him who was the bodily ancestor of the Saviour. For David truly suffered in Christ, because Jesus was truly crucified in the flesh which He had from David.
II. The Divine foreknowledge does not account for the Jews' wickedness so as to excuse them.
Since then all things which Jewish ungodliness committed against the Lord of Majesty were foretold so long before [1068] , and the language of the prophets is concerned not so much with things to come as with things past, what else is thereby revealed to us but the unchangeable order of God's eternal decrees, with Whom the things which are to be decided are already determined, and what will be is already accomplished? For since both the character of our actions and the fulfilment of all our wishes are fore-known to God, how much better known to Him are His own works? And He was rightly pleased that things should be recorded as if done which nothing could hinder from being done. And hence when the Apostles also, being full of the Holy Ghost, suffered the threats and cruelty of Christ's enemies, they said to God with one consent, "For truly in this city against Thy holy Servant Jesus, Whom Thou hast anointed, Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel were gathered together to do what Thy hand and Thy counsel ordained to come to pass [1069] ." Did then the wickedness of Christ's persecutors spring from God's plan, and was that unsurpassable crime prefaced and set in motion by the hand of God? Clearly we must not think this of the highest Justice: that which was fore-known in respect of the Jews' malice is far different, indeed quite contrary to what was ordained in respect of Christ's Passion. Their desire to slay Him did not proceed from the same source as His to die: nor were their atrocious crime and the Redeemer's endurance the offspring of One Spirit. The Lord did not incite but permit those madmen's naughty hands: nor in His foreknowledge of what must be accomplished did He compel its accomplishment, even though it was in order to its accomplishment that He had taken flesh.
III. Christ was in no sense the Author of His murderer's guilt.
In fact, the case of the Crucified is so different from that of His crucifiers that what Christ undertook could not be reversed, while what they did could be wiped out. For He Who came to save sinners did not refuse mercy even to His murderers, but changed the evil of the wicked into the goodness of the believing, that God's grace might be the more wonderful, being mercifully put in force, not according to men's merits, but according to the multitude of the riches of God's wisdom and knowledge, seeing that they also who had shed the Saviour's blood were received into the baptismal flood. For, as says the Scripture, which contains the Apostles' acts when the preaching of the blessed Apostle Peter pierced the hearts of the Jews, and they acknowledged the iniquity of their crime, saying, "what shall we do, brethren?" the same Apostle said, "Repent and be baptized, each one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of your sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. For to you is the promise, and to your sons, and to all that are afar off, whomsoever our Lord God has called," and soon after the Scripture goes on to say: "they therefore that received his word were baptized, and there were added on that day about 3,000 souls [1070] ." And so, in being willing to suffer their furious rage, the Lord Jesus Christ was in no way the Author of their crimes; nor did He force them to desire this, but permitted them to be able, and used the madness of the blinded people just as He did also the treachery of His betrayer, whom by kindly acts and words He vouchsafed to recall from the awful crime he had conceived, by taking him for a disciple, by promoting him to be an apostle, by warning him with signs, by admitting him to the revelation of holy mysteries [1071] , that one who had lacked no degree of kindness to correct him, might have no pretext for his crime at all.
IV. The enormity of Judas' crime is set forth.
But O ungodliest of men, "thou seed of Chanaan and not of Juda [1072] ," and no longer "a vessel of election," but "a son of perdition" and death, thou didst think the devil's instigations would profit thee better, so that, inflamed with the torch of greed, thou wert ablaze to gain 30 pieces of silver and sawest not what riches thou wouldst lose. For even if thou didst not think the Lord's promises were to be believed, what reason was there for preferring so small a sum of money to what thou hadst already received? Thou wast wont to command the evil spirits, to heal the sick, to receive honour with the rest of the apostles, and that thou mightest satisfy thy thirst for gain, it was open to thee to steal from the box that was in thy charge [1073] . But thy mind, which lusted after forbidden things, was more strongly stimulated by that which was less allowed: and the amount of the price pleased thee not so much as the enormity of the sin. Wherefore thy wicked bargain is not so detestable merely because thou countedst the Lord so cheap, but because thou didst sell Him Who was the Redeemer, yea, even thine, and hadst no pity on thyself [1074] . And justly was thy punishment put into thine own hands because none could be found more cruelly bent on thy destruction than thyself.
V. Christ's Passion was for our Redemption by mystery and example.
The fact, therefore, that at the time appointed, according to the purpose of His will, Jesus Christ was crucified, dead, and buried was not the doom necessary to His own condition, but the method of redeeming us from captivity. For "the Word became flesh" in order that from the Virgin's womb He might take our suffering nature, and that what could not be inflicted on the Son of God might be inflicted on the Son of Man. For although at His very birth the signs of Godhead shone forth in Him, and the whole course of His bodily growth was full of wonders, yet had He truly assumed our weaknesses, and without share in sin had spared Himself no human frailty, that He might impart what was His to us and heal what was ours in Himself. For He, the Almighty Physician, had prepared a two-fold remedy for us in our misery, of which the one part consists of mystery and the other of example [1075] , that by the one Divine powers may be bestowed, by the other human weaknesses driven out [1076] . Because as God is the Author of our justification, so man is a debtor to pay Him devotion.
VI. We can only attain to Christ's perfection by following in His steps.
Therefore, dearly-beloved, by this unspeakable restoration of our health no place is left us for pride or for idleness: because we have nothing which we did not receive [1077] , and we are expressly warned not to treat the gifts of God's grace with negligence [1078] . For He that comes so timely to our aid justly urges us with precept, and He that leads us to glory mercifully incites us to obedience. Wherefore the Lord Himself is rightly made our way, because save through Christ there is no coming to Christ. But through Him and to Him does he take his way who treads the path of His endurance and humiliation, and on that road you may be sure there are not wanting the heats of toil, the clouds of sadness, the storms of fear. The snares of the wicked, the persecutions of the unbelieving, the threats of the powerful, the insults of the proud are there; and all these things the Lord of hosts and King of glory passed through in the form of our weakness and in the likeness of sinful flesh, to the end that amid the danger of this present life we might desire not so much to avoid and escape them as to endure and overcome them.
VII. Christ cry of "Forsaken" on the cross was to teach us the insufficiency of the human nature without the Divine.
Hence it is that the Lord Jesus Christ, our Head, representing all the members of His body in Himself, and speaking for those whom He was redeeming in the punishment of the cross, uttered that cry which He had once uttered in the psalm, "O God, My God, look upon Me: why hast Thou forsaken Me [1079] ?" That cry, dearly-beloved, is a lesson, not a complaint. For since in Christ there is one person of God and man, and He could not have been forsaken by Him, from Whom He could not be separated, it is on behalf of us, trembling and weak ones, that He asks why the flesh that is afraid to suffer has not been heard. For when the Passion was beginning, to cure and correct our weak fear He had said, "Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me: nevertheless not as I will but as Thou;" and again, "Father, if this cup cannot pass except I drink it, Thy will be done [1080] ." As therefore He had conquered the tremblings of the flesh, and had now accepted the Father's will, and trampling all dread of death under foot, was then carrying out the work of His design, why at the very time of His triumph over such a victory does He seek the cause and reason of His being forsaken, that is, not heard, save to show that the feeling which He entertained in excuse of His human fears is quite different from the deliberate choice which, in accordance with the Father's eternal decree, He had made for the reconciliation of the world? And thus the very cry of "Unheard" is the exposition of a mighty Mystery, because the Redeemer's power would have conferred nothing on mankind if our weakness in Him had obtained what it sought. Let these words dearly-beloved, suffice to-day, lest we burden you by the length of our discourse: let us put off the rest till Wednesday. The Lord shall hear you if you pray that we may keep our promise through the bounty of Him Who lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen. __________________________________________________________________
[1065] Erigendi sursum nostri cordis the liturgical allusion is the same as that noticed in Sermon LXXIV. 5, n. 6.
[1066] The epithet sanctus is of doubtful genuineness here.
[1067] This calculation is based apparently on that of Prosper's Chronicon, which again, follows that of Eusebius.
[1068] There is another reading here, ut (for et) non tam de futuris quam de præsentibus (for præteritis) , &c., which the Ballerinii probably do right to reject. Trans. "foretold so long before that the language of the prophets is concerned not so much with the future as with the present."
[1069] Acts iv. 27, 28; it is perhaps worth noticing that Leo does not strictly follow the Biblical account in saying that the Apostles were "full of the Holy Ghost" at the time of uttering this prayer: v. 31 says they were so filled afterwards.
[1070] Acts ii. 37-41.
[1071] Consecrando mysteriis I think he has, as so often, the institution of the Holy Eucharist especially in his mind together, of course, with other sacramental ordinances (such as Holy Baptism and matrimony) which our Saviour blessed with His sanction and made the means of holiness to His disciples.
[1072] Apocrypha, Hist. of Susanna, v. 56: said by Daniel to one of the two elders; cf. also Acts ix. 15, and S. John xvii. 12.
[1073] This last privilege which Leo, with curious sarcasm, co-ordinates with the other three is spoken of twice by S. John, viz. xii. 6, and xiii. 29.
[1074] Redemptorem etiam tuum ne tibi parceres, vendidisti. It seems to me that Leo's preaching power is nowhere better shown than in the passages where he draws out the heinousness of Judas' guilt: cf. Sermon LVIII. chaps. 3 and 4, and Sermon LXII. chap. 4.
[1075] Aliud est in sacramento, aliud in exemplo, cf. Serm. LXIII chap. 4, n. 7.
[1076] Exigantur: another reading perhaps more in keeping with the context and Leo's usual language is erigantur (raised): cf. Lett. XXVIII. (Tome), chap. 3, humana augens, divina non minuens, etc.
[1077] Cf. 1 Cor. iv. 7, and 1 Tim. iv. 14.
[1078] Cf. 1 Cor. iv. 7, and 1 Tim. iv. 14.
[1079] Ps. xxii. 1.
[1080] S. Matt. xxvi. 39, 42. __________________________________________________________________
Sermon LXVIII.
(On the Passion, XVII.: delivered on the Wednesday.)
I. Christ's Godhead never forsook Him in His Passion.
The last discourse, dearly-beloved, of which we desire now to give the promised portion, had reached that point in the argument where we were speaking of that cry which the crucified Lord uttered to the Father: we bade the simple and unthinking hearer not take the words "My God, &c.," in a sense as if, when Jesus was fixed upon the wood of the cross, the Omnipotence of the Father's Deity had gone away from Him; seeing that God's and Man's Nature were so completely joined in Him that the union could not be destroyed by punishment nor by death. For while each substance retained its own properties, God neither held aloof from the suffering of His body nor was made passible by the flesh, because the Godhead which was in the Sufferer did not actually suffer. And hence, in accordance with the Nature of the Word made Man, He Who was made in the midst of all is the same as He through Whom all things were made. He Who is arrested by the hands of wicked men is the same as He Who is bound by no limits. He Who is pierced with nails is the same as He Whom no wound can affect. Finally, He Who underwent death is the same as He Who never ceased to be eternal, so that both facts are established by indubitable signs, namely, the truth of the humiliation in Christ and the truth of the majesty; because Divine power joined itself to human frailty to this end, that God, while making what was ours His, might at the same time make what was His ours. The Son, therefore, was not separated from the Father, nor the Father from the Son; and the unchangeable Godhead and the inseparable Trinity did not admit of any division. For although the task of undergoing Incarnation belonged peculiarly to the Only-begotten Son of God, yet the Father was not separated from the Son any more than the flesh was separated from the Word [1081] .
II. Christ's death was voluntary on His part, and yet in saving others He could not save Himself.
Jesus, therefore, cried with a loud voice, saying, "Why hast Thou forsaken Me?" in order to notify to all how it behoved Him not to be rescued, not to be defended, but to be given up into the hands of cruel men, that is to become the Saviour of the world and the Redeemer of all men, not by misery but by mercy; and not by the failure of succour but by the determination to die. But what must we feel to be the intercessory power of His life Who died and rose again by His own inherent power. [1082] For the blessed Apostle says the Father "spared not His own Son, but gave Him up for us all [1083] ;" and again, he says, "For Christ loved the Church, and gave Himself up for her, that He might sanctify it [1084] ." And hence the giving up of the Lord to His Passion was as much of the Father's as of His own will, so that not only did the Father "forsake" Him, but He also abandoned Himself in a certain sense, not in hasty flight, but in voluntary withdrawal. For the might of the Crucified restrained itself from those wicked men, and in order to avail Himself of a secret design, He refused to avail Himself of His open power. For how would He who had come to destroy death and the author of death by His Passion have saved sinners, if he had resisted His persecutors? This, then, had been the Jews' belief, that Jesus had been forsaken by God, against Whom they had been able to commit such unholy cruelty; for not understanding the mystery of His wondrous endurance, they said in blasphemous mockery: "He saved others, Himself He cannot save. If He be the King of Israel, let Him now come down from the cross, and we believe Him [1085] ." Not at your blind will, O foolish scribes and wicked priests, was the Saviour's power to be displayed, nor in obedience to blasphemers' evil tongues was the Redemption of mankind to be delayed; for if you had wished to recognize the Godhead of the Son of God, you would have observed His numberless works, and they must have confirmed you in that faith, which you so deceitfully promise. But if, as you yourselves acknowledge, it is true that He saved others, why have those many, great miracles, which have been done under the public gaze, done nothing to soften the hardness of your hearts, unless it be because you have always so resisted the Holy Ghost as to turn all God's benefits towards you into your destruction? For even though Christ should descend from the cross, you would yet remain in your crime.
III. A transition was then being effected from the Old to the New Dispensation.
Therefore the insults of empty exultation were scorned, and the Lord's mercy in restoring the lost and the fallen was not turned from the path of its purpose by contumely or reviling. For a peerless victim was being offered to God for the world's salvation, and the slaying of Christ the true Lamb, predicted through so many ages, was transferring the sons of promise into the liberty of the Faith. The New Testament also was being ratified, and in the blood of Christ the heirs of the eternal Kingdom were being enrolled; the High Pontiff was entering the Holy of Holies, and to intercede with God the spotless Priest was passing in through the veil of His flesh [1086] . In fine, so evident a transition was being effected from the Law to the Gospel, from the synagogue to the Church, from many sacrifices to the One Victim [1087] , that, when the Lord gave up the ghost, that mystic veil which hung before and shut out the inner part of the Temple and its holy recess was by sudden force torn from top to bottom [1088] , for the reason that Truth was displacing figures, and forerunners were needless in the presence of Him they announced. To this was added a terrible confusion of all the elements, and nature herself withdrew her support from Christ's crucifiers. And although the centurion in charge of the crucifixion, in fright at what he had seen, said "truly this man was the Son of God [1089] ," yet the wicked hearts of the Jews, which were harder than all tombs and rocks, is not reported to have been pierced by any compunction: so that it seems the Roman soldiers were then readier to recognize the Son of God than the priests of Israel.
IV. Let us profit by fasting and good works at this sacred season of the year.
Because, then, the Jews, deprived of all the sanctification imparted by these mysteries, turned their light into darkness and their "feasts into mourning [1090] ," let us, dearly-beloved, prostrate our bodies and our souls and worship God's Grace, which has been poured out upon all nations, beseeching the merciful Father and the rich Redeemer from day to day to give us His aid and enable us to escape all the dangers of this life. For the crafty tempter is present everywhere, and leaves nothing free from his snares. Whom, God's mercy helping us, which is stretched out to us amid all dangers, we must ever with stedfast faith resist [1091] so that, though he never ceases to assail, he may never succeed in carrying the assault. Let all, dearly-beloved, religiously keep and profit by the fast, and let no excesses mar the benefits of such self-restraint as we have proved convenient both for soul and body. For the things which pertain to sobriety and temperance must be the more diligently observed at this season, that a lasting habit may be contracted from a brief zeal; and whether in works of mercy or in strict self-denial, no hours may be left idle by the faithful, seeing that, as years increase and time glides by, we are bound to increase our store of works, and not squander our opportunities. And to devout wills and religious souls God's Mercy will be granted, that He may enable us to obtain that which He enabled us to desire, Who liveth and reigneth with our Lord Jesus Christ His Son, and with the Holy Ghost, for ever and ever. Amen. __________________________________________________________________
[1081] For the doctrine here stated, cf. Serm. LI., chap. vi.
[1082] Quæ vero illic vitæ intercessio sentienda est, ubi anima et potestate est emissa et potestate revocata? If we adopt Quesnel's conjecture intercisio for intercessio the meaning is I suppose, "What cutting off of the thread of life is conceivable in His case Who &c.?"
[1083] Rom. viii. 32.
[1084] Eph. v. 2, and 25, 29.
[1085] S. Matt. xxvii. 42.
[1086] Cf. Heb. x. 20: and below, S. Matt. xxvii. 51 and 54.
[1087] The older editions here add quæ Deus est (which is God), which however both Quesnel and the Ball. reject as a marginal gloss.
[1088] Cf. Heb. x. 20: and below, S. Matt. xxvii. 51 and 54.
[1089] Cf. Heb. x. 20: and below, S. Matt. xxvii. 51 and 54.
[1090] Cf. Amos viii. 10: and below, 1 Pet. v. 9.
[1091] Cf. Amos viii. 10: and below, 1 Pet. v. 9. __________________________________________________________________
Sermon LXXI.
(On the Lord's Resurrection, I.; delivered on Holy Saturday in the Vigil of Easter [1092] .)
I. We must all be partakers in Christ's resurrection life.
In my last sermon [1093] , dearly-beloved, not in appropriately, as I think, we explained to you our participation in the cross of Christ, whereby the life of believers contains in itself the mystery of Easter, and thus what is honoured at the feast is celebrated by our practice. And how useful this is you yourselves have proved, and by your devotion have learnt, how greatly benefited souls and bodies are by longer fasts, more frequent prayers, and more liberal alms. For there can be hardly any one who has not profited by this exercise, and who has not stored up in the recesses of his conscience something over which he may rightly rejoice. But these advantages must be retained with persistent care, lest our efforts fall away into idleness, and the devil's malice steal what God's grace gave. Since, therefore, by our forty days' observance [1094] we have wished to bring about this effect, that we should feel something of the Cross at the time of the Lord's Passion, we must strive to be found partakers also of Christ's Resurrection, and "pass from death unto life [1095] ," while we are in this body. For when a man is changed by some process from one thing into another, not to be what he was is to him an ending, and to be what he was not is a beginning. But the question is, to what a man either dies or lives: because there is a death, which is the cause of living, and there is a life, which is the cause of dying. And nowhere else but in this transitory world are both sought after, so that upon the character of our temporal actions depend the differences of the eternal retributions. We must die, therefore, to the devil and live to God: we must perish to iniquity that we may rise to righteousness. Let the old sink, that the new may rise; and since, as says the Truth, "no one can serve two masters [1096] ," let not him be Lord who has caused the overthrow of those that stood, but Him Who has raised the fallen to victory.
II. God did not leave His soul in hell, nor suffer His flesh to see corruption.
Accordingly, since the Apostle says, "the first man is of the earth earthy, the second man is from heaven heavenly. As is the earthy, such also are they that are earthy; and as is the heavenly, such also are they that are heavenly. As we have borne the image of the earthy, so let us also bear the image of Him Who is from heaven [1097] ," we must greatly rejoice over this change, whereby we are translated from earthly degradation to heavenly dignity through His unspeakable mercy, Who descended into our estate that He might promote us to His, by assuming not only the substance but also the conditions of sinful nature, and by allowing the impassibility of Godhead to be affected by all the miseries which are the lot of mortal manhood. And hence that the disturbed minds of the disciples might not be racked by prolonged grief, He with such wondrous speed shortened the three days' delay which He had announced, that by joining the last part of the first and the first part of the third day to the whole of the second, He cut off a considerable portion of the period, and yet did not lessen the number of days. The Saviour's Resurrection therefore did not long keep His soul in Hades, nor His flesh in the tomb; and so speedy was the quickening of His uncorrupted flesh that it bore a closer resemblance to slumber than to death, seeing that the Godhead, Which quitted not either part of the Human Nature which He had assumed, reunited by Its power that which Its power had separated [1098] .
III. Christ's manifestation after the Resurrection showed that His Person was essentially the same as before.
And then there followed many proofs, whereon the authority of the Faith to be preached through the whole world might be based. And although the rolling away of the stone, the empty tomb, the arrangement of the linen cloths, and the angels who narrated the whole deed by themselves fully built up the truth of the Lord's Resurrection, yet did He often appear plainly to the eyes both of the women and of the Apostles [1099] not only talking with them, but also remaining and eating with them, and allowing Himself to be handled by the eager and curious hands of those whom doubt assailed. For to this end He entered when the doors were closed upon the disciples, and gave them the Holy Spirit by breathing on them, and after giving them the light of understanding opened the secrets of the Holy Scriptures, and again Himself showed them the wound in the side, the prints of the nails, and all the marks of His most recent Passion, whereby it might be acknowledged that in Him the properties of the Divine and Human Nature remained undivided, and we might in such sort know that the Word was not what the flesh is, as to confess God's only Son to be both Word and Flesh.
IV. But though it is the same, it is also glorified.
The Apostle of the Gentiles, Paul, dearly-beloved, does not disagree with this belief, when he says, "even though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now we know Him so no more [1100] ." For the Lord's Resurrection was not the ending, but the changing of the flesh, and His substance was not destroyed by His increase of power. The quality altered, but the nature did not cease to exist: the body was made impassible, which it had been possible to crucify: it was made incorruptible, though it had been possible to wound it. And properly is Christ's flesh said not to be known in that state in which it had been known, because nothing remained passible in it, nothing weak, so that it was both the same in essence and not the same in glory. But what wonder if S. Paul maintains this about Christ's body, when he says of all spiritual Christians "wherefore henceforth we know no one after the flesh." Henceforth, he says, we begin to experience the resurrection in Christ, since the time when in Him, Who died for all, all our hopes were guaranteed to us. We do not hesitate in diffidence, we are not under the suspense of uncertainty, but having received an earnest of the promise, we now with the eye of faith see the things which will be, and rejoicing in the uplifting of our nature, we already possess what we believe.
V. Being saved by hope, we must not fulfil the lusts of the flesh.
Let us not then be taken up with the appearances of temporal matters, neither let our contemplations be diverted from heavenly to earthly things. Things which as yet have for the most part not come to pass must be reckoned as accomplished: and the mind intent on what is permanent must fix its desires there, where what is offered is eternal. For although "by hope we were saved [1101] ," and still bear about with us a flesh that is corruptible and mortal, yet we are rightly said not to be in the flesh, if the fleshly affections do not dominate us, and are justified in ceasing to be named after that, the will of which we do not follow. And so, when the Apostle says, "make not provision for the flesh in the lusts thereof [1102] ," we understand that those things are not forbidden us, which conduce to health and which human weakness demands, but because we may not satisfy all our desires nor indulge in all that the flesh lusts after, we recognize that we are warned to exercise such self-restraint as not to permit what is excessive nor refuse what is necessary to the flesh, which is placed under the mind's control [1103] . And hence the same Apostle says in another place, "For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it [1104] ;" in so far, of course, as it must be nourished and cherished not in vices and luxury, but with a view to its proper functions, so that nature may recover herself and maintain due order, the lower parts not prevailing wrongfully and debasingly over the higher, nor the higher yielding to the lower, lest if vices overpower the mind, slavery ensues where there should be supremacy.
VI. Our godly resolutions must continue all the year round, not be confined to Easter only.
Let God's people then recognize that they are a new creation in Christ, and with all vigilance understand by Whom they have been adopted and Whom they have adopted [1105] . Let not the things, which have been made new, return to their ancient instability; and let not him who has "put his hand to the plough [1106] " forsake his work, but rather attend to that which he sows than look back to that which he has left behind. Let no one fall back into that from which he has risen, but, even though from bodily weakness he still languishes under certain maladies, let him urgently desire to be healed and raised up. For this is the path of health through imitation of the Resurrection begun in Christ, whereby, notwithstanding the many accidents and falls to which in this slippery life the traveller is liable, his feet may be guided from the quagmire on to solid ground, for, as it is written, "the steps of a man are directed by the Lord, and He will delight in his way. When the just man falls he shall not be overthrown, because the Lord will stretch out His hand [1107] ." These thoughts, dearly-beloved, must be kept in mind not only for the Easter festival, but also for the sanctification of the whole life, and to this our present exercise ought to be directed, that what has delighted the souls of the faithful by the experience of a short observance may pass into a habit and remain unalterably, and if any fault creep in, it may be destroyed by speedy repentance. And because the cure of old-standing diseases is slow and difficult, remedies should be applied early, when the wounds are fresh, so that rising ever anew from all downfalls, we may deserve to attain to the incorruptible Resurrection of our glorified flesh in Christ Jesus our Lord, Who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Ghost for ever and ever. Amen. __________________________________________________________________
[1092] The time of delivery of this and the next Sermons was first identified by Quesnel with Easter Eve: for a most instructive note on the ceremonies of that day in early times, see Bright's n. 102.
[1093] Viz. Serm. LXX. in which (chap 6) he had promised to continue the subject (superest ut de resurrectionis consortio disseramus: quod ne continuato sermone et mihi et vobis fiat onerosum, in diem sabbati promissa differemus).
[1094] Acc. to Bright (n. 103), "As to the duration of Lent, there was anciently much diversity....Although it was not until the time of Gregory II. (715-731) that it became strictly a forty days' fast, there is no doubt that in the fourth century if not earlier a period was generally observed which might be called forty days.'"
[1095] Cf. 1 John iii. 14.
[1096] S. Matt. vi. 24.
[1097] 1 Cor. xv. 47-49. Leo's text agrees with the Vulgate in inserting heavenly' after from heaven' and in translating phoresomen (let us bear) not phoresomen (we shall bear), but is peculiar in its paraphrase at the end of the quotation ("the image of him, &c.").
[1098] Cf. Serm. LXX. chap. 3, nisi enim Verbum caro fieret, et tam solida consisteret unitas in utraque natura, ut a suscipiente susceptam nec ipsum breve mortis tempus abiungeret, nunquam valeret ad æternitatem redire mortalitas. Bright (n. 96) quotes authorities ancient and more recent to show that this has always been the Christian's belief.
[1099] From this point to the end of the chapter the language is almost identical with a passage in Letter XXVIII. (Tome), chap. 5.
[1100] 2 Cor. v. 16. It must be borne in mind that the application of the phrase after the flesh (kata sarka) is mistaken: S. Paul means "according to the ordinary view of man," as in Rom. viii. 1, and 2 Cor. x. 2. See Bright's note 107.
[1101] Rom. viii. 24.
[1102] Rom. xiii. 14.
[1103] Cf. Serm. XIX. chap. 1.
[1104] Eph. v. 29.
[1105] Quo suscepta sit (sc. nova creatura) quemve susceperit, i.e. Christ has taken on Him human nature, and we by virtue thereof are partakers of the Divine.
[1106] S. Luke ix. 62.
[1107] Ps. xxxvii. 23, 24. __________________________________________________________________
Sermon LXXII.
(On the Lord's Resurrection, II.)
I. The Cross is not only the mystery of salvation, but an example to follow.
The whole of the Easter mystery, dearly-beloved, has been brought before us in the Gospel narrative, and the ears of the mind have been so reached through the ear of flesh that none of you can fail to have a picture of the events: for the text of the Divinely-inspired story has clearly shown the treachery of the Lord Jesus Christ's betrayal, the judgment by which He was condemned, the barbarity of His crucifixion, and glory of His resurrection. But a sermon is still required of us, that the priests' exhortation may be added to the solemn reading of Holy Writ, as I am sure you are with pious expectation demanding of us as your accustomed due. Because therefore there is no place for ignorance in faithful ears, the seed of the Word which consists of the preaching of the Gospel, ought to grow in the soil of your heart, so that, when choking thorns and thistles have been removed, the plants of holy thoughts and the buds of right desires may spring up freely into fruit. For the cross of Christ, which was set up for the salvation of mortals, is both a mystery and an example [1108] : a sacrament where by the Divine power takes effect, an example whereby man's devotion is excited: for to those who are rescued from the prisoner's yoke Redemption further procures the power of following the way of the cross by imitation. For if the world's wisdom so prides itself in its error that every one follows the opinions and habits and whole manner of life of him whom he has chosen as his leader, how shall we share in the name of Christ save by being inseparably united to Him, Who is, as He Himself asserted, "the Way, the Truth, and the Life [1109] ?" the Way that is of holy living, the Truth of Divine doctrine, and the Life of eternal happiness.
II. Christ took our nature upon Him for our salvation.
For when the whole body of mankind had fallen in our first parents, the merciful God purposed so to succour, through His only-begotten Jesus Christ, His creatures made after His image, that the restoration of our nature should not be effected apart from it, and that our new estate should be an advance upon our original position. Happy, if we had not fallen from that which God made us; but happier, if we remain that which He has re-made us. It was much to have received form from Christ; it is more to have a substance in Christ [1110] . For we were taken up into its own proper self by that Nature (which condescended to those limitations which loving-kindness dictated and which yet incurred no sort of change. We were taken up by that Nature [1111] ), which destroyed not what was His in what was ours, nor what was ours in what was His; which made the person of the Godhead and of the Manhood so one in Itself that by co-ordination of weakness and power, the flesh could not be rendered inviolable through the Godhead, nor the Godhead passible through the flesh. We were taken up by that Nature, which did not break off the Branch from the common stock of our race, and yet excluded all taint of the sin which has passed upon all men. That is to say, weakness and mortality, which were not sin, but the penalty of sin, were undergone by the Redeemer of the World in the way of punishment, that they might be reckoned as the price of redemption. What therefore in all of us is the heritage of condemnation, is in Christ "the mystery of godliness [1112] ." For being free from debt, He gave Himself up to that most cruel creditor, and suffered the hands of Jews to be the devil's agents in torturing His spotless flesh. Which flesh He willed to be subject to death, even up to His (speedy) [1113] resurrection, to this end, that believers in Him might find neither persecution intolerable, nor death terrible, by the remembrance that there was no more doubt about their sharing His glory than there was about His sharing their nature.
III. The presence of the risen and ascended Lord is still with us.
And so, dearly-beloved, if we unhesitatingly believe with the heart what we profess with the mouth, in Christ we are crucified, we are dead, we are buried; on the very third day, too, we are raised. Hence the Apostle says, "If ye have risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting on God's right hand: set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. For when Christ, your life, shall have appeared, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory [1114] ." But that the hearts of the faithful may know that they have that whereby to spurn the lusts of the world and be lifted to the wisdom that is above, the Lord promises us His presence, saying, "Lo! I am with you all the days, even till the end of the age [1115] ." For not in vain had the Holy Ghost said by Isaiah: "Behold! a virgin shall conceive and shall bear a Son, and they shall call His name Emmanuel, which is, being interpreted, God with us [1116] ." Jesus, therefore, fulfils the proper meaning of His name, and in ascending into the heavens does not forsake His adopted brethren, though "He sitteth at the right hand of the Father," yet dwells in the whole body, and Himself from above strengthens them for patient waiting while He summons them upwards to His glory.
IV. We must have the same mind as was in Christ Jesus.
We must not, therefore, indulge in folly amid vain pursuits, nor give way to fear in the midst of adversities. On the one side, no doubt, we are flattered by deceits, and on the other weighed down by troubles; but because "the earth is full of the mercy of the Lord [1117] ," Christ's victory is assuredly ours, that what He says may be fulfilled, "Fear not, for I have overcome the world [1118] ." Whether, then, we fight against the ambition of the world, or against the lusts of the flesh, or against the darts of heresy, let us arm ourselves always with the Lord's Cross. For our Paschal feast will never end, if we abstain from the leaven of the old wickedness (in the sincerity of truth [1119] ). For amid all the changes of this life which is full of various afflictions, we ought to remember the Apostle's exhortation; whereby he instructs us, saying, "Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus: Who being in the form of God counted it not robbery to be equal with God, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, being made in the likeness of men and found in fashion as a man. Wherefore God also exalted Him, and gave Him a name which is above every name, that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow of things in heaven, of things on earth, and of things below, and that every tongue should confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father [1120] ." If, he says, you understand "the mystery of great godliness," and remember what the Only-begotten Son of God did for the salvation of mankind, "have that mind in you which was also in Christ Jesus," Whose humility is not to be scorned by any of the rich, not to be thought shame of by any of the high-born. For no human happiness whatever can reach so great a height as to reckon it a source of shame to himself that God, abiding in the form of God, thought it not unworthy of Himself to take the form of a slave.
V. Only he who holds the truth on the Incarnation can keep Easter properly.
Imitate what He wrought: love what He loved, and finding in you the Grace of God, love in Him your nature in return, since as He was not dispossessed of riches in poverty, lessened not glory in humility, lost not eternity in death, so do ye, too, treading in His footsteps, despise earthly things that ye may gain heavenly: for the taking up of the cross means the slaying of lusts, the killing of vices, the turning away from vanity, and the renunciation of all error. For, though the Lord's Passover can be kept by no immodest, self-indulgent, proud, or miserly person, yet none are held so far aloof from this festival as heretics, and especially those who have wrong views on the Incarnation of the Word, either disparaging what belongs to the Godhead or treating what is of the flesh as unreal. For the Son of God is true God, having from the Father all that the Father is, with no beginning in time, subject to no sort of change, undivided from the One God, not different from the Almighty, the eternal Only-begotten of the eternal Father; so that the faithful intellect believing in the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost in the same essence of the one Godhead, neither divides the Unity by suggesting degrees of dignity, nor confounds the Trinity by merging the Persons in one. But it is not enough to know the Son of God in the Father's nature only, unless we acknowledge Him in what is ours without withdrawal of what is His own. For that self-emptying, which He underwent for man's restoration, was the dispensation of compassion, not the loss of power [1121] . For, though by the eternal purpose of God there was "no other name under heaven given to men whereby they must be saved [1122] ," the Invisible made His substance visible, the Intemporal temporal, the Impassible passible: not that power might sink into weakness, but that weakness might pass into indestructible power.
VI. A mystical application of the term "Passover" is given.
For which reason the very feast which by us is named Pascha, among the Hebrews is called Phase, that is Pass-over [1123] , as the evangelist attests, saying, "Before the feast of Pascha, Jesus knowing that His hour was come that He should pass out of this world unto the Father [1124] ." But what was the nature in which He thus passed out unless it was ours, since the Father was in the Son and the Son in the Father inseparably? But because the Word and the Flesh is one Person, the Assumed is not separated from the Assuming nature, and the honour of being promoted is spoken of as accruing to Him that promotes, as the Apostle says in a passage we have already quoted, "Wherefore also God exalted Him and gave Him a name which is above every name." Where the exaltation of His assumed Manhood is no doubt spoken of, so that He in Whose sufferings the Godhead remains indivisible is likewise coeternal in the glory of the Godhead. And to share in this unspeakable gift the Lord Himself was preparing a blessed "passing over" for His faithful ones, when on the very threshhold of His Passion he interceded not only for His Apostles and disciples but also for the whole Church, saying, "But not for these only I pray, but for those also who shall believe on Me through their word, that they all may be one, as Thou also, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us [1125] ."
VII. Only true believers can keep the Easter Festival.
In this union they can have no share who deny that in the Son of God, Himself true God, man's nature abides, assailing the health-giving mystery and shutting themselves out from the Easter festival. For, as they dissent from the Gospel and gainsay the creed, they cannot keep it with us, because although they dare to take to themselves the Christian name, yet they are repelled by every creature who has Christ for his Head: for you rightly exult and devoutly rejoice in this sacred season as those who, admitting no falsehood into the Truth, have no doubt about Christ's Birth according to the flesh, His Passion and Death, and the Resurrection of His body: inasmuch as without any separation of the Godhead you acknowledge a Christ, Who was truly born of a Virgin's womb, truly hung on the wood of the cross, truly laid in an earthly tomb, truly raised in glory, truly set on the right hand of the Father's majesty; "whence also," as the Apostle says, "we look for a Saviour our Lord Jesus Christ. Who shall refashion the body of our humility to become conformed to the body of His glory [1126] ." Who liveth and reigneth, &c. __________________________________________________________________
[1108] Cf. Serm. LXIII. 4, above: Salvator noster--et sacramentum condidit et exemplum: ut unum apprehenderent renascendo, alterum sequerentur imitando.
[1109] S. John xiv. 6.
[1110] i.e. that both of the two natures in Christ should be ours, as he goes on to show.
[1111] The words in brackets are of doubtful genuineness, and seem in themselves a mediæval imitation of Leo's style.
[1112] Sacramentum pietatis, the regular Latin version of 1 Tim. iii. 16.
[1113] Celerrimam. The epithet spoils the argument, and is probably an interpolation. Cf. however Serm. LXXI. chap. 2, above.
[1114] Col. iii. 1-4.
[1115] S. Matt. xxviii. 20.
[1116] Is. vii. 14 ; S. Matt. i. 23.
[1117] Ps. xxxiii. 5.
[1118] S. John xvi. 33.
[1119] Cf. 1 Cor. v. 8: the words in brackets are of doubtful authority.
[1120] Phil. ii. 5-11.
[1121] Much the same language is used in Lett. XXVIII. (Tome) 3 and Serm. XXIII. 2.
[1122] Acts iv. 12.
[1123] Phase id transitus dicitur, cf. the Vulgate, Exod. xii. 11, est enim Phase (id est transitus) Domini. The form of the word is due to defective transliteration, the correct Hebrew form being Pesach, which "is derived from a root which means to step over or to overleap, and thus points back to the historical origin of the festival (Exod. xii.)."--Edersheim's Temple, p. 179.
[1124] S. John xiii. 1; the word for "pass" here in the Gk. is metabe, in the Lat. transeat.
[1125] S. John xvii. 20, 21.
[1126] Phil. iii. 20, 21. __________________________________________________________________
Sermon LXXIII.
(On the Lord's Ascension, I.)
I. The events recorded as happening after the Resurrection were intended to convince us of its truth.
Since the blessed and glorious Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, whereby the Divine power in three days raised the true Temple of God, which the wickedness of the Jews had overthrown, the sacred forty days, dearly-beloved, are to-day ended, which by most holy appointment were devoted to our most profitable instruction, so that, during the period that the Lord thus protracted the lingering of His bodily presence, our faith in the Resurrection might be fortified by needful proofs. For Christ's Death had much disturbed the disciples' hearts, and a kind of torpor of distrust had crept over their grief-laden minds at His torture on the cross, at His giving up the ghost, at His lifeless body's burial. For, when the holy women, as the Gospel-story has revealed, brought word of the stone rolled away from the tomb, the sepulchre emptied of the body, and the angels bearing witness to the living Lord, their words seemed like ravings to the Apostles and other disciples. Which doubtfulness, the result of human weakness, the Spirit of Truth would most assuredly not have permitted to exist in His own preacher's breasts, had not their trembling anxiety and careful hesitation laid the foundations of our faith. It was our perplexities and our dangers that were provided for in the Apostles: it was ourselves who in these men were taught how to meet the cavillings of the ungodly and the arguments of earthly wisdom. We are instructed by their lookings, we are taught by their hearings, we are convinced by their handlings. Let us give thanks to the Divine management and the holy Fathers' necessary slowness of belief. Others doubted, that we might not doubt.
II. And therefore they are in the highest degree instructive.
Those days, therefore, dearly-beloved, which intervened between the Lord's Resurrection and Ascension did not pass by in uneventful leisure, but great mysteries [1127] were ratified in them, deep truths [1128] revealed. In them the fear of awful death was removed, and the immortality not only of the soul but also of the flesh established. In them, through the Lord's breathing upon them, the Holy Ghost is poured upon all the Apostles, and to the blessed Apostle Peter beyond the rest the care of the Lord's flock is entrusted, in addition to the keys of the kingdom. Then it was that the Lord joined the two disciples as a companion on the way, and, to the sweeping away of all the clouds of our uncertainty, upbraided them with the slowness of their timorous hearts. Their enlightened hearts catch the flame of faith, and lukewarm as they have been, are made to burn while the Lord unfolds the Scriptures. In the breaking of bread also their eyes are opened as they eat with Him: how far more blessed is the opening of their eyes, to whom the glorification of their nature is revealed than that of our first parents, on whom fell the disastrous consequences of their transgression.
III. They prove the Resurrection of the flesh.
And in the course of these and other miracles, when the disciples were harassed by bewildering thoughts, and the Lord had appeared in their midst and said, "Peace be unto you [1129] ," that what was passing through their hearts might not be their fixed opinion (for they thought they saw a spirit not flesh), He refutes their thoughts so discordant with the Truth, offers to the doubters' eyes the marks of the cross that remained in His hands and feet, and invites them to handle Him with careful scrutiny, because the traces of the nails and spear had been retained to heal the wounds of unbelieving hearts, so that not with wavering faith, but with most stedfast knowledge they might comprehend that the Nature which had been lain in the sepulchre was to sit on God the Father's throne.
IV. Christ's ascension has given us greater privileges and joys than the devil had taken from us.
Accordingly, dearly-beloved, throughout this time which elapsed between the Lord's Resurrection and Ascension, God's Providence had this in view, to teach and impress upon both the eyes and hearts of His own people that the Lord Jesus Christ might be acknowledged to have as truly risen, as He was truly born, suffered, and died. And hence the most blessed Apostles and all the disciples, who had been both bewildered at His death on the cross and backward in believing His Resurrection, were so strengthened by the clearness of the truth that when the Lord entered the heights of heaven, not only were they affected with no sadness, but were even filled with great joy. And truly great and unspeakable was their cause for joy, when in the sight of the holy multitude, above the dignity of all heavenly creatures, the Nature of mankind went up, to pass above the angels' ranks and to rise beyond the archangels' heights, and to have Its uplifting limited by no elevation until, received to sit with the Eternal Father, It should be associated on the throne with His glory, to Whose Nature It was united in the Son. Since then Christ's Ascension is our uplifting, and the hope of the Body is raised, whither the glory of the Head has gone before, let us exult, dearly-beloved, with worthy joy and delight in the loyal paying of thanks. For to-day not only are we confirmed as possessors of paradise, but have also in Christ penetrated the heights of heaven, and have gained still greater things through Christ's unspeakable grace than we had lost through the devil's malice. For us, whom our virulent enemy had driven out from the bliss of our first abode, the Son of God has made members of Himself and placed at the right hand of the Father, with Whom He lives and reigns in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen. __________________________________________________________________
[1127] Sacramenta--mysteria.
[1128] Sacramenta--mysteria.
[1129] S. Luke xxiv. 36: S. John xx. 19. __________________________________________________________________
Sermon LXXIV.
(On the Lord's Ascension, II.)
I. The Ascension completes our faith in Him, who was God as well as man.
The mystery of our salvation, dearly-beloved, which the Creator of the universe valued at the price of His blood, has now been carried out under conditions of humiliation from the day of His bodily birth to the end of His Passion. And although even in "the form of a slave" many signs of Divinity have beamed out, yet the events of all that period served particularly to show the reality of His assumed Manhood. But after the Passion, when the chains of death were broken, which had exposed its own strength by attacking Him, Who was ignorant of sin, weakness was turned into power, mortality into eternity, contumely into glory, which the Lord Jesus Christ showed by many clear proofs in the sight of many, until He carried even into heaven the triumphant victory which He had won over the dead. As therefore at the Easter commemoration, the Lord's Resurrection was the cause of our rejoicing; so the subject of our present gladness is His Ascension, as we commemorate and duly venerate that day on which the Nature of our humility in Christ was raised above all the host of heaven, over all the ranks of angels, beyond the height of all powers, to sit with God the Father. On which Providential order of events we are founded and built up, that God's Grace might become more wondrous, when, notwithstanding the removal from men's sight of what was rightly felt to command their awe, faith did not fail, hope did not waver, love did not grow cold. For it is the strength of great minds and the light of firmly-faithful souls, unhesitatingly to believe what is not seen with the bodily sight, and there to fix one's affections whither you cannot direct your gaze. And whence should this Godliness spring up in our hearts, or how should a man be justified by faith, if our salvation rested on those things only which lie beneath our eyes? Hence our Lord said to him who seemed to doubt of Christ's Resurrection, until he had tested by sight and touch the traces of His Passion in His very Flesh, "because thou hast seen Me, thou hast believed: blessed are they who have not seen and yet have believed [1130] ."
II. The Ascension renders our faith more excellent and stronger.
In order, therefore, dearly-beloved, that we may be capable of this blessedness, when all things were fulfilled which concerned the Gospel preaching and the mysteries of the New Testament, our Lord Jesus Christ, on the fortieth day after the Resurrection in the presence of the disciples, was raised into heaven, and terminated His presence with us in the body, to abide on the Father's right hand until the times Divinely fore-ordained for multiplying the sons of the Church are accomplished, and He comes to judge the living and the dead in the same flesh in which He ascended. And so that which till then was visible of our Redeemer was changed into a sacramental presence [1131] , and that faith might be more excellent and stronger, sight gave way to doctrine, the authority of which was to be accepted by believing hearts enlightened with rays from above.
III. The marvellous effects of this faith on all.
This Faith, increased by the Lord's Ascension and established by the gift of the Holy Ghost, was not terrified by bonds, imprisonments, banishments, hunger, fire, attacks by wild beasts, refined torments of cruel persecutors. For this Faith throughout the world not only men, but even women, not only beardless boys, but even tender maids, fought to the shedding of their blood. This Faith cast out spirits, drove off sicknesses, raised the dead: and through it the blessed Apostles themselves also, who after being confirmed by so many miracles and instructed by so many discourses, had yet been panic-stricken by the horrors of the Lord's Passion and had not accepted the truth of His resurrection without hesitation, made such progress after the Lord's Ascension that everything which had previously filled them with fear was turned into joy. For they had lifted the whole contemplation of their mind to the Godhead of Him that sat at the Father's right hand, and were no longer hindered by the barrier of corporeal sight from directing their minds' gaze to That Which had never quitted the Father's side in descending to earth, and had not forsaken the disciples in ascending to heaven.
IV. His Ascension refines our Faith: the ministering of angels to Him shows the extent of His authority.
The Son of Man and Son of God, therefore, dearly-beloved, then attained a more excellent and holier fame, when He betook Himself back to the glory of the Father's Majesty, and in an ineffable manner began to be nearer to the Father in respect of His Godhead, after having become farther away in respect of His manhood. A better instructed faith then began to draw closer to a conception of the Son's equality with the Father without the necessity of handling the corporeal substance in Christ, whereby He is less than the Father, since, while the Nature of the glorified Body still remained the faith of believers was called upon to touch not with the hand of flesh, but with the spiritual understanding the Only-begotten, Who was equal with the Father. Hence comes that which the Lord said after His Resurrection, when Mary Magdalene, representing the Church, hastened to approach and touch Him: "Touch Me not, for I have not yet ascended to My Father [1132] :" that is, I would not have you come to Me as to a human body, nor yet recognize Me by fleshly perceptions: I put thee off for higher things, I prepare greater things for thee: when I have ascended to My Father, then thou shalt handle Me more perfectly and truly, for thou shalt grasp what thou canst not touch and believe what thou canst not see. But when the disciples' eyes followed the ascending Lord to heaven with upward gaze of earnest wonder, two angels stood by them in raiment shining with wondrous brightness, who also said, "Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing into heaven? This Jesus Who was taken up from you into heaven shall so come as ye saw Him going into heaven [1133] ." By which words all the sons of the Church were taught to believe that Jesus Christ will come visibly in the same Flesh wherewith He ascended, and not to doubt that all things are subjected to Him on Whom the ministry of angels had waited from the first beginning of His Birth. For, as an angel announced to the blessed Virgin that Christ should be conceived by the Holy Ghost, so the voice of heavenly beings sang of His being born of the Virgin also to the shepherds. As messengers from above were the first to attest His having risen from the dead, so the service of angels was employed to foretell His coming in very Flesh to judge the world, that we might understand what great powers will come with Him as Judge, when such great ones ministered to Him even in being judged.
V. We must despise earthly things and rise to things above, especially by active works of mercy and love.
And so, dearly-beloved, let us rejoice with spiritual joy, and let us with gladness pay God worthy thanks and raise our hearts' eyes unimpeded to those heights where Christ is. Minds that have heard the call to be uplifted must not be pressed down by earthly affections [1134] , they that are fore-ordained to things eternal must not be taken up with the things that perish; they that have entered on the way of Truth must not be entangled in treacherous snares, and the faithful must so take their course through these temporal things as to remember that they are sojourning in the vale of this world, in which, even though they meet with some attractions, they must not sinfully embrace them, but bravely pass through them. For to this devotion the blessed Apostle Peter arouses us, and entreating us with that loving eagerness which he conceived for feeding Christ's sheep by the threefold profession of love for the Lord, says, "dearly-beloved, I beseech you, as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul [1135] ." But for whom do fleshly pleasures wage war, if not for the devil, whose delight it is to fetter souls that strive after things above, with the enticements of corruptible good things, and to draw them away from those abodes from which he himself has been banished? Against his plots every believer must keep careful watch that he may crush his foe on the side whence the attack is made. And there is no more powerful weapon, dearly-beloved, against the devil's wiles than kindly mercy and bounteous charity, by which every sin is either escaped or vanquished. But this lofty power is not attained until that which is opposed to it be overthrown. And what so hostile to mercy and works of charity as avarice from the root of which spring all evils [1136] ? And unless it be destroyed by lack of nourishment, there must needs grow in the ground of that heart in which this evil weed has taken root, the thorns and briars of vices rather than any seed of true goodness. Let us then, dearly-beloved, resist this pestilential evil and "follow after charity [1137] ," without which no virtue can flourish, that by this path of love whereby Christ came down to us, we too may mount up to Him, to Whom with God the Father and the Holy Spirit is honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen. __________________________________________________________________
[1130] S. John xx. 29.
[1131] In sacramenta transivit, i.e. Christ's presence is now vouchsafed us only after a spiritual manner in His sacraments and means of grace.
[1132] S. John xx. 17.
[1133] Acts i. 11.
[1134] Sursum vocatos animos. The allusion no doubt is to the V. Sursum corda. R. habemus ad Dominum, with which the Church Liturgy has always ushered us into the most solemn part of the Eucharistic worship (Col. iii. 1, 2). Cf. Bright's n. 122, and Serm. LXVII. chap. i.
[1135] 1 Pet. ii. 11.
[1136] Cf. 1 Tim. vi. 10; and below, 1 Cor. xiv. 1.
[1137] Cf. 1 Tim. vi. 10; and below, 1 Cor. xiv. 1. __________________________________________________________________
Sermon LXXV.
(On Whitsuntide, I.)
I. The giving of the Law by Moses prepared the way for the outpouring of the Holy Ghost.
The hearts of all catholics, beloved, realize that to-day's solemnity is to be honoured as one of the chief feasts, nor is there any doubt that great respect is due to this day, which the Holy Spirit has hallowed by the miracle of His most excellent gift. For from the day on which the Lord ascended up above all heavenly heights to sit down at God the Father's right hand, this is the tenth which has shone, and the fiftieth from His Resurrection, being the very day on which it began [1138] , and containing in itself great revelations of mysteries both new and old, by which it is most manifestly revealed that Grace was fore-announced through the Law and the Law fulfilled through Grace. For as of old, when the Hebrew nation were released from the Egyptians, on the fiftieth day after the sacrificing of the lamb the Law was given on Mount Sinai, so after the suffering of Christ, wherein the true Lamb of God was slain, on the fiftieth day from His Resurrection, the Holy Ghost came down upon the Apostles and the multitude of believers, so that the earnest Christian may easily perceive that the beginnings of the Old Testament were preparatory to the beginnings of the Gospel, and that the second covenant was founded by the same Spirit that had instituted the first.
II. How marvellous was the gift of "divers tongues."
For as the Apostles' story testifies: "while the days of Pentecost were fulfilled and all the disciples were together in the same place, there occurred suddenly from heaven a sound as of a violent wind coming, and filled the whole house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them divided tongues as of fire and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Holy Spirit gave them utterance [1139] ." Oh! how swift are the words of wisdom, and where God is the Master, how quickly is what is taught, learnt. No interpretation is required for understanding, no practice for using, no time for studying, but the Spirit of Truth blowing where He wills [1140] , the languages peculiar to each nation become common property in the mouth of the Church. And therefore from that day the trumpet of the Gospel-preaching has sounded loud: from that day the showers of gracious gifts, the rivers of blessings, have watered every desert and all the dry land, since to renew the face of the earth the Spirit of God "moved over the waters [1141] ," and to drive away the old darkness flashes of new light shone forth, when by the blaze of those busy tongues was kindled the Lord's bright Word and fervent eloquence, in which to arouse the understanding, and to consume sin there lay both a capacity of enlightenment and a power of burning.
III. The three Persons in the Trinity are perfectly equal in all things.
But although, dearly-beloved, the actual form of the thing done was exceeding wonderful, and undoubtedly in that exultant chorus of all human languages the Majesty of the Holy Spirit was present, yet no one must think that His Divine substance appeared in what was seen with bodily eyes. For His Nature, which is invisible and shared in common with the Father and the Son, showed the character of His gift and work by the outward sign that pleased Him, but kept His essential property within His own Godhead: because human sight can no more perceive the Holy Ghost than it can the Father or the Son. For in the Divine Trinity nothing is unlike or unequal, and all that can be thought concerning Its substance admits of no diversity either in power or glory or eternity. And while in the property of each Person the Father is one, the Son is another, and the Holy Ghost is another, yet the Godhead is not distinct and different; for whilst the Son is the Only begotten of the Father, the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of the Father and the Son, not in the way that every creature is the creature of the Father and the Son, but as living and having power with Both, and eternally subsisting of That Which is the Father and the Son [1142] . And hence when the Lord before the day of His Passion promised the coming of the Holy Spirit to His disciples, He said, "I have yet many things to say to you, but ye cannot bear them now. But when He, the Spirit of Truth shall have come, He shall guide you into all the Truth. For He shall not speak from Himself, but whatsoever He shall have heard, He shall speak and shall announce things to come unto you. All things that the Father hath are Mine: therefore said I that He shall take of Mine, and shall announce it to you [1143] ." Accordingly, there are not some things that are the Father's, and other the Son's, and other the Holy Spirit's: but all things whatsoever the Father has, the Son also has, and the Holy Spirit also has: nor was there ever a time when this communion did not exist, because with Them to have all things is to always exist. In them let no times, no grades, no differences be imagined [1144] , and, if no one can explain that which is true concerning God, let no one dare to assert what is not true. For it is more excusable not to make a full statement concerning His ineffable Nature than to frame an actually wrong definition. And so whatever loyal hearts can conceive of the Father's eternal and unchangeable Glory, let them at the same time understand it of the Son and of the Holy Ghost without any separation or difference. For we confess this blessed Trinity to be One God for this reason, because in these three Persons there is no diversity either of substance, or of power, or of will, or of operation.
IV. The Macedonian heresy is as blasphemous as the Arian.
As therefore we abhor the Arians, who maintain a difference between the Father and the Son, so also we abhor the Macedonians [1145] , who, although they ascribe equality to the Father and the Son, yet think the Holy Ghost to be of a lower nature, not considering that they thus fall into that blasphemy, which is not to be forgiven either in the present age or in the judgment to come, as the Lord says: "whosoever shall have spoken a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him, but he that shall have spoken against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him either in this age or in the age to come [1146] ." And so to persist in this impiety is unpardonable, because it cuts him off from Him, by Whom he could confess: nor will he ever attain to healing pardon, who has no Advocate to plead for him. For from Him comes the invocation of the Father, from Him come the tears of penitents, from Him come the groans of suppliants, and "no one can call Jesus the Lord save in the Holy Ghost [1147] ," Whose Omnipotence as equal and Whose Godhead as one, with the Father and the Son, the Apostle most clearly proclaims, saying, "there are divisions of graces but the same Spirit; and the divisions of ministrations but the same Lord; and there are divisions of operations but the same God, Who worketh all things in all [1148] ."
V. The Spirit's work is still continued in the Church.
By these and other numberless proofs, dearly-beloved, with which the authority of the Divine utterances is ablaze, let us with one mind be incited to pay reverence to Whitsuntide, exulting in honour of the Holy Ghost, through Whom the whole catholic Church is sanctified, and every rational soul quickened; Who is the Inspirer of the Faith, the Teacher of Knowledge, the Fount of Love, the Seal of Chastity, and the Cause of all Power. Let the minds of the faithful rejoice, that throughout the world One God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, is praised by the confession of all tongues, and that that sign of His Presence, which appeared in the likeness of fire, is still perpetuated in His work and gift. For the Spirit of Truth Himself makes the house of His glory shine with the brightness of His light, and will have nothing dark nor lukewarm in His temple. And it is through His aid and teaching also that the purification of fasts and alms has been established among us. For this venerable day is followed by a most wholesome practice, which all the saints have ever found most profitable to them, and to the diligent observance of which we exhort you with a shepherd's care, to the end that if any blemish has been contracted in the days just passed through heedless negligence, it may be atoned for by the discipline of fasting and corrected by pious devotion. On Wednesday and Friday, therefore, let us fast, and on Saturday for this very purpose keep vigil with accustomed devotion, through Jesus Christ our Lord, Who with the Father and the Holy Ghost lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen. __________________________________________________________________
[1138] In eo (Sc. die) a quo coepit (Sc. festum), apparently an obscure way of saying that the first Whitsunday was the same day of the week (viz. the first) as the first Easter-day.
[1139] Acts ii. 1-4.
[1140] Cf. S. John iii. 8; and below, Gen. i. 2.
[1141] Cf. S. John iii. 8; and below, Gen. i. 2.
[1142] For this statement of the doctrine of the Trinity, esp. in regard to the Twofold Procession of the Holy Ghost, cf. Lett. XV. chap. 2. Bright quotes Swete's History of the Doctrine, p. 157.
[1143] S. John xvi. 12-15.
[1144] Cf. Serm. XXVIII. chap. 4, cum gradus in vera Divinitate esse non possit, and Serm. LXXII. chap. 5, nec Unitatem gradibus dividat, and Bright's notes 29 and 116 on the subject.
[1145] "Arianism had spoken both of the Son and the Holy Spirit as creatures. The Macedonians, rising up out of Semi-arianism, gradually reached the Church's belief as to the uncreated Majesty of the Son, even if they retained their objection to the Homoousion. But having, in their previously Semi-arian position, refused to extend their own Homoi-ousion to the Holy Spirit, they afterwards persisted in regarding Him as external to the one indivisible Godhead.'" Newman's Arians, p. 226. Bright's n. 129. Macodonius, from whom the sect was named, was bp. of Constantinople alternately with his rival, the orthodox Paul, between 342 and 351, and from that date he held the See in full possession till 360, when he was finally deposed.
[1146] S. Matt. xii. 32.
[1147] 1 Cor. xii. 3-6.
[1148] 1 Cor. xii. 3-6. __________________________________________________________________
Sermon LXXVII.
(On Whitsuntide, III.)
I. The Holy Ghost's work did not begin at Pentecost, but was continued because the Holy Trinity is One in action and in will.
To-day's festival, dearly-beloved, which is held in reverence by the whole world, has been hallowed by that advent of the Holy Ghost, which on the fiftieth day after the Lord's Resurrection, descended on the Apostles and the multitude of believers [1149] , even as it was hoped. And there was this hope, because the Lord Jesus had promised that He should come, not then first to be the Indweller of the saints, but to kindle to a greater heat, and to fill with larger abundance the hearts that were dedicated to Him, increasing, not commencing His gifts, not fresh in operation because richer in bounty. For the Majesty of the Holy Ghost is never separate from the Omnipotence of the Father and the Son, and whatever the Divine government accomplishes in the ordering of all things, proceeds from the Providence of the whole Trinity. Therein exists unity of mercy and loving-kindness, unity of judgment and justice: nor is there any division in action where there is no divergence of will. What, therefore, the Father enlightens, the Son enlightens, and the Holy Ghost enlightens: and while there is one Person of the Sent, another of the Sender, and another of the Promiser, both the Unity and the Trinity are at the same time revealed to us, so that the Essence which possesses equality and does not admit of solitariness is understood to belong to the same Substance but not the same Person.
II. Each Person in the Trinity took part in our Redemption.
The fact, therefore, that, with the co-operation of the inseparable Godhead still perfect, certain things are performed by the Father, certain by the Son, and certain by the Holy Spirit, in particular belongs to the ordering of our Redemption and the method of our salvation. For if man, made after the image and likeness of God, had retained the dignity of his own nature, and had not been deceived by the devil's wiles into transgressing through lust the law laid down for him, the Creator of the world would not have become a Creature, the Eternal would not have entered the sphere of time, nor God the Son, Who is equal with God the Father, have assumed the form of a slave and the likeness of sinful flesh. But because "by the devil's malice death entered into the world [1150] ," and captive humanity could not otherwise be set free without His undertaking our cause, Who without loss of His majesty should both become true Man, and alone have no taint of sin, the mercy of the Trinity divided for Itself the work of our restoration in such a way that the Father should be propitiated, the Son should propitiate [1151] , and the Holy Ghost enkindle. For it was necessary that those who are to be saved should also do something on their part, and by the turning of their hearts to the Redeemer should quit the dominion of the enemy, even as the Apostle says, "God sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying Abba, Father [1152] ," "And where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty [1153] ," and "no one can call Jesus Lord except in the Holy Spirit [1154] ."
III. But this apportionment of functions does not mar the Unity of the Trinity.
If, therefore, under guiding grace, dearly-beloved, we faithfully and wisely understand what is the particular work of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, and what is common to the Three in our restoration, we shall without doubt so accept what has been wrought for us by humiliation and in the body as to think nothing unworthy about the One and Selfsame Glory of the Trinity. For although no mind is competent to think, no tongue to speak about God, yet whatever that is which the human intellect apprehends about the essence of the Father's Godhead, unless one and the selfsame truth is held concerning His Only-begotten or the Holy Spirit, our meditations are disloyal, and beclouded by the intrusions of the flesh, and even that is lost, which seemed a right conclusion concerning the Father, because the whole Trinity is forsaken, if the Unity therein is not maintained; and That Which is different by any inequality can in no true sense be One.
IV. In thinking upon God, we must put aside all material notions.
When, therefore, we fix our minds on confessing the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, let us keep far from our thoughts the forms of things visible, the ages of beings born in time, and all material bodies and places. Let that which is extended in space, that which is enclosed by limit, and whatever is not always everywhere and entire be banished from the heart. The conception of the Triune Godhead must put aside the idea of interval or of grade [1155] , and if a man has attained any worthy thought of God, let him not dare to withhold it from any Person therein, as if to ascribe with more honour to the Father that which he does not ascribe to the Son and Spirit. It is not true Godliness to put the Father before the Only-begotten: insult to the Son is insult to the Father: what is detracted from the One is detracted from Both. For since Their Eternity and Godhead are alike common, the Father is not accounted either Almighty and Unchangeable, if He begot One less than Himself or gained by having One Whom before He had not [1156] .
V. Christ as Man is less than the Father, as God co-equal.
The Lord Jesus does, indeed, say to His disciples, as was read in the Gospel lection, "if ye loved Me, ye would assuredly rejoice, because I go to the Father, because the Father is greater than I [1157] ;" but those ears, which have often heard the words, "I and the Father are One [1158] ," and "He that sees Me, sees the Father also [1159] ," accept the saying without supposing a difference of Godhead or understanding it of that Essence which they know to be co-eternal and of the same nature with the Father. Man's uplifting, therefore, in the Incarnation of the Word, is commended to the holy Apostles also, and they, who were distressed at the announcement of the Lord's departure from them, are incited to eternal joy over the increase in their dignity; "If ye loved Me," He says, "ye would assuredly rejoice, because I go to the Father:" that is, if, with complete knowledge ye saw what glory is bestowed on you by the fact that, being begotten of God the Father, I have been born of a human mother also, that being invisible I have made Myself visible, that being eternal "in the form of God" I accepted the "form of a slave," "ye would rejoice because I go to the Father." For to you is offered this ascension, and your humility is in Me raised to a place above all heavens at the Father's right hand. But I, Who am with the Father that which the Father is, abide undivided with My Father, and in coming from Him to you I do not leave Him, even as in returning to Him from you I do not forsake you. Rejoice, therefore, "because I go to the Father, because the Father is greater than I." For I have united you with Myself, and am become Son of Man that you might have power to be sons of God. And hence, though I am One in both forms, yet in that whereby I am conformed to you I am less than the Father, whereas in that whereby I am not divided from the Father I am greater even than Myself. And so let the Nature, which is less than the Father, go [1160] to the Father, that the Flesh may be where the Word always is, and that the one Faith of the catholic Church may believe that He Whom as Man it does not deny to be less, is equal as God with the Father.
VI. And this equality which the Son has with the Father, the Holy Ghost also has.
Accordingly, dearly-beloved, let us despise the vain and blind cunning of ungodly heretics, which flatters itself over its crooked interpretation of this sentence, and when the Lord says, "All things that the Father hath are Mine [1161] ," does not understand that it takes away from the Father whatever it dares to deny to the Son, and is so foolish in matters even which are human as to think, that what is His Father's has ceased to belong to His Only-begotten, because He has taken on Him what is ours. Mercy in the case of God does not lessen power, nor is the reconciliation of the creature whom He loves a falling off of Eternal glory. What the Father has the Son also has, and what the Father and the Son have, the Holy Ghost also has, because the whole Trinity together is One God. But this Faith is not the discovery of earthly wisdom nor the conviction of man's opinion: the Only-begotten Son has taught it Himself, and the Holy Ghost has established it Himself, concerning Whom no other conception must be formed than is formed concerning the Father and the Son. Because albeit He is not the Father nor the Son, yet He is not separable from the Father and the Son: and as He has His own personality in the Trinity, so has He One substance in Godhead with the Father and the Son, filling all things, containing all things, and with the Father and the Son controlling all things, to Whom is the honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen. __________________________________________________________________
[1149] Bright (n. 133) quotes Aug. (in Joan. Evan. Tr. 92, c. 1 and Serm. 267, 1) for the opinion, which Leo here seems to follow, that the "all" of Acts ii. 1 includes the 120 (cf. Acts i. 20) as well as the Twelve.
[1150] Wisd. ii. 24.
[1151] "The Atonement is a reconciling not merely of man to God but of God to man," says Archbp. Trench, and that, as S. Thomas Aquinas explains, in regard to our sins not in regard to our nature, in which regard He always loves us (passages quoted by Bright, n. 54).
[1152] Gal. iv. 6.
[1153] 2 Cor. iii. 17.
[1154] 1 Cor. xii. 3.
[1155] See Serm. LXXV. chap. 3, n. 3.
[1156] See Serm. XXIII. chap. 2.
[1157] S. John xiv. 28; x. 30; xiv. 9. In the English Church, the Gospel for Whitsunday is still the same as it was in Leo's time at Rome.
[1158] S. John xiv. 28; x. 30; xiv. 9. In the English Church, the Gospel for Whitsunday is still the same as it was in Leo's time at Rome.
[1159] S. John xiv. 28; x. 30; xiv. 9. In the English Church, the Gospel for Whitsunday is still the same as it was in Leo's time at Rome.
[1160] Vadat (subj.); others read vadit (indic.) = goes, in which case Christ is still imagined to be speaking. If we read vadat, His utterance ends with the last sentence.
[1161] S. John xvi. 15. __________________________________________________________________
Sermon LXXVIII.
(On the Whitsuntide Fast, I.)
I. Since the Apostles' day till now self-restraint is the best defence against the Devil's assaults.
To-day's festival, dearly-beloved, hallowed by the descent of the Holy Ghost, is followed, as you know by a solemn fast, which being a salutary institution for the healing of soul and body, we must keep with devout observance. For when the Apostles had been filled with the promised power, and the Spirit of Truth had entered their hearts, we doubt not that among the other mysteries of heavenly doctrine this discipline of spiritual self-restraint was first thought of at the prompting of the Paraclete in order that minds sanctified by fasting might be fitter for the chrism to be bestowed on them [1162] . The disciples of Christ had the protection of the Almighty aid, and the chiefs of the infant Church were guarded by the whole Godhead of the Father and the Son through the presence of the Holy Ghost. But against the threatened attacks of persecutors, against the terrifying shouts of the ungodly, they could not fight with bodily strength or pampered flesh, since that which delights the outer does most harm to the inner man, and the more one's fleshly substance is kept in subjection, the more purified is the reasoning soul.
II. The tempter is foiled in attacks upon those who have learnt these tactics.
And so those teachers, who have instructed all the Church's sons by their examples and their traditions, began the rudiments of the Christian warfare with holy fasts, that, having to fight against spiritual wickednesses, they might take the armour of abstinence, wherewith to slay the incentives to vice. For invisible foes and incorporeal enemies will have no strength against us, if we be not entangled in any lusts of the flesh. The desire to hurt us is indeed ever active in the tempter, but he will be disarmed and powerless, if he find no vantage ground within us from which to attack us. But who, encompassed with this frail flesh, and placed in this body of death, even one who has made much decided progress, can be so sure of his safety now, as to believe himself free from the peril of all allurements? Although Divine Grace gives daily victory to His saints [1163] , yet He does not remove the occasion for fighting, because this very fact is part of our Protector's Mercy, Who has always designed that something should remain for our ever-changing nature to win, lest it should boast itself on the ending of the battle.
III. And so this fast comes very opportunely after the feast of Whitsuntide.
Therefore, after the days of holy gladness, which we have devoted to the honour of the Lord rising from the dead and then ascending into heaven, and after receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, a fast is ordained as a wholesome and needful practice, so that, if perchance through neglect or disorder even amid the joys of the festival any undue licence has broken out, it may be corrected by the remedy of strict abstinence, which must be the more scrupulously carried out in order that what was on this day Divinely bestowed on the Church may abide in us. For being made the Temple of the Holy Ghost, and watered with a greater supply than ever of the Divine Stream, we ought not to be conquered by any lusts nor held in possession by any vices in order that the habitation of Divine power may be stained with no pollution.
IV. And by proper use of it we shall win God's favour.
And this assuredly it is possible for all to obtain, God helping and guiding us, if by the purification of fasting and by merciful liberality, we take pains to be set free from the filth of sins, and to be rich in the fruits of love. For whatever is spent in feeding the poor, in healing the sick, in ransoming prisoners, or in any other deeds of piety, is not lessened but increased, nor will that ever be lost in the sight of God which the loving-kindness of the faithful has expended, seeing that whatever a man gives in relief, he lays up for his own reward. For "blessed are the merciful, since God shall have mercy on them [1164] ;" nor wilt shortcomings be remembered, where the presence of true religion has been attested. On Wednesday and Friday, therefore, let us fast, and on Saturday let us keep vigil in the presence of the most blessed Apostle, Peter, by whose prayers we surely trust to be set free both from spiritual foes and bodily enemies; through our Lord Jesus Christ, who with the Father and the Holy Ghost, lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen. __________________________________________________________________
[1162] Cf. note 9 on Lett. CLVI. chap. 5.
[1163] Cf. Serm. LXXXVIII. chap. 3, licet quotidiano Dei munere a diversis contaminationibus emundemur, inhærent tamen incautis animis maculæ crassiores quas oporteat diligentiori cura ablui.
[1164] S. Matt. v. 7. __________________________________________________________________
Sermon LXXXII.
On the Feast [1165] of the Apostles Peter and Paul (June 29).
I. Rome owes its high position to these Apostles.
The whole world, dearly-beloved, does indeed take part in all holy anniversaries, and loyalty to the one Faith demands that whatever is recorded as done for all men's salvation should be everywhere celebrated with common rejoicings. But, besides that reverence which to-day's festival has gained from all the world, it is to be honoured with special and peculiar exultation in our city, that there may be a predominance of gladness on the day of their martyrdom in the place where the chief of the Apostles met their glorious end [1166] . For these are the men, through whom the light of Christ's gospel shone on thee, O Rome, and through whom thou, who wast the teacher of error, wast made the disciple of Truth. These are thy holy Fathers and true shepherds, who gave thee claims to be numbered among the heavenly kingdoms, and built thee under much better and happier auspices than they, by whose zeal the first foundations of thy walls were laid: and of whom the one that gave thee thy name defiled thee with his brother's blood [1167] . These are they who promoted thee to such glory, that being made a holy nation, a chosen people, a priestly and royal state [1168] , and the head of the world through the blessed Peter's holy See thou didst attain a wider sway by the worship of God than by earthly government. For although thou wert increased by many victories, and didst extend thy rule on land and sea, yet what thy toils in war subdued is less than what the peace of Christ has conquered.
II. The extension of the Roman empire was part of the Divine scheme.
For the good, just, and Almighty God, Who has never withheld His mercy from mankind, and has ever instructed all men alike in the knowledge of Himself by the most abundant benefits, has by a more secret counsel and a deeper love shown pity upon the wanderers' voluntary blindness and proclivities to evil, by sending His co-equal and co-eternal Word. Which becoming flesh so united the Divine Nature with the human that He by lowering His Nature to the uttermost has raised our nature to the highest. But that the result of this unspeakable Grace might be spread abroad throughout the world, God's Providence made ready the Roman empire, whose growth has reached such limits that the whole multitude of nations are brought into close connexion. For the Divinely-planned work particularly required that many kingdoms should be leagued together under one empire, so that the preaching of the world might quickly reach to all people, when they were held beneath the rule of one state. And yet that state, in ignorance of the Author of its aggrandisement though it rule almost all nations, was enthralled by the errors of them all, and seemed to itself to have fostered religion greatly, because it rejected no falsehood. And hence its emancipation through Christ was the more wondrous that it had been so fast bound by Satan.
III. On the dispersing of the Twelve, St. Peter was sent to Rome.
For when the twelve Apostles, after receiving through the Holy Ghost the power of speaking with all tongues, had distributed the world into parts among themselves, and undertaken to instruct it in the Gospel, the most blessed Peter, chief of the Apostolic band, was appointed to the citadel of the Roman empire, that the light of Truth which was being displayed for the salvation of all the nations, might spread itself more effectively throughout the body of the world from the head itself. What nation had not representatives then living in this city; or what peoples did not know what Rome had learnt? Here it was that the tenets of philosophy must be crushed, here that the follies of earthly wisdom must be dispelled, here that the cult of demons must be refuted, here that the blasphemy of all idolatries must be rooted out, here where the most persistent superstition had gathered together all the various errors which had anywhere been devised.
IV. St. Peter's love conquered his fears in coming to Rome.
To this city then, most blessed Apostle Peter, thou dost not fear to come, and when the Apostle Paul, the partner of thy glory, was still busied with regulating other churches, didst enter this forest of roaring beasts, this deep, stormy ocean with greater boldness than when thou didst walk upon the sea. And thou who hadst been frightened by the high priest's maid in the house of Caiaphas, hadst no fear of Rome the mistress of the world. Was there any less power in Claudius, any less cruelty in Nero than in the judgment of Pilate or the Jews' savage rage? So then it was the force of love that conquered the reasons for fear: and thou didst not think those to be feared whom thou hadst undertaken to love. But this feeling of fearless affection thou hadst even then surely conceived when the profession of thy love for the Lord was confirmed by the mystery of the thrice-repeated question. And nothing else was demanded of this thy earnest purpose than that thou shouldst bestow the food wherewith thou hadst thyself been enriched, on feeding His sheep whom thou didst love.
V. S. Peter was providentially prepared for his great mission.
Thy confidence also was increased by many miraculous signs, by many gifts of grace, by many proofs of power. Thou hadst already taught the people, who from the number of the circumcised had believed: thou hadst already founded the Church at Antioch, where first the dignity of the Christian name arose: thou hadst already instructed Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, in the laws of the Gospel-message: and, without doubt as to the success of the work, with full knowledge of the short span of thy life didst carry the trophy of Christ's cross into the citadel of Rome, whither by the Divine fore-ordaining there accompanied thee the honour of great power and the glory of much suffering.
VI. Many noble martyrs have sprung from the blood of SS. Peter and Paul.
Thither came also thy blessed brother-Apostle Paul, "the vessel of election [1169] ," and the special teacher of the Gentiles, and was associated with thee at a time when all innocence, all modesty, all freedom was in jeopardy under Nero's rule. Whose fury, inflamed by excess of all vices, hurled him headlong into such a fiery furnace of madness that he was the first to assail the Christian name with a general persecution, as if God's Grace could be quenched by the death of saints, whose greatest gain it was to win eternal happiness by contempt of this fleeting life. "Precious," therefore, "in the eyes of the Lord is the death of His saints [1170] :" nor can any degree of cruelty destroy the religion which is founded on the mystery of Christ's cross. Persecution does not diminish but increase the church, and the Lord's field is clothed with an ever richer crop, while the grains, which fall singly, spring up and are multiplied a hundred-fold [1171] . Hence how large a progeny have sprung from these two Heaven-sown seeds is shown by the thousands of blessed martyrs, who, rivalling the Apostles' triumphs, have traversed the city far and wide in purple-clad and ruddy-gleaming throngs, and crowned it, as it were with a single diadem of countless gems.
VII. No distinction must be drawn between the merits of the two.
And over this band, dearly-beloved, whom God has set forth for our example in patience and for our confirmation in the Faith, there must be rejoicing everywhere in the commemoration of all the saints, but of these two Fathers' excellence we must rightly make our boast in louder joy, for God's Grace has raised them to so high a place among the members of the Church, that He has set them like the twin light of the eyes in the body, whose Head is Christ. About their merits and virtues, which pass all power of speech, we must not make distinctions, because they were equal in their election [1172] , alike in their toils, undivided in their death. But as we have proved for ourselves, and our forefathers maintained, we believe, and are sure that, amid all the toils of this life, we must always be assisted in obtaining God's Mercy by the prayers of special interceders, that we may be raised by the Apostles' merits in proportion as we are weighed down by our own sins. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, &c. __________________________________________________________________
[1165] Natali, lit. birthday; but the early Church gave this beautiful name to, and kept the memory of Saints on, the day of their death (cf. below, in die martyrii eorum) in all cases except that of S. John the Baptist (from the importance of his natural birthday in connexion with the Lord's Nativity). The Conversion of S. Paul is a later exception.
[1166] It is of course well known that this is very debatable ground, and as such, it is wiser to leave it untouched in a work which is only intended as a means of rendering English-speaking people acquainted with Leo's views and statements. It will be noticed however, that the historically verified connexion of S. Paul with Rome is as nothing in his eyes in comparison with the very apocryphal connexion of S. Peter: cf. below, per sacram beati Petri sedem, on which the Ballerinii very appropriately quote Prosper de Ingratis:-- Sedes Roma Petri, quæ pastoralis honore facta caput mundo, quidquid non possidet armis religione tenet. The Roman Calendar still retains the double commemoration on June 29.
[1167] i.e. Romulus (the traditional founder of Rome) murdered his brother, Remus.
[1168] Cf. 1 Pet. ii. 9.
[1169] Acts ix. 15.
[1170] Ps. cxvi. 15.
[1171] This is a commonplace with the Fathers: S. Augustine is esp. fond of it; Hurter quotes from him de catech. rud. chap. xxiv. and four times on the Psalms. Cf. Serm. XXXVI. chap. iii. n. 1.
[1172] Electio pares (fecit) omitted by the oldest Vatican ms. but undoubtedly genuine, the allusion being obviously to S. Paul's claim to equal apostleship with the Twelve more than once advanced (e.g. 2 Cor. xi. 5, &c.). This then is an interesting passage when read side by side with Leo's Petrine claims, but does not really contradict them, though the language here used, esp. the figure of the two eyes, is strong. __________________________________________________________________
Sermon LXXXIV [1173] .
Concerning the Neglect of the Commemoration.
I. The Churchmen of Rome are in danger of forgetting past judgments and mercies, and becoming ungrateful to God.
The fewness of those who were present has of itself shown, dearly-beloved, that the religious devotion wherewith, in commemoration of the day of our chastisement and release, the whole body of the faithful used to flock together in order to give God thanks, has on this last occasion been almost entirely neglected: and this has caused me much sadness of heart and great fear. For there is much danger of men becoming ungrateful to God, and through forgetfulness of His benefits not feeling sorrow for the chastisement, nor joy for the liberation. Accordingly I fear, dearly-beloved, lest that utterance of the Prophet be addressed in rebuke to such men, which says, "thou hast scourged them and they have not grieved: thou hast chastised them, and they have refused to receive correction. [1174] " For what amendment is shown by them in whom such aversion to God's service is found? One is ashamed to say it, but one must not keep silence: more is spent upon demons than upon the Apostles, and mad spectacles draw greater crowds than blessed martyrdoms [1175] . Who was it that restored this city to safety? that rescued it from captivity? the games of the circus-goers or the care of the saints? surely it was by the saints' prayers that the sentence of Divine displeasure was diverted, so that we who deserved wrath, were reserved for pardon.
II. Let them avail themselves betimes of God's long-suffering and return to Him.
I entreat you, beloved, let those words of the Saviour touch your hearts, Who, when by the power of His mercy He had cleansed ten lepers, said that only one of them all had returned to give thanks [1176] : meaning without doubt that, though the ungrateful ones had gained soundness of body, yet their failure in this godly duty arose from ungodliness of heart. And therefore, dearly-beloved, that this brand of ingratitude may not be applied to you, return to the Lord, remembering the marvels which He has deigned to perform among us; and ascribing our release not, as the ungodly suppose, to the influences of the stars, but to the unspeakable mercy of Almighty God, Who has deigned to soften the hearts of raging barbarians, betake yourselves to the commemoration of so great a benefit with all the vigour of faith. Grave neglect must be atoned for by yet greater tokens of repentance. Let us use the Mercy of Him, Who has spared us, to our own amendment, that the blessed Peter and all the saints, who have always been near us in many afflictions, may deign to aid our entreaties for you to the merciful God, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. __________________________________________________________________
[1173] There is some doubt as to the exact occasion of this sermon. It seems to have been connected with the yearly commemoration (not the first or second from the language Leo uses), of that 14 days' pillage of Rome by Genseric (in 455) and of the city's subsequent liberation, in which Leo took so important a part. But the date ascribed to the sermon's delivery (the octave of SS. Peter and Paul, i.e. July 6) does not tally well with its allusions to the ludi Circenses as counter-attractions to the recent Church functions. A reference to Serm. IX. n. 6, will remind the reader that it was the ludi Apollinares that, at least in the past, were associated with that date: perhaps Leo's phrase ludus Circensium is only a general description and would include the Apollinarian games as being still held in Circo as well as others. The ludi Circenses themselves were held Sept. 4-12.
[1174] Jer. v. 3.
[1175] Martyria, which the Ball. here consider means the churches built in honour (? on the scene) of the martyrdoms.
[1176] Cf. S. Luke xvii. 18. __________________________________________________________________
Sermon LXXXV.
On the Feast of S. Laurence the Martyr [1177] (Aug. 10).
I. The example of the martyrs is most valuable.
Whilst the height of all virtues, dearly-beloved, and the fulness of all righteousness is born of that love, wherewith God and one's neighbour is loved, surely in none is this love found more conspicuous and brighter than in the blessed martyrs; who are as near to our Lord Jesus, Who died for all men, in the imitation of His love, as in the likeness of their suffering. For, although that Love, wherewith the Lord has redeemed us, cannot be equalled by any man's kindness, because it is one thing that a man who is doomed to die one day should die for a righteous man, and another that One Who is free from the debt of sin should lay down His life for the wicked [1178] : yet the martyrs also have done great service to all men, in that the Lord Who gave them boldness, has used it to show that the penalty of death and the pain of the cross need not be terrible to any of His followers, but might be imitated by many of them. If therefore no good man is good for himself alone, and no wise man's wisdom befriends himself only, and the nature of true virtue is such that it leads many away from the dark error on which its light is shed, no model is more useful in teaching God's people than that of the martyrs. Eloquence may make intercession easy, reasoning may effectually persuade; but yet examples are stronger than words, and there is more teaching in practice than in precept.
II. The Saint's martyrdom described.
And how gloriously strong in this most excellent manner of doctrine the blessed martyr Laurentius is, by whose sufferings to-day is marked, even his persecutors were able to feel, when they found that his wondrous courage, born principally of love for Christ, not only did not yield itself, but also strengthened others by the example of his endurance. For when the fury of the gentile potentates was raging against Christ's most chosen members, and attacked those especially who were of priestly rank, the wicked persecutor's wrath was vented on Laurentius the deacon, who was pre-eminent not only in the performance of the sacred rites, but also in the management of the church's property [1179] , promising himself double spoil from one man's capture: for if he forced him to surrender the sacred treasures, he would also drive him out of the pale of true religion. And so this man, so greedy of money and such a foe to the truth, arms himself with double weapon: with avarice to plunder the gold; with impiety to carry off Christ. He demands of the guileless guardian of the sanctuary that the church wealth on which his greedy mind was set should be brought to him. But the holy deacon showed him where he had them stored, by pointing to the many troops of poor saints, in the feeding and clothing of whom he had a store of riches which he could not lose, and which were the more entirely safe that the money had been spent on so holy a cause.
III. The description of his sufferings continued.
The baffled plunderer, therefore, frets, and blazing out into hatred of a religion, which had put riches to such a use, determines to pillage a still greater treasure by carrying off that sacred deposit [1180] , wherewith he was enriched, as he could find no solid hoard of money in his possession. He orders Laurentius to renounce Christ, and prepares to ply the deacon's stout courage with frightful tortures: and, when the first elicit nothing, fiercer follow. His limbs, torn and mangled by many cutting blows, are commanded to be broiled upon the fire in an iron framework [1181] , which was of itself already hot enough to burn him, and on which his limbs were turned from time to time, to make the torment fiercer, and the death more lingering.
IV. Laurentius has conquered his persecutor.
Thou gainest nothing, thou prevailest nothing, O savage cruelty. His mortal frame is released from thy devices, and, when Laurentius departs to heaven, thou art vanquished. The flame of Christ's love could not be overcome by thy flames, and the fire which burnt outside was less keen than that which blazed within. Thou didst but serve the martyr in thy rage, O persecutor: thou didst but swell the reward in adding to the pain. For what did thy cunning devise, which did not redound to the conqueror's glory, when even the instruments of torture were counted as part of the triumph? Let us rejoice, then, dearly-beloved, with spiritual joy, and make our boast over the happy end of this illustrious man in the Lord, Who is "wonderful in His saints [1182] ," in whom He has given us a support and an example, and has so spread abroad his glory throughout the world, that, from the rising of the sun to its going down, the brightness of his deacon's light doth shine, and Rome is become as famous in Laurentius as Jerusalem was ennobled by Stephen. By his prayer and intercession [1183] we trust at all times to be assisted; that, because all, as the Apostle says, "who wish to live holily in Christ, suffer persecution [1184] ," we may be strengthened with the spirit of love, and be fortified to overcome all temptations by the perseverance of steadfast faith. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, &c. __________________________________________________________________
[1177] S. Laurence was the chief Deacon in the time of Sextus II., and was martyred in the persecution of Valerian, 258, in the way detailed by Leo in this Sermon. His was a very favourite festival in the Middle Ages both in the East and West.
[1178] Cf. Rom. v. 7, 8.
[1179] It will be remembered that "the serving of tables" was from the first institution of the office one of the principal duties of the deacon (levita), see Acts vi. 1-6. This side of the office has latterly fallen into abeyance and is but slightly recognized in the English Ordinal.
[1180] Depositum, viz. his faith, the paratheke of 1 Tim. vi. 20.
[1181] Per cratem ferream usually represented in pictures, or statues of the saints as a gridiron.
[1182] Ps. lxviii. 35 (LXX.).
[1183] Cf. Sermon LXXXII. c. 7.
[1184] 2 Tim. iii. 12. __________________________________________________________________
Sermon LXXXVIII.
On the Fast of the Seventh Month, III [1185] .
I. The Fasts, which the ancient prophets proclaimed, are still necessary.
Of what avail, dearly-beloved, are religious fasts in winning the mercy of God, and in renewing the fortunes of human frailty, we know from the statements of the holy Prophets, who proclaim that justice of God, Whose vengeance the people of Israel had again and again incurred through their iniquities, cannot be appeased save by fasting. Thus it is that the Prophet Joel warns them, saying, "thus saith the Lord your God, turn ye to Me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning, and rend your hearts and not your garments, and turn ye to the Lord your God, for He is merciful and patient, and of great kindness, and very merciful [1186] ," and again, "sanctify a fast, proclaim a healing, assemble the people, sanctify the church [1187] ." And this exhortation must in our days also be obeyed, because these healing remedies must of necessity be proclaimed by us too, in order that in the observance of the ancient sanctification Christian devotion may gain what Jewish transgression lost.
II. Public services are of a higher character than private.
But the respect that is paid to the Divine decrees always brings a special blessing, whatever may be the extent of our voluntary services, so that publicly proclaimed celebrations are of a higher character than those which rest on private institution [1188] . For the exercise of self-restraint, which each individual imposes on himself at his own discretion, concerns the benefit of a certain portion only of the Church, but the fast which the whole Church undergoes leaves out no one from the general purification, and God's people then become strongest, when the hearts of all the faithful meet together in one common act of holy obedience, when in the camp of the Christian army there is on all sides the same making ready for the fight and for defence. Though the cruel enemy rage in restless fury, and spread all round his hidden snares, yet he will be able to catch no one and wound no one, if he find no one off his guard, no one given up to sloth, no one inactive in works of piety.
III. The September fast calls us in this public way to self-amendment.
To this unconquerable strength of unity, therefore, dearly-beloved, we are even now invited by the solemn Fast of the Seventh Month, that we may lift our souls to the Lord free from worldly cares and earthly concerns. And because, always needful as this endeavour is, we cannot all adhere to it perpetually, and often through human frailty we fall back from higher things to the things of earth, let us at least on these days, which are most healthfully ordained for our correction, withdraw ourselves from worldly occupations, and steal a little time for promoting our eternal welfare. "For in many things," as it is written, "we all stumble [1189] ." And though by the daily gift of God [1190] we be cleansed from divers pollutions, yet there cling to unwary souls for the most part darker stains, which need a greater care to wash them out, a stronger effort to destroy them. And the fullest abolition of sins is obtained when the whole Church offers up one prayer and one confession. For if the Lord has promised fulfilment of all they shall ask, to the holy and devout agreement of two or three, what shall be denied to many thousands of the people who unite in one act of worship, and with one breath make their common supplications [1191] ?
IV. Community of goods and of actions is most precious in God's sight.
It is a great and very precious thing, beloved, in the Lord's sight, when Christ's whole people engage together in the same duties, and all ranks and degrees of either sex co-operate with the same intent: when one purpose animates all alike of declining from evil and doing good; when God is glorified in the works of His slaves, and the Author of all godliness [1192] is blessed in unstinted giving of thanks. The hungry are nourished, the naked are clothed, the sick are visited, and men seek not their own but "that which is another's [1193] ," so long as in relieving the misery of others each one makes the most of his own means; and it is easy to find "a cheerful giver [1194] ," where a man's performances are only limited by the extent of his power. By this grace of God, "which worketh all in all [1195] ," the benefit and the deserts of the faithful are both enjoyed in common. For they, whose income is not like, can yet think alike, and when one rejoices over another's bounty his feelings put him on the same level with him whose powers of spending are on a different level. In such a community there is no disorder nor diversity, for all the members of the whole body agree in one strong purpose of godliness, and he who glories in the wealth of others is not put to shame at his own poverty. For the excellence of each portion is the glory of the whole body, and when we are all led by God's Spirit, not only are the things we do ourselves our own but those of others also over the doing of which we rejoice.
V. Let us then make the best use possible of the opportunity.
Let us then, dearly-beloved, lay hold upon this most sacred unity in all its blessed integrity and engage in the solemn fast with the concordant purpose of a good will. Nothing hard, nothing harsh is asked of anyone, nor is anything imposed beyond our strength, whether in the discipline of abstinence or in the amount of alms. Each knows what he can and what he cannot do: let every one pay his quota, assessing himself at a just and reasonable rate, that the sacrifice of mercy be not offered sadly nor reckoned among losses. Let so much be expended on pious work, as will justify the heart, wash the conscience, and in a word profit both giver and receiver. Happy indeed is that soul and truly to be admired which in its love of doing good fears not the failing of the means, and has no distrust that He will give him money still to spend, from Whom he had what he spent in the past. But because few possess this greatness of heart, and yet it is truly a pious thing for each one not to forsake the care of his own, we, without prejudice to the more perfect sort, lay down for you this general rule and exhort you to perform God's bidding according to the measure of your ability. For cheerfulness becomes the benevolent man, who should so manage his liberality that while the poor rejoice over the help supplied, home needs may not suffer. "And He that ministers seed to the sower, shall both provide bread to be eaten and multiply your seed and increase the fruits of your righteousness [1196] ." On Wednesday and Friday therefore let us fast; and on Saturday keep vigil all together [1197] in the presence of the most blessed Apostle Peter, by whose merits and prayers we are sure God's mercy will be vouchsafed to us in all things through our Lord Jesus Christ, Who lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen. __________________________________________________________________
[1185] That is the September, or as we should now say, the Michaelmas Embertide.
[1186] Joel ii. 12, 13, and 15, 16.
[1187] Joel ii. 12, 13, and 15, 16.
[1188] He pursues the same thought in chap. 2 of Sermon LXXXIX. e.g. tunc est efficacior sacratiorque devotia, quando in operibus pietatis totius Ecclesiæ unus animus et unus est census; publica enim præferenda sunt propriis et ibi intelligenda est præcipua ratio utilitatis, ubi vigilat cura communis.
[1189] S. James iii. 2.
[1190] Cf. Serm. LXXVIII. 2. donet licet sanctis suis quotidianam gratia Divina victoriam, non aufert tamen dimicandi materiam.
[1191] Cf. S. Matt. xviii. 19, 20.
[1192] Totius pietatis auctori: cf. Collect for 23rd Sunday after Trinity, which is based on that in the Gregorian Sacramentary.
[1193] Cf. 1 Cor. x. 24; xii. 6; 2 Cor. ix. 7.
[1194] Cf. 1 Cor. x. 24; xii. 6; 2 Cor. ix. 7.
[1195] Cf. 1 Cor. x. 24; xii. 6; 2 Cor. ix. 7.
[1196] 2 Cor. ix. 10.
[1197] Pariter. He thus keeps up the leading thought of this sermon to end . __________________________________________________________________
Sermon XC.
(On the Fast of Seventh Month, V.)
I. We must always be seeking pardon, because we are always liable to sin.
We proclaim the holy Fast of the Seventh Month, dearly-beloved, for the exercise of common devotions, confidently inciting you with fatherly exhortations to make Christian by your observance that which was formerly Jewish [1198] . For it is at all times suitable and in agreement with both the New and Old Testament, that the Divine Mercy should be sought with chastisement both of mind and body, because nothing is more effectual in prevailing with God than that a man should judge himself and never cease from asking pardon, knowing that he is never without fault. For human nature has this flaw in itself, not planted there by the Creator but contracted by the transgressor [1199] , and transmitted to his posterity by the law of generation [1200] , so that from the corruptible body springs that which may corrupt the soul also. Hence although the inner man be now reborn in Christ and rescued from the bonds of captivity, it has unceasing conflicts with the flesh, and has to endure resistance in seeking to restrain vain desires. And in this strife such perfect victory is not easily obtained that even those habits which must be broken off do not still encumber us, and those vices which must be slain do not wound. However wisely and prudently the mind presides as judge over the outer senses, yet even amid the pains it takes to rule and the limits it imposes on the appetites of the flesh, the temptation is always too close at hand. For who so abstracts himself from pleasure or pain of body that his mind is not affected by that which delights or racks it from without? Joy and sorrow are inseparable from a man: no part of him is free from the kindlings of wrath, the over-powerings of delight, the castings down of affliction. And what turning away from sin can there be, where ruler and ruled alike are liable to the same passions? Rightly does the Lord exclaim that "the spirit indeed is willing but the flesh is weak [1201] ."
II. Christ is Himself the Way, which He bids us tread.
And lest we should be led by despair into sheer inaction, He promises that the Divine power shall make those things possible which are to man impossible from his own lack of power: "for narrow and strait is the way which leadeth unto life [1202] ," and no one could set foot on it, no one could advance one step, unless Christ by making Himself the Way unbarred the difficulties of approach: and thus the Ordainer of the journey becomes the Means whereby we are able to accomplish it, because not only does He impose the labour, but also brings us to the haven of rest. In Him therefore we find our Model of patience, in Whom we have our Hope of life eternal; for "if we suffer with Him, we shall also reign with Him [1203] ," since, as the Apostle says, "he that saith he abideth in Christ ought himself also to walk as He walked [1204] ." Otherwise we make a vain presence and show, if we follow not His steps, Whose name we glory in, and assuredly they would not be irksome to us, but would free us from all dangers, if we loved nothing but what He commanded us to love.
III. The love of God contrasted with the love of the world.
For there are two loves from which proceed all wishes, as different in quality as they are different in their sources. For the reasonable soul, which cannot exist without love, is the lover either of God or the world. In the love of God there is no excess, but in the love of the world all is hurtful. And therefore we must cling inseparably to eternal treasures, but things temporal we must use like passers-by, that as we are sojourners hastening to return to our own land, all the good things of this world which meet us may be as aids on the way, not snares to detain us. Therefore the blessed Apostle makes this proclamation, "the time is short: it remains that those who have wives be as though they had none; and those who weep, as though they wept not; and those who rejoice, as though they rejoiced not; and those who buy, as though they possessed not; and those that use this world, as though they used it not. For the fashion of this world passes away [1205] ." But as the world attracts us with its appearance, and abundance and variety, it is not easy to turn away from it unless in the beauty of things visible the Creator rather than the creature is loved; for, when He says, "thou shalt love the Lord thy God from all thy heart, and from all thy mind, and from all thy strength [1206] ," He wishes us in noticing to loosen ourselves from the bonds of His love. And when He links the love of our neighbour also to this command, He enjoins on us the imitation of His own goodness, that we should love what He loves and do what He does. For although we be "God's husbandry and God's building," and "neither is he that planteth anything, nor he that watereth, but God that giveth the increase [1207] ," yet in all things He requires our ministry and service, and wishes us to be the stewards of His gifts, that he who bears God's image may do God's will. For this reason, in the Lord's prayer we say most devoutly, "Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done as in heaven, so also on earth." For what else do we ask for in these words but that God may subdue those whom He has not yet subdued, and as in heaven He makes the angels ministers of His will, so also on earth He may make men? And in seeking this we love God, we love also our neighbour: and the love within us has but one Object, since we desire the bond-servant to serve and the Lord to have rule.
IV. The love of God is fostered by good works.
This state of mind, therefore, beloved, from which earthly love is excluded, is strengthened by the habit of well-doing, because the conscience must needs be delighted at good deeds, and do willingly what it rejoices to have done. Thus it is that fasts are kept, alms freely given, justice maintained, frequent prayer resorted to, and the desires of individuals become the common wish of all. Labour fosters patience, gentleness extinguishes anger, loving-kindness treads down hatred, unclean desires are slain by holy aspirations, avarice is cast out by liberality, and burdensome wealth becomes the means of virtuous acts [1208] . But because the snares of the devil are not at rest even in such a state of things, most rightly at certain seasons of the year the renewal of our vigour is provided for: and now in particular, when one who is greedy of present good might boast himself over the clemency of the weather and the fertility of the land, and having stored his crops in great barns, might say to his soul, "thou hast much goods, eat and drink," let him take heed to the rebuke of the Divine voice, and hear it saying, "Thou fool, this night they require thy soul of thee, and the things which thou hast prepared, whose shall they be [1209] ?" This should be the wise man's most anxious consideration, in order that, as the days of this life are short and its span uncertain, death may never come upon him unawares, and that knowing himself mortal he may meet his end fully prepared. And so, that this may avail both for the sanctification of our bodies and the renewal of our souls, on Wednesday and Friday let us fast, and on Saturday let us keep vigil with the most blessed Apostle Peter, whose prayers will help us to obtain fulfilment of our holy desires through Christ our Lord, Who with the Father and the Holy Ghost lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen. __________________________________________________________________
[1198] The observances of the seventh month, especially of the Day of Atonement, will be found in Lev. xxiii. 26-44, and Numbers xxix.
[1199] Sc. by Adam.
[1200] Generandi lege: others read generali lege, by the universal law.
[1201] S. Matt. xxvi. 41; for this passage, cf. Serm. XIX. chaps. 1 and 2, and LXXVIII. chap. 2.
[1202] Matt. vii. 14.
[1203] 2 Tim. ii. 12.
[1204] 1 John ii. 6.
[1205] 1 Cor. vii. 29-31.
[1206] S. Matt. xxii. 37.
[1207] 1 Cor. iii. 9 and 7.
[1208] From this point the oldest Vatican lectionary (3836) gives a very different ending to the Sermon, which the Ball. consider as genuine as the one given by the other mss., and translated above: in which case they are probably right in inferring that Leo used the Sermon more than once, and wrote these two endings for two different occasions.
[1209] S. Luke xii. 19, 20. __________________________________________________________________
Sermon XCI.
On the Fast of the Seventh Month, VI.
I. Abstinence must include discipline of the soul as well as of the body.
There is nothing, dearly-beloved, in which the Divine Providence does not assist the devotions of the faithful. For the very elements of the world [1210] also minister to the exercise of mind and body in holiness, seeing that the distinctly varied revolution of days and months opens for us the different pages of the commands, and thus the seasons also in some sense speak to us of that which the sacred institutions enjoin. And hence, since the year's course has brought back the seventh month to us, I feel certain that your minds are spiritually aroused to keep the solemn fast; since you have learnt by experience how well this preparation purifies both the outer and the inner parts of men, so that by abstaining from the lawful, resistance becomes easier to the unlawful. But do not limit your plan of abstinence, dearly-beloved, to the mortifying of the body, or to the lessening of food alone. For the greater advantages of this virtue belong to that chastity of the soul, which not only crushes the lusts of the flesh, but also despises the vanities of worldly wisdom, as the Apostle says, "take heed that no one deceive you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men [1211] ."
II. And in particular we must abstain from heresy, and that of Eutyches as well as that of Nestorius.
We must restrain ourselves, therefore, from food, but much more must we fast from errors that the mind, given up to no carnal pleasure, may be taken captive by no falsehood: because as in past days, so also in our own, there are not wanting enemies of the Truth, who dare to stir up civil wars within the catholic Church [1212] , in order that by leading the ignorant into agreement with their ungodly doctrines they may boast of increase in numbers through those whom they have been able to sever from the Body of Christ. For what is so opposed to the Prophets, so repugnant to the Gospels, so at variance with the Apostles' teaching as to preach one single Nature in the Lord Jesus Christ born of Mary, and without respect to time co-eternal with the Eternal Father? If it is only man's nature which is to be acknowledged, where is the Godhead Which saves? if only God's, where is the humanity which is saved? But the catholic Faith, which withstands all errors, refutes these blasphemies also at the same time, condemning Nestorius, who divides the Divine from the human, and denouncing Eutyches, who nullifies the human in the Divine; seeing that the Son of True God, Himself True God, possessing unity and equality with the Father and with the Holy Ghost, has vouchsafed likewise to be true Man, and after the Virgin Mother's conception was not separated from her flesh and child-bearing, so uniting humanity to Himself as to remain immutably God; so imparting Godhead to man as not to destroy but enhance him by glorification. For He, Who became "the form of a slave," ceased not to be "the form of God," and He is not one joined with the other, but One in Both, so that ever since "the Word became Flesh" our faith is disturbed by no vicissitudes of circumstance, but whether in the miracles of power, or in the degradation of suffering, we believe Him to be both God, Who is Man, and Man, Who is God [1213] .
III. The truth of the incarnation is proved both by the Eucharistic Feast and by the Divine institution of almsgiving.
Dearly-beloved, utter this confession with all your heart and reject the wicked lies of heretics, that your fasting and almsgiving may not be polluted by any contagion with error: for then is our offering of the sacrifice clean and our gifts of mercy holy, when those who perform them understand that which they do. For when the Lord says, "unless ye have eaten the flesh of the Son of Man, and drunk His blood, ye will not have life in you [1214] ," you ought so to be partakers at the Holy Table, as to have no doubt whatever concerning the reality of Christ's Body and Blood. For that is taken in the mouth which is believed in Faith, and it is vain for them to respond Amen [1215] who dispute that which is taken. But when the Prophet says, "Blessed is he, who considereth the poor and needy [1216] ," he is the praiseworthy distributor of clothes and food among the poor, who knows he is clothing and feeding Christ in the poor: for He Himself says, "as long as ye have done it to one of My brethren, ye have done it to Me [1217] ." And so Christ is One, True God and True Man, rich in what is His own, poor in what is ours, receiving gifts and distributing gifts, Partner with mortals, and the Quickener of the dead, so that in the "name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, of things on earth, and of things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father [1218] ," living and reigning with the Holy Spirit for ever and ever. Amen. __________________________________________________________________
[1210] Cf. Serm. XIX. 2, per ipsius mundi cardines, quasi per quattuor evangelia, incessabiliter discimus quod et prædicemus et agamus.
[1211] Col. ii. 8.
[1212] The occasion of this Sermon seems to have been either the same or a similar one to that of Serm. XCVI., in which we read that certain traders had come to Rome from Egypt after the murder of Proterius, supporting the heresy of Eutyches.
[1213] For the whole of this chap. compare Lett. XXXI. chaps. 1 and 2.
[1214] S. John vi. 53.
[1215] This (acc. to the Ball.) is the Amen which the communicant said at the Reception of the Elements when the Priest said to Him, Corpus Christi and sanguis Christi: on the Eucharistic evidence against Eutyches, see Lett. LIX. chap. 2, and Serm. LXIII. chap. 7.
[1216] Ps. xli. 1.
[1217] S. Matt. xxv. 40.
[1218] Phil. ii. 10, 11. __________________________________________________________________
Sermon XCV.
A Homily on the Beatitudes, St. Matt. v. 1-9
I. Introduction of the subject.
When our Lord Jesus Christ, beloved, was preaching the gospel of the Kingdom, and was healing divers sicknesses through the whole of Galilee, the fame of His mighty works had spread into all Syria: large crowds too from all parts of Judæa were flocking to the heavenly Physician [1219] . For as human ignorance is slow in believing what it does not see, and in hoping for what it does not know, those who were to be instructed in the divine lore [1220] , needed to be aroused by bodily benefits and visible miracles: so that they might have no doubt as to the wholesomeness of His teaching when they actually experienced His benignant power. And therefore that the Lord might use outward healings as an introduction to inward remedies, and after healing bodies might work cures in the soul, He separated Himself from the surrounding crowd, ascended into the retirement of a neighbouring mountain, and called His apostles to Him there, that from the height of that mystic seat He might instruct them in the loftier doctrines, signifying from the very nature of the place and act that He it was who had once honoured Moses by speaking to him: then indeed with a more terrifying justice, but now with a holier mercifulness, that what had been promised might be fulfilled when the Prophet Jeremiah says: "behold the days come when I will complete a new covenant [1221] for the house of Israel and for the house of Judah. After those days, saith the Lord, I will put My laws in their minds [1222] , and in their heart will I write them [1223] ." He therefore who had spoken to Moses, spoke also to the apostles, and the swift hand of the Word wrote and deposited the secrets of the new covenant [1224] in the disciples' hearts: there were no thick clouds surrounding Him as of old, nor were the people frightened off from approaching the mountain by frightful sounds and lightning [1225] , but quietly and freely His discourse reached the ears of those who stood by: that the harshness of the law might give way before the gentleness of grace, and "the spirit of adoption" might dispel the terrors of bondage [1226] .
II. The blessedness of humility discussed.
The nature then of Christ's teaching is attested by His own holy statements: that they who wish to arrive at eternal blessedness may understand the steps of ascent to that high happiness. "Blessed," He saith, "are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven [1227] ." It would perhaps be doubtful what poor He was speaking of, if in saying "blessed are the poor" He had added nothing which would explain the sort of poor: and then that poverty by itself would appear sufficient to win the kingdom of heaven which many suffer from hard and heavy necessity. But when He says "blessed are the poor in spirit," He shows that the kingdom of heaven must be assigned to those who are recommended by the humility of their spirits rather than by the smallness of their means. Yet it cannot be doubted that this possession of humility is more easily acquired by the poor than the rich: for submissiveness is the companion of those that want, while loftiness of mind dwells with riches [1228] . Notwithstanding, even in many of the rich is found that spirit which uses its abundance not for the increasing of its pride but on works of kindness, and counts that for the greatest gain which it expends in the relief of others' hardships. It is given to every kind and rank of men to share in this virtue, because men may be equal in will, though unequal in fortune: and it does not matter how different they are in earthly means, who are found equal in spiritual possessions. Blessed, therefore, is poverty which is not possessed with a love of temporal things, and does not seek to be increased with the riches of the world, but is eager to amass heavenly possessions.
III. Scriptural examples of humility.
Of this high-souled humility the Apostles first [1229] , after the Lord, have given us example, who, leaving all that they had without difference at the voice of the heavenly Master, were turned by a ready change from the catching of fish to be fishers of men, and made many like themselves through the imitation of their faith, when with those first-begotten sons of the Church, "the heart of all was one, and the spirit one, of those that believed [1230] :" for they, putting away the whole of their things and possessions, enriched themselves with eternal goods, through the most devoted poverty, and in accordance with the Apostles' preaching rejoiced to have nothing of the world and possess all things with Christ. Hence the blessed Apostle Peter, when he was going up into the temple, and was asked for alms by the lame man, said, "Silver and gold is not mine, but what I have that I give thee: in the Name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, arise and walk [1231] ." What more sublime than this humility? what richer than this poverty? He hath not stores of money [1232] , but he hath gifts of nature. He whom his mother had brought forth lame from the womb, is made whole by Peter with a word; and he who gave not Cæsar's image in a coin, restored Christ's image on the man. And by the riches of this treasure not he only was aided whose power of walking was restored, but 5,000 men also, who then believed at the Apostle's exhortation on account of the wonder of this cure. And that poor man who had not what to give to the asker, bestowed so great a bounty of Divine Grace, that, as he had set one man straight on his feet, so he healed these many thousands of believers in their hearts, and made them "leap as an hart" in Christ whom he had found limping in Jewish unbelief.
IV. The blessedness of mourning discussed.
After the assertion of this most happy humility, the Lord hath added, saying, "Blessed are they which mourn, for they shall be comforted [1233] ." This mourning, beloved, to which eternal comforting is promised, is not the same as the affliction of this world: nor do those laments which are poured out in the sorrowings of the whole human race make any one blessed. The reason for holy groanings, the cause of blessed tears, is very different. Religious grief mourns sin either that of others' or one's own: nor does it mourn for that which is wrought by God's justice, but it laments over that which is committed by man's iniquity, where he that does wrong is more to be deplored than he who suffers it, because the unjust man's wrongdoing plunges him into punishment, but the just man's endurance leads him on to glory.
V. The blessedness of the meek.
Next the Lord says: "blessed are the meek, for they shall possess the earth by inheritance [1234] ." To the meek and gentle, to the humble and modest, and to those who are prepared to endure all injuries, the earth is promised for their possession. And this is not to be reckoned a small or cheap inheritance, as if it were distinct from our heavenly dwelling, since it is no other than these who are understood to enter the kingdom of heaven. The earth, then, which is promised to the meek, and is to be given to the gentle in possession, is the flesh of the saints, which in reward for their humility will be changed in a happy resurrection, and clothed with the glory of immortality, in nothing now to act contrary to the spirit, and to be in complete unity and agreement with the will of the soul [1235] . For then the outer man will be the peaceful and unblemished possession of the inner man: then the mind, engrossed in beholding God, will be hampered by no obstacles of human weakness nor will it any more have to be said "The body which is corrupted, weigheth upon the soul, and its earthly house presseth down the sense which thinketh many things [1236] :" for the earth will not struggle against its tenant, and will not venture on any insubordination against the rule of its governor. For the meek shall possess it in perpetual peace, and nothing shall be taken from their rights, "when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality [1237] :" that their danger may turn into reward, and what was a burden become an honour [1238] .
VI. The blessedness of desiring righteousness.
After this the Lord goes on to say: "blessed are they who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be satisfied [1239] ." It is nothing bodily, nothing earthly, that this hunger, this thirst seeks for: but it desires to be satiated with the good food of righteousness, and wants to be admitted to all the deepest mysteries, and be filled with the Lord Himself. Happy the mind that craves this food and is eager for such drink: which it certainly would not seek for if it had never tasted of its sweetness. But hearing the Prophet's spirit saying to him: "taste and see that the Lord is sweet [1240] ;" it has received some portion of sweetness from on high, and blazed out into love of the purest pleasure, so that spurning all things temporal, it is seized with the utmost eagerness for eating and drinking righteousness, and grasps the truth of that first commandment which says: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God out of all thy heart, and out of all thy mind, and out of all thy strength [1241] :" since to love God is nothing else but to love righteousness [1242] . In fine, as in that passage the care for one's neighbour is joined to the love of God, so, too, here the virtue of mercy is linked to the desire for righteousness, and it is said:
VII. The blessedness of the merciful.
"Blessed are the merciful, for God shall have mercy on them [1243] ." Recognize, Christian, the worth of thy wisdom, and understand to what rewards thou art called, and by what methods of discipline thou must attain thereto. Mercy wishes thee to be merciful, righteousness to be righteous, that the Creator may be seen in His creature, and the image of God may be reflected in the mirror of the human heart expressed by the lines of imitation. The faith of those who do good [1244] is free from anxiety: thou shalt have all thy desires, and shalt obtain without end what thou lovest. And since through thine alms-giving all things are pure to thee, to that blessedness also thou shalt attain which is promised in consequence where the Lord says:
VIII. The blessedness of a pure heart.
"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God [1245] ." Great is the happiness, beloved, of him for whom so great a reward is prepared. What, then, is it to have the heart pure, but to strive after those virtues which are mentioned above? And how great the blessedness of seeing God, what mind can conceive, what tongue declare? And yet this shall ensue when man's nature is transformed, so that no longer "in a mirror," nor "in a riddle," but "face to face [1246] " it sees the very Godhead "as He is [1247] ," which no man could see [1248] ; and through the unspeakable joy of eternal contemplation obtains that "which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither has entered into the heart of man [1249] ." Rightly is this blessedness promised to purity of heart. For the brightness of the true light will not be able to be seen by the unclean sight: and that which will be happiness to minds that are bright and clean, will be a punishment to those that are stained. Therefore, let the mists of earth's vanities be shunned, and your inward eyes purged from all the filth of wickedness, that the sight may be free to feed on this great manifestation of God. For to the attainment of this we understand what follows to lead.
IX. The blessedness of peace-making.
"Blessed are the peace-makers, for they shall be called the sons of God [1250] ." This blessedness, beloved, belongs not to any and every kind of agreement and harmony, but to that of which the Apostle speaks: "have peace towards God [1251] ;" and of which the Prophet David speaks: "Much peace have they that love Thy law, and they have no cause of offences [1252] ." This peace even the closest ties of friendship and the exactest likeness of mind do not really gain, if they do not agree with God's will. Similarity of bad desires, leagues in crimes, associations of vice, cannot merit this peace. The love of the world does not consort with the love of God, nor doth he enter the alliance of the sons of God who will not separate himself from the children of this generation. [1253] Whereas they who are in mind always with God, "giving diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace [1254] ," never dissent from the eternal law, uttering that prayer of faith, "Thy will be done as in heaven so on earth [1255] ." These are "the peacemakers," these are thoroughly of one mind, and fully harmonious, and are to be called sons "of God and joint-heirs with Christ [1256] ," because this shall be the record of the love of God and the love of our neighbour, that we shall suffer no calamities, be in fear of no offence, but all the strife of trial ended, rest in God's most perfect peace, through our Lord, Who, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, liveth and reigneth for ever and ever. Amen. __________________________________________________________________
[1219] Cf. S. Matt. iv. 23, 24.
[1220] Divina eruditone firmandos = tous didachthesomenous, a common form of expression in Leo. Cf. Lett. XXVIII. the Tome, chap. 1, quod voce omnium regenerandorum (= ton anagennethesomenon), depromitur.
[1221] Or testament (Lat. testamentum).
[1222] In sensu ipsorum.
[1223] Jer. xxxi. 31 and part of 33: the passage is quoted in full, Heb. viii. 8-12.
[1224] Or testament (Lat. testamentum).
[1225] Cf. Heb. xii. 18 and foll.
[1226] S. Paul's language (Rom. viii. 15) is in his mind.
[1227] Matt. v. 3.
[1228] Et illis in tenuitate amica est mansuetudo et istis divitiis familiaris elatio.
[1229] The mss. vary between primum and primi. The rendering above given practically represents either. If primi, however, is read, it may be questioned whether the true rendering is not "the first apostles after the Lord," which would be interesting as suggesting that S. Leo did not necessarily confine the title "apostle" to the Twelve.
[1230] Acts iv. 32.
[1231] Acts iii. 6.
[1232] Præsidia pecuniæ.
[1233] S. Matt. v. 4.
[1234] S. Matt. v. 5. It will be observed that Leo's order for the 2nd and 3rd beatitudes is that of the English version, not that of the Vulgate.
[1235] In nullo iam spiritui futura contraria et cum voluntate animi perfectæ unitatis habitura consensum: compare S. Aug. de Fide et symbolo, cap. 23, "est autem animæ natura perfecta cum spiritui suo subditur et cum sequitur sequentum Deum--non est desperandum etiam corpus restitui naturæ propriæ--tempore opportuno in novissima tuba, cum mortui resurgent incorrupti et nos immutabimur." The interpretation of this beatitude in this way is fantastic, and very strange to modern notions.
[1236] Wisdom ix. 15.
[1237] 1 Cor. xv. 53.
[1238] Quod fuit oneri, sit honori, the play on the words (which is quite classical) may perhaps be represented by the difference between onerous and honorary.
[1239] S. Matt. v. 6.
[1240] Ps. xxxiv. 8: suavis, A.V. and R.V. good, P.B.V. gracious, LXX. chrestos.
[1241] Deut. vi. 5, quoted, it will be remembered, by our Lord, as "the first and great commandment" in the law, S. Matt. xxii. 37; S. Mark xii. 30; S. Luke x. 27.
[1242] The two words for "love" here are different, and speak for themselves, diligere (agapan) Deum and amare (eran) iustitiam.
[1243] S. Matt. v. 7.
[1244] Operantium: operatio is the regular patristic term for the doing of charitable actions; for this application of the beatitude and its promised reward, compare Ps. xli. 1-3.
[1245] S. Matt. v. 8.
[1246] 1 Cor. xiii. 12.
[1247] 1 John iii. 2.
[1248] Exod. xxxiii. 20; John. i. 18; 1 Tim. vi. 16.
[1249] Is. lxiv. 4 ; 1 Cor. ii. 9.
[1250] S. Matt. v. 9.
[1251] Rom. v. 1, where "we have" or "let us have" is the exact phrase.
[1252] Ps. cxix. 165.
[1253] A carnali generatione.
[1254] Eph. iv. 3.
[1255] S. Matt. vi. 10.
[1256] Rom. viii. 17. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
THE
Book of Pastoral Rule,
and
Selected Epistles,
Of Gregory The Great Bishop Of Rome,
OF
GREGORY THE GREAT
BISHOP OF ROME,
Translated, with Introduction, Notes, and Indices,
by the
REV. jAMES bARMBY, d.d.,
vICAR OF nORTHALLERTON, yORKSHIRE. __________________________________________________________________
Prefatory Note.
------------------------
The Text followed in these Translations is the Benedictine one, as given by Migne in Patrologia, Vol. LXXVII., Sancti Gregorii Magni, Vol. III. The same Text of the Regula Pastoralis has been published with an English Translation by the Rev. H. R. Bramley (James Parker and Co., 1874). The Translation now given is an original one, though the translator desires to express his obligations to his predecessor in the same task. The selection of Epistles translated has been made with the view of exhibiting Gregory's various activities, his various styles of correspondence, his views and character, as well as of illustrating the history of his time. Those which relate to certain important subjects--such as the Lombard invasion, the English Mission, the dispute about the title of OEcumenical Bishop,' correspondence with the Emperors and with the Potentates of Gaul--have been given in their entirety. Of such as relate to subjects of less moment specimens only have been selected, but sufficient, it is hoped, for presenting a picture of the writer under his various aspects, and in his various spheres of work. It is hoped also that the appended notes may serve to shew the connexion of the several Epistles with each other, and with the circumstances they refer to, as well as to explain obscure words or passages. For a better understanding of the correspondence relating to the Church in Gaul, a pedigree of the contemporary Merovingian Kings is appended. __________________________________________________________________
Prolegomena.
------------------------
FOR an understanding of Gregory's position, and of the purport of a great part of those of his epistles which are translated in this Series, a brief survey of the state of things, politically and ecclesiastically, at the time of his accession may in the first place be of service. There was now no separate Emperor of the West; what remained of the once great Western Empire being governed in the name of the Eastern Emperor, who had his court at Constantinople, by the Exarch of Italy, resident at Ravenna. The Kingdom of the Goths in Italy had ceased to be, the country having been recovered from them under Justinian about half a century before Gregory's accession, as well as the province of Africa from the Vandals.
But the Emperor's hold on Italy was limited and precarious, a large portion of it being already occupied by the Lombards, whose first invasion, under Alboin, had been in 568: and accordingly Gregory, writing in the thirteenth Indiction (a.d. 594-5), speaks of their having been in Italy for twenty-seven years, and in the sixth Indiction (a.d. 602-3) of their having been there for thirty-five years [Epp., Lib. V., Ep. 21, and Lib. XIII., Ep. 38]. Subsequently the Lombard King Autharis had advanced on Alboin's conquests, and is said to have proceeded to Rhegium, at the very toe of Italy, and there, riding up to a column on the shore through the tidal waves, to have touched it with the point of his spear and said, "So far shall extend the boundary of the Lombards" (Paul. Warnefr., de gestis Longob., III. 33]. Autharis died in the first year of Gregory's popedom [Epp., Lib. I., Ep. 17], and was succeeded by Agilulph, previously duke of Turin, whom Theodelinda, the widow of the deceased king, had selected as her consort. Under him, his royal seat being at Ticinum (Pavia), the Lombard dominion included the greater part of Northern Italy, reaching northward to the Alpine passes, the two great dukedoms of Spoletum and Beneventum in Southern Italy, with partial hold on Tuscia and elsewhere. The only parts that now distinctly acknowledged the sway of the Exarch were the Exarchate of Ravenna, on the eastern side of Italy, with Istria and Venetia further north, the duchies of Rome and Naples on the western side, portions of territory at the heel and toe of Italy, and the islands of Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica. But beyond the limits of their actual occupation the Lombards kept the country in a continual state of disturbance and alarm; a great part of it appears to have been debatable ground, and no one could say definitely to whom it belonged.
No previous invaders seem to have been viewed by contemporaries with more horror, or painted in blacker colours, than the Lombards. Their Arian Christianity does not appear to have rendered them less odious than heathens would have been, or to have softened their alleged savagery. Gregory repeatedly in his letters speaks in the strongest possible terms of the misery of Italy "among the swords of the Lombards:" and it was doubtless the state of general distress thence arising, together with disorganization of the country from other causes, and the prevalence of calamity on whatever side he looked, that caused him continually to express his conviction that the signs of the times betokened the speedy approach of the Second Advent. It is in connexion with such a state of things that he stands out prominently as a political administrator of no common order. His position was one of peculiar difficulty. Though virtually, as bishop, the ruler of Rome, he was not a temporal potentate with power to act independently. He was but a subject of the Emperor, as he continually acknowledged, under the dominion of the Exarch of Ravenna, and possessed theoretically of spiritual jurisdiction only. And in his efforts to do good he was continually thwarted. He complains repeatedly in his letters of the insufficient aid afforded him by the distant Emperor, the counteraction of his own designs by the Exarch, and the corruption and iniquitous conduct of the imperial officers in Italy, which in more than one place he describes as even more trying than the oppressions of the Lombards. Still, in virtue of his high and influential position as bishop of old Rome, his commanding character, his indefatigable zeal, and his diplomatic talents, he did exert great political influence; and whatever success was attained in the defence of Italy against further aggression, or in effecting truces with the enemy, to him alone such success appears to have been due. Many of the letters translated in this volume shew his activity in this regard. A short summary of what may be gathered from them will be given below. All Europe, to the north of Italy, was now severed from the Western Empire. Britain had long been relinquished: the old provinces of Gaul were ruled and contended for by the descendants of Clovis of the Merovingian dynasty: Spain, with Narbonensian Gaul, was an independent Visigothic kingdom. The relations of these kingdoms to the Empire were at this time amicable; and it was in ecclesiastical, and not temporal, matters that Gregory had dealings with them, as will appear below.
His talents and activity in secular affairs were shewn also in his management of the possessions in various quarters with which the See of Rome had been endowed, known as "St. Peter's patrimony." In Sicily especially, and also in Campania, Calabria, Dalmatia and elsewhere, and to a small extent in Gaul, the Roman Church held lands so called, over all of which Gregory exercised personal superintendence by letters to his various agents, shewing a remarkable knowledge of the state of things in the several localities, and giving minute directions. While, on the one hand, he took care that the Church should not be defrauded of her just dues, on the other hand we find him repeatedly and strongly forbidding any unjust claims, or any oppression of the natives who cultivated the Church lands. The patrimony was commonly managed, under him, by agents on the spot, called rectores patrimonii, and often by deacons, or subdeacons, sent from Rome, to control the ordinary rectores, or act in the same capacity. We find bishops also in some cases acting as rectores. There was also a class of officials called defensores ecclesiæ, or Guardians of the Church, who were required to be authorized by letters from Rome under the Pope's hand (see V. 29; IX, 62; XI. 38). These letters of appointment, of which we have specimens in V. 29 and XI. 38, specified the protection of the poor as their primary duty. But their office had a much wider scope. We find them commissioned, not only to carry out various works of charity, but also to maintain the rights and property of churches, to rectify abuses in monasteries and hospitals (see e.g. I. 52; XIV. 2), to see to the canonical election of bishops (e.g. X. 77), and to the supply of episcopal ministrations during the suspension or incapacity of the holders of Sees (XIV. 2), to assist bishops in the exercise of discipline (X. I), and even to rebuke and coerce bishops themselves when negligent of duty (III. 36; X. 10; XIII. 26, 27; XIV. 4). In some cases they were also themselves rectores patrimonii (IX. 18). Further, they constituted a schola, as did also the notaries and subdeacons; and in the first Indiction (a.d. 598) Gregory appointed that seven of their number should thenceforth be dignified with the name of regionarii (as was already the case with the notaries and subdeacons), which gave them rank, and entitled them to sit in assemblies of the clergy (VIII. 14). Though entrusted with such large powers in matters ecclesiastical, they do not seem to have been of necessity in sacred orders, and might marry and have families (cf. III. 21; XII. 25). Some were subdeacons, as Anthemius, subdeacon and defensor of Campania (VII. 23). They might be apt, it seems, to take too much upon them: for we find Romanus, the defensor of Sicily, sharply rebuked for trenching on the prerogatives of a bishop (XI. 37). Though entitled, by special commission from the Roman See, to call even bishops to account, they were not to usurp their junctions. In some cases we find sworn notarii (otherwise called chartularii) attached to the patrimonies in addition to the rectores. Thus Adrian receives instructions as being notarius Siciliæ; and, on his being made rector, Pantaleo is appointed notarius (XIII. 18 and 34).
Notable among the subdeacons invested with authority for the number and particularity of the letters addressed to him is Peter, whom Gregory sent at once in the first year of his pontificate to Sicily, not only to look after the patrimony there and after the supply of corn sent annually thence to Rome, but also, for a time at least, to exercise delegated authority, in matters ecclesiastical, over the bishops of the island (see Lib. 1., Ep. I). From the letters to this Peter we learn a good deal about the way in which the lands of the patrimony, in Sicily at least, were cultivated, and how the revenues were derived from them. (See especially Lib. I., Ep. 44.) They were cultivated by native peasants, called by Gregory rustici, or coloni, who enjoyed the fruit of their labour, subject only to customary dues to the lords of the land; in this case to the Roman See. The principal dues we find referred to were, in the first place, a kind of land-tax, called burdatio, and further, the tithe of all the produce, which might be paid in kind, but seems to have been often commuted for a money payment. Among the prevalent abuses which Gregory peremptorily required to be corrected were excessive valuation of the tithe, irrespective of the current price of corn, when a money equivalent was paid, and in other cases the use of measures of too large capacity, and exactions in various ways of more than was fairly due. He orders schedules to be made and authorised, copies of which were to be given to the rustici in all the farms of the church, shewing what their legal payments were, so as to guard against their being wronged in future. There were other customary payments of smaller amounts, such as fees on the marriage of peasants, which, under limitations, he allows to be continued. It appears also from Lib. XII., Ep. 25, that these rustici, or coloni, were ascripti glebæ, so as not to be allowed to migrate from the estate (massa) to which they were attached, or to contract marriages beyond its limits. The several estates constituting the patrimony were called massæ, each of which might comprise several fundi; and it was customary to let these massæ to farmers (conductores), who were left to deal with the rustici, or coloni, being themselves responsible for a certain amount, whether in money or produce, to the officials of the Church. Gregory directed, among other things, that these conductores, should not be arbitrarily disturbed in their holdings, and that, on their death, members of their family should succeed them, guardians being appointed in case of their children being under age. Sicily was of great importance to Rome, as being a corn-growing country from which especially the Romans were supplied. Among Gregory's temporal responsibilities was that of seeing to a regular and adequate supply, a failure in which might be followed by famine in Rome: and we find him attentive to this duty, giving particular directions as to the procuring, storing, and shipping of the corn. (See e.g. Lib. l., Ep. 2, 44, 72.) In fact, provision generally for the welfare of the Roman citizens, and the general charge of the city, seems to have devolved upon the Pope. And it was doubtless his responsibilities in this regard, together with his more general political ones, in addition to his "care of all the churches," that caused him so continually to bemoan in his letters the billows of worldly business, incident to his office, which overwhelmed him, and hindered his advancement in the spiritual life. Remarkable, indeed, must have been his mental activity and his varied abilities, in that he was able, as appears from his epistles, to make himself accurately acquainted with, and personally attend to, so many matters, finding time also for theological composition and letters of spiritual counsel, and retaining his religious aspirations in the midst of all. And all this is the more striking when one considers the distressing state of health, especially from gout, of which he continually complains, and the fact also that, with his strong monastic predilections, matters of worldly business would be likely to be peculiarly distasteful to him. We get a further view of his multifarious engagements from what his biographer, John the Deacon, tells us of his having himself seen to the fourfold distribution--to the bishop, the clergy, the fabrics and services of the churches, and the poor--of the revenues of the See; his having himself caused to be sought out, and kept a list of, the recipients of charity; and himself taught the choristers in the Orphanotrophium which he had himself founded in Rome. It appears to have been his principle and practice to rely on others for nothing which he could possibly do himself.
With regard to the state of things in the ecclesiastical sphere during Gregory's popedom, it may be observed first, that there was now a comparative cessation for a time of controversial warfare. The battle no longer raged over Arian, Nestorian, Monophysite, or Pelagian heresies; the Monothelitic controversy had not yet begun. Catholic orthodoxy, as defined by the first four Councils, was accepted generally, and enforced by the imperial power, with Gregory's full approval of coercive measures (see e.g. Lib. IX., Ep. 49; Lib. XI., Ep. 46) [1257] ; while outside the limits of the Empire it was professed and upheld by the Frankish rulers of Gaul, and at length at the commencement of Gregory's reign accepted in Spain by the Visigothic Reccared. The Lombards, indeed, with their king Agilulph, were still Arians; but his queen Theodelinda, with whom Gregory corresponded, was herself a devout Catholic. Hence he was not called on to come forward prominently in the field of controversy, for which indeed he does not appear to have been peculiarly fitted. For, though able to state clearly, and give the received reasons for, accepted dogmas, he nowhere evinces any great originality of conception, or depth of insight of his own. He is content to rest on authority; that especially of the four Councils, which he regards as the unassailable bulwarks of the true faith (see I. 25; III. 10; IV. 37), or of ancient fathers of the Church. Nor does he seem to have been well versed in the past history of controversy. An instance of his imperfect knowledge in this regard is found in the letters which he wrote after receiving from Cyriacus, the newly-appointed bishop of Constantinople, his confession of faith, in which Eudoxius, who had been prominent in the course of the Arian controversy, was condemned. Gregory had never heard of this noted heretic, though he had come across the name of a sect called Eudoxiani, and, not finding his name in the Latin books he was able to consult at Rome, he takes objection to his condemnation by Cyriacus (Lib. VII., Ep. 4); and it was not till he had consulted Eulogius of Alexandria, who was more learned than himself, that he was satisfied; and this simply on being informed that ancient fathers of repute had condemned this Eudoxius. "We know him (he writes) to be manifestly slain, against whom our heroes have cast so many darts" (VII. 34; VIII. 30). Again, in writing to the same Eulogius against the sect of Agnoitæ, who taught a certain limitation of our Lord's human knowledge, he appears to draw all his arguments from what he found in Augustine and other Latin Fathers, and he rejoices to hear that Eulogius had found the Greek Fathers (whom he himself, being wholly ignorant of Greek, was unable to consult) consentient (Lib. X., Epp. 35, 39).
But one subject of controversy there was, which especially troubled him; viz., that of "the three Chapters" (tria capitula), consequent upon the condemnation of the documents so-called, and of their deceased authors, at the instance of the Emperor Justinian, by the fifth General Council (a.d. 553). This condemnation had been in fact forced upon the Church by the Emperor in the said Council under his presidency at Constantinople, in spite of the protest of the great majority of the Western bishops, and of the then bishop of Rome, Vigilius. The grounds of objection to the condemnation were, that it was held to contravene the Council of Chalcedon, at which two of the writers whom it was proposed to condemn---Theodoret and Ibas--had been expressly acquitted of heresy; that to anathematize the dead, whatever their opinions might have been, was wrong; and further, that the condemnation was intended to conciliate the Monophysites, to whom the writers in question had been peculiarly obnoxious, and was in fact a concession to their heresy. Nor can it be doubted that a design to conciliate the Monophysite party, still strong and resolute in spite of its condemnation at Chalcedon, had been a main motive with Justinian in forcing a decree against the Three Chapters on the Church. Vigilius, however, had afterwards yielded to pressure, and assented, however inconsistently, to the condemnation of the Chapters; as did his successors in the See of Rome, including Gregory. Consequently several Churches of the West had renounced communion with Rome; and the schism thus arising--as in Liguria, which was under the metropolitan of Milan, and still more decidedly in Istria and Venetia under the metropolis of Aquileia--continued throughout the reign of Gregory. He in vain endeavoured, either by remonstrance or by trying to enlist the emperor's aid, to bring back the Istrian bishops to conformity; and it must have been distressing to him, that even the Lombard queen, Theodelinda, who was so orthodox a Catholic, and whom he esteemed so highly, and corresponded with so cordially, herself could not be induced to accept the fifth Council, so far as the condemnation of the Three Chapters was concerned. In his last extant letter to her, written in the year of his death, he regrets that severe illness prevented him from replying to certain arguments on the subject by an abbot, Secundus, which she had sent for his consideration, but transmits to her a copy of the Acts of the fifth council, and again repeats his constant protest that his acceptance of that Council by no means implied any disparagement of the previous councils, or of the Tome of pope Leo (Lib. XIV., Ep. 12). Further, the schism of the Donatists still lingered in the African provinces, though no longer powerful, and though a series of Imperial edicts had been issued for their suppression. We find Gregory, in many letters, urging measures against them, and more rigid enforcement of the penal laws.
With regard to the spiritual authority over the Church at large, claimed in the time of Gregory, and by him asserted, and the extent to which such claims were then acknowledged, the following remarks may be made.
Beyond the episcopal jurisdiction of the bishops of Rome over their own proper diocese, which comprised only the city of Rome, and their metropolitan jurisdiction over the seven suffragan bishops of the Roman territory--viz., those of Ostia, Portus, Silva Candida, Sabina, Præneste, Tusculum, and Albanum,--they had long exercised a more extended patriarchal jurisdiction, which (according to Rufinus towards the end of the fourth century) seems originally to have extended over the suburban provinces which were under the civil jurisdiction of the vicarius urbis, including the islands of Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica. But, being the only patriarchs of the West, they had long exercised authority, more or less defined, over a much wider area, including Northern Italy, with its metropolis at Milan, Illyricum East and West, and Northern Africa. It is not necessary to attempt any review here of the growth, as years had gone on, of such extended jurisdiction, or of the degree and kind of authority over Churches that had been consequently claimed. Nor need we consider now the well-known instances of resistance to such authority, as notably in Africa by St. Cyprian in the third century, and at a later date in the same province when Zosimus was pope, in the case of Apiarius. For our present purpose it may be enough to say that the bishop of Rome was now generally acknowledged to be not only the sole Patriarch in the West, but also the highest in rank of all the bishops of Christendom. Still, even in some provinces where his authority was not openly disputed, there appears to have been, at any rate, jealousy of its exercise. For proofs of this in Africa, see II. 47, n. 1; IV. 34, n. 1 ; IX. 58, n. 1. For a notable instance in Western Illyricum, in the case of Maximus, bishop of Salona, see III. 47, and note there. At Ravenna also, the seat of the Exarch, there seems to have been jealousy of the claims of Rome, seeing that John, bishop of that See, in a letter to Gregory, though expressing himself as personally devoted to the Roman See, says that he had provoked no little ill-will of many enemies against himself for his defence of its authority (III. 57).
In Gaul, under the Merovingian princes, there are no signs of any dispute of the pope's spiritual jurisdiction, which was constantly asserted, over the Churches there: but the ancient Celtic Churches of the British islands still retained their independence. This last fact is apparent, not only from what Bede relates of the attitude of the British and Scottish Christians towards Augustine and the Roman mission, but also from the tone of the letter of the Irish Columbanus to Gregory, which will be found among the epistles (see Lib. IX., Ep. 127). With the Church in Spain, after its renunciation of Arianism under King Reccared at the beginning of Gregory's episcopate, he seems to have had little communication. He corresponded indeed with his friend Leander, of Seville, about the King's conversion, and wrote a letter to the latter (IX. 122), who had sent an offering to Rome. Further, he sent into Spain the abbot Cyriacus, who had been employed to bring about the assembling of a Council in Gaul, commending him in a somewhat adulatory epistle to one Claudius, who appears to have been a person of influence in the court of Reccared (IX. 120). But for what special purpose he was sent does not appear. There is, moreover, a long document, comprised under XIII. 45 in the Benedictine edition of the epistles, relating to two bishops who were said to have been uncanonically deposed, for the adjudication of whose case one John, a defensor ecclesiæ, is said to have been sent, and to have pronounced sentence. But this epistle is not found in all codices; nor does it appear from it, even if it were considered genuine, whether John's decision was accepted in Spain. On the whole, there is no sufficient evidence, but rather the contrary, of papal jurisdiction being recognized at that time in Spain as it certainly was in Gaul. It remains only to note the historical fact, that the whole Eastern branch of the Church Catholic never at any time submitted itself to the Roman See, notwithstanding occasional appeals to it by bishops or others when suffering under grievances.
With regard to Gregory's own view of the prerogatives of the Roman See beyond the limits of its proper metropolitan or patriarchal jurisdiction, he undoubtedly claimed for it a primacy not of rank only, but also of authority in the Church Universal; and this of divine right, as representing the See of the Prince of the apostles. Such claim had come, in his day, to be the tradition of the Roman Church, which he accepted as a matter of course, and handed on. In assertion of this claim he says in more than one place, "Petro totius ecclesiæ cura et principatus commissa est;" and again, "quis nesciat sanctam Ecclesiam in apostolorum principis soliditate firmatam....Itaque, cum multi sint apostoli, pro ipso tamen principatu sola apostolorum principis sedes in auctoritate convaluit" (Lib. VII., Ep. 40); and he certainly regarded the like authority as residing still in what was called St. Peter's See. But we nowhere find him asserting it in such a way as to merge the general episcopal commission in the Papacy, or to interfere with the canonical exercise of their independent jurisdiction by other patriarchs of ancient Apostolic Sees. He sent according to custom, after his accession, his confession of faith to the four Eastern patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Constantinople, as to brethren: he never, even where his jurisdiction was acknowledged, interfered with the free election of bishops by their several Churches, except where he saw some canonical impediment, reserving only to himself the right of confirming the election (see e.g. Lib. II., Ep. 6; Lib. V., Ep. 17, &c.): and, lastly, his memorable emphatic protest against the assumption of the title of Universal Bishop by the patriarchs of Constantinople, with his total renunciation of any right of his own to assume such a title, has often been quoted as a standing protest against such papal supremacy as has subsequently been claimed and exercised. He seems to have regarded the See of St. Peter as everywhere supreme only in the sense of its being its prerogative to conserve inviolate the catholic faith and observance of the canons, wherever heresy or uncanonical proceedings called for protest and correction. He writes thus to John, bishop of Syracuse, "Si qua culpa in episcopis invenitur, nescio quis ei [Sedi apostolicæ] subjectus non sit: cum vero culpa non exigit, omnes secundum rationem humilitatis æquales sunt" (Lib. IX., Ep. 59). Again, to the defensor Romanus, "Si qua unicuique episcopo jurisdictio non servatur, quid aliud agitur, nisi ut per nos, per quos ecclesiasticus custodiri debuit ordo, confundatur?" (Lib. XI., Ep. 37). Again to Eulogius of Alexandria, protesting against being addressed as Universal Pope, and against the expression, sicut jussistis, "Quod verbum jussionis peto a meo auditu removere, quia scio qui sum, qui estis. Loco quim mihi fratres estis, moribus patres. Non ergo jussi, sed quæ utilia visa sunt indicare curavi....Nec honorem esse deputo in quo fratres meos honorem suum perdere cognosco. Si enim universalem me Papam vestra sanctitas dicit, negat se hoc esse, quod me fatetur universum. Sed absit hoc." (Lib. VIII., Ep. 30). Further, there is the notable fact, that he distinctly accords to the patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch equal shares with himself in the primacy of St. Peter's See;--to the former on the ground of his See having been founded by St. Mark, who had been sent by St. Peter; to the latter because (according to the Clementine tradition, which he takes for granted) St. Peter had been for seven years bishop of Antioch before he went to Rome. To Eulogius of Alexandria he writes, "Cum ergo unius atque una sit sedes, cui ex auctoritate divina tres nunc episcopi præsident, quicquid ergo de vobis boni audio, hoc mihi imputo. Si quid de me boni creditis, hoc vestris meritis imputate, quia in illo unum sumus qui ait, Ut omnes unum sint, sicut et tu Pater in me, et ego in te, et ipsi in nobis unum sint" (Lib. VII., Ep. 40. Cf. V. 39; X. 35; XIII. 41). He wrote thus in his anxiety to induce those two patriarchs to support him in his resistance to the assumptions of Constantinople; but his view of the principality of St. Peter's See not being vested exclusively in the See of Rome remains no less distinctly on record. The view to which he gives expression of the unity of the three Sees may perhaps have arisen thus. The tradition of the peculiarly Petrine origin of the Roman See, and hence its claim as of divine right to supremacy, having come by this time to be accepted in the West, the undoubted ancient jurisdiction, independently of Rome, of the great patriarchal sees of the East in their own regions, had to be accounted for in accordance with this theory: and hence they too were regarded as deriving their authority from St. Peter. Accordingly we do not find Gregory in any of his letters to the patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch addressing them in a tone of command. It is true that in one letter to Eulogius of Alexandria he remonstrates with him urgently for allowing (as was alleged) simony in his diocese; but it is brotherly remonstrance only (Lib. XIII., Ep. 41).
[There is indeed a passage in one of Gregory's Epistles (II. 52) which has been taken to imply a claim to jurisdiction over them. (See note on passage in Migne's Patrologia.) Natalis, bishop of Salona, had disregarded the admonitions of two successive bishops of Rome; and Gregory writes to him, "Quod si quilibet ex quatuor patriarchis fecisset, sine gravissimo scandalo tanta contumacia transire nullo modo potuisset." But the intended meaning may be, not that such contumacy towards Rome would have been scandalous even in one of the great Eastern patriarchs, but that it could not have been passed over by them if shewn towards themselves in their own patriarchates. The words, it is true, suggest the former meaning, but the latter seems more likely to have been intended.]
On the other hand, towards the patriarch of Constantinople, when he considered him guilty of uncanonical procedure, he assumed a distinctly authoritative attitude. On his own authority he declared null and void (as his predecessor Pelagius II. had done) the synod at which the title of oecumenical bishop had been conferred on the Constantinopolitan patriarch (Lib. V., Epp. 18, 21); he entertained the appeal to himself of the two presbyters John and Athanasius, reversed their condemnation by the patriarch of Constantinople, and ordered their restitution (Lib. VI., Epp. 14, 15, 16, 17, &c.); and in a letter to John of Syracuse he says, "Nam de Constantinopolitana ecclesia quod dicunt, quis eam dubitet sedi apostolicæ esse subjectam?" (Lib. IX., Ep. 12.) For the See of Constantinople, though now patriarchal, was not even an ancient sedes apostolica: its bishop had indeed been assigned honorary rank (ta presbeia tes times) next after the bishop of Rome by the general Council of Constantinople (a.d. 381), but this only on the political ground of Constantinople being new Rome: patriarchal jurisdiction had indeed been confirmed to it over the Metropolitans of the Pontic, Arian, and Thracian dioceses by the 28th Canon of the Council of Chalcedon (a.d. 451); but this Canon had been repudiated at the time by Pope Leo of Rome. Hence the popes were ever peculiarly jealous of any new assumption, or uncanonical proceedings, on the part of the Constantinopolitan See, the ascendancy of which signified to them imperial domination rather than primitive ecclesiastical order or prerogative: and hence it is not to be wondered at that on the assumption of a title that seemed to imply universal supremacy Gregory was at once in arms, and asserted strongly all the authority that he believed to be inherent in his own Apostolic See. Such assertion, however, had no immediate effect in the absence of power to enforce it: it was disregarded at Constantinople: the Emperor Mauricius, who alone could have given practical effect to it, was appealed to by Gregory in vain; and, though Phocas, who succeeded him, is said to have issued a decree that "the Apostolic See of St. Peter, that is the Roman Church, should be the head of all Churches" (Anastasius Bibliothec.), yet it is an historical fact that neither Constantinople nor the Churches of the East generally, ever submitted to the claims of the Roman See.
There is no record of the year of Pope Gregory's birth: It was probably about a.d. 540, some ten years after Benedict of Nursia had founded the Benedictine order. He was well born, his father Gordianus being a wealthy Roman of senatorial rank, bearing the title of "Regionarius," which denoted some office of dignity. He received the education usual with young Romans of his rank in life, and is said to have been an apt scholar. The historian Gregory of Tours, who was his contemporary, states that in grammar, rhetoric, and logic he was considered second to none in Rome; and he also studied law. Such education, however, fell somewhat short of what we should now call a liberal one, leaving him, as it did, entirely unacquainted. with any language but his own, and so a stranger to all Greek literature; with no apparent taste, that he anywhere displays in his writings, for art, poetry, or philosophy; and with scanty historical knowledge. He was, with regard to intellectual equipment, an educated Roman gentleman of his day, and no more; regarding the Roman nation as paramount in the world, and not aspiring beyond the studies thought sufficient for Roman citizens of rank, at a time when study of Greek literature and scientific culture had died out at Rome. In later life also, when he had time to devote himself to study and contemplation, he confined himself, with a purely devotional purpose, to Holy Scripture, in which (though of course only in the Latin version) he was thoroughly versed, or to the orthodox Latin Fathers, St. Augustine being his favourite. His condemnation of the study of classical heathen literature by Christians, appears strikingly in his letter to Desiderius (Lib. XI., Ep. 54). Still his early education, though thus limited, fitted him well for dealing with practical matters, for grasping the bearings of subjects that came before him, and for expressing himself clearly and often forcibly thereon; though his style is not free from the artificiality that was probably encouraged by the rhetorical training of his day. He was intended for, and at first pursued, secular occupations suitable to his rank in life; and at an unusually early age (certainly before 573, when he would be little more than 30 years of age) he was appointed by the Emperor Justin II. to the dignified office of Prætor Urbanus. In this early period he does not appear to have been distinguished by any peculiar saintliness of practice or demeanour. He dressed, at any rate, conformably to his rank: for Gregory of Tours speaks of the striking contrast of the monastic garb which he afterwards assumed with the silk attire, the sparkling gems, and the purple-striped trabea, with which he had formerly paced the streets of Rome. But, on the other hand, there is not the least reason to suppose that he had ever been loose or irreligious.
He had been religiously brought up. His father Gordianus is said to have been himself a religious man: his mother Silvia (who lived in ascetic seclusion after her husband's death), and the sisters of Gordianus, Tarsilla and Æmiliana (who lived in their own house as dedicated virgins), have obtained a place in the calendar of saints: and his biographer, John the Deacon, speaks of his early training having been that of a saint among saints. He never, in his own writings, alludes to any crisis in his early life at which he had become convinced of sin, saying rather (as in one of his letters) that, while living in the world, he had tried to live to God also, but had found it hard. But on the death of his father (the date of which is not known) his religious aspirations took a decided form; he kept but a small part of the patrimony that came to him, employing the rest in charitable uses, and especially in founding monasteries, of which he endowed six in Sicily, and one, dedicated to St. Andrew, on the site of his own house near the Church of St. John and St. Paul on the Cælian, "ad clivum Scauri" which he himself entered as a monk, and of which he was eventually elected abbot. The religious views of his age, in which he fully shared, would of necessity suggest to him the monastic life as the highest form of saintliness; and he may have been especially moved by the recent example of St. Benedict of Nursia, whom he greatly admired, and of whom he has left us in his Dialogues many interesting records. In the ardour of his devotion, his life in the monastery appears to have been ascetic to an extreme degree. He is said by his biographer to have been fed on raw vegetables (crudo legumine), supplied to him by his mother, who had become a recluse in a neighbouring cell; and his fasts made him continually ill, and endangered his life. He tells us himself in his Dialogues of one Holy Week towards the end of which he fainted from exhaustion, and was hardly kept alive: but before losing consciousness, being shocked at the idea of breaking his fast before Easter Day, he had requested the prayers of a very holy monk called Eleutherius; and the result was that, returning to consciousness, he remembered nothing of his previous pangs, felt no longer any craving for food, and could have continued his fast a day longer than was required. (Dialog., Lib. iii. c. 33.) Such was the idea then entertained, and by him shared, of the way of attaining to the highest holiness. However he survived all, though the very weak health of which in his subsequent life he continually complains may have been due in part to such extreme self-discipline. Nor did he, it is said, relax his habits of study and prayer in consequence of the debility induced by his asceticism. It seems not to have precluded even energetic action of a practical kind. For it was at this period of his life that, according to John the Deacon his biographer, the well-known incident occurred of his seeing the English youths in the Roman slave-market, and obtaining the leave of pope Benedict I. to undertake a missionary enterprise for the conversion of the Angli, on an expedition for which purpose he had already set forth when the pope, moved by the remonstrances of the Roman people, recalled him to Rome.
Having thus become a devout monk, he remained one in heart throughout his life. His habits of life were, as far as they could be, still monastic while he sat upon the papal chair; and he never lost, and often gave expression to, his ardent longing for a return to monastic seclusion, as alone allowing closeness to God, as well as peace and happiness. See, for instance, what he says on this subject soon after his accession to the Emperor's sister Theoctista (Epp., Lib. I., Ep. 5), or, after longer experience, to his old friend Leander of Seville (Lib. IX., Ep. 121).
But he was not allowed to enjoy for long the seclusion he so much desired; being summoned from his monastery by the pope to be ordained one of the seven deacons of Rome, and afterwards sent to Constantinople to be the pope's apocrisiarius (or responsalis) at the imperial court. There is some doubt as to which pope it was that thus ordained and commissioned him. From a combination of what is said by his biographers, Paul the Deacon and John the Deacon respectively, it seems most probable that it was Pope Benedict I. who summoned him from his monastery and ordained him, perhaps with the view of sending him to Constantinople, and that it was Pelagius II. (who succeeded Benedict a.d. 578) under whom he was actually sent. The office of apocrisiarius was usually filled by a deacon; and hence it is not unlikely that his employment in that office had been in view from the first, when he was called from his monastery and ordained. The popes at this time were in special need of an able representative at Constantinople for procuring, if possible, some effective aid against the Lombards, the Exarch at Ravenna having been appealed to in vain. Gregory remained at Constantinople for several years, probably from a.d. 578 to a.d. 585, first under the Emperor Tiberius, and then under Mauricius, who succeeded to the Empire a.d. 582. There is no extant record of instructions sent to him from Rome till a.d. 584, when Pope Pelagius wrote to him, representing the miserable state of Italy under the Lombards, the imminent danger of Rome, and the inaction of the Exarch, and directing him to press the Emperor for succour. He also desired him to send back to Rome the monk Maximianus, who, together with other monks of his monastery, had accompanied Gregory to Constantinople. This, his official residence in the imperial city, could not fail to be of advantage to him in the way of preparation for his subsequent position, as giving him a practical knowledge of the state of parties there, the ways of the court, and the conduct of political affairs. He also made friends of position and influence there, with whom he afterwards corresponded; among whom may be named Theoctista, the Emperor's sister, who had charge of the imperial children, Narses a patrician, Theodorus, physician to the Emperor, Gregoria, lady of the bedchamber to the Empress, and two patrician ladies, Clementina and Rusticiana. All these were religious persons, over whom he had gained influence, which he did not allow to die. He also formed at this time the intimate acquaintance of Leander, Bishop of Seville, who happened to be sojourning in Constantinople, and to whom he wrote afterwards very affectionate letters. It was at his instigation that he began, while at Constantinople, the Magna Moralia, or Exposition of the Book of Job, which he also dedicated to him in its completed form (Moral. Libri., Epist. Missoria, c. 1; Epp., Lib. V. Ep. 49). For he found time from secular business for devotion and study with the monks who had followed him from Rome, including his particular friend Maximianus, as has been already mentioned.
"By their example (he writes in his Introduction to the Magna Moralia, above referred to) I was bound, as it were by the cable of an anchor, when tossing in the incessant buffeting of secular affairs, to the placid shore of prayer. For to their society, as to the bosom of a most safe harbour, I fled for escape from the rollings and the billows of earthly action; and, though that ministry had torn me from the monastery, and cut me off by the sword of its occupation from my former life of quiet, yet among them, through the converse of studious reading, the aspiration of daily compunction gave me life." He was engaged also at one time in a long dispute with Eutychius, the Constantinopolitan patriarch, who had written a treatise on the nature of the body after the resurrection, maintaining that it would be impalpable, and more subtle than air. Gregory maintained its palpability, alleging in proof that of the risen body of Christ. The Emperor Tiberius at length took cognizance of the dispute, and decided it in favour of Gregory, ordering the book of Eutychius to be burnt. The disputants are said to have been so exhausted by the long controversy that both had to take to their beds at its close (Joan. Diac., Lib. I., c. 28, 29).
Gregory was at length (probably a.d. 585) allowed by Pelagius to return to Rome and reenter his beloved monastery; and it was now probably that he was elected to be its abbot. But Pelagius appears still to have made use of him, a letter from that pope to Elias bishop of Aquileia on the subject of "The Three Chapters" being attributed by Paul the Deacon to the pen of Gregory (De gestis Longobard., Lib. III.).
That period of peace, lasting some five years, Gregory constantly refers to, and doubtless with complete sincerity, as the happiest part of his life. It was interrupted by the death of Pelagius II., who fell a victim to an epidemic disease then raging on the 8th of February, a.d. 590, when we are informed that the whole clergy and people of Rome concurred in electing Gregory to the popedom, as the only man for the place at that time of peculiar trial. In addition to the general distress and alarm caused by the advancing Lombards, the Tiber had overflowed its banks, destroying property and stores of corn, famine was feared, and fatal disease prevailed. Men's hearts were failing them for fear, and for looking after those things that were coming on the earth. Gregory himself often speaks of the signs of the time as betokening the coming end of all things; and in one of his letters he compares Rome to an old and shattered ship, letting in the waves on all sides, tossed by a daily storm, its planks rotten and sounding of wreck. If anyone could pilot the ship through the storm, there seems to have been a general feeling that the man was Gregory. He was most unwilling to undertake the task. When an embassy was sent to Constantinople for obtaining the Emperor's confirmation of the election, he sent at the same time a letter imploring him to withhold it. But the letter was intercepted by the prefect of the city, and another sent in its place, entreating confirmation. Meanwhile Gregory employed himself in preaching to the people, and calling them to repentance, in view of so many symptoms of the wrath of God. He instituted at this time the "Septiform Litany," to be chanted through the streets of the city by seven companies--of clergy, of laymen, of monks, of nuns, of married women, of widows, and of children and paupers--who, setting out from different churches, were to meet for common supplication. It was at the close of one such procession that the vision (not mentioned by any contemporaries, or by Bede) was afterwards said to have been seen, to which the name of the Castle of St. Angelo is attributed; the story being that, on approaching the basilica of St. Peter on the Vatican, Gregory saw above the monument of Hadrian an angel sheathing his sword in token that the plague was stayed. At length, the Emperor's confirmation of his election having arrived at Rome, he is said to have fled in disguise from the city, and hid himself in a forest cave, to have been pursued and discovered by means of a pillar of light that disclosed his hiding-place, to have been brought back to the city in triumph, conducted to the church of St. Peter, and there at once ordained, on the 3rd of September, a.d. 590 (Paul. Diac., c. 13; Joan. Diac., I. 44).
The four Eastern patriarchs at this time, to whom, according to custom, he sent letters immediately after his accession continuing his confession of faith, were John (known as Jejunator, or the Faster) of Constantinople, Eulogius of Alexandria, Gregory of Antioch, and John of Jerusalem; to whom is added in the address at the head of the circular letter, "Anastasius, ex-patriarch of Antioch," who was indeed the true patriarch, having been deposed by the mere secular authority of the Emperor, Justin II. (Evagr. H. E., V. 5). Consequently Gregory, though not venturing to ignore the patriarch in possession, addressed the deposed one also in his circular, and wrote him also separate letters, in which he recognized him as the rightful patriarch, and undertook to intercede with the Emperor Maurice in his behalf (I. 8, 25, 26). On the restoration of Anastasius to his See (a.d. 593) by the Emperor on the death of the interloper, Gregory wrote him a warm congratulatory letter (V. 39).
Of the other patriarchs John of Constantinople was succeeded during Gregory's pontificate (a.d. 596) by Cyriacus, and John of Jerusalem by Amos, and he (a.d. 600 or 601) by Isacius (see XI. 46). But the patriarchs of Jerusalem, though their position was recognized, were not at that time of any great influence or importance.
A brief summary may now suitably be given of some leading events of Gregory's pontificate in the order suggested by the successive Books of his Epistles, which correspond to the years of his reign. His biographer John the Deacon says of him that, having been pope for a little more than thirteen and a half years, he left in the archives (in scrinio) as many books of Epistles as he had reigned years, the last, or 14th, book being left incomplete because of his not having completed the 14th year of his reign (Joan. Diac. Vit. S. Greg., IV. 71). Accordingly the Benedictine Editors of his works have arranged his extant epistles, according to what, to the best of their judgment, they conceived to have been the original order, in 14 books, answering to the successive years of his pontificate. Previous editions had given them in 12 books only, and many of them evidently placed wrongly in order of time. (See Patrologiæ Tomus LXXV. Sancti Gregorii magni; Præfatio in Epistolas.) Hence, supposing the Benedictine arrangement to be on the whole correct, we have in the successive books as now arranged reference to the historical events of the successive years to which the books are assigned. The dates given to the books are according to the Roman method of Indictions, one Indiction being a period of 15 years, and the successive years of each of such periods being called the 1st, 2nd, 3rd year of the Indiction, or the 1st, 2nd, 3rd Indiction, and so on to the 15th. Each Indiction year began with September; and Gregory, having been ordained on the 3rd of September, a.d. 590, which was the commencement of the 9th year of the then Indiction, the date of the first book of the epistles, corresponding to the first year of his reign, is given as Indiction IX.
Book I. Indiction IX. (a.d. 590-1.)
This first book introduces us at once to a view of the new pope's immediate vigilance and activity in affairs secular and sacred that demanded his attention. (1.) We find him providing without delay for the efficient and just management of the patrimony of St. Peter, which has been spoken of above; and this especially in Sicily, whither (as has been also said above) he sent Peter the subdeacon as his agent with large powers. To him also he gave charge to keep him fully informed of all that was going on, and further committed to him ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the bishops of the island, directing him among other things to convene synods annually, and requiring the bishops to submit to his control (Ep. I). This, however, seems to have been only a temporary arrangement, since in the following year he appointed Maximian, bishop of Syracuse, who had been a monk with himself and his peculiar friend in the Monastery of St. Andrew, to act as his vicar in the island. Such vicarial jurisdiction, however, was only conferred on Maximian personally, as was specified at the time (Lib. II., Ep. 7), and was not continued to his successor, though he also received the pallium. [It may be here observed that this decoration, in the time of Gregory, though usually conferred on Metropolitans, did not of necessity imply metropolitan jurisdiction. Cf. Epp., Lib. IX., Note to Ep. 11.] At a later date we find Romanus the Defensor, who had been made Rector patrimonii in Sicily, charged apparently with an oversight of the churches similar to what had been entrusted to Peter (Lib. IX., Ep. 18; Lib. XI, Ep. 37). (2.) We find him also, through his commissioned subdeacons, at once careful to correct the irregularities of monks in Campania, Sicily, Corsica, and other smaller islands; such as their migrating from monastery to monastery, wandering about exempt from rule, and even taking to themselves wives, or having women resident in the same buildings with themselves (Epp. 41, 42, 50, 51, 52). (3.) Frequent directions are given for charitable donations to such as needed them (e.g. Epp. 18, 24, 39); and his apocrisiarius at Constantinople is charged to move the Emperors in behalf of the natives of Sardinia, who were said to be oppressed illegally by the duke of the island (Ep. 49). (4.) For the due election of bishops to vacant Sees, and the visitation of Sees during vacancy, in the case of Churches under his acknowledged jurisdiction, he gives careful orders, as e.g. in the case of Ariminum (Epp. 57, 58), of Menavia in Umbria (Ep. 81), and Saona in Corsica (Ep. 78). The canonical rule, which he was careful to observe, was to leave the people of the place (clergy, nobles, and commonalty) free to elect their own bishop; but still reserving to himself power to reject any unfit person. Thus, in one case, he rejects one Ocleatinus as a candidate for the See of Ariminum (Epp. 57, 58), and in another, in consequence of delay on the part of the electors, he departs from his usual practice by himself appointing a bishop of Saona (Ep. 80). Over remiss or criminal bishops, as soon as he hears of their defaults--whereof, as of other things, he seems to have been speedily informed by his agents--he loses no time in bringing his authority to bear. It was in this, his first year, that he began a long continued correspondence with and with respect to Januarius, Bishop of Cagliari in Sardinia, who appears to have been a frivolous old man of very doubtful character (see Ep. 62, and reff.). Also with and with respect to Natalis, the convivial bishop of Salona in Western Illyricum, with reference both to his own habits and to his quarrel with the archdeacon Honoratus (see Ep. 19, and note with reff.). (5.) There will be found also in this first book letters of sympathy and friendship, such as he never ceased to write, some of which are to pious ladies of rank, including one to Theoctista, the Emperor's sister (Ep. 5), which is further interesting as containing a specimen of his usual way of interpreting Holy Scripture allegorically. Peculiarly charming as illustrative of his warm and abiding friendship is his long continued correspondence, begun in this year, with or with regard to Venantius, who had relinquished monastic for married life (see Ep. 34, and note with reff.). (6.) To be noted also in this Book, are his ineffectual attempts, though apparently supported by the Emperor, to bring the Istrian bishops to submission in the matter of the" Three Chapters" (see Ep. 16, and notes), and his invoking of the secular arm for suppression of what remained of the Donatist schism in Africa (see Ep. 74, and notes). (7.) Lastly, we find, in Ep. 43 to Leander of Seville, the first intimation of the important event of the conversion to Catholicity of Reccared, the Visigothic King of Spain.
Most, if not all, of the subjects above noted, or the like, recur frequently in subsequent years. It may suffice to have drawn attention to them here, noting only in connexion with the following books any new subjects that appear of special interest.
Book II. Indiction X. (a.d. 591-2.)
(1.) We meet in this book with the first allusion to the operations of the Lombards in Italy (Ep. 3); and hence this may be a suitable place for giving a brief sketch of Gregory's dealings with regard to them in the light thrown on the subject by his epistles. The Lombard King, Agilulf (as has been said above, p. vii.), had his headquarters at Ticinum (Pavia), the extensive dukedoms of Beneventum and Spoletum in Southern Italy being in the possession of his dukes. Early in the year before us (the 10th Indiction), it appears that Ariulf, duke of Spoletum, was believed to be marching either towards Ravenna or Rome. (See Ep. 3, which is dated in the Collection of Paul the Deacon and in Cod. Colbert. "die V. Kalend. Octob. Indict. 10," i.e. 27 Sept., a.d. 591.) Later in the same Indiction Gregory becomes aware of his approach, and addresses letters (Epp. 29, 30) to officers in command of the imperial forces with the purpose of urging them to meet the impending danger. Subsequently in the same year it appears from a letter to the Bishop of Ravenna (Ep. 46) that Ariulf was already besieging Rome. Gregory in this letter gives a sad account of the savagery of the besieger outside the walls, his own illness and depression, and the difficulties he had to contend with. He complains, in this as in other letters, of the conduct of Romanus Patricius, the Exarch at Ravenna, who would neither send aid nor sanction terms of peace. Further, troops had, he says, been withdrawn from Rome before the siege, so as to leave it insufficiently defended; and the soldiers of a legion that remained there, not receiving their pay, had refused to man the walls. In these straits Gregory appears at length to have come to terms with Ariulf on his own responsibility; for doing which he was afterwards blamed and reproached as having been duped by Ariulf. (See Lib. V., Ep. 40.) The peace, however, was not of long duration. The Exarch (probably soon afterwards, though the date is not clear) marched himself to Rome, and on his return seized certain cities--Satrium, Polimartium, Horta, Tudertua, Ameria, Perusia, Luceoli, and others--which had been ceded to the Lombards under treaty--perhaps that which Gregory himself had made. (Paul. Diac. De gestis Longobard, IV. 8. Cf. Epp., Lib. V., Ep. 40.) Agilulf, the Lombard King, incensed by this breach of faith, now came with an army from Ticinum, recaptured Perusia, and again besieged Rome. In a letter addressed some time afterwards to the Emperor (Lib. V., Ep. 40), Gregory gives a lamentable account of the misery that had ensued. Since the departure of Ariulf, he says, "troops had still further been withdrawn from the city for the fruitless defence of Perusia, the supply of corn had failed, while from the walls they saw Romans led away with ropes round their necks like dogs to be sold in France." He, with the præfect of the city, also called Gregory, and the military commander Castorius, had done all they could under extreme difficulty to guard the walls, for which he complains they afterwards got no thanks, but rather blame for neglect of duty in letting the corn run short. He himself, when the besiegers arrived, had been delivering his well-known course of homilies on Ezekiel, which he had been obliged to break off abruptly. The last ends thus:--"Let no one blame me if henceforth I cease my speaking, since, as you all see, our tribulations have increased; we are surrounded on all sides by swords; on all sides we are afraid for imminent danger of death. Some return to us with their hands cut off; others are reported to us as taken captive or slain. I am now forced to withhold my tongue from exposition, for my soul is weary of life." How long this siege lasted, or on what terms of agreement Agilulf at length departed, we are not told. Whatever arrangement was made, it was evidently due to Gregory alone. Paul the Deacon says only (De gest. Longob., IV. 8), "that King Agilulf, matters being arranged, returned to Ticinum;" and adds, "and not long afterwards, at the suggestion especially of his wife Queen Theodelinda, as the blessed Gregory often admonished her in his letters, he concluded a most firm peace with the same most holy Pope Gregory, and with the Romans." But it is plain from epistles written subsequently that it was not till some years later that anything like a settled truce was concluded: for it was not till the second indiction, i.e. a.d. 598-9 (if the letters are rightly arranged, as they appear to be, by the Benedictine editors), that we find letters of thanks from Gregory to King Agilulf for peace at length concluded, and to Theodelinda for her good offices (Lib. IX., Epp. 42, 43). In the meantime, as appears from various letters, Gregory continued to urge the Emperor or the Exarch to arrange terms of peace, for which he asserts, though he was not believed, that Agilulf was prepared. He declares also that he could have himself made a separate peace with him so as to secure himself and Rome; but that he had been unwilling to do so, having the welfare of the whole republic at heart. He implies that the Exarch and his adherents were but serving their own ends in opposing terms of peace, their own exactions and oppressions during the continuance of hostilities being even more intolerable than the ravages of the Lombards (see Lib. V., Epp. 40, 42). In an urgent letter to the Empress Constantina he complains also of the cruel oppression of the natives of Sicily and Corsica under colour of raising funds for the war, and begs her to plead with the Emperor, for his own soul's sake as well as for real advantage to the republic, against the use of such iniquitous means (Lib. V., Ep. 41). These letters (if rightly placed) were written in the 13th Indiction (a.d. 394-5), and in the next we find a letter to one Secundus at Ravenna, in which negotiations with Agilulf with a view to peace are spoken of as still going on, which this Secundus is urged to further (Lib. VI., Ep. 30). But it was not, as has been already said, till the 2nd Indiction (a.d. 598-9) that any definite terms appear to have been agreed to (see Lib. IX., Epp. 4, 6, 42, 43, 98): and then, it seems, only for a limited time (see Lib X., Ep. 37;--"indicantes cum Langobardorum rege usque ad mensem Martiam futuræ quartæ indictionis de pace, propitiante Domino, convenisse"); and even so, Gregory does not appear to have felt secure: for in a letter written at this time to Januarius, bishop of Cagliari in Sardinia, alluding to the peace that had been made, he warns him to guard the island well in view still of possible danger from the Lombards (Lib. IX., Ep. 6. Cf. also Lib. X., Ep. 37). After the expiration of this truce (which, as has been seen, was from some time in the 2nd Indiction (588-9) to March in the 4th Indiction (a.d. 601), probably for two years), hostilities having again broken out, a second truce was concluded in September, a.d. 603, as appears from Paul the Deacon (De gest. Longob., IV. 29), until April, a.d. 605: and that Gregory had been instrumental in procuring it through the influence of Queen Theodelinda on her husband, may be concluded from what he says in the last letter he addressed to her, not long before his death (Lib. XIV., Ep. 12).
We thus see how indefatigably active Gregory was in the political sphere of things. Lasting peace or security for Italy at that trying time it was beyond the power of man to bring about: but whatever was done towards mitigation of distress, and temporary cessation of hostilities, or approaches to better understanding with the Lombard King, appears plainly to have been due to Gregory. Nor should we leave out of sight his provision for the redemption of captives taken in war, whether out of ecclesiastical funds or others entrusted to him for the purpose, or by the sale, which he cordially sanctioned, of the sacred vessels of churches (IV. 17, 31; VII. 13, 26, 28, 38; IX. 17, &c.).
(2.) Attention may be directed to epistles 22, 23 in this book in connexion with the spiritual jurisdiction exercised by Rome over East as well as West Illyricum.
(3.) We may observe also the important import of epistle 41, with regard to the exemption of monasteries from episcopal control by Gregory. The constitutions, De privelegiis monasteriorum, therein contained were afterwards promulged by a council under him (called Conciliæ Romanum III., sive Lateranense) in April, a.d. 601, being signed by 20 bishops, 14 presbyters, and 3 or 4 deacons.
Book III. Indiction XI. (a.d. 592-3).
The following notable incidents are referred to in this Book :
(1.) Two instances of the authority exercised (as above said) over the Illyrian Churches being, for a time at least, resisted or disregarded, and of the support of the Emperor being sought, and more or less obtained, in such resistance or disregard. The first instance was in the case of Adrian, bishop of Thebæ Phthioticæ in Eastern Illyricum, as to which see note to Ep. 6. The second and more serious one (which has been already alluded to) was in the case of Maximus, elected and consecrated bishop of Salona in Western Illyricum, in defiance of Gregory's prohibition and excommunication. In this case the resistance was pertinacious and long continued, and it was not till after seven years that the matter was compromised and communion restored. A summary of the proceedings, with reference to all the epistles bearing on the case, will be found in a note to Ep. 47.
(2.) As illustrative of the relations between Rome and Constantinople, the case of John of Chalcedon and Athanasius of Isauria, whose appeal to the Roman See was entertained by Gregory. See note to Lib. III., Ep. 53.
(3.) The beginning of remonstrances, continued through two years, with the metropolitan bishops of Ravenna with regard to their assumption of dignity above that of other metropolitans, expressed especially by their use of the pallium on other occasions than during Mass. From the letters on this subject we may detect, as has been said above, some jealousy at the seat of the Exarch of the authoritative claims of the Roman See. See Lib. III., Ep. 56, with note and reff.
(4.) The conduct of Gregory, at once outspoken and submissive to imperial edicts, with respect to the recent prohibition by the Emperor of soldiers becoming monks. See Ep. 65, note and reff. The incident illustrates well Gregory's habitual deference to the authority of the state, except in matters purely spiritual.
(5.) His requirement of Jews not being allowed to obtain or keep possession of Christian slaves. There are other letters on this subject, viz. IV. 9, 21; VI. 32; VII. 24; IX. 36, 110. Even slaves already in the lawful possession of Jews, on declaring their desire to become Christians, were to be thenceforth free without any compensation to their owners; only that pagans bought by Jews simply with a view to sale might, on their declaring such desire, be sold by such Jews within three months after their purchase of them; but only to Christian masters. It may be here observed that, though such provisions seem hard upon Jewish owners, and though Jews were legally prohibited from proselytising or building new synagogues, yet we find Gregory in other respects very tender towards them, repeatedly forbidding their being at all molested in the synagogues they had, or being in any way persecuted into accepting baptism (I. 10, 35, 47; VIII. 25; IX. 6, 55; XIII. 12). Those on the estates of the Church might indeed be drawn towards Christianity by the prospect of reduced rents (II. 32, V. 8), but all compulsory conversion of them is denounced as wrong and unavailing (e.g. I. 47). On the other hand, with some apparent inconsistency, pagan peasants on the estates might be compelled to conform by intolerable exactions being laid upon them in case of their refusal (IV. 26), and idolaters or diviners were to be reclaimed, if freemen, by imprisonment, or, if slaves, by stripes and torments (IX. 65).
Book IV. Indiction XII. (a.d. 593-4).
In this book we may note:
(1) The continued refusal of many at least of the bishops in Liguria, as well as in Istria and Venetia, to assent to the condemnation of the "Three Chapters" by the fifth Council, and with them of Theodelinda, the Catholic Lombard queen. See Ep. 2 and notes, with Epp. 3, 4, 38, 39.
(2.) The case of Paul, a bishop in Numidia, as indicating the continuance of disinclination to submit fully to the Roman See in the African provinces. See Ep. 34, with note. Cf. also Ep. 7, and IX. 58, 59.
(3.) The directions given by Gregory, and, as thereby shewn, the custom of the Church, with regard to the anointing of the baptized (Ep. 9, and Ep. 26, with note); and also his belief in the miraculous efficacy of the relics of saints, shewn in many other Epistles, but especially in Ep. 30 of this book.
Book V. Indiction XIII. (a.d. 594-5).
(1.) This year is memorable for the commencement of Gregory's earnest protest, continued through his subsequent life, against the title of OEcumenical, or Universal, Bishop (or Patriarch) assumed by the Patriarch of Constantinople. The title itself was not a new one. It appears to have been occasionally given during the fifth century as a title of honour to patriarchs generally, the first known instance being when Olympius Episc. Evazensis gave it to Dioscorus at Concil. Ephes. ii. (Giesler's Eccles. Hist. 2nd Period, 1st Division, Ch. iii., § 93, note 20; with ref. to Mansi, vi. 855). Justinian also had styled the patriarch of Constantinople "OEcumenical Patriarch" (Cod. i. 1, 7; Novell. iii., v., vi., vii., xvi., xiii.). The first known protest against it from Rome was on its assumption, a.d. 587 [1258] , by John Jejunator at a synod at Constantinople, when Gregory's predecessor, Pelagius II., had disallowed the acts of the synod in consequence, and had withdrawn his apocrisiarius from communion with the patriarch (Epp. V. 18, 43; IX. 68). Gregory himself also had, as appears from the epistles above referred to, remonstrated through his representatives at Constantinople with the patriarch on the subject, and had received a letter from the emperor desiring him to let the matter rest (V. 19). But he was now provoked to resolute action by having received a communication from the patriarch in reference to the case of John the Presbyter, wherein the title of "OEcumenical Patriarch" was repeatedly assumed (ib.). The peculiar warmth of feeling and strength of language that mark his lengthened correspondence on the subject, are accounted for not only by the old jealousy felt at Rome (which has been noticed above) of any claim of Constantinople, in mere virtue of being the imperial city, to the prerogatives of an ancient Apostolic See, but also by the title being viewed as not being one of honour only, but as meaning really assumption of spiritual authority over the Church at large. Such assumption could only rest on the fact of Constantinople having come to be the imperial city: it had neither a shew of divine right, nor Apostolic tradition, nor canonical authority to go on. Rome, though for himself also Gregory earnestly disclaimed the title of Universal Bishop, was at any rate an. ancient apostolic See, and viewed at that time generally as representing the authority of the Prince of the Apostles, to whom Christ himself had given the keys. But no such ancient prestige or apostolical commission could possibly be claimed for Constantinople: its ascendency over the whole Church would simply mean imperialism, and imperial domination over the whole Church would in fact have been likely to be its practical result: and thus, in his determined protest, Gregory might well feel himself to be contending for heavenly as against earthly jurisdiction, for Christ as against the world, for God as against Cæsar.
The following is a summary of the correspondence that ensued in this and following years:--
In this year Gregory despatched five letters to Sabinianus, his apocrisiarius at Constantinople:--1. A long one to be delivered to John Jejunator, the Patriarch (Ep. 18), dated Kal. Jan. Indict. 13 (i.e. Jan., a.d. 595), containing earnest remonstrances against pride in general, and against this display of it in particular, and expressing the hope that stronger measures may not be needed. 2. A private one to Sabinianus (Ep. 19), in a bitter tone against the patriarch, attributing the mildness of the letter now addressed to the latter to the Emperor's orders, but promising another by and by, such as would not be relished. 3. A long one to the Emperor Maurice (Ep. 20), earnestly desiring him to disallow the title, and, if necessary, coerce the patriarch to compliance. While acknowledging the Emperor's pious desire to promote peace among the Bishops, he contends that the only means to this end was to quell the assumption of the patriarch, the inconsistency of which with his ascetic habits, and his affectation of humility, are pointed out ironically. 4. Another to the Empress Constantina (Ep. 21), whose good disposition towards the Roman See he had heard of from Sabinianus. His object is to enlist her influence with the Emperor and his sons in the matter; and it is observable how, in addressing her, he speaks in a way he does not venture on to the Emperor, of the peril to her own soul if St. Peter should be dishonoured, to whom the power of binding and loosing had been given. 5. A long one to be transmitted through Sabinianus to the patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch (Ep. 43), with the purpose of inducing them to join him in his protest. He represents the offensive title as an infringement on the rights and dignity of all patriarchs, not claiming in this letter any peculiar authority for the Roman patriarchate above the rest. He bids them not be afraid of the Emperor in the event, which he hopes will not ensue, of his continuing to support the Constantinopolitan patriarch, but to be ready to face all consequences.
In the following year (Lib. VI., Indict. XIV., i.e. a.d. 595-6) we find an epistle, dated August (i.e. August, a.d. 596), to Eulogius, the patriarch of Alexandria only (Ep. 60), expressing surprise that the latter, in a letter received from him had not even alluded to the subject of the former epistle which had been addressed to the two patriarchs. It seems as if Eulogius had either been afraid to provoke the emperor's displeasure, or had attached less importance to the title than did Gregory himself, and so had maintained a discreet silence. In this epistle Gregory expresses the view, which has been alluded to above, of the sees of Rome and Alexandria being both in a sense St. Peter's, in virtue of the latter having been founded by St. Mark, whom St. Peter had sent. He had previously, in a letter to Anastasius of Antioch (V. 39), intimated a similar view of the See of Antioch being also in a certain sense St. Peter's; and in a subsequent letter to Eulogius (VII. 40) he sets forth more distinctly and at length his noteworthy position of all the three patriarchal Sees of Rome, Antioch, and Alexandria, having together the prerogatives of St. Peter's See.
In the following year (Indict. XV., a.d. 596-7) John Jejunator died, and was succeeded by Cyriacus, to whom Gregory wrote on receiving his synodical letter, addressing him in a friendly tone (Ep. 4), but urging in the course of his letter the rejection of the offensive title. He wrote again (Ep. 31) especially on the subject, still courteously, but pressing the matter strongly. To the emperor we find two letters; the first (Ep. 6) approving of the appointment of Cyriacus, but without any allusion to the burning question; the second (Ep. 33), after receiving one from the emperor, in which the desire had been expressed that the emissaries of the new patriarch should be honourably received at Rome. To this request Gregory replies that he has so received them, and admitted them to communion with him, hoping for the best; but that his own representatives at Constantinople would by no means be allowed to communicate with Cyriacus, unless the title were renounced. The emperor had said that the matter was a frivolous one. "Yes (says Gregory) the title is indeed frivolous, but its meaning and its consequences are serious;" and he repeals his continual assertion that whosoever assumes it is the precursor of Antichrist. In this year also he continued his efforts to induce the patriarchs Anastasius and Eulogius to join him in his protest. Anastasius, it seems, had not, like Eulogius, ignored the subject in his reply to the letter that had been addressed to both, but had said that in his opinion the matter was of little moment and not worth making a disturbance about; at the same time addressing Gregory in flattering terms. Gregory, in his reply (Ep. 27), which is somewhat ironical, insists again. To Eulogius also he writes again (Ep. 40), deprecating the too deferential manner in which he had been addressed by this patriarch, and setting forth his view of the oneness of the three sees. The offensive title itself is not in this letter specifically referred to. There is also a second letter to the two patriarchs jointly, explaining what had been done so far since the accession of Cyriacus, and reiterating his protest against allowance of the title. In the succeeding year (Lib. VIII., Indict. I., a.d. 597-8) there is again a letter (Ep. 30) to Eulogius, who appears to have written a third time to Gregory, at length alluding to the title so far as to say that he did not now use proud titles in addressing certain persons, but still apparently not prepared to take any action. As if to make up for such inaction, he had seemingly been profuse in his compliments to Gregory, using the expression, "as thou hast commanded," and calling him "Universal Pope." Such language Gregory, in reply, earnestly protests against, disclaiming for himself, as much as for any other bishop, the name of Universal. In the following year (Lib. IX., Indict. II., a.d. 598-9) we find two letters; one of which is an encyclical one (Ep. 68), to Eusebius of Thessalonica and other Eastern bishops, in view of a synod about to be held at Constantinople, warning them against being cajoled there into assenting to the title, and threatening them with excommunication in case of their complying. From the second letter assigned to this year, which is again to Eulogius (Ep. 78), it would seem that the synod at Constantinople had been held, and that Eulogius himself had been there, though what had been done does not appear. The letter is in reply to one which had been received with reference to a different subject from Eulogius; and Gregory complains that the latter had still said nothing about the most important subject of all, namely the title. He supposes Eulogius to be waiting till he himself shall take decided action; and he accounts for his own apparent delay by saying that he had been unwilling to be himself the immediate author of schism. It seems as if he had felt at a loss what to do. His remonstrances with Cyriacus and the emperor had been entirely unavailing; he had failed to move the two great Eastern patriarchs, or the bishops of the East generally, to take up the question; and he shrank from so serious a step as breaking off communion with the whole Eastern Church. And so matters appear to have rested. We find no further epistle on the subject till four years later (Lib. XIII, Indict. VI., a.d. 602-3), when in a short letter (Ep. 40) to Cyriacus, with whom he appears to be still in communion, he urges him once more to give up the title. There are in the same year two letters, and one in the previous one (XII. 50), as well as two (X., 35, 39) in the third indiction, to Eulogius, in which the subject is not alluded to.
(2) We observe in this year the sending of the pallium to Virgilius, bishop of Arles in Gaul, and with it his delegation (Epp. 53, 54, 55) as the Pope's Vicar in the Kingdom of Childebert. As has been said above (see p. xii.), the spiritual authority of Rome over the Gallican Churches was not disputed; and Gregory exercised it vigilantly by means of letters to bishops, and to royal personages, labouring among other things to move them to put down simony, clerical immorality, and other prevalent abuses, and to assemble synods under authority from Rome for the correction of crying evils. But, though we find no resistance to his spiritual authority, neither do we find any evidence of his appeals to the consciences of the potentates of Gaul having had much practical effect in the directions indicated. Doubtless in a difficult field of action he did what he could; nor need we doubt that the authoritative voice from Rome was at any rate some check on violence and disorder, though the results may not be very apparent in history.
The main divisions of Gaul at this time were Austrasia on the Eastern side, including part of what is now Germany, Burgundy to the West and South, and the smaller Neustria on the North-west. The limits as well as the possession of these territories were continually changing during the contests between the descendants of Clovis, some or other of whom ruled the whole of Gaul; all now professing Catholic Christianity. In the Indiction now before us (Indict. XIII., a.d. 594-5), as is pointed out in a note to Ep. 53, Childebert II., then aged about 25, ruled by far the greatest part of Gaul; and hence the jurisdiction intended to be conferred on Virgilius, when the pallium was sent him, may be taken as equally extensive. We find no instance of spiritual authority so claimed being disputed in Gaul.
Book VI. Indiction XIV. (a.d. 595-6).
(1) This year is memorable for the mission of Augustine to England, the progress of which, as indicated by the epistles, may be summarized as follows. The missionaries having left Rome, probably in the early spring of the year 596, and proceeded as far as the South coast of France, and having there turned faint-hearted, Augustine himself returned to Rome for leave to relinquish the enterprize. Gregory sent him back to his companions with the letter, addressed to them, numbered Ep. 51 in this sixth book. It is dated X. Kal. Aug. Indict. 14, i.e. 23 July, a.d. 596. For a view of the circumstances see note to vi. 51. He was now charged (as he does not appear to have been when first sent forth) with various letters of commendation, intended to speed him on his journey: viz. to the bishops of Marseilles, of Turni (al. Turon:--Tours?), of Arles, Vienne and Autun, to Arigius, designated as Patrician of Gaul, to Theodebert and Theoderic, the two boy-kings of Austrasia and of Burgundy, and to their powerful grandmother Brunehild, who at this time ruled Austrasia as the guardian of Theodebert. The course of the missionaries, after leaving Marseilles, would naturally be up the valley of the Rhone, and so northward as far as Autun, most at least of the letters above named being such as might be delivered on the way. Thence to their place of embarcation for the Isle of Thanet we find no intimation of their route, except that, in passing through Neustria, they were well received and aided by Clotaire II. (nephew of Charibert, the deceased father of Bertha), who at that time ruled the country, having his capital at Soissons. This appears, though there is no extant letter of commendation on this occasion to Clotaire, from a subsequent letter to him (XI. 61).
The landing of the missionaries on the Isle of Thanet was, according to Bede, in the following year, a.d. 597 (H. E., I. 25, V. 24). It must have been early in the year, so as to allow time for the events, to be next noticed, which took place before its close. The next allusion to the mission found in the Epistles is Gregory's exulting announcement to Eulogius, bishop of Alexandria, of its remarkable success, and of the baptism of more than ten thousand Angli as early as the Christmas of the same year, 597 (VIII. 30). The date is definitely given in the letter to Eulogius;--"in the solemnity of the Lord's Nativity which was kept in this first indiction"--The first indiction being from September, 597, to September, 598. In the meantime, as appears from the same letter, Augustine had already been consecrated bishop. The letter says vaguely "a Germanis Episcopis": but, according to John the Deacon (Vit. S. Greg. II. 36), and Bede (H. E., I. 27), it was to Virgilius, bishop of Arles, that Augustine had gone, as directed by Gregory, for consecration.
The next batch of Epistles throwing light on the progress of the mission (after two others, IX. 11 and 108, wherein Queen Brunehild and Syagrius Bishop of Autun are thanked for their attention to the missionaries on their progress) is in Book XI, and thus assigned to Indiction 4, i.e. A. D. 600-1, some three years after the aforesaid letter to Eulogius. It comprises fourteen Epistles, some of which bear their own dates, and others are shewn by their contents to have been written at the same time. It is true that the dates of the dated epistles vary in different mss. with regard to the time of year; but all the mss. agree in giving the same Indiction, viz. the fourth. The occasion of writing was when Augustine, according to Bede and John the Deacon, had sent the presbyter Laurentius and the monk Peter to Rome, to seek instructions on certain points, and to ask for more missionaries: whereupon, we are told, Gregory sent back the messengers accompanied by Mellitus, Justus, Paulinus, Rufinianus, and others, with replies to Augustine's questions, instructions for the constitution of the Church in Britain, the pallium for himself, and books, utensils and relics for the Churches (Joann. Diac. in Vit. S. Greg., II. 36, 37; Bede, H. E., I. 27, 29). We might have supposed from the narratives of John the Deacon and Bede that Augustine had sent Lawrence and Peter to Rome on his return to Britain after his own consecration by the bishop of Arles, and that the new band of missionaries had been sent out without delay. But the dates of the epistles shew, as has been seen above, that several years had intervened, at any rate, between Augustine's return and the sending out of the new missionaries. And indeed Bede himself intimates this in his recapitulation of events (H. E., V. 24), though not in his narrative. For, having given a.d. 597 as the date of Augustine's first arrival in Britain, he gives a.d. 601 as that of the sending of the pallium with "more ministers, among whom was Paulinus."
The letters which these new missionaries carried with them were to the bishops Virgilius of Arles (Ep. 55), Desiderius of Vienne (Ep. 54), Aetherius of Lyons (Ep. 56), Arigius of Vapincum (Ep. 57), with a circular to various bishops of Gaul (Ep. 58); also to Queen Brunehild (Ep. 62), to kings Theodebert, Theoderic, and Clotaire (Epp. 59, 60, 61): to Augustine himself (Ep. 65), together with a long reply (Ep. 64) to his questions [1259] , to Ethelbert king of Kent (Ep. 66), and probably at the same time to Bertha his queen (Ep. 29) [1260] .
One more letter relating to the mission in Book XI. remains to be noticed; viz., Ep. 76, to Mellitus, which was sent after the rest, being intended to overtake the new band of missionaries on their journey through Gaul. Its main purpose seems to have been to modify what had been said in the letter to Ethelbert as to the destruction of heathen temples. See Note to Ep. 76. This is the last extant epistle referring to the English mission.
(2) To be noted also in this book is the first of the ten epistles addressed to the notorious queen Brunehild in Gaul (VI. 5). On her alleged character, and Gregory's mode of addressing her, see note to the epistle.
Book VII. Indiction XV. (a.d. 596-7), and Book VIII. Indiction I. (a.d. 597-8).
Though no historical events of importance come for the first time before our notice in these books, attention may be drawn (1) to Gregory's policy of protecting monasteries from episcopal domination (VII. 12, 43; VIII. 15); (2) his sanction of the sale of church plate for charitable purposes (VII. 13, 38); (3) Specimens of his letters of spiritual counsel, especially to pious ladies of rank (VII. 25, 26, 30; VIII. 22).
Book IX. Indiction II. (a.d. 598-9)
Noticeable in this book are, (1) Gregory's renewed efforts, on Romanus Patricius being succeeded by Callinicus in the exarchate, to reclaim the Istrian bishops to communion with Rome (Ep. 9, 10, 93, &c.); (2) his interesting letter with reference to the ancient liturgical usages of the Roman Church (Ep. 12); (3) the correspondence between him and the Visigothic king Reccared in Spain, assigned to this year (Epp. 61, 121, 122); (4) his continued efforts to bring about the assembling of synods and correction of prevalent abuses in the Church of Gaul (Ep. 106, &c.); (5) the remarkable letter to him of the Irish saint Columbanus, illustrating the differences with regard to the computation of Easter between the Roman and Celtic Churches, and the attitude of the latter towards the Roman See (Ep. 127).
Book XI. Indiction IV. (a.d. 600-1).
Noticeable in this book are--
(1) The letter to Serenus, bishop of Marseilles, with regard to the use and abuse of pictures in Churches (Ep. 13).
(2) Two long letters to ladies of rank at Constantinople (Epp. 44, 45), the first of which is interesting, as in other ways, so for the account contained in it of supposed miracles at the monastery of St. Andrew in Rome, shewing, as many other epistles do, Gregory's firm belief in miraculous interventions; while the second is remarkable, not only for its spiritual counsels, but also for its expression of Gregory's views on the unlawfulness of married persons entering monasteries without mutual consent; on the efficacy of baptism; and on various points of doctrine.
(3) The letter to the bishops of Iberia, setting forth the various ways of reconciling various kinds of heretics to the Church, and containing a specimen of Gregory's controversial skill in his refutation of Nestorianism (Ep. 67).
(4) Evidence of Gregory's unremitted efforts to correct the immorality prevalent among the clergy in Gaul, shewn in his letter to queen Brunehild on the subject (Ep. 69).
(5) The letters relating to the English mission, notice of which has been forestalled under Book VI.
Book XIII. Indiction V. (a.d. 602-3).
In this Book we may note--
(1) Continued correspondence about the Church in Gaul, with references to a church, monastery, and hospital, founded by queen Brunehild at Autun, and to the synod for correction of abuses, long desired by Gregory, for the holding of which she had now requested a fit person to be sent from Rome (Epp. 6, 7, 8, 9, 10).
(2) The important event of the accession of Phocas to the empire (November, a.d. 602), with the letters of Gregory on the occasion to him and to his wife Leontia (Epp. 31, 38, 39).
The tone of high compliment--nay, of adulation--which marks these letters has been justly regarded as a blot, much to be regretted, on the lustre of Gregory's character. There is indeed no reason to conclude that he knew so far of the peculiar blackness of the usurper's character, as depicted by contemporary historians, and evinced by his disastrous and sanguinary reign. And, seeing that it appears from Epistle 38 that he had had no apocrisiarius resident at Constantinople towards the end of the reign of Mauricius, it may be that he had not been fully informed of the cruelties that accompanied the accession of Phocas to the imperial throne;--how, for instance, five sons of the former emperor had been murdered in succession before their father's eyes, and then the emperor himself, their bodies being thrown into the Tiber, and their heads exposed in Constantinople till putrefaction began. But, however this might be, Gregory's high-flown compliments addressed to the new potentates, and his excessive exultation on their accession, cannot but strike one as unseemly as well as premature. Nor is it pleasant to observe his exultant way of speaking of the fall of the late emperor, whose sad fate called for so much sympathy, and to whom he had himself once written in such terms as these:-- "Since a sincere rectitude of faith shines in you, most Christian of princes, like a light sent from heaven, and since it is known to all that your Serenity embraces with all your heart the pure profession which wins the favour of God" (VI. 16). Again, "Amidst the cares of warfare, and innumerable anxieties which you sustain in your unwearied zeal for the government of the Christian republic, it is a great cause of joy to me, along with the whole world, that your Piety ever keeps guard over the faith whereby the empire of our lords is resplendent" (VI. 65). Again, about him, only some two years before his death, in a letter to the patriarch of Jerusalem, "Thanks should be given without cease to Almighty God, and prayer ever made for the life of our most pious and Christian lord the Emperor, and for his most tranquil spouse, and his most gentle offspring, in whose times the mouths of heretics are silent, &c." (XI. 46). Doubtless Maurice's inefficiency with regard to the Lombards had been exceedingly provoking, and perhaps still more so to Gregory himself, his support of the Patriarch of Constantinople in his assumption of the offensive title. And perhaps the gout from which Gregory appears to have been suffering intensely at the time may partly account for his having given vent as he did to feelings of irritation long suppressed. Then, with regard to his adulation of the new potentates, some excuse may be found in prevalent usage, or his own habitual deference to the powers that be, or his policy (apparent also in his letters to Brunehild) of enlisting their support by flattering addresses to the cause of religion and the Church. But still a painful impression remains; though, on the other hand, it may be observed with truth that few great historical characters of whom so much is known are stained by so few disfiguring blots as that of Gregory. It may be presumed that a prominent motive of his paying court to the rising suns was his hope of getting their support against the patriarch. He does not indeed refer distinctly to the title; but in his letter to Leontia (whom, rather than the emperor, with characteristic address, he warns about her spiritual prospects being dependent on the favour of St. Peter) we can hardly mistake the covert allusion. If so, his policy was not fruitless. For, though there is no sufficient foundation for the statement of Baronius, that Phocas formally conferred on pope Boniface III. the title of "Universal Bishop" which had been assumed by the patriarch, there seems to be no good reason for doubting that the new emperor took the pope's part against Cyriacus, who had offended him by his protection of Constantina and her daughters, and that, when Boniface, who had been Gregory's apocrisiarius at Constantinople, himself became pope, an imperial edict of some kind was issued in favour of the claims of Rome. The words of Anastasius, the biographer of the popes towards the end of the ninth century, with reference to it are these: "He (i.e. Boniface) obtained from the emperor Phocas that the Apostolic See of St. Peter, that is, the Roman Church, should be the head of all Churches, because the Church of Constantinople wrote itself the first of all Churches." The authority, however, of Anastasius, who lived in a time of hierarchical forgeries, cannot be relied on without reserve.
Book XIV. Indiction VII. (a.d. 603-4.)
In the course of this indiction (on the 12th of March, a.d. 604) Gregory died. The seventeen Epistles assigned to this last half-year of his life (one of which is dated December) shew no abatement of his care for all the Churches, or his activity in correspondence, notwithstanding his excessive affliction from gout, leaving him sometimes hardly able to speak, which he alludes to in his letter to Theodelinda, the Lombard queen (Ep. 12). This letter was probably written shortly before his death, since he speaks in it of the queen's messengers having left him between life and death, though he still contemplates the possibility of recovery. It is a peculiarly interesting one, not only for this reason, but also as being his last to her. He congratulates her in it on the recent baptism of her infant son Adulouvald in the catholic faith, sends for him a cross containing, as he alleges, wood from the true one, and also jewelled rings for his sister; he bids her thank her husband for peace concluded, and influence him, as she had ever done, to continue it; and he promises her an answer, in case of his recovery, to certain arguments against the condemnation of the Three Chapters by the fifth council, which she had sent for his consideration. It thus appears that to the end of his life he had failed to convince the Lombard queen on this subject, notwithstanding his influence over her, and the cordial relations ever subsisting between them.
The view opened to us through this long series of letters into the mind and character of the great Gregory is of peculiar interest. The man himself stands out before us therein self-disclosed; his very faults and frailties, which a panegyrist would have veiled, giving life and reality to the picture. We may observe in the first place how conspicuous throughout is his unhesitating faith. No cloud of doubt seems to have cast its shadow on his certainty of the truth of Holy Writ and Christianity, and of the divine authority of the Catholic Church, speaking through Fathers and Councils as its exponents. Nor were either his temperament or his training such as to expose him to philosophic questionings. No less clear is the sincerity of his life as inspired and guided by his religious faith. Whatever inferior human motives may appear sometimes, there can be no doubt that his paramount aim was to devote himself to God's service. As was to be expected from the religious ideas of his age, his theory of the Christian life was ascetic in the extreme. Continual compunction, fear of judgment, fastings, tears, almsgiving, and heavenly contemplation, formed his ideal of holiness. Even lawful marriage he seems to tolerate, as a Zoar of escape from temptation, rather than to approve: and for a man to enjoy life as most people aim at doing--to sit, as it were, under his vine and under his fig-tree--appeared to him at any rate fraught with danger. Hence the more of both sexes that were able, and could be induced, to leave the active duties of life for monastic seclusion, the better he regarded it for them and for the world in whose behalf they might thus have leisure to pray. Still, on the other hand, such ascetic views were not found incompatible in his case with tender regard for others in their earthly joys and sorrows, and interest in their family life, as expressed in many kind and sympathetic letters to friends; and he was ever ready to meet their temporal as well as spiritual needs. His charitable donations in all directions were bounded only by his means; all oppression of the poor had in him a resolute opponent; nor can we but be struck by his keen sense of justice and regard for it in all his dealings. His gentle breeding, aided by Christian culture, induced a tone of courtesy, with delicate consideration for the feelings of others, in his letters generally; and he usually softens even rebuke with gentleness. Partly, it may be, to this habit may be traced the tone of flattery, which has been remarked on elsewhere, in his letters to potentates, or to others whom it was his purpose to conciliate; which was such indeed in some cases as to lay him open to a charge of insincerity. On the other hand, however, it is to be remembered that, when strongly moved, he could write with very outspoken boldness, not without a vein of cutting irony, even to the Emperor. Witness his two letters (V. 40; VII. 33) to Mauricius on the two subjects that appear above all others to have distressed and irritated him. In such letters--and especially in some to various correspondents about the title of "Universal Bishop"--there are symptoms, no doubt, of much personal irritation, intensified perhaps by gout, under provoking circumstances. But, if his politic flattery in some cases, and his irritability in others, are to some minds disappointing in a saint, they are interesting to a student of human nature: and it is greatly to his credit that they nowhere indicate any merely selfish aims, but rather zeal--however alloyed by policy or by bitterness--for what he honestly believed to be the cause of God.
As a divine he merits his title of a Doctor of the Church. He was, indeed, neither original nor deeply learned; as a mystical interpreter of Scripture he was fanciful, and often, from our point of view, absurd; owing to his visionary turn and his uncritical credulity he may have fostered, and perhaps originated, some fond fables and superstitions, such as infected the general belief of Christians in the middle ages: but he grasped and set forth clearly the orthodox doctrines of the Church; in treating difficult theological questions he displays from time to time no small power of thought and argument; as a preacher of essential Christian morality he was ever sound and true; nor has anyone more insisted on spiritual communion of the individual soul with God, or more strongly maintained the principle of justice, mercy and truth being of the essence of religion.
His diplomatic and practical talents, and his unwearied industry, have been already spoken of, and need no further notice in this brief final survey, the intention of which is to view him rather in his character as a saint and a divine. __________________________________________________________________
Pedigree of Kings of Gaul __________________________________________________________________
[1257] "Prayer should ever be made for the life of our most pious and Christian lord the Emperor, and his most tranquil consort, &c., in whose times the mouths of heretics are silent, since, though their hearts seethe with the madness of perverse opinion, they presume not in the time of the catholic Emperor to utter the wrong things they think" (Lib. IX., Ep. 49).
[1258] That this was the date may be inferred from Gregory, in Epistle XLIII. of this fifth book, speaking of the synod having been held eight years ago.
[1259] Another letter to Augustine (Ep. 28), though placed in Book XI. by the Benedictine editors, may have been written in some previous year. It is one of congratulation on reported success, and of warning against elation. It seems to refer to the same news, received from Britain, that Gregory announced to Eulogius of Alexandria in his letter to him, a.d. 598, and resembles that letter in its exultant tone. Containing in itself no intimation of its own date, it seems more likely that it was written about the same time with the letter to Eulogius than that Gregory should have let several years elapse before finding an opportunity of congratulating Augustine on his success.
[1260] The only reason for doubting whether the letter to Bertha was sent at the same time with that to Ethelbert, is that in the former the queen is exhorted to move her husband to follow her faith, whereas in the latter the king is addressed as already a Christian. The letter to Bertha is shewn by what is said in it to have been written after the arrival in Rome of Laurence and Peter, and that to Ethelbert, from its date, to have been sent by Mellitus and his companions when they left Rome for Britain. But there is nothing to shew that the letter to Bertha might not have been sent previously. It may be that the news of the king's conversion did not reach Rome till after the arrival there of Lawrence and Peter, and that Gregory had found an opportunity, before sending to Britain the new band of missionaries, of despatching a letter to the queen, urging her to bring it about. There would be time enough for his doing so, since the sending of Mellitus seems to have been delayed for a considerable time, owing, it may be, to Gregory's state of health at the time. See Preface to XI. 64. On the other hand, the language used in the letter to Bertha may possibly only mean that she ought to move her husband to greater zeal in propagating the faith, already embraced by himself, among his subjects. The exact date of Ethelbert's baptism is not known. Bede only says that he allowed the missionaries to preach freely before being himself converted, and that, after his conversion, he compelled no one to accept Christianity. It may, then, be only his reported lukewarmness in this regard that Gregory's exhortation to Bertha refers to. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
The Book of Pastoral Rule.
------------------------
Preface.
The title, Liber Regulæ Pastoralis, is the one adopted by the Benedictine Edition from several ancient mss., being Gregory's own designation of his work when he sent it to his friend, Leander of Seville;--"Ut librum Regulæ Pastoralis, quem in episcopatus mei exordio scripsi...sanctitati tuæ transmitterem" (Epp. Lib. v., Ep. 49). The previously more usual one, Liber Pastoralis Curæ, may have been taken from the opening words of the book itself, "Pastoralis curæ me pondera fugere, etc." The book was issued (as appears from the passage above quoted in the Epistle to Leander) at the commencement of Gregory's episcopacy, and (as appears from its opening words) addressed to John, bishop of Ravenna, in reply to a letter received from him. But, though put into form for a special purpose on this occasion, it must have been the issue of long previous thought, as is further evident from the fact that in his Magna Moralia, or Commentary on the Book of Job, begun and in a great measure written during his residence in Constantinople, he had already sketched the plan of such a treatise, and expressed the hope of some day putting it into form. For we there find the prologue to the third book of the Regula already written, together with most of the headings contained in the first chapter of that book, followed by the words, "And indeed we ought to have denoted particularly what should be the order of admonition with respect to each of these points; but fear of prolixity deters us. Yet, with God's help, we hope to complete this task in another work, should some little time of this laborious life still remain to us" (Moral. Lib. xxx. c. 12 and 13).
The book appears to have been estimated as it deserved during the writer's life. It was sent by him, as we have seen, to Leander of Seville, apparently at the request of the latter, for the benefit of the Church in Spain; and there will be found among the Epistles one addressed to Gregory from Licinianus, a learned bishop of Carthagena in that country, in which it is highly praised, though a fear is expressed lest the standard required in it of fitness for the episcopal office might prove too high for ordinary attainment (Epp. Lib. II., Ep. 54). The Emperor Maurice, having requested and obtained a copy of it from Anatolius, Gregory's deacon at Constantinople, had it translated into Greek by Anastasius the patriarch of Antioch, who himself highly approved of it (Epp. Lib. XII., Ep. 24). It appears to have been taken to England by the Monk Augustine. This is asserted by Alfred the Great, who, nearly three hundred years afterwards, with the assistance of his divines, made a translation, or rather paraphrase, of it in the West Saxon tongue, intending, as he says, to send a copy to every bishop in his Kingdom [1261] .
Previously to this, there is evidence of the high repute in which the book was held in Gaul. In a series of councils held by command of Charlemagne, a.d. 813,--viz. at Mayence, Rheims, Tours, and Châlon-sur-Seine--the study of it was specially enjoined on all bishops, together with the New Testament Scriptures and the Canons of the Fathers [1262] . Similarly at a Council held at Aix-la-Chapelle, a.d. 836 [1263] . Further, it appears from a letter of Hincmar [1264] , Archbishop of Rheims (a.d. 845-882), that a copy of it together with the Book of Canons was given into the hands of bishops before the altar at their consecration, and that they were admonished to frame their lives accordingly.
The work is well worthy of its old repute, being the best of its kind, and profitable for all ages. Two similar works had preceded it. First, that of Gregory Nazianzen (c. a.d. 362), known as his second oration, and called tou autou apologetikos , which was written, like that of the later Gregory, to excuse the writer's reluctance to accept the episcopate, and to set forth the responsibilities of the office. It is obvious, from comparing the two treatises, that the earlier had suggested the later one; and indeed Pope Gregory acknowledges his indebtedness in his prologue to the second book of the Regula. The second somewhat similar treatise had been that of Chrysostom, De Sacerdotio,' in six books, c. a.d. 382. It also sets forth the awful responsibilities of the episcopal office; but there are no signs of pope Gregory having drawn from it.
It is to be observed that the subject of all these treatises is the office of episcopacy; not the pastoral or priestly office in its wider sense, as now commonly understood: and it is noteworthy how prominent in Gregory's view of it are the duties of preaching and spiritual guidance of souls. It is regarded, indeed, in the first place as an office of government--locus regiminis, culmen regiminis, denote it frequently--and hence the exercise of discipline comes prominently in; and the chief pastor is viewed also as an intercessor between his flock and God--See e.g. I. 10;--but it is especially as a teacher, and a physician of souls, that he is spoken of throughout the treatise; as one whose peculiar duty it is to be conversant with all forms of spiritual disease, and so be able to suit his treatment to all cases, to "preach the word, reprove, rebuke, exhort, with all long suffering and doctrine," and both by precept and example guide souls in the way of salvation. Gregory had not studied in vain the Pastoral Epistles of St. Paul. Remarkable indeed is his own discriminating insight, displayed throughout, into human characters and motives, and his perception of the temptations to which circumstances or temperament render various people--pastors as well as members of their flocks--peculiarly liable. No less striking, in this as in other works of his, is his intimate acquaintance with the whole of Holy Scripture. He knew it indeed through the Latin version only; his critical knowledge is frequently at fault; and far-fetched mystical interpretations, such as he delighted in, abound. But as a true expounder of its general moral and religious teaching he well deserves his name as one of the great Doctors of the Church. And, further, notwithstanding all his reverence for Councils and Fathers, as paramount authorities in matters of faith, it is to Scripture that he ever appeals as the final authority for conduct and belief. __________________________________________________________________
[1261] Edited, with an English version, by Henry Sweet of Balliol College, and published for the Early English Text Society, 1871, Part I., p. 7.
[1262] Concil. Mogunt. Præfat.;--Concil. Rhemens. II., Canon x.;--Concil. Turon. III., Canon iii.;--Concil. Cabilon. II., Canon i.
[1263] Concil. Aquisgran., cap. i., De Vita Episcoporum, can. 7, 9, 10; cap. 2, De doctrina episcoporum.
[1264] Hincmar. Opp. tom. ii. p. 389, Ed. Paris, 1645. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
The Book of Pastoral Rule
of
Saint Gregory the Great,
Roman Pontiff,
to John, Bishop of the City of Ravenna.
------------------------
Part I.
Gregory to his most reverend and most holy brother and fellow-bishop, John.
With kind and humble intent thou reprovest me, dearest brother, for having wished by hiding myself to fly from the burdens of pastoral care; as to which, lest to some they should appear light, I express with my pen in the book before you all my own estimate of their heaviness, in order both that he who is free from them may not unwarily seek them, and that he who has so sought them may tremble for having got them. This book is divided into four separate heads of argument, that it may approach the reader's mind by allegations arranged in order--by certain steps, as it were. For, as the necessity of things requires, we must especially consider after what manner every one should come to supreme rule; and, duly arriving at it, after what manner he should live; and, living well, after what manner he should teach; and, teaching aright, with how great consideration every day he should become aware of his own infirmity; lest either humility fly from the approach, or life be at variance with the arrival, or teaching be wanting to the life, or presumption unduly exalt the teaching. Wherefore, let fear temper the desire; but afterwards, authority being assumed by one who sought it not, let his life commend it. But then it is necessary that the good which is displayed in the life of the pastor should also be propagated by his speech. And at last it remains that, whatever works are brought to perfection, consideration of our own infirmity should depress us with regard to them, lest the swelling of elation extinguish even them before the eyes of hidden judgment. But inasmuch as there are many, like me in unskilfulness, who, while they know not how to measure themselves, are covetous of teaching what they have not learned; who estimate lightly the burden of authority in proportion as they are ignorant of the pressure of its greatness; let them be reproved from the very beginning of this book; so that, while, unlearned and precipitate, they desire to hold the citadel of teaching, they may be repelled at the very door of our discourse from the ventures of their precipitancy. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter I.
That the unskilful venture not to approach an office of authority.
No one presumes to teach an art till he has first, with intent meditation, learnt it. What rashness is it, then, for the unskilful to assume pastoral authority, since the government of souls is the art of arts! For who can be ignorant that the sores of the thoughts of men are more occult than the sores of the bowels? And yet how often do men who have no knowledge whatever of spiritual precepts fearlessly profess themselves physicians of the heart, though those who are ignorant of the effect of drugs blush to appear as physicians of the flesh! But because, through the ordering of God, all the highest in rank of this present age are inclined to reverence religion, there are some who, through the outward show of rule within the holy Church, affect the glory of distinction. They desire to appear as teachers, they covet superiority to others, and, as the Truth attests, they seek the first salutations in the market-place, the first rooms at feasts, the first seats in assemblies (Matth. xxiii. 6, 7), being all the less able to administer worthily the office they have undertaken of pastoral care, as they have reached the magisterial position of humility out of elation only. For, indeed, in a magisterial position language itself is confounded when one thing is learnt and another taught [1265] . Against such the Lord complains by the prophet, saying, They have reigned, and not by Me; they have been set up as princes, and I knew it not (Hos. viii. 4). For those reign of themselves, and not by the Will of the Supreme Ruler, who, supported by no virtues, and in no way divinely called, but inflamed by their own desire, seize rather than attain supreme rule. But them the Judge within both advances, and yet knows not; for whom by permission he tolerates them surely by the judgment of reprobation he ignores. Whence to some who come to Him even after miracles He says, Depart from Me, ye workers of iniquity, I know you not who ye are (Luke xiii. 27). The unskilfulness of shepherds is rebuked by the voice of the Truth, when it is said through the prophet, The shepherds themselves have not known understanding (Isai. lvi. 11); whom again the Lord denounces, saying, And they that handle the law knew Me not (Jer. ii. 8). And therefore the Truth complains of not being known of them, and protests that He knows not the principality of those who know not Him; because in truth these who know not the things of the Lord are unknown of the Lord; as Paul attests, who says, But if any man knoweth not, he shall not be known (1 Cor. xiv. 38). Yet this unskilfulness of the shepherds doubtless suits often the deserts of those who are subject to them, because, though it is their own fault that they have not the light of knowledge, yet it is in the dealing of strict judgment that through their ignorance those also who follow them should stumble. Hence it is that, in the Gospel, the Truth in person says, If the blind lead the blind, both fall into the ditch (Matth. xv. 14). Hence the Psalmist (not expressing his own desire, but in his ministry as a prophet) denounces such, when he says, Let their eyes be blinded that they see not, and ever bow thou down their back (Ps. lxviii. 24 [1266] ). For, indeed, those persons are eyes who, placed in the very face of the highest dignity, have undertaken the office of spying out the road; while those who are attached to them and follow them are denominated backs. And so, when the eyes are blinded, the back is bent, because, when those who go before lose the light of knowledge, those who follow are bowed down to carry the burden of their sins. __________________________________________________________________
[1265] In this passage the phrase magisterium humilitatis has reference to Matt. xx. 25, &c., or Luke xxii. 25, &c., and ipsa lingua confunditur to Gen. xi. 7. The meaning appears to be that, when men seek and attain in a spirit of pride the office which according to our Lord's teaching is one of humility, they are incapable of fulfilling its duties by speaking to others so to be understood and edify. They are as the arrogant builders of Babel, whose language the Lord confounded, that they might not understand one another's speech.
[1266] In Hebr. and Engl. lxix. 24. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter II.
That none should enter on a place of government who practise not in life what they have learnt by study.
There are some also who investigate spiritual precepts with cunning care, but what they penetrate with their understanding they trample on in their lives: all at once they teach the things which not by practice but by study they have learnt; and what in words they preach by their manners they impugn. Whence it comes to pass that when the shepherd walks through steep places, the flock follows to the precipice. Hence it is that the Lord through the prophet complains of the contemptible knowledge of shepherds, saying, When ye yourselves had drunk most pure water, ye fouled the residue with your feet; and My sheep fed on that which had been trodden by your feet, and drank that which your feet had fouled (Ezek. xxxiv. 18, 19). For indeed the shepherds drink most pure water, when with a right understanding they imbibe the streams of truth. But to foul the same water with their feet is to corrupt the studies of holy meditation by evil living. And verily the sheep drink the water fouled by their feet, when any of those subject to them follow not the words which they hear, but only imitate the bad examples which they see. Thirsting for the things said, but perverted by the works observed, they take in mud with their draughts, as from polluted fountains. Hence also it is written through the prophet, A snare for the downfall of my people are evil priests (Hos. v. 1; ix. 8). Hence again the Lord through the prophet says of the priests, They are made to be for a stumbling-block of iniquity to the house of Israel. For certainly no one does more harm in the Church than one who has the name and rank of sanctity, while he acts perversely. For him, when he transgresses, no one presumes to take to task; and the offence spreads forcibly for example, when out of reverence to his rank the sinner is honoured. But all who are unworthy would fly from the burden of so great guilt, if with the attentive ear of the heart they weighed the sentence of the Truth, Whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were drowned in the depth of the sea (Matth. xviii. 6). By the millstone is expressed the round and labour of worldly life, and by the depth of the sea is denoted final damnation. Whosoever, then, having come to bear the outward show of sanctity, either by word or example destroys others, it had indeed been better for him that earthly deeds in open guise should press him down to death than that sacred offices should point him out to others as imitable in his wrong-doing; because, surely, if he fell alone, the pains of hell would torment him in more tolerable degree. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter III.
Of the weight of government; and that all manner of adversity is to be despised, and prosperity feared.
So much, then, have we briefly said, to shew how great is the weight of government, lest whosoever is unequal to sacred offices of government should dare to profane them, and through lust of pre-eminence undertake a leadership of perdition. For hence it is that James affectionately deters us, saying, Be not made many masters, my brethren (James iii. 1). Hence the Mediator between God and man Himself--He who, transcending the knowledge and understanding even of supernal spirits, reigns in heaven from eternity--on earth fled from receiving a kingdom. For it is written, When Jesus therefore perceived that they would come and take Him by force, to make Him a king, He departed again into the mountain Himself alone (Joh. vi. 15). For who could so blamelessly have had principality over men as He who would in fact have reigned over those whom He had Himself created? But, because He had come in the flesh to this end, that He might not only redeem us by His passion but also teach us by His conversation, offering Himself as an example to His followers, He would not be made a king; but He went of His own accord to the gibbet of the cross. He fled from the offered glory of pre-eminence, but desired the pain of an ignominious death; that so His members might learn to fly from the favours of the world, to be afraid of no terrors, to love adversity for the truth's sake, and to shrink in fear from prosperity; because this often defiles the heart through vain glory, while that purges it through sorrow; in this the mind exalts itself, but in that, even though it had once exalted itself, it brings itself low; in this man forgets himself, but in that, even perforce and against his will, he is recalled to memory of what he is; in this even good things done aforetime often come to nothing, but in that faults even of long standing are wiped away. For commonly in the school of adversity the heart is subdued under discipline, while, on sudden attainment of supreme rule, it is forthwith changed and becomes elated through familiarity with glory. Thus Saul, who had before fled in consideration of his unworthiness, no sooner had assumed the government of the kingdom than he was puffed up (1 Kings x. 22; xv. 17, 30); for, desirous of being honoured before the people while unwilling to be publicly blamed, he cut off from himself even him who had anointed him to the kingdom. Thus David, who in the judgment of Him who chose him was well pleasing to Him in almost all his deeds, as soon as the weight of pressure was removed, broke out into a swelling sore (2 Kings xi. 3, seq.), and, having been as a laxly running one in his appetite for the woman, became as a cruelly hard one in the slaughter of the man; and he who had before known pitifully how to spare the bad learnt afterwards, without impediment of hesitation, to pant even for the death of the good (Ibid. 15). For, indeed, previously he had been unwilling to smite his captured persecutor; and afterwards, with loss to his wearied army, he destroyed even his devoted soldier. And in truth his crime would have snatched him farther away from the number of the elect, had not scourges called him back to pardon. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IV.
That for the most part the occupation of government dissipates the solidity of the mind.
Often the care of government, when undertaken, distracts the heart in divers directions; and one is found unequal to dealing with particular things, while with confused mind divided among many. Whence a certain wise man providently dissuades, saying, My son, meddle not with many matters (Ecclus. xi. 10); because, that is, the mind is by no means collected on the plan of any single work while parted among divers. And, when it is drawn abroad by unwonted care, it is emptied of the solidity of inward fear: it becomes anxious in the ordering of things that are without, and, ignorant of itself alone, knows how to think of many things, while itself it knows not. For, when it implicates itself more than is needful in things that are without, it is as though it were so occupied during a journey as to forget where it was going; so that, being estranged from the business of self-examination, it does not even consider the losses it is suffering, or know how great they are. For neither did Hezekiah believe himself to be sinning (2 Kings xx. 13), when he shewed to the strangers who came to him his storehouses of spices; but he fell under the anger of the judge, to the condemnation of his future offspring, from what he supposed himself to be doing lawfully (Isai. xxxix. 4). Often, when means are abundant, and many things can be done for subordinates to admire, the mind exalts itself in thought, and fully provokes to itself the anger of the judge, though not breaking out in overt acts of iniquity. For he who judges is within; that which is judged is within. When, then, in heart we transgress, what we are doing within ourselves is hidden from men. but yet in the eyes of the judge we sin. For neither did the King of Babylon then first stand guilty of elation (Dan. iv. 16, seq.) when he came to utter words of elation, inasmuch as even before, when he had given no utterance to his elation, he heard the sentence of reprobation from the prophet's mouth. For he had already wiped off the fault of the pride he had been guilty of, when he proclaimed to all the nations under him the omnipotent God whom he found himself to have offended.
But after this, elevated by the success of his dominion, and rejoicing in having done great things, he first preferred himself to all in thought, and afterwards, still vain-glorious, said, Is not this great Babylon, that I have built for the house of the kingdom, and in the might of my power, and for the honour of my majesty? (Dan. iv. 30.) Which utterance of his, as we see, fell openly under the vengeance of the wrath which his hidden elation kindled. For the strict judge first sees invisibly what he afterwards reproves by publicly smiting it. Hence him He turned even into an irrational animal, separated him from human society, changed his mind and joined him to the beasts of the field, that in obviously strict and just judgment he who had esteemed himself great beyond men should lose even his being as a man. Now in adducing these things we are not finding fault with dominion, but guarding the infirmity of the heart from coveting it, lest any that are imperfect should venture to snatch at supreme rule, or those who stumble on plain ground set foot on a precipice. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter V.
Of those who are able to profit others by virtuous example in supreme rule, but fly from it in pursuit of their own ease.
For there are some who are eminently endowed with virtues, and for the training of others are exalted by great gifts, who are pure in zeal for chastity, strong in the might of abstinence, filled with the feasts of doctrine, humble in the long-suffering of patience, erect in the fortitude of authority, tender in the grace of loving-kindness, strict in the severity of justice. Truly such as these, if when called they refuse to undertake offices of supreme rule, for the most part deprive themselves of the very gifts which they received not for themselves alone, but for others also; and, while they meditate their own and not another's gain, they forfeit the very benefits which they desire to keep to themselves. For hence it was that the Truth said to His disciples, A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid: neither do they light a candle and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick, that it may give light to all that are in the house (Matth. v. 15). Hence He says to Peter, Simon, Son of Jonas, lovest thou Me? (Joh. xv. 16, 17); and he, when he had at once answered that he loved, was told, If thou lovest Me, feed My sheep. If, then, the care of feeding is the proof of loving, whosoever abounds in virtues, and yet refuses to feed the flock of God, is convicted of not loving the chief Shepherd. Hence Paul says, If Christ died for all, then all died. And if He died for all, it remaineth that they which live should now no longer live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them and rose again (2 Cor. v. 15). Hence Moses says (Deut. xxv. 5) that a surviving brother shall take to him the wife of a brother who has died without children, and beget children to the name of his brother; and that, if he haply refuse to take her, the woman shall spit in his face, and her kinsman shall loose the shoe from off one of his feet, and call his habitation the house of him that hath his shoe loosed. Now the deceased brother is He who, after the glory of the resurrection, said, Go tell My brethren (Matth. xxviii. 10). For He died as it were without children, in that He had not yet filled up the number of His elect. Then, it is ordered that the surviving brother shall have the wife assigned to him, because it is surely fit that the care of holy Church be imposed on him who is best able to rule it well. But, should he be unwilling, the woman spits in his face, because whosoever cares not to benefit others out of the gifts which he has received, the holy Church exprobrates even what he has of good, and, as it were, casts spittle on his face; and from one foot the shoe is taken away, inasmuch as it is written, Your feet shod in preparation of the Gospel of Peace (Ephes. vi. 15). If, then, we have the care of our neighbour as well as of ourselves upon us, we have each foot protected by a shoe. But he who, meditating his own advantage, neglects that of his neighbours, loses with disgrace one foot's shoe. And so there are some, as we have said, enriched with great gifts, who, while they are ardent for the studies of contemplation only, shrink from serving to their neighbour's benefit by preaching; they love a secret place of quiet, they long for a retreat for speculation. With respect to which conduct, they are, if strictly judged, undoubtedly guilty in proportion to the greatness of the gifts whereby they might have been publicly useful. For with what disposition of mind does one who might be conspicuous in profiting his neighbours prefer his own privacy to the advantage of others, when the Only-begotten of the supreme Father Himself came forth from the bosom of the Father into the midst of us all, that He might profit many? __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VI.
That those who fly from the burden of rule through humility are then truly humble when they resist not the divine decrees.
There are some also who fly by reason only of their humility, lest they should be preferred to others to whom they esteem themselves unequal. And theirs, indeed, if it be surrounded by other virtues, is then true humility before the eyes of God, when it is not pertinacious in rejecting what it is enjoined to undertake with profit. For neither is he truly humble, who understands how the good pleasure of the Supernal Will ought to bear sway, and yet contemns its sway. But, submitting himself to the divine disposals, and averse from the vice of obstinacy, if he be already prevented with gifts whereby he may profit others also, he ought, when enjoined to undertake supreme rule, in his heart to flee from it, but against his will to obey. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VII.
That sometimes some laudably desire the office of preaching, while others, as laudably, are drawn to it by compulsion.
Although sometimes some laudably desire the office of preaching, yet others are as laudably drawn to it by compulsion; as we plainly perceive, if we consider the conduct of two prophets, one of whom offered himself of his own accord to be sent to preach, yet the other in fear refused to go. For Isaiah, when the Lord asked whom He should send, offered himself of his own accord, saying, Here I am; send me (Isai. vi. 8). But Jeremiah is sent, yet humbly pleads that he should not be sent, saying, Ah, Lord God! behold I cannot speak: for I am a child (Jer. i. 6). Lo, from these two men different voices proceeded outwardly, but they flowed from the same fountain of love. For there are two precepts of charity; the love of God and of our neighbour. Wherefore Isaiah, eager to profit his neighbours through an active life, desires the office of preaching; but Jeremiah, longing to cleave sedulously to the love of his Creator through a contemplative life, remonstrates against being sent to preach. Thus what the one laudably desired the other laudably shrunk from; the latter, lest by speaking he should lose the gains of silent contemplation; the former, lest by keeping silence he should suffer loss for lack of diligent work. But this in both cases is to be nicely observed, that he who refused did not persist in his refusal, and he who wished to be sent saw himself previously cleansed by a coal of the altar; lest any one who has not been purged should dare to approach sacred ministries, or any whom supernal grace has chosen should proudly gainsay it under a show of humility. Wherefore, since it is very difficult for any one to be sure that he has been cleansed, it is safer to decline the office of preaching, though (as we have said) it should not be declined pertinaciously when the Supernal Will that it should be undertaken is recognized. Both requirements Moses marvellously fulfilled, who was unwilling to be set over so great a multitude, and yet obeyed. For peradventure he were proud, were he to undertake without trepidation the leadership of that innumerable people; and, again, proud he would plainly be were he to refuse to obey his Lord's command. Thus in both ways humble, in both ways submissive, he was unwilling, as measuring himself, to be set over the people; and yet, as presuming on the might of Him who commanded him, he consented. Hence, then, hence let all rash ones infer how great guilt is theirs, if they fear not to be preferred to others by their own seeking, when holy men, even when God commanded, feared to undertake the leadership of peoples. Moses trembles though God persuades him; and yet every weak one pants to assume the burden of dignity; and one who can hardly bear his own load without falling, gladly puts his shoulders under the pressure of others not his own: his own deeds are too heavy for him to carry, and he augments his burden. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VIII.
Of those who covet pre-eminence, and seize on the language of the Apostle to serve the purpose of their own cupidity.
But for the most part those who covet pre-eminence seize on the language of the Apostle to serve the purpose of their own cupidity, where he says, If a man desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work (1 Tim. iii. 1). But, while praising the desire, he forthwith turns what he has praised to fear when at once he adds, but a bishop must be blameless (1 Tim. iii. 2). And, when he subsequently enumerates the necessary virtues, he makes manifest what this blamelessness consists in. And so, with regard to their desire, he approves them, but by his precept he alarms them; as if saying plainly, I praise what ye seek; but first learn what it is ye seek; lest, while ye neglect to measure yourselves, your blamefulness appear all the fouler for its haste to be seen by all in the highest place of honour. For the great master in the art of ruling impels by approval and checks by alarms; so that, by describing the height of blamelessness, he may restrain his hearers from pride, and, by praising the office which is sought, dispose them to the life required. Nevertheless it is to be noted that this was said at a time when whosoever was set over people was usually the first to be led to the torments of martyrdom. At that time, therefore, it was laudable to seek the office of a bishop, since through it there was no doubt that a man would come in the end to heavier pains. Hence even the office of a bishop itself is defined as a good work, when it is said, If a man desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work (1 Tim. iii. 1). Wherefore he that seeks, not this ministry of a good work, but the glory of distinction, is himself a witness against himself that he does not desire the office of a bishop; inasmuch as that man not only does not love at all the sacred office, but even knows not what it is, who, panting after supreme rule, is fed by the subjection of others in the hidden meditation of his thought, rejoices in his own praises, lifts up his heart to honour, exults in abundant affluence. Thus worldly gain is sought under colour of that honour by which worldly gains should have been destroyed; and, when the mind thinks to seize on the highest post of humility for its own elation, it inwardly changes what it outwardly desires. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IX.
That the mind of those who wish for pre-eminence for the most part flatters itself with a feigned promise of good works.
But for the most part those who covet pastoral authority mentally propose to themselves some good works besides, and, though desiring it with a motive of pride, still muse how they will effect great things: and so it comes to pass that the motive suppressed in the depths of the heart is one thing, another what the surface of thought presents to the muser's mind. For the mind itself lies to itself about itself, and feigns with respect to good work to love what it does not love, and with respect to the world's glory not to love what it does love. Eager for domination, it becomes timid with regard to it while in pursuit, audacious after attainment. For, while advancing towards it, it is in trepidation lest it should not attain it; but all at once, on having attained, thinks what it has attained to be its just due. And, when it has once begun to enjoy the office of its acquired dominion in a worldly way, it willingly forgets what it has cogitated in a religious way. Hence it is necessary that, when such cogitation is extended beyond wont, the mind's eye should be recalled to works already accomplished, and that every one should consider what he has done as a subordinate; and so may he at once discover whether as a prelate he will be able to do the good things he has proposed to do. For one can by no means learn humility in a high place who has not ceased to be proud while occupying a low one: one knows not how to fly from praise when it abounds, who has learnt to pant for it when it was wanting: one can by no means overcome avarice, when advanced to the sustentation of many, whom his own means could not suffice for himself alone. Wherefore from his past life let every one discover what he is, lest in his craving for eminence the phantom of his cogitation illude him. Nevertheless it is generally the case that the very practice of good deeds which was maintained in tranquillity is lost in the occupation of government; since even an unskilful person guides a ship along a straight course in a calm sea; but in one disturbed by the waves of tempest even the skilled sailor is confounded. For what is eminent dominion but a tempest of the mind, in which the ship of the heart is ever shaken by hurricanes of thought, is incessantly driven hither and thither, so as to be shattered by sudden excesses of word and deed, as if by opposing rocks? In the midst of all these dangers, then, what course is to be followed, what is to be held to, except that one who abounds in virtues should accede to government under compulsion, and that one who is void of virtues should not, even under compulsion, approach it? As to the former, let him beware lest, if he refuses altogether, he be as one who binds up in a napkin the money which he has received, and be judged for hiding it (Matth. xxv. 18). For, indeed, to bind up in a napkin is to hide gifts received under the listlessness of sluggish torpor. But, on the other hand, let the latter, when he craves government, take care lest, by his example of evil deeds, he become an obstacle to such as are journeying to the entrance of the kingdom, after the manner of the Pharisees, who, according to the Master's voice (Matth. xxiii. 13), neither go in themselves nor suffer others to go in. And he should also consider how, when an elected prelate undertakes the cause of the people, he goes, as it were, as a physician to one that is sick. If, then, ailments still live in his body, what presumption is his, to make haste to heal the smitten, while in his own face carrying a sore! __________________________________________________________________
Chapter X.
What manner of man ought to come to rule.
That man, therefore, ought by all means to be drawn with cords to be an example of good living who already lives spiritually, dying to all passions of the flesh; who disregards worldly prosperity; who is afraid of no adversity; who desires only inward wealth; whose intention the body, in good accord with it, thwarts not at all by its frailness, nor the spirit greatly by its disdain: one who is not led to covet the things of others, but gives freely of his own; who through the bowels of compassion is quickly moved to pardon, yet is never bent down from the fortress of rectitude by pardoning more than is meet; who perpetrates no unlawful deeds, yet deplores those perpetrated by others as though they were his own; who out of affection of heart sympathizes with another's infirmity, and so rejoices in the good of his neighbour as though it were his own advantage; who so insinuates himself as an example to others in all he does that among them he has nothing, at any rate of his own past deeds, to blush for; who studies so to live that he may be able to water even dry hearts with the streams of doctrine; who has already learnt by the use and trial of prayer that he can obtain what he has requested from the Lord, having had already said to him, as it were, through the voice of experience, While thou art yet speaking, I will say, Here am I (Isai. lviii. 9). For if perchance any one should come to us asking us to intercede for him with some great man, who was incensed against him, but to us unknown, we should at once reply, We cannot go to intercede for you, since we have no familiar acquaintance with that man. If, then, a man blushes to become an intercessor with another man on whom he has no claim, with what idea can any one grasp the post of intercession with God for the people, who does not know himself to be in favour with Him through the merit of his own life? And how can he ask of Him pardon for others while ignorant whether towards himself He is appeased? And in this matter there is yet another thing to be more anxiously feared; namely, lest one who is supposed to be competent to appease wrath should himself provoke it on account of guilt of his own. For we all know well that, when one who is in disfavour is sent to intercede with an incensed person, the mind of the latter is provoked to greater severity. Wherefore let one who is still tied and bound with earthly desires beware lest by more grievously incensing the strict judge, while he delights himself in his place of honour, he become the cause of ruin to his subordinates. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XI.
What manner of man ought not to come to rule.
Wherefore let every one measure himself wisely, lest he venture to assume a place of rule, while in himself vice still reigns unto condemnation; lest one whom his own guilt depraves desire to become an intercessor for the faults of others. For on this account it is said to Moses by the supernal voice, Speak unto Aaron; Whosoever he be of thy seed throughout their generations that hath a blemish, he shall not offer loaves of bread to the Lord his God (Lev. xxi. 17). And it is also immediately subjoined; If he be blind, if he be lame, if he have either a small or a large and crooked nose, if he be brokenfooted or brokenhanded, if he be hunchbacked, if he be bleareyed (lippus), if he have a white speck (albuginem) in his eye, if chronic scabies, if impetigo in his body, or if he be ruptured (ponderosus) (Ibid. 18 [1267] ). For that man is indeed blind who is unacquainted with the light of supernal contemplation, who, whelmed in the darkness of the present life, while he beholds not at all by loving it the light to come, knows not whither he is advancing the steps of his conduct. Hence by Hannah prophesying it is said, He will keep the feet of his saints, and the wicked shall be silent in darkness (1 Kings ii. 9). But that man is lame who does indeed see in what direction he ought to go, but, through infirmity of purpose, is unable to keep perfectly the way of life which he sees, because, while unstable habit rises not to a settled state of virtue, the steps of conduct do not follow with effect the aim of desire. Hence it is that Paul says, Lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees, and make straight paths for your feet, lest that which is lame be turned out of the way; but let it rather be healed (Heb. xii. 12, 13). But one with a small nose is he who is not adapted for keeping the measure of discernment. For with the nose we discern sweet odours and stenches: and so by the nose is properly expressed discernment, through which we choose virtues and eschew sins. Whence also it is said in praise of the bride, Thy nose is as the tower which is in Lebanon (Cant. vii. 4); because, to wit, Holy Church, by discernment, espies assaults issuing from this or that quarter, and detects from an eminence the coming wars of vices. But there are some who, not liking to be thought dull, busy themselves often more than needs in various investigations, and by reason of too great subtilty are deceived. Wherefore this also is added, Or have a large and crooked nose. For a large and crooked nose is excessive subtilty of discernment, which, having become unduly excrescent, itself confuses the correctness of its own operation. But one with broken foot or hand is he who cannot walk in the way of God at all, and is utterly without part or lot in good deeds, to such degree that he does not, like the lame man, maintain them however weakly, but remains altogether apart from them. But the hunchbacked is he whom the weight of earthly care bows down, so that he never looks up to the things that are above, but is intent only on what is trodden on among the lowest. And he, should he ever hear anything of the good things of the heavenly country, is so pressed down by the weight of perverse custom, that he lifts not the face of his heart to it, being unable to erect the posture of his thought, which the habit of earthly care keeps downward bent. Of this kind of men the Psalmist says, I am bent down and am brought low continually (Ps. xxxviii. 8). The fault of such as these the Truth in person reprobates, saying, But the seed which fell among thorns are they which, when they have heard the word, go forth, and are choked with cares and riches and pleasures of life, and bear no fruit (Luke viii. 14). But the blear-eyed is he whose native wit flashes out for cognition of the truth, and yet carnal works obscure it. For in the blear-eyed the pupils are sound; but the eyelids, weakened by defluxion of humours, become gross; and even the brightness of the pupils is impaired, because they are worn continually by the flux upon them. The blear-eyed, then, is one whose sense nature has made keen, but whom a depraved habit of life confuses. To him it is well said through the angel, Anoint thine eyes with eyesalve that thou mayest see (Apoc. iii. 18). For we may be said to anoint our eyes with eyesalve that we may see, when we aid the eye of our understanding for perceiving the clearness of the true light with the medicament of good conduct. But that man has a white speck in his eye who is not permitted to see the light of truth, in that he is blinded by the arrogant assumption of wisdom or of righteousness. For the pupil of the eye, when black, sees; but, when it bears a white speck, sees nothing; by which we may understand that the perceiving sense of human thought, if a man understands himself to be a fool and a sinner, becomes cognizant of the clearness of inmost light; but, if it attributes to itself the whiteness of righteousness or wisdom, it excludes itself from the light of knowledge from above, and by so much the more fails entirely to penetrate the clearness of the true light, as it exalts itself within itself through arrogance; as of some it is said, Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools (Rom. i. 22). But that man has chronic scabies whom the wantonness of the flesh without cease overmasters. For in scabies the violent heat of the bowels is drawn to the skin; whereby lechery is rightly designated, since, if the heart's temptation shoots forth into action, it may be truly said that violent internal heat breaks out into scabies of the skin: and it now wounds the body outwardly, because, while sensuality is not repressed in thought, it gains the mastery also in action. For Paul had a care to cleanse away this itch of the skin, when he said, Let no temptation take you but such as is human (1 Cor. x. 13); as if to say plainly, It is human to suffer temptation in the heart; but it is devilish, in the struggle of temptation, to be also overcome in action. He also has impetigo in his body whosoever is ravaged in the mind by avarice; which, if not restrained in small things, does indeed dilate itself without measure.
For, as impetigo invades the body without pain, and, spreading with no annoyance to him whom it invades, disfigures the comeliness of the members, so avarice, too, exulcerates, while it pleases, the mind of one who is captive to it. As it offers to the thought one thing after another to be gained, it kindles the fire of enmities, and gives no pain with the wounds it causes, because it promises to the fevered mind abundance out of sin. But the comeliness of the members is destroyed, because the beauty of other virtues is also hereby marred: and it exulcerates as it were the whole body, in that it corrupts the mind with vices of all kinds; as Paul attests, saying, The love of money is the root of all evils (1 Tim. vi. 10). But the ruptured one is he who does not carry turpitude into action, but yet is immoderately weighed down by it in mind through continual cogitation; one who is indeed by no means carried away to the extent of nefarious conduct; but his mind still delights itself without prick of repugnance in the pleasure of lechery. For the disease of rupture is when humor viscerum ad virilia labitur, quæ profecto cum molestia dedecoris intumescunt He, then, may be said to be ruptured who, letting all his thoughts flow down to lasciviousness, bears in his heart a weight of turpitude; and, though not actually doing deeds of shame, nevertheless in mind is not withdrawn from them. Nor has he power to rise to the practice of good living before the eyes of men, because, hidden within him, the shameful weight presses him down. Whosoever, therefore, is subjected to any one of these diseases is forbidden to offer loaves of bread to the Lord, lest in sooth he should be of no avail for expiating the sins of others, being one who is still ravaged by his own.
And now, having briefly shewn after what manner one who is worthy should come to pastoral authority, and after what manner one who is unworthy should be greatly afraid, let us now demonstrate after what manner one who has attained to it worthily should live in it. __________________________________________________________________
[1267] The designations here given of the bodily imperfections, enumerated in Levit. xxi. as disqualifying for priestly functions, are the same as those in the Tridentine edition of the Vulgate, except that instead of herniosus Gregory has ponderosus, which was a word used in the same sense, denoting one suffering from rupture (Cf. Augustine, De Civitate Dei, Lib. ult., cap. viii.). The idea expressed by the latter word, and carried out in Gregory's application, was that of the weight (pondus), or downward pressure, of the intestines in a ruptured person. The Hebrew Bible (see A.V.), and also the rendering of the LXX. (monorchis), conveys a different idea of the ailment intended. The cutaneous diseases specified are denoted, here as in the Vulgate, by jugas scabies (psora agria, LXX.; scurvy, A.V.) and impetigo (leichen, LXX.; scabbed A.V.). Whatever may be the exact meaning of the original Hebrew words, Gregory's conception of these diseases evidently was that the former was a chronic and painful eruption, proceeding from internal heat, and the latter a painless, but disfiguring, affection of the skin. The diseases of the eye, with regard to which the Hebrew (and consequently our A.V.) differs from the LXX. and Vulgate, are denoted by lippus (ptillos tous ophthalmous, LXX.), and albuginem habens (ephelos, LXX.); of which Gregory's conception was that the former was an affection, not properly of the eye, but eyelid, the flux from which impaired the power of vision, while the latter was an obscuration of the pupil itself, exhibiting a white colour. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Part II.
Of the Life of the Pastor.
Chapter I.
How one who has in due order arrived at a place of rule ought to demean himself in it.
The conduct of a prelate ought so far to transcend the conduct of the people as the life of a shepherd is wont to exalt him above the flock. For one whose estimation is such that the people are called his flock is bound anxiously to consider what great necessity is laid upon him to maintain rectitude. It is necessary, then, that in thought he should be pure, in action chief; discreet in keeping silence, profitable in speech; a near neighbour to every one in sympathy, exalted above all in contemplation; a familiar friend of good livers through humility, unbending against the vices of evil-doers through zeal for righteousness; not relaxing in his care for what is inward from being occupied in outward things, nor neglecting to provide for outward things in his solicitude for what is inward. But the things which we have thus briefly touched on let us now unfold and discuss more at length. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter II.
That the ruler should be pure in thought.
The ruler should always be pure in thought, inasmuch as no impurity ought to pollute him who has undertaken the office of wiping away the stains of pollution in the hearts of others also; for the hand that would cleanse from dirt must needs be clean, lest, being itself sordid with clinging mire, it soil whatever it touches all the more. For on this account it is said through the prophet, Be ye clean that bear the vessels of the Lord (Isai. lii. 11). For they bear the vessels of the Lord who undertake, on the surety of their own conversation, to conduct the souls of their neighbours to the eternal sanctuary. Let them therefore perceive within themselves how purified they ought to be who carry in the bosom of their own personal responsibility living vessels to the temple of eternity. Hence by the divine voice it is enjoined (Exod. xxviii. 15), that on the breast of Aaron the breastplate [1268] of judgment should be closely pressed by binding fillets; seeing that lax cogitations should by no means possess the priestly heart, but reason alone constrain it; nor should he cogitate anything indiscreet or unprofitable, who, constituted as he is for example to others, ought to shew in the gravity of his life what store of reason he carries in his breast. And on this breastplate it is further carefully prescribed that the names of the twelve patriarchs should be engraved. For to carry always the fathers registered on the breast is to think without intermission on the lives of the ancients. For the priest then walks blamelessly when he pores continually on the examples of the fathers that went before him, when he considers without cease the footsteps of the Saints, and keeps down unlawful thoughts, lest he advance the foot of his conduct beyond the limit of order. And it is also well called the breastplate of judgment, because the ruler ought ever with subtle scrutiny to discern between good and evil, and studiously consider what things are suitable for what, and when and how; nor should he seek anything for himself, but esteem his neighbours' good as his own advantage. Hence in the same place it is written, But thou shalt put in the breastplate of Aaron doctrine and truth [1269] , which shall be upon Aaron's breast, when he goeth in before the Lord, and he shall bear the judgment of the children of Israel upon his breast in the sight of the Lord continually (Ibid. 30). For the priest's bearing the judgment of the children of Israel on his breast before the face of the Lord means his examining the causes of his subjects with regard only to the mind of the judge within, so that no admixture of humanity cleave to him in what he dispenses as standing in God's stead, lest private vexation should exasperate the keenness of his censure. And while he shews himself zealous against the vices of others, let him get rid of his own lest either latent grudge vitiate the calmness of his judgment, or headlong anger disturb it. But when the terror of Him who presides over all things is considered (that is to say of the judge within), not without great fear may subjects be governed. And such fear indeed purges, while it humiliates, the mind of the ruler, guarding it against being either lifted up by presumption of spirit, or defiled by delight of the flesh, or obscured by importunity of dusty thought through lust for earthly things. These things, however, cannot but knock at the ruler's mind: but it is necessary to make haste to overcome them by resistance, lest the vice which tempts by suggestion should subdue by the softness of delight, and, this being tardily expelled from the mind, should slay with the sword of consent. __________________________________________________________________
[1268] For breastplate (A.V.) the LXX. has logeion, and the Vulgate, from which St. Gregory quotes, rationale. On the significance of this word the application depends. Anciently an ornament called the rationale was attached to the vestments of bishops. "Rationale...Ornamenti genus quo ornantur casulæ aliaque vestes ecclesiasticæ" (Ducange). The vestment itself seems also to have been sometimes called the rationale. "Vestis episcopalis novæ legis, le pallium" (Ib.).
[1269] For Urim and Thummim (as in A.V., retaining the Hebrew words), the LXX. has ten delosin kai ten aletheian, and the Vulgate, quoted by St. Gregory, Doctrinam et Veritatem. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter III.
That the ruler should be always chief in action.
The ruler should always be chief in action, that by his living he may point out the way of life to those that are put under him, and that the flock, which follows the voice and manners of the shepherd, may learn how to walk better through example than through words. For he who is required by the necessity of his position to speak the highest things is compelled by the same necessity to exhibit the highest things. For that voice more readily penetrates the hearer's heart, which the speaker's life commends, since what he commands by speaking he helps the doing of by shewing. Hence it is said through the prophet, Get thee up into the high mountain, thou that bringest good tidings to Sion (Isai. xl. 9): which means that he who is engaged in heavenly preaching should already have forsaken the low level of earthly works, and appear as standing on the summit of things, and by so much the more easily should draw those who are under him to better things as by the merit of his life he cries aloud from heights above. Hence under the divine law the priest receives the shoulder for sacrifice, and this the right one and separate (Exod. xxix. 22); to signify that his action should be not only profitable, but even singular; and that he should not merely do what is right among bad men, but transcend even the well-doers among those that are under him in the virtue of his conduct, as he surpasses them in the dignity of his order. The breast also together with the shoulder is assigned to him for eating, that he may learn to immolate to the Giver of all that of himself which he is enjoined to take of the Sacrifice; that he may not only in his breast entertain right thoughts, but with the shoulder of work invite those who behold him to things on high; that he may covet no prosperity of the present life, and fear no adversity; that, having regard to the fear within him, he may despise the charm of the world, but considering the charm of inward sweetness, may despise its terrors. Wherefore by command of the supernal voice (Exod. xxix. 5) the priest is braced on each shoulder with the robe of the ephod, that he may be always guarded against prosperity and adversity by the ornament of virtues; so that walking, as S. Paul says (2 Cor. vi. 7), in the armour of righteousness on the right hand and on the left, while he strives only after those things which are before, he may decline on neither side to low delight. Him let neither prosperity elate nor adversity perturb; let neither smooth things coax him to the surrender of his will, nor rough things press him down to despair; so that, while he humbles the bent of his mind to no passions, he may shew with how great beauty of the ephod he is covered on each shoulder. Which ephod is also rightly ordered to be made of gold, blue, purple, twice dyed scarlet, and flue twined linen (Exod. xxviii. 8), that it may be shewn by how great diversity of virtues the priest ought to be distinguished. Thus in the priest's robe before all things gold glitters, to shew that he should shine forth principally in the understanding of wisdom. And with it blue, which is resplendent with aerial colour, is conjoined, to shew that through all that he penetrates with his understanding he should rise above earthly favours to the love of celestial things; lest, while caught unawares by his own praises, he be emptied of his very understanding of the truth. With gold and blue, purple also is mingled: which means, that the priest's heart, while hoping for the high things which he preaches, should repress in itself even the suggestions of vice, and as it were in virtue of a royal power, rebut them, in that he has regard ever to the nobility of inward regeneration, and by his manners guards his right to the robe of the heavenly kingdom. For it is of this nobility of the spirit that it is said through Peter, Ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood (1 Pet. ii. 9). With respect also to this power, whereby we subdue vices, we are fortified by the voice of John, who says, As many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God (John i. 12). This dignity of fortitude the Psalmist has in view when he says, But with me greatly honoured have been Thy friends, O God; greatly strengthened has been their principality (Ps. cxxxviii. 17). For truly the mind of saints is exalted to princely eminence while outwardly they are seen to suffer abasement. But with gold, blue, and purple, twice died scarlet is conjoined, to show that all excellences of virtue should be adorned with charity in the eyes of the judge within; and that whatever glitters before men may be lighted up in sight of the hidden arbiter with the flame of inward love. And, further, this charity, since it consists in love at once of God and of our neighbour, has, as it were, the lustre of a double dye. He then who so pants after the beauty of his Maker as to neglect the care of his neighbours, or so attends to the care of his neighbours as to grow languid in divine love, whichever of these two things it may be that he neglects, knows not what it is to have twice dyed scarlet in the adornment of his ephod. But, while the mind is intent on the precepts of charity, it undoubtedly remains that the flesh be macerated through abstinence. Hence with twice dyed scarlet fine twined linen is conjoined. For fine linen (byssus) springs from the earth with glittering show: and what is designated by fine linen but bodily chastity shining white in the comeliness of purity? And it is also twisted for being interwoven into the beauty of the ephod, since the habit of chastity then attains to the perfect whiteness of purity when the flesh is worn by abstinence. And, since the merit of affliction of the flesh profits among the other virtues, fine twined linen shews white, as it were, in the diverse beauty of the ephod. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IV.
That the ruler should be discreet in keeping silence, profitable in speech.
The ruler should be discreet in keeping silence, profitable in speech; lest he either utter what ought to be suppressed or suppress what he ought to utter. For, as incautious speaking leads into error, so indiscreet silence leaves in error those who might have been instructed. For often improvident rulers, fearing to lose human favour, shrink timidly from speaking freely the things that are right; and, according to the voice of the Truth (Joh. x. 12), serve unto the custody of the flock by no means with the zeal of shepherds, but in the way of hirelings; since they fly when the wolf cometh if they hide themselves under silence. For hence it is that the Lord through the prophet upbraids them, saying, Dumb dogs, that cannot bark (Isai. lvi. 10). Hence again He complains, saying, Ye have not gone up against the enemy, neither opposed a wall for the house of Israel, to stand in the battle in the day of the Lord (Ezek. xiii. 5). Now to go up against the enemy is to go with free voice against the powers of this world for defence of the flock; and to stand in the battle in the day of the Lord is out of love of justice to resist bad men when they contend against us. For, for a shepherd to have feared to say what is right, what else is it but to have turned his back in keeping silence? But surely, if he puts himself in front for the flock, he opposes a wall against the enemy for the house of Israel. Hence again to the sinful people it is said, Thy prophets have seen false and foolish things for thee: neither did they discover thine iniquity, to provoke thee to repentance (Lam. ii. 14). For in sacred language teachers are sometimes called prophets, in that, by pointing out how fleeting are present things, they make manifest the things that are to come. And such the divine discourse convinces of seeing false things, because, while fearing to reprove faults, they vainly flatter evil doers by promising security: neither do they at all discover the iniquity of sinners, since they refrain their voice from chiding. For the language of reproof is the key of discovery, because by chiding it discloses the fault of which even he who has committed it is often himself unaware. Hence Paul says, That he may be able by sound doctrine even to convince the gainsayers (Tit. i. 9). Hence through Malachi it is said, The priest's lips keep knowledge, and they shall seek the law at his mouth (Malac. ii. 7). Hence through Isaiah the Lord admonishes, saying, Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet (Isai. lviii. 1). For it is true that whosoever enters on the priesthood undertakes the office of a herald, so as to walk, himself crying aloud, before the coming of the judge who follows terribly. Wherefore, if the priest knows not how to preach, what voice of a loud cry shall the mute herald utter? For hence it is that the Holy Spirit sat upon the first pastors under the appearance of tongues (Acts ii. 3); because whomsoever He has filled, He himself at once makes eloquent. Hence it is enjoined on Moses that when the priest goes into the tabernacle he shall be encompassed with bells (Exod. xxviii. 33); that is, that he shall have about him the sounds of preaching, lest he provoke by his silence the judgment of Him Who beholds him from above. For it is written, That his sound may be heard when he goeth in unto the holy place before the Lord and when he cometh out, that he die not (Exod. xxviii. 35). For the priest, when he goeth in or cometh out, dies if a sound is not heard from him, because he provokes the wrath of the hidden judge, if he goes without the sound of preaching. Aptly also are the bells described as inserted in his vestments. For what else ought we to take the vestments of the priest to be but righteous works; as the prophet attests when he says, Let Thy priests be clothed with righteousness (Ps. cxxxi. 9)? The bells, therefore, are inherent in his vestments to signify that the very works of the priest should also proclaim the way of life together with the sound of his tongue. But, when the ruler prepares himself for speaking, let him bear in mind with what studious caution he ought to speak, lest, if he be hurried inordinately into speaking, the hearts of hearers be smitten with the wound of error and, while he perchance desires to seem wise he unwisely sever the bond of unity. For on this account the Truth says, Have salt in yourselves, and have peace one with another (Mark ix. 49). Now by salt is denoted the word of wisdom. Let him, therefore, who strives to speak wisely fear greatly, lest by his eloquence the unity of his hearers be disturbed. Hence Paul says, Not to be more wise than behoveth to be wise, but to be wise unto sobriety (Rom. xii. 3). Hence in the priest's vestment, according to Divine precept, to bells are added pomegranates (Exod. xxviii. 34). For what is signified by pomegranates but the unity of the faith? For, as within a pomegranate many seeds are protected by one outer rind, so the unity of the faith comprehends the innumerable peoples of holy Church, whom a diversity of merits retains within her. Lest then a ruler should be unadvisedly hurried into speaking, the Truth in person proclaims to His disciples this which we have already cited, Have salt in yourselves, and have peace one with another (Mark ix. 49). It is as though He should say in a figure through the dress of the priest: Join ye pomegranates to bells, that in all ye say ye may with cautious watchfulness keep the unity of the faith. Rulers ought also to guard with anxious thought not only against saying in any way what is wrong, but against uttering even what is right overmuch and inordinately; since the good effect of things spoken is often lost, when enfeebled to the hearts of hearers by the incautious importunity of loquacity; and this same loquacity, which knows not how to serve for the profit of the hearers, also defiles the speaker. Hence it is well said through Moses, The man that hath a flux of seed shall be unclean (Levit. xv. 2). For the quality of the speech that is heard is the seed of the thought which follows, since, while speech is conceived through the ear, thought is engendered in the mind. Whence also by the wise of this world the excellent preacher was called a sower of words (seminiverbius) (Acts xvii. 18). Wherefore, he that suffers from a flux of seed is pronounced unclean, because, being addicted to much speaking, he defiles himself by that which, had it been orderly issued, might have produced the offspring of right thought in the hearts of hearers; and, while he incautiously spends himself in loquacity, he sheds his seed not so as to serve for generation, but unto uncleanness. Hence Paul also, in admonishing his disciple to be instant in preaching, when he says, I charge thee before God and Christ Jesus, Who shall judge the quick and the dead by His appearing and His kingdom, preach the word, be instant opportunely, importunely [1270] (2 Tim. iv. 1), being about to say importunely, premises opportunely, because in truth importunity mars itself to the mind of the hearer by its own very cheapness, if it knows not how to observe opportunity. __________________________________________________________________
[1270] Opportune, importune, the second word being apparently understood in the sense of importunately. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter V.
That the ruler should be a near neighbour to every one in compassion, and exalted above all in contemplation.
The ruler should be a near neighbour to every one in sympathy, and exalted above all in contemplation, so that through the bowels of loving-kindness he may transfer the infirmities of others to himself, and by loftiness of speculation transcend even himself in his aspiration after the invisible; lest either in seeking high things he despise the weak things of his neighbours, or in suiting himself to the weak things of his neighbours he relinquish his aspiration after high things. For hence it is that Paul is caught up into Paradise (2 Cor. xii. 3) and explores the secrets of the third heaven, and, yet, though borne aloft in that contemplation of things invisible, recalls the vision of his mind to the bed of the carnal, and directs how they should have intercourse with each other in their hidden privacy, saying, But on account of fornication let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband. Let the husband render unto the wife her due, and likewise the wife unto the husband (1 Cor. vii. 2). And a little after (Ibid. v. 5), Defraud ye not one the other, except it be with consent for a time, that ye may give yourselves to prayer, and come together again, that Satan tempt you not. Lo, he is already initiated into heavenly secrets, and yet through the bowels of condescension he searches into the bed of the carnal; and the same eye of the heart which in his elevation he lifts to the invisible, he bends in his compassion upon the secrets of those who are subject to infirmity. In contemplation he transcends heaven, and yet in his anxious care deserts not the couch of the carnal; because, being joined at once to the highest and to the lowest by the bond of charity, though in himself mightily caught up in the power of the spirit into the heights above, yet among others, in his loving-kindness, he is content to become weak. Hence, therefore, he says, Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is offended, and I burn not? (2 Cor. xi. 29). Hence again he says, Unto the Jews I became as a Jew (1 Cor. ix. 20). Now he exhibited this behaviour not by losing hold of his faith, but by extending his loving-kindness; so as, by transferring in a figure the person of unbelievers to himself, to learn from himself how they ought to have compassion shewn them; to the end that he might bestow on them what he would have rightly wished to have had bestowed upon himself, had he been as they. Hence again he says, Whether we be beside ourselves, it is to God: or whether we be sober, it is for you (2 Cor. v. 13). For he had known how both to transcend himself in contemplation, and to accommodate himself to his hearers in condescension. Hence Jacob, the Lord looking down from above, and oil being poured down on the stone, saw angels ascending and descending (Gen. xxviii. 12); to signify, that true preachers not only aspire in contemplation to the holy head of the Church, that is to the Lord, above, but also descend in commiseration downward to His members. Hence Moses goes frequently in and out of the tabernacle, and he who is wrapped into contemplation within is busied outside with the affairs of those who are subject to infirmity. Within he considers the secret things of God; without he carries the burdens of the carnal. And also concerning doubtful matters he always recurs to the tabernacle, to consult the Lord before the ark of the covenant; affording without doubt an example to rulers; that, when in the outside world they are uncertain how to order things, they should return to their own soul as though to the tabernacle, and, as before the ark of the covenant, consult the Lord, if so, they may search within themselves the pages of sacred utterance concerning that whereof they doubt. Hence the Truth itself, manifested to us through susception of our humanity, continues in prayer on the mountain, but works miracles in the cities (Luke vi. 12), thus laying down the way to be followed by good rulers; that, though already in contemplation aspiring to the highest things, they should mingle in sympathy with the necessities of the infirm; since charity then rises wonderfully to high things when it is compassionately drawn to the low things of neighbours; and the more kindly it descends to the weak things of this world, the more vigorously it recurs to the things on high. But those who are over others should shew themselves to be such that their subjects may not blush to disclose even their secrets to them; that the little ones, vexed with the waves of temptation, may have recourse to their pastor's heart as to a mother's breast, and wash away the defilement they foresee to themselves from the filth of the sin that buffets them in the solace of his exhortation and in the tears of prayer. Hence also it is that before the doors of the temple the brazen sea for washing the hands of those who enter, that is the laver, is supported by twelve oxen (1 Kings vii. 23, seq.), whose faces indeed stand out to view, but whose hinder parts are hidden. For what is signified by the twelve oxen but the whole order of pastors, of whom the law says, as explained by Paul, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn (1 Cor. ix. 9; ex Deut. xxv. 4)? Their open works indeed we see; but what remains to them behind in the hidden retribution of the strict judge we know not. Yet, when they prepare the patience of their condescension for cleansing the sins of their neighbours in confession, they support, as it were, the laver before the doors of the temple; that whosoever is striving to enter the gate of eternity may shew his temptations to his pastor's heart, and, as it were, wash the hands of his thought and of his deed in the laver of the oxen. And for the most part it comes to pass that, while the ruler's mind becomes aware, through condescension, of the trials of others, it is itself also attacked by the temptations whereof it hears; since the same water of the laver in which a multitude of people is cleansed is undoubtedly itself defiled. For, in receiving the pollutions of those who wash, it loses, as it were, the calmness of its own purity. But of this the pastor ought by no means to be afraid, since, under God, who nicely balances all things, he is the more easily rescued from his own temptations as he is more compassionately distressed by those of others. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VI.
That the ruler should be, through humility, a companion of good livers, but, through the zeal of righteousness, rigid against the vices of evildoers.
The ruler should be, through humility, a companion of good livers, and, through the zeal of righteousness, rigid against the vices of evil-doers; so that in nothing he prefer himself to the good, and yet, when the fault of the bad requires it, he be at once conscious of the power of his priority; to the end that, while among his subordinates who live well he waives his rank and accounts them as his equals, he may not fear to execute the laws of rectitude towards the perverse. For, as I remember to have said in my book on morals (Lib. xxi., Moral, cap. 10, nunc. n. 22), it is clear that nature produced all men equal; but, through variation in the order of their merits, guilt puts some below others. But the very diversity which has accrued from vice is ordered by divine judgment, so that, since all men cannot stand on an equal footing, one should be ruled by another. Hence all who are over others ought to consider in themselves not the authority of their rank, but the equality of their condition and rejoice not to be over men, but to do them good. For indeed our ancient fathers are said to have been not kings of men, but shepherds of flocks. And, when the Lord said to Noe and his children, Increase and multiply, and replenish the earth (Gen. ix. 1), He at once added, And let the fear of you and the dread of you be upon all the beasts of the earth. Thus it appears that, whereas it is ordered that the fear and the dread should be upon the beasts of the earth, it is forbidden that it should be upon men. For man is by nature preferred to the brute beasts, but not to other men; and therefore it is said to him that he should be feared by the beasts, but not by men; since to wish to be feared by one's equal is to be proud against nature. And yet it is necessary that rulers should be feared by their subjects, when they find that God is not feared by them; so that those who have no dread of divine judgments may at any rate, through human dread, be afraid to sin. For superiors by no means shew themselves proud in seeking to inspire this fear, in which they seek not their own glory, but the righteousness of their subordinates. For in exacting fear of themselves from such as live perversely, they lord it, as it were, not over men, but over beasts, inasmuch as, so far as their subordinates are bestial, they ought also to lie subdued to dread.
But commonly a ruler, from the very fact of his being pre-eminent over others, is puffed up with elation of thought; and, while all things serve his need, while his commands are quickly executed after his desire, while all his subjects extol with praises what he has done well, but have no authority to speak against what he has done amiss, and while they commonly praise even what they ought to have reproved, his mind, seduced by what is offered in abundance from below, is lifted up above itself; and, while outwardly surrounded by unbounded favour, he loses his inward sense of truth; and, forgetful of himself, he scatters himself on the voices of other men, and believes himself to be such as outwardly he hears himself called rather than such as he ought inwardly to have judged himself to be. He looks down on those who are under him, nor does he acknowledge them as in the order of nature his equals; and those whom he has surpassed in the accident of power he believes himself to have transcended also in the merits of his life; he esteems himself wiser than all whom he sees himself to excel in power. For indeed he establishes himself in his own mind on a certain lofty eminence, and, though bound together in the same condition of nature with others, he disdains to regard others from the same level; and so he comes to be even like him of whom it is written, He beholdeth all high things: he is a king over all the children of pride (Job xli. 25). Nay, aspiring to a singular eminence, and despising the social life of the angels, he says, I will place my seat in the north, and I will be like unto the Most High (Isai. xiv. 13). Wherefore through a marvellous judgment he finds a pit of downfall within himself, while outwardly he exalts himself on the summit of power. For he is indeed made like unto the apostate angel, when, being a man, he disdains to be like unto men. Thus Saul, after merit of humility, became swollen with pride, when in the height of power: for his humility he was preferred, for his pride rejected; as the Lord attests, Who says, When thou wast little in thine own sight, did I not make thee the head of the tribes of Israel (1 Sam. xv. 17)? He had before seen himself little in his own eyes, but, when propped up by temporal power, he no longer saw himself little. For, preferring himself in comparison with others because he had more power than all, he esteemed himself great above all. Yet in a wonderful way, when he was little with himself, he was great with God; but, when he appeared great with himself, he was little with God. Thus commonly, while the mind is inflated from an affluence of subordinates, it becomes corrupted to a flux of pride, the very summit of power being pander to desire. And in truth he orders this power well who knows how both to maintain it and to combat it. He orders it well who knows how through it to tower above delinquencies, and knows how with it to match himself with others in equality. For the human mind commonly is exalted even when supported by no authority: how much more does it lift itself on high when authority lends itself to its support! Nevertheless he dispenses this authority aright, who knows how, with anxious care, both to take of it what is helpful, and also to reject what tempts, and with it to perceive himself to be on a par with others, and yet to put himself above those that sin in his avenging zeal.
But we shall more fully understand this distinction, if we look at the examples given by the first pastor. For Peter, who had received from God the principality of Holy Church, from Cornelius, acting well and prostrating himself humbly before him, refused to accept immoderate veneration, saying, Stand up; do it not; I myself also am a man (Acts x. 26). But, when he discovers the guilt of Ananias and Sapphira, he soon shews with how great power he had been made eminent above all others. For by his word he smote their life, which he detected by the penetration of his spirit; and he recollected himself as chief within the Church against sins, though he did not acknowledge this, when honour was eagerly paid him, before his brethren who acted well. In one case holiness of conduct merited the communion of equality; in the other avenging zeal brought out to view the just claims of authority. Paul, too, knew not himself as preferred above his brethren who acted well, when he said, Not for that we have dominion over your faith, but are helpers of your joy (2 Cor. i. 23). And he straightway added, For by faith ye stand: as if to explain his declaration by saying, For this cause we have not dominion over your faith, because by faith ye stand; for we are your equals in that wherein we know you to stand. He knew not himself as preferred above his brethren, when he said, We became babes in the midst of you (1 Thess. ii. 7); and again, But ourselves your servants through Christ (2 Cor. iv. 5). But, when he found a fault that required to be corrected, straightway he recollected himself as a master, saying, What will ye? Shall I come unto you with a rod (1 Cor. iv. 21)?
Supreme rule, then, is ordered well, when he who presides lords it over vices, rather than over his brethren. But, when superiors correct their delinquent subordinates, it remains for them anxiously to take heed how far, while in right of their authority they smite faults with due discipline, they still, through custody of humility, acknowledge themselves to be on a par with the very brethren who are corrected; although for the most part it is becoming that in our silent thought we even prefer the brethren whom we correct to ourselves. For their vices are through us smitten with the vigour of discipline; but in those which we ourselves commit we are lacerated by not even a word of upbraiding. Wherefore we are by so much the more bounden before the Lord as among men we sin unpunished: but our discipline renders our subordinates by so much the freer from divine judgment, as it leaves not their faults without retribution here. Therefore, in the heart humility should be maintained, and in action discipline. And all the time there is need of sagacious insight, lest, through excessive custody of the virtue of humility, the just claims of government be relaxed, and lest, while any superior lowers himself more than is fit, he be unable to restrain the lives of his subordinates under the bond of discipline. Let rulers, then, maintain outwardly what they undertake for the benefit of others: let them retain inwardly what makes them fearful in their estimate of themselves. But still let even their subjects perceive, by certain signs coming out becomingly, that in themselves they are humble; so as both to see something to be afraid of in their authority, and to acknowledge something to imitate with respect to humility. Therefore let those who preside study without intermission that in proportion as their power is seen to be great externally it be kept down within themselves internally; that it vanquish not their thought; that the heart be not carried away to delight in it; lest the mind become unable to control that which in lust of domination it submits itself to. For, lest the heart of a ruler should be betrayed into elation by delight in personal power, it is rightly said by a certain wise man They have made thee a leader: lift not up thyself, but be among them as one of them (Ecclus. xxxii. 1). Hence also Peter says, Not as being lords over God's heritage, but being made ensamples to the flock (1 Pet. v. 3). Hence the Truth in person, provoking us to higher virtuous desert, says, Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are greater exercise authority upon them. It shall not be so among you, but whosoever will be greater among you, let him be your minister; and whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant; even as the San of Man came not to be ministered to, but to minister (Matth. xx. 25). Hence also He indicates what punishments are in store for the servant who has been elated by his assumption of government, saying, But and if that evil servant shall say in his heart, My Lord delayeth his coming, and shall begin to smite his fellow-servants, and to eat and drink with the drunken, the Lord of that servant shall come in a day when he looketh not for him, and in an hour that he is not aware of, and shall cut him asunder, and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites (Matth. xxiv. 48, seq.). For he is rightly numbered among the hypocrites, who under pretence of discipline turns the ministry of government to the purpose of domination. And yet sometimes there is more grievous delinquency, if among perverse persons equality is kept up more than discipline. For Eli, because, overcome by false affection, he would not punish his delinquent sons, smote himself along with his sons before the strict judge with a cruel doom (1 Sam. iv. 17, 18). For on this account it is said to him by the divine voice, Thou hast honoured thy sons more than Me (Ibid. ii. 29). Hence, too, He upbraids the shepherds through the prophet, saying, That which was broken ye have not bound up, and that which was cast away ye have not brought back (Ezek. xxxiv. 4). For one who had been cast away is brought back, when any one who has fallen into sin is recalled to a state of righteousness by the vigour of pastoral solicitude. For ligature binds a fracture when discipline subdues a sin, lest the wound should bleed mortally for want of being compressed by the severity of constraint. But often a fracture is made worse, when it is bound together unwarily, so that the cut is more severely felt from being immoderately constrained by ligaments. Hence it is needful that when a wound of sin in subordinates is repressed by correction, even constraint should moderate itself with great carefulness, to the end that it may so exercise the rights of discipline against delinquents as to retain the bowels of loving-kindness. For care should be taken that a ruler shew himself to his subjects as a mother in loving-kindness, and as a father in discipline. And all the time it should be seen to with anxious circumspection, that neither discipline be rigid nor loving-kindness lax. For, as we have before now said in our book on Morals (Lib. xx., Moral n. 14, c. 8, et ep. 25, lib. 1), there is much wanting both to discipline and to compassion, if one be had without the other. But there ought to be in rulers towards their subjects both compassion justly considerate, and discipline affectionately severe. For hence it is that, as the Truth teaches (Luke x. 34), the man is brought by the care of the Samaritan half dead into the inn, and both wine and oil are applied to his wounds; the wine to make them smart, the oil to soothe them. For whosoever superintends the healing of wounds must needs administer in wine the smart of pain, and in oil the softness of loving-kindness, to the end that through wine what is festering may be purged, and through oil what is curable may be soothed. Gentleness, then, is to be mingled with severity; a sort of compound is to be made of both; so that subjects be neither exulcerated by too much asperity, nor relaxed by too great kindness. Which thing, according to the words of Paul (Heb. ix. 4), is well signified by that ark of the tabernacle, in which, together with the tables, there as a rod and manna; because, if with knowledge of sacred Scripture in the good ruler's breast there is the rod of constraint, there should be also the manna of sweetness. Hence David says, Thy rod and thy staff, they have comforted me (Ps. xxiii. 4). For with a rod we are smitten, with a staff we are supported. If, then, there is the constraint of the rod for striking, there should be also the comfort of the staff for supporting. Wherefore let there be love, but not enervating; let there be vigour, but not exasperating; let there be zeal, but not immoderately burning; let there be pity; but not sparing more than is expedient; that, while justice and mercy blend themselves together in supreme rule, he who is at the head may both soothe the hearts of his subjects in making them afraid, and yet in soothing them constrain them to reverential awe. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VII.
That the ruler relax not his care for the things that are within in his occupation among the things that are without, nor neglect to provide for the things that are without in his solicitude for the things that are within.
The ruler should not relax his care for the things that are within in his occupation among the things that are without, nor neglect to provide for the things that are without in his solicitude for the things that are within; lest either, given up to the things that are without, he fall away from his inmost concerns, or, occupied only with the things that are within bestow not on his neighbours outside himself what he owes them. For it is often the case that some, as if forgetting that they have been put over their brethren for their souls' sake, devote themselves with the whole effort of their heart to secular concerns; these, when they are at hand, they exult in transacting, and, even when there is a lack of them, pant after them night and day with seethings of turbid thought; and when, haply for lack of opportunity, they have quiet from them, by their very quiet they are wearied all the more. For they count it pleasure to be tired by action: they esteem it labour not to labour in earthly businesses. And so it comes to pass that, while they delight in being hustled by worldly tumults, they are ignorant of the things that are within, which they ought to have taught to others. And from this cause undoubtedly, the life also of their subjects is benumbed; because, while desirous of advancing spiritually, it meets a stumbling-block on the way in the example of him who is set over it. For when the head languishes, the members fail to thrive; and it is in vain for an army to follow swiftly in pursuit of enemies if the very leader of the march goes wrong. No exhortation sustains the minds of the subjects, and no reproof chastises their faults, because, while the office of an earthly judge is executed by the guardian of souls, the attention of the shepherd is diverted from custody of the flock; and the subjects are unable to apprehend the light of truth, because, while earthly pursuits occupy the pastor's mind, dust, driven by the wind of temptation, blinds the Church's eyes. To guard against this, the Redeemer of the human race, when He would restrain us from gluttony, saying, Take heed to yourselves that your hearts be not overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness (Luke xxi. 34), forthwith added, Or with cares of this life: and in the same place also, with design to add fearfulness to the warning, He straightway said, Lest perchance that day come upon you unawares (Ibid.): and He even declares the manner of that coming, saying, For as a snare shall it come on all them that dwell on the face of the whole earth (Ibid. 35). Hence He says again, No man can serve two masters (Luke xvi. 13). Hence Paul withdraws the minds of the religious from consort with the world by summoning, nay rather enlisting them, when he says, No man that warreth for God entangleth himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him to whom he has approved himself (2 Tim. ii. 4). Hence to the rulers of the Church he both commends the studies of leisure and points out the remedies of counsel, saying, If then ye should have secular judgments, set them to judge who are contemptible in the church (1 Cor. vi. 4); that is, that those very persons whom no spiritual gifts adorn should devote themselves to earthly charges. It is as if he had said more plainly, Since they are incapable of penetrating the inmost things, let them at any rate employ themselves externally in necessary things. Hence Moses, who speaks with God (Exod. xviii. 17, 18), is judged by the reproof of Jethro, who was of alien race, because with ill-advised labour he devotes himself to the people's earthly affairs: and counsel too is presently given him, that he should appoint others in his stead for settling earthly strifes, and he himself should be more free to learn spiritual secrets for the instruction of the people.
By the subjects, then, inferior matters are to be transacted, by the rulers the highest thought of; so that no annoyance of dust may darken the eye which is placed aloft for looking forward to the onward steps. For all who preside are the head of their subjects; and, that the feet may be able to take a straight course, the head ought undoubtedly to look forward to it from above, lest the feet linger on their onward journey, the body being bent from its uprightness and the head bowed down to the earth. But with what conscience can the overseer of souls avail himself among other men of his pastoral dignity, while engaged himself in the earthly cares which it was his duty to reprehend in others? And this indeed is what the Lord, in the wrath of just retribution, menaced through the prophet, saying, And there shall be like people, like priest (Hos. iv. 9). For the priest is as the people, when one who bears a spiritual office acts as do others who are still under judgment with regard to their carnal pursuits. And this indeed the prophet Jeremiah, in the great sorrow of his charity, deplores under the image of the destruction of the temple, saying, How is the gold become dim! The most excellent colour is changed; the stones of the sanctuary are poured out in the top of all the streets (Lam. iv. 1). For what is expressed by gold, which surpasses all other metals, but the excellency of holiness? What by the most excellent colour but the reverence that is about religion, to all men lovely? What are signified by the stones of the sanctuary but persons in sacred orders? What is figured under the name of streets but the latitude of this present life? For, because in Greek speech the word for latitude is platos, streets (plateæ) have been so called from their breadth, or latitude. But the Truth in person says, Broad and spacious is the way that leadeth to destruction (Matth. vii. 13). Gold, therefore, becomes dim when a life of holiness is polluted by earthly doings; the most excellent colour is changed, when the previous reputation of persons who were believed to be living religiously is diminished. For, when any one after a habit of holiness mixes himself up with earthly doings, it is as though his colour were changed, and the reverence that surrounded him grew pale and disregarded before the eyes of men. The stones of the sanctuary also are poured out into the streets, when those who, for the ornament of the Church, should have been free to penetrate internal mysteries as it were in the secret places of the tabernacle seek out the broadways of secular causes outside. For indeed to this end they were made stones of the sanctuary, that they might appear in the vestment of the high-priest within the holy of holies. But when ministers of religion exact not the Redeemer's honour from those that are under them by the merit of their life, they are not stones of the sanctuary in the ornament of the pontiff. And truly these stones of the sanctuary lie scattered through the streets, when persons in sacred orders, given up to the latitude of their own pleasures, cleave to earthly businesses. And it is to be observed that they are said to be scattered, not in the streets, but in the top of the streets; because, even when they are engaged in earthly matters, they desire to appear topmost; so as to occupy the broad ways in their enjoyment of delight, and yet to be at the top of the streets in the dignity of holiness.
Further, there is nothing to hinder us from taking the stones of the sanctuary to be those of which the sanctuary was itself constructed; which lie scattered in the top of the streets when men in sacred orders, in whose office the glory of holiness had previously seemed to stand, devote themselves out of preference to earthly doings. Secular employments, therefore, though they may sometimes be endured out of compassion, should never be sought after out of affection for the things themselves; lest, while they weigh down the mind of him who loves them, they sink it, overcome by its own burden, from heavenly places to the lowest. But, on the other hand, there are some who undertake the care of the flock, but desire to be so at leisure for their own spiritual concerns as to be in no wise occupied with external things. Such persons, in neglecting all care for what pertains to the body, by no means meet the needs of those who are put under them. And certainly their preaching is for the most part despised; because, while they find fault with the deeds of sinners, but nevertheless afford them not the necessaries of the present life, they are not at all willingly listened to. For the word of doctrine penetrates not the mind of one that is in need, if the hand of compassion commends it not to his heart. But the seed of the word readily germinates, when the loving-kindness of the preacher waters it in the hearer's breast. Whence, for a ruler to be able to infuse what may profit inwardly, it is necessary for him, with blameless consideration, to provide also for outward things. Let pastors, then, so glow with ardour in regard to the inward affections of those they have the charge of as not to relinquish provision also for their outward life. For, as we have said, the heart of the flock is, even as it were of right, set against preaching, if the care of external succour be neglected by the pastor. Whence also the first pastor anxiously admonishes, saying, The elders which are among you I beseech, who am also an elder, and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, and also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed, feed the flock of God which is among you (1 Pet. v. 1): in which place he shewed whether it was the feeding of the heart or of the body that he was commending, when he forthwith added, Providing for it, not by constraint, but willingly, according to God, not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind. In these words, indeed, pastors are kindly forewarned, lest, while they satisfy the want of those who are under them, they slay themselves with the sword of ambition; lest, while through them their neighbours are refreshed with succours of the flesh, they themselves remain fasting from the bread of righteousness. This solicitude of pastors Paul stirs up when he says, If any provide not for his own, and especially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel (1 Tim. v. 8). In the midst of all this, then, they should fear, and watchfully take heed, lest, while occupied with outward care, they be whelmed away from inward intentness. For usually, as we have already said, the hearts of rulers, while unwarily devoting themselves to temporal solicitude, cool in inmost love; and, being carried hither and thither abroad, fear not to forget that they have undertaken the government of souls. It is necessary, then, that the solicitude expended on those who are put under us should be kept within a certain measure. Hence it is well said to Ezekiel, The priests shall not shave their heads, nor suffer their locks to grow long, but polling let them poll their heads (Ezek. xliv. 20). For they are rightly called priests who are set over the faithful for affording them sacred guidance. But the hairs outside the head are thoughts in the mind; which, as they spring up insensibly above the brain, denote the cares of the present life, which, owing to negligent perception, since they sometimes come forth unseasonably, advance, as it were, without our feeling them. Since, then, all who are over others ought indeed to have external anxieties, and yet should not be vehemently bent upon them, the priests are rightly forbidden either to shave their heads or to let their hair grow long; that so they may neither cut off from themselves entirely thoughts of the flesh for the life of those who are under them, nor again allow them to grow too much. Thus in this passage it is well said, Polling let them poll their heads; to wit, that the cares of temporal anxiety should both extend themselves as far as need requires, and yet be cut short soon, lest they grow to an immoderate extent. When, therefore, through provident care for bodies applied externally life is protected [or, through provident care applied externally the life of bodies is protected], and again, through moderate intentness of heart, is not impeded [1271] , the hairs on the priest's head are both preserved to cover the skin, and cut short so as not to veil the eyes. __________________________________________________________________
[1271] The wording of this passage is obscure and may be corrupt. In a corresponding one in Gregory's Epistles (Lib. VII. Ep. 4), in other respects the same as this, we find, instead of "et rursus per moderatam cordis intentionem non impeditur," "et rursus per immoderatam cordis intentio non impeditur." Here, though non before impeditur is absent from many mss., and consequently rejected by the Benedictine editors, it seems necessary for the sense. The whole passage is thus capable of being intelligibly rendered thus: "When, therefore through provident care (providentiam) externally applied the life of bodies is protected, and again intentness of heart is not impeded through immoderate (providentiam)." In both passages the general drift is clear enough, as follows: When, through adequate taking thought on the part of the priest for people's bodily needs, their life is protected from harm, and yet his attention to such external matters is not so excessive as to hinder the devotion of his heart to spiritual things, then the meaning of Ezekiel's words is fulfilled. For the hairs of the head, denoting thoughts of the brain for temporal concerns, are allowed to advance so far as to afford needful protection, but not to such an immoderate extent as to obscure the sight of the eyes, i.e. spiritual vision. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VIII.
That the ruler should not set his heart on pleasing men, and yet should give heed to what ought to please them.
Meanwhile it is also necessary for the ruler to keep wary watch, lest the lust of pleasing men assail him; lest, when he studiously penetrates the things that are within, and providently supplies the things that are without, he seek to be beloved of those that are under him more than truth; lest, while, supported by his good deeds, he seems not to belong to the world, self-love estrange him from his Maker. For he is the Redeemer's enemy who through the good works which he does covets being loved by the Church instead of Him; since a servant whom the bridegroom has sent with gifts to the bride is guilty of treacherous thought if he desires to please the eyes of the bride. And in truth this self-love, when it has got possession of a ruler's mind, sometimes carries it away inordinately to softness, but sometimes to roughness. For from love of himself the ruler's mind is inclined to softness, because, when he observes those that are under him sinning, he does not presume to reprove them, lest their affection for himself should grow dull; nay sometimes he smooths down with flatteries the offence of his subordinates which he ought to have rebuked. Hence it is well said through the prophet, Woe unto them that sew cushions under every elbow, and make pillows under the head of every stature to catch souls (Ezek. xiii. 18); inasmuch as to put cushions under every elbow is to cherish with bland flatteries souls that are falling from their uprightness and reclining themselves in this world's enjoyment. For it is as though the elbow of a recumbent person rested on a cushion and his head on pillows, when the hardness of reproof is withdrawn from one who sins, and when the softness of favour is offered to him, that he may lie softly in error, while no roughness of contradiction troubles him. But so rulers who love themselves undoubtedly shew themselves to those by whom they fear they may be injured in their pursuit of temporal glory. Such indeed as they see to have no power against them they ever keep down with roughness of rigid censure, never admonish them gently, but, forgetful of pastoral kindness, terrify them with the rights of domination. Such the divine voice rightly upbraids through the prophet, saying, But with austerity and power did ye rule them (Ezek. xxiv. 4). For, loving themselves more than their Maker, they lift up themselves haughtily towards those that are under them, considering not what they ought to do, but what they can do; they have no fear of future judgment; they glory insolently in temporal power; it pleases them to be free to do even unlawful things, and that no one among their subordinates should contradict them. He, then, who sets his mind on doing wrong things, and yet wishes all other men to hold their peace about them, is himself a witness to himself that he desires to be loved himself more than the truth, which he is unwilling should be defended against him. There is indeed no one who so lives as not to some extent to fail in duty. He, then, desires the truth to be loved more fully than himself, who wishes to be spared by no one against the truth. For hence Peter willingly accepted Paul's rebuke (Galat. ii. 11); hence David humbly listened to the reproof of his subject (2 Sam. xii. 7); because good rulers, being themselves unconscious of loving with partial affection, believe the word of free sincerity from subjects to be the homage of humility. But meanwhile it is necessary that the care of government be tempered with so great skill of management that the mind of subjects, when it has become able to feel rightly on some subjects, should so advance to liberty of speech that liberty still break not out into pride; lest, while liberty of the tongue is perchance conceded to them overmuch, the humility of their life be lost. It is to be borne in mind also, that it is right for good rulers to desire to please men; but this in order to draw their neighbours by the sweetness of their own character to affection for the truth; not that they should long to be themselves loved, but should make affection for themselves as a sort of road by which to lead the hearts of their hearers to the love of the Creator. For it is indeed difficult for a preacher who is not loved, however well he may preach, to be willingly listened to. He, then, who is over others ought to study to be loved to the end that he may be listened to, and still not seek love for its own sake, lest he be found in the hidden usurpation of his thought to rebel against Him whom in his office he appears to serve. Which thing Paul insinuates well, when, manifesting the secret of his affection for us, he says, Even as I please all men in all things (1 Cor. x. 33). And yet he says again, If I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ (Gal. i. 10). Thus Paul pleases, and pleases not; because in that he desires to please he seeks that not he himself should please men, but truth through him. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IX.
That the ruler ought to be careful to understand how commonly vices pass themselves off as virtues.
The ruler also ought to understand how commonly vices pass themselves off as virtues. For often niggardliness palliates itself under the name of frugality, and on the other hand prodigality hides itself under the appellation of liberality. Often inordinate laxity is believed to be loving-kindness, and unbridled wrath is accounted the virtue of spiritual zeal. Often precipitate action is taken for the efficacy of promptness, and tardiness for the deliberation of seriousness. Whence it is necessary for the ruler of souls to distinguish with vigilant care between virtues and vices, lest either niggardliness get possession of his heart while he exults in seeming frugal in expenditure; or, while anything is prodigally wasted, he glory in being as it were compassionately liberal; or in remitting what he ought to have smitten he draw on those that are under him to eternal punishment; or in mercilessly smiting an offence he himself offend more grievously; or by immaturely anticipating mar what might have been done properly and gravely; or by putting off the merit of a good action change it to something worse. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter X.
What the ruler's discrimination should be between correction and connivance, between fervour and gentleness.
It should be known too that the vices of subjects ought sometimes to be prudently connived at, but indicated in that they are connived at; that things, even though openly known, ought sometimes to be seasonably tolerated, but sometimes, though hidden, be closely investigated; that they ought sometimes to be gently reproved, but sometimes vehemently censured. For, indeed, some things, as we have said, ought to be prudently connived at, but indicated in that they are connived at, so that, when the delinquent is aware that he is discovered and borne with, he may blush to augment those faults which he considers in himself are tolerated in silence, and may punish himself in his own judgment as being one whom the patience of his ruler in his own mind mercifully excuses. By such connivance the Lord well reproves Judah, when He says through the prophet, Thou hast lied, and hast not remembered Me, nor laid it to thy heart, because I have held My peace and been as one that saw not (Isai. lvii. 11). Thus He both connived at faults and made them known, since He both held His peace against the sinner, and nevertheless declared this very thing, that He had held His peace. But some things, even though openly known, ought to be seasonably tolerated; that is, when circumstances afford no suitable opportunity for openly correcting them. For sores by being unseasonably cut are the worse enflamed and, if medicaments suit not the time, it is undoubtedly evident that they lose their medicinal function. But, while a fitting time for the correction of subordinates is being sought, the patience of the prelate is exercised under the very weight of their offences. Whence it is well said by the Psalmist, Sinners have built upon my back (Ps. cxxviii. 3). For on the back we support burdens; and therefore he complains that sinners had built upon his back, as if to say plainly, Those whom I am unable to correct I carry as a burden laid upon me.
Some hidden things, however, ought to be closely investigated, that, by the breaking out of certain symptoms, the ruler may discover all that lies closely hidden in the minds of his subordinates, and, by reproof intervening at the nick of time, from very small things become aware of greater ones. Whence it is rightly said to Ezekiel, Son of man, dig in the wall (Ezek. viii. 8); where the said prophet presently adds, And when I had digged in the wall, there appeared one door. And he said unto me, Go in, and see the wicked abominations that they do here. So I went in and saw; and behold every similitude of creeping things, and abomination of beasts, and all the idols of the house of Israel, were pourtrayed upon the wall (Ibid. 9, 10). Now by Ezekiel are personified men in authority; by the wall is signified the hardness of their subordinates. And what is digging in a wall but opening the hardness of the heart by sharp inquisitions? Which wall when he had dug into, there appeared a door, because when hardness of heart is pierced either by careful questionings or by seasonable reproofs, there is shewn as it were a kind of door, through which may appear the interior of the thoughts in him who is reproved. Whence also it follows well in that place, Go in and see the wicked abominations that they do here (Ibid.). He goes in, as it were, to see the abominations, who, by examination of certain symptoms outwardly appearing, so penetrates the hearts of his subordinates as to become cognizant of all their illicit thoughts. Whence also he added, And I went in and saw; and behold every similitude of creeping things, and abomination of beasts (Ibid.). By creeping things thoughts altogether earthly are signified; but by beasts such as are indeed a little lifted above the earth, but still crave the rewards of earthly recompense. For creeping things cleave to the earth with the whole body; but beasts are in a large part of the body lifted above the earth, yet are ever inclined to the earth by gulosity. Therefore there are creeping things within the wall, when thoughts are revolved in the mind which never rise above earthly cravings. There are also beasts within the wall, when, though some just and some honourable thoughts are entertained, they are still subservient to appetite for temporal gains and honour, and, though in themselves indeed lifted, as one may say, above the earth, still through desire to curry favour, as through the throat's craving, demean themselves to what is lowest. Whence also it is well added, And all the idols of the house of Israel were pourtrayed upon the wall (Ezek. viii. 10), inasmuch as it is written, And covetousness, which is idolatry (Colos. iii. 5). Rightly therefore after beasts idols are spoken of, because some, though lifting themselves as it were above the earth by honourable action, still lower themselves to the earth by dishonourable ambition. And it is well said, Were pourtrayed; since, when the shows of external things are drawn into one's inner self, whatever is meditated on under imagined images is, as it were, pourtrayed on the heart. It is to be observed, therefore, that first a hole in the wall, and afterwards a door, is perceived, and that then at length the hidden abomination is made apparent; because, in fact, of every single sin signs are first seen outwardly, and afterwards a door is pointed out for opening the iniquity to view; and then at length every evil that lies hidden within is disclosed.
Some things, however, ought to be gently reproved: for, when fault is committed, not of malice, but only from ignorance or infirmity, it is certainly necessary that the very censure of it be tempered with great moderation. For it is true that all of us, so long as we subsist in this mortal flesh, are subject to the infirmities of our corruption. Every one, therefore, ought to gather from himself how it behoves him to pity another's weakness, lest, if he be too fervently hurried to words of reprehension against a neighbour's infirmity, he should seem to be forgetful of his own. Whence Paul admonishes well, when he says, If a man be overtaken in any fault, ye which are spiritual restore such an one in the spirit of meekness, considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted (Galat. vi. 1); as if to say plainly, When what thou seest of the infirmity of another displeases thee, consider what thou art; that so the spirit may moderate itself in the zeal of reprehension, while for itself also it fears what it reprehends.
Some things, however, ought to be vehemently reproved, that, when a fault is not recognized by him who has committed it, he may be made sensible of its gravity from the mouth of the reprover; and that, when any one smooths over to himself the evil that he has perpetrated, he may be led by the asperity of his censurer to entertain grave fears of its effects against himself. For indeed it is the duty of a ruler to shew by the voice of preaching the glory of the supernal country, to disclose what great temptations of the old enemy are lurking in this life's journey, and to correct with great asperity of zeal such evils among those who are under his sway as ought not to be gently borne with; lest, in being too little incensed against faults, of all faults he be himself held guilty. Whence it is well said to Ezekiel, Take unto thee a tile, and thou shalt lay it before thee, and pourtray upon it the city Jerusalem (Ezek. iv. 1). And immediately it is subjoined, And thou shalt lay siege against it, and build forts, and cast a mount, and set camps against it, and set battering rams against it round about. And to him, for his own defence it is forthwith subjoined, And do thou take unto thee an iron frying-pan, and thou shalt set it for a wall of iron between thee and the city. For of what does the prophet Ezekiel bear the semblance but of teachers, in that it is said to him, Take unto thee a tile, and thou shalt lay it before thee, and pourtray upon it the city Jerusalem?
For indeed holy teachers take unto themselves a tile, when they lay hold of the earthly heart of hearers in order to teach them: which tile in truth they lay before themselves, because they keep watch over it with the entire bent of their mind: on which tile also they are commanded to pourtray the city Jerusalem, because they are at the utmost pains to represent to earthy hearts by preaching a vision of supernal peace. But, because the glory of the heavenly country is perceived in vain, unless it be known also what great temptations of the crafty enemy assail us here, it is fitly subjoined, And thou shalt lay siege against it, and build forts. For indeed holy preachers lay siege about the tile on which the city Jerusalem is delineated, when to a mind that is earthy but already seeking after the supernal country they shew how great an opposition of vices in the time of this life is arrayed against it. For, when it is shewn how each several sin besets us in our onward course, it is as though a siege were laid round the city Jerusalem by the voice of the preacher. But, because preachers ought not only to make known how vices assail us, but also how well-guarded virtues strengthen us, it is rightly subjoined, And thou shalt build forts. For indeed the holy preacher builds forts, when he shews what virtues resist what vices. And because, as virtue increases, the wars of temptation are for the most part augmented, it is rightly further added, And thou shalt cast a mount, and set camps against it, and set battering rams round about. For, when any preacher sets forth the mass of increasing temptation, he casts a mount. And he sets camps against Jerusalem when to the right intention of his hearers he foretells the unsurveyed, and as it were incomprehensible, ambuscades of the cunning enemy. And he sets battering-rams round about, when he makes known the darts of temptation encompassing us on every side in this life, and piercing through our wall of virtues.
But although the ruler may nicely insinuate all these things, he procures not for himself lasting absolution, unless he glow with a spirit of jealousy against the delinquencies of all and each. Whence in that place it is further rightly subjoined, And do thou take to thee an iron frying-pan, and thou shalt set it for a wall of iron between thee and the city. For by the frying-pan is denoted a frying of the mind, and by iron the hardness of reproof.
But what more fiercely fries and excruciates the teacher's mind than zeal for God? Hence Paul was being burnt with the frying of this frying-pan when he said, Who is made weak, and I am not made weak? Who is offended, and I burn not? (2 Cor. xi. 29). And, because whosoever is inflamed with zeal for God is protected by a guard continually, lest he should deserve to be condemned for negligence, it is rightly said, Thou shalt set it for a wall of iron between thee and the city. For an iron frying-pan is set for a wall of iron between the prophet and the city, because, when rulers already exhibit strong zeal, they keep the same zeal as a strong defence afterwards between themselves and their hearers, lest they should be destitute then of the power to punish from having been previously remiss in reproving.
But meanwhile it is to be borne in mind that, while the mind of the teacher exasperates itself for rebuke, it is very difficult for him to avoid breaking out into saying something that he ought not to say. And for the most part it happens that, when the faults of subordinates are reprehended with severe invective, the tongue of the master is betrayed into excess of language. And, when rebuke is immoderately hot, the hearts of the delinquents are depressed to despair. Wherefore it is necessary for the exasperated ruler, when he considers that he has wounded more than he should have done the feelings of his subordinates, to have recourse in his own mind to penitence, so as by lamentations to obtain pardon in the sight of the Truth; and even for this cause, that it is through the ardour of his zeal for it that he sins. This is what the Lord in a figure enjoins through Moses, saying, If a man go in simplicity of heart with his friend into the wood to hew wood, and the wood of the axe fly from his hand, and the iron slip from the helve and smite his friend and slay him, he shall flee unto one of the aforesaid cities and live; lest haply the next of kin to him whose blood has been shed, while his heart is hot, pursue him, and overtake him, and smite him mortally (Deut. xix. 4, 5). For indeed we go with a friend into the wood as often as we betake ourselves to look into the delinquencies of subordinates. And we hew wood in simplicity of heart, when with pious intention we cut off the vices of delinquents. But the axe flies from the hand, when rebuke is drawn on to asperity more than need requires. And the iron leaps from the helve, when out of reproof issues speech too hard. And he smites and slays his friend, because overstrained contumely cuts him off from the spirit of love. For the mind of one who is reproved suddenly breaks out into hatred, if immoderate reproof charges it beyond its due. But he who smites wood incautiously and destroys his neighbour must needs fly to three cities, that in one of them he may live protected; since if, betaking himself to the laments of penitence, he is hidden under hope and charity in sacramental unity, he is not held guilty of the perpetrated homicide. And him the next of kin to the slain man does not kill, even when he finds him; because, when the strict judge comes, who has joined himself to us by sharing in our nature, without doubt He requires not the penalty of his fault from him whom faith, hope and charity hide under the shelter of his pardon. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XI.
How intent the ruler ought to be on meditations in the Sacred Law.
But all this is duly executed by a ruler, if, inspired by the spirit of heavenly fear and love, he meditate daily on the precepts of Sacred Writ, that the words of Divine admonition may restore in him the power of solicitude and of provident circumspection with regard to the celestial life, which familiar intercourse with men continually destroys; and that one who is drawn to oldness of life by secular society may by the aspiration of compunction be ever renewed to love of the spiritual country. For the heart runs greatly to waste in the midst of human talk; and, since it is undoubtedly evident that, when driven by the tumults of external occupations, it loses its balance and falls, one ought incessantly to take care that through keen pursuit of instruction it may rise again. For hence it is that Paul admonishes his disciple who had been put over the flock, saying, Till I come, give attendance to reading (1 Tim. iv. 13). Hence David says, How have I loved Thy Law, O Lord! It is my meditation all the day (Ps. cix. 97). Hence the Lord commanded Moses concerning the carrying of the ark, saying. Thou shalt make four rings of gold, which thou shalt put in the four corners of the ark, and thou shalt make staves of shittim-wood, and overlay them with gold, and shalt put them through the rings which are by the sides of the ark, that it may be borne with them, and they shall always be in the rings, nor shall they ever be drawn out from them (Exod. xxv. 12, seq.). What but the holy Church is figured by the ark? To which four rings of gold in the four corners are ordered to be adjoined, because, in that it is thus extended towards the four quarters of the globe, it is declared undoubtedly to be equipped for journeying with the four books of the holy Gospel. And staves of shittim-wood are made, and are put through the same rings for carrying, because strong and persevering teachers, as incorruptible pieces of timber, are to be sought for, who by cleaving ever to instruction out of the sacred volumes may declare the unity of the holy Church, and, as it were, carry the ark by being let into its rings. For indeed to carry the ark by means of staves is through preaching to bring the holy Church before the rude minds of unbelievers by means of good teachers. And these are also ordered to be overlaid with gold, that, while they are resonant to others in discourse, they may also themselves glitter in the splendour of their lives. Of whom it is further fitly added, They shall always be in the rings, nor shall they ever be drawn out from them; because it is surely necessary that those who attend upon the office of preaching should not recede from the study of sacred lore. For to this end it is that the staves are ordered to be always in the rings, that, when occasion requires the ark to be carried, no tardiness in carrying may arise from the staves having to be put in; because, that is to say, when a pastor is enquired of by his subordinates on any spiritual matter, it is exceedingly ignominious, should he then go about to learn, when he ought to solve the question. But let the staves remain ever in the rings, that teachers, ever meditating in their own hearts the words of Sacred Writ, may lift without delay the ark of the covenant; as will be the case if they teach at once whatever is required. Hence the first Pastor of the Church well admonishes all other pastors saying, Be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you (1 Pet. iii. 15): as though he should say plainly, That no delay may hinder the carrying of the ark, let the staves never be withdrawn from the rings. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Part III.
How the Ruler, While Living Well, Ought to Teach and Admonish Those that are Put Under Him.
Prologue.
Since, then, we have shewn what manner of man the pastor ought to be, let us now set forth after what manner he should teach. For, as long before us Gregory Nazianzen of reverend memory has taught, one and the same exhortation does not suit all, inasmuch as neither are all bound together by similarity of character. For the things that profit some often hurt others; seeing that also for the most part herbs which nourish some animals are fatal to others; and the gentle hissing that quiets horses incites whelps; and the medicine which abates one disease aggravates another; and the bread which invigorates the life of the strong kills little children. Therefore according to the quality of the hearers ought the discourse of teachers to be fashioned, so as to suit all and each for their several needs, and yet never deviate from the art of common edification. For what are the intent minds of hearers but, so to speak, a kind of tight tensions of strings in a harp, which the skilful player, that he may produce a tune not at variance with itself, strikes variously? And for this reason the strings render back a consonant modulation, that they are struck indeed with one quill, but not with one kind of stroke. Whence every teacher also, that he may edify all in the one virtue of charity, ought to touch the hearts of his hearers out of one doctrine, but not with one and the same exhortation. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter I.
What diversity there ought to be in the art of preaching.
Differently to be admonished are these that follow:--
Men and women.
The poor and the rich.
The joyful and the sad.
Prelates and subordinates.
Servants and masters.
The wise of this world and the dull.
The impudent and the bashful.
The forward and the fainthearted.
The impatient and the patient.
The kindly disposed and the envious.
The simple and the insincere.
The whole and the sick.
Those who fear scourges, and therefore live innocently; and those who have grown so hard in iniquity as not to be corrected even by scourges.
The too silent, and those who spend time in much speaking.
The slothful and the hasty.
The meek and the passionate.
The humble and the haughty.
The obstinate and the fickle.
The gluttonous and the abstinent.
Those who mercifully give of their own, and those who would fain seize what belongs to others.
Those who neither seize the things of others nor are bountiful with their own; and those who both give away the things they have, and yet cease not to seize the things of others.
Those that are at variance, and those that are at peace.
Lovers of strifes and peacemakers.
Those that understand not aright the words of sacred law; and those who understand them indeed aright, but speak them without humility.
Those who, though able to preach worthily, are afraid through excessive humility; and those whom imperfection or age debars from preaching, and yet rashness impels to it.
Those who prosper in what they desire in temporal matters; and those who covet indeed the things that are of the world, and yet are wearied with the toils of adversity.
Those who are bound by wedlock, and those who are free from the ties of wedlock.
Those who have had experience of carnal intercourse, and those who are ignorant of it.
Those who deplore sins of deed, and those who deplore sins of thought.
Those who bewail misdeeds, yet forsake them not; and those who forsake them, yet bewail them not.
Those who even praise the unlawful things they do; and those who censure what is wrong, yet avoid it not.
Those who are overcome by sudden passion, and those who are bound in guilt of set purpose.
Those who, though their unlawful deeds are trivial, yet do them frequently; and those who keep themselves from small sins, but are occasionally whelmed in graver ones.
Those who do not even begin what is good, and those who fail entirely to complete the good begun.
Those who do evil secretly and good publicly; and those who conceal the good they do, and yet in some things done publicly allow evil to be thought of them.
But of what profit is it for us to run through all these things collected together in a list, unless we also set forth, with all possible brevity, the modes of admonition for each?
(Admonition 1.) Differently, then, to be admonished are men and women; because on the former heavier injunctions, on the latter lighter are to be laid, that those may be exercised by great things, but these winningly converted by light ones.
(Admonition 2.) Differently to be admonished are young men and old; because for the most part severity of admonition directs the former to improvement, while kind remonstrance disposes the latter to better deeds. For it is written, Rebuke not an elder, but entreat him as a father (1 Tim. v. 1).> __________________________________________________________________
Chapter II.
How the poor and the rich should be admonished.
(Admonition 3.) Differently to be admonished are the poor and the rich: for to the former we ought to offer the solace of comfort against tribulation, but in the latter to induce fear as against elation. For to the poor one it is said by the Lord through the prophet, Fear not, for thou shalt not be confounded (Isai. liv. 4). And not long after, soothing her, He says, O thou poor little one, tossed with tempest (Ibid. 11). And again He comforts her, saying, I have chosen thee in the furnace of poverty (Ibid. xlviii. 10). But, on the other hand, Paul says to his disciple concerning the rich, Charge the rich of this world, that they be not high-minded nor trust in the uncertainty of their riches (1 Tim. vi. 17); where it is to be particularly noted that the teacher of humility in making mention of the rich, says not Entreat, but Charge; because, though pity is to be bestowed on infirmity, yet to elation no honour is due. To such, therefore, the right thing that is said is the more rightly commanded, according as they are puffed up with loftiness of thought in transitory things. Of them the Lord says in the Gospel, Woe unto you that are rich, which have your consolation (Luke vi. 24). For, since they know not what eternal joys are, they are consoled out of the abundance of the present life. Therefore consolation is to be offered to those who are tried in the furnace of poverty; and fear is to be induced in those whom the consolation of temporal glory lifts up; that both those may learn that they possess riches which they see not, and these become aware that they can by no means keep the riches that they see. Yet for the most part the character of persons changes the order in which they stand; so that the rich man may be humble and the poor man proud. Hence the tongue of the preacher ought soon to be adapted to the life of the hearer, so as to smite elation in a poor man all the more sharply as not even the poverty that has come upon him brings it down, and to cheer all the more gently the humility of the rich as even the abundance which elevates them does not elate them.
Sometimes, however, even a proud rich man is to be propitiated by blandishment in exhortation, since hard sores also are usually softened by soothing fomentations, and the rage of the insane is often restored to health by the bland words of the physician, and, when they are pleasantly humoured, the disease of their insanity is mitigated. For neither is this to be lightly regarded, that, when an adverse spirit entered into Saul, David took his harp and assuaged his madness (1 Sam. xviii. 10). For what is intimated by Saul but the elation of men in power, and what by David but the humble life of the holy? When, then, Saul is seized by the unclean spirit, his madness is appeased by David's singing; since, when the senses of men in power are turned to frenzy by elation, it is meet that they should be recalled to a healthy state by the calmness of our speech, as by the sweetness of a harp. But sometimes, when the powerful of this world are taken to task, they are first to be searched by certain similitudes, as on a matter not concerning them; and, when they have pronounced a right sentence as against another man, then in fitting ways they are to be smitten with regard to their own guilt; so that the mind puffed up with temporal power may in no wise lift itself up against the reprover, having by its own judgment trodden on the neck of pride, and may not try to defend itself, being bound by the sentence of its own mouth. For hence it was that Nathan the prophet, having come to take the king to task, asked his judgment as if concerning the cause of a poor man against a rich one (2 Sam. xii. 4, 5, seq.), that the king might first pronounce sentence, and afterwards hear of his own guilt, to the end that he might by no means contradict the righteous doom that he had uttered against himself. Thus the holy man, considering both the sinner and the king, studied in a wonderful order first to bind the daring culprit by confession, and afterwards to cut him to the heart by rebuke. He concealed for a while whom he aimed at, but smote him suddenly when he had him. For the blow would perchance have fallen with less force had he purposed to smite the sin openly from the beginning of his discourse; but by first introducing the similitude he sharpened the rebuke which he concealed. He had come as a physician to a sick man; he saw that the sore must be cut; but he doubted of the sick man's patience. Therefore he hid the medicinal steel under his robe, which he suddenly drew out and plunged into the sore, that the patient might feel the cutting blade before he saw it, lest, seeing it first, he should refuse to feel it. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter III.
How the joyful and the sad are to be admonished.
Admonition4. Differently to be admonished are the joyful and the sad. That is, before the joyful are to be set the sad things that follow upon punishment; but before the sad the promised glad things of the kingdom. Let the joyful learn by the asperity of threatenings what to be afraid of: let the sad bear what joys of reward they may look forward to. For to the former it is said, Woe unto you that laugh now! For ye shall weep (Luke vi. 25); but the latter hear from the teaching of the same Master, I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man shall take from you (Joh. xvi. 22). But some are not made joyful or sad by circumstances, but are so by temperament. And to such it should be intimated that certain defects are connected with certain temperaments; that the joyful have lechery close at hand, and the sad wrath. Hence it is necessary for every one to consider not only what he suffers from his peculiar temperament, but also what worse thing presses on him in connection with it; lest, while he fights not at all against that which he has, he succumb also to that from which he supposes himself free. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IV.
How subjects and prelates are to be admonished.
(Admonition 5.) Differently to be admonished are subjects and prelates: the former that subjection crush them not, the latter that superior place elate them not: the former that they fail not to fulfil what is commanded them, the latter that they command not more to be fulfilled than is just: the former that they submit humbly, the latter that they preside temperately. For this, which may be understood also figuratively, is said to the former, Children, obey your parents in the Lord: but to the latter it is enjoined, And ye, fathers, provoke not your children to wrath (Coloss. iii. 20, 21). Let the former learn how to order their inward thoughts before the eyes of the hidden judge; the latter how also to those that are committed to them to afford outwardly examples of good living. For prelates ought to know that, if they ever perpetrate what is wrong, they are worthy of as many deaths as they transmit examples of perdition to their subjects. Wherefore it is necessary that they guard themselves so much the more cautiously from sin as by the bad things they do they die not alone, but are guilty of the souls of others, which by their bad example they have destroyed. Wherefore the former are to be admonished, lest they should be strictly published, if merely on their own account they should be unable to stand acquitted; the latter, lest they should be judged for the errors of their subjects, even though on their own account they find themselves secure. Those are to be admonished that they live with all the more anxiety about themselves as they are not entangled by care for others; but these that they accomplish their charge of others in such wise as not to desist from charge of themselves, and so to be ardent in anxiety about themselves as not to grow sluggish in the custody of those committed to them. To the one, who is at leisure for his own concerns, it is said, Go to the ant, thou sluggard, and consider her ways, and learn wisdom (Prov. vi. 6): but the other is terribly admonished, when it is said, My son, if thou be surety for thy friend, thou hast stricken thy hand with a stranger, and art snared with the words of thy mouth, and art taken with thine own speeches (Ibid. 1). For to be surety for a friend is to take charge of the soul of another on the surety of one's own behaviour. Whence also the hand is stricken with a stranger, because the mind is bound with the care of a responsibility which before was not. But he is snared with the words of his mouth, and taken with his own speeches, because, while he is compelled to speak good things to those who are committed to him, he must needs himself in the first place observe the things that he speaks. He is therefore snared with the words of his mouth, being constrained by the requirement of reason not to let his life be relaxed to what agrees not with his teaching. Hence before the strict judge he is compelled to accomplish as much in deed as it is plain he has enjoined on others with his voice. Thus in the passage above cited this exhortation is also presently added, Do therefore what I say, my son, and deliver thyself, seeing thou hast fallen into the hands of thy neighbour: run up and down, hasten, arouse thy friend; give not sleep to thine eyes, nor let thine eyelids slumber (Prov. vi. 3). For whosoever is put over others for an example of life is admonished not only to keep watch himself, but also to arouse his friend. For it is not enough for him to keep watch in living well, if he do not also sever him when he is set over from the torpor of sin. For it is well said, Give not sleep to thine eyes, nor let thine eyelids slumber (Ibid. 4). For indeed to give sleep to the eyes is to cease from earnestness, so as to neglect altogether the care of our subordinates. But the eyelids slumber when our thoughts, weighed down by sloth, connive at what they know ought to be reproved in subordinates. For to be fast asleep is neither to know nor to correct the deeds of those committed to us. But to know what things are to be blamed, and still through laziness of mind not to amend them by meet rebukes, is not to sleep, but to slumber. Yet the eye through slumbering passes into the deepest sleep; since for the most part, when one who is over others cuts not off the evil that he knows, he comes sooner or later, as his negligence deserves, not even to know what is done wrong by his subjects.
Wherefore those who are over others are to be admonished, that through earnestness of circumspection they have eyes watchful within and round about, and strive to become living creatures of heaven (Ezek. i. 18). For the living creatures of heaven are described as full of eyes round about and within (Revel. iv. 6). And so it is meet that those who are over others should have eyes within and round about, so as both in themselves to study to please the inward judge, and also, affording outwardly examples of life, to detect the things that should be corrected in others.
Subjects are to be admonished that they judge not rashly the lives of their superiors, if perchance they see them act blamably in anything, lest whence they rightly find fault with evil they thence be sunk by the impulse of elation to lower depths. They are to be admonished that, when they consider the faults of their superiors, they grow not too bold against them, but, if any of their deeds are exceedingly bad, so judge of them within themselves that, constrained by the fear of God, they still refuse not to bear the yoke of reverence under them. Which thing we shall shew the better if we bring forward what David did (1 Sam. xxiv. 4 seq.). For when Saul the persecutor had entered into a cave to ease himself, David, who had so long suffered under his persecution, was within it with his men. And, when his men incited him to smite Saul, he cut them short with the reply, that he ought not to put forth his hand against the Lord's anointed. And yet he rose unperceived, and cut off the border of his robe. For what is signified by Saul but bad rulers, and what by David but good subjects? Saul's easing himself, then, means rulers extending the wickedness conceived in their hearts to works of woful stench, and their shewing the noisome thoughts within them by carrying them out into deeds. Yet him David was afraid to strike, because the pious minds of subjects, withholding themselves from the whole plague of backbiting, smite the life of their superiors with no sword of the tongue, even when they blame them for imperfection. And when through infirmity they can scarce refrain from speaking, however humbly, of some extreme and obvious evils in their superiors, they cut as it were silently the border of their robe; because, to wit, when, even though harmlessly and secretly, they derogate from the dignity of superiors, they disfigure as it were the garment of the king who is set over them; yet still they return to themselves, and blame themselves most vehemently for even the slightest defamation in speech. Hence it is also well written in that place, Afterward David's heart smote him, because he had cut off the border of Saul's robe (Ibid. 6). For indeed the deeds of superiors are not to be smitten with the sword of the mouth, even when they are rightly judged to be worthy of blame. But if ever, even in the least, the tongue slips into censure of them, the heart must needs be depressed by the affliction of penitence, to the end that it may return to itself, and, when it has offended against the power set over it, may dread the judgment against itself of Him by whom it was set over it. For, when we offend against those who are set over us, we go against the ordinance of Him who set them over us. Whence also Moses, when he had become aware that the people complained against himself and Aaron, said, For what are we? Not against us are your murmurings, but against the Lord (Exod. xvi. 8). __________________________________________________________________
Chapter V.
How servants and masters are to be admonished.
(Admonition 6). Differently to be admonished are servants and masters. Servants, to wit, that they ever keep in view the humility of their condition; but masters, that they lose not recollection of their nature, in which they are constituted on an equality with servants. Servants are to be admonished that they despise not their masters, lest they offend God, if by behaving themselves proudly they gainsay His ordinance: masters, too, are to be admonished, that they are proud against God with respect to His gift, if they acknowledge not those whom they hold in subjection by reason of their condition to be their equals by reason of their community of nature. The former are to be admonished to know themselves to be servants of masters; the latter are to be admonished to acknowledge themselves to be fellow-servants of servants. For to those it is said, Servants, obey your masters according to the flesh (Coloss. iii. 22); and again, Let as many servants as are under the yoke count their masters worthy of all honour (1 Tim. vi. 1); but to these it is said, And ye, masters, do the same things unto them, forbearing threatening, knowing that both their and your Master is in heaven (Ephes. vi. 9). __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VI.
How the wise and the dull are to be admonished.
(Admonition 7). Differently to be admonished are the wise of this world and the dull. For the wise are to be admonished that they leave off knowing what they know: the dull also are to be admonished that they seek to know what they know not. In the former this thing first, that they think themselves wise, is to be thrown down; in the latter whatsoever is already known of heavenly wisdom is to be built up; since, being in no wise proud, they have, as it were, prepared their hearts for supporting a building. With those we should labour that they become more wisely foolish, leave foolish wisdom, and learn the wise foolishness of God: to these we should preach that from what is accounted foolishness they should pass, as from a nearer neighbourhood, to true wisdom. For to the former it is said, If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise (1 Cor. iii. 18): but to the latter it is said, Not many wise men after the flesh (1 Cor. i. 26); and again, God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise (Ibid. 27). The former are for the most part converted by arguments of reasoning; the latter sometimes better by examples. Those it doubtless profits to lie vanquished in their own allegations; but for these it is sometimes enough to get knowledge of the praiseworthy deeds of others. Whence also the excellent teacher, who was debtor to the wise and foolish (Rom. i. 14), when he was admonishing some of the Hebrews that were wise, but some also that were somewhat slow, speaking to them of the fulfilment of the Old Testament, overcame the wisdom of the former by argument, saying, That which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away (Heb. viii. 13). But, when he perceived that some were to be drawn by examples only, he added in the same epistle, Saints had trial of mockings and scourgings, yea moreover of bonds and imprisonment; they were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword (Ibid. xi. 36, 37): and again, Remember those who were set over you, who spoke to you the Word of God, whose faith follow, looking to the end of their conversation (Ibid. xiii. 7); that so victorious reason might subdue the one sort, but the gentle force of example persuade the other to mount to greater things. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VII.
How the impudent and bashful are to be admonished.
(Admonition 8). Differently to be admonished are the impudent and the bashful. For those nothing but hard rebuke restrains from the vice of impudence; while these for the most part a modest exhortation disposes to amendment. Those do not know that they are in fault, unless they be rebuked even by many; to these it usually suffices for their conversion that the teacher at least gently reminds them of their evil deeds. For those one best corrects who reprehends them by direct invective; but to these greater profit ensues, if what is rebuked in them be touched, as it were, by a side stroke. Thus the Lord, openly upbraiding the impudent people of the Jews, saying, There is come unto thee a whore's forehead; thou wouldest not blush (Jerem. iii. 3). But again He revives them when ashamed, saying, Thou shalt forget the confusion of thy youth, and shalt not remember the reproach of thy widowhood; for thy Maker will reign over thee (Isai. liv. 4). Paul also openly upbraids the Galatians impudently sinning, when he says, O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you (Galat. iii. 1)? And again, Are ye so foolish, that, having begun in the Spirit, ye are now made perfect in the flesh (Ibid. 3)? But the faults of those who are ashamed he reprehends as though sympathizing with them, saying, I rejoiced in the Lord greatly, that now at the last ye have flourished again to care for me, as indeed ye did care, for ye lacked opportunity (Philipp. iv. 10); so that hard upbraiding might discover the faults of the former, and a softer address veil the negligence of the latter. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter VIII.
How the forward and the faint-hearted are to be admonished.
(Admonition 9.) Differently to be admonished are the forward and the faint-hearted. For the former, presuming on themselves too much, disdain all others when reproved by them; but the latter, while too conscious of their own infirmity, for the most part fall into despondency. Those count all they do to be singularly eminent; these think what they do to be exceedingly despised, and so are broken down to despondency. Therefore the works of the forward are to be finely sifted by the reprover, that wherein they please themselves they may be shewn to displease God.
For we then best correct the forward, when what they believe themselves to have done well we shew to have been ill done; that whence glory is believed to have been gained, thence wholesome confusion may ensue. But sometimes, when they are not at all aware of being guilty of the vice of forwardness, they more speedily come to correction if they are confounded by the infamy of some other person's more manifest guilt, sought out from a side quarter; that from that which they cannot defend, they may be made conscious of wrongly holding to what they do defend. Whence, when Paul saw the Corinthians to be forwardly puffed up one against another, so that one said he was of Paul, another of Apollos, another of Cephas, and another of Christ (1 Cor. i. 12; iii. 4), he brought forward the crime of incest, which had not only been perpetrated among them, but also remained uncorrected, saying, It is reported commonly that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not even among the Gentiles, that one should have his father's wife. And ye are puffed up, and have not rather mourned, that he that hath done this deed might be taken away from among you (1 Cor. v. 1, 2). As if to say plainly, Why say ye in your forwardness that ye are of this one or of the other, while shewing in the dissoluteness of your negligence, that ye are of none of them?
But on the other hand we more fitly bring back the faint-hearted to the way of well-doing, if we search collaterally for some good points about them, so that, while some things in them we attack with our reproof, others we may embrace with our praise; to the end that the hearing of praise may nourish their tenderness, which the rebuking of their fault chastises. And for the most part we make more way with them for their profit, if we also make mention of their good deeds; and, in case of some wrong things having been done by them, if we find not fault with them as though they were already perpetrated, but, as it were, prohibit them as what ought not to be perpetrated; that so both the favour shewn may increase the things which we approve, and our modest exhortation avail more with the faint-hearted against the things which we blame. Whence the same Paul, when he came to know that the Thessalonians, who stood fast in the preaching which they had received, were troubled with a certain faint-heartedness as though the end of the world were nigh at hand, first praises that wherein he sees them to be strong, and afterwards, with cautious admonition, strengthens what was weak. For he says, We are bound to thank God always for you, brethren, as it is meet, because that your faith groweth exceedingly, and the charity of every one of you all toward each other aboundeth; so that we ourselves too glory in you in the churches of God for your patience and faith (2 Thess. i. 3, 4). But, having premised these flattering encomiums of their life, a little while after he subjoined, Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and our gathering together unto Him, that ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as sent by us, as that the day of the Lord is at hand (Ibid. ii. 1). For the true teacher so proceeded that they should first hear, in being praised, what they might thankfully acknowledge, and afterwards, in being exhorted, what they should follow; to the end that the precedent praise should settle their mind, lest the subjoined admonition should shake it; and, though he knew that they had been disquieted by suspicion of the end being near, he did not yet reprove them as having been so, but, as if ignorant of the past, forbade them to be disquieted in future; so that, while they believed themselves to be unknown to their preacher with respect even to the levity of their disquietude, they might be as much afraid of being open to blame as they were of being known by him to be so. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter IX.
How the impatient and the patient are to be admonished.
(Admonition 10.) Differently to be admonished are the impatient and the patient. For the impatient are to be told that, while they neglect to bridle their spirit, they are hurried through many steep places of iniquity which they seek not after, inasmuch as fury drives the mind whither desire draws it not, and, when perturbed, it does, not knowing, what it afterwards grieves for when it knows. The impatient are also to be told that, when carried headlong by the impulse of emotion, they act in some ways as though beside themselves, and are hardly aware afterwards of the evil they have done; and, while they offer no resistance to their perturbation, they bring into confusion even things that may have been well done when the mind was calm, and overthrow under sudden impulse whatever they have haply long built up with provident toil. For the very virtue of charity, which is the mother and guardian of all virtues, is lost through the vice of impatience. For it is written, Charity is patient (1 Cor. xiii. 4). Wherefore where patience is not, charity is not. Through this vice of impatience, too, instruction, the nurse of virtues, is dissipated. For it is written, The instruction of a man is known by his patience (Prov. xix. 11). Every man, then, is shewn to be by so much less instructed as he is convicted of being less patient. For neither can he truly impart what is good through instruction, if in his life he knows not how to bear what is evil in others with equanimity.
Further, through this vice of impatience for the most part the sin of arrogance pierces the mind; since, when any one is impatient of being looked down upon in this world, he endeavours to shew off any hidden good that he may have, and so through impatience is drawn on to arrogance; and, while he cannot bear contempt, he glories ostentatiously in self-display. Whence it is written, Better is the patient than the arrogant (Eccles. vii. 9); because, in truth, one that is patient chooses to suffer any evils whatever rather than that his hidden good should come to be known through the vice of ostentation. But the arrogant, on the contrary, chooses that even pretended good should be vaunted of him, lest he should possibly suffer even the least evil. Since, then, when patience is relinquished, all other good things also that have been done are overthrown, it is rightly enjoined on Ezekiel that in the altar of God a trench be made; to wit, that in it the whole burnt-offerings laid on the altar might be preserved (Ezek. xliii. 13). For, if there were not a trench in the altar, the passing breeze would scatter every sacrifice that it might find there. But what do we take the altar of God to be but the soul of the righteous man, which lays upon itself before His eyes as many sacrifices as it has done good deeds? And what is the trench of the altar but the patience of good men, which, while it humbles the mind to endure adversities, shews it to be placed low down after the manner of a ditch? Wherefore let a trench be made in the altar, lest the breeze should scatter the sacrifice laid upon it: that is, let the mind of the elect keep patience, lest, stirred with the wind of impatience, it lose even that which it has wrought well. Well, too, this same trench is directed to be of one cubit, because, if patience fails not, the measure of unity is preserved. Whence also Paul says, Bear ye one another's burdens, and so ye shall fulfil the law Christ (Galat. vi. 2). For the law of Christ is the charity of unity, which they alone fulfil who are guilty of no excess even when they are burdened. Let the impatient hear what is written, Better is the patient than the mighty, and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh cities (Prov. xvi. 32). For victory over cities is a less thing, because that which is subdued is without; but a far greater thing is that which is conquered by patience, since the mind itself is by itself overcome, and subjects itself to itself, when patience compels it to bridle itself within. Let the impatient hear what the Truth says to His elect; In your patience ye shall possess your souls (Luke xxi. 19). For we are so wonderfully made that reason possesses the soul, and the soul the body. But the soul is ousted from its right of possession of the body, if it is not first possessed by reason. Therefore the Lord pointed out patience as the guardian of our state, in that He taught us to possess ourselves in it. Thus we learn how great is the sin of impatience, through which we lose the very possession of what we are. Let the impatient hear what is said again through Solomon; A fool uttereth all his mind, but a wise man putteth it off, and reserves it until afterwards (Prov. xxix. 11). For one is so driven by the impulse of impatience as to utter forth the whole mind, which the perturbation within throws out the more quickly for this reason, that no discipline of wisdom fences it round. But the wise man puts it off, and reserves it till afterwards. For, when injured, he desires not to avenge himself at the present time, because in his tolerance he even wishes that men should be spared; but yet he is not ignorant that all things are righteously avenged at the last judgment.
On the other hand the patient are to be admonished that they grieve not inwardly for what they bear outwardly, lest they spoil with the infection of malice within a sacrifice of so great value which without they offer whole; and lest the sin of their grieving, not perceived by men, but yet seen as sin under the divine scrutiny, be made so much the worse as it claims to itself the fair shew of virtue before men.
The patient therefore should be told to study to love those whom they must needs bear with; lest, if love follow not patience, the virtue exhibited be turned to a worse fault of hatred. Whence Paul, when he said, Charity is patient, forthwith added, Is kind (1 Cor. xiii. 4); shewing certainly that those whom in patience she bears with in kindness also she ceases not to love. Whence the same excellent teacher, when he was persuading his disciples to patience, saying, Let all bitterness, and wrath, and indignation, and clamour, and evil speaking be put away from you (Ephes. iv. 31), having as it were now set all outward things in good order, turns himself to those that are within, when he subjoins, With all malice (Ibid.); because, truly, in vain are indignation, clamour, and evil speaking put away from the things that are without, if in the things that are within malice, the mother of vices, bears sway; and to no purpose is wickedness cut off from the branches outside if it is kept at the root within to spring up in more manifold ways. Whence also the Truth in person says, Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you, and pray for them which persecute you and say evil of you falsely (Luke vi. 27). It is virtue therefore before men to bear with adversaries; but it is virtue before God to love them; because the only sacrifice which God accepts is that which, before His eyes, on the altar of good work, the flame of charity kindles. Hence it is that to some who were patient, and yet did not love, He says, And why seest thou the mote in thy brother's eye, and seest not the beam in thine own eye? (Matth. vii. 3; Luke vi. 41). For indeed the perturbation of impatience is a mote; but malice in the heart is a beam in the eye. For that the breeze of temptation drives to and fro; but this confirmed iniquity carries almost immoveably. Rightly, however, it is there subjoined, Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye, and then shall thou see to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye (Ibid.); as if it were said to the wicked mind, inwardly grieving while shewing itself by patience outwardly as holy, First shake off from thee the weight of malice, and then blame others for the levity of impatience; lest, while thou takest no pains to conquer pretence, it be worse for thee to bear with the faultiness of others.
For it usually comes to pass with the patient that at the time, indeed, when they suffer hardships, or hear insults, they are smitten with no vexation, and so exhibit patience as to fail not to keep also innocence of heart; but, when after a while they recall to memory these very same things that they have endured, they inflame themselves with the fire of vexation, they seek reasons for vengeance, and, in retracting, turn into malice the meekness which they had in bearing. Such are the sooner succoured by the preacher, if the cause of this change be disclosed. For the cunning adversary wages war against two; that is, by inflaming one to be the first to offer insults, and provoking the other to return insults under a sense of injury. But for the most part, while he is already conqueror of him who has been persuaded to inflict the injury, he is conquered by him who bears the infliction with an equal mind. Wherefore, being victorious over the one whom he has subjugated by incensing him, he lifts himself with all his might against the other, and is grieved at his firmly resisting and conquering; and so, because he has been unable to move him in the very flinging of insults, he rests meanwhile from open contest, and provoking his thought by secret suggestion, seeks a fit time for deceiving him. For, having lost in public warfare, he burns to lay hidden snares. In a time of quiet he returns to the mind of the conqueror, brings back to his memory either temporal harms or darts of insults, and by exceedingly exaggerating all that has been inflicted on him represents it as intolerable: and with so great vexation does he perturb the mind that for the most part the patient one, led captive after victory, blushes for having borne such things calmly, and is sorry that he did not return insults, and seeks to pay back something worse, should opportunity be afforded. To whom, then, are these like but to those who by bravery are victorious in the field, but by negligence are afterwards taken within the gates of the city? To whom are they like but to those whom a violent attack of sickness removes not from life, but who die from a relapse of fever coming gently on? Therefore the patient are to be admonished, that they guard their heart after victory; that they be on the lookout for the enemy, overcome in open warfare, laying snares against the walls of their mind; that they be the more afraid of a sickness creeping on again; lest the cunning enemy, should he afterwards deceive them, rejoice with the greater exultation in that he treads on the necks of conquerors which had long been inflexible against him. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter X.
How the kindly-disposed and the envious are to be admonished.
(Admonition 11.) Differently to be admonished are the kindly-disposed and the envious. For the kindly-disposed are to be admonished so to rejoice in what is good in others as to desire to have the like as their own; so to praise with affection the deeds of their neighbours as also to multiply them by imitation, lest in this stadium of the present life they assist at the contest of others as eager backers, but inert spectators, and remain without a prize after the contest, in that they toiled not in the contest, and should then regard with sorrow the palms of those in the midst of whose toils they stood idle. For indeed we sin greatly if we love not the good deeds of others: but we win no reward if we imitate not so far as we can the things which we love. Wherefore the kindly-disposed should be told that if they make no haste to imitate the good which they applaud, the holiness of virtue pleases them in like manner as the vanity of scenic exhibitions of skill pleases foolish spectators: for these extol with applauses the performances of charioteers and players, and yet do not long to be such as they see those whom they praise to be. They admire them for having done pleasing things, and yet they shun pleasing in like manner. The kindly-disposed are to be told that when they behold the deeds of their neighbours they should return to their own heart, and presume not on actions which are not their own, nor praise what is good while they refuse to do it. More heavily, indeed, must those be smitten by final vengeance who have been pleased by that which they would not imitate.
The envious are to be admonished how great is their blindness who fail by other men's advancement, and pine away at other men's rejoicing; how great is their unhappiness who are made worse by the bettering of their neighbour, and in beholding the increase of another's prosperity are uneasily vexed within themselves, and die of the plague of their own heart. What can be more unhappy than these, who, when touched by the sight of happiness, are made more wicked by the pain of seeing it? But, moreover, the good things of others which they cannot have they might, if they loved them, make their own. For indeed all are constituted together in faith as are many members in one body; which are indeed diverse as to their office, but in mutually agreeing with each other are made one. Whence it comes to pass that the foot sees by the eye, and the eyes walk by the feet; that the hearing of the ears serves the mouth, and the tongue of the mouth concurs with the ears for their benefit; that the belly supports the hands, and the hands work for the belly. In the very arrangement of the body, therefore, we learn what we should observe in our conduct. It is, then, too shameful not to act up to what we are. Those things, in fact, are ours which we love in others, even though we cannot follow them; and what things are loved in us become theirs that love them. Hence, then, let the envious consider of how great power is charity, which makes ours without labour works of labour not our own. The envious are therefore to be told that, when they fail to keep themselves from spite, they are being sunk into the old wickedness of the wily foe. For of him it is written, But by envy of the devil death entered into the world (Wisd. ii. 24). For, because he had himself lost heaven, he envied it to created man, and, being himself ruined, by ruining others he heaped up his own damnation. The envious are to be admonished, that they may learn to how great slips of ruin growing under them they are liable; since, while they cast not forth spite out of their heart, they are slipping down to open wickedness of deeds. For, unless Cain had envied the accepted sacrifice of his brother, he would never have come to taking away his life. Whence it is written, And the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering, but unto Cain and to his offering He had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell (Gen. iv. 4). Thus spite on account of the sacrifice was the seed-plot of fratricide. For him whose being better than himself vexed him he cut off from being at all. The envious are to be told that, while they consume themselves with this inward plague, they destroy whatever good they seem to have within them. Whence it is written, Soundness of heart is the life of the flesh, but envy the rottenness of the bones (Prov. xiv. 30). For what is signified by the flesh but certain weak and tender actions, and what by the bones but brave ones? And for the most part it comes to pass that some, with innocence of heart, in some of their actions seem weak; but others, though performing some stout deeds before human eyes, still pine away inwardly with the pestilence of envy towards what is good in others. Wherefore it is well said, Soundness of heart is the life of the flesh; because, if innocence of mind is kept, even such things as are weak outwardly are in time strengthened. And rightly it is there added, Envy is the rottenness of the bones; because through the vice of spite what seems strong to human eyes perishes in the eyes of God. For the rotting of the bones through envy means that certain even strong things utterly perish. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XI.
How the simple and the crafty are to be admonished.
(Admonition 12.) Differently to be admonished are the simple and the insincere. The simple are to be praised for studying never to say what is false, but to be admonished to know how sometimes to be silent about what is true. For, as falsehood has always harmed him that speaks it, so sometimes the hearing of truth has done harm to some. Wherefore the Lord before His disciples, tempering His speech with silence, says, I have many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now (Joh. xvi. 12). The simple are therefore to be admonished that, as they always avoid deceit advantageously, so they should always utter truth advantageously. They are to be admonished to add prudence to the goodness of simplicity, to the end that they may so possess the security of simplicity as not to lose the circumspection of prudence. For hence it is said by the teacher of the Gentiles, I would have you wise in that which is good, but simple concerning evil (Rom. xvi. 19). Hence the Truth in person admonishes His elect, saying, Be ye wise as serpents, but simple as doves (Matth. x. 16); because, to wit, in the hearts of the elect the wisdom of the serpent ought to sharpen the simplicity of the dove and the simplicity of the dove temper the wisdom of the serpent, to the end that neither through prudence they be seduced into cunning, nor from simplicity grow torpid in the exercise of the understanding.
But, on the other hand, the insincere are to be admonished to learn how heavy is the labour of duplicity, which with guilt they endure. For, while they are afraid of being found out, they are ever seeking dishonest defences, they are agitated by fearful suspicions. But there is nothing safer for defence than sincerity, nothing easier to say than truth. For, when obliged to defend its deceit, the heart is wearied with hard labour. For hence it is written, The labour of their own lips shall cover them (Ps. cxxxix. 10). For what now fills them then covers them, since it then presses down with sharp retribution him whose soul it now elevates with a mild disquietude. Hence it is said through Jeremiah, They have taught their tongue to speak lies, and weary themselves to commit iniquity (Jerem. ix. 5): as if it were said plainly, They who might have been friends of truth without labour, labour to sin; and, while they refuse to live in simplicity, by labours require that they should die. For commonly, when taken in a fault, while they shrink from being known to be such as they are, they hide themselves under a veil of deceit, and endeavour to excuse their sin, which is already plainly perceived; so that often one who has a care to reprove their faults, led astray by the mists of the falsehood that surrounds them, finds himself to have almost lost what he just now held as certain concerning them. Hence it is rightly said through the prophet, under the similitude of Judah, to the soul that sins and excuses itself, There the urchin had her nest (Isai. xxxiv. 15). For by the name of urchin is denoted the duplicity of a mind that is insincere, and cunningly defends itself; because, to wit, when an urchin is caught, its head is perceived, and its feet appear, and its whole body is exposed to view; but no sooner has it been caught than it gathers itself into a ball, draws in its feet, hides its head, and all is lost together within the hands of him that holds it which before was all visible together. So assuredly, so insincere minds are, when they are seized hold of in their transgressions. For the head of the urchin is perceived, because it appears from what beginning the sinner has advanced to his crime; the feet of the urchin are seen, because it is discovered by what steps the iniquity has been perpetrated; and yet by suddenly adducing excuses the insincere mind gathers in its feet, in that it hides all traces of its iniquity; it draws in the head, because by strange defences it makes out that it has not even begun any evil; and it remains as it were a ball in the hand of one that holds it, because one that takes it to task, suddenly losing all that he had just now come to the knowledge of, holds the sinner rolled up within his own consciousness, and, though he had seen the whole of him when he was caught, yet, illuded by the tergiversation of dishonest defence, he is in like measure ignorant of the whole of him. Thus the urchin has her nest in the reprobate, because the duplicity of a crafty mind, gathering itself up within itself, hides itself in the darkness of its self-defence.
Let the insincere hear what is written, He that walketh in simplicity walketh surely (Prov. x. 9). For indeed simplicity of conduct is an assurance of great security. Let them hear what is said by the mouth of the wise man, The holy spirit of discipline will flee deceit (Wisd. i. 5). Let them hear what is again affirmed by the witness of Scripture, His communing is with the simple (Prov. iii. 32). For God's communing is His revealing of secrets to human minds by the illumination of His presence. He is therefore said to commune with the simple, because He illuminates with the ray of His visitation concerning supernal mysteries the minds of those whom no shade of duplicity obscures. But it is a special evil of the double-minded, that, while they deceive others by their crooked and double conduct, they glory as though they were surpassingly prudent beyond others; and, since they consider not the strictness of retribution, they exult, miserable men that they are, in their own losses. But let them hear how the prophet Zephaniah holds out over them the power of divine rebuke, saying, Behold the day of the Lord cometh, great and horrible, the day of wrath, that day; a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of cloud and whirlwind, a day of trumpet and clangour, upon all fenced cities, and upon all lofty corners (Zephan. i. 15, 16). For what is expressed by fenced cities but minds suspected, and surrounded ever with a fallacious defence; minds which, as often as their fault is attacked, suffer not the darts of truth to reach them? And what is signified by lofty corners (a wall being always double in corners) but insincere hearts; which, while they shun the simplicity of truth, are in a manner doubled back upon themselves in the crookedness of duplicity, and, what is worse, from their very fault of insincerity lift themselves in their thoughts with the pride of prudence? Therefore the day of the Lord comes full of vengeance and rebuke upon fenced cities and upon lofty corners, because the wrath of the last judgment both destroys human hearts that have been closed by defences against the truth, and unfolds such as have been folded up in duplicities. For then the fenced cities fall, because souls which God has not penetrated will be damned. Then the lofty corners tumble, because hearts which erect themselves in the prudence of insincerity are prostrated by the sentence of righteousness. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XII.
How the whole and the sick are to be admonished.
(Admonition 13.) Differently to be admonished are the whole and the sick. For the whole are to be admonished that they employ the health of the body to the health of the soul: lest, if they turn the grace of granted soundness to the use of iniquity, they be made worse by the gift, and afterwards merit the severer punishments, in that they fear not now to use amiss the more bountiful gifts of God. The whole are to be admonished that they despise not the opportunity of winning health for ever. For it is written, Behold now is the acceptable time, behold now is the day of salvation (2 Cor. vi. 2). They are to be admonished lest, if they will not please God when they may, they may be not able when, too late, they would. For hence it is that Wisdom afterward deserts those whom, too long refusing, she before called, saying, I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded; ye have set at naught all my counsel, and would none of my reproof: I will also laugh at your destruction, and will mock when what you feared cometh (Prov. i. 24, seq.). And again, Then shall they call upon me, and I will not hearken; they shall rise early, and shall not find me (Ibid. 28). And so, when health of body, received for the purpose of doing good, is despised, it is felt, after it is lost, how precious was the gift: and at the last it is fruitlessly sought, having been enjoyed unprofitably when granted at the fit time. Whence it is well said through Solomon, Give not thine honour unto aliens and thy years unto the cruel, lest haply strangers be filled with thy wealth, and thy labours be in the house of a stranger, and thou moan at the last, when thy flesh and thy body are consumed (Ibid. v. 9, seq.). For who are aliens from us but malignant spirits, who are separated from the lot of the heavenly country? And what is our honour but that, though made in bodies of clay, we are yet created after the image and likeness of our Maker? Or who else is cruel but that apostate angel, who has both smitten himself with the pain of death through pride, and has not spared, though lost, to bring death upon the human race? He therefore gives his honour unto aliens who, being made after the image and likeness of God, devotes the seasons of his life to the pleasures of malignant spirits. He also surrenders his years to the cruel one who spends the space of life accorded him after the will of the ill-domineering adversary. And in the same place it is well added, Lest haply strangers be filled with thy wealth, and labours be in the house of a stranger. For whosoever, through the healthy estate of body received by him, or the wisdom of mind granted to him, labours not in the practice of virtues but in the perpetration of vices, he by no means fills his own house, but the habitations of strangers, with his wealth: that is, he multiplies the deeds of unclean spirits, and indeed so acts, in his luxuriousness or his pride, as even to increase the number of the lost by the addition of himself. Further, it is well added, And thou moan at the last, when thy flesh and thy body are consumed. For, for the most part, the health of the flesh which has been received is spent through vices: but, when it is suddenly withdrawn, when the flesh is worn with afflictions, when the soul is already urged to go forth, then lost health, long enjoyed for ill, is sought again as though for living well. And then men moan for that they would not serve God, when altogether unable to repair the losses of their negligence by serving Him. Whence it is said in another place, When He slew them, then they sought Him (Ps. lxxvii. 34).
But, on the other hand, the sick are to be admonished that they feel themselves to be sons of God in that the scourge of discipline chastises them. For, unless He purposed to give them an inheritance after correction, He would not have a care to educate them by afflictions. For hence the Lord says to John by the angel, Whom I love I rebuke and chasten (Rev. iii. 19; Prov. iii. 11). Hence again it is written, My son despise not thou the discipline of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of Him. For whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth (Heb. xii. 5, 6). Hence the Psalmist says, Many are the tribulations of the righteous, and out of all these hath the Lord delivered them (Ps. xxxiii. 20). Hence also the blessed Job, crying out in his sorrow, says, If l be righteous, I will not lift up my head, being saturated with affliction and misery (Job x. 15). The sick are to be told that, if they believe the heavenly country to be their own, they must needs endure labours in this as in a strange land. For hence it was that the stones were hammered outside, that they might be laid without sound of hammer in the building of the temple of the Lord; because, that is, we are now hammered with scourges without, that we may be afterwards set in our places within, without stroke of discipline, in the temple of God; to the end that strokes may now cut away whatever is superfluous in us, and then the concord of charity alone bind us together in the building. The sick are to be admonished to consider what severe scourges of discipline chastise our sons after the flesh for attaining earthly inheritances. What pain, then, of divine correction is hard upon us, by which both a never-to-be-lost inheritance is attained, and punishments which shall endure for ever are avoided? For hence Paul says, We have had fathers of our flesh as our educators, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much more be in subjection unto the Father of spirits and live? And they indeed for a few days educated us after their own will; but He for our profit in the receiving of His sanctification (Heb. xii. 9, 10).
The sick are to be admonished to consider how great health of the heart is in bodily affliction, which recalls the mind to knowledge of itself, and renews the memory of infirmity which health for the most part casts away, so that the spirit, which is carried out of itself into elation, may be reminded by the smitten flesh from which it suffers to what condition it is subject. Which thing is rightly signified to Balaam (had he but been willing to follow obediently the voice of God) in the very retardation of his journey (Num. xxii. 23, seq.). For Balaam is on his way to attain his purpose; but the animal which is under him thwarts his desire. The ass, stopped by the prohibition, sees an angel which the human mind sees not; because for the most part the flesh, slow through afflictions, indicates to the mind from the scourge which it endures the God whom the mind itself which has the flesh under it did not see, in such sort as to impede the eagerness of the spirit which desires to advance in this world as though proceeding on a journey, until it makes known to it the invisible one who stands in its way. Whence also it is well said through Peter, He had the dumb beast of burden for a rebuke of his madness, which speaking with a man's voice forbade the foolishness of the prophet (2 Pet. ii. 16). For indeed a man is rebuked as mad by a dumb beast of burden, when an elated mind is reminded by the afflicted flesh of the good of humility which it ought to retain. But Balaam did not obtain the benefit of this rebuke for this reason, that, going to curse, he changed his voice, but not his mind. The sick are to be admonished to consider how great a boon is bodily affliction, which both washes away committed sins and restrains those which might have been committed, which inflicts on the troubled mind wounds of penitence derived from outward stripes. Whence it is written, The blueness of a wound cleanseth away evil, and stripes in the secret parts of the belly (Prov. xx. 30). For the blueness of a wound cleanseth away evil, because the pain of scourges cleanses iniquities, whether meditated or perpetrated. But by the appellation of belly the mind is wont to be understood. For that the mind is called the belly is taught by that sentence in which it is written, The spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord, which searcheth all the secret parts of the belly (Ibid. 27). As if to say, The illumination of Divine inspiration, when it comes into a man's mind, shews it to itself by illuminating it, whereas before the coming of the Holy Spirit it both could entertain bad thoughts and knew not how to estimate them. Then, the blueness of a wound cleanses away evil, and stripes in the secret parts of the belly, because when we are smitten outwardly, we are recalled, silent and afflicted, to memory of our sins, and bring back before our eyes all our past evil deeds, and through what we suffer outwardly we grieve inwardly the more for what we have done. Whence it comes to pass that in the midst of open wounds of the body the secret stripe in the belly cleanses us more fully, because a hidden wound of sorrow heals the iniquities of evil-doing.
The sick are to be admonished, to the end that they may keep the virtue of patience, to consider incessantly how great evils our Redeemer endured from those whom He had created; that He bore so many vile insults of reproach; that, while daily snatching the souls of captives from the hand of the old enemy, He took blows on the face from insulting men; that, while washing us with the water of salvation, He hid not His face from the spittings of the faithless; that, while delivering us by His advocacy from eternal punishments, He bore scourges in silence; that, while giving to us everlasting honours among the choirs of angels, He endured buffets; that, while saving us from the prickings of our sins, He refused not to submit His head to thorns; that, while inebriating us with eternal sweetness, He accepted in His thirst the bitterness of gall; that He Who for us adored the Father though equal to Him in Godhead, when adored in mockery held His peace: that, while preparing life for the dead, He Who was Himself the life came even unto death. Why, then, is it thought hard that man should endure scourges from God for evil-doing, if God underwent so great evils for well-doing? Or who with sound understanding can be ungrateful for being himself smitten, when even He Who lived here without sin went not hence without a scourge? __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIII.
How those who fear scourges and those who contemn them are to be admonished.
(Admonition 14.) Differently to be admonished are those who fear scourges, and on that account live innocently, and those who have grown so hard in wickedness as not to be corrected even by scourges. For those who fear scourges are to be told by no means to desire temporal goods as being of great account, seeing that bad men also have them, and by no means to shun present evils as intolerable, seeing they are not ignorant how for the most part good men also are touched by them. They are to be admonished that, if they desire to be truly free from evils, they should dread eternal punishments; nor yet continue in this fear of punishments, but grow up by the nursing of charity to the grace of love. For it is written, Perfect charity casteth out fear (1 Joh. iv. 18). And again it is written, Ye have not received the spirit of bondage again in fear, but the spirit of adoption of sons, wherein we cry, Abba, Father (Rom. viii. 15). Whence the same teacher says again, Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty (2 Cor. iii. 17). If, then, the fear of punishment still restrains from evil-doing, truly no liberty of spirit possesses the soul of him that so fears. For, were he not afraid of the punishment, he would doubtless commit the sin. The mind, therefore, that is bound by the bondage of fear knows not the grace of liberty. For good should be loved for itself, not pursued because of the compulsion of penalties. For he that does what is good for this reason, that he is afraid of the evil of torments, wishes that what he fears were not, that so he might commit what is unlawful boldly. Whence it appears clearer than the light that innocence is thus lost before God, in whose eyes evil desire is sin.
But, on the other hand, those whom not even scourges restrain from iniquities are to be smitten with sharper rebuke in proportion as they have grown hard with greater insensibility. For generally they are to be disdained without disdain, and despaired of without despair, so, to wit, that the despair exhibited may strike them with dread, and admonition following may bring them back to hope. Sternly, therefore, against them should the Divine judgments be set forth, that they may be recalled by consideration of eternal retribution to knowledge of themselves. For let them hear that in them is fulfilled that which is written, If thou shouldest bray a fool in a mortar, as if with a pestle pounding barley, his foolishness will not be taken away from him (Prov. xxvii. 22). Against these the prophet complains to the Lord, saying, Thou hast bruised them, and they have refused to receive discipline (Jer. v. 3). Hence it is that the Lord says, I have slain and destroyed this people, and yet they have not returned from their ways (Isai. ix. 13). Hence He says again, The people hath not returned to Him that smiteth them (Jer. xv. 6). Hence the prophet complains by the voice of the scourgers, saying, We have taken care for Babylon, and she is not healed (Jer. li. 9). For Babylon is taken care for, yet still not restored to health, when the mind, confused in evil-doing, hears the words of rebuke, feels the scourges of rebuke, and yet scorns to return to the straight paths of salvation. Hence the Lord reproaches the children of Israel, captive, but yet not converted from their iniquity, saying, The house of Israel is to Me become dross: all they are brass, and tin, and iron, and lead, in the midst of the furnace (Ezek. xxii. 18); as if to say plainly, I would have purified them by the fire of tribulation, and I sought that they should become silver or gold; but they have been turned before me in the furnace into brass, tin, iron, and lead, because even in tribulation they have broken forth, not to virtue but to vices. For indeed brass, when it is struck, returns a sound more than all other metals. He, therefore, who, when subjected to strokes, breaks out into a sound of murmuring is turned into brass in the midst of the furnace. But tin, when it is dressed with art, has a false show of silver. He, then, who is not free from the vice of pretence in the midst of tribulation becomes tin in the furnace. Moreover, he who plots against the life of his neighbour uses iron. Wherefore iron in the furnace is he who in tribulation loses not the malice that would do hurt. Lead, also, is the heaviest of metals. He, then, is found as lead in the furnace who, even when placed in the midst of tribulation, is not raised above earthly desires. Hence, again, it is written, She hath wearied herself with much labour, and her exceeding rust went not out from her, not even by fire (Ezek. xxiv. 12). For He brings upon us the fire of tribulation, that He may purge us from the rust of vices; but we lose not our rust even by fire, when even amid scourges we lack not vice. Hence the Prophet says again, The founder hath melted in vain; their wickednesses are not consumed (Jer. vi. 29).
It is, however, to be known that sometimes when they remain uncorrected amid the hardness of scourges, they are to be soothed by sweet admonition. For those who are not corrected by torments are sometimes restrained from unrighteous deeds by gentle blandishments. For commonly the sick too, whom a strong potion of medicine has not availed to cure, have been restored to their former health by tepid water; and some sores which cannot be cured by incision are healed by fomentations of oil; and hard adamant admits not at all of incision by steel, but is softened by the mild blood of goats. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIV.
How the silent and the talkative are to be admonished.
(Admonition 15.) Differently to be admonished are the over-silent, and those who spend time in much speaking. For it ought to be insinuated to the over-silent that while they shun some vices unadvisedly, they are, without its being perceived, implicated in worse. For often from bridling the tongue overmuch they suffer from more grievous loquacity in the heart; so that thoughts seethe the more in the mind from being straitened by the violent guard of indiscreet silence. And for the most part they overflow all the more widely as they count themselves the more secure because of not being seen by fault-finders without. Whence sometimes a man's mind is exalted into pride, and he despises as weak those whom he hears speaking. And, when he shuts the mouth of his body, he is not aware to what extent through his pride he lays himself open to vices. For his tongue he represses, his mind he exalts; and, little considering his own wickedness, accuses all in his own mind by so much the more freely as he does it also the more secretly. The over-silent are therefore to be admonished that they study anxiously to know, not only what manner of men they ought to exhibit themselves outwardly, but also what manner of men they ought to shew themselves inwardly; that they fear more a hidden judgment in respect of their thoughts than the reproof of their neighbours in respect of their speeches. For it is written, My son, attend unto my wisdom, and bow thine ear to my prudence, that thou mayest guard thy thoughts (Prov. v. 1). For, indeed, nothing is more fugitive than the heart, which deserts us as often as it slips away through bad thoughts. For hence the Psalmist says, My heart hath failed me (Ps. xxxix. 13 [1272] ). Hence, when he returns to himself, he says, Thy servant hath found his heart to pray to Thee (2 Sam. vii. 27). When, therefore, thought is kept under guard, the heart which was wont to fly away is found. Moreover, the over-silent for the most part, when they suffer some injustices, come to have a keener sense of pain from not speaking of what they endure. For, were the tongue to tell calmly the annoyances that have been caused, the pain would flow away from the consciousness. For closed sores torment the more; since, when the corruption that is hot within is cast out, the pain is opened out for healing. They, therefore, who are silent more than is expedient, ought to know this, lest, amid the annoyances which they endure while they hold their tongue, they aggravate the violence of their pain. For they are to be admonished that, if they love their neighbours as themselves, they should by no means keep from them the grounds on which they justly blame them. For from the medicine of the voice there is a concurrent effect for the health of both parties, while on the side of him who inflicts the injury his bad conduct is checked, and on the side of him who sustains it the violent heat of pain is allayed by opening out the sore. For those who take notice of what is evil in their neighbours, and yet refrain their tongue in silence, withdraw, as it were, the aid of medicine from observed sores, and become the causers of death, in that they would not cure the venom which they could have cured. The tongue, therefore, should be discreetly curbed, not tied up fast. For it is written, A wise man will hold his tongue until the time (Eccles. xx. 7); in order, assuredly, that, when he considers it opportune, he may relinquish the censorship of silence, and apply himself to the service of utility by speaking such things as are fit. And again it is written, A time to keep silence, and a time to speak (Eccles. iii. 7). For, indeed, the times for changes should be discreetly weighed, lest either, when the tongue ought to be restrained, it run loose to no profit in words, or, when it might speak with profit, it slothfully restrain itself. Considering which thing well, the Psalmist says, Set a watch, O Lord, on my mouth, and a door round about my lips (Ps. cxl. 3 [1273] ). For he seeks not that a wall should be set on his lips, but a door: that is, what is opened and shut. Whence we, too, ought to learn warily, to the end that the voice discreetly and at the fitting time may open the mouth, and at the fitting time silence close it.
But, on the other hand, those who spend time in much speaking are to be admonished that they vigilantly note from what a state of rectitude they fall away when they flow abroad in a multitude of words. For the human mind, after the manner of water, when closed in, is collected unto higher levels, in that it seeks again the height from which it descended; and, when let loose, it falls away in that it disperses itself unprofitably through the lowest places. For by as many superfluous words as it is dissipated from the censorship of its silence, by so many streams, as it were, is it drawn away out of itself. Whence also it is unable to return inwardly to knowledge of itself, because, being scattered by much speaking, it excludes itself from the secret place of inmost consideration. But it uncovers its whole self to the wounds of the enemy who lies in want, because it surrounds itself with no defence of watchfulness. Hence it is written, As a city that lieth open and without environment of walls, so is a man that cannot keep in his spirit in speaking (Prov. xxv. 28). For, because it has not the wall of silence, the city of the mind lies open to the darts of the foe; and, when by words it casts itself out of itself, it shews itself exposed to the adversary. And he overcomes it with so much the less labour as with the more labour the mind itself, which is conquered, fights against itself by much speaking.
Moreover, since the indolent mind for the most part lapses by degrees into downfall, while we neglect to guard against idle words we go on to hurtful ones; so that at first it pleases us to talk of other men's affairs; afterwards the tongue gnaws with detraction the lives of those of whom we talk; but at last breaks out even into open slanders. Hence are sown pricking thorns, quarrels arise, the torches of enmities are kindled, the peace of hearts is extinguished. Whence it is well said through Solomon, He that letteth out water is a well-spring of strifes (Prov. xvii. 14). For to let out water is to let loose the tongue to a flux of speech. Wherefore, on the other hand, in a good sense it is said again, The words of a man's mouth are as deep water (Ibid. xviii. 4). He therefore who letteth out water is the wellspring of strifes, because he who curbs not his tongue dissipates concord. Hence on the other hand it is written, He that imposes silence on a fool allays enmities (Ibid. xxvi. 10). Moreover, that any one who gives himself to much speaking cannot keep the straight way of righteousness is testified by the Prophet, who says, A man full of words shall not be guided aright upon the earth (Ps. cxxxix. 12 [1274] ). Hence also Solomon says again, In the multitude of words there shall not want sin (Prov. x. 19). Hence Isaiah says, The culture of righteousness is silence (Isai. xxxii. 17), indicating, to wit, that the righteousness of the mind is desolated when there is no stint of immoderate speaking. Hence James says, If any man thinketh himself to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man's religion is vain (James i. 26). Hence again he says, Let every man be swift to hear, but slow to speak (Ibid. 19). Hence again, defining the power of the tongue, he adds, An unruly evil, full of deadly poison (Ibid. iii. 8). Hence the Truth in person admonishes us, saying, Every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment (Matth. xii. 36). For indeed every word is idle that lacks either a reason of just necessity or an intention of pious usefulness. If then an account is required of idle discourse, let us weigh well what punishment awaits much speaking, in which there is also the sin of hurtful words. __________________________________________________________________
[1272] In English Bible, xl. 12.
[1273] In English Bible, cxli. 3.
[1274] In English Bible, cxli. 11. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XV.
How the slothful and the hasty are to be admonished.
(Admonition 16.) Differently to be admonished are the slothful and the hasty. For the former are to be persuaded not to lose, by putting it off, the good they have to do; but the latter are to be admonished lest, while they forestall the time of good deeds by inconsiderate haste, they change their meritorious character. To the slothful therefore it is to be intimated, that often, when we will not do at the right time what we can, before long, when we will, we cannot. For the very indolence of the mind, when it is not kindled with befitting fervour, gets cut off by a torpor that stealthily grows upon it from all desire of good things. Whence it is plainly said through Solomon, Slothfulness casteth into a deep sleep (Prov. xix. 15). For the slothful one is as it were awake in that he feels aright, though he grows torpid by doing nothing: but slothfulness is said to cast into a deep sleep, because by degrees even the wakefulness of right feeling is lost, when zeal for well-doing is discontinued. And in the same place it is rightly added, And a dissolute soul shall suffer hunger (Ibid.). For, because it braces not itself towards higher things, it lets itself run loose uncared for in lower desires; and, while not braced with the vigour of lofty aims, suffers the pangs of the hunger of low concupiscence, and, in that it neglects to bind itself up by discipline, it scatters itself the more abroad hungry in its craving after pleasures. Hence it is written again by the same Solomon, The idle man is wholly in desires (Prov. xxi. 26). Hence in the preaching of the Truth Himself (Matth. xii. 44, 45) the house is said indeed to be clean when one spirit has gone out; but, when empty, it is taken possession of by his returning with many more. For the most part the slothful, while he neglects to do things that are necessary, sets before him some that are difficult, but is inconsiderately afraid of others; and so, as though finding something that he may reasonably fear, he satisfies himself that he has good reason for remaining torpid. To him it is rightly said through Solomon, The sluggard would not plough by reason of the cold; therefore shall he beg in summer, and it shall not be given unto him (Prov. xx. 4). For indeed the sluggard ploughs not by reason of the cold, when he finds an excuse for not doing the good things which he ought to do. The sluggard ploughs not by reason of the cold, when he is afraid of small evils that are against him, and leaves undone things of the greatest importance. Further it is well said, He shall beg in summer, and it shall not be given unto him. For whoso toils not now in good works will beg in summer and receive nothing, because, when the burning sun of judgment shall appear, he will then sue in vain for entrance into the kingdom. To him it is well said again through the same Solomon, He that observeth the wind doth not sow: and he that regardeth the clouds never reapeth (Eccles. xi. 4). For what is expressed by the wind but the temptation of malignant spirits? And what are denoted by the clouds which are moved of the wind but the oppositions of bad men? The clouds, that is to say, are driven by the winds, because bad men are excited by the blasts of unclean spirits. He, then, that observeth the wind soweth not, and he that regardeth the clouds reapeth not, because whosoever fears the temptation of malignant spirits, whosoever the persecution of bad men, and does not sow the seed of good work now, neither doth he then reap handfuls of holy recompense.
But on the other hand the hasty, while they forestall the time of good deeds, pervert their merit, and often fall into what is evil, while failing altogether to discern what is good. Such persons look not at all to see what things they are doing when they do them, but for the most part, when they are done, become aware that they ought not to have done them. To such, under the guise of a learner, it is well said in Solomon, My son, do nothing without counsel, and after it is done thou shalt not repent (Ecclus. xxxii. 24). And again, Let thine eyelids go before thy steps (Prov. iv. 25). For indeed our eyelids go before our steps, when right counsels prevent our doings. For he who neglects to look forward by consideration to what he is about to do advances his steps with his eyes closed; proceeds on and accomplishes his journey, but goes not in advance of himself by looking forward; and therefore the sooner falls, because he gives no heed through the eyelid of counsel to where he should set the foot of action. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVI.
How the meek and the passionate are to be admonished.
(Admonition 17.) Differently to be admonished are the meek and the passionate. For sometimes the meek, when they are in authority, suffer from the torpor of sloth, which is a kindred disposition, and as it were placed hard by. And for the most part from the laxity of too great gentleness they soften the force of strictness beyond need. But on the other hand the passionate, in that they are swept on into frenzy of mind by the impulse of anger, break up the calm of quietness, and so throw into confusion the life of those that are put under them. For, when rage drives them headlong, they know not what they do in their anger, they know not what in their anger they suffer from themselves. But sometimes, what is more serious, they think the goad of their anger to be the zeal of righteousness. And, when vice is believed to be virtue, guilt is piled up without fear. Often, then, the meek grow torpid in the laziness of inactivity; often the passionate are deceived by the zeal of uprightness. Thus to the virtue of the former a vice is unawares adjoined, but to the latter their vice appears as though it were fervent virtue. Those, therefore, are to be admonished to fly what is close beside themselves, these to take heed to what is in themselves; those to discern what they have not, these what they have. Let the meek embrace solicitude; let the passionate ban perturbation. The meek are to be admonished that they study to have also the zeal of righteousness: the passionate are to be admonished that to the zeal which they think they have they add meekness. For on this account the Holy Spirit has been manifested to us in a dove and in fire; because, to wit, all whom He fills He causes to shew themselves as meek with the simplicity of the dove, and burning with the fire of zeal.
He then is in no wise full of the Holy Spirit, who either in the calm of meekness forsakes the fervour of zeal, or again in the ardour of zeal loses the virtue of meekness. Which thing we shall perhaps better shew, if we bring forward the authority of Paul, who to two who were his disciples, and endowed with a like charity, supplies nevertheless different aids for preaching. For in admonishing Timothy he says, Reprove, entreat, rebuke, with all long-suffering and doctrine (2 Tim. iv. 2). Titus also he admonishes, saying, These things speak, and exhort, and rebuke with all authority (Tit. ii. 15). What is the reason that he dispenses his teaching with so great art as, in exhibiting it, to recommend authority to the one, and long-suffering to the other, except that he saw Titus to be of a meeker spirit, and Timothy of one a little more fervid? The former he inflames with the earnestness of zeal; the latter he moderates by the gentleness of long-suffering. To the one he adds what is wanting, from the other he subtracts what is overabundant. The one he endeavours to push on with a spur, the other to keep back with a bridle. For the great husbandman who has the Church in charge waters some shoots that they may grow, but prunes others when he sees that they grow too much; lest either by not growing they should bear no fruit, or by growing over much they should lose the fruits they may put forth. But far different is the anger that creeps in under the guise of zeal from that which confounds the perturbed heart without pretext of righteousness. For the former is extended inordinately in that wherein it ought to be, but the latter is ever kindled in that wherein it ought not to be. It should indeed be known that in this the passionate differ from the impatient, that the latter bear not with things brought upon them by others, but the former themselves bring on things to be borne with. For the passionate often follow after those who shun them, stir up occasion of strife, rejoice in the toil of contention; and yet such we better correct, if in the midst of the commotion of their anger we do shun them. For, while they are perturbed, they do not know what we say to them; but, when brought back to themselves, they receive words of exhortation the more freely in proportion as they blush at having been the more calmly borne with. But to a mind that is drunk with fury every right thing that is said appears wrong. Whence to Nabal when he was drunk Abigail laudably kept silence about his fault, but, when he had digested his wine, as laudably told him of it (1 Sam. xxv. 37). For he could for this reason perceive the evil he had done, that he did not hear of it when drunk.
But when the passionate so attack others that they cannot be altogether shunned, they should be smitten, not with open rebuke, but sparingly with a certain respectful cautiousness. And this we shall shew better if we bring forward what was done by Abner. For, when Asahel attacked him with the violence of inconsiderate haste, it is written, Abner spake unto Asahel, saying. Turn thee aside from following me, lest I be driven to smite thee to the ground. Howbeit he scorned to listen, and refused to turn aside. Whereupon Abner smote him with the hinder end of the spear in the groin, and thrust him through, and he died (2 Sam. ii. 22, 23). For of whom did Asahel present a type but of those whom fury violently seizes and carries headlong? And such, in this same attack of fury, are to be shunned cautiously in proportion as they are madly hurried on. Whence also Abner, who in our speech is called the lantern of the father, fled; because when the tongue of teachers, which indicates the supernal light of God, sees the mind of any one borne along over the steeps of rage, and refrains from casting back darts of words against the angry person, it is as though it were unwilling to smite one that is pursuing. But, when the passionate will not pacify themselves by any consideration, and, like Asahel, cease not to pursue and to be mad, it is necessary that those who endeavour to repress these furious ones should by no means lift themselves up in fury, but exhibit all possible calmness; and yet adroitly bring something to bear whereby they may by a side thrust prick the heart of the furious one. Whence also Abner, when he made a stand against his pursuer, pierced him, not with a direct stroke, but with the hinder end of his spear. For to strike with the point is to oppose with an onset of open rebuke: but to smite the pursuer with the hinder end of the spear is calmly to touch the furious one with certain hits, and, as it were, by sparing him overcome him. Asahel moreover straightway fell, because agitated minds, when they feel themselves to be spared, and yet are touched inwardly by the answers given in calmness, fall at once from the elevation to which they had raised themselves. Those, then, who rebound from the onset of their heat under the stroke of gentleness die, as it were, without steel. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVII.
How the humble and the haughty are to be admonished.
(Admonition 18.) Differently to be admonished are the humble and the haughty. To the former it is to be insinuated how true is that excellence which they hold in hoping for it; to the latter it is to be intimated how that temporal glory is as nothing which even when embracing it they hold not. Let the humble hear how eternal are the things that they long for, how transitory the things which they despise; let the haughty hear how transitory are the things they court, how eternal the things they lose. Let the humble hear from the authoritative voice of the Truth, Every one that humbleth himself shall be exalted (Luke xviii. 14). Let the haughty hear, Every one that exalteth himself shall be humbled (Ibid.). Let the humble hear, Humility goeth before glory; let the haughty hear, The spirit is exalted before a fall (Prov. xv. 33; xvi. 18). Let the humble hear, Unto whom shall I have respect, but to him that is humble and quiet, and that trembleth at my words (Isai. lxvi. 2)? Let the haughty hear, Why is earth and ashes proud (Ecclus. x. 9)? Let the humble hear, God hath respect unto the things that are humble. Let the haughty hear, And lofty things He knoweth afar off (Psal. cxxxvii. 6 [1275] ). Let the humble hear, That the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister (Matth. xx. 28); let the haughty hear, that The beginning of all sin is pride (Ecclus. x. 13). Let the humble hear, that Our Redeemer humbled himself, being made obedient even unto death (Philip. ii. 8); let the haughty hear what is written concerning their head, He is king over all the sons of pride (Job xli. 25). The pride, therefore, of the devil became the occasion of our perdition, and the humility of God has been found the argument for our redemption. For our enemy, having been created among all things, desired to appear exalted above all things; but our Redeemer, remaining great above all things, deigned to become little among all things.
Let the humble, then, be told that, when they abase themselves, they ascend to the likeness of God; let the haughty be told that, when they exalt themselves, they fall into imitation of the apostate angel. What, then, is more debased than haughtiness, which, while it stretches itself above itself, is lengthened out beyond the stature of true loftiness? And what is more sublime than humility, which, while it depresses itself to the lowest, conjoins itself to its Maker who remains above the highest? There is, however, another thing in these cases that ought to be carefully considered; that some are often deceived by a false show of humility, while some are beguiled by ignorance of their own haughtiness. For commonly some who think themselves humble have an admixture of fear, such as is not due to men; while an assertion of free speech commonly goes with the haughty. And when any vices require to be rebuked, the former hold their peace out of fear, and yet esteem themselves as being silent out of humility; the latter speak in the impatience of haughtiness, and yet believe themselves to be speaking in the freedom of uprightness. Those the fault of timidity under a show of humility keeps back from rebuking what is wrong; these the unbridled impetuosity of pride, under the image of freedom, impels to rebuke things they ought not, or to rebuke them more than they ought. Whence both the haughty are to be admonished not to be free more than is becoming, and the humble are to be admonished not to be more submissive than is right; lest either the former turn the defence of righteousness into a display of pride, or the latter, while they study more than needs to submit themselves to men, be driven even to pay respect to their vices.
It is, however, to be considered that for the most part we more profitably reprove the haughty, if with our reproofs of them we mingle some balms of praise. For some other good things that are in them should be introduced into our reproofs, or at all events some that might have been, though they are not; and then at last the bad things that displease us should be cut away, when previous allowance of the good things that please us has made their minds favourably disposed to listen. For unbroken horses, too, we first touch with a gentle hand, that we may afterwards subdue them to us even with whips. And the sweetness of honey is added to the bitter cup of medicine, lest the bitterness which is to be of profit for health be felt harsh in the act of tasting; but, while the taste is deceived by sweetness, the deadly humour is expelled by bitterness. In the case, then, of the haughty the first beginnings of our rebuke should be tempered with an admixture of praise, that, while they admit the commendations which they love, they may accept also the reproofs which they hate.
Moreover, we shall in most cases better persuade the haughty to their profit, if we speak of their improvement as likely to profit us rather than them; if we request their amendment to be bestowed upon us more than on themselves. For haughtiness is easily bent to good, if its bending be believed to be of profit to others also. Whence Moses, who journeyed through the desert under the direction of God and the leading of the cloudy pillar, when he would draw Hobab his kinsman from converse with the Gentile world, and subdue him to the dominion of Almighty God, said, We are journeying unto the place of which the Lord said, I will give it to you; Come with us, and we will do thee good; for the Lord hath spoken good concerning Israel. And when the other had replied to him, I will not go with thee, but will return to my own land in which I was born; he straightway added, Leave us not, I pray thee; for thou knowest in what places we should encamp in the wilderness, and thou shalt be our guide (Num. x. 29, seq.). And yet Moses was not straitened in his own mind by ignorance of the way, seeing that acquaintance with Deity had opened out within him the knowledge of prophecy; and the pillar went before him outwardly, while inwardly familiar speech in his sedulous converse with God instructed him concerning all things. But, in truth, as a man of foresight, talking to a haughty hearer, he sought succour that he might give it; he requested a guide on the way, that he might be able to be his guide unto life. Thus he so acted that the proud hearer should become all the more attentive to the voice that persuaded him to better things from being supposed to be necessary, and, in that he believed himself to be his exhorter's guide, he should bow himself to the words of exhortation. __________________________________________________________________
[1275] In English Bible, cxxxviii. 6. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XVIII.
How the obstinate and the fickle are to be admonished.
(Admonition 19.) Differently to be admonished are the obstinate and the fickle. The former are to be told that they think more of themselves than they are, and therefore do not acquiesce in the counsels of others: but the latter are to be given to understand that they undervalue and disregard themselves too much, and so are turned aside from their own judgment in successive moments of time. Those are to be told that, unless they esteemed themselves better than the rest of men, they would by no means set less value on the counsels of all than on their own deliberation: these are to be told that, if they at all gave heed to what they are, the breeze of mutability would by no means turn them about through so many sides of variableness. To the former it is said through Paul, Be not wise in your own conceits (Rom. xii. 16): but the latter on the other hand should hear this; Let us not be carried about with every wind of doctrine (Ephes. iv. 14). Concerning the former it is said through Solomon, They shall eat of the fruits of their own way, and be filled with their own devices (Prov. i. 31); but concerning the latter it is written by him again, The heart of the foolish will be unlike (Ibid. xv. 7). For the heart of the wise is always like itself, because, while it rests in good persuasions, it directs itself constantly in good performance. But the heart of the foolish is unlike, because, while it shews itself various through mutability, it never remains what it was. And since some vices, as out of themselves they generate others, so themselves spring from others, it ought by all means to be understood that we then better wipe these away by our reproofs, when we dry them up from the very fountain of their bitterness. For obstinacy is engendered of pride, and fickleness of levity.
The obstinate are therefore to be admonished, that they acknowledge the haughtiness of their thoughts, and study to vanquish themselves; lest, while they scorn to be overcome by the right advice of others outside themselves, they be held captive within themselves to pride. They are to be admonished to observe wisely how the Son of Man, Whose will is always one with the Father's, that He may afford us an example of subduing our own will, says, I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me (Joh. v. 30). And, still more to commend the grace of this virtue, He declared beforehand that He would retain the same in the last judgment, saying, I can of myself do nothing, but as I hear I judge (Ibid.). With what conscience, then, can a man disdain to acquiesce in the will of another, seeing that the Son of God and of Man, when He comes to shew forth the glory of his power, testifies that of his own self he does not judge?
But, on the other hand, the fickle are to be admonished to strengthen their mind with gravity. For they then dry up the germs of mutability in themselves when they first cut off from their heart the root of levity; since also a strong fabric is built up when a solid place is first provided whereon to lay the foundation. Unless, then, levity of mind be previously guarded against, inconstancy of the thoughts is by no means conquered. From this Paul declared himself to be free, when he said, Did I use levity? or the things that I purpose do I purpose according to the flesh, that with me there should be yea and nay (2 Cor. i. 17)? As if to say plainly, For this reason I am moved by no breeze of mutability, that I yield not to the vice of levity. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XIX.
How those who use food intemperately and those who use it sparingly are to be admonished.
(Admonition 20.) Differently to be admonished are the gluttonous and the abstinent. For superfluity of speech, levity of conduct, and lechery accompany the former; but the latter often the sin of impatience, and often that of pride. For were it not the case that immoderate loquacity carries away the gluttonous, that rich man who is said to have fared sumptuously every day would not burn more sorely than elsewhere in his tongue, saying, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame (Luke xvi. 24). By these words it is surely shewn that in his daily feasting he had frequently sinned by his tongue, seeing that, while burning all over, he demanded to be cooled especially in his tongue. Again, that levity of conduct follows closely upon gluttony sacred authority testifies, when it says, The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play (Exod. xxxii. 6). For the most part also edacity leads us even to lechery, because, when the belly is distended by repletion, the stings of lust are excited. Whence also to the cunning foe, who opened the sense of the first man by lust for the apple, but bound it in a noose of sin, it is said by the divine voice, On breast and belly shalt thou creep (Gen. iii. 14); as if it were plainly said to him, In thought and in maw thou shalt have dominion over human hearts. That lechery follows upon gluttony the prophet testifies, denouncing hidden things while he speaks of open ones, when he says, The chief of the cooks broke down the walls of Jerusalem (Jer. xxxix. 9; 2 Kings xxv. 10) [1276] . For the chief of the cooks is the belly, to which the cooks pay observance with great care, that it may itself be delectably filled with viands. But the walls of Jerusalem are the virtues of the soul, elevated to a longing for supernal peace. The chief of the cooks, therefore, throws down the walls of Jerusalem, because, when the belly is distended with gluttony, the virtues of the soul are destroyed through lechery.
On the other hand, were it not that impatience commonly shakes the abstinent out of the bosom of tranquillity, Peter would by no means, when saying, Supply in your faith virtue, and in your virtue knowledge, and in your knowledge abstinence (2 Pet. i. 5), have straightway vigilantly added, And in your abstinence patience. For he foresaw that the patience which he admonished them to have would be wanting to the abstinent. Again, were it not that the sin of pride sometimes pierces through the cogitations of the abstinent, Paul would by no means have said, Let not him that eateth not judge him that eateth (Rom. xiv. 3). And again, speaking to others, while glancing at the maxims of such as gloried in the virtue of abstinence, he added, Which things have indeed a show of wisdom in superstition and humility, and for not sparing of the body, not in any honour for the satisfying of the flesh (Coloss. ii. 25). Here it is to be noted that the excellent preacher, in his argument, joins a show of humility to superstition, because, when the flesh is worn more than needs by abstinence, humility is displayed outwardly, but on account of this very humility there is grievous pride within. And unless the mind were sometimes puffed up by the virtue of abstinence, the arrogant Pharisee would by no means have studiously numbered this among his great merits, saying, I fast twice in the week (Luke xviii. 12).
Thus the gluttonous are to be admonished, that in giving themselves to the enjoyment of dainties they pierce not themselves through with the sword of lechery; and that they perceive how great loquacity, how great levity of mind, lie in wait for them through eating; lest, while they softly serve the belly, they become cruelly bound in the nooses of vice. For by so much the further do we go back from our second parent as by immoderate indulgence, when the hand is stretched out for food, we renew the fall of our first parent. But, on the other hand, the abstinent are to be admonished ever anxiously to look out, lest, while they fly the vice of gluttony, still worse vices be engendered as it were of virtue lest, while they macerate the flesh, their spirit break out into impatience; and so there be no virtue in the vanquishing of the flesh, the spirit being overcome by anger. Sometimes, moreover, while the mind of the abstinent keeps anger down, it is corrupted, as it were, by a foreign joy coming in, and loses all the good of abstinence in that it fails to guard itself from spiritual vices. Hence it is rightly said through the prophet, In the days of your fasts are found your wills (Isai. lviii. 3, lxx.). And shortly after, Ye fast for debates and strifes, and ye smite with the fists (Ibid.). For the will pertains to delight, the fist to anger. In vain, then, is the body worn by abstinence, if the mind, abandoned to disorderly emotions, is dissipated by vices. And again, they are to be admonished that, while they keep up their abstinence without abatement, they suppose not this to be of eminent virtue before the hidden judge; lest, if it be perchance supposed to be of great merit, the heart be lifted up to haughtiness. For hence it is said through the prophet, Is it such a fast that I have chosen? But break thy bread to the hungry, and bring the needy and the wanderers into thine house (Ibid. 5).
In this matter it is to be considered how small the virtue of abstinence is accounted, seeing that it is not commended but for other virtues. Hence Joel says, Sanctify a fast. For indeed to sanctify a fast is to shew abstinence of the flesh to be worthy of God by other good things being added to it. The abstinent are to be admonished that they then offer to God an abstinence that pleases Him, when they bestow on the indigent the nourishment which they withhold from themselves. For we should wisely attend to what is blamed by the Lord through the prophet, saying, When ye fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh month far these seventy years, did ye at all fast a fast unto Me? And when ye did eat and drink, did ye not eat for yourselves, and drink for yourselves (Zach. vii. 5 seq.)? For a man fasts not to God but to himself, if what he withholds from his belly for a time he gives not to the needy, but keeps to be offered afterwards to his belly.
Wherefore, lest either gluttonous appetite throw the one sort off their guard, or the afflicted flesh trip up the other by elation, let the former hear this from the mouth of the Truth, And take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged in surfeiting and drunkenness and cares of this world (Luke xxi. 34). And in the same place there is added a profitable fear; And so that day come upon you unawares. For as a snare shall it come on all them that dwell on the face of the whole earth (Ibid. 35). Let the latter hear, Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man (Matth. xv. 11). Let the former hear, Meat for the belly, and the belly far meats; but God shall destroy both it and them (1 Cor. vi. 13). And again, Not in rioting and drunkenness (Rom. xiii. 13). And again, Meat commendeth us not to God (1 Cor. viii. 8). Let the latter hear, To the pure all things are pure: but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure (Tit. i. 15). Let the former hear, Whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their own confusion (Philip. iii. 19). Let the latter hear, Some shall depart from the faith; and a little after, Forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth (1 Tim. iv. 1, 3). Let those hear, It is good neither to eat flesh nor to drink wine, nor anything whereby thy brother stumbleth (Rom. xiv. 21). Let these hear, Use a little wine far thy stomach's sake and thine often infirmities (1 Tim. v. 23). Thus both the former may learn not to desire inordinately the food of the flesh, and the latter not dare to condemn the creature of God, which they lust not after. __________________________________________________________________
[1276] The designation (Rab-tabbachim) of Nabuzaradan, who acted for Nebuchadnezzar after the capture of Jerusalem, is rendered in the LXX. archimageiros, i.e. Chief Cook. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XX.
How to be admonished are those who give away what is their own, and those who seize what belongs to others.
(Admonition 21.) Differently to be admonished are those who already give compassionately of their own, and those who still would fain seize even what belongs to others. For those who already give compassionately of their own are to be admonished not to lift themselves up in swelling thought above those to whom they impart earthly things; not to esteem themselves better than others because they see others to be supported by them. For the Lord of an earthly household, in distributing the ranks and ministries of his servants, appoints some to rule, but some to be ruled by others. Those he orders to supply to the rest what is necessary, these to take what they receive from others. And yet it is for the most part those that rule who offend, while those that are ruled remain in favour with the good man of the house. Those who are dispensers incur wrath; those who subsist by the dispensation of others continue without offence. Those, then, who already give compassionately of the things which they possess are to be admonished to acknowledge themselves to be placed by the heavenly Lord as dispensers of temporal supplies, and to impart the same all the more humbly from their understanding that the things which they dispense are not their own. And, when they consider that they are appointed for the service of those to whom they impart what they have received, by no means let vain glory elate their minds, but let fear depress them. Whence also it is needful for them to take anxious thought lest they distribute what has been committed to them unworthily; lest they bestow something on those on whom they ought to have spent nothing, or nothing on those on whom they ought to have spent something, or much on those on whom they ought to have spent little, or little on those on whom they ought to have spent much; lest by precipitancy they scatter unprofitably what they give; lest by tardiness they mischievously torment petitioners; lest the thought of receiving a favour in return creep in; lest craving for transitory praise extinguish the light of giving; lest accompanying moroseness beset an offered gift; lest in case of a gift that has been well offered the mind be exhilarated more than is fit; lest, when they have fulfilled all aright, they give something to themselves, and so at once lose all after they have accomplished all. For, that they may not attribute to themselves the virtue of their liberality, let them hear what is written, If any man administer, let him do it as of the ability which God administereth (1 Pet. iv. 11). That they may not rejoice immoderately in benefits bestowed, let them hear what is written, When ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants, we have done that which was our duty to do (Luke xvii. 10). That moroseness may not spoil liberality, let them hear what is written, God loveth a cheerful giver (2 Cor. ix. 7). That they may not seek transitory praise for a gift bestowed, let them hear what is written, Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth (Matth. vi. 3). That is, let not the glory of the present life mix itself with the largesses of piety, nor let desire of favour know anything of the work of rectitude. That they may not require a return for benefits bestowed, let them hear what is written, When thou makest a dinner or a supper, call not thy friends, nor thy brethren, neither thy kinsmen, nor thy rich neighbours, lest they also bid thee again, and a recompense be made thee. but, when thou makest a feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind: and thou shalt be blessed; for they have not whereof to recompense thee (Luke xiv. 12 seq.). That they may not supply too late what should be supplied at once, let them hear what is written, Say not unto thy friend, go and come again, and to-morrow I will give, when thou mightest give immediately (Prov. iii. 28). Lest, under pretence of liberality, they should scatter what they possess unprofitably, let them hear what is written, Let thine alms sweat in thine hand. Lest, when much is necessary, little be given, let them hear what is written, He that soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly (2 Cor. ix. 6). Lest, when they ought to give little, they give too much, and afterwards, badly enduring want themselves, break out into impatience, let them hear what is written, Not that other men be eased, and ye burdened, but by an equality, that your abundance may supply their want, and that their abundance may be a supply to your want (Ibid. viii. 13, 14). For, when the soul of the giver knows not how to endure want, then, in withdrawing much from himself, he seeks out against himself occasion of impatience. For the mind should first be prepared for patience, and then either much or all be bestowed in bounty, lest, the inroad of want being borne with but little equanimity, both the reward of previous bounty be lost, and subsequent murmuring bring worse ruin on the soul. Lest they should give nothing at all to those on whom they ought to bestow something, let them hear what is written, Give to every man that asketh of thee (Luke vi. 30). Lest they should give something, however little to those on whom they ought to bestow nothing at all, let them hear what is written, Give to the good man, and receive not a sinner: do well to him that is lowly, and give not to the ungodly (Ecclus. xii. 4). And again, Set out thy bread and wine on the burial of the just, but eat and drink not thereof with sinners (Tobit iv. 17).
For he gives his bread and wine to sinners who gives assistance to the wicked for that they are wicked. For which cause also some of the rich of this world nourish players with profuse bounties, while the poor of Christ are tormented with hunger. He, however, who gives his bread to one that is indigent, though he be a sinner, not because he is a sinner, but because he is a man, does not in truth nourish a sinner, but a poor righteous man, because what he loves in him is not his sin, but his nature.
Those who already distribute compassionately what they possess are to be admonished also that they study to keep careful guard, lest, when they redeem by alms the sins they have committed, they commit others which will still require redemption; lest they suppose the righteousness of God to be saleable, thinking that if they take care to give money for their sins, they can sin with impunity. For, The soul is more than meat, and the body than raiment (Matth. vi. 25; Luke xii. 23). He, therefore, who bestows meat or raiment on the poor, and yet is polluted by iniquity of soul or body, has offered the lesser thing to righteousness, and the greater thing to sin; for he has given his possessions to God, and himself to the devil.
But, on the other hand, those who still would fain seize what belongs to others are to be admonished to give anxious heed to what the Lord says when He comes to judgment. For He says, I was an hungered, and ye gave Me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave Me no drink: I was a stranger, and ye took Me not in: naked, and ye clothed Me not; sick, and in prison, and ye visited Me not (Matth. xxv. 42, 43). And these he previously addresses saying, Depart from Me, ye cursed, into eternal fire, which is prepared for the devil and his angels (Ibid. 41). Lo, they are in no wise told that they have committed robberies or any other acts of violence, and yet they are given over to the eternal fires of Gehenna. Hence, then, it is to be gathered with how great damnation those will be visited who seize what is not their own, if those who have indiscreetly kept their own are smitten with so great punishment. Let them consider in what guilt the seizing of goods must bind them, if not parting with them subjects to such a penalty. Let them consider what injustice inflicted must deserve, if kindness not bestowed is worthy of so great a chastisement.
When they are intent on seizing what is not their own, let them hear what is written, Woe to him that increaseth that which is not his! How long doth he heap up against himself thick clay (Hab. ii. 6)? For, indeed, for a covetous man to heap up against him thick clay is to pile up earthly gains into a load of sin. When they desire to enlarge greatly the spaces of their habitation, let them hear what is written, Woe unto you that join house to house and lay field to field, even till there be no place left. What, will ye dwell alone in the midst of the earth (Isai. v. 8)? As if to say plainly, How far do ye stretch yourselves, ye that cannot bear to have comrades in a common world? Those that are joined to you ye keep down, and ever find some against whom ye may have power to stretch yourselves. When they are intent on increasing money, let them hear what is written, The covetous man is not filled with money; and he that loveth riches shall not reap fruit thereof (Eccles. v. 9). For indeed he would reap fruit of them, were he minded, not loving them, to disperse them well. But whoso in his affection for them retains them, shall surely leave them behind him here without fruit. When they burn to be filled at once with all manner of wealth, let them hear what is written, He that maketh haste to be rich shall not be innocent (Prov. xxviii. 20): for certainly he who goes about to increase wealth is negligent in avoiding sin; and, being caught after the manner of birds, while looking greedily at the bait of earthly things, he is not aware in what a noose of sin he is being strangled. When they desire any gains of the present world, and are ignorant of the losses they will suffer in the world to come, let them hear what is written, An inheritance to which haste is made in the beginning in the last end shall lack blessing (Prov. xx. 21). For indeed we derive our beginning from this life, that we may come in the end to the lot of blessing. They, therefore, that make haste to an inheritance in the beginning cut off from themselves the lot of blessing in the end; since, while they crave to be increased in goods here through the iniquity of avarice, they become disinherited there of their eternal patrimony. When they either solicit very much, or succeed in obtaining all that they have solicited, let them hear what is written. What is a man profited, if he should gain the whole world, but lose his own soul (Matth. xvi. 26)? As if the Truth said plainly, What is a man profited, though he gather together all that is outside himself, if this very thing only which is himself he damns? But for the most part the covetousness of spoilers is the sooner corrected, if it be shewn by the words of such as admonish them how fleeting is the present life; if mention be made of those who have long endeavoured to grow rich in this world, and yet have been unable to remain long among their acquired riches; from whom hasty death has taken away suddenly and all at once whatever, neither all at once nor suddenly, they have gathered together; who have not only left here what they had seized, but have carried with them to the judgment arraignments for seizure. Let them, therefore, be told of examples of such as these, whom they would, doubtless, even themselves, in words condemn; so that, when after their words they come back to their own heart, they may blush at any rate to imitate those whom they judge. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXI.
How those are to be admonished who desire not the things of others, but keep their own; and those who give of their own, yet seize on those of others.
(Admonition 22.) Differently to be admonished are those who neither desire what belongs to others nor bestow what is their own, and those who give of what they have, and yet desist not from seizing on what belongs to others. Those who neither desire what belongs to others nor bestow what is their own are to be admonished to consider carefully that the earth out of which they are taken is common to all men, and therefore brings forth nourishment for all in common. Vainly, then, do those suppose themselves innocent, who claim to their own private use the common gift of God; those who, in not imparting what they have received, walk in the midst of the slaughter of their neighbours; since they almost daily slay so many persons as there are dying poor whose subsidies they keep close in their own possession. For, when we administer necessaries of any kind to the indigent, we do not bestow our own, but render them what is theirs; we rather pay a debt of justice than accomplish works of mercy. Whence also the Truth himself, when speaking of the caution required in shewing mercy, says, Take heed that ye do not your justice before men (Matth. vi. 1). The Psalmist also, in agreement with this sentence, says, He hath dispersed, he hath given to the poor, his justice endureth for ever (Ps. cxii. 9).
For, having first mentioned bounty bestowed upon the poor, he would not call this mercy, but rather justice: for it is surely just that whosoever receive what is given by a common Lord should use it in common. Hence also Solomon says, Whoso is just will give and will not spare (Prov. xxi. 26). They are to be admonished also anxiously to take note how of the fig-tree that had no fruit the rigorous husbandman complains that it even cumbers the ground.
For a fig-tree without fruit cumbers the ground, when the soul of the niggardly keeps unprofitably what might have benefited many. A fig-tree without fruit cumbers the ground, when the fool keeps barren under the shade of sloth a place which another might have cultivated under the sun of good works.
But these are wont sometimes to say, We use what has been granted us; we do not seek what belongs to others; and, if we do nothing worthy of the reward of mercy, we still commit no wrong. So they think, because in truth they close the ear of their heart to the words which are from heaven. For the rich man in the Gospel who was clothed in purple and fine linen, and feasted sumptuously every day, is not said to have seized what belonged to others, but to have used what was his own unfruitfully; and avenging hell received him after this life, not because he did anything unlawful but because by immoderate indulgence he gave up his whole self to what was lawful.
The niggardly are to be admonished to take notice that they do God, in the first place, this wrong; that to Him Who gives them all they render in return no sacrifice of mercy. For hence the Psalmist says. He will not give his propitiation to God, nor the price of the redemption of his soul (Psal. xlviii. 9 [1277] ). For to give the price of redemption is to return good deeds for preventing grace. Hence John cries aloud saying, Now the axe is laid unto the root of the tree. Every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit shall be hewn down and cast into the fire (Luke iii. 9). Let those, therefore, who esteem themselves guiltless because they do not seize on what belongs to others look forward to the stroke of the axe that is nigh at hand, and lay aside the torpor of improvident security, lest, while they neglect to bear the fruit of good deeds, they be cut off from the present life utterly, as it were from the greenness of the root.
But, on the other hand, those who both give what they have and desist not from seizing on what belongs to others are to be admonished not to desire to appear exceeding munificent, and so be made worse from the outward show of good. For these, giving what is their own without discretion, not only, as we have said above, fall into the murmuring of impatience, but, when want urges them, are swept along even to avarice. What, then, is more wretched than the mind of those in whom avarice is born of bountifulness, and a crop of sins is sown as it were from virtue? First, then, they are to be admonished to learn how to keep what is theirs reasonably, and then in the end not to go about getting what is another's. For, if the root of the fault is not burnt out in the profusion itself, the thorn of avarice, exuberant through the branches, is never dried up. So then, cause for seizing is withdrawn, if the right of possession be first adjusted well. But then, further, let those who are admonished be told how to give mercifully what they have, when they have learnt not to confound the good of mercy by throwing into it the wickedness of robbery. For they violently exact what they mercifully bestow. For it is one thing to shew mercy on account of our sins; another thing to sin on account of shewing mercy; which can no longer indeed be called mercy, since it cannot grow into sweet fruit, being embittered by the poison of its pestiferous root. For hence it is that the Lord through the prophet rejects even sacrifices themselves, saying, I the Lord love judgment, and I hate robbery in a whole burnt offering (Isai. lxi. 8). Hence again He has said, The sacrifices of the ungodly are abominable, which are offered of wickedness (Prov. xxi. 28). Such persons also often withdraw from the indigent what they give to God.
But the Lord shews with what strong censure he disowns them, saying through a certain wise man, Whoso offereth a sacrifice of the substance of the poor doeth as one that killeth the son before the father's eyes (Ecclus. xxxiv. 20). For what can be more intolerable than the death of a son before his father's eyes? Wherefore it is shewn with what great wrath this kind of sacrifice is beheld, in that it is compared to the grief of a bereaved father. And yet for the most part people weigh well how much they give; but how much they seize they neglect to consider. They count, as it were, their wage, but refuse to consider their defaults. Let them hear therefore what is written, He that hath gathered wages hath put them into a bag with holes (Hagg. i. 6). For indeed money put into a bag with holes is seen when it is put in, but when it is lost it is not seen. Those, then, who have an eye to how much they bestow, but consider not how much they seize, put their wages into a bag with holes, because in truth they look to them when they gather them together in hope of being secure, but lose them without looking. __________________________________________________________________
[1277] In English Bible, xlix. 9. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXII.
How those that are at variance and those that are at peace are to be admonished.
(Admonition 23.) Differently to be admonished are those that are at variance and those that are at peace. For those that are at variance are to be admonished to know most certainly that, in whatever virtues they may abound, they can by no means become spiritual if they neglect becoming united to their neighbours by concord. For it is written, But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace (Gal. v. 22). He then that has no care to keep peace refuses to bear the fruit of the Spirit. Hence Paul says, Whereas there is among you envying and strife, are ye not carnal (1 Cor. iii. 3)? Hence again he says also, Follow peace with all men and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord (Heb. xii. 14). Hence again he admonishes, saying, Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace: there is one body and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling (Eph. iv. 3, 4). The one hope of our calling, therefore, is never reached, if we run not to it with a mind at one with our neighbours. But it is often the case that some, by being proud of some gifts that they especially partake of, lose the greater gift of concord; as it may be if one who subdues the flesh more than others by bridling of his appetite should scorn to be in concord with those whom he surpasses in abstinence. But whoso separates abstinence from concord, let him consider the admonition of the Psalmist, Praise him with timbrel and chorus (Ps. cl. 4). For in the timbrel a dry and beaten skin resounds, but in the chorus voices are associated in concord. Whosoever then afflicts his body, but forsakes concord, praises God indeed with timbrel, but praises Him not with chorus. Often, however, when superior knowledge lifts up some, it disjoins them from the society of other men; and it is as though the more wise they are, the less wise are they as to the virtue of concord. Let these therefore hear what the Truth in person says, Have salt in yourselves, and have peace one with another (Mark ix. 50). For indeed salt without peace is not a gift of virtue, but an argument for condemnation. For the better any man is in wisdom, the worse is his delinquency, and he will deserve punishment inexcusably for this very reason, that, if he had been so minded, he might in his prudence have avoided sin. To such it is rightly said through James, But if ye have bitter envying and strife in your hearts, glory not, and lie not against the truth. This wisdom descendeth not from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish. But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable (James iii. 14, 15, 17). Pure, that is to say, because its ideas are chaste; and also peaceable, because it in no wise through elation disjoins itself from the society of neighbours. Those who are at variance are to be admonished to take note that they offer to God no sacrifice of good work so long as they are not in charity with their neighbours. For it is written, If thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way first to be reconciled to thy brother, and then thou shalt come and offer thy gift (Matth. v. 23, 24). Now by this precept we are led to consider how intolerable the guilt of men is shewn to be when their sacrifice is rejected. For, whereas all evils are washed away when followed by what is good, let us consider how great must be the evils of discord, seeing that, unless they are utterly extinguished, they allow no good to follow. Those who are at variance are to be admonished that, if they incline not their ears to heavenly commands, they should open the eyes of the mind to consider the ways of creatures of the lowest order; how that often birds of one and the same kind desert not one another in their social flight, and that brute beasts feed in herds together. Thus, if we observe wisely, irrational nature shews by agreeing together how great evil rational nature commits by disagreement; when the latter has lost by the exercise of reason what the former by natural instinct keeps. But, on the other hand, those that are at peace are to be admonished to take heed lest, while they love more than they need do the peace which they enjoy, they have no longing to reach that which is perpetual. For commonly tranquil circumstances more sorely try the bent of minds, so that, in proportion as the things which occupy them are not troublesome, the things which invite them come to appear less lovely, and the more present things delight, eternal things are the less sought after. Whence also the Truth speaking in person, when He would distinguish earthly from supernal peace, and provoke His disciples from that which now is to that which is to come, said, Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you (Joh. xiv. 27). That is, I leave a transitory, I give a lasting peace. If then the heart is fixed on that which is left, that which is to be given is never reached. Present peace, therefore, is to be held as something to be both loved and thought little of, lest, if it is loved immoderately, the mind of him that loves be taken in a fault. Whence also those who are at peace should be admonished lest, while too desirous of human peace, they fail entirely to reprove men's evil ways, and, in consenting to the froward, disjoin themselves from the peace of their Maker; lest, while they dread human quarrels without, they be smitten by breach of their inward covenant. For what is transitory peace but a certain footprint of peace eternal? What, then, can be more mad than to love footprints impressed on dust, but not to love him by whom they have been impressed? Hence David, when he would bind himself entirely to the covenants of inward peace, testifies that he held no agreement with the wicked, saying, Did not I hate them, O God, that hate thee, and waste away on account of thine enemies? I hated them with perfect hatred, they became enemies to me (Ps. cxxxviii. 21, 22 [1278] ). For to hate God's enemies with perfect hatred is both to love what they were made, and to chide what they do, to be severe on the manners of the wicked, and to profit their life. It is therefore to be well weighed, when there is rest from chiding, how culpably peace is kept with the worst of men, if so great a prophet offered this as a sacrifice to God, that he excited the enmities of the wicked against himself for the Lord. Hence it is that the tribe of Levi, when they took their swords and passed through the midst of the camp because they would not spare the sinners who were to be smitten, are said to have consecrated their hands to God (Exod. xxxii. 27, seq.). Hence Phinehas, spurning the favour of his fellow-countrymen when they sinned, smote those who came together with the Midianites, and in his wrath appeased the wrath of God (Num. xxv. 9). Hence in person the Truth says, Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword (Matth. x. 34). For, when we are unwarily joined in friendship with the wicked, we are bound in their sins. Whence Jehoshaphat, who is extolled by so many praises of his previous life, is rebuked for his friendship with King Ahab as though nigh unto destruction, when it is said to him through the prophet, Thou givest help to the ungodly, and art joined in friendship with them that hate the Lord; and therefore thou didst deserve indeed the wrath of the Lord: nevertheless there are good works found in thee, in that thou hast taken away the graves out of the land of Judah (2 Chron. xix. 2, 3). For our life is already at variance with Him who is supremely righteous by the very fact of agreement in the friendships of the froward. Those who are at peace are to be admonished not to be afraid of disturbing their temporal peace, if they break forth into words of rebuke. And again they are to be admonished to keep inwardly with undiminished love the same peace which in their external relations they disturb by their reproving voice. Both which things David declares that he had prudently observed, saying, With them that hate peace I was peaceable; when I spake unto them, they fought against me without a cause (Ps. cxix. 7 [1279] ). Lo, when he spoke, he was fought against; and yet, when fought against, he was peaceable, because he neither ceased to reprove those that were mad against him, nor forgot to love those who were reproved. Hence also Paul says, If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, have peace with all men (Rom. xii. 18). For, being about to exhort his disciples to have peace with all, he said first, If it be possible, and added, As much as lieth in you. For indeed it was difficult for them, if they rebuked evil deeds, to be able to have peace with all. But, when temporal peace is disturbed in the hearts of bad men through our rebuke, it is necessary that it should be kept inviolate in our own heart. Rightly, therefore, says he, As much as lieth in you. It is indeed as though he said, Since peace stands in the consent of two parties, if it is driven out by those who are reproved, let it nevertheless be retained undiminished in the mind of you who reprove. Whence the same apostle again admonishes his disciples, saying, If any man obey not our word, note that man by this epistle; and have no company with him, that he may be confounded (2 Thess. iii. 14). And straightway he added, Yet count him not as an enemy, but reprove him as a brother (Ibid. 15). As if to say, Break ye outward peace with him, but guard in your heart's core internal peace concerning him; that your discord with him may so smite the mind of the sinner that peace depart not from your hearts even though denied to him. __________________________________________________________________
[1278] In English Bible, Ps. cxxxiv.
[1279] Ibid., Ps. cxx. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXIII.
How sowers of strifes and peacemakers are to be admonished.
(Admonition 24.) Differently to be admonished are sowers of strifes and peacemakers. For sowers of strifes are to be admonished to perceive whose followers they are. For of the apostate angel it is written, when tares had been sown among the good crop, An enemy hath done this (Matth. xiii. 28). Of a member of him also it is said through Solomon, An apostate person, an unprofitable man, walketh with a perverse mouth, he winketh with his eyes, he beateth with his foot, he speaketh with his finger, with froward heart he deviseth mischief continually, he soweth strifes (Prov. vi. 12-14). Lo, him whom he would speak of as a sower of strifes he first named an apostate; since, unless after the manner of the proud angel he first fell away inwardly by the alienation of his mind from the face of his Maker, he would not afterwards come to sow strifes outwardly. He is rightly described too as winking with his eyes, speaking with his finger, beating with his foot. For it is inward watch that keeps the members outwardly in orderly control. He, then, who has lost stability of mind falls off outwardly into inconstancy of movement, and by his exterior mobility shews that he is stayed on no root within. Let sowers of strifes hear what is written, Blessed are the peacemakers, far they shall be called the children of God (Matth. v. 9). And on the other hand let them gather that, if they who make peace are called the children of God, without doubt those who confound it are the children of Satan. Moreover, all who are separated by discord from the greenness of loving-kindness are dried up: and, though they bring forth in their actions fruits of well-doing, yet there are in truth no fruits, because they spring not from the unity of charity. Hence, therefore, let sowers of strifes consider how manifoldly they sin; in that, while they perpetrate one iniquity, they eradicate at the same time all virtues from human hearts. For in one evil they work innumerable evils, since, in sowing discord, they extinguish charity, which is in truth the mother of all virtues. But, since nothing is more precious with God than the virtue of loving-kindness, nothing is more acceptable to the devil than the extinction of charity. Whosoever, then, by sowing of strifes destroy the loving-kindness of neighbours, serve God's enemy as his familiar friend; because by taking away from them this, by the loss of which he fell, they have cut off from them the road whereby to rise.
But, on the other hand, the peacemakers are to be admonished that they detract not from the efficacy of so great an undertaking through not knowing between whom they ought to establish peace. For, as there is much harm if unity be wanting to the good, so there is exceeding harm if it be not wanting to the bad. If, then, the iniquity of the perverse is united in peace, assuredly there is an accession of strength to their evil doings, since the more they agree among themselves in wickedness, by so much the more stoutly do they dash themselves against the good to afflict them. For hence it is that against the preachers of that vessel of damnation, to wit, Antichrist, is it said by the divine voice to the blessed Job, The members of his flesh stick close to each other (Job xli. 14 [1280] ). Hence, under the figure of scales, it is said of his satellites, One is joined to another, and not even a breathing-hole cometh between them (xli. 7 [1281] ). For, indeed, his followers, from being divided by no opposition of discord among themselves, are by so much the more strongly banded together in the slaughter of the good. He then who associates the iniquitous together in peace supplies strength to iniquity, since they worse press down the good, whom they persecute unanimously. Whence the excellent preacher, being overtaken by violent persecution from Pharisees and Sadducees, endeavoured to divide among themselves those whom he saw to be violently united against himself, when he cried out, saying, Men, brethren, I am a Pharisee, the son of Pharisees; of the hope and resurrection of the dead I am called in question (Acts xxiii. 6). And, whereas the Sadducees denied the hope and resurrection of the dead, which the Pharisees in accordance with the precepts of Holy Writ believed, a dissension was caused in the unanimity of the persecutors; and Paul escaped unhurt from the divided crowd, which before, when united, had savagely assailed him. Those, therefore, who are occupied with the desire of making peace, are to be admonished that they ought first to infuse a love of internal peace into the minds of the froward, to the end that external peace may afterwards avail to do them good; so that, while their heart is hanging on cognition of the former, they be by no means hurried into wickedness from perception of the latter; and, while they see before them that which is supernal, they in no way turn that which is earthly to serve to their own detriment. But, if any perverse persons are such that they could not harm the good, even though they lusted to do so, between them, indeed, earthly peace ought to be established, even before they have risen to the knowledge of supernal peace; even so that they, whom the wickedness of their impiety exasperates against the loving-kindness of God, may at any rate be softened out of love of their neighbour, and, as it were from a neighbouring position, may pass to a better one, and so rise to what is as yet far from them, the peace of their Maker. __________________________________________________________________
[1280] So Vulgate. Gregory always takes Leviathan to signify the devil.
[1281] So Vulgate. Gregory always takes Leviathan to signify the devil. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXIV.
How the rude in sacred learning, and those who are learned but not humble, are to be admonished.
(Admonition 25.) Differently to be admonished are those who do not understand aright the words of the sacred Law, and those who understand them indeed aright, but speak them not humbly. For those who understand not aright the words of sacred Law are to be admonished to consider that they turn for themselves a most wholesome drought of wine into a cup of poison, and with a medicinal knife inflict on themselves a mortal wound, when they destroy in themselves what was sound by that whereby they ought, to their health, to have cut away what was diseased. They are to be admonished to consider that Holy Scripture is set as a kind of lantern for us in the night of the present life, the words whereof when they understand not aright, from light they get darkness. But in truth a perverse bent of mind would not hurry them to understand it wrong, did not pride first puff them up. For, while they think themselves wise beyond all others, they scorn to follow others to things better understood: and, in order to extort for themselves from the unskilful multitude a name for knowledge, they strive mightily both to upset the right views of others and to confirm their own perverse views. Hence it is well said by the prophet, They have ripped up the women with child of Gilead, that they might enlarge their border (Amos i. 13). For Gilead is by interpretation a heap of witness (Gen. xxxi. 47, 48). And, since the whole congregation of the Church together serves by its confession for a witness to the truth, not unfitly by Gilead is expressed the Church, which witnesses by the mouth of all the faithful whatever is true concerning God. Moreover, souls are called with child, when of divine love they conceive an understanding of the Word, so that, if they come to their full time, they may bring forth their conceived intelligence in the shewing forth of work. Further, to enlarge their border is to extend abroad the fame of their reputation. They have therefore ripped up the women with child of Gilead that they might enlarge their border, because heretics assuredly slay by their perverse preaching the souls of the faithful who had already conceived something of the understanding of the truth, and extend for themselves a name for knowledge. The hearts of little ones, already big with conception of the word, they cleave with the sword of error, and, as it were, make for themselves a reputation as teachers. When, therefore, we endeavour to instruct these not to think perversely, it is necessary that we first admonish them to shun vain glory. For, if the root of elation is cut off, the branches of wrong assertion are consequently dried up. They are also to be admonished to take heed, lest, by gendering errors and discords, they turn into a sacrifice to Satan the very same law of God which has been given for hindering sacrifices to Satan. Whence the Lord complains through the prophet, saying, I gave them corn, wine, and oil, and I multiplied to them silver and gold, which they sacrificed to Baal (Hos. ii. 8). For indeed we receive corn from the Lord, when, in the more obscure sayings, the husk of the letter being drawn off, we perceive in the marrow of the Spirit the inward meaning of the Law. The Lord proffers us His wine, when He inebriates us with the lofty preaching of His Scripture. His oil also He gives us, when, by plainer precepts, He orders our life gently and smoothly. He multiplies silver, when He supplies to us eloquent utterances, full of the light of truth. With gold also He enriches us, when He irradiates our heart with an understanding of the supreme splendour. All which things heretics offer to Baal, because they pervert them in the hearts of their hearers by a corrupt understanding of them all. And of the corn of God, of His wine and oil, and likewise of His silver and gold, they offer a sacrifice to Satan, because they turn aside the words of peace to promote the error of discord. Wherefore they are to be admonished to consider that, when of their perverse mind they make discord out of the precepts of peace, they themselves, in the just judgment of God, die from the words of life.
But, on the other hand, those who understand indeed aright the words of the Law, but speak them not humbly, are to be admonished that, in divine discourses, before they put them forth to others, they should examine themselves; lest, in following up the deeds of others, they leave themselves behind; and lest, while thinking rightly of all the rest of Holy Scripture, this only thing they attend not to, what is said in it against the proud. For he is indeed a poor and unskilful physician, who would fain heal another's disease while ignorant of that from which he himself is suffering. Those, then, who speak not the words of God humbly should certainly be admonished, that, when they apply medicines to the sick, they see to the poison of their own infection, lest in healing others they die themselves. They ought to be admonished to take heed, lest their manner of saying things be at variance with the excellence of what is said, and lest they preach one thing in their speaking and another in their outward bearing. Let them hear, therefore, what is written, If any man speak let him speak as the oracles of God (1 Pet. iv. 11). If then the words they utter are not of the things that are their own, why are they puffed up on account of them as though they were their own? Let them hear what is written, As of God, in the sight of God, speak we in Christ (2 Cor. ii. 17). For he speaks of God in the sight of God, who both understands that he has received the word of preaching from God, and also seeks through it to please God, not men. Let them hear what is written, Every one that is proud in heart is an abomination to the Lord (Prov. xvi. 5). For, surely, when in the Word of God he seeks his own glory, he invades the right of the giver; and he fears not at all to postpone to his own praise Him from whom he has received the very thing that is praised. Let them hear what is said to the preacher through Solomon, Drink water out of thine own cistern, and running waters of thine own well. Let thy fountains be dispersed abroad, and divide thy waters in the streets. Have them to thyself alone, and let not strangers be partakers with thee (Prov. v. 15-17). For indeed the preacher drinks out of his own cistern, when, returning to his own heart, he first listens himself to what he has to say. He drinks the running waters of his own well, if he is watered by his own word. And in the same place it is well added, Let thy fountains be dispersed abroad, and divide thy waters in the streets. For indeed it is right that he should himself drink first, and then flow upon others in preaching. For to disperse fountains abroad is to pour outwardly on others the power of preaching. Moreover, to divide waters in the streets is to dispense divine utterances among a great multitude of hearers according to the quality of each. And, because for the most part the desire of vain glory creeps in when the Word of God has free course unto the knowledge of many, after it has been said, Divide thy waters in the streets, it is rightly added, Have them to thyself alone, and let not strangers be partakers with thee. He here calls malignant spirits strangers, concerning whom it is said through the prophet in the words of one that is tempted, Strangers are risen up against me, and strong ones have sought after my soul (Ps. liii. 5 [1282] ). He says therefore, Both divide thy waters in the streets, and yet have them to thyself alone; as if he had said more plainly, It is necessary for thee so to serve outwardly in preaching as not to join thyself through elation to unclean spirits, lest in the ministry of the divine word thou admit thine enemies to be partakers with thee. Thus we divide our waters in the streets, and yet alone possess them, when we both pour out preaching outwardly far and wide, and yet in no wise court human praises through it. __________________________________________________________________
[1282] In English Bible, liv. 3. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXV.
How those are to be admonished who decline the office of preaching out of too great humility, and those who seize on it with precipitate haste.
(Admonition 26.) Differently to be admonished are those who, though able to preach worthily, are afraid by reason of excessive humility, and those whom imperfection or age forbids to preach, and yet precipitancy impells. For those who, though able to preach with profit, still shrink back through excessive humility are to be admonished to gather from consideration of a lesser matter how faulty they are in a greater one. For, if they were to hide from their indigent neighbours money which they possessed themselves they would undoubtedly shew themselves to be promoters of their calamity. Let them perceive, then, in what guilt those are implicated who, in withholding the word of preaching from their sinning brethren, hide away the remedies of life from dying souls. Whence also a certain wise man says well, Wisdom that is hid, and treasure that is unseen, what profit is in them both (Ecclus. xx. 32)? Were a famine wasting the people, and they themselves kept hidden corn, undoubtedly they would be the authors of death. Let them consider therefore with what punishment they must be visited who, when souls are perishing from famine of the word, supply not the bread of grace which they have themselves received. Whence also it is well said through Solomon, He that hideth corn shall be cursed among the people (Prov. xi. 26). For to hide corn is to retain with one's self the words of sacred preaching. And every one that does so is cursed among the people, because through his fault of silence only he is condemned in the punishment of the many whom he might have corrected. If persons by no means ignorant of the medicinal art were to see a sore that required lancing, and yet refused to lance it, certainly by their mere inactivity they would be guilty of a brother's death. Let them see, then, in how great guilt they are involved who, knowing the sores of souls, neglect to cure them by the lancing of words. Whence also it is well said through the prophet, Cursed is he who keepeth back his sword from blood (Jer. xlviii. 10). For to keep back the sword from blood is to hold back the word of preaching from the slaying of the carnal life. Of which sword it is said again, And my sword shall devour flesh (Deut. xxxii. 42).
Let these, therefore, when they keep to themselves the word of preaching, hear with terror the divine sentences against them, to the end that fear may expel fear from their hearts. Let them hear how he that would not lay out his talent lost it, with a sentence of condemnation added (Matth. xxv. 24, &c.). Let them hear how Paul believed himself to be pure from the blood of his neighbours in this, that he spared not their vices which required to be smitten, saying, I take you to record this day, that I am pure from the blood of all men: for l have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God (Acts xx. 26, 27). Let them hear how John is admonished by the angelic voice, when it is said, Let him that heareth say, Come (Rev. xxii. 17); in order doubtless that he into whose heart the internal voice has found its way may by crying aloud draw others whither he himself is carried; lest, even though called, he should find the doors shut, if he approaches Him that calls him empty. Let them hear how Esaias, because he had held his peace in the ministry of the word when illuminated by supernal light, blamed himself with a loud cry of penitence, saying Woe unto me that I have held my peace (Isai. vi. 5). Let them hear how through Solomon the knowledge of preaching is promised to be multiplied to him who is not held back by the vice of torpor in that whereto he has already attained. For he says, The soul which blesseth shall be made fat; and he that inebriates shall be inebriated also himself (Prov. xi. 25). For he that blesses outwardly by preaching receives the fatness of inward enlargement; and, while he ceases not to inebriate the minds of his hearers with the wine of eloquence, he becomes increasingly inebriated with the drought of a multiplied gift. Let them hear how David offered this in the way of gift to God, that he did not hide the grace of preaching which he had received, saying, Lo I will not refrain my lips, O Lord, thou knowest: I have not hid thy righteousness within my heart: I have declared thy truth and thy salvation (Ps. xxxix. 10, 11 [1283] ). Let them hear what is said by the bridegroom in his colloquy with the bride; Thou that dwellest in the gardens, thy friends hearken: make me to hear thy voice (Cant. viii. 13). For the Church dwelleth in the gardens, in that she keeps in a state of inward greenness the cultivated nurseries of virtues. And that her friends hearken to her voice is, that all the elect desire the word of her preaching; which voice also the bridegroom desires to hear, because he pants for her preaching through the souls of his elect. Let them hear how Moses, when he saw that God was angry with His people, and commanded swords to be taken for executing vengeance, declared those to be on God's side who should smite the crimes of the offenders without delay, saying, If any man is the Lord's, let him join himself to me; put every man his sword upon his thigh; go in and out from gate to gate through the midst of the camp, and slay every man his brother and friend and neighbour (Exod. xxxii. 27). For to put sword upon thigh is to set earnestness in preaching before the pleasures of the flesh; so that, when any one is earnest to speak holy words, he must needs have a care to subdue illicit suggestions. But to go from gate to gate is to run to and fro with rebuke from vice to vice, even to every one by which death enters in unto the soul. And to pass through the midst of the camp is to live with such impartiality within the Church that one who reproves the sins of offenders turns aside to shew favour to none. Whence also it is rightly added, slay every man his brother and friend and neighbour. He in truth slays brother and friend and neighbour who, when he finds what is worthy of punishment, spares not even those whom he loves on the score of relationship from the sword of his rebuke. If, then, he is said to be God's who is stirred up by the zeal of divine love to smite vices, he surely denies himself to be God's who refuses to rebuke the life of the carnal to the utmost of his power.
But, on the other hand, those whom imperfection or age debars from the office of preaching, and yet precipitancy impells to it, are to be admonished lest, while rashly arrogating to themselves the burden of so great an office, they cut off from themselves the way of subsequent improvement; and, while seizing out of season what they are not equal to, they lose even what they might at some time in due season have fulfilled; and be shewn to have justly forfeited their knowledge because of their attempt to display it improperly. They are to be admonished to consider that young birds, if they try to fly before their wings are fully formed, are plunged low down from the place whence they fain would have risen on high. They are to be admonished to consider that, if on new buildings not yet compacted a weight of timbers be laid, there is built not a habitation, but a ruin. They are to be admonished to consider that, if women bring forth their conceived offspring before it is fully formed, they by no means fill houses, but tombs. For hence it is that the Truth Himself, Who could all at once have strengthened whom He would, in order to give an example to His followers that they should not presume to preach while imperfect, after He had fully instructed His disciples concerning the power of preaching, forthwith added, But tarry ye in the city until ye be endued with power from on high (Luke xxiv. 49). For indeed we tarry together in the city, if we restrain ourselves within the enclosures of our souls from wandering abroad in speech; so that, when we are perfectly endued with divine power, we may then go out as it were from ourselves abroad, instructing others also. Hence through a certain wise man it is said, Young man, speak scarcely in thy cause; and if thou hast been twice asked, let thy answer have a beginning (Ecclus. xxxii. 10). Hence it is that the same our Redeemer, though in heaven the Creator, and even a teacher of angels in the manifestation of His power, would not become a master of men upon earth before His thirtieth year, in order, to wit, that He might infuse into the precipitate the force of a most wholesome fear, in that even He Himself, Who could not slip, did not preach the grace of a perfect life until He was of perfect age. For it is written, When he was twelve years old, the child Jesus tarried behind in Jerusalem (Luke ii. 42, 43). And a little afterwards it is further said of Him, when He was sought by His parents, They found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, hearing them, and asking them questions (Ibid. v. 46). It is therefore to be weighed with vigilant consideration that, when Jesus at twelve years of age is spoken of as sitting in the midst of the doctors, He is found, not teaching, but asking questions. By which example it is plainly shewn that none who is weak should venture to teach, if that child was willing to be taught by asking questions, who by the power of His divinity supplied the word of knowledge to His teachers themselves. But, when it is said by Paul to his disciple, These things command and teach: let no man despise thy adolescence (1 Tim. iv. 11, 12), we must understand that in the language of Holy Writ youth is sometimes called adolescence [1284] . Which thing is the sooner evident, if we adduce the words of Solomon, who says, Rejoice O young man in thy adolescence (Eccles. xi. 9). For unless he meant the same by both words, he would not call him a young man whom he was admonishing in his adolescence. __________________________________________________________________
[1283] In English Bible, Ps. xl.
[1284] The word adolescentia, used in the Vulgate, implies properly the age of immaturity, while growth is still going on. "Adolescentia, prima hominis ætas post pueritiam, et ante juventutem." Facciolati. St. Gregory's intention is to preclude the idea of Timothy having been called to "command and teach" at so immature an age as the word might seem to imply. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXVI.
How those are to be admonished with whom everything succeeds according to their wish, and those with whom nothing does.
(Admonition 27.) Differently to be admonished are those who prosper in what they desire in temporal matters, and those who covet indeed the things that are of this world, but yet are wearied with the labour of adversity. For those who prosper in what they desire in temporal matters are to be admonished, when all things answer to their wishes, lest, through fixing their heart on what is given, they neglect to seek the giver; lest they love their pilgrimage instead of their country; lest they turn the supplies for their journey into hindrances to their arrival at its end; lest, delighted with the light of the moon by night, they shrink from beholding the clearness of the sun. They are, therefore, to be admonished to regard whatever things they attain in this world as consolations in calamity, but not as the rewards of retribution; but, on the other hand, to lift their mind against the favours of the world, lest they succumb in the midst of them with entire delight of the heart. For whosoever in the judgment of his heart keeps not down the prosperity he enjoys by love of a better life, turns the favours of this transitory life into an occasion of everlasting death. For hence it is that under the figure of the Idumæans, who allowed themselves to be vanquished by their own prosperity, those who rejoice in the successes of this world are rebuked, when it is said, They have given my land to themselves for an inheritance with joy, and with their whole heart and mind (Ezek. xxxvi. 5). In which words it is to be observed, that they are smitten with severe rebuke, not merely because they rejoice, but because they rejoice with their whole heart and mind. Hence Solomon says, The turning away of the simple shall slay them, and the prosperity of fools shall destroy them (Prov. i. 32). Hence Paul admonishes, saying, They that buy, as though they possessed not; and they that use this world, as though they used it not (1 Cor. vii. 30). So may the things that are supplied to us be of service to us outwardly to such extent only as not to turn our minds away from desire of supernal delight; and thus the things that afford us succour in our state of exile may not abate the mourning of our soul's pilgrimage; and we, who see ourselves to be wretched in our severance from the things that are eternal, may not rejoice as though we were happy in the things that are transitory. For hence it is that the Church says by the voice of the elect, His left hand is under my head, and his right hand shall embrace me (Cant. ii. 6). The left hand of God, to wit prosperity in the present life, she has put under her head, in that she presses it down in the intentness of her highest love. But the right hand of God embraces her, because in her entire devotion she is encompassed with His eternal blessedness. Hence again, it is said through Solomon, Length of days is in her right hand, but in her left hand riches and glory (Prov. iii. 16). In speaking, then, of riches and glory being placed in her left hand, he shewed after what manner they are to be esteemed. Hence the Psalmist says, Save me with thy right hand (Ps. cvii. 7 [1285] ). For he says not, with thy hand, but with thy right hand; in order, that is, to indicate, in saying right hand, that it was eternal salvation that he sought. Hence again it is written, Thy right hand, O Lord, hath dashed in pieces the enemies (Exod. xv. 6). For the enemies of God, though they prosper in His left hand, are dashed to pieces with His right; since for the most part the present life elevates the bad, but the coming of eternal blessedness condemns them.
Those who prosper in this world are to be admonished to consider wisely how that prosperity in the present life is sometimes given to provoke people to a better life, but sometimes to condemn them more fully for ever. For hence it is that to the people of Israel the land of Canaan is promised, that they may be provoked at some time or other to hope for eternal things. For that rude nation would not have believed the promises of God afar off, had they not received also something nigh at hand from Him that promised. In order, therefore, that they may be the more surely strengthened unto faith in eternal things, they are drawn on, not only by hope to realities, but also by realities to hope. Which thing the Psalmist clearly testifies, saying, He gave them the lands of the heathen, and they took the labours of the peoples in possession, that they might keep his statutes and seek after his law (Ps. civ. 44 [1286] ). But, when the human mind follows not God in His bountiful gifts with an answer of good deeds, it is the more justly condemned from being accounted to have been kindly nurtured. For hence it is said again by the Psalmist, Thou castedst them down when they were lifted up (Ps. lxxii. 18 [1287] ). For in truth when the reprobate render not righteous deeds in return for divine gifts, when they here abandon themselves entirely and sink themselves in their abundant prosperity, then in that whereby they profit outwardly they fall from what is inmost. Hence it is that to the rich man tormented in hell it is said, Thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things (Luke xvi. 25). For on this account, though an evil man, he here received good things, that there he might receive evil things more fully, because here even by good things he had not been converted.
But, on the other hand, those who covet indeed the things that are of the world, but yet are wearied by the labour of adversity, are to be admonished to consider anxiously with how great favour the Creator and Disposer of all things watches over those whom He gives not up to their own desires. For a sick man whom the physician despairs of he allows to take whatever he longs for: but one of whom it is thought that he can be cured is prohibited from many things that he desires; and we withdraw money from boys, for whom at the same time, as our heirs, we reserve our whole patrimony. Let, then, those whom temporal adversity humiliates take joy from hope of an eternal inheritance, since Divine Providence would not curb them in order to educate them under the rule of discipline, unless it designed them to be saved for ever. Those, therefore, who in respect of the temporal things which they covet, are wearied with the labour of adversity are to be admonished to consider carefully how for the most part even the righteous, when temporal power exalts them, are caught by sin as in a snare. For, as in the former part of this volume we have already said, David, beloved of God, was more upright when in servitude than when he came to the kingdom (1 Sam. xxiv. 18). For, when he was a servant, in his love of righteousness he feared to smite his adversary when taken; but, when he was a king, through the persuasion of lasciviousness, he put to death by a deceitful plan even a devoted soldier (2 Sam. xi. 17). Who then can without harm seek wealth, or power, or glory, if they proved harmful even to him who had them unsought? Who in the midst of these things shall be saved without the labour of a great contest, if he who had been prepared for them by the choice of God was disturbed among them by the intervention of sin? They are to be admonished to consider that Solomon, who after so great wisdom is described as having fallen even into idolatry, is not said to have had any adversity in this world before his fall; but the wisdom that had been granted him entirely left his heart, because not even the least discipline of tribulation had guarded it. __________________________________________________________________
[1285] In English Bible, cviii. 6.
[1286] Ibid. cv. 44.
[1287] Ibid. lxxiii. 18. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXVII.
How the married and the single are to be admonished.
(Admonition 28.) Differently to be admonished are those who are bound in wedlock and those who are free from the ties of wedlock. For those who are bound in wedlock are to be admonished that, while they take thought for each other's good, they study, both of them, so to please their consorts as not to displease their Maker; that they so conduct the things that are of this world as still not to omit desiring the things that are of God; that they so rejoice in present good as still, with earnest solicitude, to fear eternal evil; that they so sorrow for temporal evils as still to fix their hope with entire comfort on everlasting good; to the end that, while they know what they are engaged in to be transitory, but what they desire to be permanent, neither the evils of the world may break their heart while it is strengthened by the hope of heavenly good, nor the good things of the present life deceive them, while they are saddened by the apprehended evils of the judgment to come. Wherefore the mind of married Christians is both weak and stedfast, in that it cannot fully despise all temporal things, and yet can join itself in desire to eternal things. Although it lies low meanwhile in the delights of the flesh, let it grow strong in the refreshment of supernal hope: and, if it has the things that are of the world for the service of its journey, let it hope for the things that are of God for the fruit of its journey's end: nor let it devote itself entirely to what it is engaged in now, lest it fall utterly from what it ought stedfastly to hope for. Which thing Paul well expresses briefly, saying, They that have wives as though they had none, and they that weep as though they wept not, and they that rejoice as though they rejoiced not (1 Cor. vii. 29, 30). For he has a wife as though he had none who so enjoys carnal consolation through her as still never to be turned by love of her to evil deeds from the rectitude of a better aim. He has a wife as though he had none who, seeing all things to be transitory, endures of necessity the care of the flesh, but looks forward with longing to the eternal joys of the spirit. Moreover, to weep as though we wept not is so to lament outward adversities as still to know how to rejoice in the consolation of eternal hope. And again, to rejoice as though we rejoiced not is so to take heart from things below as still never to cease from fear concerning the things above. In the same place also a little afterwards he aptly adds, For the fashion of this world passeth away (v. 31); as if he had said plainly, Love not the world abidingly, since the world which ye love cannot itself abide. In vain ye fix your affections on it as though it were continuing, while that which ye love itself is fleeting. Husbands and wives are to be admonished, that those things wherein they sometimes displease one another they bear with mutual patience, and by mutual exhortations remedy. For it is written, Bear ye one another's burdens, and so ye shall fulfil the law of Christ (Galat. vi. 2). For the law of Christ is Charity; since it has from Him bountifully bestowed on us its good things, and has patiently borne our evil things. We, therefore, then fulfil by imitation the law of Christ, when we both kindly bestow our good things, and piously endure the evil things of our friends. They are also to be admonished to give heed, each of them, not so much to what they have to bear from the other as to what the other has to bear from them. For, if one considers what is borne from one's self, one bears more lightly what one endures from another.
Husbands and wives are to be admonished to remember that they are joined together for the sake of producing offspring; and, when, giving themselves to immoderate intercourse, they transfer the occasion of procreation to the service of pleasure, to consider that, though they go not outside wedlock yet in wedlock itself they exceed the just dues of wedlock. Whence it is needful that by frequent supplications they do away their having fouled with the admixture of pleasure the fair form of conjugal union. For hence it is that the Apostle, skilled in heavenly medicine, did not so much lay down a course of life for the whole as point out remedies to the weak when he said, It is good for a man not to touch a woman: but on account of fornication let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband (1 Cor. vii. 1, 2). For in that he premised the fear of fornication, he surely did not give a precept to such as were standing, but pointed out the bed to such as were falling, lest haply they should tumble to the ground. Whence to such as were still weak he added, Let the husband render unto the wife her due; and likewise also the wife unto the husband (v. 3). And, while in the most honourable estate of matrimony allowing to them something of pleasure, he added, But this I say by way of indulgence, not by way of command (v. 6). Now where indulgence is spoken of, a fault is implied; but one that is the more readily remitted in that it consists, not in doing what is unlawful, but in not keeping what is lawful under control. Which thing Lot expresses well in his own person, when he flies from burning Sodom, and yet, finding Zoar, does not still ascend the mountain heights. For to fly from burning Sodom is to avoid the unlawful fires of the flesh. But the height of the mountains is the purity of the continent. Or, at any rate, they are as it were upon the mountain, who, though cleaving to carnal intercourse, still, beyond the due association for the production of offspring, are not loosely lost in pleasure of the flesh. For to stand on the mountain is to seek nothing in the flesh except the fruit of procreation. To stand on the mountain is not to cleave to the flesh in a fleshly way. But, since there are many who relinquish indeed the sins of the flesh, and yet, when placed in the state of wedlock, do not observe solely the claims of due intercourse, Lot went indeed out of Sodom, but yet did not at once reach the mountain heights; because a damnable life is already relinquished, but still the loftiness of conjugal continence is not thoroughly attained. But there is midway the city of Zoar, to save the weak fugitive; because, to wit, when the married have intercourse with each other even incontinently, they still avoid lapse into sin, and are still saved through mercy. For they find as it were a little city, wherein to be protected from the fire; since this married life is not indeed marvellous for virtue, but yet is secure from punishment. Whence the same Lot says to the angel, This city is near to flee unto, and it is small, and I shall be saved therein. Is it not a little one, and my soul shall live in it (Gen. xix. 20)? So then it is said to be near, and yet is spoken of as a refuge of safety, since married life is neither far separated from the world, nor yet alien from the joy of safety. But the married, in this course of conduct, then preserve their lives as it were in a small city, when they intercede for each other by continual supplications. Whence it is also rightly said by the Angel to the same Lot, See I have accepted thy prayers concerning this thing also, that I will not overthrow the city for the which thou hast spoken (v. 21). For in truth, when supplication is poured out to God, such married life is by no means condemned. Concerning which supplication Paul also admonishes, saying, Defraud ye not one the other except it be with consent for a time, that ye may give yourselves to prayer (1 Cor. vii. 5).
But, on the other hand, those who are not bound by wedlock are to be admonished that they observe heavenly precepts all the more closely in that no yoke of carnal union bows them down to worldly cares; that, as they are free from the lawful burden of wedlock, the unlawful weight of earthly anxiety by no means press them down; that the last day find them all the more prepared, as it finds them less encumbered; lest from being free and able, and yet neglecting, to do better things, they therefore be found deserving of worse punishment. Let them hear how the Apostle, when he would train certain persons for the grace of celibacy, did not contemn wedlock, but guarded against the worldly cares that are born of wedlock, saying, This I say for your profit, not that I may cast a snare upon you, but for that which is comely, and that ye may attend upon the Lord without hindrance (1 Cor. vii. 3, 5). For from wedlock proceed earthly anxieties; and therefore the teacher of the Gentiles persuaded his bearers to better things, lest they should be bound by earthly anxiety. The man, then, whom, being single, the hindrance of secular cares impedes, though he has not subjected himself to wedlock, has still not escaped the burdens of wedlock. The single are to be admonished not to think that they can have intercourse with disengaged women without incurring the judgment of condemnation. For, when Paul inserted the vice of fornication among so many execrable crimes, he indicated the guilt of it, saying, Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall possess the kingdom of God (1 Cor. vi. 9, 10). And again, But fornicators and adulterers God will judge (Heb. xiii. 4). They are therefore to be admonished that, if they suffer from the storms of temptation with risk to their safety, they should seek the port of wedlock. For it is written, It is better to marry than to burn (1 Cor. vii. 9). They come, in fact, to marriage without blame, if only they have not vowed better things. For whosoever has proposed to himself the attainment of a greater good has made unlawful the less good which before was lawful. For it is written, No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God (Luke ix. 62). He therefore who has been intent on a more resolute purpose is convicted of looking back, if, leaving the larger good, he reverts to the least. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXVIII.
How those are to be admonished who have had experience of the sins of the flesh, and those who have not.
(Admonition 29.) Differently to be admonished are those who are conscious of sins of the flesh, and those who know them not. For those who have had experience of the sins of the flesh are to be admonished that, at any rate after shipwreck, they should fear the sea, and feel horror at their risk of perdition at least when it has become known to them; lest, having been mercifully preserved after evil deeds committed, by wickedly repeating the same they die. Whence to the soul that sins and never ceases from sin it is said, There is come unto thee a whore's forehead; thou refuseth to be ashamed (Jer. iii. 3). They are therefore to be admonished to take heed, to the end that, if they have refused to keep whole the good things of nature which they have received, they at least mend them after they have been rent asunder. And they are surely bound to consider, how many in so great a number of the faithful both keep themselves undefiled and also convert others from the error of their way. What, then, will they be able to say, if, while others are standing in integrity, they themselves, even after loss, come not to a better mind? What will they be able to say, if, when many bring others also with themselves to the kingdom, they bring not back even themselves to the Lord who is waiting for them? They are to be admonished to consider past transgressions, and to shun such as are impending. Whence, under the figure of Judæa, the Lord through the prophet recalls past sins to the memory of souls corrupted in this world, to the end that they may be ashamed to be polluted in sins to come, saying, They committed whoredoms in Egypt; they committed whoredoms in their youth: then were their breasts pressed, and the teats of their virginity were bruised (Ezek. xxiii. 3). For indeed breasts are pressed in Egypt, when the will of the human soul is prostituted to the base desire of this world. Teats of virginity are bruised in Egypt, when the natural senses, still whole in themselves, are vitiated by the corruption of assailing concupiscence.
Those who have had experience of the sins of the flesh are to be admonished to observe vigilantly with how great benevolence God opens the bosom of His pity to us, if after transgressions we return to Him, when He says through the prophet, If a man put away his wife, and she go from him and become another man's, shall he return to her again? Shall not that woman be polluted and contaminated? But thou hast played the harlot with many lovers; yet return again to me, saith the Lord (Jer. iii. 1). So, concerning the wife who has played the harlot and is deserted, the argument of justice is put forward: and yet to us returning after fall not justice, but pity is displayed. Whence we are surely meant to gather how great is our wickedness, if we return not, even after transgression, seeing that, when transgressing, we are spared with so great pity: or what pardon for the wicked there will be from Him who, after our sin, ceases not to call us. And indeed this mercifulness, in calling after transgression, is well expressed through the Prophet, when to man turned away from God it is said, Thine eyes shall see thy teacher, and thine ears shall hear the word of one behind thy back admonishing thee (Isai. xxx. 20, 21). For indeed the Lord admonished the human race to their face, when to man, created in Paradise, and standing in free will, He declared what He ought to do or not to do. But man turned his back on the face of God, when in his pride he despised His commands. Yet still God deserted him not in his pride, in that He gave the Law for the purpose of recalling man, and sent exhorting angels, and Himself appeared in the flesh of our mortality. Therefore, standing behind our back, He admonished us, in that, even though despised, He called us to the recovery of grace. What, therefore could be said generally of all alike must needs be felt specially with regard to each. For every man hears the words of God's admonition set as it were before him, when, before he commits sin, he knows the precepts of His will. For still to stand before His face is not yet to despise Him by sinning. But, when a man forsakes the good of innocence, and of choice desires iniquity, he then turns his back on the face of God. But lo, even behind his back God follows and admonishes him, in that even after sin He persuades him to return to Himself. He recalls him that is turned away, He regards not past transgressions, He opens the bosom of pity to the returning one. We hearken, then, to the voice of one behind our back admonishing us, if at least after sins we return to the Lord inviting us. We ought therefore to feel ashamed for the pity of Him Who calls us, if we will not fear His justice: since there is the more grievous wickedness in despising Him in that, though despised, He disdains not to call us still.
But, on the other hand, those that are unacquainted with the sins of the flesh are to be admonished to fear headlong ruin the more anxiously, as they stand upon a higher eminence. They are to be admonished to be aware that the more prominent be the place they stand on, so much the more frequent are the arrows of the lier-in-wait by which they are assailed. For he is wont to rouse himself the more ardently, the more stoutly he sees himself to be vanquished: and so much the more he scorns and feels it intolerable to be vanquished, as he perceives the unbroken camp of weak flesh to be set in array against him. They are to be admonished to look up incessantly to the rewards, and then undoubtedly they will gladly tread under foot the labours of temptation which they endure. For, if attention be fixed on the attained felicity apart from the passage to it, the toil of the passage becomes light. Let them hear what is said through the Prophet; Thus saith the Lord unto the eunuchs, Whoso shall have kept my sabbaths, and chosen the things that l would, and kept my covenant, I will give unto them in mine house and within my walls a place and a name better than of sons and of daughters (Isai. lvi. 4, 5). For they indeed are eunuchs, who, suppressing the motions of the flesh, cut off within themselves affection for wrong-doing. Moreover, in what place they are held with the Father is shewn, forasmuch as in the Father's house, that is in His eternal mansion, they are preferred even before sons. Let them hear what is said through John; These are they which have not been defiled with women; for they are virgins, and follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth (Rev. xiv. 4); and how they sing a song which no one can utter but those hundred and forty four thousand. For indeed to sing a song to the Lamb singularly is to rejoice with Him for ever beyond all the faithful, even for incorruption of the flesh. Yet the rest of the elect can hear this song, although they cannot utter it, because, through charity, they are joyful in the exaltation of those others, though they rise not to their rewards. Let those who are unacquainted with the sins of the flesh hear what the Truth in person says concerning this purity; Not all receive this word (Matth. xix. 11). Which thing He denoted as the highest, in that He spoke of it as not belonging to all: and, in foretelling that it would be difficult to receive it, He signifies to his hearers with what caution it should be kept when received.
Those who are unacquainted with the sins of the flesh are therefore to be admonished both to know that virginity surpasses wedlock, and yet not to exalt themselves above the wedded: to the end that, while they put virginity first, and themselves last, they may both keep to that which they esteem as best, and also keep guard over themselves in not vainly exalting themselves.
They are to be admonished to consider that commonly the life of the continent is put to shame by the action of secular persons, when the latter take on themselves works beyond their condition, and the former do not stir up their hearts to the mark of their own order. Whence it is well said through the Prophet, Be thou ashamed, O Sidon, saith the sea (Isai. xxiii. 4). For Sidon is as it were brought to shame by the voice of the sea, when the life of him who is fortified, and as it were stedfast, is reproved by comparison with the life at those who are secular and fluctuating in this world. For often there are some who, returning to the Lord after sins of the flesh, shew themselves the more ardent in good works as they see themselves the more liable to condemnation for bad ones: and often certain of those who persevere in purity of the flesh seeing that they have less in the past to deplore, think that the innocency of their life is fully sufficient for them, and inflame themselves with no incitements of ardour to fervour of spirit. And for the most part a life burning with love after sin becomes more pleasing to God than innocence growing torpid in security. Whence also it is said by the voice of the Judge, Her sins which are many are forgiven, for she loved much (Luke vii. 47); and, Joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth more than over ninety and nine just persons which need no repentance (xv. 7). Which thing we the sooner gather from experience itself, if we weigh the judgments of our own mind. For we love the land which produces abundant fruit after thorns have been ploughed out of it more than that which has had no thorns, but which, when cultivated, yields a barren harvest. Those who know not the sins of the flesh are to be admonished not to prefer themselves to others for the loftiness of their superior order, while they know not how great things are done by their inferiors better than by themselves. For in the inquisition of the righteous judge the quality of actions changes the merits of orders. For who, considering the very outward appearance of things, can be ignorant that in the nature of gems the carbuncle is preferred to the jacinth? But still a jacinth of cerulean colour is preferred to a pale carbuncle; because to the former its show of beauty supplies what the order of nature denied it, and the latter, which natural order had preferred, is debased by the quality of its colour. Thus, then, in the human race both some in the better order are the worse, and some in the worse order are the better; since these by good living transcend the lot of their lower state, and those lessen the merit of their higher place by not coming up to it in their behaviour. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXIX.
How they are to be admonished who lament sins of deed, and those who lament only sins of thought.
(Admonition 30.) Differently to be admonished are those who deplore sins of deed, and those who deplore sins of thought. For those who deplore sins of deed are to be admonished that perfected lamentations should wash out consummated evils, lest they be bound by a greater debt of perpetrated deed than they pay in tears of satisfaction for it. For it is written, He hath given us drink in tears by measure (Ps. lxxix. 6): which means that each person's soul should in its penitence drink the tears of compunction to such extent as it remembers itself to have been dried up from God through sins. They are to be admonished to bring back their past offences incessantly before their eyes, and so to live that these may not have to be viewed by the strict judge.
Hence David, when he prayed, saying, Turn away thine eyes from my sins (Ps. l. 11 [1288] ), had said also a little before, My fault is ever before me (v. 5); as if to say, I beseech thee not to regard my sin, since I myself cease not to regard it. Whence also the Lord says through the prophet, And I will not be mindful of thy sins, but be thou mindful of them (Isai. xliii. 25, 26). They are to be admonished to consider singly all their past offences, and, in bewailing the defilements of their former wandering one by one, to cleanse at the same time even their whole selves with tears. Whence it is well said through Jeremiah, when the several transgressions of Judæa were being considered, Mine eye hath shed divisions of waters (Lam. iii. 48). For indeed we shed divided waters from our eyes, when to our several sins we give separate tears. For the mind does not sorrow at one and the same time alike for all things; but, while it is more sharply touched by memory now of this fault and now of that, being moved concerning all in each, it is purged at once from all.
They are to be admonished to build upon the mercy which they crave, lest they perish through the force of immoderate affliction. For the Lord would not set sins to be deplored before the eyes of offenders, were it His will to smite them with strict severity Himself. For it is evident that it has been His will to hide from His own judgment those whom in anticipation He has made judges of themselves. For hence it is written, Let us come beforehand before the face of the Lord in confession (Ps. xciv. 2 [1289] ). Hence through Paul it is said, If we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged (1 Cor. xi. 31). And again, they are to be admonished so to be confident in hope as not to grow torpid in careless security. For commonly the crafty foe, when he sees the soul which he trips up by sin to be afflicted for its fall, seduces it by the blandishments of baneful security. Which thing is figuratively expressed in the history of Dinah. For it is written, Dinah went out to see the women of that land; and when Sichem, the son of Hemor the Hivite, prince of the country, saw her, he loved her, and seized her, and lay with her, and defiled her by force; and his soul clave unto her, and he soothed her with kind blandishments when she was sad (Gen. xxxiv. 1-3). For indeed Dinah goes out to see the women of a foreign land, when any soul, neglecting its own concerns, and giving heed to the actions of others, wanders forth out of its own proper condition and order. And Sichem, prince of the country, overpowers it inasmuch as the devil corrupts it, when found occupied in external cares. And his soul clave unto her, because he regards it as united to himself through iniquity. And because, when the soul comes to a sense of its sin, it stands condemned, and would fain deplore its transgression, but the corrupter recalls before its eyes empty hopes and grounds of security to the end that he may withdraw from it the benefit of sorrow, therefore it is rightly added in the text, And soothed her with blandishments when she was sad. For he tells now of the heavier offences of others, now of what has been perpetrated being nothing, now of God being merciful; or again he promises time hereafter for repentance; so that the soul, seduced by these deceptions, may be suspended from its purpose of penitence, to the end that it may receive no good hereafter, being saddened by no evil now, and that it may then be more fully overwhelmed with punishment, in that now it even rejoices in its transgressions.
But, on the other hand, those who bewail sins of thought are to be admonished to consider anxiously within the recesses of their soul whether they have sinned in delight only, or also in consent. For commonly the heart is tempted, and in the sinfulness of the flesh experiences delight, and yet in its judgment resists this same sinfulness; so that in the secrets of thought it is both saddened by what pleases it and pleased by what saddens it. But sometimes the soul is so whelmed in a gulph of temptation as not to resist at all, but follows of set purpose that whereby it is assailed through delight; and, if outward opportunity be at hand, it soon consummates in effect its inward wishes. And certainly, if this is regarded according to the just animadversion of a strict judge, the sin is one, not of thought, but of deed; since, though the tardiness of circumstances has deferred the sin outwardly, the will has accomplished it inwardly by the act of consent.
Moreover, we have learnt in the case of our first parent that we perpetrate the iniquity of every sin in three ways; that is to say, in suggestion, delight, and consent. Thus the first is perpetrated through the enemy, the second through the flesh, the third through the spirit. For the lier-in-wait suggests wrong things; the flesh submits itself to delight; and at last the spirit, vanquished by delight, consents. Whence also that serpent suggested wrong things; then Eve, as though she had been the flesh, submitted herself to delight; but Adam, as the spirit, overcome by the suggestion and the delight, assented. Thus by suggestion we have knowledge of sin, by delight we are vanquished, by consent we are also bound. Those, therefore, who bewail iniquities of thought are to be admonished to consider anxiously in what measure they have fallen into sin, to the end that they may be lifted up by a measure of lamentation corresponding to the degree of the downfall of which they are inwardly conscious; lest, if meditated evils torment them too little, they lead them on even to the perpetration of deeds. But in all this they should be alarmed in such wise that they still be by no means broken down. For often merciful God absolves sins of the heart the more speedily in that He allows them not to issue in deeds; and meditated iniquity is the more speedily loosed from not being too tightly bound by effected deed. Whence it is rightly said by the Psalmist, I said I will declare against myself my iniquities to the Lord, and thou forgavest the impiety of my heart (Ps. xxxi. 5). For in that he added impiety of heart, he indicated that it was iniquities of thought that he would declare: and in saying, I said I will declare, and straightway subjoining, And thou forgavest, he shewed how easy in such a case pardon was. For, while but promising that he would ask, he obtained what he promised to ask for; so that, since his sin had not advanced to deed, neither should his penitence go so far as to be torment; and that meditated affliction should cleanse the soul which in truth no more than meditated iniquity had defiled. __________________________________________________________________
[1288] In English Bible, li. 3.
[1289] Ibid. xcv. 2. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXX.
How those are to be admonished who abstain not from the sins which they bewail, and those who, abstaining from them, bewail them not.
(Admonition 31.) Differently to be admonished are those who lament their transgressions, and yet forsake them not, and those who forsake them, and yet lament them not. For those who lament their transgressions and yet forsake them not are to be admonished to learn to consider anxiously that they cleanse themselves in vain by their weeping, if they wickedly defile themselves in their living, seeing that the end for which they wash themselves in tears is that, when clean, they may return to filth. For hence it is written, The dog is returned to his own vomit again, and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire (2 Pet. ii. 22). For the dog, when he vomits, certainly casts forth the food which weighed upon his stomach; but, when he returns to his vomit, he is again loaded with what he had been relieved from. And they who mourn their transgressions certainly cast forth by confession the wickedness with which they have been evilly satiated, and which oppressed the inmost parts of their soul; and yet, in recurring to it after confession, they take it in again. But the sow, by wallowing in the mire when washed, is made more filthy. And one who mourns past transgressions, yet forsakes them not, subjects himself to the penalty of more grievous sin, since he both despises the very pardon which he might have won by his weeping, and as it were rolls himself in miry water; because in withholding purity of life from his weeping he makes even his very tears filthy before the eyes of God. Hence again it is written, Repeat not a word in thy prayer (Ecclus. vii. 14). For to repeat a word in prayer is, after bewailing, to commit what again requires bewailing. Hence it is said through Isaiah, Wash you, be ye clean (Isai. i. 16). For he neglects being clean after washing, whosoever after tears keeps not innocency of life. And they therefore are washed, but are in no wise clean, who cease not to bewail the things they have committed, but commit again things to be bewailed. Hence through a certain wise man it is said, He that is baptized from the touch of a dead body and toucheth it again, what availeth his washing (Ecclus. xxxiv. 30 [1290] )? For indeed he is baptized from the touch of a dead body who is cleansed from sin by weeping: but he touches a dead body after his baptism, who after tears repeats his sin.
Those who bewail transgressions, yet forsake them not, are to be admonished to acknowledge themselves to be before the eyes of the strict judge like those who, when they come before the face of certain men, fawn upon them with great submission, but, when they depart, atrociously bring upon them all the enmity and hurt they can. For what is weeping for sin but exhibiting the humility of one's devotion to God? And what is doing wickedly after weeping but putting in practice arrogant enmity against Him to whom entreaty has been made? This James attests, who says, Whosoever will be a friend of this world becomes the enemy of God (James iv. 4). Those who lament their transgressions, yet forsake them not, are to be admonished to consider anxiously that, for the most part, bad men are unprofitably drawn by compunction to righteousness, even as, for the most part, good men are without harm tempted to sin. Here indeed is found a wonderful measure of inward disposition in accordance with the requirements of desert, in that the bad, while doing something good, but still without perfecting it, are proudly confident in the midst of the very evil which even to the full they perpetrate; while the good, when tempted of evil to which they in no wise consent, plant the steps of their heart towards righteousness through humility all the more surely from their tottering through infirmity. Thus Balaam, looking on the tents of the righteous, said, May my soul die the death of the righteous, and may my last end be like theirs (Num. xxiii. 10). But, when the time of compunction had passed, he gave counsel against the life of those whom he had requested for himself to be like even in dying: and, when he found an occasion for the gratification of his avarice, he straightway forgot all that he had wished for himself of innocence. Hence it is that Paul, the teacher and preacher of the Gentiles, says, I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin, which is in my members (Rom. vii. 23). He is of a truth tempted for this very purpose, that he may be the more stedfastly confirmed in good from the knowledge of his own infirmity. Why is it, then, that the one is touched with compunction, and yet draws not near unto righteousness, while the other is tempted, and yet sin defiles him not, but for this evident reason, that neither do good things not perfected help the bad, nor bad things not consummated condemn the good?
But, on the other hand, those who forsake their transgressions, and yet mourn them not, are to be admonished not to suppose the sins to be already remitted which, though they multiply them not by action, they still cleanse away by no bewailings. For neither has a writer, when he has ceased from writing, obliterated what he had written by reason of his having added no more: neither has one who offers insults made satisfaction by merely holding his peace, it being certainly necessary for him to impugn his former words of pride by words of subsequent humility: nor is a debtor absolved by not increasing his debt, unless he also pays what he has incurred. Thus also, when we offend against God, we by no means make satisfaction by ceasing from iniquity, unless we also follow up the pleasures which we have loved by lamentations set against them. For, if no sin of deed had polluted us in this life, our very innocence would by no means suffice for our security as long as we live here, since many unlawful things would still assail our heart. With what conscience, then, can he feel safe, who, having perpetrated iniquities, is himself witness to himself that he is not innocent?
For it is not as if God were fed by our torments: but He heals the diseases of our transgressions by medicines opposed to them that we, who have departed from Him delighted by pleasures, may return to Him embittered by tears; and that, having fallen by running loose in unlawful things, we may rise by restraining ourselves even in lawful ones; and that the heart which mad joy had flooded may be burnt clean by wholesome sadness: and that what the elation of pride had wounded may be cured by the dejection of a humble life. For hence it is written, I said unto the wicked, Deal not wickedly; and to the transgressors, lift not up the horn (Ps. lxxiv. 5 [1291] ). For transgressors lift up the horn, if they in no wise humble themselves to penitence after knowledge of their iniquity. Hence again it is said, A bruised and humbled heart God doth not despise (Ps. l. 19 [1292] ). For whosoever mourns his sins yet forsakes them not bruises indeed his heart, but scorns to humble it. But he who forsakes his sins yet mourns them not does indeed already humble his heart, but refuses to bruise it. Hence Paul says, And such indeed were ye; but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified (1 Cor. vi. 11); because, in truth, amended life sanctifies those whom the ablution of the affliction of tears cleanses through penitence. Hence Peter, when he saw some affrighted by consideration of their evil deeds, admonished them, saying, Repent, and be baptized every one of you (Acts ii. 38). For, being about to speak of baptism, he spoke first of the lamentations of penitence; that they should first bathe themselves in the water of their own affliction, and afterwards wash themselves in the sacrament of baptism. With what conscience, then, can those who neglect to weep for their past misdeeds live secure of pardon, when the chief pastor of the Church himself believed that penitence must be added even to this Sacrament which chiefly extinguishes sins? __________________________________________________________________
[1290] In Engl. Bib., xxxiv. 25.
[1291] In English Bible, lxxv. 4.
[1292] Ibid. li. 17. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXI.
How those are to be admonished who praise the unlawful things of which they are conscious, and those who while condemning them, in no wise guard against them.
(Admonition 32.) Differently to be admonished are they who even praise the unlawful things which they do, and those who censure what is wrong, and yet avoid it not. For they who even praise the unlawful things which they do are to be admonished to consider how for the most part they offend more by the mouth than by deeds. For by deeds they perpetrate wrong things in their own persons only; but with the mouth they bring out wickedness in the persons of as many as there are souls of hearers, to whom they teach wicked things by praising them. They are therefore to be admonished that, if they evade the eradication of evil, they at least be afraid to sow it. They are to be admonished to let their own individual perdition suffice them. And again they are to be admonished that, if they fear not to be bad, they at least blush to be seen to be what they are. For usually a sin, when it is concealed, is shunned; because, when a soul blushes to be seen to be what nevertheless it does not fear to be, it comes in time to blush to be what it shuns being seen to be. But, when any bad man shamelessly courts notice, then the more freely he perpetrates every wickedness, the more does he come even to think it lawful; and in what he imagines to be lawful he is without doubt sunk ever more and more. Hence it is written, They have declared their sin as Sodom, neither have they hidden it (Isai. iii. 9). For, had Sodom hidden her sin, she would still have sinned, but, in fear. But she had utterly lost the curb of fear, in that she did not even seek darkness for her sin. Whence also again it is written, The cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is multiplied (Gen. xviii. 20). For sin with a voice is guilt in act; but sin with even a cry is guilt at liberty.
But, on the other hand, those who censure wrong things and yet avoid them not are to be admonished to weigh circumspectly what they can say in their own excuse before the strict judgment of God, seeing they are not excused from the guilt of their crimes, even themselves being judges. What, then, are these men but their own summoners? They give their voices against misdeeds, and deliver themselves up as guilty in their doings. They are to be admonished to perceive how it even now comes of the hidden retribution of judgment that their mind is enlightened to see the evil which it perpetrates, but strives not to overcome it; so that the better it sees the worse it may perish; because it both perceives the light of understanding, and also relinquishes not the darkness of wrong-doing. For, when they neglect the knowledge that has been given to help them, they turn it into a testimony against themselves; and from the light of understanding, which they had in truth received that they might be able to do away their sins, they augment their punishments. And, indeed, this their wickedness, doing the evil which it condemns, has already a taste here of the judgment to come; so that, while kept liable to eternal punishment, it shall not meanwhile be absolved here in its own test of itself; and that it may experience there the more grievous torments, in that here it forsakes not the evil which even itself condemns. For hence the Truth says, That servant which knew his Lord's will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes (Luke xii. 47). Hence the Psalmist says, Let them go down quick into hell (Ps. liv. 16 [1293] ). For the quick know and feel what is being done about them; but the dead can feel nothing. For they would go down dead into hell if they committed what is evil without knowledge. But when they know what is evil, and yet do it, they go down quick, miserable, and feeling, into the hell of iniquity. __________________________________________________________________
[1293] In English Bible, lv. 15. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXII.
How those are to be admonished who sin from sudden impulse and those who sin deliberately.
(Admonition 33.). Differently to be admonished are those who are overcome by sudden passion and those who are bound in guilt of set purpose. For those whom sudden passion overcomes are to be admonished to regard themselves as daily set in the warfare of the present life, and to protect the heart, which cannot foresee wounds, with the shield of anxious fear; to dread the hidden darts of the ambushed foe, and, in so dark a contest, to guard with continual attention the inward camp of the soul. For, if the heart is left destitute of the solicitude of circumspection, it is laid open to wounds; since the crafty enemy strikes the breast the more freely as he catches it bare of the breastplate of forethought. Those who are overcome by sudden passion are to be admonished to cease caring too much for earthly things; since, while they entangle their attention immoderately in transitory things, they are not aware of the darts of sins which pierce them. Whence, also, the utterance of one that is stricken and yet sleeps is expressed by Solomon, who says, They have beaten me, and I was not pained; they have dragged me, and I felt it not. When shall I awake and again find wine (Prov. xxiii. 35)? For the soul that sleeps from the care of its solicitude is beaten and feels not pain, because, as it foresees not impending evils, so neither is it aware of those which it has perpetrated. It is dragged, and in no wise feels it, because it is led by the allurements of vices, and yet is not roused to keep guard over itself. But again it wishes to awake, that it may again find wine, because, although weighed down by the sleep of its torpor from keeping guard over itself, it still strives to be awake to the cares of the world, that it may be ever drunk with pleasures; and, while sleeping to that wherein it ought to have been wisely awake, it desires to be awake to something else, to which it might have laudably slept. Hence it is written previously, And thou shalt be as one that sleepeth in the midst of the sea, and as a steersman that is lulled to rest, having let go the rudder (Prov. xxiii. 35). For he sleeps in the midst of the sea who, placed among the temptations of this world, neglects to look out for the motions of vices that rush in upon him like impending heaps of waves. And the steersman, as it were, lets go the rudder when the mind loses the earnestness of solicitude for guiding the ship of the body. For, indeed, to let go the rudder in the sea is to leave off intentness of forethought among the storms of this life. For, if the steersman holds fast the rudder with anxious care, he now directs the ship among the billows right against them, now cleaves the assaults of the winds aslant. So, when the mind vigilantly guides the soul, it now surmounts some things and treads them down, now warily turns aside from others, so that it may both by hard exertion overcome present dangers, and by foresight gather strength against future struggle. Hence, again, of the strong warriors of the heavenly country it is said, Every man hath his sword upon his thigh because of fears in the night (Cant. iii. 8). For the sword is put upon the thigh when the evil suggestion of the flesh is subdued by the sharp edge of holy preaching. But by the night is expressed the blindness of our infirmity; since any opposition that is impending in the night is not seen. Every man's sword, therefore, is put upon his thigh because of fears in the night; that is, because holy men, while they fear things which they do not see, stand always prepared for the strain of a struggle. Hence, again, it is said to the bride, Thy nose is as the tower that is in Lebanon (Cant. vii. 4). For the thing which we perceive not with our eyes we usually anticipate by the smell. By the nose, also, we discern between odours and stenches. What, then, is signified by the nose of the Church but the foreseeing discernment of Saints? It is also said to be like to the tower that is in Lebanon, because their discerning foresight is so set on a height as to see the struggles of temptations even before they come, and to stand fortified against them when they do come. For things that are foreseen when future are of less force when they are present; because, when every one has become more prepared against the blow, the enemy, who supposed himself to be unexpected, is weakened by the very fact of having been anticipated.
But, on the other hand, those who of set purpose are bound in guilt, are to be admonished to perpend with wary consideration how that, when they do what is evil of their own judgment, they kindle stricter judgment against themselves; and that by so much the harder sentence will smite them as the chains of deliberation have bound them more tightly in guilt. Perhaps they might sooner wash away their transgressions by penitence, had they fallen into them through precipitancy alone. For the sin is less speedily loosened which of set purpose is firmly bound. For unless the soul altogether despised eternal things, it would not perish in guilt advisedly. In this, then, those who perish of set purpose differ from those who fall through precipitancy; that the former, when they fall by sin from the state of righteousness, for the most part fall also into the snare of desperation. Hence it is that the Lord through the Prophet reproves not so much the wrong doings of precipitance as purposes of sin, saying, Lest perchance my indignation come out as fire, and be inflamed, and there be none to quench it because of the wickedness of your purposes (Jer. iv. 4). Hence, again, in wrath He says, I will visit upon you according to the fruit of your purposes (Ibid. xxiii. 2). Since, then, sins which are perpetrated of set purpose differ from other sins, the Lord censures purposes of wickedness rather than wicked deeds. For in deeds the sin is often of infirmity or of negligence, but in purposes it is always of malicious intent. Contrariwise, it is well said through the Prophet in describing a blessed man, And he sitteth not in the chair of pestilence (Ps. i. 1). For a chair is wont to be the seat of a judge or a president. And to sit in the chair of pestilence is to commit what is wrong judicially; to sit in the chair of pestilence is to discern with the reason what is evil, and yet deliberately to perpetrate it. He sits, as it were, in the chair of perverse counsel who is lifted up with so great elation of iniquity as to endeavour even by counsel to accomplish evil. And, as those who are supported by the dignity of the chair are set over the crowds that stand by, so sins that are purposely sought out transcend the transgressions of those who fall through precipitancy. Those, then, who even by counsel bind themselves in guilt are to be admonished hence to gather with what vengeance they must at some time be smitten, being now made, not companions, but princes, of evil-doers. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXIII.
How those are to be admonished who commit very small but frequent faults, and those who, while avoiding such as are very small, are sometimes plunged in such as are grievous.
(Admonition 34.) Differently to be admonished are those who, though the unlawful things they do are very small, yet do them frequently, and those who keep themselves from small sins, but are sometimes plunged in such as are grievous. Those who frequently transgress, though in very small things, are to be admonished by no means to consider the quality of the sins they commit, but the quantity. For, if they scorn being afraid when they weigh their deeds, they ought to be alarmed when they number them; seeing that deep gulphs of rivers are filled by small but innumerable drops of rain; and bilge-water, increasing secretly, has the same effect as a storm raging openly; and the sores that break out on the members in scab are minute; but, when a multitude of them gets possession in countless numbers, it destroys the life of the body as much as one grievous wound inflicted on the breast. Hence for certain it is written, He that contemneth small things falleth by little and little (Ecclus. xix. 1). For he that neglects to bewail and avoid the smallest sins falls from the state of righteousness, not indeed suddenly, but bit by bit entirely. Those who transgress frequently in very little things are to be admonished to consider anxiously how that sometimes there is worse sin in a small fault than in a greater one. For a greater fault, in that it is the sooner acknowledged to be one, is by so much the more speedily amended; but a smaller one, being reckoned as though it were none at all, is retained in use with worse effect as it is so with less concern. Whence for the most part it comes to pass that the mind, accustomed to light evils, has no horror even of heavy ones, and, being fed up by sins, comes at last to a sort of sanction of iniquity, and by so much the more scorns to be afraid in greater matters as it has learnt to sin in little ones without fear.
But, on the other hand, those who keep themselves from small sins, but are sometimes plunged in grievous ones, are to be admonished anxiously to apprehend the state they are in; how that, while their heart is lifted up for very small things guarded against, they are so swallowed up in the very gulph of their own elation as to perpetrate others that are more grievous, and, while they outwardly master little ills, but are puffed up inwardly with vain glory, they prostrate their soul, overcome within itself by the sickness of pride, amid greater ills even outwardly. Those, then, who keep themselves from little faults, but are sometimes plunged in such as are grievous, are to be admonished to take care lest they fall inwardly where they suppose themselves to be standing outwardly, and lest, according to the retribution of the strict judge, elation on account of lesser righteousness become a way to the pitfall of more grievous sin. For such as, vainly elated, attribute their keeping of the least good to their own strength, being justly left to themselves are overwhelmed in greater sins; and by falling they learn that their standing was not of themselves, so that immeasurable ills may humble the heart that is exalted by the smallest good. They are to be admonished to consider that, while in their more grievous faults they bind themselves in deep guilt, they nevertheless for the most part sin worse in the little faults which they guard against; because, while in the former they do what is wicked, in the latter they hide from men that they are wicked. Whence it comes to pass that, when they perpetrate greater evils before God, it is a case of open iniquity; and when they are careful to observe small good things before men, it is a case of pretended holiness. For hence it is that it is said of the Pharisees, Straining out a gnat, but swallowing a camel (Matth. xxiii. 24). As if it were said plainly. The least evils ye discern; the greater ye devour. Hence it is that they are again reproved by the mouth of the Truth, when they are told, Ye tithe mint and anise and cummin, and omit the weightier matters of the Law, judgment and mercy and truth (Ibid. 23). For neither is it to be carelessly heard that, when He said that the least things were tithed, He chose indeed to mention the lowest of herbs, but yet such as are sweet-smelling; in order, surely, to shew that, when pretenders observe small things, they seek to extend for themselves the odour of a holy reputation; and, though they omit to fulfil the greatest things, they still observe such of the smallest as smell sweetly far and wide in human judgment. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXIV.
How those are to be admonished who do not even begin good things, and those who do not finish them when begun.
(Admonition 35.) Differently to be admonished are they who do not even begin good things, and those who in no wise complete such as they have begun. For as to those who do not even begin good things, for them the first need is, not to build up what they may wholesomely love, but to demolish that wherein they are wrongly occupied. For they will not follow the untried things they hear of, unless they first come to feel how pernicious are the things that they have tried; since neither does one desire to be lifted up who knows not the very fact that he has fallen; nor does one who feels not the pain of a wound seek any healing remedy. First, then, it is to be shewn to them how vain are the things that they love, and then at length to be carefully made known to them how profitable are the things that they let slip. Let them first see that what they love is to be shunned, and afterwards perceive without difficulty that what they shun is to be loved. For they sooner accept the things which they have not tried, if they recognize as true whatever discourse they may hear concerning the things that they have tried. So then they learn to seek true good with fulness of desire, when they have learnt with certainty of judgment how vainly they have held to what was false. Let them be told, therefore, both that present good things will soon pass away from enjoyment, and also that the account to be given of them will nevertheless endure, without passing away, for vengeance; since both what pleases them is withdrawn from them now against their will, and what pains them is reserved them, also against their will, for punishment. Thus may they be wholesomely filled with alarm by the same things in which they harmfully take delight; so that when the stricken soul, in sight of the deep ruin of its fall, perceives that it has reached a precipice, it may retrace its steps backward, and, fearing what it had loved, may learn to esteem highly what it once despised.
For hence it is that it is said to Jeremiah when sent to preach, See, I have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms, to pluck out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to scatter, and to build, and to plant (Jer. i. 10). Because, unless he first destroyed wrong things, he could not profitably build right things; unless he plucked out of the hearts of his hearers the thorns of vain love, he would certainly plant to no purpose the words of holy preaching. Hence it is that Peter first overthrows, that he may afterwards build up, when he in no wise admonished the Jews as to what they were now to do, but reproved them for what they had done, saying, Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by powers and wonders and signs, which God did by Him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves know; Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have by the hands of wicked men crucified and slain; whom God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of hell (Acts ii. 22-24); in order, to wit, that having been thrown down by a recognition of their cruelty, they might hear the building up of holy preaching by so much the more profitably as they anxiously sought it. Whence also they forthwith replied, What then shall we do, men and brethren? And it is presently said to them, Repent and be baptized, every one of you (Ibid. 37, 38). Which words of building up they would surely have despised, had they not first wholesomely become aware of the ruin of their throwing down. Hence it is that Saul, when the light from heaven shone upon him, did not hear immediately what he was to do aright, but what he had done wrong. For, when, fallen to the earth, he enquired, saying, Who art Thou, Lord? it was straightway replied, I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom thou persecutest. And when he forthwith replied, Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do? it is added at once, Arise, and go into the city, and it shall be told thee there what thou must do (Acts ix. 4, &c.; xxii. 8, &c.). Lo, the Lord, speaking from heaven, reproved the deeds of His persecutor, and yet did not at once shew him what he had to do. Lo, the whole fabric of his elation had already been thrown down and then, humble after his downfall, he sought to be built up: and when pride was thrown down, the words of building up were still kept back; to wit, that the cruel persecutor might long lie overthrown, and rise afterwards the more firmly built in good as he had fallen utterly upset from his former error. Those, then, who have not as yet begun to do any good are first to be overthrown by the hand of correction from the stiffness of their iniquity, that they may afterwards be lifted up to the state of well-doing. For this cause also we cut down the lofty timber of the forest, that we may raise it up in the roof of a building: but yet it is not placed in the fabric suddenly; in order, that is, that its vicious greenness may first be dried out: for the more the moisture thereof is exuded in the lowest, by so much the more solidly is it elevated to the topmost places.
But, on the other hand, those who in no wise complete the good things they have begun are to be admonished to consider with cautious circumspection how that, when they accomplish not their purposes, they tear up with them even the things that had been begun. For, if that which is seen to be a thing to be done advances not through assiduous application, even that which had been well done falls back. For the human soul in this world is, as it were, in the condition of a ship ascending against the stream of a river: it is never suffered to stay in one place, since it will float back to the nethermost parts unless it strive for the uppermost. If then the strong hand of the worker carry not on to perfection the good things begun, the very slackness in working fights against what has been wrought. For hence it is that it is said through Solomon, He that is feeble and slack in work is brother to him that wasteth his works (Prov. xviii. 9). For in truth he who does not strenuously execute the good things he has begun imitates in the slackness of his negligence the hand of the destroyer. Hence it is said by the Angel to the Church of Sardis, Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die; for I find not thy works complete before my God (Rev. iii. 2). Thus, because the works had not been found complete before his God, he foretold that those which remained, even such as had been done, were about to die. For, if that which is dead in us be not kindled into life, that which is retained as though still alive is extinguished too. They are to be admonished that it might have been more tolerable for them not to have laid hold of the right way than, having laid hold of it, to turn their backs upon it. For unless they looked back, they would not grow weak with any torpor with regard to their undertaken purpose. Let them hear, then, what is written, It had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness than, after they have known it, to be turned backward (2 Pet. ii. 21). Let them hear what is written; I would thou wert cold or hot: but, because than art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will begin to spue thee out of my mouth (Rev. iii. 15, 16). For he is hot who both takes up and completes good purposes; but he is cold who does not even begin any to be completed. And as transition is made through lukewarmness from cold to heat, so through lukewarmness there is a return from heat to cold. Whosoever, then, has lost the cold of unbelief so as to live, but in no wise passes beyond lukewarmness so as to go on to burn, he doubtless, despairing of heat, while he lingers in pernicious lukewarmness, is in the way to become cold. But, as before lukewarmness there is hope in cold, so after cold there is despair in lukewarmness. For he who is yet in his sins loses not his trust in conversion: but he who after conversion has become lukewarm has withdrawn the hope that there might have been of the sinner. It is required, then, that every one be either hot or cold, lest, being lukewarm, he be spued out: that is, that either, being not yet converted, he still afford hope of his conversion, or, being already converted, he be fervent in virtues; lest he be spued out as lukewarm, in that he goes back in torpor from purposed heat to pernicious cold. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXV.
How those are to be admonished who do bad things secretly and good things openly, and those who do contrariwise.
(Admonition 36.) Differently to be admonished are those who do bad things in secret and good things publicly, and those who hide the good things they do, and yet in some things done publicly allow ill to be thought of them. For those who do bad things in secret and good things publicly are to be admonished to consider with what swiftness human judgments flee away, but with what immobility divine judgments endure. They are to be admonished to fix the eyes of their mind on the end of things; since, while the attestation of human praise passes away, the heavenly sentence, which penetrates even hidden things, grows strong unto lasting retribution. When, therefore, they set their hidden wrong things before the divine judgment, and their right things before human eyes, both without a witness is the good which they do publicly, and not without an eternal witness is their latent transgression. So by concealing their faults from men, and displaying their virtues, they both discover while they hide what they deserve to be punished for, and hide while they discover what they might have been rewarded for. Such persons the Truth calls whited sepulchres, beautiful outward, but full of dead men's bones (Matth. xxiii. 17); because they cover up the evil of vices within, but by the exhibition of certain works flatter human eyes with the mere outward colour of righteousness. They are therefore to be admonished not to despise the right things they do, but to believe them to be of better desert. For those greatly misjudge their own good things who think human favour sufficient for their reward. For when transitory praise is sought in return for right doing, a thing worthy of eternal reward is sold for a mean price. As to which price being received, indeed, the Truth says, Verily I say unto you, they have received their reward (Matth. vi. 2, 5, 6). They are to be admonished to consider that, when they prove themselves bad in hidden things, but yet offer themselves as examples publicly in good works, they shew that what they shun is to be followed; they cry aloud that what they hate is to be loved: in fine, they live to others, and die to themselves.
But, on the other hand, those who do good things in secret, and yet in some things done publicly allow evil to be thought of them, are to be admonished that, while what is good in them quickens themselves in the virtue of well-doing, they themselves slay not others through the example of a bad repute; that they love not their neighbours less than themselves, nor, while themselves imbibing a wholesome drought of wine, pour out a pestiferous cup of poison to minds intent on observing them. These assuredly in one way little help the life of their neighbour, and in the other greatly burden it, while they both study to do what is right unseen, and also, in some things in which they set an example, sow from themselves the seeds of evil. For whosoever is already competent to tread under foot the lust of praise commits a fraud on edification, if he conceals the good things he does; and he steals away, as it were, the roots of germination after having cast the seed, who shews not forth the work that is to be imitated. For hence in the Gospel the Truth says, That they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven (Matth. v. 16). But then there comes also this sentence, which has the appearance of enjoining something very different, namely, Take heed that ye do not your righteousness before men, to be seen of them (Matth. vi. 1).
What means then its being enjoined both that our work is so to be done as not to be seen, and yet that it should be seen, but that the things we do are to be hidden, lest we ourselves should be praised, and yet to be shewn, that we may increase the praise of our heavenly Father? For, when the Lord forbade us to do our righteousness before men, He straightway added, To be seen of them. And again, when He enjoined that our good works were to be seen of men, He forthwith subjoined, That they may glorify your Father which is in heaven (Matth. v. 16). In what manner, then, they are to be seen, and in what manner they are not to be seen, He shewed in the end of His injunctions, to the effect that the mind of the worker should not seek for his work to be seen on his own account, and yet that on account of the glory of the heavenly Father he should not conceal it. Whence it commonly comes to pass that a good work is both in secret when it is done publicly, and again in public when it is done secretly. For he that in a public good work seeks not his own, but the heavenly Father's glory, hides what he has done, in that he has had Him only for a witness whom he has desired to please. And he who in his secret good work covets being observed and praised has done this before men, even though no one has seen what he has done; because he has adduced so many witnesses to his good work as he has sought human praises in his heart. But when bad repute, so far as it prevails without sin committed, is not obliterated from the minds of lookers on, the cup of guilt is offered, in the way of example, to all who think evil. Whence also it generally comes to pass, that those who carelessly allow evil to be thought of them do not indeed commit wickedness in their own persons, but still, through those who may have taken example from them, offend in a more manifold way. Hence it is that Paul says to those who ate certain unclean things without pollution, but in this their eating put a stumbling-block of temptation in the way of the imperfect, Take heed, lest by any means this liberty of yours become a stumblingblock to them that are weak (1 Cor. viii. 9); and again, And by thy conscience shall the weak brother perish, for whom Christ died. But when ye so sin against the brethren, and wound their weak conscience, ye sin against Christ (Ibid. ii. 12). Hence it is that Moses, when he said, Thou shalt not curse the deaf, at once added, Nor put a stumblingblock before the blind (Lev. xix. 14). For to curse the deaf is to disparage one who is absent and does not hear; but to put a stumbling-block before the blind is to act indeed with discernment, but yet to give cause of offence to him who has not the light of discernment. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXVI.
Concerning the exhortation to be addressed many at once, that It may so aid the virtues of each among them that vices contrary to such virtues may not grow up through it.
These are the things that a Bishop of souls should observe in the diversity of his preaching, that he may solicitously oppose suitable medicines to the diseases of his several hearers. But, whereas it is a matter of great anxiety, in exhorting individuals, to be of service to them according to their individual needs, since it is a very difficult thing to instruct each person in what concerns himself, dealing out due consideration to each case, it is yet far more difficult to admonish innumerable hearers labouring under various passions at one and the same time with one common exhortation. For in this case the speech is to be tempered with such art that, the vices of the hearers being diverse, it may be found suitable to them severally, and yet be not diverse from itself; that it pass indeed with one stroke through the midst of passions, but, after the manner of a two-edged sword, cut the swellings of carnal thoughts on either side; so that humility be so preached to the proud that yet fear be not increased in the timid; that confidence be so infused into the timid that yet the unbridled licence of the proud grow not; that solicitude in well doing be so preached to the listless and torpid that yet licence of immoderate action be not increased in the unquiet; that bounds be so set on the unquiet that yet careless torpor be not produced in the listless; that wrath be so extinguished in the impatient that yet negligence grow not in the easy and soft-hearted; that the soft-hearted be so inflamed to zeal that yet fire be not added to the wrathful; that liberality in giving be so infused into the niggardly that yet the reins of profusion be in no wise loosened to the prodigal; that frugality be so preached to the prodigal that yet care to keep perishable things be not increased in the niggardly; that marriage be so praised to the incontinent that yet those who are already continent be not called back to voluptuousness; that virginity of body be so praised to the continent that yet fecundity of the flesh come not to be despised by the married. Good things are so to be preached that ill things be not assisted sideways. The highest good is so to be praised that the lowest be not despaired of. The lowest is so to be cherished that there be no cessation of striving for the highest from the lowest being thought sufficient. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXVII.
Of the exhortation to be applied to one person, who labours under contrary passions.
It is indeed a serious labour for the preacher to keep an eye in his public preaching to the hidden affections and motives of individuals, and, after the manner of the palæstra, to turn himself with skill to either side: yet he is worn with much severer labour, when he is compelled to preach to one person who is subject to contrary vices. For it is commonly the case that some one is of too joyous a constitution, and yet sadness suddenly arising immoderately depresses him. The preacher, therefore, must give heed that the temporary sadness be so removed that the constitutional joyousness be not increased; and that the constitutional joyousness be so curbed that the temporary sadness be not aggravated. This man is burdened by a habit of immoderate precipitancy, and yet sometimes the power of a suddenly-born fear impedes his doing what ought to be done in haste. That man is burdened by a habit of immoderate fear, and yet sometimes is impelled in what he desires by the rashness of immoderate precipitancy. In the one, therefore, let the fear that suddenly arises be so repressed that his long-nourished precipitancy do not further grow. In the other let the precipitancy that suddenly arises be so repressed that yet the fear stamped on him by constitution do not gather strength. And, indeed, what is there strange in the physicians of souls being on their guard in these things, when those who heal not hearts but bodies govern themselves with so great skill of discernment? For it is often the case that extreme faintness weighs down a weak body, which faintness ought to be met by strong remedies; but yet the weak body cannot bear a strong remedy. He, therefore, who treats the case gives heed so to draw off the supervening malady that the pre-existing weakness of the body be in no wise increased, lest perchance the faintness should pass away with the life. He compounds, then, his remedy with such discernment as at one and the same time to meet both the faintness and the weakness. If, then, medicine for the body administered without division can be of service in a divided way, why should not medicine for the soul, applied in one and the same preaching, be of power to meet moral diseases in diverse directions: which medicine is the more subtle in its operation in that invisible things are dealt with? __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXVIII.
That sometimes lighter vices are to be left alone, that more grievous ones may be removed.
But since, when the sickness of two vices attacks a man, one presses upon him more lightly, and the other perchance more heavily, it is undoubtedly right to haste to the succour of that through which there is the more rapid tendency to death. And, if the one cannot be restrained from causing the death which is imminent unless the other which is contrary to it increase, the preacher must be content by skilful management in his exhortation to suffer one to increase, to the end that he may keep the other back from causing the death which is imminent. When he does this, he does not aggravate the disease, but preserves the life of his sufferer to whom he administers the medicine, that he may find a fitting time for searching out means of recovery. For there is often one who, while he puts no restraint on his gluttony in food, is presently pressed hard by the stings of lechery, which is on the point of overcoming him, and who, when, terrified by the fear of this struggle, he strives to restrain himself through abstinence, is harassed by the temptation of vain-glory: in which case certainly one vice is by no means extinguished unless the other be fostered. Which plague then should be the more ardently attacked but that which presses on the man the more dangerously? For it is to be tolerated that through the virtue of abstinence arrogance should meanwhile grow against one that is alive, lest through gluttony lechery should cut him off from life entirely. Hence it is that Paul, when he considered that his weak hearer would either continue to do evil or rejoice in the reward of human praise for well-doing, said, Wilt thou not be afraid of the power? Do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same (Rom. xiii. 3). For it is not that good things should be done in order that no human power may be feared, or that the glory of transitory praise may be thereby won; but, considering that the weak soul could not rise to so great strength as to shun at the same time both wickedness and praise, the excellent preacher in his admonition offered something and took away something. For by conceding mild ailments he drew off keener ones; that, since the mind could not rise all at once to the relinquishing of all its vices, it might, while left in familiarity with some one of them, be taken off without difficulty from another. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XXXIX.
That deep things ought not to be preached at all to weak souls.
But the preacher should know how to avoid drawing the mind of his hearer beyond its strength, lest, so to speak, the string of the soul, when stretched more than it can bear, should be broken. For all deep things should be covered up before a multitude of hearers, and scarcely opened to a few. For hence the Truth in person says, Who, thinkest thou, is the faithful and wise steward, whom his Lord has appointed over his household, to give them their measure of wheat in due season? (Luke xii. 42). Now by a measure of wheat is expressed a portion of the Word, lest, when anything is given to a narrow heart beyond its capacity, it be spilt. Hence Paul says, I could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal. As it were to babes in Christ, I have given you milk to drink, and not meat (1 Cor. iii. 1, 2). Hence Moses, when he comes on from the sanctuary of God, veils his shining face before the people; because in truth He shews not to multitudes the secrets of inmost brightness (Exod. xxxiv. 33, 35). Hence it is enjoined on him by the Divine voice that if any one should dig a cistern, and not cover it, and an ox or ass should fall into it, he should pay the price (Exod. xxi. 33, 34), because when one who has arrived at the deep streams of knowledge covers them not up before the brutish hearts of his hearers, he is adjudged as liable to penalty, if through his words a soul, whether clean or unclean, be caught on a stumbling-stone. Hence it is said to the blessed Job, Who hath given understanding unto the cock? (Job xxxviii. 36). For a holy preacher, crying aloud in time of darkness, is as the cock crowing in the night, when he says, It is even now the hour for us to arise from sleep (Rom. xiii. 11). And again, Awake ye righteous, and sin not (1 Cor. xv. 34). But the cock is wont to utter loud chants in the deeper hours of the night; but, when the time of morning is already at hand, he frames small and slender tones; because, in fact, he who preaches aright cries aloud plainly to hearts that are still in the dark, and shews them nothing of hidden mysteries, that they may then hear the more subtle teachings concerning heavenly things, when they draw nigh to the light of truth. __________________________________________________________________
Chapter XL.
Of the work and the voice of preaching.
But in the midst of these things we are brought back by the earnest desire of charity to what we have already said above; that every preacher should give forth a sound more by his deeds than by his words, and rather by good living imprint footsteps for men to follow than by speaking shew them the way to walk in. For that cock, too, whom the Lord in his manner of speech takes to represent a good preacher, when he is now preparing to crow, first shakes his wings, and by smiting himself makes himself more awake; since it is surely necessary that those who give utterance to words of holy preaching should first be well awake in earnestness of good living, lest they rouse others with their voice while themselves torpid in performance; that they should first shake themselves up by lofty deeds, and then make others solicitous for good living; that they should first smite themselves with the wings of their thoughts; that whatsoever in themselves is unprofitably torpid they should discover by anxious investigation, and correct by strict animadversion, and then at length set in order the life of others by speaking; that they should take heed to punish their own faults by bewailings, and then denounce what calls for punishment in others; and that, before they give voice to words of exhortation, they should proclaim in their deeds all that they are about to speak. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Part IV.
How the Preacher, When He Has Accomplished All Aright, Should Return to Himself, Lest Either His Life or His Preaching Lift Him Up.
But since often, when preaching is abundantly poured forth in fitting ways, the mind of the speaker is elevated in itself by a hidden delight in self-display, great care is needed that he may gnaw himself with the laceration of fear, lest he who recalls the diseases of others to health by remedies should himself swell through neglect of his own health; lest in helping others he desert himself, lest in lifting up others he fall. For to some the greatness of their virtue has often been the occasion of their perdition; causing them, while inordinately secure in confidence of strength, to die unexpectedly through negligence. For virtue strives with vices; the mind flatters itself with a certain delight in it; and it comes to pass that the soul of a well-doer casts aside the fear of its circumspection, and rests secure in self-confidence; and to it, now torpid, the cunning seducer enumerates all things that it has done well, and exalts it in swelling thoughts as though superexcellent beyond all beside. Whence it is brought about, that before the eyes of the just judge the memory of virtue is a pitfall of the soul; because, in calling to mind what it has done well, while it lifts itself up in its own eyes, it falls before the author of humility. For hence it is said to the soul that is proud, For that thou art more beautiful, go down, and sleep with the uncircumcised (Ezek. xxxii. 19): as if it were plainly said, Because thou liftest thyself up for the comeliness of thy virtues, thou art driven by thy very beauty to fall. Hence under the figure of Jerusalem the soul that is proud in virtue is reproved, when it is said, Thou wert perfect in my comeliness which I had put upon thee, saith the Lord, and having confidence in thy beauty thou hast committed fornication in thy renown (Ibid. xvi. 14, 15). For the mind is lifted up by confidence in its beauty, when, glad for the merits of its virtues, it glories within itself in security. But through this same confidence it is led to fornication; because, when the soul is deceived by its own thoughts, malignant spirits, which take possession of it, defile it through the seduction of innumerable vices. But it is to be noted that it is said, Thou hast committed fornication in thy renown: for when the soul leaves off regard for the supernal ruler, it forthwith seeks its own praise, and begins to arrogate to itself all the good which it has received for shewing forth the praise of the giver; it desires to spread abroad the glory of its own reputation, and busies itself to become known as one to be admired of all. In its renown, therefore, it commits fornication, in that, forsaking the wedlock of a lawful bed, it prostitutes itself to the defiling spirit in its lust of praise. Hence David says, He delivered their virtue into captivity, and their beauty into the enemy's hands (Ps. lxvii. 61 [1294] ). For virtue is delivered into captivity and beauty into the enemy's hands, when the old enemy gets dominion over the deceived soul because of elation in well doing. And yet this elation in virtue tempts somewhat, though it does not fully overcome, the mind even of the elect.
But it, when lifted up, is forsaken, and, being forsaken, it is recalled to fear. For hence David says again, I said in mine abundance, I shall not be moved for ever (Ps. xxix. 7 [1295] ). But he added a little later what he underwent for having been puffed up with confidence in his virtue, Thou didst turn thy face from me, and I was troubled (Ibid. v. 8). As if he would say plainly, I believed myself strong in the midst of virtues, but, being forsaken, I become aware how great was my infirmity. Hence he says again, I have sworn and am stedfastly purposed to keep the judgments of thy righteousness (Ps. cxix. 106 [1296] ). But, because it was beyond his powers to continue the keeping which he sware, straightway, being troubled, he found his weakness. Whence also he all at once betook himself to the aid of prayer, saying, I am humbled all together; quicken me, O Lord, according to Thy word (Ibid. v. 107). But sometimes Divine government, before advancing a soul by gifts, recalls to it the memory of its infirmity, lest it be puffed up for the virtues it has received. Whence the Prophet Ezekiel, before being led to the contemplation of heavenly things, is first called a son of man; as though the Lord plainly admonished him, saying, Lest thou shouldest lift up thy heart in elation for these things which thou seest, perpend cautiously what thou art; that, when thou penetratest the highest things, thou mayest remember that thou art a man, to the end that, when rapt beyond thyself, thou mayest be recalled in anxiety to thyself by the curb of thine infirmity. Whence it is needful that, when abundance of virtues flatters us, the eye of the soul should return to its own weaknesses, and salubriously depress itself; that it should look, not at the right things that it has done, but those that it has left undone; so that, while the heart is bruised by recollection of infirmity, it may be the more strongly confirmed in virtue before the author of humility. For it is generally for this purpose that Almighty God, though perfecting in great part the minds of rulers, still in some small part leaves them imperfect; in order that, when they shine with wonderful virtues, they may pine with disgust at their own imperfection, and by no means lift themselves up for great things, while still labouring in their struggle against the least; but that, since they are not strong enough to overcome in what is last and lowest, they may not dare to glory in their chief performances.
See now, good man, how, compelled by the necessity laid upon me by thy reproof, being intent on shewing what a Pastor ought to be, I have been as an ill-favoured painter pourtraying a handsome man; and how I direct others to the shore of perfection, while myself still tossed among the waves of transgressions. But in the shipwreck of this present life sustain me, I beseech thee, by the plank of thy prayer, that, since my own weight sinks me down, the hand of thy merit may raise me up. __________________________________________________________________
[1294] In English Bible, lxviii. 61.
[1295] Ibid. xxx. 6.
[1296] Ibid. cxix. 106. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Register of the Epistles of Saint Gregory the Great.
------------------------
Book I.
The Month of September, Indiction IX., Being the First Year of His Ordination.
Epistle I.
To all the Bishops of Sicily.
Gregory, servant of the servants of God [1297] , to all the bishops constituted throughout Sicily.
We have plainly perceived it to be very necessary that, even as our predecessors thought fit to do, we should commit all things to one and the same person; and that, where we cannot be present ourselves, our authority should be represented through him to whom we send our instructions. Wherefore, with the help of God, we have appointed Peter, subdeacon of our See, our delegate in the province of Sicily. Nor can we doubt as to the conduct of him to whom, with the help of God, we are known to have committed the charge of the whole patrimony of our church.
This also we have plainly perceived to be a thing that ought to be done; that once in the year your whole fraternity should assemble, at Syracuse or Catana, receiving, as we have charged him, the honour due to you; to the end that, together with the aforesaid Peter, subdeacon of our See, you may settle with due discretion whatever things pertain to the advantage of the churches of the province, or to the relief of the necessities of the poor and oppressed, or to the admonition of all, and the correction of those whose transgressions may peradventure be proved. From which council far be animosities, which are the nutriment of crimes, and may inward grudges die away, and that discord of souls which is beyond measure execrable. Let concord well-pleasing to God, and charity, approve you as His priests. Conduct all things, therefore, with such deliberation and calmness that yours may most worthily be called an Episcopal Council. __________________________________________________________________
[1297] "Sanctus Gregorius primus omnium se principio epistolarum suarum servum servorum. Dei satis humiliter definivit." (Joan Diac. in Vit. S. Greg. l. ii. c. 1). The designation, however, had been used by others before him, as by Pope Damasus (Ep. IV. ad Stephanum et Africæ Episcopos), and Augustine (Ep. ad Vitalem). Gregory may have been the first to use it habitually. It is true that in the Registrum Epistolarum we find it four times only, viz., in the headings of Epistles I. 1, I. 36, VI. 51, XIII. 1. But it may have been omitted in the copies of his letters preserved at Rome. This is probable from the fact that it occurs in the letters relating to the English Mission as given by Bede, though absent from the same letters in the Registrum. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle II.
To Justinus, Prætor of Sicily.
Gregory to Justinus, Prætor of Sicily.
What my tongue speaks my conscience approves; since even before you had become engaged in the employments of any office of dignity, I have greatly loved and greatly respected you. For the very modesty of your deportment made certain incipient claims on affection even from one who had been loth. And, when I heard that you had come to administer the prætorship of Sicily, I greatly rejoiced. But, since I have discovered that a certain ill-feeling is creeping in between you and the ecclesiastics, I have been exceedingly distressed. But now that you are occupied with the charge of civil administration, and I with the care of this ecclesiastical government, we can properly love one another in particular so far as we do no harm to the general community. Wherefore I beseech you by Almighty God, before Whose tremendous judgment we must give account of our deeds, that your Glory have always the fear of Him before your eyes, and never allow anything to come in whereby even slight dissension may arise between us. Let no gains draw you aside to injustice; let not either the threats or the favours of any one cause you to deviate from the path of rectitude. See how short life is: think, ye that exercise judicial authority, before what judge ye must at some time go. It is therefore to be diligently considered that we shall leave all gains behind us here, and that of harmful gains we shall carry with us to the judgment the pleas only that are against us for them. Those advantages, then, are to be sought by us which death may in no wise take away, but which the end of the present life may shew to be such as will endure for ever.
As to what you write concerning the corn, the magnificent Citonatus asserts very differently that no more has been transmitted than what was supplied for replenishing the public granary in satisfaction of what was due for the past indiction. Give attention to this matter, since, if what is transmitted be at all defective, it will be the death not of any one single person only, but of the whole people together [1298] .
Now for the management of the patrimony of Sicily I have sent, as I think under the guidance of God, such a man as you will be in entire accord with, if you are a lover of what is right, as I have found you to be. Moreover, as to your desire that I should remember you kindly, I confess the truth when I say that, unless any injustice should creep in from the snares of the ancient foe, I have learnt thy Glory's modesty to be such that I shah not blush to be thy friend. __________________________________________________________________
[1298] The population of Rome had long been greatly dependent on Sicily for the supply of corn, which it was the duty of the prætor to purchase and transmit to Rome. Famine might result from failure of this supply. Hence what is said further on the subject in this Epistle. Cf. "Neminem vestrum præterit, judices omnem utilitatem opportunitatemque provinciæ Siciliæ quæ ad commoda populi Romani adjuncta sit consistere in re frumentaria maxime. Nam cæteris rebus adjuvamur ex illa provincia, hac vero alimur et sustinemur." (Cicero in Verrem, Act II. lib. 3, c. 5.) __________________________________________________________________
Epistle III.
To Paul, Scholasticus.
Gregory to Paul, &c.
However strangers smile upon me on account of the dignity of my priestly office, this I take not much account of; but I do grieve not a little at your smiling upon me on this account, seeing that you know what I long for, and yet suppose me to have received advancement. For to me it would have been the highest advancement, if what I wished could have been fulfilled; if I could have accomplished my desire, which you have been long acquainted with, in the enjoyment of longed-for rest. Yet, since I am now detained in the city of Rome, tied by the chains of this dignity, I have something wherein I may even rejoice in addressing your Glory, seeing that, when the most eminent lord the ex-consul Leo comes, I suspect that you will not remain in Sicily; and when thou thyself also, tied by thine own dignity, shalt come to be detained in Rome, thou wilt come to know what sorrow and what bitterness I suffer. But when the magnificent Lord Maurentius, the Chartularius, comes to you, I pray thee concur with him in regard to the present straits of the Roman city, since outside we are stabbed without cease by hostile swords. But we are still more heavily pressed by danger within through a sedition of the soldiers. Further, we commend to your Glory in all respects Peter our sub-deacon, whom we have sent to rule the patrimony of the Church. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle IV.
To John, Bishop of Constantinople [1299] .
Gregory to John, Bishop of Constantinople.
If the virtue of charity consists in the love of one's neighbour, and we are commanded to love our neighbours as ourselves, how is it that your Blessedness does not love me even as yourself? For I know with what ardour, with what anxiety, you wished to fly from the burden of the episcopate; and yet you made no opposition to this same burden of the episcopate being imposed on me. It is evident, then, that you do not love me as yourself, seeing that you have wished me to take on myself that load which you were unwilling should be imposed on you. But since I, unworthy and weak, have taken charge of an old and grievously shattered ship (for on all sides the waves enter, and the planks, battered by a daily and violent storm, sound of shipwreck), I beseech thee by Almighty God to stretch out the hand of thy prayer to me in this my danger, since thou canst pray the more strenuously as thou standest further removed from the confusion of the tribulations which we suffer in this land.
My synodical epistle I will transmit with all possible speed, having despatched Bacauda, our brother and fellow-bishop, immediately after my ordination, as the bearer of this letter, while pressed by many and serious engagements. __________________________________________________________________
[1299] For notice of him, see III. 53, note. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle V.
To Theoctista, Sister of the Emperor.
Gregory to Theoctista, &c.
With how great devotion my mind prostrates itself before your Venerableness I cannot fully express in words; nor yet do I labour to give utterance to it, since, even though I were silent, you read in your heart your own sense of my devotion. I wonder, however, that you withdrew your countenance, till of late bestowed on me, from this my recent engagement in the pastoral office; wherein, under colour of episcopacy, I have been brought back to the world; in which I am involved in such great earthly cares as I do not at all remember having been subjected to even in a lay state of life. For I have lost the deep joys of my quiet, and seem to have risen outwardly while inwardly falling down. Whence I grieve to find myself banished far from the face of my Maker. For I used to strive daily to win my way outside the world, outside the flesh; to drive all phantasms of the body from the eyes of my soul, and to see incorporeally supernal joys; and not only with my voice but in the core of my heart I used to say, My heart hath said unto Thee, I have sought Thy face, Thy face, Lord, will I seek (Ps. xxvi. 8). Moreover desiring nothing, fearing nothing, in this world, I seemed to myself to stand on a certain summit of things, so that I almost believed to be fulfilled in me what I had learnt of the Lord's promise through the prophet, I will lift thee up upon the high places of the earth (Isai. lviii. 14). For he is lifted up upon the high places of the earth who treads under foot through looking down upon them in his mind even the very things of the present world which seem lofty and glorious. But, having been suddenly dashed from this summit of things by the whirlwind of this trial, I have fallen into fears and tremors, since, even though I have no fears for myself, I am greatly afraid for those who have been committed to me. On every side I am tossed by the waves of business, and sunk by storms, so that I may truly say, I am come into the depth of the sea, and the storm hath overwhelmed me (Ps. lxviii. 3 [1300] ). After business I long to return to my heart; but, driven therefrom by vain tumults of thoughts, I am unable to return. From this cause, then, that which is within me is made to be far from me, so that I cannot obey the prophetic voice which says, Return to your heart, transgressors (Isai. xlvi. 8). But, pressed by foolish thoughts, I am impelled only to exclaim, My heart hath failed me (Ps. xxxix. 13 [1301] ). I have loved the beauty of the contemplative life as a Rachel, barren, but keen of sight and fair (Gen. xxix.), who, though in her quietude she is less fertile, yet sees the light more keenly. But, by what judgment I know not, Leah has been coupled with me in the night, to wit, the active life; fruitful, but tender-eyed; seeing less, but bringing forth more. I have longed to sit at the feet of the Lord with Mary, to take in the words of His mouth; and lo, I am compelled to serve with Martha in external affairs, to be careful and troubled about many things (Luke x. 39, seq.). A legion of demons having been, as I believed, cast out of me, I wished to forget those whom I had known, and to rest at the feet of the Saviour; and lo it is said to me, so as to compel me against my will, Return to thine house, and declare how great things the Lord hath done for thee (Mark v. 19). But who in the midst of so many earthly cares may be able to preach the wondrous works of God, it being already difficult for me even to call them to mind? For, pressed as I am in this office of dignity by a crowd of secular occupations, I see myself to be of those of whom it is written, While they were being raised up thou didst cast them down (Ps. lxxii. 18 [1302] ). For he said not, Thou didst cast them down after they had been raised up, but while they were being raised up; because all bad men fall inwardly, while through the support of temporal dignity they seem outwardly to rise. Wherefore their very raising up is their fall, because, while they rely on false glory, they are emptied of true glory. Hence, again, he says, Consuming away as smoke shall they consume away (Ps. xxxvi. 20 [1303] ). For smoke in rising consumes away, and in extending itself vanishes. And so indeed it comes to pass when present felicity accompanies the life of a sinner, since whereby he is shewn to be exalted, thereby it is brought about that he should cease to be. Hence, again, it is written, My God, make them like a wheel (Ps. lxxxii. 14 [1304] ). For a wheel is lifted up in its hinder parts, and in its fore parts falls. But to us the things that are behind are the goods of the present world, which we leave behind us; but the things that are before are those which are eternal and permanent, to which we are called, as Paul bears witness, saying, Forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth to those things which are before (Phil. iii. 13). The sinner, therefore, when he is advanced in the present life, is made to be as a wheel, since, while falling in the things which are before, he is lifted up in the things which are behind. For, when he enjoys in this life the glory which he must leave behind, he falls from that which comes after this life. There are indeed many who know how so to control their outward advancement as by no means to fall inwardly thereby. Whence it is written, God casteth not away the mighty, seeing that He also Himself is mighty (Job xxxvi. 5). And it is said through Solomon, A man of understanding shall possess governments (Prov. i. 5). But to me these things are difficult, since they are also exceedingly burdensome; and what the mind has not received willingly it does not control fitly. Lo, our most serene Lord the Emperor has ordered an ape to be made a lion. And, indeed, in virtue of his order it can be called a lion, but a lion it cannot be made. Wherefore his Piety must needs himself take the blame of all my faults and short-comings, having committed a ministry of power to a weak agent. __________________________________________________________________
[1300] In English Bible, lxix. 2.
[1301] Ibid. xl. 12.
[1302] In English Bible, lxxiii. 18.
[1303] Ibid. xxxvii. 20.
[1304] Ibid. lxxxiii. 13. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle VI.
To Narses, Patrician [1305] .
Gregory to Narses, &c.
In describing loftily the sweetness of contemplation, you have renewed the groans of my fallen state, since I hear what I have lost inwardly while mounting outwardly, though undeserving, to the topmost height of rule. Know then that I am stricken with so great sorrow that I can scarcely speak; for the dark shades of grief block up the eyes of my soul. Whatever is beheld is sad, whatever is thought delightful appears to my heart lamentable. For I reflect to what a dejected height of external advancement I have mounted in falling from the lofty height of my rest. And, being sent for my faults into the exile of employment from the face of my Lord, I say with the prophet, in the words, as it were of destroyed Jerusalem, He who should comfort me hath departed far from me (Lam. i. 16). But when, in seeking a similitude to express my condition and title, you frame periods and declamations in your letter, certainly, dearest brother, you call an ape a lion. Herein we see that you do as we often do, when we call mangy whelps pards or tigers. For I, my good man, have, as it were, lost my children, since through earthly cares I have lost works of righteousness. Therefore call me not Noemi, that is fair; but call me Mara, for I am full of bitterness (Ruth i. 20). But as to your saying that I ought not to have written, "That you should plough with bubali [1306] in the Lord's field," seeing that when in the sheet shewn to the blessed Peter both bubali and all wild beasts were presented to view; thou knowest thyself that it is subjoined, Slay and eat (Acts x. 13). Thou, then, who hadst not yet slain these beasts, why didst thou already wish to eat them through obedience? Or knowest thou not that the beast about which thou wrotest refused to be slain by the sword of thy mouth? Thou must needs, then, satisfy the hunger of thy desire with those whom thou hast been able to prick and slay (Lit., to slay through compunction) [1307] .
Further, as to the case of our brethren, I think that, if God gives aid, it will be as thou hast written. It was not, however, by any means right for me to write about it at present to our most serene lords, since at the very outset one should not begin with complaints. But I have written to my well-beloved son, the deacon Honoratus [1308] , that he should mention the matter to them in a suitable manner at a seasonable time, and speedily inform me of their reply. I beg greetings to be given in my behalf to the lord Alexander, the lord Theodorus [1309] , my son Marinus, the lady Esicia, the lady Eudochia, and the lady Dominica. __________________________________________________________________
[1305] There are other letters from Gregory to this Narses, viz. iv. 32, vi. 14, and perhaps vii. 30. He may have been the same as the Narses who was a famous general of the Emperor Maurice, and who was eventually burnt alive by Phocas. (Theoph., Sim. V.)
[1306] The animal called boubalos is described by Pliny (l. 8, c. 15) as "animal ferum in Africa, vitulo ac cervo simile." The reference in the text is to Amos vi. 12, where the Vulgate has, "Numquid currere queunt in petris equi, aut arari potest in bubalis?" The clause in the epistle, "ut in agro Dominico cum bubalis arares," appears to be a quotation from a previous letter of Gregory's, in which he may have announced his election to Narses.
[1307] The whole passage is rather obscure to us, not having before us the letter from Narses, which is replied to, or the previous ones from Gregory to which Narses had referred. The drift seems to be as follows. Gregory, in his former letter, had compared his being elected pope to a bubalis being set to plough in the Lord's field. Narses had replied to the effect that even if he were a bubalus, he was not therefore unfit, since bubali, with other wild beasts, had been in St. Peter's sheet, and pronounced clean. To this Gregory now rejoins, "Yes; but those beasts were to be slain before they might be eaten; and so you must first slay me, per compuctionem--i.e. by so pricking me with the sword of your mouth' as to induce me to comply--before you may eat me per obedientiam--i.e. make use of me in the way you wish through my obedience to your desire. Not being thus so far slain, I have a right to protest against being made pope against my will."
[1308] Honoratus was at this time Gregory's apocrisiarius at Constantinople. We find several letters addressed to him in this capacity, but none throwing light on the case here referred to.
[1309] Theodorus was the court Physician at Constantinople, to whom Epistles III. 66, IV. 31, VII. 28, are addressed. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle VII.
To Anastasius, Patriarch of Antioch [1310] .
Gregory to Anastasius, &c.
I have found what your Blessedness has written to be as rest to the weary, as health to the sick, as a fountain to the thirsty, as shade to the oppressed with heat. For those words of yours did not seem even to be expressed by the tongue of the flesh, inasmuch as you so disclosed the spiritual love which you bear me as if your soul itself were speaking. But very hard was that which followed, in that your love enjoined me to bear earthly burdens, and that, having first loved me spiritually, you afterwards, loving me as I think in temporal wise, pressed me down to the ground with the burden you laid upon me; so that, losing utterly all uprightness of soul, and forfeiting the keen vision of contemplation, I may say, not in the spirit of prophecy, but from experience, I am bowed down and brought low altogether (Ps. cxviii. 107 [1311] ). For indeed such great burdens of business press me down that my mind can in no wise lift itself up to heavenly things. I am tossed by the billows of a multitude of affairs, and, after the ease of my former quiet, am afflicted by the storms of a tumultuous life, so that I may truly say, I am come into the depth of the sea, and the storm hath overwhelmed me (Ps. lxviii. 3 [1312] ). Stretch out, therefore, the hand of your prayer to me in my danger, you that stand on the shore of virtue. But as to your calling me the mouth and the lantern of the Lord, and alleging that I profit many, this also adds to the load of my iniquities, that, when my iniquity ought to have been chastised, I receive praises instead of chastisement. But with what a bustle of earthly business I am distracted in this place, I cannot express in words; yet you can gather it from the shortness of this letter, in which I say so little to him who I love above all others. Further, I apprize you that I have requested our most serene lords with all possible urgency to allow you to come to the threshold of Peter, the prince of the apostles, with your dignity restored to you, and to live here with me so long as it may please God; to the end that, as long as I am accounted worthy of seeing you, we may relieve the weariness of our pilgrimage by speaking to each other of the heavenly country. __________________________________________________________________
[1310] Anastasius had been threatened with deposition and exile (a.d. 563) by the Emperor Justinian, and the sentence had been carried into effect (a.d. 570) by Justinian's successor, Justin II. Notwithstanding this, Gregory after his own accession acknowledged him as the true patriarch of Antioch; and, probably owing to his intercession with the Emperor Maurice, Anastasius was restored to his patriarchal See on the death of Gregory, who had been intruded into it, a.d. 593. Other Epistles to, or concerning this Anastasius are I. 25, 26, 28; V. 39; VII. 27, 33; VIII. 2.
[1311] In English Bible, cxix. 107.
[1312] Ibid. lxix. 2. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle IX.
To Peter the Subdeacon.
Gregory to Peter, &c.
Gregory, a servant of God, presbyter and abbot of the monastery of Saint Theodore in the province of Sicily constituted in the territory of Panormus, has given us to understand that men of the farm of Fulloniacus, which belongs to the holy Roman Church, are endeavouring to encroach on the boundaries of the farm of Gerdinia, bordering on the said farm of the holy Roman Church, which they [i.e. monks of St. Theodore] have possessed without dispute for innumerable years. And for this cause we desire you to go to the city of Panormus, and investigate the question in such sort (with the view of the right of possession remaining with those who have had it heretofore) that, if you shall find that the aforesaid monastery of Saint Theodore has possessed the boundaries concerning which the dispute has arisen without disturbance for forty years, you shall not allow it to suffer any damage, even though it were to the advantage of the holy Roman Church, but provide in all ways for its undisturbed security. But, if the agents of the holy Roman Church should shew that the monastery has not been in possession without dispute of its right for forty years, but that any question has been raised within that time concerning the said boundaries, let it be set at rest peaceably and legally by arbitrators chosen for the purpose. For not only do we wish that questions of wrong-doing that have never yet been mooted should be raised, but also that such as have been raised by others than ourselves should be speedily set at rest. Let thy experience, therefore, cause all to be so effectively adjusted, that no question relating to this matter may be hereafter referred to us again. Further, we desire that the testament of Bacauda, late Xenodochus, continue valid as when first made.
The month of November: ninth Indiction. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle X.
To Bacauda and Agnellus, Bishops.
Gregory to Bacauda, &c.
The Hebrews dwelling in Terracina have petitioned us for licence to hold, under our authority, the site of their synagogue which they have held hitherto. But, inasmuch as we have been informed that the same site is so near to the church that even the sound of their psalmody reaches it, we have written to our brother and fellow-bishop Peter that, if it is the case that the voices from the said place are heard in the church, the Jews must cease to worship there. Therefore let your Fraternity, with our above-named brother and fellow-bishop, diligently inspect this place, and if you find that there has been any annoyance to the church, provide another place within the fortress, where the aforesaid Hebrews may assemble, so that they may be able to celebrate their ceremonies without impediment [1313] . But let your Fraternity provide such a place, in case of their being deprived of this one, that there be no cause of complaint in future. But we forbid the aforesaid Hebrews to be oppressed or vexed unreasonably; but, as they are permitted, in accordance with justice, to live under the protection of the Roman laws, let them keep their observances as they have learnt them, no one hindering them: yet let it not be allowed them to have Christian slaves. __________________________________________________________________
[1313] For the result of this order, see below, Ep. 35. For other instances of Gregory's tolerant attitude towards Jews, and his deprecation of force being used for their conversion, see that Epistle, and also I. 47; IX. 6. But he is strict in prohibiting their possession of slaves who were already, or might become, Christians, and will allow them no compensation for the loss of such (cf. iii. 38; IV. 9, 21; IX. 109, 110). __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XI.
To Clementina, Patrician [1314] .
Gregory to Clementina, &c.
Having received your Glory's letter speaking of the passing away of the late Eutherius of magnificent memory, we give you to understand that our mind no less than yours is disturbed by such a sorrow, in that we see how men of approved repute are by degrees removed from this world, whose ruin is already evidenced in the actual effects of the causes thereof. But it becomes us to withdraw ourselves from it by the wise precaution of conversion [1315] , lest it involve us too in its own ruin. And indeed our sorrow for the loss of friends ought to be the more tolerable as our condition of mortality requires from us that we should lose them. Nevertheless, for the loss of aid to our carnal life He Who granted permission for its removal is powerful to console, and to come Himself as a comforter into the vacant place.
That we are unable to accede to your request that the deacon Anatholius should be sent to you is due to the circumstances of the case, and not to any rigorous austerity. For we have appointed him our steward [1316] , having committed our episcopal residence to his management. __________________________________________________________________
[1314] Another Epistle, X. 15, is addressed to the same lady.
[1315] The word conversio commonly denotes entering a monastery.
[1316] Vicedominum. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XII.
To John, Bishop of Urbs Vetus (Orvieto).
Gregory to John, &c.
Agapitus, abbot of the monastery of St. George, informs us that he endures many grievances from your Holiness; and not only in things that might be of service to the monastery in time of need, but that you even prohibit the celebration of masses in the said monastery, and also interdict burial of the dead there. Now, if this is so, we exhort you to desist from such inhumanity, and allow the dead to be buried, and masses to be celebrated there without any further opposition, lest the aforesaid venerable Agapitus should be compelled to complain anew concerning the matters referred to. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XVI.
To Severus, Bishop of Aquileia [1317] .
Gregory to Severus, &c.
As, when one who walks through devious ways takes anew the right path, the Lord embraces him with all eagerness, so afterwards, when one deserts the way of truth, He is more saddened with grief for him than He rejoiced over him with joy when he turned from error; since it is a less degree of sin not to know the truth than not to abide in it when known: and what is committed in error is one thing, but what is perpetrated knowingly is another. And we, from having formerly rejoiced in thy being incorporated in the unity of the Church, are now the more abundantly distressed for thy dissociation from the catholic society. Accordingly we desire thee, at the instance of the bearer of these presents, according to the command of the most Christian and most serene Emperor, to come with thy adherents to the threshold of the blessed Apostle Peter, that, a synod being assembled by the will of God, judgment may be passed concerning the doubt that is entertained among you. __________________________________________________________________
[1317] The bishops of Istria, of whom the bishop Aquilea was Metropolitan, still refused to accept the decree of the fifth OEcumenical Council, which had, under the dictation of the Emperor Justinian, condemned certain writings of three deceased prelates, Theodore of Mopsuesta, Theodoret and Ibas, called "the three chapters" (tria capitula). Severus the Metropolitan, summoned in this letter with his suffragans to Rome, disregarded the summons, going instead, at the instance of the Exarch Smaragdus, to Ravenna, where he remained a year. On his return to his See he still held out, though many of his bishops conformed. A schism hence ensued in Istria, which continued during the life of Gregory (Joan. Diac. Vit. S. Greg. iv. 37, 38). Other Epistles referring to the Istrian schism are II. 46, 51; V. 51; IX. 9, 10; XIII. 33. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XVII.
To all the Bishops of Italy.
Gregory to all, &c.
Inasmuch as the abominable Autharit [1318] during this Easter solemnity which has been lately completed, forbade children of Lombards being baptized in the catholic faith, for which sin the Divine Majesty cut him off, so that he should not see the solemnity of another Easter, it becomes your Fraternity to warn all the Lombards in your districts, seeing that grievous mortality is everywhere imminent, that they should reconcile these their children who have been baptized in Arian heresy to the catholic faith, and so appease the wrath of the Almighty Lord which hangs over them. Warn, then, those whom you can; with all the power of persuasion you possess seize on them, and bring them to a right faith; preach to them eternal life without end; that, when you shall come into the sight of the strict judge, you may be able, in consequence of your solicitude, to shew in your own persons a shepherd's gains. __________________________________________________________________
[1318] Autharit (al. Autharith, called by Paul. Diac. Authari), who died at Pavia in this year (a.d. 591) had been king of the Lombards for six years, having effected extensive conquests in Italy. "Rex Authari apud Ticinum Nonas Septembris veneno, ut tradunt, accepto moritur, postquam sex regnaverat annos." (Paul. Diac. de gestis Longob. iii. 36). It is he who is said to have advanced to Rhegium at the toe of Italy. and there, riding up to a pillar in the sea, to have touched it with the point of his spear, and said, "As far as this shall the boundaries of the Lombards extend." (Paul. Diac. iii. 33.) He had been a determined Arian. He was succeeded by Agilulph, whom his widow Theodelinda, a Catholic Bavarian princess, selected as her consort. With her Gregory carried on a very friendly correspondence and probably through her influence, Agilulph himself, originally an Arian, is said to have been converted to Catholicity. Gregory's letters to Theodelinda are IV. 4, 38; IX. 43; XIV. 12. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XVIII.
To Peter the Subdeacon.
Gregory to Peter, &c.
We have been informed that Marcellus of the Barutanian Church, who has had penance assigned him in the monastery of Saint Adrian in the same city of Panormus, not only is in want of food, but also suffers inconvenience from scarcity of clothing. Therefore we hold it necessary to enjoin your Activity by this present order to appoint for him as much as you may see to be needful in the way of food, clothing and bedding for his own maintenance, and provision for his servant; so that his want and nakedness may be provided for with such timely care that what you assign to this same man may be reckoned afterwards to your own account. So act, therefore, that you may both fulfil our command, and also by ordering this very thing well you may be able yourself to partake of the profit of the same. Further, there is this other matter that we enjoin you to look to without regard to the old custom that has now grown up; namely, that if any cities in the province of Sicily, for their sins, are known to be without pastoral government through the lapses of their priests, you should see whether there be any worthy of the office of priesthood among the clergy of the churches themselves, or out of the monasteries, and, after first enquiring into the gravity of their behaviour, send them to us, that the flock of each place may not be found destitute for any length of time through the lapse of its pastor. But if you should discover any vacant place in which no one of the same church is found fitted for such a dignity, send us word after the like careful enquiry, that some one may be provided whom God may have judged worthy of such ordination. For it is not right that from the deviation of one the Lord's flock should be in danger of wandering abroad among precipices without a shepherd. For thus both the administration of places will go on, and there will remain no suspicion of the lapsed being restored to their former rank; and so may they repent the better. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XIX.
To Natalis, Bishop of Salona [1319] .
Gregory to Natalis, &c.
The acts of your synod which you have transmitted to us, in which the Archdeacon Honoratus is condemned, we perceive to be full of the seed of strifes, seeing that the same person is at one and the same time advanced to the dignity of the priesthood against his will, and removed from the office of the diaconate as though unworthy of it. And, as it is just that no one who is unwilling should be advanced by compulsion, so I think we must be of opinion that no one who is innocent should be deposed from the ministry of his order unjustly. Nevertheless, since discord hateful to God excuses thy part in the transaction, we admonish thee to restore his place and administration to the Archdeacon Honoratus, and agree to supply him with attendance sufficient for his divine ministry. If cause of offence is still fomented between you, let the aforesaid Archdeacon submit himself to our audience and enquiry, when admonished to do so, and let thy love send to us a person instructed in the case, that in the presence of both, the Lord assisting us, we may be able to decide what justice approves without respect of persons. __________________________________________________________________
[1319] Salona was the metropolis of the province of Dalmatia in Western Illyricum. The misdoings of its bishop, Natalis, gave rise to a lengthy correspondence. See, in addition to this letter, I. 20; II. 18, 19, 20, 52; III. 8, 32. He had, as appears from this letter and others, desired to get rid of his archdeacon Honoratus, having apparently some grudge against him, and with this a few would have ordained him priest against his will, none but deacons being then capable of holding the office of archdeacon. He was accused also of addiction to unbecoming conviviality, and of neglecting his episcopal duties. Eventually, after continued contumacy, he appears to have satisfied Gregory in the matter of Honoratus, and also to have reformed his own habits of life, after writing what appears from Gregory's reply to it to have been a racy letter in defence of conviviality, which was taken in good part and replied to in a good-humoured vein (II. 52). Gregory subsequently said of him, "I was at one time much distressed concerning our brother and fellow bishop Natalis, having experienced proud behaviour from him. But since he has himself corrected his manners, he has overcome me, and comforted my sadness" (II. 46). __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XX.
To Honoratus, Deacon of Salona.
Gregory to Honoratus, &c.
Having read the contradictory letters which thou and thy bishop have addressed to us against each other, we grieve that there is so little charity between you. Nevertheless we enjoin thee to continue in the administration of thy office, and, if the cause of offence between you can, under the power of grace, be settled on the spot, we believe it will be greatly to the advantage of your souls. But in case the discord between you has so set you in arms against each other that you have no will to allay the swelling of your offence, do thou without delay come to be heard before us, and let thy bishop send to us on his own behalf such person as he may choose, furnished with instructions; that, after minutely considering the whole case, we may settle what may appear fit between the parties. But we would have thee know that we shall make strict enquiry of thee on all points, as to whether the ornaments [1320] , either those of thine own church, or such as have been collected from various churches, are being now kept with all care and fidelity. For, if any of them shall be found to have been lost through negligence or through any person's dishonesty, thou wilt be involved in the guilt of this, being, in virtue of thy office of Archdeacon, peculiarly responsible for the custody of the said church. __________________________________________________________________
[1320] Cimelia, from Gr. keimelia. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXI.
To Natalis, Bishop of Salona [1321] .
Gregory to Natalis, &c.
We have received at the hands of the deacon Stephen, whom you sent to us, the letters of thy Reverence, wherein you congratulate us on our promotion. And truly what has been offered in the kindness and earnestness of charity demands full credence, reason having prompted your pontifical order to rejoice with us. We therefore, being cheered by your greeting, declare in conscience that I undertook the burden of dignity with a sick heart. But, seeing that I could not resist the divine decrees, I have recovered a more cheerful frame of mind. Wherefore we write to entreat your Reverence that both we and the Christian flock committed to our care may enjoy the succour of your prayers, to the end that in the security of that protection we may have power to overcome the hurricanes of these times.
The month of February, ninth indiction. __________________________________________________________________
[1321] This appears to have been the formal answer to the official letter sent by the bishop of Salona to Gregory, congratulating him on his accession to the popedom, having no connexion with, and perhaps written before, the preceding Epistle XIX. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXV.
To John, Bishop of Constantinople, and the Other Patriarchs.
Gregory, to John of Constantinople, Eulogius of Alexandria, Gregory of Antioch, John of Jerusalem, and Anastasias, Ex-Patriarch of Antioch. A paribus [1322] .
When I consider how, unworthy as I am, and resisting with my whole soul, I have been compelled to bear the burden of pastoral care, a darkness of sorrow comes over me, and my sad heart sees nothing else but the shadows which allow nothing to be seen. For to what end is a bishop chosen of the Lord but to be an intercessor for the offences of the people? With what confidence, then, can I come as an intercessor for the sins of others to Him before Whom I am not secure about my own? If perchance any one should ask me to become his intercessor with a great man who was incensed against him, and to myself unknown, I should at once reply, I cannot go to intercede for you, having no knowledge of that man from familiar acquaintance with him. If then, as man with man, I should properly blush to become an intercessor with one on whom I had no claim, how great is the audacity of my obtaining the place of intercessor for the people with God, whose friendship I am not assured of through the merit of my life! And in this matter I find a still more serious cause of alarm, since we all know well that, when one who is in disfavour is sent to intercede with an incensed person, the mind of the latter is provoked to still greater severity. And I am greatly afraid lest the community of believers, whose offences the Lord has so far indulgently borne with, should perish through the addition of my guilt to theirs. But, when in one way or another I suppress this fear, and with mind consoled give myself to the care of my pontifical office, I am deterred by consideration of the immensity of this very task.
"For indeed I consider with myself what watchful care is needed that a ruler may be pure in thought, chief in action, discreet in keeping silence, profitable in speech, a near neighbour to every one in sympathy, exalted above all in contemplation, a companion of good livers through humility, unbending against the vices of evil-doers through zeal for righteousness [1323] ." All which things when I try to search out with subtle investigation, the very wideness of the consideration cramps me in the particulars. For, as I have already said, there is need of the greatest care that "the ruler be pure in thought, &c." [A long passage, thus beginning, and ending with "beyond the limit of order," is found also in Regula Pastoralis, Pt. II. ch. 2, which see.]
Again, when I betake myself to consider the works required of the pastor, I weigh within myself what intent care is to be taken that he be "chief in action, to the end that by his living, he may point out the way of life to them that are put under him, &c." [See Reg. Past., Pt. II. ch. 3, to the end.]
Again, when I betake myself to consider the duty of the pastor as to speech and silence, I weigh within myself with trembling care how very necessary it is that he should be discreet in keeping silence and profitable in speech, "lest he either utter what ought to be suppressed or suppress what ought to be uttered, &c." [See Reg. Past., III., 4, down to "keep the unity of the faith."]
Again, when I betake myself to consider what manner of man the ruler ought to be in sympathy, and what in contemplation, I weigh within myself that he "should be a near neighbour to every one in sympathy, and exalted above all in contemplation, to the end that through the bowels of loving-kindness, &c." [See Reg. Past, Pt. II. ch. 5, to the end.]
Again, when I betake myself to consider what manner of man the ruler ought to be in humility, and what in strictness, I weigh within myself how necessary it is that he "should be, through humility, a companion to good livers, and, through the zeal of righteousness rigid against the vices of evil-doers &c." [See Regula Pastoralis, Pt. II. ch. 6, down to "towards the perverse;" there being only a slight variation, not affecting the sense, in the wording of the concluding clause.] For hence it is that "Peter who had received from God, &c." [See Reg. Past., Pt. II. ch. 6, down to "dominates over vices rather than over his brethren."] He orders well the authority he has received who has learnt both to maintain it and to keep it in check. He orders it well who knows how both through it to tower above sins, and with it to set himself on an equality with other men.
Moreover, the virtue of humility ought to be so maintained that the rights of government be not relaxed; lest, when any prelate has lowered himself more than is becoming, he be unable to restrain the life of his subordinates under the bond of discipline; and the severity of discipline is to be so maintained that gentleness be not wholly lost through the over-kindling of zeal. For often vices shew themselves off as virtues, so that niggardliness would fain appear as frugality, extravagance as liberality, cruelty as righteous zeal, laxity as loving-kindness. Wherefore both discipline and mercy are far from what they should be, if one be maintained without the other. But there ought to be kept up with great skill of discernment both mercy justly considerate, and discipline smiting kindly. "For hence it is that, as the Truth teaches (Luke x. 34), the man is brought by the care of the Samaritan, &c." [See Reg. Past., Pt. II. ch. 6, down to "manna of sweetness."]
Thus, having undertaken the burden of pastoral care, when I consider all these things and many others of like kind, I seem to be what I cannot be, especially as in this place whosoever is called a Pastor is onerously occupied by external cares; so that it often becomes uncertain whether he exercises the function of a pastor or of an earthly noble. And indeed whosoever is set over his brethren to rule them cannot be entirely free from external cares; and yet there is need of exceeding care lest he be pressed down by them too much. "Whence it is rightly said to Ezekiel, The priests shall not shave their heads, &c." [See Reg. Past., Pt. II., ch. 7, to the end.]
But in this place I see that no such discreet management is possible, since cases of such importance hang over me daily as to overwhelm the mind, while they kill the bodily life. Wherefore, most holy brother, I beseech thee by the Judge who is to come, by the assembly of many thousand angels, by the Church of the firstborn who are written in heaven, help me, who am growing weary under this burden of pastoral care, with the intercession of thy prayer, lest its weight oppress me beyond my strength. But, being mindful of what is written, Pray for one another, that ye may be healed (James v. 16), I give also what I ask for. But I shall receive what I give. For, while we are joined to you through the aid of prayer, we hold as it were each other by the hand while walking through slippery places, and it comes to pass, through a great provision of charity, that the foot of each is the more firmly planted in that one leans upon the other.
Besides, since with the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation, I confess that I receive and revere, as the four books of the Gospel so also the four Councils: to wit, the Nicene, in which the perverse doctrine of Arius is overthrown; the Constantinopolitan also, in which the error of Eunomius and Macedonius is refuted; further, the first Ephesine, in which the impiety of Nestorius is condemned; and the Chalcedonian, in which the pravity of Eutyches and Dioscorus is reprobated. These with full devotion I embrace, and adhere to with most entire approval; since on them, as on a four-square stone, rises the structure of the holy faith; and whosoever, of whatever life and behaviour he may be, holds not fast to their solidity, even though he is seen to be a stone, yet he lies outside the building. The fifth council also I equally venerate, in which the epistle which is called that of Ibas, full of error, is reprobated; Theodorus, who divides the Mediator between God and men into two subsistences, is convicted of having fallen into the perfidy of impiety; and the writings of Theodoritus, in which the faith of the blessed Cyril is impugned, are refuted as having been published with the daring of madness. But all persons whom the aforesaid venerable Councils repudiate I repudiate; those whom they venerate I embrace; since, they having been constituted by universal consent, he overthrows not them but himself, whosoever presumes either to loose those whom they bind, or to bind those whom they loose. Whosoever, therefore, thinks otherwise, let him be anathema. But whosoever holds the faith of the aforesaid synods, peace be to him from God the Father, through Jesus Christ His Son, Who lives and reigns consubstantially God with Him in the Unity of the Holy Spirit for ever and ever. Amen. __________________________________________________________________
[1322] A paribus denotes that the Epistle is a copy of an identical one that has been sent to more than one person, exemplis being perhaps understood. Cf. I. 80; VI. 52, 54, 58; IX. 60, 106.
[1323] What is here printed between inverted commas, with much of what has come before, occurs also in Regula Pastoralis, II. 1. So also long passages afterwards, as will be seen. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXVI.
To Anastasius, Patriarch of Antioch.
[The beginning of this epistle is the same as that of Epistle VII. to the same Anastasius as far as the words "stand on the shore of virtue"; after which it is continued as follows.]
But, as to your calling me the mouth and lantern of the Lord, and alleging that I profit many by speaking, and am able to give light to many, I confess that you have brought me into a state of the greatest doubt in my estimate of myself. For I consider what I am, and detect in myself no sign of all this good. But I consider also what you are, and I do not think that you can lie. When, then, I would believe what you say, my infirmity contradicts me. When I would dispute what is said in my praise, your sanctity contradicts me. But I pray you, holy man, let us come to some agreement in this our contest, that, though it is not as you say, it may be so because you say it. Moreover, I have addressed my synodical epistle to you, as to the other patriarchs, your brethren [1324] ; inasmuch as with me you are always what it has been granted you to be by the gift of Almighty God, without regard to what you are accounted not to be by the will of men [1325] . I have given some instructions to Boniface the guardian (defensori), who is the bearer of these presents, for him to communicate to your holiness in private. Moreover, I have sent you keys of the blessed apostle Peter, who loves you, which are wont to shine forth with many miracles when placed on the bodies of sick persons [1326] . __________________________________________________________________
[1324] The Benedictine Editors adopt the reading patribus instead of fratribus. But the sense seems to require the latter.
[1325] See Ep. 7, note 1.
[1326] Keys of St. Peter's sepulchre, in which had been inserted filings from his alleged chains preserved at Rome, were often sent by Gregory to distinguished friends (cf. III. 48; VI. 6; VII. 26; VIII. 35; IX. 122; XI. 66), to be hung round the neck (VI. 6) or deposited (XI. 66), or used for healing. For an account of how the filings were obtained, see IV. 30. In one instance the key is described as being of gold (VII. 26). To Eulogius of Alexandria is sent a small cross containing filings from the chains, to be applied to his sore eyes. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXVII.
To Anastasius, Archbishop of Corinth.
Gregory to Anastasius, &c.
In proportion as the judgments of God are unsearchable ought they to be an object of fear to human apprehension; so that mortal reason, being unable to comprehend them, may of necessity bow under them the neck of a humble heart, to the end that it may follow with the mind's obedient steps where the will of the Ruler may lead. I, then, considering that my infirmity cannot reach to the height of the apostolic See, had rather have declined this burden, lest, having pastoral rule, I should succumb in action through inadequate administration. But, since it is not for us to go against the will of the Lord who disposes all, I obediently followed the way in which it pleased the merciful hand of the Ruler to deal with me. For it was necessary that your Fraternity should be informed, even though the present opportunity had not occurred, how the Lord had vouchsafed that I, however unworthy, should preside over the apostolic See. Since, then, reason required this to be done, and an opportunity having occurred through our sending to you the bearer of these presents, that is, Boniface the guardian (defensorem), we are careful not only to offer to your Fraternity by letter the good wishes of charity, but also to inform you of our ordination, as we believe you would wish us to do. Wherefore let your Charity, by a letter in reply, cause us to rejoice for the unity of the Church and the acceptable news of your own welfare; to the end that our bodily absence from each other, which distance of place causes us to endure, may become as presence through interchange of letters. We exhort you, also, since we have despatched the above-mentioned bearer of these presents on certain necessary business to the feet of the most clement prince, and since the mutability of the time is wont to generate many hindrances on the way, that your priestly affection would bestow upon him whatever may be necessary either in provision for his journey by land or in procuring for him the means of navigation, that through God's mercy, he may be able the more quickly to accomplish his intended journey. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXVIII.
To Sebastian, Bishop of Rhisinum [in Dalmatia].
Gregory to Sebastian, &c.
Although I deserved to receive no letters from your Blessedness, yet I also do not forget my own forgetfulness; I blame my negligence, I stir up my sluggishness with goads of love, that one who will not pay what he owes of his own accord, may learn even under blows to render it. Furthermore, I inform you that I have prepared a full representation, with urgent prayers to our most pious lords, to the effect that they ought to have sent the most blessed Lord patriarch Anastasius, with the use of the pallium granted him, to the threshold of the blessed Peter, prince of the apostles, to celebrate with me the solemnities of Mass; to the end that, though he were not allowed to return to his See, he might at least live with me, retaining his dignity. But of the reason that has arisen for keeping back what I had thus written the bearer of these presents will inform you. Nevertheless, ascertain the mind of the said lord Anastasius, and inform me in your letters of whatever he may wish to be done in this business [1327] . __________________________________________________________________
[1327] See Ep. 7, note 1. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXIX.
To Aristobulus, Ex-Prefect and Antigraphus [1328] .
Gregory to Aristobulus, &c.
For fully expressing my affection I confess that my tongue suffices not: but your own affection will better tell you all that I feel towards you. I have heard that you are suffering from certain oppositions. But I am not greatly grieved for this, since it is often the case that a ship which might have reached the depths of the ocean had the breeze been favourable is driven back by an opposing wind at the very beginning of its voyage, but by being driven back is recalled into port. Furthermore, if you should by any chance receive for interpretation a lengthy letter of mine, translate it, I pray you, not word for word, but so as to give the sense; since usually, when close rendering of the words is attended to, the force of the ideas is lost. __________________________________________________________________
[1328] I.e. Secretary. "Scriptor idem est et cancellarius...quod rescribit literis missis ad dominum suum." Du Cange. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXXIII.
To Romanus, Patrician, and Exarch of Italy.
Gregory to Romanus, &c.
Even though there were no immediate cause for writing to your Excellency, yet we ought to shew solicitude for your health and safety so as to learn through frequent intercommunication what we desire to hear about you. Besides, it has come to our knowledge that Blandus, bishop of the city of Hortanum [1329] , has been detained now for a long time by your Excellency in the city of Ravenna. And the result is that the Church decays, being without a ruler, and the people as being without a shepherd; and infants there, for their sins, die without baptism [1330] . And again, since we do not believe that your Excellency has detained him except on the ground of some probable transgression, it is proper that a synod should be held to bring to light any crime that is charged against him. And, if such fault is found in him as to lead to his degradation from the priesthood, it is necessary that we should look out for another to be ordained, lest the Church of God should remain untended, and destitute in what the Christian religion does not allow it to be without. But, if your Excellency should perceive that the case is otherwise with him than it is said to be, allow him, I pray you, to return to his church, that he may fulfil his duty to the souls committed to his charge.
The month of March; the ninth Indiction. __________________________________________________________________
[1329] Al. Orta, in Tuscia.
[1330] This alleged consequence of the bishop's absence from his See does not imply that he alone could administer baptism, but only that his authorization was required for its administration. See Bingham, Bk. II. ch. iii. Sect. 3, 4, and references there given: e.g. Ignat. Ep. ad Smyrn. n. viii., "It is not lawful either to baptize or celebrate the Eucharist without the bishop; but that which he allows is well-pleasing to God:" Hieron. Dialog. c. Lucifer, p. 139, "Thence it comes that, without the order of the bishop neither presbyter nor deacon has the right of baptizing;" Can. Apost. c. xxxviii., "Let the presbyters and deacons execute no office without the knowledge of the bishop; for it is to him that the Lord's people are committed, and he must give an account of their souls." It was usual in episcopal cities to have only one baptistery, connected with the bishop's church; and these all would be baptized, if not by the bishop himself (who was accounted the chief minister of baptism), yet under his direction and superintendence. Cf. Bingham, Bk. VIII., ch. vii., Sect. 6; Bk. XI., ch. vii., Sect. 12, 13. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXXIV.
To Venantius, Ex-Monk, Patrician of Syracuse [1331] .
Gregory to Venantius, &c.
Many foolish men have supposed that, if I were advanced to the rank of the episcopate, I should decline to address thee, or to keep up communication with thee by letter. But this is not so; since I am compelled by the very necessity of my position not to hold my peace. For it is written, Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet (Isai. lviii. 1). And again it is written, I have given thee for a watchman unto the house of Israel, thou shalt hear the word at my mouth, and declare it to them from me (Ezek. iii. 17). And what follows to the watchman or to the hearer from such declaration being kept back or uttered is forthwith intimated; If, when I say to the wicked, Thou shalt surely die, thou declare it not to him, nor speak to him, that he may turn from his wicked way and live, the wicked man himself shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at thine hand. Yet if thou declare it to the wicked, and he turn not from his iniquity and from his wicked way, he himself indeed shall die in his iniquity, but thou hast delivered thy soul. Hence also Paul says to the Ephesians, My hands are pure this day from the blood of all of you. For I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God (Acts xx. 26, 27). He would not, then, have been pure from the blood of all, had he refused to declare unto them the counsel of God. For when the pastor refuses to rebuke those that sin, there is no doubt that in holding his peace he slays them. Compelled, therefore, by this consideration, I will speak whether you will or no; for with all my powers I desire either thee to be saved or myself to be rescued from thy death. For thou rememberest in what state of life thou wast, and knowest to what thou hast fallen without regard to the animadversion of supernal strictness. Consider, then, thy fault while there is time; dread, while thou canst, the severity of the future judge; lest thou then find it bitter, having shed no tears to avoid it now. Consider what is written; Pray that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the Sabbath day (Matth. xxiv. 20). For the numbness of cold impedes walking in the winter, and, according to the ordinance of the law, it is not lawful to walk on the Sabbath day. He, then, attempts to fly in the winter or on the Sabbath day, who then wishes to fly from the wrath of the strict Judge when it is no longer allowed him to walk. Wherefore, while there is time, while it is allowed, fly thou from the animadversion which is of so great dreadfulness: consider what is written; Whatsoever thine hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is neither work, nor device, nor wisdom, in the grave whither thou hastenest (Eccles. ix. 10). By the witness of the Gospel thou knowest that divine severity accuses us for idle talk, and demands a strict account of an unprofitable word (Matth. xii. 36). Consider, then, what it will do for perverse doing, if in its judgment it reprobates some for talking. Ananias had vowed money to God (Acts v. 2 seq.), which, afterwards, overcome by diabolical persuasion, he withheld. But by what death he was mulcted thou knowest. If then he was deserving of the penalty of death who withdrew the money which he had given to God, consider of how great penalty thou wilt be deserving in the divine judgment, who hast withdrawn, not money, but thyself, from Almighty God, to whom thou hadst devoted thyself in the monastic state of life. Wherefore, if thou wilt hear the words of my rebuke so as to follow them, thou wilt come to know in the end how kind and sweet they are. Lo, I confess it, I speak mourning and constrained by sorrow for what thou hast done. I scarce can utter words; and yet thy mind, conscious of guilt, is hardly able to bear what it hears, blushes, is confounded, remonstrates. If, then, it cannot bear the words of dust, what will it do at the judgment of the Creator? And yet I acknowledge the exceeding mercy of heavenly grace, in that it beholds thee flying from life, and nevertheless still reserves thee for life; that it sees thee acting proudly, and still bears with thee; that through its unworthy servants it administers to thee words of rebuke and admonition. So great a thing is this that thou oughtest anxiously to ponder on what Paul says; We exhort you, brethren that ye receive not the grace of God in vain: for he saith, I have heard thee in a time accepted, and in the day of salvation have I succoured thee. Behold now is the acceptable time, behold now is the day of salvation (2 Cor. vi. 1 seq.).
But I know that, when my letter is received, forthwith friends come about thee, thy literary clients are called in, and advice about the purpose of life is sought from the promoters of death; who, loving not thee, but what belongs to thee, tell thee nothing but what may please thee at the time. For such, as thou thyself rememberest, were those thy former counsellors, who drew thee on to the perpetration of so great a sin. To quote to thee something from a secular author [1332] , "All things should be considered with friends, but the friends themselves should be considered first." But, if in thy case thou seekest an adviser, take me, I pray thee, as thy adviser. For no one can be more to be relied on for advice than one who loves not what is thine, but thee. May Almighty God make known to thy heart with what love and with what charity my heart embraces thee, though so far only as not to offend against divine grace. For I so attack thy fault as to love thy person; I so love thy person as not to embrace the viciousness of thy fault. If, therefore, thou believest that I love thee, approach the threshold of the apostles, and use me as an adviser. But if perchance I am supposed to be too keen in the cause of God, and am suspected for the ardour of my zeal, I will call the whole Church together into counsel on this question, and whatever all are of opinion should be done for good, this I will in no wise contradict, but gladly fulfil and subscribe to what is decided in common. May Divine grace keep thee while accomplishing what I have warned thee to do. __________________________________________________________________
[1331] The relations of Gregory to this Venantius are interesting; other letters throwing light on them being III. 60; VI. 43, 44; IX. 123; XI. 30, 35, 36, 78. Venantius was a patrician, resident in Sicily, who, having become a monk, had discovered that he had mistaken his vocation and returned to secular life. In the letter before us he is kindly, but very earnestly, written to, in the hope of inducing him to retrace a step which, from Gregory's point of view, was so dangerous to his friend's soul. But the remonstrance was in vain. Venantius appears, from an allusion in the letter, to have been associated with a literary set of friends who took a view of the purpose of life not in accordance with the monastic theory: and other motives may have disposed him to listen to their advice, since we find him afterwards married to a lady called Italica. She appears to have been, like Venantius of patrician rank, and resident in Sicily and to have possessed property there; for see III. 60, an epistle addressed to "Italica Patricia," remonstrating with her for her alleged harsh treatment of certain poor people, who were under the protection of the Church. It appears from this letter that Gregory had known her previously, and it is observable that he makes allusion to her personal charms (pulchritudo in superficie corporis). There being no allusion in this letter to any husband, it cannot be concluded that she was, at the time when it was written, married to Venantius: but we may reasonably suppose her to have been the same Italica who was subsequently addressed as his wife, for see IX. 123, "Domno Venantio patricio et Italicæ jugalibus." The marriage may possibly have taken place soon after Gregory's first letter to Venantius, which, if the date assigned be correct, was written in the 9th Indiction (a.d. 590-l). It cannot well have been much later, since in the 4th Indiction, i.e. a.d. 600-1 (still supposing the assigned dates correct) there were two girls, the issue of the marriage, who were also written to by Gregory after their father's death, and seem then to have been already old enough to be betrothed. See XI. 35, 36, 78. At some time subsequent to his marriage we find a letter of serious admonition addressed to Venantius (VI. 43), who had quarrelled with his bishop on some matters of business, and acted violently. But, notwithstanding all such causes for displeasure, Gregory continued on terms of cordial friendship with the married couple, and took a warm interest in their children. Having heard of Venantius being dangerously ill, he wrote a letter of sympathy, addressed to him and his wife jointly, and at the end sent greetings to his "most sweet daughters, the lady Barbara and the lady Antonina" (IX. 123). Subsequently, when Venantius was suffering from gout, he addressed him earnestly, but kindly; and, when he was on his death-bed, and the inheritance of the daughter was in jeopardy owing to certain claims made by certain persons on their father's estate, he wrote a short kind letter to the little ladies, bidding them keep up their spirits so as to comfort their father, assuring them that he himself would protect them after their father's death, and speaking of the debt of gratitude he owed for the goodness to himself of both their parents. The mother not being written to, or alluded to as alive, may be supposed to have died previously. At the same time he wrote to John, bishop of Syracuse (the same bishop with whom Venantius had been once for a time at variance), urging him to do what he could to induce Venantius, even in his last moments, to resume the monastic habit for the safety of his soul and no less urgently charging him to take up the cause of the orphan girls. Lastly (XI. 87), the girls are once more addressed by Gregory in a kind letter, from which it seems, that, young as they must have been, marriage was already in contemplation for them, and in which he expresses his hope of seeing them at Rome. The correspondence thus summarised is peculiarly interesting, as shewing both Gregory's strong sense of the sin and danger to the soul of returning to the world from the monastic life, and also the continuance of his friendship and affection to one who had thus sinned, and the interest he could still take in his domestic happiness and the welfare of his family.
[1332] Seneca, Epist. 3: "Tu omnia cum amico delibera, sed de ipso prius. Post amicitiam credendum est; ante amicitiam judicandum." __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXXV.
To Peter, Bishop of Terracina.
Gregory to Peter, &c.
Joseph, a Jew, the bearer of these presents, has informed us that, the Jews dwelling in the camp of Terracina having been accustomed to assemble in a certain place for celebrating their festivities, thy Fraternity had expelled them thence, and that they had migrated, and this with thy knowledge and consent, to another place for in like manner observing their festivities; and now they complain that they have been expelled anew from this same place. But, if it is so, we desire thy Fraternity to abstain from giving cause of complaint of this kind, and that they be allowed, as has been the custom, to assemble in the place which, as we have already said, they had obtained with thy knowledge for their place of meeting. For those who dissent from the Christian religion must needs be gathered together to unity of faith by gentleness, kindness, admonition, persuasion, lest those whom the sweetness of preaching and the anticipated terror of future judgment might have invited to believe should be repelled by threats and terrors. It is right, then, that they should come together kindly to hear the word of God from you rather than that they should become afraid of overstrained austerity. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXXVI.
To Peter the Subdeacon.
Gregory, bishop, servant of the servants of God, to Peter the Subdeacon.
The code of instructions which I gave thee on thy going to Sicily must be diligently perused, so that the greatest care may be taken concerning bishops, lest they mix themselves up in secular causes, except so far as the necessity of defending the poor compels them. But what is inserted in the same code concerning monks or clerics ought, I think, in no respect to be varied from. But let thy Experience observe these things with such great attention as may fulfil my desire in this regard. Further, it has come to my ears that from the times of Antoninus, the defensor, till now, during these last ten years, many persons have endured certain acts of violence from the Roman Church, so that some publicly complain of their boundaries having been violently invaded, their slaves abstracted, and their moveables carried off by force, and not by any judicial process. In all such cases I desire thy Experience to keep intent watch, and whatsoever during these last ten years may be found to have been taken away by violence, or retained unjustly in the name of the Church, to restore it by authority of this my order to him to whom it is found to belong; lest he who has suffered violence should be obliged to come to me, and undertake the labour of so long a journey, in which case it could not be ascertained here before me whether or not he spoke the truth. Having regard, then, to the majesty of the Judge who is to come, restore all things that have been sinfully taken away, knowing that thou bringest great gain to me, if thou gatherest [heavenly] reward rather than riches. But we have ascertained that what the greater part complain of is the loss of their slaves, saying that, if any man's bondman, peradventure running away from his master, has declared himself to belong to the Church, the rectors [1333] of the Church have at once kept him as a bondman belonging to the Church, without any trial of the case, but supporting with a high hand the word of the bondman. This displeases me as much as it is abhorrent from the judgment of truth. Wherefore I desire thy Experience to correct without delay whatever may be found to have been so done: and it is also fit that any such slaves as are now kept in ecclesiastical possession, as they were taken away without trial, should be restored before trial; so that, if holy Church has any legitimate claim to them, their possessors may then be dispossessed by regular process of law. Correct all these things irretractably, since thou wilt be truly a soldier of the blessed apostle Peter if in his causes thou keep guard over the truth, even without his receiving anything. But, if thou seest anything that may justly be claimed as belonging to the Church, beware lest thou ever try to assert such claim by force; especially as I have established a decree under pain of anathema, that tituli may not ever be put by our Church on any urban or rural farm [1334] ; but whatever may in reason be claimed for the poor ought also to be defended by reason; lest, a good thing being done in a manner that is not good, we be convicted of injustice before Almighty God even in what we justly seek. Moreover, I pray thee, let noble laymen, and the glorious [Prætor] [1335] love thee for thy humility, not dread thee for thy pride. And yet, if by any chance thou knowest them to be doing any injustice to the indigent, turn thy humility at once into exaltation, so as to be always submissive to them when they do well, and opposed to them when they do ill. But so behave that neither thy humility be remiss nor thy authority stiff, to the end that uprightness season humility, and humility render thy very uprightness gentle. Further, since it has been customary for bishops to assemble here for the anniversary [1336] of the pontiff, forbid their coming for the day of my ordination, since foolish and vain superfluity delights me not. But if they must needs assemble, let them come for the anniversary [1337] of Peter, the prince of the apostles, to render thanks to him by whose bounty they are pastors. Farewell. Given this XVII day of the Kalends of April, in the ninth year of the Emperor Mauricius. __________________________________________________________________
[1333] As to the rectores patrimonii, see Proleg. p. vii.
[1334] Titulum imponere seems to have meant originally setting up a scroll or tablet on a property to assert a title to it; it might be in some cases with a view to sale, letting, or to confiscation.
[1335] I.e. the Prætor of Sicily.
[1336] Natalem, i.e. birthday; denoting usually, in the case of a dignitary, the day of his inauguration; and, in the case of a deceased saint, the day of his death.
[1337] Natalem, i.e. birthday; denoting usually, in the case of a dignitary, the day of his inauguration; and, in the case of a deceased saint, the day of his death. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXXIX.
To Anthemius, Subdeacon [1338] .
Gregory to Anthemius, &c.
We charged thee on thy departure, and remember to have afterwards enjoined on thee by letter, to take care of the poor, and, if thou shouldest find any in those parts to be in want, to inform me by letter: and thou hast been at pains to do this with regard to very few. Now, I desire that, as soon as thou hast received this present order, thou offer to Pateria, my father's sister, forty solidi for shoe-money for her boys, and four hundred modii of wheat; to the lady Palatina, the widow of Urbicus, twenty solidi and three hundred modii of wheat; to the lady Viviana, widow of Felix, twenty solidi and three hundred modii of wheat. And let all these eighty solidi be charged together in thy accounts. But bring hither with speed the sum of thy receipts, and be here, with the Lord's help, by Easter Day. __________________________________________________________________
[1338] He was the subdeacon who had charge of the patrimony in Campania, as appears from other letters to him (see Index of Epistles). __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XLI.
To Peter, Subdeacon.
Gregory to Peter, &c.
The venerable Paulinus bishop of the city of Taurum (Taurianum in Brutia), has told us that his monks have been scattered by reason of barbaric invasions, and that they are now wandering through the whole of Sicily, and that, being without a ruler, they neither have a care of their souls, nor pay attention to the discipline of their profession. On this account we enjoin thee to search out with all care and diligence, and collect together, these same monks, and to place them with the said bishop, their ruler, in the monastery of Saint Theodorus situate in the city of Messana, that both such as are there now, whom we find to be in need of a ruler, and those of his congregation whom you may have found and brought back, may be able, under his leadership, to serve the Almighty Lord together. Know also that we have signified this matter to the venerable Felix, bishop of the same city, lest anything ordained in the diocese committed to him should be disturbed without his knowledge. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XLII.
To Anthemius, Subdeacon [1339] .
Gregory to Anthemius, &c.
John, our brother and fellow-bishop, in a schedule sent to us by his cleric Justus, has among many other things intimated to us as follows: that some monks of the diocese of Surrentum [1340] transmigrate from monastery to monastery as they please, and depart from the rule of their own abbot out of desire for a worldly life; nay even (what is known to be unlawful) that they aim severally at having property of their own. Wherefore we command thy Experience by this present order, that no monk be henceforth allowed to migrate from monastery to monastery, and that thou permit not any one of them to have anything of his own. But, if any one whatever should so presume, let him be sent back with adequate constraint to the monastery in which he lived at first, to be under the rule of his own abbot from which he had escaped; lest, if we allow so great an iniquity to take its course uncorrected, the souls of those that are lost be required from the souls of their superiors. Further, if any of the clergy should chance to become monks, let it not be lawful for them to return anew to the same church in which they had formerly served, or to any other; unless one should be a monk of such a life that the bishop under whom he had formerly served should think him worthy of the priesthood, so that he may be chosen by him, and by him ordained to such place as he may think fit. And since we have learnt that some among the monks have plunged into such great wickedness as publicly to take to themselves wives, do thou seek them out with all vigilance, and, when found, send them back with due constraint to the monasteries of which they had been monks. But neglect not to deal also with the clergy who profess monasticism, as we have said above. For so thou wilt be pleasing in the eyes of God, and be found partaker of a full reward. __________________________________________________________________
[1339] Rector patrimonii and defensor in Campania. See above Ep. 39.
[1340] In Compania, hodie Sorrento. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XLIII.
To Leander Bishop of Hispalis (Seville) [1341] .
Gregory to Leander, &c.
I should have wished to reply to your letters with full application of mind, were I not so worn by the labour of my pastoral charge as to be more inclined to weep than to say anything. And this your Reverence will take care to understand and allow for in the very text of my letters, when I speak negligently to one whom I exceedingly love. For, indeed, I am in this place tossed by such billows of this world that I am in no wise able to steer into port the old and rotten ship of which, in the hidden dispensation of God, I have assumed the guidance. Now in front the billows rush in, now at the side heaps of foamy sea swell up, now from behind the storm follows on. And, disquieted in the midst of all this, I am compelled sometimes to steer in the very face of the opposing waters; sometimes, turning the ship aside, to avoid the threats of the billows slantwise. I groan, because I feel that through my negligence the bilgewater of vices increases, and, as the storm meets the vessel violently, the rotten planks already sound of shipwreck. With tears I remember how I have lost the placid shore of my rest, and with sighs I behold the land which still, with the winds of affairs blowing against me, I cannot reach. If, then, thou lovest me, dearest brother, stretch out to me in the midst of these billows the hand of thy prayer; that from helping me in my labours thou mayest, in very return for the benefit, be the stronger in thine own.
I cannot, however, at all fully express in words my joy on having learnt that our common son, the most glorious King Rechared, has been converted with most entire devotion to the Catholic faith [1342] . In describing his character to me in thy letters thou hast made me love him, though I know him not. But, since you know the wiles of the ancient foe, how against conquerors he prepares all the fiercer war, let your Holiness keep watch the more warily over him, that he may accomplish what he has well begun, nor lift himself up for good works accomplished; that he may keep the faith which he has come to know by the merits also of his life, and shew by his works that he is a citizen of the eternal kingdom, to the end that after a course of many years he may pass from kingdom to kingdom.
But with respect to trine immersion in baptism, no truer answer can be given than what you have yourself felt to be right; namely that, where there is one faith, a diversity of usage does no harm to holy Church. Now we, in immersing thrice, signify the sacraments of the three days' sepulture; so that, when the infant is a third time lifted out of the water, the resurrection after a space of three days may be expressed. Or, if any one should perhaps think that this is done out of veneration for the supreme Trinity, neither so is there any objection to immersing the person to be baptized in the water once, since, there being one substance in three subsistences, it cannot be in any way reprehensible to immerse the infant in baptism either thrice or once, seeing that by three immersions the Trinity of persons, and in one the singleness of the Divinity may be denoted. But, inasmuch as up to this time it has been the custom of heretics to immerse infants in baptism thrice, I am of opinion that this ought not to be done among you; lest, while they number the immersions, they should divide the Divinity, and while they continue to do as they have been used to do, they should boast of having got the better of our custom. Moreover, I send to your to me most sweet Fraternity the volumes of which I have appended a notice below. What I had spoken in exposition of the blessed Job, which you express in your letter your wish to have sent to you, being weak both in sense and language as I had delivered it in homilies, I have tried as I could to change into the form of a treatise, which is in course of being written out by scribes. And, were I not crippled by the haste of the bearer of these presents, I should have wished to transmit to you the whole without diminution; especially as I have written this same work for your Reverence, that I may be seen to have sweated in my labours for him whom I love above all others. Besides, if you find time allowed you from ecclesiastical engagements, you already know how it is with me: even though absent in the body, I behold thee always present with me; for I carry the image of thy countenance stamped within the bowels of my heart. Given in the month of May. __________________________________________________________________
[1341] Gregory made the acquaintance of Leander, bishop of the Metropolitan See of Hispalis (Seville) in Spain, during his residence at Constantinople. It was at the instigation of Leander together with the request of the monks who had followed him from his Roman Monastery to Constantinople, that he had begun when there, to expound the book of Job. The earlier part of his "Moralium libri, sive Expositio in librum B. Job," had been delivered in oral discourses at Constantinople, but afterwards revised, arranged, and completed in thirty-five books. The whole, when finished, was addressed to Leander. All this appears from the "Epistola Missoria" prefixed to the completed treatise. Gregory evidently had a peculiar affection for Leander. Other epistles addressed to him are V. 49, and IX. 121. He is spoken of also in the Dialogues of Gregory, Lib. III. cap. 31, being there referred to as "dudum mihi in amicitiis familiariter junctus."
[1342] Reccared, the Visigoth King in Spain, had declared himself a Catholic a.d. 587 and formally renounced Arianism and adopted the Catholic Creed at the Council of Toledo, a.d. 589. The date of the letter before us, if rightly placed, is a.d. 591. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XLIV.
To Peter, Subdeacon of Sicily.
Gregory to Peter, &c.
With regard to our having so long delayed sending off thy messenger, we have been so occupied with the engagements of the Paschal festival that we have been unable to let him go sooner. But, with regard to the questions on which thou hast desired instruction, thou wilt learn below how, after fully considering them all, we have determined them.
We have ascertained that the peasants [1343] of the Church are exceedingly aggrieved in respect of the prices of corn, in that the sum appointed them to pay is not kept in due proportion in times of plenty. And it is our will that in all times, whether the crops of corn be more or less abundant, the measure of proportion be according to the market price [1344] . It is our will also that corn which is lost by shipwreck be fully accounted for; but on condition that there be no neglect on thy part in transmitting it; lest, the proper time for transmitting it being allowed to pass by, loss should ensue from your fault [1345] . Moreover, we have seen it to be exceedingly wrong and unjust that anything should be received from the peasants of the Church in the way of sextariatics [1346] , or that they should be compelled to give a larger modius than is used in the granaries of the Church. Wherefore we enjoin by this present warning that corn may never be received from the peasants of the Church in modii of more than eighteen sextarii; unless perchance there be anything that the sailors are accustomed to receive over and above, the consumption of which on board ship they themselves attest.
We have also ascertained that on some estates [1347] of the Church a most unjust exaction is practised, in that three and a half [modii] in seventy are demanded by the farmers [1348] ;--a thing shameful to be spoken of. And yet even this is not enough; but something besides is said to be exacted according to a custom of many years. This practice we altogether detest, and desire it to be utterly extirpated from the patrimony. But, whether in this or in other minute imposts, let thy Experience consider what is paid too much per pound, and what is in any way unfairly received from the peasants; and reduce all to a fixed payment, and, so far as the powers of the peasants go, let them make a payment in gross amounting to seventy-two [1349] : and let neither grains [1350] beyond the pound, nor an excessive pound, nor any further imposts beyond the pound, be exacted; but, through thy valuation, according as there is ability to pay, let the payment be made up to a certain sum, that so there may be in no wise any shameful exaction. But, lest after my death these very imposts, which we have disallowed as extras but allowed in augmentation of the regular payments, should again in any way be put on additionally, and so the sum of the payment should be found to be increased and the peasants be compelled to pay additional charges over and above what is due, we desire thee to draw up charters of security, to be signed by thee, declaring that each person is to pay such an amount, to the exclusion of grains (siliquæ), imposts, or granary dues. Moreover, whatever out of these several items used to accrue to the rector [sc. patrimonii], we will that by virtue of this present order it shall accrue to thee out of the total sum paid.
Before all things we desire thee carefully to attend to this; that no unjust weights be used in exacting payments. If thou shouldest find any, break them and cause true ones to be made. For my son the servant of God, Diaconus, has already found such as displeased him; but he had not liberty to change them. We will, then, that, saving excepted cibaria of small value [1351] , nothing else beyond the just weights be exacted from the husbandmen [1352] of the Church.
Further, we have ascertained that the first charge of burdatio [1353] exceedingly cripples our peasants, in that before they can sell the produce of their labour they are compelled to pay taxes; and, not having of their own to pay with, they borrow from public pawnbrokers [1354] , and pay a heavy consideration for the accommodation; whence it results that they are crippled by heavy expenses. Wherefore we enjoin by this present admonition that thy Experience advance to them from the public fund all that they might have borrowed from strangers, and that it be repaid by the peasants of the Church by degrees as they may have wherewith to pay, lest, while for a time in narrow circumstances, they should sell at too cheap a rate what might afterwards have sufficed for the payment of the due, and even so not have enough.
It has come to our knowledge also that immoderate fees [1355] are received on the marriages of peasants: concerning which we order that no marriage fees shall exceed the sum of one solidus. If any are poor, they should give even less; but if any are rich, let them by no means exceed the aforesaid sum of a solidus. And we desire no part of these marriage fees to be credited to our account, but that they should go to the benefit of the farmer (conductorem).
We have also ascertained that when some farmers die their relatives are not allowed to succeed them, but that their goods are withdrawn to the uses of the Church: with regard to which thing we decree that the relatives of the deceased who live on the property of the Church shall succeed them as their heirs, and that nothing shall be withdrawn from the substance of the deceased. But, if any one should leave young children, let discreet persons be chosen to take charge of their parents' goods, till they come to such an age as to be able to manage their own property.
We have ascertained also that, if any one of a family has committed a fault, he is required to make amends, not in his own person, but in his substance: concerning which practice we order that, whosoever has committed a fault, he shall be punished in his own person as he deserves [1356] . Moreover, let no present (commodum) be received from him, unless perchance it be some trifle which may go to the profit of the officer who may have been sent to him. We have ascertained also that, as often as a farmer has taken away anything unjustly from his husbandman, it is indeed required from the farmer, but not restored to him from whom it was taken: concerning which thing we order that whatever may have been taken away by violence from any one of a family be restored to him from whom it was taken away, and not accrue to our profit, lest we ourselves should seem to be abettors of violence. Furthermore, we will that, if thy Experience should at any time despatch those who are under thy command in causes that arise beyond the limits of the patrimony, they may indeed receive small gratuities from those to whom they are sent; yet so that they themselves may have the advantage of them: for we would not have the treasury of the Church defiled by base gains. We also command thy Experience to see to this: that farmers never be appointed on the estates of the Church for a consideration (commodum); lest, a consideration being looked for, the farmers should be frequently changed; of which changing what else is the result but that the Church farms are never cultivated? But lest also the leases [i.e. by the Church to the farmers] be adjusted according to the sum of the payments due. We desire thee to receive no more from the estates of the Church on account of the store-houses and stores beyond what is customary; but let thine own stores which we have ordered to be procured be procured from strangers.
It has come to our ears that three pounds of gold have been unjustly taken away from Peter the farmer of Subpatriana; concerning which matter examine closely Fantinus the guardian (defensorem [1357] ); and, if they have manifestly been unjustly and improperly taken, restore them without any delay. We have also ascertained that the peasants have paid a second time the burdation [1358] which Theodosius had exacted from them but had failed to pay over, so that they have been taxed twice. This was done because his substance was not sufficient for meeting his debt to the Church. But, since we are informed through our son, the servant of God Diaconus, that this deficiency can be made good out of his effects, we will that fifty-seven solidi be repaid to the peasants without any abatement, lest they should be found to have been taxed twice over. Moreover, if it is the case that forty solidi of his effects remain over and above what will indemnify the peasants (which sum thou art said also to have in thy hands), we will that they be given to his daughter, to enable her to recover her effects which she had pawned. We desire also her father's goblet (batiolam) to be restored to her.
The glorious magister militum Campanianus had left twelve solidi a year out of the Varronian estate to his notary John; and this we order thee to pay every year without any hesitation to the granddaughter of Euplus the farmer, although she may have received all the chattels of the said Euplus, except perhaps his cash; and we desire thee also to give her out of his cash five-and-twenty solidi. A silver saucer [1359] is said to have been pawned for one solidus, and a cup for six solidi. After interrogating Dominicus the secretary, or others who may know, redeem the pledge, and restore the aforesaid little vessels.
We thank thy Solicitude for that, after I had enjoined thee, in the business of my brother, to send him back his money, thou hast so consigned the matter to oblivion as if something had been said to thee by the last of thy slaves. But now let even thy Negligence--I cannot say thy Experience--study to get this done; and whatever of his thou mayest find to be in the hands of Antoninus send back to him with all speed.
In the matter of Salpingus the Jew a letter has been found which we have caused to be forwarded to thee, in order that, after reading it and becoming fully acquainted with his case and that of a certain widow who is said to be implicated in the same business, thou mayest make answer as may appear to thee just concerning the fifty-one solidi which are known to be returnable, so that the creditors may in no way be defrauded unjustly of the debts due to them.
A moiety of his legacy has been given to Antoninus; a moiety will be redeemed: which moiety we desire to be made up to him out of the common substance; and not to him only, but also to the guardians (defensoribus) and strangers (pergrinis) to whom he [the testator] has left anything under the title of a legacy. To the family (familiæ) also we desire the legacy to be paid; which, however, is our concern. Having, then, made up the account for our part, that is for three-quarters, make the payment [1360] .
We desire thee to give something out of the money of the Church of Canusium to the clergy of the same Church, to the end that they who now suffer from want may have some sustenance; and that, if it should please God that a bishop should be ordained, he may have a maintenance.
As to lapsed [1361] priests, or any others of the clergy, we desire thee in dealing with their property to keep free from any contamination. But seek out the poorest regular monasteries which know how to live according to God, and consign the lapsed to penance in these monasteries; and let the property of the lapsed go to the benefit of the place in which they are consigned to penance, to the end that those who have the care of their correction may have aid themselves from their means. But, if they have relations, let their property be given to their legitimate relations; yet so that an allowance for those to whom they have been consigned for penance be sufficiently provided. But, if any of an ecclesiastical community, whether priests, levites, or monks, or clerics, or any others, shall have lapsed, we will that they be consigned to penance, but that the Church shall retain its claim to their property. Yet let them receive for their own use enough to maintain them during their penance, lest, if left destitute, they should be burdensome to the places whereto they have been consigned. If any have relations on the ecclesiastical domain, let their property be delivered to them, that it may be preserved in their hands subject to the Church's claim.
Three years ago the subdeacons of all the churches in Sicily, in accordance with the custom of the Roman Church, were forbidden all conjugal intercourse with their wives. But it appears to me hard and improper that one who has not been accustomed to such continency, and has not previously promised chastity, should be compelled to separate himself from his wife, and thereby (which God forbid) fall into what is worse. Hence it seems good to me that from the present day all bishops should be told not to presume to make any one a subdeacon who does not promise to live chastely; that so what was not of set purpose desired in the past may not be forcibly required, but that cautious provision may be made for the future. But those who since the prohibition of three years ago have lived continently with their wives are to be praised and rewarded, and exhorted to continue in their good way. But, as for those who since the prohibition have been unwilling to abstain from intercourse with their wives, we desire them not to be advanced to a sacred order; since no one ought to approach the ministry of the altar but one who has been of approved chastity before undertaking the ministry.
For Liberatus the tradesman, who has commended himself to the Church, dwelling on the Cincian estate, we desire thee to make an annual provision; which provision do thou estimate thyself as to what it ought to be, that it may be reported to me and charged in thy accounts. With regard to the present indiction I have already got information from our son the servant of God Diaconus.
One John, a monk, has died and left Fantinus the guardian (defensorem) his heir to the extent of one half. Hand over to the latter what has been left him, but charge him not to presume to do the like again. But appoint what he should receive for his work, so that it be not fruitless to him; and let him remember that one who lives on the pay of the Church should not pant after private gains. But, if anything should accrue to the Church, without sin and without the lust of concupiscence, through those who transact the business of the Church, it is right that these should not be without fruit of their labour. Still let it be reserved for our judgment how they should be remunerated [1362] .
As to the money of Rusticianus, look thoroughly into the case, and carry out what appears to thee to be just. Admonish the magnificent Alexander [1363] to conclude the cause between himself and holy Church; which if he peradventure shall neglect to do, do thou, in the fear of God and with honour preserved, bring this same cause to an issue as thou art able. We desire thee also to expend something in this business; and, if it can be done, let him be spared the cost of what has to be given to others, provided he terminates the cause which he has with us.
Restore without any delay the donation of the handmaiden of God [1364] who has lapsed and been sent into a monastery, to the end that (as I have said above) the same place that bears the toil of attending to her may have provision for her from what she has. But recover also whatever of hers is in the hands of others, and hand it over to the aforesaid monastery.
Send to us the payments of Xenodochius of Via Nova to the amount thou hast told us of, since thou hast them by thee. But give something, according to thy discretion, to the agent whom thou hast deputed in the same patrimony.
Concerning the handmaiden of God who was with Theodosius, by name Extranea, it seems to me that thou shouldest give her an allowance, if thou thinkest it advantageous, or at any rate return to her the donation which she made. The house of the monastery which Antoninus had taken from the monastery, giving thirty solidi for it, restore thou without the least delay, the money being repaid. After thoroughly investigating the truth restore the onyx phials [1365] , which I send back to thee by the bearer of these presents.
If Saturninus is at liberty and not employed with thee, send him to us. Felix, a farmer under the lady Campana, whom she had left free and ordered to be exempt from examination, said that seventy-two solidi had been taken from him by Maximus the sub-deacon, for paying which he asserted that he sold or pledged all the property that he had in Sicily. But the lawyers said that he could not be exempt from examination concerning acts of fraud. However, when he was returning to us from Campania, he perished in a storm. We desire thee to seek out his wife and children, to redeem whatever he had pledged, repay the price of what he had sold, and moreover provide them with some maintenance; seeing that Maximus had sent the man into Sicily and there taken from him what he alleged. Ascertain, therefore, what has been taken from him, and restore it without any delay to his wife and children. Read all these things over carefully, and put aside all that familiar negligence of thine. My writings which I have sent to the peasants cause thou to be read over throughout all the estates, that they may know in what points to defend themselves, under our authority, against acts of wrong; and let either the originals or copies be given them. See that thou observe everything without abatement: for, with regard to what I have written to thee for the observance of justice, I am absolved; and, if thou art negligent, thou art guilty. Consider the terrible Judge who is coming: and let thy conscience now anticipate His advent with fear and trembling, lest it should then fear [not?] without cause, when heaven and earth shall tremble before Him. Thou hast heard what I wish to be done: see that thou do it. __________________________________________________________________
[1343] Rusticos ecclesiæ; i.e. the native cultivater of the land, called elsewhere coloni, and by Cicero (In Verrem), aratores. See Proleg.
[1344] It appears from Cicero that, when the Romans annexed Sicily, they found the greater part of the land subject by ancient custom to a tithe of the corn and other produce, and that such tithe continued to be enacted by the Roman government, which derived thence its main revenue from the island: further, that the custom had grown up of allowing a pecuniary composition for the tithe, and that this custom, intended originally for the accommodation of the tithe payers, had been abused to their detriment by over valuation in years when corn was cheap. One of the charges against Verres was that this had been done under him as Prætor. When wheat was selling in Sicily for two or at the most three sesterces per modius, the peasants had been made to compound for their tithes at the rate of three denarii, i.e. twelve secterces. (Cic. in Verr. Divin. 10; Act II. Lib. iii. 6, 18). The Roman Church having succeeded the Roman Government in the lordship of the "Patrimony of St. Peter," it appears that the Church officials had not been guiltless of similar unfair exactions. Hence the direction here in this Epistle that the valuations of the tithe in successive years should follow the market price.
[1345] This refers to the corn which was sent annually in large quantities to Rome, and on which the Romans were in a great measure dependent for their supply. Those in Sicily who furnished it were, it seems, responsible for its delivery, taking the risk of loss by sea. But it rested with the Church officials to provide for its being shipped; and, if any loss on the voyage ensued from their delay, the parties otherwise responsible were to be indemnified.
[1346] Ex sextariaticis. This appears to have been a technical term, denoting unjust exaction of the following kind. The peasants (rustici) on an estate had to supply, let us say, so many modii of corn to be shipped for Rome. But the modius varied in capacity. It is said originally to have contained sixteen sextarii, a sextarius being between a pint and a quart. But it appears below that one of eighteen sextarii was in use in the time of Gregory, and by him allowed. This limit, however, seems to have been sometimes exceeded, and herein consisted the abuse complained of. In a subsequent epistle (XIII. 34) a modius of even twenty-five sextarii is spoken of as having been in one case used:--"We understand that the modius by which the husbandmen (coloni) were compelled to give their corn was one of twenty-five sextarii."
[1347] Massis. These massæ might include several farms (fundi, or prædia), and were let or leased to farmers (conductores), who made their profit out of them. Cf. xiv. 14, "Massam quæ Aquas Salvias nuncupatur cum omnibus fundis suis;" also v. 31, "Conductoribus massarum per Galliam."
[1348] Conductores. See last note.
[1349] Pensantem ad septuagena bina. It would seem that, in addition to the abuse of using modii of too large capacity, there was the additional one of exacting more modii than were legally due, three and a half being added to every seventy; i.e. one to every twenty. Cf. Cicero in Verrem, "Ab Siculis aratoribus, præter decumam, ternæ quinquagesimæ (i.e. three for every fifty) exigebantur." If the reading septuagena bina be correct, it would seem that Gregory allowed two to be added to every seventy perhaps on the ground of long-established custom. The readings, however, vary; and what was meant is uncertain.
[1350] Siliquæ. In Roman weights the uncia contained 144 siliquæ, and the as or libra 12 unciæ. The reference seems to be to cases in which the grain or other produce was rendered by weight. The just pound was not to be exceeded.
[1351] Præter excepta et vilia cibaria. Cibaria bears the general sense of victuals or provender; and specifically, "Cibarium, teste, Plin. I. 18, c. 9, ubi de siligine agit, dicitur farina quæ post pollinem seu florem excussum restat, postquam nihil aliud remanet nisi furfures: the second sort of flour. Eadem dicitur secundarium. Ex ea qui conficitur vocatur panis cibarius, quia solet esse communis vulgi cibus." Facciolati. The adjective cibarius is applied to provisions generally, wine, oil, bread, &c., of a common and inferior kind, and consumed by the common people. The reference in the text may be to refuse and inferior grain or other breadstuff, of which an excessive weight might be exacted to make up for its inferior quality.
[1352] Colonis, meaning the same as rustici. See note 1.
[1353] Burdationis. This appears to have been a kind of land tax, payable in the first instance, before the peasants had been able to convert their produce into money. "Burdatio est pensio quæ a rusticis præstatur prædii nomine, quod Burdam vocant, nostri Borde." Alteserra.
[1354] Auctionariis. "Mercator qui res suas auget; et proprie dicitur ille qui hic vel illic res parvas et veteres et tritas eruit, ut postea carius vendat." Du Cange.
[1355] Commoda. The word commodum denotes properly a bounty (as to soldiers over and above their pay), a gratuity, a voluntary offering, though used also for a stipend, or payment generally. The peasants (rustici) might not marry without permission. Cf. xii. 25, "ut eum districte debeas commonere ne filios suos quolibet ingenio vel excusatione foris alicubi in conjugio, sociare præsumat, sed in ea massa cui lege et conditione ligati sunt socientur." For such permission they were, it seems, accustomed to pay a fee, in theory perhaps voluntary, but virtually exacted as a due.
[1356] Because a fine would have to be paid out of the common substance of the family, and so all would be punished for the offence of one.
[1357] On the office of defensores, see Proleg.
[1358] See note 2.
[1359] Suppositorium. The word itself might denote anything put under another, or supporting another. Here its being associated with a cup (calix), and both being called small vessels (vascula), suggests the translation in the text.
[1360] The meaning of these directions is obscure owing to our ignorance of the circumstances.
[1361] The word lapsi was the regular one for denoting clergy or others, who had fallen into sin rendering them liable to excommunication.
[1362] It was against monastic rule for monks or nuns to retain property of their own after profession, or the power of disposing of it by will. It became the common property of the monastery. Cf. Justinian, Novell. V. c. 38. See also what was said above about the goods of lapsed members of religious communities. In a subsequent Epistle (IX. 7), Gregory annulls a will that had been made by an abbess Sirica. The case of one Probus, an abbot (Appendix, Ep. IX.), who was allowed to make a will, is no real exception to the rule. For Gregory gave him special permission to do so on his own petition, on the equitable ground that at the time of his hasty ordination as abbot, not having been a monk previously, he had neglected to make provision for his son by will, as he had intended to do, and as he had then a right to do. In the case before us Gregory acts with lenient consideration. Though condemning the bequest of the monk John to the guardian Fantinus, he allows the latter to take it on the ground that he deserved, but had not so far received, a proper remuneration for his services.
[1363] Magnificum virum. Who this Alexander was is not known. His designation implies a position of rank. An Alexander appears afterwards as Prætor of Sicily (VI. 8): but the Prætor of this year was Justinus (see above, Ep. II.), who was apparently succeeded by Libertinus (III. 38).
[1364] Ancillæ Dei. So were called, not professed nuns only, but also others who devoted themselves to virginity and religious lives. Gregory's own aunts, Tarsilla and Æmiliana, who lived as dedicated virgins in their own home, were instances. See Proleg. p. xiv.
[1365] Amulas. "Amula, minor ama, vas vinarium, in quo sacra oblatio continetur." Du Cange. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XLVI.
To Peter the Subdeacon.
Gregory to Peter, &c.
The divine precepts admonish us to love our neighbours as ourselves; and, seeing that we are enjoined to love them with this charity, how much more ought we to succour them by supplies to their carnal needs, that we may relieve their distress, if not in all respects, yet at least with some support. Inasmuch, then, as we have found that the son of the most worthy Godiscalchus is in distress, not only from loss of sight, but also from want of food, we hold it necessary to provide for him as far as possible. Wherefore we enjoin thy Experience by this present order to supply to him for sustaining life twenty-four modii of wheat every year, and also twelve modii of beans and twenty decimates [1366] of wine; which may afterwards be debited in thy accounts. So act, therefore, that the bearer of these presents may have to complain of no delay in receiving the gifts of the Lord, and that thou mayest be found partaker in the well administered benefit. __________________________________________________________________
[1366] "Decimatas vini duas pensantes per unamquamque decimatam libras 60 (Ap. Anastasium in Hadriano)...mensuræ vinariæ species videtur." Du Cange. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XLVII.
To Virgilius, Bishop of Arelate (Arles) and Theodorus, Bishop of Massilia (Marseilles).
Gregory to Virgilius, Bishop of Arelate, and Theodorus, Bishop of Massilia, in Gaul.
Though the opportunity of a suitable time and suitable persons has failed me so far for writing to your Fraternity and duly returning your salutation, the result has been that I can now at one and the same time acquit myself of what is due to love and fraternal relationship, and also touch on the complaint of certain persons which has reached us, with respect to the way in which the souls of the erring should be saved. Very many, though indeed of the Jewish religion, resident in this province, and from time to time travelling for various matters of business to the regions of Massilia, have apprized us, that many of the Jews settled in those parts have been brought to the font of baptism more by force than by preaching. Now, I consider the intention in such cases to be worthy of praise, and allow that it proceeds from the love of our Lord. But I fear lest this same intention, unless adequate enforcement from Holy Scripture accompany it, should either have no profitable result, or even (which God forbid) the loss of the souls which we wish to save should further ensue. For, when any one is brought to the font of baptism, not by the sweetness of preaching, but by compulsion, he returns to his former superstition, and dies the worse from having been born again. Let, therefore, your Fraternity stir up such men by frequent preaching, to the end that through the sweetness of their teacher they may desire the more to change their old life. For so our purpose is rightly accomplished, and the mind of the convert returns not again to his former vomit. Wherefore discourse must be addressed to them, such as may burn up the thorns of error in them, and illuminate what is dark in them by preaching, so that your Fraternity may through your frequent admonition receive a reward for them, and lead them, so far as God may grant it, to the regeneration of a new life. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XLVIII.
To Theodorus, Duke of Sardinia.
Gregory to Theodorus, &c.
The justice which you bear in your mind you ought to shew in the light of your deeds. Now Juliana, abbess of the monastery of Saint Vitus which Vitula of venerable memory had once built, has intimated to us that possession of the aforesaid monastery is claimed by Donatus, your official; who, seeing himself to be fortified by your patronage, scorns to have resort to a judicial examination of the case. But now let your Glory enjoin this same official, with the aforesaid hand-maiden of God, to submit the matter to arbitration to the end that whatever may be decided as to the question in dispute by the judgment of the arbitrators may be carried into effect; so that, whatever he may find he has to lose or keep, what he does may not be done as a deed of virtue, but set down to the justice of the law.
Further, Pompeiana, a religious lady, who is known to have established a monastery in her own house, has complained that the mother of her deceased son-in-law wishes to annul his will, to the end that her son's last disposition of his property may be made of none effect. On this account we hold it necessary with paternal charity to exhort your Glory to lend yourself willingly, with due regard to justice, to pious causes, and kindly order that whatever these persons have a rightful claim to be secured to them. Now, we beseech the Lord to direct the way of your life propitiously, and grant you a prosperous administration of your dignified office. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XLIX.
To Honoratus, Deacon [1367] .
Gregory to Honoratus, &c.
Since we have undertaken, however undeserving, a place of government, it is our duty to succour our brethren in need, so far as our power extends. Januarius, then, our brother and fellow-bishop of the metropolitan city of Caralis (Cagliari), has been here in the city of Rome, and informed us that the glorious magister militum, Theodorus, who is known to have received the dukedom of the island of Sardinia, is doing many things there contrary to the commands of our most pious lords, whereby with fitting clemency and gentleness they removed many hardships of proprietors, or of citizens of their empire. Wherefore we desire you at a suitable time to represent the case to our most pious lords in accordance with what the provincials of the aforesaid island justly and reasonably demand; seeing that on a previous occasion also their sacred imperial letters were sent to the glorious Magister militum Edancius, who was in the seventh indiction duke of Sardinia, in which they ordered all these present grievances to be redressed, to the end that their commands, proceeding from the bountifulness of their piety, might be observed unshaken by dukes who might come in course of time to be in power, and that the benefit thereof might not be squandered away by administrators; that so a quiet life might be led under the clement empire of our lords, and for the ordinance which with tranquil mind they grant to their subjects they might receive multiplied compensation at the coming of the eternal judge. __________________________________________________________________
[1367] Honoratus was Gregory's apocrisiarius at Constantinople. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle L.
To Anthemius the Subdeacon [1368] .
Gregory to Anthemius, &c.
Even as, through the ordering of God as it hath pleased Him, we have received the place of government, so ought we to be solicitous for the souls committed to us. Now we find that in the Eumorphian island [1369] , in which, as is well known, there is an oratory of the blessed Peter, Prince of the Apostles, a large number of men with their wives from various patrimonies have fled to it for refuge, through stress of barbarian ferocity. [1370] This we consider inexpedient: for, there being other places of refuge near at hand, why should women have their abode there with monks? Wherefore we enjoin thy Experience by this present order from this time forward to allow no woman, whether she be under ecclesiastical jurisdiction or any other, to take up her abode or tarry there; but let them provide for themselves a place of refuge (there being, as has been said above, so many in the neighbourhood) wherever they may choose; so that all intercourse with women may henceforth be put an end to; lest, if we should desist from taking all the care we can, and guarding against the snares of the enemy, we henceforth (which God forbid) should be culpable in case of anything wrong taking place. Delay not, therefore, to give to the abbot Felix, the bearer of these presents, one thousand five hundred pounds of lead, which he is known to be in want of in the same island, which may be charged afterwards in thy accounts, when the whole quantity shall be known. So proceed, then, that thou mayest provide thyself with some, if any can be profitably used for the buildings of the same island. Moreover, since congregations of monks in the islands are exposed to hardship, we forbid boys under eighteen years of age to be received into these monasteries. Or, if there are any now there, let thy Experience remove them, and send them to the city of Rome. We desire thee in all respects to observe this in Palmaria also and the other islands. __________________________________________________________________
[1368] Anthemius was Defensor ecclesiæ in Campania.
[1369] An island, as well as Palmaria mentioned afterwards, near the Campanian coast, and hence under the care of Anthemius.
[1370] Alluding to the Lombards, who at this time were ravaging Italy. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle LII.
To Symmachus the Defensor [1371] .
Gregory to Symmachus, &c.
My son Boniface the deacon has told me that thy Experience had written to say that a monastery built by Labina, a religious lady, is now ready for monks to be settled in it. And indeed I praised thy solicitude; but we wish that some other place than that which has been assigned for the purpose should be provided; but with the condition, in view of the insecurity of the time, that one above the sea be looked out for, which is either fortified by its position, or at all events can be fortified without much labour. So may we send monks thither, to the end that the island itself, hitherto without a monastery, may be improved by having this way of life upon it.
For carrying out and providing for this business we have given directions to Horosius, the bearer of this present order, with whom thy Experience must go round the shores of Corsica, and if any more suitable place in the possession of any private person should be found, we are prepared to give a suitable price, that we may be able to make some secure arrangement. We have enjoined the aforesaid Horosius to proceed to the island Gorgonia; and let thy Experience accompany him, and do you so avenge the evils that we have ascertained to have found entrance there that through the punishment you shall inflict the aforesaid island may remain corrected for the future also. Let the same abbot Horosius set in order the monasteries of this island, and so hasten to return to us. Let, then, thy Experience so act that in both these matters, that is, both in providing for monasteries in Corsica, and in correcting the monks of Gorgonia, thou mayest make haste to obey, not our will, but that of Almighty God.
Moreover we desire that the priests who abide in Corsica shall be forbidden to have any intercourse with women, except it may be a mother, or a sister, or a wife, towards whom chastity should be observed [1372] . But to the three persons about whom thy Experience has written to my son the aforesaid deacon Boniface, give whatsoever thou deemest sufficient for them, since they are in grievous need; and this we will allow thee afterwards in thy accounts. Given in the month of July. __________________________________________________________________
[1371] I.e. of the Church in Corsica, as appears from the letter.
[1372] The clergy who had been married before ordination were not required to put away their wives. Can. Apostol. V. expressly forbids their doing so under pain of excommunication. The 3rd Nicene Canon, which forbids any bishop, presbyter, or any of the clergy, to have a woman dwelling with him except a mother, or sister, or aunt, or such persons only as are above suspicion, does not touch the case of wives, being directed against the custom of the clergy having females who where neither wives nor of their own kindred, to live with them, who were called synesactæ, or agapetæ. Accordingly a law of Honorius and the younger Theodosius, made in pursuance of the Nicene Canon, adds to the above injunction, "That those who were married before their husbands were ordained should not be relinquished upon pretence of chastity, it being reasonable that those should be joined to the clergy who by their conversation had made their husbands worthy of the priesthood." (Cod. Theodor. lib. xvi. tit. ii. de Episc. l. xliv. Also Cod. Just. lib. i. tit. iii. leg. xix. See Bingham, Bk. vi. ch. ii. sect. 13). But in the West it was now the established rule that neither bishops, priests, nor deacons should have conjugal intercourse with their wives after ordination: and it has been seen under Ep. XLIV. how this rule had been extended to subdeacons. Gregory tells us in his Dialogues (Lib. iv. cap. 11) of a holy presbyter in the province of Nursia, who at the time of his ordination had a wife (presbyteram suam), whom he thenceforth loved as a sister, but avoided as an enemy, never suffering her to come near him for fear of temptation: and he adds, "For this is the way of holy men, that in order to keep far away from what is unlawful they cut themselves off even from what is lawful." Cf. IX. 60. "Hoc tantummodo adjecto ut hi, sicut canonica decrevit auctoritas, uxores quas caste debent regere non relinquant." __________________________________________________________________
Epistle LVI.
To Peter, Subdeacon.
Gregory to Peter, &c.
Being exceedingly desirous of observing the festivals of saints, we have thought it needful to address this our letter of direction to thy Experience, informing thee that we have arranged for the dedication with all solemnity, with the help of the Lord, in the month of August, of the Oratory of the Blessed Mary lately built in the cell of brethren where the abbot Marinianus is known to preside, to the end that what we have begun may through the Lord's operation be completed. But, inasmuch as the poverty of that cell requires that we should assist in that day of festival, we therefore desire thee to give for celebrating the dedication, to be distributed to the poor, ten solidi in gold, thirty amphoræ of wine, two hundred lambs, two orcæ of oil, twelve wethers, and a hundred hens, which may be afterwards charged in thy accounts. Provide therefore for this being done at once without any delay, that our desires, God granting it, may take speedy effect. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle LVII.
To Severus, Bishop.
Gregory to Severus, &c.
We learn from thy Fraternity's epistle that, with regard to the choice of a bishop, some are agreed in favour of Ocleatinus, with whom, since we disallow him, they need not further concern themselves [1373] . But give notice to the inhabitants of that city that, if they should find any one in their own Church fit for that work, they all transfer their choice to him. Otherwise the bearer of these presents will point out a person, of whom I have told him, in favour of whom the notification of the election should be made. Do you, moreover, be prudent and careful with regard to your visitation of the same Church, that its property may be preserved inviolate, and its interests attended to after the accustomed manner under your management. __________________________________________________________________
[1373] The vacant See referred to was that of Ariminum. See following epistle. Severus, who had been commisioned to act as visitor during the vacancy, was bishop of Ficulum, or Ficocle in the same province. See V. 25. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle LVIII.
To Arsicinus Duke, the Clergy, Nobility, and Common People (ordini et plebi) of the City of Ariminum.
Gregory to Arsicinus, &c.
How ready is the devotion of your love in expectation of a pontiff the text of the report which you have addressed to us shews. But, since the ordainer ought in such cases to be exceedingly careful, we are watching over this case with due deliberation. And so we warn your Charity by this present writing that no one need trouble himself to apply to us in favour of Ocleatinus: but, if any one is found in your own city to undertake this work with profit, so that he cannot be objected to by us, let your choice concur in his favour. But, if no one should be found fit for it, we have mentioned to the bearers of these presents one to whom you may no less accord your consent. But do you with one accord pray faithfully, that, whosoever may be ordained, he may be able both to be profitable to you and to display priestly service worthy of our God. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle LXI.
To Gennadius, Patrician and Exarch of Africa.
Gregory to Gennadius, &c.
That you have unceasingly the fear of God before your eyes, and pursue justice, the subdued necks of enemies testify; but, that the grace of Christ may keep your Glory in the same prosperity, restrain, as you have been wont, with speedy prohibition whatever things you discover to be committed wrongfully, so that, fortified with the arms of justice, you may overcome hostile attacks with the power of faith, which is the top of all virtue. Now Marinianus, our brother and fellow-bishop of the city of Turris [1374] has tearfully represented to us that the poor of his city are being vexed everywhere, and afflicted by expenses in the way of gifts or payments [1375] ; and further that the religious [1376] of his church endure serious molestation from the men of Theodorus the magister militum, and suffer bodily injuries; and that this thing is breaking out to such a pitch that (shocking to say) they are thrust into prison, and that he himself also is seriously hindered by the aforesaid glorious person in causes pertaining to his Church. How opposed such things are, if indeed they are true, to the discipline of the republic you yourselves know. And, since it befits your Excellency to amend all these things, greeting your Eminence I demand of you that you suffer them to be done no more; but straightly order him to abstain from harming the Church, and that none be aggrieved by burdens laid upon them, or payments [1377] , beyond what reason allows, and that, if there should be any suits, they be determined not by the terror of power, but by order of law. I pray you, then, so correct all these things, the Lord inspiring you, by the menace of your injunction that the glorious Theodorus and his men may abstain from such things, if not out of regard to rectitude, yet at any rate out of fear inspired by your command; that so, to the advancement of your credit and reward, justice with liberty may flourish in the parts committed to your charge. __________________________________________________________________
[1374] Turritana civitas, a city in Sardinia, called by Pliny (lib. iii. c. 7) Turris Lybissonis, and by Ptolemy (lib. iii. c. 5) Turris Byssonis.
[1375] Commodalibus dispendiis. The word commodum is used not only for a stipend, or a present or gratuity, but also for exacted payments, "Pro quavis pensitatione vel etiam exactione usurpat Gregor. M." Du Cange.
[1376] Religiosos ecclesiæ. By the terms religiosi and religiosæ were denoted not only monks, nuns, dedicated virgins, and clergy, but also other persons devoted to piety and good works in connection with the Church. Cf. xi. 54, "laico religioso." See reff. in Index under Religiosus.
[1377] Angariis seu commodis. Angarium, or angaria, denotes any forced service imposed on people, either rendered in person or in money payment. See also V. 8, note 4. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle LXII.
To Januarius, Archbishop of Caralis (Cagliari) in Sardinia.
Gregory to Januarius, &c.
If our Lord Himself by the testimony of Holy Scripture declares Himself to be the husband of widows and father of orphans, we also, the members of His body, ought with the soul's supreme affection to set ourselves to imitate the head, and saving justice, to stand by orphans and widows if need be. And, having been given to understand that Catella, a religious woman who has a son serving here in the holy Roman Church over which under God we preside, is being troubled by the exactions and molestations of certain persons, we think it needful to exhort your Fraternity by this letter not to refuse (saving justice) to afford your protection to this same woman, knowing that by things of this kind you both make the Lord your debtor and bind us to you the more in the bonds of charity. For we wish the causes of the aforesaid woman, whether now or in future, to be terminated by your judgment, that she may be relieved from the annoyance of legal proceedings, and yet be by no means excused from submitting to a just judgment. Now I pray the Lord to direct your life in a prosperous course towards Himself, and Himself to bring you in His mercy to the kingdom of glory which is to come. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle LXIII.
To Januarius, Bishop of Caralis (Cagliari) in Sardinia [1378] .
Gregory to Januarius, &c.
Though your Fraternity in the zeal of righteousness gives fitting attention to the protection of divers persons, yet we believe that you will be the more prone to succour those whom a letter from us may commend to you. Know then that Pompeiana, a religious woman, has represented to us through one of her people that she endures many grievances continually and unreasonably from certain men, and on this account has petitioned us to commend her in our letters to you. Wherefore, greeting your Fraternity with the affection of charity that is due to you, we have felt that we must needs commend the aforesaid woman to you, that, with due regard to justice, thy Fraternity may not allow her to be aggrieved in any way contrary to equity, or to be subjected to any expense unadvisedly. But if it should happen that she has any suits, let the matter of dispute be debated before chosen arbitrators, and whatsoever shall be decided, let it be so carried into effect quietly through your assistance that both reward may accrue to you for such a work, and she who has been commended by our letters may rejoice in having found justice. __________________________________________________________________
[1378] Other letters addressed to or relating to this bishop, who was an old man of very unsatisfactory character, are I. 63; II. 49; III. 36; IV. 8, 9, 15, 26, 27, 29; V. 2; IX. 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 25, 65; XIV. 2. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle LXVI.
To Felix, Bishop of Messana (Messene).
Gregory to Felix, &c.
Customs which are found to bring a burden upon churches it becomes us in our consideration to discontinue, lest any should be forced to contribute to quarters from which they ought rather to look for contributions. Accordingly, it is thy duty to preserve intact the custom of the clergy and others, and to transmit to them every year what has been accustomed: but for the future we forbid thee to transmit anything to us. And, since we take no delight in presents (xeniis) [1379] , we have received with thanks the Palmatianæ [1380] which thy Fraternity has sent us, but have caused them to be sold for an adequate price, which we have transmitted separately to thy Fraternity, for fear lest thou shouldest have felt the expense. Further, since we have learnt that thy Charity is desirous of coming to us, we admonish thee by the present letter not to take the trouble of coming: but pray for us, that the more we are separated by length of way, the more we may be joined one to another in mind, with the help of Christ, by charity; to the end that, aiding each other by mutual supplication, we may resign our office unimpaired to the Judge that is to come. __________________________________________________________________
[1379] See II. 23, note 8.
[1380] Probably vestes palmatæ, i.e. robes interwoven or embroidered with palm leaves. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle LXVII.
To Peter, Subdeacon.
Gregory to Peter, &c.
If with kind disposition we meet the needs of our neighbours by shewing compassion, we shall undoubtedly find the Lord mercifully inclined to our petitions. Now we have learnt that Pastor, who labours under exceeding weakness of sight, having a wife and two slaves, who also had formerly been with the glorious lady Jonatha, is suffering from great need. Wherefore, we admonish thy Experience, by the writing of this present order, not to delay giving him for his sustenance three hundred modii of wheat, and also as many modii of beans, which may afterwards be charged in thy accounts. So act, then, as both thyself to obtain the benefit of reward for thy good service, and to carry our orders into effect. In the month of August. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle LXXII.
To Peter, Subdeacon.
Gregory to Peter, &c.
Thou hast learnt from a former letter [1381] that we have desired our brethren and fellow-bishops dwelling in the island of Sicily to assemble here for the anniversary of the blessed Peter the apostle. But, seeing that their suit with the magnificent Justin the ex-prætor [1382] has meanwhile hindered them, and that there is not now sufficient time for coming and returning, we do not wish them to be troubled before winter. But Gregory of Agrigentum, Leo of Catana, and Victor of Panormus, we by all means desire to come to us before winter [1383] . Further, get together from strangers [1384] corn of this year's growth to the value of fifty pounds of gold, and lay it up in Sicily in places where it will not rot, that we may send thither in the month of February as many ships as we can to convey this corn to us. But, in case of our delaying to send ships, do thou thyself provide some, and, with the help of the Lord, transmit this same corn to us in February, with the exception, however, of the corn which we expect to have sent to us now, according to custom, in the months of September or October. Let thy Experience, then, so proceed that, without annoyance to any husbandman (colonus) of the Church [1385] , the corn may be collected, since there has been here such a scanty crop that, unless by God's help corn be collected from Sicily, there is a serious prospect of famine. But keep guard in all ways over the ships that have always been assigned to the use of Holy Church, as the letters also addressed to thee by the glorious ex-consul Leo concur in directing thee to do. Moreover, many come hither desiring sundry lands or islands belonging to our Church to be leased to them; and some, indeed, we refuse, but to others we have already granted their request. But let thy Experience see to the advantage of Holy Church, remembering that thou hast before the most sacred body of the blessed apostle Peter received power over his patrimony. And, though letters should reach you from hence, allow nothing to be done in any way to the disadvantage of the patrimony, since we neither remember to have given, nor are disposed to give away, any thing without good reason. __________________________________________________________________
[1381] See Ep. XXXVI.
[1382] See Ep. II. If this Epistle is rightly assigned to the ninth Indiction, the title ex-prætor may possibly be an error in the text since Justin is still addressed as prætor in the following Indiction (II. 33). Libertinus appears to have succeeded him as Prætor of Sicily in the eleventh Indiction. See III. 38.
[1383] Two of these bishops, Gregory and Leo, are referred to afterwards as having been at Rome to answer to certain charges. See II. 33, and III. 12.
[1384] Extraneis, i.e. growers or vendors of corn outside the patrimony of the Church.
[1385] See I. 44, note 1. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle LXXIV.
To Gennadius, Patrician and Exarch of Africa.
Gregory to Gennadius, &c.
As the Lord hath made your Excellency to shine with the light of victories in the military wars of this life, so ought you to pose the enemies of the Church with all activity of mind and body, to the end that from both kinds of triumph your reputation may shine forth more and more, when in forensic wars, too, you firmly resist the adversaries of the Catholic Church in behalf of the Christian people, and bravely fight ecclesiastical battles as warriors of the Lord. For it is known that men heretical in religion, if they have liberty allowed them to do harm (which God forbid), rise strenuously against the catholic faith, to the end that they may transfuse, if they can, the poison of their heresy to the corrupting of the members of the Christian body. For we have learnt that they are lifting up their necks against the Catholic Church, the Lord being opposed to them, and desire to pervert the faith of the Christian profession. But let your Eminence suppress their attempts, and subdue their proud necks to the yoke of rectitude [1386] . Moreover, order the council of catholic bishops to be admonished not to appoint their primate on the ground of his standing, without regard to the merits of his life, since before God it is not the more distinguished rank, but the action of a better life, that is approved [1387] . But let the primate himself live, not, as is customary, here and there in the country, but in one city according to their selection, to the end that he may be better able to bring to bear the influence of the dignity that has fallen to him in resisting the Donatists. Moreover, if any from the Council of Numidia should desire to come to the Apostolic See, permit them to do so; and stop any who may be disposed to bring charges against their character. Great increase of glory will accrue to your Excellency with the Creator, if through you the union of the divided churches could be restored. For when He beholds the gifts granted by Him given back to His glory, He bestows gifts so much the more abundantly as He sees the dignity of His religion to be thereby enlarged. Furthermore, bestowing on you, as is due, the affection of our paternal charity, we beseech the Lord to make your arm strong for subduing your enemies, and to sharpen your soul with zeal for the faith like the edge of a quivering sword. __________________________________________________________________
[1386] The heretics (so called, though they were really rather schismatics than heretics) were the Donatists, who still lingered in Africa in spite of imperial edicts for their suppression. What Gregory here urges the Exarch to do is to put in force the existing laws against them. A series of imperial laws against the Donatists will be found in Cod. Theod. Bk. xvi. tit. 5, that of Honorius, a.d. 414, being especially severe.
[1387] It was the immemorial custom in the provinces of Africa generally for the senior bishop of the province according to the date of his consecration to be appointed primate, instead of the bishop of the civil metropolis being such in virtue of his See, as was the rule elsewhere. (The province of Africa proper, or Africa Proconsularis, was however an exception; for in it the bishop of Carthage was always the primate.) Hence in Africa the designation Metropolitan was not used, but that of Primate or Senior (senex). Gregory here, though allowing the old custom of movable primacies, forbids the necessary election of the senior bishop: and this in order to guard against the appointment of unfit persons. His main motive, as appears from Epistle LXXVI., addressed to the bishops of the province of Numidia, was to preclude the elevation to the primacy of any bishop who had once been a Donatist. For in it he allows the retention of the old African custom in all respects, save only that no bishop who had been a Donatist was ever to be appointed primate. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle LXXV.
To Gennadius, Patrician, and Exarch throughout Africa.
Gregory to Gennadius, Patrician, &c.
Had not such great success of the military exploits of your Excellency arisen from the merit of your faith and from the grace of the Christian religion, it would not have been so greatly to be wondered at, since we know that the like has been granted to military leaders of old time. But when, God granting it, you forestall future victories, not by carnal provision, but rather by prayers, it becomes a matter of astonishment how your glory comes down upon you, not from counsels of this world, but from God, who bestows it from above. For where is not the renown of your deserts in people's mouths? And report goes that it is not from a desire of shedding blood that you constantly court these wars, but for the sake of extending the republic in which we see that God is worshipped, to the end that the name of Christ may be spread abroad through subject nations by preaching of the faith. For, as your outward deeds of valour make you eminent in this life, so also the inward adornment of your character, proceeding from a clean heart, glorifies you in making you partaker of celestial joys to come. For we have learnt that your Excellency has done very many things of advantage for feeding the sheep of the blessed Peter, Prince of the apostles, so as to have restored to him no small portions of his patrimony, which had been denuded of their proper cultivators, by supplying them with Datitian settlers. Whatever, then, with Christian disposition you confer on him, you receive retribution for through hope in the judgment to come. Wherefore we have thought fit to commend to your Eminence Hilarus [1388] , who is also the hearer of these presents, that you may bestow on him (though ever with regard to justice) your accustomed affection in matters wherein he may intimate his need of your help. Now, addressing to you the greeting of our paternal charity, we beseech our God and Saviour mercifully to protect your Eminence for the consolation of the holy republic, and to fortify you with the strength of His arm for spreading His name more and more through the neighbouring nations. __________________________________________________________________
[1388] See I. 77, note 2. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle LXXVII.
To All the Bishops of Numidia.
Gregory to all the Bishops of Numidia.
If ever, most dear brethren in Christ, a troublesome mixture of tares intrudes itself among green corn, it is necessary for the hand of the husbandman to root it up entirely, lest the future fruit of the fertile corn should be obstructed. Wherefore let us too, who, however unworthy, have undertaken the cultivation of the field of the Lord, hasten to render the corn pure from all offence of tares, that the field of the Lord may fructify with more abundant increase. Now you requested through Hilarus our chartulary [1389] from our predecessor of blessed memory that you might retain all the customs of past time, which, from the beginnings of the ordinances of the blessed Peter, Prince of the apostles, long antiquity has so far retained. And we, indeed, according to the tenour of your representation, allow your custom (so long as it clearly makes no claim to the prejudice of the catholic faith) to remain undisturbed, whether as to constituting primates or as to other points; save that with respect to those who attain to the episcopate from among the Donatists, we by all means forbid them to be advanced to the dignity of primacy, even though their standing should denote them for that position [1390] . But let it suffice them to take care of the people committed to them, without aiming at the topmost place of the primacy in preference to those prelates whom the Catholic faith hath both taught and engendered in the bosom of the Church. Do you, therefore, most dear brethren, anticipate our admonitions in the zeal of the charity of the Lord, knowing that the strict Judge will bring into examination all we do, and will approve every one of us with regard not to the prerogative of a higher rank, but to the merits of our works. I beseech you, therefore, love ye one another mutually, having peace among yourselves in Christ, and with one purpose of heart oppose ye heretics and enemies of the Church. Be ye solicitous for the souls of your neighbours: persuade all ye can to faith by the preaching of charity, holding before them also the terror of the future judgment; inasmuch as ye are appointed to be shepherds, and the Lord of the flocks expects from the shepherds to whom He has committed them the fruit of a multiplied flock. And if He should foresee an augmentation of His own flock through your bestowal of more diligent care upon it, He will assuredly adorn you with manifold gifts of the heavenly kingdom. Furthermore, addressing to you the greeting of fraternal love, I pray the Lord that He would make you, whom He has chosen to be shepherds of souls, worthy in His sight, and Himself so order our deeds here that He may accept them as they deserve in the future life. __________________________________________________________________
[1389] "Chartularius. Qui chartas tractant, qui chartis deserviunt....Dignitas ecclesiastica etiam fuit." Du Cange. This Hilary is commended to Gennadius the Exarch of Africa, I. 75, and again mentioned as Gregory's Chartulary in Africa, II. 48; X. 37; XII. 28, 29.
[1390] See I. 74, note 9. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle LXXVIII.
To Leo, Bishop in Corsica.
Gregory to Leo, &c.
Our pastoral charge constrains us to come with anxious consideration to the succour of a church that is destitute of the control of a priest [1391] . And, inasmuch as we have learnt that the church of Saona for many years, since the death of its pontiff, has been thus entirely destitute, we have thought it needful to enjoin on thy Fraternity the work of visiting it, to the end that through thy ordering its welfare may be promoted. In this church also and in its parishes we grant thee licence to ordain deacons and presbyters; concerning whom, however, let it be thy care to make diligent enquiry, that they be not personally in any respect such as are rejected by the sacred canons. But whomsoever thy Fraternity has perceived to be worthy of so great a ministry, having ascertained that their manners and actions fit them for ordination, them, by permission of our authority, thou mayest freely promote to the aforesaid office. We desire thee, therefore, to make use of all the property of the above named church as though thou wert its proper pontiff, until we write to thee again. Be, then, so diligent and careful in all these matters that through thy ordering all things may, with the help of God, be salubriously arranged to the Church's profit. __________________________________________________________________
[1391] Sacerdotis. The term includes bishops as well as presbyters, and is used in this and the two following Epistles, as usually elsewhere by Gregory, to denote the former in distinction from the latter. The occasion of this and the two following Epistles will be seen to be as follows. The See of Saona in Corsica had been for some time vacant. It rested with the clergy and nobles of the island (see above, Ep. LXXX.), to elect a new bishop; but they had failed to do so; and consequently Gregory remedied their neglect by himself filling up the vacancy. His right to do so would not be questioned there, Corsica as well as Sicily being among the Suburbicarian provinces which were under the acknowledged patriarchal jurisdiction of the See of Rome. Meanwhile he also commissioned Leo, the bishop of a neighbouring See (to whom this letter is addressed), to make a visitation of the Church of Saona, and exercise episcopal authority there, till the new bishop should take possession. There are several other Epistles, not included in this translation, appointing visitors of various churches. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle LXXIX.
To Martinus, Bishop in Corsica.
Gregory to Martinus, &c.
To those who ask for what is just it behoves us to lend a kindly ear, to the end both that the petitioners may find the remedies they hope for, and that the anxious care of a shepherd be not wanting to the Church. And inasmuch as the church of Tanates, in which thy Fraternity was formerly adorned with sacerdotal dignity, has for its sins been so taken possession of and ruined by hostile savagery that no further hope remains of thy returning thither, we appoint thee, by authority of these presents, undisputed cardinal priest [1392] in the Church of Saona, which has now been long deprived of the aid of a pontiff. Do thou therefore so arrange and order all things according to the injunctions of the canons with vigilant care in the love of God, that both thy Fraternity may rejoice in having attained thy desires, and the Church of God may be filled with answering joy for having received thee as Cardinal pontiff. __________________________________________________________________
[1392] Cardinal bishops, presbyters, or deacons, meant formerly such as were regularly instituted and attached to some particular see, parish, or church, which constituted their title (titulas). They were then said to be incardinati, the act of so instituting them being called incardinatio. Cf. II. 37; XIV. 7. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle LXXX.
To the Clergy and Nobles of Corsica.
Gregory to the Clergy, &c...A paribus [1393] .
Although for a long time it has caused you no sorrow that the Church of God should be without a pontiff, yet as for us, we are both compelled by the charge of the office we bear and bound especially by the charity of our love for you, to take thought for its government, knowing that in its supervision lies at the same time advantage to your souls. For, if the care of a shepherd be wanting to a flock, it easily falls into the snares of the lier in wait. Accordingly, inasmuch as the church of Saona has long been deprived of the aid of a priest, we have held it necessary to constitute Martinus, our brother and fellow-bishop, cardinal priest of the same [1394] , but to enjoin on Leo our brother and fellow-bishop the work of its visitation. To the latter we have also granted licence to ordain presbyters and deacons in it and in its parishes, and have permitted him to make use of its property so long as be shall be there, as though he were its proper pontiff. And so we admonish you by these present writings that your Charity receive the aforesaid visitor with all devotion, and shew him obedience in whatever is reasonable, as becomes sons of the Church, to the end that, supported by your devotion, he may be able to accomplish all that is found to conduce to the advantage of the above-named church. __________________________________________________________________
[1393] See I, 25, note 8.
[1394] See note under Ep. LXXIX. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Book II.
Epistle III.
To Velox, Magister Militium.
Gregory to Velox, &c.
We informed your Glory some time ago that soldiers had been prepared to come to your parts; but, inasmuch as your letter had signified to us that the enemy were collected and were marching hitherward, we for this reason have detained them here. But now it appears to be advantageous that a certain number of soldiers should be sent to you, whom let thy Glory be careful to admonish and exhort to be prepared for toil. And, when you find an opportunity, confer with our glorious sons Maurilius and Vitalianus, and do whatever, with the help of God, they may appoint you to do for the advantage of the republic. And, should you ascertain that the unspeakable Ariulph [1395] is making an incursion hitherward or to the parts about Ravenna, do you labour in his rear, as becomes brave men, to the end that your renown may by God's help advance still more in the republic from the quality of your labour. This, however, before all, we admonish you to do: to release without any delay or excuse the family of Maloin and Adobin, Vigild and Grussing [1396] , who are known to be with the glorious Magister militum Maurilius, to the end that the men of the aforesaid Maurilius, when they come to your parts, may without any impediment march along with them.
[In Colbert. and Paul. diac., Die. V. Kal. Oct. Indict. 10.] __________________________________________________________________
[1395] Ariulph was the Lombard Duke of Spoletum, one of the principal cities in Italy occupied by the Lombards. For further reference to him cf. II. 29, 30, 46; IX. 98. He was at this time preparing, and suspected by Gregory of such intention, for an attack on Rome. Cf. Prologom. Velox (to whom this letter is addressed), and Maurilius and Vitalian (alluded to in it, and addressed in Epp. 29, 30), were Roman Generals (magistri militum) in command of imperial forces: but where they were is not apparent. From an allusion to Suana (or Soana) as within reach of the last two they may be supposed to have been somewhere in Tuscia.
[1396] Apparently a familia of slaves belonging to Velox, but at this time with Maurilius. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle VI.
To the Neapolitans.
Gregory to the clergy, nobles, gentry, and commonalty [1397] dwelling at Naples.
Although the sincere devotion of spiritual sons in behalf of their mother Church needs no exhortation, nevertheless, it ought to be stirred up by letter, lest it should suppose itself slighted. On this account I approach your love with an admonition of paternal charity, that with many tears and with one accord we may render thanks to our Redeemer, who has not suffered you to walk along pathless ways under so perverse a teacher, but has made publicly known the crimes of your unworthy pastor. For Demetrius, to wit, who even before had not deserved to be called a bishop, has been found to be involved in transactions to such an extent and of such a kind that, if he had received judgment without mercy according to the character of his deeds, he would undoubtedly have been condemned to a most hard death by both divine and human laws. But since, being reserved for penance, he has been deprived of the dignity of the priesthood, we cannot suffer the Church of God to remain long without a teacher, since it is laid down by canonical rules that, on the death or removal of a pastor, the church should not be long deprived of the priesthood [1398] . Wherefore, I have thought it necessary to admonish your Charity by this present writing that neither delay nor the discord which has been wont to generate scandals ensue to hinder your election of a pontiff. But seek you out with all care such a person as all by common consent may rejoice in, and as is in no respect rejected by the sacred canons; to the end that the office which the most wicked of men had polluted by his evil administration may be worthily filled and administered by him, whoever he may be, who, by the grace of Christ, and with His approval, shall be ordained. __________________________________________________________________
[1397] Clero, nobilibus, ordini et plebi. Ordo seems to denote persons of official or other rank, above the commonalty, but below the nobility. In some cases the corresponding address is to clero, ordini et plebi (as in I. 81; V. 26); in others to clero et nobilibus only. All such expressions shew that the election of bishops rested with the members, laity as well as clergy, of each church, though the bishop of Rome, wherever his jurisdiction extended reserved to himself the power of approving or disallowing the election. In the election at Naples, referred to in this Epistle, there appears to have been a difficulty in arriving at an unanimous choice. Other Epistles referring to the case are II. 9, 10, 15, 26; III. 35. From the last of these it appears how it was eventually settled. See especially note 6 under II. 9.
[1398] Sacerdotii; meaning here episcopacy. See I. 78, note 2. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle VII.
To Maximianus, Bishop of Syracuse [1399] .
Gregory to Maximianus, &c.
We execute more efficiently our heavenly commission, if we share our burdens with our brethren. For this cause we appoint thee, our most reverend brother and fellow-bishop, to have administration over all the churches of Sicily in the name of the Apostolical See, so that whosoever there is reckoned as being in a condition of religion may by our authority be subject to thy Fraternity, to the end that it may not hereafter be necessary for them to make such long sea-voyages in resorting to us for slight causes. But if by any chance there are matters of difficulty which can by no means be settled by the judgment of thy Fraternity, in these only let our judgment be solicited, that so we may occupy ourselves more efficaciously in greater causes, being relieved from the least. And be it understood that we give this delegation of authority, not to thy place, but to thy person, because we have learnt from thy past life what we may presume of thee in thy future conduct.
The month of December, the tenth Indiction. __________________________________________________________________
[1399] Maximianus had been a monk, and for a time abbot, in Gregory's monastery of St. Andrew at Rome, had accompanied him to Constantinople, and been recommended by him soon after his own accession, and elected Bishop of Syracuse (Joan. Diac. Vit. S. Greg. ii. 11, 12). He was highly esteemed by Gregory, and mentioned in his Dialogues as having been miraculously delivered from shipwreck on his return from Constantinople to Rome (Dialog. iii. 36. Cf. Hom. 34 in Evang.). His appointment now as delegate of the Roman See in Sicily would relieve Peter the subdeacon of his temporary jurisdiction over the ecclesiastics there. Maximianus died in November, a.d. 594. See V. 17, 22. It is to be observed that the general authority now given to Maximianus was granted to him personally, and not permanently to the See of Syracuse. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle IX.
To the Neapolitans.
Gregory to the gentry and commonalty (ordini et plebi) residing at Naples.
The communication you have addressed to us has made manifest what your opinion is of our brother and fellow-bishop Paulus [1400] : and we congratulate you in that your experience of him for a few days has been such that you desire to have him as your cardinal bishop [1401] . But, since in matters of supreme importance there ought to be no hasty decision, so we, Christ helping us, will arrange after mature deliberation what is to be done hereafter, his character meanwhile, in course of time, having become better known to you.
Wherefore, most beloved sons, obey ye the aforesaid man, if you truly love him, and with devoted minds meet his wishes in peaceful concurrence, to the end that the affection of your mutual charity may so bind you to each other, that the enemy who flies about you raging may find no way through any of you for creeping in to break up your unanimity. Further, when we shall have perceived the aforesaid bishop offering to God the fruit of souls which we long for, God Himself also approving, we will do afterwards whatever divine inspiration may suggest to our heart, with regard to his person and to your desire. __________________________________________________________________
[1400] He was bishop of Nepe, which as well as Naples, was in the urbicarian province of Rome. The filling up of the See of Naples appears to have been a cause of great anxiety to Gregory, probably because of the party feeling prevailing in the city. In his first letter to the Neapolitans (supra, Ep. 6), he had contemplated the speedy election of a new bishop in the usual way; but it appears from this Epistle that he had seen reason to defer such election, sending meanwhile Paulus of Nepe to administer the See. Some at least in Naples appear to have wished this Paulus to be elected soon after his arrival among them; but this Gregory would not allow till he could see better how things were going. Such provisional arrangement continued, it seems, for more than a year, another bishop having been commissioned to supply Paul's place in his own Church of Nepe against the Easter festival (II. 26). That Gregory's fear of opposition to Paul were justified appears from the subsequent mention of a violent attack made on him by a party opposed to him at Naples (III. 1). He meanwhile, not liking his position, had already been anxious to return to his own see (II. 15), but had not been allowed. When he went at last, it seems that an election had taken place, but had proved futile from the person chosen having refused to be ordained (III. 15). Eventually the election had taken place, by Gregory's direction, not at Naples, but at Rome (III. 35), one Fortunatus being chosen (III. 61). The whole history of the case illustrates the troubles incident to popular election of bishops at that time, especially in great cities.
[1401] See I. 79, note 5. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle X.
To Paulus, Bishop of Naples [1402] .
Gregory to Paulus, &c.
If we administer safely the priestly office which we have received, without doubt both Divine assistance and the affection of our spiritual sons will not be wanting to us. Wherefore let thy Fraternity take care to shew thyself in all things such that the testimony which the clergy, the nobility, and all the people together, of the city of Naples bears to thee may be strengthened by the increase of thy goodness. Thou oughtest, then, so to bind thyself to continual employment in exhorting the aforesaid people that the Divine husbandman may store in his garners the fruit of thy word, which thou shalt have gathered from them by thy labours. But till such time as we shall be able, God revealing to us His will, to deliberate concerning the things which our aforesaid sons request us should be done, we grant leave for clerics to be ordained from the ranks of the laity, and also for manumissions to be solemnly celebrated before thee in the same church. Moreover we desire thee to observe without hesitation the customs of the clerical order and of the presbyters of the above-named church: and do thou also keep such diligent watch in the instruction of the same, that, abstaining from all that is unsuitable or unlawful, they may stand fast, under thy exhortations, ministering with due obedience, in the service of our God. The month of January, the tenth Indiction. __________________________________________________________________
[1402] Though called here Episcopus Neapolitanus, it is apparent from this and other Epistles that he was as yet only the episcopal visitor, not the regular, or cardinal, bishop of Naples. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XII.
To Castorius, Bishop of Ariminum.
Gregory to Castorius, &c.
The illustrious lady Timothea has intimated to us by a petitionary notification, as is set forth below, that she has founded an oratory within the city of Ariminum in a place belonging to her, which she desires to have consecrated in honour of the holy cross. And, accordingly, dearest brother, if the said construction is in the jurisdiction of thy city, and if it is known that no body has been buried there, then, after reception in the first place of a legitimate endowment, that is, of two-thirds of her whole property (excepting slaves), of her movables and fixtures and live stock, the usufract being reserved to her for her life, and such endowment having been secured by municipal deeds, thou wilt solemnly consecrate the aforesaid oratory without any public mass, on the condition that no baptistery shall be constructed in the same place in future times, and that thou appoint not a cardinal presbyter [1403] . And if perchance she should prefer having masses said there, let her know that she must ask thy Love for a presbyter, to the end nothing else may be presumed by any other priest whatever. Further, thou wilt reverently deposit the holy things [1404] she has provided. __________________________________________________________________
[1403] See I. 79, note 5.
[1404] Sanctuaria, meaning apparently relics, the deposition of which usually accompanied the consecration of holy places. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XV.
To Paul, Bishop.
Gregory to Paul, &c.
I appointed thy Fraternity to preside for the present over the church of Naples, to the end that thou mightest convert all thou canst to God by persuasive preaching. And, while thou oughtest to be giving thy whole mind to this work, thou art in haste to return before bringing forth this fruit to the Lord, and requestest me to settle the affairs of this same church speedily, my mind being meanwhile by no means unoccupied in this matter. But, being desirous of fortifying securely the well-being of this Church, I hold it needful to consider the matter with long continued deliberation, so as to be able to arrange its affairs by the ordination of a worthy whom Christ may reveal to us. Wherefore let thy Fraternity meanwhile study to watch for the good of souls, so that the opinion I have of thee may be strengthened by the effect of thy working. All thou hast written concerning the deacon Peter has now been made known to us by the ex-consul Theodorus. And so, now that I know that he is constant to thee, and, according to thy testimony, studies the advantage of the Church, he ought to be afraid of no one's opposition or enmity, but persevere in benefiting the Church and serving God all the more watchfully as he feels that others have a grudge against him; that so they may have no power at all to injure him. Moreover, thy Fraternity ought not hereafter to be suspected with regard to him; since no surreptitious proceedings will have effect on me [1405] . __________________________________________________________________
[1405] For the occasion of this letter, see II. 9, note 6. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XVIII.
To Natalis, Bishop of Salona [1406] .
Gregory to Natalis, &c.
I have learnt, dearest brother, from many who have come from thy city that, neglecting thy pastoral charge, thou occupiest thyself wholly in feastings: which report I should not have believed had not my own experience of thy conduct confirmed it. For that thou in no wise art intent on reading, in no wise givest attention to exhortation, but art even ignorant of the very use and purpose of ecclesiastical order, there is this in evidence, that thou knowest not how to observe reverence to those who are put over thee. For, when thou hadst been forbidden in writing by our predecessor of holy memory to retain in thy heart the soreness of thy long displeasure against Honoratus thy archdeacon, and when this had been positively interdicted thee by myself also, thou, disregarding the commands of God, and setting at naught our letters, didst attempt by a cunning device to degrade the aforesaid Honoratus thy archdeacon under colour of promoting him to a higher dignity. Thus it was contrived that, he being removed from the post of archdeacon, thou mightest call in another who would have fallen in with thy manner of life, the aforesaid man having, as I think, displeased thee for no other cause but that he prevented thee from giving sacred vessels and vestments to thy relations. Which case both I now, and my predecessor of holy memory formerly, have wished to subject to an accurate investigation; but thou, being conscious of what thou hadst done, hast put off sending hither a representative instructed for trial of the case. Wherefore let thy Fraternity, even after admonition so often repeated, repent of the error of thy wrongdoing, and restore the aforesaid Honoratus to his post immediately on the receipt of my letter. Which if thou shouldest defer doing, know that the use of the pallium, granted thee by this See, is taken from thee. But if, even when thou hast lost the pallium, thou still persistest in thy contumacy, know that thou art deprived of participation of the body and blood of the Lord. And after this it will be needful for us to enquire more fully into the charges against thee, and to consider with the utmost care and investigation whether thou shouldest retain even thy episcopate. Him also who, against the rule of justice, has consented to be promoted to the place of another we depose from the dignity of the said archdeaconry. And, should he presume any longer to minister in this same office, let him know that he is deprived of participation in holy communion. Do thou, therefore, dearest brother, in no wise provoke us further, lest, having set us at naught when in an attitude of charity towards thee, thou shouldest find us very hard in our severity. Having, therefore, restored the archdeacon Honoratus to his place, send to us with speed a person instructed in the case, who may be able to shew to me by his allegations how the matter should be equitably proceeded with. For we have commanded the said archdeacon to come to us, that, having heard the assertions of the parties, we may come to whatever decision may be just and well-pleasing to Almighty God. For we defend no one on the ground of personal love, but, God helping us, keep the rule of justice, putting aside respect to any man's person. __________________________________________________________________
[1406] Salona was the metropolis of the province of Dalmatia in the diocese of Illyricum Occidentale, and Natalis, in virtue of his occupancy of the See, the Ecclesiastical Metropolitan of the province. For Gregory's subsequent dealings with this bishop see II. 19, 20, 52; III. 8, 32. For the occasion of this Epistle, see I. 19, note 5. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XIX.
To all the Bishops of Dalmatia.
Gregory to all the bishops constituted throughout Dalmatia.
Though desiring to visit your Fraternity frequently through the intercourse of letters, yet, when some special case demands our attention, we wish to take the opportunity of fulfilling two duties at once, so as both to refresh our brotherly souls in the way of visitation and to explain accurately matters that come up for notice, lest ignorance of them should leave the mind confused. Now when our brother Natalis, bishop of the city of Salona, wished to advance the archdeacon Honoratus to the order of the priesthood, who thereupon declined being advanced to a higher order, the latter demanded my predecessor of holy memory, in a petition that he sent, that he should not be so advanced against his will. For he alleged that the thing was attempted, not for the sake of promoting him, but in consequence of displeasure against him. Thereupon our predecessor of holy memory addressed letters to Natalis, our brother and fellow-bishop, interdicting him from promoting the archdeacon Honoratus against his will, or retaining in his heart the soreness of the displeasure which he had conceived against him. And when we too had laid the same interdiction on the said Natalis, he, not only disregarding the commands of God, but also setting at naught our letters, attempted, it is said, craftily to degrade the aforesaid archdeacon, in a way contrary to custom, under colour of promoting him to a higher dignity. Thus it was contrived that, having removed him from the archdeaconry, he might call in another person to minister in the place of the deposed archdeacon. Now we think that this Honoratus may have fallen under the displeasure of his bishop on account of having prevented him from giving sacred vessels to his relations: and both my predecessor of holy memory formerly and I now have wished to investigate the case accurately; but he, conscious of what he had done, has put off sending a representative with a view to its trial, lest the truth with respect to his doings might appear. We therefore, now that he has been already so often admonished by letter, and has so far been pertinaciously obstinate, have taken order for his being admonished once more in letters sent to him through the bearer of these presents, to the end that he may, immediately on the arrival of the bearer of these presents, receive the archdeacon Honoratus into his former place. And if, with heart still hardened, he should contumaciously defer restoring him to the said position, we order that for his contumacy so many times exhibited he be deprived of the use of the pallium granted to him by this See. But if, even after loss of the pallium, he should persevere in the same pertinacity, we order him to be debarred from participation in the body and blood of the Lord. For it is right that he should find those severe in justice whom he set at naught when they approached him in charity. Wherefore neither do we now deviate from the path of justice, which the aforesaid bishop has despised; but, when he whose guilt has by no means been made apparent to us has been restored to his place, we enjoin the bishop Natalis to send to us a person with instructions, who may be able by his allegations to prove to us the right intentions of the said bishop. For we have caused also the said archdeacon to come to us, that, having heard the assertions of both parties, we may decide whatever may be just, whatever may be well pleasing to Almighty God. For we defend no one on the ground of personal love, but, God helping us, keep the rule of justice without respect to any man's person. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XX.
To Antoninus, Subdeacon [1407] .
Gregory to Antoninus, &c.
Honoratus, archdeacon of the Church of Salona, had demanded from my predecessor of holy memory, in a petition that he sent, that he should by no means be forced by his bishop to be advanced against his will, in a way contrary to custom, to a higher order.
[Here follows an account of the subsequent proceedings, almost word for word the same as that given in Epistle XIX.]
Wherefore we have thought it right to support thy Experience by the authority of this present order, that thou mayest resort to Salona, and at least try by exhortation to induce Natalis, our brother and fellow-bishop, who has been admonished by so many letters, to restore the above-mentioned Honoratus to his place immediately. But if, as has been his wont, he should contumaciously delay doing this, forbid him by authority of the Apostolic See the use of the pallium which has been granted him by this See. But if, even after loss of the pallium, thou shouldest find him persevering in the same pertinacity, thou shalt deprive the said bishop of participation in holy communion. Moreover, him who, against the rule of justice, has consented to be promoted to another man's place we order to be deposed from the dignity of the same archdeaconry. And, if he should presume to minister further in the same place, we deprive him of participation in holy communion. For it is right that he should find those severe in justice whom he sets at naught when approaching him in charity. Wherefore, when the archdeacon Honoratus has been restored to his place, let the aforesaid bishop, at thy instigation, send to us a person with instructions, who may be able by his allegations to prove to us that the bishop's intention is or has been just.
[What follows corresponds exactly with the conclusion of Epistle XIX.]
As to our brother and fellow-bishop Malchus [1408] , thou wilt take care to make him find a surety, that he may come to us as soon as possible, to the end that, without any delay or loitering, he may render us an account of his proceedings, and so be able to return to his own with security. __________________________________________________________________
[1407] This Antoninus was rector patrimonii in Dalmatia (see III. 22), and, though but a subdeacon, appears to have had the same kind of jurisdiction over the clergy given him in the pope's name even in ecclesiastical matters as had been committed to Peter the subdeacon in Sicily. (See I. 1.)
[1408] This Malchus was a bishop in Dalmatia (cf. Lib. 1. Ep. 38, "Ad Malchum episcopum Dalmatia,") and appears to have been in charge of some part of the patrimony there, for his administration of which he had been called to account, and was therefore summoned to Rome to clear himself. He died there suddenly after his case had been heard, and judgment had been given against him, Gregory being calumniously accused of having caused his death. His case is referred to II. 20, 46; III. 22, 47; IV. 47. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXII.
To all the Bishops of Illyricum. [1409]
Gregory to all the bishops, &c.
It both affords us joy for your carefulness, and makes your Fraternity safe in your own ordination, if the order of ancient custom is maintained. Since, then, we have learnt from the letters which you have sent to us through the presbyter Maximianus and the deacon Andreas that the consent of all of you and the will of the most serene Prince have concurred in the person of our brother and fellow-bishop John, we feel great exultation that, under God's direction, such a one has been advanced to the office of priesthood [1410] as the judgment of all has approved as worthy. Wherefore, in accordance with your request, we confirm our aforesaid brother and fellow-bishop by the authority of our assent in the order of priesthood wherein he has been constituted, and declare our ratification of his consecration by sending him the pallium. And since, according to custom, we have committed to him vicariate jurisdiction in our stead, we must of necessity take the precaution of exhorting your Fraternity that you in no wise hesitate to obey him in matters pertaining to ecclesiastical order and the right course of discipline, or in other things not precluded by canonical decrees; that the soundness of your judgment in electing him may be declared by the obedience which you shew. __________________________________________________________________
[1409] This Epistle, as appears from the following one, was on the occasion of the election of John to the See of Justiniana Prima in Eastern Illyricum, which, though annexed by the Emperor Gratian (379) to the Eastern Empire, had remained under the spiritual control of the Roman See. Accordingly Pope Damasus had assigned to the bishop of Thessalonica vicariate jurisdiction under Rome over the new præfecture: and this arrangement had continued to the time of Pope Vigilius, when the Emperor Justinian assigned to Achrida, called by him Justiniana Prima, Metropolitan jurisdiction over the five provinces of the Dacian civil diocese with the two Pannonias in the diocese of Illyricum Occidentale (Justin. Novell. cxxxi. c. iii.). Hence Justiniana Prima became the seat thenceforth of the ecclesiastical Vicariate also. The election to the See, being a metropolitan one, appears to have been made in this instance by the suffragan bishops with the concurrence of the Emperor; after which the Bishop of Rome was applied to for confirmation. In the case before us it was readily given, the pallium sent, and the vicariate jurisdiction renewed. A case will appear below in which such confirmation was refused, but dispensed with by the Emperor, who supported the elected bishop against the Pope. See III. 47, note 1.
[1410] Sacerdotii, meaning here episcopacy. See I. 78, note 1. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXIII.
To John, Bishop.
Gregory to John, Bishop of Prima Justiniana in Illyricum.
It is clearly a manifest evidence of goodness that the consent of all should concur in the election of one person. Since, then, the account which we have received from our brethren and fellow-bishops declared that you are summoned to the position of priesthood by the unanimous consent of the whole council and the will of the most serene Prince, we have rendered thanks with great exultation to Almighty God our Creator, who has made your life and actions so commendable in the past as to bring about (what is exceedingly to your credit) your approving yourself to the judgment of all. With them we also fully agree with regard to the person of your Fraternity. And we implore Almighty God that, as His Grace has chosen your Charity, so He would keep you in all respects under His protection. We have sent you the pallium according to custom, and, renewing our commission, we appoint you to act as vicar of the Apostolic See, admonishing you that you so shew yourself gentle to your subjects that they may be provoked to love you rather than to fear you. And, if perchance any fault of theirs should require notice, you will be careful so to correct their transgressions as by no means to discard paternal affection from your mind. Be watchful and assiduous in the care of the flock committed to you, and strict in the zeal of discipline, so that the wolf lying in wait may not prevail to disturb the Lord's sheepfold, or have opportunity for deceit, so as to hurt the sheep. Make haste with full purpose of heart to win souls to our God; and know that we have received the name of shepherd not for repose, but for labour. Let us, then, shew forth in our work what our name denotes. If we weigh with right consideration the prerogative of the priesthood, it will be to those who are diligent and do their duty well for honour, but to those who are negligent assuredly for a burden. For, as this name, in the sight of God, conducts those who labour and are assiduous for the salvation of souls to eternal glory, so in the case of the idle and sluggish it tends to punishment. Through our tongue let the people committed to us learn that there is another life. Let the teaching of your Fraternity be to them an acceptable spur to urge them on, and your life an example for imitation. For your Fraternity's preaching should disclose to them what to love and what to fear, and your efficiency in this way should reap the fruit of eternal retribution. But let your deliberate care especially constrain you never to attempt to make any unlawful ordinations; but, whenever any are promoted to the clerical order, or, it may be, to some higher rank, let them be ordained, not for bribes or entreaties, but for merit. In no ordination let any consideration, in any way whatever, surreptitiously reach your Fraternity, lest you should be entangled (which God forbid) in the snares of simoniacal heresy. For what shall it profit a man, as the Truth says, if he shall gain the whole word, and lose his own soul (Mark viii. 36)? Hence it is necessary for us to look to God in all we do, to despise temporal and perishable things, and to direct the desire of our heart to the good things of eternity. Your Holiness's present [1411] I was altogether unwilling to accept, since it were very unseemly for us to seem to have received gifts from our plundered and afflicted brethren. But your messengers got the better of me by another argument, proffering it to one from whom your Fraternity's offerings may not be withheld [1412] . For this you ought before all things to study: how you may provide imperishable gifts to be offered to the coming judge of souls, to the end that He may have respect both to you for your profitable labour, and to us likewise for our exhortation. __________________________________________________________________
[1411] Xenia. The term denotes, among other kinds of presents, such as were voluntarily offered to superiors, as by the people of a province to proconsuls. Those here referred to were such as it was the custom for bishops to send to the Pope after their ordination or from time to time. We find other instances of Gregory deprecating such presents. "The temporal Xenia which you have sent us, though we are in no need of such, we have nevertheless accepted with due charity." (VI. 64, Ad Dominicam episcopum Carthaginensem.) The word is used also for presents of all kinds. Cf. e.g. the letter to Ethelbert (XI. 66).
[1412] Meaning St. Peter. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXVI.
To John, Bishop.
Gregory to John, &c.
Inasmuch as we have enjoined on our brother and fellow-bishop Paulus the work of the visitation of the Neapolitan church, therefore let not Fraternity shrink from assuming the visitation of the Nepesine Church, to the end that, according to the requirements of the Paschal festivity, whatever the solemnity of divine service demands may, through thy operation, be in all respects fulfilled. Until, then, we may be able to consider what should be done with regard to our aforesaid brother and fellow-bishop, let thy Fraternity strive to shew thyself so skilful and vigilant in all things that the absence of the bishop aforesaid may not at all be felt [1413] .
The month of April, the tenth Indiction. __________________________________________________________________
[1413] See II. 9, note 6. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXVII.
To Rusticiana, Patrician [1414] .
Gregory to Rusticiana, &c.
On receiving the epistle of your Excellency I was relieved by the welcome news of your welfare, hoping that the Lord in His mercy may protect and direct your life and doings. But I wondered much why you have turned from your intention and vow to accomplish a good work in respect of your meditated journey to the holy places [1415] , seeing that, when anything good is by the gift of the Creator conceived in the heart, it is needful that it be carried out with quick devotion, lest, while the cunning plotter strives to ensnare the soul, he should afterwards suggest impediments, whereby the mind, weakened by occupations, may fail to carry its desires into effect. Whence it is necessary that your Excellency should anticipate all impediments that come in the way of pious designs, and gasp after the fruit of good work with all the efforts of your heart, that so you may succeed in living tranquilly in the present world and gaining possession of a heavenly kingdom in the future. But as to what you have written to us of Passivus having attempted to spread some calumnies against you, consider, on the other hand, that the most pious emperors have not only been unwilling to listen to them, but have also received the author of them roughly; and turn the whole hope of your soul to Him Who powerfully prevents men in this world from doing as much harm as they long to do, that so He may beat back the wicked intentions of men by the opposition of His arm, and Himself mercifully shatter their attempts, as He has been wont to do. I entreat that the glorious Lord Appio and the lady Eusebia, the Lord Eudoxius and the lady Gregoria, be greeted in my name through you. __________________________________________________________________
[1414] Other letters addressed to this patrician lady are IV. 46; VIII. 22; XI. 44; XIII. 22. She appears to have been a widow, no husband being alluded to, who had migrated with her family from Rome to Constantinople (cf. VIII. 22, and XIII. 22). She is spoken of in subsequent letters as a person of slender frame and weak health, and subject to gout. Her family, to whom greetings are always sent, being her children either by birth or marriage, were Appio and Eusebia, Eudoxius and Gregoria, the former, and perhaps the latter also, being a married couple. Strategius also, a son of Appio and Eusebia, apparently a child, has afterwards greetings sent to him. They had daughters also, whose names are not given.
[1415] Two years later (see IV. 46, Indict. XII. i.e. a.d. 593-4) she appears to have made a pilgrimage to Mount Sinai. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXIX.
To Maurilius and Vitalianus [1416] .
Gregory to Maurilius and Vitalianus, magistris militum.
On receiving your Glory's letters we gave thanks to God that we were assured of your safety; and we greatly rejoiced at your careful provision; and what you wrote about was at once prepared. But the magnificent Aldio wrote to us after the arrival of your men that Ariulph was already near at hand, and we feared that the soldiers sent to you might fall into his hands. Yet here also, so far as God may give aid, our son the glorious magister militum has prepared himself against him. But, if the enemy himself should advance hither, let your Glory also, as you have been accustomed to do, accomplish what you can in his rear. For we hope in the power of Almighty God, and that of the blessed Peter himself, the Prince of the apostles, on whose anniversary he desires to shed blood, that he may find him also without delay opposed to him. __________________________________________________________________
[1416] Cf. II. 3. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXX.
To Maurilius and Vitalianus.
Gregory to Maurilius and Vitalianus, magistris militum [1417] .
We have entreated your Glory through our son Vitalianus both by word and letter, charging you to communicate with him. But on the eleventh day of the month of January [1418] Ariulph sent us this letter which we forward to you. Wherefore, when you have read it, see if the people of Suana [1419] have stood fast in the fidelity they promised to the republic, and take adequate hostages from them, such as you can rely on; and moreover bind them anew by oaths, restoring to them what you took from them in the way of a pledge, and bringing them to a right mind by your discourses. But, should you quite distinctly ascertain that they have treated with Ariulph about their surrender to him, or at any rate have given him hostages, as the letter of Ariulph which we have forwarded to you leads us to suspect, then (after wholesome deliberation, lest your souls or mine be burdened with respect to our oaths), do ye whatever ye may judge to be of advantage to the republic. But let your Glory so act that neither anything be done for which we could be blamed by our adversaries, nor (which may the Lord avert) anything neglected which the advantage of the republic requires. Furthermore, my glorious sons, take anxious heed, since the enemy, so far as I have ascertained, has an army collected, and is said to be stationed at Narina [1420] ; and if, God being angry with him, he should resolve to bend his course hitherward, do you plunder his positions so far as the Lord may aid you, or certainly let those whom you send carefully require night-watches [1421] , lest news of any sad event should reach us [1422] . __________________________________________________________________
[1417] "Abest hæc Epist. a plerisque mss." (Benedict Ed.)
[1418] In Collect. Pauli Diac., Junii. (Ibid.)
[1419] Or Soana, a town in Tuscia.
[1420] Perhaps Narnia, in Umbria.
[1421] Sculcas. Sculcæ, excubiæ; pro exulcæ vocabulo truncato, ut cubiæ pro excubiæ. Du Cange.
[1422] In Colbert. Vet. the date is added, "Die 14 Kal. Jan. Indict. 10." The dates are evidently uncertain. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXXII.
To Peter, Subdeacon of Sicily.
Gregory to Peter, &c.
By information received from Romanus the guardian (defensore) I have learnt that the monastery of handmaidens of God which is on the farm of Monotheus has suffered wrong from our church of Villa Nova with respect to a farm belonging to the latter, which is said to have been leased to the said monastery. If this is so, let thy Experience restore to them the farm, and also the payments from the same farm for the two indictions during which thou hast exacted them. Moreover, since many of the Jews dwell on the estates of the Church, I desire that, if any of them should be willing to become Christians, some little of their dues be remitted to them, to the end that others also, incited by this benefit, may be moved to a like desire.
Cows which are now barren from age, or bulls which appear to be quite useless, ought to be sold, so that at least some profit may accrue from their price. But as to the herds of mares which we keep very unprofitably, I wish them all to be dispersed, and four hundred only of the younger kept for breeding; which four hundred ought to be presented to the farmers [1423] --so many to each, to the end that they may make some return to us from them in successive years: for it is very hard for us to spend sixty solidi on the herdsmen, and not get sixty pence from these same herds. Let then thy Experience so proceed that some may be divided among all the farmers, and others dispersed and converted into money. But so arrange with the herdsmen themselves throughout our possessions that they may be able to make some profit by cultivation of the ground. All the implements which, either at Syracuse or at Panormus, can be claimed by the Church must be sold before they perish entirely from age.
On the arrival of the servant of God, brother Cyriacus, at Rome I questioned him closely as to whether he had communicated with thee about the receiving of a bribe in the cause of a certain woman. And the same brother says that he had learnt the state of the case from thy telling him, for that he had been commissioned by thee to ascertain who was the person commissioned to pay the bribe. This I believed, and immediately received him familiarly into favour, introduced him to the people and clergy, increased his stipend [1424] , placed him in a superior rank among the guardians, praising his fidelity before all, in that he had acquitted himself so faithfully in thy service; and I have consequently sent him back to thee. But, inasmuch as thou art in great haste, and I, though sick, am desirous of seeing thee, do thou leave some one whom thou hast fully proved to take thy place in the Syracusan district, and thyself make haste to come to me, that, if it should please Almighty God, we may consult together as to whether thou thyself oughtest to return thither or another person should be appointed in thy place. At the same time I have sent Benenatus the notary to occupy thy place in the patrimony in the district of Panormus till such time as Almighty God may ordain what pleases Him.
I have strongly rebuked Romanus for his levity, because in the Guest-house (xenodochium) which he kept, as I have now discovered, he has been taken up more with his own profits than with [heavenly] rewards. Him, therefore, if it should haply seem good to thee, leave in thy place. See how thou mayest best fortify him, by alarming and admonishing him, that he may act kindly and carefully towards the peasants (rusticos [1425] ); and shew himself towards strangers and townspeople changed and active. In saying this, however, I am not selecting any person, but leave this to thy judgment. It is enough for me to have selected an occupier of thy place in the district of Panormus; and I wish thee to see thyself to providing one for the Syracusan district. When thou comest, bring with thee the moneys and ornaments (ornamenta) on the part, or of the substance of Antoninus. Bring also the payments of the ninth and tenth indictions which thou hast exacted, and with them all thy accounts. Take care, if it should please God, to cross the sea for this city before the anniversary of Saint Cyprian, lest any danger should ensue (which God forbid) from the constellation which always threatens the sea at that season.
Furthermore, I would have thee know that I have no slight compunctions of mind for having been grievously set against the servant of God Pretiosus for no grievous fault of his, and driven him from me, sad and embittered. And I wrote to the Lord bishop [1426] requesting him to send the man to me, if willing to do so; but he was altogether unwilling. Now him I ought not to distress, nor can I do so; since, occupied as he is in the causes of God, he ought to be supported by comfort, not depressed by bitterness. But the said Pretiosus, as I hear, is altogether distressed because he cannot return to me. I, however, as I have said, cannot distress the Lord bishop, who is not willing to send him, and I am doubtful between the two. Do thou then, if in thy little diminutive body thou hast the greater wisdom, manage the matter so that I may have my will, and the Lord bishop be not distressed. Yet, if thou see him to be at all distressed, say no more about it. I have, however, taken it amiss that he has excommunicated the Lord Eusebius [1427] , a man of so great age and in such bad health. Wherefore it is needful for thee to speak privately to the said Lord bishop, that he be not hasty in pronouncing sentences, since cases which are to be decided by sentences must needs be weighed beforehand with careful and very frequent consideration.
When the recruiting officers [1428] come, who, as I hear, are already raising recruits in Sicily, charge thy substitute to offer them some little present [1429] , so as to render them well-disposed towards him. But, before thou comest away, give also something, according to ancient custom, to the prætor's officials; but do it by the hands of him thou leavest in thy place, so as to conciliate their favour towards him. Also, lest we should seem to them to be at all uncivil, direct thy substitutes to carry out in all respects the orders we have given to thy Experience as to what is to be given to any individuals or monasteries. But when thou comest, we will, with the help of God consider together how these things should be arranged. The three hundred solidi which I sent to be given through thee to the poor I do not think ought to be committed to their discretion. Let them carry out, then, those directions I have spoken of with reference to particular places and persons.
Now I remember having written before now to say that the legacies, which, according to the representation of Antoninus the guardian (defensoris), are due from us to monasteries or others, were to be paid as had been appointed. And I know not why thy Experience has delayed to accomplish this. Wherefore we desire thee to pay in full our portion of these legacies from the moneys of the church, that when thou comest to me, thou mayest not leave there the groans of the poor against thee. Bring also with thee at the same time the securities which have been found relating to the substance of the same Antoninus.
I have learnt on the information of Romanus that the wife of Redemptus, when dying, directed by word of mouth one silver shell to be sold, and the proceeds given to her freedmen, and also left a silver platter to a certain monastery; in respect of both of which bequests we desire her wishes to be fully carried out, lest from the least things we be betrayed into greater sins.
Further, I have learnt on the information of the Abbot Marinianus that the building in the Prætorian Monastery is not yet even half completed: which being the case, what can we praise for it but thy Experience's fervour [1430] ? But even now let this admonition rouse thee; and, as far as thou canst, assert thyself in the construction of this same monastery. I said that nothing was to be given them for the cost; but I did not prohibit their building the monastery. But so proceed as to enjoin in all ways on him whom thou mayest depute in thy place at Panormus that he construct this same monastery at the charge of the ecclesiastical revenue, and that I may have no more private complaints from the abbot.
Moreover, I have learnt that thou knowest certain things on the farms, even in considerable numbers, to belong to others; but, owing to the entreaty of certain persons or to timidity, thou art afraid to restore them to their owners. But, if thou wert truly a Christian, thou wouldest be afraid of the judgment of God more than of the voices of men. Take notice that I unceasingly admonish thee on this matter; which if thou neglect to set right, thou wilt have also my voice for witness against thee. If thou shouldest find any of the laity fearing God who might receive the tonsure and become agents under the rector [1431] , I give my full con sent. It will be necessary that letters also be sent to them.
Concerning the case of the son of Commissus the scholasticus [1432] , thou hast taken advice; and it appears that what he claims is not just in law. We are unwilling to burden the poor to their disadvantage; but, inasmuch as he has given himself trouble in this matter, we desire thee to give him fifty solidi, which must certainly be charged in thy accounts. As to the expense thou hast incurred on the business of the Church in the case of Prochisus, either reimburse thyself there out of his revenues, or, should his revenues be clearly insufficient for the repayment, thou must needs receive what is due to thee here from the deacon. But presume not to say anything about Gelasius the subdeacon, since his crime calls for the severest penance even to the end of his life.
Furthermore, thou has sent me one sorry nag and five good asses. That nag I cannot ride, he is such a sorry one; and those good asses I cannot ride, because they are asses. But we beg that, if you are disposed to content us, you will let us have something suitable. We desire thee to give to the abbot Eusebius a hundred solidi of gold, which must certainly be charged in thy accounts. We have learnt that Sisinnius, who was a judge at Samnium, is suffering from grievous want in Sicily, to whom we desire thee to supply twenty decimates [1433] of wine and four solidi yearly. Anastasius, a religious person (religiosus [1434] ), is said to be living near the city of Panormus in the oratory of Saint Agna, to whom we desire six solidi of gold to be given. We desire also six solidi, to be charged in thy accounts, to be given to the mother of Urbicus the Prior [1435] . As to the case of the handmaiden of God, Honorata, what seems good to me is this: that thou shouldest bring with thee when thou comest all her substance which evidently existed before the time of the episcopate of John, bishop of Laurinum [1436] . But let the same handmaiden of God come with her son, that we may speak with her, and do whatever may please God. The volume of the Heptateuch [1437] out of the goods of Antoninus we desire to be given to the Prætorian monastery, and the rest of his books to be brought hither by thee. __________________________________________________________________
[1423] Conductores. See I. 44, note 6.
[1424] Presbyterium. The term, as here used, means apparently a pecuniary allowance to presbyters. Cf. V. 33, Ad Gaudentiam Episcopum; "Fraternitatem tuam præsentibus hortamur affatibus ut clericis Capuanæ Ecclesiæ quartam in presbyterium eorum de hoc quod ante dictæ ecclesiæ singulis annis accesserit juxta antiquam consuetudinem distribuere secundum personarum studeat qualitatem, quatenus aliquod stipendiorum habentes solatium, ministerium officiumque suum circa eamdem ecclesiam devotiore mente provocentur impendere."
[1425] See I. 44, note 1.
[1426] Maximianus (as appears from Epistle 34), whom Gregory had himself appointed bishop of Syracuse. Cf. II. 7, and note.
[1427] This Eusebius was an abbot in Sicily. Letters follow about him to Maximianus (Ep. 34), and to him (Ep. 36).
[1428] Scribonibus. The term denoted officers sent from the imperial court into the provinces for executing certain duties; in this case for raising recruits for the imperial army. Cf. V. 30, note 8.
[1429] Parum aliquid xenii. On xenia, see II. 23, note 8.
[1430] We note here the sarcastic vein in which Gregory from time to time pleasantly stimulates Peter to activity.
[1431] I.e. the rector patrimonii. The purport of this direction seems be that agents from the laity might be appointed with advantage to assist the rector patrimonii; and these must first be made clerici by receiving the tonsure, so as to be qualified to act for the Church. The rectors themselves were usually at least subdeacons.
[1432] Scholastici. The designation appears to have been applied generally to scholarly and learned persons. Cf. Hieron. in Catal. Scriptor. Eccles., "Serapion ob elegantiam ingenii cognomen scholastici meruit." In Gregory's Epistles it seems to denote usually men learned in the law, who might advise on legal points or sit as assessors. In I. 44 (to Peter the subdeacon) scholastici are spoken of as having given a legal opinion, Epistle 36 in Bk. IX. is addressed "Severo scholastico exarchi," and he is spoken of as one of those "qui assistant judicibus." Cf. also IX. 58, 59, for the employment of "Martinus Scholasticus, vir eloquentissimus," in a case of disputed jurisdiction over the primate of the African province of Bizacia. Such scholastici were evidently persons of importance. Gregory addresses them by the title of "Gloria vestra" (IV. 40), and of "Magnitudo tua" (IX. 58). In IX. 12 he speaks of the form of prayer which followed the words of institution in the Canon of the Mass as having been composed by a scholasticus (precem quam scholasticus composuerat), perhaps using the term in the general sense of a scholar.
[1433] See I. 46, note.
[1434] See I. 61, note 7.
[1435] Præpositi. The word, though used also in a more general sense, usually denotes the Prior of a monastery, appointed as the Abbot's vice-gerent.
[1436] Episcopi Laurinensis. If the reading is correct, the See intended is unknown. Holstein (Annot. in Geograph. Sacra, p. 21) suggests Carinensem, denoting the Sicilian See of Carine, or Camarina.
[1437] I.e. the first seven books of the Bible. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXXIII.
To Justinus, Prætor [1438] .
Gregory to Justinus, &c.
The spite of the ancient foe has this way of its own, that in the case of those whom, through God resisting him, he cannot delude into the perpetration of evil deeds, he maims their reputation for a time by false reports. Seeing, then, that a sinister rumour about our brother and fellow-bishop Leo [1439] had disseminated certain things inconsistent with his priestly profession, we caused strict and lengthened enquiry to be made as to whether they were true, and we have found no fault in him touching the things that had been said. But, that nothing might seem to be omitted, and that no possible doubt might remain in our heart, we caused him over and above to take a strict oath before the most sacred body of the blessed Peter. And, when he had done this, we rejoiced with great exultation that from a proof of this kind his innocence evidently shone forth. Wherefore let your Glory receive the aforesaid man with all charity, and shew him reverence such as is becoming towards a priest; nor let any doubtfulness remain in your heart touching the charges from which he has now been purged. But it lies upon you so to cleave in all respects to the above-named bishop, that you may be seen fittingly and becomingly in his person to honour God, whose minister he is. __________________________________________________________________
[1438] Now Prætor of Sicily. Cf. I. 2.
[1439] Bishop of Catana in Sicily. Cf. I. 72. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXXIV.
To Maximianus, Bishop of Syracuse.
Gregory to Maximianus, &c.
I remember to have often admonished you to be by no means hasty in passing sentence. And lo, I have now learnt that your Fraternity in a fit of anger has excommunicated the most reverend abbot Eusebius. Now I am much astonished that neither his former conversation, nor his advanced age, nor his long-continued sickness, could turn your mind from wrath. For, whatever his transgression may have been, the very affliction of sickness ought to have sufficed as a scourge for him. For to one crushed by divine discipline it was superfluous to add human scourges. But perhaps thou hast been allowed to exceed in the case of such a person, in order that thou mightest become more cautious in the case of others of less account, and ponder long when thou art disposed to smite any one through a sentence. Yet still comfort this same man with a sweetness proportionate to the fury with which thou hast exasperated him, since it is very unjust that the very persons who have loved thee most should find thee without cause most bitter against themselves. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXXVI.
To the Abbot Eusebius.
Gregory to Eusebius, &c.
Let thy Charity believe me that I have been greatly saddened for thy sadness, as though I had myself suffered wrong in thee. But, when I afterwards learnt that, even after the most reverend Maximianus, our brother and fellow-bishop, had restored thee to his favour and communion, thy Love would not accept communion from him, I then knew that what had been done before was just. The humility of God's servants ought to appear in a time of affliction: but those who lift themselves up against their superiors shew that they scorn to be God's servants. And, indeed, what he once did ought not to have been done; but still it ought to have been taken by thee with all humility: and again, when he restored to thee his favour, he ought to have been met with thanks. And because it was not so done by thee, I feel that to us in every way there is cause for tears. For it is no great thing for us to be humble to those by whom we are honoured; for even any worldly man would do this: but we ought especially to be humble to those at whose hands we suffer. For the Psalmist says, See my humility before mine enemies (Psal. ix. 14). What life are we leading, if we will not be humble even to our fathers? Wherefore, most beloved son, I beseech thee that all bitterness pass away from thy heart, lest perchance the end should be near, and the ancient foe should, through the iniquity of discord, bar against us the way to the eternal kingdom. Further, we have caused a hundred solidi to be given to thy Love through Peter the subdeacon, which I beg thee to accept without offence. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXXVII.
To John, Bishop of Squillacium (Squillace, in Calabria).
Gregory to John, &c.
The care of our pastoral office warns us to appoint for bereaved churches bishops of their own, who may govern the Lord's flock with pastoral solicitude. Accordingly we have held it necessary to appoint thee, John, bishop of the civitas Lissitana (Lissus, hodie, Alessio?), which has been captured by the enemy, to be cardinal [1440] in the Church of Squillacium, that thou mayest carry on the cure of souls once undertaken by thee, having regard to future retribution. And although, being driven from thine own Church by the invading enemy, thou must govern another Church which is now without a shepherd, yet it must be on condition that, in case of the former city being set free from the enemy, and under the protection of God restored to its former state, thou return to the Church in which thou wast first ordained. If, however, the aforesaid city continues to suffer under the calamity of captivity, thou must remain in this Church wherein thou art by us incardinated [1441] . Moreover, we enjoin thee never to make unlawful ordinations, or allow any bigamist, or one who has taken a wife who was not a virgin, or one ignorant of letters, or one maimed in any part of his body, or a penitent, or one liable to any condition of service, to attain to sacred orders. And, shouldest thou find any of this kind, thou must not dare to advance them. Africans generally, and unknown strangers, applying for ecclesiastical orders, on no account accept seeing that some Africans are Manichæans, and some have been rebaptized; while many strangers, though being in minor orders, are proved to have pretended to a higher dignity. We also admonish thy Fraternity to watch wisely over the souls committed to thee, and to be more intent on winning souls than on the profits of the present life. Be diligent in keeping and disposing of the goods of the Church, that the coming Judge, when He comes to judge, may approve thee as having in all respects worthily executed the office of shepherd which thou hast taken upon thee. __________________________________________________________________
[1440] See I. 79, note 5.
[1441] See as above. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XLI.
To Castorius, Bishop.
Gregory to Castorius, Bishop of Ariminum (Rimini).
What lamentable supplications have been poured out to us by Luminosus, abbot of the monastery of St. Andrew and St. Thomas, in the city of Ariminum, appears from the text of the subjoined petition. With regard to this matter we exhort thy Fraternity that, on the death of the abbot of this same monastery, thy church shall under no pretext interfere in scheduling or taking charge of the property of the said monastery, acquired or to be acquired. And we desire thee to ordain as abbot of the same monastery none other but him whom the whole congregation may by common consent demand as being worthy in character and apt for monastic discipline. Moreover, we entirely forbid public masses to be celebrated there by the bishop, lest occasion be given for popular assemblies in the retreats of God's servants, and also lest too frequent an entrance of women be a cause of scandal (which God forbid), especially to the simpler souls. Further, we ordain that this paper by us written shall be carefully held to, and kept in force and unadulterated in all future time by thee and the bishops that shall be ordained after thee; that so, with the help of God, both thy church may be content with its own rights and no more, and also the said monastery, being subject henceforth to none but general or canonical jurisdiction, and free from all annoyances and vexations, may accomplish its divine work with the utmost devotion of heart.
[In place of the epistle as above given, the following, with the appended paper on the privileges of monasteries, is found in some Codices.]
Gregory to Castorius, Bishop of Ariminum.
What lamentable supplications Luminosus, abbot of the monastery of Saints Andrew and Thomas, in the city of Ariminum, has poured out to us, appears from the text of the subjoined petition. For from his account we learn that in very many monasteries the monks have suffered many prejudices and annoyances from prelates. It is therefore the duty of thy Fraternity to make provision for their future quiet by a wholesome arrangement, to the end that those who have their conversation therein in God's service may, His grace assisting them, persevere with minds free from disturbance. But, lest from a custom which ought to be rather amended than continued, any one should presume to cause any kind of annoyance to monks, it is necessary that the things which we have caused to be enumerated below should be so carefully observed by the fraternity of bishops that no possible occasion of introducing disquiet may be found hereafter.
Of the privileges of Monasteries.
We therefore interdict in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and forbid by the authority of the blessed Peter, Prince of the apostles, in whose stead we preside over this Roman Church, that any bishop or secular person hereafter presume in any way to devise occasions of interfering with regard to the revenues, property, or writings of monasteries, or of the cells or vills thereto appertaining, or have recourse to any tricks or exactions: but, if any case should by chance arise as to land disputed between their churches and any monasteries, and it cannot be arranged amicably, let it be terminated without intentional delay before selected abbots and other fathers who fear God, sworn upon the most holy Gospels. Also on the death of the abbot of any congregation, let no stranger be ordained, or any but one of the same congregation whom the society of the brethren shall of its own accord have elected unanimously, and who shall have been elected without fraud or venality. But, if they cannot find a suitable person among themselves, let them in like manner elect some one from some other monastery to be ordained. Nor, when an abbot has been constituted, let any person whatever on any pretext be put over him, unless perchance (which God forbid) crimes be apparent which are shewn to be punishable by the sacred canons. Likewise the rule is to be observed, that monks must not, without the consent of the abbot, be removed from monasteries for constituting other monasteries, or for sacred orders, or for any clerical office. We also disallow ecclesiastical schedules of the property of a monastery to be made by bishops. But if, circumstances requiring it, the abbot of a place should have questions with other abbots concerning property that has come into possession, let the matter be terminated also by their counsel or judgment. On the death also of an abbot let not the bishop on any pretext intermeddle in the scheduling or taking charge of the property of the monastery, acquired, or given, or to be acquired. We also entirely forbid public masses to be celebrated by him in a convent, lest in the retreats of the servants of God and their places of refuge any opportunity for a popular concourse be afforded, or an unwonted entrance of women should ensue, which would be by no means of advantage to their souls. Nor let him dare to place his episcopal chair there, or have any power whatever of command, or of holding any ordination, even the most ordinary, unless he should be requested to do so by the abbot of the place; that so the monks may always remain under the power of their abbots: and let no bishop detain a monk in any church without a testimonial and permission from his abbot, or promote one without such permission to any dignity. We ordain, then, that this paper by us written be kept to for all future time, in force and unadulterated, by all bishops; that both they may be content with the rights of their own churches and no more, and that the monasteries be subject to no ecclesiastical conditions, or compelled services, or obedience of any kind to secular authorities (saving only canonical jurisdiction [1442] ), but, freed from all vexations and annoyances, may accomplish their divine work with the utmost devotion of heart. __________________________________________________________________
[1442] The text here ("nullis canonicis juris deserviant") appears to be corrupt, being unintelligible. The sense of the corresponding clause in the shorter Epistle has been given in the translation. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XLII.
To Luminosus, Abbot.
Gregory to Luminosus, abbot of the monastery of Saint Thomas of Ariminum.
We were glad to receive thine own and thy congregation's petition, and accede to thy requests, in accordance with the statutes of the Fathers and with form of law. For to our brother and fellow-bishop Castorius a letter has been sent by our order, whereby we have taken away entirely from him and his successors all power to harm thy monastery; so that neither may he any longer come among you to be a burden to you, nor schedules be made of the property of the monastery, nor any public procession [1443] take place there; this only jurisdiction being still left to him, that he must ordain in the place of a deceased abbot another whom the common consent of the congregation may have chosen as worthy. But now, these things being thus accomplished, be you diligent in the work of God, and assiduously devote yourselves to prayer, lest you should seem not so much to have sought security of mind for prayer, as to have wished to escape strict episcopal control over you while living amiss. __________________________________________________________________
[1443] Processio usually denotes the celebration of Mass. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XLVI.
To John, Bishop.
Gregory to John, Bishop of Ravenna [1444] .
That I have not replied to the many letters of your Blessedness attribute not to sluggishness on my part, but to weakness, seeing that, on account of my sins, when Ariulph, coming to the Roman city, killed some and mutilated others, I was affected with such great sadness as to fall into a colic sickness. But I wondered much why it was that that well-known care of your Holiness for me was of no advantage to this city and to my needs. When, however, your letters reached me, I became aware that you are indeed taking pains to act, but yet have no one on whom you can bring your action to bear. I therefore attribute it to my sins that this man [1445] with whom we are now concerned both evades fighting against our enemies and also forbids our making peace; though indeed at present, even if he wished us to make it, we are utterly unable, since Ariulph, having the army of Authar and Nordulf, desires their subsidies [1446] to be given him ere he will deign to speak to us at all about peace.
But, as to the case of the bishops of Istria [1447] , I have learnt the truth of all you had told me in your letters from the commands which have come to me from the most pious princes, bidding me abstain for the present from compelling them. I indeed feel with you, and rejoice greatly in your zeal and ardour, with regard to what you have written, and acknowledge myself to have become in many ways your debtor. Know nevertheless that I shall not cease to write with the greatest zeal and freedom on this same matter to the most serene lords. Moreover the animosity of the aforesaid most excellent Romanus Patricius ought not to move you, since, as we are above him in place and rank, we ought so much the more to tolerate with forbearance and dignity any light conduct on his part.
If, however, there is any opportunity of prevailing with him, let your Fraternity work upon him, so that we may make peace with Ariulph, if to some small extent we may, since the soldiery have been removed from the city of Rome, as he himself knows. But the Theodosiacs [1448] , who have remained here, not having received their pay, are with difficulty induced to guard the walls; and how shall the city subsist, left destitute as it is by all, if it has not peace?
Furthermore, as to the gift redeemed from captivity, about whom you have written to us asking us to enquire into her origin, we would have your Holiness know that an unknown person cannot easily be traced. But as to what you say about one who has been ordained being ordained again, it is exceedingly ridiculous, and outside the consideration of one disposed as you are, unless perchance some precedent is adduced which ought to be taken into account in judging him who is alleged to have done any such thing. But far be it from your Fraternity to entertain such a view. For, as one who has been once baptized ought not to be baptized again, so one who has been once consecrated cannot be consecrated again to the same order. But in case of any one's attainment of the priesthood having been accompanied by slight misdemeanour, he ought to be adjudged to penance for the misdemeanour, and yet return his orders.
With regard to the city of Naples [1449] , in view of the urgent insistance of the most excellent Exarch, we give you to understand that Arigis [1450] , as we have ascertained, has associated himself with Ariulph, and is breaking his faith to the republic, and plotting much against this same city; to which unless a duke be speedily sent, it may already be reckoned among the lost.
As to what you say to the effect that alms should be sent to the city of the schismatic Severus which has been burnt [1451] , your Fraternity is of this opinion as being ignorant of the bribes that he sends to the Court in opposition to us. And, even though these were not sent, we should have to consider that compassion is to be shewn first to the faithful, and afterwards to the enemies of the Church. For indeed there is near at hand the city Fanum, in which many have been taken captive, and to which I have already in the past year desired to send alms, but did not venture to do so through the midst of the enemy. It therefore seems to me that you should send the Abbot Claudius thither with a certain amount of money, in order to redeem the freemen whom he may find there detained in slavery for ransom, or any who are still in captivity. But, as to the sum of money to be thus sent, be assured that whatever you determine will please me. If, moreover, you are treating with the most excellent Romanus Patricius for allowing us to make peace with Ariulph, I am prepared to send another person to you, with whom questions of ransom may be better arranged.
Concerning our brother and fellow-bishop Natalis [1452] I was at one time greatly distressed, in that I had found him acting haughtily in certain matters; but, since he has himself amended his manners, he has overcome me and consoled my distress. In connexion with this matter admonish our brother and fellow-bishop Malchus [1453] that before he comes to us he render his accounts, and then depart elsewhere if it is necessary. And if we find his conduct good, it will perhaps be necessary for us to restore to him the patrimony which he had charge of. __________________________________________________________________
[1444] For elucidation of the circumstances of this Epistle see above, Epistles 3, 29, 30.
[1445] Viz. Romanus Patricius, mentioned below, the Exarch of Ravenna, and as such representing the Emperor in Italy. See I. 33, "Ad Romanum Patricium et Exarchum Italiæ."
[1446] Precaria; apparently subsidies demanded for the support of the invading army. Precarium (or Precarim), which has various applications, appears to be capable of this sense. See Du Cange.
[1447] The Istrian bishops still held out in refusing to accept the condemnation of "The Three Chapters" passed in the fifth OEcumenical Council at the instance of the Emperor Justinian. Gregory, soon after his accession, had summoned Severus, Bishop of Aquileia and Metropolitan, with his suffragans, to Rome; and this, as he alleges, by command of the Emperor, though the latter had now, it appears, forbidden further proceedings. See I. 16, and note.
[1448] I.e. the soldiers of the Theodosian Legion.
[1449] With respect to Rome Gregory has already complained that the Exarch would neither send forces for its defence nor allow peace to be made with Ariulph. So also with regard to Naples, which Gregory understands to be now threatened by the Lombards. The Exarch, it appears, had been urgent in insisting that it should hold out against the enemy ("excellentissimo exarcho instanter imminente"), but without giving any help for the purpose. What Gregory here says is that without aid from the Exarch its defence was hopeless.
[1450] Aragis was the Lombard duke of Beneventum.
[1451] Viz. Aquileia, of which Severus was bishop and Metropolitan, called here schismaticus because of his holding out against Rome in the matter of the Three Chapters. The bribes he is said below to have sent to Constantinople would be for inducing the Emperor to take his part against Gregory.
[1452] See above, Ep. 20, in this Book, and I. 19, note 5, where references to other Epistles are given.
[1453] See II. 20, note 5. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XLVII.
To Dominicus, Bishop.
Gregory to Dominicus, Bishop of Carthage [1454] .
We have received with the utmost gratification the letters of your Fraternity, which have reached us somewhat late by the hands of Donatus and Quodvultdeus, our most reverend brethren and fellow-bishops, and also Victor the deacon with Agilegius the notary. And though we thought that we had suffered loss from the tardiness of their coming, yet we find gain from their more abundant charity; seeing that from this delay in point of time there appears no interruption, but rather increase of the love which, by the mercy of God, through your contemplation of the priestly office, your practice of reading, and your maturity of age, we know to be already firmly planted in you. For it would not flow so largely from you, had it not very many most abundant veins in your heart. Let us, therefore, most holy brother, hold fast with unshaken firmness this mother and guard of virtues. Let not the tongues of the deceitful diminish it in us, or any snares of the ancient enemy corrupt it. For this joins what is divided, and keeps together what is joined. This lifts up what is lowly without tumour; this brings down what is lifted up without dejection. Through this the unity of the universal Church, which is the knitting together of the Body of Christ, rejoices in its several parts through the mind's equalization of them, though having in it dissimilarity from the diversity of its members. Through this these members both exult in the joy of others, though in themselves afflicted, and also droop for the sorrows of others, though in themselves joyful. For seeing that, as the teacher of the Gentiles testifies, if one member suffers anything, the other members suffer with it, and if one member glories, all the members rejoice with it, I doubt not that you groan for our perturbation, as it is quite certain that we rejoice for your peace.
Now as to your Fraternity rejoicing with us on our ordination, it displays to me the affection of most sincere charity. But I confess that a force of sorrow strikes through my soul from contemplation of this order of ministry. For heavy is the weight of priesthood; seeing that it is necessary for a priest, first to live so as to be an example to others, and then to be on his guard not to lift up his heart because of the example which he shews. He should ever be thinking of the ministry of preaching, considering with most intense fear how that the Lord, when about to depart to receive for Himself a kingdom, and giving talents to His servants, says, Trade ye till I come (Luke xix. 13). Which trading surely we carry on only if by our living and our speaking we win the souls of our neighbours; if by preaching the joys of the heavenly kingdom we strengthen all that are weak in divine love; if by terribly sounding forth the punishments of hell we bend the froward and the timid; if we spare no one against the truth; if, given to heavenly friendships, we fear not human enmities. And indeed it was in thus shewing himself that the Psalmist knew that he had offered a kind of Sacrifice to God, when he said, Did I not hate them, O God, that hated thee, and was I not grieved with thine enemies! Yea I hated them with a perfect hated, and they became enemies unto me (Ps. cxxxviii. 21 [1455] ). But in view of this burden I tremble for my infirmity, and look to the returning of the Master of the house, after receiving His kingdom, to take account of us. But with what heart shall I bear His coming, if from the trading I undertook I render Him no gain, or almost none? Do thou, therefore, most dear brother, help me with thy prayers; and what thou seest me to fear for myself, consider daily on thine own account with anxious dread. For through the bond of charity both what I say of myself is thy concern, and what I desire thee to do is mine.
Further, as to what your Fraternity writes about ecclesiastical privileges, keep to this without any hesitation, since, as we defend our own rights, so we observe those of several churches. Nor do I through partiality grant to any Church whatever more than it deserves, nor do I under the instigation of ambition derogate from any what belongs to it by right; but I desire to honour my brethren in all ways, and study accordingly that each may be advanced in honour, so long as there can be no opposition to it of right on the part of one against the other. Further, I greatly rejoice with you in the manners of your messengers, in whom it has been shewn me how much you love me, in that you have sent to me elect brethren and sons.
Given the tenth of the Kalends of August, tenth indiction. __________________________________________________________________
[1454] The bishop of Carthage was primate of the province of Africa Proconsularis in virtue of his See. For the custom with regard to primacy in other African provinces, see I. 74, note 2. The fact, apparent from this letter, that Dominicus had deemed sending to Gregory on his accession the congratulatory letter that had been expected, and Gregory's carefulness to assure him, in the course of the studiously courteous letter, of his desire to respect the ancient privileges of Churches, may be among the symptoms, otherwise apparent, of the authoritative claims of the Roman See being still viewed with some jealousy in the African Church. Cf. in Book VIII. Epistle 33, to the same Dominicus, in which Gregory, in praising his reverence for the Apostolic See, attributes such reverence to his knowledge of the origin of the African episcopacy, refraining from asserting in this case any prerogative of divine right belonging to the See of S. Peter. Other letters to Dominicus are V. 5; VII. 35; XII. 1.
[1455] In English Bible, cxxxix. 21. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XLVIII.
To Columbus, Bishop [1456] .
Gregory to Columbus, &c.
It is known, most dear brother in Christ, that the ancient enemy, who by cunning persuasion deposed the first man from the delights of Paradise to this life of care, and in him even then inflicted the penalty of mortality on the human race, does now with the same cunning, so as more easily to seize the flock, endeavour to infect the shepherds of the Lord's sheep with infused poisons, and already to claim them as his own by right. But we, who, though unworthy, have undertaken the government of the Apostolic See in the stead of Peter the prince of the apostles, are compelled by the very office of our pontificate to resist the general enemy by all the efforts in our power. Now the bearers of these presents, Constantius and Mustellus, have in a petition presented to us given us to understand, and the deacons of the Church of Pudentiana constituted in the province of Numidia assert, that Maximianus, prelate of the same Church, corrupted by a bribe from the Donatists, has by a new licence allowed a bishop to be made in the place where he lives; which thing, though previous usage allowed it, is prohibited from remaining and continuing by the catholic faith [1457] . On this account, then, we have deemed it necessary to exhort thy Fraternity by these present writings that, when Hilarus our chartularius comes to thee, this same case be subjected to a thorough and wise investigation in an united general council of bishops, having the terror of the coming judge before their eyes. And if this charge should be proved with sufficient evidences by the bearers of these presents against the aforesaid bishop, let him by all means be degraded from the dignity and office which he enjoys, that both he may return to the gains of penitence through acknowledgment of his fault, and others may not presume to attempt such things.
For it is right that one who has sold our Lord Jesus Christ to a heretic for money received, as is said to have been done, should be removed from handling the mysteries of His most holy body and blood. Further, if, apart from this accusation, there is any contest afoot among them, as is contained in the petition of the deacons themselves, with respect to certain wrongs or private transactions, this let thy Fraternity with our aforesaid chartularius fully enquire into with evidence adduced, and decide it according to justice between all the parties.
But, further, we have learnt through the information given us by the bearers of these presents that the heresy of the Donatists is for our sins spreading daily, and that very many, leave being given them through venality, are being baptized a second time by the Donatists. How serious a matter this is, brother, it behoves us with the whole bent of our minds to consider. Lo, the wolf tears the Lord's flock, no longer stealthily in the night, but in the open light; and we see him advance in the slaughter of the sheep, and with no solicitude, with no darts of words, do we oppose him. What fruits, then, of a multiplied flock shall we shew to the Lord, if even that of which we have undertaken the feeding we see with easy mind mangled by the wild beast? Let us therefore study to inflame our hearts by imitation of earthly shepherds, who often keep watch through winter nights, pinched with showers and frost, lest even one sheep, and perchance not a profitable one, should perish. And, if the prowler should have bitten it with greedy mouth, how do they busy themselves, with what palpitations of heart do they pant, with what cries do they leap forward to rescue the captured sheep, stimulated by the pressing need, lest anything lost through their carelessness should be required of them by the Lord of the flock! Let us then watch, lest anything should perish: and, if anything should by chance have been seized, let us bring it back to the Lord's flock by the cries of divine discourses, that He who is the Shepherd of shepherds may mercifully vouchsafe to approve us in His judgment as having kept watch over His sheepfold. This also it is needful for you to attend to wisely; that, if there should be any proper petition on the part of the same bishop against the bearers of these presents, it should be thoroughly enquired into; and, if haply they themselves also should rightly deserve to be smitten for their own fault, we pronounce that they should by no means be spared on the ground of their having had the toil of resorting to us.
In the month of August, tenth indiction. __________________________________________________________________
[1456] This Columbus was one of the bishops in Numidia, who seems to have enjoyed the peculiar confidence of Gregory, being written to on various questions concerning the Church there, and charged with seeing to the exercise of discipline over other bishops, though not himself the primate. He is addressed (III. 68; VIII. 13) as being himself especially devoted to the Roman See. Other letters addressed to him are III. 48; IV. 35; VI. 37; VII. 2; VIII. 28; XII. 8; XII. 28.
[1457] The Donatists had formerly been allowed their own bishop, tolerated along with the Catholic ones. This liberty was now disallowed, probably in accordance with imperial edicts. See I. 74, note 8. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XLIX.
To Januarius, Archbishop.
Gregory to Januarius, archbishop of Caralis (Cagliari).
If with integrity of heart we consider the priestly office which we administer, the concord of personal charity ought so to unite us with our sons that, as we are fathers in name, so we should be proved by our affection to be so in deed. While, then, we ought to be such as has been said above, we wonder why such a mass of complaints has arisen against thy Fraternity. We still indeed hesitate to believe it: but, that we may be able to ascertain the truth, we have sent to your parts John the notary of our See, supported by our injunction, who may compel all parties to abide the judgment of chosen arbitrators, and by his own execution carry their judgments into effect. Wherefore we exhort thy Fraternity by this present writing to consider well with thyself beforehand the merits of the cases; and, if you find that you have taken or hold anything unjustly, in consideration of your priesthood to restore it before trial.
Now, among numerous complaints, the most distinguished Isidore has complained of having been excommunicated and anathematised by thy Fraternity for invalid reasons. And, when we had wished to learn from one of thy clergy who was here for what cause this had been done, he gave us to understand that it had been done for no other cause than that the man had done thee an injury. This distresses us exceedingly; since, if it is so, thou shewest that thou dost not think of heavenly things, but givest signs of having thy conversation among things of earth, having brought to bear the malediction of anathema to avenge a private wrong; which is a thing forbidden by the sacred rules. Wherefore for the future be thoroughly circumspect and careful, and presume not to inflict any such penalty again for vindication of thine own wrongs. For, shouldest thou do anything of the kind, know that it will afterwards be avenged on thyself. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle LI.
To All Bishops.
Gregory to all bishops in the matter of the Three Chapters [1458] .
I have received your letters with the utmost gratification: but I shall have far abundant joy, if it should be my lot to rejoice in your return from error. Now the forefront of your Epistle notifies that you suffer severe persecution. But persecution, if endured irrationally, is of no profit at all unto salvation. For it is impious in any one to expect a recompense of reward for sin. For you ought to know, as the blessed Cyprian says, that it is not the suffering that makes the martyr, but the cause for which he suffers. This being so, it is exceedingly incongruous for you to glory in the persecution whereof you speak, seeing that you are not thereby at all advanced towards eternal rewards. Let, then, purity of faith bring your Charity back to your mother church who bare you; let no bent of your mind dissociate you from the unity of concord; let no persuasion deter you from seeking again the right way. For in the synod which dealt with the three chapters it is distinctly evident that nothing pertaining to faith was subverted, or in the least degree changed; but, as you know, the proceedings had reference only to certain individuals; one of whom, whose writings evidently deviated from the rectitude of the Catholic Faith, was not unjustly condemned [1459] .
Moreover, as to what you write about Italy among other provinces having been especially scourged since that time, you ought not to twist this into a reproach, since it is written, Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth (Hebr. xii. 6). If, then, it is as you say, Italy has been since that time the more loved by God, and in all ways approved, having been counted worthy of enduring the scourge of the Lord. But, since it is not as ye try to make out by way of insulting over her, attend ye to reason.
After the Pope Vigilius of illustrious memory, having been appointed in the royal city [1460] , promulgated a sentence of condemnation against Theodora, then empress, or against the Acephali [1461] , the city of Rome was then attacked and captured by enemies. Does it follow from this that the Acephali had a good case, or that they were unjustly condemned, because such things happened after their condemnation? Away with the thought! For it is not fit that either any one of you, or any others who have been instituted in the mysteries of the Catholic Faith, should say or in any way acknowledge this. This then being recognized, retire ye even now at length from the determination you have come to. Wherefore, that full satisfaction may be infused into your minds, and all doubt removed, with respect to the three chapters, I have judged it of advantage to send you the book which my predecessor of holy memory, Pope Pelagius, had written on this subject [1462] . Which book if you should be willing to read again and again, putting aside the spirit of wilful self-defence, I have confidence that you will follow it in all respects, and, notwithstanding all, return to union with us. But if henceforth, after perusal of this book, you should decide to persist in your present determination, you will doubtless shew that you gave yourselves up not to reason but to obstinacy. Wherefore once more, in a spirit of compassion, I admonish your Charity, that, inasmuch as under God the purity of our faith has remained inviolate in the matter of the Three Chapters, ye put away from you all swelling of mind, and return to your mother the Church, who expects and invites her sons; and this all the more speedily as you know that she expects you daily. __________________________________________________________________
[1458] This letter, being in reply to one from the bishops addressed who are spoken of as being at the time schismatics, cannot have been meant for the universal episcopate. They were probably those of Istria or elsewhere, who were out of communion with Rome because of their refusal to accept the condemnation of the "Three Chapters" by the fifth Council. See I. 16, note 3: IV. 1, 2, 3, 4, 38, 39.
[1459] I.e. Theodorus of Mopsuestia, whose person, and not his writings only, was anathematized in the fifth Council. The sentence was; "Prædicta tria capitula anathematizamus, id est, Theodorum Mopsuestenum cum nefandis ejus scriptis, et quæ impie Theodoritus conscripsit, et impiam epistolam quæ dicitur Ibæ, et defensores eorum."
[1460] Vigilius, having gone to Constantinople with pope Agapetus, who died there, was selected by the Empress Theodora as his successor, and sent back to Italy with an order from her to Belisarius to bring about his election (Liberatus, Breviar. c. 22). Gregory seems to have been unaware of the fact stated by Liberatus, namely that Vigilius had come to a secret understanding with the Empress that he would support the Monophysite party and disallow the Council of Chalcedon, as there is good evidence that he did after his accession. It is true that he afterwards declared for orthodoxy, and condemned all abettors of the Eutychian heresy. But this appears to have been not till a.d. 540, in reply to a letter received from the Emperor Justinian and therefore subsequent to the occupation of Rome by the Gothic King Theodatus, which was in 536, and to its siege by Vitiges, who retired in 538. Thus what Gregory goes on to say about Rome having been attacked and captured by enemies after the condemnation of heresy by Vigilius must be due to serious ignorance of the facts of the case. Nor does he appear to have known--at any rate he does not intimate--that the condemnation of the Three Chapters, pressed upon the fifth Council by the Emperor Justinian, had been in spite of the opposition of Vigilius, though it is true that this sorry pope did afterwards assent to it.
[1461] The Monophysites--or some of them--had come to be so called, as being without a head, after their leader, Peter Mongus, had accepted the See of Alexandria on the doctrinal basis of Zeno's Henoticon.
[1462] Pelagius I., who succeeded Vigilius, though he had formerly with him opposed the condemnation of the Three Chapters, upheld it after his accession to the popedom. The "book" sent by Gregory to the bishops may have been the Epistle given as Ep. VII., among those attributed to Pelagius, addressed to Helias and the bishops of Istria. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle LII.
To Natalis, Bishop [1463] .
Gregory to Natalis, Bishop of Salona.
As though forgetting the tenour of former letters, I had determined to say nothing to your Blessedness but what should savour of sweetness: but, now that in your epistle you have recurred in the way of argumentation to preceding letters, I am once more compelled to say perhaps some things that I had rather not have said.
For in defence of feasts your Fraternity mentions the feast of Abraham, in which by the testimony of Holy Scripture he is said to have entertained three angels (Gen. xviii.). In view of this example, neither will we blame your Blessedness for feasting, if we come to know that you entertain angels. Again you say that Isaac gave a blessing to his son when satiated (Gen. xxvii. 27). Now as to both these things in the Old Testament--since they were so done in the way of history as still to have a meaning in the way of allegory--would that we could so read through the accounts of the things done as to perceive and take thought for the things to be done. For indeed the one, in saluting one only of the three angels, declared the Persons of the Trinity to be of one Substance; the other blessed his son when satiated, because one who is filled with divine banquets has his senses extended into the power of prophecy. But the words of Holy Writ are divine banquets. If, then, you read diligently--if, drawing example from what is outward, you penetrate what is inward--you will be satiated, as it were, from hunting in the field, and fill the stomach of the soul, so as to be able to announce things to come to your son placed before you, to wit to the people you have taken in charge. But one who prophesies anything of God is already in the dark as to this world; for it is assuredly right and fit that he whose senses are bright inwardly through intelligence should see less through concupiscence here below.
Take, therefore, these things to yourselves; and, if you know yourselves to be such as I have said, you need not at all doubt of our esteem. I also find your Blessedness rejoicing if you bear the name of "a gluttonous man" along with the world's Creator. As to this I briefly comment thus; that, if you are called so falsely, you do truly bear this name along with the world's Creator; but, if it is true of you, who can doubt that it was false of Him? A like name does not avail to acquit you, if the cause for it is unlike. For even the thief who was condemned to die endured the cross with Him; but a like crucifixion did not acquit him whom his own guilt bound. But now I beseech God with all the prayers I can offer that not the name only, but the cause for it, may join your most holy Fraternity to our Creator.
Further, your Holiness in your letters rightly praises feasts which are made with the intention of bestowing charity. But yet you should know that they then truly proceed from charity, when at them the lives of the absent are not backbitten, no one is censured in derision, and no idle tales about secular affairs, but the words of sacred reading, are heard; when the body is not pampered more than is needful, but only its weakness refreshed, that it may be kept in health for the practice of virtue. If, then, you thus conduct yourselves in your feasts, I own that you are masters of abstinence.
As to your alleging to me the testimony of the apostle Paul, where he says, Let not him that eateth not judge him that eateth (Rom. xiv. 3), I think that this was altogether out of place, seeing both that I am not one that eateth not, and also that Paul did not here mean to say that the members of Christ, who are mutually bound to each other in His body, that is to say in his Church, with the bond of charity, should have no care whatever for each other. If, indeed, I had nothing to do with thee, nor thou with me, I should rightly be compelled to hold my peace, lest I should blame one whom I could not mend. This precept, then, was given only with reference to persons who go about to judge those who have not been committed to their care. But now that we, by the ordering of God, are one, we should be much in fault were we to pass over in silence what calls for our correction. Lo, thy Fraternity has taken it amiss to have been blamed by me about feasts, while I, who surpass thee in my position, though not in my life, am ready to be found fault with by all, and by all to be amended. And him only do I esteem to be a friend to me, through whose tongue I wipe off the stains of my soul before the appearance of the strict judge.
But as to what you say, most sweet brother, about your being unable to read because of the pressure of tribulations upon you, I think this avails little for your excuse, since Paul says, Whatsoever things are written are written for our instruction, that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope (Rom. xv. 4). If, then, holy Scripture has been prepared for our comfort, we ought by so much the more to read it as we find ourselves the more wearied under the burden of tribulations. But if we are to rely only on that sentence which you quote in your letter, wherein the Lord says, When they deliver you up, take no thought how or what ye shall speak, for it shall be given you in that hour what ye shall speak; for it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father that speaketh in you (Matth. x. 19), I say that Holy Scriptures have been given us in vain, if, being filled with the Spirit, we have no need of external words. But, dearest brother, trusting in God without doubt, when we are straightened in a time of persecution, is one thing; what we ought to do when the Church is at peace is another. For it is our duty, through this same Spirit, to learn by reading now what we may be able to shew forth also in suffering, should cause arise.
Now, I rejoice exceedingly that you declare in your letter that you are giving attention to exhortation. For thus I know that you are wisely fulfilling the duties of your position, if you take pains to draw others also to your Maker. But your saying in the same sentence that you are not like me saddens me at once, after I had begun to rejoice, since I think that it is in derision that you give me praises which in truth I do not recognize as due. However, I give thanks to Almighty God that through you heretics are being recalled to holy Church. But it is needful for you to have a care that those also who are contained in the bosom of holy Church live so that they be not her adversaries through their evil lives. For, if they give themselves not to heavenly desires, but to earthly lusts and pleasures, sons of strangers are being nourished in her bosom.
Now as to your declaring that you cannot possibly be ignorant of the degrees of ecclesiastical rank, I too fully know them with regard to you; and I am therefore much distressed that, if you knew the order of things, you have failed, to your greater blame, in knowing it with regard to me. For, after letters had been addressed to your Blessedness by my predecessor and myself in the cause of the archdeacon Honoratus, then, the sentence of both of us being set at nought, the said Honoratus was deprived of the rank belonging to him. Which thing if any one of the four patriarchs had done, such great contumacy could by no means have been allowed to pass without the most grievous offence. Nevertheless, now that your Fraternity has returned to your proper position, I do not bear in mind the wrong done either to myself or to my predecessor.
But as to your saying that what has been handed down and guarded by my predecessors ought to be observed in our times also, far be it from me to infringe in any church the statutes of our ancestors with regard to my fellow priests, since I do myself an injury if I disturb the rights of my brethren. But when your accredited messengers arrive, I shall know the rights of the case between you and the aforesaid archdeacon Honoratus; and my own personal examination of it will shew you that, if you have the support of justice on your side, you will sustain no injury from me; as indeed you never have done. But in case justice supports the plea of the often-before-named Honoratus, I will shew by my acquittal of him that in judgment I have no knowledge even of persons whom I knew.
Concerning the article of excommunication which, if I may say so, was of necessity added to our letters (though even the second and the third time with a condition interposed), your Blessedness complains unreasonably, since the apostle Paul says, Having in a readiness to revenge all disobedience (2 Cor. x. 6). But let these things pass: let us return to what concerns us now. For, if the lord Natalis acts as he should do, I cannot but be friends with him, knowing how much I am a debtor to his affection. __________________________________________________________________
[1463] See I. 19, note 5, with reff. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle LIV.
Here follows the Epistle of Saint Licinianus, bishop, concerning the Book of Rules, addressed to Saint Gregory, pope of the city of Rome [1464] .
To the most blessed Lord pope Gregory, Licinianus, bishop.
The Book of Rules issued by Thy Holiness, and by the aid of divine grace conveyed to us, we have read with all the more pleasure for the spiritual rules which we find contained in it. Who can fail to read that with pleasure wherein by constant meditation he may find medicine for his soul; wherein, despising the fleeting things of this world which vary in their mutability, he may open the eyes of his soul to the settled estate of eternal life? This book of thine is a palace of all virtues. In it prudence fixes the boundary line between good and evil; justice gives each one his own, while it subjects the soul to God, and the body to the soul. In it fortitude also is found ever the same in adversity and in prosperity, being neither broken by opposition nor lifted up by success. In it temperance subdues the rage of lust, and discriminately imposes a limit upon pleasures. In it thou comprehendest all things that pertain to the partaking of eternal life: and not only for pastors layest down a rule of life, but also to those who have no office of government thou suppliest a rule of life. For pastors may learn in thy fourfold division what they should be in coming to this office; what life they should lead after coming to it; how and what they should teach, and what they should do to avoid being lifted up in so high a position as that of priesthood. This excellent teaching of thine is attested by the holy ancient fathers, doctors, and defenders of the Church; Hilary, Ambrose Augustin, Gregory Nazianzen: these all bear testimony to thee as did the prophets to the apostles. Saint Hilary says, in expounding the words of the Apostle who was the teacher of the Gentiles, "For so he signifies that the things belonging to discipline and morals serve to the good desert of the priesthood, if those things also which are necessary for the science of teaching and guarding the faith shall not be wanting among the rest; since it does not all at once constitute a good and useful priest only to act innocently, or only to preach knowingly, seeing that, though a man be innocent, he profits himself only unless he be learned, and that he that is learned is without the authority of a teacher unless he be innocent [1465] ." Saint Ambrose gives attestation to this book of thine in the books which he wrote about Duties (de officiis). Saint Augustin gives attestation, saying, "In action dignity should not be loved in this life, neither power; since all things under the sun are vain." But the work itself which is done by means of this dignity or power, if it is rightly and profitably done, this is what avails for that weal of subjects which is according to God. Wherefore the Apostle says, "He that desireth the office of a bishop desireth a good work." He wished to explain what episcopus means; that it is a title denoting work, not dignity. For it is a Greek word derived hence;--that he who is put over others overlooks those whom he is put over, to wit, as taking care of them; for episcopacy is overlooking. Therefore, if we choose, we may say in Latin that to exercise the office of a bishop is to overlook; so that one who delights to be over others and not to profit them may understand that he is no bishop. For so it is that no one is prohibited from longing to become acquainted with truth, for which purpose leisure is to be commended; but as to a position of superiority, without which the people cannot be governed, though it may be held and administered becomingly, it is unbecoming to covet it. Wherefore charity seeks holy leisure, so as to have time for perceiving and defending the truth. But if [the burden of government] be imposed, it is to be undertaken on account of the obligation of charity. But not even so should delight in the truth be altogether forsaken, lest the former sweetness should be withdrawn, and the present obligation be oppressive (Lib. viii. de Trinit, num. 1).
Saint Gregory attests, whose style thou followest, and after whose example thou didst desire to hide thyself in order to avoid the weight of priesthood; which weight, of what sort it is, is clearly declared in the whole of thy book: and yet thou bearest what thou wast afraid of. For thy burden is borne upwards, not downwards; not so as to sink thee to the depths, but to lift thee to the stars; whilst by the grace of God, and the merit of obedience, and the efficiency of good work, that is made sweet which seemed to have heaviness through human weakness. For thou sayest the things that are in agreement with the apostles and with apostolic men. For, being fair, thou hast said things fair, and in them hast shewn thyself fair. I would not have thee liken thyself to an ill-favoured painter painting fair things, seeing that spiritual teaching issues from a spiritual soul. The human painter is by most men esteemed more highly than the inanimate picture. But put not this down to flattery or adulation, but to truth: for it neither becomes me to lie, nor thee to commend what is false. I then, though plainly sincere, have seen thee and all that is thine to be fair, and have seen myself as ill-favoured enough in comparison with thee. Wherefore I thee pray by the grace of God which abounds in thee that thou reject not my prayer, but willingly teach me what I confess myself ignorant of. For we are compelled of necessity to do what thou teachest.
For, when there is no skilled person found for the sacerdotal office, what is to be done but that an unskilled one such as I am, should be ordained? Thou orderest that no unskilled one should be ordained. But let thy prudence consider whether it may not suffice him for skill to know Jesus Christ and Him crucified: for, if this does not suffice, there will, according to this book, be no one who can be called skilled: and so no one will be a priest, if none, unless he be skilled, should be one. For with open front we resist bigamists, lest the sacrament should be thus corrupted. What if the husband of one wife should have touched a woman before his wife? What if he should not have had a wife, and yet should not have been without touch of a woman? Comfort us with thy pen, that we may not be punished either for our own sin or that of others. For we are exceedingly afraid lest we should be forced to do what we ought not to do. Lo, obedience must be paid to thy precepts, that such a one may be made a priest as apostolical authority approves; and such a one as is sought is not found. Thus faith will cease which cometh of hearing; baptism will cease, if there should be no one to baptize; those most holy mysteries will cease which are effected through priests and ministers. In either case danger remains: either such a one must be ordained as ought not to be, or there must be no one to celebrate or administer sacred mysteries.
A few years ago Leander, Bishop of Hispalis, on his return from the royal city, saw us in passing, and told us that he had some homilies issued by your Blessedness on the Book of Job. And, as he passed by in haste, he did not shew them to us as we requested. But thou wrotest afterwards to him about trine immersion, and saidest in thy letter, as I am told, that thou wast dissatisfied with that work, and hadst determined on maturer consideration to change those homilies into the form of a treatise [1466] .
We have indeed six books of Saint Hilary, Bishop of Pictavia, which he turned into Latin from the Greek of Origen: but he has not expounded the whole of the book of holy Job in order. And I am not a little surprised that a man so very learned and so holy should translate the silly tales of Origen about the stars. I, most holy father, can in no wise be persuaded to believe that the heavenly luminaries are rational spirits, Holy Scripture not declaring them to have been made either along with angels or along with men. Let then your Blessedness deign to transmit to my littleness not only this work, but also the other books on morals which in this Book of Rules thou speakest of having composed. For we are thine, and are delighted to read what is thine. For to me it is a desirable and glorious thing, as thy Gregory says, to learn even to extreme old age. May God the Holy Trinity vouchsafe to preserve your crown unharmed for instructing His Church, as we hope, most blessed father. __________________________________________________________________
[1464] Licinianus was bishop of Carthagena in Spain, a Latin ecclesiastical writer. Isidore (Lib. de illustribus Ecclesiæ scriptoribus, c. 29) says of him, "In scripturis doctus, cujus quidem nonnullas epistolas legimus. De sacramento denique baptismatis unam, et ad Eutropium abbatem postea Valentiæ episcopum plurimas; reliqua vero industriæ et laboris ejus ad nostram notitiam minime pervenerunt. Claruit temporibus Mauricii Augusti; occubuit Constantinopoli veneno ut ferunt, extinctus ab æmulis Sed, ut scriptum est, Justus quacunque morte præoccupatus fuerit, anima ejus in refrigerio est." The "Book of Rules" which he had received, was Gregory's Regula Pastoralis.
[1465] This and the succeeding quotations from the works of the Fathers are inaccurately given, and in places hardly intelligible. Where this is so, the original passages have been followed in the translations.
[1466] See I. 43. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Book III.
Epistle I.
To Peter, Subdeacon.
Gregory to Peter, Subdeacon of Campania.
What a crime has been committed in the Lucullan fort against our brother and fellow-bishop Paul [1467] the account which has been sent to us has made manifest. And, inasmuch as the magnificent Scholasticus, judge of Campania, happens at the present time to be with us here, we have especially enjoined on him the duty of visiting the madness of so great perversity with strict correction. But, since the bearer of the aforesaid account has requested us to send some one to represent ourselves, we therefore send the subdeacon Epiphanius, who, together with the aforesaid judge, may be able to investigate and ascertain by whom the sedition was raised or investigated, and to visit it with suitable punishment. Let thy Experience then make haste to give aid in this case with all thy power, to the end both that the truth may be ascertained, and that vengeance may proceed against the guilty parties. Wherefore, since the slaves of the glorious Clementina are said to have had to do with this same crime, and to have used language calculated to stir up the sedition, do thou subject them strictly to immediate punishment, nor let your severity be relaxed in consideration of her person, since they ought to be smitten all the more as they have transgressed out of mere pride as being the servants of a noble lady. But you ought also to make thorough enquiry whether the said lady was privy to so atrocious a crime, and whether it was perpetrated with her knowledge, that from our visitation of it all may learn how dangerous it is not only to lay hands on a priest, but even to transgress in words against one. For, if anything should be done remissly or omitted in this case, know that thou especially wilt have to bear the blame and the risk; nor wilt thou find any plea for excuse with us. For in proportion as this business will commend thee to us if it be most strictly investigated and corrected, know that our indignation will become sharp against thee, if it be smoothed over.
Moreover, for the rest, if any slaves from the city should have taken refuge in the monastery of Saint Severinus, or in any other church of this same fort, as soon as this has come to thy knowledge, by no means allow them to remain there, but let them be brought to the church within the city; and, if they should have just cause of complaint against their masters, they must needs leave the church with suitable arrangements made for them. But, if they should have committed any venial fault, let them be restored without delay to their masters, the latter having taken oath to pardon them. __________________________________________________________________
[1467] The Castellum, or Castrum, Lucullanum was a small island adjoining Naples. Respecting Paul, bishop of Nepe, who had been sent as visitor to the See of Naples during a vacancy, and his difficulties there, cf. II. 9, 10, 15; III. 35. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle II.
To Paulus, Bishop [1468] .
Gregory to Paulus, &c.
Although it has distressed us in no slight degree to hear of the injury that thou hast suffered, yet we have matter of consolation in learning that the affair is to thy credit, in that, so far as the account sent to us has disclosed the facts, thou hast suffered in the cause of uprightness and equity. Wherefore, that it may redound to the greater glory of thy Fraternity, this occurrence ought neither to shake thy constancy nor turn thee aside from the way of truth. For it is to the greater reward of priests if they continue in the path of truth even after injuries. But, lest the madness of such great impiety should remain unpunished, and pernicious insubordination break out to a worse degree, we have enjoined the magnificent Scholasticus, judge of Campania, who is at present here, that he should avenge what has been done with the repression it deserves. But, inasmuch as thy men have requested us to commission some one to represent ourselves, know that we have for this reason sent to Naples the subdeacon Epiphanius, who may be able, with the judge above named, to investigate and ascertain the truth, to the end that by his instancy he may cause worthy vengeance to be executed on those who may be shewn to have instigated or perpetrated so great a crime. __________________________________________________________________
[1468] See preceding Epistle. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle III.
To John, Abbot [1469] .
Gregory to John, &c.
Thy Love has requested me that brother Boniface might be ordained Prior (præpositus) [1470] in thy monastery; as to which request I wonder much why it has not been done before. For since the time when I caused him to be given to thee thou oughtest already to have ordained him.
With regard to the tunic of Saint John [1471] , I have been altogether gratified by thy anxiety to tell me of it. But let thy Love endeavour to send me this tunic, or (better still) this same bishop who has it, with his clergy and with the tunic itself, to the end that we may enjoy the blessing thereof, and be able to derive benefit from this bishop and his clergy. I have been desirous of putting an end to the cause that is pending with Florianus, and have already advanced to him as much as eighty solidi, which I believe he proposes should be given him in compensation for the monastery's debt; and I am altogether desirous that this cause should be settled, inasmuch as Stephen the chartularius is said to be urgent that the aforesaid Florianus should transfer it to public cognizance, and it is distasteful to us to be engaged in a public lawsuit. Wherefore we must needs make some concession, so as to be able to bring this same cause to a composition. When this shall have been done, we will inform your Love of it.
But do thou give thy whole attention to the souls of the brethren. Let it be now enough that the reputation of the monastery has been stained through your negligence. Do not often go abroad. Appoint an agent for these causes, and do thou leave thyself time for reading and prayer.
Be attentive to hospitality; as far as thou art able, give to the poor; yet so as to keep what ought to be restored to Florianus. Moreover, among the brethren of thy monastery whom I see I do not find addiction to reading. Wherefore you must needs consider how great a sin it is, that God should have sent you alimony from the offerings of others, and you should neglect learning the commandments of God.
Further, with regard to the six twelfths, unless we see the original deed, or a copy of it, we can do nothing. But I have sent an order to the servant of God, Florentinus, that, if the truth should be made apparent to him, he restore to you the six twelfths; after the restoration of which we will either grant the remaining six twelfths on lease or commute the revenue. __________________________________________________________________
[1469] Probably John, abbot of the monastery of St. Lucia in Syracuse, referred to as engaged in a dispute about property in VII. 39.
[1470] See II. 32, note 5.
[1471] This tunic is referred to by John the Deacon (Vit. S. Greg. iii. 57, 59), and supposed by him to have been that of St. John the Evangelist, and identical with one of the vestments afterwards preserved under the altar of St. John in the Basilica Constantiniana at Rome, fragments of which he says were given away as relics, and possessed of miraculous virtue. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle V.
To Peter, Subdeacon.
Gregory to Peter, Subdeacon of Campania.
As we have no wish to disturb the privileges of laymen in their judgments, so, when they judge wrongfully, we desire thee to resist them with moderate authority. For to restrain violent laymen is not to act against the laws, but to support law. Since then Deusdedit, the son-in-law of Felix of Orticellum, is said to have done violent wrong to the bearer of these presents, and still unlawfully to detain her property, in such sort that the dejection of her widowhood is found not to move his compassion, but to confirm his malice, we charge thy Experience that against the aforesaid man, as well as in other cases wherein the aforesaid woman asserts that she suffers prejudice, thou afford her the succour of thy protection, and not allow her to be oppressed by any one whatever, lest either thou be found to neglect what without prejudice to equity is commanded thee, or widows and other poor persons, finding no help where they are, be put to expense by the length of the journey hither. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle VI.
To John, Bishop.
Gregory to John, bishop of Prima Justiniana [1472] .
After the long afflictions which Adrian, bishop of the city of Thebæ, has endured from his fellow-priests, as though they had been his enemies, he has fled for refuge to the Roman city. And though his first representation had been against John, bishop of Larissa, to wit that in pecuniary causes he had given judgment without regard to the laws, yet after this he complained most grievously rather against the person of thy Fraternity, accusing thee of having deposed him unjustly from the degree of priesthood. But we, giving no credence to petitions that have not been enquired into, perused the acts of the proceedings, whether before our brother and fellow-bishop John, or before thy Fraternity. And indeed concerning the judgment of the above-named John, bishop of Larissa, which was suspended on appeal, both the most pious emperors, in their orders sent to the bishop of Corinth, have sufficiently decreed, and we have decreed also, Christ helping us, in our letters directed through the bearers of these presents to the aforesaid John of Larissa. But having ventilated the conflicting judgments, the examination of which the imperial commands had committed to thee, and inspected the series of proceedings held before the bishop John concerning the incriminated persons, we find that thou hast investigated almost nothing pertaining to the questions named and assigned to thee for decision, but by certain machinations hast produced witnesses against the deacon Demetrius, who were to allege with a view to the condemnation of this same bishop, that they had heard this Demetrius bearing testimony concerning the said bishop;--a thing not even lawful to be heard of. And when Demetrius in person denied having done so, it appears that, contrary to the custom of the priesthood and canonical discipline, thou gavest him into the hands of the prætor of the province as a deacon deposed from his dignity [1473] . And when, mangled by many stripes, he might perchance have said some things falsely against his bishop under the pressure of torment, we find that to the very end of the business he confessed absolutely nothing of the things about which he was interrogated. Neither do we find anything else in the proceedings themselves, whether in the depositions of witnesses or in the declaration of Adrian, to his disadvantage. But it is only that thy Fraternity, I know not with what motive, in contempt of law, human and divine, has pronounced an abrupt sentence against him; which, even though it had not been suspended on appeal, being pronounced in contravention of the laws and canons, could not rightly in itself have stood. Further, after, as is abundantly evident, the appeal had been handed to thee, we wonder why thou hast not sent thy people to us to render an account of thy judgment according to the undertaking delivered to our deacon Honoratus by the representatives of thy church. This omission convicts thee either of contumacy or of trepidation of conscience. If, then, these things which have been brought before us have the rampart of truth, inasmuch as we consider that, taking advantage of your vicariate jurisdiction under us, you are presuming unjustly, we will, with the help of Christ, decree further concerning these things, according to the result of our deliberations.
But as regards the present, by the authority of the blessed Peter, Prince of the apostles, we decree that, the decrees of thy judgment being first annulled and made of none effect, thou be deprived of holy communion for the space of thirty days, so as to implore pardon of our God for so great transgression with the utmost penitence and tears. But, if we should come to know that thou hast been remiss in carrying out this our sentence, know thou that not the injustice only, but also the contumacy, of thy Fraternity will have to be more severely punished. But, as to our aforesaid brother and fellow-bishop Adrian, condemned by thy sentence, which, as we have said, was consistent with neither canons nor laws, we order that he be restored, Christ being with him, to his place and rank; so that neither may he be injured by the sentence of thy Fraternity pronounced in deviation from the path of justice, nor may thy Charity remain uncorrected; that so we may appease the indignation of the future judge. __________________________________________________________________
[1472] As to the See of Prima Justiniana, the Metropolitan jurisdiction assigned to it by the Emperor Justinian, and the vicariate jurisdiction that had been transferred to it from Thessalonica by the popes, see note on Lib. II., Ep. 22. The circumstances referred to in this and the following letter are interesting as shewing, among other things, the relations of the See of Rome to the Church in Illyricum, and the action of the Emperors with regard to it. They may be epitomized as follows. Thebæ Phthioticæ was a See in the province of Thessalia, of which Larissa was the Metropolis. But, as appears from what Gregory says in Epistle VII., Thebæ had been for some reason exempted from the metropolitan jurisdiction of the bishop of Larissa by pope Pelagius II. John and Cosmas, two deposed deacons of the Church of Thebæ, had sent a representation to the Emperor, accusing their bishop, Adrian, of defalcations in money matters, and also of certain misdemeanours; the latter being that he had retained in office one of his deacons, Stephen, whose shameful life was notorious, and that he had ordered baptism to be refused to certain infants, who had consequently died unbaptized. The Emperor (Mauricius) referred the matter to John, bishop of Larissa, as Metropolitan of Thessalia, who, notwithstanding the exemption of Thebæ from his jurisdiction by pope Pelagius II., took it up, and decided against Adrian, at any rate with respect to his alleged pecuniary defalcations. Adrian appealed against this decision to the Emperor, who thereupon deputed certain persons (not bishops) to enquire and report, and, on receiving their report, exempted Adrian from further proceedings, sending an order to that effect to the Bishop of Corinth, who was Metropolitan of the adjoining province of Achaia. Meanwhile John of Larissa had imprisoned Adrian, and elicited from him (under compulsion, it was said) an ambiguous confession of his guilt, and also obtained from the Emperor a second order committing the reinvestigation and final adjudication of the case to John, bishop of Prima Justiniana, who confirmed the sentence of John of Larissa, and deposed Adrian from his See. Adrian now at last appealed to the pope, and went himself to Rome to seek aid from Gregory, who took up the case at once and strenuously declared the past proceedings unfair, uncanonical, and void, ordered the immediate restoration of Adrian to his See, excommunicated John of Prima Justiniana, and forbade John of Larissa, under pain of excommunication, to assume hereafter any metropolitan jurisdiction over the church of Thebæ. Now it is plain that, till Adrian's final appeal, no recourse was had by any of the parties concerned to the See of Rome, and that the Emperor, who alone was at first appealed to, took the matter up on his own authority without reference to Rome: nor was it till he had failed of redress from Constantinople that Adrian himself appealed to Gregory. But it is equally evident that Gregory, when appealed to, asserted his own plenary jurisdiction as matter of course and without hesitation: nor is there any evidence to shew that his assertion of authority was resisted either by the Illyrican prelates or the Emperor. It was probably a case in which the Emperor himself took little interest; and he might be glad that the pope should take it out of his hands and settle it. It was otherwise, however, in a subsequent case (though occurring not in Eastern, but in Western Illyricum), in which Gregory was at issue with the Emperor with respect to the appointment of a bishop to the See of Salona, as will be seen hereafter. See III. 47, note 2.
[1473] Otherwise he could not have been examined by scourging, as it appears he was. For clerics were by law exempt from the question. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle VII.
To John, Bishop.
Gregory to John, bishop of Larissa.
Our brother Adrian, bishop of the city of Thebæ, has come to Rome, bitterly complaining of having been condemned, neither lawfully nor canonically, on certain charges by thy Fraternity, and also by John, bishop of Prima Justiniana. And, when for a long time we saw no representative of the opposite party arrive here who might have replied to his objections, we delivered for perusal [1474] , with a view to the necessary ascertainment of the truth, the proceedings which had taken place before you. From these we ascertained that John and Cosmas, deacons who had been deposed from their office, one for frailty of the body and the other for fraudulent dealing with ecclesiastical property, had sent a representation to our most pious emperors against him, with respect to pecuniary matters and also criminal charges.
They, in their commands sent to thee, desired thee (that is with strict observance of law and canons) to take cognizance of the matter so as to pass a sentence firm in law as to the pecuniary questions, but, as to the criminal charges, to report to their Clemency after a searching examination. Now if thy Fraternity had received in a right frame of mind these such right commands, you would never have accepted for a general accusation of their bishop men removed from their own office for their transgressions, and already hostilely disposed; especially as by their representation addressed to our most pious lords their untruthfulness is detected, in that they declared that they made it with the consent of all the clergy.
Yet after this, to touch briefly and summarily on some of the proceedings before thee, the first head of accusation was concerning the Theban deacon Stephen, whom the bishop Adrian had failed to deprive of the dignity of his order, though supposed to have been aware of his most shameful life. As to this head, no witnesses were produced to show that bishop Adrian had any knowledge of the matter, except that Stephen alone, a man of shameful life and on his own confession to be condemned, is alleged to have said so. The second charge made against him appears to have been concerning infants having been debarred by his order from receiving holy baptism, and so having died with the filth of sin unwashed away. But none of the witnesses brought forward against him declared their knowledge of anything of the kind having come under the notice of bishop Adrian, but said that they had learnt it from the mothers of the infants, whose husbands, it is said, had been removed from the church for their crimes. But even so they did not declare that the hour of death had overtaken those infants while unbaptized, as was contained in the invidious representation of the accusers, it being evident that they had been baptized in the city of Demetrias. So much then for the criminal charges.
But, as to the pecuniary matters, after what manner they were adjudged by thee is attested by the enquiry of the men deputed by the prince in pursuance of the most pious order of the most serene princes [1475] . For, when the oft-named Adrian had appealed against thy sentence, then, so far as we have ascertained from the depositions of four witnesses which were laid before John, bishop of Prima Justiniana, he was thrust into most close confinement, and forced by thy Fraternity to produce a document in which he confessed the charges brought against him. And it is true that in the document so produced by him he is found to have assented to thy sentence as to pecuniary matters. But the criminal charges he touched on in an indefinite and dubious sort of way, so that both thy purpose might be frustrated by the raising of certain clouds, and he might afterwards the better escape from his confession in the obscurity of a perplexed mode of speech. And when the appeal handed in by his people, and the rest of the proceedings under thy cognizance, had been reported to the most pious princes, and Honoratus, deacon of our See, with the glorious antigraphus [1476] Sebastian having been deputed, as we have said, he was exempted by the most serene lords from all further orders. But, by what sought out contrivances I know not, another imperial order was again elicited, requiring John, bishop of Prima Justiniana, to enquire closely and pass judgment concerning all the aforesaid charges. In which trial all bishop Adrian's clergy, and Demetrius the deacon, the latter in the midst of torments, declared that all this calumny against bishop Adrian had been got up by the contrivance of thy Fraternity. Nor were any of the criminal charges that had been made in thy audience against the bishop Adrian proved. But there came up, contrary to canons and laws, another cruel and crafty enquiry directed against his deacon Demetrius and other persons, in the course of which nothing was discovered for which the oft-mentioned Adrian could have been lawfully condemned, but rather ground for his acquittal. But with respect to John, prelate of the city of Prima Justiniana, and his most iniquitous and abominable judgment, we shall take further measures. As to bishop Adrian, we find both that he has laboured under thy enmity in a way ill-befitting thy priestly character, and that he has been condemned in pecuniary matters for no just cause by the sentence of thy Fraternity.
Since then, having been deposed also by the above-said John bishop of Prima Justiniana in contravention of law and canons, he could not be left deprived of his rank and honour, we have decreed that he be reinstated in his church, and recalled to the order of his proper dignity. And, though thou oughtest to have been deprived of the communion of the Lord's body, for that, setting at naught the admonition of my predecessor of holy memory, whereby he exempted him and his church from the jurisdiction of thy authority, thou hast again presumed to retain some jurisdiction over them, yet we, decreeing more humanely, and still allowing thee the sacrament of communion, decree that thy Fraternity shall abstain from all exercise of the jurisdiction formerly held by thee over him and his church; but that, according to the written instructions of our predecessor, if any case should possibly arise, whether touching the faith, or criminal, or pecuniary, against the aforesaid Adrian our fellow-priest, it be either taken cognizance of, if the question be a slight one, by those who are or may be our representatives in the royal city, or, if it be an arduous one, it be brought hither to the Apostolic See, to the end that it may be heard and decided before ourselves. But, if thou shouldest attempt at any time, on any pretext or by any surreptitious device, to contravene these our ordinances, know that we decree thee to be deprived of holy communion, and not to partake of it except at the close of thy life, unless upon leave granted by the Roman pontiff. For this we lay down as a rule, agreeably to the teaching of the holy fathers, that whosoever knows not how to obey the holy canons, neither is he worthy to minister or receive the communion at the holy altars. Moreover let thy Fraternity restore to him without any delay the sacred property, or any other, movable or immovable, which thou art said to retain so far; a specification whereof, that has been handed to us, we append to this letter. Concerning which if any question arises between you, we desire it to be considered by our representative in the royal city. __________________________________________________________________
[1474] "Relegenda tradidimus," not "relegimus;" presumably because, the Acts being drawn up in Greek, Gregory was unable to read them himself.
[1475] The Emperor Mauricius had associated his son Theodosius, being four years of age, with himself in the empire. Hence "princibus."
[1476] See I. 39, note. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle VIII.
To Natalis, Archbishop.
Gregory to Natalis, archbishop of Salona [1477] .
Whilst every kind of business demands [1478] anxious investigation of the truth, what pertains to deposition from sacerdotal rank should be considered with especial strictness, since here the matter in hand is not concerning persons constituted in a humble position, but, as it were, concerning reversal of divine benediction. This consideration has also moved us to exhort your Fraternity with respect to the person of Florentius, bishop of the city of Epidaurus. For indeed we have been told that he had been accused on certain criminal charges, and that, without any canonical proof being sought, and without previous sentence of any sacerdotal council, he has been deposed from his office of dignity, not by law, but by authority. Inasmuch, then, as no man can be removed from the rank of episcopacy except for just causes by the concordant sentence of priests, we exhort your Fraternity to cause the aforesaid man to be recalled from the banishment into which he has been driven, and his case enquired into in a consultation of bishops. And, should he be convicted by canonical proof of the charges brought against him, without doubt he must be visited with canonical punishment. But, should the facts be found by the synodical inquisition to be otherwise than had been supposed, it is necessary both that his accusers should dread the rigour of justice, and that the incriminated person should have the approbation of his innocence preserved inviolate. But we have committed by our order the execution of the above-mentioned business to Antoninus, our subdeacon, to the end that decisions may be come to in accordance with the laws and canons, and, with the help of the Lord, be carried into effect. __________________________________________________________________
[1477] Natalis was Metropolitan of the province of Dalmatia. See note II. 18, note 3.
[1478] I.e. episcopal rank. Here, as below in this Epistle and elsewhere, by sacerdotes are meant bishops. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle IX.
To Antoninus, Subdeacon [1479] .
Gregory to Antoninus, &c.
It has come to our ears that Florentius, bishop of the city of Epidaurus, his property having first been seized, has been condemned, for certain crimes not proved, without a sacerdotal council. And, inasmuch as he ought not to suffer canonical punishment, no canonical sentence having been pronounced for his condemnation, we enjoin thy Experience to urge upon our brother and fellow-bishop Natalis that he should cause the aforesaid man to be recalled from the banishment into which he is said to have been driven. And a council of bishops having been assembled, if the charges brought against him should be canonically proved, we will that the sentence of our aforesaid brother and fellow-bishop Natalis shall take effect against him. But, should he be absolved by a general judgment, thou must not permit him to be subject to prejudice on the part of any one, and must carefully and rigorously insist on his aforesaid property being restored to him. It is therefore needful that the heavier thou feelest the burden of such negotiations to be, with the maturer and more vigilant execution thou take pains to fulfil them. __________________________________________________________________
[1479] I.e. of Dalmatia. The case referred to in this and the preceding letter is interesting as illustrating canonical procedure against incriminated bishops. Natalis as Metropolitan, had entertained a charge against one of his suffragans and pronounced judgment against him on his own authority. Gregory insists that he had no right to do so except in a synod of bishops. It appears that Natalis (as to whose character and relations to Gregory, see II. 18, and reff. in note), paid no regard in this instance to the pope's remonstrances, and the latter found no means of enforcing his orders. For, in a letter written five years later (a.d. 597), long after the death of Natalis, we find Gregory writing, "The inhabitants of the city of Epidaurus have most urgently demanded that Florentius, who they say is their bishop, should be restored to them by us, asserting that he had been driven into exile invalidly by the mere will of the bishop Natalis." (Lib. viii. Indict. i. Ep. 11). __________________________________________________________________
Epistle X.
To Savinus, Subdeacon [1480] .
Gregory to Savinus, &c.
Bad men have gone forth and disturbed your minds, understanding neither what they say nor whereof they affirm, pretending that in the times of Justinian of pious memory something was detracted from the faith of the holy synod of Chalcedon, which with all faith and all devotion we venerate. And in like manner all the four synods of the holy universal Church we receive as we do the four books of the holy Gospel. But concerning the persons with respect to whom something had been done after the close of the synod, there was something ventilated in the times of Justinian of pious memory: yet so that neither was the faith in any respect violated, nor anything else done with regard to these same persons but what had been determined at the same holy synod of Chalcedon. Moreover, we anathematize any one who presumes to detract anything from the definition of the faith which was promulgated in the said synod, or, as though by amending it, to change its meaning: but, as it was there promulged, so in all respects we guard it. Thee, therefore, most dear son, it becomes to return to the unity of Holy Church, that thou mayest end thy days in peace; lest the malignant spirit, who cannot prevail against thee through thy other works, may from this cause find a way at the day of thy departure of barring thy entrance into the heavenly Kingdom. __________________________________________________________________
[1480] It does not appear who this Savinus was. The Epistle refers to the condemnation of the Three Chapters by the fifth General Council. See Proleg. p. xi. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XII.
To Maximianus, Bishop.
Gregory to Maximianus, bishop of Syracuse
I wrote some time ago to your Fraternity desiring you to send to the Roman city those who had alleged anything against Gregory, bishop of the city of Agrigentum [1481] . And we exhort you by this present epistle that this should be immediately done. Wherefore hasten to send with speed the persons themselves, and the rest of the documents, that is the reports of proceedings and the petitions that have been given in. Nor do we allow any delay or excuse to be sought; to the end that, when they have been sent, as we have said, with speed to the Roman city, we may know how, with the help of God, we may most advantageously deal with him. __________________________________________________________________
[1481] Cf. I. 72. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XV.
To Scholasticus, Judge.
Gregory to Scholasticus, judge of Campania.
While we were greatly distressed in our care for the city of Naples, bereaved of the solace of a priest [1482] , the arrival of the bearers of these presents with the decree for the election of our subdeacon Florentius, had afforded us some relief under so great a burden of thought. But, when it appeared that our said subdeacon, flying from the very city, had deprecated his ordination with tears, know ye that our sadness increased, as if from some heavier dispensation. Wherefore, greeting you well, we exhort your Greatness to assemble the chief men or the people of the city, so as to take thought for the election of another, who may be worthy to be promoted to the priesthood with the consolation of Christ. Then, the decree having been solemnly passed, and transmitted to this city, let the ordination proceed, with the help of Christ, among yourselves. But, should you not find a suitable person on whom you can agree, at any rate choose ye three upright and wise men, to be sent to this city as representing the community, and to whose judgment the whole population may assent. Perhaps, when they come hither, they will find such a one as may be ordained as your bishop without reproach, to the end that your bereaved city may neither within itself want an inspector of its deeds, nor, when the care of a priest is supplied to it, afford entrance to hostile snares from without. __________________________________________________________________
[1482] For an account of the circumstances of the vacancy at Naples after the deposition of Demetrius, cf. II. 6, note 3; II. 9, note 6. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXII.
To Antoninus, Subdeacon.
Gregory to Antoninus, Subdeacon, Rector of the patrimony in Dalmatia.
It is commonly reported in these parts that our brother and fellow-bishop, Natalis of the Church of Salona, is dead. If this is true, let thy Experience with all speed and all care hasten to admonish the clergy and people of that city that with one consent they elect a priest for ordination; and, when the nomination of the person who may be elected has been made, thou wilt take care to transmit it to us, that he may be ordained with our consent, as has been the case from ancient times. And this above all things thou must look to, that in this election neither any bribery in any way whatever come in, nor the patronage of any persons whatever prevail. For if one is elected through the patronage of certain persons, he is obliged out of deference to them to comply with their wishes after his ordination, and so it comes to pass that the possessions of that church are lessened, and ecclesiastical order is not maintained. They must, therefore, under thy superintendence, elect such a person as will not be unsuitably subservient to the will of any one, but one who in the adornment of his life and conversation may be found worthy of such a high degree. But of the possessions or ornaments of the same church cause an inventory to be faithfully written out in thy presence. And, lest any of the possessions themselves should be lost, admonish Respectus the deacon and Stephanus the chief notary (primicerium notariarum) to take sole charge of these possessions, warning them that they will have to make good out of their own substance any diminution of them that may have arisen from their negligence.
Moreover, strictly charge Malchus [1483] , our brother and fellow-bishop, that he refrain entirely from intermeddling in this matter. For, should we learn that anything has been done or attempted by him against our will, let him know that he will incur no slight guilt and danger. But of this also take care to warn him, that he must be careful to set down and complete the accounts of our patrimony which he has had in charge; for doing which let him make haste, laying aside all excuses, to come to us from the Sicilian parts. Let him, then, in no wise presume to meddle with the affairs of the Church of Salona, lest he should be under further liability to it, and possibly found culpable. For he is said to have many things belonging to the aforesaid church; and report goes that he was well-nigh the prime mover in the sale of its possessions, and in other unlawful doings. And, should this be found in manifest truth to be as it is said to be, he may be certain that it will by no means remain unavenged.
Let any necessary expenses be defrayed by the steward who was in office at the time of the aforesaid bishop's death, that so he may explain his accounts to the future bishop as he knows them to be. All the things that we have enjoined on thee to be done it is certainly necessary that thou shouldest do with the advice of our son, the magnificent and most eloquent Marcellus [1484] , to the end that thou mayest be able to carry out carefully and effectively all that is contained in this paper of directions, and that no blame for negligence may belong to thee __________________________________________________________________
[1483] For an account of this Malchus and his doings, see II. 20, note 5.
[1484] Proconsul of Dalmatia: see IX. 5. For subsequent proceedings in connexion with the election of a successor to Natalis at Salona, see III. 47. It appears that the co-operation of the proconsul Marcellus, anticipated in this Epistle, was not in fact obtained, but that he acted independently, and in opposition to Gregory. Cf. IX. 5. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXIX.
To the Presbyters and Clergy of Mediolanum (Milan) [1485] .
Gregory to the presbyters, deacons, and clergy of the church of Mediolanum.
We have received your Love's epistle, which, though it bore no subscription, was accredited by the persons of the bearers, the presbyter Magnus and the cleric Hippolytus. Having read it, we find that you are all agreed in favour of our son Constantius, deacon of your church, who has been well known to me for long. And, when I represented the Apostolical See in the royal city, he stuck close to me for a long time; but I never found anything in him that could at all be found fault with. Nevertheless, since it has been for long my deliberate determination to interfere in no man's favour with a view to his undertaking the burden of pastoral care, I can but follow up your election with my prayers that Almighty God, who is ever prescient of our future doings, may supply you with a pastor such that in his tongue and manners you may be able to find pastures of divine exhortation; one in whose disposition humility may shine forth together with rectitude, and severity with loving-kindness; one who may be able to shew you the way of life not in his speaking only but also in his living; that so from his example your love may learn to sigh with longing for the eternal country. Wherefore, most dear sons, we, warned by our sense of the censorship of our office, urge you in this matter of getting yourselves a bishop that none of you look to your own gain without regard to the common advantage, lest, if any one is eager after his own individual interest, he should be deceived by a frivolous estimate: for the mind that is bound by cupidity does not examine with a free judgment a person's claims to preference. Considering, therefore, what things are profitable for all, pay ye ever in all things most complete obedience to him whom Divine grace may put over you. For, when once put over you, he must not be further judged by you; though now he ought to be the more thoroughly judged as he may not be judged hereafter. But, when with God's leave a pastor has been consecrated for you, commit ye yourselves to him with all your heart, and in him serve the Lord the Almighty, who has put him over you.
But, inasmuch as supernal judgment is wont to provide pastors for peoples according to their deservings, do you seek spiritual things, love heavenly things, despise things temporal and fugitive; and hold it for most certain that you will have a pastor who shall please God, if you in your own doings please God. Lo, all the things of this world, which we used to hear from the sacred page were doomed to perish, we see already ruined. Cities are overthrown, camps uprooted, churches destroyed; and no tiller of the ground inhabits our land. Among ourselves who are left, very few in number, the sword of man incessantly rages along with calamities wherewith we are smitten from above. Thus we see before our eyes the evils which we long ago heard should come upon the world, and the very regions of the earth have become as pages of books to us. In the passing away, then, of all things, we ought to take thought how that all that we have loved was nothing. View, therefore, with anxious heart the approaching day of the eternal judge, and by repenting anticipate its terrors. Wash away with tears the status of all your transgressions. Allay by temporal lamentation the wrath that hangs over you eternally. For our loving Creator, when He shall come for judgment, will comfort us with all the greater favour as He sees now that we are punishing ourselves for our own transgressions.
We are now sending to you, by the favour of God, John our subdeacon, the bearer of these presents, to this end;--that, with the help of Almighty God, he may see to your bishop-elect being consecrated after the manner of his predecessor. For, as we demand our rights from others, so we conserve their several rights to all. __________________________________________________________________
[1485] As to the great Metropolitan See of Milan having been anciently independent of the See of Rome, cf. Bingham. Bk. IX., Ch. I., Sect. 10, 11. As to Pope Gregory's attitude with regard to it, as shewn in this and the two following Epistles, we may remark as follows. (1) The electors addressed (Ep. 29) are the clergy only, not (as is usual in other cases) including the laity of the Church. This may be due to the ancient custom of that Church. (2) The electors, having already made their choice, seem to have sent messengers to announce it to the pope (Ep. 29). (3) Gregory disclaims all desire of interfering either in the election or in the consecration of the new Metropolitan, according to ancient custom by his own suffragans, or in any way infringing the prescriptive rights of the Church of Milan. But he sends his own subdeacon, both to assure himself of the unanimity of the election and to see to the consecration being effected according to precedent. He also intimates (Epp. 30, 31) the necessity of his own assent to the consecration. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXX.
To John, Subdeacon.
Gregory to John, &c.
Inasmuch as it is manifest that the Apostolic See is, by the ordering of God, set over all Churches, there is, among our manifold cares, especial demand for our attention, when our decision is awaited with a view to the consecration of a bishop. Now on the death of Laurentius, bishop of the church of Mediolanum, the clergy reported to us that they had unanimously agreed in the election of our son Constantius, their deacon. But, their report not having been subscribed, it becomes necessary, that we may omit nothing in the way of caution, for thee to proceed to Genua (Genoa), supported by the authority of this order [1486] . And, inasmuch as there are many Milanese at present there under stress of barbarian ferocity, thou must call them together, and enquire into their wishes in common. And, if no diversity of opinion separates them from the unanimity of the election--that is to say, if thou ascertainest that the desire and consent of all continues in favour of our aforesaid son, Constantius,--then thou art to cause him to be consecrated by his own bishops, as ancient usage requires, with the assent of our authority, and the help of the Lord; to the end that through the observance of such custom both the Apostolic See may retain the power belonging to it, and at the same time may not diminish the rights which it has conceded to others. __________________________________________________________________
[1486] The reason of John the subdeacon being directed to go to Genoa rather than to Milan may have been danger from the Lombards in approaching the latter place, as well as the fact of many of the Milanese having, for the same reason, taken refuge in Genoa. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXXI.
To Romanus, Patrician.
Gregory to Romanus, Patrician, and Exarch of Italy.
We believe that your Excellency is already aware of the death of Laurentius, bishop of the church of Mediolanum. And since, so far as we have learnt from the report of the clergy, all have agreed in the election of our son Constantius, deacon of the same church, it was necessary for us, for keeping up old usage, to send a soldier of our church, to cause him in whose favour he finds the will and consent of all to concur unanimously to be consecrated by his own bishops, as ancient usage requires, though still with our assent. Wherefore, greeting you with fatherly affection as in duty bound, we request your Excellency to vouchsafe your support, justice approving, to the aforesaid Constantius, whether elected or not, whenever need may arise; to the end that this service may both exalt you here before your enemies, and commend you beforehand in the future life before God. For he is one of mine, and was once associated with me on very intimate terms. And you ought to hold as yours, and to love peculiarly, those whom you know to be ours. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXXII.
To Honoratus, Archdeacon.
Gregory to Honoratus, Archdeacon of Salona [1487] .
The mandates of ourselves and of our predecessor had reached thy Love not long ago, in which thou wert acquitted of the charges calumniously brought against thee; and we ordered thee to be reinstated without any dispute in the order of thy rank. But, inasmuch as again after no great lapse of time, thou camest to the city of Rome complaining of some improper proceedings among you concerning the alienation of sacred vessels, and as, while we had persons with us here who might have replied to thy objections, Natalis, thy bishop, departed this life, we have judged it necessary to confirm further by this present letter those same mandates, both our predecessor's and our own, which (as has been said) we sent not long ago for thy acquittal. Wherefore, acquitting thee fully of all the charges brought against thee, we will that thou continue without any dispute in the rank of thy order, so that the question raised by the aforesaid man may not on any pretext prejudice thee in the least degree. Moreover, as to the heads of thy complaint, we have straitly charged Antoninus, subdeacon and rector in your parts of the patrimony of holy Church over which, by God's providence, we preside, that, if he should find ecclesiastical persons implicated in them, he decide these cases with the utmost strictness and authority. But, in case of the business being with such persons as the vigour of ecclesiastical jurisdiction cannot reach, he is to deposit the proofs under each particular head among the public acts, and transmit them to us without any delay, that, being accurately informed, we may know how, with the help of Christ, to dispose of the matter. __________________________________________________________________
[1487] See I. 19, note 5. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXXIII.
To Dynamius, Patrician.
Gregory to Dynamius, Patrician of Gaul.
He who administers faithfully what is other's shews how well he dispenses what is his own. And this your Glory makes manifest to us in that, intent on your annual offering, you have rendered the blessed Peter, Prince of the apostles, the fruits of his revenues. In paying him what is his faithfully, you have made these gifts to him your own. For indeed it becomes the glorious people of this earth who think of eternal glory so to act that in virtue of their excelling in temporal power, they may procure for themselves a reward that is not temporal. Accordingly, addressing to you the greeting which we owe, we implore Almighty God both to replenish your life with present good, and to extend it to the lofty joys of eternity. For we have received through our son Hilarus (al Hilarius) of the aforesaid revenues of our Church four hundred Gallican solidi [1488] . We now send you as the benediction of the blessed apostle Peter a small cross, wherein are inserted benefits from his chains [1489] , which for a time bound his neck: but may they loose yours from sins for ever. Moreover in its four parts round about are contained benefits from the gridiron of the blessed Laurence, whereon he was burnt, that it, whereon his body was consumed by fire for the truth's sake, may inflame your soul to the love of the Lord. __________________________________________________________________
[1488] As to Gallic money, cf. VI. 7, and note.
[1489] Cf. I. 26, note 3. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXXV.
To Peter, Subdeacon.
Gregory to Peter, subdeacon of Campania [1490] .
Our brother and fellow-bishop Paul has often requested us to allow him to return to his own church. And, having perceived this to be reasonable, we have thought it needful to accede to his petition. Consequently let thy Experience convene the clergy of the Neapolitan church, to the end that they may choose two or three of their number, and not omit to send them hither for the election of a bishop. But let them also intimate, in their communication to us, that those whom they send represent them all in this election, so that their church may have its own bishop validly ordained. For we cannot allow it to be any longer without a ruler of its own. Should they perchance try in any way to set aside thy admonition, bring to bear on them the vigour of ecclesiastical discipline. For he will be giving proof of his own perverseness, whosoever does not of his own accord assent to this proceeding. Moreover, cause to be given to the aforesaid Paul, our brother and fellow-bishop, one hundred solidi, and one little orphan boy, to be selected by himself, for his labour in behalf of the same church. Further, admonish those who are to come hither as representing all for the election of a bishop, to remember that they must bring with them all the episcopal vestments, and also as much money as they may foresee to be necessary for him who may be elected bishop to have to his own use. But lose no time in despatching those of the clergy who are selected as we have said, that, seeing that there are present here divers nobles of the city of Naples, we may treat with them concerning the election of a bishop, and take counsel together with the help of the Lord. __________________________________________________________________
[1490] See II. 6, note 3. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXXVI.
To Sabinus, Guardian (Defensorem).
Gregory to Sabinus, Guardian of Sardinia.
Certain serious matters having come to our ears which require canonical correction, we therefore charge thy Experience not to neglect to cause Januarius, our brother and fellow-bishop, together with John the notary, to appear before us with all speed, all excuses being laid aside, that in his presence what has been reported to us may be subjected to a thorough investigation. Further, if the religious women Pompeiana and Theodosia, according to their request, should wish to come hither, afford them your succour in all ways, that they may be able, through your assistance, to accomplish their desires: but especially be careful by all means to bring with you the most eloquent Isidore, as he has requested, that, the merits of his case which he is known to have against the Church of Caralis having been fully gone into, he may be able to have it legally terminated.
Furthermore, some personal misdemeanours having been reported to us of the presbyter Epiphanius, it is necessary for you to investigate everything diligently, and to make haste to bring at the same time with you the women with whom he is said to have sinned, or others whom you suppose to know anything about the matter; that so the truth may be clearly laid open to the rigour of ecclesiastical discipline.
Now you will take care to accomplish all these things so efficiently as to lay yourself open to no blame for negligence, knowing that it will be entirely at your peril if this our order should in any way be slackly executed. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXXVIII.
To Libertinus, Præfect [1491] .
Gregory to Libertinus, Præfect of Sicily.
From the very beginning of your administration God has willed you to go forth to vindicate His cause, and of His mercy has reserved for you this reward, with praise attending it. For it is reported that one Nasas, a most wicked Jew, has with a temerity that calls for punishment erected an altar under the name of the blessed Elias, and by sacrilegious seduction has enticed many Christians to worship there; nay, has also, it is said, acquired Christian slaves, and devoted them to his own service and profit. Whilst, then, he ought to have been most severely punished for such great crimes, the glorious Justinus [1492] , soothed (as has been written to us) by the charm of avarice, put off avenging the injury done to God. But let your Glory institute a strict examination into all these things, and, if it should be found manifest that such things have been done, make haste to visit them most strictly and corporally on this wicked Jew, in such sort that you may thereby both conciliate the favour of God to yourself, and shew yourself by this example, to your own reward, a model to posterity. Moreover, set at liberty, without any equivocation, according to the injunctions of the laws [1493] , whatever Christian slaves it shall appear that he has acquired; lest (which God forbid) the Christian religion should be polluted by being subjected to Jews. Do you therefore with all speed correct these things most strictly, that not only may we give thanks to you for this discipline, but also bear testimony to your goodness in case of need. __________________________________________________________________
[1491] In some mss. prætori, in others exprætori. It seems probable from the contents of this letter that Libertinus had succeeded Justinus (see I. 2) as prætor of Sicily.
[1492] See I. 2.
[1493] In Cod. lib. 1, tit. 10; "Judæus servum Christianum nec comparare debebit, nec largitatis aut alioquocunque titulo consequetur. Quod si aliquis Judæorum..., non solum mancipii damno multetur, verum etiam capitali sententia puniatur." Eusebius also (De Vita Constantini, lib. iv. c. 27) speaks of a law passed by Constantine forbidding Jews to have Christian slaves, and ordering any that might be found to be set at liberty, and the Jew to be fined. Cf. II. 21. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XLV.
To Andrew, Bishop.
Gregory to Andrew, Bishop of Tarentum [Taranto, in Calabria].
A man may look without alarm to the tribunal of the eternal Judge, if only, conscious of his own guilt, he strives to pacify Him by befitting penitence. Now that thou hadst a concubine we find to be manifestly true, with regard to whom also an adverse suspicion has arisen in the minds of some. But, since in doubtful cases judgment ought not to be absolute, we have chosen to leave the matter to thine own conscience. If, then, after being constituted in sacred orders thou rememberest having been defiled by carnal intercourse, thou must resign the dignity of priesthood, nor presume by any means to approach its ministration, knowing that thou wilt administer it to the peril of thy soul, and without doubt have to render an account to our God, if, being conscious of this crime, thou shouldest desire to continue in the order wherein thou art, concealing the truth. Wherefore we again exhort thee that, if thou knowest thyself to have been deceived by the craft of the ancient foe, thou hasten to overcome him, while thou mayest, by adequate penitence, lest, as we hope may not be, thou be reckoned as partner with him in the day of judgment. If, however, thou art not conscious of this guilt, thou must needs continue in the order wherein thou art.
Furthermore, since, against due order, thou didst doom a woman on the Church-roll [1494] to be cruelly beaten with cudgels, although we do not think that she died eight months afterwards, yet, because thou hast had no regard to thy order, we therefore sentence thee to abstain for two months from the administration of mass. Meanwhile, being suspended from thy office, it will become thee to weep for what thou hast done. For it is very right that, now that the examples of praiseworthy priests do not provoke thee to the tranquil rectitude befitting thy position, at any rate the medicine of correction should compel thee. __________________________________________________________________
[1494] Mulierem de matriculis. Matricula was probably a list or roll of names of widows and other who were supported by the Church. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XLVI.
To John, Bishop.
Gregory to John, Bishop of Calliopolis [Gallipoli, in Calabria].
From the reports sent to us by thy Fraternity it appears that Andrew, our brother and fellow-bishop, undoubtedly had a concubine. But, since it is uncertain whether he has touched her while constituted in sacred orders, it is necessary that thou shouldest warn him with earnest exhortation that, if he knows himself to have had intercourse with her while in sacred orders, he should retire from the office which he holds, and minister no longer. And if, though conscious of having done this thing, he should conceal his sin and presume to minister, let him know that peril hangs over his soul in the divine judgment.
As to the woman on the Church-roll, whom he caused to be chastised with cudgels, though we do not believe that she died eight months afterwards, yet, since he caused her to be thus punished inconsistently with his sacred calling, do thou suspend him for two months from the solemnization of mass, that at any rate this disgrace may teach him how to behave himself in future.
Moreover, the clergy of the aforesaid bishop, in a petition presented to us, which is subjoined below, allege that they endure much ill-treatment from him. Wherefore let thy Fraternity take care to ascertain all these things accurately, and so to correct and arrange them in a reasonable way that they may be under no necessity hereafter of resorting hither on account of this matter. In the month of July, indiction 11. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XLVII.
To the Clergy of the Church of Salona [1495] .
Gregory to the clergy, &c.
Having read your letter, beloved, we learn that you have made choice of Honoratus your archdeacon; and know ye that it is altogether pleasing to us that you have chosen for the order of episcopacy a man tried of old and of grave manner of life. We too join with you in approbation of his personal character, inasmuch as it is already known to us; and it has been our own wish also that he should be ordained as your priest according to your desire. For which cause we exhort you to persist in his election without any ambiguity. Nor ought any circumstances to disincline you from his person, since, as this laudable choice is now approved, so it will impose both a burden on your souls and a stain of unfaithfulness on your reputation, if any one should seduce you (which God forbid) to turn aside your love from him. But as to those who are not at one with you in this desired election, we have caused them to be admonished by Antoninus our subdeacon, that they may be able to agree with you. To him also we have already given our injunctions as to what ought to be done with respect to the person of our brother and fellow-bishop Malchus [1496] . But, inasmuch as we have ourselves also written to him, we believe that he will without delay keep himself quiet from disquieting you. If by any chance he should in any way whatever neglect to obey, his contumacy will in every way be mulcted with the utmost rigour of canonical punishment. __________________________________________________________________
[1495] For notice of the Metropolitan See of Salona, and Gregory's dealings with its former bishop Natalis, see II. 18, note 3. The appointment of a successor to Natalis engaged Gregory in a long struggle for maintenance of his authority over the Illyrican churches, which on this occasion seems to have been, for some time at least, slightly regarded. What took place, as gathered from his extant letters, may be thus summarised. Immediately on hearing of the death of Natalis he wrote to Antoninus, the rector patrimonii in Dalmatia, charging him to see to the canonical election of a successor and to its notification, when made, to himself, that it might be approved, as was customary, by the See of Rome (III. 22). This was in the 11th Indiction, i.e. between Sept. a.d. 592 and Sept. a.d. 593. Subsequently. having been informed that the clergy of Salona had elected their archdeacon Honoratus, he wrote to them in the letter before us approving their choice, and exhorting them to stick to it, being evidently aware of a party opposed to it. This Honoratus was the man whom he had previously supported against Bishop Natalis, who had attempted to deprive him of his archdeaconry. See II. 18, 19, 20; III. 32. Hence it was not improbable that the election of Honoratus would be opposed by the partizans of the late bishop who, as appears from his correspondence with Gregory, had been a convivial man, with a pleasant vein of wit, and thus likely to be popular with many. But, whatever the cause, Gregory before long received the startling intelligence that not only had the election of Honoratus, confirmed by himself, been set aside, but that another candidate, one Maximus, had been actually ordained under the alleged authority of an order from the Emperor. This defiance of his authority was the more offensive as he had already, having apparently got wind of the candidature of Maximus, prohibited his ordination under pain of excommunication of both him and his ordainers (IV. 10). He accordingly wrote a strongly-worded letter (IV. 20), dated May, a.d. 594, prohibiting Maximus from undertaking any episcopal functions, and from officiating at the altar, till it should be ascertained whether the emperor had really ordered his consecration. But Maximus treated this prohibition with contempt and appealed against the Pope to the Emperor, who thereupon wrote to Gregory, requesting him to condone the fact of the ordination having taken place without his assent, and bidding him receive Maximus with honour if he should resort to Rome, as he was apparently desired to do. This was at the time when John Jejunator, the patriarch of Constantinople, had recently incensed Gregory by his assumption of the title of Universal Bishop, and when the latter was urging the Emperor to disallow the title. Writing on this subject to the Empress Constantina, he alludes also to the case of Maximus, hoping through her whose religious reverence for St. Peter he appeals to, to move the Emperor. In his letter to her (V. 72), written in the 13th Indiction (594-5), he consents, in deference to the Emperor's wish, to look over the fact of Maximus having been ordained without his leave; but he insists on his appearing at Rome to answer to other charges, including especially that of simony, and his having disregarded the excommunication pronounced against him. He also protests strongly against his bishops being allowed to appeal to the secular power in ecclesiastical causes. But he did not thus move the Emperor, who appears from one of Gregory's letters to Maximus (VI. 25) to have directed any charges against the latter to be entertained in his own locality rather than at Rome. Meanwhile Maximus continued to disregard Gregory's repeated letters summoning him to Rome, being apparently supported by a majority of his own people and of his suffragan bishops. For in a letter to the Salonitans (VI. 26), written in the 14th Indiction (395-6), Gregory expresses his surprise that Honoratus alone among the clergy of Salona, and one only of the suffragan bishops, had refused to communicate with Maximus, notwithstanding his excommunication. However, as time went on, Gregory's persistence seems to have had some effect. In the 15th Indiction (596-7) one of the suffragan bishops, Sabinianus of Jadera, who had previously communicated with Maximus, deserts him, and is invited by Gregory to come to Rome to be absolved, and to bring with him any other whom he could persuade to come (VII. 15). Sabinianus did not go, but retired for a time to a monastery by way of expressing penitence, after which Gregory in the following year granted him full absolution (VIII. 10, 24). Perhaps about a year later, in the 2nd Indiction (IX. 5), we find Gregory writing to Marcellus, the proconsul of Dalmatia, in reply to a letter from him in which he had expressed his regret for being apparently out of favour with the pope, and his wish to be reconciled. This Marcellus had been, according to what Gregory says in his reply, the prime and original abettor of Maximus; and it would seem that he had now become desirous of coming to terms with the pope. In the same year we find a letter to one Julianus, described as Scribo, at Salona, who had addressed Gregory with a view to peace, asserting that Maximus enjoyed both the affection of his people and the favour of the court (IX. 41). In replying to both these correspondents Gregory shews no signs of giving way: but in the same Indiction (588-9) he did give way to an extent that seems at first sight surprising, considering the resolute tone of his previous correspondence. He may have been partly moved to make some concession by such letters as those from Marcellus and Julianus, testifying to the character of Maximus and to the support he continued to receive; but the intercessor who really prevailed with him at last appears evidently to have been Callinicus, Exarch of Italy, resident at Ravenna, to whom Maximus had applied after failing to induce the Emperor himself to interfere. In one of his letters (IX. 67), Gregory says that Maximus, having failed to influence "the greater powers of the world" in his behalf, had betaken himself to the lesser ones, and implies that it was to their intercession that the concession he was prepared to make was due. It may be supposed that by "the greater power" are meant the imperial family, and that among "the lesser" Callinicus was at any rate the most influential: for in writing to the latter (IX. 9) he says, "In the cause of Maximus we can no longer resist the importunity of thy Sweetness;" and again to Marinianus, bishop of Ravenna, "I have received repeated and pressing letters from my most excellent son the lord exarch Callinicus in behalf of Maximus. Overcome by his importunity, &c." (IX. 10). Nor is the reason far to seek why the intercession of Callinicus should at that particular time prevail. For Gregory was in correspondence with him, and most anxious to secure his co-operation, in the reconciliation to the Roman Church of the Istrian bishops, who had so far been out of communion with Rome in the matter of "the Three Chapters" and was therefore likely to wish to oblige him. However induced, he now consented that Maximus should appear not before himself at Rome as he had before so resolutely insisted, but before Marinianus, bishop of Ravenna, and promised to accede to whatever the latter might determine (IX. 10). Nay, he even accepted the proposal of Marinianus that the charges against Maximus should not be investigated at all, but that a declaration on oath by the accused of his own innocence should be accepted as a sufficient purgation; requiring only that he should do such penance as the bishop of Ravenna might impose for having disregarded the excommunication pronounced at Rome (IX. 79, 80). He wrote also to Constantius, bishop of Milan, requesting him to proceed to Ravenna in order to act in concert with Marinianus in case of Maximus not having confidence in the latter (IX. 67). But the bishop of Ravenna appears to have acted alone: and the result was that Maximus was acquitted of simony and all other charges, and, after doing the penance assigned by Marinianus at Ravenna, was, seven years after his ordination, cordially received by Gregory into communion, and had the pallium sent him (IX. 81, 82, 125). The epistles to be consulted for a view of the whole proceedings are III. 22, 47; IV. 10, 20, 47; V. 21; VI. 3, 25, 26, 27; VII. 17; VIII. 10, 24; IX. 5, 10, 41, 67, 79, 80, 81, 82, 125.
[1496] See III. 22. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XLVIII.
To Columbus, Bishop [1497] .
Gregory to Columbus, &c.
Even before receiving thy Fraternity's letter, I knew thee from the report of thy deserved reputation to be a good servant of God. And now that I have received it, I understand more fully that what fame had already spread abroad was well founded; and I greatly rejoice in thy deserts, in that thou exhibitest manners and deeds that testify to a praiseworthy life. Since, then, I feel that these things are conferred on thee by the Supernal Majesty, I congratulate thee; and I bless God our Creditor, who denies not the gifts of His mercy to His humble servants. On this account I declare it to be true that thy Fraternity so kindles me with the flame of charity to love thee, and my spirit is so united to thee, that I both desire to see thee and am also with thee in heart, though absent. Thou perceivest in thine own thoughts that this is so. For in truth unity of minds in charity has power to unite more than bodily presence can. Furthermore, that with thy whole mind, thy whole heart, thy whole soul, thou cleavest and art devoted to the Apostolic See I am now assured, as, indeed before thy letter had borne testimony to the fact, I plainly knew. Wherefore, first addressing thee with the greeting of charity which is due, I exhort thee not to cease to be mindful of what thou hast promised to the blessed Peter, Prince of the apostles.
Wherefore be thou urgent with the primate of thy synod [1498] , that boys be in no wise admitted to sacred orders, lest they fall by so much the more dangerously as they hasten more speedily to mount to higher places. Let there be no venality in ordination: let not the influence or entreaty of any persons obtain anything in contravention of these our prohibitions. For without doubt God is offended if any one is promoted to sacred orders, not for merit, but by favour (which God forbid) or venality.
If, then, thou art aware of these things being done, keep not silence, but oppose them urgently; since, if perchance thou shouldest neglect them, or conceal them when known of, the chain of sin will bind not those alone who do such things, but no light guilt before God will touch thee also in the matter. If, then, anything of the kind is committed, it ought to be restrained by canonical punishment, lest so great a wickedness, with sin in others, acquire strength from connivance.
I have, therefore, the sooner given leave of departure to the bearer of these presents, Victorinus, thy Fraternity's deacon, whom I think to be thy imitator, and whom I have received with charity; and by him I have transmitted to thee for a blessing keys of the blessed Peter, in which something from his chains is included.
Lastly, with regard to the unity and peace of the council which, under God, you are taking measures to assemble, let thy Charity rejoice my mind by informing me of everything particularly. __________________________________________________________________
[1497] See II. 48, note 8.
[1498] With regard to Primates in Africa, see I. 74, note 9. The primate of Numidia at this time was Adeodatus. See below, Ep. 49. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XLIX.
To Adeodatus, Bishop.
Gregory to Adeodatus, Primate bishop of the province of Numidia.
After what manner the charity of affection has bound your Fraternity to usward the tenour of your letters has evidently shewn; and they have afforded us great matter of rejoicing, in that we have found them to be composed in a spirit of loving-kindness, and to glow with affection well-pleasing to God. As, then, we have briefly said, the epistle which you have addressed to us has so laid open your mind that its author might be supposed not to be absent from us at all. For, indeed, persons are not to be accounted absent whose feelings are not at variance with mutual charity. And though, as you say in your letter, neither your strength nor your age allow you to come to us, that we might be gratified by the bodily presence of your Fraternity, yet, seeing that we are one with you and you with us in feeling, we are entirely present one to the other, while we see each other in a mind made one through love. Furthermore, greeting your Fraternity with the suitable affection of charity, we exhort you that you study with all your heart so to acquit yourself wisely in the office of primacy which under God you hold, that it may both profit your soul to have attained to this rank, and that you may stand out as a good example for imitation to others in the future.
Be, then, especially careful with regard to ordination; and by no means admit any to aspire to sacred orders but such as are somewhat advanced in age and pure in deeds, lest perchance they cease for ever to be what they immaturely haste to be. For you must first examine the life and manners of those who are to be placed in any sacred order; and, that you may be able to admit such as are worthy to this office, let not the influence or the entreaty of any persons whatever inveigle you. But before all things it behoves you to be cautious that no venality may have place in ordination, lest (which God forbid) the greater danger hang over both the ordained and the ordainers. If ever, then, there is need for such things to be taken in hand, call grave and experienced men into your counsels, and consider the matter in common deliberation with them. And before all others it is fit that you should in all cases call in Columbus our brother and fellow-bishop. For we believe that, if you shall have done what is to be done with his advice, no one will find anything in any way to find fault with in you; and know ye that it will be as acceptable to us as if it had been done with our advice; inasmuch as his life and manners have in all respects so approved themselves to us that it is clearly apparent to all that what is done with his consent will be darkened by no blot of faultiness. But the bearer of these presents, Victorinus, deacon of our fellow-bishop above-named, has been such a herald of your merits as exceedingly to refresh our spirits with regard to your behaviour. And we pray the Almighty Lord to cause the good that has been reported of you to shine forth more fully in operation as well-pleasing to Him. When, therefore, the council which you are taking measures to assemble has, with the succor of God, been brought to a conclusion, rejoice us by telling of its unity and concord, and give us information on all points. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle LI.
To Maximianus, Bishop.
Gregory to Maximinianus, Bishop of Syracuse [1499] .
My brethren who live with me familiarly urge me by all means to write something briefly about the miracles of the Fathers done in Italy, which we have heard of. With this view I am in great need of the assistance of your Charity, to mention to me shortly what comes back to your memory, and what you happen to have known. For I remember your telling me something, which I have now forgotten, about the Lord [1500] Abbot Nonnosus, who was with the Lord [1501] Anastasius of Pentomi [1502] . And therefore this, or anything else, I beg thee to communicate to me by letter without delay, if indeed thou art not intending to come to me thyself shortly. __________________________________________________________________
[1499] See II. 7, note 5.
[1500] Domno. "Abbas autem, quia vices Christi agere creditur, Domnus et Abbas vocetur." Regula S. Benedicti, c. 63.
[1501] Domno. "Abbas autem, quia vices Christi agere creditur, Domnus et Abbas vocetur." Regula S. Benedicti, c. 63.
[1502] The miracles attributed to Nonnosus, which are here referred to, are told in Dialog. I. 7, as having been communicated to Gregory by Maximianus and an old monk called Laurio. Nonnosos, at the time when they were wrought, had been Prior under Anastasius of a monastery on the summit of Mount Soracte. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle LIII.
To John, Bishop.
Gregory to John, Bishop of Constantinople [1503] .
Though consideration of the case moves me, yet charity also impels me to write, since I have written once and again to my most holy brother the lord John, but have received no letter from him. For some one else, a secular person, addressed me under his name; seeing that, if those were really his letters, I have not been vigilant, having believed of him something far different from what I have found. For I had written about the case of the most reverend presbyter John, and about the questions of the monks of Isauria, one of whom, being in priest's orders, has been beaten with clubs in your church; and thy most holy Fraternity (as appears from the signature of the letter) has written back to me professing ignorance of what I wrote about. At this reply I was exceedingly astonished, revolving within myself in silence, if he speaks the truth, what can be worse than that such things should be done against the servants of God, and even he who was close at hand should not know? For what excuse can a shepherd have if the wolf devours the sheep and the shepherd knows it not? But, if your Holiness knew both what I referred to in my letter and what had been done, whether against John the presbyter or against Athanasius, monk of Isauria and presbyter, and wrote to me, I know not; what can I reply to this, since the Truth says through His Scripture, The mouth that lieth slayeth the soul (Wisd. i. 11)? I demand of thee, most holy brother; has that so great abstinence of thine come to this, that by denial thou wouldest hide from thy brother what thou knewest to have been done? Had it not been better that flesh should go into that mouth for food, than that falsehood should come out of it for deceiving a neighbour; especially when the Truth says, Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man (Matth. xv. 11)? But far be it from me to believe anything of the kind of your most holy heart. Those letters were headed with your name, but I do not think they were yours. I had written to the most blessed lord John; but I believe that that familiar of yours has replied,--that youngster, who as yet has learnt nothing about God; who knows not the bowels of charity; who in his wicked doings is accused by all; who daily lays snares against the deaths of divers people by means of concealed wills; who neither fears God nor regards men. Believe me, most holy brother, you must first correct this man, that from the example of those who are near to you those who are not near may be better amended. Do not give ear to his tongue: he ought to be directed after the counsel of your holiness; not your holiness swayed by his words. For, if you listen to him, I know that you cannot have peace with your brethren. For I, as my conscience bears me witness, wish to quarrel with no man; and with all my power I avoid it. And, though I desire exceedingly to be at peace with all mankind, it is especially so with you, whom I exceedingly love, if only you are yourself the person whom I knew. For, if you do not observe the canons, and wish to tear to pieces the statutes of the Fathers, I know not who you are. So act, then, most holy and most dear brother, that we may mutually recognize each other, lest, if the ancient foe should move us two to take offence, he slay many through his most atrocious victory. As for me, to shew that I seek to do nothing in a haughty spirit, if that youngster of whom I have before spoken did not hold the topmost place of evil doing with thy Fraternity, I could meanwhile have passed over in silence what is ready to my hand from the canons, and have sent back to thee with confidence the persons who came to me at the first, knowing that your Holiness would receive them with charity. But even now I say; Either receive these same persons, restoring them to their orders, and leaving them in quiet; or, if perchance thou art unwilling to do this, observe in their case the statutes of the Fathers and the definitions of the canons, putting aside all altercation with me. But, if thou shouldest do neither, we indeed are unwilling to bring on a quarrel, but still do not shun one if it comes from your side. Moreover your Fraternity knows well what the canons say about bishops who desire to inspire fear by blows. For we have been made shepherds, not persecutors. And the excellent preacher says, Argue, beseech, rebuke, with all longsuffering and doctrine (2 Tim. iv. 2). But new and unheard of is this preaching, which exacts faith by blows. But I need not speak at length by letter about these things, since I have sent my most beloved son, the deacon Sabinianus, as my representative in ecclesiastical matters, to the threshold of our lords; and he will speak with you about everything more particularly. Unless you are disposed to wrangle with us, you will find him prepared for all that is just. Him I commend to your Blessedness, that he at least may find that lord John whom I knew in the royal city. __________________________________________________________________
[1503] John Jejunator (or the Faster), so called from his ascetic habits. Gregory had known and esteemed him during his residence at Constantinople. See above, III. 4. The occasion of the letter before us was as follows. Two presbyters, John of Chalcedon and Athanasius of Isauria (the latter being also a monk in the monastery of St. Mile in Isauria), had been accused of heresy at Constantinople, found guilty, and one of them beaten with cudgels in the church. They had gone to Rome to lay their grievances before the pope, who had written to John Jejunator the Patriarch more than once to protest against so uncanonical a punishment. The Patriarch seems to have replied that he knew nothing about the matter: whereupon Gregory sent him this stinging letter. In the following year (593-4), it appears from a letter to Narses, a patrician at Constantinople, that the case was still pending. Narses had reported the Patriarch as wishing to act canonically; and Gregory, doubtfully hoping so, threatens strong measures if it should be otherwise (IV. 32). Afterwards (a.d. 594-5) it seems as if the Patriarch had written on the subject pleasantly: for at the end of a long letter to him protesting against his assumption of the title of "OEcumenical Bishop," Gregory alludes to his "scripta dulcissima atque suavissima" in the matter of John and Athanasius, promising a reply (V. 18). In the following year (a.d. 595-6) we find that the charges of heresy against the two presbyters had been entertained before Gregory in a Roman synod; and this apparently with the assent of the Patriarch, who had transmitted a statement of the case. John of Chalcedon had been fully acquitted of heresy; but some doubt still remained as to the orthodoxy of Athanasius. Accordingly John was at once sent back to Constantinople with a letter from Gregory to the Patriarch, reversing the sentence against him which had been passed at Constantinople and demanding that he should be received with favour and reinstated. As though doubtful of the Patriarch's compliance, Gregory addressed also the Emperor, and Theoctistus, a relation of the Emperor's, requesting them to protect the acquitted appellant (VI. 14, 15, 16, 17). In the same year Athanasius, who had explained or retracted what had been objected to in his writings, was also declared orthodox, and sent back to Constantinople as acquitted. But this was after the death of John Jejunator; and accordingly the letter demanding the reinstatement of Athanasius was addressed to his successor Cyriacus (VI. 66; VII. 5). How John Jejunator would have acted at this stage of the proceedings, had he lived, we have no means of knowing; nor is there record of the action of Cyriacus. The only further reference to the subject in the epistles is in one to the two Patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch (VII. 34), in writing to whom Gregory sets forth at some length the doctrinal questions that had been treated in the trial of Athanasius, as though desirous of having the assent of those apostolical and patriarchal sees, which (as we have seen) he elsewhere acknowledges as sharing with his own the authority of St. Peter, to the decision come to at Rome. The whole history of the case, which, as has been seen, was protracted through several years, is of some importance as illustrating Gregory's claim to entertain appeals from Constantinople, and to reverse at Rome what had been decided there, though it is not equally clear, from what is before us in this particular case, how such claims were viewed at Constantinople. On the one hand we find no sign of the appeal of the two presbyters to Rome having been objected to; while on the other, Gregory evidently had his doubts as to whether the Roman decision would be acted on at Constantinople; and whether it was so or not we do not know. The letters about it, above referred to, are III. 53; IV. 32; V. 18; VI. 14, 15, 16, 17, 66; VII. 5, 34. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle LVI.
To John, Bishop.
Gregory to John, Bishop of Ravenna [1504] .
It is not long since certain things had been told us about thy Fraternity concerning which we remember having declared ourselves in full, when Castorius, notary of the holy church over which we preside, went into your parts. For it had come to our ears that some things were being done in your church contrary to custom and to the way of humility, which alone, as you well know, exalts the priestly office. Now, if your Wisdom had received our admonitions kindly or with episcopal seriousness, you ought not to have been incensed by them, but have corrected these same things with thanks to us. For it is contrary to ecclesiastical use, if even unjust correction (the which be far from us) is not most patiently borne.
But your Fraternity has been too much moved; and when, in the swelling of thy heart, as if to justify thyself, thou wrotest that thou didst not use the pallium except after the sons of the Church had been dismissed from the sacristy [1505] , and at the time of mass, and in solemn litanies, thou madest acknowledgment in words with most manifest truth of having usurped something contrary to the usage of the Church in general. For how can it be that at a time of ashes and sackcloth, through the streets among the noises of the people thou couldest do lawfully what thou hast disclaimed the doing of as being unlawful in the assembly of the poor and nobles, and in the sacristy of the Church? Yet this, dearest brother, is not, we think, unknown to thee; that it has hardly ever been heard of any metropolitan in any parts of the world that he has claimed to himself the use of the pallium except at the time of mass. And that you knew well this custom of the Church in general you have shewn most plainly by your epistles, in which you have sent to us appended the precept of our predecessor John of blessed memory, to the effect that all the customs conceded in the way of privilege to you and your church by our predecessors should be retained. You acknowledge, then, that the custom of the Church in general is different, seeing that you claim the right of doing what you do on the score of privilege. Thus, as we think, we can have no remaining doubtfulness in this matter. For either the usage of all metropolitans should be observed also by thy Fraternity, or, if thou sayest that something has been specially conceded to thy church, it is for your side to shew the precept of former pontiffs of the Roman City wherein these things have been conceded to the Church of Ravenna. But, if this is not shewn, it remains, seeing that you establish your claim to do such things on the score neither of general custom nor of privilege, that you prove yourself to have usurped in what you have done. And what shall we say to the future judge, most beloved brother, if we defend the use of that heavy yoke and chain on our neck with a view, I do not say to ecclesiastical, but to a certain secular dignity; judging ourselves to be lowered if we are without so great a weight even for a short space of time? We desire to be adorned with the pallium, being, it may be, unadorned in character; whereas nothing shines more splendidly on a bishop's neck than humility.
It is therefore the duty of thy Fraternity, if thou art firmly determined to defend thy honours with any kind of arguments, either to follow the use of the generality without written authority, or to defend thyself under privileges shewn in writing. Or, if lastly thou doest neither, we will not have thee set an example of presumption of this sort to other metropolitans. But, lest thou shouldest perchance think that we, in thus writing to you, have neglected what belongs to fraternal charity, know ye that careful search has been made in our archives for the privileges of thy Church. And indeed some things have been found, sufficient to obviate entirely the aims of thy Fraternity, but nothing to support the contentions of your Church on the points in question. For even concerning the very custom of thy Church which thou allegest against us, which custom we wrote before should be proved on your side, we would have you know that we have already taken thought sufficiently, having questioned our sons, Peter the deacon and Gaudiosus the primicerius [1506] , and also Michael the guardian (defensorem) of our see, or others who on various commissions have been sent by our predecessors to Ravenna; and they have most positively denied that thou hast done these things in their presence. It is therefore apparent that what was done in secret must have been an unlawful usurpation. Hence what has been latently introduced can have no firm ground to justify its continuance. What things, then, thou or thy predecessors have presumed to do superfluously do thou, having regard to charity, and with brotherly kindness, study to correct. To no degree attempt--I do not say of thine own accord, but after the fashion set by others, even thy predecessors,--to deviate from the rule of humility. For, to sum up shortly what I have said above, I admonish thee to this effect; that unless thou canst shew that this has been allowed thee by my predecessors in the way of privilege, thou presume not any more to use the pallium in the streets, lest thou come not to have even for mass what thou audaciously usurpest even in the streets. But as to thy sitting in the sacristy, and receiving the sons of the Church with the pallium on (which thing thy Fraternity has both done and disclaimed), we now for the present make no complaint; since, following the decision of synods, we refuse to punish minor faults, which are denied. Yet we know this to have been done once and again, and we prohibit its being done any more. But let thy Fraternity take careful heed, lest presumption which in its commencement is pardoned be more severely visited if it proceeds further.
Furthermore, you have complained that certain of the sacerdotal order in the city of Ravenna are involved in serious criminal charges. Their case we desire thee either to examine on the spot, or to send them hither (unless, indeed, difficulty of proof owing to the distance of the places stands in the way of this), that the case may be examined here. But if, relying on the patronage of great people, which we do not believe, they should scorn to submit to thy judgment or to come to us, and should refuse contumaciously to answer to the charges made against them, we desire that after thy second and third admonition, thou interdict them from the ministry of the sacred office, and report to us in writing of their contumacy, that we may deliberate how thou oughtest to make a thorough enquiry into their doings, and correct them according to canonical definitions. Let, therefore, thy Fraternity know that we are most fully absolved from responsibility in this case, seeing that we have committed to you a thorough investigation of the matter; and that, if all their sins should pass unpunished, the whole weight of this enquiry redounds to the peril of thy soul. And know, beloved, that thou wilt have no excuse at the future judgment, if thou dost not correct the excesses of thy clergy with the utmost severity of canonical strictness, and if thou allowest any against whom such excesses shall have been proved to profane sacred orders any longer.
Further, what you have written in defence of the use of napkins by your clergy is strenuously opposed by our own clergy, who say that this has never been granted to any other Church whatever, and that neither have the clergy of Ravenna, either there or in the Roman city, presumed, to their knowledge, in any such way, nor, if it has been attempted in the way of furtive usurpation, does it form a precedent. But, even though there had been such presumption in any church whatever, they assert that it ought to be corrected, not being by grant of the Roman pontiff, but merely a surreptitious presumption. But we, to save the honour of thy Fraternity, though against the wish of our aforesaid clergy, still allow the use of napkins to your first deacons (whose former use of them has been testified to us by some), but only when in attendance upon thee. The use of them, at any other time, or by any other persons, we most strictly prohibit. __________________________________________________________________
[1504] This John, and apparently previous bishops of Ravenna, appear to have assumed a dignity not conceded to other metropolitans; perhaps on the ground of Ravenna being the seat of the Exarch, and having been once the imperial residence. The pallium usually granted to Metropolitans was allowed to be used by them only during the celebration of the Eucharist; and we find Gregory, in several epistles, restricting them to such use of it, when he sent it to them. John was reported to have worn it while receiving the laity in the sacristy before celebration; and he owned to having worn it in solemn processions through the city, alleging custom and peculiar privilege. Further, his clergy, when accompanying him in processions, had been accustomed to carry napkins (mappulæ), which appear to have been signs of dignity. It is for these assumptions that Gregory now remonstrates with him; but apparently in vain with regard to the use of the pallium in processions through the city: for Marinianus, the successor of John, continued the custom, though whether he finally persisted in it does not appear. Other letters referring to the subject are V. 15; VI. 34, 61.
[1505] Secretarium, viz. the chamber adjoining the church in which the vestments and sacred utensils were kept, and the clergy vested for service; and in which also as appears from this and the following epistle, the bishop was accustomed to receive the laity before mass. From the custom of holding synods in the apartments so called, the sessions of synods were also themselves sometimes called secretaria.
[1506] The term primiceriusis variously applied, denoting the chiefs of departments. In Ep. 22, supra, we find primicerium notariorum. In VII. 32, we find also the designation Secundi cerius. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle LVII.
From John, Bishop of Ravenna to Pope Gregory [1507] .
My most reverend fellow-servant Castorius, notary of your Apostolical See, has delivered to me my Lord's epistle, compounded of honey and of venom; which has yet so infixed its stings as still to leave place for healing appliances. For my Lord, while he reproves pride and speaks of divine judgment following it, in a certain way professes himself with reason to be mild and placid.
You have alleged, then, that I, ambitious of novelty, have usurped the use of the pallium beyond what had been indulged to my predecessors. This let not the conscience of my own lord, which is governed by the divine right hand, in any way allow itself to believe; nor let him open his most sacred ears to the uncertainty of common report. First, because I, though a sinner, still know how grave a thing it is to transgress the limits assigned to us by the Fathers, and that all elation leads to nothing but a fall. For, if our ancestors did not tolerate pride in kings, how much more is it not to be endured in priests! Then, I remember how I was nourished in the lap and in the bosom of your most holy Roman Church, and therein by the aid of God advanced. And how should I be so daring as to presume to oppose that most holy see, which transmits its laws to the universal Church, for maintaining whose authority, as God knows, I have seriously excited the ill-will of many enemies against myself? But let not my most blessed lord suppose that I have attempted anything contrary to ancient custom, as is attested by many and nearly all the citizens of this city, and as the above-written most reverend notary, even though he had taken no part in the proceedings, might have testified, inasmuch as it was not till the sons of the Church were descending from the sacristy [1508] , and the deacons were coming in for proceeding immediately [to the altar] that the first deacon has been accustomed to invest the bishop of the Church of Ravenna with the pallium, which he has also been accustomed in like manner to use in solemn litanies.
Wherefore let no one endeavour to insinuate anything against me to my lord, since if any one wishes to do so, he cannot prove that any novelty has been introduced by me. For in what manner I have obeyed your commands and served your interests when cause required, may Almighty God make manifest to your most sincere heart: and I attribute it to my sins that after so many labours and difficulties which I endure within and without I should deserve to experience such a change. But again this among other things consoles me, that most holy fathers sometimes chastise their sons for the purpose only of advancing them the more, and that, after this devotion and satisfaction, you will not only conserve to the holy Church of Ravenna her ancient privileges, but even confer greater ones in your own times.
For with respect to the napkins, the use of which by my presbyters and deacons your Apostleship alleges to be a presumption, I confess in truth that it irks me to say anything on the subject, since the truth by itself, which alone prevails with my lord, is sufficient. For this being allowed to the smaller churches constituted around the city, the apostleship of my lord will also be able in all ways to find, if he deigns to enquire of the venerable clergy of his own first Apostolical See, that as often as priests or levites of the Church of Ravenna have come to Rome for the ordination of bishops or for business, they all have proceeded [1509] with napkins before the eyes of your most holy predecessors without any blame. Wherefore also at the time when I, sinner as I am, was ordained there by your predecessor, all my presbyters and deacons used them while proceeding [1510] in attendance on the lord pope. And since our God in His providence has placed all things in your hand and most pure conscience, I adjure you by the very Apostolical See, which you formerly adorned by your character, and now govern with due dignity, that you in no respect diminish on account of my deservings the privileges of the Church of Ravenna, which is intimately yours; but, even according to the voice of prophecy, let it be laid upon me and upon my father's house, according to its deserving. I have, therefore, for your greater satisfaction, subjoined all the privileges which have been indulged by your predecessors to the holy Church of Ravenna, though none the less finding assurance in your venerable archives in reference to the times of the consecration of my predecessors. But now whatever, after ascertaining the truth, you may command to be done, is in God's power and yours; since I, desiring to obey the commands of my lord's Apostleship, have taken care, notwithstanding ancient custom, to abstain till I receive further orders. __________________________________________________________________
[1507] See Ep. 56. John of Ravenna, notwithstanding his obsequious language in this letter, appears to have been by no means disposed to give way. For see Gregory's subsequent letter to him (V. 15), in which he is sharply accused of duplicity. And not only he, but his successor in the see also, appear to have continued the practice of wearing the pallium in public processions. What he says in the letter before us of his having incurred odium by his defence of the authority of the Roman See may be noted as significant of some jealousy of such authority at Ravenna.
[1508] Ut mox procedatur. The word procedere is used here, and elsewhere, for approaching the altar for celebration. Cf. below, and VII. 34.
[1509] Procedebant. See last note.
[1510] Procedebant. See last note. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle LIX.
To Secundinus, Bishop.
Gregory to Secundinus, Bishop of Tauromenium. [In Sicily.]
Some time ago we ordered that the baptistery [1511] should be removed from the monastery of Saint Andrew, which is above Mascalæ, because of inconvenience to the monks, and that an altar should be erected in the place where the fonts now are. But the carrying out of this order has been put off so far. We therefore admonish thy Fraternity that thou interpose no further delay after receiving this our letter, but that the fonts themselves be filled up [1512] , and an altar at once erected there for celebration of the sacred mysteries; to the end that the aforesaid monks may be at liberty to celebrate more securely the work of God, and that our mind be not provoked against thy Fraternity for negligence. __________________________________________________________________
[1511] Baptisteries (baptisteria) were anciently separate buildings adjoining churches (cf. VI. 22), the fontes being the pools of water (called also piscinæ and kolumbethra) therein contained. (See Bingham, B. VIII. C. VII. Sect. 1, 4.) The inconvenience to the monks of having a baptistery at their monastery would be from the concourse of people resorting to it, which would interfere with monastic seclusion. For a similar reason Gregory more than once forbids public masses in monasteries. Cf. e.g. II. 41; VI. 46.
[1512] Fonts were anciently sunken pools. "In medio habet fontem in terra excavatam ad quinque ulnas...tribus gradibus in id descensus est." Onuphrius, de baptisterio Lateran. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle LX.
To Italica, Patrician [1513] .
Gregory to Italica, &c.
We have received your letter, which is full of sweetness, and rejoice to hear that your Excellency is well. Such is the sincerity of our own mind with regard to it that paternal affection does not allow us to suspect any latent ill-feeling concealed under its calmness. But may Almighty God bring it to pass, that, as we think what is good of you, so your mind may respond with good towards us, and that you may exhibit in your deeds the sweetness which you express in words. For the most glorious health and beauty on the surface of the body profit nothing if there is a hidden sore within. And that discord is the more to be guarded against to which exterior peace affords a bodyguard. But as to what your Excellency in your aforesaid epistle takes pains to recall to our recollection, remember that you have been told in writing that we would not settle anything with you concerning the causes of the poor so as to cause offence, or with public clamour. We remember writing to you to this effect, and also know, God helping us how to restrain ourselves with ecclesiastical moderation from the wrangling of suits at law, and, according to that apostolical sentence, to endure joyfully the spoiling of our goods. But this we suppose you to know; that our silence and patience will not be to the prejudice of future pontiffs after me in the affairs of the poor. Wherefore we, in fulfilment of our aforesaid promise, have already determined to keep silence on these questions; nor do we desire to mix ourselves personally in these transactions, wherein we feel that too little kindness is being shewn. But, lest you should hence imagine, glorious daughter, that we still altogether renounce what pertains to concord, we have given directions to our son, Cyprianus the deacon, who is going to Sicily, that, if you arrange about these matters in a salutary way, and without sin to your soul, he should settle them with you by our authority, and that we should be no further vexed by the business which may thus be brought to a conclusion amicably. Now may Almighty God, who well knows how to turn to possibility things altogether impossible, may He inspire you both to arrange your affairs with a view to peace, and, for the good of your soul, to consult the benefit of the poor of this Church in matters which concern them. __________________________________________________________________
[1513] Possibly the same lady whom the ex-monk Venantius married. See I. 34, note 8, and IX. 123. The correspondence that took place at this time between her and Gregory seems to have arisen from some question of legal right, in which she appeared to the latter to be dealing harshly with some poor persons, perhaps peasants (rustici) on an estate of the Church (hujus Ecclesiæ pauperibus). The passing tribute paid in this letter to the lady's personal charms is characteristic of Gregory's complimentary style, and (supposing her to have been the same Italica who became the bride of Venantius) suggests one attraction which may have drawn the latter away from his intended monastic life. Further on the same supposition, we may perhaps read with interest between the lines of this letter something of the feeling subsisting at the time of writing between the correspondents. She, being a well-bred patrician lady, had evidently written to him with gentle courtesy. But he detected, or thought he detected, something wanting in the tone of her letter. Nor was she likely to feel warmly towards him who now called her to account, if it were he whom she knew to have done all he could to alienate Venantius from her. He, on the other hand while addressing her in return with all the courtesy due to her rank and character, and evidently anxious to avoid unpleasantness, shews signs of not being entirely satisfied as to her feelings towards himself, or her readiness to follow his admonitions. It is interesting to observe that, judging from the tone of subsequent Epistles, we may conclude very friendly relations to have been afterwards maintained between Gregory and the wedded pair. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle LXV.
To Mauricius Augustus [1514] .
Gregory to Mauricius, &c.
He is guilty before Almighty God who is not pure of offence towards our most serene lords in all he does and says. I, however, unworthy servant of your Piety, speak in this my representation neither as a bishop, nor as your servant in right of the republic, but as of private right, since, most serene Lord, you have been mine since the time when you were not yet lord of all.
On the arrival here of the most illustrious Longinus, the equerry (stratore), I received the law of my lords, to which, being at the time worn out by bodily sickness, I was unable to make any reply. In it the piety of my lords has ordained that it shall not be lawful for any one who is engaged in any public administration to enter on an ecclesiastical office. And this I greatly commended, knowing by most evident proof that one who is in haste to desert a secular condition and enter on an ecclesiastical office is not wishing to relinquish secular affairs, but to change them. But, at its being said in the same law that it should not be lawful for him to become a monk, I was altogether surprised, seeing that his accounts can be rendered through a monastery, and it can be arranged for his debts also to be recovered from the place into which he is received. For with whatever devout intention a person may have wished to become a monk, he should first restore what he has wrongly gotten, and take thought for his soul all the more truly as he is the more disencumbered. It is added in the same law that no one who has been marked on the hand [1515] may become a monk. This ordinance, I confess to my lords, has alarmed me greatly, since by it the way to heaven is closed against many, and what has been lawful until now is made unlawful. For there are many who are able to live a religious life even in a secular condition: but there are very many who cannot in any wise be saved with God unless they give up all things. But what am I, in speaking thus to my lords, but dust and a worm? Yet still, feeling that this ordinance makes against God, who is the Author of all, I cannot keep silence to my lords. For power over all men has been given from heaven to the piety of my lords to this end, that they who aspire to what is good may be helped, and that the way to heaven may be more widely open, so that an earthly kingdom may wait upon the heavenly kingdom. And lo, it is said in plain words that one who has once been marked to serve as an earthly soldier may not, unless he has either completed his service or been rejected for weakness of body, serve as the soldier of our Lord Jesus Christ.
To this, behold, Christ through me the last of His servants and of yours will answer, saying; From a notary I made thee a Count of the bodyguard; from Count of the bodyguard I made thee a Cæsar; from a Cæsar I made thee Emperor; and not only so, but also a father of emperors. I have committed my priests into thy hand; and dost thou withdraw thy soldiers from my service? Answer thy servant, most pious lord, I beseech thee; what wilt thou answer to thy Lord when He comes and thus speaks?
But peradventure it is believed that no one among them turns monk with a pure motive. I, your unworthy servant, know how many soldiers who have become monks in my own days have done miracles, have wrought signs and mighty deeds. But by this law it is forbidden that even one of such as these should become a monk.
Let my Lord enquire, I beg, what former emperor ever enacted such a law, and consider more thoroughly whether it ought to have been enacted. And indeed it is a very serious consideration, that now at this time any are forbidden to leave the world; a time when the end of the world is drawing nigh. For lo! there will be no delay: the heavens on fire, the earth on fire, the elements blazing, with angels and archangels, thrones and dominions, principalities and powers, the tremendous Judge will appear. Should He remit all sins, and say only that this law has been promulged against Himself, what excuse, pray, will there be? Wherefore by the same tremendous Judge I beseech you, that all those tears, all those prayers, all those fasts, all those alms of my Lord, may not on any ground lose their lustre before the eyes of Almighty God: but let your Piety, either by interpretation or alteration, modify the force of this law, since the army of my lords against their enemies increases the more when the army of God has been increased for prayer.
I indeed, being subject to your command, have caused this law to be transmitted through various parts of the world; and, inasmuch as the law itself is by no means agreeable to Almighty God, lo, I have by this my representation declared this to my most serene lords. On both sides, then, I have discharged my duty, having both yielded obedience to the Emperor, and not kept silence as to what I feel in behalf of God. __________________________________________________________________
[1514] This letter is supposed to have been written in the third Indiction (a.d. 592-3); the law complained of having been issued in the previous year. The epistle, which follows, to the Emperor's physician on the same subject, shews how much Gregory had it at heart. Some five years later it appears from a letter to divers metropolitans, dated December, a.d. 597 (VIII. 5), that an amicable agreement had meanwhile been come to, both the Emperor and the Pope having made some concessions. Cf. also the end of Ep. 24 in Book X.
[1515] Cf. below, "in terrena militia signatus." It appears that not slaves only, but soldiers also, were sometime marked on the hand. Cf. Cyprian, Ad Donatum, "Te quem jam spiritualibus castris militia signavit." __________________________________________________________________
Epistle LXVI.
To Theodorus, Physician.
Gregory to Theodorus, &c.
What benefits I enjoy from Almighty God and my most serene lord the Emperor my tongue cannot fully express. For these benefits what return is it in me to make, but to love their footsteps sincerely? But, on account of my sins, by whose suggestion or counsel I know not, in the past year he has promulged such a law in his republic that whoso loves him sincerely must lament exceedingly. I could not reply to this law at the time, being sick. But I have just now offered some suggestions to my lord. For he enjoins that it shall be lawful for no one to become a monk who has been engaged in any public employment, for no one who is a paymaster [1516] , or who has been marked in the hand, or enrolled among the soldiers, unless perchance his military service has been completed. This law, as those say who are acquainted with old laws, Julian was the first to promulge, of whom we all know how opposed he was to God. Now if our most serene lord has done this thing because perhaps many soldiers were becoming monks, and the army was decreasing, was it by the valour of soldiers that Almighty God subjugated to him the empire of the Persians? Was it not only that his tears were heard, and that God, by an order which he knew not of, subdued to his empire the empire of the Persians?
Now it seems to me exceedingly hard that he should debar his soldiers from the service of Him who both gave him all and granted him to rule not only over soldiers but even over priests. If his purpose is to save property from being lost, why might not those same monasteries into which soldiers have been received pay their debts, retaining the men only for monastic profession? Since these things grieve me much, I have represented the matter to my lord. But let your Glory take a favourable opportunity of offering him my representation privately. For I am unwilling that it should be given publicly by my representative (responsalis), seeing that you who serve him familiarly can speak more freely and openly of what is for the good of his soul, since he is occupied with many things, and it is not easy to find his mind free from greater cares. Do thou, then, glorious son, speak for Christ. If thou art heard, it will be to the profit of the soul of thy aforesaid lord and of thine own. But if thou art not heard, thou hast profited thine own soul only. __________________________________________________________________
[1516] Nullus qui optio.--"Optiones: Militaris annonæ eragatores: distribiteurs des vivres aux soldats" (Cod. Th.) D'Arnis Lexicon Manuale. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle LXVII.
To Domitian, Metropolitan [1517] .
Gregory to Domitian, &c.
On receiving the letters of your most sweet Blessedness I greatly rejoiced, since they spoke much to me of sacred Scripture. And, finding in them the dainties that I love, I greedily devoured them. Therein also were many things intermingled about external and necessary affairs. And you have acted as though preparing a banquet for the mind so that the offered dainties might please the more from their diversity. And if indeed external affairs, like inferior and ordinary kinds of food, are less savoury, yet they have been treated by you so skilfully as to be taken gladly, since even contemptible kinds of food are usually made sweet by the sauce of one who cooks well. Now, while the truth of the History is kept to, what I had said some time ago about its divine meaning ought not to be rejected. For, although, since you will have it so, its meaning may not suit my case, yet, from its very context, what was said as being drawn from it may be held without hesitation. For her violator (i.e. Dinah's) is called the prince of the country (Genes. xxxiv. 2), by whom the devil is plainly denoted, seeing that our Redeemer says, Now shall the prince of this world be cast out (John xii. 31). And he also seeks her for his wife, because the evil spirit hastens to possess lawfully the soul which he has first corrupted by hidden seduction. Wherefore the sons of Jacob, being very wroth, take their swords against the whole house of Sichem and his country (Genes. xxxiv. 25), because by all who have zeal those also are to be attacked who become abettors of the evil spirit. And they first enjoin on them circumcision, and afterwards, while they are sore, slay them. For severe teachers, if they know not how to moderate their zeal, though cutting off the bias of corruption by preaching, nevertheless, when delinquents already mourn for the evil they had done, are frequently still savage in roughness of discipline, and harder than they should be. For those who had already cut off their foreskins ought not to have died, since such as lament the sin of lechery, and turn the pleasure of the flesh into sorrow, ought not to experience from their teachers roughness of discipline, lest the Redeemer of the human race be Himself loved less, if in His behalf the soul is afflicted more than it should be. Hence also to these his sons Jacob says, Ye have troubled me, and made me odious to the Canaanites (Ibid. v. 30). For, when teachers still cruelly attack what the delinquents already mourn for, the weak mind's very love for its Redeemer grows cold, because it feels itself to be afflicted in that wherein of itself it does not spare itself.
So much therefore I would say in order to shew that the sense which I set forth is not improbable in connexion with the context. But what has been inferred from the same passage by your Holiness for my comfort I gladly accept, since in the understanding of sacred Scripture whatever is not opposed to a sound faith ought not to be rejected. For, even as from the same gold some make necklaces, some rings, and some bracelets, for ornament, so from the same knowledge of sacred Scripture different expositors, through innumerable ways of understanding it, compose as it were various ornaments, which nevertheless all serve for the adornment of the heavenly bride. Further, I rejoice exceedingly that your most sweet Blessedness, even though occupied with secular affairs, still brings back its genius vigilantly to the understanding of Holy Writ. For so indeed it is needful that, if the former cannot be altogether avoided, the latter should not be altogether put aside. But I beseech you by Almighty God, stretch out the hand of prayer to me who am labouring in so great billows of tribulation, that by your intercession I may be lifted up to the heights, who am pressed down to the depths by the weight of my sins. Moreover, though I grieve that the Emperor of the Persians has not been converted, yet I altogether rejoice for that you have preached to him the Christian faith; since, though he has not been counted worthy to come to the light, yet your Holiness will have the reward of your preaching. For the Ethiopian, too, goes black into the bath, and comes out black; but still the keeper of the bath receives his pay.
Further, of Mauricius you say well, that from the shadow I may know the statue; that is, that in small things I may perpend greater things. In this matter, however, we trust him, since oaths and hostages bind his soul to us. __________________________________________________________________
[1517] This Domitian, Bishop of Melitene and Metropolitan of Roman Armenia, was a kinsman of the Emperor Maurice, and had lately been successfully employed by him in coming to terms with the Persian king, Chosroes II., as is related in the histories of Evagrius and Theophylact. The latter describes him as "holy in life, sweet in speech, ready in action, most prudent in council" (Hist. iv. 14). He also gives at length an eloquent sermon of his, delivered after the cession, through his mediation, of the city Martyropolis in Mesopotamia to the Roman Emperor (IV. 16). Chosroes II., who is said to have had a strong regard for Domitian, appears to have had some leanings towards Christianity. We are told that, when flying from his enemies in Persia, and in doubt whether to seek refuge with the Romans or the Turks, he had let his horse take its own course, calling on the God of the Christians for guidance, and thus found his way to Circesium, where he was received by Probus the Governor (Theophyl. IV. 10; Evagr. H. E. VI. 16). Further, it is related that, on one occasion, when Probus, bishop of Chalcedon, had been sent to him as ambassador by the Emperor, he requested to be shewn a portrait of the Blessed Virgin, which he adored when he saw it, saying that he had seen the original in a vision (Theophyl. V. 15); and also that he attributed his own success in arms, and the pregnancy of his favourite wife Syra (Shirin), who was herself a Christian, to the intercession of S. Sergius, whom he had invoked, and that he sent a cross of pure gold, adorned with jewels, which he had vowed with other presents, to the shrine of the saint, together with a letter of acknowledgment addressed to him (Theophyl. V. 13, 14; Evagr. H. E. VI. 20). But he certainly never became a Christian, though it appears from the letter before us that Domitian had done his best to convert him. The earlier part of this epistle refers evidently to some allegorical interpretation of Scripture by Gregory after his usual manner, to which Domitian had taken objection. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Book IV.
Epistle I.
To Constantius, Bishop.
Gregory to Constantius, Bishop of Mediolanum (Milan).
On receiving the letters of your Fraternity I returned great thanks to Almighty God, that I was counted worthy to be refreshed by the celebration of your ordination. Truly that all, by the gift of God, with one accord concurred in your election, is a fact which thy Fraternity ought with the utmost consideration to estimate, since, after God, you are greatly indebted to those who with so submissive a disposition desired you to be preferred before themselves.
It becomes you, therefore, with priestly benignity to respond to their behaviour, and with kind sympathy to attend to their needs. If perchance there are any faults in any of them, rebuke these with well-considered reproofs, so that your very priestly indignation be mingled with a savour of sweetness, and that so you may be loved by your subjects even when you are greatly feared. Such conduct will also induce great reverence for your person in their judgment; since, as hasty and habitual rage is despised, so discriminate indignation against faults for the most part becomes the formidable in proportion as it has been slow.
Further, John our subdeacon, who has returned, has reported many good things of you as to which we beseech Almighty God Himself to fulfil what He has begun; to the end that He may shew thee to have advanced in good inwardly and outwardly both now among men and hereafter among the angels.
Moreover, we have sent thee, according to custom, a pallium to be used in the sacred solemnities of mass. But I beg you, when you receive it, to vindicate its dignity and its meaning by humility. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle II.
To Constantius, Bishop.
Gregory to Constantius, Bishop of Mediolanum.
My most beloved son, the deacon Boniface, has conveyed to me certain private information through thy Fraternity's letter; namely that three bishops, having sought out rather than found an occasion, have separated themselves from the pious communion of your Fraternity, saying that you have assented to the condemnation of the Three Chapters [1518] , and have given a security [1519] . And, indeed, whether there has been any mention made of the Three Chapters in any word or writing whatever thy Fraternity remembers well; although thy Fraternity's predecessor, Laurentius, did send forth a most strict security to the Apostolic See, to which most noble men in legitimate number subscribed; among whom I also, at that time holding the prætorship of the city, likewise subscribed; since after such a schism had taken place about nothing, it was right that the Apostolic See should take heed, with the view of guarding in all respects the unity of the Universal Church in the minds of priests. But as to its being said that our daughter, Queen Theodelinda, after hearing this news, has withdrawn herself from thy communion, it is for all reasons evident that, though she has been seduced to some little extent by the words of bad men, yet, on the arrival of Hippolytus the notary, and John the abbot, she will seek in all ways the communion of your Fraternity [1520] . To her also I have addressed a letter [1521] , which I beg your Fraternity to transmit to her without delay. Further, with regard to the bishops who appear to have separated themselves, I have written another letter, which when you have caused to be shewn to them, I doubt not that they will repent of the superstition of their pride before thy Fraternity.
Furthermore, you have accurately and briefly informed me of what has been done, whether by King Ago [1522] or by the Kings of the Franks. I beg your Fraternity to make known to me in all ways what you have so far ascertained. But, if you should see that Ago, King of the Lombards, is doing nothing with the Patrician [1523] , promise him on our part that I am prepared to give attention to his case, if he should be willing to arrange anything with the republic advantageously. __________________________________________________________________
[1518] As to the schism from Rome in the province of Istria consequent on the condemnation of "The Three Chapters" by the fifth General Council, see I. 16, note 3. It appears that in the adjacent province of Liguria, of which Mediolanum (Milan) was the metropolis, there was a like rejection of the fifth council on the part at least of some bishops, who had consequently declined communion with their newly-appointed Metropolitan Constantius, who was believed to have agreed formally to the condemnation of The Three Chapters.
[1519] Cautionem fecisse: i.e. had pledged himself to the pope by a formal document to uphold the fifth council in its condemnation of the said Chapters.
[1520] Theodelinda, the Lombard queen, was a catholic Christian, though her husband Agilulph was still an Arian. Ticinum (or Pavia), which was the residence of the Lombard Kings, was under the Metropolitan jurisdiction of Milan; and it appears that, under the influence of the dissentient bishops of the province, she too had refused to communicate with the new Metropolitan. Gregory's anticipation, expressed in what follows, that she would easily be brought round, was premature: for ten years later (a.d. 603-4) we find Gregory still taking pains to overcome her scruples with regard to the fifth council. See XIV. 12.
[1521] Viz. Epistle 4 below. This letter, however, was not delivered to the queen by the bishop Constantius, to whom it had been sent, because of the allusion contained in it to the fifth council, which she appears to have been resolute in rejecting. The new bishop thought she would be more likely to accept him as orthodox, if it were only said that he adhered in all respects to the faith of the four previous councils, including that of Chalcedon. See below, Ep. 39. Accordingly another letter (Ep. 38), in which allusion to the fifth council was omitted, was prepared and sent in accordance with the advice of Constantius. See further, note 8, under Epistle 3.
[1522] I.e. Agilulph the Lombard King. The time (Indict. XII., i.e. a.d. 593-4) was after he had invested Rome and returned to Pavia, and when Gregory had in vain urged Romanus Patricius, the Exarch at Ravenna, to come to terms with him. Gregory appears prepared to approach him now with a view to a separate peace with himself, which he says afterwards (see V. 36, 40) he could have made if he had been so minded. Letters bearing on the subject are V. 36, 40, 41, 42; VI. 30; IX. 4, 6, 42, 43, 98. See also Proleg. p. xxi.
[1523] I.e. Romanus Patricius, the Exarch. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle III.
To Constantius, Bishop.
Gregory to Constantius, Bishop of Mediolanum.
It has come to my knowledge that certain bishops of your diocese, seeking out rather than finding an occasion, have attempted to sever themselves from the unity of your Fraternity, saying that thou hadst given a security [1524] at the Roman city for thy condemnation of the three Chapters. And the fact is that they say this because they do not know how I am accustomed to trust thy Fraternity even without security. For if there had been need for anything of the kind, your mere word of mouth could have been trusted. I, however, do not recollect any mention between us of the three Chapters either in word or in writing. But as for them, if they soon return from their error, they should be spared, because, according to the saying of the Apostle Paul, They understand neither what they say nor whereof they affirm (1 Tim. i. 7). For we, truth guiding us and our conscience bearing witness, declare that we keep the faith of the holy synod of Chalcedon in all respects inviolate, and venture not to add anything to, or to subtract anything from, its definition [1525] . But, if any one would fain take upon himself to think anything, either more or less, contrary to it, and to the faith of this same synod, we anathematize him without any hesitation, and decree him to be alien from the bosom of Mother Church. Any one, therefore, whom this my confession does not bring to a right mind, no longer loves the synod of Chalcedon, but hates the bosom of Mother Church. If then those who appear to have been thus daring have presumed thus to speak in zeal of soul, it remains for them, having received this satisfaction, to return to the unity of thy Fraternity, and not divide themselves from the body of Christ, which is the holy universal Church. __________________________________________________________________
[1524] Cautionem fecisse. See Ep. 2, note 2.
[1525] The contention of those who disapproved of the condemnation of "The Three Chapters" by the fifth council was not only that the condemnation of deceased persons was wrong as well as useless, but also that it impugned the faith of the Council of Chalcedon. For that Council had not condemned the writers who were now condemned; and two of them, Theodoret of Cyrus and Ibas of Edessa, had even appeared before it, and been accepted as orthodox. Further, the condemnation was regarded as a concession to the Monophysites who had been condemned at Chalcedon, the writers in question having been peculiarly obnoxious to the Monophysite party. And it does appear to be the case that a main motive of the Emperor Justinian in forcing the condemnation of The Three Chapters on the Church had been to conciliate the Monophysites, and to induce them to conform. Hence Gregory's anxiety to shew that what had been done at the fifth did not touch the faith as previously defined. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle IV.
To Queen Theodelinda.
Gregory to Theodelinda, Queen of the Lombards [1526] .
It has come to our knowledge by the report of certain persons that your Glory has been led on by some bishops even to such an offence against holy Church as to withdraw yourself from the communion of Catholic unanimity. Now the more we sincerely love you, the more seriously are we distressed about you, that you believe unskilled and foolish men, who not only do not know what they talk about, but can hardly understand what they have heard.
For they say that in the times of Justinian of pious memory, some things were ordained contrary to the council of Chalcedon; and, while they neither read themselves nor believe those who do, they remain in the same error which they themselves feigned to themselves concerning us. For we, our conscience bearing witness, declare that nothing was altered, nothing violated, with respect to the faith of this same holy council of Chalcedon; but that whatever was done in the times of the aforesaid Justinian was so done that the faith of the council of Chalcedon should in no respect be disturbed. Further, if any one presumes to speak or think anything contrary to the faith of the said synod, we detest his opinion, with interposition of anathema. Since then you know the integrity of our faith under the attestation of our conscience, it remains that you should never separate yourself from the communion of the Catholic Church, lest all those tears of yours, and all those good works should come to nothing, if they are found alien from the true faith. It therefore becomes your Glory to send a communication with all speed to my most reverend brother and fellow-bishop Constantius, of whose faith, as well as his life, I have long been well assured, and to signify by your letters addressed to him how kindly you have accepted his ordination, and that you are in no way separated from the communion of his Church; although I think that what I say on this subject is superfluous: for, though there has been some degree of doubtfulness in your mind, I think that it has been removed from your heart on the arrival of my son John the abbot, and Hippolytus the notary. __________________________________________________________________
[1526] This letter was not delivered to Theodelinda, Epistle XXXVIII. having been afterwards substituted for it. See note 4 under Ep. 2. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle V.
To Boniface, Bishop.
Gregory to Boniface, Bishop of Regium (Reii).
It is a shame for priests to be admonished about matters of divine worship. For they are then to their disgrace required to do what they ought themselves to require to be done. Yet lest, as I do not suppose, thy Fraternity should neglect in any respect the things that pertain to the work of God, we have thought fit to exhort thee specially on this very head. We therefore admonish thee that the clergy of the city of Regium be to no extent released by the indulgence of thy Fraternity in duties demanded by their office. But in the things that pertain to God let them be most instantly and most earnestly compelled. We desire thee also to study the reputation of the aforesaid clergy, that nothing bad, nothing that at all contravenes ecclesiastical discipline, be heard of them; seeing that it is to its adornment, not to foulness of deeds, that their office appertains. Further, we decree that what we determined in the case of the Sicilians be observed by thy subdeacons [1527] ; nor mayest thou suffer this our decision to be infringed by the contumacy or temerity of any one whatever; that so, as we believe will be the case, all that has been said above being most strictly kept in force by thee, thou mayest neither prove a transgressor of our admonition, nor be accused as guilty of remissness in the order of pastoral rule which has been committed to thee. __________________________________________________________________
[1527] See I. 44, p. 91; also below, Ep. 36. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle VI.
To Cyprian, Deacon.
Gregory to Cyprian, Deacon and Rector of Sicily.
It has been reported to us that a native of the province of Lucania, Petronilla by name, was converted [1528] through the exhortation of the bishop Agnellus, and that all her property, though she had it in her own power, she nevertheless bestowed on the monastery which she entered even by a special deed of gift: also that the aforesaid bishop died leaving half of his substance to one Agnellus, his son, who is said to be a notary of our Church, and half to the said monastery. But, when they had fled for refuge to Sicily because of the calamity impending on Italy, the above-named Agnellus is said to have corrupted her morals and defiled her, and, finding her with child, to have seduced her from the monastery, and to have taken away with her all her belongings, both those that had been her own and such as she might have had given her by his own father, and that, after perpetrating such and so great a crime, he claims these things as his own. We therefore exhort thy Love to cause the aforesaid man, and the above-named woman, to be summarily brought before thee, and to institute a most thorough enquiry into the case. And, if thou shouldest find it to be as reported to us, determine an affair defiled by so many iniquities with the utmost severity of expurgation; to the end that both strict retribution may overtake the above-named man, who has regarded neither his own nor her condition, and that, she having been first punished and consigned to a monastery under penance, all the property that had been taken away from the oft above-named place, with all its fruits and accessions, may be restored. __________________________________________________________________
[1528] Conversam, with the usual sense of monastic profession. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle VII.
To Gennadius, Patrician.
Gregory to Gennadius, Patrician and Exarch of Africa.
We are well assured that the mind of your religious Excellency is inflamed with zeal of divine love against those things especially which are done in unseemly wise in the churches. We therefore the more gladly impose on you the correction of faults in ecclesiastical cases as we have confidence in the bent of your pious disposition. Be it known, then, to your Excellence that it has been reported to us by some who have come to us from the African parts that many things are being committed in the council of Numidia contrary to the way of the Fathers and the ordinances of the canons. And, being unable to bear any longer the frequent complaints that have reached us about such things, we committed them to be enquired into to our brother and fellow-bishop Columbus [1529] , of whose gravity his very reputation, which is spread abroad, now allows us not to doubt. Wherefore, greeting you with fatherly affection, we exhort your Excellence that in all things pertaining to ecclesiastical discipline you should lend him the support of your assistance, lest, if what is done amiss should not be enquired into and visited, it should grow with greater license into future excesses through precedent of long continuance. Know moreover, most excellent son, that if you seek victories, and are dealing for the security of the province committed to you, nothing will avail you more for this end than being zealous in restraining as far as possible the lives of priests and the intestine wars of Churches. __________________________________________________________________
[1529] See II. 48, note 1. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle VIII.
To Januarius, Bishop.
Gregory to Januarius, Bishop of Caralis (Cagliari).
We think indeed that thy position may in itself be enough to compel thee to be instant in the fulfilment of pious duties. But, lest remissness of any kind should intervene to abate thy zeal, we have thought it right to exhort thee especially with regard to them. Now it has come to our knowledge that your Stephen, when departing this life, by his last will and testament directed a monastery to be founded. But it is said that his desire is so far unaccomplished owing to the delay of the honourable lady Theodosia, his heiress. Wherefore we exhort thy Fraternity to pay the utmost attention to this matter, and admonish the above-named lady, to the end that within a year's space she may establish a monastery as has been directed, and construct everything without dispute according to the will of the departed. But if she should put off the completion of the design out of negligence or artfulness (as, for instance, if she is unable to found it in the place that had been appointed, and it is thought fit that it be placed elsewhere, and the matter is neglected through the intervening delay), then we desire that it be built by the diligence of thy Fraternity, and that, all things being set in order, the effects and revenues that have been left be appropriated by thee to this venerable place. For so thou wilt both escape condemnation for remissness before the awful Judge, and, in accordance with our most religious laws, wilt be accomplishing with episcopal zeal the pious wishes of the departed, which had been disregarded [1530] . __________________________________________________________________
[1530] For subsequent proceedings with regard to this intended monastery, see IV. 15; V. 2. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle IX.
To Januarius, Bishop.
Gregory to Januarius, Bishop of Caralis (Cagliari).
Pastoral zeal ought indeed in itself to have sufficiently instigated thee, even without our aid, to protect profitably and providently the flock of which thou hast taken charge, and to preserve it with diligent circumspection from the cunning devices of enemies. But, since we have found that thy Charity needs also the written word of our authority for the augmentation of thy firmness, it is necessary for us, by the exhortation of brotherly love, to strengthen thy faltering disposition towards the earnestness of religious activity.
Now it has come to our knowledge that thou art remiss in thy guardianship of the monasteries of the handmaidens of God situated in Sardinia; and, though it had been prudently arranged by thy predecessors that certain approved men of the clergy should have the charge of attending to their needs, this has now been so entirely neglected that women specially dedicated to God are compelled to go in person among public functionaries about tributes and other liabilities, and are under the necessity of running to and fro through villages and farms for making up their taxes, and of mixing themselves unsuitably in business which belongs to men. This evil let thy Fraternity remove by an easy correction; that is, by carefully deputing one man of approved life and manners, and of such age and position as to give rise to no evil suspicion of him, who may, with the fear of God, so assist the inmates of these monasteries that they may no longer be allowed to wander, against rule, for any cause whatever, private or public, beyond their venerable precincts; but that whatever has to be done in their behalf may be transacted reasonably by him whom you shall depute. But let the nuns themselves, rendering praises to God and confining themselves to their monasteries, no longer suggest any evil suspicion to the minds of the faithful. But if any one of them, either through former license, or through an evil custom of impunity, has been seduced, or should in future be led, into the gulph of adulterous lapse, we will that, after enduring the severity of adequate punishment, she be consigned for penance to some other stricter monastery of virgins, that she may there give herself to prayers and fastings, and profit herself by penitence, and afford an example of the more rigorous kind of discipline, such as may inspire fear in others. Further, let any one who may be detected in any iniquity with women of this class be deprived of communion, if he be a layman; but, if he be a cleric, let him also be removed from his office, and thrust into a monastery for his ever to be deplored excesses.
We also desire thee to hold councils of bishops twice in the year, as is said to have been the custom of thy province, as well as being ordered by the authority of the sacred canons; that, if any among them be of moral character inconsistent with his profession, he may be convicted by the friendly rebuke of his brethren, and also that measures may be taken with paternal circumspection for the security of the flock committed to him, and for the well-being of souls. It has come to our knowledge also that male and female slaves of Jews, who have fled for refuge to the Church on account of their faith, are either restored to their unbelieving masters, or paid for according to their value in lieu of being restored. We exhort therefore that thou by no means allow so bad a custom to continue; but that whosoever being a slave to Jews, shall have fled for refuge to venerable places, thou suffer him not in any degree to sustain prejudice. But, whether he had been a Christian before, or been baptized now, let him be supported in his claim for freedom, without any loss to the poor, by the patronage of ecclesiastical compassion.
Let not bishops presume to sign baptized infants a second time on the forehead with chrism; but let the presbyters anoint those who are to be baptized on the breast, that the bishops may afterwards anoint them on the forehead [1531] .
With regard also to founding monasteries, which divers persons have ordered to be built, if thou perceivest that any persons to whom the charge has been assigned put it off on unjust pretexts, we desire thee to insist sagaciously according to what the laws enjoin, lest (as God forbid should be the case) the pious retentions of the departed should be frustrated through thy neglect. Further, as to the monastery which Peter is said to have formerly ordered to be constructed in his house, we have seen fit that thy Fraternity should make accurate enquiry into the amount of the revenues there. And in case of there being a suitable provision, when all diminutions of the property and what is said to have been dispersed have been recovered, let the monastery with all diligence and without any delay be founded. But, if the means are insufficient or detrimental [1532] , we desire thee, after closely investigating everything as has been commanded, to send a report to us, that we may know how to deliberate with the Lord's help with regard to its construction. Let, then, thy Fraternity give wise attention to all the points above referred to, so as neither to be found to have transgressed the tenour of our admonitions nor to stand liable to divine judgment for too little zeal in thy pastoral office. __________________________________________________________________
[1531] For the meaning of this order, and its subsequent modification, see note to IV. 26.
[1532] The word damnosa, meaning perhaps injuriously excessive. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle X.
To All the Bishops of Dalmatia.
Gregory to all the bishops through Dalmatia [1533] .
It behoved your Fraternity, having the eyes of the flesh closed out of regard to Divine judgment, to have omitted nothing that appertains to God and to a right inclination of mind, nor to have preferred the countenance of any man whatever to the uprightness of justice. But now that your manners have been so perverted by secular concerns, that, forgetting the whole path of the sacerdotal dignity that is yours, and all sense of heavenly fear, you study to accomplish what may please yourselves and not God, we have held it necessary to send you these specially strict written orders, whereby, with the authority of the blessed Peter, Prince of the apostles, we enjoin that you presume not to lay hands on any one whatever in the city of Salona, so far as regards ordination to episcopacy, without our consent and permission; nor to ordain any one in the same city otherwise than as we have said.
But if, either of your own accord, or under compulsion from any one whatever, you should presume or attempt to do anything contrary to this injunction, we shall decree you to be deprived of participation of the Lord's body and blood, that so your very handling of the business, or your very inclination to transgress our order, may cut you off from the sacred mysteries, and no one may be accounted a bishop whom you may ordain. For we wish no one to be rashly ordained whose life can be found fault with. And so, if the deacon Honoratus is shewn to be unworthy, we desire that a report may be sent us of the life and manners of him who may be elected, that whatever is to be done in this matter we may allow to be carried out salubriously with our consent.
For we trust in Almighty God that, as far as in us lies, we may never suffer to be done what may damage our soul; never what may damage your Church. But, if the voluntary consent of all should so fix on one person that by the favour of God he may be proved worthy, and there should be no one to dissent from his being ordained, we wish him to be consecrated by you in this same church of Salona under the license granted in this present epistle; excepting notwithstanding the person of Maximus, about whom many evil reports have reached us: and, unless he desists from coveting the higher order, it remains, as I think, that after full enquiry, he should be deprived also of the very office which he now holds. __________________________________________________________________
[1533] On the occasion of this Epistle, see III. 47, note 2. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XI.
To Maximianus, Bishop.
Gregory to Maximianus, Bishop of Syracuse.
It had indeed been committed to thy Fraternity long ago by our authority to correct in our stead any excesses or unseemly proceedings that there might be in the Church and other venerable places of Sicily [1534] . But, seeing that a complaint has reached us of some things having been so far neglected, we have thought it fit that thy Fraternity should again be specially stirred up to correct them.
For we learn that in the case of revenues of Churches that have been newly acquired the canonical disposition of their fourth parts does not prevail [1535] , but that the bishops of the several places distribute a fourth part of the ancient revenues only, retaining for their own use those that have been recently acquired. Wherefore let thy Fraternity make haste actively to correct this evil custom that has crept in, so that, whether in the case of former revenues or of such as have accrued now or may accrue, the fourth parts may be dispensed according to the canonical distribution of them. For it is unseemly that one and the same substance of the Church should be rated, as it were, under two different laws, namely, that of usurpation and that of the canons.
Permit not presbyters, deacons, and other clerks of whatever order, who serve churches, to be abbots of monasteries; but let them either, giving up clerical duties, be advanced to the monastic order, or, if they should decide to remain in the position of abbot, let them by no means be allowed to have clerical employment. For it is very unsuitable that, if one cannot fulfil the duties of either of these positions with diligence proportional to its importance, any one should be judged fit for both, and that so the ecclesiastical order should impede the monastic life, and in turn the rule of monasticism impede ecclesiastical utility. Of this thing also we have taken thought to warn thy Charity; that, if any one of the bishops should depart this life, or (which God forbid) should be removed for his transgressions, the hierarchs and all the chief of the clergy being assembled, and in thy presence making an inventory of the property of the Church, all that is found should be accurately described, and nothing should be taken away in kind, or in any other way whatever, from the property of the Church, as is said to have been done formerly, as though in return for the trouble of making the inventories. For we desire all that pertains to the protection of what belongs to the poor to be so executed that in their affairs no opportunity may be left for the venality of self-interested men.
Let visitors of churches, and their clerks who with them are at trouble in parishes that are not of their own city, receive according to thy appointment some subsidy for their labour. For it is just that they should get payment in the places where they are found to lend their services.
We most strongly forbid young women to be made abbesses. Let thy Fraternity, therefore, permit no bishop to veil any but a sexagenarian virgin, whose age and character may demand this being done; that so, this as well as the above-named points being set right with the Lord's help by the urgency of thy strict requirement, thou mayest hasten to bind up again with canonical ties the long loosened state of venerable things, and also that divine affairs may be arranged, not by the incongruous wills of men, but with adequate strictness. The month of October, Indiction 12. __________________________________________________________________
[1534] See II. 7.
[1535] For the canonical rule as to the fourfold division of the Church funds, cf. Gregory's letter to Augustine, XI. 64 Responsio prima. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XV.
To Januarius, Bishop.
Gregory to Januarius, Bishop of Caralis (Cagliari).
Theodosia, a religious lady, being desirous of carrying out the intention of her late husband Stephen by the building of a monastery [1536] , has begged us to transmit our letters to your Fraternity, whereby, through our commendation, she may the more readily be counted worthy of your aid. She asserts that her husband had given directions for the monastery to be constructed on the farm called Piscenas, which has come into the possession of the guest-house (Xenodochii) of the late bishop Thomas. Now, though the possessor of the property would allow her to found it on land that is not her own, yet seeing that the Lord with reason objects [1537] , we have thought it right to agree to her petition; which is that she should, with the Lord's help, construct a monastery for handmaidens of God in a house belonging to herself, which she asserts that she has at Caralis. But, since she says that the aforesaid house is burdened by guests and visitors, we exhort thy Fraternity to take pains to assist her in all ways, and lend the aid of thy protection to her devotion, so that thy assistance and assiduity may make thee partaker of the reward of her departed husband's earnestness and her own. As to the relics which she requests may be placed there, we desire that they be deposited with due reverence by thy Fraternity. __________________________________________________________________
[1536] See also IV. 8, and V. 2.
[1537] The farm Piscenas appears to have been held by the tenure called Emphyteusis, according to which the possessor of the land (called also Emphyteuta) was not its real owner, though on condition of his cultivating it properly and paying certain fixed dues to the owner (dominus), he had a perpetual right of possession (jus in re), which passed to his heirs, and could be sold by him to others. In the latter case, however, the dominus had the option of himself buying up the possessor's right at the price offered by the proposed purchaser, and he could object to the transference of possessio to persons unable to maintain the property in good condition. In all cases of transference, other than devolution to heirs, a fiftieth part of the purchase money, or of the value of the property, was also payable to the dominus. (Article on Emphyteusis in Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities.) In the case before us the lord of the property seems to have refused his consent to any part of it being alienated in Mortmain to a monastery. It may be supposed that the possession of the farm Piscenas had been in Stephen the testator himself when he directed a monastery to be founded on it, and that it had passed after his death into other hands. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XVIII.
To Maurus, Abbot.
Gregory to Maurus, &c.
The care of churches which is evidently inherent in the priestly office compels us to be so solicitous that no fault of neglect may appear with regard to them. Since, however, we have learnt that the church of Saint Pancratius, which had been committed to presbyters, has been frequently neglected, so that people coming there on the Lord's day to celebrate the solemnities of mass have returned murmuring on finding no presbyter, we therefore, after mature deliberation, have determined to remove those presbyters, and with the favour of God constitute for the same church a congregation of monks in a monastery, to the end that the abbot who shall preside there may give care and attention in all respects to the aforesaid church. And we have also thought fit to put thee, Maurus, over this monastery as abbot, ordaining that the lands of the aforesaid church, and whatever may have come into its possession, or accrued from its revenues, be applied to this thy monastery, and belong to it without any diminution; but on condition whatever needs to be effected or repaired in the church above written may be so effected and repaired by thee without fail.
But lest, after the removal of the presbyters to whom this church had previously been committed, it should seem to be without provision for divine service, we therefore enjoin thee by the tenour of this authority to supply it with a peregrine [1538] presbyter to celebrate the sacred solemnities of mass, who, nevertheless, must needs both live in thy monastery, and have from it provision for his maintenance.
But let this also above all be thy care, that there over the most sacred body of the blessed Pancratius the work of God be executed daily without fail. These things, then, which by the tenour of this precept we depute thee to do, we will that not only thou perform, but that they be also so observed and fulfilled for ever by those who shall succeed thee in thy office and place, that there may be no possibility henceforth of neglect being found in the aforesaid church. __________________________________________________________________
[1538] Peregrinum presbyterum; meaning apparently one not belonging to the house as a member of it, though living and maintained there. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XX.
To Maximus, Pretender (Præsumptorem) [1539] .
Gregory to Maximus, Pretender in Salona.
Though the merits of any one's life were in other respects such as to offer no impediment to his ordination to priestly offices, yet the crime of canvassing in itself is condemned by the severest strictness of the canons. Now we have been informed that thou, having either obtained surreptitiously, or pretended, an order from the most pious princes, hast forced thy way to the order of priesthood [1540] , which is of all men to be venerated, while being in thy life unworthy. And this without any hesitation we believed, inasmuch as thy life and age are not unknown to us, and further, because we are not ignorant of the mind of our most serene lord the Emperor, in that he is not accustomed to mix himself up in the causes of priests, lest he should in any way be burdened by our sins. An unheard-of wickedness is also spoken of; that, even after our interdiction, which was pronounced under pain of excommunication of thee and those who should ordain thee, it is said that thou wast brought forward by a military force, and that presbyters, deacons, and other clergy were beaten. Which proceeding we can in no wise call a consecration, since it was celebrated by excommunicated men. Since, therefore, without any precedent, thou hast violated such and so great a dignity, namely that of the priesthood, we enjoin that, until I shall have ascertained from the letters of our lords or of our responsalis, that thou wast ordained under a true and not a surreptitious order, thou and thy ordainers by no means presume to handle anything connected with the priestly office, and that you approach not the service of the holy altar till you have heard from us again. But, if you should presume to act in contravention of this order, be ye anathema from God and from the blessed Peter, Prince of the apostles, that your punishment may afford an example to other catholic churches also, through their contemplation of the judgment upon you. The month of May, Indiction 12. __________________________________________________________________
[1539] See III. 47, note 2.
[1540] Sacerdotii ordinem, meaning here, as elsewhere, the order of episcopacy. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXI.
To Venantius, Bishop.
Gregory to Venantius, Bishop of Luna (in Etruria).
It has reached us by the report of many that Christian slaves are detained in servitude by Jews living in the city of Luna [1541] ; which thing has seemed to us by so much the more offensive as the sufferance of it by thy Fraternity annoys us. For it was thy duty, in respect of thy place, and in thy regard for the Christian religion, to leave no occasion for simple souls to serve Jewish superstition not through persuasion, but, in a manner, by right of authority. Wherefore we exhort thy Fraternity that, according to the course laid down by the most pious laws, no Jew be allowed to retain a Christian slave in his possession. But, if any are found in their power, let liberty be secured to them by protection under the sanction of law. But as to any that are on the property of Jews, though they be themselves free from legal obligation, yet, since they have long been attached to the cultivation of their lands as bound by the condition of their tenure, let them continue to cultivate the farms they have been accustomed to do, rendering their payments to the aforesaid persons, and performing all things that the laws require of husbandmen or natives, except that no farther burden be imposed on them. But, whether any one of these should wish to remain in his servitude, or any to migrate to another place, let the latter consider with himself that he will have lost his rights as a husbandman by his own rashness, though he has got rid of his servitude by force of law. In all these things, then, we desire thee to exert thyself so wisely that neither mayest thou be a guilty pastor of a dismembered flock, nor may thy too little zeal render thee reprehensible before us. __________________________________________________________________
[1541] On the holding of Christian slaves by Jews, and the treatment of Jews generally, cf. Proleg. p. xxi. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXIII.
To Hospito, Duke of the Barbaricini [1542] .
Gregory to Hospito, &c.
Since no one of thy race is a Christian, I hereby know that thou art better than all thy race, in that thou in it art found to be a Christian. For, while all the Barbaricini live as senseless animals, know not the true God, but adore stocks and stones, in the very fact that thou worshippest the true God thou shewest how much thou excellest them all. But carry thou out the faith which thou hast received in good deeds and words, and offer what is in thy power to Christ in whom thou believest, so as to bring to Him as many as thou canst, and cause them to be baptized, and admonish them to set their affection on eternal life. And if perchance thou canst not do this thyself, being otherwise occupied, I beg thee, with my greeting, to succour in all ways our men whom we have sent to your parts, to wit my fellow-bishop Felix, and my son, the servant of God, Cyriacus [1543] , so that in aiding their labours thou mayest shew thy devotion to Almighty God, and that He whose servants thou succourest in their good work may be a helper to thee in all good deeds. We have sent you through them a blessing [1544] of St. Peter the apostle, which I beg you to receive, as you ought to do, kindly. The month of June, Indiction 12. __________________________________________________________________
[1542] The Barbaricini appear to have been a native tribe in Sardinia, having its own duke, Zabardas (see Ep. 24) being the duke of the island.
[1543] These two ecclesiastics had been sent into Sardinia to promote the conversion of the natives, which seems to have been remissly attended to, not only by the Christian lay proprietors, but also by the bishops of the island. See below, Epp. 25, 26. The bishop Felix was not commissioned to supercede the ordinary episcopal jurisdiction, but to act as a missionary bishop in aid. Cf. V. 41.
[1544] Benedictio, here as elsewhere, means a present;--in this case, being said to be from St. Peter, containing doubtless something that had acquired sanctity from him; probably, as in other cases, filings from his chains. Cf. I. 26, note 3. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXIV.
To Zabardas, Duke of Sardinia.
Gregory to Zabardas, &c.
From the letters of my brother and fellow-bishop Felix, and of the servant of God, Cyriacus, we have learnt your Glory's good qualities. And we give great thanks to mighty God, that Sardinia has got such a duke; one who so knows how to do his duty to the republic in earthly matters as to know also how to exhibit to Almighty God dutiful regard for the heavenly country. For they have written to me that you are arranging terms of peace with the Barbaricini on such conditions as to bring these same Barbaricini to the service of Christ. On this account I rejoice exceedingly, and, should it please Almighty God, will speedily notify your gifts to our most serene princes. Do you, therefore, accomplish what you have begun, shew the devotion of your heart to Almighty God, and help to the utmost of your power those whom we have sent to your parts for the conversion of the Barbaricini [1545] ; knowing that such works may avail much to aid you both before our earthly princes and in the eyes of the heavenly king. __________________________________________________________________
[1545] See preceding Epistle. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXV.
To the Nobles and Proprietors in Sardinia.
Gregory to the Nobles, &c.
I have learnt from the report of my brother and fellow-bishop Felix, and my son the servant of God, Cyriacus [1546] , that nearly all of you have peasants (rusticos [1547] ) on your estates given to idolatry. And this has made me very sorry, since I know that the guilt of subjects weighs down the life of their superiors, and that, when sin in a subject is not corrected, sentence is flung back on those who are over them. Wherefore, magnificent sons, I exhort that with all care and all solicitude ye be zealous for your souls, and see what account you will render to Almighty God for your subjects. For indeed they have been committed to you for this end, that both they may serve for your advantage in earthly things, and you, through your care for them, may provide for their souls in the things that are eternal. If, then, they pay what they owe you, why pay you not them what you owe them? That is to say, your Greatness should assiduously admonish them, and restrain them from the error of idolatry, to the end that by their being drawn to the faith you may make Almighty God propitious to yourselves. For, lo, you observe how the end of this world is close at hand; you see that now a human, now a divine, sword rages against us: and yet you, the worshippers of the true God, behold stones adored by those who are committed to you, and are silent [1548] . What, I pray you, will you say in the tremendous judgment, when you have received God's enemies into your power, and yet disdain to subdue them to God and recall them to Him? Wherefore, addressing you with due greeting, I beg that your Greatness would be earnestly on the watch to give yourselves to zeal for God, and hasten to inform me in your letters which of you has brought how many to Christ. If, then, haply from any cause you are unable to do this, enjoin it on our aforesaid brother and fellow-bishop Felix, or my son Cyriacus, and afford them succour for the work of God, that so in the retribution to come you may be in a state to partake of life by so much the more as you now afford succour to a good work. __________________________________________________________________
[1546] See above, Ep. 23.
[1547] As to rustici, or coloni, see I. 44, note 1.
[1548] Cf. IV. 23, note 8. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXVI.
To Januarius, Bishop.
Gregory to Januarius, Bishop of Caralis (Cagliari).
We have ascertained from the report of our fellow-bishop Felix and the abbot Cyriacus that in the island of Sardinia priests are oppressed by lay judges, and that thy ministers despise thy Fraternity; and that, so far as appears, while you aim only at simplicity, discipline is neglected. Wherefore I exhort thee that, putting aside all excuses, thou take pains to rule the Church of which thou hast received the charge, to keep up discipline among the clergy, and fear no one's words. But, as I hear, thou hast forbidden thy Archdeacon to live with women, and up to this time art set at naught with regard to this thy prohibition. Unless he obey thy command, our will is that he be deprived of his sacred order.
There is another thing also which is much to be deplored; namely, that the negligence of your Fraternity has allowed the peasants (rusticos) belonging to holy Church to remain up to the present time in infidelity. And what is the use of my admonishing you to bring such as do not belong to you to God, if you neglect to recover your own from infidelity? Hence you must needs be in all ways vigilant for their conversion. For, should I succeed in finding a pagan peasant belonging to any bishop whatever in the island of Sardinia, I will visit it severely on that bishop.
But now, if any peasant should be found so perfidious and obstinate as to refuse to come to the Lord God, he must be weighted with so great a burden of payment as to be compelled by the very pain of the exaction to hasten to the right way [1549] .
It has also come to our knowledge that some in sacred orders who have lapsed, either after doing penance or before, are recalled to the office of their ministry; which is a thing that we have altogether forbidden and the most sacred canons also declare against it. Whoso, then, after having received any sacred order, shall have lapsed into sin of the flesh, let him so forfeit his sacred order as not to approach any more the ministry of the altar. But, lest those who have been ordained should ever perish, previous care should be taken as to what kind of people are ordained, so that it be first seen to whether they have been continent in life for many years, and whether they have had a care for reading and a love of almsgiving. It should be enquired also whether a man has perchance been twice married. It should also be seen to that he be not illiterate, or under liability to the state, so as to be compelled after assuming a sacred order to return to public employment. All these things therefore let your Fraternity diligently enquire into, that, every one having been ordained after diligent examination, none may be easily liable to be deposed after ordination. These things which we have written to your Fraternity do you make known to all the bishops under you, since I myself have been unwilling to write to them, lest I might seem to lessen your dignity.
It has also come to our ears that some have been offended by our having forbidden presbyters to touch with chrism those who are to be baptized. And we indeed acted according to the ancient use of our Church: but, if any are in fact hereby distressed, we allow that, where there is a lack of bishops, presbyters may touch with chrism, even on their foreheads, those who are to be baptized [1550] . __________________________________________________________________
[1549] The rustici, or coloni, who cultivated the land, made their living out of it, having to pay dues in money or in kind (see I. 44). Gregory's suggestion is that such dues should be made so heavy in the case of natives who refused to be converted as to starve them into compliance. Elsewhere we find him deprecating compulsion, or any kind of persecution, for the conversion of Jews and heretics, on the ground that forced conversions were unreal. But he appears to have had no such compunctions in the case of these illiterate pagans. This is not the only instance of religious zeal betraying him into a certain human inconsistency. Cf. IX. 65.
[1550] See above, IV. 9. There is some doubt as to what the practice was which Gregory had forbidden in his former epistle but now allows. In Ep. IX. he had said, "Episcopi baptizatos infantes signare bis in fronte chrismate non præsumant; sed presbyteri baptizandos ungant in pectore, ut episcopi postmodum ungere debeant in fronte." There is obvious reference here to the two unctions, before and after baptism. The first, in preparation for baptism, was with simple oil, on the breast and other parts of the body, and was administered by presbyters both in the East and West: the second for confirmation after baptism, was with chrism (a mixture of oil and balsam), on the forehead, and in the Eastern Churches might be, as it still is, administered immediately after baptism by the baptizing presbyter, but in the West was usually reserved for the bishop in person. It would seem that in Sardinia the Eastern usage had been followed with regard to the presbyter signing the baptized child on the forehead with chrism immediately after baptism, but that it had been also customary for the bishop afterward to repeat the rite ("signare bis in fronte chrismate"). Such repetition Gregory, in Ep. IX., appears to forbid in cases where the presbyter had already administered the rite; but, in the second clause of the sentence, he directs that the Western usage should thenceforth be observed: the presbyter who baptized was to anoint on the breast before the baptism; but the bishop, and he alone, on the forehead with chrism afterwards. Such being the most obvious meaning of what is said in Ep. IX. the equally obvious meaning of the concession in Ep. XXVI. would be allowance for presbyters in the absence of bishops, to confirm with chrism after baptism, according to the Eastern usage, but for the fact that the expression now used is not baptizatos, but baptizandos. Hence one opinion is that all that is here allowed to presbyters is the anointing of the forehead with chrism, as well as the breast with oil, previously to baptism; in which case of course it would not be confirmation. But it seems more likely that the intention was to allow presbyters to administer confirmation in the absence of bishops, the term baptizandos being used loosely to denote candidates for baptism. The fact that it is only where bishops could not be had (ubi desunt episcopi) that the practice is allowed adds probability to this view; and also his saying that in his previous prohibition he had been following the ancient custom of the Roman Church, which was to reserve the signing the forehead with chrism after baptism, i.e. confirmation, to the bishop. Innocent I. (Ep. i. ad. Decent. c. iii.) lays down the rule thus; "Presbyteris, qui, seu extra episcopum seu pæesente episcopo, baptizant, chrismate baptizatos ungere licet, sed quod ab episcopo fuerit consecratum; non tamen frontem ex eodem oleo signare, quod solis debetur episcopis, quum tradunt Spiritum Sanctum Paracletum." Here, we observe, the usage of the Roman Church allows the baptizing presbyter to anoint with chrism after baptism, only not therewith to sign the forehead for actual confirmation; and this is still the Roman usage. It should be observed further that in all cases, in the East as well in the West, confirmation was regarded as belonging peculiarly to the Bishop's office, the chrism used having always been consecrated by him, though it might be applied by presbyters: and thus Gregory, in allowing presbyters to administer the rite in Sardinia, would not regard any essential principle of Church order as being infringed. He only shews the same wise liberality as we find evidence of in other cases, allowing varieties of usage in various churches, where no important principle seemed to be involved. Thus he approves of single instead of triune immersion in baptism being practised in Spain (I. 43), and bids Augustine in England adopt according to his discretion the customs of other Churches (XI. 64). With regard to the essential form of confirmation recognized in the time of Gregory, it appears evidently from these epistles to have been unction, and not mere imposition of hands. It is also evident that it was administered, as in the East now, to infants; cf. XIII. 18, where the phrase is "ad consignandos imantes." __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXVII.
To Januarius, Bishop.
Gregory to Januarius, Bishop of Caralis (Cagliari).
Thy Fraternity ought indeed to have been so attentive to pious duties as to be in no need at all of our admonitions to induce thee to fulfil them: yet, as certain particulars that require correction have come to our knowledge, there is nothing incongruous in your having besides a letter addressed to you bearing our authority.
Wherefore we apprize you that we have been given to understand that it has been the custom for the Guest-houses (Xenodochia) constituted in the parts about Caralis to submit their accounts in detail from time to time to the bishop of the city; that is, so as to be governed under his guardianship and care. Now, as thy Charity is said to have so far neglected this, we exhort, as has been said, that the inmates who are or have been established in these Guest-houses submit their accounts in detail from time to time. And let such persons be ordained to preside over them as may be found most worthy in life, manners and industry, and at any rate religiosi [1551] , whom judges may have no power of annoying, lest, if they should be such as could be summoned to the courts, occasion might be given for wasting the feeble resources which they have: concerning which resources we wish thee to take the greatest care, so that they be given away to no one without thy knowledge, lest the carelessness of thy Fraternity should go so far as to let them be plundered.
Moreover, thou knowest that the bearer of these presents, Epiphanius the presbyter, was criminally accused in the letters of certain Sardinians. We, then, having investigated his case as it was our will to do, and finding no proof of what was charged against him, have absolved him, so that he might be restored to his place. We therefore desire thee to search out the authors of the charge against him: and, unless he who sent those same letters be prepared to support his charges by canonical and most strict proofs, let him on no account approach the mystery of holy communion.
Further, as to Paul the cleric, who is said to have been often detected in malpractices, and who had fled into Africa, having returned to a lay state of life in despite of his cloth, if it is so, we have seen to his being given up to penance after previous corporal punishment, to the end that, according to the apostolic sentence, by means of affliction of the flesh the spirit may be saved, and also that he may be able to wash away with continual tears the earthly filth of sin, which he is said to have contracted by wicked works.
Moreover, in accordance with the injunctions of the canons, let no religious person (religiosus) associate with those who have been suspended from ecclesiastical communion.
Further, for ordinations or marriages of clerics, or from virgins who are veiled, let no one presume to receive any fee, unless they should prefer to offer something of their own accord.
As to what should be done in the case of women who have left monasteries for a lay life, and have taken husbands, we have conversed at length with thy Fraternity's aforesaid presbyter, from whose report your Holiness may be more fully informed.
Further, let religious clerics (religiosi clerici) [1552] avoid resort to or the patronage of laymen; but let them be in all respects subject to thy jurisdiction according to the canons, lest through the remissness of thy Fraternity the discipline of the Church over which thou presidest should be dissolved.
Lastly, as to the men who have sinned with the aforesaid women who had left their monasteries, and are said to be now suspended from communion, if thy Fraternity should observe them to have repented worthily for such a wickedness, we will that thou restore them to holy communion. __________________________________________________________________
[1551] For what was meant by religiosi and religiosæ, see I. 61, note 7. It appears from what is said here that persons recognized as such were ordinarily exempt from certain claims upon them by the state to which others might be liable.
[1552] For the meaning of religiosi, see I. 61, n. 7. They were not of necessity clerici. In X. 54, we find religioso laico. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXIX.
To Januarius, Bishop.
Gregory to Januarius, Bishop of Caralis (Cagliari).
It has come to our knowledge that in the place within the province of Sardinia called Phausiana it is said to have been once the custom to ordain a bishop; but that, through stress of circumstances, the custom has for long fallen into disuse. But, as we are aware that now, owing to scarcity of priests, certain pagans remain there, living like wild beasts, and entirely ignorant of the worship of God, we exhort thy Fraternity to make haste to ordain a bishop there according to the ancient way; such a one, that is, as may be suitable for this work, and may take pains to bring wanderers into the Lord's flock with pastoral zeal; that so, while he devotes himself there to the saving of souls, neither may you be found to have required what was superfluous, nor may we repent of having re-established in vain what had been once discontinued. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXX.
To Constantina Augusta.
Gregory to Constantina, &c.
The Serenity of your Piety, conspicuous for religious zeal and love of holiness, has charged me with your commands to send to you the head of Saint Paul, or some other part of his body, for the church which is being built in honour of the same Saint Paul in the palace. And, being desirous of receiving commands from you, by exhibiting the most ready obedience to which I might the more provoke your favour towards me, I am all the more distressed that I neither can nor dare do what you enjoin. For the bodies of the apostles Saint Peter and Saint Paul glitter with so great miracles and terrors in their churches that one cannot even go to pray there without great fear. In short, when my predecessor, of blessed memory, was desirous of changing the silver which was over the most sacred body of the blessed apostle Peter, though at a distance of almost fifteen feet from the same body, a sign of no small dreadfulness appeared to him. Nay, I too wished in like manner to amend something not far from the most sacred body of Saint Paul the apostle; and, it being necessary to dig to some depth near his sepulchre, the superintendent of that place found some bones, which were not indeed connected with the same sepulchre; but, inasmuch as he presumed to lift them and transfer them to another place, certain awful signs appeared, and he died suddenly.
Besides all this, when my predecessor, of holy memory, was desiring in like manner to make some improvements not far from the body of Saint Laurence the martyr, it not being known where the venerable body was laid, diggings were made in the course of search, and suddenly his sepulchre was unawares disclosed; and those who were present and working, monks and mansionarii [1553] , who saw the body of the same martyr, which they did not indeed presume to touch, all died within ten days, so that none might survive who had seen the holy body of that righteous man.
Moreover, let my most tranquil lady know that it is not the custom of the Romans, when they give relics of saints, to presume to touch any part of the body; but only a cloth (brandeum) is put into a box (pyxide), and placed near the most sacred bodies of the saints: and when it is taken up it is deposited with due reverence in the Church that is to be dedicated, and such powerful effects are thereby produced there as might have been if their bodies had been brought to that special place. Whence it came to pass in the times of Pope Leo, of blessed memory, as has been handed down from our forefathers, that, certain Greeks being in doubt about such relics, the aforesaid pontiff took scissors and cut this same cloth (brandeum), and from the very incision blood flowed. For in the Roman and all the Western parts it is unendurable and sacrilegious for any one by any chance to desire to touch the bodies of saints: and, if one should presume to do this, it is certain that this temerity will by no means remain unpunished. For this reason we greatly wonder at the custom of the Greeks, who say that they take up the bones of saints; and we scarcely believe it. For certain Greek monks who came here more than two years ago dug up in the silence of night near the church of Saint Paul, bodies of dead men lying in the open field, and laid up their bones to be kept in their own possession till their departure. And, when they were taken and diligently examined as to why they did this, they confessed that they were going to carry those bones to Greece to pass for relics of saints. From this instance, as has been already said, the greater doubt has been engendered in us whether it be true that they really take up the bones of saints, as they are said to do.
But what shall I say of the bodies of the blessed apostles, when it is well known that, at the time when they suffered, believers came from the East to recover their bodies as being those of their own countrymen? And, having been taken as far as the second milestone from the city, they were deposited in the place which is called Catacumbas. But, when the whole multitude came together and endeavoured to remove them thence, such violence of thunder and lightning terrified and dispersed them that they on no account presumed to attempt such a thing again. And then the Romans, who of the Lord's loving-kindness were counted worthy to do this, went out and took up their bodies, and laid them in the places where they are now deposited.
Who then, most serene lady, can there be so venturesome as, knowing these things, to presume, I do not say to touch their bodies, but even at all to look at them? Such orders therefore having been given me by you, which I could by no means have obeyed, it has not, so far as I find, been of your own motion; but certain men have wished to stir up your Piety against me, so as to withdraw from me (which God forbid) the favour of your good will, and have therefore sought out a point in which I might be found as if disobedient to you. But I trust in Almighty God that your most kind good will is in no way being stolen away from me, and that you will always have with you the power of the holy apostles, whom with all your heart and mind you love, not from their bodily presence, but from their protection.
Moreover, the napkin, which you have likewise ordered to be sent you, is with his body, and so cannot be touched, as his body cannot be approached. But since so religious a desire of my most serene lady ought not to be wholly unsatisfied, I will make haste to transmit to you some portion of the chains which Saint Peter the apostle himself bore on his neck and his hands, from which many miracles are displayed among the people; if at least I should succeed in removing it by filing. For, while many come frequently to seek a blessing from these same chains, in the hope of receiving a little part of the filings, a priest attends with a file, and in the case of some seekers a portion comes off so quickly from these chains that there is no delay: but in the case of other seekers the file is drawn for long over the chains, and yet nothing can be got from them. In the month of June, Indiction 12. __________________________________________________________________
[1553] "Mansionarius. Sacristain d'une église, chargé de la garder, de sonner les cloches pour l'office divin, de préparer les reliquaires, etc." D'Arnis. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXXI.
To Theodorus, Physician.
Gregory to Theodorus, Physician to the Emperor.
I myself give thanks to Almighty God, that distance does not separate the hearts of those who truly love each other mutually. For lo, most sweet and glorious son, we are far apart in body, and yet are present with each other in charity. This your works, this your letters testify, this I experienced in you when present, this I recognize in your Glory when absent. May this make you both beloved of men and worthy for ever before Almighty God. For, charity being the mother of virtues, you bring forth the fruits of good works for this reason that you keep in your soul the very root of those fruits. Now what you have sent me, God inspiring you, for the redemption of captives, I confess that I have received both with joy and with sorrow. With joy, that is, for you, whom I thus perceive to be preparing a mansion in the heavenly country; but with exceeding sorrow for myself, who, over and above my care of the property of the holy apostle Peter, must now also give an account of the property of my most sweet son, the Lord Theodorus, and be held responsible for having spent it carefully or negligently. But may Almighty God, who has poured into your mind the bowels of His own mercy, who has granted to you to take anxious thought for what is said of our Saviour by the excellent preacher--That, though he was rich, yet for us he became poor (2 Cor. viii. 9)--may He, at the coming of the same Saviour, shew you to be rich in virtues, cause you to stand free from all fault, and grant to you heavenly for earthly joys, abiding joys for transitory.
As to what you say you desire to be done for you near the most sacred body of the holy apostle Peter, be assured that, though your tongue were silent, your charity bids the doing of it. Would indeed that we were worthy to pray for you: but that I am not worthy I have no doubt. Still, however, there are here many worthy folk, who are being redeemed from the enemy by your offering, and serve our Creator faithfully, with regard to whom you have done what is written; Lay up alms in the bosom of the poor, and it shall pray for thee (Ecclus. xxix. 15).
But, since he loves the more who presumes the more, I have some complaint against the most sweet disposition of my most glorious son the Lord Theodorus; namely that he has received from the holy Trinity the gift of genius, the gift of wealth, the gift of mercy and charity, and yet is unceasingly bound up in secular causes, is occupied in continual processions, and neglects to read daily the words of his Redeemer. For what is sacred Scripture but a kind of epistle of Almighty God to His creature? And surely, if your Glory were resident in any other place, and were to receive letters from an earthly emperor, you would not loiter, you would not rest, you would not give sleep to your eyes, till you had learnt what the earthly emperor had written.
The Emperor of Heaven, the Lord of men and angels, has sent thee his epistles for thy life's behoof; and yet, glorious son, thou neglectest to read these epistles ardently. Study then, I beseech thee, and daily meditate on the words of thy Creator. Learn the heart of God in the words of God, that thou mayest sigh more ardently for the things that are eternal, that your soul may be kindled with greater longings for heavenly joys. For a man will have the greater rest here in proportion as he has now no rest in the love of his Maker. But, that you may act thus, may Almighty God pour into you the Spirit the Comforter: may He fill your soul with His presence, and in filling it, compose it.
As to me, know ye that I suffer here many and innumerable bitternesses. But I give thanks to Almighty God that I suffer far less than I deserve.
I commend to your Glory my son, your patient, the lord Narses. I know indeed that you hold him as in all respects commended to you; but I beg you to do what you are doing, that, in asking for what I see is being done, I may by my asking have a share in your reward. Furthermore, I have received the blessing [1554] of your Excellency with the charity wherewith it was sent to me. And I have presumed to send you, in acknowledgment of your love, a duck with two small ducklings, that, as often as your eye is led to look at it, the memory also of me may be recalled to you among the occupations and tumults of business. __________________________________________________________________
[1554] Benedictionem in the sense of a present, as elsewhere in the epistles. Cf. Gen. xxxiii. 11; 2 Kings v. 14. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXXII.
To Narses the Patrician.
Gregory to Narses, &c.
Your most sweet Charity has said much to me in your letters in praise of my good deeds, to all which I briefly reply, Call me not Noemi, that is beautiful; but call me Mara, that is bitter; for I am full of bitterness (Ruth i. 20).
But as to the cause of the presbyters [1555] , which is pending with my brother and fellow-bishop, the most reverend Patriarch John, we have, as I think, for our adversary the very man whom you assert to be desirous of observing the canons. Further, I declare to thy Charity that I am prepared, with the help of Almighty God, to prosecute this same cause with all my power and influence. And, should I see that in it the canons of the Apostolic See are not observed, Almighty God will give unto me what I may do against the contemners of the same.
As to what your Charity has written to me, asking me to give thanks for you to my son the chief physician and ex-præfect Theodorus, I have done so, and have by no means ceased to commend you as much as I could. Further, I beg you to pardon me for replying to your letters with brevity; for I am pressed by such great tribulations that it is not allowed me either to read or to speak much by letter. This only I say to thee, For the voice of groaning I have forgotten to eat my bread (Ps. ci. 5 [1556] ). All that are with you I beg you to salute in my name. Give my salutations to the lady Dominica, whose letter I have not answered, because, though she is Latin, she wrote to me in Greek. __________________________________________________________________
[1555] Probably Athanasius and John. See III. 53.
[1556] In English Bible, cii. 4. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXXIII.
To Anthemius, Subdeacon.
Gregory to Anthemius, &c.
Those whom our Redeemer vouchsafes to convert to himself from Judaical perdition we ought, with reasonable moderation, to assist; lest (as God forbid should be the case) they should suffer from lack of food. Accordingly we charge thee, under the authority of this order, not to neglect to give money every year to the children of Justa, who is of the Hebrews; that is to Julianus, Redemptus, and Fortuna, beginning from the coming thirteenth Indiction; and know that the payment is by all means to be charged in thy accounts. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXXIV.
To Pantaleo, Præfect.
Gregory to Pantaleo, Præfect of Africa.
How the law urgently prosecutes the most abominable pravity of heretics is not unknown to your Excellency [1557] . It is therefore no light sin if these, whom both the integrity of our faith and the strictness of the laws condemn, should find licence to creep up again in your times. Now in those parts, so far as we have learnt, the audacity of the Donatists has so increased that not only do they with pestiferous assumption of authority cast out of their churches priests of the catholic faith, but fear not even to rebaptize those whom the water of regeneration had cleansed on a true confession. And we are much surprised, if indeed it is so, that, while you are placed in those parts, bad men should be allowed thus to exceed. Consider only in the first place what kind of judgment you will leave to be passed upon you by men, if these, who in the times of others were with just reason put down, find under your administration a way for their excesses. In the next place know that our God will require at your hand the souls of the lost, if you neglect to amend, so far as possibility requires it of you, so great an abomination. Let not your Excellency take amiss my thus speaking. For it is because we love you as our own children that we point out to you what we doubt not will be to your advantage. But send to us with all speed our brother and fellow-bishop Paul [1558] , lest opportunity should be given to any one under any excuse for hindering his coming; in order that, on ascertaining the truth more fully, we may be able, with God's help, to settle by a reasonable treatment of the case how the punishment of so great a crime ought to be proceeded with. __________________________________________________________________
[1557] As to imperial edicts against the African Donatists, see I. 74, note 8. It would seem from this and the following letter that enforcement of the laws for their repression had been relaxed of late. It will be observed from this and other instances that Gregory, though often in general terms deprecating the use of force in matters of faith, did not scruple, when occasion arose, to call in the aid of the secular arm; and in this case with some heat and acrimony. Cf. IV. 35, below.
[1558] This Paul was one of the bishops of Numidia, against whom some charges of misconduct, not specified, had been brought. His case has some significance as shewing that, though the spiritual authority of the bishop of Rome over the Church in Africa had now come to be acknowledged in a way that it had not been in the age of Cyprian, yet there seems to have been still some resistance to its exercise. This appears also from the fact that it was not the primate of Numidia, but Columbus, a bishop notable for his devotion to the Roman See, that Gregory mainly and most confidentially corresponded with in relation to ecclesiastical affairs (see II. 48, note 1), and that this Columbus complained of being in disfavour with many on the ground of the frequent communications he received from Rome (VII. 2). In the case before us Gregory's desire (urgently expressed in this letter to Pantaleo, and in that which follows to the primate and Columbus, jointly), that Paul should at once be sent to Rome for trial was not complied with. For two years later (VI. 63) Gregory complains of this, and also expresses surprize that the accused bishop should have been excommunicated by the African authorities, and no news sent thereof to himself by the primate. Then, in the following year (VII. 2), writing to Columbus, he finds himself unable to refuse his assent to Paul's resorting to Constantinople to lay his case before the Emperor. However in the year after this it seems that he did go at length to Rome, but not so as to have his case decided there: for Gregory sends him back to Africa to have his case inquired into, only enjoining Columbus, to whom he writes, to do his utmost to see justice done, he himself believing the accused to be innocent, and attributing the charges against him to odium incurred by his measures against the Donatists. The final issue does not appear. See also XII. 8. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXXV.
To Victor and Columbus, Bishops [1559] .
Gregory to Victor and Columbus, Bishops of Africa.
After what manner a disease, if neglected in its beginning, acquires strength we have proved from our own necessities, whosoever of us have had our lot in this life. If, then, it were met by the foresight of skilful physicians at its birth, we know that it would cease before doing very much harm from being attended to too late. On this consideration, then, reason ought to impel us, when diseases of souls are beginning, to make haste to resist them by all the means in our power, lest, while we neglect applying wholesome medicines, they steal away from us the lives of many whom we are striving to win for our God. Wherefore it behoves us so with watchful carefulness to guard the folds of sheep which we see ourselves to be put over as keepers that the prowling wolf may find everywhere shepherds to resist him, and may have no way of entrance thereinto.
For indeed we find that the stings of the Donatists have in your parts so disturbed the Lord's flock, as though it were guided by no shepherd's control. And there has been reported to us what we cannot speak of without heavy sorrow, seeing that very many have already been torn by their poisoned teeth. Lastly, in order with most wicked audacity to drive catholic priests from their churches, they are said, in their most atrocious wickedness, even to have slain many besides, on whom the water of regeneration had conferred salvation, by rebaptizing them. All this saddens our mind exceedingly, for that, while you are placed there, it has been allowed to damned presumption to perpetrate such wickedness.
In this matter we exhort your Fraternity by this present writing, that, after discussion held and a council assembled, you should eagerly and with all your power so oppose this still nascent disease that neither may it acquire strength from neglect nor scatter the woes of pestilence in the flock committed to your charge. For, if in any way whatever (as we do not believe will be the case) you neglect to resist iniquity in its beginning, they will wound very many with the sword of their error. And it is in truth a most serious thing to allow to be ensnared in the noose of diabolical fraud those whom we are able to rescue beforehand from being entangled. Moreover it is better to prevent any one from being wounded than to search out how one that is wounded may be healed. Considering this, therefore, hasten ye by sedulous prayer and all the means in your power, to quell sacrilegious wickedness, so that subsequent news, through the aid of the grace of Christ, may cause us more joy for the punishment of those men than sadness for their excesses.
Furthermore, take all possible pains to send to us with all speed our brother and fellow-bishop Paul [1560] , to the end that, on learning more particularly from him the causes of so great a crime, we may be able by the succour of our Creator to apply the medicine of fitting rebuke to this most atrocious wickedness. __________________________________________________________________
[1559] Victor was now primate of Numidia, having succeeded Adeodatus (see III. 49). As to the African custom with respect to primates, see I. 74, note 9. For notice of Columbus, see II. 48, note 7.
[1560] See Last Epistle, note 4. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXXVI.
To Leo, Bishop.
Gregory to Leo, Bishop of Catana [1561] .
We have found from the report of many that a custom has of old obtained among you, for subdeacons to be allowed to have intercourse with their wives. That any one should any more presume to do this was prohibited by the servant of God, the deacon of our see, under the authority of our predecessor [1562] , in this way; that those who at that time had been coupled to wives should choose one of two things, that is, either to abstain from their wives, or on no account whatever presume to exercise their ministry. And, according to report, Speciosus, then a subdeacon, did for this reason suspend himself from the office of administration, and up to the time of his death bore indeed the office of a notary, but ceased from the ministry which a subdeacon should have exercised. After his death we have learnt that his widow, Honorata, has been relegated to a monastery by thy Fraternity for having associated herself with a husband. And so if, as is said, her husband suspended himself from ministration, it ought not to be to the prejudice of the aforesaid woman that she has contracted a second marriage, especially if she had not been joined to the subdeacon with the intention of abstaining from the pleasures of the flesh.
If, then, you find the truth to be as we have been informed, it is right for you to release altogether the aforesaid woman from the monastery, that she may be at liberty to return without any fear to her husband.
But for the future let thy Fraternity be exceedingly careful, in the case of any who may be promoted to this office, to look to this with the utmost diligence, that, if they have wives, they shall enjoy no licence to have intercourse with them: but you must still strictly order them to observe all things after the pattern of the Apostolic See. __________________________________________________________________
[1561] Catana was one of the sees in Sicily.
[1562] This order had been given by pope Pelagius II. a.d. 588. In I. 44 Gregory had seen fit to relax the stringency of this order in the case of existing subdeacons who had not on their ordination pledged themselves to chastity. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXXVIII.
To Queen Theodelinda.
Gregory to Theodelinda, Queen of the Lombards [1563] .
It has come to our knowledge from the report of certain persons that your Glory has been led on by some bishops even to the offence against holy Church of suspending yourself from the communion of Catholic unanimity. Now the more we sincerely love you, the more seriously are we distressed about you, that you believe unskilled and foolish men, who not only do not know what they talk about, but can hardly understand what they have heard; who, while they neither read themselves, nor believe those who do, remain in the same error which they have themselves feigned to themselves concerning us. For we venerate the four holy synods; the Nicene, in which Arius, the Constantinopolitan, in which Macedonius, the first Ephesine, in which Nestorius, and the Chalcedonians, in which Eutyches and Dioscorus, were condemned; declaring that whosoever thinks otherwise than these four synods did is alien from the true faith. We also condemn whomsoever they condemn, and absolve whomsoever they absolve, smiting, with interposition of anathema, any one who presumes to add to or take away from the faith of the same four synods, and especially that of Chalcedon, with respect to which doubt and occasion of superstition has arisen in the minds of certain unskilled men.
Seeing, then, that you know the integrity of our faith from my plain utterance and profession, it is right that you should have no further scruple of doubt with respect to the Church of the blessed Peter, Prince of the apostles: but persist ye in the true faith, and make your life firm on the rock of the Church; that is on the confession of the blessed Peter, Prince of the apostles, lest all those tears of yours and all those good works should come to nothing, if they are found alien from the true faith. For as branches dry up without the virtue of the root, so works, to whatsoever degree they may seem good, are nothing, if they are disjoined from the solidity of the faith.
It therefore becomes your Glory to send a communication with all speed to our most reverend brother and fellow-bishop Constantius, of whose faith and life I have long been well assured, and to signify by your letters addressed to him how kindly you accept his ordination, and that you are in no wise separated from the communion of his Church, so that we may truly rejoice with a common exultation, as for a good and faithful daughter. Know also that you and your works will please God, if, before his assize comes, they be approved by the judgment of his priests. __________________________________________________________________
[1563] This letter was substituted for Ep. IV. which had been previously written, but not delivered. See note 4 under Epistle II. above. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXXIX.
To Constantius, Bishop.
Gregory to Constantius, Bishop of Mediolanum (Milan).
Having read the letter of your Holiness, we find that you are in a state of serious distress, principally on account of the bishops and citizens of Briscia (Brescia) who bid you send them a letter in which you are asked to swear that you have not condemned the Three Chapters [1564] . Now, if your Fraternity's predecessor Laurentius did not do this, it ought not to be required of you. But, if he did it, he was not with the universal Church, and contradicted what he had sworn to in his security [1565] . But, inasmuch as we believe him to have kept his oath, and to have continued in the unity of the Catholic Church, there is no doubt that he did not swear to any of his bishops that he had not condemned the Three Chapters. Hence your Holiness may conclude that you ought not to be forced to do what was in no wise done by your predecessor. But, lest those who have thus written to you should be offended, send them a letter declaring under interposition of anathema that you neither take away anything from the faith of the synod of Chalcedon nor received those who do, and that you condemn whomsoever it condemned, and absolve whomsoever it absolved. And thus I believe that they may be very soon satisfied [1566] .
Further, as to what you write about many of them being offended because you name our brother and fellow-bishop John of the Church of Ravenna during the solemnities of mass, you should enquire into the ancient custom; and, if it has been the custom, it ought not now to be found fault with by foolish men. But, if it has not been the custom, a thing ought not to be done at which some may possibly take offence. Yet I have been at pains to make careful enquiry whether the same John our brother and fellow-bishop names you at the altar; and they say that this is not done. And, if he does not make mention of your name, I know not what necessity obliges you to make mention of his. If indeed it can be done without any one taking offence, your doing anything of this kind is very laudable, since you shew the charity you have towards your brethren.
Further, as to what you write of your having been unwilling to transmit my letter to Queen Theodelinda on the ground that the fifth synod was named in it, if you believed that she might thereby be offended, you did right in not transmitting it. We are therefore doing now as you recommend, namely, that we should only express approval of the four synods. Yet, as to the synod which was afterwards held in Constantinople, called by many the fifth, I would have you know that it neither ordained nor held anything in opposition to the four most holy synods, seeing that nothing was done in it with respect to the faith, but only with respect to persons; and persons, too, about whom nothing is contained in the acts of the Council of Chalcedon [1567] but, after the canons had been promulged, discussion arose, and final action was ventilated concerning persons. Yet still we have done as you desired, making no mention of this synod. But we have also written to our daughter the queen what you wrote to us about the bishops. Ursicinus, who wrote something to you against our brother and fellow-bishop John, you ought by your letters addressed to him, with sweetness and reason, to restrain from his intention. Further, concerning Fortunatus [1568] , we desire your Fraternity to be careful, lest you be in any way surreptitiously influenced by bad men. For I hear that he ate at the table of the Church with your predecessor Laurentius for many years until now, that he sat among the nobles, and subscribed, and that with our brother's knowledge he served in the army. And now, after so many years, your Fraternity thinks that he should be driven from the position which he now occupies. This seems to me altogether incongruous. And so I have given you this order through him, but privately. Still, if there is anything reasonable that can be alleged against him, it ought to be submitted to our judgment. But, if it please Almighty God, we will send letters through your man to our son the Lord Dynamius. __________________________________________________________________
[1564] See above, Epistle II., note 1.
[1565] Cautionis suæ, as to the meaning of which expression, see above, Epistle II., note 2. It appears certain from what Gregory says, here and in Epistle II., that Laurentius, the predecessor of Constantius, had pledged himself by oath to the bishop of Rome to uphold the condemnation of "The Three Chapters." But it seems that some of his suffragans now asserted that he had sworn to them that he had not assented to such condemnation, and that on this understanding they had remained in his communion. Gregory does not seem certain how the matter stood: but he goes on the supposition that he could not have perjured himself as the bishops alleged.
[1566] See above, Ep. II., note 4.
[1567] Here Gregory is in error, for in the eighth, ninth, and tenth sessions of the council of Chalcedon Theodoret and Ibas, whose writings were anathematized in that fifth council, were heard in their own defence, and definitely acquitted of heresy. It is true that there is no mention of them in the Definition of faith, agreed upon in the fifth session of Chalcedon, or in the Canons which were perhaps all that Gregory had before him. It is true also that there was no reference at Chalcedon to Theodore of Mopsuestia, who was especially and personally anathematized at the fifth council, he having died many years before the council of Chalcedon was held. But the cases of Theodoret and Ibas had been prominently before the synod; and this not, as Gregory here goes on to intimate, in a supplementary sort of way at the end of the main proceedings: for the eighth, ninth, and tenth sessions had been occupied with them, after which there had been other sessions. For similar inaccuracy on Gregory's part in referring to past events, see II. 51, note 2; and for an instance of his imperfect acquaintance with the history of past controversies, see VII. 4.
[1568] Concerning this Fortunatus, see also V. 4. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XLVI.
To Rusticiana, Patrician.
Gregory to Rusticiana, &c.
On receiving your Excellency's letters I was glad to hear that you had reached Mount Sinai. But believe me, I too should have liked to go with you, but by no means to return with you. And yet I find it very difficult to believe that you have been at the holy places and seen many Fathers. For I believe that, if you had seen them, you would by no means have been able to return so speedily to the city of Constantinople. But now that the love of such a city has in no wise departed from your heart, I suspect that your Excellency did not from the heart devote yourself to the holy things which you saw with the bodily eye. But may Almighty God illuminate your mind by the grace of His lovingkindness and give unto you to be wise, and to consider how fugitive are all temporal things, since, while we are thus speaking, both time runs on and the Judge approaches, and lo the moment is even now near when against our will we must give up the world which of our own accord we will not. I beg that the lord Apio and the lady Eusebia, and their daughters, be greeted in my behalf. As to that lady my nurse, whom you commend to me by letter, I have the greatest regard for her, and desire that she should be in no way incommoded. But we are pressed by such great straits that we cannot excuse even ourselves from exactions (angariis) [1569] and burdens at this present time. __________________________________________________________________
[1569] The word angaria, which is of frequent occurrence, denotes exactions and forced services of various kinds. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XLVII.
To Sabinianus, Deacon [1570] .
Gregory to Sabinianus, &c.
Thou knowest what has been done in the case of the prevaricator Maximus [1571] . For after the most serene Lord the Emperor had sent orders that he should not be ordained [1572] , then he broke out into a higher pitch of pride. For the men of the glorious patrician Romanus [1573] received bribes from him, and caused him to be ordained in such a manner that they would have killed Antoninus, the sub-deacon and rector of the patrimony, if he had not fled. But I despatched letters to him, after I had learnt that he had been ordained against reason and custom, telling him not to presume to celebrate the solemnities of mass unless I should first ascertain from our most serene lords what they had ordered with regard to him. And these my letters, having been publicly promulged or posted in the city, he caused to be publicly torn, and thus bounced forth more openly into contempt of the Apostolic See. How I was likely to endure this thou knowest, seeing that I was before prepared rather to die than that the Church of the blessed apostle Peter should degenerate in my days. Moreover thou art well acquainted with my ways, that I bear long; but if once I have determined not to bear, I go gladly in the face of all dangers. Whence it is necessary with the help of God to meet danger, lest he be driven to sin to excess. Look to what I say, and consider what great grief inspires it.
But it has come to my ears that he has sent [to Constantinople] a cleric, I know not whom, to say that the bishop Malchus [1574] was put to death in prison for money. Now as to this there is one thing that thou mayest shortly suggest to our most serene lords;--that, if I their servant had been willing to have anything to do with the death of Lombards, the nation of the Lombards at this day would have had neither king nor dukes nor counts, and would have been divided in the utmost confusion. But, since I fear God, I shrink from having anything to do with the death of any one. Now the bishop Malchus was neither in prison nor in any distress; but on the day when he pleaded his cause and was sentenced he was taken without my knowledge by Boniface the notary to his house, where a dinner was prepared for him, and there he dined, and was treated with honour by the said Boniface, and in the night suddenly died, as I think you have already been informed. Moreover I had intended to send our Exhilaratus to you in connection with that business; but, as I considered that the case was now done with, I consequently abstained from doing so. __________________________________________________________________
[1570] He was the pope's apocrisiarius at Constantinople.
[1571] See III. 47, note 2.
[1572] In his letter to Maximus (IV. 20), Gregory had only expressed a suspicion that the alleged order of the Emperor for his consecration had been fictitious. He now seems to have satisfied himself that it was so. For a review of the whole case, see III. 47, note 2.
[1573] Romanus Patricius was the Exarch of Italy. See I. 33; II. 46; III. 31; V. 24.
[1574] See II. 20, note 5. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Book V.
Epistle II.
To Felix, Bishop, and Cyriacus, Abbot [1575] .
Gregory to Felix, &c.
The tenor of the report submitted to you sufficiently explains the complaint of the religious lady Theodosia, in which we have found on reading it many heads of accusation, not befitting priestly gentleness, against our brother and fellow-bishop Januarius; so much so that, after the foundation by her of a monastery for servants of God, all that pertains to avarice, turbulence, and wrong is said to have been exhibited at the time of the very dedication of the oratory. Wherefore, if the case is as we find in her aforesaid representation, and if you are aware that anything at all unbecoming has been committed besides, we exhort you that, all wrongs having first been redressed, you press upon Musicus, the abbot of the monastery of Agilitanus [1576] , that he lose no time in giving the greatest attention to his monks whom he had began to settle there, to the end that, this venerable place being with the Lord's help set in order by you in a decent and regular manner, neither may we be disturbed by the frequent complaints of the aforesaid religious lady that her good desires are not fulfilled, nor may it be to the detriment of your soul that so pious a design should languish, as we do not believe it will, through any neglect of yours. __________________________________________________________________
[1575] They had been sent by Gregory into Sardinia with the special purpose of promoting the conversion of the natives, which had been neglected by the bishops and clergy of the island. See V. 41, and IV. 23, note 8.
[1576] Apparently the designation of the monastery which had been now at length founded by Theodosia in execution of her late husband's will. See above, IV. 8, 15. In IV. 15, Gregory had acceded to her desire in view of certain difficulties in carrying out her husband's intention, to found a nunnery in a house of her own at Cagliari. But it seems that a monastery of monks had in the end been founded. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle IV.
To Constantius, Bishop.
Gregory to Constantius, Bishop of Mediolanum (Milan).
If licence to be restored to their rank be granted to the lapsed, the force of ecclesiastical discipline is undoubtedly broken, while in the hope of restoration each person fears not to give way to his evil inclinations. Your Fraternity, for instance, has consulted us as to whether Amandinus, ex-presbyter and ex-abbot, who was deposed by your predecessor for fault requiring it, should be called back to his rank; which thing is not allowable; and we decree that it cannot on any account be done. Yet, if it should be the case that his manner of life deserves it, seeing that he has been deprived altogether of his sacred office, assign him a place in a monastery, as you may see fit, before other monks. Above all things, then, take care that no one's supplication persuade you in any way to restore the lapsed to their sacred orders, lest such punishment should be supposed not to be definitely ordained for them, but only a temporary expedient.
As to Vitalianus the ex-presbyter, about whom you write that he should be strictly guarded, we will cause him to be sent into Sicily, that, being deprived of all hope of departure thence, he may then at least constrain himself to penitential bewailing. Jobinus also, of Portus Veneris, once deacon and abbot, we have decreed to be deprived of his office, and written that another should be ordained in his place. In like manner also we decree that the three subdeacons, whom your Fraternity has notified to us as having lapsed, shall ever cease from and stand deprived of their office, and that nothing beyond lay communion be allowed them. Further, we have adjudged the ex-presbyter Saturninus to give security that he will not ever presume to approach the ministry of his sacred order. And we desire him to remain, with deprivation of his sacred order, in the same island in which he was, permitting him to have and exercise care and solicitude with respect to monasteries; for we believe that, his lapse having made him more wary, he will now the more carefully keep guard over those who are committed to him.
Further, concerning John, notary of your church, the charity wherewith we love you and have long loved you warns us to write, lest you should order anything with regard to him while you are still provoked by his fault. Guarding, then, against this, enquire fully by all means in your power into the possessions of your church; by which means neither may you offend God, nor may he be able to find a ground for accusing you before men. For we write, not as defending John or commending him personally without reason, but lest your soul should be in any way burdened with sin under the incitement of anger. Whence it is needful, as we have before said, that you should by no means neglect to enquire, in the fear of God, with a full investigation into the possessions of your church.
Furthermore, the epistle of your most dear Fraternity has caused us to wonder much with respect to the person of Fortunatus [1577] . But either that letter was not dictated by you, or certainly, if it is yours, we by no means recognize in it our brother the lord Constantius. For you ought to have paid, and still ought to pay, attention to the fact that it is in behalf of your reputation that we write. For, when he asserts that he suffers wrong among you, and has been unable to procure the guardian's (defensoris) aid, what else does he intimate but ill-will on your part? Wherefore, that neither this affair may dim your reputation in some quarters nor damage possibly ensue in any way with good cause to your church, you ought to send hither a person instructed by you, that the nature of the case may be examined, and the matter terminated, without ill-will on your part. And for this reason especially, that if, after his complaint, sentence should be pronounced among yourselves in your favour, he will be believed to have been defeated, not reasonably, but by power alone. But we, out of the charity wherewith we are bound to you, desist not from admonishing you to do what will be for your good repute, knowing that, though this exhortation saddens you for the time, it will afterwards cause you joy, when the animosity of contention has passed away. In the month of September, Indiction 13. (In Vatic. The month of December, Indict. 13.) __________________________________________________________________
[1577] See IV. 39. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle V.
To Dominicus, Bishop.
Gregory to Dominicus, Bishop of Carthage.
Prosper your delegate (responsalis), the bearer of these presents, has been with us, and after other expressions of your charity handed us your second letters with an allegation of the imperial commands, and a paper giving an account of the synod that has been held among you [1578] . Having read all, we rejoiced for your pastoral zeal, and that our most pious lords had given no ear to the calumnies of venal persons brought against you on the plea of religion; but especially that your Fraternity has so taken pains to preserve the African province as in no wise to neglect to restrain with priestly fervour the devious sects of heretics; concerning the quieting of whom we remember having laid down the law so fully, even before consulting the letters of your Charity, that we do not believe that anything needs to be said again in reply to you about them. Although, however, this is so, and though we desire all heretics to be repressed always with vigour and reason by catholic priests, yet, on looking thoroughly into what has been done among you, we are in fact apprehensive lest offence should thereby be caused (which thing may the Lord avert) to the primates of other councils. For at the conclusion of your acts you have promulged a sentence, in which, while ordering the searching out of those heretics, you have brought in that those who neglect the duty are to be punished by forfeiture of their possessions and dignities. It is therefore best, most dear brother, that, in dealing with matters outside ourselves that require correction, charity among ourselves should first be preserved, and that we should be subject in mind (as I judge to be peculiarly proper to your Gravity) even to persons below us in dignity. For you will then more advantageously meet the errors of heretics with your whole united powers when, as befits your priesthood, you study to keep ecclesiastical concord among yourselves. __________________________________________________________________
[1578] This had been a synod held at Carthage for the suppression of the Donatists. Cf. I. 74, note 8. Gregory, while fully approving, as he shows elsewhere, of strict enforcement of the imperial laws against them, expresses fear in this epistle lest the council lately held might have gone too far, so as to endanger the unity of the African Church, in exceeding the decrees of synods that had been held elsewhere, and especially in ordering severe measures against bishops or others who might be remiss in the work of suppressing heresy. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle VIII.
To Cyprian, Deacon.
Gregory to Cyprian, deacon and rector of the patrimony of Sicily.
Concerning the Manicheans who are on our possessions I have frequently admonished thy Love to press them with the utmost diligence, and recall them to the Catholic faith. If, then, the time requires it, make enquiries in person, or, if other business does not allow this, through others. Further, it has come to my ears that there are Hebrews on our possessions who will not by any means be converted to God. But it seems to me that thou shouldest send letters through all our possessions on which these Hebrews are known to be, promising them particularly from me that whosoever of them shall have been converted to our true Lord God Jesus Christ shall have the burdens of his holding lightened. And this I wish to have done in such sort that, if one has a payment to make of one solidus, a third should be remitted him; if of three or four, that one solidus should be remitted; if of any more, the remission should still be made in the same proportion, or at any rate according as thy Love sees fit, so that one who is converted may have some relief of his burden, and the Church may not be put to heavy expense. Nor shall we do this unprofitably, if by lightening the burdens of their payments we bring them to the grace of Christ, since, though they themselves came with little faith, yet those who may be born of them will now be baptized with more faith: thus we gain either them or their children. And whatever amount of payment we let them off for the sake of Christ is nothing serious. Furthermore, some time ago, when John the deacon came, thy Love wrote something to me, the whole of which I read at the time, but let many days intervene before replying; and then, after such delay, replied to all particulars as I recollected them. But now I think that one point escaped my memory, and suspect that I gave no reply about it. For thou hadst written that loans were being advanced to peasants (rusticis) through certain undertakers for their debt [1579] , lest in borrowing from others they should be burdened either by exactions or by the prices of things [1580] . This particular was to me most acceptable; and, if indeed I have already written about it, observe what I wrote. But if, as I suspect, I gave in my reply no definite direction on the subject, thou must not hesitate to advance money for the advantage of the peasants, since the ecclesiastical property will not thus be wasted, and out of it the peasants will derive advantage. And, if there are other things which thou considerest to be advantageous, thou must carry them out without any hesitation. __________________________________________________________________
[1579] Per manus quorundam debiti conductorum. If the word debiti(absent from some mss.) is read here, the meaning may be that certain persons, called debiti conductores, undertook the recovery of the arrears of the rustici, and that through them easy loans were advanced to such as were unable to pay at the proper time. Cf. I. 44, p. 89. For the ordinary meaning of conductores (without debiti), in connexion with the Church estates, see I. 44, p, 89, note 5.
[1580] Aut in angariis aut in rerum pretio. The word angaria is applicable to any kind of vexatious exaction, either in the way of forced labour or in other ways. "Per angarias intelliguntur vexationes et injuriæ quælibet." Du Cange. It may be used here for exorbitant interest on loans obtained from usurers. As to rerum pretio, cf. I. 44, p. 89, about burdatio, and note 2. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XI.
To John, Bishop.
Gregory to John, Bishop of Ravenna.
I find that your Fraternity is greatly distressed on account of being forbidden by the censure of reason to wear the pallium in litanies. But through the most excellent Patrician, and through the most eminent Prefect, and through other noble men of your city, you have urgently requested to have this allowed you. Now we, having made careful enquiry of Adeodatus, some time thy Fraternity's deacon, have ascertained that it was never the custom of thy predecessors to use the pallium during litanies, except at the solemnities of the blessed John the Baptist, the blessed Apostle Peter, and the blessed martyr Apollinaris. But we were by no means bound to believe him, since many of our delegates have often been at your Fraternity's city, who declare that they never saw anything of the kind. And in this matter credence is rather to be given to many than to one, who is attesting something in behalf of his own Church. But, since we do not wish your Fraternity to be distressed, or the petition of our sons to be of no avail with us, we concede the use of the pallium, until we shall gain some more accurate knowledge, on the days of the Nativity of the Blessed John the Baptist, of the blessed Apostle Peter, and the blessed martyr Apollinaris, and on the day of the celebration of your ordination. But in the sacristy, according to former custom, after the sons of the Church have been received and dismissed, your Fraternity may put on the pallium, and so proceed to the solemnization of mass, arrogating to yourself nothing more in the daring of rash presumption; lest, while something is snatched at out of order in exterior habiliment, what might have been done in due order be neglected. Given in the month of October; Indiction 13. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XV.
To John, Bishop.
Gregory to John, Bishop of Ravenna.
In the first place this makes me sad; that thy Fraternity writes to me with a double heart, exhibiting one sort of blandishment in letters, but another sort with the tongue in secular intercourse. In the next place, it grieves me that my brother John even to this day retains on his tongue those gibes which notaries while still boys are wont to indulge in. He speaks bitingly, and seems to delight in such pleasantry. He flatters his friends in their presence, and maligns them in their absence. Thirdly, it is to me grievous and altogether execrable, that he imputes shameful crimes to his servants [1581] , whatever the hour may be, calling them "effeminate;" and, what is still more grievous, this is done openly. Then there is this in addition that there is no discipline for keeping guard over the life of the clergy, but that he exhibits himself only as their lord. The last thing, but first in importance as evidence of elation, is about his use of the pallium outside the church, which is a thing he never presumed to do in the times of my predecessors, and what none of his predecessors ever presumed to do, as our delegates testify (except it might be when relics were deposited, though with regard to relics one person only could be found to say that it was so); yet this in my days, in contempt of me, with extreme audacity, he not only did, but even made a habit of doing.
From all these things I find that the dignity of the Episcopacy is with him all in outside show, not in his mind. And indeed I return thanks to Almighty God that at the time when this came to my knowledge, which had never reached the ears of my predecessors, the Lombards were posted between me and the city of Ravenna. For perchance I had it in my mind to shew to men how severe I can be [1582] .
Lest, however, thou shouldest suppose that I wish thy church to be depressed or lessened in dignity, remember where the deacon of Ravenna used to stand in solemnization of mass at Rome, and enquire where he stands now; and thou wilt recognize the fact that I desire to honour the church of Ravenna. But that any one whatever should snatch at anything out of pride, this I cannot tolerate.
Nevertheless I have already written on this matter to our deacon at Constantinople, that he should enquire of all who have under them even thirty or forty bishops. And if there is anywhere this custom of their walking in litanies wearing the pallium, God forbid that through me the dignity of the church of Ravenna should seem to be in any way lessened.
Reflect, therefore, dearest brother, on all that I have said above: think of the day of thy call: consider what account thou wilt render of the burden of episcopacy. Amend those manners of a notary. See what becomes a bishop in tongue and in deed. Be entirely sincere to thy brethren. Do not speak one thing, and have another in thy heart. Do not desire to seem more than thou art, that so thou mayest be able to be more than thou seemest. Believe me, when I came to my present position, I had such consideration and charity towards thee that, if thou hadst wished to keep hold of this my charity, thou still wouldest not have ever found such a brother as myself, or one so sincerely loving thee, or so concurring with thee in all devotion: but when I came to know of thy words and thy manners, I confess I started back. I beseech thee, then, by Almighty God, amend all that I have spoken of, and especially the vice of duplicity. Allow me to love thee; and for the present and the future life it may be of advantage to thee to be loved of thy brethren. Reply, however, to all this, not by words, but by behaviour. __________________________________________________________________
[1581] "Servis tuis turpia crimina imponis,"--apparently meaning that at all hours he was accustomed to call them by opprobrious names.
[1582] The meaning may be, "I am thankful now that the fact of communication between Rome and Ravenna being blocked by the Lombards when the matter first reached my ears prevented my acting so peremptorily as I might then have been disposed to do." __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XVII.
To Cyprian, Deacon [1583] .
Gregory to Cyprian, &c.
I received your letters of most bitter import about the death of the Lord Maximianus [1584] in the month of November. And he indeed has reached the rewards he longed for, but the unhappy people of the city of Syracuse is to be commiserated as not having been counted worthy to have such a pastor long. Accordingly let thy Love take anxious heed that such a one may be chosen for ordination in the same church as may not seem to obtain undeservedly the same place of rule after the lord Maximianus. And indeed I believe that the majority would choose the presbyter Trajan, who, as is said, is of a good disposition, but, as I suspect, not fit for ruling in that place. Yet, if a better cannot be found, and if there are no charges against him, he may be condescended to under stress of very great necessity. But, if my wishes are asked with regard to this election, I inform thee privately of what I do wish: for no one in this same church appears to me so worthy after the lord Maximianus as John the archdeacon of the church of Catana. And, if his election can be brought about, I believe that he will be found an exceedingly fit person. But he too must first be enquired about by thee privately as to any charges against him that may stand in the way. If he should be found free from any, he may be rightly chosen. Should this be done, our brother and fellow-bishop Leo [1585] will also have to give him leave to go, that he may be found free to be ordained. These things, then, I have taken care to intimate to thy Love; and it will now be thy concern to look round thee on all sides carefully, and arrange what is pleasing to God. __________________________________________________________________
[1583] The deacon Cyprian had succeeded the sub-deacon Peter as rector patrimonii in Sicily, and Gregory's general agent there, through whom he acted in ecclesiastical as well as temporal matters, at any rate now, after the death of Maximianus of Syracuse.
[1584] See II. 7, note 5.
[1585] Bishop of Catana where this John was archdeacon. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XVIII.
To John, Bishop.
Gregory to John, Bishop of Constantinople [1586] .
At the time when your Fraternity was advanced to Sacerdotal dignity, you remember what peace and concord of the churches you found. But, with what daring or with what swelling of pride I know not, you have attempted to seize upon a new name, whereby the hearts of all your brethren might have come to take offence. I wonder exceedingly at this, since I remember how thou wouldest fain have fled from the episcopal office rather than attain it. And yet, now that thou hast got it, thou desirest so to exercise it as if thou hadst run to it with ambitious intent. For, having confessed thyself unworthy to be called a bishop, thou hast at length been brought to such a pass as, despising thy brethren, to covet to be named the only bishop. And indeed with regard to this matter, weighty letters were addressed to your Holiness by my predecessor Pelagius of holy memory; in which he annulled the acts of the synod, which had been assembled among you in the case of our once brother and fellow-bishop Gregory, because of that execrable title of pride, and forbade the archdeacon whom he had sent according to custom to the threshold of our lord, to celebrate the solemnities of mass with you. But after his death, when I, unworthy, succeeded to the government of the Church, both through my other representatives and also through our common son the deacon Sabinianus, I have taken care to address your Fraternity, not indeed in writing, but by word of mouth, desiring you to restrain yourself from such presumption. And, in case of your refusing to amend, I forbade his celebrating the solemnities of mass with you; that so I might first appeal to your Holiness through a certain sense of shame, to the end that, if the execrable and profane assumption could not be corrected through shame, strict canonical measures might be then resorted to. And, since sores that are to be cut away should first be stroked with a gentle hand, I beg you, I beseech you, and with all the sweetness in my power demand of you, that your Fraternity gainsay all who flatter you and offer you this name of error, nor foolishly consent to be called by the proud title. For truly I say it weeping, and out of inmost sorrow of heart attribute it to my sins, that this my brother, who has been constituted in the grade of episcopacy for the very end of bringing back the souls of others to humility, has up to the present time been incapable of being brought back to humility; that he who teaches truth to others has not consented to teach himself, even when I implore him.
Consider, I pray thee, that in this rash presumption the peace of the whole Church is disturbed, and that it is in contradiction to the grace that is poured out on all in common; in which grace doubtless thou thyself wilt have power to grow so far as thou determinest with thyself to do so. And thou wilt become by so much the greater as thou restrainest thyself from the usurpation of a proud and foolish title: and thou wilt make advance in proportion as thou art not bent on arrogation by derogation of thy brethren. Wherefore, dearest brother, with all thy heart love humility, through which the concord of all the brethren and the unity of the holy universal Church may be preserved. Certainly the apostle Paul, when he heard some say, I am of Paul, I of Apollos, but I of Christ (1 Cor. i. 13), regarded with the utmost horror such dilaceration of the Lord's body, whereby they were joining themselves, as it were, to other heads, and exclaimed, saying, Was Paul crucified for you? or were ye baptized in the name of Paul (ib.)? If then he shunned the subjecting of the members of Christ partially to certain heads, as if beside Christ, though this were to the apostles themselves, what wilt thou say to Christ, who is the Head of the universal Church, in the scrutiny of the last judgment, having attempted to put all his members under thyself by the appellation of Universal? Who, I ask, is proposed for imitation in this wrongful title but he who, despising the legions of angels constituted socially with himself, attempted to start up to an eminence of singularity, that he might seem to be under none and to be alone above all? Who even said, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of heaven: I will sit upon the mount of the testament, in the sides of the North: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High (Isai. xiv. 13).
For what are all thy brethren, the bishops of the universal Church, but stars of heaven, whose life and discourse shine together amid the sins and errors of men, as if amid the shades of night? And when thou desirest to put thyself above them by this proud title, and to tread down their name in comparison with thine, what else dost thou say but I will ascend into heaven; I will exalt my throne above the stars of heaven? Are not all the bishops together clouds, who both rain in the words of preaching, and glitter in the light of good works? And when your Fraternity despises them, and you would fain press them down under yourself, what else say you but what is said by the ancient foe, I will ascend above the heights of the clouds? All these things when I behold with tears, and tremble at the hidden judgments of God, my fears are increased, and my heart cannot contain its groans, for that this most holy man the lord John, of so great abstinence and humility, has, through the seduction of familiar tongues, broken out into such a pitch of pride as to attempt, in his coveting of that wrongful name, to be like him who, while proudly wishing to be like God, lost even the grace of the likeness granted him, and because he sought false glory, thereby forfeited true blessedness. Certainly Peter, the first of the apostles, himself a member of the holy and universal Church, Paul, Andrew, John,--what were they but heads of particular communities? And yet all were members under one Head. And (to bind all together in a short girth of speech) the saints before the law, the saints under the law, the saints under grace, all these making up the Lord's Body, were constituted as members of the Church, and not one of them has wished himself to be called universal. Now let your Holiness acknowledge to what extent you swell within yourself in desiring to be called by that name by which no one presumed to be called who was truly holy.
Was it not the case, as your Fraternity knows, that the prelates of this Apostolic See which by the providence of God I serve, had the honour offered them of being called universal by the venerable Council of Chalcedon [1587] . But yet not one of them has ever wished to be called by such a title, or seized upon this ill-advised name, lest if, in virtue of the rank of the pontificate, he took to himself the glory of singularity, he might seem to have denied it to all his brethren.
But I know that all arises from those who serve your Holiness on terms of deceitful familiarity; against whom I beseech your Fraternity to be prudently on your guard, and not to lay yourself open to be deceived by their words. For they are to be accounted the greater enemies the more they flatter you with praises. Forsake such; and, if they must needs deceive, let them at any rate deceive the hearts of worldly men, and not of priests. Let the dead bury their dead (Luke ix. 60). But say ye with the prophet, Let them be turned back and put to shame that say unto me, Aha, Aha (Ps. lxix. 4). And again, But let not the oil of the sinner lard my head (Ps. cxl. 5).
Whence also the wise man admonishes well, Be in peace with many: but have but one counsellor of a thousand (Ecclus. vi. 6). For Evil communications corrupt good manners (1 Cor. xv. 33). For the ancient foe, when unable to break into strong hearts, looks out for weak persons who are associated with them, and, as it were, scales lofty walls by ladders set against them. So he deceived Adam through the woman who was associated with him. So, when he slew the sons of the blessed Job, he left the weak woman, that, being unable of himself to penetrate his heart, he might at any rate be able to do so through the woman's words. Whatever weak and secular persons, then, are near you, let them be shattered in their own persuasive words and flattery, since they procure to themselves the eternal enmity of God from their very frowardness in being seeming lovers.
Of a truth it was proclaimed of old through the Apostle John, Little children, it is the last hour (1 John ii. 18), according as the Truth foretold. And now pestilence and sword rage through the world, nations rise against nations, the globe of the earth is shaken, the gaping earth with its inhabitants is dissolved. For all that was foretold is come to pass. The king of pride is near, and (awful to be said!) there is an army of priests in course of preparation for him, inasmuch as they who had been appointed to be leaders in humility enlist themselves under the neck of pride. But in this matter, even though our tongue protested not at all, the power of Him who in His own person peculiarly opposes the vice of pride is lifted up for vengeance against elation. For hence it is written, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble (Jam. iv. 6). Hence, again, it is said, Whoso exalteth his heart is unclean before God (Prov. xvi. 5). Hence, against the man that is proud it is written, Why is earth and ashes proud (Ecclus. x. 9)? Hence the Truth in person says, Whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased (Luke xiv. 11). And, that he might bring us back to the way of life through humility, He deigned to exhibit in Himself what He teaches us, saying, Learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart (Matth. xi. 29). For to this end the only begotten Son of God took upon Himself the form of our weakness; to this end the Invisible appeared not only as visible but even as despised; to this end He endured the mocks of contumely, the reproaches of derision, the torments of suffering; that God in His humility might teach man not to be proud. How great, then, is the virtue of humility for the sake of teaching which alone He who is great beyond compare became little even unto the suffering of death! For, since the pride of the devil was the origin of our perdition, the humility of God has been found the means of our redemption. That is to say, our enemy, having been created among all things, desired to appear exalted above all things; but our Redeemer remaining great above all things, deigned to become little among all things.
What, then, can we bishops say for ourselves, who have received a place of honour from the humility of our Redeemer, and yet imitate the pride of the enemy himself? Lo, we know our Creator to have descended from the summit of His loftiness that He might give glory to the human race, and we, created of the lowest, glory in the lessening of our brethren. God humbled Himself even to our dust; and human dust sets his face as high as heaven, and with his tongue passes above the earth, and blushes not, neither is afraid to be lifted up: even man who is rottenness, and the son of man that is a worm.
Let us recall to mind, most dear brother, this which is said by the most wise Solomon. Before thunder shall go lightning, and before ruin shall the heart be exalted (Ecclus. xxxii. 10); where, on the other hand it is subjoined, Before glory it shall be humbled. Let us then be humbled in mind, if we are striving to attain to real loftiness. By no means let the eyes of our heart be darkened by the smoke of elation, which the more it rises the more rapidly vanishes away. Let us consider how we are admonished by the precepts of our Redeemer, who says, Blessed are the poor in spirit; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven (Matth. v. 3). Hence, also, he says by the prophet, On whom shall my Spirit rest, but on him that is humble, and quiet, and that trembleth at my words (Isai. lxvi. 2)? Of a truth, when the Lord would bring back the hearts of His disciples, still beset with infirmity, to the way of humility, He said, Whosoever will be chief among you shall be least of all (Matth. xx. 27). Whereby it is plainly seen how he is truly exalted on high who in his thoughts is humbled. Let us, therefore, fear to be numbered among those who seek the first seats in the synagogues, and greetings in the market, and to be called of men Rabbi. For, contrariwise, the Lord says to His disciples, But be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your master; and all ye are brethren. And call no man your Father upon the earth, for one is your Father (Matth. xxiii. 7, 8).
What then, dearest brother, wilt thou say in that terrible scrutiny of the coming judgment, if thou covetest to be called in the world not only father, but even general father? Let, then, the bad suggestion of evil men be guarded against; let all instigation to offence be fled from. It must needs be (indeed) that offences come; nevertheless, woe to that man by whom the offence cometh (Matth. xviii. 7). Lo, by reason of this execrable title of pride the Church is rent asunder, the hearts of all the brethren are provoked to offence. What! Has it escaped your memory how the Truth says, Whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a mill stone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea (Ib. v. 6)? But it is written, Charity seeketh not her own (1 Cor. xiii. 4). Lo, your Fraternity arrogates to itself even what is not its own. Again it is written, In honour preferring one another (Rom. xii. 10). And thou attemptest to take the honour away from all which thou desirest unlawfully to usurp to thyself singularly. Where, dearest brother, is that which is written, Have peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord (Heb. xii. 14)? Where is that which is written, Blessed are the peacemakers; for they shall be called the children of God (Matth. v. 9)?
It becomes you to consider, lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled. But still, though we neglect to consider, supernal judgment will be on the watch against the swelling of so great elation. And we indeed, against whom such and so great a fault is committed by this nefarious attempt,--we, I say, are observing what the Truth enjoins when it says, If thy brother shall sin against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone. If he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother. But if he will not hear thee, take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of one or two witnesses every word may be established. But if he will not hear them, tell it unto the Church. But if he will not hear the Church, let him be to thee as an heathen man and a publican (Matth. xviii. 15). I therefore have once and again through my representatives taken care to reprove in humble words this sin against the whole Church; and now I write myself. Whatever it was my duty to do in the way of humility I have not omitted. But, if I am despised in my reproof, it remains that I must have recourse to the Church.
Wherefore may Almighty God show your Fraternity how great love for you constrains me when I thus speak, and how much I grieve in this case, not against you, but for you. But the case is such that in it I must prefer the precepts of the Gospel, the ordinances of the Canons, and the welfare of the brethren to the person even of him whom I greatly love.
I have received the most sweet and pleasant letter of your Holiness with respect to the case of the presbyters John and Athanasius [1588] , about which, the Lord helping me, I will reply to you in another letter; for, being surrounded by the swords of barbarians, I am now oppressed by such great tribulations that it is not allowed me, I will not say to treat of many things, but hardly even to breathe. Given in the Kalends of January; Indiction 13. __________________________________________________________________
[1586] On the same occasion of this letter and subsequent correspondence on the same subject, see Prolegomena, pp. xiv., xxii.
[1587] As to this assertion (repeated in V. 20, 43, and in VIII. 30), Giesler says, "Gregory was mistaken in believing that at the Council of Chalcedon the name Universalis Episcopus was given to the bishop of Rome. He is styled oikoumenikos archiepiskopos (Mansi VI. 1006, 1012), as other patriarchs also. But in another place the title was surreptitiously introduced into the Latin acts by the Romish legates. In the sentence passed on Dioscurus, actio iii (Mansi VI. 1048), the Council say, ho hagiotatos kai makariotatos archiepiskopos tes megales kai presbuteras Romes Leon: on the contrary, in the Latin acts which Leo sent to the Gallic bishops (Leonis, Ep. 103, al. 82), we read; Sanctus ac beatissimus Papa, caput universalis Ecclesiæ, Leo.' In the older editions the beginning of Leo's Epist. 97 (ap. Quesn. 134, Baller. 165), runs thus: Leo Romæ et universalis catholicæque Ecclesiæ Episcopus Leoni semper Augusto salutem.' Quesnel and the Ballerini, however, found in all the Codices only, Leo Episcopus Leoni Augusto.'" (Giesler's Eccl. Hist., 2nd Period, 1st Division, ch. iii. § 94, note 72).
[1588] Cf. III. 53, and reff. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XIX.
To Sabinianus, Deacon [1589] .
Gregory to Sabinianus, &c.
In the cause of our brother the most reverend John, bishop of Constantinople, I have been unwilling to write two letters. But one I have drawn up briefly, which may seem to combine both requisites; that is to say, both honesty and kindness.
Let therefore thy Love take care to give him this letter which I have now addressed to him in compliance with the wish of the Emperor. For in the sequel another will be sent him such as his pride will not rejoice in. For he has come even to this; that, taking occasion of the case of John the presbyter, he transmitted hither the acts, wherein almost in every line he called himself oikoumenikon (oecumenical) patriarch. But I hope in Almighty God that the Supernal Majesty will confound his hypocrisy. But I wonder how he could so deceive thy Love as that thou shouldest allow the lord Emperor to be persuaded to write to me himself concerning this matter, admonishing me to have peace with him. For, if the lord Emperor wishes to observe justice, he ought to have admonished him to refrain from the proud title, and then at once there would be peace between us. I suspect, however, that thou hast not all considered with what cunningness this has been done by our aforesaid brother John. For it is for this purpose that he has done it; that the lord Emperor might be obeyed, and so he himself might seem to be confirmed in his vanity, or that I might not obey him, and so his mind might be irritated against me. But we will keep to the right way, fearing nothing in this cause except the Almighty Lord. Wherefore let thy Love be in nothing afraid. All things that you see to be lofty in this world against the truth in behalf of the truth despise; trust in the grace of Almighty God, and the help of the blessed Apostle Peter. Remember the voice of the Truth, which says, Greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world (1 John iv. 4); and in this cause whatever has to be done, do it with the utmost authority. For now that we can in no wise be protected from the swords of our enemies, now that for love of the republic we have lost silver, gold, slaves and clothing, it is too ignominious that through those men we should lose even the faith. For to assent to that atrocious title is nothing else than to lose the faith. Wherefore, as I have written to thee already in former letters, never do thou presume to proceed with him [1590] . __________________________________________________________________
[1589] Sabinianus was at this time the pope's apocrisiarius, or responsalis, at Constantinople.
[1590] Cum eo procedere, i.e. in effect, to communicate with him. Procedere means to approach the altar for celebration. Cf. III. 57, "ingredientibus diaconibus ut mox procedatur." __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XX.
To Mauricius Augustus.
Gregory to Mauricius, &c.
Our most pious and God-appointed lord, among his other august cares and burdens, watches also in the uprightness of spiritual zeal over the preservation of peace among the priesthood, inasmuch as he piously and truly considers that no one can govern earthly things aright unless he knows how to deal with divine things, and that the peace of the republic hangs on the peace of the universal Church. For, most serene Lord, what human power, and what strength of fleshly arm would presume to lift irreligious hands against the lofty height of your most Christian Empire, if the concordant hearts of priests were studious to implore their Redeemer for you with the tongue, and also, as they ought to do, by their deservings? Or what sword of a most savage race would advance with so great cruelty to the slaughter of the faithful, unless the life of us, who are called priests but are not, were weighed down by works most wicked. But while we neglect the things that concern us, and think of those that concern us not, we associate our sins with the barbaric forces and our fault, which weighs down the forces of the republic, sharpens the swords of the enemy. But what shall we say for ourselves, who press down the people of God which we are unworthily set over with the loads of our sins; who destroy by example what we preach with the tongue; who by our works teach unrighteous things, and with our voice only set forth the things that are righteous? Our bones are worn down by fasts, and in our mind we swell. Our body is covered with vile raiment, and in elation of heart we surpass the purple. We lie in ashes, and look down upon loftiness. Teachers of humility, we are chiefs of pride; behind the faces of sheep we hide the teeth of wolves [1591] . But what is the end of these things except that we persuade men, but are manifest to God? Wherefore most providently for restraining warlike movements does the most pious lord seek the peace of the Church, and, for compacting it, deigns to bring back the hearts of its priests to concord. And this indeed is what I wish; and, as far as I am concerned, I render obedience to his most serene commands. But since it is not my cause, but God's, since the pious laws, since the venerable synods, since the very commands of our Lord Jesus Christ are disturbed by the invention of a certain proud and pompous phrase, let the most pious lord cut the place of the sore, and bind the resisting patient in the chains of august authority. For in binding up these things tightly you relieve the republic; and while you cut off such things, you provide for the lengthening of your reign.
For to all who know the Gospel it is apparent that by the Lord's voice the care of the whole Church was committed to the holy Apostle and Prince of all the Apostles, Peter. For to him it is said, Peter, lovest thou Me? Feed My sheep (John xxi. 17). To him it is said, Behold Satan hath desired to sift you as wheat; and I have prayed for thee, Peter, that thy faith fail not. And thou, when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren (Luke xxii. 31). To him it is said, Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven and whatsoever thou shalt bind an earth shall be bound also in heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed also in heaven (Matth. xvi. 18).
Lo, he received the keys of the heavenly kingdom, and power to bind and loose is given him, the care and principality of the whole Church is committed to him, and yet he is not called the universal apostle; while the most holy man, my fellow-priest John, attempts to be called universal bishop. I am compelled to cry out and say, O tempora, O mores!
Lo, all things in the regions of Europe are given up into the power of barbarians, cities are destroyed, camps overthrown, provinces depopulated, no cultivator inhabits the land, worshippers of idols rage and dominate daily for the slaughter of the faithful, and yet priests, who ought to lie weeping on the ground and in ashes, seek for themselves names of vanity, and glory in new and profane titles.
Do I in this matter, most pious lord, defend my own cause? Do I resent my own special wrong? Nay, the cause of Almighty God, the cause of the Universal Church.
Who is this that, against the evangelical ordinances, against the decrees of canons, presumes to usurp to himself a new name? Would indeed that one by himself he were, if he could be without any lessening of others,--he that covets to be universal.
And certainly we know that many priests of the Constantinopolitan Church have fallen into the whirlpool of heresy, and have become not only heretics, but even heresiarchs. For thence came Nestorius, who, thinking Jesus Christ, the Mediator of God and men, to be two persons, because he did not believe that God could be made man, broke out even into Jewish perfidy. Thence came Macedonius, who denied that God the Holy Spirit was consubstantial with the Father and the Son. If then any one in that Church takes to himself that name, whereby he makes himself the head of all the good, it follows that the Universal Church falls from its standing (which God forbid), when he who is called Universal falls. But far from Christian hearts be that name of blasphemy, in which the honour of all priests is taken away, while it is madly arrogated to himself by one.
Certainly, in honour of Peter, Prince of the apostles, it was offered by the venerable synod of Chalcedon to the Roman pontiff [1592] . But none of them has ever consented to use this name of singularity, lest, by something being given peculiarly to one, priests in general should be deprived of the honour due to them. How is it then that we do not seek the glory of this title even when offered, and another presumes to seize it for himself though not offered?
He, then, is rather to be bent by the mandate of our most pious Lords, who scorns to render obedience to canonical injunctions. He is to be coerced, who does wrong to the holy Universal Church, who swells in heart, who covets rejoicing in a name of singularity, who also puts himself above the dignity of your Empire through a title peculiar to himself.
Behold, we all suffer offence for this thing. Let then the author of the offence be brought back to a right way of life; and all quarrels of priests will cease. For I for my part am the servant of all priests, so long as they live as becomes priests. For whosoever, through the swelling of vain glory, lifts up his neck against Almighty God and against the statutes of the Fathers, I trust in Almighty God that he will not bend my neck to himself, not even with swords.
Moreover what has been done in this city on our hearing of this title, I have indicated in full to my deacon and responsalis Sabinianus. Let then the piety of my lords think of me as their own, whom they have always cherished and countenanced beyond others, and who desire to render obedience to you and yet fear to be found guilty in the heavenly and tremendous judgment, and, according to the petition of the aforesaid deacon Sabinianus, let my most pious lord either deign to judge this business, or to move the often before mentioned man to desist at length from this attempt. If then through the most just judgment of your Piety he should comply with your orders, even though they be mild ones, we shall return thanks to Almighty God, and rejoice for the peace granted through you to all the Church. But should he persist any longer in his present contention, we hold this sentence of the Truth to be already made good; Every one that exalteth himself shall be humbled (Luke xiv. 11; xviii. 14). And again it is written, Before a fall the heart is lifted up (Prov. xvi. 18). I however, rendering obedience to the commands of my lords, have both written sweetly to my aforesaid fellow-priest, and humbly admonished him to amend himself of this coveting of empty glory. If therefore he be willing to hear me, he has a devoted brother. But, if he persists in pride, I already see what will follow:--that he will find Him as his adversary of whom it is written, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble (Jam. iv. 6). __________________________________________________________________
[1591] The ironical allusion here to John the Faster is evident.
[1592] Cf. V. 18, and note 5. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXI.
To Constantina Augusta [1593] .
Gregory to Constantina, &c.
Almighty God, who holds in His right hand the heart of your Piety, both protects us through you and prepares for you rewards of eternal remuneration for temporal deeds. For I have learnt from the letters of the deacon Sabinianus my responsalis with what justice your Serenity is interested in the cause of the blessed Prince of the apostles Peter against certain persons who are proudly humble and feignedly kind. And I trust in the bounty of our Redeemer that for these your good offices with the most serene lord and his most pious sons you will receive retribution also in the heavenly country. Nor is there any doubt that you will receive eternal benefits, being loosed from the chains of your sins, if in the cause of his Church you have made him your debtor to whom the power of binding and of loosing has been given. Wherefore I still beg you to allow no man's hypocrisy to prevail against the truth, since there are some who, according to the saying of the excellent preacher, by sweet words and fair speeches seduce the hearts of the innocent,--men who are vile in raiment, but puffed up in heart. And they affect to despise all things in this world, and yet seek to acquire for themselves all the things that are of this world. They confess themselves unworthy before all men, but cannot be content with private titles, since they covet that whereby they may seem to be more worthy than all. Let therefore your Piety, whom Almighty God has appointed with our most serene Lord to be over the whole world, through your favouring of justice render service to Him from whom you have received your right to so great a dominion, that you may rule over the world that is committed to you so much the more securely as you more truly serve the Author of all things in the execution of truth.
Furthermore, I inform you that I have received a letter from the most pious lord desiring me to be pacific towards my brother and fellow-priest John. And indeed so it became the religious lord to give injunctions to priests. But, when this my brother with new presumption and pride calls himself universal bishop, having caused himself in the time of our predecessor of holy memory to be designated in synod by this so proud a title, though all the acts of that synod were abrogated, being disallowed by the Apostolic See,--the most serene lord gives me a somewhat distressing intimation, in that he has not rebuked him who is acting proudly, but endeavours to bend me from my purpose, who in this cause of defending the truth of the Gospels and Canons, of humility and rectitude; whereas my aforesaid brother and fellow-priest is acting against evangelical principles and also against the blessed Apostle Peter, and against all the churches, and against the ordinances of the Canons. But the Lord, in whose hands are all things, is almighty; of Him it is written, There is no wisdom nor prudence nor counsel against the Lord (Prov. xxi. 30). And indeed my often before mentioned most holy brother endeavours to persuade my most serene lord of many things: but well I know that all those prayers of his and all those tears will not allow my lord to be in any thing cajoled by any one against reason or his own soul.
Still it is very distressing, and hard to be borne with patience, that my aforesaid brother and fellow-bishop, despising all others, should attempt to be called sole bishop. But in this pride of his what else is denoted than that the times of Antichrist are already near at hand? For in truth he is imitating him who, scorning social joy with the legions of angels, attempted to start up to a summit of singular eminence, saying, I will exalt my throne above the stars of heaven, I will sit upon the mount of the testament, in the sides of the North, and will ascend above the heights of the clouds, and I will be like the most High (Isai. xiv. 13). Wherefore I beseech you by Almighty God not to allow the times of your Piety to be polluted by the elation of one man, nor in any way to give any assent to so perverse a title, and that in this case your Piety may by no means despise me; since, though the sins of Gregory are so great that he ought to suffer such things, yet there are no sins of the Apostle Peter that he should deserve in your times to suffer thus. Wherefore again and again I beseech you by Almighty God that, as the princes your ancestors have sought the favour of the holy Apostle Peter, so you also take heed both to seek it for yourselves and to keep it, and that his honour among you be in no degree lessened on account of our sins who unworthily serve him, seeing that he is able both to be your helper now in all things and hereafter to remit your sins.
Moreover, it is now even seven years that we have been living in this city among the swords of the Lombards. How much is expended on them daily by this Church, that we may be able to live among them, is not to be told. But I briefly indicate that, as in the regions of Ravenna the Piety of my Lords has for the first army of Italy a treasurer (sacellarium) to defray the daily expenses for recurring needs, so I also in this city am their treasurer for such purposes. And yet this Church, which at one and the same time unceasingly expends so much on clergy, monasteries, the poor, the people, and in addition on the Lombards, lo it is still pressed down by the affliction of all the Churches, which groan much for this pride of one man, though they do not presume to say anything.
Further, a bishop of the city of Salona has been ordained without the knowledge of me and my responsalis, and a thing has been done which never happened under any former princes. When I heard of this, I at once sent word to that prevaricator, who had been irregularly ordained, that he must not presume by any means to celebrate the solemnities of mass, unless we should have first ascertained from our most serene lords that they had ordered this to be done; and this I commanded him under pain of excommunication. And yet, scorning and despising me, supported by the audacity of certain secular persons, to whom he is said to give many bribes so as to impoverish his Church, he presumes up to this time to celebrate mass, and has refused to come to me according to the order of my lords. Now I, obeying the injunction of their Piety, have from my heart forgiven this same Maximus, who had been ordained without my knowledge, his presumption in passing over me and my responsalis in his ordination, even as though he had been ordained with my authority. But his other wrong doings--to wit his bodily transgressions, which I have heard of, and his having been elected through bribery, and his having presumed to celebrate mass while excommunicated--these things, for the sake of God, I cannot pass over without enquiry. But I hope, and implore the Lord, that no fault may be found in him with respect to these things that are reported, and that his case may be terminated without peril to my soul. Nevertheless, before this has been ascertained, my most serene lord, in the order that has been despatched, has enjoined me to receive him with honour when he comes. And it is a very serious thing that a man of whom so many things of such a nature are reported should be honoured before such things have been enquired into and sifted, as they ought in the first place to be. And, if the causes of the bishops who are committed to me are settled before my most pious lords under the patronage of others, what shall I do, unhappy that I am, in this Church? But that my bishops despise me, and have recourse to secular Judges against me, I give thanks to Almighty God that I attribute it to my sins. This however I briefly intimate, because I am waiting for a little while; and, if he should long delay coming to me, I shall in no wise hesitate to exercise strict canonical discipline in his case. But I trust in Almighty God, that He will give long life to our most pious Lords, and order things for us under your hand, not according to our sins, but according to the gifts of His grace. These things, then, I suggest to my most tranquil lady, since I am not ignorant with how great zeal for rectitude the most pure conscience of her Serenity is moved. __________________________________________________________________
[1593] The main purport of this letter to the Empress is to induce her to move the Emperor to disallow the title of Universal Bishop assumed by the patriarch of Constantinople; but at the end of the letter he takes occasion to solicit her good offices also in the case of Maximus, bishop of Salona for an account of which, with references to other letters on the subject, cf. III. 47, note 2. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXIII.
To Castorius, Notary.
Gregory to Castorius, &c.
Our hearing of the death of our brother and fellow-bishop John [1594] has greatly saddened us especially as that city at this time has lost the solace of pastoral care. Wherefore, since very many advantages to the Church itself demand that, under the guidance of Christ, a priest should be ordained without delay, we accordingly charge thy Experience to exhort the clergy and people with all urgency that they delay not to elect for themselves a priest to be consecrated. This however, and before all things, we desire thee to press upon them, that in the general cause they regard not their own private interests. Let there be no venality, then, in this election, lest, while they covet rewards, they lose their discrimination of choice and think that man worthy for this office who may have pleased them, not by his merits, but by his gifts. For let them especially and absolutely know this, that he is not only unworthy of the priesthood, but will also certainly become further culpable, whosoever may presume to make merchandise of the gift of God by thinking to purchase it for a price. Wherefore let not him that is liberal in bribes, but him that is worthy for his merits, be chosen. For the penalty will affect both the elected and the electors, if they attempt with sacrilegious mind to violate the purity of the priesthood. Moreover, whether one or two may have been elected, by all means warn five of the senior presbyters and five of the leading people [1595] to come to us together. But with respect to the clergy, if, besides those who determine to come, you are of opinion that the presence of any others is necessary, send them to us without delay, that there may be no plea of excuse, nor any delay ensue, in setting the Church in order. __________________________________________________________________
[1594] Viz. John bishop of Ravenna, as to whom see III. 56, 57; V. 11, 15. Marinianus was elected in his place. See VI. 34, 61.
[1595] De præcedentibus. Al. de præcedentibus diaconibus. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXV.
To Severus, Bishop.
Gregory to Severus, Bishop of Ficulum.
The report that has been sent to us has informed us of the death of the bishop John [1596] . Wherefore we solemnly delegate to thy Fraternity the work of the visitation of the bereaved Church: which work it becomes thee so to execute that no one may presume to interfere with respect to the promotions of the clergy, the revenues, ornaments, ministrations, or whatever else belongs to the patrimony of the same Church. According to custom. __________________________________________________________________
[1596] Viz. John, bishop of Ravenna. See Ep. 23. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXVI.
To the people of Ravenna.
Gregory to the clergy, gentry, and common people of Ravenna [1597] .
Having been informed of the death of your bishop, we have taken care to delegate to our brother and fellow-bishop Severus of Ficulum the visitation of the bereaved Church, to whom we have given in charge to allow nothing with respect to the promotions of the clergy, the revenues, ornaments, and ministrations, to be usurped by any one. It is for you to render obedience to his assiduous exhortations. According to custom. __________________________________________________________________
[1597] Cf. II. 6, note 3. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXIX.
To Vincomalus, Guardian (Defensorem) [1598] .
Gregory to Vincomalus, &c.
With a view to the advantage of the Church it is our will and pleasure, that, if thou art held bound by no condition of, or liability to, bodily service, and hast not been a cleric of any other city, and if there is no canonical objection to thee, thou take the office of guardian of the Church, that thou mayest execute incorruptly and with alacrity whatever may be enjoined thee by us for the benefit of the poor, using this privilege which after deliberation we have conferred upon thee, so as to do thy diligence faithfully in accomplishing all that may be enjoined on thee by us, as having to render an account of thy doings under the judgment of our God. This epistle we have dictated, to be committed to writing, to Paterius, notary of our Church; In the month of March, Indiction 13. __________________________________________________________________
[1598] We have in this epistle the form of appointment to the office of Defensor Ecclesiæ. Cf. XI. 38. From IX. 62 it appears that the functions of the office had in some cases been usurped by persons not duly authorized, as it is there ordered that none should be recognized but such as possessed letters of appointment. The only duties of the office specified in this form of appointment have reference to the poor--"pro pauperum commodis;" but it is evident from the many epistles addressed to defensores, that they had a much wider scope. See Prolegomena, p. vii. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXX.
To Mauricius Augustus.
Gregory to Mauricius, &c.
The Piety of my Lords, which has been wont mercifully to sustain your servants, has shone forth here in so kind a supply that the need of all the feeble has been relieved by the succour of your bounty. On this account we all with prayers and tears beseech Almighty God, who has moved the heart of your Clemency to do this thing, that He would preserve the empire of our Lords safe in His unfailing love, and by the aid of His own majesty extend their victories in all nations. The thirty pounds of gold which my fellow-servant Busa brought, Scribo [1599] has distributed faithfully to priests, persons in need, and others. And, since certain females devoted to a religious life (sanctimoniales foeminæ) have come to this city from divers provinces, having fled hither after captivity, of whom some, so far as there was room for them, have been placed in monasteries, but others, who could not be taken in, lead a life of singular destitution, it has been thought good that what could be spared from the relief of the blind, maimed and feeble should be distributed to them, so that not only needy natives, but also strangers who arrive here, might receive of the compassion of our Lords. Hence it has been brought about that all alike with one accord pray for the life of our lords, that so Almighty God may give you a long and quiet life, and grant to the most happy offspring of your Piety to flourish long in the Roman republic. The pay also of the soldiers has been so distributed by my aforesaid fellow-servant Scribo [1600] , in the presence also of the glorious Castus, magister militum, that all received with thanks the gifts of our lords under due discipline, and abstained from all murmuring such as was formerly wont to prevail among them. __________________________________________________________________
[1599] Or Scribo may be the official designation of the officer commissioned to distribute the imperial bounty. Cf. II. 32, note 7.
[1600] Or Scribo may be the official designation of the officer commissioned to distribute the imperial bounty. Cf. II. 32, note 7. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXXVI.
To Severus, Scholasticus
Gregory to Severus, Scholasticus to the Exarch [1601] .
Those who assist judges and are bound to them by sincere attachment ought to advise them and suggest to them what may both save their souls and not derogate from their reputation. This being so, since we know with what sincere loyalty you love the most excellent Exarch, we have been careful to inform your Greatness of the things that have been done, that, being aware of them, you may move him to assent to them reasonably.
Know then that Agilulph, King of the Lombards, is not unwilling to conclude a general peace, if only the lord Patricius will consent to an arbitration. For he complains that many acts of violence were committed in his regions during the time of peace. And since, if reasonable grounds for arbitration should be found, he desires to have satisfaction made to himself, he also himself promises to make satisfaction in all ways, if it should appear that any wrong was committed on his side during the peace. Since then it is no doubt reasonable to agree to what he asks, there ought to be an arbitration, that, if any wrongs have been done on either side, they may be adjusted; so that it may be possible, with the protection of God, to establish a general peace; for how necessary for us all this is you well know. Act therefore wisely as you have been wont to do, that the most excellent Exarch may consent to this without delay, lest peace should appear to be refused by him, as should not be. For, should he be unwilling to consent, he indeed [Agilulph] again promises to conclude a special peace with us; but we know that divers islands and other places would undoubtedly in that case be ruined. However, let him [the Exarch] consider these things, and hasten to make peace, to the end that at any rate during this cessation of hostilities we may have some degree of quiet, and the forces of the republic may with the help of God be the better repaired for resistance. __________________________________________________________________
[1601] "Scholasticus--Quivis eloquens, disertus, oratoriæ facultatis et politiaris literaturæ studiis eruditus.--Advocatus, patronus, qui causam in foro agit; sed proprie peritus, eloquens, disertus patronus (Cod. Theod)." [D'Arnis' Lexicon Manuale.] Severus may be concluded to have been the Exarch's legal adviser. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXXIX.
To Anastasius, Bishop [1602] .
Gregory to Anastasius, Bishop of Antioch.
Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to men of good will (Luke ii. 14), because that great river which once had left the rocks of Antioch dry has returned at length to its proper channel, and waters the subject valleys that are near, so as also to bring forth fruit, some thirty-fold, some sixty-fold, and some an hundred-fold. For now there is no doubt that many flowers of souls are growing up in its valleys, and that they will come even to ripe fruit through the streams of your tongue. Wherefore with voice of heart and mouth from our inmost soul we render due praise to Almighty God, and rejoice in your Blessedness, not with you only, but with all who are subject to you. I have received the letters of your Holiness, to me most sweet and pleasant, while we ourselves, if I may so speak, are sweating under the same toil with you. And indeed I know how heavy must be to thee the burden of external cares after those heights of rest, wherein with the hand of the heart thou wert touching heavenly secrets. But remember that thou rulest an Apostolic See, and assuagest sorrow the more readily from being made all things to all men. In the Books of Kings, as your accomplished Holiness knows, a certain man is described who used either hand for the right hand (1 Chron. xii. 2). And, with regard to this, I am not doubtful about the lord Anastasius, of old my most sweet and most holy patron, that, while he draws earthly works to heavenly profit, he turns the left hand to the right hand's use; so that his heavenly intentness may accomplish its work, so to speak, with the right hand, and also, when he is led in his care of temporal things towards the interests of justice, the left hand may acquire the strength of the right.
And indeed these things cannot be without heavy labour and trouble. But let us remember the labours of those who went before us; and what we endure will not be hard. For We must through many tribulations enter into the kingdom of God (Acts xiv. 22). And, We were pressed out of measure, yea and above strength, insomuch that we were weary even of life. But we ourselves, too, had the answer of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves (2 Cor. i. 8, 9). And yet The sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the supervening glory which shall be revealed in us (Rom. viii. 18). How then can we that are weak sheep pass without labour through the heat of this world wherein we know that even rams have suffered under heavy toil?
Further, what tribulations I suffer in this land from the swords of the Lombards, from the iniquities of judges, from the press of business, from the care of subjects, and also from bodily affliction, I am unable to express either by pen or tongue. Concerning which things even though I might say something briefly, I hesitate, lest to your most holy Charity, while afflicted by your own tribulations, I should add mine also. But may Almighty God both in the abundance of His loving-kindness fill the mind of your most holy Blessedness with all comfort, and grant at some time, on account of your intercession, to unworthy me to rest from these evils which I suffer. Amen. Grace. These words, as you see, taken from what you had written, I insert in my epistles, that your Blessedness may perceive with regard to Saint Ignatius that he is not only yours, but also ours [1603] . For, as we have his master, the Prince of the apostles in common, so also no one of us ought to have to himself alone the disciple of this same Prince [1604] . Moreover, we have received your blessing [1605] , which is of sweet smell and of a good savour, with the feelings that were due to it. And we give thanks to Almighty God that what you do, what you say, and what you give, is fragrant and savoury. For your life therefore let us say together, let us say all, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will. __________________________________________________________________
[1602] See I. 7, note 5. Anastasius had now been recently restored to his patriarchal see.
[1603] The expression is found in the spurious, but not in what are held to be the genuine, epistles of St. Ignatius.
[1604] For Gregory's view of Antioch having been St. Peter's see previously to his presiding over that of Rome, and of the sees of Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch jointly representing the see of the Prince of the Apostle's, see especially VII. 40. Cf. also VI. 60; VIII. 2; X. 35.
[1605] Benedictio, meaning a present. See IV. 31, note 9. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XL.
To Mauricius Augustus.
Gregory to Mauricius, &c.
The Piety of my Lords in their most serene commands, while set on refuting me on certain matters, in sparing me has by no means spared me. For by the use therein of the term simplicity they politely call me silly. It is true indeed that in Holy Scripture, when simplicity is spoken of in a good sense, it is often carefully associated with prudence and uprightness. Hence it is written of the blessed Job, The man was simple and upright (Job i. 1). And the blessed Apostle Paul admonishes saying Be ye simple in evil and prudent in good (Rom. xvi. 19). And the Truth in person admonishes saying, Be ye prudent as serpents, and simple as doves (Matth. x. 16); thus shewing it to be very unprofitable if either prudence should be wanting to simplicity, or simplicity to prudence. In order, then, to make His servants instructed for all things He desired them to be both simple as doves, and prudent as serpents, that so both the cunning of the serpent might sharpen in them the simplicity of the dove, and the simplicity of the dove temper the cunning of the serpent.
I therefore, who am denounced in the most serene commands of my Lords as simple without the addition of prudence, as having been deceived by the cunning of Ariulph, am plainly and undoubtedly called silly; which I also myself acknowledge to be the case. For, though your Piety were silent, the facts cry out. For, if I had not been silly, I should by no means have come to endure what I suffer in this place among the swords of the Lombards. Moreover, in what I stated about Ariulph, that he was prepared with all his heart to come to terms with the republic, seeing that I am not believed, I am reproved also as having lied. But, although I am not a priest [1606] , I know it to be a grave injury to a priest that, being a servant of the truth, he should be believed to be deceitful. And I have been for some time aware that Nordulph is believed before me, and Leo before me, and that now easy credence is given to those who seem to be in your confidence more than to my assertions.
And indeed if the captivity of my land were not increasing day by day, I would gladly pass over in silence contempt and ridicule of myself. But this does afflict me exceedingly, that from my bearing the charge of falsehood it ensues also that Italy is daily led captive under the yoke of the Lombards. And, while my representations are in no wise believed, the strength of the enemy is increasing hugely. This however I suggest to my most pious lord, that he would think anything that is bad of me, but, with regard to the advantage of the republic and the cause of the rescue of Italy, not easily lend his pious ears to any one, but believe facts rather than words. Moreover, let not our lord, in virtue of his earthly power, too hastily disdain priests, but with excellent consideration, on account of Him whose servants they are, so rule over them as also to pay the reverence that is due to them. For in Holy Writ priests are sometimes called gods, and sometimes angels. For even through Moses it is said of him who is to be put upon his oath, Bring him unto the gods (Exod. xxii. 8); that is unto the priests. And again it is written, Thou shalt not revile the gods (Ib. 28), to wit, the priests. And the prophet says, The priest's lips shall keep knowledge, and they shall seek the law at his mouth; for he is the angel of the Lord of hosts (Malach. ii. 7). Why, then, should it be strange if your Piety were to condescend to honour those to whom even God Himself in His word gives honour, calling them angels or gods?
Ecclesiastical history also testifies that, when accusations in writing against bishops had been offered to the Prince Constantine of pious memory, he received indeed the bills of accusation, but, calling together the bishops who had been accused, he burnt before their eyes the bills which he had received, saying, Ye are gods, constituted by the true God. Go, and settle your causes among you, for it is not fit that we should judge gods. Yet in this sentence, my pious Lord, he conferred more on himself by his humility than on them by the reverence paid to them. For before him there were pagan princes in the republic, who knew not the true God, but worshipped gods of wood and stone; and yet they paid the greatest honour to their priests. What wonder then if a Christian emperor should condescend to honour the priests of the true God, when pagan princes, as we have already said, knew how to bestow honour on priests who served gods of wood and stone? These things, then, I suggest to the piety of my Lords, not in my own behalf, but in behalf of all priests. For I am a man that is a sinner. And, since I offend against Almighty God incessantly every day, I surmise that it will be some amends for this at the tremendous judgment, that I am smitten incessantly every day by blows. And I believe that you appease the same Almighty God all the more as you more severely afflict me who serve Him badly. For I had already received many blows, and when the commands of my Lords came in addition, I found consolations that I was not hoping for. For, if I can, I will briefly enumerate these blows.
First, that the peace which without any cost to the republic I had made with the Lombards who were in Tuscany was withdrawn from me. Then, the peace having been broken, the soldiers were removed from the Roman city. And some indeed were slain by the enemy, but others were placed at Narnii and Perusium (Perugia); and Rome was left, that Perusium might be held. After this a still heavier blow was the arrival of Agilulph, so that I saw with my own eyes Romans tied by the neck with ropes like dogs, to be taken to France for sale. And, because we who were within the city under the protection of God escaped his hands, a ground was thence sought for making us appear culpable; to wit, because corn ran short, which cannot by any means be kept in large quantities for long in this city; as I have shewn more fully in another representation. On my own account indeed I was in no wise disturbed, since I declare, my conscience bearing me witness, that I was prepared to suffer any adversity whatever, so long as I came out of all these things with the safety of my soul. But for the glorious men, Gregory the præfect, and Castorius the military commander (magistro militum), I have been distressed in no small degree, seeing that they in no way neglected to do all that could be done, and endured most severe toil in watching and guarding the city during the siege, and, after all this, were smitten by the heavy indignation of my Lords. As to them, I clearly understand that it is not their conduct, but my person, that goes against them. For, having with me alike laboured in trouble, they are alike troubled after labour.
Now as to the Piety of my Lords holding out over me the formidable and terrible judgment of Almighty God, I beseech you by the same Almighty God to do this no more. For as yet we know not how any of us will stand there. And Paul, the excellent preacher, says, Judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts (1 Cor. iv. 5). Yet this I briefly say, that, unworthy sinner as I am, I rely more on the mercy of Jesus when He comes than on the justice of your Piety. And there are many things that men are ignorant of with regard to this judgment; for perhaps He will blame what you praise, and praise what you blame. Wherefore among all these uncertainties I return to tears only, praying that the same Almighty God may both direct our most pious Lord with His hand and in that terrible judgment find him free from all defaults. And may He make me so to please men, if need be, as not to offend against His eternal grace [1607] . __________________________________________________________________
[1606] This may be an ironical allusion to something the Emperor had said in his letter to Gregory.
[1607] For the circumstances referred to in this epistle, see Proleg., p. xix. It shews how outspoken Gregory could be, when greatly moved, in addressing the Emperor, notwithstanding his accustomed deference. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XLI.
To Constantina Augusta.
Gregory to Constantina, &c.
Knowing how my most serene Lady thinks about the heavenly country and the life of her soul, I consider that I should be greatly in fault were I to keep silence on matters that ought to be represented to her for the fear of God.
Having ascertained that there are many of the natives in the island of Sardinia who still, after the evil custom of their race, practise sacrifices to idols, and that the priests of the same island are sluggish in preaching our Redeemer, I sent thither one of the bishops of Italy, who with the co-operation of the Lord has brought many of the natives to the faith. But he has reported to me a sacrilegious proceeding, namely, that those in the island who sacrifice to idols pay a bribe to the judge for license to do this. And, when some of them had been baptized and had ceased sacrificing to idols, the same payment had been exacted by this same judge of the island, even after their baptism, which they had been previously accustomed to make for leave to sacrifice to idols. And, when the aforesaid bishop found fault with him, he replied that he had promised so large a suffragium [1608] that he could not make it up except by aid from cases of this kind. But the island of Corsica is oppressed by such an excessive number of exactors and such a burden of exactions, that those who are in it are hardly able to make up what is exacted except by selling their children. Hence it ensues that the proprietors of this island, deserting the pious republic, are forced to take refuge with that most wicked nation of the Lombards. For what can they suffer from barbarians harder or more cruel than being so straitened and squeezed as to be compelled to sell their children? Moreover, in the island of Sicily one Stephen, chartularius of the maritime parts, is said to practise such illegalities and such oppressions, invading places that belong to various persons, and without any legal process putting up titles [1609] on properties and houses, that, if I wished to tell every one of his doings that have come to my ears, I could not accomplish the task in a large volume.
Let my most serene Lady look to all these things wisely, and assuage the groans of the oppressed. For I suspect that these things have not come to your most pious ears. For if they could have reached them, they would by no means have continued until now. But they should be represented now at a suitable time to our most pious lord, that he may remove such and so great a burden of sin from his own soul, from the empire, and from his sons. I know he will say that whatever is collected from the aforesaid islands is transmitted to us for the expenses of Italy. But in reply to this I suggest that, even though less expenditure were bestowed on Italy, he should still rid his empire of the tears of the oppressed. For perhaps, too, such great expenditure in this land profits less than it might do because the money for it is collected with some admixture of sin. Let therefore our most serene Lords give orders that nothing be collected with sin. And I know that, though less is given for the advantage of the republic, the republic is thereby much aided. And though perhaps it may be less aided by a less expenditure, yet it is better that we should not live temporally, than that you should find any hindrance in the way of eternal life. For consider what must be the feelings, what the state of heart of parents, when they part with their children lest they should be tormented. But how one ought to feel for the children of others is well known to those who have children of their own. Let it then suffice for me to have briefly represented these things, lest, if your Piety were not to know what is being done in these parts, I should suffer for the guilt of my silence before the strict judge. __________________________________________________________________
[1608] i.e. the payment to the imperial government required from judges or other functionaries in consideration of their appointment. "Suffragium. Pecuniæ quæ suffragii titulo ab Imperatoribus accipiebantur cum honores deferebant, quæ despotika; vocantur in formula jurisjurandi.--Novellæ Justiniani 8, cujus titulus est, ut judices sine suffragio fiant." Du Cange.
[1609] Titulos, i.e. notices put upon properties, asserting claim, or announcing sale, &c. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XLII.
To Sebastian, Bishop.
Gregory to Sebastian, Bishop of Sirmium.
I have received the most sweet and pleasant letter of thy Fraternity, which, though you are never absent from my heart, has nevertheless made your Holiness as it were present with me bodily. But I beseech Almighty God to protect you with His right hand, and to grant you a tranquil life here, and, when it shall please Him, eternal rewards. But I beg you, if you love me with that love wherewith you always loved me when we were together, to pray for me more earnestly, that so Almighty God may loose me from the bands of my sins, and make me to stand free in His sight, released from the burden of this corruption. For, however inestimable be the sweetness of the heavenly country for drawing one towards it, yet there are many sorrows in this life to impel us daily to the love of heavenly things. And these only please me exceedingly from the very fact that they do not allow anything to please me in this world.
For we can by no means describe, most holy brother, what we suffer in this land at the hands of your friend, the lord Romanus [1610] . Yet I may briefly say that his malice towards us has surpassed the swords of the Lombards; so that the enemies who kill us seem kinder than the judges of the republic, who by their malice, rapines, and deceits wear us out with anxiety. And to bear at the same time the charge of bishops and clergy, and also of monasteries and people, and to watch anxiously against the plots of the enemy, and to be ever suspicious of the deceitfulness and malice of the dukes; what labours and what sorrows all this involves, your Fraternity may the more truly estimate as you more purely love me who suffer these things
Furthermore, while addressing you with the greeting that I owe you, I inform you that it has come to my knowledge from the report of Boniface the defensor, that our brother the most holy lord Anastasius the patriarch [1611] has wished to commit to you the government of the Church in one of his cities, and that you have refused your assent. This your feeling and your wisdom I most gladly approve of, and strongly commend; and I account you happy, and myself unhappy in having consented at such a time as this to undertake the government of the Church. If, however, by any chance, in condescension to your brethren, and as being intent on works of mercy, you should ever decide to consent to such a proposal, I beg you by no means to prefer any one else's love to mine. For there are in the island of Sicily Churches without bishops, and, if by the guidance of God you are pleased to take the government of a Church, you will be able to do this better near the threshold of the blessed apostle Peter, with his aid. But if you are not so pleased, remain happily as you are, that this resolution may continue in you; and pray for us unhappy ones. Now may Almighty God keep you under His protection, in whatever place it be His will that you should be, and bring you to heavenly rewards. __________________________________________________________________
[1610] Romanus Patricius, the Exarch.
[1611] Viz. of Antioch. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XLIII.
To Eulogius and Anastasius, Bishops.
Gregory to Eulogius, Bishop of Alexandria, and Anastasius, Bishop of Antioch.
When the excellent preacher says, As long as I am the apostle of the Gentiles I will honour my ministry (Rom. xi. 13); saying again in another place, We became as babes among you (1 Thess. ii. 7), he undoubtedly shews an example to us who come after him, that we should retain humility in our minds, and yet keep in honour the dignity of our order, so that neither should our humility be timid nor our elevation proud. Now eight years ago, in the time of my predecessor of holy memory Pelagius, our brother and fellow-bishop John in the city of Constantinople, seeking occasion from another cause, held a synod in which he attempted to call himself Universal Bishop. Which as soon as my said predecessor knew, he despatched letters annulling by the authority of the holy apostle Peter the acts of the said synod; of which letters I have taken care to send copies to your Holiness. Moreover he forbade the deacon who attended us the most pious Lords for the business of the Church to celebrate the solemnities of mass with our aforesaid fellow-priest. I also, being of the same mind with him, have sent similar letters to our aforesaid fellow-priest, copies of which I have thought it right to send to your Blessedness, with this especial purpose, that we may first assail with moderate force the mind of our before-named brother concerning this matter, wherein by a new act of pride, all the bowels of the Universal Church are disturbed. But, if he should altogether refuse to be bent from the stiffness of his elation, then, with the succour of Almighty God, we may consider more particularly what ought to be done.
For, as your venerable Holiness knows, this name of Universality was offered by the holy synod of Chalcedon to the pontiff of the Apostolic See which by the providence of God I serve [1612] . But no one of my predecessors has ever consented to use this so profane a title; since, forsooth, if one Patriarch is called Universal, the name of Patriarch in the case of the rest is derogated. But far be this, far be it from the mind of a Christian, that any one should wish to seize for himself that whereby he might seem in the least degree to lessen the honour of his brethren. While, then, we are unwilling to receive this honour when offered to us, think how disgraceful it is for any one to have wished to usurp it to himself perforce.
Wherefore let not your Holiness in your epistles ever call any one Universal, lest you detract from the honour due to yourself in offering to another what is not due. Nor let any sinister suspicion make your mind uneasy with regard to our most serene lords, inasmuch as he fears Almighty God, and will in no way consent to do anything against the evangelical ordinances, against the most sacred canons. As for me, though separated from you by long spaces of land and sea, I am nevertheless entirely conjoined with you in heart. And I trust that it is so in all respects with your Blessedness towards me; since, when you love me in return, you are not far from me. Hence we give thanks the more to that grain of mustard seed (Matth. xiii. 31, 32), for that from what appeared a small and despicable seed it has been so spread abroad everywhere by branches rising and extending themselves from the same root that all the birds of heaven may make their nests in them. And thanks be to that leaven which, in three measures of meal, has leavened in unity the mass of the whole human race (Matth. xiii. 33); and to the little stone, which, cut out of the mountain without hands, has occupied the whole face of the earth (Dan. ii. 35), and which to this end everywhere distends itself, that from the human race reduced to unity the body of the whole Church might be perfected, and so this distinction between the several members might serve for the benefit of the compacted whole.
Hence also we are not far from you, since in Him who is everywhere we are one. Let us then give thanks to Him who, having abolished enmities, has caused that in His flesh there should be in the whole world one flock, and one sheepfold under Himself the one shepherd; and let us be ever mindful how the preacher of truth admonishes us, saying, Be careful to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace (Ephes. iv. 3), and, Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see God (Hebr. xii. 14). And he says also to other disciples, If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, having peace with all men (Rom. xii. 18). For he sees that the good cannot have peace with the bad; and therefore, as ye know, he premised, If it be possible.
But, because peace cannot be established except on two sides, when the bad fly from it, the good ought to keep it in their inmost hearts. Whence also it is admirably said, As much as lieth in you; meaning that it should remain in us even when it is repelled from the hearts of evil men. And such peace we truly keep, when we treat the faults of the proud at once with charity and with persistent justice, when we love them and hate their vices. For man is the work of God; but vice is the work of man. Let us then distinguish between what God and what man has made, and neither hate the man on account of his error nor love the error on account of the man.
Let us then with united mind attack the evil of pride in the man, that from his enemy, that is to say his error, the man himself may first be freed. Our Almighty Redeemer will supply strength to charity and justice; He will supply to us, though placed far from each other, the unity of His Spirit; even He by whose workmanship the Church, having been constructed as it were after the manner of the ark with the four sides of the world, and bound together with the compacture of incorruptible planks and the pitch of charity, is disturbed by no opposing winds, by the swelling of no billow coming from without.
But inasmuch as, with His grace steering us, we ought to seek that no wave coming upon us from without may throw us into confusion, so ought we to pray with all our hearts, dearest brethren, that the right hand of His providence may draw out the accumulation of internal bilgewater within us. For indeed our adversary the devil, who, in his rage against the humble, as a roaring lion walketh about seeking whom he may devour (1 Pet. v. 8), no longer, as we perceive, walks about the folds but so resolutely fixes his teeth in certain necessary members of the Church that, unless with the favour of the Lord, the heedful crowd of shepherds unanimously run to the rescue, no one can doubt that he will soon tear all the sheepfold; which God forbid. Consider, dearest brethren, who it is that follows close at hand, of whose approach such perverse beginnings are breaking out even in priests. For it is because he is near of whom it is written, He is king over all the sons of pride (Job xli. 25)--not without sore grief I am compelled to say it--that our brother and fellow-bishop John, despising the Lord's commands, apostolical precepts, and rules of Fathers, attempts through elation to be his forerunner in name.
But may Almighty God make known to your Blessedness with what sore groaning I am tormented by this consideration; that he, the once to me most modest man, he who was beloved of all, he who seemed to be occupied in alms, deeds, prayers, and fastings, out of the ashes he sat in, out of the humility he preached, has grown so boastful as to attempt to claim all to himself, and through the elation of a pompous expression to aim at subjugating to himself all the members of Christ, which cohere to one Head only, that is to Christ. Nor is it surprising that the same tempter who knows pride to be the beginning of all sin, who used it formerly before all else in the case of the first man, should now also put it before some men at the end of virtues, so as to lay it as a snare for those who to some extent seemed to be escaping his most cruel hands by the good aims of their life, at the very goal of good work, and as it were in the very conclusion of perfection.
Wherefore we ought to pray earnestly, and implore Almighty God with continual supplications, that He would avert this error from that man's soul, and remove this mischief of pride and confusion from the unity and humility of the Church. And with the favour of the Lord we ought to concur, and make provision with all our powers, lest in the poison of one expression the living members in the body of Christ should die. For, if this expression is suffered to be allowably used, the honour of all patriarchs is denied: and while he that is called Universal perishes per chance in his error, no bishop will be found to have remained in a state of truth.
It is for you then, firmly and without prejudice, to keep the Churches as you have received them, and not to let this attempt at a diabolical usurpation have any countenance from you. Stand firm; stand secure; presume not ever to issue or to receive writings with the falsity of the name Universal in them. Bid all the bishops subject to your care abstain from the defilement of this elation, that the Universal Church may acknowledge you as Patriarchs not only in good works but also in the authority of truth. But, if perchance adversity is the consequence, we ought to persist unanimously, and show even by dying that in case of harm to the generality we do not love anything of our own especially. Let us say with Paul, To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain (Philip. i. 21). Let us hear what the first of all pastors says; If ye suffer anything for righteousness' sake, happy are ye (1 Pet. iii. 14). For believe me that the dignity which we have received for the preaching of the truth we shall more safely relinquish than retain in behalf of the same truth, should case of necessity require it. Finally, pray for me, as becomes your most dear Blessedness, that I may shew forth in works what I am thus bold to say to you. __________________________________________________________________
[1612] Cf. V. 18, and note. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XLVIII.
To Andrew, Scholasticus [1613] .
Gregory to Andrew, &c.
We have been desirous of carrying out the wish of the most excellent the lord Patrician as to the person of Donatus, the archdeacon; but, seeing that it is very dangerous to the soul to lay hands on any one rashly, we took care to examine by a thorough investigation into his life and deeds. And, since many things have been discovered, as we have written to the said lord Patrician, which remove him far from the episcopate, we, fearing the judgment of God, have not thought fit to consent to his ordination. But neither have we presumed to ordain John, the presbyter, who is ignorant of the psalms, since this circumstance certainly shewed him to be too little in earnest about himself. These, then, being excluded, when we had urged the parties to choose some one from among their own people [1614] , and they declared that they had no one fit for this office, and when we together with them were the more distressed, they at length, with one common voice and consent, repeatedly solicited our venerable brother the presbyter Marinianus, who they learnt had been associated with me for a long time in a monastery. He, shrinking from the office, was at last, by various means, with difficulty persuaded to give assent to their petition. And, since we were well acquainted with his life, and knew him to be solicitous in winning souls, we did not delay his ordination. Let, therefore, your Glory receive him as is becoming, and extend to his newness the aid of your succour. For to all, as you know, newness in any office whatever is very trying. But I have great confidence that Almighty God, who has vouchsafed to put him over His flock, will both stimulate him to give heed to what is inward, and comfort him with the loving-kindness of His grace for administering what is outward. But, inasmuch as, after his long enjoyment of quiet, his newness, as we have before said, will without doubt expose him to perturbation, I beg that, when he shall come to you flying from the whirlwinds of secular storms, he may always find in your heart a haven of rest, and be cheered by the boon of your charity. But you will soon learn how much you will find yourselves able to agree; for he comes unwillingly to the episcopate [1615] . __________________________________________________________________
[1613] On the term "Scholasticus," see V. 36, note 9. It appears from this and other epistles that persons thus designated were addressed as "Gloria vestra." The "Patrician" mentioned in this letter as having recommended the Archdeacon Donatus to succeed John as Archbishop of Ravenna, was Romanus Patricius, Exarch of Italy, who died a.d. 598. He is often addressed or referred to in the Epistles. See Index.
[1614] See above V. 23.
[1615] For subsequent notices of Marinianus, see Index. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XLIX.
To Leander, Bishop.
Gregory to Leander, Bishop of Hispalis (Seville).
With what ardour I am athirst to see thee thou readest in the tables of thine own heart, since thou lovest me exceedingly. But since I cannot see thee, separated as thou art from me by long tracts of country, I have done what charity towards thee dictated, namely to transmit to thy Holiness, on the arrival here of our common son Probinus the presbyter, the book of Pastoral Rule, which I wrote at the commencement of my episcopate, and the books which thou knewest I had already composed on the exposition of the blessed Job. Some sheets indeed of the third and fourth parts of that work I have not sent to thy Charity, having already given those sheets only of the said parts to monasteries. These, then, which I send let thy Holiness earnestly peruse, and more earnestly deplore my sins, lest it be to my more serious blame that I am seen as it were to know what I omit to do. But with how great tumults of business I am oppressed in this Church the very brevity of my epistle will signify to thy Charity, seeing that I say so little to him whom more than all I love. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle LII.
To John, Archbishop.
Gregory to John, Archbishop of the Corinthians.
The equity and solicitude of Secundinus our brother and fellow-bishop, which had been well known to us of old, is shewn also by the tenor of your letters. In this matter he has greatly pleased us, and made us glad, in that in the cause of Anastasius [1616] , once bishop, which we charged him to enquire into, he has both exercised his vigilance diligently and judged the crimes that were discovered as justice required, and as was right. But in all these things we return thanks to Almighty God for that, when certain accusers held back, He brought the truth to his knowledge, lest the originator of such great crimes should escape detection. But seeing that, in the sentence wherein it is evident that the above-named Anastasius has been justly condemned and deposed, our above-named brother and fellow-bishop has visited the offence of certain persons in such a manner as to reserve them for our judgment, we therefore have seen fit to signify by this present epistle what is to be held to and observed concerning them.
As to Paul the deacon then, the bearer of these presents, although his fault is exceedingly to his shame and discredit--namely, that deluded by promises, he held back from accusation of his late bishop who has been lately deposed, and that, in the eagerness of cupidity, he consented, against his own soul, to keep silence rather than declare the truth--yet, since it befits us to be more kind than strict, we pardon him this fault, and decide that he is to be received again into his rank and position. For we believe that the affliction which he has endured since the time of the sentence being pronounced may suffice for the punishment of this fault. But as to Euphemius and Thomas, who received sacred orders for relinquishing their accusation, it is our will that they be deprived of these sacred orders, and, having been deposed from them, so continue; and we decree that they shall never, under any pretext or excuse, be restored to sacred orders. For it is in the highest degree improper, and contrary to the rule of ecclesiastical discipline, that they should enjoy the dignity which they have received, not for their merits, but as the reward of wickedness. Yet, inasmuch as it is fit for us to incline to mercy more than to strict justice, it is our will that the same Euphemius and Thomas be restored to the rank and position, but to that only, from which they had been promoted to sacred orders, and receive during all the days of their life the stipends of these positions, as they had been before accustomed. Further, as to Clematius the reader, I appoint, from a like motive of benignity, that he is to be restored to his rank and position. To all these also, that is, to Paul the deacon, to Euphemius, Thomas, and Clematius, let your Fraternity take care to supply their emoluments, according to the rank and position in which each of them is, as each has been accustomed to receive them, from this present thirteenth indiction without any diminution. Inasmuch, therefore, as the above-named Paul the deacon asserts that he expended much for the advantage of your Church, and desires to be aided by the succour of your Fraternity for recovery of the same, we exhort that, if this is so, you should concur with him in all possible ways, and support him with your aid, for recovering what he has given, since no reason allows that he should unjustly suffer loss in what he has expended for the advantage of the generality. Furthermore, let your Fraternity restore without delay the three pounds of gold which, at the instance of our above-named brother and fellow-bishop Secundinus, it appears that the said Paul the deacon gave for the benefit of your Church, lest (which God forbid) you should seem to burden him, not reasonably, but out of mere caprice. __________________________________________________________________
[1616] Anastasius, bishop of the Metropolitan See of Corinth, had been deposed for some serious crime, the nature of which is not mentioned, Secundinus, bishop of some other see, having apparently been commissioned by Gregory to investigate the charges against him. John, to whom this letter is addressed had now succeeded him. See also Epp.
Lvii., Lviii.
LVII., LVIII. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle LIII.
To Virgilius, Bishop.
Gregory to Virgilius, Bishop of Arelate (Arles).
O how good is charity, which through an image in the mind exhibits what is absent as present to ourselves, through love unites what is divided, settles what is confused, associates things that are unequal, completes things that are imperfect! Rightly does the excellent preacher call it the bond of perfectness; since, though the other virtues indeed produce perfectness, yet still charity binds them together so that they can no longer be loosened from the heart of one who loves. Of this virtue, then, most dear brother, I find thee to be full, as both those who came from the Gallican parts and the words also of thy letter addressed to me testify to me of thee.
Now as to thy having asked therein, according to ancient custom, for the use of the pallium and the vicariate of the Apostolic See, far be it from me to suspect that thou hast sought eminence of transitory power, or the adornment of external worship, in our vicariate and in the pallium. But, since it is well known to all whence the holy faith proceeded in the regions of Gaul, when your Fraternity asks for a repetition of the old custom of the Apostolic See, what is it but that a good offspring reverts to the bosom of its mother? [1617] With willing mind therefore we grant what has been asked for, lest we should seem either to withdraw from you anything of the honour due to you, or to have despised the petition of our most excellent son king Childebert. But the present state of things requires the greater earnestness, that with increase of dignity solicitude also may advance, and watchfulness in the custody of others may grow, and the merits of your life may serve as an example to your subjects, and that your Fraternity may never seek your own through the dignity accorded you, but the gains of the heavenly country. For you know what the blessed apostle says, groaning, For all seek their own, not the things which are Jesus Christ's (Philip. ii. 21).
For I have learnt from information given me by certain persons that in the parts of Gaul and Germany no one attains to holy orders except for a consideration given. If this is so, I say it with tears, I declare it with groans, that, when the priestly order has fallen inwardly, neither will it be able to stand outwardly for long. For we know from the Gospel what our Redeemer in person did; how He went into the temple, and overthrew the seats of them that sold doves (Matth. xxi. 12). For to sell doves is to receive a temporal consideration for the Holy Spirit, whom, being consubstantial with Himself, God Almighty gives to men through the imposition of hands. From which evil what follows is already intimated. For of those who presumed to sell doves in the temple of God the seats fell by God's judgment.
And in truth this transgression is propagated with increase among subordinates. For he who is promoted to any sacred order for a price, being already corrupted in the very root of his advancement, is the more ready to sell to others what he has bought. And where is that which is written, Freely ye have received, freely give (Matth. x. 8)?
And, seeing that the simoniacal heresy was the first to arise against the holy Church, why is it not considered, why is it not seen, that whoso ordains any one for money, causes him in advancing him, to become a heretic?
Another very detestable thing has also been reported to us; that some persons, being laymen, through desire of temporal glory, are tonsured on the death of bishops, and all at once are made priests. In such cases it is already known what manner of man he is who attains to priesthood, passing suddenly from a lay estate to sacred leadership. And one who has never served as a soldier fears not to become a leader of the religious [1618] . How is that man to preach who has perhaps never heard any one else preach? Or how shall he correct the ills of others who has never yet bewailed his own? And, where Paul the apostle prohibits a neophyte from coming to sacred orders, we are to understand that, as one was then called a neophyte who had been newly planted in the faith, so we now reckon among neophytes one who is still new in holy conversation.
Moreover, we know that walls after being built, are not made to carry a weight of timber till they are dried of the moisture of their newness, lest, if a weight be put on them before they are settled, it bear down the whole fabric together to the ground. And, when we cut trees for a building, we wait for the moisture of their greenness to be first dried out, lest, if the weight of the fabric is imposed on them while still fresh, they be bent from their very newness, and be the sooner broken and fall down from having been elevated prematurely. Why, then, is not this scrupulously seen to among men, which is so carefully considered even in the case of timber and stones?
On this account your Fraternity must needs take care to admonish our most excellent son king Childebert that he remove entirely the stain of this sin from his kingdom, to the end that Almighty God may give him the greater recompense with Himself as He sees him both love what He loves and shun what He hates.
And so we commit to your Fraternity, according to ancient custom, under God, our vicariate in the Churches which are under the dominion of our most excellent son Childebert [1619] , with the understanding that their proper dignity, according to primitive usage, be preserved to the several metropolitans. We have also sent a pallium for thy Fraternity to use within the Church for the solemnization of mass only. Further, if any one of the bishops should by any chance wish to travel to any considerable distance, let it not be lawful for him to remove to other places without the authority of thy Holiness. If any question of faith, or it may be relating to other matters, should have arisen among the bishops, which cannot easily be settled, let it be ventilated and decided in an assembly of twelve bishops. But, if it cannot be decided after the truth has been investigated, let it be referred to our judgment.
Now may Almighty God keep you under His protection, and grant unto you to preserve by your behaviour the dignity that you have received. Given the 12th day of August, Indiction 13. __________________________________________________________________
[1617] Gregory here asserts the view of his day, which after his manner he takes for granted that Gaul had derived its Christianity from Rome. Similarly, long before him, pope Zosimus (417-418), writing to the bishops of Gaul in support of the jurisdiction over them of Patroclus of Arles, speaks of such jurisdiction being of ancient right, derived from Trophimus having been sent from Rome as first bishop of Arles, and all Gaul having received the stream of faith from that fountain. Gregory of Tours (Hist. Franc. i. 28), referring to Passio S. Saturnini Episc. Solos., speaks of seven missionary bishops having been sent from Rome to Gaul "Decio et Grato consulibus," i.e. a.d. 250, including Trophimus, who is said to have founded the see of Arles. But the see of Arles must have existed before the date assigned, since it appears from Cyprian (Ep. VI. 7), that in 254 Marcian had long been its bishop. And generally, the well-known differences of the Gallican liturgy and usages from the Roman, to which pope Gregory himself alludes in his letter to Augustine (XI. 64), as well as Irenæus of Lyons, in the second century, being said to have been a disciple of Polycarp points to an Asiatic rather than Roman origin of the Church in Gaul.
[1618] Religiosorum. The appellation is applied to persons generally who gave themselves to a religious life, including monks, nuns, dedicated virgins, and the like. It must be here taken to include the clergy.
[1619] Childebert II., the son of Sigebert I. and Brunechild, was at this time the ruler of nearly all the dominions of the Franks in Gaul. Having been proclaimed by the Austrasian nobles king of Austrasia on the death of his father, a.d. 575, he acquired also Burgundy on the death of his uncle Guntramn in 593. These kingdoms at this time comprised by far the greatest part of Gaul, the kingdom of what was called Neustria under Clotaire II. including only a small territory on the north-west coast. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle LIV.
To all the Bishops of the Kingdom of Childebert.
Gregory to all the Bishops of Gaul who are under the kingdom of Childebert [1620] .
To this end has the provision of the divine dispensation appointed that there should be diverse degrees and distinct orders, that, while the inferiors shew reverence to the more powerful and the more powerful bestow love on the inferiors, one contexture of concord may ensue of diversity, and the administration of all several offices may be properly borne. Nor indeed could the whole otherwise subsist; unless, that is, a great order of differences of this kind kept it together. Further, that creation cannot be governed, or live, in a state of absolute equality we are taught by the example of the heavenly hosts, since, there being angels and also archangels, it is manifest that they are not equal; but in power and rank, as you know, one differs from another. If then among these who are without sin there is evidently this distinction, who of men can refuse to submit himself willingly to this order of things which he knows that even angels obey? For hence peace and charity embrace each other mutually, and the sincerity of concord remains firm in the reciprocal love which is well pleasing to God.
Since, then, each single duty is then salubriously fulfilled when there is one president who may be referred to, we have therefore perceived it to be opportune, in the Churches that are under the dominion of our most excellent son king Childebert, to give our vicariate jurisdiction, according to ancient custom, to our brother Virgilius, bishop of the city of Arelate, to the end that the integrity of the catholic faith, that is of the four holy synods, may be preserved under the protection of God with attentive devotion, and that, if any contention should by chance arise among our brethren and fellow-priests, he may allay it by the rigour of his authority with discreet moderation, as representing the Apostolic See. We have also charged him that, if such a dispute should arise in any cases as to require the presence of others, he should assemble our brethren and fellow-bishops in competent number, and discuss the matter salubriously with due regard to equity, and decide it with canonical integrity. But if a contention (which may the Divine power avert) should happen to arise on matters of faith, or any business come up about which there may perchance be serious doubt, and he should be in need of the judgment of the Apostolic See in place of his own greatness, we have directed him that, having diligently enquired into the truth, he should take care to bring the question under our cognizance by a report from himself, to the end that it may be terminated by a suitable sentence so as to remove all doubt.
And, since it is necessary that the bishops should assemble at suitable times for conference before him to whom we have granted our vicariate jurisdiction as often as he may think it, we exhort that none of you presume to be disobedient to his orders, or defer attending the general conclave, unless perchance bodily infirmity should prevent any one, or a just excuse in any case should allow his absence. Yet let such as are unavoidably prevented from attending the synod send a presbyter or a deacon in their stead, to the end that the things that, with the help of God, may be decided by our vicar, may come to the knowledge of him who is absent by a faithful report through the person whom he had sent, and be observed with unshaken steadfastness, and that there be no occasion of excuse for daring to violate them.
About this also we take the precaution of warning you, that none of you may attempt in any way to depart to places at any great distance without the authority of our aforesaid brother and fellow-bishop Virgilius, knowing that the orders of our predecessors, who granted vicariate jurisdiction to his predecessors, undoubtedly lay this down.
Furthermore, we exhort that each one of you give careful attention to his own office, so that he who desires to receive the reward promised for feeding the sheep may guard the flock committed to him with carefulness and prayer, lest the prowling wolf should invade and tear the sheep entrusted to him, and there should be in the retribution punishment instead of reward. We hope, therefore, most dear brethren, and we entreat Almighty God with all our prayers, that He would make you to be fervent more and more in the constancy of His love, and grant you especially to be retained in the peace of the Church, and in agreement together.
It has been reported to us that some are promoted to sacred orders through simoniacal heresy; and we have ordered our above-written brother and fellow-bishop Virgilius that this must be altogether prohibited; and, that your Fraternity may know and studiously observe this, our letter to him is to be read in your presence. Given the 12th day of August, Indiction 13. __________________________________________________________________
[1620] See preceding Epistle, note 9. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle LV.
To King Childebert.
Gregory to Childebert, king of the Franks [1621] .
The letter of your Excellency has made us exceedingly glad, testifying as it does that you are careful, with pious affection, of the honour and reverence due to priests. For you thus shew to all that you are faithful worshippers of God, while you love His priests with the acceptable veneration that is due to them, and hasten with Christian devotion to do whatever may advance their position. Whence also we have received with pleasure what you have written, and grant what you desire with willing mind; and accordingly we have committed, with the favour of God, our vicariate jurisdiction to our brother Virgilius, bishop of the city of Arelate, according to ancient custom and your Excellency's desire; and have also granted him the use of the pallium, as has been the custom of old.
But, inasmuch as some things have been reported to us which greatly offend Almighty God, and confound the honour and reverence due to the priesthood, we beg that they may be in every way amended with the support of the censure of your power, lest, while headstrong and perverse doings run counter to your devotion, your kingdom, or your soul (which God forbid) be burdened by the guilt of others.
Further, it has come to our knowledge that on the death of bishops some persons from being laymen are tonsured, and mount to the episcopate by a sudden leap. And thus one who has not been a disciple is in his inconsiderate ambition made a master. And, since he has not learned what to teach, he bears the office of priesthood only in name; for he continues to be a layman in speech and action as before. How, then, is he to intercede for the sins of others, not having in the first place bewailed his own? For such a shepherd does not defend, but deceives, the flock; since, while he cannot for very shame try to persuade others to do what he does not do himself, what else is it but that the Lord's people remains a prey to robbers, and catches destruction from the source whence it ought to have had a great support of wholesome protection? How bad and how perverse a proceeding this is let your Excellency's Highness consider even from your own administration of things. For it is certain that you do not put a leader over an army unless his work and his fidelity have first been apparent; unless the virtue and industry of his previous life have shewn him to be a fit person. But, if the command of an army is not committed to any but men of this kind, it is easily gathered from this comparison of what sort a leader of souls ought to be. But it is a reproach to us, and we are ashamed to say it, that priests snatch at leadership who have not seen the very beginning of religious warfare.
But this also, a thing most execrable, has been reported to us as well: that sacred orders are conferred through simoniacal heresy, that is for bribes received. And, seeing that it is exceedingly pestiferous, and contrary to the Universal Church, that one be promoted to any sacred order not for merit but for a price, we exhort your Excellency to order so detestable a wickedness to be banished from your kingdom. For that man shows himself to be thoroughly unworthy of this office, who fears not to buy the gift of God with money, and presumes to try to get by payment what he deserves not to have through grace.
These things, then, most excellent son, I admonish you about for this reason, that I desire your soul to be saved. And I should have written about them before now, had not innumerable occupations stood in the way of my will. But now that a suitable time for answering your letter has offered itself, I have not omitted what it was my duty to do. Wherefore, greeting your Excellency with the affection of paternal charity, we beg that all things which we have enjoined on our above-named brother and fellow-bishop to be done and observed, may be carried out under the protection of your favour, and that you allow them not to be in any way upset by the elation or pride of any one. But, as they were observed by his predecessor under the reign of your glorious father, so let them be observed now also, by your aid, with zealous devotion. It is right, then, that we should thus have a return made to us; and that, as we have not deferred fulfilling your will, so you too, for the sake of God and the blessed Peter, Prince of the apostles, should cause our ordinances to be observed in all respects; that so your Excellency's reputation, praiseworthy and well-pleasing to God, may extend itself all around. Given the 12th day of August, Indiction 13. __________________________________________________________________
[1621] See Ep. LIII., note 9. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle LVI.
To Marinianus, Bishop.
Gregory to Marinianus, Bishop of Ravenna.
Moved by the benevolence of the Apostolical See and the order of ancient custom, we have thought fit to grant the use of the pallium to thy Fraternity, who art known to have undertaken the office of government in the Church of Ravenna [1622] . And remember thou to use it in no other way but in the proper Church of thy city, when the sons (i.e. laity) have been already dismissed, as thou art proceeding from the audience chamber [1623] to celebrate the sacred solemnities of mass; but, when mass is finished, thou wilt take care to lay it by again in the audience chamber. But outside the Church, we do not allow thee to use it any more, except four times in the year, in the litanies which we named to thy predecessor John; giving thee at the same time this admonition; that, as through the Lord's bounty thou hast obtained from us the use of an adornment of this kind to the honour of the priestly office, so thou strive to adorn also the office undertaken by thee to the glory of Christ with probity of manners and of deeds. For thus wilt thou be conspicuous for two adornments answering to each other, if with such a vesture of the body as this the good qualities also of thy soul agree. For all privileges also which appear evidently to have been formerly granted to thy Church we confirm by our authority, and decree that they continue inviolate. __________________________________________________________________
[1622] With regard to the use of the pallium claimed by, and allowed to, John, the preceding bishop of Ravenna, see III. 56, 57; V. 11, 15. For further contentions with Marinianus on the subject, see VI. 34, 61.
[1623] Salutatario: called in previous letters to Archbishop John, secretarium. See III. 56, note 2. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle LVII.
To John, Bishop.
Gregory to John, Bishop of the Corinthians
Now that our God, from whom nothing is hidden, having cast out an atrocious plague of pollution from the government of His Church [1624] , has been pleased to advance you to the rule thereof, there is need of anxious precaution on your part that the Lord's flock, after the wounds and various evils inflicted by its former shepherd, may find consolation and wholesome medicine in your Fraternity. Thus, then, let the hand of your action wipe away the stain of the previous contagion, so as to suffer no traces even to remain of that execrable wickedness.
Let, therefore, your solicitude towards your subjects be worthy of praise. Let discipline be exhibited with gentleness. Let rebuke be with discernment. Let kindness mitigate wrath; let zeal sharpen kindness: and let one be so seasoned with the other that neither immoderate punishment afflict more than it ought, nor again laxity impair the rectitude of discipline. Let the conduct of your Fraternity be a lesson to the people committed to you. Let them see in you what to love, and perceive what to make haste to imitate. Let them be taught how to live by your example. Let them not deviate from the straight course through your leading; let them find their way to God by following you; that so thou mayest receive as many rewards from the Saviour of the human race as thou shalt have won souls for Him. Labour therefore, most dear brother, and so direct the whole activity of thy heart and soul, that thou mayest hereafter be counted worthy to hear, Well done, thou good and faithful servant: enter thou into the joy of thy Lord (Matth. xxv. 21).
As you requested in your letter which we received through our brother and fellow-bishop Andrew, we have sent you the pallium, which it is necessary that you should so use as your predecessors, by the allowance of our predecessors, are proved to have used it.
Furthermore, it has come to our ears that in those parts no one attains to any sacred order without the giving of a consideration. If this, is so, I say with tears, I declare with groans, that, when the priestly order has fallen inwardly, neither will it stand long outwardly. For we know from the Gospel what our Redeemer in person did; how He went into the temple, and overthrew the seats of them that sold doves (Matth. xxi. 12). For to sell doves is to receive a temporal consideration for the Holy Spirit, whom, being consubstantial with Himself, Almighty God gives to men through imposition of hands. And what follows from this evil, as I have said before, is intimated; for the seats of those who presumed to sell doves in the temple of God fell by the judgment of God. And in truth this transgression is propagated with increase among subordinates. For one who attains to a sacred dignity tainted in the very root of his promotion is himself the more prepared to sell to others what he has bought. And where then is that which is written, Freely ye have received; freely give (Matth. x. 8)? And, since the simoniacal heresy was the first to arise against holy Church, why is it not considered, why is it not seen, that whosoever ordains any one for a price in promoting him causes him to become a heretic? Seeing, then, that the holy universal Church utterly condemns this most atrocious wickedness, we exhort your Fraternity in all ways to repress, with all the urgency of your solicitude, this so detestable and so huge a sin in all places that are under you. For, if we shall perceive anything of the kind to be done henceforth, we will correct it, not with words, but with canonical punishment; and we shall begin to have a different opinion of you; which ought not so to be.
Further, your Fraternity knows that formerly the pallium was not given except for a consideration received. But, since this was incongruous, we held a council before the body of the blessed Peter, Prince of the apostles, and forbade under a strict interdiction the receiving of anything, as well for this as for ordinations.
It is your duty then, that neither for a consideration, nor for favour or the solicitation of certain persons, you consent to any persons being advanced to sacred orders. For it is a grave sin, as we have said, and we cannot suffer it to continue without reproof.
I delayed receiving the above named Andrew, our brother and fellow-bishop, because by the report of our brother and fellow-bishop Secundinus we learnt that he had forged letters, as to himself from us, in the proceedings against John of Larissa [1625] . And, unless your goodness had induced us, we would on no account have received him. Given the 15th day of the month of August, Indiction 13. __________________________________________________________________
[1624] See above, V. 52, and Ep. LVIII., below.
[1625] See III. 6, 7. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle LVIII.
To all the Bishops throughout Helladia [1626] .
Gregory to all bishops constituted in the province of Helladia.
I return thanks with you, dearest brethren, to Almighty God, who has caused the hidden sore which the ancient enemy had introduced to come to the knowledge of all, and has cut it away by a wholesome incision from the body of His Church. Herein we have cause both to rejoice and to mourn; to rejoice, that is, for the correction of a crime, but to mourn for the fall of a brother. But, since for the most part the fall of one is wont to be the safeguard of another, whosoever fears to fall, let him give heed to this, that he afford no way of approach to the enemy, nor think that deeds done lie hidden. For the Truth proclaims, There is nothing hidden that shall not be revealed (Matth. x. 26). For this voice is already the herald of our doings, and He himself, being witness, brings in all ways to public view what is done in secret. And who may strive to hide his deeds before Him Who is both their witness and their judge? But, since sometimes, when one thing is attended to, another is not guarded against, it behoves every one to be watchful against all the snares of the enemy, lest, while he conquers in one point he be vanquished in another. For an earthly enemy too, when he desires to invade fortified places, thus employs the art of warfare. For indeed he lays ambushes latently; but shews himself as though entirely bent on the storming of one place, so that, while there is a running together for defence of that place where the danger is imminent, other places about which there is no suspicion may be taken. And the result is, that he who, when perceived, was repulsed by the valour of his opponent, obtains by stealth what he could not obtain by fighting. But, since in all these things there is need of the aid of divine protection, let every one of us cry to the Lord with the voice of the heart, saying, Lord, remove not Thy help far from me; Look Thou to my defence (Ps. xxi. 20) [1627] . For it is manifest that, unless He Himself should help, and defend those who cry to Him, our enemy cannot be vanquished.
Furthermore, know ye that, having received the letter of your Charity through Andrew our brother and fellow-bishop, we have transmitted the pallium to John our brother, the bishop of the Corinthians; whom it is by all means fitting that you should obey, especially as the order of ancient custom claims this, and his good qualities, to which you yourselves bear testimony, invite it. For from the account given me by certain persons I have learnt that in those parts no one attains to any sacred order without the giving of a consideration. If this is so, I say with tears, I declare with groans, that, when the priestly order has fallen inwardly, neither will it be able to stand long outwardly. For we know from the Gospel what our Redeemer did in person; how He went into the temple, and overthrew the seats of them that sold doves. For in truth to sell doves is to receive a temporal consideration for the Holy Spirit, whom, being consubstantial with Himself, Almighty God gives to men through imposition of hands. And, as I have said before, what follows from this evil is intimated; for the seats of them that presumed to sell doves in the temple of God fell by God's judgment. And in truth this transgression is propagated with increase among subordinates. For he who is advanced to a sacred order already tainted in the very root of his promotion is himself more prepared to sell to others what he has bought. And where is that which is written, Freely ye have received; freely give (Matth. x. 8)? And, since the simoniacal heresy was the first to arise against the holy Church, why is it not considered, why is it not seen, that whosoever ordains any one for a price in promoting him causes him to become a heretic? And so we exhort that none of you suffer this to be done any more; or dare to promote any to sacred orders for the favour or supplication of any person, except such a one as the character of his life and actions has shewn to be worthy. For, if we should perceive the contrary in future, know ye that it will be repressed with strict and canonical punishment. Given on the 15th day of the month of August, Indiction 13. __________________________________________________________________
[1626] Meaning, we may suppose, the province of Achaia, of which Corinth was the metropolis.
[1627] In English Bible, xxii. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Book VI.
Epistle I.
To Marinianus, Bishop.
Gregory to Marinianus, Bishop of Ravenna.
As unjust demands should not be conceded, so the petition of such as desire what is lawful ought not to be set aside. Now your Fraternity's presbyters, deacons and clergy have presented to us a petition complaining that the late John, your predecessor, made a will burdening his Church with various bequests. And they have petitioned that these, which are to the detriment of his Church, should under no excuse be paid, as being prohibited by law. And although, heredity and succession having been by him renounced, no reason binds thee to satisfy any such claims, nevertheless we hereby exhort thee over and above that with regard to such bequests as he has made, contrary to the ordinances of the laws, of property belonging to his Church, or acquired by him in his episcopate, your Fraternity neither lend your authority nor on any account consent to them. But, if he has wished or directed anything to be done with regard to his private property which he had before his episcopate, and which he had not previously bestowed upon his Church, it is necessary that this disposition should be held valid in all respects, and that no one of the ecclesiastics should attempt against reason on any pretext to set it aside.
But, inasmuch as during his life he often begged of us that we should confirm by our authority what he had conferred on the monastery which he had himself constructed near the church of Saint Apollinaris, and we promised to do this, we hold it needful to exhort your Fraternity to suffer nothing of what he has there conferred and constituted to be diminished, but to see to all being preserved and firmly established. Since, then, he is known to have made mention of this monastery, and of the property conferred on it, in the will which he made, you must know that we have not confirmed this part of it by reason of our following his last wishes, but because, as we have said, we promised it to him when he was alive. Let your Fraternity, therefore, make haste so carefully to accomplish all these things that both what was by him constituted and by us confirmed in the above-named monastery may be maintained, and what he has by will directed to be given or done to the detriment of his Church may have no validity, seeing that the law forbids it. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle II.
To the Clergy and People of Ravenna.
Gregory to the clergy and people of the Church of Ravenna.
We have been informed that certain men, instigated by the malignant spirit, have wished to corrupt your minds by false speech with regard to the reputation of our brother and fellow-bishop Marinianus [1628] ; saying that this our brother venerates the holy synod of Chalcedon less than becomes him [1629] . On this head both he himself in person will satisfy you all of the integrity of his faith, and we fully testify that, having been nursed from his cradle in the bosom of the holy Universal Church, he has held the right preaching of the faith with the attestation of his life. For he venerates the holy Nicene synod in which Arius, the Constantinopolitan, in which Macedonius, the first Ephesine, in which Nestorius, and the holy Chalcedonian, in which Dioscorus and Eutyches were condemned. And if any one presumes ever to speak anything against the faith of these four synods and against the tome and definition of pope Leo of holy memory, let him be anathema. Accordingly, receiving the fullest satisfaction, love ye your pastor in entire charity with a pure heart, that the intercession of the same your pastor, poured out purely before God, may avail to your profit. __________________________________________________________________
[1628] See above, V. 48, note 3.
[1629] The ground of this charge against Marinianus was doubtless his acceptance of the condemnation of the "Three Chapters" by the fifth council, which condemnation, notwithstanding Rome's approval of it, was still objected to in many quarters as contravening the council of Chalcedon. See I. 16, note 3; IV. 2, note 1; IV. 38, 39; XIV. 12. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle III.
To Maximus of Salona.
Gregory to Maximus, pretender to the Church of Salona [1630] .
As often as anything is said to have been done contrary to ecclesiastical discipline, we dare not leave it unexamined, lest we should be guilty before God for connivance. Now it has come to our ears that thou wast ordained by means of simoniacal heresy. Nay and many other things have been said of thee here, whereof there was one especially on account of which we held it needful to prohibit thee urgently by letter from celebrating the solemnities of mass until we might ascertain the state of the case more certainly. Wherefore, lest the children of the Church should be too long without a shepherd, and lest, in case of these things which are said remaining unexamined, vice of this nature should extend itself to many, we exhort thee to make haste to come to us, laying aside all excuses, to the end that with due regard to justice we may be able to gain knowledge of these things, and terminate them according to the canonical institutes, Christ shewing us the way. But do thou so act that there be no more of these successive delays of thy coming, lest thy very absence point thee out as the more obnoxious to these charges against thee, and lest we should be thus compelled to pass in council a harder sentence on thee, not only for thy alleged crimes from which thou evadest purging thyself, but also for the fault of disobedience, to wit as one that is contumacious. __________________________________________________________________
[1630] Cf. III. 47, note 2. As is there stated, Maximus does not seem to have paid the slightest attention to this letter. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle V.
To Queen Brunichild.
Gregory to Brunichild, Queen of the Franks [1631] .
The laudable and God-pleasing goodness of your Excellence is manifested both by your government of your kingdom and by your education of your son [1632] . To him you have not only with provident solicitude conserved intact the glory of temporal things, but have also seen to the rewards of eternal life, having planted his mind in the root of the true faith with maternal, as became you, and laudable care of his education. Whence not undeservedly it ensues that he should surpass all the kingdoms of the nations [1633] , in that he both worships purely and confesses truly the Creator of these nations. But that faith may shine forth in him the more laudably in his works, let the words of your exhortation kindle him, to the end that, as royal power shews him lofty among men, so goodness of conduct may make him great before God.
Now inasmuch as past experience in many instances gives us confidence in the Christianity of your Excellence, we beg of you, for the love of Peter, Prince of the apostles, whom we know that you love with your whole heart, that you would cherish with the aid of your patronage our most beloved son the presbyter Candidus [1634] , who is the bearer of these presents, together with the little patrimony for the government of which we have sent him, to the end that, strengthened by the favour of your support, he may be able both to manage profitably this little patrimony, which is evidently beneficial towards the expenses of the poor, and also to recover into the possession of this little patrimony anything that may have been taken away from it. For it is not without increase of your praise that after so long a time a man belonging to Church has been sent for the management of this patrimony. Let your Excellency, then, deign so willingly to give your attention to what we request of you that the blessed Peter, Prince of the apostles, to whom the power of binding and loosing has been given by the Lord Jesus Christ, may both grant to your Excellence to rejoice here in your offspring, and after courses of many years cause you to be found, absolved from all ills before the face of the eternal Judge. __________________________________________________________________
[1631] This is the first of the ten letters of Gregory to the notorious Brunechild. A daughter of Athanagild, king of the Visigoths in Spain, she had married Sigebert I., one of the grandsons of Clovis, who reigned over that part of the dominion of the Franks which was called Austrasia, having on her marriage renounced Arianism for Catholicity. Sigebert having been assassinated a.d. 575, his son Childebert II., then only five years old, was proclaimed King of Austrasia; whereupon Brunechild herself became the virtual ruler of the kingdom. So she was again after the death of Childebert, a.d. 596, as guardian of Theodebert II., his illegitimate son, who succeeded him at the age of ten years. See Pedigree of Kings of Gaul, p. xxx. The praises lavished on her by Gregory in this and his other epistles to her appear strangely inconsistent with the character given her by the historians of the time. It has been suggested in explanation; 1. That the historians may have maligned her, attributing to her crimes that were not her own; 2. That, whatever her misdemeanours, Gregory might not have heard of them, knowing of her only as a faithful Catholic, and a supporter of the Church; 3. That no such misdemeanours had become notorious when Gregory wrote to her in such flattering terms, the worst doings imputed to her having in fact been after his death. She survived him some nine years. Still, when we consider Gregory's diplomatic turn, together with his habitual deference to potentates apparent elsewhere, we cannot think it unlikely that he might ignore purposely in his addresses to them even their known moral delinquencies, so long as he could enlist their support of religion and orthodoxy, or their loyalty to the see of Rome. And, after all, Brunechild may not have been much worse than some other Frank royalties, all of whom he would be naturally and properly desirous of conciliating, and making the best of them he could. A less defensible instance of apparently politic flattery is found in his letters to the Emperor Phocas and his Empress Leontia after the deposition and murder of Mauricius. See XIII. 31, 38, 39, and Proleg., p. xxvii.
[1632] Childebert II. (see last note), who had been a minor when he came to the throne. He would now, if the epistle was written, as supposed, in the 14th Indiction (595-6), be about 25 years old.
[1633] Since the death of his uncle Guntramn, a.d. 593, he had become King of Burgundy as well as of Austrasia.
[1634] It was the sending of Candidus, a presbyter from Rome, to take charge of the patrimony in Gaul in place of Dynamius, a patrician, who had previously managed it (see Ep. 6), that offered occasion for this and the following letter. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle VI.
To King Childebert.
Gregory to Childebert, King of the Franks [1635] .
As much as royal dignity is above that of other men, so much in truth does the high position of your kingdom excel that of the kingdoms of other nations. And yet to be a king is not extraordinary, there being others also; but to be a Catholic, which others are not counted worthy to be, this is enough. For as the splendour of a great lamp shines by the clearness of its light in the darkness of earth's night, so the clear light of your faith glitters and flashes amid the dark perfidy of other nations. Whatever the other kings glory in having you have. But they are in this regard exceedingly surpassed, because they have not the chief good thing which you have. In order, then, that they may be overcome in action as well as in faith, let your Excellence always shew yourself kind to your subjects. And, if there are any things such as to offend your mind, punish them not without enquiry. For then you will the more please the King of kings, that is the Almighty Lord, if, restraining your power, you feel that you may not do all that you can.
Now that you keep purity of faith both in mind and deed, the love that is in you of the blessed Peter, Prince of the apostles, evidently shews, whose property has been so far well governed and preserved under the sway of your supremacy. But since Dynamius the Patrician, who on our recommendation looked after this property, is not able, as we have learnt, to govern it now, lest the little patrimony which is in your parts should be ruined from neglect, we have therefore sent the bearer of these presents, our most beloved son the presbyter Candidus [1636] to govern it, whom we commend in all respects to your Excellency, greeting you in the first place with paternal charity, with the request that, if by any chance any wrong has been done there, or if the property of the same little patrimony is detained by any one, the matter may be set right, and what has been alienated may be restored to its original ownership; that so your equity, as well as your faith, may shine forth to all nations, which will be something very glorious and laudable.
Moreover we have sent to your Excellency Saint Peter's keys, containing a portion of his chains, to protect you from all evils, when hung on your neck [1637] . __________________________________________________________________
[1635] Cf. last Epistle, notes 5, 6, 7.
[1636] See last Epistle note 8.
[1637] See IV. 30. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle VII.
To Candidus, Presbyter.
Gregory to Candidus, Presbyter, going to the patrimony of Gaul.
Now that thou art proceeding, with the help of our Lord God Jesus Christ, to the government of the patrimony that is in Gaul, we desire thy Love to procure with the money thou mayest receive clothing for the poor, or English boys of about seventeen or eighteen years of age, who may profit by being given to God in monasteries, that so the money of Gaul, which cannot be spent in our country [1638] , may be expended profitably in its own locality. Further, if you should succeed in getting anything from the moneys accruing to revenue which are called ablatæ [1639] , from this too we desire thee to procure clothing for the poor, or, as we have before said, boys who may profit in the service of Almighty God. But, since such as can be found there are pagans, I desire that a presbyter be sent hither with them to provide against the case of any sickness occurring on the way, that he may baptize those whom he sees to be about to die. Wherefore let your Love so proceed as to lose no time in accomplishing these things diligently. __________________________________________________________________
[1638] Probably because of the inferior value in Italy of Gallic gold. "Nullus solidum integri ponderis calumniosæ approbationis obtentu recuset exactor, excepto eo Gallico cujus aurum minore æstimatione taxatur." Novella Majoriani.
[1639] Some kind of due, so-called. See Du Cange under Ablata:--"Ablatio, Exactio, Tolta...Liberos deinceps esse constituimus ab omni tallia, ablatione et exactione, et questu.' (A. 1173).' __________________________________________________________________
Epistle VIII.
To the Bishops of Epirus.
Gregory to Theodorus, Demetrius, Philip, Zeno, and Alcissonus, Bishops of Epirus.
The notification of your letters, most dear brethren, has made known to us that our brother Andrew has, by the favour of God, been solemnly ordained bishop of the city of Nicopolis. And, since you signify that his consecration has taken place with the assent of the clergy and provincials, we rejoice; and we pray that the good which you testify of him may remain in him, and by the co-operation of God's grace receive increase, since the goodness of prelates is the safety of their subordinates. It is your duty then to make haste studiously to imitate what you show by your praises to be pleasing to you in his person. For it is faulty before men and penal before God for any one to be unwilling to imitate the good that pleases him. Wherefore let your obedience supply credit to your testimony. Let no one gainsay him in what, with preservation of integrity, he may enjoin for the common profit of the Church. Let each one of you willingly exhibit his devotion that, while there is among you priestly concord pleasing to God and constant, no ill feeling may avail to loose you from the bond of mutual charity, or difference disturb you. For neither will there be access to your hearts for the crafty foe, since he knows that he can in no degree be admitted or received, where sincere charity finds place.
Moreover be ye attentive, most dear brethren, and bestow on the flock committed to you the vigilance which ye have taken upon yourselves, and which ye owe; meet the frauds of the enemy by attention and prayer. Surrender with uncontaminated faith to our God the people over which ye are, that your priestly office may avail you not for a penalty but for a crown before the sight of the eternal Judge.
Know ye then that we have sent a pallium to the above-written Andrew our brother and fellow-bishop, and have granted him all the privileges which our predecessors conferred on his predecessors.
Furthermore, it has come to our ears that sacred orders in your parts are conferred for a consideration given. And, if this is so, I say it with tears, I declare it with groans, &c. [See Lib. V. Ep. 53, to "become a heretic"] [1640] . On this account I admonish and conjure you to be altogether attentive to this, that no giving of a consideration, no favour, no supplication of any persons whatsoever, put in any claim in regard to sacred orders, but that one be promoted to this office whom gravity of manners and behaviour commends. For if, as we do not believe will be the case, we should perceive anything of the kind to be done, we will correct it, as is fit, with canonical severity. Now may Almighty God, who orders all things wonderfully by the power of His wisdom, and guards what He has ordered, grant unto you both to will and to do what He commands. __________________________________________________________________
[1640] This form of protest against simony is found, in the same words, in several other letters. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle IX.
To Donus, Bishop.
Gregory to Donus, Bishop of Messana (Messene).
Moved by the benevolence of the Apostolic See, and by the order of ancient custom, we have thought fit to grant to thee, who art known to have undertaken the office of government in the Church of Messana, the use of the pallium; to wit, at such times and in such manner as we dispute not that thy predecessor used it; at the same time warning thee that, as thou rejoicest in having received from us a decoration of this kind to the honour of thy priestly office, so also thou strive, by probity of manners and deeds, to adorn, to the glory of Christ, the office which thou hast undertaken under our authority. For so wilt thou be conspicuous for decorations mutually answering to each other, if with such an habiliment of the body as this all good qualities of thy soul also agree. For all the privileges which are known to have been granted of old to thy Church we confirm by our authority, and decree that they shall continue inviolate. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XII.
To Montana and Thomas.
Gregory to Montana, &c.
Since our Redeemer, the Maker of every creature, vouchsafed to assume human flesh for this end, that, the chain of slavery wherewith we were held being broken by the grace of His Divinity, He might restore us to pristine liberty, it is a salutary deed if men whom nature originally produced free, and whom the law of nations has subjected to the yoke of slavery, be restored by the benefit of manumission to the liberty in which they were born. And so, moved by loving-kindness and by consideration of this case, we make you, Montana and Thomas, servants of the holy Roman Church which with the help of God we serve, free from this day, and Roman citizens, and we release to you all your private property.
And, inasmuch as thou, Montana, declarest that thou hast applied thy mind to monastic profession, we therefore this day give and grant to thee two unciæ, which the presbyter Gaudiosus by the disposition of his last will is known to have left to thee in the way of institution [1641] , provided that all go in all respects to the advantage of the monastery of Saint Laurence, over which the abbess Constantina presides, and in which by the mercy of God thou art about to make profession. But, if it should appear that thou hast in any way concealed any part of the property left by the above-written Gaudiosus, the whole of this must undoubtedly be transferred to the possession of our Church.
Moreover to thee, Thomas above-written, whom for enhancement of thy freedom we desire also to serve among the notaries, we in like manner this day give and grant by this writ of manumission the five unciæ which the aforesaid presbyter Gaudiosus by his last will left to thee under the title of inheritance, together with the dowry which he had bestowed upon thy mother; to wit with this annexed law and condition, that, in case of thy dying without legitimate children, that is children born in lawful wedlock, all that we have granted thee shall revert without any diminution to the possession of the holy Roman Church. But, if thou shouldest have children both in wedlock, as we have said, and recognized by the law, and shouldest leave them surviving thee, then we appoint thee to remain master of this same property without any condition, and give thee full power to make a will with respect to it. These things, then, which we have appointed and granted by this charter of manumission, know ye that we and our successors will observe without any demur. For the rule of justice and reason suggests that one who desires his own orders to be observed by his successors should undoubtedly keep to the will and ordinances of his predecessor. This writ of manumission we have dictated to the notary Paterius to be put in writing, and for the fullest security have subscribed it with our own hand, together with three chief presbyters and three deacons, and have delivered it to you.
Done in the city of Rome. __________________________________________________________________
[1641] Institutionis; a legal term, denoting apparently the constituting of a person as an inheriter. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XIV.
To the Count Narses [1642] .
Gregory to Narses, &c.
Your Charity, being anxious to learn our opinion, has been at the pains of writing to us to ask what we think of the book against the presbyter Athanasius which was sent to us. Having thoroughly perused some parts of it, we find that he has fallen into the dogma of Manichæus. But he who has noted some places as heretical by a mark set against them slips also himself into Pelagian heresy; for he has marked certain places as heretical which are catholicly expressed and entirely orthodox. For when this is written; that when Adam sinned his soul died, the writer shews afterwards how it is said to have died, namely that it lost the blessedness of its condition. Whosoever denies this is not a Catholic. For God had said, In the hour ye eat thereof, in death ye shall die (Gen. ii. 17). When, therefore, Adam ate of the forbidden tree, we know that he did not die in the body, seeing that after this he begat children and lived many years. If, then, he did not die in the soul, the impious conclusion follows that He himself lied who foretold that in the day that he sinned he should die. But it is to be understood that death takes place in two ways; either from ceasing to live, or with respect to the mode of living. When, then, man's soul is said to have died in the eating of the forbidden thing, it is meant, not in the sense of ceasing to live, but with regard to the mode of living;--that he should live afterwards in pain who had been created to live happily in joy [1643] . He, then, who has marked this passage in the book sent to me by my brother the bishop John as heretical is a Pelagian; for his view is evidently that of Pelagius, which the apostle Paul plainly confutes in his epistles. The particular passages in his epistle I need not quote, as I write to one who knows. But Pelagius, who was condemned in the Ephesine synod, maintained this view with the intention of shewing that we were redeemed by Christ unreally. For, if we did not through Adam die in the soul, we were redeemed unreally, which it were impious to say. Further, having examined the acts of the synod of Ephesus, we find nothing at all about Adelphius and Sava, and the others who are said to have been condemned there, and we think that, as the synod of Chalcedon was in one place falsified by the Constantinopolitan Church, [1644] so something of the kind has been done with regard to the synod of Ephesus. Wherefore let your Charity make a thorough search for old copies of the acts of this synod, and thus see whether anything of the kind is found there, and send such copy as you may find to me, which I will return as soon as I have read it. For recent copies are not entirely to be trusted; and it is for this reason that I have been in doubt, and have not wished as yet to reply in this case to my aforesaid brother the bishop John. Further, the Roman copies are much more correct than the Greek ones, since, as we have not your cleverness, so neither have we any impostures.
Now concerning the presbyter John, know that his case has been decided in synod, whereby I have clearly ascertained that his adversaries have wished and long endeavoured to make him out a heretic, but have entirely failed.
Salute in my name your friends, who are ours: ours also, who are yours, salute you heartily through me. May Almighty God protect thee with His hand in the midst of so many thorns, that thou mayest, unhurt, gather those flowers which the Lord hath chosen. __________________________________________________________________
[1642] On the case of John of Chalcedon and Athanasius of Isaura, referred to in this and the three following letters, see III. 53, note 9.
[1643] Cf. VII. 34 and IX. 49, where the same argument, in nearly the same words, is set forth.
[1644] The reference may be to Canon xxviii. of the Council of Chalcedon, assigning rank and jurisdiction to the patriarchs of Constantinople, which was protested against by the Roman legates at the Council and afterwards disallowed by Pope Leo. It is omitted in the Latin version of the canons published by Dionysius Exiguus about the beginning of the sixth century, though it had been in the Prisca Versio which he amended. It appears as if Gregory, not finding it in the Latin version before him, supposed it to have been interpolated at Constantinople; the fact being that it had been purposely omitted at Rome, as not having the Pope's sanction. If such is the allusion, it may seem strange that Gregory did not know the circumstances better. But this is not the only instance of his imperfect knowledge of past events, even in ecclesiastical matters. Cf. II. 51, note 2. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XV.
To John, Bishop.
Gregory to John, Bishop of Constantinople.
As the pravity of heretics is to be repressed by the zeal of a right faith, so the integrity of a true confession is to be embraced. For, if one who declares himself sound in the faith is scorned, the faith of all is brought into doubt, and fatal errors are generated from inconsiderate strictness. And hence not only are wandering sheep not recalled to their Lord's folds, but even those that are within them are exposed to be cruelly torn by the teeth of wild beasts. Let us then fully consider this, most dear brother, and not suffer any one who truly professes the catholic faith to be distressed under pretext of heresy, nor (which God forbid) allow heresy to grow the more under shew of correcting it.
But we have wondered much why those who were deputed by you as judges in a matter of faith against John, presbyter of the church of Chalcedon, believed report, disregarding truth, and would not believe him when he distinct professed his faith; especially as his accusers, when asked what was the heresy of the Marcionists which they spoke of, and on the ground of which they endeavoured to make him out guilty, replied by a plain confession that they did not know. From which circumstance it evidently comes out that, without regard to God, not justly, but against their own souls, they were desirous only of injuring him personally of their own mere will. We therefore, after Council held (as the tenor of the proceedings before us shews), having thoroughly examined and considered all that was necessary. inasmuch as we have been unable to find the aforesaid presbyter in any respect guilty, and especially as the plea which he delivered to the judges delegated by you is in entire accordance with the integrity of a right faith, we I say on this account, disapproving the sentence of the said judges, through the revealing grace of Christ our God and Redeemer, pronounce him by our definite sentence catholic and free from all charge of heresy. Seeing, then, that we have sent him back to your Holiness, it is for you to receive him with the kindness which you shew to all, and bestow on him your priestly charity, and defend him from all molestation, nor allow any one to busy himself in causing him trouble: but, as you defend others from oppression, so from him ought you not to withhold your succour. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XVI.
To Mauricius, Augustus.
Gregory to Mauricius, &c.
Seeing that in you, most Christian of princes, uncorrupt soundness of faith shines as a beam sent down from heaven, and that it is known to all that your Serenity embraces fervently and loves with entire devotion of heart the pure profession in which by God's favour you are powerful, we have perceived it to be very necessary to make request for those whom one and the same faith enlightens, to the end that the Piety of our lords may protect them with its favour, and defend them from all molestation. When certain men scorn the confession of faith of such persons they are shewn to contradict the true faith. For, since the Apostle declares that confession of the mouth is made unto salvation, he who will not consent to believe a right profession accuses himself in rejecting others (Rom. x. 10).
Now all the proceedings against John, presbyter of the church of Chalcedon, having been read in council and considered in order, we have found that he has suffered the greater injustice in that, when he declared and shewed himself to be a Catholic, it was not his guilt, but an uncertain accusation of long standing, that crushed him; and this to such an extent that his accusers declared in their open reply that they did not know the heresy of the Marcionists which they referred to. And, whereas they ought therefore to have been rejected from the very beginning of the trial, they were allowed, vague as they were, to remain in court for his accusation. But, lest at any rate alleged report might injure him, he produced a written confession of his faith with the purpose of shewing evidently that he was a professor and follower of the right faith. But this the judges deputed by the most holy John, our brother and fellow-bishop, unjustly and unreasonably disregarded; and so, in doing all they could to put him down, shewed themselves more to blame than he. For no one doubts that it is unfaithfulness not to have faith in the faithful. Seeing then that, everything having been thoroughly enquired into and considered, the decision of the holy Council with me, by the revealing grace of Divine power, has declared the above-written John the presbyter to be a Catholic, and that no spot of heretical pravity has been found in him, I entreat that the pious protection of your Serenity may order him to be kept unharmed from all annoyance, nor allow a professor of the catholic faith to suffer any molestation. For not to believe one who professes truly is not to purge heresy, but to make it. If this should be allowed, occasion of infidelity will arise, and people will themselves incur the guilt which they would correct unwarily.
These things therefore let the most Serene lord with pious precaution consider, and, as I have already requested, with profuse entreaties I again implore, that he allow not an innocent man to be afflicted anew as though he were guilty; to the end that Almighty God, who sees your Clemency love and defend the purity of catholic rectitude, may cause you both to rule over a pacified republic with your foes subdued, and to reign with His saints in life eternal. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XVII.
To Theotistus.
Gregory to Theotistus, kinsman of the Emperor.
We know that the Christianity of your Excellency is always intent on good works and therefore we provide for you occasions for reaping reward, which you are certain to be glad of, so that we by so providing may have a share in your merits.
We therefore inform you that John the presbyter, the bearer of these presents, has come out free from those by whom he had been accused. For having, according to his request held a council, and subjected his faith to a subtle scrutiny, we found him guiltless of any wrong confession. And, inasmuch as he appeared to be, by the mercy of God, a professor and follower of the right faith, we absolved him by our definite sentence; especially as his accusers professed that they did not know what the heresy of the Marcionists, which they spoke of, was. On this account, saluting you with paternal affection, we request you to protect him with the grace of your favour. And, lest any one hereafter should be disposed to afflict him to no purpose, or in any way to cause him annoyance in this matter, let the advocacy of your Excellency so protest and defend him--and this the more instantly in consideration of your own reward--that no unjust affliction may any more consume him, and that the Creator and Redeemer of the human race, whom you worship with a sincere confession, may recompense your action in this behalf among your many good works. The month of October. Indiction 14. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XVIII.
To John, Bishop.
Gregory to John, Bishop of Syracuse.
Moved by the benevolence of the Apostolic See and by the order of ancient custom, we have thought fit to grant to thy Fraternity, who art known to have received the office of government in the Church of Syracuse, the use of the pallium; that is, at such times and in such manner as thou knowest without doubt that it was used by thy predecessor; nevertheless admonishing thee that, as thou rejoicest in having received from us the use of this decoration for the honour of thy priestly office, so also by probity of manners and deeds thou strive to adorn the office thou hast received unto our glory in Christ. For thus wilt thou be conspicuous for decorations mutually answering to each other, if with this habit for the body the excellence also of thy mind agrees.
For all privileges which are known to have been granted formerly to thy Church we confirm by our authority, and decree that they shall remain inviolate. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXII.
To Peter, Bishop.
Gregory to Peter, Bishop of Aleria in Corsica.
Inasmuch as in the isle of Corsica, at the place Nigeunum, in the possession which is called Cellas Cupias belonging to the holy Roman Church, which by the providence of God we serve, we have ordered to be founded a basilica, with a baptistery [1645] , to the honour of the blessed Peter, Prince of the apostles, and of Laurentius the martyr, we therefore hereby exhort thy Fraternity to proceed at once to the aforesaid place, and with observance of the venerable solemnities of dedication to consecrate solemnly the aforesaid church and baptistery. Deposit also reverently the holy relics (sanctuaria) which you have received. __________________________________________________________________
[1645] Baptisteries were anciently buildings contiguous to but apart from the churches. Cf. III. 59, note 7. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXIV.
To Marinianus, Bishop.
Gregory to Marinianus, Bishop of Ravenna.
We have received by the deacon Virgilius the letter of your Fraternity, in which you inform us that certain of the clergy and people have cried out that it is contrary to the laws and canons that the cause between your Church and the abbot Claudius should be examined and decided here. But, had they paid attention to ecclesiastical order and to the persons between whom the case is pending, they would by all means have abstained from needless complaint; especially as the cause could not be pleaded there, where the aforesaid abbot has complained of having endured injustice from your predecessor and of still suffering from it. For the objection might perhaps have been made if he had not appealed to a superior authority, and sought to have the rights of his case determined before it. Nay, but dost thou not thyself know that the case which arose on the part of the presbyter John against John of Constantinople, our brother and fellow-bishop, came before the Apostolic See, and was decided by our sentence? [1646] If, then, a cause was brought under our cognizance from that city where the prince is, how much more should an affair between you have the truth about it ascertained and be terminated here? But as for you, let not the words of foolish men there move you, and believe not that through us any detriment to your Church is caused. For, if you will enquire of the servant of God Secundinus your deacon and of Castorius our notary, you will learn from them how your predecessor had already desired to arrange this case. But your Fraternity has done wisely in sending persons hither for this business, and in not listening to vain words. Now we trust in Almighty God that this cause may be terminated in a way well-pleasing to God, so that no room may be left for renewed complaint and that neither party may be aggrieved unjustly. The sword [1647] which our most beloved son Peter, then deacon and guardian (defensor) in your parts, had left for us with your predecessor, please to send to us by the servant of God Secundinus, and Castorius the notary, the bearers of these presents. __________________________________________________________________
[1646] See III. 53, note 9, and reff there. It seems from what Gregory here says, that it was not in the East only, but also in Italy, at Ravenna, that the authority of the Roman See met with opposition, perhaps mainly on the ground of Ravenna having been an Imperial city, and being still the seat of the Exarch of Italy. Cf. III. 57, note 4.
[1647] Spatam. Cf. VI. 61, note 8. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXV.
To Maximus of Salona.
Gregory to Maximus, intruder in the Church of Salona [1648] .
While, seeking this or that excuse, thou deferrest obedience to our letters, while thou puttest off coming to us for ascertainment of the truth after being so often admonished, thou lendest credibility all the more to what is alleged against thee; and, even though there had been nothing else to go against thee and do thee harm, thy delay alone would render thee culpable and accuse thee. Humble thyself at length, and submit thyself to obedience, and make haste to come to us without any excuses, that, the truth being investigated and ascertained, in the fear of God, whatever may be fair and canonical may be decided. For be assured that we will observe towards thee justice and the ordinances of the canons, and, by the revelation of God, who is the Author of truth, will terminate thy cause agreeably to justice. For, as to thy demand that we should send some one to your city, in whose presence there might be proof of the things alleged, this would be in some degree excusable, if reason ever imposed on the accused the necessity of proof. But, inasmuch as this burden lies not on thee but on thine accusers, do not thou hesitate to come to us, as we have before said, putting it off no longer; and either thine accuser will be present without delay to support with suitable proof what has been alleged as to simoniacal heresy or other things; or certainly, as far as regards a sound settlement of this business, a just dealing with it will, through the intervention of Peter, Prince of the apostles, ensue; that so no guiltiness may confound us before God for any connivance, now that these things have come to our knowledge. But, as to thy allegation that our most serene lords have ordered cognizance of the matter to be taken in your city, we indeed have received no other commands of theirs on the subject except that thou wert to come to us. But, even if by chance, occupied as they are by many thoughts and anxieties for the good of their republic which by the divine bounty has been granted to them, this has been suggested to them, and a command has been surreptitiously elicited from them, yet, inasmuch as it is known to us and to all how our most pious lords love discipline, observe degrees, venerate the canons, and refrain from mixing themselves up in the causes of priests, we will still execute with instancy what is for the good both of their souls and of the republic, and what we are driven to by regard to the terrible and tremendous judgment.
Cease then from all excuses, and delay not to appear here, that, fortified by investigation of the truth, we may at length bring thy cause to a termination. But, whereas we have been informed that thou art greatly afraid and altogether in trepidation lest we should avenge on thee the known fact of thy having forced thy way irregularly into the order of priesthood without our consent, this was indeed an intolerable misdemeanour: but, in accordance with the commands of our most serene lord the Emperor, we forgive thee this, provided that thou in no wise persist any longer in the error of thy contumacy; and we are by no means moved against thee on this account. But other things that have been reported to us we cannot suffer to pass without enquiry.
Now inasmuch as we long ago sent thee a letter warning thee by no means to dare to celebrate the solemnities of mass till we should ascertain the will of the said our most serene lord, and as thou hast cunningly contrived that this letter should not come into thy hands, though thou nevertheless knewest in one way or another what its purport was, but hast refused to comply with it;--we therefore confirm what was before sent thee in writing, that thou must not dare to celebrate the solemnities of mass until all that has been alleged against thee has been thoroughly enquired into and sifted. And, if, with perverse daring, thou shouldest presume to celebrate, know that thou art not free from the former threat of interdiction from communion. For, even though there were no other transgressions, we deprive thee of the communion of the body and blood of the Lord for this sin of pride alone. Wherefore, shewing the obedience that becomes thee, make haste, as we have said, with all diligence to come to us; but so as to have a space of thirty days for preparing for thy journey; and so, laying aside all excuses, defer not thy appearance here.
Moreover, if any occasion of hindering thy journey has arisen from the judges, or the military force, or the people, we acknowledge the skilfulness with which things are done. Do thou thyself, then, see what account of this obligation, thou canst render either to men here or to Almighty God in the future judgment, having by thy contempt provoked a strict sentence against thee.
Furthermore, it has come to my knowledge that my brother and fellow-bishop Paulinus, and Honoratus, archdeacon of the Church of Salona [1649] , for having refused to give assent to thy presumption are suffering grievous molestation at thy hands, so as to have been constrained to give sureties to the end that may not be at liberty to leave the city or their own houses. If this is so, do thou on receipt of this present writing, returning at last, though late, to a sound mind, desist from molesting either of them, that they may have free license either to come to me if they wish, or to go anywhere else for their advantage. __________________________________________________________________
[1648] See III. 47, note 2.
[1649] In the letter to the Salonitans, which follows, it appears that Honoratus only among the clergy of Salona (having been the rival candidate for the bishopric and supported by the Pope), and Paulinus only among the suffragan bishops, had refused to communicate with Maximus. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXVI.
To the Salonitans.
Gregory to his most beloved sons, the clergy and nobles dwelling at Salona [1650] .
It has come to my ears, that certain men of perverse disposition, in order to poison your minds, beloved, have tried to insinuate to you that I am moved by some grudge against Maximus, and that I am desiring to carry out not so much what is canonical as what anger dictates. But far, far be it from the priestly mind to be moved in any cause by private feeling. It is on the contrary as taking thought for you, beloved, and as fearing the judgment of Almighty God on my own soul, that I desire the case of this same Maximus to be thoroughly investigated, as to whether he is burdened by no such crimes as are a bar to ordination, and makes no attempt to attain to the priestly office through simoniacal heresy; that is by giving bribes to some of his electors. He will then be a free intercessor for you before the Lord, if he shall come to the place of intercession bound by no sins of his own.
And yet his sin of pride is already manifestly shewn, in that, having been summoned to come to us, he resists under various excuses, shuns coming, is afraid to come. What then is he afraid of, if his conscience does not accuse him with respect to the things he is charged with? Lo, beloved, ye have now been long without a pastor, and may Almighty God make known to you how earnestly and from the bottom of my heart I sympathize with you in your destitution. For I hear what ravages are being made in the Lord's flock. But, when there is no shepherd, who may watch against the wolves? Wherefore urge ye the aforesaid Maximus to come hither to us, to the end that we may confirm him if we are able to find him innocent; but, if the things that are said of him should turn out to be true, that you, beloved, may be no longer left destitute through the interposition of his person.
For as to me, be assured that I am not moved against him by any grudge or any animosity of private feeling; but whatever may be canonical and just with the help of God I will determine.
But I have been greatly astonished that among so many clergy and people of the Church of Salona hardly two in sacred orders have been found--to wit our brother and fellow-bishop Paulinus and my most beloved son Honoratus, archdeacon of the same Church--who refused to communicate with Maximus when he seized the priesthood, and who remembered that they were Christians.
For you ought, most dear sons, to have considered your own orders, and recognized as rejected him whom the Apostolical See rejected, that he might first be purged, if he could be, from the charges brought against him, and that then your Love might communicate with him without being partakers in his liability. We however are bound to your Charity in the bowels of loving-kindness; and, since we have learnt that some of you were pressed by force to accept him and communicate with him, we implore Almighty God to absolve you from all guilt of your own sins and from all implication in the liability of others, and to give you the grace of His protection in the present life, and grant to us to rejoice for you in the eternal country. __________________________________________________________________
[1650] See III. 47, note 2. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXVII.
To the Clergy and People of Jadera [1651] .
Gregory to the presbyters, deacons, and clergy, nobles and people, dwelling at Jadera, and who have communicated with the prevaricator Maximus.
It has come to my knowledge that some of you, deceived by ignorance or under compulsion, have communicated with those who, their fault as you know requiring it, have been deprived of communion by the Apostolic See, but that others, with wholesome discretion, have under the Lord's protection abstained; and as much as I rejoice in those that have been constant so much do I groan for those who have gone astray, since they have partaken of the mysteries of holy communion, which have been granted to us by Divine loving-kindness for absolution, rather to the detriment of their souls. And because (as I pray Almighty God to make known to you) I earnestly and from the bottom of my heart sympathize will your Charity, I adjure and entreat you with fatherly affection, that every one of you abstain from unlawful communion, and altogether shun those whom the Apostolic See does not receive into the fellowship of its communion, lest any one should stand guilty in the sight of the eternal Judge from that whereby he might have been saved.
Moreover I have discovered that certain men of perverse mind in your parts have tried to insinuate that I am moved against Maximus by some grudge, and that I desire to carry out not what is canonical, but what anger dictates. But far, far be this from the priestly mind, that it should be moved in any cause by private animosity. But as for me, it is as taking thought for the people dwelling in those parts and for my own soul, and as fearing the judgment of Almighty God, that I wish to have the cause of this Maximus enquired into, and, God shewing me the way, to decide canonically. Now, inasmuch as I have written to him frequently that he was not to celebrate the sacred solemnities of mass until I had been able to obtain knowledge of his case, he would in any case be deprived of communion; and now his sin of pride is openly shewn from this,--that, having (as I have said) been often admonished to come to us, under various excuses he refuses, he shuns, he fears coming. What then is he afraid of, if his conscience does not accuse him with regard to the things that have been said? Since then you know these things, now that you can make no excuse on the plea of ignorance, I beseech, I exhort, I warn you, that you altogether refrain from fellowship with forbidden communion, and that not one of you presume, against his own soul, to communicate with any priest who communicates with the above written Maximus.
Since however I hear, as I have said before, that some of you fell in ignorance, and that some were even driven by force to communicate, I implore the Almighty Lord, that He would keep with His perpetual protection, and answer with His wished for bounty, those who have given no assent to this iniquity; and as to those whom either party spirit, or ignorance, or any other cause soever, has drawn into a fault, that He would absolve them from all guilt of their sins, and from all implication in the liability of others, and both give them all the grace of His protection in the present life, and grant to me to rejoice for them in the eternal country. Wherefore, that this intercession may avail for you with God our Saviour, do ye shew obedience to our exhortations for the weal of your souls, and receive the holy communion from those whom ye know to have abstained, and to abstain still, from communion with the aforesaid Maximus. __________________________________________________________________
[1651] See III. 47, note 2. Jadera was one of the sees in the province of Dalmatia of which Salona was the Metropolis. The bishop of Jadera, Sabinianus, had communicated with Maximus, and probably assisted in ordaining him, but afterwards repented. See below, VII. 17; VIII. l0, 24. It may have been because Gregory had heard that there was already a party in Jadera prepared to renounce Maximus that he wrote this letter to strengthen it. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXIX.
To Marinianus, Bishop.
Gregory to Marinianus, Bishop of Ravenna [1652] .
We wonder why the discernment of thy Fraternity should have been so changed in a short time that it does not consider what it asks for. On this account we grieve, since thou affordest manifest proof that the words of evil counsellors have availed with thee more than the study of divine lore has profited thee. And, when thou oughtest to be protecting monasteries, and with all thy power congregating the religious therein so as to make gain from the gathering together of souls, thou art on the contrary desiring to exercise thyself in oppressing them, as thy letters testify; and, what is worse, art trying to make us partakers in thy fault; to wit, in wishing, with our consent, to oppress the monastery which thy predecessor founded under the name of looking after its property and business affairs.
For thou oughtest to call to mind that, in thy presence, and in the presence also of sundry of thy presbyters, deacons, and clerics, we granted, as they requested, a precept contrary to the testament of thy predecessor. Yet, though the disposition he had made with regard to the monastery itself was still therein confirmed, thou now dissemblest this, and demandest of us that we should order the contrary. And indeed we know that this device is not thine own; but, when thou refusest not to listen to those who say incongruous things, thou injurest not only thine own reputation, but also souls. Since, then, I love thee much, I urgently admonish thee--consider this attentively--that thou care not more for money than for souls. The former should be regarded collaterally; but the latter should be regarded with the whole bent of the mind, and vehemently striven after. On this spend vigilantly thy labour and solicitude, since our Redeemer seeks from the priest's office not gold, but souls.
Further, it has reached our ears that monasteries which are constituted under thy Fraternity are oppressed by importunities and various annoyances from the clergy. That this may no longer be so, restrain it by strict prohibition, to the end that the monks who live therein may be able to exult freely in the praises of our God.
With regard to the clerics Romanus and Dominicus, who presumed with rash daring to depart from this city without our blessing, though they were to have been stricken with heavier punishment, nevertheless such relaxation ought to be made in a spirit of kindness that they be urged to come back to their duty. The month of April, Indict. 14. __________________________________________________________________
[1652] Cf. above, VI. 1. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXX.
To Secundus.
Gregory to Secundus, servant of God at Ravenna [1653] .
Now that Castorius [1654] has returned and made known to us all that has been done between you and King Agilulph, we have taken care to send him back to you with all speed, lest any one should find an excuse against us on the ground of delay. Having learnt then from him all that is to be done, give the matter your earnest attention, and press in all ways for this peace to be arranged, since, as report goes, there are some who are trying to hinder it. On this account make haste to act strenuously, that your labour may not remain without effect. For both these parts and various islands are already placed in great danger.
Stir up with such words as thou canst use our brother the bishop Marinianus [1655] : for I suspect that he has fallen asleep. For certain persons have come to me, among whom were some aged mendicants, who were questioned by me as to what they had received and from whom they had received it; and they told me particularly how much had been given them on their journey, and by whom it had been given. But, when I enquired of them what my aforesaid brother had given them, they replied that they had asked him, but had received nothing at all from him; so that they did not get even bread on the way, though it has always been the familiar usage of that Church to give to all. For they said, He answered saying, I have nothing that I can give you. And I am surprised, if he who has clothes, money, and storehouses, has nothing to give to the poor.
Tell him, then, that with his place he should change his disposition too. Let him not believe reading and prayer alone to be enough for him, so that he should think to sit apart, and nowise fructify with his hand; but let him have a liberal hand; let him succour those who suffer need; let him believe the wants of others to be his own; since, if he has not these things, he bears but a bishop's empty name. I did indeed give him some admonitions about his soul in my letter; but he has sent me no reply whatever; whence I suppose that he has not even deigned to read them. For this reason it is needless now for me to admonish him at all in my letter to him; and so I have written only what I was able to dictate as his adviser in worldly matters. For it is not incumbent on me to tire myself, by dictation for a man who does not read what is said to him. Let, then, thy Love speak to him about all these things privately, and admonish him how he ought to demean himself, lest through present negligence he lose the advantage of his former life, which God forbid. __________________________________________________________________
[1653] Gregory appears to have communicated with this Secundus, rather than with the bishop of Ravenna, for reasons which appear below, and to have employed him in negotiations with the Exarch for peace with the Lombards.
[1654] A Castorius is mentioned in Gregory's letter to the Emperor as having been the magister militum in command at Rome during its siege by Agilulph. This may be the same person.
[1655] For his appointment to the see of Ravenna, cf. V. 48. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXXII.
To Fortunatus, Bishop.
Gregory to Fortunatus, Bishop of Neapolis (Naples).
We have written before now to your Fraternity that, if any [slaves] by the inspiration of God, desire to come from Jewish superstition to the Christian faith, their masters have no liberty to sell them, but that from the time of their declaring their wish they have a full claim to freedom. But since, so far as we have learnt, they [i.e. Jewish masters], weighing with nice discrimination neither our wish nor the ordinances of the law, think that they are not bound by this condition in the case of pagan slaves, your Fraternity ought to attend to such cases, and, if any one of their slaves, whether he be a Jew or a pagan, should wish to become a Christian, after his wish has been openly declared, let not any one of the Jews, under cover of any device or argument whatever, have power to sell him; but let him who desires to be converted to the Christian faith be in all ways supported by you in his claim to freedom. Lest, however, those who have to lose slaves of this kind should consider that their interests are unreasonably prejudiced, it is fitting that with careful consideration you should observe this rule;--that if pagans when they have been brought out of foreign parts for the sake of traffic should chance to flee to the Church, and say that they wish to become Christians, or even outside the Church should announce this wish, then, till the end of three months during which a buyer to sell them to may be sought for, they [the Jewish owners] may receive their price; that is to say, from a Christian buyer. But if after the aforesaid three months any one of such slaves should declare his wish and desire to become a Christian, let not either any one afterwards dare to buy him, or his master, under colour of any occasion whatever, dare to sell him; but let him unreservedly attain to the benefit of freedom; since he (i.e. the master) is in such case understood to have acquired him not for sale but for his own service. Let, then, your Fraternity so vigilantly observe all these things that neither the supplication of any nor respect of persons may avail to inveigle you [1656] . __________________________________________________________________
[1656] As to ownership by Jews of converted slaves, see Prolegom., p. xxi., and other Epistles there referred to. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXXIV.
To Castorius, Notary.
Gregory to Castorius, our notary at Ravenna.
When Florentinus, deacon of the Church of Ravenna, treated with us in behalf of our most reverend brother and fellow-bishop Marinianus concerning the use of the pallium, on our asking him what was the ancient custom, he replied that the bishop of the Church of Ravenna used the pallium in all litanies [1657] . But that this was not so we both learnt from others, and it appeared evidently from the letters of the former bishop John, which we shewed to him. But he said what he had been ordered to say. For, at the time when this same John was inhibited by thee from presuming to use the pallium out of order and unadvisedly, he wrote to us that the ancient custom had been this; that the bishop of that city should use the pallium in solemn litanies. We send thee, for thy information, copies of his letters. But when Adeodatus, deacon of the aforesaid Church, at the time when he was here, in like manner pressed us strongly concerning this use of the pallium, we, desiring to ascertain the truth, in like manner had him questioned as to what the custom was: and he, that he might persuade us to believe him, and succeed in obtaining from us what he sought, testified under oath that it had been the ancient custom for the bishop of his city to use the pallium in four or five solemn litanies. Let therefore thy Experience look to the matter diligently, and enquire with all carefulness how many solemn litanies there have been from ancient times. Take care also to make enquiry by calling them, not the solemn, but the greater litanies; that when, through what the aforesaid deacon Adeodatus testified to us and what the letter of the aforesaid bishop John acknowledges, it shall appear how many of these solemn litanies there were, we, knowing how often the pallium used to be worn in litanies, may most willingly grant the privilege. But do not make this enquiry of those who are put forward by the ecclesiastics, but of others whom you know to be impartial: and whatever after careful investigation you discover communicate to us with accuracy, that having ascertained the truth, as we have said, we may relieve the mind of our brother and fellow-bishop, the most reverend Marinianus. __________________________________________________________________
[1657] Marinianus had succeeded John as bishop of Ravenna. For Gregory's dispute with John concerning the use of the pallium, see above, III. 56, 57; V. 11, 15, and below, VI. 61. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXXV.
To Anthemius, Subdeacon.
Gregory to Anthemius, our Neapolitan Sub-deacon [1658] .
How great is our grief, and how great the affliction of our heart, from what has taken place in the regions of Campania we cannot express; but thou mayest thyself gather it from the greatness of the calamity. With regard to this state of things, we send thy Experience by the magnificent Stephen, bearer of these presents, money for the succour of the captives who have been taken, admonishing thee that thou give thy whole attention to the business, and carry it out strenuously; and, in the case of freemen whom thou knowest to have no sufficient means for their own redemption, that thou make haste to redeem them. But, should there be any slaves, and thou findest that their masters are so poor that they cannot come forward to redeem them, hesitate not to recover them also. In like manner also thou wilt take care to redeem the slaves of the Church who have been lost by thy neglect. Further, whomsoever thou shalt have redeemed, thou wilt by all means be at pains to make out a list, containing their names, and a statement of where each is staying, and what he is doing, and where he came from; which list thou mayest bring with thee when thou comest. Moreover, hasten to shew thyself so diligent in this business that those who are to be redeemed may incur no risk through thy negligence, or thou come afterwards to be highly culpable before us. But work especially for this also; that, if possible, thou mayest be able to recover those captives at a moderate price. But set down in writing, with all clearness and nicety, the whole sum expended, and transmit to us this thy written account with speed. The month of May, Indiction 14. __________________________________________________________________
[1658] The occasion of this letter seems to have been some recent aggression of the Lombards in the Neopolitan district, resulting in the capture of many prisoners of war. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXXVII.
To Columbus, Bishop.
Gregory to Columbus, Bishop of Numidia. [1659]
The letters of your Fraternity, full of priestly sweetness, we have received at the hands of Rogatianus the deacon, the bearer of these presents. And their kind expressions rejoiced us much, especially as we were informed through them of what we long to hear of, your welfare. But the devotion of your Holiness we have both known of old; and as you now write, so we hold it to be. For of what kind the sincerity of your Fraternity towards us is we need nothing to satisfy us, since we know it from the love of our own heart which encircles you. We have given to the above-named hearer, whom you commended to us by letter, writings addressed to the Rector of the patrimony of Sicily, bidding him urge the opposite party to do what is just, to the end that, idle excuses being put aside, the whole case in dispute may be speedily brought to an end.
We now inform your Holiness that a certain man has come to us, Peter by name, who asserted that he was a bishop, and requested from us a remedy of his complaint. And at first indeed he related things that might have been deserving of pity; but on enquiry we found things to be very different from what he told us, and his behaviour has exceedingly distressed us. But, inasmuch as, separated as we are by so great a distance, we could by no means learn thoroughly the gist of his case, we have been unable to determine it, being in doubt. But now, seeing that the aforesaid deacon, who is returning to you, has asked that this person should be allowed to go with him, and he himself has requested to be sent to you, both of them knowing that your Holiness has, as becomes you, zeal for the faith and a love of justice, the proposal has been acceptable to us, and we have granted what they asked. Since, then, you being on the spot can ascertain the merits of the case more thoroughly, we exhort you so to observe what is just and canonical towards the same Peter that both the requirements of rectitude may be fulfilled by you in all respects, and his case may be seen to have been judged after the fear of God and the rules of the Church. But, if any one is said to have been privy to, or a partaker in, the things which the aforesaid Peter is accused of, accurate enquiry must be made, and, when the truth is known, judgment in like manner pronounced canonically.
Furthermore, a thing altogether hard to be borne, and hostile to the right faith, has come to our ears; namely that catholics (which is awful to be told) and religious persons [1660] (which is worse) consent to their children and their slaves, or others whom they have in their power, being baptized in the heresy of the Donatists. And so, if this is true, let your Fraternity study with all your power to correct it, to the end that the purity of the faith may through your solicitude stand inviolate, and innocent souls who might be saved by catholic baptism perish not from the infection of heretics. Whosoever, then, of the persons above mentioned has suffered any one belonging to him to be baptized among the Donatists, study with all your power, and with all urgency, to recall such to the catholic faith. But, if any one of such persons should under any pretext endure the doing of this thing in the case of such as are his in future, let him be cut off entirely from the communion of the clergy. __________________________________________________________________
[1659] See II. 48, note 7.
[1660] Religiosi. See I. 61, note 7. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XLIII.
To Venantius, Patrician.
Gregory to Venantius, Patrician, and Ex-monk [1661] .
Your communication to us has found us much distressed from having become aware that offence has arisen between you and John our brother and fellow-bishop, in whose agreement with you we were desirous of rejoicing. For, whatever the cause may have been, rage ought not to have broken out to such a pitch that your armed men, as we have heard, should have burst into the episcopal palace, and committed divers evil deeds in a hostile manner, and that this affair should meanwhile separate you from his paternal charity. Could not the dispute, whatever it may have been, have been quietly arranged, so that neither party might suffer disadvantage, nor good feeling be disturbed? Now it is not unknown to us of what gravity, of what holiness, of what gentleness our above-named brother is. Whence we gather that, unless excessive force of vexation had compelled him, his Fraternity would by no means have resorted to the measure by which you say that you are aggrieved. We, however, on hearing of it by letter from him, at once wrote to him, admonishing him to receive your offerings as before, and not only to allow masses to be celebrated in your house, but, if you wish it, even to officiate himself, and that he ought to have prosecuted his cause without breach of charity. And, inasmuch as we wish none to come or continue to be at variance, we have taken care to renew this same admonition. Hence it is necessary, dearest son, that you, as becomes sons, should shew him the reverence due to a priest, and not provoke his spirit to anger. For with whom will you have assured goodwill, if (which God forbid) you are at variance with your priest? Wherefore, putting away swelling of spirit, try ye so to transact the causes that ye have one with another that both charity may remain inviolate, and what is to your mutual advantage may be peaceably attained. __________________________________________________________________
[1661] Cf. I. 34, note 8. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XLIV.
To John, Bishop.
Gregory to John, Bishop of Syracuse [1662] .
Although there may have been cause to provoke the spirit of your Fraternity not unreasonably to anger, so that you would neither receive the offerings of the Lord Venantius nor allow the sacred solemnities of mass to be celebrated in his house, yet, inasmuch as our earthly interests should be prosecuted in such a manner that no quarrel may avail to sever us from the bond of charity, we therefore exhort your Holiness, as we have already written, that you should both receive the offerings of the aforesaid man with all sweetness and God-pleasing sincerity, and allow the mysteries of the mass to be performed in his house; and that, as we have written, you should, if perchance he should wish it, go there in person, and by celebrating mass with him renew your former friendly feeling. For it is your duty to bestow priestly affection on sons, though still, in causes that may arise, by no means to pretermit, as reason approves, the jurisdiction of your Church. Wherefore, considering this, it is necessary that your Fraternity should try so to demean yourself with discreet moderation with respect to these matters as both to transact advantageously what the nature of the business requires, and not to recede from the grace of paternal charity. __________________________________________________________________
[1662] Cf. preceding Epistle. John, previously archdeacon of Catana, had been elected in the previous year (594) with Gregory's approval as the successor of Maximianus of Syracuse (V. 17), and had recently had the pallium sent him. (VI. 18.). __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XLVI.
To Felix, Bishop of Pisaurum (Pesaro).
Gregory to Felix, Bishop, &c.
We wonder at your Fraternity, that, disregarding the tenor of the precept given you by our predecessor of holy memory, you should consecrate the monastery constructed by John, the bearer of these presents, otherwise than as ancient use demands. For, while it is ordered among other things in the said precept that you should dedicate the place itself without a public mass, still, as we have heard, your chair has been placed there, and the sacred solemnities of mass are there publicly celebrated. If this is true, we hereby exhort you that, putting aside all excuse, you cause your chair to be altogether removed thence, and that henceforth you perform no public masses there. But, as both custom and the tenor of the precept direct, if they should wish mass to be celebrated for them there, let a presbyter be appointed by thee for the purpose [1663] .
Further, we desire that with the favour of God there shall always remain a congregation of servants of God in the same monastery, as the aforesaid John has requested, and as is now the case. As to the cup also which he informs me has been taken away by your Fraternity, if it be so, make haste to restore it. These things, then, let your Holiness so study to fulfil that the aforesaid bearer may have no need to resort to us again on the same account. __________________________________________________________________
[1663] Cf. II. 41. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XLVIII.
To Urbicus, Abbot.
Gregory to Urbicus, Abbot of Saint Hermes, which is situated in Panormus.
Whosoever, incited by divine inspiration, hastens to leave the employments of this world and to be converted to God should so be received with charity, and refreshed in all ways with kind consolations, that, by the help of God, he may delight in all ways to persevere in the state of life which he has chosen. Since, then, Agatho, the bearer of these presents, desires to be converted [1664] in thy Love's monastery, we exhort thee to receive him with all sweetness and love, and by assiduous exhortation kindle his longing for eternal life, and study to be diligently solicitous for his soul's salvation; to the end that, while by thy admonition he shall persist with devoted mind in the service of our God, it may both profit him to have left the world, and his conversion may be to the increase of thine own reward. Know, however, that he is to be so received only if his wife also should wish to be similarly converted. For, when the bodies of both have been made one by the tie of wedlock, it is unseemly that part should be converted and part remain in the world [1665] . __________________________________________________________________
[1664] Conversion has its usual sense of embracing monastic life.
[1665] See also on this subject, XI. 45, XI. 50. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XLIX.
To Palladius, Bishop.
Gregory to Palladius, Bishop of Santones in Gaul (Saintes).
Leuparic your presbyter, the bearer of these presents, when he came to us informed us that your Fraternity has built a church in honour of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul, and also of the martyrs Laurentius and Pancratius, and placed there thirteen altars, of which we learn that four have remained not yet dedicated because of your desiring to deposit there relics of the above-named saints. And, seeing that we have reverently supplied you with relics of the Saints Peter and Paul, and also of the martyrs Laurentius and Pancratius, we exhort you to receive them with reverence, and deposit them with the help of the Lord, providing before all things that supplies for the maintenance of those who serve there be not wanting. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle L.
To Queen Brunichild.
Gregory to Brunichild, Queen of the Franks.
The tenor of your letters, which evinces a religious spirit and the earnestness of a pious mind, causes us not only to commend the purpose of your request, but also to grant willingly what you demand. For indeed it would ill become us to refuse what Christian devotion and the desire of an upright heart solicits, especially as we know that you demand, and embrace with your whole heart, what may both protect the faith of believers, and work no less the salvation of souls. Accordingly, greeting your Excellency with befitting honour, we inform you that to Leuparic, the bearer of these presents, through whom we received your communication, and whom you described as a presbyter, we have handed over, according to your Excellency's request, with the reverence due to them, certain relics of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul. But, that laudable and religious devotion may be more and more conspicuous among you, you must see that these benefits of the saints be deposited with reverence and due honour, and that those who serve in attendance on them be vexed with no burdens or molestations, lest perchance, under the pressure of outward necessity, they be rendered unprofitable and slow in the service of God, and (which God forbid) the benefits of the saints that have been bestowed sustain injury and neglect. Let, then, your Excellency see to their quiet, to the end that, while they are guarded by your bounty from all disquietude, they may render praises to our God with minds undisturbed, and that reward may also accrue to you in the life eternal. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle LI.
To the Brethren going to England (Angliam) [1666] .
Gregory, servant of the servants of God, to the servants of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Since it had been better not to have begun what is good than to return back from it when begun, you must, most beloved sons, fulfil the good work which with the help of the Lord you have begun. Let, then, neither the toil of the journey nor the tongues of evil-speaking men deter you; but with all instancy and all fervour go on with what under God's guidance you have commenced, knowing that great toil is followed by the glory of an eternal reward. Obey in all things humbly Augustine your provost (præposito), who is returning to you, whom we also appoint your abbot, knowing that whatever may be fulfilled in you through his admonition will in all ways profit your souls. May Almighty God protect you with His grace, and grant to me to see the fruit of your labour in the eternal country; that so, even though I cannot labour with you, I may be found together with you in the joy of the reward; for in truth I desire to labour. God keep you safe, most beloved sons. Given the tenth day of the Kalends of August, the fourteenth year of the Emperor our lord Mauricius Tiberius, the most pious Augustus, the thirteenth year of the consulship of our said lord, Indiction 14. __________________________________________________________________
[1666] This, with the eight following letters (51-59), were committed to Augustine, who is spoken of in several of them as the bearer, when he was sent back from Rome to rejoin his companions. Bede (H. E. I. 23), and John the deacon (Vit. S. Greg. II. 33), say that the missionaries--"cum aliquantulum itinerus confecissent" (Bede)--"post dies aliquot" (John Diac.)--were deterred by what they had heard of the difficulties of their undertaking, and sent Augustine to Rome to request leave to give it up and that Gregory sent him back to them with letters of admonition and of commendation. No commendatory letters seem to have been given them when they first set out. Those now sent are addressed to the bishops of Turni (al. Turon), Marseilles, Arles, Vienne, Autun, and Aix in Provenee, to the abbot of Lerins, to Arigius, Patrician of Gaul, to Theodoric and Theodebert, the two boy-kings of Burgundy and Austrasia, and to queen Brunechild their grandmother, who at this time ruled Austrasia as Theodebert's guardian. See Pedigree of Kings of Gaul, p. xxx. The letters which come first in order, 51 and 52, being dated 22 July a.d. 596, we may conclude that the missionaries had been originally despatched in the spring of the same year. They appear to have got as far as the southern coast of Provence, since the letters to the bishop of Aix and the Abbot of Lerins shew that Augustine had already visited them, though not, apparently, any others to whom letters are now addressed. The mission was accompanied by Candidus, sent out as Rector of the patrimony in Gaul (cf. Ep. VII.), who is also commended in the letter. The patrimony appears to have been attended to previously in a way not satisfactory to Gregory by the bishops of Arles (see below, Epp. LIII., LV.). This letter is not found in the Registrum Epistolorum; but given by Bede (I. 23), and by John the Deacon (Vit. S. Greg. lib. ii. c. 34). __________________________________________________________________
Epistle LII.
To Pelagius and Serenus, Bishops.
Gregory to Pelagius of Turni [1667] and Serenus of Masilia (Marseilles) Bishops of Gaul. A paribus [1668] .
Although with priests who have the charity that is well pleasing to God religious men need no commendation, yet, since an apt time for writing has offered itself, we have thought well to send a letter to your Fraternity, mentioning that we have sent into your parts, with the help of the Lord, for the benefit of souls, the servant of God Augustine, of whose earnestness we are assured, with other servants of God. Him your Holiness must needs assist with priestly earnestness, and hasten to afford him your succour. We have also enjoined him, that so you may be the more ready to support him, to make you fully acquainted with the matter he has in hand, knowing that, when it is known to you, you will lend yourselves with entire devotion for God's sake to succour him as the case requires.
Moreover, we commend in all ways to your charity our common son the presbyter Candidus, whom we have sent for the government of the patrimony of our Church. Given on the tenth day of the Kalends of August, Indiction 14. __________________________________________________________________
[1667] De Turnis; in Colbert. Turonis. The latter name itself would seem to denote Tours. But it is not easy to see why a common letter should have been addressed to the Bishops of Tours and Marseilles. And, further, would Tours on the Loire be likely to lie on the route which the missionaries would take to Britain?
[1668] See I. 25, note 8. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle LIII.
To Virgilius, Bishop.
Gregory to Virgilius, Bishop of Arelate (Arles), Metropolitan.
Although we are confident that your Fraternity is intent on good works, and that you come forward of your own accord in causes well-pleasing to God, we nevertheless deem it advantageous to address you with fraternal charity, that, being provoked also by our letters, you may increase the solace which it becomes you voluntarily to bestow. And accordingly we inform your Holiness that we have sent Augustine, the servant of God, the bearer of these presents, with other servants of God, for the winning of souls in the parts whither he is going, as he will be able himself to inform you face to face. In these circumstances you must needs aid him with prayer and assistance, and, where need may require, afford him the support of your succour, and refresh him, as is fit, with fatherly and priestly consolation, to the end that, when he shall have obtained the succour of your Holiness, if he should succeed in winning any gain for God, as we hope he may, you too may be able to gain a reward along with him, having devoutly administered to his good works the abundance of your support. Moreover, as to Candidus the presbyter, our common son, and the little patrimony of our Church, let your Fraternity, as being of one mind with us, study to hold both as commended to you; that so, with the help of your Holiness, something may thence accrue for the sustenance of the poor. Inasmuch, then, as your predecessor held this patrimony for many years, and kept in his own hands the collected payments, let your Fraternity consider whose the moneys are, and to whom they should be paid, and restore them to us, handing them to the above-written presbyter Candidus, our son. For it is very execrable that what has been preserved by the kings of the nations should be said to be taken away by bishops. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle LIV.
To Desiderius and Syagrius, Bishops.
Gregory to Desiderius of Vienna (Vienne), and Syagrius of Augustodunum (Autun), Bishops of Gaul. A paribus [1669] .
Having regard to your sincere charity we are well assured that out of love for Peter, the Prince of the apostles, you will devotedly afford your succour to our men; especially since the nature of the case requires you to give assistance even of your own accord, and the more when you see them labour. Wherefore we inform your Holiness that, the Lord so ordering it, we have despatched Augustine, the servant of God, the bearer of these presents, whose zeal and earnestness are well known to us, with other servants of God, in behalf of souls in those parts; from whose account of things when you have fully learnt what is enjoined on him, let your Fraternity bestow your succour on him in all ways which the case may require, that you may be able, as is becoming and fit, to be helpers of a good work. Let, then, your Fraternity study to shew yourself so devoted in this matter that your action may prove to us the truth of the good report that we have heard of you. We commend to you in all respects our most beloved common son, Candidus the presbyter, to whom we have committed the patrimony of our Church situated in those parts. __________________________________________________________________
[1669] See I. 25, note 8. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle LV.
To Protasius, Bishop.
Gregory to Protasius, Bishop of Aquæ in Gaul (Aix).
How great love of the blessed Peter, Prince of the apostles, distinguishes you is evident, not only from the prerogative of your office, but also from the devotion you bestow on what is to the advantage of his Church. And having learnt that this is the case from the relation of Augustine, servant of God, the bearer of these presents, we rejoice exceedingly for the affection and zeal for truth that is in you; and we give thanks that, though absent in the body, you still shew that you are with us in heart and mind, seeing that you exhibit brotherly charity towards us, as is fit. In order then that actual fact may confirm the good report of you, tell our brother and fellow-bishop Virgilius to hand over to us the payments which his predecessor received for many years and retained in his own hands: for it is the property of the poor. And if perchance, as we do not believe will be the case, he should desire in any way to excuse himself, do you, who know the real truth more exactly, inasmuch as you acted as steward (vicedominus) at that time, explain to him how the matter stands, and urge him not to retain in his hands the property of Saint Peter and of his poor. But, though perhaps our men may not need this, do not refuse your testimony in the case; that so, with regard to the truth as well as to the devotion of your good will, the blessed apostle Peter, for whose love you do this, may respond to you by his intercession both here and in the life to come. We heartily commend to your Holiness the presbyter Candidus, our common son, to whom we have committed the charge of this patrimony. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle LVI.
To Stephen, Abbot [1670] .
Gregory to Stephen, &c.
The account given us by Augustine, servant of God, the bearer of these presents, has made us joyful, in that he has told us that your Love is vigilant as you ought to be; and he further affirms that the presbyters and deacons and the whole congregation live in unanimity and concord. And, since the goodness of presidents is the salutary rule of their subjects, we implore Almighty God to enkindle thee always in good works by the grace of His loving-kindness, and to keep those who are committed to thee from all temptation of diabolical deceit, and grant to them to live with thee in charity and in the manner of life that pleases Him.
But, since the enemy of the human race never rests from plotting against our doings, so as to deceive in some part souls that are serving God, therefore, most beloved son, we exhort thee to exercise vigilantly thy anxious care, and so to keep those who are committed to thee by prayer and heedfulness that the prowling wolf may find no opportunity for tearing the flock: to the end that, when thou shalt have rendered to our God unharmed those of whom thou hast undertaken the charge, He may both of His grace repay thee with rewards for thy labour and multiply in thee longings for eternal life.
We have received the spoons and plates which thou hast sent us, and we thank thy Charity, because thou hast shewn how thou lovest the poor in having sent for their use such things as they need. __________________________________________________________________
[1670] In Cod. Colbert. Stephen is described as "abbati de monasterio quod est Lirino;" i.e. the famous monastery on the island of that name (Lerins) now known as L'ile de St. Honorat. This was probably Stephen's monastery. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle LVII.
To Arigius, Patrician [1671] .
Gregory to Arigius, Patrician of Gaul.
We have learnt from the servant of God, Augustine, the bearer of these presents, how great goodness, how great gentleness, with the charity that is well-pleasing to Christ, is in you resplendent; and we give thanks to Almighty God, who has granted you these gifts of His loving-kindness, through which you may have it in your power to be highly esteemed among men, and--what is truly profitable--glorious in His sight. We therefore pray Almighty God, that He would multiply in you these gifts which He has granted, and keep you with all yours under His protection, and so dispose the doings of your Glory in this world that they may be to your benefit both here, and--what is more to be wished--in the life to come. Saluting, then, your Glory with paternal sweetness, we beg of you that the bearer of these presents, and the servants of God who are with him, may obtain your succour in what is needful, to the end that, while they experience your favour, they may the better fulfil what has been enjoined on them to do.
Furthermore, we commend to you in all respects our son the presbyter Candidus, whom we have sent for the government of the patrimony of our Church which is in your parts; trusting that your Glory will receive a reward in return from our God, if with devout mind you lend your succour to the concerns of the poor. __________________________________________________________________
[1671] The term Patricius was used to designate governors of provinces under the Frank kings. Cf. III. 33, "Dynamio patricio Galliarum," and Greg. Turon. (IV. 24), "Guntramnus rex, amoto Agricola patricio, Celsum patriciatus honore donavit. There were at this time two Burgundian Patricii, one called the Patricius absolutely, residing at Arles, the other at Marseilles (Greg. Turon). __________________________________________________________________
Epistle LVIII.
To Theodoric and Theodebert [1672] .
Gregory to Theodoric and Theodebert, brethren, Kings of the Franks. A paribus [1673] .
Since Almighty God has adorned your kingdom with rectitude of faith, and has made it conspicuous among other nations by the purity of its Christian religion, we have conceived great expectations of you, that you will by all means desire that your subjects should be converted to that faith in virtue of which you are their kings and lords. This being so, it has come to our knowledge that the nation of the Angli is desirous, through the mercy of God, of being converted to the Christian faith, but that the priests in their neighbourhood neglect them, and are remiss in kindling their desires by their own exhortations. On this account therefore we have taken thought to send to them the servant of God Augustine, the bearer of these presents, whose zeal and earnestness are well known to us, with other servants of God. And we have also charged them to take with them some priests from the neighbouring parts, with whom they may be able to ascertain the disposition of the Angli, and, as far as God may grant it to them, to aid their wishes by their admonition. Now, that they may have it in their power to shew themselves efficient and capable in this business, we beseech your Excellency, greeting you with paternal charity, that these whom we have sent may be counted worthy to find the grace of your favour. And, since it is a matter of souls, let your power protect and aid them; that Almighty God, who knows that with devout mind and with all your heart you take an interest in His cause, may propitiously direct your causes, and after earthly dominion bring you to heavenly kingdoms.
Furthermore, we request your Excellency to hold as commended to you our most beloved son, Candidus, a presbyter, and the rector of the patrimony of our Church, to the end that the blessed Peter, Prince of the apostles, may answer you by his intercession, while, looking to the reward, you afford your protection in the concerns of his poor. __________________________________________________________________
[1672] Childebert II. son of Sigebert I. and Brunechild, who had reigned over nearly all the dominions of the Franks in Gaul (see VI. 5, note 5), died in this year, a.d. 596, and was succeeded by his illegitimate son Theodebert II. as king of Austrasia, and by his second son Theoderic II. as king of Burgundy. These two kings were only ten and seven years of age respectively when their father died, and their grandmother Brunechild was appointed guardian of the former. Hence Gregory, writing now after the death of Childebert, addresses formal letters in identical terms to the two minors, but another (Ep. LIX.) to Brunechild. See Pedigree of Kings of Gaul, p. xxx.
[1673] See I. 25, note 8. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle LIX.
To Brunichild, Queen of the Franks.
Gregory to Brunichild, &c.
The Christianity of your Excellence has been so truly known to us of old that we do not in the least doubt of your goodness, but rather hold it to be in all ways certain that you will devoutly and zealously concur with us in the cause of faith, and supply most abundantly the succour of your religious sincerity. Being for this reason well assured, and greeting you with paternal charity, we inform you that it has come to our knowledge how that the nation of the Angli, by God's permission, is desirous of becoming Christian, but that the priests who are in their neighbourhood have no pastoral solicitude with regard to them. And lest their souls should haply perish in eternal damnation, it has been our care to send to them the bearer of these presents, Augustine the servant of God, whose zeal and earnestness are well known to us, with other servants of God; that through them we might be able to learn their wishes, and, as far as is possible, you also striving with us, to take thought for their conversion. We have also charged them that for carrying out this design they should take with them presbyters from the neighbouring regions. Let, then, your Excellency, habitually prone to good works, on account as well of our request as of regard to the fear of God, deign to hold him as in all ways commended to you, and earnestly bestow on him the favour of your protection, and lend the aid of your patronage to his labour and, that he may have the fullest fruit thereof, provide for his going secure under your protection to the above-written nation of the Angli, to the end that our God, who has adorned you in this world with good qualities well-pleasing to Him, may cause you to give thanks here and in eternal rest with His saints.
Furthermore, commending to your Christianity our beloved son Candidus, presbyter and rector of the patrimony of our Church which is situated in your parts, we beg that he may in all things obtain the favour of your protection. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle LX.
To Eulogius, Bishop.
Gregory to Eulogius, Bishop of Alexandria.
Charity, the mother and guardian of all that is good, which binds together in union the hearts of many, regards not as absent him whom it has present in the mind's eye. Since then, dearest brother, we are held together by the root of charity, neither will bodily absence nor distance of places have power to assert any claim over us, inasmuch as we who are one are surely not far from each other. Now we wish to have always this common charity with the rest of our brethren. Yet there is something that binds us in a certain peculiar way to the Church of Alexandria, and compels us, as it were by a special law, to be the more prone to love it. For, as it is known to all that the blessed evangelist Mark was sent by Saint Peter the apostle, his master, to Alexandria, so we are bound together in the unity of this master and his disciple, so that I seem to preside over the see of the disciple because of the master, and you over the see of the master because of the disciple.
Moreover to this unity of hearts we are bound also by the merits of your Holiness, since we know that you follow profitably the ordinances of your founder, and feel how you betake yourself with entire devotion to the bosom of your master, whence sprung the preaching of salvation in your parts. And so, when we received the letters of your Holiness, as much as our heart rejoiced in your brotherly visitation, so much is it oppressed with sadness for the untold burdens which you refer to, and we groan with you in brotherly sympathy for your grief. But, since a shaking of various kinds is extending itself everywhere, in the midst of a common need one should grieve less for one's own, but study rather, by patiently enduring, to overcome what we cannot altogether avoid.
But what we ourselves are suffering from the swords of the Lombards in the daily plundering and mangling and slaying of our citizens, we refuse to tell, lest, while speaking of our own sorrows, we should increase yours from the sympathy which you bestow upon us.
Furthermore, a little time ago we sent to Sabinianus, who represents our Church in the royal city, a letter from ourselves, which he should have sent on to your Fraternity [1674] . If you have received it, we wonder why you have sent us no reply to it. And accordingly, since caution must be taken lest the pride of any one whatever introduce offence in the Churches, it is needful that you should carefully peruse it, and with all diligence and full bent of mind maintain what pertains to your dignity and to the peace of the Church.
Now may Almighty God, who by the grace of His loving-kindness has conferred on you the disposition and charity that becomes a priest, protect you in His service, and keep you within and without from all adversity, and mercifully grant that the souls of wanderers may be converted to Himself by your preaching.
We have received with the charity that was due to the bearer of these presents, our common son the deacon Isidore, who brought to us the benediction [1675] of Saint Mark the evangelist. And you indeed, being resplendent in the merit of a good life, have sent to us the sweetly smelling word, which is nigh unto Paradise. But we, to wit because we are sinners, send you wood from the West, which, being suitable for the building of ships, signifies the tumult of our mind, as being ever tossed in the sea-waves; and we wished indeed to send larger pieces, but the ship was not large enough to hold them [1676] . In the month of August, Indiction 14. __________________________________________________________________
[1674] See V. 43, which is probably the letter here referred to, being one sent to the two patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch, urging them to join in resisting the assumption of the title of universal Bishop by the patriarch of Constantinople.
[1675] Benedictionem, with reference to the present of sweet wood that had been sent. Cf. 2 Kings v. 15, "Take a blessing of thy servant."
[1676] Cf. VII. 40; IX. 78. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle LXI.
To Castorius, Notary [1677] .
Gregory to Castorius, &c.
The magnificent lord Andreas presses me continually about restoring the use of the pallium in the Church of Ravenna according to ancient custom. And thou knowest that the bishop John wrote to me that it had been the custom for the bishops of the said Church to use the pallium in solemn litanies [1678] . Adeodatus, deacon of that church, when he besought me earnestly on the same subject, satisfied me by oath that the bishops of the said place were accustomed to use the pallium in litanies four times in the year. But the aforesaid lord Andreas says in his letters that the bishop of Ravenna was in the habit of using the pallium in litanies at all times except in Lent. And these litanies, which he does not blush to say were daily, he asserts to be solemn ones. Whence I have been altogether astonished. But let thy Experience regard no man's person, no man's words; keep the fear of God and rectitude only before thine eyes, and enquire of senior persons, and of the Archdeacon of that same Church, who would not, I think, perjure himself for the honour of another, and of others of older standing who had been in sacred orders before the times of bishop John, or if there are any others of riper age not in holy orders; and let them come before the body of Saint Apollinaris, and touching his sepulchre swear what had been the custom before the times of bishop John; since, as thou knowest, he was a man who presumed greatly and endeavoured in his pride to arrogate many things to himself. And whatever may be sworn to by faithful and grave men, according to the subjoined form, we desire to be retained in the same Church. But see that thou act not negligently, and that no one corrupt thy faithfulness and devotion in this matter; for thy zeal I know. Act assiduously, yet so that the aforesaid Church be not lowered in a way contrary to justice, but that it retain the usage that existed before the times of bishop John. Moreover, for satisfying thyself, do not enquire of two or three persons, but of as many as thou canst find of old standing and grave character, that so we may neither deny to that Church what has been of ancient custom, nor concede to it what has been coveted and attempted newly. But do all kindly and sweetly, so that both thy action may be strict and thy tongue gentle. The sword [1679] which has been left at Ravenna, as we have already written, bring hither with thee; and carefully attend to what our son Boniface the deacon and the magnificent Maurentius the chartularius have written to thee about.
I swear by the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the inseparable Trinity of Divine Power, and by this body of the blessed martyr Apollinaris, that out of favour to no person, and without any advantage to myself intervening, I give my testimony. But this I know, and am personally cognizant of, that, before the times of the late bishop John, the Bishop of Ravenna, in the presence of this or that apocrisiarius of the Apostolic See, on such and such days, had the custom of using the pallium, and I am not aware that he had herein usurped latently, or in the absence of the apocrisiarius. __________________________________________________________________
[1677] On the subject of this Epistle, cf. above, Ep. XXXIV., with references in note.
[1678] Cf. V. 11; VI. 34.
[1679] Spatam, a word usually signifying a kind of sword. Cf. VI. 24, where this same spata is referred to. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle LXIII.
To Gennadius, Patrician [1680] .
Gregory to Gennadius, Patrician of Africa.
We doubt not that your Excellency remembers how two years ago we wrote in behalf of Paul our brother and fellow-bishop, asking you to afford him the support of your Dignity in his desire to come to us on account of the trouble he was said to be undergoing from persecution on the part of the Donatists, to the end that, since it had been reported to us that he could get no aid against them there, we might, after ascertaining the truth, give him advice with fraternal sympathy, and treat with him as to what should be done in the way of a wholesome arrangement against the madness of pestiferous presumption. And, so far as our aforesaid brother gave us to understand, he not only failed to get succour from any one, but was prevented by various hindrances from being able to come with safety to the Roman city. Yet, when we had caused your epistle to be read to him, he replied that he is not suffering from the ill-will of certain persons because he repressed the Donatists, but rather says that he is in disfavour with many for his defence of the Catholic faith; and he told me many things besides, which, since this is not a fit time for mentioning them, we have thought best to keep to ourselves.
Since, then, the question before us is not one of earthly affairs, but of the health of souls, and your assertion and his are different, we have been unable to say anything particularly in reply, not having investigated the truth, seeing that, when we received the letters of your Excellency, we were confined by bodily sickness. But when Almighty God, if it should please Him, shall have restored us to our former health, we will sift the truth as we can by diligent enquiry. And according to what we may be able to learn we will so settle the case through the mercy of God that not only the health of souls in the cure whereof you deign to take an interest, lost now by them that err, may be restored, but also that which the maintainers of the true faith still possess may, through the protecting grace of our Redeemer, be preserved.
But with regard to the above-named bishop, whom you assert to be deprived of communion, we greatly wonder how it is that a letter from your Excellency, and not from his primate, has announced this to us. __________________________________________________________________
[1680] On the subject of this letter, see IV. 34, 35. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle LXV.
To Mauricius, Emperor.
Gregory to Mauricius Augustus.
Amidst the cares of warfare and innumerable anxieties which you sustain in your unwearied zeal for the government of the Christian republic, it is a great cause of joy to me along with the whole world that your Piety ever watches over custody of the faith whereby the empire of our lords is resplendent. Whence I fully trust that, as you guard the causes of God with the love of a religious mind, so God guards and aids yours with the grace of His Majesty. Now after what manner the serenity of your Piety, out of regard to righteousness and zeal for the purest religion, has been moved against the most flagitious pravity of the Donatists, the tenor of the commands which you have sent most clearly shews. But the most reverend bishops who have come from the African province assert that these have been so disregarded through ill-advised connivance that neither is the judgment of God held in fear there, nor are the imperial commands so far carried into effect; adding also this: that in the aforesaid province, through the bribes of the Donatists prevailing, the Catholic faith is publicly let to sale. But on the other hand the glorious Gennadius [1681] has likewise complained of one of those who made such complaints: and two others also have borne like testimony with him on the subject. But, inasmuch as in this case a secular judge was concerned, I have thought it right to send these bishops to the footsteps of your Piety, that they may represent in person to your most serene ears what they declare themselves to have endured for the catholic faith.
For these reasons I beseech the Christianity of my lords, for the weal of their souls and life of their most pious offspring, to give orders by a strict mandate for the punishment of such as you find to be such as have been described, and to arrest with the hand of rescue the ruin of those who are perishing, and to apply the medicine of correction to insane minds, and cure them of the poisonous bite of error; that so, the darkness of pestiferous pravity having been driven away by the remedy of your provision, and the true faith having shed abroad in those parts the rays of its serenity, heavenly triumph may await you before the eyes of our Redeemer, because whomsoever you defend outwardly from the enemy, them you also set free inwardly from the poison of diabolical fraud; which is a still more glorious thing. __________________________________________________________________
[1681] Gennadius was the Exarch of Africa. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle LXVI.
To Athanasius, Presbyter.
Gregory to Athanasius, Presbyter of Isauria.
As we are afflicted and mourn for those whom the error of heretical pravity has cut off from the unity of the Church, so we rejoice with those whom their profession of the catholic faith retains within her bosom. And, as it is our duty to oppose the impiety of the former with pastoral solicitude, so it is fitting for us to bestow favour on the pious professions of the latter, and to declare their views to be sound. And accordingly, a suspicion of unsoundness in the faith having arisen against thee, Athanasius, presbyter of the monastery of Saint Mile, called Tamnacus, which is established in the province of Lycaonia, thou, in order that the integrity of the profession of faith might appear, didst elect to have recourse to the Apostolical See over which we preside, asserting also that, having been corporally chastised, thou hadst done some things unjustly and impetuously. And, although things done under compulsion by no means fall under the censure of the canons, and they are rightly accounted to be of no weight (since he himself invalidates them who compels what is unjust to be confessed and done), and though that confession is rather to be received and embraced which is shewn to proceed from the spontaneous will, as is known to be the case in that which thou madest before us;--yet still, to avoid the possibility of uncertainty, we took the precaution of writing about thee to our brother and fellow-bishop, the prelate of the city of Constantinople, that he might inform us by letter of what had been done. He, after being often admonished by us, wrote in reply to the effect that a volume had been found in thy possession, which contained many heretical statements, and that on this account he had been incensed against thee. He having lent this to us in his desire to satisfy us, we read the earlier portions of it attentively: and inasmuch as we found in it manifest poison of heretical pravity, we forbade its being read any more. But, since thou hast assured us that thou hadst read it in simplicity, and, in order to cut off all ground for uncertain suspicion, hast handed to us a paper in thine own handwriting in which expounding thy faith, thou hast most plainly condemned all heresies in general, or whatever is opposed to the integrity of the Catholic faith or profession, and hast declared that thou hadst always received and didst still receive all that the four holy Ecumenical synods receive, and hadst condemned and didst still condemn what they condemn, and hast promised also to accept and hold to that synod which was held in the times of the emperor Justinian concerning the Three Chapters, and, being forbidden by us to read that same volume in which the poison of pestiferous error is interwoven, rejecting also and condemning all that in it is said or latently implied against the integrity of the Catholic faith, thou hast promised that thou wilt not read it again;--we, moved by these reasons (thy faith also having clearly appeared to us from the paper under thine own hand, God guarding thee, to be catholic), decree thee to be, according to thy profession, free from all stain of heretical perversity, and catholic; and we pronounce that thou hast proved thyself, by the grace of Christ Jesus our Saviour to be in all things a professor and follower of the unadulterated faith: and we give thee free licence, notwithstanding all, to return to thy monastery, resuming thy place and rank.
We wish to write also on this matter to our most beloved brother, the prelate of the city of Constantinople, who has been ordained in the place of the aforesaid holy John [1682] . But, since it is the custom that we should not write before his synodical epistle has reached us, we have therefore delayed. But, after it has reached us, we will inform him of these things when we find a convenient opportunity. __________________________________________________________________
[1682] Cyriacus (a.d. 595) succeeded John the Faster as patriarch of Constantinople. For the letter written afterwards written to him with reference to Athanasius, cf. VII. 5. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Book VII.
Epistle II.
To Columbus, Bishop.
Gregory to Columbus, Bishop of Numidia [1683] .
We received at the hands of the bearer, your deacon, the epistle of your Fraternity, in which you informed us of what had been done among you with regard to the person of the bishop Paul. This has been done so late that he could not now have appeared here in person. For his Excellency also, our son Gennadius the Patrician, sent his chancellor to us with reference to the same case. But when we had caused enquiry to be made whether he was willing to plead against him [i.e. against the bishop Paul] before us, he replied that he had been by no means sent with this intent but had only brought hither certain three persons from his Church who would allege many things against him. While, then, we neither found him prepared to commence an action, nor were moved by the quality of those persons to regard them as fit accusers of a bishop, we could not gainsay or offer hindrance to the often before-mentioned bishop Paul, who petitioned us in the hope of having leave given him to resort to the royal city; but we presently allowed him according to his petition, with two others whom he should take with him, to set forth. If, then, there have been any things that could be reasonably said against him, the proper course would have been for him to come here at once, and for your Fraternity to inform us of all particulars, as you have now done. For, as to your having signified to us that you suffer from the enmities of many on account of our frequently visiting you by our letters, there is no doubt, most reverend brother, that the good suffer from the grudges of the bad, and that those who are intent on divine works are harassed by the oppositions of the perverse. But, in proportion as these bad things are around you, ought you to be more instantly occupied with the care of the government committed to you, and to watch for the custody of the flock of Christ; and in proportion as the contrariety of unrighteous men presses upon you, ought the care of pastoral solicitude to inflame you to be more active, and very certain of the promised reward, to the end that you may be able to offer to the chief Shepherd gain from the work given you to do. __________________________________________________________________
[1683] On the subject of this letter, see IV. 34, 35: also VI. 63. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle IV.
To Cyriacus, Bishop.
Gregory to Cyriacus, Bishop of Constantinople.
We have received with becoming charity our common sons, George the presbyter and Theodore your deacon; and we rejoice that you have passed from the care of ecclesiastical business to the government of souls, since, according to the voice of the Truth, He that is faithful in a little will be faithful also in much (Luke xvi. 10). And to the servant who administers well it is said, Because thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things (Matth. xxv. 23); to whom also it is presently said further with respect to eternal retribution, Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord. Now you say in your letter that you had exceedingly wished for rest. But in this you shew that you have fitly assumed pastoral responsibility, since, as a place of rule should be denied to those who covet it, so it should be offered to those who fly from it. And no man taketh this honour unto himself, but he that is called of God, as was Aaron (Hebr. v. 4). And again the same excellent preacher says, If one died far all, then all died; and Christ died for all. It remaineth that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again (2 Cor. v. 14, 15). And to the shepherd of holy Church it is said, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me? Feed My sheep (John xxi. 17). From which words it appears that, if one who is able refuses to feed the sheep of Almighty God, he shews that he does not love the chief Shepherd. For if the Only-begotten of the Father, for accomplishing the good of all, came forth from the secrecy of the Father into the midst of us, what shall we say, if we prefer our secrecy to the good of our neighbours? Thus rest is to be desired by us with all our heart; and yet for the advantage of many it should sometimes be laid aside. For, as we ought with full desire to fly from occupation, so, if there should be a want of some one to preach, we must needs put a willing shoulder under the burden of occupation. And this we are taught by the conduct of two prophets [1684] , one of whom attempted to shun the office of preaching, while the other desired it. For to the Lord who sent him Jeremias replied saying, Ah, Lord God, I cannot speak; for I am a child (Jer. i. 6). And when Almighty God sought for some one to preach, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Isaias offered himself of his own accord, saying, Here am I, send me (Isai. vi. 8). Lo, different voices proceeded outwardly from the two, but they flowed from the same fountain of love.
For indeed there are two precepts of charity; to wit, the love of God and of one's neighbour. Wherefore Isaias, wishing to profit his neighbours by an active life, desires the office of preaching; but Jeremias, longing to cling assiduously to the love of his Maker by a contemplative life, protests against being sent to preach. What, then, one laudably desired the other laudably shrunk from: the latter lest by speaking he should lose the gains of silent contemplation; the former lest by keeping silence he should feel the loss of diligent work. But this is nicely to be observed in both, that he who refused did not resist finally, and he who wished to be sent saw himself previously purged by a coal from the altar; that so no one who has not been purged should dare to approach sacred ministries, nor any one whom heavenly grace chooses refuse proudly under a show of humility.
Moreover I find you in your epistles seeking with great longing after serenity of mind, and panting for tranquillity of thought apart from perturbation. But I know not in what manner your Fraternity can attain to this. For one who has undertaken the pilotage of a ship must needs watch all the more as he further recedes from shore, so as sometimes to foresee from signs the coming storms; sometimes, when they come, either, if they are small, to ride over them in a straight course, or, if they swell violently, to avoid them as they rush on by steering sideways; and often to watch alone when all who are without charge of the ship are at rest. How, moreover, having undertaken the burden of pastoral charge, can you have serenity of thought, seeing that it is written, Behold giants groan under the waters (Job xxvi. 5)? For, according to the words of John, The waters are peoples (Rev. xvii. 15). And the groaning of giants under the waters means that whoso in this world has increased in degree of power, as though in a sort of massive size of body, feels the load of greater tribulation by so much the more as he has taken on himself the care of ruling peoples. But, if the power of the Holy Spirit breathes upon the afflicted mind, forthwith what was done bodily for the people of Israel takes place with us spiritually. For it is written, But the children of Israel walked upon dry land in the midst of the sea (Exod. xiv. 29). And through the prophet the Lord promises saying, When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee, and the rivers shall not overflow thee (Isai. xliii. 2). For the rivers overflow those whom the active business of this world confounds with perturbation of mind. But he who is sustained in mind by the grace of the Holy Spirit passes through the waters, and yet is not overflowed by the rivers, because in the midst of crowds of peoples he so proceeds along his way as not to sink the head of his mind beneath the active business of the world.
I also, who, unworthy as I am, have come to a place of rule, had sometimes determined to seek some place of retirement: but, seeing the Divine counsels to be opposed to me, I submitted the neck of my heart to my Maker's yoke; especially reflecting on this, that no hidden places whatever can save the soul without the grace of God; and this we observe sometimes, when even saints go astray. For Lot was righteous in the depraved city itself, and sinned on the mountain (Gen. xix.). But why speak of these instances, when we know of greater ones? For what is pleasanter than Paradise? What safer than Heaven? And yet man out of Paradise, and the angel from heaven, by sinning fell. His power, then, should be sought, His grace implored, without whom we are nowhere without fault, with whom we are nowhere without righteousness. We should, then, take care that perturbation of thought get not the better of our minds; for it can by no means be entirely got rid of. For whosoever is in a place of rule must needs have to think sometimes even of earthly things, and to have a care also of external things, that the flock committed to him may be able to subsist for accomplishing what it has to do. But it should be most carefully seen to, that this same care pass not due measure, and that, when lawfully admitted into the heart, it be not allowed to become excessive. Whence it is rightly said through Ezekiel [1685] , Let not the priests shave their heads, nor suffer their locks to grow long; but polling let them poll their heads (Ezek. xliv. 20). For what are hairs in the head by signification but thoughts in the mind? For, rising above the brain insensibly, they denote cares of the present life, which from negligent perception, since they come on sometimes importunely, advance as it were without our feeling them. Since, then, all who are over others ought indeed to have outward anxieties, and yet not to devote themselves to them exceedingly, the priests are rightly forbidden either to shave the head or to let their locks grow long, so that they may neither entirely cut off from themselves carnal thoughts for the life of their subjects, nor again allow them to grow too much. And it is also there well said, Polling let them poll their heads; meaning that the anxieties of a temporal charge should both proceed as far as is needful, and yet should be soon cut short, lest they grow to an immoderate length. While therefore both, through external provision administered, the life of bodies is protected, and again intentness of heart is not hindered through the same being immoderate, the hairs on the head of the priest are kept to cover the skin, and cut short so as not to veil the eyes.
Furthermore, we have received in full faith your letters addressed to us, and give thanks to Almighty God, who, by the mutual confession of the faithful, guards the coat that is without seam woven from the top throughout, that is to say His Church, in the unity of grace, from all rent of error; and against the deluge (so to speak) of so many sins of the perishing world constructs an ark of many planks in which the elect of Almighty God may be preserved unto life. For, when we in our turn send the confession of our faith to you, and you shew your charity towards us, what are we doing in holy Church but smearing the ark with pitch; lest any wave of error enter, and kill all the spiritual as being men, and the carnal as being beasts.
But, when you have wisely professed a right faith, it remains doubtless that you should keep the more warily the peace of hearts, because of what the Truth says, Have salt in yourselves, and have peace one with another (Mark ix. 50). And Paul the apostle admonishes, saying, Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (Ephes. iv. 3). And again he says, Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see God (Hebr. xii. 14). Which peace indeed you will then truly have with us, if you turn away from the pride of a profane name, according to what the same teacher of the Gentiles says, O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane novelties of words (1 Tim. vi. 20). For indeed it is too bad, if these who have been made preachers of humility should glory in the elation of a vain name, when the true preacher says, But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ (Gal. vi. 14.). He then is truly glorious who glories not in temporal power, but, for the name of Christ, glories in His passion. Herein therefore we embrace you from the bottom of our heart, herein we recognize you as priests, if, rejecting the vanity of words, you occupy the place of holiness with holy humility. For behold, we have been scandalized by this impious appellation, and retain in our mind and express in words by no means slight complaints. But your Fraternity knows how the Truth says, If thou offerest thy gift before the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee, leave there thy gift, and go thy way to be first reconciled to thy brother, and then thou shalt come and offer thy gift (Matth. v. 23, 24). Herein is to be considered, that, while every fault is done away by the offering of sacrifice, so great is the evil of offence engendered in another's heart that from one who has so sinned the Lord accepts not the sacrifice itself which is wont to do away sin. Take heed then with speed to wipe off cause of offence from your heart, that Almighty God may be able to regard as acceptable the sacrifice of your offering.
Furthermore, while you have truly and accurately professed the right faith, we find that among those whom you have held to be condemned by the most holy general synods you have condemned a certain Eudoxius; whose name we have not found mentioned in the Latin language either in synods or in the books of the bishops of blessed memory, Epiphanius, Augustin, or Philaster, whom we know to have been the chief disputants against heretics [1686] . Now if any one of the catholic Fathers really condemns him, we undoubtedly follow their opinion. If, however, in your synodical epistle you have wished to condemn by name those also who, apart from the holy synods, are condemned in the writings of the Fathers, your Fraternity has mentioned too few by many; but if those whom the general synods reject, then too many by this one. But in the midst of all these things it is to be remembered, that in order that we may be free to profess the true faith and to order whatever has to be done in peace and concord, we ought to pray incessantly for the life of our most serene lords and of their offspring, that Almighty God would subdue barbarous nations under their feet, and grant them long and happy lives, to the end that through a Christian empire the faith which is in Christ may reign. __________________________________________________________________
[1684] What follows about Isaiah and Jeremiah occurs also in the Pastoralis Cura, I. 7.
[1685] The following fanciful interpretation of Ezekiel's direction to priests is found also, almost word for word, in the Pastoralis Cura, II. 7. See note there.
[1686] It is a sign of Gregory's scanty knowledge of the history of controversies that so far he seems never to have heard of so noted an Arian leader as Eudoxius, whose followers, under the name of Eudoxians, had been specifically condemned in the 1st Canon of the first general Council of Constantinople. But it appears from a subsequent letter (VII. 34), that there was no copy at Rome of the canons of that Council, which had not in fact been accepted there, probably because of the 3rd Canon, which assigned a primacy of honour after Rome to the See of Constantinople as being new Rome. When he wrote this subsequent letter, he had become aware that the Eudoxians had been so condemned, but still had no idea who Eudoxius had been. The fact was that he was not well versed in past ecclesiastical history and, being totally ignorant of Greek, could only consult such Latin writings as were within his reach; and in these he had failed to find Eudoxius mentioned. He applied, however, to the patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch for further information on the subject (see VII. 34, and VIII. 30), and was at length satisfied that Eudoxius had been a veritable heretic, having been condemned by many Greek Fathers of repute, and concluded that he was "manifestly slain, against whom our heroes have cast so many darts" (VIII. 30). __________________________________________________________________
Epistle V.
To Cyriacus, Bishop.
Gregory to Cyriacus, Bishop of Constantinople.
When in time past I represented the Apostolic See in the royal city, I became acquainted with the good qualities of your Holiness. And I greatly rejoice that the care of souls has been committed to you. And though unworthy, I beseech Almighty God with all the prayers in my power that He would even increase His grace in you, and cause you to gather gain of souls for the eternal country. But, whereas you say that you are weak for this work that has been put upon you, we know that the first virtue is acknowledgment of infirmity; and from this we gather that you can fulfil well the ministry you have undertaken, that we see how, out of humility, you acknowledge your own infirmity. For we are all infirm; but he is more infirm who has not strength to consider his infirmity. But you, most blessed brethren, are for this reason strong, that, distrusting your own strength, you trust in the power of Almighty God.
I cannot, however, express by the words of a letter how much my heart is bound to your Charity. But I pray that Almighty God may by the gift of His grace multiply the same charity that is between us, and may take away all occasion of offence, lest the holy Church, united by the profession of the true faith, and compacted by conjunction of the hearts of the faithful, should suffer any damage from priests disputing with each other, which God forbid. I at any rate, in all that I speak, in all that I say, against the proud conduct of certain persons, still, through the bounty of Almighty God, never relinquish custody of inward charity; but so execute outwardly what belongs to justice as by no means to disregard inwardly what belongs to love and kindness. And do you also ever return my love, and guard what belongs to peace and kindness; that, remaining of one mind, so as to allow no dissension to come in between us, we may be better able from the very unity of our hearts to obtain what we seek from the Lord.
Furthermore, I commend to your Holiness John, presbyter of Chalcedon, and Athanasius of Isauria, that no one may set you against them by underhand misrepresentations; for I have thoroughly examined their faith, and have found them sound in their confessions, which have also been given in writing.
Now may the Holy Trinity protect you with His hand, and render you always vigilant and careful in the custody of souls, to the end that in the eternal retribution you may be counted worthy to be crowned, not only for your own work, but also for the amelioration of your subjects. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle VI.
To Mauricius Augustus.
Gregory to Mauricius Augustus.
Almighty God, who has made your Piety to be the guardian of ecclesiastical peace, preserves you by the same faith which, through unity among priests, you preserve; and when you submit your heart humbly to the yoke of heavenly loving-kindness, it is brought to pass by heavenly grace that you tread your enemies under the foot of valour. For it cannot be of small advantage that, when John of holy memory had departed this life, your Piety long hesitated, and somewhat deferred the time, while seeking counsel in the fear of Almighty God, in order, to wit, that the cause of God might be ordered, as it should be, with great fear [1687] . Whence also I think that my brother and fellow-priest Cyriacus is proved to be exceedingly fit for pastoral rule, in that the long deliberation of your Piety has raised him to this degree. And we all know how diligent and how practised he has long been in the administration of ecclesiastical affairs. Whence also I doubt not that it has been brought about by Divine ordering that one who had administered the least things well should fitly undertake the greater, and should pass from the charge of affairs to the government of souls. Wherefore in all our prayers we beseech Almighty God to repay this good work to the Serenity of our lords and to their pious offspring both in the present world and also with a perpetual recompense, and to grant to my aforesaid brother and fellow-priest, who has been put over the Lord's flock, to shew himself fully solicitous in the care of souls; that he may be able irreprovably both to correct what is wrong in his subjects and to foster what is right unto further increase; to the end that the judgment of your Piety concerning him may be approved, not only before men, but also before the eyes of the Supernal Majesty.
The venerable men, George the presbyter and Theodore the deacon, in consideration of the command of my lords and the imminence of the winter season, I have not allowed to be delayed in this city. __________________________________________________________________
[1687] What is said here shews that the appointment of the Patriarchs of Constantinople rested in fact entirely with the Emperor. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle VII.
To Peter, Domitian, and Elpidius.
Gregory to Peter, Domitian, and Elpidius, Bishops [1688] .
I rejoice exceedingly that you welcomed with great joy the ordination of the most holy Cyriacus, my brother and fellow-priest. And since we have learnt from the preaching of Paul the apostle that If one member rejoice, all the members rejoice with it (1 Cor. xii. 26), you must needs consider with how great exultation I rejoice with you in this thing, wherein not one member, but many members of Christ have rejoiced. Nevertheless, so far as I have been able to consider your Fraternity's letters on a cursory perusal, great joy has carried you away into immoderate praise of this my brother. For you say that he has appeared in the Church like the sun, so that you all cried out, This is the day which the Lord hath made; let us rejoice and be glad in it (Ps. cxvii. 24) [1689] . Yet surely this is a promise of the life to come, seeing that it is said, The righteous shall shine forth as the sun (Matth. xiii. 43; Wisd. iii. 7). For, in whatsoever virtue any one may excel, how can he shine forth as the sun while still in the present life, wherein The corruptible body presseth down the soul, and the earthly tabernacle weigheth down the mind that museth upon many things (Wisd. ix. 15); wherein We see another law in our members warring against the law of our mind, and bringing us into captivity by the law of sin which is in our members (Rom. vii. 23); wherein Even in ourselves we have the answer of death, that we should not trust in ourselves (2 Cor. i. 9); wherein also the Prophet cries aloud, Fear and trembling are come upon me, and darkness hath covered me (Ps. liv. 6) [1690] ? For it is written also, A wise man abideth as the sun; a fool changeth as the moon (Ecclus. xxvii. 12); where the comparison of the sun is not applied to the splendour of his brightness, but to perseverance in well-doing. But the good beginning of his ordination could not as yet be praised by you with regard to perseverance. And as to your saying that you cried out, This is the day which the Lord hath made, you ought to have considered of whom this is said. For what comes before is this; The stone which the builders refused, the same is made the head-stone of the corner. This is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes (Ps. cxvii. 22) [1691] . And with regard to this same stone it is forthwith added, This is the day which the Lord hath made. For He who for strength of building is said to be a stone, for the grace of illumination is called the Day, being also made, because He became incarnate. In Him we are enjoined to rejoice and be glad, because He has overcome in us the darkness of our error by the light of His excellence. In praise of a creature, then, that expression ought not to have been used which is suitable to the Creator alone.
But why should I find fault with these things, knowing as I do how joy carries away the mind? For your charity engendered in you great gladness, which gladness of heart the tongue applauding followed. This being so, the praise which charity found to hand cannot now be called a fault. But to me concerning my most holy brother there should have been briefly said what I might accept with satisfaction, seeing that I knew him to be one who has long given to me especially this proof of his greatness; that, having been occupied in so many affairs of ecclesiastical administration, he has kept a tranquil heart in the midst of turbulent throngs, and always restrained himself with a gentle bearing. And this indeed is no small commendation of a great and unshaken mind, not to have been perturbed among the perturbations of business.
Furthermore, your Fraternity should be instant in continual prayers, that Almighty God may guard in our aforesaid brother and fellow-priest what has been well begun, and ever lead him on to what is better still. This should ever be the prayer of you, most holy ones, and of the people subject to him. For the deserts of rulers and peoples are so connected with each other that often the lives of subjects are made worse from the fault of those who are over them, and often the lives of pastors fall off from the ill desert of peoples. For that the evil doings of one who is over others does very great harm to those who are under him the Pharisees are evidence, of whom it is written, Ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men. For ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in (Matth. xxiii. 13). And that the fault of peoples does much harm to the life of pastors we perceive in what David did (2 Kings ii. 24). For he, praised by the testimony of God, he, conscious of heavenly mysteries, being inflated by the tumour of hidden elation, sinned in numbering the people; and yet the punishment fell upon the people for David's sin. Why was this? Because in truth according to the desert of subject peoples are the hearts of rulers disposed. Now the righteous Judge rebuked the fault of the sinner by visitation on those on account of whom he sinned. But, because he himself, waxing proud of his own will, was not free from fault, he himself also received punishment of his fault. For the fierce wrath, which smote the people bodily, prostrated also the ruler of the people with inmost sorrow of heart. Consider therefore these things mutually; and, even as he who is put over you and over the people should intercede for all, so should all of you pray for his conversation and manners, that before Almighty God both you may profit by imitation of him, and he may be aided by your deserts. Further, let us all with one accord pray continually with great weeping to the utmost of our powers for our most serene lords and their pious offspring, that protecting heavenly grace may guard their lives, and subdue the necks of the nations to the Christian empire. __________________________________________________________________
[1688] Who these bishops were, who had assisted at the ordination of Cyriacus and sent a report of it to Gregory, does not appear. In the objection taken by the latter to the language of laudation with which the new patriarch had been hailed at Constantinople we may perhaps detect something of his habitual jealousy of the assumptions of the Constantinopolitan See. Of Cyriacus himself he appears to have had a high opinion and to have welcomed his accession, hoping at first that he would renounce the offensive title of oecumenical bishop which had been assumed by John Jejunatur. In this, however, he was disappointed, and afterwards inveighed against the new patriarch for proud presumption no less than against the old one.
[1689] cxviii. 24.
[1690] lv. 5.
[1691] cxviii. 22. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XI.
To Rufinus, Bishop of Ephesus.
Gregory to Rufinus, &c.
The charity of your acts of friendship in the past has moved us to visit your Fraternity with the present letter. For we have been refreshed with great joy by learning from reports given us of your health that all is well with you. But, while this is so, we implore Almighty God, that as in the present life, which is as it were a shadow of the future one, He has granted you to rejoice in the transitory welfare of your body, so in that heavenly country wherein is true life He may cause us to give thanks and rejoice with a common exultation for the perfected salvation of your soul. Now the bearer of this, desiring to be commended to you by a letter from us, having been asked by us whether he had learnt letters as becomes a clerk, replied that he was ignorant of them. What further commendation, then, with regard to him I should give to your Fraternity I know not; except that you should be solicitous about his soul, and watch over him with pastoral zeal, so that, as he cannot read, your tongue may be a book to him, and that in the goodness of your preaching and work he may see what to follow. For the living voice usually draws the heart more closely than perfunctory reading. But, while, as his master, you supply him inwardly with this spiritual teaching, let not outward care for him also be wanting, that by its aid he come to long for spiritual things, and lest, if such aid is slighted, you should no longer have one to preach to. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XII.
To Respecta, Abbess.
Gregory to Respecta, Abbess of Massilia (Marseilles) in Gaul.
The demand of a pious wish ought to be accomplished by a consequent result, that so the benefit demanded may be validly attained, and sincerity of devotion may laudably shine forth. Accordingly to the monastery consecrated to the honour of Saint Cassian wherein you are selected to preside--in accordance with the petition of our children Dynamius and Aureliana, who are shewn, in their religious devotion, to have united it to the house in their possession by connecting the buildings--we have seen fit to allow these privileges:--We appoint that on the death of the abbess of the aforesaid monastery, not a stranger, but one whom the congregation may choose for itself from among its own members, shall be ordained; whom (provided however that she be judged worthy of this ministry) the bishops of the same place shall ordain. Further, with regard to the property and management of the same monastery, we decree that neither bishop nor any ecclesiastic shall have any power; but appoint that these things shall in all respects pertain to the charge of thy Solicitude, or of her who may be abbess in the same place after thee. If on the day of the Saint's anniversary, or of the dedication, of the aforesaid monastery the bishop should resort thither for celebrating the sacred solemnities of mass, still his office must be so executed that his chair be not placed there, except on the aforesaid days while he is celebrating there the solemnities of mass. And when he departs, let his chair be at the same time removed from the same oratory. But on all other days let the offices of mass be performed by the presbyter whom the same bishop may appoint
Furthermore, with regard to the life and deeds of the handmaidens of God, or of the abbess who may be constituted in the above-written monastery, we enjoin on the bishop, in the fear of God, to devote careful attention to them; so that, if any of those who dwell there, her fault demanding it, ought to be subjected to punishment, he may himself visit the offence according to the vigour of the sacred canons. These things, then, being by us ordained and granted, do thou, in the ordering of thy congregation, study to shew thyself so earnestly attentive in all respects that the malice of the malignant foe may find nothing there that can be contaminated. All these things, therefore, embraced in this paper of injunctions, we ordain to be observed, under Christ's protection, in all respects and by all persons for ever in thy monastery, to the end that the benefits of the privileges allowed may always continue firm and inviolate. The month of November, Indict. 15. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XIII.
To Fortunatus, Bishop.
Gregory to Fortunatus, Bishop of Fanum [1692] .
As it is reprehensible and deserving of punishment for any one to sell consecrated vessels except in cases sanctioned by law and the sacred canons, so it is not a matter for reproach or penalty if they should be disposed of with a compassionate purpose for the redemption of captives. Since, then, we find from the information given us by your Fraternity that you have borrowed money for the redemption of captives, and have not the means of repaying it, and on this account desire, with our authority, to dispose of some consecrated vessels,--in this case, seeing that the decrees of both the laws and the canons approve, we have thought fit to lend our approval, and grant you leave to dispose of the consecrated vessels. But, lest their sale should possibly lead to any ill-feeling against yourself, they ought to be disposed of, up to the amount of the debt, in the presence of John our defensor, and their price should be paid to the creditors, to the end that, the business being completed with observance of this kind, neither may the creditors feel loss from having lent the money, nor your Fraternity sustain ill-will now or at any future time. __________________________________________________________________
[1692] Fanum Fortunæ in Picenum (Fano). __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XV.
To George, Presbyter.
Gregory to George, Presbyter, and to Theodore, deacon, of the Church of Constantinople.
Mindful of your goodness and charity, I greatly blame myself, that I gave you leave to return so soon: but, since I saw you pressing me importunately once and again for leave to go, I considered that it might be a serious matter for your Love to tarry with us longer. But, after I had learnt that you had lingered so long on your journey owing to the winter season, I confess that I was sorry that you had been sent away so soon. For, if your Love was unable to accomplish your intended journey, it had been better that you had lingered with me than away from me.
Moreover, after your departure I learnt from information given me by my most beloved sons the deacons that your Love had said that our Almighty Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, when He descended into hell, saved all who there acknowledged Him as God, and delivered them from the pains due to them. With regard to this subject I desire that your Charity should think very differently. For, when He descended into hell, He delivered through His grace those only who both believed that He should come and observed His precepts in their lives. For it is evident that after the incarnation of the Lord no one can be saved, even of those who hold His faith, who have not the life of faith; since it is written, They acknowledge that they know God, but in deeds they deny Him (Tit. i. 16). And John says, He that saith that he knows Him, and keepeth not His commandments, is a liar (1 John ii. 4). James also, the brother of the Lord, writes saying, Faith without works is dead (Jam. ii. 20). If, then, believers now are not saved without good works, while the unbelieving and reprobate without good action were saved by our Lord descending into hell, then the lot of those who never saw the incarnation of the Lord was better than that of these who have been born after the mystery of His incarnation. But what fatuity it argues to say or think this the Lord Himself testifies to His disciples, when He says, Many kings and prophets have desired to see the things which ye see, and have not seen them (Matth. xiii. 17; Luke x. 24). But, that I may not detain your Love with argument of my own, learn what Philaster, in the book which he wrote about heresies, says about this heresy. His words are these; "They are heretics who say that the Lord descended into hell, and announced himself after death to all who were already there, so that in acknowledging Him there they might be saved; seeing that this is contrary to the prophet David where he says, But in hell who shall acknowledge thee (Ps. vi. 6)? And to the Apostle; As many as have sinned without law shall perish without law (Rom. ii. 12)." And with his words the blessed Augustine also agrees in the book which he wrote about heresies.
Considering, therefore, all these things, hold ye nothing but what the true faith teaches through the Catholic Church: namely, that the Lord in descending into hell rescued from infernal durance those only whom while living in the flesh He preserved through His grace in faith and good conduct. For in that which He says in the Gospel, When I shall be lifted up from the earth, I will draw all to myself (John xii. 32), He means all that are elect. For one could not be drawn to God after death who had separated himself from God by evil living. May Almighty God keep you under His protection, that, wherever ye are, ye may feel in soul and body the aid of His grace. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XVII.
To Sabinianus, Bishop.
Gregory to Sabinianus, Bishop of Jadera [1693] .
If thou hadst been at pains to weigh with careful consideration the rule of ecclesiastical administration and the order of ancient custom, neither would any fault of unlawful presumption have crept in upon thee, nor would others have incurred danger by occasion of thy sin. Now there is no doubt that thou wast aware how that, certain things having come to our ears about Maximus which were no slight bar to his advancement to the priesthood, we had not given our assent to it, and that it was our will that he should not attain to what he strove after till there had been adequate satisfaction concerning the things that were said. But, when thou oughtest by all means to have observed this, it came rather to pass that he, snatching at the episcopate with the greediness of a blind mind, inclined thee unwarily to favour him in spite of our prohibition. But, lest even then the things that had been reported to us should remain unexamined, he was summoned to come hither by letters from us. And, when he was so perversely inclined as to defer doing so, we took care to admonish him in repeated letters, under pain of interdiction from communion, to make haste to come to us for his purification, putting aside all excuses: but he chose rather to submit to excommunication than to evince obedience. Whence the result is (awful to be said), that the pravity of his perverse disposition involves others in his own perdition. Now however, inasmuch as we have learnt that thou dissentest from his wickedness, we exhort thee by the present writing (that so it may profit thy soul to have severed thyself, even though late, from him) that thou henceforth neither communicate with him nor make mention of his name in the sacred solemnities of mass; and also that thou defer not coming to us without delay, yea and bring others with thee too, such as thou canst, whether bishops or other religious persons, so that (the cause being thoroughly examined), both your absolution, should the case require it, may fittingly and decently ensue, and that those who have fallen into the sin of the like temerity may be recalled to the way of salvation, with the help of the blessed Peter, Prince of the apostles, by an arrangement well-pleasing to Christ. Moreover, let any bishop or religious person that may come to us know that he will sustain no prejudice or injustice, but that all will be arranged so as to please our Redeemer after full ascertainment of the truth; to the end that even from our way of ordering the matter, with the Lord's approval, it may appear to all that we are not moved by private grudge against any man, but by zeal for God and for the adjustment of ecclesiastical order. __________________________________________________________________
[1693] See VI. 27, note 6. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XIX.
To Marinianus, Archbishop.
Gregory to Marinianus, Archbishop of Ravenna [1694] .
Your Fraternity has been long aware after what manner the Church of Ariminum has been hitherto deprived of pastoral government by reason of the known bodily affliction of the priest who was ordained by us [1695] . Now we, moved by the prayers of the inhabitants of that place, having frequently exhorted him to return with the help of the Lord to his Church, if he should feel himself relieved from this affliction of the head whereby he was kept away, he has been expected now for four years since the leave of absence given him. And, when at the instance of clergy and citizens who have come from thence and urged us with entreaties, we urgently exhorted him to return with them, the Lord helping him, if able to do so, he begged of us by a supplication in writing [1696] , that, inasmuch as by reason of this affliction wherewith he is held he can in no wise rise to the government of the same Church, or to the office undertaken by him, we should ordain a bishop to this same Church. Hence, seeing that the charge laid upon us of caring for all the Churches constrains us to see that pastoral guardianship be no longer wanting to the flock of the faithful, and being compelled by their entreaties, and by his renunciation on the ground of his own inability, we have resolved that a bishop should be ordained to this same Church of Ariminum: and, having issued our precept according to custom, we have not failed to admonish the clergy and people of the same Church, to the end that they may concur with concordant provision to choose for themselves a prelate [1697] . We therefore exhort your Fraternity that him whom all with one consent shall choose (as they themselves also have requested leave to do) you cause to be summoned before you; and test him by cautious enquiry on all sides. And if, by favour of the Lord, none of the things that are punished with death in the text of the Heptateuch are found in him, and if, on the report of trustworthy persons, his life should approve itself to you, send him to us with the certification of his election, adding your own letter of testification, to the end that a prelate of this same Church may, under the ordering of the Lord, be by us consecrated. __________________________________________________________________
[1694] Concerning the election of Marinianus, see V. 48.
[1695] Viz. Castorius. See II. 41.
[1696] Cf. XI. 47 as to the supersession of a bishop incapacitated by illness, except at his own written request, being uncanonical.
[1697] See Ep. XX., which follows. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XX.
To the Clergy and People Ariminum [1698] .
Gregory to the Clergy, &c.
Our pastoral charge constrains us to succour with anxious consideration any Churches that are deprived of the government of a priest. Accordingly, inasmuch as your Church has long been deprived of pastoral rule from the malady, as you know, of its own priest, we, moved by your entreaties, have not failed to admonish the said bishop, that, if he should feel himself recovered from that malady, he should resume the ministry of the priesthood undertaken by him. And he, having been again and again warned by us, has now under the pressure of the same malady intimated by a supplication addressed to us in writing that by reason of this malady he can by no means rise to the government of the said Church or to the office undertaken by him. We therefore, compelled by the hopeless condition of this same person, have held it necessary to take thought for the setting in order of your Church. We exhort, then, that all of you, with one consent, without noise or disturbance, choose with the help of the Lord such a priest to preside over you as may not be disapproved by the venerable canons, and also be found worthy of so great a ministry. And let him, when required, come to us to be ordained, with the solemnity of a decree attested by the subscriptions of all and followed up by the written approval of the visitor [1699] , to the end that your Church, by the Lord's ordering, may have its own priest.
We desire also that him whom your unanimity may have chosen you take without delay to our brother and fellow-bishop Marinianus at Ravenna [1700] , that, having been thoroughly examined and tested by him, he may be supported by his testimony also when he comes to us. __________________________________________________________________
[1698] See preceding Epistle.
[1699] Viz. a bishop Sebastian, who had been commissioned, as was usual in such cases, to visit the church of Ariminum during the incapacity of its proper bishop. The Epistle which follows this (Ep. XXI., which, as not throwing further light on the proceedings, has not been translated) is addressed to him, directing him to see to the due election, &c., of a successor to Castorius.
[1700] As Metropolitan. See preceding Epistle. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXIII.
To Fortunatus and Anthemius [1701] .
Gregory to Fortunatus, bishop, and Anthemius, guardian (defensori).
Catellus, the bearer of these presents, has informed us that his sister, who had been betrothed to one Stephen, has, through divine mercy moving her, been converted [1702] in a monastery at Naples, and that the same Stephen improperly detains a house and some other things belonging to her. And, inasmuch as legal decrees (Caus. 17, q. 2, c. 28) have appointed that a betrothed woman, should she wish to be converted, shall suffer no loss whatever, let thy Fraternity, together with Anthemius the subdeacon, endeavour by diligent enquiry to investigate the truth. And if, as we have been informed, you find that the Stephen above-named is keeping a house or anything else unjustly, let him be urgently warned by your exhortation to restore without any delay or altercation what he unduly detains, and not to defer under any kind of excuse the restitution of what is not his own. And if perchance you find him neglect your exhortation, notify this to us, giving also an accurate account of the facts of the case, to the end that, when the merits of the case are known, he may be forced by other means, in accordance with equity, to make the restitution which he scorns to make of his own accord out of regard to honesty. Commending the bearer of these presents to thy Fraternity, we exhort thee to allow him no longer to suffer from delay on this account. __________________________________________________________________
[1701] Fortunatis was bishop of Naples, and Anthemius a subdeacon, and Defensor of Campania.
[1702] Conversam fuisse; the usual phrase for taking to monastic life. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXV.
To Gregoria.
Gregory to Gregoria, Lady of the Bed-chamber (cubiculariæ) to Augusta.
I have received the longed for letters of your Sweetness, in which you have been at pains all through to accuse yourself of a multitude of sins: but I know that you fervently love the Almighty Lord, and I trust in His mercy that the sentence which was pronounced with regard to a certain holy woman proceeds from the mouth of the Truth with regard to you: Her sins, which are many, are forgiven her, for she loved much (Luke vii. 47). And how they were forgiven is shewn also by what follows afterwards; that she sat at the Lord's feet, and heard the word from His mouth (Luke x. 39) [1703] . For, being rapt in the contemplative, she had transcended the active life, which Martha her sister still pursued (Ib. 40). She also sought earnestly her buried Lord, and, stooping over the sepulchre, found not His body. But, even when the disciples went away, she remained standing before the door of the sepulchre, and whom she sought as dead, Him she was counted worthy to see alive, and announced to the disciples that He had risen again. And this was by the wonderful dispensation of the loving-kindness of God, that life should be announced by a woman's mouth, because by a woman's mouth had been the first taste of death in Paradise. And at another time also, with another Mary, she saw the Lord after His resurrection, and held His feet. Bring before your eyes, I pray you, what hands held whose feet. That woman who had been a sinner in the city, those hands which had been polluted with iniquity, touched the feet of Him who sits at the right hand of the Father above all the angels. Let us estimate, if we can, what those bowels of heavenly loving-kindness are, that a woman who had been plunged through sin into the whirlpool's depth should be thus lifted high on the wing of love through grace. It is fulfilled, sweet daughter, it is fulfilled, what was promised to us by the prophetic voice concerning this time of the holy Church: And in that day the house of David shall be an open fountain for ablution of the sinner and of her that is unclean (Zach. xiii. 1). For the house of David is an open fountain for ablution to us sinners, because we are washed from the filth of our iniquities by mercy now disclosed through the son of David our Saviour.
But as to what thy Sweetness has added in thy letters, namely that thou wilt continue to be urgent with me till I write that it has been revealed to me that thy sins are forgiven, thou hast demanded a difficult, nay even an unprofitable thing; difficult indeed, because I am unworthy of having a revelation made to me; but unprofitable, because thou oughtest not to become secure about thy sins, except when in the last day of thy life thou shalt be able no longer to bewail them. But, until that day comes, thou oughtest, ever suspicious and ever fearful, to be afraid of faults, and wash them with daily tears. Assuredly the apostle Paul had already ascended into the third heaven, had also been caught up into Paradise, and heard secret words which it was not lawful for a man to speak (2 Cor. xii. 2, &c.), and yet, still fearful, he said, I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection, lest that by any means, while preaching to others, I myself should become a castaway (1 Cor. ix. 27). One who is caught up into heaven still fears; and shall one whose conversation is still on earth desire already not to fear? Consider, most sweet daughter, that security is wont to be the mother of carelessness. Thou oughtest not, then, in this life to have security, whereby thou mayest be rendered careless. For it is written, Happy is the man that is always afraid (Prov. xxviii. 14). And again it is written, Serve the Lord in fear, and rejoice unto him with trembling (Ps. ii. 11). In short, then, it must needs be that in the time of this life trembling possess your soul, to the end that it may hereafter rejoice without end through the joy of security. May Almighty God fill your soul with the grace of His Holy Spirit, and, after the tears which you daily shed in prayer, bring you to eternal joys. __________________________________________________________________
[1703] It will be observed that Gregory identifies the woman who had been a sinner in the city with the sister of Martha, and also with the Magdalene. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXVI.
To Theoctista, Patrician [1704]
Gregory to Theoctista, &c.
That your Excellency, though placed in so great a tumult of affairs, is full of the fruitfulness of the sacred word, and incessantly pants after eternal joys, for this I give great thanks to Almighty God, in that in you I see fulfilled what is written of the elect fathers, But the children of Israel walked on dry land through the midst of the sea (Exod. xv. 19). But on the other hand, I am come into the depth of the sea, and the storm hath overwhelmed me (Ps. lxviii. 3) [1705] . But you, as I see, walk with dry feet through the waves of secular affairs to the country of promise. Let us give thanks, then, to that Spirit who lifts up the hearts which He fills; who amid the tumults of men makes a solitude in the soul; and in whose presence there is no place, wherein a soul moved by compunction can be, which is not a secret one. For you inhale the odour of eternal sweetness, and so ardently love the bridegroom of your soul as to be able to say with the heavenly bride, Draw me after thee; we run in the odour of thine ointments (Cant. i. 3). But in the letters of your Excellency I find this deficiency; that you have been unwilling to tell me about your most serene mistress, how studiously she reads, or how she is moved by compunction in her reading. For your presence ought to be of great advantage to her, that amid the billows of affairs under which she continually suffers and by which, whether she will or no, she is drawn abroad, she may be recalled inwardly to the love of the heavenly country. And this also you ought to investigate, as often as tears are given her for her soul, whether her compunction arises still from fear, or whether now from love [1706] .
For there are two kinds of compunction, as you know: one that is afraid of eternal pains, the other that sighs for heavenly rewards; since the soul that is athirst for God is first moved to compunction by fear, and afterwards by love. For in the first place it is affected to tears because, while recollecting its evil doings, it fears to suffer for them eternal punishments. But, when fear has died away in the anxiety of a long sorrow, a certain security has birth from a sense of pardon; and the mind is enflamed with love of heavenly joys. And one who previously wept for fear of punishment begins afterwards to weep most bitterly for being kept back from the kingdom. For the soul contemplates what are those choirs of angels, what is the very society of blessed spirits, what the vision of the inward brightness of God; and laments more for the lack of unending good than it wept before when it feared eternal evil; and thus it comes to pass that the compunction of fear, when perfected, draws the mind to the compunction of love. All this is well described in the sacred and true history, understood figuratively, which says, Axa the daughter of Caleph sighed sitting on an ass. And her father said to her, What wouldest thou? Who answered, Give me a blessing, Thou hast given me a South and dry land; give me also a watered land. And her father gave her the upper springs, and the nether springs (Josh. xv. 18) [1707] . For indeed Axa sits on an ass, when the soul presides over the irrational motions of the flesh. And sighing she seeks a watered land from her father, because the grace of tears is to be sought with great longing from our Creator. For there are some who have already freely received the gift of speaking in behalf of justice, of protecting the oppressed, of giving of their own to the needy, of having ardour of faith, but have not yet the grace of tears. These, that is to say, have a South and dry land, but still need springs of water; because, while they are occupied in good works, wherein they are great and fervent, they have still sore need (either from fear of punishment, or from love of the heavenly kingdom) to lament the sins which they cannot be without while they live. But since, as I have said, there are two kinds of compunction, her father gave her the upper springs and the nether springs. For the soul receives the upper springs, when she afflicts herself in tears for desire of the heavenly kingdom; but she receives the nether springs, when she shudders with weeping at the punishments of hell. And indeed the nether springs are given first, and the upper springs afterwards. But, because the compunction of love is far above the other indignity, there was need for the upper springs to be mentioned first, and the nether springs afterwards. You then, who through the operation of the Almighty Lord know by experience both kinds of compunction, ought anxiously to try to discover day by day how much you are profiting your most serene mistress by your words.
Further, I beg you to take especial care to instruct in good morals the little lords whom you are bringing up, and to admonish the glorious eunuchs who are appointed to attend them that they should speak to them such things as may move their minds to mutual charity between themselves and to gentleness towards subjects; lest, if they should conceive now any grudge against each other, it should break out openly hereafter. For in truth the words of those who bring up children will be either milk, if they are good, or poison if they are evil. Let them therefore so speak now to the little ones that the latter may shew hereafter what good words they had sucked from the mouths of those who nursed them.
Furthermore, my beloved son, Sabinianus the deacon, has brought thirty pounds of gold, sent by your Excellency to be given for the redemption of captives and for distribution to the poor; with regard to which I rejoice, but tremble for myself, seeing that I shall have to render an account before the tremendous Judge, not only of the substance of Saint Peter, Prince of the apostles, but also of your possessions. But to you may Almighty God return heavenly things for earthly, and eternal for temporal. I have now to inform you that from the city of Crotona, which, lying on the Adriatic Sea in the land of Italy, was taken last year by the Lombards, many noble men and many noble women were led away captive, and children were parted from their parents, parents from their children, husbands from their wives, and wives from their husbands; of whom some have already been redeemed. But, because of the heavy prices put upon them, many have remained so far in the hands of those most abominable Lombards. But I sent at once for their redemption a moiety of the money sent by you. Out of the other moiety I have arranged for the purchase of bed-clothes for the handmaidens of God whom you in Greek language call monastriæ; seeing that they suffer from grievous bareness in their beds during the very severe cold of this winter; there being many of them in this city. For, according to the official list of them, they are found to be three thousand in number. They do indeed receive fourscore pounds a year from the possessions of Saint Peter, Prince of the apostles. But what is this for so great a multitude, especially in this city, where everything is so dear? Their life, moreover, is such, and strict to such a degree in tears and abstinence, that we believe that, but for them, not one of us could have subsisted for so many years in this place among the swords of the Lombards.
Furthermore, I send you, as a blessing from Saint Peter the apostle, a key from his most sacred body; with respect to which key the miracle has been wrought which I now relate. A certain Lombard, having found it on his entrance into a city in the parts beyond the Po, and, paying no regard to it as Saint Peter's key, but wishing to make something of it for himself in that he saw it to be of gold, took out a knife to cut it. But presently seized by a spirit, he plunged the knife wherewith he had thought to cut it into his own throat, and in the same hour fell down dead. And when Autharith, king of the Lombards [1708] , and many others belonging to him came to the place, and he who had stabbed himself was lying apart in one place dead, and this key on the ground in another, exceeding fear came upon all, so that no one ventured to lift this same key from the ground. Then a certain Lombard who was a Catholic, and known to be given to prayer and almsgiving, Minulf by name, was called, and himself lifted it from the ground. But Autharith, in consideration of this miracle, made another golden key, and sent it along with this to my predecessor of holy memory, declaring what kind of miracle had through it occurred. I have taken thought, then, to send your Excellence this key, through which Almighty God cut off a proud and faithless man, that through it you who fear and love Him may be enabled to have both present and eternal welfare. __________________________________________________________________
[1704] This patrician lady was sister of the Emperor Mauricius (see I. 5), and appears from what is said in this letter to have been governess of the imperial children, and in close attendance on the Empress Constantina. The letter is in many respects interesting and characteristic. In it may be noted Gregory's way of retaining influence over devout ladies in high circles, and through them hoping to influence others; his favourite method of allegorizing the Old Testament Scriptures; his tendency to regard remarkable incidents as miraculous; and his allusion to the very large number of females at that time leading a monastic life in Rome. Cf. XI. 45, addressed to the same lady.
[1705] Ps. lxix. 2.
[1706] The whole passage which follows about two kinds of compunction, with the allegorical interpretation of the story of Achsah, is found, word for word, in the Dialogues Lib. III. cap. 34.
[1707] In Joshua xv. 18, instead of "and she lighted off her ass," as in the English Version, the Vulgate has "suspiravitque ut sedebat in asino."
[1708] See I. 17, note 4. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXVII.
To Anastasius, Bishop.
Gregory to Anastasius, Bishop of Antioch.
I have received through the hands of our common son the deacon Sabinianus the longed for letter of your most sweet Holiness, in which the words have flowed not from your tongue but from your soul. And it is not surprising that one speaks well who lives perfectly. And, since you have learnt, through the Spirit teaching you in the school of the heart, the precepts of life--to despise all earthly things and to speed to the heavenly country,--in proportion as you have advanced in good you think what is good of others. But, when I heard many things said in the letters of your Blessedness in praise of me, I understood your intention; how that you wished to describe not what I am, but what I ought to be. But as to your saying that I ought to remember my manner of life, and on no account give place to the malignant spirit who seeks to sift souls, I indeed recollect myself to have been always of bad manner of life, and hasten to overcome and put an end to this my manner of life, if I can. If however, as you believe, I have had anything good in me, I trust in the help of Almighty God that I have not forgotten it. But your Holiness, as I see, by the words of sweetness at the beginning and the words that follow, has wished your letter to be like a bee, which carries both honey and a sting, satiating me with the honey and piercing me with the sting. But meanwhile I return to meditation on the words of Solomon, That better are the wounds of one that loves than the kisses of a flattering foe (Prov. xxvii. 6). Thus, as to your saying that we ought not to give occasion of offence for no cause at all, this is what your son, our most pious lord (for whose life we ought continually to pray) has already written repeatedly; and what he says out of power I know that you say out of love. Nor do I wonder that you have made use of imperial language in your letters, since there is a very close relationship between love and power. For both presume in a princely way; both ever speak with authority.
And indeed on the receipt of the synodical epistle of our brother and fellow-bishop Cyriacus it was not worth my while to make a difficulty on account of the profane title at the risk of disturbing the unity of holy Church: but nevertheless I took care to admonish him with respect to this same superstitious and proud title, saying that he could not have peace with us unless he corrected the elation of the aforesaid expression, which the first apostate invented. You, however, ought not to say that this is a matter of no consequence, since, if we bear it with equanimity, we are corrupting the faith of the Universal Church; for you know how many not only heretics but heresiarchs have issued from the Constantinopolitan Church. And, not to speak of the injury done to your dignity, if one bishop is called Universal, the Universal Church comes to ruin, if the one who is universal falls. But far, far be this levity from my ears. Yet I trust in Almighty God that what He has promised He will soon fulfil; Whosoever exalteth himself shall be humbled (Luke xiv. 11).
So much, in the midst of many occupations. I have briefly replied to what you have said in your letters: for what I ought not just now to express in writing remains imprinted on my mind. I beg your Blessedness always to recall me to your memory in your holy prayers, that so your intercessions may rescue me from temporal and eternal ills. Pray moreover zealously and fervently for the most serene lord the Emperor; for his life is very necessary for the world. I refrain from saying more, for I doubt not that you know. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXVIII.
To Theodore, Physician.
Gregory to Theodore, Physician at Constantinople.
My most beloved son the deacon Sabinianus [1709] , on his return to me, brought me no letter from your Glory; but he conveyed hither what had been sent for the poor and captives; whence I understood the reason. It was that you would not speak by letters to a man, having by a good deed made your address to Almighty God. For this same deed of yours has a voice of its own, which calls to the secret ears of God, as it is written, Hide thy alms in the bosom of the poor, and it shall entreat for thee (Ecclus. xxix. 15). And indeed to me, I confess, it is sad to expend what is not my own, and to add to the accounts which I keep of the substance of the Church those also of the property of my most sweet son the lord Theodore. And yet I rejoice with your benignity that you carefully attend to and observe what the Truth says; Give alms, and behold, all things are clean unto you (Luke xi. 41); and this which is written, Even as water quencheth fire, so alms quench sin (Ecclus. iii. 33). Paul the apostle also says, Let your abundance supply their want, that their abundance also may be a supply to your want (2 Cor. viii. 14). Tobias admonishes his son, saying, If thou hast much, give abundantly; but if thou hast little, of that little impart willingly (Tob. iv. 9). You therefore observe all these precepts: but we beg you to pray for us, lest we should dispense the fruits of your labours indiscreetly, and not as need requires; lest from that whereby you diminish sins we should heap up sins. Now may Almighty God keep you under His protection, and so grant you human favour in an earthly court as to bring you after a long life to the eternal joys of a heavenly court.
We send you as the benediction of Saint Peter, Prince of the apostles, whom you greatly love, a key from his most sacred body, in which is enclosed iron from his chains, that what bound his neck for martyrdom, may loose yours from all sins. __________________________________________________________________
[1709] Gregory's apocrisiarius at Constantinople, and eventually his successor in the See of Rome. See III. 53. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXX.
To Narses, the Religious (Narsæ Relegioso) [1710] .
Gregory to Narses, &c.
When I was sending Romanus the guardian (defensorem) to the royal city, he sought long your letters, but they could not be found: but afterwards they were found among many letters from other persons, your Sweetness, therein telling me of your afflictions and tribulations of spirit, and making known the oppositions to you of bad men. But, I pray you, in all this recall to your mind what I believe too that you never forget, That all who will live godly in Christ suffer persecution. (2 Tim. iii. 12). And with regard to this I confidently say that you would live less godly if you suffered persecution less. For let us hear what else the same teacher of the Gentiles says to his disciples; Yourselves know, brethren, our entrance in unto you, that it was not in vain; for we had before suffered and been shamefully entreated (1 Thess. ii. 1). Lo, most sweet son, the holy preacher declared that his entrance would have been of no effect, if he had not been shamefully entreated; and thy Charity wishes to say good things, but refuses to endure evil things. Wherefore thou must needs gird thyself up more tightly in the midst of adverse circumstances, that adversity itself may the more increase thy desire for the love of God and thy earnestness in good works. So the seeds of harvests germinate the more fruitfully for being covered over with frost; so fire is kept down by a blast, that it may grow greater. I know indeed that from the perverse speeches of so many evil tongues thou endurest a violent storm, and bearest in thy soul billows of contradictions. But remember what the Lord says by the Psalmist, I heard thee in the secret place of storm; I proved thee at the waters of contradiction (Psal. lxxx. 8) [1711] . For, if in the midst of them that contradict thou doest the things that are of God, then thou art proved a true worker.
Further, your most sweet Charity has written to me that I should write something in the way of admonition to the monasteries which, through your prayers and influence, have been instituted by our son the lord Paul. But, if they are vessels of God, I know that they have through the grace of compunction a fountain of wisdom within, and ought not to take in the little drops of my dryness. Further, your perfect wisdom recollects that in Paradise there was no rain, but a fountain ascended from the midst of Paradise to water the face of the ground. Those souls, then, that through the grace of compunction have a fountain in themselves have no need of rain from another's tongue.
Further, you inform me in your letter of the passing away of the lady Esychia [1712] ; and I rejoiced with great exultation that that good soul, which laboured in a foreign country, has arrived happily at its own. Further, greet in my behalf my glorious daughters, the lady Dominica and the lady Eudochia. But, inasmuch as I hear that it is now a long time since the aforesaid lady Dominica was made a prioress, let your Charity watch over her in this regard; that, as she is no longer compelled to serve in the toil of an earthy court, she may fly perfectly from all noises of this world, devote herself entirely to God, and leave no part of herself outside herself; but that she also gather together as many souls as she can to the service of her Creator, that their minds through her word may receive the grace of compunction, and that she herself may so much the more speedily be absolved from all her sins as, through her life and her tongue, the souls of others also shall have broken loose from the bands of sins. Moreover, since no one among men in this world is without sin (and what else is sinning but flying from God?), I say confidently that this my daughter also has some sins. Wherefore, that she may perfectly satisfy her mistress, that is eternal Wisdom, let her, who fled alone, return with many. For the guilt of turning away will be imputed to no one who in returning brings back gain.
Further, I beg you to greet in my behalf the lord Alexander and the lord Theodorus. But with respect to your saying in your letter that I ought to write to my most excellent daughter the lady Gurdia, and her most holy daughter the lady Theoctista [1713] , and their magnificent husbands, the lord Marinus and the lord Christidorus, and to give them some admonition about their souls, your most sweet Greatness well knows that there are none at present in the city of Constantinople who can translate well into Greek what has been dictated in Latin. For keeping to the words, but attending little to the sense, they both fail to make the words understood and also mangle the sense. On this account I have written shortly to my aforesaid daughter the lady Gurdia; but have not addressed the others. Further, I have sent you two camisiæ and four oraria, which I beg may be humbly offered, with the blessing of St. Peter, to the aforesaid men. Besides, a certain person on his death has left me by will a little boy; taking thought for whose soul, I have sent him to your Sweetness, that he may live in this world in the service of one through whom he may be able to attain to the liberty of heaven. Further, I beg your most sweet Charity to visit frequently my most beloved son, the deacon Anatolius, whom I have sent to represent the Church in the royal city, that after the toils which he endures in secular causes he may find rest with you in the word of God, and wipe away the sweat of this his earthly toil as it were with a kind of white napkin. Commend him to all who are known to you, though I am sure that, if he is perfectly known, he needs no commendation. Yet do you shew with regard to him how much you love the holy apostle Peter, and me. Now may Almighty God guard your Charity, to me most sweet, from enemies within and without, and, when it shall please Him, bring you to heavenly kingdoms. __________________________________________________________________
[1710] On the designation Religiosus, cf. I. 61, note 7. The Narses here addressed as "Religiosus" was probably the same as the "Narses Comes" of I. 6, and VI. 14, and the "Narses Patricius" of IV. 32 (see note to I. 6). For it is evident from the letters that he was of high rank at Constantinople, and greetings are sent through him to the same persons as in the other letters. He had now, we may suppose, devoted himself to the service of the Church in some capacity.
[1711] Ps. lxxxi. 7.
[1712] Cf. I. 6, where greetings were sent to this lady, there also designated as Domna.
[1713] The Emperor Maurice is said to have had a sister called Gordia, who may have been the lady here referred to. Her daughter Theoctista may be concluded from the epithet "sanctissima" to have been piously disposed; and it may have been a fear lest her piety should suffer through the temptations of fashionable life that had led Narses, who was himself religious, to suggest to Gregory that he should write letters of admonition to the husbands of these ladies, as well as to themselves. Gregory's reluctance to do so may have arisen from a fear of giving offence to such distinguished people from the purport of what he could only write in Latin being misunderstood. Elsewhere apparent are his caution and delicacy in dealing with great people. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXXI.
To Cyriacus, Bishop.
Gregory to Cyriacus, Bishop of Constantinople.
We have received the letters of your Blessedness, which speak to us in words not of the tongue but of the soul. For they open to me your mind, which, however, was not closed to me, since of myself I retain experience of the same sweetness. Wherefore I return thanks continually to Almighty God, since, if charity the mother of virtues abides in your heart towards us, you will never lose the branches of good works, seeing that you retain the very root of goodness. You ought, then, to shew the beauty of this charity to me and to all your brethren by this good work in the first place,--your hastening to discard that word of pride whereby grave offence is engendered in the Churches, thus fulfilling in all ways what is written, Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (Ephes. iv. 3): and again, Give none occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully (1 Tim. v. 14). For then will true charity be displayed, if there is no schism among us through an example of pride. For, as for me, I call Jesus to witness in my soul, that to no one among men from the highest to the lowest do I wish to give occasion of offence. I desire that all should be great and honourable, yet so that their honour detract not from the honour of Almighty God. For whoso covets to be honoured against God to me is not honourable. But, that you may learn what good will I have towards your Blessedness, I have sent my son the deacon Anatolius to the feet of our most pious lords, for satisfying their Piety and your Fraternity that I desire to injure no man in this matter, but to keep the humility that is pleasing to God, and the concord of holy Church. And because Antichrist, the enemy of God, is near at hand, I studiously desire the he may not find anything belonging to himself, not only in the manners, but even in the titles of priests. Let then what has been introduced after a new fashion be removed in like manner as it was brought in, and peace in the Lord will remain with us inviolate. For what pleasantness, what charity, will there be amongst us, if we cheer ourselves up with words, while we are galled by facts? Let then your Holiness so act that we may feel in our inmost hearts the good things you speak of, to the end that, the hearts of priests being in unanimity, when we supplicate for the life of our most pious lords, we may be counted worthy to be heard all the more as peace illuminates your prayers before the eyes of God, and no stain of discord darkens them. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXXII.
To Anastasius, Presbyter [1714] .
Gregory to Anastasius, &c.
That a good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth good things (Matth. xii. 35; Luke vi. 45), this thy Charity has shewn, both in thy habitual life and lately also in thy epistle; wherein I find two persons at issue with regard to virtues; that is to say, thyself contending for charity, and another for fear and humility. And, though occupied with many things, though ignorant of the Greek language, I have nevertheless sat as judge of your contention. But, in very truth, thou hast, in my judgment, thyself conquered thy opponent by the apostolical sentence, which I proffered to you during your contention, That there is no fear in charity,, but perfect charity casteth out fear; because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in charity. I know then how much thy Fraternity is made perfect in charity. And, since thou lovest Almighty God much, thou oughtest to presume on thy neighbour much. For it is not places or ranks that make us neighbours to our Creator; but either our good deserts join us to Him, or our bad deserts separate us from Him. Since, then, it is still uncertain what any one is inwardly, how was it that thou wast afraid to write, ignorant as thou art as to which of us two is the superior? And indeed that thou livest well I know, but I am conscious myself of being burdened by many sins. And though thou art thyself a sinner, still thou art much better than I, since thou bearest thine own sins only, but I those also of the persons committed to me. In this, then, I look upon thee as lofty, in this I look upon thee as great, that in a great place and lofty before human eyes thou hast not felt thyself advanced at all. For therein, while honour is paid thee by men outwardly, thy mind is sunk into depths, because burdened by distracting cares. But to thee Almighty God has done as it is written; He hath laid down ascents in the heart, in the valley of tears (Ps. lxxxiii. 6). To me, however, thou mightest have appeared far loftier, far more sublime, hadst thou never undertaken the leadership of the monastery which is called Neas, seeing that in that monastery, as I hear, there is indeed an appearance of monks kept up, but many secular things are done under the garb of sanctity. But even to this I shall think that heavenly grace has brought thee, if what in that place displeases Almighty God should be corrected under thy guidance.
But, since there have been wont to be quarrels between the father of this same monastery and the pastor of the Church of Jerusalem, I believe that Almighty God has willed that thy Love and my most holy brother and fellow-priest Amos should be at the same time at Jerusalem for this end, that the quarrels which I have spoken of should be put an end to. Shew, then, now how much you loved before. For I know that both of you are abstinent, both learned, both humble; whence the glory of our Saviour must needs be praised, according to the language of the Psalm, in timbrel and chorus (Ps. cl. 4). For in a timbrel the sound from the skin is dry, but in a chorus there is a concord of voices. What therefore is denoted by a timbrel but abstinence, and what by a chorus but unanimity? Since then by abstinence ye praise the Lord in timbrel, I beg that by unanimity ye praise Him in chorus. The Truth also in person says, Have salt in yourselves, and have peace one with another (Mark ix. 50). What is denoted by salt but wisdom, as Paul attests, who says, Let your speech be alway in grace, seasoned with salt (Col. iv. 6)? Since, then, we know that you have salt through the teaching of the heavenly word, it remains that through the grace of charity you keep with all your hearts peace between yourselves. All this I say, dearest brother, because I love you both exceedingly, and am much afraid lest the sacrifices of your prayers should be stained by any dissension between you.
The blessing which you sent, first by Exhilaratus the Secundicerius [1715] , and afterwards by Sabinianus the deacon, I received with thanksgiving, since from a holy place it became you to send holy things, and to shew by your very gift whom you serve continually. May Almighty God protect you with His right hand, and preserve you scatheless from all evils. __________________________________________________________________
[1714] This epistle appears to have been in reply to one from a presbyter. Anastasius (al. Athanasius), of Jerusalem announcing his promotion to the abbacy of a monastery there. There had been, it seems, a standing feud between the abbots of this monastery and the bishops of Jerusalem, the continuance of which Gregory gracefully deprecates in the course of his letter.
[1715] See III. 56, note 3. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXXIII.
To Mauricius Augustus.
Gregory to Mauricius Augustus.
The provident piety of my lords, lest perchance any scandal might be engendered in the unity of Holy Church by the dissension of priests, has once and again deigned to admonish me to receive kindly the representatives of my brother and fellow-priest Cyriacus, and to give them liberty to return soon. And although, most pious lord, all your injunctions are suitable and provident, yet I find that by such an admonition I am reproved as being in your judgment indiscreet. But, even though my mind has been wounded in no slight degree by a proud and profane title, could I possibly be guilty of so great indiscretion as not to know what I owed to the unity of the faith and to ecclesiastical concord, and to refuse to receive the representatives and the synodical letter of my brother on account of bitterness from whatever cause intervening? Far be this from me. Such wisdom had been unwisdom. For what is due from us for conserving unity of faith is one thing; what is due for restraining elation is another. Times therefore were to be distinguished, lest the newness of my aforesaid brother might in any point be disturbed [1716] . Whence also I received his representatives with great affection. Whatever charity I owed to them I displayed, and honoured them more than it had been the ancient custom to do, and caused them to celebrate the sacred solemnities of mass with me; since, even as my deacon ought not to serve, for exhibition of the sacred mysteries, him who has either committed the sin of elation or corrects it not himself when committed by others, so it was right that his ministers should attend, in the celebration of mass, on me, who, under the keeping of God, have not fallen into the error of pride.
I have however taken care to admonish earnestly the same my brother and fellow-bishop that, if he desires to have peace and concord with all, he must refrain from the appellation of a foolish title. As to this, the piety of my lords has charged me in their orders, saying that offence ought not to be engendered among us for the appellation of a frivolous name. But I beseech your imperial Piety to consider that some frivolous things are very harmless, and others exceedingly harmful. Is it not the case that, when Antichrist comes and calls himself God, it will be very frivolous, and yet exceedingly pernicious? If we regard the quantity of the language used, there are but a few syllables; but if the weight of the wrong, there is universal disaster. Now I confidently say that whosoever calls himself, or desires to be called, Universal Priest, is in his elation the precursor of Antichrist, because he proudly puts himself above all others. Nor is it by dissimilar pride that he is led into error; for, as that perverse one wishes to appear as above all men, so whosoever this one is who covets being called sole priest, he extols himself above all other priests. But, since the Truth says, Every one that exalteth himself shall be humbled (Luke xiv. 11; xviii. 14), I know that every kind of elation is the sooner burst as it is the more inflated. Let then your Piety charge those who have fallen into an example of pride not to generate any offence by the appellation of a frivolous name. For I, a sinner, who by the help of God retain humility, need not to be admonished to humility. Now may Almighty God long guard the life of our most serene Lord for the peace of holy Church and the advantage of the Roman republic. For we are sure, that if you live who fear the Lord of heaven, you will allow no proud doings to prevail against the truth. __________________________________________________________________
[1716] So literally;--"Ne prædicti fratri mei ex quolibet articulo novitas turbaretur." The meaning seems to be, Lest Cyriacus should be troubled immediately on his accession. He was to be remonstrated with in due time; but rejection at once of his synodical letter and of his emissaries would have been premature. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXXIV.
To Eulogius, Bishop.
Gregory to Eulogius, Bishop of Alexandria, and Anastasius, Bishop of Antioch [1717] .
The charity wherewith I am greatly bound to you allows me by no means to keep silence, that your Holiness may know all that is going on among us, and, deceived by no false rumours, may keep more perfectly the way of your justice and rectitude, as you have perfectly begun to do. Now the representatives (responsales) of our brother and fellow-bishop Cyriacus came to me, bringing me his synodical epistle. And indeed between us and him there is, as your Blessedness knows, serious difference on account of the appellation of a profane name; but I thought that his representatives sent in the cause of the faith ought to be received, lest the sin of elation which has arisen in the Constantinopolitan Church almost against all priests, might cause a shaking of the faith and a breach in ecclesiastical unity. I also caused the same representatives, inasmuch as they very humbly requested it, to celebrate with me the solemnities of mass, because, as I have taken care to intimate to the most serene lord the Emperor, it was right that the representatives of our brother and fellow priest Cyriacus should communicate with me, since by God's help I have not fallen into the error of elation. But my deacon ought not to celebrate the solemnities of mass with our aforesaid-brother Cyriacus, since, through a profane title, he has either committed or accedes to the sin of pride; lest if he (my deacon) proceeds [1718] with one who is in such a position of elation, we might seem (which God forbid) to confirm the vanity of that foolish name. But I have taken care to admonish our said brother to correct himself of such elation, since, if he does not correct it, he will in no way have peace with us.
Furthermore, our said brother in his synodical letters has by the grace of God expressed himself in all respects as a Catholic. But he has condemned a certain Eudoxius, whom we find neither condemned in synods, nor repudiated by his predecessors in their synodical letters [1719] . It is true that the canons of the council of Constantinople condemn the Eudoxians; but they say nothing as to who their author Eudoxius was. But the Roman Church does not possess so far these same canons, or the acts of that council, nor has it accepted them, though it has accepted this same synod with regard to what was defined by it against Macedonius. It does certainly repudiate the other heresies therein spoken of, which had already been condemned by other Fathers: but so far it knows nothing about the Eudoxians. Some things are indeed told in Sozomen's history about a certain Eudoxius, who is said to have usurped the episcopate of the Church of Constantinople. But this history itself the Apostolic See refuses to accept, since it contains many false statements, and praises Theodore of Mopsuestia too much, and says that he was a great doctor of the Church even to the day of his death. It remains then that, if any one receives that history, he contradicts the synod held in the times of Justinian of pious memory concerning the three chapters. But one who cannot contradict this synod must needs reject that history. Moreover in the Latin language we have so far found nothing about this Eudoxius, either in Philaster or in the blessed Augustine, who wrote much about heresies. Let therefore your Charity inform me in your letters if any one of the approved Fathers among the Greeks has made mention of him.
Furthermore three years ago, with reference to the case of the monks of Isauria, who were accused as being heretics [1720] , my brother and fellow-bishop the lord John once sent me letters for my satisfaction, in which he attempted to shew that they had contradicted the definitions of the synod of Ephesus; and he forwarded to me certain chapters, purporting to be those of the same synod, which they were said to oppose [1721] . Now among other things it was in these chapters asserted concerning the soul of Adam, that by sin it did not die, in that the devil does not enter into the heart of man; and that whoso said it was so was anathema. When this was read to me I was much grieved. For if the soul of Adam, who was the first to sin, did not die by sin, how was it said to him concerning the forbidden tree, In the day that ye eat thereof ye shall surely die (Gen. ii. 17)? And certainly Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden tree, and yet in their flesh they lived afterwards more than nine hundred years. It is therefore evident that in his flesh he did not die. If then he did not die in his soul, the impious conclusion follows that God pronounced a false sentence concerning him, when He said that in the day that he ate he should die. But far be this error, far be it from the true faith. For what we say is, that the first man died in soul in the day that he sinned, and that through him the whole human race is condemned in this penalty of death and corruption. But through the second man we trust that we can be freed, both now from the death of the soul, and hereafter from all corruption of the flesh in the eternal resurrection:--as moreover we said to the aforesaid representatives; We say that the soul of Adam died by sin, not from the substance of living, but from the quality of living. For, inasmuch as substance is one thing, and quality another, his soul did not so die as not to be, but so died as not to be blessed. Yet this same Adam returned afterwards to life through penitence.'
But that the devil enters into the heart of man cannot be denied, if the Gospel is believed. For it is there written, And after the sop Satan entered into him (John xiii. 27). And again it is therein also said, When the devil had now put himself into the heart of Judas, that Judas should betray Him (Ibid. 2). He that denies this falls into Pelagian heresy. Seeing then that, having examined the Ephesine synod, we found nothing of the kind to be contained therein, we caused to be brought to us also a very old Codex of the same synod from the Church of Ravenna, and we found it to agree with the report of the synod which we have so as to differ in no respect, and to contain nothing else in its decree of anathema and rejection, except that they reject the twelve chapters of Cyril of blessed memory. But this whole argument we set forth much more fully and particularly to his representatives when they were with us, and most fully satisfied them. Wherefore lest either these or any like things should creep in yonder, so as to cause offence to holy Church, it is necessary for us to indicate these things to your Holiness. And, although we know our brother and fellow-bishop Cyriacus to be orthodox, yet on account of others we ought to be cautious, that the seeds of error may be trampled down before they spring up to public view.
I received the letters of your Holiness on the arrival here of our common son the deacon Sabinianus; but, as their bearer is already prepared for departure and cannot be detained, I will reply when the deacon, my responsalis, comes. __________________________________________________________________
[1717] As to the first subject of this epistle, with references to others on the same subject, see Prolegom., p. xxii.
[1718] Procedit, the usual term for proceeding to the Holy Table for celebration. See III. 57, note 5.
[1719] Cf. VII. 4.
[1720] See III. 53, note 9.
[1721] Cf. VI. 14, where the same doctrinal questions are similarly discussed in the same connexion. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXXV.
To Dominicus, Bishop.
Gregory to Dominicus, Bishop of Carthage.
Though we believe that thy Fraternity gives attention with pastoral vigilance to the care of monasteries, yet we think it necessary to inform you of what we have learnt about a monastery in the African province. Now the abbot Cumquodeus, the bearer of these presents, complaints that, if at any time he wishes to restrain under regular discipline the monks over whom he presides, they at once leave the monastery, and are allowed to wander wherever they will. Seeing, then, that this is both altogether pernicious to themselves and also sets an example of perdition to others, we exhort your Fraternity that, if it is so, you should bring ecclesiastical censure to bear upon them, and withhold them by suitable punishment from such undoubted presumption; and that you should so bring them to obedience by salubrious provision, subduing their proud minds to the yoke of discipline, that correction may recall from guilt others whom their example might have provoked to similar transgression, and teach them to obey their superiors, as is fit. But, since he tells us that stray monks are defended by some bishops, let your Fraternity give careful attention to this, and restrain them by your menaces in all ways from such defence. The month of July, Indiction 15. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXXVIII.
To Donus, Bishop.
Gregory to Donus, Bishop of Messana (Messene).
The ordinances both of the sacred canons and of the laws allow the utensils of the Church to be sold for the redemption of captives. And so, seeing that Faustinus, the bearer of these presents, is proved to have contracted a debt of three hundred and thirty solidi for the purpose of redeeming his daughters from the yoke of captivity, and that, thirty thereof having been repaid, it is certain that he has not sufficient means for the repayment of the remaining sum, we exhort thy Fraternity by this communication that thou by all means give him fifteen pounds, taking his receipt for the same, out of the silver in thy hands belonging to the Meriensian Church, of which he is known to be a soldier; so that, it being sold, and the debt paid, he may be freed from the bond of his obligation. But of this also your Fraternity should be careful, that in case of the aforesaid Church having so much current coin, he should receive from it the amount above-written; but otherwise you must needs supply him for the purpose in view with the sum we have stated from the consecrated vessels. For, as it is a very serious thing to sell idly ecclesiastical utensils, so on the other hand it is wrong, under pressing necessity of this kind, for an exceedingly desolated Church to prefer its property to its captives, or to loiter in redeeming them. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXXIX.
To John, Bishop.
Gregory to John, Bishop of Syracuse.
Lest attention to secular affairs should disjoin the hearts of religious men (which God forbid) from mutual charity, very earnest endeavour should be made to bring any matter that has come into dispute to the easiest possible termination. Since, then, from the information of Cæsarius, abbot of St. Peter's monastery, constituted in a place called Baias, we find that between him and John, abbot of St. Lucia's monastery, constituted in the city of Syracuse, there has arisen a serious question about certain boundaries, we, lest this contention should be prolonged between them, have taken thought for their dispute being terminated by the determination of a land-measurer. And accordingly we have written to the defensor Fantinus, bidding him direct John the land-measurer, who has gone from Rome to Panormus, to resort to your Fraternity.
We exhort, therefore, that you go with him to the places about which there is contention, and, both parties having been brought together, cause the places in dispute to have their boundaries defined in your presence, though still with a claim of prescription for forty years preserved to either party. But, whatever may be determined, let it be your Fraternity's anxious and studious care to have it so observed that no strife may henceforth be stirred up anew, nor any further complaint reach us.
We believe that it is not unknown to your Fraternity that the venerable abbot Cæsarius was formerly our friend; and therefore, saving equity, we commend him to you in all respects. And, seeing that he is entirely inexperienced in secular causes, it is needful for him to be aided by your solicitude; yet so that, in this as in all cases, you observe, as is fit, reason and justice. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XL.
To Eulogius, Bishop.
Gregory to Eulogius, Bishop of Alexandria.
Your most sweet Holiness has spoken much in your letter to me about the chair of Saint Peter, Prince of the apostles, saying that he himself now sits on it in the persons of his successors. And indeed I acknowledge myself to be unworthy, not only in the dignity of such as preside, but even in the number of such as stand. But I gladly accepted all that has been said, in that he has spoken to me about Peter's chair who occupies Peter's chair. And, though special honour to myself in no wise delights me, yet I greatly rejoiced because you, most holy ones, have given to yourselves what you have bestowed upon me. For who can be ignorant that holy Church has been made firm in the solidity of the Prince of the apostles, who derived his name from the firmness of his mind, so as to be called Petrus from petra. And to him it is said by the voice of the Truth, To thee I will give the keys of the kingdom of heaven (Matth. xvi. 19). And again it is said to him, And when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren (xxii. 32). And once more, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou Me? Feed my sheep (Joh. xxi. 17). Wherefore though there are many apostles, yet with regard to the principality itself the See of the Prince of the apostles alone has grown strong in authority, which in three places is the See of one [1722] . For he himself exalted the See in which he deigned even to rest and end the present life. He himself adorned the See to which he sent his disciple as evangelist. He himself stablished the See in which, though he was to leave it, he sat for seven years. Since then it is the See of one, and one See, over which by Divine authority three bishops now preside, whatever good I hear of you, this I impute to myself. If you believe anything good of me, impute this to your merits, since we are one in Him Who says, That they all may be one, as Thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee that they also may be one in us (Joh. xvii. 21). Moreover, in paying you the debt of salutation which is due to you, I declare to you that I exult with great joy from knowing that you labour assiduously against the barkings of heretics; and I implore Almighty God that He would aid your Blessedness with His protection, so as through your tongue to uproot every root of bitterness from the bosom of holy Church, lest it should germinate again to the hindrance of many, and through it many should be defiled. For having received your talent you think on the injunction, Trade till I come (Luke xix. 13). I therefore, though unable to trade at all nevertheless rejoice with you in the gains of your trade, inasmuch as I know this, that if operation does not make me partaker, yet charity does make me a partaker in your labour. For I reckon that the good of a neighbour is common to one that stands idle, if he knows how to rejoice in common in the doings of the other.
Furthermore, I have wished to send you some timber: but your Blessedness has not indicated whether you are in need of it: and we can send some of much larger size, but no ship is sent hither capable of containing it: and I think shame to send the smaller sort. Nevertheless let your Blessedness inform me by letter what I should do.
I have however sent you, as a small blessing from the Church of Saint Peter who loves you, six of the smaller sort of Aquitanian cloaks (pallia), and two napkins (oraria); for, my affection being great, I presume on the acceptableness of even little things. For affection itself has its own worth, and it is quite certain that there will be no offence in what out of love one has presumed to do.
Moreover I have received the blessing of the holy Evangelist Mark, according to the note appended to your letter. But, since I do not drink colatum [1723] and viritheum [1724] with pleasure, I venture to ask for cognidium [1725] , which last year, after a long interval, your Holiness caused to be known in this city. For we here get from the traders the name of cognidium, but not the thing itself. Now I beg that the prayers of your Holiness may support me against all the bitternesses which I suffer in this life, and defend me from them by your intercessions with Almighty God. __________________________________________________________________
[1722] As to the view here expressed of the unity of the three Sees of Rome, Antioch, and Alexandria, see Prolegom., p. xii.
[1723] "Colaticus. Lapides quoque medicinalium, mortariarum, et pigmentariarum usibus apti (Isid. Lib. 16. Orig. cap. 4)." Du Cange. But colatum here appears to have been some drink.
[1724] Genus potionis, Papiæ, Ægyptios vel Alexandrinos--Illud forte de quo S. Hieronymus de Vita Clericorum cum palmarum fructus exprimuntur in liquorem, coatisque frugibus aqua pinguior coloratur. Du Cange.
[1725] "Potionis species apud Ægyptianos, vel saltem Alexandrinos." Du Cange. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XLII.
To Marinianus, Bishop.
Gregory to Marinianus, Bishop of Ravenna.
We find from the information given in your Fraternity's letter that the sons of the Church of Cornelium are continually supplicating you to consecrate a bishop for them in place of their former bishop who has lapsed, and that you are in doubt as to what should be done in the matter, and await our plain command. Inasmuch, then, as no sort of reason allows any one who has departed criminally to be recalled to the place from which he has lapsed, and as the ordinances of the sacred canons allow not a Church to be without a bishop beyond three months, lest (which God forbid) the ancient foe should lie in wait to tear the Lord's flock, your Fraternity ought to comply with their entreaty, and ordain a bishop in the place of the lapsed one. For, seeing that you ought to have admonished them to this thing by your exhortations before they asked you, you can have no excuse for refusing them when they demand it of you, since a Church of God ought not to remain long widowed of a bishop of its own. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XLIII.
To Marinianus, Bishop.
Gregory to Marinianus, Bishop of Ravenna.
It has for some time reached us from the report of many that the monasteries constituted in the district of Ravenna are everywhere aggrieved by the domination of your clergy; so that--grievous to be said--under the pretext of government they take possession of them as if they were their own. Condoling in no small degree with these monasteries, we sent letters to your predecessor bidding him correct this evil. But, seeing that he was soon overtaken by the close of life, we remember having written in like manner to your Fraternity, lest this burden on the monasteries should continue. And because, as we have discovered, there has been loitering so far in the correction of this thing, we have thought fit to address you a second time by this letter. We exhort you, then, that, putting aside all delay and all excuses, you so study to relieve these monasteries from this kind of grievance that clerics, or such as are in sacred orders, may henceforth have no leave of access to them on any other ground except only for the purpose of praying, or if perchance they should be invited for solemnizing the sacred mysteries of mass. But, lest haply the monasteries should sustain a burden through the promotion of any monk or abbot, you must take care that, if any of the abbots or monks of any monastery should accede to any clerical office or sacred order, he shall have, as we have said, no power there any longer, lest under cover of this occasion the monasteries should be compelled to sustain the burdens which we prohibit. Let not your Holiness, then, after this second admonition, delay correcting all this with vigilant care, lest, if we should after this perceive you to be negligent (as we do not believe will be the case), we be compelled to provide otherwise for the quiet of the monasteries. For be it known to you that we will no longer suffer the congregations of the servants of God to be subjected to such requirements. Lest, however, any excuse should be put forward with regard to the monks, let your Fraternity without fail send hither such person as you may see to be serviceable, and we will depute monks to go with him to you, to provide for whom you must place them in monasteries, if indeed there are among you places such as may afford them a maintenance. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Book VIII.
Epistle I.
To Peter, Bishop.
Gregory to Peter, Bishop of Corsica [1726] .
On receiving the letters of your Fraternity we returned great thanks to Almighty God, that you had been so good as to refresh us with the news of the gathering in of many souls. And accordingly let your Fraternity strive anxiously to bring to perfection, with the help of the Lord, the work which you have begun. And with regard to those who have once been faithful, but from negligence or under constraint have returned to the worship of idols, make haste to bring them back to the faith, imposing on them a penance of a few days, that they may bewail their guilt, and keep to that to which they return, God helping them, the more firmly as they shall have perfectly deplored that from which they now depart; and with regard to those who have not yet been baptized, let thy Fraternity make haste, by admonishing, by beseeching, by alarming them about the coming judgment, and also by giving reasons why they should not worship stocks and stones, to gather them in to Almighty God; that so, at His advent, when the strict day of judgment comes, thy Holiness may be found in the number of the Saints. For what more profitable work or more lofty canst thou be engaged in than taking thought for the quickening and gathering together of souls and bringing in immortal gain to thy Lord, Who has given to thee the post of preaching?
Further, we send thy Fraternity fifty solidi for procuring vestments for those who are to be baptized; and we have also caused to be given to the presbyter of the Church situated in Mount Negeugnus [1727] the possession which thy Fraternity has asked for, so that its value may be deducted from the money that he had been accustomed to receive.
Further, your Fraternity has asked to be allowed to make for yourself an episcopal residence in the church that is not far from the same mountain; which proposal I most gladly accede to, since the nearer you are, the more will you be able to do good to the souls that are there.
In consideration of your Holiness's intercessions for him we have made the bearer of these presents an acolyte, and have sent him back to attend upon you, in order that, if he should be of still more service in winning souls, he may be in a position to be still further advanced. __________________________________________________________________
[1726] Bishop of Aleria in Corsica. Cf. VI. 22.
[1727] A basilica, with a baptistry attached, had been built on this Mount Negeugnus (or Nigeunus), on land belonging to the Roman See, for the purpose of "winning souls." Cf. VI. 22. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle II.
To Anastasius, Bishop of Antioch.
Gregory to Anastasius, Patriarch of Antioch.
I have received the letters of your most sweet Blessedness, which flowed with tears for words. For I saw in them a cloud flying aloft as clouds do; but, though it carried with it a darkness of sorrow, I could not easily discover at its commencement whence it came or whither it was going, since by reason of the darkness I speak of I did not fully understand its origin. Yet it becomes you, most holy ones, ever to recall to mind what the preacher to the Gentiles says; In the last times perilous times shall be at hand, and there shall be men loving themselves, covetous, lifted up (1 Tim. iv. 1); and what follows, which it would be a trouble for me to speak, and which is not necessary for you to hear. Lo, in your holy old age, your Blessedness labours under many tribulations; but consider in whose seat you sit [1728] . Is it not in his to whom it was said by the voice of the truth, When thou shalt be old, another shall gird thee and carry thee whether thou wouldest not (Joh. xxi. 18)? But in saying this I recollect that your Holiness even from your youth has toiled under many adversities. Say then with the good king, I will think again over all my years in the bitterness of my soul (Isai. xxxviii. 15). For there are many who, as you say in your letter, make to themselves pastime over our wounds: but we know who said, Ye shall lament and weep, but the world shall rejoice; and ye shall be sorrowful (Joh. xvi. 20): where also he forthwith adds, But your sorrow shall be turned into joy. But, since we already suffer what was foretold, it remains that we should also hope for what was promised. For as to these of whom you say that they themselves lay on the burdens which they ought to have lightened, I know that they are those who come in sheep's clothing, and inwardly are ravening wolves (Matth. vii.). But they are so much the more to be endured as they persecute us not only with a malicious mind, but also in religious guise. And in that they desire to have to themselves above others what it were not fit that they should have even with their brethren, we are in no wise disturbed at this, since we trust in Almighty God that those who desire what belongs to others will be the sooner deprived even of what is their own. For we know who said, That every one that exalteth himself shall be abased (Luke xiv. 11). And again it is written, Before a fall the heart is exalted (Prov. xvi. 18).
But in these days, as I find, new wars of heretics are arising, about whom I have before now written to your Blessedness, in such sort that they attempt to invalidate the prophets, the Gospels, and all the sayings of the Fathers. But, while the life of your Holiness endures, we trust in the favour of our Protector that their mouths which have been opened against the solidity of the truth may be the sooner stopped, inasmuch as, however sharp may be the swords that are employed, they recoil broken when they strike the rock. Moreover there is this by the great favour of Almighty God; that among those who are divided from the doctrine of Holy Church there is no unity, since every kingdom divided against itself shall not stand (Luke xi.). And holy Church is always more thoroughly equipped in her teaching when assaulted by the questionings of heretics; so that what was said by the Psalmist concerning God against heretics is fulfilled, They are divided from the wrath of his countenance, and his heart hath drawn nigh (Ps. liv. 22 [1729] ). For while they are divided in their wicked error, God brings His heart near to us, because, being taught by contradictions, we more thoroughly learn to understand Him.
Further, what ills we suffer from the swords of barbarians, and what from the perversity of judges, I shrink from relating to your Blessedness, lest I should increase your groaning, which I ought to diminish by consolation. But in all these things the precepts of our Master comfort me, who says, These things have I spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation (John xvi. 33). For I consider to whom it was said, This is your hour, and the power of darkness (Luke xxii. 53). If, then, the hour of light will be afterwards, since it is said to the elect, Ye are the light of the world (Matth. v. 14), and as it is written, The righteous shall have dominion over them in the morning (Ps. xlviii. 15) [1730] , whatever we suffer in the hour of the power of darkness is not to be deplored.
Moreover your most sweet Holiness tells me that you would have wished, if it could have been so, to converse with me without paper and pen, and grieves that a distance almost as far as the East is from the West lies between us. But this which I feel I declare is true; that on paper your soul speaks to me without paper, since in the words of your Holiness charity alone sounds, and we are not divided by distance of place who, of the gift of Almighty God, are joined together in the bond of love. Why then seek you to have given you the wings of a dove covered with silver, when you already have them? For indeed these wings are love of God and of our neighbour. For by these holy Church flies aloft, and by these transcends all that is earthly; which if your Holiness had not, you would not have come to me by letter with so great charity.
Further, I beg you to pray earnestly in behalf of the weakness of my heart, to the end that Almighty God may through your intercession defend my soul from all evils, and the sooner snatch me away from the hurricanes of this time, which are so many, and bring me to the shores of eternal rest.
I have received all the very rich blessings [1731] , directed to me, which thou, as a man of God poor in spirit, hast sent me, saying of them, For what can a poor man give but what is poor? But had you not been poor through a spirit of humility, your blessings would not have been rich. May Almighty God guard you by His protection from all evils; and, since your life is very necessary for all good men, bring you after many years yet to come to the joys of the heavenly country. __________________________________________________________________
[1728] Cf. V. 39, note 3.
[1729] In English Bible, lv. 21 (differently rendered from the Hebrew).
[1730] In English Bible, xlix. 14.
[1731] See IV. 31, note 9. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle III.
To Donus, Bishop of Messana (in Sicily).
Gregory to Donus, &c.
The most eloquent man, our son Faustinus, has come to us and complained that his late father Peltrasius left some things which were not his own to your Church for his burial. And indeed he knows himself, and we have heard, what the secular law is in such a case; namely, that the heir is bound to pay if his father has bequeathed what was not his own. But, as we know that your Fraternity lives by the law of God and not of the world, it seems to me very unjust that an amber cup, and a boy who is said to be of a certain church situate on his property in the diocese of Consentia, should be detained by thy Fraternity. For, when the most reverend Palumbus, now bishop, but then archdeacon, had testified that things were as I have said, you certainly ought to have taken his word, and restored what was not your own. Further, you ought in my opinion to have considered the golden brooch, which would be his whole substance were there anything for the sustenance of those he had left behind him, and accepted it at that time for his burial. Nevertheless, you know our ordinance, how that we have entirely forbidden the old custom in our Church, nor give our assent to any one being allowed to acquire burial-places for a human body for a price. For, if the men of Sichem, who were as we suppose Gentiles, offered without charge to Abraham sepulture for the dead Sara to be buried in a place of her own, and were hardly prevailed upon by his great importunity to receive a price for her place of burial, ought we, who are called bishops, to make any charge for burying the bodies of the faithful? This, then, we commit to the judgment of your Fraternity [1732] .
The aforesaid most eloquent man complains also of this; that Sisinnius, the guardian (defensor) of thy Church, unreasonably detains slaves in his possession: concerning whom also he asserts that it had been decided by the judgment of bishop Maximianus of holy memory that the detainer of them should give them up, but that he has so far wilfully put off their restitution. We therefore exhort thy Fraternity that, if the case has manifestly been adjudged, what was ordained be carried out. Otherwise, some one being deputed to act in the case, cause him to resort to the parts of our brother and fellow-bishop Secundinus for judgment, that, when it shall have been declared by his sentence to whom the slaves in question belong, neither the one party may appear to suffer prejudice nor the other bear a grudge. __________________________________________________________________
[1732] For similar disapproval of burial fees, cf. IX. 3. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle V.
To various Metropolitans and Bishops [1733] .
Gregory to Eusebius of Thessalonica, Urbitius of Dyracchium, Constantius ofMediolanum (Milan), Andrew of Nicopolis, John of Corinth, John of Prima Justiniana, John Cretensi Scoritano, John of Larissa, Marinianus of Ravenna, Januarius of Caralis (Cagliari) in Sardinia, and all the bishops of Sicily.
I have taken care to transmit to your Fraternity the law which the most pious Emperor has issued, to the effect that such as are bound by engagements of military service or public liabilities, may not in any case, in order to escape risk of being called to account, assume the condition of ecclesiastics, or become monks: and this I especially press upon you, that such as are involved in secular engagements are not to be received hastily among the clergy of the Church, since, while they live in an ecclesiastical condition no otherwise than they had lived before, they are by no means trying to escape secular affairs, but to change them. But, if any such should even seek a monastery, they are by no means to be received unless they have first been absolved from their public liabilities. Further, if any from the military order are in haste to become monks, they are not to be received rashly, or until their life has been fully enquired into. And, according to the regular rule, they ought to undergo a probation of three years, and then, God granting it, assume the monastic habit. And if they have thus been proved and accepted, and are anxious, for the good of their souls, to do penance for the sins they have committed, then, with a view to their heavenly life and gain, monastic profession should not be denied them. With respect to this matter also, believe me, the most serene and most Christian Emperor is in every way pacified, and willingly allows the monastic profession of those whom he knows not to be implicated in public liabilities. The Month of December, first Indiction. __________________________________________________________________
[1733] On the subject of this Epistle, see III. 65, 66. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle VI.
To Amos, Patriarch of Jerusalem.
Gregory to Amos, Bishop of Jerusalem.
Being confident that your Fraternity pays regard to the ordinances of the canons and the vigour of discipline, lest the falseness of one of your clerics should succeed in imposing on you so as to escape the strictness of ecclesiastical order, we have thought it right to inform you of his fault, that through your solicitude he may be subjected to the discipline from which he has fled. We understand, then, that Peter, an acolyte, whom we had caused to serve under our son the deacon Sabinianus, our ecclesiastical representative in the royal city, has fled, and resorted to your Church. If this is true, let your Fraternity be at pains to secure him, and send him back hither when an opportunity occurs. But if by chance, fearing this, he shall have departed from your Church, and be lurking in various places to escape detection, order him to be diligently sought for in all your parishes, and, when found, send him back to us, as we have before said. And we desire also to notify through you that he is deprived of communion: nor let him dare to receive the mysteries of the Lord's body and blood until he shall return to us, unless by chance he should be in imminent peril of death. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle X.
To Sabinianus, Bishop of Jadera [1734] .
Gregory to Sabinianus, &c.
As to one who perseveres in a fault punishment is rightly due, so pardon should be granted to those who return to a better mind. For, as in the former case anger against the culprit is deservedly provoked, so in the latter good-will displayed is wont to promote concord. And so, inasmuch as a recollection of the gravity of the priestly office has now withdrawn thy Fraternity from fellowship and communion with Maximus, into which thoughtlessness had before betrayed thee; and this to such an extent that thou couldest by no means allow thyself to be content with mere separation from him without also bewailing thy past transgression by betaking thyself to the retirement of a monastery, therefore doubt not that thou art received again into our favour and communion: for, as much as thy fault had before offended us, so much has thy penitence appeased us. We exhort thee, therefore, most beloved brother, that thou be instant in bestowing pastoral solicitude on the Lord's flock, and be diligently on the watch to make profit of the sheep committed to thy charge; that so the retribution of a copious reward may abound to thee in proportion as thou shalt offer multiplied fruits of thy labour at the coming of the eternal Judge. Strive then to rescue those who have fallen into sin; strive to shew the way of retracing their steps to those that go astray; strive to recall salubriously to the grace of communion those who have been deprived of communion. Let the coming back of your Charity lay on you the duty of rescuing others, and be an example of salvation; to the end that, while your anxious care shall direct the wandering steps of sheep to the folds of the chief shepherd, both they themselves may not be left exposed to the teeth of wolves, and (what is above all things to be desired) that the compensation of condign retribution may await thee in the life eternal.
As to the cause about which you wrote to us, requesting us to guard against any clandestine proceedings against you in the royal city, let not this matter disturb your mind. For we have with all possible care given orders to our responsalis to shew himself solicitous and on his guard. And we trust in the power of our God that things are being so conducted that the opposition of no one shall avail against reason, so as in any way to trouble you or to bear hard upon you.
Furthermore, the inhabitants of the city of Epidaurus have most urgently requested us to restore to them Florentius, whom they allege to be their bishop, asserting that he was driven into exile invalidly by the mere will of the bishop Natalis [1735] . And so, if your Fraternity has any knowledge of his case, please to inform us accurately by letter. But, if so far you have no knowledge of it, make enquiry, and report to us, that we may be able, with the Lord's help, to deliberate with full knowledge before us as to what should be determined concerning him. In the month of February, first Indiction. __________________________________________________________________
[1734] See VII. 17, and note on VI. 27.
[1735] See III. 8, and III. 9, note 2. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XIII.
To Columbus.
Gregory to Columbus, Bishop of Numidia [1736] .
How we may presume on your Charity we gather from the disposition of our own mind with regard to you. Nor do we think that you love the Apostolic See otherwise than as it loves you. Whence it must needs be that we should more peculiarly commend those whom we know to be, as they should be, devoted in the Church of the blessed Peter, Prince of the apostles, to you whose life the action as well as the dignity of a priest adorns, and of whose sincerity we already hold proof from past experience.
As to our brother, therefore, and fellow-bishop Paul [1737] , the bearer of these presents, with what billows and adversities he is tossed in your parts he tells us is not unknown to your Holiness. And seeing that he asserts that the complaints against him which you have told us have come to your ears are not true, but raised against him at the instigation of his adversaries, and that he trusts to be able by the help of the Lord to surmount them all, with the truth to support him and with you to take cognizance, we exhort you, most beloved brother, that, in whatever points considerations of justice are clearly on his side, you afford him becomingly the hand of succour, and aid him with priestly sympathy. Let, then, no circumstance, no influence of any persons, deflect you from studious regard to equity. But, leaning on the Lord's precepts, set at naught whatever is opposed to rectitude. In defending one party or the other insist constantly on justice. Shrink not from incurring ill-will, if such there be, in behalf of truth; that thou mayest find in the advent of our Redeemer so much the greater fruit of reward as, not neglecting His commands, thou shalt have devoted thyself to the countenance and defence of justice. In the month of March, first Indiction. __________________________________________________________________
[1736] See II. 48, note 8.
[1737] See IV. 34, note 4. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XIV.
To Boniface, First Guardian (Defensorem).
Gregory to Boniface concerning the privileges of Guardians [1738] .
Those who labour faithfully in the interests of the Church should receive the benefit of suitable remuneration, so that both we may be seen to have made a worthy return for their services, and they may shew themselves the more useful for the favour of the solace granted them. Seeing, then, that those who hold the office of Guardians are known to labour in the causes of the Church and in the service of the pontiffs, we have thought fit that they should enjoy the following prerogatives, granted to them for recompense;--appointing that, as in the school (schola) of notaries and subdeacons, through the indulgence of pontiffs long ago, there have been constituted regionarii, so also among the Guardians seven who may have commended themselves by proved utility shall be distinguished by the dignity of regionarii. And we appoint that these, in the absence of the pontiff, shall have leave to sit anywhere in any assembly of clergy, and enjoy in all respects the privileges of their dignity. Furthermore, if any one, attaining to this position of priority, should by any chance live in another province for his own advantage, he must needs still occupy in all respects his place of priority, so that he may be the chief of all the guardians, as being one who, even before he obtained his position of priority, had not ceased by assiduous personal attention to devote himself to the interests of the Church and the service of the pontiff. These decrees, then, by us constituted, which have been ordained for the privileges and constitution of Guardians, we appoint to be kept in perpetual force and irrefragably;--whether such things as we have decreed in writing, or such as are seen to have been ordained in our presence: and we decree also that they shall not be upset or changed in whole or in part on any occasion whatever by any of the pontiffs. For it is a very harsh proceeding, and especially contrary to good conduct in priests, that any one should endeavour, under any manner of excuse, to rescind what has been well ordained, and also by his example to teach others to dissolve his own constitutions after his own time. The month of April, first Indiction. __________________________________________________________________
[1738] See Prolegom., p. vii. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XV.
To Marinianus, Bishop of Ravenna.
Gregory to Marinianus, &c.
How necessary it is to provide for the quiet of monasteries [1739] , and to take measures for their perpetual security, you are aware from the office you formerly filled in government of a monastery. And so, seeing that we have learnt how the monastery of the blessed John and Stephen in the city of Classis, over which our common son, the abbot Claudius, is known to preside, has suffered many prejudices and grievances from your predecessors, it is right that the provision of your Fraternity should make salutary arrangements for the quiet of its inmates in future; to the end that living there in the service of God, His grace also assisting them, they may persevere with free mind. But lest, owing to the custom which ought rather to be amended, any one at any time should presume to cause any annoyance there, it is necessary that the points which we have taken care to enumerate below be so guarded by the careful attention of your Fraternity that no occasion of causing them disquiet may possibly be found in future. Let no one, then, any more dare, by any kind of inquisition whatever, to diminish anything from the revenues or charters of the aforesaid monastery, or of any place that in any manner whatever pertains to it, or to attempt any kind of usurpations or stratagems. But if perchance any matter of dispute should arise between the Church of Ravenna and the aforesaid monastery, and it cannot be settled amicably, let it be concluded without voluntary delay before men who fear God chosen by the parties, oath being made upon the most holy Gospels. Further, on the death of an abbot, let not a stranger be ordained, but one whom the congregation may choose of its own free will for itself from the same congregation, and who shall have been chosen without any fraud or venality. But, if they should be unable to find a suitable person among themselves, let them in like manner wisely choose for themselves for ordination one from some other monastery. And, when an abbot comes, let no person whatever on any occasion whatever be put over him in his own monastery, unless perchance in the case (which God forbid) of crimes which are shewn to be punishable by the sacred canons. This rule also must be no less carefully observed; that against the will of the abbot of such monastery monks be not removed thence for furnishing other monasteries, or for sacred orders, or for any clerical office. But in cases of there being monks in abundance, sufficient for celebrating praises to God and for satisfying the requirements of monasteries, let the abbot offer with devotion of those who are to spare, such as he may be able to find worthy in the sight of God. But if, while having a sufficient number he should refuse to give any, then let the bishop of Ravenna take of such as are to spare for furnishing other monasteries. Nevertheless, let no one be taken out thence for an ecclesiastical office, except such as the abbot of the place, on having notice given him, may offer of his own accord. Whosoever also from the aforesaid monastery shall have attained to any ecclesiastical order, let him thenceforth have neither any power there nor leave to dwell there [1740] .
It is to be observed also that no schedule of the property and charters of this monastery must be made by ecclesiastics, if ever circumstances require one: but let the abbot of the place with other abbots make an inventory of the property.
Further, as often as the abbot may perchance wish to go or send to the Roman pontiff in the interest of his monastery, let him have entire liberty to do so.
Furthermore, though the visits of bishops should be looked for with desire by monasteries, yet, seeing that it has been reported to us that the aforesaid monastery in the times of your predecessor was burdened by occasion of entertainment, it is right that your Holiness should regulate this in a becoming manner, so that the prelate of the city may have access to the monastery as often as he pleases for the sake of visiting and exhorting. But let the bishop so fulfil the office of charity there that the monastery incur not any burden. Now the aforesaid abbot not only does not fear your Fraternity's frequent access to the monastery, but even longingly desires it, knowing that it is quite impossible that the substance of the monastery should be burdened through you. Given in the month of April, first Indiction. __________________________________________________________________
[1739] For other Epistles in which bishops are forbidden to interfere, except in the case of need, with monasteries, see Index under monasteries. Also Prolegom., p. xx.
[1740] This is among the many evidences found in Gregory's Epistles that monks in his day were essentially laymen. The active duties incumbent on the clergy were held to be inconsistent with monastic life. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XVII.
To Maurentius.
Gregory to Maurentius, magister militum [1741] .
My most beloved son, Cyprian the deacon, had pleased me much by his return to me, if his whole self had returned to me. But now that your Glory has stayed in Sicily, I know most certainly that he has returned indeed in body, but in mind has remained in Sicily. Yet, in saying this, I rejoice with you for your quiet as much as I groan for my own occupations. And to this I earnestly exhort you, that, if the pleasant savour of inward sweetness has touched the palate of your heart, your mind be so rapt within itself that all which sounds without, all that delights without, may be distasteful. Moreover I commend you for avoiding concourses of men, seeing that a mind which desires to be renewed in God through the grace of compunction often relapses into its old state through evil conversation and words. I have sought for some to join you in a society for sacred reading, but have found no one, and I exceedingly lament the scarcity of what is good. And though I, a sinner, am very much occupied, yet, if you should wish to come to the threshold of the blessed apostle Peter, you will be able to have me as a close associate in the study of Holy Writ. May Almighty God keep you under His heavenly protection, and grant you to remain defended against the snares of the ancient foe. __________________________________________________________________
[1741] This letter is interesting as one of those which shew Gregory's carefulness to retain influence over pious lay friends of position, and his uniform tone of courtesy in addressing them. Maurentius appears to have been a military officer of studious habits in Sicily. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XVIII.
To Agnellus, Bishop of Terracina.
Gregory to Agnellus, &c.
It has come to our ears--a thing shocking to be told--that some in your parts worship trees, and perpetrate many other unlawful things contrary to the Christian faith. And we wonder why your Fraternity has delayed correcting this by strict punishment. On this account we exhort you by this present writing to cause these persons to be sought out by diligent enquiry, and such vengeance to be executed on them that both God may be pacified and their punishment may be an example of rebuke to others.
We have written also to Maurus the Viscount that he should afford aid to your Fraternity in this matter, that so you may be unable to find any excuse for not apprehending them. Further, as we find that many excuse themselves from keeping watch over the walls, let your Fraternity be careful to suffer no man, either under the name of our or your Church, or under any other pretext, to be exempted from keeping watch: but let all generally be compelled, to the end that, while all keep watch, the custody of the city may, by the help of the Lord, be the better provided for. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XX.
To Marinianus, Bishop of Ravenna.
Gregory to Marinianus, &c.
John, the bearer of these presents, complains that his wife, flying from the molestations of one George, has long been residing within venerable precincts [1742] , and has so far met with no assistance. Since she asserts that there is a dispute about her condition [1743] , and has asked that it should be commended to your Fraternity, we hereby exhort you that you afford your protection to this woman, and permit her not to be in any way aggrieved by any one unreasonably. But if the question about her station still continues, let it be your care that, without any oppression, and in a legal manner, it may be submitted for judgment; so that when, after ascertainment of the truth, what is agreeable to the order of law has been determined, neither party may complain of having suffered wrong. The month of May, first Indiction. __________________________________________________________________
[1742] The woman had fled to the precincts of some church for protection from one George, who apparently claimed her as his slave. The right of temporary asylum in sacred precincts, from which refugees could not be taken without the bishop's assent, rested on imperial edicts. "Vide lib. I. Cod., tit. 12, cap. 3, ubi imperatores Theodosius et Valentianus plurima de septis ecclesiasticis statuunt....Vocantur etiam claustra dominica, et continent atria et porticus ecclesiæ, domum episcopi, xxx vel xl passus in circuitu, et domus quæ iu eis fuerint. Tandem cessavit ista immunitas ob abusus." (Note to I. 37 in Migne's Patrilogia). Cf. X. 37, where directions are given to Januarius, bishop of Cagliari, for his course of action in such cases.
[1743] I.e. as to whether she was a free-woman or a slave. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXI.
To John, Bishop of Syracuse.
Gregory to John, &c.
Felix, the bearer of these presents, has complained to us that, being born of Christian parents, he was given (i.e. as a slave) by a certain Christian to a Samaræan [1744] , which is an atrocious thing to be said. And, though neither order of law nor reverence for religion allow men of such like superstition in any way whatever to possess Christian slaves, yet he asserts that he remained for eighteen years in that man's service. But he says that, when your predecessor Maximianus of holy memory became aware of the fact, he was freed by him, moved, as was becoming, by priestly zeal, from the service of that Samaræan. But, inasmuch as the son of the said Samaræan is said after five years to have become a Christian, and certain persons are trying to reclaim the aforesaid Felix, according to his own account, to his service, let your Holiness enquire diligently into the facts that we have been informed of, and, if they should be found true, study to protect him, and allow him on no pretext whatever to be aggrieved by any one, seeing that, while the laws plainly forbid slaves of that superstitious sect who are before their masters in coming to the faith being reclaimed to their service, how much more ought not this man--born of Christian parents, and a Christian from his childhood--to be subjected in any wise to this contention; especially as neither could be the slave of that other man's father, who it is clear was rather liable to punishment by law for his wicked presumption? And so, as we have said, let the defence of your Holiness so protect him reasonably that no one may be at liberty, under any pretence whatever, in any degree to afflict him. __________________________________________________________________
[1744] Samaræo, meaning apparently a Samaritan, and as such incapable, as Jews were, of holding Christian slaves. See Prolegom., p. xxi., and references there. In the case before us here the Samaritan claimant had himself become a Christian; and an attempt had been made on this plea to recover for him the Christian slave who had been emancipated from his father. But this Gregory will by no means allow. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXII.
To Rusticiana, Patrician [1745] .
Gregory to Rusticiana, &c.
I remember having before now written to your Excellency, and repeatedly urged you to lose no time in revisiting the thresholds of the blessed Peter, Prince of the apostles. And what means your so great delight in the city of Constantinople, and your oblivion of the city of Rome, I know not. I have not so far been thought worthy of getting any information from you on this head. For how far it might be of advantage to your soul for reaping the rewards of eternal life, and how far it would suit also in all respects your glorious daughter, the lady Eusebia, this we fully give our attention to, and you may no less fully consider. But, if you enquire of my son Peter, your servant, whom I have found to be wise beyond his age and to be studying to attain ripeness, you will find how great is the love towards your Excellency of all who dwell here, and how great their desire to be thought worthy of seeing you again. And if, the Lord teaching us, we are admonished in Holy Writ that we should love even our enemies, we ought to consider how wrong it is to shew no love even to those who love us. But, if haply we are said to be loved, we know most certainly that no one can have affection for those whom he does not wish to see. If, however, you are afraid of the swords and wars of Italy, you should attentively observe how great is the protection of the blessed Peter, Prince of the apostles, in this city, wherein, without a large force of people, and without military aid, we are preserved under God for so many years among swords. This we say, because we love. But may Almighty God grant whatever He sees to be of advantage to your soul for ever, and to the renown of your house at the present time.
The ten pounds of gold which your Excellency has sent for the redemption of captives I have received at the hands of my aforesaid son. But I pray that the heavenly grace which granted to you that you should give them for your soul's reward may also grant to me to dispense them without any contagion of sin; lest we should be stained by that whereby you wipe away sins. May Almighty God, who looks upon the weakness of your body and your pilgrimage, comfort you ever by His grace, and by the life and health of my most sweet son the Lord Strategius [1746] ; that so He may nurture him both for you through many years and for Himself through eternity, and may both replenish you and all your house with present good and grant you to have grace from above. We further beg that the glorious lord Eudoxius may be greeted in our behalf. __________________________________________________________________
[1745] See II. 27, note 2.
[1746] A grandchild of Rusticiana. See as above. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXIII.
To Fantinus, Guardian (Defensorem).
Gregory to Fantinus, &c.
From the information of the lady abbess of the monastery of Saint Stephen in the territory of Agrigentum we find that many of the Jews, divine grace inspiring them, wish to be converted to the Christian faith; but that it is necessary for some one to go thither by our command. Accordingly we enjoin thee, in virtue of the authority hereby given thee, that, putting aside every excuse, thou make haste to go to the aforesaid place, and with the favour of God aid their desire by thy exhortations. If, however, it seems long and dreary for them to look forward to the Paschal solemnity, and thou findest them anxious for baptism now, then lest long delay should possibly change their minds (which God forbid), speak thou with our brother the bishop of that place, that, penitence and abstinence having been prescribed them for forty days, he may baptize them under the protection of the mercy of Almighty God on a Lord's day, or on any very noted festival that may chance to occur; since the character of the present time too, on account of impending calamity, impels us not to defer the fulfilment of their desires by any procrastination. Further, whomsoever of them thou ascertainest to be poor and without sufficient means for buying vestments for themselves, we desire thee to supply with vestments for their baptism; and know that the price that thou mayest give for them is to be charged in thy accounts. But, if they should choose to wait for the holy season of Easter, speak again with the bishop, that they may for the present become catechumens, and that he may go to them frequently, and pay careful attention to them, and kindle their minds by the admonition of his exhortations, so that the more distant the expected festival is, the more may they prepare themselves and with fervent desire look forward to it.
Furthermore, let it be thy care to enquire with all zeal and diligence whether the above-named monastery over which the aforesaid lady presides has sufficient means, or whether it suffers any need. And whatever thou mayest truly ascertain, as well as what is done with respect to those who desire to be baptized, make haste to inform us in full. The Month of June, first Indiction. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXIV.
To Sabinianus, Bishop of Jadera [1747] .
Gregory to Sabinianus, &c.
I am well delighted in thy sincerity, dearest brother, knowing how, with the discrimination of a careful judgment, it both obeys where obedience is due and resists where resistance is due with priestly zeal. For with what alacrity of devotion thou hast submitted to what we enjoined for the fault of thy past transgression is disclosed to us by the contents of the letters which thou hast sent to us by the bearer of these presents. For indeed my beloved brother could not take it otherwise than as it was enjoined by one who loves him. Hence I trust in the compassion of Almighty God that His grace so protects thee that, having been thus absolved also from other sins, thou mayest rejoice in having wholesomely obeyed. But as to what thy Charity has signified about being distressed by the jealousy of the excommunicated prevaricator Maximus, thou oughtest not to be disturbed; but it becomes thee by patiently enduring to bear up against the billows that swell vainly to some small degree, and by the virtue of perseverence to subdue the foaming of the waves. For patience knows how to smooth what is rough, and constancy to overcome fierceness. Let not, then, adversity deject your spirits, but inflame them. Let priestly vigour shew thee in all things the more bold. For this is a true evidence of truth, for one to exhibit himself as all the readier in hard circumstances, and all the braver in such as are adverse. Wherefore, that no blow may avail to upset the firmness of thy rectitude from its good determination, plant, as thou hast begun to do, the steps of thy soul on the solidity of that rock on which thou knowest that our Redeemer has founded the Church throughout the world, that so the right footsteps of a sincere heart may not stumble on a devious way.
As to the things about which thou hast written, or which the bearer of these presents has explained in our presence, do not suppose that we are neglecting them: we are very carefully considering them.
Further, we have already, both before and now, given accurate information about everything to our most beloved son the deacon Anatolius [1748] ; exhorting him to lose no time, with the aid of our Creator, in acting strictly and zealously in whatever pertains to the advantage and quiet of your Charity and of your sons. And so let not sorrow affect your Fraternity, nor the enmity of any one whatever afflict you. For, with the assistance of Divine Grace, we trust that it will not be long before the presumption of the aforesaid excommunicated prevaricator will be more strictly repressed, and your quiet, as you desire, arrive. We have also by no means omitted to write about his perverseness to our most excellent son the Exarch [1749] , who is anxious to commend him to us.
As to the presbyter about whom thy Fraternity has consulted us through the representation of the bearer of these presents, know that after his lapse he cannot by any means remain in, or be restored to, his sacred order. Still be ought to be somewhat mildly dealt with, inasmuch as he is said to have readily confessed his fault. Furthermore, this same bearer spoke at the same time of certain privileges of your Church granted by our predecessors.
About the writings thus referred to by your Charity we wish to be more accurately informed. Or, if any of them are lying in the registry of your Church, it is necessary that copies of them be transmitted hither; that we may be able with willing mind to renew whatever concerns reverence for your dignity or the genius of the aforesaid Church.
If our common son, the glorious lord Marcellus [1750] , should be minded to come hither, urgently persuade him to do so; for on all accounts I desire to see him. But, if he should choose to remain where he is, do you so exhibit yourselves to him in beseeming charity that you may be able to respond, as becomes you, to the affection which he has towards you. May Almighty God keep and protect you with the gift of His grace, and enflame your heart to do the things that are well pleasing to Him. __________________________________________________________________
[1747] See VI. 27, VII. 17, VIII. 10, and III. 47, note 2.
[1748] At this time Gregory's apocrisiarius at Constantinople. Cf. VII. 31, IX. 82.
[1749] Callinicus, who at this time was Exarch of Italy at Ravenna. See IX. 9, with note, and III. 47, note 2.
[1750] Proconsul of Dalmatia. Cf. IX. 5, and III. 47, note 2. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXIX.
To Eulogius, Bishop of Alexandria.
Gregory to Eulogius, &c.
An address from a learned man is always profitable, because the hearer either learns what he had known himself to be ignorant of, or, what is more, comes to know what he did not know he had been ignorant of. A hearer of the latter kind I have now become, your most holy Blessedness having been minded to write to me, asking me to send you the acts of all the martyrs, which were collected in the times of Constantine, of pious memory, by Eusebius of Cæsarea. But before receiving the letter of your Blessedness I did not know of these acts, whether they had been collected, or whether not. I therefore give thanks that, instructed by your most holy teaching, I have begun to know what I was ignorant of. For beside what is contained about the acts of the holy martyrs in the books of the same Eusebius, I am not aware of any collections in the archives of this our Church, or in the libraries of the city of Rome, unless it be some few things collected in one single volume. We have indeed the names of almost all the martyrs, with their passions assigned to particular days, collected in one volume; and we celebrate the solemnities of mass on such days in commemoration of them. Yet it is not indicated in this volume who each was, and how he suffered; but only his name, the place, and day, of his passion are put down. Hence it results that many of divers countries and provinces are known to have been crowned with martyrdom, as I have said, through their several days. But these we believe you have. That, however, which you wish to have sent to you we have sought for, but have not found; but, though we have not found it, we will still search, and, if it can be found, will send it.
With regard to what you write about the timber being short in length, the cause was in the kind of ship by which it was sent; for, if a larger ship had come, we could have sent larger pieces of timber. But as to your saying that, if we send larger pieces, you will pay for them, we thank you indeed for your liberality, but we are precluded from accepting a price, since the Gospel forbids it. For we do not buy the timber which we send; and how can we accept a price, when it is written, Freely ye have received, freely give (Matth. x. 8)? We have therefore sent now through the shipmaster timber of short length in accordance with the size of the ship, whereof a notice is subjoined. Next year, however, should it please Almighty God, we will prepare larger pieces.
We have received with the kindliness wherewith it was sent the blessing of Saint Mark the Evangelist, nay, it may be said more truly, of Saint Peter the Apostle [1751] ; and, greeting you well, we beg your Blessedness to deign to pray for us, that so we may be counted worthy to be soon delivered from present evils, and not to be excluded from future joys. __________________________________________________________________
[1751] Cf. VII. 40, for Gregory's view of the sees of Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch, jointly representing the see of St. Peter. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXX.
To Eulogius, Bishop of Alexandria.
Gregory to Eulogius, &c.
Our common son, the bearer of these presents, when he brought the letters of your Holiness found me sick, and has left me sick; whence it has ensued that the scanty water of my brief epistle has been hardly able to exude to the large fountain of your Blessedness. But it was a heavenly boon that, while in a state of bodily pain, I received the letter of your Holiness to lift me up with joy for the instruction of the heretics of the city of Alexandria, and the concord of the faithful, to such an extent that the very joy of my mind moderated the severity of my suffering. And indeed we rejoice with new exultation to hear of your good doings, though at the same time we by no means suppose that it is a new thing for you to act thus perfectly. For that the people of holy Church increases, that spiritual crops of corn for the heavenly garner are multiplied, we never doubted that this was from the grace of Almighty God which flowed largely to you, most blessed ones. We therefore render thanks to Almighty God, that we see fulfilled in you what is written, Where there is much increase, there the strength of the oxen is manifest (Prov. xiv. 4). For, if a strong ox had not drawn the plough of the tongue over the ground of the hearts of hearers, so great an increase of the faithful would by no means have sprung up.
But, since in the good things you do I know that you also rejoice with others, I make you a return for your favour, and announce things not unlike yours; for while the nation of the Angli, placed in a corner of the world, remained up to this time misbelieving in the worship of stocks and stones, I determined, through the aid of your prayers for me, to send to it, God granting it, a monk of my monastery for the purpose of preaching. And he, having with my leave been made bishop by the bishops of Germany, proceeded, with their aid also, to the end of the world to the aforesaid nation; and already letters have reached us telling us of his safety and his work; to the effect that he and those that have been sent with him are resplendent with such great miracles in the said nation that they seem to imitate the powers of the apostles in the signs which they display. Moreover, at the solemnity of the Lord's Nativity which occurred in this first indiction, more than ten thousand Angli are reported to have been baptized by the same our brother and fellow-bishop. This have I told you, that you may know what you are effecting among the people of Alexandria by speaking, and what in the ends of the world by praying. For your prayers are in the place where you are not, while your holy operations are shewn in the place where you are.
In the next place, as to the person of Eudoxius the heretic [1752] , about whose error I have discovered nothing in the Latin language, I rejoice that I have been most abundantly satisfied by your Blessedness. For you have adduced the testimonies of the strong men, Basil, Gregory, and Epiphanius; and we acknowledge him to be manifestly slain, at whom our heroes have cast so many darts. But with regard to these errors which are proved to have arisen in the Church of Constantinople, you have replied on all heads most learnedly, and as it became you to utter the judgment of so great a see. Whence we give thanks to Almighty God, that the tables of the covenant are still in the ark of God. For what is the priestly heart but the ark of the covenant? And since spiritual doctrine retains its vigour therein, without doubt the tables of the law are lying in it.
Your Blessedness has also been careful to declare that you do not now make use of proud titles, which have sprung from a root of vanity, in writing to certain persons, and you address me saying, As you have commanded. This word, command, I beg you to remove from my hearing, since I know who I am, and who you are. For in position you are my brethren, in character my fathers. I did not, then, command, but was desirous of indicating what seemed to be profitable. Yet I do not find that your Blessedness has been willing to remember perfectly this very thing that I brought to your recollection. For I said that neither to me nor to any one else ought you to write anything of the kind; and lo, in the preface of the epistle which you have addressed to myself who forbade it, you have thought fit to make use of a proud appellation, calling me Universal Pope. But I beg your most sweet Holiness to do this no more, since what is given to another beyond what reason demands is subtracted from yourself. For as for me, I do not seek to be prospered by words but by my conduct. Nor do I regard that as an honour whereby I know that my brethren lose their honour. For my honour is the honour of the universal Church: my honour is the solid vigour of my brethren. Then am I truly honoured when the honour due to all and each is not denied them. For if your Holiness calls me Universal Pope, you deny that you are yourself what you call me universally. But far be this from us. Away with words that inflate vanity and wound charity.
And, indeed, in the synod of Chalcedon and afterwards by subsequent Fathers, your Holiness knows that this was offered to my predecessors [1753] . And yet not one of them would ever use this title, that, while regarding the honour of all priests in this world, they might keep their own before Almighty God. Lastly, while addressing to you the greeting which is due, I beg you to deign to remember me in your holy prayers, to the end that the Lord for your intercessions may absolve me from the bands of my sins, since my own merits may not avail me. __________________________________________________________________
[1752] Cf. VII. 4, and 34.
[1753] Cf. V. 18, note 5. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXXIII.
To Dominicus.
Gregory to Dominicus, Bishop of Carthage.
The letter of your Holiness, which we received at the hands of the bearer of these presents, so expressed priestly moderation as to soothe us, in a manner, with the bodily presence of its author. Nor indeed does infrequency of communication cause any harm where the affection of love remains uninterrupted in one's mind. Great, moreover, is the power of charity, beloved brother, which binds hearts one to another in mutual affection with the chain of its sincerity, and suffers them not to be loosened from the cohesion of grace, which conjoins things disjoined, keeps together things united, and causes persons who are unknown by sight to be known through love. Whosoever therefore fixes his heart on the hinge of charity, him no impulse of any adversity whatever tears from the habitation of the heavenly country, since, in whatever direction he may turn himself, he parts not from the threshold of the commandments. Hence also it is said by the excellent preacher in praise of this same charity, Which is the bond of perfectness (Coloss. iii. 14). We see, then, what great praise is due to that which not only engenders perfectness in the soul, but also binds it.
Wherefore, since the language of thy letters shews thee to be inflamed with the fire of this virtue, I rejoice in the Lord with abundant exultation, and hope that it may shine forth in thee more and more, seeing that the flame of the shepherd is the light of the flock. For it becomes the Lord's priest [1754] to shine in manners and life, to the end that the people committed to him may be able, as it were in the mirror of his life, both to choose what to follow, and to see what to correct.
Knowing, furthermore, whence priestly ordination took its beginning in the African parts, you act laudably in recurring with wise recollection, in your love of the Apostolic See, to the origin of your office, and in continuing with commendable constancy in your affection towards it [1755] . For indeed it is certain that whatever reverence and devotion in priestly wise you shew to it, this you add to your own honour; seeing that you hereby invite it to be bound with answering love to you.
It remains, most dear brother, that we beseech Almighty God with continual prayer that He would direct the steps of our hearts into the pathway of His truth, and bring us to the heavenly kingdoms, granting us by the grace of His protection to exhibit in our works the office which we bear in name. The Month of August, first Indiction [1756] . __________________________________________________________________
[1754] "Dominicam sacerdotam," perhaps with allusion to the name of Dominicus.
[1755] See II. 47, note 6.
[1756] The date varies in some few mss. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXXIV.
To John Bishop of Scyllacium [1757] .
Gregory to John, &c.
It is evidently a very serious thing, and contrary to what a priest should aim at, to wish to disturb privileges formerly granted to any monastery, and to endeavour to bring to naught what has been arranged for quiet. Now the monks of the Castilliensian monastery in your Fraternity's city have complained to us that you are taking steps to impose upon the said monastery certain things contrary to what had been allowed by your predecessors and sanctioned by long custom, and to disturb ancient arrangements by a certain injurious novelty. Wherefore we hereby exhort your Fraternity that, if this is so, you refrain from troubling this monastery under any excuse, and that you try not, through any opportunity of usurpation, to upset what has been long secured to it, but that you study, without any gainsaying, to preserve all its privileges inviolate, and know that no more is lawful to you with regard to the said monastery than was lawful to your predecessors.
Further, inasmuch as they have likewise complained that thy Fraternity has taken certain things from the monastery under the guise of their being, as it were, an offering [1758] , it is necessary that, if thou recollectest having received anything unbecomingly, thou restore it without delay, lest the sin of avarice seriously convict thee, whom priestly munificence ought to have shewn liberal towards monasteries. Therefore, while thou preservest all things which, as we have said, have been allowed and preserved by thy predecessors, let it be thy care to keep careful watch over the acts and lives of the monks residing there, and, if thou shouldest find any one living amiss, or (which God forbid) guilty of any sin of uncleanness, to correct such by strict and regular emendation. For, as we desire your Fraternity to abstain from incongruous usurpations, so we admonish you to be in all ways solicitous in what pertains to rectitude of discipline and the guardianship of souls.
The monks of the aforesaid monastery have also informed us that the camp which is called Scillacium is built on ground belonging to their monastery, and that on this account those who live there pledged themselves in writing [1759] to pay a solatium [1760] every year; but that they afterwards thought scorn of it, and idly withheld their stipulated payment. Let then your Fraternity take care to learn the truth accurately; and, if you should find it so, urgently see to their not delaying to give what they promised, and what also reason requires; that so both they may possess quietly what they hold, and the rights of the monastery may incur no damage.
Furthermore, the monks of the aforesaid monastery have complained to us that their abbot has granted to thy Fraternity by title of gift land within the camp of Scillacium, to the extent of six hundred feet, under pretext of building a church: and accordingly it is our will that as much land as the walls of the church, when built, can surround shall be claimed as belonging to the church. But let whatever may be outside the walls of the said church revert without dispute to the possession of the monastery. For the ordinances neither of worldly laws nor of the sacred canons permit the property of a monastery to be segregated by any title from its ownership. On this account restore thou this gift of land which has been granted against reason. __________________________________________________________________
[1757] The address in the text is "Episcopo Scillitano." That the see was that of Scyllacium in Brutia appears from the contents of the epistle. Syllacium itself appears to have been a Castrum, which had been erected on land belonging to a monastery. The epistle is illustrative of Gregory's anxiety to protect the property and privileges of monasteries against bishops. See Prolegom., p. xx., and references in Index under Monasteries.
[1758] Sub xenii quasi specie. For the meaning of the word xenium, see II. 23, note 8.
[1759] Libellis factis; meaning apparently that there had been written memoranda of agreement.
[1760] The word solatium is variously used, sometimes for any kind of aid or succour; sometimes for remuneration for services done, or grants in aid; here apparently for payment in the way of rent for the land occupied. __________________________________________________________________
Epistle XXXV.
To Leontius, Ex-Consul.
Gregory to Leontius, &c.
Since in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and of silver, but also of wood and of earth, and some indeed to honour but some to dishonour (2 Tim. ii. 20), who can be ignorant that in the bosom of the Universal Church some as vessels of dishonour are deputed to the lowest uses, but others, as vessels of honour, are fitted for clean uses. And yet it commonly comes to pass that the citizens of Babylon serve in task-work for Jerusalem, while the citizens of Jerusalem, that is of the heavenly country, are deputed to the task-work of Babylon. For when the elect of God, endowed with moral excellence, distinguished for moderation, seeking not their own gain, are deputed to earthly business, what else is it but that the citizens of holy Jerusalem serve in the work of Babylon? And when some, unbridled in immorality, hold places of holy dignity, and in the very things which they seem to do well seek praise to themselves, what else is it but that the citizens of Babylon execute the task-work of the heavenly Jerusalem? For so Judas, mixed with the apostles, long preached the Redeemer of the human race, and did signs with the rest; but, because he had been a citizen of Babylon, he executed his work as task-work for the heavenly Jerusalem. But on the other hand Joseph, being carried into Egypt, served an earthly court, bore the charge of administration in temporal things, exhibited whatever was justly due to a transitory kingdom; but, because he was still a citizen of holy Jerusalem, he administered the service of Babylon, as has been seen above, in the way of task-work only. A follower of him, good man, I believe thee to be, knowing thee, though involved in earthly action, to act with a gentle spirit, to keep in all respects the citadel of humility, and to give to every one what is just. For such good things are reported by many of your Glory that I would fain not hear of such things, but see them: yet still I am fed by the good renown of him whom I am not allowed to see. But the woman who poured from the alabaster box, exhibiting a type of the Holy Church, that is of all the elect, filled the house with the ointment (Luke vii.). And we, as often as we hear anything of good people, draw in as it were through our nostrils a breath of sweetness. And when Paul the Apostle said, We are a good odour of Christ unto God (2 Cor. ii. 15), it is plainly given to be understood that he exhibited himself as a savour indeed to the present, but as an odour to the absent. We therefore, while we cannot be nourished by the savour of your presence, are so by the odour of your absence.
For this also we greatly rejoice, that the gifts which you sent us were not unlike your character. For indeed we received oil of the holy cross [1761] , and wood of aloes; one to bless by the touch, the other to give a sweet smell when kindled. For it was becoming that a good man should send us things that might appease the wrath of God against us.
Many other things also you have sent for our store-houses, since, as we subsist both in soul and in flesh, it was needful that we should be sustained in both. And yet in transmitting these things your most sweet soul declares that it blushes much for shame, and holds out the shield of charity before this same shame-facedness. But I altogether rejoice in these words, since from this attestation of the soul I know that he can never take away what is another's who blushes even in bestowing what is his own. Your gifts however, which you call small, are great: but I think that your Glory's very humility enhances them yet the more. And you beg me to receive them kindly. But meanwhile recall to your memory the two mites of a certain widow (Luke xxvii.). For, if she pleased God who offered a little with a good will, why should not he please men who with a humble mind has given much? Furthermore we send you, as a blessing from Saint Peter, Prince of the apostles, a key of his most sacred sepulchre, in which is inserted a blessing from his chains [1762] , that what bound his neck for martyrdom may loose yours from all sins. __________________________________________________________________
[1761] "Oil of the cross" is spoken of not infrequently from the 6th century downward as efficient for healing. In the Itinerarium attributed to Antoninus of Placentia in that century mention is made of ampullæ of onyx stone containing oil being brought into contact with the wood of the true cross which was supposed to be preserved in Constantine's Church on Golgotha, and the oil thereupon at once boiling over. It may have been oil which was believed to have thus acquired healing virtue that was originally meant by "oil of the cross." But in the following century we find notice of a belief that oil flowed miraculously from the wood of the cross itself. For Adamnan, in his book De locis sanctis (which is mentioned by Bede, H. E. V. 15, as presented by him to King Aldfrid of Northumbria, and published by Mabillon, de S. Adamn. Act. Benedict. sæc. iii. part ii. p. 456), speaks of his informant, Arcuulf, a Gallic bishop, having seen at Constantinople, a piece of the true cross which had been sent thither by Helena, from the knots of which an odorous liquid with healing virtues flowed.
[1762] Filings from the supposed chains of St. Peter, preserved at Rome, were inserted in keys for his sepulchre (cf. IV. 30), and these keys were sent by Gregory to various persons as valuable charms. Cf. I. 26, note 3. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
Indexes __________________________________________________________________
Index of Scripture References
Genesis
[1]1:1-19 [2]1:2 [3]1:2 [4]1:5 [5]2:7 [6]2:17 [7]2:17 [8]3:14 [9]3:19 [10]3:19 [11]4:4 [12]9:1 [13]11:7 [14]12:3 [15]18 [16]18:1 [17]18:20 [18]19 [19]19:20 [20]19:21 [21]21:10 [22]22:18 [23]22:18 [24]25:23 [25]27:27 [26]28:12 [27]29 [28]31:47-48 [29]32:24 [30]33:11 [31]34:1-3 [32]34:2 [33]34:25 [34]34:30 [35]49:10
Exodus
[36]3 [37]12 [38]12:11 [39]12:23 [40]12:23 [41]12:23 [42]14:29 [43]15:6 [44]15:19 [45]16:6 [46]16:8 [47]18:17-18 [48]18:30 [49]21:33-34 [50]22:8 [51]22:28 [52]25:12 [53]28:8 [54]28:15 [55]28:33 [56]28:34 [57]28:35 [58]29:5 [59]29:22 [60]32:6 [61]32:27 [62]32:27 [63]33:20 [64]34:33 [65]34:35
Leviticus
[66]15:2 [67]19:14 [68]21 [69]21:13 [70]21:13-14 [71]21:14 [72]21:17 [73]21:18 [74]23:26-44
Numbers
[75]10:29 [76]22:23 [77]23:10 [78]24:17 [79]25:9 [80]29
Deuteronomy
[81]6:5 [82]8:3 [83]19:4-5 [84]19:15 [85]25:4 [86]25:5 [87]28:66 [88]32:42
Joshua
[89]15:18 [90]15:18
Ruth
[91]1:20 [92]1:20
1 Samuel
[93]2:25 [94]2:29 [95]4:17-18 [96]15:17 [97]18:10 [98]24:4 [99]24:6 [100]24:18 [101]25:37
2 Samuel
[102]2:22-23 [103]7:27 [104]11:17 [105]12:4-5 [106]12:7
1 Kings
[107]2:9 [108]7:23 [109]10:22 [110]15:17 [111]15:30 [112]17:11
2 Kings
[113]2:24 [114]5:14 [115]5:15 [116]6:16 [117]11:3 [118]11:15 [119]20:13 [120]25:10
1 Chronicles
[121]12:2
2 Chronicles
[122]19:2-3
Ezra
[123]3:2
Job
[124]1:1 [125]1:8 [126]7:1 [127]10:15 [128]14:4 [129]19:4 [130]26:5 [131]31:26-28 [132]36:5 [133]38:36 [134]41:7 [135]41:14 [136]41:25 [137]41:25 [138]41:25
Psalms
[139]1:1 [140]2:11 [141]6:6 [142]6:6 [143]7:4 [144]9:14 [145]11:2 [146]15:1 [147]15:1 [148]15:5 [149]15:5 [150]16:10 [151]18:44 [152]19:1-2 [153]19:4 [154]22:1 [155]22:12-13 [156]22:16 [157]22:16-17 [158]22:16-17 [159]22:20 [160]23:4 [161]25:10 [162]26:8 [163]27:1 [164]30:5 [165]30:6 [166]30:7 [167]31:5 [168]31:14 [169]33:5 [170]33:20 [171]34:3 [172]34:5 [173]34:8 [174]34:18 [175]34:18 [176]36:4 [177]37:20 [178]37:23-24 [179]38:8 [180]40 [181]40:10-11 [182]40:12 [183]40:12 [184]41:1 [185]41:1 [186]41:1-3 [187]44:22 [188]49:9 [189]49:14 [190]49:17 [191]51:3 [192]51:3 [193]51:15 [194]51:17 [195]54:3 [196]55:5 [197]55:15 [198]55:21 [199]68:35 [200]68:61 [201]69:2 [202]69:2 [203]69:2 [204]69:2 [205]69:4 [206]69:21 [207]69:21 [208]69:24 [209]73:18 [210]73:18 [211]75:4 [212]76:1 [213]77:10 [214]77:34 [215]78:39 [216]79:6 [217]81:7 [218]81:7 [219]81:10 [220]83:13 [221]84:6 [222]84:12 [223]85:12 [224]86:9 [225]95:2 [226]96:10 [227]98:2 [228]102:4 [229]105:4 [230]105:44 [231]108:6 [232]109:1 [233]109:6 [234]109:97 [235]110:1 [236]110:4 [237]112:9 [238]115:5 [239]116:15 [240]118:16 [241]118:16 [242]118:22 [243]118:24 [244]119:73 [245]119:73 [246]119:106 [247]119:107 [248]119:107 [249]119:165 [250]120 [251]120:2 [252]120:7 [253]123:8 [254]126:2 [255]128:3 [256]130:7 [257]131:9 [258]134 [259]135:23-24 [260]135:23-24 [261]136:4 [262]138:6 [263]138:17 [264]139:10 [265]139:21 [266]139:21-22 [267]140:3 [268]140:5 [269]141:3 [270]141:11 [271]144:21 [272]145:14 [273]145:14 [274]145:19 [275]145:19 [276]146:6 [277]146:7-8 [278]150:4 [279]150:4
Proverbs
[280]1:5 [281]1:24 [282]1:28 [283]1:31 [284]1:32 [285]3:11 [286]3:16 [287]3:28 [288]3:32 [289]4:25 [290]5:1 [291]5:9 [292]5:15-17 [293]6:1 [294]6:3 [295]6:4 [296]6:6 [297]6:12-14 [298]9:1 [299]9:1 [300]10:9 [301]10:19 [302]11:17 [303]11:25 [304]11:26 [305]14:4 [306]14:30 [307]15:7 [308]15:33 [309]16:5 [310]16:5 [311]16:18 [312]16:18 [313]16:18 [314]16:32 [315]17:14 [316]18:4 [317]18:9 [318]19:11 [319]19:14 [320]19:15 [321]19:15 [322]20:4 [323]20:21 [324]20:27 [325]20:30 [326]21:11 [327]21:13 [328]21:26 [329]21:26 [330]21:28 [331]21:30 [332]23:35 [333]23:35 [334]25:28 [335]26:10 [336]27:6 [337]27:22 [338]28:14 [339]28:20 [340]29:11
Ecclesiastes
[341]3:7 [342]5:9 [343]7:9 [344]7:17 [345]9:10 [346]11:4 [347]11:9 [348]20:7
Song of Solomon
[349]1:3 [350]2:6 [351]3:8 [352]7:4 [353]7:4 [354]8:13
Isaiah
[355]1:2-3 [356]1:16 [357]3:9 [358]5:1-5 [359]5:8 [360]6:5 [361]6:8 [362]6:8 [363]7:14 [364]7:14 [365]7:14 [366]9:2 [367]9:6 [368]9:6 [369]9:13 [370]11:1 [371]14:13 [372]14:13 [373]14:13 [374]22:22 [375]23:4 [376]30:15 [377]30:20-21 [378]32:17 [379]34:15 [380]35:5-6 [381]38:15 [382]39:4 [383]40:1 [384]40:9 [385]42:16 [386]42:16 [387]43:2 [388]43:25-26 [389]43:26 [390]45:8 [391]46:8 [392]48:10 [393]50:6 [394]52:10 [395]52:11 [396]52:15 [397]53:1 [398]53:8 [399]53:45 [400]54:4 [401]54:4 [402]54:11 [403]55:5 [404]56:4-5 [405]56:10 [406]56:11 [407]57:11 [408]58:1 [409]58:1 [410]58:3 [411]58:3 [412]58:5 [413]58:9 [414]58:14 [415]61:8 [416]64:4 [417]65:1 [418]65:1 [419]65:1 [420]65:2 [421]66:2 [422]66:2
Jeremiah
[423]1:5 [424]1:6 [425]1:6 [426]1:10 [427]2:8 [428]3:1 [429]3:3 [430]3:3 [431]4:4 [432]5:3 [433]5:3 [434]6:29 [435]9:1 [436]9:5 [437]15:6 [438]23:2 [439]23:5 [440]31:31 [441]31:33 [442]39:9 [443]48:10 [444]51:9
Lamentations
[445]1:16 [446]2:14 [447]3:48 [448]4:1
Ezekiel
[449]1:18 [450]3:17 [451]3:17 [452]4:1 [453]8:8 [454]8:9-10 [455]8:9-10 [456]8:9-10 [457]8:10 [458]13:5 [459]13:18 [460]16:14-15 [461]21:27 [462]22:18 [463]23:3 [464]24:4 [465]24:12 [466]32:19 [467]34:4 [468]34:18-19 [469]36:5 [470]43:13 [471]44:20 [472]44:20 [473]44:22
Daniel
[474]2:35 [475]4:16 [476]4:30
Hosea
[477]2:8 [478]4:9 [479]5:1 [480]8:4 [481]9:8 [482]13:14
Joel
[483]2:12-13 [484]2:12-13 [485]2:15 [486]2:15 [487]2:16 [488]2:16
Amos
[489]1:13 [490]6:12 [491]8:10 [492]8:10
Micah
[493]5:2
Habakkuk
[494]2:4 [495]2:4 [496]2:6 [497]3:2
Haggai
[498]1:6
Zechariah
[499]7:5 [500]13:1
Malachi
[501]2:7 [502]2:7
Matthew
[503]1:1 [504]1:1 [505]1:1 [506]1:22-23 [507]1:23 [508]1:23 [509]2:1-12 [510]2:10-11 [511]2:16 [512]3:11 [513]3:17 [514]3:17 [515]3:17 [516]4:1-11 [517]4:3 [518]4:4 [519]4:10 [520]4:23-24 [521]5:1-9 [522]5:3 [523]5:3 [524]5:4 [525]5:5 [526]5:6 [527]5:6 [528]5:7 [529]5:7 [530]5:7 [531]5:7 [532]5:7 [533]5:8 [534]5:9 [535]5:9 [536]5:9 [537]5:9 [538]5:14 [539]5:15 [540]5:16 [541]5:16 [542]5:16 [543]5:17 [544]5:17 [545]5:17 [546]5:23-24 [547]5:23-24 [548]6:1 [549]6:1 [550]6:2 [551]6:3 [552]6:5 [553]6:6 [554]6:10 [555]6:10 [556]6:12 [557]6:12 [558]6:12 [559]6:14 [560]6:14 [561]6:15 [562]6:15 [563]6:21 [564]6:24 [565]6:25 [566]7 [567]7:2 [568]7:3 [569]7:3 [570]7:6 [571]7:13 [572]7:14 [573]7:14 [574]7:14 [575]7:14 [576]7:15 [577]7:15 [578]9:3 [579]9:13 [580]10:8 [581]10:8 [582]10:8 [583]10:8 [584]10:16 [585]10:16 [586]10:19 [587]10:24 [588]10:24 [589]10:26 [590]10:32 [591]10:34 [592]10:38 [593]10:42 [594]11:28 [595]11:29 [596]11:29-30 [597]11:29-30 [598]12:32 [599]12:35 [600]12:36 [601]12:36 [602]12:44-45 [603]13:17 [604]13:28 [605]13:31-32 [606]13:33 [607]13:43 [608]13:43 [609]15:11 [610]15:11 [611]15:13 [612]15:14 [613]16:13 [614]16:13 [615]16:13-16 [616]16:16 [617]16:16 [618]16:16 [619]16:16 [620]16:16-19 [621]16:17-18 [622]16:18 [623]16:18 [624]16:18 [625]16:18 [626]16:18 [627]16:19 [628]16:19 [629]16:26 [630]16:28 [631]17:1-13 [632]17:6 [633]18:6 [634]18:6 [635]18:7 [636]18:15 [637]18:19-20 [638]18:20 [639]19:6 [640]19:11 [641]20:25 [642]20:25 [643]20:26-28 [644]20:27 [645]20:28 [646]20:28 [647]21:12 [648]21:12 [649]22:11-13 [650]22:32 [651]22:37 [652]22:37 [653]22:37 [654]22:39 [655]22:43-44 [656]23:6-7 [657]23:7-8 [658]23:11-12 [659]23:13 [660]23:13 [661]23:17 [662]23:23 [663]23:24 [664]24:13 [665]24:20 [666]24:48 [667]25:18 [668]25:21 [669]25:23 [670]25:24 [671]25:40 [672]25:40 [673]25:41 [674]25:42-43 [675]26:5 [676]26:38-39 [677]26:38-39 [678]26:39 [679]26:39 [680]26:39 [681]26:39 [682]26:41 [683]26:42 [684]26:42 [685]26:42 [686]26:53 [687]27:1 [688]27:19 [689]27:19 [690]27:25 [691]27:25 [692]27:25 [693]27:42 [694]27:42 [695]27:51 [696]27:51 [697]27:51 [698]27:54 [699]27:54 [700]27:54 [701]28:10 [702]28:16-20 [703]28:19 [704]28:19 [705]28:19-20 [706]28:20 [707]28:20 [708]28:20 [709]28:20
Mark
[710]3:17 [711]4:24 [712]5:19 [713]6:6 [714]8:36 [715]9:49 [716]9:49 [717]9:50 [718]9:50 [719]9:50 [720]12:30 [721]16:9-20 [722]16:15 [723]16:16
Luke
[724]1:35 [725]1:35 [726]1:43 [727]1:46 [728]2:7 [729]2:13 [730]2:14 [731]2:14 [732]2:14 [733]2:14 [734]2:42-43 [735]2:49 [736]3:9 [737]3:15-23 [738]3:16 [739]5:17 [740]5:46 [741]6:12 [742]6:24 [743]6:25 [744]6:27 [745]6:30 [746]6:36 [747]6:36-38 [748]6:36-38 [749]6:38 [750]6:41 [751]6:41 [752]6:45 [753]7 [754]7:47 [755]7:47 [756]8:14 [757]9:10 [758]9:50 [759]9:60 [760]9:62 [761]9:62 [762]10:24 [763]10:27 [764]10:34 [765]10:34 [766]10:39 [767]10:39 [768]10:40 [769]11 [770]11:21-22 [771]11:41 [772]12:16-20 [773]12:19-20 [774]12:23 [775]12:42 [776]12:47 [777]13:27 [778]14:11 [779]14:11 [780]14:11 [781]14:11 [782]14:11 [783]14:11 [784]14:12 [785]15:7 [786]16:10 [787]16:13 [788]16:24 [789]16:25 [790]17:10 [791]17:18 [792]18:12 [793]18:14 [794]18:14 [795]18:14 [796]18:14 [797]18:14 [798]19:10 [799]19:10 [800]19:10 [801]19:13 [802]19:13 [803]19:46 [804]21:2-4 [805]21:19 [806]21:19 [807]21:34 [808]21:34 [809]21:34 [810]21:34 [811]21:35 [812]21:35 [813]22:25 [814]22:31 [815]22:53 [816]22:61 [817]22:61 [818]23:34 [819]23:34 [820]23:34 [821]24:27 [822]24:36 [823]24:38-39 [824]24:39 [825]24:49 [826]27
John
[827]1 [828]1:1-3 [829]1:1-3 [830]1:1-3 [831]1:1-3 [832]1:3 [833]1:3 [834]1:3 [835]1:3 [836]1:3 [837]1:3 [838]1:9 [839]1:12 [840]1:13 [841]1:13 [842]1:13 [843]1:13 [844]1:13 [845]1:14 [846]1:14 [847]1:14 [848]1:14 [849]1:14 [850]1:14 [851]1:14 [852]1:17 [853]1:17 [854]1:17 [855]1:18 [856]1:29 [857]1:29 [858]1:29 [859]2:19 [860]3:8 [861]3:8 [862]3:16 [863]4:2-3 [864]5:30 [865]5:30 [866]6:15 [867]6:53 [868]8:11 [869]8:24 [870]8:38 [871]8:44 [872]8:44 [873]8:56 [874]8:56 [875]10:11 [876]10:12 [877]10:15 [878]10:16 [879]10:17 [880]10:30 [881]10:30 [882]10:30 [883]10:30 [884]10:30 [885]10:30 [886]10:30 [887]10:30 [888]10:30 [889]10:38 [890]10:38 [891]10:38 [892]12:6 [893]12:23 [894]12:23 [895]12:27 [896]12:27 [897]12:28 [898]12:28 [899]12:30-32 [900]12:30-32 [901]12:31 [902]12:32 [903]12:32 [904]12:32 [905]12:32 [906]13:1 [907]13:2 [908]13:27 [909]13:27 [910]13:29 [911]14:6 [912]14:6 [913]14:6 [914]14:9 [915]14:9 [916]14:9 [917]14:16 [918]14:26 [919]14:27 [920]14:27 [921]14:27 [922]14:28 [923]14:28 [924]14:28 [925]14:28 [926]14:28 [927]14:28 [928]14:28 [929]14:28 [930]14:28 [931]15:16-17 [932]16:12 [933]16:12-15 [934]16:13 [935]16:15 [936]16:20 [937]16:22 [938]16:33 [939]16:33 [940]16:33 [941]17:3 [942]17:12 [943]17:20-21 [944]17:21 [945]18:3 [946]18:11 [947]20:17 [948]20:19 [949]20:22 [950]20:22-23 [951]20:29 [952]21:15-17 [953]21:17 [954]21:17 [955]21:17 [956]21:17 [957]21:18 [958]50
Acts
[959]1:11 [960]1:11 [961]1:20 [962]2:1 [963]2:1-4 [964]2:3 [965]2:22-24 [966]2:37-38 [967]2:37-41 [968]2:37-41 [969]2:38 [970]3:6 [971]4:12 [972]4:12 [973]4:12 [974]4:27-28 [975]4:32 [976]4:32 [977]4:32 [978]5:2 [979]6:1-6 [980]7:38 [981]9:4 [982]9:15 [983]9:15 [984]10:13 [985]10:26 [986]11:26 [987]14:16-17 [988]14:22 [989]17:18 [990]20:26-27 [991]20:26-27 [992]22:8 [993]23:6
Romans
[994]1:1-3 [995]1:3 [996]1:8 [997]1:14 [998]1:16 [999]1:20 [1000]1:22 [1001]1:25 [1002]2:12 [1003]2:25 [1004]3:2 [1005]4:20-21 [1006]4:21 [1007]5:1 [1008]5:1 [1009]5:5 [1010]5:7-8 [1011]5:18-19 [1012]5:20 [1013]6:3-5 [1014]6:12 [1015]6:12 [1016]7 [1017]7:23 [1018]7:23 [1019]8:1 [1020]8:14 [1021]8:15 [1022]8:15 [1023]8:17 [1024]8:18 [1025]8:18 [1026]8:24 [1027]8:24 [1028]8:28 [1029]8:32 [1030]8:34 [1031]8:35 [1032]8:35 [1033]8:35 [1034]8:35 [1035]8:35-37 [1036]8:38 [1037]9:5 [1038]9:5 [1039]9:26 [1040]10:4 [1041]10:4 [1042]10:10 [1043]11:13 [1044]11:20 [1045]11:32 [1046]12:3 [1047]12:5 [1048]12:10 [1049]12:15 [1050]12:15 [1051]12:16 [1052]12:18 [1053]12:18 [1054]13:3 [1055]13:11 [1056]13:13 [1057]13:14 [1058]14:3 [1059]14:3 [1060]14:21 [1061]14:23 [1062]15:2 [1063]15:4 [1064]16:17-18 [1065]16:19 [1066]16:19
1 Corinthians
[1067]1:10 [1068]1:10 [1069]1:10 [1070]1:12 [1071]1:13 [1072]1:13 [1073]1:17-20 [1074]1:24 [1075]1:24 [1076]1:26 [1077]1:27 [1078]2:8 [1079]2:9 [1080]2:12 [1081]2:12 [1082]3:1-2 [1083]3:3 [1084]3:4 [1085]3:7 [1086]3:9 [1087]3:11 [1088]3:16 [1089]3:18 [1090]4:5 [1091]4:7 [1092]4:7 [1093]4:21 [1094]5:1-2 [1095]5:5 [1096]5:7 [1097]5:8 [1098]5:8 [1099]5:8 [1100]5:8 [1101]5:8 [1102]5:8 [1103]5:8 [1104]6:4 [1105]6:9-10 [1106]6:11 [1107]6:12 [1108]6:13 [1109]6:20 [1110]7:1-2 [1111]7:2 [1112]7:3 [1113]7:3 [1114]7:5 [1115]7:5 [1116]7:6 [1117]7:9 [1118]7:19 [1119]7:21 [1120]7:29 [1121]7:29 [1122]7:29-30 [1123]7:29-31 [1124]7:29-31 [1125]7:30 [1126]7:31 [1127]8:8 [1128]8:9 [1129]9:9 [1130]9:20 [1131]9:27 [1132]10:13 [1133]10:17 [1134]10:24 [1135]10:24 [1136]10:24 [1137]10:33 [1138]11:19 [1139]11:31 [1140]12:3 [1141]12:3-6 [1142]12:3-6 [1143]12:6 [1144]12:6 [1145]12:6 [1146]12:12 [1147]12:26 [1148]13:4 [1149]13:4 [1150]13:4 [1151]13:4 [1152]13:12 [1153]14:1 [1154]14:1 [1155]14:20 [1156]14:25 [1157]14:38 [1158]14:38 [1159]15:21-22 [1160]15:22 [1161]15:28 [1162]15:33 [1163]15:33 [1164]15:34 [1165]15:45 [1166]15:47-49 [1167]15:48 [1168]15:53 [1169]17:6
2 Corinthians
[1170]1:8-9 [1171]1:9 [1172]1:17 [1173]1:23 [1174]2:15 [1175]2:17 [1176]3:17 [1177]3:17 [1178]4:5 [1179]4:18 [1180]4:18 [1181]5:13 [1182]5:14-15 [1183]5:15 [1184]5:15 [1185]5:16 [1186]5:19 [1187]5:19 [1188]5:19 [1189]6:1 [1190]6:2 [1191]6:2 [1192]6:7 [1193]7:1 [1194]8:9 [1195]8:9 [1196]8:13-14 [1197]8:14 [1198]9:6 [1199]9:7 [1200]9:7 [1201]9:7 [1202]9:7 [1203]9:10 [1204]10:2 [1205]10:6 [1206]11:2 [1207]11:5 [1208]11:14 [1209]11:14 [1210]11:28-29 [1211]11:29 [1212]11:29 [1213]11:29 [1214]12:2 [1215]12:3 [1216]13:4
Galatians
[1217]1:9 [1218]1:9 [1219]1:10 [1220]2:9 [1221]2:9-10 [1222]2:10 [1223]2:11 [1224]2:18 [1225]3:1 [1226]3:3 [1227]3:16 [1228]3:22 [1229]3:27-28 [1230]3:27-29 [1231]4 [1232]4:4 [1233]4:4 [1234]4:4 [1235]4:6 [1236]4:30 [1237]5:17 [1238]5:17 [1239]5:22 [1240]6:1 [1241]6:2 [1242]6:2 [1243]6:14
Ephesians
[1244]1:15-23 [1245]2 [1246]2:4-5 [1247]2:8-10 [1248]2:14 [1249]2:14 [1250]2:18 [1251]2:18 [1252]2:20 [1253]3:10 [1254]4:3 [1255]4:3 [1256]4:3 [1257]4:3 [1258]4:3 [1259]4:3-4 [1260]4:5 [1261]4:5-6 [1262]4:14 [1263]4:31 [1264]4:31 [1265]5:2 [1266]5:2 [1267]5:2 [1268]5:23 [1269]5:25 [1270]5:29 [1271]5:29 [1272]5:30-32 [1273]6:5 [1274]6:9 [1275]6:12 [1276]6:14-17 [1277]6:15
Philippians
[1278]1:11 [1279]1:21 [1280]1:28 [1281]2:4 [1282]2:5-11 [1283]2:6 [1284]2:6 [1285]2:6 [1286]2:6 [1287]2:6-7 [1288]2:6-11 [1289]2:8 [1290]2:9-11 [1291]2:10 [1292]2:10-11 [1293]2:10-11 [1294]2:13 [1295]2:21 [1296]2:21 [1297]2:21 [1298]2:21 [1299]2:21 [1300]3:13 [1301]3:19 [1302]3:20-21 [1303]4:4 [1304]4:10
Colossians
[1305]1:12-13 [1306]1:18 [1307]1:18 [1308]1:18-20 [1309]2:8 [1310]2:8 [1311]2:8-10 [1312]2:8-10 [1313]2:9 [1314]2:10 [1315]2:14 [1316]2:14 [1317]2:18-19 [1318]2:25 [1319]3:1-2 [1320]3:1-4 [1321]3:1-4 [1322]3:2 [1323]3:2 [1324]3:3 [1325]3:3-4 [1326]3:3-4 [1327]3:5 [1328]3:14 [1329]3:20-21 [1330]3:22 [1331]3:22 [1332]4:6
1 Thessalonians
[1333]2:1 [1334]2:7 [1335]2:7 [1336]2:19 [1337]2:20 [1338]5:16
2 Thessalonians
[1339]1:3-4 [1340]2:1 [1341]3:2 [1342]3:14 [1343]3:15
1 Timothy
[1344]1:7 [1345]1:15 [1346]2:4 [1347]2:5 [1348]2:6 [1349]3:1 [1350]3:1 [1351]3:2 [1352]3:2 [1353]3:7 [1354]3:10 [1355]3:16 [1356]3:16 [1357]3:16 [1358]3:27 [1359]4:1 [1360]4:1 [1361]4:3 [1362]4:11-12 [1363]4:13 [1364]4:14 [1365]4:14 [1366]5:1 [1367]5:1-2 [1368]5:8 [1369]5:14 [1370]5:22 [1371]5:22 [1372]5:23 [1373]6:1 [1374]6:10 [1375]6:10 [1376]6:10 [1377]6:16 [1378]6:17 [1379]6:20 [1380]6:20
2 Timothy
[1381]2:4 [1382]2:4 [1383]2:8 [1384]2:12 [1385]2:12 [1386]2:14 [1387]2:17 [1388]2:20 [1389]2:20 [1390]2:25-26 [1391]3:5 [1392]3:12 [1393]3:12 [1394]3:12 [1395]4:1 [1396]4:2 [1397]4:2 [1398]4:3-4
Titus
[1399]1:9 [1400]1:15 [1401]1:15 [1402]1:16 [1403]1:16 [1404]1:16 [1405]1:16 [1406]2:9 [1407]2:15 [1408]3:10-11
Philemon
[1409]1:1
Hebrews
[1410]2:14 [1411]5:4 [1412]8:8-12 [1413]8:13 [1414]9:4 [1415]10:20 [1416]10:20 [1417]10:20 [1418]11:6 [1419]11:36-37 [1420]12:5-6 [1421]12:6 [1422]12:9-10 [1423]12:12-13 [1424]12:14 [1425]12:14 [1426]12:14 [1427]12:14 [1428]12:14 [1429]12:18 [1430]13:4 [1431]13:7 [1432]13:12
James
[1433]1:5 [1434]1:19 [1435]1:26 [1436]2:20 [1437]2:26 [1438]3:1 [1439]3:2 [1440]3:2 [1441]3:8 [1442]3:8 [1443]3:14-15 [1444]3:17 [1445]4:4 [1446]4:6 [1447]4:6 [1448]5:16
1 Peter
[1449]1:2 [1450]1:13 [1451]1:18 [1452]2:6 [1453]2:9 [1454]2:9 [1455]2:9 [1456]2:11 [1457]2:11 [1458]2:21-24 [1459]3:14 [1460]3:15 [1461]4:11 [1462]4:11 [1463]5:1 [1464]5:3 [1465]5:8 [1466]5:8 [1467]5:9 [1468]5:9
2 Peter
[1469]1:5 [1470]2:16 [1471]2:21 [1472]2:22
1 John
[1473]1:7 [1474]2:4 [1475]2:6 [1476]2:18 [1477]2:19 [1478]3:2 [1479]3:8 [1480]3:14 [1481]3:15 [1482]4:2-3 [1483]4:2-3 [1484]4:4 [1485]4:4 [1486]4:4 [1487]4:18 [1488]4:19 [1489]4:19 [1490]5:4-8 [1491]5:8 [1492]5:19 [1493]5:20 [1494]5:20 [1495]17:11
Revelation
[1496]3:2 [1497]3:11 [1498]3:15-16 [1499]3:18 [1500]3:19 [1501]4:6 [1502]14:4 [1503]17:15 [1504]19:20 [1505]21:5 [1506]22:17
Tobit
[1507]4:7 [1508]4:9 [1509]4:17
Wisdom of Solomon
[1510]1:5 [1511]1:11 [1512]2:24 [1513]2:24 [1514]2:24 [1515]3:7 [1516]9:15 [1517]9:15
Susanna
[1518]1:56
Sirach
[1519]2:1 [1520]3:30 [1521]3:30 [1522]3:33 [1523]6:6 [1524]7:14 [1525]10:9 [1526]10:9 [1527]10:13 [1528]11:10 [1529]12:4 [1530]13:1 [1531]18:30 [1532]19:1 [1533]20:32 [1534]27:12 [1535]29:15 [1536]29:15 [1537]32:1 [1538]32:10 [1539]32:10 [1540]32:24 [1541]34:20 [1542]34:25 __________________________________________________________________
Index of Greek Words and Phrases
* agapan: [1543]1 * anakeimenois: [1544]1 * antidosis: [1545]1 * apo tes prototupou petras: [1546]1 * apo tou xulou: [1547]1 * archimageiros: [1548]1 * akraton: [1549]1 * en heauto akraton tou suneidotos echon ton elenchon: [1550]1 * en tois tou Patros mou: [1551]1 * eparchias: [1552]1 * episkopon: [1553]1 * episphragisasa: [1554]1 * epipsephisasa: [1555]1 * eran: [1556]1 * engraphon: [1557]1 * ephelos: [1558]1 * heos han elthe ta apokeimena auto: [1559]1 * he en Christo teleia diamone: [1560]1 * he humon adelphotes: [1561]1 * he ton sullogon to numphoni: [1562]1 * en pote hote ouk en: [1563]1 * es tinos homologias: [1564]1 * ho hagiotatos kai makariotatos archiepiskopos tes megales kai presbuteras Romes Leon: [1565]1 * homoousion: [1566]1 * hupselon: [1567]1 * ho apokeitai: [1568]1 * Gk. hekateron: [1569]1 * a: [1570]1 [1571]2 * aido pasan apobalon kai hen periekeito tes planes doran apotinaxamenos: [1572]1 * b: [1573]1 [1574]2 * boubalos: [1575]1 * g: [1576]1 [1577]2 * dunamis: [1578]1 * despotika: [1579]1 * diabolos: [1580]1 * di' autou: [1581]1 * diathekes: [1582]1 * diairein: [1583]1 * dunameis: [1584]1 * euboulian: [1585]1 * eunoian: [1586]1 * theotokos: [1587]1 * kan tois deuterois iasasthai ta protera: [1588]1 * kome: [1589]1 * kata sarka: [1590]1 * keimelia: [1591]1 * kolumbethra: [1592]1 * lian: [1593]1 * logia: [1594]1 * luei: [1595]1 * leichen: [1596]1 * logeion: [1597]1 * logikou: [1598]1 * mandra: [1599]1 * mega esti to tes eusebeias musterion: [1600]1 * meta tou sulleitourgou mou: [1601]1 * metabe: [1602]1 * metanoein: [1603]1 * metempsuosis: [1604]1 * monorchis: [1605]1 * monogenes: [1606]1 * musterio: [1607]1 * oikoumenikon: [1608]1 * oikoumenikos archiepiskopos: [1609]1 * paschein: [1610]1 * pathetos: [1611]1 * paratheke: [1612]1 * peri de tes hagiotetos tes megales pisteos: [1613]1 * plasma: [1614]1 * platos: [1615]1 * poiein: [1616]1 * prassein: [1617]1 * prothemeta hubreos kai loioorias anamesta: [1618]1 * ptillos tous ophthalmous: [1619]1 * sumbolon: [1620]1 * sunodos endemousa: [1621]1 * sparganon: [1622]1 * stephanousa kallinikos Euphemia: [1623]1 * ten delosin kai ten aletheian: [1624]1 * tes oikoumenes: [1625]1 * ton anagennethesomenon: [1626]1 * to endoxotato kai philanthropotato k.t.l: [1627]1 * to krinonti dikaios: [1628]1 * tous didachthesomenous: [1629]1 * phoresomen: [1630]1 * phoresomen: [1631]1 * charis: [1632]1 * chrestos: [1633]1 * psora agria: [1634]1 __________________________________________________________________
Index of French Words and Phrases
* OEuvres très complètes de Saint Leon le Grand publièes d'après l'édition des frères Ballerinii et celle de Paschase Quesnel enrichées de préfaces, d'avertissements et de commentaires, suivies des exercices de Cacciari sur toutes les oeuvres du saint docteur. Paris: [1635]1 * , Memoires pour servir à l'histoire Ecclesiastique: [1636]1 * Histoire Universelle de l'Eglise catholique: [1637]1 * Histoire du Pontificat de Saint Léon le Grand par Monsr. L. Maimbourg La Haye: [1638]1 * Histoire du Xtianisme: [1639]1 * Histoire du pontificat de Saint Léon le Grand, Paris: [1640]1 * Histoire générale des Auteurs sacrés: [1641]1 * L'edition que l'on doit aujourd'hui préférer, est: [1642]1 * L'ile de St. Honorat: [1643]1 * La vie et religion de deux bons papes Léon premier et Gregoire premier par: [1644]1 * Le Nain de Tillemont: [1645]1 * Lerins: [1646]1 * Pierre Du Moulin: [1647]1 * Sacristain d'une église, chargé de la garder, de sonner les cloches pour l'office divin, de préparer les reliquaires: [1648]1 * celle qui a été publiée par M. l'abbé Migne sous le titre d: [1649]1 * on reproche aux éditions du P. Quesnel un grand nombre de falsifications, par lesquelles le P. Quesnel se proposait notamment d'affaiblir l'autorité pontificale: [1650]1 * prêtre de l'oratoire: [1651]1 __________________________________________________________________
Index of Pages of the Print Edition
[1652]ia [1653]i [1654]iii [1655]v [1656]vi [1657]vii [1658]viii [1659]ix [1660]x [1661]xi [1662]xii [1663]xiii [1664]xiv [1665]xv [1666]1 [1667]2 [1668]3 [1669]4 [1670]5 [1671]6 [1672]7 [1673]8 [1674]9 [1675]10 [1676]11 [1677]12 [1678]13 [1679]14 [1680]15 [1681]16 [1682]17 [1683]18 [1684]19 [1685]20 [1686]21 [1687]22 [1688]23 [1689]24 [1690]25 [1691]26 [1692]27 [1693]28 [1694]29 [1695]30 [1696]31 [1697]32 [1698]33 [1699]34 [1700]35 [1701]36 [1702]37 [1703]38 [1704]39 [1705]40 [1706]41 [1707]42 [1708]43 [1709]44 [1710]45 [1711]46 [1712]47 [1713]48 [1714]49 [1715]50 [1716]51 [1717]52 [1718]53 [1719]54 [1720]55 [1721]56 [1722]57 [1723]58 [1724]59 [1725]60 [1726]61 [1727]62 [1728]63 [1729]64 [1730]65 [1731]66 [1732]67 [1733]68 [1734]69 [1735]70 [1736]71 [1737]72 [1738]73 [1739]74 [1740]75 [1741]76 [1742]77 [1743]78 [1744]79 [1745]80 [1746]81 [1747]82 [1748]83 [1749]84 [1750]85 [1751]86 [1752]87 [1753]88 [1754]89 [1755]90 [1756]91 [1757]92 [1758]93 [1759]94 [1760]95 [1761]96 [1762]97 [1763]98 [1764]99 [1765]100 [1766]101 [1767]102 [1768]103 [1769]104 [1770]105 [1771]106 [1772]107 [1773]108 [1774]109 [1775]110 [1776]111 [1777]112 [1778]113 [1779]114 [1780]115 [1781]116 [1782]117 [1783]118 [1784]119 [1785]120 [1786]121 [1787]122 [1788]123 [1789]124 [1790]125 [1791]126 [1792]127 [1793]128 [1794]129 [1795]130 [1796]131 [1797]132 [1798]133 [1799]134 [1800]135 [1801]136 [1802]137 [1803]138 [1804]139 [1805]140 [1806]141 [1807]142 [1808]143 [1809]144 [1810]145 [1811]146 [1812]147 [1813]148 [1814]149 [1815]150 [1816]151 [1817]152 [1818]153 [1819]154 [1820]155 [1821]156 [1822]157 [1823]158 [1824]159 [1825]160 [1826]161 [1827]162 [1828]163 [1829]164 [1830]165 [1831]166 [1832]167 [1833]168 [1834]169 [1835]170 [1836]171 [1837]172 [1838]173 [1839]174 [1840]175 [1841]176 [1842]177 [1843]178 [1844]179 [1845]180 [1846]181 [1847]182 [1848]183 [1849]184 [1850]185 [1851]186 [1852]187 [1853]188 [1854]189 [1855]190 [1856]191 [1857]192 [1858]193 [1859]194 [1860]195 [1861]196 [1862]197 [1863]198 [1864]199 [1865]200 [1866]201 [1867]202 [1868]203 [1869]204 [1870]205 [1871]210 [1872]ib [1873]iiib [1874]vib [1875]viib [1876]viiib [1877]ixb [1878]xb [1879]xib [1880]xiib [1881]xiiib [1882]xivb [1883]xvb [1884]xvib [1885]xviib [1886]xviiib [1887]xixb [1888]xxb [1889]xxib [1890]xxiib [1891]xxiiib [1892]xxivb [1893]xxvb [1894]xxvib [1895]xxviib [1896]xxviiib [1897]xxixb [1898]xxxb [1899]xxxib [1900]xxxiib [1901]1b [1902]2b [1903]3b [1904]4b [1905]5b [1906]6b [1907]7b [1908]8b [1909]9b [1910]10b [1911]11b [1912]12b [1913]13b [1914]14b [1915]15b [1916]16b [1917]17b [1918]18b [1919]19b [1920]20b [1921]21b [1922]22b [1923]23b [1924]24b [1925]25b [1926]26b [1927]27b [1928]28b [1929]29b [1930]30b [1931]31b [1932]32b [1933]33b [1934]34b [1935]35b [1936]36b [1937]37b [1938]38b [1939]39b [1940]40b [1941]41b [1942]42b [1943]43b [1944]44b [1945]45b [1946]46b [1947]47b [1948]48b [1949]49b [1950]50b [1951]51b [1952]52b [1953]53b [1954]54b [1955]55b [1956]56b [1957]57b [1958]58b [1959]59b [1960]60b [1961]61b [1962]62b [1963]63b [1964]64b [1965]65b [1966]66b [1967]67b [1968]68b [1969]69b [1970]70b [1971]71b [1972]72b [1973]73b [1974]74b [1975]75b [1976]76b [1977]77b [1978]78b [1979]79b [1980]80b [1981]81b [1982]82b [1983]83b [1984]84b [1985]85b [1986]86b [1987]87b [1988]88b [1989]89b [1990]90b [1991]91b [1992]92b [1993]93b [1994]94b [1995]95b [1996]96b [1997]97b [1998]98b [1999]99b [2000]100b [2001]101b [2002]102b [2003]103b [2004]104b [2005]105b [2006]106b [2007]107b [2008]108b [2009]109b [2010]110b [2011]111b [2012]112b [2013]113b [2014]114b [2015]115b [2016]116b [2017]117b [2018]118b [2019]119b [2020]120b [2021]121b [2022]122b [2023]123b [2024]124b [2025]125b [2026]126b [2027]127b [2028]128b [2029]129b [2030]130b [2031]131b [2032]132b [2033]133b [2034]134b [2035]135b [2036]136b [2037]137b [2038]138b [2039]139b [2040]140b [2041]141b [2042]142b [2043]143b [2044]144b [2045]145b [2046]146b [2047]147b [2048]148b [2049]149b [2050]150b [2051]151b [2052]152b [2053]153b [2054]154b [2055]155b [2056]156b [2057]157b [2058]158b [2059]159b [2060]160b [2061]161b [2062]162b [2063]163b [2064]164b [2065]165b [2066]166b [2067]167b [2068]168b [2069]169b [2070]170b [2071]171b [2072]172b [2073]173b [2074]174b [2075]175b [2076]176b [2077]177b [2078]178b [2079]179b [2080]180b [2081]181b [2082]182b [2083]183b [2084]184b [2085]185b [2086]186b [2087]187b [2088]188b [2089]189b [2090]190b [2091]191b [2092]192b [2093]193b [2094]194b [2095]195b [2096]196b [2097]197b [2098]198b [2099]199b [2100]200b [2101]201b [2102]202b [2103]203b [2104]204b [2105]205b [2106]206b [2107]207b [2108]208b [2109]209b [2110]210b [2111]211b [2112]212b [2113]213b [2114]214b [2115]215b [2116]216b [2117]217b [2118]218b [2119]219b [2120]220b [2121]221b [2122]222b [2123]223b [2124]224b [2125]225b [2126]226b [2127]227b [2128]228b [2129]229b [2130]230b [2131]231b [2132]232b [2133]233b [2134]234b [2135]235b [2136]236b [2137]237b [2138]238b [2139]239b [2140]240b [2141]241b [2142]242b [2143]243b [2144]247b 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This document is from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library at Calvin College, http://www.ccel.org, generated on demand from ThML source.
References
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